German VTOL saucer 1944 ?

Hi everybody

Long time ago I read a article about german saucers.
The article was published in the german magazine "Luftfahrt History Nr.14."
It was a preview article for the next issue.
Sadly, they did not publish this next issue.


The Luftfahrt History people wrote they have found vague informations
about a real concept for a german saucer.

I can remember some informations from the article.
-It was only a "DENKMODELL"
-Two counter-rotating rotors (Klappenringe ?)
-one 2000 PS jet-engine ?
-Magnetkissen ?
-Linearmotoren ?
-VTOL
-speed 700 km/h

Maybe someone knows more about this project ?

Many greetings and thanks in advance for every reply

That sounds like the same rubbish as the usual flying saucer nonsense.

I've seen different books about German aircraft development of that time, with details down to simple sketches that never got a project designation. There was zero indication for any flying saucer activity.

The first question for every supposed German project of that time is "Which company / engineer?"
There's no reason to assume any real background for a project unless at least this can be answered.

Heinkel, Focke-Achgelis, Doblhoff and Focke-Wulf had some VTOL activities and the DFS was certainly a suspect for unusual projects as well, but there was no such project in the recovered archives or engineer memoirs.

moin1900 said:

-It was only a "DENKMODELL"

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Translates roughly as "thought experiment" or "concept model". Which is probably all it ever was, if indeed it existed at all. As others have pointed out, the whole "Advanced German WWII Projects" scene has become contaminated with so much weapons-grade BS that it's definitely a case of Caveat Emptor!

Having said that, could such a thought experiment/model have been created in Germany in the last days of WWII ? Why not....German aircraft designers and scientists investigated a whole range of advanced (for the time) aerodynamic concepts (see, I said "aerodynamic"! Not a word about anti-gravity, cold fusion, nuclear bombs or trips to Andromeda.... ;D ), so why not a disc-shaped, twin-encapsulated-rotor VTOL aircraft using magnetic bearings for the rotors ?

Regards & all,

Thomas L. Nielsen
Denmark

Oh boy! :-X Here we go with German saucers again.

"All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again."

Moonbat

I think the real question is regarding whether there are adequate prewar paper designs for VTOL saucer projects coming out of Germany. This would add credibility to the idea that some paper designs might be based in fact. If the majority of the saucer shaped fixation is a early post-war phenomena than it would certainly raise extensive doubts.

Could it be this?


I'd never heard of it until i posted a thread on the Pfannkuchen Fligende. See
Frankly, i'm skeptical it was ever anything more than paper pipe-dreams - or possibly even a hoax by some UFO nut. Enjoy the links though

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Note that i've had about 40 years of trawling through stuff on WWII German aviation projects... and i'm not completely convinced by the "Recently Declassified" documents thing :-\

TsrJoe said:

wasnt the FW a pre war patent design ?

cheers, Joe

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Well, the design is dated 1944, the patent was filed in September 1957. But most interesting is that model tests were conducted in Bremen in mid-1950s.


Pages 14 & 15.

I was : at another discussion of this topic, but it lead me to the Weser WPG P.16 so I feel that the UFOs and I are even for a while. :-*

Here Focke Wulf "Rochen" original drawing and 1/10 windtunnel model pics (september 1957)

Oki, i never expected wind-tunnel models to turn up
Surely, i thought, empirical testing buried the notion of the circular wing planform by the late 30's / early 40's...
what with the problem of cross-flows, aerodynamic flutter, control problems and stuff.

The "Circular Wing" just doesn't seem to have any merits, for me

Any Comments?

The ring wing was thought about until the sixties ! In the "WGL yearbook 1961"
was an article about a project of the the School for engineers Aachen, which
wasn't realised, but at least tested in a windtunnel. But, about the expected
merits of this concept, I couldn't find any informations there either !

Ta for the cool post, Jemiba
I would expect that a ring-shaped wing would possess fundamentally different aerodynamics to a purely circular planform. Never heard of a ring wing before B)

Bodmas said:

Never heard of a ring wing before B)

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How about the McCormick-Romme Umbrella Plane of 1910-1913?
The first project worked on by one Chauncey Milton Vought.

Jon

More recently, in the 80s, Karl Dehn in Australia designed a glider with a perfect ring-wing. Quickly nick-named,« The Flying Dunny Seat », the glider flew well.
This aircraft is now preserved by the Air World Museum at Benamba.

I find the level of emotion and quick dismissals on the internet odd and unprofessional. Research is difficult, dismissals are easy. The following is from the book Leap of Faith by astronaut Gordon Cooper. In it, he recounts the following comments made to him by Werner von Braun:

"You could almost not refer to them as planes. We flew several craft that were totally different. Very advanced principles were involved."
Acording to Jack (Joachim Kuettner, a Luftwaffe test pilot), who flew some of these advanced craft, they included saucer-shaped vehicles with double intakes and counter-rotating fans and disks and some with advanced propulsion systems. Jack said they had flown successfully. None of these craft surfaced after the war. Werner and Jack were unclear about whether any of them had survived the war's last hectic days.


Ed

edwest said:

I find the level of emotion and quick dismissals on the internet odd and unprofessional. Research is difficult, dismissals are easy.

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What you consider "unprofessional" is actally basic and proper science. As Sagan said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

Dismissals are easy. Sadly, wild claims are even easier. And thus society gets saddled with conspiracy theories up the wazoo.

Acording to Jack (Joachim Kuettner, a Luftwaffe test pilot), who flew some of these advanced craft, they included saucer-shaped vehicles with double intakes and counter-rotating fans and disks and some with advanced propulsion systems. Jack said they had flown successfully.

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That's nice. Where' the *evidence*?

If you said you had bacon and eggs for breakfast, I can believe you without any difficulty. If you said your grandfather flew an antigravity Luftwaffe saucer to Mars in 1943, I'd need more than just your word on that.

Hi guys,

this theme is hotly debated in the web, but sources are scant, mostly oral, oversized by some "enlighted" who see related interplanetary technology, antarctic bases or death rays. However, due to this "inventions", some tend to overlook what could be true. What we need are reliable, hard facts, not assumptions of those who love "make believe" and the pressumptions of those who have decided it does not exists "just because...".
I prompt my fellow members to see our own thread:

The proof that reliable sources are much better than imagination or prejudice.

Wurger said:

The proof that reliable sources are much better than imagination or prejudice.

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And in the absence of reliable sources, skepticism is appropriate and necessary.

I got just the cure for sudden dissmissals: hard evidence. Also know as legitimate proof.

Unfortunately non-scientifically minded humans prefer often prefer human story over evidence. Hence the giant controversy over vaccinations. The 99.97% of people who get no adverse reaction don't feel compelled to make Facebook pages about their non-experience, but the tiny few with a bad experience do - and their testimony is worth a hundred times the cold statistical facts to most people.

Oral evidence needs to be considered in this light:

1) Is the quote presented an accurate account of what the person said.
2) Is what they said exactly what they meant to say.
3) Is what they said a truthful statement or not.

In the case of German engineers brought to the the US for their engineering expertise, its not unreasonable to expect a degree of exaggeration in their claims. Like all people, they want to make sure they have a job tomorrow. Talking up what you did in a previous job is pretty universal - I've done it myself.

Equally, people's memories can be selective, and can play tricks on us. I have interviewed a few old Hawker engineers about events in the 1950s, and their memories aren't always reliable - multiple visits to a place can get merged into one in the memory, timings are often wrong, and sometimes they recall things that can't possibly be true (like a person being at a meeting who died 5 years previously).

Therefore, oral evidence needs careful assessment and *corroboration*.

edwest said:

I find the level of emotion and quick dismissals on the internet odd and unprofessional.

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Exactly. Not wanting to believe in just about every crazy story is normal, keeping a critical eye and distance whenever possible is certainly healthy, but this particular subject seems to be so touchy that simple conjecture doesn't even seem an option to many. How sad.

edwest said:

he recounts the following comments made to him by Werner von Braun:

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Von Braun was there back in the Luftwaffe days. He is also the one who almost single-handedly made it possible to send Americans to the Moon in less than a decade... So if this man actually did say to one US astronaut that Nazi Germany "flew several craft that were totally different" with "very advanced principles", and though there may not be any solid evidence to back it up, I'm willing to give him the benefit of doubt more than anybody else. What is missing here of course is evidence that this conversation between Von Braun and Cooper actually took place... but then thousands of historical events we take as hard fact can only be traced to the written testimony of those who claim they happened. The death of Socrates has never been backed by solid scientific evidence, yet few would question it...

Whatever Nazi Germany was working on, be it in the fields of propulsion, weaponry or medicine, became the Allies' war loot after the war, each taking its share of the pie (the US obviously a little more than the rest). If any form of highly advanced craft had been developed and tested there (and provided the Germans had not already destroyed all the records), that technology or at least the records thereof WOULD most certainly have ended up in Soviet or US hands.

And if that technology ever happened to be feasible to the point of actually producing flyable craft, why would the country benefitting from that technology communicate on its findings? Denial is part of military tradition, and if some more conventional programs such as Lockheed's Suntan and A-series could be kept secret for 40 years because they were still considered sensitive, if the secrecy of some 1950s and 1960s programs still hasn't been lifted, what is so disturbing or improbable about the notion that some highly advanced 1940s technology could still be shrouded in secrecy? Personally I have no problem with that.

Werner and Jack were unclear about whether any of them had survived the war's last hectic days.

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If such was the case, no wonder they would have been unclear about it. They knew the value of keeping a secret in these times of cold war when the protection of intelligence data was more crucial than ever.

Stargazer2006 said:

Von Braun ... So if this man actually did say to one US astronaut that Nazi Germany "flew several craft that were totally different" with "very advanced principles", and though there may not be any solid evidence to back it up, I'm willing to give him the benefit of doubt more than anybody else.

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Two points:

1) Von Braun was a good bullshitter. Witness the A-11/A-12.
2) "flew several craft that were totally different" with "very advanced principles" is extraordinarily vague. From the standpoint of 1945, the Me 163 *was* totally different AND had very asvanced principles.

If you want to pile supposition on supposition you end up with an inverted pyramid balancing precarously on a single, unverified statement made in an unknown context, probably taken out of context. Welcome to the world of conspiracy theory, where someone can claim that he identifies a Taildog/SRAAM AAM launcher attached to one of the 9/11 airliners. Because airliners fitted with 1970s AAM prototypes by the US government for the mission of blowing up skyscrapers with are *so* much more likely than a bunch of terrorists planning to fly an airliner into the World Trade Center.

Likewise, so many ludicrous theories have been advanced in the "Nazi saucers" area that any new claims need to expect more than a little scepticism. "Some guy said something to another guy" doesn't cut it, even if the person is question is

The only way for your theory to make sense, Stargazer, would be for Nazi Germany to have invented a wholly new principle of science, like "anti-gravity", which the US has kept completely secret ever since, and then spent trillions of dollars in hiding by developing conventional aircraft to duplicate the missions that could have been flown by the "saucers". Why would the US spend billions of dollars and years of effort trying to make VTOL aircraft work, if they already had the know-how?

Perhaps they are saving the saucers for repelling an alien invasion?

Gordon Cooper's book "Leap of Faith" is all about his claims that the government has withheld information from the public that alien spacecraft have visited earth. Hence I would expect to take anything he claims in it with a large pinch of salt. It is also very vague, it could mean anything. The second part of edwest's post is more specific, but completely unattributed. However the source of the first part of his post doesn't lead me to great expectations of the second part.

I understand what you're saying here, Paul, and of course I think it is necessary to avoid spreading unfounded claims unless there is some sort of evidence to back it up.

[/OFF TOPIC MODE ON ]Let it be known here once and for all that I DO believe 9/11 was an inside job! However, I do not try to go and convince other people about that nor do I claim to be right about it. The things I have read on the subject so far have pointed me to that particular conclusion. Time will tell. I most certainly would love to be proven wrong. [/OFF TOPIC MODE OFF]

I do not think the Nazis developed anti-gravity, nor that any such technology is readily available and viable as of today. All I'm saying is that any steps towards building craft of very unusual configuration by the Germans, if that configuration had proved to have some merit, would have been the subject of ongoing and intensive study by either of the superpowers to see how they could use it, IF indeed they could. In the end the whole thing might have proved to be a terrible disappointment! Maybe also the whole story is bullsh--, all I'm saying is that it ought to be discussed reasonably without the heated passion and intolerance it usually generates. Heck, if people want to believe in little gray aliens, one's got to respect their point of view! I personally won't buy it unless they come up with proof, and this is where we fundamentally agree!

Why would the US spend billions of dollars and years of effort trying to make VTOL aircraft work, if they already had the know-how?

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What seems to support your approach is that too much time has lapsed now for any valuable secret technology to be interesting, if there was one. I can understand that some white programs be used as cover-up to conceal their black counterparts (e.g. the X-36 vs. the Bird of Prey) until the black program can be revealed, but a cover-up that would last 60+ years, especially of that magnitude, is more than improbable, it would be downright crazy.

Gordon Cooper's book "Leap of Faith" is all about his claims that the government has withheld information from the public that alien spacecraft have visited earth. Hence I would expect to take anything he claims in it with a large pinch of salt. It is also very vague, it could mean anything. The second part of edwest's post is more specific, but completely unattributed. However the source of the first part of his post doesn't lead me to great expectations of the second part.

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I haven't read Cooper's book and therefore didn't know that he linked his claims to extraterrestrial visitation, otherwise I would have been more wary. In this context, your conclusion as to the validity of the second part of the quote is wholly understandable.

Well Stargazer you just went into the whack-job file. Enjoy your stay.

For anyone interested, I suggest the book Flying Saucer Aircraft by Bill Rose.

Regarding advanced rocket projects I suggest a visit to the PRO: C.I.O.S. Report XXXII-125, German Guided Missile Research, C.I.O.S. Target Numbers 4/288 & 6/144. "A-11, A-12, A-13, A-14 further developments models of the A9/A10 with 3500 miles range. Long-range rockets for attacks on the United States. A-15: This project probably never left the drawing board." From Appendix 1 of this report: "Only the A-15 was never constructed."



Ed

"flew several craft that were totally different" with "very advanced principles" is extraordinarily vague
from. "German Helicopters 1928-1945" by Heinz J. Nowarra -Schiffer-1990

From:"Geheimprojekte der DFS" by Host Lommel-Motorbuch Verlag-2000

From: "Dragonfly" by David Myhra-Schiffer-2003

The Blohm & Voss Bv 141 and the Flettner Fl 282 may have presented unusual configurations, but they by no means did they use "very advanced principles"... and were certainly not "totally different" from existing aircraft. Nor does it match assertions such as "You could almost not refer to them as planes", which they quite obviously were!

Justo Miranda said:

"flew several craft that were totally different" with "very advanced principles" is extraordinarily vague
from. "German Helicopters 1928-1945" by Heinz J. Nowarra -Schiffer-1990

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Sir,


The statement was made that they were saucer shaped. Your are trying to obfuscate.

I suggest Helicopters of the Third Reich by Coates.




Ed

Stargazer2006 said:

The Blohm & Voss Bv 141 and the Flettner Fl 282 may have presented unusual configurations, but they by no means did they use "very advanced principles"... and were certainly not "totally different" from existing aircraft. Nor does it match assertions such as "You could almost not refer to them as planes", which they quite obviously were!

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The words "saucer shaped" were included in my post.




Ed

edwest said:

The statement was made...

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Ahem. Once again... "statements" are worth what, exactly?

"flew several craft that were totally different" with "very advanced principles" is extraordinarily vague
Here "saucer shaped" with "very classic principles" from
-Flugzeug Profile Nº 23

Hey, neat! I've never seen most of those photos of the Sack saucer before.

And before people start going bonkers about this being some advanced plane... it was a home-made stick-and-canvas job built by a farmer, and it didn't fly worth a damn.

Hence it's nickname,the "bierdeckel", or beer mug lig.

edwest said:

Justo Miranda said:

"flew several craft that were totally different" with "very advanced principles" is extraordinarily vague
from. "German Helicopters 1928-1945" by Heinz J. Nowarra -Schiffer-1990

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Sir,

The statement was made that they were saucer shaped. Your are trying to obfuscate.

I suggest Helicopters of the Third Reich by Coates.

Ed

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Well, it wasn't clear from your post where the second part of your post came from - is it also from the Cooper book? You should really use quote tags or something to make it clear. It looks to me like your quote ends with the bit in speech marks and the rest could come from any source.

In 1957, at Edwards Air Force Base in the California desert, Cooper was given photographs of a "classic saucer" that had reportedly landed at the top-secret military installation. He sent the photos to a Pentagon general, but never heard about the matter again. In the late 1970s, Cooper (who's now an aeronautical designer) unsuccessfully tried to launch a research company devoted to free worldwide energy transmission using Nikola Tesla's discoveries, as well as to advanced medical devices and other projects. His partner in this venture, Valerie Ransone, claims to receive scientifically useful telepathic transmissions from extraterrestrial sources. The story gets a lot weirder, as Cooper agrees to join Ransone in the Arizona desert for a telepathically arranged rendezvous with a UFO. Joining them at this alleged meeting (which was canceled) was Atlas missile aerospace engineer Dan Fry, who claims to have flown over Texas on board a UFO in 1950.

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From a review on Amazon.

Orionblamblam said:

edwest said:

The statement was made...

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Ahem. Once again... "statements" are worth what, exactly?

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I just wanted to say that I love that gif.

In 1957, at Edwards Air Force Base in the California desert, Cooper was given photographs of a "classic saucer" that had reportedly landed at the top-secret military installation. He sent the photos to a Pentagon general, but never heard about the matter again. In the late 1970s, Cooper (who's now an aeronautical designer) unsuccessfully tried to launch a research company devoted to free worldwide energy transmission using Nikola Tesla's discoveries, as well as to advanced medical devices and other projects. His partner in this venture, Valerie Ransone, claims to receive scientifically useful telepathic transmissions from extraterrestrial sources. The story gets a lot weirder, as Cooper agrees to join Ransone in the Arizona desert for a telepathically arranged rendezvous with a UFO. Joining them at this alleged meeting (which was canceled) was Atlas missile aerospace engineer Dan Fry, who claims to have flown over Texas on board a UFO in 1950.

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Urgh.

With that sort of talk, we run the risk of degenerating into ATS. Gods help us all. What's happening to our forum?