The
BMW 003 was an early axial-flow turbojet
engine produced by BMW AG in Germany
during
World War II. It and the
Junkers Jumo 004 were the only
German turbojet engines to reach production during World War
II.
Work had begun on the design of the BMW 003 before its
contemporary, the
Junkers Jumo 004
engine, but prolonged developmental problems meant that the BMW 003
entered production much later, and the aircraft projects that had
been designed with it in mind were re-engined with the Jumo
powerplant instead. The most famous case of this was the
Messerschmitt Me 262, in two of the
V-series prototypes and in the two experimental A-1b aircraft, and
the same was true of the
Arado Ar 234
and
Horten Ho 229. The only production
aircraft to use the BMW 003 were the
Heinkel He 162 and late, four-engined
versions of the
Arado Ar 234.
Some 500 BMW 003 engines were built in Germany, but very few were
ever installed in aircraft.
The engine also formed the basis for turbojet
development in Japan
during the
war, and following the war was produced in the Soviet Union
and France
.
Design and development
The practicality of jet propulsion had been demonstrated in Germany
in early 1937 by
Hans von Ohain
working with the
Heinkel company.
Recognising the potential of the invention,
the Reichsluftfahrtministerium
(RLM - Government Air Ministry) encouraged
Germany's aero engine manufacturers to begin their own programmes
of jet engine development. The BMW 003 began development as a project
of the Brandenburgische
Motorenwerke (The Brandenburg
Motor Works, known as "Bramo ") under the
direction of Hermann Östrich
and assigned the RLM designation 109-003 (the 109-
prefix common to all jet engine projects). Bramo was also
developing another turbojet, the 109-002. In 1939, BMW bought out
Bramo, and in the acquisition, obtained both engine projects. The
109-002 had a very sophisticated
contra-rotating compressor design intended to eliminate
torque, but was abandoned in favour of the
simpler engine, which in the end proved to have enough development
problems of its own.
Construction began late in the same year and the engine ran for the
first time in August 1940, but produced less than half of the
thrust expected, 2.5 kN instead of 6.3 kN.
The first flight test took place in mid-1941, mounted underneath a
Messerschmitt Bf 110. Problems
continued, however, meaning that while the Me 262 (the first
aircraft intended to use the engine) was ready for flight-testing,
there were no powerplants available for it and it actually began
flight tests with a conventional
Junkers Jumo 210 piston engine in the nose.
It was not until November 1941 that the Me 262 was flown with BMW
engines, which both failed during the test, the prototype having to
return to the airfield on the power of the piston engine, which
luckily, was still fitted.
The general usage of the BMW powerplant was abandoned for the Me
262, except for two experimental examples of the plane known as the
Me 262 A-1b. The Me 262 A-1a production version used the competing
Junkers Jumo 004 whose heavier
weight required the wings to be swept back in order to move the
center of gravity into the correct
position. Work on the 003 continued anyway, and by late 1942 it had
been made far more powerful and reliable. The improved engine was
flight tested under a
Junkers Ju 88 in
October 1943 and was finally ready for mass production in August
1944, in time to power the He 162.
One late version of the engine added a small
rocket motor (BMW 109-718) at the rear of the engine,
which added some 9.8 kN of thrust for take off and short dashes. In
this configuration, it was known as the BMW-003R and was tested,
albeit with some serious reliability problems, on a single Me 262
interceptor prototype, the Me 262 C-2b
Heimatschützer II, and perhaps a He 162 as well.
The BMW-003 was intended for export to Japan, but working examples
of the engine were never supplied. Instead, Japanese engineers used
drawings and photos of the engine to design an indigenous turbojet,
the
Ishikawajima Ne-20.
Post-war use
Following
the war, two captured BMW-003s powered the prototype of the first
Soviet
jet, the
Mikoyan-Gurevich
MiG-9. Blueprints for BMW engines had been seized by
Soviet forces from the Basdorf-Zühlsdorf plant near Berlin and from
the Central Works near Nordhausen
and production of the BMW 003 was set up at the
"Red October" GAZ 466 (Gorkovsky Avtomobilny Zavod, or
"Gorky Automobile Plant") in Leningrad
, where the engine was mass produced from 1947 under
the designation RD-20 (reactivnyi dvigatel, or "jet
drive").
After the Allied occupation of Germany,
Marcel Dassault assisted Hermann Östrich to
move from the
American
Zone of occupied Germany into the
French
Zone and within a couple of years he was at work for
Voisin, a division of
SNECMA,
France's state-owned aircraft engine company, where he produced the
Atar jet engine that powered Dassault's
Ouragan and
Mystère fighters.
Applications
Specifications (BMW 003A-1)
See also
References
Notes
Bibliography
- Gunston, Bill. World Encyclopedia of Aero Engines.
Cambridge, England. Patrick Stephens Limited, 1989. ISBN
1-85260-163-9
- Jane's Fighting Aircraft of World War II. London.
Studio Editions Ltd, 1989. ISBN 0-517-67964-7
External links