Thunder Makers is a 1950s film that shows the production and testing of the Pratt & Whitney J57 turbojet aircraft engine at the Ford Motor Company’s Aircraft Engine Division plant in Chicago. (Ford built these engines under license from P&W.) The film opens with a shot of two men in a control room testing the J57 and firing the engine’s afterburner (01:35). The film then shows viewers the Ford Aircraft Engine plant, where a train is pulling into one of the plant’s warehouses (02:06). A J57 sits next to the tracks inside the warehouse (02:34). There is an exterior shot of the main building of Ford’s Aircraft Engine Division in Chicago (03:00). Materials used for the engine are unloaded in the loading docks at the plant (04:00). A man sets the center shaft of the engine; other men examine compressor discs in a large room (04:59). Various other parts are tested (05:30), and the center shaft is bored (05:43). The film shows some of the large equipment used to machine the parts for the J57. A man tests fuel flow at a simulated altitude (07:52), using dry ice to drop the temperature for the test. Two men lower a J57 engine on the sub-assembly line to continue piecing it together (09:19). Compressor rotors are tested (10:05); then the engine is tipped over onto its cradle (10:20) and is connected with the afterburner. The completed engine is tested in the jet test cell. The film closes with a train leaving the Ford plant, followed by footage of three planes that use the J57: a fighter jet, a B-52 bomber, and a giant airliner.
The Pratt & Whitney J57 (company designation: JT3C) is an axial-flowturbojet engine developed by Pratt & Whitney in the early 1950s. The J57 (first run January 1950) was the first 10,000 lbf (45 kN) thrust class engine in the United States. The J57/JT3C was developed into the J75/JT4A turbojet, JT3D/TF33 turbofan and the PT5/T57 turboprop.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
