The Flying Saucers are Real by Donald Keyhoe (fun to read txt) 📖

WHEN I reached home, I found a brief letter from Ken Purdy.

Dear Don: The Mantell and Eastern cases both look good. I don’t see how they can brush them off. It looks more like the interplanetary answer to me, but we won’t decide on treatment until we’re sure. [I had suggested two or three angles, if this proved the real answer.] Who would be the best authority to check our disk operation theory and give us more details on directional control? I’d like to have it checked by two more engineers.

KEN

Next day, I dug out my copy of Boal’s interview with D––, the famous aircraft designer.

“Certainly the flying saucers are possible,” the designer had told Boal. “Give me enough money and I’ll build you one. It might have to be a model because the fuel would be a problem. If the saucers that have been seen came from other worlds, which isn’t at all Buck Rogerish, they may be powered with atomic energy or by the energy that produces cosmic rays—which is many times more powerful—or by some other fuel or natural force that our research hasn’t yet discovered. But the circular airfoil is quite feasible.

“It wouldn’t have the stability of the conventional airplane, but it would have enormous maneuverability—it could rise vertically, hover, descend vertically, and fly at extremely high speed, with the proper power. Don’t take my word for it. Check with other engineers.”

Before looking up a private engineer I had in mind, I went to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. The N.A.C.A. {the predecessor of NASA—jbh} is America’s most authoritative source of aerodynamic knowledge. I knew they had already tried

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out disk-shaped airfoils, and I asked about this first. I found that two official N.A.C.A. reports, Technical Note 539 and Report 431, discuss tests on circular and elliptical Clark Y airfoils. Both reports state that these designs were found practical.

Later, I talked with one of the top engineers in the N.A.C.A. Without showing him D––‘s sketch, I asked how a disk might operate.

“It could be built with variable-direction jet or rocket nozzles,” be said. “The nozzles would be placed around the rim, and by changing their direction the disk could be made to rise and descend vertically. It could hover, fly straight ahead, and make sharp turns.

“Its direction and velocity would be governed by the number of nozzles operating, the power applied, and the angle at which they were tilted. They could be pointed toward the ground, rearward, in a lateral direction, or in various combinations.

“A disk flying level, straight ahead, could be turned swiftly to right or left by shifting the angles of the nozzles or cutting off power from part of the group. This method of control would operate in the earth’s atmosphere and also, using rocket power, in free space, where conventional controls would be useless.”

The method he had described was not the one which D–– had outlined.

“What about a rotating disk?” I asked the N.A.C.A. man. “Suppose you had one with a stationary center, and a large circular section rotating around it? The rotating part would have a camber built into it, or it would have slotted vanes.”

He gave me a curious look, “Where’d you get that idea about the camber?”

I told him it had come to me from True.

“It could be done,” he said. “The slotted-vanes method has already been tried. There’s an engineer in Glendale, California, who’s built a model. His name’s E. W. Kay.”

He gave me a few details on how a cambered or slotted-vane rotating disk might operate, then interrupted himself to ask me what I thought the saucers were.

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“They’re either interplanetary or some secret development,” I said. ‘What do you think?”

“The N.A.C.A. has no proof they even exist,” he answered.

When I left the building a few minutes later, I was still weighing that statement. If the Air Force or the Navy had a secret disk device, the N.A.C.A. would almost certainly know about it. The chances were that any disk-shaped missile or new type of circular aircraft would first have been tested in the N.A.C.A. wind tunnels at Langley Field. If the saucers were interplanetary, the N.A.C.A.—at least top officials—would probably have been in on any discussion of the disks’ performance. Either way, the N.A.C.A.‘s official attitude could be expected to match the Pentagon’s.

After lunch, I took a taxi to the office of the private engineer. Like D––, he has asked that he not be quoted by name. The name I am using, Paul Redell, will serve that purpose. Redell is a well-known aeronautical engineer. He has worked with major aircraft companies and served as a special consultant to government agencies and the industries. He is also a competent pilot.

Although I had known him several years, he refused at first to talk about the saucers. Then I realized he thought I meant to quote him. I showed him some of the material I had roughed out, in which names were omitted or changed as requested.

“All right,” Redell said finally. “What do you want to know?”

“Anything you can tell us. But first, your ideas on these sketches.” I showed him D––‘s drawings and then gave him the high points of the investigation. When I mentioned the mystery-light incident at Fairfield Suisan Air Force Base, Redell sat up quickly.

“The Gorman case again!”

“We heard about some other ‘light’ cases,” I said. “One was at Las Vegas.”

“I know about that one. That is, it you mean the green light—wait a minute!” Redell frowned into space for a few seconds, “You say that Fairfield Suisan sighting

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was on December third? Then the Las Vegas sighting was only a few days later. It was the first week of the month, I’m positive.”

“Those light reports have got me stumped,” I said. “A light just can’t fly around by itself. And those two-foot disks—”

“You haven’t worked on the Gorman case?” asked Redell.

I told him I hadn’t thought it was coming up on my schedule.

“Leave these sketches here,” he said. “Look into that Gorman sighting. Then check on our plans for space exploration. I’ll give you some sources. When you get through, come on back and we’ll talk it over.”

The Gorman “saucer dogfight” had been described in newspapers; the pilot had reported chasing a swiftly maneuvering white light, which had finally escaped him. Judging from the Project “Saucer” preliminary report, this case had baffled all the Air Force investigators. When I met George Gorman, I found him to be intelligent, coolheaded, and very firmly convinced of every detail in his story. I had learned something about his background. He had had college training. During the war, he had been an Air Force instructor, training French student