The Gemini Divergence (51 page)

In posterity it has come to be named the
‘Tsar Bomba’, but it was officially named ‘Vanya’ when built, and
nicknamed, ‘Big Ivan’ by the technicians working on it at the
time.

Of course, it was unknown to the free world
until AFOAT detected it and relayed the findings to the Kennedy
administration, and once again the size and scope of AFOAT was
expanded.

President Kennedy knew that the NTBT was
inevitable, and the Soviets were just muscle flexing before the
test ban was signed, but we didn’t have any weapon nearly that
large to respond in kind with.

He wanted to keep a firm line in the sand
before the treaty, so he quickly authorized ‘Operation Dominic’,
which was the largest and most comprehensive nuclear weapons
testing program ever undertaken in history.

It consisted of 105 nuclear explosions
detonated by the United States over the next year in the Pacific,
Nevada, and in Space.

29 November 1961

NASA launched Mercury 5 into orbit with a
capsule containing ‘Enos” the chimp which after a short mission
splashed down safely off the coast of Puerto Rico.

20 February 1962

NASA launched Mercury 6, carrying John Glenn
inside of the Friendship 7 capsule.

Fearing that America might still be up to
something, the Overseers kept their distance for a few orbits and
just observed Glenn, as well as listened to his radio
transmissions.

When they were convinced that he was indeed a
human pilot, they went in for the kill.

They used their automated claw to tear open
Friendship 7’s aft jet pack and severely damage its heat
shield.

Convinced that the American astronaut could
never survive de-orbit they disengaged and left Glenn alone to
attempt re-entry.

Glenn, not completely aware as to what had
just happened and suspecting that one of his compressed gas
cylinders in his jet pack had exploded, radioed for permission to
jettison the damaged jet pack; also to report that he could see
that the capsule was now surrounded by tiny debris catching the
sunlight, but mission control consistently denied his requests for
fear that the jettisoning of the pack may pull the damaged shield
from Friendship 7.

Glenn feared that the exposed fuel containers
inside of the damaged jet pack would heat up and explode during
re-entry, but mission control engineers assured him that they
believed the shield could withstand the explosion.

He then started to report control problems.
Some of the attitude thrusters were not working properly.

But mission control was still very
apprehensive that jettisoning the pack would remove the shield and
leave Friendship 7 defenseless against the re-entry ablation heat
from skidding into the denser ionosphere from LEO.

When Glenn finally entered the upper
atmosphere, mission control went through a nail biting few moments
as they waited through the brief period of radio silence that was
caused by the capsule burning through the ionosphere.

Glenn finally splashed down about 200 miles
north of the Dominican Republic, in the North Atlantic, east of the
Bahamas.

John Glenn has always maintained the generic
NASA stance on UFOs, and refuted other astronaut’s reports of
them.

April 1962

NASA X-15 pilot, Joseph Walker, filmed five
flying saucer shaped objects from his X-15; reporting that they
appeared to be observing him test the aircraft.

8 May 1962

At the National Conference on the Peaceful
Space Research, at Seattle Washington, Walker reported that one of
his assignments was to keep an eye out for UFOs.

He further said that he had filmed them on at
least two occasions and turned the films over to his superiors for
processing.

None of the films have ever surfaced.

25 April 1962

One of the first tests of the Apollo/Saturn
rockets was for a project called ‘Highwater’.

Supposedly the project was to demonstrate how
liquids dispersed at high altitudes, namely the ionosphere.

The effect of the experiment was that it
created a cloud of ice crystals that stretched for miles and caused
the ionosphere to almost completely disappear for a few hours.

Air Force officials were ecstatic that this
device could be used in conjunction with a nuclear space detonation
to remove any natural shielding to an American EMP device that the
ionosphere normally provided.

Though, not stated as the original purpose of
the experiment, many thought that the EMP assisting effect was
secretly the sole purpose of the experiment all along.

May 1962

The dawning desert sun was casting bright
orange rays of light through the crags of rock atop the perimeter
mountains surrounding Groom Dry Lake Bed.

Gus was early to rise, as usual, working on
one of AFOAT’s WB57-Fs. Preparing it for the ongoing Operation
Dominic testing. They had just finished up a series of tests on
Christmas Island and were now getting ready for another series on
Johnston atoll

At first his head was buried inside of one of
the removable panels underneath the aircraft, until he heard the
starting of a Ford truck engine followed by a loud squeaking and
moaning sound, which was the unmistakable sound of hanger doors
opening.

On any normal base, this would not be cause
for Gus to stop and look, but at Groom Lake, one never knew what
would come rolling out of the very often closed hangers.

He thought to himself, m
y, how this place
has changed. I can remember when there was nothing here but Me,
Jack, a shed, a campfire and an earlier version of the plane I’m
working on.

So he lowered his head, trying not to be
obviously gawking, but trying to sneak a peek at whatever was to
come rolling out.

He was relieved to see Everett walking out
with a group of others in front of whatever they were testing
today.

Gus waived and Everett returned the
pleasantry.

Then he saw it.

It was long thin and silver. This plane
didn’t look like anything that he had ever seen before in his life.
To Gus, it looked like a lawn dart with two fins removed.

He was so mesmerized that he wasn’t aware
that Everett had approached him, and was surprised out of his
trance when Everett suddenly spoke to him.

“Its pretty radical looking, isn’t it?”

“… What is it?”

“We call it the A-12. NASA and the CIA asked
us to build and test it. We have been here flying it every day
since its first flight on April 25th”

“What is its purpose…What does it do?”

“At first they wanted a super fast high
altitude pursuit plane to chase down the Overseers whenever they
showed up.”

“How fast is it?”

“That’s classified, but I can tell you that
it’s the fastest damn thing anybody’s got. It can even outrun the
Overseers within the atmosphere.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“It takes entirely too long to scramble to be
an effective pursuit plane. Even though it can pass them up, it
takes so long to get into the air that the intruders are long gone
before it can intercept, and even when it is already in the air and
it comes across a chance intruder, the Overseers just climb into
space.”

“So what are they going to do with it now?
They’re not just going to abandon such a beautiful piece of
machinery are they?”

“NASA and The CIA have cut funds, but Lemay
and the Air Force see other purposes for it. He sent us some design
changes and wants us to build a model for Air Force
reconnaissance.”

“For AFOAT?”

“I’m sure that you guys will have some new
little secret boxes to stick into the Q cavity.”

“Hot damn! I can’t wait.”

24 May 1962

NASA launched Mercury-Atlas 7 carrying Scott
Carpenter aboard Aurora 7.

Unlike the previous manned space flights,
Carpenter’s was largely ignored by the American public.

To them, spaceflight was already mundane and
routine.

It was to be a one day, three orbit mission
with about 5 hours of scientific experiments.

Just before re-entry, Carpenter secretly
relayed to mission control that he was observing a UFO and had
taken photos of it as it circled his capsule.

Suddenly the capsule jutted from its planned
bearing. Then mission control prematurely lost radio contact with
Aurora 7 and presumed that he had been attacked and burned up in
the atmosphere.

Those in the know feared that the
Raumsfahrtwaffe may have captured their first American.

Nobody saw or heard Carpenter until the Navy
recovered his capsule and opened the hatch. The rescuers were
astonished to find a dazed Carpenter, babbling “Who are you? Where
do you come from?”

During his post flight de-briefing, he came
to a more cognizant state and reported that he remembered very
little about re-entry.

Many believed that he had merely lost
consciousness and had been guided in remotely by mission control.
They also believed that his sighting was part of a hallucination
associated with passing out.

None of his reported photographs have ever
surfaced.

Later in life Carpenter was quoted as saying,
“At no time, when the astronauts were in space were they alone:
there was constant surveillance by UFO’s.”

Decades later, with the advent of the
internet, many stories of Carpenter’s abduction and safe return to
the Earth circulated the net.

He later recanted and denied the,
‘surveillance’, quote, and maintained for years that all or these
stories were false, but in April of 2001 he told a newspaper
reporter in Cincinnati, “UFOs absolutely do exist.”

*~*

Jack and Gus were busy unloading pressurized
spherical sample containers from one of AFOAT’s WC-135s on the
South Pacific island of Johnston Atoll.

It was total chaos around them as other AFOAT
technicians worked on a variety of reconnaissance aircraft, all
working around the clock monitoring the ‘Operation Fishbowl’ tests
of ‘Operation Dominic’.

They no longer had their B-29s or B-36s, but
they now had their new WC-135s, their old RB-57Fs, WB-57Fs, and a
removable platform that mounts into the Bombay of a B-52 called
‘Giant Fish’, very similar to the one used on the B-36 before they
were removed from service.

Their aircraft had also recently been fitted
with a bevy of new equipment to monitor missiles in flight and
explosions in space; all to enhance Eisenhower’s original dream of
‘Project Constant Phoenix’, which now had many derivative projects
such as ‘Cobra Ball,’ ‘Pony Express’, ‘ and ‘Giant Fish’.

Lemay was there to coordinate the Navy with
all of the different branches of the Air Force, Army and all of the
national laboratories involved with this massive testing
program.

Volmer was also there to verify that all of
the most recently installed monitoring equipment was working as
designed.

Jack was inside of an airplane tossing sample
containers, from the plane, one at a time to Gus, who was standing
on the tarmac loading the samples onto a waiting truck.

As Jack stood in the aircraft door waiting
for Gus to be ready for the next one, he commented, “I hope one of
these sorties gets us onto Hickam sometime this summer. I can only
take so much of these small atolls, and we are going to be out here
all summer, I hear.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“That Eric guy, from the Giant Fish
crew.”

“What the hell does he know? Besides, I would
bet we end up on Kwajalein before we end up in Hawaii… You know
that the Air Force avoids landing there like the plague.”

“Why is that anyway?”

“Because all of there planes seem to
mysteriously break down after they land there, and there crews
report back that they are just going to have to wait there until
the parts arrive.”

Jack chuckled, “What a bummer, a week in
Honolulu waiting for aircraft parts.”

“That’s why they don’t land there as often as
the remote islands. You notice that planes don’t break down as
often here at Johnston Atoll, or in Alaska.”

“No,” still chuckling, “They want to get the
hell out of there as soon as possible… Hey look, here comes Mr.
Volmer with the General.”

Gus turned to the direction that Jack had
pointed to see Lemay and Volmer walking up.

A Ground crewman working on a neighboring
plane saw Lemay and yelled, “Attention.”

Lemay just waved them off and yelled, “Don’t
pay any mind to me boys, I’m here to work too.”

As they approached Gus, he politely saluted
and greeted them, “General Sir, Mr. Volmer, how are both of you
today?”

Lemay snorted, “I’d be better if I didn’t
have this confounded sand in my shoes and underwear. How the hell
do you boys stand this?”

They simultaneously respond, “You get used to
it.”

Gus went on, “Jack here tells me that he
heard this operation is going to last all summer. Is that true
sir?”

“Unfortunately yes; Kennedy has us testing
every damn fire cracker we have, or have even thought of, before he
signs a treaty with Russia in the fall to ban these tests
altogether. It all seems pretty stupid to me, but I’m not a
politician.”

Volmer added, “The Soviets are also very
busy, we have a few crews working on that as well… I have never
seen this much testing activity.”

The Doctor then looked over his shoulder to
see if anyone was in earshot then continued, “The Overseers have
taken a keen interest in all of this commotion as well. There have
been many sightings already.”

Gus laughed, “I bet ole Schwerig is
scratchin’ his head, tryin’ to figure out what the hell we’re
doin’”.

Lemay added, “I hope he gets the message that
some of these tests are directed for his attention as well as the
Soviets.”