Scientists and engineers in the United States working for the defense department of their state usually do not lack funding and have the opportunity to test many unusual ideas in practice. We present to the readers several secret projects that were developed under the control of the US special services - and only recently, after declassification, they became known to the general public.
Artificial eagles and crows
In the early 1960s, the United States began developing the first unmanned aerial vehicles. The project was named "Aquiline" (English Aquiline - "eagle profile"), the devices were supposed to float in the air, flapping their wings, and in appearance resembled eagles. The devices were intended for reconnaissance purposes, they were equipped with cameras and equipment for electronic tracking.
The Arons were tested for a long time, but they were never put into service. Failed to debug control, and too frequent accidents during landing forced the CIA to close the secret project.
A little later, other attempts were made to create a similar device. Within the framework of the Ornithopter project (English ornithopter, from the ancient Greek words meaning “bird” and “wing”), an apparatus was developed that was much smaller in size, outwardly similar to a crow. As conceived by the creators, he was supposed to fly into the window and photograph the desired object inside the room. For the same purpose, a very small apparatus of the Insectopter project (from the Latin insectum - "insect") was created - a mini-robot resembling a dragonfly. Both projects were closed because these devices were also too difficult to manage. As a result, scientists suggested using real pigeons with special collars for reconnaissance purposes, where video cameras were embedded. But this idea also failed: the equipment was too heavy for the birds,and making it more compact proved to be an unsolvable technical problem for the mid-1960s.
Project No. 57
This was the name of the experiment conducted on April 24, 1957 at the proving ground in Nevada (the name indicated the year when these tests were carried out). The US military wanted to check what would happen if an aircraft carrying a nuclear charge exploded in the sky and released radioactive substances into the atmosphere.
At the site over which the atomic explosion was carried out, a dummy of a small town was built to find out what would happen to the buildings. Trucks and cars were placed on specially paved asphalt roads. Animals were used to test the exposure to radiation: 109 dogs, 10 sheep, 9 donkeys and 31 rats.
The nuclear warhead was detonated at 6:27 am local time. As a result, an area of 895 acres (1 acre = 0.4 hectares) was exposed to radioactive contamination.
All information about the consequences of this explosion is still classified. But it is known that after him it was not possible to clear the landfill (in the military documents it appears under the name Zone-13). This area is still fenced with barbed wire, no one is allowed here. Models of buildings and cars were burned, the burnt remains were not taken out.
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Fleas with plague pathogens
The "Great Itching" project, which the Americans tried to implement in 1954, was associated with the development of biological weapons. The tests were carried out at a remote base in the Utah desert. Their goal was to determine the possibility of using the tropical fleas of the Xenopsylla cheopis species (the insect was discovered in 1901 in Egypt and named after the Pharaoh Cheops) for military purposes. Fleas were carriers of plague pathogens - and scientists wanted to check how the process of mass infection would take place.
Engineers have developed two modifications of cluster bombs: E14, designed for 100 thousand insects, and E23 - twice as large. At an altitude of 300 to 600 meters, these bombs released parachutes and slowed down the descent, after which they opened in the air, releasing insects. Below, at the test site, cages with guinea pigs were placed.
True, the E23 product turned out to be unfinished. During one of the tests, the bomb exploded right on the plane. The fleas that escaped to freedom bit the pilot, the bombardier and the observer. After that, they decided to conduct tests using only the E14 bomb.
According to the test results, it was recommended to build a huge flea nursery with a capacity of up to 50 million insects per week. But the task looked too difficult, there were serious fears that blood-sucking pests or microbes infecting them could seep to freedom. Therefore, the Big Itch project was closed.
Lost bomb
As you know, the shortest route from the USA to the USSR ran over the territories near the North Pole. Beginning in 1961, the Americans conducted constant combat duty of strategic bombers with thermonuclear weapons on board in the Greenland region.
On January 21, 1968, a fire broke out in the cabin of one of these cars due to the fault of the pilots. The crew managed to jump out with parachutes (with one person killed), after which an unguided B-52G bomber with four nuclear bombs crashed into an ice rock. Three charges detonated, resulting in a serious radioactive contamination of the surrounding area. The heat from the explosion melted the ice, and the fourth bomb, without exploding, went to the bottom of North Star Bay.
In 1995, some of the documents related to the disaster were declassified, and the story became public. After the crash of the bomber, the Americans sent a group of scientific and military specialists to Greenland to search for the missing bomb and decontaminate the area. The project has received the official name "Crested ice", and the unofficial, but much more common - "Dr. Freezlaw". In this case, the surname of the hero of the cult film directed by Stanley Kubrick "Doctor Strangelove, or How I Stopped Fearing and Loved the Bomb", filmed in 1964 (English strangelove - "strange love", azelove - "frozen love") was played up.
For several months, the Americans collected and removed 10,500 tons of radioactive snow and ice, their disposal was carried out in South Carolina. After the completion of the decontamination work, the contaminated area was surrounded by a fence with warning notices in English and Eskimo.
The missing bomb was searched for with the help of a deep-sea vehicle - but it was never found.
Jump from the window
In the late 1940s, a department was formed in the CIA, which was engaged in the development of drugs for influencing the human psyche. In 1951, it was headed by Doctor of Chemical Sciences Sidney Gottlieb. Research has focused on the use of the powerful hallucinogens mescaline and LSD.
The experiment program was named "Project MK-ultra". It was so secret that it was not even subject to inspections and audits by the control and financial structures of the CIA.
The tests took place in a domestic environment, drugs were administered to people without their knowledge, including residents of other states. For example, in August 1951, in the French village of Pont-Saint-Esprit, a substance containing LSD was added to a local bakery. As a result, about two hundred people were in a state of feverish delirium for a long time, ten went crazy and ended up in mental hospitals, seven died.
In the mid-1950s, a terrible experiment was carried out in New York: a car passing through the streets sprayed hallucinogenic drugs. The researchers studied the behavior of people caught in the zone of poisoning - the change in their behavior and its dependence on the concentration of gas and weather conditions.
During the same years in San Francisco, recruited women of easy virtue put their clients to sleep, then injected them with LSD and monitored the reactions of the subjects. In Lexington, Virginia, similar studies were conducted on unsuspecting patients at a drug treatment clinic.
In the early 1970s, US congressmen initiated an investigation into such incidents. It turned out that all the key documents of the project were deliberately destroyed. But according to various kinds of evidence, it was possible to establish that over the 11 years of the existence of the MK-ultra program, more than 5 thousand civilians and military personnel of the United States and other countries were exposed to the drugs, including the researchers themselves - in particular, the microbiologist Frank Olsen without his knowledge was injected with LSD, after which the scientist jumped out of the window and crashed to his death.
The scale of the project is evidenced by the fact that its budget in 1953 amounted to 6 percent of all CIA spending.
Many conspiracy theorists believe that experiments on manipulating people's minds continue to this day, and call such stars of show business as Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, Christina Aguilera, Whitney Houston, Angelina Jolie and many others as victims of the project. Although, according to official information, work on the MK-Ultra program was completely stopped in 1977. At the same time, not a single CIA officer was punished for the death of people.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №44. Author: Svetlana Savich