-Caveat Lector- an excerpt from: UFO Magazine May 1999, Vol. 14, No. 5 ISSN#1043-1233 5455 Centinela Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90066 310-827-0505 ----- Some great pix and drawings in zine. Om K ----- COLD WAR SECRETS: America's Disc Planes by Bill Rose In concert with the rise of the LIFO presence in America, defense and aviation industries began a serious line of programs that exploit the shape and myths surrounding UFOs. Some didn't get off the ground; others became leading edge designs for a whole generation of craft that fulfilled multiple purposes for military and defense. The crossover between "real" UFOs and secret military programs has obfuscated the entire issue, but this following article attempts a first wave of clarification. During the Second World War, a small group of German scientists began to experiment with circular winged disc planes which were revolutionary in concept and decades ahead of their time. At least three manned prototypes were built, and a combat version was being developed which might have reached production if the war had lasted longer. The Nazis funded hundreds of exotic weapons projects, although the Allies probably knew nothing about their flying disc experiments until aeronautical engineers and scientists started to fall into U.S., British and Soviet hands after the country surrendered. Then a new East-West arms race began and the Pentagon resurrected the German disc plane project which would help to endorse the public's growing belief that alien agencies were covertly operating on our planet. Pentagon planning As postwar U.S.-Soviet relations started to deteriorate, Washington feared a sneak air attack across the North Pole. Russia was building fleets of longrange bombers, which would soon be capable of delivering nuclear weapons to the heart of America. At that time, the development of efficient jet engines and reliable surface-to-air missiles was proving difficult and the U.S. Army Air Force needed new methods to counter this very real Soviet threat. With alarm bells starting to ring in the corridors of power, military planners turned to the country's leading aviation contractors who were all carefully assessing advanced wartime German research. By mid-1946, proposals were in hand to develop a supersonic disc-shaped interceptor based on German work, which would be ideal for the harsh climates of Alaska and Northern Canada. Initial studies for this aircraft took place at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, with development work following in California, New Mexico. But it was increasingly difficult to maintain security at existing test sites, and a series of UFO incidents (which sometimes involved highly classified prototypes) were starting to convince the general public that aliens had arrived on Earth. The question of whether ET has, or is visiting our world lies outside the scope of this article, but the Pentagon did nothing to discourage the widening perception of an alien presence. By the late 1940s, a USAF bureau had been established to investigate UFO sightings. This carefully orchestrated highprofile public relations exercise made it relatively easy to debunk genuine sightings of secret experimental aircraft. At the same time, the USAF continued to look for new sites where experimental aircraft could be developed in total secrecy. The search would lead to the establishment of several new bases, which included Groom Dry Lake, Nevada, but long before that happened, the USAF would turn its attention toward facilities outside the continental U.S. Shared defense concerns with Canada made this country a particularly attractive proposition for a new secret disc plane project, and U.S. proposals were carefully channeled through the CDRB (Canadian Defense Research Board) by weapons technology chief Dr. Vannevar Bush, head of the Pentagon's Joint Research and Development Board. In 1951, Avro-Canada, Ltd. (a British-owned high-tech aviation company located in Malton, Toronto), was approached by the CDRB to develop a new high-performance disc-shaped interceptor capable of effectively countering any Soviet threat from the north. Because this was officially a Canadian undertaking, the CDRB allocated $410,000 to the program and additional funds were provided by Avro-Canada. Project Y Avro-Canada appointed John Carver Meadows Frost as the director of their new Top Secret disc plane program, now called Project Y. Frost was a British scientist already working for Avro on the RCAF's new CF-100 fighter program, and was previously involved with the DeHavilland DH.110 project in England. The first flying disc design was based on German research studies. It has been suggested that Dr. Richard Miethe (who undoubtedly controlled the Heinkel/ BMW flying disc project in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia) assisted the Avro team during the first two years of their program. Under Frost's leadership, Avro's Special Projects Group began to work on a oneman, heel-shaped supersonic fighter. The aircraft was powered by a very unusual radial flow jet engine which promised a much higherpower output than any conventional gas turbine of that era. Thought to have been invented during WWII by BMW engineers and fully developed in England during the late 1940s, the radial flow engine was very different in design from axial flow or centrifugal gas turbines. It took the form of a big ring which revolved around the center of the aircraft at several hundred R.P.M., working "edge on" to the direction of flight, while also providing gyroscopic stability. The real problem with the design of Frost's Project Y interceptor was the position of the exhaust vents along each side of the fuselage, which would only allow take-off and landing from a very steep angle of about 75 degrees. To make this possible, a single long retractable undercarriage leg was fitted, which worked in combination with a small tail wheel, design features that led to the aircraft being called "Manta" or "Praying Mantis." But it was obvious such an arrangement would never work properly and a series of undercarriage re-designs followed. Eventually, the retractable strut was replaced by two new legs which formed a tripod configuration, but this was no better. As a result, the aircraft was finally abandoned. The Manta. had nevertheless provided valuable data on radial flow engine integration and Avro's engineers learned that it would be very easy to construct a completely circular aircraft. Phase Two By the middle of 1953, the USAF had taken full control of Project Y and had begun funding second generation studies. From the very beginning of Project Y, Canadian newspapers carried reports that the company was developing a revolutionary type of flying saucer for the RCAF, although this was always rigorously denied by officials. Nevertheless, media interest in Canada's flying saucer intensified, and eventually a number of American correspondents correctly deduced that the Avro-Canada disc was a long-range interceptor, primarily funded by the USAF. By 1954 the flying saucer project had become a hot domestic issue and the Canadian government unexpectedly announced that all development of discshaped aircraft at Avro-Canada had been canceled, due to rising costs. Events took another bizarre turn in 1955, when USAF Secretary Donald Quarles confirmed that negotiations were taking place with Avro-Canada to start fullscale production of a new type of disc-shaped combat aircraft designed by John Frost. Quarles allocated an additional $750,000 to the project, which was now given the USAF reference code 1794 and secretly known as. "Silver Bug." Silver Bug Three years ago, some details of the USAF's Project Silver Bug program were declassified, and these documents revealed two separate designs for flying saucers designed at Avro-Canada which came under the revised name of Project Y2. Both Silver Bugs stemmed directly from the Manta, with additional input coming from USAF scientists at Wright-Patterson AFB and several research institutions that included M.I.T. The first flying disc described in the USAF documentation is a small, one-man VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing) research aircraft with a diameter of 21.5 feet. It was powered by eight axial flow turbojet engines drawing air from regulated inlets around the center of the aircraft and ducting exhaust to the edges of the disc. The cockpit was located at the center of the flying disc and covered by a one-piece, dome-shaped transparency. The more advanced aircraft seems to have been designed from the outset with some kind of a military role in mind, although its overall diameter of approximately 29 feet suggests there was little internal space for offensive hardware or reconnaissance equipment. The maximum performance of this aircraft would have been nothing short of sensational during the mid 1950s, with an estimated maximum speed of Mach 3.5�two and a half times faster than the speed of sound-and a service ceiling in excess of 80,000 feet. The power plant for the larger Silver Bug was a radial flow turbine equipped with reheat, which was coupled to an extremely complex system of exhaust vents that were used to provide flight control. Of course, such a system in a premicrochip era would have created many formidable electromechanical challenges for the engineers! Perhaps the real question is whether these flying discs were ever built and test flown. No hard evidence has yet surfaced, but there is a possibility that construction was carried out by a major U.S. contractor, and testing followed at a secret base like Groom or Papoose Dry Lake, with some limited clandestine deployment. <pix> INTERCEPTION-Artist's conception of a high performance USAF Silver Bug disc plane slicing through a Soviet Tupolev Tu-95 "Bear" long range nuclear bomber at 2000 m.p.h. This was probably the most unusual WWIII combat Proposal for America's Top Secret flying saucer which was developed during the 1950s .ARTWORK BILL ROSE Super Silver Bugs Evolution of the Silver Bugs led to proposals for a larger disc which used a unique gas turbine-ramjet propulsion system that could work at all speeds, from hover to a suggested Mach 3.8 at 100,000 feet. Another design called WS-606A amalgamated a small, tailless, fighter-sized aircraft with a circular wing, which might have become the U-2 spyplane's successor, had things gone differently. In 1956, the USAF expressed serious concerns about the reliability and combat survivability of the radial flow-engined Silver Bug, and it was accepted that without engine power, the aircraft would fly like a brick. Engine failure would have required the immediate ejection of the pilot and the aircraft would have crashed. Although it must have seemed like a major step backwards, Frost's team accepted this concern and set about re-designing the aircraft to accept conventional jet engines, which had now improved considerably in terms of performance, reliability, fuel efficiency and weight. Externally, this variant looked very similar to the radial-engined Silver Bug, but internally, it was equipped with six turbojets which delivered almost the same performance. ilver Bug in combat A number of studies were carried out to arm the Silver Bug with cannons and missiles, but it was discovered that fitting the necessary airborne radar would create a significant weight penalty. One particularly crazy idea which received serious consideration was to heavily armor the leading edge of the Silver Bug so it could be used to ram enemy bombers like a manned missile. Frost himself suggested that it would be possible to slice through an enemy bomber at speeds in excess of 2,000 m.p.h with absolutely no risk to the pilot, and little if any damage to the disc. Perhaps the idea would have worked, but it is hard to imagine fighter pilots expressing great enthusiasm for the idea of smashing through a Soviet Tu-95 "Bear" bomber at Mach 2.75! USAF sources hinted at many possible future uses for aircraft based on the Silver Bug, which included interdiction missions launched from specially modified submarines. One recently declassified document from the mid-1950s predicted that flying discs like Silver Bug would be in widespread military service by 1960. AVROCAR�An elaborate cover story? Press speculation about Avro-Canada's flying saucer continued through the remainder of the 1950s. In 1960, a poor quality aerial photograph of a disc-shaped craft was conveniently made available to the press, and a delegation of media representatives was invited to view Avro's "flying saucer"�now called Avrocar. What they saw turned out to be even more astonishing than anyone had imagined, because the machine parked on the runway bore absolutely no resemblance to a high performance disc-shaped fighter. Eighteen feet in diameter, the Avrocar was little more than a fancy-looking hovercraft which didn't work very well and may have been purposely built to deflect public interest from Project Silver Bug. Within a year, Avrocar was scrapped, the company's highly advanced CF-105 Arrow was canceled as a result of U.S. political pressure, and Avro-Canada, Ltd. finally folded. In the wake of the company's demise, many of the best staff were recruited by American contractors and NASA. John Frost retired to Australia and the Malton facility was sold to Douglas Aircraft of Canada. The newly learned history of these projects begs pertinent questions. Was Avro-Canada simply used as the design bureau for a deep black USAF flying disc program which mainly took place in America? Was Avrocar a carefully orchestrated program of deception? Were the many press leaks intentional? When the program officially ended, Avrocar had managed to demonstrate that it was almost impossible to make a flying saucer fly ... so all UFOs had to come from another world, didn't they? Project Winterhaven While Silver Bug was under development at Avro-Canada, a more exotic flying disc project being considered by the USAF used a system of gravity modification. Decades ago, a brilliant American scientist called Thomas Townsend Brown discovered that gravity could be nominally distorted by a highly charged electrical field. Calling this new science electrogravitics, Townsend Brown thought that it might be used to power a disc-shaped fighter with very high supersonic performance. Once convinced of the validity of electrogravitics, Brown approached the USAF, whose scientists were so impressed with his theories and proposals they commissioned ten major aerospace companies to conduct detailed development studies. Strictly speaking, Townsend Brown's discovery had little to do with the kind of inertialess antigravity drive you might expect to see in a science fiction movie. He envisaged a kind of hybrid propulsion system which primarily relied on conventional turbojet technology. His system worked by positively charging the aircraft's leading edge and negatively charging the exhaust stream. This was expected to improve airflow and reduce friction while the aircraft literally rode upon a weak gravity wave! Known as Project Winterhaven, the program was immediately moved into the black domain. The USAF eventually said that the physics could not be made to work, and that all further research had ceased. Of course, conspiracy theorists point to reasons why this was probably a cover story, such as the fact that Townsend Brown successfully flew small model discs under laboratory conditions during the late 1950s, and the Air Force wouldn't have spent so much money on the scheme without some promise of success. The Air Force's conclusion seemed to be the end of the story, until reports starting to circulate in March, 1992 suggested that the Northrop B-2A stealth bomber used a system of gravity modification based on Townsend Brown's original ideas. According to an article which appeared in Aviation Week and Space Technology, the B-2's leading wing edges and its exhaust flow may be electrostatically charged-just like the Project Winterhaven proposal! If true, this may explain a number of shortcomings in the B-2 which were identified by Tony Gonsalves in 1990. (See UFO Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 3.) The B-2 is characterized by a highly novel triangular shape. Strange glows, electrical interference and unusual noises have often been associated with triangular UFOs, which seems to indicate that this particular shape is well-suited to electrogravitic propulsion. No longer itself a secret, the B-2 may still be a window to other secrets. Is the American military currently testing a series of highly classified flying triangles which utilize Townsend Brown's ideas? The U.S. Navy's flying saucer The USAF wasn't the only branch of the armed services to investigate disc planes during the postwar years. In 1939, the U.S. Navy took a serious interest in the work of Charles Zimmerman, an aircraft designer employed by Chance Vought Aviation in Connecticut. Zimmerman had built a small, circular-winged model aircraft which possessed outstanding STOL (Short Take-Off & Landing) performance. This feature was of great interest to the Navy, which recognized its use for future carrier-based combat aircraft. Funding was soon forthcoming, and by late November 1942, Chance Vought had completed a manned disc plane called the V-173, which was ready to make its first semi-secret flight around Bridgeport. The V-173, which was known less formally as the "Flying Pancake," had a 23.3 feet wingspan, a wing area of 427 square feet and was powered by two rather feeble 80 hp Continental piston engines. That said, high speed was not a requirement, and the outstanding STOL performance allowed V-173 to lift off in less than 200 feet. Then the aircraft would happily cruise around at less than 75 m.p.h. By the time the V-173 made its first test flight, Zimmerman was already working on a high performance weaponized successor called the Chance Vought XF5U-1. Described in some UFO publications as a "still secret" 100-ft. wide flying saucer with rocket propulsion, the XF5U-1 was actually a second generation V-173 with exactly the same wing area. Sometimes called the "Skimmer," the XF5U-1 was designed as a long range, carrier-based fighterbomber with a good STOL capability. It was powered by two Pratt & Whitney R2000-7 radial air cooled engines, which provided an astonishing performance span of about 40- to 500-m.p.h. Maximum range was anticipated at 1000 miles, with a service ceiling of 32,000 feet. The craft was able to carry a substantial armament of cannons and bombs. Had the power-to-weight ratio been slightly better, the XF5U-1 would have been capable of hovering in mid-air like a helicopter. After taxiing trials were completed at Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1945, Vought was ready to pass the XF5U-1 to the U.S. Navy for flight testing at Muroc Field in California. (Now Edwards AFB) Unfortunately, the very complex engine, gearbox and drive-shaft layout continued to generate major technical difficulties which are said to have been responsible for delaying the test flight schedule. By August, 1945, the XF5U-1's apparently troublesome three-blade propellers had been changed to a four blade design used on the F4U-4 Corsair. Taxiing trials resumed, and at the same time flights of the original V-173 continued, and the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh took the controls on at least one occasion. Sudden endings Both programs remained active until early 1947, when the Navy abruptly pulled the plug on them. V-173 trials finished, and the airplane was placed in storage, eventually ending up at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. As for the XF5U-1, it was about to be shipped to Muroc Field for flight testing, but instead was reduced to scrap on mystifying Navy orders which seemed to make little or no sense. Perhaps propeller driven fighters had reached the limits of their performance potential and the future lay with jets, but it is hard to understand why such an interesting experimental design like the XF5U-1 didn't follow V-173 into storage. However, the truth about this aircraft's fate may differ considerably from the official story, and a former engineer with Chance Vought has recently claimed that the XF5U-1 was secretly flown around Bridgeport, Connecticut under cover of darkness. Apparently, the XF5U-1 was then transported to Muroc Field, where it crashed during an early test flight. Chance Vought may have simultaneously been secretly developing a jet-powered version of the Skimmer. This same engineer says that he was aware of such an aircraft, but never managed to see it because of very tightly compartmentalized security. A separate source has suggested that this third generation "Flying Pancake" may have been called XF5U-2, and was completed in early 1947. Powered by two Allison J33 turbojets which directly replaced the piston engines and gearboxes, the XF5U-2 featured a redesigned undercarriage and was fitted with a single tail fin. It is also possible that a fourth version of the Skimmer using turboprop engines was developed by Chance Vought, and that both of these "black budget" Pancakes led to a string of even more exotic disc planes. Advanced "pancake" sightings On July 9, 1947, an unidentified, heel-shaped aircraft, producing the same distinctive sound as an Allison J-33 jet-engined P-80 Shooting Star fighter, was observed passing over Phoenix, Arizona, and a report of the incident was carried in the Arizona Republic newspaper. Apparently, the aircraft flew in from the west and was later seen returning in the same direction, towards California. On May 11, 1950, Paul Trent, an Oregon farmer living near McMinnville, snatched two photographs of a metallic, disc-shaped aircraft fitted with a single vertical tailfin, a cockpit and bulges which may have housed turbojet engines. In March, 1954, a flying saucer with a tailfin was photographed flying over Rouen, France by a French Air Marshal. Its appearance can only be described as virtually indistinguishable from the McMinnville craft. Every attempt to debunk these pictures failed. The Condon Committee, set up in the 1960s to investigate UFO phenomena, concluded that the McMinnville pictures were undoubtedly genuine. All the available evidence seems to suggest that the Chance Vought Flying Pancakes led to several experimental flying discs which were built for the U.S. Navy and USAF during the 1950s. Authors Note: Under the National Security Act of 1947, the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) became the United States Air Force (USAF). This led to most USAAF facilities receiving new names when they switched from AAFs (Army Air Fields) to AFBs. (Air Force Bases). Bill Rose is an aerospace and science writer living in England. He holds degrees in astronomy and economics and has worked as a photojournalist on assignments around the world an enthusiastic supporter of space is exploration and remains fascinated by, the idea of contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. ROUND AND ROUND�A number of Top Secret disc planes are believed to have followed the "Flying Pancakes" and this concept shows the type of twin jet engined disc plane which may have been responsible for numerous UFO sightings in the late 1940s, early 1950s.ARTWORK@ BILL ROSE ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. 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