Pretty memo on the Horten brothers (1947)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
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| Date | 16 December 1947 |
|---|---|
| People | Horten brothers, Harry H. Pretty |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 39 |
| Year | 1947 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1947 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 6 |
The Pretty memo is a secret U.S. Army intelligence memo of 16 December 1947, titled "Horton Brothers (Flying Saucers)", reporting an inquiry in occupied Germany into whether wartime German designs could explain the 1947 flying disc reports. Its sources all said that no flying saucer design had ever existed in Germany.[1][2]
Background
After the 1947 wave of sightings, U.S. intelligence asked officers in Germany to investigate whether German aircraft designers could be behind the discs. A natural lead was Reimar and Walter Horten, brothers who had built a series of tailless flying-wing aircraft, including the jet-powered Horten IX (Ho 229), which first flew in early 1945.[1][3]
The memo
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The memo was written by Lieutenant Colonel Harry H. Pretty of the intelligence section of Headquarters Berlin Command, Office of Military Government for Germany, and addressed to the Deputy Director of Intelligence, European Command, in Frankfurt. It described Reimar as the theorist of the flying wing and Walter as the engineer who tested his ideas, recounted wind-tunnel tests of the Horten IX at Göttingen in 1944 and flights at Rechlin in which one test pilot was killed, and said Hermann Göring had ordered mass production at Gotha in January 1945, though it never began. After the war the brothers had spent about 90 days being questioned in England; Reimar was studying mathematics at Bonn, and Walter had written to Northrop about working in the United States.[1]
The findings
Investigators questioned Walter Horten; a former secretary to General Ernst Udet; a former official of the Luftwaffe high command's research office; Professor Albert Betz, former head of the Aerodynamic Institute at Göttingen; and a former test pilot. All independently said that no flying saucer design had existed or been planned by German air research institutions and that they knew nothing of one being built, though they agreed such a design would be highly practical and desirable. According to the memo's source, neither brother had contact with the Soviet air force or any other foreign power, although a possible link through the Gotha factory, where the Horten IX plans had been hidden, was to be checked.[1]
Significance
The memo, published by the research group Project 1947, is one of the clearest early documents undercutting the later "Nazi UFO" legend that Germany secretly built flying saucers. The Horten flying wings themselves were real and influential, and the surviving Horten IX airframe is held by the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.[1][2][3]
People and topics
- Horten brothers — German aircraft designers of the Ho 229 jet flying wing, investigated in 1947 as a possible source of the discs.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
- U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
- Harry H. Pretty — Army intelligence officer in Berlin who wrote the December 1947 memo on the Horten brothers.
On the Timeline
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- Mexican mystery missile (1947) (October 1947) — An unknown missile allegedly crashes in Mexico and the State Department is said to seek the wreckage.
- Laredo UFO crash claim (1948) (1948) — An anonymous retired colonel claims a craft crashed near Laredo, Texas, and witnesses were sworn to secrecy.
See every 1947 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- "Horton Brothers (Flying Saucers)", Pretty memo of 16 Dec 1947, Project 1947 · project1947.com · archived copy
- Nazi UFOs — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Horten Ho 229 — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- 1947 UFO document index — Project 1947 · project1947.com · archived copy
- The manhunt for the Horten brothers (Operation Harass) — Gizmodo · gizmodo.com · archived copy
- project1947.com · project1947.com · archived copy
Further reading
- Operation Paperclip — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
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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