Heinrich Himmler, acknowledged by many historians as the driving force behind such research, was, perhaps, the most obsessed with the occult. In 1935, he became a key player in the establishment of the Ahnenerbe, which was basically the ancestral heritage division of the SS. With its work largely coordinated according to the visions of one Dr. Hermann Wirth, the chief motivation of the Ahnenerbe was to conduct research into the realm of religious archaeology; however, its work also spilled over into areas such as the occult, primarily from the perspective of determining whether a particular artifact was a tool that, like the Holy Grail, could be used to further strengthen the Nazi war machine.
Then there is Trevor Ravenscroft’s book The Spear of Destiny, which detailed a particularly odd fascination Adolf Hitler had with the fabled spear, or lance, that supposedly pierced the body of Jesus during the crucifixion. Ravenscroft’s book maintained that Hitler deliberately started the Second World War with the intention of trying to secure the spear, with which he was said to be obsessed — again as a weapon to be used against the Allies. So the account went, however, Hitler utterly failed. Ravenscroft suggested that as the conflict of 1939–1945 came to its end, the spear came into the hands of U.S. General George Patton. According to legend, losing the spear would result in death — a prophecy that that was said to have been definitively fulfilled when Hitler committed suicide.
Perhaps not every ancient artifact remained quite so elusive to Hitler. One rumor suggests that an attempt on the part of the Nazis to locate the remains — or, at least, some of the remains — of the legendary Ark of Noah was actually successful. It’s a strange and secret story that takes us from the icy-cold peak of Turkey’s Mount Ararat to a classified location in one of the United States’s most cherished and historic locales: the Washington, D.C. — based Smithsonian Institution.
The Bible states: “God said unto Noah…. Make thee an ark of gopher wood…. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.” A cubit roughly equates to 20 inches, thus making the Ark 500 feet in length, 83 feet in width, and 50 feet in height. In addition, it is said that the Ark was powerful enough to withstand the cataclysmic flood that allegedly overtook the globe and lasted for 40 terrible days and nights. As legend has it, when the flood waters finally receded, the Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat.
Exactly why Hitler was after the Ark is unclear, but the fact that he was hot on its trail is indisputable. Intelligence files generated by Britain’s highly secretive MI6 in 1948 state that, in the closing stages of the war, rumors were coming out of Turkey that German military personnel were then engaged in flying a sophisticated spy balloon (based upon radical Japanese designs) over Mount Ararat, attempting to photograph the area. Then, if the operation proved successful in locating the Ark, they planned to recover it — or whatever might be left of it, given the passage of time and the harsh conditions on the perpetually snow-capped mountain.
The Japanese, who were closely allied with Nazi Germany during the Second World War, were indeed master builders of advanced balloons. Arguably one of the best-kept secrets of the Second World War, the “balloon bomb,” or Fugo as it was generally called, was a classified weapon constructed and flown by the Japanese military. No less than 9,000 such devices were built and employed against the United States. More than 32 feet in diameter when inflated, the balloons were constructed out of paper or rubberized silk and carried below them payloads of small bombs powerful enough to wreak havoc if stumbled upon at the wrong moment. They were intensively launched from the east coast of Honshu during a nearly six-month period beginning in the latter part of 1944, and traveled more than 6,000 miles eastward across the Pacific to North America. The vast majority of the Fugos failed to reach their planned targets, but U.S. Army estimates suggested no less than a thousand made it to the States, the majority having come down in such West Coast states as Oregon, British Columbia, and Washington.
Thus, given what we know about their expertise in such areas, the Japanese may very well have helped their Nazi comrades locate Noah’s Ark by providing some form of highly advanced reconnaissance balloon that could be directed over Mount Ararat. Available MI6 files are frustratingly incomplete — maybe too conveniently and suspiciously incomplete — and do not reveal whether or not the operation was in any way successful.
Mysteries at the Smithsonian
Witness testimony has suggested a fantastic scenario that some see as far-fetched: Certain sections of the famous Smithsonian Institution are off-limits to the general public due to certain unacknowledged archaeological wonders contained therein. Indeed, available data suggests that (in an eerily parallel to the final scenes of the 1981 Indiana Jones film, Raiders of the Lost Ark) deep below the Smithsonian there exist secret chambers housing anomalies from humankind’s ancient past — perhaps even the fragmentary remains of what was once known as Noah’s Ark.
Said witness, an employee of the Smithsonian named David Duckworth, revealed that in the fall of 1968 a number of crates were delivered to the particular section of the Smithsonian to which he was assigned, and provoked a significant amount of interest on the part of senior personnel. The crates contained within them ancient pieces of wood and a selection of very old tools. Possibly echoing — or directly connected to — the story of a Nazi/Japanese balloon utilized to find the Ark, Duckworth stated that the unique stash of material contained photographs reportedly taken from a balloon, and showed a ship-like object partly buried in the ice of a mountainous location. On speaking with colleagues, Duckworth was quietly told that the site displayed in the photographs was Mount Ararat, and the ship in question was Noah’s Ark.
Five days later, the excited atmosphere began to change. All discussions of the Ark came to a sudden halt as people were told to keep their mouths firmly shut, and the priceless evidence was gathered up and removed to a new location. Duckworth, after making the mistake of speaking with people outside of the Smithsonian about the Ark rumors, paid an ominous price: he was visited at work by two men who identified themselves as agents of the FBI. The visiting special agents made it clear to Duckworth that his very talkative mouth was making significant waves; he had been somewhere he shouldn’t have been, and had seen things he had no business seeing. End of story.
Had the Nazis really found Noah’s Ark? Did their Japanese-assisted, balloon-based operation actually work? And did that same discovery somehow, years later, secretly fall into the hands of the U.S. government and the Smithsonian? Even if there does exist a secure vault — or series of vaults — at the Smithsonian where such legendary materials are still being maintained and carefully studied, officialdom is today saying nothing of any significance on the matter of that old wooden ship.