Hans von Ohain

Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain (1911 to 1998) was a German-American physicist and engineer, the designer of the first aircraft to use a turbojet engine. Together with Frank Whittle and Anselm Franz he is described as a co-inventor of the turbojet. Supported by the aircraft manufacturer Heinkel, he designed an engine around a centrifugal compressor and a radial inflow turbine, and on 27 August 1939 his engine powered the Heinkel He 178, the first aircraft flown on a gas turbine. Whittle's design flew later in the Gloster E.28/39, and after the war the two men met, became friends and shared the Charles Stark Draper Prize for the independent development of the turbojet engine.