On March 25, 1942, Polish captain, pilot Roman Sobinsky from a squadron of strategic bombers of the British Air Force took part in a night raid on the German city of Essen. Having completed the task, he, together with everyone, turned back, rising to a height of 500 meters. But only with relief he leaned back in his chair to rest, when the machine-gunner exclaimed in alarm:
- We are being pursued by an unknown apparatus!
- New fighter? Sobinsky asked, remembering the unsafe Messerschmitt 110.
- No, sir captain, - replied the machine gunner, - it seems that this is not an airplane. It has an indefinite shape and glows …
Then Sobinsky himself saw an amazing object, which ominously played with yellow-red tints. The pilot's reaction was instantaneous and quite natural for a pilot attacking over enemy territory. "I thought," he pointed out later in his report, "that this was some new diabolical thing of the Germans, and ordered the machine gunner to open aimed fire." However, the device, which approached to a distance of 150 meters, completely ignored the attack, and from what - it did not receive any, even a little noticeable damage. The frightened machine gunner stopped firing. After a quarter of an hour of flight "in the ranks" of bombers, the object swiftly rose and disappeared from view at an incredible speed.
A month earlier, on February 26, 1942, a similar object had shown interest in the cruiser Tromp of the occupied Netherlands. The ship's commander described it as a giant disc, apparently made of aluminum. The unknown guest watched the sailors for three hours without fear of them. But even those, convinced of his peaceful behavior, did not open fire. The farewell was traditional - the mysterious apparatus suddenly soared upward at a speed of about 6,000 kilometers per hour and disappeared.
On March 14, 1942, an alarm was announced at the secret Norwegian base "Banak", which belonged to Twaffeflotta-5 - an alien appeared on the radar screen. The best base, Captain Fischer, lifted the car into the air and at an altitude of 3500 meters discovered a mysterious object. “The alien device seemed to be made of metal and had an aircraft fuselage 100 meters long and about 15 meters in diameter,” the captain reported. “I could see what looked like antennas ahead. Although it had no motors visible from the outside, it flew horizontally. I chased him for several minutes, after which, to my surprise, he suddenly took the height and disappeared with lightning speed."
And at the end of 1942, a German submarine fired from cannons at a silvery spindle-shaped object about 80 meters long, which flew quickly and soundlessly 300 meters from it, not paying attention to the heavy fire.
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On this, such strange meetings with both the one and the other of the warring parties did not end. For example, in October 1943, the Allies bombed Europe's largest ball bearing plant in the German city of Schweinfurt. The operation involved 700 heavy bombers from the US 8th Air Force, accompanied by 1,300 American and British fighters. The mass scale of the air battle can be judged at least by the losses: the Allies had 111 shot down fighters, about 60 shot down or damaged bombers, the Germans had about 300 shot down planes. It would seem that in such a hell, which the French pilot Pierre Klosterman compared with an aquarium full of crazy sharks, nothing could capture the imagination of the pilots, and yet …
British Major R. F. Holmes, commander of the bomber flight, reported that as they passed over the plant, a group of large shiny discs suddenly appeared, which, as if curious, rushed towards them. Calmly crossed the line of fire of German aircraft and approached the American "flying fortresses". They also opened heavy fire from onboard machine guns, but again with zero effect.
However, the crews did not have time to gossip on the topic: "Who else has brought us?" - it was necessary to fight off the advancing German fighters. Well, then … Major Holmes's plane survived, and the first thing this phlegmatic Englishman did when he landed at the base was to file a detailed report to the command. It, in turn, asked intelligence to conduct a thorough investigation. The answer came in three months. In it, they say, then the famous abbreviation UFO was used for the first time - after the initial letters of the English name "unidentified flying object" (UFO), and it was concluded that the discs have nothing to do with the Luftwaffe or with other air forces on Earth. The Americans came to the same conclusion. Therefore, both in Great Britain and in the United States, research groups were immediately organized, operating in an atmosphere of the strictest secrecy.
Our compatriots also did not bypass the UFO problem. Few probably heard about this, but the first rumors about the appearance of "flying saucers" over the battlefield reached the Supreme Commander in 1942, during the Battle of Stalingrad. Stalin initially left these messages with no visible reaction, since the silver discs had no effect on the course of the battle.
But after the war, when it came to him that the Americans were very interested in this problem, he remembered about UFOs again. SP Korolev was summoned to the Kremlin. He was handed a bundle of foreign newspapers and magazines, adding:
- Comrade Stalin asks you to express your opinion …
Then they gave translators and locked them up in one of the Kremlin offices for three days.
“On the third day, Stalin personally invited me,” Korolev recalled. - I reported to him that the phenomenon is interesting, but does not pose a threat to the state. Stalin replied that other scientists whom he asked to familiarize themselves with the materials were of the same opinion as me …
Nevertheless, from that moment on, all reports of UFOs in our country were classified, reports on them were sent to the KGB.
This reaction becomes understandable if we consider that in Germany, apparently, the UFO problem was dealt with earlier than the Allies. At the end of the same 1942, there was created "Sonderburo-13", which was designed to study the mysterious aircraft. His activities were codenamed "Operation Uranus".
The result of all this, according to the Czech magazine "Signal", was the creation of their own … "flying saucers". The testimony of nineteen Wehrmacht soldiers and officers who served in Czechoslovakia during World War II in one of the secret laboratories for the creation of a new type of weapon have been preserved, the magazine reports. These soldiers and officers have witnessed the flights of an unusual aircraft. It was a silver disc 6 meters in diameter with a truncated body in the center and a teardrop-shaped cockpit. The structure was mounted on four small wheels. According to one of the eyewitnesses, he watched the launch of such a device in the fall of 1943.
This information to some extent coincides with the facts set forth in a curious manuscript that recently came to my eyes in a reader's mail. “Where fate has not thrown me,” electronic engineer Konstantin Tyuts wrote in an accompanying letter to her. - I had to drive around South America. And he climbed into such corners that lie, frankly, quite far from the tourist trails. I had to meet different people. But that meeting remained in my memory forever.
It happened in Uruguay in 1987. At the end of August in a colony of emigrants, which is 70 kilometers from Montevideo, a traditional holiday was held - a festival is not a festival, but everything was dashing. I am not a big fan of "this business", so I stayed at the Israeli pavilion (there was a painfully interesting exposition there), and my colleague walked away "for a beer." Then I looked - an elderly fit man in a light shirt, ironed trousers was standing nearby and was staring at me. He came up and started talking. It turns out that he caught my talk, and this attracted him. We both, as it turned out, were from the Donetsk region, from Horlivka. His name was Vasily Petrovich Konstantinov.
Then, taking the military attaché with us, we went to his house, sat all evening … In Uruguay, Konstantinov ended up in the same way as dozens, and maybe hundreds of his compatriots. Having freed from a concentration camp in Germany, he moved not to the east, to "infiltration", but to the other side, which saved him. Shook across Europe, settled in Uruguay. For a long time I kept in my memory the amazing things that I learned from the distant 41-43 years. And finally I got it out.
In 1989, Vasily died: age, heart …
I have the notes of Vasily Konstantinov, and, offering a fragment of his memoirs, I hope that he will amaze you in the same way that the oral story of their author struck me in due time."
This was followed by the manuscript itself …
It was hot July 1941. Every now and then there appeared before my eyes the unhappy pictures of our retreat - airfields dug by craters, half-sky glow from whole squadrons of our aircraft burning on the ground. The constant howl of German aircraft. Piles of metal interspersed with mutilated human bodies. A suffocating haze and stench from wheat fields engulfed in flames …
After the first battles with the enemy near Vinnitsa (in the area of our then main headquarters), our unit fought its way to Kiev. Sometimes, for rest, we took refuge in the woodlands. Finally we came to the highway six kilometers from Kiev. I don’t know what exactly came to mind of our freshly baked commissioner, but all the survivors were ordered to form a column and march along the highway to Kiev with a song. From the outside, it all looked like this: a group of exhausted people in windings, with heavy three-line models of 1941, were moving towards the city. We only managed to walk about a kilometer. A German reconnaissance plane appeared in the blue-black sky from the heat and conflagration, and then - the bombing … So fate divided us into the living and the dead. Five survived, as it turned out later in the camp.
I woke up after an air strike with a concussion - my head was buzzing, everything was floating in front of my eyes, and here - a fellow, the sleeves of a shirt rolled up, and threatening with a machine gun: "Rusish Schwein!" In the camp, I remember the rantings of our commissar about justice, brotherhood, mutual assistance, until together they shared and eaten the last crumbs of my miraculously survived NZ. And then typhus dumped me, but fate gave me life - slowly I began to scramble out. The body demanded food. "Friends", including the commissar, at night, hiding from each other, killed the unripe potatoes collected in the daytime in the neighboring field. And what am I - why transfer goodness to a dying person?..
Then I was transferred to the Auschwitz camp for attempting to escape. I still have nightmares at night - the barking of cannibalistic German shepherds ready to tear you to pieces on the orders of the SS guards, the screams of the capo capo camp elders, the groaning of the dying near the barracks … the prisoner orderly of the convalescent block, again ill with relapsing fever, was waiting for his turn in the accumulator near one of the crematorium ovens. There was a sickening stench of burnt human flesh all around. Low bow to the female doctor, a German woman (there was an article about her in the Izvestia newspaper in 1984), who saved and left me. That's how I turned out to be a different person, and even with the documents of a mechanical engineer.
Somewhere in August 1943, some of the prisoners, including myself, were transferred near Peenemünde, to the KTs-A-4 camp, as it turned out, to eliminate the consequences of Operation Hydra - a British air raid. By order of the executioner, SS Brigadefuehrer Hans Kampler, the prisoners of Auschwitz became the "katsetniks" of the Peenemünde test site. The head of the landfill, Major General Deriberger, was forced to attract prisoners from KTs-A-4 to speed up the restoration work.
And then one day, in September 1943, I was lucky enough to witness an interesting event.
Our group was finishing dismantling a broken reinforced concrete wall. The whole brigade was taken away under guard for a lunch break, and I, as having injured my leg (it turned out to be a dislocation), was left to wait for my fate. Somehow I managed to straighten the bone myself, but the car had already left.
Suddenly, on a concrete platform near one of the nearby hangars, four workers rolled out a round, like a basin turned upside down, an apparatus with a transparent drop-shaped cabin in the middle. And on small inflatable wheels. Then, with a wave of the hand of a short, overweight man, a strange heavy apparatus, casting a silvery metal in the sun and shuddering with every gust of wind, made a hissing sound like the noise of a blowtorch, broke off the concrete platform and hovered at a height of about five meters. Having swayed briefly in the air - like a "vanka-vstanka" - the apparatus suddenly seemed to be transformed: its contours began to gradually blur. They seemed to be defocused.
Then the apparatus jumped up sharply like a whirligig and began to gain altitude like a snake. The flight, judging by the rocking, was unstable. Suddenly a gust of wind came from the Baltic, and the strange structure, turning over in the air, began to abruptly lose altitude. A stream of burning, ethanol and hot air poured over me. There was a blow, the crunch of breaking parts - the car fell near me. Instinctively, I rushed to her. You need to save the pilot - man! The pilot's body dangled lifelessly from the broken cockpit, the fragments of the skin, drenched with fuel, were gradually enveloped in bluish streams of flame. The still hissing jet engine was sharply exposed: in the next instant everything was engulfed in fire …
This is how my first acquaintance with an experimental apparatus with a propulsion system took place - a modernized version of a jet engine for Messerschmitt-262 aircraft. Flue gases, escaping from the nozzle, flowed around the body and, as it were, interacted with the surrounding air, forming a rotating cocoon of air around the structure and thereby creating an air cushion for the movement of the machine …
This ended the manuscript, but what has been said is enough for a group of voluntary experts from the Tekhnika-Molodezhi magazine to try to determine what kind of flying vehicle the former prisoner of the KTs-A-4 camp saw? And this is what, according to engineer Yuri Stroganov, they did it.
Model No. 1 of the disc-shaped aircraft was created by German engineers Schriever and Habermohl back in 1940, and tested in February 1941 near Prague. This "saucer" is considered the world's first vertical takeoff aircraft. In design, it somewhat resembled a recumbent bicycle wheel: a wide ring revolved around the cabin, the role of "spokes" of which was played by playfully adjustable blades. They could be put in the desired position for both horizontal and vertical flight. At first, the pilot sat as in an ordinary plane, then his position was changed to almost recumbent. The machine brought a lot of problems to the designers, because the slightest imbalance caused significant vibration, especially at high speeds, which was the main cause of accidents. An attempt was made to make the outer rim heavier,but in the end the "wheel with a wing" exhausted its possibilities.
Model No. 2, called "vertical aircraft", was an improved version of the previous one. Its size was increased to accommodate two pilots lying in the seats. Engines were strengthened, fuel reserves increased. For stabilization, an aircraft-like steering mechanism was used. The speed reached about 1200 kilometers per hour. As soon as the desired height was gained, the carrier blades changed their position, and the device moved like modern helicopters.
Alas, these two models were destined to remain at the level of experimental developments. Many technical and technological obstacles did not allow them to be brought up to standard, not to mention mass production. It was then, when a critical situation arose, and the Sonderburo-13 appeared, which attracted the most experienced test pilots and the best scientists of the Third Reich to the research. Thanks to his support, it became possible to create a disk that left far behind not only all the then, but also some modern aircraft.
Model No. 3 was made in two versions: 38 and 68 meters in diameter. It was propelled by the "smokeless and flameless" engine of the Austrian inventor Viktor Schauberger. (Apparently, one of these options, and possibly even an earlier prototype of an even smaller size, was seen by a prisoner of the KTs-A-4 camp.)
The inventor kept the principle of operation of his engine in the strictest confidence. Only one thing is known: the principle of its operation was based on an explosion, and during operation it consumed only water and air. The machine, codenamed "Disk Belontse", was ringed by an installation of 12 inclined jet engines. They cooled the "explosive" engine with their jets and, sucking in air, created a rarefaction area on top of the apparatus, which facilitated its rise with less effort.
On February 19, 1945, Disk Belontse made its first and last experimental flight. In 3 minutes, the test pilots reached an altitude of 15,000 meters and a speed of 2,200 kilometers per hour in horizontal motion. He could hover in the air and fly back and forth almost without turns, for landing he had folding racks.
The device, which cost millions, was destroyed at the end of the war. Although the plant in Breslau (now Wroclaw), where it was built, fell into the hands of our troops, it did not work. Schriever and Schauberger escaped Soviet captivity and moved to the United States.
In a letter to a friend in August 1958, Viktor Schauberger wrote: “The model, tested in February 1945, was built in collaboration with the first-class explosion engineers from among the Mauthausen concentration camp inmates. Then they were taken to the camp, for them it was the end. After the war, I heard that there was an intensive development of disk-shaped aircraft, but despite the past time and a lot of documents captured in Germany, the countries leading the development did not create at least something similar to my model. It was blown up on Keitel's orders."
The Americans offered Schauberger $ 3 million for revealing the secret of his flying disc and especially the "explosive" engine. However, he replied that until the signing of an international agreement on complete disarmament, nothing could be made public and that its discovery belongs to the future.
Honestly, the legend is fresh … Just remember how Wernher von Braun unfolded in the States, on whose rockets the Americans eventually flew to the moon (we will talk about his activities in detail in the next chapter). Schauberger would hardly have resisted temptation if he could show the product with his face. But there seemed to be nothing to show him. For the simple reason that he, it can be assumed, if he did not deceive, then simply did not possess all the necessary information. And most of his assistants, first-class specialists, found their end in Mauthausen and other death camps.
However, the allies received a hint that such work was nevertheless carried out. And not only from Schauberger. Our units, having seized the secret plant in Breslau (Wroclaw), probably also found something. And after a while, Soviet specialists launched their own work on the creation of vertical take-off vehicles.
It is likely that the Americans also traveled a similar path in their time. And in the mysterious hangar No. 18, which journalists like to remember from time to time, there are indeed fragments of "flying saucers". Only the aliens have absolutely nothing to do with them - the trophies of the Second World War are stored in the hangar. And over the past decades, based on their study, the Americans have managed to create many curious aircraft.
So, recently, a mysterious "unknown star" was seen at one of the secret US air bases.
At first, this name - "Darkstar" - attributed to the mysterious strategic scout "Aurora". Recently, however, the fog of secrecy has gradually begun to dissipate. And it became clear that in fact it belongs to the unmanned high-altitude aircraft of the Lockheed-Martin company, created under the Tier III Minus program. The official demonstration of the prototype took place on June 1, 1995 in Palmdale (Antelope Valley, California), where the firm's factories are located. Before that, only vague guesses were built about the existence of the machine.
Unmanned high-altitude aircraft "Unknown Star" was developed jointly by Lockheed Martin and Boeing. The share of participation of each firm in the implementation of the program was 50 percent. Boeing's specialists were responsible for creating a composite wing, supplying avionics and preparing the aircraft for operation. Lockheed Martin was involved in fuselage design, final assembly and testing.
The vehicle on display at Palmdale is the first of two in the Tier III Minus program. It is made using stealth technology. In the future, it is likely that comparative tests of these "invisibles" will be carried out with a sample of Teledine, which was previously selected by the Pentagon as part of a program providing for the creation of a whole family of unmanned reconnaissance aircraft.
In total, it is planned to purchase 20 machines from Lockheed and Teledine firms. This should allow unit commanders to receive operational information during exercises or hostilities practically around the clock in real time. The Lockheed aircraft is designed primarily for short-range operations, in high-risk areas and at altitudes above 13,700 meters, its speed is 460-550 kilometers per hour. He is able to stay aloft for 8 hours at a distance of 900 kilometers from the base.
Structurally, the "Unknown Star" is made according to the "tailless" aerodynamic scheme, has a disk-shaped fuselage and a wing of high aspect ratio with a slight forward sweep.
This unmanned reconnaissance aircraft operates in fully automatic mode from takeoff to landing. It is equipped with the Westinghouse AN / APQ-183 radar (intended for the failed project A-12 Avenger 2), which can be replaced by an electro-optical complex of the Recon / Optical company. The aircraft has a wingspan of 21.0 meters, a length of 4.6 meters, a height of 1.5 meters and a wing area of 29.8 square meters. The empty weight (together with reconnaissance equipment) of the vehicle is about 1200 kilograms, with a full refueling - up to 3900 kilograms.
Flight tests are being conducted at NASA's Dryden Test Center at Edwards AFB. If they are successful, then the plane can be adopted at the end of our, the beginning of the next century.
So, as you can see, from time to time you can even benefit from seemingly empty talk about "flying saucers".