SS Brotherhood of the Bell: The Nazis’ Incredible Secret Technology

by Joseph P. Farrell

  3. Death in the Air: The Sound Barrier Too?

  The Project Lusty documentation referred to previously indicates that the Type XXI’s deadly performance characteristics were matched, if not surpassed, by similar German developments in aerial warfare.

  With the Allied and Soviet Air Forces’ increasing dominance of the skies over Germany, it became increasingly vital for the Luftwaffe to pursue the unconventional avenue toward recovering mastery of the air over Germany. One such solution, the Focke Wulfe Triebflügel, is well-known to researchers. This “vertical takeoff and landing” or VTOL fighter was a viable solution, since there was no need to try to take off or land on bombed and cratered airfield runways. Consisting of three rotating wings around a central fuselage, each wing was tipped with a ramjet engine. The wings could in turn be rotated to increase or decrease the angle of attack. With rockets to assist the ramjets to get started, the Triebflügel was in effect a vertical takeoff and landing jet-airplane combined with a helicopter. Witkowski describes it as follows:

  (The) name could be translated as “propulsive wing”, reflecting its unusual principle of operation. During takeoff and landing the lifting surfaces performed the function of a helicopter’s rotor, whereas during flight at high speed they “transformed” into wings…. Three ramjet engines were mounted on the wing tips, each with a maximum thrust of 840 KG. During takeoff they were boosted by three Walter rocket engines, accelerating the wings to a speed enabling the ramjet engines to be started. 28

  Prior to the publication in English of Witkowski’s research, however, little was known about the performance capabilities of this unconventional aircraft, and it remained a curiosity.

  Witkowski, however, managed to procure a postwar Polish report on the actual test results the craft managed to achieve:

  The maximum vertical speed did not exceed 124 km/h. After climbing to a sufficient altitude, the aircraft commenced horizontal flight with the adjustment of control surfaces and ailerons.(…) In horizontal flight the aircraft reached a speed of 1,000 km/h. The rotor operated at 520 rpm, which after conversion gave a rotational speed of the tips of 1,500 km/h.

  The initial rate of climb amounted to 7.5 km/min. Rotor working time -42 min., range 640 km. At an altitude of 11 km horizontal speed amounted to 800 km/h.29

  Note that the speed of the craft at normal altitudes was 1,000 kilometers per hour, or approximately 600 miles per hour. Note also that the craft was apparently capable of reaching altitudes of some 11 kilometers, or about six and a half miles above the surface, far above the normal operational altitudes of most Allied and Soviet aircraft of the war.

  The performance characteristics cited are made even more remarkable by the fact that the Triebflügel and similar craft were apparently brought to the United States as part of Project Lusty:

  A report reached Lt Col. O’Brien’s party that a “strange aircraft” had been seen in a mountainous retreat near Salzburg. Investigation quickly determined that this “strange aircraft: was a jet-propelled helicopter, the only one of its kind in the world. The inventor and his entire staff, who had laboriously worked ten years to perfect it, were present, guarding his invention as one would a precious jewel. The helicopter was examined, and a preliminary superficial interrogation of the staff was sufficient to reveal its tremendous importance. It was carefully loaded in a large truck and taken to Munich. From there it was sent across Europe to France, placed on a boat and shipped to Wright Field, together with the confiscated notes, drawings, and meticulous records of experiments conducted by the scientist and his assistants.30

  The Triebflügel and similar other projects were thus for the American military no mere curiosities. They represented significant technological advances over then existent American aerospace technology.

  But now a question occurs: if the machine – and there was only one such of its kind in the world – was brought to Wright Patterson Airfield31 and its scientists interred and papers confiscated, how did the postwar Polish Communist government know so much about its performance within six years of the war’s end? The standard answer is, of course, that there were Soviet spies within the program, and that is the most likely explanation. But there is another possible answer that will loom ever larger as we proceed, and that is that it is possible that all these programs were continued after the war in a variety of host countries including Russia, and yet were independently coordinated from some hidden center, passing information back and forth between the cells in various host countries via a continuing “Nazi International”.

  The Triebflügel also points to another direction wartime German research pursued, and pursued with a vengeance: high performance ramjet-propelled aircraft. Indeed, when entering this area of inquiry, one is again entering one of those areas where the reality of wartime German accomplishments in secret weapons research was in diametric contradiction to the postwar Allied Legend, only in this case, the legend is not about the Allies having acquired the a-bomb while the Nazis remained incompetent nuclear bunglers, but about the fact that an American, Chuck Yeager, was the first human to pilot an aircraft through the sound barrier, an event that occurred after the war’s end and the beginning of America’s own black projects in exotic aircraft and space-based weapons.

  The story begins with the acknowledged expert on ramjets, Prof. Dr. Alexander Lippisch, and his designs for a delta-winged P-13b ramjet aircraft. The goal of the project was to produce a supersonic aircraft with a cheap, reliable propulsion system. Lippisch produced a number of designs, beginning with the P-12.

  Lippisch’s P-12 Design

  Work on this aircraft was interrupted in May 1944, and Lippisch produced the design for the cleaner lines of the P13b.

  Lippisch’s P13b Design

  The large air intakes for the ramjets and the disk-shaped combustion chamber are clearly evident. Wind tunnel trials soon showed the advantages of the pure delta shape for supersonic flight, however, and Lippisch produced his final design for the P13b, the final design for which is described in a U.S. intelligence summary for April, 1945:

  The Final Version of the Lippisch P13b According to a US Intelligence Summary of April 1945

  The remarkable thing about the P13b development is that according to one version, the pure delta version, i.e., the final version seen immediately above, was the version that went through comprehensive trials in 1945. The design in fact, was completed by January 7, 1945.32

  But did this fantastic supersonic fighter ever progress beyond the planning and wind-tunnel test stages? Enter Project Lusty once again. Frame 599 of the documentation lists the various actual aircraft that were brought to the Wright Airfield in the United States for “extended study and development.”33 As the documents state, “at least one, in some cases as many as ten, of the following, which represent only a fraction of the types (of aircraft), were located, some only after extensive searching throughout Germany.”34 The report then lists the types of aircraft, not just documents, that were seized:

  The Messerschmitt aircraft series 1101, 1106, 1110, 1111 and 1112, a series particularly interesting in that it illustrates a phase of coordinated aircraft design into which American aircraft are only now entering; seven rocket-propelled piloted aircraft specifically designed for anti-bomber interception work; a jet-propelled helicopter; Flettner-282 helicopter; Horton-9, a flying winged glider; Ju-188, a radar equipped twin-engine night fighter; Ju-290, four-engine long range transport; seven Me-163s, rocket-propelled interceptor fighters; ten Me-262s, twin jet-propelled fighter-interceptors; He-162, single place fighter powered by jet engines; flying bombs, type V-1 single and dual piloted; Lippisch P-13 Jager(sic)35, a tailless twin rocket-propelled wing for supersonic speeds…36

  The report clearly indicates that an actual aircraft, and not just a model, was brought to the United States, though it clearly has misidentified the fighter’s rocket engines as the main propulsion unit. They were necessary only to reach sufficient speed to start the ramjets.

 
But the truly sensational bit of information concerning the P13b that emerges from the Project Lusty documents occurs in frame 601, where the top recorded speed for the P13b is stated as Mach 1.85, “about 2100 km/h” or approximately 1200 miles per hour.37 UFO researches will recognize that figure, because it appears often in newspaper accounts of UFO performance characteristics from the postwar period on into the 1950s. In any case, Polish military files indicate that the craft was prepared for, and successfully undertook, comprehensive trials ca. January-February 1945, and that indeed, the sound barrier had been broken by the Germans during that time, though no mention is made of the test pilot’s name.38

  The fact of the P13b’s incredible speed and the uniqueness and simplicity of its combustion chamber, would have meant nothing less than an aerial warfare revolution had the war lasted a little longer and the aircraft had seen production. The reason is quite simple: it was cheap, impervious to Allied radar, and utterly beyond the performance capabilities of the prototype British and American jet fighters only just beginning to be tested. Indeed, the performance characteristics of the P13b would only be matched by the “X planes” of the early American space program some years later.

  As for Lippisch himself, he became something of a celebrity at Wright Airfield in Dayton, Ohio, since he was recognized as the leading authority on supersonic flight. Lippisch conducted seminars and lectures for his new American bosses.39 More importantly, Lippisch had also completed designs for an orbiting space station capable of dropping nuclear bombs on any target on earth.40

  4. Death on the Ground: Weapons of Mass Destruction in Use by the German Army on the Eastern Front in 1941

  Beyond these deadly aerial and submarine developments of the late war, there were already indicators that something had long been afoot on the ground as well, as persistent rumors came from the Eastern Front that the German Army, on more than one occasion, had used some weapon of enormous destructive power on Russian military targets. In Reich of the Black Sun I indicated that this was most likely some early version of a fuel-air bomb, a device that the Germans had brought, by the end of the war, to enormous capability.41 The sources for these strange allegations were none other than a secret Japanese communiqué from its embassy in Stockholm, Sweden, to an equally secret communication from the Soviets to the Nazis that if they did not “cease and desist” the Russians would resort to the use of poison gas.

  Further corroboration of this is found in none other than celebrated SS commando Otto Skorzeny’s memoirs. However, he recounts that their first use occurred not in the siege of Sevastopol in the Crimea in 1942, nor indeed with the prologue to the Battle of Kursk in 1943, but in the fierce Battle for Moscow during late November and early December of 1941!

  To our left is situated Khmiki, Moscow’s port. From here it is only 8 kilometers to Moscow. On 30 November, without a single shot, the 62nd reconnaissance regiment belonging to Hoepner’s Armoured Corps moves in here. It is not known why this opportunity was not exploited. Our motorcyclists retreated.

  Here begins the next mysterious episode in the battle for Moscow, which has escaped the attention of many historians. In order to oppose the horrifying rockets of “Stalin’s organs” we applied a new type of rocket missile filled with liquid air. These were similar to enormous bombs and as far as my competence allows me to estimate – their effectiveness had no equal. Their use immediately had an impact on the enemy’s defensive forces. The enemy used huge loudspeakers for propaganda purposes… By means of them several days after first using our missiles the Russians threatened to respond with gas attacks if we continued to use rockets filled with liquid air. From that moment, at least in our sector, they were never used again. I don’t think they were used on other stretches of the front as well.42

  Witkowski confirms the assertion first broached by Renato Vesco that the research for these weapons of mass destruction – a large fuel air bomb has the same destructive effect as a small atom bomb – was undertaken by Prof. Dr. Zippermayer under the apt code name Hexenkessel or “Witches’ Cauldron.”43

  British Intelligence Report on Fuel Air Bomb

  British Intelligence Report on German Fuel Air Bomb

  Skorzeny also indicates the method of delivery was apparently through rocket artillery systems. In point of fact, SS panzer and panzer grenadier divisions often had a complement of so-called Nebelwerfer artillery units. These units were six-barreled rocket artillery pieces, ranging in caliber from 150mm (about six inches) to 280 mm (about eleven inches). The six barrels of a typical Nebelwerfer were arranged in a hexagonal pattern on an otherwise conventional split-trail artillery carriage. The 280mm Nebelwerfer units would have been the ideal delivery system for fuel air bombs.44

  One can only guess what the effect of a battery of these weapons firing fuel air bombs on rockets, with their sirens screaming down on their targets, all synchronized to detonate simultaneously, would have had on a Russian unit. The phrase “carpet bombing” together with “tactical nukes” might, however, come close.

  But in any case, it is clear why the Russians resorted to the threat of poison gas. And perhaps it is also clear why only recently the Russian government has revealed that its casualties during the war were far higher than anyone had previously imagined. Operationally competent as the German Army was during World War Two, the fantastic “kill ratios” it achieved on the Eastern Front could only have been due to the assistance of unconventional weaponry, and weaponry of mass destruction at that.

  5. Beyond the Nuclear and Thermonuclear Bombs: Indications of a New Physics

  Project Lusty also corroborates another sensational allegation that we shall encounter much later, namely, that the Nazis were engaged in research on various types of “death rays” or “anti-aircraft rays.” This research apparently was undertaken in Vienna at number 87 Weimarstrasse.45 But these were no ordinary lasers.

  According to Polish researcher Igor Witkowski, the German government’s archives indicate that

  In 1944 a special Luftwaffe research establishment received the task to develop such a weapon, situated in the town of Gross Ostheim. Materials relating to this work are currently located in a civilian establishment – the Karlsruhe research centre (Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe) and were disclosed several years ago.46

  As was seen in Reich of the Black Sun, research was also conducted into exotic “Tesla” technology at the University of Heidelberg, where an underground bunker was discovered that housed a large artificial quartz parabolic dish which was used to fire high voltage pulses at targets some meters away to disintegrate them.47 In this light it is perhaps worth mentioning that the giant German electronics firm, Siemens A.G., took out one of the first patents for an X-ray laser in the U.S.A. in 1955,48 roughly half a decade before the first masers and lasers were “discovered.” Did the Siemens patent in fact reflect work already undertaken by the Third Reich?

  While this cannot be determined with certainty, it is perhaps significant that the Siemens firm seldom reveals the exact nature and extent of its research undertaken during the Nazi era. And it is perhaps also significant that Siemens might be trying to protect a patent or device previously filed during the Nazi era and subsequently confiscated as booty by taking out a patent for an X-ray laser in the United States.

  Taken together, all these secret weapons projects – and they are only the tip of a very large, very deadly iceberg – indicate that Nazi Germany was aiming for supremacy on the ground, sea, and air. But it would be misleading to assume that this was the limit of their ambitions…

  1 Linda Hunt, The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip: 1945 to 1990 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), pp. 8-9.

  2 Ibid., p. 219.

  3 Geoffrey Brooks, Hitler’s Terror Weapons: From V1 to Vimana (Pen and Sword Books: Barnsley, South Korshire, 2002), p. 103. (ISBN 0850528968)

  4 Ibid.

  5 Ibid.

  6 Brooks, Hitler’s Terror Weapons, p. 19.

&nb
sp; 7 Cited in Georg, Star Wars 1947, pp. 25-26, all emphases in the original.

  8 Georg, Star Wars, p. 15. See also pp. 182-183.

  9 Ibid., p. 199, my translation.

  10 As I note in my Reich of the Black Sun, p. 80, Italian eyewitness Luigi Romersa, who described the test in detail, leaves out of his description any observation of the fusing of the soil at the test site into the glassy silicate covering associated with above ground low altitude nuclear tests. This fact weighs strongly against the test having been of a nuclear device though other signatures of the device tested there resemble a nuclear bomb. Background radiation on Rügen appears too small for a nuclear device. Romersa might thus be obfuscating his testimony; perhaps the test was elsewhere in the Baltic, or perhaps the test was of a large fuel-air bomb?

  11 Cited in Friedrich Georg, Hitlers Siegeswaffen, Band 2: Star Wars 1947: Teliband B: Von der Amerikarakete zur Orbitalstation – Deutschlands Streben nach Interkontinentalwaffen und das erste Weltraumprogramm (Schleusingen, Germany: Amun Verlag, 2004), pp. 194-195.

  12 Igor Witkowski, The Truth About the Wunderwaffe, trans. from the Polish by Bruce Wenham (Farnborough, England: Books International (European History Press, 2003), p. 224. Witkowski’s research in The Truth about the Wunderwaffe, like Carter Hydrick’s in Critical Mass, is first class and simply put, cannot and must not be ignored by any serious inquirer into the alternative and secret history of World War Two secret weapons and technology. I state this simply to put the record straight, since a number of stupid and utterly silly remarks have been made about Mr. Witkowski in various reviews of Nick Cook’s The Hunt for Zero Point. These reviews have tried to impeach Cook’s story by, in some cases, implying that Mr. Witkowski’s work was somehow slip shod or second rate. The persons making such comments have obviously never bothered to read Mr. Witkowski’s work nor considered its profound implications. So, once again, to set the record straight, Mr. Witkowski’s work is superb and magisterial. The reviewers implying that Mr. Witkowski is an “unknown” or a second-rate author might possibly be in the covert employment of somebody’s (Hot) Air Force.