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

70 The Hunt for Zero Point
could have used to get close enough to a bomber to disrupt its engine
ignition systems.
I felt for the first time like I had a foot in the door.
A few frames later and here was a large document set out in tabular
format with headings running across the top of the page: Target~, Organization,
City, Activity, Assessed (date), Action Taken and Remarks. From
the first page, it was clear that this was a very different kind of file, filled
with data as raw as it came, and instantly noteworthy for what it did—
and didn't—say. In the remarks section of one target, listed only as
a "research station" near the town of Eib See, assessed primarily by
the British, curiously, on May 2, 1945, it said: "Over 400 evacuated
Peenemunde personnel held. Excavations made in the mountainside
close to lake for underground workshops. A very important target."
Nothing else.
Mysterious as hell.
Next page.
Target: Luftfahrt forschungs [sic]. City: Brunswick. Activity: Radiocontrolled
aircraft. Assessed: April 21-24, 1945. Action Taken: Team has
been dispatched. Remarks: "Evidence of radio-controlled aircraft."
I scratched some notes. Another potential foo-fighter technology.
Next page.
Target: Research. Location: 87, Weimarerstr. Vienna. Activity: Experiments
with antiaircraft rays. Remarks: "Research activity is conducted
in a house at the above address. Research personnel were not
allowed to leave house (reported hermetically sealed)."
The Germans had been working on directed energy weapons and had
sealed those working on it from the outside world.
So many radical technologies and so long ago. I had no idea.
Next page.
Target: Daimler-Benz. City: Unter-Turkheim/Stuttgart. Activity:
Secret weapon. Assessed: April 25, 1945. Remarks: "Said to stop ignition
system of a petrol engine. The apparatus has succeeded in stopping a
motor vehicle w/magneto ignition, but not one w/battery, at a range of
2 or 3 km."
The report went on to say that the technology had been insufficiently
developed to have been brought against aircraft, but it made clear that
this was the goal.
The Germans, then, had also been working on devices that were
designed to "interfere with the engines of aircraft in flight," contrary to
the note sent by Colonel Sullivan to General McDonald on September 28.
Why, then, did Sullivan say that all information available through in-