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FLIGHT International, 13 May 1971

The Gloster E.28/39 come into being purely

as a testbed for the Power Jets engines.
It was designed in consultation with that
firm and Aerodynamics Department, RAE
Farnborough, and was virtually the minimumsize
aeroplane
for
the
early
engines
(though the specification called for provision
to fit four 0.303 Browning machine guns and
2,000 rounds of ammunition). Two aircraft
were built, the second, piloted by John Grierson,
flying on March I, 1943, at Edgehill. (Coincidentally, the F.9/40 made its first flight
four days later at Cranwell, in the hands of
Michael Daunt.) The second E.28 was powered
by a Rover W.2B engine of 1,4501b design
thrust

BRITAIN'S FIRST JET .

massage produced by the Napier Sabre's 2,400 h.p. in the

cockpit of the Typhoon.
On one occasion at Edgehill I taxied out for a flight
and just as I was opening up the engine and had reached
13,000 r.p.m. the noise faded right out and the turbine
stopped. I had to get out fairly quickly and push my little
aeroplane off the runway out of the path of a student pilot
landing a Wellington. To begin with the failure was a
mystery but during a meeting at Bentham held to discuss
it, the makers of the fuel pump contended that it must
have been due to an air-lock caused by air bubbles becoming trapped in the inverted-flying compartment of the fuel
tank, a theory with which Power Jets did not agree and
which seemed to me most unlikely. Thus when the Ministry
chairman of the meeting declared that he accepted the
air-lock theory, I simply said "We are not prepared to fly
again until a more plausible explanation is forthcoming."
Patrick Johnson of Power Jets was delighted because he
shared my disagreement, and as a result of further tests
it was discovered that the failure had really been due to
dirt in the governor of the Iffield fuel pump. The cure for
this was a better standard of filtration, but in the meantime we flew with the governor disconnected.
In April the engine was re-rated by Rovers from 1,2001b
to 1,4001b thrust at 16,350 r.p.m., just as Rolls-Royce took
over responsibility for its production and development. On
the 17th of that month I had to ferry the aeroplane to
Hatfield on a very secret mission which turned out to be
a demonstration in front of Mr Churchill. For this, its
first cross-country flight, the E.28 was nominally to be
escorted by two squadron Spitfires and a Typhoon. My
compass had not been swung (primarily I suppose on
grounds of security) and I was nervous of losing myself
in the haze. Although I kept throttling back so that the
Typhoon was visible, I lost the Spitfires completely.
In those days Hatfield had only rough grass and no
runway and the available area was not very large. In trying
to slow down on the approach I did a slight side-slip which
blanketed the rudder with the result that I had to fight to
regain control within 100ft of the ground. The trouble was
due to the rather bulgy fuselage spoiling the airstream
over the rudder as soon as yaw was introduced. The
Spitfires dived over the aerodrome just after I had landed.
The next important programme was aimed at getting
the first E.28, W4041, to the greatest possible height.
It had been re-engined with a Power Jets W.2/500 engine
of 1,6201b thrust, and this brought the all-up weight to
4,1801b. I had to go into special training at the RAE
Physiological Laboratory at Farnborough and when they
tested me at first in the decompression chamber, I suffered

a bit from bends above 35,000ft although I had been to

40,000ft fairly comfortably in Hurricanes, which had heat
but not pressure. Because there was to be no pressurisation
in the E.28 cockpit, they fitted me with a pressure waistcoat consisting of a Mae West into which my oxygen
supply's exhaust was fed. This had the effect of partially
pressurising my lungs and was expected to increase by
4,000ft the altitude at which consciousness would be lost
with full oxygen, and I was successfully tested up to
46,000ft in the decompression chamber with this equipment. As an antidote to "bends", due to nitrogen bubbles
forming in the blood-stream and producing a pain like that
of acute rheumatism, the doctors advised me to preoxygenate myself by taking a liberal supply of oxygen
through a mask and jumping on and off a chair for
20min so as to saturate my blood-stream with oxygen just
before take-off.
In June during my early attempts to reach the ceiling of
the E.28 I encountered a number of problems. To begin
with, after carrying out fairly extended tests at 20,000ft
and descending into the circuit among the balloons at
Brockworth, I found to my dismay that on lowering the
undercarriage, the green light for the nose-wheel failed
to come on however hard I pumped. So I tried retracting
and lowering again several times, to the accompaniment of
much furious pumping, but all in vain and the low reading
of the fuel contents gauge indicated that I could not afford
to delay my landing much longer. So I had recourse to my
final life-line and pulled the plunger of the emergency air
system. Luckily this broke the ice which had evidently
been hindering the mechanism and I was delighted to see
the third green light come on at last.
On the next climb the ailerons became so stiff at 27,000ft
they could hardly be moved. This flight was therefore
abandoned and the trouble was found to be due to dirt
in the hinge ball-races of the ailerons, where trapped
globules of moisture duly froze at altitude. This was
exactly the same trouble which was to lead Farnborough to
lose the second E.28 on July 30, when the ailerons
jammed solid at 37,000ft and the pilot, Doug Davie, was
catapulted out through the canopy, though he fortunately
survived that time. He lost his goggles, a glove and his
oxygen mask, so that he only survived by sticking the tube
of his emergency oxygen supply in his mouth, but he
suffered extensive frostbite. If there had been better
technical collaboration, Farnborough would have been
forewarned of the danger of freezing ailerons on the E.28
in the light of Gloster's previous experience and solution
of the problem.
On the third flight, I was climbing at 34,500ft and the