German Scientist's Article on 'Flying Discs'

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

THE MYSTERY OF THE "FLYING DISCS"

A contribution to its possible explanation.

By Dr. Eduard Ludvig, Santiago, Chile. Av. Cristobal Colon 1916

Though the continuously reappearing reports on the appearance of new, mysterious aircraft of unknown construction should be considered with severe skepticism as the result of a sort of mass-hypnosis, nevertheless some of the detailed and coinciding accounts of technically trained observers deserve attention and permit one to draw conclusions as to the probable classification of these new aircraft.

Since so far the observations have been made mainly in the dark, which means that only the luminous parts of the craft are visible, every report brings the description of shining discs or circles. If one should discard the absurd conjecture that these aircraft originate from beyond this earth, then it is easy to arrive at the conclusion that the shining circles bear a relation to the exhaust of a rotary gas-turbine. The possibility exists that the rotor of a turbine is used at the same time as a stabilizing top and is therefore fixed vertically to the level of the other turbine rings, which in the darkness produces the effect of the "rings of Saturn".

These observations remind me of a completely new type of aircraft which was developed during the years I worked in the research plant of Professor Junkers in Dossau, which was attached to the airplane factories known all over the world. I do not know how many of my co-workers are still alive today, but I do know that Dr. Bock, Professor at the Technical High School of Berlin, and who was at that time my chief and friend of many years, has been deported to the Soviet Union.

The name of Professor Bock was never widely known due to his modest character, but he may have been the greatest genius of German airplane theoretics, and later, in view of his extraordinary faculties, he was named head constructor of the Ministry of German Airways and Director of the German Institute of Airways Research in Berlin-Adlershof.

In order to explain to a wider circle of readers the basic idea of the new aircraft, I should like to submit first the following explanations:

The first [physician] and mathematician who considered the new Science of Aero-dynamics after the commencement of purely experimental developments of aircraft construction was the Russian Professor Jukowski of Moscow. Before the first World War and together with my esteemed teacher, Dr. Kutta from the Technical High School of Stuttgart, Germany, he developed the theory of airplane-wingbeam. Professor Kutta succeeded in establishing the famous "Differential equation of the boundary stratum" which for the first time throws light on the processes in current particles and which in any case explains for the first time theoretically the reason why a planewing can bear a load while moving forward through the air. Since then the "Kutta-Jukowski Theory of Airplane-wingbeam" has been the foundation of all aerodynamics. As already mentioned, the core of this work is the so-called "boundary stratum", which consists of the thin layer of air in which the transition of Velocity Zero to the Velocity of the Moving Object takes place. If the object is streamlined then the boundary stratum will endeavor not to sever, no whirlvinds will occur, and therefore no loss of energy will take place in that stratum. Since nature always functions most economically, it always tries to avoid loss of energy,