FOIA: Joint ATIC-WADC Report on Project Silver Bug, page

silverbug.pdf
Joint ATIC-WADC Report on Project Silver Bug
A technical document proposing project Silverbug, the Air Forces Radical Aircraft Design, “flying Disk” program.
Document date: 1955-02-15
Department: USAF
Author: Technical Intelligence Center, Wright-Patterson AFB
Document type: Technical Report
pages: 30

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Archivist's Notes: A proposal document for project Silverbugs supersonic, vertical take-off, disk-shaped aircraft. The report covers both a multi-engine configuration, and a radial-flow single-engine design. The aircraft itself was envisioned for speeds up to mach 3.4, at a ceiling of 80,600 feet, with a range of 620 miles. The document is in good condition, and includes a large number of schematics, cut-aways, engine airflow patterns, and graphics explaining ground effect cushioning.

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Project Silver Bug has a colorful though confusing history that is only partially made more transparent through this document, the Project Silver Bug Technical Report of the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) of the U.S. Air Force. Originally published in February, 1955, the Technical Report document was declassified in March of 1995.

Background:
There is some discrepancy in the records as to the chronology and relationship between the Canadian AVRO vehicle and the inception, design, development, testing, and deployment of the secret “Black” project Silver Bug aircraft. You can read a synopsis in the ATS TinWiki Article about Project Silverbug, including the often quoted essay by aviation history expert Randall Whitcomb on the subject.

There is not much doubt that the engineering impetus for Silver Bug and the AVRO development was engendered through Project Paperclip, the program enacted during the closing days of World War II by which the U.S. government relocated many of the top German scientists and engineers away from Hitler’s soon to be eliminated Nazi party to the west. These scientists and engineers were sent to places like White Sands in New Mexico to help with rocketry and nuclear physics programs and to bases in the U.S. and Canada to provide engineering assistance on the many airframe, weaponry, and propulsion systems under development. Some of these scientists presumably worked on the Nazi’s infant saucer programs, and were transferred to AVRO in Canada among other places to transfer some of their knowledge to these burgeoning disc-based aviation programs. Here’s a video montage of some the Nazi Saucer programs:



There is some speculation that Project Silver Bug was, in fact, a highly classified program that used the AVRO development as a smokescreen or disinformation campaign to deflect attention away from the much more sophisticated craft under the Silver Bug umbrella.

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Although a few sources claim that Silver Bug was actually a coordinated project to work in secret but in tandem with the AVRO disc vehicle development, others say that one project preceded the other or that Silver Bug began as a tandem military project that “went Black” when certain propulsion or aerodynamic milestones were achieved. There is little doubt that Silver Bug was a secret (classified) project since even the attached technical report was kept away from public scrutiny for 40 years.

Most researchers believe that because of the 40-year secrecy, and the fact that no military official has ever denied that there are additional saucer-development military projects that remain classified. Since the 1947 UFO flaps and subsequent hysteria, the military has extended significant efforts to cover up, spread disinformation, and otherwise deflect further scrutiny of actual UFO or saucer development or interest by the government. There was even an article published in “LOOK” Magazine in June of 1955, that seemed to be created merely to satisfy the public curiosity to know more about the various “Flying Saucer” reports making the news.

In actuality, the Canadian-built AVRO car prototypes (several versions), were clumsy, silly-looking, unstable craft that barely hovered a few shaky feet off the ground:



By contrast, as this declassified document reveals on page 22, Table III, the Silver Bug Radial-Flow Engine was designed to propel the craft a range of 620 miles, at a speed of nearly Mach 3.5 (2,300 mph) and to an altitude of over 80,000 feet. This is a substantial performance increase over what has been shown capable with the AVRO vehicles.

For further reading, here are a few more links to information regarding the Silver Bug program and its relationship to AVRO and other disc-shaped aircraft development programs:

Project Silver Bug – Full Detail Page, Illustrated:
greyfalcon.us...

A SilverBug Model Kit (French):
modelstories.free.fr...

North American Aviation (NAA) Manned Bombardment and Control Vehicle - Saucer Design based on Silverbug lineage:
www.astronautix.com...