ScienceDirect - Technol Rep Tohoku Univ ... - Garryck Osborne

NICK COOK 199
A book in Witkowski's possession, The Nuclear Axis by Philip
Henshall, had provided this one essential detail. Henshall had picked
up on Tom Agoston's story of Himmler's request for a "truck." But
Henshall had arrived at a markedly different interpretation of the data.
When Kammler had telexed Himmler on April 17 from his Munich
office—the last signal anyone ever received from him—refusing the
Reichsführer-SS the use of a "heavy truck" from the Junkers "motor
pool," he hadn't been referring to a truck in the conventional sense. He
had been referring to an aircraft. A long-range one with a heavy pay load.
Kammler had been telling Himmler, his superior, that he couldn't
have a Junkers 290 or 390 for his own use, because it was committed
elsewhere. It could only have been for use by the Special Evacuation
Kommando. Why else stamp such an ostensibly bland, innocent message
geheim—secret? Why else would Himmler have been bothering himself
with trucks?
With Bormann, Hitler's deputy, in charge of the evacuation plan,
Kammler would have been in a unique position to call the shots.
Although Hitler viewed Himmler as a valued and trusted ally—certainly
up until the moment his secret surrender negotiations were discovered—
it was Bormann, Hitler's gray eminence, who had his ear.
Kammler could safely refuse Himmler permission to use a Ju 290 or
390 without fear of recrimination. With such aircraft at its disposal, the
Kommando could have flown its cargo of documents, personnel and
technology pretty much anywhere it wanted. Spain, South America—
Argentina, even—would have represented no problem to such a longrange
platform.
The realization pulled me up short. What was the point of chasing
Kammler, if he 'd already shipped everything out?
After dinner, a good but simple meal of boiled eggs and local ham, I
wandered back outside to take the air, leaving Witkowski inside to talk to
our hosts.
I gazed at the ridgelines again. A few miles away, lay the Wenceslas
Mine.
Part of me was transported back to the desert around Groom Lake, to
the time when I'd stood vigil over the hills that shielded Area 51 from the
outside world.
The part-completed Giant underground manufacturing complex and
the Wenceslas Mine were a lot closer than I'd ever been able to get to the
27,000-feet-long paved runway on the desert lakebed. But the feeling
they evoked in me was curiously similar.
The S S had installed a security system around the mine every bit as