The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies (50 page)

4. Captain James Duesler statement

HEADQUARTERS

315 AF BASE UNIT  (RES TNG)      A/hmg

GODMAN FIELD, FORT KNOX, KENTUCKY

9 January 1948

At approx 1420, 7 Jan 48, I accompanied Lt Col E. G. Wood to the Godman Field Control Tower to observe “an object hanging high in the sky south of Godman”.

Shortly after reaching the tower, Col Guy F. Hix, the Commanding Officer, was summoned; it was at that time that I first sighted the bright silver object.

Approximately five minutes after Col. Hix came into the tower, a flight of four P-51’s flew over Godman. An officer in the tower requested that the Tower Operator call this flight and ask the Flight Leader to investigate this object if he had sufficient fuel. The Flight Leader (Capt. Thomas F. Mantell) answered that he would, and requested a bearing to this object. At that time one member of the flight informed the leader that it was time for him to land and broke off from the formation. This A/C was heard requesting landing instructions from his home field, Standiford, in Louisville.

In the meantime the remaining three P-51’s were climbing on the course given to them by Godman Tower towards this object that still appeared stationary. The Tower then advised the Flight Leader to correct his course 5 degrees to the left; the Flight Leader acknowledged this correction and also reported his position at 7,500 feet and climbing. Immediately following the Flight Leader’s transmission, another member of the flight asked “Where in the hell are we going?” In a few minutes the Flight Leader called out an object ”twelve o’clock high”. Asked to describe this object, he said that it was bright and that it was climbing away from him. When asked about its speed, the Flight Leader stated it was going about half his speed, approximately 180 M.P.H.

Those of us in the Tower lost sight of the flight, but could still see this object. Shortly after the last transmission, the Flight Leader said he was at 15,000 ft, and still climbing after “it”, but that he judged its speed to be the same as his. At that time a member of the Flight called to the leader and requested that he “level off ”, but we heard no reply from the leader. That was the last message received from any member of the flight by Godman.

/a/James F. Duesler, Jr

JAMES F. DUESLER, JR

Captain, USAF

MAXW-PBB3–720

5. Col Guy F. Hix statement

HEADQUARTERS

315TH AF BASE UNIT  (RES TNG)      A/hmg

GODMAN FIELD, FORT KNOX, KENTUCKY

9 January 1948

At approximately 1300 hours a call came to this Headquarters from State Police, reporting a flying object near Elizabethtown. Another report came in from Madisonville about ten minutes later. A third call came in from Lexington, Kentucky. (All towns are south of Godman Field.)

We alerted the Tower to be on the lookout for flying objects. At 1445 hrs the Tower notified me that an object had been sighted at about 215°. I went to the Tower and observed the object until 1550 hrs., when it disappeared behind the clouds.

The object observed could be plainly seen with the naked eye, and appeared to be about one-quarter the size of a full moon, white in color. Through eight-power binoculars, the object seemed to have a red border at the bottom, at times, and a red border at the top at times. It remained stationary for 1½ hours.

When I arrived at the Tower, Tech. Sgt Quinton Blackwell had contacted the P-51 airplanes over the field and suggested that they have a look if they had sufficient fuel. When I arrived they were within sight of the Tower, heading on a course of 215°.

I heard one of the pilots report that he saw the object straight ahead and estimated the speed of 180 M.P.H. The pilot stated that the object was very large and very bright.

/a/Guy F. Hix

GUY F. HIX

Colonel, USAF Commanding

NARA-PBB2–865

6. Lt Paul Orner statement

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

AIRWAYS AND AIR COMMUNICATIONS SERVICE, ATC

DETACHMENT 733–5 AF BASE UNIT (103D AACS SQ)

Godman Field, Fort Knox, Ky

9 January 1948

STATEMENT OF LT PAUL I. ORNER

Following is an account of the sighting of unknown objects from the Control Tower on 7 January 48 at Godman Field.

On the above date at approximately 1400 CST a report came in to the Control Tower through M Sgt. Cook of a report of an unidentified object flying at terrific speed in the vicinity of Maysville. This call was cancelled minutes later by the Military Police at Fort Knox who had instructions from the Kentucky State Police.

Very soon thereafter several reports of the same nature came from Flight Service saying this object was over Irvington and Owensboro, Kentucky. At the same time an object was reported by T. Sgt Blackwell, Chief Control Tower operator on duty. I was in the office of the Commanding Officer checking the call from the Fort Knox Military Police at this time. When the call was cancelled I was returning to the Control Tower to see the object sighted by them. I immediately went to the Control Tower and saw a small white object in the southwest sky. This object appeared stationary. I was unable to tell if it was an object radiating its own light or giving off reflected light. Through binoculars it partially appeared as a parachute does with bright sun shining on the top of the silk but there also seemed to be some red light around the lower of it.

The Commanding Officer, Operations Officer, S-2 and Executive Officer were called immediately. Several minutes after the object was sighted a flight of four (4) P-51’s came over the field from the south. I instructed T. Sgt Blackwell to call the flight leader and ask if they had seen any evidence of this object. The flight leader answered negative and I suggested to the Operations Officer that we ask them if they had enough gas to go look for this object. The Tower operator was instructed to call the flight leader and he answered “yes” to this question. One (1) P-51 had permission from the flight leader to break formation and continue where he landed several minutes later on their original flight plan. The flight leader and two (2) other planes flew a course of 210° and in about five (5) minutes sighted the object. At first the flight leader reported it high and about one-half his speed at “12 o’clock”. Shortly thereafter the flight leader reported it at about his speed and later said he was closing in to take a good look. This was the last message from NG869, the flight leader. NG800 shortly thereafter reported NG869 disappeared. From pilots reports in the formation NG869 was high and ahead of the wing man at about 1515 CST to 1530 CST when he disappeared. NG800 said he was breaking off with other wingman to return to Standiford Field due to lack of gas. This was about 1523 CST to 1530 CST. From messages transmitted by the formation it is estimated the flight leader was at 18 to 20 thousand feet and the wingman at approximately 15 thousand feet wide formation when the flight leader NG869 disappeared. NG800 and other wing man returned to Standiford Field.

NG800 gassed up and got more oxygen and flew a second mission on the same heading of 210° to a position of about 100 miles south of Godman Field to an altitude of 33 thousand feet and did not sight the object. At about 1645 CST when NG800 reported not seeing the object I left the Control Tower.

At about 1735 CST I returned to the Control Tower and a bright light different than a star at a position of about 240° azimuth and 8° elevation from the Control Tower. This was a round object. It seemed to have a dark spot in the center and the object moved north and disappeared from the horizon at a point 250° from the Tower. The unusual fact about this object was the fact that it remained visible and glowed through the haze near the Earth when no other stars were visible and did not disappear until it went below the level of the earth in a manner similar to the sun or moon setting. This object was viewed and tracked with the Weather Station theodolite from the hangar roof.

MAYAN CALENDAR

If you are reading this in 2013 or beyond, then the Mayan Calendar was wrong and the world has not disappeared in a catastrophe.

The medieval Central American civilization of the Maya used three intersecting calendar cycles, the
haab
(civil year, 365 days), the
tzolkin
(religious year, 260 days) and the Long Count. The Long Count gives the total number of days which have passed since a fixed point in the past which, for we users of the Gregorian calendar, is 11 August 3114
BC
. Since the Long Count or “Great Cycle” lasts for 5,125.36 years, this means that time runs out on 21 December 2012 .

Did the Maya know something we didn’t? Forgotten after the invasion of Yucatan by the Spanish, the Mayan Calendar was revived in the late twentieth century from information preserved in the study
Relación de las cosas de Yucatán
by Fray Diego de Landa, a Franciscan monk, accompanying the conquistadors. Soberingly for the apocalyptically minded, numerous other native myths based on the sun cycle also end with the end of days.

How the catastrophe will arrive is open to conjecture. Some claim that 2012 is the year the Earth will experience a polar shift, others moot the final triumph of the
New World Order
. The End Game scenario with the most scientific substance is that 2012 will see massive solar activity on the scale of the 1859 supercharged sun strike known as the Carrington Event. Most worrying of all, the Earth’s magnetic shield ain’t what it used to be in 1859, meaning that solar activity has a large hole through which to enter and zap the globe’s electrical and electronic systems. Human cost, with no communications, refrigerated medicines, heat, financial services could be extreme. Some scientists postulate that full recovery could take a decade.

Further Reading

John Jenkins,
Tzolkin: Visionary Perspectives and Calendar Studies
, 1994

NAZCA LINES

Ever since the first explorers stumbled on the Nazca Lines, high in the Peruvian Andes, they have exercised the Western imagination. The artificial lines, cut into the red desert floor rock, range from animal shapes to complex geometric patterns. By carbon-dating the hundreds of giant geoglyphs, as the shapes are properly known, archaeologists have determined that the Nazca Lines are at least 1,500 years old. After that, it is open season on who made the lines and why.

Noting that some of the lines are only intelligible from the air, many theorists have reached for the stars for the answers. Frenchmen Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier proposed in
The Morning of the Magicians
that the lines had an alien origin, and that said ETs helped hairy lumbering proto-humans to stand up, count and take over the planet from other earthly life forms. The doyen of alternative history, Erich Von Daniken, climbed on the alien-wagon and mooted in his 1969 classic
Chariots of the Gods?: Unsolved Mysteries of the Past
that the Nazca Plateau was an airfield for ET-craft. The lines were markers for the runway, and the figures enticers by humans for the aliens to drop in (a sort of ancient take on the cargo cult). Going one better, a current troop of UFO-centric conspiracists maintain that the Nazca Lines are still a landing ground for alien astronauts, with members of the
New World Order
making up the reception committee. Quite how the ETs and the NWO manage to avoid the gaze of the hundreds of tourists to the Nazca Desert, an UNESCO World Heritage site, is left deafeningly silent. Neither do the “runway” theories explain how a spacecraft can land on the soft desert without getting stuck in the mud.

Closer to planet Earth, but still edging towards the wacky, is the notion of Jim Woodman of the International Explorers Society that the ancient Nazca Indians who inhabited the region fabricated hot-air balloons for “ceremonial flights” during which they could “appreciate the great ground drawings on the
pampas
”. Full marks to Mr Woodman for effort: using cloth, reeds and rope, Woodman and his colleagues made a balloon and basket, in which he and British balloonist Julian Nott made a shaky 300 feet high flight over the Nazca plain. When the balloon took a dive downwards, Woodman and Nott were lucky to escape with their lives, jumping clear of the craft ten feet off the desert floor. Woodman’s thesis flies about as well as his balloon: there is no evidence whatsoever that balloons existed 1,500 years back.