Originally Posted by
FlightlessParrot
I've come in a bit late, evidently, but what was "Frank Whittle's farce" and where is the uncovering recorded, please?
This is purely a straight request for information; I am conscious of a great deal of mythologising about British aviation history, mostly on the lines of "brilliant industry initiatives cut down by Government stupidity/parsimony/treason." I wonder where those myths might have originated? OTOH, whilst I as a schoolboy was fed the "Whittle invented the jet engine" over-simplification, I haven't subsequently found anything one might call a farce: so I'd like to know.
Whittle W.B.2/700 engine was a failure... it did not produce the specified thrust required to go supersonic and never successfully completed a full power test without damage... Whittle abandonded the project and the W.B.2/700 was never completed and was canceled The UK government had no choice but to cancel the already over budget and behind schedule debacle that is now remember as the M.52 a plane that never was and certainly never flew.
Whittle was fired, forced to quietly resign in order to save what little reputation Power Jets Ltd company had left in a desperate attempt to survive the M.52 fiasco...Whittle never worked in the british aero industry ever again .
Whittle invented the jet engine is another claim without any historic or educational value.. But it made for very good propaganda in post WW2 Britain when nobody wanted to know anything about Nazi German scientific achievements, in other words the bad guys. But the myth has been debunked long time ago.
After 1980, the scientific world introduced the concept of co - inventors.
We have been told that Brits broke the enigma code at Bletchley Park. The names of Jewish Polish mathematicians Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki, Henryk Zygalski have been erased from the records to give Alan Turing the whole credit.