‘That could make sense,’ Stanford said. ‘Why else would they set
out to ridicule their own pilots and ground crews? Why else would they
encourage officers like Ruppelt to investigate the matter and then, when
they came up with firm evidence, harass them out of the scene?’ ‘Right,’ O’Hara said. ‘And bear in mind how the defense forces
operate. The Navy, the Army and the Air Force all run research projects
independently of one another – and they usually keep their secrets to
themselves. Likewise, in the Pentagon, there are departments so secret
that even the President doesn’t know what they’re up to. The same
could be said for the FBI and the CIA: behind the names there are
numbers and those numbers can’t be checked; those numbers represent
the nameless men who create their own laws.’
‘So,’ Stanford said, ‘there are always rumors.’
‘Oh, yes,’ O’Hara. ‘For instance, just before I left the CIA, there
were rumors going around that there’d been actual UFO landings on Air
Force bases, one at Cannon AFB, New Mexico, on 18 May, 1954,
another at Deerwood Nike AFB on 9 September, 1957, and a third at
Blaine AFB on 12 June, 1965. Now the automatic response to such
stories is to assume that they couldn’t be true – that such events
couldn’t possibly be kept secret, not only from the public, but from the
vast majority of FBI, CIA and Pentagon staff.’
‘Not true,’ Stanford said. ‘Some of the most startling scientific
discoveries have been kept under wraps with incredible efficiency for as
long as fifty years. Antibiotics were discovered as far back as 1910, but
weren’t truly applied until 1940. Likewise, nuclear energy was discovered in 1919, but not generally announced until 1965. In short, no
matter how big the secret, we can make sure it stays that way.’ ‘True,’ O’Hara said. ‘So… Could the fact that UFOs have landed
on at least three different Air Force bases be kept a secret for almost a
decade? I believe it could. I believe so because the Air Force, the Navy,
the Army, the CIA or the higher echelons of the Pentagon could, if not
totally suppressing such a fact, reduce that fact to a mishmash of vague
speculation and rumor… And a very good example of this is the
renowned Flying Flapjack.’
‘That,’ Stanford said, ‘sounds familiar.’
‘It should be,’ O’Hara said. ‘The most interesting thing about the
Flying Flapjack is that no one in the CIA had ever mentioned it until
1950, yet it had been designed back in 1942. The Flapjack, originally
known as the Navy Flounder, was a circular aircraft being built by the
US Navy during the Second World War. At that time, what the Navy
desperately needed was an airplane that would not require long
airfields, could rise almost vertically from an aircraft carrier, and could
be used in any cleared area just behind frontline troops. What they came
up with was a combination of helicopter and jet plane, a saucer-shaped
machine powered by two piston engines and driven by twin propellers.
The prototype, designed by Charles H. Zimmerman of the National
Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and constructed by ChanceVoight, reportedly had a maximum speed of four hundred to five
hundred miles miles an hour, could rise almost vertically, and could
practically hover at thirty-five miles an hour. Apparently, because the
aircraft was wingless, the lessened stability presented problems, but a
later model – the one since reported to be…’ O’Hara checked his
notes… ‘The XF-5-U-1. That model solved the problem and was
rumored to be circular in shape, over a hundred feet in diameter, and
with jet nozzles – which resembled the glowing windows observed on
so many UFOs – arranged right around its outer rim. Further, it was
built in three layers, with the central layer slightly larger than the other
two. And since the saucer’s velocity and maneuvering capabilities were
controlled by the power and tilt of the separate jet nozzles, there were
no ailerons, rudders or other protruding surfaces.’
‘A genuine flying saucer,’ Stanford said.
‘Right,’ O’Hara said. ‘Now, as I’ve already stated, no one in the
CIA – at least no one I dealt with – knew a damned thing about that
machine until early 1950 when the Air Force, in a bid to legitimize their
December 1949 termination of Project Grudge, released photos and
vague technical info about the Navy Flounder and Flying Flapjack,
adding in their press release that they had dropped the project back in
1942 when they had generously passed it over to the US Navy, which
had more interest in it.’
‘Christ,’ Stanford said.
‘Okay,’ O’Hara said. ‘Information about the Flounder and
Flapjack was released to the public in April 1950 via the US News and
World Report, and it touched off some interesting speculations. The
first of these arose from the retrospective knowledge that the US Navy
had always expressed more interest in a vertically rising aircraft than
had the Air Force; that it had, up to 1950, spent twice as much money as
the Air Force on secret guided missile research; that their highly secret
missile-research bases were located around the White Sands Proving
Ground – where the majority of the military UFO sightings had
occurred – and that, because they were not involved officially in UFO
investigations, they could conduct their own research in a secrecy
unruffled by the attentions of the public or the media. The next
interesting point was that the measurements taken by Navy Commander
R. B. McLaughlin and his team of Navy scientist of the UFO they
tracked over the White Sands Proving Ground in early 1950
corresponded closely, except for the speed, with the details of the
legendary XF-5-U-1, that those details were more or less known to the
general public through McLaughlin’s published article of that year, and
that the US Navy, while refusing to make any comment about the Flying
Flapjack project, promptly shipped Commander McLaughlin back to
sea.’
‘Christ,’ Stanford repeated.
‘Okay, Stanford, let’s look at what we have here. First question:
Were the rumors that passed around the CIA about flying saucers
having landed on at least three Air Force bases based on fact? Second
question: Could it be that the same machines that either landed on, or
possibly were being tested on, those Air Force bases were the same
objects that were frequently being observed over the White Sands Proving Ground area? In short, do we have here a scenario suggesting that the so-called unidentified flying objects are just what they appear to be – and that rather than being of extraterrestrial origin, they’re actually the products of the US Navy’s secret research activities since the
Second World War?’
Stanford fought to control himself. He felt a cold, hard excitement.
The facts tumbled like ball bearings in his head with confusing rapidity. ‘Was anyone else involved in this?’ he asked.
‘All I know,’ O’Hara said, ‘is that in 1954 the Canadian
government announced publicly – after having examined the Project
/>
Blue Book evidence on the Lubbock sightings of 1951 – that the UFO
observed over Albuquerque was similar to a flying saucer they were
then trying to construct but had since, due to lack of know-how and
facilities, passed over to the US Air Force. The Air Force naturally
claimed that they’d eventually dropped this project as being
unworkable.’
Stanford leaned forward to place his face in his hands. He rubbed
his eyes and then sat up again and stared straight at O’Hara.
‘This all sounds impossible,’ he said.
‘Impossible? Let’s review the facts, Stanford… We have the fact
that the majority of the proven unknowns are observed either over
desolate countryside or over top-secret military and civilian
establishments. We have the fact that crude flying saucers were once
constructed by the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, that
they were one of the US Navy’s research projects from at least 1942 to
1947, that similar machines were rumored to have landed on military
bases around the White Sands Proving Ground area, and, finally, that
the Canadian government claimed to have worked on a flying saucer
that was eventually passed on to the US Air Force. And last but no
least, we have the fact that when a US Navy commander and his Navy
scientists tracked and measured an unidentified flying object over the
White Sands Proving Ground – and when that object turned out to
correspond very closely to the Navy’s Flying Flapjack – that Navy
commander was removed from White Sands and transferred back to sea. ‘Now let’s look at how the Air Force reacted to the most
successful UFO investigations. We had, during that time, only three
scientifically sound methods of analyzing the speed and dimensions of the UFOs, and, more important, of ascertaining whether or not they were intelligently controlled. The first was Major Fournet’s maneuver study of 1952, the second was the Project Blue Book compilation of official unknowns, and the third was Captain Ruppelt’s planned visualradar sighting network. Regarding these, the Air Force denied that Fournet’s maneuver study ever existed, secreted Project Blue Book’s findings behind the Espionage Act, and killed off Ruppelt’s visual-radar
sighting plan.
‘What else did we have? We had an Air Force that insisted that
UFOs did not exist, yet made the release of information on that subject
to the public a crime under the same Espionage Act. We also had, in
that regulation, a threat not only to military personnel, but to civilian
airline pilots and any civilian who happened to know that the regulation
existed. We had, more mysteriously, an Air Force which claimed that
national security was its only concern, yet ensured that its own air crews
and ground crews would not report unidentified objects in the sky…
What do you think it means?’
He stared directly at Stanford, his eyes blue and unblinking, as
Stanford sat up straight in his chair, feeling slightly unreal.
‘That still begs the question,’ Stanford said. ‘Is all this possible?’ ‘And the answer must be “yes”,’ O’Hara said. ‘
All things are
possible. As you yourself said: in this context we only have to think of
the extraordinary innovations in today’s science and technology, then
remember that such miracles are only the tip of the iceberg, and that
what goes on behind the guarded fences of our top-secret establishments
is probably decades ahead of what we officially know about. Given this,
the speed and capability of the unidentified flying objects are not
beyond the bounds of possibility. Also, given this, it is not beyond
reason that the UFOs rumored to have landed on various Air Force
bases are the products of a military program so secret that only the
personnel on those bases know what’s going on.’
O’Hara checked his wristwatch, then pressed a button on his desk
phone. The door of the office opened and a secretary entered, moving
over to stand beside Stanford, very sleek and efficient. Stanford stood
up, feeling dazed. He also felt a growing rage. He glanced at the girl, at
the paneled walls of the room, at the clear sky beyond O’Hara’s head, at
O’Hara’s broad outline. The facts were amazing. The possibilities were frightening. Stanford looked at O’Hara’s sky-blue eyes and let the rage
become part of him.
‘There the case rests,’ O’Hara said. ‘Don’t come back, Dr
Stanford.’
Chapter Sixteen
The New Order was planned and executed with the sort of ferocious drive that only the mystically inclined can possess. Albert Speer was the architect: he created the environment for their vision. In the works of Albert Speer and the other Nazi architects I could see the realization of Lebensraum in its most concrete form. Lebensraum – space – German conquest and expansionism: the great buildings and the underground factories were signposts to my future.
Himmler showed me Hitler’s teahouse. It was on top of the Kehlestein Mountain. The five-mile road that ran up from the Berghof had been hacked out of the side of the mountain by the sweat of slave labor. In the peak of the mountain was an underground passage; at the end of the passage was a copper-lined elevator, its shaft about four hundred feet deep, hacked out of the solid rock. That elevator descended to an immense, high-walled gallery, supported by baroque Roman pillars. At the end of the gallery, also hacked out of the mountain, was a dazzling, glassed-in, circular hall. And standing in that great hall, looking out through the windows, I saw nothing but the other mountains and sky – an overwhelming experience.
The impossible made possible – such was constantly accomplished. If the dreams were grandiose, the actual achievements were more so: the achievements of men who could make the impossible seem commonplace.
The German genius was for organization. In that area it had no peer. Add to this the fact that their well of slave labor was bottomless, and what one had was the dream as a reality. Who built the mighty pyramids? The thousands of Egyptian slaves. The Third Reich had the genius and seven and a half million slaves, and given the combination of these two, all things became possible.
Seven and a half million slaves. Slaves who worked an endless day. Slaves who hacked out the mountains and dug tunnels through the earth and moved rocks and equipment and stores, and never complained. Such were my resources. I could have made Egypt envious. And given that, plus my own grandiose ambitions, there was little I couldn’t do.
I was very close to Himmler. He unveiled his great dream. It was a dream of Atlantis reborn from the ashes of war. No Jews or subhumans. A blond SS would rule. In a society of masters and slaves there would be no dissension. Magnificent cities of steel and glass. The pure Aryan predominant. Himmler told me of his dream of a wilderness populated by supermen.
‘How do you build Atlantis? You need masters and slaves. The masters will be the elite of my Death’s Head SS; the slaves will be the Poles and the Czechs and all the other low races. And how do we do it? It is easy, mein freund. We keep building the camps, we ship the Jews there by their thousands, and when the wires of the camps begin to bulge we build more crematoria. Gas the schweine and burn them; let them turn to smoke and ash. When the camps have been cleared of the Jews we bring in the subhumans. The subhumans are the workers. They exist as mere slaves. They live just to work and that work is for the glory of the Reich – the slaves will build the new temples.’
The new temples would be the factories, the universities and laboratories; the new religion would be knowled
ge and conquest, the return of the Superman. How grandiose the dream! How impressive the rehearsal! Himmler wanted cities under the earth and he set out to create them. He drove me all around Germany. He showed me what could be achieved. I saw the great underground factories and I learned what was possible.
I remember Nordhausen. It had been hacked out of the Kohnstein Mountain. Thirteen thousand slaves from Buchenwald had done it with muscle and sweat. It was empty when I first saw it. The V-2 complex was still to come. It had tunnels eighteen hundred meters long, and nearly fifty side chambers. I gazed about me in wonder. Himmler scratched his nose and smiled. The work area was one hundred and twenty-five thousand meters square, buried deep in the mountain. Himmler showed me around. His voice echoed in the silence. There were twelve ventilation shafts, huge generators supplied the light, and special heating ensured a constant temperature, day in and day out.
‘Here thousands will work. The slaves will live in a separate camp. That camp, which now exists, is hidden deep in a mountain valley, less than a kilometer from the entrance to one of the tunnels. It has every facility. Lots of barracks, a brothel. It has a sports ground and a hospital, a kitchen and a laundry, a psychological and vocational selection unit, a crematorium and prison. There is also the town of Bleicherode. It’s twenty kilometers from here. There, the new tunnels, sixteen kilometers deep, will house several more missile factories and living quarters for thousands. What else are mountains for? How else do we use the slaves? The new temples will be underground cities that are virtually impregnable.’
I still remember his every word. His voice echoed in that vast silence. I knew that the whole area, from the Harz Mountains to Thuringia, south of Prague and across to Mahren, was littered with similar tunnels and underground factories. Only a few were known to Hitler. Himmler controlled them all. They were cloaked in the strictest secrecy and ruled by the SS. The work went on night and day. All slackers were shot or hung. The underground factories were totally insular colonies, worked by masters and slaves, unrestricted by moral laws, and yet very few Germans knew about them or would ever set eyes on them.
Thus were my problems solved. I saw what could be achieved. Standing there beside Himmler, in that enormous, silent cave, I thought of all the thousands who would work there, and knew where my future lay. Himmler dreamed of ice and fire. He dreamed of cities beneath the earth. He saw the sun flashing off the frozen peaks that showed only emptiness. I would take what Himmler offered. I would hide in glass and stone. I turned around and stared at Himmler’s modest eyes and saw his madness as sanity.
GENESIS (Projekt Saucer) Page 28