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BMW 018

German turbojet engine

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionNov 10, 2025
Entity authorityQ796365
Source-derived summary

The BMW 018 (RLM designation 109-018) was an early axial-flow turbojet engine project by BMW AG in Germany.

Design

The 018 design was begun in 1940. It was generally similar to the BMW 003, but had a twelve-stage axial compressor and three-stage turbine, for a thrust of 34.3 kN (7,700 lbf).

Three engines were at various stages of completion at Staßfurt, but due to continuing efforts toward protracted development of the 003 along with Allied bombing and the liberation of France, official 018 development was stopped in late 1944. On BMW's own initiative, it was decided that the existing 018 development examples would be moved to a pair of successive locations in Bavaria; to Kolbermoor to finish construction, and then move them to Oberwiesenfeld for testing. Despite this planning, the rapidly deteriorating war situation of March 1945 prompted BMW personnel to destroy the engines and their components in order to prevent them from falling into Allied hands.

It was estimated that 50 h/p starter (2 cycle, air-cooled gasoline engine) would be required for the BMW 018 and 028.

Specifications

Data from Christopher, p. 74

General characteristics

Type: axial flow turbine

Length: 4,190 mm (165 in)

Diameter: 1,252 mm (49.3 in)

Dry weight: 2,295 kg (5,060 lb)

Components

Compressor: 12-stage

Combustors: annular

Turbine: 3-stage

Performance

Maximum thrust: 34.3 kN (7,700 lbf)

Thrust-to-weight ratio: 1.52

See also

Related development

BMW 003

SNECMA Atar

Comparable engines

Westinghouse J40

Related lists

List of aircraft engines

Notes

Bibliography

Christopher, John (2013). The Race for Hitler's X-Planes: Britain's 1945 Mission to Capture Secret Luftwaffe Technology.

Editorial summary

“BMW 018” enters the record as german turbojet engine. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what German, turbojet and engine can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1940, 1944, 1945, 2013—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around German, turbojet and engine.
Editorial analysis

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“BMW 018” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, German, turbojet and engine provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 10, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q796365. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1940, 1944, 1945 and 2013.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from BMW 018” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.