Wolfgang Klemperer
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 👤 Person
Contents 8
| Type | Person |
|---|---|
| Also known as | Klemperer |
| On the Timeline | 1 event, 1955 |
Wolfgang Benjamin Klemperer (18 January 1893 – 25 March 1965) was a German-born aeronautical engineer and gliding pioneer. He worked on Zeppelin airships in Germany and the United States, then spent three decades at Douglas Aircraft, where he became one of the leading American missile scientists.[2] He is best known in astronomy for the "Klemperer rosette", a symmetrical arrangement of orbiting bodies he described in 1962.[2] In UFO history his name appears in two claims about Douglas Aircraft in 1955. An aerospace executive told Jacques Vallée that Klemperer was a member of a UFO study group at Douglas. And the former Douglas employee William Tompkins supplied a 1955 document said to show Klemperer and Elmer Wheaton surveying UFO reports and "unconventional" propulsion.[4][5][6]
Germany and gliding
Klemperer was born in Dresden to Austrian parents. The Wikipedia account describes his early career:[2]
- First aircraft. At 19, while still at school, he began building his first powered aircraft, a tail-first design that flew at Altchemnitz in 1914.
- War service. In the First World War he served in the Austro-Hungarian aviation troops and gained his pilot's licence.
- Studies. He graduated from the Dresden Institute of Technology in 1920 and became assistant to Theodore von Kármán at the Aachen Aerodynamics Institute.
- Gliding. With German powered flight restricted by the Treaty of Versailles, he led the student gliding club founded at Aachen in 1920. His glider "Schwatze-Düvel" set a distance record that year. In 1921 his "Blaue Maus" stayed up for 13 minutes, beating Orville Wright's 1911 duration record, and he received gliding certificate No. 1, the first ever issued.
- Zeppelins. From 1922 to 1924 he was head of research at Luftschiffbau Zeppelin in Friedrichshafen. His wind-tunnel work on airship loads became his doctoral thesis at Aachen in 1924.
United States
In 1924 Klemperer emigrated to the United States and joined the Goodyear-Zeppelin Corporation in Akron, Ohio.[2] His American career:[2]
- Airships. He worked on the designs for the Navy airships USS Akron and USS Macon, ordered in 1928, and on the Army's Stratospheric Research Project balloons of 1934–35.
- Douglas. From 1936 he worked at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica, first on a pressure cabin for civil aircraft, used in the DC-6. In the Second World War he led an instrumentation research group that developed a high-speed wide-angle cine-camera, analogue computers and flight simulators.
- Missiles. His department grew into Douglas's guided missile division, and projects he oversaw led to the Nike, Sparrow, Honest John and Thor missiles. In 1958 he became director of the guided missile research section, staff assistant to the vice-president and director of product development.
- Space navigation. His later work on orbital navigation led to his 1962 paper on what became known as Klemperer rosettes.
- Gliding. He was for many years a director and honorary vice-president of the Soaring Society of America, and chief engineer of planning and operations for the Sierra Wave Project.
He stayed at Douglas until his death in 1965.[2]
The Douglas UFO claims (1955)
The Van Nuys executive
In his published journals, Forbidden Science volume 2 (pp. 334–335), Jacques Vallée recorded a call from a vice-president of an environmental systems company in Van Nuys, who had read Vallée's book The Invisible College.[4] The caller said:[4]
- as early as 1955 he had belonged to a UFO group at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica, working with "Wheaten" (later at Lockheed), Ted Gordon, "Klemperer" and Dave Crook;
- Douglas management asked them to assess Project Blue Book cases, with photos and films;
- their conclusion, which they were asked to "forget", was that the objects used "multi-dimensional physics";
- they found some 2,000 sites in "Owen valley" alone, including places where objects seemed to go in and out of solid ground.
The 2024 UAP timeline published with Michael Shellenberger's congressional testimony lists this claim under 1955.[5] The Australian researcher who quoted the entry noted that, if true, it would mean Douglas ran a UFO study around 1955 as well as its known 1966–1970 study.[4] See Jacques Vallée and McDonnell Douglas.
The Tompkins document
William Tompkins, who said he worked in Douglas's "Advanced Design" think tank from late 1950, supplied a document that, according to the writer Michael Salla, shows his superiors Elmer Wheaton and W. B. Klemperer researching UFO reports and anti-gravity studies in open literature.[6] The Shellenberger timeline dates the document to 1 March 1955 and describes it as a Douglas study of "unconventional" propulsion systems based in part on open-source UFO material. It notes that Tompkins's surrounding claims about alien contact are unsupported.[7] See William Tompkins and Douglas Aircraft unconventional propulsion study.
The two accounts name the same two men, Klemperer and Wheaton (spelled "Wheaten" in Vallée's note). Neither the study's contents nor any conclusions about UFOs have been published in the sources read here.
Notes on the earlier version
- Birth year. The earlier version gave his dates as 1899–1965. The Wikipedia account gives 18 January 1893 to 25 March 1965, consistent with his building an aircraft at 19 in 1912.[2]
- Career. The earlier version's summary (German-born, gliding pioneer, Goodyear airships, Douglas missiles) is supported.[2]
- The 1955 study. The earlier version said Klemperer was reportedly involved in a mid-1950s Douglas study of advanced propulsion, and that an aerospace executive later said a Douglas group looked into UAP from 1955. Both are supported as reports, from Tompkins's document and from Vallée's journal.[4][6][7]
- Removed references. A Sign Historical Group introduction page and a 2019 blog post cited by the earlier version contained no relevant text when checked and have been dropped.
On the UAP Timeline
- Douglas Aircraft unconventional propulsion study (1955) — An aerospace executive claims he worked in a UAP group at Douglas Aircraft from 1955.
References
- Wolfgang Klemperer — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- "Aerospace companies and UFOs – 3" (2010), quoting Jacques Vallée, Forbidden Science vol. 2, pp. 334–335 — UFOs Scientific Research · ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com
- Michael Shellenberger, written testimony with UAP timeline (2024), p. 53 · oversight.house.gov
- Michael Salla, "Secret History of RAND Corporation in Reverse Engineering Antigravity UFOs" (2016) — Biblioteca Pleyades · bibliotecapleyades.net
- Michael Shellenberger, written testimony with UAP timeline (2024), pp. 53–54 · oversight.house.gov
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Wolfgang Klemperer”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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