This is a real oddity, and I still can’t wrap my head around it. In 1910, a Romanian named Henri Coandă built and flew the world’s first jet aircraft. Yes, 1910! That’s two whole decades before Frank Whittle. And less than a decade after the Wright brothers!
Caveats: when I say “jet”, I mean “thermojet” — it was powered by an internal combustion engine, not a gas turbine as with a turbojet, which is what most people are talking about when they say “jet”. But a thermojet is still a jet: it works on the reactive principle, by combusting compressed air and fuel and exhausting the gas at high velocity, which imparts momentum to the aircraft in the opposite (ie forward) direction.
And when I say “flew”, I mean “crashed and burned”. After exhibiting his aeroplane at a Paris aeronautical exhibition (where the accompanying photographs were presumably taken), Coandă was testing the engine on the ground at Issy-les-Moulineaux on 16 December 1910. It turned out to be more powerful than he expected, and the aircraft took off briefly — how briefly is not clear — and then crashed. Coandă was not a pilot and was lucky to escape with only minor injuries, especially given the flames streaming from the engine; his aeroplane caught fire upon impact.
But the jet engine was not the only innovative feature of this remarkable aeroplane. Consider the wings: there were only one-and-a-half (ie, a sesquiplane rather than a biplane); they were partly of metal construction; and there were what sound like slats on the leading edge of the upper wing — which also stored the fuel! This was all too much, apparently; although he went on to a successful career designing aircraft (for Bristol, among others), Coandă couldn’t get anyone to take interest in his novel design.
Was this a missed opportunity? Probably not, I’d say. Assuming that the thermojet propulsion did make the Coandă-1910 potentially faster than propeller-driven aircraft (opinions seem to vary — some argue that a thermojet would actually be less efficient), then this was a solution to a problem that nobody was yet aware of. Speed and maneuverability were not highly prized by the military at this time — stability was, for ease of observation (and maybe bombing) of ground forces. Also, airframes were still very flimsy — wood and wire — and were not up to the stresses that powerful thermojets would have imposed on them. Both of these circumstances had changed by the 1930s. Perhaps most importantly, the possibilities of “conventional” aircraft had obviously not yet been exhausted. There was no need to take risks with such an unfamiliar technology.
But, I still have this vision of swarms of Coandă-1917 jet fighters screaming into the sky over London to rip the heart out of the incoming waves of Gotha bombers …
Image sources: Centre for Telecommunications and Information Engineering, Monash University; Forţele Aeriene Române.
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The engine seems to be essentially a piston engine and prop in a pipe – I think there would be a goodish gain in aerodynamic efficiency, but the real difference in performance between jet and piston comes from the fact that a turbine is the most efficient prime mover – this is why turboprop propulsion is a good idea, even using the turbine to spin a prop beats the hell out of a piston engine.
Chuck in the advantage of only having one moving part, and you’ll see why this design lags a true jet.
Interestingly enough, the pulse-jet (as in the V1) *had* been invented then – it’s just never been very efficient. It would have been a far better candidate for a WW1 jet. though. The real limiting factor on gas turbines was metallurgy – everyone had been aware that a gas turbine would be a good idea for years, but the science of high temperature alloys was lagging. Frank Whittle was convinced this was really because nobody had tried to do a gas turbine yet…which turned out to be the truth.
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Hmmm, well I was about to say that it’s not just a propellor in a tube – at least according to all the online sources I could find. Eg, from the Monash site linked to in the post:
The “air-reactive engine”, invented and built for the first time by Henri Coanda, composed of a piston-engine with four cylinders, cooled with water; it developed 50 HP (Horse-Power) at 1000 rotations/minute. This piston-engine was connected to a rod which rotated the rotation multiplier; the movement was transmitted to the compressor which gained a rotation speed of 4000 rot./min.. In front of the compressor was placed the obturator – a device very similar to that of a photo-camera; this device could be controlled by the pilot such that the quantity of air that entered the compressor could be regulated. The air entered the burning rooms, (that had a ring-like section and were placed on both sides of the fuselage), from which, through some tubes, burned gases of the engine were evacuated and the propulsion force was generated.
This seems to describe the combustion of a fuel-air mixture, which would provide much more thrust than just a jet of compressed air would.
But, most of the descriptions on the net seem to be drawn from the same source (a post to a Romanian mailing list – although it does list further sources). Now, I’ve had a look in my Gibbs-Smith and here’s what he has to say:
it was equipped with a reaction propulsion unit consisting of a 50-h.p. Clerget engine driving a large ducted fan in front of it, the latter enclosed in a cowling which covered the nose of the machine and part of the engine: the fan was a simple air-fan driving back the air to form the propulsive ‘jet’.
Charles H. Gibbs-Smith, Aviation: An Historical Survey from its Origins to the End of World War II (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1985), 156.
This sounds like merely a jet of air! So who is right? It might be that Gibbs-Smith is missing something here, as he says the Coandă-1910 was ‘inevitably earth-bound’, which suggests to me that he was not aware of Coandă’s claim to have flown it briefly. But going against Gibbs-Smith is a tough call …
So now I don’t know!
PS Interesting about the pulsejet, I didn’t realise it was around so early.
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Absolutely fasccinating. I had no idea that there was jet research, let alone actual attempts, happening that early.
Thanks for a very good read, and this information. I will be reading more of your site now that I have found it.
Again, thanks for this enlightening information.
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I heard of this technology on Modern Marvels on the History channel. I was shocked, and longed for more info. I am thrilled that someone took the time to research this technology to assist the rest of us. Thank you for your time and effort. Great read!
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From what I picked up researching this many years ago Coanda started with just a ducted fan blowing cold air and when this failed to generate enough force for take off further added the use of buring petrol (gasolene) which did get him off the ground enough to hit a tree! This type of engine with an internal combustion driven compressor) was effectively a forerunner of the WW2 Italian attempts to produce a jet (the prototype of which did fly). The Japanes also designed a suicide bomber using a similar engine.
All attempts to use the pulse jey as a practical propulsion for a manned aircraft failed (with the possible exception of the 1945 Riechenberg suicide aircraft which was merely a piloted V1) mainly because of the extreme vibration created by this engine. The Germans did build an emergency fighter using two pulse jets but soon abandoned the jets and converted the aircraft into suicide gliders (not deployed). In attempt to boost the performance of the P51D Mustang (to meet the threat of the new jet fighters) the Americans fitted one with pulse jets, one on each wing tip, again vibration caused the abandonment of the project. Putting pulsejets on an aircraft with WW1 construction standards would have been a disaster
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Yes, I agree. And as I said in my post, there was just no need for jet propulsion at the time. Interesting about Coandă’s improvisation … it sounds less like foresight than the lack of it!
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colanda’s engine compressed air and then fuel was injected into the compressed air stream in tubes along the side of the aircraft providing ~220 lbs of thrust
see g harry stine “the coanda effect” analog magazine july 1984
pgs 62-75“….when operating , the compressor sucks in air and compresses it inside the large cylinderical cowling. the engine’s exhaust is routed into this compressed air where it’s enriched by a spray of raw gasolien and then ignited. the resulting hot high-speed gases are then ducted to the rear out of two asbestos-lined jet pipe, one on each side of the molded plywood fuselage… it produced a static thrust od 220 pounds….”
ming
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Thanks!
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There is a full-size replica of this machine on display in the main terminal building of Romania’s Bucharest airport, in which country it and its inventor’s work are quite well-known and valued.
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Thanks, I think I’ve seen a photo of that somewhere. It’d be very interesting if somebody tried to build a flying replica …
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