‘So you’re suggesting that the US Navy, the US Air Force and the Canadian government were all working together to build those saucers.’
‘Yes,’ Stanford said. ‘The next major flap was the Washingto, DC, flap of 1952. On reinvestigating the case, Scaduto found that while the real flap had begun on July 19, there was a record, dated June 17, of several unidentified red-colored spheres that flew at supersonic speeds over the Canadian Air Base of North Bay in Ontario and then crossed over some of the southeastern states. He also discovered that nearly all of the subsequent DC UFOs were described as disappearing toward the north, and that when they UFOs returned en masse, on July 26, their disappearance in a general northerly direction also applied.’
‘All heading toward the Canadian border,’ Epstein said.
‘Right,’ Stanford said.
The waitress brought their food, set it down and smiled at Stanford, did not receive a smile in return and so flounced off in a huff. Epstein had ordered a Spanish omelet and a glass of cold milk; he drank the latter down in one thirsty gulp and then stared at the former. Stanford was distressed, feeling sorry for Epstain’s plight, but he picked up his own bacon cheeseburger and sank his teeth into it.
‘It adds up,’ Epstein said. ‘Lake Ontario and Lake Eyrie are as notorious as the Bermuda Triangle for the unexplained destruction of hundreds of aircraft and boats, the failure of gyroscopes and radio instruments, irrational behaviour in normally sane crew members and, of course, the sighting of numerous UFOs. It’s also worth noting that Canada, contrary to popular belief, is one of the greatest aeronautical powers in the world, that as far back as 1952 it had been described as the Promised Land of Aviation, that it has a truly remarkable range of world-famous aircraft companies, and that it also has vast areas of heavily wooded and uninhabited land – ideal for hiding secret aeronautical research establishments.’
‘That,’ Stanford said, ‘is what Scaduto found out. So, the next thing he had to ascertain was whether or not the Canadian saucer project had really been passed on to the US Air Force and if the Air Force had then simply dropped it.’
‘And the answer was both accounts was “No”.’
‘Correct. His research revealed that on February 11, 1953, the Toronto Star announced that a new flying saucer was being developed at the Avro-Canada plant in Malton, Ontario – ’
‘The word “new” suggesting that it wasn’t the first one.’
‘Exactly. Then, on February 16, the Minister of Defense Production, C. D. Howe, informed the Canadian House of Commons that Avro-Canada was in fact working on a, quote, “mock-up model of a flying saucer, capable of flying at fifteen hundred miles an hour and climbing straight up in the air.” By February 27, Crawford Gordon Jr., the president of Avro-Canada, was writing in the Avro News that the prototype being built was so revolutionary that it would make all other forms of supersonic aircraft obsolescent. Next, the Toronto Star was claiming that Britain’s Field Marshal Montgomery had become one of the few people ever to view Avro’s mock-up of the flying saucer, and short after that Air Vice Marshal D. M. Smith was reported to have said that what Field Marshal Montgomery had seen was the revolutionary construction plans for a gyroscopic fighter whose gas turbine would revolve around the pilot, who would be positioned at the center of the disk.’
Epstein winced with pain, ignored his Spanish omelet and swallowed a tablet; he washed the tablet down with a glass of water and then looked right at Stanford.
‘Good God,’ he said. ‘I think I remember it. The American media dubbed that then legendary machine the Omega and in 1953 the RAF Review gave it a semi-official respectability by reprinting most of the unclassified Canadian research and including doctored drawings of the machine.’
‘What did it look like?’ Stanford asked.
‘According to the sketches, it was a relatively small, horse-shoeshaped flying wing, with numerous air intake slots along its edge, ten deflector vanes for direction control, a single pilot cabin topped by a cupola of transparent plastic, and a large turbine engine that revolved around the vertical axis of the main body.’
‘Fantastic,’ Stanford said. ‘Now listen to this. In early November, 1953, Canadian newspapers were reporting that a mock-up of the Omega had been shown on October 31 to a group of twenty-five military officers and scientists; then, in March the following year, the American press was claiming that the US Air Force, concerned at Soviet progress in aeronautics, had allocated an unspecified sum of money to the Canadian government for the building of a prototype of their flying saucer, that the machine had been designed by the English aeronautical engineer, John Frost – who had worked for Avro-Canada in Malton, Ontario – and that it would be capable of either hovering in midair or flying at a speed of nearly two thousand miles an hour. This hot bit of news was followed by Canadian press assertions that their government was planning to form entire squadrons of flying saucers for the defense of Alaska and the far regions of the North, and that the machines would require no runways, were capable of rising vertically, and were ideal weapons for subarctic and polar regions.’
‘Did the Canadian government make any comment about all this?’
‘Not until December 3, 1954, when they suddenly announced that the flying saucer project had been abandoned.’
‘Any reason?’
‘Oh, yeah. Because, although it was believed that the saucers would fly, they would, quote, service no useful purpose. The Minister of Defense then confirmed their decision, adding that the project would have cost far too much for something that was, in the end, highly speculative.’
Epstein picked up his fork, poked distractedly at his omelet, set the fork down again and glanced around him, his normally weary gaze still excited.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘All these facts merely confirmed what your friend Scaduto had known for some time: that the Canadian government had officially dropped their saucer project in 1954.’
‘I would stress the word “officially”,’ Stanford said.
‘Why?’
‘Because that announcement by the Canadian government was clearly contradicted on October 22, 1955, when the US Air Force Secretary, Donald Quarles, released an extraordinary statement through the press office of the Department of Defense. Among other things he said that an aircraft of “unusual configuration and flight characteristics” would soon be appearing, that the US government had “initiated negotiations” with the Canadian government and Avro-Canada for the preparation of an experimental model of the Frost flying disk, and that the aircraft would be mass-produced and used for the common defense of the subarctic area of the continent.’
Epstein rubbed his eyes, studied his omelet with distaste, then returned his gaze to Stanford and smiled, his hands spread on the table.
‘So what am I to make of all this?’ he asked. ‘First, the Canadian government announces that they have abandoned their saucer project. Next, ten months later, the US Air Force officially announces that such a project is underway. Was it or wasn’t it?’
‘It was,’ Stanford said. ‘By February 1959 the press was receiving ambiguous Air Force statements about a revolutionary new aircraft that had been undertaken jointly by the US Air Force, the US Army and the Canadian government. Then, on April 14, during a press conference in Washington, DC, General Frank Britten implied that the first test flight of the aircraft was imminent and that it was destined to revolutionize traditional aeronautical concepts.’
‘That doesn’t necessarily imply a saucer.’
‘It did,’ Stanford said. ‘In August, 1960, the Air Force, giving in under pressure, allowed reporters to view the very machine they had all been writing about. What the reporters were shown was the Avro Car, an experimental aircraft that combined the characteristics of air-cushion machines and airplanes – in short, a crude flying saucer based on the principles of the jet ring and barely able to rise above the runway. Small wonder, seeing this, that they experienced no surprise when, in December the fol
lowing year, the Department of Defense announced that they were withdrawing from participation in the project.’
Stanford finished off his bacon cheeseburger, wiped his lips with a paper napkin, then sat back and stared intently at Epstein, not smiling at all.
‘There the story of the official flying saucers ended,’ he said. ‘Scaduto spent months trying to work out what it all meant, but in the end he grew increasingly baffled. First, he tried to find a correlation between the fact that an awful lot of UFOs seemed to come from and return to Canada and the fact that the Canadian government had been engaged in trying to build flying saucers – but there could be no remote comparison between the capabilities of the unknowns and the pathetic performance of the government-sponsored saucers. On the other hand, there were a few lingering mysteries…’
‘Let me try to guess,’ Epstein said. ‘Why did the Canadian government announce that they had dropped their flying saucer project when in fact, at least according to the US Air Force, they were still working on it? And why did the US Air Force Secretary announce that aircraft like flying saucers would soon be flying? And why, after that announcement, was there a four-year gap – with no sign of the magical aircraft – before a remarkably similar announcement was made? And why, after this latest announcement, did the Air Force unveil their magical offering, let it be known that it was a failure, and then announce that they were dropping the project? And finally, why, if the Canadians had genuinely dropped their flying saucer project, did the US Department of Defense, in announcing the termination of their own project, state that they were withdrawing from participation in the project? Withdrawing from participation with whom?’
‘Those were the burning questions,’ Stanford said. ‘The suspicion remained that the Canadian government and the US Air Force were both still involved in the construction of flying saucers, that those saucers were vastly more advanced than the rubbish the Air Force had deigned to show us, that some of the supposed UFO landings on or around various top-secret military establishments were actually the products of Canadian-US cooperation, and that the Canadian and American statements, with their contradictions and ambiguities, had been designed to deliberately confuse the facts and turn them into rumors.’
‘Good God,’ Epstein said.
Stanford didn’t smile at all. He paid the check and stood up. Epstein followed him out into the street and turned his fur collar up. Neon lights flickered spasmodically. The snow was turning to slush. The street was crowded with beaded youngsters and politicians and whores, with well dressed secretaries and generals wearing suits, all defying the biting cold. Stanford headed for M Street. Epstein coughed at his side. They both walked in a deliberately casual manner, rarely looking around them.
‘Anyway,’ Stanford said eventually, ‘unable to solve the mystery, Scaduto finally had to let it go. Then, in 1965, it all came back with a bang.’ Glancing up at the sky, scarcely aware that he was doing so, he saw a patch of glittering stars above the clouds, the black void all around them. ‘In 1964, 1965 and 1966 there were three singular events that really put the Air Force in a fix. It was the culmination of those events that finally stung the Air Force into getting rid of its much publicized Project Blue Book – and that also encouraged Scaduto into re-examining the whole Canadian mystery. The first of these events was the close encounter of the third kind of Socorro, New Mexico, in 1964, when Deputy Marshall Lonnie Zamora claimed to have seen two schoolboy-sized people in coveralls standing beside an egg-shaped, metallic craft that was resting on legs extending from its body. The machine took off with a roar, spitting flames and ascending vertically, before Zamora could get down there to investigate.’
‘An extraordinary case,’ Epstein said. ‘Witnesses, including Allen Hynek, later confirmed that the four landing marks and the burned greasewood plants, a local verified that he had seen Zamora’s squad car heading toward a strange, oval-shaped object that was descending in the direction of the sighting, and a check with NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and fifteen industrial firms to see if they were working with experimental lunar landing modules in the area received nothing but negative replies. Hynek later described the incident as one of the major UFO sightings of all time.’
‘Jesus,’ Stanford said, ‘your photographic memory’s better than mine… Anyway, that was the first event. The second was when, on March 20, 1966, at Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan, eighty-seven female students and a civil defense instructor saw a glowing, footballshaped object hovering over an empty swamp a few hundred yards from the women’s dormitory, repeatedly racing at and retreating from the dormitory, dodging an airport beacon light, and generally flying back and forth for hours before disappearing – and when, the next day, in Dexter, Michigan, five people including two police officers reporting seeing the same. The third event was merely the widely reported fact that by 1966 a Gallup poll had indicated that approximately nine million Americans thought they had seen a UFO. It was these major events, plus the Great Northeast Blackout of November 9, 1965, that led directly to the infamous Condon Report and the final closing down of Project Blue Book. Now while the Great Northeast Blackout was actually the second incident, I’ve left it to the last because it was the incident that really resurrected the Canadian mystery at the NICAP – particularly with Scaduto.’
Stanford saw Epstein swallowing another tablet while passing the numerous pedestrians on the sidewalk as if they didn’t exist. His old friend looked exhausted and very ill, which made Stanford feel both helpless and angry.
‘As you already know,’ he said, ‘there’s a long history of UFOs being seen over power lines and of subsequent, unexplainable power failures. Now, during the first week of August, 1965, thousands of people in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado and neighbouring states witnessed one of the biggest UFO displays ever. Unidentified lights flew across the skies in formation, were tracked on radar, and played tag with civilian and Air Force aircraft. This major display of UFOs eventually faded away, but a milder flap continued over the next three months until, on the night of November 9, unidentifieds were reported from Niagara, Syracuse and Manhattan. Then, the same night, all the lights went out – in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont and a section of Canada – went out over a total area of eighty thousand square miles and a population of twenty-six million people.’
‘I remember it,’ Epstein said. ‘The huge power grid that controlled all those blacked-out areas – an interlocking network linking almost thirty utility companies, with hundreds of automatic controls and safety devices – was considered to be invulnerable… yet the cause of the blackout was never ascertained.’
‘Right,’ Stanford said. ‘They never found out what caused it. The only thing they knew for certain was that the failure had occurred somewhere in the flow between the Niagara Falls generators and the Clay power substation, an automatic control unit through which the electric power flowed from Niagara Falls to New York.’
‘There was a UFO connection,’ Epstein said.
‘Yes,’ Stanford said. ‘First report of an unidentified was made by the Deputy Aviation Commissioner of Syracuse, Robert C. Walsh, and several other witnesses, all of whom, just after the power failed at Syracuse, saw what resembled a huge fireball ascending from a fairly low altitude near Hancock Airport. Approaching for a landing at that time was Flight Instructor Weldon Ross and his passenger, computer technician James Brooding, both of whom saw the same object, at first mistaking it for a burning building on the ground – something corroborating the fact that the fireball was at low altitude – then quickly realizing that it was something in the air: a single, round-shaped object about a hundred feet in diameter, which they later described as a flamecolored globe. And, according to Ross’s calculations, that object was directly over the Clay power substation.’
‘So,’ Epstein said, ‘we’re back with Canada.’
‘Yes,’ Stanford said with some emphasis. ‘
For obvious reasons this whole damned mess resurrected the Canadian mystery at the NICAP, particularly with Scaduto. Now, more than ever, he was convinced that there was some sort of connection between Canada and the UFO phenomenon. He was convinced even more of this when a friend pointed out that until the United States defensive radar network was extended to the Far North, which was in 1952, Soviet long-range reconnaissance planes from Siberian and subarctic bases had flown frequently over Alaska, the Yukon territory, and the MacKenzie District areas to spy on what was supposed to be relatively uninhabited territory. This just didn’t make sense. What the hell were the Soviets spying on? And so wondering about this, Scaduto pulled out his Canadian files and started working again.’
GENESIS (Projekt Saucer) Page 41