I don't believe we had turbine technology until late in WWII...
1918 - General Electric company started a gas turbine division. Dr. Stanford A. Moss developed the GE turbosupercharger engine during W.W.I. It used hot exhaust gases from a reciprocating engine to drive a turbine wheel that in turn drove a centrifugal compressor used for supercharging.
1920 - Dr. A. A. Griffith developed a theory of turbine design based on gas flow past airfoils rather than through passages.
1930 - Sir Frank Whittle in England patented a design for a gas turbine for jet propulsion. The first successful use of this engine was in April,
1937. His early work on the theory of gas propulsion was based on the contributions of most of the earlier pioneers of this field.
The specifications of the first jet engine were:
Airflow = 25 lb/s
Fuel Consumption = 200 gal/hr or 1300 lb/hr
Thrust = 1000 lb
Specific Fuel consumption = 1.3 lb/hr/lb
1936 - At the same time as Frank Whittle was working in Great Britain, Hans von Ohian and Max Hahn, students in Germany developed and patented their own engine design. 1939 (August) - The aircraft company Ernst Heinkel Aircraft flew the first flight of a gas turbine jet, the HE178.
1941 - Sir Frank Whittle designed the first successful turbojet airplane, the Gloster Meteor, flown over Great Britain. Whittle improved his jet engine during the war, and in 1942 he shipped an engine prototype to General Electric in the United States. America's first jet plane was built the following year.
1942 - Dr. Franz Anslem developed the axial-flow turbojet, Junkers Jumo 004, used in the Messerschmitt Me 262, the world's first operational jet fighter.
