France-Soir, Saturday June 7, 1952

German Engineer Richard Miethe Affirms to France-Soir: "If flying saucers exist, it is the V7 which I built in 1944, the engines of which the Russians seized at Breslau "

TEL-AVIV, June (special to "France-Soir") A group of German experts on "V-weapons", who were working for the Egyptian government in the manufacture of radio-controlled missiles, were very recently expelled by the authorities of Cairo. These specialists of the Physikalische Arbeitsgemeinschaft (PAG), headed by Dr. Kurt Fuellner and Mr. Herman Plitzken, had refused to deliver, after the completion of their work, their secret plans to Egypt.

After several unfruitful attempts, the authorities confiscated all the goods and the personal effects of the German scientists and refused to pay them the arrears of their wages as long as they refused to deliver the documents.

A short time thereafter, the police made it known to some of the Germans that they had no legal right to be in Egypt, Germany not yet having diplomatic relations. The team leaders returned at once to Hamburg, where they charged a lawyer with raising a protest at the United Nations against Egypt for "swindle and ill treatment".

A chemist of the organization, Doctor Erich Stoetzer, and a secretary, Miss Helga Wiegels, were arrested, shackled by the hands, led through Cairo, and threatened with a camel-whip. Miss Wiegels was maltreated and beaten by Egyptian soldiers, who tried to force her to reveal the whereabouts of the plans. Doctor Stoetzer and Miss Wiegels were finally expelled last month, after having spent nine days in prison.

Some of these experts, who collaborated to one degree or another in the manufacture of these rockets, fled to Tel-Aviv. One of them is Doctor Richard Miethe, 40 years old, ex-colonel and scientist for the Third Reich, and aeronautical engineer. A few days before the German surrender, Doctor Miethe managed to escape the front by aircraft. He joined the Arab Legion in Addis-Ababa and Cairo, where many Nazi senior officers are currently residing (including many under Allied death sentences).

Doctor Miethe claims to have worked, from April 1943, as the head of a group of technicians of the Tenth Reich Army, in Essen, Stettin and Dortmund, where the principal research for German secret weapons was carried out. The first V-1 and V-2's were delivered from these factories.

For seven years, Dr. Miethe has sought to reconstruct the plans of an exceptional machine which he built with six other engineers (of which three have died and the other three are being held by the Russians beyond the Urals). In his opinion, it is this apparatus which the press persists in calling "flying saucers":

The engines of the weapons which I designed in Germany, in collaboration with other engineers, were taken by the Soviet troops from the underground arsenals at Breslau.

One of the engines was intended for a supersonic helicopter. The appearance of this apparatus, at a distance of several thousand meters, could, without magnifying glasses, more or less to resemble the saucer of a set of table ware. In fact, a helicopter is very different, in its structure as well as its form.

To describe it in common terms, this apparatus has the exact shape of an Olympic discus, an immense metal disc of circular form, with a diameter is approximately forty-two meters. More than twenty months of experiments, continually revised designs, and extremely complicated studies of gyroscopy and innumerable tests, which resulted in the death of 18 pilots, were necessary to build these machines.

The problem was that of finding the ideal aerodynamic form that could break the sound barrier, and easily transport bombs to ranges of over 20,000 km, guided by radio and radar, and driven by means of a compressed gas based on helium. 22 cubic meters this gas were enough to maintain an average of sixteen hours of flight.

The principle of propulsion was, roughly speaking, that of the jet, but instead of two, or four, or eight turbines, the apparatus uses twelve of them, laid out at equal distances inside a moving metal ring, turning around the central mass. There are neither visible flames nor smoke, because the gases coming from combustion are recovered by an extremely clever compression system, discovered in 1938 by a British engineer.

The first conclusive flights were accomplished above the Baltic, three days exactly after the beginning of the offensive by von Runstedt in the Belgian Ardennes, and with greatest success. But it was only when Patton's army succeeded in crossing the Rhine that Hitler, warned by Marshal Keitel of the long range of this apparatus, which we had by then named the V-7, decided to undertake mass production in the underground factories of the south of Germany.

A copy of the plans was in the personal files of Keitel at Bad-Gandersheim, in the Harz Mountains, close to Hanover. At the time of their advance into this area, the Americans were advised of the existence of these military secrets and tore apart the castle from cellar to roof. They at least could have recovered their expenses, but did not discover, in the walled cellars, tens of thousands of boxes of silk stockings.

The Russians were luckier, getting their hands on the engines, and capturing three of my colleagues. I therefore assert, that if flying saucers are in the skies, they were built in Germany, as developed under my orders, and probably reproduced by Germans in chains in Soviet captivity.

This account has been belittled on the Internet for technical inaccuracies in general by those that never read the whole thing. But consider:

• There was a German project in Egypt, just as described in the article. Consider the following chronology from the article "Ballistic missile development in Egypt" by Joseph S. Bermudez, Jr, in Jane's Intelligence Review, October 1992, pages 452-458:

  1951: As part of the program to modernize Egypt's military in the wake of defeat in the 1947-49 war with Israel, Egyptian Premier Mustafa Nahas initiates a program to build military rockets in Egypt. Egypt contracts German armaments expert Dr. Wilhelm Voss to oversee the program and hires a firm owned by Herr Fuellner that employs several German rocket experts. The experts begin developing a small rocket, probably solid fueled, with a range of several kilometers.

  March 1952: Having achieved some progress in the design of a tactical rocket, Egypt begins considering production of a longer-range guided missile. However … difficulty in acquiring high-quality steel, propellants and fuses, cause the delay of the guided rocket program and the eventual cancellation of the tactical rocket program. Tests of the rocket developed for Egypt by Herr Fuellner's firm are unsatisfactory, and Egypt proposes that the firm be put under government control. Herr Fuellner refuses and is forced to leave the country along with some of the German experts.

  July 1952: General Muhammad Naguib seizes power from King Farouk

  Late 1952: Naguib appoints Wilhem Voss as director of the Central Planning Board and chief advisor to the Ministry of War. Voss hires Dr. Rolf Engel as the senior German expert … and he becomes a dominant force. Wolfgang Pilz and Paul Goercke, a German electronics expert, also join ….

  This backs up the Miethe article as regards dates and corroborates Fuellner as the director of the project, and Fuellner's falling out with the Egyptians.

  The 20,000 km range seems ludicrous, but consider the gigantic size of the disc - 42 m. The Avro Silverbug, which seems to be a subscale version of the concept, had a diameter of 8.9 m. This had a vertical takeoff weight of 13,150 kilograms. Assuming the same wing loading, a 42 m version of the Avro design would have had a weight of nearly 300 metric tons - the same magnitude as the subsonic postwar B-52 or supersonic B-70, which did indeed approach this range. 16 hours of flight would indicate an average speed of 1250 kph, indicating subsonic cruise with a supersonic dash over the target.

  The use of helium gas in the engines makes no sense - as a fuel. But the Avro design was dependent on an air bearing, and the USAF Silverbug report noted that "A ground supply of compressed air applied to air bearing will be used when starting the engine". The gas might be related to this; or it may refer to a pneumatic supply necessary for the air bearings of the gyroscopic navigation platform referred to earlier in the same sentence.

  So there is nothing historically or technically absurd in this account.

  But what happened to Miethe? Lusar and Internet Nazi saucer lore say he wound up in Canada, working on the Silverbug. On 15 July 1959, a UFO New York newsletter ridiculed the Canadian Avro saucer story and reported that personal contact with Avro indicated that they knew nothing about a Miethe. But given that the project was so secret that it was not declassified until 1995, such a denial would not be surprising… In any case Avro went under in the 1960's, with many of its staff being hired by NASA to work on the Apollo program.

  In modern Germany those bearing this name are heavily concentrated on the easternmost border, particularly around Gorlitz. This is interesting, since this is the closest current German town to Breslau, in modern Poland. Something else shows a connection between the Miethe name and the formerly German town…?

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  Original French text:

  France-Soir, Samedi 7 juin 1952

  L'Ingénieur Allemand Richard Miethe Affirme À France-Soir : «Si les soucoupes volantes existent ce sont les V7 que j'ai construits.en 1944 et dont les Russes ont trouvé les moteurs à Breslau»

  Tel-Aviv, .. juin (dépêche «France-Soir»)

  Un groupe d'experts allemands en engins «V», qui put fabriquer pour le gouvernement égyptien des fusées radioguidées, ont été tout récemment expulsés par les autorités du Caire. Ces spécialistes du Physakalische [sic] Arbeitsgemeinschaft (P.A.G.) qui ont à leur tête le Dr Kurt Fuellner et Mr Herman Plitzken, avaient refusé de livrer, après l'achèvement de leurs travaux, leurs plans secrets à l'Égypte.

  Après plusieurs tentatives infructueuses, les autorités confisquèrent tous les biens et les effets personnels des savants allemands et refusèrent de leur payer les arriérés de leurs salaires tant qu'ils n'auraint pas les documents.

  Peu de temps après, la police fit connaître à certains de ces Allemands qu'ils n'avaient aucun droit d'être en Égypte, l'Allemagne n'y ayant pas encore de représentants diplomatiques. Les chefs de groupe rentrèrent aussitôt à Hambourg, où ils chargèrent un avocat d'élever une protestation auprès de l'O.N.U. contre l'Égypte pour «escroquerie et mauvais traitements».

  Un chimiste de l'organisation, le docteur Erich Stoetzer, et une secrétaire, Mlle Helga Wiegels, furent, en effet, arrêtés sous mandat et conduits, menottes aux mains, à travers le Caire et menacés avec un fouet de chamelier. Mlle Wiegels aurait été maltraitée et battue par des soldats égyptiens, qui essayèrent de nouveau d'obtenir les plans. Le docteur Stoetzer et Mlle Wiegels furent finalement expulsés le mois dernier, après avoir passé neuf jours en prison.

  Certains experts, qui ont collaboré de près ou de loin à la fabrication de ces fusées, se sont rendus à Tel-Aviv. L'un d'eux est le docteur Richard Miethe, 40 ans, ex-colonel du Génie du IIIe Reich, ingénieur de l'Aéronautique. Quelques jours avant la capitulation des troupes allemandes, le docteur Miethe était parvenu à quitter précipitamment le front par avion pour aller rejoindre l'Arabisch Legion [sic] à Addis-Abbeba et au Caire, où sont regroupés actuellement de nombreux officiers supérieurs hitlériens (dont ceux qui ont été condamnés à mort).

  Le docteur Miethe déclare avoir travaillé, depuis avril 1943, à la tête d'un groupe de techniciens de la Xe armée du Reich, à Essen, Stettin et Dortmund, où s'effectuaient les principales recherches des armes secrètes allemandes. Les premières V-1 et V-2 sortirent de ces usines-là.

  Depuis sept ans, le Dr Miethe cherche seul à recomposer les plans d'un engin exceptionnel qu'il avait construit avec six autres ingénieurs (dont trois sont mort et les trois autres seraient détenus par les Russes au-delà de l'Oural). D'après lui, c'est cet appareil qu'on persiste à nommer «soucoupe volante».

  » Les moteurs d'armes que j'avais conçues en Allemagne, en collaboration avec d'autres ingénieurs, ont été pris par les troupes soviétiques dans les arsenaux souterrains de Breslau.

  » L'un des moteurs était destiné à un hélicoptère supersonique. L'aspect de cet appareil, considéré à plusieurs milliers de mètres de distance, pourrait, sans verres grossissants,[3] ressembler plus ou moins à une soucoupe de nos services de table. En fait, l'hélicoptère est tout différent, tant dans sa structure que dans sa forme.

  » Pour utiliser un langage à la portée de tous, cet appareil présente très exactement la forme d'un disque olympique, c'est-à-dire un immense palet de forme circulaire, dont le diamètre est d'environ quarante-deux mètres. Il a fallu plus de vingt mois d'expériences, de plans renouvelés, d'études extrêmement compliquées de gyroscopie et d'incalculables essais qui ont entraîné la mort de 18 pilotes pour parvenir à construire ces engins.

  » Le problème posé était celui d'une «carrosserie» aérodynamique idéale, qui pût traverser le mur du son, transporter aisément des bombes à plus de 20.000 km, et se mouvoir, guidé par radio et radar, au moyen d'un gaz comprimé à base d'hélium; 22 mètres cubes de ce gaz suffisent à entretenir une moyenne de seize heures de vol.

  » Le principe de la propulsion est, grosso modo, celui de l'avion à réaction, mais au lieu de deux, de quatre ou de huit turbines, l'appareil en utilise douze, disposées à égale distance à l'intérieur d'un anneau métallique mobile, tournant autour de la masse centrale. Il n'y a ni flammes ni fumée visibles, car les gaz provenant de la combustion sont récupérés par un système foulant extrêmement ingénieux, découvert en 1938 par un ingénieur britannique.

  » Les premiers vols concluants ont été effectués au-dessus de la mer Baltique trois jours exactement après le début de l'offensive von Runstedt [sic] dans les Ardennes belges, et avec le plus grand succès.

  » Mais ce n'est qu'au moment où l'armée de Patton eut réussi à franchir le Rhin que Hitler, avisé par le maréchal Keitel de la gigantesque portée de cet appareil que nous nommions déjà V-7, décida d'en entreprendre la fabrication en série dans les usines souterraines du sud de l'Allemagne.

  » Une copie des plans se trouvait dans le domaine personnel de Keitel à Bad-Gandersheim, dans le Harz, près de Hanovre. Lors de leur avance dans cette région, les Américains furent avisés de l'existence de ces secrets militaires et fouillèrent le château de fond en comble. Il faut dire qu'ils en furent pour leurs frais, car ils ne découvrirent, dans les caves murées, que des dizaines de milliers de boîtes de bas de soie...

  » Les Russes, plus heureux, mirent la main sur les moteurs mêmes, et entraînèrent trois de mes collègues en captivité.

  » J'AI LA PRÉTENTION DE DIRE QUE SI DES DISQUES VOLANTS ÉVOLUENT DANS LE CIEL, ILS ONT ÉTÉ CONSTRUITS EN ALLEMAGNE, MIS AU POINT SOUS MES ORDRES ET PROBABLEMENT REPRODUITS EN CHAÎNE PAR LES SOVIETS.»