Rudolf Schriever (aged 40 in March 1950) — 'Flugkreisel' claimant
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He said he designed a flying disc for the Reich. He never built one, and the only model he had was stolen in 1948.
Who they are
Rudolf Schriever, a former flight captain living in Bremerhaven, described by the magazine as 40 years old, interviewed by Der Spiegel in March 1950[1].
What they do
In the engine he is the origin point of the Nazi flying-disc story, held as a claimant and nothing more.
How it works
He says the idea came to him in 1942 while watching children launch spinning toy propellers, and that he was chief pilot at Eger at the time. A year later he gave Czech engineers in Prague the calculations and detail drawings, and says they did not know what they were working on. He describes a three-part machine with a rotating blade-disc just over fourteen metres across, driven by three nozzles based on the Me 262's. He worked on it until 15 April 1945 and meant to submit it to Göring's air ministry, but the Russians arrived first. When the magazine found him he was driving for the US Army motor pool[1].
Why it matters
It matters because the later literature presents his account as a documented programme. What the source actually contains is one man's recollection, no hardware, and a closed unsolved burglary where the evidence used to be. This entry first gave him a birth year of about 1910. No source here gives one. That was arithmetic on his stated age, dressed as biography, and it has been withdrawn.
The engine's record — word for word
[Report #195] **In plain terms:** the man whose 1950 interview is the origin of the Nazi flying-disc story. Everything below is what Der Spiegel 13/1950 records, retrieved directly from the publisher's archive; none of it is adjudicated here.
As the article has him: 'Fluzeugbau-Ingenieur Rudolf Schriever, Flugkapitän a. D.', aged 40, living at Bremerhaven-Lehe, Luisenstraße 9, second floor left, carefully collecting every report of flying discs. His stated role in 1942 is 'Chefpilot in Eger' — chief pilot at Eger, not an engineer at a manufacturing plant. He says the idea came from watching children launch spinning propellers from a twisted flat wire.
THE DESIGN AS DESCRIBED: a light-metal 'Flugkreisel' in three parts, a 14.40 m rotating blade-disc, three drive nozzles on hollow struts carrying the fuel, 1,650 to 1,800 rpm, a 360-degree rotatable lower gondola with two nozzles for horizontal thrust, gondola 3.60 m across and 3.20 m high, three tonnes, all calculations based on the Me 262's nozzles.
WHAT NEVER EXISTED: no prototype and no production stage are claimed in the article. Work stopped on 15 April 1945 before the plans reached the RLM. The drawings and the single hand model vanished in the 4 August 1948 Bremerhaven burglary, case closed unsolved. At the time of the interview he is employed as a driver at the US Army Motor Pool. He states he is convinced the Prague engineers reconstructed his gyro for another power.
ENGINE NOTE: canon held nothing on Schriever before this record — a direct string search of all eight canon files returned zero occurrences on 2026-09-20, as it did for Belluzzo, Habermohl, Miethe, Georg Klein, Vesco and Lippisch. The engine held the downstream literature (wunderwaffe_program, goodrick_clarke, silver_bug_avrocar) and not the root.
[Report #195, same-day correction] This record's label originally read 'b. c.1910'. No source retrieved for this report gives Schriever a birth year. The figure was arithmetic on the article's own 'der 40jährige' and was presented as biography. It is withdrawn. What the source states is that he was 40 years old when interviewed in March 1950; anything further is not established here.
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