The Race to Break the Sound Barrier

“I think we were all so full of energy during the war, and then we tried to turn it off like a tap, but of course that doesn’t work, the adrenaline’s still there, ticking away all the time. It’s best to do something about it.”

- Harold Lindsay-Jones (Alfred Molina), Close to the Enemy

The end of the war thrust Britain, the Allies and the Soviets straight into an arms race to develop the fastest jet fighter. Flying at supersonic speed, breaking the sound barrier, was the ultimate objective. It was as important to all three nations as the space race was to prove ten years later. 

In 1942, the British Air Ministry recognised its negligence in not investing in Frank Whittle’s innovation in jet engine technology when they contracted Miles Aircraft to build a research aircraft under top secret conditions. The plane was required to travel at the ambitious speed of 1,000mph during level flight. Miles Aircraft met the request with a design for the M.52, which incorporated a jet engine designed by Frank Whittle and fitted with an afterburner to increase thrust.

In 1944, design work was considered 90% complete and later that year, the Air Ministry signed an agreement with the United States to exchange high-speed research and data. Bell Aircraft, the company developing the Bell X-1 (the M.52’s rival in the U.S.) was given access to the drawings and research on the British M.52, but the U.S. reneged on the agreement and no data was forthcoming in return.

By the end of the war the British prototype may have been ready to start flight testing within a year, however, the Labour Party was elected in 1945 defeating the conservative Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The new Labour government instituted funding cuts to the defence sector given that the war was now won. As a consequence the Air Ministry cancelled the M.52 in early 1946 and controversially changed the project to a series of unmanned rocket-powered aircraft - missiles.

One of the reasons often cited for this decision was captured German data on high-speed aerodynamics that indicated swept wing designs were superior in supersonic flight. Alas, this information was proved by the Americans to be wrong when they broke the sound barrier in October 1947 with the Bell X-1, a fixed wing aircraft. Its design was very similar to the British M.52. 
The UK government were severely criticised by the press for its decision to cancel their own fixed wing aircraft which may well have beaten the Americans in the supersonic air race.

John Derry was the first British pilot to break the sound barrier in September 1948. David Lean’s 1952 hit film The Sound Barrier captured on film some of Derry’s flying feats and celebrated the fictional British attempts to break the sound barrier. Chuck Yeager who attended the British premiere of the film wrote in his autobiography “When the lights came up I realized that people seated around me thought they had watched a true story.” He turned to a fellow American and exclaimed, “Hey, we broke the sound barrier, not the damned British! And I’m the guy who did it!!”

August Diehl and Vinette Robinson testing the jet engine in Close to the Enemy

Miles Aircraft's M.52 supersonic jet using engine designed by Frank Whittle

Callum and Frank Whittle, the Jet Plane Man

Before the story starts in Close to the Enemy Callum (played by Jim Sturgess) has worked with Frank Whittle, the inventor of the jet engine. As a very young man, Callum had seen how Whittle was frustrated in developing his invention by the indifference shown by the Air Ministry. Callum therefore knows at first hand the devastating price Britain paid for this extraordinary missed chance.

In 1929, Frank Whittle, a commissioned officer of 22, felt reasonably confident of making a convincing case for a concept of his own,  a potential revolution in aviation technology that could put Britain years ahead of its likely enemies. He was a jet engine pioneer who developed the initial idea of the jet engine using a gas turbine to produce a propelling jet. The Air Ministry rejected Whittle’s design as totally impractical and carried on ordering traditional planes with basic propellers. Whittle was bitterly disappointed at this rejection. However, despite having the door slammed in his face, he was urged by RAF colleagues to apply for a patent which he filed on January 16, 1930.
In October 1932, when the patent was granted, full specifications were published around the world and German diplomats in London wasted no time in ordering copies of the patent. Whittle’s patent expired in 1935 because the Air Ministry refused to pay for its renewal, and he couldn’t afford to do so at £5.

In 1936 in Germany, Herbert Wagner and Hans von Ohain independently and in secret began development of their own turbojet proposals. The British Air Ministry only realised as late as 1939 that Whittle’s design was feasible, at which point the German Air Force had been developing designs and testing for three years.

The first British jet engine propelled plane few into combat as late as 1944.
The continuing stress caused by all the obstacles Whittle had encountered caused him to have a nervous breakdown in the same year.

In the end, the jet engine played no significant role in the war. By the time jets were in operational use it was too little, too late. Hans von Ohain later said, “If the British experts had had the vision to back Whittle, World War II would probably never have happened. Hitler would have doubted the Luftwaffe’s ability to win.”

Jim Sturgess plays Callum Ferguson in Poliakoff's Close to the Enemy on BBC Two (2016)

Frank Whittle, jet engineer. 

The jet engine from Close to the Enemy (2016)