Reading Room

19 September 1955

SUBJECT: Operation BRAVO-CHARLIE — Reassessment of the Operating Principle of the Apparatus in the Light of Findings Subsequent to the Second Field Trial

TO: The Chief of Operations

Attention: , Asst. Director, OSI

Reference is made to the after-action report of the Second Field Trial dated , to the inclosures forwarded under references INC-BC-4848459 and INC-BC-4848571, and to the revised technical note of Dr. dated .

This Division has, in the interval since the conduct of the First Field Trial in May of the present year, conducted a reassessment of the operating principle of the apparatus and of the operational object of the program. The reassessment has been undertaken in consultation with the Office of Scientific Intelligence and with the historical consultants attached to this Division. The findings are set forth below. They are not such as this Division undertakes lightly to commit to writing, and the present memorandum is forwarded with the recommendation that its distribution be confined to the addressees and to such further personnel as the Chief of Operations may specifically direct.

It has been the working hypothesis of the program, from its inception, that the apparatus effects the displacement of physical matter along the temporal axis in the rearward direction. The bench trials of the preliminary phase were consistent with that hypothesis, and the operational planning of the First Field Trial proceeded upon it. The findings to be set forth below are not consistent with it. This Division is constrained to report that the hypothesis cannot be sustained and that an alternative account of the apparatus must be advanced.

The First Field Trial of May 1955 resulted, as the Chief of Operations is aware, in the non-return of the vessel and was reported in the after-action documents as a failure of the operation. This Division was, however, advised in June of the present year by Professor , historical consultant, of the existence of a passage in the standard edition of Livy bearing upon the prodigies of the year 218 B.C., the passage having been brought to his attention in the course of his preparation of the historical appreciation for the Second Field Trial. The passage, an extract of which is forwarded under reference INC-BC-4848459, records the sighting of phantom ships gleaming in the sky in the period immediately preceding the campaigns of the Second Punic War. The passage has stood in the corpus of Livy without notable comment since antiquity and was reproduced in the Columbia University Press anthology of 1951 in advance of the authorization of the program and in advance of the conduct of the trial.

This Division has examined the passage and the manuscript tradition supporting it and is satisfied that the passage is authentic to the corpus as transmitted. It cannot be the product of the trial in any ordinary sense, for it antedates the trial by some twenty-one centuries upon the date of the manuscript and by some four years upon the date of the printed anthology. It is, however, consistent with the trial in every particular of which it speaks. This Division is constrained to report that the apparent failure of the First Field Trial was not a failure but a success of a character the program had not anticipated, and that the operational record of the program now extends backward through the historical record by means that the program had not foreseen.

The Second Field Trial, conducted in August of the present year against coordinates of 1440 B.C.E. in the Egyptian sector, was undertaken upon the assumption that the apparatus operated as the working hypothesis described and that a payload of active character would have its effect at the coordinates to which it was set. The trial yielded no recovery and was, by the criteria of the working hypothesis, a second failure. The Office of Scientific Intelligence has, however, identified in the published transcription of the papyrus designated by the Vatican Library as the Tulli papyrus, an extract of which is forwarded under reference INC-BC-4848571, a record consistent in every particular with the payload dispatched in the Second Field Trial, save in respect of the coordinates. The payload was set for the eighteenth dynasty in the lower Nile. The record places the event in the reign of Thutmose III, which is consistent. The record describes a circle of fire of dimensions consistent with the vessel and a foul odour consistent with the hazardous gas. It describes the multiplication of similar circles in the days following, which is consistent with the explosive payload. It places the events at coordinates the apparatus was not set to reach.

This Division is therefore constrained to report a further finding, more serious than the first. The apparatus does not deliver its payload to the coordinates at which it is set. It delivers the payload to coordinates determined by some agency other than the apparatus and other than the operator. The agency is not within the program. The agency is not, so far as this Division has been able to determine, within the cognizance of any office of this Agency or of the United States Government.

Dr. , principal technical officer, has in his revised technical note advanced the hypothesis that the apparatus does not effect displacement along the temporal axis but effects, rather, the translation of physical matter into a higher manifold of which the temporal axis is one of several axes, and from which return into the historical record is effected by means not under the operator’s control. The deterioration of organic materials observed in the preliminary phase, and the lateral positional drift observed at all magnitudes, are accounted for upon this hypothesis as interactions with the inhabitants or properties of that manifold. The shadow recorded upon the third plate of Trial Seven of the preliminary phase, the existence of which has not previously been entered upon the file and is now entered for the first time by the present memorandum, is accounted for upon this hypothesis as the projection into the apparatus of a body of dimension greater than the apparatus is capable of rendering. This Division is not in a position to assess the technical merits of the hypothesis. This Division is, however, in a position to report that the hypothesis is consistent with the operational record and that no alternative hypothesis presently before this Division is so consistent.

This Division is conscious that the findings here set forth are of a character to invite scepticism and that the documents adduced in their support, being two extracts of ancient or classical record and one photographic plate the existence of which is here first acknowledged, are not of a character that would ordinarily suffice. This Division has weighed the matter and has concluded that the proper course is to report the findings as they stand and to invite such further inquiry as the Chief of Operations may direct. The alternative course, which would be to defer the report pending the accumulation of further evidence, is in the judgment of this Division not open, by reason that the apparatus has now been operated twice with consequences in the historical record, that the inhabitants of the manifold, if such they be, have given proof of capacity to redirect payloads, and that the continuation of trials upon the present basis would be in this Division’s judgment imprudent.

This Division accordingly recommends, first, that further trials be suspended pending review at such level as the Chief of Operations shall determine; second, that the file be augmented to include the photographic record of Trial Seven, the revised technical note of Dr. , and the historical appreciations prepared by Professor ; and third, that consideration be given, at such level as the Chief of Operations shall determine, to the question whether the existence of the manifold and of its inhabitants is a matter properly confined to this Agency or properly the subject of report at a higher level. This Division does not presume to advise upon the third matter. This Division does, however, observe that the matter is of a character not contemplated by the directive of 4 May 1954 and not within the ordinary cognizance of this Agency.

This Division is prepared to attend upon the Chief of Operations at his convenience to address such questions as the present memorandum may raise.

W. SEATON

Division Chief, Western Europe

Inclosures: INC-BC-4848459; INC-BC-4848571; Revised Technical Note of Dr. (under separate cover, ); Photographic Plate, Trial Seven, Third Exposure (under separate cover, )