THE GRUDGE 13 AFFAIR Byline: Peter Brookesmith Fortean Times, number 76 (Report on Bill English, a Vietnam veteran with an amazing story to tell. English told how in 1970 he had been sent into the Laos jungle with a Special Forces Team to investigate a bomber allegedly downed by a UFO; how six years later he had seen the secret Grudge #13 report while working as an intelligence analyst at RAF Chicksands in Bedfordshire; how he was separated from his wife and summarily deported back to the US without explanation; how back in America his former base commander from Chicksands had shown up out of the blue and invited him on a mission to find a buried flying saucer at White Sands Missile Base in New Mexico; how he survived an assassination attempt while looking for the saucer; and how, finally, he went into hiding for eight years, working as a TV cameraman for WSET Channel 13. Now Brookesmith evaluates the authenticity of English's bizarre tale.) When I first read the story of Bill English and the Grudge Report #13 I thought it was a folk tale like the famous Vidal teleportation case. Or that it was a hoax, a put-on by someone who either didn't know enough to get the details right, or who had made deliberate, judicious errors to alert the wise. But getting the full details from the horse's mouth left my boggle threshold in need of major repair. On the other hand, it did restore the smile to my face. What can one make of Bill English's extraordinary claims? First, let's take what allegedly happened in the jungles of Laos in April or May 1970. English maintains that Grudge/Blue Book Report #13 relates how the last message from a B-52 bomber before it crashed on a mission over Laos described an attack by a UFO; this was the same plane he had investigated, and his photos of the mysteriously mutilated crew were in the report he read while serving at RAF Chicksands. Twenty-nine US aircraft were shot down during operations over Laos between 9 March and 22 April 1970. Not one was a B-52, although B-52s were used in the 7th Air Force's Commando hunt campaigns against Laotian segments of the Ho Chi Minh Trail at that time. Indeed the records at the US Air Force's Center for Air Force History show that no B-52s were lost anywhere in South-East Asia from July 1969 until July 1972. Was the mysteriously downed B-52 English says he investigated one of the three that crashed in 1969? There could be no good reason for leaving an aircraft sitting in the jungle for nine months without attention, and English said his job was "to go in and find the aircraft, see if there were any survivors and bring them out." That implies a recent crash. So, if a B-52 did flop into the Laotian jungle in April or May 1970, the fact has been kept from the official record. This is more easily said than done. A B-52 Stratofortress is a very big and very expensive aircraft, and it's difficult to mislay one without someone soon noticing. It's also quite easy, if you have the patience, to trace the entire history of any of the 744 B-52s turned out of Boeing's Seattle, Washington, and Wichita, Kansas, plants between November 1951 and October 1962, from production line and force acceptance through upgrades and base assignments to combat loss, operational loss or mundane retirement. Some buff would have noticed by now if a B-52, the mighty winged equivalent of a dreadnought, had gone missing from the record 24 years ago (or at any time). None has. Every one of them can be accounted for. (Report on Bill English, a Vietnam veteran with an amazing story to tell. English told how in 1970 he had been sent into the Laos jungle with a Special Forces Team to investigate a bomber allegedly downed by a UFO; how six years later he had seen the secret Grudge #13 report while working as an intelligence analyst at RAF Chicksands in Bedfordshire; how he was separated from his wife and summarily deported back to the US without explanation; how back in America his former base commander from Chicksands had shown up out of the blue and invited him on a mission to find a buried flying saucer at White Sands Missile Base in New Mexico; how he survived an assassination attempt while looking for the saucer; and how, finally, he went into hiding for eight years, working as a TV cameraman for WSET Channel 13. Now Brookesmith evaluates the authenticity of English's bizarre tale.) When I first read the story of Bill English and the Grudge Report #13 I thought it was a folk tale like the famous Vidal teleportation case. Or that it was a hoax, a put-on by someone who either didn't know enough to get the details right, or who had made deliberate, judicious errors to alert the wise. But getting the full details from the horse's mouth left my boggle threshold in need of major repair. On the other hand, it did restore the smile to my face. What can one make of Bill English's extraordinary claims? First, let's take what allegedly happened in the jungles of Laos in April or May 1970. English maintains that Grudge/Blue Book Report #13 relates how the last message from a B-52 bomber before it crashed on a mission over Laos described an attack by a UFO; this was the same plane he had investigated, and his photos of the mysteriously mutilated crew were in the report he read while serving at RAF Chicksands. Twenty-nine US aircraft were shot down during operations over Laos between 9 March and 22 April 1970. Not one was a B-52, although B-52s were used in the 7th Air Force's Commando hunt campaigns against Laotian segments of the Ho Chi Minh Trail at that time. Indeed the records at the US Air Force's Center for Air Force History show that no B-52s were lost anywhere in South-East Asia from July 1969 until July 1972. Was the mysteriously downed B-52 English says he investigated one of the three that crashed in 1969? There could be no good reason for leaving an aircraft sitting in the jungle for nine months without attention, and English said his job was "to go in and find the aircraft, see if there were any survivors and bring them out." That implies a recent crash. So, if a B-52 did flop into the Laotian jungle in April or May 1970, the fact has been kept from the official record. This is more easily said than done. A B-52 Stratofortress is a very big and very expensive aircraft, and it's difficult to mislay one without someone soon noticing. It's also quite easy, if you have the patience, to trace the entire history of any of the 744 B-52s turned out of Boeing's Seattle, Washington, and Wichita, Kansas, plants between November 1951 and October 1962, from production line and force acceptance through upgrades and base assignments to combat loss, operational loss or mundane retirement. Some buff would have noticed by now if a B-52, the mighty winged equivalent of a dreadnought, had gone missing from the record 24 years ago (or at any time). None has. Every one of them can be accounted for. English says he didn't note the tail number of the B-52 he investigated - that he "didn't know aircraft from baloney". One of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst's most distinguished historians confirmed to me that the tail number of the aircraft, its squadron, crew members' names and service numbers, even specifications of code books, would be given to such a team. English can remember the precise date of his summary expulsion from the UK, but not the tail number of this very special B-52. Sending an Army Special Forces A-Team to poke around a downed B-52 would have been highly unusual in the Vietnam conflict. If the circumstances were very strange, then perhaps strange measures would be taken. But the US Air Force had their own very effective system for finding crashed aircraft and retrieving crewmen. This is hardly surprising; the planes were theirs, after all, not the Army's, and they had an empire to build just like the rest of the military establishment in Vietnam. The four squadrons of the USAF's 3d Aerospace and Recovery Group operated from 18 airfields and were directed from 7th Air Force HQ at Tan Son Nhut. A typical Search and Rescue (SAR) task force consisted of HH-53 Super Jolly Green Giant choppers, A-1 Skyraiders ('Sandies') to defend them and, later, Rockwell OV-10 Broncos acting as flying communications posts for the various parties involved. The USAF's SAR teams performed extraordinary feats of bravery and daring to fish downed airmen out of trouble. They would have had no trouble finding or investigating the B-52 that English describes. Ground troops were occasionally used to rescue airmen. In one of the most controversial rescue operations of the war, in April 1972, Lt Col Iceal Hambleton - the sole survivor of, as it happens, a downed B-52 - was finally extricated from enemy territory by a squadron of US Marines on the Cam Lo River. But, note, these were common marine grunts doing the job: it wasn't deemed necessary to call up the Green Berets for the task. There was an extremely secret command based in Saigon called MACV-SOG: an acronym for Studies and Observation Group, which was a cover name for all kinds of 'black' operations. Within it was SOG-80, the Recovery Studies Division, whose specialty was retrieving downed airmen from behind enemy lines. It is also worth quoting Captain Shelby Stanton's comment: "The blackest MACV-SOG operations were premised on concepts of absolute denial if ever exposed." But if English did work under SOG-80, it's curious that he can't remember it; admitting as much seems rather less of a secret to blow than the 'fact' of a UFO wreaking havoc with a B-52 bomber. So, all in all, to believe English's B-52 story, you have to accept a plethora of deviations from the usual track of events. Besides, the USAF allegedly knew that UFOs were involved. If the legends about Wright-Patterson AFB are true, wouldn't the USAF have kept this one well within their own walls? But the real question is: why would anyone bother to cover up a B-52 crash, be there whole squadrons of UFOs involved, that happened in a war zone? The war itself provides all the cover you need. What English says happened after his alleged visit to the downed plane is intriguing, too. Not long after he received a battlefield commission, his Alpha team was led into an ambush by an American defector. BillEnglish > He killed out point man and took his place. All BillEnglish > we saw was the back of his head, a guy in uniform, BillEnglish > using all the right hand-signals and everything. BillEnglish > We were a 10-man team. Four of us were killed BillEnglish > outright in the bush, six of us were taken captive. BillEnglish > Out of the six, I was the only survivor, because they BillEnglish > took 'em all out and tortured them to death at their BillEnglish > leisure. The last man they took out, they skinned him BillEnglish > alive. As he was dying, they threw him back in the BillEnglish > tiger cage - which was essentially a big bamboo cage BillEnglish > that you can hardly lie down in, you can't sit very BillEnglish > comfortably and you can't stand up - with me. BillEnglish > Apparently, when they had released him from his BillEnglish > ropes he had fallen to the ground and picked up a lid BillEnglish > from a C-ration can, which he stuffed under the muscle BillEnglish > on his chest. when they put him back in the cage with BillEnglish > me he pulled this out and said 'Get outa here, you're BillEnglish > next.' He died in my arms. BillEnglish > I used the lid to cut my way out of the cage and BillEnglish > I cut my guard's throat with it. Next thing I BillEnglish > remember, there was this big 300-pound black Army BillEnglish > sergeant tackling me. They had apparently tracked me BillEnglish > with a helicopter for about two or three miles at a BillEnglish > dead run. I spent several months at the hospital in BillEnglish > Saigon. On hearing my version of this heroic tale, my expert Sandhurst source said drily: "He got the bamboo cage right out of 'The Deer Hunter.'" Not being familiar with the NVA's preferred arrangements for their US guests in the field, I have enough difficulty with the arithmetic. If there was an American defector and a dead point man, how were there four men killed in the ambush and six survivors out of the 10-man patrol? (Which anyway was down to two down on the usual American complement of 12.) One might say it is (a) sheer coincidence, or (b) proof of the length to which the Establishment's UFO cover-up gang will go, or (c) convenient to Bill English, that there is no one alive today who might publicly corroborate key aspects of his story. His A-team, which took part in the B-52 investigation, was wiped out; and the two other crucial figures, "Colonel Robert Black and his operations sergeant" from English's time at RAF Chicksands, also allegedly die in suspicious circumstances. Full-blown conspiracy addicts will have little difficulty with these objections. They might even portray the US defector who led the A-team into an ambush as a double-agent, in the pay of the government UFO gang, leading these guys to their doom to ensure their silence. But in that case, why didn't someone slip English, the true-grit survivor of this byzantine plot, the poisoned needle while he was in hospital in Saigon? A good conspiracist should take no more than five minutes to produce an answer. English's version of his time in Special Forces in Vietnam doesn't hang together either. He says that he was posted to Vietnam from Fort Davis, Panama, where he was serving with 8th Special Forces Group. His unit was attached to 5th Special Forces in Vietnam. The locations for these groups are correct, but there is no record for any 8th SF being attached to 5th SF. Rather odder is English's designation of his unit as "1st Battalion, 5th Platoon, attached to Operation Phoenix". You would expect at least a company number in between the battalion and the platoon (the latter was never the same thing as an A-team, incidentally). Even in this garbled form, the unit seems not to have existed. But you would not expect to hear of a unit being attached to what was actually called the Phoenix-Phung Hoang programme, which was run mainly by the South Vietmanese and co-ordinated by the CIA. Only individual US military advisors were involved. Odder still, English cannot remember the number of his A-team detachment, which is surely a strange lapse in a professional soldier. It does, however, make it impossible, perhaps conveniently, to check a claimed unit against the fairly comprehensive records of A-teams and their locations that are in the public domain. While English implies that he was based in or near Saigon in May 1970, he has twice told me that his A-team was based near the DMZ (the demilitarized zone, roughly following the 17th parallel, between the old North and South Vietnams; this was in I Corps Tactical Zone). Where, exactly? "Dien Bien Phu, north of Phnom Penh." Neither of these names appears on large-scale maps of the DMZ area that I have consulted. This is a pity, but not a surprise. Because, while Dien Bien Phu is roughly north of Phnom Penh, it is in the former North Vietnam, and was an unlikely base, even for US Rangers. Phnom Phen was always an unlikely name for a Vietnamese town, being the capital of Cambodia. Mr. English's geography, as well as his memory, seems to be confused. What about English's close encounter with Project Grudge/Blue Book Report #13? There is no doubt that English is familiar, for whatever reason, with RAF Chicksands: he can describe the place minutely. It is certainly possible that a document, just as he describes it, was put his way. If English DID see such a report, it seems to me that it was more likely faked than not, and at least possible that he was the object of a species of psychological experiment. In 'Revelations' (Souvenir, 1992, page 179) Jacques Vallee notes that both Bill english and 'UFO Believer' Bill Cooper claim to have seen Grudge/Blue Book Report #13. He writes: JacquesVallee > I am not questioning the good faith of their JacquesVallee > testimony. The documents in question may have been JacquesVallee > nothing more than fabrications designed by their JacquesVallee > superiors to test their abilities to screen JacquesVallee > disinformation... It would only have been natural to JacquesVallee > test their degree of gullibility and their JacquesVallee > analytical skill by thrusting under their noses a JacquesVallee > document that mixed some elements of reality with JacquesVallee > some preposterous claims, as any good piece of JacquesVallee > disinformation art would. If that was the case, they JacquesVallee > certainly did not pass the test. And if that was the case, J. Allen Hynek's hand in it (and his qualified admission to Bill English) may be no more than the simple truth. Note that, like other star witnesses in this saga, Allen Hynek can't comment on his alleged part in it all - because he is dead. As for English's tale of being expelled from the United Kingdom: after months of my getting the most obtuse and oblique run-around from officials in the shiftiest and most paranoically furtive organisation in the land, our own dear Home Office, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Charles Wardle MP, was persuaded to reveal that "following a further search of Immigration Department files, my officials can locate no immigration papers relating to a Captain William English." Mr. Wardle also made it clear that only US military personnel are exempt from immigration control and deportation under the Immigration Act of 1971. Bill english was allegedly a civilian when he was allegedly deported. Who's telling the truth? English has repeatedly and consistently referred to the USAF commander of RAF Chicksands at the time he worked there as "Colonel Robert Black". The ever- helpful Captain Lewonnie Belcher, Chief of Public Affairs there, was unable to establish whether or not a Colonel Robert Black has ever served at Chicksands, since the base does not hold records that old. But she did supply me with a list of all the officers who have commanded the base since September 1956 to the present. There is no Col Black on the list. From September 1974 until August 1976 the base commander was Col James W. Johnson Jr. The USAF Military Personnel Center at Randolph AFB, Texas, has two Col Robert Blacks on its retired list. One retired in 1971, the other in 1981. The latter has communicated that he does not wish to discuss his military service. Make of that what you will. There is no Col Robert Black on their 'deceased' list. What of the visit to White Sands, during which 'Col Black' - whoever that person may really have been - and his 'operations sergeant' allegedly died? Larry D. Furrow, Chief of Public Affairs at the US Army's White Sands Missile Range wrote to me: "I can assure you that we have never fired a rocket at an intruder or his vehicle. In fact, the idea is rather ludicrous." The helicopters that patrol the range perimeter are not armed, he said, "But their occupants can be". Well, yes, nod-nudge-wink, they would say that, wouldn't they? But rocketing unwanted guests is a pretty ludicrous idea. Like hiding the loss of a bomber downed in a war zone, it's unnecessary; and messy, extremely expensive, and probably calling for a mountain of paperwork. Why bother? I have other reasons for not taking everything Bill English says at face value. One: I'd still like to see the copies of his DD-1422s (service records) that he has so often promised to send, and has agreed may even be published. Two: I was startled to hear him say on one occasion that Budd Hopkins habitually shows photographs of female abductees' genitals (complete with alien-induced scars) at his lectures in the United States. Such a thing does not accord with the Budd Hopkins I have seen in public or met in private. Indeed, Hopkins was at the very least disturbed and probably quite angry when he learned that Rima Laibow had showed such a picture at a conference held in Fairfield, Connecticut, USA, in May 1989. (See Jim Schnabel's 'Dark White,' Hamish Hamilton, 1994, pp 176-177.) I have a third reason too, but a third party's privacy would be disturbed if I discussed it here. I wish someone (men in black, I don't care) would let me have a gander at Grudge/Blue Book Report #13. I could probably just about put up with the consequences, if they meant being declared and undesirable alien and being flown to Tucson, Arizona, at the USAF's expense.