De Havilland Gyron
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The de Havilland PS.23 or PS.52 Gyron, originally the Halford H-4, was
Frank Halford Major Frank Bernard Halford CBE FRAeS (7 March 1894 – 16 April 1955) was an English aircraft engine designer. He is best known for the series of de Havilland Gipsy engines, widely used by light aircraft in the 1920s and 30s. Career Educate ...
's last
turbojet The turbojet is an airbreathing jet engine which is typically used in aircraft. It consists of a gas turbine with a propelling nozzle. The gas turbine has an air inlet which includes inlet guide vanes, a compressor, a combustion chamber, a ...
design while working for
de Havilland The de Havilland Aircraft Company Limited () was a British aviation manufacturer established in late 1920 by Geoffrey de Havilland at Stag Lane Aerodrome Edgware on the outskirts of north London. Operations were later moved to Hatfield in H ...
. Intended to outpower any design then under construction, the Gyron was the most powerful engine of its era, producing "dry", and with
afterburner An afterburner (or reheat in British English) is an additional combustion component used on some jet engines, mostly those on military supersonic aircraft. Its purpose is to increase thrust, usually for supersonic flight, takeoff, and c ...
("reheat" in British terminology). The design proved too powerful for contemporary aircraft designs and saw no production use. It was later scaled down to 45% of its original size to produce the
de Havilland Gyron Junior The de Havilland Gyron Junior was a military turbojet engine design of the 1950s developed by the de Havilland Engine Company and later produced by Bristol Siddeley. The Gyron Junior was a scaled-down derivative of the de Havilland Gyron. ...
, which was somewhat more successful.


Design and development

The Gyron was Halford's first
axial-flow An axial compressor is a gas compressor that can continuously pressurize gases. It is a rotating, airfoil-based compressor in which the gas or working fluid principally flows parallel to the axis of rotation, or axially. This differs from other ...
design, a complete departure from his earlier centrifugal-flow engines based on Whittle-like designs, the
Goblin A goblin is a small, grotesque, monstrous creature that appears in the folklore of multiple European cultures. First attested in stories from the Middle Ages, they are ascribed conflicting abilities, temperaments, and appearances depending on ...
(H-1) and
Ghost A ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that is believed to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to re ...
(H-2). The Gyron was also one of the first engines designed specifically for
supersonic Supersonic speed is the speed of an object that exceeds the speed of sound ( Mach 1). For objects traveling in dry air of a temperature of 20 °C (68 °F) at sea level, this speed is approximately . Speeds greater than five times ...
flight. The Gyron first ran in 1953. Flight testing started in 1955 on a modified
Short Sperrin The Short SA.4 Sperrin (named after the Sperrin Mountains) was a British jet bomber design of the early 1950s, built by Short Brothers and Harland of Belfast. It first flew in 1951. From the onset, the design had been viewed as a fall-back opti ...
, a bomber design that was instead turned into an experimental aircraft. The Sperrin used four
Rolls-Royce Avon The Rolls-Royce Avon was the first axial flow jet engine designed and produced by Rolls-Royce. Introduced in 1950, the engine went on to become one of their most successful post-World War II engine designs. It was used in a wide variety of ...
s, mounted in over/under pairs in a single pod on each wing. For testing, the lower Avons were replaced with the much larger Gyrons. Flight rating was . In 1955 the DGy.1 received an official rating of . Addition of a reheat section boosted output to and then in the DGy.2 The Gyron was selected for a number of projects, most notably the Hawker P.1121 (sometimes referred to as the Hurricane) supersonic attack aircraft that was to have been the replacement for the
Hawker Hunter The Hawker Hunter is a transonic British jet-powered fighter aircraft that was developed by Hawker Aircraft for the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It was designed to take advantage of the newly developed Rolls-Ro ...
. However, this project was eventually cancelled. Another design potentially based on the Gyron was the Operational Requirement F.155 interceptor, which optionally used the
Rolls-Royce RB.106 The Rolls-Royce RB.106 was an advanced military turbojet engine design of the 1950s by Rolls-Royce Limited. The work was sponsored by the Ministry of Supply. The RB.106 project was cancelled in March 1957, at a reported total cost of £100,000 ...
. F.155 was also cancelled, part of the
1957 Defence White Paper The 1957 White Paper on Defence (Cmnd. 124) was a British white paper issued in March 1957 setting forth the perceived future of the British military. It had profound effects on all aspects of the defence industry but probably the most affected w ...
. Government financial support of the Gyron project itself was cancelled in March 1957, at a reported total cost of £3.4 million.


Engines on display

An example of the Gyron is held by the
Science Museum, London The Science Museum is a major museum on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London. It was founded in 1857 and is one of the city's major tourist attractions, attracting 3.3 million visitors annually in 2019. Like other publicly funded ...
, another is on public display at the
de Havilland Aircraft Museum The de Havilland Aircraft Museum, formerly the de Havilland Aircraft Heritage Centre, is a volunteer-run aviation museum in London Colney, Hertfordshire, England. The collection is built around the definitive prototype and restoration shops fo ...
, St Albans.


Specifications (Gyron D.Gy.2)


See also


References


External links


Photo of DH Gyron at DH Heritage Centre
{{De Havilland aeroengines
Gyron A gyron is a triangular heraldic ordinary having an angle at the fess point and the opposite side at the edge of the escutcheon. A shield divided into gyrons is called gyronny, the default is typically of eight if no number of gyrons is specifi ...
1950s turbojet engines