Flying Saucers – Secret History!
by Tim Matthews
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Over the last few months new information has emerged relating to the terrestrial origins of flying saucers. This goes to the heart of modern-day UFO research and because we neither claim that UFOs are of ET origin nor that flying saucer sightings are explainable as evidence of natural phenomena or simply "misidentifications" of mundane phenomena we are under attack from all sides. Nevertheless, the evidence we have put forward has encouraged many researchers to become engaged in a debate that some people might have hoped had gone away
The fundamental point to make is that, according to a great deal of UFO literature, despite the best efforts of researchers to identify the objects described in UFO reports there remains a hard core, perhaps 1-2%, that are said to represent 'true' or 'real' UFO phenomena. Therefore the evidence suggests that many of this 'core' of 1-2% of sightings relates to structured craft of 'unknown' origin. In this case, I am writing about flying saucers - often quite small, seemingly constructed of some metallic substance - occasionally described as 'brushed' aluminum.
Perhaps it is time for a little demystification....
We suspect that 'flying saucers' were developed, to some extent in parallel, on either side of the Atlantic during the Second World War. This realization, or understanding, is becoming increasingly a focus for research even though a long period of time has passed since those developments took place. Our research might be said to represent a 'small voice of calm' within the UFO community, whose increasingly shrill calls for Western governments to 'come clean about UFOs and aliens' tend to obscure the truth about flying saucers.
To others, our research is an example of the 'Federal Hypothesis', that which states that:
The answer seems to be that, in the USA at least, UFOs are controlled not so much by an intelligence as by an Intelligence Agency. 2
In the first place, it is certainly not the case the new generation of man-made flying saucer advocates are "apologists" for Nazism as is suggested by the skeptics who claim that because some "Nazi" saucer researchers are of dubious political persuasion then all subsequent research is invalid.
This type of guilt by association is, of course, a rather ineffective way of arguing with the evidence. 3
Secondly, debunkers argue that because some supposed sightings of flying saucers have been explained or that they are explainable then all sightings should be called into question. The reader has seen that there are impressive UFO sightings that clearly relate to structured circular craft and that these have been reported from around the world with a concentration upon the USA - a fact which surprises few researchers.
Despite the argument that German scientists had no more advanced technology than the allies, one American was very clear as to the technical achievements of nazi scientists: Major General Hugh Knerr, Deputy Commanding General for Administration of US Strategic Forces in Europe, wrote to Lieutenant General Carl Spaatz 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 the 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. 4
It is possible to look into the area of German flying saucers without reference to so-called "established" sources. These authors are often targetted for attack by skeptics and include Allen Harbinson, who has contributed to the subject through his exciting series of Project Saucer novels and the more recent non-fiction paperback Projekt UFO and Renate Vesco, whose research appeared in the late 1960s as a paperback with the title Intercept But Don't Shoot and later as Intercept UFO. Vesco appears to have cooperated with "hidden knowledge" writer David Hatcher Childress in the production of Man-Made UFOs - 50 Years of Suppression. In addition to these books, which are interesting though imperfect in their presentation (and omission) of the evidence, there are also two books written in the 1970s by Ernst Zündel under the pseudonym "Mattern Friedrich" which were popular for a short time within the far-right political community and may still be available.
Zündel himself is a controversial figure for a number of obvious reasons which include support for anti-Semitic groups, his publication of books and magazines denying the holocaust, and his links with most of the influential neo-Nazi groups in Germany, Britain, the USA and Canada. His most important book on the subject of German flying saucers is entitled UFOs: Nazi Secret Weapons.
Despite the fact that Zündel is a character with whom we have little or nothing in common from a political point of view, his espousal of far-right politics neither means that every piece of information in his two books is wrong nor that they should be ignored. It is important to realize that Zündel's main purpose in writing and dissemination these books was not primarily an attempt to advocate the supposed "superiority" of Nazi technologies but to make a fast buck.
In short, Zündel did it for the money, and he has made it quite clear that these publications are, in his view, not to be taken 100% seriously. 5 The skeptics point to Zündel as a major source on German secret projects despite the fact that there are several other books and articles, including primary material, that have no link with such questionable politics. Where we have a situation where skeptics will use any tactic, we can expect them to claim that any use of contemporary German-language material is evidence of "apology" for Nazi war crimes. This is not the case although we do not any longer intend to look over our shoulder every time we mention German pre-war or wartime technology. We research this subject in order to shed new and important light on the fundamental reality of man-made flying saucers.
The final point to bear in mind regarding this subject is that the victors of any conflict have a head start in writing the history books and, in the case of the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, burying or spiriting away evidence, documents, plans and blueprints, actual technology and a variety of other materials that the allies did not, and do not, want the public to know about - for a variety of reasons that may become apparent.
Despite the fact that the man-made origins of flying saucers are of the greatest implications in terms of our understanding of postwar history, "man-made UFO" researchers have to some extent been deliberately ostracized and smeared.
Nevertheless, a great deal of new information has emerged in recent years and there is still more to come. The suggestion that fifty years after the end of the Second World War new information cannot emerge because this period has been the subject of the most intense scrutiny is an illogical one. For any number of reasons information can stay buried and, beyond mere speculation, we know that files relating to the Second World War remain locked in the deep dark vaults of the Public Records Office in Kew, London. Remember this - records are routinely held for 30 years and can be held for 50, 75 and 100 years after the event.6 By the time they emerge they may have been altered, edited or sanitized to "protect" the identity of those responsible for the implementation of policy. One simple example that comes to mind is the emergence in recent years of new and credible information about the German nuclear research programme underway during the Second World War. Much of this has been the result of research undertaken by Philip Henshall who has also contributed a great deal to our understanding of advanced German weapons projects through his books on the rocket research facilities at Pennemünde on the Baltic coast. 7/8
Even before the allies landed in Normandy in June 1944 special groups of language and technical research specialists had been organized in order to recover as much of the technological hardware and research data relating to advanced German weapons. This effort was dedicated to getting hold of much more than data on the V2 rocket - the most obvious and well-known example of German scientific expertise. 9 Already, through an intelligence estimate passed to the allies via a Norwegian source and known as the "Oslo Letter", the allies were aware of other weapons under development and in operation by axis powers. These included radio-controlled bombs, huge guns, rocket launchers, new radar systems, long-range bombers and torpedoes. 10 It would seem that they might also have been interested in a circular-wing aircraft with Vertical-Take-Off-and Landing (VTOL) capabilities. In short, an early and relatively primitive flying saucer.....
In order to make some progress in terms of this research it seems necessary to avoid using the standard sources - Vesco and Harbinson - even though some of their information is valid as we have seen. Other sources are equally intriguing. One source indicates that from the mid 1930s there was significant interest in both Vertical-Take Off and-Landing (VTOL) and circular wing aircraft. This led to a number of designs one of which was the Focke-Wulf VTOL.
Professor Heinrich Focke was particularly interested in emerging helicopter and autogyro technologies and was involved in the design and production of the FW6, Fa223, Fa226, Fa283 and 284 models during the war. The creation of the jet engine encouraged him to design a propulsion system known as the "turbo-shaft" still used in most helicopters today. In 1939 he patented a saucer-type aircraft with enclosed twin rotors. This was a revolutionary development described as follows:
The exhaust nozzle forked in two at the end of the engine and ended in two auxiliary combustion chambers located on the trailing edge of the wing. When fuel was added these combustion chambers they would act as afterburners to provide horizontal propulsion to Focke's design. The control at low speed was achieved by alternately varying the power from each auxiliary combustion chamber. 11
This was by no means the only circular aircraft.
Another similar aircraft was the troubled AS6 partly designed by the leading aviation expert in Germany Dr. Alexander Lippisch whose work at the Göttingen Aviation Institute was legendary and whose impact upon postwar 'UFOs' cannot be underestimated. His revolutionary "DM" series of small triangular aircraft were built and flown in conjunction with students at Darmstadt and Munich Universities (hence the DM prefix) and used rocket propulsion. The plans for these were transported to the USA after the war.
His most advanced design was undoubtedly the Lippisch Supersonic Flying Wing which, although never built, strongly hinted at the triangular 'UFOs' of the 1980s and 1990s.12/13
The information about the AS6 (V1) emerged in an article written by Hans Ebert and Hans Meier based to a certain extent upon information and a photograph provided by German aviation expert Wolfgang Späte.14 (Späte was the former Commander of Operational Test Unit 16 during the War and more recently recognized as a leading aviation expert. He served in the refounded postwar Luftwaffe). The article, entitled "Prototypen - Einselschicksale deutscher Flugzeuge, Der Kreisflügler AS6 V1", was included in the respected Luftfahrt International in 1980. 15 In certain respects the AS6, built by Messerschmidt, was based upon similar thinking as the Zimmerman V173 "flying flapjack" - designed for use by the US Navy from 1942.
The "flying flapjack" was far more successful and developed at the Chance-Vought works in Connecticut and despite its' supposed limitations was a propeller-driven aircraft designed to be flown from an aircraft carrier, hence the need for Short Take off and Landing (STOL) capability. The flapjack was able to fly at low speeds of approximately 40mph. The flight envelope was 40-425 mph and a more advanced version, the XF5U1, was also tested.
One other important feature of these circular wings was an early 'stealth' capability. 16 The Horten brothers Reimar and Walter, known for their many successful flying wing prototypes, had developed a composite wing made of plywood held together by sawdust, charcoal and glue intended to absorb radar waves for use in their HlX model. 17
In 1946 Chance-Vought was using a similar technique. A skin called 'metalite' was used in one of its' circular wings. Thomas C.Smith, former President of the Woodstream Corporation and a Penn State graduate engineer at the time, reported that he had seen a 'flying saucer' (XF5U1?) taking off vertically from the Chance-Vought facilities in Stratford, Connecticut at the time and that it had used this composite. This was reported last year. 18
This means that the circular wing or 'flying saucer' had a limited stealth capability years before the use of Radar Absorbent Materials was considered for other advanced aircraft....
We can certainly dismiss all the nonsense so prevalent in various media on the subject of German flying saucers which relates to the development of circular-wing aircraft as the result of "occult" or "mystical" beliefs.19 The truth is that the circular wing was designed for technical reasons.
Whilst it is likely that any information relating to the limited AS6 would have been taken by the allies for examination 20 at a later date it would seem that there is some evidence to suggest that a more advanced jet-powered flying saucer was at least designed, if not built, from around 1943 onwards. The first source is Flight Captain Rudolf Schriever who came forward in 1950 and claimed that he had worked with a small team at facilities near Prague with a view to developing a flying saucer-type vehicle. The Schriever story first emerged in Der Spiegel magazine dated March 30th 1950 entitled "Untertassen-Flieger Kombination":
A former Luftwaffe captain and aircraft designer. Rudolf Schriever, who says engineers throughout the world experimented in the early 1940s with "flying saucers" is willing to build one for the United States in six to nine months. The 40 year old Prague University graduate said he made blueprints for such a machine, which he calls a "flying top", before Germany's collapse and that the blueprints were stolen from his laboratory. He says the machine would be capable of 2,600 mph with a radius of 4,000 miles, Schriever is a US Army driver at Bremerhaven. 21
This is a most credible story. Schriever claimed that the model built for testing was completed in 1944 with a view to flying it in 1945. Nevertheless, the Russian advance 22 ended any hopes of a test-flight.
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A 1975 Luftfahrt International report took these claims seriously and noted that after Schriever's death in the late 1950s papers found amongst his belongings had included technical drawings of a flying saucer. 23
Reconstruction of Schriever's Flugkreisel based
on the Luftfahrt magazine article
Schriever seemed to argue that although a saucer had existed it had not flown. This is contradicted by a possible eyewitness, Georg Klein.
He claimed after the war in an interview, given on November 18th 1954 to the Zurich-based Tages Anzeiger, that he had actually seen a flying saucer test on 14th February 1945 and that the craft had performed remarkably well reaching an altitude of 30,000ft in 3 minutes as well as a high speed of hundreds of miles and hour. Despite the fact that subsequent information leads us to conclude that a jet-powered flying disc was developed at the end of the war Klein spoke of a "ray-guided disc". 24
Despite this fanciful claim some of the things he said made more sense. For instance, he claimed that some of the work on the flying saucers had taken place at Pennemünde. Pennemünde was of course the focal point for the development of the A4/V2 rocket. Interestingly, Klein also claimed that the necessary stability for the saucer had been attained through the use of a gyroscope. This is exactly the method used in the later German rockets developed by the Von Braun/Dornberger team. What is more, the entire rocket effort moved to the Mittelwerke underground facilities near Nordhausen in the Harz Mountains. It is claimed, by several other witnesses, that a flying saucer was tested in the vicinity of Kahla In Thuringia in early 1945. 25
The evidence presented above seems to have been taken seriously not only by mainstream magazines and national newspapers in the 1950s but also by the author of Brighter Than A Thousand Suns, Robert Jungk. This is an authoritative and historical account of the development of the Atomic Bomb written by a respected author. The book itself, still available and published by Harcourt and Brace, received critical acclaim from Bertrand Russell, amongst others. A section of text on page 87 of the paperback edition states:
The indifference of Hitler and those about him to research in natural sciences amounted to positive hostility.
The accompanying footnote reads as follows:
The only exception to the lack of interest shown by authority was constituted by he Air Ministry [Reichs Luftfahrt Ministirium or RLM, TM]. The Air Force research workers were in a peculiar position. They produced interesting new types such as the Delta [Lippisch and Horten, TM] ..and flying discs. The first of these "flying saucers", as they were later called - circular in shape, with a diameter of some 45 yards - were built by the specialists Schriever, Habermohl and Miethe. They were first airborne on February 14th 1945, over Prague and reached in three minutes a height of nearly eight miles. They had a speed of 1250mph which was doubled in subsequent tests. It is believed that Habermohl fell into the hands of the Russians. Miethe developed at a later date similar "flying saucers" at A.V Roe and Company for the United States. 26
This use of the original Schriever story is interesting if only because the author felt that the information was good and warranted exposure. Given the nature of the book, we might well ask whether the author had any other information that supported the claims made as to the characteristics of the circular aircraft. It is up to the reader to decide whether these claims make any sense at all and more importantly, how this might affect our understanding of flying saucer history......
Until recently, it would have been rather safer and perhaps more sensible to argue that although various prototype saucers existed in whatever form they were never tested. Safety is often the best policy given the shark infested waters of modern-day UFO research. However, thanks to three years of painstaking research by UK astronomy, aviation and photographic expert Bill Rose which included on-site research in Germany, Canada and America we now know a great deal more. Initially Rose felt, like many skeptics, that the evidence for German flying saucer (and UFO) reality was very shaky.
Nevertheless, and without reference to the UFO community in his personal quest for the truth, he was able to use his expert technical knowledge to follow up leads and to make significant progress.27
First of all he was able to discover that Dr. Walter Miethe, whom all sources agree was involved with Schriever, Klaus Habermohl and Giuseppe Belluzzo 28 (an Italian engineer) had been the Director of the saucer programme at two facilities located outside Prague. In May 1945, after testing of the prototype had taken place, both Miethe and Schriever were able to flee in the direction of Allied forces. Habermohl was captured by Soviet forces and spirited East where he ended up working on various aviation projects quite probably at facilities located outside Moscow.
It would seem that Klaus Habermohl was the man who developed the radial-flow jet engine, described in various articles as a system of "adjustable" nozzles, of great significance just ten years later. (Radial-flow allowed for VTOL performance and used the little-known "Coanda" effect. 29) Rose learned that not only had test flights taken place but that film footage of these had been taken. This had always been rumoured and makes perfect sense given the Nazi fetish for keeping records on everything. The footage, of good quality, has subsequently been stored in a secure location and shown only to a handful of people. Rose was shown some stills taken from the original film and given his expert photo-technical background concluded, after careful consideration, that this was probably real and historical footage. He calculated that the craft was around half the size claimed in Klein's report. The saucer, rather less contoured and sleek than postwar artists' impressions might suggest (and unlike Bob Lazar's S4 "Sports Model"!), was perhaps 75 ft in diameter. The saucer was shown in flight above the runway over the heads of a couple of observers.
Although this is in itself of the greatest significance other more contradictory evidence has emerged. One of the people that Rose met had good information about the February test flight and was able to confirm that several people had seen the test-flight - as we might expect. It was said that Schriever himself had piloted the test craft. This does seems sensible (and logical) given Schriever's background in the Luftwaffe - although it is at variance with his own account. One can only speculate as to why this may be. It should be pointed out that the performance characteristics of this jet-powered aircraft have probably been exaggerated and although it might have been technically possible given further research and development to approach supersonic speeds, this was almost certainly not achieved in February 1945. Finally, it seems as if Klein himself was centrally involved in the saucer project and may indeed have had responsibilities for procurement.
We know a little more about Dr.Miethe. One of the important pieces of information came in the form of a rare group photograph showing various young German scientists in 1933. The photograph shows Wernher von Braun and Walter Miethe. It would seem that these two knew each other well. During the War various lists of "wanted" German scientists were drawn up. One of these was the "Black List" used by Counter Intelligence Corps and Combined Allied Field Teams (CAFT) as they moved through Germany from 1944 in order to help them get hold of the important scientific personnel.30
Dr. von Braun was certainly at the top of the list and if Miethe and he were old friends and had cooperated on early rocket projects, there is little doubt that Miethe would have been a target too. Nevertheless, his work near Prague put him out of reach and only through Miethe's own efforts did the allied teams get their hands on him.
The immediate postwar is critical to an understanding of both the myth and reality of flying saucers or UFOs. One thing is for sure: hundreds of nazi scientists as well as intelligence personnel 31, many of whom had been involved in the abuse of thousands of slave labourers, were transported via Operation Paperclip (so named after the original designation Overcast was compromised). Many of these technical personnel were sent initially to Fort Bliss in Texas. From here they were farmed out, according to their ability and expertise, to the many advanced scientific facilities dotted throughout the USA and Canada. 32
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Interestingly, Chance-Vought, builder of both the V173 and XF5U1 prototypes, moved its' base of operations to Texas in early 1947. The company seems to have been less than candid at this early stage about the true nature and extent of its' involvement in flying saucers. The official story of the demise of the XF5U1 - that there was no interest in developing a propeller driven aircraft from 1948 after the advent of jets - is now in question. It would seem that a jet-powered version using Allison J33 engines was actually test-flown at Muroc Field in 1947 33. The history books tell us that the propeller-driven version was to be tested here before the programme was cancelled. 34 Nevertheless, our understanding of the situation is that technical drawings of the jet-powered version have now surfaced through a series of Freedom Of Information Act requests. Given the overall design of this craft and the many sightings of flying saucers in New Mexico and the Western seaboard in the late 1940s it is safe to concluded that the sightings related to a saucer of terrestrial origin with limited performance characteristics. 35
The best of these are arguably the sightings over Muroc Field reported by serving military personnel on 8th July 1947 and the subject of subsequent internal investigation which revealed that the object seen was disc-shaped moving at around 300 miles per hour.
The military witnesses Gerald Neuman and Joseph Ruvolo stated that in their opinion this was a man-made aircraft traveling at only 300 miles per hour and this view was supported by a civilian witness named Lenz. 36/37
Similar objects were seen - many of them in and around the White Sands Proving Ground where we know for sure that many of the Paperclip scientists were working. 38 It is probable that at this stage people were seeing a US-built circular-wing aircraft and only gradually, in the late 1940s/early 1950s, were German advances incorporated into the overall saucer programme. After all, military historians agreethat a huge amount of material was recovered from facilities in Germany and it took a great deal of time and effort to collate this. We know both from Gerald K Haines report 39 and from the recently declassified (1995) Air Technical Intelligence Centre report on "Project Silver Bug" 40 that prototype saucers were actually test-flown (obviously before 1955) in order to determine their usefulness in terms of future dispersed base operations designed to reduce vulnerability to Russian air attack. Hence the possible use of VTOL aircraft from camouflaged facilities.
I also suggest that the sightings reported by military personnel during the 1952 'Operation Mainbrace' may have related to a similar flying saucer prototype. It seems to me that such a major exercise would offer an excellent opportunity for testing and evaluation. 41
Given that we now believe that Klaus Habermohl designed the first radial-flow engine, a revolutionary development by any standards (even today) in 1943, it is likely that within a few years progress had been made although the advanced nature of the engine made only for slow progress. The incorporation of a radial-flow engine using the Coanda Effect 42 in combination with a circular wing made this a weapon worth keeping secret.
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The jet-powered circular wing and the Silver Bug craft were two out of three variations upon a theme.
There were two Silver Bug prototypes, Projects Y and Y2, the first using a standard axial flow engine, the second the more advanced type. "Project Y" was also designated P724 (P being the AV Roe Company project number) and was in fact a hybrid saucer/AVRO Arrow (the Arrow was an advanced supersonic aircraft cancelled in the early 1960s supposedly after the US pressurized on the Canadian government).
The existence of projects beyond the limited Avrocar adds further weight to the suggestion that Avrocar was little more than a cover for much more advanced aircraft. Let us be quite clear on this point: Both Projects Y and Y2 were separate and distinct from the Avrocar and in fact the evidence further suggests that the craft test-flown near Prague in February 1945 was actually more advanced! It is interesting to note that proponents of the extra-terrestrial hypothesis tend to use the failed Avrocar programme as evidence that flying saucers "must be" of ET origin. 43 We must now dismiss such misleading conclusions.
On a separate note and in view of the suggestion that underground facilities have been built in the postwar period it now seems that in certain cases these were used to house small numbers of flying saucer-type aircraft. This is not to say that they were located in the wilds of Canada but more likely within the White Sands Proving Ground and later on or near the Groom Lake facilities in the Nevada Desert. Whilst the man-made reality of flying discs has been hijacked by Bob Lazar, John Lear and a generation of US Ufologists, it seems as if the remote nature of Groom dry Lake bed was considered both with flying saucers and the U2 spyplane in mind. 44
There is no doubt that all kinds of weird and wonderful aircraft are tested from Groom Lake 45 but in terms of flying saucers it seems as if they may have arrived in 1959/60. The facilities there, although home to secret CIA and possibly National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) aircraft have primarily been operated as US Air Force Flight Test Centre Detachment 346 (AFFTC Det 3). AFFTC is headquartered at Edwards Air Force Base, formerly Muroc Field. It is vital for the reader to understand that Silver Bug, Project Y and in fact all the saucer programmes we now know about had very strong links with the US Air Force. 46
In fact, Dr. Miethe worked primarily for the USAF even though he was sub-contracted to AVRO - possibly as a cover for the real efforts underway in the USA whereby the design work was undertaken in Canada and the majority of test flights within US borders. 47 Having said that there was a mention of Canadian saucers made in several newspaper articles and books in the early 1950s. Even Donald Keyhoe notes a conversation with an "informed" source on this subject in his populist Flying Saucers From Outer Space (1953). 48
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More interesting was an article featured in Look magazine dated June 14, 1955 (Volume 19) which featured a design study for a flying saucer produced by Thomas Turner, an British aeronautical engineer with Republic Aviation Corporation. It would seem that Turner might have had some knowledge of Silver Bug if only because his proposal for a flying saucer was almost exactly the same as the ATIC aircraft. In addition Turner's proposal includes use of the Coanda effect and the placing of a pilot in a prone position in order to allow for high acceleration and quick turns.
Both these would seem to come from an understanding of German projects the skeptics deny existed. Other notable features of the article include the use of language, for instance the following which reminds us of the introduction to the Project Silver Bug report:
Future airports built for vertically rising flying saucers would have no need of the long, vulnerable runway's today's fighters require. The complete operation could go underground. Tunnels with take-off shafts set into the ground, complete with maintenance bays, fuel and crew quarters, would be bombproofed shelters for a saucer squadron. The shafts would be sealed after take-off for camouflage and protection.
This sounds rather like the need for dispersed base operations discussed in the Silver Bug document. I further suggest that we now have a possible primary source for Renate Vesco's insistence that flying saucer bases were situated in the wilds of Canada in a 'remote area of British Columbia'. A picture of such a saucer base is shown in the article and reproduced in this report. The quality is not that good:
The article quoted Brigadier General Benjamin Kelsey (Deputy Director, Air Force Research and Development) who commented that a major problem was the existence of longer runways for the modern fighter and how these were vulnerable and might be destroyed through a single crippling enemy strike. Hence the need for VTOL operations. The article is of the utmost importance: in the mid-1950s at the same time that both the US Air Force and CIA were attempting to play down the significance of flying saucer and UFO reports there is substantial evidence to suggest that design teams were building and testing flying saucer prototypes.
Although it has proved difficult to find out about the reality or otherwise of a separate saucer-testing facility situated at Papoose Lake within Area 51 Bill Rose has been given information that this was the HQ for much saucer prototype testing and that several accidents and crashes resulted from use of early radial-flow engines.
More recently the unusual story of archeologist and historian Jerry Freeman emerged in a series of article published in the well-known Las Vegas Sun newspaper. Simply stated, Freeman wanted to find evidence of a 19th Century pioneer wagon train known as "the lost '49ers". Unfortunately for him, and for history, their remains lay within the boundaries of Area 51! Undeterred, Freeman decided to go on an expedition into the twilight zone and after several days reached Papoose Dry Lake.
He saw a security vehicle in the exact same place that the claimed S4 facilities were hidden and also thought that he saw come sort of door opening in the rock face. 49 It is possible, that electrogravitic systems have been tested both at the Papoose and Groom Lake facilities. 50
It might be sensible, at this stage, to note the existence of several texts on the question of future propulsion systems for flying discs written in the 1950s. One of these, entitled "Electrogravitics Systems" 51 mentions a research project called "Project Winterhaven" undertaken in 1952 in order to validate Thomas Townsend Browns' 52 "Biefeld-Brown" effect. The report in question makes for fascinating reading and states that:
Using a number of assumptions as to the nature of gravity, the report postulated a saucer as the basis of a possible interceptor with Mach 3 capability. Creation of a local gravitational system would confer upon the fighter the sharp-edged changes of motion typical in space.
And that:
Glenn Martin say gravity control could be achieved in six years, but they add that it would entail a Manhattan District type effort to bring it about.
The reader will perhaps not be surprised to learn that once again this report was kept away from public view for some 35 years by Air Force Aeronautical Laboratories at........Wright Patterson AFB! It was declassified and made available through the Technical Library in the early 1990s.
Whatever the final truth of the matter, we have done enough to establish that flying saucers grew from separate and distinct German-American projects begun in World War Two.
Relatively primitive German discs must have been developed partly because of the failure of the Luftwaffe to defend Axis airfields from allied bombing and the resulting need for VTOL operation. 53 The V173 that became the XF5U1 and later a jet-powered "flying pancake" was born out of a US Navy requirement for an STOL aircraft.
So why the secrecy?
A number of simple answers emerge: firstly the radial-flow engine is still advanced today. It allows for supersonic flight and tremendous VTOL performance. A revolutionary propulsion technology, electrostatics, might threaten the economic status quo. A circular wing offers good stealth capability and effective handling at low speeds.
According to the Silver Bug documentation, radial-flow allows for an aircraft to perform a range of staggering maneuvers including flying edge-on 54 - a characteristic noted in numerous flying saucer/UFO sightings.
It would seem that even if the most straightforward flying saucer stories are to be believed then these aircraft have been used primarily as high-performance reconnaissance vehicles.
The psychological effects of seeing a flying saucer could only be heightened if it was "unknown" to the observer - an aircraft that did not appear in anything more than pulp fiction tracts about terrifying close encounters with aliens and which was regarded pretty much as a product of science fiction not science fact. Never forget the CIA memorandum circulated in 1952 by Director Walter B.Smith which noted the possible use of flying saucers for the purposes of psychological warfare. 55
There is also the whole, and unresolved, political question of the mass transportation of nazi scientists and their families, some with dubious wartime records, to the USA under the secret Paperclip programme. Although the existence of Paperclip was known in the early postwar period the actual shocking details of the deals between victor and vanquished led to great concern particularly by those who survived the horrors of concentration camps and/or forced labour under German occupation. Although Paperclip may have resulted in technological achievements the moral position is certainly open to question.56
It would seem that the Soviets may have had their saucers too and undoubtedly more is to emerge from the archives there. As a result the US would undoubtedly have been concerned to build the similar and competing aircraft that was Silver Bug. Once again, such Soviet work would have been based upon recovered German, not alien, technologies and there has been some suggestion that the Soviets did indeed develop flying saucers. Jan Aldrich's Project 1947 has sought to collate information about early flying saucers sightings and media reports.
One of these reports may have originated via Project Wringer, a postwar effort tasked with interviewing military, industrial and other personnel of former Axis countries, Prisoners of War held in the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc nations or displaced persons with intelligence or military information. Jan Aldrich found the following report whilst undertaking research at the US National Archives:
10. SOURCE: EP 134892, Rpt. No. 5418-47758 dated 19th January 1954. Date of Observation: May 1953.
Preamble: During his internment in PW camp #1 in STALINGRAD (48/42N 44/30E) SOURCE ????? some ???? of general interest and ??? allegedly observed a couple of flying saucers. SOURCE was always interned in the camp. He understood a little Russian.
Flying saucers: SOURCE emphasized that he had never seen or heard anything of flying saucers before he observed two of them on a dusty morning over Stalingrad in May 1953 when he was on guard within the camp. He observed them in a rather high altitude flying fast in one direction, one following the other. Thinking they had something to do with scientific research of Russia he forgot about his observation until he came back home in Oct.1953 and saw designs of flying saucers in West European magazines. He could not provide further details. 57/58
It is difficult to know what to make of such reports except to point out that they were taken seriously by operatives within the intelligence community. In fact, all the evidence we have - some of which is included in my forthcoming book entitled UFO Revelation - is that in the early 1950s there was a reorientation of thinking relating to flying saucer sightings whereby the CIA, particularly, chose to concentrate upon attacking the veracity of flying saucer reports by doubting the credibility of the witness. At the same time, the Agency knew, as Haines admits, that saucer prototypes were under construction. 59
Study of the many CIA documents made available through FOIA requests indicates that the CIA was misleading the public. 60 The Agency often directed requests for information on flying saucer sightings to the Air Technical Intelligence Centre (ATIC) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Whilst both the Agency and ATIC were claiming that they were unable to determine the origin of flying saucers ATIC/WADC were working upon Silver Bug - and maybe more besides. In addition to this, Project Grudge had recently been downgraded (March 1952) and redesignated Blue Book and this was headquartered at.....Wright-Patterson Air Force Base!!. In any case Blue Book investigators were unable to explain away some 701 of 12,918 sightings they investigated. Project Blue Book was downgraded through the 1950s to the stage where there was only a handful of personnel working on UFO sightings. 61
In fact, according to David Jacobs, 62 the downgrading took place after September 1953 and went hand in hand with Air Force regulation 200-2 which stated that local Air Force base commanders could only discuss sightings if they had been solved and that any others should be classified. Jacobs also notes that February 1955 (Silver Bug was released from ATIC-WADC on the 15th February) was of significance because ATIC sought to explain away as many sightings as possible and to leave no unsolved cases.
Project Blue Book Special Report Number 1463 64, dated May 5th, 1955 and release in October determined that:
On the basis of this study we believe that no objects such as those popularly described as flying saucers have overflown the United States.
We now know that this was a lie:
CIA officials knew that the British and Canadians were already experimenting with "flying saucers". Project Y was a Canadian-British-US developmental operation to produce a non-conventional flying-saucer-type aircraft, and Agency official feared that the Soviets were testing similar devices. 65
The downgrading and the debunking of UFO reports was deliberate and took place at exactly the same time that the US was working upon advanced flying saucers. Once this is understood and established the official attitudes towards flying saucer sightings make more sense. Secrecy, and perhaps even paranoia, appear to have gripped the intelligence community and the USAF: even now, some forty five years after Silver Bug was test-flown former project workers remain tight-lipped. We can only conclude that silence in this case indicates particularly advanced technologies and the need to keep a lid on the details relating to them.
One could easily make a case that the development and debunking of flying saucers was undertaken at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and it is to be hoped that this document will encourage people with information about US saucer projects to come forward. It is up to UFO researchers to reorient their thinking, to come to terms with man-made flying saucer reality and the ongoing cover-up relating to it....
The case for man-made UFOs is stronger than ever whereas the evidence for "alien flying saucers" is wholly untenable.
We have introduced here a new line of research and a new perspective on UFO reality. Beyond the fantastic claims and mystification of UFOs by too many UFO "researchers" the painful truth is that flying saucers were, and are, a tremendous human technical achievement. The truth is that serious research exists only beyond the unfortunate skeptic-believer dialectic.
Surely it is to the military-industrial complex and not the heavens above that we should look for the origins of the flying saucer.
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Tim Matthews - April 1998
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Regarding Papoose Lake, between 1960 and 1962, we have a possible designation for one of the discs - XD-3A.
Apparently, these discs were developed to intercept increasing numbers of Soviet intruders from the mid-1950s onwards (it would seem that US fears regarding Soviet penetrations of US airspace - DEW line - were to some extent justified after all) and were equipped with a version of the AIM-47A missile. The official story is that this was designed in 1958 (for the F-108??) though not used until the arrival of the YF-12 interceptor years later. In fact it may well have been used in a larger disc-type craft able to travel at speeds approaching Mach 3.
This would have been equipped with Hughes ASG-18 radar and would have been used covertly until a decision was made to opt for the most conventional (!) designs offered by the Blackbird family....
I never hear much mention of the various AVRO projects. For years now we have been convinced through speaking with people who worked at the Malton, Ontario, plant up to 1960, through declassified intelligence documents and via our enquiries in the UK (AVRO was a subsidiary of Hawker-Siddeley and records are kept in the UK nowadays) that a much more advanced disc than the 'Avrocar' was designed, built and flown by the USAF. The 'Project Silver Bug' documents - released in 1995 - tend to confirm this...
What is more; at a time in the mid-1950s when ATIC were denying any knowledge of the origins of flying discs they were actually producing technical reports on their construction!
We also understand that the XF5U1 'flying pancake' was developed from 1947 and was fitted with gas turbines that allowed it to fly at very low speeds/near hover and up to around 600 mph. This was a metallic disc and one of many X-planes designed by the US Navy during the postwar period that were responsible for 'UFO' reports.
In addition to the recently declassified document AIR 100-203-79 mentioning an 'operational' XF5U1 and the fact that most of the flying saucer reports related to flying wings not unlike those designed by the Horten Brothers and Jack Northrop we also have a 'Project Sign' documents dated 23rd June 1948 and signed by Col. RD Wentworth which confirms the existence of low aspect ratio aircraft built by the US Navy which most closely resembled the objects reported to the official USAF investigation into supposedly 'unexplained aerial phenomena'.
All of the above fails to deal with the vexed question of Nazi scientists whose influence should not be underestimated. From 1946/7 these guys - often with less than spotless war records and a history of involvement in abuse of slave labour at various facilities within Germany between 1939-45 - were involved in US flying wing and disc programmes. The most obvious example is that of Dr. Richard Miethe whose involvement in classified US programmes was admitted by none other than Dr. Alexander Flax, former Secretary to the USAF, in an interview screened on a Sightings TV show.
Miethe was said, by former colleague Rudolf Schriever and other witnesses, to have been involved in German disc projects. In fact it seems that he was one of the most senior figures in the work of the Special Projects Group outside Prague from 1944. We also know that he was a colleague of Wernher von Braun and that he was involved in secret negotiations between USAF technical and intelligence personnel and AVRO spokesmen in 1951 when the first tentative moves to design and build the 'Project Silver Bug' discs were taken.
We now have technical diagrams of the 1952 version of the Miethe disc, the P724 alternative design, the WS606 and the various Project Y/Y2 discs.
There should be no confusion between these and the VZ-9 Avrocar - a very sad though successful attempt to cover-up the real technology......
None of the above relies upon the oh so typical drivel about Nazi gravitics systems, 'Vril' and 'Haunebu' discs, 'Nazi occult' links/'Nazi-ET' links or the nonsense contained in documents like the 'Omega File'.
Our conclusions are based upon sound research and upon primary research into declassified documents as well as interviews with people like Jack Pickett whose information have blown the lid off the REAL 'UFO cover-up'.
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Tim Matthews - October 1998
Now we're getting somewhere....
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Sources:
1 William Hartmann (Condon Committee) quoted in Jerome Clark's "The UFO Book" (Omnigraphics, 1998).
2 Peter Brookesmith first coined the phrase in an article entitled "UFOs: a Federal case" written for popular partwork "The Unexplained", Volume 5, number 56.
3 See "Heart of Darkness Part 2 - Notes Towards the Destruction of a Myth" by David Sivier, Strange Daze, Number 15, February 1998 and Abduction Watch number 5, December 1997.
4 Quoted in "Crossbow and Overcast" by James McGovern (Hutchinson, 1965), page 125.
5 For a factual introduction to this and similar material see "Giving the devil his due; Holocaust revisionism as a test case for free speech and the skeptical ethic" by Frank Miele. This is a Skeptics Society publication available at www.skeptic.com/02.4.miele-holocaust.html
6 See "A Covert Agenda" by Nick Redfern (Simon and Schuster, 1997) for fascinating information on the PRO and government UFO secrecy.
7 "Vengeance: Hitler's Nuclear Weapon: Fact or Fiction?" By Philip Henshall (Motorbooks 1995).
8 Another source supporting claims that Germany developed flying saucers was Major Rudolph Lusar whose "German Secret Weapons of World War 2" (Spearman 1959) included a few pages on the subject (pages 165-7) and also a comment supporting claims that the US was developing flying discs along similar lines in 1955. Importantly, Lusar also mentioned German scientists' attempts to develop a Nuclear weapon over thirty years before Henshall! The technical information in Lusars' book is both detailed and essentially correct and this lends greater weight to his claims about "nazi" discs.
9 (McGovern.)
10 A great deal of information on allied knowledge of, and advances in, pre-war and wartime German technologies is to be found in Professor R.V.Jones "Reflections on Intelligence" (Heinemann 1989).
11 "German Circular Planes" - J.Miranda and P.Mercado - "Reichdreams" Dossier No.10 (self-published).
12 A great deal of useful information and links on this subject can be found on the Internet at www.nurflugel.com.
13 See "Luftwaffe Secret Projects - Fighters 1939-45" by Walter Schick and Ingolf Meyer (Midland Publishing 1997) available in all good bookshops.
14 For detailed information on some advanced German projects I recommend "Top Secret Bird - The Luftwaffe's Me-163 Comet" by Wolfgang Spate (Independent Books/Pictorial Histories 1995).
15 Luftfahrt International 4/1980 pp.154-157. Copies on request with SAE from LUFOS at P.O.Box 73, Lancaster LA1 1GZ.
16 By 'stealth' I mean moves to reduce the Radar Cross Section (RCS) of an aircraft by use of Radar Absorbent Material (RAM) or by shaping. See Jones' "Stealth technology - the Art of Black Magic" (Aero/TAB, 1989) for a particularly detailed account of 'low observable' techniques.
17 "The Horten Flying Wing in World War 2" by H.P.Dabrowski (Schiffer Military History, number 47, Westchester, USA, 1991)) and "Stealth Bomber" by Bill Sweetman (Motorbooks 1989).
18 "Witness says US had flying saucer in 1946 - Could Explain Roswell UFO, Aircraft Engineer Thinks" from Lancaster New Era newspaper (Lancaster, Pennsylvania), July 12th 1997.
19 Take for instance several clearly faked technical documents relating to craft known as the 'Vril 7' and 'Haunebu' (one of which is an 'Adamski'-type!). These have been circulated and widely publicized on a video entitled "UFO Secrets of the Third Reich" (Labyrinth Video, 1994). The Miethe 'V7' related to 'Versuchs ('experimental') 7, if anything.
20 For example, the Gotha plant at Friedrichsrode was captured by US troops on 14th April 1945 and Horten wing designs were transported back to America for examination.
21 Taken from an International News Service release on 11th April 1950. The article included a photograph of Schriever as well as an artists' impression of his craft.
22 The Red Army gained control of Prague, the last piece of the crumbling Reich to fall, on about 10-11th May 1945.
23 "Deutsche Flugkreisel", Luftfahrt International, May-June 1975.
24 "Tages Anzeiger", 18th November 1954. A report entitled "Flying Saucer in 1945 - German's account of experiments" was covered in The Times on the same date.
25 This is mentioned in most accounts of so-called "Nazi UFOs", Harbinson, Vesco et al.
26 "Brighter Than A Thousand Suns" by Robert Jungk (Harcourt and Brace).
27 Bill Rose wrote a book on his research entitled "Shadowcraft". For a variety of reasons he decided to break sections of the text into a number of articles to be published in forthcoming issues of Quest Internationals' UFO Magazine (1998) and possibly in the USA. He has written a number of expert technical articles for Astronomy and photography magazines.
28 I am very grateful to Maurizio Verga for his information about Belluzzo which suggests that he was in fact a turbine expert who had been working upon various circular craft from 1942. In addition, Verga has advised me that on March 24th 1950 an Italian newspaper carried an article claiming, like Schriever a few days later, that flying saucers were most likely a development of his early ideas. Check out Verga's vital 'secret weapons' web site: www.ufo.it/german
29 The Coanda Effect is mentioned in several documents relating to flying saucers including the recently declassified "Project Silver Bug" joint Air Technical Intelligence Centre - Wright Air Development Centre (ATIC-WADC) report dated 15th February 1955 and rated Top Secret.
30 This is very well documented in both "America's Secret Army" by Douglas Botting and Ian Sayer (Grafton 1989), and "Overcast and Crossbow" by McGovern.
31 "Blowback - America's recruitment of Nazis and its' effects on the Cold War", Christopher Simpson (Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1988).
32 Ibid.
33 "Project Blue Book Unknowns"
34 "The American Fighter", Enzo Angelucci and Peter Bowers (Orion 1987).
35 Saucer sightings are covered in many books including Richard Hall's "The UFO Evidence" (Barnes and Noble, reprint 1997) originally released by NICAP in 1964.
36 For detailed information on this see the Project 1947/Internet UFO Group web site at www.iufog.org (look under 1947 - documents).
37 The Muroc Field sighting was a Project Blue Book 'unknown'. The sightings were considered to be of the utmost significance by Dr. J Allen Hynek.
38 Ibid.
39 "A Die-Hard Issue, CIA's role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90", Gerald K. Haines in Studies in Intelligence Vol. 01, No.1, 1997.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 The Coanda Effect - mentioned in several German-language articles on nazi discs and also in the ATIC Project Silver Bug technical report. The effect is named after Rumanian scientist Henry Coanda (1886-1972) and can be described as "the tendency of a fluid to follow the wall contour of a curved surface". Otherwise described; "Coanda jets are generated by blowing a moderate to high pressure gas (such as air) or liquid through a narrow slot over a surface which in some cases might be convexly curved). In terms of a flying saucer the craft would use this principle to generate vertical lift by the use of directed and/or adjustable jets. This would create a "ground cushion" effect and might eliminate the need for conventional landing gear.
43 Timothy Good is guilty of this. See his "Alien Liaison" (Arrow 1992). Good states that although he believes that German disc were a reality they never got far - in fact no further than Avrocar. We now know that this is not the case...
44 An intriguing article on flying saucers and their camouflaged launch sites was included in Look magazine, Volume 19, June 1955. The text, written by Thomas Turner, a British aeronautical engineer employed at the time by Republic Aviation was accompanied by drawings of saucer bases located beneath the surface and seemingly impervious to attack. Note the date, just a few months after rumours about a supersonic VTOL saucer appeared in the US-Canadian media and the distribution of the Silver Bug document within the US intelligence community. Article available at www.thule.org/page2.html
45 For a sensible and recent addition to the literature on Groom Lake see "Area 51 - No Past - No Future" by Bill Sweetman and featured in X-Planes magazine, an Air Forces Monthly Special, February 1998.
46 For details on AFFTC and the history and timeline of Groom Lake see either Glen Campbell's Area 51 Research Centre on the Internet at www.ufomind.com or Phil Patton's "Travels in Dreamland" (Orion, 1997).
47 Ibid.
48 According to Clark (1998) Keyhoe noted that saucer sightings were frequently reported from USAF facilities. I suggest that the reason is clear - they were of military origin! Keyhoe was very concerned about the role of the Air Technical Intelligence Centre at Wright-Patterson AFB....
49 See www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/1997/jul/19/506108271.html
50 Nick Cook - "Anti-Gravity for Real", Jane's Defence Weekly, June 19th 1995.
51 "Electrogravitic Systems - An examination of electrostatic motion, dynamic counterbary and barycentric control", Gravity Research Group, Aviation Studies Ltd., Knightsbridge, London, February 1956. Copies available from the author upon request.
52 Readers may be interested to learn that Brown worked for Lockheed and also helped to set up the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena in 1957 before being forced out by Keyhoe.
53 German VTOL projects, including Heinkel's P1077 Julia aircraft, mention of prone positioning for pilots and more, was included in "Rocket Fighter" by William Green (Ballantine, 1971).
54 Ibid.
55 A copy of this memorandum is available in "Phantoms of the Sky" by Dave Clarke and Andy Roberts (Hale, 1990).
56 Ibid.
57 www.ufomind.com/ufo/updates/1997/oct/m08-004.shtml
58 Ironically perhaps, a Russian prisoner claims to have seen a flying disc whilst imprisoned in a German concentration camp in 1943! See "Nazi UFOs: A Russian Eyewitness" by P.Stonehill - "UFO" Volume 10, no.2, pp.17-18.
59 Ibid.
60 Many of these important pieces of information are available from the Computer UFO Network at www.cufon.org. Pay the site a visit an download the documents for free!
61 This is recorded in several books including "The Hynek UFO Report" (Dell, 1977), "The Encyclopedia of UFOs" ed. Ronald Story (Doubleday, 1980), "The UFO Book - Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial" by Jerome Clark (Omnigraphics, 1998).
62 "The UFO Controversy in America" by David Jacobs (Indiana University Press, 1975).
63 The Battelle Memorial Institute study, a scientific effort conducted from 1951 at the behest of the Air Force, was also included in report number 14.
64 What is even more odd is that on the front of Project Blue Book Special Report Number 14 was a picture of a flying saucer almost exactly the same as the Silver Bug aircraft!
65 Taken from the Haines report (1997). In the footnote (41) attached to the quotation Haines notes that "'Project Y' did produce a small-scale model that hovered a few feet off the ground'. The evidence suggests that rather more was achieved and that this is part of the ongoing cover. Why no mention of Y2?
Kevin McClure's "Secrets Or Lies"! An Answer! by Tim Matthews, June 1998 I received this morning the latest McClure missive on so-called "Nazi UFOs" entitled "Secrets or Lies?" Investigating the Nazi UFO legends" which, true to form, erects a number of false arguments in order to knock them down. Despite the fact that I have sent Kevin McClure several detailed and informative letters on the subject he has quite obviously failed to read them. McClure has significant influence with Fortean Times magazine, the largest "paranormal" and "strange phenomena" journal in the UK, and will, no doubt, eventually use this forum to debunk my work. What's the betting that he'll volunteer to debunk my book when it comes out in several months time? Will future efforts be so misleading? Let's hope not! Where are all the ethics and principles as noted in several issues of Abduction Watch (which I subscribe to and actively promote in my own magazine "UFO NEWS") here? They seem curiously absent. Just last week Kevin attempted to discourage the British UFO Research Association from allowing Malcolm Robinson to speak at their forthcoming London lecture. This week I'm the target. What a shame...... His letter, which runs into several unnecessary pages, concentrates almost entirely upon debunking my latest fully researched and referenced report entitled "Flying Saucers - Secret History!" (in lower case) as well as having a pop at a few other people including Bill Rose. McClure's main thesis appears to be that the few of us interested in this subject believe in a 'legend' that" depends on unproven claims, on individuals with extreme right-wing beliefs, and on publishers and magazines keen to profit from sensational material, even where there is no evidence to suggest that it is true. (The suggestion that there is money in researching man-made flying saucers is a good joke.) The first part of this statement is just nonsense, as are Kevin's assertions about supposed 'standard' and 'conventional history' texts - which might be better described as those which tell people little of importance and which tell the half truth and nothing like the truth. Specifically, Kevin uses guilt by association to debunk my, and others, research. His letter, no doubt mailed to all and sundry (and to whom I have little chance of a gaining a fair hearing) at a cost that I cannot hope to equal deliberately misrepresents my report. The FACTS are that in my "Flying Saucers - Secret History!" report: - there is only the briefest and negative mention made of the author Renate Vesco. - there is NO interest shown in either the so-called "Feuerball" or "Kugelblitz" aerial devices. - there is but the briefest - and negative mention - made of the occult and paranormal lunacy surrounding the "Nazi" UFO topic. - there is NO use of extreme right-wing material. - NO interest is shown in the Nazi Polar/Antarctic myth. - the information, theories and other material made available through "Vanguard Sciences" are NOT referred to at all. - only a minority of the document actually deals with supposed "Nazi" UFOs (!). - the main part of the document deals with postwar developments including those that are supported by, amongst other things, declassified Intelligence documents. - contrary to the misleading information put out by McClure, there is no attempt to erect a specific theory that there is a "secret history of the development of black and secret weapons development under the cover of UFO sightings and explanations" even though this might indeed be the case. Other points: Both Robert Jungks' acclaimed Brighter Than a Thousand Suns (Harcourt and Brace 1970) and David Masters' German Jet Genesis (Jane's Publications, 1982) note the existence of German flying discs. This should not be taken as an indication that I support the inclusion of the material ONLY that it is in books that according to McClure "have only ever existed in the occult, paranormal and Ufological fringes". So he's wrong. He's hopelessly wrong about other things too. US Air Intelligence Report 100-203-79, released in 1948, notes that the Horten flying wing aircraft (advanced German technology) most closely resembled the flying objects reported in the early postwar period. This is but one document that says the same thing and these points are made in my report and deliberately ignored by McClure. He is NOT interested in an investigation or in asking questions. It is more than clear that he has already answered them in his own mind and that he retreats into out and out debunking again and again. His interest in such trashy publications as Michael X's The German Saucer Story"(as requested by him in a "search for reference material" booklist towards the end of his letter) indicates once again that he is attempting to debunk our work by falsely associating it with such rubbish. Anyone who has bothered to read my report will note that only one of the books in his list is referred to (negatively) in my report. 'Sufficient caution' has certainly been exercised by Bill Rose, myself and John Locker in our research into this subject. Over 300 pages of US Army documents (released 1994 I think?) on the subject of "UFOs" make it clear that German origins are of the greatest importance. I can quote ad nauseam from these for anybody who is interested but just one quotation from a Counter Intelligence Corps (region 6) document dated 10th November 1947 is enough to be going on with: It is further suspected that the flying objects seen [in 1946/7] have been developed from original plans and experiments conducted by the Germans prior to the capitulation. (The document also says that "At the present time, construction models are being built for wind tunnel tests" and that "This canvas is to be made discreetly and to conceal our interest in this subject". No wonder this information did not appear in any of the much-vaunted 'standard' or 'conventional' texts!!!) Incidentally, the AS6 V1 was a German circular wing aircraft that flew in 1943/44. A photograph of this is shown in hard copies of my report - again available upon request! What about this from a declassified CIA document dated 19th October 1955: Project Y is being directed by John Frost. Mr.Frost is reported to have obtained his original idea for a flying disc from a group of Germans just after World War Two. (Projects Y/Y2, P724 and the WS606 were variants of flying discs developed as part of a joint US-Canadian-British effort under the influence of Dr.Walter Miethe, who worked at the BMW plant near Prague associated with flying saucer developments during World War Two). So much for all the evidence for our supposed "claims" being entirely taken from the occult, paranormal and Ufological fringes! I could go on, but I don't see why I should. This kind of debunking is so typical of a UFO 'movement' that it is increasingly difficult to take seriously - unless a massive change in attitude takes place. It would seem that participants are happy with their sad little "aliens or not" arguments and occasional diversions into earth lights research. The TRUTH is that our research is right on the mark. Perhaps that's why it's so unpopular with some. The questions should be: 1 - Could the US and its' colleagues have developed various advanced/unconventional aircraft from 1946 onwards? 2 - Would the secrecy surrounding them have anything to do with their ultimate use? The answers to both these questions would appear to be YES. This information does not necessarily exist on Waterstones' bookshelves or on Microsoft Encarta '98. That doesn't mean that we have no evidence or that new evidence cannot come to light. Under Kevin's proposals, that no meaningful information on the subject could emerge before perhaps the 1950s, then we should all give up. Luckily, this is not the case and I suggest that the answers are there. For 50 years the majority of UFO "researchers" have been pissing in the wind with alien stories on the one hand and personal attacks, Mosleyesque scandal-mongering and debunking on the other whilst a range of circular and delta-wing aircraft have been flown under their noses. Perhaps THIS is the real story. The big question now is: Has the UFO community been actively discouraged from looking into this or has it just taken no interest? I suspect the latter to be the case and I suggest to the reader that UFO 'research' and wishful thinking go hand-in-hand all too often. In Kevin's case perhaps "wishing it away" might be a better description. No doubt UFO skeptics will rally to his defence. Who really cares? I think we know the real truth of the matter................. |