A tale torn from the pages of the newspapers indeed. " The CIA sends playboy Mike Trent to Alaska with agent Vee Langley, posing as his "nurse," to investigate flying saucer sightings. At first, installed in a hunting lodge, the two play in the wilderness. But then they sight a saucer. Investigating, our heroes clash with an inept gang of Soviet spies, also after the saucer secret." The film was made on a budget and utilized a lot of canned imagery of Alaska as backdrop. It was released Jan 05, 1950, Director Mikel Conrad, also provided the story (after an alleged sighting he had) and worked with screenwriter Howard Irvin Young to bring the story to life.
The early 'UFO files' in the FBI and CIA records indicate that the story dovetails smoothly with either a real perceived threat or one that became a viable cover story for other things going on in the years of "Project Grudge".
January through June of 1947 people across the country reported seeing "formations" or single objects they could not identify, and which appeared to be maneuvering in ways that suggested they were not the normal things seen in the skies. The first story to really hit the "big time" was the one where Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine strange looking and odd moving craft near Mt. Rainer, in Washington State. There it was the happenstance of a) a search and rescue going on to locate a downed plane, b) successful businessman-pilot involved, and c) radioed report of what was seen to air traffic control. Reporters waiting seeking a story found one and ran with it and it extended far beyond the scope of many of the earlier ones. Earlier stories were often merely highly localized or regional in scope. Once the people involved were no longer recognizable the story immediately lost credibility and moved to a back page filler or was merely noted in an editorial about 'these crazy times.'
Military leaders were quick to downplay the whole story and ignore the existence of the others. Tongue in cheek comments about the new "pink elephant" was now a flying one were the tone. Only the crazy, drunk or pranksters were seeing anything!
Then July 8, 1947 in the late afternoon a story went out over the wire service that the "Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) had captured a flying disc!" The flurry of activity included collecting the debris, shipping it to Ft. Worth and/or Wright Patterson Field in Ohio (based on telegrams), and immediately setting in place a retraction or rebuttal to the previous day's announcement from the Roswell AA Field and the local press there. On July 9, 1947, smaller headlines announced the 'flying disk' or 'flying disc' was emptied, full of gas, or other similar cute phrases that dismissed the find as nothing more than a 'normal' and run of the mill neoprene weather balloon with a foil and balsa wood raywin target. The highly trained men of the only military flight unit trained and cleared for nuclear weapons transfer had mistaken a common weather balloon and accessories that went up weekly at airfields all over the country and all over their region in New Mexico. Oops, the press stories said, pardon the egg on the faces of the boys from Roswell.
Records document that July 9 and 10 were spent with numerous meetings, press meetings, statements and interviews with one purpose to refute the headline of July 8.
On July 10, 1947, General George F. Shulgen (he was actually a Brigadier General at the time according to his biographical information) met with D.M. Ladd of the Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding the issue of the "flying disks". Ladd wrote up the meeting in a memo sent to C.G. Fitch of the FBI. In the memo Schulgen is defined as "Chief of the Requirements Intelligence Branch of Army Air Corps Intelligence." A copy of the memo is in the FBI's declassified files online.
Schulgen , in the memo, was quoted as saying that "all Air Corps installations have been alerted to run out each reported sighting to obtain all possible data to assist in this research project." The memo further stated Schulgen had shared "in passing" that an Air Corps pilot who believed that he saw one of these objects was thoroughly interrogated by General Schulgen and scientists, as well as a psychologist, and the pilot was adamant in his claim that he saw a flying disk." Into the early years of the 1950's the witnesses of seeing flying saucers, disks or objects were not questioned but were interrogated. At the time of the Robertson Panel, copies of a revised "Interrogation Form" for the flying objects was considered over a series of meetings. Copies are available in the files of Project Blue Book.
Here, casually again?, "General Schulgen advised that the possibility exists that the first reported sightings of the so-called flying disks were fallacious and prompted by individuals seeking personal publicity or were reported for political reasons.
Then, he added "He stated that if this was so, subsequent sightings might be the result of a mass hysteria." Then he went on to suggest early sightings had been made by individuals of communist sympathies with a view to causing hysteria and fear of a secret Russian weapon."
A memo from Schulgen, dated 28 October 1948, indicates this later title and the content of the multipage memo indicates he was seriously exploring the possible/probable transfer of the German Horton Brother aerial designs being utilized by the Russians. The Horton brothers and one sister were all gifted aircraft designers and their plans were truly impressive. The Horton brothers were eventually located but the sister was harder to find.
This multiple page memo outlines - very specifically - what things to look for as to construction, design, power, movements, etc. So specific, that one has to wonder. It is true that several aircraft designers were working - and had been since the late 1930's - on revolutionary designs of delta wings, pilot spaces, and power packages. Some even played with a disc like shape but - according to all available records they always had trouble with the power, leveling and directional elements of the craft. The flying flapjack was touted as a possibility shortly after Arnold had his sighting. As were dream machines being worked on with Northrup and others. The problem was they looked good on paper but getting them to achieve the concept was a little harder. The Soviet government apparently realized the value of blueprint intimidation but posting images of sleek jets with big saucer attachments. They never, apparently, flew but they left the question do they have one or not? Despite the fears of Russian super crafts invading the U.S. the Russians had no clues what the things were either.
Seriously, had the U.S. or Russia had craft capable of flying the way the things being reported had looked and moved (speed, sudden stops, hovering, sharp 90 degree turns, and strange colors not then in use on planes) surely the Korean War would have been shorter and a more decisive victory for one side or the other.
Instead, the global aspect of the sightings coupled with the so ahead of the time maneuvers and looks lingered, feeding Cold War fears without comforting them, and leading to many a time when jets were scrambled because no one knew what the objects were.
So - that first UFO movie - could have been written from this memo as it emphasized the only strange things to be seen in the skies are foreign craft designed by alien nations intent on destroying the good old U S of A.
More importantly - had the Russians, or any other superpower, had a craft of the capabilities of the flying disks being reported. Another nation - England, the US, Canada, Australia, someone, would have acquired that secret and replicated it to maintain the balance of power. Just as Russia acquired the "secrets" to the atom bomb, the balance of power in the air would have been matched and/or exceeded in a swift and decisive manner. Yet, none of that happened. The jet planes hurlted into air during the Korean Conflict were already on the drawing board. Designers had to discover that design of plane and power of the engine had to work in harmony. Early failures of the jet stemmed from trying to get the same results from jet engine as a propeller-based engine when attached to a propeller-based chassis. The structure of the craft - more delta or swept back wings - they would allow the jet powered plane to truly fly. In 1947 and 1948 those were still in the future,
So what were those things being seen? As another General, this one Nathan F. Twining, said in a memo, "they are real."
------------
More on Bridigier General Schulgen:
His official bio at "Biography of Brigadier-General George Francis Schulgen (1900 – 1955), USA (generals.dk)" infers a different role. In that source he is listed with this information: "1945-XX-XX–1947-XX-XX Attached to the Civil Affairs Division, Office of the Chief of the Army Air Force 1948-06-XX." Schulgen is listed in the 1948 Official Army and Air Force Register, Volume 1, under "brigadier Generals." Is not listed, at this date, on the Air Force Biography directory online at Biographies (af.mil). He died 18 February 1955 and the New York Times listed him as retired "former Chief of Staff of the First Air Force."
No comments:
Post a Comment