the Byrd Expidition

[missyfan45]

In 1947, Admiral Harry Byrd set up a expedition to the Antarctic. there are many mysteries and incidents surrounding this event that could cover a entire campaign. One idea is the hollow earth theory.

[Catsmate]

Antarctic Space Nazis!

Obviously Operation Highjump was actually a reconnaissance-in-force against the Neuschwabenland Redoubt where the Nazis fled when the war appeared lost. The idea of a Nazi redoubt down there goes back a long time too; just after the end of the Second World War rumours, and a few strange events, contributed to the idea. The Byrd expeditions, especially Operation Highjump, are often associated in popular culture and fringe literature with an attempt to assault such a base. Byrd's own comments, that the United States should be prepared for an attack by "hostile planes coming from the polar regions" are often distorted to support such beliefs.
The Call of Cthulhu campaign Assault on the Mountains of Madness would make a good Secret History prequel to Byrd, who may have been cleaning up the Nazi holdouts, or attempting to grab the gates through which they passed to hidden bases elsewhere in the planet/solar system/galaxy/universe/multiverse.


The idea of a secret organisation of Nazi supporters, survivors of the fall of the Reich and others preparing for another attempt at world domination is a common one the fiction, written and broadcast of the classic Who era. Pretty much every TV series of the sixties onwards with science fictional leanings (the 'SpyFi' sub-genre), any many without, used the idea. There are examples in:

• The Man from UNCLE: The Deadly Games Affair [the one where Solo was sleeping with a THRUSH agent] had Hitler's body still preserved.
• The Tomorrow People: Hitler's Last Secret had a resurge in Nazism and Hitler as a shapeshifting alien
  
• The New Avengers: The Eagle's Nest also had Hitler being kept in suspended animation, plus sinister monks and  poison-tipped fishing hooks.
  
• The Champions: The Final Countdown omitted Hitler but had a German nuclear bomb and an irredentist Nazi a Sinister Plan.
• The Freewheelers: many episodes featured the former Nazi von Gelb and his Sinister Plans. Though he was gone by series five when Wendy Padbury appeared (and seemed to spend most of her on-screen time tied up).
• Mission Impossible: Echo of Yesterday had resurgent Nazis
• Wonder Woman: in Anchluss 77 has a regenerated Hitler attempted to restart is old plans.
  

The "they saved Hitler's brain" trope is rather common.

Even Doctor Who used it, in the sixth Doctor novel The Shadow in the Glass. Of course the Doctor was also around for Hitler's riser to power (Timewyrn - Exodus) and inadvertently inspired the German development of stealth aircraft (Just War). Who has visited the frozen south quite a few times over the years, most notably Snowcap Base was the scene of The Tenth Planet, the fourth Doctor encountered the Krynoids there and it was the setting, complete with Cybermen base, of the novel Iceberg. But there were many other visits and references, in all media.

• I suggested in a previous thread that there's a campaign around a former German surface raider in WW2 that's displaced in time.

While Camp Century (The Nuclear Ice City) was actually in Greenland, there's no reason to to build a similar town in Antarctica. Perhaps in the Whoniverse antarctic exploration was more commonplace and there are more, and larger, bases in the southern cold?

[Catsmate]

One interestingly historical oddity that can be linked to Byrd is the mysterious death of James Vincent Forrestal, the man who sent him to the Antarctic in '46.

• Forrestal was the first Secretary of Defense for the United States (previously the cabinet had separate secretaries for the Army and Navy; these roles, and the Secretary of the Air Force, were now subordinate positions).

Some background.
James Forrestal was the son of an Irish immigrant bricklayer, and had been a combat pilot in the Great war. Between the wars he worked Dillon, Read & Co., a major  investment bank. Prior to WW2 he became Roosevelt's undersecretary
of the Navy and later (in 1944) became Secretary of the Navy. Thanks to his intelligence, experience and contacts  he built a surprisingly efficient military procurement program for the war effort.
In 1947 Truman reorganised the service departments under the new Department of Defense and Forrestal became the first Secretary of Defense.
That's when his problems really began.

Truman wanted a balanced budget, a unified and efficient military but also to contain the Red Menace. Unfortunately these were impossible and mutually exclusive aims. Forrestal gained new enemies, especially one Stuart Symington, the secretary of the Air Force; at the time the USAF believed that the still new and shiny atomic bomb, and their monopoly of the ability drop them, meant that the rest of the US military was obsolete and should be scrapped.

In 1949 Forrestal began complaining of harassment and being followed (this was in fact entirely true); certainly he was the victim of a campaign of leaks and innuendo by Drew Pearson and Walter Winchell , both prominent columnists and broadcasters.
He lost the trust of Truman (helped by another whispering campaign by Attorney General Thomas Clark) and was replaced on 28MAR1949.

• Curiously on the way back from the ceremony where he was replaced by Louis Johnson, Forrestal was accompanied by Symington, who'd insisted on sharing the car with him.
  

Later that afternoon Forrestal was found repeating the words "You are a loyal fellow" over and over; he had suffered a nervous breakdown.

His friends took Forrestal to Florida to recover, but he continued to suffer from nightmares of suicide and being followed. Finally he was admitted to Bethesda Naval Hospital, placed in a VIP suite on the sixteenth floor; his diagnosis was "involutional melancholia", what we'd now call clinical depression.
Forrestal was isolated in the hospital, old friends were refused admission and even his brother was only allowed to see him after threatening to go to the press.

On the morning of 22MAY1949, at about 1:50AM Forrestal knotted the sash of his bathrobe around his neck, tied the other end to the radiator, opened a screen window, and stepped out.
Forrestal plunged to his death, striking the building and landing on a third-floor roof.    
His doctors had considered him well enough to be released to his brother Henry the following day.

While Forrestal believed he was the victim of espionage and conspiracies he was, in fact, under surveillance by at least three groups.

1. The Soviet Union.
The later Venona intercepts, communications between Soviet spies and their handlers, showed there was a thriving Soviet spy ring within the Truman administration, one that was watching Truman's most devoted anti-Communist cabinet member.

2. The Israelis.
Both his aides and Forrestal himself were under surveillance by Israeli agents concerned, with good reason, that Forrestal was attempting to end American support for Zionism and the nascent state of Israel.

3. The Americans.
Urbanus Baughman, head of the US Secret Service, and the man who reported oddities and delusions in Forrestal's behaviour to Truman, was in fact also having Forrestal followed.


Some further notes.
1. There were scuff marks on the window ledge, the coroner considered them the "hesitation marks" of a suicide.
2. Forrestal had written to Truman stating that he believed that US would be at war with Communism within a year (he was right, Korea erupted 1950) and that the Soviet Union would attempt to expand its influence in the post-colonial world, where guerrilla warfare could pose a challenge for American forces. He also stated that American support for Israel would anger the Arab states and endanger the US oil supply.
3. The medical corpsman who checked on Forrestal at 1:45AM was on his first such shift, the usual man having gone AWOL.
4. Forrestal's diaries (which were released, heavily edited, in 1951)  are blank for the period from 03JUL 13JUL 1947, a period associated with certain odd events in the town of Roswell in New Mexico.
5. On 10JAN1948 the Czechoslovakian Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk was also found dead, also dressed only in his pyjamas, in the courtyard of the Foreign Ministry in Prague below his bathroom window.Which he had closed after himself....


Let the paranoid speculating begin.....