B00AY88OHE EBOK (8 page)

24.  Epp, J. Andreas, 1997. page 33

25.  Lusar, Rudolf, 1960, (English version)
German Secret Weapons of the Second World War
, Neville Spearman Limited, 112 Whitfield St., London W.1, England

Miethe-Belluzzo Saucer In America?

Top: a picture from the July 9, 1947 edition of the Arizona Republic taken by William A. Rhodes as it flew over his home in Phoenix. Lower left: a drawing of the craft by Klaus-Peter Rothkugel. Lower right: one view of the Avro Frost-Manta design, predating the Silver Bug Project. Was this a captured Miethe-Belluzzo-Leduc saucer?

Foo Fighters

“Foo fighter” is a name given to a small, round flying object which followed Allied bombers over Germany during the latter phases of the air war. There are also some reports of foo fighters in the Pacific theater of the war. Sometimes they would appear singularly but more often in groups, sometimes flying in formation. By day they appeared to be small metallic globes. By night they glowed with various colors. These object attempted to approach Allied bombers closely which scared the bomber crews who assumed they were hostile and might explode. Upon taking evasive maneuvers they found the foo fighters would keep pace with them in some instances. Besides the name foo fighter this device is sometimes called “Feuerball,” its German name or its English translation, fireball. More about names later.

For those readers who have not been exposed to foo fighters before, following is an American flight account found in
Intercept UFO
by Renato Vesco:

“At 0600 (on December 22) near Hagenau, at 10,000 feet altitude, two very bright lights climbed toward us from the ground. The leveled off and stayed on the tail of our plane. They were huge bright orange lights. They stayed there for two minutes. On my tail all the time. They were under perfect control (by operators of the ground). They turned away from us, and the fire seemed to go out.”

Vesco goes on to say, “The rest of the report was censored. Apparently it went on to mention the plan’s radar and its sudden malfunctioning” (1).

Flying saucer books of the 1950s usually mentioned foo fighters and recounted the sightings of Allied servicemen. Later, due to the extraterrestrial hysteria, publications tended to omit descriptions of foo fighters, preferring to begin the tale of flying saucers with Kenneth Arnold in 1947.

In modern times, if they are mentioned at all by mainstream UFO magazines or books, an attempt is sometimes made to confuse the issue of the origin of foo fighters in one of three ways. First, they say or imply that both sides in World War Two thought foo fighters were a weapon belonging to the opposite side. They may cite as a source some German pilot obviously “out of the loop” who claims the Germans did not know their origin. Second, they attempt to advance the idea that foo fighters are still unknown and a mystery or possibly a naturally occurring phenomenon. Third, they advance an extraterrestrial origin.

It is difficult to imagine a vast bad faith plot, extending over years, which attempts to discredit or confuse the issue of foo fighters. Perhaps the authors of these UFO magazines and books are truly without a clue and simply perpetuating old and bad information as a convenient explanation. In any event, it is now clear they utterly failed to do their homework on foo fighters before writing about them.

The U.S. military, too, has always denied knowledge of foo fighters. Numerous Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests have been filed, for instance, by this writer as well as other researchers asking for information on foo fighters. A “no record” response always followed. All U.S. governmental agencies queried claimed that they had never heard of foo fighters. This happened in spite of the fact that all known alternate names for foo fighters were submitted as well as a detailed description of the device itself. This was the situation until the late 1990s.

Vesco is by far the best source concerning the foo fighter which he calls “Feuerball.” He describes it as a radio controlled missile, built at an aeronautical establishment at Wiener Neustadt (Austria) with assistance of the Flugfunk Forschungsanstalt (Radio-Flight Research Installation) of Oberpfaffenhoffen. The project was under the control of an SS technical division. It was armored, circular in shape, resembling the shell of a tortoise. The device was powered by special flat, circular a turbojet engine. After being guided to the proximity of the target from the ground, an automatic infra-red tracking device took over control. The circular spinning turbojet exhaust created a visual effect of a bright, fiery ball in the nighttime sky. Within the craft itself a klystron tube pulsated at the frequency of Allied radar making it almost invisible to those remote eyes. A thin sheet of aluminum encircled the device immediately under the layer of protective armor but was electrically insulated from the armor. Once a bullet pierced the armor and the thin aluminum sheet, a circuit was formed which had the effect of triggering the Feuerball to climb out of danger at full speed (2).

Once within range, special chemical additives were added to the fuel mixture which caused the air in the vicinity of the device to become ionized. This meant that electricity could be conducted directly through the air itself (3). Any ignition-based engine coming into range of the ionized region would become useless, misfiring, stalling and eventually crashing.

Vesco goes on to say that with the advance of the Soviets into Austria the production facilities for the Feuerball were moved to a number of underground plants in the Black Forest run by the Zeppelin Works (4).

Recently an Austrian researcher, Kadmon, who specializes in uncovering the esoteric, sent to me a copy of a letter describing details of the foo fighter from the German perspective. This letter is reproduced here for those who read German language. It is a letter from physicist Friedrich Lachner to Professor, Dr. Alois Fritsch. The letter tells Dr. Fritsch that in an aircraft plant which was a branch of Messerschmitt at Weiner-Neustadt, Austria, a test model of a flying craft was built with a diameter of five meters which presumably made a test flight to Vienna. “His Martha,” his wife, saw the outline of an exactly elliptical flying object in the twilight which appeared to her to be operating by some other means of flight that was normally the case because of its sudden directional changes. Her reaction was that it was an enemy flying object and it scared her. After the bomber attack on the plant, a doctor, “Oskar L.” saw a model of this frightful thing in the plant also and had no idea of what it was. The astronomer Waehnl was, during the war, employed calculating construction costs at this aircraft facility where she had earlier in life learned something of aircraft technology from her father. She confirmed it also. Lachner briefly spoke with an engineer named Kuehnelt who worked as in flight technology for the German Army. He explained to Lachner that he saw such a device with a diameter of fifteen meters. Lachner says that he had known for some years about a machine with a thirty meter diameter. He also says that he had gotten to know a flight engineer named Klein when he was active near the flight testing of the supreme chief General Udet. Lachner claims that “Klein had something to do with these things.” One or more unmanned and remote controlled craft of this sort of spinning-top-like flying objects are mentioned by Lachner in connection with the massive Allied bomber raids on the ball-bearing plant at Wuerzburg. Finally, Lachner goes on to say that a Professor Richter built these devices for Peron in Argentina. A long distance test-flight was actually flown to the United States. There, the device was intercepted and an American pilot was shot down. The remainder of the letter concerns nuclear developments in Austria and the USA before and after the Second World War and misunderstandings by Lusar in his book.

This letter was written in 1975. Details concerning Klein and the larger flying objects were in print by that time. There are important confirmations within this letter. These are revelations concerning Lachner’s wife as an eyewitness to the object in twilight flight, the medical witness who saw the object within the plant at Wiener-Neustadt, and the confirmation of the astronomer, Waehnl. Unfortunately, Kadmon advises that Dr. Waehnl is now deceased. The important point is that these are real people with real names. Most of whom were alive at the time of this letter. Further, some of these people were scientists with a reputation at stake yet they did not disavow the substance of this letter in any way.

In the closing months of the last millennium witnessed a breakthrough regarding foo fighters. The break came by accident and from the government of the United States. Remember, Freedom Of Information Act requests regarding foo fighters had been filed with many branches of the U.S. military and intelligence services as well as with their repository, the National Archives. Even though all known alternative names were included, as well as a detailed description of the device in question was provided, a “no record” response was uniformly generated by all facets of government.

A German researcher, Friedrich Georg, recognized a valuable entry in a microfilm roll, titled a 1944 U.S. Strategic Air Forces In Europe summary titled An Evaluation Of German Capabilities In 1945, which, somehow, had eluded the censors (5). In that summary report German devices called by American Intelligence “Phoo Bombs” are discussed. Sources for this summary were reports of pilots and testimony of prisoners of war. Phoo bombs were described as “radio-controlled, jet-propelled, still-nosed, shortrange, high performance ramming weapons for use against bombing formations.” Speed was estimated at 525 miles per hour.

Further demands were made using FOIA as to the raw data used to compile the summary evaluation. Of course, denials followed, but finally, after an Appeal, the government indicated that more information did exist concerning Phoo Bombs. Most of this was a repeat or re-statement of the summary document. One document was hand-written and may have served as the basic text of the report.

The First Reports of German Foo Fighters

Top:
A Reuters report from December 13, 1944
Bottom:
The New York Times, December 14, 1944

Foo Fighters In Flight

Top:
At night or in dim light foo fighters appeared luminescent. Bottom: In strong light foo fighters appeared as silvety balls. This picture taken over the Pacific in 1943. There are many stories speaking of small, round flying balls sent to Japan by the Germans via submarine.

It seems the U.S. Air Force was never aware of a threat to aircraft engines coming from over ionization of the air around these devices. Likewise, the claim by Vesco that they possessed klyston tubes which pulsed at the same frequency of Allied radar and so jammed radar on board was not recognized. Vesco cites the aircraft radio research institute at Oberpfaffenhofen (F.F.O.) as having invented such devices (6).

The Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee report on this facility, Report 156, states that work there involved several types of klystron tubes and that one of this facilities principal functions was inventing technology to jam Allied radar. Unfortunately, all the secret material held at this facility was burned in the face of the advancing Allies. Individual scientists later produces some copies of documents which represent what the Allied intelligence strike teams took away. Exactly how complete this sample was we will never know (7).