So what you have read in these pages about a great airship and the flying machines it carried, releasing and recovering them in flight, has a great 'reality foundation' in aviation history.
BUT—JET ENGINES IN 1930?
If you search through your history books on aviation, or study thick encyclopedias, or wander through jet aviation exhibits in museums, you are certain to be informed that the first jet airplane took to the skies in August of 1939. This was a Heinkel He178 of Germany, and it represented a highwater mark in aviation progress.
But it wasn't the first jet flight—which established another foundation for our story. In fact, the He178 made its first flight nearly thirty years after the Frenchman, Henri Coanda, lunged into the skies from the airfield at IssylesMoulineaux in France. The year was 1910, and not only did Coanda make the first jet flight (short and disastrous though it was), but he also designed the jet engine for his own sleek biplane jet. Today, the second biplane jet Coanda built is still on display at a French aviation museum. The first machine of its type was publicly displayed in 1910 at the Salon Aeronautique in Paris.
This writer interviewed Henri Coanda at great length, and a marvelous time it was, being with one of the greatest aviation pioneers of history. Coanda began to develop his ideas for a jet engine in 1904, when he attended the French School of Advanced Aeronautic Study. From this learning period he designed and continued to improve on a jet engine he called the turbopropulsor. His friend, Clerget, built the engine from Coanda's design drawings, and it was installed in the sleek biplane, also of Coanda's design.
Since Coanda flew his jet in 1910, some twenty years before our story takes place, there was certainly plenty of time to develop the original crude jet engine into a powerful and reliable system for the flying discs that Indiana Jones had to face.
But why haven't we heard more of Coanda? Because while he managed to take off in his jet, his landing was a thundering crash. He was performing taxi tests. That is, running the Coanda Jet along the airport to test its power and its brakes, so the pilot would know what to expect before his first attempt to fly. To Coanda's surprise, his jet engine was far more powerful than he'd anticipated, and when he pushed his throttle forward, jet flames burst back from the engine, and it howled like a huge dragon. Before Coanda could stop his machine, it leaped into the sky. When Coanda looked up there was a wall in front of him. Desperately, he yanked off power and hauled back on the control stick, and the Coanda Jet fell off to one side and smashed into the ground. Coanda was thrown clear and was only bruised, but the airplane burned to a skeleton.
In our story we encountered Coanda developing his first jet engine and airplane in 1910, and we ran into him again during World War I when he developed a rocket gun for the French Army. He also applied for a patent (in 1914) for his jet engine. All this is factual history, and it establishes the basis for the jet engines in the flying discs.
In fact, Coanda was also responsible for several flying saucer designs which, when they were made public many years after he worked on those astonishing machines, were known as Lenticular Aerodynes. And they worked. So that if the reader assumes that even the flying saucers in our story are, or can be, real— you're right!
The jet engines in this book are based on Coanda's designs built and tested in 1910, and patented in France in 1914.
Had the French government, or individual investors, supported Coanda's work, then World War I, from 1914 to 1918, might well have been fought with jet fighters and bombers. But the immediate need for planes overshadowed what most Frenchmen had never even heard of, and government authorities looked with suspicion upon anything that revolutionary.
The Coanda engine, as it developed, would have been perfect for the giant dirigible and the flying discs in our story. It fired up like an ordinary combustion engine, but its power came from a rotary system operating at great speed within the engine. The spinning motion created a partial vacuum that drew in huge amounts of air. Then the engine compressed that air, mixed it with fuel, and lit the entire affair in the manner of a continuous explosion. This spun even more blades to increase the flow of air, the density of the fuelair mixture, the temperature within the engine, and the speed of hot gases hurled back from the engine. There you have it—not merely a workable jet engine, but one that increased its power and compression the faster it moved. And the faster it flew, the greater was its power, so that continuing to develop the Coanda engine gave us the perfect propulsion for the discs and the dirigible that so astonished everyone.
Of course there were still problems to overcome in balancing and controlling the flight direction of the discs, but from the same fertile mind of Henri Coanda came that solution. In his Coanda Effect, the Frenchman proved that by blowing a powerful jet along a flat surface (or engine vane), the flow of the jet will follow the flat surface, and even hug that surface as it begins to move into a circular shape. Coanda designed an Aerodyne machine that created through this effect a partial vacuum above a wing (or a disc in the form of an airfoil) shape. With normal pressure beneath the disc, there was then created a tremendous lifting force. Coanda then designed his jet system into a perfect disc which gave him what he called ThreeDimensional Propulsion. As to balance, the air whirling at tremendous speed in circular motion around the rim of his disc turned the entire disc into a wonderful gyroscope. It always pointed, when flying, to true north. So when the disc maneuvered, it didn't bank and turn like an airplane, but moved in a 'skidding motion' through the air. The pilot cockpit swiveled to keep the pilot pointed in whatever direction he desired, and by changing pressure along different parts of the edge of the flying disc, he was able to turn in whatever direction he chose. Result: a flying saucer. It took years for the Coanda Effect, and Coanda's unique jet engine design, to actually be built and test flown, but the Canadian government finally assembled the Aerodyne shape—and many years ago actually flew its own flying saucer.
Let's return, even if briefly, to the subject of UFO's as they have been reported for thousands of years. As we pointed out in the story—and every reference to historical sightings of strange and unidentified objects in the skies is absolutely true—the entire subject of the UFO has been an area of great controversy. The truth is that there's no question that strange objects hurtle through our skies. There have been many sightings by highly experienced observers, and, since 1947, UFO's have been captured on film, tracked by telescopes, followed on radar, and had close encounters with manned aircraft.
It may seem strange that the most reliable reports and sightings do not become available to the public. Many UFO sightings by military forces are immediately classified. They cannot be explained, and our government dislikes intensely being on the 'hot spot' as unable to verify what's streaking through our skies faster and higher than any airplanes we have in the air.
Because so many reports have been subjected to ridicule, airline captains and top pilots almost to a man refuse to comment publicly on discs and other craft—which are not known to be the property of any country on this planet—they have encountered in flight. This writer has hundreds of such reports from pilots who provided amazing details of the startling objects they have encountered in flight.
Also, when I was in the U.S. Air Force, I participated in UFOsightings investigations, talking to hundreds of witnesses who had encountered, on the ground and in the air, objects they could not identify. Many reports turned out to be dead ends. Others were exactly the opposite. As a pilot, I have also pursued UFO's while flying highspeed jets. I have chased a startlingly huge disc at low altitude when flying a B25 bomber; it easily outmaneuvered us and then flew away as if we were standing still in the air. What was it?
