As part of the Emergency Fighter Program (German: Jägernotprogramm), at the beginning of 1945 a programme was launched by the OKL in order to replace the He 162 Spatz,[2] the winner of the earlier Volksjäger "people's fighter" design competition. The new aircraft was intended to have superior performance in order to deal with high altitude threats such as the B-29 Superfortress. To meet this requirement, power was to be a single Heinkel HeS 011 turbojet.