Sir Whittle and the German Franz von Oheim did develop the first so called jet engine but which did not lead us into the jet age at all.
No airliner of today is using the radial jet engine of Whittle and von Oheim !
Both developed the radial jet engine at the same time by not knowing of each other. After WW 2 both became friend.
At the end the radial one was no more increaseable in power - due to it`s single compressor. The only compressor had to be huge so we received the wide-body jet engine of
the Meteor and the MIG 15. The MIG 17 could increase speed only by using the first afterburner - disigned by the Junkers Factory/Germany in 1944.
The start of the real jet age: It began in 1939 in Germany. The BRAMO-Factory near Berlin producing the Siemens-Radial engine since long for light aircraft.
was forced into the production of a very new jet engine, as BMW and Junckers too, the axial jet engine. The one which drives every airliner of today. It is called the straight-air-through jet engine. While the radial one of Whittle and von Oheim was just a try - no more. By having captured the first Me 262 in 1945 Rollce Royce
stopped the production of the radial one immediately - and did copy further on the German axial jet engine. At least it`s proved by historian.
Reason of all till the change to the axial jet engine of today: Willy Messerschmitt was the founder of the real jet engine of today as he needed for his Me 262 a narrow jet engine with a diameter of no more then 60 cm. The wide body radial engine of Franz von Oheim would not fit under the wings of his Me 262.
BRAMO (Brandenburgische Motorenwerke) agreed by designing a 12 stage compressor to the front of the burning chambers. The axial jet engine was born and is still in the
use of every todays airliner. Rolls-Royce and Russia had to increase the compressor diameter only for getting a more powerful engine - reaching Mach 2 and more.
It may have been the Jumo 002 which became the Heinkel Hirth HeS 006.
In Germany development of jet engines began in airframe companies Heinkel and Junkers. It was the same in the USA with Lockheed's L1000
The RLM Stripped the right of these airframe companies to develop engines. Heinkel stayed in the game by buying an engine company called Hirth at 50% over share market price where the development of von Ohains and Hahns could continue with official sanction. The Junkers Jumo 002 was abandoned but the team also went to Heinkel Hirth and resurrected the Jumo 002 as the HeS 006.
Jumo then started the Famous Jumo 004 using a new team with a turbo charger background.
The Heinkel Hirth HeS 006 was based on the Jumo 002 designed by Adolf Müller of the Airframe division of Junkers. The engine division
JUnkers
MOtoren or
Jumo had nothing to do with developing jet engines initially, it was the RLM that decided that airframe manufacturers shouldn't develop jet engines so Adolf Müller moved to Heinkel and the Austrian Turbo charger espert Franz Anselm started to develop the Jumo 004. Heinkel, an airframe manufacturer, faced been sidelined as well so Ernst Heinkel brought the company Hirth Motoren at 50% above market value so that he could claim to be an engine manufacturer and continue to develop the jet engine that had in fact been invented by his companies patronage of von Ohain.
Adolf Müller's Jumo 002 that became the Heinkel Hirth HeS 006 was far more capable than the Jumo 004. It used a 50% reaction compressor that was 10%-15% more efficient and required only 5 stages to achieve the same compression ratio as the jumo 004.
As a result it had 50% of the weight for the same thrust. In fact it wasn't beaten in terms of frontal area vs thrust and weight versus thrust by anyengine till 1947 and weighed only 390kg versus the 740kg of the jumo.
There are two types of axial compressor: reaction type where the pressure build up is both over rotor and stator and impulse where the stator is only a guide vane. Reaction types need machining because of tolerances instead of stamping. The Jumo 004 used impulse type HeS 006 reaction type.