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The Sack AS 6
The Real "Nazi Saucer?"
For decades, a rich mythology has developed around the claim that Nazi Germany's engineers secretly developed one or
more super-sophisticated saucer-shaped aircraft and unmanned disc-like missiles, and that this technology was
appropriated by the US or the Soviet Union in the post-war period. The names Schriever, Miethe, Habermohl, Belluzzo
are associated with some of these stories, and the locations of the secret plants where these craft were allegedly built
range from Prague to Stettin to shadowy underground factories in the legendary "Nazi southern redoubt."
Typical of the unsubstantiated claims about WWII Nazi saucers is this diagram of a "V-7" which appears to be a form
of jet-powered helicopter. No real evidence of the existence of such vehicles has emerged from archival documents
Kevin McClure's outstanding analysis of these legends is presented at
http://www.magonia.demon.co.uk/abwatch/naziufo/naziufo1.html
But according to researchers Hans J. Ebert and Hans Justus Maier, the real creator of the "Nazi flying saucer" – a
vehicle which can be shown to have had links to the US Air Force's investigation of UFOs in the post-WWII period -
was a farmer from the Leipzig region who had an avid interest in model airplanes. His name was Arthur Sack.
In July 1938, as Ebert and Maier explain it, Sack had entered a competition called the "First Reich-Wide Contest for
Motorized Flying Models" in Leipzig. The object of the contest was a simple closed-loop flight from one point and back
again, but in those days of primitive model control systems, most of the entrants were unable to persuade their creations
to lift off, let alone complete the course. Sack's unique contribution was the use of a circular wing.
The rationale behind the design is unknown — like some other circular or semicircular aircraft, such as Snyder's Arup, it
may have been initially an aesthetic whim — but in any case the model displayed the STOL performance characteristic
of the planform. With a single tail fin and a conventional horizontal stabilizer for pitch control, the AS 1 looked a bit
more like the Arups than Zimmerman's Vought V-162. Its wing was about four feet in diameter; it weighed about 10
pounds and was powered by a 30 cc gasoline engine. Sack and his model might have faded into obscurity if one of the
most important figures in the German military aircraft establishment had not happened to drop in on the contest. Ernst
Udet, the Generalluftzeugmeister (chief of armaments procurement) of the Luftwaffe, was impressed by the short
takeoff and landing runs of the model.
Udet (an expert pilot and maverick who would shortly become one of the most enthusiastic high level supporters of
Lippisch's Me-163 Komet rocket fighter) had been interested in STOL aircraft since Gerhard Fieseler had developed a
gangly three-seat observation craft called the Storch (Stork) to meet a 1935 Luftwaffe requirement for a light tactical
reconnaissance and ground attack plane which could use very short airstrips. The specification resulted in some
interesting proposals: a helicopter-like Focke-Wulf autogyro and a Messerschmitt design using a tilting wing. But the
Storch was the hands-down winner. To achieve extremely short takeoff and landing distances Fieseler's designers used
an aerodynamic technique almost diametrically opposed to Zimmerman's theory: the Storch's long, thin wing was a
flying venetian blind, endowed with large slats and flaps to coax the airflow into generating useful lift even at very slow
speeds. Under normal conditions, a Storch could take off in a little over 80 yards; in a strong headwind, it could almost
hover, dropping gently to a touchdown like a seagull landing on a post. Perhaps Udet, knowing of the STOL potential of
circular wings, saw the same possibilities in Sack's disk plane.
According to Maier and Ebert, Udet unofficially encouraged Sack to pursue the development of his design for
observation missions or light ground attack duty. But Sack was no Gerhard Fieseler or Charles Zimmerman. During the
course of the war he built four more models, about which little is known, and five years would pass before he decided
to make the leap to constructing a piloted, full-scale aircraft. While there is no evidence that Sack was directly
influenced by the V-173, it is interesting that he began work on his piloted craft in late 1943, when the Flapjack's test
flights were beginning. Sack enlisted the help of an engineer from "MiMo" (Mitteldeutsche Motorenwerke, an aircraft
subcontracting company located at Brandis Airfield) to calculate structural loads and design the plane's airframe, and
persuaded other Brandis workshops to fabricate its components.
Brandis is a small town a few miles southeast of Leipzig. Just east of the city was a large airfield. Flugplatz Brandis was
the location of satellite factories where components of various types of aircraft were fabricated. Its very large runways
made it ideal as a flight test and fighter base.
When Allied bombing raids threatened the crucial Leuna synthetic oil plant near Leipzig, a squadron of 600 mph
Messerschmitt Me-163 rocket-powered interceptors was transferred to Brandis to provide defensive cover
By early 1944 the AS 6 took shape. Its circular fabric-covered wing was about 21 feet in diameter. An Argus AS 10
engine of 240 hp — the same type used in the Storch — drove a single two-blade wooden propeller. The wing was
equipped with ailerons for roll control, and a large flap was set into the wing just in front of the squat vertical fin, which
was stencilled with a Swastika and the letters "AS 6/V1." A simple canopy with flat transparencies was provided for the
pilot. Stocky, non-retractable landing gear betrayed the limited performance envelope of the machine. What the AS 6
lacked in the sophisticated drag-reducing features of the V-173 it compensated for with brute force: it possessed fifty
percent more horsepower, but weighed just over half as much as its American counterpart.
The plane was finally ready for testing in April 1944. Sack had convinced a pilot named Baltabol, the chief pilot for
ATG, a Junkers subcontractor at the base, to try out the peculiar machine. Baltabol soon found out that the AS 6 was
poorly built and had vicious handling qualities. The little disk swerved back and forth across the runway as he
desperately tried to maintain control by alternately slamming the rudder pedals from one stop to the other. Five times he
ran the AS 6 up and down the long Brandis field, veering from side to side. One of the overstressed landing gear struts
finally snapped and brought the session to an end. Baltabol realized that the plane was badly designed and would need to
be modified to have satisfactory handling.
On April 16, after some rework, the AS 6 was again rolled out, this time with the object of actually achieving flight. The
plane was pushed to the very end of the runway. It was dead calm; no crosswinds would complicate steering. Baltabol
opened the throttle of the Argus and the craft surged ahead. But to his annoyance, after speeding along for a quarter
mile the airplane showed no inclination to lift off. He pulled back on the stick. In another 300 feet, it finally started to
bounce. The bouncing rapidly diverged into severe porpoising. The end of the runway loomed, and he finally aborted
the run. Another attempt gave similar results, but this time, on one of the bounces, the propeller struck the ground and
shattered. The AS 6, lacking the meticulous development of the V-173, apparently had some serious design flaw.
The swept-wing Me-163 was powered by a liquid-fuel rocket engine and had a phenomenal rate of climb. Capable of
speeds approaching Mach 1 in level flight, the Me-163 had the potential to inflict heavy damage on US bomber raids, but
its exotic and highly dangerous fuels and limited endurance reduced its effectiveness. US and Soviet technical
intelligence analysts were highly interested in the Me-163 and both sides based early post-war interceptor projects on its
technology. The designer of the radical tailless plane, Alexander Lippisch, was one of the first technicians relocated to
Wright Field under "Project Paperclip" after the war
The German disc plane languished at the base until the summer of 1944, when an Me-163 Komet rocket-powered
interceptor squadron, JG 400, was deployed to the base to provide cover for the Leuna synthetic oil plant near Leipzig.
Sack soon approached the unit's commander, Hauptmann Robert Olejnik, begging him to let one of his "right stuff"
pilots give the AS 6 another try. Olejnik was on the spot:
[Sack] had made contact with my pilots with the aim of winning one of them over to attempting the first flight…and
one of my best and most energetic pilots, [Oberleutnant] Franz Rössle, [one of the five pilots who had made the
historic encounter with the US Mustangs over Merseburg], a real daredevil, had agreed to undertake this. After days of
contemplation and some hot debates with all my pilots, I finally agreed to let Rössle make taxying trials. Taxying trials
on the runway proceeded quite well, but as soon as Rössle began further trials on grass, a wheel ran into a molehill
[sic] and the leg was bent.
The AS 6, a flawed and now crippled anomaly, was a very low priority project in the hectic closing months of the
European war. In all probability it was dragged to some out of the way corner of the base and abandoned.
As the war ground on, German aircraft firms had fewer and fewer safe refuges to test new aircraft. Bombing raids and
the progress of the Allied fronts forced Junkers to transfer some of its experimental aircraft to Brandis. About the time
the Me 163 unit arrived at the base, Junkers was beginning experiments with a transonic jet test bed called the Ju 287
V1, the world's first forward-swept-wing bomber. On August 16, the big bomber thundered off the Brandis runway for
the first time. One of the strangest looking airplanes ever built, it had two jet engines mounted in pods on either side of
the nose, two more under the wings, and fixed landing gear enclosed in gigantic fairings. While testing progressed,
construction of two more prototypes- the Ju 287 V2, and the definitive six-engine production version, Ju 287 V3, began READ MORE HERE
