Ernst Wagner Propellerjäger mit Tandem-Motor 1944

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An interesting German project by Ernst Wagner featured in FliegerRevue X 65.

http://www.fliegerrevuex.aero/fliegerrevue-x-65/

From the magazine overview through Google Translate :
X-Projects: Wagner-propeller-hunter with tandem engine from 1944
From assemblies of the Messerschmitt Bf 109 with a new delta wing, Ernst Wagner constructed a fast, highly unusual fighter aircraft in 1944.
 

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A good views.
 

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Just a suggestion: Of this "project" only a sketch and some basisc data are known, obviously
submitted as a proposal to use components of the Bf 109 to produce a new and superior fighter.
Eve that article states, that the known data seem not to be coherent, but probably based on
the designers memories after the war.
Such proposals were made in dozens, probably even hundreds or more during the closing stages
of the war, when many "inventors" thought, that their ideas still could change tack.

I'm very sceptic about putting those immature thoughts in a line with, say, real projects like the
later versions of the Me 262 or Ar 234, where actual and serious design and research work was done.

If those would be nowadays "projects", we probably would see them as CGI in an issue of an aviation
magazine, once or twice at best, called a "concept" and everybody would knew, that it's not to be taken
too seriously. And here it would be stuff for the "aerospace" section at best, or better the "theoretical and
speculative" section ...
But it's labelled "secret German WW II project" and so it finds lots of excited fans and probably soon a
model kit is available, proving that it was a real and serious project ! Would someone produce a kit of
a dodgy idea ?

We had here more than once the question, why there were so many German projects and so few from the allieds.
The answer, to my opinion, is just, that many people are still willing to accept every sketch on the back of an envelope
as to be taken seriously, if only the "designer" was German. Similar ideas from British or US "designers"
quickly vanished, were they were most appropriate for: In the waste basket !

So I would suggest a more judicious use of the term "project", even for WW II designs or proposals from Germany.
 
Looks like that design was intended to allow relatively long endurance loitering, so as to allow for better interception vectoring on to Allied bombers. A logical approach one could argue.
 
Jemiba said:
We had here more than once the question, why there were so many German projects and so few from the allieds.
The answer, to my opinion, is just, that many people are still willing to accept every sketch on the back of an envelope
as to be taken seriously, if only the "designer" was German. Similar ideas from British or US "designers"
quickly vanished, were they were most appropriate for: In the waste basket !

So I would suggest a more judicious use of the term "project", even for WW II designs or proposals from Germany.

Many German design bureau kept producing this kind of speculative project to keep their staff employed.. and spare them from the front. Hence the plethora of concept that aimed mainly to achieve something that was far from actually producing something real.
 
This reminds me of the PM Bull custom design from X-Plane. https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/5031-pm-aircraft-bull/

Jemiba said:
We had here more than once the question, why there were so many German projects and so few from the allieds.
The answer, to my opinion, is just, that many people are still willing to accept every sketch on the back of an envelope
as to be taken seriously, if only the "designer" was German. Similar ideas from British or US "designers"
quickly vanished, were they were most appropriate for: In the waste basket !

So I would suggest a more judicious use of the term "project", even for WW II designs or proposals from Germany.

I'm personally surprised the Nazis get so much attention as well. The United States had their own share of "wunderwaffe"-tier weapons during WWII, such as the first UCAVs and active radar homing missiles. Yet to date I've never seen any models of the XBDR!
 
GWrecks said:
I'm personally surprised the Nazis get so much attention as well. The United States had their own share of "wunderwaffe"-tier weapons during WWII, ...

It's not so surprising, for several reasons:
1: About ten seconds after the war was over the German "Luft '46" designs started hitting the press. American secret projects remained secret projects for *decades.*
2: American and allied designers were generally rational, producing rational designs. German designers were often hunched over their drafting tables hoping to come up with a way to keep from being shipped to the Russian front. Desperation leads to wacky designs, and wacky is interesting.
3: A few generations of the market flooded with Luft '46 and silence on USAAF'46 leads most people to just *assume* that the Germans were some innovative designin' fools while Americans... weren't. That has led to it becoming easy to invent nonsense like Nazi antigravity and such...and the more that sort of rubbish is invented, the more it's accepted. And the more it's accepted, the more it is Just Understood that the Nazis were more interesting.
4: The Nazis were clearly, unambiguously evil. And in the realm of PR evil will always triumph, because good is dumb. Honestly: who's more interesting, Darth Vader or Admiral Ackbar? Emperor Palpatine or Mon Mothma? Han Solo (he's a criminal who straight-up murders people, remember) or Luke Skywalker?
 
"4: The Nazis were clearly, unambiguously evil. And in the realm of PR evil will always triumph, because good is dumb. Honestly: who's more interesting, Darth Vader or Admiral Ackbar? Emperor Palpatine or Mon Mothma? Han Solo (he's a criminal who straight-up murders people, remember) or Luke Skywalker"?

I may be an ol' 'it but my vote goes for Doctor WHO.

I know, I'll get my coat.
 
TomcatViP said:
Many German design bureau kept producing this kind of speculative project to keep their staff employed.. and spare them from the front. Hence the plethora of concept that aimed mainly to achieve something that was far from actually producing something real.

The only known design which was unambiguously kept alive for the sole reason of keeping staff from the front was Heinkel's P 1077 Julia. It was cancelled in December 1944, but Heinkel deliberately chose to continue with it right up to the end of the war to prevent staff at the company mock-up building workshop from being drafted.
Scott's right about the unbalanced perception that arose due to all the Nazi projects appearing together immediately after the war - because the manufacturers' surviving archives had been emptied and suddenly all projects from throughout the war years were made available to the world. Chances are, if you'd piled up all the project files from all British or American manufacturers, from every year of the war, at that moment you would find just as many 'secret projects' - some of them just as 'wacky'.
The outlandish German designs often appear out of context, for example on Luft46.com where they are listed by manufacturer rather than by the specification they were intended to meet. If you look at the specs, you get a better idea of where the 'wacky' designs came from - they are designed to provide solutions to very particular problems. What sort of aerodynamic form do you choose in 1944 when you have to come up with something that will do 1000km/h and still handle in a dogfight? How do you launch a fast bomber (or fighter) when every concrete runway is Germany has been wrecked? How do you inflict the maximum possible damage on a very well-defended fleet of enemy bombers? How do you build a high performance fighter that doesn't require light alloy for its construction (because there isn't any) or petrol for its engine (because there isn't any)?
True, there are examples of totally unrealistic designs produced without any apparent government requirement - such a Focke-Wulf's Triebflugeljager (no runway required) - but the vast majority were produced because the company employing the designers was required to submit designs for a government competition, not simply to keep the designers from being sent to the front.
Public interest in the designs, as Scott also says, continues because Nazis = ultimate evil bad guys.

Regarding the Ernst Wagner design. The caption says it's a 'reconstruction'. Is there a period drawing accompanying the article or is the magazine's drawing a speculative design?
 
but the vast majority were produced because the company employing the designers was required to submit designs for a government competition, not simply to keep the designers from being sent to the front.

At last an unbiased, educated statement! Back to secret, wacky projects, please!!!
 
newsdeskdan said:
...Is there a period drawing accompanying the article or is the magazine's drawing a speculative design?

The article says, that Ernst Wagner presented the design of a twin engined private aircraft with push-pull configuration
in 1958. And when introducing this design to the public, the designer mentioned, that it was based on this design for a
fighter, submitted to the German airforce in 1944 ... "intensive research of the author didn't bring out any original document,
nor about the company owned by Ernst Wagner back then ..."
The whole shown project is based on the Ernst Wagners memories, and the author of the article in the FR X points to some
details, where this memory obviously already was fading.

I fully agree with Scott and newsdeskdan about the mass of projects "flooding the market" after the war, because Messerschmitt,
Heinkel, Junkers and so on no longer existed in the form, they did until the end of the war. Lockheed, Boeing, Hawker or Bristol had
no reason to show to the public, what they were developing just a few years ago !
But I agree to Scott, too, in his point about the fascination of "Nazi secret weapons" to many people. And I cannot think of
an article in quite a reputable magazine about aviation history dealing with a design drawn by, say, Bill Smith (insert any other
unknown name here) one day in the war submitted to the USAF/RAF, because he thought it to be a good idea to win the war.
And if so, I think the letters to the editor would just say "meh", definitely not creating such a fuss as the "Heinkel He X/He 519",
or the "Junkers/Klagenfurt Klf 255", started as an April fool hoax, and even announced as such, but still having numerous loyal
believers.
 
Jemiba said:
newsdeskdan said:
...Is there a period drawing accompanying the article or is the magazine's drawing a speculative design?

The article says, that Ernst Wagner presented the design of a twin engined private aircraft with push-pull configuration
in 1958. And when introducing this design to the public, the designer mentioned, that it was based on this design for a
fighter, submitted to the German airforce in 1944 ... "intensive research of the author didn't bring out any original document,
nor about the company owned by Ernst Wagner back then ..."
The whole shown project is based on the Ernst Wagners memories, and the author of the article in the FR X points to some
details, where this memory obviously already was fading.

I fully agree with Scott and newsdeskdan about the mass of projects "flooding the market" after the war, because Messerschmitt,
Heinkel, Junkers and so on no longer existed in the form, they did until the end of the war. Lockheed, Boeing, Hawker or Bristol had
no reason to show to the public, what they were developing just a few years ago !
But I agree to Scott, too, in his point about the fascination of "Nazi secret weapons" to many people. And I cannot think of
an article in quite a reputable magazine about aviation history dealing with a design drawn by, say, Bill Smith (insert any other
unknown name here) one day in the war submitted to the USAF/RAF, because he thought it to be a good idea to win the war.
And if so, I think the letters to the editor would just say "meh", definitely not creating such a fuss as the "Heinkel He X/He 519",
or the "Junkers/Klagenfurt Klf 255", started as an April fool hoax, and even announced as such, but still having numerous loyal
believers.

It's unfortunate that projects without any basis in period documents are being 'reconstructed' this way. I can think of at least two unpublished 'projects' from period documents, complete with drawings, that I've deliberately ignored because they do not come from professional designers working for a reputable aircraft manufacturer or aviation research institution. There's no need to publish that sort of material when the designs being produced by the pros to meet government requirements are often still so poorly understood. And there is still plenty of period material from the likes of Focke-Wulf, Messerschmitt, Lippisch, Heinkel, Blohm & Voss etc. which has yet to see the light of day.
 
The article about the EWA 77 is part of a series in the FRX, which started with the article about the "Me 262/Fi 103R suicide
Mistel" (https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,23397.0.html), not free of doubts, too, to my opinion.
The problem may be, that once a series in a mag was started, the readers are expecting an "unknown project" in every issue.
And then quite soon stuff may become scarce.
 
Orionblamblam said:
GWrecks said:
I'm personally surprised the Nazis get so much attention as well. The United States had their own share of "wunderwaffe"-tier weapons during WWII, ...

It's not so surprising, for several reasons:
1: About ten seconds after the war was over the German "Luft '46" designs started hitting the press. American secret projects remained secret projects for *decades.*
2: American and allied designers were generally rational, producing rational designs. German designers were often hunched over their drafting tables hoping to come up with a way to keep from being shipped to the Russian front. Desperation leads to wacky designs, and wacky is interesting.
3: A few generations of the market flooded with Luft '46 and silence on USAAF'46 leads most people to just *assume* that the Germans were some innovative designin' fools while Americans... weren't. That has led to it becoming easy to invent nonsense like Nazi antigravity and such...and the more that sort of rubbish is invented, the more it's accepted. And the more it's accepted, the more it is Just Understood that the Nazis were more interesting.
4: The Nazis were clearly, unambiguously evil. And in the realm of PR evil will always triumph, because good is dumb. Honestly: who's more interesting, Darth Vader or Admiral Ackbar? Emperor Palpatine or Mon Mothma? Han Solo (he's a criminal who straight-up murders people, remember) or Luke Skywalker?


I prefer my drawing board ;)
 

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About Ernst Wagner , two post-war projects here :

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,31042.0.html
 

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