BEN RICH AND TED MERKLE WERE THE SAME MAN

Both of these men were working on 35,000 pound thrust ramjet engines at the same time. Ben Rich during this period claims he was working under the pseudonym "Ben Dover" that was a lie. He was Ted Merkle. Rich claims that he did his work on the Blackbird's inlet at the Lawrence Livermore when they did not have a Mach-3 wind tunnel to do his testing. It is also notable that Ben Rich went undercover, using the alias "Ben Dover" to develop the hydrogen powered plane (Rich & Janos 170). The hydrogen powered plane was a cover for the indirect cycle nuclear plane. So, we know that he was working on the nuclear plane project. And we know that Kelly Johnson was working on the plane as well.

Here is something interesting. REX-III contains 310 in the name. If you take REX-III and reverse the Roman numerals X and III you get III = 3 and X=10. You now have the RE-310 engine. RE-310 does not sound too different from GE-310. We know that Kelly Johnson liked to play with numbers this way. Also we know that Ted Merkle was the head of the R-Division at Lawrence Livermore. Which could account for the R instead of the G in the RE- XIII.







SOURCES:

 Rich, B. and Janos, L. (1996). Skunk Works. Boston: Back Bay Books.

Given the fact that there is often a eight to ten year lag between when something is produced and declassified. It is likely that this paper was produced in 1947/1949