Thinking Sideways: Operation Highjump

to the pet store. Go down to your local shelter and adopt a puppy or a kitten or a full grown adult dog or a cat or whatever else they have. And if you've hit your pet quotient, which there really is, there's a limit, don't get too many. Then you can still help out by donating your time or your money. They always need help, so go down there and make it happen. Hey, guys, welcome to another episode of Thinking

Sideways the podcast. I am Devin, joined as always by who already looks bored and Steve, sorry, I was looking at me kind he looks super bored. Alright, you have the face of somebody who's been caught expression of that, like, oops, I just I'm serious for super serious episode. This is a serious topic here, Okay, about that that continent at the bottom of our world that keeps us right side up and it weighs a lot. It's true. It's the

center of it's our ballot, it's our ballast. Another term at the center of gravity in the middle of the Earth. That's the North Pole. Yeah, right, obviously, Sorry, we've already divulged. It's fine. This is going to be good, devolved, not divulged. Yeah, should be sharing some Yeah, you got it. That's great. Today's episode was recommended by Colton, So thanks Colton. Yeah, guy, guy, buddy. Uh. And we are going to talk about Operation high Jump

and the many weird conspiracy mysteries that surround it. By mystery kind of, it's kind of a lot of different mysteries put together. There's a lot of weird stuff going on here, It's true. Including me. You were likely that's

nothing weird about you, weird sight. I totally dropped the ball. Now, Okay, you're likely unfamiliar with Operation high Jump, which was officially called the United States Navy Antarctic Developments Program nineteen nineteen forty six to nineteen seven, and rightfully so, because why would you know about this? Operation High Jump was one of twenty eight expedition SANS made to Antarctica, which is the South Pole for you people who don't know what

that graphically confused. Yeah, five of these twenty eight were taken on by the United States. Unsurprisingly, Brittain holds the record because they just like to colonize everything they do. Yeah, they visited Antarctica eleven times, and visits are still happening. These are just these like grand expeditions. Yeah, these expeditions

and discovery. Yeah, yeah, there actually were a lot of the Argentines, for example, have been have been sort of poking around Antarctica since like the early nineteenth century, very early, much closer than we are. Yeah, they definitely it's them. Yeah, This specific expedition took place, If you were paying attention, you may already know, took place from nineteen forty six to nineteen forty seven and involved four thousand, seven hundred

men and lots of boats and aircrafts. Officially, there were six submissions of this mission expedition up the primary mission of the expedition being establishing Little America. For yeah, I don't remember Roman numeral. It was like Ivy IVY Little America for America form, which was just the base of operations for Operation High Jumps, so literally the jumping off point. Well, yeah, it's kind of weird. They were like, well, our primary goal is to establish the base of the operations for

our expedition. Where our primary goal is to establish the base of operations for our primary expedition goal. I really feel like I'm watching a Leslie Nielsen movie. Yeah, a little bit. That's like we were at a part of town they called Little Italy. Did you ever see that episode? Of course? Yeah. Anyway. The submissions, not to be confused with submissions submissions were one training personnel and testing equipment

in frigid conditions. To consolidating and extending the United States sovereignty over the largest practicable of practice I think, participal area of the Antarctic continent. This was publicly denied um even before the expedition ended. Always it's always been denied to the three Determining the feasibility of establishing, maintaining, and utilizing bases in the Antarctic for investigation and investigating possible

based sites. Number four, Developing techniques for establishing, maintaining, and utilizing air bases on ice, with particular attention to later applicability too, of such techniques to operations in interior Greenland, where conditions are comparable to those of the antarctics. So what are you guys doing living there? All the fifty listeners we have in Greenland? Yeah? How many people live in Greenland anyway? And all of them listen to us? Yet? Yeah.

The fifth submission was amplifying existing stores of knowledge of electromagnetic, geographic, geological, hydrographic and meteorological propagation conditions in the area. This is fancy talking, guys, I'm sorry. And somebody printed the script like front to back, so it's like it's fine and cheap paper. And six is supplementary objectives to the Ninook Expedition, a smaller which which was a smaller expedition to Greenland off of the east of Greenland. But yeah, I guess

Greenland is rather inhospitable from what I've heard. Not the people, I'm sure they're wonderful, but the climate. Well, no, that was God. Who was it the discovered Greenland? Do either of you remember? Because they named it Greenland in an attempt to encourage people to move there, to make it sound more hospitable and nicer. It's a greenland Vikings, I think, but it was. But but actually that was I think

in the medieval warm period or something like that. Before then it was actually and it actually wasn't all iced over, not nearly as much. It was kind of greenish. It was a lot greener that is today. Yeah. So, in an effort to try to summarize, as many of you have been asking for are lately, uh, in like five

sentences or less, what this mystery is. The mystery here is that, um, a lot of people think that this is just a big cover up for one of many different reasons, and I want to play it a little close to the chest and not tell you sure, um, but basically that the Navy was sent to battle with like UFOs, or like Aliens, or or Nazis, or or to hide some stuff from public consumption. Um. So that's our mystery, is what really was Operation High Jump and

what was what were their actual missions? First of all, when the military wants to hide something, they just take it to area. I've got to shoot that one down right away. But they can't get all of Antarctica in the temperature is totally different. Yeah, but well maybe they could, because if you just melt it down, who I don't know how much there is. Let's talk about Operation High

Jump for a minute. We're going to talk about who was involved and like what ships were involved, and maybe maybe Joe knows some things about some of these ships. I don't know not. Operation High Jump was organized officially organized by Rear Admiral Richard E. Bird, Jr. The United States Navy retired. He was the officer in charge of Task Force sixty eight, which was not retired at He

was not retired at the time he was retired. Eventually he was still active, but he was the officer in charge of Task Force sixty eight, which is what Operation High Jump. All of the people who were a part of it, they were part of Task Force, and uh a lot of them were like Task Force sixty eight point one. Why not? Yeah, And it was led by Rear Admiral Richard H. Kruzen because Bird wasn't there on the ground per se the whole time. He showed up

pretty late and left pretty early. Yeah, that was kind of his gig, but he was not actually the point man. It was kind of his gig because you may may not know this about bird. He claims to have been the first person to reach both the North and South poles. There's a lot of contentions about this claim he did. It is documented he reached the South pole, fine, but a lot of people think he didn't actually reach the North pole. There's a lot of contention about people who

reached the poles. Every time somebody says that, they're like, and if you can't easily prove it, as in, you took a hundred people or film the whole thing, it was always contesting if it took a hundred people. It's it's kind of difficult sometimes. Well, I mean, I guess if you use the right if you have the right instrument, but it's hard. I mean, there's not our listeners I

think probably know this, but maybe not. There's not actual polls just like sticking out of the ground that say like this is the North Pole, and this is this outpoll and we congratulations, you've made it. Yeah, technically, there have been people who have gone figured out their location said I am at the pole, stuck a pole in the ground and if you wait twenty five minutes, that poll is no longer at the north because of the ice shelves moving, and to be fair, I meant like

naturally occurring poles. It's not like everybody could say, yeah, when you get to that pole, you're at the North Pole, because it's the North pole. Tops got that little thing sticking off the top of it that you used to spin with your fingers, right, Yeah. It is a little known fact that God does not the Earth does not spin because God is just like whipping us around like a top every once in a while. That's not that's not how it works. Sorry, um no, but we'll talk

about that on a different episode. Anyway. Bird had been previously on a funded expedition, The first United States expedition to the Antarctica was actually it was called like Birds Expedition or something like that, and he led it and he was that was his big thing, was leading these extravagant expeditions because these things always turn out so well, right, So that's why he was like in charge of the

whole thing. I think he convinced some some lawmakers and the president that it was worth it, or somebody said, hey, that guy, we should bring him in. He's done it before. The impression I have is that he brought it to their attention actually that he was like, you know what we should do again, go to the South Pole. That's a good idea. And again you know, actually probably did say something in the order if you know, there's a lot of people going down there and setting a basis,

we better go down and just sort of stake a claim. Yeah, and we'll talk about a lot of the actual reasons um a little bit later. There were five different groups

on the expedition, and they went different ways. Um. I don't know if you guys got a chance to look at the map, um, there were different like approaches that people they did, and I mean one of the it was kind of interesting actually they kind of they ended up kind of completely coming from totally opposite directions to Antarctica, and basically the Navy just kind of circumvented the entire circucumnavigate,

circumnavigating um, the entire continent of Antarctica. They made like a big circle um and kind of simultaneously around it, which again has a lot of people scratching their heads. The East group was three ships, which was the uss Pine Island back up here. It was this entire expedition was broken into how many groups, five groups total. Yeah, okay, so that's what we're describing each of the groups. Yeah, okay, just make sure I was on board where we were. Yeah,

super important to the whole story. Um, the USS Pine Island, which was a seaplane tender, and there were over thirty aircraft aircraft, aircraft, over thirty aircraft that also participated in this expedition, both seaplanes and pontoon helicopters, which I think there's an actual term for, but I could not remember what it was. Um, I don't know, it's a good question. A little floaty helicopters. Yeah, yeah, with pontoons on they land. Yeah, the USS Brownson, which was a destroyer, and the U

S S. Canisteo, which was a tanker. And these were all like kind of state of the art ships by the way, as we're going through this, Um, a couple of them were actually like the most state of the art ships of the time, but most of them were pretty new. Well this is like the year after World War two in the US. Yeah, oh yeah, we built a lot of ships and so hey, that's probably what was this was all about. It's like, you know, we got some board sailors, okay, something to do. Yeah, yeah,

oh sorry. The central group was the USS Mount Olympus, which was in charge of all of the communications for this expedition and later become became kind of the floating communications hub once they got to the space where they were going, which was the Ross Ice Shelf right off the Ross Sea. So you know, those of you, yeah, those of you who know the ant art, the landscape of the ant art, know what I'm talking about, but probably no one else does. So talk about the second.

If you look, if you look at a map of Antarctica, and you see like there's what else which is to the east of the Antarctic Peninsula that stretches up towards South America, and then on the and then go way around that peninsula in the's a ross ice shelf, and and there's all sorts of ceas and there's just every like every every regular intervals like this season there's a different yeah, and then and it's like, I don't see any particular reason why you should call this a c

because there's nothing like sticking out and kind of defining it as a bay of c or anything else. It is my understanding that the reason that those are named, and please feel free to emails of us if this is wrong, But it was my impression that the reason

that they're all named different things. Um, the lots of the landmasses are named different things too, and that's because a bunch of different countries have common been like this is our c it's this thing, okay, and this is where ore, this is our We claim this whole area here. Everything we can see is ours. You can get all yours over there, and this is whatever we're doing. That's

my understanding at least, so I think so. Yeah. And Argentina, by the way, it's it's illegal in Argentina to sell a map of the country that does not include their chunk of Antarctic. I believe that. And they have a pretty substantial chuck. Yeah, and that's a waste of paper. Yeah. Um, So back to our ships. The U S S. Yancey was also part of the central group. The USS Merrick Uh and the Yancy We're both on supplies, that's all

they were. The U. S. S. Senate, which is sc N an E E T not like Senate like our like this Congress in the Senate, which was a submarine, and the USS Burton Island and the U S. C. G C, so the United States Coast Guard craft car whatever cutter, UH north Wind, the Barton Burton Island and the North Wind. We're both ice for akers, and the north Wind was it was the only non naval vessel that was sent on this expedition. But who killed it? Um? But it was also literally state of the art. It

was part of the Wind class. It was her and her sister ship, which was called the south Wind UM I believe south Wind, and they were like state of the art, right off the line ice breakers, and they were in service for a really, really really long time. This was one of the first expeditions that they were sent on, so again we're sending fancy tools down here. There was the Carrier Group, which was just one ship.

It was the U S S Philippine Sea. And then the West Group, which was the U S S, the U S S. Current Tuck, which was another seaplane tanker, the U S S Henderson, a destroyer, and and finally the USS Casapon which was another tanker. Okay, how many more ships do we have? This list is huge. I told you there was a lot of ships. They had a lot of ships to go through. Yeah, the Western Group ships reached the Marquesis Islands, which is part of

French Polynesian Islands or French Polynesia. Yeah. Here, that's a nice place, like all that stuff. Yeah, I'm gonna go someday, probably not as soon as you. Yeah, the Polynesian Islands are super nice French Polynesian Islands. There's also US Polynesian I think, so there's a bunch of different Polynesians. We keep tracking at the moment. These islands are parallel with Northern Peru, kind of um close to the equator. Actually, yeah, not exactly a great place for as your as to

set up as your base of Antarctic operations. Yeah, it's basically halfway up the world. Yeah, they think they wanted to just stop off and like party for a couple of weeks. Maybe that was like it really is. It was funny as I charted the court, you know, just because I have Google Earth opening and I was trying to figure out which. By the way, figuring out north on the South Pole is really pain in the butt.

But the point is I was looking and saying, okay, so where is this relation to the United States, And if you went from if you left California and you went on a degree angle. It is almost exactly halfway between the US and Antarctica, and it seems to be, as you said, kind of a stop off, a little

bit out of the way. That well, one thing I will say is that it is it's not my understanding that all of these ships were coming from the same ports, you know, especially like even in the same group, right, the Western group was all coming from different ports, and they had to have someplace where they were like, all right, meet there and then we'll all go through the dangerous part together, because that's why we're in a group, is so that we can, you know, all work as a

team to go down. So I think that it was probably a pretty convenient spot. I suspect that some of the ships were not coming from America, so I was like, let's just all meet here in the party for a little while and then go down. Yeah, it was very probably something coming from who knows where, Japan, you know, Pearl Harbor and god knows where. So they didn't actually reach that um set of islands until December twelfth, nineteen six.

So this when when we're talking about this expedition running from nineteen to ninety seven, I know you have the impression that it was like a year, but it was really like less than six months. It was like a couple of months. Yeah, but less than it was less than a half a year. And keep in mind because I actually had this question initially, it's like, why are

you going there in the winter. That's so dumb, But it's actually it's actually the summer in Antarctic the best time to be there, if there is a good time. There's a little confused that part of the world. Yeah. Yeah, one they all got there, a bunch of the seaplanes started exploring southerly just to make sure, you know, conditions are good, you know, is are there islands that we should stop at, because they think, you know, there was a lot of stuff that was still uncharted. I mean,

we didn't have satellites back in those days. We we were pretty sure we knew where things were. But you know, when you can't take pictures from space, you're like, well, I don't know, I think there might be an island there, but that could be from one of those fake maps that's you know, to test us. We did. Yeah, so that was on December is when they launched those So after twelve days they launched all of these seaplanes to explore down in the South regions. The eastern group of

ships reached Peter the First Island in late December. There's not really a date attached to this um late December of forty six. The Peter the First Island is just about two hundred and eighty miles away from Antarctica. That's kind of closed. That's to four and fifty KOs for you folks who don't use the smart measurements. It's currently claimed by Norway along with our favorite little island, Bouvet Island. One of the way, is the boat still there? I

think so. I don't know. I haven't done our national monument. Yeah, it's the Norwegian National Monument. Actually, is this real weird boat on a tiny little island on the totally other side of the world. You go away had half a sense of humor. They would like take the boat away and replace it with another boat that like a sailboat or god knows what. You know. They really should just

best what the world's head. You know what we should do is we should start a Kickstarter campaign or go fund me campaign to get all of us to go down to Bouvet Island to just the three of us and just replace the ship our Don't you think I will go. I will take that challenge higher standing. I believe it's gonna be rather cold. Yeah, that's what Parker is there for. I don't like the coal. That's what ton Tons are for. I don't like the coal kind.

And it's not that bad in the summertime. Their summertime, not ours. Famous last words. Uh. Now, Arctica has that kind of peninsula that Joe was talking about a little earlier that runs north towards South America. I've granted every peninsula off of Antarctica runs north, but this one like really runs north. It's it's the only peninsula. Yeah, and

there are two kind of like gulfs. There's the one gulf that's like inside the peninsula and gulfs on the outside, both of which have ice shelves over the gulf's ross the Ross ice shelf, which is where Little America is once. I don't know if it's still there or not. Probably still there. There were a lot of Little America's. It's kind of like south of New Zealand kind of on the other side, it's hard, like like Steve was saying, like it's almost impossible to say, like, it's not like

there's nout. Yeah, you can't say, well, it's like it's like north, it's like east. It's like you need to go by longitude. I mean that's the only way to do it. So starting at zero degrees and just working your way around, that's kind of way to do it. I didn't do that. So's so realistically, what you have to do is if you really care about where the Ross ice shelf is is just google it. It'll pop up. Yeah, it's it's white. You have to seem out a lot

before you can see anything about white. But then it'll show up and it's fine. Just I was just to help you get a little bit of bearings. The Eastern group arrived at the Bay of Whales, which is a seaport for the Ross ice Shelf. Actually was it went away? Okay? Was it kind of disappeared when an iceberg was melted or whatever. Yeah, So they got to the Bay of Whales,

like I said, um on January of forty seven. A little more than like a month later, Yeah, in late February of nineteen forty seven, they were ordered to return home. Mission success go home. Yeah, so that's another reason. Yeah, the going on of the actual time on the Ross ice shelf aren't particularly well documented for a public consumption, which is why we get to do an episode on it. Absolutely, that was not They didn't have like a documentary film

cruise along for the whole. They did have some journalists, but since it was an active mission of the military, plus the journalists all died, didn't They four men did die, but none of them were journalists. But they they you know, the Navy got to say what they got to review when they wrote and approving, right, I mean, the only form of communication was on a naval ship. Did you read how some of these guys died? Though? That was a plane crash for three of my thing, but the

other four that was horrible. So if you've ever seen the big thing that you know they pour asphalt to make a road and then they've got the big the big steamroller job that goes across it had one of those to pack the ice to make runways. He was like Wiley, a coyote on many occasions sucked under the wheel. So it's actually interesting. I've read two different accounts of

how he died. Both of them are horrific. There was that one, and then there was another one where they were using a fork, like a giant forklift to unload some of these other big pieces of machinery and he just happened to be in the way, so he got crushed. They like put down the tractor on top of it there, Yeah, which is also really rough whenever there's unloading a big things. I'm far away. Yeah, me too, as far aways possible. The worst move I was gonna say. They're like, Devon,

come help, and I'm like i can't my back. Sorry, I'll take some pizza. The four men die and then then what happens? Yeah, but they were called in February. So where does that leave us? Great question, Steve, Yeah, no, I mean, so the thing is is like these four men died, but that wasn't the reason that they were called back. They were called back because the weather was bad. That was an acceptable amount of casualty s apparently, or I mean, actually a much higher number would have been acceptable.

Oh yeah, there there are numbers about that. But out of four deaths, say you know, I mean, but especially in a hostile, dangerous environment like Antarctica, is it's kind of to be expected that at least a few people are going to die. Yeah, I mean, but that's the thing is, like we don't really know what happened down there. They were supposed to be building this base and they were kind of paving away for an airway, but that

kind of didn't really pan out. And then they were supposed to be like training on combat, but a lot of the ships were there for like two weeks, so I don't know. I mean, there's a lot of training you can do in two weeks, but it seems like not a lot of stuff happened, which is kind of weird. Well, you know, I think that they were probably doing stuff like just testing their new their new toilets on sean board the ships, just to make sure that they truly

didn't freeze up like they were supposed to not do. Yeah. Probably that's why it was stuff like that, checking the plumbing. Yeah, well, I mean that is making sure the heaters worked. That was one of the stated missions, was just to see how well some of the gear and stuff held up in those kind of conditions. And so I guess a month is long enough to do that. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's true. Yeah. Um Bird gave an interview in March of that year. Admiral Bird retired, gave an

interview in March off on his return. I think he was in Argentina. I can't remember, to be honest with you, what I think it was South America, somewhere in I was I was taking Oh, yeah, yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, we're basically he it was this kind of weird interview, and I don't know how accurate it is, but I'm going to read part of it because it kind of adds yeah, and it adds to the intrigue. Actually, Joe, do you want to read This'll put on my admiral voice. Yeah,

I just I'll just give the whole thing here. Admiral Richard E. Bird Warren today that the United States that measures of protection against the possibility of an invasion of the country by hostile planes coming from the polar regions. The admiral explained that he was not trying to scare anyone, but the cruel reality is that in case of a new war, the United States could be attacked by planes

flying over one or both Poles. This statement was made as part of a recapitulation of his own polar experience in an exclusive interview with International News Service, talking about that recently completed expedition, Birds said that the most important result of his observations and discoveries is the potential the fact that they have in relation to the security of the United States. The fantastic speed with which the world is shrinking, recalled the Admiral is one of the most

important lessons learned during his recent Antarctic exploration. I have to warn my compatriots that the time has ended when we were able to take refuge in our isolation and rely on the certainty that the distances the oceans and the poles were a guarantee of safety. So that leaves a lot of people questioning, well, yeah, especially I mean I can totally see actually flying over the poles. I mean, actually he was a little bit prescient because of course,

now what we're looking, We're always watching. We're always watching for those those i CBMs come come flying over the pole from the pole from Russia. I'm not so sure about the South Pole, Ya, Russia or anybody else. Frankly, even if Australia wanted to attack US, I think there's better ways than flying over the South Pole to get

to US. Yeah, I was gonna say the other things that a lot of people read, and and much as you have stated, I always took this, at least initially, I took it the way you said, like flying over the poles, coming from somewhere, going over the pole and hitting us. But he could have also meant something akin to what we were trying to do, which is someone establishes a base, so they're flying from the pole, so it's it's technically it's kind of over the pole to us,

but that's that cuts down the distance required greatly. But yeah, I'm thinking about, like, if you think about the situation then, because the Cold War is starting where we're looking at prop potentially catastrophic war with the Soviet Union, and think about you know that with all these planes and everything they have left over from World War Two, if they wanted to say, fly up to the North Pole, established temporary basis for supplies of fuel, etcetera, and just refuel

their planes. They're all their bombers and stuff for an invasion of the US. You know, that's that's entirely a feasible thing. Well, and they would have to have some sort of base of operations because I actually looked into this is that bombers of you know, large caliber planes like that that are able to carry that kind of equipment had a range of about two to three thousand miles, so they would have had to have started. They couldn't

have made the trip in one feld. So yeah, that's why I say, just established temporary basis where they can stop, refuel. Everybody goes to the bathroom and then serious. And I still wonder about those guys like you know, like flying those those long missions and like F you know F fifteen s and B two bombers and all that stuff. I mean, what do you guys do? There was a bucket? Is that what it is? I've I've read accounts there

was a bucket. God help you. If there was turbulence and the buckets spilled and you were the low man on the totem pole, you had to clean the bucket. Yeah, I'm thinking more of the guys that are like sitting in there, like I say, an SR seventy one, where you're in a titlett com cockpit. You can't stand up and walk back to the bucket and urinated. No, that's a diaper situation. I guess a diaper or maybe a coffee can they give you a coffee? Can you? Guys?

I don't know, but you guys are treading. Yeah, you're treading into theories category. Actually yes week, next week our mystery. What are those guys do? Yeah? Um no, But I mean there there are some questions, you know, the stuff about flying over the poles, especially in the South Pole, and we're going to talk about that in a second. But I do you know when one of the questions, right is like why would why did they call this high jump? Like they're going to the most southern point

of the world and calling it high jump? Actually why? Yeah, And that's suspicious. But I can answer that question. I'm sure you can. Can Can you do it in theories? Yeah? Yeah? Great? Perfect. So bird you may remember I said he didn't show up until like way late. He showed up on January, and the evacuation orders were sent in like the middle of February. So that's the way I would do it. If I was going to well, I would do it too.

It seems like a lot of efforts to put into basically what was like a month of photographs, because that was really the only takeaway that that happened from this mission, and they did take about seventy photographs, about half of which was selfies, you know, but most of them were useless because there was no ground control on any of them. And what that means for people who don't know is is you fly in a grid pattern so that you can line things up, and they didn't do that. You

just kind of flew around and took some pictures. They had white stuff together. Yeah, yeah, this is what's white. Hey, it goes with the rank next to it, which is kind of ad I don't know why they didn't have some sort of more disciplined effort for that. They should have, But but that also raises questions for people, is like, we are they doing something else? Maybe they're just flat around like looking for you secret stuff, or were they

hiding something? Right, Maybe they did find something and they were like, oh, what do you mean, we didn't take any pictures of that grid part. Whoops. They just pull them out and took the notes off of them totally. So um, that is the question we're going to talk about in theories is what was the real reason for this operation? Absolutely, But before we do that, let's take a break. Everyone always thinks that little green men or yes, as Devin says, maybe they're gray are coming to Earth

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theory number one. Theory number one is that the Navy did it for the reasons the Navy did it, they were telling the truth. One does that happened all the time. So they said they were going to like win World War two, did they Yeah, we get to write the history books. So yeah, never mind, we've won all the

wars that we've been involved in. Okay, uh um yeah, I mean we just assumed that the Navy is telling the truth that they sent more than four thousand troops too and several resources down to Antarctica to establish a base for a month, to establish a base for a month, to establish a base for a month, and do the like ten other things they said they were going to um,

okay six whatever. I mean, you know, and there is I know, this was the thing you want to talk about, right, is like why Operation high Jump might have been called Operation high Jump. Yeah, because there's been a lot of suspicion about that. There has. Yeah, but this is on the heels of World War two and the military, the US military burned to all the operational names. They have a huge list, and there's there's a whole office in the Penticon that maintains this lip and they pretty much

burned through the entire thing. There are only a couple of kind of crappy names left. Wait, wait, is their list the equivalent to our not brought to you by list. We're like, oh, it's running out. That new petition change dot org. Somebody make this um petition to make Team Sideways the official namer of operations from now on. Yeah, I think that'd be kind of cool. Yeah, they don't have to tell us what they are. They can just be like, we just need like a new name for

an operation, and we hug operation free Hug. That's about it. I mean, I think that that's not suspicious at all. They just they were stuck with the lame name because that was about all that was left over. I mean, they did there was an operation that was fairly simultaneous, which was Operation a Nook, right, which was also an ice based one. Like why why didn't they call it like Polar Bear Hug Operation Polar Bears. I'm stuck on the hugs right now. Yeah, that's a good question. But yeah,

the nook kind of makes sense. Yeah, although that today that would be probably cause cultural appropriation, so culturally insensitive appropriation.

And the thing is, though, I actually, to a degree, this expedition being taken on at this time makes sense when you actually again we've got to look back a year or three to World War Two, and there is that whole time when the Russians and the Germans are going at it and men are Germans mostly are dying in droves because they're freezing to death because they are ill equipped and you're ill prepared for this kind of terrible,

terrible cold. And so in a way it's like, well, you know, we're there's some things, you know, Russian and Us we're kind of giving each other the stink. I maybe we should just gain a little bit more information just to make sure we don't get caught in action, because yeah, I mean, when you're when you're out there fighting in the snow and you're fringing rifle doesn't work, you know, what does that kind of and thanks your

jeep doesn't whatever. I mean. The thing the other thing to think about, yes, is this is on the heels of World War Two, and that will feed into some of our other theories. But it's also on the beginning of the Cold War, um, and you know, and it's cold, right, but also like with Russia, right, And there's some saying

I think it might be in Russia. I don't know really where it's from, but it's like, um, all all Russia has to do is make it to the winter and then yeah maybe yeah, well so I don't know if you know, like the better quote or whatever, but basically it's basically that, yeah, all I Russia has to do is get to the winter, and then Russia the land mother Russia will fight the war itself, because every every single time somebody has tried to invade Russia or

otherwise wage war, wage war on Russian land, they've just died in the winter. And with the winter is like the years too, I mean, and that was the French under Napoleon, and Naves suffered badly. Everybody whould tries this. Yeah. Granted, Napoleon I think tried to take like elephants, which maybe not the right choice, but okay, listen, he had a lot of issues trip, but no, so that's something to bear in mind as well. Um, but let's go to more fun theories theories. Um, this one's less still not

super fun, but still a little more fun. Um that that the main, the main reason of it was actually just to claim more land. And as we mentioned that, I think it was listed that was a claim of some sort. There wasn't specific a specific parcel of land. Yeah, that was the submission number two that we listed before. But again it has been publicly denied the entire time, basically that that was actually a reason, which is weird because like that was a one of the reasons we

wanted to get to get to the Moon first. Yeah, we wanted to claim it as ours. Yeah we well not necessarily we own the moon. We just a we probably do, but we most especially didn't want anybody else itt up there and stick of a claim to it. We wanted the cheese, yeah, all the trees and whatever, the cow that jumps over and all that stuff. Yeah. My one of my favorite things is this like thought process of what if like China or Russia went to the Moon and went up and just like knocked our

flag over? What would you do? And I'm pretty sure that America would spend the millions of dollars that it would take to send another man to the moon. We could do it for millions of dollars to have trillions of however much money it would take. We would be petty enough to send another man to the moon or woman, another person to the moon to knock their flag over and be like what the current yahoo would either do

that or go on a Twitter tirade one of the two. No, no, no, Like I am fully supportive of NASA doing that in the instance that China or Russian goes for sure, we should go back to the moon anyway, or at least hire somebody like Stanley Kuber to fake it, fake it again. Yeah,

well Elon Musk is going so take it. Yeah, yeah, al must Anyway, that was that was the long version of the this extra theory is that also it was for this theory or this mission that of course it was we had to claim a little piece of land wine. Everybody else was running down there and stake of the claim. And I've seen this take to take their claims kind of seriously, like Norway or Argentina, which is the one, Yeah, I think you have to have from the map. Well yeah,

it seems like but Argentina does. But a lot of the other countries do too. Uh. They've sort of officially declared that even because some of their claims kind of overlap a bit, and so they officially declared that even though their claim is the right one, they're not going to make a huge stink over it. Smart decide. Everybody's signed a treaty. So everybody's decided, Yeah we're right, but we're just gonna like just not you know, shoot anybody

over it. Okay. So yeah, this next theory is that it was a response to aliens or a battle over a Nazi sanctuary. Yeah, this is really the UFO theory, right, Um, it's a good one, actually, the secret Nazi base. Yeah, so that is that's one of the big proponents are one of the big parts of this theory is there is a theory out there that there was a Nazi base that was established on Antarctica, and that's where like you know, Hitler, because he didn't actually die, he was

he was taken down German shepherd Antarctica. Yeah, had a German shepherd. He had a German shepherd that he loved, right, No, I took her with him. He left it bron He had a bullet hole in her head, I think, you know. Yeah, yeah, So I mean that's it's a It is a big theory that they had this thing down there and that we knew about it, and so we sent a bunch of naval ships down there to once and for all obliterate the Nazis down there. I guess is the way

that that goes. Jerry basically that in this theory, it was not storms that forced them to retreat. It was UFOs again, either trustrial, either terrestrial or non terrestrial. That's right. I'm talking about Nazi UFOs or alien UFOs altogether in one coherent theory. Yeah. Take that. No, I like it now. It's entirely possible. I have some questions about that, but I'll wait till you get to the end of it. Okay, So here are some other things that people present as evidence.

You might be able to hear my air quotes around that evidence for this theory. Apparently some of the ships were lost. Yeah, the US it was after the mission. The USS Pine Island was struck from the Naval register in an unknown date. Her title was transfer or to Maritime Administration for layup at the National Defense Reserve Fleet. She was actually re registered in Portland, Oregon. Do you know where? Uh, yeah, right here in Portland, Oregon's yeah,

a stone So from where we sit right now. But oh my god, we are We're the product, were the product probably, but yeah, but but I believe it was given to Zydell just to be chopped up for Yeah, it was actually well. I saw an aerial photos of Zydell and huge acres and acres of land right next to the Willam and they had like at least a dozen Navy ships tied up there in the river, and online acres and acres are just piles of scrap and they had it all sorted out in the various things,

but just piles and piles of it. Really cool photo. I'm not sure I was supposed to have seen it or not. It might have been classified, but people don't know. Zidell was a scrappy, yeah, ship scrap yard mostly. Yeah. But anyway, I don't think it's any coincidence that this ship went down and participated in this and then and then right after that or one of years after thirty years after it was chopped up, you know and scrapped.

I mean, yeah, it was in two I think officially they've done that to a number of ships, right, but it was it was struck from the register before it disappeared, yeah, and then it came back just to be scrapped. I have no idea how that happens, but you know, I mean it's a big meraucracy the Navy is, and I imagine they misplaced ships all the time. Oh, I'm sure.

I'm sure that you could have just called them up and been like, hey, did you know that the uss Pine Island was like missing from these dates on your registry and they'd be like, oh, look at that, we'll fix it. Cool. Thanks. Guy. You call him up and you tell them that, and there's a scream and the phone drops, hear them running away, and then pretty soon they come. Somebody else goes decide, never mind, it's all okay, take care of taking care of It's fine. What's your

thank you? We want to send you a thank you package? What's your address? Where? What are you? Where are you located? Right now? Then in suits and sunglasses will be delivering thank you. Another thing that people say to back up their Nazi sanctuary a slash alien technology theory sanctuary. Yeah, I mean that's what it is. It's a retirement home for Hitler. I'd call that a Nazi sanctuary. Nazi Hills, Nazi Hills, Nazi Hills, Nazi Hills, the Nazi sanctuary in

Antarctica States anyway. Um, sorry, So apparently there's a claim that Bird's remarks in the newspaper the one that Joe read a couple of minutes ago was actually a bitter reality.

In the case of a new war, the continental US would be attacked by flying objects which would fly from poll to pull at incredible speeds, which leads these researchers to believe that Bird himself was trying to warn people about the UFOs he'd en counter down there without like trying to trying to circumvent use that word, right, his gag order from the Navy. Yeah, already just saw the speed at which missile technology was moving and thought or the one that Joe red was a good translation and

this one was a weird translation. I think the one that I read was actually it wasn't actually a direct quote. It was more like a summary of his remarks, and it could have been misrepresented as the idea of things coming over both poles. Maybe they met the North Pole, you know, I don't know. I mean, so the big question here is like, why would the Nazis be hiding down yonder because nobody else would go there, well except for tons of people were going there all the time.

That's why they're on the moon. Yeah yeah, yeah, But but a contest the size of Antarctica even if even if hundreds of people go are there at any given time, you're still pretty unlucky to run into them. True. Yeah, and you know, as long as you put yourself kind of as long as you use some white camo around your base, you're probably good. On The question is how do you feed them natural resources? Being snow and oh yeah, no,

the Nazis have absolutely perfected greenhouse technology. Of course they have, right well, and maybe they don't need to because maybe they actually have alien technology, because the other theory is Nazis. You know, again, this isn't an r isn't an episode about that necessarily, but we've talked a little bit around the idea that the Nazis might have had like flying saucer UFOs and also had some kind of weird technology

of you know, laser guns and stuff like that. I think it would have won the war if they had that stuff. Yeah. Yeah, but maybe, or just maybe the Nazis, in creating their base in Antarctica encountered the Aliens, and the Aliens were like, sure, you can have our technology. You seem like good people. I don't know, uh so, yeah, basically, what if the Nazis stumbled across the Aliens and their

secret base, and they blackmailed them. They said, you know, if you want to skip your secret you know you will, you will hand us your devastating weapons otherwise we'll rat you out. And the ali said, oh you got us good there, Okay, here you go, rather than just using our deadly weapons to obliterate you. You know, there's there's actually no rule. I mean, the Aliens might have some fantastic technology, but that doesn't mean that they're actually not morons. Totally.

They totally could. I mean, if you look at there's a lot of people I see walking around today who have the most fantastic technology in their hands, you know, like an iPhone and their complete bone heads. Yeah, try to explain to your like, you know, if you ever somebody came from the past, from the fifties, like, try to explain to them that you hold in your pocket a device that could access every single bit of knowledge

that's ever been held in the entire world. They use it to like look at cavidios, Like that's where we use it for, right. Yeah. I have a question if if so, this theory is saying that we there were UFOs and either they were Nazi driven or they were little green men driven okay, or grace the neutral ones. So my question is why and and of course the theory goes on to say that these little guys at least obliterated at least one ship on the expedition by you know, going pup pew and just blowing it out

of the water. Why are they not destroying any other boats? Because maybe they're actually just scientific observers who were just trying to protect their anonymity. You're saying they're shy. I'm just saying there, maybe they're scientists who were just sent to observe and the only reason they attacked was because they were being attacked. And then once we left, they were like great, cool they probably Yeah, that makes sense

to me. I'm sorry, I cannot defend this theory particularly well, it's kind of a dumb theory, but I like it because it's fun. It's it's fun. The next two are dumb, Yeah, we're they're real quick. Um. The next one is that the Navy went down there to further protect the secret of the Hollow Earth. How would they further protected, Well, you know, they circumvented the entire They're com navigated the

entirety of Antarctica. So they were really just securing the perimeter, making sure that no one else was down there, and then may and then like you know, putting somehow deterrence of some kind. I don't know, bid electric sense maybe, Yeah, I don't really know what. I definitely don't want people discovering that entrance because, yeah, a lot of a lot of unclaimed real estate. And it's true or your own plot alternately very claimed. There's two two groups of people

who may have claimed already the hollow Earth. One is Nazis, because that's the other theory, right, is that Nazis are actually living inside of the Hollow Earth. That was the entrance. Yeah, that was the entrance, and the U. S. Navy was really going there to be like, all right, you can live down there, but don't come up. If I see you step foot out the door. We're just telling them they did just blast the whole shot. Yeah, it's possible

you're staying in there and enjoy yourself. But alternately, it is where the lizard people who secret secretly run our lives. That's it's where they live. That doesn't make any sense. Lizards are cold blooded. I've never got that well, but they live inside. That's just where the whole out to the out of that would that would discourage them from trying to come out here through the one of the coldest areas of our planet. I'm sorry, we're not. Let's not.

I don't want to entertain this too much. If your lizard people, though, I mean, there's no reason you can't have you know, parks places, all kinds of stuff like that, thermal socks. They are shape shifters, you know. Yeah, well, I mean that's what Hillary Clinton is. You go, right,

because it's a better theory, right somehow? Okay, great. The next theory is that they were actually doing this to part at the secret of the flat Earth, because for some reason, that's a big conspiracy that like nobody everybody's trying to trick the trying to trick all of the like intellectuals, the like higher thinking beings people of our yeah, I don't know whatever, um trying to somehow trick them into thinking that the world is a sphere because I

don't know why, I don't know who that benefits. I don't understand this very much, and I don't know if you guys have seen these maps lately, of the flat Earth it is. Yeah. So the very center of the of the what is it circle plate? Yeah, I guess it's a plate. The very center, Yeah, the very center of the plate is the North Pole, and then the outer rim is Antarctica. And so they were really just going to you know, further secure the perimeter and for some reason keep it a secret. I think that I

don't understand the flat earth thing. Don't understand it. I'm sorry. Well, no, actually I like it because um, well not really but and the but the kind of tells you where it came from though, because you know, the North Pole is the center of the whole thing. So obviously the people who invented it must live in the northern and then they must yeah, obviously, Um, but no, I mean it's it's it would be interesting because it calls all of

our physics, and it basically the question. It really does, and and if our physics have been called in the question that calls you know, the existence of things like nuclear bombs and laser beams and gravity and god knows what else. Yeah, and since people depend on those those those things, it's like it's like, for example, like for example of paper currency, we all think a hundred dollar bills worth something. It's because it is worth it is

worth nothing. What if people were to similarly to discover that gravity doesn't exist, then poof, off we go to the space. You know. That's how it works. If you just stop leaving in a thing, it stops being real. You're right, a stop believing in my bill collectors. For years they kept coming around. I was gonna say, really, the moral of the story is a hundred dollars means nothing to you listeners, so send it to us. It's really true that that that's it's not worth the papers prints. Yeah.

I don't know if you saw this recently, but you guys should go look at Neil de grass Tyson or actually maybe it was Elon musk even who tweeted at the Flat Earth Society and there he was like, why is there no more Flat Mars Society? And they're like, well, because that's been proven to be a sphere. Apparently the Earth is the only one that's flat. And I don't know, I just don't understand it. I like the flat earthers, and I gotta tell you, why is that because of

their MAXI isn't it? It's not just their moxie or anything. And I don't agree with I don't agree with everything to say. But what I like about them is there very civil about the whole thing. They you know, and there's a lot of people, you know, there's a lot of people that are very self righteous about the things that they believe. And if you post something they don't like on the Internet, they'll destroy you on Twitter, Facebook, whatever. They'll even try to get your fired from your job,

destroy your business whatever. The flat earthers are, you know, in my opinion, a model of civility. And that's why, even though I don't, I don't buy into their theories, I had to give them. I had to give them. I think flat earthers, in the Church of Satan, those are the two most civil people on the Internet, I think, you know, I wish people would behave more like them, not necessarily what they believe in the flat earth, but yeah, it would be nice anyway. That's the end of our theories.

The Yeah, I think that, you know. One of my one of my things is I really do think there was a good reason to go down there to just you know, stick acclaim and test a bunch of stuff in the cold and It's also possible that this was right after World War Two and they were probably probably at some point they've just been transporting men back from Europe and and you know, the Western Pacific and stuff,

you know, and huge teaming hordes. At some point, you know, somebody probably said, hey, you know, we can only absorb are so many soldiers coming back all at once. Maybe it's just slow to slow it down just a little bit. And I said, okay, and meantime, I gotta find something for these guys to do. So let's come up with

some make work. You know, everybody said, make your proposals, and admiraalbers like, okay, let's take like, let's guys to the Other thing though, is that if they're going to if they if they are indeed testing things in frigid conditions to make sure they work, you can't take them north because that's putting you very close to an ally

who is currently under great tension with you. You can't go to the North Pole because then it's construed as maybe you're trying to make a move on on the Eastern block, so it's the only safe move or the safe place to go. That's yeah, that's another way to do, but also to the you know, Antarctica actually is land. I mean you wouldn't know it. It's not covered with ice, but yeah, where is just you know, and stuff like that.

I also kind of wonder if you know, the war ended, but it was kind of looking like there might be another war, and I you know, it almost kind of seems like instead of saying, all right, you guys can go home and start your lives, it just made more sense of like, yeah, make war, you know, just let's send them to do this thing. Let's go, let's go, just send them on you know, what is equivalent to a busy work paper. Just have fun with that. Yeah.

The other thing too, is that bureaucracies have a tendency to defend their turf. And it might have been the Navy was just trying to come up with all kinds of missions to justify a larger budget and justify not chopping up all of its ships. They mean, they even do that today and they and so that may have been part of this too. So I think we can all agree that this was just kind of like a weird mission that the Navy did not not the UFOs.

It's actually not an unreasonable thing to do is send a much of guys to Antarctica for you know, miscellaneous purposes. Why not? I actually think that this might have accident at least spawned another little submistery that I've seen floating around on the internet. Why the heck did Thinking Sideways do an episode on this because it's so small? Okay, it's such a teeny tiny I'm sorry, meant that this episode. No. The thing I'm thinking of, I cannot remember the name

of it. But there are these weird these images of these weird objects over the ocean, and I'm pretty sure that they're basically balloons, you know, for target practices, but they're odds shaped and so they don't move and regular patterns. But there's these old photos of it. I bet that that is one of the things that they were doing, is going down there and not only looking around, but you know, doing practice, target practice and stuff like that

in in windy crappy. I mean, if you want to go somewhere's got a lot of wind, you go down there. It's crappy conditions. That's good point, you know, and you probably want to see if you they took some destroyers that the destroyers have some fairly decent sized guns on something. Yeah, so they might want to see how the guns perform when they're that kind of condition. How accurate are you in this kind of weather? Yeah? How's your gunpowder hold

up in you know, sub zero below or something like that. Well, I'm glad this is like the first time we've all agreed on something, so good job we've done it once or twice. Yeah, I mean we've got to the same restaurant before we've agreed on something before. That's true, right, fair? Yeah, anyway, there might have been there might have been a few Nazis hiding that down there. They were probably just still

haven't found them. Well no, actually, when they showed up, the Nazis are probably saying, oh, thank god you're here. I'm ready to go somewhere even thank you, thank you. Yeah. So, if you want to see some of the links to our really informative research on this topic, you can find that, along with links to merch You can stream the show. There's episode list all on our website, which is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. You can find us on social media if you want to get a hold of us.

That way, you can join the group where you have to answer some questions to get in, just to prove you're a real boy. Um or girl. Sorry it was a Pinocchio reference. I'm sorry. Uh. Or you can like the page and on Facebook. Um. If you do like the page, just know, like, that's not where the discussion happens. So if you post on the page, we'll probably be like, hey, join the group. You can also tweet at us a k A me, which is thinking Sideways. You can also

join the subreddit, which is thinking Sideways. If none of that really floats your boat, you can go ahead and just send us an email. The email address is Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. Uh, totally unintentional, I promise. Also, you know where you're finding us iTunes, Stitcher, wherever for whatever. Uh, if you haven't already subscribed, leave a comment in a rating helps other people find us and reminds us how

cool we are. That's right. And while you're out there like leaving us an awesome rating, go to all the other reviews and down both the bad ones. Yeah, don't know everybody who you don't agree with all the time. Yeah, be not like the flat earthers. There we go. Yeah, that's very democratic, I know, yeah. Anyway, Um, all of that having been said, we're going to float on out of here. Okay insert ice joke here. It's kind of blustery, okay,

but didn't work. This guy got cold feet. He's got a cold shoulders, which by guys,