Flying Saucer Aircraft (Book)

Infobox Book
name = Flying Saucer Aircraft (Secret Projects)
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author = Bill Rose & Tony Buttler
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language = English
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subject = Aviation history
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publisher = Midland Publishing December 2006
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media_type = Hardcover
pages = 192 pages
isbn = 1-85780 233 0
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"Flying Saucer Aircraft" is mainly the work of Bill Rose, with Tony Buttler acting as a consultant and providing additional technical expertise.

Bill Rose is a UK photographer and writer with a long history of interest in this subject.

Tony Buttler is a UK aviation writer, best known for the Warpaint and Secret Project series of books.

Details

Flying Saucer Aircraft is primarily aimed at aviation readers and examines man-made flying discs in some detail.

It does not deal with the general subject of UFOs or the question of aliens. However there are frequent references to important UFO cases, such as the Arnold sighting, Roswell and Mantell Incident.

The first chapter starts with the philosopher and scientist Emanuel Swedenborg. It describes his design for a circular shaped flying apparatus in 1714. This is followed by various early flying machines, powered manned flight and circular winged biplanes.

There is detailed discussion of various pre-war aircraft such as the Arup aircraft, which leads on to the well-known Charles H. Zimmerman Vought V-173 and Vought XF5U Flying Pancake built by Vought during WW2. The following chapter deals with the controversial German wartime projects to build flying saucer shaped prototype aircraft.

Amongst these designs are the Sack AS-6, the Focke Wulf VTOL project, the Heinkel-BMW project in Czechoslovakia, Foo Fighters and a possible connection between the Horten Brothers and suspicions about flying saucers within the US Military. There are several acknowledged gaps in the author's research and the Heinkel-BMW project is treated is coniderable caution, while the book suggests that Foo fighters are probably a natural, but still unknown phenomena.

Chapter Three is fairly lengthy and covers the Avro-Canada flying disc project undertaken near Toronto, Ontario, during the 1950s. An article on this subject written by Rose appeared in Air Pictorial Magazine in 2001 (1) and this chapter appears to be a major development of that particular piece of work. It is extremely detailed and well illustrated chapter.

Of particular interest are the methods of using these aircraft in combat and it was suggested by the chief designer to use the Silver Bug flying disc as an armoured manned missile that would slice through enemy bombers at high supersonic speed. The better-known Avrocar is also discussed in detail and reasons are given why the design failed to work as expected.

In the following chapter, a number of post-war projects are discussed, including the work of Alfred Loedding at Wright-Patterson AFB, Lockheed's ideas for a high-supersonic, long-range ramjet powered flying saucer bomber and the rather sad story of the French designer Rene Couzinet who failed to secure the French government's interest in his saucer shaped aerodyne.

Chapter five examines Russian flying saucer aircraft, although it appears there are still many unanswered questions concerning the development of flying discs in the USSR. However, the Russians were heavily involved at one point in developing a two-stage-to-orbit flying saucer, presumably for the purpose of launching a surprise nuclear missiles on America. There is also a section on the Russian EKIP ( _ru. ЭКИП) aircraft and it seems that this interesting project will not be developed any further in the US.

Balloons and lighter-than-air craft are covered fairly extensively in Chapter Six. Rose examines the connection between early high altitude balloons used in the US and reports of UFOs. There is some fairly detailed examination of the Mantell Incident and Roswell, which both involved balloons.

One section in the chapter describes the UK Channel 4 Flying saucer hoax undertaken at Avebury in 2003. There is a good deal of background material disclosed in this account and it is interesting to learn that that the production did not go exactly as planned.

Chapter Seven deals with spacecraft and describes the early crew vehicle designs for the Apollo Moon project at the start of the 1960s. Several different flying saucer shaped vehicles were considered, as they were judged especially suitable for re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere.

Eventually, the best designs were abandoned in favour of a ballistic capsule, which was recognised as the simplest and easiest to build solution for a re-entry vehicle. There are also details about the North American nuclear space bomber and the shapes of various heat shields that resemble flying saucers, including advance lunar spacecraft designed to aerobrake into the Earth's atmosphere.

A chapter follows this on aircraft using ducted fan propulsion methods and there is a very well researched section on the French SNECMA Coleoptre VTOL fighter project, which was developed from wartime German research into VTOL fighters. Other interesting designs are the manned flying platforms built by Hiller in the 1950s and the saucer shaped Cypher remote control drone.

The final chapter discusses exotic propulsion methods such as the Townsend Brown gravity reduction experiments, ionic airflow and laser powered lightships built by Leak Myrabo. The enigmatic Nikola Tesla gets a brief mention.

This book appears to be the most comprehensive work on this particular subject currently available.

References

1. Bill, Rose. Flying Saucers - Avro's Secrets. Air Pictorial May 2001. P342-347.