Frank Whittle
During that phase of the war, fighters in WW2 were originally designed for a max lifetime of ten to twenty hours (even on Korea the US fighter jets were designed to last for 4 missions max total 25 hours), because they were thought to be shot down anyways. A 30 hours TBO is plenty of time in that light and anything more was a waste of engineering. This stuff was war material, not built to last, but designed to be built cheap in masses and disposable.
and flying along in my early jet I would be much happier being propelled along by a jet with a reasonable TBO LOL.
I would hope that the US Korean jets had a longer TBO than 25 hours - otherwise the groundcrew would have spent all their time changing engines
Last edited by longer ron; 21st May 2016 at 04:37.
(even on Korea the US fighter jets were designed to last for 4 missions max total 25 hours)
Can you provide a reference for that extraordinary statement?
That would use up half a squadron of airframes for even a minimal pilot type conversion, hardly sounds practical.
I think he may have been talking about the unreliability of early Axial flow engines,the early J47 could well have had a useful life of circa 25 hours although a few years later - later marks of J47 were circa 400 - 600hr life ?.
As I posted earlier - it took a few years to iron out design/manufacturing faults with Axial engine blade technology - which is why Whittle stuck with the centrifugal engine to start with.
As I posted earlier - it took a few years to iron out design/manufacturing faults with Axial engine blade technology - which is why Whittle stuck with the centrifugal engine to start with.
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On the short life of engines. I remember that when I heard that the life of a Klimov was about 50 hours (word of mouth from a restorer, so may not be totally accurate), I thought that was going it a bit even by Soviet standards. Then I guessed the average life of an airframe in combat on the Eastern Front, and thought that maybe it was a cost-effective solution. Same would hold for the desperate situation of the Luftwaffe in 1944-5, especially as jets took something like a third as many man-hours to make as piston engines, and used lower-grade fuel. So a short life could be practical for Germany in 1944.
In combat - you need 'unburstable' engines , 10 - 15 hrs on any engine is unacceptable and just a complete waste of raw materials and manhours - luckily for us the German Aircraft procurement system was so badly 'organised' and political that they wasted the whole war on 'superweapons',if they had built more of their conventional aircraft they would have had a more effective Air Force.
Similar with their bomber force - if they had simply fitted 4 normal engines to the He 177 they would have had a long range heavy bomber which could have struck far into Russia and perhaps slowed down their industrial build up - but they persisted with the problematic self igniting coupled engines for almost the whole war - unbelievable - but lucky for the allies !
Similar with their bomber force - if they had simply fitted 4 normal engines to the He 177 they would have had a long range heavy bomber which could have struck far into Russia and perhaps slowed down their industrial build up - but they persisted with the problematic self igniting coupled engines for almost the whole war - unbelievable - but lucky for the allies !
