Late, great engineers: Frank Whittle: Founder of the jet age

If you want to start an argument among a group of engineering historians, raise the idea that the age of jet-propelled flight was Sir Frank Whittle’s great legacy. There will be those that challenge it outright, saying he wasn’t the first ‘invent’ the jet engine because there was pioneering work in the field by French engineer Maxime Guillaume that predated Whittle’s. There will be others who say that the birth of the jet engine can be pinpointed unambiguously to 16 January 1930, when Whittle submitted his first patent showing a two-stage axial compressor feeding a single-sided centrifugal compressor.

Yet more will discuss German engineer Hans von Ohain’s contribution to the discipline by designing the first operational jet engine. Whittle’s biographers fall over themselves to claim that their radically different outlooks are the only true version of events, while the BBC rather lamely describes Whittle as, “a Royal Air Force officer who made a major contribution to the invention of the jet engine”. His entry in Britannica credits Whittle as ‘inventor’ without qualification. Whichever team you find yourself siding with, perhaps the most sensible neutral position comes from Duncan Campbell-Smith who diplomatically writes in Jet Man: The Making and Breaking of Frank Whittle: “To try telling the tale of the jet’s origins without assigning Whittle a central role… is to rehearse Hamlet without the Prince”.