It is noted for producing bomber aircraft for the Luftwaffe in World War II and for important contributions to high-speed flight, with the pioneering examples of a successful liquid-fueled rocket and a turbojet-powered aircraft in aviation history, with both Heinkel designs' first flights occurring shortly before the outbreak of World War II in Europe.

By 1929, the firm's compressed air-powered catapults were in use on the German Norddeutscher Lloyd ocean-liners SS Bremen and Europa to launch short-range mail planes from the liners' decks.

The firm's headquarters was in Rostock later known as Heinkel-Nord (Heinkel-North), located in what used to be named the Rostock-Marienehe neighborhood (today's Rostock-Schmarl community, along the west bank of the Unterwarnow estuary), where the firm additionally possessed a factory airfield along the coastline in the Rostock/Schmarl neighborhood roughly three kilometers (1.9 miles) north-northwest of the main offices, with a second Heinkel-Süd engineering and manufacturing facility in Schwechat, Austria, after the Anschluss in 1938.

The German Luftwaffe equipped both of these bombers with the Z-Gerät, Y-Gerät, and Knickebein, developed by Johannes Plendl, and thus they were among the first aircraft to feature advanced night navigation devices, common in all commercial airplanes today.

The 30-meter (100 ft) class wingspan design was to be built to be able to perform moderate-angle dive bombing attacks from the moment of its approval by the RLM in early November 1937, until this was rescinded in September 1942.

Very late in the war, a Heinkel single-jet powered fighter finally took to the air as the Heinkel He 162A Spatz (sparrow) as the first military jet to use retractable tricycle landing gear, use a turbojet engine from its maiden flight forward, and use an ejection seat from the start, but it had barely entered service at the time of Germany's surrender.

The company eventually returned to aircraft in the mid-1950s, licence building Lockheed Martin F-104 Starfighters for the West German Luftwaffe.

Entwicklungsring Süd, a research and development conglomeration in a joint venture with Bölkow and Messerschmitt, designed the EWR VJ 101A/He 231, a VSTOL prototype, intended to protect West Germany's airfields against Soviet attack.

A large and relatively heavy touring machine, it provided good weather protection with a full fairing and the front wheel turning under a fixed nose extension.