Whittle produced a treaty on the "jet" engine in the early 30s this was used by the germans to produce the worlds first jet (they even credited Whittle ) Whittle however had to continue his work as a private company with no govenment support.

The british were unconvinced of trhe benifits of the jet

Whittle knew all about axial flow engines and could have built one, but he reckoned that the technology was not available to produce a reliable engine (the German axial engines tend to support this) so went with the centrifugal an engine he knew he could get reliable

a good story is a postwar test of a whittle engine in a german test rig (one designed for testing jet engines)  they ran the whittle then stopped for lunch, the german technicians wanted to know what parts needed changing for the afternoon test and were supprised to find that it was to run exactly as it was in the morning, they changed a large proportion of the axial (if it lasted that long which was unusual)  as a matter of course.