Heinkel HeS 1
Encyclopedia
The Heinkel HeS 1 was Germany's first jet engine, which was a stationary test item that ran on hydrogen
Hydrogen
Hydrogen is the chemical element with atomic number 1. It is represented by the symbol H. With an average atomic weight of , hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant chemical element, constituting roughly 75% of the Universe's chemical elemental mass. Stars in the main sequence are mainly...
.
History
In 1933, Hans von OhainHans von Ohain
Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain was a German engineer, one of the inventors of jet propulsion.Frank Whittle, who patented in 1930 in the United Kingdom, and Hans von Ohain, who patented in 1936 in Germany, developed the concept independently during the late 1930s...
wrote his PhD thesis at the University of Göttingen on the topic of an optical microphone
Microphone
A microphone is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. In 1877, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone used as a telephone voice transmitter...
that could be used to record sound directly to film. Siemens
Siemens
Siemens may refer toSiemens, a German family name carried by generations of telecommunications industrialists, including:* Werner von Siemens , inventor, founder of Siemens AG...
bought the patent for DM 3,500, a princely sum. Ohain used the money to invest in his real interest, the gas turbine
Gas turbine
A gas turbine, also called a combustion turbine, is a type of internal combustion engine. It has an upstream rotating compressor coupled to a downstream turbine, and a combustion chamber in-between....
. In 1934 von Ohain contracted his mechanic, Max Hahn, to build a prototype of his concept. Later referred to as the "garage engine", it quickly burned out due to the use of low-temperature metals. Nevertheless, it was successful and piqued the interest of his professor, Robert Pohl.
In February 1936, Pohl wrote to Ernst Heinkel
Ernst Heinkel
Dr. Ernst Heinkel was a German aircraft designer, manufacturer, Wehrwirtschaftführer in the Third Reich, and member of the Nazi party. His company Heinkel Flugzeugwerke produced the Heinkel He 178, the world's first turbojet aircraft and jet plane, and the Heinkel He 176, the first rocket aircraft...
on behalf of von Ohain, telling him of the design and its possibilities. Heinkel arranged a meeting where his engineers were able to grill von Ohain for hours, during which he flatly stated that the current garage engine"would never work but there was nothing wrong with the concept as a whole. The engineers were convinced, and in April, von Ohain and Hahn were set up at Heinkel's works at the Marienehe airfield outside Rostock
Rostock
Rostock -Early history:In the 11th century Polabian Slavs founded a settlement at the Warnow river called Roztoc ; the name Rostock is derived from that designation. The Danish king Valdemar I set the town aflame in 1161.Afterwards the place was settled by German traders...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
in Warnemünde
Warnemünde
Warnemünde is a sea resort and northmost district of Rostock in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, situated on the Baltic Sea in the northeast of Germany at the estuary of the river Warnow.- History :...
.
Once moved, a study was made of the airflow in the engine, and several improvements made over a two month period. Much happier with the results, they decided to produce a completely new engine incorporating all of these changes, running on hydrogen
Hydrogen
Hydrogen is the chemical element with atomic number 1. It is represented by the symbol H. With an average atomic weight of , hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant chemical element, constituting roughly 75% of the Universe's chemical elemental mass. Stars in the main sequence are mainly...
gas. The resulting Heinkel-Strahltriebwerk 1 (HeS 1), German for Heinkel Jet Engine 1, was built by hand-picking some of the best machinists in the company, much to the chagrin of the shop-floor supervisors. Hahn, meanwhile, worked on the combustion problem, an area he had some experience in.
The engine was extremely simple, made largely of sheet metal. Construction started late in the summer of 1936, and completed in March 1937. It ran two weeks later on hydrogen, but the high temperature exhaust led to considerable "burning" of the metal. The tests were otherwise successful, and in September the combustors were replaced and the engine was run on gasoline for the first time. This proved to clog up the combustors, so Hahn designed a new version based on his soldering torch, which proved to work much better. Although the engine was never intended to be a flight-quality design, it proved beyond a doubt that the basic concept was workable.
While work on the HeS 1 continued, the team had already moved on to the design of a flight-quality design, the HeS 3
Heinkel HeS 3
The Heinkel HeS 3 was the world's first operational jet engine to power an aircraft. Designed by Hans von Ohain while working at Heinkel, the engine first flew as the primary power of the Heinkel He 178, piloted by Erich Warsitz on 27 August 1939...
.
Reference
- Sterling Michael Pavelec, "The Jet Race and the Second World War", Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007, pg. 18-22