Antarctic Bases?

On reaching land, Bunger flew west for a time, then, coming up over the featureless, white horizon, he saw a dark, bare area which Byrd later described as "a land of blue and green lakes and brown hills in an otherwise limitless expanse of ice." (18) Bunger and his men carefully reconnoitred the area before racing back to the Currituck with news of their find. The 'oasis' they had discovered (above) covered an area of some three hundred square miles of the continent and contained three large, open water lakes along with a number of smaller lakes. These lakes were separated by masses of barren, reddish-brown rocks possibly indicating the presence of iron ore. Several days later, Bunger returned to the area, and found that the water was warm to the touch and the lake itself was filled with red, blue and green algae giving it a distinctive colour. Bunger filled a bottle with the water which later "turned out to be brackish, a clue to the fact that the 'lake' was actually an arm of the open sea." (19)

This is important for two reasons; warm, inland lakes connected to the surrounding oceans would be perfect for submarines to hide within, and similar lakes have been noted in Neu-Schwabenland, the site of the alleged Nazi base. There is no conclusive evidence of a Nazi base on Antarctica, however that something untoward was happening on, or around, the frozen continent appears, on balance of probabilities, to be likely. The evidence is there. (i) The Germans invaded and claimed part of Antarctica on the very eve of the war when all of their activity was geared towards the war machine and the establishment of a 1000 year Reich. (ii) There was ongoing ship and submarine activity in the South Atlantic and polar regions throughout and after the war had apparently ended. (iii) The US invaded the continent itself with considerable naval resources leaving mainland America exposed and vulnerable as the world edged into the Cold War. The task force limped home as if defeated only weeks later, and the local South American press wrote of such a defeat. (iv) Admiral Byrd spoke of objects that could fly from pole to pole at incredible speeds being based on Antarctica. (v) Hundreds of thousands of Germans and numerous U-boats were missing at the end of the war.

The connection between Antarctica and the UFO phenomenon was sealed with claims made by one Albert K. Bender (above) who stated that he "went into the fantastic and came up with an answer ... I know what the saucers are." Albert Bender ran an organisation called the International Flying Saucer Bureau a small UFO organisation based in Connecticut, USA and he also edited a publication known as the Space Review which was committed to the dissemination of news about UFOs. In truth, the organisation had only a small membership and the publication circulated amongst hundreds rather than thousands, but that its members and readers valued it was in little doubt. The publication itself advocated that flying saucers were spacecraft of extraterrestrial origin. Then, in the October 1953 edition of Space Review, there were two major announcements. The first was headed Late Bulletin and stated "A source which the IFSB considers very reliable has informed us that the investigation of the flying saucer mystery and the solution is approaching final stages. This same source to whom we had referred data, which had come into our possession, suggested that it was not the proper method and time to publish the data in Space Review."

The second announcement read "Statement of Importance: The mystery of the flying saucers is no longer a mystery. The source is already known, but any information about this is being withheld by order from a higher source. We would like to print the full story in Space Review, but because of the nature of the information we are very sorry that we have been advised in the negative." The statement ended in the sentence "We advise those engaged in saucer work to please be very cautious." These announcements were of little significance in themselves. What gained them wider attention was the fact that immediately after publishing this October 1953 issue, Bender suspended further publication of the magazine and closed the IFSB down without any further explanation. Bender might have known "what the flying saucers" were, but he later revealed in a local newspaper interview that he was keeping his knowledge a secret following a visit by three men who apparently confirmed he was right about his UFO theory, but put him in sufficient fear to immediately close down his organisation and cease publication of the journal.

It has been argued that the story of being visited by three strangers and being 'warned off' was a front to close a publication that was losing money, however the fact that Bender had been "scared to death" and "actually couldn't eat for a couple of days" was verified by his friends and associates. However, in 1963, a full decade after his visit from the three strangers, Bender was seemingly prepared to reveal more of his story in a largely unreadable book entitled Flying Saucers and the Three Men in Black. The book was scant on facts however intriguingly described extraterrestrial spacecraft that had bases in Antarctica. This was apparently the truth Bender was terrorised into not revealing. Bender also provided images of the saucers he was aware of.

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