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MISSOURI INSTITUTE OF AERONAUTICS
The Missouri Institute of Aeronautics at Sikeston, Missouri housed the closest military to the alleged southeast Missouri (SEMO) crash retrieval. Parks Air College provided administration for the facility. Lost, missing, or destroyed official records for the era in question include: Missouri Institute of Aeronautics, Parks Air College, Sikeston Fire, Police, and Sheriff.
In October of 1938, General Henry H. Arnold “invited to Washington representatives of three of the nation's best civilian flying schools—Oliver L. Parks, of the Parks Air College, Inc., East St. Louis, Illinois; C. C. Moseley, of the Curtiss-Wright Technical Institute, Glendale, California; and Theopholis Lee, of the Boeing School of Aeronautics, Oakland, California. Out of this conference came the first tentative plans for what was to become the standard practice for primary flight training during the next six years."[1]
In 1946, Oliver Parks donated Parks Air College to the Jesuits of St. Louis University.[2] After the College donation, Oliver Parks continued to operate Parks Aircraft Sales and Service business from the E. St. Louis airport facility. In 1965 Bi-State Development Agency acquired the Airport which then reopened as the Bi-State Parks Airport. “Bi-State contracted with Oliver Parks to run the Airport as Airport Manager for two years at $1 per year. During this period, McDonnell-Douglas Corporation built a test facility on the Airport to test its Gemini space capsules in a large water reservoir built to test their structural integrity during water entry.”[3] In 1945, Arnold recognized the need for research and development for the future of national security. The result was Project RAND, short for Research and Development. In March of 1946, RAND became a division of Douglas Aircraft Company.
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1947
During the course of research three accounts within an approximate ten mile radius speak of an additional southeast Missouri unidentified aerial event circa 1947.
- A SEMO resident recalls: In late summer of 1947 I was a small boy living in Morehouse, Mo. On a Sunday night, we witnessed two metallic objects circling above the ground on the south end of town. There were no lights, no sounds ---just these two metallic objects. They resembled airplanes without windows, wings or tails. They were there for several minutes, perhaps as long as several hours. My parents made me go inside and go to bed. I have not been successful in finding any mention of this event in any of the UFO reports or writings. The strange part is that the entire town of Morehouse seems to have amnesia concerning the event. I have questioned other residents who I remember being at the sighting, and they just don't seem to recall it. These two metallic objects circled in the sky above us opposite from each other --- just silently circling. At least 20 or 30 people were out in the street witnessing this event. And yet, no one in Morehouse today seems to recall it.
- Another source indicates a few years after the alleged retrieval event an unidentified object returned to the sky over Sikeston. The craft hovered over the car where the resident and an acquaintance sat in disbelief at the loitering craft that defied physics. The source indicates the two individuals never spoke of the incident again. To this day, the source finds the event unbelievable although quit sure the event occurred as stated.
- A SEMO resident recalls a family story about an unidentified aerial object. According to this account, some residents speculated the object was a meteor. This event purportedly occurred around time of Roswell, the summer of 1947.
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[1] United States Air Force Historical Advisory Committee Prepared Under the Editorship of Wesley Frank Craven Princeton University and James Lea Cate University of Chicago, The Army Air Forces in World War II Volume VI: Men and Planes: Chapter 14 (Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1984
[2] K. Ravindra and John Waide, FROM PARKS AIR COLLEGE TO PARKS COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING & AVIATION:75 YEARS OF LEGACY IN AEROSPACE ENGINEERING (Saint Louis University St. Louis, MO 63103)
[3] http://www.stlouisdowntownairport.com/history.htm
[4] TJ Greaney, Area UFO expert Rutledge, 80, dies, Southeast Missourian, June 6,2006
[5] www.aaffha.org/Army
Audiotaped and Written Statements
from Unrelated Sources
“They were small framed like a child
about 4 feet tall, but had larger heads”
“….[Parks/MIA employee] 'picked up the bodies' of crash victims from the base. He continued to comment that there were more crashes than had been reported…”
“A rumor circulated about a crash of an
air space ship-- or something like that, nobody
knew for sure --- but it had 'little people' on it”
"I heard my folks talk about a strange craft that crashed"
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An unrelated resident recalls honest citizens claimed to have seen an unidentified object crash and after the event local residents gathered to watch the sky for additional occurrences
Others recall the incident as a meteor. Still others recall no incident. Do you know?
- The Holt Family did not know of Charlette Mann at the time of the initial statement.
- The Holt Family relates family secrets about father, Reverend Turner Hamilton Holt. The Reverend had first hand knowledge of a pre-Roswell crash of an unidentified flying object.
- Two sisters corroborate the account of a family secret
- Exact time unknown.The event occurred sometime after a September 23, 1935 letter from FDR.
- Reverend Holt traveled to Washington D.C. where a meeting took place with his cousin Cordell Hull, Secretary of State to FDR.
- Cordell Hull escorted Reverend Holt to the sub-basement of the Capitol Building
- The Reverend witnessed something extraordinary. Although sworn to secrecy, the Reverend confided in family members.
- Reverend Holt saw four large glass jars holding four creatures and pieces of an unknown vehicle.
- The "creatures" appeared to be about four feet tall.
- The debris was an unfamiliar type of material somewhat like silver in color.
- Lucille Holt Andrew wrote a letter dated November 29, 1999 about the event and sent the correspondence to CUFOS; William E. Jones researched the account.
Holt Family History Secrets
Margaret Gramly speaks with her Mother, Allene Holt Gramly, and Aunt, Lucille Holt Andrew, about a family secret. Reverend Turner Hamilton Holt, father and grandfather, confided in his daughters about a secret Washington, D.C. meeting with Cordell Hull, Reverend Holt's cousin and Secretary of State to Franklin D. Roosevelt. According to the respected minister, Cordell Hull escorted the Reverend to the Capitol sub-basement where the debris of an unidentified crash retrieval remained hidden from public view.
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to Enlarge.
FAMILY HISTORY SECRETS
FDR UNIDENTIFIED CRASH RETRIEVAL
Videotaped by www:seekingmoinfo.com: August 2008
ReverendWilliam Huffman
Huffman Family History Secrets
Charlette Mann speaks of the secret her Grandfather, Reverend William Huffman, shared with family. On a Pre-Word War II spring Cape Girardeau evening, the Reverend received a call for assistance. Upon arrival to a crash site "13-15 miles or so" outside of Cape Girardeau, the Reverend found something extraordinary. The local military personnel on site swore all to secrecy because the object was of unknown origin. It was, according to the respected Baptist Reverend, a downed space ship–an alleged UFO.
Lucille Holt Andrew (1921-2009) continued to teach piano and voice full time until her death. Lucille and her sister, Allene, strongly believed in the obligation to fulfill their father's request to make information about the Capitol sub-basement known long after the reverend and Cordell were gone.
We can be thankful that she took the time to write CUFOS as that allowed us to document the story as we know it so far. We owe Lucille our gratitude for opening up an important avenue of investigation into the history of this country’s handling of the UFO mystery.
William E. Jones
MUFON/State Director for Ohio
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Victor Marchetti
Special Assistant
Richard Helms
CIA Director
How the CIA Views the UFO Phenomenon
My theory is that we have, indeed, been contacted perhaps visited by extraterrestrial beings, and that the U.S. Government, in collusion with other national powers of the Earth, is determined to keep this information from the general public.
There were, however, rumors at high levels of the CIA...rumors of unexplained sightings by qualified observers, of strange signals being received by the National Security Agency, and of little-gray-men whose ships had crashed...
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Dr Edgar Mitchell
Apollo 14 Astronaut
Sixth Person on Moon
Kerrang! Radio Interview
July 2008
I happen to be privileged enough to be in on the fact we have been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomenon is real, although it has been covered up by our governments for quite a long time.
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Dr. Bud Baker
Author:Clipped Wings: The Death of Jack Northrop's Flying Wing Bombers
Dr. Baker is Professor of Management at Wright State University and directs the WSU Graduate Program. His first career was as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, where he served as a transport navigator, Strategic Air Command missile crew commander, Air Force Academy professor, and weapon system project manager.
In response to an inquiry about a pre-World War II unidentified crash, Dr. Baker responds:
First off, I would say that anything is possible in such matters. Anyone who says otherwise is kidding themselves.
But as far as any sort of flying wing involvement, I know of none, and I believe it would be unlikely. The big wings did not exist at that time--they did not fly until 1946 and 1947--and even if they had existed, they were way too big and way too distinctive to hide. When they ultimately did crash--one in 1948 and another in 1950--their demise was national news.
Which would leave some of the smaller, fighter-sized wings, which did exist in 1940 and after. But all of those are accounted for, even the then-secret ones, and in any event they were kept on pretty short leashes: they rarely left their southern California desert environs.
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Stanton T Friedman/
Nuclear Physicist/Lecturer
Len Stringfield had told Charlette Mann's story but would not tell anybody where she was. Some few years after his death, I asked Len's wife if she would provide contact information. She refused. She was saving Len's files for a grandchild who might be interested at some time in the future.
I started with the church in Cape Girardeau and eventually located people who had known Reverend Huffman, a copy of his obituary and then Charlette herself. She was most cooperative...
Charlette has been filmed. I have no good reason, now, to doubt her story.
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Sikeston Herald
Thursday, May 5, 1938
LARGE METEOR SEEN BY SIKESTONIANS FRIDAY
A dazzling meteor, said to have been one of the largest ever seen in this district, was watched by a number of Sikestonians and other Southeast Missourians as it plunged earthward Friday night.
Kenneth Williams, assistant engineer at the municipal light plant, saw the meteor at 7 o'clock Friday night in the northwest. It was brilliant, he said, and seemed to change colors as it fell.
The meteor, brilliant blue white in appearance, was heard as well as seen in Poplar Bluff and indications are that it fell somewhere between St. Louis and Poplar Bluff. It made a sizzling sound as it plunged to earth, Pop-Bluffians said.
If it had been dark when the meteor fell, it would have considerably lightened the sky, those who saw it declared.
Five months after the object streaked through the southeast Missouri sky on October 30, 1938, Orson Welles presented the broadcast of the War of the Worlds during the CBS radio network presentation of the Mercury Theatre.
U.S. Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt wrote, "The UFO files [Project Blue Book] are full of references to the near mass panic of October 30, 1938, when Orson Welles presented his now famous The War of the Worlds broadcast."
A curios unsubstantiated claim of Welles is that he was a relative of a Cordell Hull Assistant Secretary of State, Sumner Welles.
Famous Quotes
“Yes, we discussed this at every conference that we had with the military. There was always things that that going on. There were flying saucer and other things you know…”
--Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States of America
“For reasons of national security and out of consideration for some people still alive I have omitted certain material. Some of this material cannot be made available for many years, perhaps for many generations.”
--Preface to the Memoirs of Harry S Truman, 1946-52 Vol II: Years of Trial and Hope
"We must insist upon full access to disks recovered. For instance, in the La case the Army grabbed it and would not let us have it for cursory examination."
--J Edgar Hoover, First Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
"The UFO phenomenon being reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious"
--General Nathan Twining Chairman, Joint chiefs of staff, 1955-1958
"I certainly believe in aliens in space, and that they are indeed visiting our planet. They may not look like us, but I have very strong feelings that they have advanced beyond our mental capabilities."
--Senator Barry Goldwater, United States Senator from Arizona (1953–65, 1969–87)
“If I become president, I’ll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists.”
---President Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States
"I don't laugh at people any more when they say they've seen UFOs. I've seen one myself!"
---President Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States
WWW.SEEKINGMOINFO.COM seeks information that will lead to the genesis of unrelated family history narratives that include Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration covert unidentified crash retrieval. DISCLAIMER: Due diligence guided research; at the same time, to error is human. For that reason, this disclaimer disavows liability due to overt or perceived errors and omissions. The synchronicity of certain people, institutions, and events does not authenticate a covert relationship. The presentation of the research is for informational purposes only.
- Charlette Mann did not know of the Holt Family at the time of the initial statement.
- Charlette Mann relates family secrets about grandfather, Reverend William Huffman. The Reverend had first hand knowledge of a pre-Roswell crash of an unidentified flying object.
- Two sisters corroborate the account of a family secret.
- Exact time unknown. The event believed to have occurred in the spring 1941. The event occurred around 9:30 pm.
- Reverend Huffman traveled "13 -15 miles or so” outside of Cape Girardeau after a phone call about a presumed airplane crash.
- A driver escorted Reverend Huffman about ¼ mile off road where a fire was burning.
- The Reverend witnessed something extraordinary. Although sworn to secrecy, Reverend confided in family the members.
- Reverend Huffman saw three apparent non-human bodies and wreckage of an unknown craft.
- The non-human bodies were small framed about 4 feet tall.
- The debris was an unfamiliar type of shiny metallic finish.
- Charlette Mann wrote a letter dated May 6, 1991 about the event and sent the correspondence to UFO researcher Raymond Fowler; Leonard Springfield researched the account.
WWW.SEEKINGMOINFO.COM
Seeking Mo Info: Franklin D. Roosevelt Era Unidentified Crash Retrieval, an Alleged UFO
Audio: Widow of a Parks Air College associate assigned to the Missouri Institute of Aeronautics in Sikeston, Missouri
The closest military base to the alleged SEMO retrieval event was the Missouri Institute of Aeronautics at Sikeston, Missouri.
.
Parks Air College served as Administrators of the Missouri Institute of Aeronautics.
Former Sikestonian is Cape Sheriff
Of special interest to Sikeston people was the election of Ruben Schade of Jackson to the office of Cape Girardeau County.
Young Schade, who for the past several years has been advertising manager for the Jackson Post was formerly employed in a similar capacity by The [Sikeston] Herald and made many friends in this city.
Ben Schade, purchasing agent of the Missouri Institute of Aeronautics, is a brother of the new sheriff.
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SIKESTON HERALD
Various archived Sikeston Herald articles speak of the link between the Cape Girardeau Sheriff’s Department, alleged first response personnel, and the Missouri Institute of Aeronautics, alleged retrieval personnel of an unidentified crash, an alleged UFO. As an example is The Sikeston Herald article dated November 7, 1940.
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SEM0 SHARECROPPER’S FAMILY HISTORY SECRET
"I heard my folks talk about a strange craft that crashed…they wondered what it was and where it came from."
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A GRANDSON'S FAMILY HISTORY SECRET
UNIDENTIFIED CRASH IN SEMO FARM FIELD
A sincere young man speaks about a rural southeast Missouri event his Grandmother witnessed; a Grandmother described as church going and not prone to exaggeration.
The setting for this SEMO family history narrative is in the Little River Drainage District area northwest of Sikeston and southwest of Benton. In 1907 innovative community leaders, promoted a project that built a network of canals that drained two million acres of swampland. The project reached completion in 1926. The same politicians and community leaders that promoted the project gained financially from the implementation of the largest drainage project the country ever witnessed. The promoters purchased large parcels of worthless swampland that, after drained by the network of canals, transformed into fertile and valuable farmland. For that reason, families of the planners, politicians and community leaders, enjoyed the financial benefits of the project. Many large commercial working farms comprised the Little River Drainage District.
President William Clinton mentions the Little River Drainage District in his autobiography, My Life. According to the autobiography, President Clinton's father met his death in a drainage ditch outside of Sikeston.
- On May 17, 1946, after moving their furniture into their new home, my father was driving from Chicago to Hope to fetch his wife. Late at night on Highway 60 outside of Sikeston, Missouri, he lost control of his car a 1942 Buick, when the right front tire blew out on a wet road. He was thrown clear of the car but landed in, or crawled into, a drainage ditch dug to reclaim swampland.
Nestled in the midst of the large working farms that sprawled over the landscape of the Little River Drainage District was a house that served as a local General Store. According to the account handed down by Grandmother to Grandson, one day a routine ride with the family to the General Store presented the Grandmother with a puzzle she never resolved. As was the custom, local residents congregated at the General Store and on this unique day all present speculated about the source of a peculiar addition to the community.
Usually vacant farmland acquired something new and bizarre. Three large boulders, for lack of a better word, sat on the previously empty land. The largest object stood approximately six feet tall. The unknown material reflected sun light like metal and radiated a strong stench. The objects did not appear to be pieces of any type of craft known to that era.
Later the same day, men in a large flatbed truck arrived at the crossroads community. Since the out-of-the-way, rural community had few telephones and even less outside traffic, the residents wondered how the strangers knew of the curios event. A man dressed in business attire paid the Grandmother’s father to help uniformed men load the objects onto the flatbed truck.
The men were concerned the objects would be too heavy to lift. Surprisingly, the material was lightweight and moved with great ease. The man had no physical reaction to contact with the unknown substance. The Grandmother recalled when her father returned home she watched him at the kitchen sink as he washed and re-washed his hands repeatedly as if to remove the stench of the encounter.
The Grandmother related that prior to this incident many people in the area witnessed orbs of light in the sky on more than one occasion. Large lights dispersed into multiple small lights and small lights combined into larger ones. The Grandmother spoke often of the unresolved mystery.
The family history account captivated the Grandson and motivated his interest in Astronomy. As a child, the young astronomy student brought books to his Grandmother to show her pictures of meteors and other objects in the hope of solving the mystery. The Grandmother always responded, “That is not what I saw.”
The man expressed his amazement when acquaintances, unfamiliar with his family history, spoke about orbs in the same general area of southeast Missouri sky in the 1970s—orbs identical to the lights his Grandmother saw so many years before. Clearly, the man was seeking answers.
In 1981, Harley D. Rutledge, Ph.D., Southeast Missouri State University Physics Department Chair from 1964-1982[4], published a book entitled Project Identification: The First Scientific Field Study of UFO Phenomena. The book was the result of a scientific investigation into a southeast Missouri UFO flap that began in 1973. The flap originated at Piedmont, Missouri with sightings of a large number of orbs. Rutledge’s conclusion at the end of the seven-year study was, “Without doubt, our research has established that there is a UFO phenomenon…”
The high percentage of large working farms in the Little River Drainage District brought to mind the family history account from a sharecropper's son. Born in Cape Girardeau in 1938, this source was the son of a southeast Missouri sharecropper. The narrator of this family history account was too young to remember southeast Missouri where his parents moved to work on a farm outside of Sikeston; in 1943 the family moved to Minnesota to live with other family members. A puzzling Minnesota childhood memory was his parent’s frequent conversation with his aunt and uncle about being witness to a unidentified crash event on a southeast Missouri farm. Through the course of the rest of their lives, the sharecropper witnesses often speculated about “what it was and where it came from."
According to a letter from Charlette Mann to researcher Ray Fowler, the event her Grandfather witnessed in 1941 was “...out of town [Cape Girardeau, Missouri] 13-15 miles or so...” The appearance of the craft “wasn't an airplane or like any craft he'd ever seen. It was broken and scattered all around, but one large piece was still together and it appeared to have a rounded shape with no edges or seams. It had a very shiny metallic finish.” The location of the Little River Drainage District event located northwest of Sikeston and southwest of Benton exceeds the crash location perimeter described by Ms. Mann by a few miles or so.
Another interesting parallel aspect is the indication that local residents witnessed the incident. In a 2002 interview with Linda Moulton Howe, Ms. Mann quoted her Grandfather as saying “…it wasn't a crashed plane at all. There were some civilians. We assume probably people who lived near the farm where it had crashed.” According to the parallel account as described by a church going Grandmother to Grandson, approximately fifty people including the retrieval personnel witnessed the bizarre event.
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Orbs of Light
Foo-Fighter Mystery
On June 20, 1941, “Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall saw the need for a stronger role for Army aviation. Consequently they created the Army Air Forces with General H. H. (Hap) Arnold as its head.” [5] The Army Air Forces superseded the Army’s Air Corps.
During World War II, the matter of unidentified aerial objects fell into the hands of the U. S. Army Air Force. After the war, The National Security Act of 1947 established the U.S. Air Force as a separate branch of the military.
General H. H. Arnold presided over World War II Army Air Force when fighter pilots reported ‘foo-fighters”, the name given to unidentified balls of lights that approached fighter planes.
An often-quoted source of information about the foo-fighter enigma is The American Legion Magazine article by Jo Chamberlin entitled The Foo Fighter Mystery.
According to the Library of Congress, during World War II Chamberlin was an aide to General H. H. Arnold and assigned to the Office of Information Services, Army Air Force. The Jo Chamberlin File is in Box 272, Volume 4 of the Henry Harley Arnold Papers. Contained in the papers are the Jo Chamberlin notes on “Foo Fighters.”
Chamberlin’s name, title, and address appear on the notes:
- Lt. Col. Jo H.Chamberlin Headquarters, AAF Wash, DC Republic 6700, Ext 74154
- No military title to appear with author’s signature
A curios Chamberlin hand initialed note appears in the top margin on page nine of the typewritten “Foo-Fighter” research notes, "When back in Wash. get dope on that S. Atlantic transport load from Air Transport Command. JHC."
PAGE LAST UPDATED: January 20, 2014
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