The Flying Saucer Designed To Ram Soviet Bombers | Avro Canada Silver Bug 

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Those performance numbers (mach 2.7, 90,000 foot ceiling, etc.) remind me of the last time I talked with a retirement investment broker.

This was another master piece that can be summarized by one of your own signature quotes: 'I wish I was making that up' Thanks Rex and see you next year. Can't wait.

Anti Soviet Frisbee of Death is a phrase I never knew I needed to hear, until I did. Fantastic video Rex!

A fascinating illustration of what happens when you combine science fiction, a huge, undisciplined flow of money, and a bunch of engineers unencumbered by adult supervision.

I used to live in Malton, only 300 metres from the old AVRO factory, and a couple of the locals remembered seeing the Avrocar. They had some really interesting ideas, emphasis on interesting.

Even by cold war standards this idea is insane.

I take it that sanity was not a requirement in Frost's job description, nor for the CAF and USAF personnel reviewing his work.

Unparalleled aviation development from ‘45 to ‘55. Lots of interesting ideas that looked good on paper but didn’t come to fruition, this being one of them. Remember, the combination of almost limitless American money, combined with the post-war optimism I remember so clearly from my childhood days, fuelled by the very real threat of Soviet bombers appearing overhead, made projects like this possible. From nothing to a man on t(e moon in less than 19 years… Anything seemed possible - until it wasn’t.

I find the lack of death rays disturbing.

For an aircraft that relied so heavily on the serviceability of its engines to remain controllable / airborne, the Viper is a rather curious choice of powerplant as it was originally designed as a single use engine to power Jindivic target drones. Obviously it was later beaten into shape and its early prolonged-use maintenance issues were resolved, as it went on to power the BAC Jet Provost, and with another compressor stage added, the HS Dominie.

As a kid I got to see the Avrocar in person as it was awaiting restoration in a U.S. Air and Space museum facility. I touched it and the guide was extremely upset with me.

Wow, even for Canadians that's quite insane!

That was far from being the only ramming aircraft suggested. One of the Northrop flying wings was intended as a ram fighter as were lots of German WWII proposals. There were some examples of non-suicidal ramming attacks during WWII. Probably the most famous is the Hurricane pilot who, out of ammo and seeing a Do 17 heading for Buckingham Palace, put his wing through the Dornier's notably slim rear fuselage, cutting the tail end of it off completely. There is cine footage, taken from the ground, of the tail unit sycamour-leafing it's way to earth. The Hurricane remained flyable for a while after the collision, but unfortunately it was one of the early fabric-wing ones and air flowing in through the damaged leading edge eventually ripped the fabric to the point where it became unflyable, and the pilot had to bale out.

Woah, these look exactly like the flying saucers that chase Dash in the Incredibles (2004)!

Drach’s cocaine laced rum seems to have had a much wider distribution than anyone had ever thought…

That first boat you showed at the beginning of the video, what a masterpiece!

This is one fascinating concept aircraft video, Rex!^^ I've heard of the Avrocar before, but your video made me aware of this flying saucer concept from Avro Canada.

There’s a whole country waiting with baited breath for the Avro Canada Story! 🇨🇦

These showed up in F-91 Gundam. They were still called BUGS. They even looked like the inner petal drawing of the disc at 4:35. Now that I look at it, the circular cockpit on that craft looks very similar to the domed cockpit Iron Mask sits in on the Rafflesia mobile armor.

The Frisbee of Death ☠️! Ohh, Canada, how could you?

Rex, April Fool's is still a couple of months away. In any case, I will be putting my tinfoil hat on. Just in case the CIA does come to my house to zapp me, with one of these, from the face of the earth.😂

You have to admit, as an explanation for all the old UFO sightings from the 50s and 60s New Mexico-area, one-off almost-working prototypes of some of these really fit. There probably are some real interesting things in the underground hangars, just not extraterrestrial.

They all look remarkably like the BMW WW2 projects of the late war period! Great Video!

Have mentioned in another thread, a term I have come up with that covers both "flying saucers" and many flying wings is "Fat Wing", meaning a thick wing surface about as long as the craft, with resulting high resistance to stalling. From examples like the Chance Vought V-173 and Kalinin K-7, what we can see is that the true saucer had no advantages over a semi circular or elliptical design, and that all could work with propellers. It's also clear in hindsight that after Sikorsky came along, there was nothing these craft could do that a helicopter couldn't do better outside of less noise and better fuel economy.

I believe the supply lines from Colombia to the drafting room were running quite well in the case of this design...

TY for Covering the developments of the Secretly named 'Enterprise' NX-000.001 Alpha: Saucer Development.

Know much about "Pyewacket" or the "lenticular defense missile"? It was a proposed defensive armament for the B-70 that would fly at hypersonic speeds and pull 100G that would similarly just bash into interceptors or SAMs. They did quite a bit of development work on it. Havent seen much on it on RU-vid but i guess flying saucer shaped aircraft/missiles were all the rage back in the 50s.

Pye Wacket was another 'flying saucer', a Mach 7 Lenticular Defense Missile for the B-70.

I enjoyed this one Rex (as always!); well done. Wishing you, from just up the road from the Duxford IWM, a productive, expansive and enjoyable 2024.

I wonder if anything like it could be produced, with the technical knowledge and materials we have today 🤔

Another Great one. Thanks. All the best for the festive season

for half a second I though it would be about those Lenticular defensive missiles the valkyrie had

Another great video, sort of Xmas gift. Thanks Rex, and wish you a prosperous 2024.

Ah, the Avro Car - unexpected precursor to the hovercraft

A fascinating video. Looking forward to watching more of your videos and enjoying your great narration in 2024. Thank you for the enlightenment and entertainment over the year.

Great video and channel! Happy New Year 🎉

great videos been watching for long while now

Happy New Year Rex>

Happy New Year!

Man that thing is the Ultimate Frisbee.

Nice in depth doc !

Frost reminds me of Rusty Venture,including the" directing " of officials. In fact the whole thing is very Venture Industrys,lol!!Thanks Rex!

Happy New Year Rex! :)

Happy new year!

love the maple leaf roundels

I think we've found the line between genius and insanity and this guy kept hopping back and forth across it like a jump rope.

I just love your colorful use of euphemisms and irony, Rex: Anti-soviet frisbee of death.......priceless!!!

Thank you, you are making great content. Dc-3 and Dc-6 those beauties needs your attention.

Always interesting. Thanks.

My instructor at Job Corps here in the US (for non Americans, it's a government run job training program) has pictures of her standing next to the Avro Aircar as a kid. Her dad worked at Avro at the time and took her out to see it.

Ah, a weapon for when the Canadians decide they are no longer sorry.

Happy New Year

all the bestfor the new year

Omg that display picture I saw that in an aviation magazine when I was young; crazy is an understatement.

Absolutely amazingly wild!!!!

Little did they know that their anti-communist Frisbee of death would be used by the Soviet Union's most powerful psychic... Yuri.

Thank you for your videos. They are a highlight every time. Looking forward to every video and especially Canadian content. 😊 Very curious if there was ever a night fighter response by Japan to the B29 raids?

Ramming a bomber at mach 2 thats some math to hit a soft bit a few feet wide and not a bomb or engine. Brave or mad?

Keep going rex!!!

I used to work for Avrocar in Canada and spirited away the 1st 9961 silver Bug Prototype away before the Avrocar was bought out and dissolved. It's still in My garage. I only take it out a couple times a year to fly it to the local Dairy Queen for a Blizzard Shake. But You are absolutely right about the visibility not being the Greatest because of the center cockpit, but it is also a problem when going thru the Drive-Thru when You try to reach Your Order all the way over at the Window!

HAPPY NEW YEAR. 😄👍

I, for one, lament the absence of manned supersonic destructo-disks in my life.

Another great vid. (I will go into more detail in another comment at a later date)

It must have been a wonderful time to be a Canadian when we had flying saucers of death.

@3:26 - this is the coolest spaceship from 90s video game I've ever seen! But jokes aside, was there any possibility, that Silver Bug 1 and 2 could actually work as Frost envisioned? I have real trouble envisioning how the airflow would look and how VTOL would be achieved in both cases

Just looking at the cross sections of this thing blows my mind! So many vents; it would have been a nightmare to clean!

well damn, I thought this was gonna be @Mustards new video not Rex's. either way happy surprise!.

Where on earth did they get that max speed estimate???? Did they just add up the thrust of all the engines or something? Cause I imagine there'd be A LOT of losses due to having your exhaust flow around in ducts before exiting. I bet nowadays with turbo fans you could get one of these to work. Idk about anywhere near mach tho lol

Those, often outright bizarr, ideas of early aircraft pioneers are really fascinating to look back to as a lesson on what was tried and worked. Many of those strange ideas had great promises which they then sadly could no longer hold up to in practice. It´s almost sad that, while we now might have the technology to remedy their weaknesses from the technical limitations back then, in most cases we now have better solutions for the same goals or functions. But they make great inspiration for SciFi fighters! XD

I find it funny that he doesn’t think people would willingly fly a plane into something else, because I can think of two pretty good examples of it

Intercontinental Flying Saucer Fantasies is my favorite funk band of the late 70s

imagine being the test pilot, being briefed on what you will be testing..."you want me to ram what at mach2?"

“I can’t imagine a pilot volunteering-“ Let me stop you right there

Have you done or are you going to do anything on the Pyewacket?

So thats where the flying saucer concept came from.

*"And, continuing the trend of designing weapons best suited for a Tom Clancy novel..."* Tom Clancy, hell. This man is related to Gerry Anderson. You cannot convince me otherwise.

The despair in rex's voice when he says "alarming"....

Trying to make a flying saucer aeroplane is like trying to make a renaissance rapier in the stone age.

Do you have a source list for the images? Or anything really?

You can wonder if someone tried this later on with better technology. Very interesting

10:30 Simular to the Flying Sub carried by the Sea View submarine in the 1960's TV show... Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

Anti soviet Frisbee of death !! Such a brilliant name. Much better than the snow-thingy. Great interesting film. 👍🏼

Coanda Effect: remember the Exhaust exits of 2012 F1 cars? Yes. Those.

The pilot sitting in the middle of this thing, _completely_ surrounded by jet fuel, trying to ram enemy aircraft. Jesus christ.

*Rex: **_"Anti-Soviet Frisbee of Death"_* Genius...🤭

Me thinks that Mr. Frost saw flying saucers everywhere he looked.

Imagine successfully spying on Area 51 in the 1950s as an American citizen and you see this thing

Any ramming-based military technology is top tier.

Based on a myriad of blurry photos I can only assume these flew in the 1950s and spooked a lot of people in rural America.

No one has mentioned adverse gyroscopic forces of the giant anular disc compressor/turbine in full song. This would have severely limited maneuvrability. I reckon these projects were always a flimsy smoke screen for more exotic levity disc craft that was being worked on at deeper levels. Excellent plausable deniability.

The Silver Bug with Aerogel might work?

Somebody loved the Jetsons.

Thanks Rex..... Shoe🇺🇸

Somewhere out there is a Fallout 5 Developer who ought to be taking notes.

I think you might be mixing up radial flow and axial flow engines

Weren’t they supposed to spin? Anyway, maybe they should try again because technology has changed since then….. Who knows, maybe they did, and that could be the source of all the UFO reports! Great video Rex

kinda intersting that these designs were first imagined just before flying saucers were prominent in popular culture

I want to believe, Rex

Can you think of *any* disk shaped aircraft that flew successfully? I can't. All these pseudo UFO craft were duds.