Sunnyvale and the Roswell materials theory

Sunnyvale and the Roswell materials theory

Date	12 September 2009
People	Eric W. Davis, Jacques Vallée
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 170
Year	2009 in UFO history
Timeline	2009 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	10

The Sunnyvale theory is a suggestion made by the physicist Eric W. Davis to Jacques Vallée on 12 September 2009. Davis proposed that the Lockheed designer Nathan C. Price would have been in a position to know about materials from the Roswell crash. He also suggested that any such materials were more likely held at Lockheed's site in Sunnyvale, California, than at the company's famous Skunk Works.^[7] The remark is known from Vallée's published journals, as summarised in a timeline submitted to Congress in 2024.^[6][7] It was a conjecture about where a hidden program might be housed. No document or named witness supports it in the sources read here.

The conversation

• The source. The exchange appears in Vallée's journals for 2000–2009, published as Forbidden Science 5: Pacific Heights.^[6][7] The Forbidden Science series collects Vallée's private diaries by decade, from 1957 to 2025.^[1][6]
• The timeline's summary. The 2024 timeline compiled by Michael Shellenberger gives the conversation in a single line: Davis told Vallée that Price "would be in position to know about Roswell materials", and that the materials were likely held "in Sunnyvale not the Skunk Works".^[7]
• Davis's reasons. The summary gives none. Davis's account of why Price would have known, and why he favoured Sunnyvale, is not recorded in the sources read here.^[7]

The earlier version of this article said Davis set Sunnyvale against the Skunk Works "in Burbank or Palmdale". The timeline mentions only "the Skunk Works", and the two locations are not named in the sources read here.^[7] The earlier version also called Price a pioneer of jet engines in the 1930s and 1940s, which the Wikipedia account of his career bears out.^[3]

Nathan C. Price

Price was a real aviation engineer. The Wikipedia account describes a varied career on the West Coast.^[3]

• Early life. Nathan Cozens Price was born on 20 December 1904 in Montclair, New Jersey. He won a scholarship to Princeton in 1923, then went to the University of California, Berkeley, and graduated in engineering in 1932.^[3]
• Steam power. While working part-time for Doble Steam Motors in Emeryville, he led development of the engine for a steam-powered aeroplane, which William Besler flew in April 1933. He also converted a LaSalle car to steam.^[3]
• Boeing. After serving as chief engineer of the Universal Engine and Propeller Company, he became chief engineer of Boeing in Seattle in 1937.^[3] There he designed and patented the cabin-pressure regulator at the heart of the Boeing 307 Stratoliner's pressurisation system.^[3]
• Lockheed. By October 1940 he was at Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank. In 1941 Lockheed engaged him to improve the turbochargers of the P-38 fighter, and he is credited with their later success.^[3]
• A jet engine. Price began designing his own turbojet in 1938. It caught the interest of Lockheed's chief research engineer, Kelly Johnson, who in 1941 began work on an aircraft to be powered by it: the engine became the L-1000 and the aircraft the L-133.^[3]
• Shelved. The government did not adopt the design, having learned of British jet work. In June 1943 it gave Lockheed a jet-aircraft contract built around a British engine instead, and Price stopped work on his own. The only surviving example of his engine is at the Planes of Fame Air Museum in Chino, California.^[3]

The Wikipedia account ends with the Second World War and says nothing about any later work, about Sunnyvale or about UFOs.^[3] On what basis Davis linked Price to Roswell, which happened in 1947, four years after Price's jet project ended, is not explained in the sources read here.

Lockheed at Sunnyvale

• The site. Lockheed's Sunnyvale site was home to Lockheed Missiles and Space Company (LMSC), part of the company's "Missiles, Space, and Electronics Systems Group". LMSC was started by Willis Hawkins, who was its president.^[9]
• Satellites. Next to Moffett Field, it ran a major satellite development and manufacturing plant. After Lockheed's merger with Martin Marietta it became Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space.^[9]

The earlier version of this article said the Sunnyvale division built Polaris missiles and spy satellites. The Wikipedia account read here confirms the satellite work, but does not mention Polaris or say which satellites were built there.^[9]

Context in Vallée's 2009 journals

Davis's remark came during the period when Vallée was close to the Pentagon-funded AAWSAP study run by Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS). The 2024 timeline's other 2009 entries from Vallée's journals show the same hunt for "legacy" programs.^[7][8]

• Old files. In January 2009, Colm Kelleher told Vallée that a BAASS team member was going to Area 51 to retrieve data from the days of Project Grudge and a rare "artifact" file kept away from Project Blue Book.^[8]
• MJ-12 doctored. In the same month, Hal Puthoff told Vallée that Admiral Edward Burkhalter, a former head of naval intelligence, had "doctored" genuine 1950s documents about an MJ-12 project in order to mislead the Soviets. Davis had already learned this through his own contacts, Puthoff said.^[8]
• Promises unkept. In April 2009, Kelleher said the program's sponsor at the Defense Intelligence Agency had still not delivered the promised introductions to, and access to, legacy UFO programs.^[7]
• Still blocked. In November 2009, Kelleher said clearances had been received, but the Air Force "nor others" would talk to BAASS until a special access program was set up for AAWSAP.^[7]

Speculation that such programs sat inside aerospace contractors recurs in the same circle. In 2018 the astrophysicist Bernard Haisch, a former Lockheed Martin scientist and a colleague of Davis and Puthoff, said four related programs dating back to 1947 were housed as of the 1990s in companies "such as for example Lockheed, TRW, Raytheon, Aerospace Corp". He argued that it is easier to hide a program in a contractor's facility than in a government one.^[10]

Assessment

• Opinion, not evidence. The Sunnyvale remark was an informal opinion passed on in a private conversation and recorded in a diary.^[7] It names no witness, document or program, and no evidence that Roswell materials were ever held at Sunnyvale is cited in the sources read here.
• The Price link. Price's documented career ends with his wartime engine work.^[3]
• How the guesses were made. Read with the surrounding entries, the remark shows how researchers close to AAWSAP tried to guess where any hidden program might be housed, after official channels had failed to open access.^[7][8]
• Other sources. Reviews and summaries of the later Forbidden Science volumes are listed below for further reading; none of them mentions the Sunnyvale remark.^[2][4][5]

People and topics

• Eric W. Davis — Physicist who worked on AAWSAP and has said the U.S. holds recovered craft.
• Roswell — The New Mexico town at the center of the 1947 crash story.
• Lockheed Martin — The aerospace company whose Skunk Works built the U-2, SR-71 and F-117.
• Jacques Vallée — Computer scientist and astronomer, author of the Forbidden Science journals and a central figure in UFO research.

On the Timeline

• Georgia witness visited by agents (2009) (8 May 2009) — A Georgia UAP witness says government agents visited him twice.
• AAWSAP special access program request (29 November 2009) — BAASS gets clearances, but the Air Force won't talk without a special access program.

See every 2009 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Nathan C. Price”, “Lockheed Missiles and Space Company”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.