With the exception of state supported expansion and generous funding in Hitler’s Germany, for much of the 1930s, aircraft manufacturers elsewhere in the United States, Britain and France were small, and ran on tight budgets in the midst of the Great Depression. 

Even so, it was also one of the most creative moments in aircraft engine design, which set the stage for the post-war boom in commercial jet airliners, which continues to this day, and a series of quantal improvements in military aircraft performance over the same period. 

The single most important technical development to have a major impact in commercial and military aviation after the war was the development of turbine jet engines.

They offered better high-altitude performance and higher speeds compared to standard inline engines and radial engines of the interwar and Second World War eras.  

Engineers in Germany and Britain recognized as early as the mid-1920s that they would have to develop the turbine engine, which offered better performance at higher altitudes and higher speeds.  

The design of the jet engine in the U.K. was pioneered by Frank Whittle, whose initial efforts were stifled by official conservatism and worries about siphoning resources away from conventional high-performance fighters, desperately needed during the Second World War.

Like Britain, Germany’s early development of turbine jet engines was met by official indifference and skepticism.

The first flight of a jet powered aircraft, the He 178, took place in August 1939 using a Heinkel hydrogen-fueled jet engine. Two years later in April 1941, the more mature and practical Heinkel He 280 twin-engine jet prototype fighter took off on its first flight.

The latter had a projected top speed of 559 miles per hour, much faster than the fastest conventional fighters of any nation in the Second World War.

And no surprise, infighting over the acquisition of aircraft was just as stifling in Germany as in Britain and the He 280 was similarly scuppered by official indifference. 

Then, in 1943, the superbly designed Messerschmidtt Me 262 took flight.

It was a twin jet swept-wing fighter and clearly a generation ahead of other jet fighters introduced in the Second World War.

Fortunately for the Allies, there were too few of them and there were serious problems with the lifetime of the engines: hard-to-obtain elements needed for high-quality alloys were in short supply, and the aircrafts were often assembled in factories run by slave labour, therefore many had flaws coming out of the factory.

The result was that the Me 262s offered little challenge to the overwhelming piston-engined air supremacy of the Western allies employing conventional aircraft.

Jet engine and aircraft development in Britain wasn’t far behind Germany, but the war time twin-engined Meteor was never up to the performance of the Me 262, and the DeHavilland vampire was too late for the Second World War.

The United States lagged well behind Britain in jet engine design and had to rely on British designs to power its early jet fighters. The first U.S. jet fighter was a dog — no faster than conventional fighters of the day.

Finally, in 1944, the U.S. got its act together with the introduction of the Lockheed P-80. Initially powered by a British engine, its performance nearly equaled the Me 262, but only a few were operational during the Second World War.

The P-80 was designed by John Kelly and his makeshift team at Lockheed, which — for want of space — was built in a small shack, with walls made from wooden packing crates and a circus tent for cover.

The aircraft took flight in August 1944, 143 days following signing the contract for the aircraft.  

Such was the beginning of what became the now justly famous Lockheed Skunk works, which later developed the U-2 and later the SR-71 blackbird aircraft — both reconnaissance aircrafts — and went on to develop stealth aircrafts such as the F-117 of Gulf War fame and later the F-22 Raptor and F-35 fighters. 

These days U.S. and European high-performance jets and jet engines are challenged by Chinese and Russian equivalents, to say nothing about current and future designs from the U.K., Germany and France, plus up-and-comers South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, India, Turkey and various consortia around the world.

Even though today’s commercial aircrafts aren’t much faster than the original commercially successful Boeing 707, they are more energy-efficient and some carry many more passengers than the 707. 

History shows that jet engines were imagined and created in the period between the wars and improved somewhat during the war.

Most of the technical advances since in commercial aviation have been incremental in the efficiency and power of the engines, electronics and size of the aircraft. 

This highly condensed summary of progress in aviation is like so many other developments in the 20th century that were both revolutionary and evolutionary.

Similar trajectories are obvious in the basic sciences, health care, computer science and so many other technical and innovative ventures. 

After starting several series in the sciences including reviews of Nobel Prizes, I’ve come to realize that there were many Camelot years in the sciences in the 20th century and the upward shows no end in sight unless, for whatever reasons, we lose our way in what has become a very fragile earth and body politic.

Unfortunately, I’m not optimistic about both and by nature, I’m not a gloom-and-doom person.  

Dr. William Brown is a professor of neurology at McMaster University and co-founder of the InfoHealth series at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Public Library.