ATLAS

VariantOMEGA-24-8-1Sheet 1 of 5 of the dossier Operation Highjump

Saucers from the inner Earth

The version in which Byrd's fleet is driven out by craft rising from a hollow Earth, and the pulp-to-legend chain behind it.

Engraving of the Earth seen from space with a large circular opening at its pole.
"Symmes's hole, as it would appear to a lunarian with a telescope": an 1882 magazine illustration of the hollow Earth theory, not an observation. Unknown authorUnknown author · public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Summary

This sheet follows the version of the story in which Operation Highjump was driven out of Antarctica by flying saucers rising from inside a hollow Earth. According to its supporters, the poles are openings to an inner world, Admiral Richard E. Byrd found one, and the Navy's early return in 1947 hid a defeat. The tale is a patchwork. The hollow Earth itself goes back to Edmond Halley's concentric shells of 1692 and to John Cleves Symmes Jr., who in 1818 argued for polar openings. In the 1940s Ray Palmer's Amazing Stories published the Shaver Mystery, and in 1960 and 1964 a writer using the name Raymond W. Bernard, in reality Walter Siegmeister, tied saucers to the inner Earth and named Byrd as its explorer. The record gives nothing to hold on to. Earth's mean density of about 5.5 g/cm³ and the way seismic waves cross the planet contradict a hollow globe, and the Ohio State archives that keep Byrd's papers say they hold no evidence of any flight inside it. Byrd flew over both poles in 1926 and 1929 without reporting entrances, although the 1926 claim has itself been questioned. The belief therefore documents a genre, pulp fiction turned into legend, rather than an event: the saucers enter the story through books written years after Highjump, not through anything reported by its crews.

What the thesis says

The sources show where these claims circulate, not that they are true.

  1. Thesis

    In one popular retelling, Operation Highjump was a failed invasion of Antarctica: Admiral Byrd's fleet is said to have been forced to retreat by flying saucers coming from the Hollow Earth.

  2. Thesis

    Hollow Earth lore holds that the saucers are the craft of an inner civilisation and that the poles hide the entrances to its world.

    • Hollow Earth, Wikipedia
      presents the idea of UFOs coming from inside the Earth
    • Hollow Earth, The Skeptic's Dictionary (Robert Todd Carroll)
      Flying Saucers from the Earth's Interior

Verified facts

  1. Verified fact

    The link between hollow Earth and saucers was made in print by Raymond W. Bernard, a pen name of Walter Siegmeister, in Flying Saucers from the Earth's Interior and then The Hollow Earth (1964).

    • Hollow Earth, Wikipedia
      presents the idea of UFOs coming from inside the Earth
    • Hollow Earth, The Skeptic's Dictionary (Robert Todd Carroll)
      His real name was Walter Siegmeister.
  2. Verified fact

    The hollow Earth idea is much older than Byrd: Edmond Halley proposed concentric shells in 1692 to explain compass anomalies, and John Cleves Symmes Jr. proposed polar openings in 1818.

    • Hollow Earth, Wikipedia
      proposed this scheme in order to explain anomalous compass readings
  3. Verified fact

    In 1945-1949 Ray Palmer's magazine Amazing Stories ran the "Shaver Mystery", cave-dwelling beings and ancient machines, one of the pulp roots of later UFO and inner-Earth beliefs.

    • Hollow Earth, Wikipedia
      promoted one such idea from 1945 to 1949 as "The Shaver Mystery"
    • Hollow Earth, The Skeptic's Dictionary (Robert Todd Carroll)
      the FBI blamed Palmer and Shaver
  4. Verified fact

    Physics rules out a hollow planet: Earth's mean density is about 5.5 g/cm³, and seismic wave travel times directly contradict a fully hollow sphere.

    • Hollow Earth, Wikipedia
      the average density of the planet Earth is 5.515 g/cm3
  5. Verified fact

    Byrd flew over the North Pole in 1926 (a claim later disputed) and over the South Pole in 1929; critics note that he reported no polar entrances.

    • Richard E. Byrd, Wikipedia
      Byrd and Bennett said they reached the North Pole, a distance of 1,535 miles
    • Hollow Earth, The Skeptic's Dictionary (Robert Todd Carroll)
      Byrd flew over the North Pole in 1926 and over the South Pole in 1929, but he didn't see these entrances
  6. Verified fact

    The Ohio State University archives, which hold the Papers of Admiral Byrd, state that they contain no evidence that he flew into the Hollow Earth.