During WWII, Germany had become the undisputed leader in highly advanced aircraft technology. The Me-262 jet interceptor, Horten flying wings, and the Me-163 rocket powered aircraft were decades ahead of allied designs.

Under the direction of Dr. Walter Dornberger, the man in charge of operations at Peenemünde, and Dr. Wernher von Braun's boss, a secret saucer program was started at the BMW/Heinkel factory in Dresden in 1943. This design team was headed by Dr. Richard Miethe, who worked for the BMW rocket division in Berlin. These discs had been originally built in Germany in the fall of 1943, with the first flight occurring during the spring of 1944.

After the close of WWII, many German aeronautical engineers were sent to White Sands Missile Range under "Operation Paperclip". The remaining group of scientists, were captured by the Russians. The Soviets reached the German plant in Breslau before the Americans, and quickly dismantled many factories, rebuilding them in Russia. It's clear now that the Soviet Union had it's own saucer program (derived from captured German scientist) which explains many of the over-flights in the United States. Dr. Richard Miethe was sent to Fort Bliss, and later worked at Wright Patterson AFB. Eventually, Dr. Miethe went to work for John C. Frost of the Avro Aircraft Company (a subsidiary of Hawker Siddeley) in Malton Ontario Canada. Mr. Frost was a gifted aircraft designer from England, who headed up Avro's "special projects group" in 1952. Avro was currently working on at least 16 different "Flying Saucer" proposals, including project "Y" and project "Y2" (aka "Project Silverbug"). Project Silverbug was a design for a supersonic VTOL flying disc.

By 1953, John Frost and his team had completed most of the "paper studies" on these highly unusual aircraft. The only problem facing Mr. Frost, was the overwhelming costs involved in the development of these designs. It quickly became clear that only one country was capable of providing the necessary "financial backing" to "foot the bill" for Avro's flying saucer programs. USAF Lt. General Donald L. Putt had been briefed on the incredible performance specifications of these aircraft, and visited the Avro Canada plant on September 16, 1953.

Not wanting this incredible technology to be acquired by any other nation, the U.S.A.F. officially took over and financed Avro's saucer program in late 1954. This allowed the Air Force to "farm out" its own saucer program on foreign soil, while at the same time keeping the project strategically close to the United States. By 1955, Dr. Miethe had completed construction of the disc shaped aircraft he had originally built in Germany in 1944. These were the exact aircraft reported as "flying Saucers" in the U.S. during 1947. The first test flight of this USAF/Avro disc occurred in Malton in 1955, with additional test flights taking place at Edwards AFB.

Project Silver Bug, a 1950s operation designed to build what was, quite literally, a man-made Flying Saucer. To what extent the US military may have had actual success in this area is unknown; however, only a few years later, man-made Flying Saucers were once again the subject of official interest – and this time the plan was to make them nuclear-powered.   A report, dated October 1962, titled Environment Control Systems Selection for Manned Space Vehicles, and prepared by North American Aviation Inc., for the Air Force Systems Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, reveals the facts.   Although much of the text is highly technical, the description of the proposed Flying Saucer as the “Lenticular Reentry Vehicle” is eye opening.   According to the document:   The overall weapon system concept results in a requirement for three basic orbiting components. First, there is a requirement for a manned bombardment vehicle which houses the basic control function in space. Secondly, a weapon cluster is required. This is an unmanned weapon carrier which combines and integrates several weapons into a common orbiting package to facilitate handling and servicing. The third requirement is the weapon itself.

 

Real Flying Saucers During the Second World War the United States was looking desperately for anything that could give its fighter pilots an edge in combat. So in 1942 the Navy ordered the construction of an experimental aircraft designated the XF5U-1: A flying saucer.   In the years before the war an Aeronautics engineer named Charles Zimmerman became fascinated with the possibilities offered by an aircraft designed like a thin disc. Zimmerman, who worked for the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, tested a series of unmanned models that eventually led to this design. The shape, commonly referred to at the time as a "flying flapjack," would allow an aircraft to both perform well at high speeds by producing very little drag, and at low speeds, by resisting a stall.   Most traditional aircraft designs have to make a trade off: Long wings let an airplane land and take off at very low speeds. This means shorter runways and greater payloads. As the speed increases, though, long wings create too much resistance to the air and waste power. That's why modern jet fighters have very short, stubby wings. They can go very fast, but they are difficult to land because if you fly them too slow they will not produce enough lift to keep the plane in the air (this is called a stall) and crash. Some modern jets, like the United State's F111 and F14 solve this problem by using a "swing wing" that could be changed from short and swept back to long and square depending on what the plane was trying to do. Zimmerman's design promised to do the same thing without the mechanical complexities associated with moving the wing in flight.   The idea was tested with a manned prototype called the V-173. The V-173 made over 100 successful flights, so two prototypes of a fighter, the XF5U1, were built.   The XF5U-1 prototypes were powered by two 1600-horsepower engines which drove twin propellers on the front of the craft. The pilot sat in a bubble-like canopy that was roughly in the center of the saucer. Small vertical and horizontal tailfins were on the rear of the craft. Zimmerman estimated that the planes would have a top speed of 425 miles an hour and still be able to land as slow as 40 miles an hour. He hoped that with even more powerful engines the fighter might reach 550 miles an hour and be able to take off almost vertically.   By the time the XF5U-1 was finished, though, the war was over and the Navy had become interested in jet powered aircraft of more conventional designs. The XF5U-1s never flew and were destroyed.   There is some evidence that during WWII the Germans had some interest in disc shaped aircraft, too, though it seems unlikely that any of their designs were ever flight tested.   The next attempt to take advantage of the saucer shape was the VZ-9V Avrocar,  Avro Aircraft, a British concern, designed an aircraft that was circular in shape and used a central fan, powered by three turbo-jet engines, to make a vertical takeoff. Once in the air the turbo-jet exhaust would be shifted to the rear giving the vehicle the forward movement it would need to let the circular wing generate lift.   The project was originally funded by Canada, but later was taken over by the U.S. Air Force in 1954. The USAF was concerned that it would need a fighter capable of vertical takeoffs and the VZ-9V was seen as a possibility.   The VZ-9V was about twenty feet in diameter with a five foot wide central fan. It flew well at low altitudes of five or six feet, but when it tried to rise further it became unstable. This had been recognized as a problem early on and the aircraft had a complex mechanical system that was supposed to automatically control the undesired movement and keep the craft stable. It never really worked, though, and, in 1961, after putting $10 million dollars into the project, the Air Force dropped it.   Lockheed was assigned patent rights for a passenger UFO. Its design was among several developed by the military and aerospace companies Still, more aircraft designers found the saucer shape interesting. In 1954 Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, the same company that later built the super secret U-2 spy plane, SR-71 "Blackbird" and F-117A "Stealth Fighter", applied for a patent on a saucer shaped plane. Lockheed was convinced that the shape would allow for excellent structural rigidity, stable vertical ascent, inherent aerodynamic efficiency, and lots of room inside for fuel and payload. As far as anyone knows the Lockheed design was never built. SR-71 and Area 51 One flying saucer that has been built is the Sikorsky Cypher. It is a flying robot about six feet in diameter designed for remote reconnaissance. Unlike the V-173 and similar designs, this saucer is not a wing, but a shroud for a rotary-wing. Operating like a helicopter it can hover and fly slowly around using its video camera to spy. Designed for military operations, the saucer-like shroud keeps the spinning rotor from coming in contact with tree limbs and wires as it manoeuvres down tight city streets during urban warfare. The shape has another property that has become important in the last ten or twenty years of aircraft design: It is stealthy. Military radar works by sending a radio wave out from a radar transmitter. When the wave hits an object it reflects some of the wave back. A radar receiver located at the same place as the transmitter can then detect the wave. By knowing how long it took for the wave to return, what direction it returned, and if the frequency of the wave was shifted, the distance, location and speed of the object can be calculated and shown on the radar screen.   Some objects reflect radio wave better than others. Flat objects will reflect a wave strongly in a particular direction. Circular or rounded objects reflect the wave more poorly because they scatter it in many directions. The F-117A and B-2 aircraft, known as the "Stealth Fighter" and "Stealth Bomber" respectively, hide by never reflecting radar waves back toward the radar receiver. In normal flight they are designed to present their perfectly flat surfaces away from potential radar sites at an angle.   A competing stealth design, though, would use a rounded aircraft, like a saucer, to scatter the waves. Before photos of the F-117A were released many engineers speculated that the plane would be round and flat with a short, sharp, pointed nose at the forward end. Could the government be developing a super secret, vertical takeoff and landing, stealth-flying disc somewhere (Perhaps at the famed Area 51) Problems that plagued earlier designs, like the Avrocar, have been resolved. Computer fly-by-wire systems have made inherently unstable aircraft, like the F-117A, very flyable. There is no reason why the same thing couldn't be done for a jet powered flying saucer.   Flying Wings And Saucer-Shaped Craft Known Disc-Shaped, Triangular, Flying-Wing Aircraft     We all know about B-2's and F-117's, and could see how they might be described as "disk-shaped" if viewed from the appropriate angle. Here's some other information about some similar aircraft from the past. They are presented here merely to show that disk-shaped flying craft are not only possible, but have been built.   XB-35 - In response to the possibility of Britain falling in the early stages of WWII, the US Army Air Force began taking designs for extremely long-ranged, heavy-bomb-load aircraft that could fly from North America to Germany and back, carrying 10,000 pounds of bombs. Northrop proposed the XB-35. The XB-35 had 4 engines, each driving two counter rotating pusher propellers along the same shaft (!). Pictures of the XB-35 look like each shaft has a six-bladed propeller, but its actually two three-bladed propellers -- for a total of 8 propellers.    Jack Northrop had been experimenting with flying-wing designs since the early 1920's. In Germany, the Horten brothers (see below) were working on a flying wing as well -- the final designs look surprisingly like the XB-35 (though it had only two propellers).   Northrop's first prototype was the N-1M (nicknamed "the Jeep"), which was tested in the Roseman Dry Lake in the Mohave Desert from July 1940-early 1942. It had two pusher propellers, and space for one pilot. Wingspan was 38 feet, and the plane weighed 4,000 pounds. First "public" flight made the newsreels. The wings were altered significantly as testing went on; for instance the "drooping wingtips" were discarded early on. The (only) N-1M stills exists, and has been restored, it is now sitting in a Smithsonian storage hangar, painted its original brilliant yellow.    Northrop was contracted by the US Army Air Force Materiel Division to build one XB-35 (wingspan 172'). The N-9M was the first product from the contract, a 1/3 scale (working, though wood-structured, not metal) model with two engines with a 60' wingspan as a testbed/trainer. It first flew successfully on Dec. 27, 1942. Three other N-9M's were built, and the N-9M test program was completed in Oct. 1944. [The last surviving N-9M is being painstakingly rebuilt by the "Planes of Fame" Museum, in Chino, CA] One of the N-9M's crashed during testing. On June 25th 1946, the XB-35 was at last ready to fly (after a number of difficulties with the propellers) at Hawthorne Field, CA -- the Northrop company field. The '35 was now in competetion with what became the Consolodated B-36 as the postwar strategic bomber (interestingly, both planes were pushers.) Its first flight was from Hawthorne to Muroc Dry Lake (later named Edwards AFB) for additional testing.   Attempts to make the propeller system less complex were generally unsuccessful. Northrop decided to replace the props with 8 jet engines, and continue work on the plane, renamed the YB-49. Only 2 XB-35's were ever completed, the second one first flying on June 26, 1947. The Martin Corporation worked on the YB-35 (same basic plane, just built at Martin), and the only YB-35 first flew on May 15, 1948. The power problems of the XB-35 completely disappeared with the jet engines of the YB 49, but unfortunately they reduced the range of the plane such that it could not be thought of as a strategic bomber (mid-air refuelling not then being feasible). The second YB-49 produced was the first to fly, flown by Maj. Robert Cardinas, the US Army Air Force test pilot assigned to the Northrop program (i.e. Northrop retained control, but had military test pilots mixed in with their own.) On April 26th 1948, the YB-49 flew 4,000 miles with a 10,000 pound payload, on circuitous route that took it as far east as Phoenix, and as far north as San Francisco. In June, 1948 a YB-49 on a routine test flight crashed (Capt. Glen Edwards, for whom Edwards AFB is named, died in this crash, along with four others); specific cause of the crash was never determined; structural failure was the most likely reason.   The military had expressed an interest in a reconnaissance version (with two extra jets) of the YB-49, called the YRB-49, and placed an order for 30. In January 1949, though, this order was cancelled.   In Feb. 1949 the remaining YB-49 flew from (now) Edwards AFB to Andrews AFB in record time (just over 4 hours - the record was broken the next day by the XB-47, its medium-bomber competitor, which flew almost 100mph faster). The famous YB-49-over-the-Capitol photos are from this flight. President Truman toured the plane's interior on the ground, and then '49 headed back to Edwards. During the flight, 6 of the 8 engines failed due to an oil failure which has a slightly mysterious history (apparently the oil reservoir had not been filled properly before the flight -- there are hints of sabotage). The YB-49 made an emergency landing at Winslow AZ. Later on in 1949 the last flying YB-49 was destroyed during high-speed taxi tests, when the undercarriage collapsed.   In November 1949, the Air Force (the US Army Air Force became the US Air Force on July 26, 1947 -- it changed from the US Army Air Corps to the US Army Air Force on June 29, 1941) cancelled the last part of the YB-49 contract, that of converting the remaining partially-completed XB-35's to jet power. The last 11 XB-35 hulls (in varying states of completeness) were rolled out onto the flight ramp outside of the factory, lined up, photographed (a very impressive aerial photograph of them lined up survives) and broken up for scrap. Northrop employees made a last-ditch request to finish the planes in their spare time, which Jack Northrop had to turn down, for fear of jeopardizing further military contracts (political shenanigans for government contracts were just as silly back then as they are now, and Northrop was concerned that Stuart Symington, secretary of the Air Force, would look unkindly on Northrop in general if the planes were not destroyed -- Symington was very specific that the YB-49 program not continue. Northrop partisans say that Symington wanted to force Northrop to merge with Convair, for reasons of his own, and was hoping to damage Northrop enough to force the merger. Others say that the expected costs of the YB-49 were sufficiently higher that the XB-57 to warrant the choice of the latter.)   (Other WWII-flying-wing ideas from Jack Northrop included the turbojet-powered XP-79 "Flying Ram", a rocket-powered interceptor that was designed to literally slice the tail off of enemy aircraft with its heavily-reinforced wing to knock them down. The XP-79 actually flew (once -- it crashed), along with at least one similar prototype, the (rocket powered) MX-324, which first flew (powered) on July 5, 1944. Another was the JB-1, an unmanned rocket-assisted, turbojet-propelled missle, and the XP-56, another pusher-flying-wing; this time a fighter, with two counter-rotating propellers along the same shaft, which also made several test flights, in 1943 and 1944 one of the two XP-56's crashed in a landing, the other wound up at the National Air and Space Museum.)   Jack Northrop resigned from the company he had built after the YB-49 was cancelled, and left the aircraft industry entirely. In the mid-1970's, NASA sent him a letter that they were re-examining the flying wing idea (also, the YB-49's small radar signature was being taken more seriously by then.) In April 1980, he (suffering now from Parkinson's disease) was given a security clearance, taken to Northrop, and shown a model of the B-2. Makes a nice ending to the story, eh? The B-2 has exactly the same wingspan as the YB-49 (172').    (An interesting sidelight: in the late 1940's Northrop had also made a slick promotional-film campaign to drum up support for the flying wing; this included a film describing a proposed 80 passenger flying-wing commercial jet.)     The Horten Brothers' Wings - in the 1930's and 1940's in Germany, the Horten Brothers, Walter and Reimar, built a succession of flying wing designs which were quite advanced, and on the cutting edge for their day. Their "Ho" series is as follows:   Ho I - 1931 - a flying-wing sailplane.   Ho II - 1934 - initially a glider, it fitted with a pusher propeller in 1935. Looked very like Northrop's flying wings.   Ho III - 1938 - a metal-frame glider, later fitted with a folding-blade (folded while gliding) propeller for powered flight.   Ho IV - 1941 - a high-aspect-ratio glider (looking very like a modern sailplane, but without a long tail or nose).   Ho V - 1937-42 - first Horten plane designed to be powered, built partially from plastics, and powered by two pusher propellers.   Ho VI "flying parabola" - an extremely-high-aspect-ratio test- only glider. (After the war, the Ho VI was shipped to Northrop for analysis.)   Ho VII - 1945 - considered the most flyable of the powered Ho series by the Horten Brothers, it was built as a flying-wing trainer. (Only one was built and tested, and 18 more were ordered, but the war ended before more than one additional Ho VII could be even partially completed.   Ho VIII - 1945 - a 158-food wingspan, 6-engine plane built as a transport. Never built. However, this design was "reborn" in the 1950's when Reimar Horten built a flying-wing plane for Argentina's Institute Aerotecnico, which flew on December 9, 1960 -- the project was shelved thereafter due to technical problems.   Ho IX - 1944 - the first combat-intended Horten design, it was jet powered (Junkers Jumo 004B's), with metal frame and plywood exterior (due to wartime shortages). First flew in January 1945, but never in combat. When the Allies overran the factory, the almost-completed Ho IX V3 (third in the series - this plane was also known as the "Gotha Go 229") was shipped back to the Air and Space Museum.   [Interestingly, the Horten brothers were helped in their bid for German government support when Northrop patents for the N-1M appeared in US Patent Office's "Official Gazette" on May 13, 1941, and then in the International Aeronautical journal "Interavia" on November 18, 1941.]     [Of course, one other "Flying-Wing-type" plane existed in the German Luftwaffe - Alexander Lippisch's-inspired Me-163 rocket-powered interceptor, and its intended successor, the Messerschmitt P.1111, a turbojet-powered fighter. At the end of the war, Lippisch was engaged in supersonic-fighter research, models of his "P12" were shipped back to the US for analysis.   The "Zimmer Skimmer" (aka "The Flying Pancake") - in an attempt to develop a high-speed interceptor (fast enough to overtake diving enemy planes) to deal with Japanese kamikaze attacks, the Navy asked for bids for such an aircraft in early 1944. (The Chance-Vought F4U Corsair - and the Grummann F4F and F6F - eventually filled this bill more or less, but were hard to land on carriers, for weight and pilot-visibility reasons). Minimum speed desired was 450mph, then-available planes would do only about 400mph. USP # 2,431,293 (11-18-47)  Airplane of Low Aspect Ratio Zimmermann, Charles H. Charles Zimmerman, a research engineer for NACA, had come up with a disk-shaped, two-propeller aircraft idea before the war, which promised to be fast, and have short-take-off-and-landing ability (which included the ability to hover), which would be useful on aircraft carriers. (Imagine an oblong disk, with a canopy on top near the front, twin rudders and two small aerolons in the rear, and twin booms extending forward from the left and right sides of the disk with a huge counter rotating propeller on each. The undercarriage was a spindly-looking tricycle arrangement that had the "Skimmer" taxying at about a 40 degree angle. The fuselage was the "wing", but was much thinner and wider than later "lifting body" experiments. Hovering was accomplished by going nose-vertical and, well, just hanging there - such was the power of the propellers. Wingspan approximately 30-40 feet [by my eye].)   The V173 (the first prototype version) was built by Chance-Vought. Boon T. Guiten was its first test pilot. Its first flight (November 23, 1942) lasted only 13 minutes, but was entirely successful, and testing continued. One of the later-on test pilots was Charles Lindberg, who was an enthusiastic supporter. In July 1944, the Navy ordered two more "Skimmers" built for further testing, each equipped with significantly more powerful engines (1350hp Pratt and Whitneys -- the V173 was judged underpowered, since its top speed was not up-to-spec). The two new planes were built from "metalite", a composite material made from sandwiching layers of aluminum and balsa wood. These planes were designated F5U's.   The F5U's were actually overpowered, and had a clutched gearing system to vary propeller speed in flight. In addition, a geared propeller-synchronizer was also installed. The first F5U was ready for flight in August, 1945 (but was delayed by a lengthy redesign of the propellers). By 1948, an F5U was finally ready to fly, but technology had passed the plane by (jets were already doing 600mph). The F5U taxi'd up and down the runway a couple of times, but never flew. Total pricetag on the project was about $9M. Both 5FUs were scrapped. (The F5U's were intended to be sent to Edwards AFB for testing -- shipped via the Panama Canal; apparently the skimmer's unusual shape would have made ground transport difficult.) [In the mid-1930's the Arup S1, S2, S3 and S4 - looking very like what became the Zimmer Skimmer, but with a single centerline "puller" propeller - were flown as flying billboards and test aircraft.]   The Avro (Canada) "Avrocar" was an outright flying saucer. It used three Continental turbojets, turning a central impeller ("turbo rotor") to keep it airborne with downward thrust, with a vane/shutter system to propell the craft in pretty much any direction by venting thrust in any direction desired. It was built to hold two human crewmen in separate cockpits on either side, facing front - total width of the Avrocar was 18 feet, with tricycle landing pads or wheels for undercarriage. It was first proposed in the early 1950's by the Avro company to the Canadian government.   The maximum expected airspeed was originally about 700mph. As Avro worked on the design, expected airspeed dropped to 300mph. By the mid-50's, a very-secret project (unknown to even most Avro employees) was in full swing to build the Avrocar. The blades of the Avrocar turbo-rotor were hollow with internal re-enforcing, and brazed to cement the parts. The first turbo-rotor was tested for 150 hours without mishap.   By 1955, the costs of the project had escalated beyond the resources of the Canadian government. The project after that was underwritten by the US DoD (the USAF and Army were both interested.) The Avrocar first flew with a pilot on Dec. 5, 1959 (prior to that, it was tested unmanned). Two were built - one Avrocar was tested out at the Ames research center in California, the other remained with Avro for testing. Although the aircraft did fly, its ability to rise and top speed was extremely disappointing, mostly due to thrust dissipation in the impeller. The Avrocar was able to clear (small) obstacles without difficulty, but maximum altitude was never more than about 6 feet! The project was quietly closed down.   Curiously, the Avrocar's technology was within a hair's breadth of being successful. Using almost exactly the same propulsion setup, the British developed hovercraft (the first being the British SRN-1) in the early 1960's -- basically an Avrocar propulsion system with a rubber skirt, which greatly improved the use of downward thrust.   Edmund Doak also was contracted by the USAF to develop disk-shaped airfoil aircraft in the 1950's and 1960's. His last and most promising, the Doak-16, was canceled by the USAF. [Sources: Documentary "The Wing Will Fly", a 'Wings' documentary on "Strange Planes", and "Winged Wonders", by E.T. Wooldridge, published by the National Air and Space Museum, 1983, "In Search Of" episode "UFO Coverups".] An Aeronautical History of Flying Saucers Variations in the Airfoil Trace the History of Flight   Real Flying Saucers   With the outbreak of war in 1939, the Nazis would begin development of new weapons like the V-2 rocket designed by Wernher Von Braun the Nazi Chief Technology Officer at the top-secret headquarters in Peenemünde. Unknown by most at this time, was an even more secret development taking place in Prague using the unlikely resources of the Skoda company to develop a fantastic new flying craft.   By 1944 the war was not going too well for Germany and Hitler, seeking to reassure his ally Mussolini, invited him to Germany to visit the Skoda factory along with his weapons expert Luigi Romersa to see his fantastic new aircraft.   Luigi Romersa, now 84 and living in Italy, described what he saw at the Skoda factory: "It was something exceptional, round with a central cockpit made from plexi-glass, and with jets all around it as means of propulsion".   One of the men who helped create this first flying saucer was Andreas Epp. He had invented a disc shaped flying gunnery target and sent the prototype to the Luftwaffe high command suggesting it could be adapted for manned flight.   Epp discovered that his plans had been stolen and were being developed in Prague. He travelled to the Skoda factory and witnessed, and photographed, the first test flights of the flying saucer.   The saucer used a combination of technologies, including the Coanda Effect, helicopter principles and jet propulsion. It was fast, versatile and could potentially carry a heavy payload of bombs. But, perhaps most importantly, for a country that had lost most of it's runways to enemy bombing, it could take off vertically. According to Romersa, Hitler planned to use his new weapon in a devastating attack on New York which would be the final battle of The Third Reich. An attack which never came. As the Russians closed in on Prague, the scientists destroyed the evidence of their developments.   In 1947 pilot Kenneth Arnold was flying over mountains in Washington State when he saw nine objects shooting across the sky at incredible speeds. He described them as saucers being skipped on water, which is were the name flying saucers originated. The US government were concerned with these reports as it suggested the Russians had acquired the Nazi technology and were building the saucers. It turned out to be true. The Russians had gained the services of Andreas Epp.   By July 1952 an increasingly paranoid America sought to play down reportings of Russian flying saucers so adopted a two-pronged approach. Firstly denying that the Soviets had any such flying machines and then starting rumours that any such sightings could be of extra-terrestrial origin.   America, in turn, had managed to obtain the services of Wernher Von Braun, and a good deal of V-2 technology but not much more. However in 1957 their luck would improve. Andreas Epp had a falling out with the Soviets and move from East Germany to West Germany where he handed himself over to the Americans. Flying Saucers - For Real! The secret truth behind U.S. built flying wing disc aircraft     By the early 60's almost all of the major aerospace contractors, including Boeing, Convair, Lockheed and North American were working on concepts for saucer shaped vehicles. Spurred on greatly, by the realisation that saucers could make ideal stealth aircraft.   In 1961 the world was shown what it's builder's claimed was the first real flying saucer, invented by John Frost. The Avrocar had serious problems and while this new design was being shown to the public the project was abandoned. In truth the Avrocar was not a flying saucer at all, it was the world's first hovercraft. It was also the by-product of a far more secret and ambitious project which had everything to do with flying saucers. Project Y2 or weapons system 606A was run by Avro and utilised German saucer technology.   But, the fantastic, supersonic, flying saucer of Frost's imagination was a long way from becoming reality. His design was one of the purest uses of the Coanda or flying saucer effect yet. It had six powerful jets which sucked air over the saucer shape, these provided the saucer with it's lift and it's manoeuvrability. But, testing this craft was not going to be easy or safe.   This project died a death when the Avro Corporation got into financial difficulties and John Frost left the company and moved to New Zealand.   The American Air Force were far from happy, they still wanted a saucer and if Avro wouldn't build it, they would build it themselves. John Frost's supersonic flying saucer was about to disappear into the blackest recesses of the American military machine.   In the late 80's in Gulf Breeze, Florida there was a spate of UFO sightings largely unexplained, but Boyd Bushman believes he recognised the technology from his time spent working at Lockheed. It seems the American military are still working on this project and playing on the UFO believers as their cover story.