Page 14 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - April 2024

14 Silicon Valley’s Flying Saucer Man
The Forgotten Legend of
Silicon Valley’s Flying
Saucer Man
Continued from Page 13
For a time, his work paid off. Shortly
after he moved to Berkeley, Calif., in
1936, his pieces began to appear in the
Oakland Museum of California and the
Smithsonian American Art Museum. But
when World War II began, the market
dried up and Weygers began to struggle
again. At 40, and by then a U.S. citizen,
he joined the U.S. Army and served two
years in an intelligence unit, translating
messages written in Malay, Dutch,
Italian, and German. By the time he
received a discharge at the end of 1943,
he was refocused on his old Discopter
design, thinking it could replace the
helicopter, which he considered “an
unfinished piece of engineering.”
Weygers saw the Discopter as a way to
help U.S. soldiers as well as his family in
the Dutch Indies, many of whom had
been put in concentration camps by
Japanese troops. He imagined Discopters
flying quietly behind enemy lines to
perform rescue missions. After a short,
unhappy stint at Northrop Aviation in Los
Angeles, where he worried that his
colleagues might steal the idea, Weygers
moved to Carmel Valley with his second
wife, Marian Gunnison. An Army buddy
had bequeathed him several acres in his
will, so, with gasoline rations still in
effect, the couple motored 350 miles
north in a 1928 Ford Model A retooled by
Weygers to run on steam from burning
wood and kerosene. They didn’t see
another driver the whole way.
The legend of Alexander Weygers began
to take shape on this hilly, wooded 3-acre
plot. For months, he and Marian slept in
a tent he’d built and stayed alive on
dandelion soup and gopher stew. They
managed to coax some bees into hives
built with scrap lumber and traded the
honey in town for other goods. “We were
like Adam and Eve,” Marian later
recalled. “We had no neighbors. It was so
dark at night, and we’d just lie there and
watch shooting star after shooting star.”
Eventually, Weygers set to work on a
house that would become iconic. He
foraged in dumps for logs, metal,
bathtubs, sinks, and window frames to
recycle. He began building a structure saying the vehicle appeared sound but too
that looked like the cap of a mushroom— advanced for the time. (It would need
a hobbit’s lair in the Carmel Valley. It was lighter-weight materials and more
circular, with curved sides. Weygers efficient propulsion systems.) Most of the
described it as a “geodesic dome gone letters were disappointing. “Our technical
wild.” Every hinge, handle, nut, and bolt people have reviewed this design and
he needed was forged by hand. He stated they have no interest,” one U.S. Air
decided to leave the knotty wood exterior Force colonel wrote. “Your
unfinished to match the landscape. A thoughtfulness in bringing this to the
thick, flat roof covered the structure, and attention of the Air Force is appreciated.”
lichen took root along its edges. The end
product blended into its surroundings, In 1947 a flurry of stories appeared in the
looking almost as if the forest itself had popular press, discussing UFO sightings
produced it. and carrying the flying saucer into
mainstream consciousness. The Chicago
Near the house, Weygers also built an art Sun ran one in June of that year with the
studio and a blacksmith shop. Then he headline “Supersonic Flying Saucers
created a darkroom underground for Sighted By Idaho Pilot”; Newsweek and
developing photos. The yard around these Life published pieces along these lines
structures soon overflowed with within a week of each other that July.
scavenged objects. “It looked like a There seemed to be a flying saucer
junkyard,” says Rob Talbott, who grew outbreak across the U.S.
up nearby. “He had old vehicles, steel,
wood, and wheels. He’d save anything, Tales of mysterious flying objects date
because he’d reuse it.” To that point, to medieval times, and other inventors
Weygers was known to turn auto springs and artists had produced images of disk-
into chisels, axles into hammers; a shaped crafts. Henri Coanda, a Romanian
dentist’s chair became a contraption that inventor, even built a flying saucer in the
let him raise and lower hunks of marble 1930s that looked similar to what we now
with the tap of his toe. think of as the classic craft from outer
space. Historians suspect that the designs
After settling in, Weygers turned back to of Coanda and Weygers, floating around
the Discopter. The feds granted him in the public sphere, combined with the
Patent No. 2,377,835A in June 1945. He postwar interest in sci-fi technology to
hoped to gift the patent to the U.S. create an atmosphere that gave rise to a
military and then try to commercialize sudden influx of UFO sightings. Then, in
the technology. He assembled large the 1950s, NASA and other companies
binders of information about the and organizations actually attempted to
Discopter and mailed them off to build vertical takeoff and landing
branches of the military, airplane makers, (VTOL) vehicles with saucerlike designs.
helicopter makers, and even carmakers to
gauge interest. He received a handful of (Continued on Page 15)
encouraging notes back, with engineers