Nazis and UFOs

I was very interested to read SD Tucker’s response to my criticism of the promotional article for his book [FT437:68]. I notice that he mentions the Horten 229 flying wing “Amerika Bomber” jet project in association with Kenneth Arnold’s sighting as being a “myth”. Well, that is of course an opinion, and one that I disagree with. The Horten brothers were not part of Operation Paperclip, but their superior – Siegfried Knemeyer, was. He was Head of Technical Development at The Reich Ministry of Aviation. He was awarded a permanent contract with the US Air Force – Air Materiel Command and was eventually granted the highest civilian honour that the US military could bestow – The Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Award.

Combine that fact with the – admittedly only strongly rumoured – argument, that between 20 and 30 complete, but boxed up Horten 229s, not just the single one captured by the US military, were brought back for examination to the US, then I feel that there is a strong case to posit that what Arnold in fact actually saw, was a flight of adapted/improved Horten 229s, flying in formation, as they would do.

I understand, and appreciate what Mr Tucker says about not having the space to list all sections of his book, of course, but what I still disagree with is the cursory and casual way that he dismisses (or, as I haven’t read his book, should I say – seemingly dismisses?) solid, and deeply strange facts, such as the Nazis keeping a whole army, so very late in the war, away from combat duties, and used for guarding purposes around the Owl Mountains in Lower Silesia, which is now part of Poland.

There were seven massive underground tunnel structures as part (part of, note, not all of) “Project Riese” (Giant), all of which were either back-filled by the Nazis, or, more interestingly, I think, by the Allies after discovery in 1945, at the end of hostilities in that area. Still largely back-filled today. The Wenceslas Mine of “Die Glock” conspiracy theory fame is but a small part of the overall complex.

The Nazis only ever went to such enormous trouble when they had something pretty scary to actually use! Think of

Mittelwerk, the underground facility for V1s and V2s. Ditto La Coupole and The Blockhaus D’Eperlecques.

Combine all the above with the fact that no one for sure knows exactly what happened to Obergruppenfuhrer Hans Kammler in the last days of the war, who was the overseer of all Top Secret “Wunderwaffe” – excepting his possible talks via a junior with the US Counterintelligence Corps with a view to becoming part of Operation Paperclip or, as some have suggested, The Soviet’s Operation Osoaviakhim. In conclusion, I’m going to have to repeat myself: there is no smoke without fire! Except… in some cases?!

Mark Pearson

By email

SD Tucker replies ...

I do just want to emphasise that Mr Pearson admits he hasn’t actually read my book, just my article based on it, and my subsequent letters: if he had, he would understand that I don’t completely dismiss Project Riese as a total fake or myth, just that it was nothing specifically to do with building flying saucers or Nazi UFOs. I detail how, as he correctly says, Hans Kammler was indeed involved in secret Wunderwaffen projects throughout the war, and that the Allies who (apparently) captured him did indeed pump him for info about these subjects; my point about his secret Project Riese operations is not that there was nothing whatsoever to them, but simply that they did not involve attempting to build Hitler a time-machine or spaceship, as subsequent stupid Internet rumours claim.

Some more plausible accounts say he was trying to develop a V-2-mounted radiological ‘dirty bomb’ missile there. Maybe so, nobody knows. Also, I don’t specifically deny that what Kenneth Arnold saw that day in 1947 might have been some kind of secret US aircraft based on one or more captured Horten 229s

– I don’t know what his famous ‘saucers’ really were, but the fact they were broadly ‘bat-wing’-like in shape, rather like the Hortens, makes this a reasonable enough guess. I just show how this fair enough assumption was then later abused to falsely imply Stalin and Dr Josef Mengele then used some back-engineered Hortens themselves to stage the alleged Roswell UFO crash.

All I debunk in my actual book itself is the specific myth of Nazi UFOs – i.e., German-built flying saucers/spaceships/flying timemachines – not the much more realistic Wunderwaffen projects Mr Pearson mentions. Really, if he actually reads the full thing, rather than just short edited extracts where many elements by necessity have to be dismissed in a “cursory and casual way” due to issues of space, this will soon become exceedingly obvious. Nonetheless, I thank him for allowing me to remind readers of my book’s existence in the pages of FT once again! Perhaps it will now sell a few more copies – maybe even one to Mr Pearson himself this time?

Editorial note: this discussion is now closed