anatomy
of a hoax
Above: From July, 1945, silhouetted against canvas, personnel at the Trinity test site near Alamogordo, New Mexico, load a plutonium core into the explosive shell of "the gadget" -- nickname for the world's first nuclear weapon, the penultimate development of the top-secret "Manhattan Project".
IN THE END it all came down to the word of one man.
For seven years, the man said, he had been involved in "top secret defense projects" and "had played a part in 35,000 experiments on land, sea, and air, involving 1,700 scientists".
His role in the billion-dollar project, the man said, was "to direct a division of top scientists" in the "electromagnetic branch of science".
So vital was his research, the man said, that though the details of the fabled Manhattan Project -- the super-secret effort to produce the world's first atomic bomb -- were now widely publicized, his group's work was still being kept hidden from the public eye by layers of military security.
And it was in his role as the leading magnetic research scientist for this top-secret project, the man said, that in 1948 the military summoned him to examine a flying saucer which had crashed in New Mexico, along with its dead occupants from another planet.
THE MAN HAD FIRST confided his pivotal role in the investigation of crashed saucers to one Silas M. Newton of Colorado, an oilman with whom the magnetic research scientist would join in business immediately after leaving government service in July, 1949.
Newton himself had decades behind him in the petroleum industry and had discovered -- so Newton said -- that oil in place lying many miles underground could be located using microwave technology of Newton's own design.
In a stroke of brilliant good fortune -- again, according to Newton -- Newton's new partner had drawn upon his extensive knowledge and experience as a magnetic research scientist to invent a device which measured magnetic energy, enabling him to determine the volume of oil in any deposit which Newton might locate through the use of Newton's microwave device. Together with their proprietary inventions, Newton and the magnetic research scientist seemingly had a fool-proof method to find and exploit major undiscovered oil deposits lying untapped deep beneath the Earth's surface, promising untold wealth ahead.
And thus it was merely incidental that Newton began spreading the magnetic research scientist's story of crashed flying saucers and their dead occupants from another planet in casual conversation with others.
AT FIRST the magnetic research scientist's tale had spread slowly, as Newton confided the details to two other friends. One of these was a Denver radio advertising salesman named George Koehler. The second -- and eventually key to the story becoming widespread -- was Newton's valued friend, Frank Scully, a columnist for the show-business trade publication Variety, and author of several best-selling books.
The first of these two friends, George Koehler, began spreading the story of crashed discs and dead aliens to his own associates in Denver. Koehler's associates then brought others into the circle -- notably one Rudy Fick of Kansas, who repeated the story first to friends and neighbors in Kansas and then to a reporter. The reporter wrote up the story for the Kansas-based Wyandotte Echo, and the story was soon repeated in other newspapers, including the Kansas City Star. Still more newspapers sparked off the original story and did their own investigative stories which were themselves repeated -- for instance, a lengthy interview with Koehler by Amarillo, Texas Globe-News editor Wes Izzard was reprinted in the Atchison, Kansas Daily Globe.
But even as Koehler was peddling the tale through word of mouth, Silas Newton's friend Frank Scully was introducing it to a wider audience through his own column for Variety -- as for instance, in describing a crashed saucer in an October, 1949, piece...
It was 100 feet across, with a cabin in the center that measures 18 feet in diameter and 72 inches high... sixteen men, intact but charred black, were found in the cabin. The space ship contains two metals never found so far on this earth.
And Silas Newton himself spread the story somewhat randomly, as reported in this letter from the Los Angeles office of the FBI to the Los Angeles-based Air Force 18th District Office of Special Investigations, passing on a tip it had received from actor Bruce Cabot, telling of a curious incident while golfing in Los Angeles...
CABOT overheard NEWTON talking about a magnetic radio the latter had in his possession and which he claimed had come from a flying disc which had crashed in New Mexico. NEWTON, who claimed to be in the oil business, had the radio with him at the golf course. CABOT described the radio as being about 7x2x2 inches.
NEWTON further advised CABOT that he and an unnamed scientist were using the radio as a 'doodle bug' to find oil deposits in the ground. NEWTON stated that several of the flying discs had recently crashed in New Mexico, Arizona and Maine. He also told CABOT that the discs had contained men and that he had bits of cloth at home from the clothing of these men. In addition, NEWTON claimed to have piece of metal from the gears of the disc.
Newton's actions also began to receive broadcast attention, as in a Los Angeles morning radio program in which local broadcaster Sam Hayes...
...announced in effect that a party at a Hollywood country club had stated that he had information on flying discs and that the discussion took place over a round of drinks at the "nineteenth hole" of the local golf course and that the "story got better with each drink."
Not long after, a local radio station in Virginia broadcast a similar story, reported in a national newswire article...
Another "flying saucer" report cropped up yesterday.
Radio Station WRVA at Richmond, Va., reported that the wreckage of a spaceship had been found with some 12 dead crew members aboard. It said the disc was powered by small engines the size of a basketball and were made of unfamiliar metal. The space-traveling victims, it said, were much smaller than earthmen and wore clothing similar to that worn on this planet during the 15th Century.
And so between October, 1949 and February, 1950 the story gathered momentum as it crossed first from coast to coast, and then even to further shores. But it was with a decision by Newton to present a lecture to a basic science class at the University of Denver in March, 1950, that the wave of rumors telling of crashed discs and their dead crewmembers from another planet would reach its first crest.
THE CIRCUMSTANCES surrounding the lecture remain sketchy in detail six decades hence. Frank Scully would later write that the "negotiations between the faculty and the spokesman for the lecturer took months to arrange". However, that "spokesman for the lecturer" -- Newton's friend George Koehler -- would tell a reporter that "he had been badgered for several months by a student friend wanting to learn the true story of the flying saucers".
And it was George Koehler who would bring Newton before the class, albeit pseudonymously, as later reported in article by reporter Thor Severson in the Denver Post...
The flying saucer . . .
Does it exist?
If it does, is it born of the earth planet or is it interplanetary...
Wednesday . . . a stranger whose identity was shrouded in a cloak of carefully spun mystery gave some disturbing answers -- this in an address before a classroom of students at the University of Denver.
His fifty-minute address shocked the campus into divided camps -- those who believed, those who scoffed in disbelief. Saturday, his identity was still closely guarded by his sponsor, George Koehler of radio station KMYR. He still was identified only as a "man of science", a man accepted by the University of Denver as of a "mature mind."
And in fact, one report said that during the lecture Newton had been identified only as "Mr. X", while Scully says it was "Scientist X", but in any case Silas Newton was never identified by name until some days later when reporters tracked his true identity down.
What was most notable, however, is that Newton presented the story of the crashed discs to a level of detail never before publicly revealed. The students were told that three saucers had crashed (or at least landed using interplanetary autopilot) and been retrieved by the U.S. government, along with their dead crewmembers (a fourth had landed but upon being spotted had quickly departed again). In all, 34 dead aliens -- ranging in height from 36 to 42 inches -- were now being stored in government laboratories. Remarkably, they were all little men identical to their Earthly counterparts except for their size and perfect teeth. Racially, they "were as fair complexioned as the Anglo-Saxon".
The discs themselves were constructed of a metal unknown on Earth -- extremely light and resistant to temperatures of up to 10,000 degrees -- and assembled without bolts, rivets or screws. Inside the discs were push-button control panels. Also inside were small edible wafers, which greatly expanded upon being placed in water. Scientists had determined that the saucers themselves were propelled through the use of magnetic lines of force, and that they had originated from the planet Venus.
Newton's lecture, understandably, generated some amount of local controversy in Denver, and even made it into the national newswires as part of the coverage of the simultaneously emerging story of Ray Dimmick -- a dynamite salesman who claimed to have just seen the wreckage of a crashed saucer in Mexico (this time with a single dead alien inside). But though Dimmick's story generated far more coverage -- and may have serendipitously deprived Newton's lecture of national news status -- still there was some reprinting of the Denver Post article on Newton's lecture in other newspapers as far north as Canada.
But Ray Dimmick was soon changing the details of his story -- generating even more news coverage -- while public attention to Newton's story of crashed discs and dead alien crewmembers seemingly reached a standstill just after his March, 1950, lecture...
...followed by a period of quietude which would ultimately prove to be but a mere intermission.
Above: Artist (unknown) depiction of scientists with crashed flying saucer in Aztec, New Mexico, based on book by Frank Scully.
SIX MONTHS TO THE DAY following Silas Newton's lecture to a basic science class at the University of Denver, the magnetic research scientist's story of crashed saucers and their dead crewmembers would emerge once again -- not, as before, through ripples of rumor but instead this time trumpeted from coast to coast by way of a new book, Behind the Flying Saucers, by Newton's friend, confidant and columnist for Variety, Frank Scully.
The book caused an immediate sensation, and generated both coverage and controversy nationwide. By October it found a place on the prestigious New York Times bestseller list, where it remained for the rest of the year and into the first weeks of 1951.
In essence the book repeated the details already related by Silas Newton in his March, 1950, lecture in Denver -- in fact the first two chapters of Scully's book were focused on that event. In support of the possible truth of the magnetic research scientist's story the overwhelming majority of the book focused on other matters -- including a recap of flying saucer events since 1947, the public pronouncements of Air Force spokesmen (whom Scully labeled "the Pentagonians"), the story of how Newton, Scully and the magnetic research scientist had all met, a survey of current thinking on interplanetary travel, the views of astronomers, a review of more esoteric possibilities, the history of flying saucer hoaxes, a review of Einstein's theories (which Scully asserts got the speed-of-light-limit wrong), and finally a history of magnetic research (portions of which were so different in style and so textbook-dry that they were almost certainly ghost-written).
But for a book whose very title promised the full story "behind the flying saucers" there was but one scant chapter -- taking up just 14 pages of a 230-page book -- that actually quoted the magnetic research scientist, whom Scully pseudonymously called "Dr. Gee".
And it was "Dr. Gee" -- the sole individual whom it was stated had actually witnessed the events related in Scully's book -- upon whose word the entire story rested...
Chapter 12 -- Inside Flying Saucers:
IT IS an accepted practice in jurisprudence to give the plaintiff enough rope in the hope that he will hang himself and thus spare the defendant the task of doing it by way of rebuttal. On occasion when such a procedure may have left some doubt in the minds of jurors it is up to counsel for the defense to spring a surprise witness, and this I propose to do.
In the summer of 1949, while consorting with men engaged in magnetic research on the Mojave Desert, I met a man of science whose contemporaries rated him the top magnetic research specialist of the United States. He had more degrees than a thermometer and had received them from such diverse institutions as Armour Institute, Creighton University, and the University of Berlin. He is the scientist I have called Dr. Gee.
He had been assigned to direct a division of top scientists during the war. Their task was to knock submarines out of the seven seas and directed-missiles out of the skies by other than the slow and disheartening methods then in use. They conducted 35,000 experiments on land, sea, and air on this defense project. They worked out of two laboratories and had a budget of one billion dollars at their secret command.
Their work has never been publicized, as was the two billion spent on creating the first atomic bomb, first, because defense is never as spectacular as offense and, second, because so much of their work was still uncompleted by the war's end that it has remained top secret to this day. Suffice it to say that it was of magnetic origin.
Long after other scientists were discharged and back in their industrial and scholarly laboratories, these men labored on. The director in fact didn't get even a conditional release until July, 1949.
I met him shortly afterward. He was the man who told us the whole story of the first flying saucer that had landed in the United States. Another had landed in the Sahara before this, but that one was more cracked than a psychiatrist in an auto wreck. But the one he had worked on had gently pancaked to earth like a slow motion of Sonja Henie imitating a dying swan.
Two tenescopes [sic, throughout] caught this unidentified ship as it came into our atmosphere. They watched its position and estimated where it would land. Within a few hours after it landed, Air Force officers reached the flying field at Durango, Colorado, and took off in their search for the object.
When they found it, it was in a very rocky, high plateau territory, east of Aztec, New Mexico. They immediately threw a guard around it. Then Dr. Gee and seven of his group of magnetic scientists were called in to examine this strange ship. When they arrived on the ground they decided that the best thing to do was not to touch it or try to get into it. They studied the ship from a distance for a matter of two days, bombing it with Geiger counters, cosmic rays, and other protective devices.
"Finally, we decided that it was probably safe," the doctor said, "as nothing had transpired inside the ship to indicate that there was life therein. Apparently there was no door to what unquestionably was the cabin. The outside surface showed no marking of any sort, except for a broken porthole, which appeared on first examination to be of glass. On closer examination we found it was a good deal different from any glass in this country. Finally, we took a large pole and rammed a hole through this defect in the ship.
"Having done this, we looked into the interior. There we were able to count sixteen bodies, that ranged in height from about 36 to 42 inches.
"We assumed that there must be a door of some kind, unless these people had been hermetically sealed in a pressurized cabin, so we prodded around with the pole which we had used to push through the opening made through the broken porthole, and on the opposite side from the broken porthole, we hit a knob; or a double knob, to be exact. When we pushed against that double knob, to our amazement and surprise, a door flew open. This enabled us to get into the ship.
"We took the little bodies out, and laid them on the ground. We examined them and their clothing. I remember one of our team saying, 'That looks like the style of 1890.' We examined the bodies very closely and very carefully. They were normal from every standpoint and had no appearance of being what we call on this planet 'midgets.' They were perfectly normal in their development. The only trouble was that their skin seemed to be charred a very dark chocolate color. About the only thing that we could decide at the time was that the charring had occurred somewhere in space and that their bodies had been burned as a result of air rushing through that broken porthole window, or something going wrong with the means by which the ship was propelled and the cabin pressured."
They then began an examination of the ship itself. First they decided to take complete measurements of the ship from the outside. The skin was aluminum colored.
"Reports that had appeared from time to time in the papers about these strange visitors," continued Dr. Gee, "had always been to the effect that 'they looked like flying saucers.' With this ship on the ground we could not help but be aware of the fact that it looked like a huge saucer, and you might almost say that there was a cup in it, because the cabin set [sic] in an insert in the bottom of the saucer. The overall dimensions of the ship were found to be a fraction short of 100 feet in diameter. To be exact it measured 9999⁄100 feet wide. From the outer tip of the wing, which was entirely circular, to the bottom of the saucer, measuring in an imaginary line vertically, was 27 inches. The cabin which was entirely round, was 18 feet across, and 72 inches in height. Exactly 45 inches of the cabin was exposed above the outer rim of the saucer. The portholes were located in this area."
On getting into the ship, the doctor said, their first objective was to decide, if they could, how the ship was propelled. He was the first to suggest that it probably flew on magnetic lines of force. Some of his staff suggested pushing some of the buttons on what appeared to be the instrument board to find out if his suspicions were true. But all agreed after some discussion that that would be about the worst possible thing they could do, because if the ship started, nobody would know which button to push to stop it again.
"So the result was," said Dr. Gee, "that none of us pushed any buttons on the instrument board."
There were two "bucket seats," as the doctor called them, in front of the instrument board and two of the little fellows were sitting there. They had fallen over, face down, on the instrument board.
Now, it appeared that this ship, if flying on magnetic lines of force, must have had an automatic type of control, so that when it came into danger or when its occupants were not in a position to operate the ship, it simply settled quietly to earth. Obviously it had already flown into our atmospheric area, either on intelligence or instruments.
"None of us could arrive at any conclusion as to when or how this window had broken," Dr. Gee remarked, "or at what possible point in space these occupants must have been killed. The simple fact was that there they were, dead from either burns or the bends, and we proceeded with the further examination of the interior of the ship.
"We found some pamphlets or booklets, which in all probability dealt with navigation problems. However, we were unable to decipher any of the writing, which we judged to be a pictorial type of script. All of these booklets were turned over to certain officials of the Air Force, who in turn reported that they were going to have them placed in the hands of men experienced in translating work of this kind."
I asked the doctor if he had heard if the handwriting experts had much success. He said as far as he knew no headway of any kind had been made in working out a translation of the written subject matter of the booklets. He said there were not any maps, and so far as they could determine the ship carried no instruments of destruction, nor the crew any firearms of any sort.
In studying the matter further, the doctor pointed out that this of course was entirely unnecessary, because if the ship had been operated magnetically, it unquestionably had the means by which it could demagnetize any object, from an asteroid to a F-80 that might cross its path. The demagnetization would destroy or disintegrate the obstacle. This of course would equally be applicable to human beings on this earth, or any form of matter which they came in contact with on this planet.
I said, "Doctor, what do you make of this whole thing? Where do you think these ships are coming from?"
He said, "Of course we don't know, but our best guess at this moment, astronomers to the contrary, is that they have flown here from the planet Venus."
I asked him why they had decided this.
"Well," he said, "in all the latest research regarding the possibility of life on other planets it was fairly well agreed among quite a school of thought in astronomical research, that there was more likelihood of human habitation on the planet Venus than on the planet Mars."
The size of the men, too, was a factor in his decision. He went so far as to say that if there were any human beings on the planet Mars they would probably be three or four times as large as human beings on this planet, and since the people on the grounded disk ship ranged in height from about 36 to 42 inches, that, in his judgment, ruled out Mars.
Day after day over a period of the next ninety days following this first talk about this first space ship, or as we came to talk of it, this "flying saucer," one of our number, made it his business on all sorts of occasions, most of them when alone with the doctor and in the midst of research in magnetic work, to ask him for more details. The questioner came up with questions at the most inopportune times, because, it must be understood, that he felt that he owed it to himself as well as to us, to run this thing down to where we could finally decide as to whether or not this was all true.
On one occasion he asked, "Doctor, how were these ships constructed?" He said, "The outer skin of the ship was what looked like aluminum, but on all the tests so far made, there was nothing that had been found by the scientists who had checked into it, to indicate that this was any form of aluminum that we know."
He said that on the big ship two or three men could lift one side of it, it was that light. On the other hand, as many as a dozen of them had crawled up on top of the wing and it was so strong they made no impression on it whatever.
He said that the Air Force, in wanting to move the ship, decided to dismantle it because it was too big to move otherwise.
This began a most interesting study. There were no rivets. There were no bolts, no screws. There was nothing on the outer skin that would indicate how the ship was put together.
After a long study it was found, however, that the ship was assembled in segments. The segments fitted in grooves and were pinned together around the base.
When the cabin was lifted out of the bottom of the saucer, they found a gear completely encircling the bottom of the ship and this gear fitted into a gear that was on the cabin.
The whole thing was very ingeniously put together, and there had to be a lot of care taken in breaking it down.
After it had been broken down, it was moved to a government testing laboratory and there it remained while parts were being tested for a considerable period of time.
When Dr. Gee next saw it, the instrument board, to his amazement and chagrin, had been broken up and all of the inner workings torn apart. This, he said, prevented any further study by them as to the magnetic operation of the ship itself.
He regretted this dismantling very much, because he said that had they been able to keep it intact long enough, there might have come a time when they might have worked out a plan, whereby they could make certain tests as to the different push buttons on the instrument board. These, he was certain, held the clews [sic, throughout] to the magnetic form of combustion developed on the ship itself.
One of us asked, "What has been done with the people that were on the ship?" Dr. Gee said that some of them had been dissected, and studied by the medical division of the Air Force and that from the meager reports he had received, they had found that these little fellows were in all respects perfectly normal human beings, except for their teeth. There wasn't a cavity or a filling in any mouth. Their teeth were perfect.
From the characteristics and physiology of their bodies they must have been about 35 to 40 years of age, judged by our standards of age.
As to clothes, he said they all wore the same type of uniform, a dark blue garment, with metal buttons. He said it was significant that there was not any insignia of any kind on the collars or on the sleeves or on the caps of these people. So, to all intents and purposes, all of them had the same rank.
He said it might of course be possible that they had different ranks among themselves but that by our standards of military ranking there was nothing to indicate who they were nor what they were.
Going into the matter of physical possessions on the bodies of these people, Dr. Gee said that so far as he saw himself, they were very limited, but that there were two or three pieces to which he had had access that might have been timepieces.
He said it was very interesting to study these timepieces, because they seemed to do their work, or functioning, without any attention. The timepieces were about the size of a silver dollar in diameter and a little bit thicker. They had four markings, one at the top, and one at what would be 3 o'clock, another at 6 o'clock, and a fourth at 9 o'clock.
It was discovered that the inside part of what he and his staff called a timepiece, actually moved, but that it took a full magnetic month for it to complete its circle.
"Now," said Dr. Gee, "you know of course that a magnetic day is 23 hours and 58 minutes. We found that the time it took for the timepiece to make this complete circumference, was over 29 days. Figured out in hours and minutes, that totaled exactly the number of magnetic days in a magnetic month."
He said that there was what appeared to be food on this ship and that these were little wafers. They fed them to guinea pigs, and they seemed to thrive on them. On one occasion one wafer was put into a gallon container of boiling water and it very quickly boiled over the sides of the container.
This was the only evidence of food on the ship. He added that there were two containers of water on this particular ship, and on checking the water they found it to be normal in all respects to our water, except it was about twice as heavy. The doctor pointed out that there was a water in Norway that was about the weight of this water.
One day Si Newton, who was closest to Dr. Gee and felt he was in a position to act as a sort of buffer state, since he was both a partner in geophysical research and independent of any Pentagonic ties, past or present, was surprised to hear the doctor say, "I want you to see these ships and judge for yourself whether we are on the right track and not guessing at their point of origin. I'm trying to get clearance right now."
Newton asked, "Did you say ships?"
"Oh yes," responded Dr. Gee, "we have had three and we saw a fourth. But that one got away," he added with a laugh. "The second one landed near one of the proving grounds in Arizona, as opposed to the first which landed near a proving ground in New Mexico. When we got to the second one we found almost the same conditions of the first, except that the door was open and the sixteen dead people in it were not burned nor browned. In fact medical opinion was that they had not been dead more than two or three hours. Our conclusion was that they had died in our atmosphere when the double knob of the door was opened and our air rushed into their cabin which was probably vacuumed or pressurized for their atmosphere but not ours."
Newton asked, "How do you determine the presence of these particular ships. [sic, no question mark] Do you stumble on them or know the moment they come in our atmosphere?"
Dr. Gee replied, "In the laboratories and also at Alamogordo and Los Alamos and at different parts of the country we have tenescope observers who spend 24 hours a day watching for evidence of objects or ships flying in the sky. Everything that comes within the range of these tenescopes is noted. If it is unfamiliar and lands, the Air Force is aware of it almost immediately, and if it presents scientific problems we or other groups are consulted."
He said that the second ship was smaller, 72 feet in diameter, but otherwise similar to the 9999⁄100 foot ship. He and his fellow scientists had decided that the mathematical system of the operators of these ships was in all probability the same as ours, "because mathematical law should follow for all the planets in this solar system." Their reason for thinking this was because they were struck with the fact that when the measurements of the ship in all its parts were broken down they found that it followed what he called "The System of 9's."
He went to considerable length to explain the mathematical system of 9's, and added, "We concluded from this clew that in all probability they used a system of mathematics similar to ours."
The third ship he and his staff examined landed right above Phoenix in Paradise Valley. "We happened to be in Phoenix, so we got out to it in a hurry."
One of the little men was half out of the escape door or "hatch," as the doctor called it. The little man was dead. The other little fellow (there being only a crew of two on this ship) was sitting in his seat at the control board. He also was dead. This ship was 36 feet in diameter and the size of the cabin and all the rest of dimensions balanced out on the same system of 9's, that had been found in the other ships.
Asked if they had any sleeping quarters or toilet facilities, the doctor explained that on the 72-foot ship there was a very ingenious device which when they discovered how to operate it, turned out to be the sleeping quarters. Pushed back into the wall was what turned out to be a collapsible or accordion type screen, and as it was pulled out, it moved around in a half circle, so that by the time it reached the wall of the circular cabin little hammocks had dropped down from this screen or accordion-like wall, and there were the sleeping quarters for these men.
He said there were toilet facilities inside the sleeping quarters. The smallest ship, however, had no such conveniences, from which the doctor deduced they were making round trips so fast they didn't feel the need of such facilities any longer.
Newton asked, "Where is the little ship?"
"We have that one in the laboratories at the present time," replied Dr. Gee. "As soon as I get your appointment through I will be authorized to let you inspect it."
In time Newton's appointment came through, but by then the ship had been dismantled and reported shipped to Dayton, and all comment thereafter proscribed, denied, or ignored.
All the doctor had to show for his labors was a tubeless radio, some gears, some small disks, and other items that could be carried in one's pocket. He was granted these baubles for research.
I saw and examined these. More than 150 tests had failed to break down the metal of the gears. The gears themselves were of a ratio unfamiliar to engineers on this earth; had no play, no lubrication.
As for the radio, it was not much bigger than a pack of cigarettes. It had been torn from a corner of the cabin, which was in all likelihood its aerial antenna. It had no tubes, no wires, and only one dial. Dr. Gee built a special antenna for it, about 4 inches high, and was able to catch a high C sort of note at 15 minutes past every hour. It wasn't radio as we know it, but it was a means of communication with somewhere.
Asked what possible reason there could be for keeping all this a secret, Dr. Gee couldn't imagine, "unless," he added, "fear of a panic or the upsetting of certain religious beliefs, or just plain brass exercising its authoritative powers to keep their powers from atrophying. The government wants to keep people away from that area of New Mexico, as this could very well start a stampede of curiosity seekers as well as a panic among certain types of people who are easily frightened. I've talked to religious leaders and they ridicule any idea that this would upset theological concepts. So I can't imagine what the Air Force had in mind. All I know is they ruined our chances of working on 'live' models and have left themselves groping and guessing ever since. I think we have some of the answers by now, but they are derived from our side not the visitors, who, my guess is, are 500 years ahead of us -- in their knowledge of propulsion at any rate."
Whether we can soon return the compliment and visit the Saucerians, with or without permission of the Pentagonians, even with nothing more than the charred body of Orson Welles, depends, Dr. Gee believed, on how fast we can step up our knowledge of magnetic propulsion and the whole subject of magnetic energy generally. That the visitors showed improvement in each ship they sent out, the doctor didn't doubt. He pointed out a three point landing gear which was on the smallest ship. It held steel balls in vacuum cups which permitted the balls to revolve. While the balls were moving in one direction, nothing could tilt or tip the ship, but when they were motionless a child could tilt it. To solve that secret alone, Dr. Gee contended, would be worth years of research. Maybe others in the vast interdepartmental structure of the Pentagon are doing it and keeping it a secret from those who worked on some other phase of it. The whole procedure tends to make a man hoard what he knows instead of sharing it, lest he be clinked for giving away the nation's security, or what some fallible and unidentified authority has decreed for the moment is the nation's security.
We asked the doctor what in his opinion were the chances of the Air Force's eventually admitting that the flying saucers have come from another planet. He replied that as nearly as he could judge from all the work that he and his associates had done, the Air Force was not interested in admitting the discovery of a new method of flight. Jet propulsion was their story and we were stuck with it. Then he launched on a technical explanation concerning the creation of motive power by the breaking of magnetic lines of force. He called to my attention that there are 1,257 magnetic lines of force to the square centimeter. These are counted on a tenescope as one would count strands of wire at the cut end of a cable.
He said that the crossing of two or more lines of force made it possible in effect to permit movement in a manner hitherto unknown in aerodynamics.
"Of course, you understand," he added, "the saucer-like construction is the most ideal type of vehicle to move in the air. The fact that the saucer whirls is only for the purpose of balance, because there is not any thrust insofar as the wing surface is concerned. There is not any thrust by reason of any propeller, either, because there are no propellers.
"What actually happens is that, even though the wing part is whirling, the saucer actually crawls forward from one crossed magnetic line of force to another.
"Now, when you consider there are 1,257 lines to the square centimeter and no two cross, we have the problem of combustion or propulsion, or power created when they are crossed under control. The successive crossing of these magnetic lines of force under control makes possible the speeding up of the whirling action of the plate or wing part of the saucer, because the saucer is attempting to get to the next succeeding line of force; or, perhaps we could say, seeking to get back in balance.
"In other words, the ship is trying to get away from itself, or trying to get away from the position it finds itself in, when combustion power is created by the crossing of magnetic lines of force.
"We think in terms of electric current, when it is produced in a wire, as traveling in the wire itself, or as some scientists put it, flowing through a wire. This has never been conclusively proved. But we do know that where the electric energy is created at its source, the dynamo, it is transmitted through the wire, and the wire of course becomes a magnetic field and at its various termini we have the use of it, as electric light or in other forms."
Asked if he didn't consider that the motive power of the saucer was what one might say, in reverse as to electric energy in a wire, Dr. Gee explained, "What we have here is energy existing and created without a wire and actually in the lines of force themselves. The saucer being so regulated magnetically is eternally trying to get away from its disturbed magnetic points, as a person prodded from behind by a needle might try to get away from the disturbance, and thereby movement is created.
"When the saucer moves out of our atmospheric area, or control, then, of course, we have no weight and we have no resistance. And all we have left is magnetic lines of force, which are in an undisturbed state, out to where they approach magnetic lines of force from another planet. Since these magnetic lines of force are identical, they act similar to the two north poles of any magnet. In other words, like poles (which is the first law of magnetism) repel. Therefore, the planet Venus, for example, and the planet Earth, is each held in position by reason of its magnetic repulsion. All are in universal balance and all move in their orbits in the same fashion.
"We do not understand how these magnetic fields are created from the sun; we only know that they exist, and when we learn something about how they are created, or how they evolved, then we can begin to learn something about how they act."
His reason for appraising the interplanetary visitors who have flown in here as being 500 years ahead of us, is based on the fact that they now appear to come and go at will. Somehow they can cross from their magnetic lines of force on to ours, despite the fact that the two planets involved are positive and would therefore repel any object's effort to move from one to the other. It is as easy to conceive of them traveling in their zone and we in ours as it is to conceive of traveling up and down on a scenic railway once given sufficient push. But hopping from one scenic railway to another going in the opposite direction represents a triumph of magic over experience. This the Saucerians appear to have achieved. They fly singly, and in groups and, as reported at Farmington, New Mexico, during the month of March, 1950, they even appear now and then in groups of hundreds. It is as if they were demonstrating that where one, two, and even three of their number had failed, they later corrected the faults that caused the failures and came over in strength, flying over the very area where their pioneers had died trying.
Those whose doubts exceeded those of the Pentagonians have harped on the size of those piloting the flying saucers. It has seemed to them like a rewrite of Gulliver's Travels. These scoffers should not be allowed to forget that Jonathan Swift's little friends measured six inches high, whereas these Saucerians measured three to three-and-a-half feet tall and are therefore at least as believable as Mickey Rooney.
The magnetic research scientist's story -- as told by Frank Scully -- was surprisingly anachronistic for being the true story of an alien species "500 years ahead of us" in their technological development. Examples were rife throughout -- pushbuttons, hammocks, button-up uniforms, and "bucket seats" being among the seemingly antiquated contrivances of such a technologically advanced race as the Venusians. But one instance in particular stands out: "pamphlets or booklets, which in all probability dealt with navigation problems".
Left otherwise undescribed, the implication was clearly that these "pamphlets or booklets" consisted of conventionally-printed sheets of paper, along with conventional binding. And it was in such matters that "Dr. Gee" and Frank Scully showed a remarkable lack of intellectual and scientific curiosity. Among the questions left unasked and unanswered were the nature of Venusian paper (gloss, matte, parchment, or) and ink (black, blue, or), as well as the means and method by which these "pamphlets or booklets" were bound (glue, staples, or). And like the anachronisms themselves, such questions are rife throughout the telling.
Just as disconcerting were the conclusions sometimes offered, starting with "Dr. Gee's" assumption that the pamphlets "in all probability dealt with navigation problems", which gave a Peter-Pan quality to Venusian technology ("second star to the right, and straight on till morning"). Equally odd was his assertion that electricity flowing through a wire "has never been conclusively proved". Or the unexplained nexus behind his statement that "if the ship had been operated magnetically, it unquestionably had the means by which it could demagnetize any object, from an asteroid to a F-80 that might cross its path" (analogous to concluding that any intercontinental missile propelled by combustion undoubtedly had the means by which it could 'de-combust' any other missile). Or the assertion that Earth and Venus are "each held in position by reason of its magnetic repulsion" -- gravity and centrifugal forces apparently playing no role in "Dr. Gee's" cosmos.
Or, for that matter, the statement that "if there were any human beings on the planet Mars they would probably be three or four times as large as human beings on this planet, and since the people on the grounded disk ship ranged in height from about 36 to 42 inches, that, in his judgment, ruled out Mars". Leaving aside his reasoning about the size of "human beings on Mars", it still leaves unexplained why "Dr. Gee" would choose Venus as the origin of the saucers based on the aliens' size, as Venus is close in size to Earth in both its radius and mass, as well as its gravitational pull.
In fact, if the occupants of the saucers were identical to ordinary (Anglo-Saxon) human beings in every respect except for their height and the condition of their teeth (presumably of the same number as those of Earthlings), why conclude that the crew was alien at all rather than the product of Earth-bound selective breeding or some other means of eugenics practiced by a yet-to-be-identified Earthly power? In line with this, "Dr. Gee's" 'system of nines' -- which relied on the crafts' dimensions consistently reflecting a system of both feet and inches -- strongly argued for the origin of the saucers not only being Earth-bound, but holding vital clues in ruling out foreign powers which used the metric or other systems of measurement. For that matter, the 'system of nines' is itself baffling, suggesting that "Dr. Gee" had little familiarity with factoring down to the smallest prime number -- which should have suggested to the eminent scientist who had "more degrees than a thermometer" that it was in fact a 'system of threes'.
Meanwhile, the mere premise of "Dr. Gee" and his group being called to the crash site is counterintuitive. Why, for instance, call out a magnetic research scientist to deal with a vehicle which according to Dr. Gee was only observed from a distance for the first two days after discovery, and whose means of motive power was theretofore unknown? Why not instead call out the experts from the foreign technology division of Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base -- whose very purpose was to analyze captured aircraft in all its details, and whose members had vast experience in such, including having recently scoured post-war Germany for its technological developments in aeronautics and rocketry.
And finally there was the matter of the "tenescopes" -- scientific instruments never revealed publicly before or since -- which "counted" the "1,257 magnetic lines of force to the square centimeter... as one would count strands of wire at the cut end of a cable".
According to "Dr. Gee", it had been two "tenescopes" which had "caught" the first "unidentified ship as it came into our atmosphere". By this means the "tenescope" operators "watched its position and estimated where it would land" -- allowing "Air Force officers" to locate and capture it.
The public revelation of this technological breakthrough was as startling as the tale of the crashed saucers themselves, if the following part of the testimony of "Dr. Gee" was true...
Dr. Gee replied, "In the laboratories and also at Alamogordo and Los Alamos and at different parts of the country we have tenescope observers who spend 24 hours a day watching for evidence of objects or ships flying in the sky. Everything that comes within the range of these tenescopes is noted.
Here, seemingly, was an aerial "early warning" system already in place not only to track saucers but giving the United States military the capability to defend against Soviet attack -- a national concern stretching back to the first weeks of saucer reports in summer, 1947, as reflected in a July 12, 1947, column by writers Joseph and Stewart Alsop...
Flying Saucers Emphasize Lack of Warning System Against New Weapons
By Joseph and Stewart Alsop
Washington, July 12 -- The flying saucers have served at least to pound one lesson home. That is that the United States has developed no effective warning system against surprise attack in this age of the new and terrible weapons. For if such a system had been in existence, the military authorities could instantly have ended speculation. They could have given those assurances which an effective warning system would instantly provide: "We know all that passes through the American air. You saw sunlight on the wings of highflying aircraft -- or you saw nothing -- or you saw a meteor in the night sky." No such assurances were forthcoming. We do not have an effective warning system. We are not prepared for the worst.
Adequate defensive preparation for an all too possible worst will mean, in the opinions of those charged with planning for national security in this era of the atom bomb and the guided missile, two things. First, it will mean a radar umbrella extending over the whole continental United States, to give instant warning of any object which passes through the air over America...
True, "Dr. Gee" had only stated that the "tenescopes" were placed "in the laboratories and also at Alamogordo and Los Alamos and at different parts of the country" -- but surely their use could have been quickly expanded to provide an "early warning" shield protecting all borders.
As it turned out, such a system would not be in place for seven more years, and even then it was based on radar, not "tenescopes".
But the litany of incongruities -- many pointed out at the time by the book's critics -- did little to dampen its popularity. Behind the Flying Saucers not only spent months on bestseller lists but appeared in digest form in Pageant magazine and as a 24-part serialization in newspapers -- propelling Scully to a level of fame and national attention unprecedented in his career.
As for "Dr. Gee", Scully insisted he remain pseudonymous, as from this January 9, 1951, story in the Indiana, Pennsylvania, Evening Gazette concerning a follow-up story by Scully in Pageant magazine...
Why doesn't Scully reveal the identity of Dr. Gee, the scientist on
of his book? "I'm not privileged to do this," writes Scully in Pageant. "I belong to an old school of journalism -- I don't kiss and tell."
And so in the end the tale of crashed saucers and dead aliens all came down to the word of one man, the top scientist whose name Scully refused to publicly reveal...
...providing a protective cloak of anonymity to both the man and his tale -- a situation which would endure until almost two years to the day after publication of Scully's book, when a national magazine decided it was time to solve the mystery of the scientist's identity once and for all.
Notes:
1. The text quotations for Behind the Flying Saucers have been transcribed from the original 1950 first edition.
2. Over the years, researcher Wendy Connors accumulated a considerable audio archive related to UFO history. Recently part of that archive was placed on the Internet Archive by Isaac Koi. Of interest here is one recording by Silas Newton telling "Dr. Gee's" story.
Although the time and place of the recording is not noted, listening to it in full indicates that it likely was directly linked to the lecture given by Newton to the basic science class at the University of Denver in March, 1950. In this regard the lack of background noise as would be expected during a well-attended lecture seems to eliminate it being made during the lecture itself. It may have served as a rehearsal speech, and/or it may possibly be the recording referred to in reporter Thor Severson's piece for the Denver, Colorado, Post...
A transcription of his fifty-minute discussion of the saucers was played Saturday before a group of Denver businessmen, two of them United Air Lines executives who remained frankly skeptical of the ideas presented.
In regard to Severson's verbiage, "transcription" was a term in common use at the time for an audio recording. Further indicators that it was this recording which was reported by Severson is that Serverson makes the following statement in his article on the lecturer...
He repeatedly used the word "we" in referring to scientific experiments on the strange craft he said existed.
And indeed over the course of the recording Newton does exactly that (though it is in the context of quoting "Dr. Gee"). Also in support of the likelihood that it was this recording which was reported by Severson is that the details in his article about what the lecturer said matches the details given in Newton's recording -- as far as it goes, for the recording as posted ends abruptly at 24 minutes with a discussion of Venusian toilets, and the full lecture was said to last 50 minutes. Based on all the above it seems that the rest of the lecture existed at one time as part of that recording, and may or may not still be in existence somewhere.
With that as preface, it is especially interesting here to note that the entire portion of the story of "Dr. Gee" as presented by Scully above is lifted bodily from Newton's recording, with Scully at times claiming -- and at other times implying -- that it was Scully who was personally told this story by "Dr. Gee". For instance, Scully writes...
In the summer of 1949, while consorting with men engaged in magnetic research on the Mojave Desert, I met a man of science whose contemporaries rated him the top magnetic research specialist of the United States.
Compare that with Newton's recording of his experience...
In the summer of 1949, while engaged in magnetic research in the Mojave Desert in California, I was driving one day with one of my associates, who happens to be rated the top magnetic scientist of the United States.
In fact almost all of Scully's telling of the story as told by "Dr. Gee" matches Newton's recording nearly word for word.
The following is a transcript of Newton's recording...
In the summer of 1949, while engaged in magnetic research in the Mojave Desert in California, I was driving one day with one of my associates, who happens to be rated the top magnetic scientist of the United States. In conversation with this gentleman, I had occasion to mention a report about flying saucers. I said, doctor, do you know anything about them? His answer was startling. He said to me, he said I thought about you last week when I came down from Denver to Phoenix. When I passed Aztec, New Mexico, I said to my wife I wish Si was here, because I would take him out and show him where the first flying saucer landed in the United States.
I said, doctor, do you mean to tell me that one of these ships landed, and that the American people doesn't know anything about it? He said, two tenescopes saw this flying saucer, or an unidentified ship. And they watched its position on the tenescope and estimated approximately where it would land. Within two to three hours after the landing Air Force officials reached the flying field at Durango, and took off in their search for this object.
When they found it, it was in a very rocky, dry, plateau territory about 16 miles east of Aztec, New Mexico. They immediately threw a guard around it and about seven of our magnetic group of scientists were called in to examine this strange ship.
When we arrived on the ground, we decided that the best thing to do was not to touch it or try to get into it. We studied the ship from a distance for a matter of two days. We went so far as to bombard the ship with cosmic rays, with an idea that if there was any danger to be developed we wanted to find it out, if possible, before examining the ship at close quarters.
Finally, we decided that it was probably safe as nothing had happened or transpired inside the ship to indicate that there was life therein. And we began a closer examination. Apparently there was no door to what unquestionably was the cabin. We found the broken porthole of what appeared at first examination to be glass. But on closer examination we found it was a good deal different from any glass in this country. Finally, we used a large pole and rammed a hole through this portion of the ship.
Having done this, we looked into the interior. There we were able to count sixteen bodies of little people, that ranged in height from about 36 to 42 inches.
We assumed that there must be a door of some kind, so we prodded around with the pole which we had pushed through the opening made through the broken porthole, and on the opposite side from the broken porthole, we found a knob, or a double knob to be exact, on the wall. And when we pushed against that, to our amazement and surprise, what turned out to be the door flew open. This enabled us to get into the ship.
We took the little bodies out, and laid them on the ground. We examined the -- their clothing. The first thing that struck us was that so far as style goes, some of the boys said that looks like about 1890-style.
We examined the bodies very closely and very carefully. They were normal from every standpoint and had no appearance of being what we call on this planet midgets. They were perfectly normal in their development. The only trouble was that their skin seemed to be charred a very dark chocolate color. About the only thing that we could decide was that this had possibly occurred somewhere in space and that they had been killed as a result of the breaking of the porthole window.
We then began an examination of the ship itself. First we decided to make complete measurements of the ship from the outside. It was what we would call aluminum-colored.
From rim to rim of the ship -- and the reports that have appeared from time to time in the papers about these strange visitors were, and had always been, to the effect that they looked like flying saucers. With this ship on the ground we could not help but be aware of the fact that it looked like a huge saucer, and they -- you might almost say that there was a cup in it, because the cabin set in an insert in the bottom of the saucer. The overall dimensions of the ship were found to be almost exactly 100 feet in diameter. To be exact it was 9999⁄100 feet wide.
From the outer tip of the wing, which was entirely circular, which of course was entirely circular, to the bottom of the saucer, measuring in an imaginary line vertically, was 27 inches. The cabin, which was entirely round, was 18 feet across and 72 inches in height. Forty-five inches of the cabin was exposed above the outer rim of the saucer. The portholes were located at this point. And doctor said that he did not recall at that moment how many portholes there were in this ship, but that there were several.
On getting into the ship, he said that their first objective was to decide, if they could, how the ship was propelled. Doctor said that he was among the first to suggest that it probably flew on magnetic lines of force. Some of the boys, he said, suggested that somebody should push some of the buttons on what appeared to be the instrument board. But all agreed that that would be about the worst possible to do, because if the ship would start, nobody knew which buttons to push to stop it again.
So the result was that none of us, he said, pushed any button on the instrument board.
There were two what doctor called bucket seats sitting in front of the instrument board and two little fellas were sitting there. They had fallen over, face down, on the instrument board.
Now, it appeared that this ship, if flying on magnetic lines of force, must have had an automatic type of control, so that when it became in danger, when it did not have available its occupants in a position to operate it, simply settled quietly to earth, it had already flown into our atmospheric area.
Now none of us could arrive at any conclusion as to when or how this window had broken or at what possible point in space could these occupants have been killed. The simple facts were that there they were, and that we proceeded with the further examination of the interior of the ship.
We found some pamphlets or booklets, which in all probability dealt with navigation problems. However, we were unable to decipher any of the writing, which we judged to be a pictorial type of writing. All of these booklets were turned over to certain officials of the Air Force, who in turn reported that they were going to have them placed in the hands of men experienced in translating work of this kind.
I asked the doctor immediately if he had heard of any success. He said at the latest report there had been no headway made of any kind in working out a translation of the written subject matter of the booklets. He said there were not any maps, and he said so far as they could determine there was not an instrument of destruction or any kind of firearms, as we know them, inside the ship.
Studying the matter, the doctor pointed out to me that this of course was in -- unnecessary, because if the ship was operated magnetically, it unquestionably had the means by which it could demagnetize any object in its path and thereby disintegrate such an object. This of course would be possible both as human beings on this earth, or for that matter, any form of matter which they came in contact with on this planet.
Well I said doctor, what do you make of this whole thing? Where do you think these ships come from?
He said, well off course we don't know. But, he said, our best thought at the moment is that it's entirely possible that they have flown here from the planet Venus.
I asked him why they had decided this. Well, he said, in all the latest research regarding the possibility of life on other planets it was fairly well agreed among quite a school of thought in astronomical research, that the planet Venus could in all possibility sustain life. And that it was much more likely that there was human habitation on the planet Venus than on the planet Mars.
Doctor even went so far as to say that if there were any human beings on the planet Mars, they would probably be three or four times as large as human beings on this planet. And since these people on the ranged in height from about 36 to 42 inches, that of course ruled out, in their judgment, Mars.
Day after day over the period of the next ninety days following this first talk about this space ship, or as we came to talk of it, this flying saucer, I made it my business on all types of occasions, most of them when I was entirely alone with doctor, and we were in the midst of research in our magnetic work. I came up with questions at the most inopportune times. Because, it must be understood, that I felt that I owed it to myself to run this thing down to where I could finally decide whether or not this was a true story.
And in telling my findings, I am not now going to try to follow any sequence of events but simply recall all that I had to ask, and noted here regardless of its possible order of inquiry.
I said doctor, how were these ships constructed? He said, well outer skin of the ship was what looked like aluminum, but on all the tests so far made, there was nothing that had been found by the scientists and experts who had checked into it, to indicate that this was any form of aluminum that we know.
He said that on the big ship two or three men could lift one side of it. But in turn that as many as a dozen of them had crawled up on top of the wing and had made no impression on it whatever.
He said that the Air Force, in wanting to move it, found out that they should dismantle on the ground where they had found it due to its size.
And this began a most interesting study. There were no rivets. There were no bolts. There was nothing on the outer skin that would indicate how the ship was put together.
After a long study it was found, however, that the ship was put together in segments. And they fitted in grooves and were pinned together around the base.
When the cabin was gotten out of the bottom of the saucer, they found there a circular gear completely encircling the bottom of the ship. And this gear fitted into a gear that was on the cabin.
The whole thing was very ingeniously put together. And there had to be a lot of care taken in breaking it down.
After it had been broken down, it was moved to the laboratory, government laboratory at Phoenix. And there it remained for a considerable period of time.
The instrument board, to the amazement of doctor and his brother scientists, was also broken up and all of the inner workings torn apart. This, he said, prevented any further study by them as to the magnetic operation of the ship itself.
He regretted this very much. Because he said that had they been able to keep it intact for a considerable period, there might have come a time when they might have worked out a plan whereby they could make certain tests as to the different push buttons on the instrument board that would have given them the clues to the magnetic form of combustion developed on the ship itself.
I said, well, I said what has been done with the people on the ship? He said that some of them had been dissected and studied by the medical divisions of the Air Force and that from reports that he had received, they had found that these little fellas were in all respects perfectly normal human beings. He said that one thing that was outstanding was that their teeth were all perfect. And as near as the could judge from the characteristics and physiology of the bodies, they would be about 35 to 40 years of age, judged by our standards of age of human beings.
He said they all wore the same type of uniform, a dark blue garment, and they had metal buttons. He said it was significant that there was not any insignia of any kind on the collars or on the arms or on the caps of these people. So, to all intents and purposes, all of them had the same rank.
He said that it might of course be possible that they had different ranks among themselves that they were acquainted with, but not our standards of ranking what we would call Air Force or Army people. There was nothing to indicate who they were nor what they were.
Going into the matter of physical possessions on the bodies of the different people, he said that so far as he saw himself, they were very limited, but that there was two or three pieces which he had had access to that might be considered timepieces.
And he said it was very interesting to study these timepieces, because they seemed to do their work, or functioning, without any attention. He said they were about the size of a silver dollar in diameter and a little bit thicker. And that there were four markings, one at the top, and one at what would be at three o'clock, and six o'clock, and nine o'clock.
And he said it was suddenly discovered that the inside part of the -- what they called a timepiece, actually moved. But that it took a full magnetic month for it to complete its circle.
Now, he said, you know of course that a magnetic month is 23 hours and 58 minutes -- a magnetic day is 23 hours and 58 minutes. And we found that the time it took for to make this complete circumference was over 29 days. And figured out in hours and minutes, totaled exactly that number of magnetic days.
He said that there was what appeared to be food on this ship, and that these were little wafers. They fed them to guinea pigs, and they seemed to thrive on them. And that on one occasion one of these was put into a gallon container of boiling water, and it very quickly boiled over the sides.
This was the only evidence of food on the ship. He said there were two containers on the ship that contained water. And on checking this water they found it to be normal in all respects to our water, except it was about twice as heavy. Doctor recalled to me that there was a water in Norway that was about the weight of this water.
As I stated a while ago, I continued to ask questions. And to my surprise doctor said I want you to see these ships. And I said do you mean ships? And he said oh yes. He said we have three of them. In fact another ship landed near one of the proving grounds in Arizona and when we got to it the door was open on this ship. And on looking into it, there were 16 people in it also. And it was evident that they had not been dead more than two or three hours.
I said how do you determine the presence of these particular ships? He said well of course you must understand that in the laboratories and also at Alamogordo and Los Alamos and at different parts of the country, we have tenescope observers are 24 hours a day watching the tenescope for evidence of objects, ships flying in the sky.
And everything that comes within the range of these tenescopes are noted. He said that the dimensions of the 72-foot ship were comparable in degree to those of the 9999⁄100-foot ship. And he said we have decided that their mathematical system is in all probability the same as ours because mathematical law should follow for all the planets in this solar system. And he said our reason for thinking this is because we were all struck with the fact that when the measurements of the ship in all of its parts were broken down, we found that they follow what we call the system of nines. Whereupon doctor went to considerable length to
explain to me the mathematical system of nines. And he said we had to decide or conclude from this clue, that in all probability they used a system of mathematics similar to ours in this respect.
He said by the way, he said one of these little ships landed right up above Phoenix in Paradise Valley. And he said we got out to it in a hurry. And actually, one of the little men was about half out of the escape door or hatch, as doctor called it. And he was dead. The other little fellow, there being two people on this ship, was sitting in his seat at the control board. This ship was 36-feet in diameter and the size of the cabin and all the rest of the dimensions balanced out on the same system of nines that had been found in the other ships.
I said did they have any sleeping quarters or did they have any toilet facilities? And he immediately explained that on the 72-foot ship there was a very ingenious device by which they found, when they discovered how to operate it, were the sleeping quarters on this ship.
He said there was, pushed back in the wall, what turned out to be a collapsible or accordion-type screen. And as it was pulled out, it moved around in a half circle, and by the time it reached the wall of the circular cabin, little hammocks had dropped down from the wall of this screen or accordion-like wall, and there were the sleeping quarters for these men.
He said that the toilet facilities were inside of this sleeping quarter place. And he said that it was amazing when you looked at it to know how small it was. But for their purposes it served exactly what they wanted.
(As noted above, the recording abruptly ends here).
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