June 2002

Research Material Provided by:
John F. Schuessler
International Director
Mutual UFO Network, Inc.
Post Office Box 369
Morrison, Colorado 80465-0369

Background

From The New York Times, December 31, 1989: NUREMBERG, West Germany, Dec. 30 (AP) - Hermann Julius Oberth, a pioneer of the space age who worked with Werner von Braun to help develop Germany's V-2 rocket, died on Friday (December 28, 1989). He was 95 years old. Mr. Oberth died at a hospital in Nuremberg after a short illness, the Hermann Oberth Museum in Feucht said in a statement.

He began experiments on a jet motor for the German Government in 1930 and developed a model later that year. He worked on the motor with Mr. von Braun, considered the leading scientist in American space flight development.

Mr. Oberth joined Mr. von Braun in rocket experiments in the United States in 1955, but he retired three years later and returned to West Germany. Mr. von Braun died in 1977.

Mr. Oberth was born near Nuremberg on June 25, 1894. At age 15, he built a model of a rocket motor described in Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon." After high school and service in the infantry in World War I, Mr. Oberth studied medicine, aerodynamics, and physics at universities in Munich, Gottingen and Heidelberg.

He submitted a thesis on rocket experiments for his doctorate, but it was rejected as too cursory. An expanded version was published in 1923 as the book "The Rockets to the Planets in Space."

Flying Saucers Come from a Distant World
By Professor Hermann Oberth
The American Weekly, October 24, 1954

Professor Hermann Oberth started the article with the following statement: "It is my thesis that flying saucers are real and that they are space ships from another solar system. I think that they possibly are manned by intelligent observers who are members of a race that may have been investigating our earth for centuries. I think that they have been sent out to conduct systematic, long-range investigations, first of men, animals and vegetation, and more recently of atomic centers, armaments and centers of armament production. They obviously have not come as invaders, but I believe their present mission may be one of scientific investigation."

Dr. Hermann Oberth Discusses UFOs
Fate Magazine, May 1962

Dr. Oberth said he prefers to use the term "UFOs," rather than "flying saucers." Then he referred to thousands of cases of unexplained sightings and why they are important. He said: ..."I would like to say that as a physicist I am more satisfied by the assumption that we are dealing with flying machines. So far, other plausible explanations have not been found."

Oberth went on to say: "But if we establish the working hypothesis that the UFOs are machines, we also have to assume the following:
a) They are not built by human beings..
b) They are flying by means of artificial fields of gravity..
c) They produce high-tension electric charges in order to push the air out of their paths, so it does not start glowing, and strong magnetic fields to influence the ionized air at higher altitudes."

Dr. Hermann Oberth Looks at UFOs
By Rho Sigma
Fate Magazine, July 1968

Professor Oberth said: "In my opinion, science should regard anything as possible so long as it cannot be proven impossible by facts based on observations. Each explanation should be considered valid as a working hypothesis until observations are presented to contradict it. I do not concern myself with UFO research because it is along the line of space travel and because I believe that objective persons should screen the material which is gathered in commendable fervor even by persons who are not always objective."

Further, Oberth said: "It looks as if UFO research will go through the same stages as the automobile, aviation, space travel, bacteriology."

In his reference to NASA, Oberth said: "NASA is busy telling us that there is a high probability of life in the universe but it's all far out there, not here. Frankly, when one looks long and carefully at the UFO evidence one wonders if perhaps it's not conceivable that some of it has found us - rather than vice versa. But to date my own efforts to get NASA to consider that intriguing possibility seem to have been ignored.. I realize, of course, that there may be semi-political considerations that make it awkward for NASA to fish in these waters.."

Where Are They Now?
Newsweek, March 25, 1968

In discussing Oberth and UFOs, Newsweek states: "Oberth holds that unidentified flying objects have been sighted for thousands of years." When asked why the outer spacemen have not contacted man, Oberth said: "Maybe they have looked us over and don't want to come in contact. Or perhaps they have conquered telepathy so they can read our thoughts and feel that is enough. Or maybe we represent nothing more important to them than a termite colony in the jungle."

Lecture Notes About Flying Saucers 1954 by Hermann Oberth
By Paul Norman
Australian UFO Bulletin, September 1991

Paul Norman obtained Oberth's translated lecture notes from Drs. Blumrich and Ferdie, at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. In the notes Prof. Oberth gave his observations about UFOs as follows: "There are about 50 observations known from the time before World War II. Then the number of appearances increased; the Allies thought it was a German secret weapon, and the Germans thought it was one of the Allies. Since 1947, the reports of eyewitnesses increased considerably. It is said by the English Air Marshall Lord Dowding that there have been 10,000 (reports) by 1953."

"The appearances are usually described as disks, sometimes as balls or ellipsoids. It sometimes happens that these disks place one upon the other, the largest in the center, the smaller toward the ends, to form an object the shape of a cigar, which then flies away with high speed. Sometimes one already saw such a cigar (UFO) stopping and untie into separate disks. The disks always fly in a manner as if the drive is acting perpendicular to the plane of the disk; when they are suspended over a certain terrain they keep horizontal; when they want to fly very quick, they tilt (tip) and fly with the plane directed forward. In sunlight, which is brighter than their own gleaming, they appear glittering like metal. They are dark orange and cherry red at night, if there is not much power necessary for the particular movement, for instance, when they are suspended calm. Then, they also do not shine very much. If more driving power is necessary, the shining increases (brightens) and they appear yellow, yellow-green, green like a copper flame and in a state of highest speed or acceleration extremely white. Sometimes they suddenly blink or extinguish. Their speed is sometimes very high, 19 km/sec has been measured with wireless measuring instruments (radar). Accelerations are so high that no man could stand it; he would be pressed to the wall and bruised. The accuracy of such measurements has not been doubted. If there would be only 3 or 4 measurements, I would not rely upon them and would wait for further measurements, but there is existing more than 50 such measurements; the wireless sets (radar) of the American Air Force and Navy, which are used in all fighters, cannot be so inaccurate that the information obtained with them can be doubted completely."

Hermann Oberth Writing in
Mitteilungen Der Gesellschaft Fur Interplanetarik
1961

Dr. Oberth summarized hypotheses that might explain the UFO phenomenon and predicted that scientific institutions will enter seriously into UFO research once the field had been more clearly defined so that it can be assigned to the appropriate specialists and when enough evidence had been collected so that facts can no longer be denied or ridiculed.

Interview at the Second Congress of Aeronautical
And Space Medicine
By Antonio Ribera
Flying Saucer Review, Sept/Oct 1962

Dr. Oberth said that in his opinion, the higher forms of life in our planetary system are to be found only on Earth. He said: "If we are to seek the place of origin of the flying saucers, we must look to other stellar systems, perhaps to the planets of Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani, two of the suns nearest us and belonging to the same spectrographic type of our own."

Radio Interview with Dr. Oberth
Flying Saucer Review, Sept/Oct 1965

The radio interview with Dr. Oberth was conducted during the First Astronautical Week in Barcelona, Spain, May 3-9, 1965, where Dr. Oberth said: "We must consider real a fact of which we possess eight thousand certain sightings. I cannot say if they are or are not interplanetary vehicles, but nobody can doubt any more their existence."

UFOs: Interplanetary Visitors
Raymond Fowler

In his book UFOs: Interplanetary Visitors, Raymond Fowler quoted statements from the Huntsville Times (Alabama), where Dr. Oberth said the following: "According to information available to me there exist more that 70,000 eyewitness reports of UFOs. Eleven percent of these reports cannot be easily explained. They should not be lies or hoaxes because they involve responsible senior Air Force officers of radar readings or photographs from responsible sources."