Palmiro Campagna,
Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Co., 1997
ISBN 0-7737-3015-X. 161 pp, plus appendixes and bibliography.
Palmiro Campagna has actually written two books under the same overblown title. One, the first half of this rather thin volume, is a well researched description of efforts made by the Canadian government to investigate various forms of aerial phenomena. Indeed, on this point Campagna has uncovered a good deal of newly released material from the National Archives of Canada relating to the activities of Wilbert Smith, an electrical engineer employed by the Canadian Department of Transport. During the early 1950s Smith conducted research, under the title ‘Project Magnet’, on geomagnetism as a potential propulsion system for aircraft.
Interest in unidentified flying objects led to further government action. Campagna has located documents which show that this subject was considered seriously enough by the Canadians that an inter-departmental committee, initiated at the prompting of Defense Minister Brooke Claxton, was created in 1950. The result was ‘Project Second Storey’, the Canadian equivalent of ‘Project Blue Book’, a programme sponsored by the U.S. Air Force to investigate UFOs. It was, however, unable to resolve many of the unexplained sightings made over Canadian airspace.
Campagna also examines in some detail the progress of the ‘Avrocar’, a disk-shaped aircraft, built by Toronto-based Avro Canada in the mid-1950s and allegedly based on German ‘flying saucer’ experiments conducted during the Second World War. This project was ultimately taken over the USAF but shut down in 1961 when the ‘Avrocar’ failed to meet minimum performance standards.
Campagna suggests that the ‘Avrocar’, a well-publicized aircraft at the time, was actually a ruse used by the Americans to divert attention away from their own work with ‘flying saucer’ technology, in particular ‘Project Silver Bug’. His findings on this point, however, are inconclusive.
As for the second half of the book, comprising mostly of a hodgepodge of speculation and rumour on subjects such as Area 51 and ‘alien’ technologies, the less said the better.