Seperating myth from reality: Nazi secret tech development projects

[Tiki Tom]

Well. I'm doing some reading at the moment that touches upon some of the super advanced technology that the Nazis were supposedly working on (lasers! flying saucers! Foo fighters were real and they were some kind of Nazi prototype!). My natural inclination is to take it with a grain of salt. Or a handful of salt. Of course, no sooner do I finish the chapter than I stumble upon this BBC story: WWII flying wing decades ahead of its time.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160201-the-wwii-flying-wing-decades-ahead-of-its-time

I'm still not convinced about the flying saucers and lasers. At the same time, I admit that I'm wading into a subject that I know next to nothing about. I know that the Luftwaffe was the first to get jet fighters into the air, but that is about the extent of my knowledge. So I thought I'd come to the WWII experts here at FL for your insights on the subject. What were the Nazis working on? What is pure fiction? What falls into the category of "we're not sure"? Was German Major Rudolf Lusar a real person? Was his book "German Secret Weapons of World War II" a fraud?

 

[filfoster]

I share your interest in this area. I'd take much of what's out there with a block of salt the size used in cattle pastures.
The Nazis were working on a host of very advanced, cool stuff. The rocket fighter Me 163 was operationally deployed as were the V-1 and V-2. Many exotic airframes were still on the drawing boards. Prototypes like the Horton 229 did manage to get airborne and the ME 1101 prototype may not have actually flown but the US did 'borrow' it as the test bed and prototype for our successful F-86 fighter.
The US Flying Wing was a neat looking bust.
As for the more arcane 'black projects' like Die Glocke (the Nazi Bell, perhaps a centrifuge for the A-bomb research or a propulsion system or time machine), there's not much reliable stuff out there. Igor Witkowski's reportage is pretty flimsy.
The more elaborate flying saucer claims like the Haunebu remain for me, comic book fiction.
I hope your new thread attracts some good references sources.

Can't wait for the inevitable finger to point to Nicola Tesla's confiscated research here in the U S of A.

 

[filfoster]

Something to consider:
If the Nazis (or in our own time, the US Government) had/have advanced alien (space aliens, not Syrian refugees) technology, why would so much treasure and effort be dedicated to traditional technology projects like jets and rockets? Pretty expensive camouflage.
That's a troubling 'elephant in the room' that counts against the reality of the exotic toys at S4 at Area 51 or in the Harz Mountains.
The Nazi regime did operate chaotically and at cross purposes but in the last desperate months, it seems too insane even for them to have been banging away at jets if they had flying suacers at the ready.

 

[Tiki Tom]

the ME 1101 prototype may not have actually flown but the US did 'borrow' it as the test bed and prototype for our successful F-86 fighter.

That, right there, is an interesting tidbit that I didn't know.

Am interested in that Igor Witkowski character. Did he just make up a story out of the blue?

 

[filfoster]

That, right there, is an interesting tidbit that I didn't know.

Am interested in that Igor Witkowski character. Did he just make up a story out of the blue?

Don't think so. He purports to have some classified Polish data, including an interrogation report of an SS general, Jakob Sporrenberg, who claimed to know what was going on there at the 'henge' in Poland. Sporrenberg was a nasty piece of work, afraid for his own life (he did swing later for mass murders). As with so much of this deep black stuff, no hard evidence. Witkowski was allegedly shown transcripts of Sporrenberg's interrogation but couldn't have a copy of the actual document. He had to transcribe it. Enigmas inside riddles.
There is a very persuasive article I found on the net (I'll look again today) that pretty clearly explains The Bell as a centrifuge to isolate fissionable nuclear material for the A-bomb project. Whether it also had some of the weird incidental properties others ascribe to it, who knows?
Google 'John Hutchison' for some interesting reading on current anti-gravity research and its unpredictable effects and be sure to have the salt block handy.

 

[filfoster]

Here's the link to explain the Bell as simply a centrifuge for the bomb project:
https://sites.google.com/site/nazibelluncovered/
This is probably the all-round best explanation of the Bell, anywhere.
I confess that even the 'dumbed down' scientific explanations in this are heavy going for me. The take-away is that yes, there was some super secret sh-t going on connected to the German A-Bomb project (this bell thing had the highest known war priority and secrecy classification in Nazi Germany, which by itself is notable), but there's not much to support flying saucer bases in Antarctica, time machines or Adolf kneading coconut oil onto Eva's hard-to-get-at bits by a pool in Buenos Aires.

 

[MikeKardec]

I share your interest in this area. I'd take much of what's out there with a block of salt the size used in cattle pastures.

I agree. There is "back up" for a great deal of the rumors but can you imagine what people would think of technology in the US if it was accepted that anything that made it to the blue print stage was viable technology? Lusar's book in fascinating but some of what is in it is just crank inventor ideas or last ditch, didn't really work, prototype stuff ... more an indication of ideas than actually advanced technology. It's very important in understanding the Nazi mentality to remember that they were hopeless romantics.

Given German interest in science and engineering, their aircraft industry definitely benefited by restrictions imposed by Versailles. The treaty forced German aircraft designers back to the basics: gliders. While the rest of the world was working on brute force aircraft and designs, like the straight wing box-kite biplanes, that were perfected during WWI for reasons other than their advanced aerodynamics. Glider design after WWI, because of the lack of engines, had to be elegant and efficient. Those experiments paid off handsomely and newish elements of that research are STILL being exploited around the world. This is a point I'm failing to state in a manner that expresses its importance. The glider and fundamental aerodynamic research was HUGE.

Rocketry was a similar thing. Artillery was also Versailles limited, so Germany started experimenting with self propelled/self guided explosives. Submarine design fell into the same ball park. Germany has few seaports, they are mostly bottled up in easily observable (by other nations) areas. England, just a few miles away in places, had the world's dominant navy. Subs just made sense.

The brilliantly designed Type 21 sub (a true wonder weapon in some ways) was never able to run on it's original, peroxide derived, power system (way too dangerous) and, instead, operated with a slightly improved diesel electric engine motor set up. They were never well built. For all the vaunted German attention to detail, the sections, which were separately built like American Liberty and Victory ships, had trouble matching up and the few subs that eventually sailed were sort of a patched together job. The design, intended to operate predominantly underwater instead of just diving to attack, was copied for decades by other nations. It was the next logical step ... but I will say this: it was the next logical step after the basic WWI designs everyone in the world was using up until work was started on the 21. Someone would have done it, it was just a question of who. It wasn't a crazy leap into the future. German pride and insecurity forced them to go to the next generation in a world that was mostly happy to get by with 30 year old technology.

I think some of the most impressive German accomplishments of the era, the truly ground breaking stuff may very well have been the stuff that gets little credit, the early transistor type components they built. They never used it for much but after the war others did!

On "flying saucers:" Everybody was experimenting with radar both the use of it and the ability to hide from it. Radar invisibility probably became a goal as soon as the first experimental radar was turned on. Early on, roundish aircraft might have seemed like a good idea. We have developed this mythology about "flying saucers" being advanced. The design might be, but it doesn't have to be. They might also just be awkward, energy sucking white elephants that seem like pie in the sky (or a pie plate in the sky) but could actually have been just a dead end. The theory of fuselage-less craft is good as long as the body creates lift. If it doesn't it's just a fuel hog. Unless you have anti-gravity. I suspect, like radar invisibility, every research intensive military in the world has looked into that, but having done so would probably leave behind some evidence but still doesn't mean anyone found anything useful. To ever so slightly suggest that something was found is just good, intelligence based, misdirection.

Germany had a unique opportunity (if you can call something as horrible as the Nazi instigated aspects of WWII and opportunity) to develop weapons but I'm not really sure they were so far ahead of the curve as they just didn't have other things to concentrate on, like managing the British Empire, recovering from the Russian Civil Wars, converting from an agrarian economy (like the US) or getting out of the Depression (they were probably emerging before other countries). They went to the next step because they had been humbled in war and then because they got themselves back into a war (that they were going to have a hell of a time digging themselves out of).

If you read the following authors you'll have a lot of fun but you have to accept that some of them are crack pots: Tom Agoston, Joe Farrell, Henry Stevens, WA Harbinson, Geoffrey Brooks. I do believe that where there is smoke there is fire but don't be confused by the difference between a still smoldering cigarette and a burning city!

 

[Stearmen]

A lot of countries were working on flying saucers during WWII. None of them amounted to any thing.

 

[filfoster]

Not to detour the thread from Nazi secret weapons but on saucers, doesn't it seem likely that any 'real' saucers that have the speed and handling characteristics that have been observed (OK you have to credit some observations to get this far), have a propulsion system that's radically different from anything we know?
As posts above imply, the saucer shape airframe isn't really suited for conventional propulsion flight except inducted fan hover craft. Hoohee. That's not what we're talking about.
As far as those weird engines patented by some Germans back in the '30's (Schauberger's Repulsine, for example), they really weren't very practical, if they worked at all, were they? They weren't going to power a mach-whatever saucer.
I'm not a physicist or engineer but the explanations of anti-gravity (just typing that seems fatuous), or bending space/time make sense to match observed results, if it could be done. I don't believe, and thank a higher power, that the Nazis managed that, unless by accident in their operation of the Bell centrifuge. If these phenomena do occur, they evidently can't be well controlled by our present technology.

 

[filfoster]

I have read also that the Nazis invested some effort in scrounging Biblical artifacts, ala Indiana Jones, and investigated psychic techniques to read the minds of their enemies' leaders.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...-the-holy-grail-and-the-ghent-altarpiece.html

Now, that's weird, but not as tangible as exotic aircraft or submarines.

 

[filfoster]

I'm reluctant to post this but if you can endure a fire hose of paranoid Nazi conspiracy rant, tying together almost all the better-known mysteries and conspiracies (Freemasons, Illuminati, Nazi secret bases and societies, etc., even the Hitler and Eva go to Rio saga), go here:

http://thewebmatrix.net/disclosure/1933.html

and be entertained. It's likely there are a few kernels of truth in this dunghill but only just. Like Farrell's works, it's entertainingly presented and seems rational but....very soon, you realize you're in a loony bin.

 

[MikeKardec]

Not to detour the thread from Nazi secret weapons but on saucers, doesn't it seem likely that any 'real' saucers that have the speed and handling characteristics that have been observed (OK you have to credit some observations to get this far), have a propulsion system that's radically different from anything we know?
As posts above imply, the saucer shape airframe isn't really suited for conventional propulsion flight except inducted fan hover craft. Hoohee. That's not what we're talking about.
As far as those weird engines patented by some Germans back in the '30's (Schauberger's Repulsine, for example), they really weren't very practical, if they worked at all, were they? They weren't going to power a mach-whatever saucer.
I'm not a physicist or engineer but the explanations of anti-gravity (just typing that seems fatuous), or bending space/time make sense to match observed results, if it could be done. I don't believe, and thank a higher power, that the Nazis managed that, unless by accident in their operation of the Bell centrifuge. If these phenomena do occur, they evidently can't be well controlled by our present technology.

I've always though that if some exotic motive power had been found the logical way to use it would be to have installed it as a power source for factories or radar or headquarters buildings rather than to immediately think "Wonder Weapon." By 1945 Germany didn't really have much to lose by keeping things secret, they needed to power facilities in protected areas (underground, distant from cities) and they didn't have the fuel. If their factory/city/military building power generation requirements had been met through other means they'd have had energy resources to shift into front line machinery like tanks and planes. That said people don't always make sense.

WE are obsessed with cars, as soon as a new technology (or old technology like fuel cells) appears people are instantly saying we have to put in a car to save on petroleum usage or prevent CO2 or something. In reality a huge amount of oil has gone into power generation and using that same "new" tech for local generators, electrical generation on ships or for truck heating or refrigeration (all big sources of pollution) would save a lot of fuel. Cars have size, weight, heat, vibration, longevity, cost and fuel economy issues that make them a supreme engineering challenge when considering an alternate power source. Using new technologies to power buildings, trains, and ships removes most of the restrictive factors.

 

[Stanley Doble]

The other day read an article on the V2 that claimed it actually hurt the Nazi war effort. It seems they built 6000 of them and each one cost as much as a 4 engine bomber but only 3000 were used, and they were only good for one flight. The alcohol fuel for one flight took 30 tons of potatoes to make. From a purely military standpoint the effect they had was negligible. Their own experts wanted to drop the whole project but Hitler refused.

What other dead ends did they pursue that cost more than they were worth?

 

[Tiki Tom]

Here's the link to explain the Bell as simply a centrifuge for the bomb project:
https://sites.google.com/site/nazibelluncovered/
This is probably the all-round best explanation of the Bell, anywhere.

Thanks. That is a very interesting link. Some additional possible circumstantial evidence to support the centrifuge theory is the curious story of U-234 which surrendered at the end of the war, thus aborting its secret mission to take highly classified technology from Nazi Germany to Japan. Among the items found on board was (supposedly) uranium packed in gold-lined containers. I've read that gold would only be necessary if the uranium was enriched. After the U-boat was taken into custody by the Americans, the uranium part of the cargo very quickly became top secret and "disappeared". So, at the end of the war were the Nazis closer to an A-bomb than we are generally taught to believe? Following link goes into some detail on the U-234 story.

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/atomicbomb/chap01.htm

 

[filfoster]

The other day read an article on the V2 that claimed it actually hurt the Nazi war effort. It seems they built 6000 of them and each one cost as much as a 4 engine bomber but only 3000 were used, and they were only good for one flight. The alcohol fuel for one flight took 30 tons of potatoes to make. From a purely military standpoint the effect they had was negligible. Their own experts wanted to drop the whole project but Hitler refused.

What other dead ends did they pursue that cost more than they were worth?

The opportunity costs of the V2 were tragic: Think of the vodka produced from 30 tons of potatoes x 3000!. The horror...the horror.. That would have either given comfort to the beleaguered German populace or rewarded Ivan when he came to town.
Your question raised is an interesting one. The German war effort was riddled with fits and starts. Without quoting specifics, many prototypes and projects were developed and scrapped. Even their successful tank production was arguably wasted effort. Where the allies relied on large numbers of mediocre design (the Sherman in its variants) or pretty good (T-34), the Germans produced many variants: The various Marks I, II, III, IV, Panther, Tiger and Tiger II and the 'tank hunter' variants of these, as well as the truly ridiculous Maus.

 

[filfoster]

On the theme of opportunity costs, the Nazis, particularly the military idiot savant Fuhrer, ("These operational matters can be managed by anyone..") were an Allied secret weapon. Who knows what might have been done with proper deployment of the Me 262 as a fighter instead of the Fuhrer's insistence on its initial use as a fast bomber?

Would the air war against England been more successful if the Germans had built more and better (bigger payload) bombers? If they had continued to focus on British airfields instead of cities for terror bombing?

Apologies to Stanley Doble because the question of resources spent on dead ends is a very interesting one my posts haven't advanced far.

 

[MikeKardec]

It really just seems that they weren't ready for the war they later created, once ambition got the best of them. If you think of early Nazi victories, Austria, Czechoslovakia, nudging into the borderlands of France, there was always a well prepared political component. The target was softened up through propaganda and the opportunity to join with the Nazi concept ... there was also thuggery and the threat of military action. The carrot and the stick. Then a swift move both militarily and politically and BAM ... expanded territory. It was brilliant. It worked well. It may have reached its current limit of effectiveness just before Poland, but maybe not. All the German military preparations seem to me to have been excellent for this approach. Lightning Politics and Lighting War.

Then an entire (political, equipment, command structure) design that was centered around light and fast was suddenly thrown into what seems obvious to have been something that would turn into a slug fest war of attrition with countries who were actually capable of resisting politically and militarily. Obvious to us, in hind sight I guess but you'd have thought someone would have noticed.

As much as Japanese culture painted them into a corner when it came to attacking the US they, at least, freely admitted prior to Pearl Harbor that they couldn't win the war they were starting. They just couldn't stop themselves. On the up side, they were honest about it.

 

[Otter]

Dead ends ? You only have to look at the Kriegsmarine carrier projects and pretty much any other surface combatant. Oh, and the high pressure gun projects in fixed locations, can't remember the proper name for them at the moment. Hindsight is always 20/20!

 

[Trenchfriend]

You're absolutely right. Look at the German Navy's "Z-Plan".

Hitler himself argumented, that the war isn't to await before 1946. And that was their dilemma with all of their military buildup.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIFO_(Nazi_company)

Their depots were filled 83%, at beginning the war.

Next to me:
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/fe5085bf60009398.html

 

[filfoster]

Tiki Tom, to your OP, here is a fun and pretty good online summary of the best known Nazi wunderwaffe:
http://sploid.gizmodo.com/the-definitive-collection-of-secret-nazi-weapons-1473126559
Many photos provided.
Of course, the most intriguing are the ones like the Nazi Bell, with its gauzy aura of time travel and flying saucers, which are so poorly documented and exist mostly in fevered conjecture. Those are the really fun ones.

Related threads could explore Nazi diplomacy and espionage but the catalog of successful examples would be pretty sparse. These did not play to the Nazis' strong suit, bullying force. 'Nazi diplomacy' conjures a vision of Ribbontrop playing a banjo while wearing several pairs of gloves.