Engines

Bristol Mercury

The earliest of the aeroplane engines currently on display at Jet Age Museum is the Bristol Mercury 9 cylinder supercharged piston radial used to power the Gloster Gladiator.

This engine was recovered from the Norwegian crash site of the Museum’s RAF Gladiator, shot down in 1940. This biplane came down on Lille Haugefell Mountain above the Arctic Circle.

The engine was donated to the museum by the Norwegian Government and has since been refurbished by the Rolls Royce Heritage Trust.

The Bristol Mercury engine was used from 1926 to 1945 and was the first British aero engine approved for use with variable pitch propellers. 20,700 Bristol Mercury engines were built and powered 43 aircraft types including the Gloster Gauntlet and Gladiator and Bristol Blenheim twin engine bomber.

Rolls-Royce RB-23 Welland

This was Britain’s first mass production jet engine, developed from Sir Frank Whittle’s W2B/23C design. A total of 167 Welland engines were built before being replaced by the more powerful and reliable Derwent.

There were 20 Welland powered Gloster Meteor Mark 1s produced before the introduction of the Derwent powered Meteor Mark IIIs.

Rolls-Royce RB-37 Derwent

Jet Age Museum’s Rolls-Royce Derwent is a Mk.8, sectioned and on a stand complete with jet pipe. It was given to the museum by North Gloucestershire Technical College. Previously it had been one of two powering Gloster’s private venture Reaper ground attack aircraft.

The Derwent was essentially an improved version of the Rolls-Royce Welland, itself a renamed version of Frank Whittle’s Power Jets W.2B. Rolls Royce inherited the design from Rover when they took over their jet engine development in 1943. The performance over the original design was somewhat improved, reliability dramatically, making the Derwent the chosen engine for the Gloster Meteor and many other post-World War II British jet designs.

The basic Derwent design was also used to produce a larger 5,000 lbf (22.2 kN) thrust engine known as the Rolls-Royce Nene. Development of the Nene continued in a scaled-down version specifically for use on the Meteor.

Several Derwents and Nenes were sold to the Soviet Union, causing a major political row, as it was the most powerful production-turbojet in the world at the time. The Soviets promptly reverse engineered the Derwent V and produced their own unlicensed version, the Klimov RD-500. The Mk.V was also used on the Canadian Avro Jetliner, but this was never put into production.

On 7 November 1945, a Meteor powered by the Derwent V set a world air speed record of 606 mph (975 km/h). In 1977, a Derwent Mark 8 engine powered Richard Noble’s Thrust 1 land speed record car.

Armstrong-Siddeley Sapphire

Two Armstrong-Siddeley Sapphire Sa.7R jet engines powered Jet Age Museum’s Gloster Javelin FAW9.
Produced in the 1950s, the Armstrong-Siddeley Sapphire axial flow engine also powered early versions of the Hawker Hunter and Handley-Page Victor and every mark of Gloster Javelin. They were manufactured in Gloucestershire at the Armstrong Siddeley factory at Brockworth.

The Sapphire was considered as either the main or back-up engine for most British jet aircraft designs of the late 1940s and early 1950s. In service it proved to be robust and reliable. Its main competitor was the Rolls-Royce Avon. The Sapphire evolved through a number of iterations from the ASSa.2 to the ASSa.7, seen at Jet Age Museum. Later versions of the Sapphire were equipped with reheat to restore lost performance at high altitude due to Gloster Javelins carrying the new de Havilland Firestreak air-to-air missiles.

Over 12,000 Sapphires were produced under licence in the US by Wright Aeronautical where it was known as the J65. The Wright J65 powered the Martin B-57, Republic F-84, Douglas A-4 and two prototypes of the Lockheed Starfighter.

Rolls-Royce Spey

The Hawker-Siddeley Trident was the world’s first three-engine jet airliner, serving with British European Airways, then British Airways, from 1964 until the mid-1980s. It was powered by three rear-mounted Rolls-Royce RB163 Spey engines as currently seen at Jet Age Museum. The Spey engine also powered such British aircraft as the Blackburn Buccaneer, Hawker-Siddeley Nimrod and BAC 1-11.

The Spey is an example of a what is called a turbofan engine where the basic jet engine drives an additional fan at the front, increasing efficiency. Virtually all of today’s jet engines are turbofans, some with very large diameter fans as seen on most airliners.

It is on loan from the Aeroplane Collection.