B00AY88OHE EBOK (10 page)

Phoo Bombs–An Intelligence Officer’s Hand Written Notes

U.S. government’s own documents prove they knew of the German origin of foo fighters. This table of contents of a “Intelligence Digest” document, with a February, 1945 date, addresses German military capacities. It lists “Phoo Bombs” as weapon in the German arsenal (see VI-Other Weapons) Taken from microfilm negative image.

Sources and References

  1.  Vesco, Renato, 1976, page 82,
Intercept UFO
, Pinnacle Books, Inc., 275 Madison Ave, New York, NY. 10016, recently reissued as Man-Made UFOs 1944-1994 by Adventures Unlimited Press

  2.  Vesco, Renato, 1976, pages 85-86

  3.  ibid

  4.  Vesco, Renato, 1976, page 87

  5.  United States Air Force, 1944, “An Evaluation Of German Capabilities In 1945,” Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, USA, this and other information related to Phoo Bombs can be found on microfilm rolls A-1007-1652, A-5729-2040

  6.  Vesco, Renato, 1976, pages 85-87

  7.  Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee Report Numbe 156, “Report On Flugfunk Forschungsinstitut Oberpfaffenhofen F.F.O. Establishments”

  8.  ibid

  9.  Corso, Phillip J., Col., 1997, page 161,
The Day After Roswell
, Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc., 1230 Avenue of the Americans, New York, NY. 10020

10.  Vesco, Renato, 1976, pages 136-138

11.  Vesco, Renato, 1976, pages 145 and 156

12.  German Research Project, 1999, “German Death Rays Part Two: The German And American Governmental Evidence,” P.O. Box 7, Gorman, CA. 93243-0007 USA

13.  Vesco, Renato, 1976, page 86

14.  Rothkugel, Klaus-Peter, not yet published, page 31, Das Geheimnis der deutschen Flugscheiben

The Peenemuende Saucer Project

A report comes to us from Russian immigrant Paul Stonehill concerning the experience of a Russian POW in Northern Germany. The report was first published some time ago in UFO Magazine, volume 10, number 2 in 1995, but this witness describes a story so different from other German saucer reports that it is worth emphasis at this point. The witness is unnamed but the source of the original report is known to Paul Stonehill and he vouches for its authenticity. The unnamed witness is called mister “X.”

Mister X was taken prisoner by the Germans in the Ukraine in 1941, early in the German offensive. From there he was housed in a concentration camp where he contracted typhus. X improved and even managed to escape but was re-captured and taken to Auschwitz concentration camp. There, he worked as a medical orderly before a typhus relapse made this work impossible. X was scheduled for a one-way trip to the crematorium but was saved from this fate by a woman German medical doctor who cured him of the typhus. Not only did she do this but, for some reason not made clear in the article, she supplied him with false identity papers stating that X was a mechanical engineer.

In August of 1943 X was moved to KZ (concentration camp) A4 at Trassenhedel in the vicinity of Peenemuende to work on project Hochdruckpumpe’s removal from that area. Hochdruckpumpe, the V-3, or high pressure pump in English, was a long distance cannon with fired in sequential states as the projectile moved by each charge and along an very long barrel. From here X was reassigned to work at Peenemuende itself.

In September of 1943, X and some other prisoners were engaged in demolition of a reinforced cement wall. At lunch time the other prisoners were driven away from this site but for some reason, possibly a dislocated foot, X was left behind.

After the others had gone, four workers appeared from a hangar and rolled out a strange looking craft onto the concrete landing strip nearby. It was round, had a teardropshaped cockpit in the center and was rolled out on small inflatable wheels, like an “upside down wash basin.” After a signal was given, this silvery metal craft began making a hissing sound and took off, hovering at an altitude of about five meters directly over the landing strip. As it hovered, the device rocked back and forth. Then the edges began to blur. Suddenly the flying craft’s edges seem to blur as it jumped up sharply and gained altitude in a snakelike trajectory. X concludes that because rocking was still exhibited, the craft was advancing erratically.

A gust of wind blew in from the Baltic. The flying craft was turned upside down and began to loose altitude. Mr. X was enveloped by hot air and the smell of ethyl alcohol as he heard the craft grinding into the earth. Without thinking, X ran for the craft in an effort to assist the downed pilot. The pilot’s body was hanging out of the broken cockpit and the craft was engulfed in blue flames of fire. X glimpsed the still hissing jet engine before everything was swallowed in flames.

What can be gleaned from this account? Mr. X certainly saw a German flying disc. But the “smell of ethyl alcohol” and the “blue fames of fire” set this engine apart from any so far described. German jet engines ran on jet fuel, a light oil something similar to kerosene. The Walter rocket engines ran of very exotic hypergolic fuels which burst into flames automatically once they made contact with each other. Ethyl alcohol is the alcohol of fermentation as, for instance, potatoes are fermented and distilled into vodka. Ethyl alcohol is not the best substance for aircraft fuel since it is low calories by weight and volume in comparison with the other fuels mentioned. The advantage of alcohol for the shortage plagued Germans was that it was available. Ethyl alcohol and liquid oxygen were exactly the fuels which powered the V-2 rocket developed at nearby Peenemuende.

Captured Foo Fighters In the USA?

From “The Arizona Republic,” July 8, 1947

Given this report, we have a reason to consider Peenemuende as a German site which produced flying discs. But before proceeding with our inquiry as before we must take a step back from our strictly detailed survey of German flying saucers in order to get better perspective of this overall body of information.

To this point, any reader somewhat familiar with German flying discs might find the level of detail and proof enlightening but might feel that the basic story is known and has already been told. These readers will be pleasantly surprised by this chapter of our story. Not only is new evidence presented here but a new interpretation of existing evidence sheds a whole new light upon the study of German flying discs.

This new evidence and this new way of looking at things are primarily the result of the input of German aeronautical investigator Klaus-Peter Rothkugel. Within the last year or so he has proposed to me and to another investigator, Heiner Gehring, ideas which were previously overlooked. Mr. Rothkugel has investigated and documented his ideas to both of us and has convinced us of their merit. In turn, both Mr. Gehring and myself have spent some time and effort in advancing this research ourselves and sharing the results. These researchers have published their findings in Germany and have allowed me to make use of these ideas here.

The careful reader will note that mention has already been made of Mr. Rothkugel and his contributions. In this section some of the ideas which he first put forth will be examined as will his emphasis on the overall organization and understanding of the material.

It was Vesco who first gave us an explanation of foo fighters. Vesco relied upon his own understanding of the subject which was gained during the war and documented them with facts gleaned from his research into British intelligence files. His explanation has been largely vindicated both by reports of sightings within Austria and through United States military documents obtained independently through the Freedom Of Information Act. Why then should not the other explanations given us by Vesco be worthy of further inquiry? While discussing German saucer development, Vesco described German research designed to overcome the drag limitations imposed upon aircraft by boundary layer effects.

Boundary layer effects refer to the flow of air across the wing of an aircraft in flight. The air forms sheets of air moving across the wing, the slowest moving sheet being closest to the wing. At high speeds these slower moving layers collide with oncoming air molecules of the atmosphere causing areas of turbulence with translate into atmospheric drag as a practical matter. Elimination of the boundary layer would mean that the aircraft could fly faster or expend less energy to fly at any given speed (1)(2).

Swept wings, a German innovation, represent an aircraft designer’s response toward lessening the effects of drag on high speed aircraft wings. It was found that air passing over the wings at an angle retarded boundary layer formation. Therefore, turbulence was less apt to form. The swept back-wings of the Me-163 rocket interceptor may have been the result of this research. An advanced model of the Me-262 jet fighter was to incorporate fully swept-back wings. But German aircraft designers of those times wanted to go further. They wanted to eliminate the boundary layer completely.

They proposed to do this with suction wings (3). The literature on German efforts toward elimination of the boundary layer using suction wings is voluminous, as Vesco has pointed out. Beginning in the early 1940s German designers cut slots into experimental aircraft and auxiliary engines were employed to suck in the boundary layer through the wing itself and redirect this air into the fuselage and out the rear of the aircraft (4). This proved to be more complicated than first anticipated. It was found that the area of turbulence, eddy currents caused by the boundary layer, moved across the wing from front to back as air speed increased. A slot at one position on the wing might work at one speed but not another. This meant that many, many slots covering the expanse of the wing would be needed to totally defeat this boundary layer problem. This proved impractical for a number of reasons.

One reason this should be seen as impractical was that multiple engines had to be used. The first engine had to provide power for flight as in any airplane. The second engine, mounted in the fuselage, was necessary to draw in air through the slotted wings and exhaust it towards the rear. Interestingly enough, it was found that the boundary layer could be eliminated by “sucking it in” or by “blowing it off” using a strong flow of air to disrupt it (5).

Full scale suction wing aircraft were built for purposes of testing this concept. These were the Junkers “Absaugeflugzeug” (suction aircraft) AF-1 and the Fieseler “Absaugestorch” (suction-stork) AF-2.

Concurrent with these experiments, work was being done into the feasibility of circular wings. This work also began in the 1930s with the basic ideas being credited to Professor Ludwig Prandtl. Early scientific papers on circular winged aircraft were written beginning in 1936 by Wilhelm Kinner (6) and in 1938 by M. Hansen (7). Both of these scientists worked at the Aerodynamic Research Facility at Goettingen. By 1941 Dr. Alexander Lippisch was also engaged in experimentation on circular wings at the Messerschmitt firm. His design, designated J1253, was tested at the wind-tunnel at Goettingen (8). Dr. Lippisch was visited by Dr Giuseppe Belluzzo while at Messerschmitt in Augsburg and Lippisch worked together with Dr. F. Ringlib on a “Drehfluegel” or “rotating wing” which was tested at Peenemuende (9). As with suction wings, a body of scientific literature from those times documents this early circular-wing experimentation.

The genius of the German designers was to combine the ideas of suction and circular wings into a single aircraft. Housing a complete aircraft within its wing would eliminate the fuselage and so eliminate an unnecessary, drag-causing structure.

Prandtl and Lippisch were not comparable to Schiever and Habermohl. Prandtl and Lippisch are not even comparable to Dr. Richard Miethe. Pradtl and Lippisch were senior scientists who were well established in their worlds, either of whom would have been capable of heading a major project. In fact neither the Schriever-Habermohl or what we have called the Miethe-Bellonzo projects were major projects. This is another significance of what is being discussed here because what is being discussed here is a completely different organization and understanding of German flying discs than has been presented heretofore.