by Timothy Good
In Secrets of Antigravity Propulsion, Paul LaViolette traces the history of research into “antigravity,” focusing for example on ground-breaking experiments into “electrogravitics” by the physicist Thomas Townsend (“Towny”) Brown, who in 1928 patented his invention of a “gravitator” motor. Later, Brown developed further projects, and there is evidence that he was involved with other top scientists in the highly classified so-called “Philadelphia Experiment” in 1943.5
“In an effort to secure government funding,” LaViolette reports, “Brown wrote a proposal in 1952 urging the Navy to initiate a highly secret project to develop a manned flying saucer as the basis of an interceptor with Mach 3 capability and proposed that this might follow along the same lines as the Manhattan [Engineering] District Project, which developed the atomic bomb…. This confidential January 1953 submittal was code-named Project Winterhaven.” And in 1960 he produced a report titled “Electrohydrodynamics,” proposing a vertical takeoff aero-marine vehicle powered by a high-voltage “flame-jet generator.”6 The design is remarkably similar to that of George Adamski’s iconic “scoutcraft.” Interestingly, Adamski himself was averse to the expression “antigravity.” In his final book, published in 1961, he wrote that “many writers have referred to ‘antigravity’ devices, and in our scientific researches the idea has been introduced that gravity can be wrestled to a standstill. This is not an efficient approach.
“Space ships that today are visiting our world from other planets operate on a ‘pro-gravitic’ principle, using the natural forces instead of attempting to fight them. Since these ships operate on electrostatic power, it would be useless for them to fight the geomagnetic forces, since Earth’s geomagnetic field alone has an electrical potential of billions of volts….
“A flying saucer, or ‘pro-gravitic’ craft, operates by generating its own gravitational field, which surrounds it in a generally spherical pattern. This field is adjusted to resonate, or blend in harmony with the planet’s geomagnetic field. The resonating gravitational field causes the ship to be weightless. In this weightless or balanced condition, the ship, wherever it may be, can be moved by a relatively slight thrust…. Within its self-generated pro-gravitic field, the saucer can travel at a rate exceeding the speed of light!”7
A privately owned London-based aviation intelligence firm, Aviation Studies (International), evidently took Brown’s efforts seriously. And in an edition of their Aviation Report in October 1954, the company, citing Brown’s Winterhaven project proposal, indicated that the Pentagon was on the verge of funding the development of electrogravitic aircraft.8 LaViolette adduces numerous other examples proving that such craft were literally taking shape. In another Aviation Report (December 9, 1955), it was stated that companies studying the implications of gravitics included Glenn Martin, Convair, Sperry-Rand, Sikorsky, Bell, Lear Inc., and Clarke Electronics. And in an article two months later, Aviation Report quotes Glenn Martin as alleging that “gravity control could be achieved in six years,” but that it would necessitate a type of highly classified effort along the lines of the Manhattan Engineering District Project. The report also confirmed that research was also being conducted in Britain, Canada, France, Germany, and Sweden. One year later, Aviation Studies confirmed that “Electrostatic discs can provide lift without speed … and a program in hand may now ensure that development of large-sized discs will be continued.”9
“In secret studies and laboratories of the mighty of this world,” reported Adamski to his co-workers, following his return from a world tour in 1959, “it is already quite well known how to make use of certain sources of free energy; for instance, canceling gravity, devices for creating electrostatic magnetism, etc. They already have models for antigravity cars and antigravity-propelled objects in disc form. But none of these methods for application of a kind of free energy must be revealed to the public, because such a society in possession of these advanced methods would soon escape from economic control.”
Coincidently, LaViolette points out that, around 1959, openness about gravity technology programs decreased substantially.10 Since that period, it has remained among the most highly classified, so-called “deep black” Special Access Programs (SAPs). Periodically, however, witnesses come forward who have observed test flights of highly advanced craft.
A Canadian Disc
Also in 1959, the Avro VZ-9AV Avrocar, a disc-shaped, jet-propelled vehicle designed by John Frost and built by A. V. Roe Ltd. of Canada, was first “flown.” It was powered by three Continental J69 engines driving a central fan which provided “a peripheral air curtain and ground cushion for vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) operation.”11 Following unsuccessful trial hovering flights, the program was canceled a few years later, despite extravagant claims made for its performance. A 1955 CIA memorandum notes, interestingly, that “Mr. Frost is reported to have obtained his original idea for the flying machine from a group of Germans just after World War II….”12
In the opinion of several experts, the VZ-9 was a smoke screen. Lieutenant Colonel George Edwards (USAF, retired), for example, is said to have revealed that he and others involved in the project were aware from the outset that it would never be successful. “Although we weren’t cut in on it,” he stated, “we knew that the Air Force was secretly test-flying a real alien spacecraft. The VZ-9 was to be a cover, so the Pentagon would have an explanation whenever people reported seeing a saucer.”13
Robert Bracken, a Canadian aviation authority, sent me a photograph of an actual flying disc (reproduced in the photo section), the negative of which had been loaned to him in 1995 by a Royal Canadian Air Force officer who had served in the 1970s. “It is not the Avrocar, but it is a real ‘aircraft,’” Bracken explained, “with a round ‘fuselage,’ twin triangular fins with racing stripes, and what looks like a converted F-86 or CF-100 canopy on top. I asked him all about this ‘aircraft’: he would not say much, but suggested [the photo] was taken at De Havilland.”14
In conversation with a uniformed officer at the Fort Eustis Museum, Virginia, where one of the Avrocars is displayed, researcher George Myers was informed that the VZ-9 was the initial step to a successful program in which a disc-shaped aircraft flew to twenty thousand feet. It is quite likely that this is the craft depicted in the photograph, which evidently betrays no signs of a conventional powerplant.
Area 51
In the early 1960s, Mike Hunt, who held a “Q” clearance from the Atomic Energy Commission and an inter-agency top-secret clearance, observed one such craft, at Groom Dry Lake in Area 51, which he guessed was twenty or thirty feet in diameter. He also claimed to have been present on several occasions when the “flying saucer” was taking off or landing, although he was never allowed actually to observe it. Hunt believed that a highly secret program known as “Project Red Light” or “Redlight”—connected to the discs—was in operation at Area 51 at that time.15
“We talked about Area 51 years ago, and at that time I only knew it as a place where we tested our most advanced aircraft,” a friend informed me. “In fact, right up to my retirement two years ago, that was what I knew. At the end of my career, there was a program I was on that required a new development at Area 51. Aviation Week reported the existence of this building and the UFO enthusiasts who spied on Groom Lake caught sight of [it], and others wondered what it might be. In fact, it was business as usual with ground support for flight tests.
“Just yesterday I spoke again with a retired Lockheed mechanic [who] told me that he had worked with half a dozen other men at Area 51 in the nineties. Within five working years of working on that project, six of his buddies had died of cancer. He, however, did not have that problem because he said that he had only worked there about two months, whereas they stayed for two years…. Apparently his diabetes has affected one of his legs, which now needs to be amputated. So with a bleak and possibly short future to look forward to, he told me that the reason he left after two
months was because the project scared him. The government had disassembled a flying disc and was building tooling to reassemble the thing. It was very large and had more height than the typically depicted flying saucer. He said that it was definitely not from here. He left the program as soon as he could….”
Further Developments
In a publication of Borderland Sciences Research Foundation in 1967, an article on the infiltration of the U.S. government by aliens, based on a lecture by one Gordon Shandley, created a stir. “Those familiar with this field took Mr. Shandley’s entertaining revelations in their stride,” explained the writer, “but the ‘newcomers’ received the shock of their lives as they listened to this Army Air Corps pilot (1941 clearance Top Secret) expound matter-of-factly on the various types of UFOs as casually as though he were discussing the latest models put out by General Motors.
“Most of Mr. Shandley’s research in this field stresses the scientific and technical side; but his association with George Adamski, prior to the latter’s death some time ago, acquainted him with the philosophical and religious framework of space….
“Mr. Shandley’s elaboration upon the nature of the spaceships revealed that the large mother ships rarely come into the Earth’s atmosphere. The saucers are contact discs operated by remote control from the main ship…. An ionization force is placed around the ship to protect it. A magnetic screen will plow a path ahead of the ship in its course through space…. Apparently the space people have gained comprehension of an unbelievably complex array of one-inch-thick invisible lines of force, none of which touch one another. If these lines do cross, a death ray is produced inimical to anything in its path.
“Although Earth has been visited by beings from other planets since the time higher forms of life developed here, their most recent attention has been sparked by our atomic explosions and the radar we bounced off the Moon….
“It seems that our government is as infiltrated by spacemen as it is supposed to be by Communists—only with better intentions. Their purpose is to aid us spiritually and technically. Mr. Shandley spoke of having consulted personally with at least six individuals from other planets who in an unobtrusive way volunteered information aiding him in his research. Scientific laboratories have also received the benefit of extraterrestrial knowledge. Mr. ‘Man-from-Venus’ will pose as a second or third laboratory assistant. Then, when his suggestions have been adopted, he will quietly melt away and move on to some other spot….
“John Q. Public, though conceding God’s place in heaven, was nevertheless jolted on learning that said heaven was more thickly populated than was formerly suspected … several brisk questions were directed to Mr. Shandley regarding the credentials of these interplanetary visitors…. Mr. Shandley calmly replied that their identity was confirmed by Government top brass, and more than this he could not part with as things were coming dangerously near to trespassing on Top Secret territory. The U.S. government, while completely cognizant of interplanetary beings, has formulated a twenty-year education program for the public…. The idea is to break everybody in gradually, by emphasis on outer space exploration, rockets, etc., through news and TV media, which will in time lead to an admission of the true nature of these strange objects…. Until this period of time is up, the Air Force officially will continue to manifest a state of amnesia on UFO reports.”16
White Sands
One of my sources served with the U.S. Army from 1969 to 1972. “In my initial six months of service,” he reported to me, “I was assigned to the Pentagon in a position that was reasonably uninteresting. During that time, living in and around Washington, D.C., I met with a gentleman who was working the electrical side of hot-rodding VW Beetles. Mine was one of his projects….
“One evening, over a couple of beers, he showed me photos of a ‘hot-rod’ version of a flying saucer he took at White Sands Missile Range. He had been employed by a contractor involved in a construction project there in the late 1960s, and the photos I was shown were less than three years old. The photos depicted the saucer-shaped craft maneuvering at about two thousand feet, then flying and hovering at fifty to a hundred feet, and landing. The closest shot was taken from about thirty feet away, when the hatch opened.
“There were no images of the personnel piloting the saucer, but he made it clear to me that these vehicles were ours, or at least under U.S. military control. The craft parked gave one the impression that the disc was about eighteen feet in diameter. My presumption here is based on my calculation from a three-foot-wide hatchway. It was a medium silver/gray color. The surface skin had a texture—not a rough profile texture, but a smooth and sort of porous-looking texture. To me, it looked like a sheet of aluminum or titanium that had been overheated, then cooled slowly rather than quenched. I recall that the sunlight reflected oddly on the craft, [giving] a pale orange-ish/silver-ish appearance. I drew my rendition in PowerPoint [see below], which has limited tools.”17
“Could you help me to distinguish between the types of craft that are constructed here, ‘under license’ as it were, and the ‘real McCoy’?” I asked Fred Steckling in 1976.
“Well, as far as I have found out from my sources,” he replied, “the Air Force has managed to build several types of these scout ships, and they are not quite as sophisticated as the ones that they have on other planets. They look the same, and they do move around in our atmosphere, but they are not capable of going twenty thousand miles per hour in our atmosphere, because the knowledge that we have so far is to extend force-fields around this vehicle to protect it from any friction, and blend it. Actually, when the spacemen move with this spacecraft, it blends with our atmosphere; it does not force itself into the air, like a jet does, and we do not quite have this knowledge.
“I only know that what we have at the moment is a craft that uses mirror systems … we have a craft that looks like a doughnut: it has a hole in the center and it has a different arrangement of mirrors built in, so that when the craft is up about two, three hundred feet, hovering, they can, by reflecting the light around it, camouflage it with the background well enough so that if you really didn’t know, you wouldn’t see it….
“George Adamski said to me, before he passed on [in 1965], that ‘the Boys’ [as he called his alien friends] had just returned from Russia and they told him that the Russians had developed a scout ship that looked like the one from Venus. It could move around in our atmosphere quite well, and they were going to work on a modification which would take approximately nine months and then they could go to the Moon with it. By 1966, the ship should have been ready to go to—we had not yet landed an astronaut there so, technically speaking, the Russians were capable of visiting the Moon long before we had our astronauts up there….
“I know that nations work closer together than we think. This atmosphere of ‘communism’ as the enemy, the escalation of war material, and so on, are a clever set-up to keep our industries from going bankrupt. In other words, ‘no breakage, no makeage.’ So you know they’re working together….”18
Lockheed Skunk Works
Brad Sorensen, an aviation designer who works mostly for aerospace companies, reported to aviation illustrator Mark McCandlish that during an air show at Norton Air Force Base, California, on November 12, 1988, he was invited by a wealthy former secretary or undersecretary of defense to visit a huge hangar at the base, surrounded by a cordon of military police armed with M-16s. Sorenson’s companion asked one of the guards to fetch an acquaintance of his, the man in charge of the show. When he appeared, it was clear that the two men recognized each other. Queried about Sorensen’s presence, the retired Defense source said Sorensen was his “aide.” Reportedly, the men were then escorted into “the Big Hangar” (as it was called) and shown some highly classified exotic aircraft, including three fully functioning flying saucers.
“At this point, the story becomes somewhat confusing,” explains Richard Dolan, the distinguished h
istorian and researcher. “Sorensen originally told McCandlish and others that the exhibit of exotic craft took place within the Big Hangar. In later tellings, he added a twist: that in fact the demonstration did not occur at Norton. Rather, the group was escorted aboard an Air Force passenger jet and flown fifty miles northwest to Palmdale. They arrived at the Lockheed Skunkworks facility at the west end of the complex, and it was here that the entire exhibit was held. It appears Sorensen was originally trying to withhold certain pieces of the story.
“They entered the Lockheed hangar, and it was obvious that the exhibit was for politicians and military officials who were cleared for high-security information. As McCandlish and aviation researcher Michael Schratt later put it, ‘the express purpose of the exhibit was to garner additional support for classified “black,” or SAR “special access required” programs.’”
As soon as they walked in the huge hangar, Sorensen received a warning from the former Defense official. “There are a lot of things in here that I didn’t expect they were going to have on display—stuff you probably shouldn’t be seeing,” he advised. “So, don’t talk to anybody, don’t ask any questions, just keep your mouth shut, smile and nod, but don’t say anything—just enjoy the show.”
Among the first craft they were shown was a flattened football, diamond-shaped craft, known as the Pulser or “Flaming Pumpkinseed,” an unmanned vehicle supposedly capable of launching nuclear warheads within less than a tenth of a second (an absurdly short time). According to Schratt, eighteen of these vehicles were built during the Reagan administration.19 Sorensen told McCandlish that after he had been shown this and other craft, he noted a large black curtain dividing the hangar into two different areas. “Behind these curtains was another big area, and inside this area they had all the lights turned off.
