This was my introduction to your RUclips channel. Bucking. Frilliant. You have completely changes my thoughts on this time period and, what's more, the important of jet engines. If ever I have access to a time machine, I will be very tempted to make this change. Thank you.
In a ship displacing over 8000 tonnes the propulsion system takes up roughly the same volume within a hull whatever system you choose. It is just distributed differently. The idea of GT powered fast battleships is exciting.
Greetings Dr Clarke! I have only just come across your channel and, following a career lifetime in the design of gas turbine engines, industrial, marine and aero, together with an interest in the history of the gas turbine, I think that I can offer some relevant comments. I have yet to watch this video at length, but I promise that I will do so when I have time. In the meantime I will come up with a brief overview of the work of Griffith, Whittle, and others, which I will add as a separate comment.
Thanks for another engrossing video Dr Clarke. A question about the KGVs. Would the weight savings from gas turbine propulsion have been enough for a three quad turret main armament? I seem to recall reading the design of a twin B turret delayed construction by 12 months. If possible what would this have done for the ships performance and in service dates?
Thank you Dr C, very interesting! In the late 70's, the Howerds Way era, I worked for a yacht company whose boats were in the running for the starring role vessels in that series. Obviously this brought up a lot of comment within the company, and, as I am an engineer, I spoke with the designers about our chances of our boats forming the basis of the race models depicted in the series. Our conversations ended up being around the differences between a race and cruiser hull, oddly enough with similar, in percentage terms, speed increases. In order to atchieve the speed increase, our basic cruising vessel, with gentle sea keeping abilities would change completly and not be suitable for the weekend family sailor. My question is, how much would the increased speed available have altered the design of the hull, and what impact would this have had on the suitability of the various vessels, given their various duties, with regard to the stability of the gun plaform, the general sea keeping ability and so on?
honestly the conservative margins, i.e. +3kts probably wouldn't affect things too much, although I think the Abdiel class would be the most affected - however the RN again have a lot of facilities for hull design & testing, so would probably be happy with that as problem - i.e. oh our ships can be a bit faster... the main problem would be hull weight vs top weight with the lighter engines, hence my views on subdivision increasing... hope that helps
@@DrAlexClarke Thanks for the quick reply. According to our designer, in order to have an increase of 10%, the whole "feel" of the vessel would change, from what I was told, the actual sustainable top speed, is more dependent upon the design of the hull than the raw power available. I realise, of course, that we were talking of rag and stick vessels, so there were other factors to take into account, but surely the hull form would be a factor?
RN hulls have a certain amount of latitude designed into them - they are not quite as perfectly formed as yachts or similar, as such 3kts is ok, if they were going for more than there would probably be issues... 3kts with extra subdivision/i.e. hull strengthening, that will be fine.
Herewith my promised commentary. In 1926, Dr A A Griffith wrote an internal RAE report proposing an aircraft gas turbine engine: however, it was not a jet engine, it was what we would now describe as an axial flow turboprop. He continued to espouse the axial flow turboprop principle into the 1930s, even to the extent of proposing an extremely complex machine with a contraflow arrangement. Griffith also visited Brown Boveri and Company in Switzerland in 1938, or thereabouts, to view their work on an industrial gas turbine. This was arguably the world’s first successful industrial machine. It ran for 63 years until it was finally shut down in 2002, following damage to the generator. Following a hiatus in gas turbine work at the RAE in the early 1930s, Griffith and his team were working on axial flow compressors in the late 1930s and, in 1939, they successfully ran a ‘ground use only’ machine, known as the B.10. It was a heavyweight axial flow machine, which was far too heavy to fly. However, it was intended as a proof-of-concept engine and produced neither shaft nor jet power. In parallel, another machine, the D.11, was also constructed. This again was a heavyweight axial flow machine, but it had a free power turbine, with the turboprop principle in mind. In 1939, Griffith left RAE for Rolls-Royce at Derby, with Hayne Constant continuing to head the gas turbine work at RAE. At about that time, Metropolitan-Vickers at Manchester were working with RAE on the design of a lightweight axial flow turboprop engine. Is it a coincidence that it rapidly metamorphosed into a turbojet at the end of 1939, following the successful run of the second rebuild of the Whittle/Power Jets WU engine in June of that year? Returning to the events of 1929 and Griffith’s rejection of Whittle’s proposal, Griffith was certainly not objecting to the principle of an aircraft gas turbine: he was objecting to the principle of the turbojet, particularly one with a centrifugal compressor. He believed that its component efficiencies would be too low and that there would be insufficient energy in the exhaust to produce sufficient jet thrust. He continued to believe that only an axial flow turboprop would have the necessary component and propulsive efficiencies. I must tell you that Whittle’s work on the jet engine would have been largely irrelevant in respect of marine propulsion, in the first instance because those first generation engines were far too small for anything bigger than a motor boat. I say this having been a member of the design team for the Marine Olympus, Marine Tyne and Marine Spey - and a passing involvement in the MT30 at the end of my career. Of more relevance was the work at RAE and Metropolitan-Vickers on axial flow machines: the Metrovick G.1 Gatric gas turbine, based on the Beryl aero engine, went to sea in 1947 in MGB 2009 - a big motor boat. Of even more relevance for larger vessels would have been BBC’s industrial gas turbine machine, which certainly demonstrated its reliability. I have no doubt that the early jet engines would have been totally unsuitable for adaptation as marine engines. They had overhaul lives of hundreds of hours, even into the 1950s. A jet aircraft had to land after a few hours of flight at most, and an engine could be changed in a matter of hours. What use would that have been to the Royal Navy, who needed to stay at sea for days, even weeks at a time? For aero-derivative marine gas generators to become sufficiently reliable and have acceptable overhaul lives, much more experience and development was needed. Even then, hard in-service experience, with which I was involved, showed that what had been a very reliable aero engine suffered when run continuously at ground/sea level conditions as a gas generator. In flight, it was in rarefied air and needed to produce much less thrust than at take-off, which greatly reduced aerodynamic loads throughout the engine. On the ground, even at a reduced maximum continuous rating, as compared to a take-off rating, the aerodynamic loads were much greater. Improved materials, wear resistant-coatings and other design changes were required to give acceptable lives and reliability. These are my views in respect of the prospect of marine gas turbine propulsion, based on the early jet engines, in the 1940s: it was simply impracticable. I am posting this before having viewed the whole of your video: I will be interested to see how it compares with your view. However, I do also have some very definite views on what might have happened in 1940, had Whittle’s 1929 proposal been accepted and supported. Could we have had Gloster Pioneers (production versions of the E.28/39) decimating the Luftwaffe’s Bf109s over southern England? And by the way, Whittle's 1928 thesis did not propose a jet engine as such: it could be described as a 'motorjet' machine. "The penny dropped" (as Whittle himself said) the following year, as a result of which his proposal for a true turbojet was forwarded to Griffith - and the rest is history, as they say.
As obsessed as the Admiralty was with power dense propulsion, why didn't they go with the high pressure boilers like the USN? I've heard they had the technology for the KGVs but haven't heard the explanation for why they decided to steer away.
because of training and implementation, they thought it would be quicker and easier to bring them into service if they went with the best of what they already used, rather than adding in something new...
The higher pressure saves ~10% in fuel... As for compactness and hull weight... It saves ~nothing as power requirements went up. Range of all ships also was continually increasing so, that fuel savings just went to more range and generally not tonnage saved.
Doesnt the QE class carrier have the equivilent of turbo electric drive with gas turbine using turbines for electric power and electric motors to drive the shafts?
Did AA Griffith ever apologise to Whittle for his egregious error? Things turned out very embarrassingly for him. Griffin was heavily involved in the design of axial-flow turbojet engine designs - is there any evidence that he deliberately bombed Whittle's competing proposal?
Please see the commentary I posted a short while ago. Perhaps I'm being charitable, but I don't think that Griffith saw Whittle's centrifugal turbojet proposal as competitive. He was so espoused to (Stanley Hooker described him as being "obsessed with") his axial flow turboprop, believing it to be the only solution that would provide the necessary component and propulsive efficiencies. Apparently, he did not share Whittle's vision of the turbojet being altogether superior for high speed flight at high altitude. However, it took Metrovick, building on a substantial amount of government-funded prior research on axial flow compressors at RAE in the 1930s, several years to develop a reliable axial flow turbojet. This engine was, in actuality, a metamorphosis of the Griffith/RAE turboprop work. The first run of the Metrovick F.2/1 took place in December of 1941, with the flight standard engine powering a Meteor prototype in November 1943. Whittle, on the other hand, initially with only a small amount of private venture capital from his backers, arrived at a practicable centrifugal flow turbojet, with the first run of his WU engine in April 1937. With some limited hand-to-mouth funding from the Air Ministry, he was able to give a successful demonstration run of the WU, in its second rebuild configuration, in June 1939. The flight standard W.1 engine, closely based on the WU, took to the air in the Gloster E.28/39 in April 1941.
Well run businesses understand the inefficiency of trying to be too efficient, the need for reserve capacity (at least when it comes to critical systems). They may run their factory with little stock of parts, adopting the 'just in time' supply model (after evaluating the risks - if they're competent). But they spend vast amounts of money on redundancy for their IT systems, because they know if those go down it's not just one factory or office affected but the entire corporation. IT budgets will be under pressure to cut costs, but not to the point of running at >95% capacity all the time 'for efficiency'. The politicians we've had for over 40 years claim to be business minded and talk about running the country efficiently along business lines. But they haven't a clue - none who make it anywhere near the top have experience of how to actually run a successful large business. 'Efficiency' is simply code for making cuts - first budgets, then services and as an inevitable consequence lives. They also have a divine belief utterly at odds with logic & reality that the private sector is 'more efficient' than the public. Even though they will be seeking to take as much money out of the system as profit. And any genuine efficiency savings (and there are plenty of those - especially the closer you get to the top and the politicians) could easily be made in situ. No need to pay the exorbitant 'profit tax' of giving public money to private companies to run services.
[commenting after ~20min] What about a hybrid powerplant, either geared in or for separate screws, like the additional diesel engines on some German cruisers? Jumping at a treaty breaking technology is one thing, but relying on new tech is also a gamble, so I'd expect the first jet classes to be built with a fallback system keeping them operational even if the jets prove unreliable. Another thing, rather than saving on engine weight and space, wouldn't there be a usecase for just going faster, at least for so ships? Also, wouldn't diesel and jets make sense to try? Maybe you'll get there later, but I'll probably fall asleep rather than finish it tonight...
Honestly the reason I didn't go the hybrid route is a) the justification was Treaty busting, and that maximises that & b) then I'd have to add on another hour working through the options and explaining which the RN would go with, was tempted to put in COGAS for cruisers & above, Gas for destroyers & below, but to be honest if the RN invests enough money in this they might just go all out... I could also see a difference if they go for an electric vs. direct drive option, i.e., if the go electric, COGAD makes more sense, if they go direct drive COGAS makes more sense... and 3) if I cover every potential in one of these videos, it cuts down on the discussion in the comments & on the discord, and I know it's silly but I really enjoy watching and occasionally responding to those comments, so sometimes if I think it will be fine & complete without it I leave something out... on this occasion, it was hybrid powerplants as I felt the discussion would be interesting to watch
Unfortunately, if you start equipping MTBs with gas turbines you probably nix the Napier Deltic engine, and then we miss out on one of the best railway locomotive classes 😢
Please see the commentary I posted a short while ago. The first gas turbine engine to go to sea in 1947 was the Metrovick G.1 Gatric engine: it was based on the F.2/4 Beryl turbojet engine, and powered MGB 2009. It was really an experimental installation, but did prove that marine gas turbine power was a practicable proposition. The Deltic engine would have been in no danger. The first really practicable gas turbine powered vessels were the two Brave class boats, Brave Border and Brave Swordsman, which were commissioned in 1960. They had three Marine Proteus engines, giving the boats a maximum speed of 52 knots. Several other navies had similar vessels, and there may still be a preserved, seaworthy example in Sweden.
Herewith some further thoughts on the prospect of marine gas turbines in WWII, beginning with a quotation. "The gas turbine was an old idea. Over the years many unsuccessful designs had been promoted by hopeful inventors. This background of failure generated a widespread prejudice against gas turbines, though a few heavy and inefficient machines were built to power factory machinery. Nevertheless, interest in gas turbines for the special needs of aircraft arose in several countries in the 1920s, for it was hoped that the continuous combustion in a gas turbine could give it power advantage over the conventional piston engine." The above were the introductory words of a display in the Flight Gallery of the Science Museum, London. The wording originally credited both Griffith and Whittle as having made proposals for a gas turbine aero engine, without explaining that one had proposed a turboprop, while the other had proposed a turbojet. The display has recently been replaced, with the reference to Griffith removed. Ian Whittle, son of Sir Frank Whittle, had been objecting to the form of words since 2005 and, having made his acquaintance some years ago, I have been supporting him in his mission to have the wording changed. As I’ve described elsewhere, the first successful industrial gas turbine was made by Brown Boveri and Company, Switzerland. It entered service in 1938/9, produced 4MW of electrical power (around 5,500HP) and was finally taken out of service in 2002. It has been restored and preserved, and is now on display in Birr, Switzerland. If you look for a photo and a cross-sectional diagram of the machine on the internet, I’m sure you will realise that it was a large, heavyweight machine, which owed absolutely nothing to jet engine technology. It was based on proven steam turbine design and construction practice - and 63 years of operation proved its reliability. If gas turbines had been given serious consideration for naval marine applications in the 1930s, I have no doubt that they would have followed steam turbine practice. Why would any navy take the risk of doing otherwise? They would want a machine that could go to sea with at least the same levels of life and reliability as the steam turbines with which they were familiar. Having said this, I’m sure that they would have first needed to see a shore trials unit run for a few thousand hours before it went into a vessel. But what about the size? I’ve been doing a bit of research into what powered what during the war. A Flower class corvette had a triple-expansion steam engine giving about 2,750HP, but could have done with twice that for a decent turn of speed. A Hunt class small destroyer had two steam turbines, giving a total of 19,000HP or so. I went for the Hunt class as HMS Atherstone was named after the hunt associated with my home town in the Midlands, and there’s an additional connection. After the war, Armstrong Siddeley used one steam turbine set from a Hunt class ship to power its compressor test facility (known as ‘Ten Thousand Test’), at the site where I served my apprenticeship. So, to power a Hunt class destroyer, the equivalent of four BBC units would have been required or, preferably, two scaled-up equivalents. However, unlike the BBC unit, any equivalent marine engine would have required a free power turbine. That would, of course, have made the installation larger and a little more complex, and a big reduction gearbox would have been required, as with a steam turbine. And what about putting gas turbines into a battleship? I believe HMS Hood’s steam turbines produced around 140,000HP. Relating this to the aero-derivative machines with which I was familiar, that’s the equivalent of six Marine Olympus TM3Bs, four of which powered the Invincible class carriers, or three MT30s, two of which power the current carriers. But those technologies were twenty-five years and fifty years into the future, respectively, for the wartime Royal Navy. I am trying to envisage four heavyweight gas turbine sets, each giving 35,000HP. That’s not big for a modern heavyweight machine, where you can get one from GE producing 500,000HP. However, compared to the 5,500HP of the BBC machine in 1938, a 35,000HP machine would have been getting on for three times the size. Today’s Siemens SGT-600 industrial engine would fill the bill, but the 1940s equivalent would have been significantly larger than this machine. Until now, I haven’t mentioned one obvious problem with the gas turbine: throttled back and off design, its efficiency reduces rapidly. This is why the Type 21s and Type 42s had two Marine Tynes and Two Marine Olympus engines, with the later Type 22s having two Marine Tynes and two Marine Speys, so that they could cruise efficiently on the two Tynes. I did hear a story from a retired RN captain of a Type 22 crossing the Atlantic on one Tyne to save fuel. He also told the story of the captains who water skied behind their Type 21s. However, with fuel efficiency in mind, the Type 23s were CODLAG, with the Tynes replaced by diesel-electrics for cruise. So, if ever a gas turbine powered Royal Navy battleship had put to sea in the 1940s, which was extremely unlikely, I venture to suggest that she would have sailed slowly past Fort Blockhouse (where my son once had a room) with two steam turbines producing the power. Well, COSAG did come along in due course with the County class destroyers, which had four Metrovick G.6 gas turbines. Alternatively, and perhaps just as unlikely, she might have been CODAG and sailed past to the sound of two (or four) big diesel engines chugging away:
40 knot cruisers by 1940... there would be some very fierce language used in navies around the world. The perfidious albionese navy has done it to them again!
So hypothetical would gas turbines make major reconstruction of the R class battleships a viable option. Also would in your opinion a refit of us standard battleships that have turbo electric drive for a slightly faster speed be viable pre us involvement is ww2
Even today, gas turbines with their multi thousand hours runtime ability barely make grade in navy ships. An "engine" which lasts a hundred hours before massive power degradation is beyond HOPELESS, not to mention its fuel consumption is beyond pitiful even if we assume the Gas turbine is powering an electric generator--> ALA how submarines work in this time period as Gas turbines high RPM eliminates it as a viable option for direct drive. Not to mention the power output of these small gas turbines would be pitiful. His entire premise is pitiful from an engineering perspective. There is a reason no one tried testing gas turbines in ships until the 1960's as one off's. If you want more in depth engineering perspective it would be several books, but in my other post on here I partially covered how hopeless his fantasy is.
@@w8stral You've made your point - about power output - but using deprecatory terms such as 'pitiful' and 'fantasy' is both unnecessary, and ill-mannered.
@ianwalter62 I've only just come across this channel, but with a career lifetime in the design of gas turbine engines, industrial. marine and aero, I think the comments I've posted are relevant. However, I've tried to offer argued, constructive criticism based on my experience. I do so in some detail (although some may think I'm long-winded), not only politely to inform Dr Clarke, but also to educate and enlighten those of his viewers who haven't lived and breathed gas turbines for almost half-a-century.
American designers' potential use of freed tonnage - more "armor" generally, possibly including armoured flight decks on the Essex class (2-3" STS, deck only, the hanger sides are not boxed, and they might get more aviation store spaces low in the ship). Whatever is left goes to more light AAA mounts and ammunition lockers. Increasing speed by including more turbines is not really an immediate option, because (a) law of diminishing returns, and (b) they have too many treaty ship escorts on the 28-33 knot standard; if however the Fletchers arrive with a significant speed increase, maybe that starts the evolution from 33 knots to something higher. And perhaps the Alaskas get some decent underwater protection.
What do things look like if history changed the other way, for one reason or another we don't see a working jet engine from either Mr Whittle or the Germans before the end of WW2 what does a Korean War fought with super-props look like?
A decent diesel ethanol mix is available at the time and that would do, I think it's otherwise called oxygenated diesel, but I'm still awake because I'm coughing still not because my brain is functioning properly
@@DrAlexClarke Gas turbines are almost completely agnostic to the type of gas or liquid fuels. Heavy diesel and crude oil bunker oil of the 1920s is Okay then as it is now. -The main issue is that the fuel system pumps, flow sensors, flow control valves and atomizers work with the viscosity of liquid fuel being used. Preheating the oil to achieve the correct viscosity is the best way if a heavy diesel is used instead of light diesel or kerosene. That's what is done in large marine diesels along with starting and stopping on lighter fuels. -The German Jumo 004B turbojet used on the Me 262 was designed to run of a medium grade diesel fuel called K2 to to begin with for reasons of economy and safety (lower flammability). However some Me 262 missions were flown using crude oil impeller centrifuge refined only and preheated prior to the mission. (Germany had small amounts of its own crude oil in 1944/45. ) A reference for that is Antony Kay's "German jet engines and gas turbines 1932 to 1945." -So it might need a Graf Spey type refining plant on board to take on foreign bunker oil but I suspect the gas turbine is better than the diesel in this regard. -British success in the gas turbine is due to Sir Frank's invention of the fir tree root to anchor the turbine blade. British blades were cast and then had the fir tree roots machined in. German blades were cold drawn (stamped) over ten operations and anchored with a single eye bolt that provided inferior strain relief. This construction difference was likely more important than the alloy used. -Whitle's blades were made of Nimonic 80 which was 80% nickel, 19.9% chromium and 0.1% zirconium. It arose out of Nimonic 75 which had been developed for the exhaust valves and valve seats of aircraft engines. Nimoinc 80 was so much better for gas turbines when tested. -The Germans used an Krupp Alloy Called Tinidur that was only 30% nickel. They considered developing a 60% version as they knew nickel was key but they were on such severe nickel rations they never tried. Thousands of tons of nickel was used in the Armour of German tanks, battleships and subs. It wasn't any better than British Armour at stopping penetration but it had much less spalling which could be just as deadly. That's where German nickel went. -Thee Germans developed ceramic turbine blades and water cooled turbne blades in WW2 (as did the Italians) but never used them. In 1948 the Allies gave Siemens permission to develop a gas turbine that ran of blast furnace gas based on the Jumo 004 compressor. They used a ceramic turbine but this was troublesome so they switched to water cooled stainless steel. When the British gave the Germans nimonic this was abandoned. -These is no nimonic in 1920 but there is stellite and hastelloy which GE used in their turbochargers. These alloys were developed by an American waiter who wanted smudge resistant cutlery. He made his cutlery company into a multi billions dollar surgical instrument and refractory alloy company. -The British marine turbine engines worked because they used an exhaust heat generator. Exhaust heat is used to preheat the compressed air before combustion to recover energy.
No, the only way it might have happened would have been if steam turbine practice had been followed, which is what Brown Boveri in Switzerland did with their industrial gas turbine, widely recognised as the first successful industrial gas turbine. It went into service in 1938/39 and was finally shut down in 2002. Please see the more detailed comments that I have posted.
Yes, but not in the late 1930s context & not for a Royal Navy wanting to operate from existing carriers... it's a case of, not brilliant, but good enough
Thanks, Hi Praise for a student of military history since birth. English engineering would have handled that problem as they finally did hen pressed. I feel that it was only time and money and RollsRoyce that kept the Axial back Whittle knew that axials were the next step.@@DrAlexClarke
Your right, i got the same answer from Col LT Davis, my@@DrAlexClarkedads Squadron Commander. He was TDY EDWARDS AFB Flying and Modifying B-29s and B-50sto load, drop test supersonic Aircrafts.
@@USAACbrat Rolls-Royce didn't hold the axial flow engine back: the huge step change in technology did. To get a compressor consisting of several rows of blades and vanes to work efficiently and reliably was a much greater challenge than getting a single-stage centrifugal impeller and diffuser to work. It needed a lot more time, money, and engineers - not to say trial and error. I still recall a very apocryphal story from the early days of the development of the jet engine at Armstrong Siddeley, which I heard as an apprentice. A high-up from the management was visiting the test bed, to view an engine on test. He happened to ask the test site labourer (who did all the dirty work), "How many blades and vanes in this engine?" Quick as a flash, the answer came back, "Two bucketsful!" If anything, at the end of WWII, R-R neglected its centrifugal engines, such as the Nene and the Tay, in favour of trying to get an axial flow engine, the AJ.65, to work. Stanley Hooker, in his autobiography, 'Not Much of an Engineer', declares that it took R-R seven years to give the engine (which became the Avon) "a clean bill of health", whereas "we had made the Nene in as many months!" The real salvation of the Avon was the incorporation of the compressor aerodynamics of the Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire, which started life as the Metrovick F.9. This was the immediate and larger successor to the F.2/4 Beryl, the compressor aerodynamics of which originated in RAE's research compressors. At Metrovick, they did not understand why they had such a good compressor, only that they did. Axial compressor aerodynamics at the time was far from an exact science, and stage matching was little understood. Get the aerodynamics wrong, which was easy to do if you had only a limited understanding and, at worst, you had an engine that just would not start and run. At best, it might start, but its throttle response could be problematic, so that it would surge and flame out if the throttle was opened up with any rapidity. This was one the several problems with the German axial flow engines at the end of WWII: their throttle response was abysmal. Although they have often been described as "advanced" by those seduced by their appearance, they were actually inferior in terms of performance, when compared to Whittle's Power Jets W.1 engine of 1941. Admittedly they had more thrust, simply because they were larger engines: however, their compressors had lower pressure ratios, they had higher specific fuel consumptions, and lower thrust/weight ratios. And, of course, their reliability was was abysmal, with a life of no more than 30 hours, because of the shortage of nickel and cobalt for the manufacture of high temperature alloys. Finally, are you aware that, at the end of the war, Whittle was working on his LR.1 engine? This had an axial flow compressor, with a centrifugal last stage, and it had a geared three-stage fan, to give a bypass ratio of between 2:1 and 3:1. Regrettably, the project was cancelled, along with other advanced projects in the UK, such as the supersonic Miles M.52 research aircraft. Unfortunately, the country was broke after six years of war, and a lot of reconstruction work in the bombed cities was needed.
Getting a properly operational Meteor equivalent in 1940 would've taken FAR more than moving up the turbine development time-line. The basic principles of drag at speeds significantly less were barely being understood by that point historically and other unexpected aspects of high speed aerodynamics continued to plague even piston engined aircraft right through the end of the war. First discovering, then understanding, and finally fixing all the issues would've taken a simply massive amount of funding in both GB and the USA starting in 1930 or maybe 32 at the very latest. The Depression and prevailing political climate makes it all most unlikely. Personally given the scenario in this time-line the earliest i could see proper jet aircraft in combat service is spring of 43 or so.
A specially-prepared Meteor F.3, with Derwent engines, set an air speed record of 606 miles/hr in November 1945. It was, aerodynamically, basically the same airframe as the F.1 with Welland engines. The F.1 had a maximum speed of a little over 400 miles/hr, entered squadron service in July 1944, and was credited with downing 14 V.1 'Doodlebugs'. Had Whittle been able to run his first engine in 1934, rather than 1937, then it might have been possible for Meteors to be in service three years earlier, in 1941. It's also possible that the Gloster Pioneer (a production version of the E.28/39) could have been available in small numbers in the summer of 1940. In 1941, the E.28/39 with the Whittle/Power Jets W.1 engine was faster than a Spitfire or a Messerschmitt. With the equivalent of a Welland engine, and beefed up to carry a couple of 20mm cannon, it could have given the Luftwaffe a nasty surprise. Might it have been possible? Yes, I believe so - but it didn't happen. If only someone (how about John Nichol?) could be persuaded to write a 'what if' story, based on the RAF having a few squadrons of jet fighters in the Battle of Britain.
Is it a possibility that Germany still starts the war in 1939 with Poland because the perception that Britain and France are still weak but catching up due to jets/gas turbines (so grab Poland while they can)?
The Americans will have a faster Iowa with better armor and even more AA, At least one Montana that goes 30kts and the Essex class would be if not faster than at least better protected agains torpedos and they'd carry more planes. The Germans might get a gen 1 turbine but it would be in 39 and if not Bismarck, than Tirpitz might be a test unit that gets the new propulsion sysyem and be redesigned (the AA would still suck, because they lack dual purpose guns)
Every countries AAA/FLAK sucks until 1942 because no one has Proximity fuses. Everyone AAA sucks till 1941 and having DP guns has I think little to do with it. Bismark problem was primarily not enough 20mm guns which was fixed by replacing the twin C30 20mm guns by quad C38 and doubling the number of stations in Tiptiz. The 3.7cm gun had superb ballistics but its long cartridge mean it was semi automatic could not be converted to automatic easily due to the long cartridge. The German 10.5cm FLAK gun had much better range and ballistics than the US 5 inch DP and weight was 60% as much so not a whole let less. -The US had a poor 27mm 1.1 inch gun due to low rate of fire and no fire control and no 40mm boffors -The UK at least had good fire control for the 40mm pom pom and believe it or not air burst on a 40mm but the gun had poor ballistics. They even had type 285 radar. -The German 150mm secondary armament could fire FLAK rounds at 8 RPM up to 44 degrees so torpedo bombers could be engaged and bombers under 5000ft. The crappy thing about the 10.5cm mounts was they were unarmored like light mounts. -If you take a German ship and give them proximity fuse and replaced their 37mm naval guns with fast firing Luftwaffe 37mm guns you've got pretty good AAA. The 10.5cm guns were to be enclosed in the H39 ships.
That is the common standard people go to, the reality was a lot more complicated than that... am going to have to do a video at some point, it's a combination of their own readiness, perception of others, the financial situation tends to get overblown because the reality was the German leadership really didn't understand how bad of a situation they were getting into by changing over to a Command Economy... a large proportion of them fundamentally believed things wouldn't go wrong because they could order it right... some modern historians have got incredibly attached to it, especially considering the modern perception on economics, but I always prefer to say it's a factor in the decision making process, but far from the only factor and I'm not sure due to its prominence depending on context whether it should portrayed as a deciding factor rather than a critical factor, but that is a discussion for another video...
Partially, but Half of Poland was Prussia--> AKA German Military for HUNDREDS of years if not ~1000 years. To this day the population of northern Poland is VERY low as the German portion of the population was evicted after WW 1 and 2. It could be said that if the WWI treaty of Versai did not Butcher Prussia, WW2 would not have happened. Yes, Reich had gargantuan money problems as they had been printing since 1870 and the chickens were all coming home to roost. The cupboard was bare, but to think Poland was going to save them and make them $$$... uh, no, they were desperately poor. The $$$ angle was why they grabbed AUSTRIA. Checkyslovoakia. Poland was all about Prussia and FOOD--> Do remember Germany imported ~30% of their food and this was a MASSIVE problem due to the Nazi's shrinking markets theory.
i did not mention that the German declaration of war was actually the Beginning of the Patrician of Poland with Russia participating. Hitler and Stalin started the Second world.
#1 Excellent topic. Listened to it live until you went insane and proposed navalizing this and just laughed my ass off. =) But this gets into engineering and away from history, though with enough sleuthing in reading NACA papers and ASME periodicals etc one could piece this together. Here goes for why this(Sorry--> would not work or you must say WHY certain engineering hurdles could be moved forward) Prerequisites for a turbine are Understanding of the physics(This did NOT happen until the LATE 1930's with theoretical testing of compound contra rotating propellers as the "turbines" in warships at the time were SINGLE stage, no stator turbines. Lots of single stages piled on top of each other. This is one reason why the UK went with IMPELLER driven compressors(actually they accidentally stumbled upon the more efficient for small turbines option) and the Germans on a different path went with what we would call a turbine today with stators in its compressor. On top of the above and why you could NOT develop this in the 1930's.... ==> A) Extremely high content Nickel/Tungsten alloys--> Developed in early 30's. B) Tungsten Carbide cutters to CUT those nickel alloys(or just high grade stainless steels)--> Also developed to actually USE them in 1930's and C) High repeatable(key) precision machinery to produce the turbine blades and here is a MAJOR problem as prior naval turbines run at LOW RPM comparatively speaking while aviation turbines run at high RPM making any discrepancy due to assymetric balance problem massive. Low speed, LARGE turbine blades you can balance post production, but high speed blades balance post production?--> not at the time, not even until 1960's at which time CNC etc. So they would WEIGH blades and sort thousands of blades into "weight" categories and try to populate a blisk with correctly weighted blades opposite each other (no one had this tech and honestly did not even into the 1960's). No Nation in the 1930's had all of the above requirements. In fact, none had it in the 1940's. The only reason the USSR was able to make a turbine in the 1950's was one of the last idiotic lend lease machinery acquisitions were "state of the art" for its time tungsten carbine tooling from the USA. Without this tooling, and showing how to make it etc the cold war would have been a lot more cold for a lot longer. Your fantasy about gas powered turbines in Ships is uh, ludicrous from engineering perspective due to fuel efficiency and above ALL else, runtime. Early gas powered turbines were LUCKY to run into the 100 hour lifetime mark let alone 1000 hours... This alone would keep any gas turbine OUT of a warship at the couple thousand horsepower equivalent. Warships needs a hundred thousand horsepower + in the big boys ~50k Hp in the small fry. No way in Hell can LARGE gas turbines be produced back then. Approaching a couple hundred hours their power output was SEVERELY degraded(at best) as the materials in question could NOT withstand the high temp environment. A better power to weight option for peak power in a warship at the time would have been Diesel electric engines used in submarines(barely were reliable in the 1930's) except this would have required to carry another form of fuel onboard. Of course this gets to the Biggest challenge, combining power sources running at vastly different RPM's. This in essence requires monster efficiency destroying gear boxes at power levels we cannot get right even today in Helicopters, or you have to go with Generator --> Electric drive and power controls route, which stinks for cruise or have a hybrid system(possible). Even today neither route is exactly smooth sailing, and in 1930's? Uh... not a chance. They did not even combine engines in submarines at the time even though they would benefit the MOST from doing so and ran at same RPM. Went with diesel electric drive to combine power sources. So best gas turbine powered would be straight to electric generator and then have an electric Boost motor on the standard Steam turbine output shaft. Now this could be possible, but due to gas turbines being LOW power and piss poor runtime--> blowing themselves up... Not a chance. Now would the navy love such a high density power output device? Sure. Would they partialy fund R&D? Sure. But as soon as the horrific fuel efficiency numbers come back--> all funding would be cut.
I've only just come across Dr Clarke's channel, so I would invite you to read the comments that I've now posted. Whittle went for a centrifugal compressor in 1929 because he would have been familiar with the centrifugal impellers used in the superchargers of aero engines , as a result of his RAF engineering training - and, no doubt, his avid reading. From that reading, he was also probably aware of the state of axial flow compressors at the time. They were heavy industrial machines with relatively low efficiencies: the technology needed much more development. The centrifugal impeller was obviously a lightweight solution, the technology was accessible - and manufacturing was far easier Even so, he aimed for an efficiency beyond anything available at the time, which was one of Griffith's criticisms when he met Whittle in late 1929. Dr Griffith recognised the poor efficiency of the axial flow compressors of the time in the RAE internal report that he wrote in 1926. In this, he proposed a gas turbine aero engine driving a propeller - a turboprop. However, he had realised that the compressor blading needed to be designed in more line with the aerodynamics of an aircraft wing. Following this, RAE went on to do a lot of research work axial on flow compressors in the late 1930s (there was no "accidental stumbling"). In 1938, or thereabouts, RAE were working with Metrovick on a turboprop with an axial flow compressor. This work resulted in the Metrovick F.2/1 turbojet, which first ran in December 1941. And why the 'F' designation? Because it used RAE's research compressor, which was code named 'Freda' (I believe that the first one was named 'Anne'). Correct me if I'm wrong, but you appear to be suggesting that the steam turbines of the day did not comprise of successive rows of nozzles (I would call the nozzle guide vanes - NGVs) and rotor blades. In the 1890s, Parsons' very first steam turbine had successive rows of nozzles and blades: take a look at the photos you can easily find on the internet. And on the subject of heat-resistant alloys, even at the end of the 1920s, there were steel alloys good enough to make the turbine blades and discs for a gas turbine - albeit with a relatively short life. Whittle used Stayblade, as used in the steam turbines of the day, almost certainly because BTH at Rugby, a steam turbine manufacturer, was contracted to carry out the detail design of his engine. He went on to use Rex 78, which is still available, before Henry Wiggin came up with the first of their nickel-based Nimonic alloy range. If he had done some research, he would have come across KE965, an exhaust valve alloy, which was developed in the 1920s: it would have been superior to Stayblade. In conclusion, I agree with your conclusion - if only in principle. In the early 1940s, marine gas turbines based on the technology of the early aero gas turbines would have been impracticable. However, you have come to that conclusion through a flawed understanding of both the history and the relevant technologies.
@@grahamj9101 Not talking about compressor. Obviously had multi stage compressors using stators in the 19th century(Heck first oil powered turbine had this ). But even then, the ability to calculate compressor pressure ratio was not possible at the time. Some of those old guys had what? Upwards of 20 compressor stages and it was more rule of thumb guess than anything else. Wasn't really until theoretical aerodynamics in the late 30's were multi stage contra rotating rough calculations could be done. I believe NACA came out with a paper in 1938? Though maybe guys in Germany or UK had already figured it out and were daunted by the GARGANTUAN requirements for gargantuan matrix solving. Would require an immense amount of engineers to calculate each iteration and no one was throwing enough $$$$$ at the problem at something which was unproven.
@@DrAlexClarke If it gets to 3 weeks AND you are bringing up green and yellow crap, doctor and get antibiotics. I waited too long and developed my first ever dose of pneumonia. 1 star out of 5. Would not recommend and wouldn't want to go back. I needed a second course of antibiotics AND steroids...
Also given fearless and the combined ships (Leander etc) way after gas turbines were solid wouldn't a conservative RN have at best gone with a combined powerplant?
It's potential, but under this scenario the guide was maximising tonnage under treaty limits... I've already explained why I didn't go into this elsewhere, but the trouble is once you go Hybrid powerplants you then have to justify what they choose and why, and that itself depends upon whether they go electric drive or direct drive... in which case you are getting many extra butterflies & at a certain point instead of giving an alternate history where I keep as close to history as possible, so we can learn about the decisions they were making from how they might have been changed by a small differential factor, and instead I'm rebuilding the royal navy of the 1930s on my fantasy lines... so in this scenario I kept it simple just going straight swap of Steam Turbines to Gas Turbines... also made weight calculations so much easier
I’ve now found time to view the whole video while I’m house-sitting at the home of my son and family. I’ve tried to take it all in, but couldn’t at the one sitting, so I’ll respond by referring to a few notes, but I can’t cover everything. Firstly, I think you are totally unrealistic in terms of your timescales for the development of the Whittle engine. Your starting point of 1928 is wrong: his Cranwell thesis did not propose a gas turbine. It had the seeds of an idea, but they did not germinate until the following year, when he forwarded a proposal for a true propulsion gas turbine - a turbojet. I am now going to be a little more realistic, but still highly optimistic, and start by thinking in terms of someone, whether an individual such as Lady Houston, or a company, or the government, immediately taking up the ideas in his 1931 patent and financing him. However, it would have needed the RAF to release him, and he may never have got to Cambridge. But who would have taken this short (5ft 7in) working-class lad from Coventry seriously? Despite Cranwell, he would still have had more than a trace of his Coventry Kid accent (at 80, I know I still have some of the local accent). After all, in naval parlance, “he came up through the hawse pipe.” So, let’s assume that he did get adequate funding from, say, 1931. WU could have had its first run in 1933 and the equivalent of WU3 in 1935. W.1 could have been running by 1937 and, if an airframe had been designed in parallel, my vision is of a small aircraft, with no propeller and making a curious whistling noise, startling the crowds (and the authorities) at the 1937 Hendon Air Show. It would have been the 20th century equivalent of ‘Turbinia’ at the 1897 Jubilee Review of the Fleet. This could have resulted in rapid development of the engine and the airframe, so that an aircraft like the E.28/39, but with an uprated engine and a couple of 20mm cannon, might have been ready for the Battle of Britain, if only in relatively small numbers. The Gloster Pioneer, or a similar single-engined jet, could have decimated the Luftwaffe’s Bf109s in the summer of 1940, and their presence may even have delayed the Battle of Britain. The Meteor could have followed the PIoneer in 1941/42, but with accelerated development of both the Metrovick F.2 and DeHavilland H.1 Goblin, in parallel with the Whittle W.2, the Welland and the Derwent, it might have been powered by a pair any one of those engines. My money would have been on the F.2, as the government would, by then (I hope), have been actively encouraging diversity of jet engine design and production. The F.2 had the potential for more thrust than the centrifugal engines and was developed as the F.2/4 Beryl. The Meteor would have benefited from the extra thrust of the Beryl, had it gone into combat with the Me262 in 1942. The latter entered service in late 1944, but the appearance of the British jet fighters would surely have spurred development of both engines and aircraft in Germany. Nevertheless, despite having a more advanced airframe aerodynamically, the Me262 would have been inferior in a dogfight to a Meteor powered by better and more powerful axial flow engines. At the end of the war the Jumo 004B was grossly inferior to the British centrifugal engines of the time. This is my scenario for what might have been (but was still highly unlikely) for the development of the jet engine following Whittle’s 1931 patent. However, at the end of the war, typically they had overhaul lives of no more than 150 hrs. Their technology was no real basis for a marine gas turbine: considerable adaptation and development would be required. I’ve discussed this previously, but will add to it separately.
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
This was my introduction to your RUclips channel.
Bucking. Frilliant.
You have completely changes my thoughts on this time period and, what's more, the important of jet engines.
If ever I have access to a time machine, I will be very tempted to make this change.
Thank you.
Outstanding. An opinion. Loud and brave! Someone, Buy that man an IRN BRW.
In a ship displacing over 8000 tonnes the propulsion system takes up roughly the same volume within a hull whatever system you choose. It is just distributed differently.
The idea of GT powered fast battleships is exciting.
Greetings Dr Clarke!
I have only just come across your channel and, following a career lifetime in the design of gas turbine engines, industrial, marine and aero, together with an interest in the history of the gas turbine, I think that I can offer some relevant comments. I have yet to watch this video at length, but I promise that I will do so when I have time. In the meantime I will come up with a brief overview of the work of Griffith, Whittle, and others, which I will add as a separate comment.
Thanks for another engrossing video Dr Clarke. A question about the KGVs. Would the weight savings from gas turbine propulsion have been enough for a three quad turret main armament? I seem to recall reading the design of a twin B turret delayed construction by 12 months. If possible what would this have done for the ships performance and in service dates?
Thank you Dr C, very interesting! In the late 70's, the Howerds Way era, I worked for a yacht company whose boats were in the running for the starring role vessels in that series. Obviously this brought up a lot of comment within the company, and, as I am an engineer, I spoke with the designers about our chances of our boats forming the basis of the race models depicted in the series. Our conversations ended up being around the differences between a race and cruiser hull, oddly enough with similar, in percentage terms, speed increases. In order to atchieve the speed increase, our basic cruising vessel, with gentle sea keeping abilities would change completly and not be suitable for the weekend family sailor. My question is, how much would the increased speed available have altered the design of the hull, and what impact would this have had on the suitability of the various vessels, given their various duties, with regard to the stability of the gun plaform, the general sea keeping ability and so on?
honestly the conservative margins, i.e. +3kts probably wouldn't affect things too much, although I think the Abdiel class would be the most affected - however the RN again have a lot of facilities for hull design & testing, so would probably be happy with that as problem - i.e. oh our ships can be a bit faster... the main problem would be hull weight vs top weight with the lighter engines, hence my views on subdivision increasing... hope that helps
@@DrAlexClarke Thanks for the quick reply. According to our designer, in order to have an increase of 10%, the whole "feel" of the vessel would change, from what I was told, the actual sustainable top speed, is more dependent upon the design of the hull than the raw power available. I realise, of course, that we were talking of rag and stick vessels, so there were other factors to take into account, but surely the hull form would be a factor?
RN hulls have a certain amount of latitude designed into them - they are not quite as perfectly formed as yachts or similar, as such 3kts is ok, if they were going for more than there would probably be issues... 3kts with extra subdivision/i.e. hull strengthening, that will be fine.
Herewith my promised commentary.
In 1926, Dr A A Griffith wrote an internal RAE report proposing an aircraft gas turbine engine: however, it was not a jet engine, it was what we would now describe as an axial flow turboprop. He continued to espouse the axial flow turboprop principle into the 1930s, even to the extent of proposing an extremely complex machine with a contraflow arrangement. Griffith also visited Brown Boveri and Company in Switzerland in 1938, or thereabouts, to view their work on an industrial gas turbine. This was arguably the world’s first successful industrial machine. It ran for 63 years until it was finally shut down in 2002, following damage to the generator.
Following a hiatus in gas turbine work at the RAE in the early 1930s, Griffith and his team were working on axial flow compressors in the late 1930s and, in 1939, they successfully ran a ‘ground use only’ machine, known as the B.10. It was a heavyweight axial flow machine, which was far too heavy to fly. However, it was intended as a proof-of-concept engine and produced neither shaft nor jet power. In parallel, another machine, the D.11, was also constructed. This again was a heavyweight axial flow machine, but it had a free power turbine, with the turboprop principle in mind.
In 1939, Griffith left RAE for Rolls-Royce at Derby, with Hayne Constant continuing to head the gas turbine work at RAE. At about that time, Metropolitan-Vickers at Manchester were working with RAE on the design of a lightweight axial flow turboprop engine. Is it a coincidence that it rapidly metamorphosed into a turbojet at the end of 1939, following the successful run of the second rebuild of the Whittle/Power Jets WU engine in June of that year?
Returning to the events of 1929 and Griffith’s rejection of Whittle’s proposal, Griffith was certainly not objecting to the principle of an aircraft gas turbine: he was objecting to the principle of the turbojet, particularly one with a centrifugal compressor. He believed that its component efficiencies would be too low and that there would be insufficient energy in the exhaust to produce sufficient jet thrust. He continued to believe that only an axial flow turboprop would have the necessary component and propulsive efficiencies.
I must tell you that Whittle’s work on the jet engine would have been largely irrelevant in respect of marine propulsion, in the first instance because those first generation engines were far too small for anything bigger than a motor boat. I say this having been a member of the design team for the Marine Olympus, Marine Tyne and Marine Spey - and a passing involvement in the MT30 at the end of my career. Of more relevance was the work at RAE and Metropolitan-Vickers on axial flow machines: the Metrovick G.1 Gatric gas turbine, based on the Beryl aero engine, went to sea in 1947 in MGB 2009 - a big motor boat. Of even more relevance for larger vessels would have been BBC’s industrial gas turbine machine, which certainly demonstrated its reliability.
I have no doubt that the early jet engines would have been totally unsuitable for adaptation as marine engines. They had overhaul lives of hundreds of hours, even into the 1950s. A jet aircraft had to land after a few hours of flight at most, and an engine could be changed in a matter of hours. What use would that have been to the Royal Navy, who needed to stay at sea for days, even weeks at a time? For aero-derivative marine gas generators to become sufficiently reliable and have acceptable overhaul lives, much more experience and development was needed.
Even then, hard in-service experience, with which I was involved, showed that what had been a very reliable aero engine suffered when run continuously at ground/sea level conditions as a gas generator. In flight, it was in rarefied air and needed to produce much less thrust than at take-off, which greatly reduced aerodynamic loads throughout the engine. On the ground, even at a reduced maximum continuous rating, as compared to a take-off rating, the aerodynamic loads were much greater. Improved materials, wear resistant-coatings and other design changes were required to give acceptable lives and reliability.
These are my views in respect of the prospect of marine gas turbine propulsion, based on the early jet engines, in the 1940s: it was simply impracticable. I am posting this before having viewed the whole of your video: I will be interested to see how it compares with your view. However, I do also have some very definite views on what might have happened in 1940, had Whittle’s 1929 proposal been accepted and supported. Could we have had Gloster Pioneers (production versions of the E.28/39) decimating the Luftwaffe’s Bf109s over southern England?
And by the way, Whittle's 1928 thesis did not propose a jet engine as such: it could be described as a 'motorjet' machine. "The penny dropped" (as Whittle himself said) the following year, as a result of which his proposal for a true turbojet was forwarded to Griffith - and the rest is history, as they say.
Gas turbine ships rely heavily on their bunkers for ballast. Does RAS'ing take a leap in tech too in your alternative time line?
Live long and prosper. I come here when I want a 3hr lecture on sloops. Not much I can say about that .
As obsessed as the Admiralty was with power dense propulsion, why didn't they go with the high pressure boilers like the USN? I've heard they had the technology for the KGVs but haven't heard the explanation for why they decided to steer away.
because of training and implementation, they thought it would be quicker and easier to bring them into service if they went with the best of what they already used, rather than adding in something new...
The higher pressure saves ~10% in fuel... As for compactness and hull weight... It saves ~nothing as power requirements went up. Range of all ships also was continually increasing so, that fuel savings just went to more range and generally not tonnage saved.
Doesnt the QE class carrier have the equivilent of turbo electric drive with gas turbine using turbines for electric power and electric motors to drive the shafts?
Yes, the Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales have two Rolls-Royce MT30s driving generators, but they cruise on diesel-electric power.
Did AA Griffith ever apologise to Whittle for his egregious error? Things turned out very embarrassingly for him.
Griffin was heavily involved in the design of axial-flow turbojet engine designs - is there any evidence that he deliberately bombed Whittle's competing proposal?
Please see the commentary I posted a short while ago.
Perhaps I'm being charitable, but I don't think that Griffith saw Whittle's centrifugal turbojet proposal as competitive. He was so espoused to (Stanley Hooker described him as being "obsessed with") his axial flow turboprop, believing it to be the only solution that would provide the necessary component and propulsive efficiencies. Apparently, he did not share Whittle's vision of the turbojet being altogether superior for high speed flight at high altitude.
However, it took Metrovick, building on a substantial amount of government-funded prior research on axial flow compressors at RAE in the 1930s, several years to develop a reliable axial flow turbojet. This engine was, in actuality, a metamorphosis of the Griffith/RAE turboprop work. The first run of the Metrovick F.2/1 took place in December of 1941, with the flight standard engine powering a Meteor prototype in November 1943.
Whittle, on the other hand, initially with only a small amount of private venture capital from his backers, arrived at a practicable centrifugal flow turbojet, with the first run of his WU engine in April 1937. With some limited hand-to-mouth funding from the Air Ministry, he was able to give a successful demonstration run of the WU, in its second rebuild configuration, in June 1939. The flight standard W.1 engine, closely based on the WU, took to the air in the Gloster E.28/39 in April 1941.
Well run businesses understand the inefficiency of trying to be too efficient, the need for reserve capacity (at least when it comes to critical systems). They may run their factory with little stock of parts, adopting the 'just in time' supply model (after evaluating the risks - if they're competent). But they spend vast amounts of money on redundancy for their IT systems, because they know if those go down it's not just one factory or office affected but the entire corporation. IT budgets will be under pressure to cut costs, but not to the point of running at >95% capacity all the time 'for efficiency'.
The politicians we've had for over 40 years claim to be business minded and talk about running the country efficiently along business lines. But they haven't a clue - none who make it anywhere near the top have experience of how to actually run a successful large business. 'Efficiency' is simply code for making cuts - first budgets, then services and as an inevitable consequence lives.
They also have a divine belief utterly at odds with logic & reality that the private sector is 'more efficient' than the public. Even though they will be seeking to take as much money out of the system as profit. And any genuine efficiency savings (and there are plenty of those - especially the closer you get to the top and the politicians) could easily be made in situ. No need to pay the exorbitant 'profit tax' of giving public money to private companies to run services.
[commenting after ~20min]
What about a hybrid powerplant, either geared in or for separate screws, like the additional diesel engines on some German cruisers?
Jumping at a treaty breaking technology is one thing, but relying on new tech is also a gamble, so I'd expect the first jet classes to be built with a fallback system keeping them operational even if the jets prove unreliable.
Another thing, rather than saving on engine weight and space, wouldn't there be a usecase for just going faster, at least for so ships?
Also, wouldn't diesel and jets make sense to try?
Maybe you'll get there later, but I'll probably fall asleep rather than finish it tonight...
Honestly the reason I didn't go the hybrid route is a) the justification was Treaty busting, and that maximises that & b) then I'd have to add on another hour working through the options and explaining which the RN would go with, was tempted to put in COGAS for cruisers & above, Gas for destroyers & below, but to be honest if the RN invests enough money in this they might just go all out... I could also see a difference if they go for an electric vs. direct drive option, i.e., if the go electric, COGAD makes more sense, if they go direct drive COGAS makes more sense... and 3) if I cover every potential in one of these videos, it cuts down on the discussion in the comments & on the discord, and I know it's silly but I really enjoy watching and occasionally responding to those comments, so sometimes if I think it will be fine & complete without it I leave something out... on this occasion, it was hybrid powerplants as I felt the discussion would be interesting to watch
Unfortunately, if you start equipping MTBs with gas turbines you probably nix the Napier Deltic engine, and then we miss out on one of the best railway locomotive classes 😢
Please see the commentary I posted a short while ago.
The first gas turbine engine to go to sea in 1947 was the Metrovick G.1 Gatric engine: it was based on the F.2/4 Beryl turbojet engine, and powered MGB 2009. It was really an experimental installation, but did prove that marine gas turbine power was a practicable proposition. The Deltic engine would have been in no danger.
The first really practicable gas turbine powered vessels were the two Brave class boats, Brave Border and Brave Swordsman, which were commissioned in 1960. They had three Marine Proteus engines, giving the boats a maximum speed of 52 knots. Several other navies had similar vessels, and there may still be a preserved, seaworthy example in Sweden.
Herewith some further thoughts on the prospect of marine gas turbines in WWII, beginning with a quotation.
"The gas turbine was an old idea. Over the years many unsuccessful designs had been promoted by hopeful inventors. This background of failure generated a widespread prejudice against gas turbines, though a few heavy and inefficient machines were built to power factory machinery. Nevertheless, interest in gas turbines for the special needs of aircraft arose in several countries in the 1920s, for it was hoped that the continuous combustion in a gas turbine could give it power advantage over the conventional piston engine."
The above were the introductory words of a display in the Flight Gallery of the Science Museum, London. The wording originally credited both Griffith and Whittle as having made proposals for a gas turbine aero engine, without explaining that one had proposed a turboprop, while the other had proposed a turbojet. The display has recently been replaced, with the reference to Griffith removed. Ian Whittle, son of Sir Frank Whittle, had been objecting to the form of words since 2005 and, having made his acquaintance some years ago, I have been supporting him in his mission to have the wording changed.
As I’ve described elsewhere, the first successful industrial gas turbine was made by Brown Boveri and Company, Switzerland. It entered service in 1938/9, produced 4MW of electrical power (around 5,500HP) and was finally taken out of service in 2002. It has been restored and preserved, and is now on display in Birr, Switzerland. If you look for a photo and a cross-sectional diagram of the machine on the internet, I’m sure you will realise that it was a large, heavyweight machine, which owed absolutely nothing to jet engine technology. It was based on proven steam turbine design and construction practice - and 63 years of operation proved its reliability.
If gas turbines had been given serious consideration for naval marine applications in the 1930s, I have no doubt that they would have followed steam turbine practice. Why would any navy take the risk of doing otherwise? They would want a machine that could go to sea with at least the same levels of life and reliability as the steam turbines with which they were familiar. Having said this, I’m sure that they would have first needed to see a shore trials unit run for a few thousand hours before it went into a vessel.
But what about the size? I’ve been doing a bit of research into what powered what during the war. A Flower class corvette had a triple-expansion steam engine giving about 2,750HP, but could have done with twice that for a decent turn of speed. A Hunt class small destroyer had two steam turbines, giving a total of 19,000HP or so. I went for the Hunt class as HMS Atherstone was named after the hunt associated with my home town in the Midlands, and there’s an additional connection. After the war, Armstrong Siddeley used one steam turbine set from a Hunt class ship to power its compressor test facility (known as ‘Ten Thousand Test’), at the site where I served my apprenticeship.
So, to power a Hunt class destroyer, the equivalent of four BBC units would have been required or, preferably, two scaled-up equivalents. However, unlike the BBC unit, any equivalent marine engine would have required a free power turbine. That would, of course, have made the installation larger and a little more complex, and a big reduction gearbox would have been required, as with a steam turbine.
And what about putting gas turbines into a battleship? I believe HMS Hood’s steam turbines produced around 140,000HP. Relating this to the aero-derivative machines with which I was familiar, that’s the equivalent of six Marine Olympus TM3Bs, four of which powered the Invincible class carriers, or three MT30s, two of which power the current carriers. But those technologies were twenty-five years and fifty years into the future, respectively, for the wartime Royal Navy.
I am trying to envisage four heavyweight gas turbine sets, each giving 35,000HP. That’s not big for a modern heavyweight machine, where you can get one from GE producing 500,000HP. However, compared to the 5,500HP of the BBC machine in 1938, a 35,000HP machine would have been getting on for three times the size. Today’s Siemens SGT-600 industrial engine would fill the bill, but the 1940s equivalent would have been significantly larger than this machine.
Until now, I haven’t mentioned one obvious problem with the gas turbine: throttled back and off design, its efficiency reduces rapidly. This is why the Type 21s and Type 42s had two Marine Tynes and Two Marine Olympus engines, with the later Type 22s having two Marine Tynes and two Marine Speys, so that they could cruise efficiently on the two Tynes. I did hear a story from a retired RN captain of a Type 22 crossing the Atlantic on one Tyne to save fuel. He also told the story of the captains who water skied behind their Type 21s. However, with fuel efficiency in mind, the Type 23s were CODLAG, with the Tynes replaced by diesel-electrics for cruise.
So, if ever a gas turbine powered Royal Navy battleship had put to sea in the 1940s, which was extremely unlikely, I venture to suggest that she would have sailed slowly past Fort Blockhouse (where my son once had a room) with two steam turbines producing the power. Well, COSAG did come along in due course with the County class destroyers, which had four Metrovick G.6 gas turbines. Alternatively, and perhaps just as unlikely, she might have been CODAG and sailed past to the sound of two (or four) big diesel engines chugging away:
40 knot cruisers by 1940... there would be some very fierce language used in navies around the world. The perfidious albionese navy has done it to them again!
So hypothetical would gas turbines make major reconstruction of the R class battleships a viable option. Also would in your opinion a refit of us standard battleships that have turbo electric drive for a slightly faster speed be viable pre us involvement is ww2
Even today, gas turbines with their multi thousand hours runtime ability barely make grade in navy ships. An "engine" which lasts a hundred hours before massive power degradation is beyond HOPELESS, not to mention its fuel consumption is beyond pitiful even if we assume the Gas turbine is powering an electric generator--> ALA how submarines work in this time period as Gas turbines high RPM eliminates it as a viable option for direct drive. Not to mention the power output of these small gas turbines would be pitiful. His entire premise is pitiful from an engineering perspective. There is a reason no one tried testing gas turbines in ships until the 1960's as one off's. If you want more in depth engineering perspective it would be several books, but in my other post on here I partially covered how hopeless his fantasy is.
@@w8stral You've made your point - about power output - but using deprecatory terms such as 'pitiful' and 'fantasy' is both unnecessary, and ill-mannered.
Ah, the moon is made out of cheese guy; how dare you bring reality into my delusions; why you ill mannered cad!!! @@ianwalter62
@ianwalter62 I've only just come across this channel, but with a career lifetime in the design of gas turbine engines, industrial. marine and aero, I think the comments I've posted are relevant. However, I've tried to offer argued, constructive criticism based on my experience. I do so in some detail (although some may think I'm long-winded), not only politely to inform Dr Clarke, but also to educate and enlighten those of his viewers who haven't lived and breathed gas turbines for almost half-a-century.
American designers' potential use of freed tonnage - more "armor" generally, possibly including armoured flight decks on the Essex class (2-3" STS, deck only, the hanger sides are not boxed, and they might get more aviation store spaces low in the ship). Whatever is left goes to more light AAA mounts and ammunition lockers.
Increasing speed by including more turbines is not really an immediate option, because (a) law of diminishing returns, and (b) they have too many treaty ship escorts on the 28-33 knot standard; if however the Fletchers arrive with a significant speed increase, maybe that starts the evolution from 33 knots to something higher.
And perhaps the Alaskas get some decent underwater protection.
A most interesting video. I would love your views of the 1930's Leander class cruisers.
There are honestly a few videos I've done on them, this is the one from the year of the cruiser ruclips.net/video/VRRfgJlwlAg/видео.html
@@DrAlexClarke many thanks to you. Wishing you a happy new year 👍
You could have a Korea era air fleet in WW2
What do things look like if history changed the other way, for one reason or another we don't see a working jet engine from either Mr Whittle or the Germans before the end of WW2 what does a Korean War fought with super-props look like?
Btw has to be said if fitted to a MTB or tribal then would anyone realise if you had a turbine runaway? "Captain Jones seems quite keen to close"...
Honestly with those crews, no one would notice... but the gearing on the direct drive system might allow them to control that situation...
Don't gas trubines need relatively clean fuel? That could be a logistics issue delaying large scale adoption...
A decent diesel ethanol mix is available at the time and that would do, I think it's otherwise called oxygenated diesel, but I'm still awake because I'm coughing still not because my brain is functioning properly
@@DrAlexClarke Gas turbines are almost completely agnostic to the type of gas or liquid fuels. Heavy diesel and crude oil bunker oil of the 1920s is Okay then as it is now.
-The main issue is that the fuel system pumps, flow sensors, flow control valves and atomizers work with the viscosity of liquid fuel being used.
Preheating the oil to achieve the correct viscosity is the best way if a heavy diesel is used instead of light diesel or kerosene. That's what is done in large marine diesels along with starting and stopping on lighter fuels.
-The German Jumo 004B turbojet used on the Me 262 was designed to run of a medium grade diesel fuel called K2 to to begin with for reasons of economy and safety (lower flammability). However some Me 262 missions were flown using crude oil impeller centrifuge refined only and preheated prior to the mission. (Germany had small amounts of its own crude oil in 1944/45. ) A reference for that is Antony Kay's "German jet engines and gas turbines 1932 to 1945."
-So it might need a Graf Spey type refining plant on board to take on foreign bunker oil but I suspect the gas turbine is better than the diesel in this regard.
-British success in the gas turbine is due to Sir Frank's invention of the fir tree root to anchor the turbine blade. British blades were cast and then had the fir tree roots machined in. German blades were cold drawn (stamped) over ten operations and anchored with a single eye bolt that provided inferior strain relief. This construction difference was likely more important than the alloy used.
-Whitle's blades were made of Nimonic 80 which was 80% nickel, 19.9% chromium and 0.1% zirconium. It arose out of Nimonic 75 which had been developed for the exhaust valves and valve seats of aircraft engines. Nimoinc 80 was so much better for gas turbines when tested.
-The Germans used an Krupp Alloy Called Tinidur that was only 30% nickel. They considered developing a 60% version as they knew nickel was key but they were on such severe nickel rations they never tried. Thousands of tons of nickel was used in the Armour of German tanks, battleships and subs. It wasn't any better than British Armour at stopping penetration but it had much less spalling which could be just as deadly. That's where German nickel went.
-Thee Germans developed ceramic turbine blades and water cooled turbne blades in WW2 (as did the Italians) but never used them. In 1948 the Allies gave Siemens permission to develop a gas turbine that ran of blast furnace gas based on the Jumo 004 compressor. They used a ceramic turbine but this was troublesome so they switched to water cooled stainless steel. When the British gave the Germans nimonic this was abandoned.
-These is no nimonic in 1920 but there is stellite and hastelloy which GE used in their turbochargers. These alloys were developed by an American waiter who wanted smudge resistant cutlery. He made his cutlery company into a multi billions dollar surgical instrument and refractory alloy company.
-The British marine turbine engines worked because they used an exhaust heat generator. Exhaust heat is used to preheat the compressed air before combustion to recover energy.
So marine gas turbines before aerial ones? One wonders about how large the ship could be at that stage in the development process.
No, the only way it might have happened would have been if steam turbine practice had been followed, which is what Brown Boveri in Switzerland did with their industrial gas turbine, widely recognised as the first successful industrial gas turbine. It went into service in 1938/39 and was finally shut down in 2002. Please see the more detailed comments that I have posted.
Gen2 aircraft in the early 30'es ..the "lets build this one out of metal following the fabric fires which worry the pilots" generation. 😊
I never went through that gambling phase. I stink at cards. You have to win a little to be confident.
my grandfather was a good teacher... so I got to the winning, then the losing, then the winning again... he was a cool grandpa
Turbo Props are dead ends for fighter aircraft.
Yes, but not in the late 1930s context & not for a Royal Navy wanting to operate from existing carriers... it's a case of, not brilliant, but good enough
Thanks, Hi Praise for a student of military history since birth. English engineering would have handled that problem as they finally did hen pressed. I feel that it was only time and money and RollsRoyce that kept the Axial back Whittle knew that axials were the next step.@@DrAlexClarke
Your right, i got the same answer from Col LT Davis, my@@DrAlexClarkedads Squadron Commander. He was TDY EDWARDS AFB Flying and Modifying B-29s and B-50sto load, drop test supersonic Aircrafts.
@@USAACbrat Rolls-Royce didn't hold the axial flow engine back: the huge step change in technology did. To get a compressor consisting of several rows of blades and vanes to work efficiently and reliably was a much greater challenge than getting a single-stage centrifugal impeller and diffuser to work. It needed a lot more time, money, and engineers - not to say trial and error.
I still recall a very apocryphal story from the early days of the development of the jet engine at Armstrong Siddeley, which I heard as an apprentice. A high-up from the management was visiting the test bed, to view an engine on test. He happened to ask the test site labourer (who did all the dirty work), "How many blades and vanes in this engine?" Quick as a flash, the answer came back, "Two bucketsful!"
If anything, at the end of WWII, R-R neglected its centrifugal engines, such as the Nene and the Tay, in favour of trying to get an axial flow engine, the AJ.65, to work. Stanley Hooker, in his autobiography, 'Not Much of an Engineer', declares that it took R-R seven years to give the engine (which became the Avon) "a clean bill of health", whereas "we had made the Nene in as many months!"
The real salvation of the Avon was the incorporation of the compressor aerodynamics of the Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire, which started life as the Metrovick F.9. This was the immediate and larger successor to the F.2/4 Beryl, the compressor aerodynamics of which originated in RAE's research compressors. At Metrovick, they did not understand why they had such a good compressor, only that they did.
Axial compressor aerodynamics at the time was far from an exact science, and stage matching was little understood. Get the aerodynamics wrong, which was easy to do if you had only a limited understanding and, at worst, you had an engine that just would not start and run. At best, it might start, but its throttle response could be problematic, so that it would surge and flame out if the throttle was opened up with any rapidity.
This was one the several problems with the German axial flow engines at the end of WWII: their throttle response was abysmal. Although they have often been described as "advanced" by those seduced by their appearance, they were actually inferior in terms of performance, when compared to Whittle's Power Jets W.1 engine of 1941.
Admittedly they had more thrust, simply because they were larger engines: however, their compressors had lower pressure ratios, they had higher specific fuel consumptions, and lower thrust/weight ratios. And, of course, their reliability was was abysmal, with a life of no more than 30 hours, because of the shortage of nickel and cobalt for the manufacture of high temperature alloys.
Finally, are you aware that, at the end of the war, Whittle was working on his LR.1 engine? This had an axial flow compressor, with a centrifugal last stage, and it had a geared three-stage fan, to give a bypass ratio of between 2:1 and 3:1. Regrettably, the project was cancelled, along with other advanced projects in the UK, such as the supersonic Miles M.52 research aircraft. Unfortunately, the country was broke after six years of war, and a lot of reconstruction work in the bombed cities was needed.
Getting a properly operational Meteor equivalent in 1940 would've taken FAR more than moving up the turbine development time-line. The basic principles of drag at speeds significantly less were barely being understood by that point historically and other unexpected aspects of high speed aerodynamics continued to plague even piston engined aircraft right through the end of the war. First discovering, then understanding, and finally fixing all the issues would've taken a simply massive amount of funding in both GB and the USA starting in 1930 or maybe 32 at the very latest. The Depression and prevailing political climate makes it all most unlikely. Personally given the scenario in this time-line the earliest i could see proper jet aircraft in combat service is spring of 43 or so.
A specially-prepared Meteor F.3, with Derwent engines, set an air speed record of 606 miles/hr in November 1945. It was, aerodynamically, basically the same airframe as the F.1 with Welland engines.
The F.1 had a maximum speed of a little over 400 miles/hr, entered squadron service in July 1944, and was credited with downing 14 V.1 'Doodlebugs'. Had Whittle been able to run his first engine in 1934, rather than 1937, then it might have been possible for Meteors to be in service three years earlier, in 1941.
It's also possible that the Gloster Pioneer (a production version of the E.28/39) could have been available in small numbers in the summer of 1940. In 1941, the E.28/39 with the Whittle/Power Jets W.1 engine was faster than a Spitfire or a Messerschmitt. With the equivalent of a Welland engine, and beefed up to carry a couple of 20mm cannon, it could have given the Luftwaffe a nasty surprise.
Might it have been possible? Yes, I believe so - but it didn't happen. If only someone (how about John Nichol?) could be persuaded to write a 'what if' story, based on the RAF having a few squadrons of jet fighters in the Battle of Britain.
BZ Dr Clarke, just get well.
Is it a possibility that Germany still starts the war in 1939 with Poland because the perception that Britain and France are still weak but catching up due to jets/gas turbines (so grab Poland while they can)?
The germans were insolvent and did not expect England's to declair war.germany fails Without the cash captured in poland
The Americans will have a faster Iowa with better armor and even more AA, At least one Montana that goes 30kts and the Essex class would be if not faster than at least better protected agains torpedos and they'd carry more planes. The Germans might get a gen 1 turbine but it would be in 39 and if not Bismarck, than Tirpitz might be a test unit that gets the new propulsion sysyem and be redesigned (the AA would still suck, because they lack dual purpose guns)
Every countries AAA/FLAK sucks until 1942 because no one has Proximity fuses. Everyone AAA sucks till 1941 and having DP guns has I think little to do with it.
Bismark problem was primarily not enough 20mm guns which was fixed by replacing the twin C30 20mm guns by quad C38 and doubling the number of stations in Tiptiz. The 3.7cm gun had superb ballistics but its long cartridge mean it was semi automatic could not be converted to automatic easily due to the long cartridge. The German 10.5cm FLAK gun had much better range and ballistics than the US 5 inch DP and weight was 60% as much so not a whole let less.
-The US had a poor 27mm 1.1 inch gun due to low rate of fire and no fire control and no 40mm boffors
-The UK at least had good fire control for the 40mm pom pom and believe it or not air burst on a 40mm but the gun had poor ballistics. They even had type 285 radar.
-The German 150mm secondary armament could fire FLAK rounds at 8 RPM up to 44 degrees so torpedo bombers could be engaged and bombers under 5000ft. The crappy thing about the 10.5cm mounts was they were unarmored like light mounts.
-If you take a German ship and give them proximity fuse and replaced their 37mm naval guns with fast firing Luftwaffe 37mm guns you've got pretty good AAA.
The 10.5cm guns were to be enclosed in the H39 ships.
Germany declared war on Poland to cover the financial insecurity of the Reich.
That is the common standard people go to, the reality was a lot more complicated than that... am going to have to do a video at some point, it's a combination of their own readiness, perception of others, the financial situation tends to get overblown because the reality was the German leadership really didn't understand how bad of a situation they were getting into by changing over to a Command Economy... a large proportion of them fundamentally believed things wouldn't go wrong because they could order it right... some modern historians have got incredibly attached to it, especially considering the modern perception on economics, but I always prefer to say it's a factor in the decision making process, but far from the only factor and I'm not sure due to its prominence depending on context whether it should portrayed as a deciding factor rather than a critical factor, but that is a discussion for another video...
one of the many factors that make the war decision. Will be and interesting journey.@@DrAlexClarke
Partially, but Half of Poland was Prussia--> AKA German Military for HUNDREDS of years if not ~1000 years. To this day the population of northern Poland is VERY low as the German portion of the population was evicted after WW 1 and 2. It could be said that if the WWI treaty of Versai did not Butcher Prussia, WW2 would not have happened. Yes, Reich had gargantuan money problems as they had been printing since 1870 and the chickens were all coming home to roost. The cupboard was bare, but to think Poland was going to save them and make them $$$... uh, no, they were desperately poor. The $$$ angle was why they grabbed AUSTRIA. Checkyslovoakia. Poland was all about Prussia and FOOD--> Do remember Germany imported ~30% of their food and this was a MASSIVE problem due to the Nazi's shrinking markets theory.
i did not mention that the German declaration of war was actually the Beginning of the Patrician of Poland with Russia participating. Hitler and Stalin started the Second world.
when? Poland was larger than Russia and there was not even a Prussia @@w8stral
#1 Excellent topic. Listened to it live until you went insane and proposed navalizing this and just laughed my ass off. =) But this gets into engineering and away from history, though with enough sleuthing in reading NACA papers and ASME periodicals etc one could piece this together. Here goes for why this(Sorry--> would not work or you must say WHY certain engineering hurdles could be moved forward)
Prerequisites for a turbine are Understanding of the physics(This did NOT happen until the LATE 1930's with theoretical testing of compound contra rotating propellers as the "turbines" in warships at the time were SINGLE stage, no stator turbines. Lots of single stages piled on top of each other. This is one reason why the UK went with IMPELLER driven compressors(actually they accidentally stumbled upon the more efficient for small turbines option) and the Germans on a different path went with what we would call a turbine today with stators in its compressor. On top of the above and why you could NOT develop this in the 1930's.... ==> A) Extremely high content Nickel/Tungsten alloys--> Developed in early 30's. B) Tungsten Carbide cutters to CUT those nickel alloys(or just high grade stainless steels)--> Also developed to actually USE them in 1930's and C) High repeatable(key) precision machinery to produce the turbine blades and here is a MAJOR problem as prior naval turbines run at LOW RPM comparatively speaking while aviation turbines run at high RPM making any discrepancy due to assymetric balance problem massive. Low speed, LARGE turbine blades you can balance post production, but high speed blades balance post production?--> not at the time, not even until 1960's at which time CNC etc. So they would WEIGH blades and sort thousands of blades into "weight" categories and try to populate a blisk with correctly weighted blades opposite each other (no one had this tech and honestly did not even into the 1960's). No Nation in the 1930's had all of the above requirements. In fact, none had it in the 1940's. The only reason the USSR was able to make a turbine in the 1950's was one of the last idiotic lend lease machinery acquisitions were "state of the art" for its time tungsten carbine tooling from the USA. Without this tooling, and showing how to make it etc the cold war would have been a lot more cold for a lot longer.
Your fantasy about gas powered turbines in Ships is uh, ludicrous from engineering perspective due to fuel efficiency and above ALL else, runtime. Early gas powered turbines were LUCKY to run into the 100 hour lifetime mark let alone 1000 hours... This alone would keep any gas turbine OUT of a warship at the couple thousand horsepower equivalent. Warships needs a hundred thousand horsepower + in the big boys ~50k Hp in the small fry. No way in Hell can LARGE gas turbines be produced back then. Approaching a couple hundred hours their power output was SEVERELY degraded(at best) as the materials in question could NOT withstand the high temp environment. A better power to weight option for peak power in a warship at the time would have been Diesel electric engines used in submarines(barely were reliable in the 1930's) except this would have required to carry another form of fuel onboard. Of course this gets to the Biggest challenge, combining power sources running at vastly different RPM's. This in essence requires monster efficiency destroying gear boxes at power levels we cannot get right even today in Helicopters, or you have to go with Generator --> Electric drive and power controls route, which stinks for cruise or have a hybrid system(possible). Even today neither route is exactly smooth sailing, and in 1930's? Uh... not a chance. They did not even combine engines in submarines at the time even though they would benefit the MOST from doing so and ran at same RPM. Went with diesel electric drive to combine power sources. So best gas turbine powered would be straight to electric generator and then have an electric Boost motor on the standard Steam turbine output shaft. Now this could be possible, but due to gas turbines being LOW power and piss poor runtime--> blowing themselves up... Not a chance.
Now would the navy love such a high density power output device? Sure. Would they partialy fund R&D? Sure. But as soon as the horrific fuel efficiency numbers come back--> all funding would be cut.
I've only just come across Dr Clarke's channel, so I would invite you to read the comments that I've now posted.
Whittle went for a centrifugal compressor in 1929 because he would have been familiar with the centrifugal impellers used in the superchargers of aero engines , as a result of his RAF engineering training - and, no doubt, his avid reading. From that reading, he was also probably aware of the state of axial flow compressors at the time. They were heavy industrial machines with relatively low efficiencies: the technology needed much more development.
The centrifugal impeller was obviously a lightweight solution, the technology was accessible - and manufacturing was far easier Even so, he aimed for an efficiency beyond anything available at the time, which was one of Griffith's criticisms when he met Whittle in late 1929.
Dr Griffith recognised the poor efficiency of the axial flow compressors of the time in the RAE internal report that he wrote in 1926. In this, he proposed a gas turbine aero engine driving a propeller - a turboprop. However, he had realised that the compressor blading needed to be designed in more line with the aerodynamics of an aircraft wing. Following this, RAE went on to do a lot of research work axial on flow compressors in the late 1930s (there was no "accidental stumbling").
In 1938, or thereabouts, RAE were working with Metrovick on a turboprop with an axial flow compressor. This work resulted in the Metrovick F.2/1 turbojet, which first ran in December 1941. And why the 'F' designation? Because it used RAE's research compressor, which was code named 'Freda' (I believe that the first one was named 'Anne').
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you appear to be suggesting that the steam turbines of the day did not comprise of successive rows of nozzles (I would call the nozzle guide vanes - NGVs) and rotor blades. In the 1890s, Parsons' very first steam turbine had successive rows of nozzles and blades: take a look at the photos you can easily find on the internet.
And on the subject of heat-resistant alloys, even at the end of the 1920s, there were steel alloys good enough to make the turbine blades and discs for a gas turbine - albeit with a relatively short life. Whittle used Stayblade, as used in the steam turbines of the day, almost certainly because BTH at Rugby, a steam turbine manufacturer, was contracted to carry out the detail design of his engine. He went on to use Rex 78, which is still available, before Henry Wiggin came up with the first of their nickel-based Nimonic alloy range. If he had done some research, he would have come across KE965, an exhaust valve alloy, which was developed in the 1920s: it would have been superior to Stayblade.
In conclusion, I agree with your conclusion - if only in principle. In the early 1940s, marine gas turbines based on the technology of the early aero gas turbines would have been impracticable. However, you have come to that conclusion through a flawed understanding of both the history and the relevant technologies.
@@grahamj9101 Not talking about compressor. Obviously had multi stage compressors using stators in the 19th century(Heck first oil powered turbine had this ). But even then, the ability to calculate compressor pressure ratio was not possible at the time. Some of those old guys had what? Upwards of 20 compressor stages and it was more rule of thumb guess than anything else. Wasn't really until theoretical aerodynamics in the late 30's were multi stage contra rotating rough calculations could be done. I believe NACA came out with a paper in 1938? Though maybe guys in Germany or UK had already figured it out and were daunted by the GARGANTUAN requirements for gargantuan matrix solving. Would require an immense amount of engineers to calculate each iteration and no one was throwing enough $$$$$ at the problem at something which was unproven.
Wasn’t this supposed to be the slot for a live? I hope Dr Clarke’s mum is ok.
mum ok, I'm coughing like a seal who's developed a 90 a day habit
@@DrAlexClarke I’m liking for the good news about your mum.
@@DrAlexClarke If it gets to 3 weeks AND you are bringing up green and yellow crap, doctor and get antibiotics. I waited too long and developed my first ever dose of pneumonia. 1 star out of 5. Would not recommend and wouldn't want to go back. I needed a second course of antibiotics AND steroids...
had the first dose of antibiotics, they ran out monday and the cough is back with a vengence thursday... think I might need a second round
Also given fearless and the combined ships (Leander etc) way after gas turbines were solid wouldn't a conservative RN have at best gone with a combined powerplant?
It's potential, but under this scenario the guide was maximising tonnage under treaty limits... I've already explained why I didn't go into this elsewhere, but the trouble is once you go Hybrid powerplants you then have to justify what they choose and why, and that itself depends upon whether they go electric drive or direct drive... in which case you are getting many extra butterflies & at a certain point instead of giving an alternate history where I keep as close to history as possible, so we can learn about the decisions they were making from how they might have been changed by a small differential factor, and instead I'm rebuilding the royal navy of the 1930s on my fantasy lines... so in this scenario I kept it simple just going straight swap of Steam Turbines to Gas Turbines... also made weight calculations so much easier
Declaring someone detached from reality is your greatest insult. Hmm, you must be saying that a lot these days.
I’ve now found time to view the whole video while I’m house-sitting at the home of my son and family. I’ve tried to take it all in, but couldn’t at the one sitting, so I’ll respond by referring to a few notes, but I can’t cover everything.
Firstly, I think you are totally unrealistic in terms of your timescales for the development of the Whittle engine. Your starting point of 1928 is wrong: his Cranwell thesis did not propose a gas turbine. It had the seeds of an idea, but they did not germinate until the following year, when he forwarded a proposal for a true propulsion gas turbine - a turbojet.
I am now going to be a little more realistic, but still highly optimistic, and start by thinking in terms of someone, whether an individual such as Lady Houston, or a company, or the government, immediately taking up the ideas in his 1931 patent and financing him. However, it would have needed the RAF to release him, and he may never have got to Cambridge.
But who would have taken this short (5ft 7in) working-class lad from Coventry seriously? Despite Cranwell, he would still have had more than a trace of his Coventry Kid accent (at 80, I know I still have some of the local accent). After all, in naval parlance, “he came up through the hawse pipe.”
So, let’s assume that he did get adequate funding from, say, 1931. WU could have had its first run in 1933 and the equivalent of WU3 in 1935. W.1 could have been running by 1937 and, if an airframe had been designed in parallel, my vision is of a small aircraft, with no propeller and making a curious whistling noise, startling the crowds (and the authorities) at the 1937 Hendon Air Show. It would have been the 20th century equivalent of ‘Turbinia’ at the 1897 Jubilee Review of the Fleet.
This could have resulted in rapid development of the engine and the airframe, so that an aircraft like the E.28/39, but with an uprated engine and a couple of 20mm cannon, might have been ready for the Battle of Britain, if only in relatively small numbers. The Gloster Pioneer, or a similar single-engined jet, could have decimated the Luftwaffe’s Bf109s in the summer of 1940, and their presence may even have delayed the Battle of Britain.
The Meteor could have followed the PIoneer in 1941/42, but with accelerated development of both the Metrovick F.2 and DeHavilland H.1 Goblin, in parallel with the Whittle W.2, the Welland and the Derwent, it might have been powered by a pair any one of those engines. My money would have been on the F.2, as the government would, by then (I hope), have been actively encouraging diversity of jet engine design and production. The F.2 had the potential for more thrust than the centrifugal engines and was developed as the F.2/4 Beryl.
The Meteor would have benefited from the extra thrust of the Beryl, had it gone into combat with the Me262 in 1942. The latter entered service in late 1944, but the appearance of the British jet fighters would surely have spurred development of both engines and aircraft in Germany. Nevertheless, despite having a more advanced airframe aerodynamically, the Me262 would have been inferior in a dogfight to a Meteor powered by better and more powerful axial flow engines. At the end of the war the Jumo 004B was grossly inferior to the British centrifugal engines of the time.
This is my scenario for what might have been (but was still highly unlikely) for the development of the jet engine following Whittle’s 1931 patent. However, at the end of the war, typically they had overhaul lives of no more than 150 hrs. Their technology was no real basis for a marine gas turbine: considerable adaptation and development would be required. I’ve discussed this previously, but will add to it separately.