Projekt Saucer: Inception Part 1

Inception.

W. A. Harbinson.

PROJEKT SAUCER.

For Howard and Vicki Moore and Julia and Nicola.

My favourite Muswell Hillbillies.

AUTHOR'S NOTE In 1980 my 615-page novel, Genesis, based on a ma.s.s of research material, became a cult best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic. It remains in print to this day.

Reviewing the novel on its initial publication in the United States, Publishers Weekly said: 'Harbinson has drawn so heavily on factual material and integrated it so well into the text that the book begins to read like non-fiction...' This conclusion was drawn by other reviewers, and over the years I received many letters from readers who obviously thought the same and asked me to tell them which parts of the book were fact and which were fiction. For the record, then, here are some facts.

Before writing Genesis, while researching a different novel altogether, I obtained through the Imperial War Museum, London, two short articles that attracted my attention. One was a routine war report by Marshall Yarrow, then the Reuters special correspondent to Supreme Headquarters in liberated Paris. The particular cutting I had was from the South Wales Argus of December 13, 1944. It stated: 'The Germans have produced a "secret" weapon in keeping with the Christmas season. The new device, which is apparently an air defence weapon, resembles the gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s which adorn Christmas trees. They have been seen hanging in the air over German territory, sometimes singly, sometimes in cl.u.s.ters. They are coloured silver and are apparently transparent.' The second article, an a.s.sociated Press release published in the New York Herald Tribune of January 2, 1945, illuminated the subject even more. It said: 'Now, it seems, the n.a.z.is have thrown something new into the night skies over Germany. It is the weird, mysterious "Foo fighter" b.a.l.l.s which race alongside the wings of Beaufighters flying intruder missions over Germany. Pilots have been encountering this eerie weapon for more than a month in their night flights. No one apparently knows what this sky weapon is. The "b.a.l.l.s of fire" appear suddenly and accompany the planes for miles. They seem to be radio-controlled from the ground, so official intelligence reports reveal...'

Official 'Foo fighter' reports were submitted by pilots Henry Giblin and Walter Cleary, who stated that on the night of September 27, 1944, they had been hara.s.sed in the vicinity of Speyer by 'an enormous burning light' that was flying above their aircraft at about 250 miles per hour; then by Lieutenant Edward Schluter, a fighter pilot of the US 415th Night-Fighter Squadron based at Dijon, France, who, on the night of November 23, 1944, was hara.s.sed over the Rhine by 'ten small reddish b.a.l.l.s of fire' flying in formation at immense speed. Further sightings were made by members of the same squadron on November 27, December 22, and December 24. While no official designation of the Foo fighters was offered, most reports indicated that they appeared to be under some kind of control and were certainly not natural phenomena. Indeed, according to a London Daily Telegraph report of January 2, 1945, RAF pilots were describing them as 'strange orange lights which follow their planes, sometimes flying in formation with them, and eventually peeling off and climbing' (author's italics) .

According to the Italian author Renato Vesco, in his book Intercept.

But Don't Shoot (Grove Press, 1971), the Foo fighter was actually the German Feuerball, or Fireball, constructed at an aeronautical establishment at Wiener Neustadt. It was a flat, circular flying machine, powered by a turbojet, and used during the closing stages of the war both as an anti-radar device and a psychological weapon designed to disturb Allied pilots. In any event, sightings of the Foo fighters tailed off and ceased completely a few weeks before the end of the war.

The next wave of UFO sightings occurred in Western Europe and Scandinavia. From 1946 to 1947 many people, including airline pilots and radar operatives, reported seeing strange cigar-or-disc-shaped objects in the skies. On June 21, 1947, Harold Dahl reported seeing saucer-shaped objects flying toward the Canadian border. Three days later Kenneth Arnold made his more famous sightings of saucershaped objects over the Cascades, also flying toward the Canadian border.

These and subsequent sightings led to speculation that both the Soviets and the Americans, utilizing the men and material captured in the secret research plants of n.a.z.i Germany, including those at Peenemiinde and Nordhausen, were developing advanced saucershaped aircraft.

Were such speculations based on facts? It would certainly seem so. During the early 1950s, a former Luftwaffe engineer, Flugkapitan Rudolph Schriever, then resident at Hokerstra.s.se 28 in BremerhavenLehe, West Germany, claimed that in 1941 he had designed the prototype for a 'flying top,' which was test-flown in June 1942. In the summer of 1944, with his colleagues Klaus Habermohl, Otto Miethe, and an Italian, Dr Giuseppe Belluzzo, he had constructed a larger version of his original prototype. Then, in the East Hall of the BMW plant near Prague, they redesigned the larger model, replacing its gasturbine engines with an advanced form of jet propulsion. An article about Projekt Saucer was later published in the indispensable volume, German Secret Weapons of the Second World War (English-language editions published by Neville Spearman, London, 1959, and the Philosophical Library, New York, 1959) by Major Rudulph Lusar. It included reproductions of Schriever and Miethe's flying-saucer drawings. According to Lusar, the flying saucer consisted of a 'wide surface ring which rotated round a fixed, cupola-shaped c.o.c.kpit.' The ring consisted of 'adjustable wing-discs which could be brought into appropriate position for the take-off or horizontal flight, respectively.' Also developed was 'a discus-shaped plate of a diameter of 42 metres (138 feet), in which adjustable jets were inserted.' The completed machine had a height from base to canopy of 32 metres (105 feet).

Schriever claimed that his 'flying disc' had been ready for testing in early 1944, but with the advance of the Allies into Germany, the test had been cancelled, the machine destroyed, and his designs either mislaid or stolen. His story was, however, contradicted by alleged eyewitness Georg Klein, who later stated to the German press that he had actually seen the test flight of the Schriever disc, or one similar, on February 14, 1945.

Doubt may be cast on Klein's date, because according to the War Diary of the 8th Air Fleet, February 14, 1945, was a day of low clouds, rain, snow, and generally poor visibility: hardly the conditions for the testing of a revolutionary new kind of aircraft. Nevertheless, according to author Renato Vesco, the test flight of a machine called the Kugelblitz, or Ball Lightning Fighter which was rumoured to be a revolutionary kind of supersonic aircraft was conducted successfully over the underground complex of Kahla (near Nordhausen) sometime during February 1945.

Did the United States then become involved in flying saucer projects?.

The short answer is: yes.

Evidence for US involvement surfaced with information about the US Navy's Flying Flapjack, or Flying Pancake. Designed by Charles H. Zimmerman and constructed in 1942 by the Chance-Voight Corporation, the Flying Flapjack, or V-173, was an experimental, vertical-rising, disc-shaped aircraft that used two 80-hp engines. A later, more advanced model, the XFSU1, utilized two Pratt and Whitney R-2000-7 engines of 1,600 hp each. It was rumoured to be over 100 feet (30 metres) in diameter and to have jet nozzles resembling the 'glowing windows' seen on so many UFOs arranged around its rim.

It was built in three layers, the central layer being slightly larger than the other two. As the saucer's velocity and manoeuvring abilities were controlled by the power and tilt of the separate jet nozzles, there were no ailerons, rudders, or other protruding surfaces.

In appearance it was remarkably similar to those reported by so many UFO witnesses.

The US Navy claimed that it had ceased working on the Flying Flapjack project in 1947 (the first version, the V-173, is stored with the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution), but US involvement with saucer-shaped aircraft did not stop there.

The reports that started the modern UFO scare the Dahl and Arnold sightings of 1947 both stated that the saucers flew back toward the Canadian border. On February 11, 1953, the Toronto Star reported that a new flying saucer was being developed at the AvroCanada plant in Malton, Ontario. The US and Canadian governments both vehemently denied involvement in any such project, but on February 16, after freelance photographer Jack Judges had taken an aerial photograph of a flying saucer resting outdoors in the AvroCanada plant in Malton, the Minister for Defence Production admitted to the Canadian House of Commons that the firm was working on a 'mock-up model' of a flying saucer, capable of flying at 1,500 miles per hour (2,400 km/h) and ascending vertically. Shortly after this announcement, the president of Avro-Canada wrote in Avro News that the prototype being built was so revolutionary that it would make all other forms of supersonic aircraft obsolete.

The aircraft's official name was the Avro-Car.

According to official statements, the Avro-Car was tested in 1960 and subsequently abandoned as a failure. (The prototype was subsequently placed on display for all to see at the Army Transportation Museum at Fort Eustis, Virginia.) However, while the Canadian and US governments have insisted that they are no longer involved with flying saucer construction projects, there are many who believe that they are lying and that the Canadian, British, US, and even Soviet governments are continuing to work on highly advanced, saucer-shaped, supersonic aircraft based on the work done in n.a.z.i Germany. Those who believe in this are often quick to point out that of the original Projekt Saucer team, Habermohl was captured by the Russians and taken back to the Soviet Union, along with over six thousand German technical specialists of all kinds, to work on similar projects; Miethe went to the United States with Wernher von Braun and other German rocket scientists and ended up working for AvroCanada, in Malton; and Rudolph Schriever insisted right up to his death, in the late 1950s, that the Soviet Union and United States were both working on flying saucer construction projects based on material captured during the war.

For the purposes of my fiction, I have utilized many real-life people, including the mysterious John Wilson and the n.a.z.i SS generals Artur Nebe and Hans Kammler.

The term 'real-life' is used in regard to John Wilson only in the sense that during the first modern UFO sightings the Great Airship Scare of 1896-97, when airships of unknown origin and advanced design were reportedly seen, and landed, all over the United States the man whom most witnesses reportedly spoke to had introduced himself simply as 'Wilson' and claimed that his airships had been constructed in Iowa and Illinois.

He was not seen or heard of after the Great Airship Scare ended, though C. C. Akers, former sheriff of Zavalia County, Texas, to whom Wilson had referred when speaking to one of the witnesses, claimed that he had known a Wilson who was of 'a mechanical turn of mind' and 'working on aerial navigation and something that would astonish the world.'

Regarding SS General Artur Nebe, while he was placed on a n.a.z.i 'death list' in 1944 and disappeared shortly after, his death was never confirmed and many felt that he had simply fled for his life. As for General Hans Kammler, his history with the SS and the V-2 rocket program is well doc.u.mented, but what became of him after he disappeared from Germany in April 1945 remains a mystery to this day.

These are some of the facts supporting the fiction of the original Genesis as well as Inception.

Ponder them wisely.

W. A. Harbinson London, 1990.

CHAPTER ONE.

The sun was still rising over the barren prairie near Roswell, New Mexico, when the Model T Ford, towing a trailer and churning up clouds of dust, approached the flat plain of Eden Valley, followed by a vintage black touring sedan.

Parked by the wooden shelter near the steel-webbed tower that soared sixty feet above the desert floor, with her knees propped up on the steering wheel of her car and her notebook resting on them, Gladys Kinder chewed on her pencil, watched the distant caravan approaching, then nodded thoughtfully and started to write. She began positively.

Well, folks, what an era it has been! First the Civil War, then the Industrial Revolution, and now the Age of Science and Technology. And what advances have been made in the past few years! Michael Faraday explored electrical induction, Joseph Henry made startling advances in electromagnetism, Bell devised the telephone, Morse the telegraph, Edison the incandescent lamp, Heinrich Hertz detected radio waves, Marconi produced the wireless communicator, and other scientists are presently revolutionizing our concept of the essential elements of matter and the behaviour of light-waves all in the s.p.a.ce of a few years!

And this very day, just before we hail the bright and shiny New Year of 1931, our very own scientific genius, Robert H. G.o.ddard, is about to launch his latest liquid fueled, instrument-carrying, gyroscopically controlled rocket from the desolate plain known as Eden Valley.

Eden Valley! An appropriate name since what is being created here could well lead to a world changed beyond our wildest imaginings.

A strange and terrible beauty is being born here in Roswell, New Mexico... She studied what she had written, not pleased with its awkward mixture of the folksy and the academic, then looked up again as the caravan approached the steel-webbed launching tower and braked to a halt.

As the dust subsided around the vehicles, Gladys gazed around her to take in some background details, then hurriedly jotted down what she had seen: From where I sit, which is close to the rocket's launching tower, the snowcapped El Capitan Mountain rises from the foothills near the southwestern horizon. To the east are the sunlit slopes of the Caprock and, beyond them, the Staked Plains, where Comanche Indians, Spanish explorers, and even Billy the Kid roamed not long ago...

Temporarily blocked and deciding to fill the rest in later, she put the notebook and pen back into her shoulder bag. As she looked up, five men stepped down from the two vehicles, casting long shadows on the desert floor.

She instantly recognized the forty-eight-year-old G.o.ddard from his stooped walk and thin, tubercular body. He did not like journalists, did not approve of her being there, and so stared directly at her, his brown gaze intense over his moustache, before turning away to give instructions to his small group of mechanics and machinists.

Wilson wasn't among them.

Surprised, Gladys slid her knees off the steering wheel and looked south across the flat plain, hoping to see him driving toward her. Thwarted, she returned her gaze to the front in time to see the crew unwrapping the long bundle that had been covered with quilts and oilcloth and trussed down on the back of the trailer towed by the Ford.

Once it had been unwrapped, the men lifted Robert H. G.o.ddard's latest rocket out of the trailer bed.

It was a slender cylinder, about eleven feet long and nine inches in diameter, with various tanks and tubing attached to it. One of its stabilizer vanes was painted bright red. The men carried it with considerable care to the sixty-foot launching tower, which had been guyed by cables and anch.o.r.ed in concrete.

Henry Sachs, the crew chief and instrument maker, and Al Kisk, G.o.ddard's brother-in-law, climbed the tower and fastened cables to the striped rocket to hold it steady until its moment of release. Meanwhile, on the ground below, two of the mechanics, brothers Lawrence and Charles Mansur, reeled wire out from the tower to the control shelter that had been constructed about a thousand feet away from the launching tower and b.u.t.tressed with sandbags. Then Lawrence headed out into the desert with his recording telescope and stopwatch while Charles walked up to Gladys and grinned nervously at her.

'No journalists are supposed to be here,' he said. 'G.o.ddard's not pleased to see you.'

'Wilson told me I could come,' she replied.

'Oh, did he, indeed?'

'Yes.'