1969 Brooke Bond collectors tea card. depicting: Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle (1 June 1907  9 August 1996). Royal Air Force (RAF) engineer air officer. He is credited with single-handedly inventing the turbojet engine. A patent was submitted by Maxime Guillaume in 1921 for a similar invention. however. this was technically unfeasible at the time. Whittle's jet engines were developed some years earlier than those of Germany's Hans von Ohain who was the designer of the first operational turbojet engine.