Pratt & Whitney F401

The Pratt & Whitney F401, company designation JTF22, was an afterburning turbofan developed alongside the F100 as its naval variant. It grew from the joint Air Force and Navy engine request of 1967 for the Grumman F-14 Tomcat and the fighter that became the McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle. In 1970 the Air Force awarded Pratt & Whitney a contract for the 25,000 pounds-force F100 and the Navy one for the 30,000 pounds-force F401-PW-400. The F401 shared the F100 core but had a larger fan, an extra low-pressure compressor stage and a bypass ratio of 1.0, and it produced about 28,000 pounds-force with afterburner. A prototype first flew in 1973, but the cost and reliability problems of early F100s and the failure of the Rockwell XFV-12 project led the Navy to cancel the engine in 1974, and the F-14 stayed on the TF30.