to open next chapter. - NASA's History Office

In the Urals
mechanisms. Lyulka did not agree, and the debate was carried over to
Bolkhovitinov. Ultimately, I was relieved of the work on the regulation of turbojet
engines, and Lyulka’s engineers worked on this independently.
Lyulka spent eighteen months in Bilimbay, before transferring to Moscow in
1943. He soon thereafter received his own production base beside the Yauza River.
The opening of new factories was a rare occurrence during the war. During the
first postwar years, our engine-building industry reproduced captured German
JUMO-004 and BMW-003 engines for the first Soviet jet aircraft. By 1948,
Lyulka’s work force was building domestic turbojet engines that were more
powerful than the captured engines. 3
One of the paradoxes of the history of technology is that liquid-propellant
rocket engines using special oxidizers were developed and broadly applied much
earlier than reactive (now referred to as jet) engines using a “free” oxidizer—the
oxygen of the Earth’s atmosphere.
during that difficult year of 1942, our collective’s priority was to produce
a reliable engine system for the BI aircraft. Lyulka’s engines seemed to be for the
distant future, while the exploding liquid-propellant rocket engine was in the here
and now.
Bolkhovitinov and Isayev had flown to Kazan for several days. Our patron had,
with difficulty, obtained permission to visit the NKVD’s special prison attached to
Factory No. 16 in Kazan.There they met with Valentin Petrovich Glushko. Upon
their return, Isayev enthusiastically told us about their meeting. He said that their
two days with the imprisoned Glushko and his associates had taught them more
about the liquid-propellant rocket engine than the entire preceding period of dealing
with the RNII.
“These zeki live better than we do,” Isayev told us.“They have benches, laboratories,
and production facilities that we wouldn’t even dream about. They are
under guard, so they weren’t able to talk openly about their life. On the other
hand, they are fed better than we are, who are free.The most important thing is
that their engines work much more reliably.”
This first encounter with Glushko in Kazan in the winter of 1942 determined
Isayev’s subsequent fate.To the end of his days,he remained true to the decision made
at that time regarding the development of reliable liquid-propellant rocket engines.
Upon his return from evacuation, Isayev set up a special engine-design bureau.
A postwar temporary assignment to Germany profoundly influenced Isayev’s engineering
career. He became a leader in the design of liquid-propellant rocket
engines for air defense, missile defense, submarines, spacecraft, and many other
applications.The collective that he founded inherited Isayev’s marvelous enthusi-
3. Lyulka served as Chief (and later General) Designer of OKB-165 (or KB Saturn) from 1946-84. During
that time, he oversaw the development of many generations of Soviet jet engines for civil and military aviation.
191