by Jay Reynolds
VERITAS NEWS SERVICE
5/24/99

The most basic premise of the contrail controversy has now been blown to bits.

Most people have been deliberately mislead by William Thomas, and many others, to believe that contrails always quickly evaporate, and any that persist are not normal.

This basic premise has led many to believe that if they saw suchcontrails, they were actually 'chemtrails', that were not normal, and in fact were anomalous and probably harmful or sinister.

Well described scientific studies have been presented by many scientists, meteorologists, and others that prove the above is incorrect. The idea that normal contrails cannot persist and spread is false.

In an effort to show historically that this is true, I have contacted several members of air crews who flew bombing missions over Europe during World War II. Without exception, they all describe in detail that such contrails were formed by their small(compared to today's aircraft) B-17 and B-24 bombers. Their testimony positively refutes the erroneous misinformation that has been repeated by people who did not bother to check their facts.

I remind you all that I not only stated this fact in my article "Those Mysterious Lines In The Sky" , I also sourced and documented the information with a link to a 50 year old photo, and a navigators flight log(see Mission 24) describing persistent contrails. This was done months ago.

The singular fact that normal contrails can persist totally blows away the hypothesis that persistent contrails are necessarily composed of harmful substances. While samples of alleged 'contrail fallout' have been supposedly made over the last two years, they have repeatedly either been totally unverifiable, knowingly false and misleading, or ouright fabrications.

These facts, and the many other deceptions I have exposed among the people promoting the contrail scare are clear examples of an observable pattern of deception which has taken place. The situation has been compounded by the rumormonmgers that repeat and embellish these fabrications, and the gullible victims that willfully and uncritically accept whatever they are told. With education and information available universally to all as never before, the contrail controversy is a sad commentary on the level of discernment of our people.

Thus a large hole has been blown into the initial premise of the 'chemtrail' hypothesis, which can no longer use contrail persistence as an indicator of anything abnormal. Below are some responses I have received from the eyewitnesses.

Jay Reynolds
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Jay,
Yes, we certainly did. Contrails were so thick that they became clouds. We often said that we created weather over Europe. They would persist for many hours, maybe days. We flew a different route coming back than going in partly to avoid the contrail clouds that we created. There are some pictures of contrails on my web site - none of these are shown to be very heavy but there were time when we were near the end of the bomber stream and the contrails were so dense that it was no dfferent than flying in clouds. A thousand or more
planes (4000 internal combustion engines) can make a lot of contrail at 25000 feet or more.
Hope this helps.
Willard Reese- 457th Bomb Group

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Dear Mr. Reynolds:
As you've assumed, the bomber crews as well as our fighter escort saw
contrails about every day even though an effort was made to avoid them. As
was often said, they represented large fingers pointing to the bombers.
Obviously of assistance to the enemy fighters who could spot us at a
considerable distance.

The nature of the contrails was such that they required certain atmospheric conditions to form. Thus, they were principally affected by altitude. At the pre-mission briefings, they typically advised us of the altitude that the formation of contrails could be expected with an effort made to avoid that particular altitude. More often than not though, we did in fact make contrails indicating that their information was faulty or that flying at that altitude couldn't be avoided. We in B-24s typically bombed from about 22,000 feet while the B-17s, which could fly higher, bombed from around 27,000, particularly at tough targets where higher was better in an effort to avoid the flak as much as possible.

My recollection is that the contrails persisted for some time. While I don't recall timing them, I would guess that they could be seen for fifteen minutes or more. At times, Germany appeared to be almost covered by contrails as far as you could see. Essentially creating a cloud layer which could possibly persist for hours I suppose. The bombers' in more or less straight lines, the fighters', usually above us, more random as they criss crossed or circled. A common sight was the escorts dropping their tanks and heading off after the bad guys.

The contrails also tended to create a cloud layer which restricted the visibility of the following aircraft. So, contrails represented a problem to us and were to be avoided if at all possible. The idea of poison clouds is obviously ludicrous to those who have regularly experienced them.

I haven't mentioned winds aloft which would affect the persistence of the contrails. In the northern hemisphere, the primary circulation at higher altitudes is north to south, combined with the earth's rotation (coriolis effect) results in winds out of the northwest. As a navigator, I'd often use a wind of 60 knots from 300 degrees if I didn't have anything better. While I've seen a wind of 120 knots from due north, in most cases it was from the northwest quadrant then you have the jet stream which can produce winds of 200 knots or more, principally from the west, but usually at higher altitudes
than we operated at.

Looking at contrails from the ground today, I've noticed occasional breaks which indicate inconsistencies in the atmospheric conditions at that altitude.

I hope some of my rambling may be of value to you.

Sincerely,
Ronald D. Spencer
788th Bomb Squadron
467th Bomb Group
96th Bomb Wing
2nd Bomb Division
8th Air Force
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Hi Jay,

What an unusual idea!! Yes, I saw contrails during the war in Europe.

The day was March 18, 1945, the target was Berlin, where approximately 1300
heavy bombers of the 8th AiR Force were to drop bombs. On that day our
scheduled bombing altitude was to be 21,000 for my Bomb Squadron, the 391st
BS of the 34th BG. As we neared Berlin at that altitude we began to stream
contrails from the wing tips, the tips of the tail assemblage, and the tips of the propellors on each of the 4 engines. We were, in effect, clouding the sky over Germany . In an effort to eliminate this phenom we were told to go to "Angels5" which meant that we were to add 5 hundred feet to our scheduled bombing altitude. So we went to 21,000 +500 or 21,500 feet and the problem did not resolve. If anything it got worse! We kept adding 500 foot increments to our scheduled altitude until our aircraft reached 27,500 feet, still trailing contrails.

We didn't like contrails because they pointed directly to the aircraft and provided a better target for the anti-aircraft gunners on the ground. I was flying as a toggleer (enlisted bombardier who threw the switch to release the bombs). When the lead bombardier's Norden bombsight released his bombs, two smoke bomb were released from below the chin turret. When the rest of the squadron bombardiers or toggleers saw the smoke bombs released we then hit the SALVO switch and released our bombs also. Of course, milli-seconds later we would have seen the actual explosive bombs falling from the bomb-bay but in an attempt to group the bombs on target we needed to release them ALMOST at the same time the lead bombardier released his bombs.

As we increased our bombing altitude toward 28,000 one of our engines (left inboard) lost power and we kept drifting back and lower from the 391st squadron elements. Finally, at 27,500 feet my pilot, 2Lt William Wilcox, told me to release our load so that we could maintain altitude. Off to my right I could see where the first elements of the bomb stream had dropped their bombs. Smoke trails from smoke bombs marked the path of the bombs toward the targets in Berlin. Obviously, the aircraft dropping the bombs had not traversed the air over Berlin and the sky below 28,00 was relatively clear. I hit the Salvo switch and then promptly closed the bomb-bay doors to decrease the drag on the aircraft.

The pilot then turned the B17 through north and back to a generally westerly course toward England. Then we started looking for a group or squadron where we could attach our aircraft for protection. We finally found one and pulled up under it until someone in the crew recognized that the aircraft were of the 100th
Bomb Group (the Bloody 100th!). We decided to take our chances on getting
back alone and so left the 100th and flew home as a sole aircraft, taking what cloud cover when it was available.

I seem to have become quite wordy in describing my encounter with contrails
but that is what I recall of the 18th of March 1945! Almost any of the books by the 8th AF biographer, Roger Freeman, have pictures of contrails over Europe. Most public libraries also have the Life series on WWII with similar pictures. And I am certain that NASA has abundant pictures in their files of WWII photos.

Since the war I have, on many occasions, called attention to aircraft marking up the sky and my memory goes back to March 18, 1945. My sons would also call my attention--"Dad, there's another airplane marking up the sky!". I have noticed that when certain cold-air masses flow south over the US that the phenomenon occurs. With many of the commercial aircarft fllying at altitudes
in excess of 20,000, I am not surprised to see contrails quite often. I believe the idea that aircraft are spraying poison is absurd!

Please write again if you have any questions that I might answer.
Hal Province 34th Bomb Group