Shortly after my 35mmc article about “Understanding Life Backwards” went online, another fascinating example dropped on me. I was working at my computer — with a cable-TV documentary about UFOs blaring in the background — when I heard something that whip-lashed my attention away from the keyboard. Something that may have answered a question that has long bugged me about my father: Why did he try to convince his employer (Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus, Ohio) to build an electrostatically powered flying machine during the Vietnam War?
Dad may have been an international expert in “metal vapor deposition” — but NOT in designing flying machines that could hover silently in place, glide in any direction, and look a bit like UFOs. And they would do this with only an electrostatic generator as engine. No propellers, jets, wings or rockets.
A Cable Revelation
The cable show that grabbed my attention was Season 1, Episode 3 (“Alien High Tech”) of the Travel Channel series “UFO Witness.” The series follows a former FBI agent who tries to unearth new information about classic and modern UFO cases. [The story is also discussed in one of the History Channel’s somewhat believable “Ancient Aliens” episodes (Season 11, Episode 13).]
They featured interviews with Colonel Philip J. Corso, who was taped just after he’d published his controversial book “The Day After Roswell,” and only a year before his death. Many people who witness or investigate UFOs are warned to never discuss what they’ve seen, on pain of experiencing things they’d rather not know. But many of them still choose to tell “what needs to be known” in death-bed confessions.
Corso’s book may have been his confession.
Colonel Corso’s Claims
In the early 1970s, Corso manned the U.S. Pentagon’s “Foreign Technology Desk.” For decades, it had collected samples of nearly every Russian MiG jet ever made. And he claimed a major goal of his tenure was to give artifacts from the 1947 Roswell UFO crash to private R&D labs and universities for reverse-engineering. They’d be free to patent and sell what they developed. The only requirement was that they feed their results back to the U.S. military and other commercial developers. This novel plan reportedly accomplished four things:
- It moved the reverse-engineering efforts into the private sector, where the Freedom of Information Act couldn’t extract information about them.
- It (in Corso’s words) “made the history of the patents the history of the inventions.”
- It distanced subsequent patents and inventions from UFOs and the Roswell event.
- And it either launched or accelerated research in fields like integrated circuitry, fiber optics, night-vision systems, bullet-proof vests and even medical devices.
And what had yanked my attention to the TV was Corso’s claim that he sent one of the Roswell artifacts — a swatch of indestructible metallic fabric found around the UFO’s hull and in its occupants’ flight suits — to my father’s Metallurgy Division at Battelle! Though as light as silk, the metallic fabric could not be cut, torn or burned. And if crushed and released, it sprang back to its original shape. For this reason, the U.S. Army called it “memory foil.”
Why Dad’s Group?
In one of his last interviews before he died, Corso explained that he sent the artifact to dad’s group because they were “The best people we knew of to try to recreate it.” He also said that the fabric seemed to be made of an exceedingly pure nickel-titanium alloy with “special internal structures that may have formed during fabrication.” In addition, Battelle was supposedly “the only place in the country at the time with an arc furnace hot enough to do the alloying.”
Dad and his colleagues did know a lot about fabricating exotic alloy structures. They’d published articles and books about them — including flexible nickel-titanium ones! And dad once told me that his office was right beside Battelle’s “special furnace.”
But though he never discussed his metallurgical projects with us, dad wasn’t nearly as hesitant about other projects, which helped to:
- Perfect the process that became Xerography,
- Hand-grow the first ruby crystal pure enough for laser applications,
- Create the carbonless carbon paper we still use in multi-part business forms, and
- Formulate the Space Shuttle’s heat-shield coatings.
But as far as I know, dad’s group never completely recreated the flexible, electrically conductive, and almost indestructible “fabric” that was found at Roswell and nearby Corona. They did come close, though, with a recipe for fabricating something called “memory metal” (AKA “metal that remembers its shape”).
And per Battelle’s founding charter (their standard operating procedure) they then transferred their work to other organizations — specifically, the Naval Ordnance Laboratory and NASA — for further development. The Navy eventually patented and sold their “memory metal” under the brand name “NITINOL” — short for “Nickel-Titanium Naval Ordnance Laboratory.” And today, if you wear glasses whose wire frames can be bent, twisted and even folded… only to instantly spring back to their original shape — or if an aortic stent is implanted in your body — you may well own an offshoot of the Roswell crash!
And NASA is reportedly using its unique “memory metal” to build jets and rockets whose wings can “morph” in flight without needing mechanical hinges. Pretty wild stuff!
A Sad Possibility
So this history may have addressed my nagging question about why — near the end of the Vietnam War — dad felt safe to suggest that Battelle build his UFO-like machine. He thought the vehicles would be great “stealth” alternatives to helicopters in battlefield surveillance applications. Also, they could “stack like pancakes” for efficient shipping on planes, trains, trucks and boats. But their electrostatic motors would never move them at the incredible speeds of “real” UFOs. However, they could cruise silently through the air, glow faintly blue in the dark, and remain airborne even when shot.
Battelle reportedly studied dad’s proposal and concluded that the machine “wouldn’t fly.” But he corrected their calculations and Battelle conceded that “it might” (but still declined). Personally, I think the thing would have had to be extremely large to carry just one occupant (to say nothing of military cargo). But today, a small version would be a very cool propeller-less drone!
I still wonder, though, why dad considered proposing the project in the first place. Even today, anything that smacks of UFOs could be the kiss-of-death for a scientist or research firm. The project also seemed to fall way outside his group’s purview. But conversely, why would Battelle even study the proposal, as dad claimed? Could they have felt safer about it because they both knew his group had tried to reverse-engineer a Roswell artifact?
Maybe dad knew, and maybe he didn’t. For Colonel Corso said he gave the artifact to the head of dad’s division, and the usual requirement for these donations was to keep everyone except the top recipient in the dark about their history. So it’s sadly possible that dad may never have known where the most exciting project of his entire career actually originated.
About the Opening Image(s)
If you’ve heard of the “virtual world” known as Second Life (SL), then you know where I photographed this article’s featured “image.” I’ve always loved architecture and after learning how to use SL’s building tools, I soon found myself teaching “in-world” architectural-design classes for international groups of real-world students!
But if you haven’t heard of SL, it isn’t actually a “computer game” (as some people claim). It’s a simulated 3D world with its own physical laws and building tools. And it was an ideal place to quickly create a 3D structural model of what I thought dad’s UFO would have looked like. The featured image offers two views of my mock-up (with its side open to expose the interior). I could have moved around, and even into, it to take more photos. SL can be a great place to build such models without having to worry too much about 3D-CAD-maths!
And in fact, Second Life also can be an excellent venue for doing all kinds of research and photography. For instance, before Kate and I took a tour of Ireland, we visited an exact SL recreation of Dublin’s central city to familiarize ourselves with various site locations. (Even dropped into a couple pubs along the way, but their virtual beer was rather bland.)
Similarly, before our first trip to Rome, we visited an exact SL recreation of the Sistine Chapel. So exact in fact, that the super-high-res photos used to create it allowed us to “fly” up to the ceiling and view Michelangelo’s work up close and in detail. (When we toured the place in person, we weren’t even allowed to take non-flash photos from the chapel floor!)
There are also in-world recreations of:
- Paris (where it’s hoot to fly to the top of the Eiffel Tower and lord it over the city below)
- Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house
- Many other well-known locations
- And different scenic environments, like deserts, arctic plains and tropical islands (great for photo backdrops)
If any readers would like to hear more about Second Life, let me know in your comments, and I’ll do a piece about SL’s potential uses as a photographic tool (where one can also create one’s own props).
Two Final Notes
While writing this piece, I stumbled across an energetic independent researcher named Anthony Bragalia, who has apparently made investigating the Roswell-Battelle connection his major life’s work. Most pertinent to this article is his website’s claims that Battelle may have had more involvement with UFOs than the work of my father’s metallurgy group.
And– returning to UFOs– one of my most ambitious Second-Life building projects was a fully functional flying saucer that used SL physics to behave exactly like “real” UFOs. It could change shape, turn invisible, teleport instantly across great distances, and even beam avatars from the ground into the craft. It was a fun challenge, and I WISH I had one in “First Life”!
–Dave Powell is a Westford, Mass., writer and avid amateur photographer.
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