"The Nazi party had a secret flying disc already off of the drawing board and flying and it was capable of 1200 miles an hour. Vertical take-off, 90ƒ changes, much like a helicopter, and of course was far superior to anything the Allies powers had at that time. Secondly they also had another craft about to be up and going it was capable of doing 2500 miles per hours, which was double the original. Not only did it have the characteristics of the original craft, but it also had a laser weapon aboard it which capable of penetrating four inches of armour. Needless to say that really spooked the allied forces into making a redemptive attempt against Von Braun and bringing him … into a state of capitulation." (6)
Bulgarian Physicist Vladimir Terziski also wrote the following about these mystery craft. "According to Renato Vesco … Germany was sharing a great deal of the advances in weaponry with their allies the Italians during the war. At the Fiat experimental facility at Lake La Garda, a facility that fittingly bore the name of Air Marshall Hermann Goering, the Italians were experimenting with numerous advanced weapons, rockets and airplanes, created in Germany. In a similar fashion, the Germans kept a close contact with the Japanese military establishment and were supplying it with many advanced weapons. I have discovered for example a photo of a copy of the manned version of the V-1 - the Reichenberg - produced in Japan by Mitsubishi. The best fighter in the world, the push-pull twin propeller Dornier-335 was duplicated at the Kawashima works."This appears to be the extent of information that can be verified to a degree. However there is much more that `fits' within the known facts, but cannot be verified independently and therefore may well be fiction portrayed as fact. That said, much of the following information does flow with the themes explored further in the subsequent chapters of this book.Claims have also been made that Nazi Occult societies were involved in the development of such unconventional saucer craft. One such, the `Vril Society' was allegedly `channelling' messages from an alien civilisation in the Aldebaran solar system and planned to develop a craft that could make physical contact with the civilisation there. This may or may not be true; but there was certainly a high level of occult activity in mid-Europe at that time, and no doubt organisations did exist then with unconventional beliefs just as they do today. Whatever the truth of this, by 1934 the Vril Society had apparently developed its first UFO shaped aircraft, known as the Vril 1, which was propelled by an anti-gravity effect. (This was the same year as Viktor Schauberger discussed his flying disk ideas with Hitler.)
The society then allegedly went on to develop this craft, and later - and again allegedly - produced the RFC-2. This craft was apparently 16 feet long and fitted with an improved propulsion system and for the first time, magnetic impulse steering. Interestingly, when in flight, it reportedly produced colour effects normally associated with UFOs.Yet the RFC-2 was largely ignored with only the SS showing an interest in the Vril Society's work. An inner organisation of the SS then set up its own SSE-4 department to develop new alternative technologies to ensure Germany no longer had to be dependent on external sources of energy and it began work on its own version of the RFC or Vril.
By 1939 the SS had produced the RFC-5, which it called the Haunebu 1. In August 1939 the machine made its maiden flight and proved its viability, being more than 65 foot in diameter and offering considerable storage space. By the end of 1940 the RFC-2 (Haunebu II) had entered service as a reconnaissance aircraft and there is certainly photographic evidence to support this, for example an RFC-2 was photographed near Antarctica in 1940 (see next chapter.) It should be noted that there is scant corroborative and historically verifiable information to support these claims, however the design of the Haunebu II should be noted for future reference.Whatever their exact nature, it appears confirmed that a range of alternative design aircraft were by now either on the drawing board, hovering above the ground, or crashing into it. Some of these designs proved viable and successes were
being reported. On 17th April 1945 Miethe was able to advise Hitler that the V-7 had been tested in the skies above the Baltic. This particular craft was a supersonic helicopter fitted with 12 BMW Turbo aggregate engines. During its first test it reached an altitude of 78000feet and then 80000 feet on its second test. Miethe reported that the new craft could be powered by unconventional energy sources in principle. However these new technologies were coming on-line too late, for the war was already being lost and won.Within months the Allies and Russians had poured into central Europe, Hitler was dead and the war apparently over.And as soon as the war was over, ghost rockets started appearing over Scandinavia and within two years `flying saucers' were being reported wholesale over mainland United States.It was no co-incidence.
After the end of the war in 1945, Russian and American intelligence teams began a hunt to track down this perceived military and scientific booty of the advanced German technology. Following the discovery of particle/laser beam weaponry in German military bases, the US War Department decided that the US must not only control this technology, but also the scientists who had helped develop it "to ensure that [America] takes full advantage of those significant developments which are deemed vital to our national security." It therefore launched a project to bring these personnel to the United States. Whilst initially publicised the nature, extent and secrecy of the project, later termed `Operation Paperclip' remained classified until 1973.The thinking behind Paperclip was exemplified in a letter Major General Hugh Knerr, Deputy Commanding General for Administration of US Strategic Forces in Europe, wrote to Lieutenant General Carl Spatz in March 1945: "Occupation of German scientific and industrial establishments has revealed the fact that we have been alarmingly backward in many fields of research, if we do not take this opportunity to seize apparatus and the brains that developed it and put this combination back to work promptly, we will remain several years behind while we attempt to cover a field already exploited." There was however, one slight problem: It was illegal, for US law explicitly prohibited Nazi officials from immigrating to America, and as many as three-quarters of the scientists in question were allegedly committed Nazis. (Indeed as at least 1600 scientists and their dependants were taken to America under Operation Paperclip and its successor projects, it could hardly avoid including Nazis.)
However President Truman decided that the national interest was paramount and that America needed the German scientists to work on America's behalf. In fairness to Truman, he expressly ordered that anyone found to "have been a member of the Nazi party and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazism or militarism" must be excluded from the operation.Operation Paperclip was carried out by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) and had two aims: Firstly, to exploit German Scientists for American research by rounding up Nazi scientists and taking them to America. and, secondly, to deny these intellectual resources to the Soviet Union (7). (The name `Operation Paperclip' derived from the fact that those individuals selected to go to the United States were distinguished by paperclips on their files joining their scientific papers with regular immigration forms.(8)) The Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) then conducted background investigations on the identified scientists, and in February 1947 the Director of the JIOA, Navy Captain Bosquet Wev, submitted the first set of dossiers to the State and Justice Departments for review.These dossiers, though, proved to be damning, with Samuel Klaus, the State Department's representative on the JOIA Board claiming that all the scientists in the first batch were `ardent Nazis'. The visa requests were consequently denied. (Wev already knew those proposed had Nazi backgrounds this for in a memo dated 27th April 1948 to the Pentagon's Director of Intelligence, he wrote "Security investigations conducted by the military have disclosed the fact that the majority of German scientists were members of either the Nazi Party or one or more of its affiliates." (9) Wev was furious and he fired off a memo to the State Department in March 1948 warning that "the best interests of the United States have been subjugated to the efforts expended in `beating a dead Nazi horse'" (10).
The following month, 27th April 1948, Wev again wrote to his superiors concerned about the delays in approving the German scientists. He stated "In light of the situation existing in Europe today, it is conceivable that continued delay and opposition to the immigration of these scientists could result in their eventually falling into then hands of the Russians who would then gain the valuable information and ability possessed by these men. Such an eventuality could have a most serious and adverse effect on the national Security of the United States." (11) By this time the Nazi Intelligence leader, Reinhard Gehlen had met with the future CIA Director (26th February 1953 - 29th November 1961), Allen Dulles (right), and they had hit it off. Gehlen was a master spy for the Nazis and had infiltrated Russia with his vast intelligence network. (In 1942 the future CIA Director Dulles had moved to Bern, Switzerland, as Head of Office of Strategic Services to negotiate with some Nazi leaders who were already convinced they were going to lose WWII and wanted a deal with the US about a possible future war with the USSR.) Dulles was not above pursuing his own agenda with the Nazis, for he had worked with many of them before the war; as a prominent New York lawyer (1926-1942 and again from 1946 to 1950) When Gehlen surrendered to the US, he was taken to Fort Hunt, Virginia, where he and the US Army reached an agreement: his intelligence unit would work for and be funded by the US until a new German Government came into power. In the meantime, should he find a conflict between the interests of Germany and the US, he could consider German interests first (12). For almost ten years the `Gehlen Org' as it became to be known, operated safely within the CIA and was virtually the CIA's only source of intelligence on Eastern Europe. Then in 1955 it evolved into the BND (the German equivalent of the CIA) and continued to co-operate with its US counterparts.The scientists immigration problem was then side-stepped with the dossiers being `cleansed' of incriminating evidence and, as promised, Allen Dulles delivered Gehlen Org, the Nazi Intelligence Unit, to the CIA, which later opened many umbrella projects based on earlier Nazi research.Operation Paperclip also had a part to play in events at Maury Island. Washington State, itself, was the location of several aerospace defence contractors, which were benefiting from the then secret Paperclip Operation. It was also the location of sightings in 1947 of a number of aircraft that looked suspiciously like some that had been seen on Nazi drawing boards and in the skies above Europe towards the end of the war.The officers who attended the Maury Island incident, Davidson and Brown belonged to G-2: It was G-2's responsibility to ensure Operation Paperclip was kept as a covert activity and provide the necessary security to achieve this. Another function of G-2 was the surveillance of anyone whose activities put Paperclip security at risk. That they were on their way to Wright-Patterson AFB with the objects Crisman had given them, was entirely logical - Wright Patterson (then Wright-Field) was the major research and development centre where many of the Nazi scientists had been taken to continue their work.One of the most prominent of the Paperclip physicians was Hubertus Strughold, later known as the `father of space medicine' and after whom the Aeromedical Library at the USAF School of Aerospace medicine was named in 1977. His April 1947 intelligence report stated "[H]is successful career under Hitler would seem to indicate that he must be in full accord with Hitler." However he was admitted under Operation Paperclip on the grounds that he was "not an ardent Nazi." (13)Other Nazis included Klaus Barbie, the so-called `Butcher of Lyon', Otto von Bolschwing, infamous for his holocaust activities and the SS Colonel, Otto Skorzeny (14). However the cleansing of the files did not always stand up to the scrutiny of time. In 1984, Arthur Rudolph, who, in 1969 had been awarded NASA's Distinguished Service Award, left the country rather than face charges as a Nazi war criminal.
Another former alleged Nazi was Wernher Von Braun. Born on 23rd March 1912, von Braun became one of the world's first and foremost rocket engineers and a leading authority on space travel. Born the son of Prussian aristocrats Baron Magnus and Baroness Emmy von Braun, the young Wernher read Hermann Oberth's `By Rocket into Planetary
Space' (De Rakete zu den Planetenaumen), and his new interest led him to later enrol at the Berlin Institute of Technology in 1930. In 1932 he received his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and he was then offered a grant to conduct and develop scientific investigations on liquid-fuelled rocket engines (15). Von Braun's rocket experiments were tested at the Kummersdorf Proving Grounds, sixty miles south of Berlin, between 1932 and 1937.Kummersdorf was the launch site of two German V-2 rockets in 1934 (16). After their launch, Braun started work on a jet-assisted take off vehicle for heavy bombers and all-rocket fighters (17) however Kummersdorf was too small for this task, and so von Braun relocated to Peenemunde on the Baltic Coast where he became director from 1937-1945. This site was then equipped with laboratories and industrial facilities to facilitate the development, production and testing of the German V-1 (Vengeance Weapon 1) and V-2, (Vengeance Weapon 2) rockets (18). It was this V-2 rocket that inflicted such heavy damage on England during the war. Von Braun was not a reluctant Nazi. Indeed, "he joined the National Socialist Aviation Corps, getting his pilot's license in 1933, the DAF trade organisation, a hunting organisation associated with the Nazis, the air raid protection investigation, and the SS horseback riding school (19)." Von Braun's own admissions in US Army records further show that he was a former SS Major who frequently visited the underground rocket factory where 25,000 prisoners from the concentration camp Dora had died. According to the former executive producer of CNN's investigative unit, Linda Hunt, von Braun attended a meeting that discussed rounding up of citizens off the streets of France to be taken to Dora.As the war entered its dying throws in 1945, von Braun ordered two men to find an abandoned mine in the Harz Mountains to hide data about the V-2s. Several large boxes were then placed in a discovered cave and von Braun sent his younger brother Magnus off on a bicycle he had borrowed from a local innkeeper to look for Allies to whom they could surrender. Von Braun and his scientific staff duly surrendered to the US Army whilst most of the production engineers were taken prisoner by the Soviets (20). After entering America as part of Project Paperclip, on a pay of $6 a day plus lodging in a military installation, Braun worked on guided missiles for the US Army. He returned to Bavaria in 1948 to marry his second cousin and he later served as Technical Director then later Chief of the Guided Missile Development Division of Redstone Arsenal from 1950 to 1956 whilst living in Huntsville, Alabama (21). Von Braun was later appointed Director of Development Operations Division of the Army Missile Agency, which developed the Jupiter-C rocket that was to successfully launch the western's hemisphere's first satellite, `Explorer-I' on 31st January 1958, auguring the birth of the American Space Programme (22). Two years later von Braun and his team were transferred to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Centre where he served as Director from July 1960 to February 1970. During the 1950s and 60s he achieved an almost celebrity status as one of Walt Disney's experts on the `World of Tomorrow'. In 1970 he became NASA's associate administrator and without him, it is unlikely that the organisation would ever have put man on the Moon.
Over a course of twenty years, von Braun received approximately 25 honorary degrees and he accepted many other awards and medals, presented to him from small cities, to NASA and even the President. (Right - Von Braun with President Kennedy.)His dossier was apparently rewritten so he didn't appear an enthusiastic (alleged) Nazi and he attempted to play down his real Nazi involvement by claiming "In 1939 [sic] I was officially demanded to join the National Socialist Party. At this time I was already Technical Director at Peenemünde … The technical work had … attracted attention at higher and higher levels. Thus, my refusal to join the party would have meant that I would have to abandon the work of my life. My membership in the party did not include any political activity (23)." However, von Braun's claim was simply untrue, for other scientists successfully used an old rule of the Weimar Republic that was still in use, forcing anyone in the military to abstain from political affiliation.
Wernher von Braun's mentor, Hermann Oberth also entered the US after the war under Operation Paperclip. Born 25th June 1894 in the Transylvanian town of Hermannstadt, Oberth is widely recognised as the founding father of modern rocketry, having published the paper in 1923 that was to so inspire von Braun, `Die Rakete zu den Planetenraumen' (By Rocket into Planetary Space.) This was followed by a longer version (429 pages) in 1929 that was internationally regarded as a work of tremendous scientific importance. When in his thirties, Oberth took Wernher von Braun (who affectionately referred to Oberth as his `teacher') on as an assistant, and they worked together at Peenemunde developing the V2 rocket. After entering the US at the end of the war along with the remaining 100 V2 rockets and components, Oberth again worked with Von Braun as the entire Peenemunde team was re-assembled at the White Sands Proving Grounds. Oberth and Von Braun continued their work and it was a later development of the same V2 rocket which had inflicted so much damage on Northern Europe that was eventually to propel the first American into space in the Saturn V rocket. Oberth retired three years after entering the US and returned to Germany where he headed us the Oberth Commission for the German Government into the UFO phenomenon.
