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Ufologists - especially, I suspect, those who want to believe that the
Nazis flew high-performance UFOs - can take life dreadfully seriously.
Unfortunately, this failing extends to not being able to spot a genuine
mistake, or recognise a fantasy or a fiction that was never intended to
be anything but that. Two classic blunders involved taking Lusar far
too seriously, and undermining the credibility of otherwise serious and
respectable books.
German Jet Genesis
The first is in a Jane's publication - a publisher with a fine reputation of dealing with all kinds of arms and armaments. However, in German Jet Genesis
by David Masters, published in 1982, the author not only reprints
Lusar's claims re flying performance, but also what appear to be
pre-Harbinson details from 'Brisant'. Particularly absurd are the three
apparently freehand drawings, depicting a 'Miethe flying disc', a
'Schriever flying disc' and a 'Schriever and Habermohl flying disc.
Masters sets out some of the traditional array of excuses for the
absence of evidence, saying
"Information on this
aspect of German jet aircraft development is very sketchy. the project
was always highly secret, and documents that may have existed were
probably either destroyed, lost or taken by the Russians when the war
ended. A last possibility is that the Allies discovered Schriever's
work and considered it too important to reveal", [74]
but in reality I'd guess this was one of the publisher's most embarrassing moments.
Robert Jungk
Jungk's 1956 book Brighter than a Thousand Suns
was first published in English in 1958. An impressive history of the
development of the atomic bomb, it contains (at page 87 in my 1965
Pelican edition) a curious footnote, which has been used to add
credibility to the 'Saucer Builder' legends. Referring to a sentence in
the text where Jungk says "The indifference of Hitler and those about
him to research in natural science amounted to positive hostility", the
footnote says
"The only exception to the lack of
interest shown by authority was constituted by the Air Ministry. The
Air Force research workers were in a peculiar position. They produced
interesting new types of aircraft such as the Delta (triangular) and
'flying discs'. The first of these 'flying saucers', as they were later
called - circular in shape, with a diameter of some 45 yards - were
built by the specialists Schriever, Habermohl and Miethe. They were
first airborne on 14 February 1945 over Prague and reached in three
minutes a height of nearly eight miles. they had a flying speed of 1250
mph which was doubled in subsequent tests. It is believed that after
the war Habermohl fell into the hands of the Russians. Miethe developed
at a later date similar 'flying saucers' at A V Roe and Company for the
United States." [75]
It is clear that this footnote derives from Lusar, and should therefore
not be taken as true. I note that the original book was written in 1956
and I wonder whether, in fact, the footnote was added by someone other
than Jungk at the translation stage in 1957 or 1958. It would be
interesting to know whether the original ,Heller als tausend Sonnen (Alfred Scherz Verlag 1956) had this footnote, too. Either way, Jungk - of whose book the Spectator said
"He tells the story brilliantly; no intelligent man or woman can afford
to miss it . . Should be compulsory reading for every budding scientist
in every sixth form and every university in the world" may be forgiven
this lapse, which should not be exploited in order to provide support
for the nonsense that Lusar concocted.
The Miethe Legend
In 'Projekt UFO', Harbinson asserts that, of the 'rocket scientists' involved in flying disc development
"at the close of the war, Walter Miethe went to the US with Wernher von
Braun, Dornberger, and hundreds of other members of the Peenemunde
rocket programme . . . Miethe, though initially working under Wernher
von Braun for the United States' first rocket centre in the White Sands
Prov-ing Ground, New Mexico, joined the A.V. Roe (AVRO-Canada) aircraft
company in Malton, Ontario, re-portedly to continue work on disc-shaped
aircraft, or flying saucers just as Habermohl was thought to be doing
with the Russians." [76]
These assertions, presumably based on Lusar's, seem to have led to the
development of an impressive, but entirely false, history for the
elusive Miethe, covering many years. I think we can now dispose of
them. . . .
Tim Matthews, in his book UFO Revelation, refers to the
"three years of painstaking research by UK astronomy, aviation and
photographic specialist Bill Rose, which included on-site research in
Germany, Canada and the USA . . he was able to discover that Dr Walter
Miethe who all sources agree was involved with Schriever, Klaus
Habermohl and Guiseppe Belluzzo (an Italian engineer) had been the
director of the saucer programme at two facilities located outside
Prague. In May 1945, after testing of the prototype had taken place,
both Miethe and Schriever were able to flee in the direction of allied
forces .
Rose learned not only that test-flights had taken place but that there
was film footage of them . . Rose was shown some stills taken from the
original 16mm film and, given his expert photo-technical background,
concluded, after careful consideration, that this was probably real and
historical footage . .
We know a little more about Dr Miethe. One of the important pieces of
information came in the form of a rare group photograph showing various
young German scientists in 1933. The photograph shows Werner von Braun
and Walter Miethe (or Richard Miethe - different sources mention
different first names). It would seem that these two knew each other
well” [77]
Rose and Matthews claimed that Miethe worked with von Braun in 1933,
and that the photo provided by the person who responded to an advert
Rose had placed showed them together with other rocket scientists in
that year. Fortunately, this is a well-researched and well-recorded
period of history, and it should be no more difficult to find records
of Miethe than it is that of von Braun. Indeed, von Braun was born in
1912 and if Miethe was 40 in 1952, they should have been absolute
contemporaries. The Rocket and the Reich by Michael J Neufeld [78]
covers this period, and von Braun's activities, in detail, as well as
detailing rocket and 'secret weapon' development right through to the
end of the war. Yet it makes no mention at all of Miethe (Walter or
Richard), Habermohl, Schreiver, or Belluzzo, Klein or Klaas. Nor, for
that matter, does Philip Henshall in Vengeance - Hitler's Nuclear Weapon Fact or Fiction [79],
which covers a similar range in rather less detail. You might think
that these people never existed or that, if they did, they played no
part in the development of any German flying disc.
SInce his book was published I've spoken to Tim Matthews about this
matter, and corresponded with Bill Rose. I don't think either would
disagree if I were to say to that it seems that, while Rose is not in a
position to disclose details of the elderly West German from whom it
appears that both the photos and the surrounding information derived,
those photos did not depict a craft in flight or, indeed, fully
constructed. In view of the 1952 'France-Soir' interview, the 1957
intelligence report, and the complete absence of anyone called Miethe
in the mainstream history of rocketry, I think we can safely set any
contrary evidence aside. In view of the considerable influence 'UFO
Revelation' and its effective and communicative author have had,
particularly in the USA, I hope that the full story behind Rose's
source(s) will be made public. In the meantime, if what was published
wasn't exactly a mistake, it may be fair to say that somebody got hold
of the wrong end of the stick, but I'm not sure who was holding the
stick at the time.
Balls
I strongly suspect that a supposed AP release of December 1944 about
the Germans having "a secret weapon in keeping with the Christmas
season" which "resembles the glass balls which adorn Christmas trees",
"are coloured silver and are apparently transparent", and "have been
seen hanging in the air over German territory, sometimes singly,
sometimes in clusters", was actually a light-hearted bit of fun
designed for Christmas. The phenomenon described certainly doesn't bear
any resemblance at all to the 'foo fighter' reports.
This item was apparently only published - in similar but not identical
versions - in the South Wales Argus for 13 December 1944 and the New
York Herald Tribune for 2 January 1945. Any competent historian will be
aware that in wartime, censorship ensures that the existence of
mysterious, enemy secret weapons is not announced by AP, and published
openly by the newspapers of combatant nations. Mainstream history has
taken no notice of these reports, and in the absence of any evidence to
the contrary I suggest they were no more than slight, seasonal jokes,
published by just two newspapers out of the thousands that, if the
information really derived from a serious AP report, would have taken
it up.
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