The War Years 1940–1945

Eckardt, Dietrich

doi:10.1007/978-3-658-38531-6_8

Dietrich Eckardt²

233 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter deals with the German turbojet engine developments during the war period 1940–1945, and separately, in continuation of Sect. 6.2.5 for Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwer-ke AG, Dessau and the JFM team of chief designer Dr. Anselm Franz, in Sect. 8.1.1,—and in continuation of Sect. 6.2.4 for BMW Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, Berlin-Spandau and the activities of Dr. Hermann Oestrich and his development team, in Sect. 8.1.2. Already in 1941, the aero engine group of BBC Brown Boveri & Cie., Mannheim, led by chief designer Hermann Reuter was contracted by RLM to support BMW by alternative, exchangeable axial compressor designs; related information can be found in Chap. 9 as a highlight of Hermann Reuter’s engineering work. Finally, wartime work at Heinkel-Hirth at Rostock-Marienehe and Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen of chief designer Dr. Hans-Joachim Pabst von Ohain and his relatively small team, supplemented by Max Adolf Mueller and his larger group up to his leave in early June 1942, are collected in Sect. 8.1.3.

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Notes

1.
See Irving, The Rise and Fall, p. 289 f.
2.
See Hirschel, Aeronautical Research, Chapter ‘Axial Flow Compressors‘, p. 231 f.
3.
See Franz, Der Weg.
4.
In 1949, J.W. Adderley, author of—see B.I.O.S, German Gas Turbine Developments, p. 17, reasoned then already correctly: ‘Encke’s background was originally in the field of single-stage fan design and it was therefore almost inevitable that he should extend this work to axial compressors leading to a design in which the pressure rise took place almost entirely in the moving blades.’ With all likelihood, Encke carried out already the single stage Siemens-Betz blower tests in 1928, Fig. 4.38.
5.
Modern axial compressor represent a combination of these design principles on the basis of degree of reaction: Since the flow normally enters the compressor axially and leaves axially, there are advantages to having the front and back stages close to axial; correspondingly the reaction starts high (R ~ 1), goes down to around R ~ 0.5 in the mid stages and rises again towards the last stage.
6.
See Hirschel, Aeronautical Research in Germany, p. 231.
7.
In Fig. 4.48 an efficiency advantage of 7–12 percentage points was shown for a R 0.5 compressor design in comparison to R 1.0, deduced from BBC measurements, 1933,—and a theoretical assessment of R. Howell, 1945. These numbers are correct on the basis of the then limited aerodynamic understanding. However, as outlined by compressor expert, em. Prof. Nick Cumpsty, Imperial College London, in a discussion with the author on 15 July 2021, ‘As for the difference in efficiency of seven points, it is not at all clear how much of this is due to reaction. There are so many things which could be different, notably loading and flow coefficient, but also blade solidity and thickness.’
8.
See Wikipedia, ‘Ernest Anton Kraft‘in German, and—see AEG, Wir stellen vor.
9.
See Schlaifer, The Development, p. 432.
10.
In general, an axial engine turns more slowly than a centrifugal, while turbine efficiency falls off as speed decreases. Correspondingly, also the turbine of the British axial engine F.2 had an efficiency slightly below that of the turbines of the British centrifugal engines. Another factor was that the 004 was designed to have a certain residual pressure after the turbine, since this was thought to facilitate planned afterburning.
11.
See Kay, German Jet Engine, pp.112–113.
12.
See Eckardt, Gas Turbine Powerhouse, p. 116, and there especially Footnote 74.
13.
Further investigation of the Jumo 004B turbine efficiency deficit revealed in—see Decher, Die Entwicklung, p. 43, that thermal casing deformation required a turbine rotor tip clearance increase from nominal 2 up to 6.5 mm!
14.
For a general construction survey of the various Jumo 004 engine versions—see Gersdorff, Flugmotoren in German and—see Kay, German Jet Engine, pp.57–95; by far the most detailed information has still—see Power Jets, The Junkers Jumo 004.
15.
See Kay, German Jet Engine, p. 60.
16.
See B.I.O.S, German Gas Turbine Developments, p. 24. The usage of sheet metal for compressor vanes was also to circumvent ever existing forging bottlenecks. BMW had experimented with reinforced plastic material for the first two compressor stages, but finally selected sheet metal for all rows, easily handled by women working in the BMW automobile shop,—see Bruckmann, Unexpected, p. 78.
17.
See Gersdorff, Flugmotoren, pp. 299–300.
18.
See B.I.O.S, German Gas Turbine Developments, p. 24.
19.
See Power Jets, The Junkers Jumo 004, p. 342. The three-race front bearing arrangement was also used for the BMW 003, Fig. 8.9, and for the first Heinkel HeS 011 design, Fig. 7.5 (r), before it was replaced by a single, heavy cyl. roller bearing for the production standard.
20.
See Eckardt, Gas Turbine Powerhouse, p.169 f.—there, with the 20-stage axial compressor as Fig. 4.64.
21.
See Lowell, Gas Turbine Design.
22.
See Kruschik, Die Gasturbine.
23.
Also known as VKF, Vereinigte Kugellagerfabriken (United ball bearing fabrication) AG, Schweinfurt.
24.
See Wikipedia, ‘Amerika Bomber’ in English and—see Forsyth, Messerschmitt.
25.
Schwencke’s name is often misspelled as ‘Schwenke’,—see e.g. Irving, Rise and Fall. Figure 8.3 (m) has also Schwencke’s signature, with which he was identified as author of a secret RLM GL-C (Milch) report, special print in 50 copies, issued on 15 March 1944, ‘Strahtriebwerke des Auslands (Foreign turbojet engines)’, used to interpret corresponding ‘Signals across the Channel’, Figs. 8.23 and 8.24.
26.
See Duffy, Target: America.
27.
No official source, but reliable and probable information, courtesy to Lutz Budrass, 13 Aug. 2021.
28.
Split, 60% from the USA and 40% from UK. In 1944, the German output increased to 34,100 aircraft, but was outperformed by 96,600 units from Allied production, with 77% from the USA alone. Source: Statista Res. Dept. 1998.
29.
Since March 1941 there was USAAF presence on Greenland to establish a shorter, though weather-sensitive aircraft route to England, backed by an agreement with Denmark against attack by a ‘non-American nation’. Schwencke’s project failed to come to fruition later; the Allied bombing was so intense near the end of the war, it disrupted the German supply chain, which anyway was running low on supplies, particularly fuel and kept what little was left for defence, and—see Wikipedia, ‘Daimler-Benz DB 603’ in English; the DB 613 was a twin DB 603 package.
30.
The cryolite mine at Ivigtut is depleted since 1987; now synthetic sodium aluminide fluoride is produced from the common mineral fluorite, a technique which the German Reich possessed exclusively in the 1940s.
31.
Chemically, Cryolite stands for—Na₃AlF₆—sodium hexafluoraluminate. Prior to the Hall-Héroult process the cost to produce aluminium was very high, higher than for gold or platinum. Production costs came down over time, but when Al was selected for the lightning rod atop the Washington Monument in Washington D.C., it was still more expensive than silver.
32.
See Wikipedia, ‘Hall-Héroult process’ in English. The process was invented independently in 1886 by the American chemist Charles M. Hall and the Frenchman Paul Héroult—both 22 years old. In 1888, Hall opened the first large-scale aluminium production plant at Pittsburgh, the roots of Alcoa Corp.
33.
See Wikipedia, ‘Bayer process‘and ‘Carl Josef Bayer‘, both in English. Bayer, a born Austrian, invented the process of extracting alumina from bauxite in 1888, essential to the economical Al production up to this day. Bayer’s solution, along with the Hall-Héroult process, caused the price of Al to drop about 80% in 1890, from what it had been in 1854. This, in turn, made it possible for pioneers like Hugo Junkers to utilise Al—and AlMg—alloys to make metal airplanes in large quantities.
34.
As outlined in Sect. 8.3.1, the aero engine design department TLUK/Ve at BBC Mannheim, led by Hermann Reuter, was established in April 1941.
35.
See Sect. 8.1.3 ‘The Heinkel HeS 011 Development Programme’.
36.
See Kay, German Jet Engine, pp. 43–47. A single-row, cylindrical roller bearing was foreseen for the Class III Junkers Jumo 109-012 A with 2780 kp take-off thrust, and a single-row ball bearing for the Class IV BMW 109-018 with, 3500 kp static thrust,—see Kay, German Jet Engine, p. 90 and p. 132.
37.
See Hafer, Gas turbine progress report, p. 130.
38.
See Eckardt, Gas Turbine Powerhouse, p. 56 f.
39.
See Constant, Turbojet Revolution, p. 148. Similarly,—see Wilson, Turbomachinery, p. 39, stated: ‘Christian Lorensen (sic) in Berlin began experiments on axial-flow turbines and hollow air-cooled blades, which were made by Brown Boveri, in 1929. His work led directly to German turbojet cooled blade designs.’
40.
The German patent DE346,599 on ‘Gas turbine cooling method and device‘had a priority of 21 July 1920, and was deduced from BBC‘s original Swiss patent CH92,250—with equal priority. Eighteen months later Lorenzen’s ‘Gas turbine’ was patented as CH101,035 with priority 12 January 1922. A 1947 statement of Ad. Meyer insinuates, that Ch. Lorenzen was accordingly a BBC licensee in this context,—see Eckardt, Gas Turbine Powerhouse, p. 400.
41.
C.I.O.S. Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee.
42.
See C.I.O.S., Description of Junkers .004, p. 29.
43.
See Hirschel, Aeronautical Research in Germany, with H. Schubert’s comprehensive section on ‘Turbine—The Hollow Metal Blade as Solution for Material Shortage’, pp. 244–251, and—see Kay, German Jet Engine, pp. 75–78 (Jumo), p. 105 and pp. 112–114 (BMW) and p. 49 (Heinkel).
44.
Tinidur chemical composition: 15 Cr, 30 Ni, 2 Ti, 0.8 Si, 0.7 Mn, 0.15 C, balance Fe. Acc. to—see Schlaifer, The Development, p. 426, the decision in favour of Tinidur as preferred turbine material was taken by Heinrich Adenstedt as early as summer 1939 (!), who made corresponding assessments still in M.A. Mueller’s group at Junkers Magdeburg, and continued with materials responsibility in A. Franz’s Jumo 004 development team at Junkers Dessau.
45.
Founded in 1530 at Aachen by the goldsmith William Prym (1490–1561), the company is Germany’s oldest industrial family enterprise. In 1642 during a religious civil war, the protestant Prym family had to leave their guild in catholic Aachen, and was forced to resettle with others at Stolberg, 10 km in the east of Aachen. The company became world-wide known for ‘Prym’s press button’, basically invented in 1885 and in 1903 improved by Hans Prym (1875–1965), by insertion of the ‘crown spring’.
46.
Cromadur chemical composition: 18 Mn, 12 Cr, 0.65 V, 0.5 Si, 0.2 Ni, < 0.12 C, balance Fe.
47.
The actual scarcity of Nickel supplies has been sometimes disputed, especially in view of the small amount required for turbojet engine production, but the volatility between 1942 and 1944 (Finland) was high, and in fact the advantages of blade fabrication from sheet metal might have outweighed the corresponding nickel savings,—see Kay, German Jet Engine, p. 16.
48.
See Kay, German Jet Engine, p. 75 f.
49.
Available as nearly complete collection at Deutsches Museum Munich,—see Mueller, Junkers Flugtriebwerke, p. 223.
50.
In the following this so called ‘T1 Gerät’ (device) was presented in ‘idling operation’ immediately to Prof. Mader, mainly to change (successfully) his reserves against the new turbojet propulsion, to Helmut Schelp and some members of the Junkers board (L/010).
51.
Leipheim lies on the Munich-Stuttgart Autobahn, some 60 km in the west of the then Messerschmitt Works at Augsburg-Haunstetten. In a second flight on the same day the top speed rose without difficulty to 720 km/h.
52.
See Kay, German Jet Engine, p. 89.
53.
L/018, dated 30 Dec. 1940, contains presumably a first T,s-representation of a complete Joule gas turbine cycle for the Jumo 004 turbojet engine with afterburning.
54.
There were plans to implement 20+ percent thrust by afterburning to a Jumo 004 E type in July 1945, on the basis of a, 1000 kp Jumo 004 C, which in itself was a re-designed B-4 model with detail refinements,—see Kay, German Jet Engine, pp. 87–88.
55.
See Kay, German Jet Engine, pp. 72–74; a better explanation of the Junkers ‘Isodrom’ governor provides—see Mueller, Junkers Flugtriebwerke, pp. 231–234.
56.
Slow acceleration was a problem with all early jet engines because compared with a propeller driven plane a pure jet engine produces little thrust at take-off.
57.
An example of RLM-enforced cooperation amongst the turbojet engine manufacturers,—see Schlaifer, The Development, p. 436, who highlights the significant cooperation differences in comparison to the English industry. And typical for the ‘Junkers secrecy’, it was only in March 1942 that W. Encke was allowed to witness—one time—a full-scale test of a compressor based on his work at Dessau.
58.
See Wikipedia ‘Adolf Galland’ in German; other sources have the 23 May 1943, and—see Wikipedia, ‘Messerschmitt Me 262’ in English,—and Green, Warplanes, p. 622, put Galland’s flight already to 22 April 1943.
59.
See Budrass, Review; p. 184; circumstances and decisions of that RLM meeting on 25 May 1943 have already been described in Chap. 7.
60.
L/055, dated 23 Oct. 1941, mentions a saving of 60 kg Nickel per engine, and an overall dry weight reduction of 100 kg.
61.
See Kay, German Jet Engine, p. 75.
62.
See Giffard, Making Jet Engines (2016),—Engines of Desperation (2013) and,—Engine of innovation (2019). Already the 2013 publication was extensively quoted in the German news magazine ‘Der Spiegel’, 7/2014, under the title ‘Wundertüte am Himmel`(instead to a wonder weapon, ‘Wundertüte’ refers to a grab bag), and the believing journalist saw Giffard ‘smashing the legend of the Me 262’, in her view as ‘shoddy, unproven and dangerously faulty’.
63.
See Giffard, Engine of innovation, abstract.
64.
See next Sect. 8.2 ‘British Turbojet Engine Developments’.
65.
See Kay, Turbojet, Vol. 1, p. 19.
66.
See Giffard, Engines of Desperation, abstract.
67.
See Schelp, Hochleistungstriebwerke.
68.
Page numbers in parenthesis of quotations from—see Giffard, Making Jet Engines.
69.
Schelp in German on 2 July 1943: ‘Der erste Abschnitt galt der Schaffung der nötigen Grundlagen und der Entwicklung von TL-Triebwerken bis zur Serienreife, ohne von vornherein Extremwerte anzustreben. … Der erste Abschnitt ist abgeschlossen und hat Ergebnisse gebracht, die revolutionierend auf das gesamte Triebwerksgebiet, nicht allein für die Luftwaffe, sein werden.’
70.
See Constant, Turbojet Revolution.
71.
See Pavelec, The Jet Race, p. 91.
72.
See Bailey, The Early Development, p. 57.
73.
See Kay, Turbojet, Volume 1, p. 61,—and Wikipedia, ‘Gloster Meteor’ in English.
74.
Similarly, the most frequent non-enemy affected cause of Me 262 crashes.
75.
See Wikipedia, ‘Gloster Meteor’ in English.
76.
See Budrass, Review, p. 181.
77.
A qualification, additionally accentuated in—see Giffard‚ Response on (Budrass’s) review, p. 190: ‘National Socialist Germany designed … the jet engine, to be produced under concentration camp conditions, which did go against everything industry believed to be good engineering practice. … That these engines did not live up to the engineering standards of production by a peace-time aero-engine firm is unsurprising.’
78.
Budrass refers to—see Maier, Forschung, p. 366 and—see Flachowsky, Von der Notgemeinschaft.
79.
In 1942 a Messerschmitt Bf 109 on the Eastern front was in service on average for just 65 h before it was lost or damaged beyond repair, a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 on the Western front for just 25 h.
80.
See Budrass, Flugzeugindustrie, pp. 818–829, and—see Budrass, Ideology and Business.
81.
The chemical composition of Cromadur has 0.2% of Nickel, see Footnote 46.
82.
See Mueller, Junkers, pp. 235–236 and 244–245.
83.
See Simms, Hitler, p. 514 f., who requotes from—see Von Kotze, Es spricht der Führer.
84.
See Kay, German Jet Engine, p. 78.
85.
In summary, eight Junkers production sites employed 864 concentration camp inmates in 1944,—see Wikipedia, ‘Zittwerke’ in German, of which also the following related information has been taken.
86.
Both pictures from—see Uziel, Arming the Luftwaffe, who has also on p. 232 a direct quotation in this context: ‘Another woman survivor described the conditions in Junkers aero-engine factory in Zittau as “paradise”, when compared to Auschwitz.’
87.
See Wikipedia, ‘Obertraubling‘in English. Author—see Uziel, Arming the Luftwaffe, p. 202, knows about the last few operational months, that at Messerschmitt Obertraubling Airfield ‘aircraft were moved around primarily with horses and oxen because there was no gas for the tow tractors’, and beginning mid-January 1943, Messerschmitt’s Regensburg plant organised privately ‘factory protection flights’, with two fighters at constant readiness and four more aircraft in reserve during daytime, normally tasked to operate within a 30 km radius around the factory.
88.
See Vierhaus, DBZ Vol. 7, p. 134. Moebius’s organisation was, in German: Junkers KoBü Sondermaschinenbau, MZM Motorenbau-Zweigwerk Magdeburg.
89.
Documented is a 25 m long, fully automatised takt street for the manufacturing of Jumo 213 cylinder heads—with automatic quality control, designed by Friedrich Wahl (1907–1973). In addition, there were several such units for the mass production of Jumo 004 parts (without further details),—see Mueller, Junkers Flugtriebwerke, p. 240. Wahl, after he had been responsible for the Jumo 004 production quality at Nordwerke AG, the 40,000 m² Junkers section in the north of the underground ‘Mittelwerke’ site at Kohnstein in the Harz Mountains (mostly used for V-2 production), escaped after the war from being deported with the rest of the Jumo team to Kuibyshev near Samara, SU by staying in the Harz region as forest worker between 1946 and 1948.
90.
See Friedrich, Vom Wagner/Mueller RT0 Versuchsgeraet. For the RT0 project,—see Fig. 6.17.
91.
On 27 June 1944, 1.30 am, the small mining village of approx. 800 inhabitants was attacked by a British air-raid, and an oversize bomb exploded in village centre, approx. 500 m from the AVA compound, killing 19 inhabitants. In—see Eckardt, Gas Turbine Powerhouse, pp. 132–134, where especially the V-3 super gun threat to London had been emphasised, like in the community was speculated since then about possible reasons; the relocation of the described AVA copy milling equipment to Reyershausen puts now a new target into focus, in addition to AVA high-speed wind tunnel investigations by Prof. O. Walchner. However,—see Middlebrook, The Bomber Command, still claims an attack of 35 ‘Mosquitos’ on Goettingen railway workshops in that night, though there were no bombs on Goettingen then, except the disastrous one, 12 km off on Reyershausen. As of mid-Nov. 2022 (manuscript deadline) this ‘riddle’ has been fully clarified, waiting for a future account.
92.
Milch’s corresponding diary entry reads: ‘Massage, GL conf. with department heads. Lunch with Speer. Afternoon telephone Göring: “Drop the Me 209, put Me 262 in its place. I propose an anti-invasion [air] corps”’—see Irving, The Rise and Fall, FN 19, p. 438 f., who comments: ‘The latter corps was to consist of airborne troops, special fighter and fast bomber units fitted with special weapons for combating an Allied invasion attempt wherever it might be made.’ Applied for the invasion theatre with expectable Allied air superiority, Hitler’s ill-fated ‘Schnellbomber (fast bomber)’ mission demand for the Me 262 stands in a new context. However, on D-day, 6 June 1944, no Me 262 were available operational, and it was only at the end of that month that 26 Me 262 s with engines rolled off the production lines,—see Pavelec, The Jet Race, p. 94.
93.
Two months later, Milch himself called his decision ‘very brave and courageous (sehr tapfer und mutig)’; to put this in perspective, one can quote W. Messerschmitt on 2 June 1943: ‘For a long time, perhaps never, a turbojet aircraft (262) will replace the normal (piston-powered) fighter aircraft’;—see Schabel, Die Illusion, p. 36.
94.
See Wikipedia, ‘Messerschmitt Me 209 (1943)’ in English.
95.
On 1 May 2018, Johannes Schubert, former head of the MBB Space Division, provided a comment, that in mid-war also for German standard fighter aircraft, the performance became increasingly uncompetitive due to the basic 85–87 octane fuel—and the shortage of anti-knock-TEL tetraethyl lead, which was then produced still under US licence in two I.G. Farben plants in Brandenburg. He considered the strategic importance of TEL for German warfare even higher than the heavily attacked ball bearing production at Schweinfurt; the Brandenburg plant(s) with an annual TEL capacity of 3600 t remained unscathed from Allied bombing. Special thanks for intermediation to Ernst H. Hirschel. In the meantime, a 2020 publication—see Douglas, The secret horsepower race, p. 65., located the two secret TEL plants at Gapel, 60 km west of Berlin, as the first site erected still with (US/ Esso?) licence, and an IG Farben ‘copy plant’ at Frose, 40 km south-east of Magdeburg.
96.
See Irving, The Rise and Fall, p. 245.
97.
See Wikipedia, ‘Gloster E.28/39’ in English, and http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_gloster_e28_39.html
98.
See Wikipedia, ‘Edgar Petersen’ in English.
99.
See Wikipedia, ‘Henry H. Arnold’ in English and—see Houston, American Air Power (Arnold diaries). The trip was between 9 April to 1 May 1941, of these 23 days nine were spent for travelling Washington—Bristol, and back, most impressively Arnold’s Atlantic crossing on board a long-range flying boat—see Wikipedia, ‘Boeing 324 Clipper’ in English, NY-Bermuda-Azores-Lisbon, eighteen passengers and a crew of 11.
100.
See Wikipedia, ‘Elwood Richard Quesada’ in English.
101.
See Koos, Heinkel Raketen- und Strahlflugzeuge, p. 130.
102.
See Houston, American Air Power, p. 140. At the request of the AAF, Pan American Airways opened a school to train navigators, the first class commencing instruction in Coral Gables, FL, in August 1940. After the AAF opened its own school, RAF students were admitted to the Pan American course in 1941.
103.
See Wikipedia, ‘General Electric I-A’ in English.
104.
See Wikipedia, ‘Bell P-59 Airacomet‘in English.
105.
See https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4306/ch3.htm
106.
The tricycle, front wheel supported landing gear was only introduced by a design change of the Messerschmitt Me 262 prototypes V-5 (fixed) and V-6 (retractable), after Oct. 1943.
107.
See Gersdorff, Flugmotoren, p. 301.
108.
See Wikipedia, ‘Messerschmitt Me 262’ in English.
109.
See Wikipedia, ‘Arado Ar 234’ in English. After the Me 262, this turbojet aircraft became the second in series production. Overall from mid-1944 until the end of the war a total of 210 aircraft were built. The first Ar 234 prototype, a design of WW I flight ace Walter Blume (1896–1964)—see Wikipedia, ‘Walter Blume (aircraft designer)’ in English, made its first flight, powered by two Jumo 004B, on 15 June 1943 at Rheine Airfield near Muenster/Westphalia. The four-engine Ar 234 V8 with BMW 003A turbojet engines, shown in Fig. 8.7 (r) with ‘twinned’ engine nacelles, flew first on 4 Feb. 1944, also first take-off with four turbojet engines.
110.
See Pavelec, The Jet Race, p. 105.
111.
See Wikipedia, ‘Junkers Ju 287’ in English.
112.
See Wikipedia, ‘Flugplatz Brandis-Waldpolenz’ in German; this military airport, up to 1989 used by the SU Airforce, was located 20 km in the east of Leipzig.
113.
See Wikipedia, ‘Horten Ho 229’ in English.
114.
See Wikipedia, ‘Flugplatz Oranienburg’ in German; this military airport, jointly used by Luftwaffe and Heinkel’s Oranienburg Works, had a 2.2 km long, 52 m wide concrete runway, and was located approx. 25 km in the north-west of the Berlin city centre.
115.
Schreiber (1923–1944) was credited with a further four aerial victories before being killed on 26 Nov. 1944 in a crash landing at Lechfeld Airfield, making him the first ‘jet ace’ in history.
116.
See Wikipedia, ‘Messerschmitt Me 262’ in English.
117.
See Uziel, Arming the Luftwaffe, p. 204.
118.
Excerpt from—see Kay, Turbojet. Vol.1, p. 176.
119.
See Kay, German Jet Engine, p. 96 f.
120.
BMW developed a turbine blade rolling/ welding process, similar to the one described before from Wellner & Söhne for the Jumo 004 turbine, from Boehler FBD sheet stock (17 Cr, 15 Ni, 2 Mo, 1.15 Ta-Nb, 0.9 Mn, 1.0 Si, 0.1 C, balance Fe)—with quantity production by WMF Wuerttembergische Metallwaren-Fabrik, Geislingen an der Steige, 50 km east of Stuttgart.
121.
See Hagen, Zur Geschichte des Strahltriebwerkes.
122.
See Kay, German Jet Engine, p. 106 and 116.
123.
See Kay. German Jet Engine, p. 101.
124.
The odyssey of BMW’s development team after its leave and little by little relocation from the Berlin-Spandau plant in response to heavy Allied air raids end of 1943, first 700 km in the south-west to Wittring/Saarbruecken, then mid-1944 back to an underground salt mine at Neu-Staßfurt, some 150 km west of Bln.-Spandau, and thereafter in four stations after war’s end, finally in 1950 to Snecma, Paris-Villaroche will be described in a detailed portrait of Hermann Oestrich, Chap. 9.
125.
See Wikipedia, ‘Kampfgeschwader 76’ in English.
126.
See Wikipedia, ‘Battle of the Bulge’ in English.
127.
See Cole, The Ardennes, Ch. XXI, p. 527.
128.
See Wikipedia, ‘Battle of Remagen’ in English.
129.
See Wikipedia, ‘Achmer Aerodrome’ in English.
130.
See Wikipedia, ‘Heinkel He 162’ in English.
131.
See ‘Mittelbau-Dora Memorial’, https://www.buchenwald.de/en/29/ in English.
132.
Details of Steckhan’s CV and his early acquaintance with Helmut Schelp in 1935 have been described already in the context of Fig. 7.3.
133.
Then commanded by Oberst H. Ihlefeld (1914–1995),—see Wikipedia, ‘Herbert Ihlefeld‘in English.
134.
See Forsyth, He 162 Volksjäger Units, p. 60.
135.
See Wikipedia, ‘Heinkel HeS 011’ in English.
136.
See minute 2:00 of 3:34 min YouTube video on He 280 re-enacted first flight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM0RhZeB49c
137.
See Sect. 6.2, entry section.
138.
Known as HeS 09, of which however no drawings exist,—see Koos, Heinkel Raketen- und Strahlflugzeuge, p. 69.
139.
See Schlaifer, The development, p. 435, who comments this unusual intervention: ‘The two cases in which the Ministry ultimately did dictate … the design of an engine were the mixed-flow Heinkel 011, begun in 1942, and the turboprop version of that engine, the 021, begun by Daimler-Benz in 1943.’
140.
A more detailed discussion of diagonal compressor patents in Sect. 12.2 will list besides Birmann’s US patent with priority of 1932, patents of M.A. Mueller’s teacher at the Technical College Cologne,1927/1928, Dr.-Ing. Bruno Eck in 1937, by M.A. Mueller still at Junkers Dessau for a comparable turboprop project in 1939 (see also Sect. 8.3), and finally, for H. von Ohain and V. Vanicek at Heinkel-Hirth in 1942.
141.
See Eckardt, Detailed Flow Investigations, and—see Eckardt, Untersuchung der Strahl/Totwasser-Strömung.
142.
See Von Ohain, Besonderheiten, pp. 116–118.
143.
See Mueller, TL-Triebwerke. The order of presentations might have been arranged in favour of Von Ohain by Schelp and the organising RLM.
144.
See Dean, Rotating Wakes.
145.
By the end of 1944 in addition, the production version of HeS 011 A-0 compressor, Fig. 8.16, was also tested as only full-size compressor at AVA Goettingen, for which W. Encke reported a rather disappointing efficiency of just 80%. The new test rig used a 4 MW DC electric motor with a step-up gearbox at each end of its shaft.
146.
See Koos, Raketen- und Strahlflugzeuge, p. 72.
147.
On 27 Feb. 2019 Prof. V. Guemmer, TU Munich, commented this ‘triple vane set-up’ as ‘highly endangered by 3D wall BL separations, to be assessed by later published de Haller criteria’.
148.
See Whittle, Gas Turbine Aero-Thermodynamics, p. 101, provides in hindsight an interesting, general comment in this context: ‘The compression process in a gas turbine is performed in a centrifugal compressor or an axial flow compressor or a combination of both. If both types are used, the axial flow compressor invariably precedes the centrifugal type,’ so, in this respect the HeS 011 compressor arrangement represented a clear exemption.
149.
See Kay, German Jet Engine, p. 50.
150.
See Wikipedia, ‘Max Bentele’ in English.
151.
The manufacturing of these ‘Topfschaufeln (pot blades)’ has deen described in detail by H. Schubert in—see Hirschel, Aeronautical Research in Germany, pp. 444–450.
152.
See Kay, German Jet Engine, p. 51.
153.
A selection of planned applications has—see Kay, German Jet Engine, p. 51 f.
154.
Messerschmitt’s evacuation quarters at war’s end, 90 km south of the Augsburg-Haunstetten headquarter.
155.
See Wikipedia, ‘Bell X-5’ in English.
156.
Kochendorf lay 50 km north of the Heinkel-Hirth headquarter at Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen.
157.
See Wikipedia, ‘Organisation Todt’ in English.
158.
Kolbermoor lies about half-way between Bad Aibling and Rosenheim, 50 km south-east of BMW’s Munich-Milbertshofen headquarter.
159.
See Budrass, Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain, and Deutsches Museum, DMM/ASD, FAA 001/0323.
160.
Budrass quotes a letter from Heinkel to the EHAG board, dated 15 March 1944, characterising Ohain as ‘excellent physicist, who requires the strong hand of a chief engineer, who stops Ohain’s constantly observed notion to “bricolage” over the past six years’.
161.
Both Heinkel (1888–1958) and Kamm (1893–1966) belonged to the ‘Burschenschaft (fraternity) Ghibellina‘at TH Stuttgart,—see Wikipedia, ‘Wunibald Kamm’ in English. After the war Kamm met Hans von Ohain again at the Wright Patterson Airforce Base in Dayton, Oh., before he continued 1953–1956, 17 years after Schelp’s stay, as professor at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ.
162.
At Rostock Hilgendorf joined Mueller’s team in July 1939, moved with this group back to Heinkel-Hirth, Stuttgart in mid-April 1941, and joined here after Mueller’s leave the united engineering team under Von Ohain’s sole leadership in autumn 1942.
163.
See Potthoff, Wunibald I.E. Kamm, p. 228.
164.
See Chap. 9, for Hermann Reuter.
165.
As discussed before in Sect. 4.3.3, and in the context of Fig. 4.49 in the ‘Patent Arena’.
166.
See C.I.O.S., Interrogation, p. 7/8,—or ‘o si tacuisses, philosophus mancisses’, (lt., Boethius or Bible, Job/ Hiob 13.5, and in English: ‘If you had remained silent, you would have continued to be a philosopher’.
167.
Helmuth Trischler, leading German expert on the history of aeronautical research, addressed the apparent problem, that ‘the NS State defined no concrete, specifically designed research programme for the needs of air armament’,—see Trischler, Luft- und Raumfahrtforschung, p. 255.
168.
See Postan, Design and Development of Weapons.
169.
See Maier, Forschung als Waffe, p. 772.
170.
See Schmaltz, Vom Nutzen und Nachteil, and—see Kay, German Jet Engine, p. 220, where also is mentioned that the BMW 003 nacelle, investigated at AVA Goettingen as a 1/5th scale wind- and water tunnel model, was result of these activities.
171.
See Wikipedia, ‘Dietrich Küchemann’ in English.
172.
Graphically adapted,—see Kuechemann, Stroemungsvorgaenge, pp. 8–10.
173.
See Wikipedia, ‘Hermann Schlichting’ in English.
174.
Partially as a result of these research activities on aircraft nacelle aerodynamics, the lack of large high-speed wind tunnel capacity became imminent and was compensated by the large 76 MW wind tunnel facility at Oetztal. This, at war’s end unfinished project of LFM Munich, has been described by—see Hirschel, Aeronautical Research in Germany, p. 193 f.
175.
See Wikipedia, ‘Johanna Weber’ in English.
176.
See Kuechemann, Aerodynamics of Propulsion.
177.
See Wikipedia, ‘Concorde’ in English.
178.
See Hirschel, Aeronautical Research in Germany, p. 412.
179.
See Flight, 8 Jan. 1942, p. 25. The publication of these, for the British side then rather disturbing data without any delay, is most noteworthy. The figures include the episode of a RAF Wing in Russia, but exclude the Middle East, and Luftwaffe aircraft shot down by the Royal Navy.
180.
See Schabel, Die Illusion, p. 198, from USSBS, The Defeat of the German Air Force (European Report, No. 59), p. 19, Fig. 8 (redrawn).
181.
See Flight, 16 March 1944, p. 289–291; correspondingly grew the ‘total military AAF personnel’ between 1940–43,118 to 1944–2,385,000, the ‘labour force’ in US engine plants between 1940–25,000 to Jan. 1944–361,000, and in US airframe plants between 1940–86,000 to Jan.1944–1,022,000.
182.
See Budrass, Die Mobilisierung, p. 299, requoting ‘Command of Luftwaffe Test Centres, Side notes on the organisation of Luftwaffe technology, 20 May 1944, Bundesarchiv Militärarchiv (BA-MA) Freiburg, ZA 3/25. In German ‘Würde man imstande sein, eine wahrheitsgetreue Darstellung, eine objektiv richtige Geschichte der Technik in der Luftwaffe seit 1934 zu schreiben, dann würde schon heute ein Unbeteiligter oder erst recht ein Nachfahre das Ganze für eine mit krankhafter Fantasie erfundene oder ersonnene Satire halten. Denn es würde niemand im Ernst annehmen, dass es in Wirklichkeit so viel Unzulänglichkeit, Pfuscherei, Verworrenheit, Macht am falschen Platz, Verkennung der objektiven Wahrheit und Vorbeilaufen an den vernünftigen Dingen insgesamt geben kann.’
183.
See Schmunk, Entweder KZ.
184.
On 31 Aug. 1942,—see Wikipedia, ‘Harro Schulze-Boysen’ in English, was arrested in his RLM office; he had led an espionage ring for the Soviet-Union, later to be known as ‘Red Orchestra (Rote Kapelle)’. He had had access to the Milch protocols, and as Milch jokingly stated in the minutes’s continuation on 20 Oct. 1942 ‘… had mixed up Luftwaffe Required and Actual Strength figures, so that my office appeared in Russia, but also in England and Amerika, more positive than in reality. Quite comfortable though, otherwise, I would have been ashamed by these laughable low numbers.’
185.
In German ‘Entweder KZ oder ordentliche Deutsche …‘(Milch), and ‘Die richtige Lösung ist und bleibt Konzentrationslager. … Wenn wir das fertigbringen, hätten wir die Gewissheit, dass man die Maschinen dort aufbauen kann und an den Maschinen ein paar Leute stehen hat’ (Mahnke).
186.
See Wikipedia, ‘William Werner’ in German: ‘Wir helfen uns selber, fangen uns die Menschen und Maschinen und hauen das durch.’
187.
See Wikipedia, ‘Gothic Line’ in English.
188.
Part of the successfully accomplished ‘adventure’ was an unauthorised extension of the trip over the weekend, some 350 km further north, first by train in a permanently ‘Occupied’ WC to Stettin/Szczecin, followed by a 30 km march through the Pölitz/ Police ruins, and then by sailing across river Oder in a fisher boat to the completely surprised family, with the new-born son waiting, at Ganserin/Gasierzyno, Fig. 8.20 (r). On the way back several barrel exchange sections were duly picked up at the regiment headquarters at Halle-Leuna, and carried back to the Italian front.
189.
See Wikipedia, ‘Zerstörergeschwader 26’ in English.
190.
By a strange coincidence, 2 h before the air raid culminated over Pölitz/Police on 29 May 1944, 8.30 am, the author was born in Ganserin, a small village of 500 inhabitants on the eastern shore of the Oder estuary, Fig. 8.20, orientation map (r). At ~9 am the author’s grandfather cycled some 5 km to the next post office, to inform father Hans via telegram of the happy childbirth, when he was hit by a shell splinter—unhurt though, just the bicycle clip on the left trouser leg was sharply cut off.
191.
See https://www.cdvandt.org/ktb-chef-tlr.htm in German, with comments in English, covering in eight parts the period of 13 Dec. 1944 to 4 April 1945.
192.
See Wikipedia, ‘David Edgerton (historian)’ in English.
193.
See Edgerton, Britain’s War Machine.
194.
See Budrass, Review. The hun, p. 187.
195.
Joseph J. Ermenc (1912–2005), Professor Emeritus, Dartmouth College, NH.
196.
See Ermenc, Interviews, p. 97.
197.
See Sect. 10.1, and see—Wikipedia, ‘Fedden Mission’ in English.
198.
See Christopher, The race, p. 76.
199.
See Constant, The Origins, p. 208.
200.
See Wikipedia, ‘Robert Schlaifer’ in English.
201.
See Schlaifer, The Development, p. 321.
202.
See Wikipedia, ‘Phoney War’ in English.
203.
Patent attorneys Ernst and Carl Wiegand, for details, see Sect. 12.1.1.
204.
A German secret report ‘Sondertriebwerke des Auslands (Foreign jet engines)’, signed by Colonel-Engineer Dietrich Schwencke, Fig. 8.3, issued on 15 March 1944, lists three Whittle patents, his first one of 1930 (GB347,206), the dual-flow radial impeller of 1935 (CH188,758), and the twin-compound engine of 1936 (CH195,823). For the rermainder the German side assumed unpublished ‘secret patents’.
205.
Actually the international demand for Gohlke’s summary information was so high, that an English version of his article was launched immediately in Feb. 1942,—see Gohlke, Heizluftstrahltriebwerke.
206.
In 2019, now—FlightGlobal celebrated the 110th anniversary of FLIGHT magazine, still located at Dorset House, in the vicinity of Regent’s Park.
207.
See FLIGHT, Vol. 40, 1941, pp. 115–117, (II) pp. 155–158, (III) pp. 190–201, (IV) pp. 239–242.
208.
See Smith, Gas Turbines, 3rd ed., p. 10.
209.
Heinkel He 280 turbojet aircraft, first flight, 30 March 1941, and Junkers Jumo 109–004 A turbojet engine, with a series of first test runs between 11 Oct. 1940 and end of Jan. 1941.
210.
Schwencke’s secret report of 1944 repeats Fig. 8.23 (l) with the predictable interpretation, that here with all likelihood a look-alike of the actually coming GB/US turbojet aircrafts has been shown; in addition, the ‘squirt’ engine of Fig. 8.24 (l) has been reproduced, with the expectation that these new aircrafts will be seen in the European war theatre not before autumn 1944. The announcement of 6 Jan. 1944 (below) of joint UK/ US turbojet developments was equally confirmed.
211.
See Smith, Gas Turbines.
212.
See Flight, 16 Nov. 1944, pp. 526–528.
213.
See Wikipedia, ‘Ernst Udet’ in English. Udet, factually Chief of Procurement and Supply for the Luftwaffe, committed suicide on 17 Nov. 1941 by shooting himself; causes might have been the newly started ‘Operation Barbarossa’ against the Soviet Union in summer 1941, and related issues with the Luftwaffe’s needs for equipment outstripping Germany’s production capacity.
214.
After FlightGlobal, 24 May 2019, ‘The 1940s—Flight goes to war.’
215.
As outlined in the context of Fig. 6.38, a foregoing contact between RAE and Metrovick on axial superchargers had been initiated by Pye as early as 3 June 1937,—with a serious working start not later than 13 Dec. 1937.
216.
See Fig. 4.24, #9.
217.
See Constant, The Internal Combustion Turbine.
218.
See Kay, Turbojet, Vol. 1, p. 19. As a kind of forerunner to higher stage pressure ratios (but still unsatisfactory performance) as finally achieved with ‘Freda’; ‘Ruth’ #6 in Fig. 8.25, was designed with a higher pressure rise per stage in 1939, and tested in 1940 only.
219.
See Constant, Pyestock’s contribution.
220.
See Bailey, The Early Development, p. 13.
221.
See Schlaifer, Development of Aircraft Engines, p. 430/431, has interesting information on the achieved technology standard: ‘In November 1943, about the time when the design of the (Jumo) 004B was fixed for production, the F-2 weighed 1510 lb and was cleared for experimental flight at 1800 lb thrust. The specific weight of the F-2 was thus 0.84 lb/lbf, or a shade more than the 0.83 of the 004B.’ and ‘… it must be remembered that the design of the compressor of the 004 was virtually fixed before the end of 1941 … For this … reason it is scarcely fair to compare the 004 compressor with the axial compressor of the F2, which delivered a pressure ratio of 4:1 with 90% efficiency by the end of 1943.’ Comparable values were only achieved by H. Reuter’s ‘Hermso’ compressors out of BBC Mannheim in 1944–1945, see Sect. 9.1.
222.
See Kay, Turbojet, Vol. 1, p. 47.
223.
See Kay, Turbojet, Vol. 1, p. 46.
224.
See Lloyd, Hayne Constant.
225.
See Constant, Influence of the R.A.E. Reference and quotation, courtesy of Andrew Nahum, 12 Oct. 2021. The continuation of Griffith’s contra-flow design story at Rolls-Royce will be addressed in the next Sect. 8.2.3.
226.
F.2/2 was a redesigned F.2, 1090 kp thrust version of August 1942.
227.
After the nationalisation of Whittle’s Power Jets in 1944, making Roxbee both Chairman and Managing Director, Karl Baumann participated from 28 April 1944 onwards in GTTACC, the Gas Turbine Technical Advisory and Co-Ordinating Committee. His patent record comprises 81(!) grants for assignees like British Westinghouse, Westinghouse Electric, Vickers Electric, and in his own name.
228.
There are inherent problems with high-pressure atomising, but with the ASM system the fuel is sprayed at low pressure into a ‘walking stick’ 180 degree curved tube where it vaporises, to give near-perfect burning at all fuel flows, which can vary considerably between sea-level take off and high altitude flight idle. This system was later applied to the Viper and Sapphire series of engines and was licensed to Westinghouse and Curtiss-Wright in the United States. It was used on the RR Pegasus, M.45 and Viper, and was applied to overcome the smoke problem on the Olympus 593 for Concorde.
229.
See Griffith, The Present Position.
230.
As described in the context of Fig. 4.28, Griffith’s 1929 patent of the typical, radially stapled compressor/turbine blade had forerunners from Stolze-Barkow, 1905 and Mérigoux, 1910.
231.
See Baxter, Contra-Flow Turbo-Compressor Tests. Acc. to—see Hodgson, Armstrong Siddeley, p. 6, ASM received from RAE the manufacturing order for this CR rig under the designation ‘C.6 (some-times C.5)’ in 1938 to produce the ‘equivalent’ of 200 hp. Supervised by M. Cutler, the rig was ready for RAE testing end of 1939, and is now exhibited at Science Museum, London. Information, courtesy to A. Nahum, 11 Oct. 2021. Foregoing experiences with this contra-flow design might have alleviated Heppner’s corresponding design adaptations as in the ASH engine concept, Fig. 8.31.
232.
As said already in Sect. 4.2.2, Baxter and Smith described the fundamental sealing problems between turbine and adjacent compressor rows only ‘between the lines’, with nevertheless a positive general outlook on their master’s concept.
233.
See Armstrong, Farnborough, p. 25–26.
234.
See Armstrong, Farnborough, p. 28.
235.
Thanks to Hives, no less than a hundred and sixty thousand RR Merlins were produced by 1945.
236.
In preparation, the giant C.R.1 engine had been shown also as 3D perspective during a ‘secret’ visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at the Rolls-Royce Derby Plant, Nightingale Road, on 8 Aug. 1940; this took place at the height of the Battle of Britain and the Rolls-Royce production lines were working flat-out to supply Merlin engines powering the Spitfires and Hurricanes,—see Eyre, 50 years.
237.
See Rubbra, Alan Arnold Griffith, p. 126.
238.
With all likelihood Griffith was confirmed in contact with Fritz Heppner, who propagated similar contra-flow, counter-rotating design principles of integral compressor/turbine rotors as head of the ASM Advanced Projects team, as outlined in Sect. 8.2.4.
239.
See Giffard, Making Jet Engines, p. 92.
240.
The Avon was the first Rolls-Royce axial compressor turbojet to enter production. Used in both civil and military aircraft, over 11,000 were built from 1947–1974. Applications covered 12 types, including the first Comet and Caravelle airliners; industrial versions of the Avon also remain in service today.
241.
See Wikipedia, ‘Rolls-Royce Thrust Measuring Rig’ in English.
242.
See Cantor, The Equation of Materials, p. 253, and—see Wikipedia, ‘George Griffith’ in English.
243.
Certainly not only coincidentally, Arnold is also the main protagonist in GG’s key work, inventor of the revolutionary, global peace-enforcing Aeronef (airship, in French), in romance with ‘The Angel of the Revolution’ Natasha, the daughter of Natas (sic! Satan in reverse), a Russian Jew and leader of the ‘Brotherhood of Freedom’.
244.
See Wikipedia, ‘Fred T. Jane’ in English.
245.
As a story in the story, Ithuriel is the name of an angel in the epic poem ‘Paradise lost’ of John Milton (1608–1674),—see Wikipedia, ‘Ithuriel’ in English.
246.
See Rubbra, Alan Arnold Griffith, p. 117.
247.
See Constant, The Origins, p. 218.
248.
Whittle, then 34, made it a ‘secret stay’ by checking in to downtown ‘Hotel Statler Boston’, today—see Wikipedia, ‘Boston Park Plaza’ in English, as ‘Mr. Whitely’, before he demanded a phone installed in his room not connected to the main switchboard, etc. (GE Aviation Blog, 7 Feb. 2019).
249.
See R. Hodgson’s website, http://www.designchambers.com/wolfhound/index.htm#Heppner
250.
Rowell had already hoped to become ASM’s chief engineer in May 1939, when actually Tresilian got the job,—see R. Hodgson’s website.
251.
Cambridge graduate T.P. de Paravicini, since 1935 former research assistant of legendary turbo-charger designer James P. Ellor at Rolls-Royce Derby, left ASM shortly after Tresilian’s firing to Bristol, followed six months later by J. Bucher et al., who—according to Hodgson, somewhat sibylline—‘worked during the war period for H.M.G. (the British Government) in Europe, including Germany’.
252.
B. Slatter (1920–2016) joined—after a stay at RAE Farnborough—Rolls Royce Derby, ending his career as Technical Director of RR Gas Turbines; his Olympus engines powered most of the Royal Navy fleet in the Falklands War of 1982.
253.
This report was followed in December 1941 by ‘An Introduction to Gas Turbine and Jet Propulsion Theory’—possibly one of the UK earliest treatises on the subject—with strong effect in favour of axials,—see Hodgson, Armstrong Siddeley, p. 10. Both reports should be at RRHT Derby Archives—to re-open in late 2022; information, courtesy of Neil Chattle, RRHT Derby, 22 Oct. 2021.
254.
This preceded the Metrovick F5 UDF by at least 2.5 years, and GE’s counter-rotating, open propfan of the early 1980s,—see Wikipedia, ‘General Electric GE 36’ in English, by more than 40 years.
255.
See Hodgson, Armstrong Siddeley, p. 17: ‘Heppner had demanded an immediate apology, which he did not receive. On Monday, 19 January 1941, Tresilian was asked by Rowell to apologise in writing to Heppner. He refused. Rowell said that if he did not, Heppner would leave immediately. He still refused. Rowell then telephoned Spriggs and/or Sopwith in London. A few minutes later, Tresilian announced to some of his design staff that: “I’ve upset the apple cart and have to go”. He was given 2 h to leave. As a parting present, Spriggs gave him 12 days’ pay (he had no contract) and ensured that no-one in the industry would employ him. He remained unemployed for some six months until he became the RAF-USAAF engine co-ordinator.’
256.
The end of ASH development documents T.B. 23 in the ‘Heppner (file) Box’ at RRHT Derby Archives: ‘The A.S.H. Mk IV’, dated 16 Feb. 1946.
257.
See Giffard, Making Jet Engines, p. 107, an expression which appears not to be justified by facts.
258.
As indicated already in Chap. 5, Heppner might have used this ‘turbojet development gap’ also for broadening his aerodynamic (patent) knowledge at the London Patent Office, in view e.g. for his inventions/ activities in the context of Figs. 8.34 and 8.36.
259.
This number implies multi-national applications; the number of Heppner’s unique patented innovations is rather close to 20 (15× turbomachinery-, and 5× automotive-related).
260.
Insinuating Constant’s membership in the Communist Party, which the Author was unable to verify.
261.
Hodgson, Armstrong Siddeley, p. 15.
262.
See Chap. 5, in the context of Fig. 5.11 (bottom). The official, negative reply must have reached Heppner still in Dec. 1939.
263.
This priority date is only 10 days after Heppner’s return from Isle of Man internment. Apparently, he was highly committed to proceed.
264.
See Smith, Gas Turbines, 3rd ed., pp. 77–79, but a publication in 2nd edition is likely. as well, in addition to Flight, 1942.
265.
See Eckardt, Gas Turbine Powerhouse, p. 308 f.
266.
It is likely that the designation of the complete set of 22 T.B: reports, T.B. 1 to T.B. 23 (with T.B. 11 missing) of the ‘Heppner Box’ at RRHT Derby Archive, stands actually for ‘Torque Balancing’.
267.
Besides Heppner’s turbofan set-up with two fan stages at flow entry, both concepts correspond with inner compressor and outer turbine locations, and the rotating fuel injection, see also Fig. 8.37 (r) for a related design solution of Heppner’s German ‘partner’ H. Weinrich. Unchanged, also ASH had the disadvantages of a long thin shaft and numerous bearings with difficult lubrication.
268.
The date is remarkable since ASM indicated by the decision to present ASH instead of ASX to the Ministry, a clear preference for Heppner’s engine concept. The ASH base patent US2,428,330 ‘Assembly of Multi-Stage Internal-Combustion Turbines Embodying Contrarotating Bladed Members’ for F. Heppner alone, had a priority date of 15 Jan. 1943.
269.
From RRHT Derby Archive: TB 01 ‘Note on the Thermodynamic Basis of the T.B. Engine’ (19 Nov. 1942), TB 02 ‘Detailed Theoretical Notes on the T.B. Engine’, and TB 03 ‘A Review of Alternative Designs Working on the Thermodynamic Cycle Already Discussed’ (16 Oct. 1942). The pictures of manufactured ‘staged’ turbine (top)/ compressor (bottom) blading, Fig. 8.31 (r) are part of TB 16 ‘The A.S.H. Mark III’, dated 21 April 1944.
270.
In 1942/1943, Heppner apparently used Howell’s 1942 reports,—see Howell, The Present Basis of Axial Compressor Design, Parts 1 and 2.
271.
See Lawton, Parkside, pp. 68–69.
272.
There is some probability, that Heppner used the de Paravicini/ Slatter propulsors, and adapted them with his typical counter-rotating core engine.
273.
The engine manufacturer association of General Electric Aviation and Safran Aircraft Engine, which commonly investigate future environmentally-friendly and fuel-efficient engine concepts in a technology programme RISE—Revolutionary Innovation for Sustainable Engines.
274.
See Betz, Zur Theorie der Leitapparate fuer Propeller, also as NACA TM No. 909 (Sep. 1939).
275.
MTU patent DE19,828,562 ‘Triebwerk mit gegenläufig drehenden Rotoren (Counter-Rotating Engine)‘with priority 26 June 1998. An earlier MTU patent ES2,023,020 ‘Turbofan‘, invented by H. Grieb and H. Geidel had been filed with priority 11 April 1988,—see Geidel, Gearless CRISP. The ‘Geared CRISP’ base version was not patentable, due to two premature publications of 1986,—see Grieb, Turbofan and Propfan.
276.
See Wikipedia, ‘Pratt & Whitney PW1000G’ in English.
277.
Patent GB577,950 ‘Improvements Relating to Jet-Propelled Aircraft’, with priority 31 Dec. 1941.
278.
See Froude, Description (1883). This Robert E. ‘Froude, the Younger’ had generated a related formula, which was renewed and brought to public attention by Sir Geoffrey I. Taylor (1886–1975),—see also the ‘Griffith-Taylor-Prandtl scandal’ in Sect. 4.2.1.
279.
See Betz, Tragflügel, p. 281 (1927, in German), and—see Betz, Interference, p. 218 (1966, in English).
280.
Patent DE513,116 ‘Verfahren zur Verminderung des Widerstands eines Körpers in Flüssigkeiten oder Gasen (Drag reduction of a body in fluids and gases)’, with priority 5 Sep. 1923,—see Sect. 12.1.2 and Fig. 12.7. Heppner’s 1941 patent addresses a tail-mounted aft-fan as aircraft-specific variant thereof.
281.
See Smith, Wake ingestion.
282.
See Seitz, Concept validation, and—see Wiart, Exploration of the Airbus ‘Nautilus’. The Heinkel He 211B, jet-powered 20+ passenger aircraft project of 1961 (design S. Günter) had a tail-mounted turbojet installation very close to Heppner’s 1941 patent, with an accordingly projected sfc improvement of 10%.
283.
Whittle pat. GB512,064, ‘Improvements relating to the propulsion of aircraft’, priority 25 Feb. 1938. As discussed by—see Smith, Gas Turbines, 3rd ed., p. 97, Whittle stated that the forward-facing ‘air scoops’ of the shown patent drawing had radially exaggerated dimensions.
284.
Whittle patent GB471,368 (same title as GB512,064), priority 4 March 1936.
285.
See Masters, German Jet Genesis, p. 131.
286.
See Wikipedia, ‘Area rule’ in English.
287.
See Wikipedia, ‘MK 108 cannon’ in English.
288.
Fritz Heppner, ‘The general theory of boundary layer propulsion’, ASM (internal) T.B. Report No. 18, dated 3rd Nov. 1944, quoting O. Schrenk’s NACA TM 974 of April 1941.
289.
See Wikipedia, ‘Boundary layer suction’ in English, and for an overview—see Gerber, Untersuchungen, in German, a 1938 doctoral thesis at Ackeret’s ETHZ Institut für Aerodynamik.
290.
See Schrenk, Grenzschichtabsaugung, NACA TM No. 974.
291.
See Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz HLS, ‘Werner Pfenninger’ in German. Pfenninger laid ground in the area of ‘suction-type laminar flow control’,—see Braslow, A History, p. 6.
292.
Following an interpretation of Peter Barnes, Librarian of the Coventry & Ansty Branch of RRHT of 17 March 2017, the loan was issued three days after Heppner had bought the house at Leamington Spa, Fig. 5.7 (r), with some likelihood per cheque by Tom Sopwith himself. The 1600 £ of 1942 would correspond to 80,000 £, or 92,000 € today (11/2022), sufficient for the house in 1942.
293.
Acc. to an Espacenet check, this might have been ~15 basic turbo-related ideas, times multi-country affiliations; the upper limit of 10,000 £/a would correspond to presently ~600,000 €/a. Details of the royalty reference calculation basis are not known.
294.
The word schizophrenia translates as ‘splitting of the mind’ and is Modern Latin from the Greek words schizein (σχίζειν, ‘to split’) and phrēn, (φρήν, ‘mind’). Its use was intended to describe the separation of function between personality, thinking, memory, and perception. Classification subtypes of schizophrenia as paranoid, disorganized, catatonic, undifferentiated, and residual type were difficult to distinguish between and are no longer recognised as separate conditions. Instead, stress in all forms, which Heppner had more than enough, is considered a main cause.
295.
Not mentioned are possible inlet distortions, which came into focus only later.
296.
The Author feels not in a position to judge, if the foregoing remark is ‘sound’ under the precarious wartime conditions end of 1944.
297.
Mail of Dave Piggott, RRHT Derby, 8 April 2013: ‘In my many conversations with Geoffrey Wilde, he talked about Heppner’s time in Derby just after the war. After he fell out with AS, he joined RR for a short time but was not a success at Derby either and soon left. Wilde maintained that his technical logic was not sound and some time after leaving RR he had mental health problems.’
298.
Tony Butler, ‘Griffith Wing Meteor’, 11 July 2019: https://www.key.aero/article/griffith-wing-meteor
299.
See Brown, Wings on my sleeves, describing a quite dramatic Meteor test flight with Griffith’s suction wing on 1st Oct. 1948.
300.
Fellow of the Institute of Physics (FInstP) is the highest grade of membership, elected by making ‘an outstanding contribution to the profession.’ The Fellow’s gown follows the pattern of the Doctor’s robes of Oxford University in black with 4″ cuffs in violet damask, the cuffs slightly gathered with red cords and violet buttons; Fellows wear a doctor’s bonnet in black velvet with red tassels.
301.
In principle, Heppner’s affiliation to ‘Physics’ followed a certain logic due to his ‘Vordiplom’ in Theoretical Physics at TH Dresden on 22 June 1929, Fig. 5.2 (m), while he graduated from TH Berlin-Charlottenburg in ~1932 as Dipl.-Ing.
302.
See Wikipedia, ‘Central Hospital, Hatton‘in English, stating that—as a kind of post-war trauma—‘the hospital was overcrowded for over 20 years between 1945 and the late 1960s.’
303.
Weinrich patent DE899,298, with priority 9 Dec. 1951.
304.
Heppner patent US2,334,625, ‘Turbomachine’, with priority 26 March 1941.
305.
Mail to the Author, dated 24 Jan. 2014.
306.
See Schubert, BBC-Mannheim.
307.
See Eckardt, Gas Turbine Powerhouse, pp. 18.21, and—see Wikipedia, ‘Bombing of Mannheim in WW II’ in English. Before the Yalta conference, 4–11 Feb.1945, US-President Roosevelt instructed Lt. General L. Groves as the responsible US Army authority, that if the atomic bombs were ready before the war with Germany ended, he should be ready to drop them on Germany; besides Berlin, the area Mannheim-Ludwigshafen was considered as alternative target. Considerations, which became obsolete after Germany’s unconditional surrender, effective 8 May 1945,—see Wikipedia, ‘Manhattan Project’ in English.
308.
Besides the shown—see Wikipedia, ‘German battleship Tirpitz’, commissioned in Feb. 1941 with 163,000 shp, the not completed—see Wikipedia, ‘German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin’ was equipped with a set of four BBC steam turbines of in total 200,000 shp; these deliveries were supplemented by huge helical gear drives, coming out of BBC Baden, CH.
309.
For a complete survey of BBC-designed and -manufactured high-speed wind tunnels,—see Eckardt, Gas Turbine Powerhouse, pp. 126–151.
310.
In this period he managed the erection of a new high-altitude test facility, which in the meantime under his successors Profs. Wolfgang Braig and—since 2001—Stephan Staudacher became an internationally renowned test facility, regularly occupied by MTU Aero Engines, Rolls-Royce Germany, etc.
311.
As a confirmation,—see Senger, Die Betriebskennlinien mehrstufiger Verdichter, which may be understood as an independent position paper in 1941 in this important turbomachinery area; it was part of Senger’s planned doctoral thesis which however, he was not able to finish during wartime; in 1948 he became Professor for Thermal Fluidmachinery and Steam Power Plants at the TH Stuttgart—without the normally requested engineering doctorate, but with an extraordinary broad range of practical technical expertise.
312.
Hermann Reuter (1911–1981) worked from 1935 to 1967 for BBC Mannheim; in 1948 he became successor of U. Senger; for details of his turbomachinery design activities,—see the next Sect. 8.3.4 and Chap. 9. Reuter finished his professional life as Professor for Mechanical Engineering at TH Karlruhe from 1967 to 1976.
313.
Hammerbacher followed Schnetzler as CEO in 1945, and kept this position up to 1958. He had prepared—see Wikipedia, ‘Kurt Lotz’ in English, as his successor, apparently also with the target to unite the Baden and Mannheim businesses, now with a certain, in view of size, natural German dominance. Consequently, Lotz led both Companies alternately for two days from Baden and Mannheim, until he realised—what he called a certain ‘anti-German opposition’—see Spiegel, Schweizer Spitze in German. Lotz left BBC in 1968 to Volkswagen in succession of Heinrich Nordhoff, where he launched the ‘Golf’ as mid-term replacement of Ferdinand Porsche’s then still popular ‘Beetle’.
314.
See Ruch, Geschäfte und Zwangsarbeit, and—see Schubert, BBC-Mannheim. At War’s end 2/3 of the Käfertal production was in ruins. The move of the BBC administration was accelerated after a RAF 554 bomber raid in the night of 5/6 Sep.1943 which destroyed Mannheim nearly completely. Heidelberg’s bombing safety can be deduced from operetta and films—see Wikipedia, ‘The Student Prince’ in English, based on the play ‘Old Heidelberg’, with 608 performances en suite the longest-running Broadway show of the 1920s, revived there in 1943, before intensified Allied bombing started. The BBC industrial gas turbine and turbomachinery department under Max Schattschneider was dispersed to the Robert Bunsen School at Neuenheim—across River Neckar from Heidelberg,—see Kay, German Jet Engine, p. 196.
315.
See Wikipedia, ‘Bombing of Mannheim in World War II’ in English. Between 16 Dec. 1940 and 2nd March 1945 more than 150 air raids with a total bomb load of 25,181 t were recorded, killing 1700 people. These were 0.6% of the 284,000 inhabitants only due to an extraordinarily high bomb shelter capacity. Ludwigshafen-Mannheim had been ‘earmarked’ as a potential target for nuclear bombing within the US Manhattan Project, a disastrous plan not executed due to the German capitulation on 8 May 1945. As a result of war 1300 BBC employees had lost their lives and in 1950 still 600 were reported missing.
316.
For the BBC gas turbine locomotive,—see Eckardt, Gas Turbine Powerhouse, pp. 196–203, with obvious consequences to the derivative tank gas turbine design, Sect. 8.3.4, and in due course the ‘stand-alone’ locomotive combustor stimulated also ideas for aero combustor designs and fuselage-mounted gas generator aircraft applications, described in GT Powerhouse, pp. 208–209, which led also to a BBC patent CH221,503 with priority 9 Dec. 1940.
317.
Inventor Claude Seippel, ‘Gas turbine plant’, CH214,256 and US2,326,072, with priority in Germany: 28 June 1939.
318.
Hans von Ohain’s first secret patent No. 317/38 and the corresponding background of the diffusing ‘Venturi chamber’ combustors will be discussed in detail in Sect. 12.1.1.
319.
See Smith, Gas Turbines, 3rd ed., April 1944, pp. 75–76, ‘… Only 20 to 30 per cent of the air delivered by the compressor is required for the combustion of fuel; the remainder is employed to lower the temperature of the combustion gases,’ and ‘Flame forms at or beyond the (Venturi chamber) grid bars (20), which furnish a number of friction surfaces along which the boundary layers of the mixture move at lower velocity than the ignition velocity. Small flames are formed locally which preheat and ignite the main mass of the mixture and thus maintain stable conditions.’
320.
See Schwencke, Strahltriebwerke. The distribution list of the report comprises a.o. RLM State Secr. E. Milch; Chief of Luftwaffe (Lw) Planning Office—see Wikipedia, ‘Ulrich Diesing’ in English; RLM GL/C-E3 H. Schelp; Chief of Lw Gen. Staff—see Wikipedia, ‘Günther Korten’ in English; Chief of Lw Führungsstab (Operational Staff)—see Wikipedia ‘Eckhard Christian’ in English, General Fighter A/C A. Galland, Gen. Bomber A/C W. Marienfeld, Gen. Reconnaissance A/C G. Lohmann, and Lw HQ—see Wikipedia, ‘Lager Robinson’ in German, and—see Wikipedia, ‘Hans Jeschonnek’ (death) in English.
321.
This is also a strong hint, that the mutual patent information system was only of limited use during wartime.
322.
Darrieus’s contributions to Brown Boveri’s early axial compressor developments have been outlined in—see Eckardt, Gas Turbine Powerhouse, pp. 98–101.
323.
Details of this trip originate from Cl. Seippel’s diary 1941, which reads in this context in French: ‘29/31 VII—Lyon, Darrieus, Destival; Grenoble Maue. pénurie!’, i.e. after the aero gas turbine meeting at Lyon, Seippel continued to Grenoble to contact BBC’s hydro and electro machinery plant with the recorded observation of a ‘mauvaise pénurie’, a serious lack of food. Information, with special thanks to Cl. Seippel’s son Olivier (1926–2012), also employed in various functions at BBC, who helped to revive personal memories of his father, especially by providing insight into the BBC part of Cl. Seippel’s diary notes.
324.
See Destival, SOCEMA and—see Destival, French Turbo-Propeller; given the described, close contacts between RAE Farnborough and BBC Baden on the one side, and the unchanged close cooperation between BBC and its French subsidiary C.E.M., this statement surprises.
325.
See Eckardt, Gas Turbine Powerhouse, pp. 131–135, ‘The AVA/ LFM wind tunnel projects’.
326.
See Pfenninger, Die Gasturbinenabteilung bei BBC. See also Fig. 10.20, where these developments are brought in the context of SOCEMA’s TGA 1 turboprop. To the rather uncommon tasks of that BBC department belonged e.g. the development of an accelerating drive for the landing wheels of Swiss Airforce aircrafts to prevent the excessive rubber wear after touch-down at landing speeds up to 150 km/h; the solution was realised by means of an oil drive with a screw pump/ motor combination.
327.
See Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy (The Second World War, Vol. 6), p. 712, often interpreted as a neutralising comment towards Stalin’s hefty critique against Switzerland.
328.
Katharine Lee Bates’ lyrics of ‘America the Beautiful’ are said to be owed to the stunning vistas from the summit of Pikes Peak. Besides the exceptional scenery, there is a hidden technical relationship to Switzerland, and Brown Boveri’s early railway past, Fig. 4.2. Since 1964 the Manitou and Pikes Peak Railway, the highest rack railway in the world, uses equipment from SLM Swiss Locomotive & Machine Works, Winterthur,—see Wikipedia, ‘Pikes Peak Cog Railway’ in English. M&PPR uses the Abt rack system, limited to maximum grades of 25%. Many rack railroads like the one on Mt. Rigi, 15 km east of Lucerne, CH, use the Riggenbach system, also called ‘ladder rack’. The steepest cog railway in the world is the Mt. Pilatus Railway, 5 km south of Lucerne. It uses the Locher rack system to climb grades of 48%. The steepest cog locomotive track along the Panama Canal has short grades of even fifty percent, it uses also the Riggenbach system.
329.
The idea was decisively boosted when Asmus Hansen, who had submitted in 1930 at TH Dresden his doctoral thesis ‘Die thermodynamischen Grundlagen des Höhenflugmotors’ (The fundamental thermodynamics of the altitude flight motor), struggled with an engine fire while descending from a stratosphere flight up to 13 km with the Junkers Ju 49 in 1932, Fig. 4.34—and was forced to an emergency landing with ‘stehender Latte’ (seized propeller) at the Junkers airfield, Dessau.
330.
See Barth, Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der deutschen Flugtriebwerks-Hoehenprüfstaende (with the following information on BBC altitude test unit sales provided by H. Koeckritz, BBC Mhm. in 1966), N_I units were delivered to DVL Bln.-Adlershof (4), E-Stelle Rechlin (2), BMW Munich, FKFS Stuttgart, DB S.-Untertuerkheim (2), Junkers-Motorenwerke Dessau (2), DFL Braunschweig, AVA Goettingen, Rheinmetall-Borsig Bln.-Tegel, Heinkel-Hirth S.-Zuffenhausen; in addition, Moscow CIAM etc. (5), up to June 1941, not completely delivered,—see Ruch, Geschäfte und Zwangsarbeit, p. 85.
331.
At least the equipment of six more N_II facilities was delivered by BBC, but not put into operation: DB S.-Untertuerkheim, DVL Bln.-Adlershof, E-Stelle Rechlin (2), BMW Munich, LFM Munich. The two N_II—sets for the ‘E-Stelle Rechlin’, 130 km in the north of Berlin, are said, were stored ‘in a wood near the field’—see C.I.O.S, Gas Turbine and Wind Tunnel Activity. The E-Stelle had at Rechlin-Laerz two parallel concrete runways, each 2400 m long and 50 m wide. BBC charged for one N_II altitude test equipment 6,300,000 RM with an extra one Million RM for the air conditioning plant.
332.
Detailed facility descriptions are contained in—see Hirschel, Aeronautical Research in Germany, pp. 216–224, and—see Stoeckly, Bavarian Motor Works, in English, and in—see Hirschel, Luftfahrtforschung, pp. 201–209, and—see Barth, Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte, in German. In a letter, dated 1 Feb. 1971, from Herbert Gassert (1929–2011), BBC Mannheim’s Chairman of the Board between 1980–1987, to MTU board member Dr.-Ing. Karl Ad. Müller, the BBC turbomachinery for ‘Herbitus’ has been specified: two air compressors V1103 and V1102, three gas compressors V1604, V1104 and V704, including gearbox transmissions and e-drive motors, one air expansion turbine—with type identification, V standing for radial compressor, first three digits for impeller diameter in cm, and the fourth digit for the number of stages.
333.
Camouflaging, but for insiders nevertheless revealing project names were a speciality of educated German military; other examples will be ‘Hetralin’ in Sect. 8.3.5, and ‘ATAR’, Chap. 9. The code name ‘Herbitus’ of the BMW altitude engine test facility was demystified recently as follows: It was located ~100 m south-west of what is today the street corner of Lueneburger- and Konstanzer-Strasse in Munich-Milbertshofen, where then (and still today) the housing BMW Power Station, Bldg. 100 existed, Fig. 8.46. East thereof was the eponymous ‘Oberwiesenfeld’, site of F.-Z. Diemer’s altitude flight record in 1919, Fig. 4.29, till 1939 Munich’s only civil airport and what became the ‘Olympia-Park’ in 1972. Ober-Wiese(n)-Feld has Wiese/meadow/grassland in the middle which in lat. is ‘herba’; accordingly, ‘herbescere’ means ‘to pullulate/to sprout’ and the past participle thereof ‘herbitus’ something like ‘it is pullulated/it is sprouted’ or ‘green overgrown’—with the additional benefit that the ending US could be interpreted as reference to the initials of Ulrich Senger as the responsible BBC chief engineer. In this context, special thanks go to Maria Kissler, Bochum for her kind support in Latin grammar.
334.
See Bailey, The Early Development, p. 60.
335.
Ch. Soestmeyer came with practical experiences at the smaller DVL altitude test facility in 1941 to BMW Munich, where he together with U. Senger, BBC Mannheim and a number of responsible engineers from the altitude test facilities at Rechlin and Junkers Dessau designed the ‘Herbitus’ concept in a rather rare cooperative approach. Soestmayer stayed several years as the AEDC ETF ‘Manager of Operation’,—see Hirschel, Aeronautical Research.
336.
One post-war addition to the Tullahoma turbomachinery comprised two large DEMAG centrifugal compressors with PR 2.5, V₁ 114 m³/s entry volume flow and 14 MW max. power consumption,—see Barth, Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte, p. 21.
337.
See Eckardt, Gas Turbine Powerhouse, pp. 137–148, and—see Eckardt, The 1×1 m hypersonic wind tunnel. At War’s end the turbomachinery and materials deliveries were ~80% complete on stock at Kochel. One of the decisive differences between Kochel planning and Tullahoma realisation was unlimited use of e-motor drive technology, so that the planned hydraulic turbine drives were no longer required for the compressor field.
338.
The designation ‘Tunnel A’ dates back to planning of the Peenemuende team under W. von Braun in the late 1930s.
339.
The excellence of the German altitude test equipment may be also put in better perspective in comparison to the Farnborough altitude (motor) engine test chamber, for which two independent statements of UK visitors at Wright Field in September 1938 exist, as minutes of meetings,—see Douglas, The Secret Horsepower Race, p. 66 f. Rolls-Royce’s Stanley Hooker ‘was of the opinion, that the Farnborough altitude test chamber devoted most of its effort to making the equipment work and very little actual testing had been completed,’ and A.A. Griffith stated shortly thereafter more cautiously, that ‘their air-cooling system, which is an air engine wherein the air is compressed, cooled and expanded, is not entirely satisfactory. While it is a compact arrangement, it is necessary to pass the air through a centrifuge to take out the snow. Even then under cruising conditions they have trouble with icing.’
340.
See the foregoing Chap. 7, and—see Wikipedia, ‘GT 101’ in English. M.A. Mueller was then not only already long-time NSDAP party member, but had apparently also strong ties to Waffen-SS technical institutions (without knowing his actual rank).
341.
See Eckardt, Gas Turbine Powerhouse, pp. 196–204.
342.
Shown is a pre-stressed concrete bridge with Gotthard granite cover, re-built in 1945–6, after a foregoing steel lattice construction of 1876, was partially destroyed by an US air raid with 20 bombs on bridge and the neighbouring hamlet Rheinsfelden, killing three,—see Wikipedia, ‘Aerial incidents in Switzerland in World War II’ in English.
343.
This GT sfc value applies for 50% load, and the integral use of a heat exchanger in the GT locomotive engine. In view of the GT 102 tank engine (without heat exchanger), the resulting part load sfc should have been between 500 and 600 g/PSh,—information, courtesy of Norbert Lang, 13 Dec. 2021.
344.
BBC historian and railway expert Norbert Lang expressed reservations against this insinuated GT locomotive ‘show case’, since the secondary non-electrified line Winterthur—Basel with the BBC Muenchenstein assembly plant at the Basel end represented a classical test route to omit the bottle-neck Zurich and the blocking of the critical Boezberg Jura crossing; courtesy of NL, 10 Dec. 2021.
345.
In 1943 the Panther, a MAN design with effective 620 hp, 12 cyl. V, 23 l, liquid-cooled Maybach HL 230 P30 gasoline piston engine was introduced against the T.34, with 50,000 units production record holder during WW II, and which had surprisingly appeared on the 1941 Russian battlefields. Subsequent tabulation adapted—see Kay, German Jet Engine, p. 161.
346.
Porsche’s honorary Dr.-Ing. title, actually his second after TH Vienna in 1916, was granted by TH Stuttgart for winning the 1924 Targa Florio on places #1—#3 with his Mercedes SSK, and 126 hp, 2 l, 4-cyl. compressor engine; 6 years later the title became part of the ‘Dr.-Ing. h.c. F. Porsche GmbH’. Initially, this ‘Porsche KG’ had only a small staff of thirteen, but in 1945 this had risen to forty and some 120 workers, by which time the office had been dispersed from Stuttgart to Gmuend and Rheinau, Austria,—see Wikipedia, ‘Porsche’ in English.
347.
VK30.01 (P) stands for ‘VollKetten (fully tracked)’ vehicle, of 30 t target weight, and (P)orsche’s first design,—see Wikipedia, ‘VK 3001 (P)’ in English.
348.
In Google Maps, search for < Rheinauweg, Höchst, Bregenz, Austria >.
349.
See Wikipedia, ‘Panther tank‘in English, and for Panther II installation drawing,—see B.I.O.S.: ‘Report on German Development of Gas Turbines for Armoured Fighting Vehicles’.
350.
Reference literature, e.g.—see Wikipedia, ‘GT 101’ in English, often mixes actions and responsibilities of Max Adolf Müller (1901–1962),—see Chap. 7, and Dr. Alfred (Hermann) Müller (1907–1979). In general, the author follows the corresponding assessments of—see Kay, German Jet Engine, p.156 f. A further complication was a name change/ extension of the latter in 1969 to Alfred H. Müller-Berner by adding his wife’s name to end the life-long naming confusion. Dr.-Ing. A. Mueller, aircraft engine designer at BMW Munich since 1933, received his academic degree for a thesis on ‘The inner cooling of turbocharger turbine blades’ at Kamm’s FKFS in 1941. In Jan. 1944 he finished designing the excellent turbo-supercharger for the BMW type 801 J altitude aero piston engine, before he took over the tank GT development task. Finally, in Feb. 1945, he was replaced by Max Adolf Mueller. Since 1957, after an early stay at C.A. Parsons & Co., where he led a small 1000 hp tank GT development team, and a continuation at Leyland Motors in England as Chief Development and Research Engineer for engines, trucks and busses since 1952, A. Müller worked in the piston engine development at Daimler Benz Stuttgart under Fritz Nallinger, and ended his career in 1972 as Director of the DB utility truck development under Hans Scherenberg,—see ATZ (1972), p. 456.
351.
Both designations—KTL and KVA—are in use in this context.
352.
See Wikipedia, ‘SS Führungshauptamt‘in English. Since 1943 the SS-FHA was led by Hans Jüttner; an encounter of Helmut Schelp with Jüttner on ‘forced labour’ issues in the context of turbojet engine production in mid-August 1943 has been described in Sect. 7.4.
353.
See Rabl, Das KZ-Aussenlager St. Aegyd, p. 14 and p. 24. Beginning 2nd Nov. 1944 existed there also for five months a ‘KZ-Aussenlager (dependence)’ with some 300 prisoners from KZ Mauthausen, apparently to build tank gas turbine test facilities. The project was not realised, nevertheless 46 inmates lost their lives by murder, suicide and cruel working conditions.
354.
Located in the newly erected barracks of 1940 at the south side of Schönbrunn palace garden, today Maria-Theresien-Kaserne, and immediately after the war used by British (armoured tank) troops as ‘Schönbrunn Barracks, H.Q. Vienna Grn.’ which may explain that a substantial part of the KTL engineering team (Müller, Kolb, Hryniszak, Zadnik) found occupation at C.A. Parsons & Co., Newcastle,—see patent of a ‘Gas turbine plant’, CH275,240 with priority 7 March 1949, a design derivative of GT 102,—and Leyland Motors (Müller) up to ~1956, the latter company later known for their truck gas turbine project.
355.
See Kay, German Jet Engine, pp. 156–173.
356.
A rare original drawing of Federal Military Archive BA-MA Freiburg, RS/5, 459: ‘Tätigkeitsbericht der kraftfahrtechnischen Lehranstalt der Waffen-SS, Aussenstelle “Alfred“ (KTL Report, field office “Alfred”)’, 1 Feb. 1945.
357.
According to—see Kay, German Jet Engine, p. 166: ‘Brown Boveri & Cie., Mannheim having been chosen for the task because of the excellent results it had been obtained in designing a new axial compressor for the BMW 109–003 (C) turbojet’ as part of the RLM-issued ‘Hermso projects’,—see Chap. 9.
358.
The GT 103 heat exchanger with slowly rotating ceramic drum was within the responsibility of the BBC specialist W. Hryniszak, who also participated in the regenerator design of a long-range ‘Amerika bomber’ turbojet engine, which is dealt with in the next Sect. 8.3.5. This project like that for the tank GT was configured as a ‘last minute War effort’—not only for the utilisation of low-quality liquid fuels, but also solid coal dust/chips were seriously investigated,—see Sect. 8.3.5.
359.
The overall thermal efficiencies of 16 percent without heat recovery, and of 28.8% with heat exchanger have to be put in perspective to the about 35 percent for a good internal combustion piston engine of the time.
360.
Quoted and translated after—see Rabl, Das KZ-Aussenlager St. Aegyd, p. 25.
361.
Neblich committed suicide on 3rd April, 1945 at Vienna.
362.
Information, courtesy of Helmut Schubert, 21 Dec. 2021.
363.
See Eckert, Erinnerungen, p. 64–67. Seven pages of Minutes of that Meeting are preserved in the personal estate of the participating Prof. E. Schmidt at Hist. Archive of TU Munich, HATUM NL7.2 Ernst Schmidt, then LFA Braunschweig. The MoM confirms, besides several SS ranks, the attendance of H. Schelp and W. Brisken, RLM TLR-E3 VII, Dr. A. Müller and M.A. Müller, L. Ritz (see next Sect. 8.3.5), K. Bammert, R. Friedrich, Dr. V. Vanicek and J. Kruschik. Information, courtesy of Dr. Chr. Rabl, 03 Jan. 2022.
364.
Founded in 1828, the house was run as cast iron work up to 1885, and presumably belonged to the industrial imperium of—see Wikipedia, ‘Karl Wittgenstein’ in English, until it was sold in ~1930 to the Catholic Caritas social service organisation, present address Berggasse 6. Karl’s youngest son—see Wikipedia, ‘Ludwig Wittgenstein’ in English, had studied Mechanical Engineering at TH Berlin-Charlottenburg, from where he moved on in spring 1908 to study for a doctorate in aeronautics at Victoria University of Manchester. Before becoming the renowned philosopher, he filed there in 1910 a patent GB27,087 on ‘Improvements in Propellers applicable for Aerial Machines’—with small combustion chambers at the tip of the propeller blades.
365.
Eckert’s observation caused some uncertainty in view of the confirmed conference date end of August 1944 and the official opening of the St. Aegyd satellite concentration camp on 2nd Nov. 1944. With some likelihood he referred to the ‘SS Barracks’ under construction in the vicinity of Caritas House, Fig. 8.52 (r).
366.
It is known that the tank GT prototypes were planned to be tested on the RLM-owned ‘Hochdruckfeldprüfanlage (High-pressure field test facility)’ at Brueckner, Kanis & Co., Dresden, then led by Carlotto Martin, born 1903, FKFS employee and one of the last Dr.-Ing. students of Enno Heidebroek (1876–1955), Prof. for Mechanical Engineering since 1931 at TH Dresden, and its first post-war headmaster (Rektor),—see Wikipedia, ‘Paul Kanis’, and—see Wikipedia, ‘Enno Heidebroek’, both in German. In 1959 under Prof. U. Senger, C. Martin was responsible for the erection of the TH Stuttgart altitude engine test facility, technically closely related to the BMW ‘Herbitus’ plant of Sect. 8.3.3,—see Hirschel, Aeronautical Research In Germany, p. 465.
367.
Reuter was employed by BBC Mannheim, and in 1944 a kind of guest researcher as FKFS,—see Chap. 9.
368.
See Wikipedia, ‘Stridsvagn 103’ in English.
369.
See Wikipedia, ‘T-80’ and—see Wikipedia, ‘T-14 Armata’, both in English.
370.
Replaced for the subsequent LV100-5 by Honeywell Aerospace, Phoenix, AZ.
371.
See Brockett, LV100 AIPS Technology. Further participating companies were GM’s Allison Transmission Div., Indianapolis, IN, Donaldson Co. Inc., Minneapolis, MN, for air filtration system, and RCA, Burlington, MA, later replaced by Bendix, South Bend, IN, for digital engine control. MTU’s share comprised a two-stage, variable geometry power turbine and a unique compact recuperator package with shock-absorbing U-tubes, where the 7 mm long elliptic ‘lancet profiles’ were produced in a patented, continuous sheet metal folding/ welding process,—see H. Grieb and W. Schlosser, US4,766,953 with priority 24 March 1987, ‘Shaped tube with elliptical cross section for tubular heat exchangers and a method for their manufacture’.
372.
Possibly in association to Porsche’s Tiger I tank of 1942, Vk45.01 (P), with 8.8 cm gun, arguably the most famous tank in WW II.
373.
See Kay, German Jet Engine, p. 139; except that the expendable BMW P.3307 was a competitor to the Porsche 109-005, not many details of design and programme achievements are known.
374.
See Wikipedia, ‘Porsche 109-005’ in English.
375.
Camp/ Lager Schlatt is 15 km north-east of Vöcklabruck, 200 km west of St. Aegyd,—see Uziel, Arming the Luftwaffe, pp. 75–76, who knows in this context: ‘Müller, who was well connected to the Nazi Party … approached the SS (after leaving Heinkel) with his design proposal. Initially the SS wanted to adapt his engine as a gas turbine for use in tanks, but while working for the SS, Müller also developed a new jet aero-engine, the TL-300 (Porsche 109–500), which never proceeded beyond the design stage. In 1945 the KTL was evacuated to Sulzhayn in the Harz Mountains and then to Schlatt in the Austrian Tyrol.’ Meant is Sülzhayn/ Ellrich, approx. 9 km north-west of Mittelbau-Dora;—see also H. Reuter’s moves together with KTL in the last months of War in Sect. 9.1.
376.
See Kay, German Jet Engine, p. 154; in addition, also anti-icing considerations were listed pro diagonal impeller.
377.
Though the Porsche 109-005 turbojet with Mueller’s diagonal/ axial compressor combination achieved only PR 2.8, it had the same outer diameter of ~0.4 m as the GT 102 tank engine with an nine-stage axial compressor and PR 4.5, explanation: Mueller apparently choose a repetitive axial blading for cost reasons.
378.
Based on an otherwise unconfirmed Spiegel report ‘Operation Pastorius. Hitler’s Unfulfilled Dream of a New York in Flames’, 16 Sep. 2010, a mock-up of the four-engined Me 264 had been presented to Hitler during a visit of the Messerschmitt Augsburg plant already in 1937.
379.
Besides BBC, H. Schelp launched a second engine design contract with AEG Berlin which is sketched in—see Kay, German Jet Engine, p. 223.
380.
Data (Sign. 28,002/1449), courtesy of Judith Käpplinger, KIT Karlsruhe Archive, 18 Jan. 2022.
381.
Quoted from Ritz’s personnel file, courtesy of Dr. Jessika Wichner, DLR Archives, Goettingen, 8 April 2010.
382.
See Green, Wartime Aeronautical Research, p. 627–631, who describes the findings of Canadian scientists and engineers by touring German research facilities in late 1945, amongst these Ritz’s AVA activities (de-icing, regenerative hex, coal burning). The author John J. Green was born and educated in aeronautics in England, he arrived in Canada in 1930, where he quickly became a leader in Canadian aeronautics. Between the foundation of ICAS in 1957,—see Wikipedia, ‘International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences’ in English, up to 1982, he was highly influential in this renowned aeronautical society, which he led as president between 1972 to 1978.
383.
In German: AVA Institut für Kälteforschung, the scientific staff comprised eight assistants then. After the War Ritz joined—like the St. Aegyd tank engine developers (A. Mueller, Kolb, Hryniszak, Zadnik)—C.A. Parsons & Co., Newcastle, where he contributed to the British nuclear reactor programme (Bradwell, Calder Hall, with Parsons steam turbines, and 30 related Ritz patents). In 1961, he returned to Germany, recommended by the German nuclear fission pioneer,—see Wikipedia, ‘Otto Hahn’ in English, as head of the newly founded ‘IRB Institut für Reaktorbauelemente (Reactor construction elements)’ at the ‘Kernforschungszentrum (Nuclear research centre) Karlsruhe’. W. Hryniszak (1910–1996) stayed in England, and published in 1958,—see Hryniszak, Heat Exchangers.
384.
See Trischler, Luft- und Raumfahrtforschung, p. 201. As an aside, the deep founding work for the ‘Kältekanal’ produced also an unexpected benefit for Goettingen. These works were contracted to specialised Italian miners, and incidently a brother of these miners opened in ~1940 Goettingen’s first ice cream parlour, today ‘Eisfieber’ at Groner Str. 37.
385.
A patented feature: DE723,718 with priority 14 June 1939, inventor L. Ritz, ‘Anordnung zur Verminderung von Eckenverlusten in Kanälen und Rohrleitungen (Arrangement for reducing corner losses in ducts and pipework)’.
386.
See Ritz, Abriß der Theorie. With priority 12 June 1952, Ritz filed several regenerator patents (US2,925,254; GB760,913; DE1,078,595; CH329,165) which actually appear to prove him being the first inventor of this revolutionary hex concept.
387.
An aspect especially important for W. Hryszniak’s design of the GT 103 tank heat exchanger.
388.
Acc. to Kay, Turbojet, Vol. 1, p. 176—Walter Brisken and Emil Waldmann, key members of Schelp’s RLM department, carried out many studies of turboprops with heat exchangers in pursuit of maximum economy over long ranges. Date of RLM recuperated turboprop order from—L. Ritz ‘Aktenvermerk, Betr. Hetralin K13 (note for the files)’, 4 p., 12. Jan. 1943, DLR Archive Goettingen.
389.
‘Hetralin’, chemically a Dioxybenzol-hexa-methylene-tetramine contains 60% of Hexamethyl-tetramin, also known as Urotropin. At times of WW I—before sulphonamides and penicillin became available, ‘Hetralin’ (Urotropin was brought to market by Schering AG, Berlin in 1895)—in fact rather the latter content Hexamethylamin/Urotropin was—see Butler, Text-Book of Materia Medica—‘…used as a germicide in the urine. It is eliminated in the urine and broken down as formaldehyde. It is particularly valuable in cystitis, in gonorrhoea, in typhoid fever, and in all conditions in which it is desired to avoid urinary infection or to lessen its severity.’ This type of remedy was known in rough-joking trooper jargon also as ‘tube cleaner’, an association actually not too far away, when a ceramic regenerator disk with minute passages has to be cleaned from coal flue gas congestions. To complete the story, in 1920 ‘Hetralin’ usage has been patented for a ‘New or improved process of brewing or preserving beer…’, GB143’506.
390.
The 5000 hp engine shaft power is specified for an altitude of 10 km.
391.
As an approximation to an iso-thermal change of condition.
392.
For optimum cycle PR ~ 20,—not in technical reach in 1943—the gain in specific power by reheat addition would have been even in the order of +50%.
393.
Deutsche Akademie fuer Luftfahrtforschung, Berlin, 4 Nov. 1942, Session ‘Triebwerksplanung (Engine planning)’, quoted in—see Gersdorff, Flugmotoren, p. 272.
394.
L. Ritz ‘Aktenvermerk, Betr. Hetralin K13’, dated 12 Jan.1943, and Horst Otterbach (1910-xx) ‘Aktenvermerk 2. Besprechung am 31.3.43 zwischen Herrn Encke und Otterbach’, dated 1st April 1943, from DLR Archive Goettingen.
395.
In German ‘… Konkurrenz mit nicht ganz einwandfreien Methoden’.
396.
H. Reuter (1911–1981), chief engineer and head of the BBC Mannheim aero gas turbine development group TLUK, and his flight GT developments will be presented in detail in Chap. 9.
397.
See Wikipedia, ‘Messerschmitt Me 264’, and for more details on the many development variants, http://www.luft46.com/prototyp/me264.html, and—see Griehl, Luftwaffe Over America, all in English.
398.
See Eckardt, Gas Turbine Powerhouse, p. 298 f., and p. 180, where BBC coal combustion test facilities of 1943 are illustrated.

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Dietrich Eckardt

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Eckardt, D. (2022). The War Years 1940–1945. In: Jet Web. Springer, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38531-6_8

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