Let's return, even if briefly, to the subject of UFO's as they have been reported for thousands of years. As we pointed out in the story—and every reference to historical sightings of strange and unidentified objects in the skies is absolutely true—the entire subject of the UFO has been an area of great controversy. The truth is that there's no question that strange objects hurtle through our skies. There have been many sightings by highly experienced observers, and, since 1947, UFO's have been captured on film, tracked by telescopes, followed on radar, and had close encounters with manned aircraft.
It may seem strange that the most reliable reports and sightings do not become available to the public. Many UFO sightings by military forces are immediately classified. They cannot be explained, and our government dislikes intensely being on the "hot spot" as unable to verify what's streaking through our skies faster and higher than any airplanes we have in the air.
Because so many reports have been subjected to ridicule, airline captains and top pilots almost to a man refuse to comment publicly on discs and other craft—which are not known to be the property of any country on this planet—they have encountered in flight. This writer has hundreds of such reports from pilots who provided amazing details of the startling objects they have encountered in flight.
Also, when I was in the U.S. Air Force, I participated in UFOsightings investigations, talking to hundreds of witnesses who had encountered, on the ground and in the air, objects they could not identify. Many reports turned out to be dead ends. Others were exactly the opposite. As a pilot, I have also pursued UFO's while flying highspeed jets. I have chased a startlingly huge disc at low altitude when flying a B25 bomber; it easily outmaneuvered us and then flew away as if we were standing still in the air. What was it?
I do not know for certain, and I will not draw a firm conclusion when so much hard information is lacking. What we are facing is a mystery that, at least publicly, has yet to be explained in acceptable terms. But the mystery is real; there are strange and unidentified objects in our skies, and we'll just have to live with that reality until we learn enough to, hopefully, understand what's been tearing through our skies for so many thousands of years.
HOW ABOUT THAT TRIMOTOR?
There's an enormous difference between writing about the way an airplane flies and how it will perform, and the way it feels to the pilot flying the airplane.
Writing is one thing, and actually flying what is now an ancient trimotor like the Ford in this book is quite something else. So it's a great pleasure to be able to relate to the reader that the feel, the sense, and the handling of the trimotor in this book comes from the actual flying.
This writer owned and flew a Junkers Ju52/3m German trimotor that was both a transport and a bomber. It was much bigger and heavier than the Ford, but they were remarkably alike in many respects. In addition to flying the Ju52 and the Ford, there was yet another old trimotor in which I had the chance to get to know and feel the airplane at the controls, a highwing Stinson. By the time I'd put in a great many hours in the left seat of these grand old machines, I knew for certain that they were capable of incredible performance and versatility that still astounds today's pilots. Relating specifically to the Ford Trimotor in this book, the reader will no doubt be surprised to find that the barnstormers of old—the daredevil pilots who would fly as an "air circus" from town to town —actually used the Ford as an aerobatic airplane in dangerous maneuvers at extremely low heights! They would loop the airplane "right on the deck," take it up higher, and spin earthward, fascinating and amazing the awed crowds watching these remarkable flights.
But there's another level of accuracy, as well. Ford Trimotors were flown by the U.S. Army. Some Fords were loaded with machinegun positions, bomb racks, and other armament, and used in combat in different parts of the world. Everything the Ford does in these pages it did in real life. It's another case of reality outperforming fiction.
SKY CITY
Can there really be such a place as Sky City— Acoma— that seems more like a work of imagination than reality? An entire city atop a great mesa in a harsh desert land so vast that the city seems isolated and unknown—yet is really the oldest continuously inhabited community in all the Americas?
Again we are in a land where fact is stranger than fiction, for the ancient sky pueblo called Acoma is still inhabited today, and supports the Acoma Indians with evergrowing vitality. Acoma lies to the southwest of the New Mexico city of Albuquerque, and, as described in this book, it is surrounded by such fascinating lands as the Laguna Indian Reservation, with Elephant Butte Reservoir and its great lava fields to the south, as is the community with the improbable name of Truth or Consequences. Further south are the ramparts and scars of the modern age—the great dunes of White Sands where huge rockets and missiles flew in the experiments to open the space age, and near Alamagordo, the town of Trinity, host to the first atomic bomb ever exploded.
Were it not for the National Endowment for the Humanities which in 1973 made a grant to establish accurate histories of four great Indian tribes, including the Acoma, much of the past might well have been lost forever. The Acoma have believed, as far back into the mists and dust of history will reveal, that their people and their lands all were created beneath the earth, in a huge underground world they called Shipapu. When two sisters, Nautsiti and Iatiku, emerged from the subterranean holdings and were exposed to the sun, the first people and everything of Acoma sprang into existence at that moment. The spirits that protected Acoma produced husbands for the sisters, and in time their descendants became the Indians that populated the land, cared for flocks of animals, and fanned the grounds.
It seems strange when reviewing the history of what is now the heartland of the United States of America to discover that the "old times" of several hundred years ago were dominated by Spanish explorers and conquerers. Yet, the old records show that in the year 1629 Juan Ramirez, a priest with a Spanish expedition, was sent from that expedition (on its way to explore the Pueblo of Zuni) to see what might be the needs of the Acoma. For the Spaniards had been unduly harsh in their first encounters with the Acoma, and in 1599, a marauding expedition under Vicente de Zaldivar had wrecked the Acoma communities. The records show that what the Spanish had once destroyed, they then worked closely with the Acoma Indians to rebuild. Their city became stronger and more prosperous than ever, and on the great flatland mesa hundreds of feet above the desert floor, the Indians created a new Acoma with houses three stories high, and accepted Spanish design and religion as their own.
Yet long before the Spaniards, the great community on Acoma Mesa had thrived for multiple generations. When twenty years ago the effort was begun to record the ancient histories, it was learned that Acoma was but one name by which these people were known; others included Acu, Akome, Acuo, Acuco and Ako. All these names make a direct reference that, translated, means that this community of Acoma, atop the great mesa, is the "place that always was."