Word: jetted
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Next Moment, Whoom! To watch* a jet engine spring into life is to feel that power. Dimly visible inside is the turbine, like a small windmill with close-set vanes. When the starting motor whines, the turbine spins. A tainted breeze blows through the exhaust vent in the tail, followed by a thin grey fog of atomized kerosene. Deep in the engine a single sparkplug buzzes. A spot of fire dances in a circle behind the turbine. Next moment, with a hollow whoom, a great yellow flame leaps out. It cuts back to a faint blue cone, a cone that...
...test stand, the little monster is not impressive. It has no coolly symmetrical propeller, no phalanx of cylinderheads, none of the hard geometrical grace of the conventional aircraft engine. Yet the unprepossessing turbojet engine has thrown the air designers into ecstatic confusion: nobody yet knows how fast the jet will enable man to fly, but the old speed ceilings are off. In their less guarded moments, sober designers talk of speeds so high that aircraft will glow like meteors...
...coming of the turbojet does not mean that the engine in use since the first days of the Wright brothers (pistons and propellers) is done for. It will be a long time, if ever, before that old stand-by disappears; it still has the edge over jets for many purposes, including long-range bombers. But where the power range of the old engine stops, the power of the jet begins. An air revolution is beginning...
Second Lieut. Felix ("Doc") Blanchard, blockbusting "Mr. Inside" of West Point's great wartime football teams, was busy concentrating on his profession. Learning to fly jet fighters at Williams Field, Ariz., he tried on a crash helmet, just for a moment struck a pose reminiscent of old times...
...heart ailment; in Lake Winola, Pa. As head of the world's greatest aeronautical research agency (serving U.S. plane builders and the armed forces), Dr. Lewis fathered major experimental laboratories at Langley Field. Va., Cleveland, and Moffett Field, Calif., guided a spate of new developments (in propellers, jet propulsion, wind tunnels, etc.), including revolutionary wing designs which cut "profile drag" (the main hindrance to flight efficiency) by about...