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There have always been those who believe that UFOs, unidentified flying objects, are from

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outer space.

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But the truth may be closer to home.

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I'm a great cynic about UFOs and I'm quite sure that was mainly our airplanes that were

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flying around.

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For over 60 years in top secret research bases around the world, flying saucers have

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been designed, built and flown.

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Secreted away from the rest of the main company is a place where they're building flying

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saucers.

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Some even claim to have seen them.

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There was no mistaking what they were, they were flying saucers.

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This is the secret history of attempts to harness the technology of the flying saucer

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to produce the ultimate military plane.

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These are the real UFOs.

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The story of the real UFOs begins in Nazi Germany.

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As victory in the Second World War was slipping from their grasp, German scientists were trying

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to perfect weapons that might turn the war in Hitler's favor.

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One of these was Victor Schauburger, an inventor who had produced models for a flying saucer.

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It had met the promise of a flying machine that could maneuver like a helicopter, but

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travel at supersonic speed undetected by the enemy.

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Schauburger's craft utilized a tornado-like vortex which produced magnetic effects causing

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levitation.

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Victor was recognized by the German government, actually met with Hitler, and later was inducted

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into the SS and put to work further developing this flying saucer concept.

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He worked alongside a group of brilliant German engineers, including Rudolf Schriever, Andreas

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Epp and Dr. Richard Mieter, all produced highly advanced designs.

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The Germans actually had three separate developmental areas for flying saucers, one at Pina Munda,

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one at Breslau, and the other at Prague.

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At all these three facilities, flying saucers flew.

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The Germans had in fact gone far enough into development and testing that aircraft were

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in the air.

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And one company, Messerschmitt, had flown a complete saucer-shaped aircraft.

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These pictures of the early prototypes resemble photographs of UFOs that would emerge in the

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coming decades.

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But this was not the world of science fiction.

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These were highly advanced UFOs.

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For the German military, this lethal weaponry was being developed to win the war.

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The battle for air supremacy in World War II dominated the military struggle in Europe.

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By 1944, the tide was about to turn against Germany and Hitler's Third Reich.

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And then on June 13, a week after the Allied D-Day landings, Hitler unleashed his deadly

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secret weapons.

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Over a period of two months, thousands of V-1 jet-powered flying bombs attacked London.

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Some were shot down from the ground, others in the air.

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This deadly development in warfare technology was to start a whole new era of military aviation

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history.

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The use of flying saucer technology to produce even more efficient killing machines was to

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be the culmination of this research.

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During the Nazi period, we had a flowering of new thought, of scientific thought, of

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technological development.

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These scientists were freed up to do a lot of work.

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They developed science in every field that is relevant in our lives today.

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And as a matter of fact, we're still living off that carcass.

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But there was nothing new about the basic principles of rocket science.

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Since the 1920s and 30s, there had been an explosion of innocent enthusiasts experimenting

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with rocket propulsion across Europe and America.

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But what the Nazis were doing was anything but innocent.

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At their deadly weapons research facilities, scientists were working on a new generation

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of weapons.

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And alongside the rockets and missiles, real UFOs were a crucial part of that program.

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One of the incredible things that happened during the Second World War was the amount

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of technology that German scientists were turning out that was devoted to a war effort.

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And that included rocketry, it included the jet engines, but it also included some remarkable

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work in terms of flying saucer craft.

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But time was running out for Hitler and his scientists.

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On all fronts, the Allies were breaking through.

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The Germans were in retreat.

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The flying saucer technology, just like all of Hitler's other ultimate weapons, would

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come too late.

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Even right to the very end of the war, it seems they really believed that these superweapons,

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these super-delivery systems, were going to be able to at least stall the Allies and

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they were going to be able to arrive at some sort of political settlement of the war.

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Hitler's dream of winning the war with his superweapons never came.

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By May 1945, the final battle for Berlin had started.

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The war in Europe was virtually over.

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But this was only the beginning of the story of the real UFOs.

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Within three months, the Second World War came to a dramatic and horrifying end.

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At 8.15 in the morning of August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, a B-29 American bomber, dropped

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the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

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But the war finally over, the former Allies had now become rivals.

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The Soviet Union and the West would soon be locked in a battle for the latest military

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technology.

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Well, at the close of the Second World War, all the former Allied powers were engaged

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in an race to capture German technology.

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Americans captured a complex for the manufacturing of V-tools and planes for many other missiles.

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But Russians captured the latest models of jet aircraft from the Germans and a good amount

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of rocket scientists.

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But the key question was who was going to capture the real UFO scientists.

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The secrets of German rocketry in missiles was not the only technology to fall into Russian

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and American hands.

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The Cold War was about to begin and alongside the very public nuclear arms race, with its

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displays of missile hardware, there was also another secret arms race going on, which the

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public knew nothing about.

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It was time to find the ultimate flying machine, a flying saucer from the world of science

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fiction.

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During the Second World War, there was a major technological revolution in jet propulsion,

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atomic physics and real UFOs, flying saucer technology.

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The Germans had led the world in the development of real UFOs and now their ideas and scientists

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had fallen into the hands of the two superpowers, Russia and America.

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German UFO flying saucer engineers Viktor Schauburger, Rudolf Schriever and a Dr. Mieter were secretly

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working for the Americans.

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While Andrey Assepp was reported to be working on flying saucer projects for the Russians,

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both Americans and Russians exploited really a lot the scientists that they captured at

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the end of the war.

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They used this technology and these guys to develop their science during the Cold War.

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By the end of the Second World War, the former allies had become rivals and the Cold War

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arms race had begun.

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The focus of the American efforts went on developing rocket and missile weapon systems.

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It seemed that the captured German flying saucer technology had been put on hold.

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Then in 1947, there was a report of a UFO flying over America seen by an American pilot, Kenneth

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Arnold.

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He was flying near Mount Rainier in the state of Washington and witnessed nine flying disks,

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some distance from him.

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When Arnold landed, he told his story to the local press.

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I was approximately 25 to 28 miles from Mount Rainier and I noticed to the left of me a

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chain which looked to me like the tail of a Chinese kite going at a terrific speed across

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the face of Mount Rainier.

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They looked something like a pie plate that was cut in half with sort of a convex triangle

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in the rear.

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Well Kenneth Arnold started a firestorm.

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He was able to calculate from known landmarks how fast they were flying and found they were

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flying at 12 or 1300 miles an hour.

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And from his description, once he landed and gave this story to the press, he described

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these as these objects as if they were saucers skipping on water.

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And today that's how we have the word flying saucer.

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I'm out of nowhere.

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Flying saucer mystery is with us.

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What is the flying saucer?

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What do people see in sometimes photographed?

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What's behind the daily reports of aerial phenomena in the nation's press?

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U.S. television and radio began reporting eyewitness accounts of members of the public

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who claim they had seen UFOs in the skies over America.

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I glanced up and there were three flying saucers in a V. Approximately a half a mile

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away from me at an altitude of 350 feet.

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Is this what Weisberger saw?

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America was gripped with UFO sightings and flying saucer fever.

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The military was eager to deny it was anything to do with them and went on television to

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reassure the American public.

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You can say that the recent sightings are in no way connected with any secret development

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by any agency of the United States.

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In my position in the Research and Development Organization of the Bureau of Aeronautics and

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of the Navy Department, I am fairly familiar with both our aircraft and our guided missiles

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programs and can state without reservation that the Navy has no saucer-shaped aircraft

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or missile in any of these programs.

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Then in July 1947, in the midst of the UFO fever, came a startling report by another

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serving American officer.

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He announced to the press the discovery of remains from a flying saucer found in Roswell,

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New Mexico.

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Within hours the story of the Roswell incident exploded around the world.

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The American military panicked.

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Again they issued an official statement designed to reassure an anxious public.

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Denying the remains were from a flying saucer.

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They maintained that it was simply a weather balloon.

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Behind all these American denials was a more ominous possibility for the military.

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Assuming the UFOs were not from outer space, flown by aliens, perhaps all these sightings

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were evidence of an enemy closer to home.

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The American military were inundated by all kinds of UFO reports and that drove them to

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the idea that perhaps some of those UFO missions were the Soviets in the air.

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Americans captured the very exotic blueprints of the very advanced designs for aircrafts

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and among them there was the Horton 229 by the Horton brothers.

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These aircraft were very similar in shape to the first description of a flying saucer

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sighted over America in 1947.

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And the Americans were scared that the Russian could have produced actually a flying version

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of the Horton 229.

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So in the immediate post-war years, reports of UFO sightings were part of the growing

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tensions between east and west as the Cold War grew in intensity.

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In the early 1950s, the Korean War had almost brought the world to a nuclear disaster.

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In America, the paranoia and the sense of fear of communist invasion was reflected in

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attitudes to flying saucers in popular culture.

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Flying saucers have invaded our planet.

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Washington, London, Paris, Moscow are key targets.

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The whole world is under attack.

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The 50s were the golden age of flying saucer.

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People were scared by the Cold War.

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They were scared by the atomic experiments.

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They were at the same time very keen to the space exploration and to the advancement

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of technology, so the climate was the right one to expect extraterrestrial visitations

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from outer space.

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But for the American military, the continued rumors and speculation was ideal camouflage

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for the real UFOs.

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All over the deserts of America were sites like Area 51, White Sands and Los Alamos,

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where alongside missile tests and space programs, there were hundreds of other mysterious top

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secret projects.

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These included high-altitude parachute tests, satellite testing, and the development of

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future space vehicles.

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One of these secret programs was called Project Mogul.

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Project Mogul was a top secret program to listen in on the Russians using equipment

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on high-altitude balloons.

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The American military were desperate to discover secrets of the Soviet program to develop a

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rival atom bomb.

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They needed to know when the Soviets were testing one of their weapons.

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It was not until 20 years later that the U.S. government was forced to confess that the

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Roswell incident, back in 1947, was in fact secret military testing by the Americans.

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They published a report which concluded that what was recovered was not the remains of an

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extraterrestrial spacecraft, but debris from a then-classified Army Air Force research

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project codenamed Mogul.

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But there was good reason for the Americans to be frightened of the Russians.

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The experience of the Korean War and the startling appearance of the MiG fighter had proved how

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advanced Russian military technology had become.

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Russia needed to catch up and catch up fast.

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Could a supersonic flying saucer be the answer?

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In the 1950s, the race was on to build the ultimate weapon, a radar-invisible supersonic

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aircraft.

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What was needed was from the realms of science fiction.

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The U.S. Air Force, in fact, wanted a new fighter interceptor, something that no Soviet

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aircraft would look like, a completely new airplane, one that could fly faster and higher

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than anything else in the air at the time.

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In 1953, the CIA discovered that Avro, the Canadian aeronautics company, was working

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secretly on a revolutionary aircraft, a flying saucer.

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This was the brainchild of a visionary British aeronautical engineer.

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The genius behind the flying saucer project was John Frost.

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He came from England as a designer on another project, but he soon became intrigued with

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the idea of taking flying saucers into the air.

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John Frost had been responsible for one of aviation's most innovative developments, the

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swept-wing, tailless fighter.

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The inspiration behind John Frost's first ideas, in fact, came from his collecting a

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scrapbook of all the UFO reports that were being heralded all over the world.

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And through looking at every one of the reports, he began to start sifting them down to at

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least two possible sources, and one was man-made, and he traced it back to Germany.

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Frost was intrigued by reports of the Nazi flying saucers.

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In fact, we now have evidence to show that he is a participant in interviewing German

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scientists and especially one, Mietha, who had worked directly with German flying saucers.

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Dr. Mietha claimed that he had worked for over ten years on the Nazi saucer program, and

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his team had actually built the flying prototype.

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Mietha showed Frost photographs, plans, and blueprints.

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Frost was convinced that he could turn Mietha's plans into reality.

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John Frost had the promise of something that no one else could deliver at that point.

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A supersonic, more than twice as fast as the speed of sound aircraft that could fly higher

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and faster than anything else out there, and never needed a runway or any airfield to operate from.

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In 1952, the Canadian Avro Aircraft Factory concealed one of America's most highly classified

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and top-secret projects.

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John Frost set up a secret group called the Special Projects Group.

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It was based on men just like himself, engineers and technicians and scientists that would

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work on his own ideas and ideas that would in fact lead to the flying saucer projects.

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One of the aeronautical engineers who worked with John Frost on this revolutionary concept

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was Doug Garland.

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John Frost was frightfully English.

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He was a typical English gentleman from the public school system, but with tremendous

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experience in the aviation industry.

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I'd say his enthusiasm was infectious.

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No problem was too big.

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There's a solution to every problem.

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In fact, we don't have problems, we have challenges.

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There were plenty of challenges.

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John Frost's very first project is Project Y, a spade-shaped aircraft that's based around

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his circular pancake engine.

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It'll be able to take off from the ground vertically or in a rolling takeoff and fly

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as a supersonic interceptor.

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Project Y was designed as a tailless jet engine aircraft.

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It was in effect using flying saucer technology.

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A spade-shaped mockup was built by Frost's elite team in a heavily guarded workshop in

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the Avro factory.

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In 1953, a model with a delta-tailed jet flap for vertical takeoff control was secretly

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tested.

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The failings of the design soon became apparent.

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One of the main problems with any tail-sitting aircraft would be that the amount of pilot

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skills that would be required to fly vertically from the ground in that position, and then,

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in fact, to return would be incredible.

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John Frost now concentrated all the efforts of the special projects team on the development

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of a circular design, essentially a flying saucer.

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The circle is the most efficient ground-effect machine.

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You get more lift for a given thruster on the periphery.

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So it makes sense when you're hovering in ground effect.

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John Frost's next design was codenamed Y-2.

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Project Y-2 was a completely circular aircraft, now using a rotor system in the center of

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it and multiple engines on the outside edge, powering that rotor, giving it vertical takeoff

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and eventual direction so it could fly into altitudes that no one else could guess.

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It was a knife-edge supersonic fighter that he was selling.

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At this point, the American Air Force bought in in big time with a $10 million grant towards

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his research.

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By 1956, the Cold War space race and arms race was at its height.

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The American military was desperate to invest in new weapons technologies.

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With clandestine American funding, the development of the supersonic flying saucer began.

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In the Schaefer building was a full-size 50-foot diameter, six-engine-powered aircraft.

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Now, testing though proved that it was a dangerous beast, one that nearly killed the entire

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frost team.

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The test was nearly catastrophic.

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The engines of the saucer tethered in the hangar, spun out of control, and almost blew

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the roof of the research lab off.

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John Frost decides that there's no way that he can continue this work with a complete

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flying saucer.

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Supersonic project is abandoned for the time being for him to build a smaller test vehicle

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that becomes the Avrocar.

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Well, the design specification for the Avrocar was to fly at forward speed at 300 miles an

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hour, some modest kind of speed, but it had a high thrust-to-eat ratio greater than one,

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and to fly at 30,000 feet altitude, and to land and take off vertically.

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In 1957, Frost's prototype model finally rewarded the earlier American military investment

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in his project.

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The Avrocar was a scaled-down test vehicle that could do two jobs.

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One, it could provide a test vehicle for the supersonic craft that was still sitting in

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the Schaefer building, but secondly, it could be the flying jeep that the U.S. Army required.

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With weaponry, it could actually go on the battlefield as a battlefield weapon.

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In 1959, the two vertical takeoff prototypes rolled out of the factory.

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The long-term aim was to produce a flying saucer that could reach over 1,500 miles per

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hour.

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It did fly along the runways, de-icing the runways quite nicely, blowing ice and snow

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around.

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We got into trouble over a freshly mown part of the airfield when all the grass blew up

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and came back down in the intakes, and then we started thinking about how to prevent what's

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called foreign object ingestion into the intakes.

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The flying saucer flew several test flights, but its shape meant that it was incredibly

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difficult to steer.

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It was a maze of challenges, and the biggest challenge that the concept faced was the pitch

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instability, the aerodynamic center being so far forward of the center of gravity.

304
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It's not a good recipe for a happy flight.

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So the vertical takeoff and hover principle was working.

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Modifications were made, but lack of power and inadequate control mechanisms were difficult

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difficulties that had to be overcome if the Avrocar was ever to fly as intended.

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Apart from the development of powerful pitch control, the only way that we knew to make

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a circular device stable was to have it spin like a Frisbee today, and the spinning action

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will impart stability.

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Some of John Frost's early designs did in fact have large spinning components, and the

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gyroscopic power of those devices was thought to impart some stability in designs which

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were thought to go as fast as three times the speed of sound.

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Frost was convinced he could control the instability problem.

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But the Americans insisted on adding a swept tail unit.

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Frost considered this was a betrayal of his original concept.

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So in December 1961, the $10 million Avro flying saucer program was officially scrapped.

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But some of the engineers who worked on the project did not totally abandon Frost's dream.

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There really is no aerodynamic future for a circular wing subsonically.

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Supersonically, with a few modifications and tweaking to its shape to make it a little

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00:27:15,200 --> 00:27:22,200
more like a delta wing, one might see a possible outcome.

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John Frost always believed his original concept was achievable.

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Despite the unfavorable results of the Avro car testing, the work that John Frost had put

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00:27:33,720 --> 00:27:38,640
into the supersonic project showed that in fact it could have flown.

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And unfortunately with the money eventually simply stopping, the company shut down the

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entire project.

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All the technology went back to the United States, who is the real owners now at that

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00:27:49,880 --> 00:27:51,520
point.

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00:27:51,520 --> 00:27:56,760
The highly classified flying saucer technology went to America.

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00:27:56,760 --> 00:28:02,640
But were these apparent public failures covering up a more covert flying saucer project that

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00:28:02,640 --> 00:28:10,280
later indeed would work?

332
00:28:10,280 --> 00:28:11,680
This is Jack Pickett.

333
00:28:12,040 --> 00:28:16,520
Forty years ago he was a publisher of U.S. military magazines.

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00:28:16,520 --> 00:28:19,760
He even had positive security clearance.

335
00:28:19,760 --> 00:28:25,440
On a visit to McDill Air Force Base in Florida, he was convinced he saw real American Air

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00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:27,080
Force flying saucers.

337
00:28:27,080 --> 00:28:29,720
There was no mistaking what they were.

338
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They were flying saucers.

339
00:28:30,720 --> 00:28:36,720
There were four of them parked in a row down at that restricted area of the base.

340
00:28:36,720 --> 00:28:44,480
They ranged in size from 20 feet across to about 45 feet to say 70 feet and then the

341
00:28:44,480 --> 00:28:48,080
biggest one was 119 feet across.

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Perfect circles.

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00:28:49,920 --> 00:28:54,360
Jack Pickett had been invited to the Air Force Base to write an article on the recently

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00:28:54,360 --> 00:28:56,920
decommissioned aircraft.

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00:28:56,920 --> 00:29:01,720
Pickett was even shown some remarkable photographs of the aircraft in the hangar.

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00:29:01,720 --> 00:29:07,120
He showed me photographs of many of these aircraft in flight in formation.

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00:29:07,120 --> 00:29:12,600
He showed me photographs of them with jet escorts, regular type escorts, flying with

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them.

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Military researcher Michael Schrat has been investigating the Pickett story for the last

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00:29:18,920 --> 00:29:20,920
10 years.

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00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:24,360
This one was 119 feet across.

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00:29:24,360 --> 00:29:29,800
Schrat has worked closely with Pickett to produce a series of photo reconstructions of the experimental

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00:29:29,800 --> 00:29:34,000
aircraft which Pickett saw.

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00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:40,440
What Pickett was shown seemed incredible, but he was assured that indeed these were real

355
00:29:40,440 --> 00:29:46,200
experimental flying saucers, and this was the evidence that they had actually flown.

356
00:29:46,200 --> 00:29:49,800
I said, well, how fast did they fly and how high?

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He says, well, we achieved spaceflight with them.

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And I asked him pointedly, any aircraft that flew that high and that fast, why are you

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00:29:59,120 --> 00:30:00,120
discontinuing them?

360
00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:02,120
Why are you scrapping them?

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00:30:02,120 --> 00:30:07,760
He says, well, we've designed better versions with less maneuverability problems.

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00:30:07,760 --> 00:30:12,520
Pickett wrote his article and was ready to publish, but at the last moment the Air Force

363
00:30:12,520 --> 00:30:18,080
withdrew permission and took back all Pickett's photographs.

364
00:30:18,080 --> 00:30:22,160
He stands by his story and remains convinced of what he saw.

365
00:30:22,160 --> 00:30:25,560
Well, I saw the photographs of them in flight.

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I walked up and touched the actual aircraft themselves.

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I really examined them, and it was no question about it.

368
00:30:34,120 --> 00:30:38,960
It was a remarkable aircraft and it looked just exactly like what flying saucers are

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00:30:38,960 --> 00:30:41,720
supposed to look like in between.

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00:30:41,720 --> 00:30:47,280
Michael Schrat is convinced by all the evidence that indeed Jack Pickett's story is true.

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00:30:47,280 --> 00:30:52,840
I believe that these were the original true authentic articles because I've spoken to

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00:30:52,840 --> 00:30:54,640
Jack for over four years now.

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00:30:54,640 --> 00:30:57,800
He's remained consistent throughout, never changed his story.

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The aircraft that Jack kicked the tires on were capable of 15,500 miles per hour, and

375
00:31:03,680 --> 00:31:09,440
I think that's one of the reasons why it's still classified to this day.

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00:31:09,440 --> 00:31:15,880
Pickett's claims came against a background of heightened Cold War tensions.

377
00:31:15,880 --> 00:31:22,120
At the beginning of the 1960s, American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down on

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00:31:22,120 --> 00:31:25,760
a spy mission over the Soviet Union.

379
00:31:25,760 --> 00:31:32,320
In Europe, the Soviets had built the Berlin Wall dividing east from west.

380
00:31:32,320 --> 00:31:37,800
And with the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world had come closer than ever before to nuclear

381
00:31:37,800 --> 00:31:45,360
catastrophe.

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As in the 1950s, popular culture reflected the fear and paranoia of the times, and again,

383
00:31:51,480 --> 00:31:55,320
it latched onto the threat from outer space.

384
00:31:55,320 --> 00:31:59,760
The nations of the world mobilized their armed might, rushing to defend the Earth against

385
00:31:59,760 --> 00:32:03,240
the unknown weapons of the super race from the Red Planet.

386
00:32:03,240 --> 00:32:05,800
There was suddenly a wave of UFO sightings.

387
00:32:05,800 --> 00:32:10,440
We jumped out of the car and stood by the side of the road just as this thing passed

388
00:32:10,440 --> 00:32:14,600
over our heads, barely above the greenhouse.

389
00:32:14,600 --> 00:32:33,800
I've been researching the Earth for the last 25 years, and I do believe that most of us

390
00:32:33,800 --> 00:32:40,680
of the witnesses are real-world people having seen something strange in the sky.

391
00:32:40,680 --> 00:32:47,200
Most of the times, they have seen man-made phenomena or natural phenomena, like with

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00:32:47,200 --> 00:32:52,200
the balloons, planets, satellites, re-entries, stuff like that.

393
00:32:52,200 --> 00:33:01,600
But there is actually a small but significant percentage of sightings that cannot find any

394
00:33:01,600 --> 00:33:04,040
explanation at this time.

395
00:33:04,040 --> 00:33:09,920
But there was one explanation for these mysterious UFO sightings, and it didn't involve extraterrestrial

396
00:33:09,920 --> 00:33:10,920
creatures.

397
00:33:10,920 --> 00:33:19,720
I'm a great cynic about UFOs, and I would say in a single sentence that practically every

398
00:33:19,720 --> 00:33:27,280
UFO, other than those that are being taken by using source fan lids, every UFO other

399
00:33:27,280 --> 00:33:32,280
than those has probably been under contract to the U.S. Air Force.

400
00:33:32,280 --> 00:33:38,160
In the 1960s, Alan Brown was working at the Lockheed Secret Experimental Skunk Works in

401
00:33:38,160 --> 00:33:40,520
the Nevada desert.

402
00:33:40,520 --> 00:33:44,800
It was a time when both Russia and America were afraid of each other's nuclear strike

403
00:33:44,800 --> 00:33:48,040
capabilities.

404
00:33:48,040 --> 00:33:53,280
The Russians relied heavily on satellite technology to spy on the United States.

405
00:33:53,280 --> 00:33:59,840
The Americans invested mainly on man-surveillance aircraft.

406
00:33:59,840 --> 00:34:05,240
Lockheed had built the top-secret U-2 high-altitude spy aircraft, designed for covert surveillance

407
00:34:05,240 --> 00:34:07,880
over Soviet territory.

408
00:34:07,880 --> 00:34:11,480
But it was vulnerable to enemy radar.

409
00:34:11,480 --> 00:34:18,680
When the first U-2 was shot down over Russia by surface-to-air missiles, it was recognized

410
00:34:18,680 --> 00:34:23,920
even before that time that the U-2's life probably wasn't going to be very long because

411
00:34:23,920 --> 00:34:27,960
it was not designed from a stealth point of view, and it was seen that they would have

412
00:34:27,960 --> 00:34:32,840
to do something pretty drastic to make improvements.

413
00:34:32,840 --> 00:34:39,320
Using saucer technology might produce the ultimate aircraft, one invisible to radar.

414
00:34:39,320 --> 00:34:43,000
A competition was started to replace the U-2.

415
00:34:43,000 --> 00:34:48,440
Lockheed in fact won the contract, and I was involved with that in an airplane called Havv

416
00:34:48,440 --> 00:34:55,640
Blue, and the program did change very quickly from a confidential clearance to a top-secret

417
00:34:55,640 --> 00:35:01,320
clearance when it was realized just the enormity of what could be done with an airplane which

418
00:35:01,320 --> 00:35:04,200
was essentially invisible to radar.

419
00:35:04,200 --> 00:35:10,520
Over the next ten years, shrouded in secrecy, a new generation of stealth fighters was rigorously

420
00:35:10,520 --> 00:35:16,040
tested in Area 51, the U.S. government flight test base in Nevada.

421
00:35:16,040 --> 00:35:24,000
There's no question that you have to have large-scale testing over a large area, which

422
00:35:24,000 --> 00:35:28,500
means that there's going to be people on the periphery who are seeing these funny-looking

423
00:35:28,500 --> 00:35:33,540
objects flying around, which immediately get reported in the popular press as coming

424
00:35:33,540 --> 00:35:42,300
from Mars, Saturn, or you name it.

425
00:35:42,300 --> 00:35:45,580
So Jack Pickett's story might be true.

426
00:35:45,580 --> 00:35:49,820
Throughout this period, it was the U.S. Air Force that was developing aircraft capable

427
00:35:49,820 --> 00:35:57,740
of evading enemy radar, just what the pioneers of flying saucer technology always promised.

428
00:35:57,740 --> 00:36:03,260
Once more, twelve years later, there was another witness who seemed to confirm Jack Pickett's

429
00:36:03,260 --> 00:36:04,500
account.

430
00:36:04,500 --> 00:36:10,780
Warren Botts, an ex-eighth Air Force pilot, saw an identical flying saucer aircraft hidden

431
00:36:10,780 --> 00:36:17,140
in a restricted hangar while visiting Wright-Patterson Air Force Base for a pilot's reunion.

432
00:36:17,140 --> 00:36:29,620
In my surprise, I saw this huge disc airplane and was almost wall-to-wall in circumference

433
00:36:29,620 --> 00:36:34,660
and it was jet-powered from what I saw.

434
00:36:34,660 --> 00:36:41,300
I started to walk over to look at it, not thinking anything about it, and a guard, an

435
00:36:41,300 --> 00:36:46,420
armed guard stopped me and told me I'm not allowed to be in there.

436
00:36:46,420 --> 00:36:56,260
So I left, but I did see a large circular airplane in there.

437
00:36:56,260 --> 00:37:01,660
Michael Schrat now had personal testimony from a second witness of the highly classified

438
00:37:01,660 --> 00:37:02,660
flying saucer.

439
00:37:02,660 --> 00:37:08,380
He briefly described the exact same aircraft that Jack Pickett had seen and described other

440
00:37:08,380 --> 00:37:11,180
features that Jack didn't describe.

441
00:37:11,180 --> 00:37:16,540
So when I put these two men together, then I knew I was dealing with a real subject.

442
00:37:16,540 --> 00:37:21,180
Despite much skepticism, Warren Botts, like Pickett, remains convinced.

443
00:37:21,180 --> 00:37:28,540
People that I've spoke to since that time said it never existed, which I think they're

444
00:37:28,540 --> 00:37:31,140
wrong because I know what I saw.

445
00:37:31,140 --> 00:37:35,100
I believe that we do have flying saucers.

446
00:37:35,100 --> 00:37:39,860
They did exist and they do exist now.

447
00:37:39,860 --> 00:37:46,260
What both men had seen was remarkably similar to the final John Frost Avrocar design, which

448
00:37:46,260 --> 00:37:50,300
the American military had reported as abandoned.

449
00:37:50,300 --> 00:37:55,180
Many believe that far from being abandoned, research into flying saucer technology had

450
00:37:55,180 --> 00:37:56,700
continued.

451
00:37:56,700 --> 00:38:02,060
I think it's definitely being experimented today because not only can get to your enemy

452
00:38:02,060 --> 00:38:09,300
completely unannounced, but you have radar invisibility, you've got the acoustic invisibility,

453
00:38:09,300 --> 00:38:15,460
no runways necessary, you have the potential to fly outside our atmosphere into space,

454
00:38:15,460 --> 00:38:22,660
and that is the holy grail that the U.S. Air Force always had wanted from the beginning.

455
00:38:22,660 --> 00:38:30,740
This still remains much classified material on the development of flying saucer technology.

456
00:38:30,740 --> 00:38:36,140
But by the end of the century, American scientists and engineers had fulfilled many of the hopes

457
00:38:36,140 --> 00:38:38,620
and dreams of flying saucers.

458
00:38:38,620 --> 00:38:45,500
A fighting machine that could travel at supersonic speed undetected by radar based not on a circular

459
00:38:45,500 --> 00:38:54,740
disk but a pyramid.

460
00:38:54,740 --> 00:39:01,940
For a period of 15 years, this revolutionary aircraft was classified as a black project,

461
00:39:01,940 --> 00:39:05,460
one of America's best kept secrets.

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This was the ultimate real UFO, a supersonic strike aircraft, which flew like a jet but

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with stealth unseen by radar.

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In 1988, the Americans decided to reveal it to the world.

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There's an interesting aspect to the reason why the F-117 was exposed to the public at

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the end of 1988.

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The airplanes had been restrained to only flying at night, so the pilots are stuck into

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this airplane on a totally dark airfield in the middle of Nevada, and we in fact did finish

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up losing a couple of pilots by just purely being disoriented in night flying.

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At that point, the Air Force decided it had better start flying during the day, and if

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it was going to do that, it was going to give some indication of what was flying, so we

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weren't going to get a whole raft of more UFO reports.

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In order to evade radar and surface to air missiles, the Lockheed Stealth Fighter, the

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F-117, adopted some of the concepts of the flying saucer.

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Principally the idea of the shape of the aircraft determined its visibility to enemy radar.

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We got a radar cross-section that was substantially better than anybody ever expected, and the main

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reason was that we took a different approach to analyzing stealth than had been done in

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the past, and found out that basically a very shallow pyramidal shape with highly swept

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back edges gave a much lower cross-section than anything had been done before.

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In one year of the stealth fighter being declassified, the Soviet Empire began to disintegrate.

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On November the 9th, 1989, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the borders between East

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and West Germany were open.

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The Cold War effectively had come to an end.

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But it wasn't long before the stealth fighter saw its first combat spearheading the assault

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against a new enemy in the Iraq War.

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Its invisibility to radar, combined with precision bombing, shocked the world.

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We could go in there, drop the bombs exactly at the altitude we wanted to, with enormous

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precision, and take out exactly the targets we needed without being seen.

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And the whole of the Gulf War in the 1991 period was conducted where we had thousands

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of sorties and we didn't even get a scratch on one of our airplanes.

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The unique abilities of the stealth fighter were demonstrated in the Gulf War, but there

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remained one basic failing.

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It had to be designed around the needs of a pilot.

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Future fighting machines are going to be pilotless.

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I think the cost politically and morally of losing highly trained crew these days seems

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to point in the direction of UAVs, unmanned area vehicles.

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There is nothing new about the concept of pilotless aircraft.

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From the early days of flight, many have experimented with the idea.

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Some with a degree of success.

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The development of unmanned spaceflight has opened up future aviation possibilities.

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The biggest issue in the future is certainly unmanned aircraft.

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And we can also go down to miniaturized airplanes, which are the order of six inches in diameter,

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and fly those into buildings.

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And in fact, the whole scope of what can be done in the future is just enormous.

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It's mind-boggling.

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The future is perhaps in this new generation of flying machines.

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The latest Sikorsky aerobot is capable of high speed hovering, vertical takeoff, and

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landing.

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But these vehicles seem a long way from the dreams of Hitler's flying saucer engineers.

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Machines on the edge of science fiction, capable of phenomenal supersonic speed.

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Perhaps the science of flying saucers was never a reality.

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As long as you stay close to the ground, you've got yourself an efficient lifting device.

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It does not make an efficient wing in free air at all.

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It's just not an efficient shape.

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And only flying saucers from outer space have been able to do anything with it.

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And I think they're probably just a figment of the imagination.

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Sikors insist not only that the dream of flying saucer technology is possible, but

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that concealed from us all, it has already been achieved.

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I think that this is the biggest secret that the U.S. Air Force has, and I believe it's

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high time that the facts about the U.S. Air Force jet-powered flying wing disc program

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be declassified.

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There's absolutely no threat to the national security, and it's time that this bird come

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into the light.

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Some of the latest inventions are now in the public domain, but a great many remains secret,

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fueling more speculation over UFO sightings across our skies.

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The dream of the ultimate flying machine is still unfulfilled.