Timeline of Jet Power - 1944

1944

• BMW tests the 003R, a 003 with an additional rocket engine for them and produce an even more powerful engine. In a short 6-month period they design and build the Rolls-Royce Nene at 5,000 lbf (22 kN), but it sees only limited use in the United Kingdom.
• April: With internal design efforts underway at most engine companies, Power Jets have little possibility of profitability, and are nationalized, becoming a pure research lab as the National Gas Turbine Establishment.
• June: Design work on a gas turbine engine for powering tanks begins under the direction of Müller, who left Heinkel in 1942. The first such system, the GT 101, is completed in November and fit to a Panther tank for testing.
• June: A Derwent II engine is modified with an additional turbine stage powering a gearbox and five-bladed propeller. The resulting RB.50, or Rolls-Royce Trent, is not further developed, but is test flown on a modified Gloster Meteor.
• The Junkers Ju 287 jet bomber is tested.
• The BMW 018 engine is tested. Work ends soon after when the entire tooling and parts supply are destroyed in a bombing raid.
• The Junkers Jumo 012 engine is tested, it stands as the most powerful engine in the world for some time, at 6,600 lbf (29,000 N).
• The J35, a development of an earlier turboprop effort, runs for the first time.
• Ford builds a copy of the V-1's engine, known as the PJ-31-1.
• The Ishikawajima Ne-20 first runs in Japan. Originally intending to build a direct copy of the BMW 003, the plans never arrived and the Japanese engineers instead built an entirely new design based on a single cutaway image and several photographs.
• The Doblhof WNF-4 flies, the first ramjet-powered helicopter.
• April 5: The nearly complete prototype of the Leduc 010 ramjet-powered aircraft, under construction at the Montaudran airfield near Toulouse, France unbeknownst to German occupation authorities, is heavily damaged by a Royal Air Force bombing raid.
• April: The Messerschmitt Me 262 first enters combat service Germany.
• June: The Messerschmitt Me 262 enters squadron service in Germany.
• July: The Gloster Meteor enters squadron service in the United Kingdom.
• An effort starts in Germany to build a simple jet fighter, the Volksjäger. The contract is eventually won by the Heinkel He 162, to be powered by the BMW 003.
• December: Northrop's T-37 turboprop is tested. The design never matures and work is later stopped in the late 1940s.