Area 51_ An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base - Annie Jacobsen [206]
44. What made the aircraft extraordinary: Interview with EG&G engineer.
45. fighter jet: Interviews with Colonel Slater, Area 51 base commander (1963–68), Chandler’s personal friend. Chandler relayed this story to Slater decades after it happened.
46. The recovered craft looked nothing like a conventional aircraft: Interview with EG&G engineer, who was an eyewitness.
47. Cyrillic alphabet had been stamped: Interview with EG&G engineer.
48. near the Alaskan border: Interview with EG&G engineer.
49. What if atomic energy propelled the Russian craft: Interview with EG&G engineer.
50. Amerika Bomber: Myhra, The Horten Brothers and Their All-Wing Aircraft, 217–20; interview with David Myhra, who interviewed both Horten brothers, Walter in Germany and Reimar in Argentina, for hundreds of hours in the 1980s.
51. Paperclip scientists… called on for their expertise: This is my defensible speculation based on interviews with the EG&G engineer. The Paperclip group attached to the project, I learned through sources with secondhand information, allegedly included Von Braun, Ernst Steinhoff, and also Dr. Hubertus Strughold, a former Nazi and, in 1947, a research doctor at the Aeromedical Laboratory at Randolph Field in San Antonio, Texas. While employed by the Third Reich, Strughold was the leading expert on how the human body handles high altitude during flight. During World War II, Strughold had been chief of staff of aviation medicine for the German air force, or Luftwaffe. For more on Strughold, see Bower, Paperclip Conspiracy, 214–323.
52. secreted away in a manner so clandestine: Interview with EG&G engineer.
53. top secret project called Operation Harass: Jacobsen, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) FOIA request, “Horten Brothers and Operation Harass.” The file was declassified by INSCOM beginning on July 6, 1994, CDR USAINSCOM FO1/PO Auth para 1-603 DOD 5200.1R, 358 pages. Notes for pages 38 through 62 refer to this record group.
54. testimony of America’s Paperclip scientists: Headquarters, Counter Intelligence Corps Region I, 970th Counter Intelligence Corps, Detachment European Command, APO-154, January 6, 1948, 92. “Scientists who have better than average knowledge of the HORTEN brothers’ work are: (2) Lippisch, Prof., fnu, Wright Field, Ohio, U.S.A.” Dr. Lippisch was transferred to Wright Field, along with his senior staff Ernst Sielaff and Dr. Ringleb, from Luftfahrtforshungsandstalt Wien—a German aeronautical research institute for the development of high-speed aircraft.
55. The manhunt was on: The earliest dated Operation Harass memo in the file is from November 10, 1947, APO 189, Subject: Flying Saucers, 139. It reads, “Considerable material has been gathered by the Air Materiel Command WRIGHT FIELD, Ohio, concerning the appearance, description and functioning of the object popularly known as the ‘Flying Saucer.’ A copy of the request of the report from the Air Materiel Command is on file at this Headquarters, 2. The opinion was expressed that some sort of object, such as the flying saucer, did exist. At the present time, construction models are being built for wind tunnel tests.” This, however, is clearly not the first memo. Here of the FOIA file, in memo APO 134, January 2, 1948, a reference is made to an earlier letter, “RE: HORTEN Brothers, SUBJECT: Flying Saucers, dated 28, October 1947.”
56. Walter and Reimar Horten… had somehow been overlooked: Interview with David Myhra.
57. been a later-model Horten in the works: “HORTEN, Walter-” LKL: A.V.V. Gottingen (14-5-46) “Expert on ‘flying-wing’ aircraft, including HO VIII IX & X,” 155 (note there are two separate pages numbered 155).
58. Timothy Cooper filed a request for documents: Because the Flying Saucer