There are many rumors surrounding Operation HIGHJUMP. In late August 1946 the United States sent Task Force 68 to Antarctica, which included 4,700 men, 13 ships, and 33 aircraft. They were well provisioned but suddenly left early in February 1947. We are told that “Naval ships and personnel were withdrawn back to the United States in late February 1947, and the expedition was terminated due to the early approach of winter.” Of course this is the peak of Antarctica’s summer, and many do not believe the official answer.
Why is Byrd’s 1946-47 Operation Highjump mission still classified? Byrd was talking to the American public live as he was about to fly over the South Pole in late 1946, then suddenly went silent for three hours. Did the Navy cut him off because he was describing what he saw? “The listening public thought this radio silence may have been on purpose because of what Byrd was describing, and the Navy was deliberately killing the broadcast.”(see footnote 1 below) Or it could have been because the flight crew dumped equipment and just barely gained altitude in time to make it over high mountains that suddenly came up (the Vinson Massif has peaks 16,000 feet high.) That’s the Navy’s answer.
But then why did the mission, provisioned to end for many months, end abruptly? Why on the way home did Admiral Byrd, in an interview with Lee van Atta of the International News Service on board the U.S.S. Mount Olympus on March 5, 1947 – warn us (as quoted in Chile’s El Mercurio newspaper the next day: “Admiral Richard E. Byrd warned today that the United States should adopt measures of protection against the possibility of an invasion of the country by hostile flying objects coming from the polar regions…. flying objects which could fly from pole to pole at incredible speeds.” Shortly after this speech, Byrd was hospitalized in the same naval medical facilities where James Forrestal would soon fall to his death from the 16th floor, and the admiral was no longer allowed to hold press conferences. Byrd must have gotten on board with his CIA handlers, however, because he did not die, and was eventually back in charge of polar missions. Though on November 28, 1955 Byrd did say before departing for Antarctica again: “This is the most important expedition in the history of the world.”
Byrd obviously believed he had encountered something very important and dangerous in Antarctica. The U.S. Military seems to have agreed. Many have speculated that there were alien UFO bases or Nazi scientists who had taken advanced antigravity aircraft built at the tail end of WWII to bases in Antarctica. Certain German prototypes, only assembled in early 1945, do look remarkably similar to what was soon seen flying and crashing in the western United States.
Others think we found evidence of the last advanced civilization under the ice, and that Atlantis reigned in what is now Antarctica prior to the last pole shift catastrophe, which moved the now icy continent far to the south.
What do you think?
Footnote 1: Childress, David H. Antarctica and the Secret Space Program: From WWII to the Current Space Race. Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited Press, 2020, p. 73
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