Sir Frank Whittle; Invented Jet Engine for the British

BALTIMORE — Sir Frank Whittle, the British engineer who developed the jet engine for his country at the same time a German was doing the same for his, has died at his suburban Baltimore home. He was 89.

Whittle, who died Thursday of lung cancer, independently developed the jet airplane engine in the 1930s and ‘40s, as did Hans J.P. von Ohain in Germany. Although Whittle was the first to hatch the concept, a German jet was the first to fly.

The jet’s invention was perfected too late to affect the course of World War II, but it has revolutionized transportation since then. It earned Whittle a knighthood in 1948.

In 1991, Whittle and von Ohain--who both had immigrated to the United States--were jointly awarded the Charles Stark Draper Prize of the National Academy of Engineering.

“To imagine today’s world without the jet engine is almost impossible,” Robert M. White, academy president, said at the time. “Few engineering achievements in history can compare to the work of these two men.”

Whittle applied for his first jet propulsion patent in 1930, after his ideas had been turned down by the British Air Ministry, which considered it impractical.

With the financial backing of friends, he founded Power Jets Ltd. in March 1936.

The first engine ran in 1937, but it was not until 1939 that the British government contracted for a flight engine. The first British experimental jet did not take off until 1941.

Meanwhile, in Germany, von Ohain designed a jet engine and was hired by a manufacturer to do more research. By 1937, he had built and tested a laboratory model.

After that, work progressed rapidly and, on Aug. 27, 1939--days before the start of the war--von Ohain’s craft became the first jet-powered airplane to fly. It remained airborne for seven minutes.

By 1944, both Germany and Britain had limited numbers of jet aircraft in action.

Whittle immigrated to the United States in 1976, moving to Columbia, Md., and working for a time as a research professor in the aerospace engineering department at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Von Ohain, who came to the United States in 1947 and now lives in Florida, did research for the U.S. Air Force and the University of Dayton in Ohio.

Born in Coventry, England, in 1907, Whittle began his engineering career in his father’s shop, won a scholarship to attend Leamington College and left at 16 to join the Royal Air Force as an apprentice.

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