HEINRICH FLEISSNER

DÜSENSCHEIBE

(1945)

By Rob Arndt

Very little information has survived concerning this disc, but according to the “Augsburger Neue Presse” dated May 2, 1980 Ing. Heinrich Fleissner is the “Father of the Flying Disc” having designed at Peenemünde a strange disc machine known as the “Düsenscheibe” (Nozzle/Jet Disc) that took to the air shortly before Germany capitulated, on April 24, 1945 from Berlin-Lichtenfeld. The strange disc was on an official Luftwaffe mission.

Ing. Fleissner, an Augsburger himself and hydrolic engineer at Peenemünde, worked directly under Hermann Göring on the only know Luftwaffe disc project which was officially sanctioned by Hitler, which makes its last flight from Berlin all the more baffling.

Hermann Göring

Göring’s direct involvement in the project was due to the fact that the disc was secretly intended as his personal courier craft, so work on building components for the disc was ordered throughout the Reich. Once the sections of the disc began to arrive at Peenemünde a specialist team led by Ing. Fleissner assembled the disc and flight tested it.

There it remained until it was summoned to Berlin.

Peenemünde West was where the Luftwaffe projects were developed

The most advanced German Vril and Haunebu disc aircraft at the time were all controlled by Himmler’s SS E-IV technical branch which had started to evacuate to Neu Schwabenland in Antarctica (Base 211) under SS General Kammler in March 1945.

All the remaining disc projects operated by the SS were destroyed by April 1945 including all the BMW Flügelrads and Schriever’s Flugkreisel at Prag-Kbley airfield in addition to all the remaining WNF Feuerball weapons and lone Zeppelin Werk Kugelblitz in the Schwarzwald - by direct order of Berlin.

Some of Viktor Schauberger’s Repulsin discoid motors were seized by the Russians at his apartment in Linz, Austria while one or both of Miethe’s discs were either destroyed or captured at Breslau.

Still, Ing. Fleissner maintains that his Düsenscheibe flew in April 1945 and also that he personally witnessed four other German discs take off from Tempelhof before the collapse.

In the news article Ing. Fleissner states that the Düsenscheibe could be reconstructed at any time suggesting that the original had been destroyed after its last (and perhaps only) flight mission. After the war, Ing. Fleissner filed for another disc aircraft patent in 1955 which was granted in 1960 but never built.

The Düsenscheibe is described as a huge machine with a central non-rotating dome structure surrounded by a large jet rotor fed by radial fuel tanks contained in the central body. The number of jets (Jumo 004s perhaps) is a staggering twenty around the rotor. In addition to those jets, other propulsion systems are buried in the disc body below the disc rotor.

As a hydrolic engineer Ing. Fleissner had proposed a multi-fueled combination of engines to power the Düsenscheibe. The reason behind this was for the flight performance of the machine, concentrating on maximum speed, range, and altitude. The logic behind the proposal is that to achieve these maximums required different types of engines fed by different fuels to accomplish each level of flight performance.

For the take-off and landing the external rotor jets were sufficient and even necessary up to a certain speed and altitude. To achieve greater speed and heights required the internal engines which could have been burning any number of fuels including: kerosene, liquid oxygen, gelatinous metallic fuel, or liquid rocket fuels. The number and type of aux. engines is not known but a cut-away on a separate illustration shown here reveals at least two huge engines inside. It has been stated that the Düsenscheibe could reach up to 3,000 km/hr.

Judging from the large dome with many windows suggests a rather large crew and ample space to accommodate many “passengers” should the need arise.

With Hitler and staff remaining in the bunker during the final days of the Reich the mystery mission of the Düsenscheibe is unclear. This single giant disc built at Peenemünde would certainly not have come to Berlin in the heat of battle if not to remove sensitive documents and high-ranking Nazi officials to another secure area either within the Reich (Thuringia) or outside of it (South America or Antarctica). With Göring arrested for treason Hitler might have ordered that his personal courier disc be brought to Berlin for immediate use or to be taken to some remote area and destroyed. Either way, the machine WAS destroyed and there are no known photos of it.