Modern aerospace programs and technologies had their genesis in the secret aerospace programs of the Nazi-American war machine. [73] Thus is it necessary to briefly revision the popular (limited) understanding of events that transpired at the end of World War II.
On April 12, 1945, having crushed the last bastion of Nazi military resistance, U.S. forces under General Dwight D. Eisenhower secured Thuringia, the heart of the Nazi secret weapons research and development programs in Germany. Eisenhower led the charge to transfer superior and futuristic Nazi weapons technologies to the United States before the weapons facilities were turned over the allied invading Soviet army on July 4, 1945. The Soviets, of course, drew the iron curtain over Thuringia and Eastern Germany for the next 43 years (to 1989).
General Eisenhower personally oversaw the removal of futuristic aerospace “assets,” including the Fi 103 “flying bomb” (propaganda name “V1”), the A4 rocket (“V2”), and -- the world’s first deployable jet turbine aircraft -- the Messerschmidt Me 262 (which as a fighter could attain speeds of over 800 km/h). At least five Me 262 planes were assembled under the direction of U.S. forces in control of the Messerschmidt Me 262 production factory from April to July 1945.
The biggest and most secretive catch was an intact prototype of an all-wing, single engine, single-seater jet plane, type named the Go 229 V-3. This plane bore a striking similarity between the futuristic ‘stealth” bomber -- the flying wing -- unveiled in the United States circa 1989. “At least one complete Go 229 V3 plane and a large number of finished parts of the prototype fell into their [U.S.] hands.” [74]
It is notable that aircraft historian Curtiss Peebles, in his Dark Eagles: A History of Top Secret U.S. Aircraft Programs (Presidio, 1995), mentions both the Me 262 (page 16) and the Go 229 V3 (page 51) in passing, as if the reader will have some idea what they are or where they came from. He also mentions both aircraft in the context of being far superior to anything the U.S. had at the time. [75]
Given the relative obscurity of these aircraft, and the means by which they made their way in to the U.S. intelligence apparatus, Peebles’ incidental mention, and the complementary omission of further details, bespeaks the defense and intelligence apparatus tactic for bring classified information or projects out into the public: plant the information here and there; if and when anyone questions what it is about, explain that that has been common knowledge for some time.
Allied intelligence ascertained well in advance the locations of the supreme Nazi weapons facilities, including the exact factories and their production capabilities, but the Allied bombing campaign did not target the weapons complex. For example, while bombs fell in an ostensible attack on the V2 rocket production facilities near Nordhausen on April 3, 1945, the V2 centers were entirely spared: some 8,800 civilians instead died when the bombs hit the town itself. There was no military significance to these killings, merely eight days before the American troops arrived. [76] This is yet another example of war crimes orchestrated within the U.S. government.
General Eisenhower oversaw the exfiltration of over 2000 Nazi scientists – experts in biological warfare, rocketry, munitions, intelligence and psychological operations (torture and propaganda) – to U.S. bases of operation, mostly, but not exclusively, in the continental United States. (It is notable that Eisenhower, later, as U.S. President, was ardent in his support of early ENMOD research and development programs.) This mass and secretive recruitment and exfiltration occurred under highly classified programs of the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.) -- and continued under its later incarnation, the Central Intelligence Agency. These O.S.S./CIA programs were called Project “Paperclip” and Project “63.” Through the defense and intelligence establishment’s then “Operation Sunshine,” Nazi’s belonging to the elite “Gehlen Org” – named for Nazi intelligence chief Reinhard Gehlen – were exfiltrated into the CIA. [77]
The U.S. Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee (CIOS) was set up early in WW-II and tasked with collecting scientific data on the level of research attained by the Germans in select technical fields and weapons – primarily, at first, concerned with an atom bomb. Some 3000 researchers and engineers wearing U.S. Army and Air Force uniforms were attached to General Patton’s Third Army solely for this purpose, and they converged en masse on the Nazi secret underground weapons complexes of Thuringia after the Allied invasion. Their slogan was: “We take the brain.” [78]
The U.S. exfiltration of Nazi scientists paved the way for U.S. aerospace killing superiority and the imminent militarization of space. One veteran rocket scientist from the Nazi V2 rocket program, Dr. Kurt H. Debus, served at one point as director of the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral (to1975); he later turned up as CEO of the secretive West German Orbital Transport and Missiles, Ltd. (OTRAG) corporation. Another Nazi rocket enthusiast was Lutz Thilo Kayser, OTRAG’s founder and manager, a former member of the U.S. ad hoc committee on the Apollo rocket transport systems. U.S. citizen Richard Gompetz, a specialist on the V2 engine and another Cape Canaveral veteran, served with OTRAG as well. [79]
OTRAG chose a very suspicious and remote location for their aerospace research and development projects: their operations in southeastern Zaire proceeded under a massive land-leasing arrangement with CIA operative and dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Seems OTRAG -- with complete U.S., German and French support -- was testing and developing aerospace weapons (cruise missiles, satellites) on territory leased from Mobutu in Zaire: it was a highly secretive and exclusive arrangement expropriating over 29,000 square miles. It was reported that the U.S. Boeing Company was also involved. The contract with Mobutu stipulated OTRAG’s rights up to the year 2000. [80] NASA has always been heavily involved in Zaire, apparently involved with earth environment “remote sensing” projects, though NASA interests and programs there remain mostly unexplained. [81]
USAID Project No. 660-0059, dated January 27, 1977, spelled out a cooperative agreement between the Mobutu government and NASA. Negotiated by Henry Kissinger, the project involved satellite reconnaissance station development by NASA, ostensibly for crop and water surveys. [82] The project seems to have revolved around advanced remote sensing missions, likely intended to serve the national security interests of the US-supported Mobutu dictatorship, the clandestine CIA war in Angola, and the mining interests (cobalt, copper, uranium, diamonds and gold) of multinational corporations in Shaba and Katanga.
Further refined secret aerospace interests appear to have spun out of the 1950s CIA development of a lightweight STOL (short-takeoff-and-landing) aircraft, the human-piloted Helio Courier. Developed by a contractor in Norwood, Massachusetts, the Helio Courier was first utilized by Christian missionaries and other CIA front groups furthering secretive and genocidal Rockefeller interests (Chase Manhattan, Standard Oil) in Latin America in 1959. (Recall that the Rockefeller’s United Fruit Company interests worked hand-in-hand with GE’s pioneering ENMOD scientist Dr. Irving Langmuir in Honduras after WW-II.) This remarkable CIA/NSA “asset” was kept secret for three decades. [83]
Other major CIA aerospace “assets” were developed in collaboration with the Lockheed Aerospace Skunk Works facility and the ultra-high secrecy aerospace “black” programs testbed at Groom Lake.
Groom Lake or “Area 51” is one of the now known “black” operations bases established by the DOD and cloaked in secrecy. This “non-existent” test facility was designated “Area 51” by the Atomic Energy Commission in June 1958, but was built around 1955. The adjacent AEC proving grounds became known as the Nevada Test Site. The base is now known worldwide as “Area 51” -- thanks to numerous mentions in Hollywood shows and movies – but this designation was officially dropped in the 1970s.
Groom Lake gave birth to numerous “black” aerospace “assets” with complete defense and intelligence cooperation and support at the highest levels. Two that we know about include the infamous U-2 (Article 347) spy plane, and the SR-71 (A-11), a technological legend in its own time. Under “Project Oxcart,” the CIA used front companies to fund subcontractors for aerospace developments. The A-11 and A-12 were declassified in 1981.
President Eisenhower was intimately aware of the development and deployment of the U-2. [84] CIA technicians worked frequently with Lockheed at Groom Lake on the U-2 and most major black aircraft to follow. Allen Dulles (CIA Director, 1947-1961), Richard Bissell (later CIA Director) and John McCone (later CIA Director) were intimately involved as well. In 1937, Steve Bechtel teamed up with John McCone and Bechtel-McCone Corporation won major military construction projects. It has been reported that the secretive CIA-insider Bechtel Corporation was one of the prime contractors involved in the construction of Groom Lake. Unsurprisingly, Bechtel Corporation has been heavily involved with the Nevada Test Site (see information on Bechtel below); Lockheed Martin is another Nevada Test Site contractor. The CIA had a special training program to provide CIA pilots for black aircraft testing and secret deployments – out of Groom Lake and other locations. [85]
It is important to recall that Allen Dulles and his brother John Foster Dulles (Secretary of State) were lawyers with the Wall Street firm Sullivan and Cromwell, teamed with the Nazi Schroder banks to directly finance Adolf Hitler. [86]
Notably, because it demonstrates both the propensity to obscure the real mission, and the early attention to weather related missions now undertaken routinely, proponents of the U-2 used research about the weather as a “cover” for the U-2’s real mission. The first public notice of the U-2, on May 7, 1956, by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), stated that the U-2 “helps to obtain the needed data… about gust-meteorological conditions to be found at high altitudes… including air-turbulence, convection clouds, wind sheer, jet stream, ozone and water-vapor.” [87]
Other secret aircraft of the 1950s included the Bell RX-1, RX-1A and RX-2 planes; the Bell X-16 was cancelled in 1955, but its existence was not declassified until 1976. [88] And then there was the WS-606 “flying disk” project of the 1950s – about which almost no information is available. [89]