However, in 1963, a full decade after his visit from the three strangers, Bender was seemingly prepared to reveal more of his story in a largely unreadable book entitled ‘Flying Saucers and the Three Men in Black.’ The book was scant on facts however intriguingly described extraterrestrial spacecraft that had bases in Antarctica. This was apparently the truth Bender was terrorised into not revealing. Bender also provided images of the saucers he was aware of. Yet again we see a drawing of his UFO with the three bubbles underneath, reminiscent of the Haunebu II alongside a cigar shaped object, of which more later. Ernst Zundel, a German scientist turned author who had entered the US under Operation Paperclip at the end of the war and who worked at Wright Field (later Wright Patterson AFB where the alleged Roswell debris was housed), also made claims about the nature of the activity in Antarctica. In the 1970s Zundel wrote a book ‘UFOs: Nazi Secret Weapons?’ in which he claimed that UFOs were secret Nazi weapons developed during the Second World War, and some of them had been shipped out towards the end of the war and hidden at the poles. Publication of the book coincided with a tidal wave of renewed interest in all things spiritual, and Zundel was invited on to countless talk shows to share his views on spaceships, free energies, electromagnetism, emergent technologies and some of the positive contributions made by the Germans under the Third Reich in these fields (26).
The idea however, gripped the popular imagination and took on a life of its own. Zundel’s publishing company, ‘Samisdat’, started to make a name for itself by issuing newsletters and books on the subject. An expedition to Antarctica itself was even proposed to seek out ‘Hitler’s UFO bases’ there. (See advert, above.) Yet such claims would have died out had they not been based on at least some real events. That something strange was happening around the foreboding continent took an interesting turn in the 1960s when the Argentine Navy was charged with the official investigation into strange sightings in the sky. A 1965 official report prepared by Captain Sanchez Moreno of the Naval Air Station Comandante Espora in Bahia Blanca stated: "Between 1950 and 1965, personnel of Argentina’s Navy alone made 22 sightings of unidentified flying objects that were not airplanes, satellites, weather balloons or any type of known (aerial) vehicles. These 22 cases served as precedents for intensifying that investigation of the subject by the Navy (20)." Following a series of sightings at Argentine and Chilean meteorological stations on Deception Island, Antarctica, in June and July 1965, Captain Engineer Omar Pagani disclosed at a press conference that "the unidentified flying objects do exist. Their presence in Argentine airspace is proven. Their nature and origin are unknown and no judgement is made about them." (21)
The communiqué declared that the personnel of Deception Island (left) naval base saw, at nineteen hours forty minutes on 3 July, a flying object of lenticular shape, with a solid appearance and a colouring in which red and green prevailed and, for a few moments, yellow. The machine was flying in a zig-zag fashion, and in a generally western direction, but it changed course several times and changed speed, having an inclination of about forty-five degrees above the horizon. The craft also remained stationary for about twenty minutes at a height of approximately 5,000 meters, producing no sound. The communiqué states moreover that the prevailing meteorological conditions when the phenomenon was observed can be considered excellent for the region in question and the time of year. The sky was clear and quite a lot of stars were visible.
"The scientists had with them two Geiger-Miller counters of high sensitivity, one of the auditory and the other of the flash-type. When the two objects had finished their dance and reassumed their stations in the sky, someone discovered that the flash-type Geiger counter now showed that radioactivity around them had suddenly increased 40 times – enough to kill any organism subjected long enough to it. The discovery greatly increased the anxiety felt by the four men … "Although they had no telescopic lens, they did however have cameras with them, and they took numerous photographs of the objects, both in colour and black and white. We are not told in the report what became of these photographs." (24). Five years later there was another documented account of a UFO sighting over Antarctica by Rubens Junqueira Villela, a meteorologist and the first Brazilian scientist to participate in an expedition to the white continent, now a veteran of eleven expeditions to Antarctica (two with the US Navy, eight with the Brazilian Antarctic Programme and another on the sailing ship Rapa Nui). Whilst on board the US Navy icebreaker Glacier (below) which had set sail from New Zealand at the end of January 1961, Villela claims that he witnessed a UFO event in the skies over Antarctica which he immediately recorded in his diary, even including the emotions felt by all those involved. During 16th March 1961 and after a fierce storm had forced the expedition to retreat to Admiralty Bay in the King George Isles, "a strange light suddenly crossed the sky, and everyone started to shout.
"The object was multi-coloured and had a luminous body –oval-shaped. It left a long tube-like orange/red trail. Suddenly, it split into two pieces, as if it had exploded. Each part shone even more intensively, with white, blue and red colours projecting ‘V’ shaped rays behind it. Quite quickly they moved away and could be seen 200 meters above the ground … Throughout the sighting no noise was heard by any of the witnesses."
"The renowned sceptic and self-styled debunker, Phillip Klaus, believes this episode is a classic example of ‘plasma’, however the late meteorologist, James McDonald argued that the highly structured nature of the object and the low cloud overcast present at about 1500 feet were not compatible with Klass’s hypothesis. The South Atlantic area was also host to another sighting on 16th January 1958 when the Brazilian naval vessel Almirante Salddanha was escorting a team of scientists to a weather station on Trindade Island. As the ship approach the island (or rather an outcrop of rock) a UFO reportedly swooped past the ship, circled the island, then flew off in front of dozens of witnesses. One of these witnesses, the expedition photographer, took a number of photographs of the object, and later the film was handed over to the military by the Captain. After analysis, the Brazilian government released the film stating that they were unable to account for the images. Whatever was going on in the Antarctic region, it certainly wasn’t happening in isolation. TAGS: UFOs in Antarctica, Nazi UFOs in Antarctica, German UFOs in Antarctica, Secret UFO Bases, Evidence for UFOs in Antarctica, Evidence for Nazi UFOs in Antarctica
(C) VIOLATIONS 1999 - 2010 References (1) Rose, Lisle, ‘Assault on Eternity’ p35, Naval Institute Press, Maryland, 1980. (2) Ibid p 35. (3) Ibid p 35. (4) Ibid pp 35-36 (5) ‘Antarctica’, p267 Reader’s Digest, Capricorn Press, London, 1985 (6) Ibid p.267 (7) Rose, Lisle, ‘Assault on Eternity’ p.250, Naval Institute Press, Maryland, 1980. (8) ‘Antarctica’, p264 Reader’s Digest, Capricorn Press, London, 1985 (9) Headland, R.K., ‘Chronological List of Antarctic Expeditions and Related Historical Events’ p.300 Cambridge University Press 1989. (10) Headland, R.K., ‘Chronological List of Antarctic Expeditions and Related Historical Events’ p.301 Cambridge University Press 1989. (11) Ibid. p. 301 (12) Ibid. p. 303 (13) Ibid. p. 303 (14) Ibid. p. 305 Christof Friedrich "Secret Nazi Polar Expeditions" Rose, Lisle, ‘Assault on Eternity’ p165, Naval Institute Press, Maryland, 1980. Ibid pp 166-167 Ibid p175 Ibid p177 Good p264. Good p264. From Informe Oficial O.V.N.I., Summary S# A.02778-DTO, OVNI, Captain Sanchez Moreno, Naval Air Station Comandante Espora, published in 1979 by Major (Ret.) Colman VonKevickz, ICUFON, 35-40 75th Street, Suite 4G, Jackson Heights, New York, NY 11372. ‘O Estado de Sao Paulo’ 8th July 1965 reproduced in an article by Dan Lloyd, ‘Things are hotting up in the Arctic’ Flying Saucer review, Vol. 11, No. 5. September-October 1965.) Arnold, Kenneth and Palmer, Ray, ‘The Coming of the Saucers’ p. 132 privately published by the authors at Boise, Idaho and Amherst, Wisconsin, 1952. Creighton, Gordon W., ‘A Cigar-Shaped UFO over Antarctica’ Flying Saucer Review, Vol. 14, No. 2, March-April 1968. Rubens Junqueira Villela, ‘UFOs in Antarctica’ Translated by Ricky Seraphico and republished in UFO Magazine November/December 1998. First published in ‘Revista UFO Brasil’, May 1998. Original title ‘Discos Voadores Na Antarctica.’ See also US Congress, House Committee on Science and Astronautics, Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings. Ninetieth Congress, Second Session 29th July 1968, Washington DC. US Government Printing Office, 1968. (26) Hoffman, M., ‘The Great Holocaust Trial’ P 18, Institute for Historical Review, Torrance, California, 1985 (27) Miele, Frank, ‘Giving the Devil His Due’ |
Albert Bender ran an organisation called the ‘International
Flying Saucer Bureau’ a small UFO organisation based in Connecticut, USA and
he also edited a publication known as the ‘Space Review’ which was
committed to the dissemination of news about UFOs. In truth, the organisation
had only a small membership and the publication circulated amongst hundreds
rather than thousands, but that its members and readers valued it was in little
doubt. The publication itself advocated that flying saucers were spacecraft of
extraterrestrial origin.
It has been argued that the story
of being visited by three strangers and being ‘warned off’ was a front to close
a publication that was losing money, however the fact that Bender had been
"scared to death" and "actually couldn’t eat for a couple of days" was verified
by his friends and associates.
Zundel was actually only really interested in promoting his holocaust
theory, described in his book ‘Did Six Million Really Die?’ however found
that his Nazi and ‘Hollow Earth’ ideas proved a greater attraction to television
producers. Zundel explains: "I realised that North Americans were not interested
in being educated. They want to be entertained. The book was for fun. With a
picture of the Fuhrer on the cover and flying saucers coming out of Antarctica
it was a chance to get on radio and TV talk shows. For about 15 minutes of an
hour program I’d talk about that esoteric stuff. Then I would start talking
about all those Jewish scientists in concentration camps, working on these
secret weapons. And that was my chance to talk about what I wanted to talk
about." (27)
More details of these UFO sightings were given in a report
in the Brazilian newspaper ‘O Estado de Sao Paulo’ in its 8th
July 1965 edition. "For the first time in history, an official communiqué has
been published by a government about the flying saucers. It is a document from
the Argentine Navy, based on the statements of a large number of Argentine,
Chilean and British sailors stationed in the naval base in Antarctica.
"‘It’s a missile!’ said one excited Marine. ‘No, it’s a
meteor,’ barked another member of the crew. The excitement was wide-spread and
growing. Trying to describe the light which appeared over wasn’t
easy … I wrote in my diary: ‘Positively the colours, the configuration and
contours of the object, as a bodied [sic] light, with geometric forms, did not
seem to be from this world, and I did not know what could possibly reproduce
it."
"The US Navy officially registered the incident as "a meteor or some
other natural luminous phenomenon" according to the report submitted by the
Glacier’s captain, Captain Porter. As a trained meteorologist, Villela easily dismissed the official line. "How
could they mistake a meteor with an object carrying antennae, completely
symmetrical and followed by a tail without any sight of atmospheric
disturbance?" (25)