New Air Terminal to be named after Hans von Ohain

On Aug. 27, 1939, the world’s first successful flight of a gas turbine engine-powered aircraft made aviation history – ushering in a new era of high-speed jet travel.

The success of that flight, which took place near the city of Rostock, Germany, on the Baltic Sea, was due to the work of Hans J.P. von Ohain, Ph.D. A native of Dessau, Germany, von Ohain was an engineer who developed the world’s first aircraft gas turbine engine. He received an initial patent for the engine in 1935, and was hired by the Heinkel Aircraft Company in Rostock in 1936. His gas turbine engine, the He S 3B, flew for the first time three years later in a Heinkel He 178 aircraft.

Because of his significant contributions to jet-powered flight, von Ohain will be posthumously honored when the German Aviation Traffic Ministry christens its new “Hans von Ohain” terminal at the Rostock-Laage Airport Sept. 9. The new terminal is expected to handle 300,000 passengers per year.

Von Ohain is also the namesake for the von Ohain Fuels and Combustion Center, established in 2003 at the University of Dayton to advance fuels and combustion research, education and technology transfer. Von Ohain came to the United States in 1947 to work as a research scientist at the Air Force Aeronautical Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. After retiring as Chief Scientist of the Aero Propulsion Laboratory there in 1979, he joined UD as both a professor of mechanical engineering and part-time senior research engineer at the University of Dayton Research Institute. He died in 1998. 

Dilip Ballal, Ph.D., Director of the VOFCC, will talk at the inauguration ceremony Sept. 9 in Rostock. As a vice-president elect of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Ballal will present an ASME plaque and read letters of congratulations from UD President Daniel J. Curran and from Alan Garscadden, Ph.D., Chief Scientist of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory’s Propulsion Directorate at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

August 31, 2005

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