The He 178 was the world’s first turbojet aircraft to fly on August 27, 1939. The test pilot was Flight-Captain Erich Warsitz who also flew the first rocket powered plane, the He 176.1 The aircraft was designed by Ernst Heinkel after Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain approached him with his own design and prototype centrifugal-flow engine. Heinkel like the idea and agreed to fund the project. The first engine developed by the Heinkel Flugzeugwerke was the HeS 1. The engine showed promise and further development led to the HeS 3 and this became the engine that would power He 178.
Although the first flight was successful, it was not accepted by the German Ministry of Aviation (Reichsluftfahrtministerium or RLM) after a demonstration flight on November 1, 1939, to Ernst Udet, Erhard Milch and engineer Helmut Schelp. The aircraft achieved speeds to 598 km/h (380 mph), but combat endurance was only 10 minutes. Udet, Milch and Schelp were unimpressed and saw no practical value for the airplane.
