5 The Jet Engine and the Rocket: Whittle, Goddard, and NASA

Before World War II, experts believed that a jet engine to power an airplane would never be practical. A British air force officer, Frank Whittle, believed otherwise and proposed the idea in 1929, only to be ignored. But in 1936, with new foreign threats on the horizon, the British Royal Air Force gave Whittle some support to develop his idea. By 1939 he had a working jet engine, and two years later he had a jet airplane. During World War II, German engineers also produced jet airplanes, but jet aircraft did not play a significant role on either side during the war. Afterward, however, they quickly replaced propeller engines on combat aircraft. During the 1950s, passenger airplanes began to use jet engines for civilian air travel, and the result was a dramatic shift of passengers from rail and sea to air for travel over long distances.