Those Mysterious Airship Sightings
Before the airplane was invented, we didn't get reports of airplanes flying over cities, towns, or farms, but what we did get were reports of what are known as airships. I am sure that anyone that watches programs on television about unusual events, or UFOs, has seen at least one show based on this fact. No one is quite sure what these airships really were, but most believe that they weren't some sort of Zeppelin or blimp. If they were that would have meant that these types of craft were invented at least 30 years before we believe that they were. Yet there were strange stories attached to these sightings. I would like to relate two stories that tell a completely different tale from each other. One has to do with humans and the other aliens. Before I get into all that, I would like to explain the fact that Count Zeppelin actually created drawings for his craft in 1874. It is said that he did not create detailed plans until 1893. We know this, because he put his plans before a committee in 1894 and explained them. The airship was patented in the United States on 14 March 1899. This ship was a rigid ship and was put into commercial passenger service before World War I. You have to wonder, knowing how things are done today, if there were secret airship projects taking place before Zeppelin put his first craft into the sky? Having an airship would have been quite a coup. The military had imagined fleets of airships that would bomb enemy targets, companies had dreamed about using them to ferry people from one country to another, or even one continent to another. Were there secret projects going on to develop airships that were run by the militaries of the world? Anyway back to our two tales. The first one has to do with an airship hitting a windmill in Texas, in 1897. The area where this happened was in Aurora, a sleepy town near Dallas Fort Worth. The story goes on to say that a ship hit the windmill and exploded into flames and an alien was found that had fallen out of the ship onto the ground. At the time this happened, the townspeople had claimed that they tried to nurse the alien pilot back to health, but unfortunately he died. Being God fearing Christian people they buried him in their cemetery. A grave marker had shown that he was the pilot of the airship, but it has long disappeared. This might have been due to the fact that so many people were coming to the cemetery from everywhere and some were even trying to dig up the body. Today if you go there and try and locate the grave, you will be asked politely to leave by the local low enforcement people. To back up this story even more, it was said that some of the wreckage was thrown down a well and this had to be sealed due to the fact that one person using the well developed deformities all over his body. Below is a video from YouTube about the event: Below is a link to the original newspaper article about the crash. LINK to newspaper article. The second story has to do with a sighting. One airship was seen in 1896 and reported in the Sacramento Bee and the San Francisco Call. A witness said that he had seen this machine and he estimated that it was about 1000 feet up. Other people saw the craft and reported that not only was it much lower, but they could hear commands being called out to increase elevation to avoid hitting a church steeple. One witness said that there were two men on the craft and they were peddling bicycle like devices. Above the men was a passenger compartment. A light could be seen on the front end of the ship. Some witnesses even reported hearing men singing as the craft passed overhead. Was this all in the imaginations of the witnesses, or was there some kind of primitive airship that was flying in the sky before the first flight of an airship was ever reported? If we examine these two quite different cases, we do see something very similar. Both craft seem to be very frail. The first one that crashed in Texas had hit one of those windmills that are used to pump water on a farm, yet this was supposed to bring down the craft. If we are to believe this story, than we have to conclude that the craft was already on its way down and hit the windmill, because it was out of control before it crashed and would have crashed whether the windmill was there or not. The second craft seems to be some primitive attempt at creating a blimp. We have to remember that balloons did exist for quite a long time before this event and how hard would it have been to build a large one that could be propelled by some sort of propeller device powered by peddling? Just because something is not known about doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't exist.
Civil War Gas Generation
Civil War Balloon Intrepid I have always thought that it was quite strange that all these airship sightings took place just before the invention of the airship, or so it is said. If some of the sightings were not attempts to build primitive airships, why weren't they taking place before this time? Why was it that most of the sighting all take place within a few years before the airship invention? Another thing that I have wondered about was why did it take so long to invent a blimp like airship when balloons were around so long? Some say that the reason was the fact that early balloons were hot air balloons making a blimp impossible. This is not true. In the American Civil War we had a balloon corps that used balloons filled with gas. Here is the strange part of the story, the balloons had familiar names like Enterprise and Intrepid
Giffard Airship A plan for an airship had actually been presented to the French Academy by Lieutenant Jean Baptiste Marie Meusnier in 1783. The device was envisioned as a 260 feet long envelope that would contain internal ballonnets. A long carriage was to be attached that doubled as a boat. It was to have three air screw propellers with a rudder. In 1784 the same person put a propeller on a balloon and in 1785 crossed the English Channel with a balloon that had flapping wings for propulsion. An airship was actually built in France in 1852, it was the Giffard Airship. The airship had a steam engine and rudder and was filled with hydrogen gas. It flew from Paris to Trappes, a distance of 17 miles in 1852. So you see, it turns out that there were really airships around before most people knew about them and many of these sighting could have been home made jobs. |
