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.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UFOs and balloons have a long history, beginning almost immediately in the 1947 wave with the spectacular lie by General Roger Ramey at the Fort Worth press conference, where he denigrated Major Jesse Marcel by posing him with an ordinary weather balloon and saying [essentially and unmistakably] that Marcel was incapable of telling the difference between a simple balloon and a flying disk allegedly found at Roswell. But we'll let Roswell lie quietly for now and pursue the more general disinformation about balloons and UFOs. 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. He also had gotten interested in UFOs in the late 1940s and when the Navy's Intelligence officers in the Pentagon began receiving all of the USAF's UFO reports after 1948, they passed them on to ONR and they passed through Liddel's desk. Then, in late 1951 [and into 1952] Liddel got so "exercised" by the UFO problem that he issued his own special study declaring them to be mostly erroneous sightings of USN secret balloons, mainly launched in New Mexico and Minnesota. This personal study he was happy to present to the national press, who loved it and gave it big play. Although the big General Mills project balloons did look awesome and even beautiful in the high atmosphere, there were a few problems with his thesis as we shall see---problems which it seems impossible to believe that he did not know. The Air Force itself DID know the problems [i.e. that the entire idea was preposterous for 90+% of the incidents], but was happy to remain silent while some highly educated "expert" created a diversion. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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. Well...pretty bold statement by me. Where do I get off making such an accusation?--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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. Kaliszewski thought that [since he had an rough idea of how far away the balloon was from his plane] that the object was moving rapidly at about 1500-2000 mph. "Some of these balloons, they attracted these things. I would say, starting with the 50s through the late 50s there must have been dozens of sightings but nobody bothered to report them. [More about that later]. I've had a number of sightings, but I didn't log them because nobody'd listen to you. If you did have a sighting--if that thing began changing altitudes in 10 or 15 seconds from out-of-space where you almost couldn't see it, down to ground level, and then go right to left at estimated several thousand miles per hour, and all of a sudden make a 90 degree turn and go in a different direction--we've seen all those things and there's no way that the human body could handle it. If you talked to somebody, they just pooh-poohed. You couldn't talk to Wright Field [Project Grudge at the time] or any of the design groups around the country". Kaliszewski and his team had obviously seen quite a few remarkable things. Some clarification is needed for some of his remarks. He and the General Mills teams DID report their cases originally, and only after receiving disrespectful treatment by the USAF did they refuse to continue. Nevertheless, they had such numerous sightings that they kept records on self-made forms for a while, and several of their cases [ex. Moore's, two of Kaliszewski's, a famous one from Artesia, NM etc] DID get to the USAF. But, by 1952, they were so miffed at the Air Force that Captain Ruppelt said they almost threw him out in the snow when he went up there to try to reestablish a connection with them. The main point is clear: Not only were balloons NOT the "explanation" for UFOs, but some of the most powerful unknowns on record came while the balloon scientists were launching those same balloons!! If this weren't so disgusting, it would be hilarious.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let's end this today with a minor point and then a major one. The minor point is that it was probably true that top secret balloons were involved in a minority of UFO cases. Although I will get a few of my friends mad at me, I believe that it's 99% clear that the famous Mantell plane crash of 1948 involved a mistake with a balloon. Some of my other buddies would include another 1948 "classic", the George Gorman "lightball chase", as a balloon event--that I'm not nearly so sure of--the testimony of the ground witnesses makes me demure. And at the other end of the spectrum, the Roswell write-off is utterly ridiculous as any balloon. On the major point(s) to take from this, let's stop and consider the characters in the story. What-in-the-H___ explains Urner Liddel? Because he sat in ONR looking at all the UFO reports, he HAD to see his own Navy Research cases, and he HAD to know that his own balloon guys saw UFOs! There aren't many hypotheses to deal with him. He is either a bald liar, or he is profoundly ignorant, or something is wrong with his mind. He, due to his position, almost cannot be "profoundly ignorant". And, take this for what it's worth, my reading of his writing and his letters to Condon leads me to believe that HE believed what he said, and also that he was the kind of ego-centric loose cannon that the intelligence community would not risk assigning some conspiratorial task. It will probably surprise you, but I believe that there was something wrong with his mind. What was wrong was that something in his view of reality was so strongly abhorrent to this concept that he could not analyze nor think straight when he was addressing it. Smart as he was in many ways, he was when it came to threats [to his sanity?] a "messed up dude". We've had a whole angry crowd of such people, standing in the path to discovery. I think that it is time to entertain the hypothesis that in some serious way, they are crazy. What else, really, can explain staring right at information and either not even seeing it or hysterically blocking it, and replacing common sense with some of the most preposterous ideas that even informed children can see through? The august Mr. Bullis may be another such guy, or, in his case he may have been honoring a request from the USAF. Either way, he just flatly disinformed the public. It is circumstances like these played out over and over in UFO history which explain how the current state of ignorance and disinformation has been able to be maintained. But no claims by UFO exponents can be treated seriously unless the doubter would dig into the documents of our history. THEN, one finds the astounding picture of what actually went on with both the government and a few media-blessed "scientists" [it sticks in my craw to give them that designation]. But digging into real history is real work. No such truth will be dawning on the general consensus reality anytime soon....sadly. All you and I can do on these matters we care about is to stand up to the snickering ignoramuses, a task much easier if we actually learn something in depth ourselves. But...count to ten...we have one great advantage: we have fun, and they're just grumpily miserable.
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.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UFOs and balloons have a long history, beginning almost immediately in the 1947 wave with the spectacular lie by General Roger Ramey at the Fort Worth press conference, where he denigrated Major Jesse Marcel by posing him with an ordinary weather balloon and saying [essentially and unmistakably] that Marcel was incapable of telling the difference between a simple balloon and a flying disk allegedly found at Roswell. But we'll let Roswell lie quietly for now and pursue the more general disinformation about balloons and UFOs. 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. He also had gotten interested in UFOs in the late 1940s and when the Navy's Intelligence officers in the Pentagon began receiving all of the USAF's UFO reports after 1948, they passed them on to ONR and they passed through Liddel's desk. Then, in late 1951 [and into 1952] Liddel got so "exercised" by the UFO problem that he issued his own special study declaring them to be mostly erroneous sightings of USN secret balloons, mainly launched in New Mexico and Minnesota. This personal study he was happy to present to the national press, who loved it and gave it big play. Although the big General Mills project balloons did look awesome and even beautiful in the high atmosphere, there were a few problems with his thesis as we shall see---problems which it seems impossible to believe that he did not know. The Air Force itself DID know the problems [i.e. that the entire idea was preposterous for 90+% of the incidents], but was happy to remain silent while some highly educated "expert" created a diversion. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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. Well...pretty bold statement by me. Where do I get off making such an accusation?--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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. Kaliszewski thought that [since he had an rough idea of how far away the balloon was from his plane] that the object was moving rapidly at about 1500-2000 mph. "Some of these balloons, they attracted these things. I would say, starting with the 50s through the late 50s there must have been dozens of sightings but nobody bothered to report them. [More about that later]. I've had a number of sightings, but I didn't log them because nobody'd listen to you. If you did have a sighting--if that thing began changing altitudes in 10 or 15 seconds from out-of-space where you almost couldn't see it, down to ground level, and then go right to left at estimated several thousand miles per hour, and all of a sudden make a 90 degree turn and go in a different direction--we've seen all those things and there's no way that the human body could handle it. If you talked to somebody, they just pooh-poohed. You couldn't talk to Wright Field [Project Grudge at the time] or any of the design groups around the country". Kaliszewski and his team had obviously seen quite a few remarkable things. Some clarification is needed for some of his remarks. He and the General Mills teams DID report their cases originally, and only after receiving disrespectful treatment by the USAF did they refuse to continue. Nevertheless, they had such numerous sightings that they kept records on self-made forms for a while, and several of their cases [ex. Moore's, two of Kaliszewski's, a famous one from Artesia, NM etc] DID get to the USAF. But, by 1952, they were so miffed at the Air Force that Captain Ruppelt said they almost threw him out in the snow when he went up there to try to reestablish a connection with them. The main point is clear: Not only were balloons NOT the "explanation" for UFOs, but some of the most powerful unknowns on record came while the balloon scientists were launching those same balloons!! If this weren't so disgusting, it would be hilarious.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Let's end this today with a minor point and then a major one. The minor point is that it was probably true that top secret balloons were involved in a minority of UFO cases. Although I will get a few of my friends mad at me, I believe that it's 99% clear that the famous Mantell plane crash of 1948 involved a mistake with a balloon. Some of my other buddies would include another 1948 "classic", the George Gorman "lightball chase", as a balloon event--that I'm not nearly so sure of--the testimony of the ground witnesses makes me demure. And at the other end of the spectrum, the Roswell write-off is utterly ridiculous as any balloon. On the major point(s) to take from this, let's stop and consider the characters in the story. What-in-the-H___ explains Urner Liddel? Because he sat in ONR looking at all the UFO reports, he HAD to see his own Navy Research cases, and he HAD to know that his own balloon guys saw UFOs! There aren't many hypotheses to deal with him. He is either a bald liar, or he is profoundly ignorant, or something is wrong with his mind. He, due to his position, almost cannot be "profoundly ignorant". And, take this for what it's worth, my reading of his writing and his letters to Condon leads me to believe that HE believed what he said, and also that he was the kind of ego-centric loose cannon that the intelligence community would not risk assigning some conspiratorial task. It will probably surprise you, but I believe that there was something wrong with his mind. What was wrong was that something in his view of reality was so strongly abhorrent to this concept that he could not analyze nor think straight when he was addressing it. Smart as he was in many ways, he was when it came to threats [to his sanity?] a "messed up dude". We've had a whole angry crowd of such people, standing in the path to discovery. I think that it is time to entertain the hypothesis that in some serious way, they are crazy. What else, really, can explain staring right at information and either not even seeing it or hysterically blocking it, and replacing common sense with some of the most preposterous ideas that even informed children can see through? The august Mr. Bullis may be another such guy, or, in his case he may have been honoring a request from the USAF. Either way, he just flatly disinformed the public. It is circumstances like these played out over and over in UFO history which explain how the current state of ignorance and disinformation has been able to be maintained. But no claims by UFO exponents can be treated seriously unless the doubter would dig into the documents of our history. THEN, one finds the astounding picture of what actually went on with both the government and a few media-blessed "scientists" [it sticks in my craw to give them that designation]. But digging into real history is real work. No such truth will be dawning on the general consensus reality anytime soon....sadly. All you and I can do on these matters we care about is to stand up to the snickering ignoramuses, a task much easier if we actually learn something in depth ourselves. But...count to ten...we have one great advantage: we have fun, and they're just grumpily miserable.
