The practicality of jet propulsion had been demonstrated in Germany in early 1937 by
Hans von Ohain working with the
Heinkel company. Recognising the potential of the invention, the
Reich Air Ministry (, abbreviated RLM) encouraged Germany's aero engine manufacturers to begin their own programmes of jet engine development, offering contracts to both Junkers and BMW for an engine capable of
static thrust. The BMW 003 began development as a project of the
Brandenburgische Motorenwerke (
Brandenburg Motor Works, known as "
Bramo"), under the direction of
Hermann Östrich and assigned the RLM designation
109-003 (using the RLM's "109-" prefix, common to all jet and rocket engine projects). Bramo was also developing another turbojet, the 109–002. In 1939, BMW bought out Bramo, and in the acquisition, obtained both engine projects. The 109-002 had a very sophisticated
contra-rotating compressor design intended to eliminate
torque, but was abandoned in favour of the simpler engine, which in the end proved to have enough development problems of its own. Construction began late in the same year and the engine ran for the first time in August 1940, but produced only thrust, just half what was desired. The first flight test took place in mid-1941, mounted underneath a
Messerschmitt Bf 110 testbed airframe. Problems continued, however, so delaying the program that while the Me 262 V1 prototype airframe (the first aircraft intended to use the engine) was ready for flight-testing, there were no power plants available for it and it actually began flight tests with a supplementary, conventional
Junkers Jumo 210 piston engine in the nose. It was not until November 1941 that the Me 262 V1 was flown with BMW engines, which both failed during the test. The prototype aircraft had to return to the airfield on the power of the piston engine, which was still fitted. The general usage of the BMW powerplant was abandoned for the Me 262, except for two experimental examples of the plane known as the Me 262 A-1b. The few
Messerschmitt Me 262 A-1b test examples built used the more developed version of the 003 jet, recording an official top speed of . The Me 262A-1a production version used the competing Jumo 004, whose heavier weight required the wings to be swept back in order to move the
center of gravity into the correct position. Work on the 003 continued anyway, and by late 1942 it had been made far more powerful and reliable. The improved engine was flight tested under a
Junkers Ju 88 in October 1943 and was finally ready for mass production in August 1944. Completed engines earned a reputation for unreliability; the time between major overhauls (not technically a
TBO) was about 50 hours. (The competing Jumo 004's was between thirty and fifty, and may have been as low as ten.) which added one extra compressor stage beyond the seven of the earlier designs, and an extra turbine stage, with the thrust-weight ratio of 16.58 N/kg for the 003D at only in weight, being some 30% greater than the figure for the
Heinkel HeS 011A. Only two German production aircraft used the 003. The first was the
Heinkel He 162A
Spatz (since the
Volksjäger light fighter design competition mandated its use), with the
Spatz utilizing an 003E version, designed to possess ventral mounting points to allow it to be mounted atop the fuselage of an aircraft. The other was the four-engined
Arado Ar 234C reconnaissance-bomber variants, which were designed to use what was supposed to be the "more available" engine, despite its primary allocation for the He 162A. The BMW 003 proved cheaper in materials than the company's own
801 radial, to , and cheaper than the
Junkers Jumo 213 inverted V12 piston engine at , but slightly more costly than the competing Junkers Jumo 004's . Moreover, the 004 needed only 375 hours to complete (including manufacture, assembly, and shipping), compared to 1,400 for the 801. At Kolbermoor, location of the
Heinkel-
Hirth engine works, the
Fedden Mission, led by Sir
Roy Fedden, found jet-engine manufacturing was simpler and required lower-skill labor and less sophisticated tooling than piston engine production; in fact, most of making of hollow turbine blades and
sheet metal work on jets could be done by tooling used in making automobile
body panels. The lifetime of the combustion chambers was estimated at 200 hours.
"Mixed-power" upgrade One late version of the engine added a small
rocket motor (the
BMW 109-718) at the rear and usually just above the exhaust of the engine, which added some thrust each for three to five minutes, for take off and short dashes. In this configuration, it was known as the BMW 003R and was tested, albeit with some serious reliability problems, on single prototypes for advanced models of the Me 262 (the Me 262C-2b
Heimatschützer II [Home Defender II]), and He 162 (He 162E). Both prototypes flew under hybrid jet/rocket power during March 1945,
Turboshaft development The 003 was selected as the basis for a
gas turbine development project for the German military's anticipated need for what is today called a
turboshaft powerplant for multiple needs — this project was called the
GT 101, using the 003 axial-flow turbojet as the starting point in mid-November 1944. Its original purpose would have been to re-engine the
Panther tank with a turboshaft-based power system capable of up to a 1,150 PS usable shaft horsepower rating into an
AFV's drivetrain, from an engine weight of only , giving it a 27 hp/ton
power-to-weight ratio — just over twice the factor that the Panther's original gasoline-fueled
Maybach V12 piston engine provided.
Post-war use Following the war, two captured 003s powered the prototype of the first
Soviet jet, the
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-9. Blueprints for BMW engines had been seized by Soviet forces from both the Basdorf-Zühlsdorf plant near Berlin and the notorious
Mittelwerk slave labor facility near
Nordhausen. Production of the 003 was set up at the "Red October" GAZ 466 (
Gorkovsky Avtomobilny Zavod, or Gorky Automobile Plant) in
Leningrad and in Kuznetsov along KMPO, where the engine was mass-produced from 1947 under the designation RD-20 (
reactivnyi dvigatel, or "jet drive"). After the Allied occupation of Germany,
Marcel Dassault assisted Hermann Östrich in moving from the
American Zone of occupied Germany into the
French Zone. Within a couple of years, he was working for
Voisin, a division of
SNECMA, France's state-owned aircraft engine company. Using the basic design of the 003, he produced the larger
Atar jet engine that powered Dassault's
Ouragan,
Dassault Mirage III and
Mystère fighters. ==Variants==