ROLLS-ROYCE WELLAND

By Terry Jones.

The Welland as recovered from a Cambridge scrapyard in 1973

I bought the Rolls Royce Welland from Peter Grieve in 2003.  He had acquired the engine with the closure of the Rebel Air Museum at Earls Colne in 1994. The engine had been refurbished by Peter and others as a static display engine in 1993. I have now restored the engine to running order and mounted it on a frame on which the engine can be moved around a workshop and which can also be carried on a purpose built trailer. I have extensively researched the history of the engine which is now known except for a period of about twentyfive years when it was probably in Duce's scrapyard in Cambridge.

In researching the engine I was helped particularly by David Brooks, the author of “Vikings of Waterloo”, published by the Rolls Royce Heritage Trust, which describes the work done by the Rover Car Company in developing and building the Welland at Waterloo Mill in Clitheroe and at Barnoldswick. David has in his possession a copy of notebook kept Mrs Elsie Fox (nee Sharples) when she was a seventeen year old inspector in the factory at Barnoldswick in 1943/4.  In the notebook she recorded the details of all the engines she inspectected. Her notes record that engine 183 was weighed on 12^th January 1944, soon after the engine had been completed, and dispatched to Turbo Research Centre, Winnipeg Canada, for cold weather trials. She records it as having been returned from Canada on 4^th December 1944 and being forwarded to Waterloo Mill in Clitheroe on the 5^th. Documents in the National Archive at Kew list the engine, amongst 20 others, stored at Waterloo Mill on 31^st May 1945. Rolls Royce Heritage Trust records show that 183 was transferred from Clitheroe to RAF Hullavington on 13 August 1945. At that time RAF Hullavington was a flying training station and it was not unusual for such stations to have examples of engines for instructional purposes. In the summer of 1969 a Welland was discovered in Richard Duce's scrapyard in Cambridge, under a pile of scrapped aircraft where it had been for many years, by Steve Gotts. It was not until 30th April 1973 that he was able to recover the engine and identify it as number 183. This suggests that the RAF may have disposed of the engine in the 1950s. Later in the 1980s the engine was acquired by Stan Brett who ran the Rebel Air Museum in Essex with his son Dave. In the early 1990s refurbishment of the engine was commenced by Dave Brett working with Peter Grieve and Dominic Rigg, by this time Stan Brett had died. By 1994 Dave Brett had also died and the Rebel Air Museum was forced to close. This resulted in the need to hastily reassemble the engine before refurbishment was complete. The ownership of the engine passed to Peter Grieve who had moved to Carlisle by this time and the engine followed in 1994. For the next nine years the engine was exhibited at the Solway Aviation Museum at Carlisle airport.

A number of parts of the Welland were missing when it was recovered from the scrapyard, including a combustion chamber dome, a Lubbock burner, the starter motor and throttle valve. It has been found to extremely difficult to source genuine Welland parts but a number of parts of the Rolls Royce Derwent engine are suitable for use and have been sourced including a starter motor and throttle valve. The Derwent starter motor needed to be reversed for use on the Welland this was done by reversing the wiring of the two pairs of brushes in the motor. Gears for the starter motor were made from a modern pair of industry standard gears which were fortuitously available with the right ratio and centre spacing. A replacement burner was made by Eric Barnes a “one of” engineer from Dorset.

On being dismantled in 2004 much of the engine was found to be in good condition particularly the heart of the engine, the impeller, the turbine and the main bearings. It had clearly been little run some blueing of hot components being the only evidence of its having run at all. The wheelcase had split probably when water which that had clearly been present in the lower part of the wheelcase had frozen. This split was a straight forward job for Peter to repair by welding The water that had been present in the wheelcase had done little other damage beyond the need to replace a number of ball races which were readily available in Carlisle. The compressor housing of the Welland was cast from magnesium alloy and was badly corroded in those areas that had stood in water for some years. Two holes that penetrated the housing were repaired by Robin Byers using specially sourced welding rods. The corrosion products had also badly damaged one half of the diffuser vanes, which were made in two halves, and also filled the diffuser vane location channels in the compressor housing with hard white corrosion products. The damaged half section of the diffuser vane assembly was dismantled and  the side cheeks were repaired, the vanes themselves being reused.

A number of the ten combustion chambers were badly corroded and dented but were in far better condition than one would have expected of components made of 22 swg mild steel albeit protected by a sprayed aluminium. The combustion chambers have been repaired by Robin and painted with high temperature aluminium paint. In the long term it would be nice to make a new set of combustion chambers which should be a fairly straight forward if big job. The refurbishing of the combustion chambers revealed that all ten of the combustion chamber air feeds from the compressor were fitted with a sampling couplings which suggests that the engine was a development engine.

The floods in Carlisle in January 2005 resulted in the Welland once again being partially immersed in water.

Progress on the restoration of the Welland was not as fast as had been hoped. This was for two reasons firstly the need to devote time to the restoration of our flood damaged home and secondly because the task of restoring the engine is bigger and more time consuming than was anticipated. Nonetheless good progress was made during 2005 and the major components were reassembled.

The corrosion damage to the compressor casing and the diffuser was repaired more easily than anticipated. One half of the diffuser assembly had to be dismantled so that the side cheeks could be repaired by welding. The corrosion on the inside of the compressor casing was chipped off with a small cold chisel. A cold chisel being the appropriate tool as the aged corrosion product of magnesium is dolomite of which mountains are made. With the corrosion removed the surfaces were redressed with a riffler file. All the inside surfaces were then cleaned up using emery flap discs and the whole given two thin coats of epoxy paint. With the external corrosion pits filled were with epoxy resin and the outside hand painted with black 2K paint to avoid the 'flu like symptoms associated with spraying this type of paint. The final result is quite pleasing.

It was disappointing to find that after the impeller turbine assembly was reassembled into the engine and turned at a few hundred RPM with a large electric drill that there was a significant rumble from the bearings. The need to completely strip the engine down again to enable the rear bearing to be replaced was too daunting at this stage and it was decided to investigate what could be done if the turbine was removed which would allow access to the bearing. Inspection of the inner and outer races of the bearing revealed a number of very fine indentations across the bearing tracks, these were polished out and the rumble although still present is much reduced. Clearly an future task will be to completely replace this bearing. Obtaining a replacement will be interesting because whilst the major dimensions are simple imperial the inner diameter of the rear bearing is 2 inches plus 40 thou and the front bearing outer race forms part of a hemisphere.

Peter made a replica of the original end mounting plate for a second “new old stock” Derwent starter obtained from Barry Parkhouse's emporium as a replacement for the Derwent starter motor that had previously been obtained but which was found to have been well used. The reversing of the direction of rotation was a straight forward job once one got down to it. The final result is barely recognisably different to the original.

Partially reassembled.

All that was necessary to refurbish the gear case was to change those bearings which had been corroded beyond recovery and to to remove some superficial rust. The aluminium castings have all been cleaned up as far as possible to a satin finish using Scotchbright products and protected from further corrosion with clear acrylic spray paint. This may not be to everybody's taste but it would be quite easy to reinstated the original black paint finish.

The dents in the aluminum oil tank were skillfully removed by one John Williams, a Londoner, who now lives and works in a remote glen in the Scottish borders. A major problem that remained to be solved was the fabrication of a combustion chamber dome to replace one that was missing. A suitable basis for a replacement dome was a measuring bowl bought from the cookware department of the local branch of Dunelm Mill, for the princely sum of £3.99. Once the bowl had been cut down to the correct depth it was found to be just 1mm in 8.5 inches too large in diameter, this minor discrepancy was easily accommodated in the flange that Robin Byers made to complete the dome. The welding of the comparatively thick flange to the thin metal of the dome did tax Robin's welding skills. The completed dome, which also needed a special stainless steel feature that Peter made,is virtually indistinguishable from one of the originals except for the volume calibrations. It is one of the advantages, at least of early jet engines, that many of the components do not have to be made with great dimensional accuracy.

A second visit to the National Archive in Kew brought to light significant further information about the engine including an amazing photograph and periodic maintenance instructions especially prepared for engine No 183. These data, with much else, were found in a file containing exchanges of correspondence between the Ministry of Aircraft Production and the Canadian Cold Weather Test Station. where engine 183 was sent in January 1944. Shortly after the engine had arrived in Canada when it had only had a few hours running, and before serious testing had begun, the rear main bearing collapsed. There then followed a stream of secret correspondence between the UK and Canada on the possible causes of the collapse and how to proceed. The amazing photograph referred to is a picture of the remains of the collapsed bearing. It is extraordinary that such an apparently insignificant picture should have been preserved for over sixty years, but then the National Archive is itself an extraordinary asset freely available to anyone. The decision was taken that the engine could re rebuilt in Canada and the necessary spare parts were dispatched and the task completed by April 1944, unfortunately too late for any further testing as the winter had passed. The failed ball bearing was replaced by a roller bearing, other similar bearings having failed in two other early pre production engines during flight trials in October 1943. It would appear that by the time that cold weather trials could recommence during the winter of 1944/45 that trials of the Derwent I engine were given priority and the trials planned for the Welland discarded and the engine returned to Britain.

The failed rear bearing.

For some years I had been trying to obtain a copy of the maintenance manual for the US version of the W2B, the I16 designed, built and flying all in the period of one year by General Electric. A friend of fifty years living in the US on a cruise in the Mediterranean made the contact that resulted in a copy of the manual arriving by post. The comparison of the designs is most interesting and will form the basis of a future web page or two.

Seven events were attended during 2006 as a non running exhibit. The engine was taken to the “Flying Legends” event at Duxford which gave the opportunity of reuniting Steve Gotts, who had discovered the Welland in Duce's scrap yard in Cambridge almost forty years before, with the engine.

Once the engine was complete the next task was to commission the individual subsystems. The most troublesome subsystem was the fuel system which took two months to resolve. The basic problem turned out to be that the fuel pump was not capable of supplying sufficient fuel at a high enough pressure at starter motor RPM to trip the accumulator in the fuel system. In the end it was decided to take the approach that General Electric had with their I16 variant of the W2B engine and to fit an auxiliary fuel pump. In our case an electrically driven oil pump, part of the loading ramp equipment of a scrapped lorry. Having a copy of the very detailed GE I16 manual as well as the RAF's manual was crucial at this stage of the project.

The rebuilt Welland's first run 22nd April 2007.

The overhauled engine was run for the first time on Sunday 22^nd April 2007 almost exactly 63 years after it had last been run. The site chosen for the first run was adjacent to the M6 motorway as we were not sure how noisy it would be. The engine did not start at the first attempt because of a minor problem with the insulation of the high tension leads to the igniters. Once this problem was fixed, away she went in a spectacular burst of flame from the fuel remaining in the engine from the failed start. The whole event was recorded for broadcast by the BBC local television news programme “Look North” by Paul Paxton and was duly shown, later in the week, immediately after the lunch time and evening news. During the following months the Welland was exhibited at ten air shows and other events and accumulated a running time of about eighty minutes since overhaul.

Exhibiting the running engine is quite different to the Merlins and other engines in Aero Engines Carlisle's stable. As the engine is a turbine and I limit the rpm to about 4500, in the interests of minimising the stress on the impeller, the normal operation speed was 17500 rpm. The engine at this speed, does not make a great deal of noise and once the engine has started sometimes with a burst of flame there is a pretty low key event, no whirling propellers and crackling exhaust. As a result individual runs are limited to two to three minutes during which the engine is cycled between 3000 and 4500 RPM. The engine will “self sustain”, that is keep running without assistance from the starter, from about 3000 rpm, a rather lower speed than was anticipated. In view of the anxiety concerning the rear engine bearing a hand oil priming system has been installed. It is noticeable that there is a significant delay before the automatic system starts feeding oil to the rear bearing, the feed to the front bearing starting almost immediately the engine starts. These main bearing feeds can be observed through the “sight glasses” with which the engine is equipped. The oil pressure has been increased from 10 to 20 psi in the interests of improved lubrication. Originally the engine, in the absence of special gas turbine oils, was lubricated with a light machine oil diluted in a 50:50 mix with kerosene. As modern turbine oils are quite expensive I initially used a 50:50 mix of kerosene and a light multi grade oil meant for use in cars. Recently a gift of Shell turbine oil, from an unknown benefactor, has meant that the engine now has the proper lubricant The rumble from the bearings is monitored, after each run, by recording the sound in the jet pipe, when the engine is turned over by hand. There has been no detectable change in the volume or character of the sound.

Further research at the National Archive at Kew revealed that Welland 183 was actually completed in December 1943 and not in January 1944 as was previously thought, it also showed that the engine was run for 5 hours during its acceptance testing. Study of the minutes and progress reports of the Gas Turbine Collaboration Committee (GTCC) reveal that Rover Car Co's contribution to the development of the jet engine was far greater than the majority of authors writing on the subject since the war have acknowledged. It certainly emphasises the importance of going back to primary sources when writing, rather than merely repeating what others have written. The papers also emphasise the importance of completing the development of a new device before putting it into production. The GTCC was set up by the Ministry of Aircraft Production (MAP) at the end of 1941, all the key British companies who were players at the time were represented on the Committee which played a key role in the development of the jet engine in the UK in the 1940s.

In November 2007 Elsie Fox and her husband Geoff were on holiday in Barnoldswick from their home in Canada and an arrangement was made through David Brooks for Elsie and Geoff to come and see the Welland that Elsie had last seen 63 years previously. A particularly interesting comment was made by Geoff, who had worked in the engine test bays, to the effect that the oil feed to the rear bearing was slow in starting to flow. This vindicated the decision I had made to incorporate an auxilairy oil feed to the rear bearing.

Elsie and Peter Grieve inspecting the engine.

Having got the Welland running the project was complete and the problem was now  to decide how often to run it and ultimately what to do with it. It is an historic engine and the oldest running jet engine in the world.

During 2007 the engine was exhibited at ten shows, including "Flying Legends" and run for a total of 84 minutes. In  2008 just seven shows were attended with a running time of 48 minutes. The total running time of the engine since it was built in 1943 is just over 10 hours.

During 2009 the engine was exhibited eight events and run for 1 hour 13 minutes, including a number of runs for a TV programming company making a programme about Frank Whittle.

HISTORY OF WELLAND No. 183

Dec 1943                    Completed at the RR Barnoldswick factory
Jan 1944                    Sent to TurboResearch, Winnipeg, Canada
17 Feb. 1944              First run in Canada, 10 minutes,  less than 10,000rpm
27 Feb. 1944              Rear bearing failed,  running time  50 minutes at less than 12,000 rpm
1 April 1944                Rebuild completed.
3 April 1944                Run for 34 minutes up to 16,000 rpm, appeared satisfactory
4 Dec. 1944                Returns from Canada, sent to Clitheroe
31 May 1945               In store at RR Barnoldswick
13 Aug. 1945              Sent to RAF Hullavington as a training engine, it then dissappears.
Summer 1969             Discovered by Steve Gotts in Duce’s Scrapyard in Cambridge.
30 April 1973              Recovered by Steve Gotts kept in Cambridge.
Late 1970s                 Acquired by Stan and Dave Brett, of Rebel Air Museum, Earls Colne.
1993                          Initial refurbishment  by Peter Grieve and others
1994                          Acquired by Peter Grieve moved to Solway Aviation Museum, Cumbria
4 July 2003                Ownership passed to Terry Jones
2 Sept. 2003              Moved into Carlisle by Terry Jones and dismantled for  restoration.
22 April 2007             Engine successfully started for the first time since 1944, becoming the oldest                                                                 running jet engine in the world.

2007 - 2009               Engine run for a total of 3 hours 25 minutes at 25 public events.

THE WELLAND’S PLACE IN HISTORY

On 4th August 1944 two British gas turbines were in pursuit of a lone German pulse jet. The two British gas turbines were smoothly driving forward a Gloster Meteor Mk1 fighter aircraft piloted by Flying Officer Dean of 616 Squadron of the RAF. The lone German pulse jet drove forward, in its characteristically stuttering way, an unmanned  flying bomb towards London. The flying bomb, the first “cruise missile” was known as a Fieseler Fi 103 Kirchen to the Germans and a “doodle bug” to the British.  As the doodle bug approached Ashford the pilot of the British fighter caught up with it and fired his guns at it, but they quickly jammed, so, drawing alongside he manoeuvred the wing tip of his aircraft just beneath the wing tip of the flying bomb and with a single sharp application of the Meteor’s ailerons tipped the flying bomb out of the sky to explode harmlessly in a wood.

This was the first encounter and conflict between two jet powered aircraft. The two British W2B/23 gas turbines had been built by Rolls Royce and each provided 1600lb of thrust.The engines had been invented and designed by Frank Whittle, developed by the Rover Car Company and the Joseph Lucas Company, who contributed on the fuel and combustion components.

Rolls Royce took over responsibility, encouraged by the Air Ministry, for the W2B/23  in early 1943 and further developed and manufactured 135 engines which they named Wellands. This is a comparatively small number compared with the 313 Derwent I engines that RR produced between the middle of 1944 and the end of the war. Perhaps  recognising the diverse parentage of the engine Rolls Royce never fitted company nameplates to the Welland.

The largest producer of  reverse flow gas turbines based on the Whittle W2B design was the General Electric company of the US who produced 250 of their I16 (J31) engines.

SPECIFICATION

Thrust                                       1600 lb
Maximum r.p.m.                        17100
Fuel consumption, cruising       3 g.p.m.
Weight                                      850  lb
Diameter                                   42 in
Length                                      64 in

Double entry, single stage, centrifugal compressor.  Single stage, axial flow turbine.

The Welland is about as powerful as a Rolls Royce Merlin, but much lighter and simpler.

The Welland featured with Sir James Dyson in the Channel 4 series "Genius of Britain" broadcast in 2010 and available as double disc DVD.

See at :- http://www.channel4.com/programmes/genius-of-britain/4od#3080364