11 Facts About BMW 003

BMW 003 is an early axial turbojet engine produced by BMW AG in Germany during World War II.

The only production aircraft to use the BMW 003 were the Heinkel He 162 and the later C-series, four-engined versions of the Arado Ar 234.

About 3500 BMW 003 engines were built in Germany, but very few were ever installed in aircraft.

In 1939, BMW 003 bought out Bramo, and in the acquisition, obtained both engine projects.

General usage of the BMW 003 powerplant was abandoned for the Me 262, except for two experimental examples of the plane known as the Me 262 A-1b.

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Work on the BMW 003 continued anyway, and by late 1942 it had been made far more powerful and reliable.

BMW 003 utilized nearly the same starting method as its slightly more powerful Jumo 004 competitor: one of Norbert Riedel's 10 PS flat-twin two-stroke engines, installed within the engine's intake diverter as a mechanical APU, to get the 003's central shaft rotating for operation.

BMW 003 was intended for export to Japan, but working examples of the engine were never supplied.

BMW 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 BMW 003 axial-flow turbojet as the starting point in mid-November 1944.

Blueprints for BMW 003 engines had been seized by Soviet forces from both the Basdorf-Zuhlsdorf plant near Berlin and the notorious Mittelwerk slave labor facility near Nordhausen.

Production of the BMW 003 was set up at the "Red October" GAZ 466 in Leningrad and in Kuznetsov along KMPO, where the engine was mass-produced from 1947 under the designation RD-20 .