Born on 14 December 1911, in Dessau, Germany, Hans von Ohain grew up to a pioneer in the field of aviation. He was a German physicist, and designer of the first operational jet engine. Though his work was soon eclipsed by other German engineers, his achievements greatly influenced the advancement of aviation. Without him, the development of jet planes could have been severely impeded and slowed down. After receiving degrees in physics and aerodynamics, von Ohain developed a design for a jet engine that used a centrifugal compressor and turbine placed very close together, back to back, with the flame cans wrapped around the outside of the assembly and soon had it patented. After months of development, the Heinkel-Strahltriebwerk 1, or Heinkel Jet engine 1 was complete and ran successfully. Only problems with the metal’s integrity arose. The engine’s combustors were replaced and the engine was run on gasoline for the first time. Von Ohain had at last ran a self-contained turbojet. Von Ohain worked on more jet engines, including the HeS 3b and HeS 8, which propelled the prototype Heinkel He 280 …show more content…
Though von Ohain had minimal information on Whittle’s projects, he did have some commentary, "When I saw Whittle’s patent I was almost convinced that it had something to do with boundary layer suction combinations. It had a two-flow, dual entrance flow radial flow compressor that looked monstrous from an engine point of view. Its flow reversal looked to us to be an undesirable thing, but it turned out that it wasn't so bad after all though it gave some minor instability problems." He remarked that Whittle’s patent was too broad, "Our patent claims had to be narrowed in comparison to Whittle’s because Whittle showed certain things." To reinforce this he said "We felt that it looked like a patent of an idea" and "We thought that it was not seriously being worked