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.
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