AREA 51, GROOM LAKE, ROSWELL
(see source)
AREA 51, GROOM LAKE, ROSWELL
(see source)
"(J)ust out of high school, I got a job with a company that designed and built the breathing equipment for the U-2, the then super-secret high altitude spy plane. Because of the nature of the secrecy surrounding the plane, working there required me to obtain a confidential clearance.
The above quote, which is found in The Code Maker, The Zen Maker, is actually from another source and used inorder to move the subject on, and in doing so goes on to say without further comment:
"At first working on U-2 related equipment was exciting, like getting to go out to Edwards Air Force Base and Area 51 at Groom Lake fine-tuning, installing, and testing equipment and such, but, after two years, for reasons beyond my control the whole thing started to get stale and I began sleepwalking through my job."
Although both quotes mention me working on the U-2 spy plane, the second quote tosses out a certain tid-bit of information regarding me going to Area 51 at Groom Lake, also known as the Ranch and Dreamland.
In the annals of conspiracy and similar lore Area 51 is reported as being a super secret U.S. Government installation built out in the middle of a very remote section of the Nevada desert. It is said to NOT exist even though something resembling what Area 51 has been described to be like if it did exist clearly shows up in distant shots and satellite photos in the same location it is not supposed to be. The location where Area 51 isn't supposed to be is highly restricted and well placed signs are strategically located around it's non-existing perimeter indicating trespassers crossing into any of the posted areas could face the possibility of being shot --- if by existing or non-existing bullets is not clear.
If you go to the page where the source of the first quote is found, ZEPPELINS: High Altitude Warships, it mentions a person called 'Harry the Man.' Harry the Man during those early days of the U-2 was considered the top-rated high altitude breathing equipment specialist in the world. High ranking generals and pilots from all over the world would come by to pay him homage. Kelly Johnson of the Lockheed Skunk works was his friend as well as Howard Hughes and William Randolph 'Randy' Lovelace II. Lovelace, who has remained little known even to this day was, like Harry the Man, a major player in early high altitude breathing. During World War II, Lovelace, with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and age-wise no kid, rather than order a lower ranked underling to do it, taking his life in his own hands, in a first, parachuted from a plane over Washington state at over 40,000 feet. The jump, for of which he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, was a real-life high-altitude test of leading edge oxygen equipment intended to save lives of U.S. aviators rather than some laboratory test in a fluorescent lamp lit, air conditioned room with a coke machine down the hall. Harry the Man contributed heavily toward the success of the jump and equipment.[1]
A few years following the war Harry's main work-related emphasis, actually his only work-related emphasis, was the U-2 and little later, space related, more specifically the Mercury program, and because of both, at least for the U-2, he traveled to Edwards Air Force Base and Area 51 on a regular basis. At first when Harry started work on the U-2's high altitude breathing equipment, because of his level of expertise, for him it was all pretty routine stuff. But, when on December 19, 1956, a CIA U-2 pilot named Bob Ericson suffered hypoxia from an oxygen system failure with the plane coming apart and disintegrating at 35,000 feet in a high-speed out of control downward trajectory and Ericson just barely being able to escape alive, Harry took it personally. After that he never stopped working feverishly, doing everything himself in order to ensure it would never happen again under his watch --- or any other time.(see) Despite all of Harry the Man's efforts, a little over six months later, June 28, 1957, USAF Pilot Leo E. Smith was killed in a U-2 crash near Abilene, Texas with lack of oxygen cited as the reason in some quarters, a fuel imbalance between the two wings from others.
Even though at the opening at the top of this page I cite a quote saying I got a job just out of high school with a company that designed and built the breathing equipment for the U-2, it was really a little more than what most people might consider or feel comfortable with saying as being "just out of." It was actually six months after Leo Smith's June 28, 1957 crash that I was hired as a trainee technical illustrator for the same mid-level aero-space firm Harry worked for, roughly 18 months after high school. Harry actually fell under the umbrella of a smaller off-shoot of the company, however, shortly after being hired I was recruited by him for whatever reason to work for him. He became my boss, with me working directly under him in what was called a 'clean room,' a room that had double access AFTER you got through security. Basically, as far as the job was concerned I was to Harry a second banana, a straight man. Where he went, I went. What he did, I did. Some days we never went on break, working 18-20 hours, not knowing if it was day or night. Other days we were on the road sleeping at rest stops or staying at Sam and Dean Winchester type motels and eating at beside the road greasy spoons with dirt parking lots. When he said jump, I jumped. When he sat there for hours I sat there for hours.(see)
The high altitude chambers that Harry used to do what he did required the use of a lot of oxygen. Some in gas form, some in liquid form. The gas form was provided through a whole phalanx of high pressure oxygen cylinders strung out along a wall in a high security dark hallway adjacent to the clean room, tandemly hooked together (sort of) to a bunch of copper tubing, valves, gauges, knobs and stuff, all of which led in a variety of ways into the clean room and Harry's equipment.
When I was working as a technical illustrator, at lunch a bunch of us would go out to the back of the building to the loading dock, which was a large partly covered raised outdoor concrete area, to sit and eat, play cards and BS. The loading dock was the same place the oxygen cylinders Harry used were picked up and delivered. One day, and the first time I ever remember seeing him, Harry came out on the dock grumbling about some problem with the delivery or some such thing. He pointed at me out of the blue and told me that when the oxygen guy gets there to immediately let him know. I didn't know who he was, what he did, or why I should even listen to him. The rest of my buddies, who had all been there longer than I had, said they were glad he didn't pick them and when lunch was over they got up to leave. When they got up so did I. The shipping clerk said he wouldn't leave if I were you, telling me if I didn't follow through on Harry's request I could be in big trouble. So I waited. When the oxygen guy finally showed up I went to tell Harry, who, like I say I didn't know at the time. The thing is I couldn't get near him or into the area he was. I went back to the dock wondering what I should do next when Harry showed up. He got in some heated discussion with the oxygen delivery guy waving his arms and stuff, then he hopped off the dock and apparently went to his car and left. Next thing I knew all the company big shots were swarming all over me wanting to know what the heck was up with Harry and asking why he stormed off. I told them what I knew and they told me to go back to doing whatever I was hired to do.
The next day around mid morning a young woman from the front office who had all my buddies drooling and growing bumps in their pants, showed up at my drawing table informing me I needed to go with her to the loading dock. When I got there Harry the Man was rolling two oxygen cylinders in an upright cross X configuration, kicking one of them at the bottom with his foot to make it spin which in turn made the other one spin --- thus moving them forward down the dark hall. The woman introduced the two of us, we shook hands then Harry told me to help him get the 'goddam cylinders' down the hall and bring the empties back. The shipping clerk behind his counter looked at me and I could tell he was thinking 'lots of luck you poor dumbass.'
For me, unfamiliar with oxygen cylinders, moving them was a scary proposition. They were fairly tall with a brass fitting and knob on top and when full they were packed with 2000 pounds per square inch of pressure. If one was knocked down and the fitting was to break loose the cylinder would take off like a rocket.[2] I was so nervous I could barely move let alone move them, but continued to do so until all the cylinders, full and empty, were in their proper place. The next day some government guy came by work, asked me a bunch of questions, gave me what he said was an interim security clearance and by the next day I was working for Harry the Man.
The first month or so I never got closer than the first access room, basically running errands, putting in and removing oxygen cylinders, and doing a bunch of miscellaneous small stuff such as opening packages of rubber gaskets and cleaning small parts in trichloroethylene that were inside a clear glass sealed gloved container almost like a neonatal incubator. After about six weeks I received a confidential clearance and for the first time went into the clean room where Harry did his deeds. It was then I was told what went on. After that, except for Harry and a few on the side artist types from my technical illustrator gig, I really didn't have any friends at work anymore, and for sure none I could talk to about what I was doing.
One day about three months after I got my confidential clearance, following weeks of intensive work inside the clean room, Harry told me to bring a tooth brush and a change of clothes to work the next day because we were going on a little trip.
The above so mentioned trip was the first of several circa late 1957 to late 1959 early 1960 I was to go on with Harry the Man, all related to high altitude breathing equipment and most usually related to the U-2 or spacecraft launch or reentry in some manner.[3]
In 1997, forty years after my first trip with Harry the Man to Area 51, and for all practical purposes seemingly unrelated, at least on the surface, a retired U.S. Army Colonel named Philip J. Corso wrote a book published under the title The Day After Roswell. According to the book, in the 1960s he was assigned to the Pentagon and there headed up the Foreign Technology desk in Army Research and Development. Corso writes that because of his intelligence background he was put on special assignment and in the process of that special assignment inherited a file cabinet that held the Army's deepest, most closely guarded secret: the Roswell Files. The files contained information as well as debris and the locations of additional debris that military retrieval teams were said to have pulled out of the wreckage of an airborne object of unknown nature that began disintegrating out over the New Mexico desert northwest of the town of Roswell only to slam into the boulders and rocks of the Capitan mountains to the west of Roswell in the middle of the night sometime during the first week of July 1947.(see)
Corso was a perfect candidate for the special assignment not just because of his intelligence background, but also because of a past history of things Roswell. In July 1947 Corso, with the then rank of Major, was stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. He writes that on Sunday of the 4th of July weekend of that year he had been routinely assigned as post duty officer, an assignment that consisted of spending the night at the main base headquarters sort of running things with a reduced staff while the base commander et al was 'off' for the three day holiday. In the process of his job as duty officer Corso relates that by late night the base pretty much settles into a pattern. The sentries walk their posts, the various administrative offices close down, and whoever is on night watch takes over the base communications system. Corso goes on to say he had to walk a beat as well, checking the different buildings and sentry posts to make sure everyone was on duty. He also had to close down the enlisted men's and officers' clubs, etc. It was during the time he was walking his beat that he crossed paths with a bowling buddy who was standing watch.
When Corso approached the enlisted man's post the sentry told him that a convoy had arrived on base earlier and that the crews of the deuce-and-a-halfs have their own security. They told him "they brought these boxes up from Fort Bliss from some accident out in New Mexico." Corso writes, refering to the convoy:
"Nobody seemed to take much notice of the five deuce-and-a-halfs and side-by-side lowboy trailers that had pulled into the base that afternoon full of cargo from Fort Bliss in Texas on their way to Air Materiel Command at Wright Field in Ohio. If you had looked at the cargo manifests the drivers were carrying, you'd have seen lists itemizing landing gear assembly struts for B29s, wing tank pods for vintage P51s, piston rings for radial aircraft engines, ten crates of Motorola walkie-talkies, and you wouldn't think anything of the shipment except for the fact that it was going the wrong way."
What Corso was to find out a few years later through his job at the Pentagon was that although it was true what was being transported via the convoy was on its way to the Air Materiel Command at Wright Field, none of it had anything to do with what was listed on any manifest. According to Corso what was in all those crates and under the tarps was Roswell related, most likely from the so-called archaeologist site in the Capitan Mountains 50 miles or so west of Roswell rather than anything from the Brazel debris field located out in the desert flatlands near Corona --- and directly from the archaeologist site at that, with no Fort Bliss involved other than initially providing the transport vehicles and crews --- and even that is questionable. Since White Sands was tracking the object before it came down it was probably their quick-strike V-2 recovery team that was at the archaeologist site almost immediately. White Sands had been launching V-2s regularly in those days and a good portion of them were landing all over the desert where they weren't supposed to, even in Mexico, so they had a team with vehicles at the ready to bring back the remains. It could be some of the vehicles were from Fort Bliss but the core of the convoy and crew was centered around vehicles from White Sands.[4]
So, what does Corso have to do with Harry the Man and me? The main theme of Corso's book circulates around his special assignment at the Pentagon which he says dealt with Roswell. He goes on to say that the main function of his assignment morphed into what has come to be known as 'reverse engineering.' Reverse engineering in a general sense is taking an already made thing and backtracking from the completed object in hand bit by bit to how it was made in the first place --- so it can be duplicated or improved on. In Corso's case, he says he and his sources did just that with debris and parts and pieces from the craft of unknown origin said to be extraterrestrial that crashed near Roswell in 1947. Corso claims they salvaged then reverse engineered what was accumulated from Roswell then funneled their findings thought to be useful through to U.S. defense industries, claiming it to have been initiated from development and research divisions of the Defense Department. Now, Corso is not without his critics and a great deal of what he has to say has holes in it. I am certainly not in agreement with all he has to say when it comes to Roswell and have said so numerous times, most notedly so as found in The Roswell Ray Gun. I am not sure how accurate everything he writes is, that is, if everything he presents is straight forward truth or if he took bits and pieces from other sources and put them together with things he 'made up' or actually experienced. For sure I don't know about all the alien being stuff he describes as enclosed in thick glass containers stashed away in crates. I can however, attest to TWO of the things he writes about. The convoy itself and at least one aspect of potential reverse engineering by inference --- even before Corso entered the picture. The first revolves around me and my Uncle, the second around me and Harry the Man.[5]
First, the convoy. When I was not yet ten years old, during a road trip across Arizona and New Mexico in the summer of 1947, my uncle and I stopped at Fort Sumner to see the gravesite of Billy the Kid. That night, which coincided with 4th of July weekend, without even making a fire, we curled up in our sleeping bags on the desert floor under the stars. After breaking camp close to daybreak and without being remotely aware of the Roswell incident, as we were about to turn onto a main highway from some side road not far from Fort Sumner we were stopped by a military convoy. The following relates the events of that morning from the source so cited:
"The convoy itself was headed north or northeast and composed of several flatbed trucks carrying large crates, some covered with tarps some not, escorted by jeeps and followed in the rear by a huge tow truck. My uncle made his turn and eventually caught and passed the convoy, continuing on our trip without incident. However, the event was highly memorable for me as a nearly ten year old boy. The year before I had witnessed the Hughes flying boat being moved in a similar fashion and just the sight of all the army trucks trundling along out in the middle of the desert was exciting, but passing them, smelling the diesel, hearing all the noise, seeing all the wheels, and having the drivers salute or give a wave going by was unforgettable. The point is that the convoy we witnessed outside Fort Sumner and headed toward Kansas is almost an exact duplicate of the convoy as described by Lt. Col. Philip J. Corso in his 1997 book that he discovered at Fort Riley, Kansas on Sunday, July 6th apparently having arrived the day before."
(source)
Second, reverse engineering --- which requires moving on from the convoy I observed as a young boy to me being a young adult in my early 20s working for Harry the Man. You have to remember, when what I am writing about was going down, it was 40 years before Corso wrote his book. Corso may have become familiar with 'reverse engineering' after he was assigned to the Pentagon in 1960 and well before he published his book, however at the time we are dealing with here, a couple of years before, circa 1958-1959, the concept of reverse engineering wasn't public knowledge, at least that I was aware of, and for sure I had never heard of it --- especially so as it was related to anything that may have been considered extraterrestrial.
What would eventually come to me as being Corso-like reverse engineering began on one of the trips Harry the Man and I made to Edwards Air Force Base. Sometime after arrival and before we started doing whatever we came to do Harry was requested to go to Area 51, albeit without me. Harry told his handlers if I wasn't allowed to go he wouldn't go. People in the request group knew Harry, they didn't know me. Harry assured them I was OK, had a clearance and already been to Area 51 a couple of times with him. After some discussion between themselves they reneged and off we went. Why Harry was so insistent as to my presence and what nobody knew --- and what he wanted nobody to know --- was that he was in the early stages of having extreme difficulty with his hands and fingers when it came to fine motor skills, not being able to do or complete some of the watch-like precision tasks needed to work on some of the breathing equipment. He had taken me into confidence and sworn me to secrecy and, in doing so I did for him what he couldn't do, albeit done so in the presence of others as if I was being trained or Harry was too busy to complete.
After arrival we were taken without pause directly to a large hanger type building with huge open doors at one end. Inside, down the center was a unobstructed floor area clear to the other end as wide as the open doors. On either side of the open section were walls about ten feet high that ran the full length of the hanger from one end to the other with doors every so often and some windows seemingly indicating a series of individual rooms. Harry and I were taken about half way down and put in a room without a window, although it wouldn't have mattered much as the rooms with windows that we passed had either brown paper covering them from the inside or pulled down shades or blinds.
We were put into an otherwise stark room painted with flat government-white walls, the whole of the floor empty except for two stools and a Sparkletts Water type dispenser with envelope-like folding paper cups in a box attached on the side and no trash can. The room was lit with maybe six double-double-tube hanging fluorescent lights plugged into the ceiling. Along two walls was a built-in 'L' shaped work bench that ran the full length of the wall opposite the door with the other part of the 'L' running the length of the wall away from the door. There were no light switches but every few feet along the work bench were electrical outlets. Up high in the corner along the back wall was a TV set with no visible buttons, switches, or remote. The only toilet facilities were on our side down toward the main hanger doors. We were told if one of us needed to use the facilities both of us would have to go.
A short time after we were put in the room Harry, not used to being treated as such, after searching around for cameras and microphones tried the door, which opened out, and standing next to it was a guard. We waited about a half hour, then and hour, and still nothing. With that Harry reopened the door and told me we were going. We brushed by the guard, walking toward the hanger opening with the guard yelling at us to halt. He came around in front of Harry and told him if we didn't go back to the room he would have to shoot ME. Harry said, "Then after that you will have to shoot me." Almost the second we stepped through the open hanger doors into the sunlight than a vehicle screeched to a stop in front of us. We were told to get in and taken to an elementary school like office building. I was told to wait in the elementary school like lobby area while Harry was escorted down a hall into the interior --- apparently to the principal's office. After a while Harry came back and said we were going back to the room. When we arrived at the room someone had put in a coffee maker and a couple of roll around padded office chairs. There was also a tray of wrapped sandwiches, so too, a TV remote. Even so, again we sat with Harry making cryptic references we couldn't talk all the while going over the room a second time for cameras and microphones.
I told Harry the Man the whole episode reminded me of a super sanitary version of some ten or twelve years earlier when I was traveling with my uncle as a young boy while he investigated certain aspects of the Roswell incident. From the source so cited I write:
" I spent a good part of my time out in the cab of the truck reading comic books, sitting around in waiting rooms or narrow halls of places that looked like doctors offices or hospitals. Even more time was spent hanging out in dirty little rooms stuck back in the corners of hot, dusty hanger type buildings stacked to the ceiling with falling over old newspapers, out of date World War II Mil-Spec operator handbooks and training manuals, as well as grungy old coffee cups all over the place with spoons and dead bugs stuck in the bottom of thin layer of some sort of a dried-up brown, tar-like residue --- presumably it is guessed, being at onetime, coffee."
(see)
No sooner had I mentioned Roswell, and unrelated to any of my comments, than two men entered the room pushing a couple of hand trucks, each carrying several good size well worn cardboard boxes on them and, without a word, unloaded the boxes on to the floor and left. Harry told me that what was in the boxes is what he had talked about back in the office-like building and the WHY we were there. Before we had a chance to look inside any of them a man stepped into the room and said we were done for the day. We were led out of the room, the door locked, then taken to a place we could eat, have a shower, and sleep for the night. The next morning after breakfast we were returned to the room.
All the boxes were filled with mostly aluminum-like or magnesium-like metal parts, all lightweight, ranging in size from fairly small say like a matchbox to maybe that of a lunchbox, albeit nothing particularly recognizable. A couple of them, although they weren't, did have a similar size and look of a stripped down four barrel carburetor even to the point of what appeared to be butterfly valve in one of the openings, albeit looking all the same as being made from mica.
Harry was just starting to sort through the parts as though he was looking for something when a man came in and told Harry I was done there and escorted me out. By the end of the day I was put on a plane with a bunch of civilian-looking types that landed in Las Vegas and from there I had to find my own way home. It was on that trip home from Las Vegas when things began to unravel[6]
It was a week or more before Harry showed up back at work. When I asked what it was all about he said he couldn't talk about it except for two things: one, my uncle and I were right; and two, for sure, among the stuff, there were no four barrel carburetors. Just as I was leaving at the end of the day Harry told me to never ask him again, handing me a large manila envelope telling me to stuff it inside my shirt and open it later on the QT. When I opened the envelope, inside I found, with no handwritten notes or explanation, an 8X10 glossy publicity photo from the 1951 science fiction film The Man From Planet X just like the one below along with a related page neatly torn from a comic book.[7]
Please note the rather obvious 'extraterrestrial' breathing apparatus:[8] [9]
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As to the subject of donations, for those of you who may be interested in doing so as it applies to the gratefulness of my works, I invariably suggest any funds be directed toward THE WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT and/or THE AMERICAN RED CROSS.
"No sooner had I walked out of high school with my degree in my hands than I started a dream job with a major Hollywood studio, a stint that a few months over a year ended-up not working out. I returned to Redondo this time not with my degree in my hand but my hat in my hand and found that all my buddies, who I totally ignored while I was gone being a Hollywood big shot, were either well established, married, or off to college."
When I first graduated from high school the job I had lined up as mentioned in the above quote I thought was going to be a life long dream job --- a job I considered would be my career forever. It didn't quite work out that way. Without me even breaking 18 months, the company, in a preemptive strike to ward off a potential or rumored corporate restructuring or take over, started reducing the level of their work force hoping to show powers that be that they could turn a profit without being taken over. Across the board upwards of around 90 people were canned, and in a classic last hired, first fired scenario, I was caught up in it.
With so many of us suddenly laid off, most roughly in the exact same work related area with many of the last hired having degrees or training from heavyweight places like Chouinard, there just wasn't enough positions available in the industry to soak us all up, especially for a bottom of the rung in-house on-the-job trainee like me. Even though I received strong recommendations, good word of mouth, and a pile of favorable referrals, I discovered I wasn't quite the hot shot I thought I was and soon back in good old Redondo Beach searching for other kinds of work, or any work, and staying in a spare bedroom at the home of my ancient and decrepit and over-the-hill grandmother --- who loved me nonetheless.
Through a series of connections of my former babysitter who knew a few high up people in certain segments of the aero-space industry, and is mentioned in conjunction with me as a kid being a Junior Air Raid Warden during World War II in Redondo as found in the cited link in conjunction with the quote above, I was eventually able to land the job with Harry, and suddenly right before my eyes the direction of my life changed.
The aerospace firm that hired me as a trainee technical illustrator basically did so with me having only two years of high school drafting experience. Even so, it basically meant in an off-hand way if you skewed it enough, I was being paid for my drawing abilities. Soon after I was hired and well before Harry the Man came into the picture and I was placed under his wing full time, I met a few other employees in the same department doing technical drawings who, like me, fancied themselves as 'real' artists. Soon some of us began hanging out on Friday nights after work, usually at some little out of the way place like the Iconoclast Coffee House just a few steps east up the hill from El Paseo and the Horseshoe Pier on Wall Street in Redondo Beach and/or the Insomniac on Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach, always running way late into the night. In the general larger group at work it seemed all we ever talked about was girls, cars, and sports. As artists of course, even though most of us didn't know what we were talking about in either case, our conversations always seemed to have to lean toward the heavier side of things. Philosophy, religion, existentialism.
A couple of miles from my job was the Mattel Toy Company. Some of the people in the group knew some people at Mattel who also fancied themselves as artists and some of them joined us as well. One of the people that used to show up at those get togethers was Carlos Castaneda, who just happened to be working at Mattel at the time. Now, most people, especially those who know little or nothing about Castaneda's pre-Don Juan background, find themselves at a total loss as to why Castaneda would even bother to show up at our small, unprestigious, under-the-radar, and unheralded group of so-called artists. Over and over it comes up: Why would a person in their right mind, of such stature as Castaneda, entertain the possibility of participating in such a group of nobodies? The answer is quite simple. First, at the time of the meetings Carlos Castaneda was NOT the Carlos Castaneda he came to be AFTER he met the mysterious and powerful Yaqui Indian shaman-sorcerer he came to call Don Juan Matus. Secondly and most importantly, in those pre-Don Juan days, Castaneda likened himself as an artist --- and truth be told, our group was openly receptive to artists that had not made it simply because none of us had.
As for Castaneda being an artist, it is weaved throughout his early personal history and background. According to his own words, on Monday, July 24, 1961 in a conversation with Don Juan and published in Castaneda's third book Journey to Ixtlan (1972), Don Juan admonishes him for never assuming responsibility for his acts and Castaneda writes:
"He (Don Juan) dared me to name an issue, an item in my life that had engaged all my thoughts. I said art. I had always wanted to be an artist and for years I had tried my hand at that. I still had the painful memory of my failure."
WILLIAM RANDOLPH 'RANDY' LOVELACE II During World War II...
" Lives were being lost in attempts to parachute from wounded aircraft at high altitudes without the benefit of oxygen that was available on board to the crews. Randy proposed that high altitude evacuations might be accomplished using small personal oxygen bottles, but the military brass considered the approach too radical and unlikely to succeed. Denied official permission, Randy schemed to test the method himself. Locating willing accomplices, he jumped from a bomber at 40,200 feet with a small oxygen bottle taped to his leg (incredibly, his first parachute jump!). Despite being knocked unconscious when exiting the plane, he survived the surreptitious experiment and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross when the government finally acknowledged the feat and adopted the strategy." Harry the Man, always one to skirt around the rules, was one of the willing accomplices so mentioned in the above quote. Denied official permission for doing so, or anything for that matter, was big in almost everything HE did and WE did too, actually setting an adult role model precedent in how a good portion of my life would thereafter unfold. The first time I ever saw Harry the Man he reminded me a great deal of Captain Marvel's arch rival and foe, the evil scientist Dr. Sivana --- albeit not his personality or demeanor necessarily --- but his looks, bald head, glasses, lab coat and all.
As for William Randolph 'Randy' Lovelace II, he moved to New Mexico along with his family when he was just a year old, growing up as a kid either out in the boonies on his dad's ranch or, when reaching his teen years, at the 'in town' home of his uncle. My Uncle, who met and came to know Lovelace, showed up in New Mexico when he was in his early twenties and Lovelace, who graduated in 1925, was still in high school.
Their meeting came about quite by chance when, one day, my uncle was exploring in the then backcounty south of Albuquerque and the vehicle he was driving got a flat tire. After changing the tire in the middle of the day along the main road between Albuquerque and Belen, seeking a quick few minutes respite from the afternoon sun, he sought refuge in the shade by sliding part way under the vehicle. No sooner had he done so than a brand new bright red Indian motorcycle wheeled up stopping just short of where his legs and feet were sticking out. The rider of the motorcycle put down the kickstand, got off the bike, and bent over looking underneath asking my uncle if everything was alright or if he needed any help. My uncle slid out, said things were fine, albeit set back a little because unusual in those days, the rider of the seemingly new motorcycle was a teenager. They shared water from a canteen, talked for a while, then went their separate ways. The motorcycle rider was Lovelace, still in high school. Basically right after high school Lovelace left for college. However, between the meeting on the road to Belen and his departure for college, and sometimes on occasion afterwards, my uncle and Lovelace crossed paths many times.
In August 1929, four years after Lovelace graduated from high school, the giant 776 foot-long hydrogen filled German-made ridged airship the Graf Zeppelin, as part of an around the world trip, crossed the U.S. after coming from Tokyo to America via the Pacific to San Francisco, then on to Los Angeles. To avoid the necessity of crossing the ultra high peaks of the Rocky Mountains she departed Los Angeles for the east coast using a not nearly so high southern route that took her through El Paso, Texas before points east.
The L.A. to El Paso leg found the Graf Zeppelin traversing Arizona and New Mexico barely north of the Mexican border. In doing so, just before entering the state of Texas she passed almost directly overhead of the small southern New Mexico town of Columbus, famous for the cross border raid by the Mexican general, Pancho Villa in 1916. My uncle, after hearing from his brother, my dad, that he had watched the Graf Zeppelin lift off and leave Los Angeles and would be airborne over the southern reaches of New Mexico the next day decided it was something he wanted to see.
Early in the morning of Tuesday August 27, 1929, my uncle left his home in the Santa Fe, Taos area for Columbus. Around 3:00 in the afternoon the Zeppelin began looming in the western horizon, passing Columbus headed toward El Paso sometime around 3:30. Usually riding fairly high and clipping along near 100 MPH she was very low and barely crawling, maybe 30 MPH. While my uncle was in Columbus a half dozen or more motorcycle riders, some in sidecars, came into town following the railroad tracks from the west rather than using the road. They were wearing goggles and covered head to toe, along with their bikes, with dirt and dust. Down to a man they were all veterans of World War I, mostly former pilots along with some ground crew that had fought against the German airships at one time or the other. The group had been trailing along with the Zeppelin since it left Tucson. All the way through Arizona and New Mexico the craft had been buffeted by strong headwinds slowing its eastward path, making it easy for the motorcycles to keep up. Some of the riders told my uncle they were sure they could beat the airship into El Paso, telling him he was welcome to go along if he liked. Which he did.
The Zeppelin left El Paso headed toward Chicago with most of the motorcycle guys in pursuit, except for one who was returning west and in doing so, was nice enough to take my uncle back to Columbus in order to pick up his vehicle. After they arrived in Columbus they bought a few beers and camped out in the desert, talking way late into the night with the bike rider regaling my uncle with a number of World War I Zeppelin stories, the seed from which, after additional research, I put in the source so cited as follows:
"On the night of October 19, 1917 they Although I had heard of Zeppelins before, having nearly exploded in a near ecstatic state of pure ecstasy the first time I ever heard the word, the so-called 'seed' for the above quote came about one summer when I was eleven or twelve years old. I had traveled with my uncle to Badwater in Death Valley, the lowest spot in North America at 282 feet below sea level. A few days later and only 85 miles away (as the Zeppelin flies) we ended up at Mount Whitney, which before Alaska entered the union was at the time, the highest point in the United States, with an elevation of 14,505 feet. We drove about half way up to a place called Whitney Portal, camped out for a day or two to acclimate ourselves to the altitude, then hiked to the top of the summit.(see) During our campout, because altitude and acclimation was on our minds, and so too because my uncle and Randy Lovelace were 'friends' and somewhere along the way the high altitude jump he made during World War II came to his attention, around the fire that night my uncle brought up how things had changed so much between the wars. German crew men were passing out and nearly dying at 20,000 feet during World War I and here was Lovelace bailing out of a plane at 40,000 feet in World War II. In that the combination of the two were the only 'high altitude' stories I knew, to score points with Harry the Man I brought them up to him when I got the chance. As mentioned previously, which I didn't know at first, Harry knew Lovelace and somehow, because of what I told him, Harry always put it together that I knew Lovelace too, if by nothing else by inference through my uncle.(see)
TONY POE At the same time Harry the Man and I were 'doing our thing,' halfway around the world a whole series of events were unfolding, some of it U-2 related, some of it not, but eventually some of those events would encompass me. One was the yet to be formulated so-called Secret War in Laos with another being a little ditty called Operation Hat which dealt with the CIA setting up a secret high altitude monitoring system in Tibet and the Himalayas.
One of the most notorious operatives of the whole Secret War in Laos was a man by the name of Anthony Poshepny also know as Tony Poe. He was there from the very beginning circa 1961, training Hmong troops and going into the field with them. As the years went by, being there so long and lost in the culture, even marrying a Hmong 'princess' and having children, he almost forgot who he was. The following quote is from a sub-section titled "The First Part" found at the source so cited and recalls a time only a few years into Tony Poe's deployment in Laos:
"Almost the very second Poe and I made eye contact we recognized each other, Poe asking, 'What the hell are you doing here?, with my response at nearly the exact same instant being, 'I thought you were in Tibet.'
"The last I saw Poe was in 1959 or 1960. He was in Colorado at an old onetime World War II U.S. Army facility called Camp Hale, training covertly off the books, a bunch of Tibetans to fight the Chinese. At the time I was a real civilian yet to be drafted, working instead for a small offshoot of a a major aerospace company involved with the then super-secret U-2 project. The person I worked for directly, called Harry the Man, was the top high altitude breathing equipment person in the world.
"Apparently in October of 1959 it was confirmed that China, with Soviet assistance, had established a nuclear test base at Lop Nor with all intentions of testing a nuclear device. U-2 flights over China were becoming extremely dangerous, so powers that be thought if they could put a monitoring station on top of some Himalayan mountain with a clear shot towards Lop Nor they could gather all the information they needed. Before a decision was made as to what mountain would be selected, it was a given it would be at a very high altitude. The same powers wanted to ensure that already existent equipment necessary to accomplish the mission could be modified, if need be, to operate in the rarified atmosphere OR if equipment could be designed to allow it to do so without modification. Enter Harry the Man. We were both at Area 51 at Groom Lake when the call came through for Harry to meet with some people at Camp Hale. I went along and while there met Tony Poe." It should be noted that between September 1962 and September 1967, five U-2 aircraft flown by Chinese Nationalist pilots were shot down over China. The U-2 shoot-downs occurred on September 8, 1962 over the city of Nanchang; November 1, 1963 over Jiangxi; July 7, 1964 near Shantou; January 10, 1965 200 miles south of Beijing; and on September 9, 1967 over Quzhou in Jiaxing Province.
Sometime around I think, June of 2000 or so, and with me not knowing he was edging towards the end of his days, I drove to Northern California to see Tony Poe --- for no other reason than to just offer him my overall well wishes and thank him for some advice he had given me once many, many years before. To say the least I was a tad set aback from the robust young man he had been when I saw him last and how he was. How he was, was in bad shape, although holding on. A compound of aggregate conditions caused by heavy drinking and diabetes began to add up and to take their toll, even to the point he had to have a leg amputated. Toward the end it got to the point he was scheduled to have his remaining leg amputated as well, but died just prior. Even though we talked and he was cordial I know he didn't remember me, just another faceless G.I. that had passed through his life at one time or the other and I felt a sort of emptiness about it because I listened to the advice he gave me and always felt a great sense of gratitude. Yet, when I sat there across from the old warrior looking into his eyes, talking to him and expressing my appreciation for what he had done, I knew he had no idea who I was or how once upon a time, however briefly, I fit into his life. It was a long drive home.
Poe had dropped out of high school to join the Marines when World War II started. He finished high school via a correspondence course and after the war graduated from San Jose State in 1950 with a degree in history and English, although in how he presented himself you would never know it. We crossed paths at Camp Hale, but it was later in Long Tieng --- and I have been told Poe never offered sage advice to anybody --- he told me to get out of this shit while I still had a chance and never look back. Go to college, make something of yourself, don't fuck up your life like I have. Your'e a cartoonist. Draw pictures. Make people laugh. Within four months of my discharge I started college and the following happened, of which I have always attributed to Tony:
"I settled in using Redondo as a central base of operations while commuting back and forth to college attempting to grab off an undergraduate degree on the G.I. Bill, and of which I was eventually able to do.
"After receiving a B.A. along with a California Secondary Teaching Credential, which required an additional fifth year beyond a bachelors as well as student teaching, I matriculated into graduate school."
Not long after meeting Tony Poe for the second time, who as mentioned, would become notorious in legend and lore of the Secret War in Laos, I also met of all things under the same circumstances, an actual real-life Peace Corps Volunteer who in his own right, unknown to him at the time, would become more than just a footnote in the war.
It was the first time I ever met a Peace Corps Volunteer, active or otherwise --- which wasn't unusual considering the Peace Corps had only been founded the year before I was drafted. So said, he had to be one of the very first volunteers, and I have to admit there was something that impressed me about him. We were about the same age. He had already gone off to college, graduated, and joined the Peace Corps, an organization I had barely heard of, doing great humanitarian things by teaching barely educated indigenous folk, and here I was standing there with my face hanging out and hadn't done shit with my life.
The volunteer's name was Don Sjostrom, from Washington state and like me, pushing age-wise toward his mid-20's. He taught English somewhere in the center hinterlands of Thailand at a place called Yasothon. He was going to finish his Peace Corps tour of duty soon and was being recruited by USAID. They had brought him up to Laos to show him around a little to see if he might be interested when we crossed paths. Even though Sjostrom had been living under corrugated tin-roof Southeast Asia conditions in Thailand for many months, I'm sure even then the early wild west Terry and the Pirates like atmosphere of Long Tieng run by an Asian warlord was something of a shock.
On January 6, 1967 after leaving the Peace Corps and joining up with USAID Don Sjostrom, a civilian with no military training, in the midst of an attack, while trying to secure a machine gun nest defending Lima Site 36 at Na Khang, he was shot dead bigger than shit by North Vietnamese Regulars, taking one round right between the eyes.
The following regarding the crates so transported is found in THE ROSWELL INCIDENT UPDATED:
None of the crates are described as being large enough to hold a fully intact disc 20 or 30 feet in diameter --- which is interesting if the object was made out of material that couldn't be cut. Width, height, and diameter of any object too large would limit the ability of it being placed into the hold or cargo bays of any of the airplanes cited as being used in the transportation process. The same would be true regarding highway and truck routes because of the width of bridges and heights of underpasses. Neither Corso or the bio-searcher ever said anything regarding the convoys they saw transporting anything that appeared to be unusually high, wide or excessively heavy --- which might indicate the object either came apart or possibly delta or wedged shaped as some have reported rather than being disc or circular shaped. The bio-searcher said that in the course of his his assist in the investigation of the object's trajectory cited futher on that he heard rumors of the object being stripped of every possible thing that could be taken off of it or out of it. Thus stripped the bulk of the skeletal remains, framework, or superstructure too large or heavy to be transported without drawing undo suspicion was dragged across the highway and out into the desert flatlands just north of the impact site, put into a temporary shelter, then simply buried out of sight of prying eyes for later retrieval --- like some broken down abandoned truck left to rust out in the middle of the desert off some side road. If retrieval of same ever occurred, it is not known. It could still be buried somewhere out in the desert north of the Capitan Mountains for some unknowing prospector, rock hunter, or archaeologist to stumble across.(see)
As to the subject of V-2 rockets landing in Mexico and White Sands having their own quick strike recovery team that could, if such was the case, be redirected to downed objects other than their own V-2s, I give you the following from the same source as the above quote:
Less than a week before the Roswell Incident, on May 29, 1947, a modified V-2 rocket, called a Hermes B-1 vehicle, which was a highly classified top secret project at the time, was launched that somehow inadvertently got wires physically crossed in the guidance system. Instead of heading up range toward the north as intended the rocket headed south, slamming into the Tepeyac Cemetery across the border in Mexico, a mile and a half outside the city of Ciudad Juarez --- blasting out a crater 25 feet deep and 30 feet in diameter. The tracking and recovery teams were prepared and in place for a crash-down at a pre-ordained impact site up range. However the rocket, traveling well over the speed of sound during its flight, was miles off course and miles and miles away from the designated impact point. Even so the U.S. Army was able to track it, with investigators arriving on the scene, including travel time, within 120 minutes.
Whenever I come across people and works by authors who write or talk about having personally seen extraterrestrial bodies or coming in contact with live creatures of any sort, humanoid or otherwise, said to be extraterrestrial in nature and related to UFOs, I find myself getting a little leery. It is sort of a deeply ingrained gut feeling I absorbed into my psych as a teenage boy not yet 16 and still in high school. It was then I met a man named Truman Bethurum, literally the first person to become famous for what would eventually be called contactees, a contactee being a person who had been contacted by aliens from another world.
Somehow he and the person I call my Merchant Marine Friend, who I worked for part time running errands for while I was in my first two years of high school, knew each other, all three of us living only a few blocks apart at the same time in the same town. It was through their friendship I met Bethurum.
The interaction between Bethurum and me over a roughly two year period sort of soured me on it all as what he originally promulgated and what sounded so amazing at first began to unravel right before my eyes.
That leeriness continues to hold true when it comes to what Corso has to say. In his book, while at Fort Riley, after basically breaking into a secured area he describes as an old veterinary building that served as the medical dispensary for the cavalry horses before the First World War, Corso finds some 30 crates all neatly stacked. Opening one of crates of which the top was already ajar, Corso writes:
"Whatever they'd crated this way, it was a coffin, but not like any coffin I'd seen before. The contents, enclosed in a thick glass container, were submerged in a thick light blue liquid, almost as heavy as a gelling solution of diesel fuel. But the object was floating, actually suspended, and not sitting on the bottom with a fluid overtop, and it was soft and shiny as the underbelly of a fish. At first I thought it was a dead child they were shipping somewhere. But this was no child. It was a four-foot human shaped figure with arms, bizarre looking four-fingered hands - I didn't see a thumb - thin legs and feet, and an oversized incandescent light bulb shaped head that looked like it was floating over a balloon gondola for a chin. I know I must have cringed at first, but then I had the urge to pull off the top of the liquid container and touch the pale gray skin. But I couldn't tell whether it was skin because it also looked like a very thin one-piece head-to-toe fabric covering the creature's flesh."
Corso says the convoy that arrived at Fort Riley did not come to his attention until Sunday July 6th. According to ROSWELL INCIDENT: UPDATED as well as other sources, radar reported the object they were tracking seemed to come apart at 11:57 PM, just a few minutes before midnight of Friday, July 4th. The military was on the scene by 2:00 AM Saturday morning. The Roswell Fire Department fire fighter Dan Dwyer reached the archaeologist site just as the 'the first pink lines of sunlight over the horizon' could be seen that same morning. My uncle and I saw a convoy matching the one Corso describes in his book near Fort Sumner close to sunrise which would have been around 5:00 AM.
Therein lies the major problem in deciphering Corso's story. Corso writes the convoy arrived in the afternoon of Sunday July 6th. Actually Sunday July 6th is when he became aware of the convoy being on Fort Riley property. As he says, NOBODY seemed to take much notice of the five deuce-and-a-halfs and side-by-side lowboy trailers that had pulled into the base, including himself. He did not actually see the convoy as a convoy physically drive onto the base. He was only aware of it coming across it in his role as a duty officer well after the convoy arrived and the trucks were parked in a non convoy configuration. Everything he says or writes about in his book is tainted in some fashion by those two aspects of what did or did not transpire.
However, in my opinion, during the era we are talking about here, circa mid 1947, it is questionable at best that a quick strike military response team would be prepared at such a level to have in place for immediate use anything remotely close to what Corso saw, that is, glass jars, especially of the right size, the correct type of gel, and the material, packaging and trained personnel to build and package crates right on the scene with full and total completion done within a few hours notice. Anything like that would take quite a period of time. So said, the idea of seeing such creatures packed in such a manner as Corso says, in the space of time allowed for it to have all transpired, is questionable at best.
So said, there is one proviso to the above that may have or could have changed the equation in government or military preparedness in dealing with certain aspects of UFOs by the time of the Roswell incident, although in so suggesting it I still have to fall back on my certain leeriness as alluded to previously, which undermines my own feelings about fully accepting it as plausible.
In July 1945 the U.S detonated its first atomic device at what is now called Trinity Site located in the present day White Sands Proving Grounds in the desert southwest state of New Mexico.(see) One month later, in mid-August of 1945, and two full years before the Roswell incident, my uncle was in the rugged terrain on BLM land some 25 miles or so from ground zero, not far from the small New Mexico community of San Antonio. He was in the area biosearching the potential radiation fallout and any effect it may of had on a variety of indigenous plants typically used by Native Americans for medicinal and ritual purposes.
On one of the days he was out in the backcountry a large airborne, albeit non-aircraft like object of an unknown nature, seemingly made of metal and whining like a sick vacuum cleaner, crossed nearly overhead at a relatively high rate of speed at a very low altitude. Continuing to loose altitude crossing the terrain it appeared to hit the ground some distance away. When my uncle reached the scene it was just about nightfall and, although he could see the object, which he described as looking all the same as a non-rocketship looking rocketship, at the bottom of an arroyo below him, he was reluctant to scale down the steep walls in the dark. At twilight the next morning he began inching his way down the side rocky arroyo when he hurt his leg and had to return to his vehicle, coming back a week later. When he returned the object was no longer there and except for a newly graded road down the other side of the arroyo, that hadn't been there previously, he saw no signs that anything had ever been there, crashed or otherwise.
It seems the same day my uncle arrived on the scene others also arrived only from the opposite side of the arroyo and said to have actually accessed the craft. My uncle saw no signs of life or bodies related to the downed object from his location, however it has since been reported, apparently by members of the other group, that they saw creatures moving about that had bulgy eyes, stood about four-foot tall, very thin bodies, and needle-thin arms. They also reported the military arrived on the scene. Again, my uncle saw no sign of anything like the other group eventually reported as having seen, but if there were such creatures the military may have learned from the experience enough to be prepared and may have been so for the Roswell incident. Without wanting to get to far afield here, it should be noted that in 1939, well before the 1945 San Antonio incident or Roswell in 1947, a former U.S. Senator and the Secretary of State under President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the time, became privy to just such a 'glass jar' incident. If such is the case then the government may have been more prepared than I give them credit for --- although I question the validity of it all. See Cordell Hull Saw Aliens In Glass Containers. For more on the 1945 New Mexico UFO encounter please see:
Even though Harry was quite a bit older than me, married, with a daughter around my same age (who he never let me get near) after he chose me to be his assistant we were never very far apart when it came to work. However, after his return from Groom Lake he had changed dramatically. His mind was always elsewhere. So too, rather than staying in the clean room like he always had he began spending more and more of his work time, without me in attendance, at the nearby Air Research and Development Command Western Development Division in Inglewood.(see) His actions reminded me of a person that led two lives, one of them on the surface more or less normal, the other hidden, like a person who, unknown to anybody, kept a teenage chattel chained to a wall or bed against her will in a secret underground chamber and all he could think of was getting back to fondle her. Every once in a while he would come running in with some breathing device that needed testing or throw me a rough sketch on a napkin that needed to be drawn in a formal drafting or technical illustrator type style. But mostly I was spending my days in the clean room by myself with really not much to do, nor did I have the knowledge or ability at the level of Harry to accomplish projects directed specifically to him. It wasn't long that for me it all started to unravel. The following pretty much states the circumstances from the source so cited:
"My all-summer-long travels in Mexico came about after a trip to Nassau in the Bahamas for the Speed Weeks in 1958 but before being drafted into the Army in 1962. I had tired of the day-to-day over-and-over grind of the same job I had held since leaving high school. At first I had been working on the high altitude breathing equipment for the then super-secret U-2 spy plane, which was exciting work getting to go out to Edwards Air Force Base and Groom Lake, but with the contract nearing an end, the job began to get stale. When a skipper of a marlin boat offered me a no-brain job doing brightwork on his boat I jumped at it. Even so, the draft was still looming over my head and the fact my longterm semi-on-and-off high school and after girlfriend --- who had gone off to college while I remained home being nothing but a dunce working stiff --- hit me with the fact she had met and fallen in love with some hunkering down stud and they were planning on getting married didn't help. When my buddy, who was in much the same boat I was, suggested an extended, open-ended trip to Mexico I decided to take a leave of absence from my job on the boat and go for it." Not long after my buddy and I got back from Mexico than he moved to Hermosa Beach just north of Redondo Beach where the two of us had been living and I still lived, eventually buying a hardware store, the same hardware store he had worked for part time while in high school. In January of 1961, four months or so after we returned from Mexico, out of the blue, or at least as how I viewed it, he got married, eventually becoming a distinguished member of the community. Me, I was on a much different trajectory.
Four months after his marriage, on the weekend of April 29th and 30th 1961, unrelated to any of the go to Mexico stuff or my buddy getting married, I was in Las Vegas. After ensuring I paid my respects on behalf of my stepmother to a longtime friend of hers, Johnny Roselli, who lived in Las Vegas, and the weekend was over, I headed out. On Monday May 1st on the way home I circled around to Hoover Dam for a few hours then drove south to the little speed trap town of Searchlight for a little casino action and other possible extra curricular activities at the El Rey Club. While in the casino I was mysteriously hand-passed a letter from one of Roselli's associates. The letter, from a woman I peripherally knew but hadn't seen for sometime named Brenda Allen, a woman who I had been inexplicably intertwined with through both my stepmother and Roselli over the years, contained a business card from a Los Angeles lawyer and a note asking me to contact her. A couple of days later I called the lawyer who told me he had had a message for me.
Over the phone the lawyer said the message asks that I meet Allen outside her old place in Long Beach on Wednesday the 19th at 10:00 AM. Well, the 19th fell on Wednesday in April alright, but I didn't get the letter until May 1st, so, not having the letter beforehand I wasn't in a position to call the lawyer until after May 1st. I presume Brenda got the letter to whoever she did sometime before the 19th, apparently thinking I would get it right away. However, while looking at the calendar I noticed that July has the exact same dates for the exact same days, meaning that in July the 19th also fell on a Wednesday. So, although it wasn't likely, not knowing what she was thinking of or up to, just as a precaution I went to her old address on East Ocean Avenue in Long Beach on Wednesday the 19th. I gave her a couple of hours beyond the designated meeting time, then, since I was on Ocean Avenue I thought I would go down to the Long Beach Museum of Art for a while then come back and see if she showed up. While at the museum one of those mysterious unexplained flukes that just seem to happen, happened, re the following:
"(A)s I was walking around the gallery in the museum --- and totally unprepared for such an event --- I saw a woman that up to that point in time I think was absolutely the most beautiful woman I had ever personally seen in my life. Unwittingly staring at her almost as though I was frozen in a trance, she turned from the exhibit painting on the wall toward my direction and when she did the two of us made eye contact. The exact moment our gaze connected it was a though my life force had been sucked out of me, my knees even buckling from the weight of me standing. Having lost a total sense of dignity and somehow feeling a need for air I immediately went outside, crossing the short distance across a park adjacent to the museum overlooking the ocean. Within minutes if not seconds, for reasons I am yet to fathom to this day, the woman was suddenly standing next to me saying something like, 'Didn't you like the exhibit, you left so abruptly.' I don't recall what my answer was or how one thing led to the next, but soon the two of us were agreeing to have lunch together, although instead I ate breakfast, at a little restaurant she knew just a couple of blocks away called The Park Pantry.
"She said she may have been to the museum before but couldn't remember a specific instance, only stopping in for no other reason except to do so, then she saw me. She said when I left so abruptly she was overwhelmed with the strangest inner feeling, as though she had found something valuable I had lost and she had to return it --- yet she had nothing except for a strange feeling that felt so real."
For more on the Nassau in the Bahamas Speed Weeks see:
REVERSE ENGINEERING: The concepts as put forward by Philip Corso in his book The Day After Roswell have contributed a deep inclination of suspicion toward the idea of reverse engineering, especially when reverse engineering is related in some manner to extraterrestrial origin. His critics, and they are numerous, have put forward a long legacy of hard to overcome discrediting to his background, which in turn strongly undermines most of what he has to say --- weakening on a larger scale the overall prospect of reverse engineering itself as a probability and in many cases not helped by others of a similar cast.(see) However, while it is true I maintain a variety of apprehensions regarding Corso myself, there is still something strong that rings true with the story he has weaved, especially so when the coincidence of the convoy I personally witnessed plus almost proof-like comments regarding same by a U.S. Army medic I make mention of in the main text and footnotes of The Roswell Ray Gun, is considered.
Corso and others notwithstanding, one in the mix that has proved to be the hardest to discredit just happens to be the one that most closely relates to what I have presented, a man by the name of Elroy John Center. Corso is a 'Johnny-come-lately' compared to Center, who happened to be brought in early, with the timing of his being brought in meshing very closely with what I have presented in regards to the happenings at Area 51 and Harry the Man.
Center, who died July 15, 1991, was a Senior Research Chemist that worked for the highly prestigious Battelle Memorial Institute from 1939-1957 in materials sciences. Battelle is a private nonprofit applied science and technology development company that operates its own research facilities and manages or co-manages on behalf of the United States Department of Energy a whole host of national laboratories such as Brookhaven, Lawrence Livermore, and Oak Ridge.
In May of 1992, Dr. Irena McCammon Scott, who worked for both Battelle and the Defense Intelligence Agency had known of Center's work for years and came across an intriguing story involving Center which she, in conjunction with William E. Jones (of the William E. Jones UFO Collection - Ohio State University Libraries), revealed in an article titled The Ohio UFO Crash Connection and Other Stories as follows:
"In May of 1992 one of us was approached by an informant who told an intriguing story. For the record, he was not a Battelle employee. He had attended North High School in Columbus, Ohio, graduating in June of 1960. Between January and April of 1958, he dated a classmate named Cathy Center. One evening while he was visiting her home, Cathy's father, Mr. Elroy John Center, told them that while working at Battelle (he had left their employment in 1957) he was responsible for a project which required him to study 'parts' retrieved from a flying saucer. The parts had some sort of writing on them and his job was to 'find out what the characters meant.' He told them that there was 'lots more I can't go into. It's been bothering me since I saw it.' Given that some of the material (actually described as small 'I beams' Although it is alluded to in the above quote when it says Center was responsible for a project which required him to study 'parts' retrieved from a flying saucer, speaking more toward the I-beam aspect, what is not stated is his work on memory foil that came out later. As it was Battelle Institute ended up being responsible for was is called Nitinol, metal that has all the properties of the late 1940s Memory Foil.
When Harry the Man said, "My uncle and I were right," he was basically talking about the following:
"Although it was from discussions with Harry that I heard of the mysterious World War II bogies called When I first met Harry the Man he threw his hat into the ring with the standard Air Force view or explanation of flying saucers, disc sightings, and UFOs, pooh-poohing the Roswell side of things. Since I semi-supported that side of things and he didn't, I pretty much never mentioned it to him again --- that is until the two of us were taken to Area 51 as mentioned above. After that, for whatever reason, Harry the Man not only changed when it came to Roswell, HE changed.
If you haven't done so yet, please go to the all important Footnote [9].
The envelope Harry handed me was one of those large 9X12 manila envelopes with a fold over flap with both glue and a clasp to seal it closed. Harry had put the photo inside the envelope and closed it shut using only the clasp. Years later, for whatever reason, the envelope was sitting on the table with a number of other things when a nearly empty glass of water or iced tea was knocked over allowing some of the water to run up under the envelope. I quickly wiped everything down and blocked the envelope in an upright position to dry out. Later, when it was quite dry and without really checking it out or looking it over I stuck it between a couple of books on a shelf and forgot all about it.
One day I was telling someone about Harry the Man and I dug the envelope off the shelf only to find it had long been sealed shut apparently, I guess, by the water that had seeped on to it. I slit the top open with a letter opener but then wasn't able to get the photo out, it somehow getting stuck too. Using the letter opener I slit the envelope all around the edges so I could open it like a book and lift the photo out.
If you recall from the main text above, the first time I opened the envelope after Harry gave it to me, other than the photo and a related page from a comic book, I found no attached or enclosed handwritten notes or explanation. However, years later when I slit apart the envelope and folded it open like the pages of a book, roughly printed on the inside in pencil were letters about an inch high that when linked together spelled out the word TIMKEN.
It seems like when I was growing up I had nothing but a long series of obsessions, especially for things that either flew in the air or traveled underwater like submarines.(see) Physical things and people seemed to come and go, but "brain things," that is ideas and thought-concepts, except for my blackout period which only strengthened my position, seemed to stay. Somewhere along the way, as a kid, I had developed what my uncle called a near fanatical obsession with Zeppelins. To help alleviate an almost unquenchable thirst, among other things, he had my stepmother, who had high up connections in any number of areas, and most certainly so the movie industry, arrange, and of which I remember well as being so, a private screening in a totally empty movie theater just for me, to see the Howard Hughes 1930 black and white movie on Zeppelins titled Hells Angels.(see)
Along that same theme, when I was around ten years old I built a glider-type airplane initially inspired from three primary sources, a 1947 black-and-white Tarzan movie titled Tarzan and the Huntress, the drawings of flying machines as found in the notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, as well as the actual machines such as the glider pictured above by Otto Lilienthal.
One day I took the completed craft to the top of a nearby two story building and holding on for dear life, jumped off. At first the flying machine held fairly steady, maintaining altitude and covering a rather substantial distance. Then suddenly the craft stalled, I lost control and it dropped like a rock from a pretty good height, crashing into the front porch and through the windows of neighbor's house across the street. The machine escaped any real major damage and so did I.
Even though the flight ended not as smoothly as I hoped, primarily because of lack of experience on my part, and as I discovered, perhaps the lack of any sort of real flight control mechanisms, I considered my attempt a success --- especially so because of the distance covered before I lost control. I always felt my mentor and I were able to strengthen our bonds as friends initially because of his interest in flying and my early childhood attempt at manned-flight, re the following from the source so cited:
"Although I never attempted another similar human-powered flight after that, my mentor loved the story, and I think it was an early key to our initial philosophical bond." There is a slight caveat to my 'never attempted another similar human-powered flight after that' found in the above quote. That caveat circulates around what is called the 'Washoe Zephyr,' sometimes referred to as a 'devil wind.' The Washoe Zephyr occurs on a regular basis on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada mountains, with an extremely strong portion on the east side of the paralleling Virginia Range, most notedly around Virginia City. Unlike the typical thermally driven slope-flows which blow upslope during the day and downslope at night, the Washoe Zephyr winds blow down the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada in the afternoon against the local pressure gradient. The Washoe Zephyr figured prominently in my reconsideration of a second flight attempt. For more on that second attempt, please see:
Corso, because he came out of nowhere and so late into the milieu, is pretty much thought of as a pariah in the long-in-place UFO circles, especially so when it comes to Roswell and the Roswell crowd. Most of the groundwork and plot lines related to the crash down had already been well established by a small circle of pat-each-other-on-the-back Roswell cadre by the time Corso sprung his theories on the public. In that what he had to say was done without consultation or inclusion and sort of nullified or pushed aside some of their static party lines he was immediately chastised. To wit:
"My favorite in all of the Roswell stuff is Lieutenant Colonel Philip J. Corso and his 1997 book The Day After Roswell. By the time Corso's book came out all the major history and witnesses of and about Roswell were thought to have been either accounted for and/or interviewed by 'those in the know.' Then out of the blue, Corso. Of course, those who make their living pushing their story line and their story line only, and/or shredding every little bit and piece that doesn't match their own views, didn't waste time tearing him and his work apart." The downplaying of Corso and constant bleating against his credibility, real or imagined, has had a tendency to weaken on a larger scale the overall prospect of reverse engineering itself as an actual probability --- and in many cases has not been helped by others of a similar cast. Although there are any number of potential candidates that could fall into a like or same category as Corso has been place, for those who may be so interested, probably the most high profile that comes to mind is Robert Lazar.(see)
The original published source for the quote, the Ohio UFO Notebook, Summer, 1994 no longer shows up, but an online reprint of the same article is offered by the organization that initially published it, albeit in a secondary format. See "I" beam link below. The last I saw, an original hard copy of the Summer 1994 issue of the Ohio UFO Notebook was selling for thirty bucks.(see)
For some reason, that very same issue, the Summer of 1994, of the now no-longer published and hard to find periodical Ohio UFO Notebook, in conjunction with the Elroy John Center article previously mentioned, carried one of the most interesting yet under-reported articles on Roswell related reverse engineering ever published. Please see:
Within days, possibly even within just hours of the so-called Roswell incident, with me as a very young boy, I was taken by my uncle to visit the debris field related to the suspected downed object. He wanted to learn for himself if there was any truth behind the so called Hieroglyphic Writing reported on some of the metal scraps, so off we went as described in FRANK EDWARDS: The Truth Behind the Veil Although it was from discussions with Harry the Man that I heard of the mysterious World War II bogies called Foo Fighters for the first time and he was willing to discuss the wartime event called The Battle of Los Angeles or the UFO Over L.A., wherein a giant Zeppelin-size object of unknown origin overflew Los Angeles and was able to resist the impact of over 1400 anti-aircraft rounds, when I tried to talk with him about the possibilities of the Roswell Incident he scoffed at the whole idea, saying it was all BS. He had arrived at that position through personal experience. From 1947 on there was a series of high altitude balloon tests under varying names such as Project Mogul and Project Gopher designated to accomplish a variety of goals. In 1952 or so Harry was called in to consult on Project Gopher wherein a reconnaissance balloon was developed to carry a 500 pound payload to more than 70,000 feet for up to fourteen days.
"The Project Gopher test flights faced unique security problems. Since the initial sightings of 'flying saucers' in June and July 1947, including the 'Roswell incident,' in which strange debris was found in New Mexico, the belief had developed among the general public that they were seeing alien spaceships and that the air force knew about it and was covering it up."
The above quote is found in Shadow Flights (2000) by Curtis Peebles and is fairly typical. When I first met Harry the Man, because of his experience with the high altitude balloons of Project Gopher Harry threw his hat into the ring with the Air Force explanation of events, pooh-poohing the Roswell side of things. Since I semi-supported the Roswell side of things and he didn't, I pretty much never mentioned it to him again --- that is until the two of us were in the process of doing routine U-2 business at Edwards Air Force Base and taken to Area 51, in of which then Harry was assigned to investigate some mysterious parts. After that, for Harry the Man, things changed when it came to Roswell.
TRINITY SITE Below, for your own edification, is a list of the websites where I mention the 1945 U.S. New Mexico nuclear test at Trinity Site in some fashion, most commonly related back to my uncle and then how atomic bombs and atomic bomb tests, German or American, circle back to what I have presented elsewhere in my works:
I wasn't the first or only one to have ever drawn an analogy or noticed a similarity between the appearance of Harry the Man and that of Captain Marvel's rival Dr. Sivana. I say so because hanging on the wall next to Harry the Man's primary oxygen chamber was a very well done and beautifully matted and glass covered framed page from a Captain Marvel, Marvel Family story published in 1949 (The Marvel Family #41, Fawcett Publications, November 1949).
Years before, at another job site and long before I ever heard of Harry the Man or started working for him, some anonymous person, apparently as a joke or possible snide remark, taped the page to the wall of his work area. Instead of being upset or throwing it away he framed it and mounted it on the wall in a highly visible spot for all to see, and has since then taken it with him every time he moved from one job to the next. Below is a copy of that page:
As a young boy growing up during the early throes of World War II, and for sure not old enough to have served in the military in any fashion, I still, not unlike millions of other kids, both younger and older, served our country in a myriad of ways. Tin can drives, victory gardens, rationing. No gas or rubber tires. Cardboard toys. Having close friends my own age who I played with whose fathers, uncles, or brothers were fighting in the war, some lost, dying, or dead. Gold Star Mothers, Blue Star Mothers, many sharing both.
From the very beginning of the war a groundswell of patriotism grew, supporting our troops ever onward with what little they had at the start while America's war machine was ever increasingly expanding with promises of being delivered eventually in full strength. Part of that groundswell of patriotism was being driven at the bottom by movie, radio, and comic book heroes trying to shine a light of hope during an otherwise dismal time. I've cited many examples in my works of the era, and although totally minor in the overall scheme of things, added together they breathed hope with small drip-by-drips into the hearts and minds and souls of many of those at home and abroad. The illustrated contents of this page done in comic book style you are reading right now is just one example of those attempts by people on the home front trying to buoy the spirits of an America caught in tough times. There were of course, many hundreds that could be cited, but two of which I've chosen to exemplify find the heroes, both females, switched from their usual habitat in Europe fighting Germans to fighting Japanese in Asia, more specifically connecting up with the Flying Tigers in the air over and in Burma and China. They would be the more demure, albeit girl commando, Pat Parker, War Nurse and the red haired firebrand, Jane Martin, War Nurse.
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Footnote [1]
HITTING THE SILK AT 40,000 FEET
RANDY LOVELACE PREPARES FOR HIS 40,000 FOOT JUMP. NOTE
THE SMALL, PORTABLE OXYGEN BOTTLE STAPPED TO HIS LEG.
(please click image)
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STATION, EL PASO & SOUTHWESTERN RAILROAD, COLUMBUS, NM, EARLY 1900
LOVELACE SPACE PROGRAM AND THE MERCURY 13 WOMEN
Footnote [2]
Footnote [3]
THE CIAs SECRET WAR IN TIBET
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A REMOTE DRY LAKE IN THE NEVADA DESERT WAS LOCATED
FOR TEST FLIGHTS AND GIVEN THE NICKNAME"THE RANCH."
(please click image)
U.S. SECRET ARMY IN THE KINGDOM OF LAOS MEMORIAL, ARLINGTON CEMETERY
OPERATION WHITE STAR: LAOS, 1959 - 1962
MEETING WARLORDS, ET AL
THE CIA IN TIBET AND THE HIMALAYAS
PEACE CORPS ZEN
Footnote [4]
Footnote [5]
THE 1945 NEW MEXICO UFO AND THE ASTRONOMER
THE 1945 SAN ANTONIO NEW MEXICO CRASH
Footnote [6]
OF COBRAS, SCARABS, MASERATIS, AND ZEN
Footnote [7]
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Footnote [8]
Footnote [9]
GUNNER'S MATE 3rd CLASS, U.S. NAVY
(for movie please click image)
WASHOE ZEPHYR
OHIO UFO NOTEBOOK, SUMMER 1994
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THE BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES: 1942 UFO
THE SO-CALLED BATTLE OF L.A.--800 FOOT ZEPPELIN-SIZE UFO
CAUGHT IN SEARCHLIGHT BEAMS OVER LOS ANGELES IN 1942
(please click)
ROSWELL MAJOR IMPACT SITE AND DEBRIS FIELD DISCUSSED
(please click image)
THE TIME PILL PARADOX
(please click image)
FLYING CAPTAIN MARVEL
ZEN AND THE ART OF FLYING MEN
CAPTAIN MARVEL: HIS ORIGIN
JANE MARTIN, WAR NURSE MEETS THE FLYING TIGERS
