to open next chapter. - NASA's History Office

Rockets and People
great difficulty. Not only did they manage to get their people out, but they also
saved the work they had done on an experimental engine with a thrust of
500 kilograms.”
Lyulka theoretically designed a gas-turbine engine (GTD) in 1938 at the
Kharkov Aviation Institute.The first RD-1 engine was developed in Leningrad at
the Kirov Factory’s SKB-1, which Lyulka directed. Bench tests were to have begun
in 1941, but the war and subsequent blockade of Leningrad had dashed their plans.
Long before the war, Bolkhovitinov was interested in work being done on various
designs of air-breathing jets (VRD). 2 He understood that the engine propeller
unit of piston engines fundamentally limited flight speed and altitude. As soon as
the opportunity presented itself, Bolkhovitinov had turned to Shakhurin with the
request to evacuate Lyulka from Leningrad. Shakhurin arranged this with the
Leningrad authorities and Lyulka and his surviving personnel were saved.
In Bilimbay we led a semi-starved existence. However, we heard from Lyulka’s
rescued Leningraders what real hunger was.They ate the brown bilimbaikha down
to the last drop of the broth that we found barely edible.They did not drop a single
crumb of bread.
Lyulka’s workforce included several automatic control specialists. Bolkhovitinov
suggested transferring them to me. Lyulka agreed under the condition that I would
develop equipment to regulate and control the turbojet engine. I spent three days
learning the principles of the turbojet engine. Lyulka personally explained to me
the difference between the two classes of reactive engines—liquid-propellant
rocket engines and turbojet engines. He did not disparage liquid-propellant rocket
engines, which had to carry their own fuel and oxidizer. But with gentle humor,
alternating Russian speech with melodious Ukrainian, of which he had a beautiful
command,Arkhip Lyulka proved that everything had its place while telling me
about the turbojet engine.
The air-breathing turbojet engine uses the oxygen of the air that enters through
the aircraft’s air intake from the atmosphere.The air is compressed by a compressor
and then passes through combustion chambers where gasoline, or better still
kerosene, is injected. The gas formed during combustion passes through the
turbine, turning the compressor, and is ejected through the nozzle.This is not the
dazzling bright flame of the liquid-propellant rocket engine, but hot gas that has
already been depleted in the turbine and which is almost invisible in the daylight.
Once I had become familiar with the principles of turbojet engines and the
ideas for regulating them, I came to the conclusion that the immediate problems
related to the automatic regulation of the turbojet engine needed to be solved
without any electrical devices, at least for the time being. I thought that we should
instead use the capabilities of purely mechanical and pneumohydraulic automated
2. VRD—Vozdushno-reaktivniy dvigatel (Air-Reactive Engine). In Western technical vernacular, these types
of engines are known as ‘air-breathing jet engines’ or simply ‘jet engines.’
190