Haunebu

Haunebu — also called Flugscheibe ("flying disc") and Reichsflugscheibe ("Reich flying disc") — is a claimed series of disc-shaped aircraft alleged to have been developed under the German SS during the Second World War, using exotic vortex or torsion field propulsion rather than conventional jet or rocket power. The Haunebu claims circulate primarily in post-reunification German fringe and neo-Nazi publishing and remain without confirmed wartime documentation, distinguishing them from better-evidenced SS advanced weapons projects such as the Bell.

Description and specifications (as claimed)

Fringe researchers and post-war occultist-nationalist sources describe three Haunebu variants of increasing size. The Haunebu I is alleged to have had a diameter of approximately 25 metres; the Haunebu II, 32 metres; and the Haunebu III, 71 metres. The propulsion system is variously called the Thule Triebwerk, the Vril Triebwerk, the "tachyonator," or the "Schumann-Levitator" — named after W. O. Schumann, the Munich physicist alleged by these sources to have been a member of both the Thule Society and the Vril Society and to have participated in secret pre-war disc research. The claimed propulsion principle involves counter-rotating electromagnetic fields in discs, producing lift through manipulation of zero-point energy or vacuum flux — what some sources call "alternative science" in contrast to the Peenemünde rocket programme.

The development body for the Haunebu programme is identified in these accounts as the SS-E-IV (SS Entwicklungsstelle IV, or SS Development Station IV), described as an Heinrich Himmler-controlled unit investigating zero-point energy and anti-gravity within the broader Kammlerstab black projects empire. Some accounts additionally describe an "Andromeda Device" — a cigar-shaped, 150-yard-long mother ship built at the Zeppelin works intended to carry multiple Haunebu craft.

Origins of the claims

The broader narrative of a German wartime disc-aircraft programme entered West German public discourse in the 1950s when Rudolf Schriever gave interviews to the West German press recounting work he had done for the Heinkel company in 1940–1941 on flying disc aerodynes. The story was systematised by Rudolf Lusar in his 1950s book on German secret weapons, which identified "the German experts Schriever, Habermohl, and Miethe, and the Italian Bellonzo" as key figures, and stated that "the first projects, called 'flying disks', were undertaken in 1941." In 1958 the USAF Air Force Intelligence commissioned a secret appraisal of Lusar's book by Dr. Stefan Possony's special studies group.

The Schriever-Habermohl project

The best-documented of the wartime German disc programmes was based at Prag-Gbell airport (modern Prague), where Rudolf Schriever — an engineer and test pilot — and Otto Habermohl developed competing rotor-vane designs with technical assistance from the Skoda Works and participation by the Junkers, Wilhelm Gustloff, and Kieler Leichtbau firms. The project began under Ernst Udet and the Luftwaffe, was transferred to Albert Speer's Armament Ministry under engineer Georg Klein, and was finally taken over by the SS under Hans Kammler in 1944.

According to engineer Joseph Andreas Epp, who served as a consultant to both the Schriever-Habermohl and Miethe-Belluzzo projects and claimed origination of the design concept, fifteen prototypes were built in total. The design described by Rudolf Lusar — who worked in the German Patent Office — consisted of a central cockpit surrounded by rotating adjustable wing-vanes forming a wheel, with small rim-mounted rockets for initial spin-up and then jet or rocket engines for horizontal propulsion after lift-off, the wing-vanes acting as auto-gyrocopter blades in forward flight.

An eyewitness at the Prag-Gbell facility reported seeing a short test flight as early as August or September 1943: the craft was 5–6 metres in diameter, aluminium in colour, resting on four thin legs, and flew approximately 300 metres at one metre altitude before landing — the witness was 200 metres away and one of many flight-training students present at the time. The official test flight observed by Georg Klein and Epp was on 14 February 1945; on that test, top speed was reported by Epp at 2,200 km/h and by Lusar at 2,000 km/h, with a previous unofficial flight having reportedly broken the sound barrier in manned flight (though the pilot was frightened by vibrations at that speed). Test pilot Otto Lange later signed a statement crediting Epp with the invention and claiming he personally flew the saucer 500 kilometres in testing — a statement corroborated by Lange's independent presence in U.S. intelligence documents as a member of the Rüstungsstab (Armament Staff).

As Soviet forces approached Prague in April 1945, Czech technicians reportedly looted the facility; the prototypes at Prag-Gbell were pushed onto the tarmac and burned. Otto Habermohl disappeared, presumed captured by the Soviets. Schriever packed his plans in his car and drove into southern Germany, dying in 1953 (though one Bavarian witness reportedly identified him alive in 1964–65).

The Miethe-Belluzzo project

A second and distinct disc programme was directed by Dr. Richard Miethe (also styled Dr. Heinrich Richard Miethe), described by Epp as "a known V-weapons designer," working in facilities at Dresden, Breslau, and Letov/Prague with Italian engineering expert Giuseppe Belluzzo — a steam turbine authority who had been Italy's Deputy Senator and Minister of National Economy under Mussolini. The Miethe-Belluzzo designs were distinct from the Schriever-Habermohl rotor-vane type: the outer periphery of the craft did not rotate, and the disc measured 42 metres (138 feet) in diameter. Three designs are attributed to the Miethe-Belluzzo project: a non-VTOL design with twelve outboard jet engines and a periscope cockpit (the reconstruction published by Georg Klein); a second design featuring a separate rotating disc and stabilising gyroscope wheel; and a third, symmetrical VTOL design with twelve adjustable jet nozzles controlled by a surrounding ring.

After the war, Belluzzo was publicly quoted in the Los Angeles Mirror in March 1950 — one of the earliest English-language references to German flying discs — confirming that disc models had been drawn in Germany and Italy around 1942 and shown to both Mussolini and Hitler. He died in Rome on 22 May 1952; his obituary in the New York Times mentioned his work on the German saucer programme. Dr. Miethe is reported to have gone to Canada after the war to work on the joint Avro Canada – U.S. Air Force disc project, a claim repeated by Klein, Epp, Barton, and Lusar.

The specifically Haunebu-named programme, with its occult-technical elaborations, emerged from a separate and later tradition. According to researcher Joseph P. Farrell, the primary sources for the Haunebu mythology are the pseudonymous "Jan Van Helsing" (Secret Societies: Their Power and Influence in the Twentieth Century) and the authors Jürgen-Ratthofer and Ettl, who "first popularized the references to the mysterious 'Vril' force in Neo-Nazi circles." Jürgen-Ratthofer and Ettl assert that in June 1934, Lothar Weiz flew the first RFZ 1 (Rundflugzeug) at Brandenburg, and that "the Thule Society took a hand by establishing the SS Development Department E-IV for advanced saucer technology." Farrell notes that "it would be easy to dismiss all these Neo-Nazi fantasies as the ravings of utter lunatics, were it not for a few uncomfortable facts" — namely, the real existence of aeronautical engineers such as Fleissner and the documented interest of Allied intelligence in German disc research.

Relationship to documented programmes

Unlike the Haunebu claims, at least four documented or partially-attested wartime disc or unconventional aircraft projects provide a factual core to the broader Nazi UFO legend:

• Schriever and Habermohl (BMW München): Schriever's postwar press accounts and his alleged Heinkel work in 1940–1941 are the earliest named testimony.
• Miethe (Breslau): Identified alongside Schriever and Habermohl by Lusar; postwar he reportedly went to the United States and Canada. Farrell also notes an earlier Miethe in connection with German pre-war alchemical/physics research, though whether it is the same individual is unresolved.
• Bellonzo / Belluzzo (Italian engineer): Giuseppe Belluzzo, an Italian steam turbine expert and former minister in the Mussolini government, publicly confirmed in 1950 that "models for flying discs had been drawn in Germany and Italy at about the same time in 1942, and were shown to both Mussolini and Hitler." He died in Rome in 1952.
• Fleissner (Peenemünde): Heinrich Fleissner, a German fluidics engineer, described in a 1980 interview with Neue Presse a "Flugscheibe" project based at Peenemünde, claiming speeds of up to 3,000 km/h in-atmosphere and 10,000 km/h outside it. Fleissner filed a US patent (No. 2,939,648) for a flying saucer design on 28 March 1955, though it was not granted until five years later.

Prague-area facilities (the Skoda Works at Pilsen and workshops near the city) have been identified by Farrell and others as likely production or development sites for some of the most advanced German black projects, including work linked to Hans Kammler's Sonderkommando.

Propulsion theories

The claimed propulsion principle for the Haunebu series combines several elements drawn from real wartime German research traditions and fringe physics. Viktor Schauberger's "implosion" physics — the use of extreme temperature gradients and vorticular spiraling motion to approach a cold-plasma state — was pursued under SS sponsorship using concentration camp labour and placed within the orbit of the Kammlerstab. Schauberger's disc designs stood at "the boundary between the German 'suction' saucers and field propulsion craft proper."

The Haunebu propulsion mythology overlays this with the "Schumann-Levitator" or "tachyonator" terminology derived from the SS-E-IV framework and the alleged knowledge of Vril Society mediums, conflating Schauberger's vortex physics with zero-point energy theory and occult "aetheric" traditions. Farrell's analysis describes the overall research direction as a well-funded SS effort to understand "the relationship of the zero point energy, rotating fields, and gravity" — an effort that may have had legitimate scientific components but whose association with the specifically named Haunebu craft has not been verified from contemporaneous documents.

Documentation issues

The Haunebu claims present a sharply different evidentiary profile from other claimed German black projects. Researcher Igor Witkowski — whose investigation of the Bell programme drew on Polish postwar war crimes tribunal records and physical site evidence — is described by Farrell as treating the Bell story as "significantly different from the stories surrounding the 'Nazi legend' and its familiar names of Habermol, Miethe, Schriever, Epp, Schauberger and so on," on the grounds that the Bell has "clear descriptions of its design, mode of operation, and effects, as well as clear indications of known personnel involved with the project and clear corroborative evidence in the form of installations and residual physical signatures."

The "Haunebu I" design drawing most frequently reproduced in the literature is identified by Farrell as an "alleged photocopy of SS plans for a Haunebu I being designed in 1939," sourced from the 1996 German book Die Dunkle Seite Des Mondes (The Dark Side of the Moon) by Brad Harris (Pandora Books, Germany) — a post-reunification publication. The documentary chain for the Haunebu specifications thus runs through occultist-nationalist publishing houses of the 1990s, not through Allied technical intelligence reports or decrypted German military communications. Farrell acknowledges the broader Nazi Legend's early evidence as "uncorroborated hearsay testimony" and "second-hand or hearsay testimony of a few dead men and a few odd documents claiming a secret provenance deep within the black projects of the Waffen SS."

Separately, researcher William Lyne argued that any circulating "plans" and "documents" purporting to detail SS flying saucers are fakes — "an elaborate disinformation campaign" — precisely because genuinely sensitive Nazi documentation on exotic propulsion was confiscated by the United States after the war or remained under German control.

Terziski documents (1991)

In 1991, Vladimir Terziski — a Bulgarian-American researcher who claimed access to Nazi SS technical documents obtained through the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences from Soviet-era Warsaw Pact intelligence files — gave a lecture series in California presenting what he described as genuine schematics of the Haunebu I, II, and III series and the cigar-shaped Andromeda device. Terziski claimed the Germans — aided by knowledge from the Vril Society and from extraterrestrial contacts — had developed operational anti-gravity disc aircraft by the end of World War II, and that advanced prototypes were shipped to Antarctica and to the Moon before the war's end.

Haunebu and the Dark Fleet

Elena Danaan, in a 2021 interview with Michael Salla, reported that Thor Han Eredyon — her Errahel contact — had allowed her to observe Dark Fleet craft during a psychic link established during the early Federation raids on Mars. Danaan described the craft as "saucer shaped with a round underneath, a round patch and three bolts" — consistent with the Haunebu model imagery — but noted the contemporary Dark Fleet variant was "more aerodynamic, ergonomic — more futuristic" than the wartime design. Thor Han described the Dark Fleet's fleet as containing multiple ship types including triangular and egg-shaped craft in addition to the disc-derived Haunebu variants.

Danaan explained the Aldebaran connection in her account: the Vril Society contactee Maria Orsic in the 1920s received transmissions from Aldebaran-origin humanoids who, according to Danaan, were themselves instruments of the Alpha Draconian Empire — which used their human-looking appearance to avoid frightening the human recipients of the technology transfer. According to this account, the Vril craft programme began under civilian secret-society sponsorship with Orsic and physicist W. O. Schumann in the 1920s, before the Nazi SS absorbed it after 1933 and then entered direct agreements with the Draconian / reptilian collective — forming the organizational nucleus of what later became the Dark Fleet. Salla summarized the broader framing: that the Germans "had been cultivated for a long, long time by the Reptilian to provide this kind of mercenary force that would eventually be technologically developed with spacecraft and thousands of super soldiers that could then fight alongside the Reptilian in these interstellar wars."

In this contact tradition, confusing the George Adamski "scout ship" photographs — which displayed a similar saucer profile — with Haunebu craft has been a source of sustained controversy. Danaan's position is that Adamski's contacts were not Venusians but Dark Fleet operatives masquerading as benevolent extraterrestrials from Venus: "There are outposts in the solar system where ships are based, like the Moon, Mars, and Ceres... they won't say 'we are the dark fleet,' but they say 'oh, we're from Venus' — and that's a lie."

Dan Willis, a researcher who compiled a 100-year chronological timeline of the UFO/ET cover-up, identified the Vril Society and Maria Orsic as the starting point of the modern covert extraterrestrial-technology transfer, noting that the Weimar Republic's liberal democratic culture made it an ideal environment for Orsic's initial channeling contacts.

Influence on later research

The Haunebu narrative fed into postwar speculation about the origins of UFO sightings during and after the war. Allied and American intelligence reports, including a CIA report of 27 May 1954, mentioned German disc aircraft in connection with the name of Schriever. A report from Brigadier General W.M. Garland, USAF, to General Samford (Air Force Director of Intelligence), dated 3 January 1952, also addressed German involvement in the UFO mystery. A 1949 report in The Washington Daily News had circulated the view that flying discs were "of Spanish-Nazi origin" and of a new "gyroscopic" design.

The real-world Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar, a disc-shaped VTOL aircraft jointly developed by Avro Canada and the US military in the late 1950s, is routinely cited in fringe literature as evidence that postwar Western programmes drew on captured German saucer technology — though official documentation traces its lineage to Avro Canada's own boundary layer suction studies. Nick Cook's book The Hunt for Zero Point (2001) brought renewed mainstream interest to the question of whether genuine anti-gravity research had been conducted, and helped legitimize renewed scrutiny of the Schriever–Habermohl–Miethe–Bellonzo testimony, while stopping short of endorsing the Haunebu specifications as documented fact.

See also

• Foo fighters
• Operation Paperclip

References