Notes

1 Kaiser Motors (formerly Kaiser-Frazer) Corporation made automobiles at Willow Run, Michigan, United States, from 1945 to 1953. In 1953, Kaiser merged with Willys-Overland to form Willys Motors Incorporated, moving its production operations to the Willys plant at Toledo, Ohio. The company changed its name to Kaiser Jeep Corporation in 1963.

2 SeeThe Forgotten World, q.v. (Author’s Note).

3 Famous nightclub located on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. (Author’s Note) 8588 sunset Blvd; it opened in 1941 and closed in 1958.

4 The first convention was organized by the group Flying Saucers International and took place at he Hollywood Hotel on August 16-18, 1953. (Author’s Note)

5 Air Technical Intelligence Center, an American governmental organization headquartered at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, whose purpose is to investigate all phenomena related to flying saucers. (Author’s Note). The ATIC was created in May 1951, under the direct command of the Air Materiel Control Department. In 1961 ATIC became the Foreign Technology Division (FTD) which was reassigned to Air Force Systems Command (AFSC). In October 1993, FTD became the National Air Intelligence Center as a component of the Air Intelligence Agency, and was recently renamed the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) in 2003.

6 Famous authors of books about flying saucers and specialists in the study of the phenomena. (Author’s Note) Williamson is George Hunt Williamson.

7 A town around 25 miles to the east of Los Angeles. (Author’s Note)

8 A suburb to the north-east of Downtown Los Angeles. (Author’s Note)

9 The distance traveled by light in one year at 300,000 km/second or around 10 trillion km, i.e. 6 trillion miles. (Author’s Note)

10 See The Time Spiral. (Author’s Note)

11 Thus the ancient traditions, notably The Secret Doctrine y Mme. H.P. Blavatsky, calls super-evolved beings who, in Earth’s distant past, came to our planet to instruct humanity; see The Flying Saucers Come from Another World, q.v. (Author’s Note) Helena Blavatsky’s (1831-1891) The Secret Doctrine, the Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy, was first published as two volumes in 1888; the first named Cosmogenesis, the second Anthropogenesis. It was an influential example of the revival of interest in esoteric and occult ideas in the modern age, in particular because of its claim to reconcile ancient eastern wisdom with modern science. Blavatsky claimed that its contents had been revealed to her by mahatmas who had retained knowledge of humanity's spiritual history, knowledge that it was now possible, in part, to reveal.

12 True. (Author’s Note)

13 A famous beach in Los Angeles. (Author’s Note)

14 Name given to the American Commission investigating flying saucers. (Author’s Note) Project Blue Book was one of a series of systematic studies of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) conducted by the United States Air Force. It started in 1952, and it was the third study of its kind (the first two were projects Sign (1947) and Grudge (1949)). A termination order was given for the study in December 1969, and all activity under its auspices ceased in January 1970.

15 A California license plate from the early 1950s would have had at most 7 characters; the “TT”would indicate Guieu might have used here the plate of an American-made car imported in France.

16 The day when a flying saucer landed in California and one of its occupants contacted George Adamski. See The Flying Saucers Come from Another World, q.v., and Flying Saucers Have Landed by Desmond Leslie & George Adamski (1953). (Author’s Note) Adamski (1891-1965) was a Polish American citizen who became widely known in UFO circles after he claimed to have photographed alien spaceships met with friendly aliens and flown with them to the Moon. Most investigators have since concluded his claims were a hoax, and he himself was a con artist.

17 If only!

18 The address of los Angeles’ City Hall.

19 See Note 55.

20 The 15 launched in June 1938 had a 2867 cc (175.0 cu in) six cylinder engine.

21 Anthropology museum in Paris, established in 1937.

22 French acronym for “Objets volants non identifiés”, i.e.: Unidentified Flying Object s (UFOs). The term “S.V.” for “soucoupe volante” is the equivalent of “F.S.” dor flying saucer. (Author’s Note)

23 True story. This strange phenomenon of “spontaneous human combustion” was never explained. The American writer Charles Fort, in his many remarkable books, mentions a number of similarly unexplained cases. (Author’s Note) Charles Fort (1874-1932) was an American writer and researcher into anomalous phenomena. His books include The Book of the Damned (1919), New Lands (1923) and Lo! (1931).

24 True. In mid-July 1950, two flying saucers landed on this airstrip near Paris and two “men” came out and talked with a witness; see The Flying Saucers Come from Another World, q.v. (Author’s Note)

25 The Simca Vedette was manufactured by French automaker Simca from 1954 to 1961. It had acquired the model from Ford France in 1954 and the car was initially marketed as the Ford Vedette. The Vedette finally evolved into the Esplanada, following Simca’s takeover by Chrysler in 1970.

26 Special Force of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del, or MVD, in the USSR. (Author’s Note)

27 Parsec: 19 trillion, 515 billion miles roughly (19,515,000,000,000) or 206,265 times the distance of the Earth from the Sun (around 93 million miles). Megaparsec: 1 million parsecs. Between these two units is the Kiloparsec equal to 1,000 parsecs. (Author’s Note)

28 The GAZ-M20 Pobeda (Victory) was a passenger car produced in the Soviet Union by GAZ from 1946 until 1958.

29 Stop! (Author’s Note)

30 Russian automatic pistol. (Author’s Note)

31 Idiots! (Author’s Note)

32 Moskvitch was an automobile produced by AZLK from 1946 to 1991.

33 The Zis was a limousine produced by Zavod Imeni Stalina. It was introduced in 1936 and was equipped with an 5.8 L (354 cu in) straight-8 engine. Production ended in 1941.

34 Famous Russian science fiction authors. (Author’s Note) Ivan Antonovich Yefremov (1908-1972); Alexander Belyaev (1884-1942); Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940).

35 See The Flying Saucers Come from Another World, q.v. (Author’s Note) The Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar was a VTOL aircraft developed by Avro Aircraft Ltd. (Canada) as part of a secret U.S. military project carried out in the early years of the Cold War. The Avrocar intended to exploit the Coandă effect to provide lift and thrust from a single turborotor blowing exhaust out the rim of the disk-shaped aircraft to provide anticipated VTOL-like performance. In the air, it would have resembled a flying saucer. Originally designed as a fighter-like aircraft capable of very high speeds and altitudes, the project was repeatedly scaled back over time and the U.S. Air Force eventually abandoned it. Development was then taken up by the U.S. Army for a tactical combat aircraft requirement, a sort of high-performance helicopter. In flight testing, the Avrocar proved to have unresolved thrust and stability problems that limited it to a degraded, low-performance flight envelope; subsequently, the project was cancelled in September 1961.

36 Located in the Gibber Plains, 125 miles NW of Port Augusta. (Author’s Note)

37 See The Flying Saucers Come from Another World, q.v. (Author’s Note)

38 Much simplified here, this is the hypothesis formulated by Lieutenant Jean Plantier of the French Air Force in September 1953. This hypothesis may be considered highly probable. (Author’s Note) In 1953, Plantier’s Commanding Officer, Captain Rougier, spotted a flying saucer in Blida, Algeria. This led Plantier to write an article entitled “Une hypothèse sur le fonctionnement des Soucoupes Volantes” published in No. 84 (septembre 1953) of the Revue Mensuelle de l’Armée de l’Air, and, in 1955, a book entitled La Propulsion des Soucoupes Volantes par Action Directe sur l’Atome (Mame), a work of speculative science concerning the possible atomic propulsion systems of UFOs, which also included dozens of summaries of eye witness reports. Plantier assume that all space is permeated by a form of high-powered energy that is the source of cosmic rays, and that UFOs have found a way to convert that energy into motive force.

39 From Rocket: Technicians and specialists in guided missiles. (Author’s Note)

40 Name given to the biggest laboratory center for detecting flying saucers that worked in Canada after the summer of 1952. This observatory had the most advanced equipment in the world. (Author’s Note)  Project Magnet was UFO study programme established by Transport Canada on December 2, 1950, under the direction of Wilbert B. Smith, senior radio engineer for the Transport Canada's Broadcast and Measurements Section. It was formally active until mid-1954, and informally active without government funding until Smith’s death in 1962. Smith eventually concluded that UFOs were probably extraterrestrial in origin and likely operated by manipulation of magnetism.

41 See Note 68. (Author’s Note)

42 There really was no such plant; Guieu may have been referring to Special Design Bureau No. 1 of R&D Institute No. 88, founded on 16 May 1946, and often known as OKB-1, named after its first chief designer, Sergei Korolev (1946–1966), who was responsible for Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite launched on October 4, 1957, and the subsequent Vostok program.

43 RDS-6, the first Soviet test of a hydrogen bomb, took place on August 12, 1953.

44 These stupefying, giant spaceships have been spotted many times on radar when a squadron of flying saucers come back to rejoin them; see Flying Saucers Come from Another World, q.v. (Author’s Note)

45 The airspace over the White House in Washington DC is forbidden to all air traffic. No plane (even of the USAF) has the right to enter it. The jet fighters stationed on the other side of the Potomac River have orders to intercept and shoot down if need be the violators who do not obey their orders. (Author’s Note)

46 Arnold, an amateur pilot, was the first to report a squadron of lenticular spaceships flying at high speed over Mount Rainer in Washington State. (Author’s Note) The Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting occurred on June 24, 1947; private pilot Arnold claimed that he saw a string of nine, shiny unidentified flying objects flying past Mount Rainier at speeds that he estimated at a minimum of 1,200 miles an hour

47 See the following journals: The Saucerian, Flying Saucers Review, Saucers Round Robin (USA); Flying Saucers News (England); Australian Flying Saucers Magazine (Australia); Flying Saucers (New Zealand); and, in France, Ouranos, the publication of the Commission Internationale d’Enquête sur les Soucoupes Volantes. (Author’s Note)

48 One can reasonably imagine that the USA today has planes capable of such speeds. The Douglas X3, a.k.a. the “Flying Stiletto”, could (at the end of 1953) reach almost 2,000 miles an hour and almost 200,000 feet altitude. The performance of the latest experimental prototypes can certainly triple this. Let’s point out that the US Air Force has strictly forbidden its pilots to “shoot at flying saucers.” (Author’s Note)

49 See The Time Spiral. (Author’s Note)

50 See Operation Aphrodite. (Author’s Note)

51 Indeed, the first flying discs of our Atomic Age made their ever more frequent appearances starting in 1945. However, the legends and traditions of all peoples on Earth make allusion to mysterious “flying chariots” (Vimanas) and other “aerial vehicles occupied by “beings from the heavens”. We find their trace among the Hindus millennia ago and long before that among the Atlantans; see The Flying Saucers Come from Another World, q.v. (Author’s Note)

52 The oldest traditions in Asia mention this fantastic secret city; see Beasts, Men and Gods by Ferdinand Ossendowski (1925). (Author’s Note)

53 See La Dimension X [Dimension X] by Jimmy Guieu. (Author’s Note) A 1953 novel by Guieu in which Kariven locates the lost city of Bakrahna in Tibet where seven old men and their army of Yeti plot to take over the world.