John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev. Cold War rivalries were stoked by the determination of both superpowers to capture and gain the secrets of Nazi superscience. (Keystone Pictures USA / Alamy Stock Photo)
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space.”
President John F. Kennedy, May 25, 1961
By the time President Kennedy gave his famous speech committing the United States to a Moon landing, both the US and the Soviet Union had been engaged in secret efforts to reach the Moon for over a decade. Although Cold War rivalry was certainly a factor in the so-called “Moon Race,” it was not the only one: by now both powers knew that the Walhalla base existed, and that it both posed a threat and offered a treasure trove of advanced technology to whichever of the two superpowers could reach it first.
Early Satellites
Although both superpowers had captured enough documents and parts to give them a fragmentary picture of Nazi saucer research, neither one had enough information to replicate it. Initial experiments at Area 51 had led to a worldwide UFO scare in the late 1940s, but had not yielded a viable craft. Soviet engineers, meanwhile, had been unable to develop a craft capable of leaving the ground.
Both powers recognized the necessity of developing a space-flight capacity quickly. Each knew its rival was using captured German scientists to develop the dreaded V-2 into an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, which would enable it to project its power across the globe. By 1947, each power also knew that the most dangerous Nazi technology had been removed from Earth to somewhere in space, where it posed a continuing threat despite the fall of Nazi Germany. For the time being, rocket technology was the only avenue by which either superpower could pursue the goals of space travel and global nuclear domination.
At first, it was thought the Nazis were building a space station in Earth orbit. Plans for the Oberth Sonnengewehr had been recovered by Allied intelligence, and captured German scientists had boasted that the project had been only five years from completion by war’s end. A massive survey of Earth’s immediate surroundings ensued, involving optical and radio telescopes and culminating in early orbital missions from the Sputnik and Pioneer satellite programs to the manned Vostok and Project Mercury orbital missions, but nothing was found.
John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev. Cold War rivalries were stoked by the determination of both superpowers to capture and gain the secrets of Nazi superscience. (Keystone Pictures USA / Alamy Stock Photo)
Project A119
Project A119 was begun in 1958 by the US Air Force. Its plan was to detonate a nuclear warhead on the Moon “for scientific purposes,” as well as to boost morale in the face of the Soviet Union’s early lead in the space race. According to recently declassified documents, however, this was a thin cover story for the destruction of the Nazi base in order to keep its secrets out of Soviet hands if they should reach the Moon first.
The project was canceled in January 1959, however, after calculations revealed that the largest warhead the United States could then place on the Moon was 1.7 kilotons, about 10 percent of the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. Given the margin of error in targeting a nuclear weapon over such a distance, it became obvious that such a small explosion did not guarantee the destruction of the base, even if its presence in the Aristarchus crater could be confirmed.
Project Moon-Blink
Project Moon-Blink was a collaborative lunar survey launched by NASA in 1964, after it became apparent that the rumored Nazi space base was not orbiting the Earth. Its aim was to study so-called Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLPs) which had been reported with increasing frequency over the previous 15 years. From 1949 onward, flares of light, often blue or purple in color, had been reported from the Aristarchus crater in the northwest part of the Moon’s near side.
Project Moon-Blink took thousands of images of Aristarchus and the surrounding area, along with the Alphonsus crater on the southeastern side of the Mare Imbrium where other phenomena had been reported. Although the images were not clear enough to distinguish structures, the project did conclude, in a secret memo to President Lyndon Johnson, that Aristarchus required further investigation.
The US Lunar Orbiter program provided the first high-quality reconnaissance photographs of the base. The images themselves are still classified. (NASA)
Lunar Probes
In 1959 the Soviet Luna 2 probe missed the Aristarchus crater and landed on the other side of the Mare Imbrium. Other Luna missions placed orbiters around the Moon, equipped with cameras to search for signs of human activity.
Meanwhile, the US Ranger program had yielded a few images of the lunar surface before its probes crashed, but none showed anything that looked like a moonbase. The Ranger program was not an unqualified success. Ranger 1 and Ranger 2 failed to launch; Ranger 3 to Ranger 5 all failed in flight, with two missing the Moon completely; and Ranger 6 suffered a camera failure that may have been due to a hit from a Röntgenkanone or similar weapon. Improved shielding on the last three Ranger probes allowed them to transmit detailed images back to Earth, but their usefulness was limited by the fact that they were designed to crash into the lunar surface.
The Lunar Orbiter program of 1966–67 was more successful: in five missions it mapped 99 percent of the Moon’s surface with a resolution of 200 feet or better, and provided confirmation of man-made structures in the Aristarchus crater.
This information was used in planning the Surveyor series of landers, which transmitted clearer images of the Walhalla base before landing in widely scattered locations from June 1966 through January 1968. This deliberate dispersal of landing sites had two objectives: to make it harder for Nazi scientists to recover the landers and analyze their technology; and to preserve, if possible, the illusion that they were part of an innocent scientific mission by a United States that had no idea of the Walhalla base’s existence.
In regard to the second objective, at least, the strategy was a failure: spies inside von Braun’s staff at NASA were already feeding information to Walhalla, keeping the Black Sun fully informed about American progress on the hunt for the moonbase. Information leaked by these agents enabled Walhalla to shoot down Surveyor 2 and Surveyor 4 without American knowledge: from the NASA control center, the effects of a KSK hit were impossible to distinguish from a malfunction in the landers’ propulsion systems.
Manned Lunar Missions
While the American Moon program was conducted openly after Kennedy’s pronouncement in 1961, its Soviet counterpart was kept secret, and its existence was even denied. The Russians did not want their rivals to know how close they were to launching a manned Moon mission: their thinking was that the Americans would not rush so long as they thought they were ahead, giving the Soviet Union time to develop superior technology. Also, according to documents declassified in the glasnost era of the 1980s, it was felt that by openly declaring their progress in the Moon Race the Americans made themselves a more prominent target for any Nazi reprisals.
The whole world watched when astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon in 1969, but the heart of the Apollo 11 mission was taking place 60 nautical miles above, where Michael Collins, in the command module Columbia, was continuing the reconnaissance work undertaken by previous Apollo missions to photograph the Walhalla base. Since Apollo 8 had first orbited the Moon in late December of 1968, NASA had photographed the base with ever more powerful cameras to assess its defensive capabilities. Back on Earth, planning experts analyzed the photographs and film brought back from the Apollo orbiters and developed an assault strategy.
While the Apollo missions were putting boots on the ground and developing expertise for a planned ground assault, the Russian plan took a different approach. The Zond series of missions are still described as planned Moon landings, but they secretly aimed to create an orbiting base assembled from Soyuz 7K-L1 components, which would be used to knock out the Walhalla base’s defenses from long range before dropping troops to conquer it. As will be seen, though, this plan did not reach completion.
Apollo 12 astronaut Charles Conrad examines the Surveyor 3 probe to recover untransmitted images. This mission may have spurred Walhalla’s commanders to attack Apollo 13 and shoot down later unmanned probes. (NASA)
The Lunex lander design inspired both the Space Shuttle and the Lunar Hawk attack drone. (PD)
US and Soviet Moonbases
In parallel with their early satellite programs, the United States and the Soviet Union both began planning moonbases of their own, with the intention of taking the war to the Moon and extinguishing the Nazi threat once and for all. The effort was also spurred by growing Cold War tensions: whoever controlled the Moon, it was thought, would also control the Earth.
APOLLO 13
The Black Sun response to the Apollo landings came in 1970 with the attack on Apollo 13. When the spacecraft came within five and a half hours of lunar orbit, it was struck by a KSK energy beam that caused an oxygen tank to explode, severely damaging the Service Module and causing the mission to be aborted.
For three tense days, the world watched as the crew struggled to survive and return to Earth in their crippled spacecraft, believing American press releases that wrote the explosion off as an accident. In American military circles, though, it was well known that this was an attack, and a response was urgently needed.
Apollo 13 was the last of the program actually to be launched. The remaining four missions were simulated in the Nevada desert while the United States secretly switched its efforts to developing von Braun’s proposed moonbase in order to mount an assault on Walhalla and end the Nazi threat once and for all.
Lunex and Horizon
In 1958–59, both the US Army and US Air Force commissioned plans to establish a manned base on the Moon by the mid-1960s.
Project Lunex, the Air Force plan, used a one-piece lander and return vehicle that looked something like the Space Shuttle of the late 20th century. It planned to establish a permanent American presence on the Moon by 1968. Officially, the project was scrapped over crew safety concerns, and because the lander would require an even larger rocket than the Saturn V to take it to the Moon. However, various aspects of the Lunex designs were developed as classified projects at the famed Lockheed-Martin “Skunk Works” and saw service as components of Project Horizon.
Project Horizon was conceived by Wernher von Braun’s team at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, and aimed to establish a manned moonbase by 1967. Saturn-A boosters would be used to lift components into orbit, where they would be assembled at a space station. The project was examined at the highest levels, and then shelved in favor of the Apollo program.
After the attack on Apollo 13, however, priorities changed. After a total of 40 classified launches in 1970, the so-called “lunar shuttle” was complete, and starting in January 1971 it landed structural components on the southwestern edge of the Mare Imbrium, a comfortable distance from the Walhalla base. A defensive perimeter was set up immediately, consisting of low-yield Davy Crockett nuclear rockets and Claymore mines adapted to pierce space suits. The first phase of construction was complete by April and over the following 18 months a large complement of trained volunteers from every elite branch of the US military was secretly moved in.
This NASA photograph shows damage to Apollo 13’s service module, probably resulting from a long-range KSK hit. (NASA)
Zvezda and Zond
The Soviet Zvezda project was begun in 1972. It was planned to deliver prefabricated modules to the Moon using the N1 rocket, Russia’s answer to the Saturn V, and assemble the base on the lunar surface. This plan had the advantage of creating a base that could be made operational far more quickly than its American counterpart. However, the project suffered serious delays because of the problematic N-1, and after 1970 the plan was abandoned in favor of the Zond orbital station. Having observed the failure of Operation Lyre in 1972, however, the plan was canceled in 1974 without a shot being fired.
The Strategic Defense Initiative was aimed at defending the United States against Nazi spacecraft as well as Soviet missiles. (PD)
Operation Lyre
Operation Lyre took place on March 17–19, 1972. Over 200 specially-trained US troops moved overland from the Horizon base, assaulting Walhalla on the morning of March 19. The attack was the culmination of a plan that had begun six months earlier: an initial rocket attack aimed to knock out the base’s heavier defenses while ground troops in modified space suits conducted a ground assault.
The attack was a complete failure. Although the initial rocket barrage did some damage to Walhalla’s heavier defensive weaponry, lighter point-defense weapons wrought terrible havoc among the Americans, who were forced back three times before abandoning the attack. Details of the mission are still classified, and the casualties were hidden within the military losses for the First Battle of Quảng Tri which began on March 30.
The main effects of Operation Lyre were to knock out the Sonnengewehr and cause minor damage to the V-9 rail gun. Some called this a partial success, although neither weapon had yet been able to cause serious damage on Earth. However, it undoubtedly had an effect on the Black Sun’s decision to abandon Projekt Mjölnir and accelerate plans for the next phase of the Bifrost Protocol.
With the failure of Operation Lyre, the Horizon base was abandoned and the survivors were shuttled back to Earth. The Apollo program was wound down: two more missions were flown, but the pretense was no longer necessary: the United States had abandoned the Moon.
In the Soviet Union, military planners considered their options. Work on the Zond project was still hampered by flaws in the N1 rocket system, and despite the damage to two of Walhalla’s long-range weapons a Nazi reprisal attack was feared. For the next two decades, both superpowers switched their priority from attacking the Moon to defending the Earth.
Although several moonbase projects have been proposed since 1972, the continuing threat from Walhalla has led to a focus on unmanned missions. (NASA)
Orbital Defenses
After Operation Lyre, the technological advantage switched back to the Soviet Union. It already had a working orbital station thanks to the Salyut program, while the United States was forced to catch up with the Skylab project. Through the later 1970s and the 1980s, orbital stations of increasing sophistication served to provide early warning of approaching threats and, if necessary, direct ground-launched missiles to their targets.
The Salyut Program
Building on the Zvezda concept, the Soviet Union already had advanced plans for space station construction as early as 1971. Salyut 1 was launched in April of that year, and had been intended as a dry run for the construction of the planned lunar orbital station when the failure of Operation Lyre made both superpowers rethink their strategy. Russia’s Almaz program aimed to create a series of military space stations using Salyut technology, but after three missions it was decided to focus instead on automated defense satellites coordinated from a single manned station. This project continued under the Almaz name through the later Salyut missions of the early 1980s and the construction of the Mir station. Salyut 7, the last of the series, remained in orbit until 1991.
Conducted in March 1972, Operation Lyre was America’s first attack on the moonbase. The battle resulted in heavy American casualties with minimal damage to the base itself. According to some commentators, the plan was rushed through with insufficient time for training in lunar conditions; the failure of the initial rocket barrage to knock out all of Walhalla’s defensive weaponry was also critical. Shortly thereafter, the American Horizon moonbase was abandoned and the Apollo moonshot program was wound down.
Barely a year after Operation Lyre, NASA launched Skylab I, an orbiting scientific station whose stated purpose was to make astronomical observations, survey the Earth from space, and conduct experiments in zero gravity. It also had a classified mission: to detect approaching spacecraft and direct the fire of ground-launched missiles. This mission was largely carried out by automated systems, allowing Skylab to work continuously between the three manned missions to the station. Upgrades to Skylab’s detection and communications systems continued throughout its lifetime, and there was a plan to use the Space Shuttle to boost it to a higher orbit, but delays in Shuttle development prevented this operation from taking place. Skylab finally dropped out of orbit on July 11, 1979, breaking up on re-entry. The largest pieces came down near Perth in Western Australia.
Killer Satellites
The Soviet military had developed the Istrebitel Sputnik (IS; Fighter Satellite) concept in the 1960s as part of the Zond project, which saw the orbiting moonbase as the command and control center for a fleet of attack satellites parked in lunar orbit. Like the Zond space station, it was a simple matter to adapt the system for use in Earth orbit, both looking outward for approaching Nazi craft and looking out for rival US satellites.
Upon detecting an enemy launch from the lunar surface, the Zond command module would direct the nearest IS satellite toward it: the satellite would detonate a fragmentation warhead which was effective at a range of up to half a mile.
Until 1983, US orbital defense relied on missiles launched from the Earth’s surface. That year, however, President Ronald Reagan launched the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Nicknamed “Star Wars,” this ambitious program surrounded the Earth with a network of satellites armed with X-ray lasers and rail guns. The project was sold to the public as a defense against Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles, raising Cold War tensions to a pitch not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis, but equally important was its ability to detect and destroy incoming Nazi saucers.
The launch of the first SDI satellites led to a brief period of orbital dueling to accompany the political and military posturing on the Earth’s surface. Although Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov publicly declared an end to the IS program, US and Soviet satellites continued to spar with each other until the collapse of the Soviet Union.
ASAT Missiles
In addition to orbital stations and armed satellites, both superpowers relied on conventional missiles to bolster their defenses against an attack from space. Known in military circles as ASATs, antisatellite weapon programs were usually piggybacked onto antiballistic missile (ABM) development, frequently using the same launch vehicles.
Initial development stalled in the 1960s when the electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear ASAT caused disruption across a wide area of the Pacific, but after 1972 ASAT development assumed a new urgency with Earth thrown onto a defensive footing. Since that time several countries have developed an ASAT capability, most notably China, India, and Israel, which arguably has the most to fear from a Nazi attack on Earth.
The 1980s and Beyond
The collapse of the Soviet Union severely disrupted the Russian space program, although several Soviet initiatives continued. The Mir space station remained operational, and the SH-11 “Gorgon” ABM was deployed around Moscow along with other defenses such as the 53T6 “Gazelle” system.
In the United States, the lander from Project Horizon developed into the Space Shuttle, which was instrumental in deploying a network of military and civilian satellites that covered the entire globe. According to leaked Department of Defense documents, the satellites of the Global Positioning System (GPS) include a classified module codenamed SID (Space Intruder Detector) that watches for incoming threats including missiles, asteroids – and presumably, though this is never openly stated, Nazi saucers. The SID system is patched into the secret network of SDI hunter-killer satellites, and controlled both from the ground and from the International Space Station.
The International Space Station
Launched in 1998 and expanded several times, the International Space Station (ISS) began as a US/Russian cooperation after the Skylab and Mir stations became obsolete. The European, Canadian, and Japanese Space Agencies have also contributed modules, and astronauts from several other countries have served tours of duty aboard.
In addition to its scientific work, the ISS continues to serve as the primary command and control center for Earth’s orbital defenses. Each member nation also maintains a backup control center: Houston, Texas; Baikonur, Kazakhstan; Kourou, French Guiana; Saint-Hubert, Quebec; Tanegashima, Japan; and Harwell, England.
An MQ-14 Lunar Hawk attack drone awaiting servicing after a mission. (NASA)
Recent Moon Shots
In 2004, President George W. Bush proposed an American moonbase by 2020, but the idea quickly evaporated after initial cost estimates. Some observers believe that Bush wanted to capitalize on the early success of Operation Iraqi Freedom and bring the war against Walhalla into the open; others claim that the almost instant dismissal of the project was part of a cover-up organized by the US military and intelligence communities after Bush accidentally came perilously close to exposing the existence of Walhalla, which has been classified Above Top Secret for almost 70 years.
Since 1990, more nations have joined in the effort to monitor the Walhalla base and protect the Earth from future attacks. Results have varied.
In 1990 the Japanese Hagoromo orbiter was quickly neutralized, despite a highly elliptical orbit that left it vulnerable only during brief passes. Its transmitter was knocked out, probably by a Röntgenkanone or Kugelblitz- derived weapon. In 2007 the SELENE project placed three satellites in elliptical orbits around the Moon, transmitting data back to the Tanegashima Space Center. Despite heavier shielding than the Hagoromo, the SELENE mission’s Kayuga main orbiter crashed into the lunar surface in 2009 after suffering control problems. The Okina relay satellite was brought down a few days later. A similar fate was suffered by the European Space Agency’s SMART-1 orbiter in 2006 after three years of observations, and India’s Chandrayaan-1 probe after just ten months. These three shootdowns, of small satellites (3.5–5 feet each side) at distances of 60 miles or more, have led some commentators to express dismay at the frightening precision of Walhalla’s long-range defensive weapons; others suggest that all were lucky shots, finally hitting their targets after months of trying.
In 2007, China launched its own Moon probe, Chang’e 1. About four times the size of Okina and SMART-1, it was brought down 15 months after entering lunar orbit. The Chang’e 2 remained in lunar orbit for nine months before leaving the Moon for other objectives, and seems to have escaped unscathed.
In December 2013, the Chang’e 3 lander touched down across the Mare Imbrium from Walhalla and deployed the Yutu rover. At some time during the next lunar night (December 26–January 11), however, the rover suffered unspecified mechanical damage and has been unable to move since, stranded less than 165 feet from the lander. It is uncertain whether the damage is coincidental, as the China National Space Administration claims, or whether Yutu was intentionally immobilized by scouts sent from Walhalla to investigate the lander. The launch dates for the Chang’e 4 and Chang’e 5 missions have since been postponed from 2015 and 2017 to “before 2020.”
Meanwhile, Russia’s planned Luna-Glob project aims to put more rovers on the Moon, perhaps for reconnaissance purposes. Although Yutu was disabled within a few days of landing, some schools of thought believe that a small, fast-moving rover, able to take advantage of ground cover, may be able to recover more information at closer range than an orbiter.
The MQ-14 Lunar Hawk drone developed from the X-37 unmanned spaceplane, and is the primary weapon of Operation Eclipse. Drone strikes against the moonbase commenced in May 2015 and are ongoing at the time of publication. All details of the operation remain classified, although a squad-carrying X-37 variant is said to be in development, perhaps for a mopup operation after the drone-strike program is completed.
Operation Eclipse
The X-37 unmanned space-plane flew its first test mission in April 2010. Almost immediately, the US Air Force ordered a modified version, known as the X-37B. In a classified program, this was developed into the MQ-14 Lunar Hawk, a drone attack vehicle.
Emboldened by the success of drone strikes as a strategy in the War on Terror, the US Air Force began developing a secret lunar drone strategy in 2008. The first attack on Walhalla took place at 4pm Eastern Standard Time (10pm Central European Time) on May 8, 2015: 70 years to the minute from the signing of Germany’s unconditional surrender in Berlin.
Like the military drones deployed in the Earth’s atmosphere, the MQ-14’s small size and agility make it harder to detect and target than an orbiting satellite or a manned spacecraft. The design incorporates many stealth features that help mask it from enemy radar, and its avionics suite includes an Automated Terrain Following (ATF) package allowing it to fly at extremely low altitudes, making the most of ground cover.
Despite official silence on the matter, rumors have leaked out about “Operation Eclipse,” a sustained drone bombardment of the Walhalla base. Meanwhile, Boeing has announced that the X-37C space-plane will feature a pressurized cargo bay large enough to accommodate six astronauts – the equivalent of an infantry squad and its equipment.
At the time of writing, details are hard to come by. Information is fragmentary and usually denied. However, it is possible that the Operation Eclipse drone strikes are intended to strip Walhalla of its defensive armament in preparation for an assault which will, at last, lay the ghost of 1972’s disastrous attack. It may not be too much longer before the secrets of Nazi superscience are in American hands: what America will do with them remains to be seen.
