The alleged crash landing of a UFO back in 1947 was probably the best thing that ever have happened to Roswell, New Mexico, as it’s kept the Chaves County city on the world stage for over sixty years, bringing with it considerable business from UFOlogists, conspiracy theorists and a regular number of film & TV production companies.

Almost every week there’s a (supposedly) new story about the “Roswell Incident” usually relating to sighting of UFOs, or genuine info on government cover-ups, or tales of contact with little grey men or scary men in black. The latest “expose” comes from a new documentary UFOs in the Third Reich to be screened tonight on German television channel N24, which claims that the spacecraft that crashed at Roswell in July 1947 was in fact “a Nazi UFO.”

The suggestion that the Nazis were developing “flying saucers” has long been documented—in fact the US space program would not have been as successful without the import of many former German rocket scientists—and the subject matter of Nazi UFOs has also long been a staple trope of cable TV producers who know that having “Nazi,” “Hitler” or “UFO” in the title is a way to surefire success. Indeed, this piece of trivia was probably first discovered by the late journalist and humorist Alan Coren in the 1980s, when he decided he wanted a bestselling book. After skimming through the bestseller lists, Mr. Coren noticed the biggest sellers (in the UK) were books on cats, golf and Nazis. He therefore had a selection of his collected journalism published under the title Golfing for Cats with a Nazi flag on the cover. It was, of course, an immense bestseller.
 

Stories of Nazi made UFOs have long made the news like this story from German paper Bild in 2004
 
UFOs in the Third Reich claims the spacecraft that crashed at Roswell was a forerunner to today’s Stealth fighter, and was designed by the scientists behind the development of the Nazi V-2 rocket. According to the program these scientists were covertly taken to America at the end of the war to help the USA have an edge over Soviet Russia in the space race.

Amongst these scientist was allegedly the mass killer Nazi SS General Hans Kammler, who had been head of the Third Reich’s construction and defense projects, responsible for organizing forced labor factories at Auschwitz concentration camp and at Germany’s secret V-2 rocket plants.

The documentary interviews a wealth of expert historians, scientists and archivists including Igor Witkowski, a Polish ex-journalist and historian of military and aerospace technology, who wrote a book Prawda O Wunderwaffe (The Truth About The Wunderwaffe) that detailed Adolf Hitler’s plans for a Nazi flying saucer airforce or “Wunderwaffe” and wrote at length of Nazis producing a “bell-shaped” spacecraft” which they tested over Prague and Germany.

This claim is backed up by German engineer George Klein, who confirms such spacecraft were developed by the Nazis during the Second World War. In the Daily Express, Klein is quoted as saying:

“I don’t consider myself a crackpot or eccentric or someone given to fantasies.

“This is what I saw, with my own eyes; a Nazi UFO.”

Sightings of this “Nazi UFO” were made by British and American bomber crews, who reported strange flying objects over enemy territory. It is now thought that these sightings were of the “Bell” spacecraft test flights.
 

The ‘bell shaped’ spacecraft as imagined in the documentary.
 
UFOs in the Third Reich goes on to explore the possibility that another Nazi-era flying saucer, known as the “Schriever-Habermohl model” may have crashed at Roswell in 1947

The “Schriever-Habermohl model” was designed by engineers Rudolf Schriever and Otto Habermohl in Prague between 1941-1943. It is claimed that the plans for the craft were taken to America in 1945

There are many eyewitness reports that the “Schriever-Habermohl model” did fly over Prague on several occasions.

Joseph Andreas Epp, an engineer who served as a consultant to the Schriever-Habermohl project, stated fifteen prototypes were built in total.

He described how a central cockpit surrounded by rotating adjustable wing-vanes formed a circle.

The vanes were held together by a band at the outer edge of the wheel-like device.

The pitch of the vanes could be adjusted so that during take off more lift was generated by increasing their angle from a more horizontal setting.

In level flight the angle would be adjusted to a smaller angle, similar to the way helicopter rotors operate.

The wing-vanes were to be set in rotation by small rockets placed around the rim like a pinwheel.

Once rotational speed was sufficient, lift-off was achieved.

After the craft had risen to some height the horizontal jets or rockets were ignited.

“After this the wing-blades would be allowed to rotate freely as the saucer moved forward as in an auto-gyrocopter.

“In all probability, the wing-blades speed, and so their lifting value, could also be increased by directing the adjustable horizontal jets slightly upwards to engage the blades, thus spinning them faster at the digression of the pilot,” he said.

UFOs in the Third Reich will be broadcast tonight in Germany Channel N24. Of course, if you can’t wait that long, here’s one (quite similar!) that was made earlier.
 

 
Curiouser, and curiouser… The Daily Mail reports on a memo that appears “to prove that aliens did land in New Mexico.”

A bizarre memo that appears to prove that aliens did land in New Mexico prior to 1950 has been published by the FBI. The bureau has made thousands of files available in a new online resource called The Vault.

Among them is a memo to the director from Guy Hottel, the special agent in charge of the Washington field office in 1950.

The memo has been published on the FBI website. In the memo, whose subject line is ‘Flying Saucers’, Agent Hottel reveals that an Air Force investigator had stated that ‘three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico’.

The investigator gave the information to a special agent, he said. The FBI has censored both the agent and the investigator’s identity.

Agent Hottel went on to write: ‘They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter.

‘Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall,’ he stated.

The bodies were ‘dressed in a metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed flyers and test pilots.’

He said that the informant, whose identity was censored in the memo, claimed the saucers had been found in New Mexico ‘due to the fact that the Government has a very high-powered radar set-up in that area and it is believed the radar interferes with the controlling mechanism of the saucers’.

He then stated that the special agent did not attempt to investigate further.

The release of the secret memo is likely to fuel conspiracy theorists’ claims of a government cover-up.

The town of Roswell in New Mexico became infamous after reports that a flying saucer had crashed in the desert near a military base there on or around July 2, 1947.

The bodies of aliens were said to have been recovered and autopsied by the U.S. military, but American authorities allegedly covered the incident up

Military authorities issued a press release, which began: ‘The many rumours regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence officer of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc.’

The headlines screamed: ‘Flying Disc captured by Air Force.’ Yet, just 24 hours later, the military changed their story and claimed the object they’d first thought was a ‘flying disc’ was a weather balloon that had crashed on a nearby ranch.

Amazingly, the media and the public accepted the explanation without question. Roswell disappeared from the news until the late Seventies, when some of the military involved began to speak out.

Another memo published in The Vault from 1947 claimed that an object ‘purporting to be a flying disc’ had been recovered near Roswell.

The disc was ‘hexagonal in shape’ and ‘suspended from a balloon by a cable’, according to the memo, marked as ‘Urgent’, to the FBI director.

The memo noted that the disc resembled a weather balloon - but claimed that a telephone conversation between the Air Force and the field office ‘had not [word censored] borne out this belief’.

The disc and balloon were being transported to Wright Field for further inspection, the memo noted.

It added that the information was being flagged up because of ‘national interest’ in the episode, and noting that both NBC and the AP were set to break the story that day.

Of course, such loose-leaf documents are easy to forge, but it should be possible to confirm the existence of “Agent Hottel”. If it is a forgery, I doubt it will effect the interest in Roswell or, stories of alien landings. Indeed, the Daily Mail ran another story on Roswell in 2007, in which an officer’s deathbed confession confirmed extraterrestrials had landed back in 1947. This report can be read here.