top speed did not exceed 1430 mph. The Manta had interested the American General Staff, but in view of these operating deficiencies, it was decided not to build it. (48)
These high hopes for US-Canadian flying discs were dashed when, on 3 December 1954, the Canadian Defense Ministry suddenly announced that the project was to be abandoned on the grounds that the technology required to make it work was too expensive and speculative.
Nearly a year later, however, on 25 October 1955, US Air Force Secretary Donald Quarles made an intriguing statement through the Department of Defense press office.
We are now entering a period of aviation technology in which aircraft of unusual configuration and flight characteristics will begin to appear … The Air Force will fly the first jet-powered vertical-rising airplane in a matter of days. We have another project under contract with AVRO Ltd., of Canada, which could result in disc-shaped aircraft somewhat similar to the popular concept of a flying saucer … While some of these may take novel forms, such as the AVRO project, they are direct-line descendants of conventional aircraft and should not be regarded as supra-natural or mysterious … Vertical-rising aircraft capable of transition to supersonic horizontal flight will be a new phenomenon in our skies, and under certain conditions could give the illusion of the so-called flying saucer. The Department of Defense will make every effort within the bounds of security to keep the public informed of these developments so they can be recognized for what they are … I think we must recognize that other countries also have the capability of developing vertical-rising aircraft, perhaps of unconventional shapes. However, we are satisfied at this time that none of the sightings of so-called ‘flying saucers’ reported in this country were in fact aircraft of foreign origin. (49)
Quarles’s surprising statement notwithstanding, the AVRO company was in fact going through something of a bad patch following the cancellation by the Canadian Government of the contract for the CF-105 Arrow heavy bomber, on the pretext of the diminished air threat from Russia which had only a limited number of intercontinental bombers. This decision resulted in 10,000 people being laid off, most of them specialists working on the saucer project, renamed the AVRO-Car.
It was not until August 1960 that American authorities decided to allow the press to see the prototype of the AVRO-Car. Its performance was less than impressive: it managed to do little more than hover a few feet above the ground, prompting an official statement that ‘even for this type of VTOL plane … the principal problem is low-speed stability. Tests with a full-scale model have been made at the large forty-by-eighty-foot wind tunnel at the Ames Research Center, belonging to NASA, but they were not completely successful. It became clear, however, that the various problems inherent in a circular aircraft of this type are not insurmountable.’ (50)
Just over a year later, it was announced that the US Department of Defense would be withdrawing from the AVRO-Car project, on the grounds that it was unlikely that the design could ever be made to work successfully.
The lamentable story of the AVRO-Car (and its illustration of the problems besetting disc-shaped aircraft) has done nothing to dissuade Nazi-UFO proponents from maintaining that their basic thesis is correct. However, British ufologist Timothy Good quotes a CIA memorandum from W. E. Lexow, Chief of the Applied Science Division, Office of Scientific Intelligence, dated 19 October 1955, which may lend weight to this idea. According to the memorandum, John Frost, the designer of the AVRO-Car, ‘is reported to have obtained his original idea for the flying machine from a group of Germans just after World War II. The Soviets may also have obtained information from this German group’. (51)
Any theory of the origin of UFOs must, of course, take into account all the available evidence, and this includes reported encounters with and descriptions of UFO occupants. Having looked at the idea that UFOs are man-made aircraft inspired by designs developed by Nazi scientists in the Second World War, we now find ourselves confronting material that would, at first sight, be sufficient to make the Nazi-UFO theory completely untenable. For as soon as the UFO lands and opens its hatches, we meet a variety of creatures that are anything but human. (To be sure, some UFO occupants are described as being completely human-looking but they seem to be very much in the minority.) This has naturally led the majority of UFO researchers and investigators to conclude that UFOs are extraterrestrial devices. Before dealing with this problem, let us illustrate it by examining briefly some of these alleged contacts with UFO occupants.
Over the decades since the modern era of ufology began with the Arnold sighting in 1947, people all over the world have claimed to have encountered an astonishing variety of creatures linked with UFOs on the ground. In the 1950s and 1960s these people were known as ‘contactees’ and, according to their testimony, humanity had nothing whatsoever to fear from the ufonauts. They were almost invariably described as being tall and strikingly attractive, with long, sandy-coloured hair and blue eyes, a description which resulted in their being classified as ‘Nordic’ aliens. (In the present context, this description has obvious and sinister connotations but, as we shall see, is almost certainly coincidental.)
The most famous of the 1950s contactees was George Adamski who, on 20 November 1952, encountered a man claiming to come from Venus. Adamski, a self-styled philosopher and mystic, was running a hamburger stand a few miles from the Mount Palomar Observatory in California when he had his encounter. He was having lunch with several friends near Desert Center when they allegedly saw a gigantic cigar-shaped object in the sky. Telling his friends to remain behind, Adamski drove into the desert, where he witnessed the landing of a disc-shaped ‘scout craft’. When the ship’s single occupant appeared, Adamski was able to communicate with him through a combination of hand signals and telepathy and learned that the Venusians (together with other intelligent races throughout the Solar System) were deeply concerned at humanity’s misuse of nuclear energy (a theme that would be repeated again and again by the contactees).
In common with the other contactees, Adamski’s claims suffered from egregious scientific inaccuracies, not least of which was the utter inability of all the other planets in the Solar System to support intelligent humanoid life. In Adamski’s case, this difficulty was somewhat compounded by a comment he made to two followers regarding Prohibition. During this period, he had secured a special licence from the government to make wine for religious purposes (he had founded a monastery in Laguna Beach), with the result that he claimed to have made ‘enough wine for all of Southern California’. If it had not been for the repeal of Prohibition, he told his friends, ‘I wouldn’t have had to get into this saucer crap’. (52)
The contactee claims of the 1950s are rightly regarded as extremely dubious by most ufologists; however, in the decades since there have been a number of contact claims that demand more serious attention. Before proceeding, it is necessary for us to look briefly at some of the most impressive reports, since they form the backdrop to an increasingly popular conspiracy theory regarding Nazi activities in the postwar period.
When we examine reports of encounters with UFO occupants (particularly since the early 1960s), we see that the defining characteristic reveals itself to be what has come to be known as ‘abduction’, in which witnesses are taken from their normal environment against their will and are forced to interact in various ways with apparently nonhuman entities.
One of the most famous abduction cases occurred on 11 October 1973 on the shores of the Pascagoula River in Mississippi, USA. Charlie Hickson, 45, and Calvin Parker, 18, were fishing in the river when they witnessed the approach of a UFO. The following day, the United Press International news service carried the following report:
PASCAGOULA, Miss. Two shipyard workers who claimed they were hauled aboard a UFO and examined by silver-skinned creatures with big eyes and pointed ears were checked today at a military hospital and found to be free of radiation.
… Jackson County chief deputy Barney Mathis said the men told him they were fishing from an old pier on the west bank of the Pascagoula River about 7p.m. Thursday when they noticed a strange craft about two miles away emitting a bluish haze.
They said it moved closer and then appeared to hover about three or four feet above the water, then ‘three whatever-they-weres came out, either floating or walking, and carried us into the ship,’ officers quoted Hickson as saying.
‘The things had big eyes. They kept us about twenty minutes, photographed us, and then took us back to the pier. The only sound they made was a buzzing-humming sound. They left in a flash.’
