[2][3] Without Air Ministry support, he and two retired RAF servicemen formed Power Jets Ltd to build his engine with assistance from the firm of British Thomson-Houston.

Official interest was forthcoming following this success, with contracts being placed to develop further engines, but the continuing stress seriously affected Whittle's health, eventually resulting in a nervous breakdown in 1940.

Being an ex-apprentice amongst a majority of ex-public schoolboys, life as an officer cadet was not easy for him, but he nevertheless excelled in the courses and went solo in 1927 after only 13.5 hours’ instruction, quickly progressing to the Bristol Fighter and gaining a reputation for daredevil low flying and aerobatics.

[9] A requirement of the course was that each student had to produce a thesis for graduation: Whittle decided to write his on potential aircraft design developments, notably flight at high altitudes and speeds over 500 mph (800 km/h).

[11] He ranked second in his class in academics, won the Andy Fellowes Memorial Prize for Aeronautical Sciences for his thesis, and was described as an "exceptional to above average" pilot.

After the second incident an enraged Flight Lieutenant Harold W. Raeburn said furiously, "Why don't you take all my bloody aeroplanes, make a heap of them in the middle of the aerodrome and set fire to them – it's quicker!

The paper went on to describe how the increased efficiency of these sorts of compressors and turbines would allow a jet engine to be produced, although he felt the idea was impractical, and instead suggested using the power as a turboprop.

After pointing out an error in one of Whittle's calculations, Griffith went on to comment that the centrifugal design would be too large for aircraft use and that using the jet directly for power would be rather inefficient.

[13] Then, in 1931, he was posted to the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment at Felixstowe as an armament officer and test pilot of seaplanes, where he continued to publicise his idea.

According to John Golley, "The paper contained example calculations which showed the big increase in efficiency which could be obtained with the gas turbine at great height due to the beneficial effects of low air temperature.

[36] The Air Ministry still saw little immediate value in the effort (they regarded it as long-range research[37] and set up work on an axial flow turbine at the RAE with Hayne Constant in 1937[38]), and having no production facilities of its own, Power Jets entered into an agreement with steam turbine specialists British Thomson-Houston (BTH) to build an experimental engine facility at a BTH factory in Rugby, Warwickshire.

[5][40] However, by 1936, Germany had also started working on jet engines (Herbert A. Wagner at Junkers and Hans von Ohain at Heinkel) and, although they too had difficulty overcoming conservatism, the German Ministry of Aviation (Reichsluftfahrtministerium) was more supportive than their British counterpart.

[42] In Spain, air-force pilot and engineer Virgilio Leret Ruiz had been granted a patent for a jet engine in March 1935, and Republican president Manuel Azaña arranged for initial construction at the Hispano-Suiza aircraft factory in Madrid in 1936, but Leret was executed months later by Francoist Moroccan troops after commanding the defence of his seaplane base near Melilla at the onset of the Spanish Civil War.

His plans were hidden from the Francoists and secretly handed to the British embassy in Madrid a few years later when his wife, Carlota O'Neill, was released from prison.

Because of the hazardous nature of the work being carried out, development was moved largely from Rugby to BTH's lightly used Ladywood foundry at nearby Lutterworth in Leicestershire in 1938.

Whittle's smoking increased to three packs a day and he suffered from various stress-related ailments such as frequent severe headaches, indigestion, insomnia, anxiety, eczema and heart palpitations,[55] while his weight dropped to nine stone (126 lb / 57 kg).

One of the members of the team was the Director of Scientific Research, David Randall Pye, who walked out of the demonstration utterly convinced of the importance of the project.

In April, the Air Ministry issued contracts for W.2 production lines with a capacity of up to 3,000 engines a month in 1942, asking BTH, Vauxhall and the Rover Company to join.

[61] On 19 July 1940, Power Jets abandoned effort to vaporize fuel, and adopted the controlled atomising burner for the combustion chamber, developed by Isaac Lubbock of Asiatic Petroleum Company (a joint venture of Shell and Royal Dutch) In the words of Whittle, "the introduction of the Shell system may be said to mark the point where combustion ceased to be an obstacle to development."

[6] The definitive W.1 of 850 lbf (3.8 kN) thrust ran on 12 April 1941, and on 15 May the W.1-powered E.28/39 took off from Cranwell at 7:40 pm, flying for 17 minutes and reaching a maximum speed of around 340 mph (545 km/h).

Success of the design was now evident, and in 1941, Rolls-Royce, Hawker Siddeley, the Bristol Aeroplane Company, and de Havilland became interested in gas turbine aircraft propulsion.

[78] When Rolls-Royce became involved, Ray Dorey, the manager of the company's Flight Centre at Hucknall Airfield on the north side of Nottingham, had a Whittle W.2B engine installed in the rear of a Vickers Wellington bomber.

According to Whittle, "The first attempt at the turbofan proper, ie having the fan ahead of and supercharging the core engine, was the LR1 intended as the power plant of a four-engined bomber for operations in the Pacific.

[87] Whittle's work had caused a minor revolution within the British engine manufacturing industry and, even before the E.28/39 flew, most companies had set up their own research efforts.

Armstrong Siddeley also developed a more complex axial-flow design with an engineer called Heppner,[88] the ASX but reversed Vickers' thinking and later modified it into a turboprop instead, the Python.

[88] During a demonstration of the E.28/39 to Winston Churchill in April 1943, Whittle proposed to Stafford Cripps, Minister of Aircraft Production, that all jet development be nationalised.

In 1946, Whittle accepted a post as Technical Advisor on Engine Design and Production to Controller of Supplies (Air); was made a Commander of the US Legion of Merit; and was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1947.

[2][99] During a lecture tour in the US, Whittle again broke down and retired from the RAF on medical grounds on 26 August 1948, leaving with the rank of air commodore.

[2][100] He joined BOAC as a technical advisor on aircraft gas turbines and travelled extensively over the next few years, viewing jet engine developments in the United States, Canada, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

The part-time post enabled him to write a textbook entitled Gas turbine aero-thermodynamics: with special reference to aircraft propulsion, published in 1981.