PHOENIX: (Projekt Saucer series)

by W. A. Harbinson

  ‘Could have been another Skyhook balloon,’ Hackleman said. ‘Or maybe even Venus.’

  ‘No, sir,’ Dwight replied. ‘Neither. With a theodolite, stop-watch, and 25-power telescope, Commander McLaughlin’s team was able to track the UFO as it dropped from an angle of elevation of forty-five degrees to twenty-five degrees, then abruptly shot upward and disappeared. Even after putting a reduction factor on the data recorded on the theodolite, Commander McLaughlin estimated that the UFO was approximately forty feet wide and a hundred feet long, had been at an altitude of fifty-six miles, and was travelling at approximately 2,000 miles per hour.’

  ‘That’s impossible!’ General Conroy snapped angrily.

  ‘I’ll admit, sir, that there’s some legitimate doubt regarding the accuracy of the speed and altitude figures that Commander McLaughlin’s team arrived at from the data they measured with the theodolite. This, however, doesn’t mean much in the sense that even if they were off by a factor of one hundred per cent, the speeds and altitude of the UFO would be extraordinary. I’d also remind you that various members of McLaughlin’s team studied the object through a 25-power telescope and swore that it was a flat, ovalshaped object.’

  ‘And I’d remind you, Cap’n Randall, that Commander McLaughlin had no right to release that report, let alone write the article he published in True magazine in March the following year. Small wonder he’s been transferred back to sea.’

  ‘With all due respect, sir, matters of naval discipline are not my concern. I was sent the report to read and analyze, which is just what I’ve done. In my view it confirms that the UFOs, or flying saucers, can fly at extraordinary speeds and reach remarkable altitudes.’

  ‘You say these cinetheodolite cameras aren’t always accurate,’ General Conroy said. ‘Just what are they and how do you use them, Cap’n?’

  ‘A cinetheodolite is similar to a 35-mm movie camera, except that when a moving object is photographed with it, the developed photograph will also contain three readings that show the time the photo was taken, the azimuth angle, and the elevation angle of the camera. If two or more cinetheodolites photograph the same flying object, it’s possible to obtain rough estimates of the object’s size, speed and altitude. I stress rough estimates because cinetheodolites don’t give accurate readings.’

  ‘Nevertheless, you insist that the UFO tracked by McLaughlin’s team was moving remarkably fast.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘How fast?’

  ‘A lot faster than any jet plane we know about.’

  The generals glanced uneasily at one another, then returned their attention to Dwight. ‘Okay, Cap’n, that accounts for configuration and speed. What’s convinced you that these craft are real, solid objects?’

  ‘Two incidents.’ Dwight glanced at Bob, received a slight, knowing smile, then flipped over more pages in his folder and spoke as he read. ‘On April 27, 1950, shortly after a guided missile had been fired from the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico and fell back to earth, the camera crews of Air Force technicians spotted an object streaking across the sky. As most of the camera stations had already unloaded their film, only one camera was able to catch a shot of the UFO before it disappeared. That photo showed only a dark, smudgy object - but it also proved that whatever it was, it had been moving. A month later, during a second missile test, another UFO appeared. This time, two members of the camera teams saw it and shot several feet of film as the - quote - bright, shiny object - unquote - streaked across the sky. That film was subsequently processed and analysed by the Data Reduction Group at White Sands. By putting a correction factor in the data gathered by the two cameras, they were able to calculate that the object was higher than 40,000 feet, travelling over 2,000 miles per hour, and was approximately 300 feet in diameter.’ Dwight looked each of the generals in the eye. ‘I concede that these figures are only estimates, based on the possibly erroneous correction factor. However, they certainly prove that something had been in the air and it had been solid and moving very fast.’

  ‘Enough to convince you of the reality of the phenomenon,’ General Conroy said drily.

  ‘Yes, sir. In combination with the two major flaps that came the following year: the Lubbock Lights and the Fort Monmouth sightings.’

  Again the three generals stared at one another, this time even more uneasily. When General Hackleman turned back to Dwight, his hazel eyes were troubled.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘We were informed that you’d investigated both cases personally. Kindly give us your report on both events. In precise detail, Cap’n.’

  Dwight began to feel nervous. This was no casual interrogation. These three senior officers were concerned at what he knew and obviously not pleased with the extent of his knowledge. Nevertheless, they were demanding a detailed report, so, after glancing nervously at the equally concerned Bob Jackson, he picked up another file.

  ‘The Lubbock affair,’ he read, ‘began on the evening of August 25, 1951, when an employee of the Atomic Energy Commission’s supersecret Sandia Corporation – ’

  ‘Who?’ General Lamont asked abruptly.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, I can’t reveal that. I can only say that he had a top “Q” security clearance.’

  The generals glanced uneasily at one another. ‘Okay,’ Lamont said. ‘Continue.’

  ‘This Sandia employee looked up from his garden on the outskirts of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and saw a huge aircraft flying swiftly and silently over his home. He later described it as having the shape of a flying wing, about one-and-a-half times the size of a B-26, with six to eight softly glowing, bluish lights on its aft end.’

  General Lamont coughed into his clenched fist.

  ‘That same evening,’ Dwight continued, ‘about twenty minutes after this sighting, four professors from the Texas Technological College at Lubbock – a geologist, a chemist, a physicist, and a petroleum engineer - observed a formation of lights streaking across the sky: about fifteen to thirty separate lights, all a bluish-green colour, moving from north to south in a semicircular formation.’

  ‘You can’t name the four professors either,’ Conroy said sardonically. ‘No, sir, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Keep reading, Cap’n.’

  ‘Early in the morning of August 26, only a few hours after the Lubbock sightings, two different radars at an Air Defence Command radar station located in Washington State showed an unknown target travelling at 900 miles an hour at 1,300 feet and heading in a northwesterly direction. On August 31, at the height of the flap, two ladies were driving near Matador, seventy miles northeast of Lubbock, when they saw a pear-shaped object about 150 yards ahead of them, about 120 feet in the air, drifting slowly to the east at less than the take-off speed of a Cub airplane. One of those witnesses was familiar with aircraft - she was married to an air force officer and had lived on or near air bases for years - and she swore that the object was about the size of a B-29 fuselage, had a porthole on one side, made absolutely no noise as it moved into the wind, and suddenly picked up speed and climbed out of sight in a tight, spiralling motion. That same evening, an amateur photographer, Carl Hart, Jr., took five photos of a V formation of the same bluish-green lights as they flew over his back yard. Finally, a rancher’s wife told her husband, who related the story to me, that she had seen a large object gliding swiftly and silently over her house. That object was observed about ten minutes after the Sandia Corporation executive had viewed his object. It was described as – I quote – “an airplane without a body”. The woman said there were pairs of glowing lights on its aft edge - an exact description of the Albuquerque sightings made by the Sandia employee.’

  ‘Who cannot be named,’ General Conroy emphasised sardonically.

  Dwight just smiled, then glanced down at his report. ‘Subsequent investigation by myself and Captain Jackson’ - he nodded in Bob’s direction – ‘confirmed that the Washington State radar lock-on had been a solid target - not a weather target. We then calculated th
at an object flying between that radar station and Lubbock would have been on a northwesterly course at the time it was seen at the two places - and that it would have had a speed of approximately 900 miles per hour, as calculated by the radar.’

  ‘Still doesn’t prove that much,’ General Hackleman insisted with what seemed like a glimmer of hope.

  ‘No,’ Dwight said. ‘But the five photographs taken by Carl Hart, Jr. were analysed by our Photo Reconnaissance Laboratory. The results showed that the lights, in an inverted V formation, had crossed about 120 degrees of open sky at a 30-degree per second angular velocity. This corresponded exactly to the angular velocity measured carefully by the four professors from the Technical College at Lubbock. Analysis of the photos also showed that the lights were a great deal brighter than the surrounding stars and that their unusual intensity could have been caused by an exceptionally bright light source which had a colour at the most distant red end of the spectrum, bordering on infrared.’

  ‘What does that mean, Cap’n?’ Hackleman's hazel gaze, which was steady, was also too concerned for Dwight’s comfort.

  ‘As the human eye isn’t sensitive to such a light,’ Dwight explained, ‘the light could appear dim to the eye - as many of the Lubbock lights did - but be exceptionally bright on film, as they were on the photographs. While according to the Photo Reconnaissance Laboratory, at that time there was nothing flying that had those particular characteristics, I was pretty startled to discover that the lights on the photos were strikingly similar to those described by the Atomic Energy Commission employee as being on the aft edge of the huge UFO that passed silently over his house.’

  ‘So did something solid pass over Albuquerque, New Mexico,’ Hackleman asked, ‘and fly 250 miles to Lubbock, Texas, at an approximate speed of 900 miles per hour?’

  ‘Yes, sir. According to the witnesses, and to the radar and visual-tracking calculations, it did. The Lubbock files were also studied by a group of rocket experts, nuclear physicists and intelligence experts, and they were all convinced that the sightings had been of an enormous, solid object, most probably with a highly swept-back wing configuration and a series of small jet orifices around its edge.’

  There was silence for a moment while the three generals studied Dwight, none of them appearing too friendly, all looking concerned. Then General Hackleman let out a loud sigh. ‘So,’ he said. ‘Who ordered you to personally investigate the Lubbock lights?’ ‘Major General C.P. Cabell, sir, representing the Director of Intelligence of the Air Force. In a matter of hours of receiving the order, Captain Jackson and I were on an airplane to Lubbock. Once there, we worked around the clock, interrogating everyone involved in the sighting - pilots, radar operators, technicians and instructors. What they told us substantiated the sighting reports.’

  ‘We appreciate the thoroughness of the written report,’ General Hackleman said, though displaying impatience. ‘Who did you personally report to before writing it up?’

  ‘General Cabell - naturally - and other high-ranking intelligence officers in the Pentagon, where the meeting took place.’

  ‘You reported verbally?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘That’s what we’d been told,’ General Hackleman said. ‘But we couldn’t find the recording of that meeting.’

  Dwight glanced at Bob, who was looking uneasier every minute.

  ‘Every word of that meeting was recorded,’ Dwight insisted.

  ‘But the recording was destroyed shortly after,’ General Hackleman said. ‘At least, so we were informed by the CIA.’

  ‘But - ’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ General Conroy interjected. ‘Don’t bother asking, Cap’n. There are good reasons for everything, I’m sure. Now what about the replacement of Project Grudge with Project Blue Book in April this year, with Captain Ruppelt in command? Did you resent being downgraded to second-in-command?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t, sir.’ Dwight was feeling hot and embarrassed. More so because this very subject had caused more friction between him and Beth, who was convinced that officers involved in UFO investigations always had a hard time from the Air Force and were often consistently denied promotion. Thus, when Project Grudge had been dropped and replaced with Project Blue Book, with Dwight reduced to secondin-command under Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, Dwight’s acute disappointment had only been exacerbated by Beth’s angry insistence that his ‘virtual demotion’ was another sign that he should ask to be transferred to another, less controversial, line of work. ‘But I should emphasise,’ Dwight now insisted to General Conroy, ‘that Captain Ruppelt and I have an excellent working relationship.’

  ‘So Ruppelt has confirmed,’ Conroy said with a slight, mocking smile. ‘However, to change the subject slightly, do you think the stir caused by the Lubbock sightings was responsible for the replacement of Grudge with Blue Book?’

  ‘The Lubbock sightings certainly helped, sir, but they weren’t totally responsible. Though those sightings certainly made the Air Force sit up and take notice, it was the ones that took place a month later that really led to the formation of Project Blue Book.’

  ‘The ones that took place at the Army Signal Corps radar centre at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘A top-secret establishment.’

  ‘Exactly, sir.’

  ‘Tell us about those,’ General Conroy said.

  Dwight opened another file. ‘The flap began at 11.10 in the morning of September 10, 1951, when a student operator was giving a demonstration of automatic radar tracking to a group of visiting top brass – sorry: senior officers.’ General Conroy gave a wintry smile, but said nothing, so Dwight, flustered, glanced down at his notes and continued reading. ‘After spotting an object flying about 12,000 yards southeast of the station, the operator switched to automatic tracking, but failed to hold the object. In his confusion, he blurted out to the visiting officers that the object was going too fast for the radar set - which meant that it was flying faster than any known jet. After three minutes, during which the UFO continued to fly too fast for the automatic radar tracking, it disappeared.’

  ‘The weather?’ General Lamont asked.

  ‘Checks with the weather department revealed that there were no indications of a temperature inversion.’

  ‘Okay, Cap’n, continue.’

  ‘Twenty-five minutes later, the pilot of a T-33 jet trainer, carrying an Air Force major as passenger and flying 20,000 feet over Mount Pleasant, New Jersey, observed a dull, silver, disk-like object below him. It was thirty to fifty feet in diameter. When the object descended towards Sandy Hook, the T-33 pilot went after it. As he approached the object, it stopped abruptly, hovered impossibly, suddenly sped south, then made a 120-degree turn and vanished out to sea.’

  Dwight glanced up from his report, surprised at how breathless and nervous he was. ‘The Air Force major in the T-33 confirmed that sighting.’ When no one passed comment, he avoided the three pairs of eyes by looking back at his notes.

  ‘At 3.15pm, back at the Fort Monmouth radar centre, a frantic call was received from headquarters, demanding that they pick up an unknown that was flying very high, to the north, roughly where the first UFO had vanished. A radar lock-on confirmed that the UFO was travelling - I quote - slowly, at 93,000 feet - or eighteen miles above the earth - and it could also be made out visually as a silver speck.’

  ‘No known aircraft of today can fly eighteen miles above the earth,’ Bob said, speaking for the first time.

  ‘Thank you for that observation, Cap’n Jackson,’ General Conroy said dryly. ‘Okay, Cap’n Randall, continue.’

  Giving Bob a fleeting grin, Dwight said, ‘Next morning two radar sets picked up another unknown that climbed, levelled out, dived and climbed again repeatedly, too fast for the automatic radar tracking. When the object climbed, it went almost straight up. The flap ended that afternoon when the radar picked up another slowly moving UFO and tracked it for seve
ral minutes, before it, too, disappeared.’

  He looked up from his notes. ‘Those sightings were witnessed by all the visiting VIPs and it was they who really got the ball rolling. So, it was the Monmouth sightings, even more than the Lubbock lights, that compelled Major Cabell to order the ATIC to establish a new, more serious UFO investigation project. Subsequently, in April, Project Grudge was renamed Project Blue Book.’

  ‘And in contradiction to the policy of Project Grudge,’ General Hackleman said, ‘Project Blue Book is to work on the assumption that the UFOs, or flying saucers, are real, solid objects.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Dwight said, sweating too much, his heart beating too fast. When he closed the file, he noticed that his hands were shaking. Not much, but definitely shaking, which really surprised him.

  There was a lengthy, tense silence, then General Hackleman leaned forward in his chair and said, ‘Anything else, Cap’n?’

  Dwight glanced at Bob and was given a nod of approval to state what they had both been frightened of reporting. ‘Yes, sir,’ Dwight said. ‘The pattern and nature of a recent build-up of sightings of fiery discs, green fireballs, and large flying saucers, over the past month, along the East Coast, indicates something damned scary.’

  ‘Oh?’ The general’s gaze was steady and intense. ‘What’s that, Cap’n Randall?’

  Dwight took a deep breath, hardly believing he was going to say it, then let his words come out on a rush of air.

  ‘It seems like some kind of UFO invasion,’ he said, ‘and it’s closing in on Washington D.C.’

  The silence stretched out forever.

  Chapter Thirteen The sun was dying. Wilson knew this as he stood in a field of wheat in Montezuma, Iowa, the stalks shoulder-high around him, and gazed across that yellow field to where green fields met blue sky, then squinted up into the sun’s striations, which were silvery and ravishing. Wilson was only ten years old, blond-haired and tanned, but even as the sun’s heat scorched his face, he knew the sun was dying. It would take a long time, but die it surely would, and when it died, the earth would die with it, destroying the great hope of mankind. Wilson, though still a child, was overwhelmed by that knowledge and decided, there and then, without a moment’s hesitation, that he had to do something to save mankind and ensure its continuance.