Stop Messing with History!
To support positive historical revisionism in the face of official Military history is to support intellectual barbarism. While publically the members of the JREF pretend to the title of “sceptic” and to support “scientific methodology”, in actuality, when push comes to shove, they support neither. They will literally abandon those admirable principles when they find their belief system to be under threat. And no more stark evidence for this has been presented in their latest “revision” of the Naval Aeronautical Organization forward estimate documents.
For example, EHocking “cites” from those forward estimate documents and in particular the document Titled
Naval Aeronautical Organization Fiscal year 1950 ((
http://www.history.navy.mil/a-record/nao23-52/fy-1950.pdf).
The first thing to note is – and counter to the claims of some members of the JREF - that the document IS a
forward estimate, and NOT a strict accounting of real world assets for the fiscal year. This is primarily evidenced by two things:
1) The date of the document itself: 1 May 1949. In accounting the fiscal year runs from July of the previous year to June of the current year. The
title of the document in question states
“Fiscal Year 1950”, yet it was produced in May 1949. That means it is a
forward estimate for the
forthcoming 1950 fiscal year (July 1949 – June 1950).
2) The statement on page 2 of the document:
“3. This pamphlet is issued as a means of presenting to interested commands the planned size and composition of Naval Aviation. Implementation of changes in the current organization will be effected by separate correspondence in the form of specific directives.” (emphasis mine. Rr)
Note the use of the word
”planned”. This means (again) the document is a
forward estimate – a “wish list” if you like.
Following this the document then proceeds (through Sections I to IV) to list the various speculatively planned number and type of “assets” that the USN (& USNR) hopes to implement in the 1950 fiscal year. It must be noted carefully that this “list” does NOT represent
current assets (although it is clearly
based on current assets and may indeed reflect the status of current assets where NO planned change is foreseen – but where it might do this - and there is no indication of precisely where this might occur in the document itself - that coincidence would be merely incidental to the true purpose and nature of the document).
The previous paragraph holds true until we get to Section V (p.24) which lists
“Existing" assets – in the form of Naval Air Reserve Stations - and the type and number of aircraft assigned to each. That is, this is the ONLY section in the whole document where
existing assets are listed (rather than
prospective assets “planned” for the coming fiscal year).
Now EHocking wants to contend that because NAS Oakland (California) is listed under existing assets - it has airships. This is an entirely erroneous assumption because ALL 21 active USNR stations are listed here – regardless of the
type of aircraft (if any!) are held there – the simple criteria being that they are “existing”. To find out precisely WHAT aircraft are held at WHICH bases we must turn to page 25 and the table headed
“2 Aircraft Assignments (Stations) Assignment of aircraft by types to Reserve Air Stations is indicated below:”.
The table itself consist of columns for “Location” (a list of all 21 stations), followed by the columns for the various types of aircraft held at those locations (7 types – by letter code) and finally a “Totals” column. Under the “type” columns is a figure representing the number of aircraft of that type held at a particular location. The type of aircraft we are interested in is the ZP (for zeppelin) type.
Under that column we find is that there is only ONE location that has existing airship assets: that is, NARTU (Naval Air Reserve Training Unit) Lakehurst, N.J., with 2 airships. NONE of the other 20 bases listed has ANY airships at all – and that
includes Oakland!
…and that is IT. That is ALL “she wrote”.
Now, couple the above with the following historical record and we can definitively conclude that there were NO USN or USNR LTA (airship) squadrons operating on the West Coast in 1949 (indeed, from 1947 onward until the early 1950s when an airship “revival” – of sorts - was begun):
“The reduction in LTA following the war left ZP-12 at NAS Lakehurst and ZP-31 at NAS Santa Ana as the only active squadrons. A detachment of ZP-31 continued at NAS Moffett Field. On November 15, 1946, ZP-12 was redesignated ZP-2 and ZP-31 became ZP-1. In the summer of 1947, ZP-1 made a home port and fleet change from NAS Santa Ana in the Pacific Fleet to NAS Weeksville in the Atlantic. The change was due to the reduction of NAS Santa Ana to a maintenance status and the elimination of the ZP overhaul mission at NAS Moffett Field.” (
http://www.history.navy.mil/download/lta-09.pdf)
(a precise and concise history of where ALL USN and USNR LTA squadrons were located – and the dates they were commissioned and decommissioned can be found in this document)
“Following the war, all blimp squadrons decommissioned except two which included Santa Ana's ZP 31 renamed ZP-1. Santa Ana also became an aircraft storage facility in November 1945. Finally in August 1947, the Navy relocated ZP-1 to Weeksville, N. C. and all blimp operations on the West Coast ended. On June 6, 1949, Santa Ana decommissioned becoming an OLF. For a time, the hangars were used by advertising blimps.” (
http://www.militarymuseum.org/MCASTustin.html)
Now it IS interesting that there IS this comment that some have pointed to in support of Airships at Oakland from
Oakland Aviation by Ronald T. Reuther and William T. Larkins:
“Navy Reserve Squadron ZP-871 (Lighter than air) flew one after the war at Oakland from 1952 to 1958. (This photograph shows…) It was used as a slow, low-flying billboard, with the words “JOIN THE U.S. NAVAL RESERVE, BE A NAVAL AVIATION CADET” on the side.”
However that was from 1952 on!
In 1949 there simply were NO “blimp” operations (apart from Goodyear) on the West Coast. End of story.
Now EHocking and Jocce have made some statements about what the forward estimates contain and what they actually are. I need not go into all the specifics, but suffice to say that on examination of the documents it should be clear to anyone that their claims are simply false, misleading and erroneous.
Jocce for example states that we should be using the
previous year’s document! But that is a forward estimate for the year 1949 (!)
dated 28 June 1948! But that is not the ONLY clue we have that the document is a forward estimate – similar to the “1950” document above we have :
“3. The phased expansion from the aeronautical organization existing at the start of fiscal 1949 (1 July 1948) to the ultimate at the end of the fiscal year (30 June 1949) will be the subject of appropriate aviation plans to be issued throughout the year.
4. This pamphlet is issued as a means of presenting to interested commands the planned size and composition of Naval Aviation. Implementation of changes in the current organization will be effected by separate correspondence in the form of specific directives.”(p.2)
And similarly on p. 26 we have a list of aircraft types by existing station and here (again) Lakehurst is the ONLY existing station with airships (6 of them, so the number
at Lakehurst went from 6 in July 1948 to 2 in May 1949!). That is there are NO airships at ANY other station, even in 1948 –
including Oakland! And of course this is in accord with official USN history.
Thus when EHocking states
“ The fact is that I was the one who researched these documents and am fully cogniscent of their content.” then quite obviously he is utterly mistaken. Simply he has not understood the nature or content of the documents at all.
I therefore simply make a plea to the rationality of the UFO debunkers to please
examine the documents carefully and to now stop with the military historical revisionism and get back to UFOs. You have been shown to be in obvious error (and
were shown way back when this issue first arose!). I cannot believe that it has been raised again when it is clear the error that is being perpetrated by the debunkers. You are in grave error and have been shown to be so. I don’t even require an official retraction from you if you will just please stop messing with official USN history.
