Avrocar (Avro Canada VZ-9)
Also: Avro car; VZ-9 Avrocar; Project Y; Project Silver Bug
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The visual record
Illustrations, recordings and archival references — each with its own provenance. A documented source is a starting point for investigation, not a verdict on its explanation.
The Avrocar in tethered flight testing
The Avro Canada VZ-9AV Avrocar flown on safety tethers before free-flight tests, in a US Air Force photograph. Hardware context — a real, human-built experimental aircraft that explains the disc shape, not a UAP.
US Air Force photo · National Museum of the USAF (080313-F-1234P-011), via Wikimedia Commons ↗Public domain — US government workLicence terms ↗Resized and WebP-converted for display; content unchanged.The Avrocar at the National Museum of the US Air Force
The museum's 2021 photograph of the Avrocar on display. Linked to the museum's own page; the image host refused an automated download, so it is not mirrored here.
US Air Force / Ty Greenlees · 2021 ↗Public domain — US government work; link only (host refuses automated download)Licence terms ↗Jesse Michels · 0:05:42
Open the source at the cited time. The episode thumbnail is video packaging, not a photograph of the reported subject.
American Alchemy / Jesse Michels ↗YouTube-hosted preview and player; not relicensedJesse Michels · 2:15:00
Open the source at the cited time. The episode thumbnail is video packaging, not a photograph of the reported subject.
American Alchemy / Jesse Michels ↗YouTube-hosted preview and player; not relicensedJesse Michels · 0:59:05
Open the source at the cited time. The episode thumbnail is video packaging, not a photograph of the reported subject.
American Alchemy / Jesse Michels ↗YouTube-hosted preview and player; not relicensedA real 1950s disc-shaped vehicle built by Avro Canada for the US military, with a central fan and a saucer planform. Nick Cook calls it “a bit of a dog of a machine”; Peter Levenda remembers a plastic model of it; Jesse Michels and Jason Jorjani trace it to engineer Henri Coandă and ask whether Project Y fronted something deeper.
Read the full account
The Avrocar is the corpus’s one saucer with a maker’s name. Jesse Michels describes footage of “an Avro car in 1961 in an NASA wind tunnel” and says the programme “went nowhere”; Nick Cook agrees that “It really was a bit of a dog of a machine”, hovering only a few feet before becoming unstable. Peter Levenda says that “when I was a kid in the in the 19 late 1950s” you could buy “a plastic model of the Avro” — the project was public enough to be a toy.
Speakers use it two ways. For some it explains 1950s saucer imagery: a real disc that looked like the newspapers’ flying saucers. For others the publicised Avrocar was the unclassified face of a larger effort. Michels and Levenda discuss whether “project Y was a front for something deeper”, and Michels and Jorjani trace the design to “Henry kwanda a Romani engineer” — Henri Coandă — who filed an early saucer patent and “worked with the Americans on the Avro car project”.
Existence is not contested: the vehicle was built, tested and survives in museums. What is contested is meaning — a failed VTOL experiment, a deliberate cover story, or a stepping-stone to classified craft. The record is banded documented on the object and contested on interpretation.
Reported characteristics
Every value is a report, not a specification.
| shape | Flat circular disc with a central intake and a ring of nozzles; two cockpit bubbles. |
|---|---|
| size | About 18 ft in diameter and 3 ft thick. |
| lights | None; bare metal skin. |
| sound | Loud turbojet whine at tests. |
| motion | Low hover in ground effect; unstable above a few feet; top speed around 35 mph. |
| era | Designed 1952–1958; flown 1959–1961; cancelled 1961. |
Explanations offered
Failed VTOL experiment with documented engineering flaws
Public cover for more advanced classified disc designs
Mentioned in the corpus
Passages this record cites, with the stamp of the block each quote sits in.
“We Have Antigravity UFOs!” (ft. Nick Cook) 17 September 2024
CIA Historian: “Aliens Are Controlling Human Timelines!” (ft. Peter Levenda) | EARLY RELEASE 21 November 2025
- 2:15:00 ▶ Jesse Michels
the Avro car project which was an attempt to build a flying saucer >> and it originally was in Canada but then it moved over to right pad as project Y
- 2:15:32 ▶ Jesse Michels
project Y was a front for something deeper but it was there were there are videos of them trying to like fly this flying saucer just had a you know radial gas turbine engine
- 2:15:32 ▶ Peter Levenda
when I was a kid in the in the 19 late 1950s, you could buy a plastic model of the Avro.
- 2:15:00 ▶ Jesse Michels
The CIA Scientist Who Built UFOs Before Bob Lazar (Townsend Brown Documentary) 22 February 2024
- 0:59:05 ▶ Jesse Michels
Henry kwanda a Romani engineer who had invented his own designs for a lenticular aerodyme Flying Saucer kowanda was a consultant on Project y out of right field
- 0:59:05 ▶ Jesse Michels
“I Found Hitler’s Secret UFO Program!” -Jason Jorjani 1 November 2025
- 0:53:48 ▶ Jason Jorjani
A guy named Henry Kanda who was Romanian, but eventually he was, you know, overtaken by by the Nazis and bec and started to work with them. And then and then and then he went over to Reich Pat and worked with uh the Americans on the Avro car project
- 0:53:48 ▶ Jason Jorjani
Named in 10 uploads (automatic name matching, 29 mentions)
- CIA Historian: “Aliens Are Controlling Human Timelines!” (ft. Peter Levenda) | EARLY… ×5
- NASA Doctor: “I Saw This UFO In A Secret Hangar!” (Ft. Greg Rogers) ×5
- NASA Director: “I Saw A UFO Hovering In THIS Secret Hangar” (Ft. Greg Rogers) | EARLY &… ×5
- CIA Historian: “Aliens Are Controlling Human Timelines!” (ft. Peter Levenda) ×4
- UFOs & JFK: He Knew Too Much! (Ft. Danny Sheehan) ×2
- “We Have Antigravity UFOs!” (ft. Nick Cook) ×2
- The CIA Scientist Who Built UFOs Before Bob Lazar (Townsend Brown Documentary) ×2
- UAPGerb: “The New Area51 Is HERE in Utah!” ×2
- Nazis & UFOs: The Third Reich’s Obsession With Alien Technology (ft. Jason Jorjani) ×1
- “I Found Hitler’s Secret UFO Program!” -Jason Jorjani ×1
On the map
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Open the full map filtered to this record.
Sources on this record
- 0:05:42 “We Have Antigravity UFOs!” (ft. Nick Cook) · Jesse Michels ▶
an Avro car in 1961 in an NASA wind tunnel. And I know the Avro car kind of nominally, at least, went nowhere
- 0:05:42 “We Have Antigravity UFOs!” (ft. Nick Cook) · Nick Cook ▶
It really was a bit of a dog of a machine
- 2:15:00 CIA Historian: “Aliens Are Controlling Human Timelines!” (ft. Peter Levenda) |… · Jesse Michels ▶
the Avro car project which was an attempt to build a flying saucer >> and it originally was in Canada but then it moved over to right pad as project Y
- 2:15:32 CIA Historian: “Aliens Are Controlling Human Timelines!” (ft. Peter Levenda) |… · Jesse Michels ▶
project Y was a front for something deeper but it was there were there are videos of them trying to like fly this flying saucer just had a you know radial gas turbine engine
- 2:15:32 CIA Historian: “Aliens Are Controlling Human Timelines!” (ft. Peter Levenda) |… · Peter Levenda ▶
when I was a kid in the in the 19 late 1950s, you could buy a plastic model of the Avro.
- 0:59:05 The CIA Scientist Who Built UFOs Before Bob Lazar (Townsend Brown Documentary) · Jesse Michels ▶
Henry kwanda a Romani engineer who had invented his own designs for a lenticular aerodyme Flying Saucer kowanda was a consultant on Project y out of right field
- 0:53:48 “I Found Hitler’s Secret UFO Program!” -Jason Jorjani · Jason Jorjani ▶
A guy named Henry Kanda who was Romanian, but eventually he was, you know, overtaken by by the Nazis and bec and started to work with them. And then and then and then he went over to Reich Pat and worked with uh the Americans on the Avro car project
Built from graph nodes N-CRAFT-0051.