Comments for Thrust Vector

Comment on About by Jakob

Jakob — Fri, 31 May 2013 21:53:39 +0000

Many thanks for your kind words, Terry. It’s been a while since I spoke to Nick – my new arrivals have been keeping me busy! – but I’ll have to have a chat with him about this.

Comment on About by Terry Burnett

Terry Burnett — Wed, 29 May 2013 12:25:01 +0000

Jakob,
I have read your thesis and it is in my opinion worthy of publication. No one has been brave enough to address the MV Gas Turbine development story due to the complexity of unravelling the archive material. I found myself reading the thesis as I would a book. I have spoken with Nick who has a couple of ideas for a publisher if copyright allows.
I would wish to see a high quality publication and I can personally supply you with high quality photography.
As an ‘MV’ employee who worked in the research divison which evolved from the early Gas Turbine Division many thanks for producing such a fascinating read.

Regards

Terry

Comment on The Royal Navy, steam turbine plant, and engineering cultures by Duncan

Duncan — Fri, 24 May 2013 22:23:43 +0000

The Warspite and Vanguard data is from ‘British Battleships’ by Raven and Roberts and the Iowa class data is from USS New Jersey’s trials as reported here:
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a215701.pdf
It is pretty significant that Vanguard could match Iowa’s double reduction 650psi/850f power plant in fuel efficiency with her 400psi/700f single reduction turbine plant.

Comment on The Royal Navy, steam turbine plant, and engineering cultures by Jakob

Jakob — Fri, 24 May 2013 21:18:07 +0000

Thanks for this; could I ask where you got the fuel consumption numbers from? The YE47a project report did mention the Kriegsmarine’s steam engineering, and evaluated it as far inferior to the RN’s, but the conclusions were that the RN’s wartime plant was inferior to the USN’s – though this was possibly on average; I don’t recall any mention of eg Warspite’s upgraded plant.

Comment on The Royal Navy, steam turbine plant, and engineering cultures by Duncan

Duncan — Wed, 22 May 2013 21:01:00 +0000

In 1937 HMS Warspite’s 3 year reconstruction was completed. She re-entered service with a 400psi/700f steam plant, that achieved better efficiency (.748/lb/SHP/hr) than any other naval power plant in the world. In 1941 USS Washington, equipped with a state of the art, USN high pressure power plant could not achieve even .8 lbs/shp/hr. In 1945 HMS Vanguard did trials with her improved 400psi/700f steam plant, that achieved equal efficiency (.63/lb/SHP/hr) with the USN’s latest Iowa class fast battleships. The early USN high pressure plants were inefficient and could not match the best that the RN had in service. By the early 1940s the USN had taken the lead but this was primarily because RN designs were frozen when war broke out while the USN had another 2 years to continue to perfect their designs. However, if the comparison is made against the other world’s navies, it would be seen that the RN was ahead of all the others in terms of efficiency and reliability especially so over the Kriegsmarine’s latest high pressure steam plants which proved to be notoriously unreliable and inefficient despite their word leading steam temperatures and pressures.

Comment on Power Jets as Start-up by Our economic future: Other. | The Yorkshire Ranter

Our economic future: Other. | The Yorkshire Ranter — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 19:24:32 +0000

[...] Jakob Whitfield’s awesome blog has a case in point. When Frank Whittle was looking for technical partners to work on the jet engine, he found them all over the UK; Firth Vickers in Sheffield forged the main turbine, High Duty Alloys Ltd. of Slough the compressor, and although most of the people he asked thought it was impossible, a Scottish firm he found at the British Industries Fair took on making the combustion chamber. [...]

Comment on Phew… by Chris Williams

Chris Williams — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 18:58:45 +0000

Well done! Hope the hangover is not too killing.

Comment on The Royal Navy, steam turbine plant, and engineering cultures by Jakob

Jakob — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 20:40:31 +0000

In the absence of comparative evidence, I’d be a little leery of ascribing unique failings to the UK aircraft industry; much as I enjoyed Hamilton-Paterson’s book, it seemed to me to be comparing the UK to a yardstick of perfection, rather than to any other existing industry. That said, there may be something in it insofar as much of the British aircraft industry was run by designer-entrepeneurs in a fairly autocratic fashion until the mergers of the 1960s (I’m thinking of eg. Handley Page, de Havilland, Camm). Unfortunately I’m not aware of any socio-historical studies of UK aeronautical engineering even at the chief designer level; this is something I think would be greatly worthwhile, but unfortunately I’d have to find someone willing to fund me for a few years in order to do it…

It is also important to reiterate that British industry was by no means technically conservative as a whole; even within the Admiralty propulsion engineering seems to have been unusually staid. This was something I should perhaps have mentioned above; RN gunnery, signals, and torpedo specialists were executive officers, and so had a stronger voice on the naval staff. Whatever the failings of interwar RN weapons procurement (for instance, British high-angle anti-aircraft fire control is often – debatably – mentioned as a particular weakness) these were not so much the result of technical backwardness as of inaccurate strategic assumptions about the nature of the threats to be faced.

Comment on The Royal Navy, steam turbine plant, and engineering cultures by Urban Garlic

Urban Garlic — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 14:44:57 +0000

The social phenomenon you describe here, of technical talent having low formal status, is echoed in James Hamilton-Paterson’s “Empire of the Skies”, which is about the decline of British aircraft development in the post-WW2 era. According to (my recollection of) Hamilton-Paterson, there was an issue with “gentleman aircaft designers” being unwilling to listen to feedback from test pilots, who they regarded as mere vehicle operators. This was a contributing factor in relatively high operational cost and low readiness of British-built aircraft in the RAF.

I don’t have the background to really assess Hamilton-Paterson’s claim, but it’s interesting to me to see the echo of it in your post here.

Comment on Update by Jakob

Jakob — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 14:11:02 +0000

I’ll see what I can do; though for a real expert I’d recommend Engel’s ‘Cold War at 30,000 Feet’ – most of my understanding of that story has come from there anyway…