William Tompkins

William Mills Tompkins (May 29, 1923 – August 21, 2017), also known as Bill Tompkins, was an aerospace engineer and U.S. Navy intelligence operative who claimed direct involvement in classified programs linking American aerospace development to extraterrestrial intelligence through the U.S. government's purported secret space programs and alleged cooperation with non-human intelligent beings. He worked from the early 1940s through the 1960s at Douglas Aircraft Company, North American Aviation, Northrop, and Lockheed, and later at TRW Inc., which he described as having emerged directly from the Douglas secret think tank. He claimed that Nordic extraterrestrials (often referred to as Nordics) guided him throughout his career and that Germany had, under the Nazi electrogravitic development programs, produced over a thousand ET-derived vehicles during World War II — with most of these spacecraft relocated to Antarctica before the war ended as part of what he described as the predecessor of the Nachtwaffen (Dark Fleet). His 2015 autobiography Selected by Extraterrestrials and his subsequent interviews brought him to prominence in secret space program research circles and within the broader UFO community and UFOlogy milieu, where his claims are discussed alongside other whistleblower accounts central to the ET conspiracy theory and exopolitics literatures on the history of government–NHI interaction.

Early life and family

Historic photograph of U.S. Navy officers and civilians examining the warship recognition models hand-built by the young Tompkins, reproduced in Selected by Extraterrestrials.

Tompkins was born in 1923 and grew up in Los Angeles, California. His father, Sherrill Mills Tompkins, was allegedly a prominent figure in the Hollywood film industry who founded Standard Film Laboratories near Santa Monica Boulevard, a massive production facility that employed hundreds of technicians and processed films for distribution to over 140 countries worldwide. According to Tompkins, his father was reportedly "secretly way above a thirty-third degree Freemason" and allegedly inserted subliminal information into films as a form of mind control.

During his childhood, Tompkins lived with his aunt and uncle in Santa Monica, where his uncle Dr. Harding served as head surgeon at Santa Monica Hospital and conducted extensive research on the Egyptian pyramids. Dr. Harding believed the pyramids were built by extraterrestrial beings connected to the Orion constellation and were far older than conventional archaeology suggested — at least 14,000 to 20,000 years old rather than the accepted 3,000-year timeline. As a teenager he constructed a collection of 309 scale-model naval ships incorporating classified radar arrays and weapons systems he had memorized on visits to the Long Beach naval docks; the Los Angeles Times reported that he possessed an apparent photographic memory. Naval Intelligence investigated the display of these models in a Los Angeles department store in 1942 and subsequently recruited him into the Navy.

Tompkins reported witnessing the Los Angeles air raid of February 1942 from Long Beach as a young man, describing multiple craft that appeared sequentially over several hours and large round objects illuminated by anti-aircraft searchlights that withstood fire for nearly five hours. According to his detailed account, the incident began with searchlights illuminating a large object, followed by "three, then five other ships" appearing near the initial craft, with anti-aircraft fire directed at each vehicle as they passed by. Tompkins described an unusual psychological effect during the event, noting that despite hundreds of witnesses, there was no panic or fear: "It was like a spell; why were not one of the hundreds of us watching this event concerned or frightened?" He reported that unlike other witnesses who suspected a Japanese attack, he concluded the objects "were not dropping bombs and must be from somewhere out there in the galaxy," and he later interpreted this as a deliberate demonstration by a Nordic space fleet designed to select him for future collaboration, as well as the catalyst for the Navy's intense interest in the German extraterrestrial-technology question.

Naval Intelligence spy network (1942–1945)

The "Miniature U.S. Fleet" — a display case of the hand-built scale warship models that, in Tompkins' account, drew Naval Intelligence to recruit him in 1942.

From 1942 to 1945, Tompkins said, a network of 28–30 U.S. Navy spies embedded in Nazi Germany gathered technical information on Germany's extraterrestrial-assisted advanced technology programs and relayed it through debriefing sessions at Naval Air Station North Island, San Diego, to Admiral Rico Botta, who reportedly disseminated the intelligence in sealed packages to leading American aerospace contractors — a classified operation Tompkins described as the foundation of the post-war secret space program. Recruited into Naval Intelligence in 1942 following a naval security review of his ship-model display, Tompkins served from 1942 to 1947 as a draftsman and courier designated "Disseminator of Aircraft Research and Information," with the primary role of taking notes during debriefing sessions and then physically transporting the resulting packages to contractors including Douglas Aircraft Company, Northrop, Lockheed, and North American Aviation. The network's intelligence formed the basis for secret space program research and development that later accelerated at the Douglas Aircraft Advanced Design Section from 1950 onward.

Admiral Rico Botta and the debriefs

By 1942 the Navy had established a small, highly compartmentalised intelligence unit at North Island tasked with receiving and processing debriefs from agents embedded in German military-industrial facilities — agents observing what Tompkins described as an extraterrestrial-assisted manufacturing programme operating inside Germany. Admiral Rico Botta (referred to in Tompkins' account as "Admiral Rick Obatta") commanded the operation as the network's organizer and principal handler, responsible for receiving intelligence from the roughly 28–30 Navy spies who had penetrated German manufacturing facilities at various stages of the war. Tompkins described serving as "staff to Admiral Rick Obatta, Commander, Naval Intelligence," with a high-wing DH-2 aircraft assigned to him for missions to Douglas and other western facilities. When spies returned from Germany — in some cases after months inside German facilities — they were debriefed in sessions Tompkins attended, taking notes that were then compiled into sealed packages. He also described participating in the development of classified intelligence photographs documenting "German attempts to build a flying saucer," working in the darkroom of North Island's classified photo department while processing Admiral Botta's secret intelligence materials. Researcher Michael Salla subsequently obtained FOIA documentation confirming that Botta visited Lockheed, Douglas, Northrop, and North American facilities in the period immediately prior to Tompkins' courier runs to those same firms, substantiating the broad pattern described. Researcher Len Kasten, in his book Dark Fleet, likewise states that Tompkins reported directly to Admiral Rico Botta and that the Douglas spies embedded in Germany were themselves Navy assets.

Intelligence content

The intelligence relayed by the embedded spies concerned Nazi Germany's programme of manufacturing disc-shaped and other unconventional aircraft derived from extraterrestrial technical assistance. Tompkins described Germany as having been placed by Reptilian entities in receipt of advanced propulsion and materials information and as having put 1,214 distinct extraterrestrial-type vehicle designs into production using slave labour. The spies reported on multiple aspects of the programme, including electrogravitic and anti-gravity propulsion designs derived from alien technical exchanges, manufacturing processes for disc-shaped craft, the involvement of off-planet entities in advising German scientific teams, and underground construction programmes for large craft. The technical specifications for the unconventional propulsion systems were, in Tompkins' account, the driver for Botta's dissemination programme to American contractors.

Role as courier and compartmentalisation

Tompkins' courier work involved physically transporting sealed packages from North Island to the receiving companies' facilities on repeated trips throughout the 1942–1945 period, in some cases continuing into 1947, with multiple visits each to Douglas Aircraft Company (Santa Monica), Lockheed (Burbank), Northrop, and North American Aviation. He later stated that the first package he delivered to Lockheed's valley facility was the document that seeded what became Skunk Works. The compartmentalisation was strict: individual contractors received packages specific to their own programme areas and were not in formal communication with one another, though at a senior technical level informal coordination existed among the most senior figures at Douglas, Lockheed, and Northrop. Tompkins noted that the programme was kept secret not only from the public but from most of the Navy itself: only a small number of senior admirals and generals received briefings on the extraterrestrial dimension of the intelligence, while line officers at North Island were unaware of the nature of the debriefs they supported. He characterised the operation as functioning "inside the Navy, but above the Navy," with Botta reporting upward through channels that bypassed the normal chain of command.

Tompkins' supervisors at Douglas later told him of the extraordinary nature of his security access during the Naval Intelligence period: "every time — since your first top secret disseminator assignment in Naval Intelligence — you were requested to visit or work in a classified military facility and you were never ever denied access. Even admirals commanding Battle Groups in combat were denied access that you can just walk right into." This access was attributed to his identification as a "preferred human contactee" who had been "tracked by both extraterrestrials and an elite Naval intelligence-gathering operation since Commander Perry reviewed your Naval ship model collection documentation in 1940." Donald Douglas Sr. — who established the classified Advanced Design Section at Douglas following the 1942 Los Angeles event and who was among the recipients of the Botta–Tompkins intelligence pipeline — was described by Tompkins as having helped found the oversight group of two Navy admirals and two Army Air Force generals, as having been "far more important in this whole thing than people realize," and as an early member of MJ-12. In 1950–1951 the wartime intelligence-reception operation gave way to its institutional successor, the Douglas Advanced Design Section, into which Tompkins moved as a draftsman.

Douglas Aircraft think tank

Schematic of a kilometers-long "Naval Spacecraft Carrier" from a 1954 U.S. Navy advanced-design study, reproduced by Tompkins in Selected by Extraterrestrials; such craft are cited in connection with the alleged Solar Warden program.

After brief stints at Northrop, North American's cybernetics lab (where he reported seeing circuit board prototypes stated to be made from extraterrestrial materials recovered from crashed non-human craft), and Lockheed, Tompkins joined Douglas Aircraft Company in Santa Monica in 1950–1951 as a draftsman, and was transferred into the highly classified Advanced Design Section, which conducted reverse engineering of exotic alien technology. The section — which he called the Douglas Think Tank — operated inside a walled-off, locked area of the Engineering department and studied, in his account, defensive and offensive responses to multiple extraterrestrial threats on behalf of the Navy. Kasten notes that Tompkins entered the tank in March 1951 without a formal engineering credential, was promoted to associate engineer after only six weeks, and spent roughly twelve and a half years in it — working alongside Dr. Wolfgang B. Klemperer and VP Elmer Wheaton — before leaving Douglas in 1963.

Tompkins stated that he personally designed naval spacecraft carriers — Electrogravitic-propelled vessels he described as forerunners of the Solar Warden fleet — ranging from one to 1.5 kilometres in length, Moon bases, a station to be built on Mars, and the checkout and launch systems for the Apollo Saturn V, which he described as conceived at Douglas four years before NASA existed. He described his think-tank colleagues — operating under VP Elmer Wheaton and German scientific advisor Dr. Wolfgang Klemperer — designing spacecraft carrier configurations to counter what they called the "alien threat file." According to Kasten, Tompkins reported being assisted in this work by "two attractive Nordic extraterrestrial women" who knew more than the engineers and supplied design inputs which he experienced as mental flashes. In his account, the think tank originated Project RAND and later TRW Inc., and held informal channels of technical coordination with Northrop, Lockheed's Skunk Works, and Boeing.

Extraterrestrial claims

Tompkins claimed that throughout his time at Douglas he was allegedly guided by three Nordic individuals — tall, human-appearing beings — whom he encountered working on the Apollo program, describing these relationships as sustained extraterrestrial interactions with benevolent non-human intelligent beings working against hostile Reptilian factions. He stated that Nordic secretaries embedded in the think tank covertly directed his design work. He further claimed that Draco Reptilians allegedly exerted influence over all U.S. presidents through MJ-12 structures purportedly operating behind the scenes.

Regarding World War II, Tompkins described Nazi Germany as having manufactured 1,214 extraterrestrial-type vehicles using slave labour; he claimed approximately 90 percent of this programme was evacuated to Antarctica before the war ended and remained operational there. He described Operation Paperclip as far larger than publicly acknowledged — not merely a handful of German scientists but a massive organisation, with the principal figures Wernher von Braun and Kurt Debus arriving in the United States already embedded in the extraterrestrial spacecraft-carrier programme they had been managing underground in Germany, where the work drew on earlier efforts to reverse engineer captured non-human craft.

Drawing by Tompkins captioned "Apollo / Neil Armstrong, July 20 1969," depicting alleged non-human craft on the lunar surface at the time of the Apollo 11 landing, from Selected by Extraterrestrials.

On the Apollo 11 landing, Tompkins alleged that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin encountered large structured spacecraft around Tranquility Base, that Armstrong purportedly relayed "they're massive, they're threatening" during the landing, and that Armstrong filmed these vehicles — footage Tompkins claimed was suppressed.

Tompkins described Northrop's acquisition of both TRW Inc. and the Newport News naval shipyard as driven by a goal of redesigning aircraft carriers into kilometre-long spacecraft carriers for a secret space fleet, a programme he framed as a partial and controlled disclosure of classified space operations. He additionally described receiving ongoing telepathic communication from Nordic beings into old age, and attributed the formation of a Navy League Council in southern Oregon — which attracted around seventy retired naval officers — to their guidance.

Selected by Extraterrestrials

Tompkins published his autobiography Selected by Extraterrestrials: My life in the top secret world of UFOs, think-tanks and Nordic secretaries in 2015 through CreateSpace, edited by Dr. Robert M. Wood (a former Douglas engineer who overlapped with Tompkins and had worked on the Thor missile, Nike Zeus, and Saturn programmes) and with associate editing by Nick Redfern. Wood, a former Douglas engineer who independently confirmed the existence of the think tank and its key supervisors (Elmer Wheaton and Dr. Wolfgang Klemperer), vouched for Tompkins's credibility, noting that both men had worked for the same vice-presidents and knew the same key figures. A second volume, Selected by Extraterrestrials Volume 2: My life in the top secret world of UFOs, Think Tanks and Nordic secretaries, was published in 2020 by Kindle Direct Publishing, with Michael Salla as assistant editor alongside Robert M. Wood; it opens with a eulogy for Tompkins and reiterates the Admiral Rico Botta chapter structure of the first volume, establishing the Botta reporting chain and subsequent Douglas/RAND continuity as the narrative spine of his testimony.

Public exposure

Tompkins was first interviewed publicly by Dr. Robert Wood around 2009, but nothing was released at that time. In December 2016 Kerry Cassidy of Project Camelot published a two-part interview series, William Tompkins Selected by Extraterrestrials, described as detailing "German alliances with Reptilians and Dracos, the infiltration of NASA by these beings as well as the positive contribution by the Nordics to our secret space program over decades since at least the 1920s." Michael Salla, who became assistant editor on Volume 2, cited FOIA-verified documentation of Tompkins' courier runs to major aerospace firms as corroborating the broad outline of his account. Corey Goode, another secret space program claimant, stated that Tompkins's testimony aligned with his own separate testimony. The UFO: WHISTLEBLOWER! podcast ran a dedicated two-part series on Tompkins in which he described, among other things, the Northrop spacecraft-carrier acquisitions, the Moon landing encounter, and ongoing Nordic telepathic contact. The series' Part 1 episode, sourced from a Kerry Cassidy/Project Camelot interview, focused on Tompkins' Douglas and Naval Intelligence career and his claims about the Ben Rich connection to the Skunk Works.

In Part 1, Tompkins described a pattern of technical coordination at the highest classified level among Douglas, Northrop, Lockheed's Skunk Works, and Boeing, distinct from ordinary competitive information-exchange; he described personally delivering the first paper that led to the formation of Skunk Works to Lockheed's Valley facility. He stated that Donald Douglas senior had been "far more important in this whole thing than people realize" in terms of extraterrestrial knowledge-sharing, and that Kelly Johnson and Douglas had informally coordinated. He described a Boeing advanced design division abruptly folding a conventional fighter project and relocating its engineers to a southern California facility to begin designing what he called a "Starship Enterprise."

Regarding RAND, Tompkins stated it had originated entirely inside the Douglas Think Tank, then divorced from Douglas roughly eight months before he joined in 1951; he described a massive underground RAND complex beneath Point Loma, San Diego, adjacent to an underground space facility visible from the heights overlooking the bay. He stated that Wernher von Braun and Kurt Debus — the principal Operation Paperclip scientists — had already been managing underground construction of extraterrestrial spacecraft carriers in Germany during the war before their arrival in the United States, and characterised NASA as the first major institution to be infiltrated by Nazi ideology.

Tompkins told his interviewers that all countries and all human civilisations had been lied to about the extraterrestrial situation for a minimum of six thousand years, and that the public, the country, and the planet needed to know "what has taken place."

Death

Tompkins died on August 21, 2017, in San Diego, California. His posthumous second volume, Selected by Extraterrestrials Volume 2, appeared in 2020 with a eulogy and an expanded treatment of the Admiral Rico Botta reporting chain.

Place in UFO research literature

Schematic of a "Naval Galactic Battlecruiser" reproduced by Tompkins from a 1954 U.S. Navy advanced-design study; his Douglas-era designs are treated by Len Kasten as the origin narrative of Solar Warden.

While embraced within portions of the UFO and conspiracy theory milieu, Tompkins' accounts are reportedly dismissed by mainstream scientists and historians as lacking substantiated evidence, and are often categorised alongside other extraordinary whistleblower testimony about reverse-engineered non-human technology. Nonetheless, his detailed claims about Douglas, Northrop, and Lockheed have shaped discussion of purported government–NHI programmes and continue to be cited within UFOlogy research communities. Kasten's Dark Fleet (2020) treats Tompkins as the principal source for the origin narrative of the Solar Warden programme, identifying his Douglas design work in the 1950s as "the beginning of the American Secret Space Program" and corroborating the Nordic-liaison framing through the parallel testimony of Corey Goode.

See also

• U.S. Navy intelligence operations
• Project Blue Book
• List of whistleblowers and experiencers in UFOlogy
• History of technological development assistance by NHIBs to terrestrial humans
• Rico Botta
• Solar Warden
• Dark Fleet
• Operation Paperclip

References