The race for the jet engine
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 12 July 2021
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Using eyewitness recordings from the BBC archive we hear from the pioneers of the jet engine, Sir Frank Whittle and Hans von Ohain, about the struggle to develop a revolutionary new engine in the 1930s. An invention which would change the world. Photo: Sir Frank Whittle (1907-1996) is pictured here with the Whittle WV engine at the Science Museum in London c 1988 (Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:40.0 | Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Alex Last with more first-hand |
| 0:46.7 | accounts of events that shaped our world and today using the BBC archive we look at the story of an invention that has changed the lives of all of us |
| 0:56.8 | the invention of the jet engine. |
| 1:01.2 | Well I just come down to do my usual spot of gardening after tea. |
| 1:05.0 | We're going along merrily and heard the whistling noise. |
| 1:09.0 | Couldn't think what it was. |
| 1:11.0 | Looked up and saw a plane coming. In May 1941 during the Second World War, |
| 1:17.2 | a top secret new aircraft appeared in the skies over the English countryside |
| 1:21.7 | it was unlike anything people had seen before and that was because of the engine. |
| 1:27.0 | We was used to seeing airplanes with propellers and this one particular is no propeller. |
| 1:35.0 | One officer was overheard asking another one |
| 1:38.0 | how the hell does that thing work John and he very aerially replied |
| 1:42.0 | oh it's easy old boy it just sucks itself along like a vacuum cleaner. |
| 1:46.0 | When it got overhead I noticed I wasn't a propeller. |
| 1:50.0 | Why down tools and ran in the house to tell everybody I'd seen an airplane without a propeller. |
| 1:55.0 | Of course nobody believed me. |
... |
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