Rhodes Wrap Up

I said that I would let you all know about the results of my investigation into the Rhodes photographs. When this began, I had hoped for positive results simply because it seemed that too often I was exposing hoaxes and false information. It would be nice to underscore the unknown nature of a sighting.

Rhodes, it seemed, was a genius with multiple patents, who had a Ph.D. and who had photographed some kind of unknown object over Phoenix back in 1947. The Army, and later the Air Force, investigation seemed to be geared more to smearing him than it did to finding an unbiased answer to this case. That smear has little to do with the evidence that surround the pictures.

Here’s where we are today. Rhodes told, at least, two versions of how he received his advanced degree without spending the time and energy earning it in a more traditional fashion. While I could accept one version, that is, he had been awarded some sort of equivalency based on testing and his work with the Navy, the other didn’t make any sense to me.

That he gave two versions eliminates, at least in my mind, the validity of his degree. He had inflated his educational background more for his own ego than for any other reason. Because of this, his story is more than "beclouded" as Dr. James McDonald suggested.

In my research, I talked to or communicated with a couple of people who knew Rhodes. It seems they held him in high regard, were impressed with his genius, and knew that he was a clever man. One of those, Dr. Aden Meinel, who had worked with him in the mid-1950s would not confirm the story that Rhodes told about his "90 day wonder" degree, and I find that telling.

In the course of my work, I learned that what Rhodes had photographed, according to one source, was some sort of balloon-borne telescope and it was part of a then classified project that had been directed by SAFSP which is the Secretary of the Air Force Special Projects. Most of these were related to aerial reconnaissance and photography. In other words, they were attempting to determine how well objects on Earth could be photographed using a variety of platforms at a variety of altitudes.

There was also a mention of ITEK Corporation, but this organization wasn’t started until several years after Rhodes took the pictures. However, the man who started it, Richard Leghorn, had been knocking around Arizona before the beginning of the corporation he started and had been involved in this aerial reconnaissance research. From his own website I learned:

He was recalled to active duty to plan and photograph the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. What he saw changed the course of world history. It was obvious to Mr. Leghorn that there could not be another war using nuclear weapons. His vision; a new approach- deterrence and arms control- to prevent military conflict and to prevail if deterrence failed. So began his pursuit into aerospace reconnaissance, where he became one of the unsung heroes of the Cold War.

Richard Leghorn has been described as a true visionary in conceiving, planning and implementation of activities in the field of airborne and space reconnaissance developments, including origination of the "Open Skies" concept subsequently in preparation for Eisenhower’s conference of the four powers (US, USSR, Britain and France) at Geneva on July 15 1955. As a consultant and then active participant to the USAF Scientific Advisory Board as special assistant to the President for Disarmament Affairs, he was principal contributor to the early CORONA camera development. He was Chief of Intelligence and Reconnaissance Systems Planning and Development at the Pentagon. In "the Secret Empire- Eisenhower, the CIA and the Hidden Story of America’s Space Espionage", Philip Taubman of the New York Times wrote "no one person can fairly be called the progenitor of the reconnaissance revolution, but Richard S. Leghorn comes as close as anyone to fitting the description. Without Leghorn’s incredible skills and dedication our space reconnaissance technology would never have developed." Mr. Leghorn was among six pioneers inducted to Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame on August 24, 2006 for his development of early airborne and space-based photographic reconnaissance systems.

So, it is possible that Rhodes photographed something that had been created to test cameras and photographic capabilities from high altitudes. The problem is that craft, as has been described to me, is about only about three feet in diameter. If it was balloon-borne, it should not have made noise, and would be drifting with the wind, not flying about at several hundred miles an hour.

However, if it was only three feet in diameter, then Rhodes miscalculated the size, and if he had done that, then his estimates of speed and altitude would be way off as well. All his calculations were in error.

And I would expect other photographs to be made of something strange that hung in the air for two days, unless it was small and at low altitude. We do have the suggestion that Lewis Larmore also photographed the object, but, unfortunately, that information came from Rhodes and as far as I can tell has not been corroborated. If Larmore did photograph something, I have been unable to find either those photographs or a follow up in the Air Force files.

At this point, this is all the information that I have. I’m hoping that someone in Arizona or New York(where Leghorn lives) might be able to check the local libraries and newspapers to see if there are any follow up stories or examples of other photographs. A look at the city directories for Phoenix and William A. Rhodes might be interesting if not very useful.

At this point, given what I now know, I have little faith that the Rhodes photographs will lead us anywhere useful. The reputation of the man who took them is tainted by his own "resume enhancements." We have not found anything to suggest the other pictures he mentioned ever surfaced and it seems that his interest in anything was fairly short term. In the end, I suppose we can ignore the photographs and the implications, unless and until someone finds something more. This was not the result that I had hoped for.

Still More on Rhodes

Trying to get to the truth in an event that happened over sixty years ago is difficult at best. While I knew about the photographs taken by William A. Rhodes, had read the newspaper articles about them, and had read the Project Blue Book file about them, I had never delved too deeply into them. I just knew that the Air Force explanation of hoax was not based on any evidence that I had seen.

Rhodes, based on all this, seemed to be an eccentric guy who had a backyard workshop that he thought of as the Panorama Research Laboratory. He had letterhead paper and thought of himself as the Chief of Staff at the lab. He was not the first person to open a small enterprise and give it all a grandiose name. He certainly wouldn’t be the last.

The Air Force dismissed him as a fellow who lived off his wife’s income as a teacher and whatever he could make as a musician. They challenged his claim of a Ph.D. in a not very clever way, and suggested he was a crackpot not worthy of further discussion. His pictures were faked.

I regret that I never tried to find Rhodes and talk to him about his pictures. It wouldn’t have been all that difficult in the pre-Internet days. I mean, I found Delbert C. Newhouse who took movie footage of UFOs over Trementon, Utah. I intereviewd Carl Hart, Jr., in the mid-1990s about the pictures he took of the Lubbock Lights. I found Dewey Fournet and Al Chop who were involved with the official UFO investigations, the Washington National UFO sightings, and even sent Chop a copy of UFO, the movie about his experiences. But I never thought to find Rhodes. So now I have to do everything with Rhodes gone.

Rhodes is considered to be a genius by many who knew him. James McDonald, who investigated Rhodes in the 1960s made it clear that Rhodes was an inventor who held a number of patents, some of which provided a "modest" income. I don’t know how much money that might have been. Surely not more than a couple of hundred dollars a month, but enough to have helped.

His claim of a Ph.D., issued by the government is a little more difficult to prove. I have no doubt that during World War Two he was given some sort of test and scored high enough to be assigned work at a doctorate level. We still have that sort of thing in the world of the UFO. People who have not had the schooling, but who had worked at these high levels. Sort of a "bevet" degree, if you will.

Clearly Rhodes did not have a recognized advanced degree, and if this is enough of an embellishment for anyone to reject his photographs as faked, so be it. I think that Rhodes was honestly reporting what he had been told by a government official during his work for the Navy. He embraced it with an enthusiasm that is similar to that of others in similar circumstances. It’s not as if he invented the degree himself. But it’s not as if what he was told had any real merit in the world beyond that Navy job he held during the war.

Those who knew him tell me that he was very smart. One of those I contacted told me, "I remember Bill as a self-made genius. He even made the first image tubes that were sensitive enough to use at a telescope. But he seemed to lose interest in any of his detector advances as soon as he was satisfied that they would work. Unfortunately he had a knack of offending key persons at ASU [Arizona State University] and no doors opened for him. His portable 16-inch telescope was useful to me years later when I needed a network of independent amateur telescopes to monitor stellar "twinkling" as an indicator of the blurring ground objects as would be seen from a space optical system."

This seems to suggest he might have had an "abasive" personality. Note that it says here that he "had a knack of offending key persons at ASU and no doors opened for him." Doesn’t mean he wasn’t smart, just that he had no "people skills."

In my email to one of these supporters, he mentioned the "Phoenix Photographs" and offered an explanation for them. The object was some kind of classified balloon-borne camera that was being used to determine how crisp and clear pictures taken from high in the atmosphere could be. It seemed like a reasonable explanation and I asked for some additional details.

But, before I got those, I had some time to think and realized that the explanation made no sense because it had not been offered in the more than sixty years since the pictures were taken. To make it worse, the response suggested the object had been over the city for two days.

Not to mention that even if this was a classified project, as alleged, the answer would have been available to both the Air Force and the FBI and there is no indication in the files of this ever having been suggested. Remember, the Blue Book files (or in this case the Sign and Grudge files) were originally classified as "secret" so there would have been no trouble learning of the explanation, if such was the case.

Yes, you’re thinking "Need to Know." But in this case, they had a need to know. Even if the explanation was only offered quietly, those conducting the investigations had a need to know, and such an explanation would have been obvious in the files. Oh, they might not have mentioned the name of the project, but they certainly could have suggested the explanation was a classified project.

I was given the acronym of the organization that would have been in charge of this research, but according to everything I could find, it wasn’t created until the Eisenhower Administration. That would have made it six years too late, at best but this avenue deserves further investigation.

And there was even more trouble. According to a letter written by Rhodes and addressed to Colonel Howard McCoy, Chief of Intelligence (at ATIC at Wright-Patterson AFB), he said that he had been "trying to run down additional photographs of the unidentified object."

Rhodes added, "Mr. Lewis Larmore of this city has some [photographs] in his possession and I believe you can obtain copies of them by writing him. Whether or not they are real I do not know. Some of them look faked while others do not. The general shape of the ship as it was going away from me looked like this: there seemed to be a bubble on top and on bottom." (Rhodes illustration seen here.)

There is no evidence in the files, or anywhere else that I can find of a follow up to this rather startling information. Rhodes was invited to Wright-Patterson a year or so after he took the pictures. This was for another interview, but the government, or more specifically, Howard McCoy, wrote they could provide transportation but could cover no other costs. Rhodes declined.

So, now, though I had thought this would end quickly, there are more avenues to explore. I have found two documents, one running to over 350 pages, that deal with part of this story. No, not about the UFO sighting or photographs, but to the classified experiments that were being conducting and which might, and I stress the might, explain the pictures.

As far as I know, no one has ever found the alleged Larmore pictures, the Air Force did not follow up on Rhodes’ letter telling them about the pictures, they did not attempt to find and interview Larmore, and the pictures did not surface in any magazine or newspaper.

It seems to me that had an explanation been available, even if classified in 1947, it would have been noted in the file somewhere. Many of the documents in the file were originally classified so the mention of a classified project as a solution wouldn’t have been in violation of the regulations.

The Rhodes photographs, it seems, were ignored by the Air Force, the Air Force explanations don’t work, and it is clear they engaged in subtle character assassination of Rhodes. I believe, at the moment, that the follow up investigations were made, but not by the people at Project Sign (meaning Project Blue Book). Somewhere there is a file on this. The trick for me is to figure out where to send the FOIA request and what to ask for when I sent it.