27 August 1939, Marienehe

Early on the morning of 27 August 1939, test pilot Erich Warsitz climbed into a small shoulder-wing aircraft on the factory airfield at Rostock-Marienehe. It had no propeller. Behind the cockpit sat a turbojet designed by a young physicist called Hans von Ohain. The He 178 took off, flew a short circuit and landed — the first flight in history of an aircraft powered by a turbojet. Five days later Germany invaded Poland. The company that made the breakthrough was the private fiefdom of one restless, difficult man: Ernst Heinkel.

A crash, then a career

Heinkel was born in 1888 in Grunbach, Württemberg. He crashed his first home-built aircraft in 1911 and was badly hurt, but stayed in the business, designing for Albatros and then Hansa-Brandenburg during the First World War, where his seaplanes made his name. After a spell at Caspar-Werke he set up on his own at Warnemünde on 1 December 1922. With Versailles strangling German aviation, he licensed designs to Sweden and built catapult seaplanes for the Imperial Japanese Navy and for the North German Lloyd liner Bremen.

The airliner that was a bomber

The company’s first big hit was the He 70 Blitz of 1932, a sleek all-metal mail plane and airliner for Luft Hansa that set eight world speed records. The twin Günter brothers, Siegfried and Walter, then scaled it up into the He 111 Doppel-Blitz, first flown on 24 February 1935 and presented as an airliner. It was a thin disguise. The He 111 became the Luftwaffe’s standard bomber, fought in Spain with the Condor Legion and over Poland, France and Britain, and 6,508 were built. Spain’s CASA kept building a version until the 1950s.

Speed for its own sake

Heinkel loved speed records the way some men love racehorses. In 1938 Ernst Udet flew the He 100 to a 100 km closed-circuit record of 634.73 km/h. On 30 March 1939 Hans Dieterle took the He 100 V8, its Daimler-Benz engine tuned to last just 30 minutes, to an absolute world speed record of 746.6 km/h. Only weeks later Messerschmitt’s Me 209 beat it, and the Air Ministry, which preferred Messerschmitt’s fighters, never ordered the He 100 at all. Twenty-five were built, and propaganda passed them off as an operational type.

Two firsts in one summer

The summer of 1939 brought a double first. On 20 June the He 176 flew under the power of a throttleable liquid-fuel rocket, and on 27 August the He 178 proved the jet. In 1941 the twin-jet He 280 flew, and its compressed-air ejection seat became the first to save a pilot in a real emergency. Yet Berlin backed the Me 262 instead. Heinkel’s big wartime bets went wrong: the He 177 Greif heavy bomber, with paired engines on a single propeller, was plagued by fires, and the excellent He 219 night fighter was built in only 268 examples.

Sachsenhausen

The firm grew from about 1,000 staff in 1932 to about 16,000 by the end of 1944, with plants at Marienehe, Oranienburg, Vienna-Schwechat and beyond. That growth rested on forced labour. From 1941 Heinkel used Jewish forced workers, and between 6,000 and 8,000 prisoners from Sachsenhausen concentration camp worked on the He 177 at Oranienburg. Ernst Heinkel was a Nazi Party member and a Wehrwirtschaftsführer, and in 1938 he received the German National Prize for Art and Science. In the final months the company rushed out the He 162 Volksjäger, a cheap jet fighter designed and flown within months.

Scooters, bubble cars and a quiet exit

US troops captured Heinkel in July 1945. Forbidden to build aircraft, the company turned to bicycles, the Tourist motor scooter, some 27,000 Perle mopeds, and from 1956 the Heinkel Kabine bubble car, built under licence in Ireland and Britain after 1958. Ernst Heinkel published his memoir, Stürmisches Leben, in 1956 and died in Stuttgart on 30 January 1958. That year the company restarted aircraft work at Speyer, building parts for the licence-built F-104G Starfighter. In 1964–65 it was absorbed into Vereinigte Flugtechnische Werke, whose line runs through MBB to Airbus.

Fábricas

• Warnemünde · Rostock-Warnemünde — Founding site, 1922
• Marienehe works (Heinkel-Nord) · Rostock-Marienehe (today Schmarl) — Production from 1935; own airfield with five paved runways; site of the He 178 flight
• Oranienburg · Oranienburg, near Berlin — From 1936; He 111 and He 177, worked by Sachsenhausen prisoners
• Heinkel-Süd · Vienna-Schwechat, Austria — From 1942, after the 1938 Anschluss
• Speyer · Speyer, Rhineland-Palatinate — Aircraft work resumed from 1958

Pessoas

• Ernst Heinkel · founder, designer — 1888–1958; memoir Stürmisches Leben (1956)
• Siegfried and Walter Günter · designers — Twin brothers behind the He 70 and He 111
• Heinrich Hertel · designer
• Hans von Ohain · jet engine inventor — His HeS engine powered the He 178
• Erich Warsitz · test pilot — Flew the He 178 on 27 August 1939

Recordes e pioneirismos

• Eight world speed records with the He 70, 1933
• 100 km closed-circuit speed record, 634.73 km/h, Ernst Udet in the He 100, 1938
• Absolute world speed record 746.6 km/h, Hans Dieterle in the He 100 V8, 30 March 1939
• First throttleable liquid-rocket aircraft flight, He 176, 20 June 1939
• First turbojet-powered flight, He 178, 27 August 1939
• First ejection seat used in an emergency, He 280
• First operational aircraft with ejection seats, He 219