By the 1970's, East Germany had been leap-frogged by other Communist countries in many key areas, but none so acutely as aerospace. To that end, the Central Committee of the East German Commie Party ordered a crash-program to put them on the cutting edge. This plan involved stealing some plans...
While the theft of top-secret U.S. blueprints was successful, American counter-intelligence replaced valid plans with unworkable versions that were an odd mash-up of the XB-70 Valkyrie bomber and proposed F-16 fighter. The East Germans didn't notice, putting any idiosyncrasies down to conversion between Imperial and Metric measurements.
Those bogus plans were quickly handed off to the state-owned
Volkischer Flugzeug Werke (VFW) or People's Aircraft Factory for production of a prototype that was hoped would be the most dominant air superiority fighter in all Europe.
In short order, an incredibly futuristic twin-tailed, delta-winged beast emerged from the
Volkischer Flugzeug Werke. VFW engineers had created what looked to everyone like a true world-beater. Christened the
Volks Walküre or People's Valkyrie, it soon became known as the VW.
VW Beetles were often called "Bugs" so it wasn't too long before the prototype
Volks Walküre started to be jokingly referred to as the Über Bug.
Unfortunately, the Soviets thought the Über Bug was just too über and they ordered the project cancelled. And the Soviets can be very persuasive...
The East Germans were only able to manage a handful of test-flights before the heavy hand of their Soviet masters came down. Which is sad because the aircraft's irrecoverable spin characteristics would've no doubt been a boon to their NATO opponents.
The
Volkischer Flugzeug Werke was so thorough in carrying out orders to destroy not only the prototype Über Bug but also any other scrap of information on this futuristic fighter that very little documentary evidence of it exists today.
That is, except for this one artifact, an overly-optimistic desk model that was found in the recesses of the
Volkischer Flugzeug Werke when it was liquidated after German reunification. The model features the erroneous bort #1247 which is an obvious attempt to get western analysts to think there were over twelve hundred of the things.
Despite such rock-solid tangible evidence of the type, the so-called "experts" refuse to accept it ever existed and insist it must be the product of a mind that's a bit buggy.
Brian da Basher
