The Day After Roswell - Philip J. Corso-pages

Page 96 of 118

Page 96 of 118
The Day After Roswell - Philip J. Corso-pages

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military moon base without having to rely on rocket launch facilities, which would demand long turn around times and be very vulnerable to attack. A camouflaged supergun, even a series of superguns, would allow us all the benefits of a field artillery or quick response antiaircraft unit, but with a piece that could launch payloads into space. It was this combination of capabilities that delighted General Trudeau because it enabled one R&D project to help create many different systems. The United States, Canada, and the British military combined their joint expertise to find ways to develop Dr. Bull's supergun with General Trudeau, | believe, becoming one of Bull's staunchest supporters. But by the time military budget decisions had to be made to fund the weapon, all of the governments military establishments had become committed to the guided missile and rocket launched space vehicle rather than a supergun. While the weapon had some potential, the United States, UK, and Canada were too far along with their own missile programs to start up a completely new type of weapon. And in the end, they decided to end the research while still Keeping close tabs on Bull's efforts to sell his technology to other powers, especially governments in the Middle East. Through the 1980s, Gerald Bull, whom | had met at a reception honoring General Trudeau in 1986, Entered into negotiations with the Israelis as well as with the Iraqis and perhaps even the Iranians. The decade long war between Saddam Hussein and Iran proved a fertile sales territory for weapons merchants in general, and particularly for Gerald Bull, who was courted by both sides. In the end, he cut his deal with the Iranians, testing experimental versions of a supergun and planning to build the monster weapon before the British intervened and seized shipments of gun barrel units before they were shipped out of the country. By this time, Dr. Bull may have become a liability to the Iraqis, as well as to the Israelis and to the United States as well, and was shot to death outside his apartment in Belgium before the outbreak of the Gulf War. Like Jules Verne's character Barbicane in From the Earth to the Moon, Bull had a vision of the potential of a long range artillery piece. Unlike Barbicane, he came very close to proving it a practical way of launching vehicles into space. The murder of Gerald Bull has never been solved, and whatever secrets he still possessed about the assembly of a gun to launch vehicles into space probably died with him in the hallway outside his apartment. List of Omissions As | worked through the stack of projects on my desk during the spring months of 1962, | found | was devoting more of my time to the Roswell file and less to some of the other projects under development. It was apparent to me that the treasure trove we'd retrieved from Roswell was beginning to pay off in ways that not even | thought would happen. There were so many army research projects under way, | told my boss, that were not foundering, but sputtering along that could benefit from something similar found in the Roswell wreckage it we could find the match between the two. Night vision, lasers, and fiberoptic communication were obvious, | said to him, but | was sure there were other areas we could find just by looking at the problems posed by what we discovered from Roswell, not just retrieved from the wreckage. "If you just look at what we didn't find at the crash site, "| said. "That goes a long way to explaining the differences between what we are and what they are. It also shows us what we need to develop if we're going to prepare for long periods of travel in space. " "Can you make me a list?" the general asked. "There are a lot of ongoing research contracts out there that could benefit from a list of things we'd have to concern ourselves with if we're going to be planning for space travel in the next fifty years. " By the time our conversation was finished, General Trudeau had asked me to prepare not only a list of what were called the "omissions" at Roswell but a very brief report detailing the areas where | thought development needed to take place. So | assembled all the reports and information in the Roswell file and began looking for what was missing that | might expect to find at a space traveler's crash site. There was no mention in any of the reports of any food source or nutrient, and no one discovered any food preparation units or stored food on board the spacecraft, nor were there any refrigeration units for food preservation. There was no water on the ship either for drinking, washing, or flushing of waste, nor were there any waste or garbage disposal facilities. The Roswell field reports said that the retrieval team found something they thought was a first aid kit because it contained material that a doctor said was for bandaging purposes, but there were no medical facilities nor any medications. And finally, the army retrieval team said there were no rest facilities at all on board the ship; nothing that could be construed as a bunk or a bed. From this available data the army assumed that this UFO was a reconnaissance craft and could quickly return to a larger or mothership where all of the missing items might be found. The other explanation Dr. Hermann 95 "Make it specific, Phil, " the general asked. "What do you mean?"