The Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet remains the only operational rocket-powered fighter in history, a machine that climbed to 39,000 feet in about three minutes and hit roughly 700 mph in 1944, a speed no turbojet officially matched until 1953. This episode traces its strange origins in Alexander Lippisch’s tailless gliders, the 1928 black-powder rocket experiments with Opel, and the classified Messerschmitt program that skipped propellers entirely and went straight to Helmuth Walter’s liquid rocket engine.

The Komet’s performance came at a horrific price. Its hypergolic propellants, T-Stoff and C-Stoff, exploded on contact and could dissolve human tissue, forcing fuel trucks to leave the tarmac one at a time and killing pilots like Josef Pohs in ground accidents. We cover the jettisoned takeoff dolly, the spine-crushing belly-skid landings, the seven and a half minutes of powered flight, the photocell-triggered Jagdfaust weapon, the dismal combat record, Eric Brown’s unofficial postwar flight, and Japan’s ill-fated J8M Shusui copy.

• How Lippisch’s swept-wing tailless glider designs became the airframe for a rocket interceptor
• Why T-Stoff and C-Stoff made fueling and flying the Komet a daily gamble with death
• The wheel-dolly takeoff, belly-skid landing, and farm-tractor recovery system
• Why 550 mph closing speeds and slow 30 mm cannon shells made bomber intercepts nearly impossible
• The Komet’s legacy as a manned surface-to-air missile and a warning about engineering outpacing human limits