Puzzle-filling: Leslie Groves - Sperry followup
On puzzles
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Getting to the bottom of the history of the US government’s multidecade engagement with the UFO/UAP phenomenon is like putting together a puzzle. Difficult puzzles have things like missing pieces, added pieces that don’t belong in the puzzle, not knowing the size or boundaries of the puzzle, and with lots of pieces that will probably never be distinguishable as belonging inside or outside the puzzle, or their place in the puzzle being consigned to perennial ambiguity.
With this metaphor in mind, this article is an assembly of information, but it does not represent a complete end-to-end story or investigation. Rather, it represents populating a cluster of puzzle pieces in the UAP research puzzle, in the hopes that others can use it to further populate their own clusters so that a larger whole may become visible & comprehensible.
Catch-up
In October I posted a piece on Leslie Groves. I focused on Groves because, c. 1945-47, on other, prosaic, matters he was the ultimate “Secret-Keeper”. Given UAP hijinks taking place in & around his ongoing jurisdiction in New Mexico into 1947, it is hard to imagine he would not only be ‘read-in’ on all things UFO during that heady time, but was probably one of those deciding who gets to be read-in. I feel it’s important that a figure like Groves be tied as a lead to The Program through logic - i .e. common-sense - before looking at sources like the still-unverified Majestic documents. (remember, unassailable verification of Majestic documents or content that is substantially / thematically similar to them, is, de-facto, Disclosure. It will be like checkmate to the Keepers of the Secrets). So we want to build that case independent of the Majestic documents. But if the Majestic documents have relevant leads, we can simply add it to the ‘intriguing’ category - offering up potentially more detail to a lead to be followed up on externally - even while keeping. in mind that that detail could also be disinformation.
How I got here
When I first began going down. the UAP rabbit-hole in the wake of the Grusch revelations, I didn’t know about Majestic. (Reminder to ufology aficionados - I come new to this). I was simply interested in the nuclear tie-in that testimonies from the Greer press club event (that shortly followed Grusch’s revelations) highlighted. From that alone, when set against prosaic history, I suspected & started to look first into 1) Leslie Groves and 2) Vannevar Bush, who I would go on to write about much later in time for the SOL Symposium (if you haven’t already, definitely read that article for the most pivotal piece of evidence my substack pages provide). That Vannevar Bush featured heavily in Majestic docs was something I only came to learn *after* triangulating on his likely involvement from first principles. (And I only learned a couple of days ago that Leslie Groves himself features in the Majestic docs - in the ''White Hot’ doc , h/t @richgel999 -- again, not citing it as basis for anything, rather the inverse - the case for Groves’ involvement must be built independently of a Majestic doc, in order to support any Majestic doc in question).
In any case, the post concluded that in trying to get to the bottom of the history of The Program, that it would be worth paying particular attention to the various incarnations of the Sperry corporation since that is the company (following its merger with Remington-Rand, which Groves would have had scope on given his responsibilities with that company) which, as far as we publicly know, he is most associated with in the later part of his life.
I’ve realized since posting that article that there was more reason why I fixated on Sperry - seeing the company associated with famously-secretive Groves when it came to national security interest, was only the final trigger for writing it up. The fact is, along with several extant aerospace companies, Sperry shows up repeatedly in reviews of the antigravity electro-gravitics research “craze” of the late 1950s’. My first foray into encountering its name in this context was the book by Nick Cook, “The Hunt for Zero Point”. Rather than serving as an original source for the Sperry item, rather it provided a starting point to identifying original sources for that. It was only that in parallel with reading that book that I came across Groves and his management of Sperry-Rand in my research, so the association persisted in my head to delve further.
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The 1950’s electro-gravitics “craze” is a subject to itself. The intended relevance of the piece you are currently reading will assume passing awareness of it. The tl;dr of the electro-gravitics trend is that several companies were competing to develop technologies that could be considered ‘antigravity’ in one form or another. Some other companies besides Sperry that articles in this topic highlighted were: Bell, Lear, Inc; Clarke Electronics; Glenn L Martin Co (“Martin Aircraft”), Convair, Sikorsky/Gluhareff, and GE. Others who wish to can also attempt to trace through where teams & knowledge from those companies ended up.
Here is the list of electro-gravitics publications I verified as mentioning Sperry.
Publication timeline:
• Nov 20th 1955 - Ansel Talbert (mentioning Sperry Gyroscope)
• Nov 21st 1955 - Ansel Talbert (mentioning Sperry Gyroscope, w/ quote from one Norman V Petersen)
• May 1956 - Interavia 1956 (mentioning Sperry-Rand)
• Nov 1956 - Young Men, “The G-Engine are coming” (mentions Sperry Gyroscope, non-canonical source link)
• June 1957 - Mechanix Illustrated "Conquest of Space: Anti-Gravity: Power of The Future" (non-canonical source link, mentioning Sperry-Rand)
I intercalate these Sperry-mentioning electro-gravitics article with the Groves timeline from my previous piece on him.
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Groves-Sperry Timeline
• Feb 28th 1947 - appointed chief of AFSWP (Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, associated with Sandia Base). [RFTB]
• Jan 30th 1948 - meets with Eisenhower who makes clear that Groves will not have MP-like influence in the future. Groves announces his retirement days after. [RFTB]
• Feb 11th 1948 - cryptic letter to his son: “..more value to the security of the US outside the Service than in.” [RFTB]
• Feb 29th 1948 - last day in the army - [RFTB]
• Mar 1st 1948 - to be in charge of R&D of office equipment at Remington-Rand's Laboratory of Advanced Research in South Norwalk, CT [RFTB]
• basically just name-association being the value of his activity [RFTB]
• Eckert and Mauchly of ENIAC fame would report to Groves [RFTB]
• 1952 - Gen. Douglas MacArthur becomes Remington Rand’s chairman of the board [Source]
• 1953 - Groves becomes company director - corporate administration & formulation of policy [RFTB]
• June 30th, 1955 - Sperry acquires Remington-Rand [Source1; Source2]
• 1955 - Groves becomes VP of Remington Rand when it became a division of Sperry Rand. Gen. Douglas MacArthur chairman, James Rand vice chairman, Henry Vickers made CEO [RFTB]
• “early 1950s” the Sperry Gyroscope Co, along with other companies with a large presence on the East coast, decided to disperse their facilities to lessen the risk from nuclear attack. [Source]
• Nov 20th 1955 - Sperry (as Sperry Gyroscope) is working on electro-gravitics. [Source: Ansel Talbert - NYHT #1]
• Nov 21st 1955 - Sperry (as Sperry Gyroscope) is working on electro-gravitics. [Source: Ansel Talbert - NYHT #2]
• May 1956 - Sperry (as Sperry Rand) is working on electro-gravitics. [Source: Interavia]
• Nov 1956 - Sperry (as Sperry Gyroscope) is working on electro-gravitics. [Source: Young Men]
• 1956-57 Sperry opens its Arizona company [1957 but personnel were there by 1956 for 'Sperry Systems']. [Source]
• June 1957 - Sperry (as Sperry-Rand) is working on electro-gravitics [Source: Mechanix Illustrated]
• 1957 - Operating as Sperry Rand, the company established the Sperry Phoenix Division, manufacturer of flight systems equipment, in 1957" [Source]
• 1961 - Groves resigns on his 65th birthday [RFTB]
• 1967 - Sperry Phoenix Company becomes Sperry Flight Systems [Source]
• July 12th, 1970 - Groves dies, old age, age 73 [RFTB]
• late 1970s - Sperry’s Phoenix division employs more than 4,100 people [Source]
end-timeline
For Majestic fans
As referenced in passing above, I don’t reference the majestic documents to substantiate this timeline or Sperry’s place in it, preferring to take a first-principles approach. (And if a small amount of additional confidence or appreciation comes from reading a Majestic doc *after* the fact, then so be it.) But for fans of the docs (whatever you feel they represent), you may be familiar with the so-called ‘White Hot’ document. Page 2 of that document reads:
SUBJECT: MISSION ASSESSMENT OF RECOVERED LENTICULAR AERODYNE OBJECT AND [illegible]
and
"MEMBERS OF MISSION". Major General Leslie R. Groves
So for people who like this document, there would certainly reason to trace this individual’s executive decisions in his subsequent career in context of the phenomenon. Decisions like, the establishment of Sperry Phoenix.
(By the way, anticipate an article from me dedicated to my take on the Majestic docs).
Next Steps
Since the goal of this is to understand where Groves-annointed Sperry divisions operate today, one would need to extend the timeline past the late 1960’s. Unfortunately this is where the endless succession of acquisitions that plague aerospace industry history makes things hairy. Not least because tracing these acquisitions out firsthand makes my eyes bleed, I would defer to purely prosaic aviation historians to get a better sense of this.
But that said, and not yet formally a part of the above timeline, but as a teaser from what’s to come (whether from myself or others so inspired):
• History of Ring Laser Gyroscope Development at Lockheed Martin (Formerly Sperry)
We can recall that the late Harry Reid in The New Yorker, and David Grusch on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, have both fingered Lockheed-Martin in context of the UAP crash-retrieval / reverse-engineering program. Whether or not they could be referring to the gyroscope division specifically is beyond me, but there you go.
PS: I note that one name from Sperry introduced in the 2nd Talbert article came up again in the Dec 1956 astronautics-themed issue of Interavia. This name is Norman V. Petersen, who would go on to work for Lockheed on Apollo. I leave this as a fresh lead for anyone who would like to trace through.
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PPS: The engineer in me is tempted to look at key technologies pioneered by Sperry for UAP program research leads. This is dicey because it takes one into speculative / subjective territory. The only thing I’ll state with some confidence from research is that for some time leading into the late 1940’s Sperry was America’s near de-facto monopoly in developing aviation gyroscopes, and so by extension, inertial navigation. (they were also very strong in radar technology). By the time of the Apollo program, other companies, such as the MIT Draper Lab, (which designs more than builds at volume), NAA’s Autonetics, Northrop’s Nortronics, Litton, and GM’s AC Spark Plug get into the game. So if you’re reverse-engineering a UFO/UAP in the late 40’s, having the world’s incumbent experts at inertial navigation working on the problem would be a must. If the inside of a reverse-engineered UAP warps spacetime, you want to measure that, and if it doesn’t, you want to be able to guide that reverse-engineered UAP with inertial navigation. Finally, none of the listed alternative gyroscope manufacturers were associated with electro-gravitics work. So from a pure technical perspective, let’s call this very pointed speculation (no gyroscope pun intended).
PPPS: Appreciating fellow r/ufos subredditors visiting this article today 🫡. If there’s one piece of evidence that I think you will not want to leave without, that materially advances the Disclosure conversation forward, take a look at the article I released timed with the SOL Symposium in November, on what’s looking increasingly like an intentional leak from Vannevar Bush himself (who lay the groundwork for and oversaw Leslie Groves’s work on the Manhattan Project). Of all the evidence that will ever emerge via my substack’s pages, this Vannevar item will reign supreme for a looooong time.:
List of new sources for this article:
Cook, Nick. "The Hunt for Zero Point" , 2002
"Yet, for the second time in a week I had found an article--this time certainly in a publication with a solid reputation--that stated that U.S. aerospace companies were engaged in the study of this "science." It cited the same firms mentioned by Gladych and some new ones as well: Sperry-Rand and General Electric among them.”
Gladych, Michael. - “The G-engines are Coming!”. Young Men, November, 1956
[refers to ‘Sperry Gyroscope’]
Stine, G. Harry "Conquest of Space: Anti-Gravity: Power of The Future", Mechanix Illustrated, June 1957
[closest link I can secure: https://archive.ph/e6ebE]
'Intel, Washington DC' [anon journalist, selected by editor] ( "Without Stress or Strain...or Weight", Interavia Aerospace Review p.373, May, 1956
Talbert, Ansel E; “Conquest of gravity aim of top scientists in U.S” New York Herald-Tribune (20 Nov 1955), 1, 36
Talbet, Ansel E; ‘‘Spaceship marvel seen if gravity is outwitted,’’ New York Herald-Tribune (21 Nov 1955), 1, 6;
Australian Defence report, The Black Vault. [* mentions Sperry, likely referencing the Ansel Talbert series or the Interavia ‘intel’ article]