Going for a Two-fer

I might as well go for a two-fer by following my previous post with one on UFOs, the second biggest hot-potato on the Townsend Brown topic list. Townsend cemented his role in UFOdom for all time by founding NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena) in 1956.  Personally, I believe his interest in the subject dated further back, at least to the spring of 1945 when he "jumped" at the chance to parachute behind the lines and vet a German scientist claiming expertise in "ball lightning,"  the suspected root cause of the early foo-fighter sightings reported by Allied pilots.

This mission occurred two and a half years after Townsend had accepted a Lt. Cdr.'s commission in the USNR and then resigned from the regular Navy just days afterward.  Someone correct me if I am wrong, but shouldn't he have also resigned from the Naval Reserve that commissioned him? And how come Tractorman George tells of an occasion in Townsend's later years when the USN sent a sub tender to pick him up at the Catalina pier and deliver him to a waiting submarine?

I happen to think/believe that Townsend was employed by Naval Intelligence for many years after his public "resignation."  For one thing, that would explain how he, supposedly a civilian by then, was given a private research facility on the Barber's Point Naval Air Station in 1949.

It might also explain what happened in December of the previous year, when Mother Brown needed to be hospitalized on the mainland.  Townsend accompanied her there, checked her in and then left her to die alone. But Townsend loved his Mother dearly and (I suspect) he would have left her bedside only if he were called away for some vital national security reason.  And what was going full blast about then but the UFO furor?

It seems to me that those who were studying the matter were most concerned with the possibility that the UFOs represented advanced German-based technology of Soviet origin, The Professor, author of "The Big Study" blog, has presented a well documented analysis of the military position on the subject at the time. He includes a scanned copy of a situation estimate prepared for the Pentagon by the USAF Department of Intelligence and the Office of Naval Intelligence which bears the date of December 10 1948.  The author(s) of the report seemed to go out of their way to contradict the convenient "Weather Balloon" explanation that had been offered for past sightings.

I have no proof that Townsend was involved in the writing of that report, but I think it is quite safe to say that he always knew more about the UFO topic than he admitted.  By 1957, Townsend was handing batches of NICAP reports to Linda and telling her to look for reports of UFOs that wobbled because those were "ours."  Coincidentally, or not this request was delivered right in the middle of the Avrocar era, the *cough-cough*  "failed" attempt by the US Air Force and Army to develop a flying saucer.

Yeah. Failed. Right.  So what  was it that was being observed and and described as flying with a falling leaf-like  motion? And who did it belong to?