Westinghouse J40

The Westinghouse J40 was to be a high-performance afterburning turbojet engine. It was intended by the Bureau of Aeronautics, in early 1946, to power several fighter aircraft and a bomber, with a rating of 7,500 lbf (33 kN) thrust at sea level static conditions without afterburning and 10,900 lbs thrust with afterburning. A more powerful model 9.500/13,700 lbf thrust version was intended to replace the earlier engines for the various airframes, but proved to have a flawed compressor design and lacked a suitable control system. These higher-power engines were deemed a failure, leaving the US Navy Bureau of Aeronautics with only the earlier lower-power engines. These were eventually used for early flight testing. In the case of the McDonnell F3H-1N Demon, the 10,900 lb thrust engine was used in production airframes for a very short period before the aircraft was grounded after repeated incidents caused by flying the now overweight airframe with an underpowered engine and continuing engine issues. Failures in service led to the loss of aircraft. A government investigation of the F3H-1N program issue failed to determine if pilots had been lost due solely to the engine issues. The grounded airframes were either scrapped or used for ground training. The F3H-2N used the Allison J71 engine.