The project was suspended by the commencement of hostilities, but was revived in 1940 when the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM - "Reich Aviation Ministry") delivered the DFS with a requirement for a rocket-powered reconnaissance aircraft.

[citation needed] The advantages of a sailplane for aerial reconnaissance included its silence, its low speed relative to the ground (allowing for higher-quality photography), and its potential ability to loiter above an area of interest.

The project gave the DFS the opportunity to investigate two additional areas that it was interested in: the effects of wing sweep on sailplane design, and supersonic flight.

[citation needed] The DFS 228 was designed by Felix Kracht and a first prototype was completed in March 1944; it was undergoing gliding tests by that August, carried aloft piggyback and strut-mounted atop a Dornier Do 217.

[1] Forty flights were made with the prototypes, and installation of a rocket was to have taken place in February 1945, but the project fell by the wayside as the war situation became more desperate.