From: Martin Shough <parcellular.nul>
Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2009 11:26:53 -0000
Archived: Fri, 06 Feb 2009 06:51:49 -0500
Subject: Re: Military Fliers - Flying One-Man Platforms


>From: Terry Colvin <fortean1.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <post.nul>
>Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2009 23:56:40 +0700 (GMT+07:00)
>Subject: Military Fliers - Flying One-Man Platforms

>http://www.ufoinfo.com/humanoid/humanoid1910.shtml

>Location. Aldeburgh England

>Date: 1916
>Time: 1155A

>Looking out a 2nd story window, Mrs Whitehead saw, a little
>above the house (about 20 ft up), a round platform with 8-12
>men, who were staring straight ahead & tightly gripping a brass
>handrail. They wore blue uniforms & "little hats like sailors."
>The object approached slowly from nearby marshes, made a turn, &
>disappeared behind nearby houses. The platform was about a foot
>thick. The center was "hollow," like a doughnut. No means of
>propulsion was evident. Duration, less than 5 minutes.

>Humcat 1916-1
>Source: Gordon Creighton, FSR 15 # 1
>Type: A

>-----

>In the Fifties and Sixties there were several attempts at
>building flying platforms for military use. The most famous of
>these was the Hiller VZ-1 Pawnee, developed in 1954. However,
>the 8ft (2.5m) platform could only carry one man to a maximum
>height of 33ft (10m) and at a maximum speed of 16mph (25km/h)
>using the power of twin ducted fans.

>Richard Timewall invented a similar one-man platform in the mid-
>Seventies. He sold it as a kit for $5,795 or a bargain $97.50
>for the blueprints only. It was powered by four jet engines and
>Timewall claimed it had a "ten mile (16km) range, 15-minute
>flight time, with a top speed of about 40mph (64km/h)"

>Two other claimants for the crown of one-man flying platform
>were variations on a theme -- the Williams X-Jet and Williams
>Aerial Systems Platform (or WASP), which both looked a bit like
>flying pulpits, as the pilot was covered up to waist height.

>It's hard to see how any such man-made flying platforms could
>have been the cause of the two English (UK) sightings; these
>were only ever tested in America, decades later, and none
>carried more than two men.

Hi Terry

This is an old mystery that has made me scratch my head for
years - the curious nexus of synchronicities that connects 1897-
1909 mystery airship reports, mediaeval chronicles and the
"Aldeburgh platform" seen over Suffolk in 1916 (date recollected
in the 1960s by the elderly witness, whose name incidentally was
Whiteland, not Whitehead ).

What is the connection? To refresh Listers' memories, in brief:

A Texas newspaper in 1897 published an account of an airship
that had been seen by people on their way home from church. It
was too high to see more than a strange shape with lights but it
was trailing an an anchor on a rope which caught on a railroad
track, and a man "small in size" in a light blue uniform or
"sailor suit" shinned down the rope, cut it, and the thing
sailed away. The churchgoers recovered the anchor and it went on
display in the local blacksmith's shop.

The 13thC Irish 'Speculum Regale' has an account of a ship in
the sky whose anchor caught in the porch of St Kineras church,
Cloera. A man came down the rope looking as though "swimming" in
the air and the churchgoers tried to grab him but the bishop
said to let him go. He scurried back up and cut the rope. The
anchor was kept and displayed in the church.

Similar accounts occur in English chronicles. One, in Gervase of
Tilbury's Otia Imperialia which is in the British Museum's
Cotton Collection, where I went to see it many years ago, is set
in Kent. A "cloudship" was seen whose anchor got caught among
stones in a churchyard. The churchgoers heard voices above and
saw a man come down and cut the rope. They grabbed him and he
suffocated "in our thick air". In another account the man got
away again. In both stories the anchor was kept and made into
iron furniture for the church doors by the local blacksmith.

Now in the Aldeburgh case a circular flying platform was seen,
probably in 1916 (although not recounted until carrying a number
of men dressed in blue suits like sailors standing around it
behind a railing. It manoeuvred low over the town and they
appeared to be looking out for something.

The connection to the airships and the cloudships is this:

Research into this story by John Harney turned up the facts that

1) Zeppelins were sometimes flown with "observation cars"
suspended by a rope far below them, streamlined pods like hollow
bombs containing a couple of men lying prone who could spy out
the land through little windows while the ship stayed relatively
safe at altitude. You can see a stereo pair of one of these here

http://www.stereo.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/images/wrecks/cuffley.jpg

2) About a year later than the recollected date of the Aldeburgh
sighting Zeppelin L48 crashed and burned at Theberton, which is
only a few miles away from the witness's house, killing 16 crew.

http://www.fairmile.fsbusiness.co.uk/zeppelinww1.htm

3) They were buried at nearby St Peter's church, and a piece of
the Zeppelin framework was put on display in the church porch
where it remains to this day with a plaque commemorating the
event.

The cherry on this cake for me is that the wreckage fragment in
the church is anchor-shaped! I'm not kidding - you can see it
here

http://www.suffolkcam.co.uk/theberton15032003.htm

There were some very interesting web pages on the Aldeburgh
platform by John Harney at the old Magonia site, containing much
new information and correspondence, but they've disappeared. Two
of them were until recently still available in Google cache but
last time I looked these had gone too. Might be worth hunting
for. I understand the old Magonia material is being reincarnated
at a new site so maybe these pages will become available again?


Martin Shough