High Performance Turbine Engines

Abstract

“Thunder driven, they clanged ……'thwart a heaven Pldshy with flying lightnings round the spurn o’ their feet”Francis Thompson(1859–1907)If it implied anything in the context of high performance turbine engines, the mutilated quotation from “The Hound of Heaven” might conjure up a vision of afterburning turbojets, or turbo-ramjets, propelling second or third generation supersonic transports at very great heights. This would be a misleading picture, and it will probably emerge that the quotation has little to do with what follows, as this is largely concerned with subsonic flight—on which I believe the economic future of aviation will depend for many years.