Perhaps I should explain the reasons for my scepticism against a lot of german projects from
the late war years, much more scepticism, than I have against, say british or US projects :
Before and during the early years of war, procurement and development of aircraft followed
similar lines to that, in other countries. Projects or proposals from these times, can be taken as
serious as in GB or the USA, I think. For every type ordered into production, there were several
contenders and the one, which seemed to be the best, was selected. And, as in other
countries, too, the losers, especially those, who were cancelled at an early stage are most often
quite unknown and sometimes not much more than a designation has survived. With the
closing stages of war, there may have been some types, which were ordered into development
without a given specification, sometimes manufacturers proposals, which may have been
shown to “the right one, with the right connections” in the airforce staff, if the type seemed to
offer “revolutionary” capabilities. To my opinion, at least at this moment, a type would have had
official recognition and would have appeared in official documents ! If not, it never was a
serious proposal !
But the number of projects, many of them very weird is filling an enormous number of books
in the meantime. One reason, I think, is the one Richard already mentioned : The aircraft
companies probably tried to keep their design staff intact, by making a lot of unsolicited
proposals . From late 1943 onwards, to everyone with a little bit of hindsight, it must have
been clear, that work on a design, which required some effort for development must have
been in vain. But the alternative would have been, to set designers, engineers, draftsman and
others “free”, something, that for many of them would have led to being send to the front !
Nevertheless, those projects could still be regarded as “authentic”, I think, although they in
many cases were founded on principles, not yet fully understood at this time, so that the
results probably would have been less than successful and in fact they weren’t truly intended
to be build by the ones, who made them .
But I think, there’s another source for many of the fancy “secret projects” . The german
aviation industry was the first to use jet and rocket engines, swept and even forward swept
wings in combat aircraft (Ok, the term “revolutionary”can be used here, if we compare this to
the modern public relations industry, which calls every new dishwasher “revolutionary”
) and
so it was regarded as very sophisticated even by its enemies. After the war investigation teams
were send to germany from all allied countries, to try to capture as much of this knowledge,
as possible. So hundreds of people, who had worked for an aircraft manufacturer were
interviewed and probably most of them tried to be as helpful and co-operative as possible.
Never say “no” to someone, who can influence your future !
And as all this was about technical matters, probably more than once, those interviewed were
ask to make a sketch of what they had seen, when they were accidentally peaking through the
door of the design office. So a lot of rumours may have got a face and by mixing with design
lists later even a type designation.
The situation, that a search for “secret technology” was carried out throughout a whole
country was unique then, and the men searching probably were very keen to find something !
The only comparable case may be the search for ABC weapons in Iraq.
And the result is a hard to analyse mixture of some real and realistic projects, a lot of designs,
which would be called concepts or design studies today, many of them probably never with a
serious background and an even greater number of “designs”, that were based on rumours,
misinterpreted interviews and documents, or, as I tried to point out, even pure speculation.
In the case of the Iraq it seems to be clear now to most people, that there never wasn’t a real
ABC arsenal, at least in the expected form. Even in this forum, we had a thread about
“misidentified soviet aircraft”, listing several types, that never were. But there still seems to
be a special fascination with those “german projects”, that is able to fill even more books and
threads ! ???
