In 1935 Nazi aerospace engineer, Eugene Sanger, envisioned what would predate the Shuttle, hyper glide vehicles, and ICBM’s with a sub orbital bomber that could have changed the complexion of World War II. The concept was so far ahead of its time that Sanger had difficulty submitting his scientific papers to the German technical bureaus for publication. While Germany had already been experimenting with Ram jets, Scram jets, and turbo jet propulsion systems, it seems strange that Sanger’s envisioned innovations would be rejected by the design bureaus.

An American influential in Nazi planning

Several times in speeches Werner Von Braun, who would end up being NASA’s director had mentioned a source who had provided the Nazis with advanced information that allowed them to be years ahead of the Allies, we don’t know who that source was. We do know that the Nazi’s relied heavily on Robert Goddard’s data complied on the pioneer rocket launches he was working on in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Yet, while Goddard labored faithfully his own government ignored the possibilities of his work and would not even award grant money to fund his research. Fortunately, the oversights of the US government did not lead to the loss of World War II. Since America was a free information society the Nazis were able to attain Goddard’s data.

If only?

The Silber Vogel (Silver Bird) as Sanger called it was an advanced design space plane that would act as an antipodal bomber. The ship is remarkably futuristic in design even by today’s standards. Streamlined, with short stubby wings reminiscent of the F-104, with a dual tail configuration the Silver Bird would reach more than 40 miles into the upper atmosphere and the space boundary at speeds of up to 14,912.909 mph. this craft would be a hyper sonic rocket propelled bomber. The only thing that held Germany back from successfully building and launching the Silver Bird was the coming onslaught of the Allies, the devastating bombing of the Eighth Air Force and Great Britain’s night bombing, and the resulting decisions by high command on where to prioritize resources to defend Germany.

Hyper gliding

As opposed to the vertical launch methodology of Werner Von Braun using an upright gantry to support the rocket, Eugene Sanger proposed a horizontal launch on a rocket sled or monorail that used rockets to get the payload up to a take-off velocity. From there, the sub orbital bomber would achieve lift off and fire its rear rocket motor assisted by auxiliary engines to gain altitude and entry into a semi-orbital position. Flying in a practical vacuum, the space plane would eventually descend into denser atmosphere and skip across the distance between itself and the intended target. The denser lower atmosphere would lift the Silber Vogel and it would again enter higher altitudes but be slowly descending again until finally gliding to the intended coordinates.

Had it been built?

Had Sanger been allowed to complete his project, Germany would have been able to strike New York City with an indefensible hyper sonic high altitude weapon platform capable of delivering an 8 thousand pound bomb or atomic device. From there, the sub orbital bomber would continue onto an axis friendly base in Japan making a near complete orbit from Peenemunde to a Japanese air base in the Pacific untouched by Allied defenses. Fortunately, the technology of the day was not sufficient to support such a scientifically ambitious undertaking. In 1945 after the theoretical mathematics had been recalculated it was found that an error had been made underestimating the high temperatures encountered by atmospheric friction. As built by Sanger’s specifications, the Silver Bird would have over heated and disintegrated much like the ill-fated Shuttle flight that had lost some of the heat shield tiles during launch and then burned up during re-entry.

As fortune would have it

The space plane completely predated any competing technology and not until the mid-1960’s when NASA tested and flew the delta winged Dynasoar 20 experimental space plane was any project successfully flown. When the US 42^nd Infantry Division occupied Peenemunde in late 1945, 100 V-2 rockets and many blueprints for various experimental aerial crafts were confiscated and smuggled into the US along with top German scientists who gladly surrendered to the Americans and were the fabric that made up the personnel for “Project Paperclip.”

In the nick of time

Eugene Sanger’s Silber Vogel was also accompanied by similar America bombing projects that included design proposals for one-way suicide bombing missions targeting New York City. Arado, Messerschmitt, Dornier, Focke, and other German aircraft manufacturers submitted long range conventional bomber designs with 9 man crews, but none of these ever got off the ground. World War II if anything else was a race against time. These proposed bombers could only carry enough fuel for a one way ride across the Atlantic. Even though America first succeeded in the atomic bomb, it was Germany with its heavy water experiments and rocketry that could have delivered an atomic device within a long radius. With the design of the A-9 rocket, America would be in range for a trans-Atlantic launch.

What could have been and was not

The Silber Vogel configuration had already been wind tunnel tested for flight data. Its dimensions would have been 28 meters long, 15 meters wide, and weighed 110 tons. Its flat bottom designed fuselage would have allowed it to glide downward like the modern day NASA space shuttle, but the materials that existed at the time would not have been heat resistant enough. What the designers did not know in 1941 was that Sanger’s sub orbital bomber would have required a heat shield. The nose of the Silber Vogel was much like the design of the Bell X-1 rocket plane flown by Chuck Yeager to break the sound barrier 19 January 1946 achieving Mach 1.06 in the first variant. The Silber Vogel would have achieved more than Mach 10 as fast as the modern hyper glide missiles of today.