For two weeks after my return to Washington, General Sory Smith held
off a final answer about my trip to Wright Field. Meantime, Ken Purdy
had called him backing my request to see the Project files.
It was obvious to me that Wright Field was determined not to open the
files. But the General was trying to avoid making it official.
“Why can’t you accept my word there’s nothing to the saucers?” he asked
me one day. “You’re impeaching my personal veracity.”
But finally he saw there was no other way out. He told me I had been
officially refused permission to see the Wright Field files. Some time
later, Ken Purdy phoned General Smith.
“General, if the Air Force wants to talk to us off the record, we’ll
play ball. _True_ will either handle it from then on whatever way you
think best or we’ll keep still.”
Whether this offer was relayed higher up, I don’t know. But nothing
came of it.
Meantime, saucer reports had begun to come in from all over the
country. Some even came from abroad. Some of these 1950 sightings have
already been mentioned in early chapters. Besides the strange affair at
Tucson on February 1, there were several other cases in February. Three
of these were in South America. One saucer was reported near the naval
air station at Alameda, California. Some were sighted in Texas, New
Mexico, and other parts of the Southwest.
In March, the wave of sightings reached such a height that the Air
Force again denied the saucers’ existence. This followed a report that
a flying disk had crashed near Mexico City and that the wreckage had
been viewed by U. S. Air Force officials.
Scores of Orangeburg, South Carolina, residents watched a disk that
hovered over that city on March 10. It was described as silver-bright,
turning slowly in the air before it disappeared. The day before this,
residents of Van Nuys, California, saw a bright disk moving swiftly
four hundred feet in the air. Seen through a telescope, it appeared to
be fifty feet in diameter.
Disks were reported at numerous places in Mexico, including
Guadalajara, Juárez, Mazatlán, and Durango. On the twelfth of March,
the crew and passengers of an American Airlines ship saw a large
gleaming disk high above Monterrey airport in Mexico.
Captain W. R. Hunt, the senior airline pilot, watched the disk through
a theodolite at the airport. This disk and most of the others seen in
Mexico were similar in description to the one sighted at Dayton, Ohio,
on March 8. This was the large metallic saucer that hovered high over
Vandalia Airport, until Air Force and National Guard fighters raced up
after it. The disk rose vertically into the sky at incredible speed,
hovered a while longer, and then vanished.
Within twenty-four hours this mystery disk had been “identified” as the
planet Venus. (It was broad daylight.) Newspapers quoted “trained
astronomical officials in Dayton” as the source for this explanation.
Meanwhile the Mexican government newspaper, _El Nacional_, quoted “a
famous and reputable astronomer” as saying the numerous disks reported
over Mexico “carry visitors from Mars.”
One of the strangest reports came from the naval air station at Dallas,
Texas. It was about 11:30 A.M. on March 16 when CPO Charles Lewis saw a
disk streak up at a B-36 bomber. The disk appeared about twenty to
twenty-five feet in diameter, Lewis reported. Racing at incredible
speed, it shot up under the bomber, hung there for a second, then broke
away at a 45-degree angle. Following this, it shot straight up into the
air and disappeared.
Captain M. A. Nation, C. O. of the station, said it was “I the second
report in ten days. On March 7, said Captain Nation, a tower control
operator named C. E. Edmundson saw a similar disk flying so fast it was
almost a blur.
“He estimated its speed at three thousand to four thousand miles per
hour,” Captain Nation stated. “Of course, he had no instruments to
compute the speed, so that’s a pure estimate.”
It was some time before this when I heard the first crazy rumor about
the guided-missile display. This story, which had new details every
time I heard it described the Air Force as refusing to let the Navy
announce a new type of missile. According to the rumors, the Air Force
was trying to prove its own missile far superior, to keep the Navy from
invading its long-range bombing domain. Then the Army joined the
pitched battle with still a third guided missile, according to the
rumors.
And the flying disks? Army, Navy, and Air Force missiles, launched in
droves all over the country to prove whose was the best? A public
missile race, with the joint Chiefs of Staff to decide the winner!
It seems fantastic that this theory would be believed by any
intelligent person. In effect, it accuses the armed services of
deliberate, criminal negligence, of endangering millions in the cities
below.
I am convinced that some of these rumors led to at least one of the
published guesses about our missile program. One widely publicized
story stated that the flying saucers seen hurtling through our skies
are actually two types of secret weapons. One, according to radio and
newspaper accounts, is a disk that whizzes through space, halts
suspended in the air, soars to thirty thousand feet, drops to one
thousand feet, and then usually disintegrates in the air.
These saucers, it was said, ranged from 20 inches to 250 feet in
diameter. They were supposed to be pilotless—and harmless.
The second type was said to be a jet version of the Navy’s circular
airfoil “Flying Flapjack.” It was credited with fantastic speed.
The “true disks,” however, were mainly Air Force devices, according to
the report.
“Some are guided, others are not,” said the radio commentator who
released this story. “They can stay stationary, dash off to right or
left, and move like lightning. But they are utterly harmless.”
In these “harmless” disks there was supposed to be an explosive charge
that destroyed them in mid-air at a predetermined time.
Within a few days after this story was broadcast, the _United States
News and World Report_ declared that the saucers are real, and
identified them as jet models of Navy “Flying Flapjacks.” This
magazine, which is not an official publication despite its name,
mentioned the variable-direction jet principle that I had previously
described in the True article.
These two flying-saucer “explanations” brought denials from the White
House, the Navy, and the Air Force.
The Air Force flatly declared that:
1. None of the armed forces is conducting secret experiments with
disk-shaped flying objects that could be a basis for the reported
phenomena.
2. There is no evidence that the latter stem from the activities of any
foreign nation.
Before this, President Truman stated he knew nothing of any such
objects being developed by the United States or any other nation.
The Navy denial came immediately after the first broadcast story. It
ran:
“The Navy is not engaged in research or in flying any jet-powered,
circular-shaped aircraft.”
The Navy added that one model of a pancake-shaped aircraft, called the
Zimmerman Skimmer, was built but was never flown. However, a small,
three-thousand-pound scale model did fly and was under radio control
during flight. This last device is now being rumored as the Navy’s
unpiloted “missile,” said to have been launched over the country like
the so-called “harmless” disks.
Even though all these accounts have been officially denied, many
Americans may still believe they are true. I have no desire to
criticize the authors of these stories; I believe that in following up
certain guided-missile leads they were misled into accepting the
conclusions they gave.
But these stories, particularly the accounts of huge unpiloted disks,
may have planted certain fears in the public mind-fears that are
completely unwarranted. For this reason, I have personally checked at
Washington in regard to the dangers of unpiloted missiles. Here aye the
facts I learned:
1. Neither the Army, Navy, nor Air Force has at any time staged any
guided-missile competition as rumored.
2. No unpiloted missiles or remote-controlled experimental craft have
been tested over American cities or heavily populated areas.
3. No unpiloted missile carrying dangerous explosives, whether for
destruction of the device or other purposes, has been deliberately
launched or tested over heavily populated areas.
In regard to the so-called jet-propelled “Flying Flapjack,” I have been
assured by Admiral Calvin Bolster, of the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics,
that this type of plane has never been produced. I concede that he
might make this statement to conceal a secret development, but there is
one fact of which every American can be certain: Neither this type, nor
the radio-controlled smaller model, has been or will be flown or
launched over areas where people would be endangered.
The three armed services are working on guided missiles. They are not
risking American lives by launching such missiles at random across the
United States,
Although most of our guided-missile projects are secret, it is possible
to give certain facts about guided-missile developments in general.
The first successful long-range missiles were produced by the Germans.
These were the buzz-bomb and. the V-2 rocket. But research in various
other types was carried on during the war. Some of this was with oval
and round types of airfoils. As already stated by Paul Redell, there is
strong evidence that the disk-shaped foil resulted from German
observations of either space ships or remote-control disk-shaped
“observer units.” All the Nazi space-exploration plans followed this
discovery that we were being observed by a race from another planet.
After the end of World War II, the international guided-missile race
began, with the British, Russians, and ourselves as the chief
contenders. Numerous types have been developed-winged bombs, small
radar-guided projectiles launched from planes, and ground-to-plane
plane-to-ground, and plane-to-plane missiles, equipped with target
homing devices.
In certain recent types, the range can be stated as several hundred
miles. So far as I have learned, after weeks of rechecking this point,
not a single long-range missile has been identified as Russian.
Since this country is working closely with Great Britain on global
defense problems, it is no violation of security to say that we have
probably exchanged certain guided-missile information. In regard to the
British long-range missile picture outlined to me by John Steele, I can
state two major facts:
1. The British have categorically denied testing such long-range
missiles over American territory, where they might endanger American
citizens. There is convincing evidence that they are telling the truth.
2. There is no British missile now built, or planned, that could
explain the objects seen by Captain Mantell, Chiles and Whitted, and
witnesses in most of the major sightings.
The preceding statement applies equally to American-built missiles.
There is no experimental craft or guided missile even remotely
considered in this country that would begin to approach the dimensions
and performance of the space ships seen in these cases.
There is concrete evidence that the United States is as well advanced
as any other nation in guided-missile development. Certain recent
advances should place us in the lead, unless confidential reports on
Soviet progress are completely wrong.
If American scientists and engineers can learn the source of the space
ships’ power and adapt it to our use, it may well be the means for
ending the threat of war. The Soviet scientists are well aware of this;
their research into cosmic rays and other natural forces has been
redoubled since the flying-saucer reports of 1947.
The secret of the space ships’ power is more important than even the
hydrogen bomb. It may someday be the key to the fate of the world.