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A story about an Air base that has been built on an old dry lake bed. Lake Muroc now hosts all sorts of test planes, fighters, bombers, and even ground radar. All the high tech gadgets of the time.
Ernest Chapel plays Sgt Maxwell Wesley who tells this story about a particular SNAFU. Can the far fetched stories in science fiction magazines ever come true? Will man ever break the sound berrier? How quaint, but in 1948, this feat was yet to be accomplished.
Suddenly, on a clear desert night, a huge parachute is spotted. What kind of experimental airship is that? What kind of wierd flight suit is that guy wearing? The stranger is a pilot named Major Maxwell Wesley. Is this mysterious pilot the future person of our Sgt? They are identical, just a little age difference, but scars, and features are a mirror image of each other.
The story takes on a flavor of being crazy, crazier than it ought to. Why keep asking the Sgt questions? Why not ask the Major who parachuted in? I guess that’s the SNAFU. The Major is unconscious, well at least initially. Can the Major back up the story? Did the Sgt become a major, then travel back through time?
To me, the officers conducting the questioning seem awfully dense, and the SNAFU quickly turns into being FUBAR. It all boils down to travelling faster than the speed of sound, and arriving to a destination before you’ve ever arrived. Will this frustrating situation ever be resolved?
