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168 SMITHSONIAN ANNALS OF FLIGHT
resilient medium flow for the first time. Moreover he
showed how the efficiency of a ramjet engine could
be determined if the external energy was partially
or fully supplied to the air, and he investigated the
case of air flow compression due to the loss of free
stream momentum, as was suggested by Rene Lorin
in his time. In this case the air characteristics are
changed according to the "Brayton cycle" and its
thermal efficiency will equal the difference between
unity and the ratio of air temperature at the completion
of compression to its initial value at the
inlet to the engine.
Rumors about this lecture quickly spread among
the advanced scientific and technical circles at that
time interested in rocketry, and B.S. Stechkin was
asked to deliver the lecture once more for a wider
audience.
Soon such a lecture was held at one of the public
lecture halls of the Soviet Army House. The hall
was overcrowded and many of those who wished to
be present failed to get in. Then Boris Sergeyevitch
was asked to publish the lecture. With the aid of
his students and disciples Stechkin prepared the
lecture for publication as the article "Theory of a
Ramjet Engine," first published in February 1929,
thus becoming known not only to specialists in the
USSR but in other countries as well. 4 In this article
the equations of ramjet engine thrust and efficiency
were given for the first time.
Soon after the publication of Stechkin's work,
reviews, comments, and references to it, as well as
unanimous recognition of USSR priority in this
field, began to appear in the technical literature
abroad. For instance, the famous Italian scientist
Arturo Giovanni Crocco in his monograph "Superaviation
and Hyperaviation," published in 1931,
wrote that "the classic theory of ramjet engines had
been formulated for the first time in the USSR by
the Moscow professor Stechkin." 5
The theory worked out by B.S. Stechkin opened
the way for practical works in developing ramjet
engines.
In autumn 1931 in the USSR a group of ardent
enthusiasts and advocates of rocket engineering was
set up as a voluntary society which afterwards was
named the Group for Study of Jet Propulsion
(GIRD). Mainly they were young students and
aviation specialists who set for their task the practical
development of jet vehicles. GIRD conducted
its work in teams while general guidance was ef­
fected by the Technical Council composed of the
most qualified specialists. Sergei Pavlovitch Korolyev,
who afterwards became an Academican and a
spacecraft designer, was Chairman of the Technical
Council.
One of GIRD's team, headed by myself, was entrusted
with investigations and experimental testing
of ramjet engine performance. At the beginning
we devoted several months to theoretical calculations
and research into possible fields of such engines
application. Then the time was ripe to commence
the practical work, i.e., investigations of
models and separate units of ramjet engines.
Test stand IU-1 was constructed in GIRD by
March 1933. It comprised a high-pressure compression
station, a battery of tanks accumulating the air
compressed up to 200 kg/cm 2 and a stop valve
measuring the air supply from the gas pressure
tanks to the receiver. The latter damped the pressure
fluctuations of the air supplied to the experimental
engine. The design of the test stand, preserved
among other papers of that time, is shown
in Figure 1, and the ramjet engine model being
tested is shown in Figure 2. Air entered the model
at various preset values of excess pressure which
simulated the dynamic pressure in the inlet diffuser
of the engine.
Experimental laboratories as well as workshops
and design rooms of GIRD were housed at that
time in the basement of an apartment building.
The first test of IU-1 was carried out on 26 March
t -fe^fe^^J
-120
iX
vMM//A>//,V//w})//,
( Compressed air }=M
( Hydrogen tank J=*
—x T
( >
—a: J^ x-
FIGURE 1.—Diagram of IU-1 facility for ramjet engine testing
(from GIRD archives).