Jet pioneers – gloster and the birth of the jet age

On the aerodynamics of the Gloster E28/39 – a historical perspective

“…A series of meetings took place in the autumn of 1939 between Carter and the Air Ministry, including senior personnel from the RAE, with the object of defining the design requirements to the point at which a final Specification and a contract could be formulated. Much of the limited material that has survived about the early interactions between the parties has been summarised by Kershaw (8) . Among other historical detail, this shows how the Company came to be the one invited to submit the first proposals for an airframe to carry the Whittle engine.…”

“…Firstly, two possible Preliminary layouts were put up, both with an all-up weight of only 2,800lb and span of 27ft. These have been illustrated by Kershaw from contemporary drawings (8) . One utilised a short fuselage, with the propulsive jet discharging below a boom extending from behind the cockpit canopy to carry the empennage.…”

“…But at the low air temperatures around the tropopause, where the speed of sound fell to about 660mph, the E28 was expected from the beginning to approach its critical Mach number in level flight. And The shape chosen for the fuselage can be recovered by scaling from the surviving Gloster drawings (8) . It was certainly the simplest possible -the basic profile resembles that of an axisymmetric streamlined body, truncated at the nose, to form the pitot-type air intake, and at the tail for the nozzle of the propulsive jet.…”

“…There is a departure towards the tail, where an enlarged diameter would have been necessary to accommodate the internal duct for the jet. Since Lock and others from the NPL are known to have been in close contact with the Gloster team during the early stages of the design (8) , it thus seems very probable that the profile of the EC section chosen for the wing was also the model for the E28 fuselage shape.…”

“…The Hurricane had first flown with a metal-skinned wing only in April 1939 (13) . Surviving Gloster drawings and photographs show that the construction of the E28 essentially prefigured that of the generations of jet fighters that would follow (8) . The fuselage was an all-metal monocoque, with a stringer-stabilised stressed skin, flush-riveted over frames and longerons.…”