Stupidities -> Home
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I thus invite the reader to go beyond the illustration and the sensationalist headline of the front cover and to follow me in a step by step guided visit about the claims in this article on the infamous Nazi flying saucers written by the journalist and ufologist Jean-Pierre Troadec.
The headlines becomes: "Nazi UFOS - the secret plans of the third Reich".
On the left, there is a photograph of an SS cap with the skull ensign, of which I really do not see the purpose, below, there is a painting of a false Nazi flying saucer, of which I do not see the purpose either, and a "warning" which specifies that the article is not a tribute to the Nazi regime, that it is only about an "historical perspective", that it is a matter of "going beyond the controversies" and of "trying to take necessary distance" and that there is "no compromise with the duty of memory." Actually, no distancing is carried out, and the "duty of memory" here consists in propagating falsifications of the story of aeronautics, propagating errors in the field of aeronautics, false interpretations of documents, allotting false ideas to ufologists and making absolutely laughable reasoning errors.
Still in the warning, it is claimed that the article "will shed light" on German secret projects, and that the result of these secret projects "might constitute" the UFOS seen at the beginning of the Fifties. But we shall see that it is not no: instead of shedding light, the article propagates shameless lies. Is this by ignorance? I prefer to think so.
The article claims in introduction that in spite of what was written about this tragic period of history, an ignored aspect of the war was almost never presented to the public, the fact that the Nazis have built secret flying weapons.
They is actually entirely false, for there is plethora of documentary and books of good quality on the German planes of World War II, and more particularly on their most advanced of weird flying machines, from the Me 262 jet fighter to the V1 and V2 rockets, not to mention the Bachem Natter and the wooden flying wings of the Horten brothers, and there is on the other end plethora of pseudo-documentary videos and DVDs, foolish books and articles on the Nazi flying saucer lore (see the bibliography at the end of this article). When the author claims that there is something "ignored" here, he is mistaken, the theories on Nazi flying saucers as well as their refutations have blossomed everywhere. The relative lack of success of these theories is not due to a lack of information or public ignorance, it is due to the entirely justified mistrust of the public as for the value of these theories.
The author then claims that these secret aircraft have been "either of circular form or in the shape of delta wing", which is still entirely false. For example, it is perfectly true that engineer Alexander Martin Lippisch (1894 - 1976) had studied the delta wing, but nothing was built by the Nazis using a delta wing. Only a small size sailplane was built by Lippisch, who wanted to evaluate lift and drag of a delta shaped wing:
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Above: The DM-1, by Lippisch (left). It was a wooden sailplane, with no engine. The objective of the construction of this sailplane was to check if a delta plane is stable. It was by no means a "Nazi flying saucer". His attempt to make a delta-winged plane was not supported at all by the Nazis, on the contrary, the war prevented Lippisch from pursuing his delta wing studies!
It was the Americans and the French who pursued the concept of the delta wing, the French tardily with their famous Mirage III and IV by Dassault, and the Americans with this prototype initially:
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Above: As Lippisch had not been able to continue the development of the delta wing concept under the Nazi regime, he was delighted by be able to do it in the United States within NACA, the ancestor of NASA. The allies sent him with his model to Langley at the NACA laboratories. Convair had on their side made some tests of delta wings with their P-92 prototype, and with the assistance of Lippisch, work on P-92 was continued and led to the first prototype of plane with a purely delta wing, Convair XF-9À (left), that first flew in 1949. The XF-92 is currently on display at US Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB.
XF-92A having made it possible to check that the delta wing was sufficiently stable and had certain interesting qualities, Convair then developed the F-102 then F-106 jet fighters using the delta wing.
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Above: The F-102 tests (left) began in 1953, and it was the occasion of discovered famous law of the surfaces, solution of an aerodynamic problem which obstructed stable supersonic flight. F-102, first productive delta winged jet, was improved and then F-106 came out, the two models actually used by the US Air Force. Contrarily to the claims of Jean-Pierre Troadec, the Nazis did not fly any delta winged plane!
The author tells then, but in the conditional, that the Germans "would have built" true flying saucers capable of vertical takeoff, the "Vril" and "Haunebu", and claims that these projects "were ignored of general public".
In reality, it has been more than 50 years that a totally dubious literature floods the general public on this matter, and we will see together step by step, that it is within this abundant and by no means hidden literature that the author found the substance of his article.
The article itself begin with rather meaningless sentences of general considerations, rambling on about "experts" that "dispute" on "the relevance of the file", UFOs as existing or not existing, or UFOs are "you are pro or con", and about "difficulties" to "reject witnesses and documents" etc.
Inaccurate things are written then again. For the third time, which is quite useless, it is claimed that "everyone" was "unaware of" the matter of Nazi prototypes. This is entirely false, and I propose at the end of this article a bibliography on this topic which proves that the subject was absolutely not ignored, but that on the contrary it has been explained on for more than 50 years and that the myths on the flying saucers Nazi were refuted on many occasions by the serious researchers who really studied the question. I had published myself a free refutation on my website well before the publication of the article by Jean-Pierre Troadec, but it does not seem that he took notice of it, nor of any other refutations, of which he does not make any mention at all.
The following assertion is also false. The author claims that "ufologists" reject the existence of Nazi flying saucers as being an "operation of disinformation aiming at dismissing the extraterrestrial hypothesis." This is false, only some marginal ufologists went in this direction. In reality, the majority of ufologists reject Nazi flying saucers for a quite different reason: they simply never existed.
A good example of intellectual terrorism on behalf of the author follows, when he writes: "feeling directly attacked, some are maddened at the point to become blind and the intransigent."
What he means is that if you dare think that Nazi flying saucers never existed, you are in the error, you are blind and intransigent. This bad rhetoric is a telltale sign which does not mislead serious people. It is not by claiming that ufologists are "blind and intransigents" that the author will convince that they Nazi saucers existed, it is by bringing some proof, or at least, some elements of probability. We will see that there is none of that in his article.
The author then defends the relevance of the question. But there again, this is really not the problem. For example, in this criticism, I claim by no means that it is illegitimate to raise the question of a Nazi origin of the UFOs, I show only that this question was already tackled many times, that the negative answers sit here since long, while the alleged convincing or at least intriguing are still missing.
The author then recalls that identified flying craft observations began in 1947. Actually, these observations already exist during World War II with the "foo fighters" or "the Light" or "the Thing", not to mention all the reports that, no matter what they could have been, cannot have the least relationship with Nazi flying saucers since they go back well beyond the time of the Nazi regime.
The author claims that the 1947 reports talk about flying saucers whose occupants are tall and blonde and sometimes spoke with a strong German accent. Actually, it is not true. There are of course some late stories invented by eccentrics a long time after the 40's and telling such things, but no serious case, and the author indicates none, which prevents the reader from checking what he claims and realize that those were only newspapers anecdotes or long-debunked "contactees" claims and not reliable and investigated UFO sightings.
Actually, these silly contactees stories are almost never a matter of "blond giants with a German accent" but Venusian or others alleged extraterrestrial of quasi human appearance, which is obviously nonsense. The close encounters of the third kind with observation of UFO occupant show in smashing majority that occupants of UFOs are NOT human beings, even less "blonde giants with a German accent", and, must it be said, the Germans are obviously not all "blonde giants" either.
But the author seems to really believe what Adamski told. (There is in insert on this topic at the foot of the page, which is perhaps a comment of the editor: it is said that Adamski's photographs are "probably forgeries", then that they are all the same to consider seriously with the reason that "there is something utterly German in the ergonomics [sic] of this craft.")
The author tells that the infamous adventures of George Adamski "contains pieces bringing us closer to Germany."
As evidence, the author first states that a plaster molding of footsteps, made by Adamski as a proof of his encounter with a Venusian, shows that there were two swastikas on the soles of alleged Venusian's shoes. Actually these plaster moldings were made by his friend George Williamson the very same day of the alleged encounter, as the accomplices had thought of taking plaster with them, interestingly. This drawing was made thereafter to illustrate these alleged plaster moldings:
As anyone could figure out, there isn't two but one swastika, and it is of Tibetan design and not Nazi design.
It did not take long to the Belgian ufologist Franck Boitte to note that as Adamski was set on Tibetan Buddhism of which swastika was a symbol well before Hitler re-used it, it is very unsurprising that he used symbol . (See Franck Boitte's article "Eclaircissements possibles sur la signification des symboles figurant sur les moules de Desert Center, 20 novembre 1952" in "Lumière dans La Nuit" pp.13-19, n° 287-288, May-June 1988.)
In the years of the prohibition of alcohol in the USA, Adamski had indeed founded a tiny cult which he used as smokescreen of his alcohol traffic, Royal Order of Tibet, claiming he was a professor and inventing trips to Tibet he never made.
The other claimed element supposed to link Adamski's Venusian and Nazi flying saucers is that a photograph of an alleged flying saucer taken by Adamski again shows a swastika, this time on the saucer.
This photography quite simply does not exist. Of the two things that exist, the first is the false claim of certain eccentrics that pretend that a film of a flying saucer which is really a fake by Lonzo Dove and which they claim as a genuine footage by Madeleine Rodeffer would show a swastika on the "saucer". The footage is such a gross forgery that any sensible person would burst into laughter, and there is actually null swastika in it.
The second is this sketch:
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The story of this drawing is as follows: Adamski told that at their first meeting, the Venusian had borrowed the photographic plate he had taken of their saucer. He told that on December 13, meeting the Venusians again, he asked them if he could have his plate back and a Venusian threw a plate back to him from a window of their saucer, but that instead of his plate, what they threw at him was this drawing, that Adamski called "the substituted photograph." As Jean-Pierre Troadec just heard speak of that and did not get the details right, and did not take any care to dig into the story, he tells that this drawing is a photograph of saucer Nazi with swastika...
Jean-Pierre Troadec, who is not the first to claim that there is a "convincing" similarity between Adamski's saucer and the pseudo-blueprints of Nazi saucers, simply shows here - at the minimum - his lack of critical thinking and competence: it is after Adamski showed his fake photographs of Venusian flying saucers that neo-Nazi promoters of Nazi flying saucers lore drew these fake blueprints imitating the Adamski saucer!
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Above: One of the fake saucer photographs shown by Adamski. It was actually a porcelain lamp top (*) decorated with table tennis balls. Although all serious ufologists know about that, Jean-Pierre Troadec quite simply does as if the photographs were real.
(*) Adamski had foreseen that close analysis of his photographs may reveal the porcelain aspect and thus his description of the saucer's appearance complies to porcelain: "It was a marvelous small machine, resembling more a heavy bell of glass than a flying saucer. However I could not see through" the glass-like matter.
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Above: Pseudo-professor Adamski posing in front of a painting representing the "Venusian" he claimed to have met. Far from resembling some giant blonde Nazi, he is described by Adamski as of almost female beauty, with long hair, a very non-military behavior, and the ideology that Adamski claims told by the Venusian has nothing Nazi about it.
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Above: The saucer in the Madeleine Rodeffer footage, a coarse forgery. According to Jean-Pierre Troadec, there is a photograph which shows a swastika on a flying saucer filmed by Adamski. But Jean-Pierre Troadec fails to show it.
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After Adamski's fake saucer photographs were publicized, other liars made fake photographs using the same shape than Adamski's as a trick to credibility. This one is the famous forgery produced by young British Stephen Darbyshire. Instead of realizing that forgeries inspire forgeries, Jean-Pierre Troadec thinks that one fake proves the other genuine.
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Menger married this "Venusian" blonde, who had nothing of a Nazi and no German accent.
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While Menger's book represents a saucer "à la Adamski", it is not just good marketing by the editor. Menger also took fake photographs of his saucer, like that on the left. The shape of the saucer is strictly the same as that of Adamski's lamp top.
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Above: Fake "blueprints" of a Nazi "Haunebu" flying saucer appeared the decades after the above fake photographs. The silhouette of course recalls that on false photographs by Adamski, with inaccuracies however, and others such false photographs and drawings, but instead of realizing that it is only normal, Jean-Pierre Troadec believes it proves a link between UFOs and the alleged Nazi flying saucers.
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Above: Drawing of the flying saucer that cult guru Raël claims to have seen, as it appears on page 44 of his book "Le livre qui dit la vérité." Again, an Adamski-type saucer... another proof of Nazi saucers? Jean-Pierre Troadec curiously ignores this one.
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Above: The symbol that Claude Vorilhon aka Raël says "was engraved on the aircraft and the suit" of the extraterrestrial being he claimed he met, page 123 of "le livre qui dit la vérité." Another "puzzling fact"? In any case, a "puzzling fact" forgotten by Jean-Pierre Troadec. Too embarrassing maybe?
You can also have a look again at the cover of Top Secret magazine at the top of this article. The Adamski saucer is used again, changed into a HUGE thing. The table tennis balls that Adamski used are changed into oversized machine guns turrets...
I would expect that at some point the author specifies what all the serious ufologists know and say, in France since 1954 with Aimé Michel, namely that the infamous Adamski was only a liar, that there was never any truth in his statements and photographs, but no: the author omits all information which proves this, and letting the reader believe in Adamski lore, goes straight to a next topic. Is this what is referred to as "historical perspective" and "going beyond controversies"?
The author writes that in the French ufological circles, the V-7 saucer is talked about since 1956.
He writes that it was journalist and ufologist Charles Garreau who was the first to mention it. The author most seriously ensures us that although Charles Garreau "did not indicate his direct sources", it would be "confirmed" information since he knew Charles Garreau and appreciated his professionalism.
Charles Garreau did tell in 1956 that the Nazis flew a V-7 flying saucer for the first time on May 17, 1944. He wrote:
"Equipped with twelve BMW 028 turbojets, provided with six stages autonomous compressors, it would develop 5500 hp (5400 hp in flight) and 2600 kg of additional pressure (2900 kg in flight). The propulsion would be carried out by twelve turbines inside a metal ring turning around the central mass. Neither flames, nor smoke would be visible, the combustion gases being recovered by a special system developed in 1938 by a British engineer."
The problem here is that Charles Garreau merely quotes what he had read in German tabloid magazines that supplied their readers with pseudo "Nazi saucers" throughout the Fifties.
Imagine that in 2056, a gullible journalist ufologist finds in some attic a copy of 2006's "Top Secret" magazine and then reports the stories of Jean-Pierre Troadec... The "ignored evidence" of the Nazi saucers for the gullible of year 2056 is already available!
Jean-Pierre Troadec does not understand the context of 1956. In these early years of French ufology, many ufologists were still reticent to the notion of extraterrestrial visitors, an idea constantly scoffed at as supposedly "irrational" without demonstration of the alleged "irrationality" of this notion, of course.
Thus, when the good Charles Garreau read in German magazines these stories of Nazi aeronautical wonders, he gapes at this hope of a "rational" explanation of the saucers, of a human origin. Little green men, as "everyone knows" are irrational, whereas men in Feldgrau...
We are now into 2006, 50 years later, and it would be time for Jean-Pierre Troadec to revise the subject as all sensible ufologists did since. Will he do it? Will there be in a forthcoming issue of "Top Secret" a publication of my critic?
After having forgotten to do his homework on the "Adamski case", Jean Pierre Troadec is then adamant that the Russians have recovered the blueprints of V7 and succeed in building a number of them. This is completely invented. The Russians did recover some German blueprints, as we will see it at the useful time, but absolutely no blueprints of any "V7", a saucer that existed only as tabloid folklore.
For with regard to V7, only one thing is clear: there is nothing, not one shred of evidence, no blueprints, no photographs other than faked ones and a few paintings, no serious source, no acceptable testimony come to support the notion of the existence of a "V7 flying saucer."
Let's see from where exactly raises the V-7 myth and the other myths of Nazi saucers while following Jean-Pierre Troadec in his name dropping exercise.
Troadec writes: "It is the time when there Miethe is contacted by the United States to come to work." He writes that Miethe told that the Russians grabbed the V7's blueprints and would now build it.
In reality, it is certain Julius Andreas Epp who told the V-7 stories. He ensured that during the war, he transported submarines torpedoes, when one fine day he was asked to transport a "weapon of revenge", V7.
As for "Doctor Miethe", the chap probably quite simply never existed. The first mention of "Miethe" goes back to 1954, by an anonymous European author of a booklet on Nazi saucers. It told that "the creator of V-7, Dr. Heinrich Richard Miethe, was in Canada to rebuild his saucer at Avro there." The fact that Avro worked on their "Avrocar" disk shaped jet was known by the newspapers since 1953. It is then one Robert Lusar who reproduces the inventions of the anonymous author, then Robert Jungk in his book "Brighter than a thousand suns" in 1956, and so on, the invented Dr Miethe even changing first name along the embellished versions.
Troadec evokes the Canadian Avrocar attempt and its total failure, but far from drawing the obvious conclusion that this failure means that in 1961 a human flying saucer still did not fly, he affirms without blinking a second that this failure was "on purpose" of "disinforming the public," for a reason left to the imagination of the reader, as if this failure is proof of existence of human flying saucers.
The author points at a "secret Russian document declassified in 2005" of which he says that it shows a photograph of an experimental Russian flying saucer "built during the cold war." He ensures that this "brings credibility to the statements by Miethe!" Actually, there is now a true industry of faked "Russian secret document" sold with the biddings, bought by "documentary" directors and sensationalist authors of the West who thrive for any piece of "possibly authentic document."
Names are dropped of Germans that allegedly took part in Nazi flying saucers projects during the war. Upon claimed statements that are neither detailed nor sourced, the author subtly exploits the ignorance of the reader by telling that the statements were not verified, but that their falseness has not been proved either.
That is quite fantastic: I just realized that my grandmother was a Venusian ... Indeed, nobody ever proved she wasn't.
That sort of "ufology" is really pathetic. Let's see all the same what the reality behind these "unverified but potentially true" Nazi saucer engineers quoted by the author really amounts to, and those that he forgets (I hear friends ask me "why you waste your time on such twaddle?").
What Jean-Pierre Troadec forgets to tell is that all had publicly started with Giuseppe Belluzzo (1876-1952), a former technician in the field of locomotive steam turbines, who turned into a fascist politician and became minister of the economy for the Italian fascist government from 1925 to 1928. It is him who was the first to publicly say something about a connection between the Nazis and the flying saucers, in March 1950. There had just been many sighting reports of flying saucers in the Italian press, and Belluzzo simply briefly appeared as informant saying these flying saucers were initially aeronautical studies in Italy in 1942, then studies by the Nazis, and that in 1950 they can finally fly, and that they are the explanation of flying saucers sightings from 1950 an on in Europe, adding that they are not piloted but radio-controlled from the ground. The story, entirely deprived of evidence or testimonies, is then reproduced in other newspapers, "Corriere della Sera", "Nazione", "Gazzetta del Popolo", "Corriere d'Informazione" on March 29th and 30th, 1950, often completed by a refutation by General Ranza of the Italian Air Force.
Some late authors write Giuseppe Bellonzo instead of Giuseppe Belluzzo!
Days only after the first claims by Belluzzo appeared in the press, a German named Rudolph Schriever told in an article of "Der Spiegel" magazine of March 30, 1950, headline "Sie Fliegen Aber Doch" ("but they do fly"), that he had drawn plans of a German flying saucer in 1942, which was never built and that these plans were maybe in the hands of the Russians or Americans now. It was the first to publication of a drawing, although there is absolutely no serious technical comment or documentation to accompany it and presented a somehow whimsical aircraft. It does however contain ideas that are not entirely crazy, as I will show.
This original version of the drawing in the Spiegel in 1950 was then republished ad infinitum as "genuine blueprint":
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What idea isn't totally crazy? Did this saucer Nazi really fly?
Not exactly. If you closely look at the drawing, you note that the propulsion is ensured by the rotation of a broad blades rotor. All things considered, this is a kind of helicopter. If you look on the left under the rotor, you will see a small turbine attached to one of the blades. The principle of this machine, really drawn by Rudolph Schriever, was that of an helicopter whose rotor was put in moving by turbines hung on the blades.
For some skeptics this might look like a stupid and unrealizable idea.
But actually, this idea is not silly or unrealizable, on the contrary, it was realized. Astonishingly, it was realized by... the French!
Here the "French Nazi flying saucer" realized along the idea of Rudolf Schriever:
This craft is the Djinn, aka SO 1221 built in France by Sud-Ouest Aviation, future SNIAS, as of 1953, an ultra-light utility helicopter.
Djinn was the first functional helicopter using gases and air ejection compressed by a gas turbine and sent inside the two rotor blades to be expelled at their tips in order to put the rotor in motion. This concept avoided a tail rotor, replaced by a gas exhaust, it automatically de-iced the rotor, and used the remainders of gases ejected backwards for propulsion. The system had initially been tested on prototypes SO 1120 Ariel II (1948) and III (1951), but it is on the Djinn that it was actually used, via a Turbomeca Palouste IV turbojet. The system was extremely maneuverable but not very fast, not exceeding 130 km/h.
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Above: One of the French "Djinns" evaluated by the US Air Force.
But is it a flying saucer? Not!
Another craft based on the idea of a rotor with propulsion at the tips was the German Triebflügel project; I'll come too it later in the article.
The author tells that he found previously secret documents "recently published" on the "Photovni" website, of which he claims that they prove that the Germans "worked on the flying discs." This time, there is no conditional anymore, it is "proved by documents", it is claimed to be factual, the Germans built flying saucers during the 2nd world war. However, after the presentations of these secret documents, the author backs down and writes that these documents prove the reality of the Nazi flying saucers only "if they are true."
Here my comments on the documents he discovered on that website:
The author says that Ahuis wrote to the US embassy in Germany and "raises the question of the flying discs", that he "considered the topic" and "carried out various experiments since 1936" and would like "to continue his research" in the United States.
Indeed, one Heinz-Adalbert Ahuis, in Germany, wrote to the US embassy on July 16, 1947, told that he read the newspaper articles about the recovery of a flying disc in Roswell (the incident had been mentioned in the newspapers all around the world), and that he does not believe that it was a balloon as General Ramey said. He then explains that since 1936, he built wooden sailplanes models of all kinds of shapes to try out ideas in aerodynamics, and that he would like to come to the United States to continue to test his models.
The problem, as opposed to what Troadec thinks, is not at all that this document might be a fake. It is genuine. The problem is that there is nothing in here that proves the existence of Nazi flying saucers.
The author indicates that a 1953 document by the CIA is about a German guy who claims that the Russians have the plans of a Nazi flying saucer as well as the flying saucer itself. The author quotes extracts of this document, and indicates that it shows a photograph of Georg Klein in "Welt am Sontag" for April 1953.
The author claims: "This document clarifies that" the Nazis "had made operational" three "prototypes" of flying saucers including one of 42 meters in diameter "at the end of 1944."
Does this document prove that the Germans "worked on the flying discs?" Does it attest what the author claims? By no means. Here is the reality:
This other source quoted by Jean-Pierre Troadec is nothing more than one of the many characters who wanted to get some publicity by explaining the flying saucers as German craft of World War II.
It is actually about a South-African newspaper which tells that according to an unnamed German newspaper, a "famous engineer" George Klein saw a Nazi saucer taking off in 1945. Same tall tales than in 1950 are simply put into print again by German sensationalist newspapers and tabloid magazines in the following years.
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Above: In the CIA news clipping archives on flying saucers, the true George Klein story.
Below: Example of German tabloid magazine, ZB Illustrierte for December 1952, claiming "Das gab's", i.e. "this existed" and telling stories of Nazi flying saucers.
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Here again, the problem, as opposed to what Troadec thinks, is not at all that the CIA document could be a fake. It is "true". There are even at least two of them that mention George Klein's tales. The problem is that it does not prove one bit that there were Nazi flying saucers.
According to the author, a report by the FBI of June 8, 1947 tells of some Luftwaffe veteran who was engaged on the Russian front and photographed a flying saucer in November 1944.
The Luftwaffe veteran, according to the author, then "experimented a secret project in the Black Forest" in Germany which consisted in photographing the flight tests of a German flying saucer equipped of several jet engines.
Jean-Pierre Troadec's errors are countless, here is another one: actually this FBI memo is not of 1947 but of 1967!
Does this attest that the Germans "worked on the flying discs?" By no means.
As for the previous documents, the problem, as opposed to what Troadec thinks, is not at all that this FBI document could be a fake. It is genuine. But it is merely one among hundreds of such memo noted by the FBI about people telling tall tales...
There again, the author takes the readers for fools. This report is about the Horten brothers, and contains absolutely nothing on any Nazi saucers.
Again, the issue is not whether the document is genuine or fake. It is genuine. The problem is different:
As the Hortens' flying wings Horten are not at all flying discs but flying wings, the author, instead of recognizing that this has nothing to do with alleged Nazi flying saucers Nazi, divagates about "contradictory facts" and "convergent and at the same time divergent elements." All this is however very simple: the Horten brothers built many wooden flying wings, this is a known fact, nothing secret, but that has nothing to do with alleged Nazi flying saucers Nazi. These flying wings never explained even one UFO report, neither during nor after the war, for the Hortens flying wings were used only for some sailplanes competitions before the war, and of the two specimens equipped with turbojet, only one made one or two test flights before being damaged an accident, flights that did not generate ANY UFO report.
The remainders of these two craft are visible in the museums, neither the Americans nor the Russians ever continued their development, because the Russians developed their own planes which did not have a saucer shape or flying wing shape, and the Americans had the flying wings by Northrop which did not have anything to do with the wooden sailplanes of the Horten brothers, even equipped with turbojets for 2 of them.
To believe that the Hortens brothers flying wings explain the least UFO sighting reports is not to "shed light", it is on the contrary to ignore completely that the light is made for a long time on this matter and to spread confusion and ignorance.
Thousands of pages of confidential or secret documents of the Air Force, US Army, FBI, CIA were declassified in the US. What you can find in these documents is that US government agencies investigated in 1949 about Hortens brothers, because just like common people, they preferred to check whether the flying saucers of 1947 were some Russian craft of German inspiration rather than to speculate on extraterrestrial visitors, a notion that was totally existing but viewed as ridiculous, reserved for science-fiction pulp magazines and comics. The conclusions were clear: the achievements of the Hortens brothers had no importance and all that they built were sailplanes in the shape of flying wings, made out of wood, tissue and steel tubes, sometimes equipped with a regular small plane engine, and topped with two prototypes equipped with jet turbines, that the Americans had seized. Many of these documents are available on www.blackvault.com or the websites of the CIA to www.cia.gov, the NSA with www.nsa.gov and other American agencies.
What you can also find in these files is that a true crowd of swindlers and whimsical people contacted since 1947 US government agencies to tell all kinds of theories on the famous flying saucers that were much spoken to in these days. Here an example of that sort of things:
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In this document, an investigator explains that he is quite embarrassed to have to submit a report on foolish tales that he was told, but that he nevertheless believes. Two men who claimed themselves psychics served him stories on the flying saucers, seen everywhere in the world, which they said were built by the Nazis, and which would continue in 1947 to fly in the skies, Hitler himself being still alive etc. It should be known that after the end of the war, American agencies as the FBI were literally flooded of this kind of things, with hundreds people telling that they recognized Hitler in the street and so on. Unhappy FBI agents had to investigate into these lies, which naturally never had any serious base. But from time to time, people told this kind of things to the newspapers, and that is what is at the source of the myth of a secret survival of the Nazi regime and their flying discs as explanation of the flying saucers...
The author evokes V1 and V2 rockets and some other projects that weren't as successful. Everyone of course knows about the success of V1 and V2 as remarkable technical achievements, everyone knows the continuation of the story, leading to the Apollo missions and the American and Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles.
All this has obviously nothing to do with flying saucers, it has to do with aviation history, true history, as opposed to the flying saucers Nazi mythology as explanation for UFO sightings.
The author claims that Lippisch and Schauberger "dominate the whole of these prototypes", after mentioning projects of rockets and missiles. But these two engineers did not dominate anything of the sort.
Lippisch, as we saw, was nothing of an eccentric, but has nothing to do either with flying saucers. He was the first to wonder whether a triangular wing, a "delta" wing, had interesting qualities, and it proved after the war that the answer was in the positive.
The author claims that Schauberger would had started in 1922 to develop a "perfect as can be imagined" flying saucer functioning on "electromagnetic repulsion" and "succeeding in 1944." Just after having claimed that "success", he indicates that this "work remained experimental" without specifying what he means by experimental.
In reality, Viktor Schauberger (1885 - 1958) was a somehow whimsical technician who did not build any flying saucer but had specialized in the water turbines, which were not at all means of propulsion for flying saucers, but for example of the water power turbines hydroelectric plants or grass watering. His technical participation in German military aeronautics was limited to working on water cooler systems for plane engines at Messerschmitt's. Far from being eager to work for the Nazi regime, he was spotted by the Gestapo as Hitler opponent and found himself in the forced labor camp of Mauthausen before the war, leaving the camp only to work for Messerschmitt. He has now become the subjects of fantasies, allegedly inventor of a "magnetic flying saucer" called the "Repulsine", some website going so far as to show one of his water turbines water as being a flying saucer!
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Above: Water turbine by Schauberger, alleged being a "Repulsine" Nazi flying saucer. It appears on the cover of a Renato Vesco book with the Luftwaffe logo added to it!
As of BMW, this company manufactured engines and not planes and even less flying saucers.
Jean-Pierre Troadec then claims that there was really a true Nazi flying saucer of which he "found the trace".
He claims that this real flying saucer Nazi was built by BMW and was named "Flügelrad I V-1", that it was in "aluminum painted in gray", that the first tests took place on the aerodrome of Prag-Kbely between August and September 1944, that it was a disc topped of a cupola sheltering a cockpit.
He claims the "propulsion system" was underneath the 6 meters in diameter disc and that there was a landing gear of four wheels under the three tons craft.
He claims that during the tests "the rotor started to turn and the craft rose one meter in height", that it flew at a distance of 300 meters before making an emergency landing, that although the flight was "not very conclusive" it is indeed a "proven flying saucer built by the Nazis."
As of the proof, or "trace", he indicates the book by Friedrich Georg, "Hitler's Miracle Weapon" which "with due respect to the contradictors" is "not a work "saucerist" work"." As for the proof of the existence of this saucer, it would be: "a color sketch that besides illustrates the text."
One really wonders in what a book would be "truthful" with the reason that it would "not be saucerist"...
Actually, this two volumes book, 2003-2005 does not really claim that it there was a German flying saucer, and deals primarily with the German efforts towards the atomic bomb, their jet airplanes, V1, V2 rockets and lots of other rockets and projects of weapons, whether produced or simply imagined. A rumor and a color sketch is no flying saucer!
The author then claims that there was a second version of the BMW saucer, "painted in yellow", two-seater and of 8 meters which would have been tested at the aerodrome of Neubiberg in the autumn of 1944. He mentions "stability problems" which "are always a problem for durable flight."
This story of Troadec is a pure and simple plagiarism of an article on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Flugelrad :
"... This machine was painted yellow and performed its first flight tests in late autumn 1944 at the Neubiberg Aerodrome near BMW's Munich facility. Severe stability problems plagued the machine and the rudder proved useless. Not to be deterred, BMW built another prototype designated BMW Flugelrad II V-1 in 1945 which kept the same body but discarded the failed rudder. ...
Wikipedia, known as "the free encyclopedia", is a kind of organized free for all where anyone can create or modify any article in his own way. The Nazi saucers fans adore that, because it gives a pretense of credibility to their stories for the naive readers who did not realize yet that they could too publish any article on anything, and who do not notice the mention "Categories: Wikipedia article needing factual verification."
The feast continues with the assertion that there were still four other versions, Flügelrad II V-1 of 13 meters, II V-2 and II V-3 then a model III 24 meters in diameter.
Jean-Pierre Troadec claims that the versions V-2 and V-3 "seem to have been more stable in the air".
He claims that "there is a photograph showing II V-2 in flight" then that "one finds only artists' impressions coming from the current Czech republic."
There is nothing true in all that. It is only lifted from whimsical books and websites.
As for the "photograph showing a II V-2 in flight", there are actually hundreds of fake photographs of Nazi saucers in flight. The forgeries are very easy to make since there is plethora of plastic model kits of these saucers, to glue together and paint...
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The author indicates that in the Nineties, the 1995 book "Secret societies and their power in the 20th century" by Jan Van Helsing was "again, like a bomb in the ufological circles."
This, with the reason that "the book publishes plans" of "prototypes" of a Haunebu I flying saucers "tested in 1939", a Haunebu II "which would have been built in 1940", a Haunebu III, a "Vril" flying saucer, etc.
New heights of nonsense are reached with one "Andromeda-Gerät", claimed by Troadec to have been a a "large carrier plane of cylindrical form without wings of almost 150 meters length." He specifies: it "probably never in this form", but "one finds authentic photographs of it"!
Without thinking twice about it, he allots the invention of that craft to the Waffen SS, with the reason that their dreaded initials appear on the blueprint and "a series of photographs showing these craft in flight."
The presented photographs include a "Vril in flight" and a "Haunebu II in test."
Whereas one could expect from a sensible person that he recognizes that tens of late pseudo-photographs of this kind are primarily faked and prove strictly nothing, Troadec manages to write this unbelievably silly sentence, true gem of nonsense and irrationality:
"There are too many different documents to think that all are faked."
No comment!
He reproduces without giving credit the pseudo-blueprints which van Helsing published in his racist revisionist "Yellow Book N.5", and finishes wondering whether this is a "vast operation of disinformation."
Several paragraphs then follow on the topic of an alleged difficulty of distinguishing truth from forgery. Defective logic is at work again. The Nazi saucers are said to be possibly true because the Hortens' flying wings existed, he believes. The late photographs, actually coming from neo-Nazi magazines, must also be true, with the reason that "it must be acknowledged that in the Fifties, some witnesses of the times said to have photographed these craft."
Jean-Pierre Troadec then indulges in whimsical descriptions of Nazi craft, par invented and part real, but without any relation to flying saucers. What is amusing is that all this comes directly from a delirious French website, that gathered exactly these craft on a web page that Jean-Pierre Troadec practically copy-pasted there while adding even more errors, a web page which itself is a French-translated plagiarism of the "naziufo.com", a website that offers it to users willing to pay fees.
The web page that Jean-Pierre Troadec lifted.
Let's see what Jean-Pierre Troadec makes of that:
The author claims that a Focke Wulfe Vtol craft of 1939 would be "the last prototype of discus shape". But it was simply inspired by a modern drawing of such a machine, which never existed even as a project, and is precisely not the "last" Focke Wulfe vertical takeoff (Vtol) project. It should be noted that no German military plane, even prototypes, was painted yellow.
This "Vtol" craft that Troadec believes real is in fact purely a late fabrication by one Justo Miranda, included in a German magazine, and its existence is only that of a plastic model kit, that you can buy here:
www.geocities.com/unicraftmodels/germ/fockevtol/fockevtol.htm
Actually, there had been a project of machine on vertical takeoff at Focke Wulfe, called Triebflügel, imagined by Heinz von Halem, but at the end of 1944 and not in 1939. It was absolutely not disc-shaped.
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Above: Triebflügel. The photograph is that of a plastic model kit, the machine was never built by the Nazi.
Triebflügel was meant to be a vertical takeoff "tail-sitter" fighter plane with a large propeller or rotor on the fuselage. Its rotation was to be ensured by ramjets at the end of each blade, assisted by three Walter rockets for takeoff. The project existed only on paper, one among hundreds of others.
The author claims that "Horten IX and the Gotha series in 1945" are delta-winged planes.
That is not true. The Hortens' planes were flying wings, none had a delta wing. The "Gotha series" never existed pure and simple. the Horten brothers did not have a factory to build planes, and it was understood that if their Horten jet were to prove satisfactory, it would be the Gotha manufacturer who would produce it. But that was not the case.
See my article on the Hortens brothers and their flying wing.
The author claims that "Gotha would have built no less than four models, P60 A, P60 B, P60 C, P60 D. This is pure invention. The author found these ineptitudes on a sensationalist website which goes so far as inventing "the Gotha series of the architect designer Doenitz" whereas Doenitz was an admiral of Kriegsmarine which had represented Germany after Hitler's suicide in the last days of the war. I interrogated Jean-Pierre Troadec about that on other stuff, but he did not answer.
We then get the Sack AS-6 plane, introduced as being a "perfect flying saucer plane", an utterly ludicrous claim.
Sack AS6 comes from the first contest of flying models motorized by combustion engines organized in June 1939 in Leipzig-Mockau. Arthur Sack, an original whose dream was a plane with a circular wing, showed his model AS1, which poorly behaved, having to be launched with the hand and showing absolutely no decent flight behavior. In spite of that, Ernst Udet who was the Air Secretary at that time is said to have encouraged Sack to pursue in this direction. He thus built four other models, and finally Sack AS-6.
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Above: Blueprint of Sack AS6. You really need to have been struck by lightning to call this poor plane a "perfect flying saucer plane"...
Below: A prototype of the AS-6 was built in Mitteldeutsche Motorwerke, and was finalized at the Brandis airfield in the beginning of 1944. It was built using the cockpit, the seat, the gear landing and the engine of a Messerschmitt 108 wreckage, and its round wing was made out of wood. Taxiing tests took place in February 1944, and revealed that its rudder was not strong enough: it quite simply broke. After repair and reinforcement, there were 4 rolling tests at the limits of takeoff, and it was then noted that the mobile plans of the wing was right into the turbulence zone and that the plane thus could not fly without crashing. The right landing gear broke at the 3rd test. After repairs and modifications, at the 4th test, the plane took off but immediately banked and almost crashed. The pilot told Sack that it was to better to call it a day and leave it there, and Sack went back to his designer's office and produced nothing more since.
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Still follows the "Focke Wulfe Ta183", "a small short jet plane" which is alleged being "one of the most advanced unconventional projects" of which "one finds plans of it that came out of the studies such as the Secret Messerschmitt Projects.
But Focke Wulfe 183, by Hans Multhopp and Kurt Tank, had nothing more revolutionary than the Messerschmitt 262 and of course absolutely nothing of a saucer.
The Germans couldn't build it before the end of the war. Whereas his chief project manager Kurt Tank fled to Argentina at the invitation of the dictator Peron, where he improved the concept and produced I.Ae 33 Pulqui II for the Argentine Air Forces, the Russians recovered the German plans, and on July 2, 1947, their MiG manufacturer flew a first prototype powered by a Rolls-Royce "Nene" British turbojet, much more reliable than the German engine. The Russians noted that the German concept required much improvement to fly satisfactorily, and they then developed a new plane of more effective silhouette that would be a great success at the time of the Korean war: MiG 15.
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Above: a small German wooden model of Ta183 for the wind tunnel tests. What is this supposed to do with alleged Nazi flying saucers?
Below: Ta183 was never built by the Germans. Here is I.Ae 33 Pulqui II built by Kurt Tank in Argentina after the war, direct heir of Ta183.
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Above: Soviet MiG 15, whose design corrects all the aerodynamic defects of Ta183.
The author gives then a very deformed vision of the Paperclip operation. Instead of simply explaining that this Americans operation was to grab the best German researchers, that thus people of the importance of Wernher von Braun became elements essential of the programs of rockets to come, leading to the Apollo programs and the moon landings, he rather goes into misleading revisionists assertions on aeronautics.
Thus, he claims that "since 1945" the Americans manufactured "this military craft, the Chance Vought Skimmer, a classic flying wing", and finds that "this craft stunningly resembles the German's SackAS6" and that thus "operation Paperclip played its role."
But actually, what Jean-Pierre Troadec calls the "Chance Vought Skimmer"...
Just like in the rest of his article and in spite of the claims of "objectivity", this is again outrageous aeronautical revisionism!
More amusing is, Charles Zimmerman, who would likely come out of the grave if he could hear Jean-Pierre Troadec's claims that his concept was an idea of the Nazis, was also the technical adviser near the Chief of the Analysis Branch of the ATIC, of which Edward Ruppelt project Blue Book said:
"I never could figure out exactly where he stood on the subject of UFOs but I think he was a bit of a believer. Several times I tried to put through an explanation that a UFO was a balloon or other known object and he'd argue like mad against it. Many times he'd come running into my office to show me "a new, red hot report".
The very Charles Zimmerman who built the single prototype of Vought V-162 known under the name of "Zimmer Skimmer" or "Flapjack" or "flying pancake" or "flying saucer", a plane whose contour of the wings was in the shape of disc which was often incorrectly proposed (*) as "the explanation" for the UFOs, was very interested in UFOs and obviously was actually convinced of their existence and their uncommon nature.
Below: Charles Zimmerman's V173.
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Ignorance reaches a new height when the author claims that Northrop's flying wings "are inspired by the Hortens' delta wings."
Actually, Jack Northrop has been designing flying wings for a long time, and when after the war, one of the Hortens brothers wrote him to get a job at Northrop, he was not impressed at all and that was it. To claim that Jack Northrop designed its machines using Nazi ideas, this is again really outrageous!
He then claims then that the Silverbug project consisted of "plans of flying saucers that the American army tested in the Fifties" and that "officially this project did not really exist." He claims that a declassified 30 pages document "again states that the work outlined in this memo would be based on experimental work of the Nazis!"
This is again blatantly false; not only was this project known and discussed in the newspapers a few months after having started, in Canada and not to the United States, but again the craft never flew, could not have flown, and owes nothing to claimed Nazi aeronautical magic.
See the Avrocar story here for details.
When the rare proponents of the theses Nazi flying saucers lore hear what I say on the matter, they more than usually resort to a good amount of intellectual terrorism. They criticize me for calling them Nazis!
I this want to make this very clear. These rare ufologists who still imagine in spite of all that the Nazis built flying saucers, or that flying saucers were built and flew by the Americans or Russians based on Nazi plans, or that UFO sighting reports are or might be sightings Nazi saucers or their Russian or American versions, for the majority, are NOT Nazis, nor even sympathizers Nazism. The majority are certainly sincerely enemies of totalitarianism and racism. But actually, their political opinions are quite unimportant to me!
They are nevertheless responsible for what they tell. They claim to "objectivity" and claim that they are "Truth" seekers, they claim that they do "research" and so on. When they tell nonsense, as it is the case in this article, when they make as if the Adamski's lies were true, as if aeronautical engineers such as Charles Zimmerman or Jack Northrop owe their achievements to the Nazi, they do not make a "research" but propagate stupid things, lies, inventions. They do not realize that they play - in all sincerity probably - the game of dangerous people, who openly say how they benefit from the interest and fascination for the myth of the Nazi saucers Nazi to sell books and video tapes which enrich their authors who are really Nazi sympathizers, who earn money for their "cause" with these books, and openly say to benefit from this fascination to slip all kinds of revisionist stuff of more serious matter than the lies and inventions concerning aeronautics.
The authors who take part in that are responsible. Instead of writing nonsense, they should make the easy research, which hardly requires time, nor money, and learn the rudiments of the history of aviation and aeronautical techniques. They should start their ufology from scratch and really consider what UFO reports are, and they would discover that whereas the Nazi saucers stories are only lies, not one UFO sighting report ever had as explanation a "Nazi saucer." They should realize that there is better to do in the field of ufology than to feed often young readers who do not have yet the critical education and crave to get blown away by the fantastic stories they like to hear, these ufologist should realize that their ignorance spread in sensationalist articles benefits a bad cause.
Jean-Pierre Troadec offers a verbose but meaningless conclusion. He says that Nazi flying saucers Nazi are "a story more human than one imagines" and that they are - and this time the conditional is not used:
"...in no was pure phantasmagoria as was said too often."
But yes it is, Nazi flying saucers are a pure phantasmagoria, and it has not been said often enough. My criticism shows how authors ignorant of the real story of aviation and totally gullible constantly mislead their readers with false stories and drawings and fake images found with no effort on the Internet and really coming from neo-Nazi propaganda, how they present series of lies and nonsense many times refuted but presented over and over as if nothing was ever said on the topic, while playing a game of intellectual terrorism and while hiding all the very available information that shows why Nazi saucers are a phantasmagoria.
It is them, who spread disinformation.
Sources claiming that Nazi flying saucers exist:
In his article, Jean-Pierre Troadec claims that the thesis of the Nazi saucers "is ignored." Actually, there were hundreds of books and tens of "documentaries" on the subject, a very selling topic... I cannot list all of it, here thus just some landmarks of this production:
"Flying saucers have been whirling round the world since 1947, suddenly turning up here and there, soaring in and darting off again at unprecedented speed with flames encircling the rim of the saucer's disc. They have been located by radar, pursued by fighters and yet nobody has so far succeeded in establishing the existence of such a "flying saucer" or managed to ram or shoot one down. The public, even the experts, are perplexed by an ostensible mystery or a technical miracle. But slowly the truth is coming out that even during the war German research workers and scientists made the first moves in the direction of these "flying saucers". They built and tested such near-miraculous contraptions. Experts and collaborators in this work confirm that the first projects, called "flying discs", were undertaken in 1941. The designs for these "flying discs" were drawn up by the German experts Schriever, Habermohl and Miethe, and the Italian Bellonzo [sic]. Habermohl and Schriever chose a wide-surface ring which rotated round a fixed, cupola-shaped cockpit. The ring consisted of adjustable wing-discs [sic] which could be brought into appropriate position for the take-off or horizontal flight respectively. Miethe developed a discus-shaped plate of a diameter of 42m in which adjustable jets were inserted. Schriever and Habermohl, who worked in Prague, took off with the first "flying disc" on February 14, 1945. Within three minutes they climbed to an altitude of 12.400 meters and reached a speed of 2.000 km/h in horizontal flight (!) It was intended ultimately to achieve speeds of 4,000 km/h."
"Extensive preliminary tests and research were necessary before construction could be started. Because of the great speed and the extraordinary heat stress, special heat-resisting materials had to be found. The development, which cost millions, was almost completed at the end of the war. The then existing models were destroyed but the plant in Breslau where Miethe worked fell into the hands of the Russians who took all the material and the experts to Siberia, where work on these "flying saucers" is being successfully continued."
"Schriever escaped from Prague in time; Habermohl, however, is probably in the Soviet Union, as nothing is known of his fate. The former designer Miethe is in the United States and, as far as is known, is building "flying saucers" for the United States and Canada at the A. V. Roe works. Years ago, the U.S. Air Force received orders not to fire at "flying saucers". This is an indication of the existence of American "flying saucers" which must not be endangered. The flying shapes so far observed are stated to have diameters of 16, 42, 45 and 75 m respectively and to reach speeds of up to 7,000 km/h. (?). In 1952 "flying saucers" were definitely established over Korea and Press reports said they were seen also during the NATO maneuvres in Alsace in the autumn of 1954. It can no longer be disputed that "flying saucers" exist. But the fact that their existence is still being denied, particularly in America, because United States developments have not progressed far enough to match the Soviet Union's, gives food for thought. There also seems some hesitation to recognize that these novel "flying saucers" are far superior to conventional aircraft - including modern turbo-jet machines - that they surpass their flying performance, load capacity and maneuverability and thereby make them obsolete."
