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Early US Jet Planes
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As the Second World War came to an end, the U.S. realized how lucky it had been. The German plane and rocket technology was vastly superior to any we had. If the war had lasted another year and the Germans were able to build their wonder weapons, the outcome might have been different. How did the Germans accomplish these miracles of engineering?. They had assembled about 30,000 engineers and scientists at a place known as Peenemünde situated in the northwest of the former East German peninsula of Usedom. There they shared ideas and designed the most formidable weapons yet made by man. Originally Hitler wanted to wait until 1946 to declare war, thank goodness he didn't wait or we might all be under the Third Reich today. An interesting side note, Hitler wanted to build a battle ship that would have been 3X bigger than anything afloat including the giant Japanese battleship Yamoto. Lets get back to US Jet planes. The US knew it must have jet planes and was rushing to build them. Langley researchers were charged with testing jet plane designs submitted to them. They were also charged to fix everything on the planes to get them to perform optimally. The many wind tunnels were put through their paces.
Langley Free Spinning Tunnel To develop the new jet engine, light weight materials had to be considered. The work on a jet actually started before World War II and a compressor was designed by engineers at Langley. This sort of pre supercharger presented some of the problems of designing a jet engine. In later years compressors were used on jet engines. From 1941 to 1943 the engineers at Langley were trying to develop a jet system to complement a conventional engine. This held development of a pure jet engine back. Because of a report published in the 1920s stating that jet propulsion was not practical because fuel consumption would be 4X that of a piston engine, no work was done on jet engine research for many years in the US.
Pratt & Whitney Jet Engine Test in 1939 A V-tail model for the jet was suggested by Langley engineers in December of 1942.
V-Tail Model Finally in 1944 the Bell P-59 was built, it was the US's first jet plane. It wasn't produced in numbers however due to its poor performance. It was over 130 miles per hour slower than a German Me-109.
P-59 with P-63 prop plane. Finally in 1946 the US began to develop its first generation of turbo jet aircraft. The war was over but America's need was great if she was going to remain a super power, after all much of that remarkable German aircraft technology was taken by Russia.
Clockwise, from top left: Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, November 1946, the first fully operational U.S. jet fighter; Vought F7U Cutlass, December 1948, the navy's tailless twin-jet fighter; North American B-45 bomber, November 1949, powered by four jet engines; and Republic F-84 Thunderjet, October 1949. Source: NASA Lieutenant Colonel James Jabara was the world's first
jet ace. Jabara and his Sabre Jet had 15 MiG kills over Korea.
Lt. Col. Jabara |
