In the early 1940s, Erich Bachem

Erich Bachem

Erich Bachem was a German engineer.In the 1930s Erich Bachem designed the Aero-Sport camping trailer built by glider company Wolf Hirth in Kirchheim unter Teck from woodt. Until 1944 Bachem designed planes for Fieseler.In 1944, he designed for the SS the vertical take-off manned rocket plane...

, Fieseler

Fieseler

The Gerhard Fieseler Werke was a German aircraft manufacturer of the 1930s and 40s. The company is remembered mostly for its military aircraft built for the Luftwaffe during the Second World War.-History:...

's Aircraft's technical manager, developed two designs for a rocket-launched fighter that could reach high altitudes quicker than conventional fighters

Fighter aircraft

A fighter aircraft is a military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat with other aircraft, as opposed to a bomber, which is designed primarily to attack ground targets...

.

Design One

Design one involved a straight-winged jet fighter powered by two Jumo 004 jet engine

Jet engine

A jet engine is a reaction engine that discharges a fast moving jet to generate thrust by jet propulsion and in accordance with Newton's laws of motion. This broad definition of jet engines includes turbojets, turbofans, rockets, ramjets, pulse jets...

s. It would be launched upright by liquid-fuel rockets. After attaining an altitude of 3660 meters, the rocket would burn out, disconnect and return to earth via parachute for re-use. The fighter would then engage Allied bomber

Bomber

A bomber is a military aircraft designed to attack ground and sea targets, by dropping bombs on them, or – in recent years – by launching cruise missiles at them.-Classifications of bombers:...

s before landing as a conventional airplane.

Data

Design

Category	Known Data
Maximum speed	800 km/h
Takeoff weight	5 metric ton
Flying time	45 minutes