By Dr. Michael D. Swords, 8 December 2009
(The Big Study)
Quote from the article:
“This blog entry is about the title [UFOs and
Balloons] but it is mainly about the critical importance of learning
UFO/Government history. The only reason that certain falsities about the
subject are allowed to go on interminably is that no one really knows anything
about what really went on. Many good people keep disrespecting the subject because
they cannot believe that ‘science’ and the Air Force would have so thoroughly
lied and/or otherwise misinformed them through all these years. This little
entry is part of one ‘chapter’ in how all that could happen.
The villain in the story is a scientist working for
the U S Navy's Office of Naval Research. His name was Urner Liddel; he was very
smart; he knew all the science big-wigs personally [like Edward Condon, a
friend]; and he was in charge of the nuclear science desk at ONR.
The ‘Big Research Balloon’ theory had remarkable
staying power despite its absurdity. Three years after Liddel's ‘revelations’
[in 1954] it had a particularly big year with major national media outlets
resurrecting and parading it about to the relief, one supposes, of both the Air
Force and the more hysterical-oriented part of the American public. Two of the
sources shown on the left are Collier's magazine and U.S.News and World Report,
showing the kind of coverage such a debunking claim could command. The
newspaper story is even more interesting to the UFO historian, as it quotes the
CEO in charge of secret balloon research at General Mills as saying that their
balloons are responsible for the UFO craze. Certainly this is as close to the ‘horse’s
mouth’ as you can get and so it must be true. But NONE of it was true and all
the important ‘authority figures’ had to know it.
Unlike Liddel and even Bullis, it was the boys at the
left who actually flew the secret balloons. What did they say? THEY ALL SAW
UFOS. Not their own balloons, but UFOs coming to ‘visit’ or ‘inspect’ or ‘whatever
they were doing’ at their balloon launches. Commander McLaughlin, who headed up
the Navy projects out of White Sands Proving Grounds, saw a UFO and had others
reported to him. One such case was by Charles Moore, the scientific leader on
the site. Most astounding were the experiences of J.J. Kaliszewski and his launch
teams at General Mills in Minnesota. We are lucky that Tom Tulien interviewed
Kaliszewski for the UFO Oral History Project. Here are some quotes: After
saying that he and his buddies just laughed at Liddel’s article when it came
out, he told Tom this: ‘[In 1951] we were up there watching the balloon for
possible malfunction, when all of a sudden into our field of vision comes this
object--had no business being there--so this is what we reported. Oh, it passed
behind the balloon, over the balloon, oh, it moved around. It had to have some
interest in the balloon or it wouldn't have hung around.’ A day later it
happened again.”
Wikipedia article: “White Sands
Missile Range
Related posts:
Map of White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico
(wikimedia.org image)