Operation High Jump and the UFO Connection

by Erich J. Choron from GreyFalcon Website

In 1947, Admiral Richard E. Byrd led 4,000 military troops from the U.S., Britain and Australia in an invasion of Antarctica called “Operation Highjump”, and at least one follow-up expedition.

That is fact. It is undeniable. But... the part of the story that is seldom told, at least in “official” circles, is that Byrd and his forces encountered heavy resistance to their Antarctic venture from “flying saucers” and had to call off the invasion.

This aspect of the story was pushed forward, again, a few years ago, when a retired Rear Admiral, allegedly living in Texas, who had been involved in the “invasion”, said he was “shocked” when he read material from a documentary, entitled "Rire from the Sky".

He allegedly claimed that he knew there had been “a lot of aircraft and rocket shoot-downs”, but did not realize the situation was as serious as the documentary presented it.

Operation “High Jump”, which was, basically an invasion of the Antarctic, consisted of three Naval battle groups, which departed Norfolk, VA, on 2 December 1946. They were led by Admiral Richard E. Byrd’s command ship, the ice-breaker “Northwind,” and consisted of the catapult ship “Pine Island,” the destroyer “Brownsen,” the aircraft-carrier “Phillipines Sea,” the U.S. submarine “Sennet,” two support vessels “Yankee” and “Merrick,” and two tankers “Canisted” and “Capacan,” the destroyer “Henderson” and a floatplane ship “Currituck.”

A British-Norwegian force and a Russian force, and I believe some Australian and Canadian forces were also involved.

Interestingly, the Pine Island (AV-12), one of the seaplane tenders involved in the expedition, has a rather colorful history. The USS Pine Island, a Currituck Class Seaplane Tender, was laid down, 16 November 1942, at Todd Shipyard Corporation, in San Pedro, California. It was launched, 26 February 1944, and given the commissioned name, USS Pine Island on 26 April 1945.

The ship served through the final months of the Second World War, and the immediate post-war period, but was decommissioned on 1 May 1950 When the Korean War broke out, the ship was re-commissioned, on 7 October 1950, at Alameda, California. She was finally decommissioned, for good, on 16 June 1967 and laid up in the Reserve Fleet.

But... here’s where the story gets interesting... The USS Pine Island was struck from the Naval Register, on an unknown date... Her title was transferred to the Maritime Administration for lay up in the National Defense Reserve Fleet... on an unknown date... and... the ship’s final disposition is unknown... Now... how does one go about “losing” a major surface ship, over 640 feet long, almost seventy feet wide, with a displacement of over 15,000 tons?

The story, of course, gets stranger, still. The Pine Island is not the only ship involved in “Antarctic Research” or “exploration” to have disappeared. There were numerous others. The question is not so much “how many”, that is fairly well established.

  The question is “how and why”... particularly “why”...

On 5 March, 1947 the “El Mercurio” newspaper of Santiago, Chile, had a headline article “On Board the Mount Olympus on the High Seas” which quoted Byrd in an interview with Lee van Atta:

“Adm. Byrd declared today that it was imperative for the United States to initiate immediate defense measures against hostile regions. Furthermore, Byrd stated that he “didn’t want to frighten anyone unduly” but that it was “a bitter reality that in case of a new war the continental United States would be attacked by flying objects which could fly from pole to pole at incredible speeds”.

Interestingly, not long before he made these comments, the Admiral had recommended defense bases AT the North Pole.

These were not “isolated” remarks... Admiral Byrd later repeated the each of these points of view, resulting from he described as his “personal knowledge” gathered both at the north and south poles, before a news conference held for International News Service.

He was hospitalized and was not allowed to hold any more press conferences. Still, in March 1955, he was placed in charge of Operation Deepfreeze which was part of the International Geophysical Year, 1957-1958, exploration of the Antarctic. He died, shortly thereafter... in 1957... many have suggested he was murdered...

So... who was the enemy that owned or flew these flying objects? Germany was apparently defeated, and there was no evidence that the new emerging enemy, Russia, certainly had such superior technologies. They were, like the United States, only on the verge of the “rocket age”, and totally dependent upon technology, and expertise captured from Germany at the end of the War. There was no other known threat could that could account for the United States’ invasion of Antarctica nor for the development of any craft that could fly “fly from Pole to pole with incredible speeds.”

Of course, the Roswell Incident had been in the news the past summer, but... it had been “officially” explained, and hushed up by the time Highjump began.

Rumors began to circulate that even though Germany had been defeated, a selection of military personnel and scientists had fled the fatherland as Allied troops swept across mainland Europe and established themselves at a base on Antarctica from where they continued to develop advanced aircraft based on extraterrestrial technologies.

 It is interesting to note that at the end of the war the Allies determined that there were 250,000 Germans unaccounted for, even taking into account casualties and deaths. This would be quite a population base for a fledgling colony, and provide the essential degree of skill, expertise, and pure manpower for an industrial base of any sort, let alone the production of, even by today’s standards, extremely high technology.

Now, one must admit that if a person were making up such a story, why would they claim to be taken, of all places, to the pole? Of course, one must also realize that at the time of Schmidt’s comments, the rumors of “secret Nazi bases” at the poles were already fairly common... After returning he was allegedly subjected to persecution by the U.S. Government. In his defense, it must be noted that his description of the aerial discs, as he called them, matched pictures captured from the Germans in the final days of the Second World War.

In 1959, three large newspapers in Chile reported front-page articles about Unidentified Flying Object encounters in which the crew members appeared to be German soldiers. In the early 1960s there were reports in New York, and New Jersey, of flying saucer ‘aliens’ who spoke German, or English with a German accent. Nor, can it be neglected to mention that in one of the most spectacular legal cases of the Twentieth Century... the “atomic espionage” trials... Julius and Ethel Rosenberg spoke of “warships of space.”

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