AT THE end of 1941, the German Luftwaffe were on the back foot.
The Americans had joined WW2 after the attack on Pearl Harbour and the English had won the fight for aerial dominance in the Battle of Britain.
While Hitler’s inner circle bickered over grand ideas to impress him, German Air Force leader Hermann Goering crafted plans intended to cater to his intense animosity towards the United States.
Hitler was fixated on the vision of New York engulfed in flames, yet the German Air Force did not possess the necessary long-distance capabilities to reach American shores.
MAP SHOWING DISTANCE – 3,892 miles
Herman Goring pictured here speaking to crowds in Berlin, once said:
I completely lack the bombers capable of round-trip flights to New York with a 4.5tone bomb load.
I would be extremely happy to possess such a bomber, which would at last stuff the mouth of arrogance across the sea.
Pictured below, Nazi minister Albert Speer recalled Hitler’s dark fascination with watching the American city burn to the ground.
Speer wrote in his prison diary:
It was almost as if he was in a delirium when he described to us how New York would go up in flames.
He envisioned the towering skyscrapers transformed into massive columns of fire, watching them collapse as the glow of the inferno illuminated the city skyline against the night sky.
Hitler became increasingly desperate towards the end of the war tasking his engineers with creating “Wunderwaffen” – wonder weapons.
Plans were put forward by other designers as part of the “Amerika Bomber” project, based on aircraft the Luftwaffe had in use but one design was particularly adventurous.
Nazi henchman Goering devised a scheme to develop a space-age warplane that was later dubbed the “Silbervogel” or Sliver Bird.
The concept was originally designed by Austrian aeronautical engineer Eugen Sanger, pictured here, who would become part of the project to unleash hell on New York.
The orbital spacecraft would drop a 4-ton bomb on Manhatten obliterating buildings, streets and homes.
But the top-secret plan would only later come to light under bizarre circumstances and lead to a chilling kidnap plot orchestrated by Starlin.
Read on to find out more…
In 1944 Sanger submitted his audacious plans for the Sliver Bird space rocket to the Reich’s Air Ministry.
A member of the Nazi party and the SS, Sanger knew the design could spark the interest of officials looking for a weapon that could target the US.
He collaborated with German engineer and mathematician Irene Bredt to create the space plane that would be used for one mission – to fly thousands of miles above the Earth’s surface and obliterate New York City.
Irene, pictured below, would later become Sanger’s wife.
The suborbital craft, with just one pilot, would be powered up along a two-mile sled helping it to reach speeds of 1,200mph, plans showed.
Once airborne, its rocket engines would help it to climb to 450,000ft and reach an earth-shattering speed of 13,5000mph.
Once in space, the bomber would be able to “bounce” through the Earth’s atmosphere allowing it to travel further and eventually reach its target, a computerised image shows.
It would then drop a 4.5-ton “radioactive dirty bomb” on New York before continuing to skip through space and land in Japanese-controlled China where it could be picked up and used again.
It would weigh 100 tons, nearly 90 tons of that being fuel, with five tons for life support and four tons for the bomb itself, shown in the middle of the spacecraft.
Each bomb would be controlled by remote television coming within 400 miles of its intended target, shown in the map below in the top-secret plans.
The four-ton bomb would have the ability to wipe out buildings and entire streets in a radius of five miles.
The radioactive explosion would reach beyond the blast zone with toxic particulars becoming airborne causing radiation sickness, burns, vomiting and long-term increasing the risk of cancer.
The plane would be equipped with cooling tubes and a periscope system for the pilot as a window would not withstand the pressure and heat on re-entry.
A graphic shows how the bomber would “skip” in and out of the earth’s atmosphere helping it to travel further in its round-the-world trip.
But the Silver Bird was way ahead of its time for the Nazis and most of the technology needed for it to take flight didn’t even exist yet.
Luckily for the US, with the war coming to an end and no way of building the space weapon in time the project never became a reality.
The picture below shows thousands of German soldiers surrendering to the Red Army as the war faltered in 1944.
Rumours of the Sliver Bird space-plane had spread to the allied forces and both the Russians and Americans were seeking copies of the plans.
As the Soviets raided the abandoned German Rocket Centre, seen below, on the Baltic Sea coast they made an incredible discovery.
When an official went to relieve himself behind a woodpile – a file-stamped “top-secret” on the ground with Sanger’s designs inside.
They were amazed by the level of detail and when word eventually got back to Joseph Stalin he orchestrated a kidnap plot to bring Sanger to Russia and bring his project to life.
However, the plan to bring Sanger to the Soviet Union failed.
Some of Stalin’s scientists and engineers did attempt to build the engine for the Sliver Bird but it was eventually abandoned around 1950.
Sanger’s personal copy of the plans resides in The Huntingdon rare book collection, where space historian Asif Siddiqi, pictured below, has been able to analyse its content:
He describes Sanger’s designs as “advanced” due to the combination of two engine types and its ability to fly across the ocean.
He said: “Let’s presume that the Nazis had been able to do it[build the Sliver Bird]….they would have certainly changed the outcome of the war.”
He adds that it is only in the modern age that it is starting to become possible for these types of planes to be produced.
He says: “It’s time is arrive.”
You can watch the full interview with historian Asif at the top of this article.
After the war ended, Sanger refused to work for the British or Americans and the scientist, along with Irene, moved to France.
There they worked for the French government, as part of their missile programme until the 1950s.
In 1954, Sanger returned to Germany to continue aerospace research and become director of their new Institute for the Physics of Jet Propulsion in Stuttgart.
He was later implicated in a secret Egyptian plan to develop ballistic missiles and was forced to resign.
He died in February 1964, while Irene lived on for another 19 years.
His suborbital craft concept has never been brought to life but the US has plans for a “HyperSoar” aircraft that would use this technique.
