Book excerpt: In Secret Aircraft Designs of the Third Reich aircraft biographer David Myhra gives the reader much more than pictures of proposed German aircraft projects, although this work is richly illustrated by state-of-the-art digital images by Mario Merino. The total number of German projects is in excess of 400. Blohm und Voss tops the list with over 200 project designs. The reader is introduced to the men behind these proposed aircraft. One will discover Wolderman Voight's frustration with his Me P.1101 and why it simply would not jell. The reader will learn why Dr. Göthert of Gotha lobbied the RLM to take his Go P.60 designs and scrap the Horten Ho 229. We see why critics of design genius Alexander Lippisch said that he was a man who had a new design almost every day but fails to put most of them into the air. Myhra describes the shameful handling of Hugo Junkers, the father of German aviation, by the Gestapo. It was Junkers who said that "ideas for advanced aircraft projects were about as cheap as blueberries. To an idea must be added materials, resources, and time." And time in all the secret projects was short, very short. Although over 400 aircraft projects were on the drawing board when the war in Europe ended in May 1945, only a handful were in the prototype stage. This outstanding book also offers a superb collection of photographs of scale models from contributors throughout the world, and digital images by Mario Merino and Andreas Ott that offer a one-of-a-kind look at secret German designs.