Page 29 - High Duty Alloys

High Duty Alloys Redditch Heritage

Jet Aircraft

Gloster Meteor – Britain’s first
jet fighter FF March 1943. Mk.1 –
note engine nacelle position.

In 1941 HDA also produced
the very first forged
aluminium compressor blades
for the axial jet, a more
complex powerplant designed
at the same time as Whittle’s
work and which would
eventually become the main
configuration in jet engine
design. Indeed, when this type
of engine became the most
favoured internationally, the
need for vast quantities of blades became all too clear. Prior to 1950, a section of the
Redditch works was set aside for blade making but that year, under the Ministry
sponsored "Scheme 100" a dedicated blade making facility was set up in the original
foundry area with a very much increased manufacturing capacity. This has been known
ever since as the ‘Blade Forge' with the original forging area being renamed the ‘General
Forge'. In the first fifteen years of operation High Duty Alloys produced over 25 million
precision forged blades.

Gloster Meteor Mk.2 with axial engine

Page: 29