433 lines
24 KiB
Plaintext
433 lines
24 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
SUBJECT: AERO CLUB IN THE MID 1850's FILE: UFO2873
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
PART 6
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Taken from KeelyNet BBS
|
|
Sponsored by Vangard Sciences
|
|
PO BOX 1031
|
|
Mesquite, TX 75150
|
|
|
|
There are ABSOLUTELY NO RESTRICTIONS
|
|
on duplicating, publishing or distributing the
|
|
files on KeelyNet except where noted!
|
|
|
|
December 1, 1991
|
|
|
|
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
Vangard Sciences has made contact with Jimmy Ward and Pete
|
|
Navarro as mentioned in the Fate article on the 1897 Airships
|
|
(AERO1 through AERO3 on KeelyNet). Mr. Jimmy Ward has provided
|
|
us with a series of papers written by both Pete and Jimmy
|
|
several years ago. These papers are sourced from the original
|
|
Dellschau notebooks with correlations and information provided
|
|
by the authors.
|
|
|
|
We wish to thank Mr. Jimmy Ward and Mr. P.G. Navarro for
|
|
graciously sharing their work with KeelyNet. If you have
|
|
thoughts or ideas relating to the areas touched on in these
|
|
papers, we invite your comments either through the Vangard
|
|
Sciences mailing address, uploaded to KeelyNet or you may write
|
|
directly to Jimmy at :
|
|
|
|
Jimmy Ward
|
|
1511 Summer St.
|
|
Houston, TX 77007
|
|
|
|
In our attempts to integrate a wide range of studies, we at
|
|
Vangard Sciences are of the opinion that the Airship inventors,
|
|
particularly those Airships described by DELLSCHAU, discovered
|
|
one of the many gases we believe to exist below Hydrogen. The
|
|
N.B. gas would easily fit within the 26 anticipated gases
|
|
having a mass number of less than 1.008, that of Hydrogen.
|
|
|
|
If we can rediscover how the gas was extracted from the
|
|
atmosphere, it will open up entirely new avenues of transport.
|
|
Note that Hydrogen is the MOST ABUNDANT element in the
|
|
Universe. If Hydrogen is a composite of other elements as
|
|
Keely found, then N.B. gas must be one of those elements and in
|
|
greater abundance.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
The Great Airship Inventors
|
|
Fact and Fancy
|
|
|
|
In 1896, all up and down the Sacramento Valley of California, a
|
|
blinding light was seen coming from an aerial object and playing on
|
|
the ground below. The adverse weather appeared to have NO EFFECT on
|
|
the object - it sailed majestically and smoothly along DESPITE the
|
|
rain and wind, from Oroville to San Francisco and from Oakland to
|
|
Sacramento. What was this strange object with the brilliant light?
|
|
|
|
|
|
Page 1
|
|
|
|
R. Boynton, editor of the Oroville Register, thought he might have
|
|
the answer. A few years back, he recalled, there was a mining camp
|
|
called Cherokee, at the top of Table Mountain, overlooking Oroville.
|
|
Many of its workers were of Portuguese extraction. In the early
|
|
80s, he said, they worked the bluffs and celebrated big days with
|
|
balloon ascensions. Huge blazing torches would be suspended beneath
|
|
the balloons on long ropes and they would float off over the valley,
|
|
making for quite a show.
|
|
|
|
The problem is that the torches would soon burn out and the people
|
|
were now reporting a light MUCH BRIGHTER than a torch and, besides,
|
|
it was A BEAM OF LIGHT that was reported shining down. To top it
|
|
all off, the mining had stopped and the Portuguese HAD LEFT THE AREA
|
|
SEVERAL YEARS BEFORE. Still, Table Mountain WOULD make an ideal
|
|
site for secret experiments and base of operations due to its rather
|
|
inaccessible location and yet nearness to a fair-sized town.
|
|
|
|
Much has been written about these mystery airships, but little real
|
|
research has been undertaken. Most writers have relied on other
|
|
writers and their own preconceived opinions and errors have been
|
|
compounded. The first sighting is usually given as "sometime during
|
|
the week of Thanksgiving", but REALLY occurred during the first week
|
|
in November, the story first appeared in the papers during
|
|
Thanksgiving week. There is a possibility of an even earlier
|
|
sighting.
|
|
|
|
On September 20, 1896, an astronomer named Swift noticed a light
|
|
about the magnitude of Venus at its brightest out over the Pacific
|
|
Ocean. It was about 1 degree from the setting sun and thought to be
|
|
a new comet. The next evening it was not there. Weeks later they
|
|
mystery light would be seen to go out over the ocean several times
|
|
and disappear or come in from the ocean and head inland.
|
|
|
|
There are differing versions of the first real sighting of the
|
|
craft, but the gist of the event is as follows:
|
|
|
|
As dusk was descending on San Francisco, His Honor, Mayor Sutro,
|
|
arrived at his mansion which was West of the city and overlooked
|
|
the ocean. A light was seen coming in from the direction of the
|
|
Pacific. It passed over Seal Rocks shining its beam on the
|
|
seals, sending them complaining into the water.
|
|
|
|
One account quoted the witnesses as describing the craft as having a
|
|
bright light fore and aft and a row of smaller lights along its
|
|
side; however, this appears to have been an embellishment by the
|
|
reporter because as it leisurely sailed over Twin Peaks, all that
|
|
could be seen was a bright beam of light emitted by a dark and
|
|
formless source. Cable cars stopped and the passengers and crew
|
|
piled out to watch the wonder silently pass overhead. What was it?
|
|
Where had it come from?
|
|
|
|
November 1, 1896, the Detroit Free Press reported that in the near
|
|
future a New York inventor would construct and fly an "aerial
|
|
torpedo boat." On November 17, 1896, a telegram was reported to
|
|
have been received by the Sacramento Bee from a man in New York who
|
|
claimed that he was about to fly to California along with some
|
|
friends. He said the trip should take about two days. This might
|
|
explain the later sightings, but what about the prior sightings?
|
|
And there WERE earlier ones!
|
|
|
|
Page 2
|
|
|
|
One of the earliest man-made airship stories appeared in the Santa
|
|
Fe Daily New Mexican of March 26, 1880. It told of an enormous
|
|
airship that swept over this tiny town of Galisteo Junction. It was
|
|
cigar shaped with a tail and was driven by a huge propellor. The
|
|
occupants were described as inebriated and a couple of items were
|
|
thrown overboard - a beautiful rose fastened with a slip of fine
|
|
silk-like paper containing what was thought to have been "Oriental
|
|
characters" and a cup "of very peculiar workmanship."
|
|
|
|
The next morning the items were on display at the railroad depot.
|
|
That evening a stranger appeared, pronounced them of Asian origin
|
|
and made the "owner" a financial deal he could not refuse. The man
|
|
and objects then disappeared as would happen again and again in the
|
|
future of UFOs.
|
|
|
|
The story of C.A.A. Dellschau and the Sonora Aero Club has been
|
|
presented as the core of this series of articles. But they were not
|
|
the only ones who laid claim to the invention of the earliest
|
|
airships in the World. In "Milestones of the Air" there is
|
|
reproduced a pair of stereo photos showing Frederick Marriott's
|
|
"Avitor" airship/airplane combination, flown in California in 1869.
|
|
While Marriott was not THE man behind the Airships nearly 30 years
|
|
later, his ideas played a part in many later designs. And his
|
|
"Avitor" bore a striking resemblance to many of these later ships.
|
|
One major difference between the "Avitor" and the airships is that
|
|
the "Avitor" utilized a football-shaped gas bag and the later ships
|
|
were often described as MADE OF METAL or "Aluminum looking."
|
|
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
The famous Aurora, Texas, "spaceship" crash is a good example.
|
|
While there is a good probability that this story was a hoax, it may
|
|
have some basis in fact. The following story was told to the author
|
|
and permission to tell it in print was given PROVIDED the names of
|
|
the people involved were changed.
|
|
|
|
In 1888, a 15 year old boy was living with his widowed mother and
|
|
sisters on a small farm near the now extinct town of Grundy, Texas.
|
|
While working in the garden he heard what he thought was a clap of
|
|
thunder. Before he could look up from his weeding, things began to
|
|
fall around him, hard little pieces of metal, larger pieces and many
|
|
heavy objects which struck the ground. He fled for cover in the
|
|
house.
|
|
|
|
After things stopped falling, he went back outside and walked over
|
|
to a large object on the ground, which moved, and proved to be a
|
|
man. He was badly hurt, having fallen quite a distance to earth.
|
|
His mother and sisters arrived and helped him move the man into the
|
|
house, out of the hot Texas sun.
|
|
|
|
The people at Grundy heard the noise and some men rode out from town
|
|
to investigate. At the farm they found out about the "man who fell
|
|
from the sky." Some doubted, some laughed; yet they all had a look
|
|
at this man. And they told the mother and her children that the man
|
|
was not to be moved until the Sheriff could be summoned to the farm.
|
|
The Sheriff was not at Grundy and it would take a couple of days to
|
|
fetch him. The man regained consciousness that evening and he spoke
|
|
to them, but they could not understand his language. They offered
|
|
him food, but the only things he accepted were water and a piece of
|
|
|
|
Page 3
|
|
|
|
melon. A few hours later he died. The family was afraid to move
|
|
the body until the Sheriff came, so they wrapped him in a blanket
|
|
and left his body on the bed.
|
|
|
|
The Sheriff did not show up the next day, but several hundred people
|
|
from Grundy and the surrounding countryside did. The riders had
|
|
told everyone in sight about the man out at the farm and they came
|
|
in wagons, on horseback, and on foot to see him. The people
|
|
crowding in at the window flattened the garden and what people
|
|
didn't trample, the horses did. All day long people showed up,
|
|
needing water for their horses. They emptied the tank and pumped
|
|
the well dry.
|
|
|
|
When night fell, the family slipped the body out of the house and
|
|
buried it away from the house along with the things the man had with
|
|
him. The well went completely dry and, having no reserve water, no
|
|
food left in the garden, and no money to have a new well dug, the
|
|
family was forced into abandoning the farm.
|
|
|
|
This story may be considered a pure figment of the imagination, but
|
|
several years later, in 1944, this teen-age boy, now an elderly man,
|
|
told the story to some friends. Their faces must have shown doubt
|
|
because he suddenly rose, left the house and returned a few minutes
|
|
later with several pieces of metal, one he handed out for
|
|
examination and the rest he placed on the wood stove.
|
|
|
|
The first piece was very light, about 1/2 inch thick and, roughly,
|
|
6" by 9", concave on one side, convex on the other. The edges
|
|
looked like they had been "torn", with a crystal structure at right
|
|
angles to the face. The metal was a silver-gray color. It could
|
|
not be scratched with a file nor dented with a hammer, even on the
|
|
edges.
|
|
|
|
The old man then took the pieces of metal from the stovetop with his
|
|
bare hands and passed them around. It was heavier than the first
|
|
piece and of smaller dimensions. It was a dark bluish color. And
|
|
it was NOT hot, although it had laid on the stove top long enough to
|
|
be VERY hot! Though of obvious different composition, this piece
|
|
could not be scratched or dented either. When his friends commented
|
|
that they must be pieces of some new metal for airplanes, the old
|
|
man laughed and said he'd had those fragments since HE WAS A KID!
|
|
|
|
They were some of the pieces he had picked up when the man fell from
|
|
the sky. He also said that many of those who had come by had also
|
|
picked up pieces, but he did not know if any of them were still
|
|
around. He DID know that there were still pieces to be found around
|
|
the old farm.
|
|
|
|
(While the author has not personally visited the site nor knows
|
|
of its EXACT location, he was in contact with a gentleman who
|
|
said he had found it in North Texas near the Panhandle. (Near
|
|
Amarillo or Canyon, possibly...Vangard)
|
|
|
|
There were no buildings there, only traces where they had once
|
|
stood. He also found a few small pieces of shrapnel-like
|
|
metal slightly buried in the soil. But before a full report
|
|
could be made or the metal tested, he died in a traffic
|
|
accident and his wife threw the fragments away along with his
|
|
notes.
|
|
|
|
Page 4
|
|
|
|
Anyone who has information about strange fragments of metal
|
|
from this area or is interested in pursuing this story
|
|
personally, please contact me through KeelyNet (info at
|
|
beginning of this file).)
|
|
|
|
As mentioned previously, the Grundy airship and the Aurora airship
|
|
stories have a number of points in common. We may never know
|
|
whether they are two different stories or one based on the other.
|
|
With the 3-ring circus atmosphere at Aurora, the destruction caused
|
|
by over-zealous "investigators", as well as the harassment of the
|
|
citizens, it is no wonder people began to deny the event ever took
|
|
place and claimed it was a hoax from the beginning!
|
|
|
|
But was it entirely a hoax? Could there have been some truth in it?
|
|
Could there be a stranger's body buried somewhere in the cemetery?
|
|
|
|
Maybe not an Alien but A HUMAN BODY belonging to an airship inventor
|
|
who spoke a language other than English? To prevent the same things
|
|
from happening in the Grundy story, the names of the families
|
|
involved and their present whereabouts have been withheld, pending
|
|
further investigation. The town of Grundy no longer exists and had
|
|
not for many years, so no ones privacy will be invaded by divulging
|
|
ITS name.
|
|
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
More down to Earth, so to speak, are the following stories :
|
|
|
|
The Galveston Daily News of April 29, 1897 reads:
|
|
|
|
"It may be that those people out west who for the last six
|
|
months have been filling the papers with accounts of a
|
|
mysterious airship which they have seen in the sky are not
|
|
monumental liars after all. It is possible that experiments
|
|
now being made by the U.S. Government with a view to producing
|
|
a genuine air ship may be responsible for their visions.
|
|
|
|
"For several years the government has had in its employ a well-
|
|
known aeronaut, who gets, it is said, a salary of $10,000 a
|
|
year, and constant work and experiment have been going on at
|
|
Fort Logan, near Denver. A profound secrecy has been
|
|
maintained as to what has been accomplished, even Army
|
|
officers themselves only getting vague inklings of what is
|
|
going on."
|
|
|
|
Somehow this sounds familiar in today's UFO world. Who this well-
|
|
known aeronaut really was, was not divulged, but papers across the
|
|
country listed dozens of POSSIBLE inventors of the mystery airships,
|
|
among the many named included the following partial list :
|
|
|
|
George Jennings - Fresno, California
|
|
W. H. Warren - Hayward, California
|
|
John A. Horen - San Jose, California
|
|
Anton Pallardy - Beatrice, Nebraska
|
|
H. John O. Prease - Omaha, Nebraska
|
|
Clinton A. Case (A.C. Clinton) - Omaha, Nebraska
|
|
Charles Clinton - Dodge City, Kansas
|
|
Harry Tibbs - Louisville, Kentucky
|
|
Edward J. Pennington - Mount Carmel, Illinois
|
|
|
|
Page 5
|
|
C. Devonbaugh - Vandalia, Illinois
|
|
Valney Stewart - Brule, Wisconsin
|
|
|
|
Other names tossed around included :
|
|
|
|
J. F. Calipha George Francis Train
|
|
Prof. Charles Davidson Albert Whipple
|
|
|
|
Three names are not included in the above lists :
|
|
|
|
C.A.A. Dellschau - the central character of this series of
|
|
articles,
|
|
Mr. Wilson - the pilot of an airship reported in the first
|
|
of this series and his equally mysterious
|
|
"rich Uncle", and
|
|
Dr. Benjamin - and HIS uncle.
|
|
|
|
Early in November, 1896, a Bay Area attorney had received assurances
|
|
from an inventor, who wished to remain anonymous, that the problems
|
|
of air travel had been solved, George D. Collins let it leak out
|
|
that the mystery craft seen over Sacramento and the surrounding
|
|
countryside was the invention of his new client. He later stated
|
|
that $100,000 and five years had gone into perfecting the 150 foot
|
|
machine and that he had been "favored with a demonstration at a
|
|
secret location." By the 22nd, his home and office were overrun by
|
|
reporters and just plain snoopers, pressing him for details.
|
|
|
|
Backed into a corner, Collins admitted that the craft was hidden in
|
|
a barn in Berkeley during the daylight hours and that a Dr. Benjamin
|
|
had something to do with the builiding of it. "Dr. Benjamin" turned
|
|
outo be E. H. Benjamin of Ellis Street, a 34-year old bachelor,
|
|
dentist, and dabbler with inventions and recently from somewhere in
|
|
Maine. He denied any knowledge of this ship. He did admit he had
|
|
frequently visited an unnamed uncle at Oroville and that he had
|
|
privately confided to friends that he had invented something which
|
|
would revolutionise the world.
|
|
|
|
Government agents, detectives, reporters and railroad men were quick
|
|
to swarm over Oroville especially when they heard Benjamin say that,
|
|
if he HAD invented the craft, he wouldn't be so foolish as to admit
|
|
it in public. The uncle was never found nor was any evidence that
|
|
an airship had been built there as claimed.
|
|
|
|
Attorney Collins, hounded by reporters, the curious, and the
|
|
outright cranks, changed his story completely and denied ever having
|
|
ANY knowledge at all of the craft. The Patent Office in Washington,
|
|
D.C., was flooded with inquiries about Collins application.
|
|
Disclaimers were returned instead.
|
|
|
|
"Aluminum Benjamin", as he became known probably because several
|
|
close witnesses claimed it looked "like aluminum", complained to the
|
|
press that he had to move to escape the curious and that eating in
|
|
public restaurants proved to be impossible because throngs would
|
|
quickly gather to stare, giggle, and gesture at the windows of the
|
|
establishment. He feared his mind would soon become unhinged.
|
|
Benjamin finally fled the area leaving what personal effects he had
|
|
behind in his apartment.
|
|
|
|
In the meantime, Collins had been fired for talking too much and
|
|
slowly faded out of the picture. W. H. H. Hart now came forward
|
|
|
|
Page 6
|
|
|
|
claiming that HE was in secret communication with the inventor.
|
|
Hart was a former State Attorney General, a bearded, distinguished
|
|
looking gentleman and one of the most respected men in California.
|
|
|
|
In the 1907 issue of the National Cyclopedia of American Biography,
|
|
it was stated that Hart was the discoverer of "the only mine in the
|
|
world in which osmium is found in metal form....in large
|
|
quantities." The metal was used chiefly in the manufacture of
|
|
electric storage batteries. One of the chief features of these
|
|
aircraft were their powerful SEARCHLIGHTS that could turn night into
|
|
day from hundreds of feet above.
|
|
|
|
Hart also stated that while he knew very little about the airship
|
|
THERE, he had been concerned with its sister ship IN THE EAST for
|
|
some time. He refused to say much about either ship and nothing
|
|
about the inventors or where the ships were built or housed.
|
|
Sightings became rare and with no NEW news, the story was dropped -
|
|
unsolved!
|
|
|
|
Then in the April 12, 1897, issue of the Chicago Journal appeared a
|
|
brief item. It stated that Oscar D. Booth of 158 South Peoria
|
|
Street firmly believed the strange object seen was indeed an
|
|
airship. It seems Mr. Booth was ready to build one himself and was
|
|
merely waiting for the return of the Secretary of the Booth Flying
|
|
Machine Company whose name, by the way, was E. H. BENJAMIN!
|
|
|
|
Coincidence? Coincidences abound in the story of the Great
|
|
Airships. A few have been brought out in this article. Another in
|
|
the following.
|
|
|
|
Several times and in different parts of the country witnesses have
|
|
stated that they had met the captain/or crew of the local airship
|
|
and had been informed the craft had been to THE MONTEZUMA MOUNTAINS.
|
|
|
|
In researching the Dellschau material, he, too, mentioned flying to
|
|
the MONTEZUMA MOUNTAINS, but no map could be found showing any such
|
|
mountains. Finally, two old maps were found. One Mexican map shows
|
|
a range of mountains in the southern part of California just below
|
|
San Francisco that bear the label MONTEZUMA MOUNTAINS. (The exact
|
|
peaks have not yet been identified with today's labelling.)
|
|
|
|
A second old map shows another Montezuma Mountains. This one in New
|
|
York. It is now, ironically, a wild fowl preserve and is not too
|
|
far from Goshen, New York, the alleged home of the mysterious "Mr.
|
|
Wilson" and HIS uncle!
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
**********************************************
|
|
* THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
|
|
********************************************** |