Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries (61 page)

Stanford told Hynek that NASA's "official" analysis had revealed it to be common silica. "That cannot be true!" exclaimed Hynek. "I am familiar with the analysis techniques involved. Silica could not be mistaken for a zinc-iron alloy. They haven't given you the truth! I would accept Frankel's original report and forget the later disclaimer."

Given that the original analysis was accurate it is worth recording NASA Administrator Dr. Robert Frosch's statement in the letter he wrote to President Carter's science advisor, Dr. Frank Press, in 1977: "There is an absence of tangible or physical evidence available for thorough laboratory analysis ... To proceed [therefore] on a research task without a disciplinary framework and an exploratory technique in mind would be wasteful and probably unproductive."

THE SILVER SPRING FILM

In my first book I devoted a chapter to the controversial 8mm colour movie film taken by George Rodeffer and other unnamed Silver Spring, Maryland, in February 1965. I have been taken to task for endorsing the authenticity of this "obviously fake" film taken by a "proven charlatan," but I have yet to see any conclusive evidence that it Adamski witnesses in the presence of Madeleine

outside Madeleine's home at was actually faked. Both my co-author Lou Zinsstag and I exposed as many of the inconsistencies in Adamski's claims that were available to us at the time of writing, but that short piece of film, taken a few months before Adamski's death, remains authentic in my opinion at least.

Sometime between 3 and 4
P
.
M
. on 26 February 1965 an unidentified craft of the famous type photographed by Adamski in 1952 (and others subsequently) described a series of manoeuvres over Madeleine's front yard, retracting and lowering one of its three pods and making a gentle humming and swishing sound as it did so. Adamski began filming the craft with Madeleine's 8 mm camera. "It looked blackish-brown or grayishbrown at times," Madeleine told me, "but when it came in close it looked greenish and blueish, and it looked aluminium: it depended on which way it was tilting. Then at one point it actually stood absolutely still between the bottom of the steps and the driveway." The craft then disappeared from view, but reappeared above the roof and described manoeuvres once more before finally disappearing vertically. Madeleine told me that she could make out human figures at the portholes, but details were obscured.

When the film was developed the following week something was obviously wrong with many of the frames and it was apparent that it had been interfered with. Obviously faked frames had been substituted by person or persons unknown. "They took the original film," Madeleine believes, "and what I think they did was rephotograph portions of the original... and then fake some stuff. The film I got back is not the original film at all."

Fortunately enough frames showing the craft as they had remembered it survived out of the twenty-five feet that had been taken, and these were analyzed by William T. Sherwood, an optical physicist who was formerly a senior project development engineer for the Eastman-Kodak Company in Rochester, NY. I spent many hours discussing the film with Bill, and in 1968 he provided me with a brief technical summary of his evaluations as they related to the prints he made from the "original" film.

It's hard to capture the nuances of the original film. None of the movie duplicates are good: too much contrast. The outlines look "peculiar" due to distortions, I believe, caused by the "forcefield." The glow beneath the flange is, I think, significant. Incidentally, the tree [near the top of which the craft manoeuvred] is very high (90 ft?). Roughly, the geometry of imagery is this:

In 1977 Bill Sherwood sent me further details of his evaluations: The camera was a Bell & Howell Animation Autoload Standard 8, Model 315, with a fl.8 lens, 9-29 mm, used in the 9mm position.... As you can measure, the image on the film (original) is about 2.7mm maximum. So for a 90 ft distant object, [the diameter] would be about 27 feet. ... It was a large tree, and the limb that the saucer seems to "touch" could have been about that distance from the camera . . . but unfortunately I could not find a single frame where the saucer could clearly be said to be behind the limb. So it is not conclusive as for distance, and therefore for size. ... In some of the frames of the original, portholes are seen.

In reply to my query as to whether it was possible to authenticate the film unequivocally, Bill said that there is no absolutely foolproof way of assessing whether a photo is "real" or not. One must just take everything into account, including as much as one can learn about the person involved, and then make an educated guess. In the final analysis, he said, it comes down to this question: "Is this the kind of person whom I can imagine going to all the trouble and expense of simulating what only a well-equipped studio with a large budget could begin to approximate, and defending it through the years with no apparent gain and much inconvenience?"

One of the peculiarities of the film is that the outlines of the craft look peculiarly distorted at times. Bill Sherwood believes this is due to a powerful gravitational field that produces optical distortions, an opinion that is shared by Leonard Cramp, an aeronautical engineer and designer who has worked for De Havilland, Napier, Saunders-Roe, and Westland Aircraft companies. In his pioneering book, Piece for a Jig-Saw, Cramp proposed a theory to account for this peculiar effect:

Earlier, when discussing light in terms of the G [gravitational field] theory, we saw how we might expect such a field to form an atmospheric lens, producing optical effects which might be further augmented by other field effects as well as the gravitational bending of light. . . . Now it follows that if there would be a local increase in atmospheric pressure due to a powerful G field, then similarly we could expect a decrease in atmospheric pressure to accompany a powerful R [repulsion] field, and again we would not be surprised to find optical effects ... we can now say, while a G field might produce optical magnifying properties, an R field could produce optical reducing properties.

Leonard Cramp had not seen the Silver Spring film prior to publishing his book, and was delighted that it seemed to confirm his hypothesis. Like Bill Sherwood and myself, he is in no doubt that the film is authentic.

On 27 February 1967 (two years after it had been taken) the film was shown to twenty-two NASA officials at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Discussion afterwards lasted for an hour and a half, and just before Madeleine left, one of the two friends with her was allegedly told that it was "a very important piece of film" and that the craft was twenty-seven feet in diameter (the figure calculated independently by Bill Sherwood). Unfortunately, I have been unable to confirm this.

In reply to my queries, NASA scientist Paul D. Lowman Jr., of the Geophysics Branch at Goddard, stated that according to one of those present, Herbert A. Tiedemann, everyone considered the Silver Spring film to be fake. Dr. Lowman, who had helped set up the meeting but was unable to attend, offered the following comments on the color photos from the film that I sent him:

First, it is not possible to make any precise determination of the object's size from the relationship (which is basically correct) quoted by Mr. Sherwood. Given any three of these quantities, one can calculate the fourth. The focal length and image size are obviously known, but not the distance, which can only be roughly estimated. The
better than its most inexact quantity, and one might
equation can be no as well just estimate

the size of the object directly. My own strong impression is that these frames show a small object, perhaps up to 2 or 3 feet across, a short distance from the camera. Judging from the photo of Mrs. Rodeffer's house, a 27 foot UFO would have occupied most of the cleared area in the front yard, and from such a short distance would have been a very large photographic object.

Although Bill Sherwood readily concedes that his estimate of the precise distance from the camera is arbitrary, he is sure that it is reasonably accurate, and my own tests at the site show that, with the camera lens set on wide angle (as it was at the time), an object of this approximate size and distance would appear exactly as it does on the film. That either Adamski or Madeleine (or both) could have faked the film using a small model, and then have the audacity to show it at NASA, seems far-fetched in the extreme. Moreover, to produce the distortion effects as well as the lowering and retracting of one of the pods with a small model, is out of the question as far as I am concerned. As a semi-professional photographer I can speak with some authority on the matter myself.

Following the death of Adamski, Madeleine Rodeffer experienced a great deal of ridicule and harassment, and nearly all copies of the "faked" film have been stolen—in the United States and elsewhere.

Two photographs of an identical craft were taken by young Stephen Darbishire in the presence of his cousin Adrian Myers in Coniston, England, in February 1954. For the benefit of those who contend that Darbiahire had faked the pictures and recanted later, the following statement from a letter he wrote to me in 1986 is illuminating:

.. . when I said that I had seen a UFO I was laughed at, attacked, and surrounded by strange people. ... In desperation I remember I refuted the statement and said it was a fake. I was counter-attacked, accused of working with the "Dark Powers". . . or patronizingly "understood" for following orders from some secret government department.

There was something. It happened a long time ago, and I do not wish to be drawn into the labyrinth again. Unfortunately the negatives were stolen and all the prints gone ...

THE ASTRONAUTS

In the early 1970s I had the pleasure of several meetings in Britain and the United States with the former U.S. Navy test pilot, intelligence officer, and pioneer astronaut Scott Carpenter, who had reputedly seen UFOs and photographed one of them during his flight in the Mercury 7 capsule on 24 May 1962. Scott vehemently denied this, and poured scorn on other reports of sightings by fellow astronauts. I noticed that he appeared to be ill at ease when discussing the subject, and whenever I produced documentary evidence for official concern in this area he became visibly nervous. But in November 1972 Scott kindly wrote on my behalf to astronauts Gordon Cooper, Dick Gordon, James Lovell and James McDivitt, asking about reports attributed to them. James Lovell replied as follows:

I have to honestly say that during my four flights into space, I have not seen or heard any phenomena that I could not explain.... / don't believe any of us in the space program believe that there are such things as UFOs.... However, most of us believe that there must be a star like our sun that also has a planetary system [which] must support intelligent life as we know it.... I hope this is sufficient information for Tim Good, and I hope he isn't too disappointed in my answer. [Emphasis added.]

But according to the transcript of Lovell's flight on Gemini 7, an anomalous object was encountered:

SPACECRAFT: CAPCOM:
SPACECRAFT: CAPCOM:

SPACECRAFT:

CAPCOM:

SPACECRAFT:

Bogey at 10 o'clock high.
This is Houston. Say again 7.
Said we have a bogey at 10 o'clock high.
Gemini 7, is that the booster or is that an actual sighting?

We have several, looks like debris up here. Actual sighting.

. . . Estimate distance or size?

We also have the booster in sight . . .

Franklin Roach, of the University of Colorado UFO study set up by the Air Force in 1966, concluded that in addition to the booster traveling in an orbit similar to that of the spacecraft, "there was another bright object [the "bogey"] together with many illuminated particles. It might be conjectured," he said, "that the bogey and particles were fragments from the launching of Gemini 7, but this is impossible if they were traveling in a polar orbit as they appeared to be doing."

James McDivitt confirmed that although he did see an unidentified object during the Gemini 4 flight on 4 June 1965, he does not believe it was anomalous:

During Gemini 4, while we were in drifting flight, I noticed an object out the front window of the spacecraft. It appeared to be cylindrical in shape with a high fineness ratio. From one end protruded a long, cylindrical pole with the approximate fineness of pencil. I had no idea what the size was or what the distance to the object was. It could have been very small and very near or very large and very far away.

I attempted to cameras we had short time, I did not have time to properly adjust the cameras and I just take a photograph of this object with each of the two on board. Since this object was only in my view for a

took the picture object appeared turning on the actions.

The spacecraft was in drifting flight and when the sun shone on the duty window, the object disappeared from view. I was unable to relocate it, since the attitude reference in the spacecraft was also disabled, and I did not know which way to maneuver to find it.