Battle of the Engines: From Radial to Jet. The Engineering Marvels of World War II
57K views · May 9, 2026 · Science & Technology
Comments · 11
@WW2CombatFiles · 4 months ago
It’s mind-blowing to see the leap from the peak of piston engineering to the birth of the jet age in just six years. The engineering pace of WWII was truly unprecedented.
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@BlondieSuperdog · 4 months ago
Dronescape - you got one thing right, the paper by Griffith in 1926 predates Whittle - so there you have proof Whittle's paper claims to being the first are false, but the first jet patent was the Inventor Georges Mancinnet who patented the Pulse Jet in 1906, the first built by V Karavodin in 1909. Second Ohain wrote his paper in 1929 but his first design was also centrifigal,and he built his operational first engine in 1935, while Whittle's first operational engine was not until 1937. The German's first Jet flight was in 1939, and the Me 262 flew in 1942. The Gloster Metor did not fly until 1943 and had poor performance, relegated to shooting at V-1 pulse jet drones, while the Me 262's Axial engine technology was 150 mph faster and shot down hundreds of first line bombers and fighters (ref Me-262 combat diary) P-51s, Mosquitos, Spitfires, Lightnings etc.
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@humlakullen · 4 months ago
Awesome documentary… Thanks!
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@DavidFearn-x3i7j · 3 months ago
❤
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@BlondieSuperdog · 4 months ago
Whittle deserves credit for what he did contribute but it's false to give him full credit for modern jet engines. The Germans flew the first jet aircraft in 1939, the He 178. using Dr. Hans Von Ohain's turbojet engine. Ohian's original concept on paper was not quite as early as Whittle's but Ohain's actual working jet engine was made in 1935. Whittle did not have a working engine until 1937, and the British first jet flight was not until 1941. Whittle's design was Centrifugal flow, while the Germans Jets were first to use Axial flow jet engines which are the type used today; no one uses the Whittle Centrifgal type today. So it might well be said that had the Germans moved forward faster with their jets they'd have dominated the skies. They could have had the Me 262 by 1941 instead of initially flying in 1942, but like the British they did not want to use the critical resources to push jets forward. Had the Me262 ever met the Gloster Meteor f.1 in combat the Me 262 was 160 mph faster. The early Meteor was only capable of 400mph not even as fast as prop planes of the period.
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@philperry4699 · 4 months ago
Why do you keep referring to "vee" engines (e.g., Allison, Merlin, Daimler-Benz V-12s) as "inline" engines? They're not. The last inline engines (straight sixes and eights) were seen in WWI. An 8 cylinder inline is much heavier than a V-8, and you don't even want to think about an inline 12!
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@BlondieSuperdog · 4 months ago
In summary, if you want to identify who was responsible for "modern" jet engines - it isn't Whittle, his centrifugal engines are not used today because it was an inferior performer. The Germans were the first to use Axial flow and their use of that technoloy gave them superior performance jets like the Me-262 which flew over 100 mph faster than the fastest allied prop planes while the first centrifugal jets were inferior and not capable of matching high performance prop planes of the period. In any event the first Jet engine designs were not centrifugal or axial they were Pulse jets designed and built in 1906-1909. So Whittles axial flow was not the first, it is no longer used and the German axial flow technology is what is in general use today- so Griffith and the Germans can claim that, it came a few years after the very first centrifugal jets, not decades. Redo your video.
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