Rolls - Royce Nene The Rolls - Royce RB . 41 Nene was a 1940s British centrifugal compressor turbojet engine . The Nene was essentially an enlarged version of the Rolls - Royce Derwent with the minimal changes needed to deliver 5 , 000 lbf , making it the most powerful engine of its era . The Nene was Rolls - Royce ' s third jet engine to enter production , designed and built in an astonishingly short five - month period in 1944 , first running on 27 October 1944 . It was named after the River Nene in keeping with the company ' s tradition of naming its jet engines after rivers . The design saw relatively little use in British aircraft designs , being passed over in favour of the axial - flow Avon that followed it . Its only widespread use in Great Britain was in the Hawker Sea Hawk and the Supermarine Attacker . In the US it was built under license as the Pratt & Whitney J42 , and it powered the Grumman F9F Panther . Its most widespread use was in the form of the Klimov RD - 45 , which powered the famous Mikoyan - Gurevich MiG - 15 . Design and development . Although based on the " straight - through " version of the basic Whittle - style layout , the Nene used a double - sided centrifugal compressor for improved pressure ratio and thus higher thrust . It was during the design of the Nene that Rolls decided to give their engines numbers as well as names , with the Welland and Derwent keeping their original Rover models , B / 23 and B / 26 . It was later decided that these model numbers looked too much like those for bombers , and " R " was added to the front , the " R " signifying " Rolls " and the original Rover " B " signifying Barnoldswick . This RB designation scheme continues to this day . Early airborne tests of the Nene were undertaken in an Avro Lancastrian operated by Rolls - Royce from their Hucknall airfield . The two outboard Rolls - Royce Merlins were replaced by the jet engine . The Nene ' s first flight however was in a modified Lockheed XP - 80 Shooting Star . Service use . The Nene doubled the thrust of the earlier generation engines , with early versions providing about 5 , 000 lbf ( 22 . 2 kN ) , but remained generally similar in most ways . This should have suggested that it would be widely used in various designs , but the Gloster Meteor proved so successful with its Derwent s that the Air Ministry felt there was no pressing need to improve upon it . Instead a series of much more capable designs using the Rolls - Royce Avon were studied , and the Nene generally languished . The Nene was used to power the first civil jet aircraft , a modified Vickers Viking , which flew first on 6 April 1948 . Pratt and Whitney was given a licence to produce the Nene as the Pratt & Whitney J42 , and it powered the Grumman F9F Panther . Twenty - five were given to the Soviet Union as a gesture of goodwill - with reservation to not use for military purposes - with the agreement of Stafford Cripps . The Soviets reneged on the deal , and reverse engineered the Nene to develop the Klimov RD - 45 , and a larger version , the Klimov VK - 1 , which soon appeared in various Soviet fighters including Mikoyan - Gurevich MiG - 15 . It was briefly made under licence in Australia for use in the RAAF de Havilland Vampire fighters . It was also built by Orenda in Canada for use in 656 Canadair CT - 133 Silver Star aircraft . Engines on display . A sectioned Rolls - Royce Nene is on display at the Fleet Air Arm Museum , RNAS Yeovilton . There is a cutaway Nene II on display at the New England Air Museum A sectioned Hispano - Suiza Nene is on display at the Ailes Anciennes Toulouse Museum in France .