Lockheed J37
| J37/L-1000 | |
|---|---|
 |
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| An L-1000 at the Planes of Fame Museum in Chino, California | |
| Type | Turbojet |
| National origin | United States |
| Manufacturer | Lockheed |
| First run | 1946 |
The Lockheed J37 (company designation L-1000) was one of the first turbojet engines designed in the United States. It was not considered very important when it was first introduced in the 1930s and development was allowed to languish. By the time it was developed enough for production use, other engines, often British-derived, had surpassed it in performance. The design was later converted to a turboprop, the T35 and still later sold to Wright Aeronautical, where it saw some interest for use on what would become the B-52 Stratofortress, before that design moved to jet power. The J37 and T35 were built to the extent of a number of testbed examples but never entered production.
In 1930, Nathan C. Price joined Doble Steam Motors, a manufacturer of steam engines for cars and other uses. Over the next few years he worked on a number of projects and starting in autumn 1933 began working on a steam turbine for aircraft use. The engine featured a centrifugal compressor that fed air to a combustion chamber, which in turn fed steam into a turbine before exiting through a nozzle, powering the compressor and a propeller. The engine was fitted to a test aircraft in early 1934, where it demonstrated performance on par with existing piston engines except for difficulty maintaining power at higher altitudes due to the compressor. Work on the design ended in 1936 after Doble found little interest in the design from aircraft manufacturers or the Army.
Price started work on his own turbojet design in 1938, although this initial design was far more complex than what eventually emerged as the J37. In an effort to keep the fuel efficiency of the engine similar to existing piston engine, Price used a combination of low-compression axial compressor stages feeding a high-compression reciprocating compressor. In 1941 he was hired by Lockheed to evaluate the General Electric superchargers being fit to the experimental XP-49, a high-altitude version of their famous P-38. By this time Price had the basic design of his jet completed and was able to attract the interest of Lockheed's Chief Research Engineer, Kelly Johnson, who would later found the company's famous Skunk Works. Johnson had been thinking about a new high-speed design after running into various compressibility problems at high speed with the P-38 and the jet engine seemed like a natural fit in this project. During 1941 he ordered the development of a new aircraft to be powered by Price's engine, developing the engine as the L-1000 and the aircraft as the L-133.
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