Alien Base: The Evidence for Extraterrestrial Colonization of Earth: REMOTELY CONTROLLED PROBES
Among Villa’s most remarkable colour photographs are those showing various remotely controlled discs and spheres, which had been launched from a manned disc, about 42 feet in diameter. This series was taken on 19 June 1966, three miles west of Algodones and 30 miles north of Albuquerque. Photo 10, for example, shows a disc on the ground, one of several said to be from three to six feet in diameter, complete with tripod landing struts. According to Villa, the struts did not telescope into the saucer as in several other cases, but instead seemed just to shoot in or out of the bottom. Allegedly, the contraption protruding from the top of the dome was an optical device incorporating a combination of prisms and lenses. The entire unit could be retracted into the dome and could also swivel from the bottom in a circular motion, or oscillate from side to side.
In photos 11 and 12, a similar craft is seen in the air and on the ground, accompanied by four or five spheres. The disc was said to be about three feet in diameter. On landing, it bounced, shot up in the air, then landed again in almost the same place. It made no noise while on the ground, but when it shot into the air, it gave off a sound ‘like an electric motor under load; an unsteady sound which seemed to pulsate’. The small spheres, no more than three inches in diameter, rotated around the larger, six-inch sphere when away from the disc.
When close to the disc, however, the larger sphere always remained near the top, and the other spheres whirled around it at different speeds and orbits. The following is Villa’s additional, non-verbatim description of the appearance and behaviour of the spheres: They also manifest in a cascade of changing colors, from a shining aluminum to a gleaming chrome then to a bright red or the sparkling blue of a welder’s torch. With the smaller spheres, this change in coloration did not take place rapidly but was a gradual modulation from one color to another in a pulsating rhythm.
But with the larger sphere the manifestation was different: as the small spheres careened about the larger one, the latter would change instantly from its shining chrome-plated luminescence to red, blue, green and even yellow. At times, too, the spheres would get glowing hot, resembling the frequently seen and often reported ‘fireballs’. Their speed and maneuverability were incredible, for they flitted about like butterflies or raced crazily at high velocity in an array of orbital patterns.
Some of the discs and spheres had ‘flexible, probing antennas resembling the antennae of certain insects’, though these are not visible in the photos.
One of the many controversial aspects of Villa’s claims is his assertion that he himself made one of the remotely controlled discs, which is shown in photographs 14 and 15. This ‘experimental craft’, a few feet in diameter — similar to the others though lacking landing struts — was made according to ‘exact specifications’ given him by his ‘space friends’. The photos show the craft in flight, ‘monitored’ by one of the spheres. During this test flight, said Villa, the disc fell to the ground due to a ‘slight error’ on his part, though the fault was soon rectified.
The problem here, of course, is that, apart from the absence of landing struts, it is practically impossible to differentiate between this disc and all the others, a corollary being that all the discs and spheres were manufactured by Villa. I do not believe that a useful argument is as simple as that. Even were this the case, one would have to ask how it was that Villa could have managed such an elaborate, impressive hoax, inasmuch as the discs and spheres evince no indication of being suspended or superimposed. William Sherwood, formerly an optical physicist for Eastman-Kodak, told me that, based on his studies of the prints and on his discussions with Villa, all three series of photographs are genuine.
What became of the experimental disc? Villa told me that it had been destroyed when his house had burned down some time after the 1966 contacts. He did show me a later experimental craft, also supposedly made with the guidance of his space friends, of a much deeper shape than the earlier one and 18-20 inches in diameter, which he had photographed during a test flight. Regrettably, perhaps suspiciously, he seemed reluctant to let me examine it at close quarters, though it no longer functioned.