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Bruce Cathie
New Zealand writer (1930–2013) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Bruce Leonard Cathie (11 February 1930 – 2 June 2013) was a New Zealand airline captain, author, and self-styled ufologist best known for developing a theory that sought to explain the flight paths of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Trained as an engineer and later serving with the Royal New Zealand Air Force, he flew for the National Airways Corporation from the 1950s onward. He became prominent after a widely publicised 1952 sighting over Manukau Harbour. Cathie went on to publish six books between 1968 and 1994, addressing subjects such as harmonic mathematics, anti-gravity, and nuclear testing. His work was circulated in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, where it attracted both scepticism and support.
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Life and career
Cathie was raised in Onehunga and Otahuhu.[1] He remained a long time Auckland resident.[2] He worked as an airline pilot for the National Airways Corporation (NAC), later Air New Zealand.[2] Alongside his aviation career, he pursued technical study and was a trained engineer.[3] In 1967, press accounts described him as a "respected amateur mathematician".[4] A 1978 report in the San Francisco Chronicle noted that he had served in the Royal New Zealand Air Force.[3]
Cathie married Wendy in the 1950s, having met her during his career as an airline pilot when she was employed as a flight attendant. The couple had two sons, Mark and Stephen.[1] Beyond aviation, he was noted for writing poetry, and contemporary accounts described the pair as "great dancers".[1]
He died in Takapuna in 2013 at the age of 83.[1] At his funeral, it was remarked that he had often been a subject of interest and a target for scientific skeptics.[1]
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UFO sightings and research
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Early sightings
In 1952, Cathie and six other pilots reported seeing an unidentified flying object (UFO) over Manukau Harbour, observed from New Zealand's Ardmore Airport in Manurewa.[5][6] Four years later, in 1956, Cathie reported another UFO, and in 1965 he additionally reported an unidentified submerged object (USO).[7] These reports, covering a period from 1952 through 1965, were described in coverage as part of the series of experiences Cathie accumulated during his career as an airline captain. In the same year of 1965, Cathie reported another UFO sighting while flying a Fokker F27 Friendship from Auckland International Airport at Whenuapai to Kaitaia.[5][2]
Mapping and theoretical development
Following these events in the 1950s and 1960s, Cathie began recording details of reported national UFO sightings. As both a pilot and a trained engineer he maintained written records and plotted them on a gridded map across New Zealand.[7][5] The mapping exercise included sites across the Tāmaki Isthmus, Rangitoto, Waiheke, and Māngere.[5] Accounts described this as an attempt to create a systematic archive of sightings as they were reported. Cathie became convinced the 1965 UFO was "neither natural nor the work of human hands", according to Vaughan Yarwood in New Zealand Geographic.[2]
Eltanin antenna controversy
A year earlier, in 1964, the USNS Eltanin, operating off of Cape Horn, recorded undersea structures. Cathie believed that this material was related to his developing theory, according to Mark Pilkington in The Guardian.[8] The object later known as the Eltanin Antenna was identified as a Chondrocladia concrescens in 1971.[8] Cathie reportedly described the Eltanin Antenna as a "bit of ironmongery" prior to its identification.[9] He maintained until his death that there were acknowledged visual similarities between the Eltanin Antenna and Chondrocladia concrescens, but that the comparison was an attempted "cover-up", according to Vice.[9] Reports also stated that Cathie nevertheless appeared on radio programs and on UFO-related lecture circuits as a speaker and commentator.[2] Pilkington observed that Cathie had studied the works of French ufologist Aimé Michel.[8] Yarwood wrote that Cathie's work was "disparaged and ridiculed", and noted that publishers were unwilling to work with him at the time.[2] Vice identified Cathie's works on UFOs as "fringe".[9]
Mathematical theories and nuclear testing
Later accounts recorded that Cathie claimed to have developed mathematical theories which, in his view, could be used to predict the behavior of UFOs and to link them with certain nuclear-related incidents.[1][7] In 1967, Copley Press in the Anaheim Bulletin reported that several UFO sightings in the area of Hawke's Bay on the North Island appeared to align with his calculations.[4] The New Zealand Herald noted that Cathie's theories referred to connections between UFOs and nuclear weapons testing or other nuclear-related incidents.[1] The natural nuclear fission reactor at the Oklo Mines, near Franceville in the Haut-Ogooué Province of Gabon, was of particular interest to Cathie.[9]
In related coverage, Cathie was reported to have expressed the view that anti-gravity was possible and that his research was relevant to it.[10] Cathie had leveraged portions of his research against data obtained from New Zealand Scientific and Space Research, described as a Kiwi UFO organization.[9] According to Cathie, they had assembled a repository of UFO-related data on sightings from "25 different countries over the course of a 12-year period", and that the organization invited him to research against it.[9] Of that data, Cathie alleged the most frequent timing for New Zealand-based UFO sightings was 9:45 PM NZST.[9]
Also in 1967, the The Record reported that Cathie had placed copies of his works in bank vaults in six nations, with instructions for access in the event of his death.[7] In 1968, the New Zealand government engaged Cathie to provide research material related to nuclear testing by France at the island of Moruroa in the Pacific Ocean.[3] The Royal Aeronautical Society in Auckland invited Cathie to present his claims in 1968.[9] Vice stated that Cathie was invited to join the society's president and secretary at dinner, where they challenged him to demonstrate with his formulas to forecast the date of a French nuclear weapons test.[9] Cathie reportedly predicted 24 August at the event to his hosts based upon his maths at the table, and then on 24 August 1968, France detonated a nuclear weapon in Opération Canopus.[9]
In 1978, Cathie stated that he had kept the government informed of his findings over the years. He said that he had expected to be "dismissed as a crank" or "told to discontinue his activities".[3] He also reported that he was encouraged to continue his research and to publish his results.[3] The San Francisco Chronicle stated that Cathie had exchanged correspondence related to his UFO research with members of the New Zealand Parliament in Wellington, including the 26th Prime Minister of New Zealand Sir Keith Holyoake.[3] Yarwood reported that Cathie spent 27 years on this project.[2] Vice later noted that over the years "scientists across disciplines have corroborated pieces of Cathie’s grid puzzle, albeit with some refreshed math".[9] Some members of academic mathematical communities, however, were reported to consider his work a series of "mathematical quirks".[9]
Later work and collaborations
Sir Robert Anster Harvey, writing in Metro magazine in Auckland, described Cathie's investigations of UFOs.[5] Harvey called Cathie a "serious researcher and not regarded as part of a lunatic fringe of UFO spotters".[5] In later years, Cathie cooperated with mathematician Rod Maupin in developing software, known as Gridpoint Atlas, which was used to plot the proposed grid lines on Google Earth.[11] According to Yarwood, Cathie's initial calculations were based on a series of UFO reports from one night in March 1965, when multiple sightings were reported nationwide.[2] Harvey further recorded that Cathie supported UFO theories that included undersea or water-based phenomena, and that he focused his attention on Lake Pupuke.[5] Harvey also reported that Cathie associated the "North Shore Hum" with UFOs.[5] Of his research, Cathie stated that "a number of people who knew me professionally and otherwise considered the possibility that my mind had become unhinged".[3] He reported that this line of work had placed his career as a pilot at risk.[3] The San Francisco Chronicle quoted him as saying, "After all, what passenger would want to be flown by a pilot suspected of having lost his faculties?"[3]
In 2021, Vice observed similarities between Cathie's theories to a 1973 research paper from the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union journal Chemistry and Life, entitled "Is The Earth a Large Crystal?"[9] Vice summarized the research paper as proposing that the planet originated as a crystalline structure in the form of a pentadodecahedron, which later weathered into a sphere, but remained crystalline and geometric within, allegedly influencing planetary surface conditions related to gravity and magnetic anomalies.[9] The article presented Cathie's "world energy grid" as a parallel attempt to describe global geodynamic patterns.[9]
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UFO related books
His first book, Harmonic 33, was published in New Zealand in 1968[12] and reprinted in the United Kingdom by Sphere Books in 1980.[13] Over the course of his career, Cathie published six books on UFOs and harmonic theories.[1] They include:
- Harmonic 33 (1968), first published by A. H. & A. W. Reed, Wellington (NZ), ISBN 1-539-79723-6
- Harmonic 695 – The UFO and Anti-Gravity (1971), first published by A. H. & A. W. Reed, Wellington (NZ), ISBN 0-589-00661-4
- Harmonic 288 – The Pulse of the Universe (1977), first published by A. H. & A. W. Reed, Wellington (NZ), ISBN 1-976-21787-3
- Harmonic 371244 – The Bridge to Infinity (1989), first published by America West Publishers & Distributors, Tehachapi, California (US), ISBN 0-922356-00-9
- The Energy Grid (1990), first published by America West Publishers & Distributors, Tehachapi, California (US), ISBN 0-932813-44-5
- The Harmonic Conquest of Space (1994), first published by Nexus Magazine, Mapleton, Queensland (AU), ISBN 0-646-21679-1
Documentary
- The Harmonic Code – The Harmonics of Reality (2007)
See also
References
External links
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