Ernst Heinkel

He didn't know about Whittle.

They had never met, but von Ohan had developed a jet engine concept and brought it to Ernst Heinkel, who ran one of Germany's most innovative aircraft companies.

Heinkel liked it, Heinkel funded it, and on August 27, 1939, just four days before Germany invaded Poland, a tiny aircraft called the Heinkel He 178 lifted off from Marianahe Airfield and flew on pure jet power for about six minutes.

Six minutes.

No bombs, no extra fuel, no other crew members, no defensive weapons, just him in this little thing, 517 kilometers an hour, right? So they're taking all this on board.

And apparently, if you read Ernst Heinkel's autobiography, EG1000, He says, Weber used to hang around at Heinkel.

He used to come down to Rostock all the time and hang out with us.

And we really got to know him really well.

He came back around, gave himself extra margin on the approach, planned the energy management carefully, and put the airplane down.

When he climbed out, Ernst Heinkel was there to shake his hand.

They had done it.

For the first time in history, a manned aircraft had taken off, flown under its own power, and landed using pure turbojet propulsion.

A strange high-pitched noise filled the air, but a few minutes later, the plane landed safely, becoming the first ever flight powered by jet engine.

The aircraft, the Heinkel He 178, had been built in secret at a factory owned by the German aircraft builder Ernst Heinkel.

The pioneering engine was the work of a young physicist named Hans von Ohain.

Remarkably, almost a decade earlier, an English engineer, Frank Whittle, had patented a near identical turbojet.