Operation Highjump
Operation Highjump was the US Navy's 1946–47 Antarctic expedition under Richard Byrd and Richard Cruzen, later recast in claims about a hidden Nazi base and hostile flying craft.
Operation Highjump, formally the Navy's Antarctic Developments Project, was a United States naval expedition to Antarctica during the southern summer of 1946–47. Orders dated August 26, 1946, named the polar explorer Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd as officer in charge, while Rear Admiral Richard H. Cruzen commanded Task Force 68, which comprised about 4,700 men, 13 ships and 33 aircraft. Its stated objectives were to train personnel and test equipment in polar conditions, study possible sites for bases, develop ways to build and run air bases on snow and ice, photograph and map the coast and interior, and, in a goal publicly denied before the expedition ended, consolidate potential American sovereignty over as much of the continent as practical.
The task force sailed in late 1946 in several groups. An Eastern Group under Captain George Dufek and a Western Group under Captain Charles Bond, each built around a seaplane tender, flew reconnaissance and photographic missions along the coast, while Cruzen's Central Group, with the flagship USS Mount Olympus, two icebreakers and the submarine USS Sennet, pushed through the pack ice to the Bay of Whales. There, beginning on January 15, 1947, the expedition built the base Little America IV on the Ross Ice Shelf, and six R4D transport planes carried on the deck of the carrier USS Philippine Sea were flown in to operate from it. The operation's single aircraft loss came on December 30, 1946, when the PBM Mariner flying boat George 1 crashed on Thurston Island; three of its crew lost their lives, and six survivors were rescued 13 days later. A fourth man, Vance Woodall, lost his life on January 21, 1947. The ships withdrew in late February as winter approached, in keeping with orders that no ship or aircraft remain over the winter, and Operation Windmill returned in 1947–48 to check Highjump's aerial photographs on the ground. A documentary on the expedition shot by service photographers, The Secret Land, won the 1948 Academy Award for best documentary feature.
Byrd gave the expedition its most quoted line. In an interview with the International News Service published by Chile's El Mercurio on March 5, 1947, he warned that the United States could be attacked by planes flying over one or both poles. In a 2007 Polar Record study, Colin Summerhayes of the Scott Polar Research Institute and Peter Beeching concluded that Highjump was designed to train the US Navy for a possible war with the Soviet Union in the Arctic.
A rival story grew around the same expedition. The idea of a hidden German stronghold in Antarctica goes back to 1947, when the Hungarian writer Ladislas Szabo published Hitler est vivant, and in 1974 Ernst Zündel, writing as Christof Friedrich, claimed in UFOs: Nazi Secret Weapon? that flying saucers were German weapons launched from an underground Antarctic base. Later retellings say Highjump was sent to destroy that base in New Swabia, the region explored by a German expedition in 1938–39, that its aircraft fought flying saucers and that it was cut short after losing several aircraft. The skeptic Brian Dunning has pointed out that only one aircraft was lost, that no flying saucers were reported and that the expedition worked on the far side of the continent from New Swabia. Summerhayes and Beeching found that "there was no secret wartime German base" there and that the myth was built by linking unrelated wartime and postwar events once their secrecy lapsed. A separate Hollow Earth legend attached itself to Byrd personally.
Highjump lore remained active in 2026. In July the author Brad Olsen discussed Byrd, Highjump and alleged German bases on That UFO Podcast, which released clips framing his account as a disputed claim that American forces met advanced craft in Antarctica; in another clip Olsen linked the 1952 Washington flap to his theory of a hidden Antarctic group. The documented record, a single lost flying boat, four men lost and a temporary base on the Ross Ice Shelf, remains far smaller than the battle the legend describes.