1947 Roswell UFO landing was Joseph Stalin's plot to scare Americans!

London, May 14 (ANI): Since the late 1970s the Roswell Incident of 1947 has been the subject of intense controversy and of conspiracy theories as to the true nature of the 'alien spacecraft' that crashed in the desert of New Mexico.

The incident has turned into a widely known pop culture phenomenon, making the name Roswell synonymous with UFOs.

But now, sadly for UFO spotters, a new book offers an entirely man-made - and some would say even more bizarre explanation, featuring two of the greatest villains of 20th century history: the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and the infamous Nazi "Angel of Death" Joseph Mengele, reports the Telegraph.

Area 51, the new book by Annie Jacobsen, is based on interviews with scientists and engineers who worked in Area 51, the top secret test base in the Nevada desert.

It dismisses the alien story and puts forward the theory that Stalin was inspired by Orson Wells's famous radio adaptation of the HG Wells novel War of the Worlds, which provoked hysteria across America when broadcast in 1938.

According to the book, the plot started after the Soviet Union seized from Germany at the end of the war the jet-propelled, single wing Horton Ho 229 - a fighter said to be the forerunner of the modern B2 stealth bomber.

This is where Mengele enters the story. The Nazi doctor, who experimented on prisoners in Auschwitz and fled to South America after the war, was supposedly enlisted to create a crew of "grotesque, child-size aviators" in return for a eugenics laboratory.

The book says that the plane was filled with "alien-like" children, aged 12 or 13, who Stalin wanted to land in America and cause hysteria similar to the 1938 broadcast. But, the plane, remotely piloted by another aircraft, crashed and the Americans hushed up the incident.

Jacobsen's source for the fantastic story is a retired engineer from the former defence company EG and G who worked at Area 51 in 1978. (ANI)