Roswell Technology
The Summer Of '47
The UFO crash at Roswell, New
Mexico. Development of U-2, SR-71 spy planes and VCASS for RPVs.
During the summer of 1947, a few weeks after a private pilot reported
seeing a flight of unusual aircraft skimming along the mountain tops
in the Pacific Northwest, Mac Brazel, a sheep rancher living near
Corona, New Mexico stomped into the sheriff's office to complain that
something large had fallen from the sky and was cluttering up one
of his meadows. After hearing a description of the object, the sheriff
suggested Mac report the incident to the authorities at Roswell Army
Air Field.
Roswell AAF was, in 1947, home
to the 509th Bomb Group. The 509th flew B-29s that carried Atomic
Bombs. In the same general area and comprising a triangle were Los
Alamos, New Mexico where the first atomic bomb was tested, and White
Sands Missile Test Center. Authorities at Roswell were curious enough
to send a detail out to Mac's place to have a look at the object,
fearing, perhaps, that one of the B-29s had lost a part in flight.
(Nothing was ever reported missing in subsequent press releases).
After they arrived at the
meadow, they went ballistic, cordoned off the area, gathered up every
scrap of the object and carried it back to Roswell AAF. A few hours later,
someone issued a press release stating emphatically that Roswell had in
its possession an alien spacecraft - a flying saucer! The next press
release downgraded the metallic-like flying saucer to a rubber and wood
weather balloon.This encounter has been dubbed the "Roswell Incident" and,
evenafter 45 years, has refused to go away, despite the government's
attempts to deny that anything unusual happened. Later reports,
real or imagined, indicate that the "weather balloon" was placed aboard a
railway flat car and transported to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in
Ohio for examination. Two questions arise:
(1) If it was a weather balloon, why
did someone feel it required examination by the Air Force at one of
the most secret bases in the world? and: (2) who had a weather
balloon so large it had to be transported by rail car with an armed
guard rather than in a small cardboard box in a modest sized
airplane? If it was a weather balloon it would have been
launched from one of the bases mentioned and the Air Force had no
business examining it. A call to Los Alamos or White Sands would have
produced the owner and they should have claimed it, extracted the data
and tossed the ruined balloon into the trash.
It is interesting to note that the
person who issued the second press release claiming the object was a
weather balloon had never seen the object and issued the claim only on
direct orders from higher authority. He insists, to this day, that because
of the furor created over the recovery of the object, he is convinced it
was not a weather balloon or any kind of aircraft known on this
planet.
In 1947 the press, the Air Force, and
scientists spent a lot of time trying to convince the American public
that no aircraft could enter our airspace without being detected by
radar, especially around Roswell, Los Alamos and White Sands.
But what most people didn't know then and still don't know today, is
that in 1947 America had an aircraft that was, for all practical
purposes, invisible to radar! It had not been designed as a stealth
aircraft because no one even understood the concept in 1947, but
this airplane, the brainchild of Northrup Aviation, the YB-49
Flying Wing, reflected such a small radar image that ground
operators literally could not detect it. Indeed, its profile was
so slight while airborne that it could not be seen visually until it
was over the airfield!
So the claim that an aircraft could
not penetrate American airspace undetected in 1947 was a lie and the
government knew it was a lie. I believe if the Army had produced
several large pieces of a crashed B-29 (they were not known for not
crashing, after all), and had let a few hundred journalists take
pictures and print them in every newspaper in America, the incident
would have died right there. But they didn't. They told us they
had found a flying saucer which mysteriously turned into a weather
balloon and word leaked out that it had been sent to the Foreign
Technologies Center at Wright Pat for examination.
The Foreign Technologies Center at
WPAFB claims they take foreign aircraft apart to see how they were
manufactured, how they work and what danger, if any, they pose to
America. I believe that. Still, since Russian pilots now fly their
latest fighter planes and bombers at airshows on American soil and in
every country sponsoring an international airshow, and since
anyone with enough money, governments and private citizens alike,
can purchase one of these "foreign" aircraft, and since we trade and
sell aircraft like cattle to countries who have even claimed to be our
enemies, what could be so secret about any foreign aircraft that the
Foreign Technologies Center is still so secure one literally cannot
get past the entry foyer without getting shot?
Just how foreign is their foreign
technology? Is it across the border in another country, across the
ocean on another continent, or is it across the cosmos on another
planet? How does the Air Force define it? 45 years ago the
technology for stealth aircraft did not exist and neither did the
machines for analyzing material which could not be identified -
materials which might have fallen from or might have been a part of an
alien spacecraft. 45 years ago no one could identify exotic materials
such as carbon fiber composites that are lighter than but stronger
than steel, do not reflect radar images and can enter Earth's
atmosphere from space without falling apart. But someone devised
such a machine and that raises another question: Why would anyone
have need of a machine to analyze exotic, unheard of materials
unless they were required to examine something they could not
otherwise identify with machines already in production?
As early as 20 years ago no one could
have identified carbon fiber composites. Now the Air Force scientists
at Wright Pat claim they could, given time, identify anything and
eventually discover what function it performed! The question is:
Why would they need to do that unless they had found something
somewhere that prompted the development of the technology? Did
it take 25 years or more to unlock the secrets of the Roswell "weather
balloon"? Were carbon fiber composites just on chance discovered
to have the exact properties required to construct a lightweight,
strong, invisible aircraft capable of flying into and out of
Earth's atmosphere a few years after the Roswell saucer was
delivered to WPAFB?
Let's jump to the near present. Kelly
Johnson and a team of amazing co-workers developed the Lockheed U-2
spy plane to carry out recon missions over unfriendly countries during
the cold war era. It was basically a high altitude powered glider,
thought to fly so high that it was out of range of enemy missiles
until CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers was brought down over Russia,
not by a direct hit, but by the sonic explosion of the fired
missile.
The U-2 was a large, slow,
conventionally powered (jet engine), conventionally built (aluminum,
titanium, rubber, plastic) aircraft that could be easily spotted and
tracked on radar. It flew at high altitudes for great distances taking
pictures inside foreign countries, but it did not represent a great
leap forward as far as aircraft technology was concerned. The great
leap forward would be left to the next airplane, the SR-71
"Blackbird." Statistics of the SR-71 are still classified even though
the plane has been decommissioned. It was built of exotic composites,
parts of the skin fitted so loosely that the plane actually leaked
fuel before takeoff. Once in the air and after the skin of the
aircraft heated up from friction, the plane sealed itself. The
pilot would find a waiting plane, refuel, and make a dash for its
mission somewhere in the neighborhood of 2000 miles per hour ahead
of its two great ram engines.
Although a lot of unfriendly people
tried to shoot them down, they flew so fast that no known missiles
could catch them. They served America well and were recently retired
from service. Visit Boeing's Air Museum in Seattle and you will see
one prominently displayed but you will be unable to find out just what
it was really capable of doing. Anyone who has been around
airplanes for more than a few months knows that the government, and
particularly CIA, does not retire their best aircraft unless and until
a suitable replacement has been developed, tested, flown and certified
airworthy.
Now let's jump to the immediate
present and Lockheed's super secret "Skunk Works" where the U-2 and
the SR-71 were developed for CIA. A considerable workforce is still at
that facility, still working and still being funded to create new and
awesome aircraft unheard of just a few years ago. At least one of
those aircraft, Aurora, is now flying from Beale Air Force Base near
Sacramento, California and landing at a secret base near Groom Lake,
Nevada after dashing across oceans and continents at altitudes of
200,000 feet (40 miles) and speeds of Mach 6 (4000 miles an
hour). An unidentified aircraft was tracked by RAF radar
operators in 1991 leaving a remote NATO/RAF base at Mackrihanish in
western Scotland at a speed of Mach 3 when no aircraft capable of that
performance was known to exist.
They have been heard, their contrails
spotted and photographed, their sonic profiles recorded by CIT
seismologists in Pasadena, California. Eyewitnesses in the western US
and in Great Britain have filed reports of sightings. Others have
reported hearing the low growling sounds of its engine(s). The
seismic profile of the sonic boom has been recorded by CIT personnel
in response to people asking if there had been an earthquake. It is
unlike anything ever recorded before. Photographs of the contrail
clearly define the power source of Aurora to be a pulse detonation
wave engine or pulse jet similar to that used on the German V-1 "Buzz
Bomb" during the second world war, but on a much grander
scale.
But where the V-1 was relatively slow
(Hurricane and Spitfire pilots shot them down if they were lucky, and
Meteor pilots had no trouble catching them at all), Aurora's engine
produces such thrust that the plane could circle the planet at the
equator, a distance of about 25,000 miles, in a bit over six
hours. The sonic booms are produced as the plane decelerates
from hypersonic flight (Mach 5+) over north central California to land
at Groom Lake, Nevada. This is an aircraft so radical in design
and construction, so powerful, that it can literally take off
from the ground, enter space and return to earth without rocket
boosters. Just like a flying saucer might do, or exactly as we
imagine a flying saucer should do. I questioned someone who
should know if the Aurora was of a classic saucer design and the
answer was a quick, "No." A bit too quick, perhaps. But the
"classic" saucer shape is not really suitable for hypersonic
flight in the heavy air of Earth's atmosphere where friction would
cause it to heat to the melting point. If it was constructed of
conventional materials.
But the SR-71 would be so hot that no
one could touch it for hours after it landed and it stayed together
just fine. It was actually a better plane when it was red hot because
it wasn't leaking fuel all over the runway! The argument against
the ovate ellipsoid (saucer shape aircraft), and a fairly good one at
that, is that the shape creates too much drag for the amount of thrust
required to allow it to get off the ground and remain airborne
efficiently. The argument has some merit and is one of the problems
that arose with the YB-49 Flying Wing. The wing was so thick that the
plane could not accelerate to Mach 1, the speed of sound, with the
engines that were being produced at that time. Even with eight jet
engines laboring behind it, the Span Loader was a subsonic
aircraft.
But aircraft technology has changed
rather spectacularly since 1947. Aircraft, especially combat aircraft
designed for sustained high speed flight, have gotten flatter, longer
and wider, and their wings have gotten shorter and thinner, often to
the point of being hazardous to ground support personnel. Bulky,
protruding tail assemblies have disappeared completely or have been
contoured into the fuselage/wing junctions. In other words,
modern aircraft are beginning to look more and more like modified
ovate ellipsoids! A great paradox of aircraft design is that the
more stable the aircraft is, the harder it is to fly. A perfectly
stable aircraft probably wouldn't get off the ground once it got up a
full head of steam since the inertial forces would tend to keep it
heading right down the runway until it screamed off into the trees.
That's why fast, high performance fighter planes are built to be
extremely unstable, flyable only by banks of computers that
constantly monitor and vector it in the proper direction when the
pilot makes slight pressures on the control yoke. The pilot
doesn't fly the airplane; he sends electronic signals to the computer
and the computer flies the airplane. But the computer gives something
back. It presents displays on video screens of a quasi-virtual world
in two dimensions that allow the pilot to understand where he is,
what his plane is doing, what other planes are doing, how many other
airplanes are nearby, what ground features are in the way, where his
target is, how many weapons are on board and what type they are, and
gives precise times and angles to deploy them for optimum
kill.
Jump back to Building 248, Wright
Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio and the immediate present. Here
technicians are creating the ultimate flying computer. It is not an
aircraft; it is a helmet. The world outside the aircraft is presented
in two dimensions and in color on the visor inside the helmet via an
umbilical cord attached to a computer tucked away somewhere in the
airframe. It is called VCASS or Visually Coupled Airborne Systems
Simulator. The pilot doesn't even have to see what is outside his
airplane from the moment he sits down and turns the key until he opens
the lid and climbs out! Future developments, if not already produced,
will incorporate sound to alert the pilot of approaching aircraft so
precisely that the pilot need only shift his eyes to that side to
"see" the aircraft. Speed, altitude, flight attitude, fuel, heading,
ground features, man-made features, weapons stores and more are
displayed inside the helmet by tiny video cameras receiving
information from sensors located all over the aircraft. The
helmet will tell the pilot what kind of aircraft is approaching, its
speed, heading, if it is friendly or not, and select the appropriate
weapons on standby in case the pilot elects to engage in aerial
combat.
The computer, like a real-life R2D2
co-pilot will fly the aircraft through tight maneuvers if the pilot
blacks out and will perform the necessary evasive tactics until the
pilot regains consciousness and resumes control. So what does
all this modern aircraft technology have to do with what happened, or
might have happened, near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947? Just
this: Doesn't it seems strange that all this amazing technology
popped up at the same time? We have an airplane flying around the
world in six hours that can take off from the ground, enter space and
come back to land at the same airfield. We have exotic new materials
to use in the construction of sub space and hyper space aircraft. We
have a virtual world display in two dimensions, with sound,
going on inside a pilot's helmet. We have aircraft computers so
intelligent that they can fly airplanes without assistance from the
pilot from lift-off on earth to touchdown on the moon or Mars or
beyond. We have laser guided weapons so precise that they can hit
single buildings. We have communications devises floating around in
space that can guide ships and aircraft to destinations anywhere on
this planet, precisely, in total darkness.
Think about this: Why is a super
secret aircraft flying around taking pictures of the entire planet?
Because someday, in the very near future, the computer in an even
newer aircraft is going to have to know where to take the airplane
when it returns from an interplanetary journey, and the computer will
have to know long before it reaches the Earth's atmosphere.
Computers look at pictures and make
two dimensional maps to store in memory. Here is O'Hare, here is JFK,
here is Atlanta, here is Dallas, here is Roswell, New Mexico. We'll
land there. Or here is Moscow, here is Baghdad. They may be
future targets. Friendly or enemy, the two dimensional images
will one day be projected inside a pilot's helmet or on the surface of
the canopy, or as three- dimensional displays, in color, in mid-air as
holograms (and where did that technology come from just when we needed
it?) The pilot will open and close "windows", just as graphic
artists now do with their Macs and PCs, to select desired features or
landing sites, enlarging them for detail or reducing them for an
overview by simply raising a finger and pushing a button he believes
he sees in the helmet. To anyone outside, it will appear as if he is
poking the air.
Impossible? Not at all. You can do it
with your home computer if you have the right program. Touch the
screen with a stylus and the image changes. Draw pictures with your
finger. Stretch it, move it, color it. If the computer is programmed
to perform a function when you move your finger, the computer will
perform the same or different function if it is programmed to
"believe" you have touched a button in mid air that really isn't
there, that only exists in the computer's memory! It is being
done right now in Building 248 at WPAFB, in Dayton, Ohio, in the USA,
and probably in other labs in other countries as well. We are an ace
from jumping off this rock and going where no man has gone
before. Before you discount this, consider one last item: Some
years ago scientists launched a tiny hunk of iron called Voyager from
this planet. Inscribed on its golden skin was the precise address of
planet Earth. Inside were the sounds and scenes of earthlings, from
songs to poems to whispers and sighs, the very breath and voice of
humans and animals right down to the love songs of migrating whales.
Carefully patterned directions and arithmetic equations were
provided to lead someone back to the launching site. It is now in
deep space emitting signals to announce its passing to anyone or
anything intelligent enough to hear and understand. Earth
scientists expect it to be found and returned! It does not
really matter if flying saucers exist or not. It does not matter much
if the Air Force is hiding an alien spacecraft and its pilots or if
they are not (frankly, I would opt for the Naval Research Lab in
Washington, DC as the final resting place of the Roswell saucer).
What matters is that we have obtained the technology, whether as a
gift in return for allowing someone to live here or as pure scientific
discovery, to create a craft capable of doing most of the things a
flying saucer should do.
Makes you wonder
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