Walter Bosley – Origins of Airships and Breakaway Civilizations

My favorite co-host Walter returned to tell us about his new book Origins: The 19th Century Emergence of the 20th Century Breakaway Civilizations. The book presents a radical view of when, how and who was behind early controlled manned flight, and how early that this may have been achieved. We started off defining what exactly a “breakaway civilization” is, and moved quickly to a discussion of the famous airship artist Charles Dellschau, and how his beautiful drawings of aircraft from the 19th century may not have been merely fantasies. Walter says he has found many indications that those Dellschau mentions in his “fanciful” recollections were actual people.

Walter further contends that there was a group in Germany who funded the efforts of airship researchers in the U.S. and that these inventors turned on their benefactors when they discovered that the research was for the purposes of war. We also talked about Dr. Solomon Andrews and his demonstration of a controllable airship to Abraham Lincoln’s War department. He says that this was the basis for the first “black project” sponsored by the U.S. Government.