B00AY88OHE EBOK (11 page)

Remember that controlling authority for both the Schriever-Habermohl and the Miethe-Bellonzo projects came from officials in Peenemuende? J. Andreas Epp makes the point in his book that he originated the idea of the Schriever-Habermohl-type of flying disc and actually made a model of this flying craft. Setting aside for the moment the subject or originality, Epp sent his model to General Ernst Udet of the Luftwaffe whom he had met as a child. General Udet must have been impressed with this idea because he sent the plans and model to Peenemuende for evaluation. Peenemuende authorized the Schriever-Habermohl team to further develop the idea and as you might recall, Epp chided Schriever for straying from his original blade dimensions while crediting Habermohl for keeping them. The point is that Peenemuende set up Schriever and Habermohl to construct and further develop this design as they set up Dr. Miethe to set up further develop the Leduc engine based design. The Germans even refer to the Schriever-Habermohl design as a “Flugkreisel” or flying top in English and the Miethe design as a “Flugdiskus.” Our vernacular, “flying saucer” originally corresponded to the German folk-word “Flugschiebe” or flying disc. If the Flugkreisel, Flugdiscus and Flugschiebe are all different machines and we know who built the first two then who built the third, the Flugscheibe? The answer is that Peenemuende built the Flugscheibe. Officials at Peenemuende saved the best for themselves while controlling the other two.

Let’s look at some evidence. The May, 1980 issue of Neue Presse featured an article about the German fluidics engineer Heinrich Fleissner (10). Fleissner was an engineer, designer and advisor to what he calls a “Flugscheibe” project based at Peenemuende during the war. It is interesting to note that Fliessner’s area of expertise, fluidics, is exactly the specialty involved in investigating problems with boundary layer flow. Fleissner reports that the saucer with which he was involved would have been capable of speeds up to 3,000 kilometers per hour within the earth’s atmosphere and up to 10,000 kilometers outside the earth’s atmosphere. He states that the brains of the developmental people were found in Peenemuende under the tightest of secrecy (11). We will return to this article again, at a later point, but what is of most interest to us here are three facts. First, that Fleissner worked at Peenemuende on a flying saucer project. Second, that a hint of this design has survived to this day. Third, the surviving design can be linked to photographic evidence of a German saucer, circa World War Two.

Almost ten years after the war, on March 28, 1955, Heinrich Fleissner filed a patent application with the United States Patent Office for a flying saucer (Patent Number 2,939,648). Fleissner’s saucer was unlike Schriever’s, Habermohl’s, or Miethe’s. The engine employed by Fleissner rotated around the cabin on the outside of the saucer disc itself. It was set in motion by starter rockets as with Schriever and Habermohl. The difference is that this engine was really a form of ram-jet engine. It featured slots running around the periphery of the saucer into which air was scooped. The slots continued obliquely right through the saucer disc so that jet thrust was aimed slightly downward and backward from the direction of rotation. Within the slots, fuel injectors and a timed ignition insured a proper power curve which was in accordance with the speed and direction of the saucer much like an automobile’s fuel injection is timed to match the firing of the spark plugs. Steering was accomplished by directing the airflow using internal channels containing a rudder and flaps which ran alongside of the central cabin. The cabin itself was held stationary or turned in the desired direction of flight using a system of electromagnets and servo-motors coupled with a gyroscope (12).

It is interesting to note that while the patent was filed on March 28, 1955, it was not granted until June 7, 1960, over five years later! What could possibly have been the reason for the delay? The only possible reason concerns the American Silver Bug Project which was being developed at the same time. This was a project which was tasked with further development of the Miethe design or an outgrowth of it and simply referred to as a “radial jet engine.” But we now know this Miethe project was not the equal of the Peenemuende project in terms of speed. The Americans must have realized this sometime after the filing of Fliessner’s patent. There can be little doubt that the reason for the delay of the Fleissner patent was the evaluation and possibly the pirating of his design by the Americans. At about the same moment that Fleissner’s patent was granted, it was announced that the joint Canadian-American saucer project, Silver Bug and its derivatives, had been abandoned by those governments. The only possible reason for this abandonment was that they had found something better. The better design, by far, was Fleissner’s.

Fleissner’s design was likened to a ram-jet earlier. It could function in this way but it was also much more than a ram-jet. Fleissner states in his patent that the saucer could be powered by any number of fuels: “liquid, dust, powder, gas or solid” (11). It could have used, for example, used the recently re-discovered fuel first made by Dr. Mario Zippermayr consisting of finely powered coal dust in a suspension of liquid air (13) or “Schwammkohle” (“foam coal”) and liquid air (14). Different fuel mixtures and types could be accommodated simply by varying or adjusting the type of injectors and ignition used. We know that the Germans used hypergloic fuels during the war, that meaning fuels which ignited simply by coming in contact with one another. “C-Stoff” and “T-Stoff” were German designations for the hypergloic fuels used in the Messerschmitt Me-163 rocket interceptor, for instance. These fuels could also have been used in this engine as well. Fleissner further elaborated in his 1980 article stating that liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen were suitable for this design (11). Liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen are rocket fuels of the highest order. This means Fleissner’s saucer could function as a rocket with the proper fuel.

Shall we assess the implications? In its simplest form, Fleissner’s saucer could have operated as a ram-jet on jet fuel. At its highest level, Fleissner’s saucer could have operated outside the atmosphere on liquid hydrogen and oxygen. In fact, it could have operated on all these fuels. Fleissner’s saucer could have taken off as a ram-jet, gained speed and altitude but at some point, reached a limit of diminishing returns. At this point, the saucer would have been able to slowly bleed liquid oxygen into the ram-jets for further performance enhancement. Further, it could slowly have replaced jet fuel with liquid hydrogen. This would be accompanied by a closing of the air intake apparatus. At this point there is no reason this saucer can not become a space ship, that is, able to operate beyond the fringes of the earth’s atmosphere. Is this performance enough to impress the U.S. Air Force and the civilian population of the late 1940s and early 1950’s? The answer is certainly in the affirmative.

There are design elements in the Fleissner saucer which link it to the work of Prandtl and Lippisch. It should be noted that the slot air intakes mounted near the edge of the saucer would have sucked in the boundary layer before it got any real chance to form. Below, the jets would have blown off the boundary layer at a similar point. Further, because the entire wing, the saucer, is spinning, any further development of a boundary layer would have been moved at an angle and so almost nullified as happens with severely swept-back wings of a conventional high-speed jet aircraft. Therefore, at supersonic speeds, this saucer might not have even generated a sonic boom.

There is some proof that the Fleissner-type of saucer was actually built and flown at Peenemuende or a nearby test facility at Stettin. Fleissner’s patent is likened to wartime reality by a photograph. Actually, it is three photographs. These photographs have appeared in a fragmentary, vintage Dutch article on German saucers and they are attached to a wartime letter from Prag sent to this writer by J. Andreas Epp and later published in Ahnstern (15). No specific mention of the photograph is made in the letter and so it could be that the late Mr. Epp included it as a general example rather than a specific reference. Epp never claimed the saucers in these photographs as his design. Epp himself claimed to have the only photographs of that device. There is reason to suspect, however, that this design does bare a relationship to the Fleissner design.

The pictures show a small saucer with some telling features. One point of correspondence with the Fleissner patent is that the air intake is located near the periphery of the saucer wing. This is seen as seen in the ring just inside the saucer’s edge. The other is that the directional control is clearly viable in the rudder mounted on the top of the cockpit or central cabin. In the picture the control is external and not as sophisticated as the Fleissner patent but the idea behind both are the same. In the pictured saucer, turns would be made by turning the cabin as a whole, thus, turning the rudder just as the prehistoric flying reptile, the Pterodactyl, turned its flight direction using a rudder located on top of its head.

Further confirmation of a Peenemuende saucer project comes from a Stockholm evening newspaper, Aftonbladet, dated October 10, 1952. It reports that a flying saucer, a “space ship,” was developed by the Germans during World War Two at Peenemuende by Dr. Wernher von Braun and his rocket team. A test-model of this craft lifted off in April of 1944. It was six meters in diameter. The ultimate craft to be built was a space ship of 42 meters in diameter, capable of flying an astonishing three hundred kilometers in altitude! Not stated in the article but interesting to note is that this 300 kilometers represents a higher altitude than the first American earth orbiting satellite. The construction drawings for this device are in the USA, according to the article, and the drawings are also known to the Russians. The chief difficulty with the saucer, according to the report, is the tremendous fuel requirements during its assent. This problem, it goes on to say, could be solved through the utilization of atomic energy.

Let us look at the picture of the three saucers again. In the lower left picture two dark objects can be seen resting on its top. Mr. Rothkugel suggests these may be bombs or fuel. Let us assume the latter, that they are fuel drums for refueling the saucer. In the USA metal drums of this type commonly contain petroleum products. They measure about three feet in height. Two are shown but six lengths could be stretched across this saucer with perhaps inches to spare. A meter is slightly over a yard. This saucer roughly corresponds in size to the description given in the Aftonbladet article. The picture on the right, minus the fuel drums and poised above some buildings, clearly shows that this saucer actually flew.

A whole technical history and organizational hierarchy can be pieced together from this picture, the Fliessner patent, and the Aftonbladet article. The Fleissner design minimizes the effects of boundary layer resistance reflecting the outcome of work starting with Ludwig Prandtl. It is a circular aircraft and a linear descendant of the circular aircraft designed by Dr. Prandtl and Dr. Alexander Lippisch. Fleissner states that he worked at Peenemuende. Peenemuende functioned as the head of all German saucer research. A fact of life at Peenemuende was that all German scientists deferred to Dr. Wernher von Braun who was an expert, the only expert, at everything. Dr. von Braun did have an organizational supervisor, Dr. Walter Dornberger, later to work for Bell Aircraft in the USA. Above Dr. Dornberger was Dr. Hans Kammler, the SS chief of all jet aircraft and vengeance weaponry. All these named men and organizations were part of the German saucer program, their public denials not withstanding.

One more loose end is tied up relating to the Fleissner design. This is the relationship of Dr. Giuseppe Belluzzo to the German saucer projects as a whole. Remember, Dr. Belluzzo was a senior scientist and engineer who specialized in materials and steam turbines. The Fleissner saucer design is normally thought of as a sort of ram-jet. But this ram-jet spun due to thrust imparted to it by its exhaust. This exhaust-supplied motion scooped in and compressed the incoming air before ignition. Low speed flight would have been impossible without this feature just as it is with any ram-jet. So another way to look at this engine is that it was a turbine-ram-jet no matter how incongruous this may sound at first. It should also be noted that in the rocket mode, when the saucer is burning only liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, the products of this combustion are only heat and water. Another way to say heat and water is steam. To repeat, Dr. Giuseppe Belluzzo was a steam-turbine expert. As mentioned earlier, Mr. Rothkugel reports that Dr. Belluzzo visited and, presumably consulted with, Dr. Alexander Lippisch at Augsberg. Dr. Belluzzo’s involvement with the German saucer projects should not be assumed to be confined to the Miethe project.

Let’s review the Peenemuende Project to this point. It is a wide ranging project with at least two spin-offs, the Schriever-Habermohl project and the Miethe project. The Schriever-Habermohl project(s) employ a whirling set of vane-blades and one or more rocket or jet engines in a kind of “spinning top” manner. It may have been capable of supersonic flight. The Miethe project differs in that it employs an internal spinning turbojet first invented by Rene Leduc. Depending of the saucer configuration, its thrust can be vented in any direction for steering purposes. It also may have been capable of supersonic flight.

This design was given further study and was probably developed after the war in the form of the John Frost “Manta.” A design such as this may have been responsible for the sightings by Kenneth Arnold near Mt. Rainier in the State of Washington in June of 1947. It was probably responsible for the pictures taken by William Rhodes as seen and described in the July 9, 1947 edition of the newspaper,
The Arizona Republic
. This same design, described as a “Flying Shoe” may have figured in the Roswell crash. Ideas from this design may have been further developed by A.V. Roe, Limited company in Canada.

Besides retaining overall control of these two saucer projects, the officials at Peenemuende retained and developed their own saucer project. Using similarities between surviving pictures from the time and the patent filed by a former member of that project, Heinrich Fleissner, we can piece together something of its design. Its identifying characteristic is its engine which has been described earlier as a turbine-ram-jet. It could operate using a variety of fuels. It could function as a jet engine within the atmosphere or covert to a rocket engine using liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. Its speed and altitude limits would have been much greater than either the Schriever-Habermohl or the Miethe saucers, yet its construction would have been less complex than the advanced designs of the radial-jet engines being developed in the Canada as part of the Silver Bug Program. Recognition of these facts, especially after the 1955 patent application by Fleissner, probably lead to the abandonment of the A.V. Roe, Limited project(s). A cover project, the “Avrocar” was released to the public, discredited by its own designers, and put away to be forgotten.