The MIT and Pratt & Whitney engineers agree: Even if the engine worked, which it won’t, there would be nothing useful for it to do. In the US, Douglas sends Pavlecka’s proposal to engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney, who forwards it to MIT. In Germany, even though his airframe company has never built an aircraft engine, Heinkel hires the young von Ohain. The engine of the future must produce 2,000 hp with one moving part: a spinning turbine and compressor.'” They have hundreds of parts jerking to and fro, and they cannot be made more powerful without becoming too complicated. “Whittle expressed his idea with superb conciseness: ‘Reciprocating engines are exhausted. In England, Frank Whittle enlists the aid of two former RAF officers who arrange a meeting with two investment bankers, Sir Maurice Bonham-Carter and Lancelot Law Whyte. His name is Vladimir Pavlecka, and he has been working on a gas-turbine engine since 1933. He has helped build the world’s first successful all-metal dirigible. In his mid-thirties, he is already chief of structural research at the Douglas Aircraft Co. The German is Pabst yon Ohain, also in his mid-twenties. The German is a student of applied physics and mathematics at the University of Göttingen. Although his patent was similar to one issued years earlier to a Frenchman, the RAF is impressed and sends the young man to Cambridge University for two years. In January 1930, he had applied for his first patent, an ordinary reciprocating engine driving a compressor to produce a jet. The Englishman is an RAF officer in his mid-twenties.

Military jet engine tanks