2.4 • ANTIGRAVITY RESEARCH: TOP SECRET
Brown’s effort to promote his electrogravitic propulsion concept received its greatest boost from Aviation Studies (International) Ltd., a privately owned, London-based aviation intelligence consulting firm.
*3
Since its formation in 1950, Aviation Studies has marketed reports to aerospace companies and government defense departments on a wide variety of subjects, giving information about various kinds of aircraft, rockets, and missiles (e.g., their design features, prices, production run sizes, foreign arsenal sizes); data on nuclear, thermal, and directed-energy weapons; assessments of foreign government military intelligence capabilities (e.g., organization missions, manpower, intelligence advisories); and much more.
Their price lists for publications available between 1957 and 1960 and for publications issued in 1993 are reproduced in appendix B.
Richard Worcester, the director of Aviation Studies, had become convinced that Brown had discovered something that could radically revolutionize aviation technology.
So beginning in August 1954, his think tank began an effort to promote Brown’s ideas to the aerospace industry, indicating that the rewards of success in developing electrogravitics technology were too far-reaching to be overlooked.
They began including news items about electrogravitics technology in their weekly newsletter,
Aviation Report
,
*4
and by 1956 also began sponsoring research into high-K dielectric materials for use in electrogravitic aircraft.
Their catalytic effort proved successful because industry involvement in electrogravitics expanded exponentially from 1954 onward.
Around the late 1950s, antigravity propulsion research went underground and little was heard about it, although today the effort continues secretly on a scale rivaling the Manhattan Project’s effort to develop the atomic bomb.
In February and December 1956, Aviation Studies published two summary reports on electrogravitics.
The February report, titled “Electrogravitics Systems: An Examination of Electrostatic Motion, Dynamic Counterbary and Barycentric Control,” presents an illuminating survey of government and industry’s early involvement in the field of antigravitics R&D.
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Its cover page lists its origin as the Gravity Research Group, a subdivision of the Aviation Studies Special Weapons Study Unit, but it is now known to have been written by Worcester.
The December report, titled “The Gravitics Situation,” also written by Worcester, was issued as being produced by Gravity Rand Limited, an affiliate of Aviation Studies.
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It provides additional information about aviation industry progress in developing electrogravitic antigravity technology.
Gravity Rand had no affiliation with the Rand Corporation.
Rand, an acronym for Research and Development, is often included in the names of companies that are involved in R&D work.
It is relatively difficult to obtain original copies of these documents.
Although the card catalog at the U.S.
Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., has a card on file for the February 1956 “Electrogravitics Systems” report (LOC no.
3,1401,00034,5879; call no.
TL565.A9), when I tried to check out the report in 1985, the librarian found that it was missing from its shelves.
A subsequent check of the Library of Congress computer database showed that one other library in the United States kept a copy of the report.
That was the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Technical Library in Dayton, Ohio.
Originally marked “confidential,” the report had been declassified sometime prior to when I obtained it in 1985 and is currently available for public scrutiny.
It may be borrowed from Wright-Patterson through the interlibrary loan system, but doing so may require some persistence on the part of the requester since the document is not cataloged on all Wright-Patterson computer databases, so Air Force librarians might overlook its presence.
The February 1956 report is reproduced in appendix C.
An original copy of the December 1956 report was more difficult to locate.
Librarians at Wright-Patterson could not find a copy in their stacks and an attempt to obtain the document from Aviation Studies was also unsuccessful.
The director responded that copies of both 1956 electrogravitics studies could not be found in its files.
Currently, however, it is possible to download these documents from the Internet.
Aircraft and missile companies that have been purchasing the Aviation Studies reports may still keep copies of these older issues in their technical libraries, but company officials may be hesitant to share them with outsiders.
There is an apparent effort to keep this subject very quiet.
For example, Loral Vought Systems Corporation of Grand Prairie, Texas, a company that is heavily involved in missile R&D and that served as a subcontractor to Northrop Grumman Corporation on development of the B-2 stealth bomber, had listed the December 1956 report on its library database, but in a 1993 telephone conversation, one of their librarians told me that the document was marked as “destroyed.”
Although she mentioned that three or four other Aviation Studies reports were listed, she was unwilling to divulge their titles and cited company policy that prevented the documents from being loaned out.
The subtitle of the February 1956 report—An Examination of Electrostatic Motion, Dynamic Counterbary, and Barycentric Control—blatantly indicates that it deals with gravity control.
The words dynamic
counterbary
and
barycentric control
translate to mean antigravity propulsion and the control of gravity, the root word
bary
coming from the Greek βαρη, meaning weight.
More specifically, page 19 of this report defines
counterbary
as “the manipulation of gravitational force lines” and
barycentric control
as “the adjustment to such manipulative capability to produce a stable type of motion suitable for transportation.”
The glossary of the December 1956 Aviation Studies report defines
counterbary
as “another name for lofting .
.
.
the action of levitation where gravity’s force is more than overcome by electrostatic or other propulsion.”
It defines
barycentric control
as “the environment for regulation of lofting processes in a vehicle.”
The term “dynamic counterbary,” or contrabary, was coined by the renowned German scientist Burkhard Heim, who used it publicly for the first time in 1952 in a Stuttgart lecture titled “Dynamic Contrabary and the Solution of Astronautical Problems.”
Heim had been heavily engaged in gravity force field research in the early 1950s and claimed to have discovered what he called the “contrabaric effect,” a way of inducing a gravitational force field by electromagnetic means.
The February 1956 report briefly reviews Brown’s seminal work and mentions his 1952 Project Winterhaven proposal to develop an electrogravitic interceptor disc of approximately 35 feet in diameter that would be capable of attaining Mach 3 (2,250 miles per hour) and executing sharp-edged changes of direction.
The authors of the report were quite convinced that electrogravitics involves a nonconventional method for artificially altering a vehicle’s gravity field, because the report begins by stating:
Electrogravitics might be described as a synthesis of electrostatic energy used for propulsion .
.
.
and gravitics (or dynamic counterbary) in which energy is also used to set up a local gravitational force independent of the earth’s .
.
.
The essence of electrogravitics thrust is the use of a very strong positive charge on one side of the vehicle and a negative on the other.
The core of the motor is a condenser and the ability of the condenser to hold its charge (the K number) is the yardstick of performance .
.
.
.
.
.
The electrogravitics saucer can perform the function of a classic lifting surface—it produces a pushing effect on the under surface and a suction effect on the upper, but, unlike the airfoil, it does not require a flow of air to produce the effect.
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The report summarizes electrogravitics work that was being done in the United States and in Great Britain and even indicates that several antigravity test rigs were in operation at that time.
It also includes extracts from various issues of
Aviation Report
dated between August 1954 and December 1955.
These give an illuminating view of how interest in electrogravitics progressively expanded over this eighteen-month period.
Some interesting excerpts are quoted here in chronological order:
A
NTI
-G
RAVITATION
R
ESEARCH
The basic research and technology behind electro-antigravitation is so much in its infancy that this is perhaps one field of development where not only the methods but the ideas are secret.
Nothing therefore can be discussed freely at the moment.
Very few papers on the subject have been prepared so far, and the only schemes that have seen the light of day are for pure research into rigs designed to make objects float around freely in a box .
.
.
long term aims .
.
.
envisage equipment that can defeat gravity.
Aviation Report,
August 20, 1954
M
ANAGERIAL
P
OLICY
F
OR
A
NTI-GRAVITICS
Anti-gravitics work is .
.
.
likely to go to companies with the biggest electrical laboratories and facilities.
It is also apparent that antigravitics, like other advanced sciences, will be initially sponsored for its weapon capabilities.
There are perhaps two broad ways of using the science—one is to postulate the design of advanced type projectiles .
.
.
The other, which is a longer term plan, is to create an entirely new environment with devices operating entirely under an anti-gravitic envelope.
Aviation Report,
August 24, 1954
G
RAVITICS
F
ORMULATIONS
Some extremely ambitious theoretical programs have been submitted and work towards realization of a manned [anti-gravitic] vehicle has begun.
On the evidence, there are far more definite indications that the incredible claims are realizable than there was, for instance, in supposing that uranium fission would result in a bomb.
Aviation Report
, September 7, 1954
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An October 1954 report refers to Brown’s 1952 Winterhaven Project proposal and indicates that the Pentagon was about to begin funding the development of electrogravitic aircraft:
E
LECTRO-GRAVITIC
P
ROPULSION
S
ITUATION
Under the terms of Project Winterhaven [1952] the proposals to develop electro-gravitics to the point of realizing a Mach 3 combat type disc were not far short of the extensive effort that was planned for the Manhattan District.
Indeed the drive to develop the new prime mover is in some respects rather similar to the experiments that led to the release of nuclear energy in the sense that both involve fantastic mathematical capacity and both are sciences so new that other allied sciences cannot be of very much guide.
In the past two years since the principle of motion by means of massive-K was first demonstrated on a test rig, progress has been slow.
But the indications are now that the Pentagon is ready to sponsor a range of devices to help further knowledge.
.
.
.
Tentative targets now being set anticipate that the first disc should be complete before 1960 and it would take the whole of the “sixties” to develop it properly, even though some combat things might be available ten years from now.
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.
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The frame incidentally is indivisible from the “engine.”
If there is to be any division of responsibility it would be that the engine industry might become responsible for providing the electrostatic energy (by, it is thought, a kind of flame) and the frame maker for the condenser assembly which is the core of the main structure.
Aviation Report
, October 12, 1954
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Note that the October report mentions Brown’s flame-jet high-voltage generator concept as a means for generating electrostatic energy and suggests that such a device would be developed by the jet engine industry.
A November 1954 report describes the Air Force’s first attempts to draw up specifications for the development of an electrogravitic vehicle and notes that the goal of a Mach 3 combat saucer would be possible through an extrapolation of technology available at that time: