The UFO Singularity (10 page)

Then again, even if interplanetary beings
are
actually the denizens that haunt those strange flying saucers we keep hearing about, understanding the progression of technology as it applies to technological Singularity still may aid us in understanding what kinds of exotic technologies, even of the
alien
variety, we may actually be dealing with. For all we know, what I’ve outlined here, in terms of how Singularity might begin to occur on Earth, could have already taken place in some capacity elsewhere in the cosmos; thus, any “aliens” visiting Earth would almost inevitably also represent some kind of post-Singularity intelligence—though for now, we’ll save the discussion of alien Singularitarians for later.

On the morning of July 5, 1947, a rancher named Mac Brazel and his son headed out together to collect strange “clusters” of some unknown debris that had appeared around a New Mexico homestead where Brazel was foreman, located 30 miles north of a town called Roswell. The place would forever be remembered for its connection with the alleged government cover-up that ensued, which was said to have involved a crashed flying saucer. This, despite remaining in obscurity until the rekindled interest
it received from nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman in 1978, would secure its place as one of the most enigmatic UFO cases in American history.

That same morning back in 1947, the following news brief first appeared in the
Los Angeles Examiner,
describing the recollections of a reputable, if not somewhat unlikely source, who claimed he had witnessed the demonstration of some variety of highly advanced “saucer” technology two decades earlier:

INVENTOR’S TEST OF “FLYING SAUCERS” HERE IN 1928 BARED:
Leo Bentz, one time builder of automobiles, said that he and a friend saw a confidential demonstration of a saucer-like flying model in Griffith Park in 1928. The inventor was George de Bay, interested in a new principle for airplanes. De Bay produced drawings showing designs of contrivance that would skip through the air like a flat stone—an upside down saucer that worked on a vacuum principle requiring ten times less power for propulsion. Inventor de Bay, it is believed, may have gone to Russia.
¹⁵

Whether or not the auto designer ever really witnessed this bizarre demonstration, let alone what may have become of this alleged George de Bay character, remains a mystery. Of course, the notion that he had likely expatriated was a natural conclusion for the time; immediately following World War II, the sudden surge in reports of
“flying saucers” had greatly increased paranoia that the world’s emerging superpowers, namely the United States and Russia, might have begun to harness highly advanced new propulsion systems for exotic-looking flying vehicles.

Although the suspicions about enemy technologies would later seemingly be supplanted (albeit a bit strangely) by the scientific consensus that Earth was under visitation by extraterrestrials, it is clear that earlier explanations for UFOs and their identity had dealt with earthly causes. With his unconventional research into the history of Nazism, historian and researcher Joseph P. Farrell has brought to light a number of reports from immediately after the war, in which claims had been made that saucer-shaped aircraft were being produced toward the end of the conflict. One source for claims along these lines appeared on March 27, 1950, in the Italian newspaper
Il Mattino dell’ Italia Centrale.
The article featured a curious account where Guiseppe Belluzzo, an Italian turbine expert and ex-fascist member of Mussolini’s government, claimed that designs for Nazi “flying saucers” had been in the works by 1942, first entering production in Italy, and then in Germany. Though the craft in production had never reached a state of functionality before the end of the war, Belluzzo claimed that “by 1950 it had been sufficiently developed to deliver an atom bomb.”
¹⁶

Farrell also makes reference to a CIA report, well known in many UFO circles, dated May 27, 1954. In it, even more extraordinary claims of advanced “saucer” technology had been revealed:

A German newspaper recently published an interview with George Klein, famous German engineer and aircraft expert, describing the experimental construction of “flying saucers” carried out by him from 1941 to 1945. Klein stated that he was present when, in 1945, the first piloted “flying saucer” took off and reached a speed of 13,000 miles per hour within three minutes. The experiments resulted in three designs: one designed by (Dr. Richard Meithe) was a disc-shaped aircraft, 135 feet in diameter, which did not rotate; another designed by Habermohl and Schriever, consisted of a large rotating ring, in the centre of which was a round, stationary cabin for the crew. When the Soviets occupied Prague, the Germans destroyed every trace of the “flying saucer” project and nothing more was heard of Habermohl and his assistants.
¹⁷

We must keep in mind that Farrell himself has stressed that all such claims from the immediate post-war era were likely aimed at “cashing in” on the apparent presence of UFOs for purposes of psychological warfare and propaganda, rather than representing
actual
instances where advanced aircraft had been created here on Earth. (This is not to say, however, that such aircraft weren’t developed later on, and in other locales.) Nonetheless, it is interesting to note also that Farrell occasionally makes use of the term
technological explosion,
which bears similarity to the concept of a Singularity-style
intelligence explosion, when referencing technological innovations that had been taking place during World War II in Nazi Germany. Among these, we find projects that included, among other things, production of functional, combat-tested night vision technology, Kevlar material, miniaturization of broadcast television equipment, and even the possibility that the Nazis may have undertaken uranium enrichment toward the end of the conflict.
¹⁸
These will be of certain interest to those of us focused on the potential for rapidly occurring technological innovation within a short period. Let us remember that it is, at the very least, one part of the equation that would begin to constitute a Singularity-style “explosion” of technology. And yet, though the information regarding these sorts of Nazi wartime endeavors is readily available, it is far less often discussed in mainstream history books. Somehow, the details continue to be overshadowed by the more blatant and gory elements constituting the greatest international conflict in modern times.

But amidst the scant and somewhat spurious stories involving “Foo Fighters” and other airborne anomalies that occasionally pepper wartime reports, there are other incidents that may prove to be far more troubling and that suggest there indeed must have been
something
very strange going on, perhaps involving some variety of highly advanced technology working behind the scenes. For instance, there are reports not only of strange things seen in the skies like UFOs, but also Soviet reports of strange
underwater phenomenon, known today as “quackers,” a name that references the sound these objects would occasionally emit, which was similar to a frog’s croak. Soviet navy submarines throughout parts of the North Atlantic Ocean reported these odd manifestations after World War II and throughout the height of the Cold War; their identity, however, was never determined conclusively.
¹⁹

There are still more curious phenomenon that occurred during the war years, which point to even stranger, and perhaps more startling potentials. A German language book published in 1993 called
Zeittunnel: Reisen an den Rand der Ewigkeit
(
Time Tunnel: Travel to the Edge of Eternity
) by journalist Ernst Meckelburg related a number of strange wartime disappearances, reported by the British Royal Air Force, the German Luftwaffe, and American pilots during World War II. Among these was a curious and enigmatic tale, related by an American pilot who witnessed the sudden, inexplicable disappearance of a nearby B-25 in mid-flight over northern India in late 1944. Meckelburg’s book is, of course, somewhat difficult to obtain elsewhere in the world, although the witnesses’ story in question also appeared in
Fate Magazine
several years later, as related by the pilot himself. Still, today the odd affair remains relatively unknown, and even online searches regarding key details pertaining to the strange incident return few, if any, results.

However, on the Wednesday, August 3, 2011, edition of the popular late-night radio program
Coast to
Coast AM,
host George Noory welcomed investigative journalist Leslie Kean to the program to discuss firsthand accounts of UFO reports, which she collected from top military generals and pilots and featured in her book,
UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record.
²⁰
During the second hour of Kean’s interview on the program, Noory and his guest received a phone call from a 93-year-old World War II veteran and pilot now living in Coos Bay, Oregon, named Stewart. As the caller began to relate his story, it became evident that this was none other than the same pilot who had witnessed the strange, vanishing B-25 incident so many years before in 1944, and his recollection of those events today are still nothing short of haunting.

According to Stewart, during World War II there were many pilots who reported seeing what have traditionally been referred to as Foo Fighters. “My story involves a disappearing B-25,” Stewart said
²¹
, reminding his audience that this was the same model of airplane that aviation pioneer Jimmy Doolittle flew over Tokyo in the early part of World War II. “But I’m 93 years old, so have a little patience with me!” he joked.

Stewart explained that he had flown B-25s in the China Burma India Theater of operations during World War II. The disappearance in question took place late in 1944, while he and his wingmen were flying over Northern India toward targets located in Burma against the Japanese. “We were a flight of three B-25s, and I was in the right
seat of the lead aircraft,” he recalled. As the trio passed over a range of mountains along their route down into Burma, Stewart noted that they encountered “scattered, fluffy little cumulus clouds” at their then-present flight altitude. “As we entered them, the procedure was that the right wingman would rise up 200 feet, and the left wing-man would descend 200 feet, so as not to collide in the clouds. I remember the guy on the right—I had flown with him before, his name was Reynard—continued this way, where he would rise up 200 feet, and come back down again. This happened about three or four times, and then he entered a cloud, and did not come out!”

Without warning, nor any other indication that Reynard had experienced trouble, the pilot and his B-25 had apparently just
vanished.
“He was just gone,” Stewart said, “so we, the remaining two pilots, contacted each other, and we began turning to the right, circling around hoping to catch sight of him because, certainly, we couldn’t conceive of anybody disappearing like that.” Despite their attempts at searching for Reynard or his plane, they were unable to locate the missing aircraft.

“Finally, we decided that he might have made a sudden turn to the right and gone back to base, because he might have lost his radio, or something like that. So we continued on, and bombed our targets, and came back to the base.” Upon their return, Stewart and the remaining wingman inquired about whether Reynard had returned early, but no one there had seen or heard from
the missing pilot either. “He was gone, and so we referred to him as missing, and reported the location to the people at the base. And they sent search planes out, including two R-4 helicopters. We searched for several days afterward. We searched the ground below, hoping to find signs of a crashed airplane. He was reported missing in action, and that’s the last we heard of it!

“Later on, I wrote a description of this incident,” Stewart said, and, after having it rejected from several publications,
Fate Magazine
finally decided to carry the story. “Maybe a couple of years after that, I got a letter from a man in Germany (Ernst Meckelburg) who was writing a book about disappearing aircraft, because he had many reports from the
Luftwaffe
from that era, and also British aircraft. He had kinda collected their stories, and they were similar to mine, where airplanes just disappear into thin air. He wrote a book called
Zeittunnel,
and sent me a copy of the book, which included my story. His theory, according to
Zeittunnel,
was that there are sorts of parallel universes—that things can go in and out of universes,” Stewart explained, “which would account for UFOs, of course.”

So far as understanding the greater UFO mystery, there may be several things we can learn from a careful consideration of the reports of unexplained aerial phenomenon that began rising to prominence during and shortly after the World War II years. One aspect of the mystery worthy of mention here is that while the Nazis
were honing in on some incredibly advanced scientific and technological principles during the War, it is obvious that the Allied Forces were doing the same; how else, we can argue, would they have prevailed over the conflict?

With this in mind, is it possible that, although certain varieties of exotic UFO activity may have been taking place much earlier than World War II, it was during this pivotal period, as a result of the demand for wartime innovation, which many of the necessary technologies began to appear that, quite literally,
allowed
perception of certain UFO phenomenon? For instance, though Hanz Geiger developed the first full functional Geiger counters for detection of radiation as far back as 1908, it wasn’t until 1947 that Sidney Liebson, who had participated in Pacific bomb tests, managed to create a lower-voltage halogen counter that operated more effectively in the detection of ionizing radiation.
²²
That same year, Liebson received his PhD from the University of Maryland, and, of course, 1947 would also usher in the modern UFO era with reports of “flying saucers,” the likes of those seen by Kenneth Arnold in June of that year.