Page 22 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - February 2023 Edition

22 They’re Balloons Dammit Not Alien UFOs!

Rob McConnell: “I Told

You So!

They’re Balloons Dammit

NOT

Alien UFOs!”

Continued from Page 21

Unmanned balloons could rise to
altitudes of up to 30,500 metres – far
beyond the range of Soviet interceptor
aircraft and missiles – and if fitted with
the same altitude-control systems as the
Japanese Fu-Go, could theoretically ride
the jet stream across the entire length of

the Soviet Union, taking pictures as they
went. Fortuitously, the technology that
could make this possible had just recently
been developed – by a rather unexpected
organization.

hough best known as the manufacturer of
breakfast cereals like Cheerios, Cocoa
Puffs, and Lucky Charms, the General
Mills Corporation of Minneapolis,

Minnesota was at one point a major ships in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic Ewing used this discovery to create a
innovator in aerospace technology – Oceans, carrying a wide range of device called a SOFAR bomb to allow
especially high-altitude scientific scientific payloads including automatic Navy pilots downed at sea to secretly
balloons. The Aeronautical Research cameras for photographing solar eclipses communicate their position without
Division of General Mills was and sunspots, film-based and Cherenkov alerting the enemy. Consisting of a small
established in 1946 and placed under the detectors for studying cosmic rays, and hollow metal sphere packed in a pilot’s
direction of emigré German engineer even balloon-launched sounding rockets survival kit, when dropped in the water
Otto Winzen. The division soon began called “rockoons”. In 1949 Winzen left the bomb would sink down to the SOFAR
working closely with the U.S. Navy’s General Mills to found his own company, channel and implode, creating a signal

Office of Naval Research or ONR, which Winzen Research Inc, which continued to that could be detected and triangulated by
was seeking a means of sending scientific produce a range of successful scientific shore-based hydrophones. After the war,
payloads to extremely high altitudes to balloons until Winzen’s death by suicide it was realized that a similar sound
study high-altitude winds, cosmic rays, in 1979. channel existed in the upper atmosphere,
and other natural phenomena. At first the and that by flying balloons equipped with
ONR used long chains of traditional latex Winzen’s Skyhook balloons were exactly instruments into this channel the sounds
weather balloons, but these proved prone what the U.S. Army Air Force needed for of distant enemy nuclear tests and missile
to leaking and bursting at high altitudes. its planned reconnaissance overflights, launches could be detected. To this end
Seeking a superior alternative, Winzen codenamed Project MOGUL. MOGUL MOGUL balloons were fitted with ultra-
and his team at General Mills soon hit was based on a curious scientific sensitive microphones, telemetry systems
upon polyethylene, the same plastic used phenomenon discovered during the for transmitting recorded data to ground

in sandwich bags. Lightweight, strong, Second World War. In 1944, American stations, and automatic systems for
and resistant to ultraviolet light, geophysicist Maurice Ewing realized that maintaining the balloons’ altitude.
polyethylene could be fashioned into at a certain depth below the ocean, the
balloons only 0.025 millimetres thick and effects of pressure and temperature To disguise the true nature of the project,
up to 30 metres in diameter that would combine to create a zone of water in during testing the MOGUL equipment
not leak or tear and could maintain a which the speed of sound is at a was fitted to unclassified weather
constant altitude for weeks on end. The minimum. Any sound produced in this balloons designed and launched by a
first of these balloons, codenamed zone will thus bounce off the layers of research team from New York University.
Skyhook, was launched on September 25, water above and below, allowing it to MOGUL flight No.4, launched on June 4,

1947 carrying a cosmic ray detector to an propagate over long distances. Indeed, 1947, is almost certainly the object which
altitude of 30,000 metres. The Skyhook whales and other marine creatures are fell onto Foster ranch outside Roswell
balloons proved extremely successful, now known to use this zone – which one month later.
and over the following decade more than Ewing dubbed the SOund Fixing And
1,500 would be launched by the ONR Ranging or SOFAR channel – to (Continued on Page 23)
from locations in the US and Canada and communicate across entire oceans.