Like the military drones deployed in the Earth’s atmosphere, the MQ-14’s small size and agility make it harder to detect and target than an orbiting satellite or a manned spacecraft. The design incorporates many stealth features that help mask it from enemy radar, and its avionics suite includes an Automated Terrain Following (ATF) package allowing it to fly at extremely low altitudes, making the most of ground cover.
Despite official silence on the matter, rumors have leaked out about “Operation Eclipse,” a sustained drone bombardment of the Walhalla base. Meanwhile, Boeing has announced that the X-37C space-plane will feature a pressurized cargo bay large enough to accommodate six astronauts — the equivalent of an infantry squad and its equipment.
At the time of writing, details are hard to come by. Information is fragmentary and usually denied. However, it is possible that the Operation Eclipse drone strikes are intended to strip Walhalla of its defensive armament in preparation for an assault which will, at last, lay the ghost of 1972’s disastrous attack. It may not be too much longer before the secrets of Nazi superscience are in American hands: what America will do with them remains to be seen.
Appendix: Timeline
1922
Summer: The vril Jenseitsflugmaschine is built, allegedly based on psychic transmissions from Aryans who had been living in the Aldebaran system since 1919.
1934
June: The Rundflugzeug (Disk Aircraft) RFZ1 crashes on a test flight at the Arado works in Brandenburg.
1939
Date unknown: First flight of the Haunebu I saucer.
1941
Date unknown: First flight of the Vril-1-Jäger, the first armed disk aircraft.
December 3: Sänger submits the design for his Silbervogel orbital bomber to the Reich Air Ministry.
1942
February 25: The Battle of Los Angeles: US forces fire more than 1,400 antiaircraft rounds at a large UFO without apparent effect. July 6: The Reich Armaments Ministry reverses its previous policy of dismissing nuclear physics as “Jewish science” and begins Germany’s atomic bomb program.
1943
August — September: Flight tests of the BMW Flügelrad begin at Prag-Kbley airfield in Czechoslovakia.
1944
Date unknown: Dornier wins the contract to manufacture Haunebu II saucers, but production is impeded by Allied bombing. Hans Kammler plans the Bifrost Protocol and arranges the construction of a base on the Moon.
September 8: The first V-2 rockets are fired at Paris and London. November — December: Feuerball electrostatic weapons are deployed against Allied bombers, giving rise to the first reports of “foo fighters.”
1945
March: Kammler is promoted to Obergruppenführer and placed in charge of all Wunderwaffen production.
Apriclass="underline" American forces capture the experimental nuclear reactor at Haigerloch near the Black Forest.
April 14: The US Third Army captures the prototype Rheotron accelerator at Burggrub, Bavaria.
April 30: Hitler allegedly commits suicide in Berlin. Rumors of his survival immediately begin to circulate.
May 2: Wernher von Braun surrenders to American troops. His broken arm, sustained while escaping an assassination attempt orchestrated by Kammler, is explained as the result of a car crash.
May 8: VE Day is announced, formally ending the war against Nazi Germany.
Before May 11: The Haunebu IV saucer limps out of Prague ahead of the Soviet approach and moves to the Neuschwabenland base in Antarctica.
July 9 and 23: Time and Life magazines both carry reports on the Oberth “Sun Gun,” based on captured documents.
1946
December: Operation High Jump: The US task force converges on Antarctica.
1947
February 6: Operation High Jump: US forces are repulsed after an air battle with German saucer craft.
March — November: Operation Einherjar. The Antarctic base is evacuated and all personnel and other assets are relocated to the Moon. Initial construction of the Walhalla base takes place.
June 24: Pilot Kenneth Arnold encounters a crescent-shaped craft near Mount Rainier, Washington, whose movement he describes as “like a saucer if you skip it across water.” This is the start of the great UFO scare of the 1940s and 1950s.
July 8: An experimental saucer aircraft from Area 51 crashes on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico.
1948
January — February: Operation Windmill: US forces find the Antarctic base abandoned. The hunt for another Nazi refuge begins.
February 18: A large meteorite falls in Norton County, Kansas, on a similar latitude to New York.
March 25: An Area 51 saucer crashes near Aztec, New Mexico. Rhesus monkey test subjects on board are mistaken for diminutive aliens. December: Reports begin of UFOs apparently investigating American nuclear facilities and bases where nuclear weapons are stored. These may be Black Sun missions attempting to capture nuclear technology.
1949
Early, date classified: Signals from the Walhalla base are first intercepted by Britain’s Jodrell Bank radio-telescope observatory. September 21: A meteorite strikes Beddgelert, Wales, close to the latitude of Birmingham.
1950
September 20: A meteorite strikes Murray, Kentucky, on a latitude close to that of San Francisco.
December 10: A meteorite airburst over St Louis sparks a nuclear attack scare.
1951
October 17: A meteorite strikes near Elenovka, Ukraine, USSR.
1954
March 6: A meteorite strikes Nikolskoye near Moscow, USSR.
November 30: A meteorite strikes a home in Sylacauga, Alabama (on a similar latitude to Los Angeles), injuring one person.
1958
Date unknown: The Lunex project plans a US Moon landing in 1967 and an underground moonbase by 1968. It is abandoned in 1961 due to technical difficulties.
May: Project A119 is begun, planning a nuclear attack on the Walhalla base. It is abandoned in January 1959 after calculations show that the United States could not place a sufficiently large warhead on the Moon.