Helmut Schelp

Helmut Schelp was the director of "advanced" engine development at the RLM's T-Amt technical division leading up to and during World War II. He used his office to fund a widespread program in jet engine development, which led to many of the engine concepts still used today. In particular, he was instrumental in favoring the use of axial compressors over the simpler but "fatter" centrifugal compressors. Unlike in England where the jet had no single champion within the Air Ministry and their efforts were long delayed as a result, Schelp can be directly credited with the advancement and refinement of the jet in Germany over a few years.

Schelp received a MSc in engineering at Stevens University in Hoboken, NJ, before returning to Germany in 1936. On his return to Germany he was invited to join a new advanced course in aeronautical engineering being offered by the DVL research institute in Berlin. Following in Frank Whittle's footsteps of a few years earlier, Schelp became interested in the problems of high-speed flight, and attempted to calculate the maximum speed an aircraft could obtain. He eventually came to the conclusion that flights over Mach 0.82 were impossible due to the decreasing efficiency of propellers, which one of his professors at DVL demonstrated would be only 71% at Mach 0.82, and falling rapidly. For higher speeds a much larger engine would be needed, one whose weight would offset the amount of thrust that could be generated by the propeller. He was aware of developments in jet engines, and became convinced they were the only way forward.

In August 1937 Schelp joined the T-Amt's LC1 technical department, their short-lived pure-research arm. Neither LC1 nor DVL shared his enthusiasm for the jet engine, but when the RLM was re-organized in 1938, he found himself in the LC8 division which organized aircraft engine development. Here he found an ally in Hans Mauch, in charge of rocket and pulsejet development within LC8, who had seen a demonstration of Hans von Ohain's engine at the Heinkel works. Mauch was adamant that engine companies work on such projects, however, and refused official funding for Heinkel's developments as they were taking place at an airframe company. Mauch and Schelp did meet with most of the larger engine companies, notably BMW, Bramo, Jumo and Daimler-Benz, none of whom proved to be terribly interested, mostly because they were in the midst of bringing new piston designs into production.

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