World Ward II has diverse, memorable moments for obvious reasons. However, one of the pictures that awaken people’s curiosity is one taken at the Prague airport. It shows a strangely-shaped object flying above the area.
According to the information we have at hand, Joseph Epp took the picture and then called for help. He asked the Nazi engineers to get whatever they had created of the grand. However, once Epp arrived at the airport, the object was already flying and moving in ways familiar to spaceships we are used to seeing in sci-fi movies.
“Flying saucers” started becoming a very common rumor after the war ended. That is because the Third Reich had been investing time, effort, and resources into the development of innovative aircraft. The vehicle would be able to fly horizontally, vertically, and diagonally thanks to the inclusion of “rotors.”
If the vehicles ended up being viable, the German military would consider them especially valuable due to their excellent maneuverability. These devices could be useful as aerial warfare weapons.
Pilots would be able to reach places that would be difficult for traditional aircraft and chase their enemies more easily, among many other actions. In other words, it would make the German offensive more powerful than it already was.
At the time, Germans were well-known for creating advanced machines. Some people even dared to say that they were “ahead of their time.” Hence, it would not be surprising if they ended up creating the first “UFOs” the world had seen.
There’s plenty of evidence to support the claim that the Third Reich may have been able to create such advanced vehicles. Unfortunately, the Nazi UFOs are one of the biggest mysteries of the world, and it doesn’t make it any better than a great part of the information available is not exactly precise.
The first “flying discs.”
In 1938, Epp completed the first blueprint of his flying saucer after observing a Focke-Wulf Fw 61 being tested. This vehicle was a predecessor to the modern helicopter.
It utilized rotors integrated at the end of each wing, and it would use them to lift itself and take flight. Epp’s design was a bit different, as the rotors were located beneath the airframe to provide the vehicle with more flexibility. Plus, the shape of the vehicle was “disc-like.” Epp believed that such a shape would grant it more stability.
Epp continued developing his flying saucer and used the same blueprint to build different prototypes. In 1941, he submitted these concept models for review. As expected, Berlin’s Ministry of Aviation was very interested in his idea.
A little time after that, Epp continued to work in a facility located close to the Prague airport, in Czechoslovakia. He worked together with German and Italian engineers who had developed a similar concept. Epp spends some years trying to bring to life his idea.
Allegedly, the “Flugkreisel” was one of the prototypes of the vehicle that were actually completed. The design was in charge of Rudolf Schriever, an engineer. It had multiple similarities to Epp’s design, including the disc-like shape.
The vehicle ended up having a diameter of 42 feet and weighed over three tons. According to a post-war transcript written by Otto Lange, a Nazi officer, he was the test pilot of this vehicle.
Soviet troops attacked and invaded Czechoslovakia in April 1945, and the people involved in the project destroyed all the progress they had achieved at the time. It is unclear how advanced they were in the idea.
Not a single prototype survived, and as of now, we only have access to a few documents that made it safe after the facilities were evacuated. We also have the testimonies of engineers involved in the project, but there’s nothing much left about this “top-secret” project.
After the war
Once Hitler fell, there wasn’t much interest in these “flying discs” within the scientific community. However, the vehicles started gaining popularity once more during the Cold War.
This happened after the nuclear holocaust became an urgent threat, and engineers of the current generation started working on the flying saucer aircraft that Epp and his team weren’t able to finish in previous years. The engineers believed that these vehicles could be useful in the evacuations of large masses.
Mark Felton, a World War II historian, has a video on the subject. He speculates if the American research programs from the 50s and 60s were aided by German experts.
He says that the designs the Third Reich had come up with were “far in advance of anything the Americans were coming up with.” Plus, some of the early prototypes weren’t exactly the best. One of the most notable examples was the Avro Canada CF-100, which was designed by John Forst.
Even if German engineers were invited or hired to become part of the project, it’s clear that Epp was not included on the team. It wasn’t because he didn’t want to take part in it.
Contrary to that, it seems like the American government insisted on ignoring his requests. He gave up and tried to work with the Soviets, but he had the same luck.
It seems that Epp had to wait ten years to get a response from the government to be able to patent his design. It’s unknown why it took so long for the authorities to answer.
Schriever seems to have had a different experienced. He started working as a truck driver in the US after the war. The man claims a group of people from an unknown organization approached him and asked him if he could help them develop a vehicle similar to the disc-shaped aircraft he had built in Prague, but he refused.
Later, he encountered his workshop completely destroyed, and all the documents belonging to that particular period were missing.
What really happened
Americans kept track of everything they did for the development of a functional “flying disc.” It’s possible to find video footage of vehicles like those that we’ve described floating.
However, it was impossible for the engines to budge, and the pilots weren’t able to make the flight. Since there was no progress, the project was discarded eventually.
This situation leaves us with tons of questions regarding what really happened. Are the stories that Epp and Schriever tell the truth? After all, the Americans were trying to create something similar for several years but failed.
How was it that German engineers were able to succeed in that task, creating vehicles capable of flying like traditional aircraft?
According to Felton, all this story may have been fabricated. He says that “Epp, Schriever, and all the other engineers and pilots who spoke about Nazi flying saucer research were lying.
The entire program is a fiction that has been turned into a believable story by authors and documentary filmmakers, and that flying disc research only really got underway in the fifties in Canada and the United States, and disappeared in the 1960s as engineers couldn’t make them work.”
While UFOs and Nazi engineering seem to have some sort of connection, it may be nothing else but part of a conspiracy. However, it is clear that the Third Reich was one of the first nations interested in developing flying saucers.
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