[Richard T. Eger]

Dear Ed,

I agree with Artie Bob. There were a plethora of off the wall projects in Germany. However, when it came down to execution, as Artie Bob said, there is nothing magical that can be done to create something, other than sweat and toil. The Me 262, which I have studied in great detail, was an advanced aircraft. But, in the end, it was a construct of primarily sheet metal, just formed into a unique shape utilizing nascent jet engine technology. The problems of developing it were handled with very straight forward engineering. It was anything but magical.

You have suggested that flying saucers have been developed in the U.S. and/or Canada over the last 60 years, potentially deriving some basis from German WW II developments. You also imply that these developments have been held as closely guarded secrets, lo these many years. Admittedly, stealth technology was held secret for a fair number of years. But, at some point in time, in order to actually apply it, the secret had to be let out of the bag. For, what good is an advanced technology, if you can't make use of it?

So, I submit that, given the potential of 60 years worth of development, the fact that the cat has never been let out of the bag, that we don't have squadrons of these wonder weapons in our arsenal, I am led to conclude that they don't exist or that their technological advance was found to be wanting and the concept discarded.

Working backwards, I thus also conclude that the Germans were likely playing with themselves on this idea, too. Further, if any effort was actually funded, it was likely of an extremely low priority with very little funding, indeed. Every crackpot idea seemed to catch the fancy of someone in the Reich government and, with their penchant for wonder weapons, almost nothing completely died on the vine.

As for our keeping the ejection seat a secret from the Russians for 15 years, Ed, get real! The He 162 was equipped with an ejection seat and the Russians certainly captured examples of that aircraft. If these guys could reproduce complete B-29's from the 3 examples that fell into their hands, they could easily develop the ejection seat. Note, that they also got their share of German engineers, too. The Russians are a pretty savvy lot, as witness Sputnik.

Regards,
Richard