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 He 162 Volksjäger. The new aircraft was intended to have superior performance, in order to deal with high-altitude threats such as the B-29 Superfortress.

Messerschmitt designed a number of different high-altitude fighter projects which were submitted in February 1945. One of the designs, the Me P.1110 Ente (Duck), had a 40° wing sweep and annular air intakes in front of the wing root (akin to the North American YF-93), feeding a single Heinkel HeS 011A jet engine; the annular intakes, while flowing four percent less air, would suffer fifteen percent less drag than a single nose intake.[1] The aircraft was to be armed with three MK 108 cannon in the nose, plus perhaps two more in the 40°-swept wings.[2] There was a proposed butterfly tail variant, as well.[3] Projected maximum speed was 1,015 km/h (631 mph; 548 kn).[4]

The project would be soon dropped in favor of the more conventional other two, but in the end the Junkers EF 128 was chosen as the official winner of the competition and none of the Messerschmitt designs reached the prototype stage.[5] The designs brought forward by other German aircraft makers were the Heinkel P.1078,[6] the Focke-Wul f Ta 183 and the Blohm & Voss P 212.

A development, the P.1111, with wing root intakes to overcome the power losses[7] (a concept later adopted by the Republic F-105 Thunderchief) and 45° sweep, was prepared in January 1945, but never built.[8]