Amerika bomber

Okay, I was watching this program on History channel yesterday about the "Amerika Bomber" which the Nazis were working on. Anyway, if Sanger had been designing anything like what he was, a bomber that could fly at 14,000 mph at low earth orbit, why did it take so long for anything like "Aurora" to come out?

They (America) can't possibly have something like that thing. It would just be too effective not to be built.

Sangers design of which you speak was not the 'Amerika Bomber' merely a hypothetical suggestion of a solution to the whole concept of a bomber that could reach America and return to Germany. The project was named 'Amerika Bomber' and many solutions were put forward by many differing and diverse scientific parties.

The most successful suggestions were the practical versions, such as the ME 264 AND THE FW300 which made it as far as testing and even production. Sangers suggested design, the 'silverbird' was merely hypothetical and was abandoned as too costly and complex.

However, I do believe that the Russians, US and the British were queuing up to grab the designs post war and try to develop them.

See Links
en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

Originally posted by apex
Okay, I was watching this program on History channel yesterday about the "Amerika Bomber" which the Nazis were working on. Anyway, if Sanger had been designing anything like what he was, a bomber that could fly at 14,000 mph at low earth orbit, why did it take so long for anything like "Aurora" to come out?

For the record, the so-called "Amerika Bomber" that the Nazis were working on was nothing like the Aroura. The design was called the Horten HO XVIII (18 in Roman numerals). It was to be a long range, subsonic flying wing with some similaities to the Northrop B-2 of today. May I suggest reading up on the history of the flying wing, and also on the Horton brothers?

Tim

Actually, I agree with the other guy, the Amerika Bomber encompassed several different designs, all of them normal aeroplanes ( well, as much as the Horten can be called normal) and the programme was an attempt to create any bomber capable of reaching America. The Sanger was, as said, purely theorietical ( if extrememly far sighted in many ways) and the technology to produce it just did not exist. For a parallel, think of todays highly detailed but unbuildable TV starships.

Originally posted by waynos
Actually, I agree with the other guy, the Amerika Bomber encompassed several different designs

- !00% Waynos, as per.

There were indeed several interesting prototypes that flew along with umteen sketches and designs (that obviously did not fly) suggested for this project.

The Junkers Ju290z & Ju390; the Focke Wulf Ta400, the Junkers Ju488, Messerschmitt Me264 & Me 364 & P 08.01 amongst many others.....including the Horten Ho 18 proposal/sketches that some seem determined to imagine was anything much more than an outlined paper proposal that never made it to anything solid.

Nevermind the training, testing and development of anything like a plane fit for practical squadron service.

Ditto the Sanger proposal.
Nothing more than a mere theoretical idea with a little math and untested physics behind it.
Even if the concept was basically sound.

Anyone who looks at cutting edge rocketry and advanced aerodynamics and the enormous quantum leap in testing, funding, specialist and rare resource provision and the entire sheer national effort that was invested in by the Americans, British, French and Russians and then somehow can dismiss this as unnecessary when weighing up the last desperation-driven day-dreams of WW2 German science and deciding 'they nearly.......blah blah blah' is childishly fooling themselves (a fair summation of the crazy delusion many in Germany at that stage were living).

Look at the Me262 that they did actually produce.
Consider how many made and how few actually got into the air to fight.
An interesting idea a world away from making any difference - and that despite having a few years spent doing at least some sort of proper development, training etc etc.

If you think they were anywhere even remotely near a viable project with Sanger I suggest you consider the Space Shuttle and the years and billions spent developing that (and still it has occasional problems).

The whole point is that there is almost always a vast gulf between a viable outline and concept and it's eventual practical application and any resultant vehicle.


[edit on 13-10-2005 by sminkeypinkey]

Originally posted by apex
Okay, I was watching this program on History channel yesterday about the "Amerika Bomber" which the Nazis were working on. Anyway, if Sanger had been designing anything like what he was, a bomber that could fly at 14,000 mph at low earth orbit, why did it take so long for anything like "Aurora" to come out?

They (America) can't possibly have something like that thing. It would just be too effective not to be built.

The simple answer is that to talk about Sanger Silverbird design is much much simpler than build the real plane. The same example - why we flew on the moon in 1969, but many artists wrote about it hundred years ago?

America found all complex of problems of building spaceplane during X-20 development and realized, that it is not so simple.

I thought I'd mention the 1985 Messerschmidt-Boelkow-Bloehm (MBB) Saenger II design. A two-stage to orbit horizontal take-off aircraft.


www.astronautix.com...

The basic design went through several variations. But in the end, it was determined that vertical rocket delivery to orbit would be cheaper.

A great cut-away view of the 1946 Sanger Amerika Bomber.


www.luft46.com...

Found on the Luft '46 website:
www.luft46.com...

Check out the amazing aircraft profiles section:
www.luft46.com...

There is some fabulous artwork on those links, but one should beware of putting too much belief into the designs shown.

In many cases the design had already been considered and abandoned by the original designers but that does not prevent artists from depicting them as in service 'what if' types. There's nothing wrong with this as long as you don't get carried away.

For example the many drawings showing the the Me P.1110, P.1111 and P.1112 variants in squadron markings. These were not all under active development in parallel but instead represent a train of thought by Messerschmitt, with each design replacing the one that goes before it, and only a basic wooden mock up of the P.1112 had been constructed by the wars end. The Germans weren't developing LOADS of different jet fighters in 1945, but rather striving to find ONE that would work and could be produced.

Ok, I guess we're missing the point on the Luft '46 website.

There was no Luftwaffe in 1946. This is an imaginary German Air Force in the year after the war's end.

In the design of an aircraft, many "paper aircraft" are developed and discarded. Some of them are no more than cartoons. All from the imaginations of the designers. A few go on to more serious analysis. Eventually one or more are funded to be built for trials. And finally, among those that are built, one final design is selected for production. And of course, each aerospace company is pitted against at least one other, to increase the headaches.

Enjoy the imaginations of the designs shown, and be sure to notice a few that became operational in some other air force. I see an early design of the Mig-21 in there.

More scary then Amerika Bomber (the flying wing one) which they might have produced if they had more time , was the payload it was going to deliever. Pouring all the resources to make a few of them to carry a convential bomb load would have pretty pointless and would have really no effect on the war. They were designing it to carry a nuclear payload either a true Atomic bomb or a easier made dirty bomb.

ZPE StarPilot

Nah, not missing the point, just making one. You should see how excited some people have got on here about the Luft '46 pages in the past. They look at that stuff and suddenly cannot concieve why Germany lost the war

My point was a general one, not aimed at you. You seem pretty level headed since you arrived, and with some great info.

Thanks for replying but could it actually be possible to make the Sanger now, not 60 years ago? We must have better technology now to be able to do it, even if we had to drop it from a plane, like Space ship one(Burt Rutan, ansari X-prize).

How hard could it be now?

I suppose that if the Sanger was worth building it would have been by now. From the technological aspect it was very rudimentary by todays standards, nothing was known about many of the exotic materials in use today, even less was known about the actual requirements of space travel back then. The Space Shuttle is vastly more complex than the Sanger vehicle was ever intended to be and all of that was driven by need, not by the mere desire to make it complicated.
Basically, as drawn in the 1940's, Sanger would not have worked, it was just the starting point on an evolutionary path towards the development of a practical space plane which we have not, even yet, reached the end of. Except maybe in total secrecy.

The nearest Nazi Germany came according to the testimony of two Luftwaffe servicemen interrogated by US Army Intelligence was a flight from Mont de Marsan by a Ju-390 aircraft to withing 15 miles of New York in January 1944.

en.wikipedia.org...

The flight is hotly debated amongst historians. Reichs Armaments minister Albert Speer said after the war that a Ju-390 had also flown to Tokyo "via the polar route" at the hands of test pilots.

Of note is that the Bv222 Wiking flying boat also flew to Japanese held Sakhalin Island during the war. The Ju-390's younger brother the Ju-290 made several flights to inner Mongolia at an airstrip 300nm east of Beijing from Odessa and later from Poland via Bulgaria. These aircraft were stripped of armaments and painted in Deutsch Luft Hansa colours.