The events of 1947, when an alien flying saucer is believed to have crashed near Roswell in the United States, had a major impact on world pop culture. The spread of portable cameras and movie cameras, which became much more affordable in the second half of the 20th century, also played a role. As a result, more and more people became observers of various unidentified flying objects, the origin and nature of which they could not explain, but could capture on film.
Over time, flying saucers and various disc-shaped objects have become a symbol of UFOs all over the world, and interest in such unusual phenomena has become so great that today there is even a UFO Day in the world, which is also called UFO Day. At the same time, the only flying saucers, the existence of which has a scientific basis, have nothing to do with guests from other planets or extraterrestrial intelligence and have a completely terrestrial origin. Already at the beginning of the 20th century, the first attempts to create flying vehicles in the form of a disk appeared. Despite the fact that the most famous projects for the creation of flying saucers today are associated with the history of Nazi Germany, the first projects in this area were carried out not in Europe, but in the United States and even before the outbreak of World War II.
Chance Vout's umbrella plane
The first work on unusual projects for aircraft with a circular wing began at the very dawn of aviation. Currently, the American Chance Vout is considered the designer who for the first time in history turned to the disc-shaped wing. This inventor, back in 1911, first proposed to create an aircraft of an unusual shape and design. It was an airplane project with a wooden structure and a large-area disc-shaped wing. The umbrella plane, created from the simplest materials - wood and fabric - went down in history forever, although it did not make a single flight.
The design of the unusual aircraft was simple and consisted of 9 beams, which, when connected, formed a star. Between the wooden beams, Chance Vout pulled an ordinary fabric, such a structure very much resembled an umbrella in shape, which is why the aircraft received this name. In the tail section of the aircraft there were two fabric elevons, which were located on movable outrigger beams. The aircraft's wheeled landing gear was three-column.
Chance Vout's umbrella plane
The American designer turned to the disc-shaped wing, as he believed that a large-area wing would provide the aircraft with a large lifting force, allowing the aircraft to take off from the ground at a low speed. Unfortunately, the unusual aircraft of Chance Vout never took to the sky, so the designer was unable to confirm or refute his ideas. It is known that at about the same time a similar plane was designed in Great Britain, but that plane crashed on its first flight immediately after taking off from the ground.
Flying Saucer by Stephen Nemeth
The second American designer who fired up the idea of creating an aircraft with a disc-shaped wing was Stephen Nemeth. Unlike his predecessor, Nemeth created an airplane that took to the skies and performed flights quite successfully. An aircraft with an almost perfectly circular wing was created by Nemeth in collaboration with students from the University of Miami in 1934. An unusual aircraft, which attracted the eyes of the inhabitants with one of its appearance, went down in history under the name Nemeth Parasol. This aircraft also received unofficial nicknames based on its resemblance to an umbrella and saucer.
To create an unusual aircraft, the designer used an elongated fuselage of a previously decommissioned serial biplane Alliance A-1 Argo, lengthening the fuselage made it possible to make it two-seater. Directly above the fuselage was a perfectly round wing. The wing was located on special struts, as on ordinary biplane, there were ailerons on the wingtips. The heart of the aircraft was the Warner Scarab radial aircraft engine, which developed 110 hp. The engine power was sufficient to provide the aircraft with a maximum flight speed of over 217 km / h. At the same time, the landing speed was very low - only 40 km / h, which allowed the aircraft to land on very tiny sites.
Flying Saucer by Stephen Nemeth
The main feature of the next "flying umbrella" was a round wing with a diameter of 4, 6 meters. The slight lengthening of the wing allowed the aircraft to fly at larger than usual angles of attack, and also provided the aircraft with a smooth and not dangerous descent, which was somewhat reminiscent of a pilot's descent on a parachute. The wing itself served as a parachute, which Stephen Nemeth demonstrated during test flights. The aircraft could make a soft landing almost vertically with the engine off. Low landing speeds and circular wing capabilities made the aircraft very easy to fly, even for novice pilots. Despite a number of advantages of further development, the "flying saucer" of Nemeth did not receive, at the turn of 1934-1935 the project was abandoned, and things did not go further than the built flight copy. At the same time, already later, the developments on this project were most likely used in the United States when designing gyroplanes.
Flying pancake. Fighter XF5U
The United States remained true to itself during the Second World War. Attempts to create an aircraft of an unusual shape continued already in the war years and led to the creation of an experimental fighter, which was named Flying Pancake (flying pancake), the official index V-173. The disk-shaped fighter, to the creation of which designer Charles Zimmerman had a hand, first took to the skies in November 1942. Later, on the basis of this model, they tried to create a carrier-based fighter, which received the XF5U index.
For the first time, Charles Zimmerman turned to the idea of creating a disk-shaped aircraft back in 1937, his initial goal was to create a flying car, which science fiction writers have already actively written about. However, the commercial prospects for the civilian version were considered rather vague. Therefore, the management of the Chance-Vought company, which supported Zimmermann's unusual project, recommended that the designer abandon the idea of a civilian three-seater aircraft, focusing on creating a fighter that could interest the military.
V-173 in flight
As a result, one of the strangest aircraft of the 20th century was born, which differed from any aircraft of a contemporary in its extremely unusual appearance. "Flying pancake" received a glider without a fuselage, made in the form of a semicircle. In front of the aircraft, the designer placed the pilot's cockpit, and two engines with three-blade propellers were installed on the sides of the cockpit. In the rear of the aircraft, one could see two small semi-wings - horizontal stabilizers with elevators, as well as two vertical stabilizers on which the rudders were located. The total length of the unusual experimental fighter did not exceed 8.1 meters, and the width was 7.1 meters.
The new aircraft was actively tested for several years, the last flights of prototypes were completed only in 1947, and in total at least 190 flights or 132 flight hours were performed. At the same time, the maximum flight speed of the V-173 did not exceed 222 km / h. The reason was the low power of the engines installed on the prototype, each of them developed no more than 80 hp. Much more successful was the prototype for the US Navy, which received the designation XF5U. In total, two experimental aircraft of this model were built. The aircraft with a maximum take-off weight of more than 8.5 tons received Pratt & Whitney R-2000 engines with a capacity of 1350 hp, adequate for their weight and dimensions. each. Thanks to this, one of the prototypes developed a speed of 811 km / h in horizontal flight.
Prototype carrier-based fighter XF5U
Despite a number of successes, the project was curtailed in 1947. Although the XF5U could be effectively used from aircraft carriers, with a mass of more than 8.5 tons, the aircraft could take off from small areas. At the same time, the aircraft's controllability left much to be desired, and the design using two piston engines was considered outdated. The era of jet aircraft was approaching, and it was not possible to install jet engines on board the XF5U, with such an upgrade the plane would become completely uncontrollable in flight.
Flying saucers of the Third Reich
Aircraft designer Charles Zimmerman, who launched the "flying pancake" story in the United States, emigrated to America from Germany. But even without him, in the homeland of Willie Messerschmitt and Hugo Junkers, there were their own designers, who were also attracted by the idea of creating an aircraft of an unusual disk-shaped shape. It was the developments of the times of the Third Reich that received the greatest fame in the world and gave rise to a lot of conspiracy theories, becoming a real element of modern pop culture, lit up in a large number of science fiction books, films and comics.
As is often the case with conspiracy theories, they have nothing to do with reality. Most of the projects that were described after the end of World War II had nothing to do with reality and did not even exist in the form of drawings. At the same time, in the wake of interest in UFOs in the second half of the 20th century, such literature became widespread, first in Europe and then throughout the world. At the same time, German designers really developed aircraft of unusual shape, but these were experiments with autogyros, helicopters and ekranoplanes.
Sack AS-6
Most likely, the only German aircraft during the Second World War that resembled a UFO in shape is the experimental Sack AS-6 aircraft, photographs of which have survived to this day. It seems curious that the only German project of a disk-shaped aircraft, which reached the stage of building a prototype, was created by an amateur self-taught. Back in the late 1930s, the project of a disk-shaped aircraft was proposed by Arthur Zak, an ordinary peasant from near Leipzig.
Zak was helped by the fact that Colonel-General Ernst Udet became interested in his unusual aircraft, who gave Sack AS-6 a start in life. But the experimental plane was not ready until 1944. It is believed that only one built specimen reached flight tests. The prototype was built using various elements from other aircraft. So, the cockpit was taken from the Me Bf-109B fighter, the engine was removed from the Me Bf-108, on which an 8-cylinder air-cooled Argus with a capacity of 240 hp was installed. The only real native to the Sack AS-6 was the round wing, which was made of wood and sheathed with plywood. The total mass of a small aircraft with a wing diameter of 6.4 meters did not exceed 800 kg. But the plane did not manage to climb into the sky. Everything was limited only to runs on the runway. In conditions when the Third Reich was literally falling apart before our eyes, suffering serious defeats in the East and in the West, no one began to refine and bring to mind the project.
After the Second World War, interest in aircraft of an unusual round shape did not disappear anywhere. Only now the Canadians have intercepted the palm, who have long and stubbornly tried to impose on their neighbors the unusual developments of the Avrocar company. The story of how Canadians in the 1950s and early 1960s tried to sell their disc-shaped aircraft to the American military and implement the concept of a "flying jeep" is worthy of a separate story.
Despite numerous failures with the attempt to create disc-shaped aircraft, such projects still attract numerous engineers from different countries. The latest news on the creation of "flying saucers" came to us from Romania, where the designers Razvan Sabi and Iosif Taposu are busy creating a device capable of vertical take-off and landing and horizontal flight at supersonic speed. So far, only an unmanned prototype of an apparatus with a diameter of 1.2 meters has been tested. It is known that the experimental sample is equipped with four electric fans, which are necessary to ensure vertical take-off and landing of the vehicle, and two fans installed in the tail section and designed for horizontal flight. In the future, the designers are going to replace the tail fans with turbojet engines. We will know in the near future whether the Romanian project of the ADIFO (All DIrections Flying Object) aircraft will be successful.
