UFOs - the Soviet Connection

Cold War, linked to UFO reports

Anxiety and actual aerial activity related to the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union contributed significantly to the saucer flap of the late 1940s. In May 1945, Germany had surrendered; two months later, Japan was A-bombed into submission. Yet despite its military success and new superpower status, America felt more insecure than ever. Already it had been attacked once out of the blue, by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. Now there was the rising menace of communism and the fear that a Red tidal wave would steadily and relentlessly engulf the free countries of the world. At the end of the War, the United States alone had atomic weapons, but it was only a matter of time before the Soviets, too, would be as lethally equipped.

On March 4, 1947, less than four months before Kenneth Arnold's seminal sighting of a "flying saucer", the Soviets rejected a U.S. plan for atomic energy control. Eight days later, President Truman made clear his policy, the Truman Doctrine, that America should support any country that was trying to resist external threats to its freedom. Rapid military buildup on both sides of the Iron Curtain became a grim inevitability. Although America was strong, it would have to become much stronger and more vigilant. It would have to stockpile weapons, build up its defenses, and use its ingenuity to evolve ever more powerful forms of deterrent, in a desperate attempt to stay one step ahead of the Soviets. And all the time, every minute of every day, it would have to scan the skies, to watch for the moment when the enemy might stir and choose to unleash its weapons on the American homeland.

Nervousness and suspicion, stemming from the communist threat, began to spread among the general public and seep into the national consciousness. But these negative feelings were accompanied, strangely, by a great sense of optimism and confidence about what new technological breakthroughs might bring in other areas. The launch of the first artificial satellite and the dawn of the space age lay only ten years away in 1947. The possibilities of space travel and of finding life on other planets were being discussed widely from a practical standpoint for the first time. And America had suddenly taken a giant leap forward in this direction with the capture of scores of V2 missiles at the end of the War and the decision of the chief German rocket designer, Wernher von Braun, to bring his expertise to the U.S. Those sleek shapes on the launch-pads, it was clear, could be utilized for two very different ends: to reduce enemy cities to rubble or to take the human race on the first few steps of its journey to the stars. Even as the threat of nuclear Armageddon loomed and the Cold War went into deep freeze, people began to feel exhilarated by the prospect of exploring the new frontier of space. It made for a heady brew of conflicting emotions – one that was to boil over in the saucer frenzy of 1947.

Speculation as to what might lie behind the sudden outbreak of mysterious sightings abounded. Were they hoaxes or mistaken identifications of familiar objects? Or was the explanation more sinister: that the skies over America were being visited by foreign devices – from Moscow or Mars? At the start of the saucer scare, the U.S. military appears to have been as confused and nervous as was the public at large. It initiated the first of a series of investigations into the phenomenon, principally to determine if there was a significant threat to national security.

In September 1949, the news came that everyone had feared: the Soviet Union had exploded its first atomic bomb. It was time to raise the stakes. The following January, President Truman ordered the development of the hydrogen (fusion) bomb, a terrifying escalation of the arms race. Even as humans contemplated their first sorties to the edge of space, it appeared as if the world was poised on the brink of nuclear catastrophe. On June 25, 1950, Soviet-backed North Korea invaded its southern neighbor. Two days later, Truman ordered American troops to intervene and the Korean War began.

In many science fiction films of the early 'fifties the extraterrestrial invaders were a scantily-veiled substitute for the communist threat. And 1950 saw another alien-communist parallel come to the surface. In making his allegation of 57 "card-carrying communists" in the U.S. government, Senator Joseph McCarthy exploited the same fears and anxieties of the American people as Amazing's Raymond Palmer had done several years earlier. The Men in Black had been joined in the Senate and the Congress by Reds masquerading as true blue patriots. Two years later, the Republicans were in power and the fanatical McCarthy was in charge of the investigation into "un-American activities." If the public had been jittery before, it was driven to the verge of paranoia now thanks to McCarthy's increasingly vociferous and hysterical claims. The Communists, he insisted, were no longer just out there biding their time, mustering their forces; they had managed to infiltrate American society at all levels. No one, it seemed, could be trusted anymore. Neighbors, work-mates, even family members, despite every appearance of innocence, could secretly be operating for the other side. Again, science fiction served both to reflect and magnify a prevalent fear – that the ordinary-looking person standing next to you might not be what they seemed. Military interest in flying saucers quickly declined after the initial saucer flap, to be revived temporarily in 1952 following the "Washington Invasion". That same year a much lengthier but low key study of UFOs began under the auspices of Project Blue Book. Meanwhile the Cold War intensified, mistrust by both sides deepened, and the world stared, as never before, down the barrel of a thermonuclear gun.

On August 20, 1953, Moscow announced the explosion of the first Soviet H bomb. Three weeks earlier, the Korean War had ended in stalemate with 30,000 dead American troops. Back home, anti-Communist sentiment had never been higher and McCarthyism was at its peak. With suspicion rife that the Reds had tunneled their way into the very machinery of government and public life, it was not hard for ordinary people to be convinced by conspiracy theories about aliens. Rumors, initiated by the saucer faithful, began to intensify that the government and the military knew more about UFOs than they were prepared to admit. The public was hungry for anything that looked remotely like inside information on the subject of flying saucers, and some fanatics and charlatans, no doubt seeing the commercial possibilities, were happy to oblige – even if it meant peddling fake photos and stories that were manufactured from beginning to end.

Dawn
of the
Flying Saucers

Era

In addition, there was a subtle shift of public attitude in some quarters toward UFOs in the mid- to late-'fifties, a change of sentiment augured and perhaps partly inspired by the film The Day the Earth Stood Still. What if the aliens were not, after all, malevolent? What if they were actually here to warn us – capitalists and communists alike – of the dangers of meddling with forces over which we had no control? Central to the claim of early saucer contactees, like Adamski, was that the UFO inhabitants were both benign and wiser than ourselves. Far from wanting to take over our planet, they wished to help us, to forewarn us of what might happen unless we could defuse the nuclear time-bomb that had been set ticking. So, although the contactees may have been myth-mongering on a grand scale, they were also reflecting a mood of the times. They voiced what many people badly wanted to believe: first that flying saucers existed, and second that the creatures inside them offered a solution to the most pressing problem facing the world in the 1950s – the very real and imminent possibility of nuclear devastation.

Project Sign

The first official investigation, carried out by the U.S. Air Force, into reports of "flying disks." Project Sign (officially known as Special Project HT-304) was established on Dec. 30, 1947, in response to the massive wave of sightings that year and following recommendations by Lieutenant-General Nathan F. Twining, the head of Air Materiel Command (AMC). It was staffed by members of AMC's Technical Intelligence Division, based at Wright Field (now Wright-Patterson AFB), Dayton, Ohio, and began work on January. 22, 1948.

At the outset, the consensus among Sign researchers seems to have been that the flying disks (UFOs) were real and were most likely advanced Soviet aircraft, possibly developed from German prototypes captured at the end of World War II. During the 368 days of Sign's existence, however, opinion shifted to the extent that in a secret document entitled, Estimate of the Situation, which reached U.S.A.F. Chief of Staff General Hoyt S. Vandenburg in early October 1948, it was suggested that the extraterrestrial hypothesis offered the best solution to the mystery of the flying disks. Vandenburg rejected this conclusion, the document was declassified a few months later, and all copies of it were ordered burned. When the destruction order became public knowledge, in the mid-1950s, it served to inflame a growing belief that the government was orchestrating a cover-up as to the true nature of UFOs. Subsequent denials by the Air Force that the Estimate document had ever existed only further exacerbated the situation. Following Vandenburg's rejection of the extraterrestrial hypothesis, supporters of this view at Sign were gradually reassigned to other duties until skeptics became the majority. In its final report, Project Sign expressed itself guardedly on the extraterrestrial issue:

It is hard to believe that any technically accomplished race would come here, flaunt its ability in mysterious ways and then simply go away ... Only one motive can be assigned; that the spacemen are "feeling out" our defenses without wanting to be belligerent. If so, they must have been satisfied long ago that we can't catch them... Although visits from outer space are believed to be possible, they are believed to be very improbable. In particular, the actions attributed to the "flying objects" reported during 1947 and 1948 seem inconsistent with the requirements for space travel
.

On February 11, 1949, Project Sign gave way to its successor, Project Grudge.

Project Grudge

The second investigation into the problem of "flying disks" (or UFOs as they were soon to become known) carried out by the US Air Force, following the year-long Project Sign. Unlike its predecessor, Grudge was dismissive of the extraterrestrial hypothesis and sought instead to explain away sightings in terms of natural phenomena (such as the planet Venus) or illusions. To this end, it appointed an astronomical consultant, J. Allen Hynek. However, Grudge's attempts to demystify all the claimed aerial activity had the opposite effect to that intended. Supporters of the extraterrestrial hypothesis began to ask why, if the Air Force regarded UFOs as easily explicable, it had shown so much interest in them? In 1950, Donald Keyhoe began making accusations of a cover-up. Ironically, at the end of the same year, Grudge had been wound down to such an extent that the investigation team consisted of a single junior officer. The Air Force's interest in UFOs was briefly revived by a new wave of sightings in 1951-2, following which Grudge gave way to Project Blue Book.

J. Allen Hynek made a statement he would regret the rest of his life. He declared that a sighting made by Frank Mannor on March 16.1966 in Dexter, Michigan was probably "swamp gas." The comment made Hynek an instant celebrity. It did not, however, calm the calls for answers to the mystery, or for Hynek’s head. In fact, it made the calls for an investigation louder

Project Blue Book

The last, and by far the longest, of three studies conducted by the US Air Force into the phenomenon of unidentified flying objects. It was preceded by Project Sign (1948) and Project Grudge (1948-1952).

Initially headed by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, Project Blue Book was launched in March 1952 following a wave of sightings, including one by an Air Force pilot over Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, in September 1951. Over the next 17 years, Blue Book sifted through thousands of reports, but as the Air Force's interest in the phenomenon waned so did the number of staff working on the project. This often led to potentially interesting cases being inadequately researched and given facile explanations, with the result that proponents of the extraterrestrial hypothesis could claim that there was a cover-up in official circles. Meanwhile, Blue Book's astronomical consultant, J. Allen Hynek became increasingly convinced that a genuine and potentially important phenomenon lay behind some of the unresolved UFO reports. Following a wave of sightings in 1965 and a renewal of public interest, the Air Force set up the Ad Hoc Committee to review Project Blue Book in the fall of that year. The Committee recommended that research on the problem be strengthened by involving universities. In March 1966, sightings of UFOs in Michigan by more than 100 witnesses, and the failure of Blue Book to come up with a credible explanation, prompted the House Armed Services Committee to hold an open hearing on UFOs, out of which came a decision to implement the Ad Hoc Committee's recommendation. A tender was put out to academic institutions to sift through the annals of Project Blue Book and come up with some definitive conclusions. Eventually, the contract went to the University of Colorado under the supervision of Edward Condon. In January 1969, the Condon Report appeared and concluded that any further official UFO investigations would be unjustified. As a result, Project Blue Book was canceled.

On January 3, 1952, Brig. Gen. William M. Garland, Assistant for the Production of Intelligence, wrote a memorandum for General Samford with the title “(SECRET) Contemplated Action to Determine the Nature and Origin of the Phenomena Connected with the Reports of Unusual Flying Objects.” This memorandum begins as follows:

1. The continued reports of unusual flying objects requires positive action to determine the nature and origin of the phenomena. The action taken thus far has been designed to track down and evaluate reports from casual observers throughout the country.

Thus far, this action has produced results of doubtful value and the inconsistencies inherent in the nature of the reports has given neither positive nor negative proof of the claims.

2. It is logical to relate the reported sightings to the known development of aircraft, jet propulsion, rockets and range extension capabilities in Germany and the U.S.S.R. In this connection, it is to be noted that certain developments by the Germans, particularly the Horton wing, jet propulsion, and refuelling, combined with their extensive employment of V-1 and V-2 weapons during World War II, lend credence to the possibility that the flying objects may be of German and Russian origin. The developments mentioned above were contemplated and operational between 1941 and 1944 and subsequently fell into the hands of the Soviets at the end of the war. There is evidence that the Germans were working on these projects as far back as 1931 to 1938. Therefore, it may be assumed that the Germans had at least a 7 to 10 year lead over the United States in the development of rockets, jet engines and aircraft of the Horten-wing design. The Air Corps developed refuelling experimentally as early as 1928, but did not develop operational capability until 1948.

3. In view of the above facts and the persistent reports of unusual flying objects over parts of the United States, particularly the east and west coast and in the vicinity of the atomic energy production and testing facilities it is apparent that positive action must be taken to determine the nature of the objects and, if possible, their origin. Since it is a known fact that the Soviets did not detonate an atomic bomb prior to 1949, it is believed possible that the Soviets may have developed the German aircraft designs at an accelerated rate in order to have a suitable carrier for the delivery of weapons of mass destruction. In other words, the Soviet may have a carrier without the weapons required while we have relatively superior weapons with relatively inferior carriers available. If the Soviets should get the carrier and the weapon, combined with adequate defensive aircraft, they might surpass us technologically for a sufficient period of time to permit them to execute a decisive air campaign against the United States and her allies. The basic philosophy of the Soviets has been to surpass the western powers technologically and the Germans may have given them the opportunity.

4. In view of the facts outlined above it is considered mandatory that the Air Force take positive action at once to definitely determine the nature and, if possible, the origin of the reported unusual flying objects. The following action is now contemplated:

a) require ATIC to provide at least three teams to be matched up with an equal number of teams from ADC (Air Defense Command) for the purpose of taking radar scope photographs and visual photographs of the phenomena

b) select sites for these teams based on concentrations of already reported sightings over the United States (these areas are, generally, the Seattle area, the Albuquerque area and the New York-Philadelphia area) and

c) take the initial steps in this project during early January, 1952.

Flying Saucers and the CIA

In 1942 US President Roosevelt received a note about a sudden air-raid warning: on February 25 many flying objects appeared in the sky over Los Angeles, air defence forces decided that these were Japanese aircrafts and started shooting at them, but missed all the targets.

In 1947 the US press registered more than 850 (!) cases of UFO observations mentioning. Americans started accusing the Soviet Union of testing its new aircrafts over the US territory. The Soviet Vice Consulate had to make a statement that "the USSR respects the sovereignty of all the states, and no way would it use other counties territory as a testing ground. The Soviet Union has more than enough of its own territory for conducting scientific research.

7 Oct 46

US Correspondent Marquis Childs column "Washington Calling":

STOCKHOLM -- The most extraordinary phenomenon of post-war Europe is the report of flying bombs or rockets that are now beginning to come from widely separated areas. If they are real, then we have a small taste of what the next conflict will be like. If they are a mere illusion, then we have an example of the uneasy state of mind of the people who live on this troubled continent.

The rockets were first reported in numbers from Sweden, where you would assume that the cautious and even-tampered population, untouched by the direct tragedy of war would not be subject to random nightmares. Next were vague reports of fire-bombs over Athens at the time of the visit of the aircraft carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt. More recently, rockets have been reported over Italian cities and the Italian government has ordered an investigation.

I have talked to many people about the flying bombs. Some put the whole thing down to postwar hysteria. Others take a serious view of what they call, half in jest, "Russian hail."

One thoroughly reliable American observer with whom I talked saw flying bombs in broad daylight over this city. It was a cigar-shaped object which streaked across the sky with great speed and seemed on the point of shooting eastward. Careful Swedish observers have seen what they believed to be rockets.

Official opinion is that nothing is really known about the phenomenon, which has now more or less subsided. Recently, at any rate, very few reports of the bombs have been received. If the government has found any fragments, that fact is being kept a careful secret. The soundest opinion seems to me to be this: The Russians on the island of Peenemünde, off the German Coast in the Baltic, are probably experimenting with televised rockets. They must send them over a fairly long distance in order to make an adequate test. The United States strategic bombing survey determined that very little damage was done at Peenemünde.

From other sources I have learned that the Russians took Peenemünde almost intact. They also captured a number of German scientists who were active in promoting guided missile and rocket research.

The U. S. got its share of these scientists, many of whom are now in America. But the Soviets also shared in this strange spoil of war and their captured scientists are now said to be working for them. These experts may be teaching the Russians what they know and that may be the explanation for the mysterious fireworks.

Psychologists do not, of course, discount the remarkable suggestibility of the human mind in periods of great stress. Before the rise of Nazism with its sinister accompaniment of mass hypnosis, we like to think we were living in an age of reason and could not be touched by spells and hysteria that formerly swept whole populations. In the year 1000, large numbers of Europeans became convinced that the world was ending and strange forms of mass hysteria occurred throughout the continent.

Perhaps the "Russian hail" was only a stray meteor or two magnified by tragic fears that feed on the mysteries of science. How many years must pass before we can hope to see the peoples of the world back to anything like normal?

1 Oct 47
"Intelligence Digest," a privately produced political journal published by British conservative figure Kenneth DeCourcy, reveals information that saucers are "spent cartridges" of Soviet rockets being tested in Baltic. Flight of rockets is "maintained by the firing of a series of successive timed charges. The explosion of each propels the missile forward at an increasing speed."

1 Jul 46 - North American Aircraft issues report "A Preliminary Study on the Use of Nuclear Power In Rocket Missiles" for MX-770/NA-704 supersonic cruise missile program (NASA Historical Databook, Vol II)

Time Magazine
August 26, 1946

Celestial Phenomena

A Swedish astronomer, gazing through his telescope one quiet night last week, saw a luminous something—no bigger than a glowworm—appear on the horizon. Within ten seconds it had grown into a 90-ft.-long, torpedolike missile whose fiery tail spewed blue and green smoke. Said the astronomer: "I had visions of doomsday."

All of Sweden was having similar visions. Individual missiles had been streaking over the country since May, but now they were coming in swarms. Last week, Stockholm's Aftonbladet reported that an Army plane collided with one of the "things." Three flyers were killed. Two Swedes boating on a lake barely missed being sunk by one "thing."

Officially, military authorities declared that there was no conclusive proof that the "frequent celestial phenomena" were caused by a foreign power; they suggested tactfully that most of the missiles, after cruising in a wide semicircle over Sweden, proceeded toward Russia. Unofficial Swedes simply called the mystery missiles "Russian V-4s."

What were the Russians up to? Observers ventured three guesses: 1) the Russians were testing rocket equipment left by the Germans at Peenemünde, the now Russian-occupied V-bomb launching site (110 miles from Sweden); 2) they were trying to impress the world; 3) they were underlining, perhaps coincidentally, their suggestion that Stockholm give Moscow a one billion kronor ($278,500,000) credit, more than Sweden can afford without disrupting her economy.

Associated Press
August 2, 1950

'Flying Saucers' pop up in Korea and over Tokyo

SEOUL, Aug 2 (AP) - Those "flying saucers" have popped up in Korea and Japan.

A Canadian destroyer reported sighting two such objects July 10 and recorded them on its radar, it was learned today. A navy report placed the objects two miles high and seven miles away.

A second report dismissed the radar find as the planet Jupiter.

One officer commented, however: "Jupiter doesn't come in pairs and it is several million miles out of range of our radar."

In Tokyo Kosuke Miyazaki of the central meteorological observatory said he saw a greenish-white thing with a tail flying thru the sky last night. Makoto Sakai, a university student, saw it, too. He said it was bluish-white and split into halves before disappearing. Another witness said it was orange-white. Dr. Hideo Hirose of the Tokyo astronomical observatory said it must have been a meteor.

New York Times
February 20, 1952

'Disks' Seen in Korea

Air Force Studies Fliers' Reports of Hurtling Orange Globes

WASHINGTON, Feb. 19 (AP) - The latest version of the five-year-old flying saucers - strange-looking orange globes over Korea - is being looked into by the Air Force.

Bomber crewmen have reported seeing globe-shaped objects of an orange color on flights over Korea on the nights of Jan. 29 and 30. An Air Force spokesman said today that the incidents were being investigated.

Bomber crewmen, who reported seeing the globes over the Wonsan area in Eastern Korea and the Sunchon area in west central Korea, said the objects were about three feet in diameter and had remained with a B-29 bomber over Wonsan for about five minutes and with a B-29 over Sunchon for about one minute.

DID RUSSIA BUILT A FLEET OF FLYING SAUCERS AFTER THE WAR?

A long article on what is going on in the skies, probably unknown to anyone except intelligence agents, privy to the latest space technology, has been written by a former US govt. insider calling himself "One who knows". These articles are called Fire From The Sky.

In summary these articles claim that the Russians, starting from about 1977, began to produce a flying disk initially called 'cosmos-interceptor' then later called Cosmo spheres. By 1980/81 they'd built 7 super heavy Cosmo spheres called jumbos, even bigger than the Zeppelins of the 1930's.

They could carry 50 tons. It was actually Russia's space shuttle and powerful electromagnetic propulsion could take them all the way to orbital speed.

In the book UFO's - Secret Nazi Weapon by Mattern and Fredrich the authors describe the designs of the anti-gravity flying disks the Nazis manufactured. 2 Germans wrote this originally in the 50's and finally published it in Canada about 1966. In summary, it shows pictures of the original Nazi engineering plans for wingless anti-gravity craft. In April 1945 Germany had over 130 different types of missiles and rockets. After the war, early in the morning of 21 and 22 October 1946, in Soviet occupied Germany, Russians hauled out of their beds approx. 275,000 German scientists and technicians and their families and even included babies. They took them to Russia supposedly for 5 years.

Protests were ignored or beaten down. German factories were awaiting them, dismantled and crated. They worked around the clock for 3 bowls of borscht soup and a slice of dark bread daily. They worked in 40 different locations all over Russia. This included aircraft and jet engineers. After the 5-year term had been served, during which many died or were condemned to slave labor camps for life, the scientists were kept for another 2-3 years in quarantine, to forget the projects they worked on. They were not even allowed pencils or papers. They brought Russia into the 20th century and later the space age.

NAZIS IN ANTARCTICA

Mattern and Fredrich’s book also covers in great detail the secret German Antarctic activity. Germans had already developed technology from a spaceship that crashed in Germany in about 1939, and they developed their own anti-gravity flying disks in about 1941. (Some have also said that Pleiadians wishing to help Germany deliberately crashed it.) Germany had UFO's as early as 1940. Plans of prototype models of Victor Schauberger, inventor of the implosion motor, were found in Germany after the war. Photos of UFO's seen after the war, showed they were the same models as the ones drawn in the plans. In 1943 they were obviously working well enough and the entire German UFO plant was dismantled and shipped by freight train to the Shangri-la that they'd already built in Antarctica for Hitler. The Germans staked out Antarctica in 1937-38. Over 11,000 photos were taken of it. More land than Germany itself was claimed and Swastika flags were dropped every 20 km. Warm lakes were found by the expedition. Hitler's escape was discovered after the war. Washington, Moscow and London, in fact 8 countries then decided to go to Antarctica. 4,000 elite US navy troops and 13 ships under Admiral Byrd went there in Dec 1946. Admiral Byrd's plane instruments went haywire, when he located the secret Nazi base. He declared that in case of a new war flying objects that could fly from pole to pole at incredible speeds would attack US.

NAZI SCIENTISTS UP FOR GRABS

UFOs appeared over Germany in 1943 and 1944. Berlin headquarters issued telexes that they were 'theirs'. The allies found that after the war about 250,000 Germans had also inexplicably vanished. This took into account casualties and deaths from all causes and this number still remains constant. (The Germans kept meticulous records of people, including the number of Jews killed.) The allies could not find Germany’s flying disk research scientists and test pilots after the war. The allies began to suspect and accuse each other of having captured the last secret. They'd agreed to divide 'the loot' (i.e. German patents) honestly. Each ally was to receive microfilm of every German patent and secret document, regardless of who had captured him or her. They took 30 railroad cars full of German patents. With the advancing allied armies, came teams of scientifically trained specialists whose job was to ensure the German installations, labs and factories weren't destroyed. The Americans captured many prize 'catch' scientists, much to the anger of the British, French and Russians. The great American 'brain robbery' was so mind boggling that a special dictionary of technical jargon of the aircraft industry, containing over 75,000 separate terms had to be created by the captured Germans in US. Top-flight scientists were 'invited' to work in US for $2.20 a day, while kept as prisoners. In order to get cooperation their diets were 'supplemented'. They were offered citizenship as an inducement or a war crimes trial if they didn't produce.

Klaus Habermohl, a BMW engineer who worked as part of the Flugzeug Special Projects Group in Prague, was captured by the Russians in Prague on or about 11th May 1945. He undoubtedly helped the construction of a Soviet disc – there are rumors of plans for a Soviet low aspect aircraft that would have used nuclear propulsion.

Senator Russell and his party saw a flying disc during a trip to the USSR in 1955 and this most credible sighting was swept under the carpet by the same military intelligence personnel with knowledge both of unconventional US and Soviet aircraft. There is little doubt whether Russell and his party saw the disc by accident.

A GERMAN CONQUERS GRAVITY FOR RUSSIA

In Evil Agenda of the Secret Government by Tim Swartz, there is another account of the creation of Russian flying saucers, and it has a very intriguing story. In 1954 a low circulation English-language German magazine, Frankfurter Illustrierte, ran a series of articles claiming that flying saucers were developed and produced in the Soviet Union during WW2. The magazine gave detailed accounts of a top secret US document of 1944. An intelligence organization had dispatched 16 agents to a foreign country. 14 were lost on duty but a 15th made it back to reveal what unbelievable things were happening. Another agent, who returned code named PKR, corroborated this and he had been working as a scientist's assistant in a Soviet laboratory. PKR told of a German scientist Horst Pinkel, who in 1928 went to Russia in an exchange program of German and Russian officers. He was the only officer who failed to return a year later. Pinkel had been a follower of Walter Lewetzow who developed some theories on gravity, and its interaction with light and energy, but received some ridicule from the German scientific community.

STRANGE NEW RAYS

Pinkel advanced Lewetzow's theory, that the entire universe is filled with rays whose particles or waves, traveling in all directions, cause a neutral and balancing effect on all matter. If they were controlled, they would be a source of power, equaling perpetual motion. In 1930 outside Moscow, Pinkel furnished with all necessary materials available to him, did research. By 1941 he had finished developing instrumentation for measuring the strange new rays. He discovered that the rays belonged to a new category, whose single rays change with terrific speed from the character of ordinary waves into the clear character of corpuscles. He found that "the rhythm of change of the oscillation-frequency remained parallel".

PKR said in 1942 that Pinkel, with a group of Russian scientists and inventors moved to the south Urals. However, time ran out to develop a powerful new weapon against the Germans. At that time 5 flying saucers had been constructed in the Soviet Union. Air Marshal Konstantin Wershinin in 1948 urged his scientists to complete more of the craft which had terrific speeds and a potential sphere of action the same as the "radius of the universe".

In 1949 Pravda quoted one of Russia's most famous aeronautical engineers "If ever an aircraft from earth lands on one of the heavenly bodies, it will be Soviet". PKR brought back to the US, the exact formula for an alloy, which Pinkel had developed for use in fabricating a craft, utilizing the powerful new rays and the precise data for harnessing the fantastic ray that Pinkel had discovered. The German magazine concluded its series by reporting that in 1952, the Russians were at work on a "Space Island" that would allow a stop-over for space vehicles flying from earth to "other particles in the universe".

Soviet Union planned to build command posts on the Moon

09/21/2004

The project was shut down due to its costs

During the Cold War years, the Soviet government seriously considered an issue of building settlements on the Moon. Those strategic settlements would probably give a very important advantage in the standoff between the two super powers. Soviet military officials believed that the Moon would be a perfect command post, which would not be possible to attack with an A-bombs, the Novaya Gazeta wrote about the little-known 30-year-old project of the USSR.

Alexander Yegorov, deputy general director of one of construction bureaus said that he personally worked on the projects of human settlements on the Moon. "Since the Moon has no atmosphere, a nuclear blast would not be efficient there. A blast is a wave of compression, which can be transmitted in the air or in another environment. An explosion on the moon would simply be a bright flash of light and possibly, radiation," the scientist said. Soviet defense officials surmised that the Moon would be a perfect command post, which would be impossible to attack from Earth. As it turned out later, the US government had the same plans as far as settlements on the Moon were concerned. The two countries kept their projects in absolute secrecy.

According to the Soviet project, two spacecrafts were supposed to be launched to the Moon to build human settlements there. First settlers would live on the Moon in special rovers. Cosmonauts would then build the central building, which would provide most comfortable living conditions to humans, the Novaya Gazeta wrote. The first crew would be of four cosmonauts. Four other people were supposed to join them later, and the group would finally count 12 people. Each group of four men would work on the Moon for 12 months. Several life-support systems would be self-contained: water purification, food production, for instance. Scientists even worked on a special lunar greenhouse.

It would take hundreds of billions of dollars to build a lunar army base. The US Apollo program was a $34 billion project, whereas the project of lunar settlements would cost a lot more. To crown it all, the lunar town would require continuing investments too.

Dmitry Ustinov, then Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, decided to shut down the project gradually. Ustnov believed that the USA, as a wealthier state, would win the moon race, and the Soviet Union would not be able to afford such an expensive endeavor.

However, the works continued. Specialists found a place with the moon-looking landscape on the outskirts of Tashkent, where they organized a range ground to test lunar base modules.

A group of students from the Institute of Architecture defended diplomas on the architecture of lunar constructions. Soviet designers suggested each cosmonaut should have his own booth, including a booth at the orbital station during a long-distance flight. Every room of the moon station would be multifunctional.

29 Dec 48 - Washington, DC. (AP) The United States, leading in the world weapon race, is now studying the possibility of creating a military outpost hanging like a tiny "moon" far up in the skies. Disclosures of a fantastic "earth satellite vehicle program" was tucked away cryptically tonight in an annual report by realistic Secretary of Defense Forrestal. One theory, completely unofficial, is that a man-made satellite platform might be established about nine-tenths of the distance to the moon, beyond the earth's gravity pull. The moon is about 240,000 miles away. Aside from the name of the project, there was no further clue, thus leaving speculation that the program may be related to studies made by the German rocket experts during the war. Those studies were directed at the idea of directing a missile or aircraft which, upon reaching the outer edge of the world's gravitational pull, would become a man-created satellite. For military purposes the satellite would be a platform from which to launch or guide rocket attack on any part of the world. . . . A man-made satellite hanging near the moon would need not be manned at first, but merely equipped with automatic instruments . . . From an altitude of 200,000 miles, the satellite would have the whole earth in its bomb sight.

1949 painting by Frank Tinsley of the infamous "Military Space Platform" proposed by Secretary of Defense James Forrestal in the December 1948 military budget

America's
Nuclear Flying Saucer

MECHANIX ILLUSTRATED
April 1949

Soviet UFO Secrets

The Summer 1994 issue of Flying Saucer Review contains an article entitled "Soviet UFO Secrets", by Bryan Gresh. The article also appeared in the MUFON UFO Journal for October 1993. Brian Gresh is stated as being the Senior Vice-President of Altamira Communications Group and an associate of George Knapp, described as a renowned UFO researcher. The article details information obtained by both men during a 10-day visit to Russia in March 1993. The entire article is too lengthy to reproduce, however, the following extracts contain the main substance of the article:

The trip to Russia took seven months to set up and was arranged by our man in Moscow, Nikolai Kapranov. Kapranov is a Russian physicist who served as Security Advisor to the Soviet Parliament. Our goal was to talk, face to face, with those who were in the know... One of the bigger gems was Boris Sokolov, a retired Russian colonel from a distinguished military family. Sokolov ran an unprecedented study, the likes of which, he is undoubtedly correct in saying, will never be repeated. "For 10 years," Sokolov says, "the entire Soviet Union became one gigantic UFO listening post." The year was 1980.

"We had 40 cases where our pilots encountered UFOs," said Sokolov. "Initially, they were commanded to chase, then shoot, the UFO. But when our pilots would engage, the UFO would speed up. The pilot would give chase, lose control and crash." That happened three times. Twice, the pilots died. "After that," Sokolov said, "the pilots received another order: When they see a UFO they should change course - and get out." With the exception of the original "engage" order, Sokolov says the Soviets adapted a passive observation stance - if they saw a UFO, fine. The Soviet attitude was unlike the Americans, Sokolov says, who had set up some 30 radar stations to track UFOs. October 5, 1983 is a date Sokolov will long remember. He received an order from his commander to leave immediately for an ICBM base in the Ukraine. The reason for the urgency? A report from the base commander to the Chief of the General Staff that the day before, from 4 until 8 that evening, a UFO had been observed near the base. During that time, the lights had lit up on the base control panel - the launch codes for the ICBMs had, mysteriously, been enabled.

"They received an order to prepare the launch of the ICBMs," said Sokolov. "The chief of the General Staff wasted no time in sending in our UFO experts." Fortunately, no missiles were launched. Rimili Avramenko's world is somewhat unique. He is one of the chief scientists working on Russia's version of SDI. Avramenko has been entrusted with the highest possible clearances. We began our interview of this highly-regarded scientist with what we thought would be a good ice-breaker: is the UFO phenomenon for real? The question was quickly brushed aside, in no uncertain terms. "My colleagues and I don't even think that's a question!" he bellowed. "Of course they are real!"

Fantastic Adventures
(March 1952)

Here we see Stalin alongside a space-suited alien.

The issue of the magazine has the headline, "Flying saucers: Russia's secret weapon?" The story is "He fell among thieves" by Milton Lesser. This has the promotional line, "When this Martian crashed the Iron Curtain … He fell among thieves."

The incidence of UFO sightings in the US in the 1950s was unbelievably high and this story puts forward a reason: Russia had captured a Martian who had helped them build flying saucers, and these were now being used to spy on the US.

The exchange of information between aliens and humans, the scientist claims, has led to the development of what he referred to as the "weapon of the aliens," the plasma beam. The space age weaponry was incorporated into the Soviet version of SDI. Dr. Avramenko also confirmed for us that the Russians knew UFOs were from somewhere else as early as 1959. The Americans knew that too, he said, because both sides had the same type of satellite defense warning systems. Dr. Avramenko shared with us a couple of other startling pronouncements: during the Vietnam War, he said, a massive UFO flew over Hanoi. Although every major weapon in that city had its sights set on the craft, it didn't budge. Dr. Avramenko also slipped up and told us the only craft which can approach the speed of UFOs is the American "Aurora" which is being flown in Nevada. When the look of amazement registered on our faces, Avramenko quickly back-tracked and said his information was based solely on articles in the popular press.

Another of our meetings put us across the table from the Ministry of Defense official who is in charge of the current study. By agreement, we are not yet able to make his name public, but we can give the name of the study, "Thread-3." One illuminating section of those papers contains details of UFO sightings by Soviet cosmonauts. Unlike American astronauts' reluctance to talk about the subject, Soviet references to UFOs were reported from the very beginning, with Yuri Gagarin himself. In the documents, Gagarin is quoted as saying UFOs are real, they fly at incredible speeds and that he would tell more about what he had seen in orbit - provided he be given permission to do so. The documents also provide information on American space encounters, including several references to things seen on the Moon by our astronauts, and how that information was removed from NASA's public files.

What do the Russians know about the most celebrated of all UFO crashes, the July 1947 report of a crashed disc outside Roswell, New Mexico? Our next interview made it seem apparent that, even in the 40s, the Russians weren't buying the weather balloon explanation of Roswell being proffered to the American people at the time by the US military. The interview was with Valeriy Burdakov, a man who, to my knowledge, has never granted an interview to a Western journalist. In the 1950s, Burdakov was a scientist at the prestigious Moscow Aviation Institute, birthplace of the Soviet space program. Burdakov's interest in UFOs led to lectures on the subject, lectures which came to the attention of Sergei Korolyov, the dean of Soviet rocketry and the founder of the Russian space program. But Korolyov did not admonish the younger Burdakov; instead he confided in him.

As the now-60-something Burdakov relates, Joseph Stalin invited Korolyov to a meeting in 1948. The dictator brought Korolyov to a room where, spread out on a table, were piles of material and information collected during a top secret study. Some of the information was gleaned from reports of Soviet operatives in place in New Mexico at the time of the alleged crash. Stalin was anxious to know, what did Korolyov make of this reported crash of a UFO near Roswell?

"Korolyov told Stalin the phenomenon was real," said Burdakov. "He told him the UFOs were not dangerous to our country, but they were not manufactured in the United States, or any other country. Stalin thanked him and told him his opinion was shared by a number of other specialists." Burdakov says he has no doubts about the extent of the American government's involvement in the UFO phenomenon. Several branches of the American military, he says, are involved in active research and study. "We know that the United States Air Force possesses plenty of material," says Burdakov. "The U.S. Navy has a big amount of material as well. We know that special orders have been given to keep all materials secret. When curious people ask for the materials they are told they're not there, that they've been destroyed."

In 1993, a slick new UFO magazine called AURA-Z appeared in Moscow. Continuing the trend of tying now-dead space heroes to UFO studies, the magazine featured two separate interviews with contemporary experts concerning the role played by Sergey Korolev, the founder of the Soviet missile and space programs. It didn't bother the magazine at all that the two stories were utterly inconsistent.

In one article, rocket expert Valery Burdakov presented a detailed account of how back in 1947 Stalin had ordered Korolev to assess Soviet intelligence reports on the Roswell, New Mexico, UFO crash. Korolev had reported back that the UFOs were real but not dangerous, the article "revealed." Yet just seven pages earlier, another expert named Lev Chulkov had written: "As early as the beginning of the 1950s, Stalin ordered Korolev to study the phenomenon of UFOs, but Korolev managed to avoid fulfilling this task." Of course, both claims can't be true. Besides, Burdakov was a recently rehabilitated political prisoner in 1947 and was thus hardly the type of trusted expert that Stalin would have consulted.

~James Oberg, an internationally recognized expert on the Soviet space program.

Ron Varlamov of the Moscow Technology Institute believes evidence abounds. We met with Dr. Varlamov at his small apartment outside Moscow for an in- depth interview. Dr Varlamov has travelled to a number of reported UFO landing sites in Russia, including 10 in the direct vicinity of Moscow, to conduct a variety of tests on physical and chemical changes in the soil and the environment. Among his voluminous findings; identical quartz timepieces, one placed inside a landing site, the other just outside, record time at two different speeds. The quartz timepiece inside the landing circle speeds up. Dr Varlamov has also discovered that inside the reported landing site circles the land is all but sterile, yielding just a few individual samples of single-celled animals per cubic centimeter of soil. Just outside the circles, tens of thousands of single cell animals flourish in every cubic centimeter.

Amongst his other fascinating findings: evidence of what is knows as "angel hair", a type of by-product of UFO exhaust. Varlamov has obtained a sample to analyze the content. Dr. Varlamov also claims at least six attempts have been made to make pre-arranged contact with alien intelligence. Some of these contacts, he claims, were successful. Varlamov's findings are supported by a government biologist and close colleague. His name is Yuri Simakov. Another of Dr Simakov's discoveries comes from two reported landing sites in Siberia. Simakov found microscopic worms in the soil. Nothing too unusual there, except these worms are particular to Mexico, and don't occur naturally anywhere in the former Soviet Union.

There are obviously many fundamental repercussions arising from the content of this article. If we take it at face value, then:

1. Both the former Soviet Union and the American governments (and presumably others) have been aware of the existence of extra-terrestrial life for many years and have orchestrated a cynical cover-up.

2. Contact has been established with extra-terrestrial life forms.

3. Advanced technology has been obtained from these life forms. 4. They have the ability to engage ICBM's and possibly other nuclear weapons systems.

5. U.S. astronauts did encounter extra-terrestrial craft and there was a significant sighting made on the moon, all of which have again been cynically covered-up.

6. The U.S. Air Force and Navy do possess "material" from extra-terrestrial craft.

7. Extra-terrestrial life forms have the ability to "distort" time, as we know it.

Stalin’s Ancient Alien Rocket

Michael Hesemann’s recent findings about Soviet UFO research have emerged because these secrets are no longer closely guarded by a paranoid totalitarian culture (1). The collapse of the Soviet system has allowed the Generals to freely discuss their work on the UFO question, and the remarkable data the Russians collected about this enigma. There is a consensus of opinion among those Russian officers interviewed by Hesemann and his colleagues that UFOs are real, and not of this Earth.

The Russians are far more candid about this than we would have expected. In fact, their stark message about UFO reality can sometimes read like a sensationalist tabloid headline. Only, they’re serious people with a serious message. Is it our Western cultural bias that causes us to struggle with the image of 3-star Russian generals openly and seriously discussing the extra-terrestrial origins of UFOs? On 19th November 2002, Pravda, that old bastion of communist propaganda, published an article about Stalin’s deep interest in flying saucers, and the many military and scientific bodies set up by the Soviets to secretly investigate the phenomenon.

Incredibly, Pravda also described an alleged retrieval of an alien artefact during archaeological digs in Kiev, near the Tchaikovsky Conservatory. After all, this is the word of Pravda, the voice of Russia. I first read about this in ‘The Editor’, a weekly global news summary published by The Guardian newspaper. Entitled ‘Stalin was a UFO Obsessive’, it covered the Pravda story thus:

“The US government might have spent more than half a century trying to convince suspicious conspiracy theorists that no UFO ever crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, but one man never believed the story. That man, according to Pravda (Nov 19), was Joseph Stalin. The Soviet dictator apparently thought the US was covering up with its story of a weather balloon crashing, so he ordered senior scientists to investigate.

"In order to assess the situation, the scientists recommended that Stalin organise special investigations of similar phenomena. As a result, a number of programmes to study UFOs were launched in the USSR…"

Until the end of the 90s, there were seven research institutes and about 10 secret military departments of the [former] Soviet defence ministry that studies UFO phenomena.” In fact, suggests Pravda, one UFO-related discovery – the remains of an ancient alien rocket – provided vital technical knowledge for the Soviet space programme. The paper, once home to endless accounts of Communist party congresses, did not offer any evidence to back this assertion." (2)

On first inspection, the historical accuracy of this account published by the Guardian seemed dubious, in that Stalin was dead long before the Roswell incident later came under public scrutiny. The story had indeed been allegedly covered up in 1947 with the weather balloon in General Ramey’s office, but the story didn’t get properly aired until Stanton Friedman’s initial investigation in the 1970s. In between, the Roswell incident had been long forgotten. So if Stalin had heard of the Roswell incident, Soviet Intelligence must have picked up the initial story in the summer of 1947 when it was published widely in the American press (Stalin died in March 1953). And they must have given it a lot more thought than the Americans themselves did. Other quotes from Pravda about extensive investigations into UFOs by the Soviet Union have been borne out by Hesemann and others.

So, was Stalin really knowledgeable about Roswell, when the rest of the world had accepted the cover story? In his 1998 book ‘The Soviet UFO Files’ Paul Stonehill, the director of the Russian Ufology Center, confirms Stalin’s intense interest in UFOs (3). Stalin had appointed several eminent Russian scientists to study the phenomenon and report back to him personally. Among them was Sergei Korolyov, who was summoned to the Kremlin by Stalin in 1947 to study a mass of foreign newspapers and books. His conclusion, mirrored by similar investigations by other prominent Soviet scientists sequestered by Stalin, was that UFOs were not foreign weapons presenting an immediate threat, but that the phenomenon was real and did need investigating. Stonehill notes that investigations by Dr Richard Haines revealed that the Soviet archives contain no documents about Stalin’s UFO files. Nevertheless, evidence suggests he had a personal interest in the phenomenon and ordered some of the best scientific minds in Russia to assess the situation on his behalf. So Stonehill’s account of Stalin’s interest in UFOs corroborates the Guardian and Pravda, and suggests that the lack of official documentary evidence in Stalin’s Soviet archives from 1947 has helped the USAF to continue their denial of a UFO crash retrieval at Roswell.

Are the Russians helping the Americans to keep a lid on Roswell? The Guardian story indicates that Pravda itself has no such inclination. Martin Cosnette, of ‘Cosmic Conspiracies’ helped me to obtain a copy of the Pravda article, translated by Maria Gousseva. The Pravda article does indeed claim that Stalin was aware of Roswell, and that the Soviet leadership was not as easily duped as the American public regarding General Ramey’s weather balloon. It goes further, claiming that Stalin personally controlled a secret scientific project to back-engineer an ancient space rocket discovered by archeologists under the city of Kiev in 1948. Discoveries made by those scientists, who included Korolyov, were later made use of by the Soviet space programme in an attempt to win the Space Race. And apart from the Moon landings, they did just that. This incredible account relies heavily on the testimony of the ‘famous Soviet archaeologist and artist and journalist Sukhoveyev’ who tells of the experiences of his father, Khvoika, an archaeologist who was summoned to Kiev to study the retrieved object. Khvoika described to his son the discovery of a ‘small, silver device’ that appeared to be a space rocket that had originated from an ancient civilisation. The Soviets rapidly took control of the situation:

When workers demolished ruins in 1948, they came across the mentioned mysterious object. The find was dug up, cut into pieces, and loaded onto trucks. The parts were taken to a secret testing area in the Moscow region. The father of the journalist was sent there as well as an expert in ancient languages; he was to translate the inscriptions inside the space ship. It was the Sanscrit language, which is now a dead language. (4)

Research carried out on this device, and the information contained within it, eventually helped the Soviet space programme, says Pravda. But a different description of the ancient device, and its controversial contents, is offered by Paul Stonehill:

A Soviet archeological expedition was engaged in excavations in Kiev, at a site on Reitarskaya Street. They made a discovery that was to be kept secret by the Soviet Union for 40 years. Those involved in the discovery are fearful even today to reveal their names. One of them reluctantly talked to a Kiev newspaper in 1993. He said that the archeologists found a burial vault at a depth of 16 feet that contained a massive chest. Inside the chest the archeologists found 500 books, written in Arabic, Greek, Sanskrit and Slavic languages.

The books contained drawings: constructions of orbital stations, hangars for spaceships, and scenes from something like Star Wars. The books also contained the original manuscript, Slovo o polku Igoreve, about the exploits of ancient Prince Ivor, written by chronicler Pyotr Borislavovich. The MVD (secret police) arrived within hours, placed the findings in three covered trucks, and took them away. The archeologists were warned to keep silent about the whole episode. They did, until 1993 when a report appeared in Dzhentry newspaper (Issue #5) in Vladivostok. (3)

The implication of this account is that the chest belonged to a Russian who had collected many wonderful ancient manuscripts and books, who had hidden them for safe keeping in a vault below the streets of Kiev. This is in contrast with the Pravda account of the discovery of an actual device, presumed to be an ancient space rocket. In fact, neither of these accounts directly implicates UFOs as responsible for the origin of this mysterious object. The connection with UFOs is implied through association in Pravda’s article. However, the object is consistently referred to as an artefact of an ancient civilisation on this planet that was capable of space exploration. This is, of course, also absolutely incredulous, requiring one to connect this account with ancient astronaut theories, or Atlantis myths.

One suspects that Pravda has succumbed to a certain amount of exaggeration, possibly reflecting an evolution of this story since it first entered the public domain in 1993, and that the device was indeed a ‘treasure chest’ of remarkable texts and manuscripts rather than an actual ancient space rocket. But nevertheless, did those secrets include ancient science sufficiently advanced to aid the Soviet space programme? Pravda seems to think so. In which case the implications for our knowledge of our own origins are profound.

References

A. Lloyd “The Unofficial Review” UFO Magazine p13-4 November/December 2002 “Stalin was a UFO Obsessive” The Editor (p15), The Guardian 23rd November 2002
P. Stonehill “The Soviet UFO Files” Ch2, Bramley Books 1998 “Stalin’s UFOs”
Pravda.RU, http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/11/19/39641.html ,19th November 2002, translated by Maria Gousseva