Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency information report, distributed 31 July 1950 and marked unevaluated, forwards a translated article by Dr. Eduard Ludwig of Santiago, Chile, written for the German-language magazine Condor. Ludwig worked at the Junkers research plant in Dessau. He argues that the flying discs could be aircraft built on German research into boundary-layer aerodynamics, driven by gas turbines and fitted with Flettner rotors. He suggests that this technology may have fallen into Russian hands.
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procedure was later applied to a great extent to the fighter plane Muster Ju. 88 under the name of "dive-brake". This patent had to be handed to the English factory Handley-Page after World War I, which explains that the name of "Handley-Page Splitwing" is more widely known.
However, developments proceeded. It was principally the Acrodynamic Experimental Institute of the Gottingen University, directed by the renowned Professors Frandtl and Betz, and Constructor Flettner, which drew its conclusions from the theory of the airplane-wing-beam. Flettner proved that the conditions of a rotating object are similar to those which appear in a "translatorischen" movement. Thus evolved the "Flettner-Rotor".
Professor Junkers, head of the well known airplane works in Dessau, who in the year 1915 received his pathbreaking patent on the one-piece notal wing without junctures, ordered a research group, which was headed by Professor Dr. Bock, and to which I had the honor to belong, to investigate to what extent the uplift of a wing could be increased through the attachment of a Flettner-Rotor in the shape of a cylinder turning at great speed. The cylinder was two-thirds of the length of the wing and was installed in the nose of the wing, where it could best be adapted to the wing's profile. To assist us with aerodynamic problems, the Gottlingen University sent us Professor Prandtl. The experiments turned out to be extremely difficult and involved many casualties. The purely technical question of the speedy uplift of a long cylinder of light construction could not be solved at that time. Inexplicable vibrations and axle breakages occurred time after time which Professor Junkers ordered us to investigate, and with which we were occupied for months. Not less than four men, all experienced and tried pilots of the first World War and outstanding engineers, died in these experiments. It was clear to us that only a gas-turbine could produce the direct uplift of the cylinder. However, since meanwhile more pressing problems awaited solution, experiments with this type of aircraft were interrupted.
Meanwhile the Aerodynamic Experimental Institute of Gottingen made new and enlightening discoveries. Professor Betz found that supersonic speeds, such as are produced by quickly rotating propellers, created entirely new conditions. This investigation, however, needed the furnishing of a wind tunnel for supersonic speeds which could only be built many years later, and which after the war was forwarded to the United States where it greatly amazed all scientists.
Now light was shed on many things. It was found that the tearing of the boundary stratum at supersonic speeds involved much greater resistance, so that an object with full atmospheric pressure practically "hangs" from the upper layer of air, and theoretically experiences there the same uplift as an object of the same surface in the water. The converting of the revelations found in research into reality, however, needed the solution of the starting force through a gas-turbine or another equivalent machine or instrument.
lany heretofore unexplained phenomena now found an explanation. For example it had often been observed that the range of quickly rotating missiles ("Drall-virlung") was much greater than could be explained according to the laws of ballistics. Paradoxical explanations were sought for this such as that the air resistance decreases with growing speeds. Today we know that these quickly rotating missiles "swim" in the surrounding layers of air and therefore lose part of their weight. Full clarification was brought about only with supersonic speeds, which were obtained in the experiments with rockets (V-2) and were arrived at by flights of many hundreds and thousands of kilometers, and which can only be explained by the way in which these missiles literally "hang" in the air. The surprise of the specialised scientists the world over at the astounding results of the German V-2 was not less than that which is produced today by the appearance of the mysterious Not linked to a story yet.
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 8 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.