THE AWFUL TRUTH ABOUT UFOS
Here's the bad news:
The sad and awful truth is, they've mostly been blimps.
Yes, blimps: slow, rotund, squishy blimps, and most of those have
been
WWII Navy surplus. No sex, no sizzle, no ultra-high-tech, no aliens.
Just blimps.
The good news, if you can call it that, is that these blimps belong
to
the Central Intelligence Agency, flown by the US Air Force for the
benefit the CIA, and have, for the past 60 years, been at the center of
the most highly-classified programs of the United States Government.
THE BEGINNINGS
The UFO blitz of 1947
On June 24th, Kenneth Arnold, an Idaho businessman flying his person
plane
around
Ranier, had an encounter with nine unknown aircraft flying
in formation across the Cascades. His reports to the media
started a UFO "wave" which swept over the entire country within days
and added the term "flying saucer" to the vocabulary. There were
two colaborating sightings of (apparently) the same formation.
However, it all may have started earlier, on June 21st, in
Puget
Sound, Washington, where Harold Dahl and several others reported seeing
six large silver doughnut-shaped objects near
Island. Some recounts have them being pelted with hot slag
from the objects, which Dahl supposedly recanted later, and most
accounts of the incident tell of clouds of chaff (aluminum foil strips)
being released from one of the craft. Dahl and friends did not
immediately report the event to authorities.
Some people also point to
California, as a starting point, where, on June 23rd veteran pilot
Richard Rankin claims to have seen ten -- and later 7 -- silvery
objects flying in formation over Bakersfield, first to the north, then
to the south. There were other witnesses to the fly-by, by some
accounts dozens or even hundreds.
In any event, the mysterious objects were soon seen over other West
Coast locations, including a July 2nd report by California State
Highway
Patrol Sgt. David Menary, on duty at San
Francisco's
Gate Bridge, who saw a dozen bright football shaped metal objects
flying overhead and across the bay.
But let's go back and ask "What else happened that summer?"
ENTER THE
BLIMPS
There were three major blimp bases on the west coast during World
War
II:
Tillamook, at Tillamook, Oregon in the north;
Santa Ana in the south, near San Diego, and
Moffett Field at Sunnyvale, California, on San Francisco Bay, in
the center. In all, the three bases
hosted around 30 blimps., along with a number of auxilliary fixed-wing
aircraft for ferrying passengers and freight.
Tillamook was deactivated in 1944, its blimps probably moved to
Santa
Ana and
Moffett, which had been designated as storage facilities by that time
(the whereabouts of deactivated blimps from this period have been hard
to determine).
In early 1947 the Navy
announced the reassignment of blimp operations at NAS Moffet Field and
NAS Santa Ana, the last two remaining airship bases on the west coast,
along with the deactivation of their many auxiliary fields.
We know for certain that five of the blimps made their way to NAS
Weeksville, North Carolina, by mid-August, just about the time the
Great Flying Saucer Wave abruptly ended.
(RE) ENTER THE 412TH
In February of 1947
a famous number was revived: the USAAF's Fourth Air Force 412th Fighter
Group, deactivated on June 3, 1946, was seemingly revived as the
412th
Control Group at Seattle, Washington. The official USAF history
of the
unit show it to be inactive from 1946 until 1955, but there was
definitely a 412th in Washington State that summer.
The 412th's
sole recorded
duty that summer was to take control of the US's only remaining
long-range radar
sites (at Arlington in Washington State, and Half Moon Bay and
Mill Valley/Mt. Tamalpais in California), operate them for a few
months, then
close two of them down (more on that later). All three radar
sites were/are situated so as to provide 360-degree coverage.
The 412th is
particularly interesting in that it was the first Air Force unit to fly
and test jet aircraft, and eventually morphed into the 412th Test Wing,
whidh is now responsible for host operations at Edwards Air Force Base.
Half Moon Bay, by the
way, is south of San Francisco, less than 10
miles west of NAS Moffett Field. Mill Valley is just
north of San Francisco, about 40 miles from NAS Moffet Field. The
Arlington radar site
is near Puget Sound, north of Seattle, just 30 miles from
Maury Island.
THE AIR FORCE, THE CIA, AND THE GENERAL
Both the United States Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency
were born together, as part of the same congressional bill, the
National
Security Act of 1947, the CIA being molded from the post-war Central
Intelligence Group (CIG), USAF being forged from the existing Army Air
Forces (USAAF). Before that event, the Chief of the Intelligence
Division of the General Staff, and later Director of the CIG, was a
USAAF officer, Lt. General Hoyt Vandenberg (promoted to full General in
1947). He held that position until USN Captain Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter
was named CIA Director on May 1, 1947.
Vandenberg also served as Deputy Commander and Chief of Staff of
USAAF
in 1946 and 1947. After the formation of the separate Air Force, Gen.
Vandenberg became its first Vice Chief of Staff under General Carl
Spaatz, and succeeded him on April 30, 1948, a post he retained until
his retirement in 1953.
To further demonstrate the close connection between the USAF and the
CIA, it is important to note that the Air Force has always flown
surveillance missions for the CIA, at first using USAF-owned aircraft,
and later operated and maintained the CIA's own U-2 and SR-71
spyplanes. USAF has also launched, operated, and, where appropriate,
recovered all the CIA's surveillance satellites.
One further note: it was Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg who
approached MIT and convinced them to study radar, and develop its
Lincoln Laboratory into the world's leading state-of-the-art radar
program.
THE COMING OF THE UFOS
With all the players in place we can resconstruct the events which
led
to the Great UFO Wave of 1947.
It's early 1947, and there is considerable tension between the
military
services. The Departments of the Navy and Army were resentfui of
the upstart Air Forces and dresisted the idea of a complete
consolidation under a Department of Defense. The nacent
Department of State was trying to gain conttrol of anything which might
affect foreign policy. All the agencies and services were
negotiating and wrestling over a rapidly-shrinking defense
budget. Weapon systems and personnel were the subject of fierce
territorial battles.
Into this fray steps the CIG/CIA, eager to procure the resources it
needs to conduct foreign surveillance and intelligence gathering.
Someone, perhaps even Hoyt Vandenberg himself, hears rumors that sound
amazing: blimps don't show up on radar.
This bears checking out, of course. A cursory investigation reveals
that the Navy already has an aerial photography and reconnasance
airship squadron; some quiet questioning brings out details of their
successes. And best of all, those rumors of radar transparency seem to
be true.
Not only that, but the Navy has lots of unwanted blimps -- over 100
servicable blimps are up for grabs. But if anyone wants them for
clandestine purposes they need to be grabbed quickly, so the records of
their transfer can be "lost" among the material shuffling going on
during the summer of 1947.
An inactive USAAF unit with a history of handling sensitive
technology
is quickly reactivated and assigned a new mission -- test the radar
signatures of blimps. The unit gathers trusted pilots, crew, and
experienced radar operators. The pilots and crew are sent to NAS Moffet
Field and NAS Santa Ana for a crash course in flying airships, and the
radio jockeys are sent out to take over, reactivate, and man the last
remaining long-range radar units on the west coast.
For a few frantic months the blimps are put through their paces with
little regard to hiding the activities. After all, the blimps are
flying around in their own home territory. And just in case, there's a
plausible cover
story ready: the deactivation of Santa Ana and Moffet, and the
transfer of their aircraft to North Carolina.
However, prior to 1947 blimps operated at sea, searching for
submarines
and
other ocean dangers, away from the coast and civilian
populations. And none of the blimps on the west coast were flown
across country to their duty stations -- they were all assembled
on-site. But the new crew from the CIG didn't realize that and
took their tests inland, right across populated areas, not realizing
that most of the citizens below had never seen a blimp over their
heads, much less a whole fleet of them. Then something like this
happens:
src="http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c26/randmcnatt/BlimpFormationSantaClaraValley.jpg"
style="width: 294px; height: 173px;">
Residents of Bakersfield and California's Central Valley probably
didn't realize they lived directly between two major blimp facilities,
and were justifiably
startled by formations of huge silver things
above their heads. The same thing happened in Puget Sound and around
Washington State, and later in Oregon. And that poor Highway
Patrolman on the Golden Gate Bridge probably
didn't realize he was standing just 45 miles from the Navy's primary
blimp pilot training base. A bunch of strange silvery things
appear suddenly, engage in
unexplained activities, then just as quickly disappear.
And the unit conducting the tests probably didn't have any idea of
the
effect their project would have on the residents. After all,
these bases had been active for years. Surely the population was used
to seeing large numbers of blimps in the air?
The actual reaction must have caught Gen. Vandenberg and his staff
utterly dumbfounded. They were ready to account for the sudden
appearance of large numbers of blimps, but instead were confronted with
hundreds of reports of alien spacecraft. They carefully issued a
few non-commital statements and stepped back to asess the
situation.
THE BEGINNINGS OF COVER-UP
Partly in response to questioning from Congress and the media,
partly
out of curiosity, and partly to shut up his own officers, Vandenberg
authorized a study of the phenomenon. Project Sign, as it was
called, was conducted by the Technical Information Division of the Air
Material Command under the command of Lt.General Nathan Twining, who
would one day be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Sign was
organized in December 1947, and published its findings one
year later.
The top-secret report, known as the Estimate
of the Situation, expressed
a guarded opinion that UFOs were real, and that they were probably of
extraterrestrial origin. We know that because Gen. Vandenberg (1)
rejected the report, thereby relieving the USAF from having to account
for its findings or having keep it as an official document (2)
declassifed the report, ensuring that the conclusions would be widely
known outside the project, and (3) ordered all copies of the report
destroyed, thus concealing the details of the study, allowing the Air
Force to disavow any information that may appeared in the the
report, and allowing the Air Force to claim any copies which came to
light later to be forgeries.
The newly-minted CIA must have been absolutely overjoyed. They
had their
first surveilance
aircraft, practically for free. Their new spy-craft was virtually
radar-proof, and best of
all,
if anyone did see one they thought it was a spaceship!
AFTERMATH
The unit which relieved the 412th in California had orders to
dismantle
the radar equipment, accompany it to New Mexico, and put it all back
together
near Albequerque. Then they were to man the new station and
provide radar coverage of Los
Alamos and -- you're going to love this -- Roswell AFB. But
that's another stroy.
To Be Continued...
posted by Rand McNatt at 1/01/2006 02:32:00 PM
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