My search for scientific balloon history 1945-1949 has just taken a sharp turn to one side. I’ve managed to locate a folder in the Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, Alabama that has (or, at least, in 1986 had) information about some super-early scientific balloon stuff that might possibly be what I’ve been chasing after for a while now.
(Just so you know, this is the inside of a KC-135 Stratotanker at Maxwell AFB.)
But – Lawdy, Lawdy – finding an independent researcher in Alabama happy to go onto a military site isn’t proving easy at all. I know, it’s only a single folder, so it’s barely even a day gig, which isn’t much. But when you have nothing, even a small something can be a huge deal. It eez what it eez.
So… does anyone here happen to know someone who might fit the bill? Or have any suggestions as to how to find someone who might fit the bill? Thanks!
Could @AT be persuaded to take an Alabaman vacation?
As long as she doesn’t carry a gun (or is it the other way round?). Even Republican Alabama is a dangerous place right now. The American Dream is definitely over, welcome (not) to Trumpanian Nightmare. (oops, can he track me down here?! If the answer is yes, Nick, please redact or moderate the comment!)
Pat: I’m fairly sure They can track all of us down if They so choose.
Jo,
Am miles from Alabama and it would cost $$$ for me to get there. Besides, wandering onto a military base sounds like a great way to get arrested! Also, not much interested in the topic, I’m afraid.
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Pat,
Please, no politics! Too divisive. The American Dream, IMHO, is not over. Declarations regarding the decline of America have recurred like clockwork over the decades and are usually transitory. As Mark Twain once said, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” In some ways, the times we are living thru remind me of the ‘60s on steroids. Been there, done that, came out OK.
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Nick,
Not sure what you’re trying to find out re those balloons, as my interest in this blog has been limited to Charlie Webb, but I read recently that the “weather balloons” used in Roswell involved a government project that has now been declassified. IIRC, documents related to that program indicate that the balloons were used in an attempt to detect vibrations produced by Soviet atomic bomb tests. Maybe you already know this.
Part of me wonders if those balloons also could have been used to monitor radiation levels in our own country that resulted from similar bomb tests we were conducting in order to ensure that those levels weren’t harmful to US citizens.
FWIW, I think the cattle mutilations of the ‘70s were also the result of tests the government was doing for similar reasons, tho’ they could have involved chemicals used in the Vietnam war and/or ones being tested for combat use. The government, I believe, was concerned that those products or the radiation produced by the bombs we were testing might get into the food chain and was flying helicopters at night in which lasers were used to remove tissue and organ samples from cows for later testing in a lab. Many ordinary citizens mistook those military helicopters for UFOs w/ the encouragement, IMO, of certain well-placed “journalists” who were employed by the government to amplify beliefs about UFOs in order to divert attention away from the testing. I think the military wanted to prevent the possibility that the population might become concerned about those tests and would demand stoppage of them as well as of the weapons and chemicals that were being developed.
AT: I’m basically trying to determine whether Roswell was a different kind of scientific balloon (i.e. not a Project Mogul balloon).
The idea of Project Mogul was to send a balloon into the stratosphere and keep it at a constant height while it listened out for distant nuclear explosions. One of the people behind that project (“Doc” Ewing) was an oceanographer who had figured out that sounds at specific depths underwater could be heard at immense distances: and so the hope was that the same thing would be true at a certain height. Unfortunately this turned out not to be true, so AFOAT-1 instead started regularly sending planes up with filter paper to detect byproducts of nuclear explosions. And in 1949 this process detected “JOE-1”, the first Russian nuclear explosion, which basically heralded the full start of the Cold War.
Nick,
Very interesting! You sound remarkably well-informed on the subject.
Do you think those balloons could have been designed in whole or in part to detect radiation levels produced by the bombs we were testing? Their location in New Mexico in ’47 where Fat Man and Little Boy were developed lends credibility to this idea. If they were also positioned over AL at some point, maybe their purpose was to measure the distance the fallout had drifted and the degree to which it had dissipated.
FWIW, I think it may be difficult to get straight answers to the questions you’re pondering, due to the sensitive nature of the information. Governments are awfully good at smoke and mirrors when it comes to topics related to national security, but since Project Mogul has been declassified, perhaps you’re right in thinking those answers exist somewhere. You’re braver than I am to be digging around such well-guarded secrets. Sorry I can’t be of more help!
AT: I don’t think that the US government/military has well-guarded secrets, but rather a bunch of compartmentalised parts of it have buried dirty laundry which the rest of the government has no idea about. Alabama is just where the Air Force Historical Research Archive is located. I’m not expecting a knock on the door from the Men In Black. But I’d be delighted to invite them in for tea and cakes.
Nick,
You might spike the tea and cakes w/ a little sodium pentothal, tho’ w/ all that compartmentalization, I doubt those “Mirage Men” would be worth drugging or interrogating.
Just out of curiosity, do you believe aliens exist and UFOs are real? Guess I should have asked earlier!
AT: the probability that alien life exists elsewhere in the universe (or even our galaxy) is reasonably well established. But the probability of aliens scooting around Earth is surely fantastically low.
Almost all discourse around Roswell has been simplistic, UFO believers battling skeptics. Me, I’m trying to use historical and archival tools to work out what actually happened, and then we’ll see where I get to at the end of that process.
Nick,
Good to know. Sounds like a very well-reasoned, agnostic approach!
Long ago and in a land far away, I ardently believed in UFOs. Now, tho’, I find I have a different perspective. At present, I’m inclined to believe that the laws of physics preclude the existence of alien life that could have traveled to earth, due to the vast distances involved and the many years it would take to get here. I’ll admit, tho’, that at one time, this inconvenient truth used to annoy me no end! Wormholes and bending time were proposed as solutions to this vexing problem, but I think those possibilities been discounted now.
It’s been quite a journey arriving at what I now feel is probably the truth. I hope you find the answers you’re looking for, and that you won’t be met w/ the same pesky potholes I encountered along the way. In my experience, they’re plentiful, but w/ a little luck and a lot of smarts, maybe you’ll manage to avoid the ones that gave me flat tires!
AT: there’s something romantic and rebellious about believing in UFOs, it’s a bit like a modern religion whose Bethlehem is Roswell. But I still can’t help but want to know what actually happened!
I don’t believe in UFOs but am completely baffled by Todmorden. The last time I visited I couldn’t find anywhere to buy a pint of milk but there were plenty of vape shops and some lovely old pubs.
Todmorden is one of the most rebellious and romantic places in Britain, so perhaps that explains a few things (see Pawlikowdki’s 2004 My Summer of Love, with Emily Blunt in her break out role).
Todmodern not only boasts the Incredible Edible guerila gardening program (“Who doesn’t like taking corn from the cops”); it also has two longstanding 1980s UFO mysteries – the death of miner Zigmund Adamski and the abduction of PC Alan Godfrey.
After Roswell has been sorted, perhaps Todmorden is calling!
Nick,
Oh, my. There’s poetic wistfulness in your words. Charlie would be nodding approval!
If you’re absolutely positively hell-bent on knowing more about those balloons (and aren’t buying my theory about them or my belief that you’re unlikely to find out if the gov’t doesn’t want you to know), and you’ve had no luck getting copies of digital archives from that AL organization or any of the other organizations that come up when you google that archive (like the U of AL, e.g.), then maybe Annie Jacobsen or Leslie Kean would be willing to give you the name(s) of one or more of their researchers. Annie uses about 20 of them at any given time for her books I believe. My guess is they’re able to quote chapter and verse of government archives in their sleep! Short of that, her “Area 51” may hold clues about the balloons, but I’m sure you’ve already read it. At least one reviewer feels that book contains inaccuracies, and there’s an outlandish story in it that made me cry before I started wondering if it wasn’t smoke and mirrors, so grain of salt, IMO.
Also, if you know the name of the co. that was contracted to produce the balloons, maybe it still exists, and an employee could be persuaded to part w/ the info you’re seeking. (Longshot, probably. W/out gov’t permission, I doubt that’s going to happen.)
If all else fails, perhaps someone listed in the credits of History Channel shows (if you’re able to watch them) could help. I’ve noticed those programs frequently use professors in the US to narrate. (Some of them are unimpressive, tho’, and often get basic details that are easily accessed wrong.)
Thems my suggestions, for what they’re worth. Probably not much, but hopes this helps a little anyway!
Nick
They’re here, they really are!
https://youtu.be/EeQ65_YoAHI?si=-8b7eiUcxLbNKmNn
As for Jo’s Tod (it sounds just like Hebden Bridge) and its whoop of Incredible Edible guerrillas she should try Warminster, Wilts, instead. I have never seen the “Thing” there myself but I CAN guarantee there are lots of places to buy milk.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgzewj38peo
I think PC Alan Godfrey from Tod might have been a bit of a fibber:
“Five months earlier Alan had discovered the body of missing man Zigmund Adamski in a coal yard in the town.
Mr Adamski’s head had been shaved and bore a ring of burn marks. A slimy yellow-green substance was seeping from a neck wound. He was strangely dressed and looked as if he had been dropped onto a heap of coal from a height.”
https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/todmorden-policeman-who-reported-ufo-22070087
Wonder if Zigmund was related to George Adamski? Think I might have read one or more of his books when I was 15 and into all that Erich von Däniken/Morning of the Magicians tripe. Still, said obsession did maybe start my interest in social anthropology in a weird sort of way.
Of course I later became aware of the “fascist”/Eurocentric implications of some of this rubbish. Same is true of H P Lovecraft, who I still enjoy, but at least that’s only fiction. Also read a lot of Dick/Pohl/Bester/Ballard etc etc. Did you know E M Forster predicted the internet in 1909 in his short story ‘The Machine Stops’? The Beeb did a 50 minute adaptation in 1966, well worth watching:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8lhjd7
“The story describes a world in which most of the human population has lost the ability to live on the surface of the Earth due to extreme climate changes and toxic air. Each individual now lives in isolation below ground in a standard room, with all survival, comfort and entertainment needs met by the omnipotent, global Machine.” (Wikipedia)
It was Erich von Däniken who said the “Wandjina” figures found in the Kimberley area of WA were depictions of spacemen. Me old mate from Mowanjum, near Derby, David Mowaljarlai, had a painting of a Wandjina figure in the Australian Museum in Sydney, although this ain’t it:
https://www.theodorebruceauctions.com.au/auction-lot/david-banggal-mowaljarlai-ngarrinyin-1925-1997_F1242BC822
From the start of colonisation Europeans thought that Aboriginal people weren’t sophisticated enough to produce such paintings:
“The misunderstanding fuelled theories Asiatic or Middle Eastern people at one time occupied the Australian continent, and set the scene for an even more offensive proposition — that the Wandjina were drawings of aliens that visited prior to white settlement.
The theory emerged in the 1968 book Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past, which was written by Swiss author Erich von Daniken, and detailed examples of ancient civilisations that could be evidence of alien life form.
[Mike] Donaldson said the theory never gained much traction.
“It was just ignorance on von Daniken’s part, the kind of ignorance that goes back to the people who initially, 100 years ago, thought that Aboriginal people were not so sophisticated enough to do those paintings,” he said.
“Of course we soon learnt that they were very sophisticated, and could paint all these wonderful things … so that’s just one guy’s crazy story, that thought they were space men or something.””
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-05/aboriginal-people-move-to-reclaim-sacred-wandjina-drawings/8049978
I wanted to talk to the folks at Mowanjum. including David, about their art but they wanted to charge me an outrageous sum for the privilege so I moved on quickly with any remaining romantic ideas about the integrity of ethnographical research in complete tatters.
Anyway I don’t know anybody in ol’ ‘Bamy but I s’pose a Southern man don’t need me around, anyhow. I do know that ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ ends with the line “Montgomery’s got the answer” though, if that helps!