WW2 Jet Engine Development - WW2 Special Documentary
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ก.ย. 2024
- Jet planes and jet engine technology revolutionized air travel, as we are all well aware. However, the development of jet planes during WW2 was fraught with all sorts of obstacles and hurdles. Let's take a look at it.
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Written by: Indy Neidell
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Jet-powered aircraft are so central to our modern world that we hardly give them a second thought. However, like many things we take for granted, they have their origins in warfare. We plan to cover many other wartime inventions on this channel, but what's your favourite?
The development of IFF (Identification, friend or foe) was an important yet massively overlooked wartime invention, saving countless airmen from friendly fire. The British development of the Perfectos device which allowed their night-fighters to hack German aircraft's IFF and hunt them down also makes for an interesting story.
I have a few favorites:
* The V2 rocket!
* The magnetron radar
* The VT fuse
* Radio navigation
Radar, hands down. Radar completely changed the world in ways that make most of the other wartime inventions comparatively insignificant. It's even in bathroom faucets these days. Allied progress in Radar was simply astounding and formed the basis of the entire modern electronics industry. And the great friendly rivalries between the various US and UK research programs all vying to one-up each other while not losing sight of the main goal makes for some interesting stories.
Cargo pants and aviator sunglasses ..
More about jet technology
Chris from Military Aviation History channel has researched the infamous Me 262 demonstration. He concluded there is something of a myth about it. After all, the 262 was ready for service six months later (the demo was in November 1943, not August). In fact, all German fighters were stressed to carry bombs. The delays were down to difficulties with engine manufacture..
Yup, I watched that video. Also, the Me262 would not have changed the outcome of the war even if introduced earlier due to its engine’s unreliability. It’s an example of German generals putting all the blame on a now deceased Austrian painter (Armchair Historian did a video on that).
@@frenzalrhomb6919 The grossly incompetent generals of the Wehrmacht said they would defeat the USSR in weeks. They were wrong. Now the "maniac Austrian painter" desperately tries to prevent defeat and makes bad decisions week after week but the blame for Germany's military failings solely lies at his feet. rofl
@@frenzalrhomb6919the main point here is that Whittle’s jet engine idea was paused while more tested ideas where made by the 1,000. The Gloster Meteor flew in 1943 and was in service with 616 squadron by July 1944. There was never a real chance for Germany to jump ahead. In 1943 speed trials showed that Spitfires could handle 800 kmh in a dive so yes the bombers might have been sitting ducks, but the idea of Garland that these early trials put them far beyond prop fighters is based on lack of knowledge of their enemy. The maximum speed recorded for a Spitfire in 1944 was mach 0.92 (1,000kmh) btw, though that did rip off the propeller and almost the wings, everything else landed safely (by gliding).
I haven't seen this video, but agree with the conclusion. German fighter aircraft were under increasing pressure to adopt bomb payloads as the war progressed. Bombers were being lost, the Ju 87 was aging, the new ground attack/tactical bomber (Me 210) was plagued with design trouble. This is what let to the Bf 110 and Fw 190 being increasingly used in the fighter-bomber role, and pressure placed on engineers to make newer airframes capable of tactical bombing. The Me 262's production bottleneck was always engine procurement.
You have no idea what you are talking about if you are saying that a Spitfire could reach even close Mach 0.92 in level flight lmao no. The ME262 was most definitely far beyond.. especially considering that the British still used carburetors for more than half the war haha@@MsZeeZed
I really appreciate that you guys used footage of the tail-dragger Me-262 at the right moment in the narrative.
Kudos to whomever got it included.
You can thank the editor for this video for that one! Thank you for watching.
P.S Their name are always in the description 😀
The P-80 was still flying in the 1980s in the Alaska Air Command as the T-33A when I was stationed there. They were used for aerial reconnaissance, and intercept targets for the F-15s there. It was a two-seater then - converted from its role as a jet trainer.
It’s a myth that the inclusion of two hard points for bombs delayed the introduction of the ME262A, the main reason was the availability of reliable engines. The short supply of engine manufacture caused this, and their inherently unreliable status caused the biggest delays. The British design was a radial jet engine that didn’t need as much high temperature alloys as the axial flow type that the Germans used. The German Jumo 004 engine life was typically only 10 hours. Whereas the Gloster meteors Rolls-Royce RB.23 Welland engine was 180 hours! Whittle knew that an axial flow engine had some advantages, but life time and reliability were not as good at that time.
Makes no sense in that the power capture turbines in the exhaust stream still needed to be high temp resistant.
Is Frank Wittle the person where the saying "wittle away at it" comes from? :)
Good points, the Whittle design was called a centrifugal flow, from its compressor design
@@maarten6884His name is Whittle, so no.
@@AndrewBlacker-wr2veyes, but you need much less special metal for a centrifugal engine.
My English mom, Valerie Gretton Lowe, grew up on the same street where Jettie Whittle lived during the war. Her dad (my grandfather), George Lowe, was an electrical engineer who designed the electric motors for laying the Project Pluto pipeline.
My father may well have been one of those people running for cover when Whittle's prototype engine went out of control as he was an engineer on the project for a while.
Thanks for sharing your personal connection to history and thank you for watching!
Neat! Did he ever talk much about it? That would have been amazing to have been there at the first test even if it did blow up. The thing WORKED and they proved it!
@@rrice1705 Not in detail but he did talk about time spent in various wartime engine & airplane factories both in London and NW England (Burnley). He was involved in work on the early Merlin engine, the Halifax heavy bomber as well as the Meteor engine. He was also an Air Raid Warden in London during the Blitz of 1940 and did describe having to abandon the small fire pump he and his colleagues were using because both sides of the road were on fire. He talked about other things from this period as well, though not often, which aren't really appropriate for a video comments section. -- Finally he was involved in the post-War UK atomic weapons program (I know Indy & co are going to start talking about the Cold War), in fact we ended up with a couple of unsuccessful molds for the inner bomb casings (half spheres about 15cm diameter) in the garden and they were used as flower pots - geraniums iirc.
He probably knew my great-grandfather, then.
The transition from piston engine power to jet involved what Kuhn would call a "paradigm change." That's why it met with so much resistence at the beginning.
My application of Kuhn's thesis is limited. What I am referring to is the aircraft design and propusion culture, not the technology itself. Many were resistant to embrassing what seemed to them a radically new technology that would require major changes in airframe design (eg. swept back wings, area rule "coke bottle" fuslelages), and manufacturing processes. @@retiredbore378
My great aunt from Coventry once went on a date with Frank Whittle. She didn't like him. Thought he was too full of himself.
🤣😂
Frank Whittle was arrested for assault, battery and brandishing a firearm after a week long drug and alcohol binge, Whittle on 3 occasions would be involuntarily committed to medical treatment for addiction to Amphetamines and Benzodiazapine, Whittle was also a self-admitted alcoholic.
Chuck Yeager: "First time I saw a jet, I shot it down."
This was quite the interesting Special episode to watch, especially on the German Me 262 jet fighter. It and the British Gloster Meteor did not significantly made much of an impact on the war, but they did set the path for future jet aircraft such the F-86 Sabre and Mig-15 aircraft.
Their legacy in aviation is undeniable!
Thanks for watching.
The F-86 Sabre was designed by German engineer Edgar Schmüed and a team from Messerschmitt, the first 6 Sabres were built from parts salvaged from Me-262s.
The MiG-15 was designed by German Heinkel engineer Siegfried Günter and base on the _Projekt 1011_
"It felt as though angels were pushing." General Adolf Galland, after test-flying the Me 262 jet on May 22, 1943. After the war he got to fly the Meteor, and concluded that a winning combination would be the 262 powered by the Rolls Royce jet engines of the Meteor.
Yeah. The swept wings were a pretty good idea it turns out.
@@frenzalrhomb6919 I don't who or if swept wings even have an singular "inventor", seeing how it is a form found frequently in nature. Even in the infancy of aircraft there were swept wing designs, such as the Burgess-Dunne tailless biplane. However Willy Messerschmitt was definitely the one the popularized the design in the 20th century, and led to it being ubiquitous among aircraft. He did so on the advice of several famous German aerospace engineers though, he was not solely responsible.
@@edward9674
They sweep was slight and they were an accident. The airframe was an old 1938 design.
Drat thee, thou pre-eptressor , i was to share thi0s tid bit, and be the cool kid😂
Thanks for sharing that quote and thanks for watching!
After the war, Hans von Ohain went to work for the US Air Force. He was Chief Scientist at the Air Force Aero Propulsion Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and later a professor at the University of Dayton.
Indeed...there is that old line that came about in the wake of Sputnik that the Soviets "got better scientists than the US" after WW2...lol...but that is obviously and demonstrably untrue. Hans von Ohain is but one of many examples to go along with the most famous one of Von Braun.👍
You got something very wrong. Messerschmitt wasn't involved in the jet engine design (Jumo004), it a was a Junkers Motorenwerke development thus "Juno"
While the Heinkel He 178 and the Gloster E.28/39 are often credited as the world's first jet-powered aircraft, there's a lesser-known contender that deserves mention. In Italy, Secondo Campini, an Italian engineer, developed an experimental jet-powered aircraft called the Campini Caproni CC.2 in the late 1930s. What makes this airplane particularly interesting is that it used a unique type of jet propulsion known as a "thermojet" or "jet engine with a heating chamber." Instead of the traditional jet engine design, which relied on exhaust gases for propulsion, the thermojet design used a piston engine to compress incoming air, heat it in a combustion chamber, and then expel it at high speed through a nozzle.
While the C.C.2 might not have led the jet revolution, it certainly adds another layer to the narrative of jet propulsion's early days. Thanks for highlighting it!
the CC" was NOT a gas turbine it had a piston driven compressor
This is my favourite episode on this channel ever. Please do more special episodes on new technologies from the war
Love to hear you enjoyed the episode so much! Thanks for watching.
I've stood at the nose of the Me-262 that the US Nat'l Air and Space Museum has on display. It's stunningly beautiful.
I think it ugly myself, but that is just me.
The Germans were so advanced with Jet Engine design. Axial flow compressors so many years before anyone else dared.
ME 262 was such a beautiful machine.
I agree. Beautiful lines. But, every one I've seen looked as if it was assembled in a junk yard. The Project ME262 reproductions were beautifully built aircraft though.
I do love seeing these breakdowns of the tech of the war.
I would very much like to see an update video of how the atomic weapon program is going by this point in the war
Agreed about the atomic weapon program. That's darn-near a whole sub-series by itself.
I always find it fascinating that just one day apart the Me262 and the Gloster Meteor had their first combat missions.
The Messerschmitt Me-262 entered service 3 months before the Gloster Meatbox.
@@sandervanderkammen9230 yes Me-262 was rushed into service and that it is why their actual first combat missions were one day apart. It is very odd to try and insult the Gloster Meteor when it totally outclassed the Me-262.
@@Alex-cw3rz *The Messerschmitt Me-262 was well developed and sorted when it entered service, it was the only successful jet fighter in service during WW2.*
*The Gloster Meatbox was a joke, it only killed British pilots.*
@@sandervanderkammen9230
Really !!! Not according to some 262 pilots who flew them - its well documented that even Herr Messerschmitt wanted to stop production of the 262 in favour of the tried and tested 109 and later piston engine developed aircraft and was frustrated by the whole 262 program…….
@robertharrison2260 *The Messerschmitt Me-262 was without any doubt the most important aircraft in history since the Wright Flyer... it's the most pioneering and revolutionary aircraft of the 20th century and rendered all propeller-driven fighter aircraft obsolete.*
Interestingly Whittle and Ohain became friends after the war. Both were very smart men of their area of expertise. In my books both earn credit as inventors of jet engine.
While in the Army, I studied German at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA in 1974. One of our teachers was one of the a chief aircraft designer in the Air Minstry in Berlin, during the war, and had to meet Hitler daily towards the end of the war. He said that they had tried to convince Hitler that it was better suited as a bomber interceptor. They even had Hanna Reitsch try to convince Hitler, but he was adamant. Towards the final months of the war, he said that no one countered anything Hitler said or you could disappear. He escaped Berlin from the roof of the Air Minstry Building, which was not bombed during the war and still stands today, in an experimental one-man helicopter in the middle of the night. He basically flew from one roof top to the next to avoid all of Russian night fighters that filled the sky. He finally reached the British lines and was interrogated by two British officers, who asked him which planes he had worked on. He answered - ".... mainly the jet aircraft". They then asked him, "What's a jet?" He explained and they said that he was obviously lying, because there's "....no such thing as a plane that can fly without propellers!" This news was so top secret that the only people who knew about jets were Allied bomber crews and fighter pilots. This was later confirmed, by an old friend who was the Flight Engineer/Top Turret Gunner on a B17. He said that he was in the turret one day and saw a dot in the sky, obviously a German fighter. As he turned his guns to fire he thought he had plenty of time, when all of a sudden the jet flew right over the bomber, barely missing them. The jet pilot had miscalculated his attack, but what shocked my friend was the incredible speed. He had thought that he had plenty of time to turn his guns to fire, but the ME262 was on him in flash. Then there was the fact that there were NO propellers. Nobody in his crew who saw it could believe their eyes! When they returned to their base, they were ordered during debriefing not to discuss this with anyone or face a courts martial and time in the brig. He said that he had almost messed himself when the jet first flew by, but was happy just to be alive. ME262 jets then started to shoot B17 bombers out of the sky in increasing numbers. For the life of me, I can't remember the German teacher's name, but my friend, Alan Morton, later worked for NASA and met Werner von Braun in person numerous times.
Carrying bombs was part of the design process for the 262 from well before Hitler saw it fly.
Indeed, its a common myth. by this point the Luftwaffe demanded all fighters to be able to be multi role.
No different from Allied aircraft
Hi Indy
These extra special episode are nice to watch and learn.
Thanks
Two names: Sir Frank Whittle and Hans von Ohain... Sad that most tech advances are made during wars, but we reap the benefits today
If the same energy and money was put into civilian uses, we’d have eliminated cancer by now, have thorium reactors in widespread general use, and no doubt bases on the Moon and Mars, plus many more miracles of engineering and scientific endeavour. The amount of money and brain power spent today on killing each other is obscene!
My family was friends with another whose patriarch was known as Poppa Al. He died at the age of 105 in 1990. I often think about all the history he saw in his lifetime. He grew up when the concept of an airplane was fiction, learned about the Wright brothers, saw bi-planes and tri-planes evolve into monoplanes. He saw the creation of jet engines, then the breaking of the sound barrier, then the various generations of fighter planes, etc. This episode reminded me of him.
A jet engine is an internal combustion engine. The definition of an IC engine is to use the fuel and the air mixture themselves to generate power (compared with the steam engine, which uses an external source i.e. water to channel the energy to generate power. Which is an external combustion engine).
A jet engine has all the processes a piston engine has. But it is separated into 4 different components (compressor, combustor, turbine and exhaust) to perform them simultaneously, rather than doing them in the same chamber one after the other as in a piston engine.
I noticed too. Strange how people seem unable to separate the concepts of IC & being piston-driven.
@@retiredbore378 Interestingly jet engine is not picky about fuel it uses. Theoretically same engine could use any flammable liquid and modern jet fuel is very much diesel.
@vksasdgaming9472 Since the jet engine burns very lean and uses continuous flow, only a continuous flow of fuel mattered.
But controlling the continuous combustion was proved to be very hard. A slight disruption of air flow (e.g. crosswind, compressor stall) and fuel fuel scheduling would cause the engine to flame out.
On a minor level, wrong fuel/air mix could cause hot spots in the combustion chamber and severely shortens the lifespan or even burns out the turbine.
Excellent points, all gas turbine engines (which Inc. Turbojets) are Internal combustion, the combustion air is also the _'Working Fluid'_ there is no phase change of further energy conversion apart from mechanical energy.
Gas turbines operate using the Brayton Cycle and this is the only fundamental difference between jets and Otto or Diesel Cycle engines.
Cheers!
@@vksasdgaming9472Diesel and Otto engines can burn any fuel a jet engine can... it not a unique or distinctive feature exclusive to jets.
Fantastic and well researched as always. Quite fun to think that an individual born in say 1900 could have gone from riding horses to flying the concord in the span of his life. I wonder if we will ever again experience such rapid technological advances as the 20th century did.
We have, the pocket computer is an unbelievable change we just take it for granted now, also these new AI tools are unbelievable to someone who was born in 1970 or before. We are moving faster than ever before.
Thank you for the kind words! The pace of technological advancement in the 20th century was indeed staggering. Who knows what the future holds?
The same could be said about people in 1830 who literally overnight changed from walking to market with their horse and cart at 5km/hour to riding on a steam train at 65km/hour.
My maternal grandmother was born in 1892 in her grandmother’s log cabin. She lived until 1982, and I enjoyed talking to her as a youngster to get an understanding of what her life was like as a youngster. She lived from the horse and buggy days until after the moon landings (she thought they were faked, lol). She was 20 when the Titanic sank, was married before WW1, and lived through the Spanish Flu epidemic, the Great Depression, WW2, and the post war economic boom. Yet she took most things in stride, but she never bothered to learn to drive a car. I asked her about it, and she said that she didn’t control the horses when using a wagon, so she had no intention of trying something even more powerful like a car. She was definitely a product of her times, but a sweet lady indeed.
Fascinating video, one of the best. I would love to see a part 2, cause I’m positive you could have easily gone on an hour or more of talking about it. Bravo for you and your team. Really excellent.
Thank you for the kind words! We're glad you enjoyed the episode, thanks for watching.
The patent for the jet engine was granted in 1927 so Frank Whittle was really ahead of the game.
He got a patent for a practical implementation but there were several in just the UK working on it such as Griffiths and Constant. France was another centre of work. It's a bit of a myth that it was just Whittle. This is not to take away from Whittle's brilliance as he was much younger than the others
@@wbertie2604 Jet engines are a natural out growth of Turbosupercharged engines, eventually an engineer realizes that if the boot pressure is high enough the valves and cylinders aren't needed. A lot of people had pieces of the puzzle that eventually led to the engines.
His problem was that one of his superiors was hostile to him and did everything he could to sabotage Whittles work
@@tomricketts7821 it's actually much more complex than that. And one of the objections he faced was that even in the late 1920s, axial flow was seen as the goal.
Whittle's genius was recognising that centrifugal flow was a way to bypass some of the metallurgical issues that would affect axial flow engines. That did mean a reliable, production-capable engine about five years earlier than would have been the case. To get effective production in place this had to be moved to Rover then Rolls-Royce.
@@MartinCHorowitz credit, at least for axial flow, seems to go to Guillaume (1921) and Griffith (1926)
wished you guys had talked a bit more about the Gloster Meteor, which was the only other operational jet fighter to actually enter service in July 1944, playing a tangible role against V1s.
It was poor vid.
As cutting edge as the Me 262 was, adding the necessary hardware for use as a bomber was a minor detail. Personally, I think the Germans did an amazing job getting such an advanced fighter into combat as quick as they did. Korean veterans I've spoken with hated when jets flew ground support missions. The training necessary to be accurate was not there at this stage of the jet plane.
I can highly recommend the book: 'not much of an engineer' by Stanley Hooker, who was lead jet engineer at Rolls-royce during the war.
Early "jet engine" concepts such as ducted fans or piston engine powered compressors for the jets (Caproni Campini) would have deserved brief mention
It was not a _turbojet._
And the N1 also flew before the British Gloster Whittle E.28...
Whittle would be only the fourth person to successfully demonstrate jet aircraft propulsion
Note. Asking a fighter aircraft to carry bombs wasn't unusual. Many aircraft of the time had a fighter bomber variant.
Hitler felt that a high speed bomber during the Allied invasion in the West could be decisive if in sufficient numbers. Able to get in, drop bombs, cause chaos, get out and keep doing it.
As it was, the aircraft wasn't ready, or in the numbers that would be needed for June '44.
Indeed, the P-51 Mustang carried a similar bomb load and had a dedicated bomber variant (A-36 Mustang/Apache)
I know it's a popular theory that Hitler himself was one of the allies best tool for defeating the Nazis. Another great episode!
Not really. Bad German generals blamed him for their mistakes.
The negative aspect of bomb carrying capacity on the development time of the ME-262 is grossly overstated. At the time, fighter aircraft were more and more used to drop smaller bombs in a tactical ground support role. It was thus a logical question to insure that the new jet fighter would be able to provide such a ground support role also. For a specific bomber role, the Arado234 was in development. The only limiting factor that a jet bomber request could have had was the limited supply of the jet engine that both of the mentioned aircraft shared.
They had an abundance of Jet engines but were missing airframes. Over 1000 pairs were captured by the Allies after the war contrasted to only handful half finished airframes lyin about. Now for conventional propeller planes ;on the Eastern Front, BF109 pilots stated in interview they had abundance of airplanes but not enough good enough pilots who got younger and younger less and less trained.
@@kleinerprinz99 Yes, it was an exploit that the engine production was basically solved in the end. But the bottle-neck of engines was at the start, when the aircraft was were still in the demonstration stage.
Galland was such a pilot. Despite his rank he was always happiest flying.
Every pilot I ever met..and my family has had a few including 2 USAF generals..one a Bendix Trophy awardee...was happiest in the air
@@BleedingUranium I have nothing but respect for someone who can mouth-off to Goring AND has the flying and leadership skill to get away with it. Galland truly was a legend.
@@rrice1705 Galland was vastly respected within the Jagdwaffe. So much so several of the ranking officers of the Jagdwaffe basically fell on their swords in defense of Galland (among other issues) to Goering during the Fighter Pilots Revolt in January 1945. Goering wanted to shoot Galland after that, but even Hitler wouldn't have it and gave him a squadron of ME262s for to use as fighters. After the war Galland garnered much the same respect from his peers in Britain and the US. He was indeed a legendary character.
Great episode. Thanks for posting.
Thanks for watching!
With the way the story often gets told (visionary inventors ignored by stuffy higher-ups), I do wonder what might have happened had either main country here gone 'all in' from the first instance. Would jet aircraft have been the wonder-weapons to win the war early, or would difficulty in pilot training and logistics (after all, you can't reuse any existing factory tooling or manufacturing expertise) have meant ultimately less success than sticking with piston power for as long as they did?
That is indeed one of the great "what ifs" of the war. My opinion is, it would have given Germany a tactical advantage, but a small and fleeting one. By the time the first 262 squadrons were ready for action, France had already been invaded and Germany's overall material situation was in marginal and progressively worse shape. In the end, the allies still would have won in the same way, by essentially overwhelming Germany with men and material, it just maybe would have taken a little longer.
@@rrice1705 From Germany's POV jet engines had a hidden advantage - they used kerosene, not 120 octane avgas. By 1944 the Luftwaffe was really struggling to get quality avgas because the allied bombers specially targeted the specialised plants that produced it. Any old refinery hidden in a forest can make kerosene.
Others mentioned besides Britain and Germany.
Japan:
The Ishikawajima Ne-20 was Japan's 1st turbo jet engine, based of drawing of the German BMW 003 (competitor of the Junkers Jumo 004 used in the ME262.) The Ne-20 was used in the Nakajima Kikka jet prototype which flew on Aug 7, 1945 - sandwiched between Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombs.
Italy:
Caproni Campini N.1 prototype jet was power by a motor jet to compress the air instead of a turbine in front of the combustion chamber. It flew on 27 August 1940, but was sloooow. Italian research tried to improve it but stopped with surrender in 1943.
USSR:
The USSR did invent the Lyulka TR-1 jet engine, but when tested on a US Lend-Lease bomber, it did not work well. Nothing more was done until after the war when the USSR copied captured German Junkers 004 and BMW 003 engines.
USA:
The first US prototype jet aircraft, the Bell XP-59A Airacomet, flew 2 Oct 1942, but had many, many problems which led to none in combat before the end of the war. The engines were variants based on samples of Whittle's from Britain.
The Soviets need not have bothered copying the captured German models, as Britain SOLD 55 Rolls Royce Neve jet engines to them after the War.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Nene
Excerpt: "A total of twenty-five Nenes were sold to the Soviet Union as a gesture of goodwill - with reservation to not use for military purposes...." Hahaha, anyone who thought that Stalin wouldn't use them for military purposes was living in Lala land! Unfortunately, too many within the post-war Attlee government were.
To Clarify, 25 were sent in 1946, and the rest in 1947 to make up the total of 55.
@ktipuss That was not during the war, but after. That is why i did not add that info to what i showed.
aaah, the 262, the most beautiful aircraft ever built....
WOW just thinking about all the tech that came out of ww2 in the 1930's to 1940's it's just amazing. I would love to see like a list of all the new stuff that came from it, I think it would be a pretty big list.
Well let's try shall we:
Jet air-planes
Ballistic missiles
Air to air missiles
Surface to air missiles
Radar (and by proxy the microwave oven)
Infra-red detectors
True submarines (as opposed to WW1 subs which was only submersibles as they could only limp at 5 kn. or so submerged)
Nuclear power
Nuclear bombs
Bat bombs (no, not a joke - look it up :-) )
Napalm
Modern antibiotics
Instant coffee
Modern tanks
Shaped charge explosives
Metal detectors (including proximity fuses)
Nylon
Teflon
I likely missed a lot, but there you are.
From medicine to radar, it'd be a pretty big list indeed. Thank you for watching.
I found your explanation of how a jet engine works an easy to understand video. Thank you for a job well done .
Happy to hear that, thank you for watching!
Nice & fresh content exploring one not so much explored topic of WW2. Congratulations!
Indy explains the working principle like he understands it! Chapeau!
You dont have to be an engineer to understand how a simple engine works.
Many people who ask “why didn’t the Allies in WWII jump at the chance to use jets?” tend to ignore the complexities of making major changes like that during a war. All the Boring But Important stuff would be affected: production lines would have had to be re-tooled, workers re-trained, supply chains altered, and raw materials reallocated. Pilots would have had to be re-trained and even after their basic training would lack experience with the new planes. Mechanics and support crews, just as important to flying as the pilots, would also need complete re-training. Of course I'm not denying that it's possible to do that, there are many examples of rapid technological change during the war; but given that they were doing fine without them, the Allies correctly saw jets as something that would be important in a future war, not the current one.
Blazing Combat #4. Me-262 tells the story quite well. Excellent art work
Military Aviation History has debunked what Galland said that turning the Me262 into a fighter bomber as it was required for all fightera at that tine. It also wasn't that an issue. It also is debatable if the jeta would have been a war winner if produced earlier as the engine had a far lower MTBF than a modern one.
In the end World War II Germany neither had the manpower, nor the economic & industrial output and nor access to the needed resources. USA and Soviet Union outproduced them several times.
@@kleinerprinz99yup, potential history made cool videos on that subject.
The Gloster Meteor did have it's World War II uses. They intercepted many V-1 flying bombs for example which it's high speed allowed it to do much more easily that it's piston powered contemporaries, although they did have trouble with the guns jamming but that was not exactly the fault of the jet engines themselves. However the Meteor and it's technology were so closely guarded by the RAF that a directive was made prohibiting it's deployment outside of the British isles so there was no way a Meteor could fall into enemy hands whether by crashing or being shot down behind their lines.
Adolf Galland it's also worth noting flew with the Argentinian air force after the war too and they were equipped with Gloster Meteors which he got to fly himself. To paraphrase his opinion on the aircraft, the Me262 was a better aircraft but the British engines were far superior, probably due to war time shortages faced by the designers of the German engines in the 262.
The Meteor was deployed in Belgium.
The Meteor was used until the 1980s. It is still used today by Martin Baker. No one copied the 262 after WW2. No one. It used an airframe dating from 1938.
@@johnburns4017 Didn't the Czech company Avia build a version of it?
@@johnburns4017 Perhaps, maybe I got the directive wrong, it wasn't allowed to fly over enemy territory perhaps, which by 1945 was increasingly seen as not just the Germans but the Soviets too.
@@johnburns4017 Yes. 616 Squadron, firstly based at Melsbroek ,Belgium then at Gilze-Rijen followed by Nijmegen in the Netherlands and finally Fassberg in Germany. In the ground attack role the squadron destroyed 46 German aircraft.
Fun fact: in supersonic speeds, the volume/speed relationship inverts. This is why turbojet engines have big air intakes and small exhausts, but ramjet engines have a big cone in the middle of the air intake and big exhausts.
marvelous special episode
Thank you and thanks for watching!
Thank you for this episode 🙏
Thanks for the kind comment and thanks for watching!
The Luddites in the RAF and Luftwaffe had very strong competition from the USAAF when it came to jets. In fact the USAAF was probably even more backward than the RAF or Luftwaffe.
The Arado Ar 234 flew reconnaissance flights over the United Kingdom in 1944 & in 1945; as late as April 1945. Mark Felton has a video about this jet called Nazi Spy Jets- Secret UK missions.
In Germany and the UK the internal politics of the air ministries held up jet development. Unknown to Whittle there was another gas turbine project underway in the UK in the hands of A A Griffith. Griffith was an engineering scientist of such great reputation that he was asked for an opinion on Whittle's simple design which he rejected as not able to produce enough thrust. Whittle was completely unaware of A A Griffith's involvement. There were other delays in the Whittle engine program particularly the squabble between Whittle and Rover.
This was in the early 1930s though. There are two things about Griffith: (1) He had earned the respect. He was the country's leading expert on turbines and he, not Whittle, had worked out most of the mathematical theory of a turbojet; and (2) he was actually right at the time. There were no alloys that could stand the temperatures at the turbine inlet in Whittle's design. But Waspalloy, which could, appeared just a few years later - it was the metallurgists, not the engineers, that made the critical breakthrough.
amazing, thank you
Thank you for the kind comment and thanks for watching!
My Grandfather worked at the Landrover plant in the Birmingham area of England during the war as a skilled fitter. Apparently Whittle did some of his work there on the jet engines.
Also, I think the Meteor may have entered service before the 262, but I'm no expert. Nice show, thank you for the content.
Adolf Galland to Hitler:
“The future is now old man!”
05:24
"... the maiden flight of one of the first jet planes in the world, the German made He-178..."
The Heinkel He-178 was the first aircraft designed to be powered by a gas turbine
It was powered by Hans von Ohain's Heinkel-Hirth HeS-3, the first gas turbine to be the sole power plant of any aircraft.
It flew for the first time on 27 August 1939, before any other aircraft powered only be jet propulsion.
It's first flight was followed by that of the Heinkel He-280 jet fighter (30 March 1941) and the British Gloster E.28/39 (15 May 1941)
With respect I think the He-178 should be recognized as THE first jet plane in the world.
Excellent comments, the Heinkel He-178 IS THE FIRST and one of the most important aircraft in the entire history of aviation.
Frank Whittle's brilliance and dedication to engineering changed the course of aviation history forever. His invention of the jet engine opened up new horizons in speed and altitude for aircraft, paving the way for modern aviation as we know it today. A true pioneer whose legacy soars with every jet-powered flight
Is that a paragraph carved on his gravestone? It sounds like it.
@@herrakaarmeGravestones have shorter epitaphs like "that's all, folks" or " let 'er rip". That sounds like memorial text in newspaper.
There's an almost forgotten moment in the history of jet engine design that happened in Spain just before the Spanish Civil War.
Military engineer Virgilio Leret had a prototype of the jet engine by 1935. He was killed by the fascists in the early stages of the fascist coup that lead to the war. His wife, Carlota O'Neill, was able to smuggle the designs to British commander James Dickson in 1940, hoping it would help the allied war effort against the nazis.
Really great episode! I'm glad you're back to highlighting specific elements of the war.
Thanks for watching!
I first knew of the Horten jet bomber through games like Medal of Honor Frontline and Battlefield 1942 Secret Weapons.
The kilogram is a unit of mass. The newton is a unit of force. The imperial slug is a unit of mass. The pound is a unit of force. Thrust of a jet engine is measured in pounds or newtons.
Awesome video
Thank you for watching!
The Mk XIV Spitfire was only about 34 mph slower than the 262 in level flight and faster in a dive. The 262 only went to around 450 mph, or the pilot was in trouble. The makers said it went to 550 mph, no one else reached that. 262 pilots were told not to go over 450 mph as stability was affected.
I highly doubt that. The 262 became tricky above Mach 0.8 and uncontrollable above 0.86. As we know the Spitfire indeed could reach higher Mach numbers in a steep and long dive becoming uncontrollable closer to 0.9. Which wasn't really a property with a lot of use in a practical combat engagement against a 262. In level flight no prop driven fighter came anywhere near a 262. The dive properties only helped in a surprise attack from above to get close to a 262. Out of a high speed level flight a 262 would accelerate much faster to a higher dive speed than a Spit. Even if a Spit could technically reach a higher speed in a dive, until then the 262 would be long gone. And German jet pilots flew certainly much faster than 450 mph in level flights when required without difficulties in controllability. 800-850 kph or 500-530mph could be reached in level flight and were far below the max Mach No., especially below 8000 m altitude (thicker air = lower Mach No.for equal above ground speeds). Spits and Mustangs wouldn't reach such speeds above that altitude anyway because they would have to dive quite a bit first to get to such speeds.
@@wanderschlosser1857
What do you doubt of what I wrote?
There were bomber projects planned before the jet was presented to hitler, showing there were already ideas at the prototype stages for a bomber 262.
Don’t worry about those bomber modifications, they couldn’t make enough jet engines to rule the sky. 10 hours continuous running is useful, but they needed replacing after 25 hours of flight time 😹
I do not remember which youtube channel it was, but they asserted that it took 700 man hours to build a jet engine and 4,000 man hours to build a Rolls Royce Merlin.
Excited for more airwar coverage. Wish the channel had more time to discuss the battle for the skies.
the 262 could never have impacted the outcome of the war. but itll always remain a milestone in aircraft technology
Happy birthday Indy!!!
It's interesting that the allies also had jets, but rather than swept wings they focused their aerodynamic research on laminar flow, resulting in the P-51 Mustang and Hawker Tempest.
Straight wings provide better lift at lower speeds versus increased drag at higher speeds. The reduced drag of a swept wing would not have helped the P-51 or Tempest at the speeds they operated at, and would have actually hurt their performance. It was only the advent of jet aircraft with speeds reach 500-600mph+ range that made the swept wing a viable option.
As for the ME-262's swept wing it wasn't developed with aerodynamics in mind, rather instead it was done to maintain the aircraft's center of balance once the decision was made to shift the engines to the wings instead of the fuselage.
It was only during late and post war testing that the true effect of swept wings on highspeed aircraft became understood and were integrated into designs like the F-86 Sabre which began life in 1944 as a straight wing design spun off of the FJ-1 Fury, which itself came from an attempt to create a jet engine variant of the P-51.
I don’t think the me262 would have made such a difference in this point of the war. If it was deployed the allies would have that on top of it’s targeting list of things to bomb.
The 262 was deployed.
My dad landed in France right after The Battle of the Bulge. He ended up in Austria on VE day. He was studying engineering when Uncle Sam grabbed him when he turned 18 in 1943 (part of the ASTP Program). But he ended up as 'canon fodder', as he put it (mortars). Anyways, he was taking some POWs to a camp when he heard and saw his first Me-262s and he was stunned. A) Didn't have any props on them, B) It had the wrong marking on the wings. The engineer in him knew exactly what it was and it shook him. He later saw rows and rows of Me-262s parked along the Autobahns. He said if Hitler didn't insist on making a bomber out of it, the air war would have turned ugly for the Allies. Maybe have prolonged the War for a year or two.
I can't wait for all the jet warfare content when the Korean War series gets here, one of the historical combat scenarios I am most curious about.
Will be interesting considering props like the p-51 and f-4 U were employed alongside them.
I recall hearing about a German test-pilot who, after his first time flying a jet-powered airplane, stated that he was in a moment experiencing the entire future of aviation.
Hang on, hang on! The Gloster Meteor did make it in time for the war and entered service only shortly after the Me-262 in 1944. This is the first time I've been a bit disappointed in this channel's accuracy!
The Gloster Meteor was _operational_ before the 262.
Oh boy! A bonus episode! I thought we were lucky when we got an episode by the Adorable Astrid earlier this week but now an Indy Special Episode! Be still my heart! Keep up the great work!
*Jet facts:*
• To a thermodynamicist, jets aren't too different from piston engines. Both have a thermodynamic cycle (suck, squeeze, bang, blow) in which air is compressed, fuel injected and ignited, and the resulting high-pressure combusted gas pushes the engine along. Indeed, jet engines have a compression ratio, as do car engines, and just like in cars, the higher it is the more efficient.
• The bypass ratio is the proportion of the air accelerated by the engine which bypasses the compressor. Since the thrust increases only linearly with the speed added to the air by the engine, but the energy needed to do so increases quadratically, it's more efficient to increase the thrust by accelerating more air than by accelerating the same amount of air to a greater speed. So a higher bypass ratio is more efficient. However, it is inappropriate in supersonic jets, and it requires bigger turbine blades which can withstand greater centrifugal forces/stress. This is why old jets and supersonic jet engines are thinner than modern civilian jets.
• Because the turbine and compressor blades have to be so strong (with high temperatures and pressures, plus centrifugal forces), one of the main limitations to jet design is materials science. Nowadays, each blade is typically made from a single metal crystal/grain.
• Civilian jet engines are often rented out nowadays, instead of being just another part bought with the plane.
I am not an expert on jets, but didn't most jet burn their fuel as single burn while piston engines burn their fuel in pulses? Of course there are pulse jets which burn their fuel in pulses as well.
@@vksasdgaming9472 Of course. Still, by following a volume of air through either engine as it is compressed, combusted and used to push the engine along, you can see a thermodynamic cycle which is fundamentally quite similar. You'd typically draw this as graph showing cycles of pressure and volume or temperature and entropy, and the graphs would look fairly similar (albeit stretched differently) in both cases.
@@alphamikeomega5728 I meant that all parts of cycle happen simultaneously in different areas of engine instead of sequentially in same area. At least in theoretically perfect engine.
The Arado 234 was used to bomb the Rhine bridges.
The reason German jet fighters could not have turned around the War was the very high fuel consumption on the early jets. They could only operate for 20 - 30 minutes before running low on fuel. Allied pilots, especially Mustang pilots, would wait around the German airfields for the jets to land while they were slow and vulnerable.
If Schwalbe operated in high altitudes it could fly over 90 minutes and flying low would shorten that time. Most likely those times are result of fuel being distuributed as equally as possible in unit. It is better to have three jets flying shorter time than one for longer time.
He used kilograms as if it was an imperial unit. That grinds my gears.
Noteworthy is the somewhat unintuitive assessment of production cost and time: It was less than a third of the cost of the Junkers 213 piston engine and needed only 375 man hours to manufacture as opposed to 1400. I call this unintuitive since this was a state of the art prototype still and piston engines were proven and optimized technology. Had development started only 2 years earlier it's likely the germans would have pumped out a lot of these engines. As mentioned their fuel requirements are also lower. So far jet engines have been converted to almost any fuel, the only thing that didn't quite work out is coal dust due to the ash content eroding the fan blades.
The Gloster E28/39 was the fourth to fly even after the Italian.
Although at 67 I have always done all of my car repairs my self, I still don't understand how jet turbine engines work. What causes them to spin ?
Just like an automotive engine’s movement is sustained by the expansion of ignited fuel and air against a piston within a cylinder, the spinning of a turbine engine is sustained by the expansion of ignited fuel and air against the turbine blades in the rear section of the engine. It’s just like when you blow on a pin-wheel, or the atmosphere blows on a windmill. Turbine rotation continues as long as there is fuel to burn and impart the expansive force on the turbine blades, or in the case of the pin-wheel, until you run out of breath. The turbine section in the rear is connected by a shaft which also spins the compressor in the front. The compressor serves the same purpose as a turbocharger in an automotive engine, drawing in air and making it more dense so more fuel can be burned, which in turn produces more energy to spin the turbine, and so forth. In a pure jet engine, which does not have the big fan on the front like you see on airliners, the propulsive thrust is wholly derived from that portion of the expansive airflow out of the rear which is excess to energy needed to spin the turbine. Maximum thrust reaches a limit based on a combination of the amount of air the engine can ingest, the aerodynamic efficiency of the internal components, and the temperature limits of the materials used in the combustion and turbine sections.
@@wkelly3053 I think I'm beginning to understand the fundamentals of Jet propulsion. I think your analogy of a turbocharger would be a little better conveyed by using as an example a super charger which driven directly by a gear or a belt where as a turbocharger is driven by the exhaust of the piston driven engine. The exhaust is routed thru a turbine that has a long shaft with another turbine with the blades in the opposite configuration which pulls air in and pushes it into the intake manifold thereby putting more air in the combustion chamber. Some are also equipped with what is called an after cooler which shrinks the air before it enters the intake, which gives it a more intense explosion.
@@johnwright291 Actually, no. The integral compressor that squeezes air into a jet engine is not analogous to an accessory driven by gears or belts. A jet engine is literally like a huge turbocharger just as you yourself describe it, but it becomes an actual independent engine when you put a combustion chamber (or chambers) equipped with igniters and fuel nozzles inside between the compressor and the turbine. It now generates its own internal combustion gasses which drive the turbine, which then drives the compressor via the shaft. So a pure jet engine is really a ‘turbocharger engine’. Exhaust gasses in excess of what is demanded to spin the turbine go out the back as thrust. Don’t allow yourself to make it seem more complicated.
I believe the great appeal of jet engines was they ran on kerosene and offered at the time the same performance of piston engines which ran on highly refined distillates. Logistically that is a team come true and having worked around 130 octane Avgas its volatility is always in the back of your mind.
I have always been interested in the development of the jet engine, ever since I learnt that my "Uncle Bob" had been on Frank Whittle's team.That was Bob Feilden, who was one of Mr Whittle's core team members.
For anyone interested, there is an excellent video on YT about this whole episode called Genius of the Jet, and my uncle Bob is visible at 55.26, he's the tall, awkward ;looking one in the centre of the picture.
Unfortunately for the UK, the story of the jet is a story of missed opportunities (of course) and later exploitation by others. It remains a curiosity that Rolls Royce managed to stay in the field when the Americans(P&W) had so many resources available to them.Of course, RR had much of the original research data handed to them, taking pretty much all of Whittle's work out of his hands.
Also worth noting that Whittle was a very able pilot, but he was never allowed to fly any of the prototypes. I suspect that was because he was so important to the whole design.
Also worth noting that that first jet had to work first time out, there wasn't any more budget! Compare that to Heinkel's "Money no object" attitude.
BTW The Gernan engineer had seen the original patents published by Whittle, because the UK government wouldn't even protect that much of such a ground breaking design!
Genius of the Jet is highly recommended viewing.
what I find remarkable is that Whittle was only 21 when he submitted his thesis on jet propulsion, I will check out that documentary when I get time, btw you should be very proud of your uncle 👍
@@j.jwhitty5861 I am, that his brother, Bernard, was also a renowned architect, and his son also, makes it even easioer to be proud of the whole lot.
Always been interested in the ME 262.
Truly a jet-setter of it's time. Thanks for watching!
Thank you for the lesson.
Thanks for watching!
Great video.
But about the delays on Me-262, 'Military History Visualized' made an excellent research on the matter.
The only thing that delayed the introduction of the Me-262 was the shortage of nickel, the rest is just a load of nonsensical revisionist fiction.
Terry Gilliam is proud - @1:31. Frank Whittle gave his tech to the U.S. - specifically General Electric, in 1941?
The early jet age is one of the most exciting times in aviation history. The people who made it happen would have grown up in the wood-and-fabric biplane era. Think what that must have been like for them to see airplanes advance to this point, less than forty years after the Wright Brother's first flight.
Very enjoyable and well presented. Thanks.
Thank you for the kind comment and thanks for watching!
The Me262 had swept wings. Swept wings may seem very common nowadays, as present on every major commercial jet around the world. But it was a revolutionary innovation in WW2.
An aircraft can only fly so fast before it reaches critical Mach number. Normally on an aircraft with unswept wings, that's 60% of the speed of sound. By then the faster airflow on the wing's upper surface reaches the speed of sound, and start forming shockwaves and vastly increases drag for the aircraft and makes it very difficult to go faster.
When air hits a swept wing, it passes over the wing at an angle. The velocity component of the flow parallel to the chord is reduced (rather than 100% as on an unswept wing). So even with the same airspeed, a swept wing aircraft would have lower chordwise airflow speed -- the speed that goes supersonic and create shockwaves.
Hence an Me262 could reach critical Mach at 70% the speed of sound, compared with 60% as with most unswept wing aircraft of its time.
Nowadays airliners so a the "supercritical aerofoil" wing profile -- with a flat top and curvy bottom, to further delay the critical Mach to up to 90% speed of sound.
The swept wings were an accident. To get balance they moved the wings as they held the engines.
Really appreciate the presentation on a subject close to my heart. However, as many comments have pointed out, you are helping to perpetuate the myth Hitler slowed down production of the Me 262. For the airframe, sure, but the bottleneck was the engines. If anything, the type was pressed into service far too early. And again, as comments have pointed out, Germany completely lacked the materials to produce high-grade alloys to make the engines last longer than 10 hours.
Even with the gentlest of treatment, the engines were prone to flame-outs and as a result the Me 262 was plagued by very sub-par acceleration compared to Allied piston fighters. When flying anything other than straight at minor AoA at full speed, a P-51 on high octane fuel could and often did catch Me 262's.
The Meteor, by contrast, was a much more mature and reliable (certainly the Mk.3), but much less revolutionary aircraft. They would never meet in combat as the Meteors were heavily restricted from flying over German territory, negating their impact other than shooting down V1's. With the straight wing and rather old fashioned construction, the Meteor soldiered on for far longer than it really should have as its performance was woefully inadequate by the 1950's. The Americans didn't do much better with the P-80.
When it came to engines however, Rolls Royce had the best in the world post-war, an advantage the Labour government then simply gave away by selling Derwent and Nene engines to the Soviets, who happily copied the Nene design and then put it into the all-mighty Mig 15.
Far more impressive than the engines, however, was the German progress in airframe design, where they were years ahead. The Me 262 had a much more modern design than the Meteor, with it's slightly swept wings and better energy retention in turns. However, the Germans were already thinking way beyond this and had designs for swept wing fighters that could consistently achieve transonic speeds that would only be realized by the Allies and the Soviet Union many years later. The Mig 15, F-86 Sabre and Hawker Hunter, all used design elements captured from the Germans!
As a German aeronautics engineer who worked for Rolls-Royce ( Whittles company) I congratulate your researcher and writer to get this right and keep it simple---The presenter was pretty OK too.
Are you kidding? The 262 was undeveloped rushed together desperate junk. *The Meteor was a proper fully developed jet plane, not a thrown together desperate effort as the me262 was.* The me262 fuselage was similar to a piston plane with the pilot over the wings obscuring downward vision, while the Meteor was a proper new design fuselage specifically for jet fighters with a forward of the wings pilot position with superior vision, as we see today. The cockpit was very quiet. The high tail was not to impede the rear jet thrust. The partial sweptback wings of the me262 were to move the engines further back for better weight distribution, not for aerodynamic reasons as is thought the case. The 262 balancing problem would be exasperated when firing the guns as the weight of the bullets exiting suddenly made the the air-frame unbalanced.
The Meteor was deliberately designed to have an air-frame of known qualities, as if there were problems it would be down to the jet engine not the airframe. In WW2 British went for the centrifugal engine design as it was quicker to get operational reliably. In 1943 the Meteor ran with axial-flow engines. The first proper and reliable _axial flow_ engine was the RR Avon in 1950.
The me262 fuselage was similar to a piston plane with the pilot over the wings obscuring downward vision, while the Meteor was a proper new design fuselage specifically for jet fighters with a forward of the wings pilot position with superior vision, as we see today. The cockpit was very quiet. The high tail was not to impede the rear jet thrust. The partial sweptback wings of the me262 were to move the engines further back for better weight distribution, not for aerodynamic reasons as is thought the case. The 262 balancing problem would be exasperated when firing the guns as the weight of the bullets exiting suddenly made the the air-frame unbalanced.
Me262 started _claiming_ kills on 26 July 1944. However the supposed _kill_ was a Mosquito reconnaissance plane that had a fuselage cap blown off in a sharp fast manoeuvre, which flew on landing in Italy. The Meteor claimed its first V1 kill a few days later on the 4 August 1944.
There were *five* turbojet engines in the UK under R&D in WW2:
*1)* *Centrifugal,* by Whittle (Rover);
*2)* *Centrifugal,* by Frank Halford (DeHaviland);
*3)* *Axial-flow,* by Metro-Vick;
*4)* *Axial-flow* by Griffiths (Rolls Royce);
*5)* *Axial flow compressor, with reverse flow combustion chambers.* The ASX by Armstrong Siddley;
▪ Metro-Vick sold their jet engine division to Armstrong Siddley. The Metro-Vick engine transpired into the post war Sapphire. Most American engines in the 1940s/50s were of UK design, many made under licence.
▪ The US licensed the J-42 (RR Nene) and J-48 (RR Tay), being virtually identical to the British engines.
▪ US aircraft used licensed British engines powering the: P-59, P-80, T-33, F9F Panther, F9F-6 Cougar, FJ Fury 3 and 4, Martin B-57 Canberra, F-94 Starfire, A4 Skyhawk and the A7 Corsair.
▪ The US General Electric J-47 turbojet was developed by General Electric in conjunction with Metropolitan Vickers of the UK, who had already developed a nine-stage axial-flow compressor engine licensing the design to Allison in 1944 for the earlier J-35 engine, first flying in May 1948.
▪ The centrifugal Rolls Royce Nene is one of the highest production jet engines in history with over 50,000 built.
It was an informative and scientific introduction of jet engine development during WW2 by allies and Germany...