Frank Whittle ran his WU engine for the first time 80 years ago - Curt Lewis

Frank Whittle and the invention of the jet engine: Six places to trace his genius

Frank Whittle triumphed despite indifference and adversity

It was, in many ways, a very British sort of achievement. When the turbine began to spin on the "WU" - the prototype jet engine developed by the Coventry-born engineer Frank Whittle - it was a moment which changed the world. Had you been passing through the byways of Rugby, in Warwickshire, 80 years ago today, you might even have heard it. A thrum of mechanics in sync, building and building, growing in intensity to become a roar; a giddy howl which would permanently alter the way we journey around our planet.

And yet it might so easily not have happened. Whittle's triumph - on April 12 1937 - was garnered in the face of official indifference and scientific doubt, and was only pulled off by a merest financial hair's breadth, with the Second World War crowding in on all sides.

Such is the modern ubiquity of an aircraft traversing the firmament that it is more than possible to forget the struggles of the genius who helped to put these miracles of motion in their lofty place. Here was a man who was obsessed with aviation from an early age, but failed his RAF medical in 1923 due to a lack of height and physique.


Whittle's achievements have long been recognised

Here was a visionary who began fomenting his design for a jet engine as early as 1927, and patented it in 1930, yet had to swim against the current after seeing his idea pooh-poohed by the UK's Air Ministry - which, upon seeing the blueprint in 1929, deemed it "impracticable."

Undeterred, Whittle took his own path. In January 1936, he founded a private company, Power Jets Ltd, with aeronautical engineer Rolf Dudley Williams and retired RAF officer James Collingwood Tinling. With £2,000 of funding from O.T. Falk & Partners - an investment bank which was known for taking risks - the trio began converting what had been decried as fantasy into reality.

That first blur of blades as the WU (Whittle Unit) screamed into life was followed by a series of leaps forward. The Air Ministry placed its first order for Whittle's brainwave in January 1940. The first jet-powered British plane took off from RAF Cranwell, Lincolnshire, on May 15 1941. The rest is so much history.

None of this occurred in isolation. The story of the jet engine can never be told without mentions of Maxime Guillaume, who secured a French patent for a jet engine with a gas turbine in 1921 (no prototype was ever produced as it was beyond the scope of existing technology), and of Hans Von Ohain, who beat Whittle to the punch by building the first fully operational jet engine in 1939 as Germany chased advantages in the global conflict.

The Frank Whittle Monument, Lutterworth

But it was Whittle who first conjured the improbable into whirring, purring operation. And if you want to trace his legacy (the pressure of his work wreaked havoc on his health, causing a nervous breakdown in 1940, although he lived to 89, his love of cigarettes claiming him in 1996) you can do so in more detail than via a glance at the sky. The following six locations all bear compelling witness to his persistence and endeavour.

Midland Air Museum

Located at Coventry Airport - in Baginton, in Whittle's native Warwickshire - this intriguing nugget of aviation ephemera shines a dedicated spotlight on one of the region's most celebrated sons. It plays host to the Sir Frank Whittle Jet Heritage Centre, which dissects Whittle's journey via photos, archive video footage and first-hand testimony.

The museum's aircraft collection includes a pair of Gloster Meteor jet-fighters - direct results of Whittle's labours, which were soaring into the skies above Britain as early as 1943. One of the museum's Meteors is the second oldest version of the plane still in existence. midlandairmuseum.co.uk

Lutterworth Museum

In 1938, the thrust of Power Jets Ltd's research shifted eight miles north to Lutterworth in Leicestershire. Seventy-nine years on, this market town celebrates the pioneering toil which went on in its pretty environs - not least at the Lutterworth Museum, which boasts a wealth of papers and documents from the era, including the (renewed) 1936 patent for Whittle's design, and a champagne bottle, signed by the great man, from a party held at RAF Cranwell on the evening of those first British jet flights.

The National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC

Just in case you overlook the town's link to such swashbuckling heritage, a roundabout on its outskirts (the junction of the A4303 and Rugby Road) repeats the point with a monument of a plane in take-off. lutterworthmuseum.com

Farnborough Air Sciences Trust Museum

Set up next to Farnborough Airfield in Hampshire, the FAST Museum is another guardian of Britain's contribution to modern aviation. It shelters two of Whittle's earliest engines, and takes an endearingly focused approach to the maths and science of flying, with a fully functioning demonstration wind tunnel. It also has exhibits on more modern facets of travels through the heavens - including the role of carbon fibre in 21st century aircraft. airsciences.org.uk

The Jet Age Museum

Pitched next to Gloucestershire Airport, just outside Gloucester, the Jet Age Museum is another piece of the UK's air-heritage jigsaw, directing a bright beam onto the area's role in the development of the jet engine. It was the Gloster Aircraft Company - which existed between 1917 and 1963 - which constructed the early Meteor planes that soared upwards, powered by Whittle's ingenuity (these would prove to be the only jet-fighters used by Allied forces during the Second World War).

Two of them are here - a Meteor T7 and a Meteor F8 - along with other makes and models from the firm's mould-breaking half-century. A replica of the Gloster E28/39 - Britain's first jet aircraft - is also visible inside. jetagemuseum.org

Science Museum, London

And the reason for the use of said replica Gloster E28/39 in Gloucestershire is that the original is 100 miles away in the Science Museum in London - alongside other ghosts of the past like the Vickers Vimy, a heavy British bomber which flew in the First World War. sciencemuseum.org.uk/

National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC

Seeing as Whittle's skill enabled trips between the UK and the USA (and indeed, everywhere else) to become so much quicker than they had ever been, it is only fair that he is saluted in America's capital city. The National Air and Space Museum - part of the excellent Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC - is host to a Whittle W.1X engine. It sits in the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall with other fundamental fragments of the jump to high altitude - such as Spirit of St Louis, the aircraft with which Charles Lindbergh, foreshadowing Whittle, managed the first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic, in May 1927. airandspace.si.edu