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Silbervogel (German language for "Silver Arrows bird") was a design for a liquid-propellant rocket-powered bomber produced by Eugen Sänger and Irene Bredt in the late 1930s for The Third Reich. It is also known as the RaBo ( Raketenbomber – "rocket bomber"). It was one of a number of designs considered for the Amerikabomber project, which started in the spring of 1942, being focused solely on trans-Atlantic-range piston-engined such as the Messerschmitt Me 264 and the Junkers Ju 390, the only two airframe types which were actually built and flown for the competition. When Walter Dornberger attempted to create interest in military in the United States after World War II he chose the more diplomatic term Antipodes bomber.
The Silbervogel was intended to fly long distances in a series of short hops. The aircraft was to have begun its mission propelled along a long rail track by a large rocket-powered sled to about . Once airborne, it was to fire its own rocket engine and continue to climb to an altitude of , at which point it would be travelling at about . It would then gradually descend into the stratosphere, where the increasing air density would generate lift against the flat underside of the aircraft, eventually causing it to "bounce" and gain altitude again, where this pattern would be repeated. Because of aerodynamic drag, each bounce would be shallower than the preceding one, but it was still calculated that the Silbervogel would be able to cross the Atlantic, deliver a bomb to the continental United States, and then continue its flight to a landing site somewhere in the Empire of Japan–held Pacific, a total journey of .
Postwar analysis of the Silbervogel design involving a mathematical control analysis unearthed a computational error. It turned out that the heat flow during the initial atmospheric re-entry would have been much greater than the original one calculated by Sänger and Bredt. Hence, if the design had been actually constructed, it would have been destroyed by the heat, which would have exceeded design limits and melted the craft. The problem could have been solved by augmenting the heat shield, but this would have reduced the craft's payload capacity significantly, reducing its use for the intended mission of bombing distant areas.Claus Reuter (2026). 9781894643054, German - Canadian Museum of Applied History. . ISBN 9781894643054
Professor Walter Gregorii had Sänger rework his report, and a greatly reduced version was submitted to the RLM in September 1944, as UM 3538. It was the first serious proposal for a vehicle which could carry a pilot and payload to the lower edge of space.
Two manned and one unmanned version were proposed: the Antipodenferngleiter (antipodal long-range glider) and the Interglobalferngleiter (interglobal long-range glider). Both were to be launched from a rocket-powered sled. The two manned versions were identical, except in payload. The Antipodenferngleiter was to be launched at a very steep angle (which would shorten the range) and after dropping its bomb load on New York City was to land at a Japanese base in the Pacific.Reuter9781894643054, German Canadian Museum. ISBN 9781894643054
In the US, a similar project, the X-20 Dyna-Soar, was to be launched on a Titan II booster. As the crewed space role moved to NASA, and uncrewed reconnaissance satellites were thought to be capable of all required missions, the United States Air Force gradually withdrew from crewed space flight, and Dyna-Soar was cancelled.
One lasting impact of the Silverbird project is the "regenerative cooling–regenerative engine" design, in which fuel or oxidizer is run in tubes around the engine bell to cool the Nozzle and pressurize the fluid. The concept had been known for a long time, but Sänger's team made important work towards its practical use. Almost all modern rocket engines use a similar design.
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