Johannes Blom Ussing

Johannes Blom Ussing competed in the first edition of modern pentathlon in Stockholm in 1912. He had his best result with full points in the fourth discipline, the riding, but did not compete in the running for unknown reasons.

Ussing studied from 1902 at the København and Zürich Polytechnical Universities. He abandoned his studies, however, when he was conscripted to the Danish artillery in 1906. In 1909-11 he completed a weapons technology course at the officers’ school and was later promoted to the rank of a captain. He was the first Danish officer who was trained and appointed as an Army pilot. From 1912-16 he was head of the Army Flying School and designed aircrafts. In 1916 he became manager and designing engineer of A/S Nielsen und Winthers Flyvemaskinfabrik, which produced aircrafts for the Danish as well as for foreign military. Ussing was also a pioneer in producing transport aircrafts when the company went bankrupt in the economic crisis after World War I. He was also a member of the board of the Danish Aviation Company. Ussing left the Army in 1924 and bought the Bødskovgård near Silkeborg. He spent his last years in København (Copenhagen).

Ussing was the son of a theologian and married Sigrid Marie Margrethe Rondahl in 1907. The couple divorced in 1911. In 1915, Eleanor Ingeborg Caroline Bruun became his second wife, but they also divorced after a few years and he married Gudrun Christensen in 1923. He had a son from his first wife and a daughter from his second wife.