Townsend's Last Trip

Long-time Townsend Brown inquirer Jan Lundquist – aka 'Rose' in The Before Times – has her own substantial archive to share with readers and visitors to this site. This forum is dedicated to the wealth of material she has compiled: her research, her findings, and her speculations.
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Townsend's Last Trip

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San Antonio: an alternate theory.

After “meeting” Townsend through Paul and Linda, I began researching the history of clandestine signals organizations operations, beginning with Elizabeth Friedman cracking the bootleggers code, until the end of the Cold War.

Though I have an extensive library from the time, the best histories of the post WWII period have been written by James Bamford and much of my alternate San Antonio narrative comes from his work.

When Townsend packed for his last off-island trip, Linda was told that he was going to San Antonio. From that story, someone extrapolated that he was headed for San Antonio, Cuba, in the heart of the alleged UFO hot spot. To my knowldege there is no real evidence for that, circumstantial or otherwise.

I can only work from the facts on the ground, and here they are as I know them:

Townsend was a signals man from his earliest years in the family lab.. Before he joined the Navy Research Lab, before he ever joined the navy, he wrote to the lab director about his measurements of ultraviolet radiation from distant stars.

As he well knew, that was a topic of special interest to the director. That letter didn't get his foot in the door, but his later demonstrated radio prowess did. The Lab was the happening place at the time,but it was still the late 1920’s and technology was primitive. The arrival of radar, WW 2 and and computers would stir things up, quite a bit, in the both military and the commercial world.

The 1953 public debut of the FORTRAN language made IBM’s fortune. With its arrival, Computers became more useful and accessible to a wider audience. But for a brief time, in the interim, post war period, computers had been rare and closely held secrets.

If you will, a brief digression here: Following on the heels of the Army’s Eniac computer, devoted to calculating ballistics trajectories. came computers Abel and Brutus. Abel was a digital computer, Brutus. analog. Formulas were calculated and translated manually from one to the other. I believe Townsend’s mathematically-inclined, multi-lingual BFF, Beau Kitselman, had one of the few minds capable of envisioning how that might be done more efficiently. Someone, probably Beau himself, has credited him with being the originator of FORTRAN and I can easily see how that might have been the case.

Back to the narrative: Once the scientific community mastered both radar and computers, there was a plethora of signals needing to be captured, measured, filtered, analyzed, recorded and posted.. Thus, the National Security Agency was created and charged with the management all of these activities. (It has been said that the name was meant to obscure their actual function as the National Signals Agency.)

Space surveillance activities were hidden in the Pentagon as unit C-1000, until they emerged as part to the new and secret for decades, National Reconnaissance Organization in 1960. This group was charged with launching classified satellite programs and missions.

Sometime after the its 1952 establishment a delegation of NSA cryptographers, and cryptologists were transferred from the D.C. area to a more secure and protected site at Brookings AFB near San Antonio, TX.

As to what the unit’s purpose was, I do not know. Perhaps they were transitioned to the NRO. Perhaps they communicated with extra terrestrials, or traveled through wormholes to escort off-world ambassadors to this planet. Or, perish the thought! perhaps their work was much more routine. That is not relevant to this hypothesis.

All we have been told is that when Dr. Brown arrived at his destination, the guys were really glad to see him. I can’t recall If “Morgan” used the word honored, but if these were the same guys, I feel they would have seen him as a revered elder, one of the originating members of a shared super-secret club that had never existed before in the history of the world. From this organization perspective, it makes perfect sense that when Doc Brown would have packed up his final set of lab papers, he was taking them to be placed in the archives there.

So that’s my version. Here’s what I think about the San Antonio, Cuba narrative:
  • if he was in San Antonio, Cuba ,he was on foreign soil belonging to Russia’s closest ally in this hemisphere.

    If he was visiting with denizens of the deep, off the coast, that was a rough trip on a frail old gentleman with one lung.

    If he was picked up by a UFO…perhaps we will know about it in a hundred years.
Paul, or any other reader with information, please speak up if you think my conjecture is way off base I would love to hear them.
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Re: Townsend's Last Trip

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I am just seeing this.

It's a lot to digest... and, yeah, it meets the 'Occam's Razor' test re Cuba -v- TX.

It also strikes me that an (unnamed) base in TX was one of the stops in Linda's 'Red Car' trip across the country for one of our visits here in Nashville.

I am intrigued that you reference James Bamford as a primary source for your scenario. I think I have read at least two of Bamford's books, and I dare say Morgan was quoting passages from 'Body of Secrets' in his first letter to me.

And, come to think of it, my very first contact with Morgan was a phone call from... Texas.

And two of the people at the fateful 'Ambush at Santa Fe' brunch were from... Texas.

The next question then becomes... how much of the whole 'Winterhaven' / electrogravitics stuff was actually a misdirection?

And then... what of... 'The Set'?

I'll have to sleep on all this.

Good take, though.

--P
Paul Schatzkin, author of 'The Man Who Mastered Gravity' https://amz.run/6afz
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Re: Townsend's Last Trip

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Paul, thanks for playing! Sorry for the wall of words. I have years of pent up Townsend talk, patiently waiting for my wits to grow sharper.

I am not sure if Winterhaven was a complete misdirection. I recall tracking a seemingly related contract from initial study until it was swept out the Black door. I may have even written about it in the old "Honk if You Know Townsend Blogspot" where I was stashing bits and scraps that seemed important or relevant to his life and work.

Tom Valone, who has reviewed the work of electrokinetics pioneers from 1918 forward seems to believe that Townsend's contributions point, not to anti-gravity, but to a "propellantless propulsion source:" https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... ion_Source.

If you recall, one of the many things Townsend impressed upon Linda was that everything was/is “all about oil.” Publication of a Propellantless propulsion” source would certainly have upset a great many gas driven applecarts.

From the sideways perspective, I took another look at Kenneth Arnold's 1947 sighting.

He reported seeing 9 silver objects (half moon or crescent shaped, he thought when they turned and he saw their darker leading edge, that moved in a synchronized manner, possessing tremendous acceleration speed, and traveling like saucers skipping across water. The objects Arnold observed were large, by his calculations, and he thought that they were some sort of eXperimental aircraft.

Two years later, in 1949, Nine balloon clusters carrying “instrumentation” packages were launched from the USS Norton sound (see previous post in this thread).. There is no observable connection between these two events, nor any suggestion that Townsend contributed to either of them, but the number 9* niggles at me, and sends me to a whole 'nother side, completely.

A later group of young “New Age’ physicists gathered at Josh(?) Someone’s east coast estate. The group included Rauscher, Sarpetti, I think and a few others. At the time, they were reported to be enamored of the channeling of “The Nine.” Some, if not all of these individuals were working on research for the CIA, and one was credited with developing directed voice technology. (Sorry, forgot his name…Nate, do you remember?)

I don’t remember if that was before of after Linda's time in the lab in Philly, ca 1966, demonstrating the “fan” as an amplifier, but she said that Mr. X was directed to sit in a specific spot. To my simple mind, this seems to indicate that he was meant to hear or experience something of a better or of a different quality than everyone else enjoyed. The imaginative mind can think of many possibilities for what that might have been. The most obvious to me choices are exceptional stereo quality or a directed voice transmission, or merely the wafting of a gentle "ionic breeze?"

Townsend once described the Breeze as one of his “ashtray” projects. In one sense, ashes are that which drops off while the fire continues to burn. During the cold war, however, “ashtray” products also meant miniaturized surveillance and communication devices, tiny enough to be hidden in an ashtray, or a pen, or the frame of a pointing.

Those of us old enough to recall watching Maxwell Smart talk into his shoe, thought (if we thought about it at all) that we were seeing the magic of transistors at work. Little did we know that by then transistors were only the visible ashes in the public tray. The State of the Art flame was already burning far beyond that 1947 technology,




*In a bit of unrelated synchronicity, as Johnny has contemplated the Native American idea of the medicine wheel over the years, he come to see it as a metaphor for the nine directions of spiritual growth and development, if one chooses to meditate upon them.
Last edited by Jan Lundquist on Wed Jan 25, 2023 8:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Errata Not C-1000 but 4C-1000

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Re: Townsend's Last Trip

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Townsend once described the Breeze as one of his “ashtray” projects. In one sense, ashes are that which drops off while the fire continues to burn. During the cold war, however, “ashtray” products also meant miniaturized surveillance and communication devices, tiny enough to be hidden in an ashtray, or a pen, or the frame of a pointing.
Interesting analogy.

Much to digest.

More later.

--P
Paul Schatzkin, author of 'The Man Who Mastered Gravity' https://amz.run/6afz
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Something Unaccounted For

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Jan Lundquist wrote: Wed Jan 25, 2023 8:08 pm Paul, thanks for playing! Sorry for the wall of words. I have years of pent up Townsend talk, patiently waiting for my wits to grow sharper.
Yes, well, indeed, 'patience' is the order of the day.

I am tempted at times to think that the 'Townsend Brown' story is less a 'biography' in the classic sense than it is a Rorshach Test: "Here, look at all the words, tell us what you see..."

And there are no incorrect answers.

So, moving right along...
I am not sure if Winterhaven was a complete misdirection. I recall tracking a seemingly related contract from initial study until it was swept out the Black door.
If my chronology is correct, then 'Winterhaven' was circulated during the same period that Morgan referred to as 'The Wounded Prairie Chicken' routine.
Tom Valone, who has reviewed the work of electrokinetics pioneers from 1918 forward seems to believe that Townsend's contributions point, not to anti-gravity, but to a "propellantless propulsion source:"
This, too, is a facet of what I'm calling 'misdirection' – at least in the context of this Forum thread.

There are a couple of angles that I've tried to sharpen in the 2023 Edition:

1. All the talk about 'ionic wind' is part of the dodge. That's the fluid dielectric construction, i.e. the Ionic Breeze air purifier, Townsend (and Linda's) 'fan/loudspeaker' and the various versions of the 'Lifter's.

2. Along the way, over the decades – starting with the affidavit that turned up in the Navy files with Paul Biefeld's signature – there was another phenomenon observed in the presence of solid dielectrics. That's the 'gravitor' (or gravitator) approach. That's what Townsend was testing in Paris in the mid-50s. And if, as you say, something was "swept out the black door," then it was the solid dielectric experiments, and the fluid dielectric demonstrations were all part of the subtrefuge, intended to discredit whatever was demonstrated at Pearl Harbor ~1950.

3. The best indication we have that something unaccounted for appeared in the presence of a solid dielectric comes from Jacques Cornillon and the "Montgolfier Project" – the experiments TTB went to Paris for in 1956. At this website, https://starburstfound.org/electrograviticsblog/ Cornillon asserts:
These vacuum chamber experiments were a decisive milestone in that they demonstrated beyond a doubt that electrogravitic propulsion was a real physical phenomenon.
So, yeah, 'Winterhaven' may not have been a misdirection, but at the very least it occurred at a time when a lot of other misdirection was taking place. I'll have to re-post the chapter about the demonstrations in Los Angeles (all the old chapters that were posted in 2005-2005 have been taken out of circulation).
If you recall, one of the many things Townsend impressed upon Linda was that everything was/is “all about oil.” Publication of a Propellantless propulsion” source would certainly have upset a great many gas driven applecarts.
Oh yes, I do recall that, but it does not fit easily into the newly streamlined narrative. I think that is a germaine angle on any discussion of alternative energy sources, and that includes nuclear fusion (and the recent 'breakthrough' at NIF might be the bigges 'redirect' of all; that was no breakthrough, it wasn't even sustained fusion; it was a miniature hydrogen bomb, triggered with lasers instead of a fission device. But I digress....).
From the sideways perspective, I took another look at Kenneth Arnold's 1947 sighting.
This is where I start to go a little cross-eye and reach for my tinfoil hat. The 'UFO Angle' on the Townsend Brown story probably deserves its own topic. I for one am somewhat reticent about going too deeply into resolving that particular cloud of mysteries.
...Mr. X was directed to sit in a specific spot ... he was meant to hear or experience something of a better or of a different quality than everyone else enjoyed...exceptional stereo quality or a directed voice transmission, or merely the wafting of a gentle "ionic breeze?"
We should take into account whatever it was Morgan observed when he poked his head into Dr. Brown's study at Ashlawn in 1963 (Chapter 2, 'No Moving Parts'). I think it's entirely possible that there was something besides crystal clear audio or even an ionic wind coming out of that apparatus. My own imagination wonders about some kind of physical force / phenomenon focusing on that 'specific spot' – maybe something gravitational, or inter-dimensional, or... well, go back to what Biefeld and Cornillon observed / commented on: something unaccounted for in contemporary physics.

Johnny has contemplated the Native American idea of the medicine wheel over the years, he come to see it as a metaphor for the nine directions of spiritual growth and development, if one chooses to meditate upon them.
I got exactly.... nuthin'.

I truly appreciate that there is lot that tempts the imagination in all this. Sometimes it all seems like a swarm of metaphysical wasps buzzing around in my head. Very non linear. Sometimes I sit with a friend or colleague and begin to pontificate on all this, and it starts to get linear and make a bit of sense. That's when I wish I had a recorder going.

Case in point, this new Version 2.0 of the bio/manscript: I don't think for a minute that it is the story. But it's a story, told a little more succinctly – and hopefully a bit more coherently rendered – than Version 1.0 (the 2009 edition).

What do you say we pick one thing and knock it around a bit? I think it all went off the rails when we tried to talk about everything everywhere all at once 🤪
Paul Schatzkin, author of 'The Man Who Mastered Gravity' https://amz.run/6afz
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It's "a multigenerational project." What's your hurry?
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"We will just sail away from the Earth, as easily as this boat pushed away from the dock" - TTB
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Re: Townsend's Last Trip

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I don't want to take over your forum with my exuberant, so-excited-to-talk-Townsend-again posts, but you and I seem to be the only people who really care whether he mastered gravity or not.
And if, as you say, something was "swept out the black door," then it was the solid dielectric experiments, and the fluid dielectric demonstrations were all part of the subtrefuge, intended to discredit whatever was demonstrated at Pearl Harbor ~1950.
I thought it was post wounded chicken, post Embassy Laundry. From the contractual chronology I traced, it seemed to me that that he wrote to Jo, he would be discussing something with ?? in DC. The $ amount of the contract that followed that meeting indicated that a small R&D effort may have been funded. It dropped from view the next year, about the time GE was selected as prime contractor for the Talent/Keyhole Program. It could have reached a dead end. If it didn't it may have been subsumed into the satellite work.

Concurrently with the contract issuance, Townsend relocated to a PA community near the GE operations. While there, he attended at least one meeting at longtime friend, Fennmore Johsnon's estate. Fennmore had a strong interest in the development of cameras for taking photographs in extreme environmental conditions. Such knowledge would have been useful to the development of the Keyhole cameras.

This particular Roschach inkblot screams to me that Townsend was involved with this satellite surveillance program, somehow. At the very least, I think he was there as an engineering representative of the CIA technocrats who were driving the program. At the very best, I think he was there to oversee the culminating production and integration of a something secret and important that had been a long time coming.

Yes, "propellantless propulsion source" seemes a misdirection to me as well. I am sorry I can't "talk science" with you. But i can talk history. And, in the end, no matter how we get there, I think our two trails come together.
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Re: Townsend's Last Trip

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Jan Lundquist wrote: Fri Jan 27, 2023 8:35 pm I don't want to take over your forum with my exuberant, so-excited-to-talk-Townsend-again posts, but you and I seem to be the only people who really care whether he mastered gravity or not.
I saw a video many years ago that made the case that 'the movement starts not with the leader, but with the first follower.' So I welcome your ethusiasm. I also think you understand how unweildly the topic(s) can become. Hopefully between us we can narrow the focus and shift it as the circumstances dictate. Sound reasonable?

As for 'whether he mastered gravity or not...' ... well, that is the question, isn't it (although I am suddenly reminded of Morgan's constant admonition not to reduce things to 'either / or')? That I never found a definitive answer to that question had a lot to do with why I threw up my hands in 2009. We may never know the answer; the difference for me now is that enough people over the years have said "well, it's still a fascinating story..." Ya think?
Paul Schatzkin wrote: And if, as you say, something was "swept out the black door," then it was the solid dielectric experiments, and the fluid dielectric demonstrations were all part of the subtrefuge, intended to discredit whatever was demonstrated at Pearl Harbor ~1950.
Jan Lundquist wrote: I thought it was post wounded chicken, post Embassy Laundry. From the contractual chronology I traced...
Contractual chronology? Did I ever see that?

Speaking of 'chronology': My friend (co-conspirator?) Mike W, who did the massive edit he presented me with in 2018, created a chronology of his own as he tried to grasp with the timelines. I
·      Autumn 1951 the Browns move from Honolulu to California and Townsend “reconstitutes” the Townsend Brown Foundation in L.A..  The prairie chicken flaps. 

·      January 1953 the Browns relocate from L.A. to Zanesville and Townsend gets a job with Clevite-Brush in Cleveland.  His August 12 woe-is-me letter to Josephine is more prairie chicken.  FBI files say Townsend was active in D.C. during this time.

·      March 21, 1955, FBI attorney Lloyd Dunn reports that Townsend has “ceased efforts to promote his ‘electro-gravitational’ theory and has entered into the business of operating a laundry in Washington, D.C.” and is no longer “engaging in any promotional activity” about his scientific work.

·      Shortly after (see Winterhaven chapter’s first paragraph) Lloyd Dunn’s report, an FBI informant in Columbus, Ohio, tells the Cincinnati FBI office that January 10, 1953, Townsend sent him a letter announcing formation of Winterhaven by the Townsend Brown Foundation in L.A. with support by a special fund in D.C..
 
·      Morgan tells you that “The years clicked off,” and “eventually” Townsend was working at Embassy Laundry in D.C., during which period he declared he was “finished with science forever.”

·      Early 1954 Josephine and Linda move from Zanesville “to join Townsend in D.C..”  There Townsend and Josephine live with Jacques Bergier while Linda lives with her grandparents and she encounters Robert Sarbacher.
Rolling right along...
From the contractual chronology I traced, it seemed to me that that he wrote to Jo, he would be discussing something with ?? in DC. The $ amount of the contract that followed that meeting indicated that a small R&D effort may have been funded. It dropped from view the next year, about the time GE was selected as prime contractor for the Talent/Keyhole Program. It could have reached a dead end. If it didn't it may have been subsumed into the satellite work.
Talent/Keyhole? Hmmm??? That's not ringing any bells at all. It looks to me like you have dug a lot more into TTB's acivities in the later years, in particular 'Meadville'. I ran out of steam by the time I got that far. You can write the sequel (or we can just post things here on the website, building 'content' as they say... generates traffic... maybe sells books?)
Concurrently with the contract issuance, Townsend relocated to a PA community near the GE operations. While there, he attended at least one meeting at longtime friend, Fennmore Johsnon's estate.


Fenimore. Eldridge's son. And there's that name again...

This particular Roschach inkblot screams to me that Townsend was involved with this satellite surveillance program, somehow. At the very least, I think he was there as an engineering representative of the CIA technocrats who were driving the program. At the very best, I think he was there to oversee the culminating production and integration of a something secret and important that had been a long time coming.
There is actually a lot of evidence pointing toward that, not the least Morgan's directing me toward the early surveillance satellite concepts described in Bamford's Body of Secrets. And I recall something about house-hunting near Chantilly VA, where the NRO HQ is located.

And once you go down that rabbit hole, then you're wondering about The Caroline Group and what does the NRO really do?

Pass the tinfoil hat...
Yes, "propellantless propulsion source" seemes a misdirection to me as well. I am sorry I can't "talk science" with you. But i can talk history. And, in the end, no matter how we get there, I think our two trails come together.
My ability to 'talk science' is pretty limited; if I have any talent in this arena, it's grasping broad concepts and making sense of them for lay readers. The interest in history we both share (my most useless talent is I can name all the monarchs of England and Britain in order going back to Edward the Confessor). So, yeah, parallelt trails that overlap and converge.

I am glad we have a conversation going. I am confident others will appear.
Paul Schatzkin, author of 'The Man Who Mastered Gravity' https://amz.run/6afz
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It's "a multigenerational project." What's your hurry?
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"We will just sail away from the Earth, as easily as this boat pushed away from the dock" - TTB
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Townsend's Cleveland handoff

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Your friend's TTB chronology traces his movements on the ground, but I think it might be useful to look at dates on Townsend's surviving correspondence to JO.

When he weeded his papers, he left only a couple of his letters to her. Each mentions a specific meeting. Why did he keep those 2?
The first was his Prescott and Williams. The second was this one, post Cleveland. I recall thinking that Townsend was handing off something from Cleveland to a "Sugar Daddy" with deeper pockets.

As to how we manage information, now that we are both wrestling the octopus, I will let you figure that one out. in the meantime, i will try to start a new topic each time I wander off course. This Last Trip one has gone far afield. Sorry.
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After those 1947 UFO sightings

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On September 23, 1947, Lieutenant General Nathan F Twining, head of the Army Material Command, issued a memo to Brigadier General George Schulgen of the Army Air Forces. The subject line of the memo read “AMC Opinion Concerning 'Flying Discs.[9]'”

According to Wiki:
The general tone of the memo was that unidentified objects seen in the skies by military personnel were not weather, astronomical or other phenomenon but rather objects that warranted further investigation.
That is partly true. But ihe memo, reproduced in the final pages of Hitler's Flying Saucers, A Guide to German Flying Discs of the Second World War, by Henry Stevens , at https://viewer.joomag.com/history/07330 ... 756?page=1) seems to say something more, as well. Twinings enumerates the characteristics of the flying discs, and en goes on to say the the folks he has spoken with says the capabilities, though costly would well bewithin reach of US scientists. He also acknowledges the possibility that witnesses are seeing craft from some secret US program that he is not cleared to access.

On a separate note, Hitler's Flying Saucers is an extensively researched look at the three separate saucer programs of Nazi Germany. Stevens also tell what is known about the scientists who worked on them. He notes that no more was ever learned about Otto Habermohl after the war. Stevens speculates that he was captured by the Russians.

Perhaps he was, or perhaps he was assassinated, to keep him from falling into foreign hands, or perhaps he was spirited away to South America. Or perhaps he was the scientist Sarbacher and Twigsnapper retrieved from a Russian POW camp after the war.

More Habermohl him, here: https://www.nevingtonwarmuseum.com/bell ... discs.html
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