This article was published in New Dawn Special Issue Vol 6 No 5 (October 2012)
Like many New Dawn readers, I occasionally heard rumours over the years of firefights alleged to have taken place between United States armed forces and technologically superior Nazi naval units in, of all places, Antarctica, soon after the Second World War. Having authored several 20th century military histories,1 possibilities for such a confrontation seemed to me unlikely in the extreme, an impression deepened by some writers, who insisted the Germans were piloting “flying saucers” around the South Pole.
These far-fetched claims long convinced me that the subject was unworthy of consideration, until I was recently shocked to learn how the US Navy actually did launch nothing less than a secret, full-scale invasion of Antarctica less than a year following the Second World War, and under highly suspicious circumstances that have never been fully explained, even after the passage of nearly seven decades. I was determined now to investigate this truly bizarre event with the sole aim of discovering, if possible, what really happened – to discard every groundless speculation, hearsay or obvious fantasy – by narrowing my research exclusively on hard data and credible information only from reliable sources. Here are those facts:
With the words, “these proceedings are closed,” US General Douglas MacArthur, representing the victorious Allies, accepted Imperial Japan’s surrender aboard the battleship USS Missouri on 2 September 1945, thereby officially concluding the Second World War. But eleven months later, a huge armada departed US waters on 26 August 1946 for Antarctica. Its flagship was the USS Philippine Sea, Captain Delbert S. Cornwell commanding her 3,448 officers and enlisted men. At 27,100-tons, she was among the largest aircraft carriers afloat, powered by eight boilers and four Westinghouse geared steam turbines for a combined 150,000 horse power and a range of 20,000 nautical miles. In addition to the Philippine Sea’s 100 fighters, dive- and torpedo-bombers, she bristled with arrays of five-inch artillery and 40-mm Bofor anti-aircraft guns. Four-inch, 2.5-inch, and 1.5-inch steel armour protected her 888-foot-long hull, hanger deck and conning tower.
The Philippine Sea was screened by USS Brownson (Commander H.M.S. Gimber) and USS Henderson (Captain C.F. Bailey). At 3,460 tons each, these Gearing Class destroyers were 390 feet long, and powered pairs of General Electric steam turbines, plus four boilers for 60,000 horse power. Armament consisted of half-a-dozen five-inch guns guided by Mark 37 Gun Fire Control Systems with Mk25 fire control radar linked to Mark 1A fire-control computers. Additional weapons included twelve 40-mm Bofors guns, sixteen 20-mm Oerlikon cannons, and ten 21-inch torpedo tubes.
These surface units were joined by a 312-foot-long submarine, the 2,401-ton Sennet, with 10 officers and 71 enlisted men aboard. In addition to 24 torpedoes, Commander Joseph B. Icenhower’s boat featured a five-inch deck gun, one 40-mm Bofors, and a single 20-mm Oerlikon cannon.
All warships were supported by the tankers USS Canisteo and USS Cacapon (Captains Edward K. Walker and R.A. Mitchell, commanding, respectively), plus the supply ships USS Merrick (Captain John J. Hourihan) and USS Yancey (Captain J.E. Cohn, commanding).
Their passage through Antarctic waters was cleared by the ice-breakers USS Burton Island (Commander Gerald L. Ketchum) and USCGC Northwind (Captain Charles W. Thomas, commanding). Two seaplane tenders – USS Pine Island (Captain Henry H. Caldwell, commanding) and USS Currituck (commanded by Captain John E. Clark) – were part of the Antarctic-bound fleet. They were Barnegat-class vessels, 2,750 tons fully loaded, 311 feet long, each manned by 215 crewmembers, and armed with two 5-inch guns, six dual 20-mm anti-aircraft guns, plus four depth-charge racks. Combined, the Pine Island and Currituck stored 160,000 gallons of aviation fuel, enough spare parts, repairs, and berthing for two, full seaplane squadrons.
These capacious tenders serviced six specimens of a large and powerful flying boat. With a wing area of 1,408 square feet and loaded weight of 56,000 pounds, the Martin PBM Mariner’s twin Wright R-2600-12, fourteen-cylinder, 1,700-horse power, radial engines allowed its seven-man crew to deliver 4,000 pounds of bombs over 3,000 miles. Another half-dozen examples of the Sikorsky H-5 helicopter (referred to in the Navy as the HO3S Dragonfly) flitted between USS Philippine Sea and the seaplane tenders.
So many ships and aircraft necessitated their division into an Eastern Group commanded by Captain George J. Dufek, a Western Group headed by Captain Charles A. Bond, a Central Group, Rear Admiral Richard H. Cruzen, commanding, and a Carrier Group with none other than Richard E. Byrd, Jr. in overall command. This is the same Admiral Byrd world-renowned for his epic polar explorations during the 1920s and ‘30s. He was usually to be found aboard the USS Mount Olympus (Captain R.R. Moore, commanding), a Mount McKinley-class, amphibious force command ship, with advanced communications equipment and extensive combat information spaces for large-scale landing operations. The 12,142-ton, 459-foot-long vessel, operated by 729 officers, specialised technicians and enlisted men, was armed with a pair of five-inch deck guns, eight 40-mm guns, and twenty 20-mm anti-aircraft guns.
Operation Highjump
Altogether, the four Groups were known collectively as Task Force 68. Their assignment, referred to officially, if rather vaguely in an initial report as “The United States Navy Antarctic Developments Program,” was to establish Little America IV, a research base in the Antarctic; train personnel and test equipment in frigid conditions; determine the feasibility of establishing, maintaining and utilising bases in the Antarctic and investigating additional, possible base sites; develop techniques for establishing, maintaining and utilising air bases on ice; increase knowledge of hydrographic, geographic, geological, meteorological and electro-magnetic propagation conditions in the area.2
The report also mentioned that the expedition aimed at consolidating and extending United States sovereignty over the largest practicable area of the Antarctic continent, a goal previously and emphatically denied in repeated public pronouncements issued by the US government, even before Operation Highjump ended. In any case, its official, modest, entirely peaceful agenda was overwhelmingly dwarfed and contradicted by the prodigious fire-power and armed might assembled by Task Force 68. In fact, few research scientists and very little investigative equipment were included. Moreover, most of its stated objectives were never attempted, much less achieved.
No personnel training nor equipment testing took place. No effort was made to explore possibilities for other base sites involving aircraft or ships. No practice manoeuvres or exercises of any kind were undertaken. And whatever was learned, if anything, about Antarctica’s hydrographic, geographic, geological, meteorological and electro-magnetic propagation conditions was never disclosed. While Operation Highjump’s declared goals represented hardly more than an academic exercise, it was in reality an entirely military affair.3 An aircraft carrier, two destroyers, a pair of armed seaplane tenders, one submarine and a sophisticated communications ship, supported by a flotilla of supply vessels, plus 112 aircraft and 4,700 servicemen organised by US Navy commanders and rear admirals – including world-famous Richard E. Byrd, Jr. himself – far outstrips the requirements of some scientific investigation, no matter how ambitious.
This unlikely armada entered the Ross Sea ice pack on 31 December 1946, finally landing at the Bay of Whales by 15 January the following year. Work commenced there at once on building a headquarters, Little America IV, in what was to be of one of the few previously announced expedition goals actually attained. Just forty days later, the Central Group cast off to join the rest of Task Force 68’s units already withdrawing toward South America for repairs, thus prematurely terminating their massive, expensive mission, which had been originally scheduled to take from half a year to eight months. Even so, in only eight weeks, its aircraft logged 220 hours flying time over 22,700 miles – an area half the size of the United States – taking some 70,000 reconnaissance photographs, only a very few of which were subsequently released to the public by the Navy. To this day, the remainder, if they still exist, are still classified. The aerial survey also recorded ten new mountain ranges.
Attacked by Flying Objects?
Immediately after arriving in several Chilean ports, word of the apparently aborted expedition’s high strangeness and even disasters that plagued it began spreading like wildfire from some loose-lipped Operation Highjump sailors. Admiral Byrd himself contributed to the dire speculation. The mainstream press in Chile was quoting some of his men to the effect that his expedition had “run into trouble” and suffered “many fatalities.” Instead of denying these allegations, he expressed deep concern to reporter Lee van Atta about real possibilities for devastating aerial attacks on the US at a time when the whole world, having been largely devastated, was at peace, hardly what one would have expected to hear from the leader of a purely scientific enterprise. Van Atta published the results of his startling interview, headlined “Aboard the Mount Olympus on the High Seas,” in the 5 March 1947 edition of El Mercurio, a conservative newspaper and Chile’s largest, “considered the country’s paper-of-record and its Valparaíso edition is the oldest daily in the Spanish language currently in circulation,” since 1827.4
“Admiral Richard E. Byrd warned today that it was imperative for the United States to initiate immediate defense measures against hostile forces threatening from the Arctic or Antarctic,” according to van Atta. “The Admiral explained that he was not trying to unduly alarm anyone, but the cruel reality is that in case of a new war, the United States could be attacked by flying objects which could move from pole to pole at incredible speeds. This statement was made as part of a recapitulation of his own polar experience, in an exclusive interview with the International News Service.
“Talking about the recently completed expedition, Byrd said that the most important result of his observations and discoveries is the potential effect that they have in relation to the security of the United States. He repeated the above points of view, resulting from his personal knowledge gathered both at the north and south poles. The fantastic speed with which the world is shrinking – recalled the Admiral – is one of the most important lessons learned during his recent Antarctic exploration.
“‘I have to warn my compatriots’, Byrd said, ‘that the time has ended when we were able to take refuge in our isolation and rely on the certainty that the distances, the oceans, and the poles were a guarantee of safety’.”5
On his return to Washington, D.C., after Byrd’s interrogation by Security Services officers, he never uttered another word about Operation Highjump, which was simultaneously classified, thereby legally preventing any of its veterans from ever discussing the mission.6 Shortly thereafter, the US Navy published a brief, not very informative, even evasive summary of the Antarctic expedition’s “achievements,” which nonetheless stated that some losses had been incurred.7 Although these were glossed over and minimised, the typically anonymous report nonetheless admitted that fully half of Byrd’s seaplane and helicopter forces had been destroyed, and that he himself was nearly brought down in the aircraft he was flying, avoiding an otherwise inevitable crash only because he jettisoned everything on board, save the most bare essentials and reconnaissance films he had just taken for staying aloft. During that perilous flight, he had gone missing for more than three hours in an episode of lost time officially blamed on failed radio communications.8
The summary further admits that Task Force 68 did indeed suffer some human casualties, but all were supposedly due to accidental causes. On 30 December 1946, three men flying George 1, their Martin flying-boat, died when it crashed, allegedly during a blizzard. Six surviving crewmembers were rescued thirteen days later. Another man died in a construction accident, totalling the number of fatalities. The official summary concludes by explaining that the mission was terminated due to the early approach of winter and worsening weather conditions – which were supposedly just what the Americans had specifically come for and required to test themselves and their equipment.
Soviet Secrets Released
Released in 1948, short film coverage of Operation Highjump, ironically entitled, “The Secret Land” – although more of a breast-beating propaganda send-up for the US Navy than a real documentary – nevertheless gives viewers something of a feeling, however incomplete, for the expedition.9 It went otherwise unnoticed by the general public, and, beginning with the onset of the Korean War two years later, soon fell into virtual obscurity over the next forty years. 1991’s collapse of the Soviet Union, however, suddenly declassified literally millions of previously secret papers, among them, surprisingly, a 1947 description of Task Force 68’s mission to Antarctica.
That Joseph Stalin should have known far more about it than the American people is not surprising. Their country’s close alliance with him during World War Two allowed his spies to infiltrate all levels of the US government, including its armed forces – espionage that peaked, but did not end, with the 1953 conviction of Communists Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for their betrayal of America’s atomic bomb research to the USSR. As early as the 1930s, through the Second World War and into the so-called “Cold War,” US Congressman Samuel Dickstein (New York) was a Democrat Party confidant of President Franklin Roosevelt, all the while a paid agent of the NKVD, the Russian secret police. There were many others like him, and, because of the often high positions attained, they had access to classified undertakings such as Operation Highjump.
Its details, hidden from the US public and the rest of the outside world, were transmitted by a Soviet operative to the Kremlin, where they languished until their rediscovery before the turn of the 21st century. Shortly thereafter, a Moscow Television documentary featured spokesmen from both the Russian Army (Dr. Dimitri Filippovitch, lieutenant adjutant) and prestigious Russian Academy of Sciences physicist, Dr. Vladimir Wasilev, who finally disclosed the Stalin era report about Task Force 68’s covert experiences in Antarctica.
An Attack by “Spherical Lights”
It quotes radioman John P. Szelwach aboard USS Brownson, where, around 0700 hours, in the early morning darkness of 17 January 1947, just two days after Admiral Byrd’s Central Group made landfall at the Bay of Whales, “we observed the following: On the horizon, a bright, colourless light. We thought it was another ship. We were below the Antarctic Circle in unchartered waters [off Charcot Island, in the Weddle Sea]. Our radar was activated to no avail. I and my shipmates in the pilothouse port side observed for several minutes the bright lights that ascended about 45 degrees into the sky very quickly. We couldn’t i.d. the lights, because our radar was limited to 250 miles in a straight line. Our quartermaster, John Driscoll, recorded this in our log.”10
Their ominous sighting was followed nearly three hours later, when the lights (five) reappeared in the same area of the Ross Sea and began to rapidly close on the destroyer. Commander Gimber ordered the ship’s 40-mm Bofors anti-aircraft guns and 20-mm Oerlikon cannons to commence firing on the objects, which flew over the Brownson at high speed and low altitude (about 200 feet), without sustaining any hits. This encounter opened a series of brief, but fierce skirmishes that lasted over the next several weeks, according to the Soviet espionage report, between Task Force 68 and the lights, resulting in “dozens” of officers and men killed or wounded. Most casualties were suffered by Admiral Byrd’s Central Group, which even the sanitised, post-expedition US Navy version admitted had to be evacuated by the Burton Island ice-breaker from the Bay of Whales on 22 February 1947.
After four days, in a kind of parting shot, the spherical lights executed a dramatic attack witnessed by Lieutenant John Sayerson, a flying-boat pilot aboard one of the seaplane tenders: “The thing shot vertically out of the water at tremendous velocity, as though pursued by the devil, and flew between the masts [of the ship] at such a high speed that the radio antenna oscillated back and forth in its turbulence. An aircraft [Martin flying-boat] from the Currituck that took off just a few moments later was struck with an unknown type of ray from the object, and almost instantly crashed into the sea near our vessel. I could hardly believe what I saw. The thing flew without making any sound, as it passed close over our ships and harmlessly though their lethal anti-aircraft fire.
“About ten miles away, the torpedo-boat Maddox burst into flames and began to sink. Despite the danger, rescue boats went to her aid before she sank twenty minutes later.
“Having personally witnessed this attack by the object that flew out of the sea, all I can say is, it was frightening.”11
February 26th’s engagement was the last experienced by Task Force 68, which by then was already in headlong retreat from Antarctica.
Although identity of the invincible “lights” was unknown to Lieutenant Sayerson, he wondered if they were perhaps German “wonder weapons” operated by survivors of the recently defeated Third Reich flying out of a secret Antarctic base. His speculation is still shared by investigators today, not without cause.
German Expeditions to Antarctica
Nine years before the mighty forces of Operation Highjump had been routed from the South Polar Region, the Schwartzwald, a freighter built during 1924, was refitted in Hamburg shipyards for Germany’s most ambitious Antarctic expedition at a cost of about one million Reichmarks, almost a third of the entire mission’s budget. Re-named after the Schwabian region in southern Germany, the Schwabenland was mounted with steam catapults for a pair of Dornier Do J II Wal (“Whale”) seaplanes. They were powered by pairs of 650 HP BMW VI water-cooled V-12 engines mounted in tandem, inside a nacelle above the high-mounted, strut-braced monoplane wing aligned with the hull. The forward engine drove a tractor propeller, while the rearward turned a pusher propeller.
At 56 feet, 7 inches long, with a 72-foot, 2-inch wingspan, the unarmed Wal had a maximum take-off weight of 15,432 pounds and an effective range of 497 miles, with carrying capacity for twelve passengers. Dornier’s reliable, rugged, seaworthy aircraft established its suitability for polar operations as early as 1925, when famed Norwegian explorer, Roald Amunsen, flew two of them into the Arctic. Now, thirteen years later, they were being loaded with specially designed Zeiss RMK 38’33 Reihenmess-bildkameras and miles of film.
By late 1938, the German Society of Polar Research was ready to undertake its assignment: locating an area in Antarctica for establishment of a whaling station, as a means of augmenting their country’s production of fat. Whale oil was then the most important raw material for the production of margarine and soap in Germany, the second largest purchaser of Norwegian whale oil, importing some 200,000 metric tons annually. To avoid this dependency on foreign imports, the Reich needed to find alternative sources outside the Arctic, then something of a Norwegian monopoly. But the military side of the expedition was apparent in its determination to scout possible locations for a naval base in the Antarctic.
The mission, although not secret, was, after all, headed by a captain in the Kriegsmarine, the German Navy, Alfred Ritscher, a veteran Arctic explorer. He and his fellow 33 German Society of Polar Research members, together with the Schwabenland’s 24 officers and crew, were addressed in Berlin by none other than Admiral Richard E. Byrd, Jr., who, in the next decade, would be heading his own expedition in the same direction. Thus, the first connection between Task Force 68 and the Third Reich appears early on as a prelude to Operation Highjump. Byrd evinced sincere enthusiasm for the German undertaking, regretfully turning down Ritscher’s invitation to join it, only because of deteriorating relations between their two nations.
On 17 December 1938, the New Schwabia Expedition left the port of Hamburg, arriving one month and two days later at the Princess Martha Coast of Antarctica. After dropping anchor at 4° 30’ W and 69° 14’ S, Ritscher and company spent three weeks at Queen Maud Land, the same area later invaded by America’s Task Force 68. They flew their seaplanes, nicknamed Passat and Boreas, in fifteen missions across some 370,000 square miles of the continent, taking tens of thousands of photographs and making a colour film of their finds. These included a mountain still known as Ritscher Peak, Schirmacher Oasis (named after its discoverer, Boreas pilot, Richard Heinrich Schirmacher), and a far larger ice-free region, some 300 square miles in extent, embracing a trio of large lakes, plus several smaller lakes, separated by masses of barren, reddish-brown rocks, and filled with relatively warm, brackish water of green, blue and red algae. Connected to the sea, the geothermal heated area represented a perfect setting for a military base, particularly for u-boats.
Although the Germans reconnoitred nearly a fifth of Antarctica – most of it never seen before – they left no permanent structures, save for a few hundred small, aluminium stakes flying swastika pennants dumped by the Dornier Whales on snow-covered ground between 20°E and 10°W. In honour of his ship, Ritscher christened this area Neuschwabenland, or “New Schwabia,” a purely cartographic designation never intended as a territorial claim. The name still appears on many maps of Queen Maud Land, which the German Society of Polar Research departed on 6 February 1939. Soon after arriving back in Hamburg on 11 April, plans were laid for a return to Antarctica, which the outbreak of war in September forever cancelled.
Over the next six years of international conflict, no u-boat put in at New Schwabia or anywhere else along the continental coast, contrary to postwar speculation, if only because the Kriegsmarine’s submarine force was taxed to its limits and beyond by the exigencies of transoceanic combat. All its u-boats have been satisfactorily accounted for since, and absolutely no evidence exists to even suggest that a military installation of any kind – temporary or permanent – was based in Neuschwabenland.
Spherical “Lights” not Third Reich Forces
Nor did German aeronautical engineers ever develop the kind of overpowering spherical “lights” that attacked Task Force 68. While Third Reich advances in jet and rocket technology are well known, plans, eyewitness reports, and even photographs of Iron Cross-insignia bedecked flying saucer-like craft attributed with truly out-of-this world performance capabilities are undocumented, postwar fabrications perpetuated by uncritical writers more interested in controversial sensationalism than factual research. At most, Luftwaffe draftsmen may have sketched out theoretical concepts for designs somewhat resembling disc-shaped air-frames late in the war. But these pipe dreams certainly never left their drawing board, given the very long-term development such projects required, to say nothing of the Fatherland’s steady depletion of all materials and resources. At the time of Admiral Byrd’s early 1947 interview with a Chilean newspaper, no one, not even German scientists, had built “flying objects which could move from pole to pole at incredible speeds.”
In 2007’s Moscow Television documentary about Operation Highjump, aerospace engineer Professor Dr. Valeri Burdakov and astro-physicist Yuri Bondarenko theorised that electro-magnetically operated extraterrestrial vehicles would naturally base themselves at Antarctica and the Arctic in order to take advantage of streams of magnetic energy streaming from the Earth’s South to the North Pole. Our planet, they explained, is like a large bar magnet, which continuously repels these lines of force at one end and attracts them at the other. An electro-magnetic propulsion technology might be able to ride these magnetic currents similar to a ship riding the ocean currents of the sea. The US Navy’s published report about Operation Highjump declared that one of its primary goals was to study the South Polar Region’s “electro-magnetic propagation conditions.” To carry this out, each seaplane was equipped with a magnetometer, a device that resisters anomalies in the Earth’s magnetism, thereby determining hollow spaces under the surface ice or ground.
Antarctica’s 300-square-mile anomaly the Dornier Wal pilot discovered and years later scouted by Lieutenant Commander David Bunger, flying his Marin Mariner for Task Force 68, was, as Admiral Byrd stated, “a land of blue and green lakes and brown hills in an otherwise limitless expanse of ice” – an idyllic location for an installation, if not for u-boats, then for something else.12
Beings from Another World?
Developed from the foregoing facts, however incomplete, the most credible possible reconstruction of events, at least in general outline, begins with the accidental find by the German Society of Polar Research of a base near the coast of New Schwabia built and occupied by beings from another world in possession of highly advanced flight technology. Returning with this disclosure to Hamburg, Captain Alfred Ritscher begins organising a return trip prior to its cancellation by the advent of war.
Immediately after the close of hostilities, he arrives in the United States, where he confides the disturbing, secret discovery made in February 1939 to his old friend, Richard Byrd. Somehow, both men determine that the extraterrestrials embody a serious threat, and the highly regarded Admiral uses his prestige and influence to organise Operation Highjump, a codename for the armed invasion of Antarctica and planned destruction of its alien base.13 But his Task Force is defeated and retreats in the face of superior weaponry.
The story does not end here, however. Just three months later, a pair of UFOs crashed in the New Mexico desert, not far from America’s original nuclear research facilities, where the first atomic bomb was constructed just two years before. Published testimony by US military veterans of the famous Roswell Incident reveals that both flying disks were deliberately shot down during the first week in June 1947 by Air Force batteries operating, not ground-to-air missiles or anti-aircraft fire, but highly focused radar beams that fatally disrupted the space craft’s guidance systems.14 Over the next twelve years, a secret war raged around the world between extraterrestrial intruders violating the air space of several nations determined to defend it, as thoroughly documented by competent researchers.
Outstanding among them is Ukrainian Paul Stonehill, born in Kiev, who received his BA in Political Science from California State University for his thesis on the USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan. A world-recognised expert on Soviet covert operations, his published books describe hundreds of bloody skirmishes between Russian interceptors and off-world craft throughout the Stalin era and after.15 Similar aerial confrontations occurred over Britain and the United States during the same period. Losses occurred on all sides, but the earthlings usually came off second best. These combat engagements came to a head, according to American physicist Joseph P. Farrell and historian Henry Stevens, under cover of the International Geophysical Year, when, at the height of the Cold War, the air forces of the United States and the Soviet Union, in a unique and unprecedented cooperative effort, together attacked New Schwabia with nuclear weapons.
“Three bombs were thus detonated at an altitude of approximately 300 miles above the target,” writes Farrell, “one on August 27, 1958, one on August 30, 1958, and a third on September 6, 1958.”16
These high altitude bursts were apparently aimed at causing severe enough disruption of the South Pole’s electro-magnetic field to short out the alien space-crafts’ operational capacities; to literally fry their directional systems. Just how effective was this joint, if drastic effort is not fully known, but it certainly demonstrated the urgency felt by both the Americans and Russians.
That the under-publicised, triple atomic bombing of Antarctica was not, after all, a final solution has been suggested as recently as the 12 January 2011 up-date of a previous 13 December article entitled, “WikiLeaks Set To Reveal U.S.-UFO War In Southern Ocean”. The EU Times stated, “A new report circulating in the Kremlin today prepared for President Medvedev by Russian Space Forces (VKS) 45th Division of Space Control, says that an upcoming WikiLeaks release of secret U.S. cables details that the Americans have been ‘engaged’ since 2004 in a ‘war’ against UFOs based on or near the continent of Antarctica, particularly the Southern Ocean.
“According to this report, the United States went to its highest alert level on June 10, 2004 after a massive fleet of UFOs ‘suddenly emerged’ from the Southern Ocean and approached Guadalajara, Mexico barely 1,600 kilometres (1,000 miles) from the American border. Prior to reaching the U.S. border, however, this massive UFO fleet is said in this report to have ‘dimensionally returned’ to their Southern Ocean ‘home base’ …Since 2004, this report continues, fleets of Southern Ocean UFOs have continued to emerge from their bases, with the latest such event being this Friday past, when another of their massive fleets was sighted over the South American nation of Chile.”17
Interestingly, the EU Times’ quoted report describing UFOs that “‘suddenly emerged’ from the Southern Ocean” is identical to Operation Highjump accounts of spherical lights shooting out of the water. If, indeed, such an interplanetary war has been raging, perhaps on and off, for the past 65 years, then the consistent determination of world leaders to keep all knowledge of it from the rest of mankind is understandable: Were they to admit that the most potent Earth-made weapons – even nuclear bombs – are patently inferior to extraterrestrial violators of our air space, resultant social dislocation could shatter human civilisation, especially in our present condition of economic fragility and cultural instability. Less certain is the future of such a secret conflict.
Footnotes
1. The Axis Air Forces, Praeger Press, 2011; Mussolini’s War, Helion, 2010; Last of the Red Devils, Galde Press, 2003.
2. David A. Kearns, Where Hell Freezes Over: A Story of Amazing Bravery and Survival, Thomas Dunne Books, 2005.
3. Just before departing for Antarctica, referring to Operation Highjump, Byrd declared to representatives of the American press, “My expedition has a military character.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=znbHUcbKkjk&feature=related
4. Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, The New Press, 2003.
5. Lee Van Atta, “El almirante Richard E. Byrd se refiere a la importancia estrategica de los polos,” Santiago de Chile, El Mercurio, 5 March 1947.
6. “Byrd was returned to Washington, D.C., debriefed, and his personal and operational logs from the mission were seized and remain classified to this day…” Joseph P. Farrell, Reich of the Black Sun, Adventures Unlimited Press, 2004, 247.
7. Robert S. Dietz, Some oceanographic observations on Operation Highjump: final report, University of California Libraries, 1948.
8. Three hours over due, but his plane did not run out of fuel?
9. www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHXZGV6mQfs
10. www.thetruthbehindthescenes.org/2010/05/23/us-navy-secret-operation-high-jump-antartica/comment-page-1/
11. www.youtube.com/watch?v=znbHUcbKkjk&feature=related The NKVD report refers to Sayerson’s ship as the “Casablanca,” probably because the Russian spy had trouble pronouncing its real name, Currituck. The Soviet agent also stated that an American vessel set afire and destroyed was the USS Maddox, either a torpedo boat or torpedo-carrying destroyer. Official records list only the Henderson and Brownson as part of Task Force 68, which possessed no torpedo boats. Both destroyers survived the mission and are accounted for. A USS Maddox was indeed sunk by enemy action, but five years earlier by a German dive-bomber during the Allied invasion of Sicily. Actually, there were at least three American destroyers known by that name (DD-168, DD-622, and DD-731), all of them contemporaneous. The US Navy has long been notorious for falsifying the identity of its ships and re-writing their histories if they embarrass official policy. Cases in point include 1944’s pre-Normandy Invasion Battle of Slapton Sands, where a number of vessels were sunk and many servicemen killed by Kriegsmarine torpedo boats, but unacknowledged for the next half century; another American massacre, off the Italian coast near Bari, in 1943, was censored when numerous Allied units, illegally carrying nerve gas, were sunk by the Luftwaffe; although the largest loss of US troops at sea (1,015 fatalities) in a single incident occurred when the troopship, Rohna, was sunk by a German guided missile in the Mediterranean on 26 November 1943, only after aged veterans won a lengthy, costly lawsuit against the US Navy 57 years later did they receive official recognition for their role in the disaster. So too, the “Maddox” cited by Soviet espionage was similarly consigned to an official memory hole.
12. www.eaglespeak.us/2009/03/sunday-ship-history-operation-high-jump.html
13. Although the German Society of Polar Research took more than 16,000 aerial photographs of Antarctica in 1939, Ritscher allowed publication of a chosen few, rather unenlightening examples; the rest have never been seen by outsiders. So too, a radically edited, truncated version of the full-colour film his colleagues made of the expedition was briefly premiered in the Reich during the early war years. Since then, only snippets of a swastika flag waving in a south polar breeze, or a few Society members posing on the ice are still occasionally viewed. Task Force 68 was thrown together with a truly frantic haste, in contradistinction to its allegedly scientific purposes, as though it were absolutely imperative to the security of the United States. The ice-breaker Burton Island, for example, had only recently been commissioned, and was still undergoing sea trials off the Californian coast, when Operation Highjump was launched. Pulling a newly commissioned ship off trials adds to the mission’s sense of urgency still echoed months later, even after conclusion of the expedition, when Byrd could only talk about potential attacks coming from over the Polar Regions.
14. crazyhorsesghost.hubpages.com/hub/Interview-With-One-Of-The-Army-Sergeants-At-Roswell-In-1947
15. Paul Stonehill, The Soviet UFO Files, Clb, 1998; with Philip Mantle, UFO Case Files of Russia, 11th Dimension Publishing, 2010.
16. Joseph P. Farrell, Reich of the Black Sun, Adventures Unlimited Press, 2004, 254.
17. www.eutimes.net/2010/12/wikileaks-set-to-reveal-us-ufo-war-in-southern-ocean/
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