Johanna Weber

Her remaining family, comprising her mother and sister, were in need of financial support, so she sought employment in the armaments industry.

They teamed up, with Weber doing the theoretical development and wind tunnel testing, and Küchemann setting the direction of their research based on his consultation with manufacturers.

[1] In 1946, the British Air Ministry specified a medium-range jet propelled bomber capable of carrying a nuclear weapon.

Weber assisted with the calculations, and incorporated further design improvements including the engine air inputs based on the work she had done with Küchemann during the war.

In the 1950s, she developed a simultaneous treatment of all the features of a wing (thickness, twist, sweepback, camber) to predict the air pressure distribution over it.

The Vickers aircraft team then solved the inverse problem - that of determining the wing shape that best suited a required pressure distribution.

In 1955, she showed that a thin delta wing with a high angle of attack could generate sufficient lift to provide the take-off and landing capability, while simultaneously enabling efficient supersonic performance.

Küchemann then advocated this wing configuration with the UK Government, resulting in the support for a Mach 2 airliner by the Supersonic Transport Advisory Committee (STAC) in 1956.

[1] In 1961, a prototype aircraft, the Handley Page HP.115, was built to test the low speed performance of the slender delta wing.

In particular, she analysed the conditions under which methods addressing airflows slower than the speed of sound continued to be applicable at supercritical levels.

Her refinement of existing theories, which were based on incompressible flows, helped automate the computations to render exact, rather than approximate, solutions.

[1] Weber retired in 1975 at the grade of Senior Principal Scientific Officer, and continued to be retained by the RAE as a consultant.

She found it difficult to obtain a mortgage, as banks and building societies tended not to lend to single women for home purchases at the time.