Heinkel He 178 and HeS 3 jet engine
The first aircraft to fly on jet power alone, on 27 August 1939 at Rostock. Its HeS 3 turbojet came from physicist Hans von Ohain and mechanic Max Hahn.
- Category
- Mobility
- Introduced
- 1939
What it is
The He 178 was a small single-seat research aircraft built by Ernst Heinkel's company in Rostock. On 27 August 1939, flown by test pilot Erich Warsitz from the Marienehe works airfield, it became the first aircraft to fly solely on turbojet power. A brief hop had already occurred during taxi trials on 24 August. Its engine, the HeS 3, was designed by Hans von Ohain, who had filed his turbojet patent in 1935.
How it works
The HeS 3 is a centrifugal turbojet. Air enters through an inducer and a centrifugal compressor, which flings it outwards and raises its pressure by a ratio of about 2.8 to 1. It then turns and passes through an annular combustion chamber, where fuel burns, before driving a radial inflow turbine that powers the compressor. The remaining energy leaves as a jet. Thrust was around 4.9 kilonewtons, roughly 500 kilograms of force, from an engine weighing about 360 kilograms. An earlier demonstrator had run on hydrogen in 1937; the flight engine burned liquid fuel.
Why it stands out
- It flew 21 months before Britain's Gloster E.28/39, which made its first flight on 15 May 1941 with Frank Whittle's engine.
- Whittle had patented a turbojet in 1930 and ran an engine first, so the honest summary is that Whittle patented first and von Ohain flew first.
- Von Ohain's first demonstration engine was built by Max Hahn, a car mechanic at the Göttingen garage that serviced his sports car.
- In 1991 von Ohain and Whittle jointly received the Draper Prize for their independent development of the turbojet.
Where you meet it
Every jet airliner descends from this work and Whittle's, though modern engines use axial compressors and fans. The original He 178 and HeS 3 were destroyed in the war. In the 1980s apprentices at MTU in Munich built two HeS 3 replicas, one for the Deutsches Museum and one for the Smithsonian. Von Ohain himself moved to the United States in 1947 and spent his career at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
Sources
Related products
Anschütz gyrocompass
The Kiel gyrocompass that finds true north without magnetism. Patented from 1904, tested on SMS Deutschland in 1908, later improved with ideas from Albert Einstein, who drew a royalty on each unit.
Bosch ABS anti-lock braking system
Developed with Mercedes-Benz, Bosch's digitally controlled ABS entered series production in the S-Class in 1978. It keeps wheels from locking under heavy braking and laid the groundwork for later safety systems.
Bosch ESP electronic stability programme
Electronic stability control developed by Bosch, which debuted in the Mercedes-Benz S-Class coupé in 1995 and helps stop cars from skidding out of control.
Last reviewed 4 November 2026. Main source: aeroreport.de/en/good-to-know/eighty-years-of-jet-powered-fl. Suggest a correction.