To paraphrase the words of the pastor from the popularly beloved film “Beware of the Car”, we can say that all people believe. Some believe that there are UFOs, others that they are not; both are unprovable. The French researcher of the UFO problem Jacques Ballet once proposed a curious intellectual paradox: "Does a unicorn have a horn growing in the middle of its forehead?" - "Yes". - "Do unicorns exist?" - "Not". So are there "unicorns", that is, UFOs?
Secret contracts
Let us turn to the story of the failed attempt by the Canadian firm Avro Canada to build a disc-shaped aircraft. According to the official version, the Canadians, in cooperation with the Americans, built two experimental vehicles in 1960, which had mediocre flight characteristics. For this reason, the project was officially closed. It would seem that in the history of the attempt to build disc-shaped flying vehicles, a fat point has been put. However, is it really so?
On October 1, 1951, a report from the Pentagon's Budget Office was released, which stated: “It is possible to create a jet aircraft of a new type, vertical takeoff and landing using an air cushion. It will develop a speed of 1,500 knots (2,778 kilometers per hour) and have a range of 15,000 miles. The latest data show that a turbojet flying disc can be created by the efforts of the Western world within five years from today. Such a machine will be invulnerable to modern air defense systems."
In 1952, the aircraft manufacturer Avro Canada received a $ 400,000 contract from the Canadian government to develop a disc-shaped fighter ("Project Y"). The project was led by John Frost, nicknamed Jack, who arrived in Toronto on June 14, 1947.
Work on "Project Y" was carried out in an atmosphere of unprecedented secrecy. However, despite the measures taken, publications began to appear in the media that shocked the project management and the Canadian Air Force. The general sentiment of the leaders of Avro Canada is illustrated by the statement of one of them: "There was something intimidating that our most important secret was revealed so easily."
In January 1954, Avro Canada and the Canadian Department of Defense approached the US Air Force with a formal proposal to work together. Since then, the firm's projects to create a disc-shaped fighter have been funded through contracts with the US Air Force.
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In April 1960, the brainchild of "Avro Canada" - two experimental models of the "Avrocar" apparatus - were presented to the public. Alas, it became clear that the mountain gave birth to a mouse.
At the surface of the earth, the vehicles flew quite steadily, but at an altitude of more than 2.5 meters, instability was observed, which could lead to an overturn. The maximum speed of the vehicles was 56 kilometers per hour. As a result, in December 1961, all work was terminated "due to the expiration of the contract."
Smoke screen
Now let's talk about the strangeness of this case. The experimental models were equipped with turbojet engines, the power of which was obviously enough only to create an air cushion!
In an official report dated November 8, 1948, Colonel Howard McCoy, Commander of the United States Air Force Logistics Directorate, responded to a request from the Chief of United States Air Force Intelligence, Major General Charles P. Cable: “While saucer-shaped craft can be made to fly, they will have poor flight characteristics. in combination with a short radius of action and low flight altitude, in the presence of available modes of movement (propeller or jet engine).
The reliability of this conclusion was most remarkably illustrated 12 years later, during the official tests of the Avrocar apparatus. The question arises: why spend millions of budget dollars for the implementation of an obviously unviable project ?!
But practical Americans have invested money in Avro Canada for a reason. Many years later, US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel George Edward said that he, like some other specialists who participated in the work on the Avrocar, knew from the very beginning that their work would not bring the desired results, but "the project continued as a cover from journalists." …
According to recently declassified documents, a special group of engineers existed from 1952 until the project was completed in 1961. It was known as the "Special Projects Team" and was led by Frost. She worked on the creation of a whole family of devices in the form of a disk, which in their characteristics were supposed to outshine the famous jet fighters. Thus, within the framework of "Project 1794" a round fighter-interceptor was developed, capable of a speed of four machs (4,800 kilometers per hour) at an altitude of 100,000 feet.
Let's cite the testimony of Jack Pickett, who worked in a military publishing house in the 1960-1970s. In 1967, on the instructions of the adjutant of the commander of McDill Air Base (Tampa, Florida), Pickett prepared material on the history of experimental US aircraft. He was allowed to visit the enclosed parking areas where the various types of aircraft ever tested at the airbase were located. At one of the distant sites, he found four "discoplanes": 6, 12, 21 and 35 meters in diameter. According to him, the US Air Force had a special squadron Fighter Long-range Tactical Air-command Future Forces, which was armed with various types of discoplanes. The squadron was stationed at Carswell AFB (Fort Worth, Texas), then it was transferred to James Connolly AFB (Waco, TX). The picket saw numerous photographs of "discoplanes"including flying formation in the amount of up to 50 units.
German trace
The picket managed to find out that work on the "discoplanes" began in 1943, but not in Canada or the USA, but in Nazi Germany! They were carried out at the BMW - Heinkel plant in Dresden under the direction of Lieutenant General Walter Dornberger and SS Sturmbannführer Werner von Braun, who also supervised the German missile program. In a post-war twist, these people made a decisive contribution to the American space program.
The German development team was led by Dr. Richard Mite, who worked at BMW's rocket engine division in Berlin. The first prototype tests took place in the spring of 1944. After the end of the war, on the recommendation of Wernher von Braun, Mite ended up at a leading US Air Force research center (Wright Field, Ohio). Subsequently, Mite worked at a rocket center, and then was sent to Canada to participate in projects of the Avro Canada firm. By 1955, Mite completed the construction of the "discoplane", the prototype of which was tested in 1944 in Germany. The first tests took place in Malton, the subsequent ones were carried out at Edward AFB. The picket claimed that the "discoplanes" he saw had repeatedly flown in the airspace of the USSR.
There is also a German trace in the personal file of the head of "Project Y" Frost. Beginning in 1942, he worked at De Haviland, where captured German aircraft were studied after the end of the war. A document was found in the Canadian National Archives showing that Frost traveled to West Germany in 1953. There, during the ceremony of the official induction of British and Canadian intelligence officers, Frost met a German aeronautical engineer, who claimed that in 1944-1945, near Prague, he participated in the creation of an aircraft in the form of a disk. The device was not only built, but also successfully tested. Was this mysterious engineer Mite himself or one of his team members, it is difficult to judge at the moment.
But what about Howard McCoy's conclusion that conventional jet engines were unsuitable for aircraft of this design? It is possible that engines of a fundamentally new type were created in the Third Reich.
One of the outcomes of Germany's defeat in World War I was the restriction imposed on the development of traditional types of weapons. To get around this limitation, the country's leadership was forced to invest in the development of unconventional military technologies, including the development of alternative energy sources. In 1938, in a letter to the Minister of Culture of Baden Wacker, SS Reichsfuehrer Himmler wrote: “There are many things that we are not able to understand. But they must be used, including by amateurs."
Don't let the genie out of the bottle
After the end of World War II, German developments went to the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition. But the open introduction of such radical technologies was impossible, since it posed a threat to aviation monopolies and the "traditional" fuel and energy complex. It was also impossible to simply bury these technologies: there was a danger that yesterday's allies in the coalition would use them. In order not to let the genie out of the bottle, a version was proposed that explained the appearance in the sky of devices with unusual technical characteristics exclusively by an "extraterrestrial presence." This version organically fits the first well-known boom in the observation of "unidentified flying objects" in the United States, which occurred in 1947-1952.
Of course, it would be a mistake to reduce the problem of UFOs only to the manifestations of "miraculous" technologies that are ripening in the depths of secret laboratories. As the famous Polish writer and philosopher Stanislav Jerzy Lec put it. we must always be prepared for the fact that "in reality everything is not at all the same as in reality."
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №22. Author: Alexey Komogortsev, Interdisciplinary Research Group “The Origins of Civilizations