| RB.41 Nene | |
|---|---|
| Rolls-Royce Nene on display RAAF Base Pearce, Western Australia - note the wire mesh grille around the air intake to prevent Foreign object damage | |
| Type | Turbojet |
| Manufacturer | Rolls-Royce Limited |
| First run | 27 October 1944 |
| Major applications | Canadair CT-133 Silver Star Dassault Ouragan de Havilland Vampire Grumman F9F Panther Hawker Sea Hawk |
| Number built | 1,139 (J42) |
| Developed into | Rolls-Royce RB.44 Tay Klimov VK-1 Shenyang WP-5 |
The Rolls-Royce RB.41 Nene was a 1940s British centrifugal compressor turbojet engine. The Nene was essentially an enlarged version of the Rolls-Royce Derwent with the minimal changes needed to deliver 5,000 lbf, making it the most powerful engine of its era. The Nene was Rolls-Royce's third jet engine to enter production, designed and built in an astonishingly short five-month period in 1944, first running on 27 October 1944.[1] It was named after the River Nene in keeping with the company's tradition of naming its jet engines after rivers.
The design saw relatively little use in British aircraft designs, being passed over in favour of the Avon that followed it. Its only widespread use in Great Britain was in the Hawker Sea Hawk and the Supermarine Attacker. In the US it was built under license as the Pratt & Whitney J42, and it powered the Grumman F9F Panther. Ironically, its most widespread use was in the form of the Klimov RD-45, which powered the famous Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15.
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Pratt and Whitney was given a licence to produce the Nene as the Pratt & Whitney J42, and it powered the Grumman F9F Panther.[2] Twenty-five were given to the Soviet Union as a gesture of goodwill - with reservation to not use for military purposes - with the agreement of Stafford Cripps. The Soviets reneged on the deal, and reverse engineered the Nene to develop the Klimov RD-45, and a larger version, the Klimov VK-1, which soon appeared in various Soviet fighters including Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15. It was briefly made under licence in Australia for use in the RAAF De Havilland Vampire fighters. It was also built by Orenda in Canada for use in 656 Canadair T-33 aircraft.
Although based on the "straight-through" version of the basic Whittle-style layout, the Nene used a double-sided centrifugal compressor for improved pressure ratio and thus higher thrust. It was during the design of the Nene that Rolls decided to give their engines numbers as well as names, with the Welland and Derwent keeping their original Rover models, B/23 and B/26. It was later decided that these model numbers looked too much like those for bombers, and "R" was added to the front, the "R" signifying "Rolls" and the original Rover "B" signifying Barnoldswick. This RB designation scheme continues to this day.
The Nene doubled the thrust of the earlier generation engines, with early versions providing about 5,000 lbf (22.2 kN), but remained generally similar in most ways. This should have suggested that it would be widely used in various designs, but the Gloster Meteor proved so successful with its Derwents that the Air Ministry felt there was no pressing need to improve upon it. Instead a series of much more capable designs using the Rolls-Royce Avon were studied, and the Nene generally languished.
The Nene was used to power the first civil jet aircraft,[3] a modified Vickers Viking, which flew first on 6 April 1948.[4]
A sectioned Rolls-Royce Nene is on display at the Fleet Air Arm Museum, RNAS Yeovilton.
Data from Bingham.[1]
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