Lutterworth, Birth Place Of The Jet Engine

Jet engines are used to power aircraft across the world, and the story of their development by the twentieth century engineer Frank Whittle in the town of Lutterworth is an interesting tale of vision and endeavor. The first jet aeroplane in the United Kingdom was the Gloster E28/39 and it was produced in Lutterworth, which is in the county of Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England. A statue of the aeroplane can be seen mounted on a roundabout in Lutterworth.

Frank Whittle was born in the year 1907 and became an engineer officer in the British Royal Air Force. He was an excellent pilot and engineer, and his career in the RAF enabled him to develop his skills to the full, both as a pilot and as an engineer. Frank Whittle showed his ideas for a jet engine to the RAF and the Air Ministry. They were not interested in it and said it was 'impracticable’ which meant that his invention would not become the property of the British Government and he could keep the rights to it.

The lack of interest from the RAF and the Air Ministry meant that his invention did not have to be kept secret, so Frank Whittle therefore went ahead and patented his design for a jet engine in the year 1930 when he was only twenty three years old. He formed a company called Power Jets Ltd to develop a prototype jet aircraft without any support from the Air Ministry. He was assisted in this endeavor by partnering with an engineering firm called British Thompson-Houston which has premises in Lutterworth and Rugby in Warwickshire.

The development of the prototype jet aircraft was being carried out in Rugby, at the main foundry operated by British Thompson-Houston. However the prototype jet engine kept running out of control and people started to fear that a bad accident would take place. British Thompson-Houston had another foundry at Lutterworth which was not used much, and it was felt that this dangerous work would be better situated at the operational centre in Lutterworth.

The testing programme for Frank Whittle’s first jet aircraft was therefore transferred to Lutterworth in the year 1938. When the Second World War broke out in the year 1939 the Power Jets company had just ten people in it and little money, however the Air Ministry put money into the firm later in the year and placed an order for a flyable jet aircraft. The Power Jets company went from strength to strength during the war, and was nationalized in the year 1944.

There used to be a public house in Lutterworth called The Frank Whittle which was on the Leicester Road, but it was knocked down in the nineteen nineties to make way for a car showroom, which in turn was demolished in 2010 to make way for a residential property development. However, a public house on the Greenacres Estate in the centre of Lutterworth has had its name changed from The Balloon to The Sir Frank Whittle to commemorate the legendary inventor, engineer and industrialist who did such great work in the town.

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