The Awful Truth About UFOs (long) -- not for believers!

Here's the bad news:

The sad and awful truth is, they've mostly been blimps.

Yes, blimps: slow, rotund, squishy blimps, and most of those have been WWII Navy surplus. No sex, no sizzle, no ultra-high-tech, no aliens.

Just blimps.

The good news, if you can call it that, is that these blimps belong to the Central Intelligence Agency, flown by the US Air Force for the benefit the CIA, and have, for the past 60 years, been at the center of the most highly-classified programs of the United States Government.

THE BEGINNINGS

The UFO Blitz of 1947

On June 24th, Kenneth Arnold, an Idaho businessman flying his person plane around Mt. Ranier, had an encounter with nine unknown aircraft flying in formation across the Cascades. His reports to the media started a UFO "wave" which swept over the entire country within days and added the term "flying saucer" to the vocabulary. There were two collaborating sightings of (apparently) the same formation.

However, it all may have started earlier, on June 21st, in Puget Sound, Washington, where Harold Dahl and several others reported seeing six large silver doughnut-shaped objects near Maury Island. Some recounts have them being pelted with hot slag from the objects, which Dahl supposedly recanted later, and most accounts of the incident tell of clouds of chaff (aluminum foil strips) being released from one of the craft. Dahl and friends did not immediately report the event to authorities.

Some people also point to Bakersfield, California, as a starting point, where, on June 23rd veteran pilot Richard Rankin claims to have seen ten -- and later 7 -- silvery objects flying in formation over Bakersfield, first to the north, then to the south. There were other witnesses to the fly-by, by some accounts dozens or even hundreds.

In any event, the mysterious objects were soon seen over other West Coast locations, including a July 2nd report by California State Highway Patrol Sgt. David Menary, on duty at San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, who saw a dozen bright football shaped metal objects flying overhead and across the bay. The wave spread across the entire US, ending suddenly in mid-August.

But let's go back and ask "What else happened that summer?"

Enter the Blimps

There were three major blimp bases on the west coast during World War II: NAS Tillamook, at Tillamook, Oregon in the north; NAS Santa Ana in the south, near San Diego, and NAS Moffett Field at Sunnyvale, California, on San Francisco Bay, in the center. In all, the three bases hosted around 30 blimps., along with a number of auxiliary fixed-wing aircraft for ferrying passengers and freight.

Tillamook was deactivated in 1944, its blimps probably moved to Santa Ana and Moffett, which had been designated as storage facilities by that time (the whereabouts of deactivated blimps from this period have been hard to determine).

In early 1947 the Navy announced the reassignment of blimp operations at NAS Moffet Field and NAS Santa Ana, the last two remaining airship bases on the west coast, along with the deactivation of their many auxiliary fields. Every official history of the stations seems to end with "...and, that same month, the last blimp at Moffett Field was deflated." The implication seems to be that all the blimps were disassembled. Except we know from records at NAS Weeksville that five of the blimps and the entire military staff made their way to North Carolina by mid-August, just about the time the Great Flying Saucer Wave abruptly ended.

(Re)Enter the 412th

In February of 1947 a famous number was revived: the USAAF's Fourth Air Force 412th Fighter Group, deactivated on June 3, 1946, was seemingly revived as the 412th Control Group at Seattle, Washington. The official USAF history of the unit show it to be inactive from 1946 until 1955, but there was definitely a 412th in Washington State that summer.

The 412th's sole recorded duty that summer was to take control of the US's only remaining long-range radar sites (at Arlington in Washington State, and Half Moon Bay and Mill Valley/Mt. Tamalpais in California), operate them for a few months, then close two of them down (more on that later). All three radar sites were/are situated so as to provide 360-degree coverage.

The 412th is particularly interesting in that it was the first Air Force unit to fly and test jet aircraft, and eventually morphed into the 412th Test Wing, which is now responsible for host operations at Edwards Air Force Base. The unit just sort of dissappeared immedaitely after July, 1947.

Half Moon Bay, by the way, is south of San Francisco, less than 10 miles west of NAS Moffett Field. Mill Valley is just north of San Francisco, about 40 miles from NAS Moffet Field. The Arlington radar site is near Puget Sound, north of Seattle, just 30 miles from Maury Island.

The Air Force, the CIA, and the General

Both the United States Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency were born together, as part of the same congressional bill, the National Security Act of 1947, the CIA being molded from the post-war Central Intelligence Group (CIG), USAF being forged from the existing Army Air Forces (USAAF). Before that event, the Chief of the Intelligence Division of the General Staff, and later Director of the CIG, was a USAAF officer, Lt. General Hoyt Vandenberg (promoted to full General in 1947). He held that position until USN Captain Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter was named CIA Director on May 1, 1947.

Vandenberg also served as Deputy Commander and Chief of Staff of USAAF in 1946 and 1947. After the formation of the separate Air Force, Gen. Vandenberg became its first Vice Chief of Staff under General Carl Spaatz, and succeeded him on April 30, 1948, a post he retained until his retirement in 1953.

To further demonstrate the close connection between the USAF and the CIA, it is important to note that the Air Force has always flown surveillance missions for the CIA, at first using USAF-owned aircraft, and later operated and maintained the CIA's own U-2 and SR-71 spy planes. USAF has also launched, operated, and, where appropriate, recovered all the CIA's surveillance satellites.

One further note: it was Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg who approached MIT and convinced them to study radar, and develop its Lincoln Laboratory into the world's leading state-of-the-art radar program.

THE COMING OF THE UFOS

With all the players in place we can reconstruct the events which led to the Great UFO Wave of 1947.

It's early 1947, and there is considerable tension between the military services. The Departments of the Navy and Army were resentful of the upstart Air Forces and resisted the idea of a complete consolidation under a Department of Defense. The nascent Department of State was trying to gain control of anything which might affect foreign policy. All the agencies and services were negotiating and wrestling over a rapidly-shrinking defense budget. Weapon systems and personnel were the subject of fierce territorial battles.

Into this fray steps the CIG/CIA, eager to procure the resources it needs to conduct foreign surveillance and intelligence gathering. Someone, perhaps even Hoyt Vandenberg himself, hears rumors that sound amazing: blimps don't show up on radar.

This bears checking out, of course. A cursory investigation reveals that the Navy already has an aerial photography and reconnaissance airship squadron; some quiet questioning brings out details of their exploits. And best of all, those rumors of radar transparency seem to be true.

Not only that, but the Navy has lots of unwanted blimps -- over 100 serviceable blimps are up for grabs. But if anyone wants them for clandestine purposes they need to be grabbed quickly, so the records of their transfer can be "lost" among the material shuffling going on during the summer of 1947.

An inactive USAAF unit with a history of handling sensitive technology is quickly reactivated and assigned a new mission -- test the radar signatures of blimps. The unit gathers trusted pilots, crew, and experienced radar operators. The pilots and crew are sent to NAS Moffet Field and NAS Santa Ana for a crash course in flying airships, and the radio jockeys are sent out to take over, reactivate, and man the last remaining long-range radar units on the west coast.

For a few frantic months the blimps are put through their paces with little regard to hiding the activities. After all, the blimps are flying around in their own home territory. And just in case, there's a plausible cover story ready: due to the deactivation of Santa Ana and Moffet the airships are being transfered to North Carolina.

However, prior to 1947 blimps operated at sea, searching for submarines and other ocean dangers, away from the coast and civilian populations. And none of the blimps on the west coast were flown across country to their duty stations -- they were all assembled on-site. But the new crew from the CIG doesn't realize that and takes their tests inland, right across populated areas, not realizing that most of the citizens below had never seen a blimp over their heads, much less a whole fleet of them. Then something like this happens:


Formation Over Santa Clara Valley c. 1943

Residents of Bakersfield and California's Central Valley probably never realized they lived directly between two major blimp facilities, and are justifiably startled by formations of huge silver things above their heads. The same thing happens in Puget Sound and around Washington State, and later in Oregon. And that poor Highway Patrolman on the Golden Gate Bridge probably doesn't realize he was standing just 45 miles from the Navy's primary blimp pilot training base. A bunch of strange silvery things appear suddenly, engage in unexplained activities, then just as quickly disappear.

And the 412th probably doesn't have any idea of the effect their project is having on the residents. After all, these bases had been active for years. Surely the population was used to seeing large numbers of blimps in the air?

The actual reaction must have caught Gen. Vandenberg and his staff utterly dumbfounded. They were ready to account for the sudden appearance of large numbers of blimps, but instead were confronted with hundreds of reports of alien spacecraft. They carefully issue a few non-committal statements and step back to assess the situation.

The Genesis of a Coverup

Partly in response to questioning from Congress and the media, partly out of curiosity, and partly to shut up his own officers, Vandenberg authorized a study of the phenomenon. Project Sign, as it was called, was conducted by the Technical Information Division of the Air Material Command under the command of Lt.General Nathan Twining, who would one day be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Sign was organized in December 1947, and published its findings one year later.

The top-secret report, known as the Estimate of the Situation, expressed a guarded opinion that UFOs are real, and that they are probably of extraterrestrial origin. We know that because Gen. Vandenberg (1) rejected the report, thereby relieving the USAF from having to account for its findings or having keep it as an official document (2) declassified the report, ensuring that the conclusions would be widely known outside the project, and (3) ordered all copies of the report destroyed, thus concealing the details of the study, allowing the Air Force to disavow any information that may appeared in the the report, and allowing the Air Force to claim any copies which came to light later to be forgeries. Once again, Vandenberg must have been dumbstruck at the conclusioons his wiz-kids came up with.

The newly-minted CIA must have been absolutely overjoyed, of course. They had their first surveillance aircraft, practically for free. Their new spy-craft was virtually radar-proof, and, if anyone did see one everyone thought it was a flying saucer!

AFTERMATH

The unit which relieved the 412th in California had orders to dismantle the radar equipment, accompany it to New Mexico, and put it all back together near Albuquerque. Then, they were to man the new station and provide radar coverage to Los Alamos and -- you're going to love this -- Roswell AFB. But that's another story.

THE CASE OF THE MISSING BLIMPS

(I should probably save this until I've had a chance to reasearch a bit further, but it's
just too interesting to keep to myself. Happy New Year!)

Blue Book et al

Besides Project Sign, there were two other special USAF UFO study programs: Project Grudge and Project Blue Book. Between the three projects, Air Force personnel gathered tens of thousands of UFO reports and interviewed thousands of witnesses. Out of the thousands and thousands of blimp-like objects seen and reported only one was ever identified as a possible blimp (and it was marked "misc (blimp)"). There was never a "blimp" category at all; they did have "known aircraft" and "balloon" categories, but the notes make it clear that "aircraft" referred to fixed-wing craft flying with proper flight plans. "Balloons" clearly meant free balloons (ie, weather balloons), because they were always "released" ; theres not a hint that manned balloons were considered at all, even civilian hot-air balloons. I'm still reading through those awful microfilms that were released; if you find any report in which Blue Book deals with manned airships of any knid, please let me know.

NICAP

By the '50s a lot of civilians were getting upset that no progress was being made in identifying the UFOs. One result of that national angst was NICAP, the National Investigation Committee on Aerial Phenomena. However, the NICAP deck was stacked. As just one example, three board members were former Naval Admirals, and one was a former CIA Director. Despite having numerous Navy officers on board, in decades of research they apparently never managed to identify any UFO as a blimp, even when the witnesses said things like "..it looked like a helicopter and a blimp...". If you accept the blimp-as-ufo hypothsis as at least a possiblity, you can understand why they never solved the mystery. I'm still pouring through their web-available records, so something might show up. If you know of any, again, please let me know.

MUFON

The Mutual UFO Network, MUFON, seems to have the same blimp-blindness. I hope it's just from decades of bad examples from the military and NICAP. But again, they seemingly fail to identify ANY sighting as a blimp, even when the object looks like a blimp, moves like a blimp, and a blimp pilot says he was flying in the area at about the time of the sighting. Again, if you know of any MUFON sighting which was definitel or even tenativly identified as a blimp, please let me know.

To Be Continued...

(There were a whole lot of neat links and graphics, but the power hiccupped and all the urls got dumped; I'm too lazy to convert them all back into geekcode from html. Sorry.)

Interesting.... Surely, blimps can account for many UFO sightings. Unfortunately for your theory, they FAIL to account for even more sightings. For example, blimps are NOT capable of aerial maneuvers that defy conventional craft. Such movements have been seen and documented by even military observers.



Arnold was a trained and respected pilot, with numerous flight hours logged. He described seeing nine chevron-shaped objects flying at a high rate of speed. This is COMPLETELY inconsistent with the idea of blimps...even super secret CIA ones...



The Maury Island UFO Case is considered a Hoax by most UFOlogists. I am also in this camp. I'd recommend Kevin Randle's "UFO Casebook" for an excellent writeup of this case.



Actually, the CIA was largely molded from the OSS (or at least that's what their own history claims in the CIA Entrance Examination Guide). It's interesting to note that the National Security Act was hastily put into place even faster (and seemingly out of nowhere) than the Patriot Act. All of this, RIGHT after Roswell.....



Don't forget the Skyhook Balloons, also commonly mistaken for UFOs... However, just because some sightings are misidentifications, it doesn't mean all are.



This has little bearing on the problem of those UFOs that DID show on Radar, and which flew faster than any known craft. In fact, such sightings prompted projects SIGN, GRUDGE, etc. and later BLUEBOOK. Surely the USAF wouldn't need to investigate something it itself was doing for the CIA????



Wow, and you thing WE are paranoid???



So your assumption is that these projects were simply cover stories....??? Many of those involved in the projects, which later became published UFOlogists, would disagree with that, and it seems they would be in a better position to know than you or I.....



The easiest method is to right-click on the picture, copy the "Properties", and then use the image tagging here... In this case, it'd be ]img[url of the pic]/url[ (but reverse the brackets)

In any case, it appears you're attempting to paint all UFO sightings with a broad brush as blimps....even if the details of the sightings don't even remotely resemble the properties of blimp flight. It is true that many UFO sightings are planes, helicopters, blimps, misidentified planets or stars, falling satellites, etc., etc., but the idea of simply labelling ALL UFO sightings as secret blimps seems a bit ludicrous in the extreme....

Remember also... Even if ONE in a thousand UFO sightings are genuine, it STILL means we're being visited by beings from another world.... Still, it's an impressive bit of research, and an interesting read, but I'd like to see more evidence to support blimps in cases where such craft simply don't appear to fit the facts of the case.


[edit on 1-1-2006 by Gazrok]

So what about "blimps" that exceed 1,000 mph? That's harder to fathom than the ufo phenomenon. Sorry, I don't buy the "blimp" explanation for all the reported ufo cases.


www.nicap.dabsol.co.uk...

Could Project SIGN and its successors, Project GRUDGE and BLUEBOOK, be a cover for the United States government's deeper interest in unidentified flying objects and the need to keep important knowledge from the American people? Probably, but damn I hope not.

Why would there be a cover up into blimp manufacturing? I know that nowadays secret testings are kept quiet, I know this occured in the 40's-50s, but blimp manufacturing? I rather it be aliens then to find out the grimm truth that all this information and UFO culture is really a facade of BLIMP manufacturings.

If this assumption is correct, I'd love to know why we aren't using these 1000mph blimps nowadays....

It would the safest form of transportation. If you crash into another blimp you'd just bounced off each other, all is good.

I want a super top secret CIA blimp for xmas next year!

rand - It's GREAT to see some objective posts on this forum. I look forward to your follow up posts. If this leads to constructive, rational, well reasoned discussions the better.

There are those who know about extraterrestrials and then there are those who are jealous of those who know about extraterrestrials.

Those who claim to know what others have seen or not seen are simply arrogant or naive.

It takes intelligent life to recognize intelligent life.

There are millions of non-human species on earth, animal, insect and plant life.

All co-existing----all unaware of the other---for the most part

Many humans fall into that category----believing they are king of the hill.

However, humans are only one in billions in a crowded galaxy, and at the lowest level of the food chain concerning intelligence.

I think the aliens would follow under that same category. If you wonder how do I know this, I wonder how do you know that humans are only one in billions in a crowded galaxy? And we are the lowest level of intelligence.

I'm not saying that there isn't life in OUR galaxy, but IF advanced life lived on lets say Jupiter, I would assume that they would have visited Earth many a time and might have thought of conquering it...to be king of our hill.

I completely understand that some of the UFO sitings may have indeed been blimps, but simply not enough blimps have been flying through the sky in the past 50 years to account for all the UFO sitings, as it appears you are trying to say. And as Gazrok said, Blimps simply through design, and physics are not able to go at over 1000 mph, nor even enough to explain the aerial maneuvers reported in UFO sitings (yes, even CIA blimps, because CIA blimps are still blimps and are still unable to move at great speeds or fluidity).

Its understandable why you would believe this, but I also hope you understand that blimps are not the Awful truth. In fact, they don't even explain enough to be a reasonable explanation.

Thank you for your thought, I hope this does not discourage you from believing what you will.

Guin
s=

I've had a few run-ins with ET but I can't prove it so it doesn't count.

However there are many clues for those that don't know and have no way of knowing.

If a cherry tree full of cherries represented a galaxy and you picked a cherry from one side of the tree and examined it, who would think that the cherries on the other side of the tree are different?

Perhaps that analogy is difficult to follow, which leads to my next clue---human intelligence.

Humans have yet to hatch from this planet----space exploration; humans are clueless to everything about this planet like what are atoms, photons, electricity, fire, gases, and matter.

Sure we play with that stuff and use it but what is it? -----no one knows.

And like a child unaware of the world its parents live in, humans are unaware of the galaxy they live in.

Sorry, in no way is that a picture from 1943.

It's a reconstruction, or possibly even a modern pic.

man...that just looks gheyyyyyy!!!
hmm i didn't know pics from the olden days would have bevel and emboss to them

oh well...what's the record for fastest moving blimp anyway..considering their just a balloon of hot air and a little teenie tiny propeller in the back.

Thank God, I was afraid noone wold take me on.

They are quite capable of manuevers that most winged craft are unable to perform. They hover, accelerate straight up, spin on -- and off -- their own axis, and turn around completely without coming to a stop. They can fly backwards, sideways, and can climb at crazy roller-coaster angles. There's a lot to love there.

Arnold made a number of inconsistant statements, and a few outright errors, but then, he was startled by something he didn't recognize or comprehend, so that's understandable.

His estimate of the speed of the objects is based on a few critical assumptions, and if any one of those is wrong his entire estimate could be wildly wrong. What he SAW, as he described it, could be explained by a formation of objects travelling as slow as 75 knots.

His description of the motion of the objects, apart from their supposed speed, is a perfect description of the way LTA craft move in erratic air currents, like around mountains.

Cigar shaped objects often look like chevrons; in fact, considering the direction Arnold was travelling and the position of the sun at the time, the reflectiopn from a silvery cigar-shaped object would look just like the sketch he made of the objects. (I noticed that he said his plan view is how he thought they would look if turned on edge; if you turn the plan view back to about 45 degrees the shape looks suspiciously like the outline of a cigar with tail fins grafted on.)

Yes, I've considered this. If I've solved a case that didn't happen, I appologize. Still, ther is the matter of the chaff or aluminum foil, mentioned by a number of alleged witnesses and members of their families. I wondered, Why would a water cop mention strips (or sheets) of aluminum foil? But it makes perfect sense if the objects were testing a newly-reactivated radar site. And what about the doughnut description? There are not many people who would know that an L-type blimp can look like a doughnut (it took me a weekend of simulations to figure out how it could work!).


Franklin's COI begat the wartime OSS. Truman disbanded OSS in 1945 then created his own National Intelligence Authority (NIA), as well as the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) and appointed Rear Admiral Sidney Souers as first Director of Central Intelligence. Vandenberg was appointed second Director. Both NIA and CIG were swallowed by the new CIA.

The Services had been wrangling over territorial rights ever since the end of the war. The Army wanted the rocket programs, the Navy wanted nukes. Neither wanted the Air Force to get a monopoly on the fun stuff. I read somewhere long ago that maybe Congress wanted to get it over with, before the branches started lobbing bombs at each other.

Yes, Roswell is very important. But of course, I'm of the opinion that the coverup was to hide the fact that the Agency was preparing to violate the sovereign airspace (and maybe groundspace!) of all of our enemies and most of our friends.


Thanks, I'll include that in the book

Blimps of that era were virtually invisible on radar of that era, but just like the current crop of stealth aircraft, a determined foe could get a fix if they really wanted to. And just like the current stealths, special actions and behaviors are needed to confuse or mislead the radar operators. For instance, many blimps carried their own ground-based-size radar systems -- by the early sizties the Navy had blimps carrying 40 foot rotating antennas driven by megawatt pulse transmitters.. With one of those you could easily trick a radar operator into seeing a supersonic craft -- just hit the radar site with a blip every so often (you could also just fry their electronics, probably!)

Then again, one blimp might not be very fast, but TWO blimps can travel at an incredible speed (at least on radar). Blimp 1 unfurls a collapsible radar reflector and gets painted by the radar signal. When the beam comes back around in, say, ten seconds, Blimp 1 hides the reflector and Blimp B, ten miles away, unfurls its own. Voila: an uncorrelated target doing 3600 mph. With a formation of 10 (and there's the photo to prove they could fly in big formations when they wanted) you could get some really funky-cool radar action.

I think Sign, as I said, was a defensive reaction to quiet the voices clamoring for an investigation; would the Air Force want a completly independent group poking into the matter?
Grudge was much the same. Blue Book was triggered by a fresh young radar operator who blabbed when he should have shut up. Blue Book had the twin aims of keeping control of the investigation and providing a bureaurocratic "short circuit" to keep all those pesky airmen from accidently spilling the beans. Believe me, there's nothing that takes the magic out of something as completely as military paperwork.

Hey, I never SAID you were paranoid! Have you been reading my brain waves? Besides, there's a difference between somebody who THINKS the world is out to get them, and a person the world is really out to get
Anyway, it seems that everybody has been wondering for 60 years at Vandenberg's motives for such a bizarre series of actions. I can't think of a better explanation.

The general consensus is that all three projects were hiding something. Me, too. It's just that by my theory they were probing the extent of the cover-up as well as controlling the results to keep the secret safe. I also think they learned soemthing that's quite obvious to me: NOBODY wants to see a blim (or maybe: nobody WANTS to see a blimp). If a UFOologist want to explain to me why an object that looks like a blimp, sounds like a blimp, and acts liek a blimp can't be a blimp, well, I'm always ready to learn.

Not all, just most. I never said "ALL UFO", and in fact went out of my way to qualify the statement. There's no point trying to fit every report to a blimp sighting. For instance, I saw some chevron and saucer photos the other day. They were really out of focus pictures of a red hawk diving on and capturing a smaller bird. But there's too much junk out there to be blimpish every time.

So, I'm doing a public service. If I'm right better than half the unsolved cases could be peeled back to expose the core of real sightings.

See above; there's not enough time to explain eveery sighting. Still, I'm willing to try. I haven't published any analysis of the most high-profile cases, but they're coming.

if you want to see ufo's..concentrate your eyes in the skies in san diego..just watch the navy ships and in due time you'll see some tic-tac shaped flying objects at 29,000ft going 100mph heading south.
they also have a heat signature too..so whatever you are gonna use to see it with,make sure it can see the heat signature,the tic-tac shaped ufo has no widows or any type of exterior opening and are about 100ft long.

don't take my word for it..go look at it yourself and tell me if that's a blimp.

oh and they can go into the water as well..last year during a navy war game excercise they counted at least 100 of them on radar.

I can't help but notice how you side stepped the fact that countless experianced pilots and flight crews have reported craft out running, following and staying with craft like 747's and Dc-8's, which would be like a bike keeping pace with a sports car.

So, where does one get a blimp that can go as fast as a bullet (quite literally) and make a perfect right angle turn without slowing down or turning?

See another post about how to fool radar using two or more blimps.

Many people have a fundamental misunderstanding about how radar works, and especially how early radar sets operated. Until doppler radar came of age, radar sets didn't directly track the speed of an object. It more like, well, there's a blip here... and now there's a blip over here...it must be the same object because no other object shows up in the same general direction. But if the operator was actually tracking two or more separate targets it could easlily appear that one object was exceeding the bounds of reasonable physics.

It was a know problem from the earliest days of radar research, and one of the main reasons NORAD spent less money on radar equipment than on the computers and communications needed for fully-correlated targets.

I've noticed that more recent radar UFOs rarely seem to exceed Mach 1, while UFOs from the 50s and 60s could dart off at 8000 mph with no trouble. It's probably due to the better equipment we have now.

Please note that the visual sighting associated with the Sebago affair couild have easily been a blimp: the sun was just a few degrees below the eastern horizon, at an azimuth of around 100 degrees, while the the object was high in the west, over 30 degrees, at an azimuth of 270 degrees. Under those conditions a silvery cigar-shaped object would have lit up like a klieg light in the dark pre-dawn sky.

Not manufacturing, per se, although the recent sightings of giant stealth blimps indicate that some production is being kept secret. No, they were covering up the USE of blimps for aerial reconnaissance. Russia had ONE airship during WWII. Only England had a comparable airship program, and they threw theirs away, just like their lead in computer science. The US had a comanding lead in the operation of the world's first stealth spy platform, and they wanted to keep it quiet. Not to mention that the CIA and USAF were violating a lot of airspace, including that of our allies.

And that's what has kept it secret for 60 years. I think I'm going to have to write a song about it:

Real UFOs are hard and fast
Helium's for wimps
'Cause no-one in their right mind
Has ever seen a blimp!

I'm sorry, but how many reports have been filed by eyes alone, and quite a few of them report a craft flying right next to theirs. How in the HELL does this qualify as an optical illusion? When does the suns position equate for a 5-600 MPH difference between a 747 and a blimp?