◆ SpookStack

Tolson = BE. A. Tamm ee eS a By United Press ' — ' Air Force investigators—skeptical but intrigued are trying today to locate an eccentric inventor sho more than 10 years ago built two contraptions that look like “flying saucers.” The disc-type ships, battered and damaged, were found yesterday in an abandoned barn near Glen Burnie, Md., where they had lain untended for nine years. - ‘Tt is apparent that both ships would give the appear- ance of flying discs,” an Air Force spokesman said. NO REAL PROOF An Air Force officer last night described the two craft as “definite prototypes of flying saucers,” but the service hedged today. A spokesman objected to the word “prototype,” saying he Air Force has only reports of what flying saucers ook like and has never established that such things ac- ually were seen. The Maryland inventor, Jonathan E> Idwell, disap- eared in 1940. The only possibility of an¥ connection petween his old abandoned devices and the rumored “fly. ing saucers” of recent years would lie in the possibility A) 2) 4 ft A “oy - fy 7 , F LOT RECORDED 1. SEP 23 1949 ssing InYentor Hu ted or Clue to ‘Saucers —— Clegg Glavin Ladd Gurnea Harbo Mohr Nichols Pennington __ - Quinn Tamm_ Mri Nea s cumuanane Miss Gandy ~~ that he went to some other part of the country, devel oped better models and flew them successfully. f A good many officers find it difficult to believe he could have done that without coming to public attentio during the periodic excitement over “flying saucers” jin the past two years. But they would like to find out what happened to Mr. Caldwell after he left Maryland-and talk with him, if he still is alive. Mr. Caldwell, who would be about 70 today, left the Maryland ‘farm hastily nine years ago, after getting into financial trouble with the state. He took with him his wife and son. Maryland authorities at that time had ordered him to stop selling any more stock in his enter- prise, “Gray Goose Airways, Inc.” Previously, he had been ordered to stop selling stock in New Jersey and New York. NOT NATURALLY DISHONEST Robert E. Clapp, who as assistant Attorney General for Maryland, conducted the investigation of Mr. Caldwell’s operations in 1940, said in Baltimore today: “Whenever he needed more funds he went out and sold stock, and he continued to run the business as tho. it were his own. He wasn’t the ordinary type of frau- dulent stock salesman. I believe he sincerely thought he had something and I doubt if he thought he was eing dishonest.” For two years Air Force investigatdrs have been run- ning down clues from coast to coast on reports of flying saucers. The Air Force in the main has taken a skeptical attitude toward the reports. Its last official report said it just didn’t have conclusive evidence that they either did or didn’t exist. ONE TESTED HERE Some of the flying saucers have been reported seen from the air, but traveling at such high speed as to make pursuit impossible. One military pilot crashed to his death, reportedly while chasing a flying saucer. One of the craft found in the Maryland barn reported] flew here briefly around 1939. It was said to have gott y only 75 feet in the air, R se ne ship resembled a helicopter. But ins rotor blades it had a disc-like device about 16 feat PoRes td The device resembled two saucers revolvin to ameter. Small rotor blades jutted from between the tw P to top. The other craft, named the “Roto-Plane” Rey ie a plywood tub about 14 feet in diameter 1 ge ed like in the middle. The engine was in the tub man peat sa and bottom vims of the tub were four-bladed round. tor \ehich xeyolved in opposite directions, es “Propeller WASHINGTON NEWS Page eae |