SUBJECT: AERO CLUB IN THE MID 1850's FILE: UFO2873 PART 6 Taken from KeelyNet BBS Sponsored by Vangard Sciences PO BOX 1031 Mesquite, TX 75150 There are ABSOLUTELY NO RESTRICTIONS on duplicating, publishing or distributing the files on KeelyNet except where noted! December 1, 1991 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Vangard Sciences has made contact with Jimmy Ward and Pete Navarro as mentioned in the Fate article on the 1897 Airships (AERO1 through AERO3 on KeelyNet). Mr. Jimmy Ward has provided us with a series of papers written by both Pete and Jimmy several years ago. These papers are sourced from the original Dellschau notebooks with correlations and information provided by the authors. We wish to thank Mr. Jimmy Ward and Mr. P.G. Navarro for graciously sharing their work with KeelyNet. If you have thoughts or ideas relating to the areas touched on in these papers, we invite your comments either through the Vangard Sciences mailing address, uploaded to KeelyNet or you may write directly to Jimmy at : Jimmy Ward 1511 Summer St. Houston, TX 77007 In our attempts to integrate a wide range of studies, we at Vangard Sciences are of the opinion that the Airship inventors, particularly those Airships described by DELLSCHAU, discovered one of the many gases we believe to exist below Hydrogen. The N.B. gas would easily fit within the 26 anticipated gases having a mass number of less than 1.008, that of Hydrogen. If we can rediscover how the gas was extracted from the atmosphere, it will open up entirely new avenues of transport. Note that Hydrogen is the MOST ABUNDANT element in the Universe. If Hydrogen is a composite of other elements as Keely found, then N.B. gas must be one of those elements and in greater abundance. -------------------------------------------------------------------- The Great Airship Inventors Fact and Fancy In 1896, all up and down the Sacramento Valley of California, a blinding light was seen coming from an aerial object and playing on the ground below. The adverse weather appeared to have NO EFFECT on the object - it sailed majestically and smoothly along DESPITE the rain and wind, from Oroville to San Francisco and from Oakland to Sacramento. What was this strange object with the brilliant light? Page 1 R. Boynton, editor of the Oroville Register, thought he might have the answer. A few years back, he recalled, there was a mining camp called Cherokee, at the top of Table Mountain, overlooking Oroville. Many of its workers were of Portuguese extraction. In the early 80s, he said, they worked the bluffs and celebrated big days with balloon ascensions. Huge blazing torches would be suspended beneath the balloons on long ropes and they would float off over the valley, making for quite a show. The problem is that the torches would soon burn out and the people were now reporting a light MUCH BRIGHTER than a torch and, besides, it was A BEAM OF LIGHT that was reported shining down. To top it all off, the mining had stopped and the Portuguese HAD LEFT THE AREA SEVERAL YEARS BEFORE. Still, Table Mountain WOULD make an ideal site for secret experiments and base of operations due to its rather inaccessible location and yet nearness to a fair-sized town. Much has been written about these mystery airships, but little real research has been undertaken. Most writers have relied on other writers and their own preconceived opinions and errors have been compounded. The first sighting is usually given as "sometime during the week of Thanksgiving", but REALLY occurred during the first week in November, the story first appeared in the papers during Thanksgiving week. There is a possibility of an even earlier sighting. On September 20, 1896, an astronomer named Swift noticed a light about the magnitude of Venus at its brightest out over the Pacific Ocean. It was about 1 degree from the setting sun and thought to be a new comet. The next evening it was not there. Weeks later they mystery light would be seen to go out over the ocean several times and disappear or come in from the ocean and head inland. There are differing versions of the first real sighting of the craft, but the gist of the event is as follows: As dusk was descending on San Francisco, His Honor, Mayor Sutro, arrived at his mansion which was West of the city and overlooked the ocean. A light was seen coming in from the direction of the Pacific. It passed over Seal Rocks shining its beam on the seals, sending them complaining into the water. One account quoted the witnesses as describing the craft as having a bright light fore and aft and a row of smaller lights along its side; however, this appears to have been an embellishment by the reporter because as it leisurely sailed over Twin Peaks, all that could be seen was a bright beam of light emitted by a dark and formless source. Cable cars stopped and the passengers and crew piled out to watch the wonder silently pass overhead. What was it? Where had it come from? November 1, 1896, the Detroit Free Press reported that in the near future a New York inventor would construct and fly an "aerial torpedo boat." On November 17, 1896, a telegram was reported to have been received by the Sacramento Bee from a man in New York who claimed that he was about to fly to California along with some friends. He said the trip should take about two days. This might explain the later sightings, but what about the prior sightings? And there WERE earlier ones! Page 2 One of the earliest man-made airship stories appeared in the Santa Fe Daily New Mexican of March 26, 1880. It told of an enormous airship that swept over this tiny town of Galisteo Junction. It was cigar shaped with a tail and was driven by a huge propellor. The occupants were described as inebriated and a couple of items were thrown overboard - a beautiful rose fastened with a slip of fine silk-like paper containing what was thought to have been "Oriental characters" and a cup "of very peculiar workmanship." The next morning the items were on display at the railroad depot. That evening a stranger appeared, pronounced them of Asian origin and made the "owner" a financial deal he could not refuse. The man and objects then disappeared as would happen again and again in the future of UFOs. The story of C.A.A. Dellschau and the Sonora Aero Club has been presented as the core of this series of articles. But they were not the only ones who laid claim to the invention of the earliest airships in the World. In "Milestones of the Air" there is reproduced a pair of stereo photos showing Frederick Marriott's "Avitor" airship/airplane combination, flown in California in 1869. While Marriott was not THE man behind the Airships nearly 30 years later, his ideas played a part in many later designs. And his "Avitor" bore a striking resemblance to many of these later ships. One major difference between the "Avitor" and the airships is that the "Avitor" utilized a football-shaped gas bag and the later ships were often described as MADE OF METAL or "Aluminum looking." -------------------------------------------------------------------- The famous Aurora, Texas, "spaceship" crash is a good example. While there is a good probability that this story was a hoax, it may have some basis in fact. The following story was told to the author and permission to tell it in print was given PROVIDED the names of the people involved were changed. In 1888, a 15 year old boy was living with his widowed mother and sisters on a small farm near the now extinct town of Grundy, Texas. While working in the garden he heard what he thought was a clap of thunder. Before he could look up from his weeding, things began to fall around him, hard little pieces of metal, larger pieces and many heavy objects which struck the ground. He fled for cover in the house. After things stopped falling, he went back outside and walked over to a large object on the ground, which moved, and proved to be a man. He was badly hurt, having fallen quite a distance to earth. His mother and sisters arrived and helped him move the man into the house, out of the hot Texas sun. The people at Grundy heard the noise and some men rode out from town to investigate. At the farm they found out about the "man who fell from the sky." Some doubted, some laughed; yet they all had a look at this man. And they told the mother and her children that the man was not to be moved until the Sheriff could be summoned to the farm. The Sheriff was not at Grundy and it would take a couple of days to fetch him. The man regained consciousness that evening and he spoke to them, but they could not understand his language. They offered him food, but the only things he accepted were water and a piece of Page 3 melon. A few hours later he died. The family was afraid to move the body until the Sheriff came, so they wrapped him in a blanket and left his body on the bed. The Sheriff did not show up the next day, but several hundred people from Grundy and the surrounding countryside did. The riders had told everyone in sight about the man out at the farm and they came in wagons, on horseback, and on foot to see him. The people crowding in at the window flattened the garden and what people didn't trample, the horses did. All day long people showed up, needing water for their horses. They emptied the tank and pumped the well dry. When night fell, the family slipped the body out of the house and buried it away from the house along with the things the man had with him. The well went completely dry and, having no reserve water, no food left in the garden, and no money to have a new well dug, the family was forced into abandoning the farm. This story may be considered a pure figment of the imagination, but several years later, in 1944, this teen-age boy, now an elderly man, told the story to some friends. Their faces must have shown doubt because he suddenly rose, left the house and returned a few minutes later with several pieces of metal, one he handed out for examination and the rest he placed on the wood stove. The first piece was very light, about 1/2 inch thick and, roughly, 6" by 9", concave on one side, convex on the other. The edges looked like they had been "torn", with a crystal structure at right angles to the face. The metal was a silver-gray color. It could not be scratched with a file nor dented with a hammer, even on the edges. The old man then took the pieces of metal from the stovetop with his bare hands and passed them around. It was heavier than the first piece and of smaller dimensions. It was a dark bluish color. And it was NOT hot, although it had laid on the stove top long enough to be VERY hot! Though of obvious different composition, this piece could not be scratched or dented either. When his friends commented that they must be pieces of some new metal for airplanes, the old man laughed and said he'd had those fragments since HE WAS A KID! They were some of the pieces he had picked up when the man fell from the sky. He also said that many of those who had come by had also picked up pieces, but he did not know if any of them were still around. He DID know that there were still pieces to be found around the old farm. (While the author has not personally visited the site nor knows of its EXACT location, he was in contact with a gentleman who said he had found it in North Texas near the Panhandle. (Near Amarillo or Canyon, possibly...Vangard) There were no buildings there, only traces where they had once stood. He also found a few small pieces of shrapnel-like metal slightly buried in the soil. But before a full report could be made or the metal tested, he died in a traffic accident and his wife threw the fragments away along with his notes. Page 4 Anyone who has information about strange fragments of metal from this area or is interested in pursuing this story personally, please contact me through KeelyNet (info at beginning of this file).) As mentioned previously, the Grundy airship and the Aurora airship stories have a number of points in common. We may never know whether they are two different stories or one based on the other. With the 3-ring circus atmosphere at Aurora, the destruction caused by over-zealous "investigators", as well as the harassment of the citizens, it is no wonder people began to deny the event ever took place and claimed it was a hoax from the beginning! But was it entirely a hoax? Could there have been some truth in it? Could there be a stranger's body buried somewhere in the cemetery? Maybe not an Alien but A HUMAN BODY belonging to an airship inventor who spoke a language other than English? To prevent the same things from happening in the Grundy story, the names of the families involved and their present whereabouts have been withheld, pending further investigation. The town of Grundy no longer exists and had not for many years, so no ones privacy will be invaded by divulging ITS name. -------------------------------------------------------------------- More down to Earth, so to speak, are the following stories : The Galveston Daily News of April 29, 1897 reads: "It may be that those people out west who for the last six months have been filling the papers with accounts of a mysterious airship which they have seen in the sky are not monumental liars after all. It is possible that experiments now being made by the U.S. Government with a view to producing a genuine air ship may be responsible for their visions. "For several years the government has had in its employ a well- known aeronaut, who gets, it is said, a salary of $10,000 a year, and constant work and experiment have been going on at Fort Logan, near Denver. A profound secrecy has been maintained as to what has been accomplished, even Army officers themselves only getting vague inklings of what is going on." Somehow this sounds familiar in today's UFO world. Who this well- known aeronaut really was, was not divulged, but papers across the country listed dozens of POSSIBLE inventors of the mystery airships, among the many named included the following partial list : George Jennings - Fresno, California W. H. Warren - Hayward, California John A. Horen - San Jose, California Anton Pallardy - Beatrice, Nebraska H. John O. Prease - Omaha, Nebraska Clinton A. Case (A.C. Clinton) - Omaha, Nebraska Charles Clinton - Dodge City, Kansas Harry Tibbs - Louisville, Kentucky Edward J. Pennington - Mount Carmel, Illinois Page 5 C. Devonbaugh - Vandalia, Illinois Valney Stewart - Brule, Wisconsin Other names tossed around included : J. F. Calipha George Francis Train Prof. Charles Davidson Albert Whipple Three names are not included in the above lists : C.A.A. Dellschau - the central character of this series of articles, Mr. Wilson - the pilot of an airship reported in the first of this series and his equally mysterious "rich Uncle", and Dr. Benjamin - and HIS uncle. Early in November, 1896, a Bay Area attorney had received assurances from an inventor, who wished to remain anonymous, that the problems of air travel had been solved, George D. Collins let it leak out that the mystery craft seen over Sacramento and the surrounding countryside was the invention of his new client. He later stated that $100,000 and five years had gone into perfecting the 150 foot machine and that he had been "favored with a demonstration at a secret location." By the 22nd, his home and office were overrun by reporters and just plain snoopers, pressing him for details. Backed into a corner, Collins admitted that the craft was hidden in a barn in Berkeley during the daylight hours and that a Dr. Benjamin had something to do with the builiding of it. "Dr. Benjamin" turned outo be E. H. Benjamin of Ellis Street, a 34-year old bachelor, dentist, and dabbler with inventions and recently from somewhere in Maine. He denied any knowledge of this ship. He did admit he had frequently visited an unnamed uncle at Oroville and that he had privately confided to friends that he had invented something which would revolutionise the world. Government agents, detectives, reporters and railroad men were quick to swarm over Oroville especially when they heard Benjamin say that, if he HAD invented the craft, he wouldn't be so foolish as to admit it in public. The uncle was never found nor was any evidence that an airship had been built there as claimed. Attorney Collins, hounded by reporters, the curious, and the outright cranks, changed his story completely and denied ever having ANY knowledge at all of the craft. The Patent Office in Washington, D.C., was flooded with inquiries about Collins application. Disclaimers were returned instead. "Aluminum Benjamin", as he became known probably because several close witnesses claimed it looked "like aluminum", complained to the press that he had to move to escape the curious and that eating in public restaurants proved to be impossible because throngs would quickly gather to stare, giggle, and gesture at the windows of the establishment. He feared his mind would soon become unhinged. Benjamin finally fled the area leaving what personal effects he had behind in his apartment. In the meantime, Collins had been fired for talking too much and slowly faded out of the picture. W. H. H. Hart now came forward Page 6 claiming that HE was in secret communication with the inventor. Hart was a former State Attorney General, a bearded, distinguished looking gentleman and one of the most respected men in California. In the 1907 issue of the National Cyclopedia of American Biography, it was stated that Hart was the discoverer of "the only mine in the world in which osmium is found in metal form....in large quantities." The metal was used chiefly in the manufacture of electric storage batteries. One of the chief features of these aircraft were their powerful SEARCHLIGHTS that could turn night into day from hundreds of feet above. Hart also stated that while he knew very little about the airship THERE, he had been concerned with its sister ship IN THE EAST for some time. He refused to say much about either ship and nothing about the inventors or where the ships were built or housed. Sightings became rare and with no NEW news, the story was dropped - unsolved! Then in the April 12, 1897, issue of the Chicago Journal appeared a brief item. It stated that Oscar D. Booth of 158 South Peoria Street firmly believed the strange object seen was indeed an airship. It seems Mr. Booth was ready to build one himself and was merely waiting for the return of the Secretary of the Booth Flying Machine Company whose name, by the way, was E. H. BENJAMIN! Coincidence? Coincidences abound in the story of the Great Airships. A few have been brought out in this article. Another in the following. Several times and in different parts of the country witnesses have stated that they had met the captain/or crew of the local airship and had been informed the craft had been to THE MONTEZUMA MOUNTAINS. In researching the Dellschau material, he, too, mentioned flying to the MONTEZUMA MOUNTAINS, but no map could be found showing any such mountains. Finally, two old maps were found. One Mexican map shows a range of mountains in the southern part of California just below San Francisco that bear the label MONTEZUMA MOUNTAINS. (The exact peaks have not yet been identified with today's labelling.) A second old map shows another Montezuma Mountains. This one in New York. It is now, ironically, a wild fowl preserve and is not too far from Goshen, New York, the alleged home of the mysterious "Mr. Wilson" and HIS uncle! -------------------------------------------------------------------- ********************************************** * THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo * **********************************************