The Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet is a rocket-powered interceptor aircraft primarily designed and produced by the German aircraft manufacturer Messerschmitt. It is the only operational rocket-powered fighter aircraft in history as well as the first piloted aircraft of any type to exceed 1,000 kilometres per hour (620 mph) in level flight.
A delta wing is a wing shaped in the form of a triangle. It is named for its similarity in shape to the Greek uppercase letter delta (Δ).
Alexander Martin Lippisch was a German aeronautical engineer, a pioneer of aerodynamics who made important contributions to the understanding of tailless aircraft, delta wings and the ground effect, and also worked in the U.S. Within the Opel-RAK program, he was the designer of the world's first rocket-powered glider.
The Blohm & Voss BV 40 was a German glider fighter designed to attack Allied bomber formations during the time of the bombing raids over Nazi Germany.
The Messerschmitt Me 263 Scholle (plaice) was a rocket-powered fighter aircraft developed from the Me 163 Komet towards the end of World War II. Three prototypes were built but never flown under their own power as the rapidly deteriorating military situation in Germany prevented the completion of the test program.
Alexander Lippisch's Delta IV was a continuation of his work on delta wing designs pioneered in his Delta I, Delta II and Delta III aircraft.
The Republic XF-103 was an American project to develop a powerful missile-armed interceptor aircraft capable of destroying Soviet bombers while flying at speeds as high as Mach 3. Despite a prolonged development, it never progressed past the mockup stage.
The Convair XF-92 was an American, delta wing, first-generation jet prototype. Originally conceived as a point-defence interceptor, the design was later used purely for experimental purposes and only one was built. However, it led Convair to use the delta-wing on a number of designs, including the F-102 Delta Dagger, F-106 Delta Dart, B-58 Hustler, the US Navy's F2Y Sea Dart as well as the VTOL FY Pogo.
An airplane or aeroplane, informally plane, is a fixed-wing aircraft that is propelled forward by thrust from a jet engine, propeller, or rocket engine. Airplanes come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and wing configurations. The broad spectrum of uses for airplanes includes recreation, transportation of goods and people, military, and research. Worldwide, commercial aviation transports more than four billion passengers annually on airliners and transports more than 200 billion tonne-kilometers of cargo annually, which is less than 1% of the world's cargo movement. Most airplanes are flown by a pilot on board the aircraft, but some are designed to be remotely or computer-controlled such as drones.
The Lippisch P.13 was a 1942 design for a high-speed bomber aircraft by Josef Hubert. Of highly unconventional configuration, it was a tail-less, swept-wing design with an engine and propeller mounted at both the front and rear of the aircraft. A large ventral fin gave it an almost cruciform cross-section.
Wunderwaffe is a German word meaning "wonder-weapon" and was a term assigned during World War II by Nazi Germany's propaganda ministry to some revolutionary "superweapons". Most of these weapons however remained prototypes, which either never reached the combat theater, or if they did, were too late or in too insignificant numbers to have a military effect. The V-weapons, which were developed earlier and saw considerable deployment, especially against London and Antwerp, trace back to the same pool of highly inventive armament concepts. In the German language, the term Wunderwaffe generally refers to a universal solution which solves all problems related to a particular issue, mostly used ironically for its illusionary nature.
The Kronach Lorin was a small ramjet engine, for aircraft propulsion, that was statically tested in Vienna during the later stages of World War II. It was intended to be used in the German interceptor planes Lippisch P.13a and Lippisch P.13b.
The Messerschmitt P.1101 was a single-seat, single-jet fighter project of World War II, developed as part of the 15 July 1944 Emergency Fighter Program which sought a second generation of jet fighters for the Third Reich. A prominent feature of the P.1101 prototype was that the sweep angle of the wings could be changed before flight, a feature further developed in later variable-sweep aircraft such as the Bell X-5 and Grumman XF10F Jaguar.
The Lippisch DM-1 was a single-seat research glider that was designed and built in Germany from 1944.
The Handley Page HP.115 was an experimental delta wing aircraft designed and produced by the British aircraft manufacturer Handley Page. It was built to test the low-speed handling characteristics to be expected from the slender delta configuration anticipated for a future supersonic airliner.
In aeronautics, a tailless aircraft is an aircraft with no other horizontal aerodynamic surface besides its main wing. It may still have a fuselage, vertical tail fin, and/or vertical rudder.
The RRG Delta I was a German experimental tailless aircraft flown in the early 1930s first as a glider and then powered. It was one of the first delta wing aircraft.
Otto Hermann Bernhard Behrbohm, born 30 October 1907 in Karlsruhe, Grand Duchy of Baden, Imperial Germany; died 12 October 1977 in Fingelsham, Northbourne, Kent, United Kingdom, was a German mathematician active in Sweden and Germany.
The Lippisch Delta VI was a proposed single-seat, twin-jet experimental delta flying wing aircraft begun in 1943 by German designer Alexander Lippisch, as the developed version of the P.11 bomber project begun while he was still working for Messerschmitt in 1942. The only prototype was destroyed in June 1944 while still under construction.
