Startling Stories Unconfirmed

What you are about to read is a resume of notes I have accumulated over the past 37 years regarding fantastic flying machines and related power systems.  If true, any one would constitute the greatest technological breakthrough in history.  

The accounts went into my file because they came to me from that favorite of journalists: "reliable sources."  I emphasize that I have not been able to verify them.  My attempts through official agencies generally were dismissed as being unworthy of serious attention.  Yet, a kernel of fact, or an evasive answer, has induced me to keep the subject open.  

The latest entry into my dog-eared, gee-whiz file is a speech last week by Orville Wilbur Peters to my hometown Rotary Club.  It concerned past and future developments of the airplane.  

Mr. Peters, of Dayton, Ohio, acquired his colorful name as a result of his grandfather's pride in having worked with the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur.  The distinguished eponym foreordained that Mr. Peters should devote a lifetime studying and chronicling air science.  

Said the speaker:  A smooth cylinder 20 feet long and 8 feet in diameter sits in hangar 22 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base ready any day to fly four times around the world in two hours.  It will be powered by "electro-magnetic earth force" and will zoom along at 55,000 miles per hour - about twice that of present space ships.  

So simple is the propelling power, says Peters, that the Lionel Train Company will introduce a toy version next Christmas!

After nearly four decades of hearing and investigating such assertions I am skeptical.  But they fit a pattern I can't dismiss summarily.  

ITEM - A few months after two spectacular atomic bomb explosions ended World War II, the Associated Press reported a strange adventure by commercial airline passengers.  

An Australian plane detoured over an unexplored section of New Zealand jungle to avoid a storm.  Passengers saw a mountain with a huge hold in it and swarming with uniformed men.  The Australian prime minister said the mountain housed "another secret allied weapon more startling than the atom bomb but having nothing to do with nuclear fission."  The next day the prime minister disavowed the statement and said he had no idea what the strange jungle installation was.  

ITEM - Collier's Magazine, a highly respected mass circulation publication, in 1954 carried an article which it described as "the most important story we have ever published."  It said that a Canadian geologist, working with a magnetometer towed by plane to map mineral deposits, had discovered how to create a "sink," or hold, in the earth's north-south lines of magnetic force.  The normally weak magnetism was concentrated as it rushed to fill the sink, thus producing enormous energy.  

Collier's was the first victim of television and folded within a year, and no follow up story every appeared to confirm or deny the magnetic sink.  

ITEM -  Business Week Magazine later in 1954 reported that the Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation was financing research in a "quantum jump" process which would increase by 8,000 times the power extracted from coal, oil, and other carbons.  

Col. Harry Hardsog, formerly a research and development officer at the Pentagon, was the inventor.  Hardsog's theory involved "excitation" of the carbon atom, a feat nuclear scientists said was physically impossible.  Hardsog claimed he would get 78 million BTU from a pound of coal, in comparison with a maximum of 10,000 BTU by conventional methods.  

For several years after World War II, Fairchild had a contract with the government for research into potentials of atomic energy for aircraft power.  My query to a Fairchild public relations executive was brushed off with, "Mr. Hardsog does not work here."  

ITEM - A close friend, R.F., was an account executive for a text book publishing firm in 1957 which had a contract to write instruction manuals for the U.S. Air Force.  His duties required him to make frequent visits to Wright-Patterson.  

One of R.F.'s contacts stated during a confidential, technical discussion that the Air Force had captured a crashed flying saucer and the bodies of six, three-foot alien spacemen.  The wrecked flying machine, and the dead spacemen preserved in alcohol were kept in Hangar 6 and closely guarded.  

The hangar mentioned, indeed, was under strict security; by the Air Force said it had nothing to do with strange space ships or "little green men."  A sensational book and movie, "Hangar 18," was based on the rumor.  

ITEM - Another good friend, D.G., whose veracity is unquestioned, said he say a flying saucer in 1958 at close range along Highway 35 near Dayton.  It was on a bright summer afternoon and was witnessed for 20 minutes by about 50 motorists who stopped their cars to watch.  

The craft, about 25 feet across, was silvery metal.  It finally rose slowly with a slight humming sound, hovered for a few seconds and then shot up and away into the sky, disappearing in less than one minute.  

D.G., also a journalist, called the public information officer at Wright-Patterson who thanked him politely but said he had no idea what the craft was.  D.G. was never contacted and he heard no more about the incident.  

So much for startling stories.  Every columnist has a dozen others he cannot confirm but is loath to throw away.  

If any of mine turn out to be true, remember: You read it here first.  

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