13 Comments

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  by wachinya Planzzz! 1 year ago

  Very informative and interesting.
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  by Gerald Ascencio 1 year ago

  Knew about the a/c but had never seen the film...excellent!
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  by George Wright 8 months ago

  The first thing that strikes you with the airplane is it's strong resemblence to the P-39 (or P-400) Bell Aircobra. It was of course built by Bell, also makers of the Word War II workhorses.
  
  The German ME 262 had flown in July, three months prior to this flight, but this was the first American entry into the modern jet age. The British Gloster E28/39 had flown in May of 1941 and was credited with killing the first German V-1 flying bomb, with a second kill the next day.
  
  Only 66 P-59A's were built and it never reached military service. The contract was cancelled in 1945.
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  by JERRY HUTCHEON HUTCHEON 5 months ago

  Just goes to show that we were on the Germans heels,CONTRAY TO POPULAR BELIEFS, YOU CAN'T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM TRUE WARRIORS , WE ARE THE NATION OF HERO'S JERRY HUTCHEON
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  by Michael Hoffman 4 months ago

  In the interest of accuracy I have to amend some of George Wright's comments. First, the name of the P-39 was the Airacobra. Second, it was the Gloster Meteor that scored the V-1 kills, not the Gloster E28/39, which was Britain's first jet and was not fast enough to intercept a V-1. Third, although there were 66 Airacomets built, they were not all P-59A's. There were 3 XP-59A's, 13 YP-59A's, 20 P-59A's, and 30 P-59B's. Also, it is not true that the P-59 never reached military service. They never reached COMBAT service; however, they were assigned to operational squadrons of the 412 Fighter Group in California, which provided jet training to prospective pilots of the Lockheed P-80 "Shooting Star." Finally, the P-59 contract ended on October 30, 1943 when the AAF halved the number of P-59B's that were to be built.
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  by Nick O'Dell 3 months ago

  The USA was years behind Britain and Germany with aircraft turbojets. RAF officer Frank Whittle described his idea for this engine in his 1928 final year thesis at the RAF academy, and lodged a patent on it in 1930. The basic principle he laid down; essentially a duct with a single moving part, a shaft with an air compressor at one end driven by a power turbine at the other, is still in use today. He also described the afterburner, fanjet (as used on almost all airliners today) and vectored thrust, as used on the VTOL Harrier.
  
  Whittle was the first to build and run a turbojet, but could get nobody in the Air Ministry or government to pay any interest or fund his research, which he had to conduct in whatever spare time the RAF would allow him. Fast forward to 1941.
  
  On a mission to Britain, General Henry “Hap” Arnold, U.S. Army Air Corps chief of staff, was amazed when on May 15, Gerry Sayer took off in the little W1-powered Gloster E28/39 Pioneer—history’s second jet aircraft. With the W2 it would later hit 488 mph. Here's the key to the first US jet: Arnold arranged for a Whittle engine, engineering drawings and some of Whittle's engineers to be flown to the U.S. to help jump-start America’s jet program.
  
  Hans von Ohain almost certainly copied Whittle's design, since his patent was published around the world, and in several technical and aviation magazines. A Rolls-Royce development of the Whittle W2B powered the new Gloster Meteor fighter. Delivered to No. 616 Squadron on June 1, 1944, it was the first jet aircraft in the world to enter operational service. One was sent to the U.S. for evaluation. The Meteor and Me-262 never met in combat; the first jet-versus-jet encounters involved Meteors shooting down the world’s first cruise missiles, the pulse-jet-powered V-1 flying bombs. In October 1945, Frank Whittle piloted a an aircraft powered by his invention for the first time, a Meteor IV powered by a later version of the Welland, the Derwent. A few days later it set a world record at 606 mph. A version of the Derwent, the Allison J33, powered the Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star, a rushed design that proved no faster than contemporary piston-engined fighters.
  
  In the end, the jet engine played no significant role in the war, becoming operational too late in the conflict. But Hans von Ohain later said: “If the British experts had had the vision to back Whittle, World War II would probably never have happened. Hitler would have doubted the Luftwaffe’s ability to win.
  
  Britain’s postwar socialist government sold 60 jet engines to the Soviets, who reverse-engineered them and made 39,000 without bothering with a license and then passed the design to China, where they were still being produced in 1979. On a visit to China's aviation academy, Whittle was shown a sectioned example of his jet engine, which had been used to educate hundreds of China's pilots and technicians. The Nene powered the advanced Mig-15 fighters in Korea, with the bizarre result that in 1950 jet aircraft of all the belligerent nations were powered by developments of Whittle's designs.
  
  Frank Whittle (now Sir Frank) retired from the RAF with the rank of air commodore (equivalent to a US Brigardier General.) After emigrating to the U.S. in 1976, he accepted the position of NAVAIR research professor at the U.S. Naval Academy. Whittle died at his home in Columbia, Md, in August 1996.
  
  Whittle’s 1928 thesis and 1930 patent revolutionized military and civilian air travel. Thirty years after fighters and bombers had difficulty exceed 200 mph, their successors were traveling at 10 times that speed, and long-distance travel times were halved. Whittle’s original engine produced about 800 pounds of thrust, while today the Rolls-Royce Trent, working on the same principle, achieves more than 100,000.
  
  Advt: You can read the full story of Frank Whittle and the jet in my article in the March 2012 issue of Aviation History magazine.
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  by Bill Clark 2 months ago

  I was raised in Bakersfield, California located about 60 miles west of the Muroc Test Facility and witnessed a Airacomet (P-59) blow up in the air when I was a little kid. Finally tracked down the details through the Bakersfield Californian's archive section. They sent me a reprint of the event. It occurred on December 7, 1944. At that time, any time we kids heard a 'jet', we'd run outside to see it. In this instance I was standing in my front lawn in Oildale, California watching the 'jet' fly across the sky just north of us. It was flying at about 10,000 feet. As it crossed the sky I saw a small 'dot' fall from the plane, then.. 'boom!' the plane blew apart in the air. The dot was the pilot who opened his chute. The plane came apart in three big pieces, the fuselage, the empennage, and one wing were falling from the sky. The sky seemed filled with papers. The fuselage was descending toward the pilot who swung his chute out of the way of the falling wreckage. My mother drove us up to the crash site and I stood next to the pilot who in turn was standing in front of the jet engine that had landed in front of a no dumping sign. What a thrill for a little kid!
  
  Bill
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  by Jerry McDonough 2 months ago

  You might want to "google" the L-133. Although it never made it off the drawing board, it was a Kelly Johnson invention; jet engine and all.
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  by Robert Emmons 1 month ago

  I noticed that some of the video is in color, but, AFAIK, there was no color film in 1942. Are you sure the film is legitimate? Was some of it colorized?
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  by Ralph Bennett 1 month ago

  Interesting comments about which jet was first, but everyone seems to have forgotten the Italians. The Caproni-Campini N 1 flew, I believe, in August of 1940.I'm sure there is You tube footage of it.
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  by George Downing 1 month ago

  For Robert Emmons: Well, yes, there was color film in 1942. Two that come to mind are "Gone with the Wind" in 1939 and "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" in 1940, the latter of which was the first movie I was allowed to see. I might add that as a boy during WWII I was an aircraft buff. We were urged in school (suburban Philadelphia) to learn the silhouettes of all the planes flying so that we could help the airplane spotters on rooftops as they watched for the enemy. I had a cardboard wheeled device that acted like a set of flashcards. I knew them all, American, Japanese, and German, including the P-39 Aircobra mentioned above. I knew most of the British, but few of the Italian. Never did get on the rooftops with the spotters, though.
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  by Robert Emmons 1 month ago

  Thanks Mr. Downing. I was wrong about the existence of color film in 1942. Here is a link supplied by a friend of mine to more info on that subject: http://articles.dhwritings.com/h04.html.
  
  On the other hand, it still seems unusual to see color used in a news film in that era. I was not born then, but I think all the news films I have seen of WW II, President Roosevelt, etc. were all in black and white.
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  by Mike Adams 1 month ago

  This is interesting stuff. Thanks for posting it. I am confused as to why the jet from 1942 that seemed to fly so well was not bumped up in priority and developed into a flight ready fighter or other significant weapon? There are plenty of stories in regards to Germany's jet fighters and how they may have made a difference had they come much earlier and in great numbers. Did Curtis Lemay have something to do with our decision not to proceed? Thank you.