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

68 The Hunt for Zero Point
width and 5 to 15 meters in height; the floor space from 25,000 to 130,000
square meters.
Seven weeks later, in mid-October, in a Preliminary Report on
Underground Factories and Facilities in Germany and Austria, senior
USAAF officers were told that the final tally showed "a considerably
larger number of German underground factories than had hitherto been
suspected."
In addition to Germany and Austria, the underground building program
had been extended across France, Italy, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
"Although the Germans did not go underground on a large scale until
March 1944, they managed to get approximately 143 underground
factories into production by the last few months of the war," the report
stated. A further 107 facilities had been located that were either being
built, excavated or planned by the end of hostilities, but another 600 sites
could be added to the total if caves and mines, many of which had been
turned into production lines and weapons laboratories, were taken into
consideration.
The report's author was evidently taken aback by the breadth of the
German underground plan. "It is a matter of conjecture what would have
occurred if the Germans had gone underground before the beginning of
the war," he concluded.
And then, hot on the heels of the underground investigation, a fresh
directive, this time from a senior USAAF field officer to General
McDonald, the air force intelligence chief at Wright Field in Ohio.
Set against the steady but predictable buildup of documentation, its
tone was so unexpected and the content of the message so different that
it took me a moment to come to terms with its implications. It was dated
September 28, 1945:
1. It is considered that the following have been thoroughly investigated
and have proven to have no basis of fact.
a. Remote Interference with Aircraft
Investigations have been completed on this subject and it is
considered that there is no means presently known which was in
development or use by the German Air Force which could interfere
with the engines of aircraft in flight. All information available through
interrogations, equipment and documents has been thoroughly investigated
and this subject may be closed with negative result.
b. Balls of Fire
As far as can be determined from extensive interrogations, investigation
of documents, and field trips, there is no basis of fact in the