Secret and Advanced German Aerial Craft In seems that no idea was considered too radical among designers of the German aircraft industry. The team who worked for Blohm und Voss developed four new aircraft between February and April 1944. The first design of this quartet was given the basic Projekt No. P-192. The arrangement of the airscrew/engine installation is unusual, but it had the advantage that the motor was mounted near the aircraft's centre of gravity. A tail-less craft, Projekt No. P-208 was dubbed the "Arrow Wing", and was flight-tested in the summer of 1944. Just as interesting was the S�nger-Bredt rocket bomber project which was first instigated in 1936 (incredibly the first man-carrying rocket flight is credited to F. Stahmer in 1928, and the second to F. von Opel in 1929, both taking place in Germany), and theoretical work on the airframe and much practical research on its diesel-oil/liquid oxygen-fuelled motor was continued until 1941-42 at Trauen near Fassberg. A rocket-boosted sledge catapulted the bomber into the air after accelerating along a track 1.72 miles long and with the booster rockets consuming their fuel in 11 seconds burning time, 30 seconds after lift-off the bomber was already at a height of 32,800 ft. The pilot was then required to fire his own rocket motor, and the S�nger-Bredt rocket would then climb to a height of 90 miles where a speed of 13,500 mph was to be attained. The fuel consumed, the aircraft would then descend in a shallow glide and was expected to bounce on contact with the denser air layers surrounding the earth. The range depended on bomb load, but if a peak height of 155 miles could be reached after launching, it was calculated that the aircraft could easily fly a distance of 14,650 miles in a series of ever-decreasing ricochets with a long final glide back to base. New York could be hit with a 6-ton load, the round trip from Germany taking 1 hr, 44 min. This so-called "antipodal bomber" was finally shelved in 1942 . . . but it did provide the basic idea from which the Soviet T-4A and American Dynasoar were developed. Near Kircheim on Teck in April 1945 a strange sight could be seen: ten steel launching ramps each 80 ft. in length pointing nearly vertically into the sky. At the base of each was what appeared to be a stubby, winged missile. These were in fact the first operational examples of a unique piloted, rocket-driven aerial vehicle called the Bachem Ba 349 Natter ("Adder"). The Natter was conceived by Dr Eric Bachem of the Bachem Werke in W�rtemberg, and work on the project began in August 1944. Largely built of wood, the machine was a cheap, simple design which could be nailed and glued together by mechanics and other non-aircraft workers. After a nearly vertical launch on the power of its bi-fuel rocket motor and four jettisonable solid-fuel rocket motors, the Natter was expected to reach an altitude of 35,800 ft. in one minute. It was planned to launch the rocket planes as U.S. heavy bombers approached, guiding them automatically from the ground to within a mile of the enemy. The pilot would then taken over control, close the range and fire the nose battery of twenty-four R4M missiles in a single salvo; his task over, he was then to bale out of the armoured cockpit. Simultaneously the rear fuselage, containing the valuable rocket motor, would break off and be parachuted to earth, where the motor could be used again in a new Natter. Three manned test launches were successfully made, and thirty-six Ba 349As were completed, but the ten set up at Kircheim on Teck had to be destroyed when an American armoured unit approached the launching site. The sole Ba 349B was found by the Russians in a factory in Thuringia, where it had been sent as a production prototype. Germany's Messerschmitt Me 163B rocket fighter aircraft, the Komet, was the world's first operational rocket-driven fighter, but was severely handicapped by a very limited endurance. Less than 370 of the little fighters had been completed by the end of the war, and more advanced versions never passed the prototype stage. Hitler belatedly realised the importance of the jet fighter and in March 1945 SS- Obergruppenf�hrer Dr. General Hans Kammler was put in charge of the entire jet aircraft production program. There is little doubt that the Germans at least contemplated building a flying saucer. There are tantalizing bits of evidence that Nazi Germany indeed added a flying disc to its inventory of secret weapons. However, there is no indication of what became of it. Reichsf�hrer�..do hereby take charge of the manufacture of the A-4 instrument. The A-4 was later designated by Hitler as the V-2--V for Vengeance weapon, the V-1 buzz bomb being the first. The V-2 was Germany's most secret high-tech weapons system. Himmler then placed Kammler in overall command of the rocket program. According to Speer, Kammler worked his way into all phases of the V-2 program until Hitler finally put him in charge of all air armaments, including any possible secret saucer project. He became commissioner general for all important weapons just weeks before the end of the war. As the war drew to a close, Himmler's SS gradually assumed total control over Germany's weaponry production and research. With Kammler on the V-2 project were Wernher von Braun, who after the war headed America's National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and his superior, Lufftwaffe Maj. Gen. Walter Dornberger, who later became vice-president of Bell Aircraft Company and of Bell Aerosystems Company in the United States". Alarmed by the progress on the V-2 rockets, Britain's Bomber command sent 597 bombers on the night of August 16-17, 1943, to raid Peenem�nde, Germany's top-secret rocket facility built on an island at the mouth of the Oder River near the border of Germany and Poland. Because so much of Peenem�nde was underground or well camouflaged, much was left undamaged. After the raid, it was quickly realized by the Germans that some of the facility needed to be dispersed throughout . Theoretical development moved to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, development went to Nordhausen and Bleicherode, and the main wind-tunnel and ancillary equipment went down to Kochel, some twenty miles south of Munich. It can be noted that a certain portion of top-secret Nazi weaponry was moved to an area near Blizna, Poland. Kammler, von Braun, Dornberger, and company worked feverishly to perfect the V-2s and other secret weapons, Himmler was working on separating his SS from normal party and state control. In the spring of 1944 Hitler approved Himmler's proposal to build an SS-owned industrial concern in order to make the SS permanently independent of the state budget. In moves that were to be emulated in later years by the Central Intelligence Agency, SS leaders created a number of business fronts and other organizations--many using concentration-camp labor--with an eye toward producing revenue to support SS activities. SS officers neither required nor desired any connection with Germany. It begs the question then, If Hitler and his High Command really were in possession of aerial craft so far in advance of anything else on earth, why would they not have used such machines in order to reverse the fortunes of war? There were numerous blunders made in Germany throughout WW2 which included cancelling promising prototype aircraft. The few that appear on this page, while representing remarkable vision and feats of engineering, fall easily within the bounds of any country's achievements when all its resources are focused on producing only one result. By the spring of 1944, Germany was already feeling the crippling effects of a fuel shortage and could barely muster adequate sorties against raiding allied aircraft. An appropriate time, surely, for the unleashing of the Kugelblitz.
A secret weapon that might account for some of the "foo-fighter" reports was an antiradar, unmanned device called the Feuerball or Fire Ball. Piloted by remote control, the Fire Ball was designed to interfere with the ignition systems and radar operation of Allied bombers. According to author Renato Vesco, the Feuerball was "a highly original flying machine." It was circular and armored, resembling a tortoise shell, and was powered by a special turbojet engine, whose principles of operation, generated a great halo of luminous flames, Radio controlled at the moment of take-off, it then automatically followed enemy aircraft, attracted by their exhaust flames, and approached close enough without collision to wreck their radar gear. Vesco claimed that the basic principles of the Feuerball were later applied to a "symmetrical circular aircraft" known as the Kugelblitz, or Ball Lightning, automatic fighter. He said this innovative craft was destroyed after a "single lucky wartime mission" by retreating SS (Schutzstaffel) or Defense Force troops and later kept secret from the Americans and Russians by the British military. There is in circulation a photograph which purports to show a disc-shaped flying craft in the sky above Prague during the mid-1940s. Schriever and Habermohl, the scientists some claim to be responsible for its development, reportedly took off in the first flying disc on February 4, 1945, and climbed to an altitude of 40,000 feet in three minutes. After the war this story was quoted widely in books, with further claims that the machine reached a speed of 1,300 mph. Apparently another flying disc development by the same two scientists would have produced a craft capable of 3,000 mph, if it had reached completion. |
