The Gemini Divergence (69 page)

“Niagara Falls,“ answered Volmer.

“Yes sir, Niagara Falls power station,”
beamed Hughes, “I suggest that we piece together a working saucer
from the myriad of wreckage that we have collected, wait at Niagara
Falls ANG base and when they show up; sneak into the pack and
follow them home.”

“Why, that’s crazy,” suggested Fitzpatrick,
“What would you do when you got there?”

“General, I believe that I just suggested
that about a minute ago,” Gloated Hughes as he reiterated, “bring
them a bomb.”

*~*

Hughes began flying one of his personal
planes to Groom Lake everyday, and then taking pieces from all of
the downed saucers to build a single functioning one.

General Fitzpatrick had forced Hughes to shut
down his project at Saddleback Mountain and move it to AFOAT
facilities on the ridge between Yucca Flats and Groom Lake.

Many at Hughes’ Corporation started
expressing public dismay that he was never around anymore and very
few had seen him in the last year or so, but Hughes was focused on
his pet project, as he had always been, and merely blew off their
concerns.

*~*

The Air Force had foregone testing and
started launching their new lunar variant of the Blue Gemini
capsules into space.

McDonnell, spooked by the recent intrusion
into their airspace by the Overseers, had ramped up production of
the new variants at their own expense.

Astronauts were now using the new paraglider
recovery system to land at Edwards AFB.

The Raumsfahrtwaffe noticed the new variant
and how they were primarily landing at Edwards to then be
refurbished and re-launched at Vandenberg.

21 August 1965

NASA launched Gemini 5, carrying Gordon
Cooper and Pete Conrad into space.

The primary mission of Gemini 5 was
reportedly to remain in space for eight full days, which was the
estimated travel time to the moon and back, in order to ascertain
the problems that may develop with a crew spending that much time
cooped up in space.

In later years, after retirement, Gordon
Cooper became a staunch advocate for UFOs and professed of seeing
several during his military and NASA careers.

Although he claimed that there were no
sightings during Gemini 5, Chris Kraft at mission control had
reportedly tracked an object that was tailing Gemini 5 for most of
the mission.

Recovery personnel also recounted that when
the Gemini 5 astronauts were pulled from the ocean, that Conrad
kept asking Cooper what they were going to say about an
unidentified object that they had witnessed.

Cooper reportedly snapped at Conrad and told
him it was probably just a satellite, but he was too busy to
identify it at the time, which seemed odd because the Gemini 5 crew
spent eight days playing cards and twiddling their thumbs because
the main purpose of their experiment was to see how astronauts
dealt with monotony and boredom of space travel before sending a
crew to the moon.

NASA later publicly claimed that what Mission
Control Supervisor Kraft saw was a radar side band and not really
any object at all.

Mysteriously, debris from a Gemini spacecraft
was found later that month in Merkanooka Australia.

NASA claimed that it was part of the booster
rocket from Gemini 5, but photos that later surfaced showed that
items were drinking water and oxygen tanks that would have been
located in the main part of an inhabited Gemini capsule.

It couldn’t have possibly been remains from
Gemini 5, since it was witnessed landing safely in the Atlantic
Ocean just a few days before.

NASA and the Air Force were in a quandary to
explain the wreckage, which was obviously from a Blue Gemini
casualty. The only option for them to tell the public was that it
was, in fact, from NASA’s publicly known Gemini Program.

~~~**^**~~~

The
Gemini War / The Edwards Incident

Even though SAC had initiated new UFO alert
protocols at F.E. Warren and Minot, Edwards was the Air Force’s
second largest base and not entirely a SAC controlled base.

Out of all the AFB incidents that happened
in 1965-66, the Edwards incident is the only one given the moniker
in the Air Force lexicon of ‘The Incident.’

Although the Air Force has tried desperately
for years to deny the incident and maintain its secrecy, copies of
the control tower recordings were eventually leaked to the
press.

Multiple facets of this incident are still
cloaked in complete secrecy and many researchers strive to find out
what actually happened that makes this particular incident stand
out in the concerns of the Air Force.

7 October 1965

Shortly after midnight an F-106 fighter pilot
patrolling the skies over California reported a flight of several
saucers to the Edwards AFB tower.

Edward’s tower then confirmed that it had
already been tracking the objects as they approached the base from
the Pacific Ocean.

Secretly they had been tipped off by NORAD
command, deep inside of Cheyenne Mountain AFB, that those 12
objects had been being tracked descending from space into Edwards
AFB’s control box.

Three of the saucers broke into a small
flight, or schwarm, that began to circle the base at a distance
while one very large saucer, which was picked up by five different
radar installations in southern California, started hovering over
the secret hanger on the ‘North Base’ section of Edwards that the
new lunar Gemini variants were being refurbished within.

The Edward’s UFO officer was called into the
main tower and immediately scrambled fighters from George AFB just
south of Edwards in Victorville.

The saucers reportedly made a mockery of the
fighters by playing a game of cat and mouse with them throughout
the entire desert valley from Mojave to Victorville.

All the while, many of the smaller UFOs were
traveling freely about the base, seemingly investigating the
purposes of all the buildings and locations within Edwards.

There were reports of ineffective ground
fire, directed at the saucers, as the large one was slowly poking
about; blasting anything that seemed to be connected to the Blue
Gemini Program.

The large saucer, with its extended pincers,
actually began pealing away sheets of corrugated metal from the
tops of the hangers and allowing them to fall freely to the ground.
All the while, airmen on the tarmac and within the hangers
scattered for cover.

“Holy shit! That thing is peeling the tin off
that hanger like a child opening a Christmas present,” cried one of
the technicians in the North Base tower.

“What do you think that it’s doing?” asked
another.

“I’d guess that they’re looking for
something.”

“Edwards tower, this is North Base tower. One
of these things is ripping the tops off our hangers like sardine
cans.”

Edwards’ main tower responded, “Well, we’re
kind of busy ourselves. They’re over here too… Although, we do have
a second wave of inbound fighters from George, supposedly leaving
the runway as we speak.”

Airmen carrying the wounded away were ignored
by the saucers, who were concisely focused on their well defined
mission.

One of the small saucers flew directly
towards the main tower, until it hovered only twenty or thirty feet
away.

As many of the tower personnel were already
diving for cover, the saucer erupted into an aural display of
mischievous forked resonance. Zapping the tower; causing the
external glass to explode into thousands of shards of falling
glass.

When the saucer moved on, technicians popped
their heads up one by one and resumed their duties.

“Radar is gone,” reported one technician.

“Some electrical systems are down,” reported
another.

“Send an MT down to the power room!” shouted
the Ops Commander, “and get the Ops CO from George on the horn
again. Where the hell are those confounded fighters?”

The small saucers poked around the sub
sections of the base, while the larger one went tearing apart
hanger tops from North Base to the Air Force Rocket Propulsion Lab,
to the High Speed Flight Station;
later to be renamed Dryden
Research Center
.

Whenever it came across something that it
felt was a threat to the Raumsfahrtwaffe it would blast the
building with a bolt of lightning.

The fighters from George finally made a
second appearance and tried to intervene as best as possible, but
they couldn’t shoot at the objects closest to the ground, for fear
of collateral damage, and the objects at higher altitudes were far
too evasive to shoot down.

Eventually the fighters ran out of fuel and
had to return to base; causing all of the saucers that were
distracting the fighters to resume combing the base.

When the dawn was only a few hours away and
they knew that the saucers would probably depart back into space as
they had already in previous incidents, the Ops Commander wasn’t
about to let the offenders go unpunished this time, “Scramble a
‘Hot Bird’, I’m not going to let these things make it back to their
home.”

“Are you sure sir? There are thousands of
people in this valley,” expressed the ATC Sergeant.

“I want a B-58 with nuclear anti-satellite
capability in the air ASAP, and no more questions sergeant.

The ATC then immediately dispatched a ‘Hot
Bird,’ B-58 Hustler from Carswell AFB to pursue the saucers.

“How long before they get here?” demanded the
Ops CO.

“Full speed on a Hustler is over 1300 mph.
sir, but the only mission capable anti-satellite Hustler was
sitting on the alert pad at Carswell, it should be here in less
than an hour though.”

“Why don’t we have one closer?” questioned
the Ops CO with extreme concern.

“McNamara is phasing them out. There won’t be
any more by 1970.”

“How the hell is he justifying that?”

“He claims that the Hustler is too vulnerable
from SAMs”

“And B-52s are not?” facetiously remarked the
Ops CO.

“Scuttlebutt has it that he’s doing it out of
spite, because Lemay loved those planes so much.”

The Ops CO grimaced at what sounded like the
obvious but unpalatable truth.

*~*

“All systems are go Sir, we now have a pretty
firm eta of around 45 minutes to arrive on station over Edwards and
George,” reported the Pilot of the B-58 to the AC as they flew over
the border between Texas and New Mexico.

“How about our special payload?” the AC
asked.

“All systems go,” reported the DSO, “What on
earth could we possibly be targeting within the Conus?”

“That info is being withheld from me as well,
until we arrive on station,” answered the AC, “Who knows, this is
probably just another damn drill.”

*~*

The Edwards tower controllers watched the
intruders parse like spooked picnic flies as the refueled fighters
from George reappeared, buzzing the tower in formation as they
arrived from the south.

“It’s about damn time,” remarked the Ops CO
as he sarcastically added, “Did they run completely out of gas
before they got home and have to push the damn things to the gas
station?”

“Sir, George tower reported that their
refueling effort was hampered by the interference from some of the
same aggressors,” commented one of the controllers.

“Well then they need to fly something in from
Castle or March… We’re not just saucer fodder sitting here in the
desert for their target practice.”

“Yes Sir.”

“Where the hell is that B-58?”

Airmen throughout the base were still running
for cover as some of the Air Force security policemen continued to
fire at the objects with their rifles.

The senior tower control sergeant walked
around the tower work stations looking under the desks until he
found the one that the UFO officer was taking shelter beneath,
“Sir, we just received word from SAC Command… we have White House
ok on that Hot Bird; as long as the detonation will take place
‘within space’.

The UFO officer facetiously replied as he
took his hands away from over his cowering head, “So nice of them
to concur… Where is that damn aircraft anyway. Do we have an eta
from the Hot Bird’s mouth yet?”

*~*

“Where are we now?” asked the Hot Bird
AC.

The DCO answered, “We just passed north of
Phoenix, and we’re now coming up on Lake Havasu and the California
border… We’re about ten minutes from station.”

“Have you tried to reach Edward’s tower
yet?”

“No Sir, I’ll start now… Edward’s tower this
is One Hot Bird. Do you read? I repeat, Edward’s Tower this is One
Hot Bird. Can you read me?”

“This is Edward’s tower, we read you One Hot
Bird… We have been biting our nails for an hour waiting for you
guys,” responded the tower as cheers of euphoria could be heard in
the background of his response.