Flying Saucer Review January 1982 [antikvár]

Charles Gibbs-Smith in Washington, D.C., In 1979.Charles Gibbs-Smith nurtured many other interests, and not least among these was the lively enthusiasm which he developed for the study of UFO reports, and in later years he ventured further into other realms of parapsychology. It was at the invitation of the late Waveney Girvan in September 1960 that he joined the board of our Company, and so began his long association with flying saucer review. Formany years thereafter his homes were venues for our Board meetings which he usually chaired and for other occasions, and the social "get-togethers" of what Allen Hynek has always delighted in calling "The Gang." He was always generous in his advice and guidance to the editor of this journal, and colleagues. He made valuable contributions to the pages of flying saucer review, notably "The Cappoquin Sighting," his study of the reported observation and photograph of a UFO by Miss Jacqueline Wingfield near Cappoquin, Co. Waterford, Ireland, on December 26, 1965. (A letter of his about this same affair was published in The Times, with, uniquely for that newspaper, a reproduction of the photograph). In July 1966 the full weight of his authority as aeronautical historian was brought to bear in a statement about the 1897 (UFO) wave of "airship" reports: ". . . no form of dirigible (i.e. a gasbag propelled by an airscrew) or heavier-than-air flying machine was flying or indeed could fly at that time in America," and in 1968 there was another photographic case reviewed in "The St. Leonards Sighting." Perhaps his most telling contribution was "A Question of Integrity" (see FSR Vol. 16, No. 4) in which he poured scorn on the U.S. Air Force-sponsored University of Colorado study of UFOs: "The entire integrity of the Condon Report was shattered long before it was even written, when in 1966 the Low memorandum [the notorious "trick" memorandum by Project Co-ordinator Robert J. Low] was composed. Whatever intrinsic merits the completed report might possess were ineradically tainted in advance by what was revealed in the Low document. . ." Indeed he was always forcible in his declamations against any hint of official cover-up, and particularly so in his radio and television appearances.After his year in Washington "C.G-S" returned to his Fellowship at the Science Museum in 1980, but now his health took a turn for the worse, and his vigour and drive sadly declined. His last communication with us was to ask his secretary to telephone Gordon Creighton and say he would be unable to attend FSR's December Board meeting. We shall all miss him terribly.C.B.4