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From: Don Ledger <dledger@istar.ca>
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 1997 23:58:35 +0100
Fwd Date: Sat, 29 Nov 1997 11:32:17 -0500
Subject: Re: Kenneth Arnold's testimony


> Date: Thu, 27 Nov 1997 23:01:47 -0500
> From: James Easton <pulsar@compuserve.com>
> Subject: UFO UpDate: Re: Kenneth Arnold's testimony
> To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>


> Don wrote:

> >You know it seems there are a more than a few attempts at pounding
> >a square peg into a round hole re the Arnold sighting.  People keep
> >coming up with solutions but to only 3 or 4 of twenty points. None
> >of them match up.

> Don,

> The difficulty with Arnold's story is that there are
> imponderables and it's unlikely we'll never quantify them.

> With any report, it's not necessarily true that all of the
> account is accurate, perhaps rarely so, and it may be impossible
> to explain all the evidence.

<Snipped my stuff for brevity>

> As we know, Kenneth Arnold later produced a sketch of one of the
> objects which was apparently different from the others. I'm still
> not sure which one of the nine objects this was supposed to
> represent, i.e., where it was in the echelon and also why he
> didn't impart this potentially important information to the Army
> Air Force at the time.

> However, there's a striking resemblance with the object portrayed
> in that later sketch and a Horton GO 229 A-1.

> I've uploaded a superb illustration of an 229 A-1 to my web site
> at URL:

> http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/pulsar/ho229A-1.jpg

> I've been curious about this marked resemblance since becoming
> aware of it some time ago.

Hello James,

I had a look at them, and as you say they are impressive. You
know if I had seen them 20 years ago and not knowing then what I
know now about the K.A. sighting I might have gone for that
explanation. But none of these aircraft would have been capable
of supersonic speed in 1947. The first aircraft, the Horton Go
229 A-1, has a wing built to pile up shock waves ahead of it, but
that is not the biggest drawback.  The intakes on those jets are
just not capable of channeling air into the engines at Mach 1 or
speeds above 550-600 miles per hour. The shock waves created
around the inlets would effectively stall the compressors, making
it impossible for them to produce thrust. What would have been
needed was variable geometry anti-stall fences at the ingest
ducts to solve that problem.  Avro Canada had to come up with
that solution for the Arrow to get Mach one then Mack two in
'57.

> But as you say, nine of them?

> I would like to get Arnold's story straight on this. If we take
> at face value, his reported claim (I don't suppose anyone has a
> copy of Arnold's book they would like to loan me?) that this
> object was different from the others, then of course we only have
> one of them and eight of something else.

> Still doesn't really make any obvious sense and, so far as I'm
> aware, there's no evidence in the historical record re any such
> secret testing of captured German aircraft.

> I've also uploaded to my website, an illustration of a Horton
> Ho-1X A Series aircraft, which, as it doesn't show the two jet
> engines, resembles Arnold's sketch even more. It's at URL:

> http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/pulsar/ho_ix_v1.jpg

> It seems the Horton GO 229 A-1 and Ho-1X A Series were
> essentially the same project.

I'd make a guess and suggest that the Ho-1X was a test bed for
the 229. It was probably a glider. It has an X in the model
series number.

> Arnold's sketch is also similar to a Northrop "flying wing", but
> I've long thought the most obvious objection to Arnold's objects
> being a known aircraft was the trouble which Arnold innocently
> caused.

We've been around that "flying wing" scenario many times already.
We're talking a scaled down testbed aircraft [5 in all, with
propellers] that had trouble getting out of its own way. They
only produced three true bombers with jets and they didn't get
over 400 mph.

<Snipped for brevity>

> It seems inconceivable that if the Army Air Force, and
> subsequently the USAF, knew the explanation, that they wouldn't
> have done _something_ to indicate this, somehow reassured the
> public without disclosing the full facts and saved themselves
> much expense and continual grief.

Well that's one of the arguments that has plagued us for years.
And I think the reason is very simple. They didn't have and don't
have stuff that can do what people are reporting that these
things are doing. Remember, by their own admissions back in the
fifties, the US, the UK, Canada and NATO were sure that the UFO
phenomenon was something cooked up by the Soviets to confuse the
free world just before an eminent attack. the UFO sightings
before hand were thought to be done by small conventional
aircraft, flashing lights and what have you in an attempt to set
up a cry wolf attitude with our military so that when the real
thing came, nobody would pay any attention to it. Definite proof
of aircraft flying at over Mach 1, Mach 2 or even 5, must have
scared the hell out of them.

> It's strange though, that there is such a close match between
> Arnold's sketch and the aircraft envisaged under the abortive
> Horten "flying wing" project.

> Perhaps even stranger is how some other German designs equally
> resemble witness sketches of the Hudson Valley "boomerang".

Well you know, if you are trying to increase speed in an aircraft
without increasing the power [ and thereby increasing weight and
fuel consumption, more wieght] one of the ways to do it is to get
rid of drag. The tail section [empennage] on any aircraft is a
drag. You got a couple of wings sticking out in the wind back
there and a vertical stabilizer as well. Those horizontal
stabilizers are there to create a doward pressure [negative lift]
on the tail section to insure the nose does not pitch down, and
because it does create negative lift it is not helping to keep
the aircraft aloft.  Even the fuselage stretched to the rear to
support them creates friction drag.  If you can get rid of all of
them then you reduce drag and get increased speed.  It was a
worthy venture for the times. Everyone, it seems, was trying to
get rid of the empennage.

So if you do succeed then you end up with just a wing but in
order to maintain stability you have to have some way of getting
that cantilever effect to keep that nose [or leading edge]
pitching up so you sweep the wings back and affix small control
surfaces similiar to elevators at the tips and "voila" you got
some pitch control. You ALSO have something that looks like a
"boomerang".

> For a new perspective on contemporary triangular, or
> wedge-shaped, 'UFOs', there's also an interesting image on my web
> site at URL:

> http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/pulsar/p12.jpg

This image intrigues me but not because it might have any
relationship to Arnold's "skipping saucers", but because it looks
like a lifting body, similiar to the experimental lifting bodies
that NASA experimented with while designing the Shuttle. But this
one is a combination of both lifting body and jet propulsion
[what do you want to bet Ramjet] with the nose intake duct having
the same general shape as the F-100 Super Sabre. The attention to
drag reduction and cleaness of design is really quite modern
looking.


Nice URLs James.

Regards

Don Ledger