The Nene was a complete redesign, rather than a scaled-up Rolls-Royce Derwent,[1] with a design target of 5,000 lbf (22 kN), making it the most powerful engine of its era.

Hooker, Adrian Lombard, Pearson and Morley designed a new engine, the B.41 later called the Nene, rather than scaling up the Derwent.

Other design advances included nine new low pressure-drop/high efficiency combustion chambers developed by Lucas and a small impeller for rear bearing and turbine disc cooling.

A number of snags delayed the run until nearly midnight, when with almost the entire day and night shift staff watching, an attempt was made to start the engine.

To the frustration of everyone with a vested interest in it starting the engine refused to light - positioning the igniter was a trial-and-error affair at the time.

The larger diameter of the Nene combustion chambers found this to be a problem, and the first-run needed to ignite with a flame rather than the spark energy that was considered sufficient at that time.

For Hooker they were a worrying mechanical problem which he did not want so they were not fitted when the Derwent entered service, although the turbine had to run 90 degC hotter to give the take-off thrust of 2,000 lb.

It was during the design of the Nene that Rolls decided to give their engines numbers as well as names, with the Welland and Derwent keeping their original Rover models, B/23 and B/26.

Early airborne tests of the Nene were undertaken in an Avro Lancastrian operated by Rolls-Royce from their Hucknall airfield.

On 7 November 1945, the first official air speed record by a jet aircraft was set by a Meteor F.3 of 606 miles per hour (975 km/h) powered by the scaled-down Nene.

The Nene doubled the thrust of the earlier generation engines, with early versions providing about 5,000 lbf (22.2 kN), but remained generally similar in most ways.

This should have suggested that it would be widely used in various designs, but the Gloster Meteor proved so successful with its Derwents that the Air Ministry felt there was no pressing need to improve upon it.

A total of twenty-five Nenes were sold to the Soviet Union as a gesture of goodwill - with reservation to not use for military purposes - with the agreement of Stafford Cripps.