Back in 1947, Kenneth Arnold was busy trying to find a downed aircraft near Mount Rainier. Flying his CallAir A-2, he was attempting a quick search for the U.S. Marine transport aircraft, while en route to a business meeting. The story goes, that he spotted nine flying aircraft, their erratic motion resembling a saucer skipping across water; from this, the press quickly coined the new term 'flying saucer'.
While of significant meaning to anyone interested in the UFO subject, I recently began to explore things a little more.
Of immense help to these ends has been the following site: greyfalcon.us
Reading through, it became apparent that the actual drawn depiction of the craft he saw bears more resmblance to a Focke Wulf Schnellflugzeug 'Rochen', than the oft thought Horten IX.
The Horten, I now believe, never did make it past models V1, V2 and V3 and into full production (the end of the war saw the destruction of many such classified projects)..of possibility, from design, they were Rochen's or derivatives on test, recovered from Germany. Perhaps such testing lead to the unfortunately awful Avrocar ?
I would like your opinion as to the feasibility of the Rochen for speed appraisals. The Horten was intended to travel at the speeds requested by Goering and witnessed by Arnold, but the Rochen has the near identical shape. The Rochen is of inner twin propeller design, for vertical take off (VTOL) and it can only be imagined that jet propulsion for forward thrust enabled the velocity of Arnolds sighting.
It is noted that Arnold himself said he spent some time attempting to find a tail section, which would point to the Horten, or indeed a Northrop U.S. design.
Enough words, a few pictures
Here is the artist drawn famous depiction, seen with Kenneth Arnold himself:
Here is a Horten IX (of which I have a fascination of it's beauty and have built a couple of scale models of, to test gliding ability):
3 views of the Horten IX:
Finally, for the Horten, here are a couple of pics of the only known recovered example, brought to the USA and now awaiting restoration at the Smithsonian:
Now, here is the sketch that Arnold made on his initial sighting report:
And here is a Focke Wulf Schnellflugzeug 'Rochen':
With an actual scale model kit ! (wish I had one!):
More info on the Horten projects: http://www.nurflugel.com/...rflugels/ho_ix/ho_ix.html
More info on the 'Rochen': http://greyfalcon.us/rest...ulf%20Schnellflugzeug.htm
