The Magic of a Name: The Rolls-Royce Story, Part 2

The Power Behind the Jets

Peter Pugh

• Publisher: Icon Books
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781848319639
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Automotive Transportation & Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The Magic of a Name tells the story of the first 40 years of Britain's most prestigious manufacturer - Rolls-Royce.Beginning with the historic meeting in 1904 of Henry Royce and the Honourable C.S. Rolls, and the birth in 1906 of the legendary Silver Ghost, Peter Pugh tells a story of genius, skill, hard work and dedication which gave the world cars and aero engines unrivalled in their excellence.In 1915, 100 years ago, the pair produced their first aero engine, the Eagle which along with the Hawk, Falcon and Condor proved themselves in battle in the First World War. In the Second the totemic Merlin was installed in the Spitfire and built in a race against time in 1940 to help win the Battle of Britain.With unrivalled access to the company's archives, Peter Pugh's history is a unique portrait of both an iconic name and of British industry at its best.

CHAPTER ONE

THE GAS TURBINE IS OUR FUTURE

‘FRANK, IT FLIES!’
‘THE TURBINE ENGINES HAVE ARRIVED’
‘LET US TALK ABOUT THE ENGINEERING’
EXPERIENCED PERSONNEL
PRATT & WHITNEY
WESTINGHOUSE

‘FRANK, IT FLIES!’

THE WAR WAS OVER. For six years in Europe, slightly less in the Far East, the leading nations of the world had indulged in an orgy of destruction. In 1943, Joseph Goebbels, the German Nazi politician, had asked the German people:

Do you want total war?

Now there was total defeat. Could the world recover? World War I, with its eight million victims, had seemed bad enough, but this war had brought over thirty million. France lost 620,000, Britain 260,000 – less than in the 1914– 1918 war – but central Europe had suffered grievously. Poland lost more than 20 per cent of its population, including millions of Jews who had been murdered. Yugoslavia lost 10 per cent. It was difficult to know how many had died in the Soviet Union, but estimates ranged between twelve and twenty million. Germany lost five million. In the Far East, the losses and dislocation were also almost too great to grasp.

And material losses were greater than in World War I. Both the Germans and the Russians had pursued scorched earth policies, and hardly a major city in Europe or in Britain went unscathed. Housing for the survivors was of paramount importance, but in many countries almost a quarter of the houses were uninhabitable. Everyone was hungry, many faced starvation, the word ‘famine’ was on people’s lips. To make matters worse, in 1945 Europe suffered a drought. Cereal crops fell from 59 to 31 million tons (excluding the Soviet Union). Even the normally rich agricultural France produced only half its crop of food grains. Everywhere there was food rationing, and the rations had to be cut and cut again. Anyone losing his (or her) ration book would probably lose his life.

As winter approached, fuel also took on life-and-death significance. Coal production had fallen drastically. From the Ruhr came only 25,000 tons per day compared with the 400,000 tons before the war. However, even if the coal had been produced, the means of transporting it had been destroyed. Some 740 of the 958 bridges in American and British zones in Germany – Occupied Germany had been split into four sectors run by the Americans, British, French and Russians respectively – were out of action. France had been left with only 35 per cent of both its railway locomotives and its merchant fleet. Production everywhere was way below pre-war levels and, of course, in such a situation of supply being well beneath demand, inflation was rampant. As Walter Laqueur said in his book, Europe since Hitler:

Whole countries were now living on charity and to say that economic prospects were uncertain would have been a gross understatement in the summer of 1945. There seemed to be no prospects.

In Britain, which at least was on the winning side and which had not suffered invasion, the situation was not quite so bleak. Nevertheless, the country was in a very weak state. To survive, it had been forced to sell a third of its overseas assets, reducing its annual income from overseas investments by more than half. The country’s merchant fleet was less than three-quarters of its pre-war size and only 2 per cent of Britain’s industry was producing for export. Most of its food and raw materials came from overseas and it was struggling to pay for them.

What were Rolls-Royce’s prospects? The company had been totally geared to war production and, as we saw in the first volume of this history (The Magic of a Name, The Rolls-Royce Story, The First 40 Years), it had played a vital part in providing the engines for the fighters and bombers of the Allies. Aero engines for military purposes were not likely to be in such great demand in the coming years, though governments were aware that the rapid running-down of their armed forces, that had taken place after World War I, had not been in their best interests.

Rolls-Royce realised that, as well as supplying the air forces of the world, its best prospects lay in being a leading player in the field of civil aviation. We saw in the first volume that Ernest (later Lord) Hives appreciated that the gas turbine engine would be the future power source for aircraft.

The story of the modern jet engine had begun in the 1920s when two men, acting independently, had put forward their ideas for propulsion by means different from the reciprocating engine. In 1926, Dr. A.A. Griffith, of the Royal Aircraft Establishment’s Engines Experimental Department, proposed the use of a single-shaft turbine engine with a multi-stage axial compressor as a means of driving a propeller through a reduction gear. In 1928, a young Royal Air Force officer, Frank Whittle, wrote a paper entitled ‘Future Developments in Aircraft Design’. He envisaged aircraft flying at speeds of 500 mph, at a time when the fastest RAF fighter could not reach 200 mph, but felt it would be necessary for the aircraft to fly at great heights where the air was rare. At this stage, he was not sure about the means of propulsion, although he was already considering rockets and gas turbines driving propellers. However, a year later, in October 1929, he realised that it was not necessary to have a propeller because the exhaust from the gas turbine could be used to propel the aircraft.

The 1930s were a decade of frustration for Whittle as he tried to win backing for his idea. He was introduced to Griffith, but Griffith was somewhat dismissive, saying that his ‘assumptions were over-optimistic’. Griffith himself was also frustrated by his superiors. Whittle’s original work had been reviewed by the Engines sub-committee of the Aeronautical Research Committee in 1930, and the committee had concluded that:

At the present state of knowledge the superiority of the gas turbine over the reciprocating engine cannot be predicted.

Nevertheless, Whittle persisted and, in 1935, formed a company called Power Jets in conjunction with two former RAF colleagues – Rolf Dudley Williams and J.C.B. Tinling (later known affectionately by the Whittle children as Uncle Willie and Uncle Col). Financial backing was forthcoming from O.T. Falk & Partners. [Since the publication of The Magic of a Name, The Rolls-Royce Story, The First 40 Years, in which the progress of Whittle’s jet engine is told more fully, I have read the report of M.L. Bramson, the consulting engineer used by O.T. Falk before they made their investment, and Bramson’s comments thirty years later. I am grateful to the Bristol Branch of the Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust for reproducing these in their Sleeve Notes Issue 7.]

Bramson told of how Whittle appeared in his office one day in 1935 telling him that he needed finance for the development of a system of jet propulsion for aircraft, which he had invented. His material consisted solely of thermodynamic and aerodynamic calculations and diagrams, and there were no engineering designs. Bramson was initially sceptical of ‘the eyebrow-raising improbability of his basic thesis that aeroplanes could be made to fly without propellers’. Nevertheless, he felt Whittle seemed to know what he was talking about and decided to study his theories. Bramson said later:

At the end of the period I got quite excited. First, because of the insight, clarity and accuracy of his presentation and calculations; second because my scepticism of any project based on internal combustion turbines (which had hitherto resisted all practical development efforts) disappeared when I realised that here, for the first time, was an application where maximum energy was needed in the turbine exhaust, instead of in the shaft. This was, of course, the reverse of all past objectives for such turbines. And thirdly, because of the dramatic advance in aviation technology implicit in Whittle’s theories.

Bramson felt that Whittle’s ideas must be financed and introduced him to the bankers O.T. Falk & Partners. Falk commissioned Bramson to investigate further and produce a detailed report. On the strength of his report, Falk financed Whittle through a newly formed company, Power Jets Limited. Work on a prototype engine began at British Thomson-Houston in Rugby. On 12 April 1937 an engine was run and Whittle wrote in his diary:

Pilot jet successfully ignited at 2,000 rpm by motor. I requested a further raising of speed to 2,500 rpm and during this process I opened valve ‘B’ and the unit suddenly ran away. Probably started at about 2,300 and using only about 5hp starting power … noted that return pipe from jet was overheating badly. Flame tube red hot at inner radius; combustion very bad …

The following two years were ones of financial hardship, research setbacks and component shortages, but by June 1939 test runs of the engine were beginning to look promising. Whittle said later:

On 23 June we reached a speed of 14,700 rpm; the next day we went to 15,700 and then on the 26th we ran up to 16,000. We did several runs up to this speed on succeeding days and on one of these occasions – 30 June – DSR [Director of Scientific Research] was present.

It was a critical day because the DSR, Dr. Pye, became completely converted to the project. He agreed that the Air Ministry should buy the experimental engine, but still leave it with Power Jets for continuing experimentation. For Power Jets there was the added bonus that the Ministry would pay for spares and modifications.

Considerable progress was made during 1940, including the production of an aircraft to carry Whittle’s engine by the Gloster Aircraft Company. By April 1941 the Gloster/Whittle E.28/39 was ready, and on 7 April at Gloster’s airfield at Brockworth, Gloster’s chief test pilot, Gerry Sayer, taxied the aeroplane and took it off the ground three times and flew for 200 to 300 yards.

The first proper flight took place at Cranwell in Lincolnshire at 7.35 p.m. on 15 May 1941. It lasted seventeen minutes and Whittle recalled later:

I was very tense not so much because of any fears about the engine but because this was a machine making its first flight. I think I would have felt the same if it had been an aeroplane with a conventional power plant … I do not remember, but I am told that, shortly after take-off, someone slapped me on the back and said, ‘Frank, it flies!’ and that my curt response in the tension of the moment was ‘Well, that was what it was bloody well designed to do, wasn’t it?’

There was only one person from the Ministry of Aircraft Production present at this flight but, when news reached London, a large delegation led by the Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair, went to Cranwell on 21 May for a further demonstration. John Golley, who collaborated with Whittle to write a book, Whittle, the true story, described the scene very well:

Gerry Sayer brought gasps from the uninitiated onlookers with a high-speed run downwind, when the strange whistling roar of the propellerless engine riveted their attention as they watched the E.28 pulling up into a steep climbing turn and shoot skywards. The absence of a propeller was a source of amazement, and few of those privileged to see Sayer could have had any doubts that they had witnessed the beginning of a new chapter in aviation history…

One of two officers watching the E.28 take off was heard to ask, ‘How the hell does that thing work?’ His companion replied, ‘Oh, it’s easy, old boy, it just sucks itself along like a Hoover.’ [Whittle himself said that it ‘sucks itself along like a bloody great vacuum cleaner!’] Dan Walker of Power Jets was amused to hear one officer – not knowing that Walker was one of the engineers intimately concerned – assure everybody in his immediate vicinity that the power plant was a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine driving a small four-bladed propeller inside the fuselage. He stated positively that he had seen it!

From this moment the future of the jet engine and, in particular, Whittle’s engine, was assured. However, a prototype engine was one thing; production of reliable engines in quantity was quite another. And this was where Rolls-Royce came into the picture.

‘THE TURBINE ENGINES HAVE ARRIVED’

Rolls-Royce would have been aware of developments in the Internal Combustion Turbine (ICT) field, and on 1 June 1939 it recruited A.A. Griffith, giving him the facilities to continue the development of his axial compressor units. Hives instructed him to ‘go on thinking’, and Griffith proposed the most advanced of his concepts from the RAE – a contra-rotating engine, the CR1, with a fourteen-stage high-pressure system and six-stage low-pressure ducted fans.

While encouraging Griffith, Hives also made contact with Whittle, whom he had met at Power Jets’ factory in 1940 at the instigation of Stanley Hooker. As we have seen, Hooker had been recruited to Rolls-Royce just before the war and made an enormous contribution on the Merlin supercharger. Hooker had already been to see Whittle, and said later:

I first met Frank Whittle in January 1940. At that time he was located with a small team of engineers at an old disused foundry at Lutterworth, near Rugby. His firm was called Power Jets, and the work he was doing was Top Secret. I was taken to see his first jet engine by Hayne Constant who, at that time, was the Director of the Engine Research Department of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. Constant had specialized in both centrifugal and axial compressors, and had frequently visited Derby to discuss with me the development of the Merlin supercharger. There was snow on the ground when he took me from Derby to Lutterworth, and I saw for the first time the strange jet engine roaring in its test bed. Compared to the sophisticated design and manufacture of Rolls-Royce, it looked a very crude and outlandish piece of apparatus. Yet, standing near to it while it was running, I felt conscious that I was in the presence of great power. Whether it was useful power or not, I had no idea.

I cannot claim that I was an immediate convert to the jet engine. That took some months, while I did my own analysis of the gas-turbine engine and, more importantly, came under the spell of Frank Whittle’s genius and super technical knowledge.

By August, Hooker was convinced that Whittle’s engine was so revolutionary Rolls-Royce should become involved. Through the spring and summer as Hooker regularly visited Whittle’s operation at Lutterworth, Whittle’s engine improved in reliability and performance to the point where it could make quite long runs at 800 lb thrust.

This did not sound very much and when Hooker suggested to Hives that he go and meet Whittle, Hives said of the 800 lb thrust:

That doesn’t sound very much. It would not pull the skin off a rice pudding, would it?

However, when Hooker pointed out that the Merlin in a Spitfire at 300 mph gave about 840 lb thrust Hives agreed to go to the Power Jets factory in Lutterworth, where he was shown round by Whittle. Whittle remembered Hives saying: ‘I don’t see many engines. What’s holding you up?...