Under the pretense of his manufacturing tests, Kammler supplied himself with enough of the pressurized bomber fuselages to link all the Haunebu craft and turn the Walhalla base into a single structure.
After landing, the Haunebu III craft were adapted for use as laboratories and workshops. In addition to food production and waste processing functions, they house several E-IV branches devoted to weapon development, genetic engineering, and other research, which are described in a later chapter.
The initial phase of construction was necessarily brief. The smaller saucers lifted the fuselage-passages into place around the Haunebu IV before landing themselves, and welding crews connected the base together, working both inside the base and outside on the lunar surface. After initial pressurization, smoke was used to detect flaws and leaks, which were patched from the outside. A Glocke vril generator was brought from Neuschwabenland to power the base, and air recyclers from Type XXVI U-boats were adapted to provide basic life support.
As the base expanded, underground chambers were dug using vril power, and mineral extraction sites were set up both beneath the base and out on the Aristarchus Plateau. Pressure bulkheads were added to the Haunebu craft, creating a hard seal with the lunar bedrock, and the excavated chambers were sealed using a compound called Klebstoff X, which had been developed as an adhesive to speed construction of aircraft and U-boats. By 1972, it was estimated that as much as 75 percent of the Walhalla base was located underground.
Any activity on the lunar surface requires a pressure suit. During the first phase of construction, Walhalla’s crew used a modified version of the Dräger suit, which had been developed for high-altitude aircraft such as the Horten Ho 229.
Based on the diving suits which were Dräger’s main product, it was made of laminated silk and rubber with a helmet made of a clear rigid plastic. It performed reasonably well at high altitude except for an unfortunate tendency to inflate like a balloon, restricting a pilot’s movements and pressing the visor painfully into the face.
Kammler issued a new specification for a rigid suit and concealed it within a Navy requirement for a deep-diving suit for salvage teams. This project resulted in the Schwerenraumanzug (SRA) heavy space suit, which featured metal joints and an armored helmet.
Developments of the SRA were reportedly in use as late as the 1970s. Kampfrüstung Siegfried was a class of power armor developed for heavy infantry use as well as construction, and larger versions include the Kraftbein heavy-lifting walker.
The Walhalla moonbase was initially made up of components that were shipped from Earth and assembled within the Aristarchus crater.
A view of the moonbase circa 1967, based on classified images from the American Surveyor program. The Haunebu craft that form the base’s primary structures can clearly be seen, along with the Glocke power source and the V-9 rail gun. The rim of the Aristarchus crater can be seen on the horizon.
1. The Haunebu IV saucer acted as the command center and provided accommodation for the base’s personnel.
2. Eight of the smaller Haunebu III saucers were refitted as laboratories and workshops. Their KSK armaments were moved to upper-side mountings and provided the base’s defensive firepower.
3. A Glocke power source, shipped from a mine in Silesia, provides the base with almost unlimited power.
4. The base is held together by a network of airtight tunnels, improvised from the pressurized fuselage sections of Ta 400 high-altitude bombers.
5. The V-9 rail gun, capable of hurling building-sized rocks at Earth, provided the base’s main offensive armament.
The Walhalla base’s various research, development, and manufacturing projects are described in the next chapter. The base’s day-to-day operations are also worthy of mention for the ingenious ways in which the Walhalla’s crew overcame the particular challenges of building and maintaining a base on the Moon.
The Haunebu III craft were designed with an endurance of seven to eight weeks, about seven times the duration of the Apollo 11 Moon-landing mission in 1969. Performance figures for the Haunebu IV are not available, but it can be assumed that its endurance was at least equal to that of its predecessors. Once on the Moon, though, Kammler and his scientists had to give the problem of sustained life support their most urgent attention.
The Haunebu craft were equipped with air recyclers, and captured SS records show that Kammler took at least 40 air recyclers from the Blohm & Voss yards in Hamburg, where the Type XXVI U-Boat was under development. These were designed to sustain a crew of 33 during voyages lasting several weeks, and would have stretched the performance of the Haunebu oxygen generators considerably.
Although the specifics of the base’s life support equipment remain a mystery, it is clear that Kammler and his followers were able to create a stable, pressurized environment that has kept Walhalla’s personnel alive for more than three generations.
Kammler certainly had the personnel and equipment to extract oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen from the lunar soil, either by conventional electrochemical means or by using vril power. Electrolytic oxygen-hydrogen reactors would provide auxiliary power and yield drinkable water as a byproduct.
The waste water recyclers aboard the Haunebu craft were designed to sustain each saucer’s crew for no more than two months, and the considerably larger population of the Walhalla base, as well as the needs of food production, made it vital that Kammler and SS E-IV find ways to extract water from the lunar soil. The oxygen-hydrogen reactors mentioned above produced water as a byproduct, but not in sufficient quantities to sustain the colony indefinitely.
Water ice is present in the surface layers of the Moon, in small and localized patches where comets have crashed into the lunar surface and thrown up enough debris to cover the ice before it can sublimate and be dispersed by the solar wind. A photograph taken by the Luna 13 lander in December 1966 shows what appears to be an abandoned open-cast mine against the southeast wall of the crater where it landed, as well as markings that appear to be tire tracks. The presence of water on the Moon was not confirmed until 2009, but experts believe that the Luna chanced upon an ice extraction site in the shadow of the crater wall.