 Nick Cook's 2001 book The Hunt for Zero Point was unprecedented. Here was the Aviation Editor of Jane's Defence Weekly, the most reputable defense-industry publication in the world, asserting that flying saucers were real, that they used advanced anti-gravity technology, and that they were a follow-on of German research conducted during World War II. Cook had either turned into a lunatic fringe kook, or had blown the lid off the greatest military secret in the world.
Yet the world seemed to pay the book little attention. There were no recriminations. Cook continued his work as a distinguished writer on defense matters. What is one to make of this?
First, to summarize Cook's conclusions and a quick assessment of each point:
- Flying saucer technology, as first described by Rudolf Lusar, was perfected during World War II, by Richard Miethe, probably including flight tests. The work was conducted in enormous secrecy under SS General Kammler. Assessment: Possible, for a turbojet-powered, saucer-shaped craft.
- An antigravity drive for saucers was developed in the same period by Austrian Viktor Schauberger and tested at Wenceslas Mine, Ludwigsdorf, in what is now Poland. Assessment: Unlikely, and the 'test rig' Cook viewed at the mine has been shown conclusively to have been merely a Third-Reich-standard water tower base.
- After the war the German technology was taken on by the Americans. Assessment: Likely.
- There were separate American home-grown "antigravity" developments. Those publicly known included Thomas Townsend Brown's Philadelphia Experiment in 1943 and his public work in the late 1950's. Assessment: This is undeniable, but it has not been shown that Brown's effect was actually antigravity or led anywhere.
- Kammler actually led the postwar developments in America in great secrecy, or at least the American system of deep black technology development was taken on from the SS. Assessment: Neither allegation seems anything but speculation.
- Avro Canada developed the German saucer technology on behalf of the Americans. Assessment: This seems nearly undeniable, at least if you're talking about the turbojet-powered version (see the Silverbug report). It also seems to have led to a dead end, having no overwhelming advantage over conventional turbojet designs.
- The US government has been flying prototype saucers with some type of antigravity drive using quantum zero-point energy for decades…. but the technology has proven difficult to master. The only operational application so far has been a kind of anti-gravity field that boosts the performance of the B-2 bomber far beyond published data. Cook makes some technical arguments here in regard to the B-2's low thrust/weight ratio and range. Assessment: Northrop's original flying wing (or any pure-wing) design has similarly outstanding performance parameters, without the need of invoking antigravity.
- There is a vast black development apparatus in the United States devoted to research on this topic. Lurid tales of ships disappearing during the Philadelphia Experiment, of aliens and crashed alien saucers at Area 51, are products of US government disinformation campaigns to cover this work. Assessment: it does seem very likely that a lot of saucer lore is the result of US government disinformation operations.
In the end, Cook's book seems to be a tour of a wilderness of mirrors of which his book is an integral part. It seems more like a disinformation exercise, designed to take the focus off whatever is really going on, or at least add greatly to the background noise that is keeping the truth obscured. Whether that truth is conventional black aircraft, alien spaceships, or as Cook asserts, American antigravity technology - who can say? The whole point of disinformation is to make the truth unknowable.
The other leading defense publication, Aviation Week and Space Technology, is also subject to leaks every few years on exotic (albeit non-Nazi, non-antigravity) aircraft. None of these aircraft ever seems to be made public or become operational. None of them is remembered by the time the next breathless article appears. And, sixty years after research is said to have begun, flying saucers are not filling our skies…
One is left to wonder if in fact all of this disinformation is just to cover the greatest embezzlement of government funds in history…
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