Departing from van Driests theory for compressible turbulent boundary layers, a closed set of general equations containing 3 free parameters is established. The parameters are then determined by fitting the theoretical predictions to reliable experimental data for incompressible boundary layers. By comparing with a great deal of data on two‐dimensional compressible turbulent boundary layers, all received with shock tube experiments, it is shown that this theoretical scheme gives the correct predictions also in the case of high stagnation enthalpy flows up to 2000 K stagnation temperature.