.
The Roswell corner
Do Carey and Schmitt have the evidence
for a spaceship crash?
According to Chris Rutkowski’s blog, he received a call from Grant Cameron,
who told him that Carey and Schmitt had a piece of crashed spaceship debris.
According to Chris, “This could be it!” Hmmm....haven’t we heard this story before? Why would I read it in a blog through a second hand source? Why wasn’t there a press conference to reveal
this magnificent find? Is this another case of Carey and Schmitt exaggerating their case to somebody who is willing to believe them? Are they describing the stuff I mentioned last issue that was part of the SCI-FI dig? Inquiring minds want to know.
After reading the last chapter of the new version of “Witness to Roswell”, I can see where these stories come from. Carey and Schmitt repeat all sorts of stories about potential pieces of debris that don’t pan out. My guess is they were doing
it again with somebody “promising” to produce another fragment of “memory
metal”. Cameron simply swallowed the hook of another empty promise.
After several weeks, I saw no other news about this event. I could find no media reports
or test results published. My guess is this will also end up in the “Whatever happened to...” column soon. Could this be it? I don’t think so Chris.
Anthony Bragalia indicated that I misrepresented
the fireman story in the first issue of SUNlite.
Mr. Bragalia, told me the fireman had been interviewed by Phil Klass and Klass had footnoted it. I corrected him that it was actually Karl Pflock. I guess that all Roswell debunkers look alike. Bragalia made it a point that everyone seemed to know the identity of the man. However, since the name was anonymous
in Bragalia/Randle’s revelations, I could not verify which fireman it was (Pflock interviewed several). According to Bragalia, Pflock only asked this gentleman
about the department responding
to fires outside of town and Pflock was not interested in anything else. I found this odd because it was Pflock’s original intention to add to the body of knowledge about Roswell and he had felt there was validity to the claim of a crashed spaceship. In his Roswell in Perspective,
Pflock even suggested that the UFO crashed because it ran into a project MOGUL balloon flight! Therefore, I find it most interesting that the fireman chose not to tell Pflock his story in 1993 (when that interview happened). This was before
Pflock took on the role of Roswell debunker!
Bragalia’s attitude about my idea the story
could have been generated through contamination, indicated he felt this was extremely unlikely. The tall tales of Frank Kaufmann , Glenn Deninis, Gerald Anderson,
Jim Ragsdale suggests this is not something to be disregarded. If Bragalia, Carey, Schmitt, and Randle want to keep believing that witnesses to Roswell are telling them the truth and are not lies or exaggerations, that is their right. However,
who is to say if the witness is not lying or exaggerating? Frank Kaufmann fooled people for over a decade even though there was plenty of circumstantial evidence
to suggest he was lying! It wasn’t until the absolute physical evidence appeared
that Randle and others had to accept
the fact they had been snookered. Perhaps Bragalia and Randle should heed Kevin Randle’s own words,
Isn’t time for us to stop embracing every tale we are told that appeals to us simply
because it appeals to us? (see link above)
These words have to do with Randle’s discussion about exopolitics back in 2005 but they apply to Roswell as well. The story needs to be verified and not merely accepted because that is what is desired. Using Frankie Rowe to verify the story is just not acceptable since her story had been out in the media for over decade before the fireman started telling
his version. Some photographs or a personal journal from 1947 might do it. Oh yeah, that’s right, nobody in Roswell had a camera to record this incredibly complex operation or the debris that Bill Brazel supposedly had for many years. Additionally, nobody ever kept a private journal, wrote private letters, complained to any politicians, or anything similar that could have recorded these strange events in Roswell that summer.
Life Photographer taken out to the desert to photograph crashed “meteor”
but sees.....nothing!
The photographer told Anthony Bragalia
it was all about Roswell. However,
further investigation revealed that the story was probably something else. See page 6-8 for a discussion about the Life magazine story that was never published.
The UFO Iconclasts web site declared there is no evidence for Roswell!
Actually, they meant there is no physical
evidence. I guess they have not talked to the various Roswell investigators
who suggest they have pieces of the craft or those that have seen vague shapes and words in the Fort Worth photographs. The only evidence that remains are the stories told by various individuals, who, after decades of silence, suddenly remembered that something extraordinary happened in Roswell that summer.
Another organization knows the truth?
Anthony Bragalia once again wrote an article full of speculation that now implicates the RAND organization as having
in depth knowledge about UFOs and the crash at Roswell. Citing various documents
and rumors, he paints a convincing
picture to those just reading what he wrote. I have no intention to spend more time demolishing a lot of what he wrote but there are a few key points he left out of his article:
The Lipp document from the Proj1.
ect Sign report states that any visits from outer space would be “very improbable” and that the actions of the UFOs observed in 1947-48 were inconsistent with craft that would be used for space travel.
The request for the study of UFOs by 2.
RAND written in October 1948, clearly
states that it is believed that these craft are most likely from a foreign nation and not from outer space.
Why would RAND and the USAF 3. bother studying UFO reports if they already knew what they were based on the recovered debris from Roswell?
The USAF was wasting a lot of man power and money on something
that would be worthless in the long run.
The bottom line is what Bragalia proposes is that several major groups knew something
about the UFO crash at Roswell by examining the debris. While all this is going on, Generals high in the chain of command are asking what the Air Force knows about these UFOs that are being reported. Apparently, high-ranking Generals
and Senators were not allowed to know the truth about UFOs.
Missing progress report goes public
While I was finalizing this issue, Anthony
Bragalia sent me a new e-mail claiming he had received the missing
second progress report via FOIA. He suggested I seriously rethink my position on Roswell because the report reveals something truly “astounding” . He also added that I should stop writing about Nitinol in SUNlite because it will just make me look foolish.
Mr. Bragalia’s request resulted in the actual
document being posted on line in the USAF FOIA reading room! Apparently,
the USAF posted it in order to prevent
a flood of further requests for the same document. I am sure the reader is going to be really interested in reading the report. It is very technical and I had a hard time following some of it. My Naval nuclear propulsion training had a “materials”
class that explained some of this but not enough to recall readily. I had to review quite a bit to get up to speed. What I learned from reading it was that Bragalia’s claims, once again, appear to be overinflated.
.
Life magazine photographer and the Roswell incident
Before I start this article, I want it to be known that Anthony Bragalia implored me not to write about this story unless I contacted Karin Grant through him so she could answer any questions I had. He added that he would “let the nation know” if I did not. I am not sure what he thinks he can accomplish with such threats. I had no desire to contact a 90-year old woman through a secondary person. Therefore, I throw caution to the wind and proceed to write this article under the threat of “the nation knowing”. Before that happens, I want to thank Dave Thomas and Christopher Allan for their assistance. I also give a nod to Bragalia for his reluctant
help.
Anthony Bragalia “stunned” the UFO world again revealing he had another
story, which helps confirm the greatest secret never kept. This new tale involves Life magazine photographer, Allan Grant. Grant and his wife told Bragalia an amazing
story about Allan being involved with the Roswell incident in 1947. The basic story, as described by Bragalia, is:
Grant received a phone call from 1. Life’s editor in New York with orders to head out to New Mexico and cover a “meteor crash”.
He was flown to Albuquerque from 2. Los Angeles, where he met Major Charles Phillips.
Phillips flew Grant to a dirt airstrip 3. somewhere in New Mexico. Supposedly,
it was near Roswell.
He was handed a loaded pistol for 4. self defense. Phillips told Grant that he was ordered to do this.
They went off into the desert in a 5. jeep looking for the meteorite but found nothing.
Bragalia adds that Grant felt it was part of the cover-up. By allowing him to look for a crashed “meteorite” and finding nothing,
the government could say nothing was found. The problem in that line of thinking is that Grant’s story was never published in Life. To make it work the military
would have to force Life to publish the story.
Mr. Bragalia would later state that there were notes by Mrs. or Mr. Grant that supported
the story as well as a photograph with the date of July 1947 on the back. Anybody could write on the back of a photograph at any time and notes made in 1997 are not the same as notes made in 1947. This is not to say the Grant’s “backdated”
the photograph or notes on purpose.
They may have been going through their photos years later and put the date there as they remembered it. The notes could be recollections they put down on paper much later than 1947. Neither item was presented as evidence so it is difficult to tell.
Meanwhile, Bragalia’s search discovered that Major Charles Phillips did exist. According
to Bragalia, in August 1947, Phillips
became the first “official USAF UFO researcher” and he teamed up with Dr. Lincoln La Paz to investigate the “green fireball” phenomenon.
When I read this, I wondered to myself if Grant might be talking about another UFO case. In the first week of February, 1949, the USAF went into an “all out” large scale search for meteorite fragments from a “green fireball”. They searched the area east of Roswell as far as Texas. This is also the time period that Bill Rickett is documented
as being involved with La Paz’s work. Major Phillips was also present.
Christopher Allan suggested this scenario
on the UFO Iconclasts web site comments
section, which touched off a rather hostile barrage by Bragalia. He seemed amazed that Allan would question the integrity of Grant and his wife. The idea that it could anything but Roswell was an impossibility because Grant was adamant
about it.
Not to shy away from Bragalia’s tirade, Allen
then corrected a Bragalia error, where he stated Phillips became the first official USAF UFO investigator in 1947. Allan stated
that Phillips did not become involved in the Green Fireball investigation until late 1948. Major Phillips was actually the liaison officer between the AAF and the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) at Kirtland in the late 1940s. The CAP had been employed by La Paz when he was looking for meteorite
fragments in previous years. It would be no great surprise to have Phillips and
the CAP help out with the Green Fireball investigation in late 1948. There was no documentation presented that Phillips was involved in UFO investigations in August,
1947 and I could not find anything in any of my sources to suggest this. Not surprisingly, Bragalia did not list the exact
source of his claim.
The photograph of Phillips and Grant standing in front of their aircraft is in Bragalia’s original article. Both Phillips (assuming it is Major Phillips) and Grant are wearing some rather heavy weather gear. Unless they were flying very high, it seems unlikely they would need such equipment for July. Also, the side of the plane has writing on it. “...T IN THE..AAF” appears to be the first line. The second line looks like, “D THE.....ORY”. Perhaps the full text was “Grant in the AAF, Read the story”. This implies it was a publicity photograph of some kind. It seems odd that Grant would have been picked up for such a mission in a plane that had a slogan on the side.
Later, some pictures surfaced on the Above Top Secret forum showing Grant with a jeep and the New Mexico desert area he searched. In order to figure out the provenance of these images, I e-mailed Bragalia stating that I assumed he was the poster and asked if these were images from the Roswell search by Grant. He responded rather indignantly, stating
I always assume too much and that he never posted on the Above Top Secret board. In a second e-mail exchange, he stated the images were lifted from Allan
Grant’s web site, which he pointed me towards with the comment about my research being poor. I had somehow missed the link to Allan Grant’s Roswell web site. I moved onward once I assured myself the pictures were authentic.
If you follow the link, you will see Grant with a jeep, wearing a jacket. Once again, we have to wonder about the use of a jacket in July. The landscape photograph provided some critical information. In the distance is a remarkable peak that stood out. I e-mailed Dave Thomas, who lives in New Mexico and inquired about it. He told me it was Shiprock, a volcanic plug located in the four corners area in the northwest area of the state! When he checked with other people on his mailing list, Dave received the same identification.
Didn’t Grant know he was flown to the northwest instead of Roswell which was to the southeast? The identification of the search area had me looking to see if there was a meteorite search in northwest
New Mexico some time around July 1947.
A cursory search of the newspaper archive
revealed that Dr. Lincoln La Paz led a search over several weeks in the Shiprock area for a meteorite in November
1947! If this is the story told by Grant, then it might explain some things. There are a lot of similarities. The location being
the biggest one. The La Cruces Sun-News of November 5th, reported that the CAP was used, which would involve Major Phillips. Some of the newspaper articles also mentioned jeeps with radios installed. The photo of Grant with a jeep shows what appears to be a radio in the back. Because it was November, there would have been a greater need for the jacket we see Grant wearing in the photographs.
Finally, no meteorite was ever found in all the searches conducted. You have to wonder if these are just coincidences
or possibly the solution to the story.
The search was slow to start because the Navajo Indians did not want to help with the search. It become a minor story but was circulated by the news wires nationally.
The human interest aspect with the Indians might have caught the editor’s eye and prompted him to call Grant to get some pictures for LIFE.
Grant photographed the Spruce Goose flight on November 2, 1947, which places
him in the Los Angeles area at that time. The stories on the news wires did not start until November 4th. It seemed likely that he could finish his assignment with the Spruce Goose and then be sent to New Mexico. Because the search was to start on the 7th of November, the editor
would have wanted Grant to get to New Mexico quickly, explaining the urgency
of the trip.
I attempted to see what I could discover by contacting the New Mexico CAP. They did not have records that went that far back. However, the answer was revealed after a more thorough review of all the New Mexico newspapers from the time period. On the following page you will
.
see the article of interest that appeared in the Albuquerque Journal of November 7, 1947. Under the sub heading “Photographer
goes too”, you will read the following
statement:
“Life magazine is sending Photographer Allen Grant who will arrive in Albuquerque
today and will be flown to Shiprock in a CAP plane.” (Albuquerque Journal November
7, 1947 p. 15)
Based on this, we now know that Grant was involved in an actual unsuccessful meteorite hunt near Shiprock, N.M. in November
1947. The events of that weekend are strikingly similar to the story he told and matches the area he states he photographed
in July 1947. As far as I am concerned, the case is closed unless real proof is presented showing the Roswell version is true. It seems that Grant just confused the dates and places. Hmmm...didn’t I read something similar in the 1997 Roswell report that Grant and Bragalia
publicly criticized? Oh...the irony.
.
.
Deflating the rest of the Nitinol balloon
When I wrote the article last issue poking a big hole in the Nitinol balloon,
I knew it would draw a response. As expected, I received an e-mail from Anthony
Bragalia about a week after the issue
was posted. I will not reproduce what he wrote but needless to say he was not happy about the article. In order to help set the record straight, I felt it necessary to itemize Bragalia’s major complaints and list my responses with possible corrections.
History
Anthony Bragalia complains that I accused
him of not understanding the history of shape material alloys and Nitinol
He responded that he has amassed quite a collection of materials on the subject. The reason I stated this was because
his article made all sorts of claims that disagreed with what is known about Titanium alloys and Nitinol. Additionally,
I did not see anything in the articles that indicated any research beyond what was readily available on the internet. Did Bragalia manage to read the documents identified by Bruce Hutchinson on Titanium
Alloys by the RAND corporation/Battelle
institute in the Library of Congress? Did he give us any source (other than his interviews) that was not available on-line? Meanwhile, what he did present was very sketchy and, in several cases, appeared to misrepresent the source material. Neglecting the established history
and documentation to make wild guesses about Roswell demonstrates he seemed to be ignoring what is known in favor of what he wanted to believe. His accusations are directed at the engineers and scientists, who through their own hard work, created Nitinol. Bragalia is implying
they are all frauds but never really provides one solid document, that can be verified, which directly states that Nitinol was developed because of Roswell.
Something borrowed....???
Mr. Bragalia also took offense that I indirectly accused him of taking some, or all, of his material from the SUNRISE
web site. It was my intention to point out that the author of the SUNRISE web site was not mentioned. Either the SUNRISE
author is taking his information from Bragalia or vice-versa. SUNRISE stated they contacted Schmitt and Carey first with information about Nitinol. According
to SUNRISE, six months later, Bragalia contacted him. It is my observation that there was an exchange of information. Based on this, it was my opinion that Bragalia
should have at least mentioned the contributions of the web site (which is in the public domain) for assisting him in his efforts. Giving no recognition to the web site and its author implied that Bragalia either did all the work himself and this author
contributed nothing (as well as took Bragalia’s work for his own) or Bragalia was possibly taking credit for some/all of his work. As I said in the first article, the reader can judge for themselves Bragalia’s curious omission.
Documentation
In my original article I stated that Bragalia did not list any of these “newly discovered”
official documents other than the progress report. Bragalia then responded that he did list them in the book, “Witness to Roswell”, and also mentioned the Wang report in part 3 of the article series. This is true and I concede that in the series of articles
he finally got around to mentioning the Wang document in part 3.
That being said, there are numerous occasions
where Bragalia could have documented
where he got his information but did not. In part 1 of the series, he talked about the Wang document in vague terms such that the reader had no idea where he got the information. Waiting until the third part of the series to mention this document seemed like an afterthought.
Listing the Wang report when it was first mentioned is important because this was where he claimed that it mentioned the “missing” progress report. The reader could not understand the context under which the report was mentioned. Completely
missing in that revelation was Wang’s actual statement in this document that the phase diagram in the report was very limited and did not cover the Nitinol region. This is the only information that was available at the time regarding what was actually in the progress report and it was completely omitted by Bragalia.
This phase diagram is the linchpin in his whole argument about these “missing”
progress reports. If Wang’s report is accurate,
and there is no reason to suspect it isn’t, then the whole argument of Bragalia’s
collapses like a house of cards.
The Center of attention
Bragalia also seemed very upset that I ignored the all important testimony of Elroy Center. I did this because the testimony
of Center was second hand from an unnamed source to another author. This author’s work was not cited or quoted
(which is no surprise), so we really did not know much about what was really said. I felt it was best to let this kind of testimony
fall on its own shaky foundation. To me, anything second hand is dubious at best. If there is no source listed to be checked, it is twice as dubious.
Since Bragalia felt it was important for me to address Center’s “testimony”, I decided to pull the thread on this loose string and see where it led. It did not take long for me to locate the document by Dr. Irena Scott and William Jones titled “THE OHIO UFO CRASH CONNECTION AND OTHER STORIES”. This article sounds very much like the story recounted by Bragalia. Since Bragalia did not list his source, I had to assume
this is it. The funny thing about this article is that Bragalia’s version does not appear to quite agree with it.
While it is true the article states that Center had some interest in UFOs, the rest seems to have been distorted by Bragalia. According
to this article, Center’s job was to decipher the writing on the parts he was given. Why Center, a chemical engineer, would be asked to decipher something is an interesting question. Wouldn’t that be the job of a cryptographer or linguist (like SG-1’s Dr. Daniel Jackson!)? Anyway, Bragalia
states this information came from “a close professional associate” (on-line article version) or “a close friend” (Witness to Roswell version) of Center’s, who heard it in June of 1960. Strangely, Jones and Scott state the person was actually a high school student at the time. He was dating
Center’s daughter in 1958 when he heard this story (the student graduated from high school in June of 1960, which is where the date confusion appears to be). The person never worked with Center in a professional capacity as best I can tell and he never appears to have been that close to Center himself. Not surprisingly, Center’s daughter and wife do not even recall ever hearing this story (Mr. Bragalia informs me that he has since interviewed some family members and they tell a different
story). If Center was going to tell this classified information to a strange teenage boy, who Center probably had little knowledge about, why wouldn’t he tell his wife, whom he trusted? Again, these are things omitted by Bragalia in his article. Is there a different version of this story floating about? If so, doesn’t that suggest the story is not very accurate? If not, it seems to indicate that Bragalia got his facts wrong about this story. This is why listing sources is important.
Criss-Cross
Another item Bragalia noticed was that I ignored the connections of Dr. Cross with UFOs. Cross worked with Battelle
institute, which did the study found in Bluebook Special report no. 14. There seems to be evidence that Cross was involved
in this report. However, Bragalia never mentions that this report states there was no physical evidence to examine.
If Cross knew there was evidence to an alien spaceship crash, why wouldn’t he mention it in this prize report about UFOs?
To create a link to Nitinol, Bragalia associates
Cross with Eastwood, who coauthored
the missing progress report. Bragalia states Cross coauthored some unknown paper(s) with Eastwood. One document I found on the internet was a 1948 Battelle report about Aluminum alloys. This indicates that Cross’s association
with one of the authors of the missing progress report is no great link. Being a metallurgist, he probably co-wrote many papers with other scientists at the Battelle institute studying various alloys. Finding a link to Eastwood, Fawn, or Craighead would not be hard. I am surprised that Bragalia did not find more links than just to Eastwood.
Oh yes, in Bragalia’s long-winded linking of Cross to just about everything UFOlogical
he gave a direct quote by Alvin Moore about Cross examining a fragment from a UFO. As common in Bragalia’s article,
there is no footnote or source cited even though his use of parenthesis indicates
a direct quote. Therefore, I pulled on the loose string and stumbled across a note from Todd Zechel who wrote the same thing. However, the words were not Moore’s but Zechel’s. This is another case of where a footnote can place a statement in the proper context. In this case it was a second hand statement and not a primary quote as presented.
Then we have the idea that Cross was feeding the Office of Naval Research (ONR) information on Titanium so they could create Nitinol. The evidence for this claim is an UNCLASSIFIED December 1948 document written by Cross about Titanium Alloys. In December 1948 (and 1949), the ONR held a symposium on Titanium studies. The purpose of these symposia was to collect and share information
about the progress in Titanium research (See inset on the next page). The paper really had nothing to do with Titanium-Nickel and if this is the “smoking
gun” for Cross “feeding” the ONR, then it is very weak.
To summarize, we have no real facts that demonstrates Cross thought UFOs were alien spaceships. No real documents are presented that shows Cross worked on an actual alien spaceship or was purposefully
feeding information to the US Navy so they could create Nitinol. Bragalia’s conclusion
about Cross and his efforts with developing Nitinol is nothing more than some extremely fragile links that crumble under careful examination.
What a tangled web....
One of Bragalia’s errors that stood out for me in the first article was his obvious
omission of Uri Geller’s name from the title of one of his sources. In our exchange,
he told me that he knew skeptics
would respond negatively to Geller’s name, which is why he did this. This is funny because it means he was not only worried about a skeptic’s response but all the article’s readers! It is one thing to make a mistake in listing your source (wrong date, wrong publisher, misspelled title, etc). That can be forgiven as a personal
error. In this case, Bragalia did not list the name of Uri Geller from the title of his source and any mention of his name in his writings.
Fame ,fortune, or....neither?
In my original article, I stated Bragalia was using this effort to elevate his position
as a Roswell researcher. Bragalia responded that he had been providing information to researchers for years and only recently started exposing himself publicly because of his job. He also mentioned he opted out of several appearances
and his photograph appearing in the “Witness to Roswell” book.
As humble as this all sounds, it still does not explain why he went public with this “discovery” with such a limited amount of information as well as the highly speculative
interpretation of the documents in question. His claim directly questions the integrity of the engineers and scientists who studied and developed Titanium alloys
and Nitinol. It was my opinion that he may have been motivated to publish his “findings” for personal reasons and possibly to meet the deadline associated with the re-release of the “Witness to Roswell”
book. If Bragalia states he was not motivated in any way other than to present
the “truth”, then he appears to have had a funny way of doing it.
If Bragalia really felt he was pursing the truth he could have presented it in a different
forum like a scientific or engineering
journal, where he could question the history of Nitinol with some people who know something about the subject. My guess is it would have been rejected for many of the reasons I listed in my critique. One can easily publish anything on the internet
(this newsletter for instance) and it apparently does not require much to get your work published in a Carey/Schmitt book as long as it supports the crashed spaceship scenario.
Interviews and “original” research
Mr. Bragalia eventually went on to denigrate me for never conducting
interviews or “original research”. He made it clear that his occupation was all about conducting interviews with people and that he was very thorough in his Roswell
research. He is correct that I have a limited experience interviewing people about UFOs but I don’t think that makes that much of a difference when it comes to examining what others have written.
As for Bragalia’s claim about no “original research” of my own, it is his opinion and he is entitled to it. However, if you look at everything I have ever written in this newsletter and on my web site, I can’t recall ever taking credit for other’s work/discoveries. If I did, it was unintentional. It is just common courtesy and good writing
to mention other’s contributions/efforts.
I also make it an effort to accurately record what people have written/said and where the information was found.
Nothing is vague or hard to follow. People can get to the sources via links or looking at the sourced book/article. I have even sent individuals scans of the pages of these books/articles so they can verify what I wrote was accurate!
The objective of my web site and this newsletter is to present an opinion and point of view that is “the other side of the coin”. I want my readers to inquire and ask the difficult questions about these claims and not just blindly accept what I, or others, have written.
The will to disbelieve
Bragalia really did not seem to understand
what my major problem about his article was. It is the responsibility of the author to make sure his evidence is fully displayed to the reader so they can make an informed decision about the validity
of the claim being made. Withholding
critical information that you are aware of is intellectually dishonest.
One of the most ironic things I got from Bragalia in our e-mail exchange was his comment that I had “the will to disbelieve”.
It is my opinion that is basically what skepticism is all about. You suspend belief in something until it can be shown to be true or, at least, very likely. Mr. Bragalia
has yet to demonstrate his claims are true or even likely. The conclusions he has drawn are based on very fragile speculation with no real facts to suggest an alien spaceship was involved. As it stands now, there is absolutely no reason to change the history of Titanium and Titanium-Nickel alloy research.
A last minute update
Just prior to closing this issue out, Mr. Bragalia sent me a rather interesting e-mail stating the infamous “missing “ second
progress report was going to make me change the way I look at Roswell. Thanks to the USAF (as well as Billy Cox) and the power of the internet, I was able to now read this vitally important document
that reveals the true secrets about Nitinol and the Roswell spaceship crash. As I read the document, I kept wondering, “Where’s the beef?” This story is best told in another article, which can be found on the next page.
.
.
Nitinol Poker: Where any card is wild
...sometimes nothin’ can be a real cool hand. – Paul Newman as Luke in “Cool Hand Luke”.
I used to love playing poker when I was in the Navy. It was a friendly gathering in the chief’s quarters, where the dealer got to call the game. One of the games I disliked was called “Follow the queen”. The card after the last queen dealt upward
in seven card stud was considered wild. The wild card shifted as each queen was exposed. A great hand could become
worthless with the appearance of a queen. The game was not played often but when it was, there were many groans from the table. It seems that I am playing this game again with Nitinol because the value of the “cards” keep changing.
In mid-August, Anthony Bragalia e-mailed me announcing that he had received
the “missing” second progress report
via FOIA. He boasted that I needed to rethink my Roswell position because what he discovered in this document was “nothing short of astounding”. My response was that unless the document showed an alien spaceship crashed at Roswell,
I would not be impressed.
Since Bragalia stated the progress report had been sent to him via FOIA, I figured it might now be in the USAF FOIA reading
room. Sure enough, the USAF had posted it there at http://www.foia.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-090731-057.pdf. I was very interested in seeing what Bragalia claimed was “nothing short of astounding” and had “confirmed his findings”.
Bragalia in his original article stated the following about the progress report:
This is because if it does contain “phase diagrams” for the alloying of Nickel and Titanium- it will confirm the work on memory metal. It would strongly suggest
that shape-recovery alloys were precisely what Battelle was attempting
to create for the military in the time period directly after the Roswell crash (my emphasis).1
Now Bragalia also wrote that it would include
how to alloy Titanium to high purity
levels. That would not be surprising but any mention of Roswell or trying to create a Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) because
of Roswell would be.
Meanwhile, I had stated the following about what I thought the report would include:
Bruce Hutchinson found two reports by the Battelle institute concerning Titanium and Titanium based alloys listed in the Library
of Congress on-line catalog....They probably cover the same information as the two “missing” progress reports. Progress
report #1, which according to Bragalia,
is the study of the Roswell UFO metal itself, is probably just an earlier study of Titanium based alloys. Since the contract appears to be about studying Titanium based alloys, there is no reason to suspect it was to create a shape memory alloy (SMA).2
So which version best describes the content
of the second progress report?
The title reads that it is the Second progress
report covering the period September
1 to October 31, 1949 on research and development of Titanium Alloys. I see nothing that describes “Second progress
report in an effort to duplicate alien metals recovered at Roswell” or “Second progress report on how to create a shape memory alloy”. Most important to note is the entire document is not even classified “Confidential”! Instead there is a “limited” stamp, which is an extremely low classification
that requires no significant security
precautions.
Looking at Eastwood’s cover letter of 11 November 1949, we read a summary of the contents:
A description of the alloy development 1. work done during the bimonthly period
September 1 to October 31, 1949.
The progress made during the same 2. period on the development of refractories
for holding molten titanium.
Further work on the vacuum-fusion 3. technique for determining oxygen in titanium.3
There is no specific mention of shape memory alloys or attempts to develop them! There is a section on Titanium-Nickel but it is not very informative. The phase diagram is just as Wang described. As previously stated, Nitinol requires a much higher concentration of Nickel. Therefore, this phase diagram would be almost worthless for creating Nitinol. The Bureau of Mines phase diagram was far more extensive. Out of the 80 pages in the file, less than one page of written material is devoted to Titanium-Nickel. Three other pages show micrographs, a table, and the infamous “Tentative diagram”
for Ti-Ni. I think the one statement that stood out for me, when reading the report was that “…the data do not justify further investigation of binary titanium-germanium or titanium-nickel alloys.”4 The limited discussion of Titanium-Nickel and this statement indicates there was no great interest in developing this alloy and they apparently had no clue about its SMA potential.
I forwarded the document to others and we tried to look for some connection of importance that would make us rethink our position on Roswell. We could not find anything significant. If Bragalia saw something truly amazing, it was well hidden.
Bragalia reveals his hand
Bragalia quickly published his analysis of the report on the UFO Iconclasts blog. What kind of poker hand did Bragalia
show that was truly astounding?
As typical in his writings, Mr. Bragalia seems to overstate his case by misrepresenting
the content/importance of documents. For instance, he refers to references
of the second progress report as “buried footnotes”. They are listed in the section with all the other footnotes using
the same font and type. If they are “buried”, then ALL of the footnotes are “buried”. The document is rarely referenced
simply because the information is outdated. In 1949, it was the latest data available but by 1958, it was old news. Dr. Wang only referenced it in 1972 because he was talking about Titanium-Nickel history!
Another apparently exaggerated claim by Bragalia is that this report talks about the “first ever efforts” to create “advanced” Titanium alloys. I am not sure how he qualifies “advanced” but these efforts to alloy Titanium were not new. The Titanium
Symposium of 1948 demonstrated others were just as interested in creating “advanced” alloys:
Paper number 2 discussed the work 1. by Air Material Command on Titanium-
Chromium alloys
Paper number 5 by the Bureau of 2. Mines described Titanium alloys with emphasis on Titanium-Nickel.
Paper number 12 by PR Mallory and 3. co. for the US Navy had information on many Titanium alloys.
Paper number 14 by Westinghouse 4. research labs had more data about Titanium alloys
Paper number 15 by the Navy Re5.
search Laboratory described alloying processes/equipment being used
These papers indicated many groups knew that Titanium was unique and they were trying to create new alloys for use in aerospace/aeronautical/maritime applications
and not to create SMAs.
Mr. Bragalia also takes note that it was important for the Titanium to be of high purity levels to create Nitinol and other shape memory alloys (SMAs). The truth was that there was an extensive effort to reach high purity levels in Titanium for all alloys (See paper number 4 from the Titanium
symposium). Low purity Titanium could adversely affect the alloy being created.
Any desire to increase the purity of the Titanium had more to do with creating
the best alloy possible and not specifically
to create an SMA like Nitinol.
Follow the queen
Bragalia’s introduces another wild card by mentioning the alloy Titanium-Zirconium
(paper #12 from the 1948 symposium
also describes this alloy). It is also a SMA and this indicates, according to Bragalia, Battelle was interested in SMAs. What Bragalia omits from his revelation is the comment from the report on page 80 that Zirconium was determined to be “ineffective” as an alloying agent. Like Ti-Ni, it appears that Battelle did not know about its SMA potential
In order to keep the SMA card wild, Bragalia
makes another extravagant claim:
On Page 95 the document reveals a technical
chart showing first-ever research in such areas as “Elongation,” and “Minimum
Bend Radius” of various advanced Titanium alloys. This indicates that they were closely examining elasticity, malleability
and tensile strengths of newly created,
high-purity Titanium alloys, including
Nickel-Titanium, required to make Nitinol.5
The term “elongation” and “minimum bend radius” is nothing new for discussing
metallic properties. Read the Titanium
symposium reports and you will see the same measurements/terms used there. All of these are standard tests and terms used for examining/describing any alloy or metal. They are not tests specifically
to look for SMA characteristics.
The “First” report is still missing?
We are now reminded about the all important first progress report:
No reference whatsoever to what must surely exist- a First Progress Report- is made in this 1949 Battelle Second Progress
Report for Wright. What does the First Progress Report contain? Why is there no reference to it in the literature- or even within the FOIA-obtained Second Progress
Report? Without a title, date or the authors’ names, it is proving very difficult to locate this First Report.6
Apparently, Bragalia ignored the reference
to a previous “bi-monthly” report on page 65. In all likelihood, this is the “missing” first progress report that he claims was a study of the actual alien metallic
debris. The second progress report table of contents states the report starts at page 60 and ends with page 120. This indicates the first 59 pages are, more than likely, the first progress report!
Back to Center
As noted in the previous article, the linking of Dr. Elroy Center to Roswell was tentative through a second hand source. Bragalia now claims that this story is confirmed because Center coauthored a paper in this report titled, Analytical methods for Titanium-based alloys. We
know that Center worked for Battelle and he was a chemist. It is no great surprise that he would have written a document of this nature for a report on Titanium alloys. Stating this paper confirms the second hand story about Center reading characters
on pieces of alien spaceship debris is some very twisted logic. The only thing it is evidence of is that Center was performing in a capacity that fit his job description.
A handful of nothin’
Contrary to the claims made, this report is no great revelation. For those interested
in examining the evidence critically, they will discover this second progress report
is (to quote George Kennedy’s character,
Dragline, from “Cool hand Luke”) “a handful of nothin’” when it comes to Roswell.
Notes and references
Bragalia, Anthony. 1. Roswell debris confirmed
as extraterrestrial: Lab located, Scientists named.
Printy, Timothy. 2. Memory Metal Madness.
SUNlite 1-2. July-August 2009. p. 8
Eastwood, L. M. “To Wright Patterson 3. Air Force Base.” 11 November 1949. In Second progress report covering the period September 1 to October 31, 1949 on research and development of Titanium Alloys. Battelle Memorial Institute. Columbus, Ohio.
Simmons, O.W., Greenridge, C.T., 4. Craighead, C.M. and others. Second progress report covering the period September 1 to October 31, 1949 on research and development of Titanium
Alloys. Battelle Memorial Institute. Columbus, Ohio. P. 68.
Bragalia, Anthony. 5. Scientist admist
to study of Roswell crash debris!(confirmed by FOIA document).
Quelle: SUNlite 3/2009
4442 Views