The Gemini Divergence (59 page)

Johnson added, “It sounds like the perfect
organization to eventually take over Blue Books dismal job of
investigating reports of these things, except that I believe that
half of the problem was having men in Air Force uniforms doing the
investigating, Is there any way that you could have them wear
civilian clothes when they go from door to door from now on?”

Lemay smiled and jested, “I’ll get them some
J.C. Penney cards and 35-10 wavers, Sir.”

“So get out there and clear these damn
skies,” ordered the President.

“Mr. President,” asked McNamara, “If I have
to finance this, what are you going to call it?”

“Johnson shook his head like he didn’t care
and sarcastically suggested, “Call it ‘Project Clear Sky’.

*~*

General Taylor and Secretary McNamara met
secretly after the meeting to console each other about their
growing concern for General Lemay’s influence on everybody, and
lamented that they just saw him handed even more power today.

They saw their control over the entire
military and Vietnam slipping from them as everybody seemed to
listen to Lemay.

They also marveled at how he seemed to be
able to make people, that even resented him, capitulate to his will
or his plans.

How could one man have achieved so much
control over information, nuclear power and raw military force as
well as his influence on NASA?

Lemay had become a force that seemed larger
than life.

But now, Lemay was becoming a huge thorn in
their side in the developing Presidential election.

Lemay was furious that McNamara and Taylor
kept giving Johnson juicy military tidbits, that were in the most
part military secrets, to use in the 1964 election.

Johnson’s opponent, Barry Goldwater, had made
countless accusations that Johnson was allowing our National
Defense research and technology to fall far behind the Soviet
Union’s.

Johnson’s response was resorting to give away
some of the secret programs in and attempt to prove that he had
been strong on defense.

In July of 1964, Johnson made a gaffe that
remained a controversy for decades.

He disclosed the existence of the A-12 and
the SR-71.

Lemay was livid for many reasons; for one the
mere fact that the President was dropping military secrets just for
the sake of political conversation. Secondly, Lemay had not even
officially named the new Air Force version of the A-12 yet, and the
identifier that he had submitted was RS-17, now because of
Johnson’s preannouncement of a name, Lemay no longer had any say in
naming his own aircraft.

Rumors flew for years that Johnson misspoke
the name, but the truth was that it was so new that the name had
not officially been decided yet.

Johnson’s speech writers had seen it written
both ways and had just arbitrarily decided on one version.

Lemay’s public rebuttal of Johnson for this
gaffe just deepened the schism between Lemay and the trio of
Johnson, McNamara and Taylor.

28 July 1964

NASA launched Ranger 7 to photographically
map the moon.

Before Ranger 7 could achieve orbit around
the moon, NASA suddenly started to have technical problems with the
probe, ultimately culminating in total loss of the Ranger
craft.

Most scientists at NASA believed that Ranger
7 had impacted the moon, although, others of a small minority had
another theory, but they kept it to themselves.

1 September 1964

“Don’t you support your President? Don’t you
know that your comments are harming his chances for re-election?”
McNamara rebuked Lemay, after he and General Taylor had cornered
General Lemay in his own office.

“I don’t think that who I vote for is any of
your damn business,” responded Lemay, “but FYI, Goldwater is a damn
fine Air Force Reserve General and I think that he would make a
fine President… You’re a Republican anyway, why are you so gung ho
for a Democrat.”

“This is basically the continuation of the
same administration that gave me my job. It’s the same one that
gave you yours as well. You should be more thankful.”

“Listen Chum… I voted for Nixon in ‘60’.”

“But Kennedy promoted you to Air Force Chief
of Staff.”

“After the election,” sarcastically retorted
Lemay, “besides, I’m no Judas Republican, unlike another Republican
I know… Kennedy promoted me because he had the balls to promote the
best man for the job, regardless of political affiliation. Unlike
his former protégé, now President, that prefers to surround himself
with ass kissers and yes men… and from the color of your schnozz,
either your glasses are pinching your nose or I can only make an
educated guess where you’ve been sticking it.”

“You might just find yourself out of work if
you keep that attitude, Mister,” interjected General Taylor.

“Fine!” snapped Lemay, “I’m not so naïve as
to not see that coming in any case… I’ll just become a politician,
and run for office in ‘68’… Wait till you see how big I smile when
you’re on your knees in front of me, MISTER!”

McNamara facetiously remarked, “Do you
actually think that the Republican Party would back you as a
candidate?”

“I’ll bet my life savings against yours that
they would back me before they would back a poindexter like you.
Those Harold Lloyd’s are about a penny that hasn’t dropped as old
Schickelgruber’s Charlie Chaplain mustache.”

*~*

The Air Force in its haste to start launching
the Blue Gemini capsules in the numbers that President Johnson had
ordered, had run out of Titan II rockets which were the preferred
launching platform for the Gemini capsules.

They quickly adapted the remaining Atlas
rockets, in plentiful supply from the Mercury Program, to carry
some of the Blue Gemini workload.

Everyone stationed at Vandenberg AFB was
astonished at the sudden increase in workload.

They had suddenly gone from launching one
rocket per week to several launches each day.

The Raumsfahrtwaffe noticed the sudden surge
of launches and the growth of radio chatter from orbiting Gemini
capsules as well as the multitude of the new MOLs or Manned
Orbiting Laboratories, also launched from Vandenberg.

They knew that they were armed, so they kept
their distance.

Schwerig then ordered for them to be shot
down before they could deploy their weapons. He knew that the Blue
Gemini’s weakest moment would be when it was leaving the earth’s
atmosphere and entering orbit.

15 September 1964

Lt. Robert Jacobs was a member of the
1369
^th
Photographic Squadron based out of Vandenberg
AFB.

His daily job was to film missiles being
launched from Vandenberg AFB to the south, as they flew out over
the Pacific Ocean.

On the morning of the 15
^th
he had
his equipment set up at Big Sur California to film, supposed dummy
warheads being launched.

Unbeknownst to him, it was actually a Blue
Gemini Capsule carrying two astronauts to a rendezvous with an
orbiting MOL.

Just as the rocket left the atmosphere… it
exploded.

Jacobs and his crew thought little about the
explosion. They had seen them before and thought that the missile
was unmanned anyway.

To them it was just another botched test, so
they turned their film into their squadron and went home.

The next morning when Jacobs returned to work
he was immediately ordered to report to the office of Major Florenz
Mansmann.

Jacobs was first asked what he and his men
had witnessed the day before.

Confused, Jacobs reported that they had just
routinely filmed a missile launch, just as they did every day,
however this one exploded, but even that was not totally out of the
norm.

Mansmann then showed Jacobs the film and
asked if his equipment could have caused an effect that they
noticed on the film.

Jacobs then sat and watched the film as the
capsule was just leaving the atmosphere, beyond surface to air
missile range.

Suddenly, a metallic saucer appeared into the
image and started shooting what looked like flashes of light at the
ascending rocket.

The saucer fired several times until the
rocket exploded.

Jacobs was horrified, he didn’t know what had
actually occurred until now.

Mansmann asked Jacobs what that looked like
to him.

When he answered that it looked like a flying
saucer shooting down the missile, he was immediately scolded and
ordered never to mention that theory again.

The Air Force denied the incident ever took
place, and at first even denied that Jacobs had even been in the
Air Force.

Mansmann held his silence until just before
his death in 1993, when he signed a written confession that Jacobs
was telling the truth all along, and that a UFO had indeed been
filmed destroying a missile.

*~*

“To add insult to injury, the buffoon also
just admitted that we have not only one but two anti satellite
systems,” bemoaned Lemay as he talked on the phone to Senator
Goldwater about President Johnson, “McNamara and Taylor, in no
certain terms, let me know that I might be pushed out if I didn’t
join their seat smoochin’ team.”

“What would you do if they forced you out?”
asked Goldwater

“I’d retire first. I have more than enough
years to do that… When those idiots asked me the same thing, I told
them that I would run myself in ‘68’.”

Goldwater laughed, “Well, if you decide to do
that, give me a call. If I loose this time, I’ll run again in ‘68’
and would be more than happy to give you a chance to be my Vice
Presidential Candidate if you’d like.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” also laughing.

When the laughing died down, Lemay commented,
“If that fool doesn’t keep his mouth shut, there are things that
may turn the world upside down if he were to blab about them.”

Goldwater paused and then asked, “General, I
hear that you have a room at Wright Pat with a collection of
crashed flying saucers… Would it be possible for you to show me
that room?”

Lemay Erupted, “Holy Hell, Senator! Where did
you hear that? What the hell do you think I was talking about? I
can’t show you or anybody else! Don’t ever ask me anything about
that again!”

11 October 1964

People in Brockton Massachusetts reported
watching a flying saucer chasing two fighter planes over the city
and firing a ray at them.

One of the planes started trailing smoke as
the saucer ascended into the heavens. The fighters continued
towards the South Weymouth NAS.

Just prior, the fighters had reluctantly let
the saucer approach because they had been ordered to respect
aircraft broadcasting proper IFF signals.

Lemay knew that, thanks to their new use of
false IFF signals, the Raumsfahrtwaffe was loosing their fear of
our fighters, just as he had forewarned.

12 October 1964

The Soviet Union launched Voskhod 1

The mission was uneventful, except that
during the flight, Leonid Brezhnev replaced Khrushchev in a
peaceful coup d'état.

When asked about the overthrow, Khrushchev
replied, “I'm old and tired. Let them cope by themselves. I've done
the main thing. Could anyone have dreamed of telling Stalin that he
didn't suit us anymore and suggesting he retire? Not even a wet
spot would have remained where we had been standing. Now everything
is different. The fear is gone, and we can talk as equals. That's
my contribution. I won't put up a fight.”

16 October 1964

AFOAT detected the first Chinese nuclear test
at Lop Nur in China’s Gobi desert.

This caused Johnson to further enforce his
desire to establish detection equipment in every country on earth,
but now he didn’t even care if AFOAT or the CIA obtained the
foreign country’s permission first, before installation of the
detection equipment.

16 November 1964

The USS Gyatt was a Gearing Class Destroyer
that served during Guadalcanal. Later in 1960 she was converted
into the world’s first guided missile destroyer.

She was immediately assigned, in 1960, to
patrol the Atlantic in support of the U.S. space program.

On the nights of the 16
^th
,
17
^th
, and 18
^th
of November of 64, the Gyatt
tracked unidentified aircraft flying uncomfortably close to her
perimeter, broadcasting the encrypted military version of the IFF
code, but would not respond to voice radio.

19 November 1964

The Gyatt again started to track an unknown
object, but this time it scrambled a pair of F-8C Vought Crusader
fighters from Roosevelt Roads Naval Base in Puerto Rico, to respond
and investigate.

When the fighters arrived, the object sped
away at great speed and they were not able to intercept.

20 November 1964

The Gyatt again started tracking an
unidentified object broadcasting the classified and encrypted
military version of the IFF signals, but this time the object was
traveling well in excess of Mach 1.

She radioed to scramble two more fighters,
when Roosevelt Roads reported that they already had two F-8s
already in the air at 30,000 feet over Puerto Rico.

This time the fighters were able to make
visual contact.

The pilots reported the object as delta
shaped, with no tail fins, and about the size of a fighter
aircraft. Its color was black and gray and it had no lights.

When they finally overtook the object, it in
turn accelerated vertically at an angle impossible for conventional
aircraft to achieve as it accelerated beyond Mach 1 while ascending
out of radar range and sight.

24 November 1964

The Gyatt again tracked the mysterious object
but no confrontation materialized on this day.