As part of the Emergency Fighter Program (German: Jägernotprogramm), at the beginning of 1945 a programme was launched by the OKL for a new generation of fighter/interceptor aircraft in order to replace the winner of the Volksjäger fighter design competition, the He 162A Spatz.

The new aircraft was intended to have superior performance in order to deal with high altitude threats such as the B-29 Superfortress, but only had a 30-minute endurance figure.

The high-altitude fighter designs brought forward by other German aircraft makers were the Messerschmitt P.1110,[1] Focke-Wulf Ta 183 Huckebein, Blohm & Voss P 212 and the Junkers EF 128, the official winner of the competition.

All of the projected aircraft had the wing tips angled downwards and all of them would be powered by a single Heinkel HeS 011 turbojet.

A tailless asymmetric jet-powered interceptor with a short fuselage in which the air intake of the engine was located in the middle between two gondolas.