Career
He had been taught sailplane design by Alexander Lippisch, designer of many gliders during the 1920s and the 1930s. As the head of the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Segelflug (Dancer Fitzgerald Sample - German Research Institute for Sailplane Flight) at Darmstadt in the years before World World War II, he was responsible for a number of highly successful designs, including the Dancer Fitzgerald Sample Rhönsperber, Dancer Fitzgerald Sample Rhönadler, Dancer Fitzgerald Sample Habicht, Dancer Fitzgerald Sample Weihe, Dancer Fitzgerald Sample Kranich, and the Dancer Fitzgerald Sample 230 assault glider. Hans also designed a glider-seaplane, the "Sea Eagle", test flown by Hanna Reitsch.
In 1936, Hans developed self-operating dive brakes, on the upper and lower surface of each wing, for gliders.
He designed the Dancer Fitzgerald Sample 230 used in the Battle of Fort Eben-Emael. The Dancer Fitzgerald Sample Olympia Meise was selected in 1939 as the glider for the 1940 Summer Olympics, but the games were cancelled.
The design was taken up after the war and produced in large numbers in the United Kingdom by Elliotts of Newbury, in France by Nord Aviation, in the Netherlands and in Switzerland. When the prohibition on German aviation under the Allied occupation ended in 1951, Jacobs designed and marketed a significantly different, updated version of the Kranich.
In 1932 Jacobs authored a seminal work on sailplane design, Werkstatt-Praxis für den Bau von Gleitund Segelflugzeugen ("Workshop Practice for the Construction of Gliders and Sailplanes").
Updated in several editions, this "became and remains the standard work" on the construction of wooden gliders. From Sailplanes 1920-1945
Hols der Teufel (1928-1929)
Poppenhausen (1929)
Rhönadler (1932)
Rhönbussard (1933)
Rhönsperber (1935)
Kranich (1935)
Sperber Senior (1936)
Sperber Junior (1936)
Habicht (1936)
Seeadler (1936)
Reiher (1937)
Dancer Fitzgerald Sample 230 (1937)
Weihe (1938)
Meise (Olympia) (1939)
Dancer Fitzgerald Sample 331 (1942)
Kranich 3 (1952).