Operation Trojan Horse: The Classic Breakthrough Study of UFOs

by John A. Keel

  The next thing he knew, he was speeding along the road. He had absolutely no recollection of starting up the car and driving off again. Later he discovered that his watch—an expensive Omega chronometer—was unaccountably five minutes slow. He decided to report the incident to the authorities and voluntarily submitted to a psychiatric testing. His story was published in the West Australian, November 1, 1967, but his name was not used.

  Unearthly beams of light, sudden automobile failures, disturbing lapses of time and memory: all of these are commonplace minor elements in our UFO mystery.

  But let’s go back to the puzzling historical sightings so that we may gain a better view of the overall picture.

  The Flap of 1909

  There were, of course, many observations of unusual aerial objects between 1897 and 1909. Thanks to the efforts of Lucius Farish and his colleagues we have an impressive sampling of these early reports to work with. The reliability of some of the newspaper accounts can certainly be questioned, but the tongue-in-cheek journalistic jokes are quite transparent, at least to someone who grew up in the newspaper business.

  A minor airship flap broke out in California in 1905. On Wednesday, August 2, 1905, J. A. Jackson, “a well-known resident of Silshee,” was out at 1:30 in the morning when a bright light appeared in the sky and headed for him. According to the account published in the Brawley, California, News (August 4, 1905):

  He watched it closely until behind the light there appeared the form of an airship, apparently about 70 feet in length, with a searchlight in front and several other lights aboard, The mysterious machine appeared to be propelled by wings alone and rose and fell as the wings flapped like a gigantic bird. Apparently there was no balloon attachment as is usually the case with airships.

  Mr. Jackson, being close to the home of W. E. Wilsie, woke him up in time to see the lights of the machine before it disappeared…The same night, H. E. Allatt, postmaster at Imperial, was awakened from sleep by a bright light shining into his room. There was no moon, the light was thought to be a fire, and Mr. Allatt rose to investigate, but no fire was found. Looking at his watch, the time was discovered to be 1:30 o’clock, and it is believed that the brilliant light was caused by the searchlight from this mysterious airship.

  Other witnesses in the same area reported seeing strange lights maneuvering over some nearby mountains, And one group said they had seen “a titanic white bird” at a distance of about five miles. “As it was clearly impossible, even in the desert air, to see a bird at that distance, they, too, have been pondering the case and come to the conclusion that what they saw was the airship making its way over the desert,” the newspaper remarked.

  Winged objects, things with tail fins and propellers, had been reported during the 1896-97 wave, too. The “flapping wings” is a rather unique feature, however, and perhaps the bobbing-falling-leaf motion created some kind of illusion. There is no way of reaching a final assessment on most of these early cases.

  Based upon my study of modern sightings versus published reports, it is very possible that many people on the West Coast were seeing UFOs throughout the early 1900s but that very few of these ever made their way into print. The spotty clippings that have been uncovered to date do suggest a continuing flap of unsuspected proportions.

  The year 1908 brought a minor flap to Tacoma, Washington, and the same area of the Puget Sound that would play an important part in the Maury Island “hoax” (a sighting which preceded Kenneth Arnold’s by three days) thirty-nine years later. On Saturday, February 1, 1908, and again on the next night between the hours of 7 and 9, a brilliant reddish object “two or three times as bright as Jupiter” passed over Kent, Washington, and was seen by many. Some described it as being cigar-shaped. A story in the Tacoma, Washington, Daily Ledger (February 4, 1908) added, “During the same week, on clear nights, colored lights were displayed at high altitudes, and on one occasion a rocket was discharged high in the air, it is asserted.” The light was viewed by the populaces of many of the towns along its route. Some newspapers suggested that it was a Japanese spy craft of some sort. (The Russo-Japanese war had taken place three years earlier, and the “Yellow Peril” was a popular topic of racial bigots on the West Coast.)

  On June 30, 1908, the now-famous “meteor” exploded over Siberia.

  The next summer, in mid-July 1909, residents in the thinly populated Blue Mountains of New Zealand began to see a “cigar-shaped or boat-shaped” object cruising their skies. One account from the Otago, New Zealand, Daily Times described it this way: “It did not appear to be very long but was very broad….It flew over and past the school grounds, turned around, and went back the way it came. It was flying along very easily and had no trouble in turning.” Unusual flying lights were reportedly observed in the same areas at night.

  On Friday, August 6, 1909, “ten hitherto skeptical workmen” saw a “cigar-shaped balloon with a carriage suspended below. It had a powerful white headlight and changed altitude steadily several times.” The mystery airship of 1896-97 had returned! This time it was halfway around the world from Europe and the United States. We have found no mention of the New Zealand sightings in the American press of the period and assume that the news did not travel far. The airship itself did travel very far, however.

  Late in August 1909, the Russian correspondent of the London Daily Mail filed a dispatch about “an unknown controllable airship” that had appeared over the city of Reval, making two wide circles before disappearing in the direction of Finland. The event was said to have caused great excitement.

  A month later a machine “of great size, elliptical-shaped, and equipped with wings of some kind” passed over the Castle Forest near Gothenburg, Sweden, at an altitude of 300 feet. The time of the sighting was 6 P.M. That morning another object—or possibly the same one —flew over the Swedish city of Osthammar at an altitude of 300 feet, coming from the northeast and disappearing in a westerly direction. The date was Friday, September 24, 1909.

  Gothenburg was revisited at 8:30 P.M., Thursday, December 2, 1909, when an “illuminated balloon” appeared high in the sky and moved swiftly toward the sea. The Stockholm newspaper Dagens Nyheter noted: “Suddenly a rocket of some kind was thrown from the gondola into a garden named Redbergs Park. This took place a few minutes before the balloon went out of sight.”

  The events of 1909, 1913, and 1934 are crucial to our overall understanding of the phenomenon. They provide vital links in the long and tangled chain that we are trying to unravel. These early reports are especially meaningful because they were written as human interest items and routine news stories long before the appearance of the UFO controversy or before any government had issued a denial. The people of Sweden were completely unaware of the sightings in New Zealand. And Americans had not heard of either group of events. Skeptical explanations of mass hysteria simply cannot be applied to these early reports. Some mechanical-like object—or group of objects—was circling the globe at a time when the number of known existing dirigibles could be counted on one hand and only a few crude airplanes, homemade and of very limited range and capabilities, could be found. In fact, the development of the airplane was very slow until World War I came along and it became necessary to make improvements in design quickly.

  The first European airplane flight (Santos-Dumont) took place in 1906 in Paris. Except for one or two experimental models, all of the planes of 1909 were fashioned after the Wright brothers’ model, with the pilot sitting on the fore edge of the lower wing, his feet dangling in space, and a modified automobile engine coughing and sputtering behind him. It was almost a tradition for these machines to crash after flying a few miles at low altitude. Lieutenant Thomas E. Selfridge earned the unhappy distinction of being the first man to die in an airplane crash in 1908 when he was a passenger on a plane piloted by Orville Wright which went out of control and plummeted to earth from an altitude of 75 feet. Wright was badly injured, too.

  In 1910, there were thirty-six licensed pilots,
and they outnumbered the available airplanes.

  So all of the known pilots, planes, and dirigibles of 1909 were accounted for. They were not buzzing New Zealand and Sweden. Someone else was.

  This someone else next visited the New England states in December 1909.

  A New “Secret” Inventor

  The story of the Massachusetts flap of 1909 is another jigsaw puzzle that we have pieced together from dozens of newspaper clippings. The sightings of that December were widely published all over the United States. Thousands of witnesses were involved, and the objects described possessed all of the UFO characteristics of the 1896-97 flap. But there is a rather odd fly in this ointment: a self-proclaimed inventor from Worcester, Massachusetts. He became the focus of many of the newspaper stories, and he seems to have been surrounded by considerable mystery.

  The early newspaper accounts suggest that unidentified flying machines might have been sighted with some regularity before journalists really paid any heed to them.

  First, we have an interesting coincidence. One of the first published sightings—perhaps the very first—of the flap appeared in New York and Long Island newspapers on the same day that our mystery inventor held a press conference in Worcester and revealed his marvelous discovery to the world.

  A Long Island lifeguard, William Leech, was among those who claimed that they heard an airplane engine passing directly overhead in the darkness while on patrol off Long Island. They could not see the object but seemed certain that the sound had come from the sky, not from the water or the island. This report wouldn’t mean much ordinarily, but even while Mr. Leech was talking to New York reporters about the incident, our mystery man was shooting off his mouth in Worcester for the first time.

  His name was Wallace E. Tillinghast, and he was the vice president of the Sure Seal Manufacturing Company in Worcester. According to the newspapers, he was a man of eminence and reputation and was the holder of several patents. He claimed that he had invented, built, and tested an airplane “capable of carrying three passengers with a weight limit of 200 pounds each, a distance of at least 300 miles without a stop to replenish the supply of gasoline, and if necessary, at a rate of 120 miles per hour.”

  On September 8, 1909, he said, he had flown his machine around the Statue of Liberty and then had soared to Boston and back to New York without landing.

  The newspapers continued: “Another part of this trip is still more wonderful. Mr. Tillinghast says that when near Fire Island [off the coast of Long Island], one of the cylinders of the flier ran irregularly, so the motor was stopped, with the machine 4,000 feet in the air, and sailed forty six minutes, while two mechanics repaired it in midair, the engine being started again when the airplane was near enough to land to be seen by a member of the lifesaving crew patrolling the beach.”

  Presto, we have an explanation for Mr. Leech’s story! Or have we? Before we can review the flap of Christmas week, 1909, we must dissect the remarkable story of Mr. Tillinghast. It bears many interesting resemblances to the tales of San Francisco’s mystery inventor. Unlike Lawyer Collins’ well-dressed, well-spoken, middle-aged client, Mr. Tillinghast was located by numerous reporters. He was interviewed. His wife was interviewed. He was well known in Worcester, held a responsible position there, and had no discernible motivation for making up outrageous claims. Rather, he had everything to lose.

  As soon as the sightings of the mystery airplane broke in the newspapers, he stepped forward and offered an explanation that was taken very seriously by the nation’s press. Although all of the known airplanes of the period were tiny open biplanes, Mr. Tillinghast described his invention as being a monoplane weighing 1,550 pounds, with a wingspread of 72 feet and an engine of 120 horsepower. It could take off in a small area of about 75 feet, he said, and could travel at the unheard-of speed of 120 miles an hour—2 miles per minute. Sage scientists were then mumbling behind their Ph.D.s that no man could ever travel faster than 60 miles an hour without suffering tremendous pressures and getting his brains scrambled. Racing car driver Barney Oldfield was taking that chance, however. The fighter planes of World War I eventually managed to hit speeds of 125-150 miles an hour. As for the 72-foot wingspan, American bombers of the 1950s, such as the Douglas B-66, had spans ranging from 75 feet to 185 feet (the B-52). Most modern fighters have a span of 30-50 feet. The Douglas DC-9 transport plane (two-engined) has a wingspan of 87 feet 6 inches.

  In short, Mr. Tillinghast’s machine was larger than anything that could have been successfully flown in 1909. It would have probably required much more than 120 horsepower to lift it, and a craft of this size could hardly have taken off in the space of 25 yards. Nor is it likely that any plane, then or now, could have glided for forty-six minutes at the low altitude of 4,000 feet while mechanics tinkered with a recalcitrant engine.

  These facts brand Mr. Tillinghast a liar from the outset. But why? More important, why did he choose to issue this lie at the very moment when a massive UFO flap was about to inundate the New England states?

  He declared that he had made “over 100 successful trips, of which 18 have been in his perfected machine. His latest airplane is so perfect and adjusted so correctly that upon being taken from the shop it immediately made uninterrupted trips covering 56 miles.” (Portland, Oregon, Journal, December 23, 1909)

  The same day that William Leech told his story to the New York press and Mr. Tillinghast made his revelations to reporters in Massachusetts, a man near Little Rock, Arkansas, many hundreds of miles to the southwest of New England, reported seeing an unusual light in the sky.

  According to the Arkansas Gazette (December 15, 1909): “A. W. Norris of Mabelvale, road overseer of District No. 8, is of the opinion that an airship passed over his residence at about 10 o’clock Monday night [December 12]. Mr. Norris states that he was standing in his doorway when a strange light appeared, apparently about 300 feet above him, traveling south at a rapid rate of speed and disappearing a moment or two later in the darkness. He said that the light had the appearance of a searchlight similar to those used on automobiles, and it rose and fell like a bird in flight. The night was cloudy, which precludes the possibility of the light having been a star or any atmospheric phenomena.”

  Our strange aerial lights were apparently back in Arkansas, keeping their usual 10 P.M. timetable. We can’t blame this one on Mr. Tillinghast.

  Things were relatively quiet for the next few days. After his initial press conference, Mr. Tillinghast withdrew and refused to issue further statements. He was supposedly laboring in his secret laboratory, preparing for the enormous wave of sightings that occurred Christmas week, beginning on Monday, December 20.

  Shortly after midnight on the morning of December 20, those residents of Little Rock, Arkansas, who were still awake were amazed to see a very powerful beam of light probing across the southern sky. The Arkansas Gazette (December 20, 1909) said it was “a cylindrical shaft of light, which, arising from the southeast horizon, stretched athwart the firmament far to the east.” The editor consulted astronomers and could find no explanation for the phenomenon.

  At 1 A. M. people around the harbor of Boston, Massachusetts, saw “a bright light passing over.” “Immigration Inspector Hoe …came to the conclusion that it was an airship of some kind” (New York Tribune, December 21, 1909).

  The next night, Tuesday, December 21, the real flap began. At 1:15 A.M. residents of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, saw “two red lights proceeding southward… All were able to make out the outline of the flying machine against the background of the stars” (New York Tribune, December 22,1909).

  At 5:20 P.M. on Wednesday, December 22, a brilliant light appeared over Marlboro, Massachusetts, its powerful “search-light” sweeping the sky. Then it slowly proceeded to Worcester, some sixteen miles distance, where it hovered above the city for a few minutes and then disappeared for two hours. Finally it returned and circled four times above the city, “using a searchlight of tremendous power. Thousands of people thronged
the streets to watch the mysterious visitor.”

  The newspaper reports on this sequence of events are voluminous. Reporters immediately dashed to Mr. Tillinghast’s home in Worcester, where they found the “inventor” absent. His wife told them, “My husband knows his business. He’ll talk when the proper time comes.”

  The following night everyone in New England was out scanning the skies. They were not disappointed. Strange flying lights seemed to be everywhere. They were seen over Boston Common, and throngs in Marlboro, South Framingham, Natick, Ashland, Grafton, North Grafton, Upton, Hopedale, and Northboro witnessed them. Because the lights moved against the wind, balloons were ruled out as an explanation. Something carrying a searchlight that “played from side to side” passed over Willimantic, Connecticut.

  Here is a summary from the Providence, Rhode Island, Journal (December 24, 1909):

  As on Wednesday night, the light was first reported passing over Marlboro about 6:45 o’clock. The light, which was at a height so great as to make impossible a view of its support, disappeared to the southwest in the direction of Westboro and Worcester.

  It was traced from North Grafton, not far from Worcester, through Grafton, North Grafton, Hopedale, and Milford, and then after being lost sight of reappeared in Natick about 7:30 o’clock, going in the direction of Boston. Observers are positive that it was a searchlight. At 7:45 it was seen from Boston Common, by the testimony of several persons, among them men who were at a prominent clubhouse on Beacon Hill.

  At Northboro and Ashland, early in the evening, the population turned out en masse to watch the light pass overhead.

  Observers at several points report that while the light was generally steady, occasionally it flashed, and once or twice it disappeared entirely.