by Mike Bennett
Similar sentiments regarding German technology resurfaced in 1947 with the first wave of flying saucer reports after Kenneth Arnold’s widely reported close encounter with nine crescent-shaped objects moving at a high velocity. Personnel of Project Sign, the first US Air Force UFO investigation group, noted that the advanced flying wing aeronautical designs of the German Horten brothers were similar to some UFO reports. Later in 1959, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the first director of Project BlueBook (Project Sign’s follow-up investigation) wrote: “When WWII ended, the Germans had several radical aircraft and guided missiles under development.”
While these early speculations and reports were limited primarily to military personnel, the earliest assertion of German flying saucers in the mass media appears to have been an article which appeared in the Italian newspaper Il Giornale d’Italia in early 1950. Written by Professor Giuseppe Belluzzo, an Italian scientist and a former Italian Minister of National Economy under the Mussolini regime, it claimed that “types of flying discs were designed and studied in Germany and Italy as early as 1942.” Belluzzo also expressed the opinion that “some great power is launching discs to study them”.
The Bell was among the first flying objects to be connected with the Nazis. It apparently had occult markings on it, and it was also rumoured to have been very similar to a Wehrmacht document about a vertical take-off aircraft. It is directly related to the supposed crash of a bell-shaped object that occurred in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, USA in December 1965. The same month, German engineer Rudolf Schriever gave an interview to German news magazine Der Spiegel in which he claimed that he had designed a craft powered by a circular plane of rotating turbine blades 49 feet (15 meters) in diameter.
He said that the project had been developed by him and his team at the Skoda works near Prague until April 1945, when he fled Czechoslovakia. His designs for the disk and a model were stolen from his workshop in Bremerhaven-Lehe in 1948, and he was convinced that Czech agents had built his craft for a foreign power. In a separate interview with Der Spiegel in October 1952 he said that the plans were stolen from a farm he was hiding in near Regen on 14th May 1945. There are other discrepancies between the two interviews that add to the confusion. However, many sceptics have doubted that such a Bell was actually designed or ever built.
In 1953, when Avro Canada announced that it was developing the VZ-9-AV Avrocar, a circular jet aircraft with an estimated speed of 1,500 mph (2,400 km/h), German engineer Georg Klein claimed that such designs had been developed during the Third Reich. Klein identified two types of supposed German flying discs; the first a non-rotating disc developed at Breslau by V-2 rocket engineer Richard Miethe, which was captured by the US. Miethe also fled to the US via France and ended up working for Avro. The second consisted of a ring of revolving discs around a fixed cockpit. Klein claimed that he had witnessed this craft’s first manned flight on 14th February 1945, when it managed to climb to 12,400 metres (40,700 feet) in three minutes, and attained a speed of 2,200 km/h (1,400 mph) in level flight.
Aeronautical engineer Roy Fedden remarked that the only craft that could approach the capabilities attributed to flying saucers were those being designed by the Germans towards the end of the war. Fedden was also the chief of the technical mission to Germany for the Ministry of Aircraft Production.
The Bell was reported to be around 9 feet in diameter, and 12 to 14 feet in height. When in operation, it consumed large amounts of electrical power and reportedly glowed with a violet-blue haze surrounding the equipment due to the ionisation of the air in the vicinity.
Inside the Bell, two contra-rotating drums were installed. Norwegian-born physicist Rolf Widerøe wrote in his autobiography about the development of the Bell at Hamburg by the company CHF Muller. In his patent, his diagrams show one sphere inside another spun on a common axis. A vacuum was then created to propagate plasma inside the evacuated chambers.
Within the Bell, it was reported that heated mercury vapour would have been injected, and then, once spun up to speed, subjected to powerful discharges of electricity in order to ionise the mercury vapour. Under this influence, the mercury would fluoresce, and photons would collide with extremely energetic electrons, creating X-rays and gamma rays. This process was said to stimulate a mysterious compound known “Xerum 525” to produce the effects that were then observed.
The Nazis were known to have made a special paraffin from deuterium, which was thought to have been used within the Bell. The reports of the violet colour of the Xerum 525 were supposedly due to the Red Mercury within this compound. According to the US intelligence propaganda today, Red Mercury does not exist. It is however advertised for sale on the Internet by major Russian nuclear facilities for very large sums of money.
Up until 1944, the Nazi Bell was located in an underground facility close to the Polish city of Wrocław. The final location for the Bell’s development was at the Wenceslas mine, situated in a remote valley close to a large power station. The mining operations in the area produced the coal for the power station, and the remoteness, availability of substantial electrical power, and the old mine workings made the Wenceslas mine an ideal location for the unobserved development of this technology.
According to some reports, additional substances were said to be employed in the experiments, referred to as Leichtmetalle (light metal), with thorium and beryllium peroxides. Some describe Die Glocke (the Bell) as emitting strong radiation when activated, an effect that supposedly led to the death of several unnamed scientists and various plant and animal test subjects. Based upon certain external indications, the Polish investigator Witkowski states that the ruins of a concrete framework aesthetically dubbed “The Henge” in the vicinity of the Wenceslas mine (50°37′43″N 16°29′40″E) may have once served as a test rig for an experiment in “anti-gravity propulsion” generated with Die Glocke. However, the derelict structure itself has also been interpreted to resemble the remains of a conventional industrial cooling tower. Witkowski’s statements and views prompted further conjecture about this device from various American authors.
Since 1945, much has been written about Nazi flying discs and the Bell, and more recently many entire books written covering UFOs and flying saucers. The author believes the majority of these works to be mostly fictitious, but there is undoubtedly some factual basis to some of the accounts related. Some people have even gone so far as suggesting that the Bell was developed to investigate time travel.
As time has progressed, it has become more difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. I believe that today all we can say with certainty is that the propulsion systems that are required to propel such craft can be built, but precisely what the Bell was used for is still a matter of conjecture.
In the final analysis however, we know for certain that whatever the purpose of the Bell was, it disappeared along with Kammler in 1945, and the Germans considered this device so important that every one of the dozens of scientists who had ever worked on this project were shot by the SS and buried in a mass grave.
CHAPTER 12
During World War II, the Nazis developed the V-1 flying bomb. Although it was far from perfect, it was arguably the world’s first effective cruise missile. Also known as the buzz bomb or doodlebug, it was an early pulse jet-powered predecessor of the modern cruise missile.
The V-1 was developed at the Peenemünde Research Centre by the Luftwaffe. During initial development it was known by the codename “Cherry Stone”. The first of the so-called vengeance weapons (Vergeltungswaffen) designed for the terror bombing of London, the V-1 was fired from launch sites along the French and Dutch coasts. The first V-1 was launched at London on 13th June 1944, one week after (and prompted by) the successful Allied landings in Normandy. At its peak, more than one hundred V-1s a day were fired at south-east England, and 9,521 in total. This rate decreased as the launch sites were overrun, until October 1944, when the last V-1 site in range of Britain was finally taken by Allied forces. This caused the re
maining V-1s to be directed at the port of Antwerp and other targets in Belgium, with a further 2,448 V-1s being launched. The attacks stopped when the last site was overrun on 29th March 1945.
The British operated an arrangement of defences (including guns and fighter aircraft) to intercept the bombs before they reached their targets, as part of Operation Crossbow, while the launch sites and underground V-1 storage depots were the targets of strategic bombing.
The history of the V-1 began in the late autumn of 1936. While employed by the Argus Company, Fritz Gosslau began work on the further development of remote-controlled aircraft. Argus had already developed remote-controlled surveillance aircraft such as the AS 292 (military designation FZG 43).
On 9th November 1939, a proposal for a remote-controlled aircraft carrying a payload of 1,000 kg (2,200lbs) over a distance of 500 km (310 miles) was forwarded to the RLM (German Air Ministry). Argus joined with Lorentz AG and Arado Flugzeugwerke to develop the project as a private venture. In April 1940, Gosslau presented an improved study of the project to the RLM, known as Project P-35.
On 31st May, Rudolf Bree of the RLM commented that he saw no chance that the projectile could be deployed in combat conditions, as the proposed remote control system was seen as a design weakness. Heinrich Koppenberg, a director of Argus, met with Ernst Udet on 6th January 1941 to try to convince him that the development should be continued, but Udet opted to cancel it.
Despite this, Gosslau was convinced that the basic idea was sound and proceeded to simplify the design. As an engine manufacturer, Argus lacked the capability to produce a fuselage for the project, and Koppenberg sought the assistance of Robert Lusser, chief designer and technical director at Heinkel. On 22nd January 1942, Lusser took up a position with the Fieseler aircraft company. He met with Koppenberg on 27th February and was informed of Gosslau’s project. Gosslau’s design used two pulse jet engines. Lusser improved the design to use a single engine.
A final proposal for the project was submitted to the Technical Office of the RLM on 5th June and the project was renamed Fi 103, as Fieseler was to be the chief contractor. On 19th June, General Erhard Milch gave the Fi 103 production a high priority, and development was undertaken at the Luftwaffe’s Erprobungsstelle coastal test centre at Karlshagen, part of the Peenemünde-West facility.
By 30th August, Fieseler had completed the first fuselage, and the first flight of the Fi 103 took place on 10th December, when it was air-dropped by an FW 200.
The V-1 was designed with a fuselage constructed mainly of welded sheet steel, and wings built of plywood. The simple Argus-built pulse jet engine pulsed at fifty times per second, and the characteristic buzzing sound gave rise to the colloquial names.
Ignition of the Argus pulse jet was accomplished using an automotive-type spark plug located behind the intake shutters, with current supplied from a portable starting unit. Three air nozzles in the front of the pulse jet were at the same time connected to an external high-pressure air source which was used to start the engine. Acetylene gas was typically used for starting, and very often a panel of wood or similar material was held across the end of the tailpipe to prevent the fuel from diffusing and escaping before ignition. The V-1 was fuelled with 150 gallons of 75 octane gasoline.
Once the engine had been started and the temperature had risen to the minimum operating level, the external air hose and connectors were removed, and the engine’s resonant design kept it firing without any further need for the electrical ignition system.
It has been stated that the V-1’s Argus As 014 pulse jet engine needed a minimum airspeed of 150 mph (240 km/h) to operate. The Argus As 014 (also known as a resonant jet) could in fact operate at a lower airspeed due to the nature of its intake shutters and its acoustically-tuned resonant combustion chamber.
The minimum air speed was probably needed due to the very high stall speed of the small wings. The V-1 could not take off under its own power, and thus required to either be ground-launched with power assistance using a ramp, or air-launched from a modified bomber aircraft such as the Heinkel He-111. Beginning in January 1941, the V-1’s pulse jet engine was also tested on a variety of craft, including an experimental attack boat known as the “Tornado”. The unsuccessful prototype was a version of a Sprengboot, in which a boat loaded with explosives was steered towards a target ship, and the pilot would leap out of the back at the last moment. The Tornado was assembled from surplus seaplane hulls connected in a catamaran-like fashion, with a small pilot cabin on the crossbeams. The Tornado prototype was a noisy underperformer and was abandoned.
The V-1 guidance system used a simple autopilot to regulate altitude and airspeed, developed by Askania in Berlin. Although the original design plan of using a radio-control system would have allowed for precision attacks, the guidance system adopted instead allowed the missile to be used against very large targets, such as London. A weighted pendulum system provided fore-and-aft stabilisation to control pitch, which was also damped by a gyrocompass. Operating power for the gyroscope platform and the flight control actuators was provided by two large spherical compressed air tanks which also pressurised the fuel tank. These air tanks were charged to 150 bar before launch. With a nose-mounted counter determining how far the missile would fly, it was only necessary to launch the V-1 with the ramp pointing in the correct direction, and the autopilot then controlled the flight.
There was a more sophisticated interaction between yaw, roll and other parameters. A gyrocompass (set by swinging in a hangar before launch) gave feedback to control the dynamics of pitch and roll. The gyroscope remained true on the basis of feedback received from a magnetic compass, and from the fore-and-aft pendulum. This interaction meant that rudder control was sufficient for steering, and no banking mechanism was needed.
In a V-1 which landed in March 1945, without detonating, between Tilburg and Goirle in the Netherlands, several issues of the German wartime propaganda newspaper Signal were found inserted into the left wing’s tubular steel spar. They were assumed to have been added for weight to pre-set the missile’s static equilibrium before launching. It is also known that several of the first buzz bombs to be launched were provided with a small radio transmitter (using a triode valve marked “S3”, but equivalent to a then-current power valve, type RL 24T1), to check the general direction of flight related to the launching place’s and the target’s grid coordinates by radio bearing.
An odometer driven by a vane anemometer on the nose determined when the target area had been reached, accurately enough for area bombing. Before launch, the counter was set to a value that would reach zero upon arrival at the target in the prevailing wind conditions. As the missile flew, the airflow turned the propeller, and every thirty rotations of the propeller counted down one number on the odometer. This counter triggered the arming of the warhead after about 60 km (37 miles). When the count reached zero, two detonating bolts were fired. These caused two spoilers on the elevators to be released; the linkage between the elevators and servo was jammed, and a guillotine device cut off the control hoses to the rudder servo. These actions put the V-1 into a steep dive. While this was originally intended to be a power-dive, in practice the dive caused the fuel flow to cease, which stopped the engine. The sudden silence after the buzzing alerted people to the impending impact.
The conventional launch sites could theoretically launch about fifteen V-1s per day, but this rate was difficult to achieve on a consistent basis. The maximum rate achieved was eighteen. Overall, only about twenty-five percent of the V-1s hit their targets. The majority were lost because of a combination of defensive measures, mechanical unreliability or guidance errors. With the capture or destruction of the launch facilities used to attack England, the V-1s were employed in attacks against strategic locations in Belgium, primarily the port of Antwerp.
The intended operational altitude was originally set at 2,750 metres (9,000 feet). However, repeated failures of a barometric fuel pressure regulator led to it being changed in
May 1944, halving the operational height, thereby bringing V-1s into far easier range of the guns used by Allied AA units.
The trial versions of the V-1 were air-launched. Most operational V-1s were launched from static sites on land, but from July 1944 to January 1945, the Luftwaffe launched approximately 1,170 V-1s from modified Heinkel He 111s of the Kampfgeschwader 3 (third Bomber Wing, the so-called “Blitz Wing”) flying over the North Sea. Apart from the obvious motive of permitting the bombardment campaign to continue after static ground sites on the French coast were lost, air-launching gave the Luftwaffe the opportunity to outflank the increasingly effective ground and air defences put up by the British against the missile.
In order to minimise the associated risks (primarily radar detection), the aircrews developed a tactic called “lo-hi-lo”. The He 111s would, upon leaving their airbases and crossing the coast, descend to an exceptionally low altitude. When the launch point was neared, the bombers would swiftly ascend, fire their V-1s, and then rapidly descend again to the previous “wave-top” level for the return flight. Research after the war estimated a forty percent failure rate of air-launched V-1s. Also, the He-111s used in this role were extremely vulnerable to British night fighter attack, as the launch lit up the area around the aircraft for several seconds.
We will now look at the underground facilities created by the Nazis during the second half of World War II. Due to the extensive Allied bombing of German factories and infrastructure, it was decided to move all of the vital and sensitive industrial and research facilities underground. To accomplish this, Kammler used the slave labour at his disposal to create hundreds of tunnels and galleries at many locations within mountains in order to protect his projects.