http://www.unmuseum.org/germufo.htm

Hitler and the Third Reich led the world into a decade of terror in the first half of the 20th century that culminated in World War II. Technology played a greater part in that war than in past conflicts and the Germans developed an amazing array of secret weapons in a short time. Were flying discs part of the Luftwaffe arsenal? And, if so, was this secret looted and used by the Allied victors after the war?

Some of the German war-time technical advances are well known. The first military jet was the German Heinkel 178 which flew in 1939. In 1943 the Germans also deployed the only jet fighter to go into regular service during the war: The Messerschmitt 262. This German jet could easily overtake the fastest Allied aircraft. Only Hitler's misguided orders that the planes be outfitted as bombers, instead of defensive fighters, saved Allied aircraft from devastating casualties.

Cruise missiles, a staple of current advanced arsenals, were also first used by the Third Reich during the war. V-1 flying bombs were launched from German-held territories across the channel into England. The "buzz bombs," as they were sometimes called because of the sound of their impulse jet engines, could outrun most Allied aircraft making the V-1's almost impossible to stop. The V-1's weakness was its guidance system (a problem solved in modern cruise missiles by the use of computer-controlled radar). Because it couldn't hit a pinpoint target, the V-1 could only be used to cause random terror, not wipe out truly important military assets.

The V-2 rocket (below right) was the predecessor of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that filled the nuclear arsenals of the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War. It traveled up to 225 miles at five times the speed of sound. A single hit could demolish a city block. During the war the V-2 killed 2724 civilians and injured another 6467. Like the V-1, though, it lacked a guidance system that would have allowed it to strike at important targets.

The Germans even developed a rocket-powered fighter, the Me 163. Though it never was put into regular service, it was the first aircraft to fly faster than 600 miles an hour.

Is it possible that the list of secret weapons produced by Nazi Germany included flying saucers? Did they actually deploy disc shaped fighters or at least experiment with them?

Some of the earliest stories about German flying saucers date back to an inventor named Victor Schauberger. Schauberger was born in Austria in 1885 and was considered by many to be a crackpot. Schauberger himself said, "They call me deranged. The hope is they are right..." Schauberger believed that machines could be designed better so that they would be "going with the flow of nature" rather than against it.

One of Schauberger's projects was to produce a flying machine, saucer shaped, that used a "liquid vortex propulsion" system. His theory was that "if water or air is rotated into a twisting form of oscillation, known as a 'colloidal,' a build-up of energy results, which, with immense power, can cause levitation."

According to stories Schauberger built several models (right), one of which was almost five feet in diameter and was powered by a 1/20 hp electric engine. Some reports indicated that one of the models actually flew. There are also reports that, according to letter Victor Schauberger wrote to a friend, a full-sized prototype of one of his designs was constructed using prison labor at the Mauhausen concentration camp. This craft flew on February 19th of 1945 near Prague and obtained an altitude of 45,000 feet in only 3 minutes. The letter goes on to say the prototype was destroyed by the Nazis before it could be captured by the Allies.

Schauberger's models.

After the war Schauberger moved to the United States, where some contend he worked on secret projects for the U.S. government. He died in 1958, apparently claiming his ideas had been stolen.

Another German designer involved with the Nazi effort during the war was Rudolf Schriever. Schriever, along with some other engineers named Habermohl, Miethe and Bellanzo, apparently came up with several disc-shaped aircraft designs that used more conventional power sources than those Schauberger envisioned. One of Schriever's drawings shows an egg-shaped cockpit surrounded by a rotating fan-like disc that provided the lift. A Mieth drawing depicts a smooth flat saucer with an elongated hump on its back for the cockpit. Both would have been powered by jet engines.

As with Schauberger, there were reports that some of these designs were actually built. The Schriever machine was said to have been tested in 1945 and to have reached an altitude of 12 kilometers in a little over three minutes. It had a top speed of 2000 kilometers an hour.

There is no real, solid evidence, though, that a test flight ever took place and Schriever himself, who relocated to the United States after the war, indicated that any prototypes of the craft were destroyed, before flying as the Germans abandoned their facilities in the face of advancing Allied troops.

Stories also persist that the Germans's also had developed small automatized flying discs. One version was called the Feuerball. Another, capable of vertical takeoff, was referred to as the Kugelblitz. According to stories, these craft were only armed with devices designed to interfere with the electronics of nearby airplanes.

The Feuerball and Kugelblitz stories seem to parallel tales of "foo-fighters" told by Allied pilots during the war. Despite this it seems unlikely that Feuerballs and Kugelblitzs were ever actually built or flown. The "foo-fighters" observed were probably some purely natural phenomena. No Allied plane ever reported being attacked by a foo-fighter and it is likely that if the Germans had invented a device capable of tracking planes as well as the foo-fighters apparently did, they would have soon armed it with some effective weapon.

So were there really any German disc-shaped aircraft? It seems likely that there was certainly some experimentation with the concept within the Reich. Disc-shaped aircraft have several advantages, including low stall speed and low drag, even at high speeds. The rounded shape can also lower the craft's radar profile making it "stealthy." For these reasons German designers did consider using disc shaped aircraft, as did the U.S.

The low stall/drag of the shape was particulary imporatant to the Germans at the end of the war. Months of bombing had reduced German runways to rubble. A saucer shaped craft could have lifted off the ground like a vertical-takeoff-and landing (VTOL) aircraft without a runway at all.

It is certain that they produced some models or prototypes, though, it is unlikely that if these machines flew they obtained the outstanding climb and speed figures some stories suggest. These stories may be difficult to disprove, though, since in the chaos at the end of the War, many records were lost or destroyed.

Rumors are likely to continue that the Nazis developed flying saucer technology that was then stolen by the United States and the Soviet Union after the war. This latter suggestion is not wholly without merit, since US and USSR rocketry development after WWII owed a lot to German scientists who were recruited to assist in the superpowers Cold War space programs through an operation known as "Paperclip." There are records, exposed by author Jim Wilson in a Popular Mechanics article in July 1997, that suggest that at least two brothers, Walter and Reimar Horten, were sought by the United States after the war because of their participation in German military saucer programs.

Some saucer stories about Germany developed after the War, rather than during it. In particular there is a book, UFOs: Nazi Secret Weapons? in which the author, Ernst Zundel, suggests Hitler escaped at the end of the war to establish a flying saucer base in Antarctica at the entrance of a hole that leads to a hollow "inner Earth."

Since science has pretty well established that the Earth isn't hollow, it seems these stories can be disregarded. As for the existence of other German WWII flying discs, though, it is possibility that may never fully be disproved.