[2][3][4][5][6][7][8] Von Ohain stated in his biography that "My interest in jet propulsion began in the fall of 1933 when I was in my seventh semester at Göttingen University.

"[3] Unlike Whittle, von Ohain had the significant advantage of being supported by an aircraft manufacturer, Heinkel, who funded his work.

Von Ohain nevertheless started the world's first jet engine industry in his homeland of Germany, with many prototypes and series productions built until 1945.

"[26][27] Born in Dessau, Germany,[28] Ohain finished high school in 1930 at the Arndt-Gymnasium in Dahlem and earned a PhD in physics in 1935 at the University of Göttingen, with his thesis entitled An Interference Light Relay for White Light on an optical microphone to record sound directly to film, which led to his first patent.

[28] After receiving his PhD in 1935, Ohain became the junior assistant of Robert Wichard Pohl, then director of the Physical Institute of the university.

In 1936, while working for Pohl, Ohain registered a patent on his version of a jet engine, Process and Apparatus for Producing Airstreams for Propelling Airplanes.

While working at the university, Ohain used to take his sports car to be serviced at a local garage, Bartles and Becker.

Ohain took the model to the university for testing but ran into problems with combustion of the petrol fuel, which took place mostly after the turbine, sending flames shooting out from the exhaust duct.

The lack of combustion before the turbine contributed to the engine being unable to run without the assistance of the electric motor which subsequently overheated.

However, the model he and Max Hahn built and tested in the courtyard of the Institute showed the combustion chamber needed further development.

The engineers were convinced, and in April Ohain and Hahn began working for Heinkel[33] at the Marienehe airfield outside Rostock, in Warnemuende.

Working with Engineer Gundermann and Hahn in Special Development, von Ohain states: "Under pressure of aiming to bring a combustion chamber of unknown endurance to flight readiness, I came upon the idea of separating the turbine problem from the combustion chamber problem by using hydrogen fuel.

Encouraged by these findings, Ohain produced a new prototype that would run on hydrogen gas supplied by an external pressurised source.

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.

Two weeks later the engine was running on hydrogen, but the high temperature exhaust led to considerable "burning" of the metal.

Although the engine was never intended to be a flight-quality design, it proved beyond a doubt that the basic concept was workable, and Ohain had at last caught up with Whittle.

The He-S3 turbine was test flown by Erich Warsitz and Walter Künzel in a Heinkel He 118, providing additional throttled thrust to the conventional engine.

According to von Ohain, "We experimented with various combinations to modify the compressor diffuser and turbine nozzle vanes to increase thrust sufficiently to qualify the aircraft for the first flight demonstration.

"[32]: 122–123 A new design, the HeS 3b was proposed,[33] which lengthened the combustor by placing the forward part of it in front of the compressor outer rim.

They were built under licence in numerous countries including Australia, France and the US and were copied by the Soviets and Chinese to power the MiG-15 and MiG-17.

Whittle's basic reverse flow design remains the most common gas turbine configuration in production today with over 80,000 built in the form of the Allison (RR) 250/300 and Pratt & Whitney PT6 series of engines.

[36][37][38] However, in his invention of HE S011, von Ohain introduced a standard concept which combined axial and radial designs for most business jets today, along with turboprops and helicopters.

Ohain continued at the University of Dayton until 1992, when concerns about his health prompted a move with his wife, Hanny, to Melbourne, Florida.

In 1984–85, Ohain served as the Charles A. Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace History, a competitive senior fellowship at the National Air and Space Museum.

[49] In 1991 Ohain and Whittle were jointly awarded the Charles Stark Draper Prize for their work on turbojet engines.

[28] Ohain was awarded the Ludwig-Prandtl-Ring from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Luft- und Raumfahrt (German Society for Aeronautics and Astronautics) for "outstanding contribution in the field of aerospace engineering" in 1992.