However, not everyone in the US military was satisfied with the Grudge report. In 1952 another study was commissioned under the name Project Blue Book. This ran until 1970, and remains the best-known official study of UFOs. Like its predecessor, though, Blue Book concluded that all of the 12,618 UFO reports it had studied could be explained by phenomena other than flying saucers.
Some of the Blue Book report is still redacted, allegedly to protect the identities of named witnesses. However, at least some of this material refers to incidents where saucers buzzed other aircraft, which were probably “hot dogging” test pilots exploring the limits of what even an American saucer craft could do. It is also noticeable that most of the early saucer sightings took place in southern California, Arizona, and Nevada — all within reach of the Area 51 facility. After American saucer research shut down, this type of sighting disappears from the record almost completely.
The Base
The planning of Einherjar faced Kammler with many challenges. Given the hostility of the lunar environment, it was imperative that the Walhalla base should be designed for rapid — if not instant — construction, using only materials brought from Earth. It had to be placed in a location that gave it a clear view of Earth for the Mjölnir bombardment phase, but this location also had to be somewhat concealed, to protect the base from discovery and counterattack for as long as possible. If possible, too, there should be easy access to lunar minerals and other resources that would be needed for the planned scientific projects.
For as long as people have been writing about the Nazi moonbase, there have been two enduring myths: that the base is on the dark side of the Moon, and that it is shaped like a swastika. Both are completely incorrect.
Symbolism aside, a swastika-shaped building is impractical, especially if personnel are restricted to the inside. It simply takes too long to move from the end of one arm to the end of another, and connecting passages rapidly become choked with traffic.
A base located on the dark side of the Moon is also impractical. While it is not literally dark, the far side of the Moon faces away from the Earth, making it impossible to observe — or fire upon — the Earth from a location there. Kammler and his followers needed to be able to keep a watch on the Earth, monitor radio transmissions, and aim their planned Wunderwaffen at the United States and other targets.
Haunebu III scouts completed several survey missions in 1946 and 1947, while final preparations for Einherjar were under way at Neuschwabenland. Possible sites were examined around the edges of the Sea of Tranquility and in the mountain range south of the Ptolemaeus crater.
The site Kammler eventually chose was the Aristarchus crater, in the northwest of the Moon’s near side. At 24.9 miles across and 2.3 miles deep, the crater allowed room for the planned base to grow while remaining small enough to be defensible in the event of an attack. The shadows of the crater’s rim would help conceal the base from any Earth-based telescope then in existence. The nearby Aristarchus Plateau showed signs of volcanic origin, holding out the hope of much-needed metals and minerals.
Most important of all, though, was the crater’s position on the Earth-facing side of the Moon. Aristarchus gives a good view of the Earth, but is sufficiently offset from the center of the near side to place the base in sunlight at most times. As well as providing vital warmth, sunlight was critical to one of the base’s weapons, for which Kammler had high hopes during the bombardment phase.
When Kammler was planning the Bifrost Protocol and the construction of the Walhalla base, Germany’s heavy industry was under considerable strain. American daylight raids were crippling Germany’s industrial capacity, and the advancing Red Army was overrunning vital oilfields and mines, choking the supply of raw materials. As the SS head of Wunderwaffen production, Kammler had access to a wide range of existing projects, but he could not commission any special projects of his own. Therefore, he decided to design the Walhalla base around existing craft and structures, all of which could easily be transported to the Moon.
The base was laid out using the escaped Haunebu fleet as primary structures. The huge Haunebu IV acts as the command center and provides accommodation for the base’s personnel. The Haunebu III craft are laid out in a circle around it, connected by tunnels made up of the pressurized fuselage sections from Focke-Wulf Ta 400 high-altitude bombers.
Some commentators, unable to give up the romantic idea of a swastika ground-plan, have suggested that the layout of the Walhalla base is a form of the Black Sun emblem, but this is unlikely. Nothing in Kammler’s history shows him to be anything other than a ruthless pragmatist, and the wheel-shaped layout is simply the most practical given the components on hand. It connects every part of the base in a way that minimizes distance and offers multiple routes between two points in case a particular tunnel should be damaged, blocked, or simply jammed with other traffic.
The Haunebu IV sits at the center of the base. The upper levels are devoted to command and communications, the middle levels to accommodation, and the lower levels to maintenance and logistics.
The middle levels of the Haunebu IV were originally designed as a series of bomb bays to carry the nuclear and other weapons that the craft was designed to drop on the continental United States. As part of the craft’s final fitting-out in Antarctica, the bay doors were sealed shut and the space converted to a series of bunkrooms and cabins some four stories high.
The Haunebu IV’s Thule Triebwerk 9b power source is located in the lower levels of the craft, along with SM-Schweber maneuvering motors and associated equipment and couplings. After landing the underside weapon positions were stripped and their weapons moved to upper mountings: this created space for a series of maintenance workshops and supply stores. These levels are also hard-sealed to the underground storage bays and mineral processing plant that were excavated underneath the craft.
The Focke-Wulf Ta 400 was one of the contenders for the Amerikabomber project. Although the Messerschmitt Me 264 was the front-runner, Reich Air Ministry documents from 1944 and 1945 show that Kammler demanded unusually extensive manufacturing tests on the Ta 400’s pressurized fuselage sections. Cabin pressurization allowed an aircraft to operate at higher altitudes, out of reach of all but the heaviest flak and the most advanced fighters, and Kammler claimed the test runs were necessary to perfect this new design feature, which would surely be useful even if the Ta 400 was not put into full production.