Chapter 12

THE ALCHEMY OF ATLANTIS:

AN INVENTORY OF NAZI SECRET WEAPONS AND THEIR HISTORICAL PROBLEMATIC

"In 1939, with Professor Herbert Wagner of the Henschel aircraft company as a consultant, Fernseh undertook to develop a television installation that would enable pilots to control both planing bombs and rocket bombs after they were launched."

Renato Vesco and David Hatcher Childress

Man-Made UFOs 1

1 Renato Vesco and David Hatcher Childress, Man-Made UFOs 1944 1994: 50 Years of Suppression, p. 147.

There have been a host of books about Nazi secret weapons, detailing what is an incredible inventory of prototypical and futuristic weapons, from heat-seeking, wire-guided, radio guided, and even television-guided missiles, to tanks so gigantic that they are little more than impractical mobile pillboxes, to claims of the genuinely fantastic: flying discoid aircraft, or flying saucers, to fuel-air bombs, "death rays", particle beams, electromagnetic pulse weapons, "wind" cannon, and so on.

And beyond these, there were even more incredible long-range paper studies of nuclear powered aircraft and "space shuttles", gigantic solar mirrors in orbit to turn enemy cities and regions to toast, and a host of other paper projects almost too incredible to imagine. Usually dismissed derisively, these claims persisted in the literature, long after Adolf Hitler himself personally mentioned them, in what is usually seen as the demented ravings of a known madman:

We have invisible aircraft, submarines, colossal tanks and cannon, unbelievably powerful rockets, and a bomb with a working that will astonish the whole world. The enemy knows this, and besieges and attempts to destroy us. But we will answer this destruction with a storm and that without unleashing a bacteriological war, for which we are also prepared.... All my words are the purest truth. That you will see! 2

Hitler's alleged claims here could easily be dismissed, as well as those of the postwar neo-Nazi sympathizers who first broke the story of Nazi flying saucers, as the farthest thing from "the purest truth." Dealing with a known sociopath and genocidal maniac such as Hitler and his followers, it became easy to dismiss such claims especially when there was no corroborating evidence forthcoming. Then Renato Vesco's Intercept UFO was published in the 1960 later republished, and then later republished again with additional material by David Hatcher Childress under the title Man Made UFOs 1944-1994: Fifty Years of Suppression.

Vesco, who unlike the neo-Nazi sympathizers who emerged after the war to first tell the story in the West German press provided a host of specifics, such as the names, types of weapons and laboratories and companies conducting the research on these advanced technologies. But again, as Nick Cook was to discover, the trail seemed to lead back to the same few sources, and it became a story impossible to corroborate.3

Vesco had mentioned the British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee (BIOS) reports as substantiation for his claims, but those were, at that time, mostly inaccessible, and in addition, "researchers had been through all the available... BIOS files with a fine-tooth comb and had found nothing..."4

2. Mayer and Mehner, Das Geheimnis, p. 97, the quotation was overheard by Italian officer Luigi Romersa, q.v. chapter 5, p. 97 of this book.

3. Nick Cook, The Hunt for Zero Point, p. 53.

4. Ibid, p. 57.

Vesco couched his account of alleged Nazi "Fireballs" (the so-called Foo Fighters seen at the end of the war), within a tapestry of references to these other advanced missile projects undertaken by the Third Reich. But as researcher Kevin McClure put the case, Vesco's "technical" descriptions of the alleged Nazi devices behind the Foo Fighters sightings were based on "pseudo-technical descriptions" that originated "absolutely and only with Vesco."5 Add to this Vesco's claims for " fuel-air bombs" and the story - Vesco's detailed references to scientists, companies and laboratories notwithstanding - became all too easy to dismiss once again.

But then came the German reunification and the resulting declassification of documents by the American, British, and German governments. The truth is not merely incredible, but staggering, and it poses host of historical problematics, as we shall see.

 

A. The Missiles

A Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee (CIOS) report, number XXXII-125, running to more than one hundred and fifty pages, details not only "an experimental model of an additional thrust unit which was to be fastened to either the A4(V-2) or the A- 9 to give an additional range,"6 but also various "America Raket" projects for a guided missile with a range of 3,500 miles.7

These latter rockets, the report notes, with less than complete reassurance, "probably never progressed beyond the drawing board stage."8 But additionally, there was a V-3 weapon, "a larger version of the V1 with an incendiary warhead instead of the (high explosive) normally used. Very little information is available concerning V3 control systems."9 What, indeed, was this "incendiary warhead"? A thermite bomb? A fuel-air bomb? An actual atom bomb? The report is unclear.

5. Keven McClure, The Nazi UFO Mythos, Core 2: "Renato Vesco, Feuerball and Kugelblitz, p. 5, internet published book, www.magonia.demon.co.uk/abwatch/naziufo/naziufo3.html.

6. "German Guided Missile Research, Combined Intelligence ObjectivesSub-Committee, G-2 Division, SHAEF (Rear), APO 413, XXXII-125, p. 5.
7. Ibid., p. 6.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 7

As if this were not enough, a lengthy section of the report concerns a whole range of guided missiles being developed under the direction of Dr. Wagner for the Henschel firm. These included the HS-293-B, a rocket power glider with a wire guidance system,10 the HS-294-A rocket powered glider "with torpedo" that included a "special device for blowing off fuselage rear section and wings as soon as body touches water surface, fuselage front section then cruising as torpedo under water," a small quantity of which were built for experimentation between 1941 and 1943!11

A lengthy section of the report, from page 139 to almost the end of the report, concerned the development of miniaturized television camera guidance systems for various missiles, including the well-known anti-aircraft rocket, the "WasserfaU" (Waterfall),12 Many of these tests failed, but by the war's end, a successful test of the television-guided "Tonne" missile was conducted by German scientists for the Allies in Berlin, with the target being a photograph of a little girl's face. The test was successful, much to the impressed, and doubtless shocked, Allied observers.13

To this astounding inventory, one may add radio-controlled surface to air missiles - one of which sank the Italian battleship Roma on its way to surrender to the Allies - infrared heat seeking air-to-air and surface to air missiles, wire guided missiles and torpedoes, biological and chemical warheads for the V-l and V-2, and possible fuel-air and atomic warheads as well.14 In addition, the Heinkel and Messerschmitt companies were undertaking modifications of their He-177 and Me 264 heavy bombers to carry atom bombs. Where were these modifications being made?

In Prague.15

10.Ibid., p. 8.

11.Ibid., p. 9.

12.Ibid., pp. 139-150.

13.William Uricchio, "Envisioning the Audience: Perceptions of Early German Television's Audiences, 1935-1944, p. 1., http://www.let.uu.nl/~william.uricchio/personal/SWEDEN1.html.

14 .Q.v. Friedrich Georg, Hitlers Siegeswaffen, Band 1, pp. 128-143

15. Ibid.

 

B. Prototypical Stealth (Radar Absorbent) Materials

But Hitler's boast overheard by Luigi Romersa included more than just a prototypes for the "smart" weapons that would become such staples of the American military for decades to come. It also included a claim to possess invisible aircraft and submarines. Surely this, at least, was fantasy? Not so. There exists a British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee (BIOS) report entitled "Production and Further Investigation of Wesch Anti-Radar Material, CIOS Black List Item 1 RADAR, BIOS Target No. 1/549," whose significance is rather obvious from its title.

The objective of this team was to acquire some 500 feet of this material for secret testing by the British Admiralty.16 The report details the production of various RAM materials (Radar Absorbent Material) by the Germans,17 via techniques that involved shredding and heating rubber, and combining zinc oxide, finely ground iron powder (the powder was ground into micro-spheres), which was all then pressed into sheets, and then transferred to press moulds, trimmed and heated under small pressure. This material was actually used on the hulls of some late Type XXI U-Boats, as well as on U-boat schnorkel devices, to scatter Allied radar to return distorted or indeed, no radar signals.18

16. "Production and farther Investigation of Wesch Anti-Radar Material," British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee 1/549, Report 132, p. 4.

17.Ibid., pp. 5-6.

18. Ibid., pp. 5-7.

German Schnorkel Coated with Early "Stealth" Material

Yet another type of RAM technology was being studied by the Germans for its effects on electromagnetic wave propagation. As this is an important point that we will return to later, the report on this material is cited in full here:

Zeulenroda:

The following are the only war research activities engaged in: Measurements were made on materials for absorbing electromagnetic radiation. One of these materials consisted of spiral steel shavings imbedded in paraffin, which was named EISENSPANE. Another material tested was manufactured by I.G. Farben and was called MOLTOPREN. No papers were available on this work but the results were given from memory as shown in appendix B. The purpose of this work was for the concealment of submarines.19

I.G. Farben, and missing papers, once again. And submarine stealth was not the only thing the Nazis were after:

A large price was offered by the German Government for the development of "Schwarzflugzeug' /Black airplane/, a non-reflecting material for use on aircraft.20

As we shall see, this research may have paid unexpected dividends to the German secret weapons research project. In any case, the existence of actual "protostealth" schnorkel devices on late war German U-boats attests to the success of some of these experiments.

This report also corroborates yet another allegation, often derisorily dismissed by mainstream researchers, that in May of 1945, a small flotilla of the new Type XXI U-boats, with their revolutionary hydrogen peroxide underwater "turbine" propulsion allowing extraordinary undersea cruising speeds, met, and annihilated, a flotilla of British destroyers.21

19. Ibid., p. 57.

20. Ibid., p. 63.

21. Q.v. Henry Stevens, Tha Last Battalion (German Research Project).

The allegations included the German use of new types of wire-guided, and magnetic proximity torpedoes.22 At least one corroboration of this strange encounter occurs in the BIOS report:

Vierling has heard of electrical homing devices for torpedoes and their firing by a proximity effect. Torpedoes used magnetic fields varying at about 500 cycles per sec. Torpedoes were built by AEG in Berlin. Some work was done also at Gdynia. These torpedoes were reported to have sunk 12 Destroyers in one engagement in Arctic waters. 23

22. Q.v. Henry Stevens, The Last Battalion (German Research Project).

23. "Production and further Investigation of Wesch Anti-Radar Material," British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee 1/549, Report 132, p. 63, emphasis added.

 

C. Computers

The Allies, as is known, perfected early digital computing machines during the war, which machines were instrumental in breaking the "unbreakable" German Enigma machine's ciphers, but also of incalculable value in assisting the Manhattan Project engineers with difficult calculations needed for the atom bomb. In some rarely encountered but sophisticated versions of the Allied Legend, this constitutes another reason for the German failure to develop truly long range rockets and, of course, the atom bomb. But here too, the declassified reality is quite at odds with the postwar spin.

A computing machine was used at Gottingen for researches in airplane stability and ballistics. Machine could solve equations mentioned in two or three minutes with errors less than 3%. Only one such machine has been made. It uses ordinary vacuum tubes, a multiplying principle and two cathode ray rubes, one of which has a spiral scan. One tube draws the curve which is the solution and the other indicates the complex roots of the solution.24

24. Ibid.

The Gottingen computer, however, appears not to have been the only computer designed and built in the Third Reich. Indeed, since the reunification, reports and actual photographs have surfaced of an enormous, "Eniac" sized computer built by none other than the Deutsche Reichspost.25 The question is, why would the postal service need such an enormous, and expensive, computer? One reason has already been encountered in part one: such a computer would have been invaluable to the research that Baron Manfred von Ardenne and Dr. Fritz Houtermans were conducting for the Reichspost on the atom bomb, and for running the difficult calculations of neutron free path and cross sections that required.

25. Edgar Mayer and Thomas Mehner, p. 188


The Reichspost's Computer

 

D. The "Superbombs"

As we have seen, before the curtain of silence and spin came down after the war, a number of small articles appeared in the Allied press about the actual state of German atom bomb research. One of these was an article that appeared in the Evening Standard on August 7, 1945, one day after the Little Boy atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

It is worth citing this article in full:

GERMANS TIMED ATOM BOMB FOR OCTOBER

The Germans had an atom bomb which would have been ready by October.

A colossal blast effect was claimed for the German bomb. It was said it would wipe out everything inside a radius of six miles, said B.U.P. to-day.

The German atomic plans were uncovered four months ago, when an Allied search party walked into a small silk factory at Celle, north of Hanover.

A laboratory of two rooms was buried away in the heart of the factory. A famous research scientist was still at work. He was flown to Britain the same day.

This man, with others, had been working on the atom bomb for months. The Nazi Government poured out money on it. Apparently they did not expect immediate results.26

There are a number of disquieting things about this article. First, one gains the impression from the report that the "laboratory" was not even known to the Allies until the factory was occupied. Second, there is already evidence of a "spin" in the report, as the German program is understood to have been underway for only a few "months." But the final and most unusual thing is that its blast effects, some 6 miles radius, or 12 miles in diameter, is far beyond the blast damage radius of even a large atom bomb, much less a fuel air bomb. The only known weapon with this extraordinarily sized blast radius is a fully-fledged hydrogen bomb.

26 Mayer and Mehner, Hitler und die ,,Bombe", p. 51, emphasis added.

We have seen in part one that Professor Lachner of Vienna maintained that the German atom bombs were deliberately intended by the Nazis to be used as the detonators for hydrogen bombs. But was there sufficient basic theory for the Germans to have thought of the hydrogen bomb at that early stage?27

27.It should be recalled that Dr. Edward Teller actually first thought of, and proposed to the Allies, the hydrogen bomb in 1944.

1. The "Molecular" Bomb: The Hydrogen Bomb?

The idea of a "Superbomb" was first patented prior to World War Two in Austria, and a modification of the idea was patented in Germany in 1943.28 Its inventor, Dr. Karl Nowak, explained the reason for his invention as being to create a superbomb without the radioactive fallout effects that were evident from atomic and thermonuclear explosions!29

In other words, the Nazis were already looking past the thermonuclear age toward the creation of second and third generation weapons systems that would give the same offensive and strategic "punch" but without the side effects! In theory, the bomb is workable, but was way beyond the technological capabilities of Germany, or any other power, in that time period. Basically, the idea was to create a state of matter in which, through ultra-low temperatures approaching absolute zero, matter would be super-compressed.

The idea was then to detonate this material, subjecting it to sudden stress and heat, to create a sudden and massive expansion and explosion, and therewith, an enormous, H-bomb sized blast.30 Thus, there may have been a basis in actual German secret research for the incredible claim of the Japanese military attaché in Stockholm's 1943 report to Tokyo that the Germans were investigating the properties of super-dense matter for weaponization.

28.German patent 905.847, March 16, 1943, cited in Mayer and Mehner, Hitler und die ,,Bombe", p. 159.

29.Ibid., p. 159.

30.Ibid., p. 158.

 

2. The Fuel-Air Bomb

At the "small end" of the "bombs of mass destruction scale," however, there are equally baffling, and problematical, assertions regarding Nazi research into the fuel-air bomb, the only known conventional explosive device with enough power to produce the blast and heat effects of a small "tactical" nuclear weapon. It goes without saying that today's "tactical nuke" would have been World War Two's strategic weapon.

Once again, the first allegations of this type of bomb did not come with Gulf War One in the early 1990s, but with Renato Vesco. And his claims there, as elsewhere, were quietly ignored. But once again, declassification has verified his assertions, and to an extraordinary degree:

(g) Liquid Air bomb

As the research on the atomic bomb under Graf von Ardenne and others was not proceeding as rapidly as had been hoped in 1944, it was decided to proceed with the development of a liquid air bomb. Experiments using ordinary powdered coal were not at all successful, but extremely good results were obtained from a mixture consisting of 60% finely powdered dry brown coal and 40% liquid air. The technical man responsible for this work was Dr. Zippelmeier.

The first trial was made on the Doberitz grounds near Berlin using a charge of about 8 kg of powder in a thin tin plate container. The liquid air was poured on to the powder, and the two were mixed together with a long wooden stirrer. Kreutzfeld did this himself, and was present at the ensuing test. In an area of radius 500 to 600 meters trees, etc. were all completely destroyed. Thereafter the explosion started to rise and only the tops of the trees were affected, although the intensive explosion covered an area 2 km. in radius.

Zippelmeier then had the idea that a better effect might be obtained it the powder was spread out in the form of a cloud before the explosion. Trials were made with a paper container impregnated with some waxy substance. A metal cylinder was attached to the lower end of this container and hit the ground first, dispersing the powder. After a short time interval of the order of 1/4 second a small charge in the metal cylinder exploded and ignited the dark funnel shaped dust - liquid air cloud. The bombs had to be filled immediately prior to the departure of the aircraft.

Bombs with charges of 25 and 50 kg. of powder were dropped on the Starbergersee, and photographs of the explosion were taken. Standartenfuhrer Klumm kept a photograph of the result and showed it to Brandt (Himmler's personal adviser(sic)). The intensive explosion covered an area 4 to 4.5 km radius, and the explosion was still felt on a radius 12.5 km. When the bomb was dropped on an airfield, much destruction was caused 12 km away, and all the trees on a hillside 5 to 6 km away were flat. On a radius of 12.5 km. only the tops of the trees were destroyed.31

Several important considerations are worth mentioning here. First, note the truly massive size and area of devastation caused by the relatively small fuel-air bomb, for the area covered by the second test is commensurate with the blast from a large atom bomb: 6 kilometers' radius. Second, note that Zippelmeier has had a similar insight to Dr. Nowak's "molecular bomb": compression of material and then rapid dispersion over an area prior to detonation.

This is only one step short of a modern fuel air bomb with its chain molecules and electrical, instantaneous, rather than slower chemical, detonation. So in other words, regardless of whether or not the Nazis actually detonated atom bombs during World War Two, they did have a weapon of mass destruction as powerful as an atom bomb, and one that did not have radioactive side effects. Moreover, the weight of this bomb, while large, was within the capabilities of existing German bombers to carry. Finally, it is to be noted that this test took place under the direct auspices of the SS, Himmler's representative himself being present for it. And that would place the weapon firmly within the orbit of Kammler's "think tank." But possession of a fuel-air bomb by Nazi Germany now raises some important historical problematics.

31 British Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee, "Information Obtained from Targets of Opportunity in the Sonthofen Area," BIOS Target numbers C 28/8.211, C 25/549, C 6/137, C 30/ 338, C 4/268, C 22/2182, C 21/601., pp., 4

 

E. The Historical Problematic:

German possession of even a prototype fuel-air bomb during World War Two causes a number of historical problems, and it is worth considering them and their implications.

1. The Cold War

First, the test of such a device during the war would give lie to the contemporary "public" history of the fuel-air bomb, since they are only supposed to be the offshoot of American thermonuclear research and dating from the early 1980s. Doubtless, the modern fuel-air bomb is nothing like the early German prototype, with its chain molecules and simultaneous electrical detonation, it is a lighter, and much more powerful device.

Second, if the technology existed for such enormous conventional bombs capable of reaching strategic large scale destruction on the order of small atom bombs, why were untold billions spent on much more expensive atomic and thermonuclear bombs, whose side-effects included deadly radioactivity, and why was the charade continued for so long? The existence of such weapons indicates that at some very profound, and little appreciated, level, the Cold War was a partial sham.

Third, the basic idea for such a weapon had, in fact, been explored by Austria (prior to its annexation by Germany), and then subsequently both by Italy and Germany in the years immediately prior to the war. The idea is simple, and the effects obvious. So why did it take this long to obtain the weapon? Or is there a history that has not yet come to light? Given what we have already encountered in part one regarding allegations of the German use of some weapon of extraordinary strategic explosive power on the Eastern Front, it seems likely that some similar type of weapon was already in use. The Zippelmeier test may thus only have been a test, not of the concept itself, but of how large of a weapon could actually be made. The results, as have been seen, were probably beyond even the Nazis' wildest destructive dreams.

2. The Alchemy of Atlantis: the "Mission Brief" of the Kammler stab

But what do all these fantastic projects indicate about the nature of German secret weapons research? We may draw a number of conclusions from the evidence presented thus far, and in so doing, speculatively reconstruct the "mission briefing" of the secret weapons think tank being run by Kammler's SS Sonderkommando:

(1)

Overlapping technologies were to be developed that could be employed in across a wide variety of various weapons systems (Stealth and RAM technology, etc);

(2)

Every available method for the creation of prototypical "smart weapons" was to be pursed (wire, radio, and television-guidance systems), i.e., German technological and engineering competence were to be exploited to the maximum;

(3)

This technological competence was to be pursued in (then) unconventional ways and combinations to create not only new weapons, but a new doctrine of warfare;

(4)

The first generation of these weapons were then to be extrapolated upon, and second and third generation technology trees and long range goals mapped out;

(5)

The ultimate quest was for the attainment of weapons of mass destruction beyond the acquisition of atomic and thermonuclear weapons;

(6)

Post-nuclear systems were then to be developed ideally, and initial research on those systems undertaken; and finally, as we shall see,

(7)

Every known theoretical principle of physics was to be pondered and extrapolations for weaponization theorized, and, to the extent possible, experimented upon and utilized.

In other words, the Kammlerstab's mission brief was to think "outside the box" entirely, even if that meant outside the box of Nazi party ideology, or, when it suited it, inside it. The basis was the will to power, by whatever means possible.

3. Whose Military-Industrial Complex?

All these considerations raise a final problematic, and one so obvious that I hesitate mentioning it, since others have before, only to be dismissed or not taken seriously. President Eisenhower, as he was leaving office, gave his celebrated warning to the American people about the spiritual and cultural dangers of "the military industrial complex." With the influx of Nazi "Paperclip" scientists, many if not most of whom - including Dornberger, Oberth, and Von Braun - were members of Kammler's "think tank", this warning by someone in the know must surely be interpreted differently than current standard explanations.

Having fought the world's first "military-industrial complex" and doubtless seen at least some of its extraordinary inventory of weapons and theoretical papers, President Eisenhower is surely raising another ominous, though overlooked, specter: Just whose military-industrial complex is he really warning about?

What possible spiritual and cultural dangers were there to the American people from good old American companies like Boeing, DuPont, Lockheed, Hughes, and so on, unless, in importing ex-Nazi scientists and their unusual methods and insights and experimental results (often achieved at the cost of enormous human suffering), we inadvertently imported an underlying ideology at variance with traditional morality.

Back to Contents