Sir frank whittle has an influential friend

Saphroneth

Banned
I think it's possible to accelerate the development process somewhat - but it's not as simple as giving Whittle boatloads of cash, or rather if it is then you don't get much acceleration.
Myself I think the crucial bit is probably to get Rolls on the job and earlier to boot, they had a lot of good people who worked OTL on improving the Merlin and Griffon turbosuperchargers (i.e. things which used exhaust gas for propulsion) so the additional talent is there.
Downside is that that reduces the capability of the R-R piston engines. Tradeoffs.
 
You're assuming that the educated Whittle of 1935 already existed in 1930, which was not the case. Between the time that you speak of, he attended both the Officers’ Engineering Course and a two-year engineering course at Peterhouse. It was the knowledge and experience gained from that time that allowed Whittle to fully mature and bring his ideas to life. Furthermore, he couldn't just have an influential friend invest. He still needed permission from RAF to actually work on the project, which would require quite a political capital that few would have been able to provide in the age of relative austerity.

In other words, you have to deal with not just monetary issues, but also political and educational costs. Even supposing we magically bring someone with both the monetary and political means to get Whittle to work on the jet engine, we still need a Whittle who have accumulated engineering knowledge during those five years to actually bring out the advancement in technology that happened. I see nothing that could have brought this about.

Technology isn't as simple as throwing money at it. It requires human and political capital, which would require massive butterflies to bring into being in the case of Whittle.

Its an interesting idea, but I think the timings are a bit tight so I'm not convinced.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the British academic year starts in September? So Whittle did his RAF Engineering course in 1932-3 and started at Cambridge in September 1934, did 2 years and graduated in June 1936.

Tinning and Williams approached Whittle in May 1935, (before Whittle had finished his first year at Cambridge) they had their first meeting with financiers on 11 September 1935, (before the start of Whittle's second year at Cambridge) and Power Jets was formed 27 January 1936 (5 months before Whittle graduated from Cambridge) with 2,000 pounds initial capital and possibly another 18,000 in 18 months. So it appears that his ideas were sound enough that they were viable long before his education was complete.

As for the RAF, it isn't prison, he could possibly transfer to the Reserves if they got too difficult. The Special Duty list only allowed him to work for 6 hours per week on the jet engine, which isn't a huge amount of support for someone who they'd spent so much time and money educating.
 
I agree that politics is the main problem. But I don't regard the engineering and educational issues as being insurmountable, far from it. Whittle has the patent, he believes his invention will work and support from industry would have mitigated the engineering problems by giving him access to expertise. That's surely more efficient than the solitary route that you describe.

Your position was that he was given "as much support as possible". Well, maybe he was, in terms of his personal development, but his invention wasn't - and that's really the subject of the thread.
 

sharlin

Banned
There's also one big looming gargoyle that Whittle's engine would also have to get past.

The Air Ministry.
 
Perhaps the Gloster E.1 makes an earlier appearance?

44
 
Britain's War Machine page 239~241:

[SNIP]

In short, Whittle had every kind of support possible within the sprawling developmental process. There might have been more efficiency squeezed out by not engaging in the time-consuming "off the drawing board" process, but other than that there really was no effort not given to Whittle or the jet engine programs. Only if you have some government willing to not invest in other essential programs such as radar or virtually cancel all the "wasted" investments (various adventures in defense against the Blitz, the anti-air rockets, various aircraft engine programs) might things have turned to something close to what is required by the OP. But even then, it would require more than just a powerful friend, it would require a hurricane of butterflies.
Thanks for that, had actually read Britain's War Machine but forgotten about that part. I do however think you're making rather large sweeping statements based on the several paragraph or so from the book to say that he had 'every kind of support possible'. I looked it up and Genesis of the Jet: Frank Whittle and the Invention of the Jet Engine by John Golley and Bill Gunston was the book that I mentioned in my reply to Sior, deals with the development process from the Power Jets side of things. It was a library book so I unfortunately don't have it to hand to quote from but going from memory it had a number of examples where the Air Ministry was rather tight-fisted with funding and/or incredibly bloody minded bureaucratically that effectively helped slow things down. It certainly doesn't paint a picture of their being extended 'every kind of support possible'. Now that's not to say that the people the author's spoke to might not have been completely unbiased, I don't think anyone could ever say they are, but it's an interesting book that I'd recommend to people.
 

Daewonsu

Banned
but going from memory it had a number of examples where the Air Ministry was rather tight-fisted with funding and/or incredibly bloody minded bureaucratically that effectively helped slow things down. It certainly doesn't paint a picture of their being extended 'every kind of support possible'.

The issue is that such things are not going to change by a single influential friend unless that person was a major political leader. Within the context of a tight-fisted Air Ministry dealing with the Great Depression, what was done was 'every kind of support possible'. Within the context of the OP, what OTL became was pretty much the optimal situation.

Now, if you don't particularly care about butterflies, then there is quite a bit of room for improvement and acceleration.
 
"Tight-fisted" is putting it mildly! AIUI the Air Ministry refused to pay for the renewal of the patent in 1935. If this constitutes "every kind of support possible", then it's telling us more about the Air Ministry than Frank Whittle.
 
Well, could have him write to Howard Hughes to bankroll his research in the late '30s.

Howard had the need for speed, and would spend crazy amounts of money on things that caught his attention, and being in the UK, Whittle would be far enough away not to be micromanaged by him
 

Daewonsu

Banned
"Tight-fisted" is putting it mildly! AIUI the Air Ministry refused to pay for the renewal of the patent in 1935. If this constitutes "every kind of support possible", then it's telling us more about the Air Ministry than Frank Whittle.

And how is one influential friend going to change that?
 
Within the context of the times, the two top fighters were the tube-and-rag biplane Gladiator and the tube-and-rag cantilever monoplane Hurricane. It's hard to imagine them with jet engines. Most people of influence that could have helped had their own ideas, and found reason to belittle Whittle. Sir Frank needed help not from friends, or gummint, but from industry.

A Tale: By 1910, Ummo Luebens had invented the round baler, with the help of his brother, Melchior, a banker. The world didn't change, and hay continued to be baled in blocks. In 1940, Allis-Chalmers bought the company and, by 1947, had developed the commercially viable Roto-Baler. The rest is history. Hay bales are round. It's one thing to invent something, and another for that something to become something. We could easily say, but probably won't, that Anselm Franz created the first jet engine to power a useful production jet fighter. Or was it Stanley Hooker?

Idea for a thread: Could the round baler have been developed sooner?
 
get Rolls on the job and earlier to boot, they had a lot of good people who worked OTL on improving the Merlin and Griffon turbosuperchargers (i.e. things which used exhaust gas for propulsion)
I thought that RR used mechanical superchargers rather than turbos ?
 
Whether a two-stage supercharger, or the man behind it, Stanley Hooker, two other engineers, Frank Halford and Harry Ricardo, no relation to Ricky, spent a lot of time studying the sleeve-valve engine which had a national priority Whittle would only dream about. The Napier Sabre was the engine to save Britain. Had the Sabre's priority been re-assigned to jet engine design and production, things would be different. Flutterbyes being what they are, who knows. It might not result in an earlier great jet engine, but it would deny us a topic of discussion, or not.
 
I realize it's a bit outside the OP, but what happens if somebody at GE takes an interest? GE's the #1 manufacturer of turbochargers, second cousin to turbine engines...:cool:
 
Furthermore, he couldn't just have an influential friend invest. He still needed permission from RAF to actually work on the project, which would require quite a political capital that few would have been able to provide in the age of relative austerity.

A financially independent whittle could have resigned from the RAF. In the age of austerity they would have been glad to free up space to promote someone from a better social background. Then whittle would spend the next few years learning engineering in his workshop instead of in the lecture theatre. The idea that the turbojet design needed to somehow magically ripen in theory for several years before metal could be cut seems farfetched.

Equally farfetched is the notion that whittle had generous RAF support - if he had then he would have been sent to continue the turbine experimentation at the RAE where they had built a small-scale compressor/turbine rig in 1929 - based on Griffiths work. It was Griffith who had the early and generous support and delivered nothing before 1943.
 
Have to admit I have been trying to resolve this one myself, and the issue that keeps coming up to haunt me is the airframe the engines are going to have to be mounted on.

At the beginning of the process, when Whittle had the big idea, the RAF were just phasing out the Bristol Fighter. The main carrier fighter was the Fairey Flycatcher. the standard heavy bomber and Trenchardian hope was the Vickers Virginia.

The idea of any of these, or advanced variants thereof, with jet power would be like trying to fit a CVN's propulsion system to a seventy-four. It just won't go; the aircraft suitable for jet power do not yet exist.

There would probably be a 1900-1910 like explosion of oddities, something very like the pioneer days as everybody tries out what seems to be a good idea to absorb and use the power of even an early jet, in weird and probably not very wonderful configuration.

I suspect the job of being a jet aircraft test pilot in the early thirties would be bloody dangerous- with casualty rates similar to the pioneer aviators more likely than not.


Oh, and on the issue of support for Whittle, the biggest initial problem he had was that the official responsible for evaluating his work was not a dunce or a ministry stooge, but a rival; A A Griffith was a turbine expert himself, and thought Whittle was heading for a blind alley, that axial flow had much greater potential.

Griffith dismissed Whittle's work on those grounds- making a mistake in the calculations didn't help, but ultimately Griffith's case was that Whittle was proposing at best an interim solution, that would ultimately leave Britain at a crippling disadvantage when others developed axial flow and leapt ahead.

The flaw in Griffith's plan turned out to be that centrifugal flow jets proved to be an essential phase in the development of the turbine engine, so much so that it would probably not have been possible to go straight to axials, not if anything like service reliability was to be had.


Unfortunately, it looks to me as if high powered propeller engines were an essential step, too. Without the all metal monoplane generation, without that design and production experience, what is there that can take a jet?

(Edit- bonedome got to that before I did. Damn my slow typing.)
 
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