First Jet Plane

Heinkel presented his ideas to Ernst Heinkel, who declared himself willing to participate in the development of the project. In 1937 Von Ohain successfully showed his first jet power plant, the Heinkel HeS 1, and soon blueprints were made to test a similar jet power plant in an airplane. He 178 was developed on the basis of Ohain's third motor construction, HeS 3, which burnt off biodiesel.

This resulted in a small airplane with a metallic body in traditional design and layout. Nozzle inlet was in the nostril and the airplane was equipped with a tail wheel landing gear. It made its first mission on 27 August 1939, only a few flights before Germany began the Second World War with its invasion of Poland.

Test driver was Erich Warsitz, who had also piloted the world's first rocket-powered plane, the Heinkel He 176, on its debut in June 1939. The Heinkel He 178 V1 had quietly designed the turbine jet and the test bench plane. It was also kept under wraps from the Luftwaffe, and on November 1, 1939, after the Germans' defeat in Poland, Heinkel organized a civil servant jet protest, in which Herman Goering, commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, did not take part.

Ernest Udet and Erhard Milch, Minister of Aeroplane Production and Supply, observed the performance of the planes, but were not impressed. Heinkel was intrepid when he began the design of a twin-jet jet hunter, the He 280, as a privately owned company, using the findings from the He 178 prototypes. "He 178 Heinkel".

_GO ("The Storm of Life", 1953), Ernst Heinkel: Stuermisches Leben (in German), Stuttgart: Mundus, DNB 451925130 . Köhler, H Dieter (1999), Ernst Heinkel - Pioneer of High Speed Aircraft, Bonn: Bernard & Graefe, ISBN 978-3-7637-6116-6 . Smith, JR; Kay, Antony L (1972), World War II aircraft, London: Warsitz, Lutz (2009), The First Jet Pilot - The Story of Pilot Erich Warsitz, England:

This is Erich Warsitz (official website), with a few rarely seen video clips of the Heinkel He 178 and commentary.