Jet aircraft
History

After the first instance of powered flight, a large number of jet engine designs were suggested. René Lorin, Morize, Harris proposed systems for creating a jet efflux.

After other jet engines had been run, Romanian inventor Henri Coandă claimed to have built a jet-powered aircraft in 1910, the Coandă-1910. However, to support this claim, he had to make substantial alterations to the drawings which he used to support his subsequently debunked claims. In fact the ducted-fan engine backfired, setting the aircraft on fire before any flights were ever made, and it lacked nearly all of the features necessary for a jet engine - including a lack of fuel injection, and any concern about hot jet efflux being directed at a highly flammable fabric surface.

During the 1920s and 1930s a number of approaches were tried. A variety of motorjet, turboprop, pulsejet and rocket powered aircraft were designed. Rocket-engine research was being carried out in Germany and the first aircraft to fly under rocket power was the Lippisch Ente, in 1928. The Ente had previously been flown as a glider. The next year, in 1929, the Opel RAK.1 became the first purpose-built rocket aircraft to fly.

The turbojet was invented in the 1930s, independently by Frank Whittle and later Hans von Ohain. The first turbojet aircraft to fly was the Heinkel He 178, on August 27, 1939 in Rostock (Germany), powered by von Ohain's design. This was largely a proof of concept, as the problem of " creep " (metal fatigue caused by the high temperatures within the engine) had not been solved, and the engine quickly burned out. Von Ohain's design, an axial-flow engine, as opposed to Whittle's centrifugal flow engine, was eventually adopted by most manufacturers by the 1950s.

The first flight of a jet-propelled aircraft to come to public attention was the Italian Caproni Campini N.1 motorjet prototype which flew on August 27, 1940. It was the first jet aircraft recognised by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (at the time the German He 178 program was still kept secret). Campini began development of the motorjet in 1932; it differed from a true turbojet in that the turbine was driven by a piston engine, rather than combustion of the turbine gases - which was a much more complex solution.

The British experimental Gloster E.28/39 first flew on May 15, 1941, powered by Sir Frank Whittle 's turbojet. The United States Bell XP-59A flew on October 1, 1942, using two examples of a version of the Whittle engine built by General Electric. The Meteor was the first production jet, with the first orders for production examples being made on 8 August 1941, the prototype first flying on 5 March 1943 and the first production aircraft flying on 12 January 1944, while the first orders for production Me 262 aircraft were not issued until 25 May 1943, and the first production Me 262 did not fly until 28 March 1944 despite the Me 262 program having started earlier than that of the Meteor, as Projekt 1065, with initial plans drawn up by Waldemar Voigt's design team in April 1939.

The Messerschmitt Me 262 was the first operational jet fighter, manufactured by Germany during World War II and entering service on 19 April 1944 with Erprobungskommando 262 at Lechfeld just south of Augsburg. An Me 262 scored the first combat victory for a jet fighter on 26 July 1944, the day before the British Gloster Meteor entered operational service. The Me 262 had first flown on April 18, 1941, but mass production did not start until early 1944, with the first squadrons operational that year, too late for any effect on the outcome of the World War II. While only around 15 Meteors were operational during WW2, up to 1,400 Me 262 were produced, with 300 entering combat. Only the rocket-propelled Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet was a faster operational aircraft during the war.

Around this time, mid 1944, the United Kingdom's Meteor was being used for defence of the UK against the V-1 flying bomb – the V-1 itself a pulsejet -powered aircraft and direct ancestor of the cruise missile – and then ground-attack operations over Europe in the last months of the war. In 1944 Germany introduced the Arado Ar 234 jet reconnaissance and bomber aircraft into service, though chiefly used in the former role, with the Heinkel He 162 Spatz single-jet light fighter appearing at the end of 1944. USSR tested its own Bereznyak-Isayev BI-1 in 1942, but the project was scrapped by leader Joseph Stalin in 1945. The Imperial Japanese Navy also developed jet aircraft in 1945, including the Nakajima J9Y Kikka, a modified, and slightly smaller version of the Me 262 that had folding wings. By the end of 1945, the US had introduced their first jet fighter, the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star into service and the UK its second fighter design, the de Havilland Vampire.

The US introduced the North American B-45 Tornado, their first jet bomber, into service in 1948. It was capable of carrying nuclear weapons, but was used for reconnaissance over Korea. On November 8, 1950, during the Korean War, United States Air Force Lt. Russell J. Brown, flying in an F-80, intercepted two North Korean MiG-15s near the Yalu River and shot them down in the first jet-to-jet dogfight in history. The UK put the English Electric Canberra into service in 1951 as a light bomber. It was designed to fly higher and faster than any interceptor.

BOAC operated the first commercial jet service, from London to Johannesburg, in 1952 with the de Havilland Comet jetliner. This highly innovative aircraft travelled far faster and higher than propeller aircraft, was much quieter, smoother, and had stylish blended wings containing hidden jet engines. However, due to a design defect, and use of aluminium alloys, the aircraft suffered catastrophic metal fatigue which led to several crashes, which gave time for the Boeing 707 to enter service in 1958 and thus to dominate the market for civilian airliners. The underslung engines were found to be advantageous in the event of a propellant leak, and so the 707 looked rather different from the Comet: the 707 has a shape that is effectively the same as that of contemporary aircraft, with marked commonality still evident today for example with the 737 (fuselage) and A340 (single deck, swept wing, four below-wing engines).

Turbofan aircraft with far greater fuel efficiency began entering service in the 1950s and 1960s, and became the most commonly used type of jet.

The Tu-144 supersonic transport was the fastest commercial jet aircraft at Mach 2.35 (2,503 km/h (1,555 mph)). It went into service in 1975, but was withdrawn from commercial service shortly afterwards. The Mach 2 Concorde entered service in 1976 and flew for 27 years.

The fastest military jet aircraft was the SR-71 Blackbird at Mach 3.35 (3,661 km/h (2,275 mph)).
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