Genesis for the New Space Age
by John B. Leith
Chapter I
by John B. Leith
Chapter I
Earth under Surveillance
The sun was two o'clock high on June 24, 1947 over Mount Rainier in Washington State, U.S.A. A
commercial pilot flying northerly in a clear sky over the Cascade Mountains fixed his sight to the left
where a flash had occurred at the ten thousand foot elevation of the towering mountain.
As experienced, 50-year-old Kenneth Arnold scanned the reflection, little did he think that his
description of the objects seen near the burst of light would result in the coining of a new universal
word.
Here is how Arnold expressed himself that afternoon as reported later in newspapers around the world:
"The nine objects I saw flew like saucers, if you skipped them across the water." Although what Arnold
saw was highly technical, he pictured it in a simple, idiomatic term which thereafter caught the
imagination of kings and commoners across the globe.
Thus was born the age of flying saucers in the twentieth century. And no one, scientist or seer, could
turn back the clock ticking toward the arrival of the new aerial age. Hundreds of thousands of similar
sightings in the current years would leave the world divided about the controversy. Simply understood,
the question raised would be: Are the flying saucers real pieces of hardware or are they figments of
imagination?
Unknown to Arnold in the immediate post-war years, the unidentified flying objects he observed, had
been constructed and had taken off from the geographical area beneath which he flew. In his
reflections, he would not surmise that he had just witnessed the evidence of an aeronautical secret
which had been kept under official wraps for over twenty years.
What the veteran pilot of fixed-wing aircraft had watched were his own countrymen piloting a
revolutionary break-through in aerodynamics named "round wing aircraft."
Today, the latest versions of those early round wing planes which Kenneth Arnold glimpsed over the
Cascade Mountains have escaped the bonds of earthy's gravity, and thus weightless, patrol
the outer skies of this planet and venture fearlessly into the realms of vast space.
At this juncture, before the wider explanation of the intriguing aerial phenomena is revealed, the average
reader will recognize this unanswered riddle. Never has it been told to laymen the identities of the
thousands of aerial sightings seen by professional airmen and ordinary spectators in the last half of this
century.
To state the conundrum briefly, the so-called flying saucers seen by Arnold and countless others across
the globe were called "unidentified flying objects" by the United States Air Force. The terminology
became common place but deceptive. Hence, the shorter euphemism, UFOs was used to describe such
aerial sightings the world over. This being so, the reader will first become acquainted with four
identifiable aerial happenings which have been declassified. They are all researched and documented
cases from the years 1947, 1948 and 1955, and are actual crash landings and subsequent encounters
with beings from other worlds.
Following these reports the story will be revealed of the round wing plane as it was developed on
Planet Earth. And when the revelation is unfolded, quite imperceptibly, the following conclusion will
dawn on most readers:
The genesis of a new age has already begun for Earthlings. And it is self evident -- we are late in joining
the interplanetary creatures who have ventured into the vastness of the universe in search of other
intelligent beings.
Case Number One:
Riddle of the Crashed UFO's
One night in 1955, three manned space ships from beyond earth's own solar system crashed into the
desert near Farmington, New Mexico. Their unscheduled landings shed a display of fire
works that was seen by hundreds of people for 20 miles.
Yet, few Americans more than 22 years later have heard of that hushed-up accident -- except those in
classified military circles.
The three intergalactic space ships, with 28 beings aboard, brought to planet Earth its most revealing
evidence that mankind was not alone in the universe and that Earth was under military surveillance by
unfriendly invaders. This revelation also sobered Earth's scientific communities. Because, beyond a
doubt, the alien craft were right out of a space odyssey of the future.
For reader understanding of the alien space craft crashes, known as the Farmington Incident, it began
about 450 miles from the crash late on the evening of January 17th. At that time and place a team of
communication specialists, code named “Bootstrap," were monitoring Army maneuvers with
sophisticated long range equipment.
As the monitor spun the dial he picked up traffic on a distant amateur band. What he heard was highly
unusual "ham" talk. The ham's remarks were, in fact, an introduction to what was to become, in the next
48 hours, America's most dramatic attempt to apprehend live aliens from outer space.
The radio ham in a staccato voice had told his listener that "a large, bright object had streaked down
from above and crashed in the desert near Farmington." As it struck earth it had skidded and bounced,
making a path over a mile long. Rumbling, grating and tumbling along over the desert it finally stopped.
The ham then called it "a whopper of an aeroplane or meteor crash," but ended his message by saying,
oddly enough, that there had been no explosion. Then he signed off advising he was heading for the site.
So were dozens of others who had witnessed the unusual night display.
Twelve hours later by direct order from Offutt Air Force Base, monitors from "Operation Bootstrap"
had become a communications and rescue team arriving in the vicinity of that night's drama. Traveling at
high speeds and with top priority they sped on, still monitoring police and amateur air waves. Each
band they tuned in convinced them the object of their all night thrust was a downed military aircraft,
containing either classified equipment or high ranking military or civilian passengers.
Enroute as instructed, the team had acquired an extra communications truck, jeep and live ammunition.
Then the unexpected happened again. Another ham, corroborated by a State Trooper's radio, reported
a second crash at 2:00 P.M. in the same vicinity. "Move it faster!" the commander urged his night
convoy.
It was 8:30 A.M. on the morning of the 18th when the team arrived on site.
As Major Robert Farrell (not his real name) of St. Petersburg, Florida, endeavored to clear a path to
the wrecks, another meteor-like blob zoomed out of the sky from directly above. There was
silence as the thing slammed to earth.
The third object cut another desert swath of billowy sand and buried itself within a mile radius of the
first two crash sites.
Approaching the last crash, the security team almost immediately confirmed they were not at the scene
of an accidental crash of a conventional aircraft. The silhouette of the disabled object also indicated that
it was no rough meteorite.
What they saw in the total scene were three strange, unidentified airships of similar design, somewhat
saucer shaped.
As the "Bootstrap" crew mingled with the crowd to survey the scene, people began banging on the hulls
with a variety of tools and rocks. One man was about to fire at the hull of one of the downed ships with
a high powered rifle when the ten man rescue squad took positive action. Dissuaded by cocked rifles of
the Bootstrap crew, the curious backed off.
But the Bootstrap Major instinctively felt uneasy -- he sensed there could be intelligent life inside.
Powerful microphones were held against the skin but no internal sounds or voices were picked up.
Peering inside through a hole about seven inches in diameter, the Air Force Major glimpsed the craft's
scorched interior and observed two badly burned bodies reclining on seats.
Eventually a five by four foot door (totally invisible from the outside) was located and opened.
Venturing in, the Major could see the ship's occupants had perished in a flash fire. Had the alien
ship struck a magnetic vortex high above the earth or was it the victim of a high altitude aerial
encounter?
First the bodies were removed and placed in military bags. The charred bodies averaged 32 inches in
size with one giant corpse of almost four feet. Weight was estimated by the medical autopsy records as
65 to 75 pounds with the giant weighing close to 100. (See appendix). The hands of each corpse were
still gloved, but they had not been wearing their glass-like helmets at impact.
Closer examination showed that a touch of a finger near the collar automatically unzipped a one-piece
suit to reveal bodies with a skin pigment of golden tan. The hair on each was black; their eyes had no
irises, and were occidental in appearance. Their feet were slender and unusually long, as were the toes.
Hands and feet each had five appendages with nails. The sexual organs were pocketed in folds of skin
when apparently not in use.
Major Farrell had gained entry to the first ship by a fluke as his hand touched a door release while he
felt around the inside of the window hole.
Another fortunate blunder now took place. Totally on his own, one of the rescue crew began yanking at
the controls on the ship's console. The Major spotted him and rushed to prevent further damage.
The vandal accidentally fell against a hidden panel door which simply opened under the sudden impact
from the man's weight. The 11" square door had been totally invisible as were all seams on the outside
and inside of the craft. Inside the hidden panel lay a crystalline, metallic ring about 18 inches in diameter
and three inches thick.
Overhead on the roof the Major recalled having noticed an Impression, barely visible, about the same
size as the ring. When the ring was placed in the circular groove it clung magnetically.
The humans investigating the alien craft were hardly prepared for what happened next. As the ring was
twisted counter-clockwise, about 40 degrees from the set point, the magnetic adhesion which had held
the ship intact was de-energized.
Bedlam broke loose, both inside and out, as the ship began falling apart outwardly into nine petal-like sections. The inside rescuers tumbled down among the separated sections as those outside leaped
away. None was hurt except for bruises as the sections disjoined themselves and the interior console
doors and all access panels opened exposing their contents. Only the center housing, located in the
bottom of the ship, remained intact. It was cylindrical, three feet in diameter and three feet high. This
piece was slightly radioactive and was later ascertained to be the power source for the ship's
anti-gravitational force field power system.
The storage access areas contained extra flight gear, food wafers, spare parts, medical supplies and
mapping tools unfamiliar to the rescue crew.
That the alien ship was from beyond Earth's own solar system, the U.S. Air Force later concluded, and
maps within showed its home planet could be in a remote part of the Milky Way or even from a
constellation in another galaxy. But stellar coordinates of the home planet could not be ascertained. Its
mission and that of its mother ship was to map Earth and report this intelligence to their home base. The
men found charts showing the Earth's conformity with
rivers, mountains and cities plainly visible. Square map sheets of a metallic substance showed Earth's
charted grid lines running along magnetic variations. The results were unlike existing Earth cartographic methods which show position by longitude and latitude.
This alien ship was measured at 27 feet in diameter and nine feet thick. The underside was slightly
concave with three round caster type protrusions 120 degrees apart, which, when extended, became
the ship's gear. Ship design was shaped somewhat like a coleman lantern except that the bottom skirt
was flared outward.
On the third day after arrival, rescue operations were moved to a second ship. This craft was
saucer-like, 36 feet in diameter, and had the same three caster type landing gears as on the first ship
entered. The crew sandbagged the outside, applied and twisted the tool ring to the center top. Again
the craft parted in nine equal sections with the center pin power source remaining upright on the bottom.
Inside, four more burned bodies were found and the rescue crew again removed the bodies of human
counterparts from another world. They placed the four dead aliens beside their two comrades from ship
number one. Various medical, technical and scientific experts were now on hand. The smaller ships and
their contents, along with the bodies, were loaded gingerly by cranes aboard low-boy trucks for
eventual air delivery to Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Hanger No. 18, Dayton, Ohio. Air Research
and Development Command, under the watchful eye of Air Technical Intelligence Command, would
now take over their transportation and ultimate study.
At Offutt and Wright Patterson Air Force Bases the nation's experts from all across the U.S.A., in
whatever field needed, were already being assembled -- and sworn to secrecy. These experts would
attempt to comprehend the significance of these visitors from outer space and compare America's
progress with that on an alien society's space technology.
By now the team of expert personnel had grown to approximately 150. The largest craft, approximately
100 feet in diameter, was now approached. Unable to find an opening after digging it out, the magnetic
ring again was found to be the tool for opening the ship. It was sprung apart as were the others. The
center core of the anti-gravity propulsion device measured nine feet in height by nine feet in diameter.
Its radioactivity, higher than the others, was less than the emissions from a hospital X-ray machine.
Lead shields were used to cover the core.
Inside 22 burned bodies were found. The ship was functionally the same as the smaller ones but
measured 99.9 feet in diameter. It was armed with deadly laser ray guns and had probably been shot
out of the sky by another space craft with superior fire power which had also dispatched the first two
craft.
Additionally, galleys, sleeping quarters and baths were revealed. Utility panel buttons numbering 81 in
blocks of 9 were laid out, with nine other functional discs, for use by pilots and navigators. These discs
had slight indentations for fingertip control. Finger tips placed on various indenture combinations
apparently gave swift commands to the different electrical systems. The earth experts wondered how
the aliens' fingers were maneuverable enough to operate the system until their hands were examined.
The fingers pivoted forwards and backwards in a 180 degree arc. The entire crew had this physical
anomaly.
The scientists also confirmed that certain navigational equipment in the flight guidance system was tuned
to register mind patterns or Vice-versa.
Each alien had four lungs enabling him in a given time to slowly compress and comfortably breathe
Earth’s atmosphere. Their blood was a brownish color and thicker than ours. The autopsy showed they
probably had been breathing within their life support system a mixture of air with less oxygen than Earth
people breathed.
The brown, central part of the eye was solid in color. Beneath the outer layers the focus membranes
were hidden. Apparently the beings were able to look into the sun without eye injury or see into the
darkness of space.
The corpses were undressed and immersed in alcohol. The group was so nearly identical that they
seemed to be genetically cloned. Unless they were seen walking our streets in a single group, their
variances to humans would probably go undetected. Each appeared to be about 25 years of age as
Earth time is measured.
Concentrated food wafers were discovered. Each of these was about 1 1/2 inches long, the size of a
single stick of Dentyne gum. One wafer found near a body was dropped accidentally into a tub of
water and dissolved immediately. Its aroma was like that of vanilla extract. It bubbled and frothed over the rim of the bucket, finally rising into a deliciously tasting dough that would have filled a 30 gallon vat.
The rescue team jokingly called the mixture "desert manna.” Later it was proven that one small food
wafer kept a person alert and without the need of sleep for at least three days.
Measurements of the big ship showed it to be 99.9 feet in diameter with its outer rim forming a perfect
circle. It was 27 feet through the true center of the dome and 18 feet at the center risers’
edge. Color was a metallic grey with no visible markings, windows or openings.
Within two weeks the operation was over. The remaining bodies were placed in glass cylinders and
along with them their dismembered ship, covered with tarpaulins, were hauled out of the desert. County
police assisted in directing traffic. By night, the ship and other remnants of the accident were shipped to
Kirkland Air Force Base near Albuquerque, New Mexico. From there they were placed on board a
huge six pusher type propeller air craft known as a C99. Three
trips were required to transport the material to Wright Air Force Base.
In January, a report was made to assembled Congressmen, Senators and military in the underground Command center of Offutt Air Force Base. Viewers were shown the bodies, films, samples and other
supporting graphs and data.
Presentation on the findings were made by approximately 20 technical experts called in over a five hour
period. Sobered by the firsthand account of so many reliable witnesses, was Captain James Ruppolt
who headed up the "Official" Project Blue Book on UFO sightings.
By agreement of those present, and with approval of President Eisenhower, the lid of secrecy was
screwed air-tight on the Farmington "incident." The official line on all encounters and sightings grew
harder -- beings from outer space did not exist. Notwithstanding, secretive undertakings began
thereafter to assess the outer space technology and scientific advances found on the ships and to
compare them with U.S. Air Force accomplishments.
A nation's strength or weakness ultimately lies with its people. The official attitude of Air Intelligence
was that the American people could not comprehend that beings from light years away were spying on
Earth for purposes unknown.
As the official books were closed on the Farmington incident, Air Intelligence began rounding up film
and tapes taken at the crash. Newspapers made brief mention of the story, talkative people were
coerced and the Farmington affair was buried where it began -- in New Mexico.
Since 1955 the "secret" has seeped out into several related scientific, medical and technical areas
through writings, speakers and references referring to the phenomena. Today it is estimated
that at least 1000 persons have knowledge of the crashes of the three alien space craft.
But only a handful of people, mostly U.S. Air Force personnel, knew what really happened high above
America that day when three alien ships spying on planet Earth tumbled out of the sky with dead crews
near Farmington, New Mexico.
Case Number Two
The Robot Earth Watchers
Hundreds of sightings were analysed over a three year period in several countries, but there are no
better cases than those contacts recorded in America between homo sapiens and beings from beyond.
Many helpful intelligence authorities believe a national awareness of alien presence must be expanded.
And quickly too, they say, in order to prevent any mass fear or hysteria. Certain of the aliens who have
already arrived among us want their presence known, too. They may be the vanguard of intelligent
beings scattered throughout the cosmos whose plans call for opening up total communication with earth
before this century ends.
Therefore, only a brief mention of the next two cases is essential to portray the reality of yet another
kind of alien "eyes" used to watch earth’s military installations.
It was in 1958 near the town of Irrigon, near the Columbia River that the episode took place. The
unknown occupants were "captured" and removed, their craft downed by a support firing unit for
protection of the air force bases at Fairchild and Tacoma. Later the ship was transported to the
headquarters of SAC at Offutt.
Upon gaining entry, there was found not humans, or humanoids, but four robots at the controls. After
failing to remove the heads using conventional methods, an attempt was made to carry one of the
robots by lifting the feet and back of the "head." On raising the "head" upwards a corresponding
movement occurred in one of the arms revealing an unseen release mechanism in the back of the "skull"
which uncovered the robot's "brains."
Literally hundreds of light sensors composed the eyes of the robot -- with signals from these sensors
sent by instantaneous replay tape to the robot's computer located in its chest cavity. As
the computer accepted the impulses from the light meters (eyes), it sent the response orders to the
arms, legs, feet and fingers or head telling each or all members to take what action was necessary to
properly operate or adjust ship controls.
After the computer received the taped instructions, they were logged in a memory bank, the reel or
tape continuing back to the light sensors and thence to the computer or brain for continuing instructions.
The robot's feet and hands had only three digits each.
The robot craft was navigated by these analogue units to map planet earth and do surveillance. Of the
four units found at the Irrigon crash, only one was undamaged. Six months after the Irrigon recovery,
the U.S. began making its first thermography pictures.
Earth scientists are now convinced that the technology of one planet or solar system may differ vastly
from that of another.
Thus, a mother ship situated high in the sky over Irrigon on the day of the "robot" crash was used to
initiate the master surveillance plan of earth and record same from its drones located perhaps over
various U.S. strategic military areas.
An engineer rushed to the Irrigon site for the record, concluded that the analogue ship had struck an
uncharted magnetic vortex at 15,000 miles per hour, but not everyone agreed.
The crash landing of this alien ship from some unknown planet also was reported by the Air Force as a
meteorite, although when tracked by radar it was seen to have made a 90 degree turn upon being
pursued by another object before the subject craft lost power and tumbled to the ground.
At least ten alien ships have crashed in America since the first one was found. And aside from robots,
perhaps as many as 40 bodies much like ours have been recovered and autopsied. Today reports on
them are filed in the large library of information on the premises of the CIA in Arlington, Virginia.
Case Number Three
The Mantell Incident
and the Live Aliens
In UFO annals one of the most repeated stories is that of Captain Mantell who was shot down by a
UFO over Godnam Field, Kentucky on January 7, 1948. The official version stops there except to add
that his remains were recovered followed by an appropriate military funeral which ended the episode.
But the story of the 25 year old World War II ace was far from finished by the recovery of his remains.
At that point the real story begins. Just seconds prior to Mantell being shot down by the UFO, he had
landed a lucky burst of machine gun fire into a vital section of the alien craft.
Simultaneously with Mantell's P51 fighter plummeting to its hillside crash site, the UFO also fluttered to
earth within three miles of the military airfield over which it had been intercepted.
The tower at Godman Field had reported initially an object which could not be identified on their radar.
Meanwhile, flying a routine flight over the field was a group of Kentucky Air National Guard of which
10
Captain Thomas J. Mantell, as flight leader, was requested to investigate, and if possible, challenge.
On reaching the 8000 foot level, Captain Mantell radioed to the tower that a bright, circular object was
hovering below him. He kept contact with the tower as the object moved fifty feet below his plane and
began passing him. Next, the object hove silently along side Mantell's starboard wing. Inside the 30
foot craft Mantell saw three figures observing him through portholes.
The scrutinizing UFO then rose to 30,000 feet with Captain Mantell unable to close the distance in
pursuit. After chasing the UFO in a futile attempt to overtake it, Mantell reported an about turn by the
UFO as it turned down on him at a fantastic speed in what seemed a suicide course. At the last moment
Mantell fired a burst at the object. It stopped abruptly in mid-air and a collision was barely avoided as
the UFO fell toward earth. Hot in pursuit, Captain Mantell rolled and followed. The tower maintained
radar contact and was able to observe the chase. As the UFO descended with the P51 on its tail, those
below saw a blinding flash, as though perhaps a burst of explosive light had struck the P51. The
aeroplane broke apart and crashed on the side of a mountain about five miles from Franklin, Kentucky.
The day was cloudy with a slight haze as trucks on the field rolled out after ground crews witnessed the
flash of light that had struck the P51, after which it began to fall earthward in pieces. An Air Force
Captain and Sergeant photographer rushed through the gates towards the falling UFO. As they sped to
the site, the photographer, using a zoom lens, also caught the tragic scene of the P51 breaking apart
within sight of the base.
Meanwhile, the unidentified flying object skipped and tumbled slowly to earth glowing like a ball of fire.
It was this bright glow emitted by the UFO that enabled the emergency recovery crew and the
photographer to spot exactly the alien crash landing site.
The foregoing is the story of the chase. Captain Mantell shot down the UFO. The UFO in turn,
destroyed him. Before either craft had crashed, the air base had hurriedly dispatched two emergency
crews. One rushed to the P51 wreckage and the other vehicle raced to the site of the unidentified flying
object. The photographing team had orders to head for the UFO, but enroute was able to photograph
the disintegrating P51.
Air Force intelligence reached Mantell's crash first. The plane had disintegrated into thousands of
pieces. There was no fire and no odor of burnt flesh or fabric. They found Captain Mantell still in
helmet, suit and boots. As they removed the clothing the emergency crew recovered a clean skeleton,
intact from head to foot.
The remains were taken to an Air Force laboratory for identification and autopsy. The skeleton of the
deceased Captain Mantell was later placed in a sealed container and taken to a nearby undertaker
where it was put in a coffin and sealed.
The story at the UFO crash site had a different ending. As the photographer continued to shoot pictures
of the crash, they saw the glow of the craft cease as they arrived. A door opened and slowly three
beings emerged with hands in air. The color of their complexions was light tan, they were tall in stature
with high and narrow foreheads. The airmen rushed towards the UFO, guns drawn, as one of the
beings in perfect English, said calmly, "We mean you no harm. We have come in peace."
The photographer sergeant began snapping official pictures of the exterior and interior of the craft.
(These pictures were to remain hidden in a Washington vault for almost 30 years.) The aliens were
hustled back to the base as the confused gate guard was ordered to permit entry of the group without
identification of the airmen or aliens.
Three days later, at the administration building, the aliens were still being interrogated by a battery of
Air Force Intelligence Officers from the Pentagon.
Their alien story: They came from Venus, the capital planet of this solar empire. They said other alien
craft in the air at the time had crews from Pluto, Saturn, Mars, etc. Earth military installations were
being scrutinized carefully, they said, with no hostile intentions except to record earth progress for
interplanetary travel and nuclear war, the earth stigma that had alerted our sister planets to keep up
constant surveillance. They said that upon being disabled by the P51 they instituted no retaliatory
action.
Rather, their craft was programmed to beam in by radar fix on any adversary who shot first. The
human-like beings repeated that they were sorry and had not intended to take the life of an earthman.
The Air Force was undecided just what to do with their unexpected visitors, who, in fact, had entered
American air space only to observe.
As base radar scanned the sky, it tracked additional space ships hovering high above. Therefore it was
deduced that to try the aliens for murder would bring reprisals from above.
The three aliens were placed routinely in the guardhouse. It was while they were incarcerated the
second night that the problem of earthly law and ethics was solved without earthly help. During
the night, the military policeman in charge of detention left his guard duty and ran to the officer in
charge. "They're gone," he shouted. "The prisoners are gone!" Quick examination by security
revealed the cell door was locked, the barred windows still intact and no escape holes had been cut
into the walls.
Less than an hour later the answer came. Without human action a message began to appear on the
station's telex. Simultaneously in the tower and communications room the same message was audible. In
effect it said:
"We are a companion craft of the one shot down. We regret having killed your airman. The act was not
intentional. In future, please instruct your pilots not to fire on our ships to prevent further loss of human
life. Our spacemen kept in your prison were just rescued by a means totally unknown to you. At
another time, after friendship is established between us, we will tell you how the secret escape was
made. We are in your space to observe. We mean you no harm. Again, please forgive us for the
unavoidable killing of your pilot. We are truly sorry."
At the time of the alien disappearance some unusual and verified observations were made by several
witnesses. Here is what is described as being seen. "A 100 foot unidentified craft dropped down from
above, and hovered over the guardhouse. From the craft there emerged a beam of white light, with a
greenish tinge. On, or within this beam of light, the three aliens ascended or were taken up through the
ceiling by unknown means to the presiding ship above the
guardhouse."
A non-earthling who has been seen in Washington for several years and has been a confidant of
Presidents described the escape ray. He said it was a solid beam that disintegrated objects in its
path by disassembling the atom structure while the ray shone and allowed reassembling of the atom
particles when the ray was turned off. The Washington spaceman, whose name is Plateu, explained that
the ray principle had been used in Venus long before the present earth civilization began (which he
declared was 33,000 years ago). Plateu said the ray was also developed on earth's sunken continent of
Atlantis, but that its principle was lost when the continent sank 12,000 years ago.
As ethereal as the beings appeared to be at the time of their escape, they bore unmistakable human
characteristics. Body shape was human; features occidental; hair blond; fingers long and slender: height
5' 6" to 5 '10"; appearance youthful. Habits while in detention: they took water into which they dropped
red or white pills at different times. They used the toilet facilities and the official reports say they passed
nutrients and urinated as do human males. No wonder! They insisted they came from the ancestral
planet of earth's white races.
So ends the Mantell incident, except for over 2,000 pieces of official correspondence, between the
base, the Pentagon and other agencies at Maxwell Air Force Base and Wright Patterson Air Force
Base where the Venusian ship finally ended.
After the Mantell "incident" Air Force Intelligence privately wondered why, if the aliens were able to
retrieve their people, why hadn’t they retrieved their ship.
But, publicly, the Air Force gave out this version of the Mantell incident: (1) Mantell lost consciousness
due to oxygen starvation. (2) The object which Mantell was chasing may have been a "Sky Hook”
Navy balloon which had been released in the area.
Case Number Four
United States Receives Visit
from Beyond Earth
Washington, February 18, 1975; time - 10 P.M.
A hovering squadron of high altitude lights had just placed America's capitol under a blanket of
surveillance. Before departing, they would send shivers through the security surrounding U.S. President
Gerald Ford, and their mission would also change the U.S.A. scientific thrust in outer space within 60
days.
On this winter's night in question, the sky over Washington was clear and visibility was excellent. High
above at 50,000 feet, twelve unidentified and stationary lights had appeared. The lights were not
celestial bodies, mirages or balloons, nor were they conventional aircraft. They were, in fact, UFO's, a
name first applied in 1966 by the U.S. Air Force to describe growing numbers of unidentified flying
objects sighted around the globe.
At the three major airports around Washington several monitor systems handle traffic and also act as an
early warning vigilance for unidentified aircraft. There is the AACS, i.e., Aircraft and Airways
Communication System, the sophisticated radar at Andrews Air Force Base and the GPR, Ground
Position Radar, etc. Therefore, besides untrained street personnel who spotted the mysterious lights,
there were also the competent operators of the AACS, Andrews Air Force Base Radar and GPR, who
were continuously watching the activities of the unidentified flying objects.
At 10:16 one of the lights detached itself from the formation and, peeling off to the right, dropped
toward the city. Its color changed from blue to white. In a park in Georgetown, the northwest section
of the capitol, the light landed and as it went out, there appeared in its place a solid object. Standing
where the light had been was a 30 foot, saucer-like object with dome, supported by tripod legs.
Underneath the craft a door opened from which a stairs extended to the ground and an ordinary
looking being with occidental features descended. The six foot tall man moved briskly away from the perimeter of the craft and evaporated before his viewers.
As he did so, curious onlookers who had seen the craft's landing in their neighborhood ran toward the
machine. But ten feet away from the craft an invisible force field kept the sightseers away. The hatch
closed, and the machine stood isolated and alone.
About 10:20, after the being had departed from the craft, there simultaneously appeared a stranger
before the security guard at the street entrance to the White House. In perfect English he asked to see
President Ford. The being's request was refused.
At approximately 10:21, a being in a flight suit was seen walking down the hallway to the Oval Room.
A secret service man challenged the figure from behind. It continued on. A bullet from the gun of the
President's guard apparently passed through the being without drawing blood.
At the next instant, the stranger disappeared from the view of the secret service pursuer and silently
passed through the locked and closed door to the Oval Room. Thereupon it stopped in front of
President Ford working alone at his desk. The startled President looked up at the figure of a tall, slim
man with black hair, dressed in what appeared to be a trim flight suit of silver colored jacket and pants
tucked into calf length boots.
The being spoke calmly: "President Ford -- I am sorry to intrude in such an unearthly way, but I have a
message of great importance which must be told," He continued, "I am a scientist from Earth's sister
planet Venus, which, regardless of Earth's scientific postulations, is inhabited by a people identical to
those like yourself on Earth. But my mission in being here tonight concerns special knowledge which
others in this solar system have elected to give the United States as our chosen custodian for planet
Earth."
Much of the alien's conversation remains classified but some of the subject matter has been verified
from executive sources. In general, the visitor spoke of the dawning of a new age for Earth in science,
medicine, and other wonders -- but hinged his remarks with a single admonition: "Earth must first
denounce nuclear war," The verdict of the outer-terrestrial stemmed from an inerrant moral law of the
universe, which Earth nations had broken by splitting the atom to destroy their fellow men.
Almost an hour later the outer-terrestrial departed. Upon leaving, he placed on the President's desk a
dull, silvery object of elliptical shape with rounded edges. The stranger called it a Venusian book – a gift
from his planet to America.
Simultaneously, several miles away, the being re-entered the vehicle in which he came. It took off and
joined the lights above, at which time the formation disappeared off the radar screens of the nation's
capitol.
This meeting between an outer-terrestrial being and a world leader is only one of the hundreds
recorded since Earth's first nuclear explosion took place in 1945. American Presidents alone have had
a minimum of 60 visits.
Earth has been watched by outsiders for at least 45 millenium, and throughout the pre-Adamite
civilizations. According to their spokesmen they have witnessed this latest civilization's advent of the
railroad, the discovery of electricity, the aeroplane and auto, the rocket, the smashing of the atom and
lately, the fearful number of nuclear test explosions. And finally, the uncontrolled aggressions of nations
to make their own atomic bombs -- with intentions to deploy them.
As the President picked up the object, and examined it that night of February 18, 1975, he called for
secret service personnel. He also asked for the Secretary of State and scheduled a meeting of
the General Staff to be held at the Pentagon as soon as possible to evaluate the disk.
During the Presidential dialogue with the extra-terrestrial being, he had declared the U.S. Air Force
should learn the formula encased in the disk. Mr. Ford had gingerly examined the object, but laid it
down, perplexed as to why the alien should leave such an indecipherable thing as a parting gesture.
Was it really a goodwill gift of science from another world, or was it some diabolical, destructive force
that might enslave onlookers or destroy a city?
Like his predecessors going back to Franklin D. Roosevelt, President Ford must have asked himself
some startling questions about this peaceful outer-terrestrial invasion, whose spokesmen
looked human and acted like friends, notwithstanding their arrivals were always without warning or
prior signal.
And, in a broader sense, U.S. officialdom was also asking, "Why all the sudden attention which Earth
was now receiving after years of comparative isolation?" Even more perplexing questions were being
asked by the suspicious military and science worlds. If these outer-terrestrials were so advanced
scientifically and metaphysically, what did they know about the future destiny of mankind that made
them suddenly want to share their knowledge with a single nation, the U.S.A.?
Aside from these basic quandaries, other sobering judgments had already been established – which
authorities had long hesitated to pass on -- and for an understandable reason. Those claiming to come
from our solar system and even beyond were often nearly identical to certain Earth races in appearance
and in biological, functional and mental ways. Obviously, there existed a correlation between Earth
beings and inhabitants from certain other planets.
As President Ford may have pondered these revelations that historic night, he was well aware that alien
ships of countless origins were now bridging the time and distance barrier between
various planets in the universe, the knowledge of which leading nations of the world had denied the
public. Furthermore, appraisal of the combined world-wide UFO phenomena by military consultants
was singularly conclusive.
They concluded that all of planet Earth was under systematic surveillance by three distinct classifications
of alien intruders. Those were labeled: (1) friendly, (2) presumed hostile and (3) unknown.
Category (1) friendly were usually round wing in shape, originating within our solar system, whose
human occupants have openly made themselves known to certain earth governments and their leaders
from time to time (such as the foregoing visit to President Ford).
The same outer-terrestrials had also occasionally appeared by accident, for example the Captain
Mantell incident over Godmann Field, Kentucky in 1948.
Category (2) presumed hostile. These aliens generally came in round wing planes and were of human
resemblance from diminutive sizes to over six feet in height. They had, on occasion, attempted to
16
infiltrate Earth by establishing hidden bases in remote areas, and their spacecraft were also engaged in
mapping Earth and other questionable activities. It is believed they originated from one planet or
constellation. Example: the Farmington affair of 1955.
Category (3) unknowns (Chapter XIX, Strangers in Our Skies), who were patrolling Earth skies and
watching our people and military installations increasingly in the late 1970's. They arrived in space craft
of various dimensions and shapes up to 1,000 feet long. Occupants were observed to be of a variety of
physiological descriptions, some of which, by Earth's standards, bordered on
the ridiculous or grotesque according to their own admissions which are delivered telepathically to Air
Force pilots and airport controllers, etc. Observations of their space craft by competent observers
suggested that their space technology may be more advanced than that of this solar system.
But one repetitious warning had been delivered by all the friendly outer-terrestrials with whom physical
and voice contact had been made. According to informed Air Force sources, that constant warning
stated a nuclear holocaust on Earth was possible within a generation unless immediate plans were made
now to prevent it.
As President Ford may have reflected on the promise of sudden increased knowledge for this world in
exchange for abandoning the international nuclear race, 2700 scientists, engineers, physicists,
astronomers, geophysicists, mathematicians, geologists and radio engineers were occupied 24 hours a
day at the Goddard Center in Maryland, keeping watch on a more disturbing phenomena.
A magnetically weak but inhabited alien planet, over twice the size of Earth, had wandered into our
solar system and attached itself to the force field between the sun and Earth. By the year 2,000 this
oncoming intruder could possibly regress the climate where a third of the world's people are located
towards another ice age. Its effects were particularly being felt in the northern latitudes where teams of
American, Canadian, Japanese and Russian meteorologists and weather men daily gathered the
evidence of an abrupt change in world weather patterns.
But, underlying these hidden discoveries and new knowledge of outer space, the real question being
asked by the world's leaders was how to tell the public without creating panic. Collective scientific
minds working on the secret already were aware of these explosive truths and the problems they
presented. But how much of the biased viewpoints of our history, religion, philosophy, and science
would have to be discarded in order to make way for the new 20th century revelations? These
revelations clearly indicate: Earthlings are not isolated, but in fact are part of an interplanetary league of
intelligent creatures. Our counterparts from planets nearby and other destinations light years away are
trying to give warring Earth nations a message. The aliens are telling us to stop the nuclear race and
destroy our stockpiles before we destroy our planet and its civilizations. In return for heeding this
advice, they would provide Earthmen with the advanced technological, scientific. and medical secrets
of the Universe.
This unchangeable posture of silence exists in both democratic and totalitarian countries. It began with typical military reasoning that the public should not be informed, if to do so, national sovereignty would be jeopardized. It proceeded with the assumption that the public was not prepared for such astounding revelations, and could not cope with them.
American governmental censorship of UFO information seems to be typical of that in other countries and extends back nearly 50 years. In the mid 1930's, military secrecy about an unusual American invention in the field of powered flight triggered the first blackout of public knowledge.
It all began in 1935 because of a young aeronautical engineer with a high school education and two years study in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Oregon State College, who later became a World War I flier. His name at that time was Jonathan E. Caldwell and he lived near Glen Burnie, Maryland. He invented and built a lighter than air machine which in addition to conventional nose propulsion, was driven by a nine cylinder, 45 horse power French engine with controlled speed blades, each three feet long by 12 inches wide, mounted on top of midship which enabled the plane to ascend or descend vertically and even hover. The blades were attached to the cardinal points of a 14 foot wooden disk which was free revolving, deriving its momentum from the puwer driven nose prop blast.
The canvas covered, tubular steel plane, christened the "Grey Goose", had been constructed in a tobacco warehouse and then tested on the Maryland farm of Caldwell's friend Lewis Pumpwrey on State Road Number 3, Anne Arunder County. The machine flew fairly well; it was actually the wingless forerunner of today's helicopter.
Not satisfied with his initial achievement, a few months later Caldwell completed a fundamentally different design named the "Rotoplane", similar to an earlier model, the spectacular lifting capability of which had been tested successfully in Denver, Colorado in 1923. Notwithstanding its lifting power, this machine proved to be less maneuverable. Its energy source consisted of six large, pitched, rotor blades encased in a single 12 foot diameter rim or flange, above and in the center of which the operator sat. A news story at the time referred to the contraption as a "flying joke".
But regardless of critics and lampooners, Caldwell was not deterred from his dream of a round wing air machine. He began his final prototype which would indeed prove successful. The latest model was 28 feet in diameter and would disappear before the press or public was allowed to examine it closely, although it had been used openly to provide rides and give demonstrations to interested observers and investors.
The machine resembled a huge tub with a set of six blades projecting out from both the top and bottom of the "tub". In the center of the affair was a round tubular housing or cockpit containing seats for two persons, plus gauges, gears and levers and of course the motor. (The first motor was an eight cylinder Ford V8 gasoline engine with the block cut in half. This motor was considered heavy and troublesome in operation and was later replaced by a newly cast four cylinder lightweight aluminum block, along with aluminum gears which were later substituted with bronze.)
The operator sat in the top of the center tubing or hub with his head and shoulders above for the purposes of sight navigation. Hands and feet operated with ease the levers and pedals for speed and direction. The bottom set of six lift blades were wide, fixed at a slight angle, and they turned clockwise. They had a controlled speed operated by one of the gears.
The six, maneuverable pitch blades located topside were for lateral direction, projecting from the housing; they turned counterclockwise. In essence, the structure and design of the craft, as well as its mechanical movements and controls, were of utmost simplicity.
The two sets of rotors, set six feet apart, revolved in opposite directions around the ship. They were power driven during ascent but turned freely in pure aerodynamic descent if the motor failed, thus allowing the craft to float down under direction from its chosen height at a slower speed than that of a parachutist.
Airborne directional control was attained by changing the angle of the upper set of rotors: that is, forward or reverse thrust was accomplished by a tilting mechanism attached to the top bank of rotors. Thus slippage took place toward the lower side with advancing blades riding down-grade and retreating blades gaining altitude. According to Caldwell's description it was the same principle which birds used in flight, substituting rotors for feathered wings and tail.
The bottom of the craft could be made water tight, enabling it to take off from land or water. To raise capital for his forthcoming enterprise and float costs, Caldwell attempted unsuccessfully and repeatedly to sell stock in his aviation marvel names "The Rotoplanes Inc.," even offering up to $5.00 for a trial ride in the machine. The stock certificates read in part: "That the stock is for an invention, which invention is used in the development of an aeroplane designed to fly on the bird principle of flight, and that the stock is worth $10.00 to $100.00 per share, depending on his (Caldwell's) success in developing the aeroplane."
Eventually, a curious Army-Air Corps Colonel, Peter B. Watkins, dressed in civies, appeared as a prospective buyer whom the delighted inventor took for a test flight. The Colonel was permitted to take the controls, and was astonished at the craft's advanced maneuverability over the bi-wing and mono-wing airplanes of the 30s.
The Colonel flew the machine 45 miles to Washington, D.C., where he made 100 mile per hour passes over Washington Monument, and the White House. The Colonel was elated when he actually stopped the forward motion of the machine and hovered for a few minutes directly over the 241 foot high Washington Monument. Upon return to the city he was granted an interview with President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
He told the President that Caldwell's mystery plane was so advanced in design that to avoid copy by foreign military, the United States should immediately obtain control of patents and production. Roosevelt agreed with the Colonel, asking him to reevaluate the project and report back in 30 days for Congressional approval.
Within 30 days, without apparent Congressional approval, Roosevelt acted. Caldwell received a letter from the Attorney General of Maryland, advising him to cease and desist the sale of the stock in his new company. Previous solicitations to sell stock in New York (1934) and New Jersey (1932) had likewise been stopped by their State Attorney Generals. Caldwell, in effect, was forced out of his new aviation venture before it got off the ground.
In the autumn of 1936, Caldwell disappeared and officially was never heard of again.
The question of whom was Jonathon E. Caldwell and how he could have disappeared so completely from society was a mystery which baffled the author for almost three years. So little information could be unearthed, only scraps of newspaper accounts which had been quickly denied. And then in November of 1978 a break came in the case of the missing inventor, Jonathon E. Caldwell, who had been 37 years of age when last seen or heard publicly. He would be close to 80 years old today. Was he the one to whom we had established a vicarious attachment and to whom we had dedicated this book -- before we were certain he existed or was still alive?
The American who was to become the world's greatest genius in the field of aerodynamics, and who invented the world's first round wing plane which millions of viewers have labelled UFO's, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1899.
His name one day would become greater than the Wright Brothers and the city of St. Louis where he was born would gain an even greater fame in years to come than had been bestowed on the city by Charles Lindbergh when he named his historic aeroplane that took him across the Atlantic, The Spirit of St. Louis.
But before Jonathon E. Caldwell was to become preoccupied with a vision of how man could overcome his own absence of wings, World War I would break out. To Caldwell, the war would be a chance to fly aeroplanes, and 1917 would see him volunteering for the service of the United States Army where his training at Kelly Field, Texas in fixed winged by-planes would be a forerunner for overseas duty in France. Caldwell came out of the service a lieutenant in 1918. He rejoined the Army/Air Corps Reservists in the summer of 1921 and again found himself stationed at Kelly Field with a small group of World War I fliers who had returned for retraining and to brush up on their flying ability.
One day of that 1921 summer at Kelly Field a few young officers including Caldwell took out some saucers and tin plates and began tossing them through the air at each other to be caught during a few minutes of relaxation and horseplay. It was during this period in young Caldwell's life that he became enthralled with the idea of developing a completely new design of aircraft. At first he was hardly aware of his own intentions.
From saucers, Caldwell tried paper plates. Whether the object he threw was a saucer, or a paper or tin plate, or even a military wide brim hat, Caldwell made some pertinent observations. Such round objects when thrown and spun into the air or wind, sailed smoothly, travelled faster, and climbed higher than any other form or shape.
Caldwell while in France had learned the hard way about a fixed wing plane. He knew that if the propellor turned at sufficient revolutions per minute and the prop pitch was properly set, the plane could ride along on the air flow induced by the propeller's own current. But if the motor were to fail and the prop ceased to turn, the unbalanced plane would nose dive or spin to earth out of control. Caldwell himself had crashed and though unwounded, knew of several young acquaintances to whom such a tragedy had resulted in death. But young Caldwell realized that what made the fixed wing plane such a fearful conveyance was not primarily the problem of engine failure and resultant prop stoppage which prevented an air craft from planing through the aIr. Fundamentally, the first requirement of an aeroplane was one of design and the basic design of the present aeroplane must be changed. He reasoned that the hurling of the plates and saucers with only one leading edge to cut the air was the primary requirement for perfect aerial transportation.
Another problem to be overcome was one of balance. He had seen airborne dandelion and milkweed seeds floating along majestically and had observed maple leaves spin to earth in a gyrating fashion as they landed gently on the ground. Added to earlier observations of nature's use of air currents to propel seeds, Caldwell never forgot an experience on the battle field of Flanders, when lying injured on the ground beside his downed plane, he kept his mind occupied by studying an artillery wagon turned on its side, one of the wheels of which periodically kept turning in gusts of wind. Thus, keeping in mind nature's methods of aerial movement along with the Flander's wagon wheel, these observations were added to his own study of the kitchen saucers which he had tossed repeatedly.
That summer of '21 Caldwell decided to build himself a 12" round model of a new aerodynamic structure. He would use a delicate balsam wood frame and cover it with shellacked tissue paper. And the continuous circular edge would be down lipped so that when it was released inverted into the wind, it would ride on its own cushion of air. Thus was born the idea for the first round wing plane. A simplification of that first model of a new type of aerodynamic structure eventually became the plaything of children all over the world -- a frisbee.
As Caldwell watched the frisbee-like object skip and sail through the air, propelled by elastic bands and riding on its own cushion, he was fascinated by the same recurring thoughts. Some day he would try and build a model large enough to hold a man in the exact center point, and if he could install a motor in such an aerial conveyance to give a constant density to the cushion beneath the circular plane, and if that cushion of air could be manually directed, he would overcome all the disadvantages inherent in a fixed wing plane.
Caldwell kept his vision alive. He retained his balsam prototype and all the drawings and design ideas scribbled or traced on scraps of paper or the backs of envelopes. The idea that he would build a circular plane never left Caldwell's creative brain. Some day he knew he would invent one that could hover, or develop forward thrust and turn and bank far better and faster than the vintage planes of the early 1920's.
As the Reservists packed and left Kelly Field in 1921 to return to their jobs, the young Caldwell was careful to keep his notes and drawings and to pack along with them his first balsam and tissue paper model. At that time he lived in Denver, Colorado. Sparked by the enthusiasm of fellow pilots at Kelly Field, the young inventor seriously began his first motor operated model of the new round wing plane design. With the aid of a welder/mechanic friend in the round house of the Rio Grande Southern Locomotive Works in Denver, in 1922, they turned out a 12" model powered by an erector set toy motor and a single cell dry battery used in telephone transmission.
Wires connected from the battery to the model, as well as a three foot rope hitch, provided lift for purposes of studying the operational characteristics of the model. Battery contact was made and the round wing model spun and rose in the air. The attentive trio watched as the rope became taut. As the amazed Caldwell observed the performance, he and his helpers saw the battery and 52 pound table on which it sat, rise slowly in the air as the model plane ascended vertically and lodged itself and its suspended contacts against the shop ceiling. Electric current was cut and the heavy table and plane fell to the floor with a bang. Caldwell swore his helpers to silence and took home his 12" model (which today is in the Washington, D.C. U.S. Patent Office).
After the herculean lift by the 12" model, an elated Caldwell immediately began work on a 12 foot model, which truly was the forerunner of the round wing plane of later years. He and his railroad friends completed the project in 1923 and tested their machine in the yards outside the Denver round house. First, about 500 pounds, then a ton of weight and finally 3000 pounds of rails were tied together and attached to the model plane. Those rails were lifted with apparent ease. Then the speed of the revolving blade was decreased and the rails lowered to the ground from their highest elevation of twelve feet. Next the twelve foot model was attached to a mountain locomotive type of the Rio Grande Railroad. As all watched the experiment, they saw the round plane lift into the air as the front end of the big locomotive rose slowly at least three inches from the tracks like a reluctant steed. The yard mechanic called out, "Oh Lord, what power have we let loose?" But the plane's bottom frame broke and the engine fell down onto the tracks again.
But Caldwell was unable to raise venture capital in Colorado for the new aerodynamic invention and several years later this failure would result in his going east, first to New York, then New Jersey and finally Maryland where a decade later he would attempt his venture again.
During the 20's, the U.S.A. found its renewed industrial strength. As people like Henry Ford mass produced his Model T automobiles, the growing use of which would eventually link the country with a system of roads and change the American life style, Jonathon E. Caldwell thought of future highways in the sky.
In the years ahead he flew the early mails in fast, single engine planes and hauled bananas in cumbersome air freighters for the United Fruit Company. The same decade also saw the two and three motored planes make their debuts, and pioneer flier Caldwell could also be found at the controls of such aeroplanes flying geologists into the wilds of Venezuela or Central America, seeking locations for a source of new liquid gold called petroleum. When not on a scheduled flight he loved to rent a plane and barnstorm around the countryside and provide rides in the new aerial wonder that most people had never seen. He also became a test pilot for a large aeroplane manufacturer, now out of business, and worked on and tested Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis with Lindberg, who later reciprocated by trying out an early prototype of Caldwell's Grey Goose helicopter machine.
Also in the '20's Caldwell worked with Robert Edward Lee Cone of St. Petersburg, Florida, head of the Army/Air Corps. Cone was Billy Mitchell's adjutant, and became one of Caldwell's most important contacts because, several years later, Billy Mitchell would remember about the maverick flyer Caldwell who seriously toyed with a new circular design principle for air travel. Mitchell would write a letter to the young Caldwell urging him to keep up his research and be careful not to let his project fall into the hands of a foreign government.
After twelve years of earning a living flying aeroplanes (and a stint as a licensed Colorado stock broker located in Denver from 1928 to 1930 during which time he was married), Caldwell decided he must attempt a full scale project. In the year 1933, he had built his last twelve foot model and believed he had taken all the bugs out of the latest design. That summer he returned to Kelly Field for the last time as a Reservist. With him he packed a twelve inch miniature model to show friends. Many Airmen watched Caldwell's round wing model plane perform in a series of maneuvers that got people talking.
Word soon reached high Army/Air Corps echelons.
Plans for what he named a roto plane were later drawn up and perfected in the early thirties, and in 1935 Caldwell incorporated "The Roto Planes Incorporated", listing his new address as Glen Burnie, Maryland and showing his wife, Olive, as secretary-treasurer and brother-in-law Carl H. Davis as vice president. The next year he began his last full size model intended to be used on a commercial basis.
Thus, before 1936, the industrious Caldwell had already built and discarded his Grey Goose plane, the forerunner of today's helicopter. From the Grey Goose idea he had improved the design in a revolutionary concept and by mid 1936 had built his final round wing plane, in which Army/Air Corps Colonel Watkins had taken a ride and tested to his satisfaction.
Then on October 27, 1936, Caldwell received a letter from the Secretary of War. It went: "Pursuant to our recent conversations . . . we feel your invention is too important to fall into enemy hands. The U.S. government, therefore, is offering you $50,000 for patent rights on the Grey Goose and Roto Plane, and is also prepared to allow for future royalty payments.
The Army/Air Corps is also prepared to enlist your services as a full time officer with higher rank than your present captaincy."
The next day Jonathon Caldwell boarded a train for Washington. He sat down in an Arlington, Virginia hotel and discussed his future with Chief of Staff, Army, several aeronautical experts, key Congressmen and members of the cabinet. The delegation reconvened at the White House where Caldwell met President Roosevelt and came away with the rank of Lieut. Colonel and an annual salary of $10,000.
"For the good of the service," Jonathon E. Caldwell that day had to make his most difficult decision for him and his wife. He would surrender his family name Caldwell, and never again be known as such. For all intents and purposes he would disappear from society -- till the day he would die.
In August, 1949, long after Caldwell's disappearance, some children ventured through a broken window into a so-called haunted tobacco barn in Maryland (the location of which is now in the city limits of Baltimore) - and later told their parents they had seen a flying saucer. Old F.B.I. files and newspaper stories dated August 21, 1949 filed by United Press and Associated Press appearing in the Baltimore Sun, Washington Post, etc. told briefly what had been found. The Deputy Sheriff of Anne Arundel County, father of one of the boys, was asked to accompany the boys back to the scene. He confirmed their story, unknowingly having found Caldwell's original Grey Goose and first Rotoplane. On notifying the Air Force, the barn was placed off limits, and a new generation of Air Force investigators, unaware of Caldwell or his inventions, carted the strange craft off to Wright Patterson Air Force Base, in Dayton, Ohio.
Air Force officers at the Pentagon were red faced when they finally found the files that explained the 25 mystery. For since the day Caldwell vacated his original workshop environment, his inventions had lain forgotten and neglected in the old tobacco barn.
On November 8, 1978, at Kensington, Maryland, an historic book on Caldwell was brought up from the vaults for the researcher to read for two hours. On the leather bound cover, hand printed in gold leaf, was the name Jonathon E. Caldwell, and on the fly leaf inside the 16" X 11" X 6" book, it was written that some of the most valuable records of mankind were preserved herein. The contents were perhaps as important to the U.S. as the Bill of Rights or the early life of President Abraham Lincoln, and to the rest of the world, the knowledge discovered by Caldwell as told by the memos and letters in the leather bound scrapbook would also be a treasure which they some day would share.
As permission was given to peruse the book, before it was returned to its deep underground vault, the rules were explained. Guards would be present, the entire contents could be read and studied, no notes or diagrams were to be made, no pictures taken. Just to see and read the book briefly had required the signatures of the President of the United States, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Commanding General of the U.S. Air Force, the Director of the National Archives, and the Director of the Library of Congress. As the researcher looked at the cover and opened the book, he was filled with awe. For what he saw, was a pre-glance at history, the full contents of which would not be made available to the public till after the year 2000.
But even more terrifying than the 1936 visit to the U.S. President by an alien who was human in all aspects, was that of another suppressed landing the same year involving weird creatures stopping at three airports located throughout the northern part of the country.
According to intelligence sources, the creatures’ resemblance could best be described as octopus-like, with multiple tentacles rather than human appendages of arms and legs. The beings slithered along on their tentacles and were able to communicate that they came from a planet beyond Earth's solar system and that their celestial wandering was exploratory but their intention peaceful. They showed a fear and nervousness of the curious looking things called Earthmen, so the feeling between the visitors and the visited was of mutual intimidation. The Earthmen had seen creatures with eyes, ears and mouths who communicated from an Intelligent center in their beings, and with exposed organs in animalistic bodies, whereas the pilgrims from outer space saw Earth creatures activated by fingers and hands and feet plus a variety of clothing which must have seemed obnoxious if not at least bizarre. As terrifying as the spacemen themselves were huge seven feet, hairy monsters accompanying the travelers as guards. Today these creatures, called Yetti, have been reported all over the globe indicating they may have been planted as "information censors" by outer spacemen.
Nevertheless, aside from differences in anatomy, the shock to those Earthlings who witnessed the sighting of the outer terrestrials was terrifying.
Following the 1936 episode with the humanoids (subsequently with other intelligent beings), the Executive Branch clamped a censorship on the arrival of the spaceship and its (by human standards) grotesque looking interplanetary visitors. That experience of select Earthmen being wakened out of an insular lethargy which ordained that all God's creatures had to look like us is still hidden in classified records of the Library of Congress of the Roosevelt era.
Caldwell's genius and his Rotoplane became the beginning by which the U.S. would secretly attempt to duplicate the more advanced interplanetary UFO's. And even then, as today, the U.S. military recognized that a nation with mastery of the air could command others in times of war or peace. Caldwell's Rotoplane was typical of other similar inventions drawn to the attention of the Army/Air Force as it geared to help Caldwell develop an improved version of the round wing plane.
An official attitude of suppression grew concerning the sharing of knowledge of this type of advanced aerodynamic structure. In 1936, the non-revealing name of A-2 Army Air Corps Intelligence concealed the Air Corps' first efforts to improve Caldwell's round wing design and duplicate an interplanetary space vehicle. A military awareness was born with presidential blessing to develop a temporary, secret military air arm of technology and industry around the round wing plane. But what was needed first was where to hide the project away from the prying eyes of increasing numbers of German espionage agents.
Meanwhile, as previously noted, President Roosevelt had been disturbed in 1936 by his first meeting with an outer space being, not to mention the terrifying visit of the octopus-like creatures. A hasty cabinet meeting was called. The President was adamant in his remarks at that meeting that the American people must be told. It was Postmaster General Jim Farley who first suggested an informative radio show to prepare the public. A sense of unbelievable doom was present, the feeling that an interplanetary invasion of earth, like that fictionalized on the Buck Rogers radio program, was a possibility. Worse still, cabinet members were inclined to believe that earth technology was incapable of any defense, and consequently, destruction or slavery of our people was not unthinkable.
Roosevelt invited several electronic media leaders to a private conference. The meeting developed 27 around a radio dramatization of H.G. Wells', War of the Worlds. Present that day were Lowell Thomas, Floyd Gibbons and other top writers and producers.
Roosevelt opened by saying, "Gentlemen, we inhabitants of Earth are not alone in the Universe. First, there are other planets in our solar system inhabited by people much like us. I've personally been visited by one of these intelligent aliens. Second, but more unbelievable, are verified reports of terrifying looking creatures who have emerged from strange looking crafts at random airports. I feel we must tell the public! But the question is, how? Gentlemen, can you help us? What do you propose?" The President then polled those present for suggestions.
A committee of five men was then chosen by the Chairman of Radio City to work quickly with Roosevelt on a drama format. From 100 narrators and producers they finally chose Orson Wells, with his clear diction and ominous voice. At 8 P.M. on the evening of October 30, 1938, radio listeners tuned into the Mercury Theatre Hour heard a drama of horrible Martians landing in New Jersey. The original H.G. Welles story “War of the Worlds," seemed prophetic. The drama as portrayed for radio had been given a dry run at the White House to members of the cabinet and other key citizens, fifteen days before the public broadcast. With this audience aware of the tentacled visitors and hairy monsters, and the ultimate terror they or future humanoids could inspire, Orson Wells and his drama group were urged to make the fictional Martian invasion of Earth more dramatic in its inducement of fear. The radio play finally produced was a masterful piece of emotional suspense and terror, but it was also propaganda.
In hindsight, the invasion theme and the real fright and panic it engendered was not an appropriate way to deliver a message on the arrival of friendly outer space beings. People went berserk. Eight jumped from tall buildings in New York, other unexplained suicides were recorded during and after the show, and state troopers performed herculean feats looking for the "enemy."
Exit roads from Newark and New York were jammed as were bridges and tunnels. Panic-stricken listeners tried to escape to the countryside where they might hide from the mythical Martian Invasion.
Unfortunately, no station break announcements were made during the hour long show to explain that it was only a drama, and those who had never heard of H.G. Welles' "War of the Worlds" believed the adaptation was real. The grim voice of Orson Wells kept up a running commentary of the terrified human exodus of America's greatest city, New York.
Acting solely on the effects of this radio drama, the Executive Branch of the time decided that the American public could not now be told the truth -- that we were being scrutinized and surveyed by a race from outer planets with technological advances far beyond that of Earth.
The unwitting cover up had already begun to insulate North American minds from the horrifying possibility of contact with creatures unlike us from other worlds. The ramifications of the traditional concept regarding the singular majesty of man, made in the likeness of a supreme creator, could no longer be reconciled by those who had seen other creatures totally unlike us in appearance but equal to or exceeding us in mind and spirit. The question then was how many anatomical versions of intelligent life existed beyond our frontiers of space. And as a result of the panacea of an alien visit in 1936 of humanoid types, the United States took action to suppress future knowledge of alien visitations to Earth. President Roosevelt and his advisors were the guiding force behind the original movement, and a vigilante committee of 100 was formed to monitor future sightings from across the country and advise government on them. At the time no private agency or government body existed who were versed in such a unique problem. Those chosen were men who exerted powerful influence and included prominent bankers, educators, industrialists, railroad presidents, judicial people and select politicians. Among those selected were Henry Ford, the Presidents of Pacific Electric, General Motors, the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Chase Manhattan Bank and a Justice of the Supreme Court. The power of these leaders vis a vis government policy would increase yearly and in 1980 the vast territorial boundaries of that private advisory group would still survive and be instrumental in most aspects of the U.S. government's outer space programs. It would also affect the political, military, science and educational sectors of our entire society.
The broad charter of NSA is in itself properly warranted. Its global intelligence gathering abilities keep American's military leaders cognizant of the subtle shifts in military aggressiveness at world trouble spots, notwithstanding the stagnant diplomacy of the foreign policy experts who make judgments based on NSA intelligence briefings.
Therefore, since the Orson Wells broadcast over 40 years ago, the reality of even one outer terrestrial visit and its disputable effect on a large segment of Earth's population has not been tested because of severe intra-governmental censorship.
At the outbreak of World War II, much of America's brain power was being expended to improve existing concepts of the round wing plane. And, although American scientists continued to search and evaluate the new capabilities of its design and propulsion, industry's main thrust was quickly switched back to conventional war apparatus with which U.S. allies were more certain they could combat the enemy.
On December 7, 1941, when the U.S. entered World War II, UFO's were first sighted in number over the White House, and the U.S. Capitol Building. Anti-aircraft fire from guns located in the center of Washington sent up a barrage of metal that literally surprised the extra-terrestrials. Thus, as the hovering UFO's took evasive action, an Air Corps radar observer noted a hit on one spacecraft, which left formation and was seen vanishing into a large mothership located at 35,000 feet. This event was the first of several incidents during the war when unidentified flying objects were seen hovering over various buildings in the nation's capitol. It was also at that time that a different UFO design of cigar shape was observed over several American localities. These craft required heavy electric power for their propulsion cores and were frequently seen stealing power while suspended 29 above and attached to the center rail of electric streetcar systems. During one such Washington incident in 1944 the power drain was so great that all of the cities’ streetcars came to a standstill. Power plants themselves became the fast feeders for what came to be known as the "juice hogs" which began to steal electric power on a large volume basis. These "unknown alien craft" continued to pilfer power as evidenced by the Eastern Seaboard Blackout in 1975, and the New York Blackout in 1977, the latter of which is documented by U.S. Air Force electronic observation on the site.
By 1945, when the Japanese Surrender was signed, America still did not know for sure the identity of any of the UFO invaders or the reason for their presence. At the beginning of his tenure as Supreme Allied Commander for the Far East, General Douglas MacArthur summoned the top Japanese officials to his office in the Mechie Building in Tokyo. He stared straight at the Japanese officers, "All right, you So and So’s," he spat out roughly, as McArthur could do. "Where do you keep those round spy planes you have had over Washington during most of the war?" The Japanese looked at each other and smiled. “What round spy planes do you speak of?" McArthur cussed, and refused to believe their denials.
But for the time being America had the last laugh. At the Yalta Conference, Stalin asked Roosevelt and Churchill why the allies had kept the secret of the round wing plane from Russia. Roosevelt and Churchill denied the UFO's had been produced in allied war factories. Stalin was furious, and almost left the conference. He hissed across the table as his cold eyes apprised the two allied leaders. "You English speaking people act together. But just remember I have spies throughout both your countries, and I intend to uncover the whereabouts of your secret spaceships that hover over Moscow.”
Was Stalin really aware of the UFO's? Indeed, yes! United States intelligence (perhaps unknown to Roosevelt who overly promoted Stalin's friendship) had penetrated the heart of the Kremlin for a period of time and witnessed some astonishing things. The most enjoyable to American intelligence was the following incident: One day in 1943, Stalin received a visit by a being from outer space. The alien suddenly appeared before Stalin's desk and identified himself as an emissary from the government of the Universe. Stalin looked up startled, and replied, “I don’t appreciate American jokes," and half rising told the “Yankee” visitor he was going to call his guards. Without further discussion, the alien then told Stalin to call his guards -- who promptly entered. The Russian security guards grabbed the intruder and before Stalin's eyes the ensuing scuffle left the two embarrassed policemen holding only each other. The being had simply vanished into thin air. Adolph Hitler of Germany had also received alien visits, but the discourtesy shown by Stalin marked the beginning of an antagonism between Outer Space visitors and subsequent Russian leaders that has lasted to this day.
It is obvious that by the end of World War II, international intrigue to discover the origin of the increasing unidentified objects became the order of the day in several nations.
But, although public knowledge of the UFO phenomena was slow to spread throughout the world, 30 extensive military interest in it grew during World War II. Over Germany and its occupied territory, allied pilots reported strange lights and luminous balls of fire hovering in protective gestures over their aircraft formations. These peculiar objects were considered by allied airmen to be of unknown origin while uninformed German pilots assumed these same phenomena were perhaps of allied invention. Among allied airmen the name "friendly foo fighters" became a wartime slang that was well understood. And in the living quarters of allied airmen stationed at British airdromes, hushed voices at night whispered of the lights from heaven that sometimes flew in their midst and gave courage.
Intelligence agents of all nations preoccupied with World War II fighting began earnestly to explore the mystery of the "foo fighters." Typical is this account of Russian intelligence interrogating Lt. Colonel H. Sylvester Williams (his code name), a United States Officer in November, 1944, who had just delivered a special dispatch, direct from U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Russian Premier Joseph Stalin.
The special American courier had completed the flight from Washington to New York, then to England, then by special plane across Norway, Sweden and on to his destination, Moscow. The next morning the American courier was carefully questioned by a Colonel Murisky as to whether he had seen anything in the sky in his flight from England. The questions and answers were as follows:
Q. Did you see a cigar-shaped object flying in the sky either alongside your ship or nearby?
A. No.
Q. Did you see any cylindrical-shaped objects at all, say silver or light bluish in color?
A. No.
Q. Sometimes during the trip your plane flew at low altitude; did you observe any shadowy forms on the ground other than that of your own aircraft?
A. No.
Q. Did you see any round saucer-shaped objects that seemed to travel at extremely high speeds?
A. No.
Q. Did you observe any enemy planes during your flight?
A. No.
Q. Were you followed, say, by odd looking objects?
A. No.
Q. Did you see anything strange at all?
A. No.
At this point, the U.S. officer was told to please be on the lookout for anything unusual on his return flight.
During World War II, there were many fascinating chapters of intrigue in the international guessing game of who owned the UFO's even after the alien visits to major governments. The problem of being unable to place a name tag on the aliens was too simple. They looked too human not to be human. That there were those nearly identical to us in other worlds, was considered simply too blase an explanation.
Truly, major governments could not accept that these objects were extra-terrestrial. Deep prejudices that earthman was a superior creature living alone in the universe were ingrained through our educational and religious concepts. Therefore, at that time, much of the intelligence and military of the world surmised two things: the crafts were presumed hostile and were of earthly origin.
Each country quickly developed its own methods of counter surveillance, but with few real leads and facts to give its agents. The Americans, the British, and the Canadians cooperated, anticipating that collective action would bring faster results.
Standing orders of some countries to their fighter pilots in cumbersome propeller planes were "Hit a UFO - if you can." Already they had catalogued several varieties including the common saucer variety and coleman lantern types, the bell, the cigar or tubular object, small 13" disks, and even square -- yes, square ones -- and, of course -- giant mother ships, brighter than Venus, stationed 100 miles high and as long as a mile in length – cities in themselves, about which the military were divided, as to whether they were illusions or realities.
It's a wonder that American intelligence (Office of Strategic Services) did not become atrophied at its biggest task since General William Donovan had founded it in 1942. But, with the help of the scientists and major universities, composure was maintained and plans developed as the government quietly and clandestinely swung its efforts into the Age of Aquarius without informing press or public.
Science forums across the land, usually sponsored by some government agency, first addressed themselves to the questions:
1. Are we seeing visions or real beings with bodies like mortals?
2. Is it possible that the vibrations which apparently hold together in permanent shape the atom structure of human bodies might on a higher vibrating scale bind the structure of being from other planets in such a way that the beings are enabled to appear and disappear?
3. Must visiting intelligent beings breath an air combination as we do to survive on earth?
And then it was asked, "What if the force of gravity were negated?" The answer the scientists gave was, "If gravity could be overcome in a localized area such as a space ship, the mass thereof would be weightless.
And finally addressing themselves to the problems of space travel, other groups asked: is it possible for a given mass to travel along earth's magnetic North-South grid perhaps faster than the speed of sound? "Someday, we expect earthships to do just that, and even fly at incomprehensible speeds between planets on free magnetic energy," was the reply.
With these concepts accepted, Air Force intelligence surmised that true aliens were arriving from our own solar system and possibly beyond and were indeed policing our skies. Certain U.S. scientists hurried to review the age old concepts of earth's magnetic energy fields and the electromagnetic forces operating between planets.
By the end of World War II, Caldwell's round wing plane would be a first priority and hidden in a location where it would become approachable only through 100 miles of guarded mountain roads and tunnels. In this hideaway, the design and pertinent specifications of English speaking peoples' future round wing plane would be decided.
The rocketry race to the moon in the sixties was simply a continuation of that American goal to learn more of the stellar world. For reasons of national security, the main thrust of the plan to build a round wing plane was to be kept hidden or camouflaged under newly devised security wraps until the propitious time to tell would arrive.
Today, forty years later, many in America's intelligence and military community believe it is now an appropriate time to open the door for the public to see the dawning of a new technology that will change the world. But many others in over 30 secret government agencies, particularly NASA and National Science Foundation, consider that telling of the struggle, even in part, is premature. Although it was not articulated to the rank and file in the services, the American Air Force went on record in 1966 that some of those UFO's appearing in North American skies were interplanetary. With that admission, a confidence was growing that the UFO sightings must eventually be explained.
In 1977, a four-star Air Force staff general who had served in various hush-hush research and development projects since World War II, explained to the authors the Air Force reasoning paraphrased as follows: Heretofore, we were unwilling to divulge the nature of our own development projects because outer space beings we had met were so far advanced metaphysically and technologically that should they or other aliens less well disposed to humanity try to destroy us, we would have been helpless. It was the same assumption as that told in 1936. The General didn't mention weaponry or counter weaponry -- he simply spelled out earth's dilemma, not in terms of retaliation, but confined his remarks and thoughts to effective protection on the surface of this planet. Beyond that official explanation of the 20th century problem, the subject apparently was closed.
While the world in post-war years hunted old manuscripts to find the answer to the riddle of the UFO's, America knew the answer, and each year would bury it deeper and deeper.
For the U.S.A., the haunting question was simply this: Could she develop a counter airborne hardware quickly enough to protect her own skies from extra-terrestrial invaders? And in trying to accomplish this super-human task before the years of World War II, could she also shield her endeavours from the prying eyes of earth adversaries such as the Germans and the Japanese, and even the Russians whom they called allies?
Thus by 1936, a strong German spy apparatus had already begun to function in the U.S.A. The espionage system had been easy to implement. German nationals were able to hide their activities without undue suspicion by recruiting new members from organizations like the German Bund or by drawing sympathizers from naturalized German-Americans, enthralled by Nazi ideologies. But notwithstanding the presence of those Nazi sympathizers on the fringe of certain German communities, the bulk of the German descendants disdained the advances of the Nazi adherents and spurned their racial philosophies. In fact, loyal German-Americans not only opposed, but were foremost in fighting the Nazis at home and abroad, as intelligence files later confirmed.
Cognizant of this foreign espionage activity, the U.S. Army/Air Force officers who first interviewed Caldwell in 1936, quickly realized that this young man was on the brink of perfecting the greatest aerial marvel in the history of aviation. Although the first Glen Burnie roto-plane flew slower than 100 miles per hour and operated with a conventional small two-cylinder four cycle aircraft engine, the design of the machine and the airflow it induced was totally different than anything ever conceived and flown by earthmen in their skies. A cumbersome but necessary rudder often caused unwieldy flight patterns in cross winds, and while the machine still required a short runway for takeoff, it was apparent that its future potential in speed, hovering and maneuverability might literally allow it to reach the stars if adequate scientific help were provided.
Political unrest in Europe had alerted U.S. foreign service watchers, and their observations of a new arms build-up had been passed on to the military. Gradually there began a shift from isolationism to uneasiness. following Hitler's occupation of Austria. and later in March 1936 his march into the Rhineland. While watching Germany, France began to overspend on re-armament, and Britain and America began to show alarm at signs of German expansionism. War clouds were obviously appearing over Europe, following what amounted to international failure to promote disarmament; and a reliance on peace treaties that became mere scraps of paper.
Taking a hard look at her research achievements in the air, the U.S. suddenly realized that although there existed on the market new scientific breakthroughs in destructive weapons, America herself had produced no significant aerial developments since World War I. But the continuing use of the aeroplane as an effective weapon of war had not been obscured in the directives of the U.S. Army/Air Force advisors as they prepared reports on how Spanish towns were levelled by German dive bombers in 1936 or how the air-cover of Italian planes lent support to their troops and tanks in Mussolini's 1935 subjugation of Ethiopia.
Thus, with prognostic military awareness of the possible evolution of aerial warfare, there occurred top level re-assessments of Caldwell's first rotoplane, out of which national security advisors became doubly concerned about espionage, particularly by the Germans. Orders went out from the executive branch to relocate the Caldwell program away from the potentially prying eyes of a wave of German spies.
The new premises, operated under the supervision of Caldwell, would be located at Wright Patterson Field, outside Dayton, Ohio. In a corner of hanger number 2, in December 1936, Caldwell began again. He first set up a small machine shop and was given a full time machinist and welder. Caldwell was also provided with an assumed name which he would change twice again in the years ahead. Also added was the additional luxury of an office girl to complete the constant reports required in written communications with the new Army/Air Corps sponsor.
For Caldwell and his wife, Olive, there would be the protection of constant security police. The Caldwell children, a boy and a girl, both in their teens, complained that their dates and friends were watched and the backgrounds of the families of their new friends were checked. The privacy for which they so often longed was gone forever.
Under Caldwell's supervision, a new machine with modifications was begun in late 1936. Plans called for it to be 33 feet in diameter and to hold a crew of six. Emphasis would be on using the lightest weight components obtainable. The structure would be thin, steel tubing built around a center cockpit. Initially a silk-covered plywood veneer was intended, but that was rejected for a silk-over-cotton covering. This skin was used for the first new models tested until replaced by dura-aluminum from a formula developed by Dr. Bolton B. Smith of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Rejection of this aluminum skin also took place when it became obvious that it possessed a too-low heat point, making it unsatisfactory for high speed travel. The skin finally perfected on the rota-plane covering was an outer layer of paperthin, stainless steel, bonded to an inside layer of dura-aluminum with a film of glued silk between. The new covering would be standard specifications on all U.S. round wing planes of the future, till outer spacemen would provide a perfect skin formula for American machines.
Caldwell gave all his time to the project. Each spare moment he thought on how to improve the craft. One night, while working late under strict guard surrounding his home, a knock came at his study door. Caldwell's own vicious police dog outside the door did not stir. As Caldwell opened the door, he saw standing before him a tall man in a silver space suit and black calf-high boots, waiting with an outstretched hand. The German Shepherd looked up at the stranger and wagged his tail. As the visitor was invited to sit down in front of Caldwell's desk, the inventor, still uncertain of his polite intruder, covered with a book a diagram on which he had been working. The stranger spoke: "Don't worry about those plans lying under the book. The problem that vexes you is one of propulsion. Actually, the heart of the problem is not only one of design; rather it is mathematical." The stranger then handed Caldwell a folder with seven sheets inside, including a new carburetor design and fuel formula.
Caldwell offered his new friend a cup of coffee. They talked for fifteen minutes and the stranger explained how Caldwell could overcome the existing difficulty he was encountering in the new round wing plane.
The spaceman departed, and as Caldwell re-read the plans more carefully, he noticed a "formula of seven ingredients, which when later added to the kerosene fuel for the jet engines then being tested, gave such an improved performance that the added horse power and mileage range were unbelievable. (Up to that time, there had been no need for a highly combustible fuel. The simple additive of lead to gasoline was adequate to run the piston engines.)
German espionage agents had lost the trail of Caldwell and his amazing machine late in 1936, much to the relief of security personnel. In their new Wright Patterson quarters, the Caldwell crew were free to come and go from their workshop, but their presence in the community of Dayton would of course ultimately be discovered. German agents, undeterred, were already searching the country for their lost quarry.
In the meantime, earlier work by Caldwell on a jet engine was now being completed with help from Northwestern University and advice from the outer spaceman. Caldwell's jet was an improvement on an earlier model invented in France. Plans were made to replace the conventional aircraft engine in the round wing plane with the newly developed jet. (Early versions of Caldwell's jet plans were stolen by German agents and first installed in their new Messerschmidt 109.)
The scope of the project was enlarged when the full military application of the plane was recognized. In January 1937, Northwestern University provided physicists and contracted to do all the lab work in design, metallurgy and chemistry for the Caldwell project. Facilities in Wright Patterson Hanger No.2 began with a total of ten people helping Caldwell in the make-shift factory. The crew grew monthly. A governing board was appointed consisting of the Officer Commanding the air field, plus two other officers, along with Caldwell as supervisor.
Caldwell had narrowly missed being killed more than once in flying his new contraption; therefore, two test pilots from Kelly Field, Texas, were brought in to keep the inventor on the ground. The name roto-plane was now dropped in favor of the round wing appellation, and in official correspondence the project ceased to be called the Long Island project in preference for the new code name JEFFERSON. Jefferson quickly was placed under the highest security in the U.S.A. For the new personnel, their movements outside the hanger would be subject to closer scrutiny, and their social and family contacts would be monitored 24 hours a day.
But the new vigilance came too late. The German espionage agents had narrowed the Caldwell trail to Dayton. German agents reported their discovery to their military attache, and quietly a plan was drawn up to catch the Americans involved in the Jefferson project in a way security authorities would never suspect. German espionage teams carefully laid out their new net.
By early 1938 Project Jefferson had covered 20,000 feet of Hanger No.2, plus an adjacent hanger. There were now 102 employees sworn to silence by oath, who operated under the jurisdiction of an expanded ten-man governing board. The employees were paid top wages and often were seen at a particular bar in downtown Dayton, where the best drinks were served and affable waiters and attractive decor made an evening at the cocktail lounge a most enjoyable event. For patrons who liked the thrill of gambling, the waiters would discreetly whisper that a special room was located at the back. For patrons from Wright-Patterson Field, IOU's were honored and inducements extended to bet heavily.
It was during this period that reports from the north-east began appearing at police stations, newspaper offices and air force installations of strange, unearthly looking aircraft that streaked across the horizons at unbelievable speeds, faster than anything ever seen in the skies before. (World records in 1938 for propellor driven fixed wing planes were in the vicinity of 300 mph.) And with the sightings of these novel craft, often there was also reported a bright luminosity. The light was purely reflective, the plane's surface being so highly polished as to show a mirror-like reflection in the moonlight or perhaps a blinding flash in the bright sun which obscured its shape. The planes took off and landed at Wright-Patterson Field -- generally at night.
But now the Germans had competition in their American espionage activities. Just as interested in the new aerial phenomena were the Japanese. World War II was only a year away, and international military jitters were spreading around the globe.
Had the curious sky watchers known the truth, they would have learned that the newly seen night craft were American made. They were in fact almost totally new versions of Caldwell's first rotoplane. Of course, they were round, 33 feet in diameter, with a cabin on top in mid center. The heart of the propulsion was now a kerosene fed jet motor that could provide the plane with a top speed of 750 miles per hour. The jet sucked air into its chambers, heated it and dispersed it through a system of ducts that gave the sudden maneuverability in all directions which ground viewers had observed and reported.
Ten of these beautiful machines stood hidden in a hangar in Wright-Patterson in September 1938, approximately two years after Caldwell had flown his first canvas-covered craft the 45 miles to Washington. But September 12 was a special day. Caldwell himself took the controls of one of the planes as it was wheeled out. Before daybreak he took off after a dozen maintenance men checked out the ship and gave it clearance for departure. The jet could not lift the mass and weight straight up, but once airborne it could hover.
Up like an arrow shot in an oblique line of flight at 35 degrees the round wing plane rose into the covering darkness. Less than two hours later, as morning broke over Washington, D.C., alert onlookers saw a strange object hovering over the White House stationary, and emitting a muted whine.
The appearance of the plane over the home of the President was a combined salute to the Chief of the U.S.A., President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, from Jonathon E. Caldwell and the Army/Air Corps, which had helped him build the world's first operational round wing plane.
But not only was the American President and his staff watching, so was the German military attache. After that 1938 recorded inaugural flight, there would be renewed interest by foreign embassies in America, particularly German, concerning the most unconventional aeroplane the world had ever produced. The Germans hurried up their scheme to obtain plans on the amazing American invention, an updated version of the 1936 Caldwell rotoplane.
It was less than a month after the Washington fly-over by the round wing plane that the new, posh downtown cocktail and gambling lounge in Dayton was staked out by the FBI. Reports began coming in that gambling debts would be forgiven if indebted players of the games of chance provided information about activities at Hangers 2 and 3 at Wright-Patterson Field. It was soon ascertained that the bar was German-owned and was the trap by which they planned to obtain the secrets of the new American round wing plane. Briefly, these developments of counter intrigue took place. Two FBI men, masquerading as draftsmen on the new round wing plane, ran up debts on the German gambling room. The bar was closed and all personnel connected with the premises were arraigned and placed in jail under the severe statutes of treason; they were detained till further World War II emergency powers were invoked. Then these spies were summarily executed. The last attempt had failed by which the Germans intended to obtain the revised plans to America's revolutionary plane.
But the American intelligence authorities had learned a valuable lesson. From then on, all loose talk about the new plane must be stopped. Furthermore, the round wing plane facilities must be relocated again. And this must be done quickly. Government and military apprehensiveness mounted.
The Secretary of War wrote Caldwell to expect a move in the autumn of 1938 to a new location. Orders were given to dismantle and crate the machinery and equipment. At a scheduled time, a long train pulled into Wright-Patterson Field where it was loaded, after which Caldwell, his wife, and teenage son and daughter boarded a putman car. Their family possessions were packed also and on a flat railroad car went Caldwell's canvas covered personal automobile. Railroad men along the line called it the "X" special because it moved with the same priority as a Presidential train, requiring all other trains to stand by on siding till the "X" train passed through. All switches along the route were spiked to prevent tampering and key points were guarded by armed soldiers.
Well before the year 1938 ended, on October 23, Hangers No. 2 and 3 in Dayton's Wright-Patterson complex were emptied and closed, and only the ghosts of Jonathon Caldwell and his builders of a new aerial empire lingered behind.
The next location selected for continuing development of the round wing plane was in a military town near the continental divide in New Mexico. At an army center near the town of Los Alamos the complex was hastily made ready; a railway spur line was run in and new facilities added for the elite company of men and women about to arrive.
As the special "X" passed through Los Alamos, the engineer found himself riding on newly laid track. Cavalry units guarded the new rails. While the train pulled into the final destination site, the Caldwell entourage beheld a regiment of soldiers surrounding the enclosure. After the train was unleaded and vacated, the dining and pullman cars were pushed into sealed sheds which then were filled with cyanide gas in case a spy remained hidden on the train. Such was the security surrounding the second move of the Caldwell group known officially as Project Jefferson.
The new headquarters were self contained insofar as the life style which prevailed during non-working hours. Total security would be maintained in a setting of barbed wire and electric fences. Elaborate precautions were taken to prevent unauthorized outsiders from getting past the guards. Any truck or other vehicle leaving the Los Alamos installation from the moment of the Caldwell arrival would be thoroughly searched and torn apart if the security inspectors so decreed.
For the new inhabitants all amenities were provided, such as private tutoring and school classes, library, church services, films, restaurants, clothing, food. There was only one stipulation. No access to the outside world was tolerated, all outgoing and incoming mail was censored and telephone conversations monitored. The personnel of Project Jefferson were prisoners. And wherever Caldwell and his family went, their constant protection by Secret Service personnel would be greater than that required for the President of the United States.
In the year 1940, in the nearby town of Los Alamos, a group of merchants provided maintenance for the fast-growing personnel living in the adjacent area, engaged in production facilities for a fleet that was being hurried to assume a role in the skies should neutral America become involved in the European war which had broken out in September of 1939.
But beside the merchants who provided station provisions, there moved into Los Alamos another type of resident. This was the dogged German and Japanese who listened for casual information about the close-by activities and whose high powered binoculars and cameras scanned the clear skies for any unusual man-made phenomena.
Americans were unaware, but all the nation's industrial and scientific endeavours including the Manhattan project were now secondary to the deployment of the country's brain power in the Jefferson Project.
Then in 1941, another trauma of defense consciousness occurred with the arrival of Japanese bombers over the U.S. mainland, after which it was feared the new Los Alamos round wing plane site might be bombed. Three bombs had already been dropped in Northern California. Some Japanese field workers in Hawaii had been found guilty of espionage acts that had pointed a path for planes toward Pearl Harbor installations. Authorities asked themselves, "How vulnerable to air attack was the Los Alamos site and were Japanese espionage agents operating nearby?"
Although total military vigilance was maintained around the Los Alamos site, secret security personnel monitored the establishments which the soldiers favored while in Los Alamos. On one occasion, seven soldiers went into an “off limits” bar. As drinking increased, two of the soldiers began loudly bragging about their activities to the waitress. Within minutes, a squad of military police rounded up the group and they were returned to base. All off duty soldiers in town and at the site were also recalled. That afternoon, the two soldiers were court martialed and sentenced. The same day they dug their own graves in full view of their regiment. A squad of 12 men was called out and a firing squad executed the two who had boasted about the project in public. Such was the sensitivity to secrecy built around the round wing plane development which continues to this day.
A short time after Pearl Harbor in December 1941, traffic suddenly disappeared in and out of the Los Alamos complex. Dignitaries and visitors were seen no more, and bids to provide food and beverage were no longer asked from the merchants of the town.
Also missing were the bewildered foreign espionage agents.
High in the sky above Los Alamos, one winter night in late December, 1941, a fleet of over 60 round wing planes with their trained combat crews of over 400 men, disappeared into the blackness of the unknown.
By all evidence, the great American project surrounding the round wing installations had been abandoned, to be heard of no more.
Of course, by the end of 1941, the United States was at war with the axis powers of Germany and Italy and had declared war on Japan. Hostile planes had been sighted over San Francisco and war in the air was approaching potentially closer to home.
But as for the American war effort in the skies, all the public learned that year came from the mouth of National Defense Chairman William B. Knudsen, who said for the record: "The U.S. will soon double its present 900 monthly plane production of fighter and bomber craft, in an air re-armament drive." The new aircraft fighter hope, apparently, was still a conventional fuselage with one fixed cross wing called a R40, clocked across the Buffalo airport at 320 miles per hours.
Were the 60 round wing planes that reputedly could fly at speeds in excess of 750 miles per hour too untried to mention? Or were they classed as secret weapons being held in abeyance til America would enter the war and one day bring Hitler, the new master of Europe, to his knees?
next
Early German Development of the UFO
s48
Chapter II
Early American Development
of the Unconventional Aeroplane
The reader already must be asking questions. Why haven't I learned of these cosmic visitations before?
Why doesn't the government explain? Why the suppression of UFO landings? The authors asked the
same questions when they began to dig into the mystery three years ago. Today there are many
thousands of persons around the world who are engaged in keeping the alien presence and their
unidentified flying objects under censorship wraps. This unchangeable posture of silence exists in both democratic and totalitarian countries. It began with typical military reasoning that the public should not be informed, if to do so, national sovereignty would be jeopardized. It proceeded with the assumption that the public was not prepared for such astounding revelations, and could not cope with them.
American governmental censorship of UFO information seems to be typical of that in other countries and extends back nearly 50 years. In the mid 1930's, military secrecy about an unusual American invention in the field of powered flight triggered the first blackout of public knowledge.
It all began in 1935 because of a young aeronautical engineer with a high school education and two years study in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Oregon State College, who later became a World War I flier. His name at that time was Jonathan E. Caldwell and he lived near Glen Burnie, Maryland. He invented and built a lighter than air machine which in addition to conventional nose propulsion, was driven by a nine cylinder, 45 horse power French engine with controlled speed blades, each three feet long by 12 inches wide, mounted on top of midship which enabled the plane to ascend or descend vertically and even hover. The blades were attached to the cardinal points of a 14 foot wooden disk which was free revolving, deriving its momentum from the puwer driven nose prop blast.
The canvas covered, tubular steel plane, christened the "Grey Goose", had been constructed in a tobacco warehouse and then tested on the Maryland farm of Caldwell's friend Lewis Pumpwrey on State Road Number 3, Anne Arunder County. The machine flew fairly well; it was actually the wingless forerunner of today's helicopter.
Not satisfied with his initial achievement, a few months later Caldwell completed a fundamentally different design named the "Rotoplane", similar to an earlier model, the spectacular lifting capability of which had been tested successfully in Denver, Colorado in 1923. Notwithstanding its lifting power, this machine proved to be less maneuverable. Its energy source consisted of six large, pitched, rotor blades encased in a single 12 foot diameter rim or flange, above and in the center of which the operator sat. A news story at the time referred to the contraption as a "flying joke".
But regardless of critics and lampooners, Caldwell was not deterred from his dream of a round wing air machine. He began his final prototype which would indeed prove successful. The latest model was 28 feet in diameter and would disappear before the press or public was allowed to examine it closely, although it had been used openly to provide rides and give demonstrations to interested observers and investors.
The machine resembled a huge tub with a set of six blades projecting out from both the top and bottom of the "tub". In the center of the affair was a round tubular housing or cockpit containing seats for two persons, plus gauges, gears and levers and of course the motor. (The first motor was an eight cylinder Ford V8 gasoline engine with the block cut in half. This motor was considered heavy and troublesome in operation and was later replaced by a newly cast four cylinder lightweight aluminum block, along with aluminum gears which were later substituted with bronze.)
The operator sat in the top of the center tubing or hub with his head and shoulders above for the purposes of sight navigation. Hands and feet operated with ease the levers and pedals for speed and direction. The bottom set of six lift blades were wide, fixed at a slight angle, and they turned clockwise. They had a controlled speed operated by one of the gears.
The six, maneuverable pitch blades located topside were for lateral direction, projecting from the housing; they turned counterclockwise. In essence, the structure and design of the craft, as well as its mechanical movements and controls, were of utmost simplicity.
The two sets of rotors, set six feet apart, revolved in opposite directions around the ship. They were power driven during ascent but turned freely in pure aerodynamic descent if the motor failed, thus allowing the craft to float down under direction from its chosen height at a slower speed than that of a parachutist.
Airborne directional control was attained by changing the angle of the upper set of rotors: that is, forward or reverse thrust was accomplished by a tilting mechanism attached to the top bank of rotors. Thus slippage took place toward the lower side with advancing blades riding down-grade and retreating blades gaining altitude. According to Caldwell's description it was the same principle which birds used in flight, substituting rotors for feathered wings and tail.
The bottom of the craft could be made water tight, enabling it to take off from land or water. To raise capital for his forthcoming enterprise and float costs, Caldwell attempted unsuccessfully and repeatedly to sell stock in his aviation marvel names "The Rotoplanes Inc.," even offering up to $5.00 for a trial ride in the machine. The stock certificates read in part: "That the stock is for an invention, which invention is used in the development of an aeroplane designed to fly on the bird principle of flight, and that the stock is worth $10.00 to $100.00 per share, depending on his (Caldwell's) success in developing the aeroplane."
Eventually, a curious Army-Air Corps Colonel, Peter B. Watkins, dressed in civies, appeared as a prospective buyer whom the delighted inventor took for a test flight. The Colonel was permitted to take the controls, and was astonished at the craft's advanced maneuverability over the bi-wing and mono-wing airplanes of the 30s.
The Colonel flew the machine 45 miles to Washington, D.C., where he made 100 mile per hour passes over Washington Monument, and the White House. The Colonel was elated when he actually stopped the forward motion of the machine and hovered for a few minutes directly over the 241 foot high Washington Monument. Upon return to the city he was granted an interview with President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
He told the President that Caldwell's mystery plane was so advanced in design that to avoid copy by foreign military, the United States should immediately obtain control of patents and production. Roosevelt agreed with the Colonel, asking him to reevaluate the project and report back in 30 days for Congressional approval.
Within 30 days, without apparent Congressional approval, Roosevelt acted. Caldwell received a letter from the Attorney General of Maryland, advising him to cease and desist the sale of the stock in his new company. Previous solicitations to sell stock in New York (1934) and New Jersey (1932) had likewise been stopped by their State Attorney Generals. Caldwell, in effect, was forced out of his new aviation venture before it got off the ground.
In the autumn of 1936, Caldwell disappeared and officially was never heard of again.
The question of whom was Jonathon E. Caldwell and how he could have disappeared so completely from society was a mystery which baffled the author for almost three years. So little information could be unearthed, only scraps of newspaper accounts which had been quickly denied. And then in November of 1978 a break came in the case of the missing inventor, Jonathon E. Caldwell, who had been 37 years of age when last seen or heard publicly. He would be close to 80 years old today. Was he the one to whom we had established a vicarious attachment and to whom we had dedicated this book -- before we were certain he existed or was still alive?
The American who was to become the world's greatest genius in the field of aerodynamics, and who invented the world's first round wing plane which millions of viewers have labelled UFO's, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1899.
His name one day would become greater than the Wright Brothers and the city of St. Louis where he was born would gain an even greater fame in years to come than had been bestowed on the city by Charles Lindbergh when he named his historic aeroplane that took him across the Atlantic, The Spirit of St. Louis.
But before Jonathon E. Caldwell was to become preoccupied with a vision of how man could overcome his own absence of wings, World War I would break out. To Caldwell, the war would be a chance to fly aeroplanes, and 1917 would see him volunteering for the service of the United States Army where his training at Kelly Field, Texas in fixed winged by-planes would be a forerunner for overseas duty in France. Caldwell came out of the service a lieutenant in 1918. He rejoined the Army/Air Corps Reservists in the summer of 1921 and again found himself stationed at Kelly Field with a small group of World War I fliers who had returned for retraining and to brush up on their flying ability.
One day of that 1921 summer at Kelly Field a few young officers including Caldwell took out some saucers and tin plates and began tossing them through the air at each other to be caught during a few minutes of relaxation and horseplay. It was during this period in young Caldwell's life that he became enthralled with the idea of developing a completely new design of aircraft. At first he was hardly aware of his own intentions.
From saucers, Caldwell tried paper plates. Whether the object he threw was a saucer, or a paper or tin plate, or even a military wide brim hat, Caldwell made some pertinent observations. Such round objects when thrown and spun into the air or wind, sailed smoothly, travelled faster, and climbed higher than any other form or shape.
Caldwell while in France had learned the hard way about a fixed wing plane. He knew that if the propellor turned at sufficient revolutions per minute and the prop pitch was properly set, the plane could ride along on the air flow induced by the propeller's own current. But if the motor were to fail and the prop ceased to turn, the unbalanced plane would nose dive or spin to earth out of control. Caldwell himself had crashed and though unwounded, knew of several young acquaintances to whom such a tragedy had resulted in death. But young Caldwell realized that what made the fixed wing plane such a fearful conveyance was not primarily the problem of engine failure and resultant prop stoppage which prevented an air craft from planing through the aIr. Fundamentally, the first requirement of an aeroplane was one of design and the basic design of the present aeroplane must be changed. He reasoned that the hurling of the plates and saucers with only one leading edge to cut the air was the primary requirement for perfect aerial transportation.
Another problem to be overcome was one of balance. He had seen airborne dandelion and milkweed seeds floating along majestically and had observed maple leaves spin to earth in a gyrating fashion as they landed gently on the ground. Added to earlier observations of nature's use of air currents to propel seeds, Caldwell never forgot an experience on the battle field of Flanders, when lying injured on the ground beside his downed plane, he kept his mind occupied by studying an artillery wagon turned on its side, one of the wheels of which periodically kept turning in gusts of wind. Thus, keeping in mind nature's methods of aerial movement along with the Flander's wagon wheel, these observations were added to his own study of the kitchen saucers which he had tossed repeatedly.
That summer of '21 Caldwell decided to build himself a 12" round model of a new aerodynamic structure. He would use a delicate balsam wood frame and cover it with shellacked tissue paper. And the continuous circular edge would be down lipped so that when it was released inverted into the wind, it would ride on its own cushion of air. Thus was born the idea for the first round wing plane. A simplification of that first model of a new type of aerodynamic structure eventually became the plaything of children all over the world -- a frisbee.
As Caldwell watched the frisbee-like object skip and sail through the air, propelled by elastic bands and riding on its own cushion, he was fascinated by the same recurring thoughts. Some day he would try and build a model large enough to hold a man in the exact center point, and if he could install a motor in such an aerial conveyance to give a constant density to the cushion beneath the circular plane, and if that cushion of air could be manually directed, he would overcome all the disadvantages inherent in a fixed wing plane.
Caldwell kept his vision alive. He retained his balsam prototype and all the drawings and design ideas scribbled or traced on scraps of paper or the backs of envelopes. The idea that he would build a circular plane never left Caldwell's creative brain. Some day he knew he would invent one that could hover, or develop forward thrust and turn and bank far better and faster than the vintage planes of the early 1920's.
As the Reservists packed and left Kelly Field in 1921 to return to their jobs, the young Caldwell was careful to keep his notes and drawings and to pack along with them his first balsam and tissue paper model. At that time he lived in Denver, Colorado. Sparked by the enthusiasm of fellow pilots at Kelly Field, the young inventor seriously began his first motor operated model of the new round wing plane design. With the aid of a welder/mechanic friend in the round house of the Rio Grande Southern Locomotive Works in Denver, in 1922, they turned out a 12" model powered by an erector set toy motor and a single cell dry battery used in telephone transmission.
Wires connected from the battery to the model, as well as a three foot rope hitch, provided lift for purposes of studying the operational characteristics of the model. Battery contact was made and the round wing model spun and rose in the air. The attentive trio watched as the rope became taut. As the amazed Caldwell observed the performance, he and his helpers saw the battery and 52 pound table on which it sat, rise slowly in the air as the model plane ascended vertically and lodged itself and its suspended contacts against the shop ceiling. Electric current was cut and the heavy table and plane fell to the floor with a bang. Caldwell swore his helpers to silence and took home his 12" model (which today is in the Washington, D.C. U.S. Patent Office).
After the herculean lift by the 12" model, an elated Caldwell immediately began work on a 12 foot model, which truly was the forerunner of the round wing plane of later years. He and his railroad friends completed the project in 1923 and tested their machine in the yards outside the Denver round house. First, about 500 pounds, then a ton of weight and finally 3000 pounds of rails were tied together and attached to the model plane. Those rails were lifted with apparent ease. Then the speed of the revolving blade was decreased and the rails lowered to the ground from their highest elevation of twelve feet. Next the twelve foot model was attached to a mountain locomotive type of the Rio Grande Railroad. As all watched the experiment, they saw the round plane lift into the air as the front end of the big locomotive rose slowly at least three inches from the tracks like a reluctant steed. The yard mechanic called out, "Oh Lord, what power have we let loose?" But the plane's bottom frame broke and the engine fell down onto the tracks again.
But Caldwell was unable to raise venture capital in Colorado for the new aerodynamic invention and several years later this failure would result in his going east, first to New York, then New Jersey and finally Maryland where a decade later he would attempt his venture again.
During the 20's, the U.S.A. found its renewed industrial strength. As people like Henry Ford mass produced his Model T automobiles, the growing use of which would eventually link the country with a system of roads and change the American life style, Jonathon E. Caldwell thought of future highways in the sky.
In the years ahead he flew the early mails in fast, single engine planes and hauled bananas in cumbersome air freighters for the United Fruit Company. The same decade also saw the two and three motored planes make their debuts, and pioneer flier Caldwell could also be found at the controls of such aeroplanes flying geologists into the wilds of Venezuela or Central America, seeking locations for a source of new liquid gold called petroleum. When not on a scheduled flight he loved to rent a plane and barnstorm around the countryside and provide rides in the new aerial wonder that most people had never seen. He also became a test pilot for a large aeroplane manufacturer, now out of business, and worked on and tested Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis with Lindberg, who later reciprocated by trying out an early prototype of Caldwell's Grey Goose helicopter machine.
Also in the '20's Caldwell worked with Robert Edward Lee Cone of St. Petersburg, Florida, head of the Army/Air Corps. Cone was Billy Mitchell's adjutant, and became one of Caldwell's most important contacts because, several years later, Billy Mitchell would remember about the maverick flyer Caldwell who seriously toyed with a new circular design principle for air travel. Mitchell would write a letter to the young Caldwell urging him to keep up his research and be careful not to let his project fall into the hands of a foreign government.
After twelve years of earning a living flying aeroplanes (and a stint as a licensed Colorado stock broker located in Denver from 1928 to 1930 during which time he was married), Caldwell decided he must attempt a full scale project. In the year 1933, he had built his last twelve foot model and believed he had taken all the bugs out of the latest design. That summer he returned to Kelly Field for the last time as a Reservist. With him he packed a twelve inch miniature model to show friends. Many Airmen watched Caldwell's round wing model plane perform in a series of maneuvers that got people talking.
Word soon reached high Army/Air Corps echelons.
Plans for what he named a roto plane were later drawn up and perfected in the early thirties, and in 1935 Caldwell incorporated "The Roto Planes Incorporated", listing his new address as Glen Burnie, Maryland and showing his wife, Olive, as secretary-treasurer and brother-in-law Carl H. Davis as vice president. The next year he began his last full size model intended to be used on a commercial basis.
Thus, before 1936, the industrious Caldwell had already built and discarded his Grey Goose plane, the forerunner of today's helicopter. From the Grey Goose idea he had improved the design in a revolutionary concept and by mid 1936 had built his final round wing plane, in which Army/Air Corps Colonel Watkins had taken a ride and tested to his satisfaction.
Then on October 27, 1936, Caldwell received a letter from the Secretary of War. It went: "Pursuant to our recent conversations . . . we feel your invention is too important to fall into enemy hands. The U.S. government, therefore, is offering you $50,000 for patent rights on the Grey Goose and Roto Plane, and is also prepared to allow for future royalty payments.
The Army/Air Corps is also prepared to enlist your services as a full time officer with higher rank than your present captaincy."
The next day Jonathon Caldwell boarded a train for Washington. He sat down in an Arlington, Virginia hotel and discussed his future with Chief of Staff, Army, several aeronautical experts, key Congressmen and members of the cabinet. The delegation reconvened at the White House where Caldwell met President Roosevelt and came away with the rank of Lieut. Colonel and an annual salary of $10,000.
"For the good of the service," Jonathon E. Caldwell that day had to make his most difficult decision for him and his wife. He would surrender his family name Caldwell, and never again be known as such. For all intents and purposes he would disappear from society -- till the day he would die.
In August, 1949, long after Caldwell's disappearance, some children ventured through a broken window into a so-called haunted tobacco barn in Maryland (the location of which is now in the city limits of Baltimore) - and later told their parents they had seen a flying saucer. Old F.B.I. files and newspaper stories dated August 21, 1949 filed by United Press and Associated Press appearing in the Baltimore Sun, Washington Post, etc. told briefly what had been found. The Deputy Sheriff of Anne Arundel County, father of one of the boys, was asked to accompany the boys back to the scene. He confirmed their story, unknowingly having found Caldwell's original Grey Goose and first Rotoplane. On notifying the Air Force, the barn was placed off limits, and a new generation of Air Force investigators, unaware of Caldwell or his inventions, carted the strange craft off to Wright Patterson Air Force Base, in Dayton, Ohio.
Air Force officers at the Pentagon were red faced when they finally found the files that explained the 25 mystery. For since the day Caldwell vacated his original workshop environment, his inventions had lain forgotten and neglected in the old tobacco barn.
On November 8, 1978, at Kensington, Maryland, an historic book on Caldwell was brought up from the vaults for the researcher to read for two hours. On the leather bound cover, hand printed in gold leaf, was the name Jonathon E. Caldwell, and on the fly leaf inside the 16" X 11" X 6" book, it was written that some of the most valuable records of mankind were preserved herein. The contents were perhaps as important to the U.S. as the Bill of Rights or the early life of President Abraham Lincoln, and to the rest of the world, the knowledge discovered by Caldwell as told by the memos and letters in the leather bound scrapbook would also be a treasure which they some day would share.
As permission was given to peruse the book, before it was returned to its deep underground vault, the rules were explained. Guards would be present, the entire contents could be read and studied, no notes or diagrams were to be made, no pictures taken. Just to see and read the book briefly had required the signatures of the President of the United States, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Commanding General of the U.S. Air Force, the Director of the National Archives, and the Director of the Library of Congress. As the researcher looked at the cover and opened the book, he was filled with awe. For what he saw, was a pre-glance at history, the full contents of which would not be made available to the public till after the year 2000.
Chapter III
International Response
to UFO Phenomena
President Roosevelt may have acted with justifiable reason in placing the nation's immediate rights
above those of inventor Caldwell. In Roosevelt's mind, and that of certain Congressional and military
men, they regarded Caldwell's round wing plane as perhaps a crude facsimile of that outer space
version, that is, as related to aerodynamic design. Earlier in 1936, on two occasions the President was
made aware of the presence of strange unidentifiable objects in American skies when he received his
first visit by an alien who said he came from another planet in our own solar system. But even more terrifying than the 1936 visit to the U.S. President by an alien who was human in all aspects, was that of another suppressed landing the same year involving weird creatures stopping at three airports located throughout the northern part of the country.
According to intelligence sources, the creatures’ resemblance could best be described as octopus-like, with multiple tentacles rather than human appendages of arms and legs. The beings slithered along on their tentacles and were able to communicate that they came from a planet beyond Earth's solar system and that their celestial wandering was exploratory but their intention peaceful. They showed a fear and nervousness of the curious looking things called Earthmen, so the feeling between the visitors and the visited was of mutual intimidation. The Earthmen had seen creatures with eyes, ears and mouths who communicated from an Intelligent center in their beings, and with exposed organs in animalistic bodies, whereas the pilgrims from outer space saw Earth creatures activated by fingers and hands and feet plus a variety of clothing which must have seemed obnoxious if not at least bizarre. As terrifying as the spacemen themselves were huge seven feet, hairy monsters accompanying the travelers as guards. Today these creatures, called Yetti, have been reported all over the globe indicating they may have been planted as "information censors" by outer spacemen.
Nevertheless, aside from differences in anatomy, the shock to those Earthlings who witnessed the sighting of the outer terrestrials was terrifying.
Following the 1936 episode with the humanoids (subsequently with other intelligent beings), the Executive Branch clamped a censorship on the arrival of the spaceship and its (by human standards) grotesque looking interplanetary visitors. That experience of select Earthmen being wakened out of an insular lethargy which ordained that all God's creatures had to look like us is still hidden in classified records of the Library of Congress of the Roosevelt era.
Caldwell's genius and his Rotoplane became the beginning by which the U.S. would secretly attempt to duplicate the more advanced interplanetary UFO's. And even then, as today, the U.S. military recognized that a nation with mastery of the air could command others in times of war or peace. Caldwell's Rotoplane was typical of other similar inventions drawn to the attention of the Army/Air Force as it geared to help Caldwell develop an improved version of the round wing plane.
An official attitude of suppression grew concerning the sharing of knowledge of this type of advanced aerodynamic structure. In 1936, the non-revealing name of A-2 Army Air Corps Intelligence concealed the Air Corps' first efforts to improve Caldwell's round wing design and duplicate an interplanetary space vehicle. A military awareness was born with presidential blessing to develop a temporary, secret military air arm of technology and industry around the round wing plane. But what was needed first was where to hide the project away from the prying eyes of increasing numbers of German espionage agents.
Meanwhile, as previously noted, President Roosevelt had been disturbed in 1936 by his first meeting with an outer space being, not to mention the terrifying visit of the octopus-like creatures. A hasty cabinet meeting was called. The President was adamant in his remarks at that meeting that the American people must be told. It was Postmaster General Jim Farley who first suggested an informative radio show to prepare the public. A sense of unbelievable doom was present, the feeling that an interplanetary invasion of earth, like that fictionalized on the Buck Rogers radio program, was a possibility. Worse still, cabinet members were inclined to believe that earth technology was incapable of any defense, and consequently, destruction or slavery of our people was not unthinkable.
Roosevelt invited several electronic media leaders to a private conference. The meeting developed 27 around a radio dramatization of H.G. Wells', War of the Worlds. Present that day were Lowell Thomas, Floyd Gibbons and other top writers and producers.
Roosevelt opened by saying, "Gentlemen, we inhabitants of Earth are not alone in the Universe. First, there are other planets in our solar system inhabited by people much like us. I've personally been visited by one of these intelligent aliens. Second, but more unbelievable, are verified reports of terrifying looking creatures who have emerged from strange looking crafts at random airports. I feel we must tell the public! But the question is, how? Gentlemen, can you help us? What do you propose?" The President then polled those present for suggestions.
A committee of five men was then chosen by the Chairman of Radio City to work quickly with Roosevelt on a drama format. From 100 narrators and producers they finally chose Orson Wells, with his clear diction and ominous voice. At 8 P.M. on the evening of October 30, 1938, radio listeners tuned into the Mercury Theatre Hour heard a drama of horrible Martians landing in New Jersey. The original H.G. Welles story “War of the Worlds," seemed prophetic. The drama as portrayed for radio had been given a dry run at the White House to members of the cabinet and other key citizens, fifteen days before the public broadcast. With this audience aware of the tentacled visitors and hairy monsters, and the ultimate terror they or future humanoids could inspire, Orson Wells and his drama group were urged to make the fictional Martian invasion of Earth more dramatic in its inducement of fear. The radio play finally produced was a masterful piece of emotional suspense and terror, but it was also propaganda.
In hindsight, the invasion theme and the real fright and panic it engendered was not an appropriate way to deliver a message on the arrival of friendly outer space beings. People went berserk. Eight jumped from tall buildings in New York, other unexplained suicides were recorded during and after the show, and state troopers performed herculean feats looking for the "enemy."
Exit roads from Newark and New York were jammed as were bridges and tunnels. Panic-stricken listeners tried to escape to the countryside where they might hide from the mythical Martian Invasion.
Unfortunately, no station break announcements were made during the hour long show to explain that it was only a drama, and those who had never heard of H.G. Welles' "War of the Worlds" believed the adaptation was real. The grim voice of Orson Wells kept up a running commentary of the terrified human exodus of America's greatest city, New York.
Acting solely on the effects of this radio drama, the Executive Branch of the time decided that the American public could not now be told the truth -- that we were being scrutinized and surveyed by a race from outer planets with technological advances far beyond that of Earth.
The unwitting cover up had already begun to insulate North American minds from the horrifying possibility of contact with creatures unlike us from other worlds. The ramifications of the traditional concept regarding the singular majesty of man, made in the likeness of a supreme creator, could no longer be reconciled by those who had seen other creatures totally unlike us in appearance but equal to or exceeding us in mind and spirit. The question then was how many anatomical versions of intelligent life existed beyond our frontiers of space. And as a result of the panacea of an alien visit in 1936 of humanoid types, the United States took action to suppress future knowledge of alien visitations to Earth. President Roosevelt and his advisors were the guiding force behind the original movement, and a vigilante committee of 100 was formed to monitor future sightings from across the country and advise government on them. At the time no private agency or government body existed who were versed in such a unique problem. Those chosen were men who exerted powerful influence and included prominent bankers, educators, industrialists, railroad presidents, judicial people and select politicians. Among those selected were Henry Ford, the Presidents of Pacific Electric, General Motors, the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Chase Manhattan Bank and a Justice of the Supreme Court. The power of these leaders vis a vis government policy would increase yearly and in 1980 the vast territorial boundaries of that private advisory group would still survive and be instrumental in most aspects of the U.S. government's outer space programs. It would also affect the political, military, science and educational sectors of our entire society.
The broad charter of NSA is in itself properly warranted. Its global intelligence gathering abilities keep American's military leaders cognizant of the subtle shifts in military aggressiveness at world trouble spots, notwithstanding the stagnant diplomacy of the foreign policy experts who make judgments based on NSA intelligence briefings.
Therefore, since the Orson Wells broadcast over 40 years ago, the reality of even one outer terrestrial visit and its disputable effect on a large segment of Earth's population has not been tested because of severe intra-governmental censorship.
At the outbreak of World War II, much of America's brain power was being expended to improve existing concepts of the round wing plane. And, although American scientists continued to search and evaluate the new capabilities of its design and propulsion, industry's main thrust was quickly switched back to conventional war apparatus with which U.S. allies were more certain they could combat the enemy.
On December 7, 1941, when the U.S. entered World War II, UFO's were first sighted in number over the White House, and the U.S. Capitol Building. Anti-aircraft fire from guns located in the center of Washington sent up a barrage of metal that literally surprised the extra-terrestrials. Thus, as the hovering UFO's took evasive action, an Air Corps radar observer noted a hit on one spacecraft, which left formation and was seen vanishing into a large mothership located at 35,000 feet. This event was the first of several incidents during the war when unidentified flying objects were seen hovering over various buildings in the nation's capitol. It was also at that time that a different UFO design of cigar shape was observed over several American localities. These craft required heavy electric power for their propulsion cores and were frequently seen stealing power while suspended 29 above and attached to the center rail of electric streetcar systems. During one such Washington incident in 1944 the power drain was so great that all of the cities’ streetcars came to a standstill. Power plants themselves became the fast feeders for what came to be known as the "juice hogs" which began to steal electric power on a large volume basis. These "unknown alien craft" continued to pilfer power as evidenced by the Eastern Seaboard Blackout in 1975, and the New York Blackout in 1977, the latter of which is documented by U.S. Air Force electronic observation on the site.
By 1945, when the Japanese Surrender was signed, America still did not know for sure the identity of any of the UFO invaders or the reason for their presence. At the beginning of his tenure as Supreme Allied Commander for the Far East, General Douglas MacArthur summoned the top Japanese officials to his office in the Mechie Building in Tokyo. He stared straight at the Japanese officers, "All right, you So and So’s," he spat out roughly, as McArthur could do. "Where do you keep those round spy planes you have had over Washington during most of the war?" The Japanese looked at each other and smiled. “What round spy planes do you speak of?" McArthur cussed, and refused to believe their denials.
But for the time being America had the last laugh. At the Yalta Conference, Stalin asked Roosevelt and Churchill why the allies had kept the secret of the round wing plane from Russia. Roosevelt and Churchill denied the UFO's had been produced in allied war factories. Stalin was furious, and almost left the conference. He hissed across the table as his cold eyes apprised the two allied leaders. "You English speaking people act together. But just remember I have spies throughout both your countries, and I intend to uncover the whereabouts of your secret spaceships that hover over Moscow.”
Was Stalin really aware of the UFO's? Indeed, yes! United States intelligence (perhaps unknown to Roosevelt who overly promoted Stalin's friendship) had penetrated the heart of the Kremlin for a period of time and witnessed some astonishing things. The most enjoyable to American intelligence was the following incident: One day in 1943, Stalin received a visit by a being from outer space. The alien suddenly appeared before Stalin's desk and identified himself as an emissary from the government of the Universe. Stalin looked up startled, and replied, “I don’t appreciate American jokes," and half rising told the “Yankee” visitor he was going to call his guards. Without further discussion, the alien then told Stalin to call his guards -- who promptly entered. The Russian security guards grabbed the intruder and before Stalin's eyes the ensuing scuffle left the two embarrassed policemen holding only each other. The being had simply vanished into thin air. Adolph Hitler of Germany had also received alien visits, but the discourtesy shown by Stalin marked the beginning of an antagonism between Outer Space visitors and subsequent Russian leaders that has lasted to this day.
It is obvious that by the end of World War II, international intrigue to discover the origin of the increasing unidentified objects became the order of the day in several nations.
But, although public knowledge of the UFO phenomena was slow to spread throughout the world, 30 extensive military interest in it grew during World War II. Over Germany and its occupied territory, allied pilots reported strange lights and luminous balls of fire hovering in protective gestures over their aircraft formations. These peculiar objects were considered by allied airmen to be of unknown origin while uninformed German pilots assumed these same phenomena were perhaps of allied invention. Among allied airmen the name "friendly foo fighters" became a wartime slang that was well understood. And in the living quarters of allied airmen stationed at British airdromes, hushed voices at night whispered of the lights from heaven that sometimes flew in their midst and gave courage.
Intelligence agents of all nations preoccupied with World War II fighting began earnestly to explore the mystery of the "foo fighters." Typical is this account of Russian intelligence interrogating Lt. Colonel H. Sylvester Williams (his code name), a United States Officer in November, 1944, who had just delivered a special dispatch, direct from U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Russian Premier Joseph Stalin.
The special American courier had completed the flight from Washington to New York, then to England, then by special plane across Norway, Sweden and on to his destination, Moscow. The next morning the American courier was carefully questioned by a Colonel Murisky as to whether he had seen anything in the sky in his flight from England. The questions and answers were as follows:
Q. Did you see a cigar-shaped object flying in the sky either alongside your ship or nearby?
A. No.
Q. Did you see any cylindrical-shaped objects at all, say silver or light bluish in color?
A. No.
Q. Sometimes during the trip your plane flew at low altitude; did you observe any shadowy forms on the ground other than that of your own aircraft?
A. No.
Q. Did you see any round saucer-shaped objects that seemed to travel at extremely high speeds?
A. No.
Q. Did you observe any enemy planes during your flight?
A. No.
Q. Were you followed, say, by odd looking objects?
A. No.
Q. Did you see anything strange at all?
A. No.
At this point, the U.S. officer was told to please be on the lookout for anything unusual on his return flight.
During World War II, there were many fascinating chapters of intrigue in the international guessing game of who owned the UFO's even after the alien visits to major governments. The problem of being unable to place a name tag on the aliens was too simple. They looked too human not to be human. That there were those nearly identical to us in other worlds, was considered simply too blase an explanation.
Truly, major governments could not accept that these objects were extra-terrestrial. Deep prejudices that earthman was a superior creature living alone in the universe were ingrained through our educational and religious concepts. Therefore, at that time, much of the intelligence and military of the world surmised two things: the crafts were presumed hostile and were of earthly origin.
Each country quickly developed its own methods of counter surveillance, but with few real leads and facts to give its agents. The Americans, the British, and the Canadians cooperated, anticipating that collective action would bring faster results.
Standing orders of some countries to their fighter pilots in cumbersome propeller planes were "Hit a UFO - if you can." Already they had catalogued several varieties including the common saucer variety and coleman lantern types, the bell, the cigar or tubular object, small 13" disks, and even square -- yes, square ones -- and, of course -- giant mother ships, brighter than Venus, stationed 100 miles high and as long as a mile in length – cities in themselves, about which the military were divided, as to whether they were illusions or realities.
It's a wonder that American intelligence (Office of Strategic Services) did not become atrophied at its biggest task since General William Donovan had founded it in 1942. But, with the help of the scientists and major universities, composure was maintained and plans developed as the government quietly and clandestinely swung its efforts into the Age of Aquarius without informing press or public.
Science forums across the land, usually sponsored by some government agency, first addressed themselves to the questions:
1. Are we seeing visions or real beings with bodies like mortals?
2. Is it possible that the vibrations which apparently hold together in permanent shape the atom structure of human bodies might on a higher vibrating scale bind the structure of being from other planets in such a way that the beings are enabled to appear and disappear?
3. Must visiting intelligent beings breath an air combination as we do to survive on earth?
And then it was asked, "What if the force of gravity were negated?" The answer the scientists gave was, "If gravity could be overcome in a localized area such as a space ship, the mass thereof would be weightless.
And finally addressing themselves to the problems of space travel, other groups asked: is it possible for a given mass to travel along earth's magnetic North-South grid perhaps faster than the speed of sound? "Someday, we expect earthships to do just that, and even fly at incomprehensible speeds between planets on free magnetic energy," was the reply.
With these concepts accepted, Air Force intelligence surmised that true aliens were arriving from our own solar system and possibly beyond and were indeed policing our skies. Certain U.S. scientists hurried to review the age old concepts of earth's magnetic energy fields and the electromagnetic forces operating between planets.
By the end of World War II, Caldwell's round wing plane would be a first priority and hidden in a location where it would become approachable only through 100 miles of guarded mountain roads and tunnels. In this hideaway, the design and pertinent specifications of English speaking peoples' future round wing plane would be decided.
The rocketry race to the moon in the sixties was simply a continuation of that American goal to learn more of the stellar world. For reasons of national security, the main thrust of the plan to build a round wing plane was to be kept hidden or camouflaged under newly devised security wraps until the propitious time to tell would arrive.
Today, forty years later, many in America's intelligence and military community believe it is now an appropriate time to open the door for the public to see the dawning of a new technology that will change the world. But many others in over 30 secret government agencies, particularly NASA and National Science Foundation, consider that telling of the struggle, even in part, is premature. Although it was not articulated to the rank and file in the services, the American Air Force went on record in 1966 that some of those UFO's appearing in North American skies were interplanetary. With that admission, a confidence was growing that the UFO sightings must eventually be explained.
In 1977, a four-star Air Force staff general who had served in various hush-hush research and development projects since World War II, explained to the authors the Air Force reasoning paraphrased as follows: Heretofore, we were unwilling to divulge the nature of our own development projects because outer space beings we had met were so far advanced metaphysically and technologically that should they or other aliens less well disposed to humanity try to destroy us, we would have been helpless. It was the same assumption as that told in 1936. The General didn't mention weaponry or counter weaponry -- he simply spelled out earth's dilemma, not in terms of retaliation, but confined his remarks and thoughts to effective protection on the surface of this planet. Beyond that official explanation of the 20th century problem, the subject apparently was closed.
While the world in post-war years hunted old manuscripts to find the answer to the riddle of the UFO's, America knew the answer, and each year would bury it deeper and deeper.
For the U.S.A., the haunting question was simply this: Could she develop a counter airborne hardware quickly enough to protect her own skies from extra-terrestrial invaders? And in trying to accomplish this super-human task before the years of World War II, could she also shield her endeavours from the prying eyes of earth adversaries such as the Germans and the Japanese, and even the Russians whom they called allies?
Chapter IV
United States Readies Round
Wing Planes for Possible
Conflict with
Germans
Before World War II, the rise of militaristic regimes in Japan, Italy. and Germany had alarmed the
democracies, but the war policies of Britain and the United States had not yet been formulated. France
built the Maginot defense wall, Britain preferred to appease the Germans by compromise and
prominent American politicians tried to pull a blanket of isolation over the national perspective.
Whatever the response by which the democracies sought to resist the dictators, the Nazis under Hitler
were encouraged to establish illicit and aggressive information
gathering services abroad. Thus by 1936, a strong German spy apparatus had already begun to function in the U.S.A. The espionage system had been easy to implement. German nationals were able to hide their activities without undue suspicion by recruiting new members from organizations like the German Bund or by drawing sympathizers from naturalized German-Americans, enthralled by Nazi ideologies. But notwithstanding the presence of those Nazi sympathizers on the fringe of certain German communities, the bulk of the German descendants disdained the advances of the Nazi adherents and spurned their racial philosophies. In fact, loyal German-Americans not only opposed, but were foremost in fighting the Nazis at home and abroad, as intelligence files later confirmed.
Cognizant of this foreign espionage activity, the U.S. Army/Air Force officers who first interviewed Caldwell in 1936, quickly realized that this young man was on the brink of perfecting the greatest aerial marvel in the history of aviation. Although the first Glen Burnie roto-plane flew slower than 100 miles per hour and operated with a conventional small two-cylinder four cycle aircraft engine, the design of the machine and the airflow it induced was totally different than anything ever conceived and flown by earthmen in their skies. A cumbersome but necessary rudder often caused unwieldy flight patterns in cross winds, and while the machine still required a short runway for takeoff, it was apparent that its future potential in speed, hovering and maneuverability might literally allow it to reach the stars if adequate scientific help were provided.
Political unrest in Europe had alerted U.S. foreign service watchers, and their observations of a new arms build-up had been passed on to the military. Gradually there began a shift from isolationism to uneasiness. following Hitler's occupation of Austria. and later in March 1936 his march into the Rhineland. While watching Germany, France began to overspend on re-armament, and Britain and America began to show alarm at signs of German expansionism. War clouds were obviously appearing over Europe, following what amounted to international failure to promote disarmament; and a reliance on peace treaties that became mere scraps of paper.
Taking a hard look at her research achievements in the air, the U.S. suddenly realized that although there existed on the market new scientific breakthroughs in destructive weapons, America herself had produced no significant aerial developments since World War I. But the continuing use of the aeroplane as an effective weapon of war had not been obscured in the directives of the U.S. Army/Air Force advisors as they prepared reports on how Spanish towns were levelled by German dive bombers in 1936 or how the air-cover of Italian planes lent support to their troops and tanks in Mussolini's 1935 subjugation of Ethiopia.
Thus, with prognostic military awareness of the possible evolution of aerial warfare, there occurred top level re-assessments of Caldwell's first rotoplane, out of which national security advisors became doubly concerned about espionage, particularly by the Germans. Orders went out from the executive branch to relocate the Caldwell program away from the potentially prying eyes of a wave of German spies.
The new premises, operated under the supervision of Caldwell, would be located at Wright Patterson Field, outside Dayton, Ohio. In a corner of hanger number 2, in December 1936, Caldwell began again. He first set up a small machine shop and was given a full time machinist and welder. Caldwell was also provided with an assumed name which he would change twice again in the years ahead. Also added was the additional luxury of an office girl to complete the constant reports required in written communications with the new Army/Air Corps sponsor.
For Caldwell and his wife, Olive, there would be the protection of constant security police. The Caldwell children, a boy and a girl, both in their teens, complained that their dates and friends were watched and the backgrounds of the families of their new friends were checked. The privacy for which they so often longed was gone forever.
Under Caldwell's supervision, a new machine with modifications was begun in late 1936. Plans called for it to be 33 feet in diameter and to hold a crew of six. Emphasis would be on using the lightest weight components obtainable. The structure would be thin, steel tubing built around a center cockpit. Initially a silk-covered plywood veneer was intended, but that was rejected for a silk-over-cotton covering. This skin was used for the first new models tested until replaced by dura-aluminum from a formula developed by Dr. Bolton B. Smith of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Rejection of this aluminum skin also took place when it became obvious that it possessed a too-low heat point, making it unsatisfactory for high speed travel. The skin finally perfected on the rota-plane covering was an outer layer of paperthin, stainless steel, bonded to an inside layer of dura-aluminum with a film of glued silk between. The new covering would be standard specifications on all U.S. round wing planes of the future, till outer spacemen would provide a perfect skin formula for American machines.
Caldwell gave all his time to the project. Each spare moment he thought on how to improve the craft. One night, while working late under strict guard surrounding his home, a knock came at his study door. Caldwell's own vicious police dog outside the door did not stir. As Caldwell opened the door, he saw standing before him a tall man in a silver space suit and black calf-high boots, waiting with an outstretched hand. The German Shepherd looked up at the stranger and wagged his tail. As the visitor was invited to sit down in front of Caldwell's desk, the inventor, still uncertain of his polite intruder, covered with a book a diagram on which he had been working. The stranger spoke: "Don't worry about those plans lying under the book. The problem that vexes you is one of propulsion. Actually, the heart of the problem is not only one of design; rather it is mathematical." The stranger then handed Caldwell a folder with seven sheets inside, including a new carburetor design and fuel formula.
Caldwell offered his new friend a cup of coffee. They talked for fifteen minutes and the stranger explained how Caldwell could overcome the existing difficulty he was encountering in the new round wing plane.
The spaceman departed, and as Caldwell re-read the plans more carefully, he noticed a "formula of seven ingredients, which when later added to the kerosene fuel for the jet engines then being tested, gave such an improved performance that the added horse power and mileage range were unbelievable. (Up to that time, there had been no need for a highly combustible fuel. The simple additive of lead to gasoline was adequate to run the piston engines.)
German espionage agents had lost the trail of Caldwell and his amazing machine late in 1936, much to the relief of security personnel. In their new Wright Patterson quarters, the Caldwell crew were free to come and go from their workshop, but their presence in the community of Dayton would of course ultimately be discovered. German agents, undeterred, were already searching the country for their lost quarry.
In the meantime, earlier work by Caldwell on a jet engine was now being completed with help from Northwestern University and advice from the outer spaceman. Caldwell's jet was an improvement on an earlier model invented in France. Plans were made to replace the conventional aircraft engine in the round wing plane with the newly developed jet. (Early versions of Caldwell's jet plans were stolen by German agents and first installed in their new Messerschmidt 109.)
The scope of the project was enlarged when the full military application of the plane was recognized. In January 1937, Northwestern University provided physicists and contracted to do all the lab work in design, metallurgy and chemistry for the Caldwell project. Facilities in Wright Patterson Hanger No.2 began with a total of ten people helping Caldwell in the make-shift factory. The crew grew monthly. A governing board was appointed consisting of the Officer Commanding the air field, plus two other officers, along with Caldwell as supervisor.
Caldwell had narrowly missed being killed more than once in flying his new contraption; therefore, two test pilots from Kelly Field, Texas, were brought in to keep the inventor on the ground. The name roto-plane was now dropped in favor of the round wing appellation, and in official correspondence the project ceased to be called the Long Island project in preference for the new code name JEFFERSON. Jefferson quickly was placed under the highest security in the U.S.A. For the new personnel, their movements outside the hanger would be subject to closer scrutiny, and their social and family contacts would be monitored 24 hours a day.
But the new vigilance came too late. The German espionage agents had narrowed the Caldwell trail to Dayton. German agents reported their discovery to their military attache, and quietly a plan was drawn up to catch the Americans involved in the Jefferson project in a way security authorities would never suspect. German espionage teams carefully laid out their new net.
By early 1938 Project Jefferson had covered 20,000 feet of Hanger No.2, plus an adjacent hanger. There were now 102 employees sworn to silence by oath, who operated under the jurisdiction of an expanded ten-man governing board. The employees were paid top wages and often were seen at a particular bar in downtown Dayton, where the best drinks were served and affable waiters and attractive decor made an evening at the cocktail lounge a most enjoyable event. For patrons who liked the thrill of gambling, the waiters would discreetly whisper that a special room was located at the back. For patrons from Wright-Patterson Field, IOU's were honored and inducements extended to bet heavily.
It was during this period that reports from the north-east began appearing at police stations, newspaper offices and air force installations of strange, unearthly looking aircraft that streaked across the horizons at unbelievable speeds, faster than anything ever seen in the skies before. (World records in 1938 for propellor driven fixed wing planes were in the vicinity of 300 mph.) And with the sightings of these novel craft, often there was also reported a bright luminosity. The light was purely reflective, the plane's surface being so highly polished as to show a mirror-like reflection in the moonlight or perhaps a blinding flash in the bright sun which obscured its shape. The planes took off and landed at Wright-Patterson Field -- generally at night.
But now the Germans had competition in their American espionage activities. Just as interested in the new aerial phenomena were the Japanese. World War II was only a year away, and international military jitters were spreading around the globe.
Had the curious sky watchers known the truth, they would have learned that the newly seen night craft were American made. They were in fact almost totally new versions of Caldwell's first rotoplane. Of course, they were round, 33 feet in diameter, with a cabin on top in mid center. The heart of the propulsion was now a kerosene fed jet motor that could provide the plane with a top speed of 750 miles per hour. The jet sucked air into its chambers, heated it and dispersed it through a system of ducts that gave the sudden maneuverability in all directions which ground viewers had observed and reported.
Ten of these beautiful machines stood hidden in a hangar in Wright-Patterson in September 1938, approximately two years after Caldwell had flown his first canvas-covered craft the 45 miles to Washington. But September 12 was a special day. Caldwell himself took the controls of one of the planes as it was wheeled out. Before daybreak he took off after a dozen maintenance men checked out the ship and gave it clearance for departure. The jet could not lift the mass and weight straight up, but once airborne it could hover.
Up like an arrow shot in an oblique line of flight at 35 degrees the round wing plane rose into the covering darkness. Less than two hours later, as morning broke over Washington, D.C., alert onlookers saw a strange object hovering over the White House stationary, and emitting a muted whine.
The appearance of the plane over the home of the President was a combined salute to the Chief of the U.S.A., President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, from Jonathon E. Caldwell and the Army/Air Corps, which had helped him build the world's first operational round wing plane.
But not only was the American President and his staff watching, so was the German military attache. After that 1938 recorded inaugural flight, there would be renewed interest by foreign embassies in America, particularly German, concerning the most unconventional aeroplane the world had ever produced. The Germans hurried up their scheme to obtain plans on the amazing American invention, an updated version of the 1936 Caldwell rotoplane.
It was less than a month after the Washington fly-over by the round wing plane that the new, posh downtown cocktail and gambling lounge in Dayton was staked out by the FBI. Reports began coming in that gambling debts would be forgiven if indebted players of the games of chance provided information about activities at Hangers 2 and 3 at Wright-Patterson Field. It was soon ascertained that the bar was German-owned and was the trap by which they planned to obtain the secrets of the new American round wing plane. Briefly, these developments of counter intrigue took place. Two FBI men, masquerading as draftsmen on the new round wing plane, ran up debts on the German gambling room. The bar was closed and all personnel connected with the premises were arraigned and placed in jail under the severe statutes of treason; they were detained till further World War II emergency powers were invoked. Then these spies were summarily executed. The last attempt had failed by which the Germans intended to obtain the revised plans to America's revolutionary plane.
But the American intelligence authorities had learned a valuable lesson. From then on, all loose talk about the new plane must be stopped. Furthermore, the round wing plane facilities must be relocated again. And this must be done quickly. Government and military apprehensiveness mounted.
The Secretary of War wrote Caldwell to expect a move in the autumn of 1938 to a new location. Orders were given to dismantle and crate the machinery and equipment. At a scheduled time, a long train pulled into Wright-Patterson Field where it was loaded, after which Caldwell, his wife, and teenage son and daughter boarded a putman car. Their family possessions were packed also and on a flat railroad car went Caldwell's canvas covered personal automobile. Railroad men along the line called it the "X" special because it moved with the same priority as a Presidential train, requiring all other trains to stand by on siding till the "X" train passed through. All switches along the route were spiked to prevent tampering and key points were guarded by armed soldiers.
Well before the year 1938 ended, on October 23, Hangers No. 2 and 3 in Dayton's Wright-Patterson complex were emptied and closed, and only the ghosts of Jonathon Caldwell and his builders of a new aerial empire lingered behind.
The next location selected for continuing development of the round wing plane was in a military town near the continental divide in New Mexico. At an army center near the town of Los Alamos the complex was hastily made ready; a railway spur line was run in and new facilities added for the elite company of men and women about to arrive.
As the special "X" passed through Los Alamos, the engineer found himself riding on newly laid track. Cavalry units guarded the new rails. While the train pulled into the final destination site, the Caldwell entourage beheld a regiment of soldiers surrounding the enclosure. After the train was unleaded and vacated, the dining and pullman cars were pushed into sealed sheds which then were filled with cyanide gas in case a spy remained hidden on the train. Such was the security surrounding the second move of the Caldwell group known officially as Project Jefferson.
The new headquarters were self contained insofar as the life style which prevailed during non-working hours. Total security would be maintained in a setting of barbed wire and electric fences. Elaborate precautions were taken to prevent unauthorized outsiders from getting past the guards. Any truck or other vehicle leaving the Los Alamos installation from the moment of the Caldwell arrival would be thoroughly searched and torn apart if the security inspectors so decreed.
For the new inhabitants all amenities were provided, such as private tutoring and school classes, library, church services, films, restaurants, clothing, food. There was only one stipulation. No access to the outside world was tolerated, all outgoing and incoming mail was censored and telephone conversations monitored. The personnel of Project Jefferson were prisoners. And wherever Caldwell and his family went, their constant protection by Secret Service personnel would be greater than that required for the President of the United States.
In the year 1940, in the nearby town of Los Alamos, a group of merchants provided maintenance for the fast-growing personnel living in the adjacent area, engaged in production facilities for a fleet that was being hurried to assume a role in the skies should neutral America become involved in the European war which had broken out in September of 1939.
But beside the merchants who provided station provisions, there moved into Los Alamos another type of resident. This was the dogged German and Japanese who listened for casual information about the close-by activities and whose high powered binoculars and cameras scanned the clear skies for any unusual man-made phenomena.
Americans were unaware, but all the nation's industrial and scientific endeavours including the Manhattan project were now secondary to the deployment of the country's brain power in the Jefferson Project.
Then in 1941, another trauma of defense consciousness occurred with the arrival of Japanese bombers over the U.S. mainland, after which it was feared the new Los Alamos round wing plane site might be bombed. Three bombs had already been dropped in Northern California. Some Japanese field workers in Hawaii had been found guilty of espionage acts that had pointed a path for planes toward Pearl Harbor installations. Authorities asked themselves, "How vulnerable to air attack was the Los Alamos site and were Japanese espionage agents operating nearby?"
Although total military vigilance was maintained around the Los Alamos site, secret security personnel monitored the establishments which the soldiers favored while in Los Alamos. On one occasion, seven soldiers went into an “off limits” bar. As drinking increased, two of the soldiers began loudly bragging about their activities to the waitress. Within minutes, a squad of military police rounded up the group and they were returned to base. All off duty soldiers in town and at the site were also recalled. That afternoon, the two soldiers were court martialed and sentenced. The same day they dug their own graves in full view of their regiment. A squad of 12 men was called out and a firing squad executed the two who had boasted about the project in public. Such was the sensitivity to secrecy built around the round wing plane development which continues to this day.
A short time after Pearl Harbor in December 1941, traffic suddenly disappeared in and out of the Los Alamos complex. Dignitaries and visitors were seen no more, and bids to provide food and beverage were no longer asked from the merchants of the town.
Also missing were the bewildered foreign espionage agents.
High in the sky above Los Alamos, one winter night in late December, 1941, a fleet of over 60 round wing planes with their trained combat crews of over 400 men, disappeared into the blackness of the unknown.
By all evidence, the great American project surrounding the round wing installations had been abandoned, to be heard of no more.
Of course, by the end of 1941, the United States was at war with the axis powers of Germany and Italy and had declared war on Japan. Hostile planes had been sighted over San Francisco and war in the air was approaching potentially closer to home.
But as for the American war effort in the skies, all the public learned that year came from the mouth of National Defense Chairman William B. Knudsen, who said for the record: "The U.S. will soon double its present 900 monthly plane production of fighter and bomber craft, in an air re-armament drive." The new aircraft fighter hope, apparently, was still a conventional fuselage with one fixed cross wing called a R40, clocked across the Buffalo airport at 320 miles per hours.
Were the 60 round wing planes that reputedly could fly at speeds in excess of 750 miles per hour too untried to mention? Or were they classed as secret weapons being held in abeyance til America would enter the war and one day bring Hitler, the new master of Europe, to his knees?
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Early German Development of the UFO
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