My grandfather's first saucer model from family's sighting

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My grandfather's first saucer model from family's sighting

Postby Luther Blissett » Wed Jul 11, 2012 11:21 am

Image

Now for a personal post (albeit something I've discussed on the board a few times in the past, here, here, here, and here). Following is a quote from the "Eyes of the Mothman" thread that gives a little background on my family's encounter. My brother recently uncovered the photo above, and I was quite surprised to find that it existed. The model in my grandfather's hands is the original; it was taken from the family home during their first break-in. This photo conveys the main reason why I post on RI today.

I just realized that I've never posted the story in its entirety, as I understand it, on RI. I told some fellow posters verbally when we had our meetup, but that's it. I have to wonder how many damning cases in the canon of UFO lore there are like this that never saw the light of day.

My grandfather ran away from home to become a wingwalker in the circus when he was 16. This was approximately 1932. During the war, he never enlisted, but he flew counterespionage missions in Brazil, Mexico, Alaska, and throughout other parts of South America, trained foreign pilots, and assessed their capabilities. I believe he was already operating within an FAA capacity at this point. By 1959, he had thousands of flight hours, well beyond the usual for that era. That summer, he took my family (grandmother, mother, and three older uncles) on a camping trip in Montana along with a fellow pilot, and his family. While fishing from a lakeshore, both families (upwards of a dozen people) witnessed a spinning disc, with counter-rotating outer band, at very close range (approximately 30 meters), for upwards of 20 minutes. This was a nuts-and-bolts, metallic, dark grey/gunmetal craft, with various nodules on the top. It accelerated away at a phenomenal speed from a standstill, upwards of thousands of miles per hour, and was gone in an instant. My grandfather was an expert on aviation, aeronautics, and experimental aircraft in the States at this time, and he didn't think that it was possible that Russians had the technology either. He was always very hesitant to claim that it was extraterrestrial, but the family understands and I think we all mostly agree with that hypothesis. When he first wrote a report to his superiors (he was a regional FAA officer, so this would have been somebody pretty high up the chain of command), they told him to can it. He tried some numerous outlets for a number of years after that, as he frequently wrote for FAA newsletters and aviation journals, but continued to be stymied. He built the above model sometime in the early 60's, and began researching various means of exotic propulsion. He was working on a more in-depth report when the family home was broken into, and both the model and report were stolen. He stayed in favor with the FAA up through his retirement, winning numerous commendations and awards and receiving letters from several U.S. presidents, but after that, in the early 90's, when they feared he would start working on a book (we believe he was), they filed some trumped-up charges of misappropriation of funds and various graft-like incidents against him, was tried and convicted, and spent the remainder of his life on house arrest.

My brother and I are going to try to collect more information, and I'll update this thread with anything we might find.

Luther Blissett wrote:I have to put this question to the board because my stance is biased - in the 80's and 90's, before the movie, was "men in black" a household phrase? "Men in black" have been a part of my family's history since the 60's because they were the ones who broke into my mother's childhood home (twice), ransacked my grandfather's office, and stole his reports and models of their experience. Though these guys were always presumed by my family to have been agents of the FAA, my grandfather's employer.
The Rich and the Corporate remain in their hundred-year fever visions of Bolsheviks taking their stuff - JackRiddler
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Re: My grandfather's first saucer model from family's sighti

Postby KeenInsight » Fri Jul 13, 2012 2:41 am

Wow! Thanks for sharing!
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Re: My grandfather's first saucer model from family's sighti

Postby semper occultus » Fri Jul 13, 2012 5:59 pm

....seconded....I totally missed those prev. posts...
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Re: My grandfather's first saucer model from family's sighti

Postby streeb » Fri Jul 13, 2012 10:05 pm

Thirded. Amazing story, thanks Luther.
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Re: My grandfather's first saucer model from family's sighti

Postby Luther Blissett » Sat Jul 14, 2012 2:03 am

To be fair, they were kind of off-hand self posts on some more obscure threads.
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Re: My grandfather's first saucer model from family's sighti

Postby jingofever » Sat Jul 14, 2012 6:18 pm

Have you tried making a FOIA request to the FAA? FAA FOIA page.
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Re: My grandfather's first saucer model from family's sighti

Postby Luther Blissett » Thu Jul 19, 2012 8:57 pm

I guess my reply to you jingofever was deleted the last time the board crashed. I had never thought of that before, but I suppose now that my grandmother has passed we may pursue it. One of my uncles is still a pilot and I don't want to do anything that would embarass him or jeopardize him in any way.

I took a look at the FAA FOIA page and for anyone who's ever done this before, how much should I expect to pay? They want me to state what I'm willing to pay. If I request it in my grandfather's name, his career was something like 40 years - that's quite a haul of research and files.

I'm not sure, if this was some sort of act of revenge or malice, I'm not sure I even want to know. I just want to know about the UFO and the potential of a coverup.
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Re: My grandfather's first saucer model from family's sighti

Postby jingofever » Wed Jul 25, 2012 1:50 am

From what I have read costs differ between agencies but the first one hundred pages and two hours of search time are free. The real trick is knowing what to look for, which would require some knowledge of how the FAA works.
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Re: My grandfather's first saucer model from family's sighti

Postby Hammer of Los » Wed Jul 25, 2012 7:40 am

...

The mention of counter rotating discs reminds one of the Byefield/Brown effect.

Anti gravity technology is at least somewhat understood in certain quarters.

I imagine the craft your grandfather described may have had a terrestrial, material, technical origin.

Or not.

But I thought Ashtar command moved around in their merkaba vehicles.

Or something of that sort.

...
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Re: My grandfather's first saucer model from family's sighti

Postby semper occultus » Wed Jul 25, 2012 10:21 am

so are you intending to do this purely as a private / in-house project ..as opposed to say taking the story to a researcher like Nick redfern et al to run with it .....?

the story clearly merits entry into the public canon of UFO lore
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Re: My grandfather's first saucer model from family's sighti

Postby Luther Blissett » Thu Jul 26, 2012 9:23 am

semper occultus wrote:so are you intending to do this purely as a private / in-house project ..as opposed to say taking the story to a researcher like Nick redfern et al to run with it .....?

the story clearly merits entry into the public canon of UFO lore


I just need to discuss it with my family first. I'm not sure which way to go. I've spoken via pm with someone from this board about sharing it externally.

Hammer of Los wrote:...

The mention of counter rotating discs reminds one of the Byefield/Brown effect.

Anti gravity technology is at least somewhat understood in certain quarters.

I imagine the craft your grandfather described may have had a terrestrial, material, technical origin.

Or not.

But I thought Ashtar command moved around in their merkaba vehicles.

Or something of that sort.

...


I guess one of the big sticking points has always been that my grandfather was an expert on aircraft technology and was privy to flight experimentations leading up to the event. Also, this was approximately 53 years ago (56 years after the birth of flight) and it beggars my mind to think that the terrestrial technology to silently hover and depart on a dime at thousands of mph was built by humans at the time. If it did, I can really no longer grok what the purpose of the public spectacle of the space race was about. Though I guess it's always possible, and that many sightings prior to and since have been secret military projects. It was the opinion of a man I very much admired and respected that it was not, so I have to lean that way.

My grandfather did a lot of small-scale experiments with gyroscopes for the rest of his life after this sighting, for what that's worth.
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Re: My grandfather's first saucer model from family's sighti

Postby Hammer of Los » Thu Jul 26, 2012 9:58 pm

...

Though I guess it's always possible, and that many sightings prior to and since have been secret military projects. It was the opinion of a man I very much admired and respected that it was not, so I have to lean that way.


I understand that.

You and he may very well be right.

You don't want to take what I say as gospel, you know.

The sorry truth of the matter is that I simply make this s**t up as I go along.

...
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Re: My grandfather's first saucer model from family's sighti

Postby KeenInsight » Fri Jul 27, 2012 12:02 am

Problem with it being man-made or not is that, either way, ground-breaking and possibly world-changing technology is being kept a secret. Speculating for a moment that if UFOs, in general, are some sort free-energy, top-secret military projects, that has mind-boggling applications in the 'real world.' In retrospect, its just lies built on more lies, which just serves the purpose of fueling the whole subject.
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Re: My grandfather's first saucer model from family's sighti

Postby barracuda » Fri Jul 27, 2012 1:04 am

Luther, you've called this your grandfather's first saucer model... were there more?
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Re: My grandfather's first saucer model from family's sighti

Postby Luther Blissett » Fri Jul 27, 2012 10:12 am

barracuda wrote:Luther, you've called this your grandfather's first saucer model... were there more?


I totally forgot to explain that. He built a second (which I think he may have intended to experiment with Tesla-like effects on an actual gyroscope - much different than this first model) which was also subsequently lost. We didn't suspect malice on the misplacement of that one, and I can remember seeing it back in the very early 80's. It was white.

KeenInsight wrote:Problem with it being man-made or not is that, either way, ground-breaking and possibly world-changing technology is being kept a secret. Speculating for a moment that if UFOs, in general, are some sort free-energy, top-secret military projects, that has mind-boggling applications in the 'real world.' In retrospect, its just lies built on more lies, which just serves the purpose of fueling the whole subject.


Hammer of Los wrote:...

I understand that.

You and he may very well be right.

You don't want to take what I say as gospel, you know.

The sorry truth of the matter is that I simply make this s**t up as I go along.

...


The funny thing is that I think he wanted it to be manmade. I can't recall my grandfather ever uttering the term "extraterrestrial." He wasn't religious, but was a very pragmatic guy.
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