Question about Gloster Pioneer "story"

Discussion in 'Weapons, Technology & Equipment' started by Chris C, May 18, 2019.

  1. Chris C

    Chris C Canadian

    This popped up on Twitter from the RealtimeWW2 account:

    Supposedly a year before the Gloster Pioneer's first flight, some government science advisors claimed jet flight was impossible. Said engine designer Frank Whittle: "Good thing I was too stupid to know that!"

    True or too good to be true?
     
  2. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

  3. Chris C

    Chris C Canadian

    While that article gives some interesting background which I was glad to read... it doesn't actually answer my question.
     
  4. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

    The man who overcame that limit was not a professional engineer. Frank Whittle, a machinist’s son and Royal Air Force pilot, came up with the idea for a jet engine while serving as a flight instructor in the early 1930s. “Whittle was an odd duck pushing an idea everyone thought was kind of nuts,” says historian Roger Bilstein, author of Flight in America: From the Wrights to the Astronauts. “Nobody thought it would work.”
    A Century of Flight - Taking Wing | Innovation | Smithsonian
     
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  5. Juha

    Juha Junior Member

    RAF paid Whittle's education at Cambridge? University while he was developing his jet engine idea. Also Whittle was not only one even in Britain who was developing jet engine prewar. The main question was was the technology advanced enough to make practical jet engine possible in late 30s/early40s
     
  6. CL1

    CL1 116th LAA and 92nd (Loyals) LAA,Royal Artillery

    In 1919, when the gas turbine was an established prime mover, the British Air Ministry asked Dr. W.I. Stern to report on the prospect for the use of gas turbines for aircraft propulsion. His study was flawed in its assumptions and he concluded that the gas turbine was not a feasible proposition. This report was to have an adverse impact on Whittles quest for support years into the future. Dr. A.A. Griffith, a brilliant scientist working at England's Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) worked in the 1920s on developing groundbreaking aerodynamic theory where he treated turbomachine blades as airfoils. He built a small, 4 inch diameter, single stage axial compressor driven by an axial turbine. Griffith played an important part in gas turbine development but, as we will see later, initially rejected Whittle's concept, thereby delaying Government assistance at a most critical juncture.

    Whittle approached Britain's air ministry with his concept but was told that it was not feasible. This assessment was made by Griffith who was eager to pursue his own complex gas turbine scheme and failed to see the elegant simplicity of Whittle's engine. On January 16, 1930, Whittle filed for Patent

    https://watermark.silverchair.com/v...a98jxb_A-htHb-H0LDhi78U9YzsWCKjEoVTX0on2yEhag
     
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  7. Juha

    Juha Junior Member

    Hello CL1
    entirelly true, was Griffith pursuing theoretically optimal solution and thinking that Whittle's solution was too rude or did he want to keep a possible competitor of meager research funds out, I don't know.

    But e.g. Bristol's Owner had studied gas turbine just after WWI and when Whittle visited Bristol in 1931 Owner's subsequent report on these discussions considered that it would take ten years to bring Whittle's ideas to fruition, a quite accurate prediction.
     
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