Admiral Knowles was a veteran of both World War I and World War II. He held important submarine commands and wasn a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. Wilbert B. Smith (head of the Canadian government's UFO project, Project Magnet) claimed that in 1952, a time of the great UFO wave, the U.S.A.F. had recovered a piece of a UFO that had been shot at near Washington, D.C. He said that the U.S. Air Force had loaned him a piece of the recovery. He showed it to a friend, Rear Admiral H. B. Knowles. Statement by Rear Adm. M. Herbert B. Knowles: "I shall be very glad to accept appointment as a member of the (NICAP) Board of Governors and be listed as a 'believer' in the reality of UFO's, with the understanding that I shall resign if it appears at any time that your big group is beinq used to cover up for the top brass. I know that there is a real need to break through the official Washington brush-off and get the truth home to the people. There seems to be a great fear among the powers that be that the American people will panic if told the truth. How little they know and understand their countrymen. I feel that millions of our people already believe in the reality of the UFO's."