Hart solemnly stated that it was he who advised the inventor to use his airship as a vessel of war, since he thought that "an airship might not be a very profitable vessel of communication for ordinary commercial purposes." Instead, Hart related to a reporter, the vessel should be used for military purposes. "I advised the inventor and he agreed with my views, that he could employ his invention in war. I assure you that I believe that by means of this airship a great city could be destroyed in forty-eight hours." Apparently Hart's idea was so well taken that Hart even declared: "You know the idea is not to get it patented, but to use it for war purposes. "28
If Collins talked too much and changed his statement in the end, Hart outdid Collins in both respects. During another interview he stated that the airship was "about 125 feet and of a width in proportion to his length." Also, the inventor was now planning an airship of 50 feet in length, "to be used for war purposes principally," since the 125 feet one was "too large" and "used up too much power in running against the wind — that is, it presents too much surface to the wind." The second airship would be constructed in the locality of Bolinas.29 The proposed attack would only cost the Cuban junta $10,000,000, and the United States would not become involved in the affair, since "the parties could go outside the jurisdiction on a chartered or purchased steamer and sign the contract and make all of the agreements necessary."30
During another interview, Hart changed his description of the airship considerably. Now it did have the characteristics of a balloon: "The second ship will resemble the first. ...The sustaining power is supplied from gas tanks, which are in the hull of the vessel and which are connected with the balloon which flies over the airship by a pipe. When the inventor wants to go up higher he lets more gas into the balloon out of the tanks, which are filled with condensed gas. When the inventor wants to fly lower he simply opens a valve in the balloon and the contrivance naturally descends, just as an ordinary balloon does."31
Also, around this time Hart stopped making references to the Eastern invention. Instead he was wholly focused on the Californian airships, of which, we learn to our amazement, not one or two, but now three were in existence: "One... was of large size, capable of carrying three persons, the machinery, the fixtures and 1,000 pounds of additional weight, and another that was much smaller, capable of carrying one man, the machinery, fixtures and 500 or 600 pounds of other matter."
The inventor was also at work on the construction of a third airship "which is to be more commodious and more perfect than the other two." The airship was so constructed that if it fell in the water it could be used as a boat "by detaching a portion of the airship." The inventor had three assistants with him, all of whom were mechanics. Hart also told that the inventor used two kinds of power, gas and electricity. Sometimes gas or sometimes electricity would produce the light.32
But, as history has decreed, Havana would not be bombed by an airship, and towards December, 1896 Hart too would sink in a sea of contradictions and ultimately disappear from the pages of history. Several authors have pondered over his strange role in the whole affair. It is suggested that Hart, who owned "the only mine in the world where osmium is found in metal form," was a hustler: the osmium of his mine was used in the manufacture of electric storage batteries, which, as Hart stressed on several occasions, were parts of the construction of the airship. It is suggested therefore that Hart was perhaps planning a scheme to enrich himself, although no evidence has surfaced that he ever did.33
Why Collins came forward in the first place is even more uncertain. The opinion of eminent UFO historian Jerome Clark in his recent excellent summary of the 1896 airship wave is that a century later, it has become impossible to judge what, if any, truth lay behind the claims of Collins and Hart. "Conceivably they were truthfully passing on what they had been told by clients who for their part were less than honest. ...All that is clear.. .is that someone was lying." (Clark's italics)34
But in order to understand that not all that Collins and Hart had said was nonsense, and to fully appreciate their statements, which quite possibly originated from Astor, we must look at the curious history of Charles August Dellschau and his encoded manuscripts, with which he left a legacy of continuing puzzlement.
Charles August Dellschau (1830-1923) will probably always remain a mystery, a shadowy figure for whom history has reserved no place. What we know of his life easily fits in a paragraph or two. Dellschau was born in Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1850. He then went to Galveston, Texas, but his own testimony places him in the mining towns of Sonora and Columbia, California, in the 1850s. It is not known what Dellschau did after these years, or where he went. We do know that he went to Houston, Texas, in 1886. There he married a widow and worked at the company that her family owned. In his latter years he would visit the company's store and would occupy himself by sweeping the floors. In 1908 he began with his manuscripts, homemade scrapbooks, eventually devoting all his time and becoming a furtive recluse. He spent his last years in a room, still working laboriously on his scrapbooks until he died in 1923.
In the end he would leave a dozen or more scrapbooks, each filled with numerous designs of airships, each drawing carefully laid out, and some drawn on a grid and watercolored. It is suggested that at one time Dellschau had help with these drawings, since some of them are drawn in a different hand than his. As aviation history expanded, he adorned every page of his scrapbooks with newsclippings, eventually leaving no room for his drawings with the exception of fanciful borders and patterns with which he decorated all the pages. During World War I, he filled some of his scrapbooks with war pictures from the newspapers.
Interspersed among all of the clippings and his drawings were notations and cryptic notes, which obviously carried a hidden message. It was from these notes that researcher P.G. Navarro was able to reconstruct the story that Dellschau apparently wanted to make known, but only after someone had deciphered the code. This code was written in symbols which were unique, although Navarro found superficial resemblances with the secret writings of several known secret societies. It seems that Dellschau was only reluctantly writing down his fantastic story, written down in a manner that would discourage all but the most determined researcher. Dellschau wrote: "You, Wonder Weaver, will unriddle these writings... which are my stock of open knowledge." What his writings yielded after their decipherment was the amazing story of the enigmatic Dellschau and his activities with the equally mysterious Sonora Aero Club, and those who were members of this most secret society with him. And while all this was fantastic, the riddle posed another mystery; for behind the secret Sonora Aero Club loomed another, even more secret powerful organization, known only as NYZMA.
From the interpretation of Dellschau's writings, he and a small group of associates gathered in Sonora, California, where they formed an "Aeroy Club" which they called "the Sonora Aero Club" in 1858 after becoming associated with the even more mysterious organization NYZMA. The Sonora Aero Club eventually grew to a membership consisting of some 62 members or associates, mostly German immigrants, Englishmen, some Spanish or Mexican members and one Frenchman. There are indications that they built their first airship in 1857 and that the motors were invented or made in 1856.
The Sonora Aero Club was dedicated to the designing and construction of navigable aircraft. The group worked in secrecy, and the rules of secrecy had to be strictly observed. "They were obviously members of a larger organization of which the Sonora Aero Club was but a small branch," Navarro writes. Members were not permitted to talk openly about their work or their airships, called "Aeros," nor were they permitted to use the aeros for profit making. Anyone who went against the dictates or rules of the society was summarily dealt with.
About the identity of NYZMA, Dellschau said little, if anything. The only allusions in many of his notations is that the Sonora Aero Club was under the direction of an organization called NYZMA, which was located "somewhere back East." Its unnamed superiors were overseeing and fin
ancing the activities of the Sonora Aero Club. The superiors were definitely not government authorities, for Dellschau, in his ambiguous way, states that a government official who somehow learned of their work once approached club members with the suggestion that they design and sell their aeros as weapons of war. The suggestion was turned down. The Sonora Aero Club was against war and dreaded the eventual conversion of their aircraft designs for war purposes, or, as Astor writes about his airships, "Having as their halo the enforcement of peace, they have in truth taken us a long step towards heaven."35
The Sonora Aero Club designed and proposed a large number of aeros, including many ideas for motor designs, stabilizers and other gadgetry. But judging from Dellschau's drawings, it is difficult to believe that these machines were ever capable of flight. For instance, the bodies of the airships are radically out of proportion to the gas bag or balloon, which was supposed to lift the airship in the air. The gas that was used to lift the airships was no ordinary gas. According to Dellschau, the substance that they used was a fuel which, when injected into a chamber containing a drum-like device which soaked up the liquid fuel, produced a gas which Dellschau designates as "NB" gas. This gas not only provided the motive power for the airship, but also had the capacity to negate weight. "Incredible as it may seem," writes Navarro, "Dellschau was talking here about antigravity. ...It does not say that it lifted the weight, but that it 'negated' or 'eliminated' weight." The NB gas was produced from a substance called "supe," and apparently only one man in the organization knew the complete formula for the manufacture of this important ingredient.
This man was Peter Mennis and he not only designed and built the first motor, but he probably also discovered the substance known as NB. The group seems not to have been a harmonious one; Mennis, for instance, did not share the formula of the gas with other members, and Dellschau's tale is riddled with strange and violent deaths of group members and sudden accidents. In fact, in some cases, the group members were even working against each other. Nevertheless, if we are to believe Dellschau's incredible tale, it was Peter Mennis who was the first person to successfully fly a navigable aircraft called the Aero Goosy.
This airship was a small craft with a basket-like affair in which the pilot was seated. At both ends of the basket were rigid chambers in which the power units were located. There the gas was produced and then directed into the two balloons on either side of the basket. In the center and attached to a pole was the air-pressure motor and the fuel container. Above this was an umbrella-like device, and once again we see a curious relation with Hart's descriptions, and at the bottom of the airship was a shock absorber which was called a "Falleasy." The airship had wheels to enable it to drive on the ground. Other drawings from Dellschau's scrapbooks suggest that the airship was also capable of sea travel.
Peter Mennis died during a fire accident. It is not clear if his death was foul play, but after his demise, the Sonora Aero Club was unable to produce the so-important NB gas. After his death the picture emerges that the group fell in disarray, although Dellschau is not too clear on this point. What happened to the mysterious NYZMA is also unknown. Dellschau's scrapbooks are not light-hearted reading, instead he paints a somber picture. The symbol of the crossbones and skull, which is also used by the freemasonic fraternity, is predominant in many of Dellschau's plates. There is also a vertical line of ciphers which contain the word "todt," which is the German word for death. Throughout the scrapbooks, he often uses the symbol of the skull and crossbones and the reference to death.36
Navarro's thorough research failed to uncover any evidence that there had ever existed a Sonora Aero Club in or around Sonora that was involved in the construction and flying of airships. He did find, though, that certain events which Dellschau described as having taken place in Sonora did actually happen, and although a local towns historian suggested to Navarro that if something might indeed have taken place in total secrecy, definite evidence until now has not been found.
But it is important at this point to remember rumors that are now a century old. At the time that Collins was making wild claims in the San Francisco press and Keely was busy trying to perfect his system for aerial navigation in Philadelphia, certain residents from Oroville alleged that somewhere in the vicinity of their town in a thickly wooded area where no one ever ventured, unnamed secretive parties were experimenting with a new kind of gas. While this rumor was started at least 40 years after the period in which the Sonora Aero Club allegedly operated, the similarities are striking and there is no exact date as to when the Sonora Aero Club — if it existed — fell in disarray.
Yet somebody in America carefully monitored the developments in California, this much we can distill from the few statements that Dellschau made concerning NYZMA. Perhaps that somebody was also instrumental in forging a cloak of secrecy that surrounded the device for lifting heavy weights that Keely allegedly made in 1881 for an unidentified gentleman in California.
Perhaps somebody was also carefully following Keely's progress in Philadelphia, for if there ever was a strictly secret organization involved in the overseeing of aeronautical endeavors, Keely's antigravity research, regularly published in newspapers across America, would certainly have drawn the attention of such an alleged group. This in turn might explain the sudden withdrawal of Keely's antigravity instruments in 1898, coincidentally the year after the great airship wave stopped.
Also, Delisle Hay's cryptic 1881 novel Three Hundred Years Hence suddenly obtains a different dimension, especially the parts on the zodiacal force and of lucegen, the astonishingly lighter-than-air gas which alters its volume and thus its buoyancy when an electrical current is passed through it. And Hart's statements about "an invention in the East," or of the employment of gas and electricity, suddenly make more sense when seen against the backdrop ofKeely's researches in Philadelphia, Dellschau's strange tale, and when compared to Delisle Hay's cryptic novel.
Dellschau never disclosed the identity of NYZMA, except that he vaguely stated that this parent organization was located in the East. In the latter part of 1848, R. Porter & Co., a firm which listed its address as Room 40 of the Sun Building in New York, distributed an advertising flyer in the Eastern parts of America. The flyer read in part that the company was making active progress in the construction of an "Aerial Transport" or an "aerial locomotive" that would take passengers between New York and California. The Aerial Transport would be put into operation on April 1, 1849, but as far as we know, no such thing happened in 1849.37
Also living in New York was millionaire John Jacob Astor, inventor and acquaintance of both Keely and Tesla, who almost half a century later chose to use the term apergy which he borrowed from Greg's Across the Zodiac. It is inviting to speculate that Astor's literary borrowing was, on another level, meant as a subtle hint; that NYZMA perhaps means the New York Zodiacal Motor Association. We might envision behind that name an extremely wealthy and ultra-secret group that had mastered atmospheric and perhaps even space flight with exotic propulsion systems partially based on Keely's concepts, but this we do not know for sure. What we have seen, however, is that there is a large part of history that offers enough clues inviting us to theorize that in fact there always has been an exclusive underground that did possess certain advanced alternative technical means. Those means often surpassed conventional well-known technical achievements of the time-period or took a radical departure from known scientific doctrine.
Free Energy Pioneer- John Worrell Keely Page 46