Project Seal ( also known as the Tsunami bomb) was a programme by the New Zealand military to develop a weapon that could create destructive tsunamis. This weapon was tested in Whangaparaoa off the coast of Auckland between 1944-1945. The experiments were conducted by Professor Thomas Leech. British and US defence chiefs were eager to see it developed and it was considered as important as the atomic bomb. It was expected to cause massive damage to coastal cities; it could have even been used with a nuclear charge. The weapon was only tested using small explosions and never on a full scale. After 4000 test explosions over a seven-month period, none of which generated an appreciable tsunami, the project was closed down when it was determined that there were errors in the theoretical basis of the plan. The top secret documents on Project Seal were only declassified in 1999. A copy of the declassified report is available to the public at the Scripps Institution Of Oceanography Library in San Diego, California. Portions of the report can be downloaded from the Center for UFO Truth in the Shared Documents section[1] [2][3].
A 1968 research report sponsored by the US Office of Naval Research addressed this hypothesis of coastal damage due to large explosion-generated waves, and found theoretical and experimental evidence showing it to be relatively inefficient in wave making potential, with most wave energy dissipated by breaking on the continental shelf before reaching shore [4].
James Carrion, associated with MUFON and involved in discussion about alleged unidentified flying objects (UFOs), speculated that Project Seal may have been used as part of an elaborate deception program to convince the Soviet Union in 1947 that UFOs were a secret American weapons project, and also ferret out Communist agents within the US [5]. The Project was terminated in January 1945, but information leaked to the press in 1947 by both Thomas Leech, Director of Project Seal, and James Marion Snodgrass, an American scientist who collaborated on the project in its infancy, promoted it as an ongoing top secret research project. Carrion quotes press and military reports showing that there was speculation on what the weapon could be and, based on Thomas Leech being an expert in aerodynamics, that it was an airborne weapon.
Carrion suggests that the goals of this deception operation could have been one or more of the following: