1. Neither the Army, Navy, nor Air Force has at any time staged any guided-missile competition as rumored.
2. No unpiloted missiles or remote-controlled experimental craft have been tested over American cities or heavily populated areas.
3. No unpiloted missile carrying dangerous explosives, whether for destruction of the device or other purposes, has been deliberately launched or tested over heavily populated areas.
In regard to the so-called jet-propelled “Flying Flapjack,” I have been assured by Admiral Calvin Bolster, of the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, that this type of plane has never been produced. I concede that he might make this statement to conceal a secret development, but there is one fact of which every American can be certain: Neither this type, nor the radio-controlled smaller model, has been or will be flown or launched over areas where people would be endangered.
The three armed services are working on guided missiles. They are not risking American lives by launching such missiles at random across the United States,
Although most of our guided-missile projects are secret, it is possible to give certain facts about guided-missile developments in general.
The first successful long-range missiles were produced by the Germans. These were the buzz-bomb and. the V-2 rocket. But research in various other types was carried on during the war. Some of this was with oval and round types of airfoils. As already stated by Paul Redell, there is strong evidence that the disk-shaped foil resulted from German observations of either space ships or remote-control disk-shaped “observer units.” All the Nazi space-exploration plans followed this discovery that we were being observed by a race from another planet.
After the end of World War II, the international guided-missile race began, with the British, Russians, and ourselves as the chief contenders. Numerous types have been developed-winged bombs, small radar-guided projectiles launched from planes, and ground-to-plane plane-to-ground, and plane-to-plane missiles, equipped with target homing devices.
In certain recent types, the range can be stated as several hundred miles. So far as I have learned, after weeks of rechecking this point, not a single long-range missile has been identified as Russian.
Since this country is working closely with Great Britain on global defense problems, it is no violation of security to say that we have probably exchanged certain guided-missile information. In regard to the British long-range missile picture outlined to me by John Steele, I can state two major facts: