And in conclusion of the chapter, let's talk about another mysterious project, the fate of which has haunted researchers for a good half century.

On March 25, 1942, the Polish captain, pilot Roman Sobinsky from the British Air Force strategic bomber squadron participated in a night raid on the German city of Essen. Having completed the task, he, along with everyone else, turned back, rising to a height of 500 meters. But he just leaned back in his chair with relief to take a break, as the machine gunner exclaimed in alarm:

We are being pursued by an unknown device!

New fighter? Sobinsky asked, remembering the unsafe Messerschmitt-110.

No, sir captain, - answered the machine gunner, - it seems that this is not a plane. It has an indefinite shape and glows...

Here Sobinsky himself saw an amazing object that ominously played with yellow-red tints. The reaction of the pilot was instantaneous and quite natural for a pilot attacked over enemy territory. “I thought,” he later stated in his report, “that this was some kind of new diabolical thing of the Germans, and ordered the machine gunner to open aimed fire.” However, the device, which approached at a distance of up to 150 meters, completely ignored the attack, and there was something - it did not receive any, at least a little noticeable damage. The frightened machine gunner stopped firing. After a quarter of an hour of flying "in the ranks" of the bombers, the object rapidly rose and disappeared from sight with incredible speed.

A month earlier, on February 26, 1942, a similar object showed interest in the cruiser Tromp of the occupied Netherlands. The ship's commander described it as a giant disc, apparently made of aluminum. An unknown guest watched the sailors for three hours, not fearing them. But even those, convinced of his peaceful behavior, did not open fire. The farewell was traditional - the mysterious apparatus suddenly soared up at a speed of about 6000 kilometers per hour and disappeared.

March 14, 1942 at the secret Norwegian base "Banak", which belonged to Twaffeflotte-5, an alarm was announced - a stranger appeared on the radar screen. The best base, Captain Fisher, lifted the car into the air and at an altitude of 3500 meters discovered a mysterious object. “The alien apparatus seemed to be made of metal and had an aircraft fuselage 100 meters long and about 15 meters in diameter,” the captain reported. - Ahead could be seen something similar to antennas. Although he did not have motors visible from the outside, he flew horizontally. I pursued him for several minutes, after which, to my surprise, he suddenly took the height and disappeared with lightning speed.

And at the end of 1942, a German submarine fired cannons at a silver spindle-shaped object about 80 meters long, which quickly and silently flew 300 meters from it, not paying attention to heavy fire.
* * *

On this, such strange meetings with both the one and the other of the warring parties did not end there. For example, in October 1943, the Allies bombed Europe's largest ball bearing factory in the German city of Schweinfurt. 700 heavy bombers of the 8th Air Force of the USA participated in the operation, and 1300 American and British fighters accompanied them. The mass nature of the air battle can be judged at least by the losses: the Allies had 111 downed fighters, about 60 downed or damaged bombers, the Germans had about 300 downed aircraft. It would seem that in such a hell, which the French pilot Pierre Klosterman compared with an aquarium full of crazy sharks, nothing could capture the imagination of the pilots, and yet ...

British Major R. F. Holmes, who was in command of the bombers, reported that as they passed over the factory, a group of large shiny disks suddenly appeared, which, as if curious, rushed towards them. We calmly crossed the line of fire of German aircraft and approached the American "flying fortresses". They also opened heavy fire from onboard machine guns, but again with zero effect.

However, the crews did not have time to gossip on the topic: “Who else has been brought to us?” - it was necessary to fight off the pressing German fighters. And then ... Major Holmes's plane survived, and the first thing this phlegmatic Englishman did when he landed at the base was to submit a detailed report to the command. It, in turn, asked intelligence to conduct a thorough investigation. The answer came three months later. In it, they say, then the famous abbreviation UFO was used for the first time - according to the initial letters of the English name "unidentified flying object" (UFO), and the conclusion was made: the disks have nothing to do with the Luftwaffe or with other air forces on Earth. The Americans came to the same conclusion. Therefore, both in the UK and in the USA, research groups were immediately organized, operating in the strictest secrecy.
* * *

Not bypassed the problem of UFOs and our compatriots. Few have probably heard about it, but the first rumors about the appearance of "flying saucers" over the battlefield reached the Supreme Commander back in 1942, during the Battle of Stalingrad. Stalin at first left these reports without any visible reaction, since the silver discs had no effect on the course of the battle.

But after the war, when information reached him that the Americans were very interested in this problem, he remembered the UFO again. S.P. Korolev was summoned to the Kremlin. He was handed a pack of foreign newspapers and magazines, adding:

Comrade Stalin asks you to express your opinion...

After that, they gave translators and locked me up in one of the Kremlin offices for three days.

On the third day, Stalin personally invited me to his place, ”Korolev recalled. - I reported to him that the phenomenon is interesting, but does not pose a danger to the state. Stalin replied that other scientists, whom he asked to get acquainted with the materials, were of the same opinion as me ...

Nevertheless, from that moment on, all reports of UFOs in our country were classified, reports about them were sent to the KGB.
* * *

Such a reaction becomes understandable, given that in Germany, apparently, the problem of UFOs was dealt with earlier than the allies. At the end of the same 1942, the Sonderburo-13 was created there, which was called upon to study mysterious air vehicles. His activities were codenamed "Operation Uranus".

The result of all this, according to the Czech magazine "Signal", was the creation of their own ... "flying saucers". The testimony of nineteen Wehrmacht soldiers and officers who served during World War II in Czechoslovakia, in one of the secret laboratories for the creation of a new type of weapon, has been preserved, the magazine reports. These soldiers and officers witnessed the flights of an unusual aircraft. It was a silver disk 6 meters in diameter with a truncated hull in the center and a drop-shaped cabin. The structure was mounted on four small wheels. According to the story of one of the eyewitnesses, he observed the launch of such a device in the fall of 1943.

This information to some extent coincides with the facts set forth in a curious manuscript that recently caught my eye in the reader's mail. “Wherever fate threw me,” wrote electronic engineer Konstantin Tyuts in a cover letter to her. - I had to travel around South America. Moreover, he climbed into such corners that, frankly, they lie quite far from the tourist trails. I had to meet different people. But that meeting remained in the memory forever.

It was in Uruguay, in 1987. At the end of August, in the colony of emigrants, which is 70 kilometers from Montevideo, a traditional holiday was held - the festival was not a festival, but everyone “buzzed” famously. I'm not a big fan of "this thing", so I lingered at the Israeli pavilion (the exposition was painfully interesting there), and my colleague walked away "for a beer." Here I look - an elderly smart man in a light shirt, ironed trousers is standing nearby and staring at me intently. Came up and talked. It turns out that he caught my dialect, and this attracted him. Both of us, as it turned out, were from the Donetsk region, from Gorlovka. His name was Vasily Petrovich Konstantinov.

Then, taking the military attache with us, we went to his house, sat all evening... Konstantinov ended up in Uruguay just like dozens, maybe hundreds of his compatriots. Having been freed from a concentration camp in Germany, he moved not to the east, to "infiltration", but to the other side, which saved him. I wandered around Europe, settled in Uruguay. For a long time I kept in my memory that amazing thing that I took out from the distant 41-43s. And finally, he spoke out.

In 1989, Vasily died: age, heart ...

I have the notes of Vasily Konstantinov, and, offering a fragment of his memoirs, I hope that he will amaze you in the same way that the oral story of their author struck me at one time.

It was hot July 1941. Every now and then, unhappy pictures of our retreat rose up before my eyes - airfields pitted with funnels, a glow in the half-sky from entire squadrons of our aircraft burning on the ground. The constant howl of German aircraft. Piles of metal interspersed with mangled human bodies. The suffocating haze and the stench from the wheat fields engulfed in flames...

After the first skirmishes with the enemy near Vinnitsa (in the area of ​​our then main headquarters), our unit fought its way to Kiev. Sometimes, for recreation, we took refuge in the forests. Finally we came to the highway six kilometers from Kyiv. I don’t know what exactly came to our freshly baked commissar’s mind, but all the survivors were ordered to line up in a column and march along the highway towards Kiev with a song. From the outside, it all looked like this: a group of exhausted people in windings, with heavy three-rulers of the 1941 model, were moving towards the city. We only had time to walk just a kilometer. A German reconnaissance aircraft appeared in the blue-black sky from the heat and conflagrations, and then - the bombing ... So fate divided us into the living and the dead. Five survived, as it turned out later in the camp.

I woke up after an air raid with a shell shock - my head was buzzing, everything was swimming before my eyes, and here - a kid, his shirt sleeves were rolled up, and threatened with a machine gun: "Rusish Schwein!" In the camp, I remember the rantings of our commissar about justice, brotherhood, mutual assistance, until they shared and ate the last crumbs of my miraculously surviving NZ together. And then I fell down with typhus, but fate gave me life - slowly I began to get out. The body needed food. "Friends", including the commissar, at night, hiding from each other, crushed the unripe potatoes collected during the day in the neighboring field. And what am I - why transfer good to a dying person? ..

Then I was transferred to the Auschwitz camp for trying to escape. Until now, nightmares have haunted me at night - the barking of cannibal German shepherds, ready, on the orders of the SS guards, to tear you to pieces, the cries of the camp foremen-capos, the moans of the dying near the barracks ... Memories pile up like a terrible dream when in a pile of half-dead bodies and corpses I, a prisoner in the convalescent block, who again fell ill with relapsing fever, was waiting for my turn in the storage tank near one of the crematorium ovens. There was a nauseating stench of burnt human flesh all around. A low bow to a female doctor, a German woman (there was an article about her in the Izvestia newspaper in 1984), who saved me and got me out. That's how I turned out to be a different person, and even with the documents of a mechanical engineer.

Somewhere in August 1943, some of the prisoners, including myself, were transferred near Peenemünde, to the KTs-A-4 camp, as it turned out, to eliminate the consequences of Operation Hydra, a British air raid. By order of the executioner - SS Brigadeführer Hans Kampler - the prisoners of Auschwitz became the "katsetniks" of the Peenemünde training ground. The head of the range, Major General Deriberger, was forced to involve prisoners of KTs-A-4 to speed up the restoration work.

And then one day, in September 1943, I was lucky enough to witness one interesting event.

Our group was finishing the demolition of a broken reinforced concrete wall. The whole brigade was taken away under guard for a lunch break, and I, as having injured my leg (it turned out to be a dislocation), remained to wait for my fate. Somehow I managed to set the bone myself, but the car had already left.

Suddenly, onto a concrete platform near one of the nearby hangars, four workers rolled out a round, resembling a basin turned upside down, apparatus with a transparent teardrop-shaped cabin in the middle. And on small inflatable wheels. Then, with a wave of the hand of a short, overweight man, a strange heavy apparatus, shimmering in the sun with silvery metal and shuddering with every gust of wind, made a hissing sound like the noise of a blowtorch, broke away from the concrete platform and hovered at a height of about five meters. Having swayed for a short time in the air - like a "roly-poly-up" - the apparatus suddenly seemed to be transformed: its contours gradually began to blur. They seem to be out of focus.

Then the device abruptly, like a top, jumped up and began to gain altitude like a snake. The flight, judging by the rocking, was unsteady. Suddenly a gust of wind came from the Baltic, and the strange structure, turning over in the air, began to lose altitude sharply. I was doused with a stream of burning, ethyl alcohol and hot air. There was a blow, a crunch of breaking parts - the car fell not far from me. Instinctively, I ran towards her. We need to save the pilot - the man is the same! The pilot's body hung lifelessly from the broken cockpit, the fragments of the skin, flooded with fuel, were gradually enveloped in bluish wisps of flame. The still hissing jet engine was sharply exposed: in the next instant everything was on fire...

This was my first acquaintance with an experimental apparatus that had a propulsion system - a modernized version of a jet engine for Messerschmitt-262 aircraft. Flue gases, escaping from the guide nozzle, flowed around the body and, as it were, interacted with the surrounding air, forming a rotating cocoon of air around the structure and thereby creating an air cushion for the movement of the machine ...
* * *

The manuscript ended here, but what has already been said is enough for a group of voluntary experts from the Tekhnika-Molodezhi magazine to try to determine what kind of flying machine the former prisoner of the KTs-A-4 camp saw? And this is what, according to engineer Yuri Stroganov, they did.

Model No. 1 of a disk-shaped aircraft was created by German engineers Schriver and Gabermol back in 1940, and tested in February 1941 near Prague. This "saucer" is considered the world's first vertical take-off aircraft. By design, it somewhat resembled a lying bicycle wheel: a wide ring rotated around the cab, the role of the “spokes” of which was played by effortlessly adjustable blades. They could be put in the right position for both horizontal and vertical flight. At first, the pilot sat as in a conventional aircraft, then his position was changed to almost recumbent. The machine brought a lot of problems to the designers, because the slightest imbalance caused significant vibration, especially at high speeds, which was the main cause of accidents. An attempt was made to make the outer rim heavier, but in the end the "wheel with a wing" exhausted its possibilities.

Model No. 2, called the "vertical aircraft", was an improved version of the previous one. Its size has been increased to accommodate two pilots lying in chairs. Engines were strengthened, fuel reserves were increased. For stabilization, a steering mechanism similar to an aircraft was used. The speed reached about 1200 kilometers per hour. As soon as the desired height was gained, the bearing blades changed their position, and the device moved like modern helicopters.

Alas, these two models were destined to remain at the level of experimental developments. Many technical and technological obstacles did not allow them to be brought up to standard, not to mention serial production. It was then, when a critical situation arose, and Sonderburo-13 appeared, which attracted the most experienced test pilots and the best scientists of the "Third Reich" to research. Thanks to his support, it became possible to create a disk that left far behind not only all the then, but also some modern aircraft.

Model No. 3 was made in two versions: 38 and 68 meters in diameter. It was powered by a "smokeless and flameless" engine by the Austrian inventor Viktor Schauberger. (Apparently, one of these variants, and possibly even an earlier prototype of even smaller dimensions, was seen by a prisoner of the KTs-A-4 camp.)

The inventor kept the principle of operation of his engine in the strictest confidence. Only one thing is known: the principle of its operation was based on an explosion, and during operation it consumed only water and air. The machine, which received the code name "Disk Belonze", was ringed by an installation of 12 inclined jet engines. They cooled the “explosive” engine with their jets and, sucking in air, created a rarefaction area on top of the apparatus, which contributed to its rise with less effort.

On February 19, 1945, the Disk Belonze made its first and last experimental flight. In 3 minutes, test pilots reached an altitude of 15,000 meters and a speed of 2,200 kilometers per hour in horizontal motion. He could hover in the air and fly back and forth with almost no turns, but he had folding racks for landing.

The apparatus, which cost millions, was destroyed at the end of the war. Although the plant in Breslau (now Wroclaw), where it was built, fell into the hands of our troops, it did nothing. Schriever and Schauberger escaped Soviet captivity and moved to the United States.

In a letter to a friend in August 1958, Viktor Schauberger wrote: “The model tested in February 1945 was built in cooperation with first-class explosion engineers from among the prisoners of the Mauthausen concentration camp. Then they were taken to the camp, for them it was the end. After the war, I heard that there was an intensive development of disk-shaped aircraft, but, despite the elapsed time and a lot of documents captured in Germany, the countries leading the development did not create at least something similar to my model. It was blown up on Keitel's orders."

Schauberger was offered $3 million by the Americans for revealing the secret of his flying disc and especially the "explosive" engine. However, he replied that until the signing of an international agreement on complete disarmament, nothing could be made public and that its discovery belonged to the future.

To be honest, the legend is fresh... Just remember how Wernher von Braun unfolded in the States, on whose rockets the Americans eventually flew to the moon (we will talk about his activities in detail in the next chapter). It is unlikely that Schauberger would have resisted the temptation if he could show the goods with his face. But he didn't seem to have anything to show. For the simple reason that he, it can be assumed, if he did not deceive, then he simply did not have all the necessary information. And most of his assistants, first-class specialists, ended up in Mauthausen and other death camps.

However, the allies received a hint that such work was still underway. And not only from Schauberger. Our units, having seized a secret factory in Breslau (Wroclaw), also probably found something. And after some time, Soviet specialists launched their own work on the creation of vertical take-off vehicles.
* * *

Evidence of this can be at least a "barrel", which I happened to see in one of the hangars of the aviation museum in Monin. The official name of this outlandish aircraft is a turbofly. It was tested in the late 50s by our famous test pilot Yu. A. Garnaev. Here is how an eyewitness, honored test pilot, Colonel Arkady Bogorodsky described this event:
“The engine is running, the flames cut through the ground, knocking out stones and turning them into dust. This dust disperses around in clubs, and nothing is visible except dust.

And suddenly, at the top of this tangle, an engine nozzle is shown, then a cabin, racks - and now the entire turboplane is already visible, hanging at a height of ten meters ... "

The turboplane hovered and moved due to the lifting force of a jet engine mounted vertically. And it was controlled by gas rudders. So here, perhaps, a variation of the “Belonze Disk” took place, which then led to the creation of rocket modules for landing troops on the moon and modern vertical take-off and landing aircraft, of which there are many varieties - both foreign and our domestic ones.

One of the most promising, in my opinion, is the "flying loaf", or "EKIP" - an original aircraft created in our country by a team of scientists and engineers led by Doctor of Technical Sciences L. N. Shchukin.

Aeronautical engineers have long sought to improve aircraft in traditional ways. They increased the aerodynamic quality and reliability, reduced fuel consumption and the mass of an empty car - because these parameters directly affect the cost of passenger and freight transportation. However, according to a number of researchers, the maximum flight weight of aircraft made according to the classical scheme has approached the limit, for example, this applies to the heaviest aircraft in the world, the An-225 Mriya. One of the reasons for this is the design of the take-off and landing gear, in other words, the landing gear.

An unexpected way out of this situation was proposed by L. N. Shchukin. The EKIP concern (ecology and progress) created under his leadership has already produced a number of projects for transport aircraft of a fundamentally new type with a take-off weight of 9 to 600 tons. The first thing that catches your eye is their shape, reminiscent of the notorious UFO. But if you approach the analysis of "EKIPs" from an engineering point of view, then nothing fantastic will turn out.

In terms of layout, they represent a small elongation flying wing with a very thick profile, up to 37 percent of the chord length. They do not have the usual fuselage, and the payload, engines, fuel, equipment, crew and passengers are housed in the body, and only the tail and small consoles with aerodynamic controls protrude beyond the contours of the device. Instead of a wheeled chassis - an air cushion.

Aircraft designers back in the 30s dealt with the problem of creating such a "inhabited wing". One of the first to address it was K. A. Kalinin, who built the seven-engine bomber K-7 in 1933. In its wing of 20 percent thickness, office space, fuel, cargo were located, and only the crew, for a better view, was put in a gondola placed forward. Such a wing provided a very high aerodynamic quality, which directly affects the efficiency of the machine. A passenger version of the K-7 with large windows was also developed.

However, the Kalinin aircraft had a lot of unused internal volume, and it was possible to increase the layout density only by increasing the relative thickness of the wing, which was not possible at that time. As is known from the course of aerodynamics, the maximum values ​​of the lift coefficient are obtained with a relative wing thickness of 14–16 percent. Its further increase leads to a decrease in the limiting angles of attack, the amount of lift and an increase in drag, which adversely affects the aerodynamic quality of the machine and its efficiency. This phenomenon is associated with a forward displacement of the separation point of the boundary layer against the oncoming air flow.

As far back as the 1930s, aviation specialists proposed to control the flow around the wing. Imagine that it is with a slit at the top. Air is sucked out through it by a special device and therefore does not collide with the boundary layer flowing in the opposite direction - therefore, separation does not occur. There is another way, by the way, which has become widespread in aviation - blowing off the boundary layer at the points of its separation from the bearing surface. A combined version is also used, when the boundary layer of the wing is both sucked off and blown off.

The main difficulty that designers face here is that this consumes a significant part of the power of the power plant, which is why they use only blowing off the boundary layer, and then during landing approach, when the engines are not working at full power.

It was this method that the engineers of the concern "adopted" - in the places of the alleged separation of the flow, along the supporting body, they proposed to make slots in which air microcirculation would be created. Then the oncoming flow will not slow down - its speed will be supported by artificial vortices. By the way, the first experiments on the so-called non-separated flow were carried out back in 1978 at the Geodesy Research Institute on a thick wing model. Everything may seem very simple, but EKIP had to work hard before a successful, economical device appeared.

In addition, the air intake located in its upper part should also improve the flow around a very impressive body. Designers have already turned to such a solution, because it still reduces the likelihood of foreign objects getting into the engine during takeoff and landing. However, there was a negative interference of the air intake and the airframe of the aircraft, especially at high angles of attack. And when flying at high speed, say, 700 kilometers per hour, air intake from the top of the carrier body could lead to the appearance of local supersonic zones that degrade the aerodynamic quality of the machine. At the same time, this arrangement improves its stability. As they say, in one we win, in the other we lose. So, you have to look for the golden mean ...

Compared to conventional aircraft, EKIPs will have a 3–5 times lower specific load on the bearing surface, therefore, the inductive drag will decrease, and the maximum aerodynamic quality will increase to 17–25, while flying in the ekranoplan mode - up to 22– thirty. Therefore, "EKIPs", according to the terminology proposed by the prominent Soviet aircraft designer R. L. Bartini, should be classified as ekranoletov.

The use of landing gear on an air "cushion" will make it possible to exclude takeoff and landing only on concrete strips. Note that there have been attempts to implement it on aircraft before, but things never went beyond experiments. One of the reasons for this is a “cloud” of water drops, dust and snowflakes that escape from under the flexible guard when moving and get into the engines, settling on the hull. Instead of a flexible fence, the concern's specialists used a gas-jet curtain created together with the "cushion" of the auxiliary power unit - air jets flying out at a pressure of slightly more than 1 atmosphere from nozzles located around the perimeter of the apparatus will cut off the "cushion" from the atmosphere. In addition, it is supposed to mount ionizers in the nozzles so that if positively charged dust particles fall on the body, then only in the designated places.

Perhaps it was the work of such systems that the prisoner of the concentration camp noticed. Remember, in his manuscript, he mentions that at some point the body of the aircraft began to lose its sharpness, as it were? .. But let's return to our days.

Shchukin and his team had to solve the problem of controlling the EKIPs at the beginning of the takeoff run and hover mode, when the aerodynamic systems are ineffective. For this, it is proposed to use small-sized liquid-propellant engines from the Buran orbiter, modified for new operating conditions.

The entire power plant of the EKIPs is divided into three groups. The first includes marching PK-92 or D-436, the second - unique, unparalleled dual-mode AL-34, which will create increased pressure under the bottom of the vehicle during takeoff and provide a boundary layer control system, the third - LRE stabilization and control at small speed, takeoff and landing.

And now let's try to compare the largest of the "EKIPs" L4-2 with the giant An-225. With the same takeoff weight of 600 tons, the L4-2 will deliver a load of 200 tons over a distance of 8,600 kilometers, while the Mriya will deliver only 4,500 kilometers. In this case, the latter will need a stationary airfield with a runway length of at least 3.5 kilometers. For R4-2, you will need a platform six times shorter. Such characteristics can be achieved thanks not only to the high aerodynamic quality of the EKIP (for Mriya it does not exceed 19), but to a greater weight return.

The layout of the EKIP allows passengers to have an all-round view through the extensive portholes made of structural glass - "stained-glass windows", as the authors call them.

For almost 10 years, Lev Nikolaevich Shchukin had to prove the advantages of aircraft of a fundamentally new type. Initially, many authorities met his ideas with hostility, but over time, the ice of mistrust was melted, and today the prospects for the use of "EKIPs" in the national economy and in the armed forces are obvious. The first prototypes of the “flying saucer” have already been created and tested, inside which not mythical aliens are placed, but our compatriots.
* * *

It is likely that the Americans have gone through a similar path in their time. And in the mysterious hangar No. 18, which journalists like to remember from time to time, there really are fragments of “flying saucers”. Only aliens have absolutely nothing to do with them - the trophies of the Second World War are stored in the hangar. And over the past decades, based on their study, the Americans have managed to create many curious aircraft.

So, recently a mysterious "unknown star" was seen at one of the secret US air bases.

At first, this name - "Darkstar" - was attributed to the mysterious strategic reconnaissance aircraft "Aurora". Recently, however, the fog of secrecy has gradually begun to dissipate. And it became clear that in reality it belongs to an unmanned high-altitude aircraft of Lockheed Martin, created as part of the Tier III Minus program. The official demonstration of the prototype took place on June 1, 1995 in Palmdale (Antelope Valley, California), where the company's factories are located. Prior to this, only vague guesses were made about the existence of the machine.

Unmanned high-altitude aircraft "Unknown Star" was developed jointly by Lockheed Martin and Boeing. The share of participation of each company in the implementation of the program was 50 percent. Boeing specialists were responsible for the creation of a composite wing, the supply of avionics and the preparation of the aircraft for operation. Lockheed Martin handled fuselage design, final assembly and testing.

The machine presented in Palmdale is the first of two being created under the Tier III Minus program. It is made using stealth technology. In the future, it is likely that comparative tests of these “invisibles” will be carried out with the Teledyne model, which was previously selected by the Pentagon as part of a program that provides for the creation of a whole family of unmanned reconnaissance aircraft.

In total, it is planned to purchase 20 vehicles from Lockheed and Teledyne each. This should allow unit commanders to receive operational information during exercises or combat operations almost around the clock in real time. The Lockheed aircraft is designed primarily for short-range operations, in high-risk areas and at altitudes above 13,700 meters, its speed is 460-550 kilometers per hour. He is able to stay in the air for 8 hours at a distance of 900 kilometers from the base.

Structurally, the "Unknown Star" is made according to the "tailless" aerodynamic scheme, has a disc-shaped fuselage and a high elongation wing with a slight reverse sweep.

This unmanned reconnaissance aircraft operates in a fully automatic mode from takeoff to landing. It is equipped with the Westinghouse AN / APQ-183 radar (intended for the failed A-12 Avenger 2 project), which can be replaced by the Recon / Optical electronic-optical complex. The aircraft has a wingspan of 21.0 meters, a length of 4.6 meters, a height of 1.5 meters and a wing area of ​​29.8 square meters. The weight of the empty vehicle (including reconnaissance equipment) is about 1,200 kilograms, with a full load - up to 3,900 kilograms.

Flight testing is being conducted at NASA's Dryden Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base. If they are successful, then the aircraft can be put into service at the end of ours, the beginning of the next century.

So, as you can see, from time to time you can even benefit from seemingly empty talk about “flying saucers”.

A lot is known today about the developments of the Third Reich in the field of `flying saucers`, and we talked about them. However, the number of questions has not diminished over the years. How successful were the Germans in this? Who helped them? Was the work curtailed after the war or continued in other, secret regions of the globe? How true are the rumors that the Nazis had contact with extraterrestrial civilizations?

Oddly enough, but the answers to these questions should be sought in the distant past. Researchers of the secret history of the Third Reich today already know a lot about its mystical roots and those behind the scenes forces that brought Hitler to power and directed Hitler's activities. The foundation of the ideology of fascism was laid by secret societies long before the emergence of the Nazi state, but this worldview became an active force after the defeat of Germany in the First World War. In 1918, a circle of people who already had experience in international secret societies founded a branch of the Teutonic Knights in Munich - the Thule Society (after the name of the legendary Arctic country - the cradle of mankind). Its official goal is the study of ancient Germanic culture, but the true tasks were much deeper.

The theorists of fascism found a suitable candidate for their goals - the power-hungry, mystical experience and, moreover, drug-addicted Corporal Adolf Hitler, and inspired him with the idea of ​​world domination of the German nation. At the end of 1918, the young occultist Hitler was admitted to the Thule Society and quickly became one of its most active members. And soon the ideas of the Thule theorists were reflected in his book My Struggle.

Roughly speaking, the Thule society solved the problem of bringing the German race to dominance in the visible - material - world. But `he who sees in National Socialism only a political movement knows little about it`. These words belong to Hitler himself. The fact is that the occult owners of Thule had another, no less important goal - to win in the invisible world, metaphysical, so to speak, `other world`. For this purpose, more closed structures were created in Germany. So, in 1919, a secret `Lodge of Light` (later `Vril` - according to the ancient Indian name for the cosmic energy of life) was founded. Later, in 1933, the elite mystical order `Ahnenerbe` (Ahnenerbe - `Heritage of the Ancestors`), which since 1939, at the initiative of Himmler, has become the main research structure within the SS. Having fifty research institutes under its control, the ʻAhnenerbe` society was engaged in the search for ancient knowledge that allows developing the latest technologies, controlling human consciousness with the help of magical methods, and carrying out genetic manipulations in the villages of creating a `superman`.

Non-traditional methods of obtaining knowledge were also practiced - under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs, in a state of trance or contact with the Higher Unknowns, or, as they called it, `Outer Minds`. The ancient occult `keys` (formulas, spells, etc.) found with the help of `Ahnenerbe` were also used, which allowed establishing contact with `Aliens`. For "sessions with the gods" the most experienced mediums and contactees were involved (Maria Otte and others). For the purity of the results, the experiments were carried out independently in the `Thule` and `Vril` societies. Some occult 'keys' are said to have worked and through independent 'channels' almost identical technogenic information was received. In particular, the drawings and descriptions of `flying discs`, in terms of their characteristics, significantly exceeded the aviation technology of that time.

Another task that was set before scientists and, according to rumors, was partially solved was the creation of a `time machine` that allows you to penetrate into the depths of history and obtain knowledge of ancient high civilizations, in particular, information about the magical methods of Atlantis, which was considered the ancestral home of the Aryan race. Of particular interest to Nazi scientists was the technological knowledge of the Atlanteans, which, according to legend, helped build huge sea vessels and airships driven by an unknown force.

In the archives of the Third Reich, drawings were found explaining the principles of `twisting` thin physical fields, allowing you to create some kind of techno-magic apparatus. The acquired knowledge was transferred to leading scientists for `translation` of them into an understandable engineering language for designers.

One of the developers of techno-magical devices is the famous scientist Dr. V.O. Noise. According to the evidence, his electrodynamic machines, which used rapid rotation, not only changed the structure of time around them, but also hovered in the air. (Today, scientists already know that rapidly rotating objects change not only the gravitational field around them, but also space-time characteristics. So there is nothing fantastic in the fact that when developing the `time machine`, Nazi scientists got the effect of antigravity, no. Another thing, how manageable these processes were.) There is evidence that an apparatus with such capabilities was sent near Munich, to Augsburg, where its research continued. As a result, the SSI technology division created a series of `flying discs` of the `Vril` type.

The next generation of `flying saucers` was the `Haunebu` series. These devices are believed to use some of the ideas and technologies of the ancient Indians, as well as the engines of Viktor Schauberger, the most prominent scientist in the field of fluid movement, who created something similar to a `perpetual motion machine`. There is information about the development in the IV experimental design center of the SS, subordinate to the Black Sun society, a highly secret `flying saucer` `Honebu-2` (Haunebu-II). In his book `German flying saucers` O. Bergmann gives some of its technical characteristics. Diameter 26.3 meters. Engine: `Thule`-tachyonator 70, diameter 23.1 meters. Control: impulse magnetic field generator 4a. Speed: 6000 km / h (estimated - 21000 km / h). Flight duration: 55 hours and more. Adaptability for flights in outer space - 100 percent. The crew of nine people, with passengers - twenty people. Planned mass production: late 1943 - early 1944.

The fate of this development is unknown, but the American researcher Vladimir Terzicki (V. Terzicki) reports that the further development of this series was the Haunebu-III apparatus, designed to combat air with naval squadrons. The diameter of the `plate` was 76 meters, the height was 30 meters. Four gun turrets were installed on it, each of which mounted three 270mm caliber guns from the Meisenau cruiser. Terziyski claims that in March 1945 this `saucer` made one revolution around the Earth. The `dish` was set in motion by a `free energy engine, which ... used the almost inexhaustible energy of gravity`.

In the late 50s, the Australians found among the captured films a documentary German film-report on the research project of the `V-7` flying disc, about which nothing was known until that time. To what extent this project was implemented is not yet clear, but it is known for certain that the famous specialist in `special operations` Otto Skorzeny was instructed in the middle of the war to create a detachment of pilots of 250 people to control `flying saucers and manned missiles.

There is nothing incredible in the reports of gravitational engines. Today, scientists working in the field of alternative energy sources know the so-called Hans Kohler converter, which converts gravitational energy into electrical energy. There is evidence that these converters were used in the so-called tachyonators (electromagnetic gravitational engines) `Thule` and `Andromeda`, produced in Germany in 1942-1945 at the `Siemens` and `AEG` factories. It is indicated that the same converters were used as energy sources not only on `flying disks`, but also on some giant (5000-ton) submarines and on underground bases.

The results were obtained by scientists ʻAhnenerbe` in other non-traditional areas of knowledge: in psychotronics, parapsychology, in the use of `subtle` energies to control individual and mass consciousness, etc. It is believed that the trophy documents relating to the metaphysical developments of the Third Reich gave a new impetus to similar work in the USA and the USSR, which had underestimated or curtailed such research until that time. Due to the extreme secrecy of information about the results of the activities of German secret societies, it is difficult to separate facts from rumors and legends today. However, the incredible mental transformation that took place in a matter of years with the cautious and rational German inhabitants, who suddenly turned into an obedient crowd, fanatically believing in crazy ideas about world domination, makes one think...

In search of the most ancient magical knowledge, `Ahnenerbe` organized expeditions to the most remote corners of the globe: to Tibet, South America, Antarctica ... Special attention was paid to the latter ...

This area is still full of secrets and mysteries. Apparently, we still have to learn a lot of unexpected things, including what the ancients knew about. Officially, Antarctica was discovered by the Russian expedition of F. F. Bellingshausen and M. P. Lazarev in 1820. However, indefatigable archivists discovered ancient maps, from which it followed that they knew about Antarctica long before this historical event. One of the maps, compiled in 1513 by the Turkish admiral Piri Reis, was discovered in 1929. Others have surfaced: the French geographer Orontius Phineus from 1532, Philippe Buache, dated 1737. Fake? Let's not rush...

All these maps very accurately depict the outlines of Antarctica, but ... without ice cover. Moreover, on the Buache map, the strait is perfectly visible, dividing the continent into two parts. And its presence under the ice layer was established by the latest methods only in recent decades. We add that international expeditions that checked the Piri Reis map found out that it is more accurate than maps compiled in the 20th century. Seismic surveys have confirmed what no one had guessed: some of the mountains of Queen Maud Land, which until now were considered part of a single massif, turned out to be in fact islands, as indicated on the old map. So there is no question of falsification, most likely. But where did such information come from people who lived several centuries before the discovery of Antarctica?

Both Reis and Buache claimed that they used ancient Greek originals when compiling maps. After the maps were discovered, a variety of hypotheses were put forward about their origin. Most of them boil down to the fact that the original maps were compiled by some high civilization that existed at a time when the coasts of Antarctica were not yet covered with ice, that is, before the global cataclysm. It has been argued that Antarctica is the former Atlantis.

One of the arguments: the dimensions of this legendary country (30,000 x 20,000 stages according to Plato, 1st stage - 185 meters) approximately correspond to the size of Antarctica.

Naturally, scientists ʻAhnenerbe`, who scoured the world in search of traces of the Atlantic civilization, could not pass by this hypothesis. Moreover, it was in perfect agreement with their philosophy, which asserted, in particular, that at the poles of the planet there are entrances to huge cavities inside the earth. And Antarctica became one of the main targets of Nazi scientists.

The interest shown by the leaders of Germany on the eve of World War II in this distant and lifeless region of the globe could not be rationally explained then. Meanwhile, attention to Antarctica was exceptional. In 1938-1939, the Germans organized two Antarctic expeditions, in which the Luftwaffe pilots not only examined, but also staked out for the Third Reich a huge (the size of Germany) territory of this continent - Queen Maud Land (soon she received name `New Swabia`). On April 12, 1939, the expedition commander Ritscher, who returned to Hamburg, reported: “I have completed the mission entrusted to me by Marshal Goering. For the first time, German aircraft flew over the Antarctic continent. Every 25 kilometers, our planes dropped pennants. We have covered an area of ​​approximately 600,000 square kilometers. Of these, 350,000 were photographed`.

Goering's air aces did their job. It was the turn of the `sea wolves` of the `fuhrer of submarines` Admiral Karl Dönitz (1891-1981) to act. And submarines secretly headed for the shores of Antarctica. The well-known writer and historian M. Demidenko reports that, while sorting through top-secret SS archives, he discovered documents indicating that a submarine squadron during an expedition to Queen Maud Land found a whole system of interconnected caves with warm air. `My submariners discovered a real earthly paradise`, Dönitz dropped then. And in 1943, another enigmatic phrase came from his lips: `The German submarine fleet is proud of the fact that on the other side of the world it has created an impregnable fortress for the Fuhrer`. How?

It turns out that for five years the Germans have been carrying out carefully concealed work to create a Nazi secret base in Antarctica, code-named `Base 211`. In any case, this is stated by a number of independent researchers. According to eyewitnesses, from the beginning of 1939, regular (once every three months) flights of the research ship `Schwabia` began between Antarctica and Germany. Bergman, in his book German Flying Saucers, claims that from this year and for several years, mining equipment and other equipment, including railroads, trolleys and huge cutters for tunneling, were constantly sent to Antarctica. Apparently, submarines were also used to deliver goods. And not just ordinary ones.

Retired American Colonel Wendelle C. Stevens reports: `Our intelligence, where I worked at the end of the war, knew that the Germans were building eight very large cargo submarines (were Kohler converters installed on them? - V. Sh. ) and all of them were launched, completed and then disappeared without a trace. To this day, we have no idea where they went. They are not on the ocean floor, and they are not in any port that we know of. This is a mystery, but it can be solved thanks to the Australian documentary (we mentioned it above. - V.Sh.), which shows large German cargo submarines in Antarctica, ice around them, crews stand on decks waiting for a stop at the pier` .

By the end of the war, Stevens claims, the Germans had nine research facilities that were testing 'flying disc' projects. ʻEight of these enterprises, along with scientists and key figures, were successfully evacuated from Germany. The ninth building is blown up... We have classified information that some of these research facilities have been moved to a place called `New Swabia`... Today it may already be a decent-sized complex. Maybe those big cargo submarines are there. We believe that at least one (or more) disc development facilities have been moved to Antarctica. We have information that one was evacuated to the Amazon region, and the other to the northern coast of Norway, where there is a large German population. They were evacuated to secret underground facilities.'

Well-known researchers of the Antarctic mysteries of the Third Reich R. Vesko, V. Terziyski, D. Childress claim that since 1942, thousands of concentration camp prisoners (labor force), as well as prominent scientists, pilots and politicians with families, have been transferred to the South Pole with the help of submarines and members of the Hitler Youth - the gene pool of the future "pure" race.

In addition to the mysterious giant submarines, at least a hundred serial `U` class submarines were used for these purposes, including the top-secret `Convoy of the Fuhrer`, which included 35 submarines. At the very end of the war in Kiel, these elite submarines were stripped of all military equipment and loaded containers with some valuable cargo. The submarines also took on board some mysterious passengers and a large amount of food. The fate of only two boats from this convoy is known for certain. One of them, `U-530`, under the command of 25-year-old Otto Wehrmouth, left Kiel on April 13, 1945 and delivered to Antarctica the relics of the Third Reich and Hitler’s personal belongings, as well as passengers whose faces were hidden by surgical bandages. Another, `U-977`, under the command of Heinz Schaeffer, repeated this route a little later, but what and whom she transported is unknown.

Both of these submarines arrived in the Argentine port of Mar del Plata in the summer of 1945 (July 10 and August 17, respectively) and surrendered to the authorities. Apparently, the testimonies that the submariners gave during interrogations extremely excited the Americans, and at the end of 1946, the famous Admiral Richard E. Byrd (Byrd) received an order to destroy the Nazi base in New Swabia.

Operation `High Jump` (High Jump) was disguised as an ordinary research expedition, and not everyone guessed that a powerful naval squadron headed for the shores of Antarctica. An aircraft carrier, 13 ships of various types, 25 aircraft and helicopters, more than four thousand people, a six-month supply of food - these data speak for themselves.

It would seem that everything went according to plan: 49 thousand photographs were taken in a month. And suddenly something happened, about which the US authorities are silent until now. On March 3, 1947, the expedition that had just begun was turned off, and the ships hurriedly headed home. A year later, in May 1948, some details surfaced on the pages of the European magazine `Brizant`. It was reported that the expedition met with stiff resistance from the enemy. At least one ship, dozens of people, four combat aircraft were lost, nine more aircraft had to be left as unusable. What exactly happened can only be guessed at. We do not have original documents, however, if the press is to be believed, the crew members who dared to reminisce spoke of `flying discs` that `surfaced from under the water` and attacked them, of strange atmospheric phenomena that caused mental disorders. Journalists cite an excerpt from R. Byrd's report, allegedly made at a secret meeting of the special commission: `The United States needs to take defensive actions against enemy fighters flying from the polar regions. In the event of a new war, America could be attacked by an enemy that has the ability to fly from one pole to another at incredible speed!`

Almost ten years later, Admiral Byrd led a new polar expedition, in which he died under mysterious circumstances. After his death, information appeared in the press allegedly from the diary of the admiral himself. It follows from them that during the 1947 expedition, the plane on which he flew out for reconnaissance was forced to land by strange aircraft, `similar to British soldiers' helmets`. The admiral was approached by a tall, blond, blue-eyed man who, in broken English, delivered an appeal to the American government demanding an end to nuclear testing. Some of the sources claim that after this meeting, an agreement was signed between the Nazi colony in Antarctica and the American government to exchange German advanced technologies for American raw materials.

A number of researchers believe that the German base in Antarctica has survived to this day. Moreover, they talk about the existence of a whole underground city called `New Berlin` with a population of two million people. The main occupation of its inhabitants are genetic engineering and space flights. However, direct evidence in favor of this version has not yet been presented. The main argument of those who doubt the existence of a polar base is the difficulty of delivering there the colossal amount of fuel needed to generate electricity. The argument is serious, but too traditional, and they object to it: if Kohler converters are created, then the need for fuel is minimal.

Indirect confirmation of the existence of the base is called repeated sightings of UFOs in the area of ​​the South Pole. Often they see `plates` and `cigars` hanging in the air. And in 1976, Japanese researchers, using the latest equipment, simultaneously spotted nineteen round objects that `dived` from space to Antarctica and disappeared from the screens. The ufological chronicle periodically throws up food for talking about German UFOs. Here are just two typical messages.

Late in the evening, Raymond Schmidt, a businessman, a grain buyer, came to the sheriff of the city of Kearny and told a story that had happened to him near the city. The car he was driving on the Boston-San Francisco highway suddenly stalled and stopped. When he got out of it to see what had happened, he noticed a huge `metal cigar` not far from the road in a forest clearing. Right in front of his eyes, a hatch opened and a man in ordinary clothes appeared on the retracted platform. In excellent German—Schmidt's native language—the stranger invited him to board the ship. Inside, the businessman saw two men and two women of quite ordinary appearance, but moving in an unusual way - they seemed to be sliding on the floor. Schmidt also remembered some kind of flaming pipes filled with a colored liquid. After about half an hour he was asked to leave, the `cigar` silently rose into the air and disappeared behind the forest.

November 6, 1957 USA, Tennessee, Dante (near Knoxville).

At half past seven in the morning, an oblong object of `indeterminate color` landed in a field a hundred meters from the Clark family home. Twelve-year-old Everett Clark, who was walking his dog at the time, said the two men and two women who stepped out of the apparatus spoke to each other 'like German soldiers from a movie'. The Clarks' dog rushed towards them with a desperate bark, and after it other neighbors' dogs. The strangers at first unsuccessfully tried to catch one of the dogs that jumped up to them, but then they abandoned this idea, went into the object, and the device silently flew away. Reporter Carson Brewer of the Knoxville News Sentinel discovered downed grass at the site in a 7.5 by 1.5 meter area.

Naturally, many researchers have a desire to lay the responsibility for such cases on the Germans. `It seems that some of the ships that we see today are nothing more than a further development of German disc technology. Thus, in fact, it may be that we are periodically visited by the Germans` (W. Stevens).

Are they related to aliens? Today there is contact information (which, however, should always be treated with caution) that such a connection exists. It is believed that contact with a civilization from the Pleiades constellation occurred long ago - even before the Second World War - and had a significant impact on the scientific and technological developments of the Third Reich. Until the very end of the war, the Nazi leaders hoped for direct alien help, but they never received it.

Contactee R. Winters from Miami (USA) reports the existence of a real alien spaceport of the Pleiadian civilization in the Amazon jungle at the present time. He also says that after the war, the aliens took on the service of some of the Germans. Since then, at least two generations of Germans have grown up there. They interacted with aliens from an early age. Today they fly, work and live aboard extraterrestrial spacecraft. And they do not have those desires to rule over the planet that their fathers and grandfathers had, because, having known the depths of space, they realized that there are things much more significant.

Secrets of the Third Reich. After Stalingrad, few of the highest Nazi bosses and leaders of the Wehrmacht believed in the final victory. But there was still a chance to end the Great War "in a draw" - at the beginning of 1943, the Reich still had a powerful army; German troops occupied a huge space from the Atlantic to the Don. But after the defeat at Kursk, even the biggest optimists no longer counted on anything.

In a strange way, besides Hitler himself, one more person did not succumb to the general, poorly hidden despondency - the Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler. Although, it would seem, it was he who should have been worried in the first place.

Himmler was one of the most knowledgeable people in the Third Reich. Information from all over the world flocked to him - despite all the difficulties, the German agents worked well and, on the whole, presented a more or less correct (by no means embellished) picture of events.

The chief of foreign intelligence, Walter Schellenberg, repeatedly proved to Himmler almost irrefutably that the only saving way out for Germany was immediate negotiations (at least with the British and Americans).

But Himmler answered Schellenberg's numerous proposals vaguely and evasively. The general meaning of his strange answers tended to be that there are things about which Schellenberg (for all his knowledge) knows nothing. And it is these mysterious things that will save Germany ... But only he, Heinrich Himmler, and the Fuhrer himself know about them.

The last secret of Heinrich Himmler

What exactly, secretly from the other leaders of the Reich, Hitler and Heinrich discussed at their meetings, it became clear only many years after the end of the war.

They discussed the creation of a new miracle weapon. But it was not at all about the atomic bomb and not about the amazing rockets of Wernher von Braun, capable of flying hundreds of kilometers. Hitler and Himmler discussed the reconstruction of ... a flying saucer, a spaceship of aliens from another world.

After the war, this fact was completely accidentally leaked from the secret archives of the Allies. However, perhaps this was not an accident, but a deliberately organized leak of information.

The publication and investigation of new, completely unbelievable facts were extremely difficult. Few people wanted to do this, because from the very beginning it was clear that everything was so strange and implausible that the general public would in any case classify such messages as cheap sensations and would never believe in them.

But! There were several photographs, the authenticity of which was confirmed by numerous experts.

These unique shots show several Nazi officers and an amazing disc-shaped aircraft hovering meters above the ground!

It is unlike any of the aircraft that have ever existed on our planet. And only the sign of the swastika on board confirms that this is a reality.

This device was built on the basis of drawings that were brought from the legendary Kullu Valley by a man who remained in history under the undercover pseudonym "Raja".

In addition to photographs, another very peculiar document has been preserved - a report from the designer addressed to Adolf Hitler on the progress of testing one of these disks in 1944.

It contains the most curious technical characteristics of the new weapon: “The F-7 apparatus. Diameter - 21 m. Vertical lifting speed - 800 m / s. Horizontal flight speed - 2200 km / h.

Aircraft designers of the world managed to achieve approximately similar characteristics only ... in the 80s, with the appearance of the SU-27 fighter!

It is no wonder that Hitler cherished ties with Tibet so much.

By the way, among the papers that the winners got in 1945, there was a letter from the regent of the Dalai Lama to the Fuhrer of the German nation:

“Dear Mr. King Hitler, Ruler of Germany. May health, joy of Peace and Virtue be with you! Now you are working to create a vast state on a racial basis.

Therefore, the head of the German expedition, Sahib Schaeffer (SS Sturmbannfuehrer, Himmler's confidant, who led the expedition to Tibet - ed.) had no difficulties on the way to Tibet.

Accept, Your Grace, King Hitler, our assurances of continued friendship!

Written on the 18th day of the first Tibetan month, the year of the Earth Hare.

The regent of the Dalai Lama sent almost a thousand ministers to help "King Hitler". After the capture of Berlin, the allies were extremely surprised to find several hundred charred bodies, in which experts recognized ... residents of Tibet!

Later it was found that they all committed suicide - according to the ancient custom, they burned themselves alive.

After Stalingrad, Hitler again decides to seek help from the Tibetan magicians. He is looking for connections with the shamans of the ancient Hindu religion Bon-po, who, according to his firm conviction, directly communicate with spirits (by the way, many tried to penetrate the secrets of Bon-po - an expedition of both the NKVD of the USSR and the British special services once visited Tibet ).

The next expedition was equipped in the shortest possible time. She had to ask the Bon-po priests for help, and also find a way to the location of which the previous expeditions had identified as the borderland of the state of the Dalai Lama and the Chinese province of Kham.

Hitler and Heinrich Himmler believed that it was the help of the inhabitants of Shambhala that should bring victory to the German weapons and force the Eternal Ice to retreat.

In early 1943, 5 SS officers secretly left Berlin for Lhasa. The expedition was led by Himmler's confidant Peter Aufschnaiter and climber Heinrich Harrer. But Hitler's envoys were not destined to reach Tibet - their path ran through British India, where, by pure chance, they were arrested by representatives of the British colonial authorities.

Several times they made daring attempts to escape, but they managed to break free only after a few years. In 1951, Harrer (who nevertheless made his way to Tibet to the Bon-po shamans) returned to his homeland in Austria, bringing with him a large number of mysterious materials.

The archive was immediately arrested by the British secret services, confiscated and disappeared without a trace in the bowels of the special storage facilities. Some researchers argue that such interest of the special services in Harrer's documents was due to the film, which depicts the ritual with which Bon-po shamans communicated with spirits. But this rite could no longer help Hitler.

Why did Hitler order the Berlin subway to be flooded?

It was not military defeats, not strategic considerations, and not statistics on the ratio of resources of the Axis countries and the coalition of allies that convinced Hitler that Germany would be defeated in the war. The Fuhrer finally lost faith in victory after ... the collapse of the expedition to Shambhala.

Allied troops approached the borders of Germany even before the “finishing” of the F-7 apparatus was completed. Experimental versions of the outlandish design had to be destroyed so that they would not fall into the hands of the rapidly advancing allied armies. Meanwhile, there was no news from the expedition sent to Tibet. There was no more hope...

According to occult prophecies, the impossibility of the onset of the Age of Fire means one thing - the End of the World should soon follow. These days, eternal night will fall on the earth, and flood waves will overwhelm the cities, washing away the hated servants of the Eternal Ice.

But ... the long-awaited denouement does not come. The events are by no means bringing near the End of the World and not even the end of Germany, but only the end of the “thousand-year Reich”.

At this time, strange motives appear in Hitler's statements. He, who has always extolled the German people, the Germanic race, and sworn allegiance to Greater Germany, suddenly starts talking about the Germans with contempt and almost disgust. Dr. Goebbels, infected with Hitler's sentiments, welcomes ... Allied aircraft that bombed German cities:

“Let the achievements of the idiotic 20th century perish under the ruins of our cities!”

More and more orders are being issued for the destruction of cities and the massacre of prisoners of war. None of these orders has a military meaning - on the contrary, the forces needed at the front are spent on their execution. The reprisals against prisoners of war and concentration camp prisoners seem absolutely insane, as if Hitler is performing a mass sacrifice.

In fact, it was. Hitler continued to believe in mystical revelations. And according to his theories, the energy released into space from the simultaneous mass death of a huge number of people will shift the earth's axis by several degrees and lead to a flood and glaciation of the planet.

The last attempt to cause a global flood was a ritual that shocked the battered executioners of the Black Order of the SS with its cruelty. The failed Messiah of Fire ordered the floodgates to be opened and the Berlin subway to be flooded. In those terrible days, the subway tunnels were a refuge for hundreds of thousands of wounded soldiers and civilians who took refuge here from the fire that fell on the capital of the Reich during the battles for Berlin. The waters of the Spree, which rushed into the metro in a swift stream, claimed the lives of 300,000 people ...

Historians have long puzzled over how this horrific and, as it seemed, ABSOLUTELY POINTLESS act could be explained. Within the framework of common sense, he did not find ANY explanation. But by then, Hitler had long since traded common sense for the wild theories of the late Hans Gorbiger.

The Old Gods did not hear Hitler. When he committed suicide, the world did not turn over and the earth's axis did not budge.

Following his Fuhrer, another mystic, a brilliant doctor of philosophy and an admirer of Dostoevsky, the virtuoso propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, left this world. Before his death, he poisoned six of his children. His last appeal to the people ended with strange words: "Our end will be the end of the universe."

Few listened to Goebbels in those days. But those who heard him, for sure, thought that the chief propagandist, as always expressed figuratively. And it never occurred to anyone that Goebbels himself, most likely, understood his words absolutely literally.

Luckily he was wrong...

Secrets of the Third Reich. What was it

It is difficult for a modern person to believe that the head of the largest power in the world for many years in his political and military calculations was guided by the dictates of spirits, ancient legends, secret signs and magic spells.

Nevertheless, even skeptical historians unanimously admit that both Hitler and the top leadership of the Reich (primarily Heinrich Himmler) not only showed interest in occult practices, but also checked their decisions with the instructions of otherworldly forces.

The presence next to the leaders of the Nazi regime of various kinds of sorcerers, soothsayers and adherents of secret Eastern teachings, the epic with secret Tibetan expeditions, attempts to saturate the SS order with a mixture of ancient Germanic, medieval and Eastern mysticism - all these are historical facts, repeatedly confirmed by countless testimonies.

And here comes the most difficult question. What was it? Blurred mind of a psychopath Hitler? A clever quackery that used the ignorance and lack of culture of most of the leaders of the Reich? Or was there really something behind this that went beyond our usual materialistic ideas?

The version about charlatans will have to be dismissed on the move. Hitler's acquaintance with occult practices began long before he came to power and had a very long (more than twenty years) history. All this time, Hitler lived in a very real world and did things that require earthly pragmatism, iron logic and common sense from a person.

If Hitler, like an impressionable and gullible young lady, had “hovered in the empyrean” all this time, he would never have reached the heights of power, and even more so, he would not have conquered half of Europe.

According to numerous memoirs (starting from the personal translator of the Fuhrer Paul Schmidt and ending with ministers and field marshals), Hitler had by no means a humanitarian mindset - he showed great interest in technology, was well versed in weapons, was excellent at the most complex economic issues and masterfully manipulated hundreds of figures and facts , which repeatedly baffled his closest associates.

Simply put, Hitler was a MORE THAN PRACTICAL MAN.

If we add to all this the Fuhrer's manic suspicion, it becomes clear that deliberately leading him by the nose with deft false mystical tricks was not only dangerous, but simply impossible.

Roughly the same can be said about Himmler. After all, he was not just an abstract dreamer who in the evenings from idleness fell into fantasies about other worlds and aliens. Himmler was the AUTHENTIC head of several secret services (from Schellenberg's foreign intelligence to the secret police of the Gestapo Müller). It was all the more impossible to captivate him with clever quackery.

There are also great doubts about the psychopathic manifestations of Hitler or the peculiarities of Himmler's psyche, as the reasons for their passion for secret knowledge. Signs of mental disorders in Hitler began to be observed only in 1943 (after the Stalingrad disaster). Before that, he gave the impression of a calm person.

His famous temper tantrums were often nothing more than a well-staged performance - there is quite a lot of evidence of this. Other than that, he was a completely normal person. Therefore, the version of madness will also have to be discarded, especially since, we note again, Hitler began experiments with the occult and secret teachings long before the end of the war, when his mental health really deteriorated.

Secrets of the Third Reich

The most plausible version seems to be the following.

At the beginning of Hitler's political career, representatives of secret societies, who had certain knowledge (possibly acquired in the east) about unconventional methods of influencing the human psyche and mass consciousness, really paid attention to him.

The leaders of these societies were by no means charlatans - they developed a number of amazing abilities in Hitler, above all the ability to magnetize the crowd.

Hitler was convinced with his own eyes that secret knowledge brings very real results. Apparently, the expeditions to the Kullu Valley also brought Hitler something that could eventually become a real superweapon in his hands. Perhaps mysticism had nothing to do with it at all.

If you do not believe in otherworldly forces, then it is quite logical to assume that the inhabitants of Tibet (cut off from the world for thousands of years) retained knowledge (including technical ones) that they inherited at one time from contacts with extraterrestrial civilizations.

In any case, the passion for Tibetan mysticism played a cruel joke on Hitler. While he equipped secret expeditions to the Kullu Valley and designed a superweapon in the form of a flying saucer, the real possibilities of creating new weapons passed by his attention.

In particular, the German leadership underestimated theories about nuclear fission and missed the opportunity to create an atomic bomb. The construction of the famous V-rockets was more successful, but, according to their chief designer, Wernher von Braun, this work began too late and progressed extremely slowly.

In a sense, one could say that the ancient legend of the Kullu Valley (and the amazing blueprints) paradoxically saved us all by diverting Hitler's attention from promising nuclear physics. After all, the majority of those living on the planet would never have been born if a nuclear bomb had been in the hands of a person who considered himself the Forerunner of Fire ...

The phrase “win with dead bodies” was coined by idiots. You can't win a war by throwing poorly armed soldiers to the slaughter. So you can only lose.

There are no examples in the military when “cheap and mass”, i.e., weak and defective, could successfully withstand the ultimate military equipment. Cases of rare luck and desperate heroism are not taken into account. On a strategic scale, more advanced technology has always “grinded” a technically backward enemy.

The trigger for writing this article was the endless debate about how simple and massive Soviet military products defeated the complex and expensive Tigers. This whole fairy tale is rather annoying, and its real plot is much simpler. On both sides of the front there were both "rare and expensive" and "simple and massive" cars. Everything has its own tactical niche. Your time and place.

The story of the confrontation between the "Tigers" and "thirty-fours" is a distorted tale about the war. On the real fronts of the Second World War, the Soviet Army and the Wehrmacht agreed not for life, but for death. Where 112 thousand Soviet armored vehicles (pre-war fleet, production during WWII, lend-lease) were opposed by about 90 thousand German armored vehicles.

The figure of 90,000 may be shocking at first. Readers will perplexedly count the “troikas”, “fours”, “panthers” ... 90 thousand will obviously not be typed there.

It would be better if they counted the BTT models according to the end-to-end nomenclature of the German Army Armaments Office. Where, for example, was an armored vehicle under the index Sd.Kfz 251, that is, the 251st model of Panzerwaffe armored vehicles!

Gloomy Sd.Kfz 251 (15 thousand units produced). It turned out to be so powerful and cool that it was produced in Czechoslovakia until 1962.

Critics will say that an armored personnel carrier is not a rival to a tank. Later, in the midst of the dispute, it turns out that the Sonderkrafttsoyg-251 was three tons heavier than the Soviet T-60 light tank. In no way inferior in terms of protection to light tanks and self-propelled guns, the German armored personnel carrier in terms of equipment, the quality of radio communications and surveillance devices could give odds to any allied tank. Cranes, winches, sets of mounted armor, assault bridges, radio stations ... With the help of these vehicles, German motorized infantry received a unique opportunity to act on a par with tanks: armored personnel carriers continuously accompanied heavy armored vehicles on the march and in battle.

On the basis of the Sd.Kfz 251, special-purpose armored vehicles were created - an infrared searchlight, a noise direction finder for counter-battery combat, an artillery fire spotter, and a Fernsprechpanzerwagen cable layer. Anyone who would argue that an armored cable layer is a parody of a tank, let him first roll a coil of telephone cable over the areas of the terrain that can be shot through. Where is one crazy fragment - and now there is no one to establish communication between the units ...

The front didn't look like a Hollywood shooting until you're blue in the face. The soldiers of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht were forced to solve a huge number of different tasks. On the successful implementation of which, on a strategic scale, the success of the entire defense and offensive depended. Intelligence, communications and combat management, delivery of ammunition and equipment to the front line, evacuation of the wounded, air defense, setting up minefields and, conversely, making safe passages in minefields (mines are a terrible enemy, a quarter of all armored vehicles were blown up on them during the Second World War) .

It is for this that the Germans created such a number of specialized models of armored personnel carriers. Such armored vehicles, when they appeared in the right place and at the right time, could be much more important than ordinary "linear" tanks.

What was more important on the front lines - a light tank or a ZSU based on the Sd.Kfz 251? Which, when attack aircraft appear, can protect the entire column with its fire?

Tank or armored ammo carrier? Which, at the height of the battle, will deliver shells to the battery? At that moment, EVERYTHING depends on him!

Tank or armored medevac? Which will help save the experienced crew of a wrecked tank? Returning from the hospital to the front, these "fired wolves" will still set the enemy on fire.

Tank or sound finder? Which will help to detect the coordinates of the enemy battery and direct dive bombers at it?

What is more important in a night tank attack: another tank or an infrared searchlight that will illuminate targets for a whole battalion of Panthers in pitch darkness?

For example, the 22nd modification (Sd.Kfz.251/22) is an armored tank destroyer with a 75 mm cannon.

16th modification - flamethrower armored vehicle; 10th mod. - armored personnel carrier with a 37-mm anti-tank gun; nine - with a short-barreled 75-mm gun. There was also a popular version with an 80mm mortar and a 280mm Wurflamen multiple launch rocket system!

The Sd.Kfz 251/21 self-propelled anti-aircraft gun had a combat module of three automatic guns. Firepower - like three Soviet light tanks.

In addition to dozens of the most amazing modifications, Sd.Kfz.251 had a "little brother" - Sd.Kfz.250 (4250 units were produced). And also a lot of "senior" ones, for example, combat vehicles in the form of a "heavy military tractor" of the sWS model. These peaceful German tractors weighing 13 tons with all-round armor usually served as the base for the placement of the Nebelwerfer MLRS.

And there were also beautiful and formidable Sd.Kfz 234 - the forerunners of modern "Strikers" and "Boomerangs". Eight-wheeled armored vehicles with anti-ballistic armor, 50 and 75 mm cannons and speeds up to 80 km/h on the highway.

Self-propelled guns on the chassis of captured French armored personnel carriers (Sd.Kfz 135 or "Marder-1").

Tank destroyers "Marder-2" and "Marder-3" on the Pz. Kpfw II with Soviet 76 mm divisional guns - the Fritz did not hesitate to use any captured equipment.

All this is just the tip of the iceberg.

If you dig deeper, you will suddenly find more five thousand BREM, medevac and ammunition carriers on the chassis of the Pz.Kpfw II tank. Someone will gloat that the Germans did not have enough guns to arm these chassis. However, taking into account all of the above, the Fritz really did not see the need to arm every armored vehicle. In return, preferring to thresh a lot of specialized BTT samples, "more in number, at a cheaper price."

As time has shown, this had its rational grain. It is no coincidence that today more than half of the armored personnel carriers of the armies of all countries are lightly armed or unarmed armored vehicles for special purposes (armored personnel carriers, command vehicles, aircraft controllers, etc., etc.).

As for tank battles, even a simple knowledge of history will show that tanks do not fight tanks. According to statistics, half of all destroyed BTT units were accounted for by anti-tank batteries. Another quarter was blown up by mines. Someone got hit by an air strike. The remainder will be divided by infantry and tankers.

That is why the dispute “T-34 against the “troika” / “four” / “Panther” does not make much sense. It would be more correct to speak about the presence in the troops of thousands of medium tanks and self-propelled guns on their chassis, which were used in direct fire contact with the enemy. They crushed infantry with caterpillars, fired at equipment, houses and fortifications.

Against 50 thousand Soviet T-34s, the Germans rolled out about the same number of "Triples", "Fours", "Panthers", all kinds of "Stugpantsers", "Hetzers" and "Jagdpantsers", "Brummbers", "Grille", "Hummels" and "Nashornov".

Sd.Kfz 162 or "Jagdpanzer IV", a total of 1977 tank destroyers of this type were produced

Against tens of thousands of light BTs and SU-76 self-propelled guns - tens of thousands of armed armored personnel carriers and armored vehicles for special purposes.

As for the handful of Tigers and Ferdinands, these were elite breakthrough machines. They occupied their important tactical niche. We went to places where an ordinary tank would not have crawled even a meter. "Purley in the forehead" on the batteries "forty-five". They were used in the most important sectors of the front.

Naturally, they were protected. To evacuate wrecked supertanks, the Germans created another three hundred 44-ton Bergepanthers.

What are their claims?

Of course, we had our own "elite tanks". With its own characteristics, which were dictated by the tactics of using BTT and the capabilities of the domestic industry. In the initial period - KV, after - guards ISs and powerful "St. John's wort" for storming enemy positions.

Why did such "smart" Germans eventually lose? The first reason is that they were outnumbered. The second is the resilience of the Soviet soldier.

And now, please, your criticism and comments on the material presented.

For many years, scientists from all over the world studied one of the most mysterious objects of the Nazis. And now the researchers are confident that they have never come close to unraveling the main secrets of these mysterious buildings.

Reporting by Dmitry Soshin.

Not just a bunker, a large underground fortress. Hitler wanted to seal the eastern borders of the Third Reich with a reinforced concrete castle. "Earthworm Lair" - the largest defensive system in Europe - was built for almost 10 years.

Sylvia Banek, historian-enthusiast: "Rails of a narrow-gauge railway pass here. During the war, electric trains ran here, they carried soldiers and equipment."

Underground life was so intense that the tunnels gradually became squares and stations, although without platforms and waiting rooms. The waypoints near the "Northern Station" still work like new.

Silvia Banek, a student from Poznań, has been studying the "Lair of the Earthworm" for a long time. She is one of the few who are allowed to bring curious historians and journalists here. 5 years ago, the authorities set up guards near the entrance to the bunker: they are worried not only by teenagers who draw "graffiti". People began to disappear into the dungeon - 30 kilometers of tunnels have not been fully explored.

Sylvia Banek, enthusiastic historian: "This is a rather dangerous place. There is no complete scheme of all firing points and all tunnels. We have to fence off all unexplored places."

Bats are the only guardians of the dungeon. There are so many of them here that the local authorities declared the old ventilation shafts a nature reserve.

Everything was in the underground city: railway stations, hospital, barracks. And in the wing was a large armory room. Toward the end of the war, workers were brought here and machines were installed. For the underground factory, the cable had to be re-laid.

Engines for combat aircraft were assembled in a Polish underground. The workshop worked until February 1945: by that time, the Red Army had encircled the Mezeretsky district.

Every year, on Victory Day, military-historical clubs "play out" the assault on the underground citadel. In fact, "Earthworm's Lair" was printed out in 2 days. The surviving defenders of pillbox No. 712, the only firing point that held the defense, were released by the Red Army men home.

Robert Yurga, historian-enthusiast: "There were almost no officers among the Germans, soldiers, almost boys, lived in concrete bags. It seems that the command simply forgot about them."

If earlier speleologists and thrill-seekers from Holland and Germany aspired here, recently the Poles living in the neighborhood want to go underground.

Sylvia Banek, historian-enthusiast: "They come here several times, and not to look at the rusty rails! They ask a lot of questions. They are not indifferent to how their homeland was liberated."

Historians from Warsaw dream of dismantling the brickwork and getting to the side, "reserve" tunnels. By order of Stalin, they were walled up immediately after the war. And, perhaps, then "Earthworm's Lair" will reveal all its secrets.