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The Early Jet Age in the USA |
Beginnings
On 22 July 1941, the work of Power Jets and Whittle was heading over to America. There were no royalties for this, under the lend-lease terms.
General Electric plant Lynn Lockland, Massachusetts, GE1A
Sanford Moss out of retirement, where he had been since 1938.
In October 1941, an engine itself was taken over. The first American-built engine was ready in June.
Bell Airacomet XP-59A
A Bell experimental plane the Airacomet XP-59A flew on October 1 1942 at Muroc Dry Lake (now Edwards Air Force base),
California
by Bell's chief test pilot Robert
M. Stanley and powered by General Electric I-A engines rated at
560 kgs (this was 5 months ahead of the Meteor's first flight and 13 months after the engine had first
arrived in America).
The next day Col. Laurence C. Craigie became the
first U.S. military
pilot to fly a turbojet aircraft.
The speed of 625 km/hr was felt to be disappointing, and the aircraft was not superior to conventional piston-engined aircraft. The 50 production versions were used as jet trainers.
The XP-59A was powered by the first American jet engine, the General Electric I-A, which was centrifugal-flow and based on the W2B design of Frank Whittle.
In October 1943, Ann Baumgartener Carl of the Women Airforce Service Pilots flew a YP-59A and became the first American woman to fly a jet airplane.
General Electric
Sanford Moss
From the Whittle engine, General Electric developed its I series engines - the
I-A being used to power the first American jet aircraft.
Later followed the I-16 and the I-40, the numbers being related to the thrust
in hundreds of pounds (i.e. the I-40 developed a thrust of 4000 pounds, which is
about 1800 kgs).
The I-40 was put into production as the J33, powering the Air Force's first operational jet, the P-80 Shooting Star in June 1944. But the American Air Force requested that this engine been handed over to the Allison division of General Motors, in order to produce quantity production quickly during wartime. This engine was to have powered further versions of the P80 Shooting Star, but Allison were unable to keep up production.
It was while visiting the site in 1944 that Stanley Hooker was so surprised at the power of the engines being developed, that he immediately developed a crash program in Britain to produce the high powered Nene. General Electric were developing two engines at the time, one centrifugal and one axial, both rated at 1800 kg.
J47
In a project conceived in March 1946, the TGI80 (J35) was re-designed as the TG-190, which was first run on 21. June 1947, with a thrust of 2360 kgs. As the J47, it became the most used engine in the USAF.In September 1948, it powered a F-86 Sabre, which set a new world speed record of just under 1,080 kilometers per hour.
The Korean War provided a spur to demand, and by 1956, 35.500 had been produced, the largest number going to the B47, followed by F86. F86D and F86K with afterburner up to 3500 kg.
In February 1949 General Electric re-opened a plant near Cincinnati, known as Evendale, for J47 production. In only 20 months, the workforce at Evendale grew from 1,200 to 12,000 and manufacturing space tripled. Evandale would later become General Electric Aircraft Engines' world headquarters.
The J47 was inadequate for the new series of supersonic fighters because, at high speeds, the front compressor stages would pull in more air than then rear ones could handle, leading to compressor stall. In 1952, GE's chief of engine development Gerhard Neumann began developing the J79 turbojet engine. It had movable stator vanes in the compressor that helped modulate the amount of air that the compressor would pull in. This solved the problem of compressor stall and permitted flight at speeds of Mach 2 and greater. More than 17,000 J79s were built over 30 years, powering aircraft such as the F-104 Starfighter and F-4 Phantom II. On the Convair 880 airliner, the CJ805 derivative of the J79 engine marked GE's entry into the civil airline market.
Pratt and Whitney
In 1947, Pratt and Whitney took delivery of some Nenes. At the instigation of the Navy, Pratt and Whitney took a license from mid-1948. The J42 Turbo-Wasp (used by the Navy from 1948 for their Grumman F9F-2 Panther) was followed, in 1949, by the J48 ( a license-built version of the Rolls-Royce Tay), rated at 4000 kg.J57 (JT3)
The J57 was first run and produced in 1951, (it was known as the JT3 in civil use). On April 15, 1952, a prototype Boeing B-52 bomber first flew with eight Pratt & Whitney J57 turbojets. The production engine was rated at 6100 kgs (and reached 8100 kg in later years).
It originally stemmed from the B52 engine project, which was originally envisaged to use turboprops (the T45). Advances in the design of the bomber increased power requirements, and so it became a turbojet-powered aircraft. With afterburners (rated at 8900 kg) it powered the F100 Super Saber (in May 1953, the J57-powered North American F-100 Sabre became the first production aircraft to exceed the speed of sound in level flight, accomplishing that feat on its maiden flight on May 25, 1953), the F101 Voodoo and the F102 Delta Dagger.
Other military aircraft included the B57D (American variant of the Canberra), and the U2 spyplane.
Civil use included the Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC8. On July 15, 1954, Boeing flew its first prototype jet transport - the 707 - powered by four J57s. As the JT3, it was first used commercially in October 1958 with the inaugural flight of a Pan Am Boeing 707 from New York to Paris, which a speed of 925 kilometers per hour, 350 kilometers per hour faster than the newest propeller-driven airliner of the time.
Pratt and Whitney made 15.024 of this engine and Ford made 6202.
An enlarged engine, the J75 (JT4), powered the heavier versions of the 707 and DC8.
Wright
150 built Saphirre and Olympic as the J65 and J67The J65 powered the F84F and the B57 powered the F103 and B59.
von Ohain
Von Ohain moved to the United States in 1947 under contract with the United States Air Force to research advanced air breathing propulsion systems. He later became Chief Scientist at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Aerospace Research Laboratories in Dayton, Ohio.
Bell X1
The Bell X-1 flew on 14. October 1947. It was rocket-propelled and dropped from a B-29 bomber. 1075 km/hr
Spitfires Over London
John Young
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