Jet Man

He set about engaging the support of the RAE engineering establishment with a characteristic fearlessness. Any neutral observe might have expected this to be a protracted business, on several counts. Not yet out of his twenties, Whittle’s youth was conspicuous for a start. Those at Cambridge and at the RAE soon to emerge as the dramatis personae of his diaries were mostly of the same generation as his professor, Melvill Jones. Several of them had come together as colleagues in the early expansion of the RAE’s precursor, the Royal Aircraft Factory, and had built on that wartime experience to assume leading roles in Whitehall and Oxbridge colleges through the 1920s. They were the leading lights of the aeronautical world before Apprentice Boy 364365 had even begun to working his way up the ranks. And here was a second dimension to the challenges facing Whittle. His peers in the establishment were almost all scions of upper-middle-class families, privileged alumni of the great public schools of England. In the profoundly class-conscious society of Britain in the 1930s, Whittle’s humble background was hardly disguised by a brief albeit glittering flying career. Rumours of his courage as a test pilot and reports of his distinction as an undergraduate only added to his reputation as a curious phenomenon – a former Cranwell Boy, obsessed with an intriguing but most unlikely ambition. Many were still intensely sceptical of the jet idea but no longer quite as dismissive as they had been in the past. David Pye, the Deputy Director of Scientific Research at the Air Ministry, captured their slight bemusement perfectly in a cagey note of December 1935: ‘I wish you every success in your bold venture outside the limits of designs which have hitherto been built, and shall be very interested to hear how matters progress.’⁴

Faced with Rover’s ineptitude on the one hand and Rolls-Royce’s ready support on the other, Whittle supposed the obvious solution would be evident to all.