Jet aircraft facts for kids

An Airbus A300 jet plane from American Airlines.

A Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II jet from the United States Air Force.

A jet aircraft, or simply a jet, is an aircraft that moves forward using jet engines. Most jet aircraft are fixed-wing aircraft, meaning they have wings that don't move, like a typical airplane.

Jet engines work differently from the engines in propeller planes. Propeller planes are best at lower speeds and altitudes. But jet engines are most efficient when they fly very fast, often close to or even faster than the speed of sound. Jet planes usually fly at speeds around Mach 0.8 (which is about 981 kilometers per hour or 609 miles per hour). They also fly very high, typically between 10,000 to 15,000 meters (33,000 to 49,000 feet) above the ground.

The Invention of Jet Engines

The idea for the jet engine came from two different people around the same time.

Early Ideas and Inventors

Frank Whittle, an inventor and officer in the Royal Air Force (RAF) from England, started working on the idea of the jet engine in 1928. At the same time, Hans von Ohain in Germany also came up with the same idea on his own in the early 1930s.

In February 1936, Hans von Ohain wrote to Ernst Heinkel. Heinkel was a very important person who helped build the world's first aircraft powered by a turbojet engine. This plane was called the Heinkel He 178.

First Jet-Powered Flights

Germany was also a leader in creating rocket-powered jet aircraft. The very first aircraft to fly using rocket power was the Lippisch Ente. This happened in 1928. Before that, the Ente had been flown as a glider.

The next year, in 1929, another plane called the Opel RAK.1 became the first aircraft built specifically to fly with rocket power. These early flights showed the amazing potential of jet and rocket engines for faster flight.

Images for kids

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  A McDonnell Douglas DC-10 from Continental Airlines. This is an example of a Trijet plane, meaning it has three jet engines.

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  The Heinkel He 178 was the first aircraft to fly using a turbojet engine. This historic flight happened in August 1939.

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  A Boeing 707 jet plane.

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  The Concorde was a famous commercial supersonic jet. It flew passengers from 1976 to 2003, traveling faster than the speed of sound.

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  The Sikorsky S-69 was a special kind of helicopter called a compound helicopter. It used extra turbojet engines to go faster.

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  The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird was one of the fastest jet planes ever built. It could fly at Mach 3.35, which is about 3,661 kilometers per hour (2,275 miles per hour).

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  This graph shows how efficient rocket and jet engines are at different speeds.

See also

In Spanish: Avión de reacción para niños