page_title: Frank Whittle
section_title: After the war
hierarchical_section_title: Frank Whittle / After the war
caption_attribution_description: Frank Whittle speaking to employees of the Aircraft Engine Research Laboratory (Currently the NASA Glenn Research Center), USA, in 1946. (Note: NASA didn't exist until the early 1950's).
context_page_description: Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle, OM, KBE, CB, FRS, FRAeS was an English Royal Air Force air officer. He is credited with single-handedly inventing the turbojet engine. A patent was submitted by Maxime Guillaume in 1921 for a similar invention; however, this was technically unfeasible at the time. Whittle's jet engines were developed some years earlier than those of Germany's Hans von Ohain who was the designer of the first operational turbojet engine.
  From an early age, Whittle demonstrated an aptitude for engineering and an interest in flying. At first he was turned down by the RAF but, determined to join the Royal Air Force, he overcame his physical limitations and was accepted and sent to No. 2 School of Technical Training to join No 1 Squadron of Cranwell Aircraft Apprentices. He was taught the theory of aircraft engines and gained practical experience in the engineering workshops. His academic and practical abilities as an Aircraft Apprentice earned him a place on the officer training course at Cranwell. He excelled in his studies and became an accomplished pilot.
context_section_description: In 1946 Whittle accepted a post as Technical Advisor on Engine Design and Production to Controller of Supplies (Air); was made Commander, the US Legion of Merit; and was awarded the Order of the Bath (CB) in 1947. During May 1948 Whittle received an ex-gratia award of £100,000 from the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors in recognition of his work on the jet engine, and two months later he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE), Military Division.
  During a lecture tour in the US, he again broke down and retired from the RAF on medical grounds on 26 August 1948, leaving with the rank of Air Commodore. He joined BOAC as a technical advisor on aircraft gas turbines and travelled extensively over the next few years, viewing jet engine developments in the United States, Canada, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. He left BOAC in 1952 and spent the next year working on a biography, Jet: The Story of a Pioneer. He was awarded the Royal Society of Arts' Albert Medal that year.
  Returning to work in 1953, he accepted a position as a Mechanical Engineering Specialist with Shell, where he developed a new type of self-powered drill driven by a turbine running on the lubricating mud that is pumped into the borehole during drilling. Normally a well is drilled by attaching rigid sections of pipe together and powering the cutting head by spinning the pipe from the surface, but Whittle's design removed the need for a strong mechanical connection between the drill and the head frame, allowing for much lighter piping to be used.  He gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 1954 on The Story of Petroleum.
  Turbine drilling is best used for drilling hard rocks at high bit RPMs with diamond impregnated bits, and can be used with an angled drive shaft for directional drilling and horizontal drilling. It competes though with moyno motors and increasingly with rotary steerable systems and is again out of favour.
  Whittle left Shell in 1957 to work for Bristol Aero Engines who picked up the project in 1961, setting up "Bristol Siddeley Whittle Tools" to further develop the concept. In 1966 Rolls-Royce purchased Bristol Siddeley, but the financial pressures and eventual bankruptcy because of cost overruns of the RB211 project led to the slow wind-down and eventual disappearance of Whittle's "turbo-drill". The concept eventually re-appeared in the west in the late 1980s, imported from Russian designs.  (Russia needed the technology because it lacked high strength drill pipe.)
  As part of his socialist ideals, he proposed that Power Jets be nationalised; in part because he saw that private companies would profit from the technology freely given during the war. By 1964 he had deserted his previously socialist beliefs, going so far as to launch a fierce attack on the Labour candidate in Smethwick.
  In 1960 he was awarded an honorary degree, doctor techn. honoris causa, at the Norwegian Institute of Technology, later part of Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
  In 1967, he was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Science) by the University of Bath. That year, he was inducted into the International Air & Space Hall of Fame.
  In 1987, he was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Technology) by Loughborough University.
caption: Frank Whittle speaking to employees of the Flight Propulsion Research Laboratory (Now known as the NASA Glenn Research Center), USA, in 1946
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