For nearly three generations, rumors have swirled around Operation Highjump, a 1946 U.S. Navy training exercise in Antarctica that supposedly failed because of troops' unexpected and disastrous encounter with advanced aircraft flying out of a secret Antarctic base. The precise nature of the claims varies, but two elements are constant: that the aircraft had been created and piloted by fugitive Nazis, aliens, or both.

Antarctica is the world's southernmost continent. Sealers probably encountered the landmass before 1812; Russian and American expeditions of 1819-20 made the discovery "official." Progressively more ambitious expeditions mounted by America, France, Brittain and Russia during 1820-42 made tentative attempts at mapping. Shipbuilding advanced over the next hundred years, but much of Antarctica remained a mystery in 1946. Operation Highjump was an immediate-postwar initiative to demonstrate American military prowess to the Soviet Union, and map "the bottom of the world" in advance of the International Geophysical Year scheduled for 1957-58. Washinton had some apprehension (not shared with the public) about the Norht Pole, and the possibility of Soviet troops moving across Arctic ice to attack the United States from the north. (The U.S. military had put together a training exercise in the Arctic in the summer of 1946, but because the northern winter was coming on, no follow-up to that exercise was possible for 1946.) Highjump activities south in the Antarctic, scheduled for late 1946, would combine mapping with general evaluations of military operations in cold conditions.

The operation assembled thirteen ships, twenty-three aircraft, and some forty-seven hundred men. But most of the troops had no polar experience, and the expeditions flying leadership was, according to historian Dian Olson Belanger, "very thin." Further, Admiral Richard M. Byrd, the mission's ostensible leader, was not well, and functioned under the heavy thumb of the U.S. Navy. In the middle of a December 1946 blizzard, the crash of a Navy PBM Mariner (patrol bomber flying boar) carrying a crew of nine resulted in three deaths. The six survivors waited nearly two, bitterly cold weeks for rescue, and the bodies of the three dead men were buried where they had fallen.

Highjump's photo mapping was successfully carried our, and the crash was given appropriate press coverage. Interest in the PBM's fate intensified later, when UFO theorists downplayed the weather factor and focused on supposed alien or Nazi aircraft as the culprits. Although Admiral Byrd spoke publicly of future enemy aircraft able to fly "from pole to pole at incredible speeds," he had no reason to suspect such craft existed, and was simply hypothisizing.

Since 1959-beginning with The Worlds Beyond the Poles, a "hollow Earth" book by F. Amadeo Gianinni-and encompassing SF-fantasy novels from the 1990s to the present, as well as questionable 2006 Russian documentary, various sources have suggested that the Byrd Antarctic mission was mounted to investigate hidden German airbases. What encouraged this speculation about Nazis? Some of the tales were fact-based. German pilots operation from an aircraft carrier had begon air exploration of the Antarctic shore and interior in 1939, focussing particularly on Queen Maud Land. Before Februari 1939 was out, German soldiers and explorers had established New Swabia. During 1941-42, German scientists, engineers, and troops arrived at a new outpost, Base 211. Although Hitler never used his navy to its capacity, the apparent German interest in Antarctica puzzled and worried some Allied observers. many were perplexed by reports of the arrival at Base 211 of German tunnel-digging equipment, railroad tracks and ties, and rail-laying machines. Admiral Doenitz, the chief of the Kriegsmariene, was credited with saying this in 1939: "My submariners have found a true paradise on Earth." And Doenitz was alleged to have said this in 1943: "The German submarine fleet is proud, and at the other end of the world, we've made an impregnable citadel for our Führer." Speculation about warm Antarctic lakes and tunnels built wide enough for German submarines began during the war and continued into 1946. The Soviet Union claimed, nonsensically, that the American military had been unable to account for more then one hundred German subs, as well as thousends of top German rocket scientists, at war's end.

As Highjump unfolded, Admiral Byrd supposedly reported German fighter jets and unidentified craft that rose from beneath the water to confront his fleet. And according to a purported U.S. Navy witness named John Sireson, Byrd made a report on February 26, 1947, of "a mysterious, lethal ray" and silent "objects" that floated between his ships, "firing rays from their noses." According to this account, a Navy destroyer, the USS Murdoch, was sunk. However, Navy records show no USS Murdoch active in the Antarctic at that time. The credibility of the claims is further undermined by confusing variations/contradictions of names and other facts: accounts cannot agree, for example, on whether the violent events took place in the Antarctic or the Arctic. Witness John Sireson is often referred to as "Sayerson," and the Murdoch is alternately identified as the Murdock and the Maddox. And in some accounts, the Murdoch/Murdock/Maddox is not a destroyer but a torpedo boat. In any event, no ship of any of those names was involved in Highjump; the name that comes closest is the USS Merrick, but that was a supply ship that returned to base in one piece.

A German-based Web site that is particularly vehement about UFO aspect of Byrd's mission calls itself, in an amusingly a priori way, facts-are-facts.com. Another site, conspiracy-watch.org, describes the number of Highjump troops pretty accurately, but characterizes the mission as a U.S. "Invasion."

The next paragraph begins, "This is fact. It is undeniable."