But, many of the ships were actually diverted towards Okinawa, where they built a floating city of warships and research vessels that facilitated the mission to set up an occupational force inside the Lemurian base.
Thousands of sailors worked at the hard task of creating floating airfields, constructing Quonset hut quarters, depots for equipment and munitions and refueling stations. Over the next ten years, resources were concentrated on entering the base and discovering the secrets buried therein.
*****
Keeping such an important discovery secret required a significant effort of its own. Personnel were given intense security screenings. Many candidates could not pass various levels of background investigations that were needed to obtain the trust required to safely handle the knowledge collection efforts surrounding the Lemurians.
A core of secure, dedicated, loyal and almost fanatic officers was tasked to provide near impenetrable methods of safeguarding the data. Great pains were taken to disguise anything having to do with the base, its location or the artifacts being unearthed.
President Harry S. Truman, briefed by Fleet Admiral Ernest King in 1950 regarding the Lemurian base situation, tasked his Vice-President, Alben W. Barkley, to manage the program, with Johnson providing oversight.
Plans were being made to assure the continued secrecy of the project, regardless of whom occupied the White House and any succession of diplomatic positions.
Barkley was able to convince Truman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to use the Korean Conflict as a cover to continue operations in the East China Sea, and this allowed for a vast expansion of resources, both financial and in materiel, for the effort. Strides were made in setting up smaller bases that could be used as strategic areas for deployment of submersibles and divers.
Then, in 1953, the mantle of Executive leadership was passed to Dwight D. Eisenhower.
President Eisenhower, (a contemporary of both Generals Douglas MacArthur and George S. Patton) was briefed regarding the bases and continued to support the mission.
Vice-President Richard M. Nixon was handed the reins to manage the program and was instrumental in assuring that the necessary information was classified and secrecy maintained.
Johnson continued in his position of providing oversight of the project, and he and Nixon became strong political allies behind the scenes.
President Eisenhower, knowing full well the importance of chain of command and adept at conducting these types of controversial operations, directed Johnson and Nixon to assure that the program continued unabated.
*****
More years passed as different Navy programs were undertaken to access the base; they continued to have no success in penetrating to the depths to enter the cavern.
Media inquiries became continuous, and the escalating presence of US Naval vessels clustered in the East China Sea brought international tensions to a boiling point.
In 1957, Vice President Nixon suggested to President Eisenhower that a strategic decision be made to embroil the United States in the ongoing French Indochina War.
He reasoned that entering the conflict would serve several purposes:
1) It would take the attention of the media from the activities in the East China Sea
2) It would allow for the uninterrupted exploration and development of the Lemurian base
3) It would provide a testing ground for new technologies engineered from analysis of Lemurian science
The suggestion was examined by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Secretary of Defense, Thomas S. Gates Jr.
Gates felt that Nixon’s plan was sound and that the outcome would be beneficial in many ways, not the least being control of a potentially dangerous media breach. The plans were put into action, with Nixon now being the responsible executive. Johnson again provided the necessary oversight.
But, the opposition was beginning to appear.
*****
Certain Congressional oversight committees were questioning individual line items in the US Budget that they felt did not map to the Korean efforts.
One such young Senator, John F. Kennedy, from Massachusetts, was given limited access to the program directives and mission.
Kennedy, after being briefed, felt that the people of the United States had a right to know about their tax dollars being expended on this activity. He labeled it “fanciful” and demanded to be given a deeper view of the operation. After some discussion, Nixon and Johnson, along with President Eisenhower, reluctantly agreed that it might be beneficial for an outsider to examine the program in depth. There was an excellent potential that Senator Kennedy might find a facet that had been overlooked.
Kennedy was given full access.
The project continued.
As the decade wore on, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Vice-President Nixon would come to battle Kennedy and other political opponents who felt that more transparency regarding the Lemurian bases would help to end the conflict in Vietnam.
When Eisenhower was leaving the Presidency, Nixon unsuccessfully attempted to gain the role.
John F. Kennedy was elected President, along with his Vice-President, Lyndon B. Johnson.
During his tenure as President, Kennedy had made it clear to Johnson, Nixon, and the other principals involved that he was going to make a priority to bring the discovery of the Lemurian artifacts to light. He had contacted various media outlets, to prepare them for what he was calling “the story of the Century.”
Kennedy’s charisma and his father’s powerful political influence protected him from ridicule or scandal. The antics and peccadillos of his family were either explained away or ignored by the popular Press Corps, and he developed a sense of entitled hubris and immunity that were dangerous.
For the next two years, President Kennedy wrestled with enormous challenges.
The Soviets were posturing and had almost succeeded in implanting nuclear missiles in Cuba.
The fledgling Civil Rights Movement was creating areas of civil unrest.
Advances in space technology by the Soviet Union had led to Kennedy appointing Vice-President Johnson as Chairman of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, (the precursor to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration).
Johnson was increasing aware of Kennedy’s popularity and worried that he might accidentally or intentionally disclose information regarding the Lemurians.
He sought to strengthen his political power within the Executive Branch and drafted an executive order for President Kennedy's signature.
This would give Johnson "general supervision" over matters of national security and would mandate that all government agencies "cooperate fully with the Vice-President in the carrying out of these assignments."
President Kennedy signed a non-binding letter, instead, that requested, ironically, that Johnson be allowed "review" national security policies instead.
Nixon and Johnson decided that, along with other national secrets that the President was threatening to bring to public notice, a different plan needed to be developed that would unquestionably bring the necessary security to the project.
In November of 1963, the plan saw fruition.
Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as President of the United States and was succeeded by Richard Milhous Nixon.
The integrity of the Lemurian project was assured for the next decade.
*****
During the 1960’s, slow progress was being made in developing the needed technology to venture to the bottom of the Okinawa Trough and enter the Lemurian base.
The first US Navy submarine had attempted to enter the cavern in 1948. It had been destroyed by the pressure at depth. Recovery efforts were delayed until almost two years later.
In January 1960, the deployment of the Trieste, which was a Swiss-designed, Italian-built deep-diving research bathyscaphe heralded the beginning of serious progress.
The crew of two, Jacques Piccard (son of the boat's designer Auguste Piccard) and US Navy Li
eutenant Don Walsh achieved the goal of Project Nekton (the code name for the a particular milestone of the Lemurian exploration) by reaching a record maximum depth of about 10,911 metres (35,797 ft), in the deepest known part of the Earth's oceans on January 23, 1960.
This exercise was merely a dress rehearsal to finally uncover the secrets of the Lemurian base.
Many of the famous adventures that were documented in the media over the ensuing years actually were merely different cover operations to mask the development of the Lemurian base.
The French explorer and scientist, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, was approached to assist in the investigation and given grants to develop specialized underwater submersibles.
Cousteau and a group of oceanographers, engineers, and media specialists were allowed to document some of this, to dispel fears that the US Navy was creating advanced weaponry. The National Geographic Society was tasked with assisting in the media efforts of the Cousteau projects and served to distract the public from the actual events undertaken in the Pacific.
Over time, more than thirty special submersibles were developed and outfitted to provide an exploratory force with transportation and supplies to provision the cavern for naval operations.
Included on this roster were the Aluminaut, the Alvin, and the NR-1 Nerwin, which was unique in being the first US Navy nuclear powered research Deep Submersible Vehicle, and rolled on the seabed using large balloon wheels.
*****
The US Navy had managed several breakthroughs in their efforts to enter the cavern since the original Trieste attempts during Project Nekton.
Between September 1965 and May 1966, another bathyscaphe, the Trieste II, commanded by Lieutenant Commander John B. Mooney, Jr., with co-pilot Lieutenant John H. Howland and Captain Frank Andrews, conducted dives in the vicinity of the loss site of the submarine.
(These operations were initiated by the Trieste the year before but were unable to gain access, yet again.)
A second attempt at using the Trieste II later that year provided glimpses of how the US Navy was to eventually be able to successfully enter the caverns safely.
The later loss of a Soviet submarine, the K-129, provided an excellent double-blind cover for the U.S. Navy operations. The fact that the K-129 was not reported lost until March of 1968 was a serendipitous event for the Naval Intelligence community. Disinformation was developed that served to provide the media with a fictitious project undertaken by the Hughes Corporation.
Major news outlets were told that Hughes’ ships, the Glomar Challenger and later the Glomar Explorer, were on science missions seeking manganese nodules from the floor of the ocean.
A false top-secret story was developed that would then be released to the media, that indicated that the real mission had been to recover nuclear missiles from the sunken Soviet sub.
Finally, in 1974, using the newly refitted DSV Alvin, the oceanauts were able to penetrate into the Lemurian base.
*****
Alvin had approached the cavern at a depth of 7,600 feet. The crew became aware of some turbulence, which was initially believed to be from “black smokers”. These were hydrothermal vents that had been encountered off the coast of the Galapagos Islands by Alvin in prior expeditions.
However, there was no visual corroboration of the vents, and Alvin continued to be buffeted as it approached the mouth of the cavern.
Suddenly, the area around the vehicle began to glow with greenish phosphorescence that the crew noted as “St. Elmo’s Fire”. However, at the depth they were presently cruising, no observations had ever been made of such phenomenon.
Alvin pitched forward, and then towards the stern.
There appeared to be a mirror image of the ship as it neared the cavern. The crew was baffled but slowly crept towards their doppelganger.
The hull of Alvin seemed to touch its mate, and then they crew felt the craft being lifted, as they normally did when docking with the mother ship. They sat, dumbstruck, as Alvin was mated to a dry dock carriage of intricate design. Umbilical cables snaked toward all of the relevant power couplings, and a hose attached to the atmosphere exchange unit.
Fresh, cold air began blowing into the cabin. The portal was being unlocked, somehow, and the crew looked at each other grimly, not knowing if they would be killed in the next instant by tons of crushing water.
Instead, the hatch sprung back on its coiled hinges, and a bright bluish-white light shone down into the personnel sphere. Soft, alien-sounding music played above them.
The crew unbuckled their harnesses and climbed out of Alvin. They were inside of an enormous chamber, so big they could not see the other end. It appeared they were on the shore of a large lake. The water was so clear that they could see the bottom of the apparently artificial lake.
Strangely carved, but familiar shapes were placed strategically around the berth in which Alvin had been suspended.
An articulated walkway had automatically extended to the ship, and the Captain disembarked, followed by the pilot. They walked down to the level surface of the dock below and looked again at the strange shapes.
“These are all divots and other mechanical equipment for facilitating any size craft,” said the pilot. “How do they know what the power and water or air requirements are?”
The Captain shrugged, not able to comprehend fully the ability of devices thousands of years old to still function as flawlessly as these had.
The crew performed a superficial survey of the dock area in the immediate vicinity of Alvin for almost an hour, taking pictures and 16mm movies of the cavern. Particular attention was paid to the couplings and umbilicus attached to Alvin.
They returned to the surface uneventfully, unsung heroes in the exploration of the Lemurian legacy.
*****
Once exploration of the intact base had begun, it had been discovered that they had tremendous knowledge regarding architecture, mining and maintaining livable environments under the crushing depths of the oceans.
The United States Navy wasted no time in adapting the design and engineering principles to the creation of advanced technology warships.
Hughes Corporation, using the Hughes Glomar Explorer (HGE), the RAND Corporation, and General Dynamics managed to identify many unique technologies that were incorporated into the nuclear propulsion systems for all United States submersible vessels.
From the analysis of the artifacts, it was evident that the Lemurian scientists had been thousands of years ahead of every other race (save the Martians and Atlantean’s) and their works had survived them long after they had passed into oblivion.
Submariners were carefully indoctrinated, isolated and eventually told of the existence of the secret base. Few hints were made or given by these men as to the secret knowledge to which they were privy.
It was a badge of honor to know and run silent regarding the existence of the base.
*****
Now, (only a few hours before the impact of The Wave), as the USS Pennsylvania entered the massive docks and began maneuvering for its berth, the Captain called for a meeting of his staff officers.
Before disembarking, they held a debriefing about the recent action off the coast of China. Procedures were reviewed and critiqued; individual actions were examined for inefficiency or hesitation in performance and noted.
It was agreed that the official after-action reports were to be dictated and disseminated to the crew with special notice given to the weapons crew on their exceptional performance and reactions to the situation.
Several awards were also to be granted to individual sailors, based on their excellent performance of duties under war conditions.
The Captain dismissed his officers and orders were given regarding shore leave. The Captain then headed to the office of the Admiral to give his personal report.
He decided to order dinner first. He rang the Admiral to suggest they take their meal in the more informal setting of the Officer’s Mess. The Admiral readily agreed; he order
ed his Adjutant to make the proper arrangements for the other officers.
During the meal, the Captain reviewed the activities of the submarine and carefully detailed both his offensive and defensive actions to protect the USS Pennsylvania from enemy forces. Many questions were asked and he answered honestly and succinctly. His answers were carefully noted and the meeting progressed cordially amidst the delicious food and excellent libations.
When he asked for more detail regarding the deployment of the nuclear missiles, he was informed about the apparent attacks on Washington DC and Atlanta Georgia. He was brought up to speed regarding the incoming phenomena of The Wave.
Later in the evening the Captain and the Admiral discussed options concerning the next mission of deployment for the USS Pennsylvania.
Because of the recent hostilities, the Admiral said he wanted to keep the Pennsylvania on a cruising pattern that would keep it away from Asia.
He thought it might be a good idea to instead patrol the waters between New Zealand and Australia.
The Captain was not enthused about this idea and let the Admiral know it. However, the Admiral gently insisted in the way he had and the Captain knew that he would soon be traveling to the land Down Under.
After being dismissed, the Captain went back to his cabin on board the Pennsylvania and poured himself a cup of tea. He sat brooding and thoughtful in the darkness of his berth for over an hour. Something was not adding up in his critical mind.
The answers that he had gotten regarding the attack on China were in his opinion, not very substantial.
This bothered him greatly. He had never openly challenged the Admiral regarding his orders for any deployment before. But he had deep reservations about traveling so far off their usual pattern.
The mission of the USS Pennsylvania was nominally to provide protection in a zone around Okinawa, patrolling as far north as the East China Sea. Once, they had been deployed to a troubled area in the Middle East, but that was only for a particular show of force for one of the Fleet Admiral’s benefit.
Terminal Reset Omnibus: The Coming of The Wave Page 18
