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Title: The World of Flying Saucers: A Scientific Examination of a Major Myth of the Space Age
Author: Boyd, Lyle G., Menzel, Donald H.
Language: English
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THE WORLD OF FLYING SAUCERS
_The World of
Flying Saucers_
A SCIENTIFIC EXAMINATION OF A
MAJOR MYTH OF THE SPACE AGE
_Donald H. Menzel_
AND
_Lyle G. Boyd_
DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC., GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK
_Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 63-12989_
_Copyright © 1963 by Donald H. Menzel and Lyle G. Boyd_
_All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America_
_To_ FRED L. WHIPPLE, _whose studies have added much to our knowledge
of meteors--which have furnished more than their share of UFOs._
_Contents_
PREFACE xiii
I. THE SAUCER WORLDS 1
UFO Reports and the Air Force--The Scientist’s View--The
Question of “Evidence”--Various Types of UFO--Descriptions
of UFOs--A “Baedeker’s Guide” to Saucerdom
II. LO! 13
Arnold’s Nine Disks--The Great Shaver Mystery--The Maury
Island Fragments--Science Fiction Adopts the Saucers--Mirage
or Wave Clouds?
III. AIR-BORNE UFOS: BALLOONS TO BUBBLES 31
The Mantell Tragedy--A Probable Solution of the Mantell Case--A
Radiosonde over Virginia--Skyhook and Pibal UFOs--The
Guantánamo “Dogfight”--The Wallops Island UFO--Weather
Balloons and Saucers--Plastic UFOs and the “Stack of Coins”--Jets
and Contrails--The Killian Case-- ... And Kites and Soap
Bubbles
IV. THE SPANGLED HEAV’NS: STARS AND PLANETS 60
A Mirage of Sirius--Earth’s Distorting Atmosphere--The “Whipping
Girl” of Saucerdom--The Ryan Case--Venus as a Morning
Star--Venus as an Evening Star--The Rotating Lights of Japan--UFOs
and the Opposition of Mars--The Gorman “Dogfight”--Only
a Balloon?--Jupiter through a Jet Trail
V. OUT OF THE SKY: METEORS AND FIREBALLS 88
Stones from Heaven--Meteor Streams and Showers--The Green
Fireballs--Meteors in the Records--Fallacies about Meteors--Facts
about Meteors--Unusual Fireballs--Great Meteor Processions--The
Chiles-Whitted Sighting--Other Flaming UFOs
VI. LIVING LIGHTS 118
The Luminous Owls of Norfolk--Things That Glow in the Dark--Sea
Gulls as UFOs--The Lubbock Lights--The Lubbock Pictures--Other
Winged UFOs--The Tremonton Movies
VII. PANIC 133
Growth of a Panic--The Scoutmaster’s UFO--Monster in West
Virginia--The Panel of Civilian Scientists
VIII. PHANTOMS ON RADAR 145
Radar as a Reporter--The Principle of Radar--Weather and
Radar Echoes--The Kinross Case--The “Invasion” of Washington,
D.C.--Radar Experiments in Washington--“Simultaneous”
Radar-Visual Reports--“Ghosts” and “Angels” on Radar--The
Rapid City Sighting
IX. E-M AND G-FIELDS IN UFO-LAND 172
Stormy Weather in Texas--The Phenomenon of Ball Lightning--E-M
and Non-E-M Saucers--The Saturnian Visitors--Surveillance
by Flying Eggs--Saucerdom’s Miraculous Electromagnetic
Force--Effects and Causes--“G-Fields” and UFO Propulsion--The
G-Field Myth--Electricity, Magnetism, and Gravity
X. CONTACT! 198
Earthlings and Extraterrestrials--The “Contactees”--Adamski’s
Travels--Photography and the UFO--The Isle of Lovers Hoax--The
Trindade Island Saucer--The Brazilian Naval Ministry--The
Icarai Submarine Hunting Club--The Trindade Photographs--Project
Ozma
XI. ANGEL HAIR, PANCAKES, ETC. 219
Angel Hair and Spiders--Other Varieties of Angel Hair--The Wisconsin
Pancakes--The Moon Bridge--“Pieces of Saucers”--Silver
Rain in Brazil--Other Mysterious Fragments
XII. SPECIAL EFFECTS 238
The Role of Unusual Coincidence--The Problem of Unknown
Lights--Michigan’s Flying Bird Cage--UFOs from Reflections--Sundogs
in Utah and France--Bright Spots on Films--Unfamiliar
Lights on Planes--Inversions in California--The Chesapeake Bay
Case--A Possible Explanation of the Nash-Fortenberry Disks--Other
UFOs in “Stack” Formation--The Tombaugh Rectangles
XIII. INVESTIGATORS: AIR FORCE AND CIVILIAN 271
Official Study of UFOs--Civilian Saucer Groups--NICAP--The
“Conspiracy” Fantasy-UFO at Sheffield Lake, Ohio--“The Fitzgerald
Report”--The Open Mind
APPENDIX 291
INDEX 295
_Acknowledgments_
PLATE I: a, The Seattle _Times_. b, A Shell Photo
PLATE II: a, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. b, Wide World
Photo
PLATE III: a, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. b, Gilberto
Vazquez, _El Imparcial_, San Juan, Puerto Rico
PLATE IV: a, Wide World Photo. b, Wide World Photo. c, David Atlas,
Air Force Cambridge Research Center, Bedford, Massachusetts
PLATE V: a, Bernd T. Matthias and Solomon J. Buchsbaum, Bell
Telephone Laboratories. b, Dr. John C. Jensen, Nebraska
Wesleyan University
PLATE VI: a, United Press Photo. b, United Press Photo
PLATE VII: a, C. L. Johnson. b, Mrs. William Felton Barrett
PLATE VIII: a, United Press Photo. b, Wide World Photo
Figure 18. Courtesy _True, The Man’s Magazine_. Copyright 1952,
Fawcett Publications, Inc.
_Drawings by Cushing and Nevell_
PREFACE
Both as scientists and as devotees of science fiction, we have long
been interested in space travel. When reports of unidentified flying
objects began to increase in the years between 1947 and 1952, one of
us (D.H.M.) collected and studied the limited information available
about the sightings. He soon concluded (with a slight feeling of
disappointment!) that the flying saucers were not vehicles from other
worlds but were only mundane objects and events of various kinds,
some of them commonplace, some familiar chiefly to meteorologists,
physicists, and astronomers.
At a conference with Air Force officials in Washington in April 1952,
he presented his idea that planetary mirages, sundogs, reflections,
and other astronomical, atmospheric, and optical phenomena probably
accounted for a large percentage of the mysterious UFOs. This
suggestion met with strong skepticism from some of the conferees who at
that time were sympathetic to the interplanetary hypothesis and were,
of course, better acquainted with military than with physical science.
Other conferees, however, wished to consider and test the theories
offered. Proof obviously required a knowledge of all the facts of a
given sighting, facts that often were not available to the public. The
Air Force therefore granted access to the file of UFO cases. At the
same time, since many of the cases were then classified as secret,
the Air Force imposed the condition that security regulations must be
strictly observed.
D.H.M. was then preparing a book to present his explanations of flying
saucers. Acceptance of the Air Force offer, with the accompanying
restriction, would have prevented his publishing analyses based on
material in the files. It would also have hindered any future public
discussion of the UFO problem. For these reasons he felt compelled to
decline the opportunity.
In the spring of 1959 as we began planning the present book, we again
requested permission to study the Air Force records of UFO sightings.
This time the officials generously opened their files to us without
restriction. Thus we have been able to include detailed studies of
particular incidents, to give the explanations found for most of them
by Air Force investigators, to explain the causes of some hitherto
unsolved cases, and to suggest highly probable solutions for several
classic “Unknowns.”
To discuss each one of the thousands of unidentified flying objects
reported during the last fifteen years is obviously impossible. We
have therefore chosen to describe the common types of sighting and to
analyze some of the representative and most interesting cases in each
category. In general we have avoided using the names of the persons
involved; but when the names are well known to the flying-saucer public
and have previously appeared in print, we have felt no obligation to
disguise them.
Many persons have contributed to the material in this book. Members of
the United States Air Force have generously helped us to collect the
basic facts, and have shown amazing patience in answering hundreds of
small questions of detail. In particular, we wish to thank Col. Philip
G. Evans, Col. Edward H. Wynn, Lt. Col. William T. Coleman, Lt. Col.
Robert J. Friend, Lt. Col. Lawrence J. Tacker, Major Carl R. Hart, and
Sgt. David Moody.
Others who have helped us in various ways include Dr. Isaac Asimov,
Mr. Carleton Atherton, Miss C. M. Botley, Mr. Wilfred J. Chambers, Mr.
Albert M. Chop, Dr. Leon Davidson, Mr. Charles W. Dean, Mr. John F.
Gifford, Mr. Richard Hall, Mr. Theodore Hieatt, Prof. Seymour B. Hess,
Prof. J. Allen Hynek, Dr. Luigi G. Jacchia, Mr. Craig L. Johnson, Dr.
Urner Liddell, Mr. Oscar Main, Prof. Charles A. Maney, Dr. Richard E.
McCrosky, Mr. John W. McLellan, Capt. William B. Nash, Dr. Thornton W.
Page, Dr. Vernon G. Plank, the late Dr. H. P. Robertson, Dr. Donald H.
Robey, Dr. Carl Sagan, Dr. Clyde W. Tombaugh, Mr. John Walkin, Prof.
Fred L. Whipple, and Mr. John G. Wolbach.
D.H.M.
L.G.B.
THE WORLD OF FLYING SAUCERS
_Chapter_ I
THE SAUCER WORLDS
Thousands of reports of “flying saucers,” “unidentified flying
objects,” or “UFOs” have appeared in print during the last fifteen
years. Although most of the things seen have later been explained as
unusual but normal phenomena, some enthusiasts continue to regard them
as mysterious, and thus help perpetuate the myth that the “saucers” are
actually spaceships from other planets, busily carrying out a patrol of
the earth.
This saucer myth owes an unacknowledged debt to Charles Fort, a
talented reporter, writer, and self-appointed gadfly of science. With
a strong curiosity about the world of nature but without training
in the disciplines of research, Fort liked to challenge scientists
in general and astronomers in particular with tales of “impossible”
happenings culled from books of folklore, old journals, and newspapers.
He mistrusted orthodox knowledge because, he believed, it smugly damned
to oblivion all reports of marvels that it could not explain: pyrogenic
persons; rains of fish, frogs, and stones; accounts of telepathy,
teleportation, the vanishing of human beings, luminous objects in the
sky. Although he never claimed that he believed the stories himself,
Fort enjoyed collecting them and before his death in 1932 had completed
four volumes of these anecdotes.
Science-fiction writers have found an inexhaustible mine of ideas in
_The Book of the Damned, New Lands, Lo!_, and _Wild Talents_, which
also provide the chief elements of the saucer myth:
“Unknown, luminous things, or beings, have often been seen, sometimes
close to this earth, and sometimes high in the sky. It may be
that some of them were living things that occasionally come from
somewhere else in our existence, but that others were lights on the
vessels of explorers, or voyagers, from somewhere else.”[I-1] These
extraterrestrials may have been in communication with earthmen for many
years, Fort suggested, and they may sometimes kidnap and carry away
human beings.
_UFO Reports and the Air Force_
Most flying-saucer reports have come from reliable citizens who have
seen something extraordinary, something they do not understand.
Genuinely puzzled, they often report the incident to the nearest Air
Force base. The evaluation of such cases is the responsibility of the
United States Air Force. Since the beginning of the saucer scare in
1947, the chief investigating agency has been that at Wright-Patterson
Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio, and has borne a succession of
names--Project Sign, Project Grudge, Project Blue Book, and the Aerial
Phenomena Group of the Aerospace Technical Intelligence Center,
usually known as ATIC. Until recently this group operated under the
jurisdiction of the Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence. On July 1,
1961, it was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Air Force Systems
Command. To simplify discussion in this book, however, the group that
investigates unidentified aerial phenomena is generally referred to as
ATIC.
In military parlance the phrase “unidentified flying object,”
abbreviated as UFO, is used to indicate any air-borne phenomenon that
fails to identify itself to, or to be identified by, trained witnesses
on the ground or in the air who are using visual or radar methods of
observation. Created in the early days of the saucer era, the term UFO
is unfortunately misleading because it seems to imply that the unknown
is a solid material object. Many of them are not. The more dramatic
phrase “flying saucer” is similarly misleading because not all the
unknowns are shaped like a saucer, and not all of them are flying.
Since no one has been able to devise a more accurate brief term that
will apply to all reports in this category, both “UFO” and “flying
saucer” have remained in common use.
Air Force investigators and scientists have been able to account
for almost every reported “spaceship” as the result of failure to
identify some natural phenomenon. Some were the product of delusion
or deliberate hoaxes. A few remain technically “Unknown” because,
although the probable explanation is obvious, too few facts are
available to permit a positive identification. No such report suggests
the possibility that interplanetary craft are cruising in our skies.
_The Scientist’s View_
If a spaceship from another planet should ever visit the earth, no one
would be more eager to acknowledge it than our government officials
and our scientists. All governments would feel their responsibility
to protect the human race if necessary, and to establish diplomatic
relations with the alien race if possible. The scientists would want to
study, analyze, and try to understand the nature of both the ship and
its occupants.
Many persons, sincerely believing that flying saucers do exist, berate
the investigator who denies their reality and characterize him as
stupid, willfully obtuse, or intellectually dishonest because he does
not accept the saucer reports at face value but weighs them by the same
methods most of us use in weighing evidence in everyday life. When told
there’s a horse in the bathtub, for example, the sensible man realizes
that the alleged visitation, while not impossible, is extremely
improbable. Therefore he does not immediately begin speculating on the
color of the horse, where it might have come from, what its purpose
may be, and whether it will wreck the bathroom. Instead he adopts the
scientific method and first goes to find out whether the horse is
really there.
Like Fort, some flying-saucer believers are consciously or
unconsciously antagonistic to the scientific method and resent its
restrictions as a child objects to discipline. Suggesting that a
strictly logical approach deprives us of valuable truths about the
nature of the universe, and bluntly asserting that present-day
physicists and astronomers have closed their minds to the possibility
of new knowledge, these enthusiasts imply that we should require less
rigorous proof for the reality of saucers than for other types of
physical phenomena.
Because so many amateur investigators have misunderstood,
misrepresented, and condemned the scientists’ attitude, the authors of
this book (asking the indulgence of their colleagues) will briefly
outline the principles a researcher ordinarily applies to the study of
any new problem--the nature of radioactivity, the cause of a disease,
or the origin of flying saucers.
_The Question of “Evidence”_
Most physicists, chemists, biologists, and astronomers will agree
that life in some form probably exists in other parts of the galaxy.
These other life forms, if they exist, may or may not have a kind of
intelligence similar to our own; if they have, we might or might not
be able to recognize it. Such speculations, while fascinating, lie
entirely in the realm of theory. They are not facts and do not provide
the slightest support to the often stated corollary that intelligent
creatures do live on other planets and frequently visit the earth.
In approaching the spacecraft hypothesis, the scientist asks first:
What facts are we trying to account for? And second: Does the
spacecraft theory account for these facts better than the normal
explanations that are already available? After studying hundreds of UFO
reports, however, he concludes that much of the startling “proof” that
saucers are spacecraft is merely inference. Of the established facts,
none requires a new theory to account for it; and no evidence exists
that even faintly suggests, to the expert, that interplanetary visitors
are involved.
In the study of UFO phenomena this question of “evidence” is crucial.
The careful investigator tries always to distinguish sharply between an
observed fact, which is evidence, and an interpretation of that fact,
which is not evidence no matter how reasonable it may seem.
As a simple analogy, consider this situation: A man is sitting in his
living room late at night; the rest of the family have gone to bed.
Suddenly he is startled by a loud noise somewhere upstairs. Trying to
account for the noise, he thinks of various possible causes--a burglar,
the “settling” of the house, a mouse in the wall, someone dropping a
shoe, the wind rattling a door, the sonic boom from a distant plane.
If, without having further information, he decides that any one of
these is the true cause, he is accepting a guess as though it were a
fact. The real cause of the noise may be one of these or it may be
something else that he hasn’t even thought of.
Amateur investigators of UFOs publish many reports which they
characterize as absolute proof that spaceships exist. The expert,
analyzing the same reports, finds no proof at all because the actual
facts and the interpretations of the witnesses are hopelessly confused.
An early UFO case provides a typical example.
According to Air Force records[I-2], on the morning of December 6,
1952, a B-29 bomber was over the Gulf of Mexico returning from a
training mission. At 5:25 A.M. the student radar operator, using an
uncalibrated set, observed four bright blips (radar jargon for bright
spots on a radarscope; such a spot indicates the presence of an object
reflecting the radar pulses, but does not reveal the nature or shape
of the object). The blips were apparently returns from objects about
twenty miles away, in no specific group, which rapidly moved off the
scope. Similar groups of fast-moving blips appeared at intervals during
a period of about five minutes, and appeared also on two auxiliary
radarscopes. After the first set was calibrated, the blips reappeared;
none was observed after 5:35 A.M. From the radar data estimates of size
and distance were made; calculations based on these estimates indicated
a probable speed of 5000 to 9000 miles an hour. During the ten-minute
period two visual observations were made, lasting about three seconds,
which bore no obvious relation to the radar observations: at the right
of the plane one crewman saw a single blue-white streak going from
front to rear under the wing, and another crewman saw two flashes of
blue-white light.
An explanation of the incident was not found immediately, and ATIC at
first classified it as an Unknown. Some saucer enthusiasts interpreted
the facts to mean that several groups of saucers had been in the area,
machines flying so fast that they were visible only as blue-white
streaks, whose presence was confirmed by radar. These conclusions were
merely deductions from fact, not observed facts. The radarscope is
not a camera and does not, at least at present, picture the shape or
physical structure of the phenomenon it reports; it shows only spots of
light that change position and size. Similarly, the blue-white streaks
were mere flashes of light without size or shape.
In a later study of the evidence, the Air Force experts recognized
this incident as one of false targets on radar (see _Chapter_ VIII).
The radar phantoms may have been caused by beacon returns triggered
by another radar; by variations in the atmosphere; or, if “ducting”
conditions existed, by reflections from objects that were far beyond
the normal range of the radar set. The blue-white flashes had no
relation to the radar returns and were probably meteors; the date
corresponded with the beginning of the annual Geminid shower (see
_Chapter_ V).
This Gulf of Mexico incident is neither complicated nor puzzling. We
mention it chiefly to illustrate why the saucer enthusiasts so often
disagree with the conclusions reached by the Air Force experts. The
amateur assumes that the instrument operated faultlessly and detected a
solid object; he uses these assumptions to interpret the data, uses the
interpretation as fact, and by this “bootstrap” process deludes himself
into thinking he has proved what he assumed in the first place.
_Various Types of UFO_
A biologist trying to identify a group of unusual animals which are
said to represent a new species begins by collecting all possible
information about their appearance and behavior. After he has
determined their typical size, shape, color, mode of reproduction,
manner of locomotion, etc., he compares these characteristics with
those of animals of known species and eventually classifies the strange
specimens. In a similar way the professional investigator of UFO
phenomena begins by asking the question: What is a typical unidentified
flying object?
The published reports comprise a heterogeneous collection of facts,
fiction, and guesses. The investigator must first separate and discard
accounts that are obvious hoaxes or delusions. There are many of
these. The remaining material he divides into two classes. The first
includes statements made by competent, careful witnesses, describing
what they have seen and heard--for example, “I saw a brilliant light
moving swiftly without sound.” The second class includes statements of
opinion or belief about the thing seen--for example, “The strange light
obviously was controlled by intelligence.” Putting aside this second
class of material for the time being, he looks at the information in
the first and immediately faces an awkward conclusion: apparently no
“typical” flying saucer exists.
_Descriptions of UFOs_
No two reports describe exactly the same kind of UFO. There are dozens
of types of saucers, resembling each other as little as turnips do
comets. Hoping to find some consistent pattern, the investigator opens
his notebook and starts listing the data.
_Shape_--The flying saucer varies greatly in shape (see Figure 1).
At different times and places it may be a circular disk like a
saucer, often with a small protrusion in the center like the knob on
a tea-kettle lid; elliptical or bean-shaped like a flattened sphere;
a circular base supporting a dome-like superstructure; a sphere
surrounded by a central platform, like Saturn in its rings; long and
thin like a cigar; a tapered sphere like a teardrop; spindle-shaped,
with or without knobs on the ends; or a double- or triple-decked form
like a stack of plates.
_Size_--The saucer varies greatly in size. Estimated diameters range
from 20 or 30 feet to several thousand. While under observation it may
instantaneously increase or decrease in size.
_Color_--The saucer varies greatly in color. It may be white, black,
gray, red, blue, green, pink, yellow, silver; may be luminous or dull;
may be a solid color; may be circled by a central band of different
color; may display flashing lights of various colors. It may change
color or luminosity while being observed.
_Motion_--The saucer displays a wide variety of motions. It may travel
very slowly; very fast, approaching the speed of light; at jet speed;
at meteoric speed; may hover motionless over one place. At any speed it
can instantaneously change velocity and direction of motion--can move
horizontally, vertically, toward the observer, away from the observer,
in a straight path, a zigzag, a spiral. Like the Cheshire cat, it can
vanish instantly or slowly fade away.
_Means of propulsion_--Unknown. Some saucers move in complete silence;
others produce noises: a hiss, a whistle, a roar, a thunderclap, or a
detonation like a sonic boom.
[Illustration: _Figure 1._ Shapes of various reported UFOs.]
_Incidence_--Saucers may appear at any hour of the day or night,
but they appear most frequently in the hours before and after sunset,
and before and after sunrise. Their numbers may suddenly increase at
certain places and certain times. The objects can appear singly, in
random groups, in groups showing a geometrical pattern. A single object
may split and multiply into a group, or a group may merge into one.
Saucers almost always appear in the air, rarely on the earth’s surface
or in bodies of water. They almost never come within touching distance
of the observer. The length of their stay varies greatly, from about
two seconds to two or three hours.
_Structure_--Unknown. A saucer may be visible or invisible to the
observer; visible to the human eye but not to the camera or radar;
visible to the camera or radar but not to the eye. Some obey the laws
of gravity and inertia, others do not.
_Purpose_--Unknown. No officials in the government, the press,
the churches, or the universities have received any attempt at
communication. No saucer has produced intelligible visible, audible, or
radio signals.
Long before finishing this tabulation the investigator realizes that
he is not dealing with one thing but with many. No single phenomenon
could possibly display such infinite variety. However, before he
starts trying to classify the descriptions and to explain them, he
takes a look at the second class of material--the conclusions offered
by saucer enthusiasts. Leaving the realm of observation for that of
interpretation, he is suddenly catapulted into a world of fantasy.
_A “Baedeker’s Guide” to Saucerdom_
One of the commonest themes in science fiction is that of parallel
universes--a number of nearly identical worlds coexisting in alternate
space-time continua. Occasionally, at a vulnerable spot, the barrier
between two of these worlds will dissolve so that they overlap near
the point of contact. After such an accident a man may find himself
unhappily living two lives at once, identical in some ways but so
different in others that if one is real, the other cannot be. Until the
break is repaired and the incompatible worlds are safely separated once
more, the man exists in a state of desperate confusion and performs
agonizing mental acrobatics, trying to maintain a foothold in both
worlds until he can decide which one is valid.
From the “damned” phenomena collected by Charles Fort, plus the legends
of Atlantis, Mu, and Lemuria, flying-saucer addicts have constructed
a multiplicity of such alternate worlds. Although they differ in
minor ways, all are in direct conflict with the real world known to
science. Let us ignore, for the moment, the descriptions given by
the “contactees” (_Chapter_ X) and consider only the beliefs and/or
theories offered by serious proponents of the interplanetary theory
and publicized by writers such as Donald E. Keyhoe[I-3, I-4, I-5]
Aimé Michel[I-6], and Morris K. Jessup[I-7]. A “Baedeker’s Guide” to
saucerdom based solely on statements and speculations in the books
published by these investigators would portray a fantastic universe:[A]
[A] Following common practice in scientific discussion, we originally
included the specific sources of important and/or controversial ideas
described in this book and, for maximum accuracy, often used the
original phrasing of the several authors involved. In this and certain
other sections, however, we have been forced to abandon the more
scholarly method of presentation because one author (Major Donald E.
Keyhoe) refused permission to quote from his works.
“In saucerdom, alien spacecraft continually visit the earth and have
done so for centuries. Constructed and controlled by intelligent
extraterrestrial beings, the craft perhaps come from secret bases
on artificial earth satellites; on the moon; on Mars; on Venus; on
Jupiter; perhaps on the planets supposed to be orbiting the binary
stars 61 Cygni and 70 Ophiuchi; or from planets supposed to be in orbit
around the stars Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani, about eleven light-years
distant from earth. Radio transmitters serving as beacons for space
navigation may exist on both Venus and Jupiter.
“These spacecraft can perform maneuvers that, on earth, are possible
only for rays of light. They fly at speeds of many thousands of miles
an hour, can reverse direction instantaneously at any speed, ascend or
descend vertically, and hover motionless in the air. They accomplish
these feats perhaps by using the power of cosmic rays and by generating
and manipulating artificial gravitational fields, which they could also
use to prevent the transmission of sound waves and to become invisible.
“The extraterrestrial visitors may be explorers sent to study the
earth, descendants of a race living thousands of light-years away from
the solar system. They may be the ancestors of the human race, which
itself is a remnant of a colony established on earth thousands of years
ago and then abandoned. More than 300,000 years ago the inhabitants of
earth had found the secret of space travel, and human beings mapped
the earth by an aerial survey at least 5000 years ago. It is also
possible that these craft come not from space but from time; they may
be earthmen of the future who have traveled backward through time to
explore their own past.
“The purpose of these visitors is still unknown. They shun close
contact with human beings, rarely if ever land their ships, and never
allow close-up photographs, perhaps because they are afraid of human
savagery or are afraid of starting a panic. Nevertheless they attempt
to signal to earthmen in various ways: they have caused the production
of gigantic letters of the alphabet [U and Z] on earth radarscopes;
from a material that radiates light they have built an enormous letter
W, spanning more than 1000 miles on the surface of Mars; they have sent
out wireless signals in Morse code to represent the letter S. They may
occasionally abduct earthmen in order to use them as language teachers.
“Although these visitors are probably not hostile to human beings,
they often manifest their presence in destructive ways. They cause
many airplane crashes; seize and carry off ships, human beings, and
airplanes; destroy flocks of birds; interfere with the operation
of radio, TV, gasoline and electric motors; pelt the earth with
rocks, metal, and strange organic substances; create loud noises and
detonations; damage the windshields of cars; set fire to highways; hurl
various types of missiles; drop chunks of ice; cause storms; and cause
radioactive rain.
“One of the most peculiar features of saucerdom is the role played by
government officials and scientists who, knowing the space visitors are
real, yet deny their existence and unite in a gigantic conspiracy to
deceive the public.”
* * * * *
These excerpts from a hypothetical Baedeker have summarized the
ideas publicized by the most literate and most persuasive advocates
of the saucer theory. The chapters that follow will examine certain
flying-saucer cases. As the discussion continues and is able to account
for specific UFOs in terms of normal physical phenomena, these
anarchistic worlds of saucerdom will gradually dissolve and merge with
reality as we know it--a world that holds many mysteries but is still
subject to the laws of nature.
[I-1] Fort, Charles. _Lo!_ New York: Claude H. Kendall, 1931.
[I-2] Air Force Files.
[I-3] Keyhoe, D. E. _The Flying Saucer Conspiracy._ New York: Henry
Holt & Co., 1955.
[I-4] ---- _Flying Saucers from Outer Space._ New York: Henry Holt &
Co., 1953.
[I-5] ---- _Flying Saucers: Top Secret._ New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
1960.
[I-6] Michel, A. _The Truth about Flying Saucers._ New York: Criterion
Books, Inc., 1956.
[I-7] Jessup, M. K. _The Case for the UFO_. New York: Citadel Press,
1955.
_Chapter_ II
LO!
The overture to the _Flying Saucer_ opera took place in the summer of
1947, presenting the main themes that were to develop with fantastic
variations during the fifteen-year-long drama that followed: mysterious
apparitions in the sky, alleged interplanetary visitors, government
investigators, growing public excitement, civilians who zealously
encouraged the hysteria, and, as a climax, an elaborate hoax that
produced material “evidence” to prove the existence of spaceships.
_Arnold’s Nine Disks_
The first man to report a flying saucer was a veteran pilot named
Kenneth Arnold, representative of a fire-control equipment firm in
Boise, Idaho. On the afternoon of June 24 Arnold was flying a private
plane on his way from Chehalis to Yakima, Washington. Above the Cascade
Mountains at about 9200 feet, he noticed a series of bright flashes in
the sky off to his left. Looking for the cause, he saw what appeared
to be a formation of peculiar aircraft approaching Mount Rainier at
fantastic speed. There were nine very bright, disk-shaped objects which
he estimated to be twenty to twenty-five miles away, forty-five to
fifty feet long, and traveling at a speed of almost 1700 miles an hour.
Talking with a reporter that evening, Arnold said that the objects
“flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.” In a
later report to Air Force Intelligence he stated: “They flew very close
to the mountaintops, directly south to southeast down the hogback of
the range, flying like geese in a diagonal, chainlike line, as if they
were linked together.... They were flat like a piepan and so shiny
they reflected the sun like a mirror.”[II-1]
Newspapers all over the country picked up the story and printed it
under headlines describing flying pies, flying piepans, and flying
saucers. Alert to the possibility that the objects might have been a
new type of aircraft of Russian origin, investigators from Military
Intelligence interviewed Arnold and officials from Air Technical
Intelligence requested a report.
No one doubted Arnold’s word. He was an experienced pilot, a respected
citizen, and a careful observer. Nevertheless his description showed
some inconsistencies that made it difficult to decide what the nine
disks really were. If they had actually been forty-five or fifty feet
long, they must have been much closer than he thought; objects that
size would not have been visible at a distance of twenty to twenty-five
miles. However, if the estimated distance was correct, then in order to
be visible the objects must have been much larger, at least 210 feet
long. One of the estimates must be wrong--but which one? Until that
question was settled, the computed speed was meaningless, since to
estimate the velocity of a moving object an observer must know either
its true distance or its true size. Even after a careful study, Air
Force investigators could not identify the disks; they might have been
clouds, a mirage, or some kind of aircraft, but no definite answer was
possible from the evidence available.
Predictably, after so much publicity, a rash of similar sightings
broke out all over the country and continued for the rest of the
summer. During the hot months of the “silly season,” newspapers are
traditionally hospitable to tales of barnyard freaks, sea serpents,
and man-bitten dogs. Such stories were now shoved aside as people in
every state began to report unorthodox objects sailing through the
sky--flying disks, flying dimes, flying ice-cream cones, flying shoe
heels, and flying hubcaps. Seeing saucers became a national pastime,
but Arnold, who had reported the strange objects in all good faith,
resented the implied ridicule. Deluged with telephone calls and mail,
he resolved to keep silent in the future even if he should happen to
see a ten-story building flying through the air.
In spite of the publicity, the flying-saucer scare would probably have
died with the first frost of autumn but for the efforts of a talented
writer, editor, and publisher of science fiction, Raymond A. Palmer.
Among the many letters Arnold received was one from Palmer, then editor
of _Amazing Stories_. Tired of being laughed at, Arnold found the tone
of “sincere interest” so appealing that he answered the letter[II-2].
After a second letter a week later, he changed his mind about keeping
silent and agreed to sell his story for publication.
Under the title, “I _Did_ See the Flying Disks,” the article appeared
in the first issue of a new magazine, _Fate_, which published “true
stories of the strange, the unusual, the unknown.”[II-3] Although
Arnold was not a professional writer, he had the assistance of an
expert and produced a vivid, clearly written story--Palmer had had
unusual experience in helping fledgling authors tell their tales.
Interesting differences between Arnold’s original statements and those
in the magazine version demonstrate how much he must have owed to
editorial help. Without it, he might not have included certain colorful
details that he had apparently overlooked earlier. In his original
reports, for example, he said that he had at first supposed the disks
to be some type of experimental aircraft; in the magazine version he
added that, even at the time, the objects had given him “an eerie
feeling.” In the intervening months he had also remembered more about
their shape (see Figure 2). He no longer described them as saucerlike,
flat and shiny like piepans. Instead, a drawing based on his revised
account shows an object like the crescent moon with a sharp protrusion
on the inner, concave side and a dark, mottled circle marking the
center of the top surface. Furthermore, he told the readers of _Fate_,
one object had been darker than the others and of a slightly different
form--a detail he had forgotten to mention to reporters, to military
officials, to his friends, or even to his wife.
Arnold had never been much of a reader and was not a science-fiction
fan, but his interests were obviously widening. The next two issues
of _Fate_ carried other articles under his name. Palmer’s growing
influence is suggested by the titles: “Are Space Visitors Here?”[II-4]
and “Phantom Lights of Nevada.”[II-5]
[Illustration: _Figure 2._ Arnold’s flying saucers. Left, as first
described; right, as later sketched.]
_The Great Shaver Mystery_
Ray Palmer lays claim to being “the _first_ flying saucer
investigator”[II-6], although he frankly admits his debt to the
writings of Charles Fort. Any full account of the saucer era must
include the names of other enthusiasts such as Adamski, Bethurum,
Scully, Cramp, Keyhoe, Jessup, Michel, and Wilkins, but none merits so
much credit for keeping the saucers flying as does Palmer. He not only
opened the pages of his magazines to the first saucer reports but also,
in the beginning, paid the witnesses for their stories.
In 1947 Palmer was the editor of _Amazing Stories_ and _Fantastic
Adventures_, two of the great magazines of science fiction in which
stories of spaceships and interplanetary travel have long been
commonplace. For several years he had been hinting to readers of these
magazines that alien spaceships might _actually_ be cruising in our
skies, but _Fate_ was the first magazine that seriously promoted the
idea. No man was better qualified to glimpse the dramatic possibilities
of flying saucers. Born in Wisconsin in 1910, Palmer had begun reading
_Amazing Stories_ soon after it started publication in 1926. Turning to
writing, he showed the remarkable persistence that has characterized
his life. Although he received 100 rejections before he sold his second
story, he stubbornly kept on until he not only achieved success as an
author but also, in 1938, became managing editor of _Amazing Stories_
for the Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. Under Palmer’s guidance, “...
the entertainment side of science fiction took over.... Gone were the
ponderous styles, the verbiage, the highly technical explanations of
what mattered little in the first place. The stories took on pace and
excitement, the characters in them were faced with human problems, the
dialogue was realistic....”[II-7]
Alert to the tastes of his readers, Palmer carried the magazine to new
heights. Many science-fiction fans (including the present authors)
still remember that golden age around 1940 when _Amazing_ came out
every month with 146 pages full of startling, fantastic, wonderful
stories of how life might be on other worlds and in other galaxies.
In January 1944 began the publishing drama that for a time changed the
direction of _Amazing_ and heralded the advent of flying saucers. The
“Discussions” department that month included a letter captioned “An
Ancient Language?” which introduced what came to be known both as the
Great Shaver Mystery and the Great Shaver Hoax. Signed “S. Shaver,” the
letter began:
“Sirs: Am sending you this in hopes you will insert in an issue to keep
it from dying with me. It would arouse a lot of discussion.”[II-8]
It did indeed. The letter announced the discovery that words and
syllables of the ancient Atlantean language still exist in English
today; hence the legends of Atlantis must be true and a “wiser race
than modern man” must once have existed on the earth.
Richard Sharpe Shaver was then living in Barto, Pennsylvania, and
operated a welding machine in a war plant. In writing to thank the
editor for publishing his letter, he enclosed a manuscript called
“Warning to Future Man” which purported to give his memories of life
in the fabled continent of Lemuria. The information had been preserved
in “thought records” hidden in secret caves. By “telaug,” a kind of
audio-visual telepathy, he had begun to remember his forgotten past
when, through the noise of his welding machine, he heard voices. After
visiting Shaver and probing his “memories,” Palmer bought the story. He
didn’t like the way it was written, however, so he rewrote it, added
material that expanded it to three times its original length[II-9],
changed the title to “I Remember Lemuria,” and started advertising it
well in advance of publication as a _true_ story:
“Twelve thousand years ago the Lemurians and the Atlanteans disappeared
from the Earth. Where and why did they go?”[II-10] This story would
show that Newton and Einstein were all wrong, Palmer promised, and
would reveal new concepts of gravity, the nature of matter, and the
foundation for physical mathematics.
Thus began the controversy that rocked the world of science fiction.
Since Palmer has affirmed that “Flying saucers are a part of the Shaver
Mystery--integrally so”[II-11], we turn to the old files of _Amazing
Stories_ to trace their development.
The first of the Shaver series, “I Remember Lemuria” appeared in March
1945[II-12], along with “Mantong, The Language of Lemuria,” an article
signed by both Shaver and Palmer, and other stories followed quickly
in succeeding issues of _Amazing_. The basic themes were shopworn--a
jumble of Fortean ideas, Plato’s fables, and mystic science--but when
brightened by Palmer’s magic pencil, they seemed fresh and exciting:
The earth had an ancient past, now forgotten. The lost continents of
Atlantis, Lemuria, and Mu had been colonized many thousands of years
ago by superior beings from another planet who could travel through
space by utilizing forces unknown to present-day earthmen. Eventually
these noble aliens had been forced to abandon the earth to escape evil
radiations coming from our sun, but they had left descendants who still
lived on earth in concealment in great subterranean cities that could
be entered through certain caves. The underground dwellers in the
hidden world had retained all the secret powers of their ancestors.
They could communicate by thought transference, could speak to earthmen
by mental “voices,” and could travel on beams of light because they
understood the true nature of gravity and magnetism. These creatures
were divided into two opposing groups, one good and one evil. The
dero (detrimental robots) were the bad guys and they caused all the
unexplained accidents and misfortunes that happen to human beings.
The tero (integrative robots) were the good guys; they warned earthmen
of danger and tried to protect them from the destructive forces of the
dero.
Reader response to these fantasies was phenomenal. Fan mail zoomed from
40 or 50 to 2500 letters a month[II-13], and the magazine’s circulation
increased by some 50,000. As the records of “racial memory” continued
to appear, connoisseurs of good science fiction began to cry “Hoax!”
but their protests had no effect. Thousands of new readers were buying
the magazine and many of them were beginning to recall and report
“memories” of their own. Since the “Discussions” columns could not
take care of so many letters, Palmer opened a new department, “Report
from the Forgotten Past”[II-14], and urged the readers to send in
their personal experiences with the hidden world. Did they ever hear
strange voices? Receive mysterious messages through the air? Suspect
that they were being affected by strange rays? Feel that they had
been put on earth for some special mission? Have dreams that they
could not explain? Have a strong urge to explore caves? Have memories
of other lives? The editor was eager to learn of all such incidents.
Through the Shaver stories, Palmer was already promoting the idea that
interplanetary craft do visit the earth:
“There are many mysteries of the past that have intrigued investigators
to an almost unbearable point.... What were the glories of Babylon?
What truth is there in the Chinese legend of being the people of the
Moon, and of coming to Earth in rocket ships? What was the mystery
metal of the Lemurians, orichalcum? What was the secret of their
airships that walked on beams of light?”[II-12]
When one correspondent informed him that space travel was possible “if
one travels through curves but not through angles,” Palmer replied,
“Your editor is sincere--and he’d like to know everything you know....
For instance, please explain this space-travel business--about curves
and not angles.”[II-15]
For more than three years the columns of _Amazing_ continued to assert,
not as fiction but as fact, that interplanetary travel is a present
reality and that the laws of physics are not valid. In a mystic mumbo
jumbo the readers were told that the velocity of light, for example,
was not the ultimate speed:
“Light speed is due to ‘escape velocity’ on the sun, which is not
large. This speed is a constant to our measurement because the friction
of exd, which fills all space, holds down any increase unless there
is more impetus. The escape velocity of light from a vaster sun than
ours is higher, but once again exd slows the light speed down to its
constant by friction, so that when it reaches the vicinity of our
sun, no appreciable difference is to be noted. A body can travel at
many times the exd constant, under additional impetus, such as rocket
explosions. A ship whose weight is reduced to a very little by reverse
gravity beam can attain a great speed with a very small rocket.”[II-12]
Devotees of reasonable science fiction (who include many leading
scientists) were writing angrily to Palmer, protesting that the Shaver
hoax had gone too far, but their letters seemed only to amuse him:
“There have been some odd reactions, one of them being a promise by a
fan group to ‘expose’ our ‘hoax’ (which was a compliment, by the way,
because it was termed the ‘biggest ever attempted in modern science
fiction history’). We are waiting for this expose, [_sic_] with
interest--because we are curious to know how a hoax which is not a hoax
can be exposed as a hoax. We realize that a lot of our readers find it
difficult to believe that we ourselves believe one single word of what
Mr. Shaver tells us in his stories, but we’ll keep on presenting the
evidence as it comes in, and you can judge for yourself.”[II-14]
Readers continued to object and many stopped buying the magazine, but
Palmer persisted with ambiguous hints that spaceships were really here.
A full year before the first flying-saucer report he wrote:
“If you don’t think space ships visit the earth regularly, as in this
story [‘Cult of the Witch Queen’], then the files of Charles Fort and
your editor’s own files are something you should see.... And if you
think responsible parties in world governments are ignorant of the
fact of space ships visiting earth, you just don’t think the way we
do.”[II-16]
In succeeding months he became more and more explicit. In September
1946 he told one correspondent, “As for space ships, ... personally we
believe these ships do visit the earth. You, or any observer, would be
inclined to call it something else if you did see one.”[II-15] In the
spring of 1947 he replied to a reader who asked for concrete evidence
that Shaver’s stories were true: “... the mystery is not just ‘are
there caves with dero and tero in them?’ but it has to do with space
ships, other inhabited worlds, and so on.”[II-17]
In June 1947, the month the first flying saucers were reported, the
issue of _Amazing Stories_ was an addict’s dream[II-18]. The cover
featured “The Shaver Mystery, the Most Sensational True Story Ever
Told”; the four stories, 90,000 words, were all under the byline of
Richard S. Shaver. The entire magazine--editorial comments, discussion
columns, and most of the feature articles--was devoted to the
supernatural world of Shaver.
But the end was near. _Amazing_ published its last Shaver story, “Gods
of Venus,” in the summer of 1948; as far as the magazine was concerned,
the mystery was dead.
Who or what killed it? One version says that the publisher, William B.
Ziff, ordered the series stopped because so many fans had quit buying
the magazine. Palmer himself has given various explanations. He stopped
the stories, he said at first, when he realized that such material
did not really belong in a fiction magazine. Later he explained that
he killed the mystery because he intended to go into publishing for
himself and didn’t want to leave his successor to handle “this hot
potato.”[II-19] Later still, he implied that publishing the stories
was dangerous; that he had learned too much about the “hidden world,”
the sinister forces responsible for the plane crash that followed
the Tacoma hoax. Said Palmer, “I wanted no more dead men on my
hands.”[II-11]
_The Maury Island Fragments_
The Maury Island Mystery, a complex and eventually tragic affair,
occurred near Tacoma, Washington, less than 100 miles from the place
where Arnold had sighted the nine disks. In this mystery, too, Palmer
was involved. According to their story, two harbor patrolmen named
Harold A. Dahl and Fred L. Crisman on June 31 had observed a group
of six flying disks that hovered over their boat near Maury Island
and jammed their radio when they tried to notify the authorities. One
of the disks had seemed to be disabled, had showered down lavalike
metallic fragments that damaged the boat and killed the dog on board;
the disks had then disappeared but the fragments remained as proof
of the visit. The men also claimed to have taken some pictures that
showed the six objects but were fogged as though by radiation. Back on
shore, they had not telephoned the newspapers nor had they notified any
government officials. Instead, they had mailed a box of the fragments
to Ray Palmer, to prove that they had actually seen an accident to a
flying saucer[II-20].
Crisman was no stranger to _Amazing Stories_. A science-fiction fan,
he apparently had accepted the Shaver stories as literal truth. More
than a year before the Maury Island episode he had written to Palmer,
warning him that the knowledge contained in the Shaver stories was too
dangerous to print. Identifying himself as an ex-Air Force pilot who
had flown the Hump, Crisman explained that when he was in Burma, he had
been exploring a cave when a dero attacked him with a mysterious ray
that made a hole the size of a dime in his arm. Palmer had kept up the
correspondence[II-21] and, some months later, received a telephone call
from Crisman, then in Texas: for $250, said Crisman, he would descend
into a cave and take some actual pictures of the mysterious underground
machines that Shaver had described. The result of this offer is not
known, but in July 1947 Palmer received another letter from Crisman; he
had witnessed an accident to a flying saucer and was sending a box of
the fragments as proof[II-22].
Palmer considered buying the story for _Fate_, but first he asked
Arnold, living close to the scene, to investigate the tale. Arnold
agreed. Thus the first man to report flying saucers became also a
victim of the first flying-saucer hoax.
With an advance of $200 for expenses, Arnold flew to Tacoma and into
a nightmare of mystery. The two men were elusive, their story full of
discrepancies, their manner evasive. Wondering at first whether the
affair was a hoax, Arnold finally attributed the strange behavior of
the men to their fear of hostile saucers. Alarmed, he called in the
help of Army Intelligence. Two officers arrived from Hamilton Air Force
Base, California, and made a careful investigation. They found that
Dahl and Crisman were not “harbor patrolmen” but salvagers of floating
lumber; their boat was scarcely seaworthy and showed no evidence of
major repairs; they couldn’t remember what they had done with the
pictures they mentioned; and although the saucer accident was supposed
to have occurred nearly six weeks earlier, they had never notified
the authorities or even mentioned it to a reporter. The only evidence
offered for the truth of their tale was the collection of “strange”
fragments which were later found to be slag from a local smelter plant.
Similar fragments could be found by the ton on Maury Island[II-20].
The officers concluded that they had wasted their time on a flagrant
hoax, but the bewildered Arnold insisted that they take some of the
fragments for analysis. Unhappily, on the way back to the base the
plane crashed and although two passengers parachuted to safety, both
officers were killed. At once fantastic rumors sprang up: that the
Tacoma “disks” had been spaceships, and that the beings who operated
the craft had been forced to arrange the plane crash so that no one
could analyze the fragments of their disabled spaceship. Arnold himself
seemed to believe that the crash had resulted from extraplanetary
sabotage, but investigation showed a more ordinary cause. A burned
exhaust stack had set the left wing afire; the blazing wing had then
broken from the fuselage and torn off the plane’s tail.
For a time government officials considered placing a charge of fraud
against the two men who had started the unhappy chain of events. After
further questioning, both had admitted that their “sighting” had been a
hoax, planned merely to make their story more salable, but when first
Arnold and then Military Intelligence had entered the picture, the
hoax had simply gotten out of hand. Since the men obviously had never
intended the tragic outcome and were not directly responsible for it,
the idea of prosecution was abandoned[II-1].
_Science Fiction Adopts the Saucers_
No longer editor of _Amazing_, Palmer continued to promote the
cause of flying saucers in the pages of _Fate_. During the early
nineteen-fifties, the boom years of science fiction, he started other
magazines--_Search_, _Mystic Universe_, _Other Worlds Science Stories_.
After a time, _Fate_ began to concentrate on tales of the mystic and
occult, while _Other Worlds_ eventually took over the flying-saucer
theme.
Starting as an orthodox magazine of science fiction, _Other Worlds_
flourished until the general slump in the market caused it to suspend
publication. Revived after a time, it has undergone several changes
of editorial policy reflected in its changing names: _Other Worlds
Science Stories_, _Flying Saucers from OTHER WORLDS_, _FLYING SAUCERS
from Other Worlds_, _Flying Saucers the Magazine of Space Conquest_,
and, since the spring of 1961 when the magazine became pocket-size,
just _Flying Saucers_. Classic science fiction long ago vanished from
its pages and all articles are “true” accounts of flying saucers and
similar Fortean incidents.
_Flying Saucers_ is probably unique in modern publishing history.
Issued monthly or bimonthly at a price of thirty-five cents, the
magazine does not pay its authors because, as the editor explains,
“_Flying Saucers_ is _not_ a commercial project.” Published by
Palmer Publications, edited by Palmer, containing liberal amounts of
editorial comment and at least one article by Palmer, a typical issue
in 1960[II-6] contained sixty-six pages and carried a small number of
advertisements for telescopes, binoculars, Rosicrucian and similar
mystic publications. The remaining ads featured books and magazines
issued by Palmer Publications, Amherst, Wisconsin; books issued by
Amherst Press, also of Amherst, Wisconsin; Saucerian Books, published
under the aegis of Gray Barker, a contributing editor to _Flying
Saucers_. “Austrogen,” described as a face cream or clay for skin
ailments, was obtainable from Palmer at a dollar an ounce. Another
ad recommended something (the wording does not specify exactly what,
perhaps a powder?) that helps make good chili. Readers could buy this
too, from Palmer, for a dollar a pound or $3.50 for five pounds. A
combination dandruff remover, itch preventer, and restorer of hair
color personally recommended by Palmer sold for $5.00 a bottle, number
of ounces not specified.
The dandruff remover was also recommended by Kenneth Arnold, whose
flying disks had started the saucer epidemic. Arnold was advertising
his “World Society of Flying Saucer” which would “hold no meetings, no
minutes, no by-laws, no restrictions or regulations, no records outside
of actual membership, no presidents, no vice-presidents, no secretary,
or board of directors.” For only $5.00 those who joined the society
would receive twelve issues of _Flying Saucers_ (which if ordered from
Palmer Publications would have cost $4.00), plus an official membership
card. Arnold also offered for sale a crescent-shaped lapel pin in solid
silver, supposedly just like the “original” saucers he had sighted in
1947; and, for the ladies, the saucers in pendant form. The addition of
seven-point diamonds was optional.
The magazine has grown smaller, but its main theme is still flying
saucers, which until recently have been interpreted as interplanetary
vehicles. In December 1959, however,[II-23] Palmer announced in a lead
article that flying saucers were _not_ from outer space after all;
instead, they came from secret earth bases located under the north and
the south poles. The earth is actually shaped like a doughnut, not like
a pear, he says, and has openings at both poles where the saucer people
reside. Whether they are manned by dero or tero he has not said.
In the autumn of 1962, Arnold entered the arena of politics and was
the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor of Idaho, but lost.
Shaver became a dairy farmer, a Wisconsin neighbor of Palmer’s, but in
science-fiction circles his name will never die. Recently he has been
advertising the sale of alleged pre-Deluge and pre-Ice-Age “art stones”
described as rare, voluptuous, exciting, and usable as ornaments for
wall or mantel, or simply as book ends.
Palmer has now revived the Shaver Mystery and is reprinting the entire
series in book form “with the fiction removed,” under the general
title of _The Hidden World_. In advertising the new project he stated,
“This magazine concerns flying saucers. Flying saucers are a part
of the Shaver mystery--integrally so.” He abandoned the stories in
_Amazing_, he says, not because an outraged publisher insisted, but
because he believed the stories to be true. “That is the true motive.
I was convinced that not only was there a ‘hidden world,’ but it was
one of immense ramification, and the caves of the dero, flying saucers,
military espionage, the political science of the world, and even some
phases of religion, specifically those of the ‘cult’ variety, were
inextricably linked.” In announcing that he intended to end the secrecy
that had existed for so long, and to tell the truth after seventeen
years of “sugar-coating” the facts, he did not explain exactly why he
feels it is safe to publish the “truth” now, when it was not safe
seventeen years ago. He says only, “... there have been good reasons
for the delay--had it been done from the beginning, the pitfalls that
would have crushed it could not have been avoided.”[II-11]
At the tenth annual World Science Fiction Convention, held in Chicago
in September 1952, fans and fellow editors awarded to Palmer a bronze
plaque honoring him as a “son of science fiction,”[II-24] a citation he
fully merits. As long as flying saucers continue to make good copy and
sell magazines, Palmer will probably keep them soaring--whether their
home bases are other planets or polar caves. As one of his colleagues
once commented:
“... in these times of drab and unconvincing falsehood, there is still
something to be thankful for. A Palmer promotion has the touch of
genius. It has zing, sparkle, and true showmanship. It can be spotted a
mile away by the bright lights. The thing to do is sit back and enjoy
it.”[II-19]
_Mirage or Wave Clouds?_
What did Kenneth Arnold actually see, that June afternoon in 1947?
No absolutely certain answer is possible after so long a time. The
disks were probably a mirage (see Figure 3) in which the peaks of
the mountains seemed to float above the mountain chain[II-25]. An
alternative but much less probable explanation is that he observed
orographic clouds, a type unique to mountainous country, which often
appear to stand more or less motionless and can assume dramatic shapes.
“Grindstone” clouds, shaped like thick, solid disks (see Plate Ia),
are common phenomena in the valleys just east of the Sierra Nevada in
California and in the mountainous regions of Washington, Colorado,
and New Mexico--areas where flying-saucer reports have tended to
concentrate[II-26]. One of the most spectacular types of mountain
cloud, it closely resembles the “_pile d’assiettes_” or “stack of
plates” formation in which the cloud assumes a flat, round shape like
a plate or a saucer, and two or more are piled together in a neat
stack, as in Plate Ib[II-27]. Another picture of a “stack of plates”
(which some observers reported as a hovering flying saucer) was made on
May 31, 1953, near Jindabyna, Snowy Mountains, New South Wales, and
reproduced in _Weather_ in November 1954 Plate 47. The cloud formed
over a tub-shaped depression in the mountains and remained stationary
for more than an hour[II-28].
[Illustration: _Figure 3._ Mirage of mountain peaks. Top, normal view
of mountain chain; bottom, mirage in which some of the peaks seem to be
detached and above the peaks, like saucers.]
Such clouds reflect the undulations of lee waves formed in the
atmosphere when stable currents of air flow over obstacles such as
hills or mountains. An up-and-down wave motion may be impressed upon
the air, provided that temperature and wind conditions are suitable.
As the air describes its wavelike path, it alternately warms and
cools, the warming taking place as it sinks into the wave trough and
the cooling as it ascends to the wave crest. If the air is very dry,
the undulating current will not be visible to the eye, although the
updrafts and downdrafts will readily be felt by aircraft that chance
to pass through them. On the other hand, if the air before entering the
wave is moist enough, the cooling in the wave crest will cause water
droplets to condense and a cloud to appear.
In the vicinity of an isolated peak the cloud may assume the form of a
cap covering the summit, or it may be displaced slightly downwind and
resemble a lens or disk. Not infrequently a series of lenticular clouds
will appear, trailing downwind at regular intervals of a few miles.
Although these wave clouds are usually stationary, they sometimes move
at great speed, especially when the air temperature is changing rapidly.
From a study of a remarkable photograph made in 1956, R. J. Reed of
the University of Washington has offered the suggestion that the disks
Arnold saw were actually wave clouds in rapid motion.
On the afternoon of December 29, 1956, a photographer for the Seattle
_Times_ was on top of Pigtail Peak near White Pass, Washington (not
far from the area where Arnold’s nine disks had appeared), taking ski
pictures for the rotogravure section of the Sunday _Times_. The weather
was beautiful. Down in the pass temperatures hovered near freezing,
but the slopes were warmed by sunlight that filtered down through thin
cirrus clouds and raised the temperature to a balmy fifty degrees. Just
at sunset a strange object suddenly appeared off toward the northeast
horizon. Several skiers urged the photographer to take a picture of the
“flying saucer,” but since it was still far away and indistinct, he
waited. The first object, now followed by a second one, moved rapidly
toward Mount Rainier, began to sharpen in outline, and both were soon
so clearly visible that he was able to snap his unusual picture. The
photograph shows two apparently solid, disklike objects, flattened,
brilliantly white but dark at the bottom, apparently linked together by
white streamers, skimming toward the mountain peak (Plate Ia).
Recognizing the close resemblance between the objects in the photograph
and those Arnold described, Reed made a full analysis of the weather
conditions prevailing at the time the picture was taken. From
radiosonde data provided by the Seattle-Tacoma Airport, he obtained
measurements of the size of the clouds, their height above the
mountains, wind directions, and temperature and humidity at mountain
height and cloud height. Obviously the pattern of weather conditions
that prevailed that day was suitable for the formation of saucerlike
clouds.
To test the hypothesis that Arnold also had seen such clouds, he then
obtained records of the weather data for June 24, 1947, to determine
whether atmospheric conditions on the two dates were basically similar.
“To be comparable, winds would have to be blowing from the north or
northwest in Mr. Arnold’s case since the objects were sighted to the
south and southeast of the peak. The air would have to be dry at lower
elevations and moisture would have to be spreading in at higher levels.
An inspection of the historical maps reveals that, indeed, all these
conditions were met.”[II-29]
Reed concludes that, although we can never know for certain, the
implication that the _Times_ photographer and Kenneth Arnold viewed
essentially the same phenomenon seems “inescapable.” This interesting
hypothesis, however, requires the presence of undulating air currents
and turbulence great enough to endanger a plane in flight. Since Arnold
specifically mentioned the smooth, calm flying, the mirage explanation
remains the most probable one.
[II-1] Air Force Files.
[II-2] Arnold, K., and Palmer, R. A. _The Coming of the Saucers._
Amherst, Wisconsin: privately printed, 1952.
[II-3] _Fate_, Vol. I, No. 1 (Spring 1948).
[II-4] _Fate_, Vol. I, No. 2 (Summer 1948).
[II-5] _Fate_, Vol. I, No. 3 (Fall 1948).
[II-6] _Flying Saucers, The Magazine of Space Conquest_ (June 1960).
[II-7] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XXX, No. 4 (April 1956).
[II-8] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XVIII, No. 1 (January 1944).
[II-9] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XIX, No. 4 (December 1945).
[II-10] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XVIII, No. 5 (December 1944).
[II-11] _Flying Saucers, The Magazine of Space Conquest_ (November
1960).
[II-12] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XIX, No. 1 (March 1945).
[II-13] Palmer, R. A. “An Open Letter to Paul Fairman,” _Other Worlds
Science Stories_ (June 1952), pp. 151–56.
[II-14] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XIX, No. 3 (September 1945).
[II-15] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XX, No. 6 (September 1946).
[II-16] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XX, No. 4 (July 1946).
[II-17] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XXI, No. 2 (February 1947).
[II-18] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XXI, No. 6 (June 1947).
[II-19] Fairman, P. W. “Personalities in Science Fiction,” _If_ (May
1952), pp. 63–67.
[II-20] Ruppelt, E. J. _The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects._
Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1956.
[II-21] _Flying Saucers, The Magazine of Space Conquest_ (December
1958).
[II-22] _Flying Saucers from Other Worlds_ (June 1957).
[II-23] _Flying Saucers, The Magazine of Space Conquest_ (December
1959).
[II-24] _Other Worlds_ (July 1953).
[II-25] Tacker, L. J. _Flying Saucers and the U. S. Air Force._
Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1960.
[II-26] Ives, R. L. “Areas of Occurrence of ‘Grindstone’ Clouds,”
_Weatherwise_, Vol. XI (1958), p. 201.
[II-27] Scorer, R. S. “Lee Waves in the Atmosphere,” _Scientific
American_, Vol. CCIV (1961), p. 124.
[II-28] Kraus, E. B. “Flying Saucer?” _Weather_ (November 1954).
[II-29] Reed, R. J. “Flying Saucers over Mount Rainier,” _Weatherwise_,
Vol. XI (1958), p. 43.
_Chapter_ III
AIR-BORNE UFOS: BALLOONS TO BUBBLES
In the year 1948 the “Skyhook” balloons were an official secret.
These giant plastic bags, shaped something like a teardrop, a hundred
feet and more in diameter, were part of a classified research project
sponsored by the United States Navy, and few except the researchers
and technicians involved knew of their existence. Carrying cases of
heavy instruments, the balloons were launched from various Air Force
bases to collect information about the atmosphere high above the earth,
the winds in the stratosphere, and the incidence of cosmic rays.
Soaring upward, they traveled in courses determined by the winds and
changed in direction and speed as they shifted from one wind stream to
another. Even at heights of 60,000 feet these objects with their highly
reflecting surfaces could be seen from the ground (see Figure 4). Such
balloons were especially noticeable against dark-blue skies, which
are much more common in the western United States than in the eastern
areas. They could reach heights of 100,000 feet, higher than our planes
could go. Once considered as a means for collecting information for
Military Intelligence, a task later assumed by the U-2 jets, they could
travel across the entire continent and even across the oceans. If the
plastic skin developed a leak, the resulting loss of gas altered both
the appearance and the behavior of the balloon; if the leak became
great enough the balloon shriveled and eventually fell to the earth.
At high altitudes where the cold was extreme, the skin might become
brittle and the balloon would burst into fragments to be dispersed by
the winds and vanish.
[Illustration: _Figure 4._ Shapes of various balloons. A, Skyhook at
launching; B, Skyhook at high altitude; C, radiosonde or pibal; D,
balloon cluster; E, blimp or sausage-shaped balloon.]
Although these balloons were sometimes visible at distances of fifty or
sixty miles and were very conspicuous, officially they did not exist
until 1950 when Dr. Urner Liddel of the Office of Naval Research
released the facts behind the Skyhook balloon program. He pointed
out then that the balloons had given rise to many reports of flying
saucers. If the Skyhook project had been public knowledge in 1948 and
if information about their launching and movements had not been a
matter of security, a courageous pilot might still be alive today and
the infant flying-saucer myth would have died long ago. There can be
little question that Captain Mantell crashed in trying to intercept a
Skyhook balloon, an object he had never heard of.
_The Mantell Tragedy_
The basic facts of the Mantell case, the second of the “classic”[B]
UFO sightings, are familiar to all who have studied flying-saucer
phenomena[III-1, p. 51]. Early on the afternoon of January 7, 1948,
the Kentucky State Highway Patrol received a large number of calls from
the towns of Maysville, Owensboro, and Irvington, reporting a strange
object moving west at high speed. Alerted by the police, officials at
Godman Air Force Base, near Ft. Knox, began looking for the unknown
craft. They soon located the object but could not identify it. Watching
it through binoculars, various observers described its shape as
circular, like a teardrop, or rounded and tapered like a parachute
or an ice-cream cone. At about 2:30 P.M. (all times in this account
are E.S.T.), as they were discussing the object, a flight of four
P-51 planes approached the base from the south. Led by Captain Thomas
Mantell, the planes were being ferried from Marietta Air Base, Georgia,
to Standiford Field near Louisville. The tower operator at Godman
thereupon radioed Captain Mantell for assistance:
[B] A “classic” in the literature of flying saucers is a particularly
dramatic UFO incident whose specific cause has not yet been found or,
if found, cannot be absolutely proved from the evidence available.
Lacking a completely airtight explanation, official investigators
classify the case as Unknown. Saucer fans classify it as proof that
flying saucers exist.
“We have an object out south of Godman here that we are unable to
identify and we would like to know if you have gas enough and if so
could you take a look for us if you will.”
The ferry had been planned as a low-level flight and none of the planes
had been serviced with oxygen. Captain Mantell, a combat pilot in World
War II, nevertheless agreed to help out: “Roger. I have the gas and I
will take a look for you if you will give me the correct heading and
any information you have on locating the object.”
The talk between Godman tower and Captain Mantell was not recorded
and transmission was sometimes garbled. Although many persons heard
the exchange of remarks during the next critical minutes and agreed
on the general content, no two remembered exactly the same words;
therefore the official reports[III-2] represent only the best possible
reconstruction of the conversation that took place.
One plane, short of fuel, continued on to Louisville. The other three
circled and began to climb. At about 2:45 Mantell notified the tower
that he was at about 15,000 feet: “I have an object in sight above and
ahead of me, and it appears to be moving at about half my speed or
approximately 180 miles an hour.” One of his wing men said: “What the
hell are we looking for?” When Godman asked Mantell to describe the
object, he said: “It appears to be a metallic object, or possibly a
reflection of sun from a metallic object, and it is of tremendous size.
I’m going to 20,000 feet.”
The other two pilots, who had seen nothing and were alarmed at flying
so high without oxygen, leveled off at 15,000 feet. Mantell was then
above 22,000 feet and still climbing. In ship-to-ship conversation
he said that he would go to 25,000 feet for about ten minutes, then
come down. When all further attempts to call Mantell went unanswered,
the other pilots discontinued the search and went on to their base;
although one returned after refueling and equipping himself with a mask
and oxygen, he found nothing in the area.
At about 3:15 Mantell radioed that the object was “directly ahead of me
and slightly above, and is now moving at about my speed or better. I am
trying to close in for a better look.” He did not call again. Less than
an hour later searchers found the crashed plane. Mantell was dead. His
shattered watch had stopped at 3:18.
During the period of search, ground observers at Godman Field had been
able to watch the UFO, gradually diminishing in size, and about 3:50 it
disappeared from view. Within a few minutes, however, observers farther
south in Kentucky and Tennessee were reporting an unknown object in the
sky.
A hundred rumors sprang up immediately after the tragedy: that the UFO
was a Russian missile; was a weird machine from outer space that had
deliberately or accidentally knocked the plane out of the air when it
got too close; that Captain Mantell’s body was riddled with bullets;
that the plane had completely disintegrated before striking the ground;
that the wreckage was radioactive.
Investigators rushed in to find the cause of the fatal crash and
brought confusion with them. Some facts could be quickly established.
There were no bullet wounds. The plane had not burned on impact and was
not radioactive. The left wing had come off while in the air and landed
100 feet from the main crash area. Parts of the plane were scattered
on a line north to south within six tenths of a mile of the central
wreckage. The emergency canopy lock was in place and apparently no
attempt had been made to release it. The throttle was set at one fourth
open, mixture control at “Idle cut-off,” and prop control at “Full
increase r.p.m.”
From this evidence investigators concluded that because of lack of
oxygen Mantell had lost consciousness at about 25,000 feet, while his
plane continued to climb to about 30,000 feet; leveling off, it then
began a gradual turn to the left because of engine torque, and went
into a spiraling dive that produced a speed and a structural stress
greater than the plane could stand--the plane was “red-lined” (Air
Force jargon for the limit of safety) at 525 mph. Pilots who have
flown the P-51 in combat conditions have agreed with this conclusion
and have suggested that, as the plane fell, Mantell may have regained
consciousness, realized what was happening, pulled the throttle back
and tried to pull back on the control, thus producing a stress so great
that the wing was torn off and the plane then fell vertically.
As an immediate result of this tragic accident, Air Force officials
recommended that all pilots be briefed again on the use of oxygen
and the effects of lack of oxygen. New orders were issued; that no
pilot go above 12,000 feet without oxygen under any circumstances;
that no aircraft be cleared for cross-country flight unless it had
been serviced with oxygen; that classes in the use of oxygen start
immediately for all pilots and crew members; that all aircraft be
equipped with oxygen; and that all pilots carry mask, helmet, goggles,
and gloves on all flights.
The cause of the crash was known. But investigators had still to solve
the problem: what was the unknown object that Mantell had been chasing?
[Illustration: _Figure 5._ UFO sightings in the Mantell case. The
broken line indicates the path a balloon would have followed.]
An Air Force official had announced to the press that the unknown had
been the planet Venus. This explanation, while not impossible, was not
very probable. The position of Venus that afternoon had indeed been
very close to that of the unknown object. But with a stellar magnitude
of -3.4, less than half its maximum brilliance, in the daylight sky
the planet would have been visible, if at all, only as an exceedingly
small, bright point of light. Furthermore this answer did not fit
the pattern of sightings. The accompanying map (see Figure 5) of the
Ohio-Kentucky-Tennessee region illustrates the succession of events:
1:15 P.M., Maysville, Kentucky. Strange object sighted moving
west.
1:35 P.M., Owensboro and Irvington, Kentucky. Circular object
sighted, 250 to 300 feet in diameter, moving west.
Shortly before 1:45 P.M., Godman Air Force Base, Kentucky.
Circular or parachute-shaped object sighted; in view for about
two hours, slowly moving south.
4:00 P.M., Madisonville, Kentucky. Strange object; through
binoculars identified as a balloon.
4:45 P.M., Nashville, Tennessee. Strange object sighted;
through binoculars identified as a balloon.
5:00 P.M., Lockbourne Air Force Base, Columbus, Ohio. Round
glowing amber object sighted on southwest horizon in horizontal
flight; in view about twenty minutes, then disappeared below
the horizon.
All but the last observation in this series suggested a balloon flight,
but a quick check with the weather stations in the area failed to turn
up any record of a routine launching. Air Force investigators knew
about the Skyhook project and could have obtained information on secret
launchings, even though it was classified. But, since many of the
investigators in these early days of the saucer era were more than half
convinced that the unknown had been an interplanetary vehicle, they
abandoned the inquiry at this point and officially labeled the case an
Unknown. Flying-saucer addicts pounced on this conclusion as proof that
the object had actually been a spaceship, that the Air Force knew it to
be a spaceship and was deliberately concealing the news from the public.
_A Probable Solution of the Mantell Case_
Although the case remained unsolved for nearly four years, the
original analysis of the evidence, carried out by Dr. J. Allen Hynek,
scientific consultant for the Air Force, made certain facts clear
from the beginning. The final sightings in Ohio, so inconsistent with
the general pattern of the other observations, obviously were not
related to the reports from Kentucky and Tennessee. The object seen at
Columbus had undoubtedly been the planet Venus, glowing brilliantly
on the sunset horizon (see _Chapter_ IV). But the object that traveled
southwest over Kentucky and Tennessee had almost certainly not been
Venus. At least two objects--balloons or other aircraft--must be
involved. It was possible, though not probable, that the unknown
over Godman Field had been the planet Venus, or it might have been
still a third object. The senior author of this book, after studying
the facts available at the time and analyzing the weather conditions
prevailing that winter afternoon, suggested that the object could have
been a “mock sun” created by ice crystals in the cirrus clouds at high
altitudes[III-3, p. 22].
The final solution of these UFO mysteries often depends on one key
fact. Without it, the puzzle may never be solved. With it, all the
pieces fall into place. The “mock sun” theory (see p. 244) remained the
most probable explanation until, some time after the Skyhook project
had been declassified, ATIC investigators discovered the key fact:
At the time of the Mantell crash, the Clinton County Air Force Base,
in southern Ohio, had been a launching site for Skyhook balloons.
Unfortunately records for the day of Captain Mantell’s death were not
available, and the men who had worked on the balloon project could no
longer remember whether they had launched a Skyhook on that particular
day. If an unacknowledged balloon had been in the area, however, only
one more piece was needed to complete the puzzle: What path would the
balloon have followed?
The records at Wright-Patterson Field show that the winds that
afternoon would have carried a balloon over exactly the course the
UFO followed: from southern Ohio west into Kentucky. It would have
climbed rapidly and at about 35,000 feet would have entered the
southward-flowing jet stream; shifting direction, the balloon would
have traveled south at a high rate of speed, still climbing. Somewhere
south or southwest of Godman Field it would have climbed through the
jet stream to enter a region of calm at about 60,000 feet; slowing
down, it would have drifted south or southeast into Tennessee. Of its
fate after that we can only guess[III-4, p. 19].
Without the Skyhook records for the day in question, this solution
cannot be called absolutely certain. But the chances of its being
correct are overwhelmingly high--infinitely higher than the
probability that Mantell died while chasing a spaceship from another
planet.
_A Radiosonde over Virginia_
In the years that followed, the pattern of sightings in the Mantell
case has often reappeared but, fortunately, without the same tragic
outcome. After each Skyhook launching, a flood of UFO sightings came in
to ATIC from towns that lay under the path of the balloon. The Skyhook
project sometimes was able to relocate a “lost” balloon by following
newspaper reports of flying saucers.
By the summer of 1952 the existence of giant balloons was no longer
classified information. When on June 15 an unidentified flying object
appeared over several towns in Virginia and followed a course that
closely resembled that of the Mantell UFO, Air Force investigators
recognized the pattern and began looking for a balloon as the probable
explanation. The reports were as follows[III-1, p. 192]:
3:40 P.M., Unionville, Virginia. Very shiny object sighted at
high altitude.
4:20 P.M., Gordonsville, Virginia. Round, shiny object sighted
in the southeast.
4:25 P.M., airliner near Richmond, Virginia. A silver sphere
sighted at eleven o’clock high.
4:43 P.M., south of Gordonsville, Virginia. Jet pilot sighted
and tried to intercept a round, shiny sphere.
5:43 P.M., south of Gordonsville. An Air Force jet pilot
sighted and tried to intercept a shiny sphere; at 35,000 feet
the object was still above him.
7:35 P.M., Blackstone, Virginia. A round, shiny object with a
golden glow sighted, moving south.
7:59 P.M., radio station at Blackstone. Shiny object sighted.
8:00 P.M., Blackstone. Jets from Langley Air Force Base tried
to intercept object.
8:05 P.M., object disappeared.
Investigators first of all checked with officials at Lowry Air Force
Base, which served as a plotting center for all Skyhook balloons, but
there were none in the East that day. Next they checked the possibility
that the UFO had been a weather balloon, but nearby weather stations
replied that none of their balloons could have been responsible for the
sightings. After calling other stations within a 150-mile radius of
Gordonsville with negative results, investigators called the weather
station at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A radiosonde (a small balloon
attached to an instrument for taking soundings in the upper atmosphere)
had been released that afternoon, but had been lost about sixty miles
southeast of the station when it apparently sprung a slow leak and
leveled off at 60,000 feet. The weather man at Pittsburgh offered
to plot its probable course as determined by the prevailing winds,
and soon telephoned Dayton to report that the UFO was probably their
balloon.
Southeast of Pittsburgh above 50,000 feet there was a strong current
of air that fed into a stronger southerly stream flowing parallel to
the Atlantic coast, just east of the Appalachian Mountains. The balloon
would have floated along in this current like a log floating down a
river, and should have arrived in the neighborhood of Gordonsville
and Blackstone in the late afternoon or early evening. The UFO had
been sighted near Gordonsville between 4:43 and 5:43 P.M., and near
Blackstone between 7:35 and 8:00 P.M. The unknown was thus clearly
identified as the lost radiosonde.
_Skyhook and Pibal UFOs_
The year 1952 was a big year for experimental balloons--and for
UFO sightings. Weather balloons in clusters, 100-foot Skyhooks,
radiosondes, pibals (pilot balloons sent up to show the direction and
speed of the wind) were released on schedule all over the continent.
Launchings were recorded and the balloons were tracked, as far as
possible, so that for any given day or area ATIC could consult a map
and try to correlate the position of a known balloon with that of a
reported flying saucer. When a balloon was lost, any UFO sightings
it caused were not always easy to account for until--and unless--the
balloon could be found again.
These spheres of gas vary in size from a few inches in diameter to some
two hundred feet. Often they look and behave very unlike the popular
concept of a “normal” balloon, and under the right conditions they can
fool even the most wary observer--particularly if he is more or less
expecting to see something strange.
A man on the ground or even in a plane, watching the maneuvers of an
object some 20,000 to 100,000 feet above him, finds it impossible to
make an accurate estimate of its true height, diameter, distance, or
speed. Strong windcurrents can change the orientation of the sphere,
and the particular angle of vision of the observer can make the object
look wholly unlike a balloon. It may assume the shape of a disk, a
lens, a teardrop, a parachute, a sausage. Temperature inversions can
produce a double image of a balloon so that it looks like a linked
pair. Balloons released in pairs or clusters may seem to be traveling
in formation under intelligent control. Sunlight, moonlight, or the
lights of a city reflected from the surface may cause them to look
white, gray, amber, red, silvery, or metallic. Since balloons often
carry a heavy instrument load, they may give a radar return that
indicates a solid object.
When balloons develop a leak, they may drop some distance at high
speed and then level off, as though under intelligent control. At the
extreme cold of high altitudes they may burst and suddenly vanish.
High in the sky at morning and evening twilight they may appear to be
self-luminous, taking their light from the invisible sun just as our
artificial satellites do. They often travel high above the air lanes,
higher than any plane can go, where varying wind streams may propel
them at great velocities, slow them until they seem to hover and be
almost stationary, abruptly change the direction of their motion so
that they reverse course, dive toward the earth, or ascend rapidly into
the sky.
At night all these illusions are magnified because the observer has
fewer visible reference points by which to evaluate the true shape,
distance, and type of motion of these wandering spheres. They can
deceive even the most hardheaded and able pilot. The pilot is only
human when he doubts that any balloon can fool him--until it does.
_The Guantánamo “Dogfight”_
An American Navy pilot, practicing night flying over the Guantánamo
City base in Cuba on the night of September 24, 1952, engaged in a
“dogfight” with a balloon that exhibited all the characteristics
associated with this type of flying saucer. It seemed to take evasive
action, deliberately elude the pilot, make head-on passes, and respond
to every move of the plane with a countermove.
The pilot was at 4000 feet and slowly climbing when he spotted an
orange light approaching the city from the east at 10,000 to 15,000
feet. Realizing that the object was not a Navy plane, he tried to
intercept it, but the light had started a left turn and he could get no
closer than eight to ten miles. The object appeared to be as large as
a Navy bomber and had a greenish tail five or six times the diameter
of the light, visible only intermittently. When he reached 10,000
feet, the light was still circling left and climbing in a ten- to
fifteen-mile orbit. To keep the nose of the relatively slow TBM on the
light required about 40 degrees of bank. At 12,000 feet the light was
still climbing faster than the plane; the pilot then stopped climbing
and reversed from a left to a right turn. The light seemed also to
reverse direction.
All attempts at interception seemed to be met by purposeful evasive
action, and the object seemed to be guided by intelligence. When
the pilot followed the light to the north, it shifted to west, then
south, at about 25,000 feet. Suddenly it began to climb at an angle
of approximately 60 degrees and at a terrific rate. Although it had
been a large bright glow, it now appeared as a very small red point
which would have blended with the stars had it not been moving. It then
started a rapid descent. By this time the pilot was over the base and
headed northeast to intercept the light as it descended. He described
the ensuing “dogfight”[III-2]:
“The light appeared to level out rapidly, and I missed it on the first
run and started a tight port turn. As I headed for a point that would
give me a 90-degree collision course for the light, it appeared to
accelerate and crossed my bow at an incredible speed. I immediately
went into a tighter turn and the next intercept was the same except
that I was almost on the light, as it flashed from starboard to port.
At this close range nothing but the light could be seen, and it was a
brilliant white, approximately fifteen feet in diameter. After each
run, the light appeared to go out one-quarter to one-half mile, and
slowing in speed, continuing in a port turn. As I pulled out of the
third run the light appeared to start another rapid descent towards
Caimanera. This time I went into a steep dive to follow, when the light
appeared to shallow its dive and head towards the control tower. My
altitude was 6000 to 8000 feet, descending at a speed of better than
200 knots. The light was below me and going at more than twice my
speed. As I approached the north shore of the Bay, at approximately
2000 feet descending, the light seemed to veer to port, pass over the
army dredge, steady out on an easterly heading, level out over the
mangroves, slow down rapidly over the cove ... hover over the water
momentarily, and then fade from sight.” After the plane landed, harbor
police searched the area but found nothing.
When the pilot was informed that he had been fighting a lighted weather
balloon, released that night from the Naval Air Station at Guantánamo
Bay, he may very naturally have felt incredulous. Instead of arguing,
however, he helped carry out an experiment. On the following night the
station released another lighted balloon, at about the same time, and
the pilot took off to try an intercept. After comparing the experience
with that of the night before, he concluded that he had indeed fought a
balloon:
“Many of the illusions seen on the previous night could be duplicated
by maneuvering the plane appropriately. I tracked the balloon to 12,000
feet and made runs on it from as far away as ten miles. I could always
intercept and pass it at any predetermined position, as against the
fact that I could not get close to the other light, which at the time
appeared to be moving away at each attempt at approach.”
There were other differences, too. The rate of ascent was faster on the
first night, and the second balloon did not exhibit a tail. Discussion
with members of the Aerology Department brought out the explanation of
these differences. The first night had been clear, with a bright moon
that transformed the accompanying light into a flickering tail. On the
second night the dew point was higher and the atmosphere was hazy so
that no tail was visible, the balloon looked smaller, and showed an
orange glow instead of a bright white.
The rapid climb of the first balloon could be attributed to a vertical
air current, or to an air layer of variable density, or both. A
balloon often develops leaks at high altitudes and then descends to an
intermediate altitude where the loss of gas and the denser atmosphere
cause it to hover. One wind balloon, released earlier from the same
base, had developed a leak, started spinning, covered a horizontal
distance of about a mile, and then dropped into the water. Similarly,
the first balloon probably developed a large hole and fell very rapidly
for a while until the loss of gas and the increase in atmospheric
pressure caused it to shrink and close the hole, slowing its descent.
Some of his impressions, he decided, were the result of making tight
turns at high speed: “The last fast descent could be due to the fact
that I may have cut the balloon with my prop on the third run, causing
the light to fall free. My last three-quarter turn was diving to port
in a position northeast of the light, which could have produced the
illusion of the light arcing across Caimanera and the Bay and settling
into the water. The light’s crossing from starboard to port could have
been the result of my plane being in a vertical turn and the light
descending straight down instead of going horizontally. At the time of
intercept I thought my wings to be almost level, the light traveling in
a flat circle, but due to the afore-mentioned vertigo, a pilot cannot
rely on his senses to establish attitude.”
The pilot concluded: “Considering all the facts and an observation
of known light on the night of the twenty-fifth, it is my opinion
that the light on the night of the twenty-fourth was a balloon, with
its accompanying light, which had been released from the Naval Air
Station.”[III-2]
_The Wallops Island UFO_
Perhaps the most spectacular (and short-lived) UFO in history appeared
at 6:55 P.M. E.S.T. on April 1, 1960, along the east coast. A
bright-yellow streak of fire shot up from the horizon into the eastern
sky and slowly changed into a huge zigzag pattern. With the streak of
fire appeared a large reddish sphere, reported by some observers to
be as large as the full moon and many times brighter than a planet.
Visible along the entire eastern seaboard, the brilliant object slowly
moved eastward, followed by a trail of greenish sparks. While still at
high altitude out over the Atlantic Ocean, it suddenly vanished--as
though it had simply taken off into outer space. Switchboards
in eastern cities were jammed as witnesses called newspapers,
universities, and nearby observatories to report a comet, a fireball,
or a flying saucer.
Newspapers immediately printed a full explanation of this April
Fool’s Day apparition: a scheduled but unannounced rocket launching
from Wallops Island, Virginia. The yellow fire was debris from the
rocket, reflecting the rays of the setting sun; contrary winds in the
upper atmosphere produced the zigzag form. The luminous globe was a
full-scale model of the Echo satellite--an inflated balloon 100 feet
in diameter, carried aloft by the rocket. Dry powder escaping through
holes in the balloon produced the greenish tail. The object had
“vanished” when the balloon fell back into the earth’s shadow and was
thus no longer visible.
Although the newspapers published a full explanation within a day or
two, some saucer enthusiasts continued to treat the apparition as a
mystery. In its _Special Bulletin_ for May the National Investigations
Committee on Aerial Phenomena (see _Chapter_ XIII) included the
incident under “Recent UFO Sightings.” Three months after the launching
the organization conceded (_UFO Investigator_, July-August, 1960) that
the UFO of April 1 was probably the giant balloon sent up from Wallops
Island.
On August 12, 1960, the counterpart of this balloon went into orbit and
became the satellite Echo, which is still circling the earth, shining
like a star of the first magnitude near dawn or sunset.
_Weather Balloons and Saucers_
In the early years of the saucer era balloons accounted for some 25 per
cent of the unidentified flying objects reported to ATIC. The pattern
of these sightings is unmistakable, and the identity of balloon and UFO
is often certain--as certain as any evidence can be. Nevertheless many
such identifications are resolutely rejected by the saucer enthusiasts.
It would be pointless to discuss all the UFO reports of this class, but
we can summarize a few of the most famous.
In the winter of 1953, a flying saucer was reported to have circled
around a B-36 bomber and blinked a light as though signaling.
Investigators from ATIC determined the following facts:
At 1:13 A.M. on February 6, 1953, the pilot of a B-36 plane bound for
Spokane, Washington, was near Rosalia when he sighted a round white
light below him, circling and rising at a speed estimated at 150 to
200 knots as it proceeded on a southeast course. The B-36 made a sharp
descending turn toward the light, which was in view for a period of
three to five minutes, but the pilot could not identify it.
At 1 A.M., thirteen minutes before the sighting, the United States
Weather Bureau station at Fairchild Air Force Base had released a
pibal balloon. Winds aloft at altitudes of 7000 to 10,000 feet were
from the northwest with a speed of about fifty knots. Computations
showed that the existing winds would have carried the balloon to the
southeast, and it would have been over Rosalia, which is 12.5 nautical
miles southeast of Fairchild Air Force Base, in about fifteen minutes.
The plane sighted the unknown near Rosalia thirteen minutes after the
launching. The balloon carried white running lights which accounted for
the blinking described, and the circling climb of the UFO is typical of
a balloon’s course. Thus all the evidence supports ATIC’s conclusion
that the UFO was a weather balloon[III-2].
A similar sighting had occurred near Hamilton Air Force Base,
California, on the afternoon of August 3, 1952--toward the end of the
summer’s saucer scare (_Chapter_ VII)--when several pairs of saucers
supposedly engaged in dramatic duels in full view of the base. Ample
evidence supports the Air Force conclusion that the UFOs were balloons.
The two objects were first seen at 4:15 P.M. Ground observers at the
Air Force base, with the aid of binoculars, described them as silver
in color, circular in shape, 60 to 100 feet in diameter, and traveling
from east to west at an estimated speed of 400 to 450 miles an hour.
One object was at about 12,000 feet, the other at about 18,000 feet;
as they moved to the west a distance of about fifteen miles, passing
over the heads of the observers (but not circling the base), the higher
object dived to about the level of the lower, and they bobbed about
each other for about an hour and a quarter. Toward the end of this
period they were visible only intermittently because they were seen
against the sun. Three additional pairs of objects (a total of eight)
came into view fifteen to twenty miles west of the observers and,
buffeted by the winds, appeared to carry on a dogfight; momentarily
they appeared in a “diamond” formation extending over an area of about
four miles. Since the witnesses were looking into the sun at objects
fifteen or twenty miles away, they found it difficult to follow the
course of any one for any length of time.
The objects looked like balloons, behaved like balloons, and weather
balloons had been released in the area that day. Conclusion: the
saucers were weather balloons[III-2].
A number of other publicized cases listed as “Unknown” were in all
probability balloons. Since a probability, however good, is not the
same as an established fact, these sightings remain in the Unknown
category even though their actual explanation is reasonably certain.
Such a case was that near Hermanas, New Mexico, which, like that a few
weeks earlier at Hamilton Air Force Base, may have been stimulated by
the 1952 saucer panic in Washington (_Chapter_ VII).
On August 24, 1952, an Air Force colonel was flying from California
to Georgia in an F-84-G plane at an air speed of about 290 miles an
hour. At 10:15 A.M. M.S.T., when near Hermanas, New Mexico, he observed
two round, silvery objects about six feet in diameter some two miles
north of him and traveling east at high speed; they showed no trail
or exhaust. During the three minutes they were in view, one object
suddenly began a right turn while the second accelerated rapidly;
they changed in shape and in color, became elongated and gray, and
then disappeared. A few minutes later over El Paso, Texas, he saw two
similar silvery objects, also traveling east. During the ten minutes
they were in view, one object seemed to climb straight up for 2000 or
3000 feet, followed immediately by the second one. Assuming that the
same pair of objects was involved in both sightings, the observer
concluded that they were going much faster than any plane, and reported
the incident to ATIC.
The behavior described is typical of that of balloons. Rising into a
new wind stream, they may move rapidly and change their orientation
so that they look sausage-shaped instead of round; reflecting
the sun at a different angle, they look gray rather than silver.
Investigators checked with Biggs Air Force Base, White Sands, and El
Paso International Airport; both White Sands and El Paso had released
weather balloons at 8:00 that morning which had traveled southeast
and burst some time before the sighting at Hermanas. Since no single
recorded balloon could account for the sighting, it was listed as
Unknown[III-2].
This inquiry can scarcely be called thorough. No check seems to
have been made at Holloman Air Force Base or at more distant bases
whose weather balloons might well have traveled into the area. The
investigators apparently accepted the pilot’s assumption that the
objects in the two sightings were identical and were therefore
traveling at incredible speeds; yet there was no evidence to support
the assumption. It is far more probable that he was observing two sets
of objects, not one. The estimates of size, distance, and speed are all
uncertain because no fixed reference point existed. The report does not
state whether the objects seemed to be above or below the plane, and
does not give the exact heading of the objects.
The objects looked and behaved like balloons. Another possibility is
that they were fragments from the balloons that had burst earlier. But
the explanation of this incident remains unknown because too few facts
were determined.
_Plastic UFOs and the “Stack of Coins”_
A burst balloon has caused many a saucer scare, but the invasion of
Farmington, New Mexico, on Saint Patrick’s Day 1950 was one of the
most dramatic. The “saucers” began to fly about 10:15 A.M. M.S.T., and
soon filled the air. In numbers estimated from 500 to thousands, for
the next hour the gleaming saucer-shaped objects soared over the town,
moving erratically at incredible speeds, darting in and out among
each other in what one writer has called “the greatest exhibition of
magnetic flight that has ever happened in this universe.”[III-6] (See
_Chapter_ IX.)
The explanation is more prosaic. A Skyhook balloon had been launched
that morning from Holloman Air Force Base near White Sands, New Mexico.
Near Farmington, in the cold atmosphere at 60,000 feet the balloon had
become brittle, burst, and disintegrated into hundreds of tiny pieces
of plastic. Light as feathers, shining in the sunlight, they floated
over the town and away[III-1, p. 106].
A similar episode occurred on July 27, 1952, the day after the second
Washington “invasion.” The dramatically named “stack of coins” sighting
at Manhattan Beach, California, was reported by an aircraft engineer,
formerly a Navy pilot, and was confirmed by seven other witnesses.
At 6:35 P.M. P.S.T., just before sunset, a bright silvery object
appeared high in the sky, elliptical in shape and apparently solid. The
size was estimated to be about that of a dime held at arm’s length.
As the observers watched, it turned to the south and gracefully broke
apart into seven smaller objects, as smoothly as a stack of coins
separating. The three lead objects assumed a V position, the others
followed in two pairs, and the whole formation then turned northeast
and quickly disappeared. ATIC investigators, still buried in a mass of
equally spectacular reports, could provide no solution to the mystery,
and another fleet of saucers had apparently been added to the summer’s
list.
Immediately concluding that the objects were from outer space,
UFO-philes pondered the meaning of the incident. One author suggested
that the disks might have been seven different ships that, when first
observed, had been stacked like coins and attached to each other by
some magnetic force, so that all could be directed as one[III-5].
This sighting has remained technically an unknown chiefly because the
descriptions fail to give the necessary information. What direction
did the object come from? How long was it in sight? What balloons had
been released in the area that day? At what time? What were the winds
at high altitudes? The winds at low levels were from the west, and at
altitudes from 20,000 to 50,000 feet they were from the east; but what
were they in the region above 70,000 feet, the probable location of
the object? Even without these facts, a reasonable explanation can be
offered: the unknown was a radiosonde balloon that burst at a high
altitude.
The sun was low on the western horizon. A balloon at a great height
reflects the sun brilliantly from its rubber or plastic skin and
gleams like a giant metallic sphere. These balloons usually soar to
70,000 to 90,000 feet before they burst from the cold. The fragments
then disperse in an impressively uniform pattern, and may disappear
quickly. The radiosonde package and attached parachute fall rapidly at
such heights. They are not noticed by the witnesses because the chute
usually does not open fully until after the package has fallen some
distance into the beginning twilight near the earth’s surface.
This explanation of the “stack of coins” cannot be proved, of course,
but every detail of the incident is consistent with the behavior of a
bursting balloon[III-2].
_Jets and Contrails_
Weather balloons are not the only air-borne objects that have been
mistaken for interplanetary craft. Flying saucers reported over
Durango, Colorado, early in August 1952 turned out to be four T-33 Air
Force jets flying at 30,000 feet, so high that no sound reached the
ground.
A low-flying jet, enveloped in an aura of cloud made by the jet itself,
can look like a strange object. This condensation phenomenon, called
a contrail, occurs when areas of low pressure develop on the wing
surface; the air cools by expansion in the slowly moving boundary layer
in contact with the wing. Both the depth of the boundary layer and the
drop in pressure increase with increasing air speed, but each depends
very closely on the aerodynamic qualities of the wing. An excellent
photograph of one such disk produced by a Canberra jet was taken on
February 4, 1956, along the coast of Africa near Accra on a morning
when the condensation phenomenon occurred several times during air
maneuvers. The weather was fine, the sky cloudless with a few patches
of haze over the sea, and visibility was more than eight miles. During
the display the air speed of the jets was usually too low or the
air too dry for the aura to form. “But over the cliff edge where the
sea-breeze was just beginning to break through in patches the air would
be moist enough to condense about 1½ gm. of water droplets in each
cubic metre of air, quite sufficient to produce the observed effect.
The effect is increased by higher speeds at the end of a dive (when the
angle of incidence of the aerofoil is least) ... but it is likely that
the patchy onset of the sea-breeze was the most important contributing
factor.”[III-7]
A flying saucer reported from Johannesburg, South Africa, on April
11, 1958, belongs in this category. Hundreds of witnesses reported
a mysterious starlike object maneuvering in the northern sky on
three successive nights at speeds in excess of 2000 miles an hour.
Most observers agreed that “The Thing” could not have been any known
aircraft because its speed was too great; it sometimes hovered
stationary in the air, and repeatedly changed color from white to red
to deep scarlet. One member of an Interplanetary Club who watched it
through binoculars described the UFO as saucer-shaped, with a rim like
a soup plate around the edge.
Members of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research
Minitrack Station, near Johannesburg, were amused by the variety of
reports on “The Thing.” The mysterious object in the night skies was
in fact a South African Air Force Dakota aircraft, flying back and
forth so that the Minitrack Station could test the calibration of its
tracking instruments. In addition to the usual navigation lights, the
aircraft had carried a bright, flashing light so that it could be
photographed[III-7a].
A flight of bombers refueling in mid-air at night can be a startling
spectacle and more than once has been reported as a gathering of flying
saucers.
Such an incident occurred in Florida on October 31, 1955, when a disk
jockey at Gainesville broke into his radio program about ten o’clock in
the evening to announce that flying saucers were over the station. Many
of his listeners hurried out of their houses to look at the Halloween
visitors, clearly visible in the night sky. One reporter stated that
he had seen four to six objects, oblong in shape, brilliantly glowing,
red and orange, traveling soundlessly in a straight-line formation that
later changed to a V[III-8]. Both the radio station and the police
station were swamped with telephone calls from frightened citizens,
most of whom calmed down when they learned the explanation: a flight of
bombers had been refueling at an altitude of 32,000 feet.
_The Killian Case_
The most famous UFO sighting of this type is the Killian case. On the
evening of February 24, 1959, an American Airlines plane was flying
from Newark to Detroit. At about 8:45 P.M., when the plane was near
Bradford, Pennsylvania, the pilot, Captain Killian, noticed some
puzzling lights above and to the left of his plane. There seemed to
be three, their colors changing from yellow to light orange, dimming
and brightening in intensity and shifting their relative positions.
At first he supposed he was looking at the constellation Orion, for
the lights had the same configuration as the stars in Orion’s “belt,”
but when the lights changed position and he could see Orion itself in
addition to the lights, he discarded his first theory. He considered
the possibility of a jet tanker refueling operation, but decided the
lights were moving too slowly. He couldn’t think of any ordinary
explanation--but he had long wondered what truth there was in the idea
of flying saucers and had thought there must be something to it.
Over the loud speaker he remarked to the passengers that American
Airlines had a special treat for them which they could see by looking
out of the left windows. He continued to watch the lights as he flew
west toward Detroit, and radioed two other American Airlines planes in
the area. Learning that their pilots were also watching the unusual
spectacle, he notified Air Traffic Control (ATC) in Detroit. The lights
remained in view for about forty minutes, all the way to Detroit, and
the pilot lost sight of them only when he began to let down through the
haze for a landing.
Reporters and photographers were waiting to interview him, and next
day’s Detroit _Times_ carried a banner headline, “Mystery Discs Trail
Plane Here,” over a picture of Captain Killian flanked by the plane’s
two pretty hostesses, all three smiling as they held up to the camera
three ordinary kitchen saucers[III-9]. After checking with the Detroit
ATC, who did not know of any scheduled refueling operation, the pilot
reported his experience to officials of American Airlines, and next
day returned to New York where again he was besieged by reporters
and photographers. Meanwhile, following standard CIRVIS procedure
(Communication Instruction for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sighting
from Aircraft), the manager of operations of American Airlines reported
the incident to ATIC at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
In New York the day after the sighting Captain Killian gave a telephone
interview to Radio Station WCHS, Charleston, West Virginia, describing
his experience. Following the customary procedure, intelligence
officers from Mitchell Air Force Base questioned him and filled out the
usual report form[III-2]. In the radio interview and in the talk with
intelligence officers Captain Killian made the same statements he had
made to American Airlines officials: he didn’t know what the lights
were, and he couldn’t tell how far away they had been because he didn’t
know their size or their altitude[III-10].
Not for months had such a good flying-saucer story appeared, and the
newspapers made the most of it. Among the first to assert that the
unknown lights had been flying saucers was the UFO Research Committee
of Akron, Ohio (see _Chapter_ XIII). Members of the committee had
received the news by telephone, even before Captain Killian’s plane
landed at Detroit, from the pilot of a United Airlines plane who
had watched the lights on his flight to Akron. During the days
following, Captain Killian’s copilot gave an interview on Long John
Nebel’s after-midnight radio program in New York. Captain Killian
himself described the UFOs to members of a New York UFO organization,
Civilian Saucer Intelligence (CSI), and appeared on several radio
and TV programs. Both saucer addicts and newsmen besieged Air Force
representatives, demanding an immediate explanation of the sighting.
Finally, on February 28, only two days after receiving the report from
American Airlines, ATIC yielded to public pressure and produced a
tentative theory: it was possible that the pilots might have sighted
the stars of Orion, as Captain Killian had first suggested. However,
the release added, no definite conclusion could be reached until all
the facts had been studied.
Promptly rejecting the possibility that he might have been looking at
Orion, Captain Killian stated in an interview with the New York _Herald
Tribune_, “I am sure there are people on other planets and that they
have solved the problem of space travel.... I sincerely believe that
their vehicles are coming close to earth.”
While the saucer believers were keeping the story alive, applauding
Captain Killian and denouncing the Air Force, the experts at ATIC had
been collecting facts and trying to analyze them. The basic piece
of evidence was Captain Killian’s own report to American Airlines,
made a few hours after the incident took place. After describing the
circumstances of the sighting, the appearance and behavior of the
lights, the statement continues:
“The only possible explanation other than flying saucers could be
a jet-tanker refueling operation. Never having witnessed refueling
operations at night, I am not aware of the lighting of the jet tanker.
“My air speed during this complete flight was 250 knots indicated. I
also do not know the air speed of tankers during operation if this
could be so. I contacted ATC to find out if they had any airplanes on a
clearance and no three airplanes were given.
“In summary, it was difficult for me to believe they were jets because
of low speed and configuration. If they weren’t jets I still don’t know
any more than I did before even though I watched them for forty minutes
before. Due to the dark and strong lights I was not able to ascertain
any size or shape. The altitude of the objects was 30 degrees above my
horizon. Distance away is unknown.”[III-2]
Almost equally important was the evidence of other witnesses. During
the forty-minute period of observation, the crews of five other planes,
all flying west in the Pennsylvania-Ohio region, had watched the lights
for varying lengths of time. Several persons on the ground in and near
Akron had seen them between 9:15 and 9:30.
Air Force investigators methodically gathered the facts and made their
analysis and on March 16, only twenty days after the sighting, they
released a summary to the press. The mysterious lights belonged to
normal terrestrial aircraft. Although ATC at Detroit had apparently
not had the information when first asked, three B-47 bombers of
the Strategic Air Command had been carrying out a night refueling
operation from KC-97 tankers at the time and place reported. The tanker
has several groups of lights which, from a distance, can seem to be one
or more lights, and would have looked very much like the three objects
described by Captain Killian. Such a refueling operation takes from
about forty minutes to more than an hour.
Captain Killian had been flying at an altitude of 8500 feet, and he had
given the location of the unknowns as 30 degrees above his horizon;
this agreed with the position of the tankers, which were operating at
an altitude of 17,000 feet. Captain Killian had been flying west at an
indicated air speed of 250 knots; the refueling tankers had also been
flying west at a true air speed of 230 knots (ca. 270 mph). Since the
courses of plane and tankers were roughly parallel, the tankers had
remained in view and would have arrived over Akron at about 9:15, the
time that ground observers reported the lights.
Everything checked. Every detail of the incident was accounted
for[III-11]. Nevertheless the solution caused an explosion in
the camps of the saucer enthusiasts, who called it, among other
things, imaginative. Forgetting that the “Orion” theory suggested
immediately after the sighting had been only tentative, UFO addicts
ridiculed it and asked why the experts had later offered a different
explanation--which they greeted with equal ridicule[III-12].
Captain Killian, too, had apparently forgotten his first report. On
March 24, a month after the sighting, in an interview by the Long
Island _Daily Press_ he stated that the things he saw could not have
been tankers; that he knew what B-47 bombers and KC-97 tankers looked
like, and how they looked in operation at night (Original statement
to American Airlines: “Never having witnessed refueling operations at
night, I am not aware of the lighting of jet tankers.”) Also, he told
the _Daily Press_, the objects he saw were at least triple the size of
any known tanker or bomber. (Original statement to American Airlines:
“Due to the dark and strong lights I was not able to ascertain any
size or shape.”) Furthermore, he asserted, the unknowns had been far
too fast for a tanker, and had moved at a speed of about 2000 miles an
hour. (Original statement to American Airlines: “... it was difficult
for me to believe they were jets because of low speed.”)
In rejecting the Air Force explanation of this incident, flying-saucer
addicts ignored several embarrassing questions: If Captain Killian
actually saw interplanetary craft, how did he fail to see the earthly
aircraft operating at the same time and place? If the unknowns moved at
a speed of 2000 miles an hour, how did Captain Killian and the crews of
several other planes, flying at less than 300 miles an hour, keep the
unknowns in sight for forty minutes? In that length of time the UFOs
should have covered most of the distance to the Pacific.
Few persons, given the facts by responsible officials, would persist
in denying the reality of the tankers and conjuring up a fleet of
flying saucers to occupy the relevant cubic area of space. To the true
enthusiast, however, these refueling planes remain incontrovertible
proof that spacecraft are among us.
_... And Kites and Soap Bubbles_
Objects need not be as large as Skyhook balloons or jets to start
a flying-saucer scare. Brightly illuminated advertising blimps
have caused many UFO reports. Unfamiliar circumstances or a faulty
perspective can manufacture spaceships out of things as small as seeds,
spider webs, scraps of paper, or toy balloons.
In the autumn of 1947, during the first months of the saucer scare,
many such UFOs were reported. One experienced observer, formerly
a combat pilot, reported a flying saucer overhead at a height he
estimated as 5000 feet. More careful study showed that the object
was at a height of only about 250 feet and was suspended from small
balloons. Later he learned that, as a joke, some boys had launched a
paper saucer carried by helium-filled toy balloons. During this same
period when everyone was talking about flying saucers, spaceships
reported over an Iowa town one night turned out to be glowing bits of
paper drifting from a fireplace chimney[III-13].
On March 16, 1961, according to the British radio, a resident of East
Suffolk reported to the police that he had seen a spaceship land in a
nearby field. Investigators soon found the craft: a fuel tank that had
fallen from a passing plane.
A fleet of UFOs appeared late one afternoon in July 1961 to an observer
driving west along Highway 54 from El Paso, Texas, to Alamogordo, New
Mexico. It had been raining in the mountains, and wind and dust storms
had forced the driver to stop several times during his trip, but now
the sun was shining between patches of dark cloud in the western sky.
Driving toward the outskirts of Alamogordo, he was startled to see a
V-shaped formation of huge saucers flying directly toward him. Stopping
his car, he saw that they were glowing a deep red, were moving at high
speed, and seemed to be as high as the clouds. When they had reached
a point nearly overhead, they suddenly seemed to drop down toward the
observer. Rapidly revising all his first estimates of size, height,
and speed, he recognized their true identity. They were merely a group
of tumbleweeds that had been carried aloft in the strong winds and
were soaring past at a height of only 100 feet. Illumination from the
setting sun had produced their weird reddish glow.
A spectacular flying saucer hovered near the Smithsonian
satellite-observing station in Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles, on
the night of October 17, 1961. The station crew observed it with
binoculars, by apogee telescope, and photographed it with the
Baker-Nunn satellite camera. A brilliantly glowing object, it shone
in the eastern sky, moving erratically and fluctuating in brightness.
After watching it for nearly an hour and finding that the nearby
airport could not observe the object, the observers concluded that it
must be less distant than it seemed, and set out by car to try to get
a closer look. About a mile and a half from the station they stopped,
and solved the mystery. A plantation manager and his servant stood in a
field, hanging on to one end of a 1200-foot kite string. At the other
end, high in the sky, soared a kite; hanging from it was a lighted
pressure lantern[III-14] (see Plate IIa).
In 1954 malfunction of a sewage-disposal plant in western Pennsylvania
produced one of the most spectacular saucer reports on record. An
oversupply of detergent, whipped by a stiff breeze, foamed into a
mountainous tower of bubbles. A sudden gust of wind broke the tower
and launched a colossal mass of bubbles as large as a ten-story
building. This brilliant, scintillating, super-giant bubble bath rose
to great heights and drifted for miles. Widely reported as a UFO, this
apparition was merely an unusual by-product of modern technology. The
UFOs photographed over Kentucky on July 7, 1947, were probably vapor
trails, a less familiar sight then than now; or they might possibly
have been the smoke trails from an exploding meteor (see Plate IIb).
A saucer incident that might have become a classic Unknown occurred in
Denver at 10 A.M. on a summer’s day in 1950. A man was sitting on the
shady porch of his house, reading. Beyond the porch roof the sun shone
brightly. Glancing up from his book, he was startled to see a formation
of perhaps a dozen spherical objects, shining iridescently, traveling
toward the distant mountains. As he watched, those in the front of the
procession seemed to vanish instantly while others appeared out of
nowhere to join the parade at the rear. Measuring their size against
the mountain background, he decided they were “immense” and they moved
at fantastic speed, covering the thirty or so miles to the mountains in
a matter of five or six seconds.
Too stunned to take action, he was still numb from shock when he heard
a faint “Hello,” and looked up--to realize that the little girl across
the street was blowing soap bubbles. If the man had jumped up when
he first saw the objects and had rushed into the house to telephone
the nearest saucer club, he might never have found out that the
“spaceships” were only bubbles[III-15].
[III-1] Ruppelt, E. J. _The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects._
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1956.
[III-2] Air Force Files.
[III-3] Menzel, D. H. _Flying Saucers._ Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1953.
[III-4] Tacker, L. J. _Flying Saucers and the U. S. Air Force._
Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1960.
[III-5] Keyhoe, D. E. _Flying Saucers from Outer Space._ New York:
Henry Holt & Co., 1953.
[III-6] Scully, F. _Behind the Flying Saucers._ New York: Popular
Library, Inc., 1951, p. 144.
[III-7] Sarson, P. B. “Aircraft Condensation Aura,” _Meteorological
Magazine_, London, Vol. LXXXV (1956), p. 217.
[III-7a] Johannesburg _Star_, April 14, 1958.
[III-8] Case 142, CRIFO _Orbit_, Vol. II (March 2, 1956).
[III-9] Detroit _Times_, Feb. 25, 1959.
[III-10] Barker, G. “Chasing the Flying Saucers,” _Flying Saucers_
(July 1959), p. 24 ff.
[III-11] Kirsch, F. A. “Air Force Right on Killian ‘Saucer’?” _Flying
Saucers_ (August 1960), p. 17 ff.
[III-12] “Report on Unidentified Flying Objects Observed Feb. 24, 1959,
by American-United Airline Pilots.” Compiled by Unidentified Flying
Objects Research Committee, Akron, Ohio, Feb. 24, 1960.
[III-13] Wylie, C. C. [Speech] _Popular Astronomy_, Vol. LVI (1948), p.
217.
[III-14] Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, _The SAO News_, Vol. I,
No. 6 (November 1961).
[III-15] Dean, C. W. Personal communication.
_Chapter_ IV
THE SPANGLED HEAV’NS: STARS AND PLANETS
Shortly before dawn on March 3, 1955, a spectacular flying saucer
appeared over Alaska. The witness, a civilian scientist with the rank
of Commander in the United States Navy, was returning from the North
Pole on the daily Air Force Ptarmigan weather flight; his mission had
been to study the effect of the aurora on radio propagation, for the
Department of Defense. He described his experience as follows:
_A Mirage of Sirius_
“We were flying southwest of Point Barrow, Alaska, not far from
Bering Strait, en route to Eielson Air Force Base in Fairbanks, and
our course was roughly southeast. The night was clear and the stars
shone brilliantly. I was looking out of the western bomb blister when
suddenly I saw a bright object shoot in at tremendous speed from the
horizon, directly toward the plane. At first I thought it was a meteor
or a fireball and I instinctively ducked, but the object came to a
sudden skidding stop about 300 feet away, thereafter riding along with
our plane and keeping pace with our speed. I could scarcely believe my
eyes. The thing possessed green and red signal lights that flashed back
and forth, and something that looked like a lighted propeller on the
top. Beyond question, it was a flying saucer.
“I wondered if the thing might be a hallucination, brought on by
fatigue. After all, we had been in the air almost seventeen hours. I
cleaned my spectacles and rubbed my eyes, but the Saucer was still
there, pacing the plane and bobbing up and down as the plane itself
occasionally wove or dipped. My next thought was to eliminate all
possible chance that the thing was an internal reflection. I pulled my
fur parka up over my head and put my face smack against the bulging
surface of the blister that formed the window. Thus shielded from all
internal illumination, I could still see the glowing object. I next
drew a pencil from my pocket and held it out at arm’s length, and was
surprised to find that the glowing disk was somewhat smaller than the
eraser. I made a rapid calculation and concluded that if the sphere was
actually 300 feet away, as it seemed, then it was only a foot or two
in diameter, not much larger than a basketball. My next thought was
whether one of the radio parachutes had somehow or other got attached
to the plane by the string. These objects, brilliantly lit by an
electric light, can be quite startling. But it had been nearly half an
hour since the last parachute release and the meteorologists were just
getting ready to lower another through the trap. I decided to call the
meteorologist to look at the thing. But before I could call out, as
if it had read my mind the object suddenly took off at top speed and
disappeared. Now I was really concerned. In less than two seconds the
UFO had vanished over the coast of Siberia, some 200 miles away. It
must have been traveling at the fantastic speed of more than 100 miles
a second. The Korean War was over but our relations with the Soviet
Union were still tense, and I wondered if the object might be a secret
Russian missile on reconnaissance. I kept my eyes glued to the point
where the saucer had disappeared and suddenly, a couple of minutes
later, it shot back toward the plane, more brilliant and spectacular
than the first time.
“You can perhaps imagine my relief when I suddenly realized what the
object was, and at the same time realized that I had hit on the answer
to a great many flying-saucer reports of a similar nature. Only someone
familiar with the constellations could have identified the object. It
was a mirage of Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens. Actually
Sirius was slightly below the horizon at this time, but the bending
of the light had raised the image above the horizon and had diffused
the beam into the saucerlike form. The flashing red and green lights
were common phenomena associated with star twinkling, and the apparent
structure, including the whirling propeller, resulted from distortion
by the earth’s atmosphere.
“But why had the image taken off the way it did, and then rushed back?
The moving plane of course was continually changing position relative
to the ground features. A mountain peak on the distant horizon had
briefly come between the plane and the star, obscuring the light. The
light was not cut off all at once, however. Thus as the image dimmed
it seemed to shrink, as though it were racing away. This temporary
barrier also explained the sudden stops and starts and the tremendous
instantaneous acceleration the object seemed to make at the instant it
appeared. The large atmospheric lens was simply focusing the light of
the star in the general direction of the plane and thus it was centered
with my eye. That is why the object seemed to duplicate the motion of
the plane.
“I watched the object for several minutes after its return. I was able
to get full confirmation of this identification when the star rose over
the western horizon; it rose in the west because the southward motion
of the plane more than compensated for the westward rotation of the
star. And as Sirius came up from the horizon, the ‘flying saucer’ sank
back into the brilliant hemisphere of stars, where it belonged.” (The
witness in this case was the senior author of this book.)
Sirius has inspired many UFO reports. On December 10, 1952, at 7:15
P.M. P.S.T., the pilot and radar observer of an F-94 on routine patrol
duty were over the town of Odessa, Washington, at about 26,000 feet
when they saw a large white light in the east[IV-1]. Dim reddish-white
lights seemed to be coming from “windows,” and no trail or exhaust was
visible. The pilot attempted to intercept but the object performed
amazing feats--did a _chandelle_ in front of the plane, rushed away,
stopped, and then made straight for the aircraft on a collision course
at incredible speed. The pilot banked away to avoid collision, and
afterward was not able to locate the object. The radar man then got
a brief return but soon lost contact. Although the visual and radar
contacts had not coincided, both men assumed that they referred to the
same object[IV-2, p. 65].
Investigators suggested at first that the object might have been one
of the Telemuk balloons, but this idea had to be discarded and the
sighting was listed as Unknown. A review of the evidence by the present
authors suggests a highly probable explanation. Above the low cloud
cover at 3000 feet the night was clear and moonless. In the east,
Sirius was just rising over the horizon at the exact bearing of the
unknown object. Atmospheric refraction would have produced exactly
the phenomenon described. The same atmospheric conditions that caused
the mirage of the star would have caused anomalous radar returns (see
_Chapter_ VIII).
_Earth’s Distorting Atmosphere_
In everyday life we often look at familiar objects through a distorting
medium. Houses and persons seen through a pane of poor window glass
look peculiar and wrongly shaped, and images of trees and clouds
reflected in a pool or a stream of rippling water may continually shift
and break, but these distortions do not deceive us because we are used
to them. The child who stands before the crazy mirrors in an amusement
park may laugh at himself for looking so fat or so thin, so tall or so
short. Knowing that the image is only a ludicrous approximation to his
real appearance, he is able to recognize himself without difficulty.
But a stranger, placed so that he could see only the distorted image
and not the person who made it could not make the necessary corrections
and probably would not recognize the child if they met in the street.
Like window glass, water, or mirrors, a mere layer of air can distort
an image. For the astronomer, the earth’s atmosphere is a lifelong
frustration. Acting as an imperfect lens, it continually falsifies the
true position, color, size, and shape of the heavenly bodies he tries
to study. Under certain conditions it can change the image of a star
or a planet into an unrecognizable stranger. When light enters the
atmosphere, the rays are bent or “refracted” so that the image is moved
upward, somewhere above the true position of the star (see Figure 6).
When we are admiring a sunset and think we are watching the very top
rim of the sinking sun as it drops below the horizon, we are actually
seeing only its projected image. The sun itself has already set, but
its light is bent upward by the air that clings to the earth’s surface.
The greater the density of the air, the greater the displacement of
the image. If there were no air at the earth’s surface, the sun would
vanish and darkness would come instantaneously, with no intervening
period of twilight.
[Illustration: _Figure 6._ Bending of light by the atmosphere. A star
below the horizon is visible because refraction raises the image.]
A star’s light does not bend uniformly, however. Light rays of
different wave lengths bend at different angles, so that when white
light is scattered or “dispersed” into its component colors, the blues
and greens are bent more than the reds. The density and the temperature
of the air also affect the beam, so that as a star’s light travels from
the thin upper atmosphere to the denser air near the earth, the colors
shift constantly and the star seems to twinkle, flicker, and change in
color and brightness.
Such changes are most noticeable when a star is low on the horizon at
dawn or at dusk, so that its light reaches us only after traveling
through miles of dense atmosphere. The sun displays these effects
dramatically. At sunrise and sunset its scattered light may illuminate
the entire horizon. Clouds turn red and gold, hills and the tops of
buildings take on a ruddy glow, and the entire sky may flame. The red
wave lengths remain, while most of the blues and greens have been
scattered out of the beam or may appear briefly at the top of the sun’s
disk, as a “green flash,” at the instant it sinks below the horizon.
Similarly, a star or planet observed low on the horizon at sunrise or
sunset may appear extraordinarily large and brilliant. It may seem to
have structure, showing an intense red glow at the bottom and bright
blue at the top. Watching it, the startled observer may see the object
apparently in motion, hovering, pulsating, and flashing red and green
lights. If he is so inclined, he can easily interpret the image as a
strange machine, the red as the glow from an exhaust, and the blue as
the illumination system of an interplanetary craft.
[Illustration: _Figure 7._ Displacement of light image by temperature
inversion.]
Normally the air is warmest at the surface of the earth and steadily
gets colder at greater and greater heights. Sometimes this condition
is reversed, particularly in the broad deserts and prairies of the
Southwest, where the changes between the day’s heat and the night’s
cold may be sudden and extreme. The ground cools off rapidly during
the night and imparts this coldness to the layer of air immediately
above. Thus the air may be warmer some distance above the ground. When
such a “temperature inversion” occurs, light going through the air
bends in a peculiar way (see Figure 7), so that the image is displaced
far more than normally. The inversion may produce fuzzy or greatly
distorted images, and when there are several layers of alternating hot
and cold air, the effects may be spectacular. At the boundaries between
the layers the distortion and displacement increase greatly. A star
or a planet seen through such an atmosphere may display apparently
violent motions, peculiar shapes, and fantastic color changes; light
clouds drifting over the bright stars may increase this illusion of
motion[IV-3]. The rising or setting sun, although actually below the
horizon, may project upward several images of itself, one on the top of
another, to form a kind of Chinese pagoda, or a “bell pepper.” And the
twinkling top rung of the pagoda may simulate a whirling propeller.
_The “Whipping Girl” of Saucerdom_
The planets are wanderers. Each day they move to a new position among
the constellations. Astronomers and navigators have learned the paths
of the planets and the positions of the brightest fixed stars, but most
of us, when we look up at the night sky and see a brilliant stranger
among the familiar star groups, must cudgel our brains to account
for it. According to our dispositions, we may consult a newspaper or
telephone an observatory to find out the name of the intruder, or we
may conclude that the unknown is an alien spacecraft.
The planet Venus has been chased at least once by patrolmen in a squad
car, has several times caused the scrambling of jet interceptors,
and has been named the culprit in so many UFO mysteries that saucer
enthusiasts somewhat cynically refer to it as “the whipping girl” of
saucerdom.
The brightest of the planets and the closest to earth, Venus never
moves more than 45 degrees from the sun and thus is most often visible
in our skies near sunrise or sunset, preceding or following the sun.
The apparent size of the planet varies according to its distance from
the earth and its phase. When it is farthest from the earth, the disk
has a diameter of ten seconds; at its closest, the diameter has grown
sixfold, to sixty-four seconds. The human eye and the ordinary camera
see it as a brilliant white star. Being nearer the sun, Venus receives
almost twice as much light from the sun as does the earth, and when at
greatest brilliance, can be seen in the daytime sky. Viewed momentarily
through rapidly moving cirrus clouds, it may seem to be racing across
the sky like a flying saucer, but a longer look will reveal that the
object is actually making very slow progress, like a planet[IV-4].
To the airman in the cockpit of a plane, the planet in the dawn sky
can be a breathtaking sight. As one veteran pilot has described the
experience, “Venus rose to signal me from the eastern horizon, so
brilliant and inconsistent in color, changing at once from yellow to
green to purple and then reversing the show, that I thought for a time
it was another aircraft equipped with special lighting devices. But
Venus steadied in time, proving its identity.”[IV-5]
During the spring of 1956 Venus stimulated an unusual amount of
flying-saucer excitement. About 9:00 E.S.T. on the nights of March
20, 21, and 22, dozens of persons in Cincinnati, Ohio, telephoned
the newspapers and the local headquarters of Civilian Research
Interplanetary Flying Objects (CRIFO), to report an unidentified
flying object that was burning “like a beacon” in the western sky. A
reporter for the Cincinnati _Enquirer_ stated: “To the naked eye, the
object appeared to be an extraordinarily intense bluish white light
... through binoculars, the object appeared to be a compact galaxy
of lights, changing form as they revolved slowly. At one point, with
binoculars set slightly out of focus, it assumed the appearance of a
diamond brooch ringed with emeralds turning lazily on an eccentric
axis.” The object was visible for nearly an hour, moved slowly to the
northwest, and disappeared.
Astronomers quickly identified the unknown as Venus. To the saucer
enthusiasts, however, it appeared as a low-flying luminous object with
swept-back wings, hovering in the west, making no sound, and displaying
colors that changed from red to white. While admitting that some of
the reported sightings might have been Venus, the editor of _Orbit_
(the official publication of CRIFO) argued that an object that changed
shape and sparkled like diamonds and emeralds could not possibly be
Venus. He stated “that the public should know that out of seventeen
UFO reports received for a three day period, ten were explainable as
Venus but _six were not_! These stubborn six defied all conventional
explanation.”[IV-6]
While the fate of the seventeenth UFO may require further explanation,
the flying saucer reports did not offer a real puzzle. The time, the
position, the colors, and the apparent motions of the object were
entirely consistent with those expected for the planet under the
prevailing atmospheric conditions. Dr. Paul Herget of the Cincinnati
Observatory had easily identified the “mysterious” object. He added
that Venus would continue to get brighter and brighter until the
middle of May, and that the number of UFOs sighted would probably
increase correspondingly.
He was right. Less than three weeks after the excitement in Cincinnati,
Venus inspired one of the most notorious “Unknowns” in the history of
saucerdom, one that evoked charges of fraud, falsehood, and conspiracy
on a grand scale.
_The Ryan Case_
An American Airlines plane had just taken off on a flight from Albany
to Syracuse, New York, on the night of April 8, 1956. The sky was
clear with a very thin overcast. At 10:15 E.S.T., while at about 6000
feet over Schenectady, Captain Ryan and his first officer sighted
an unidentified flying object and reported it to Griffis Air Force
Base. Bright orange in color, it glowed ahead of the plane in the
northwestern sky. At first it seemed to be traveling at great speed,
800 to 1000 miles an hour. Then it appeared to slow down to the plane’s
speed, about 250 miles an hour, and thereafter kept a steady distance
ahead. The tower operators at the Albany and Watertown airports also
saw the object, as did the crews of four other plane flights, who
decided it was probably a star or a planet.
The shift supervisor on duty in the tower at Griffis Air Force Base,
alerted by Captain Ryan, was able to observe the unknown through
binoculars. He described it as apparently round, larger than any star,
at an estimated altitude of 3000 or 4000 feet; when first sighted it
looked white with an orange tint but after about ten minutes changed
to orange with a red tint. During the twenty-three minutes he watched
it, the unknown slowly descended over the horizon. Interceptors from
Griffis Air Force Base were scrambled (Air Force jargon meaning to take
off and pursue as quickly as possible) at 10:48 and 10:52, but returned
to base without finding anything. Captain Ryan, having watched the
object during most of the flight, landed his plane at Syracuse and made
the customary report.
The newspaper accounts that followed caused a short-lived flying-saucer
scare, but when officials from ATIC investigated they had no difficulty
in solving the mystery. The evidence was plain and unmistakable. The
object was the planet Venus. According to the reports of Captain Ryan
and the other observers in the air and on the ground, the object was
low in the northwest; estimates of its azimuth varied from 290 to 330
degrees. A plot of the planet’s actual position at 10:20 P.M., when
the UFO was first picked up by the tower operator at Griffis Air Force
Base, showed that Venus was slightly above the horizon at an azimuth
of 301 degrees, and that it set at 304 degrees at about 10:42 (when
allowance is made for the effects of atmospheric refraction)--the time
the UFO disappeared from the view of the Griffis observers. Of the
four other commercial and military pilots who reported the object, all
described it as essentially stationary, and all positively identified
it as Venus. In confirmation, the glowing light reappeared the
following night at the same time and position. The intercepting jets
had not been able to find the alleged UFO because by the time they left
the ground, around 10:50, the planet had already set[IV-1].
There the matter should have ended. The puzzle was solved, and
forgotten by all but a few saucer addicts. Some twelve months later,
however, Major Donald Keyhoe reopened the case. As the new Director of
the National Investigations Committee for Aerial Phenomena, commonly
known as NICAP (see _Chapter_ XIII), he charged the Air Force with
concealing the true facts of the incident, and himself tried to get in
touch with Captain Ryan to obtain information to support the charge.
Receiving no answer to letters or telephone calls, Major Keyhoe then
gave his story to certain government agencies. Using as evidence a
newspaper account[IV-7] and interpretations of Captain Ryan’s remarks
in a TV interview, NICAP alleged that the object sighted on April 8,
1956, had been a UFO; that the captain, on orders from Griffis Air
Force Base, had abandoned his scheduled route to chase the unknown
craft, had lost it somewhere over Lake Ontario, had then turned back
and landed at Syracuse and, finally, that his flight log must have been
falsified to conceal the facts of this pursuit[IV-8].
The original question, the identity of an unknown object, was all
but forgotten. In letters, telegrams, and telephone calls to various
officials of American Airlines, Congress, the Air Force, the Civil
Aeronautics Board, and the Civil Aviation Authority, NICAP requested
an official investigation of the incident. The first requests evoked
no response but continued efforts were successful. After hints of
publicity and of possible senatorial interest, the beleaguered agencies
at last yielded to NICAP pressure and reopened the case. Captain Ryan,
a reliable officer with twenty-three years’ experience as a pilot,
was subjected to official interrogation. Busy government bureaus were
forced to invest further time, money, and energy to confirm facts that
had never been in doubt.
To the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), Captain Ryan replied that he had
observed an unidentified object, but that he had not altered the course
of his flight. He repeated this explicit statement to officials of the
Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) and of American Airlines. Airline records
provided independent confirmation. Since the scheduled time of the
flight between Albany and Syracuse had been 49 minutes, and the actual
time elapsed on the night in question had been 48 minutes, he could
not possibly have spent time in making a detour over Lake Ontario as
alleged.
These declarations, according to NICAP, were worthless. They merely
proved that Captain Ryan had given false answers to his questioners;
that the government agencies involved knew the answers were false; and
that a gigantic conspiracy existed to suppress the truth. Among those
suggested as possible members[IV-8] were the American Airlines Company,
the Civil Aeronautics Board, the Civil Aviation Agency, the United
States Air Force, and possibly even the Central Intelligence Agency and
the National Security Council!
Saucer publications still list this sighting of Venus as an Unknown.
_Venus as a Morning Star_
One of the “best” UFOs of the year 1950 appeared when Venus performed
in plain sight of the ATIC offices at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base,
Dayton, Ohio[IV-2, p. 103].
About midmorning on March 8 a TWA plane, coming in to land at Dayton
municipal airport, was circling to get into the traffic pattern when
both pilot and copilot noticed an extremely bright light hovering in
the southeast. Much brighter and larger than a star, it appeared and
disappeared in the high, thick, scattered clouds. The tower operators,
who also saw it, immediately telephoned the Ohio Air National Guard
and officials at ATIC. Within minutes the UFO had attracted an audience
of exceptionally well-qualified observers. Air Force experts on
unidentified flying objects watched it from the ground, technicians
studied returns on the radar screens at the laboratory at Wright Field,
and the pilots of two hastily scrambled F-51s tried to intercept it.
The radar operators, who reported returns from both UFO and pursuit
planes, called the pilots and vectored them in toward the target. Both
pilots could see the light at first, but when they had climbed to about
15,000 feet they found themselves in clouds so thick that neither
could see the other plane, and the unknown was no longer visible.
Since ground radar reported that the planes were getting closer to
the target, the pilots decided to continue, on instruments, but they
separated to avoid the danger of colliding with each other. In a few
seconds they were deep in dense cloud. Flying conditions were far worse
than they had expected and the planes were icing up fast. Nevertheless
the pilots kept climbing until ground radar advised them that they
were almost on target. Realizing that if a solid object actually were
ahead of them they would hit it before they could see it, the pilots
immediately descended to below the clouds and circled, hoping for a
break in the overcast, until ground radar reported that the target was
fading fast. The planes then landed. When the clouds broke momentarily,
after about an hour, the UFO was not visible.
A conference took place at ATIC that afternoon to discuss the identity
of the mysterious light and the cause of the radar echoes. A check
showed that the position of the UFO had been identical with that of
Venus. The light, the conference concluded, had been Venus. One pilot
later disagreed, arguing that the light had not looked to him like a
planet and that if the object had been Venus it should have appeared,
but did not, at the same time on the following day. But the weather
conditions the first day would have distorted the image and made it
unlike the pale light of Venus occasionally visible in the daytime. It
was not visible at all the following day because of different weather
conditions.
The radar returns, the investigators found, had come from the ice-laden
clouds and were unrelated to the light. Both planes had encountered
unexpectedly severe icing conditions which increased as they
approached the center of the cloud. Radar, tracking their course during
these moments, had shown the planes approaching close to the unknown
target. All the evidence, the radar experts agreed, indicated that the
unknown target was ice[IV-1].
_Venus as an Evening Star_
In the spring of 1959 Venus again, this time in the evening, caused
reports of flying saucers. At 6:20 P.M. on March 13, a clear evening
with visibility of about fifteen miles, an unidentified flying object
was sighted in the western sky near Duluth, Minnesota[IV-1]. Witnesses
described its shape as tubular or round and its color as red, orange,
green, or white. Two interceptors of the Air Defense Command were
scrambled to investigate and headed for the object at top speeds, but
they could get no closer and eventually gave up the chase and landed.
Military personnel at ground stations and in the air observed the
object visually and picked up radar returns; it disappeared, after
about thirty minutes, by fading from sight. Although this spectacular
unknown had seemed to keep pace with the aircraft, at times rushing
toward the planes on a collision course and at other times reversing
direction and racing away, all witnesses agreed that the object had
remained at a magnetic bearing of approximately 300 degrees.
The radar screen at the ground station had been photographed and
the film was forwarded to ATIC at Dayton. Analysis showed that the
echoes had not come from a real target but were “angels” caused by
interference (see _Chapter_ VIII). Some operators had reported sharp
contacts, others fuzzy; on some sets the target had faded suddenly,
on others it rushed off the scope at incredible speeds. Contact was
intermittent, for short periods of from ten seconds to a minute, and
each new contact gave a different position for the target.
At the time of the sighting Venus was just on the western horizon, at
the same position occupied by the unknown, and probably would have
been invisible except for the refraction by the earth’s atmosphere.
Layers of air with different temperatures had produced the apparent
motion and changes in color. The object had maintained the same size
and relative position during the entire period of observation; it
disappeared by fading from sight, sinking farther below the horizon.
The following night, under similar atmospheric conditions, the object
reappeared in the same position. The unknown was positively identified
as Venus.
Venus was again reported as a UFO on the night of October 19, 1959,
in Korea. An observer reported a crescent-shaped silver object moving
very slowly toward the west. Observing it for three hours and twenty
minutes through the telescope of a transit, he obtained very exact data
on the bearing and altitude, which provided the facts required for
identification. The object moved westward at a rate of approximately 12
degrees an hour, a rate close to the rotational velocity of the earth
and the apparent rotational velocity of the stars. Venus at the time
occupied exactly the same position as the object, and went below the
horizon shortly after the reported sighting[IV-1].
_The Rotating Lights of Japan_
One of the most famous exploits of Venus took place over Japan and
Korea in December 1952 and January 1953. The resulting UFOs, publicized
as “The Rotating Lights of Japan,” were automatically identified as
spaceships by saucerians. Noting the similarity to the “foo balls”
often seen by airmen during World War II, however, Dr. Menzel concluded
that the lights were probably a type of foo ball, “an exceptional
mirage.”[IV-9, p. 96] The rotating cycle of colors suggested that
the atmosphere was acting to break up and disperse the component
colors of a luminous image, displaced from its true position. Without
precise information on the time, position, and direction of motion of
the unknown, this theory could not then be substantiated. During the
preparation of this book, however, the authors were able to examine the
original data on file at ATIC and to obtain the facts necessary for a
complete solution.
The drama began on December 29, when UFOs were reported at many
points over northern Honshu, the main island of Japan, and continued
with similar sightings, particularly on January 9 and January 21.
On the evening of December 29 the pilot of an F-84-G plane, engaged
in local-area night flying, overheard a radio-telephone conversation
between another plane and a radar station on the ground reporting
an unusual light in the western sky. Although the sky was thinly
overcast at 8000 to 10,000 feet, he was far above the clouds, flying
in brilliant moonlight with a visibility of at least forty miles. At
7:48 P.M. local time, while at 27,000 feet, he observed an unidentified
object above and almost due west of his plane. Turning off all his
lights to make sure that the object was not merely a reflection of his
own canopy, he climbed after the unknown and kept it in view for three
minutes, then lost it briefly. He soon located it again at 35,000 feet,
when he seemed to be level with the object and tried to close in on
it. During this second sighting he observed it for about five minutes
before the light disappeared in the west.
The pilot was a man of unusual experience, in command of a fighter
escort wing, and well aware of the illusions a flyer can experience
at night. He was also a remarkably accurate and resourceful observer,
so that his report to Intelligence investigators is a model of exact
statement. If all such reports were similarly precise and complete,
few UFOs would remain unidentified and the civilian saucer groups
would have to disband (see _Chapter_ XIII). Carefully separating what
he observed from what he concluded, the pilot stated that the object
looked larger than the stars or any planet; he assumed that it was
circular, but could not determine the actual shape. He could not
determine whether the object was silent or noisy because the noise of
his own motors would have prevented his hearing any sound from the
unknown. The object seemed to show a cluster of lights, red, white, and
green, which slowly rotated in a counterclockwise direction from east
to west; one complete cycle of revolution required a time estimated
at four to eight seconds. The shifting of the three colors during the
cycle resembled the rotating colors in some jukeboxes, and the effect
was phenomenal. “As these colors rotated in the body of the object, at
times the entire body was one solid color, either white, green, or red,
but in the process of completing a revolution the body was frequently
fractionally red, white, or white-green, plus the other possible
combinations of the three colors.” Also there seemed to be three beams
of white light radiating out from the main body in straight shafts
which, unlike the colors, did not change their relative positions but
remained constant at positions of roughly 11:00, 5:00, and 7:00. No
phenomenon that might be an exhaust was observed. As to motion and
behavior, the object seemed to travel exactly parallel to the plane
and maintained a constant distance in spite of the pilot’s attempts to
intercept it at speeds of around 500 miles an hour. At no time did it
execute any maneuvers except for a gradual change of direction during
the two observations. The sighting ended when the lights vanished in
the west[IV-1]. These rotating lights were also seen by the crew of
an F-94 interceptor who watched them for about forty minutes, by the
crew of a B-26 bomber who watched them for about seven minutes, and by
various ground observers.
To make a positive identification, the investigator must know the
weather conditions, the bearing of the observing aircraft, and the
position of the object. Atmospheric conditions were found to be
conducive to the formation of mirages. At the time of the first
sighting on December 29, the observing plane was headed slightly to the
east of north; the UFO was in the west, apparently traveling north on a
course parallel with that of the plane. After the pilot lost sight of
the object, he circled and hunted and was flying slightly east of south
when he again picked up the object, which was still in the west.
A check of the astronomical situation showed that the sun had set about
three hours before the sighting. Venus was following roughly three
hours behind the sun and was extremely brilliant, with a magnitude
of nearly -4.0. At 7:48 P.M., when the pilot sighted the unknown,
the planet was about 3 degrees above the western horizon. When Venus
finally sank beneath the horizon and disappeared, the “unknown” also
vanished.
The similar UFOs reported from Japan during the same period, on January
9 and January 21, 1953, were also mirages of the planet Venus. The
cases of “The Rotating Lights of Japan” in the Air Force file on UFOs
have now been shifted from the category “Unknown” to the category
“Solved.” In many other UFO cases of the “rotating lights” variety, the
Air Force has positively identified the unknown as the planet Jupiter.
_UFOs and the Opposition of Mars_
Venus is not the only heavenly body to simulate a flying saucer.
Jupiter and even Mercury, the smallest of the planets, have inspired
their share of UFOs. Mars, which can also be very bright, has
frequently been reported as a spaceship.
On June 21, 1952, an F-47 aircraft was on routine patrol over the
Atomic Energy Commission installation at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, when at
10:58 P.M. a spotter from the Ground Observer Corps informed the pilot
that a slow-moving craft was moving in the area at very high altitude.
At about the same time the pilot observed a blinking white light, of
no definite shape and with no exhaust or trail, apparently making
passes at him. For the next eighteen minutes the pilot tried vainly to
intercept the unknown. The plane was at 15,000 feet, moving at about
250 knots. As the pilot turned to meet the pass, the UFO would pull up
some 4000 to 5000 feet above the plane and then move in again. When
the plane reached 22,000 feet, the UFO appeared to make a final dive
from 28,000 feet, pulled back up to its previous altitude, and then
disappeared. The pilot’s reaction is indicated by his answer to one of
the routine questions on the Air Force report form: “Did you stop at
any time during the sighting?” His reply read: “Ha Ha!”
Investigating the incident, officials from ATIC at first suspected
that the object might have been a balloon, released as a hoax; only
a few weeks earlier a crank had launched a flight of balloons near
Oak Ridge and had been caught. But after interviewing the witnesses,
the investigators concluded that the UFO was far more probably the
planet Mars. As so often happens, however, they could not convert the
“probable” into a “positive” identification because they lacked one
essential fact: the bearing of the aircraft[IV-1].
Some flying-saucer enthusiasts consider Mars as the probable home port
of many spaceships, which allegedly visit the earth in particularly
large numbers when Mars is in opposition--the point in its path that is
nearest the earth; these ships supposedly seize the chance to hop over
to earth when the distance between the two planets is at a minimum.
It is to be hoped that the Martians, if any, are more competent
navigators than the terrestrial saucerians who propose this theory.
No sensible Martian would plan a journey scheduled to land him on
earth during the few weeks when the two planets are closest. Traveling
between Mars and earth is not like jumping across a mountain stream
where the banks remain stationary: the jumper, of course, chooses the
narrowest part of the stream and leaps across in a straight path. But
in space travel both planets are moving; they travel in elliptical
orbits of different sizes and at different speeds. To reach earth,
the Martian, too, must get into an elliptical orbit of a size and
shape that will eventually intersect the earth’s orbit. According to
calculations by terrestrial rocket experts, the path that requires
the least fuel is about 735 million miles long--some twenty times the
distance between the two planets when they are closest. To follow this
course, which takes 260 days of travel, the Martian must leave 260 days
before the day that his ship and the earth will converge and meet at
a particular position in space. Therefore he plans to blast off at a
time when earth in its orbit is 76 degrees of arc behind Mars in its
orbit (see Figure 8). By the time he lands on earth, the planet Mars is
lagging 44 degrees of arc behind the earth[IV-10].
Any increase in UFO reports that may occur when Mars is in opposition
should be attributed not to spaceships but to the heightened brilliance
of the planet itself glowing in the night sky.
_The Gorman “Dogfight”_
One of the most puzzling of the classic saucer mysteries began on
the evening of October 1, 1948, when George F. Gorman, manager of a
construction company and a lieutenant in the North Dakota Air National
Guard, was returning to Fargo, N.D., from a cross-country practice
flight in an F-51 fighter. About 9:00, Lieutenant Gorman called the
control tower at the local airport for landing instructions, and asked
the identity of a moving light that was blinking on and off in the air
below him. Informed that a Piper Cub was coming in from the south, he
continued to circle, and at 9:05 again called in to report that he
could see the Cub below him at about 1000 feet. He could also see an
unidentified light moving rapidly at about the same altitude.
[Illustration: _Figure 8._ Orbit of spaceship. Mars_{1} and earth_{1},
positions of planets when ship leaves Mars; Mars_{2} and earth_{2},
positions when ship lands on earth.]
The assistant traffic controller then walked to the south window of
the tower and looked out. He could see the Cub in the air and, a
little above it, a clear white light. The light was moving swiftly to
the north, then shifted and continued in a straight line toward the
northwest. After watching it for several seconds, he returned to his
post. A few minutes later Gorman called the tower for the third time to
say that he was going to try to close in on the unknown. The traffic
controller then stepped to the south window of the tower. Through his
binoculars he could see a light moving rapidly over the field in a
straight line toward the northwest. It had no particular shape and was
merely a clear white light about the size of a plane’s tail lamp. After
a few seconds he returned and resumed communication with Gorman.
The pilot of the Cub glimpsed the light briefly as he was landing his
plane. He supposed it to be the tail light of another ship going very
fast in a straight line in a westerly direction, and was puzzled by
the fact that an army plane seemed to be pursuing it. After landing
he delivered some bottles of Coca-Cola to the tower operators and,
overhearing the conversation between them and Gorman, stepped to the
balcony at the southeast corner of the tower to see what was happening.
From there he could see the light going west, with the army plane after
it. The light shifted briefly to the southeast but almost immediately
resumed its northwest course and disappeared after a few seconds.
Lieutenant Gorman, meanwhile, had begun a weird “dogfight.” The UFO
seemed to be at an altitude of about 1000 feet, was traveling about 250
miles an hour, and was blinking off and on. As he approached, the light
banked to the left. Gorman dived after it but could not catch up. The
light then began to climb in a rapid turn. Attempting to turn with it,
Gorman blacked out temporarily from the excessive speed.
Continuing the chase, this time at 5000 to 7000 feet Gorman noticed
that the light was now traveling fast, apparently faster than the F-51
could go, so he began trying to cut it off in turns with his fighter
at full power. As the object circled to the left, Gorman cut back to
the right for a head-on pass. When collision seemed inevitable he dived
and the light seemed to pass over his canopy at a distance of about
500 feet. According to the description he later gave the Air Force,
the unknown at this closest approach seemed to be a round white light,
somewhat flattened, from six to eight inches in diameter--about a
quarter the apparent size of the full moon. Gorman then made a climbing
turn. When he could see the light again it suddenly reversed direction
and headed straight for the plane, attempting to ram. It was no longer
blinking off and on but was a steady white. Just before collision it
pulled up and Gorman, too, pulled up. The light went straight up, with
Gorman following until, at 14,000 feet, his plane went into a power
stall while the object circled some 2000 feet above him. As he resumed
the battle, the light seemed to retreat, then attack. Gorman dodged and
circled to the left to get in position for another intercept. Finally,
when these maneuvers had taken him some twenty-five miles southeast of
Fargo, he was at 14,000 feet with the object below him at 11,000 feet.
He dived after it. The UFO turned and started a head-on pass, then
broke it off, climbed straight up, and disappeared. The time was 9:27.
Gorman returned to the Fargo airport and landed, convinced that some
intelligence had been controlling the actions of the unknown[IV-1].
With the memory of the Mantell tragedy (p. 33) and the Chiles-Whitted
sighting (see _Chapter_ V, p. 109) still fresh in mind, officials from
ATIC arrived at Fargo in less than twenty-four hours to investigate
this new incident [IV-2, p. 63 ff.]. They carefully questioned
Lieutenant Gorman and the three other witnesses, but could find no
obvious explanation. No other aircraft had been in the neighborhood
at the time of the sighting. The weather had been clear, visibility
unlimited, with some auroral activity in the northeast. When tested
with a control group of five other F-51s that had flown during the
same period, Gorman’s plane showed no more radioactivity than did the
control group--the slightly higher amount shown by all planes after
flight. Gorman’s report was confusing, in parts, and reconstructing
the exact sequence of maneuvers by UFO and plane proved impossible.
There were almost as many theories offered in explanation as there were
investigators, but eventually a reasonable solution did appear.
A lighted weather balloon had been released from the weather station
at Fargo at 8:50, ten minutes before Lieutenant Gorman’s first call.
As observed from the station, the balloon had traveled west and then
northwest. At 9:00 it would have been near the airport about where the
unknown light was first reported. A balloon could well have accounted
for the events described in the first phases of the incident, but less
well for those in the last. Officially, however, the cause was listed
as a lighted weather balloon[IV-2, p. 67]--an answer that was not
entirely satisfactory.
[Illustration: PLATE I
_a._ "Grindstone" clouds over Mount Rainier. (CHAP. II)]
[Illustration: PLATE I
_b._ A "stack of plates" near the Maritime Alps northeast of
Marseilles. (CHAP. II)]
[Illustration: PLATE II
_a._ Kite with lantern photographed at Curaçao, B.W.I. (CHAP. III)]
[Illustration: PLATE II
_b._ UFOs over Kentucky, 10:35 P.M., CST, July 7, 1947. Jet trails?
Bolides? (CHAP. III)]
[Illustration: PLATE III
_a._ Meteor trail. (CHAP. V)]
[Illustration: PLATE III
_b._ Fireball over Puerto Rico, January 12, 1947. (CHAP. V)]
[Illustration: PLATE IV
_a._ Coast Guard photograph of UFOs over Salem, Massachusetts, July 16,
1952. (CHAP. VI)]
[Illustration: PLATE IV
_b._ UFO near the village of Arbleterre, in northern France, October 2,
1954. (CHAP. VI)]
[Illustration: PLATE IV
_c._ Radar "ghosts" at Salina, Kansas, September 10, 1956. (CHAP. VIII)]
_Only a Balloon?_
A review of the evidence, made by the authors during the preparation of
this book, emphasized some puzzling inconsistencies. Lieutenant Gorman
had had the UFO in view for about twenty-seven minutes. During the
first five or ten minutes it had traveled horizontally at low altitude
in a fairly steady course. Then it had suddenly changed tactics, had
climbed to high altitude, turned, darted in and out, and performed both
evasive and aggressive actions. The three witnesses on the ground,
however, did not see the UFO perform _any_ of these combat maneuvers.
It had been traveling steadily north and northwest and had disappeared
from view ten or fifteen minutes before the aerial dogfight ended.
These differences strongly suggested that two unknowns were involved in
the sighting. According to this theory, the light seen by the ground
observers was the weather balloon; the light first seen over the
airfield by Gorman was also the weather balloon. His adversary during
the major part of the dogfight was a second unknown, not a physical
object but some kind of optical phenomenon, very probably a mirage
of the planet Jupiter. The reconstruction based on this theory would
account for all the puzzling aspects of the case.
As first described by Lieutenant Gorman and by the three witnesses on
the ground, the light was small, bright, and clear; no structure was
visible; it made no noise and left no trail or exhaust. It was south
of the control tower, was traveling horizontally west and northwest,
seemingly at high speed, on a straight course, at low altitude. On
these points all the witnesses agreed.
They did not agree in their estimates of its actual distance
and height--a fact that is not surprising when we consider the
circumstances. The night was clear and cloudless. It was also dark. The
sun had set more than two hours earlier and there was no moonlight (new
moon on October 2). On a dark night, the height and distance (and hence
the speed) of a moving light of unknown size are notoriously difficult
to estimate. According to Lieutenant Gorman, the light when he first
saw it was about 1000 feet above the ground and 1000 yards--a little
more than ½ mile--from his plane. The three men on the ground saw the
UFO, for a few seconds, at different times during a period of less
than ten minutes. Like Gorman, they were experienced airmen but they
differed from him and from each other in their estimates. According
to the assistant traffic controller, the altitude and distance from
the control tower were 2000–2500 feet and 1–2 miles. According to the
traffic controller, they were 4000–5000 feet and ½ mile; according to
the Cub’s pilot, they were 5000–6000 feet and 1 mile.
In spite of the discrepancies, these estimates are in general agreement
and, together with the details of the UFOs appearance, are consistent
with the description of the weather balloon that had been released at
8:50, about ten or fifteen minutes before the UFO was sighted from the
ground. The balloon carried a small white light, moved west and then
northwest, was at low altitude and slowly climbing, and would soon have
disappeared from the view of ground observers.
The object that Lieutenant Gorman first saw and pursued was also the
balloon, climbing and turning. As it bobbed and swayed in the air
currents it would have seemed to blink off and on, just as he reported.
Underestimating its height and distance and overestimating its velocity
as did the pilot in the Cuban dogfight (p. 42), he tried to follow its
apparent climbing turn and, as he stated, blacked out briefly because
of his excessive speed. During this interval, short as it may have
been, he of course lost track of the object. Shortly afterward, when
the UFO passed over his canopy and he dived, he again lost sight of the
object.
When he resumed the chase he supposed that he had located the same
object he had been following earlier--but the evidence suggests that
he had picked up a different target. The unknown was going much faster
than before, was at a much higher altitude, and shone with a steady
brilliance instead of blinking off and on. In such a tense situation
he could understandably have mistaken one strange light for another.
Pursuing an apparently hostile unknown, less than a year after the
still mysterious death of Mantell in a similar encounter, he might
justifiably have been frightened.
The most probable source of the second light is the planet Jupiter. The
sun had set at 6:24 P.M. Following some three hours behind the sun,
the planet had a magnitude of -1.7 and was thus brighter than Sirius,
the brightest star. Shortly after 9:10 when the UFO began its violent
maneuvers (the exact time is not known), Jupiter was very low in the
southwest sky, between two and three degrees above the horizon, at
a bearing of about 231 degrees. The UFO was also attacking from the
southwest, as is shown by Gorman’s tactics: in trying to cut it off in
circles to the left, he gradually moved to the southeast.
The weather bureau records for that evening, obtained from radiosonde
observations, show that temperature inversions existed both near the
ground and at higher altitude. Thus conditions were ideal to produce
a furiously twinkling planetary mirage. When a planet is close to the
horizon this twinkling, together with the defocusing action of the
earth’s atmosphere, can spread out the image so that it looks huge,
with an apparent diameter as great as ten minutes of arc. Under such
conditions, both the size and the intensity of the light fluctuate.
When they diminish, the object seems to be racing away from the
observer; when they increase, it seems to be rushing directly towards
him on a collision course. The peculiar lens-like action of the
atmosphere makes the image seem to be, not at infinity, but only a few
hundred feet away from the observer.
Seen through the distorting atmospheric lens, the image of Jupiter
could have performed exactly as Gorman described: it would have
darted back and forth, seemed to attack, retreat, and carry out the
“controlled” maneuvers that actually depended partly on the movement of
the plane itself. Gorman apparently assumed that he was dealing with a
material object (as indeed he was in the beginning), and therefore did
not consider the possibility that he was seeing merely an optical image.
The geographical situation would have helped produce the illusion.
Fargo lies at an elevation of about 900 feet and the land rises
gradually to the west. Due west is Bismarck at 1670 feet. To the south
lies a series of buttes, some of them as high as 3500 feet. Thus in the
southwest where Jupiter was setting and where the UFO attacked from,
the buttes would repeatedly have cut off the planet from view as Gorman
maneuvered, so that the image would have seemed to race in and out and
perform evasive actions, just as did the mirage of Sirius in Alaska (p.
60). Since Jupiter was very low, however, the buttes served to conceal
it from the observers on the ground.
[Illustration: _Figure 9._ Positions of refracted image of Jupiter from
9:00 to 9:29 P.M. at Fargo, North Dakota, on October 1, 1948. Azimuth
measured north through east.]
The times involved provide the last piece of the puzzle. The dogfight
ended at about 9:27. The time of the geometrical setting of Jupiter
was 9:25. The usual lag due to refraction is between two and three
minutes (see Figure 9). The planet therefore remained visible for about
two minutes longer. The image actually sank below the horizon and
disappeared from view between 9:27 and 9:28, the same time that the
UFO climbed straight up into the sky and disappeared. When Jupiter
vanished, the unknown also vanished and did not return.
Absolute proof of this solution is of course impossible. Nevertheless,
the description of the UFO, its behavior, its direction, its time of
disappearance--all are consistent with its identification as Jupiter.
The Gorman case might reasonably be removed from the “Balloon?”
category and listed as “Balloon plus planetary mirage.”
_Jupiter through a Jet Trail_
Venus, Mars, and Jupiter seen under unusual conditions can mystify even
the most hardheaded witness. Unrecognized air turbulence and increased
scattering of the light can easily create the illusion of a flying
saucer.
An ex-army man, a trained observer with a good knowledge of physics and
optics, reports the following unnerving experience[IV-11].
“On January 30, 1954, my buddy and I had been fox hunting in
southwestern Indiana. We hunted until well after sundown and headed for
the car. As we neared it, a jet plane thundered through the darkening
sky, from north to south. Placing game and guns in the car, I walked
around it to see if the tires were OK. Happening to glance skyward,
I let out a yell. There it was, and no mistaking it. A flying saucer
blazing in the sky. A real illuminated spaceship. Only it wasn’t
moving, just hanging in the sky. Football-shaped, about as long as the
apparent diameter of the full moon, it showed red, yellow, and bluish
green. [Here he sketched a football shape, glowing red knobs placed
at the two ends, yellow lights girdling the middle, and yellow and
green arcs curving between the two ends (see Figure 10).] I carry an
eight-power field glass when hunting and I immediately trained this on
the celestial wonder. The result was weird. It seemed to be pulsating
with a quivering, twinkling light. We watched it for some five minutes,
trying to figure out what we were seeing. Then the spaceship began
to get smaller, simply reducing in size without moving. Smaller and
smaller it became and in another five minutes it suddenly contracted
into a planet--Jupiter, I believe it was. [Jupiter was in the eastern
sky 50 to 60 degrees above the horizon.]
[Illustration: _Figure 10._ Witness’s sketch of Jupiter seen through a
jet trail.]
“When we realized what we were watching we began to try to figure
out the ‘why.’ Suddenly we realized we were looking directly through
the path of the plane at the planet and our best guess was that the
atmospheric turbulence and temperature change caused by the passage of
the jet was to blame for the strange aberration we had witnessed. And
we wondered if refraction of the golden light could cause the reds,
greens, and blues. Since neither of us uses snake-bite medicine in any
form, we figured our observations were about as substantial as our
feeble scientific understanding would permit.
“But anyway, I found out how people may see flying saucers and be
perfectly honest in their incomplete observations. Had a person
inclined to the supernatural taken a good look, jumped in his car,
and headed for home at high speed, he would steadfastly have believed
he had seen a flying saucer which was evidently observing the earth
preparatory to an attack from outer space.”
[IV-1] Air Force Files.
[IV-2] Ruppelt, E. J. _The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects._
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1956.
[IV-3] Tacker, L. J. _Flying Saucers and the U. S. Air Force._
Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1960, p. 59.
[IV-4] Payne-Gaposchkin, C. _Introduction to Astronomy._ Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.; Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1954.
[IV-5] Gann, E. K. _Fate Is The Hunter._ Crest Reprint, New York:
Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1962, p. 172.
[IV-6] Case 151, CRIFO _Orbit_, Vol. III (April 6, 1956).
[IV-7] Buffalo _Evening News_, April 10, 1956.
[IV-8] Keyhoe, D. E. _Flying Saucers: Top Secret._ New York: G. P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1960.
[IV-9] Menzel, D. H. _Flying Saucers._ Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1953.
[IV-10] Ley, W., and von Braun, W. _The Exploration of Mars._ New York:
The Viking Press, 1956.
[IV-11] Main, O. Personal correspondence.
_Chapter_ V
OUT OF THE SKY: METEORS AND FIREBALLS
About one o’clock in the afternoon on November 30, 1954, a spectacular
meteor flared across the southeastern part of the United States and
exploded. Many persons in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi saw the
bright flash high in the sky, followed by a trail of smoke, and heard
three violent detonations. Over the town of Sylacauga, Alabama, a
nine-pound fragment of the falling meteoric body crashed through the
roof of a house, bruised the left arm and hip of the unlucky resident,
and came to rest on the floor. Members of the American Meteor Society
collected detailed descriptions of the event from many witnesses and
added this daylight fireball to the official list of observed meteorite
falls from which meteorites are recovered[V-1, p. 128].
UFO addicts, however, apparently regarded both the meteor and its
fragments as unnatural phenomena, implied some doubt that the fragment
was really a meteorite, and characterized the incident as peculiar[V-2].
To the astronomer who specializes in the study of meteors the only
peculiar aspect of the episode is that saucer publications list so
few mysterious UFOs for that particular week when similar spectacular
fireballs were almost a commonplace in the southeast states. On
November 29 a meteor flew over Alabama at 5:30 P.M., and about two
hours later another with a long trail soared over Florida. On November
30 at 5:00 P.M., a few hours after the fall at Sylacauga, another
bright fireball flashed over Alabama. Shortly before midnight the
same night a meteor flamed over North Carolina, so brilliant that its
copper-green light illuminated the interior of cars on the highway;
blue-green fire shot out above the treetops, changed to magnesium
white, and then slowly faded. Detailed observations of all these
appeared in the scientific journal _Meteoritics_[V-1, p. 128].
_Stones from Heaven_
Until roughly a hundred and fifty years ago meteors and meteorites
had the status of cosmic orphans, unacknowledged members of the
astronomical family. Few persons doubted the existence of the fixed
stars, the solar planets, comets, or even of “new stars” or novae, but
they rejected a natural explanation for meteors and interpreted them
as falling stars, flying dragons, or fountains of fire in the sky.
Most astronomers as well as laymen laughed at the recurrent idea that
“stones from heaven” could fall on the earth. Then in 1803 the French
scientist J. B. Biot described an extraordinary rain of meteorites
that fell at L’Aigle on April 26[V-3]; he convinced the French Academy
of Sciences that the stones had indeed pelted from the sky during the
great meteor display. Meteoritics is thus a relatively young science.
Much remains to be learned about these cosmic visitors, but certain
basic facts have been established[V-4].
Meteors enter the earth’s atmosphere continually, by day as well as by
night, and they show great variety. Some are so brilliant that they are
visible even in broad daylight. Some are so faint that even in darkness
they can be seen only through a telescope. Others, still fainter, can
be detected only by radar specially designed for this purpose. Because
of the friction created when they penetrate the earth’s atmosphere,
most meteors vaporize and vanish many miles above the ground. We see
them as only bright streaks of light, quickly extinguished. If the
meteoric body is large enough, has the right chemical constitution,
and enters the atmosphere at a favorable angle and velocity, some of
it may survive the journey and fall to the earth as a meteorite. A
distinct odor sometimes accompanies the fall--the smell of sulphur,
onions, or cyanide. About 40,000 tons of meteoritic material fall on
the earth each day, most of it in the form of fine dust. The object
may be a chunk of metal or stone the size of a pebble or a boulder, or
it may be a mass weighing several tons, so enormous that it gouges out
a crater at the place where it hits and comes to rest far beneath the
earth’s surface. Some meteors, fortunately extremely rare, apparently
can strike the earth and devastate a large area but, like the wind,
leave behind no physical trace. According to present theory, members
of a regular shower are probably remnants of comets, which have an
icy structure, and the minute bits of frozen debris vaporize in a
flash of light high in the atmosphere. Meteors that survive to reach
the earth as meteorites are thought to be fragments of asteroids, or
tiny planets. Meteorites vary so widely in their physical and chemical
structure that they require a complex system of classification.
Nevertheless the specialist can distinguish between a meteorite and
earthly rocks and stones by laboratory tests[V-5].
_Meteor Streams and Showers_
Any clear night displays its quota of meteors. But at certain times,
when the earth happens to collide with a stream of cosmic debris
moving in an elliptical orbit, a shower of meteors takes place. (For
a list of the major night meteor streams, see TABLE I.) Most meteor
streams probably result from the breakup of comets; if the debris is
distributed uniformly in the comet’s orbit, a meteor shower occurs
each time the earth crosses the orbit. For example, the Perseids,
fragments of Comet 1862 III, have reappeared every August for more
than 1200 years, and the Leonids, debris of Comet Temple (1866 I),
regularly return around the third week in November. Like the Taurids,
another dependable stream, the Leonids are notable for their brilliant
fireballs, which have deposited some of the largest meteorites ever
found on the earth.
Some regular showers produce great numbers of meteors at intervals of
several years. For nearly a millennium, A.D. 902 to 1866, a marked
increase in the number of Leonids occurred every thirty-three years.
The display in 1833 was one of the most spectacular in history, and
witnesses said that the “stars were falling” as thick as snowflakes.
Before the scheduled major shower of 1899, however, the main stream
was deflected by passing close to the planet Jupiter and the periodic
spectacle did not take place. Since then, the Leonids have been
considered a “lost” stream, but some members of the shower have
continued to appear each November. On November 16 and 17, 1961, they
produced an unexpectedly awesome display with many brilliant fireballs.
TABLE I
MAJOR METEOR STREAMS
---------------+-------------+--------+------------------+------------
_Name of | _Dates of |_Date of| _Parent comet_ | _Remarks_
stream_ | occurrence_ |maximum_| |
---------------+-------------+--------+------------------+------------
Quadrantids |Jan. 1–4 |Jan. 3 |1861 I |Observed
| | | | longer than
| | | | 100 years.
| | | |
Lyrids |April 19–23 |April 21| |Observed
| | | | longer than
η Aquarids |May 2–5 |May 4 |Halley (1835 III) | 2500 years.
| | | |
δ Aquarids |July 14-Aug. |July 30 | |
| 19 | | |
| | | |
ι Aquarids |July 16-Aug. |July 30 | |
| 25 | | |
| | | |
Perseids |July 29-Aug. |Aug. 12 |1862 III |Observed
| 17 | | | more than
| | | | 1200 years.
| | | |
α Capricornids |Aug. 1–21 |Aug. 17 |1948 n |
| | | |
Cygnids |Aug. 9–22 |Aug. 17 | |
| | | |
Taurids |Sep. 15-Dec. |Nov. 12 |Encke (1957 c) |
| 2 | | |
| | | |
Draconids |Oct. 9–10 |Oct. 10 |Giacobini-Zinner |13-year
| | | (1946 V) | period;
| | | | great
| | | | showers in
| | | | 1933, 1946;
| | | | none in
| | | | 1959.
| | | |
Orionids |Oct. 18–26 |Oct. 22 |Halley (1835 III) |
| | | |
Leonids |Nov. 14–20 |Nov. 17 |Temple-Tuttle |Observed
| | | (1866 I) | since
| | | | A.D. 902.
| | | |
Geminids |Dec. 7–15 |Dec. 14 | |
| | | |
Ursids |Dec. 17–24 |Dec. 22 |Temple (1939 X) |
The close approach of a comet sometimes causes a fantastic shower
of “shooting stars,” and hundreds or even thousands may be counted
in a single night. At the approach of the debris of Comet Biela on
November 27, 1885, some 75,000 meteors were visible from a single
place during a period of an hour. Irregularly occurring or sporadic
meteors not associated with a known comet also occur and pelt the earth
unexpectedly.
_The Green Fireballs_
On the evening of September 18, 1954, a group of astronomers and their
wives from the observatory at Sacramento Peak, New Mexico, were having
a picnic at the White Sands National Monument, near Alamogordo. In this
great desert of pure white gypsum the air is extremely hot during the
daytime but cools to a pleasant warmth after sunset. Supper finished,
the picnickers had taken off shoes and stockings to wade in the soft
warm sand. By 8:30 it was dark and some of the astronomers had already
left but others (including Dr. Menzel) had lingered to watch the stars,
which stand out sharply in the clear skies over the desert.
Suddenly, far to the north, appeared an enormous green fireball. Of
blinding brilliance, it was moving slowly and majestically from east to
west in a substantially horizontal path about seven degrees above the
horizon, leaving behind a luminous trail that persisted for at least
fifteen minutes. At about the same time thousands of other persons on
the ground in New Mexico and Colorado, as well as the crews of several
planes in flight, were observing the fireball. It passed over a crowded
football stadium in Santa Fe, interfered with radio and TV transmission
as it appeared over Albuquerque, and over Denver turned night into day.
A United Airlines pilot at about 15,000 feet near Laramie, Wyoming,
saw the blue-green ball crossing his course and for some ten minutes
observed the luminous cloud it left behind[V-6]. At almost the same
instant, the fireball was sighted in the Bay of San Francisco, 1000
miles away. One publication cited this meteor as two separate UFOs,
one flying over San Francisco, the other over New Mexico and the
Southwest[V-2].
When telephone calls swamped the newspaper offices, reporters
interviewed Dr. Lincoln La Paz of the Institute of Meteoritics at the
University of New Mexico. Although he had not observed this particular
specimen, he had seen similar green fireballs a few years earlier and
he commented that this was no ordinary meteor but something unusual. A
new wave of UFO excitement began to sweep the country. Were mysterious
machines from outer space again patrolling New Mexico?
The astronomers who had admired the fireball at White Sands were
amazed at the public reaction. As professionals who had spent their
lives in observing and analyzing astronomical phenomena, they agreed
that the object had been unusual in its slow movement, its color, and
its brilliance. But an unusual meteor is still only a meteor, not a
spaceship, and they easily recognized it as a green fireball of the
type that had appeared over the Southwest a few years earlier.
The first epidemic of green fireballs had begun in early December
1948, and for nearly two months the brilliantly burning objects had
appeared almost every night in the skies over New Mexico[V-7, p. 71].
Their apparent collision course startled plane crews in the air, and
their steady, seemingly purposeful motion frightened observers on the
ground. The fireballs showed a family resemblance in their bright-green
color, their great size and brilliance, their level flight path, their
noiseless disappearance, and their failure to leave material fragments
on the ground.
New Mexico was a particularly sensitive area, studded with military
bases and research installations carrying out vital work in ballistics,
guided missiles, atomic energy, and space science in general. Since the
unusual meteors seemed to be concentrating on New Mexico, Air Force
Intelligence had to face the question: Were the fireballs natural
astronomical phenomena or were they experimental guided missiles from
another country, perhaps Russia?
After consulting Dr. La Paz and hearing his evaluation of the evidence,
the Air Force felt growing concern. Perhaps unconsciously influenced by
the general hysteria of the past year, Dr. La Paz concluded that the
objects were not meteors but must be “something unusual” because they
differed from “normal” meteors in their color, trajectory, velocity,
size, brilliance, and apparent lack of fragments.
With very little knowledge of meteors and great faith in machines from
outer space, saucer enthusiasts reasoned that since the fireballs were
not normal meteors they must be artificial objects. Since they were
artificial, they must be under intelligent control. Since they were
intelligently controlled, they must be unmanned missiles or manned
vehicles launched from an alien spaceship hovering hundreds of miles
above the earth whose purpose might or might not be destructive, or
they might be merely ranging devices sent as a warning to earthmen.
The Air Force was not particularly worried about interplanetary
visitors, but it was concerned with the possibility that the fireballs
were man-made vehicles, a potential danger to the country. One
scientist had suggested that the Russians might have constructed a
guided missile whose nose cone, the final stage in a multistage rocket,
was made of ice and various other chemicals. In re-entering the earth’s
atmosphere, such a cone would burn up; the vaporizing ices would
account for the green color observed, for the silent disappearance of
the object, and for the lack of material traces on the ground. Whatever
the true explanation, members of the Air Defense Command could not
afford to guess; they had to know.
In mid-February 1949 they assembled at Los Alamos a conference of
military and intelligence officers, physicists, and astronomers, to
discuss the problem of the green fireballs. After two days of studying
the evidence, most of the members agreed that the fireballs were
meteors of an unusual type and, as natural phenomena, not a threat to
national security. To take care of the extremely remote chance that
this conclusion might be wrong, the conference turned over the problem
to the scientists at Air Force Cambridge Research Center which, in
the late summer, organized Project Twinkle to equip and establish
three cinetheodolite stations in New Mexico. Fitted with a diffraction
grating to split the spectrum into its component colors (and thus
identify the chemical elements present), the cameras were to photograph
and record the altitude, size, speed, and spectrum of the luminous
objects.
Since the green fireballs, meanwhile, had all but vanished from the
skies, enthusiasm for the research project diminished. Only one camera
(designed by Dr. Menzel) was ever put into operation and it never found
anything to photograph. After two months of futile searching, the Air
Force finally abandoned Project Twinkle as a waste of time.
In the years following, green fireballs occasionally appeared. An
astronomer observed one over Lafayette, Colorado, at 7:45 P.M. on June
4, 1950. One soared over the New England states and eastern Canada
on November 2, 1950, and a year later, on November 2, 1951, a plane
crew over Texas sighted another which was dramatically publicized in
_Life_ magazine, and described in another publication as a missile that
ejected flaming balls. Few other fireballs made the headlines until the
one of September 18, 1954, but even that caused only brief excitement
and the Air Force expressed no alarm.
_Meteors in the Records_
The American Meteor Society, whose members specialize in the study
of meteors and meteorites, for years have collected reports of such
phenomena. From a large enough number of good descriptions of a given
meteor, astronomers can analyze the data mathematically and determine
the meteor’s radiant--the point in the heavens from which it seems to
come. The meteor is then identified by its radiant and given an AMS
number. For several years the data were published in _Meteoritics_, a
journal issued jointly by the Meteoritical Society and the Institute of
Meteoritics of the University of New Mexico. Dr. Charles P. Olivier,
president of the American Meteor Society, was a contributing editor.
The records in _Meteoritics_ for the years 1950 to 1955 list dozens
of fireballs, many of them green, that were somehow overlooked by
saucer enthusiasts. On August 11, 1950, during the maximum of the
Perseid shower, a blue-green fireball (AMS 2336) apparently oval- or
cigar-shaped appeared over Washington, Oregon, and Idaho at 7:30 P.M.
and was reported by more than 100 witnesses. So brilliant that it
showed a noticeable disk, it flew in a horizontal path, silently broke
into three pieces, and disappeared[V-8, p. 379].
September 20, the same year, was a big day for meteors. At 1:35 A.M.
a giant fireball (AMS 2326) roared over southeastern Illinois from
north to south, leaving a luminous train visible in five states and
illuminating the sky and countryside from St. Louis to Louisville and
from Memphis to Knoxville. The final detonation, over western Kentucky,
was heard over an area 1000 miles square and shook buildings from
Paducah to Memphis. Fragments showered farms over a twenty-five-mile
area, struck five buildings, and penetrated one roof. About fifty
pounds of meteorites dropped in Murray, Calloway County, Kentucky, and
are now in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. That same night
about 10:45 P.M., fireballs were reported by plane crews flying over
a six-state area--Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New
Mexico[V-9, p. 115]. Similar fireballs that vanished without trace
were reported on September 28, 1953 (AMS 2331); October 4, 1953 (AMS
2330); May 15, 1954; and October 27, 1954 (AMS 2337).
The green fireballs still appear now and then, as they always have.
None of them has yet changed into a spaceship.
_Fallacies about Meteors_
Most flying-saucer enthusiasts still refuse to believe that the green
fireballs were natural phenomena. Misinterpreting or distorting the
statements made by professional astronomers, they cite the unusual
nature of these meteors as proof that they were not meteors at all but
machines from another world. Advocates of this belief need more than
a refresher course in logic; they also need to learn some facts about
meteors.
The space-vehicle interpretation rests on a series of mistaken beliefs
and illogical conclusions about the nature and behavior of meteors.
These false premises may be summarized as follows:
1. _Color._ Meteors do not contain copper; since the peculiar shade of
green shown by the green fireballs could come only from copper, the
fireballs were not meteors but spacecraft.
2. _Speed and trajectory._ Meteors do not travel at a slow rate of
speed and do not follow a horizontal path; since the green fireballs
did both, they were not meteors but spacecraft.
3. _Size and brilliance._ Meteors do not show such great size or
brilliance as did the green fireballs, which were therefore not meteors
but spacecraft.
4. _Sound._ Meteors produce a loud noise; since the green fireballs
moved silently, they were not meteors but spacecraft.
5. _Fragments._ Meteors deposit material fragments on the earth which
can be located if the investigator maps the flight path and makes a
search; since the green fireballs left no fragments, they were not
meteors but spacecraft.
In the pages that follow we shall attempt to correct each of these
mistaken ideas in turn, to present the actual facts known to
astronomers, and to show clearly that the green fireballs were not
spacecraft, but meteors.
_Facts about Meteors_
1. _Color._ Copper-green meteors are not a new phenomenon. This
unusual shade of green is only one of the many possible colors that
meteors may display--white, green, blue, yellow, orange, red, and all
shades in between. Descriptions received by the Meteoritical Society
include adjectives such as bright-green, copper-green, blue-green,
fiery white, green-white, orange, blue, yellowish, silver, red-orange.
Perceptions of color vary greatly among different observers, so that
several witnesses may choose different words for the color of the same
object. The most common adjective used is “brilliant”; an observer who
has only a few seconds to look at the object often has real difficulty
in deciding just what color accompanied the brilliance. Very common
phrases are blue-green, greenish-white, orange-yellow, orange-red,
greenish-yellow, yellow-green.
Both the chemical structure and the velocity of the meteoric body help
determine its apparent color. As the burning object plunges through the
atmosphere and vaporizes, the chemical elements produce their typical
colors. At higher velocities, atmospheric friction heats the body to
higher temperatures and whitens the color; as the body slows down and
becomes less hot, it is apt to appear redder.
In a few instances astronomers have been able to photograph the
color spectrum of a meteor in flight, to analyze the spectral lines
and determine exactly what elements were present[V-10]. As a rule,
however, the chemical content must be found from a laboratory analysis
of recovered meteorites. Some meteors do contain traces of copper,
and free nodules of pure copper have been found in several meteorites
[V-5, p. 81]. Magnesium occurs in fairly high percentages in most
meteorites and the amount is unusually high in green meteors[V-11].
It produces a color almost identical with that from copper. Seeing
the green of a vaporizing meteor, no observer could tell whether the
color came from copper or from magnesium unless he could photograph the
spectrum or make a chemical analysis of the meteorite.
The color displayed by the New Mexico fireballs may have come from
copper, but more probably from magnesium. Another possible source
is frozen nitrogen. Laboratory experiments relating to problems
of satellite re-entry[V-12] have shown that when frozen nitrogen
vaporizes, it emits a brilliant green glow whose wave length is
almost identical with that of the New Mexico fireballs, as judged
from the paintings made by witnesses. One of the prevailing theories
suggests that meteors of this type may be icy “cometoids”--cometary
debris, chunks of ice, and frozen gases (including nitrogen) at very
low temperatures. When they enter the earth’s atmosphere and are
slowed down to speeds of several hundred miles an hour, they become
heated and vaporize, and the surface alternately melts and refreezes;
the vaporizing nitrogen would produce the green color seen in the
fireballs. Such a process would account for the color, the short
lifetime, and the lack of fragments of the New Mexico meteors.
To summarize: Meteors _can_ exhibit the particular green color shown
by the New Mexico fireballs. It can result from copper, magnesium, or
frozen nitrogen, which can normally occur in meteors.
2. _Speed and trajectory._ Meteors vary widely in their velocities
and flight paths. They plunge from space into the earth’s atmosphere
at speeds estimated to range from seven to forty-five miles a second
relative to the earth--from 25,000 to more than 150,000 miles per hour.
Members of a particular meteor stream usually show a characteristic
velocity. The Perseids, for example, travel at high speed, some
thirty-six miles a second, while the Geminids saunter in at a mere
twenty-one miles a second. Most of these “falling stars” become
visible to us when they have descended to around sixty or seventy miles
above the earth. Flashing down in a steep path, they usually burn
up and vanish by the time they have fallen to around fifty or forty
miles. The larger the meteor’s body, the longer its life and the lower
its point of disappearance. Most meteors maintain a straight course
as they descend toward earth. A typical path is that photographed by
Smithsonian astronomers in New Mexico on the night of November 23, 1960
(see Plate IIIa). Some fireballs have been reported to change course
after exploding. More probably, the witness is actually observing the
shifting pattern of the smoke cloud left by the meteor. The Puerto Rico
fireball of January 12, 1947, left an erratic trail of this type, which
was photographed ten to twenty minutes after the meteor had disappeared
(see Plate IIIb).
The original entrance velocity, angle of entry, size, and chemical
structure all influence the shape of a meteor’s path and its time of
survival. The apparent angle of descent as seen by the observer depends
on the distance and the direction the object is moving relative to the
observer. When the meteor travels parallel to the observer’s line of
sight, it seems much slower than when it passes the line of sight at
right angles. The greater the distance between the observer and the
meteor, the slower its apparent motion[V-13].
Some meteors move very slowly; traveling at an almost leisurely rate,
they soar through the sky on a long, level path almost parallel with
the earth. The slow fireballs in the great meteor procession of 1913
maintained a horizontal course over a distance of several thousand
miles, from western Canada to Brazil[V-14].
Astronomical records show that green meteors are usually slow. Some
230 persons reported to the American Meteor Society that on November
28, 1953, at 6:30 P.M., a fireball moved slowly through the sky from
Massachusetts to Pennsylvania. Described as blue-white-green, changing
to orange-yellow-red, it was huge, disk-shaped, and vanished silently
without depositing fragments [V-1, p. 273]. On May 15, 1954, at 11:22
P.M., more than 100 persons observed (and reported) a slow-moving
fireball, blue-green changing to red, of luminosity so great that it
woke sleeping people. Toward the end of its course it seemed to stop,
spiraled a couple of times, and then simply vanished without leaving
fragments [V-8, p. 336].
To summarize: Meteors _can_ travel at low velocities and in apparently
horizontal paths.
3. _Size and brilliance._ Giant meteors of great luminosity have been
recorded throughout history. Some fireballs have been visible to
observers throughout an area of thousands of square miles. Typical
descriptions are: dazzling, like an airplane falling in flames, bigger
than the full moon, of blinding brilliance, so bright it turned night
into day, like the headlight of a locomotive, as big as the setting sun
but three times as brilliant.
The luminosity does not depend on the actual size of the meteoric body.
A fragment no larger than a pinhead can create a brilliant flash as
it vanishes. A spectacular fireball that lights up the country over
hundreds of miles may have a small body that burns up completely miles
above the earth. A larger body can survive longer, so that it continues
to flare for several seconds or more. The larger, long-lasting
fireballs may explode into smaller fragments and cascades of sparks. In
exploding, they can produce a luminous cloud of particles that remains
visible for fifteen or twenty minutes and then peppers the ground
with meteorites that fall like hail or buckshot. A giant fireball can
deposit chunks of metal weighing a ton or more like those found in
Mexico, or can leave a truly enormous body that penetrates the ground
and carves out a great crater like those in Arizona and Texas.
To summarize: Huge fireballs of great brilliance are not new.
4. _Sound._ Some meteors produce noise; others do not. Most meteors
silently vaporize high above the earth. When one does reach the
ground, it may strike with no noise but the faint thud of its impact.
Shooting through the air, it sometimes makes weak noises that have been
described as rumbling, crackling, rustling, whistling, or hissing.
Meteors sometimes explode with one or more crashing detonations that
rattle or even break windows. The noise has been described as like a
heavy clap of thunder, the explosion of a volcano, or a whir as if a
million bumblebees had been disturbed. The noise from the explosion of
the Siberian meteor in 1908 was heard over a distance of 600 miles, and
the shock registered as an earthquake in England.
Many meteors, like the Pennsylvania fireball of January 29, 1952, (AMS
2328) are completely silent. This blue-green object, so large that it
showed a definite disk, was reported to the American Meteor Society by
more than 400 witnesses from Maine to Virginia and from New York to
Ohio; none of the observers heard any noise [V-1, p. 264].
To summarize: Some meteors end with a bang, but most of them don’t even
whimper.
5. _Fragments._ Most meteors burn up high in the atmosphere. A few, if
they are large enough in size (at least ten to twenty pounds) and tough
enough in structure, survive to reach the earth as stony or metallic
fragments. Marked differences characterize the various meteor streams.
The Taurids (maximum November 12) are relatively rigid structures,
unusually tough, and show little tendency to break up in their flight.
The many Taurid fireballs show that fairly large bodies have survived.
The Geminids (maximum December 14) are of average strength but appear
to be very dense, while the Draconids (October 10) are featherlike and
fragile, with low density. Some of the most brilliant fireballs may be
structures of ice and frozen gases which quickly vaporize on reaching
the earth and hence leave no detectable fragments. The fiery object
that struck Siberia in 1908 may have been such an “icy cometoid”;
although it devastated an area of hundreds of square miles and uprooted
or knocked down some eighty million trees, it apparently left no
physical trace[V-15].
If some of the physical body does survive to reach the earth’s surface,
finding it is still a problem. Recovery is rare even when the fall
occurs in daylight over well-populated country and the flight path
can be charted from the accounts of reliable witnesses. When the
fall occurs at night, recovery is even rarer[V-5]. After dark, even
experienced observers find it difficult to judge true directions and
distances, and they may plot a place of fall that is many miles from
the actual point of impact. Meteoriticists know that there is small
chance of finding meteorites that fall at night except in regions where
most of the land is under cultivation. In the fifty years between 1898
and 1948, of forty-eight recoveries from observed meteorite falls in
the United States, only seven were made from falls occurring after 8
P.M.[V-5].
Recovery depends on many factors: the number of persons who saw the
event, the accuracy of their estimates of distance and direction, the
size of the meteorites, the patience of the searchers, the time and
money available for the search, and, most important of all, just plain
luck.
The Norton County fall of February 18, 1948, illustrates both the
detective work and the luck required. At about 4:56 P.M. C.S.T. a
brilliant detonating fireball soared over an area including Kansas,
Nebraska, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas, and left a large white cloud
that was visible for about an hour afterward. Newspapers publicized
the phenomenon as a flying saucer and a few excited witnesses agreed.
One man affirmed that shortly before the explosion the strange craft
hovered over his yard at eye level, belching fire and showering sparks,
then suddenly took off, climbing fast, and exploded.
Meteoriticists at once recognized the characteristic pattern of an
exploding meteor and determined to find the remains. From newspaper
reports and personal interviews with the witnesses, H. H. Nininger
of the American Meteorite Museum in Arizona plotted the path and
determined that the probable point of explosion was thirteen miles
west and three miles north of Norton, Kansas[V-16]. From similar
investigations, Lincoln La Paz of the Institute of Meteoritics in
New Mexico determined the probable place of impact as an area eight
miles long and four miles wide, about thirty-two square miles, on the
Kansas-Nebraska line.
During the Easter vacation a field-survey party from New Mexico
drove north into Kansas to hunt for the meteorite, but blizzards and
snow-blocked roads stopped the work. A second search, begun on April
27, suggested that the main mass of the meteorite must have fallen
somewhere in Furnas County, Nebraska. When persistent hunting failed to
reveal it, the searchers moved south into Kansas, where a farmer had
found a strange stone that smelled of sulphur and contained metallic
specks. Although many stony meteorites of various weights turned up in
this area, the main mass remained hidden until July 3 when a farmer
located it, by accident, in a field that the official party had already
examined and abandoned some three months earlier. This meteorite,
although it weighed more than a ton and had dug out a six-foot crater
in the ground, had eluded the hunters because “at the time of the fall
the only dwelling close to the point of impact was unoccupied and ...
the impact occurred in a field so overgrown with weeds and stubble that
even the large crater made by the record-breaking main mass of the fall
was finally located only when by chance a caterpillar tractor started
to fall into it.”[V-17]
To find these meteorites, several highly trained searchers had spent
days of effort, made a number of field surveys, driven more than 10,000
miles, and interviewed hundreds of persons who observed the flight
of the fireball. Even so, they counted themselves lucky because many
“meteorites of such composition and structure, although large enough to
produce spectacular light and sound effects in the intermediate layers
of the atmosphere, might disintegrate so completely during transit
through the denser lower atmosphere that only dust would survive to
reach the earth.”
The green fireballs of New Mexico were silent; they were probably icy
structures and hence produced no meteorites. Even if they had, locating
the place of fall would have been nearly impossible because the meteors
appeared at night in a sparsely populated area.
To summarize: Many meteors do not leave fragments. Even when they do,
finding the meteorite requires luck as well as hard work.
_Unusual Fireballs_
The officers and crewmen of a plane in flight have a front-row seat at
the drama of the heavens, where astronomical events seem doubly vivid
against the dark night sky. The pilot has been trained to recognize
the major constellations, the brightest stars, and ordinary phenomena
such as meteors and the Aurora Borealis. As a rule, however, he limits
his study to the needs of the job. The few who have an astronomer’s
intimate acquaintance with the heavens have often made valuable
contributions to our knowledge. Comet 1957d was first observed by
an airman and Comet 1948l was discovered by a pilot flying from the
Fiji Islands to Australia. Comet Wilson, discovered on July 23, 1961
(and reported to the Air Force by some persons as a UFO), was first
recognized by A. Stewart Wilson, navigator on a Pan American flight
over the Pacific. All members of the crew were skilled and experienced
fliers, but he alone was equipped to see the significance of the
intruder in the constellation Gemini[V-18].
One of the most fantastic apparitions to confront a pilot is a group of
luminous objects flaming through the air in more or less geometrical
formation. The objects often seem to be heading directly toward the
plane on a collision course but, as though under intelligent control,
seem to veer off at the last possible instant and then disappear
at incredible speed. The pilot usually recognizes this frightening
phenomenon as an exploding meteor or a cluster of fireballs.
Occasionally the sight is so extraordinary that he insists it could
not have been a mere meteor but must have been some weird spacecraft.
Airmen of unquestioned competence have made this mistake, sometimes
because they more than half believed in extraterrestrial visitors, but
more often because they knew less than they supposed about meteors.
In trying to identify the alarming objects approaching his plane, the
pilot often thinks first of a meteor, then rejects the idea with some
form of the remark, “Whatever it was, it was certainly not a meteor;
I’ve seen meteors and I can’t be fooled.” He usually adds that no
meteor could travel so fast (or so slowly) as the one he saw; so high
(or so low); could have such a color; steer so “obvious” a collision
course; fly as part of so orderly a group; move in so level (or so
steeply angled) a path; maintain so steady a course; change course so
abruptly; move so silently; or create so loud a detonation.
Such an incident occurred on a Pan American flight from New York to
San Juan early on the morning of March 9, 1957. At about 3:30 A.M.
when the plane was off Jacksonville, Florida, the pilot and the flight
engineer saw a burning, greenish-white, round object coming out of
nowhere, seemingly only a half mile away and headed across their nose
on a direct collision course[V-19]. In such a situation a plane’s
captain cannot waste time in analyzing what he sees, but must act. In
a violent evasive move he put the plane into a climb of about 1500
feet, during which several passengers were thrown out of their seats
and injured. At the same moment the crews of at least seven other
flights within an area of 300 miles were reporting the same object.
One witness saw it split in two and the fiery rear section drop away.
About an hour earlier, the pilot of another plane in the area had seen
the breakup of a similar meteor but had not reported it. In spite of
all the evidence that the unknown was a normal meteor, breaking apart
as many meteors do, the Pan American pilot, “having seen thousands of
meteors,” could not accept the object as a natural phenomenon although
he did realize, after he heard the other reports, that he had greatly
underestimated its distance. The object showed all the characteristics
of a typical fireball, but the flying-saucer cultists have still tried
to convert this undoubted meteor into an unknown object.
The number of meteors reported as flying saucers or spaceships has
diminished in the last few years, but the Air Force has continued to
investigate all doubtful or puzzling sightings to determine whether
they in any way represent a possible threat to the nation’s security.
Every sure identification of a UFO as merely a meteor, not a ballistic
missile, brings a certain amount of relief.
A typical case, successfully solved, is that of June 20, 1959. About
2:15 A.M. the pilot of a United Airlines flight over the Pacific
reported by radio to Flight Operations that he had observed an apparent
rocket firing about thirty-five miles west of the plane position; radar
detected the presence of a surface vessel at about the same position.
The pilot first noticed a flash of light, then the entire sky lighted
up and he saw four round, fiery globules, of an intense bluish-white
color, with no tails. Flying two by two in a straight line, they made
no sound and disappeared after about two seconds. The weather was clear
and calm, the visibility excellent. The copilot, sitting at the right,
saw only the first flash, but the pilot of another plane some 120 miles
to the west reported seeing the same objects at the same time[V-19].
Because this sighting occurred in a very sensitive area where military
officials were expecting a Russian test firing of an ICBM, the Air
Force made an exhaustive study of this report and identified the object
as a meteor. Their evaluation proceeded as follows:
The United Airlines pilot estimated the distance of the objects as
only about thirty miles and their rate of travel as about 15 degrees
in two seconds. These figures indicated a velocity of approximately
14,500 miles per hour, about the speed of a ballistic missile. But
the relatively low altitude, the flat trajectory, and the fact that a
visible “power plant” was apparently still operating at this stage of
flight ruled out the possibility of a missile. However, if the observer
had underestimated the distance and the objects were actually hundreds
of miles away, then the data would indicate a speed of about 50,000
miles an hour, in the range of meteor velocities. The descriptions
given closely matched that of the classic fireball, whose colors range
over white, blue, green, red, and yellow, and whose luminosity may be
as great as -3 magnitudes. The Air Force concluded that the object
sighted was, in all probability, a meteor.
A similar sighting, which saucer enthusiasts have publicized as a
brilliantly lighted UFO that appeared to hold a definite course,
occurred at 3:02 A.M. on July 11, 1959, also over the Pacific[V-19].
The pilot of a Pan American Airlines flight reported that a mysterious
bright object accompanied at its left by four smaller lights had
approached his plane at “inconceivable speed,” made a sharp right turn,
and then disappeared. The objects seemed to be flying evenly spaced in
formation, and the pilot, who had never seen anything like it in all
his years of flying, told the newspapers, “I’m a believer, now.”
The official investigation began immediately. Four other commercial
flights had reported seeing the object at the same time. In each
case, the pilot stated that the objects seemed to head straight at
his plane at high speed on a collision course, then made a 90-degree
turn and disappeared. The various reports, however, showed significant
disagreements. Some witnesses gave the color as white, some as
orange-yellow. Of the several pilots, each gave a different description
of the “formation”: a big light with four smaller lights flying at
the left; a big light surrounded by a cluster of six or seven smaller
lights; a big light followed by four smaller lights; a big light in the
center of a rectangle formed by four smaller lights. Of the five pilots
who made official reports, one said the phenomenon was definitely not a
meteor, two said it could have been a meteor, and two did not venture
an opinion. The pilots of several other flights stated, on landing,
that they too had seen the object but had not radioed a report because
they assumed it to be a meteor.
After mapping and correlating all the observations, ATIC completed
the analysis and released the result to the press on July 14, only
three days after the sighting, a remarkably efficient piece of work.
Conclusion: the object was a fireball[V-20].
The literature of flying saucers contains dozens of similar incidents
that fit perfectly into the meteor pattern. Pointing to this list of
“unidentified” flying objects, saucer addicts still abuse the Air Force
for concealing the “fact” that these UFOs are actually spaceships!
_Great Meteor Processions_
Even more dramatic than the ordinary exploding meteor whose fragments
naturally fall into a pattern around it, a cluster of fireballs or
a great procession of meteors occasionally startles the world. On
December 21, 1876, about 8:45 P.M. such a swarm of fireballs appeared
over Kansas and disappeared some three minutes later over Pennsylvania,
having traveled the thousand-mile distance at a velocity of 20,000
to 25,000 miles an hour. Hundreds of persons in Kansas, Missouri,
Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania saw the display, which
included nearly 100 separate fireballs; the leader was more brilliant
than the full moon and many of the followers were brighter than Venus
or Jupiter. Perhaps fortunately for the nerves of the public, the most
recent such display occurred before the saucers began to fly (March 24,
1933). This cluster of fireballs was visible chiefly in the skies over
New Mexico and left a great cloud that was visible for at least three
hours.
The most spectacular of such formations was the great meteor procession
of February 9, 1913. At about 9:05 in the evening the leader or leaders
appeared in the sky over western Canada, their fiery red bodies
followed by long streaming tails. These immense fireballs showed no
tendency to fall toward the earth but, like the green fireballs of New
Mexico, “moved forward on a perfectly horizontal path with peculiar,
majestic, dignified deliberation,” and disappeared in the distance
to the southwest. No description can surpass that given by Professor
Chant[V-21] who spent two weeks in locating and interviewing many of
the witnesses.
“Before the astonishment aroused by this first meteor had subsided,
other bodies were seen coming from the northwest, emerging from
precisely the same place as the first one. Onward they moved, at the
same deliberate pace, in twos or threes or fours, with tails streaming
behind, though not so long nor so bright as in the first case. They
all traversed the same path and were headed for the same point in the
southeastern sky.
“Gradually the bodies became smaller, until the last ones were but
red sparks, some of which were snuffed out before they reached
their destination. Several report that near the middle of the great
procession was a fine large star without a tail, and that a similar
body brought up the rear.
“To most observers the outstanding feature of the phenomenon was the
slow, majestic motion of the bodies; and almost equally remarkable was
the perfect formation which they retained. Many compared them to a
fleet of airships, with lights on either side and forward and aft;...
Others, again, likened them to great battleships, attended by cruisers
or destroyers.”
No other recorded meteors have persisted for so great a distance.
Thousands of persons saw this great procession as it soared over
Saskatchewan, central Canada, Toronto and the Great Lakes region, New
York and Pennsylvania, the shipping lanes from New York to Bermuda, and
on over the South Atlantic, where before it vanished it was observed
by ships as far south as Brazil--a distance of some 5000 miles, one
fifth of the earth’s circumference. The descriptions do not vary
significantly and they all mention the slow, level flight, parallel to
the earth’s surface.
Some astronomers have suggested that these unusual meteors may
have been a group of natural satellites deflected by the earth’s
gravitation, slowing down and finally disintegrating as they made their
final revolution[V-14]. But if the UFO cult had existed in 1913, the
flying-saucer enthusiasts would probably have regarded the fireball
procession as a fleet of spaceships, and would have speculated on the
problem of what planet dispatched them and for what purpose.
_The Chiles-Whitted Sighting_
The Chiles-Whitted UFO, sighted on July 24, 1948, is one of the most
publicized of the classics. Although the object appeared, passed, and
vanished in an interval of roughly ten seconds, and the descriptions
given by the three witnesses differed on several vital points, Dr. J.
Allen Hynek, astronomer consultant to ATIC, in his report of April
30, 1949, identified it as an undoubted meteor. Nevertheless, not
until 1959 did the Air Force officially accept this solution, and the
literature of saucerdom still cites the incident as indisputable proof
of alien spaceships.
On the evening of July 23 an Eastern Airlines DC-3 took off from
Houston, Texas, en route for Boston, with an experienced pilot and
copilot in the cockpit. By 2:40 A.M. C.D.S.T. July 24 the plane was a
few miles southwest of Montgomery, Alabama, flying at an altitude of
5000 feet. The night was clear, and a bright moon just four days past
full shone through a layer of broken clouds about 1000 feet above the
plane. At 2:45 A.M. the pilot, Captain C. S. Chiles, noticed a dull
red glow some distance ahead, approaching from a little above and to
the right of the plane. He remarked to his copilot, Lieutenant J. B.
Whitted, “Look, here comes a new Army jet job.”[V-19] In the next few
seconds, however, he changed his mind about the identity of the object.
As both men watched, the brilliantly glowing unknown continued to
approach with incredible swiftness, apparently on a collision course;
it seemed to veer slightly, passed the plane on the right almost level
with and parallel to the flight path, then seemed to pull up sharply
and disappear into the clouds. Captain Chiles estimated that the object
was in sight for about ten seconds. The one passenger who was awake,
sitting at the right of the cabin, saw the light for only an instant as
it flashed by.
The brief impressions of these three witnesses were the sole foundation
for newspaper stories that the plane had narrowly escaped collision
with a spaceship.
In their official report both pilots agreed on the general appearance
of the UFO: it looked like a wingless aircraft with no fins or
protruding surfaces, was cigar-shaped, about 100 feet long, and about
twice the diameter of a B-29 superfortress. It seemed to have two rows
of windows through which glowed a very bright light, brilliant as a
magnesium flare. An intense dark-blue glow like a blue fluorescent
factory light shone at the bottom along the entire length, and
red-orange flames shot out from the rear to a distance of some fifty
feet. Neither man heard any sound and neither saw any occupants. In
their original report to ATIC both men agreed that “no disturbance was
felt from the air waves, nor was there any prop wash or mechanical
disturbance when the object passed.” The third witness, the passenger,
did not report any turbulence or rocking of the plane. Some of the
later versions of the incident gloss over these facts, however, and
thus exaggerate the startling nature of the sighting. One account
subtly implies the presence of a pilot in the UFO and several state
that, as the object passed, the plane hit turbulent air[V-7, p. 61]
or was “rocked” by the UFO[V-20, p. 21].
Like most eyewitness descriptions of a startling event, the testimony
of the three men differed. Chiles stated that at the front of the UFO
was a lighted pilot compartment or cockpit with a “snout” similar
to a radar pole, and that a kind of nozzle projected from the rear
from which the flames fanned out to a width of twenty or thirty feet.
Whitted did not see a cockpit, a snout, or a rear nozzle; he thought
the flames flared out from the entire rear and were never any wider
than the width of the UFO itself. The third witness, the passenger,
saw no shape or form, only an intensely brilliant streak of light
that appeared and vanished before he was able to focus his eyes. As
responsible officers, both pilots had obviously tried to separate the
observed phenomena from their interpretation. They differed widely
on the estimated distance of the UFO (the passenger did not offer an
estimate). Chiles thought it passed them with a margin of only about
700 feet, but Whitted believed the distance to be more than ten times
greater, about a mile and a half. However, when we remember that these
men had the UFO in sight for only a small fraction of a minute and that
their study of the side view (“windows,” “cockpit,” etc.) must have
been limited to the instant of passing, these disagreements are not
remarkable.
When Captain Chiles and Lieutenant Whitted reported their frightening
experience, the Air Force made a prompt investigation. Since Captain
Chiles explicitly stated his belief that the UFO was under intelligent
control, the case required careful consideration. A check of the air
traffic showed that no other planes had been in the area at the time,
so the object could not have been a normal aircraft. Furthermore, other
equally reliable witnesses reported seeing unusually bright meteors
in the Southeast that night. Since the bare physical description of
the UFO, apart from the inferences made, was identical with that of a
fireball, Dr. Hynek concluded that it was an unusually bright meteor.
But the climate at ATIC that summer was not friendly to a prosaic
explanation. Remembering the tragic death of Captain Mantell some
six months earlier while he was chasing a UFO, then unidentified (p.
33), some officials were more than half ready to believe in invading
space fleets as the answer to every puzzling phenomenon in the sky.
They rejected the fireball explanation. Instead of accepting the
Chiles-Whitted UFO as a meteor, they identified the other two meteors
seen that night as UFOs!
And yet the evidence is overwhelming that the UFO _was_ a fireball.
The major meteor showers that occur on schedule every year have
accounted for hundreds of alleged UFOs over the last fifteen years.
Several of these showers begin in mid-July; thus July 24 falls in a
period of greatly increased meteor activity, when the earth is moving
through the Aquarid streams and is encountering the forerunners of the
Perseids. All during the year, and particularly during these weeks
of shower meteors, amateur astronomers throughout the country spend
many evenings watching the sky, counting meteors, mapping their paths,
and reporting the data to various observatories. On an average night
outside the shower periods, if there are few clouds and no moon, an
experienced watcher may count about half a dozen meteors in an hour’s
time, but during a shower he usually sees many more. For the week of
July 23 to 30, 1948, the records of the American Meteor Society, the
Harvard College Observatory, and the Flower and Cook Observatory show
that, in spite of the interference of a bright moon, large numbers of
meteors were counted and the paths of many of them were mapped and
plotted.
The reports from the Southeast for that week have particular interest
for the Chiles-Whitted case. A regular observer in Alabama counted
fifteen meteors in one hour’s watching on the evening of July 24, and
twenty-one in two hours the following night[V-22]. On the evening of
July 26 he apparently took a holiday, but many other persons saw a huge
fireball that flashed over North Carolina and Tennessee at 9:36 P.M.
E.S.T.; its radiant (AMS 2322), plotted from many reports, showed it to
be a member of the Delta Aquarid stream, then approaching its maximum.
Early on the morning of July 27 another fireball soared over Tennessee
and apparently exploded[V-23]. On the night of July 28 the Alabama
watcher recorded fifteen meteors, from which he obtained the radiants
AMS 3269, 3270, and 3271[V-9, p. 521].
These facts alone--the occurrence of scheduled showers and the number
of well-plotted meteors observed during the period--point strongly
to the probability that the Chiles-Whitted UFO was a meteor. The
probability becomes virtual certainty when we examine the available
records for the night of July 23 and morning of July 24, the period
when this particular UFO appeared. The watcher in Alabama was not on
duty, but another observer in Iowa counted fourteen meteors in one
hour[V-22], more than double the rate for an average night. About an
hour before the UFO appeared in Alabama, ground observers at Robins
Air Force Base near Macon, Georgia, reported an unusually bright
meteor going from north to south. A few minutes before the Alabama
sighting, two Air Force officers flying between Blackstone, Virginia,
and Gainsborough, North Carolina, reported an unusually bright meteor
traveling in a southerly direction.
When Chiles and Whitted observed their UFO, its appearance and manner
of motion were identical with those of many other bright meteors but
the pilots, startled by the sudden apparition, misinterpreted what they
saw. They probably overestimated the length of time the meteor was in
view and they almost certainly underestimated the distance. Meteors
notoriously mislead even the experienced observer, who often sees them
disappearing “just behind the next hill,” when they may actually be
fifty or a hundred miles away. Although the night was moonlit and clear
except for broken clouds, the witnesses had no fixed reference point by
which to determine either distance or size.
There can be no doubt that Chiles and Whitted misinterpreted the
appearance of an unusually brilliant meteor, its body glowing to white
(the momentarily persisting luminous train of a meteor often has a
veined or fibrous structure that could easily have suggested the
“lighted window” and “cockpit”) and blue incandescence (the glowing
“undercarriage”) as it rushed through the atmosphere some fifty
miles or more away, shooting off flaming gases (the “exhaust”) and
vaporizing from the friction of the atmosphere. Flashing beyond their
range of vision (“pulling up into the clouds”), it probably burned and
disintegrated before it reached the earth.
This fresh analysis, based on meteor records for July 1948, has led
ATIC finally to remove the Chiles-Whitted UFO from the category of
Unknowns and, as Dr. Hynek suggested originally, add it to the file of
recorded meteors.
A more recent sighting that closely resembled the Chiles-Whitted
incident occurred on the evening of January 8, 1959, and was promptly
reported to ATIC [V-19]. Two Air Force pilots were flying in a C-45
type of aircraft from Phillipsburg to Brookville, Pennsylvania, at an
altitude of 8000 feet. The night was clear and moonless. At 6:14 P.M.
E.S.T. they observed what appeared to be a brilliantly lighted solid
object rushing toward them. Bluish green in color, shaped roughly
like a teardrop and about 200 feet in diameter, it made no audible
sound. Glowing like a small sun, it seemed to be flying level with the
aircraft, less than a mile away and headed straight for the plane.
The frightened pilot jerked on the controls in an attempt to dodge
the object, but almost before the plane could respond the unknown had
disappeared. It had been in sight about three seconds. In his official
report he estimated that the object had been the size of a pool ball
held at arm’s length and that it had been not more than a mile away.
The copilot, however, did not agree. A man with special training and
unusual experience in the study of UFOs, he estimated the object to be
the size of the head of a pin held at arm’s length and the distance to
be at least 300 miles. The extreme brilliance of the object against
the night sky, he thought, had made it seem larger. In his opinion,
supported by Air Force investigation, the unknown had been a fireball
at least fifty miles high that had burned out and vanished as they
watched.
As in the Chiles-Whitted case, ground observers also saw the object and
thus provided independent confirmation of the analysis. A member of
the Ohio State University reported to the Harvard College Observatory
that on the night of January 8, at approximately 6:15 P.M. E.S.T., he
had watched a brilliant bluish-white meteor streak across the sky over
Columbus and vanish within a few seconds. The fireball must indeed
have been high and spectacular to be visible at the same moment from
points nearly 300 miles apart.
_Other Flaming UFOs_
Not all spectacular UFOs are meteors, of course, any more than they
are all planets or balloons or rockets. Sudden brilliant illuminations
of the night sky can have any one of a dozen or more explanations. The
atmosphere is crowded with potential Unknowns, more than at any time
in man’s history. The air surrounding our planet plays host not only
to meteors and fireballs, birds and insects, but also to military and
commercial planes, private planes, jets, helicopters, weather balloons,
experimental rockets, and an ever-growing number of artificial
satellites. An ear-shattering detonation that rattles a house or breaks
a window may come from an exploding fireball or it may come from a jet
penetrating the sound barrier. Without an exact knowledge of all the
circumstances, only the foolhardy would attempt to say positively what
caused any given unusual aerial phenomenon.
Let us consider a sighting that might have received various wrong
interpretations and would probably have become one of the most
famous of the UFOs cited by saucerdom, had investigators lacked full
information.
Shortly after midnight one spring morning reliable witnesses on the
east coast, particularly in Connecticut and Long Island, reported a
brilliant bluish-white object flying at high altitude and incredible
speed. As it flashed overhead, it changed color to become reddish,
and several smaller objects apparently detached themselves from the
main body and followed it in orderly fashion. About five minutes later
more than fifteen ships in the Caribbean area observed similar objects
soaring overhead but the reports varied in many details. Ship number
two saw brilliant short flames darting about behind the main body,
which had a long, tapered tail. Ship number four saw a flaming white
object more brilliant than the full moon. Ship number seven reported a
flaming green ball followed by a group of several small objects. Ship
number nine observed at least fifteen smaller objects that suddenly
separated from the main body and fell into formation behind it. Ship
number eleven saw an object with a trail several miles long, brilliant
as a peacock’s tail, so luminous that the deck and sea around were
bathed in pale light as the mass crossed overhead. Ship number twelve
reported, “The main body appeared to have a blue-white head, then a
short dark space before the glowing orange-yellow tail. Twenty-seven
separate particles were actually counted as they appeared in the main
plume. Each followed the main body and each developed its own glowing
tail on leaving it.” The main body was several times brighter than
Venus, while the offshoots were each twice the magnitude of Sirius.
One observer described it as round on top and bright blue-white, while
the lower half, which was emitting sparks, seemed to be flattened and
reddish in color.
During this period of less than five minutes, similar objects were
observed from the ground by witnesses in the Virgin Islands. One man in
Martinique saw a luminous green globe, brighter than Venus, followed
at a slight distance by a flaming red, enormously long, cigar-shaped
object. Observers in Barbados saw two huge objects followed by from
twelve to eighteen “offspring” shaped like the main body; some of the
offspring subdivided to form two small cometlike objects. The object
disappeared into a cloud bank and vanished. No observations were
reported from areas farther south.
These unidentified objects were reported over an area stretching
from Connecticut to the coast of British Guiana, a distance of about
2700 miles. They flew in a straight course. All of the objects were
noiseless. They were remarkably brilliant. They seemed to have one or
more leaders, to discharge smaller objects, and to fly in formation.
They maintained a substantially horizontal path, and only the last
observers, who saw the things disappear into the cloud bank, noted any
tendency to descend. No fragments were ever found, and all witnesses
agreed that the objects were not like meteors. If all the observers
were describing the same single phenomenon, it was flying at the
incredible speed of more than 16,000 miles an hour.
What was it?
With only these facts to build on, an investigator might interpret
the sightings according to his own prejudices: an invasion fleet from
another planet making a reconnaissance in force, the mother ships
discharging the smaller craft at intervals; a mass hallucination; a
peculiar meteoric display.
Without knowledge of one essential fact, some hundreds of landsmen and
seamen in the United States, the Caribbean islands, and the British
West Indies might now feel firmly convinced that they had witnessed
a genuine “Unknown.” The date was April 14, 1958. The privileged
observers had witnessed the death of Sputnik II, the Russian satellite
launched on November 3, 1957[V-24].
The UFO reports inspired by this event presented no problem to the
Air Force. All information on the re-entry of artificial satellites
is immediately accessible to ATIC. Whenever a reported UFO shows any
possible resemblance to a falling satellite, Air Force investigators
check at once with Spacetrack. Astronomers who had been tracking this
satellite as it circled the earth had predicted more than a month in
advance that it would spiral toward the earth and fall sometime between
April 12 and April 15. A few days before the actual event they had
refined their estimate and predicted the time of the fall within a few
hours.
[V-1] _Meteoritics_, Vol. II, 1954.
[V-2] Keyhoe, D. E. _The Flying Saucer Conspiracy._ New York: Henry
Holt & Co., 1955.
[V-3] Biot, J. B. “Account of a Fire-ball which Fell in the
Neighborhood of Laigle.” _Philosophical Magazine_, Vol. XVI (1803), pp.
224–28.
[V-4] Whipple, F.L., and Hawkins, G. S. “Meteors,” _Handbuch der
Physik_, Vol. LII (1959), pp. 519–64.
[V-5] Nininger, H. H. _Out of the Sky._ University of Denver Press,
1952; New York: Dover Publications, 1959.
[V-6] Menzel, D. H. Personal files.
[V-7] Ruppelt, E. J. _The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects._
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1956.
[V-8] _Meteoritics_, Vol. III, 1955.
[V-9] _Meteoritics_, Vol. I, 1953.
[V-10] Millman, P. M., and Halliday, I. “The Near-Infra-Red Spectrum of
Meteors,” _Journal of Planetary and Space Science_, Vol. V (1961), pp.
137–40.
[V-11] Millman, P. M. “An Analysis of Meteor Spectra,” _Annals of
Harvard College Observatory_, Vol. LXXXII, Nos. 6 and 7 (1917–37), pp.
113–77.
[V-12] Robey, D. H. “An Hypothesis on the Slow Moving Green Fireballs,”
_Journal of the British Interplanetary Society_, Vol. XVII (1959–60),
pp. 398–411.
[V-13] Krinov, E. L. _Principles of Meteoritics._ New York: Pergamon
Press, 1960.
[V-14] O’Keefe, J. A. “Tektites and the Cyrillid Shower,” _Sky and
Telescope_, Vol. XXI (1961), p. 4.
[V-15] Fesenkov, V. G. “Cloudiness of the Atmosphere Produced by the
Fall of the Tunguska Meteorite of June 30, 1908,” _Meteoritika_, Vol.
VI (1949), p. 8.
[V-16] Nininger, H. H. “Tracing the Norton, Kansas, Meteorite Fall,”
_Sky and Telescope_, Vol. VII (1948), p. 294.
[V-17] La Paz, L. “The Achondritic Shower of February 18, 1948,”
_Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific_, Vol. LXI
(1949), p. 63.
[V-18] Wilson, A. S. [Letter] _Sky and Telescope_, Vol. XXII (1961), p.
3.
[V-19] Air Force Files.
[V-20] Tacker, L. J. _Flying Saucers and the U. S. Air Force._
Princeton, N. J.: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1960.
[V-21] Chant, C. A. “An Extraordinary Meteoric Display,” _Journal of
the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada_, Vol. VII (1913), pp. 145–215.
[V-22] Olivier, C. P. “Tables of Hourly Rates Based Upon American
Meteor Society Data.” Interim Report No. 28, Harvard University Radio
Meteor Research Program (May 1958).
[V-23] Whipple, F. L. Personal files.
[V-24] Jacchia, L. G. “The Descent of Satellite 1957 Beta One,”
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, _Special Report No. 15_, July
20, 1958.
_Chapter_ VI
LIVING LIGHTS
A gamekeeper in Norfolk, England, in the year 1897 observed the flight
of an unusual luminous object. According to his story, he was “... out
one very dark night stopping up fox-earths. While I was so engaged I
saw a very bright blue light pass close to my face and was very much
startled as I saw it going away from me ... I put it down as some
insect.” After the mysterious light reappeared a few nights later, the
gamekeeper prudently began carrying his gun and eventually he managed
a shot at the light. To his amazement he brought down “a poor old
half-starved barn owl, _Tyto alba_, whose body continued to glow for
some hours after death.”[VI-1]
_The Luminous Owls of Norfolk_
Some ten years later, on the night of February 3, 1907, another
Englishman and his son while taking a walk observed a similar luminous
phenomenon. Apparently about a quarter of a mile away, it moved
horizontally over a course several hundred yards in length, reversed
direction, then rose into the air to the height of forty feet or more.
“It then descended and again went through the same evolutions many
times. The light was slightly reddish in the centre, and resembled
a carriage lamp for which we at first mistook it. We watched it for
twenty minutes and were quite at a loss to ascertain its cause.
“On December 1st, 1907, when again reaching the top of Twyford Hill, I
noticed what I took to be the lamp of a motor bicycle moving rapidly
along the Bintree road to the south. The light suddenly stopped, rose
into the air above the trees and retraced its course. This it did
several times, sometimes rising twenty to forty feet into the air, and
then rapidly descending. I called my groom and his wife from their
cottage a few hundred yards away, and they watched it with me for
several minutes. I then went to my house about half a mile off, and
from one of the attic windows watched it with my son and three servants
for a short time....”
The mysterious light appeared frequently for a period of weeks,
maneuvering silently, its luminosity sometimes so great that “it
literally lighted up the branches of the trees as it flew past them.”
Attempts to identify it through a telescope were unsuccessful but
eventually one observer was lucky enough to hear a sound as the light
soared past, and at once identified it by its unique call as a white
owl, _Strix flammea_[VI-2].
If these sightings had occurred half a century later, the witnesses
might well have called them flying saucers.
_Things That Glow in the Dark_
The luminous owls of Norfolk have appeared at intervals since
1866 to frighten the superstitious and puzzle the naturalist, but
ornithologists managed to solve the mystery some years ago[VI-3]. The
birds acquire their temporary luminosity from contact with a common
fungus, _Armillaria mellea_, popularly known as “honey-tuft.” This
mushroom, which mycophagists prize for its delicious flavor, grows in
large clumps on dead trees and stumps. The dark-brown cap is rough,
with fibrous scales, while the white gills are hooked or toothed at
the end and the spores are white. The dense white lacework of the
root system or mycelium, which gives off a phosphorescent light, may
permeate the entire tree and extend even into the fibers at the base of
the tree. Wood infested with the fungus can glow in the dark, sometimes
so brightly that a man could read his watch by its light.
Many of the tales of fox fire, corpse candles, and lanternmen
undoubtedly come from glimpses of this fungoid phosphorescence. Owls
that seek refuge in the dark interiors of hollow trees during the
daytime may brush against the veins of the mycelium, which adheres to
the feathered body. Flitting about at night, the luminous bird becomes
the dancing flame of the will o’ the wisp.
Other luminous mushrooms abound in woods, swamps, and marshy areas.
Decaying, they may produce an unearthly light and can give off a
peculiarly unpleasant odor. Unexpectedly seeing and smelling a bird
touched with the substance, on a dark night, a witness might well feel
bewildered and even frightened. _Polyporus sulfureus_, which grows in
dense masses on dead trees, often phosphoresces brilliantly in the
early stages of its decay, as does _Clytocobe illudens_, the jack o’
lantern. In the tropics these fungi may produce enough light to read
by. Birds, insects, and animals that brush against them can carry
away some of the luminous material and thus, for a time, appear to be
luminous themselves.
Most of us recognize fireflies, lightning bugs, or glowworms--which are
not worms but beetles. The wingless females must creep on the surface
of ground or branch, but the winged males flit through the air. These
sparkling creatures form part of the diet of birds and bats, and when
carried aloft to be consumed in flight can make one more mysterious,
swiftly moving light to frighten the apprehensive. The earth teems
with other self-luminous organisms such as frogs’ eggs, which most
of us have never seen and would not recognize. Luminous parasites
sometimes live in the feathers of birds and make them glow. The plumage
of the great blue heron, a North American bird, can emit a pale light
sometimes known as the birds’s “lantern” because it is supposed to
help him while fishing. Fish or meat when decaying can become infected
with luminous bacteria and thus shine brilliantly in the dark. The sea
is filled with phosphorescent fish and plants which help perpetuate
tales of sea serpents. Some waters in the Caribbean contain so dense a
population of phosphorescent algae that a bird, dipping its wings to
snatch a meal, will glow for minutes after it soars again into the air.
These luminous birds, innocently fishing for dinner, probably account
for many reports that flying saucers come and go from underwater[VI-4].
Many of the erratically behaving UFOs observed at night over wooded
areas, swamps, and marshes have undoubtedly been one of these will o’
the wisps--winged creatures glowing with borrowed fire. Unfortunately
proof of this explanation is rarely possible. Before the startled
observer can recover his wits the flitting “saucer” has gone, taking
with it the evidence of its identity.
Fear of the unknown is not confined to _Homo sapiens_. A news item
published in England a few years ago reveals that the animal kingdom,
too, may have its ghosts. Under the headline, _Owl Attacks Luminous
Man_, the article reads:
“A Bournemouth long-distance runner, Ken Baily, was attacked by an owl
last night when he was running through the centre of Bournemouth in a
luminous track suit. The bird ripped the front of his suit before it
flew back into the trees.
“Baily said afterwards: ‘I heard it hooting before it attacked. The
suit is luminous so that motorists can see me, but if it attracts owls
like this I’d rather take a chance with the traffic.’”[VI-5]
_Sea Gulls as UFOs_
Early in the afternoon of December 10, 1941, three days after the
attack on Pearl Harbor, a research technician standing at the
fourth-floor window of a laboratory in Boston saw a number of bright
objects maneuvering high in the sky and slowly descending over the
city. Making a quick guess at their distance, size, and speed, he
concluded that the objects were parachutes, the first of a Japanese
invasion. Only after they had dropped to the level of a nearby church
spire was he able to gain the right perspective, correct his estimates,
and identify the objects as sea gulls drifting down with the winds.
A decade later, the public was no longer worried about danger from
Japan but was concerned about possible invasion from outer space. Sea
gulls flashing in the sun were interpreted not as parachutes but as
flying saucers.
Many luminous UFOs have in fact been ordinary living creatures,
normal inhabitants of the earth--owls that had acquired a temporary
luminosity, sea gulls reflecting the sunlight, flights of birds
reflecting the lights of a town. But in trying to identify them, the
witness is influenced by the pattern of his time. In 1897 and 1907 the
world seemed reasonably secure. Observers of mysterious lights made
fairly accurate estimates of their distance and size and compared
them to familiar, everyday things--an insect and a carriage lamp. In
1941, three days after Pearl Harbor, the world was at war and the
observer’s imagination, stimulated by a hundred rumors of imminent
Japanese invasion, transformed cruising sea gulls into parachutes. By
1950, when space travel had become at least a theoretical possibility
and scientists were discussing ways to reach the moon, uneasy persons
fantastically overestimated the height and size of mysterious lights in
the sky and sometimes saw birds as spaceships from another planet.
A well-publicized incident took place on the morning of July 16, 1952,
when a Coast Guard photographer at Salem, Massachusetts, happened to
glance out of a window and see four bright, egg-shaped objects moving
in the sky. Grabbing his camera, he managed to take a picture before
the objects were lost from view. According to some saucer enthusiasts,
certain reproductions of the photograph show typical UFOs shaped like
two saucers arranged face to face, as though joined by a ring at the
mid-line[VI-6]. The official Coast Guard photograph however, shows
merely four bright, fuzzy-edged blurs arranged in a rough V formation.
Only imagination could convert these spots of light into spaceships.
Many readers of this book have probably seen similar objects gleaming
briefly in the sun, mysterious for the moment, and then identified
them as gulls or airplanes when a shift in orientation cut down the
reflection.
On the morning of the Coast Guard photograph the day was exceptionally
clear, the sun extremely bright, and the sky a deep blue unusual on the
Massachusetts coast. Under these circumstances, objects reflecting the
sun look larger and brighter than normal. Because the picture was taken
with a dirty lens through a window, the images were further distorted.
Since the UFOs did not produce highlights on the tops of the cars in
the foreground, as luminous objects overhead would have done, they were
probably not in the sky at all. Elaborate Air Force experiments with
photo-flood lamps showed that the images were reflections in the window
glass from an interior light source behind the camera (see Plate IVa).
Weird and frightening apparitions do occur; Air Force files bulge with
reports suggesting that unfamiliar objects are moving around us day
and night, by land, sea, and air. Imagination endows them with life or
turns them into mysterious, saucer-shaped craft manned by creatures
from Mars, Venus, or even from some planet of a star beyond our solar
system. The UFO photographed over France on October 2, 1954 (a weekend
when every French village was reporting saucers by the dozen), shows
no details and might be almost anything: a bird, a balloon, a cloud of
gossamer, the sun, a plane, or merely the result of a lens defect (see
Plate IVb).
How many of the UFOs listed in the saucer publications originate from
birds, insects, and animals we cannot know, but the number must be
large. Most of us have only a sketchy acquaintance with the non-human
forms of life that share the earth with us. Seeing an unfamiliar
creature suddenly, or a familiar creature under unusual circumstances,
we often imagine it to be whatever we most fear--vengeful spirits of
the departed, fire-breathing dragons, devils, parachutes, or flying
saucers.
_The Lubbock Lights_
The luminous objects sighted in Texas during the last week of
August, 1951, would probably have been explained and forgotten in a
week’s time, except for the publication of alleged photographs of
the unknowns. This complication converted a simple incident into a
conglomerate of puzzles which, though actually unrelated, were lumped
together to form a classic Unknown. The most detailed published account
of this case[VI-7, p. 133 ff.] contains a number of statements that
differ in detail from those in the official files. When discrepancies
exist, the facts as given in this chapter are those in the original Air
Force reports[VI-8].
The Saturday night of August 25, 1951, was uncomfortably hot in the
Southwest, and many persons spent the evening in the relative coolness
out of doors. In the town of Lubbock, a professor of geology was
sitting in his yard with two guests, fellow members of the faculty,
discussing micrometeorites and counting meteors, which for several
nights had been more numerous than usual. The sky was clear and
cloudless and seeing conditions were ideal. About 9:20 the men noticed
a group of fifteen to twenty lights passing silently overhead, going
from north to south. They were obviously not meteors or planes, but
disappeared too quickly to be identified. About an hour later a second
group of lights appeared, forming a rough semicircle or crescent like a
string of beads. Shortly before midnight a third group soared overhead
in a random pattern (see Figure 11).
[Illustration: _Figure 11._ Schematic sketch of lights observed by the
professors at Lubbock, Texas. Left, pattern in the first and third
sightings; right, pattern in the second sighting.]
Trying to account for the phenomenon, the men agreed that all three
flights had appeared suddenly, not gradually, in about the same part of
the sky. Only the second had shown any sort of pattern, all had moved
silently from north to south, their luminosity was not constant but had
varied in intensity, and all had disappeared suddenly, not gradually,
at about the same point in the sky. The men did not agree on the color,
which they described as yellowish to white, with a soft glow. The
lights had passed too swiftly for the men to locate them in relation to
specific stars and there were no clouds in the sky; thus they had no
known reference points by which to judge altitude, distance, or size.
Since the lights had apparently moved over about 30 degrees of sky in
one second, however, and the observers estimated the altitude as 5000
to 50,000 feet, the unknowns must have had an enormous size and an
incredible speed of from 1800 to 18,000 miles an hour--typical flying
saucers.
Understandably curious, the host telephoned the managing editor of
the local newspaper, the Lubbock _Evening Avalanche_, hoping that a
printed account would elicit more information from other persons who
had noticed the mysterious lights. The report appeared in the Sunday
paper, August 26, but in the days that followed, no reader responded.
Then on Friday August 31, five days after the original story had
appeared and apparently died, it suddenly came to life. A college
freshman who occasionally sold news photographs to the Lubbock paper
brought in five pictures of a group of mysterious lights he had
photographed the night before. He had been lying in bed next to an open
window, he explained, and shortly before midnight he had observed a
formation of brilliant lights moving rapidly across the sky. Grabbing
his camera, a Kodak 35-mm., he had rushed out into the yard and, after
a brief wait, had been able to photograph two similar flights that
raced overhead a few minutes apart. Each light had been brighter than
Venus, they had maintained a perfect V formation, and had sped from
horizon to horizon in a mere four or five seconds. Yet this amazing
apparition had apparently gone unnoticed by all except the lucky
amateur.
Fearing a hoax, both the editor and the staff photographer hesitated
but, since the negatives displayed no obvious evidence of fraud, they
finally bought and printed the pictures and distributed them over the
country through the United Press.
People all over the nation could now argue the question: What were the
Lubbock lights? A few said flying saucers. Many Texans said ducks,
plover, or other migratory fowl. But the things in the pictures didn’t
look like birds; and if they weren’t birds, what were they? Some
persons bluntly called them a hoax.
Impelled perhaps by the growing publicity, the staff photographer of
the _Evening Avalanche_ several times tried to duplicate the pictures
by photographing flights of birds at night. He allowed himself better
equipment--a Speedgraphic camera loaded with a tungsten ASA 80 film,
and a GE no. 22 flashbulb in a concentrating reflector. Opening
the camera to f 4.7 at 1/10 second, he went up to the roof of the
newspaper building to try his luck. After a brief wait he was able to
photograph a flock of birds that appeared high overhead, reflecting the
mercury-vapor lights of the street, flying noiselessly in a “ragged” V
formation, but the image on the negative proved too faint for use. The
next night he tried again, using a Kodak Reflex set at f 3.5, Super XX
film, at 1/10 second, plus the flashbulb and concentrating reflector.
The birds appeared on schedule, but again the images proved too faint
for use. The experimenter concluded, probably correctly, that the
amateur must have photographed something much brighter than birds.
Not until late October, nearly two months after the original incident,
did the Air Force receive official notice of the mystery at Lubbock,
and Captain Ruppelt of ATIC arrived to interview witnesses in Lubbock
and the neighboring towns of Lamessa, Brownfield, and Big Spring. He
quickly discovered that he had two mysteries to solve instead of one
since, according to the witnesses who had started all the excitement,
the objects shown in the pictures were wholly unlike the luminous
phenomena observed by the three professors. The pictured lights formed
a perfectly geometrical, flat V, while the original objects had formed
a random pattern. Furthermore the pictures showed brilliant, sharply
outlined lights as intense as unshaded electric bulbs, while the
original objects had been softly glowing.
Meanwhile the professors themselves had been trying to solve their own
mystery. During September and October they had observed at least a
dozen similar flights, and in an attempt to obtain the true altitude
of the objects they had organized a field survey, operating in the
country to achieve better seeing conditions. Two groups of observers
were stationed at two different points, a measured distance apart,
with radio communication between the two. By making simultaneous
observations, they hoped to calculate the true height of the objects
and thus obtain accurate estimates of size and speed. This well-planned
experiment failed because the lights never appeared to the watchers in
the country even on nights when they were clearly visible in the town.
Nevertheless the scientists did establish one fact: the altitude could
not be as high as 50,000 feet, their original estimate. An astronomer
in the group, calculating from the few data available, showed that the
height must have been only 2000 to 3000 feet, less than a tenth of the
first estimate.
Continuing his investigation, Captain Ruppelt found that other persons
had seen the lights on the night of August 25--and identified them.
At Brownfield, Texas, some thirty miles from Lubbock, a rancher and his
wife had been sitting in their back yard when they noticed a group of
fifteen to twenty lights flying overhead from north to south, silently,
in no particular formation. They appeared to be very high and had “a
kind of glow, a little bigger than a star.” Some time later a second
group flew over. When a third group appeared, flying lower, he could
see that they were birds; as they moved on to the south and one of the
birds emitted a cry, he recognized the familiar call of the plover.
Plover have a wing span of a foot and their oily white breasts form an
excellent surface for reflecting the lights beneath them.
Like most old-time residents of the area, the rancher was accustomed
to the yearly exodus of migratory fowl. Traveling at night in groups
of six to twenty, they usually flew at 1000 feet or lower at a maximum
speed of about fifty miles an hour in the weeks from late August to
mid-November. The rancher had read about the professors’ sighting,
which sounded exactly like his own. It would have baffled him, too, he
said, if he had not gotten a good look when the third flight circled
the house and if he had not happened to hear the single call.
Another resident reported, much later, that he had often seen such
lights and recognized them as birds. One night he had noticed “a
formation of ducks pass over so low that you could actually see the
whole bodies with their shiny white undersides glowing.” At other times
he had seen ducks flying at low altitudes with only the undersides
glowing and creating an illusion of objects moving very fast at a high
altitude[VI-9].
In spite of the overwhelming evidence that the original objects had
been birds, probably plover, reflecting the city’s lights, Captain
Ruppelt chose to regard them as mysterious and listed the professors’
sighting as an Unknown. Several years later he wrote that a natural
explanation did exist but, for some reason, he had promised not
to divulge it[VI-7, p. 150]. Still later, he asserted without
amplification that the lights had been night-flying moths reflecting
the bluish green of mercury-vapor street lights[VI-10, p. 276]--a
surprising anticlimax, in view of his earlier secrecy. In a reanalysis
of the facts made in 1959, Major (now Lieutenant Colonel) R. J. Friend
of ATIC and Dr. J. Allen Hynek, science consultant, determined beyond
doubt that the objects had been plover.
_The Lubbock Pictures_
The problem of the photographs remained. In Dayton, Air Force experts
studied the four available negatives.
The photographer had used a Kodak 35-mm. camera, lens at 3.5, Plus-X
film, and an exposure time of 1/10 second. The negatives were badly
scratched and dirty from much handling. According to the photographer’s
story, each flight of unknowns had moved from horizon to horizon in
four to five seconds and had passed directly overhead; he had “panned”
his camera with the movement of the objects and had managed to snap two
pictures during one flight and three during the next.
Analysis yielded no suggestion that the negatives had been tampered
with but they offered no clue to the background, identity, height,
distance, or speed of the things shown. The images themselves, however,
aroused some doubts. Each frame showed twenty bright spots against a
uniform dark background. No trace of stars or starlight could be found,
although the sky that night had been clear and cloudless. The spots
showed evidence of slight motion during the exposure but the amount of
blurring was amazingly slight, considering the speed with which the
photographer claimed to have moved his Kodak. Professional cameramen
tried repeatedly to duplicate the performance, but failed. The most
successful try produced only two pictures, badly blurred, in four
seconds.
The most crucial discrepancy between negatives and story, however,
was revealed by the pattern of the spots, which formed a flat V.
The orientation of the V was the same on all the negatives. If the
formation had actually passed directly overhead and the photographer
had panned with it, as he claimed, then he must have taken all his
pictures either as the lights approached him or as they receded. If
he had taken two successive pictures, one as the formation approached
and the next as it receded, the V would have reversed position in
the second picture--V would have changed to ∧--unless he had managed
to stand on his head while taking the second picture. And if he had
actually taken all his pictures either as the lights approached or as
they receded, he had performed the incredible feat of obtaining two
clear, sharp photographs, while panning, in a mere two seconds.
Although these facts suggested that the explanation given for the
pictures was at least highly improbable, Air Force experts refrained
from labeling them frauds. Professional photographers can undoubtedly
make various guesses as to how the pictures were made and the possible
identity of the V of bright spots, but proof is impossible. In the Air
Force files they remain in the category of Unknowns.
_Other Winged UFOs_
During the era of the saucers, winged creatures were responsible
for many UFO stories. But winged creatures do not stay put, and in
flying away they usually take with them the evidence that the alleged
spaceships were actually only birds or insects.
One such incident occurred at Downey, California, on May 29, 1951. Late
in the afternoon three technical writers for North American Aviation
were standing outdoors chatting and looking at the sky when suddenly
they noticed about thirty glowing, meteorlike objects moving in the
east, about 45 degrees above the horizon. They made no sound and left
no trail. Emitting an intense electric-blue light, the objects made
fantastic right-angled turns and swept across the sky in an undulating
vertical formation, apparently covering about 90 degrees of sky in
about 25 seconds. The diameters of the objects were estimated at 30
feet and the speed at 1700 miles an hour[VI-11].
Many persons concluded that the unknowns must be interplanetary in
origin because, as _Life_ magazine commented, no natural object
hurtling at such a speed could execute a right-angled turn, and no
known machine could fly so fast without making a sound or leaving a
trail. No one could quarrel with this statement, but it has no obvious
relation to the incident in question. Technical writers are not
necessarily trained observers, and these witnesses had no way to make
a reliable estimate of the height of the objects. Without an accurate
estimate of at least one quantity--true altitude, true size, or true
speed--the others are meaningless. The unknowns were probably birds,
but they could equally well have been butterflies, bits of paper, or
merely ashes blowing over the two-story building.
Winged creatures sometimes avoid the interplanetary label only by
staying in sight long enough to be examined. About sundown on May 19,
1955, switchboards at police stations in the Los Angeles area were
swamped by telephone calls reporting a fleet of silvery flying saucers,
changing formation with incredible speeds “as if playing tag in the
sky.” One witness, however, had the presence of mind to get out his
binoculars and look at the objects; they were birds with dark wing
tips. Thinking they might be geese, he called the State Division of
Fish and Game, which identified the “saucers” as a flock of _Pelicanus
erythrorhynchos_, an inland species of pelican that float on the
prevailing wind currents[VI-12].
Sometimes an observer identifies such objects correctly, but later
begins to doubt his own judgment. About 7:30 in the evening of August
26, 1956, a man driving along a highway in California noticed a flock
of about nine small birds flying northward, dark against the blue sky.
In a random group, they moved freely among themselves as birds do but
continued in a northern direction. The witness watched the birds as
carefully as possible, but the intermittent glimpses possible when
a man is driving a car did not allow him to make good estimates of
their size or height. Nevertheless, he guessed at their distance and
calculated that they covered an arc of 60 degrees in five seconds,
which would mean a speed of about 1000 miles an hour.
Instead of questioning the accuracy of his estimate, for some reason he
doubted his first identification. If the objects could fly 1000 miles
an hour, he reasoned, then they were not birds after all, and must be
flying saucers![VI-13]
_The Tremonton Movies_
One of the most famous controversies resulting from a flight of birds
centered on the Tremonton, Utah, films of UFOs.
On the morning of July 2, 1952, a Navy photographer and his family
were on their way to California, driving near the town of Tremonton,
Utah, not far from the Great Salt Lake. At about 11:10 A.M. the man’s
wife noticed something unusual in the sky. Stopping the car, the man
observed about a dozen shiny, disklike objects “milling around the sky
in a rough formation.” Getting out his movie camera, a Bell and Howell
16-mm. equipped with a 3-inch telephoto lens, he started photographing
the group. Just before it disappeared toward the west, one object left
the main group and headed east. The photographer obtained about forty
feet of film before the objects vanished. After developing the film, he
sent it to the Air Force for evaluation, together with his opinion that
the objects had been huge and had traveled at very high altitude at
supersonic speeds. This was only an impression, however, for as he told
investigators from ATIC: “There was no reference point in the sky and
it was impossible for me to make any estimate of speed, size, altitude,
or distance.”[VI-8] The pictures are of such poor quality and show
so little that even the most enthusiastic home-movie fan today would
hesitate to show them to his friends. Only a stimulated imagination
could suggest that the moving objects are anything but very badly
photographed birds.
The movies show nothing that can be recognized--merely bright blurs of
light moving at random. Their luminosity is not constant, and the spots
fade out and then become bright again. The frames include no clouds,
no trees, no house, no hill--no known reference point by which to
calculate the altitude, size, or distance of the moving lights. After
exhaustive study the photographic experts concluded that the negatives
had not been tampered with and that, unlike the Lubbock stills, the
pictures had been made exactly as described. But pictures of what? The
objects were not balloons and not planes. At the time, the experts
also rejected the theory that they might be birds because, in their
[mistaken] opinion, birds could not produce such bright reflections.
If the Tremonton movies contained no proof that the objects were birds,
still less did they contain proof that they were round machines from
outer space, and ATIC finally classified the sighting as “Unknown.”
Later, however, Captain Ruppelt noted the strong resemblance to sea
gulls he observed “riding a thermal” in the sky above San Francisco.
They were “so high that you couldn’t see them until they banked just
a certain way; then they appeared to be a bright white flash, much
larger than one would expect from sea gulls.” [VI-10, p. 290]
Air Force investigators later concluded that the famous Tremonton
movies show merely the large white gulls that soar near Utah’s Great
Salt Lake. The objects were photographed shortly before noon on a
hot summer’s day, against a deep-blue sky without any clouds to
obscure the high sun. The fading and brightening of the lights, their
individual motion within the group, and the one object that suddenly
left the group, all are consistent with the behavior of a flock of
birds, probably gulls, whose plumage is reflecting the sun. The glossy
feathers of these birds can flash as brilliantly as a satiny metal
surface as they circle and change position with respect to the sun. The
birds can be dazzling against the clear, dark-blue sky of the western
states. So brilliant is the flash that it wholly obscures the object
that is reflecting the light.
Like many other puzzling UFO reports, the objects in the Tremonton
movies were living lights--a case for the ornithologist rather than the
Air Force.
A bright light moving erratically as it crossed and recrossed the field
of view caused an experienced pilot and copilot to execute violent and
evasive maneuvers in a flight over the dark Pacific.[VI-14] The errant
UFO proved to be only a firefly inadvertently trapped between the panes
of the double windshield.
[VI-1] Rolfe, F. _Eastern Daily Press_, January 16, 1908.
[VI-2] Purdy, R. J. “The occasional luminosity of the White Owl (_Strix
flammea_),” _Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists
Society_, Vol. VIII (1904–1909), p. 547.
[VI-3] Gurney, J. H. _The Zoologist_, No. 802 (April 1908), p. 121.
[VI-4] Boston _Traveller_, Oct. 30, 1961.
[VI-5] London _Daily Telegraph_, November 8, 1958.
[VI-6] Maney, C. A., and Hall, R. _The Challenge of Unidentified Flying
Objects._ Washington, D.C., 1961.
[VI-7] Ruppelt, E. J. _The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects._
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1956.
[VI-8] Air Force Files.
[VI-9] Menzel, D. H. Personal files.
[VI-10] Ruppelt, E. J. _The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects._
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., reprint, 1960.
[VI-11] _Life_ magazine, April 7, 1952.
[VI-12] Los Angeles _Times_, May 21, 1955.
[VI-13] Case 201, CRIFO _Orbit_, Vol. III (Oct. 5, 1956).
[VI-14] Major William T. Coleman. Personal communication.
_Chapter_ VII
PANIC
The summer of 1952, the period that Captain Ruppelt called “the big
flap,” offers a history of the UFO mania in capsule form. If the
newspapers were to be believed, the heavens were crowded with armadas
of spaceships both visible and invisible. There was even a monster
story to add spice to the tales.
Yet the panic was largely an artificial creation. All spring the
nation’s movie-goers had been flocking to see a well-made thriller,
_The Day the Earth Stood Still_, in which a mysterious glowing object
appears in the sky over Washington, D.C., and lands in the middle
of the city. The object proves to be a flying saucer from another
planet, whose inhabitants want only to help the human race. Looking
something like a huge poached egg, a hump in the center sloping down
to a circular rim, the pictured vehicle offered a dramatic example to
anyone in the mood to see a spaceship but not quite sure how it should
look. In fact, many of the saucers described in the months and years
following were obviously based on this model.
The summer’s hysteria was also nurtured by the fears of some Air
Force investigators who were convinced that UFOs were intelligently
controlled craft originating outside the earth[VII-1, p. 286].
Although these officials realized that whenever an unusually good
saucer story appeared in the papers the number of sightings increased
sharply in the days following, they apparently did not consider the
possibility that the increase resulted from the power of suggestion.
This apprehensive attitude, plus three publications in the spring of
1952, made the summer’s panic almost inevitable.
_Growth of a Panic_
On April 4 _Life_ magazine published an article whose title might well
have alarmed the most stolid: “Have We Visitors from Outer Space?”
Presenting ten “insoluble” cases, the article managed to suggest
without exactly saying so that interplanetary visitors were among us.
The very next day, April 5, the Air Force announced a new directive,
ordering the commanding officers of all Air Force installations to
make immediate, high-priority reports of all UFO sightings in their
areas[VII-1, p. 178]. Reasonably inferring from the _Life_ article
and from the new directive that Defense officials were concerned by the
threat of UFOs, newspapers gave space to all tales of flying saucers.
_Look_ magazine then jumped on the bandwagon and on June 24 published
an article, “Hunt for the Flying Saucers!” The public responded
enthusiastically. Hypnotized by the prestige of these magazines, whose
saucer articles seemed to have the support of the Air Force, thousands
of well-intentioned but poorly equipped observers joined in the hunt,
watched the skies, and began to cry “Tally-ho!” at every streak of
light.
Nature cooperated. As in every summer, she offered a rich display of
regular meteor showers. By mid-July Aquarids in large numbers are
streaking through the sky, to continue into mid-August, and by the
beginning of August the Perseids have arrived to join the summer’s
parade. The records of the American Meteor Society reflect this rise
in the number of meteors. In the nights from July 10 to 31, 1952, five
observers stationed in California, Oregon, Missouri, Iowa, and Long
Island, New York, counted a total of more than 2000 meteors in some
eighty-five hours of watching. The smallest number reported by a single
observer in any one hour was nine; the highest was fifty[VII-2].
Nature not only offered dramatic fireworks in the sky; she also
produced exactly the right conditions for viewing them. During June
and July an unprecedented heat wave lay over the entire East, driving
sweltering citizens out of doors to savor the relative coolness of the
night air. Furthermore, the nights were dark. The moon began to wane
on July 7, and until nearly the end of the month there was little
moonlight to dim the brilliance of the meteors flashing through the
heavens. No wonder that frightened people hunting for saucers should
have had so little trouble finding them, when the sky seemed to be
teeming with UFOs.
By the middle of July the nine-man investigating force at ATIC was all
but buried in saucer reports--more than forty a day, far too many to
handle either promptly or adequately. Only a very lengthy history of
the saucer era could describe and account for each one of the hundreds
of UFOs reported during those weeks. A few of the most publicized
incidents are listed here:
July 2. A group of UFOs photographed with a movie camera near
Tremonton, Utah (p. 130).
July 5. A UFO reported over an atomic plant at Hanford,
Washington. (A Skyhook balloon.)[VII-1, p. 203]
July 7. Flying saucer reported by hundreds of persons in
the Pacific Northwest. (This spectacular daytime meteor was
visible for a distance of 500 miles on either side of its path
and was reported from Washington, Idaho, Montana, Oregon,
California, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. It made no sound and
was so brilliant that observers called it the “Sunshine
Fireball.”)[VII-3]
July 12. A flying saucer, glowing blue-white, was reported over
Indiana. (Another fine meteor.)[VII-1, p. 203]
July 13–18. Flying saucers reported from all states in the
Union. (Observers for the American Meteor Society counted an
average of fifteen meteors per hour on those nights.)
July 14. A group of saucers over Chesapeake Bay and Norfolk,
Virginia (p. 256).
July 16. Saucers photographed by Coast Guardsman, Salem,
Massachusetts (p. 122).
The sighting hysteria was approaching the critical mass, and no special
wisdom was required to see that an explosion was inevitable. The only
question was: Where would it occur? The panic finally reached its
climax in the nation’s capital:
July 19. Flying saucers (invisible) invade Washington, D.C.
(See _Chapter_ VIII.)
July 26. Saucers again invade Washington (p. 155).
July 27. Saucers over Manhattan Beach, California (p. 49).
July 29. Saucers over Port Huron, Michigan (p. 160).
August 1. Saucer over Bellefontaine, Ohio (p. 162).
Most of these and hundreds of other UFOs were eventually identified as
meteors, stars, balloons, jet planes, birds, searchlights, and radar
angels. About the only aerial phenomenon that was not mistaken for a
flying saucer during these weeks of panic was the planet Venus. Until
the end of August it was too near the sun to be visible.
_The Scoutmaster’s UFO_
True to the pattern set during 1947, the first summer of the saucers,
the panic of 1952 did not end without an elaborate hoax and a good
monster story.
The famous “Scoutmaster” incident occurred at West Palm Beach, Florida,
on the night of August 19[VII-1, p. 229]. According to the report
given the Intelligence officer at the local air base, the scoutmaster
(an ex-Marine) had offered to drive four of the boys to their homes
at the close of the evening’s meeting. While traveling over a country
road bordered by scrub pine and palmetto thickets, he had noticed some
mysterious lights among the pines and decided he must investigate.
Leaving the frightened boys in the car with instructions to go for
help if he had not returned in fifteen minutes, he took his machete
and two flashlights and bravely set off into the dangerous woods. He
was found some time later by the boys, the constable, and the deputy
sheriff, and was apparently terrified. When he entered the woods, he
said, he noticed a peculiar odor and felt an oppressive sensation of
heat. On looking up, he saw hovering above him a dark circular object
with a turretlike dome in the middle, so large that it blotted out most
of the sky. When he went closer, a door opened, a ball of fire emerged
and drifted toward him, enveloped him, and rendered him unconscious. He
called on the boys to confirm the presence of the strange lights and
the huge machine, and as further proof he exhibited burns in his cap and
on his face and arms.
Since scoutmasters are traditionally upright citizens, the story
seemed to merit attention. Investigators from ATIC visited the scene,
interviewed all persons concerned, and sent the cap and the machete to
Dayton for analysis. Very soon, however, the drama began to fall apart.
The scoutmaster, after being interviewed by Air Force investigators,
assumed an aura of mystery and stated publicly that he had been warned
not to talk. At the same time he hired a press agent and offered to
sell his story to the newspapers. A study of the landscape showed
that the boys could not have seen any “machine” from the road. The
townspeople did not consider the woods dangerous. Aircraft preparing to
land at the airport regularly flew over the area in question with their
landing lights on; to a person on the road, the lights might seem to be
flitting through the woods. Furthermore the study showed that the scene
had been set in advance for a frightening incident. As they drove along
the lonely road, the scoutmaster had been talking about flying saucers
and, after he stopped the car, had warned the boys that they might
need to go for help. The man’s reputation for veracity, too, began to
melt away, and one townsman remarked that if the scoutmaster claimed
that the sun was shining, he’d look up to see for himself before
accepting the statement. The knife and cap showed no radioactivity. The
laboratory report from the Federal Bureau of Investigation showed that
the burn on the cap was made by a cigarette, and the “burns” on the
hand and arm proved to be only superficial scorching of the hair and
could easily have been produced by the flame of a kitchen match.
This investigation cost the usual amount of time and money, but it was
unquestionably a hoax[VII-4].
_Monster in West Virginia_
The final incident in the summer’s panic occurred on the evening
of September 12 when a family group near the town of Sutton, West
Virginia, saw a flaming object flash across the sky and apparently
land on a nearby hill. Taking their flashlights, they set out to
investigate and, on reaching the hill, smelled an unpleasant odor. When
they turned on their flashlights, they stated, they saw two red eyes
glaring at them; a huge monster, ten feet tall, breathing fire, with a
bright-green body and a blood-red face, waddled toward them, and they
turned and ran[VII-5].
Air Force investigators concluded immediately that the flaming object
first seen was the meteor observed that night by thousands of persons
in Virginia and West Virginia and reported officially to various
observatories. What the frightened family saw when they reached the
hilltop and flashed the light was probably the glowing eyes or body of
some mundane creature of the woods. A local group of civilian saucer
investigators rejected this explanation, as usual, and after making its
own study concluded that the monster story could very well have been
true!
The monster is now enshrined in West Virginia history[VII-5], and forms
the subject of a new ballad written by Cindy Coy and set to the tune of
“Sweet Betsy from Pike.” One verse and the chorus will suffice:
The size of the phantom was a sight to behold,
Green eyes and red face, so the story was told.
It floated in air with fingers of flame.
It was gone with a hiss just as quick as it came.
Chorus:
Oh, Phantom of Flatwoods, from Moon or from Mars,
Maybe from God and not from the stars,
Please tell us why you fly o’er our trees
The end of the world or an omen of peace?
_The Panel of Civilian Scientists_
When after three months of constant threat no flying saucers had yet
tried to invade the country, the acute phase of the panic subsided.
Nevertheless, responsible officials in the Department of Defense
were uneasy, and Air Defense was particularly worried by the problem
of the radar phantoms, whose cause was not fully understood (see
_Chapter_ VIII). Even if UFOs proved to be normal phenomena, other
very real dangers existed in the situation. If the public believed
in the possibility of extraterrestrial antagonists, a clever enemy
on earth simply by fabricating a few incidents could easily induce a
mass hysteria that might paralyze the country. Also, if the number
of saucer reports should be greatly multiplied by some artificial
stimulus, their sheer numbers would clog communication channels,
interfere with the Early Warning System, and at a time of imminent
attack from another part of the globe might cause a disastrous three-
or four-hour delay in the activation of the Air Force network.
Government officials, uncertain of the facts, were reluctant to decide
or to state whether there was or was not convincing evidence of
extraterrestrial surveillance.
To clear up the potentially explosive atmosphere, the Office of
Scientific Intelligence (OSI), under the Central Intelligence Agency,
decided to consult outstanding civilian experts and invited certain
eminent scientists to study and evaluate the evidence. For this purpose
Air Force investigators assembled the complete data on the cases
they considered most significant. They also prepared, on their own
initiative, an unofficial report setting forth the evidence which, in
the opinion of several investigators, proved conclusively that UFOs
were interplanetary objects operating under intelligent control.
After a preliminary meeting late in November 1952, the panel met on
January 12, 1953, to begin their study. The chairman was the late
Dr. H. P. Robertson, mathematician and physicist, of the California
Institute of Technology at Pasadena. The other members were Dr. Luis
W. Alvarez, physicist, of the University of California at Berkeley;
Dr. Lloyd V. Berkner, an expert on radio propagation; Dr. Samuel
A. Goudsmit, physicist, of Brookhaven National Laboratory; and Dr.
Thornton W. Page, astronomer, of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.
Also present were several officers of the OSI. To avoid possible bias,
Air Force officers who had actively worked on UFO cases and civilians
who were closely identified with such studies were not asked to attend.
The cases studied included all the “classics,” such as the Tremonton
and other movies, the Mantell and Gorman affairs, the radar sightings
at Washington, D.C., as well as other less well-known reports.
One incident that particularly engaged the attention of the panel,
and would probably have become a famous classic except that Air
Force investigators had kept it a strict secret, was the sighting at
Presque Isle Air Force Base in northern Maine. On October 10, 1952,
at about 10 P.M. E.S.T., a group of weather observers had noticed a
bright-orange object hovering low on the eastern horizon and had set
up a theodolite to measure its altitude and bearing. As the glowing
unknown slowly rose higher above the horizon and seemed to come closer,
it appeared through the telescope of the theodolite as a circular disk
accompanied by four flickering green lights, two on each side. Alarmed
by this spectacular phenomenon, the observers called the Air Force
Base at Limestone, some twenty miles north and east, to ask whether
the object was visible there. It was. Setting up a theodolite, the
Limestone observers measured the height and bearing, and both groups of
observers sent the recorded data to ATIC.
[Illustration: _Figure 12a._ The Presque Isle sighting from two
stations; the erroneous determination of North at Limestone seems to
indicate a nearby UFO.]
Here was the kind of situation the investigators had been hoping for:
simultaneous observations of a single object, made from two different
stations a known distance apart. Calculations based on the altitudes
and bearings reported by the two stations yielded fantastic results. In
a plot of the data (shown schematically in Figure 12a) the prolonged
lines intersected, indicating a group of unknowns hovering 100 miles
above the earth and more than 50 miles off the Maine coast, of
tremendous size and moving at high speed. Concluding that the objects
must have come from outer space, or were possibly a new type of
orbiting vehicle of Russian origin, the Air Force had promptly clamped
down the security lid. When ATIC’s science consultant, Dr. J. Allen
Hynek, looked at the data, he just as promptly disagreed with these
ideas and clearly identified the unknown as the planet Jupiter, which
had risen at 6:03 P.M. E.S.T. and at 10:00 was the brightest object
in the eastern sky. The believers in the extraterrestrial theory were
then in the majority at ATIC, however. They had refused to accept the
identification, and submitted the Presque Isle sighting to the panel as
a prize example of UFO surveillance.
[Illustration: _Figure 12b._ The Presque Isle sighting from two
stations; the corrected determination of North indicates Jupiter at
infinity.]
The panel members quickly disposed of the case. The measurements
reported from Presque Isle obviously pointed directly to the planet
Jupiter, not a mere 100 but millions of miles beyond the earth. If a
constant correction was applied to the bearings from Limestone, they
also agreed with Jupiter’s position. Careless use of the theodolite had
produced an error in the data. To measure the angle of an object above
the horizon, the observer has only to make sure that the theodolite is
level, but to measure the bearing he must align it with true north,
a direction that cannot be determined by guesswork. The Limestone
observers had made a mistake in determining true north and had thus
obtained a wrong bearing for the unknown. When the corrected data were
plotted (shown schematically in Figure 12b) the prolonged lines were
parallel, and both pointed squarely to the planet Jupiter at infinity.
The orange light was unquestionably Jupiter, and the accompanying green
lights were its four bright satellites twinkling through the layers of
the earth’s atmosphere. Amazed that this uncomplicated case, already
explained by Dr. Hynek, should have been offered as evidence for the
extraterrestrial origin of UFOs, the panel extended its investigation
to the original observers at Presque Isle. The witnesses there were
bewildered by the inquiry; they had checked the object when it appeared
again on the night of October 11, they said, and had then identified it
as the planet Jupiter, but they had not thought it necessary to notify
the Air Force![VII-4]
For five long days the panel worked, analyzing every available bit
of evidence as it related to four alternative theories: 1) that UFOs
were a supersecret device of some sort being developed by the United
States; 2) that UFOs were a supersecret device being developed by some
foreign power; 3) that UFOs were normal phenomena wrongly interpreted;
and 4) that UFOs came from other planets. As the panel succeeded in
explaining one after another of the fifty or so submitted cases, or was
able to suggest a highly probable solution in terms of normal physical
phenomena, the members reached their conclusion. Theory number one they
rejected with complete certainty; they were 98 per cent certain that
theory number two was wrong, and 99 per cent sure that number four was
also incorrect (scientists are reluctant to accept any negative belief
with absolute certainty). The document submitted unofficially by ATIC
investigators they also rejected for lack of evidence. All the facts,
they decided, supported theory number three, that the reported UFOs
were merely natural phenomena, wrongly interpreted[VII-6].
The panel delivered this evaluation to the Office of Scientific
Intelligence, together with a recommendation that government agencies
should immediately abandon the policy of secrecy regarding UFO reports
and should make public all the facts in every case. Unfortunately this
recommendation was not followed. The report included some rather
caustic comments on the general inadequacy of the investigative
techniques that had been used. As one of the members remarked
unofficially, trying to get to the bottom of some of the sightings was
like cutting treacle. The panel report with its blunt criticisms was of
course not intended for public release and, understandably, was kept
classified.
Although the OSI had asked for an expert opinion, some Air Force
and government officials were unwilling to accept the verdict when
they got it, and flatly refused to believe that UFOs were normal
phenomena[VII-7]. When echoes of their disagreement escaped the
security screen, civilian saucer enthusiasts concluded with some
justification that Air Force officials were “covering up.” They were.
They were not hiding any proof that flying saucers came from outer
space, however, as the saucer addicts charged, but were merely trying
to conceal their own confusion and the panel’s criticisms.
As one member of the panel later stated to a correspondent, the
explanation of UFO beliefs “lies in a logical defect. It is this: UFOs
form a class of all celestial observations that cannot be immediately
explained. There is no other truly common feature; some manifestations
are optical, others are detected by radar; some are points, others
circular, others patterned; some are seen by night, others by day,
etc. The implication that they are somehow related is a false one, as
we know from the large proportion positively identified after the fact
(what relation is there between Venus and a meteorological balloon?).
Calling all unidentified objects in the sky ‘flying saucers’ or even
UFOs (Venus doesn’t ‘fly’ in any proper sense of the word) is like
calling any word I cannot understand ‘Greek.’ The class of all words I
cannot understand would scarcely form a single language. Therefore, the
explanation of UFOs as a class is simply that they are not a uniform
class but a hodge-podge of widely disparate, partly described phenomena
that were seen in the sky.”[VII-8]
Not until April 9, 1958, did the Air Force make public the internal
recommendation made by the panel some five years earlier. If the entire
study had been released earlier, with a full statement of the facts and
the analyses made by the panel, it might have ended the saucer scare at
once. Instead the UFO hysteria continued, with periods of remission,
and is still dying a slow and lingering death.
[VII-1] Ruppelt, E. J. _The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects._
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1956.
[VII-2] Olivier, C. P. “Tables of Hourly Rates Based upon American
Meteor Society Data.” Interim Report No. 28, Harvard University Radio
Meteor Research Program (May 1958).
[VII-3] _Sky and Telescope_, Vol. XI (1952), p. 312.
[VII-4] Air Force Files.
[VII-5] Barker, G. _They Knew Too Much about Flying Saucers._ New York:
University Books, Inc., 1956.
[VII-6] Robertson, H. P. Personal files.
[VII-7] Chop, A. M. Personal communication.
[VII-8] Page, T. W. Personal files.
_Chapter_ VIII
PHANTOMS ON RADAR
The evidence of radar, according to the saucer enthusiasts, provides
final proof that alien spaceships indeed patrol our skies. Because
radar is an electronic device, it allegedly cannot be fooled by
mirages, reflections, or peculiar weather conditions. If radar records
an echo from an unidentified object and, at about the same time, a
human witness reports a puzzling light in the sky, the believers
proclaim that the unprejudiced testimony of science has confirmed the
presence of a solid flying saucer. Sometimes a radarscope reports
unidentified objects at a time when observers on the ground and in
search planes cannot see anything unusual in the sky. The believers
then conclude not that radar evidence can be misinterpreted, but that
the operators of the flying saucers may somehow be able to make both
themselves and their ships invisible![VIII-1]
_Radar as a Reporter_
Any UFO investigator who presumes to evaluate electronic evidence
should have much more than an amateur’s knowledge of the nature and
behavior of radar. Correct interpretation of the signals requires
training, experience, skill, and an expert’s acquaintance with the
peculiarities of the set under varying conditions. But even the
expert does not yet understand the causes of all the phenomena that
can appear. He is limited by our still incomplete knowledge of
dynamic meteorology--precise information about the composition of
the atmosphere and how it interacts with microwaves. With proper
instrumentation and first-rate operators, radar can correctly report
the approximate direction, distance, altitude, and rate of motion of
objects within its range. If the returns are misinterpreted, however,
radar can seem to give false reports.
[Illustration: _Figure 13._ Schematic view of radar targets on
successive sweeps of the antenna.]
Radar is not a TV camera or a photographic lens. It does not, at least
at present, produce a picture of the physical appearance, shape, size,
or color of the thing it detects. The scope shows only tiny spots of
light on the flat surface of a screen. A pointer something like a clock
hand continually sweeps around the dial at a given speed. A complete
rotation may take from two to fifteen seconds, depending on the type
of the set. This sweep hand keeps pace with the rotation of the radar
antenna as it scans the sky by sending out radio pulses. When they
encounter a solid object, they bounce off and return to the set as
echoes which show as “blips,” or spots of light, on the radarscope.
The operator must interpret these spots and try to identify them as
planes, helicopters, balloons, ships, mountains, clouds, birds, storms,
hurricanes, or phantom echoes of various kinds. Safe commercial flying
depends on the accuracy of these identifications, as does the security
of the country in periods of international tension.
Radar only reports. It does not interpret. If the sweep hand on
successive rotations shows a spot of light apparently moving from
position _A_ to position _B_, to _C_, to _D_, the operator generally
concludes that the blips represent a single object that is moving at
a certain speed in a certain direction (see Figure 13). If successive
sweeps show a spot of light that remains at position _A_, he usually
concludes that it represents a stationary object. If the blip moves a
very great distance in the interval between two sweeps or seems to jump
erratically from one position to another, an amateur might interpret
it as a spacecraft flying at incredible velocity--a flying saucer. But
an expert would probably conclude, especially under certain weather
conditions, that the scope was picking up echoes from two or more
separate objects, one reflecting briefly at position _A_, another at
position _B_, and so on.
_The Principle of Radar_
Radar is an electronic assembly far too complex for detailed
description here, but its basic principle is simple. It is merely an
echo machine that reflects radio waves instead of sound waves. To
illustrate by a rough analogy, let us imagine that a man is standing
in the middle of an open field on a very dark night. He wants to find
out something of the contours of the surrounding country but his only
tools are a compass, a watch with luminous dial and hands, and a large
megaphone. He raises the megaphone to his lips, points it directly
north, and gives a sharp and piercing call: “Hi!” He now cups his hand
to his ear and listens for an echo. Hearing no reply, he deduces that
in the north there are no hills, tall buildings, or other obstructions
that might have produced an echo.
Changing his position, he turns to the east and tries the experiment
again. After an interval his call returns as a faint echo: “Hi!” The
time elapsed between call and echo, according to his watch, is ten
seconds. His call has taken five seconds to reach the object and five
seconds more to return. Since he knows that sound travels at the rate
of about 1000 feet a second, he deduces that an obstruction lies in
the east, about 5000 feet away. Slowly changing position, he repeats
his call at various points around the compass. Some echoes take longer
to return than others, indicating more distant objects. Other echoes
come back in a fraction of a second, showing an object very close. Thus
he gradually constructs a mental map of the surrounding terrain.
Radar detects and locates objects in a similar way, by reflecting sharp
pulses of radio waves. But spurious echoes, which sometimes deceive the
operator, can also appear on the scope. These “anomalous” or abnormal
returns may have one of several causes, including the nature of the
radar mechanism itself. To help explain this, let us go back to our
analogy of the man in the open field. Let us suppose that the man has
mechanized his device. To ease the strain on his vocal cords, he has
built a megaphone with a record-playing device. The megaphone rotates
automatically and sends out a recorded “Hi!” once every twenty seconds,
as regular as clockwork. To increase the sensitivity of his hearing, he
wears ear trumpets that point in the same direction as the megaphone.
This procedure is more effective than cupping his ears and eliminates
some of the extraneous noise that might come in from the rear and the
sides.
With this improved equipment the man now repeats his experiment. As
before, he gets no signal from the north. When he turns to the east
he gets an echo after ten seconds, just as he did during his first
experiment. As he continues to turn slowly, like a minute hand on a
clock dial, he mentally maps the positions of the echoes as distances
along the hand from the center of the dial, and compares this new map
with the crude one he constructed earlier. Basically the two agree.
But wait! From the southwest he hears a new echo that did not occur
in his earlier experiment. It returns after two seconds and thus
apparently comes from an obstruction 1000 feet away. Puzzled, the man
decides to walk toward the object and check his observation. After he
has covered half the distance he stops, sends out a call, and listens
for the echo. The indicated distance to the echo-producing object is
now 500 feet, just as he calculated. And so he goes on, checking at
intervals. When he has covered 990 feet he knows that he should reach
the obstruction at any moment and to avoid colliding with it in the
darkness he proceeds with extreme caution--995, 996, 997, 998, 999
feet. He puts out his hand, expecting to touch a building or a stone
wall, and warily takes the last step. But he finds no structure of
any kind, merely level ground. And at the same moment he finds to
his astonishment that he can no longer detect the echoes he had been
following. What has happened? Has his equipment been malfunctioning?
Or was the unknown structure perhaps a vehicle from outer space that
waited until he was practically touching it and then rose silently in
an enormous burst of speed and vanished?
The man checks and finds that his equipment is functioning perfectly,
since he can still pick up echoes from the terrain he had mapped
earlier. He then walks back ten feet and listens once more for an
echo from the phantom structure. Again he gets a signal, apparently
from an obstruction just ten feet ahead. Has the mysterious object
suddenly returned? But how could it have done so without disturbing
the atmosphere or making a noise? By this time our man is frightened
as well as puzzled, but he boldly decides to make one more experiment.
He walks again to the point where the obstruction should be. Signaling
again to the southwest, he now gets a faint echo apparently from a
distance of 10,000 feet. Tired as he is, he starts walking toward this
new obstruction and eventually reaches his goal. He now finds the
true source of the returns--a high hill that rises abruptly from the
plain. The hill is 10,000 feet away from the position indicated by the
original series of echoes, and 11,000 feet away from the place he stood
when he first sent out the signals.
Finally the man figures out the explanation. When he made his first
experiment, with primitive equipment, he had given one sharp shout
and then waited for a long time for the signal to return; thus there
was never any uncertainty about the source of the echo. The time that
elapsed between shout and return had clearly indicated the distance of
the echo-producing object. But the improved automatic equipment of the
second experiment produced a train of signals going out continuously
at regular intervals, twenty seconds apart. Therefore when the sound
waves encountered a definite object, a train of echoes began coming
back, twenty seconds apart. An object at a distance of 10,000 feet
would return an echo in twenty seconds; another object at a distance
of 11,000 feet would return an echo in twenty-two seconds. But an
echo from this second object would reach the listener at exactly
the same time as an echo from an object only 1000 feet away. He now
understands why he seemed to detect a structure at a distance of 1000
feet which disappeared as he approached and then reappeared 10,000 feet
farther away. In fact, the object that returned the misinterpreted
echo could have been 20,000 or 30,000 or 40,000 feet farther away--any
multiple of 10,000 feet. Large numbers of signals were returning every
twenty seconds. The man had no way of deciding for certain whether
a particular echo came from the most recent signal and therefore
indicated a relatively close object, or whether it came from an earlier
signal and therefore from a more distant object.
Broadening his experiment our man eventually learned other
characteristics of these echoes. He found that on the average day he
was rarely plagued by this uncertainty in identifying the returns. The
second-round echoes were very weak, almost undetectable, and therefore
caused no major problem. But on other days, under different weather
conditions, sound tended to travel long distances without losing much
in intensity. On such days the echoes were often confusing.
_Weather and Radar Echoes_
Radar is an echo machine that reflects radio waves instead of sound
waves. Instead of traveling at the speed of sound, about 1000 feet a
second, radio waves travel at the velocity of light, 186,000 miles a
second. Successive pulses go out at very short intervals, perhaps one
one-thousandth of a second apart, so that each pulse is followed by
another just 186 miles behind it. If the operator gets a return from an
object that is apparently at a distance of 25 miles, he must sometimes
allow for the possibility that he is getting a secondary echo and that
the actual distance may be different. The object that produces the echo
may be at a distance of 25 plus 186 miles, or 25 plus twice 186 miles,
or 25 plus any other whole-number multiple of 186 miles.
Under ordinary circumstances, the reflections from very distant targets
rarely confuse the operator. The curvature of the earth tends to shield
the radiation, and the distance factor alone reduces the intensity to
a negligible value. But weather can cause peculiar returns. A layer
of warm air above cooler air at the earth’s surface has much the
same effect on radio waves that it has on light waves. A temperature
inversion can produce radar “mirages”--commonly called “phantoms,”
“ghosts,” or “angels.” Relatively small amounts of warm air, even mere
warm bubbles in a layer of colder air, will suffice. When the scope
records a series of blips, the operator ordinarily assumes that all are
returns from a single object. If inversions of temperature or humidity
exist in the atmosphere, however, the series of returns may represent
several different ground objects rather than a single object in the
sky. Since these inversion layers do not remain fixed but move, change,
and shimmer, on one sweep the radar may reflect one ground object and
on the next sweep some fifteen seconds later may reflect a totally
different ground object five or six miles away from the first. An
inexperienced operator might conclude, wrongly, that both echoes came
from a single object that had traveled five miles in a fraction of a
minute (see Figure 14). Similar mistakes in identity have caused many
reports of radar flying saucers.
[Illustration: _Figure 14._ Deflection of radar beams by temperature
inversion. Top, radar picks up ground target. Bottom, on next sweep,
radar picks up different ground target, which seems to indicate a
fast-moving UFO.]
Such a radar incident occurred at one of our defense installations
in Alaska early in the morning of January 22, 1952[VIII-2]. Shortly
after midnight a bright target appeared on the radarscope, moving down
from the northeast, fairly high, and apparently traveling at about
1500 miles an hour. Unidentified targets require particularly prompt
investigation in this sensitive area so close to Siberia. Within
minutes an F-94 jet was moving in from a fighter base 100 miles to
the south; two other jets were scrambled at intervals and vectored
in toward the unknown target by ground radar. When radar switched to
short range, however, it always lost both the target and the pursuit
plane, even though both were close to the radar site. The first jet
could find nothing in the air, and no echoes appeared on its radar.
The second jet saw nothing in the air, but its radar recorded a
brief, weak echo to the right at about 28,000 feet. The echo faded
immediately, returned briefly, and then disappeared as the jet closed
in. The third jet, after cruising the area for ten minutes without
detecting anything visually or on radar, suddenly got a strong radar
return from an apparently stationary target just as it passed over the
ground radar site. The pilot made three direct runs on the unknown.
Each time he broke off the intercept when he got within 200 yards of
the target position as shown on his radar, for fear of collision. At no
time did he see anything at the supposed location of the target. (This
experience is somewhat analogous to that of our man who used echoing
sound waves to locate a solid structure only to find, on reaching the
indicated spot, that the structure was not there.)
Captain Roy James, chief of the radar section of ATIC, examined all the
data and the scanty weather reports then available for this Alaskan
area, and concluded that the targets were ghost returns probably
from the ground, caused by peculiar atmospheric conditions--the same
conditions that had interfered with normal operation of the ground
radar. Although ground structures are scarce in that part of Alaska,
they do exist, and so do mountains. The analysis was undoubtedly
correct, even though knowledge of the location and movement of the
temperature inversion was too imprecise for the analyst to plot and
locate the true target that produced the reflections[VIII-3, p. 167].
Some of the nation’s most brilliant physicists have carried out
fundamental research into the behavior of microwaves under varying
conditions. The technical nature of these investigations makes them
difficult to describe in ordinary language, but they provide vital
information for the expert.
One such study has specifically attacked the problem of radar images
that perform rapid and erratic maneuvers at close range and seem to
overtake, fly parallel with, or almost collide with the pursuing
aircraft. Such returns may be caused by the “non-isotropic secondary
scattering of energy” (that is, the radio waves are not reflected in
a uniform manner) from an airplane to a ground object, or from ground
object to plane. Under appropriate weather conditions the plane itself
causes the puzzling echoes, so that the velocity and movement of the
radar “saucer” depend directly on those of the plane. When the aircraft
is the first of the two scatterers, the radar saucer always appears
at the same bearing as the plane, and is always farther away from the
detecting radar than is the plane. Thus the path of the phantom always
lies outside the path of the aircraft, and when the jet performs a
360-degree turn, the phantom also turns, on an outside path. However,
if the jet happens to fly directly over the ground object that is
reflecting the energy, then the observing radar will see the images of
the jet and the phantom flying on what seems to be a collision course.
Conversely, when the ground object is the first of the two scatterers,
the saucer phantom always occurs at the same bearing as the ground
object, and the distance to the phantom is always greater than to the
ground object. If the aircraft crosses the radial line from radar to
ground object, at a range exceeding the range to the object, then the
echoes from plane and saucer almost merge at the point of crossing, in
a “near collision.” But if the plane flies “this side” of the object,
then the plane and saucer will never be closer together than the
distance between plane and ground object at the point of crossing. A
height-finding radar, trained on the pursuing plane, would show the
phantom saucer apparently diving toward or climbing away from the
plane, attacking and retreating at very high velocities[VIII-4].
_The Kinross Case_
Some such mechanism probably explains the radar returns reported in the
Kinross case, which some saucer publications cite as a proved instance
in which a flying saucer attacked a plane. On the night of November
23, 1953, an Air Force jet was scrambled from Kinross Air Force Base,
Michigan, to intercept an unidentified plane observed on radar. The
jet successfully accomplished its mission and identified the unknown
as a Dakota, a Canadian C-47. On its return to the base, however, the
Air Force jet crashed into Lake Michigan and, as often happens when a
plane crashes into deep water and the exact place of the crash is not
known, no wreckage was ever found. As the ground radar at Kinross had
tracked the returning jet, the scope had picked up a phantom echo in
the neighborhood of the jet; the two blips had seemed to merge just as
both went off the scope.
Since the crash was not reported as a UFO incident and did not involve
any question of unidentified flying objects, ATIC was not asked to
investigate the problem. The office of the Deputy Inspector General for
Safety carried out a thorough inquiry and concluded that the crash had
been an aircraft accident, probably caused by the pilot’s suffering
an attack of vertigo. As for the two blips shown by radar, the night
had been a stormy one and atmospheric conditions had been conducive
to abnormal returns. The phantom echo had almost certainly been a
secondary reflection produced by the jet itself, and it thus merged
with the return from the jet and vanished with it when the plane hit
the water.
Solely on the basis of this radar phantom, some civilian saucer groups
have tried to transform the Kinross crash into a UFO mystery with Air
Force investigators as the villains, and have suggested that the ghost
blip represented an alien spacecraft that happened to be cruising over
Lake Michigan that night and attacked the jet for one of two reasons:
1) The saucer might have tried to avoid close contact with the jet by
employing a “reversed G-field beam” (see _Chapter_ IX); colliding with
this beam as with a stone wall, the jet crashed. 2) The saucer might
have used the G-field to scoop the plane out of the air and take it
aboard the spacecraft; the captured pilot might have been needed to
teach the English language to his alien captors.
_The “Invasion” of Washington, D.C._
The most famous of the radar phantoms are those that “invaded”
Washington, D.C., on the nights of July 19 and July 26, 1952, and
terrified a large number of radar operators, pilots, and Air Force
officials who in a more normal emotional climate would have recognized
the “invisible” flying saucers for what they were--radar angels
produced by weather conditions[VIII-2]. All during July the eastern
seaboard had suffered an unprecedented drought and heat wave. Lack of
cloud cover produced intensely hot days and rapid radiative cooling
of the earth’s surface at night. This situation, combined with the
prevailing light winds, was ideal for the formation of low-level
temperature inversions during the hours of darkness[VIII-5].
The hundreds of flying saucers reported during the summer (_Chapter_
VII) had produced a state of near-panic which entered its acute phase
on July 19, at 11:40 P.M. E.D.S.T., when a group of seven unidentified
targets appeared on the radarscope of the Air Route Traffic Control
(ARTC) at the Washington National Airport[VIII-3, p. 209 ff.]. Similar
targets that moved erratically, appearing and disappearing, were
observed on the radars of the control tower and of nearby Andrews Air
Force Base. If the blips were to be accepted at face value, then a
host of aerial objects had invaded Washington and were cruising over
the White House and the Capitol. Traffic control notified the pilots
of commercial flights in the area to keep alert for unidentified
aircraft. Some pilots reported unusual echoes on their plane radars,
some reported only normal returns, and two pilots reported unexplained
lights in the neighborhood indicated by radar. Nobody saw any strange
aircraft. After several requests from ARTC (which unaccountably did not
notify officials in the Air Force Intelligence that an “invasion” was
taking place), a jet interceptor finally arrived about dawn to search
the area but found nothing. Meanwhile the targets had vanished from the
radarscopes.
Next day the report flashed all over the world that a fleet of flying
saucers had invaded Washington, and public tension became almost
tangible. Was the earth doomed? The terror reached its climax on July
26, just a week after the first incident, when at 10:30 P.M., E.D.S.T.,
the same radar operators who had observed the first “invasion” picked
up another group of mysterious blips on their screens. The host of
unknowns had apparently formed a ring around the city of Washington and
the surrounding countryside. This time Air Force Intelligence officers
were notified. They raced to the airport to see the radarscopes for
themselves, and concluded that real saucers must be in the sky. All
commercial air traffic was then diverted from Washington, reporters
and photographers were barred from the radar room, and Air Force jets
took to the air to defend the nation. But against what? The enemy, if
there, was invisible. One pilot saw a bright light that vanished when
he began to chase it; later, his radar showed a return that faded after
a few seconds, but he could not find a visual target. In the hours
between midnight and dawn, jet interceptors scoured the skies looking
for mysterious objects that produced returns on ground radar but not on
plane radar, and were invisible to the human eye. They found nothing.
One pilot who flew this mission, accompanied by a copilot who was also
a radar officer, later described his experience:
“For a period of 1½ hours the B-25 was vectored at altitudes varying
from 1,000 to 4,000 feet MSL to the objects observed on the [ground
radar] screen. The airplane flew circles around stationary blips, flew
through and along with their formations, paralleled their flight, and
was observed in the radar screen to pass directly over, under, or
through an angel. At all times the echo return of the aircraft caused a
brighter return on the screen than the angel. The radar height finder
was not operating during this mission, so exact altitudes of the blips
could not be determined.
“No unidentified objects were observed by me or the crew during the
flight. At 2300 E.D.S.T. all angels disappeared from the radar screen
and screen detection returned to normal.”[VIII-6]
By dawn this fantastic war of the angels had ended and the post-mortems
had begun. One radar expert who kept his head in spite of the hysteria
was Captain Roy James of ATIC, who immediately recognized the targets
as caused by weather. A civilian expert on radio propagation, when
consulted, correctly identified the phantoms and explained how they
were produced[VIII-7, VIII-7a]. General Samford, then in charge
of the UFO investigation, concurred. But most newspapers and many
government officials, influenced by the general excitement, ignored the
conclusions of the experts. Saucer enthusiasts regarded the phenomena
as a real invasion from space, and alleged that the Air Force was
covering up the truth.
Weeks passed before the facts of the incidents could be separated from
the fancies. Three ground radars had observed unusual targets on the
nights of the “invasion.” Only once, however, did all three observe
what was apparently the same target, and that for a few seconds only.
The unusual radar echoes had no visual counterpart--nobody had seen
or heard a spaceship. A few pilots had reported unidentified lights,
but the Washington area at night displays thousands of lights, and
even an unexplained light is far from being a spaceship. One pilot who
took part in this phantom war reported that, again and again, ground
radar had vectored him in toward a target that proved to be a steamboat
making a moonlight trip on the Potomac!
_Radar Experiments in Washington_
Immediately after the Washington crisis, the Technical Development and
Evaluation Center of the Civil Aeronautics Authority was assigned the
problem of finding out exactly what had produced the radar returns.
Investigation showed that the phantoms were not a new or unusual
phenomenon. They had appeared on the Washington radars on many nights
before the first “invasion,” appeared twice during the week between
the two, and many times after the second. Abnormal returns are
commonplace during the hot summer months when temperature inversions
and inequalities in the moisture of the air are most frequent. On the
nights of July 19 and 26 the Weather Bureau at Washington recorded
small temperature inversions and an abnormal distribution of moisture
in the atmosphere, conditions that regularly produce radar angels.
The experts also carried out a series of experiments in the Washington
area on several nights in August when conditions of temperature and
humidity closely resembled those on the “invasion” nights. During
these experiments unidentified targets appeared in profusion on the
radar screens. The first observation period began on the evening of
August 13, 1952. At about 9 P.M. E.D.S.T., suddenly “a group of seven
strong stationary targets became visible in an area about fifteen miles
north-northeast of the radar antenna. During the next two or three
antenna revolutions, the area on the scope between Washington and
Baltimore became heavily sprinkled with stationary targets in a belt
about six miles wide. A group of additional targets became visible in
an area approximately ten to fifteen miles south of the radar antenna.
This was evidence of the beginning of a temperature inversion.”[VIII-6]
Two temperature inversions were involved, one just above the earth’s
surface, and one at about 8000 feet. The investigators concluded that
the unidentified targets observed on Washington MEW (Microwave Early
Warning) and other radar in the summer of 1952 were to be attributed
to secondary reflections of the radar beam, caused primarily by
temperature inversions[VIII-5].
Saucer enthusiasts protested (and still insist) that the inversions
were not large enough to produce radar anomalies, revealing how
superficial was their acquaintance with radar. Although pronounced
temperature inversions are responsible for the superior and inferior
mirages resulting from the bending of light rays, large inversions
are not required to produce the mirages resulting from the refractive
bending of radio waves. At radar frequencies, refraction is influenced
by both temperature differences and the distribution of water vapor
in the atmosphere. A pronounced drop in moisture content at higher
altitudes can easily cause radar rays to bend earthward and pick
up ground targets, even though temperature conditions in the lower
atmosphere are entirely normal.
In December 1952, _True_ magazine published a sensational article that
attacked the Air Force findings, insisted that the radar echoes had
been caused by strange machines and, in effect, accused the official
investigators of releasing an explanation they knew to be at variance
with the facts shown by radar[VIII-8].
Dr. Vernon G. Plank, now at the Aerophysics Laboratory of the Air Force
Cambridge Research Center, was at that time Radar Meteorologist at
Walpole, Massachusetts. A specialist in the science of radar, Dr. Plank
had made a detailed study of the refractive conditions prevailing
over Washington for July 20 and 21, 1952. In a letter (which was never
published) to the editor of _True_, he pointed out that the saucer
theory of the Washington radar returns had no basis in fact. The
material given in the letter merits quotation:
“The regular Washington radiosonde observations, when converted into
refractive index terms, reveal that a very marked superrefractive
condition (a condition favorable to earthward bending of radar rays)
prevailed in the lower atmosphere during this period. The cause of this
superrefractive condition was primarily the rapid decrease of water
vapor with altitude.
“Although this superrefractive layer was not quite intense enough to
cause the radar rays to be bent completely back to earth, the rays
would be very markedly bent downward from their normal position.
From past experience with other situations of this type it is to be
expected that certain regions in this layer might be considerably more
superrefractive than others, or that particular terrain features, such
as rivers or small bodies of water, might create local, transitory
conditions favorable to extreme superrefraction or even reflection.
Another factor to consider is that whereas such local anomalies are
usually due to moisture, localized temperature effects may also create
or help create such intense superrefractive regions. Therefore,
it would not be at all surprising that such local anomalies, when
superimposed on the generally superrefractive layer already existing
over Washington, could create a situation conducive to radar echoes of
the type observed.
“Under such conditions the general ground clutter referred to in the
Keyhoe article would not be present and the radarscope would only
show echoes whenever and ‘wherever’ (qualified below) a favorable
superrefractive region occurred. As the radar ray has to travel from
the radar set to the particular region of refraction and thence onward
to the ground, the scope echoes created by such disturbances would
occur at an indicated range of roughly twice the disturbance range.
“Even slow air movements within a localized disturbance (one
sufficiently intense to bend the ray into the ground) would be
translated into enormous movements of the echo over the scope face.
Both lateral and radial movements could be expected and disappearance
of echo between sweeps would not be surprising.
“Of course, the optical effects noted in conjunction with the radar
echoes would depend upon temperature effects. However, the lack of a
temperature inversion in the type of data referred to by Mr. Keyhoe
does not preclude the possibility that extremely sharp and localized
inversions existed over the area, perhaps in close association or in
conjunction with the regions causing the radar echo. The Weather Bureau
data cited are not sufficiently accurate nor do the instruments used
in obtaining the data have a sufficiently rapid response to measure
such small inversions. Also, such data are usually obtained at only two
definite periods during each day.
“As the distance between Andrews AFB and the Washington National
Airport is only some few miles, the refractive effects of a given
disturbance might appear to be quite similar, and the position of the
resulting ground echo on the two sets might coincide to a fair degree
of approximation. However, as information about the degree of accuracy
maintained in plotting echo position is not available to me, I cannot
comment with any degree of intelligence. It does seem though, that
with the observed echo speeds and radical direction changes, as well
as the echo appearance and disappearance phenomena, that accurate
scope coordination between the separate fields would be extremely
difficult.”[VIII-9]
_“Simultaneous” Radar-Visual Reports_
On the night of July 29, three days after the second Washington crisis,
the radar installation of the Air Defense Command post near Port
Huron, Michigan, had been tracking three F-94s as they made practice
runs on a B-25 bomber. At 9:40 P.M. C.S.T., ground control picked
up an unidentified target moving from north to south at a speed of
about 625 miles an hour. The operators notified the pilot of one of
the F-94s and vectored him in for an attempted intercept. The plane’s
radar did not show the reported target, but when the plane had climbed
to a height of 21,000 feet, both the pilot and his radar man saw a
brilliant multicolored light, many times larger than a star, close to
the northern horizon. At the same time the plane’s radar picked up an
echo in the north; it disappeared after thirty seconds, although the
light was still visible dead ahead. As the pilot began the chase, the
light changed color from bluish white to reddish and slowly diminished
in size as though it were moving away. The pilot pursued the light for
about half an hour without gaining on it, and eventually had to return
to base. The ground radar, meanwhile, had been trying to keep track
of events in the sky. When the chase began, the target appearing on
ground radar had first made a 180-degree turn and reversed direction
from south to north; it had then moved erratically, doubling its speed
instantaneously, and then slowing down. It once seemed to reach a
speed of about 1400 miles an hour, then slowed to about 300 mph, and
disappeared from the scope shortly after the plane had returned to
base[VIII-2].
To many persons this incident seemed a simultaneous visual and radar
sighting of a single unknown object but the Air Force soon demolished
this theory. A study of the facts revealed that the movement of the
radar target and that of the mysterious light had not coincided. The
radar target had traveled from north to south, had then reversed
direction, had slowed down, speeded up, and moved erratically. The
light, however, had remained steadily in the north, diminishing in size
and brilliance but not vanishing. It behaved, in fact, like the image
of a star or a planet seen through turbulent atmosphere (see _Chapter_
IV).
For several nights before the sighting, many residents in this part
of Michigan had noticed a similar light that appeared in the northern
sky each evening at about the same time and place, displaying various
changing colors. The investigators were able to identify the shining
unknown as the star Capella. The position of the lights coincided with
that of the star for that time, date, and latitude. Capella was at
lower culmination--that is, at the lowest point of its swing around
the pole star, just skirting the horizon where its spectacular blue,
yellow, and red twinkling is familiar to astronomers of the region.
The pilot’s description, and the fact that he could get no closer to
it even after a thirty-minute chase, confirmed this identification.
Neither the brief blip that appeared on the plane’s radar nor the
erratic returns picked up by ground radar had any relation to the star;
they were merely phantom returns caused by weather conditions[VIII-2].
Like this Michigan sighting, many UFO problems are difficult to solve
because they result from more than one cause. The observations seem at
first glance to refer to a single phenomenon, although actually two
or more unrelated phenomena are involved. On August 1, 1952, two days
after the Michigan incident, such a puzzle arose with an impressive
radar-visual-photographic sighting near Bellefontaine, Ohio[VIII-2].
At 10:45 A.M. C.D.S.T., the radar operator at the Air Defense Command
post picked up an unidentified target north of Dayton, moving southwest
at a speed of about 525 miles an hour. Two jets from Wright-Patterson
Air Force Base were scrambled for an intercept and were vectored
in by ground control. Since the ground radar was not equipped with
height-finding devices, however, the operator could not direct the
pilots to a specific altitude; he could only tell them whether they
were nearer to or farther from the target.
When the jets had reached 30,000 feet, ground radar informed them
that they were almost on target, which was still moving southwest
at the same speed. A few seconds later, the returns from the jets
and the UFO blended on the radarscope and the operator advised the
pilots that they would have to continue the search visually. At this
moment, unfortunately, the ground radar suddenly failed. Soon after
communication between ground and air had ended, the lead pilot observed
a silver-colored sphere several thousand feet above him. Both jets went
after it but although they climbed to their maximum altitude, 40,000
feet, neither could get close enough to identify the object, which
was still some 30,000 feet above them. One pilot, however, managed to
expose several feet of film with his gun camera. At the same moment the
warning light on his gunsight radar blinked on to indicate it detected
a solid object. At this point the jets broke off the intercept and
started back to Wright-Patterson Field.
Both pilots then realized that, although they had been chasing an
unknown for some ten minutes, they were still northwest of the base
in almost the same area where they had started the intercept. This
surprising fact seemed to indicate that the unknown had slowed down
from its original speed of 525 miles an hour, to hover in the sky
nearly motionless.
In flying saucer circles, this series of events was regarded as an
iron-clad case of a physically material UFO observed simultaneously by
radar, the human eye, and the camera.
After sifting the evidence, ATIC investigators eventually found the
more prosaic though complicated solution to the puzzle:
1) The object picked up on ground radar had actually been a jet plane,
flying out of Cleveland. It had not been identified immediately because
the Bellefontaine station had not received its flight plan. At 10:45
that morning the jet had been north of Dayton, flying at low altitude
on a southwest heading, at a speed of around 525 miles an hour--the
exact time, position, and speed of the radar unknown.
2) The pilots of the interceptors never saw this jet. What they saw,
what their gun radar detected, and what their gun camera photographed
was a twenty-foot radiosonde balloon that had been released from
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base that morning shortly before the
sighting. Ground radar, on the other hand, never picked up the balloon.
3) The chief reason for the confusion was that ground radar did not
have a height-finding device. When the operator notified the pilots
that his scope showed a blending of the returns produced by the pursuit
jets and by the unknown, neither he nor the pilots had any way to tell
whether the unknown was directly above or directly below the pursuing
jets. At 30,000 feet the pilots were too high to see the Cleveland jet
far below them. But they did see the balloon above them and naturally
assumed that it was the object they were supposed to be chasing.
4) Since the ground radar stopped functioning at this point, the
operator could no longer track the course of the unknown or of the
interceptors. If the radar had been working, he would have seen that
the target continued on to the southwest while the interceptors were
searching in a different area to the north.
5) The photographs confirmed this reconstruction of a complicated
series of events. The pictures obtained by the gun camera displayed a
round, indistinct blur. Analysis showed that the size of the object was
that of a twenty-foot sphere--a balloon--photographed from a distance
of 30,000 feet.
_“Ghosts” and “Angels” on Radar_
Every experienced radar man has observed blips on his scope that he
cannot account for[VIII-4], but he recognizes many characteristics of
these “ghosts” or “angels.” They often come from an apparently clear
and normal sky. They are usually concentrated in the lower atmosphere,
are weak in character, and last only a short time. Although they may
occur at any time of the year, they appear most often on summer nights
in calm weather[VIII-10]. Summer atmospheric conditions, in which the
air is relatively quiet but varies in temperature and moisture content,
have an adverse effect on radio and radar transmission and produce many
of these ghost returns.
The uneven distribution of temperature and humidity in the atmosphere
is only one of the many possible causes of the radar angels often
labeled as saucers[VIII-11, VIII-12]. These ghosts may be produced by
peculiar atmospheric conditions, back and forward scatter of radio
waves[VIII-13], smoke, wind-carried debris, moisture-laden clouds, ice
crystals in clouds or air, lightning, meteors, the Aurora Borealis,
birds, insects, bats, electronic reflections from the moon, flares on
the sun, or by “chaff” or “window” (foil dropped from airplanes). A
radar operator once picked up a group of phantom echoes that seemed
to form the letters “GI” which, according to the scope, apparently
stretched over a distance of about eighty miles. He tracked them for
two hours, but gave up trying to interpret the message when he learned
that it was produced by chaff dropped from an Air Force plane during an
experiment.
An extremely unusual pattern of “angels” (see Plate IVc) appeared
on the radarscope at Schilling Air Force Base at Salina, Kansas,
on September 10, 1956, and was attributed to forward scatter from
atmospheric eddies to ground targets and back[VIII-13].
Many radar angels are caused by insects and birds. Their detection on
sensitive, high-resolution, Q-, K-, and X-band radars has been verified
both observationally and theoretically. Since a radar set surveys
a very large volume of the atmosphere and maps it on a relatively
small dial, a surprisingly small concentration of insects can cause
appreciable clutter on the scope. On sets such as the 0.86-cm TPQ-6
(Cloud Base and Top Indicator), a single insect of detectable size
in a volume of 100,000 cubic feet of air is enough to fill the scope
with return[VIII-4]. Since the guilty insect would be invisible both
to ground observers and to the crew of pursuing jets, a flying-saucer
report inspired by the radar echoes would remain forever an “Unknown.”
Birds can cause substantial echoes on many radars. Large birds at a
distance of ten miles can give signals equivalent to those from a
medium-sized aircraft at a distance of fifty miles; in fact, even the
fading and fluctuation resemble those of aircraft echoes. On radar,
a sea gull may cause a return equivalent to that of a quart of water
flying around. The radar cross section of the blip may be several
times larger than the geometric cross section of the bird, so that a
single adult sea gull at a distance of twenty nautical miles gives
a very large radar return. As few as eight birds per square mile
can completely fill a PPI (Planned Position Indicator) scope with
return[VIII-14]. If conditions were exactly right, the birds might
be visible to an observer and the source of the angel would thus be
explained. But if no one happened to see the birds, the “mysterious”
returns could serve as a basis for still another report of invisible
flying saucers.
Birds have also been responsible for some of the “ring” angels that
have been interpreted as fleets of invisible spaceships. In September
1953 several radar sites in England picked up unidentified objects
apparently encircling the city of London. They performed peculiar
maneuvers including, according to one saucer publication, the formation
of the letters Z and U of the English alphabet. How the correct
orientation of this invisible sky writing was determined has never been
explained. If the letters are turned top to bottom, back to front, or
rotated 90 or 180 degrees, they take on new meanings. Scholars might
well argue about whether the first giant symbol should be interpreted
as a Roman Z, a Roman N, a Greek Ζ, or a Russian И; and whether the
second symbol should be read as a Roman U, a Greek Ω, the mathematical
symbol ⊂ standing for “is contained in,” or a Roman C lying on its side.
On the scope, ring angels produce outwardly expanding rings and arcs
that sometimes move on and off the screen at incredible speeds. Such
echoes have been a fairly common phenomenon in England since 1940 and
1941[VIII-15], and experimental research has shown that many of those
occurring at dawn or at dusk are caused by flocks of starlings. At dawn
thousands of starlings leave the roost in waves at intervals of about
half a minute. The birds in each wave are often closely packed in a
tight circle or semicircle as the wave ascends. All are flying outward,
dispersing in all directions, so that the ring diffuses rapidly on the
radar screen and disappears, but is followed almost at once by a new
ring. At dusk the birds may return separately to the roost during the
course of an hour. Sometimes, however, they assemble first in a field
some distance from the roost; they finally take off at the same time
as a group and head for the roost in a single giant wave, causing a
tremendously impressive but quickly vanishing angel on the radarscope.
Ring echoes observed at Texarkana, Arkansas, have been traced to the
movements of red-winged blackbirds. Thousands of birds flying out from
a common roosting ground a few minutes before sunrise show up on the
PPI scope as an expanding ring that grows broader and more diffuse with
time until the composite echo breaks into individual ones and fades at
a distance of twelve to thirty-five miles[VIII-16].
Other types of ring angels have been observed on radarscopes, but the
causes are not yet fully understood[VIII-17, VIII-18].
Recognizing the true character of these radar angels and spurious
reflections has tremendous importance for the security of the United
States. Our Early Warning System, designed to notify Air Defense of
imminent attacks by intercontinental ballistic missiles, has already
had troubles with such radar ghosts. On October 5, 1960, a signal from
Thule, Greenland, to the North American Air Defense Command flashed
the warning, “Massive ICBM attack is underway.” The Canadian officer
in charge had only seventeen minutes in which to decide whether to
order several hundred bombers of the Strategic Air Command to retaliate
against the USSR or to push the button that would cause our long-range
missiles with atomic warheads to come roaring out of their underground
sites. He immediately asked Washington: Where was Khrushchev?
Khrushchev was in New York at the United Nations: the officer did not
push the button that would have set the world at war.
Later, he learned that radar beams reflected from the moon had produced
the terrifying angels. This incident is only one of the reasons why the
Air Force continues to be interested in radar UFOs. Failure to identify
them correctly could threaten the effectiveness of our patrol system.
_The Rapid City Sighting_
One of the most complex incidents in saucer history occurred early
in August 1953 near Rapid City, South Dakota. Like the sightings the
previous year at Bellefontaine, Ohio, and Port Huron, Michigan, the
presence of a UFO seemed to be confirmed by several types of evidence.
Trained civilian and military personnel on the ground and in the air
observed an unknown visually and by radar. The blips on the ground
radarscope were photographed and a plane’s gun camera took a picture.
If a similar incident were to occur today, Air Force investigators
would probably find the answer without difficulty. In 1953, however,
they were less experienced and finally classified the case as “one of
the best” Unknowns.
It is clearly impossible to solve the mystery with absolute certainty
after nearly ten years, because vital information is lacking. The
original records are no longer on file. Few details are available
except those in Ruppelt’s sketchy summary[VIII-3, p. 303 ff.], and
some of these are inaccurate: the town of Black Hawk, for example, is
not west, but northwest, of Rapid City. Although many questions of fact
must therefore remain unanswered--exact times, directions, sequence of
events--we offer here a highly probable explanation.
The first report came at 8:05 P.M. M.S.T. when a spotter for the Ground
Observer Corps in the town of Black Hawk telephoned the Air Defense
Command post near Rapid City, approximately ten miles southeast of
Black Hawk, to report an extremely bright light hovering low on the
horizon to the northeast. The radar operators at Ellsworth Air Force
Base had been working with a jet patrol flying west of the base. After
receiving the phone call, they shifted the scope to scan the northeast
quadrant of the sky and picked up an unidentified target moving slowly
at about 16,000 feet. Although the controller wondered at first whether
the target might have been due to weather, he decided after a few
minutes that it was well defined, solid, and bright.
Since the ground spotter had a visual target and the traffic controller
had a radar target, he telephoned to compare notes on positions; as
they were talking, the spotter interrupted the conversation to say that
the light was beginning to move southwest toward Rapid City. Checking
the radarscope and finding a fast-moving target the controller sent two
of his men running outside to look at the sky. After a few seconds they
reported that they could see a large bluish-white light moving toward
them from the northeast. It made “a wide sweep” around Rapid City and
then returned to a stationary position in the northeast where it had
first appeared. (Unfortunately the account does not state clearly
whether the “wide sweep” was observed visually or on radar.)
By this time all the witnesses were greatly excited by the UFO. The
master sergeant couldn’t decide what to do next because he kept
thinking, “They’re bigger than all of us!” but the traffic controller
notified the F-84 patrolling in the west and asked for an intercept.
The pilot soon found the light, which was still stationary. He began
the chase, but when he had approached to within an estimated three
miles, the light rapidly began to retreat. He continued the chase
directly north for 120 miles (during which both the jet and the UFO
went off the ground scope) but he could not gain on the object. Running
short of fuel, he turned back toward the base. The ground scope soon
picked him up again and, a few seconds later, picked up an unknown
target apparently trailing the jet by ten or fifteen miles.
A second jet then took to the air, located the light, and began the
pursuit. Like the first pilot, he could not close the distance between
him and the receding UFO. After performing various tests to convince
himself that he wasn’t chasing a reflection, he finally turned on
his radar gun camera. After a few seconds the red light blinked on,
indicating a solid object ahead. The pilot thereupon asked permission
to break off the intercept and, having taken a photograph, returned
to base. As before, the ground scope picked up the returning jet but
this time the UFO did not reappear on the scope. The controller then
called officials at the filter center at Fargo, North Dakota. They
had not received any UFO reports; a few minutes later, however, they
called back to say that spotter posts between the two cities, on a
southwest-northeast line, had indeed seen a bluish-white light.
Investigators from ATIC arrived promptly but they were not able to
explain the sighting. Even the photographs showed nothing useful.
Conclusion: unknown.
The incident remained unexplained chiefly because the investigators,
like the witnesses, apparently assumed that a single unidentified
flying object accounted for all the phenomena observed that evening.
Although the available evidence is somewhat confusing, a careful study
shows that, on the contrary, the visual and the radar targets could not
have been the same.
When the ground spotter first reported the UFO, she described it as a
stationary light low on the horizon. The radarscope, however, showed
a target that was moving slowly, at an altitude of about 16,000 feet.
Some minutes later, when the visual target did begin to move, the radar
target speeded up. This was the only instance in which the movements
of the two seemed to be roughly parallel. But in the excitement
that followed, all the witnesses assumed that the two targets were
identical. The published account[VIII-3, p. 303 ff.] does not
distinguish clearly between the actions of the light and the movements
of the blips on the radarscope.
Let us begin by reviewing the facts about the visual target. According
to the witnesses on the ground, it was a brilliant bluish-white light
that appeared on the northeast horizon and remained stationary during
most of the period it was observed. At one time it seemed to advance
rapidly toward the witnesses, make a wide sweep around Rapid City,
which was a few miles away from the observers, and then return to
its original position. According to the witnesses in the air, the
light did not remain stationary but retreated from the pursuing plane
and followed the returning plane, duplicating the plane’s speed and
keeping the distance between them constant. The pilots based this
interpretation, evidently, on the fact that the light did not vary in
size or brilliance and thus seemed to pace the plane.
These descriptions all point to the same answer: that the light was a
star or a planet. Since it was infinitely distant, the jets could not
get any closer to it and at ground levels the image was distorted by
peculiar atmospheric conditions. Mars had been absent from the night
sky for months, and Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter were then morning
stars; therefore the unknown could not have been a planet. However,
the bright star Capella was on the northeast horizon at a declination
of plus 46 degrees and would have been visible from both Fargo and
Rapid City. A check of the Weather Bureau records shows that the night
was clear and dark. The sun had set about an hour before the sighting
began, and at that time in the evening there was no moonlight because
the moon was in its last quarter. Visibility was about thirty-five
miles and the wind was from the northeast, about four meters per
second. There was a marked temperature inversion--9 degrees--at ground
levels. Such an inversion could easily account for the erratic motions
reported for the light.
There can be little doubt that the visual target was the star Capella.
The radar targets also were clearly the result of weather, just as the
air-traffic controller had suspected when he first looked at the scope.
Conditions were ideal--a calm, clear, warm summer night--for phantom
echoes. The first radar target, moving southwest, was probably a return
from some ground object. When the jet took to the air, the scope showed
a different kind of UFO target, one that echoed the movements of the
plane itself--retreating from the pursuer, advancing when the pursuer
turned back--and was always farther away from the ground station than
the plane itself.
Although saucer enthusiasts interpret these maneuvers as proof that
the phantom was under intelligent control, radar experts recognize the
familiar pattern in which a ghost echo is actually a return from the
plane itself. Because of the temperature inversions the radar pulses
do not return directly from the plane to the ground receiver but are
deflected from the plane to the ground, then back to the plane, and
thence on to the ground scope. The phantom echo always occurs from the
same direction as the aircraft and is always “on the other side” of the
plane (see p. 153).
This explanation also accounts for the evidence of the jet’s gun
camera. The photographs taken showed nothing, although the radar
warning light indicated a solid object ahead. After the pilot had
switched on the set, however, there had been a brief delay before the
red signal blinked on. During this interval the plane had not come any
closer to the unknown light, but the radio waves had scattered from
plane to ground and back to plane so that the gun radar did indeed
detect a solid object--the plane itself!
In short, the evidence supports our conclusion that an image of the
star Capella, distorted by the atmospheric conditions produced by a
strong temperature inversion, accounted for the visual sightings;
and that radar echoes from the pursuing jets, deflected by the same
temperature inversion, accounted for the phantom targets on the ground
radarscope and the gun radar.
[VIII-1] Keyhoe, D. E. _The Flying Saucer Conspiracy_. New York: Henry
Holt & Co., 1955.
[VIII-2] Air Force Files.
[VIII-3] Ruppelt, E. J. _The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects._
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1956.
[VIII-4] Plank, V. G. “Spurious Echoes on Radar, A Survey.” Astia
Document No. AD-215470, AFCRC-TR-59-210 (May 1959).
[VIII-5] Borden, R. C., and Vickers, T. K. “A Preliminary Study of
Unidentified Targets Observed on Air Traffic Control Radars.” Technical
Development Report No. 180, Civil Aeronautics Administration, Technical
Development and Evaluation Center, Indianapolis, Indiana (May 1953).
[VIII-6] “Radar Objects Over Washington,” _Air Weather Service
Bulletin_ (September 1954), pp. 52–57.
[VIII-7] Menzel, D. H. _Elementary Manual of Radio Propagation_.
Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1948.
[VIII-7a] ---- “Why Flying Saucers Show Up on Radar.” _Look_ magazine
(September 9, 1952).
[VIII-8] Keyhoe, D. E. “What Radar Tells about Flying Saucers.” _True_
magazine (December 1952), p. 25 ff.
[VIII-9] Plank, V. G. Personal communication.
[VIII-10] Withrow, S. R. “Angels on Radar Scopes,” _Air Weather Service
Bulletin_ (September 1954), pp. 48–51.
[VIII-11] Atlas, D. “Radar Studies of Meteorological ‘Angel’ Echoes,”
_Journal of Atmospheric and Terrestrial Physics_, Vol. XV (1959), pp.
262–87.
[VIII-12] ---- “Possible Key to the Dilemma of Meteorological ‘Angel’
Echoes,” _Journal of Meteorology_, Vol. XVII (1960), pp. 95–103.
[VIII-13] ---- “Sub-horizon Radar Echoes by Scatter Propagation,”
_Journal of Geophysical Research_, Vol. LXIV (1959), pp. 1205–18.
[VIII-14] Richardson, R. E.; Stacey, J. M.; Kohler, H. M.; and Naka, F.
R., “Radar Observations of Birds,” _Proceedings of the Seventh Weather
Radar Conference_ (November 1958).
[VIII-15] Harper, W. G. “Angels on Centimetric Radars Caused by Birds,”
_Nature_, Vol. CLXXX (1957), p. 847.
[VIII-16] Ligda, M. G. H. “Radar Observations of Blackbird Flights,”
_Texas Journal of Science_ (December 1958).
[VIII-17] Holzer, R., and Smith, W. (Eds.), Proceedings on the
Conference on Atmospheric Electricity, Geophysics Research Directorate,
Air Force Cambridge Research Center, AFCRC-TR-55-222 (December 1955).
[VIII-18] Eastwood, E; Bell, J. D.; and Phelp, N. R. “‘Ring Angels’
over Southeast England,” _Nature_, Vol. CLXXXIII (1959), pp. 1759–60.
_Chapter_ IX
E-M AND G-FIELDS IN UFO-LAND
The phenomenon of magnetism has always fascinated both scientists
and laymen. Paracelsus believed that he could use a magnet to draw
disease out from a person, transfer it to the ground, and thus cure
the patient. Later practitioners believed that a sick person could
regain his health by sleeping with head and feet oriented north to
south so as to be in line with the earth’s magnetic poles. Laputa,
the saucer-shaped floating island visited by Gulliver in his travels,
was propelled by the attracting or repelling forces of a large magnet
imbedded in the center of the island. In recent years magnetism has
similarly been called on to account for some of the peculiar maneuvers
allegedly performed by UFOs.
In the world of flying saucers an all-purpose electromagnetic (E-M)
force, unknown to earth scientists, is supposed to be able to produce
light and heat, disturb a compass, render an object radioactive, stop a
wrist watch without damaging the man who wears it, interfere with the
functioning of radio and TV sets, turn out the lights of automobiles,
stop the action of gasoline engines, and aid in the creating of
artificial gravitational fields (G-fields) around extraterrestrial
spaceships.
UFOs equipped with E-M powers have occasionally been reported in
France since 1954[IX-1], but they had rarely appeared in the United
States until late in 1957 when freak weather in Texas, plus the birth
of the space age, started a new wave of flying-saucer incidents. Few
spectacular UFOs had appeared since the 1952 panic (_Chapter_ VII) and
the average citizen had almost forgotten about flying saucers. Then on
October 4, 1957, when Sputnik I went into orbit and opened the door
to outer space, people once more began to watch the heavens uneasily.
Uneasiness became alarm a month later when, with American satellites
still sitting on the launching pad, Sputnik II roared into space. A
ball of fire floating over a field in western Texas provided the small
stimulus needed to turn alarm into hysteria, and for several weeks
people tended to see spaceships in every cloud and every unfamiliar
light in the sky. The reasoning seemed to be that if man with his
limited powers could launch satellites to orbit the planet, why
shouldn’t interplanetary ships already be visiting the earth?
In the months of November and December the Air Force received more UFO
reports than during the entire ten months preceding, and the reports
had their highest frequency in the single week following November
2[IX-2]. For a period of about eight days, if all the stories were
true, our skies were crowded with flying saucers.
Spaceships with electromagnetic powers roved from the Dominican
Republic to Alaska; they stopped automobiles, turned off headlights,
jammed radios and stopped clocks in cars, blurred TV sets in the home,
dimmed the cabin lights in airplanes, and altered a speedometer to
register a dangerously high speed instead of the legal sixty miles per
hour. (Whether the driver in question offered this novel defense to a
judge in traffic court is unknown.) Police in squad cars pursued UFOs
in Elmwood Park, Illinois; Danville, Illinois; and Hammond, Indiana. In
Brazil, an orange-colored, whistling UFO hovered near Fort Itaipu and
first caused a temporary failure of the lights, then knocked out the
generating plant for several moments. A driver in Santa Fe, New Mexico,
saw a UFO that not only stalled his car but also stopped the dashboard
clock and the driver’s own wrist watch. A driver in western Texas saw
a UFO that, not content with stopping the engine and radio of his car,
also magnetized the right half of the bumper and a part of the fender.
One driver reported that his car and those of several other motorists
had stalled near Cortez, Colorado; he had not thought of looking at the
sky, but any saucer enthusiast could have told him that a UFO must have
been hovering there.
In addition to these special models equipped with Medusa-like powers,
other spaceships allegedly landed briefly at the military installation
at White Sands, New Mexico; harassed a United States Coast Guard ship
in the Gulf of Mexico; landed in Ohio and raised the radioactivity
level of the ground; and stopped in Nebraska for repairs.
_Stormy Weather in Texas_
The new type of UFO with electromagnetic (E-M) powers first attracted
notice in this country by allegedly appearing near Levelland, Texas, on
the night of November 2, 1957, a few hours before Sputnik II went into
orbit. A small town with a population of about 8000, Levelland lies on
the plains of western Texas about sixty miles from Plainview, site of
a famous meteor shower, and only twenty-five miles from Lubbock, which
a few years earlier had gained national fame with its “Lubbock lights”
(p. 123). The region is normally an arid one, but at the beginning
of November it was experiencing unusual weather--electrical storms
and rain (the month proved to be the wettest ever recorded in western
Texas).
About 11:15 that Saturday night, a farmworker named Pedro Saucedo (or
Saucido) with his friend Joe Palaz (also given in various printed
accounts as Palav, Salav, Salaz, Salvaz) was driving home from
Levelland. A few miles northwest of the town he had turned off Route
116 into a side road, when both men noticed a flash of light in a field
at the right. Evidently unalarmed, he continued driving and talking
until suddenly the engine died and the lights went out. While trying
to restart the motor, Saucedo (the similarity between “Saucedo” and
“saucer” presents a diverting coincidence) glimpsed over his left
shoulder something that looked like a flaming ball or a fiery tornado
drifting rapidly toward the truck. A veteran of combat in Korea,
Saucedo reacted instantaneously to the blazing unknown. As he described
the experience later that night, “I jumped out of the truck and hit the
dirt because I was afraid. I called to Joe but he didn’t get out. The
thing passed directly over my truck with a great sound and a rush of
wind. It sounded like thunder and my truck rocked from the flash.... I
felt a lot of heat.” Crawling out and seeing the object disappear in
the direction of Levelland, he restarted the engine and drove back to
Levelland to report the incident to the sheriff[IX-2].
The sheriff was soon receiving reports from other persons who had been
driving in the same area at about the same time. They said that they,
too, had seen a blazing object which they described as a “flying egg”
or “egg-shaped fireball.” Their cars, like Saucedo’s, had stalled and
then restarted when the object disappeared. A number of townspeople
telephoned the authorities to report bright flashes in the sky, and the
police comment that “everyone who called was very excited”[IX-3] was
probably an understatement.
Under headlines such as “Mystery Object Stalls Autos in West Texas,”
these stories hit newspapers all over the nation. The news spread fast.
All day Sunday dozens of persons in Texas and New Mexico were relating
that they, too, had seen fiery objects and flashes of light in the sky
the night before. An amazingly large number of citizens seem to have
been out late that stormy Saturday night, but apparently none of them
noticed any ordinary lightning--only phantom “somethings” variously
described as a burning mass, a big light, an egg-shaped object 200 feet
long lighted up as though it were on fire, something like neon lights,
objects that were red, glowing, brilliant, fiery, bluish-green, or
pulsating green.
Not surprisingly, with all this publicity, the original incident
quickly began to take on new dimensions. Saucedo amplified his first
statements and recalled that the object had been “torpedo-shaped,”
“like a rocket, but much larger,” and that lights on the object had
seemed to be winking on and off[IX-4].
For days the Russian satellites had to share the spotlight with the
American flying eggs, while both amateur and professional investigators
tried to solve the mystery. The proponents of UFOs deduced the presence
of a flying saucer with E-M powers. Various astronomers, when urged
by newsmen, reluctantly advanced off-the-cuff theories based on the
meager printed accounts. Dr. La Paz, of the Institute of Meteoritics
in New Mexico, suggested that the things seen at Levelland might
have been fireballs. A reporter assigned to the Harvard-Smithsonian
Observatories to cover Moonwatch observations of the new Sputnik gave
a sketchy summary of the incident to Dr. Menzel, who also concluded
that Saucedo might have seen an unusually bright meteor and, startled
by its brilliance, might accidentally have killed the engine. Lacking
news of Sputnik II, the reporter sent in a facetious story asserting
that, according to the director of the Harvard College Observatory,
the flying eggs were mirages that so frightened the drivers that they
reacted by pressing a “nervous foot” on the accelerator and killing
the engine. When the weather conditions at Levelland became known, of
course, the meteor theory was immediately discarded. Dr. Nininger,
of the American Meteorite Museum in Arizona, made the best guess of
all: Saucedo had observed an example of that rare phenomenon, ball
lightning[IX-5].
Within a few days an Air Force investigator visited Levelland to study
the incident. Members of civilian saucer groups complained later that,
since he spent only seven hours in the area, he had obviously not taken
the problem seriously and could not have found the correct solution.
Even seventy hours of labor, however, could not have produced a clearer
picture. Saucedo had unquestionably had a frightening experience, very
much as he originally described it. But as in many UFO sightings,
most of the other reports had been stimulated chiefly by the general
excitement. Three persons, not “dozens,” had seen the phenomenon near
the ground. From ten to fifteen others (including the sheriff) had not
observed it at close quarters but had merely seen brilliant flashes of
light in the sky.
After studying the weather reports and the descriptions given by the
various witnesses, the Air Force issued an explanation, unfortunately
ambiguous because it omitted the necessary word “either,” stating that
the phenomenon observed at Levelland had been “ball lightning or St.
Elmo’s fire.” Supporters of the saucer theory seized on this ambiguity
to protest, correctly, that ball lightning and St. Elmo’s fire are
two different phenomena. They went on to conclude by some process of
peculiar logic that neither ball lightning nor St. Elmo’s fire was
involved and that the phenomenon had actually been a flying saucer.
Saucer publications have printed thousands of words to support this
argument. The evidence, however, leads to an overwhelming probability:
the fiery unknown at Levelland was ball lightning.
_The Phenomenon of Ball Lightning_
Most of us know very little about lightning. On the average, it causes
some 180 deaths each year. Many persons when caught outdoors by a
thunderstorm run to shelter under a tree, not realizing that the tree
itself offers the most attractive target to the electrically charged
clouds overhead. Even the scientists who make a special study of the
phenomenon still have much to learn about the conditions that produce
lightning and its various manifestations[IX-6].
The most familiar type is the lightning we see in stormy weather;
it flashes in brilliant zigzags from zenith to horizon, darts from
cloud to cloud, or strikes like a javelin toward earth. At night,
particularly in the country where no city lights mask its brilliance,
lightning can be a frightening elemental force. A form popularly
called “heat” or “sheet” lightning is a familiar, almost playful
phenomenon in the midwest and southwest, although comparatively rare
on the east coast. In hot, humid weather it flares intermittently
near the horizon, noiseless because the luminous “sheets” are merely
reflections of an ordinary zigzag flash that is too far away to be
heard. “Bead lightning” has also been reported, appearing as a chain
of spheroids that gradually fade away as they discharge. A spectacular
display of “pinched lightning,” an even rarer phenomenon (see Plate
Va), was photographed in late August 1961 at Los Alamos, New Mexico,
during a severe thunderstorm[IX-7]. Ball lightning, which seems to
be commoner in Europe than in North America (just as tornadoes are
commoner in North America than in Europe) is so little understood that
some scientists have doubted its reality. In recent years, laboratory
research has added much to our knowledge of ball lightning and Soviet
scientists in particular have studied it as a possible weapon against
enemy planes[IX-8].
Ball lightning is usually described as a luminous ball whose diameter
ranges from a few inches to several feet; the color may be red to
orange or blue to white. These lightning balls appear most frequently
toward the end of an electrical storm when the air is highly ionized,
often just after a nearby lightning flash. They look and act like solid
objects. They can hang motionless or drift in the air, glide along
telephone wires or fences, roll down chimneys and across the floor to
radio or TV sets, float a few inches above the ground or high in the
sky. The ball persists as an entity for a time ranging from several
seconds to many minutes; it may then evaporate noiselessly, or may
disappear with an explosive noise and a force that can damage nearby
objects[IX-8a]. One of the few existing photographs of ball lightning
was taken at Lincoln, Nebraska, on August 30, 1930 (see Plate Vb).
American, European, and Soviet scientists have suggested various
theories, none of them entirely satisfactory, to explain the formation
of ball lightning[IX-9, IX-10, IX-11]. These evanescent fiery globes
probably represent some sort of continuous electric current perhaps
held together by its own magnetic field, like the fabled hoop snake
that could roll along the ground by holding its tail in its mouth.
In 1938 the pilot of a BOAC plane en route to Iraq, flying in dense
cloud and rain at 8500 feet, reported that a ball of fire had entered
the rear cabin and burst with a loud explosion. One or two minutes
later it (or another lightning ball) entered the cockpit through the
window which was open for visibility, singed the hair and eyebrows of
the pilot, then bounced on through the forward passenger cabin and into
the rear cabin, where it again exploded[IX-12].
Similar incidents have been reported by Soviet pilots. In the summer
of 1956, a Soviet transport plane flying at about 10,000 feet was
struck by ball lightning during a very rough flight through a stormy
cold front. A fiery red-orange ball ten to fifteen inches in diameter
appeared in front of the aircraft, swerved to the left, struck the left
propeller and exploded with a loud detonation and a blinding white
flash. The intense electrical discharge destroyed radio communication
between the plane and the ground and disabled the radio compass. In
attempting to disconnect the antenna, the radio operator received an
electric shock. When the plane landed and was examined, one of the
blades of the left propeller was found to be slightly damaged and a
small fused area and a deposit of soot were found on the edge of the
airfoil a few inches from its end[IX-13].
A similar case occurred in December 1956, when a Soviet jet had entered
a storm cloud and was climbing through it. As the plane reached the top
of the cloud, at an altitude of 12,000 to 15,000 feet, ball lightning
suddenly appeared a short distance ahead and to the right of the plane,
and exploded with a dull but piercing noise and a blinding flash; the
ball then broke into a series of beads. Although one of the engines
close to the ball died at the instant of the explosion, the crew were
able to start it again and the flight continued normally. After landing
and finding no mechanical damage, they concluded that the engine had
failed temporarily because the explosion had formed a region of
intense rarefied air that deprived the engine of oxygen[IX-13].
Ball lightning has often been reported near the ground, as in
the Levelland case. In the summer of 1934 Mr. Durward, a British
meteorologist, while driving along the bank of a lake observed the
phenomenon: “It began to rain heavily, with slight or moderate thunder
and lightning. His son, a boy of twelve, was opening the iron gates,
spaced at intervals on this road, and found one difficult to open.
Mr. Durward, while walking the short distance from the motor-car to
the gate to assist his son, saw among the pine trees on his left what
looked like a ball of fire about 12 in. in diameter moving towards
them. It struck the iron gatepost farthest from the latch. There was no
noise, but the boy, who had his hand on the latch, gave a yell; for the
next few hours he was unable to lower his arm.”[IX-12]
In Levelland the night of November 2 conditions were ideal for the
formation of ball lightning. For several days the area had been
experiencing freak weather, and on the night in question had been
visited by rain, thunderstorms, and lightning. Shortly before the
glowing sphere approached the truck, the two men had noticed a
lightning flash in a nearby field. The original description of the
phenomenon--a “flaming ball” or a “fiery tornado” that floated toward
and over the truck and detonated with light and heat--fits the classic
picture of ball lightning. The truck’s engine may have died for one of
several reasons. The rain during the evening could have seeped under
the hood and soaked the ignition or dampened the spark plugs. The
feed line may have been clogged. Or the region of highly rarefied air
created by the ball lightning may temporarily have deprived the engine
of oxygen.
Of the other drivers near Levelland that night who reported having
trouble with balky motors and seeing a blazing object like an
egg-shaped fireball, three probably saw ball lightning. Others, after
hearing Saucedo’s frightening story, perhaps unconsciously dramatized
their own experiences and magnified ordinary lightning flashes into
attacking fiery objects. It is significant that although the night
was stormy, only Saucedo reported seeing the ordinary lightning that
normally accompanies a thunderstorm.
Since ball lightning is short-lived and cannot be preserved as
tangible evidence, its appearance in Levelland on the night of November
2 can never be absolutely proved, even though this explanation fits
all the facts--facts that in themselves do not warrant so lengthy a
study. Only the saucer proponents could have converted so trivial a
series of events--a few stalled automobiles, balls of flame in the sky
at the end of a thunderstorm--into a national mystery. Ball lightning
doubtless accounts for other UFO reports, such as the phenomenon
observed at Lock Raven Dam on October 26, 1958, when two men returning
late at night from a fishing trip saw a flaming ball hovering above the
superstructure of a bridge; the ball exploded with a loud noise and a
brilliant white flash and disappeared.
_E-M and Non-E-M Saucers_
The next UFOs reported in this series belonged to the old-fashioned,
non-E-M variety. From White Sands Proving Grounds near Alamogordo,
New Mexico, came a report that military police, while patrolling the
up-range in a jeep about 2:30 Sunday morning (a few hours after the
Saucedo incident), had seen a brilliant reddish-orange light, shaped
like an egg, hovering in the sky. From its apparent distance (two to
three miles away) and apparent size (as large as a grapefruit held at
arm’s length), the men deduced that it was a huge object, 75 to 100
yards in diameter[IX-2]. After remaining motionless for about three
minutes, it descended toward the ground and disappeared. (According
to some versions, it later rose into the sky and then disappeared.)
Members of another jeep patrol soon matched this tale with the report
that on Sunday night about eight o’clock they had seen a bright,
glowing object hovering in the sky but, instead of landing, it suddenly
climbed until it got so far up it looked like a star. Both jeeps, it
should be noted, continued to function normally.
Officials at White Sands soon dampened the excitement. The description
of the light that appeared at 2:30 A.M. included certain doubtful
factors. The night had been overcast and so dark that the stars were
not visible, although the cloud cover was broken at intervals. Since
the sighting had not included any object of known distance or known
size for comparison, the estimates of the UFO’s distance and size
were of no value. The light might have been small and close; it might
equally well have been huge and far away. Under the circumstances,
the most probable explanation was that the men had glimpsed the moon
(then roughly half full) through broken clouds, and that the apparent
movement was an illusion produced by the moving clouds. The Sunday
evening UFO was unquestionably the planet Venus. Then nearly at maximum
brilliance, it was a conspicuous object in the western sky after sunset
and inspired many saucer reports during this week of anxiety.
The White Sands incidents had reached the papers, however, and
contributed to the general hysteria. By Monday afternoon, flying eggs
were allegedly stopping automobiles as far north as Canada, but the
Southwest continued to hold the center of the UFO stage against all
competition.
On Monday night, November 4, the Alamogordo, New Mexico, radio station
broadcast a dramatic interview with an engineer from Holloman Air
Force Base, New Mexico, describing his sighting of an E-M-radiating
UFO at least 500 feet long. About one o’clock on Monday afternoon, Mr.
X stated, he was returning to base after a weekend in El Paso[IX-4].
While driving along a desert stretch of U. S. Highway 54 near the town
of Orogrande, he noticed a group of cars stopped ahead of him, their
passengers standing in the road, pointing at the sky. Looking up, he
saw an iridescent egg-shaped object at least 500 feet long--more than
twice the size of the UFOs reported in the preceding two days. As it
approached, the flying egg exerted a force that killed the engine
of his car, generated a wave of heat that gave him a bad burn, and
demonstrated a startling new characteristic: it silenced the radio
in his car. (During the next few days, reports of similar encounters
usually included a jammed radio.) When the UFO took off toward the
mountains and disappeared, Mr. X started his car again and drove on
into Alamogordo to the home of a friend, Mrs. Coral Lorenzen.
One of the most zealous amateur investigators of UFO reports, Mrs.
Lorenzen had founded the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO)
(see _Chapter_ XIII) in January 1952, and from 1954 to 1956 had been
employed at Holloman Air Force Base. After listening to Mr. X’s
story and examining the notes he had scribbled during the sighting
(unfortunately they proved to be illegible, but for some reason no one
has ever suggested that the pen or pencil was also hexed by the UFO),
she hurried him down to the local radio station where he made the taped
interview that was broadcast later that evening.
A daylight visit by an E-M flying egg 500 feet in length would
supposedly have attracted the attention of many witnesses. Air Force
investigators could find only one: Mr. X. According to his testimony,
the passengers of several automobiles (his estimate of the number of
cars varied from time to time but he eventually settled on ten) had
stood in the road watching the unknown object. A persistent search
by Air Force officials failed to locate any one of these persons.
The witness showed no sign of the burns he allegedly suffered. In
short, the only evidence to support his story was Mr. X’s own and the
authorities sensibly concluded that the incident was either a hoax or a
hallucination, inspired by newspaper publicity about Levelland’s flying
eggs.
Tuesday morning’s chief contribution to the UFO epidemic was not to be
laughed off so easily, for it was made by trained military personnel.
At 5:10 A.M. on November 5, the Coast Guard cutter _Sebago_, traveling
north in the Gulf of Mexico, detected an erratically maneuvering UFO on
the radarscope. The swiftly moving object would race across and off the
scope, only to reappear almost immediately from another direction and
position and again move off the scope at incredible speed. After ten
minutes the radar target vanished, but watchers on the deck glimpsed a
glowing object, brilliant as a planet; it streaked across the sky just
above the northwest horizon and vanished. The unknown radar targets
then returned and continued to fill the scope with their incredible
movements until 5:37, when they finally disappeared and did not return.
This mystery, too, yielded to orderly investigation. Air Force radar
experts made a detailed analysis of the data and positively identified
the mysterious returns. They had not come from the complex air traffic
overhead, as had first been suggested, nor from a fantastically
maneuverable spaceship. They were merely false targets produced by
the weather conditions (see _Chapter_ VIII). The brilliant light that
flashed across the sky was not reported by the radarscope and had no
relation to the radar returns. In view for a few seconds at most,
brilliant in the morning twilight (the sun rose some fifty minutes
later), the flash of light was probably a distant meteor--November is
rich in meteor displays.
_The Saturnian Visitors_
Tuesday evening while the nation was still wondering about the flying
eggs in New Mexico and the invisible UFOs that buzzed the _Sebago_,
welcome comic relief appeared. A man named Schmidt, a grain buyer,
announced that during the afternoon he had visited with the crew of
a flying saucer that had landed to make repairs. While driving in
the country near Kearney, Nebraska, he said, he had noticed a bright
flash about a quarter of a mile away. Going closer to investigate, he
perceived a huge silvery ship a hundred feet long, thirty feet wide,
and fourteen feet high, which had landed in a dry river bed. The motor
of his car then died. He got out and was walking toward the ship when a
light shot out and paralyzed him. The ship opened and two men emerged.
After searching him for concealed weapons, they released him from
paralysis and invited him into the ship, where he spent half an hour
chatting with these strangers and their female companions, mostly in
High German and English. (He knew that they came from outer space but
not until some weeks later, when they paid him a second visit, did he
discover that they were natives of the planet Saturn.)[IX-14] After he
left the ship it rose straight up into the sky and disappeared, while
he hurried back to town to report to the sheriff, to broadcast an
account of his experience over the local radio, and to give his story
to the newspapers.
It is perhaps a measure of the panic level that week that local
officials actually examined the ground at the “landing” site, looking
for evidence. They found none. The four “hydraulic rams” that allegedly
supported the huge machine had left no imprint on the sand of the dry
river bed. Traces of oil found on the ground were tested chemically and
proved to be the same brand that the witness carried in the trunk of
his car.
Gaining national notoriety from this incident, Schmidt soon became
a popular lecturer at flying-saucer clubs, thrilling the audience
with tales of later visits from the Saturnians and his journeys
in their spaceship to the Arctic Circle, through the waters under
the North Pole, and even into outer space. A year or so later his
extraterrestrial friends allegedly tipped him off to the location of
certain valuable minerals on earth, including veins of quartz that had
the desirable property of curing cancer. To mine this quartz and thus
make it available to humanity, he enlisted the sympathy and financial
aid of a number of lonely, wealthy widows. Some of these ladies
eventually came to believe that they had been the victims of fraud and,
in 1961, a California jury agreed with them. The Saturnians apparently
have not yet reappeared to help their friend out of his difficulties.
_Surveillance by Flying Eggs_
Wednesday November 6 was relatively calm on the UFO front, although
automobile engines died, radios malfunctioned, and TV screens
blurred at about the time that lights were reported in the sky in
Texas, New Mexico, Illinois, and Canada. Accounts received later by
saucer organizations stated that on Tuesday (or Wednesday) night an
orange-colored, whistling, E-M type of UFO had hovered near Fort Itaipu
in Brazil, caused a temporary failure of the electric lights, and then
knocked out the generating plant for several moments. Since the alleged
visitation occurred in a foreign country it was not, of course, open to
study by the United States Air Force. In any case investigation would
have been difficult, since the report failed to include such facts as
the exact time of appearance, position, and direction of movement of
the UFO. The witnesses, whose names were not given, apparently related
the incident under pledge of secrecy to other persons who insisted
on remaining anonymous, who passed the story on to still others who
refused to be named, who in turn gave the news to reporters, who signed
only their initials[IX-15]. So insubstantial a tale obviously does
not merit serious investigation. The dimming of electric lights and
the capricious behavior of a generating system are not extraordinary
phenomena and no UFO is required to account for them.
The next incident to gain publicity in this amazing week occurred on
Thursday (or Wednesday) evening when a UFO allegedly landed in Ohio
and then vanished. Driving home in the early evening along a country
road, a Mr. Olden Moore saw a glowing UFO in the sky. At first it
looked small, like a star, but it rapidly increased in size and split
apart in the air as it descended and apparently landed in a nearby
field. Moore stopped his car, intending to investigate, but for some
reason he changed his mind and instead drove on home to get his
wife. When they returned and searched the field they found nothing.
Nevertheless, they reported the incident to the authorities and next
day a Civilian Defense official, arriving to check the ground where the
UFO supposedly had landed, reported the level of radioactivity “far
above normal.”
A woman living half a mile away from the field in question reported
that, although she herself had not seen a UFO, her TV set had blurred
at about the time of the sighting, and on the following day she found
that her car, parked near the house, was pockmarked. Applying his
Geiger counter to the car, the Civilian Defense official pronounced it
radioactive[IX-16]. This UFO apparently possessed highly selective E-M
powers: it did not stop the engine of Mr. Moore’s car but did interfere
with the operation of a TV set half a mile away!
Air Force investigators patiently collected and sifted the facts.
The supposed landing site showed nothing abnormal--the grass was not
burned, the earth was not disturbed, no foreign material could be
found. The normal radioactivity of the ground in the area measured .18
milliroentgens; at the supposed landing site the measure had been .20
milliroentgens. This difference of .02 is not “far above normal” but
well within the probable error in the calibration of the instruments.
Interviews with other Ohioans who had also seen the glowing unknown
provided the answer: the UFO was a large meteor, conspicuous in the
dusk of early evening. Traveling directly toward the witness, it
had looked like a glowing sphere suspended in the air and rapidly
increasing in brightness. Near the end of its flight it split into two
or more pieces and fell silently to the earth, not “in the next field”
but perhaps many miles away. The blurring of the TV set may have been
mere coincidence or, if the meteor had actually passed close by, may
have resulted from the ionized trail of the meteor (see _Chapter_ V).
_Saucerdom’s Miraculous Electromagnetic Force_
Most of us remember the nursery tale of Chicken-Little, who started a
panic in the barnyard kingdom with her eyewitness report that the sky
was falling: “I saw it with my eyes, I heard it with my ears, and a
piece of it fell on my tail.” Calm was restored in the kingdom, after
a time, when the prosaic truth came to light: a falling acorn, not a
piece of the sky, had grazed the credulous chick.
In somewhat similar fashion, the hysteria caused by the car-stalling
flying eggs subsided. As the Russian satellites gliding across the
night sky proved more interesting to the public than hypothetical
spaceships, flying-saucer stories occupied less and less space in
the daily papers and the number of UFO reports dwindled. Air Force
investigators worked hard at the job of separating facts from fantasy
and by Saturday November 9, 1957, the end of a wild week, the panic was
over. During the two years following, 1958 and 1959, fewer than a dozen
E-M-equipped UFOs were reported over the entire American continent.
The civilian flying-saucer groups, however, rejected the
normal explanations of the November reports except that of the
Schmidt-Saturnian meeting, which all but the cultists indignantly
denounced as a hoax publicized to embarrass sincere students of UFOs.
Dissatisfied with the solutions found by the Air Force, the National
Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) carried out an
independent study (see _Chapter_ XIII) of the November sightings,
and in June 1960 issued a booklet entitled “Electro-Magnetic Effects
Associated With Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO’s).” After examining
many reports of E-M phenomena and rejecting an unspecified number as
unreliable, members of the investigating committee studied the evidence
in a series of eighty-one incidents occurring over a period of fifteen
years, roughly a third of which were reported during the week of the
Levelland panic[IX-17].
The cases include instances in which, allegedly, electrical
appliances failed to function, at the same time and the same place
in which a witness observed a UFO. In some cases a witness observed
electromagnetic effects but did not see a UFO, at the same time that
a neighboring witness saw a UFO but did not observe electromagnetic
effects. The effects in question include the stopping, missing,
sputtering, and near-quitting of automobile motors; the dimming or
flickering of automobile headlights; static, roar, or fading of car
radios; the dimming and brightening of house lights; the dimming and
brightening of cabin lights in airplanes; the blurring of TV screens;
the temporary loss of picture and/or sound in a TV set; the stopping of
watches and clocks; and odd noises over a telephone wire.
This list may astonish the average citizen who has often endured
similar annoyances and never thought of blaming UFOs for his troubles.
Most householders know that watches run down, that houselights dim
and brighten with the changing demands made on the city electrical
system, and that a plane flying over a house can blur the image on a
TV screen. There can be few readers of this book who have not at some
time experienced such brief frustrations with automobiles, radios, TV
sets, and timepieces--the ordinary troubles that keep our repairmen in
business without assistance from UFOs.
To the heterogeneous data provided by these eighty-one cases, the
committee attempted to apply the precise tools of logic and mathematics
in order to establish a correlation between UFOs and electromagnetic
effects, and concluded that a cause-and-effect relationship probably
did exist.
With suitable material, statistical methods can suggest a correlation
between any two sets of facts and can estimate the probability that
the correlation is significant and not due to chance. No competent
statistician, however, would try to apply the methods to such amorphous
and uncertain data as those used by the committee. More than a third of
the incidents cited come from newspaper accounts or the private files
of saucer organizations in foreign countries. All leave many unanswered
questions. At least two involve fully identified objects: the great
fireball of September 18, 1954 (p. 92), and the three fireballs of
April 6, 1955, may well have caused some radio interference but they
were not UFOs. Even with the well-reported cases, a conscientious
historian would find it nearly impossible to determine precisely what
the witnesses saw, what they heard, what they did, and what they said.
The various printed accounts of the Levelland incidents, for example,
vary in many details. The events took place in an atmosphere of
excitement and the stories inevitably changed slightly with each
retelling. The reports of Air Force investigators, records in the files
of civilian saucer organizations, statements in newspapers, magazines,
and books--no two give exactly the same version of any given incident.
Although the points of disagreement are often trivial, they are
sometimes vital to finding the correct explanation.
Even if, for the sake of argument, a statistician were willing to
accept the evidence of the eighty-one cases at face value, he would
still not attempt to establish a correlation between UFOs and E-M
effects. The probability that a (postulated) UFO will appear at a given
time or place is unknown; the probability that an electrical appliance
will fail to work at a given time or place is equally unknown. Hence
the probability that the two phenomena will occur together at a given
time and place is a concept that has no meaning.
_Effects and Causes_
Asked to explain what caused the failures of engines, radios, watches,
etc. reported during the week of the Levelland sightings, any high
school physics student who answered, “Some new kind of electromagnetic
force” would properly receive a grade of zero. Admittedly there are
physical phenomena that the scientist does not yet understand, but
he does know that electrical and magnetic forces do not and can not
perform all the feats attributed to them by saucer enthusiasts.
The electrical failures ascribed to E-M forces undoubtedly had a
variety of causes. Automobile engines can stall for many reasons. Rain
seeping under the hood of a car can soak the ignition and temporarily
interfere with smooth operation. Sand or dust or a vapor lock in the
fuel line can do the same. The body of an automobile is metal and
completely encloses the ignition system and the motor. The engine
stops if it is deprived of gasoline or oxygen, but it does not stop
if lightning strikes the car. The metal body acts as a shield that
electrical forces cannot penetrate.
Every driver knows that the reception on a car radio normally varies
from poor to fair; it rarely remains constant. While moving beneath a
power line, a car may receive no radio signals at all. A high-tension
line can be surrounded by an electrical field that makes a radio set
hum or buzz raucously and completely jams the reception. Static or
a powerful interfering signal can easily jam a car’s radio, but no
electrical field, static or oscillating, can kill a car’s motor or
shut off its lights or stop the dashboard clock; it could not stop
the driver’s wrist watch, and it could not stop a man’s watch without
seriously injuring the wearer, even if he were standing in an open
field.
Radio and TV sets may function badly for one of many reasons. They
may simply need a good repairman! A passing plane, a more powerful
transmitting station on the air, auroral activity, stormy weather,
ultraviolet radiation, or clouds of ejected atoms from the sun--any of
these can disrupt radio or TV communication, but they do not interfere
with the operation of gasoline engines.
All meteors bright enough to be seen can cause some radio and TV
interference--and in the first week of November the Taurid shower
is approaching its maximum. Although meteors do not, by themselves,
emit any appreciable amount of radio energy, the friction between the
swiftly moving meteoric body and the atmosphere produces a train of hot
gases that can momentarily reflect radio waves. The brightest meteors
leave behind them a persistent cloud of luminous, electrified gas that
can absorb radio waves and thus blanket incoming signals for several
minutes after the meteor has passed. A spectacular fireball observed
about 8:30 P.M. M.S.T. on April 18, 1962, momentarily turned off the
street lights in the town of Eureka, Utah; it was so bright that it
triggered the photoelectric control, just as daybreak does[IX-17a].
No imaginable single force--electric, magnetic, or gravitational--could
possibly have caused _all_ the effects attributed to saucerdom’s
miraculous electromagnetic force. An E-M field with the postulated
powers is as improbable as a force that would lift fallen apples from
the ground and draw them up to reunite with the branches of their
parent tree.
Let us suppose for a moment, however, that the incidents in the
Levelland epidemic might have occurred just as they are described by
the NICAP committee. If UFOs had been visiting the earth that week,
projecting a force field that performed as claimed, certain other
events should also have occurred.
Thousands of automobiles should have been, but were not, temporarily
disabled in the neighborhood of every car-stopping UFO. Fantastic
traffic jams have sometimes been caused by torrid weather and
consequent vapor locks in the fuel lines of automobile engines. In June
1961, for example, a sudden heat wave in Boston caused a vapor-lock
epidemic that tied up traffic on the main highways for three hours. On
some stretches of road so many cars were immobilized that, with their
hoods up to cool off, they looked “like a convention of pelicans.” No
such traffic jams were reported in connection with the 1957 UFOs. In
South Springfield, Ohio, a car and a taxicab stalled but the vehicles
around them experienced no trouble. One car stalled in Houston and
another in Santa Fe, but the traffic around them proceeded as usual.
Hundreds of TV sets should have blurred, but did not, in the
neighborhood of every TV-blurring UFO.
Equally surprising, no one complained of UFO interference with hi-fi
sets, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, washing machines, irons,
freezers, or electric razors. No airplane, helicopter, motorcycle, or
ocean liner reported engine trouble.
At least two landings were reported, in New Mexico and Ohio. No
physical evidence of landing could be found--shrubs were not crushed,
grass was not scorched, ground was not disturbed.
Except for the _Sebago_, no radar reported the presence of a UFO.
Moonwatch teams, trained specifically to detect, observe, and plot
the exact path of moving objects in the sky, were on the alert that
week all over the United States and Canada. They did not see even one
unidentified flying object.
_“G-Fields” and UFO Propulsion_
Even more fantastic than the E-M force that stops cars and silences
radios is the artificial gravitational field or “G-field,” which
saucer enthusiasts call on to account for all UFOs whose reported
behavior clearly contradicts the laws of physics. Employing
electromagnetic forces, the UFOs supposedly can create a variety
of G-fields as needed, to be used as a defense weapon, a means to
invisibility, or a method of propulsion[IX-18, IX-19].
Writers of science fiction have regularly utilized similar handy
expedients such as “gravity shields,” “force fields,” “inertia drives,”
and “space warps” to move their heroes quickly from earth to remote
parts of the galaxy. Physicists, too, dream of revealing new aspects of
nature that would allow man to nullify the effects of gravity and make
short cuts through space, but they realize that such devices, even if
theoretically not impossible, must await unimaginable discoveries about
nature and are at least far in the future.
Unlike the amateur investigator of UFOs, both the storyteller and
the physicist know that if and when such advances are made, they
will enlarge our understanding of the cosmos, as did the creative
insights of Galileo, Newton, and Einstein, but new discoveries cannot
invalidate what we have already learned about how the universe works.
Many of the properties ascribed to UFOs imply a complete breakdown of
physical law. They belong to the realm of magic, not science. Traveling
at speeds approaching the velocity of light, reversing direction
instantaneously, achieving maximum acceleration or deceleration in
a fraction of a second, becoming invisible at will--such feats are
impossible for a solid body moving either in an atmosphere or in space.
Most of the serious proponents of the saucer hypothesis acknowledge
that such actions are impossible, according to our present knowledge,
but they argue that alien races more advanced than earthmen have
undoubtedly found new sources of power and developed new methods of
propulsion. Elaborate theories have been constructed, phrased in nearly
incomprehensible scientific jargon, to show that UFOs do not flout the
laws of physics but merely operate under laws that are still unknown to
human beings.
To UFO investigators whose professional training lies chiefly in
fields other than physics--business, the arts, entertainment, military
science, government, the law, medicine, or religion--such theories
might well seem plausible. But to the physicist they seem so irrational
that they do not even deserve discussion, and he dismisses them as
nonsense. Saucer believers thereupon denounce the physicist as a
bigot, complain of his “closed mind,” and piously invoke the ghost
of Galileo. They forget, apparently, that the persecutors of Galileo
were specialists in theology and had only a nodding acquaintance with
astronomy.
One of the earliest theories of UFO propulsion suggested that saucers
got their motive power by tapping the lines of force in the earth’s
magnetic field. One author wrote:
“The earth being simply a huge magnet, a dynamo wound with magnetic
lines of force as its coils, tenescopically [the meaning of this
impressive word is unknown to the present authors] counted to be 1,257
to the square centimeter in one direction and 1,850 to the square
centimeter in the other direction (eddy currents), indicates that
natural law has placed these lines as close together as the hairs on
one’s head. And yet they never touch or cross each other if let alone.
If done so by accident the catastrophe would spread like a searchlight
and destroy everything in its path.”[IX-20, p. 139]
The same author asserts that such a “catastrophe” is the true
explanation of Mantell’s death (p. 33). Supposedly objecting to his
close approach, the occupants of the saucer he was chasing manipulated
some of the lines of force until they crossed in front of Mantell; the
resulting surge of power knocked the plane out of the air. Under some
conditions, he adds, the crossing of the lines can produce desirable
effects, such as the Aurora Borealis, when “we have magnetic lines
of force that are crossing one another at or near the geographic and
the magnetic poles and as a result we see those beautiful colored
lights.”[IX-20, p. 141]
To the physicist, these statements are an unsavory verbal hash. Lines
of force cannot provide a source of power and they cannot cause
explosions--they are not even real. Created merely to describe the
behavior of magnetic fields, they have no more objective existence than
a train of thought. By using the convenient fiction that lines of force
emerge from the north magnetic pole, spread apart as they flow around
the earth, and then crowd close together again as they enter the south
magnetic pole, the physicist is able to map observed variations in the
earth’s magnetic field. In a similar way the geographer uses contour
lines to map high and low areas on the earth’s surface.
A spacecraft could not propel itself by hitching to magnetic lines of
force any more than a man could travel from Philadelphia to Peru by
sliding down the 75th line of longitude.
The more sophisticated students of UFO behavior do not propose magnetic
lines of force as a source of power. In fact they skip lightly over the
awkward question of how the saucers are propelled and vaguely assert
that extraterrestrial vehicles obtain energy (apparently without doing
equivalent work) by somehow plugging in to the cosmic rays and magnetic
fields that exist in space. Thus having access to unlimited power, a
saucer supposedly draws on E-M forces to create and enclose itself
in a kind of cocoon of artificial gravity. This G-field cuts off the
attraction of the earth and other heavenly bodies, enables the saucer
to attract or repel any approaching object, and allows it to travel
almost as fast as light without suffering an increase in mass or a
transformation into energy[IX-18].
_The G-Field Myth_
To explain the alleged properties and behavior of flying saucers, a
variety of speculations have been published on the nature and operation
of the G-field[IX-18, IX-19, IX-21]. In the physicist’s view, most of
these ideas belong more to the realm of magic than of science but we
shall summarize them briefly, with a few parenthetical comments.
A UFO supposedly can travel at speeds of thousands of miles an hour and
shatter the sound barrier without making any noise because the G-field
would create a kind of protective envelope around the saucer. But if
the G-field breaks down for any reason, so that the protective envelope
is opened, then the ionized moving air hits ordinary static air and
creates the thunderous detonation produced by some UFOs. (Even with an
intact G-field, a boundary or gradient would always exist somewhere
between the air that was dragged along by the saucer and the air that
was not. A thunderous impact would certainly occur at this barrier.)
The “invisible” UFOs supposedly become so by using the G-field to
bend or deflect rays of light. (It is true that starlight passing near
the sun’s gravitational field suffers a deflection that makes the star
appear slightly displaced from its actual position on the celestial
sphere, but a shift in apparent location does not dim a star and does
not make it invisible. Furthermore the amount of deflection is only
1.75 _seconds_ of arc, less than half of a thousandth of a degree! To
produce even this small deflection, a covey of saucers would have to be
able to increase its mass to equal that of the sun: 1.97 times 10^{33}
grams! What this increase in mass would do to the rest of the solar
system doesn’t bear thinking of.)
Angel hair (see _Chapter_ XI) is supposed to be a waste product from
the operation of the G-field. The ionization of the air inside the
G-field allegedly would create heavy atoms that reacted chemically
with the atoms in ordinary air to produce a kind of precipitate that
falls to the ground and disappears as the ionization decreases. (In the
physics laboratory, ionization means taking an electron away from an
electrically neutral atom. The resulting atom would not be heavier. The
contact between ordinary air and that in the ionized trail of a meteor
has never yet produced “angel hair.” No laboratory has ever reported
that isotopes of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and other elements in
the atmosphere can react with their normal analogues to produce
precipitates. A change in ionization cannot make a chemical compound
disappear.)
The envelope of air enclosed by the G-field is supposed to allow a UFO
to accelerate or change direction instantaneously, even when flying
at enormous speeds, because the UFO would not encounter atmospheric
friction. (Vehicles moving in the earth’s gravitational field are also
surrounded by a cushion of air, but they still must overcome friction.)
At this point the whole G-field myth falls apart. One of the
fundamental laws established by Newton, to which no exception has ever
been found in the laboratory, states that a moving object will continue
to move in a straight line unless it encounters an applied force. Let
us suppose, for the moment, that a gravity shield could suddenly be
interposed between a spacecraft and the earth, and thus make the craft
reverse its direction of flight. The occupants would still be subject
to the law of inertia. They would be hurled against the wall of the
craft with a violence far greater than that experienced by a plane
crashing to earth from an altitude of 30,000 feet. There could be no
cushioning of the blow.
Such dreams demonstrate an almost contemptuous disregard for reality.
Physicists admittedly do not yet understand the basic nature of
gravity, but they do know a great deal about how it acts. Gravity is
the force that holds the universe together. It exerts a pull on all
objects in the physical world--the earth, the moon, the planets, our
sun, the distant stars, and even the stars in other galaxies. All
these bodies without exception move according to the law of universal
gravitation as formulated by Newton and refined by Einstein: Every
particle in the universe attracts every other particle with a force
that is proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely
proportional to the square of the distance between them. The magnitude
of the force depends only on the masses of the bodies and on their
distances from each other. It does not depend at all on the nature of
the medium that separates them. It operates unchanged through stone,
metal, water, air, or empty space. With a metal shield we can reduce
electrical forces to zero; with a soft-iron shield we can weaken
magnetic forces; but no substance existing in nature can act as a
shield to shut out the force of gravitation.
_Electricity, Magnetism, and Gravity_
No responsible scientist would assert that man has found out all
there is to know about the universe, and few would insist that some
kind of a shield for gravity is an absolute impossibility. As yet,
however, no laboratory has detected any phenomenon that might be
a clue to “negative gravity.” In recent years nuclear physicists
have occasionally caught fleeting glimpses of what has been called
“anti-matter,” electrons with positive charges and protons with
negative charges--the reverse of their charges in the normal world.
Some investigators have speculated on the gravitational properties of
anti-matter, and have wondered whether it might exert a force that
would repel instead of attract.
So far no one has been able to think of an experiment to test the
idea. Even if someone could find a way to collect a thimbleful of
anti-matter, when he brought it into contact with normal matter, it,
he, and his surroundings would instantly detonate like a super-colossal
neutron bomb. Many physicists believe that, since electrical forces
operate independently of gravitational forces, interchanging the
charges on protons and electrons would probably have no effect on the
gravitational field. Theoretical study and computations may someday
yield an answer.
For years scientists have been searching for a “unified field theory,”
a single equation that would describe the interrelationship among
electrical, magnetic, and gravitational forces. Such a mathematical
statement would reveal the mysterious bond that holds together the
atomic nucleus, imparts to atoms their unique structure, and keeps the
stars in their courses. But this unifying equation, when it is found,
will not make our present knowledge invalid. Enthusiasts are deluding
themselves when they base their belief in flying saucers on the hope
of overthrowing the laws of gravity and inertia. Gravity, magnetism,
and electricity are actual physical forces, as real as light, air,
houses, trees, or persons. They can act only according to the laws of
nature which, unlike the laws passed by legislatures, are not subject
to repeal. No juggling of words, no argument, no wish can change these
laws any more than they can stop the rising of the sun or the waning of
the moon.
If man is ever to learn to control the force of gravity, he will
succeed not by denying the reality of the laws but only by finding out
what they are and by trying to understand them.
[IX-1] Michel, A. _Flying Saucers and the Straight Line Mystery._ New
York: Criterion Books, 1958.
[IX-2] Air Force Files.
[IX-3] El Paso (Texas) _Times_, Nov. 4, 1957.
[IX-4] Barker, G. “Chasing the Flying Saucers,” _Flying Saucers_ (May
1958), p. 20 ff.
[IX-5] Denver _Post_, Nov. 6, 1957.
[IX-6] Viemeister, P. E. _The Lightning Book._ Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday & Co., 1961.
[IX-7] Matthias, B. T., and Buchsbaum, S. J. “Pinched Lightning,”
_Nature_, Vol. 194 (1962), p. 327.
[IX-8] Ritchie, D. J. _Ball Lightning._ A Collection of Soviet Research
in English Translation (1961). New York: Consultants Bureau.
[IX-8a] Cade, C. M. “Thunderbolts as the X-weapon,” _Discovery_, Vol.
XXIII (1962), pp. 23–28.
[IX-9] Kapitsa, P. L. “The Nature of Ball Lightning,” _Dokl. Akad. Nauk
SSSR_, Vol. CI, No. 2 (1955), pp. 245–48. (Translated in [IX-8].)
[IX-10] Hill, E. L. “Ball Lightning as a Physical Phenomenon,”
_Bulletin American Meteorology Society_, Vol. XXXXI (1960), p. 199.
[IX-11] Pierce, E. T.; Nadile, R. M.; and McKinnon, P. J. “An
Experimental Investigation of Negative Point-plane Corona and Its
Relation to Ball Lightning,” AFCRL-TR-60-354. Bedford, Mass.: Oct. 24,
1960.
[IX-12] Gold, E. “Thunderbolts: The Electric Phenomena of
Thunderstorms,” _Nature_, Vol. CLXIX (1952), pp. 561–63.
[IX-13] Kogan-Beletskii, G. I. “The Nature of Ball Lightning,”
_Priroda_, No. 4 (1957), pp. 71–73. (Translated in [IX-8].)
[IX-14] Schmidt, R. O. “The Kearney Incident,” _Flying Saucers_
(October 1959), p. 31 ff.
[IX-15] _UFO Critical Bulletin_, Vol. II, No. 2 (March-April 1958).
[IX-16] “The Case of the Radioactive UFO,” _Flying Saucers_ (February
1958), p. 30.
[IX-17] “Electro-magnetic Effects Associated With Unidentified Flying
Objects (UFO’s),” Subcommittee of the National Investigations Committee
on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), Washington, D.C. (June 1960).
[IX-17a] _Sky and Telescope_, Vol. XXIII (1962), p. 323.
[IX-18] Michel, A. _The Truth about Flying Saucers._ New York:
Criterion Books, 1956.
[IX-19] Keyhoe, D. E. _The Flying Saucer Conspiracy._ New York: Henry
Holt & Co., 1955.
[IX-20] Scully, F. _Behind the Flying Saucers._ New York: Popular
Library, 1951.
[IX-21] Cramp, L. G. _Space, Gravity and the Flying Saucer._ New York:
British Book Centre, 1955.
_Chapter_ X
CONTACT!
All fields of human activity have their practical jokers. Elaborate
hoaxes have been perpetrated in music, art, literature, history,
religion, science--and in the world of flying saucers. Although the
motives for such swindles are not always obvious, the trickster is
usually trying to promote a cause, to gain fame and/or prestige,
to make money, to satirize a folly, or just to have some fun at
the public’s expense. Some hoaxes, such as Mark Twain’s petrified
man, produce only harmless amusement. Others, planned as serious
deceptions, can cause long-lasting damage. The celebrated Piltdown
man was fraudulently created from an ape’s jawbone, a stray tooth,
and a few chemical staining agents; it gained fame for the scientists
involved but threw the study of human evolution into a confusion that
lasted more than twenty years, until the forgery was revealed in every
detail[X-1].
A few hoaxes live on and on even after they are exposed, apparently
because people enjoy believing in them. The Jersey devil, described as
a fire-breathing monster with huge wings and a long tail, was first
mentioned in the columns of a small-town newspaper in New Jersey
in 1906. Within a few days inhabitants of rural areas all over the
east coast were reporting glimpses of the frightening demon and on
one particular night it allegedly terrified citizens in New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. The panic finally reached such
heights that some towns closed their factories and theaters. This
fantastic monster was quickly found to be a hoax, the brain child of
the publicity manager for a Philadelphia museum of freaks; his sole
purpose had been to drum up customers for the museum. Nevertheless many
persons rejected this explanation and continued to believe that the
creature really existed. It was reported again in 1926, in 1930, in
1932, and may reappear again at any time. Obviously the Jersey devil,
though admittedly the product of a hoax, has become a permanent part of
the local fauna[X-2].
Flying-saucer hoaxes are rarely submitted to the Air Force as bona fide
sightings. Of 1500 UFO reports, only forty-two proved to be deliberate
frauds or the delusions of unstable persons. The hoaxer may give his
tale to the newspapers, to a lecture audience, or even publish it in a
book, but he carefully avoids Air Force scrutiny. His story will not
hold up under close investigation, and he knows it.
_Earthlings and Extraterrestrials_
The fantasies of the obviously deluded are a problem for the clinician
and will not be discussed in this book. Typical is the case of
“Dr. X” who writes to strangers, inviting them to accompany him on
his next visit to the “Brothers” in space and to “join the side of
righteousness.” Although Dr. X has several times set a date for the
excursion, he has always had to postpone it for some reason. He
himself, he says, has made more than sixty journeys on flying saucers
and mother ships, and has often taken his automobile along--just why he
needed it he does not explain.
Peculiarly hard to classify are the “contact” reports, in which a
witness affirms that he has had one or more personal encounters with a
spacecraft and that he has communicated with its occupants, who range
in type from ordinary specimens of _Homo sapiens_ to hairy dwarfs and
elephant-faced little men in space suits. He gives a more or less
detailed account of the incident and sometimes offers “proof” in the
form of alleged photographs or fragments of the vehicle. Ostensibly
inspired by religious or humanitarian motives, these “contactees”
wholeheartedly support the theory that flying saucers originate in
worlds beyond the earth.
In general the contactees tell essentially the same story, with minor
variations: Earthling (the witness) sees a flying saucer; saucer lands.
Extraterrestrial occupant emerges, extends friendly greetings, confides
his wish to help the human race solve its problems, takes Earthling for
a cruise to another planet, brings Earthling back. After promising
to maintain a sort of guardianship over the earth, the visitor says
farewell and flies back to his home planet.
Although these stories are told in the first person, purportedly as
fact, they perhaps should not be called hoaxes, for they can deceive
only the credulous who want to believe that supermen from other worlds
are hovering near to save our troubled planet. With no suspense, little
characterization, and ludicrously bad science, these naïve accounts are
fiction of such poor quality that they would be rejected by even the
most hard-pressed editor of fantastic tales. Whether from Venus, Mars,
Saturn, or the planets of other solar systems, these gods from the
machine all look just like human beings and either speak the colloquial
language of the contactee or communicate by thought transference. Their
physical appearance, clothing, tastes in food, habits of thought,
and ethical values usually seem indistinguishable from those of the
citizens (whether American, French, or Brazilian) who report the
visitors.
_The “Contactees”_
One man who supposedly was privileged to make contact with visitors
from space was Daniel Fry who, while strolling in the New Mexico
desert on the evening of July 4, 1950, noticed a flying saucer that
had apparently just landed. When he approached and started to touch
the ship, he suddenly heard a voice speaking in friendly caution:
“Better not touch the hull, pal, it’s still hot.” The voice, he
discovered, belonged to an extraterrestrial being in a mother ship that
was hovering some 900 miles above the earth. The craft on the ground
needed no crew, for it was a “remote-controlled cargo carrier,” sent
down to collect samples of the earth’s atmosphere. Communicating by
mental telepathy, the spaceman revealed that, although he came from a
remote planet, his ancestors had been earthmen who had migrated from
the island of Lemuria in ancient times (see _Chapter_ II). Strangely
enough, although the visitor’s first remark had shown a remarkable
command of contemporary English, he did not know what a roller coaster
was! He took such a fancy to Fry that he invited him to enter the cargo
craft and treated him to a quick flight to New York and back, a round
trip of 4000 miles completed in half an hour![X-3]
A contactee whose experience offered variations on the basic theme was
Truman Bethurum, a construction worker. According to his story, he
happened to be looking for sea shells in the Nevada desert sometime
before dawn one morning in July 1952 when he encountered a flying
saucer and its friendly crew. The captain was a female, a “queen
among women,” whose attractive costume included a bright-red skirt,
a black-velvet short-sleeved blouse, and a black beret with red
trim[X-4]. Though the grandmother of two, she was so beautiful that
at their first meeting Bethurum was speechless. Obviously trying to
put him at his ease, she smiled and said encouragingly, “Speak up, my
friend, you’re not hexed.” During the following months, he says, they
had several meetings and eventually, at her invitation, he accompanied
her on an enjoyable visit to the saucer’s home base, the planet
“Clarion.” Being placed directly behind the moon and apparently moving
in a parallel orbit, this heavenly body has entirely escaped the notice
of earthly astronomers[X-5].
George W. Van Tassel, operator of a commercial airport, resort, and
guest ranch in California (for some reason most of the better-known
contactees seem to be Californians), allegedly made contact with
space beings of a more ethereal type. Their saucers traveled on power
produced by the “transmutation of hard light particles into soft light
particles,” and a typical vehicle was 1500 feet in diameter, 300 feet
thick, and carried a crew of 7200. Why they needed so much room--more
than 70,000 cubic feet per spaceman--remains a mystery, for both the
ship and its occupants were made of pure light. The mother ships
remained thousands of miles above the earth at substations from which
they sent out their “ventlos,” or flying saucers, to patrol the earth
and try to improve conditions here. Speaking through Van Tassel, the
visitors sent many messages such as that of June 28, 1952:
“Salutations. My identity is Qel, 72nd projection, 15th wave, realms of
Schare [a saucer station in space]. We are passing over your cone of
receptivity, 172 thousand miles above you. Our center requests that I
inform you. You will see more of us if you watch the skies.”
Several times the spacemen threatened, if opposed, to launch thousands
of saucers per second against the earth. In January 1953 they warned
that they had three substations in space ready to release 500,000
saucers each; two months later, in March, they informed Van Tassel that
they now had 3½ million saucers in operation around the earth. Somehow
or other, this armada of UFOs seems to have remained invisible to both
the United States Air Force and the public[X-6].
Whether such tales are delusions, fantasies, or hoaxes may be
impossible to determine. Some contact cases, however, undoubtedly
contain elements of fraud. At worst, the witness may be deliberately
inventing the whole story from start to finish; at best, he may feel
so certain of the reality of his experience that he feels justified in
manufacturing evidence to convince possible skeptics. No matter what
his motives, when he tries to add verisimilitude to his narrative by
fabricating proofs, he joins the company of hoaxers[X-7].
In the Maury Island case (see _Chapter_ II), the witnesses offered
alleged fragments of a disabled spaceship, which turned out to be
chunks of slag. The scoutmaster in Florida exhibited singed hair on his
arm and a scorched cap to prove that he had suffered from the heat rays
of a landed flying saucer (see _Chapter_ VII), and the grain salesman
in Nebraska bolstered his tale of the Saturnian ship by pointing to
shallow cracks in a dry river bed and oil smudges on the grass (see
_Chapter_ IX).
A contactee who provided “proof” of his story was Howard Menger, who
specialized in describing visits to the moon. In the moon cities, he
said, he met many earth scientists who enjoyed a delightful, relaxed
existence. The lunar natives use no money, are born without appendixes,
and for entertainment play a game very much like baseball. In science
they are way ahead of us: using saucers equipped with “self-contained
gravity” and propelled by “processed free energy,” they transported him
from earth to moon in only two hours[X-8]. As a trophy of his visit,
Menger brought back a lunar potato. This remarkable vegetable was
supposed to have five times the protein content of an ordinary American
potato, but unfortunately it was not available for analysis. As soon
as he returned, he said, he had turned it over to the United States
Government, and the government was keeping it top secret[X-9].
_Adamski’s Travels_
Perhaps the best known of the contactees is George Adamski, who on
the night of November 20, 1952, in the desert of Southern California,
supposedly met and talked with the pilot of a vehicle that had just
arrived from Venus. Conversation was no problem; both men simply used
telepathy and sign language when words failed[X-10]. In the years since
then Adamski has reported many other pleasant chats with visitors
from Mars and Saturn as well as Venus, and has allegedly made several
journeys in their spacecraft, including an aerial tour of the moon.
On this trip he observed with surprise that the moon’s hidden side
contained fertile country abounding in lakes, rivers, vegetation, and
prosperous cities with people strolling along the sidewalks[X-11]. He
was not at all disconcerted when the Russian photographs of the moon’s
far side showed no trace of these delightful features. Obviously,
said Adamski, the Russians had simply retouched the pictures before
releasing them to the world, in order to deceive the United States and
to conceal the vegetation, trees, and buildings of the space people who
had their bases there[X-12].
[Illustration: _Figure 15._ Top, schematic drawing of Adamski’s
Venusian saucer. Bottom, schematic drawing of chicken brooder.]
Clearly aware of possible skepticism, Adamski did not ask the public to
accept his experiences on his unsupported word; as evidence, he offered
various photographs showing cigar-shaped objects, a rocky hillside with
a white blob on the horizon, and the drawing of a person apparently
clad in coveralls--without the book’s explanation no one would ever
suspect that he came from the planet Venus. One of the best-known
pictures he published showed a bell-shaped “spaceship” with circular
openings near the top and three large balls on the bottom for landing
gear. By an interesting coincidence, this craft closely resembles a
well-known type of chicken brooder, whose three infrared bulbs at the
base look very much like the “landing gear” of the alleged spacecraft
(see Figure 15). When skeptics doubted Adamski’s claim that he had
traveled from Kansas City, Missouri, to Davenport, Iowa, by flying
saucer, he displayed one of the most unusual items ever called upon
to prove the existence of spaceships: his uncanceled railway ticket,
for which he requested a refund![X-13]
_Photography and the UFO_
Those who believe in flying saucers have long hoped to obtain a good
clear photograph that would establish their existence once and for all.
Many “UFO” pictures show vague specks and blurs whose interpretation
is limited only by the imagination of the viewer. Of the many pictures
taken in good faith and offered in evidence, none shows an indubitable
spaceship. Most of them are genuine photographs showing indistinct
images of jet planes, birds, balloons, and other objects normally in
the sky. They are puzzling only until they are compared with similar
photographs of known jet planes, birds, balloons, and other normal
objects; then their identity becomes obvious.
Trick photography has often been called upon to prove the reality of
the incredible--fairies, ectoplasm, ghosts--and it has also played
a part in the history of flying saucers. While the most detailed
contact stories have usually come from the United States, for some
peculiar reason the best of the faked pictures have come from Europe
and South America. A widely publicized photograph supposedly taken
at Taormina, Sicily, in 1954 shows four men standing on a bridge and
apparently gazing at two UFOs soaring overhead [X-14]. The deep shadows
cast by the men and the bridge railing show that the sun was shining
brilliantly, but the objects in the sky, which look like the inverted
covers of teapots or sugar bowls, show only faintly shadowed areas.
Stranger yet, the shady side of one UFO is on the left, that of the
other UFO on the right. The men on the bridge have their heads tilted
at such an angle that they could not possibly have seen the objects
pictured, but are obviously looking at the hill in the background
instead of at the sky. Even a casual inspection exposes this picture as
a crude fake (see Plate VIa).
An even cruder fake was offered as evidence to Dr. Menzel in South
Africa in the summer of 1962. The optimistic photographer insisted that
he had snapped a genuine saucer on the wing, even though the circular
object shown in the print was an unmistakable hubcap, the Chevrolet
trade-mark clearly legible.
_The Isle of Lovers Hoax_
Some photographic hoaxes are more cleverly executed. In May 1952, a
few weeks after _Life_ magazine had alarmed the world with its article
“Have We Visitors from Outer Space?”[X-15], the Brazilian weekly
picture magazine _O Cruzeiro_ published startlingly clear photographs
of an alleged flying saucer[X-16]. According to the accompanying story,
a reporter and a photographer on the staff of the magazine on May 7
had visited Ilha dos Amores, an island not far from Rio de Janeiro, to
do a feature assignment. Late in the afternoon, at a moment when the
photographer just happened to have his camera pointed at the sky, the
reporter suddenly called his attention to a passing UFO. During the
minute or so the object was in view he obtained five pictures which,
along with the reporter’s eyewitness story, were released to the public
on May 17. If the editors actually believed in the reality of the
saucer, the ten-day delay before informing the world of its visit is
remarkable. The magazine has never admitted that the photographs were a
hoax, but they inspired doubt even in sympathetic investigators[X-17].
The UFO appears in a dull sky above a mountain peak. In the first
picture the object looks like a jet plane surrounded by an exhaust haze
and, with a little imagination, might be called a Saturn-like object.
In succeeding pictures it resembles the lid of a teapot, or the bottom
view of a rubber stopper for a sink. A study of the shadows quickly
reveals the fraudulent nature of these photographs: the dome on top
of the “saucer” casts its shadow to the right, while the trees and
mountains in the foreground cast their shadows to the left. The picture
could be authentic only in a peculiar world in which the sun shone from
the west on objects on the ground, but shone from the east on objects
flying in the sky!
_The Trindade Island Saucer_
The most famous of all purported photographs of a UFO, the Trindade
Island saucer, also came from Brazil. First published in Brazilian
newspapers on February 21, 1958, the pictures showed dark mountain
crags looming against an overcast sky. Above one peak appeared a
startling image (much like the _O Cruzeiro_ saucer of 1952) resembling
the planet Saturn--a flattened sphere banded round the middle by a dark
line that extended like a platform beyond the curved sides. According
to the accompanying news stories, the UFO had flown over the island of
Trindade and had been observed by the officers and crew of a ship of
the Brazilian Navy. The pictures, taken by a photographer on board, had
been examined and supposedly pronounced genuine by Navy experts before
being released to the press. Since a responsible military organization
and a major world government thus seemed to accept the photographs
as proof that flying saucers actually existed, the incident raised a
storm of official inquiry both in Brazil and abroad. Then, within a few
weeks, the storm abruptly subsided. Although no explanation was given,
the object in the pictures was obviously considered no threat to our
planet’s security (see Plate VIb).
Although saucer enthusiasts regard these pictures as genuine evidence
for the reality of UFOs, careful study of the facts strongly suggests
that this case, which rocked the Brazilian Government and created
a short-lived but world-wide saucer scare, was merely an unusually
skillful hoax[X-18].
At first glance, the circumstances of the sighting seemed to be
entirely clear and straightforward[X-19]. Trindade is a barren,
mountainous island of about six square miles, about 600 miles from
the coast of Brazil. Abandoned after the end of the Second World
War, the island remained deserted except by sea gulls until October
1957, when the Brazilian Navy established an oceanographic post and
a meteorological station there to carry out its research for the
International Geophysical Year (IGY). To facilitate the oceanographic
studies, the Navy also converted a training ship, the _Almirante
Saldanha_, into a floating laboratory equipped with scientific
apparatus and photographic darkroom. With a crew of about 300, the ship
routinely traveled between Rio de Janeiro and Trindade Island on its
duties for the IGY.
A major function of the meteorological station was the launching and
tracking of weather balloons; they were painted red, inflated with
hydrogen, and carried radio transmitters. Launched each morning, they
were tracked by radio and optical devices to show the movements of the
winds in the upper atmosphere. At a certain point (when the balloon
burst, or at a prearranged signal) the balloon released a bag of
scientific instruments which, attached to a parachute, floated to the
ground to be retrieved.
The Trindade station began operation in November 1957. Almost
immediately, UFOs were reported over the island. (Brazil had not been
immune to the flying-saucer epidemic that had begun in Texas early that
month [see _Chapter_ IX], and sentries at Itaipu Fort, near Santos, on
November 4 had reported a UFO that knocked out the lights and electric
plant.) With weather balloons going up daily, parachutes floating down
at odd times, and sea gulls cruising over the island, the advent of
other “saucers” was inevitable. During November and December several
UFOs were reported by workmen, none of whom were trained observers.
Although neither Captain Bacellar, the commanding officer at the
station, nor his officers saw any unidentified objects, he radioed Rio
to report the incidents and investigated each story. Some he found
to be false, some were based on mistaken identification of gulls and
balloons, and in others the evidence was inconclusive.
Early in January 1958, when the _Almirante Saldanha_ arrived on
schedule at Trindade, it had on board several civilian guests who were
to collaborate in various aspects of the research. Among them was
Almiro Barauna, a professional photographer. After several days at
the island, the ship prepared to leave for the return trip to Rio on
January 16. Shortly after noon Barauna was on deck with his camera,
waiting to film the departure. The sky was thinly overcast, the sea was
rough, and waves dashing against the ship and the rocky shore created a
noisy background.
According to the news accounts printed several weeks later, Captain
Viegas, of the Brazilian Air Force, suddenly shouted “_Olha o disco!_
[Flying saucer!]” Hearing the shout, Barauna peered at the sky and saw
a luminous oval object moving swiftly toward the island. Officers and
crewmen on deck also observed the UFO, he said, and interfered with
his aim as they ran about excitedly. Nevertheless he managed to take
six shots of the UFO as it approached the island, disappeared behind a
mountain peak, reversed direction and reappeared at a lower altitude,
retraced its course, and vanished with incredible speed against the
horizon. The unknown had arrived and departed in a period of about
twenty seconds.
According to the news stories, the photographer had retired to the
ship’s darkroom under the supervision of an officer to develop
the negative, and found that four of the six exposures showed the
mysterious object. He was not able to make prints, he said, because the
darkroom supplies unfortunately did not include any photographic paper.
However, he did exhibit the negative, and the officers and crewmen who
examined it allegedly agreed that it showed the same Saturn-like UFO
that had flown over the island. After the return to Rio he made prints
and enlargements and turned them over, together with the negative, to
the Brazilian Navy.
The question of authenticity arose immediately. Called down to
Intelligence headquarters for an interview, Barauna underwent a
four-hour interrogation concerning the pictures. During the questioning
he was asked, “If you were going to make a flying saucer appear on
a negative, how would you proceed?” He replied, as he later told a
reporter, “_Comandante_, I am an able photographer, specialized in
trick photography, but I could not produce one that would withstand
close and accurate examination.”[X-18]
In spite of this modest disclaimer, some of the photographic evidence
clearly suggested fraud, and a strong difference of opinion developed
among government officials. Some accepted the pictures as a genuine
record of a flying saucer; others pronounced them fakes. For several
weeks the incident was kept secret, but when eventually someone took
the prints to the President of Brazil, further concealment became
impossible. Yielding to the persuasion of certain military advisers and
newsmen, and against the advice of the Naval Ministry, he released the
pictures to the press.
[Illustration: PLATE V
_a._ Pinched lightning, August 1961. This is believed to be the first
photograph of a pinched lightning discharge. (CHAP. IX)]
[Illustration: PLATE V
_b._ Ball lightning, Lincoln, Nebraska, August 30, 1930. (CHAP. IX)]
[Illustration: PLATE VI
_a._ Trindade Island UFO, January 1958. (CHAP. X)]
[Illustration: PLATE VI
_b._ Taormina, Sicily, UFOs, 1954. (CHAP. X)]
[Illustration: PLATE VII
_a._ UFO at Boulder, Colorado, February 6, 1959. (CHAP. XII)]
[Illustration: PLATE VII
_b._ UFO over Norway, July 24, 1957. (CHAP. XII)]
[Illustration: PLATE VIII
_a._ Images produced by lens defects, Hamilton, Ohio, steel plant.
(CHAP. XI)]
[Illustration: PLATE VIII
_b._ Ghost images produced by internal reflections in lens system.
(CHAP. XII)]
_The Brazilian Naval Ministry_
The photographs were published on February 21, five weeks after they
were taken. Since the President had apparently accepted them at face
value, the Naval Ministry was obviously in a difficult position;
through an unofficial spokesman it issued a statement notable for its
lack of enthusiasm:
“On the morning of January 16, 1958, over the island of Trindade, the
crew of the school ship _Almirante Saldanha_ sighted an unidentified
aerial object for a few seconds. A civilian who was aboard the ship
took some pictures of the object. The Navy has no connection with the
case, and its only connection with the occurrence was the fact that the
photographer was aboard the school ship, and came back with the ship to
Rio.”[X-20]
On the same day another Navy spokesman released a similar unofficial
statement to _O Globo_:
“The news about a flying saucer sighted over the Island of Trindade
was received here with utmost reserve. There will be an investigation
to verify the authenticity of the sightings and photos. No officer or
sailor from the N.E. _Almirante Saldanha_ witnessed the event.”[X-20]
Immediately an international furor broke out. Were these pictures
indeed proof of extraterrestrial spaceships, or were they a hoax, with
the Brazilian President and the Brazilian Navy as victims? Who were
the witnesses, and exactly what did they report? In the United States,
high officials asked for copies of the pictures. An editor of _Look_
magazine asked Dr. Menzel to fly to Brazil to evaluate the evidence,
but later canceled the plan when the Rio office advised that the
photographs were generally considered fraudulent. Public excitement in
Brazil became so great that on February 23 the Naval Ministry released
an official statement, distinguished by its air of caution, which
concluded:
“Clearly this Ministry will not be able to make any pronouncement
concerning the reality of the object seen because the photographs do
not constitute sufficient proof for this purpose.”[X-18]
The day after the pictures were published the _Almirante Saldanha_,
which had been lying outside the harbor at Rio, received orders to
sail. Not until February 24, when the ship docked at Santos, did
newsmen have a chance to interview the officers and crewmen who
allegedly had observed the Trindade saucer and could support Barauna’s
story. None of them, it turned out, had actually seen the object.
The Assistant Naval Attaché of the United States, who was then in
Santos in connection with the visit of the U. S. Coast Guard cutter
_Westwind_, visited the Brazilian ship to collect information about
the Trindade saucer, but with little success. The commanding officer
stated that he had not seen the alleged UFO; he had seen the pictures
but refused to express an opinion on their authenticity; he stated
that his secretary might have seen the UFO but the secretary, when
questioned, preferred not to discuss the matter. The executive officer
said that he had not been on deck at the time of the sighting, but that
other persons might have seen the object.
During the next week arguments for and against the authenticity of
the photographs filled the Brazilian papers, and _O Globo_ published
deliberately faked views of a “flying saucer”--a china plate tossed
into the air. A federal deputy in an official note to the Naval
Ministry deplored their amazing failure to procure sworn statements
from the officers and crewmen who were reported to have witnessed the
UFO.
In spite of the widespread and increasing skepticism, the weekly
magazine _O Cruzeiro_ used the Trindade pictures for its lead story in
the issue of March 8. “Once bitten, twice shy” apparently did not apply
to its editors, who seemed instead to adopt the principle, “In for a
penny, in for a pound.” The photographs, they remarked editorially, not
only proved the existence of flying saucers, they also established the
authenticity of the Ilha dos Amores pictures published several years
earlier. As though to emphasize this point, the magazine assigned the
Trindade story and the interviews with witnesses to the same staff
reporter who had described the Ilha dos Amores saucer in 1952. The
Naval Ministry refrained from further comment and, since the military
authorities showed no alarm about the possibility of extraterrestrial
patrols, public interest in the pictures quickly died.
The report sent home by the U. S. Naval Attaché included the comment:
“There appear to be only two explanations for this peculiar incident,
and the peculiar handling of it by the Brazilian Government: (a) Some
overwhelming power has told the Brazilian Navy not to verify this
incident officially (which they should easily be able to do, if it
actually occurred) or to deny it (which they should easily be able to
do if it is a fake). I personally do not believe that anyone has told
the Brazilian Navy to keep quiet about it because there has been no
hint of such suppression in either Brazilian or United States circles.
I also doubt that their control of the individual officers and men
would be good enough to hold the line in any event. (b) The whole thing
is a fake publicity stunt.... This seems more likely....”[X-18]
_The Icarai Submarine Hunting Club_
The accounts originally printed in the Brazilian papers and in _O
Cruzeiro_ contain a number of significant details that have been
glossed over or ignored by UFO enthusiasts, both in Brazil[X-19] and
in the United States[X-21], who apparently accept the Trindade saucer
at face value. A study of the available news stories, facts gathered
by Intelligence officers, and of the photographs themselves leads
inescapably to the conclusion that the Trindade Island photographs were
almost certainly a hoax.
Almiro Barauna was a free-lance photographer. A professional of unusual
skill, he had long been interested in flying saucers and, some time
before the Trindade incident, he had published a purposely humorous
magazine article entitled “A Flying Saucer Hunted Me at Home” and
illustrated by admittedly faked photographs. He had also published
trick photographs of “treasure chests” lying on the ocean bottom. In
addition, Barauna specialized in underwater photography and was a
member of the Icarai Submarine Hunting Club, a group interested in skin
diving and the study of life on the ocean floor.
When the _Almirante Saldanha_ left Rio for its historic January visit
to Trindade Island, the ship had on board, as guests of the Navy, five
members of the Icarai Club. Among the five, in addition to Barauna,
were Amilar Vieira Filho, captain of the group, and José Teobaldo
Viegas, a retired captain in the Brazilian Air Force[X-22]. On January
16 when the ship was getting ready to leave Trindade, these three
friends were on deck, Barauna with his loaded Rolleiflex camera, the
other two standing some distance away. Suddenly Vieira remarked on
a big sea gull in the sky. Looking up, Viegas immediately shouted,
“Flying saucer!” and Barauna snapped his pictures.
No other eyewitnesses have been found, even though the deck was
crowded with sailors. The ship’s dentist has been listed as a witness
(in one document he appears as two persons, under two different
versions of his name) but no newspaper yet examined mentions his story.
Captain Bacellar, returning from his post as commander of the Trindade
station, has also been listed as a witness but, according to his
statement, he was not on deck when the incident occurred.
Vieira, the first man to sight the object, had called it “a big sea
gull.” When interviewed five weeks later, in the midst of the saucer
excitement, he had changed his mind about its being a sea gull, but he
was no longer certain just what he had seen. He stated that the unknown
had been in view for twenty seconds at most, and had disappeared too
quickly for him to note any details; it was simply an oval gray object
that seemed to flash briefly before it vanished. He did not mention the
Saturn-like bands around the middle that are a conspicuous feature of
the photograph.
_The Trindade Photographs_
Accounts of the Trindade affair often remark that the photographs
must be genuine because no opportunity for fraud occurred. On the
contrary, there were ample and repeated opportunities. Since Barauna
was not under observation when he loaded his camera, he could easily
have inserted a prepared film, with no one the wiser. With the type of
camera used, the operation would have been simple. He was again free
from observation when he developed the negatives. Captain Bacellar
escorted him to the door of the darkroom but remained outside, on guard
at the door. The only person to accompany Barauna inside (to help by
holding a flashlight) was his friend Viegas--the same man who had cried
“Flying saucer!”
When Barauna emerged with the dripping film, Bacellar examined it but
what he expected to find is a question, since he had not observed the
UFO. The witnesses allegedly agreed, however, that the negatives showed
the object they had seen in the sky--an amazing feat when we remember
that the Rolleiflex film frame is small, only about 2.25 inches square.
In the print of Frame 3 shown in _O Cruzeiro_[X-22], the UFO is
slightly more than ¼ inch long and less than ⅛ inch thick. Assuming an
enlargement factor of a little more than three, we find that the UFO on
the negative would have appeared merely as a pale blur about 1/16 of an
inch in length and no thicker than a pencil line. Miraculous eyesight
would have been required to distinguish a “Saturn-like” or any other
shape.
The Navy’s officers on board showed astonishingly little interest in
the film and did nothing to prevent the possibility of fraud. All
during the homeward trip the photographer had both the camera and the
negative in his own possession. When the ship stopped at Santos, he
and his fellow club members were allowed to debark (with camera and
negative), and they completed the journey to Rio by bus. The ship had
been anchored at Rio for two days before Captain Bacellar, of the
Trindade station, finally called on Barauna and asked to see the prints
so that he could show them to the Navy. Thus the photographer had been
free of supervision for days. In that time he could have produced
pictures of little men from Mars, if he had wanted to.
The pictures themselves raise many questions. The three witnesses had
emphasized the brilliance of the UFO, yet the prints show merely a gray
shape with no suggestion of luminosity. Barauna had used a Rolleiflex
camera, 2.8 Model E, f/8 lens, set at 125. Finding that he had
overexposed the film, he said, he had treated the negative with silver
salts after development in order to increase the contrast. (During this
procedure he was, again, without official supervision.)
The prints used in _O Cruzeiro_ have obviously been cropped since,
unlike the film frames, they are not square. Frame 1 shows the UFO
above the sea, some distance from the island; Frame 2 shows the
UFO above rocky crags, at the right of a peak. Frame 3 shows it at
the right of the peak but at lower altitude. Frames 4 and 5, not
reproduced, did not show the object, and in Frame 6 the UFO is a mere
speck low on the horizon.
Frame 3, the only one showing the Saturn-like shape, deserves special
attention. In the published print the mountains in the foreground are
quite clear, while the UFO is little more than a dark line with an
indistinct beginning and end, with a faint suggestion of rounding at
top and bottom; without the dark line the curves would scarcely be
visible, so completely does the object merge into the background of
overcast sky. The picture widely distributed by news agencies is a
further enlargement of the section containing the UFO. In the enlarged
section, the foreground rocks are a mere black blur, but the UFO has
gained greatly in clarity. The central band is darker, particularly at
the left, and the outlines of the object are no longer vague.
The Navy’s study of the negatives revealed several dubious features.
The details of the land in the foreground were very sharp but the UFO
disk was hazy, showed little contrast, and was essentially without
shadows. The object in Frame 2 seemed to have been inverted, as
compared with Frames 1 and 3. From the reported high velocity of the
saucer and the fast shutter speed, some lateral haziness might have
been expected, but no such blurring appeared.
Exactly when and how the fraudulent images were produced--if they were
fraudulent--cannot be known. Experienced photographers can easily think
of a dozen possible devices. The probability that they were faked is
overwhelming and, but for the embarrassing fact that the Brazilian
President had seemed to sponsor them publicly, the Naval Ministry would
undoubtedly have exposed the entire hoax.
In summary, the facts are these: The man who made the Trindade pictures
had no connection with the Brazilian Navy; he was a professional
photographer noted particularly as an expert at trick photography. No
officer or crewman of the Brazilian Navy reported seeing the UFO; in
addition to the photographer, only two persons are on record as actual
eyewitnesses; both of them were personal friends of the photographer;
neither of them had any connection with the Brazilian Navy. The
photographer had ample time and many opportunities to fake the
pictures. A Rolleiflex camera can easily be used for double exposures.
A series of pictures of a model saucer against a dark background could
be rerolled and exposed a second time to provide the background, an
old and well-known photographic trick. The pictures themselves show
internal inconsistencies. The Brazilian Naval Ministry never accepted
the pictures as authentic records of a flying saucer.[C]
[C] During a visit to Rio de Janeiro in February 1963, Dr. Menzel
discussed this case with some of Brazil’s leading astronomers; they
concurred in the view that the Trindade saucer was a hoax.
The final paragraph from a United States Intelligence report provides
perhaps the most appropriate comment on the affair:
“It is the reporting officer’s private opinion that a flying saucer
sighting would be unlikely at the very barren island of Trindade, since
everyone knows that Martians are extremely comfort-loving creatures.”
_Project Ozma_
Astronomers have found no evidence suggesting that intelligent life
exists on any of earth’s sister planets. Most scientists would agree,
however, that life of some kind probably does exist in other parts
of our galaxy and in other galaxies. Even if this probability were
certainty and space travel were possible over the vast distances we
measure in light years, the chance that earthman and alien will ever
establish physical contact remains infinitesimally small. An explorer
(whether from earth or from a planet of another sun) would have to
begin by locating, among the millions of stars in the heavens, a
particular star that had a family of life-bearing planets. If he were
able to identify one of these needles in the cosmic haystack, he
would next have to find out which of the planets supported living,
intelligent organisms. If he could find the planet and set down his
spaceship, the explorer would then have to try to identify and to
communicate with creatures that might be unimaginably strange--so
strange that he would not recognize them as either living or
intelligent.
At present, only light waves and radio waves can bridge the immensities
of space. Physical travel to other star systems is not now and may
never be possible. Nevertheless, men are making attempts to find out
whether other intelligent beings do exist outside the solar system
and, if so, where. The earliest effort, known as Project Ozma, started
a few years ago at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green
Bank, West Virginia. As the first step in a systematic search, the
astronomers began to listen for possible radio signals from the
neighborhood of certain stars. Tau Ceti, Epsilon Eridani, and 61 Cygni
were chosen as the first targets because they lie within range of our
radio telescopes--ten to eleven light years distant--and because they
resemble our own sun in age and type and therefore might have planetary
systems not unlike our own. So far, the radio telescopes have detected
no phenomena that might be interpreted as artificial signals.
The problems involved are incredibly difficult. A background of radio
noise--“swishes,” “whistles,” “tweeks”--comes in constantly from the
universe at large. Deliberate signals, if they occurred, would be hard
to distinguish from the random noise. Even if signals came in and
were detected, they might still be indecipherable just as the written
records of some early civilizations on our own planet remain a mystery.
Egyptian hieroglyphs were meaningless pictures for millennia until
the Rosetta stone provided the key, less than 200 years ago. The many
pages of text and pictures left by the Mayan Indians cannot yet be
read, except for some dates and a few astronomical symbols. Hundreds
of inscriptions exist in the Etruscan language, written in an alphabet
that resembles the familiar Greek, but scholars have deciphered only a
few words.
If we are not able to interpret the records devised and set down by
human beings like ourselves, we will not easily understand signals that
might possibly be broadcast by aliens from the planets of other suns.
[X-1] Wiener, J. S. _The Piltdown Forgery._ London: Oxford Univ. Press,
1955.
[X-2] MacDougall, C. D. _Hoaxes._ New York: Ace Books, 1958.
[X-3] Fry, D. W. _The White Sands Incident._ Los Angeles: New Age Publ.
Co., 1954.
[X-4] Redondo Beach (Calif.) _Daily Breeze_, September 25, 1953.
[X-5] Bethurum, T. _Aboard a Flying Saucer._ Los Angeles: De Vorss &
Co., 1954.
[X-6] Van Tassel, G. W. _I Rode a Flying Saucer._ Los Angeles: New Age
Publ. Co., 1952.
[X-7] Cahn, J. P. “Flying Saucers and the Mysterious Little Men,”
_True_ magazine (September 1952).
[X-8] Menger, H. _From Outer Space To You._ Clarksburg, West Virginia:
Saucerian Publications, 1959.
[X-9] Peterborough (N.H.) _Transcript_, Oct. 30, 1958.
[X-10] Leslie, D., and Adamski, G. _Flying Saucers Have Landed._ New
York: British Book Centre, 1953.
[X-11] Adamski, G. _Inside the Space Ships._ Abelard-Schuman, 1955.
[X-12] ---- _Flying Saucers, Farewell._ Abelard-Schuman, 1961.
[X-13] _UFO Investigator_ (June 1959).
[X-14] Michel, A. _The Truth about Flying Saucers._ New York: Criterion
Books, 1956.
[X-15] “Have We Visitors from Outer Space?” _Life_ magazine (April 4,
1952).
[X-16] Rio de Janeiro: _O Cruzeiro_, May 17, 1952.
[X-17] Civilian Saucer Investigations _Quarterly Bulletin_ (September
1952).
[X-18] Air Force Files.
[X-19] _UFO Critical Bulletin_ (March-April 1958).
[X-20] Fontes, O. T. “The Brazilian Navy UFO Sighting at the Island of
Trindade,” _Flying Saucers_ (February 1961), p. 27 ff.
[X-21] Maney, C. A., and Hall, R. _The Challenge of Unidentified Flying
Objects._ Washington, D.C., 1961.
[X-22] Rio de Janeiro: _O Cruzeiro_, March 8, 1958.
_Chapter_ XI
ANGEL HAIR, PANCAKES, ETC.
If thousands of aircraft from other planets have indeed been patrolling
the earth for many years (according to some authors, for centuries),
they have achieved an incredibly perfect safety record. Disabled or
wrecked flying saucers have occasionally been reported, but the debris
and bodies to be expected from such incidents have never been located.
A “mummified man,” sometimes referred to as proof of such a
catastrophe, may be seen at Caspar, Wyoming. Found in the Rocky
Mountains in the autumn of 1932, this little creature measures 6½
inches high in a sitting position and weighs three-quarters of a pound.
Paleontologists recognize it as _Hesperopithecus_, an anthropoid
denizen of earth during the Pliocene period. The mummified body of
another such creature, supposedly found in Arizona, has also been
called the remains of “a little green man.”[XI-1] In 1952 four
spaceships were supposed to have crashed in the deserts of New Mexico
and Arizona, carrying the bodies of thirty-four “little men”[XI-2],
but the only evidence offered for this disaster was a chunk of
“unknown metal” that proved to be ordinary aluminum, and the entire
drama was shown to be the work of a known hoaxer[XI-3]. Although a
few flying-saucer organizations regard such “humanoid” evidence with
some doubt, others, such as the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization
(APRO) are less skeptical of the reality of “little men.”[XI-4]
UFO publications have reported the finding of various substances
alleged to have been produced by UFOs. The offices of Air Force
investigators at Dayton house a small museum of such “pieces of
saucers”--old batteries, meteorites, parts of primitive radios, rocks,
corroded lead pipe, tangles of wire, strips of tin foil. Although
a few of these specimens have been sent in by optimistic hoaxers,
most of them have been submitted by genuinely puzzled citizens. When
analysis shows the normal origin of such an object, the finder usually
accepts the verdict calmly, whether he is disappointed or relieved,
but occasionally he rejects the identification and indignantly accuses
the Air Force of theft, substitution, or plain lying to suppress the
“truth.” Nevertheless, not a single fragment studied so far--animal,
vegetable, or mineral--shows any evidence that it grew or was
constructed on an alien world.
_Angel Hair and Spiders_
Some centuries ago the primitive inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands,
observing the feathery, hairlike threads of volcanic glass left on
the ground from ancient eruptions, accounted for the substance by
the legend that the goddess Pelee had once stopped somewhere in the
neighborhood to comb her hair. “Angel hair,” a term in UFO parlance
used to describe any unfamiliar fibers, strands, threads, liquids,
granules, and powders found on the earth and supposedly deposited from
flying saucers, offers an interesting analogy.
_Fils de la Vierge_--the hair of the Virgin Mary--is the usual French
phrase for gossamer or cobwebs, whose origin was long a mystery.
Similarly the English “gossamer” commonly means cobwebs. According to
one source, the word may be derived from _gaze à Marie_--the gauze of
Mary. According to legend, cobwebs were formed from threads that fell
from the shroud of the Virgin Mary on her Assumption. UFO enthusiasts
in France began to use _fils de la Vierge_ in 1952, to describe the
cobwebby material that allegedly fell from flying saucers. Translators
of the French UFO publications, instead of using the English equivalent
“gossamer” or “cobwebs,” chose to create the new term “angel hair”
which, unlike the French, implies an entirely strange substance, one
that has no apparent connection with such ordinary earthly phenomena as
spiders.
Two remarkable falls of angel hair were reported in France on October
17 and 27, 1952. In both incidents, witnesses observed in the sky a
strangely shaped, cottony cloud at a height of several thousand feet.
Above it was a long, narrow, cylindrical object trailed by a white
plume, moving slowly across the sky and accompanied by twenty or thirty
smaller objects that looked like puffs of smoke. Following a broken
path, they made rapid zigzag motions, and left a broad ribbon of
white substance that slowly drifted to the ground and clung to trees,
telephone wires, and roofs of houses. These masses of white threads
were described as like wool, nylon, or Fiberglas. When rolled into a
ball they became gelatinous and disappeared within a few hours; set on
fire, they burned like cellophane.
One witness was able to disentangle a single strand more than ten yards
long. None of the material, unfortunately, was preserved for study.
Students of UFOs pondered the unusual phenomenon: “If the observers
really did see what they described, and if all these objects were
machines guided by a single intelligence, then what mysterious
experiment were they performing? What purpose was served by the strange
ballet of paired saucers? What was the meaning of the whitish streak
appearing between two saucers on separation? What, finally, was the
‘angel’s hair’ that sublimed so readily in the air?”[XI-5, p. 150]
UFO enthusiasts have suggested various theories of the nature and
origin of the mysterious substance. According to one hypothesis[XI-5,
p. 149], angel hair might be produced in the wake of a spacecraft
moving in a force field; ionization of the atmosphere would produce
ultraheavy particles which would react with ordinary air to form a
kind of precipitate-angel hair--which would disintegrate as ionization
decreased (see _Chapter_ IX). Another theory suggests that angel hair
might be a chain polymer of cellulose containing radioactive carbon 14
(the carbon 14 being produced by the action of cosmic rays on atoms
of nitrogen in the atmosphere), hydrogen, and oxygen from moisture in
the air, the three elements combining under the action of ultraheavy
particles produced by ionization[XI-6]. This theory overlooks the fact
that cellulose is not formed from a combination of carbon dioxide,
oxygen, and hydrogen in air. Rather, it is made by living organisms in
a series of complicated enzymic reactions. Even if cellulose could be
made by the hypothetical reaction suggested, it would contain no more
carbon 14 than does the ordinary carbon dioxide in the air.
To French entomologists, the angel hair seen in October 1952, was
no mystery at all. The objects dancing the strange ballet were not
spaceships, but spiders. Far from performing a mysterious experiment,
they were merely carrying out the well-established routine of migration.
Each year the young spiders of most species leave the nests of their
infancy and prepare to establish their own homes. Crawling by the
hundreds or the thousands to the tops of fence posts, walls, or trees,
they spin long silken webs which, inflated by the air, carry the tiny
emigrants up from the ground. These gossamer parachutes drift up and
along on rising air currents, sometimes to great heights; they may
soar for a few yards or for many miles over hills and valleys. These
migrating balloonists have been observed as high as 14,000 feet, and
at sea 200 miles from any land. Eventually drifting back to earth,
the spiders detach the now useless parachutes and move off to build
new nests for the coming year, while the abandoned gossamer may pile
up in great masses on trees, fences, telephone wires, and ground, to
decay and vanish in a matter of hours. These gossamer showers sometimes
include so many outworn webs that the filmy blankets of fine silk may
be several inches deep and may cover an entire landscape like snow.
These migrations occur in spring or, more frequently, in autumn--but
only when the weather is exactly right. Spiders may sit patiently for
days, waiting for a calm, clear, windless day. On such days the steady
upward currents of air from the sun-warmed ground carry the spiders
gently aloft[XI-7]. The association of angel hair with UFO sightings is
completely natural. The drifting patches of gossamer reflect the sun
brilliantly. A whole armada of saucers can appear overhead and then
vanish as the gossamer cascades to earth.
The description of the material and the date of the fall both indicate
that the angel hair observed in France in October 1952 was of arachnid
origin. Even the weather was exactly right--“superb, with a sky of
cloudless blue”--for the migration of a smother of spiders.
A similar fall of angel hair occurred in the United States on October
22, 1954, near a school in Marysville, Ohio. At afternoon recess the
pupils of the Jerome Elementary School noticed a dazzlingly bright
object in the sky. It disappeared, and for the next forty-five minutes
both children and teachers watched white, cottonlike tufts floating
slowly down to the ground. The material was in long strands, very fine
and soft, could be stretched and rolled into a tiny ball, but quickly
vanished to nothing and left a green stain on the hands. The stuff clung
to grass and cars, draped the telephone wires for a distance of three
miles, and was like a misty canopy over the road[XI-6].
Unfortunately none of the material was preserved and no analysis was
possible. Marysville is near Columbus, Ohio, an industrial center,
and the stuff might have been waste products from one of the many
factories. Since similar falls were reported in Indiana during the same
period, the substance more probably was gossamer. As in the French
incidents, the time was late October and the weather was perfect, a
warm autumn day with a sunny, cloudless sky. Both the time and the
weather were ideal for migrating spiders to take to the air, float down
to earth on their fluffy parachutes, and then discard the no longer
necessary _fils de la Vierge_.
Many falls of angel hair that occur in the warm days of Indian
summer are probably abandoned gossamer. It is significant that of
fourteen such incidents reported in Europe and the United States, all
but three took place in October and November, the season of spider
migration[XI-6]. In one of the three incidents reported in other months
(Horseheads, New York, February 21, 1955) the angel hair was identified
as waste products from the local milk plant.
One of the most recent reports of angel hair came from Sebree,
Kentucky, on September 11, 1962, when state police and the local Civil
Defense director were called in to investigate a strange substance that
looked like spun glass, which had been floating down near the residence
of Mr. Y in great quantities for more than an hour. The Air Force, when
called for advice, suggested three possibilities: the material might
be chemicals used in cloud seeding, might be refuse from a defective
filter in a chemical or industrial plant, or might be gossamer formed
by migrating spiders. The first two possibilities were quickly ruled
out. The witnesses, when requestioned, remembered that they had indeed
noticed spiders clinging to several bits of the material they had
picked up. The troopers’ report concluded, “It is the belief of this
unit the substance observed was gossamer formed by huge quantities of
migrating spiders moving, which is normal for this season.”
The yearly migration of spiders and sloughing of gossamer is an
established fact. As an explanation of angel hair it is far less
fantastic than a still-hypothetical cruising spaceship.
_Other Varieties of Angel Hair_
Several types of angel hair not of arachnid origin have been reported
in industrial areas, particularly in and near cities that have textile
factories. When the filtering system of such a factory fails to work
properly, lint and waste residues may be thrown into the air to be
carried away by the wind and eventually deposited on the ground.
Drifting fibers of nylon, rayon, and other fabrics can mystify an
observer, especially if the residues break and disappear when touched.
Some cities, such as Cincinnati, maintain an Air Pollution Center to
deal with the problems resulting from air contamination by industrial
wastes. Scientists at this and other centers often collaborate with
ATIC in identifying unknown substances reported in connection with UFOs.
Late in the afternoon of September 25, 1956, a housewife in Cincinnati
noticed a strange substance floating down into her yard, a white,
fibrous material that curled when she touched it. Wondering if she
had found some angel hair, she described the incident to the editors
of _Orbit_, a saucer publication; in addition, she collected some of
the material in a jar and sent it to the Air Force for analysis[XI-8].
Working in collaboration with the Air Pollution Center at Cincinnati,
ATIC investigators subjected the material to chemical and microscopic
tests and identified it as waste products from fibers of cuprammonium
(Bemberg) rayon, from a local industrial plant[XI-9].
The possible varieties of angel hair increase with the development of
new technologies. During March and April 1959, the Air Force received
many reports that flying saucers were cruising over the mountains near
Coburn, Virginia, regularly used a landing strip on an inaccessible
peak of Sheep Rock Mountain, and frequently dropped angel hair on
the nearby countryside. The investigating officer collected some of
the material and identified it as a type of “window,” the rolls or
long strips of aluminum foil used by the military in World War II to
produce spurious radar echoes and confuse enemy anti-aircraft fire. The
Coburn angel hair was identical with the foil used by Air Force planes
carrying out experiments in the area. “Window” falls very slowly;
dropped from a height of 40,000 feet, it may easily be visible for
some time to ground observers, as well as interfere with local radar
reception[XI-10].
A similar angel-hair incident was reported on November 23, 1960,
when many residents in southern Michigan and the Midwest reported a
mysterious, glowing white object in the eastern sky that was dropping
strange material to the earth. Witnesses described the object variously
as a comet, a satellite with a tail, or a saucer-shaped UFO. The
angel hair was quickly identified as foil dropped by planes that were
conducting a test of radar reception[XI-11].
Reports of angel hair still come in occasionally to ATIC and, if
the explanation is not immediately obvious, are investigated. On
the afternoon of October 12, 1959, officials at Robins Air Force
Base, Georgia, received a telephone call stating that unidentified
substances were falling from unknown objects in the sky near the town
of Washington. Two Air Force investigators arrived in the town before
evening to interview the witnesses and examine the material.
The first sighting had occurred shortly before noon, when a farm woman
noticed an object in the sky, traveling not particularly fast from
southeast to west. A stream of peculiar-looking substance, broad as the
vapor trail of a jet plane, was trailing behind and floating toward the
earth. The object itself was “as large as a football,” brown or black
in color, and maintained a perfectly straight, even course. A few hours
later in a town a few miles northeast, a man mowing his lawn noticed on
the grass two whitish-gray streaks about ten feet long and eight inches
wide, extending from east to west. Deciding that the peculiar streaks
were a fungus or a mold, he mowed across them; at once a gray dust rose
about twenty inches into the air and then settled back to earth.
The Air Force investigators took samples of the dusty earth and grass
for analysis. Chemical tests showed the presence of silver iodide.
Finding silver in such an unlikely place posed a problem, but it
also pointed the way to a solution. Silver iodide and other silver
halides are used in cloud seeding to produce rain; long “plumes” of
this material, ejected from planes, have been successfully tracked in
mountainous country for distances of thirty-five miles downwind. A
few questions in the right places produced the answer: research teams
from the University of Georgia at Athens and from the Lockheed plant
at Marietta had been in the air that day, carrying out experiments
in cloud seeding. The angel hair was the silver iodide used in the
experiment[XI-10].
Angel hair of less mysterious origin has now found its way into the
culinary world. The restaurant of the Hotel Bristol in Córdoba,
Argentina, offers “Angel-hair soup,” very fine threadlike spaghetti in
chicken broth.
_The Wisconsin Pancakes_
Of the many substances offered the public as proof of extraterrestrial
visitors, probably few have evoked more publicity than the Wisconsin
pancakes. According to a plumber named Joe Simonton, of Eagle River,
Wisconsin, a flying saucer with three peculiarly dressed occupants
appeared in his yard on April 18, 1961, and hovered a few feet above
the ground. When one of the saucermen indicated by sign language that
he was thirsty and held out a two-handled jug, Simonton obligingly
filled it with well water and handed it back. Looking through the open
hatchway, he saw another spaceman cooking something on a kind of grill.
When the spaceman noticed the terrestrial’s interest, he presented him
with three “pancakes” from the grill--thin, oblong, greasy, rubbery
pastries perforated by small round holes and smelling strongly of
goose grease. The saucer then departed. Although Simonton’s curiosity
apparently stopped short of tasting these gifts, he took them to a
friend of his in Eagle River, a county judge and a member in good
standing of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena
(NICAP)[XI-12].
Eager to learn whether the flapjacks came from this world or another,
the judge promptly mailed one of them to NICAP headquarters in
Washington, D.C., explained its history and requested an analysis. At
the same time he gave the story, as far as it went, to the newspapers.
After two weeks of anxious waiting, on May 7 he again wrote to NICAP,
protesting their failure to acknowledge his parcel and demanding either
an analysis or the pancake. This time he received a prompt reply:
NICAP deplored the publicity involving the organization with such a
fantastic-sounding claim, but agreed to send the stuff to a chemist.
Meanwhile time was passing and pancakes, at least terrestrial ones,
don’t last forever. Without waiting for the report from the chemist
the judge submitted one of the remaining pancakes to Air Force
investigators of UFOs. On May 25--the cakes were now more than a
month old--he wrote a third letter, excoriating NICAP for its lack of
enthusiasm over the evidence, and sent a carbon copy to Ray Palmer,
editor of _Flying Saucers_, who in the early days of UFOs had been
their staunch proponent (see _Chapter_ II). The magazine promptly
published the letter, with comments, as well as an editorial that
solemnly reproached NICAP for its attitude toward contactee stories in
general[XI-13].
If the magazine and the judge had planned the entire episode
deliberately to embarrass NICAP, they could not have timed it better.
Busy trying to promote a Congressional hearing on flying saucers, NICAP
apparently had no time, facilities, or inclination to investigate
flapjacks of such dubious origin. Interrupted by phone calls, besieged
by reporters, and generally harassed, NICAP mailed the cake to an Ohio
physics professor, a member of the organization, in the hope that he
could induce his colleague in the chemistry department to analyze the
cake. Since the chemistry professor was ill, the physics professor
returned the specimen to headquarters in Washington. Old and tired as
it must have been by this time, the cake then was dispatched to New
York to another NICAP member, a chemist, who began some preliminary
tests.
Sometime during these weeks the Air Force announced the results of
its analysis. The pancakes consisted of starch, fat, buckwheat hulls,
soybean hulls, wheat bran, and other common substances; bacteriological
and radiation readings were normal[XI-14]. Obviously the specimen
had been an ordinary pancake fried on earth--or else the spacemen’s
home planet produced grains that are indistinguishable from those
flourishing on earth.
NICAP, however, had the last word. Preliminary tests by their chemist
had shown that the cakes contained a common type of hydrogenated
oil shortening that melted at body temperature. Further tests were
temporarily delayed because of the expense. However, NICAP assured the
judge, the tests would be completed sometime, and any fragments left
over would be saved and returned![XI-15]
_The Moon Bridge_
On the evening of July 29, 1953, Mr. J. J. O’Neill, a science reporter
for the New York _Herald Tribune_, was looking at the moon through his
small telescope when he saw what he believed to be a shaft of light
shining from the mountainous ridge above the Mare Crisium crater and
fanning out into the shadowed area of the crater wall. According to his
interpretation, the light was coming from underneath a new structure, a
gigantic natural bridge twelve to twenty miles long that arched over a
gap in the mountainous rim. This region of the moon had been thoroughly
studied and mapped during the previous century and no such feature had
ever been noticed. The sudden appearance of so spectacular an object,
if true, would indeed require explanation. Alerted by news reports of
the moon bridge, a British amateur astronomer, H. P. Wilkins, reported
a few weeks later that he, too, could see the mysterious arch through
his telescope (see Figure 16).
To saucer enthusiasts these reports constituted proof that the moon was
inhabited. Since Nature alone could not have formed such an arch in so
short a time, they argued, the bridge must be artificial. The structure
might have been built by creatures living on the moon, perhaps in
enormous underground cities. These beings might be native Selenites,
or they might be colonists from Mars or from planets belonging to
another solar system who were using the moon as a base for their
spaceships[XI-16].
[Illustration: _Figure 16._ The “Moon Bridge.” A, Just before sunset
light fans out from beneath “arch”; B, the fan narrows as sun sinks
lower; C, fan begins to disappear as sun sets below horizon. (Based on
sketches by the late H. P. Wilkins.)]
Professional astronomers, queried about the mysterious bridge, pointed
out that sunlight could not have produced the phenomenon in the way
described. When a bright lamp shines through an open doorway into a
darkened room, the light spreads out like a fan into the shadowed area
because the light source is very near. But the supposed light source
in this case was the far-distant sun. If a shaft of sunlight were
shining under a huge lunar arch, as claimed, the opposite boundaries
of the illuminated area would be essentially parallel, not divergent
like the fan-shaped region described. Examining the Mare Crisium
wall through the fifteen-inch Harvard telescope, Dr. Menzel (who was
therefore labeled “one of the Army stooges”[XI-16a]) concluded that
the bright area observed by the amateurs must have been a high plateau
that was still illuminated by the setting sun while the rest of the
crater wall was already in darkness. The roughly curved boundary of
the illuminated plateau, seen against the shadowed mountains, had
been mistakenly interpreted as a bridge. Dr. G. P. Kuiper, one of the
world’s leading authorities on the moon, also studied the area with the
eighty-two-inch reflecting telescope at the McDonald Observatory, and
reached the same conclusion.
One writer offered further proof (derived from an unnamed source)
for the reality of the new bridge. Astronomers at Mount Palomar
Observatory, he asserted, had made a secret study that confirmed the
presence of the structure; furthermore a spectrographic analysis was
supposed to have proved that the bridge was made of metal[XI-16].
Sensible comment on these statements is not easy. A “secret” study
would be impossible since the moon’s face is obviously open to all
viewers, and the purported chemical analysis is sheer nonsense. The
spectroscope can tell the physicist what luminous gases are present
in the atmosphere around a heavenly body, but it cannot reveal the
composition of a solid object on the surface of the body, unless the
object is first heated until it vaporizes and is transformed into gas.
Before a physicist could make a spectrographic analysis of the alleged
lunar structure, he would have to land on the moon and chip off a piece
of the “bridge” itself.
“_Pieces of Saucers_”
In UFO publications, any oddly shaped chunk of rock or metal is
likely to be described as a fragment of an interplanetary craft. A
six-inch meteorite that fell at Sylacauga, Alabama, (_Chapter_ V)
has been classified in one saucer book as an “unidentified crashed
object.”[XI-16] By peculiar reverse logic, sometimes the absence of a
solid fragment is adduced as equally valid evidence of flying saucers.
The green fireballs of New Mexico (_Chapter_ V) were identified as
spacecraft partly because they did not leave material traces on the
ground. Similarly, when a small object apparently struck and went
through a metal signboard in New Haven, Connecticut, on August 19,
1953, the object itself could not be found. Nevertheless, from a study
of the size and shape of the hole and the material around the hole,
saucer investigators, with more than Sherlockian skill, concluded that
the object must have been a missile from outer space.
To identify “pieces of saucers,” a new pseudoscience has now developed
which we may call “xenochemistry,” the interpretation of substances
allegedly from other planets. In xenochemistry, a full qualitative and
quantitative analysis is usually not performed and exact results are
not made public. From an identification and sometimes a quantitative
estimate of one or two of the elements present in the specimen, the
investigator infers the nature of the rest and treats the inference
as proved fact. On the basis of this “analysis” he concludes that the
object, before it entered our atmosphere, must have had a certain
chemical composition that is unknown or impossible on earth and that
the object therefore came from another planet.
_Silver Rain in Brazil_
One of the most publicized substances to be analyzed in this way was
the “silver rain” that allegedly fell from an unidentified flying
object in Brazil. The incident occurred on December 13, 1954, in the
city of Campinas and the witness was a housewife but, as in many UFO
sightings, exactly what happened is not easy to find out[XI-17]. UFO
publications in England, New Zealand, and the United States reported
that the sighting had occurred at night but, in spite of the darkness,
the witness had observed the objects in detail. She described three
gray-colored, circular flying saucers; each was made up of two sections
or plates, one placed on top of the other; the top plate rotated
continuously and sent out a strong light. Moving soundlessly and in
close formation, the three saucers had performed fantastic acrobatics
over the city, apparently unnoticed by the other residents. Suddenly
one of them had peeled off and dived low over the roof of the woman’s
house, lighting up the whole neighborhood with the brilliant glare of
its rotating section; then, going into a high-speed climb, it dropped
at her feet a liquid substance that fell “like silver rain.”
According to the more generally accepted and more probable version, the
incident occurred in the morning in full daylight. The housewife was
feeding her poultry when she heard a noise on the ground near her feet.
Stooping down, she observed a pool of shiny liquid, like silver rain,
which solidified within a few seconds. Looking up, she saw three large
objects moving rapidly high in the sky and they looked to her like
flying saucers.
A reporter on the Campinas _Correio Popular_, hearing rumors that a
flying saucer had dropped strange material “something like lead,”
interviewed the woman, collected some fragments that a neighbor had
picked up, and took them to a local chemist for analysis. The newspaper
then reported that the stuff was absolutely pure tin--that is, it was
about 90 per cent pure tin and the rest was either oxidation or metal
alloys that were unknown on earth[XI-17, XI-18, XI-19].
Understandably interested in this report, members of the Brazilian Air
Force also interviewed the witness and collected some of the fragments
she showed them, as well as other fragments that had fallen about the
same time in other parts of the city. Laboratory analysis showed the
material to be merely solder. Several large airports not far from
Campinas might well have had large planes in the air; they could have
dropped the solder. The Air Force obviously saw no need to invoke the
presence of extraterrestrial vehicles to account for the incident and
considered the problem solved, but Brazilian saucer enthusiasts refused
to accept this explanation. In their opinion the Air Force had either
gotten hold of the wrong material or was covering up the true facts.
Two years later, in the autumn of 1956, the reporter who had ordered
the original analysis received another collection of fragments and
turned them over to a group of civilian investigators of UFO phenomena.
Although he did not know the full history of the new fragments
(unfortunately he had forgotten the names of the persons who gave them
to him), he himself was convinced that they were part of the original
shower of silver rain. Accepting this theory, the civilians sent the
fragments to the United States for analysis: one part to a sympathetic
scientist at an Ohio college, who asked a chemist colleague to test the
material, and another to a commercial chemist in New York. When the
New York chemist, like the Brazilian Air Force in 1954, reported that
the material was an ordinary tin solder, the UFO group concluded that
the fragment sent him must have been spurious, and refused to accept
his findings. The Ohio chemist reported that his specimen contained
tin, did not contain antimony, and had a density of 10.3. Since the
density of tin is 7.3, the sample obviously contained other elements in
addition to tin.
With the reports in hand, the editor of the Brazilian _UFO Critical
Bulletin_ published the xenochemical conclusion under the headline,
“Stuff Analyzed by American and Brazilian Scientists Proves the UFOs
Are Non-Terrestrial Flying Machines.”[XI-18]
The full facts on which this conclusion rests should presumably be
available for study, but they have never been published. The origin of
the 1956 fragments is unknown; they may or may not have been part of
the 1954 fall. But the 1954 incident at least offered an apparently
ideal chance to establish beyond doubt the exact composition of a
substance that fell from some object in the sky, and to determine
whether it came from earth or from beyond. The material did not
deliquesce or disappear, as gossamer and industrial waste may do,
but remained available for analysis. Incredibly, this ideal chance
was lost. Of the several chemists involved, none made a complete
qualitative, quantitative, and spectroscopic analysis, and none
published his complete data. The Ohio chemist, busy with ordinary
duties, had time to make only a preliminary analysis of the 1956
fragment. He did not determine the amount of tin present and did not
determine what elements other than tin were in the sample. The density
of the 1954 sample is not known and the results of the complete
qualitative, quantitative, and spectrographic tests, if performed, are
not available.
When a businessman sends a specimen to a commercial chemist for
analysis, he expects to receive a specific list of exactly what
elements it contains and in what percentages. If he received, instead,
results such as those of the silver-rain analysis, plus the chemist’s
opinion that the specimen used to consist of something else in
different proportions, the businessman would very properly refuse to
pay.
No competent chemist would use the meager data available to assert
that the 1954 and 1956 fragments had an identical origin, or that they
were originally composed only of pure tin. A quantitative analysis
theoretically could show that a given sample is composed entirely of
a certain element such as tin, but if the sample contains only 90 per
cent tin, 10 per cent obviously consists of other elements, and the
specimen is not 100 per cent pure tin.
With so few facts available, the actual identity of the silver rain can
only be guessed at, but overwhelming evidence indicates that it was
made right here on earth.
The _Handbook of Chemistry and Physics_ lists a large number of
possibilities. At least 5 alloys of tin and lead, without antimony,
have densities between 9.43 and 10.33, like the 1956 fragments.
Ordinary “plumber’s solder” is 67 per cent lead, 33 per cent tin, and
has a density of 9.4. “Tinman’s solder” is 67 per cent tin and 33 per
cent lead. Many aluminum solders have neither antimony nor lead, but
contain tin in percentages ranging from 50 to 97 per cent, combined
with varying proportions of zinc, aluminum, copper, cadmium, or
phosphorus.
One judicial-minded investigator of flying saucers gently pointed
out to the editor of the _UFO Critical Bulletin_ that the use of the
word “proved” for the extraterrestrial origin of the silver rain was
premature, and suggested the need for obtaining and publishing a
complete analysis before drawing any conclusions. The editor responded
with the peculiar logic of the xenochemist:
“What more is necessary to convince so severe and thickheaded person
as Dr. ----? Would be necessary a statement in conjunction with some
highly worldly considered scientist? ... Would be necessary a statement
in conjunction from Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the Pope?--This he’ll
never get of course. Would be necessary a UFO landing on his private
garden?”[XI-17]
Another type of colored substance is the “blue rain” that sprinkled
a thirty-mile stretch of countryside near London on September 9,
1962. Falling without warning from clear skies, it left a blue stain
that wouldn’t wash off. Investigation showed that the substance came
from jet planes taking part in Britain’s annual giant air show at
Farnborough. The jets were using the blue dye to color their vapor
trails and make a more spectacular display.
_Other Mysterious Fragments_
In the spring of 1960 Mrs. Coral Lorenzen, director of the Aerial
Phenomena Research Organization, publicly challenged the truth of
the Air Force statement that “no physical or material evidence, not
even a minute fragment of so-called ‘flying saucer’ has ever been
found.”[XI-20] Mrs. Lorenzen announced that she had in her possession
two fragments of an extraterrestrial vehicle that had met with disaster
in the earth’s atmosphere. Without specifying the date and location
of the event, the identity of the witnesses, or any corroborative
details of the alleged disaster, she merely said that several persons
had witnessed the catastrophe. She went on to assert, somewhat
astonishingly, that “the gratifying aspect of this case, however,
is that we do not have to depend on the testimony of witnesses to
establish the reality of the incident for the most advanced laboratory
tests indicate that the residual material could not have been produced
through the application of any known terrestrial techniques.”[XI-21]
Sending a letter and two photographs of the fragments to Colonel
Lawrence J. Tacker, then in the Office of Information, United States
Air Force, she simultaneously released to the press copies of both
letter and photographs, and suggested that the Air Force could
“vindicate” itself by analyzing the material. The newspaper photographs
showed one fragment about four inches long and two inches wide
resembling petrified wood in appearance, and a smaller piece shaped
roughly like a flattened cupcake, whose surface showed pits and whorls
like those on the trailing end of a meteorite.
Two days later, without waiting for a reply from Washington, Mrs.
Lorenzen through the newspaper amplified her challenge. If the Air
Force wanted to examine the mysterious fragments, she said, they would
first have to agree to certain conditions[XI-22]:
“(1) APRO officers, together with duly appointed Air Force liaison
personnel, would establish a board of experts representing both
military and civilian UFO researchers.
“(2) This board of experts would decide what meaningful tests need to
be performed on the material in question.
“(3) The board then would select a qualified testing agency to perform
these tests under its cognizance.”
In all its history, the United States Air Force can surely have
received no more extraordinary proposition. Whatever he may have felt,
Colonel Tacker merely suggested that Mrs. Lorenzen could submit the
material to ATIC for analysis.
The fragments were never forwarded to the Air Force.
Eventually APRO published some information about the “disaster.” Early
in September 1957 a group of fishermen on a beach near Ubataba, Brazil,
had supposedly sighted a disk-shaped object flashing down toward the
sea. The UFO had suddenly veered upward and exploded, showering down
fragments and sparks like fireworks. Several pieces had been obtained
by a Brazilian representative of APRO, who submitted them to a chemist
for complete tests including spectrographic and X-ray diffraction
analyses.
The analyses have apparently never been published. Although they
evidently showed the presence of at least three elements common on
earth--magnesium, hydrogen, and oxygen--APRO somehow deduced that the
fragments in their original state had consisted of pure magnesium and
that the hydroxide must have formed when they came in contact with the
water. The final conclusion stated that the object consisted, at least
in part, of 100% magnesium. Similarly, perhaps, a cook might assert
that since chocolate fudge consists, at least in part, of 100 per cent
sucrose, fudge must originally have been composed entirely of pure
sugar, except for a little chocolate and milk it picked up in passing
through the kitchen.
From the few facts available a positive identification of the fragments
is impossible. The description of the object seen by the fishermen fits
that of a meteor that broke into pieces near the end of its flight.
In the photographs the fragments look like ordinary meteorites, which
often contain a fair amount of magnesium (see _Chapter_ V). There is
no evidence to suggest that the fishermen’s “wrecked spaceship” was
anything but an exploding meteor.
In the last fifteen years the Air Force has patiently analyzed dozens
of odd substances ranging from angel hair to pancakes. The statement
made in 1960 by General Thomas D. White, Chief of Staff, United States
Air Force, still holds true:
“By an act of Congress the United States Air Force is charged with the
Air Defense of the United States. Rapid identification of anything
that flies is an important part of air defense. Thus the Air Force
initiated and continues the unidentified flying object program. Under
this program all unidentified flying object sightings are investigated
in meticulous detail by Air Force personnel and qualified scientific
consultants. So far, not a single bit of material evidence of the
existence of spaceships has been found.”[XI-23]
[XI-1] Ormond, R. “I Found a Little Green Man,” _Flying Saucers_
(August 1957).
[XI-2] Scully, F. _Behind the Flying Saucers._ New York: Popular
Library, 1951.
[XI-3] Cahn, J. P. “Flying Saucers and the Mysterious Little Men,”
_True_ magazine (September 1952).
[XI-4] Lorenzen, C. E. “The Reality of the Little Men,” _Flying
Saucers_ (December 1958), p. 26.
[XI-5] Michel, A. _The Truth about Flying Saucers._ New York: Criterion
Books, 1956.
[XI-6] Maney, C. A., and Hall, R. _The Challenge of Unidentified Flying
Objects._ Washington, D.C., 1961.
[XI-7] Crompton, J. _The Spider_, London: Collins, 1950.
[XI-8] CRIFO _Orbit_, November 2, 1956.
[XI-9] CRIFO _Orbit_, December 7, 1956.
[XI-10] Air Force Files.
[XI-11] Boston _Globe_, November 24, 1960.
[XI-12] Barker, G. “Chasing the Flying Saucers,” _Flying Saucers_
(September 1961), p. 33.
[XI-13] Palmer, R. “NICAP: National Non-investigations Committee On
Aerial Phenomena,” _Flying Saucers_ (September 1961), p. 4.
[XI-14] Palmer, R. Editorial, _Flying Saucers_ (March 1962), p. 2.
[XI-15] _UFO Investigator_ (July-August 1961).
[XI-16] Keyhoe, D. E. _The Flying Saucer Conspiracy._ New York: Henry
Holt & Co., 1955.
[XI-16a] “There’s Intelligent Life on the Moon!” _Flying Saucers_ (May
1959), p. 73.
[XI-17] _UFO Critical Bulletin_ (January-February 1958).
[XI-18] _UFO Critical Bulletin_ (July-August 1957).
[XI-19] _UFO Critical Bulletin_ (March-April 1958).
[XI-20] News Release No. 98–60, Department of Defense, January 29, 1960.
[XI-21] Alamogordo (N. Mex.) _Daily News_, March 13, 1960.
[XI-22] Alamogordo (N. Mex.) _Daily News_, March 15, 1960.
[XI-23] Tacker, L. J. _Flying Saucers and the U. S. Air Force._
Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1960.
_Chapter_ XII
SPECIAL EFFECTS
Some flying-saucer reports, at first glance, do not seem to belong
in any of the ordinary categories of sightings such as mistaken
identification of air-borne objects or astronomical phenomena. Each
of these atypical UFOs forms a class of its own and, when explained,
proves to be the “special effect” of a unique situation. Many are
misidentified lights or reflections, but since each one derives from a
peculiar combination of circumstances that may not have occurred before
and is not likely to occur again, accounting for them often requires a
certain amount of luck as well as patient detective work.
Let us suppose, for example, that an Iowa farmer telephones the county
sheriff one Tuesday afternoon to report that he has just seen a tiger
running through his cornfield. When the sheriff arrives an hour
later and can find no trace of a tiger, he is baffled; he knows the
farmer is neither demented nor a hoaxer, and must have seen something
remarkable--but what? The mystery remains unsolved until the sheriff
learns from a feature story in Sunday’s paper that on the preceding
Tuesday afternoon a trailer truck, carrying a shipment of animals for
the Des Moines zoo, had a flat tire while traveling on Highway X near
the junction with Route Y. During the stop to repair the tire, a giant
eland had escaped from its cage in the trailer; it had been recaptured
and the truck had then continued its journey and delivered its cargo
intact.
The sheriff can now reconstruct the peculiar combination of events that
produced the “tiger” theory. He knows that the section of Highway X
where the truck stopped runs parallel to the far side of the farmer’s
cornfield. The newspaper account tells him that a giant eland is a
large antelope with short, twisted horns and a tawny-colored coat with
dark stripes. He concludes that the farmer, having only a few seconds’
glimpse of a strange animal among the corn, had observed the eland’s
stripes but had failed to notice its horns, and had therefore mistaken
it for a tiger.
_The Role of Unusual Coincidence_
Analogous unlikely coincidences account for many flying-saucer reports.
The factors that encourage the misinterpretation may be the particular
time or place at which the phenomenon appears, the kind of weather, the
experience, physical state, or mood of the observer, his unawareness
of a certain fact, or any combination of these and other relevant
circumstances.
A fairly simple case of this type was the reported landing of a
spacecraft near an Army barracks (often referred to in saucer
publications as the “Nike site”) in a rural area of Maryland, shortly
before dawn on the morning of September 29, 1958. The sergeant on duty
that morning left the orderly room at 4:25 A.M. and started to the
barracks to waken the troops. The sky was clear, with bright moonlight.
Hearing a whirring sound like a pitched baseball with a loose cover, he
looked up toward the west to see a brilliant round white object soaring
through the sky from north to south, and breaking up into smaller
pieces as it traveled. It disappeared behind the roof of the mess hall,
directly to the west, after being in view about two seconds. Hurrying
around the south side of the mess hall to search the western horizon,
he observed a very bright white, pulsating light at ground level,
apparently in a wooded area some four or five miles west of the battery
site, as though the glowing object had landed there. He reported the
incident to an officer, who measured the azimuth position of the
unknown. The glow remained in one place but diminished with increasing
daylight until it was no longer visible.
Air Force investigators arrived that afternoon. They had already
received many reports that a brilliant fireball had flashed through
the sky at 4:25 A.M., the time in question, and had been observed by
many witnesses in the area between Washington, D.C., and Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, but no fireball could account for the ground light.
The next morning at 5:15 A.M. an intensely white, fluctuating light
was observed at the same place and was studied through binoculars
until daylight made it invisible; it could be seen only from the west
side of the mess hall, and one step to the right or left would hide
it from the observer. Traveling toward the position of the unknown,
investigators found a dairy barn three miles away, and on a direct line
of sight from the place the UFO had been observed. On one end of the
barn was a 200-watt floodlight with a white reflector, still burning.
On questioning the farmer, they learned that until recently the light
had been burned out and had not been in use. The early hour of sunrise
during the summer had provided all the light he needed to milk his
cows. With the shorter days of autumn, however, he had needed the light
and had replaced the bulb only a few days before. On the morning of the
sighting, he had turned on the light a few minutes before the sergeant
had noticed it[XII-1].
Thus several unrelated factors had combined to produce the illusion
of a landed space vehicle: 1) only a week earlier, newspapers had
publicized the alleged landing of a flying saucer in Sheffield Lake,
Ohio (see _Chapter_ XIII); 2) a brilliant fireball had appeared; 3) a
farmer had turned on a floodlight, previously out of use for several
months; 4) the meteor had disappeared and the floodlight had appeared
in roughly the same position as viewed by the observer.
_The Problem of Unknown Lights_
At night, when an observer notices a light appearing out of the
darkness, he usually cannot see the object that produces or carries the
light. Under familiar conditions on the ground or in the air he usually
interprets the light correctly, by a kind of informed guesswork, as
that of an automobile, an advertising sign, an airport beacon, a
plane, a star, etc. But if it appears under unfamiliar conditions or
in unexpected circumstances, he has to make an uninformed guess based
on largely unconscious estimates of its size, distance, height, color,
and rate of movement. To the driver of a car on a dark country road,
a single light suddenly appearing ahead may indicate a plane or a
star low in the sky or something on the road itself--a motorcycle, a
car with only one headlight working, a workman’s lantern, a pedestrian
carrying a flashlight, or something else. A double light may mean
another automobile, two motorcycles traveling parallel, an animal whose
eyes shine in the approaching headlight, or something else. The driver
cannot be sure he interprets the light correctly until he passes it and
can see the object itself or until he can identify it in some other way.
_Michigan’s Flying Bird Cage_
A UFO sighting based on mistaken identification of strange lights
occurred in the early morning hours of March 22, 1959, near Ann Arbor,
Michigan. The night was clear, the moon was nearly full, and visibility
was unusually good. At about 1:30 A.M. a man and his wife driving on
a country road suddenly noticed a strange object hovering in the sky
south of the road. According to their report to the Air Force, the UFO
was an elongated oval with a dome on top, something like a bird cage,
and brilliantly illuminated by two shafts of intense pale-yellow light
that sprang from the bottom and converged over the top. Frightened at
this apparition, the witnesses could provide only uncertain estimates
of distance and size. The object seemed to be twenty to thirty feet in
diameter, was at an altitude of about 200 feet when first seen, and
was hovering about two miles away. As they drove on, the object seemed
to move and travel parallel with the car for about a mile. Then the
yellow lights dimmed and a circle of eight or ten red lights suddenly
appeared on the underside, the UFO rose vertically, very rapidly, and
vanished in a few seconds. It had been in view for a period of five to
ten minutes.
Checking the most probable explanations first, ATIC officials found
that the nearby Willow Run Airport had had no aircraft in the vicinity
at the time and that no star or planet seemed to be involved. Further
investigation showed that the flying bird cage was actually the radio
telescope of the University of Michigan. The telescope was installed
on the top of Peach Mountain and was clearly visible from the road
on which the witnesses were traveling. On the underside of the
eighty-five-foot “dish” was a wire-mesh structure that suggested the
bird cage. At the time of the sighting the dish was facing in the
direction of the witnesses and was illuminated by a floodlight as
well as by the bright moonlight. It had seemed to be following the
car only because the car itself was moving. The astronomers operating
the telescope were rotating the dish from the horizon to the zenith,
and the yellow lights dimmed because the witnesses were seeing less
and less of the surface. The “circle” of red lights was the red
aircraft-warning lights on the WUOM radio tower, which lay in a direct
line between the telescope and the witnesses. When the dish reached the
zenith and was pointed to the sky overhead, the operating crew turned
off the floodlights. The dish was no longer visible to the witnesses,
who interpreted the sudden disappearance as a sudden vertical ascent
into the sky[XII-1].
_UFOs from Reflections_
Reflections from the bright sun have produced many elusive UFOs. All
pilots are familiar with the luminous objects that sometimes appear in
the air below a plane on a sunny day, particularly when the plane is
flying over wooded terrain that is partly obscured by atmospheric haze.
The sun has been reflected momentarily from a broad shiny surface, such
as the metal roof of a farm building; because of the contrast between
the bright surface and the dark forest surrounding it, the image
appears to be a UFO floating high in the air.
Sometimes the sun shines on a bright metallic surface, such as the
chrome trim of an automobile, and by chance is reflected directly into
the eyes of a passer-by. If he then glances at the sky he may see a
whole fleet of UFOs; the bright flash has produced a temporary chemical
change in the retina so that for a moment or two the eye sees a series
of saucer-shaped images of the sun. A photographer’s flashbulb or a
bright flash of lightning can produce similar after-images.
Some startling UFOs have been produced by reflections from an object
that the witness was not able to see or did not recognize. One night
in the spring of 1961 an amateur astronomer reported that a huge
cigar-shaped flying saucer was hovering in the sky several thousand
feet above the Harvard College Observatory. Investigation showed that
the “UFO” was a reflection from a small oblong insulator on an electric
wire strung between two buildings. Faintly illuminated from below
by the lights from the unshaded windows, it seemed to be an immense
and brilliantly glowing object high in the sky. The witness at first
refused to believe that he could so mistake the evidence of his own
eyes. Next morning, however, he returned to the scene and was able to
see that what had appeared the night before to be a giant spaceship was
only a small insulator a few feet above his head.
The bright sun reflected at a particular time from an object invisible
to the observer often produces a puzzling phenomenon, such as the
flying saucer reported from Danby, California, early in October 1958.
About 4:00 in the afternoon on October 2, three prospectors standing
near a tungsten mill at Railroad Danby noticed a sudden bright glow in
the northwest sky which remained visible for about 2½ hours and then
disappeared. When a glow appeared again the following day at the same
time and place, the observers tried to identify it by using a small
telescope and saw a bright, oblong object hovering above the horizon;
it was the color of aluminum, approximately fifteen feet long, five
feet high, and about four miles away. Getting into a car, the men drove
in the direction of the object and searched the supposed location on
foot for several hours, but could find no trace of the UFO.
Several days later, realizing that the object reappeared every day at
about the same time and place, two of the men decided to investigate
further. Studying the object through a pair of powerful binoculars,
they could see guy wires coming from it and rods radiating from the guy
wires. Remembering that two tall radio antennas used by the highway
patrol stood in approximately the same location, the witnesses found
the explanation, which Air Force investigators confirmed. The antennas,
placed some twenty feet apart, extended about twenty feet above the
trees. The cigar-shaped hovering object was a special effect depending
on a particular combination of circumstances: only during the first
part of October, and only late in the afternoon, did the sun’s rays
strike the antenna in such a way that the reflection was visible to an
observer at Railroad Danby[XII-1].
_Sundogs in Utah and France_
Sundogs are another special effect resulting from a peculiar
combination of circumstances, and they continue to supply their quota
of good UFO reports. Tiny ice crystals floating in a layer of quiet
air and reflecting a bright sun are responsible for producing sundogs.
A thin layer of such crystals may be invisible to the observer; a
thick layer appears as the familiar cirrus clouds. Sunlight filtering
through such an ice fog is reflected in each crystal so that a pattern
of bright spots of light forms in the sky, an image of the sun that
sometimes rivals the sun itself in brilliance. These images are called
mock suns, sundogs, or parhelia when they accompany the sun (and mock
moons, moondogs, or paraselenae when they accompany the moon). They
appear in the sky at a position a given distance from the sun and
usually have a trace of red on the edge nearest the sun.
Occasionally a sundog makes a complete circle of light surrounding
the sun with four bright patches, one above, one below, and one on
either side. Sometimes two circles will appear, one within the other,
surmounted by an inverted arc and traversed by a cross, like the
spokes of a wheel whose center is the sun. The complicated structure
of a fully developed mock sun--which is extremely rare--can suggest
to the imaginative an enormous chariot in the sky and can terrify the
superstitious. There is little doubt that this phenomenon inspired the
two visions of Ezekiel described in the Bible.
Mock suns have been the cause of many UFO sightings. Even after several
publications [see [XII-1a]] explained how the sun reflected from ice
crystals could account for some of the reported flying saucers, this
idea was largely ignored by early investigators who had a limited
training in the physical sciences.
Sundogs are relatively uncommon. Few airmen, even those with long
experience, have learned to recognize them. In a poll of both
commercial and military pilots, Dr. Menzel found that only one in
five knew what a sundog was and how it might look in the sky. Two of
three generals in the Air Force, similarly, were unfamiliar with the
phenomenon. Like balloons, sundogs have a silvery metallic sheen. When
observed from the ground, they seem to hover or move very sluggishly;
to a witness in the air they seem to move rapidly, to pace the plane,
or to take evasive action as though under intelligent control. When
enough data are available, and the time of day and the position of
the unknown relative to the sun are appropriate, a mock sun should be
considered as a possible explanation of the UFO.
A sundog seen from a plane can suggest a spectacular and fantastic
structure, like the one reported over Rheims, France, at 2:30 P.M.
local time on March 31, 1960. The pilot and crew of a C-47 plane
described the unknown as like a gigantic spool of thread some twelve
feet tall. The neck of the spool, about six feet in diameter, seemed to
be capped at top and bottom by disks eight or ten feet in diameter. The
upper disk was reddish, the lower, blue-green. The plane was flying at
6000 feet and had just passed from a storm area into a region of calm
with unlimited visibility. The UFO remained in view for about sixty
seconds, then suddenly vanished. From an analysis of the data, the
position of the unknown relative to the sun and the observers, and the
weather situation, Air Force investigators positively identified the
object as a mock sun[XII-1].
One of the most recent sightings of this type occurred on October 2,
1961, a few minutes after noon[XII-1]. A civilian pilot who was just
taking off from the Utah Central Airport at Salt Lake City noticed a
bright silvery disk in the air ahead of his plane. He supposed it to
be another aircraft crossing his course. When he was air-borne, he
was surprised to find that the object, now an elongated pencil shape,
still appeared in the same position where he had first seen it and
hence could not be a plane. Puzzled, he radioed the control tower and
reported the UFO. Looking south as directed by the pilot, the tower
operator easily found the object, a bright spot in the sky directly
below the sun and apparently hovering over the town of Provo, forty
miles to the south.
Deciding to investigate, the pilot left the traffic pattern and started
directly south after the UFO. It seemed to be standing practically
still in the sky, with a little rocking motion, at an altitude of
6500 to 7000 feet. He seemed to have approached within three to five
miles when the UFO suddenly shot up “like an elevator” and retreated
rapidly south, as though taking evasive action. The acceleration was
tremendous, almost as though the UFO had been fired from a rocket, but
there was no vapor trail and no sound. It then disappeared, gradually.
“It just faded out. I kept my eyes glued right on it because I could
see it was moving away at a great speed. I wanted to see how long
it would take and it was just a second or two until it had faded
completely. And it was getting smaller all the time, you could see it
was moving away.” The speed of departure, the pilot estimated, must
have been thousands of miles an hour.
Alerted by the pilot’s message to the control tower, several persons on
the ground at the Salt Lake City airport, most of them with experience
as pilots, had also been watching the UFO. Ground observers at the
Provo airport, also alerted, were not able to locate the unknown, even
though they had been told it was almost directly overhead.
Investigators from a nearby Air Force Base interviewed the witnesses,
who were obviously competent and reliable. All agreed that the
unknown had been a bright, silvery, metallic-looking object that
seemed to glisten or flicker in the sun; that it was roughly oval or
indeterminate in shape; that it was solid and tangible, but not a
conventional aircraft or balloon; that it made no sound, showed no
exhaust or vapor trail; that it was in view roughly fifteen minutes,
and disappeared gradually by “blotting out” or fading. All but one
of the witnesses agreed that the skies had been absolutely clear and
cloudless; one stated that, although the day was clear, a very slight
haze existed over the mountainous region where the UFO appeared.
In spite of this general agreement, certain significant discrepancies
became evident. The pursuing pilot stated that the object had moved up
and away from him at incredible speed, as though it were controlled.
The ground observers, however, did not see any movement by the UFO.
Most of them reported that it remained stationary as though it were
suspended in the air; a few said that it vanished at intervals, only to
reappear a few seconds later in another place. Most of the time, they
agreed, it just hung in the sky until it faded from view.
By analysis of these clues, ATIC was able to solve the mystery.
According to the local weather bureau, the sky had been clear with
visibility unlimited, but there had been very thin cirrus clouds, a
layer of minute ice crystals suitable for producing a mock sun. A
sundog would also account for the contradictory statements about the
UFO’s motion. Since the ground observers remained in one place, their
position relative to the sundog did not change and it seemed to remain
stationary. The pilot, however, was in a moving plane and changing his
position relative to the UFO; hence it seemed to move rapidly away
from him. In the same way a rainbow seems stationary to a person who
merely stands and watches it. But if he begins to chase it, hoping to
catch up and perhaps find the legendary pot of gold, the rainbow seems
to move away and elude its pursuer. The pilot’s belief that the UFO
had exhibited fantastic speed was, according to his own statement,
an inference based on the fact that the UFO quickly dwindled, became
very small, and vanished. It disappeared, however, not because it was
speeding away at thousands of miles an hour, but because of a change in
the relative positions of sun and ice clouds that produced the sundog
in the first place. One final point nailed down this explanation. The
angular distance between sun and UFO was exactly that to be expected
between sun and mock sun, at that time and place.
The details of this sighting obviously show a striking resemblance to
some of those in the Mantell case (p. 33), in which the UFO and the sun
had the same bearing from the pursuing plane as in the Salt Lake City
incident. With the information now available, there can be little doubt
that Mantell was actually chasing a Skyhook balloon. But in 1948 when
so many of the relevant facts were not known, the sundog theory was a
reasonable solution and may still be the correct one.
_Bright Spots on Films_
A bright blur, a ring of light, or a circular image something like the
typical disk-shaped flying saucer sometimes appears on a film, much to
the surprise of the photographer, who had not noticed any such object
when he took the picture. These UFOs are usually caused by reflections
from unnoticed drops of moisture in the air or by defects in the
camera itself (see Figure 17). If the source of the image is something
peculiar, it may pose a real problem (see Plates VIIIa and b).
[Illustration: _Figure 17._ Distorted images produced on film by lens
defects. A, True image; B, image produced by poor lens, not well
figured; C, by astigmatism; D, coma; E, off-axis beam; F, off-axis beam
and coma.]
On July 24, 1957, an American tourist in Norway snapped a picture of a
group of houses on a cliff above the seacoast, and was amazed to find
some time later that the print showed a large white, doughnut-shaped
object hovering in the sky above the coast. Puzzled by this apparent
evidence of a saucer that had been visible to the camera but not to
her, she submitted the facts to ATIC investigators. Thorough study
of the negative, the camera, possible sources of reflection in the
landscape at the time the photograph was taken, all failed to account
for the mysterious intruder. Obviously not a cloud, the image closely
resembled a smoke ring, but the photographer had not been smoking
and there were no sources of smoke in the neighborhood. The experts
were baffled until one of them thought of a new possibility and again
questioned the witness: had she by any chance been wearing a ring when
she took the picture? She had--a sparkling diamond. If the angle of
the sun, the direction she was facing, and the position of her ring
finger in relation to the camera lens and to the sun had been exactly
right, the annular image would have been reflected into the lens at the
instant she snapped the picture. The resulting bright ring would look
exactly like the UFO that appeared on the negative[XII-1] (see Plate
VIIb).
An unusually fine large UFO inserted itself into a photograph taken on
February 6, 1959, near Boulder, Colorado. The witness had spent the
afternoon climbing on Flagstaff Mountain and, about 5:00 P.M., snapped
a picture of the town of Boulder, to the southeast. Although he had
seen nothing unusual in the sky or in the air, the negative, when
developed, showed a small black blob that printed as a white, luminous,
roughly spherical object--a typical flying saucer (see Plate VIIa).
Civilian saucer investigators in the area procured a copy of the
photograph and sent it to NICAP for evaluation. The witness himself
did not immediately assume that he had photographed an interplanetary
spaceship hovering over the city of Boulder; instead, he sent a print
and a description of the circumstances to Dr. Menzel, who was well
acquainted with the geography of Boulder and Flagstaff Mountain. Dr.
Menzel suggested that the blob of light could have been produced by
some type of reflection: “The sun appears to have been pretty low at
the time. Is there, in the approximate position of the blob, some house
with a fairly large window that could have been reflecting the sun?
Stand at approximately the same spot and look over the region with a
field glass. A bright spot like this often spreads enormously on the
film. You can see from the picture that the sun must have been shining
brilliantly. The shadow, especially of the large barn on the right,
gives us some idea of the height of the sun. This was in February, and
the angle of the sun will now have changed. Please make this test and
let me know.”
Not until the first week of May, however, was the witness able to
repeat his excursion and make the necessary tests. Using a copy of his
original picture as a guide, he was able to stand in the exact spot
from which he had taken the picture. He then realized that the Law
Building of the University of Colorado stood in the place occupied by
the UFO and that the big double window of the Law Building was at the
exact center. In May no reflection appeared, but from calculations he
found that the position of the February sun was such that the window,
when open at just the right tilt, would reflect the sun’s image to the
exact spot on Flagstaff Mountain from which he took the picture. The
image of the reflected sun is extremely bright and the film had been
overexposed: therefore the image had spread on the film to create the
large UFO. To confirm the hypothesis, the witness tried overprinting
the negative so that the entire picture came out practically black,
and with successively longer exposures the size of the bright UFO
diminished. As he got it down to the smallest size on the blackest
print, he could see the fuzzy outline of a window[XII-2].
_Unfamiliar Lights on Planes_
In the spring of 1961, a leading saucer publication stated that
unidentified objects were still surveying the earth and cited, among
other cases, a bright UFO seen maneuvering the night of March 23
near Fort Pierce, Florida[XII-3]. The report failed to mention that
unidentified lights were seen on several other nights during that week
in the skies over Jacksonville, Miami, and Cocoa-Titusville, as well
as over Fort Pierce. Newspaper offices and radio stations in the area
received many telephone queries about the mysterious lights, which were
observed from the ground and from the air for periods of time ranging
from five minutes to an hour. The descriptions showed an impressive
consistency: the UFO was a round, twinkling light with a red or orange
color changing to white, and exhibited a bobbing up-and-down motion as
it swept across the horizon. In all sightings the weather was clear and
the visibility excellent.
On the night of March 24 an Eastern Airlines pilot reported the UFO
to the Miami Traffic Control. An observer in the control tower at the
airport could see the object, but lost sight of it when he took up a
plane to chase it. On the following night the Cocoa-Titusville Airport
reported a similar object. A pilot in the air sighted the unknown and,
about an hour later, encountered a turbulence unlike anything he had
experienced in sixteen years of flying. Cruising in the region the next
day, he observed a burned-out area on the ground below the place where
the UFO had been. On the night of March 27, a ground observer watched
the unknown through binoculars as it moved rapidly from west to north
and gradually disappeared in the northwest.
Most of these witnesses were veteran airmen, well able to recognize
conventional phenomena in the night sky. Studying their reports,
officials at Patrick Air Force Base decided that the similarity of the
descriptions warranted further investigation. In the preliminary study,
an Intelligence officer took up a B-57 aircraft in the vicinity of Fort
Pierce, while ground radar at Patrick Air Force Base kept his plane
under constant surveillance. At 7:20 P.M., when at 25,000 feet, he saw
the UFO, a white light three times brighter than the brightest star.
It appeared in the western sky and was moving north to south. When
viewed with the naked eye, the light looked like a star that dimmed and
brightened in a regular cycle; through binoculars it also displayed
the red and green navigation lights of a plane. Soon after the visual
sighting, the ground radar informed the investigating pilot that the
object was approximately fifty nautical miles from his plane and was a
jet airliner bound for Miami; the jet was observed for approximately
ten minutes as it descended toward the Miami airport. The investigating
plane remained in the air and, about five minutes after the jet had
landed, observed a second, similar, high-intensity light that appeared
in the western sky, moving from north to south. The radar at the Miami
air-traffic control center positively identified this light as a Delta
Airline jet, Flight 833, proceeding southeast. From these facts the
officers concluded that the UFOs seen in Florida that week had been
produced by commercial jet airliners[XII-1].
Two questions remained: How had the experienced pilots and ground
observers failed to recognize so familiar a phenomenon as a
night-flying jet? What accounted for the unprecedented turbulence
experienced by one pilot, and the burned-over ground below the region
of the sighting?
The first question was soon answered. ATIC investigators telephoned
the Federal Aviation Agency and learned that experiments with a new
type of anti-collision beacon were being carried out from various field
offices, and that several jet airliners as well as some turboprop
aircraft were using the new light. The standard beacon was a rotating
sodium light, whose color is yellow. The new beacon was an intense
white light which, viewed at a slant, becomes a spectacular phenomenon
even more brilliant than Venus or Jupiter seen rising or setting
through a hazy atmosphere. Since the witnesses were not familiar with
the appearance of the experimental beacons, they had not recognized the
newly equipped jets.
The answer to the second question came later, an example of the “luck”
required to solve some of these UFO puzzles. Major W. T. Coleman, then
Air Force Information Officer for the UFO project, was flying over
the Fort Pierce region on the afternoon of April 29 in calm, clear
weather when his plane ran into moderate turbulence of the short-wave
type, “like riding in a car over a washboard road.” The wind-shear
component was not large enough to explain the turbulence, and though
a cold front was approaching from the Gulf of Mexico, it was still
far out on the edge of the western horizon. Then, being a native of
Florida, he suddenly remembered that muck fires were fairly common in
the Everglades region, which lay below the plane. Peering down at the
glades, he noticed a very large muck fire. He concluded:
“Now, as typical with a cold front situation, the surface wind was
blowing from the east pushing the smoke and heat toward the west coast
of Florida. This relatively warm air naturally was lifting in the
surrounding cool air. When the continuing warm air rose rapidly to the
higher altitudes it ran into the reversed upper winds (high altitude
westerly). In the process of being lifted the smoke filtered and
cleared, yet the air remained relatively heated. It was moved directly
across our course, thereby causing turbulence.”[XII-4]
The fires explained both the turbulence reported during the week of the
UFO sightings and the burned-out area below the region of turbulence.
Thus these Florida UFOs were not spacecraft watching the earth, but
were a special effect created by the chance combination of unrelated
factors: a new and unfamiliar anti-collision beacon, an advancing cold
front, and fires in the Florida swamps.
_Inversions in California_
An unusually complex combination of events produced an epidemic of UFO
sightings in northern California during the week of August 12 to 20,
1960. Nearly every night dozens of reliable citizens throughout Tehama
County and the Mount Shasta region (long famous for its mysterious
lights) reported UFOs at various times and of various descriptions:
round, bright, metallic UFOs glowing with a reddish-purple fluorescent
type of light, cigar-shaped UFOs trailing a long fiery exhaust,
oval UFOs with red lights at each end and white lights in between,
yellow-colored UFOs like a flying railroad car with flashing red lights
at each end and white lights glowing at the windows. Radios roared with
static and radar sets were plagued with phantoms, as the state was
apparently invaded by a whole fleet of patrolling saucers.
The most important factor in these sightings was the weather; prolonged
and extensive temperature inversions prevailed in the area all that
week. From southern Oregon through northern California multiple
inversions of 3 to 18 degrees occurred nightly. Under these conditions,
practically any light shining into the night was apt to be projected
upward as a mirage and to perform weird antics. Determining what was
the particular light source of some specific phenomenon is almost
impossible.
As complicating factors, certain heavenly bodies made their own
contribution to the excitement. Most of the objects observed late at
night and watched for periods of one to three hours were refracted
images of the stars Capella or Aldebaran or the planet Mars.
Some of the most spectacular sightings were those reported from Red
Bluff on the night of August 13–14. Two highway patrolmen were chasing
a speeding motorcycle when, at about 11:50 P.M. P.D.S.T., they saw what
they at first supposed to be a brilliantly lighted aircraft falling
directly toward them. Jumping out of their car, they watched the object
as it apparently reversed its course, shot upward, and began to perform
fantastic maneuvers in the eastern sky. The performance continued for
more than two hours. Before it ended, a second UFO had joined in the
celestial dance, which was observed by dozens of excited witnesses in
the Red Bluff area.
Air Force bases in the neighborhood were notified, and ATIC
investigators gathered and studied the evidence. There was no real
mystery[XII-1]. The UFO first noticed by the patrolmen was probably
the star Capella, which at Red Bluff is circumpolar; it rose at 10:50
P.M. and at the time of the sighting was about 4.7 degrees above the
northeast horizon. About an hour later (12:48 A.M.) Mars rose, also in
the northeast; and close behind it (1:15 A.M.) came the bright star
Aldebaran, which made a striking pair with Mars. With three brilliant
heavenly bodies just above the horizon, on a night of fantastic
multiple inversions of temperature and humidity, the only surprising
fact is that the number of UFOs reported was not larger.
A person who has never been lucky enough to see a good mirage may
feel skeptical about the phenomenon. But those who have encountered a
first-rate specimen--for example, the Chicago skyline suspended upside
down in mid-air above Lake Michigan--know how startlingly real it can
seem. When the source of the mirage is not apparent, the displaced
image can seem mysterious and even frightening, as do many UFOs.
One such phenomenon, which might easily have been interpreted as a
flying saucer, appeared shortly after dark one evening in mid-July,
1954, and was described by Dr. Menzel in a letter to a friend:
“My wife and I were driving to Alamosa, Colorado, on one of the
longest, straightest stretches of highway in the United States,
commonly referred to as the ‘gun-barrel highway.’ I had turned over
the wheel to her and was settling back for a rest, after a long turn
at driving over the mountains, when I became aware of unusual driving
behavior on her part. First she would step on the gas, then on the
brake, then on the gas again. ‘What is the matter? What are you trying
to do?’ I asked. ‘See that truck ahead?’ she replied. ‘Every time I try
to pass it, it speeds up, and then it slows down when I try to give it
a chance to get ahead of me. It’s making me nervous.’
“I peered ahead through the darkness and there, sure enough, about
three hundred feet ahead of us was a truck, its dark body brilliantly
outlined with red and white lights. I studied the situation and glanced
at the speedometer, which read forty miles per hour. ‘Well,’ I advised
her, ‘you certainly ought to be able to pass that, dear, the way you
usually drive.’ And this time she really stepped on the gas, pushing
the speed up to sixty, seventy, eighty, and finally eighty-five. And
would you believe it, that truck took right out ahead, still holding
its estimated three hundred feet clearance, and matched us for every
mile of that speed. By this time I was beginning to get an idea. ‘Slow
down,’ I said. My wife obliged me by coming to a dead stop, brakes
squealing.
“‘Now see there,’ she said, ‘I just escaped running into that truck.’
And the truck had stopped, still 300 feet ahead. At this point I
ventured my conclusion. ‘That isn’t a truck,’ I explained. ‘It’s a
flying saucer.’ ‘You have flying saucers on the brain,’ she said. Well,
to shorten the story, she started the car again and the ‘truck’ moved
off. And we chased it in that fashion for about fifty miles. On rare
occasions, as we dipped slightly in a hollow, the truck would seem to
dash ahead at speeds close to 1000 miles an hour. Or sometimes it would
jump straight up, momentarily vanish, and then drop back into the road.
“The explanation was quite simple. The hot day had warmed the air
close to the pavement, but the cooling of the surface at the onset of
darkness had caused a layer of warm air to be sandwiched in between the
cold air close to the road surface and the cold air above. This acted
like a lens which produced an out-of-focus image of a bright tavern
sign more than fifty miles away, a real mirage. There were few cars
on the road, but as we met them the effect was most startling because
some of them were so enlarged by the lens effect that a car five miles
away seemed to be rushing directly at us only a block or two ahead.
Sometimes these cars would appear to come to a sharp stop, reverse
their course and disappear in the distance. At other times they would
appear to be rushing on us upside down, with part of the road itself
in the sky. Altogether it was a weird experience, but not in any sense
supernatural. Lenses of air, either close to the ground or in the sky,
can produce strange illusions.”
In this case, as in many UFO puzzles, the solution depended on
a knowledge of the weather conditions and of the facts of local
geography. If the pursuing car had turned off the road or stopped
for the night before reaching the tavern, the specific cause of the
phenomenon might still be a mystery.
_The Chesapeake Bay Case_
Two of the most famous UFO cases, the Nash-Fortenberry and the Tombaugh
sightings, have never been completely explained even though the
witnesses were unusually competent, the incidents fully described, and
the basic facts not in dispute. Although the probable type of mechanism
involved is clear in each case, determining specifically what factors
combined in exactly what way to produce the phenomenon has so far
proved impossible. Neither case, however, supports the theory that the
UFO had an extraterrestrial origin.
On the evening of July 14, 1952, a Pan-American DC-4 was flying
from New York to Miami, carrying ten passengers and a crew of three
including First Officer William B. Nash and Second Officer William H.
Fortenberry. As a pilot spending much of his life in the air, Captain
Nash had long been interested in the question of UFOs, and during
the long night hours of over-water flights he had often cut down
the cockpit lights to search the sky. In five years of watching he
had observed hundreds of meteors, various types of auroral display,
the lights of other aircraft, and the multicolored images of stars
and planets distorted by refraction, but he had never seen any
unidentifiable aerial phenomenon that appeared to be under intelligent
control--until this particular night, when he was not watching for UFOs.
Shortly after 8 P.M. E.S.T. the plane was cruising on automatic pilot
at about 8000 feet over Chesapeake Bay, and approaching Norfolk,
Virginia. The sun had set and the night was almost entirely dark,
although the coast line was still visible. Fortenberry, sitting at the
right as copilot, was making his first run on this particular course
and Nash, in the pilot’s seat at the left, was pointing out the cities
and landmarks of the route. Nash had just called attention to the
lights of Newport News and Cumberland, ahead and to the right of the
plane, when at 8:12 a brilliant red glow suddenly appeared in the west,
apparently between Newport News and the aircraft, and so low that it
might almost have been on the ground. One of the men exclaimed, as
have so many incredulous witnesses on first seeing a UFO, “What the
hell is that?”
[Illustration: _Figure 18._ Reported movements of the Chesapeake Bay
disks. A, Disks at first approach; B, they flip over and reverse order;
C, they change direction and recede.]
Looking through the front windows of the cockpit, they watched the
unidentified light traveling northeast at incredible speed on a
horizontal course roughly a mile below the plane. Almost immediately
they perceived that the unknown was actually a procession of six
red-orange lights, glowing like hot coals. Shooting forward like
a stream of red tracer bullets, the line of lights moved out over
Chesapeake Bay until they were only about half a mile away from the
plane. They appeared to be sharply defined, large, circular disks,
arranged in a narrow echelon formation--like a set of stairs tilted
slightly to the plane’s right, with the leader at the lowest step,
each following disk slightly higher and to the rear, and the last disk
at the highest point (see Figure 18). Realizing that the line was
apparently going to pass under the plane at the right on the copilot’s
side, Nash flipped off his seat belt so that he could move to the
window on that side. During this brief interval he was not able to see
the objects, but Fortenberry kept them in view. As he later described
their amazing behavior, all the disks simultaneously turned up on edge,
like coins, so that the glowing surfaces were tilted to the right.
Still on edge, they suddenly reversed their relative places so that
disk 1 now occupied the last place in line and disk 6 became the leader.
This shift had taken only a brief second and was completed by the time
Nash reached the window. Both he and Fortenberry then observed the
disks flip back from the on-edge to the flat position. In the same
fraction of a second, the entire line changed direction as abruptly
as a ball bouncing off a wall and shot away to the west on a heading
of 270 degrees. An instant later two similar disks darted out,
apparently from beneath the plane, and joined the line as numbers 7 and
8 (Figure 18). The lights receded to the west, suddenly disappeared,
immediately reappeared, abruptly began a steep climb to an altitude
above that of the plane, then vanished not in sequence but in random
order. The sighting had lasted for a period of twelve to fifteen
seconds[XII-1, XII-5, XII-6, XII-7].
After a quick check showed that no one else in the aircraft had
observed the lights, the pilots radioed a message to the CAA station
at Norfolk for forwarding to the Norfolk Navy Base, reporting eight
unidentified objects traveling at speeds in excess of 1000 miles
an hour. In Miami, next morning, Air Force officials questioned
both witnesses. According to their estimates, the disks had moved
horizontally about 2000 feet above the ground until their final climb
and disappearance, were about 100 feet in diameter, and about 15 feet
thick. Since they apparently traveled fifty miles during the twelve to
fifteen seconds they were in view, their velocity would have been 6000
to 12,000 miles an hour.
Intelligence officials first checked the air traffic. Five jets from
Langley Air Force Base, near Newport News, had been in the region at
the time of the sighting, but they were ruled out as an explanation
for the disks. Both pilots were informed that seven other persons,
apparently on the ground, had reported unknown lights in the Norfolk
area; the Air Force files contain no record of these reports and
it is probable that some, at least, of these persons mistook the
sunset-reddened jet trails for UFOs.
Few sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena have been more clearly
described. Both witnesses were experienced pilots. Nash had flown
more than 10,000 hours at altitudes of 7000 to 8000 feet and had held
the rank of captain for eight years. Both men had been trained to
observe accurately, to check and double-check every factor that might
affect safe flying, and to regard the word “assume” as a potential
killer. They shared the attitude of all cautious airmen: “In God we
trust--everyone else, we check.”[XII-5] Unlike many UFO descriptions,
their report distinguished rigorously between fact and inference, and
it included the exact time of the sighting as well as the position,
height, speed, and direction of flight of their plane. Using a kind of
“instinct-judgment” gradually developed during their many hours in the
air, they had made careful estimates of the position, height, speed,
and direction of flight of the unknowns. Nevertheless, no reasonable
explanation of the disks was found.
At the time of this incident flying saucers had been big news for many
weeks. Both _Life_ and _Look_ magazines had recently published serious
discussions of the possibility that flying saucers came from other
planets, and newspapers were printing dozens of reports of weirdly
glowing machines trailing fiery exhausts, streaking through the air at
meteoric speeds (see _Chapter_ VII). At ATIC, the small staff of nine
men was swamped with saucer reports, far more than they could deal with
properly, and some of the investigators were privately convinced that
UFOs did come from outer space[XII-6]. For those or other reasons, the
Norfolk sighting unquestionably received a less adequate study than
would a similar incident today. The case was dropped and filed as an
Unknown.
The incredible velocity and instantaneous change of course reported
were obviously impossible for any earthly vehicle; no known metal
could have escaped being melted by the frictional heat produced during
so swift a passage through the dense atmosphere at 2000 feet, and no
human flesh and bone could have survived the smashing inertial forces
involved in the instantaneous change of direction. Nash and Fortenberry
frankly stated their own conviction: “Though we don’t know what they
were, what they were doing here or where they came from, we are certain
in our own minds that they were intelligently operated craft from
somewhere other than this planet.”[XII-7]
_A Possible Explanation of the Nash-Fortenberry Disks_
In the hope of solving the mystery, even though a decade has passed,
the authors of this book have made a thorough study of the available
evidence and present the results in the pages that follow.[D]
[D] We wish to thank Professor C. A. Maney and Captain W. B. Nash for
their generous help with this problem. Although they do not agree with
our conclusions, Professor Maney has kindly made available certain
useful documents and Captain Nash in a lengthy correspondence has
patiently answered a great many questions of detail.
When puzzling observations in a laboratory seem to point to a
conclusion that contradicts the main body of scientific knowledge,
the researcher first tries to repeat the experiment and duplicate
the observations. If this is impossible, as with the Chesapeake Bay
phenomena, he next re-examines the assumptions on which the conclusion
is based. The belief that the UFOs had an extraterrestrial origin is
based chiefly on two assumptions: first, that the estimates of the
disks’ size, distance, and speed were reasonably accurate; and second,
that the disks were solid objects. If either assumption is unsound, the
extraterrestrial theory is unnecessary and the incident becomes much
less of a puzzle.
Both witnesses were able and experienced observers. Nevertheless their
determinations of distance and size, and hence of speed, are open to
question because of the very fact that the disks were unidentified
phenomena. Angular estimates are usually reliable when an observer is
judging the position and speed of other known aircraft moving in the
sky. But when the moving object is a strange one and is seen against
an empty sky or flat ground containing no standards of comparison,
estimates of actual size mean very little.
The ability to judge distance depends largely on the binocular vision
of the observer’s eyes, separated by a span of about 2.5 inches.
Focused on an object at 300 feet, they subtend an angle of about one
fortieth of a degree, less than one tenth the diameter of the full
moon. This is a physiological fact, and means that if the observer
is more than 300 feet away from an object of unknown size, he cannot
determine its distance accurately unless he knows how large it is or
unless he can compare it with a known object. Using angular estimates,
the witnesses in the Chesapeake Bay case calculated that at the point
of closest approach the disks were a mile lower than the plane and
about half a mile to the north--a distance of roughly 7000 feet.
Mentally comparing their appearance with that of a DC-3 aircraft at
this distance, the observers arrived at an estimate of size--whose
accuracy depends on having a known distance. The circularity of this
process indicates the weakness of all the estimates given. Even the
most skillful observer cannot accurately judge the distance of an
unidentified object when he does not know its true size, and he cannot
judge the size unless he knows its actual distance.
Over Norwich, Connecticut, on May 15, 1962, a cloudless day with
perfect visibility, a Navy aircraft and a commercial-airlines plane
reported a near collision at about 7000 feet. The Navy pilot filed
a complaint, stating that the two planes had missed each other by a
distance of only about 600 feet. According to the commercial pilot, who
did not file a complaint, the planes had had a leeway of about 4000
feet--a more than sixfold difference![XII-8]. Thus good pilots can
differ widely in estimating the position of objects in the sky, even
known aircraft seen in full daylight. With an unrecognized phenomenon
seen in darkness or in semidarkness, as in the Chesapeake Bay case,
good estimates are impossible.
The extraterrestrial conclusion depends even more strongly on the
second assumption, that the UFOs were material objects. Nearly every
part of the description is in direct conflict with this idea. The
instantaneous reversal of course, for example, if performed by solid
objects, should have produced a shock wave that would have broken
windows in Norfolk, Newport News, and points west. Only one observation
even suggests that the unknowns had a material nature: when the disks
flipped on edge they seemed to reveal bottom surfaces, which would
indicate a solid body. The witnesses specifically qualified this
statement, however, by adding that though they had the impression
that the bottom surfaces were unlighted, the “bottoms” were not
clearly visible. Thus the three-dimensional structure was not actually
observed, but only inferred. The night was dark, the UFOs were glowing
like hot coals, and were supposedly more than a mile away. Even if the
disks had been solid objects, an observer could actually have seen only
a circular-shaped light that suddenly narrowed to a very thin ellipse;
if he believed the object to be solid, he might infer the presence of
other surfaces, but a side edge 15 feet thick and an unlighted bottom
surface, even if they had existed, would not have been detectable.
Of the other observations, all are inconsistent with the theory
that the UFOs were material in nature. All, however, are completely
consistent with the theory that the disks were immaterial images made
of light.
Images made of light can glow with brilliant colors, can show
well-defined circular shapes, and can flip on edge. Since they are
not subject to the forces of gravity and inertia, they can travel
at incredible speed, change direction sharply and instantaneously,
and perform all of the maneuvers ascribed to the UFOs. On this new
assumption, the observations become credible and the major part of the
mystery vanishes.
Only one problem remains. Just exactly what produced the images? Of
the many possible explanations, we first considered the simplest,
an astronomical source. The UFOs appeared low in the western sky at
8:12 P.M. E.S.T., about forty-five minutes after sunset. The night
was dark, for the moon had just entered its last quarter and did not
rise until much later. Apparently the only planet that could have been
involved was Mercury. Setting a little more than an hour after the
sun, it should have been visible above the western horizon at the time
of the sighting, but since it was not particularly brilliant, having
a magnitude of a little more than +0.6, we put aside the astronomical
theory, for the moment, as improbable.
We next explored the possibility of multiple reflections in the glass
windows of the cockpit, produced by a light source inside the plane
(such as a cigarette), or in the air outside (such as the bright-red
exhaust trail of one of the jets in the area). Like the astronomical
theory, this idea was set aside as improbable. Learning to distinguish
between a reflection and a real light seen through a cockpit window
is part of every pilot’s training. When he sees a strange light,
he automatically makes the proper checks. Furthermore, Nash and
Fortenberry had observed the disks through three separate windows
having different orientations.
Accepting the overwhelming probability that the source of the
UFOs was outside and below the aircraft, we concluded that it was
almost certainly on the ground. The densely populated coastal
region near Newport News and Norfolk, with several airfields and
military installations, included countless possible sources such as a
searchlight, an illuminated advertising sign, an air beacon. Stratified
clouds or inversion layers of temperature and/or humidity could have
multiplied such a light into a series of glowing disks (see Figure 19).
[Illustration: _Figure 19._ Searchlight shining on clouds. A, Through
slightly foggy or dusty atmosphere, light cone plainly visible; B,
through multiple thin cloud layers and foggy or dusty atmosphere; C,
on cloud layer through clear atmosphere, no light cone visible; D, on
multiple thin cloud layers, no light cone visible.]
The soundness of this theory depended on the prevailing weather
conditions. According to the reports, on the night of July 14 roughly
a third of the sky at 20,000 feet was covered with thin cirrus clouds,
practically invisible; at lower altitudes the night was cloudless and
sharply clear, there was no apparent haze, visibility was unlimited,
and no temperature inversion existed. Under such conditions the
suggested mechanism would obviously not operate.
A more detailed survey of the weather conditions, however, quickly
showed that this picture was greatly oversimplified. At 8:12, the time
of the sighting, the night had already become quite dark. Yet the sun
had set only forty-five minutes earlier and, according to the almanac,
twilight should not have ended until 9:01 local time. Thus there must
have been a dense cloud bank low in the west. Also, according to
Captain Nash, there was probably some unstable air, which in itself
indicates inequalities of temperature and/or humidity.
A thorough study of the situation showed that inversions of both
temperature and humidity must have been present. In the summer of 1952
all the eastern states were suffering from an intense heat wave and
drought, and the ground cooled rapidly after sunset, because of the
lack of cloud cover during the day. In a period of heat and drought,
the nightly cooling produces marked inversions favorable to extreme
refraction or reflection. Small in extent, existing only briefly in
one place, constantly changing location, such inversions may not be
detected by radiosonde observations[XII-9]. During July and August,
temperature inversions occurred almost every night in the coastal
regions and accounted for the radar angels so frequently observed in
the Washington area during those weeks (see _Chapter_ VIII).
The fact that the sighting occurred over Chesapeake Bay is significant.
A body of water cools more slowly than the land, and the air over water
is warmer than that over land. The cooler air from the land is carried
over the water by convection currents, flows in and under the warm air,
is heated by the water and rises, to be replaced in turn by the further
flow of cold air from the land. The air over a lake, river, or other
body of water also has a higher moisture content than over the land and
can form an invisible haze.
All these facts lead inescapably to the conclusion that sharp localized
discontinuities of both temperature and humidity must have existed over
Chesapeake Bay on the night the UFOs appeared. A light on the Virginia
coast, shining northeast toward the plane, could easily have been
spread out into a series of images like those observed. A change in the
orientation of the light or a shift in the location of the inversion
would account for the abrupt change of course made by the disks.
Since the plane was flying at a ground speed of about 195 knots (225
to 250 miles an hour), it would have traveled about a mile during the
twelve or fifteen seconds the disks were in view. This distance would
have changed the relation between moving plane and stationary ground
light, so that the images would no longer have been visible from the
plane. By flying on, the witnesses left the phenomenon behind them.
Obviously this solution does not identify the particular beacon,
searchlight, or other ground light that produced the Chesapeake
Bay disks. But it does offer a highly probable explanation that is
consistent with all the observations and does not depend on the
presence of an extraterrestrial spacecraft.
_Other UFOs in “Stack” Formation_
A correspondent has reported a UFO sighting very similar to the Norfolk
case, almost certainly produced by the mechanism just described.
In the late spring of 1955 a physicist, Mr. Z, was driving west on
the highway between Dayton and Yakima, Washington, in a region of
low-lying hills. The time was shortly after dark; the sun had set but
there was still a suggestion of light in the west. Suddenly a line
of five glowing UFOs appeared in the western sky, apparently three
to five miles away, traveling east at high speed, and accelerating
as they approached. Flying in a “stack” with the leading saucer on
top, the individual saucers were oriented in horizontal planes, but
each follower was lower than and somewhat behind its predecessor so
that the entire formation was “like a stack of pancakes” leaning at
about a 45-degree angle toward the direction of flight. (Note that
this arrangement is the reverse analogue of that of the Chesapeake Bay
UFOs.) The top saucer advanced more rapidly than the bottom one, so
that as they flashed through the sky at the left of the observer they
appeared to be in single file. Startled, he stopped his car and got
out to scan the sky, but the saucers had disappeared. Some fifteen to
twenty seconds later a similar formation appeared in the west. As they
approached he could see that they were thin, flat disks, glowing with
a white light, sharply defined and circular in shape, and apparently
fifty to a hundred feet in diameter. As they passed, the stack again
spread out into single file. When they were apparently about ten miles
east, the three lead saucers suddenly disappeared, while the two that
had been on the bottom made a sharp turn to the north, as abruptly as
balls bouncing off a wall.
Concluding that the saucers might be images produced by an airfield
beacon shining upward through very thin horizontal clouds, the observer
continued to watch. They reappeared again and again, sometimes at the
correct interval for an airfield beacon, but sometimes delaying for
two or three minutes. To explain their occasional failure to appear
on schedule, he reasoned that some very dense, fast-moving, low-lying
clouds must lie in the west between him and the beacon, so that
sometimes the light could penetrate to shine on the assumed stratified
layers overhead, and sometimes not. After twenty minutes or so, the
appearance of the phenomenon changed. The top three saucers merged
gradually into an indistinct blur, while the bottom two remained sharp
and distinct and continued to dart abruptly to the north just before
disappearing.
Although the observer was not able to see the very thin layers of cloud
overhead that would be required to account for the sharply defined
shape of the saucers, he concluded that his explanation was the most
reasonable one[XII-10].
In the Norfolk sighting, unfortunately, the witnesses could not easily
have remained in one place to watch for a possible reappearance of the
UFOs. If they had circled and flown back, and had been able to find the
exact location, they might have seen the disks again.
_The Tombaugh Rectangles_
A remarkable phenomenon observed in New Mexico in the summer of 1949
has remained among the most puzzling of the Unknowns. As in the
Chesapeake Bay case, the facts are not in dispute. The witness was
an astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh, at that time in charge of the optical
instrumentation of the rocket-firing program at the White Sands Missile
Range. He had had thousands of hours of experience in observing the
night sky and when still a student had gained fame, after months of
patient searching of photographic plates, by locating the image of the
planet Pluto near the position long predicted for it by Lowell and
Pickering.
On the night of August 20 Tombaugh was sitting with his wife and
his mother-in-law in the yard of his home in Las Cruces, watching
the stars. There was no moon, and the transparency of the sky was
extraordinary, so that even the stars of sixth magnitude, usually
barely detectable by the naked eye, were clearly visible. About 10:45
P.M. a geometrically spaced group of six to eight rectangles of light
appeared almost directly overhead. Of low luminosity, they were
“windowlike” in appearance and yellowish-green in color. The individual
rectangles were quite small, not wider than four or five minutes of
arc, and the entire group covered a span of about 1 degree (about twice
that of the full moon). As they moved noiselessly in a vertical circle
path toward the south-southeast, the individual rectangles became
foreshortened, the span of the group became smaller, the lights turned
brownish and faded from view when 35 to 40 degrees above the horizon.
They had been in sight for about three seconds. Mrs. Tombaugh, who did
not see the lights until they had moved some distance from the zenith,
observed them for only about 1½ seconds before they disappeared. To her
they seemed a diffuse greenish glow, interconnecting a span of greenish
spots of light. Her eyesight had always been less acute than that of
her husband, and they attributed the difference in their descriptions
to this difference in vision.
Although Tombaugh had been too startled to count the number of
rectangles or to note some other features he wondered about later, he
immediately recorded the facts of the observation, sketched the pattern
of the formation, and noted his impression that the lights had been
part of a rigid structure. He added, “I have done thousands of hours
of night sky watching, but never saw a sight so strange as this.” A
report of this sighting was forwarded to Air Force officials, who could
find no explanation. UFO enthusiasts unhesitatingly pronounced the
phenomenon a huge flying saucer--an interpretation that the witness
himself never made.
The accounts given to the public unfortunately suffer from various
distortions of fact. In its Cassandra-like warning of possible
visitors from other planets, _Life_ magazine included the Tombaugh
sighting as one of the key cases and in a ten-sentence description
managed to include at least six misstatements, some of which added to
the “uncanny” nature of the incident. According to this summary[XII-11]
the year was 1948 (it was 1949); the time was about 11:00 P.M. (it
was 10:45 P.M.); the lights were traveling south to north (they were
moving northwest to southeast); the object had an oval shape (Tombaugh
did not specify a shape); the lights exhibited a glare (they were of
low luminosity); their speed was too fast for a plane, too slow for
a meteor (no estimate of speed was given). On a nationwide TV show
broadcast in 1958 one of the speakers stated specifically that Tombaugh
had observed a cigar-shaped object with lighted portholes[XII-12]. An
“artist’s conception” of the UFO in one publication[XII-13] depicts a
long, tapered ship with a line of lighted windows, wholly unrelated to
Tombaugh’s own sketch, which shows no unifying structure, merely six
small rectangles arranged as though each one were at the corner of a
hexagon (see Figure 20).
[Illustration: _Figure 20._ Tombaugh’s rectangles. Top, when first seen
at zenith; bottom, a few seconds later at 50° above horizon. (Based on
sketch by C. W. Tombaugh.)]
While keeping an open mind on the possibility of interplanetary travel,
Tombaugh himself has never supported the spaceship interpretation so
often attributed to him in print but has considered various possible
explanations--insects or birds illuminated by ground lights, or
reflections of ground lights against the boundary of an inversion layer
in the air. Of these, the inversion theory seems the most probable. The
layer in such a case must have been extremely thin or extremely weak,
otherwise it would have dimmed the brightness of the faint stars he was
observing. As in the Chesapeake Bay case, the mysterious rectangles
were undoubtedly the special effect of some unique combination of
circumstances, unlikely to be repeated. Conditions were ideal for
the formation of small sharply localized inversions: the weather was
clear, the day had been hot. A small temperature inversion existing
at a relatively low elevation and smoke, haze, or dust collecting in
a very thin layer at a relatively low altitude were the prerequisites
that almost certainly existed. Some unknown cause--in the vicinity
of an airfield there are many possibilities--could have produced a
ripple in the thin haze layer. This ripple, tipping the haze layer at
a slight angle, could have reflected the lighted windows of a house;
as the ripple progressed in a wavelike motion along the layer, the
reflection would have moved as did the rectangles of light. Conditions
of refraction at the interface would have reflected the wave upward.
Tombaugh has recently summarized his convictions on the entire UFO
phenomenon as well as on his own sighting:
“From my own studies of the solar system I cannot entertain any serious
possibility for intelligent life on the other planets, not even for
Mars (the planet to which I have devoted considerable observation and
study over the past thirty-five years). The logistics of visitations
from planets revolving around the nearer stars is staggering. In
consideration of the hundreds of millions of years in the geologic
time scale when such visitations may possibly have occurred, the odds
of a single visit in a given century or millennium are overwhelmingly
against such an event.
“A much more likely source of explanation is some natural optical
phenomenon in our own atmosphere. In my 1949 sighting the faintness
of the object, together with the manner of fading in intensity as it
traveled away from zenith towards the southeastern horizon, is quite
suggestive of a reflection from an optical boundary or surface of
slight contrast in refractive index, as in an inversion layer.
“I have never seen anything like it before or since, and I have spent
a lot of time where the night sky could be seen well. This suggests
that the phenomenon involves a comparatively rare set of conditions
or circumstances to produce it, but nothing like the odds of an
interstellar visitation.”
[XII-1] Air Force Files.
[XII-1a] Menzel, D. H. “The Truth About Flying Saucers.” _Look_
magazine (June 17, 1952).
[XII-2] Johnson, C. L. Personal communication.
[XII-3] _UFO Investigator_, April-May 1961.
[XII-4] Coleman, W. T. Personal communication.
[XII-5] Nash, W. B. Personal communication.
[XII-6] Ruppelt, E. J. _The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects._
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1956.
[XII-7] Nash, W. B., and Fortenberry, W. H. “We Flew Above Flying
Saucers,” _True_ magazine (October 1952).
[XII-8] Boston _Herald_, June 3, 1962.
[XII-9] “Radar Objects Over Washington,” _Air Weather Service Bulletin_
(September 1954), pp. 52–57.
[XII-10] Gifford, J. F. Personal communication.
[XII-11] “Have We Visitors from Outer Space?” _Life_ magazine, April 4,
1952.
[XII-12] “Flying Saucers, the Enigma of the Skies,” Armstrong Circle
Theatre TV Script, Jan. 22, 1958.
[XII-13] Michel, A. _The Truth about Flying Saucers._ New York:
Criterion Books, 1956.
[XII-14] Tombaugh, C. W. Personal communication.
_Chapter_ XIII
INVESTIGATORS: AIR FORCE AND CIVILIAN
Few government employees in recent times have been subjected to
more criticism than the men in the Aerial Phenomena Group at
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio. This agency (usually
referred to in this book as ATIC) has the responsibility of
investigating all official reports of unidentified objects in our
skies. Of the thousands of such incidents studied so far, none suggests
that the UFO in question came from outer space. In fact, the term UFO
has proven to be one of the worst misnomers of history. In the most
perplexing cases, the phenomena reported are seldom material Objects,
very few of them are Flying and, when fully analyzed, almost none
remain Unidentified.
Identifying strange objects in the air over the United States is
vital to the country’s security. That military officers should be
guilty of carelessness or casual guesswork in this serious business is
unthinkable. Yet ATIC investigators, and through them the United States
Air Force, of which they are members, for more than a decade have been
the target of vicious attacks by civilian enthusiasts devoted to the
cult of flying saucers.
Banded together in various “research” organizations and operating on
the premise that UFOs are interplanetary in origin, most of these
enthusiasts flatly reject the normal explanations--planets, meteors,
satellites, balloons, reflections, birds, radar phantoms, hoaxes,
or delusions. Flying saucers _obviously_ cruise in our skies, the
believers argue, and the Air Force failure to admit the obvious proves
that its investigators are incompetent or dishonest or both, and that
they are involved in a giant conspiracy to conceal the truth from the
American public[XIII-1].
In the view of the saucer groups, the Air Force can do no right. If,
after receiving a UFO report, the investigators require some time to
collect all the relevant facts and to reach a sound conclusion, they
are berated for the delay and accused of cover-up tactics, as in the
Killian case (p. 52). On the other hand, when the answer is found
quickly and released to the newspapers, UFO addicts deny its truth and
assert that the explanation was hurriedly rushed into print in order
to deceive the public, as in the Pacific sighting on July 11, 1959 (p.
106)[XIII-1a, p. 8]. Some of these peculiar beliefs may rest on an
imperfect understanding of the actual aims, methods, and resources of
Air Force investigators.
_Official Study of UFOs_
The report of an unidentified flying object, in about 90 per cent of
the cases, comes first from an ordinary private citizen, who often
notifies the local newspaper or radio station. Not until he reports the
incident to a military official, however, is ATIC empowered to start
investigation. The commanding officer at the Air Force base nearest the
place of the sighting then makes a preliminary investigation and, if
the facts seem to warrant further study, forwards the information to
Dayton for evaluation.
With years of experience to draw on, the Aerial Phenomena Group
can often identify the unknown after a brief study of the report.
If not, they try to determine whether the report contains all the
facts necessary for an explanation and whether the unknown may be of
interest to Intelligence officers. Does it represent a possible danger
to the nation? Does it have possible military significance? Does it
have possible scientific or technical significance? If, after this
review, the investigators conclude that the unknown might be of some
importance, they carry out an intensive study in which they may have
the help of an organization directly connected with the Assistant
Chief of Staff for Intelligence or of allied Intelligence agencies.
When all the relevant facts are collected, a survey usually shows
that the unknown fits a particular class of sighting. To complete the
identification, ATIC can call on the expert knowledge of a specialist
in the type of phenomenon involved.
Expert help is available from a large variety of sources:
1. Official consultant to the Air Force, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Director
of the Dearborn Observatory and Professor of Astronomy at Northwestern
University, formerly Assistant Director, Smithsonian Astrophysical
Observatory.
2. Members of the Air Force with special scientific and technical
training, whose full duty is the study, investigation, and analysis of
UFO reports.
3. A panel of military and civilian experts in all branches of science
and technology.
4. The scientific and technical laboratories (photographic, ballistic,
chemical, etc.) of all branches of the Air Force and of other
government agencies.
5. The meteorological records of the United States Weather Bureau, the
United States Coast Guard, and other government agencies.
6. Commercial laboratories under contract to carry out special work.
With the best scientific resources of the nation available, the Air
Force can make sure that a puzzling UFO phenomenon will undergo study
by an expert. Reports involving radar sightings are analyzed by the
research scientists who know most about the behavior of radar. If
satellites or astronomical objects might be involved, astronomers study
the evidence. If the report includes photographs or physical evidence,
experts provide the appropriate laboratory analysis. If a UFO still
proves difficult to explain, the complete facts are laid before a
panel of experts for discussion. When a sighting has been completely
analyzed, the conclusions--known or unknown--are filed with the record
of the case. If the newspapers have publicized the incident, a summary
of the analysis is given to SAFIS (Office of Information Services,
Office of the Secretary of the Air Force) for release to the press.
In the early years of the flying-saucer saga, almost none of the men
assigned to investigate UFOs had any special training in the optical
and astronomical sciences or in investigative techniques. Since the
specific facts of so many cases were classified, civilian scientists
who might have helped explain the UFO puzzles were not able to get the
necessary information. Unsurprisingly, the percentage of unexplained
cases sometimes reached as high as 5 to 10 per cent, and once reached
the staggering peak of 20 per cent! In recent years the techniques
of collection, investigation, and analysis of the facts have greatly
improved. Air Force investigators not only have excellent training,
they also have a solid body of experience behind them. In later reviews
they have found the answers to many, but not to all, of the backlog
of “Unknown” cases which, if reported today, would probably cause no
problem. Some of the old cases will probably never be solved because
the men in charge at the time did not always know what questions to
ask. Essential information was not obtained and can never be obtained
now.
The Air Force never closes an unsolved case. Reports that have been
listed as Unidentified or Insufficient Evidence are reanalyzed when new
evidence becomes available. Occasionally new evidence produces a more
complete or even a different explanation for a case that was previously
considered probably solved.
Statistical summaries of the UFO sightings for each month and for
each period of six months are forwarded to SAFIS for release. In
recent years ATIC has been receiving fewer than 600 reports per year
and solving about 98 per cent. In 1961, 578 UFOs were reported. Of
those in which all the necessary information was available, all but
thirteen--about two per cent--were completely explained.
Believers in flying saucers tend to ignore the 98 per cent of cases
fully explained by the Air Force, and to focus attention on the 2 per
cent that remain puzzling. Yet no distinguishable difference exists
between the types of observation described in solved and in unsolved
cases. From considering the original reports, the competence of the
witnesses, and the appearance and movements of the various UFOs, no
analyst could predict in advance which will be fully accounted for and
which will not. The witnesses (often technically trained observers or
experienced airmen) in the cases that are solved are just as reliable
as--and no less so than--the witnesses in the unexplained cases. They
report the same classes of phenomena--glowing UFOs, hovering UFOs, UFOs
moving at high velocities, making incredible maneuvers, and behaving as
though under intelligent control.
The Air Force has accounted for nearly all of these flying saucers.
The various causes included aircraft, balloons, satellites, mirages,
inversions, hoaxes, delusions, reflections, birds, lenticular clouds,
ball lightning, radar anomalies, sundogs, meteors, planets, stars,
the Aurora, and other astronomical phenomena. The few remaining
cases report similar observations and undoubtedly have one of these
causes--which cannot be proved because some essential fact is
missing. No data in these unsolved cases suggest that the UFOs had an
interplanetary origin or that they constituted a threat to the security
of the United States.
When Air Force investigators have determined that a UFO report does
not represent anything of interest to Intelligence, their primary duty
ends. However, since many UFO puzzles are of interest for scientific
or technical reasons, the investigators try to find the specific
explanation of each case and, if it has attracted public attention,
give the final solution to the press.
_Civilian Saucer Groups_
Since the first flying saucers were reported in 1947, dozens of
civilian clubs have been organized throughout the world to collect UFO
reports and publish “the truth” allegedly suppressed by government
sources. During the last decade the roster in the United States has
included such groups as the Borderland Sciences Research Associates
(California), Interplanetary Intelligence of Unidentified Flying
Objects (Oklahoma), Intercontinental Aerial Research Foundation
(Nebraska), UFO Research Committee (Ohio), Civilian Saucer Intelligence
(New York), Waukegan Contact Group (Illinois), Saucer Investigative
Research Organization (Georgia), World Society of the Flying Saucer
(Idaho), Civilian Research on Interplanetary Flying Objects (Ohio), and
the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (Washington,
D.C.). The oldest of these saucer clubs, the Aerial Phenomena Research
Organization (Arizona) was founded in 1952 and issues a bimonthly news
sheet, the _APRO Bulletin_. More or less regular publications (some
now defunct) of these groups have included the _Cosmic Researcher_,
_Interplanetary News Service_, _CRIFO Orbit_, _Saucerian Bulletin_,
and _UFO Critical Bulletin_. In recent years some of the best factual
accounts of UFO incidents (as well as some of the weirdest speculation)
have appeared in the magazine _Flying Saucers_, which is not connected
with any club.
A few clubs, chiefly in California, are semireligious in character,
claiming repeated communication with ethereal beings in space. Some
clubs accept “contact” stories as valid, others do not. Certain
articles of faith are apparently common to all such groups: that UFOs
are actually vehicles from outer space; that they sometimes land on
earth and occasionally leave physical traces in the form of metallic
or organic substances; that scientists who cannot accept these beliefs
are hypocrites, archfiends, anti-Galileo reactionaries, stooges for
the Army or the Air Force, and members of the conspiracy to delude the
public.
_NICAP_
The largest and probably the most influential saucer group is the
National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), with
affiliated subcommittees in various parts of the country. Many
members of local organizations such as the UFO Research Committee of
Akron, Ohio, also belong to NICAP and help maintain close liaison.
The bimonthly news sheet, the _UFO Investigator_, is distributed to
members of NICAP and to prominent persons in the government and other
fields; it regularly lists recent UFO sightings reported by members,
and occasionally prints a detailed report of a specific case. Few of
the sightings reported can be independently evaluated because the
accounts often omit such essential facts as exact times, dates, places,
direction of motion, etc.
With headquarters in Washington, D.C., NICAP strongly reflects the
views of its director, Major Donald E. Keyhoe, USMC (Ret.), that UFOs
may be interplanetary in origin, sometimes land on earth, but rarely
if ever make contact with human beings. Like most saucer believers,
many members of NICAP tend to assume without adequate investigation
that many unusual sky phenomena reported in the newspapers may be
extraterrestrial objects, and they often maintain this attitude in
the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. When the BOAC
Comet exploded near Calcutta on May 2, 1953, Major Keyhoe theorized
that a UFO might accidentally or deliberately have collided with the
plane. He continued such speculation even after British aviation
officials announced, after months of study, that the crash was caused
by metal fatigue[XIII-1]. Many of the items printed in the _UFO
Investigator_ are based on incomplete evidence. Under the headline
“Strange Series of Fireballs Reported,” NICAP listed a UFO observed on
March 7, 1960, at about 8:10 P.M., visible from the Canadian border
to Florida, and described by some observers as three or four UFOs
flying in formation[XIII-3]. This phenomenon was actually the satellite
Discoverer VIII making its final descent to earth.
NICAP membership is theoretically open to any non-Communist
citizen[XIII-4], but applicants from the “contactee” fringe are not
encouraged. The committee once canceled the membership of a space
evangelist when he claimed publicly to be a spokesman for NICAP, and in
1958 it canceled the membership of seven famous contactees who had been
admitted without the knowledge of the director[XIII-5].
Investigations are carried out as spare-time projects of the
members themselves, some of whom constitute an advisory panel
of experts. Although many are highly respected in their own
professions--television, journalism, military science, religion,
government, aviation, engineering, medicine, psychology, and teaching
in the physical sciences--few are recognized specialists in the fields
required for the analysis of most UFO cases--radar propagation, the
physics of optics, meteorology, and astronomy.
Since 1957 a major goal of NICAP has been a Congressional inquiry that
supposedly would reveal an Air Force conspiracy to deny the reality of
flying saucers[XIII-7]. In 1957 the director lodged a formal complaint
with a member of the United States Senate charging that the Air Force
continually made false statements on UFOs to the press, the public,
and members of Congress. In support of this accusation Major Keyhoe
submitted summaries of more than two hundred incidents[XIII-7].
The list cited a number of UFO reports that had never been submitted
to the Air Force for analysis. These included reports from foreign
countries (one in Sumatra in 1944 and one Holland in 1952) and from
NICAP’s private files. Others, such as the Kinross case (p. 154), had
not been within ATIC jurisdiction. Many others, such as the Mantell
(p. 33) and the Chiles-Whitted (p. 108) cases, had long ago been fully
explained. Still other cases, dating from the early days of the saucer
era, remain unsolved only because vital facts, not determined at the
time of the sighting, are necessary to a full explanation but cannot
now be ascertained. The request for a Congressional inquiry was denied
but has been repeated at intervals.
_The “Conspiracy” Fantasy_
Most UFO organizations cling to the belief that a conspiracy exists to
conceal the existence of extraterrestrial vehicles, but they disagree
on its precise composition. To NICAP and its affiliates, the chief
culprit is the Air Force, helped occasionally by other government
agencies and by well-known civilian scientists. APRO (Aerial Phenomena
Research Organization), however, considers that the Air Force is
involved only as the tool of still more powerful forces. The director
of APRO has published her conviction that nobody in the Air Force,
the Navy, or the Marines “has the brains” to contrive so successful a
scheme and that the alleged plot “could only be borne [_sic_] of minds
schooled in deception and contraception [_sic_]--the elite corps of the
Central Intelligence Agency.”[XIII-8] In still another version (which
makes the plots of E. Phillips Oppenheim seem amateurish) NICAP itself
is a pawn in a superconspiracy so vast that thousands of American
citizens have been made its unknowing tools[XIII-9]. The hundreds of
strange phenomena observed in the skies, the controversial photographs
of UFOs, the “spacemen” who visited Adamski and others, the “contact”
and little-green-men stories, the analyses made by the Air Force, the
formation of the various saucer clubs, NICAP and its war against the
Air Force--all these phenomena, events, and persons are allegedly parts
of a colossal drama planned, supported, and staged as a deliberate hoax
on the American public. The prime mover is supposed to be the Central
Intelligence Agency, whose motive is to conceal--something; just what
is not clear[XIII-10].
In comparison with this fantasy, NICAP’s charges of simple Air Force
cover-up seem tame.
_UFO at Sheffield Lake, Ohio_
One of the most notorious accusations of Air Force skulduggery, made
in attempts to procure a Congressional inquiry, was that embodied in
a saucerian study of the Fitzgerald sighting[XIII-11], published by
the UFO Research Committee of Akron, Ohio, which maintains a close
relationship with NICAP. Although the case was unimportant and was
completely explained, we shall discuss it in detail to illustrate the
peculiar views and methods of the flying-saucer groups.
In summary, a strange light observed on a dark night for roughly half a
minute by a drowsy housewife was converted into a weapon to attack the
Air Force. The incident inspired thousands of words of argument, caused
the publication and distribution of a lengthy document, used the time
of busy investigators, required an otherwise unnecessary expenditure of
public funds, and evoked an exchange of letters among angry citizens,
harassed Congressmen, and equally harassed Air Force officials. In all
UFO history, no larger mountain has ever been made from so small a
molehill.
On September 30, 1958, the Air Technical Intelligence Center at
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base received a letter from Mrs. William
Fitzgerald of Sheffield Lake, Ohio, reporting that on September 21
she had sighted a UFO which she would like to have investigated. She
enclosed a three-page summary prepared by members of the UFO Research
Committee of Akron, and added, “I assure you that I will contact my
congressman about this matter if some action is not taken soon to
explain it.”[XIII-12]
The alleged UFO had appeared at about 3 A.M. in the yard of the
one-story, two-bedroom house occupied by Mrs. Fitzgerald and her
husband. She had been sitting up alone watching television and had
gone to bed at the end of the late movie. The bedroom window was shut
and the window curtains were closed. Outside, the night was dark; the
moon had set, there were no street lights, and none of the neighboring
houses was lighted. Lying with her arm over her eyes, trying to get to
sleep, she suddenly realized that the room was illuminated and stood
up on the bed to look out of the window.
According to her account, a disk-shaped object with a hump in the
middle, a dull aluminum in color, was moving across the yard at a
height of about five feet. The object did not glow and did not have
lights on it; she could not determine the source of the light that
made it visible to her. About twenty to twenty-two feet in diameter
and about six feet high, the UFO moved north across the driveway into
a neighbor’s yard, losing altitude on the way until it was only one
foot above the ground. At a distance of fifty feet, it stopped and
floated motionless for several seconds while pink-gray smoke billowed
out from two openings in the rim and illuminated the UFO. Each opening
contained seven pipes. The smoke did not come from the pipes but from
the openings from which the pipes projected. The object then moved back
into the witness’s yard, rising to a height of five feet. No longer
emitting smoke, it made two quick clockwise turns with a radius of
about three feet, and rose straight up. The roof of the house, jutting
out over the window, cut it from further view. During the entire time
of the sighting, about thirty-six seconds, she had heard a muffled
noise like that of a jet engine warming up. She had tried several times
to waken her husband, by kicking him, but without success. When the
object had gone, she went back to bed and slept.
When she awoke at 11:00 the next morning and mentioned her experience
to the family, she learned that ten-year-old John Fitzgerald, sleeping
in the second bedroom, had also seen a strange light. He had apparently
wakened during the night to go to the bathroom and had returned to bed,
when he saw a bright light shining into his room and heard an unusual
noise. Climbing up on the radiator to look out of his window, he saw
something the color of a tin cup moving across the yard. After watching
for a few seconds until the light had gone, he went to bed and to sleep.
Puzzled by the incident, Mrs. Fitzgerald telephoned the local
newspaper, the Lorain _Journal_, and the story appeared in several Ohio
newspapers. Members of the Akron Committee, one of whom lived in the
nearby town of Lorain, soon arrived to question her and prepare the
summary of her experience. Other witnesses in Lorain were reported to
have seen the same UFO.
Even at first glance, the situation presented several unusual features.
The witness had delayed more than a week before notifying Air Force
investigators, yet she threatened to notify her congressman unless some
action were taken soon. She had not waited for action, however, but by
the same mail had written to her congressman requesting him to obtain
an explanation from the Air Force. The summary of her experience,
prepared with the help of members of the UFO Research Committee of
Akron, was equally remarkable. Even though her dark-adapted eyes had
just been assaulted by a bright light and the object had been in view
for a maximum of only thirty-six seconds, she provided a description so
detailed that it almost suggested a photographic memory.
On October 3, three days after her letter reached ATIC, two Air Force
men, Technical Sergeant A and Technical Sergeant B, who were specially
trained in the investigation of UFO incidents, arrived in Lorain. After
a day spent in studying such pertinent matters as the local geography,
the records of the Weather Bureau, the Coast Guard station, and the
local railway, on October 4 they called on the witnesses.
Again the situation was unusual. Mrs. Fitzgerald’s husband did not
appear. With Mrs. Fitzgerald and young John, however, was Mr. C, the
member of the local UFO group who had spent several days helping her
prepare her account. To the amazement of the sergeants, Mr. C seemed to
assume that he was in charge of the interview, answered the questions
put to Mrs. Fitzgerald, and continually interrupted with questions
and statements of his own. After half an hour of this frustrating
procedure, Sergeant A led Mr. C out into the yard. In the house,
Sergeant B resumed the inquiry and filled out the official report form.
Few questions were asked of the boy because both the details and the
phraseology of his description seemed to echo adult conversations
overheard during the two weeks that had elapsed since the sighting.
According to the account prepared by the Akron Committee, the boy had
been frightened by a light so bright that he had to shield his eyes.
(The time was unknown, and the light may or may not have been the one
observed by Mrs. Fitzgerald.) Climbing on top of the radiator to look
out of the window, he had seen the UFO and watched it take off into
the air, and then had gone back to bed and to sleep. Sergeant B had
a young son of about the same age. That a normal ten-year-old boy
should not call out and try to awaken the household when confronted
with a whirling, humming, dome-shaped spaceship some twenty-two feet in
diameter and six feet high, moving through his own yard in the middle
of the night, seemed too improbable to warrant serious questioning.
After finishing with the Fitzgeralds, the sergeants called on other
supposed witnesses in Lorain. Satisfied that they had completed a
thorough investigation, they returned to Dayton and presented the
information to their superior officers for evaluation. None of the
evidence suggested that the phenomenon had been a spacecraft[XIII-12].
The UFO had been the “special effect” of a peculiar combination of
circumstances:
1. The time. The sighting had occurred about 3 A.M.; the exact
moment was not known and could not be determined.
2. The geography. The shore of Lake Erie lay about three fifths
of a mile north of the Fitzgerald house. South of the house,
roughly 100 yards away, ran the tracks of the New York Central
Railway. Southwest of the house about one and a half miles
stood a steel foundry.
3. The weather. A drizzling rain was falling at the time of the
sighting. There was some haze and wind; no moonlight.
4. Other factors, (a) Between midnight and 4 A.M. a Coast Guard
cutter equipped with an eight-inch spotlight had been plying
back and forth on Lake Erie, searching for an overdue cabin
cruiser. At about 3 A.M. the cutter had been headed east toward
Lorain, reaching there at 3:15, had then continued east beyond
Sheffield to Avon, before turning back to the Lorain lifeboat
station and berthing at 4 A.M. (b) At 2:52 A.M. a train had
left the Lorain railroad station, roughly three miles from
the Fitzgerald house. Eight minutes later it would have been
passing south of the house at a distance of about 100 yards.
The engine was using a rotating headlight.
From these facts it was possible to reconstruct the probable sequence
of events that produced the UFO: In the hour or so before the sighting,
the witness had been sitting up alone watching the late movie on TV.
The film that night was a horror movie, _Dracula’s Daughter_. About 3
A.M., soon after the witness had gone to bed, the Coast Guard cutter
on Lake Erie was traveling east toward Lorain, was very near the harbor
and was flashing its spotlight toward shore. The light had briefly
illuminated the two bedrooms of the Fitzgerald house and had roused
Mrs. Fitzgerald. At that distance, between three and four miles, the
beam would have spread and would have been dispersed still more by the
drops of rain falling. By the time Mrs. Fitzgerald reached the window
and pulled back the curtains, the searchlight was gone. At the same
time, however, the train that left Lorain at 2:52 was passing south of
the house, using its rotating headlight and producing a roaring noise
made more piercing by the moist atmosphere. Looking through the wet
glass of the window, the witness saw the beam of the train’s headlight
moving through the haze in the yard. Smoke from the nearby foundry was
also being blown into the yard. Illuminated by the circular beam of
light, the smoke seemed to be a glowing, solid object that moved back
and forth and emitted clouds of gray-pink smoke.
In summary, the Air Force concluded that Mrs. Fitzgerald’s UFO was
an illusion produced by a combination of factors: an excited frame
of mind induced by _Dracula’s Daughter_, the spotlight on the Coast
Guard cutter, the rotating headlight of the train and the noise of its
engine, drifting smoke from the foundry, and the haze of the drizzly
night.
This conclusion provoked an explosion from the witness, who wrote her
congressman suggesting mental incompetence on the part of the Air Force
official who analyzed the case.
“_The Fitzgerald Report_”
The UFO Research Committee compiled and on December 1, 1958, published
a thirteen-page pamphlet (later reissued in amplified form and
copyrighted) entitled: “The Fitzgerald Report, A Complete and Detailed
Account of the Sighting of an Unidentified Flying Object, Sheffield
Lake, Ohio, September 21, 1958.” This document charged “duplicity”
in the Air Force treatment of UFO reports in general, and asserted
that the Fitzgerald investigation in particular had been “criminally
mishandled” and was a “disgrace to the U. S. Air Force and an insult
to the American public....” It further suggested that Sergeants A and
B be “disciplined” because their investigation was not adequate or
thorough, and that they had had “little or no intention of making an
honest investigation of this sighting.”
Copies of the pamphlet were mailed to eminent scientists throughout
the country, members of the United States House of Representatives and
the United States Senate, officers in the Air Force, the Secretary of
the Air Force, and the Secretary of Defense. The publication of such
charges against an ordinary private citizen might easily have caused
a suit for libel. The Air Force investigators, whatever their private
reactions may have been, had no such recourse; their accusers could act
with fair assurance of immunity from legal action.
The document made a number of specific accusations. Because of the
wide publicity given this attack, we shall discuss each point fully.
Our comments, appended in brackets, are based on official records of
the Air Force, the New York Central Railway, the United States Weather
Bureau, and the United States Coast Guard. Most of these facts were
available to the Akron Committee itself.
_Charge 1._ Because of the position of the Fitzgerald house, the
headlight of the train could not have shone into the bedroom windows.
[Correct. But the point is irrelevant. The Air Force did not suggest
that the train’s light shone into the window. The light could have
shone into the yard, however, and would have been visible to a witness
looking out of the window. The brilliant light that flashed in the
window and roused the witness did not come from the train but from the
spotlight of the Coast Guard cutter.]
_Charge 2._ Events taking place on the lake could not have had any
relation to the sighting because the shore was 3000 feet away and,
because of intervening houses and trees, a witness in the Fitzgerald
house could not see the lake. [Incorrect conclusion from the facts. The
beam of a spotlight on a boat moving one or two miles offshore (as was
the Coast Guard cutter at about 3 A.M.) could have been seen from the
house. The beam of such a light can be visible for great distances.
Reflected from the clouds and spread by the drops of moisture in
the air, it could easily have flashed into the window with great
brilliance.]
_Charge 3a._ The spotlight used by the Coast Guard cutter was of a
type that could not be focused like a searchlight; therefore the beam
could not have been reflected from the clouds to the Fitzgerald house.
[Incorrect. The spotlight used could operate with either a diffuse or a
narrow beam, could be focused like a searchlight, and could have been
reflected from the clouds to the house.]
_Charge 3b._ The Coast Guard cutter had used its spotlight and turned
the beam in the direction of the house only once that night, while
signaling another boat at a time two hours earlier than the sighting
and a place roughly five miles from the house. [The December 1, 1958,
edition of the document gives the distance as 4½ miles; the 1959
edition gives 5½ miles. Whatever the true distance, the statement is
incorrect. A signaling incident did occur at the time and about the
place specified, but it had no relation to the Fitzgerald sighting. The
light was used frequently in the hours between midnight and 4 A.M., as
the cutter carried out its search for the missing cabin cruiser. In a
statement obtained by the Akron Committee itself, the chief boatswain’s
mate affirmed that “subject spotlight was flashed on and off a number
of times during the night, picking up objects in all directions. It
is hard to estimate how many times spotlights were snapped on and off
during subject search, but they were used quite often during short
periods of time.”]
_Charge 4._ The statement that the supposed confirmatory witness, Mrs.
S, could not recall anything unusual for the night of the sighting
was “a lie,” as evidenced by her signed statement. [Incorrect. When
the investigators visited Mrs. S, she asserted that she had nothing
to contribute. At about 2:30 A.M. (half an hour earlier than the
Fitzgerald sighting) she had indeed noticed a bright-red glow that
had startled her at first until she realized that it probably came
from the nearby Ohio Edison plant or from the foundry. The signed
statement printed by the Akron Committee in the December 1958 edition
of the document bears no date. The notarized statement used in the 1959
edition is dated March 25, six months after the sighting had occurred.
After the Air Force interview, apparently, Mrs. S had changed her mind
for reasons unknown.]
_Charge 5._ The statement that another confirmatory witness, Mr. G,
was not available for interview was “pathetic” because it was Mrs.
G, not Mr. G, who saw the UFO. [The point of this accusation is not
clear. Because of a typographical error in a letter, “Mrs.” was changed
to “Mr.” The fact remains that the supposed witness, Mrs. G, was not
available. Also, the light she reported had appeared about 2 A.M., an
hour before the Fitzgerald sighting.]
_Charge 6a._ It was not true that a misty rain with haze and mist had
occurred at the time of the sighting; the witness herself stated that
it was not raining. [Incorrect. The Cleveland Weather Bureau recorded
continual slight precipitation between midnight and 7 A.M.: .20 inches
were recorded between 2 and 4 A.M. When asked whether it was raining
when she saw the UFO, the witness replied, “It had rained a few hours
before,” a vague response suggesting that she had not noticed the
weather at the time of the sighting. Other parts of her account,
however, strongly indicate rain. Although the night was warm (about 65
degrees F. at 3 A.M.), her bedroom window was closed.]
_Charge 6b._ It was not true that smoke from the steel plant southwest
of the house could have been a factor in the sighting, because the
direction of the wind was wrong. [Incorrect. The Weather Bureau
recorded “WSW and SW” winds that night averaging ten miles an hour;
coming from the southwest, the winds would have blown the smoke
northeast, directly toward the house.]
_Charge 7a._ The sergeants did not make a house-to-house check among
the neighbors to obtain confirmatory evidence. [Correct. Such a
time-consuming procedure would not have been justified. The neighbors
had had two weeks in which to report a visiting spaceship. No such
report had been made, even by the neighbor in whose yard the noisy
object was supposed to have hovered while emitting puffs of smoke.]
_Charge 7b._ They did not ask Mrs. Fitzgerald to make a drawing of the
UFO. [Correct. Before their visit she had already made such a drawing,
prepared with the help of members of the Akron Committee who had shown
her a sketch of an alleged spaceship reproduced several years earlier
in an Air Force pamphlet[XIII-13]. With this sketch before her to
aid her memory, Mrs. Fitzgerald had described her UFO to a draftsman
provided by the committee. Unsurprisingly, the resulting sketch was
very similar to the picture used as an example. A drawing obtained in
this way could have no value as evidence.]
_Charge 7c._ The sergeants failed to ask enough questions about the
motions of the object. [Incorrect. The standard form for reporting
unidentified flying objects contains questions specifically designed to
describe the motion of an unknown; all these questions were asked and
answered.]
_Charge 7d._ They used only the standard report form; it did not
include questions that allowed Mrs. Fitzgerald to express all her
ideas of what she had seen. [Correct. The questions are designed to
elicit observed physical facts; it does not require all the witness’s
interpretations.]
_Charge 7e._ They did not take notes during the interview. [Correct.
In filling out the report form they obtained all the necessary
information. They had been trained not to take additional notes because
some witnesses become nervous when they see that their remarks are
being written down.]
_Basic charge 7._ These “omissions” in procedure proved that the
sergeants had little intention of making an honest investigation.
[Incorrect. They omitted no query that might have yielded useful
evidence. Their duty was to report and try to account for the
phenomenon observed by Mrs. Fitzgerald, not to record her belief in a
hypothetical spaceship. The details of structure and motion that Mr.
C wanted to insert in the record were mere impressions based on his
assumption that the UFO was a solid object under intelligent control.]
The document repeatedly charged that the investigators asked too
few questions, and implied that they asked only five of Mrs.
Fitzgerald--yet she answered all the many questions in the standard
report form. Furthermore, Mr. C had no way of knowing just how many and
what questions were asked; during all the latter part of the interview
he was outside the house.
Perhaps the best comment on the Fitzgerald Report and on the activities
of civilian saucer-investigation groups in general is that of Dr.
Thornton Page, the eminent astronomer who in 1952 served on the
scientific panel to evaluate UFO reports (see _Chapter_ VII). After
receiving a copy of the Fitzgerald Report, he wrote to a member of the
Akron Committee:
“As a scientist I am interested in unexplained phenomena, but the
one or ones responsible for Mrs. Fitzgerald’s sighting is or are
undoubtedly highly complex. It is just as false to say simply that
she saw a flying saucer 20 feet in diameter as it is to say that she
saw nothing, or that she simply saw the train headlight on a mist.
Certainly, I would not expect a pair of Air Force investigators to
be able to explain her sighting (and the others) satisfactorily from
interviews two weeks after the event. It would be ridiculous to
propose that a team of experts in the fields of physics, psychology,
meteorology, engineering and railroading be sent to Sheffield Lake,
Ohio, to study these sightings from all possible angles.
“I have already written to you and to others that your fundamental
error is in oversimplifying your explanations of complex natural
phenomena by assuming a common cause without justification. If you
say that everything you cannot understand is caused by gremlins, then
gremlins are everywhere! And the Air Force would need a much larger
budget to investigate every sighting or hearing or feeling of a gremlin!
“... The onus is not on the Air Force or me to prove that no flying
saucer was present that night; the onus is on you and your UFO Research
Committee to prove that there is _no_ other explanation of what was
seen and heard.”
_The Open Mind_
Of the many astronomical observatories in the United States and
abroad, none has ever photographed an object that remotely resembled
a spaceship. Since 1957, hundreds of members of Moonwatch teams
throughout the world have watched the skies to record passages of the
many artificial satellites, but no Moonwatch team has yet reported the
presence of a spaceship. Radar stations on all continents keep track
of every artificial satellite and fragment of satellite orbiting the
earth. In February 1963 there were 284 such objects, originating in
Canada, Great Britain, Russia, and the United States. If an interloper
from beyond our planet should join the parade, Space Track stations
would at once detect its presence.
The Air Force has found no evidence of any kind that anyone has ever
seen, heard, smelled, photographed, touched, or in any way detected a
trace of an interplanetary spacecraft. Extraterrestrial visitors have
not yet arrived, and may never arrive. If and when they do, our Air
Force wants to be the first to know.
The Air Force will continue to investigate reports of unidentified
flying objects and to treat them as “serious business.”[XIII-14] The
security of the nation depends on this watchfulness. When a pilot
sees a bright object flashing through the sky and cannot immediately
recognize it, he knows that he may be looking at a meteor, a balloon,
a bird, a sundog, a planetary mirage, or another plane. On the other
hand, since he may be catching a significant glimpse of a guided
missile or an aircraft from beyond the United States, he promptly
reports another UFO. The Air Force cannot afford to guess what is in
our skies. They want to _know_.
The creative scientist, eternally curious, keeps an open mind toward
strange phenomena and novel ideas, knowing that we have only begun to
understand the universe we live in. He remembers, too, that Biot’s
discovery that meteorites were “stones from the sky” was at first
greeted with disbelief, and he hopes never to be guilty of similar
obtuseness. But an open mind does not mean credulity or a suspension of
the logical faculties that are man’s most valuable asset.
Human beings now stand on the threshold of space. Visits to and from
other worlds may occur in the future, bringing new facts and new
interpretations of reality that we cannot now imagine. No evidence yet
found indicates that such visits have begun. No fact so far determined
suggests that a single unidentified flying object has originated
outside our own planet.
[XIII-1] Keyhoe, D. E. _The Flying Saucer Conspiracy._ New York: Henry
Holt & Co., 1955.
[XIII-1a] Tacker, L. J. _Flying Saucers and the U. S. Air Force._
Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1960.
[XIII-2] Keyhoe, D. E. _Flying Saucers from Outer Space._ New York:
Henry Holt & Co., 1953.
[XIII-3] _UFO Investigator_ (March 1960).
[XIII-4] _UFO Investigator_ (August-September 1958).
[XIII-5] _UFO Investigator_ (April-May 1961).
[XIII-6] _UFO Investigator_ (July-August 1960).
[XIII-7] Keyhoe, D. E. _Flying Saucers: Top Secret._ New York: G. P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1960.
[XIII-8] Lorenzen, C. E. “The Psychology of UFO Secrecy,” _Flying
Saucers_ (October 1958), p. 12 ff.
[XIII-9] Davidson, L. [Letter] _Flying Saucers_ (October 1958), p. 79.
[XIII-10] Davidson, L. “An Open Letter to Saucer Researchers,” _Flying
Saucers_ (March 1962), p. 36.
[XIII-11] _The Fitzgerald Report_, The UFO Research Committee of Akron,
Ohio, 1958.
[XIII-12] Air Force Files.
[XIII-13] Project Blue Book, _Special Report No. 14_, ATIC,
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. May 5, 1955.
[XIII-14] New York _Times_, February 28, 1960.
APPENDIX
UFO AND OTHER INCIDENTS REFERRED TO
_Date_ _Place_ _Associated _Page_
name_
1913 February 9 Canada Great Meteor 107
Procession
1947 Jan. 12 Puerto Rico 99
June 24 Chehalis, Wash. Arnold 13
June 31 Tacoma, Wash. Maury Island 21
July 7 Kentucky 58
1948 Jan. 7 Louisville, Ky. Mantell 33
Feb. 18 Norton, Kans. 102
July 24 Alabama Chiles-Whitted 109
July 26 Southeast states 111
July 27 Tennessee 112
Oct. 1 Fargo, N.D. Gorman 77
December New Mexico Green fireballs 93
1949 Aug. 20 Las Cruces, N.M. Tombaugh 266
1950 March 8 Dayton, Ohio 70
March 17 Farmington, N.M. 48
June 4 Colorado 95
July 4 New Mexico Fry 200
Aug. 11 Washington, Oregon 95
Sep. 20 Murray, Ky. 96
Sep. 20 Western states 98
Nov. 2 Eastern states 95
1951 May 29 Downey, Calif. 129
Aug. 25 Lubbock, Tex. Lubbock lights 123
Nov. 2 Texas 95
1952 Jan. 6 California Van Tassel 201
Jan. 22 Alaska 152
Jan. 29 Eastern states 100
May 7 Brazil Ilha dos Amores 206
June 15 Virginia 39
June 21 Oak Ridge, Tenn. 76
July 2 Tremonton, Utah 130
July 5 Hanford, Wash. 135
July 7 Pacific Northwest 135
July 12 Indiana 135
July 14 Chesapeake Bay, Va. Nash-Fortenberry 256
July 16 Salem, Mass. Coast Guard photo 122
July 19 Washington, D.C. Radar saucers 155
July 26 Washington, D.C. Radar saucers 155
July 27 Manhattan Beach, Calif. Stack of coins 49
July 27 Nevada Bethurum 201
July 29 Port Huron, Mich. 160
Aug. 1 Bellefontaine, Ohio 162
Aug. 3 Hamilton A.F.B., Calif. 46
Aug. 8 Durango, Colo. 50
Aug. 10 Durango, Colo. 50
Aug. 19 W. Palm Beach, Fla. Scoutmaster 136
Aug. 24 Hermanas, N.M. 47
Sep. 12 Sutton, W.Va. Sutton monster 137
Sep. 24 Cuba 42
Oct 10 Presque Isle, Me. 139
Oct 10 France Angel hair 220
Oct 27 France Angel hair 220
Nov. 20 California Adamski 203
Dec. 6 Gulf of Mexico 5
Dec. 10 Odessa, Wash. 62
Dec. 29 Japan Rotating lights 73
1953 Jan. 9 Japan Rotating lights 73
Jan. 21 Japan Rotating lights 73
Feb. 6 Rosalia, Wash.
May 2 Calcutta, India BOAC Comet 276
May 31 New South Wales 26
July 29 New York Moon Bridge 228
Aug. 5 Rapid City, S.D. Ellsworth A.F.B. 167
Aug. 19 New Haven, Conn. 231
September England Invisible saucers 165
Nov. 23 Michigan Kinross 154
Nov. 28 Eastern states 99
1954 Jan. 30 Indiana 85
Sep. 18 San Francisco, Calif. 92
Sep. 18 New Mexico, Colorado 92
Oct. 2 France 123
Oct. 22 Marysville, Ohio Jerome School 222
Nov. 30 Sylacauga, Ala. 88
November Taormina, Sicily 205
Dec. 13 Campinas, Brazil Silver rain 231
1955 Feb. 21 Horseheads, N.Y. Angel hair 223
March 3 Alaska 60
May 19 Los Angeles, Calif. 130
Oct. 31 Gainesville, Fla. 51
1956 Feb. 4 Accra, Africa 50
March 20–22 Cincinnati, Ohio 67
April 8 New York Ryan 68
Summer U.S.S.R. 178
Aug. 26 California 130
Sep. 10 Salina, Kansas 164
Sep. 25 Cincinnati, Ohio Angel hair 224
Dec. 29 White Pass, Wash. 28
December U.S.S.R. 178
1957 March 9 Atlantic Ocean PanAm-San Juan 104
July 24 Norway 248
Sep. ? Ubataba, Brazil 236
Nov. 2 Levelland, Tex. 174
Nov. 3 White Sands, N.M. 180
Nov. 4 Orogrande, N.M. 181
Nov. 5 Kearney, Neb. Schmidt 183
Nov. 5 Brazil Itaipu Fort 184
Nov. 5 Gulf of Mexico Sebago 182
Nov. 7 Ohio Moore 185
1958 Jan. 16 Brazil Trindade Island 206
April 11 Johannesburg, S. Africa The Thing 51
April 14 Eastern seaboard Sputnik II 116
Sep. 21 Sheffield Lake, Ohio Fitzgerald 279
Sep. 29 Maryland Nike site 239
Oct. 2 Danby, Calif. 243
Oct. 26 Maryland Lock Raven Dam 180
1959 Jan. 8 Pennsylvania 113
Feb. 6 Boulder, Colo. 249
Feb. 24 Pennsylvania Killian 52
March 13 Duluth, Minn. 72
March 22 Ann Arbor, Mich. 241
March-April Coburn, Va. Sheep Rock saucer 224
June 20 Pacific Ocean 105
July 11 Pacific Ocean 106
Oct. 12 Washington, Ga. 225
Oct. 19 Korea 73
1960 March 7 East coast 277
March 31 France 245
April 1 Wallops Island, Va. 44
Aug. 12–20 Northern California Red Bluff 253
Oct. 5 Greenland 166
Nov. 23 Michigan 225
Nov. 23 New Mexico 99
1961 March 16 England 56
March 23–30 Florida 250
April 18 Eagle River, Wis. Pancakes 226
July New Mexico 57
July 23 Pacific Ocean 103
August Los Alamos, N.M. 177
Oct. 2 Salt Lake City, Utah 245
Oct. 17 Netherlands Antilles 57
1962 April 18 Eureka, Utah 189
Sep. 9 England Blue rain 234
Sep. 11 Sebree, Ky. 223
INDEX
A
Accra, Africa, 50
Adamski, G., 16, 203, 204, 278
Aerial Phenomena Group, U. S. Air Force, 2, 271, 272.
_See also_ ATIC
Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), 181, 219, 235–36, 275,
278
Aerospace Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC), 2, 271.
_See also_ ATIC
After-image, 242
Air Defense Command, 72, 94, 139, 160, 162, 166, 167
Air Force, U. S., 2, 272–75;
APRO challenge to, 235–36;
conspiracy charges against, 69–70, 277–78.
_See also_ ATIC
Air Force pilots, UFO sightings by, 70–72, 112, 113
Akron, Ohio, 53, 280
Alamogordo, N.M., 92
Alaska, 60, 152
Aldebaran, 253, 254
_Almirante Saldanha_, 207 ff
Aluminum foil, 164, 224, 225
Alvarez, L. W., 139
_Amazing Stories_ magazine, 15, 16–21, 25
American Airlines flights, UFOs reported from, 52, 68
American Meteor Society, 88, 95, 111, 134, 135
American Meteorite Museum, 102, 176
Analyses of UFO “fragments,” 220, 231–34, 236
Angel hair, 220–26;
alleged origins of, 194, 221;
arachnid, 220–24;
industrial, 224
“Angels” on radar, Pl. IVc;
collision course of, 153–54;
defined, 151;
conditions producing, 157–60, 164, 170;
moisture inversion and, 151, 158–60;
possible causes of, 157–58;
ring, 150, 165–66;
temperature inversion and, 151–52, 158–60;
UFO reports based on, 5–6, 71, 72, 151–52, 155–57, 161, 164–71, 182
Ann Arbor, Mich., 241
Antigravity, 195
Aquarid meteors, 111, 134
_Armillaria mellea_, 119
Arnold, K., articles by, 15;
Maury Island investigation by, 22;
UFO sighting by, 13, 26, 28, 29
Artificial gravitational field, 10, 193.
_See also_ G-field
Artificial satellites, 45, 116, 172–73, 277, 288
Asteroids, fragments of, 90
ATIC, UFO investigations by, 5, 38, 46, 54, 68, 70, 72, 76, 80, 106,
108, 113, 126, 131, 135, 136, 141, 163, 169, 176, 182, 185,
224, 236, 239, 241, 245, 247, 254, 281;
resources of, 272–73;
responsibility of, 271–75
Atlantis, 10, 17, 18
Aurora Borealis, radar echoes from, 164
B
Ball lightning, 176–80, Pl. Vb;
theory of, 178;
USSR reports of, 178
Balloon, pibal, 40;
radiosonde, 39–40, 163;
Skyhook, 31–33, 38, 49;
toy, 56
Balloons, burst, 48, 50;
clusters of, 41;
dogfight among, 47;
dogfight with, 42–44, 77–79;
shapes of, 32, 40–41;
UFO reports based on, 33–39, 42–44, 46, 47, 48, 80, 82
Barauna, A., 208 ff
Barker, G., 24
Bellefontaine, Ohio, 162
Berkner, L. V., 139
Bethurum, T., 16, 201
Biot, J. B., 89, 289
Birds, light reflected from, 122, 125, 127, 130–32;
luminous, 118, 127;
migrations of, 127;
radar echoes from, 164–66;
UFO reports based on, 122–27, 130–32
Blip, defined, 5
Boulder, Colo., 249, Pl. VIIa
Brazil, UFOs reported from, 184, 206, 207, 231–34, 236
Bubbles, UFO reports based on, 57, 58
Bubbles of air, angels produced by, 151
C
Capella, UFO reports based on, 161, 170–71, 253–54
Carbon 14, 221
Central Intelligence Agency, 70, 139, 278
Chant, C. A., 107
Chemical analysis, of meteorites, 90, 98;
of Moon Bridge, 230;
of pancakes, 227–48;
of saucer fragments, 232–34, 236
Chesapeake Bay, Va., UFOs reported over, 256–65
Chiles, C. S., 108 ff
Chiles-Whitted sighting, 108–13
Cigar shape, 7, 95, 109, 243, 253
Cincinnati, Ohio, 67, 224
Civilian investigators of UFOs, 186, 275–78
Civilian Research Interplanetary Flying Objects (CRIFO), 67
Civilian scientists, panel of, 138–43;
report of, 142
“Classic” UFO, defined, 33
Clouds, grindstone, 26, Pl. Ia;
ice crystals in, 71, 164, 244, 247;
orographic, 26;
searchlights on, 263, 266, 283–85;
“stack of plates,” 26, Pl. Ib;
wave, 26–29
Clubs, flying saucer, 275–76
Coast Guard station, UFO photographed from, 122, Pl. IVa
Coburn, Va., 224
Coincidence, role of in UFO sightings, 238–39
Coleman, W. T., 132, 252
Collision course, apparent, 60, 104, 106, 109, 113
Color, of meteors, 97–98;
of UFOs, 7
Comet, BOAC, 276
Comet Biela, 92
Comets, discovery of, 103;
meteors associated with, 90;
remnants of, 90, 98
Condensation trail, 50
Congress, U. S., 69
Congressional inquiry, requests for, 227, 277–78, 279
Conspiracy, allegations of, 11, 69–70, 276, 277
Contact stories, pattern of, 199–200
Contactees, 199–205, 277
Control by intelligence, apparent, 42, 60, 61, 80, 104, 110, 259
Copper in meteors, 98
Cosmic rays, power from, 10, 193
Coy, Cindy, 138
Cramp, L. G., 16
Craters, meteor, 100
Crisman, F. L., 21, 22
Cults, flying saucer, 108, 199, 201–2, 275–76
Curaçao, N.W.I., 57, Pl. IIa
D
Dahl, H. A., 21
Danby, Calif., 243
_Day the Earth Stood Still_, UFO pictured in, 133
Defense, national, 147, 237, 271
Deflection, of radar beams, 151;
of starlight, 194
Dero, 18, 19, 22, 25
Discoverer VIII, 277
Disk shape, of meteors, 95, 99, 101;
of UFOs, 7, 13, 140, 280
Disks, flying, 13.
_See also_ UFO
Distance, difficulty of estimating, 14, 41, 54, 81, 105–6, 110, 131,
180, 260–61
Dogfight, balloons engaged in, 47;
Gorman, 77–85;
Guantánamo Bay, 42–44
Draconid meteors, 101
_Dracula’s Daughter_, 282, 283
Ducting conditions, 6
Duluth, Minn., 72
Duplicity, charges of, 283–84, 287
E
Eagle River, Wis., 226
Early Warning System, 139, 158, 166
Earth, doughnut-shaped, 25
Eastern Airlines flights, UFOs reported from, 109–10, 250
Echo machine, radar as, 147–48
Echo satellite, 45
Echoes, radar. _See_ Angels
Einstein, Albert, 18, 191, 195
Electrical appliances, E-M interference with, 173, 184, 186–87;
meteor interference with, 185, 189
Electromagnetic (E-M) effects, NICAP study of, 186–88
Electromagnetic force, 172–75, 188
Electromagnetic phenomena, reports of, 173, 181, 184–87
Ellsworth Air Force Base, 167
England, blue rain in, 234;
invisible UFOs in, 165
Eureka, Utah, 189
Evidence, nature of, 4–6
Extraterrestrial beings, possible communication with, 3, 216–17
Extraterrestrial visitors, alleged signals from, 11, 165;
appearance of, 200, 201;
languages used by, 183, 200, 203;
reported contact with, 183–84, 186, 199–200, 203–4
F
Fallacies about meteors, 96–97
False targets on radar. _See_ Angels
Farmington, N.M., 48–49
_Fate_ magazine, 15, 16, 22
Fear of the unknown, 121–23
Film, UFOs found on, 247–50, Pls. VIIb, VIIIa, VIIIb
Fireball, of Sept. 18, 1954, 92–93;
“Sunshine,” 135
Fireballs, 103–6;
clusters of, 104–7;
conference on, 94;
green, 92–95, 97, 98;
official records of, 88–89, 95–96, 99;
slow, 92, 99, 107–8
Fitzgerald sighting, 279–88
Flower and Cook Observatory, 111
Flying bird cage, 241–42
Flying egg, 175, 181–82, 184
Flying hubcap, 205
Flying saucer, clubs, 275–76;
defined, 2;
first report of, 13.
_See also_ UFO
_Flying Saucers_ magazine, 24–25, 227, 276
Foo balls, 73
Force field, 172, 190, 191, 221
Fort, C., 1, 2, 3, 10, 16, 18, 20
Fort Itaipu, Brazil, 173, 184
Fort Pierce, Fla., 250
Fortenberry, W. H., 256, 258, 259
Fragments of alleged UFOs, 23, 219–20, 230, 231–33, 235–36
France, angel hair reported in, 220–22;
UFO photographed in, 123, Pl. IVb
Fraud, in contact stories, 202
Friction, atmospheric, 194
Friend, R. J., 127
Fry, D. W., 200
G
Gainesville, Fla., 51
Galileo, 191, 192, 276
Geminid meteors, 6, 98, 101
G-field, plane crash attributed to, 154;
propulsion by, 190, 193;
theory of, 190–95
G-field beam, reversed, 154
Ghosts, radar. _See_ Angels
Godman Air Force Base, 33–39
Gorman, G. F., UFO sighting by, 77–80
Gossamer, 220.
_See also_ Angel hair
Goudsmit, S. A., 139
Gravity, force of, 18, 195–96;
law of, 195;
negative, 195;
self-contained, 202;
shield for, 194–95
Green fireballs, 92–95, 97, 98;
Los Alamos conference on, 94
Greenland, phantom targets in, 166
Griffis Air Force Base, 68
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, 42–44
Gulf of Mexico, 5–6, 182
Gulliver, L., 172
H
Hamilton Air Force Base, 46
Hanford, Wash., 135
Harvard College Observatory, 111, 113, 175
Height-finding radar, 153, 156, 162, 163
Herget, P., 67
Hermanas, N.M., 47
_Hidden World_, 25
Hoax, Ilha dos Amores, 206;
Maury Island, 21–23;
Schmidt, 183;
Scoutmaster, 136–37;
Shaver, 17–21
Hoaxes, 198–99, 219;
photographic, 203–7, Pls. VIa, VIb, 213–16;
UFO, 199
Humidity, inversions of, 151, 157–58
Hynek, J. A., 37, 108, 111, 113, 127, 141, 273
I
Ice crystals, radar echoes from, 71, 164;
sundogs from, 244, 247
Ices, vaporizing, 94
Icy cometoid, 90, 98, 101
Ilha dos Amores, 206
Inertia, law of, 194–95
Inference, distinguished from observation, 5–6, 74;
limitations of, 4–5
Insects, radar echoes from, 164–65
Institute of Meteoritics, 93, 102, 175
Intelligence, apparent control of UFOs by, 61, 80, 110, 168, 259
Intercontinental ballistic missiles, meteors as possible, 105;
radar angels as possible, 166
Interplanetary travel, 19, 77–78, 216–17.
_See also_ Spacecraft
Inversions, moisture, 157–58;
temperature, 65, 253–54, 269
Investigations, Congressional, 227, 277–78, 279
Investigators, Air Force, 271–75;
civilian, 275–77
Invisible UFOs, reports of, 145, 152, 155, 165, 193, 202
Ionization, defined, 194;
angel hair produced by, 221;
radio interference by, 92, 178, 185, 187, 189
J
James, R. L., 152, 156
Japan, UFOs reported from, 73–75
Jessup, M. K., 10, 16
Jet planes, UFO reports based on, 50, 51, 52–56, 251
Johannesburg, South Africa, 51
Jupiter, mirages of, 81–85, 141–42;
seen through jet trail, 85–86
K
Kearney, Nebr., 183
Kentucky, UFO over, 58, Pl. IIb
Keyhoe, D. E., 10, 16, 69, 159, 276, 277
Killian case, 52–56
Kinross case, 154
Kites, UFO reports based on, 56–57, Pl. IIa
Korea, UFO reports from, 73–75
Khrushchev, 166, 235
Kuiper, G. P., 230
L
“Landings” of spacecraft, 180, 183–85, 203–4, 239
La Paz, L., 93, 102, 175
Laputa, 172
Las Cruces, N.M., 267
Lemuria, 10, 17, 18, 200
Lens, defects in photographic, 123, 248, Pls. VIIIa, VIIIb;
of air, 63, 83, 255
Leonid meteors, 90, 92
Levelland, Tex., UFOs, 174–76, 179
Liddell, U., 31
_Life_ magazine, 95, 129, 134, 259, 268
Life, possibility of extraterrestrial, 4, 216–17, 269
Light, deflection of, 194;
refraction of, 63–66;
velocity of, 19, 150
Lightning, ball, 176–80, Pl. Vb;
pinched, 177, Pl. Va;
types of, 177
Lights, Lubbock, 123–27;
reflections of, 127;
unfamiliar, 52–56, 240–41, 250–52;
rotating, 73–75
Lincoln, Nebr., 178
“Little Men,” 199, 220
Lock Raven Dam, 180
Logical defect, in UFO beliefs, 143
_Look_ magazine, 134, 210, 259
Lorenzen, C., 181, 235, 236
Los Alamos, N.M., 177;
conference on fireballs, 94
Lubbock lights, 123–27
Luminosity, of birds, 118–27;
of fungi, 119–20;
of meteors, 99–100, 106–7
M
Magnesium, in meteors, 98;
in UFO fragments, 236
Magnetic field, 172, 192
Magnetic force, island propelled by, 172;
UFOs attached by, 49
Magnetic lines of force, plane crash attributed to, 192–93
Magnetism, 18, 172–73, 192, 195–96
Maney, C. A., 260
Manhattan Beach, Calif., 49
Mantell case, 33–39, 192, 247
Mars, as space base, 76;
comfort-loving creatures on, 216;
mirages of, 76, 253;
opposition of, 76;
possibility of intelligent life on, 269;
spaceship orbit from, 77–78
Marysville, Ohio, 222
Maury Island hoax, 21–23
Menger, H., 202
Menzel, D. H., 73, 92, 95, 175, 210, 230, 245, 249, 254
Meteor processions, 107–8
Meteor showers, 90–93, 111, 134;
dates of, 91
Meteor trail, luminous, 88, 92, 96, 100, 107;
photograph of, 99, Pl. IIIa
Meteorites, composition of, 90, 98, 101;
recovery of, 101–3
_Meteoritics_, meteors recorded in, 88–89, 95–96, 99
Meteors, colors of, 97–98;
exploding, 96, 100, 104, 230, 236;
false beliefs about, 96–97;
formations of, 104, 106–7;
luminosity of, 99–100, 106–7;
numbers seen, 111, 134, 135;
odors from, 89;
paths of, 98–99, Pl. IIIa;
radio and TV interference by, 185, 187, 189;
sounds made by, 96, 100–1;
spectra of, 94, 97–98;
structure of, 98, 100–1;
UFO reports based on, 88, 108–13, 185, 239–40;
velocity of, 93, 98, 106
Michel, A., 10, 16
Mirage, of Chicago skyline, 254;
of mountain peaks, 26–27;
on gun-barrel highway, 254–55
Mirages, causes of, 63–66, 255;
of planets, 66–67, 81–85, 141–42, 253;
of stars, 60–62, 161, 170–71, 253–54;
on radar, 151–52
Missiles, UFOs interpreted as, 93–95, 166, 231
Mock sun, 38, 244–47
Moisture, inversions of, 151, 157–58
Monster, New Jersey, 198;
West Virginia, 137–38
Moon, hidden side of, 203;
inhabitants of, 202–3;
planet hidden by, 201;
radar echoes from, 164, 166, 167;
UFO base on, 228;
underground cities on, 228
Moon Bridge, 228–30;
spectrographic analysis of, 230
Moonwatch, 190, 228
Moore, O., 185
Mother ship, 115, 199, 201
Mu, 18
Mummified men, 219
Murray, Ky., 96
Mushrooms, luminous, 119–20;
odor of, 120
Myth, G-field, 193–95
N
Nash, W. B., 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 262, 264
Nash-Fortenberry case, 256–65
National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), 45,
276–78.
_See also_ NICAP
Negative gravity, 195
New Haven, Conn., 231
New Mexico, green fireballs in, 92, 93–95
Newton, Isaac, 18, 191, 194, 195
NICAP, E-M effects studied by, 186–88;
membership of, 277;
pancakes studied by, 226–28;
Ryan case studied by, 69–70
Nike site, UFO reported from, 239
Nininger, H. H., 102, 176
Norfolk, luminous owls of, 118–19
Norton County, Kansas, meteor fall at, 102–3
Norway, 248, Pl. VIIb
O
Odessa, Wash., 62
Office of Scientific Intelligence, 139, 142, 143
Olivier, C. P., 95
Orbit of Martian spaceship, 77–78
Orogrande, N.M., 181
Owls, luminous, 118–19
Ozma, Project, 216–17
P
Pacific ocean, 105–6
Page, T. W., 139, 287
Palmer, R. A., 15–21, 23, 26, 227
Pan American Airlines flights, UFOs reported from, 103, 104–6, 256
Pancakes, extraterrestrial, 226–28
Panel of civilian scientists, 138–43;
report of, 142
Panic, growth of 1952, 133–35;
growth of 1957, 174–76
Paracelsus, 172
Parallel universes, 9
Pelicans, UFO report based on, 130
Perseid meteors, 98, 111, 134
Phantoms, radar. _See_ Angels
Phosphorescent organisms, 119–20
Photographs, UFOs in, 122, 130–32, 205–7, 248;
by gun-camera, 162–63, 168, 170
Photography, trick, 205, 209, 212, 215
Pibal, 40, 46
_Pile d’assiettes_, 26, Pl. Ib
Pilots, UFOs reported by, 70, 92, 103–6, 109–10, 250, 256
Pinched lightning, 177, Pl. Va
Plane crashes attributed to UFOs, 11, 23, 35, 154, 192, 276
Planets, extra-solar, 10, 217;
mirages of, 66–76, 81–85, 141–42, 253
Plank, V. G., 158
Plato, 18
Port Huron, Mich., 160
Presque Isle, Me., 139
Probability, methods of, 187–88
Project Ozma, 216
Project Twinkle, 94
Propulsion, theories of UFO, 190–93
Publications, UFO, 67, 275–76
Puerto Rico fireball, 99, Pl. IIIb
R
Radar, as reporter, 145–47;
experiments in, 152–53, 157–60;
principle of, 147–50;
ring angels on, 165–66
Radar echoes, from ice crystals, 71, 164;
from moon, 164, 167;
interpretation of, 145–47;
possible sources of, 164.
_See also_ Angels
Radarscope, mechanism of, 146
Radar-visual UFOs, 160–63, 167–71
Radio astronomy, 216
Radio noise from space, 217
Radio-TV failures, 181, 184–87
Radio waves, behavior of, 153;
scatter of, 153, 164;
secondary reflection of, 154, 158;
velocity of, 150
Radioactivity, 35, 80, 137, 172, 185
Radiosonde, 39–40, 163
Rain, blue, 234;
silver, 231–34
Rapid City, S.D., 167–70
Red Bluff, Calif., 253
Reflections, multiple, 263, 266;
UFOs from, 242–44, 248, 249–50, Pls. VIIa, VIIb
Refraction, atmospheric, 63–66, 269;
of radar beams, 158–60
Refractive index, 159, 160
Rheims, France, 245
Ring angels, 156, 165–66
Robertson, H. P., 139
Robins Air Force Base, 112
Rocket, reported as UFO, 44–45
Rosalia, Wash., 46
Rotating lights of Japan, 73–75
Ruppelt, E. J., 126, 127, 133, 167
Russia, ball lightning in, 178
Ryan case, 68–70
S
Salina, Kans., 164, Pl. IVc
Salt Lake City, Utah, 245–47
Samford, J. A., 157
Satellites, artificial, 116, 172, 173, 277;
natural, 108
Saturn, visitors from, 183, 186, 200, 203
Saturn-like UFOs, 7, 206, 207, 214
Saucer. _See_ UFO
Saucerdom, myths of, 10–11, 193–95
Scatter of radar beams, 164, 170–71
Schilling Air Force Base, 164, Pl. IVc
Schmidt, R., 183
Science, methods of, 3, 289
Science fiction, 1, 9, 17, 19, 23–25, 200
Scientists, views on UFOs, 139, 142, 143, 215, 269–70, 287
Scoutmaster, UFO reported by, 136
Scully, F., 16
Sea gulls, UFO reports based on, 121–22, 130–32, 213
Searchlights on clouds, 263, 266, 283, 285
_Sebago_, U. S. Coast Guard cutter, 182
Sebree, Ky., 223
Secondary reflection of radar beam, 154, 158
Secrecy, alleged Air Force, 37, 69–70, 154, 157, 283;
alleged government, 202
Security, national, 147, 271, 275, 289
Shapes of UFOs, 7–8, 206–7
Shaver hoax, 17–21, 25
Sheep Rock saucer, 224
Sheffield Lake, Ohio, 279
Siberian meteor of 1908, 100, 101
Silver iodide, 225
Silver rain, 231–34
“Simultaneous” radar-visual UFO sightings, 5–6, 72, 160–63, 167–71,
182
Sirius, mirages of, 61–63
Size, difficulty of estimating UFO, 14, 54, 131, 181, 260
Skyhooks, 31–33
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, 57, 99, 175, 273
Sound, associated with meteors, 96, 100–1;
associated with UFOs, 7, 193;
velocity of, 147
Spacecraft, bases for, 228;
“landings” by, 183–85, 203–4, 239;
motive power of, 192–93;
occupants of, 183, 199, 200, 203, 220, 226;
signals from, 11, 165;
theories about, 10–11, 190–95
Spectra of meteors, 94, 97–98
Spiders, angel hair produced by, 220–24
Sputnik II, 116, 173
St. Elmo’s fire, 176
Stack, formations, 49, 257, 265–66;
of coins, 49;
of plates, 26
Stars, hypothetical planets of, 10, 216
Statistical summaries of UFO cases, 274
Stones from heaven, 89, 289
Sundogs, 38, 244–47
Superrefractive conditions, 159
Sutton, W. Va., monster, 137
Sylacauga, Ala., meteorite, 88, 230
T
Tacker, L. J., 235, 236
Taormina, Sicily, 205, Pl. VIa
Taurid meteors, 90, 101, 189
Temperature inversions, displacement of image by, 65;
low-level, 155, 157;
mirages caused by, 82, 157, 170, 253–54, 269;
multiple, 82, 158, 253;
radar angels from, 151, 158–60, 170
Tero, 19, 25
Texarkana, Ark., 166
Tin, in alloys, 234;
in saucer fragments, 232
Tombaugh, 256, 266–70;
UFO reported by, 268
Trans World Airlines flight, UFOs reported from, 70
Travel, interplanetary, 19, 77–78, 216–17;
in time, 11
Tremonton, Utah, movies, 130–32
Trindade Island UFO, 206–16, Pl. VIb
_True_ magazine, 158
Truth, alleged Air Force concealment, 37, 69–70, 107, 154, 157–58,
220, 277, 283
Tumbleweeds, as UFOs, 57
TV set, malfunction of, 185.
_See also_ E-M effects
U
UFO, as misnomer, 271;
defined, 2
UFO reports, Air Force study of, 272–75;
commonest explanations of, 105–6, 275;
witnesses making, 2, 272
UFO Research Committee of Akron, Ohio, 276, 279, 281, 288;
Fitzgerald case studied by, 283–87;
Killian case studied by, 53
UFOs, colors of, 7;
electromagnetic, 172–75;
formations of, 114–16;
fragments of, 88, 230–37;
invisible, 10, 145, 152, 155–57, 165, 193, 194, 202;
motions of, 7;
radar reports of, 5, 152, 155–57;
shapes of, 7–8;
silence of, 193;
sounds made by, 7, 193;
types of, 6–9;
velocity of, 13, 124, 129, 161, 193, 194, 258
Unidentified flying object, 2.
_See also_ UFOs
Unified field theory, 196
United Airlines flights, UFO reported from, 92, 105
Unknowns, 274.
_See_ UFOs
V
Van Tassel, G. W., 201, 202
Vapor lock, 188, 190
Velocity, difficulty of estimating UFO, 14, 41, 131;
of light, 19, 150;
of meteors, 93, 98–100;
of radio waves, 150;
of sound, 147
Venus, magnitude of, 66;
mirages of, 67–75, 181;
visitors from, 203
Visitors, extraterrestrial, 4, 10–11, 183–84, 186, 199–200, 203–4
W
Wallops Island, Va., 44–45
Washington, D.C., “invasion,” 155–57
Washington, Ga., 225
Wave clouds, 26–29
Weather, effects on radar, 150–51, 154, 155, 157–58
Weather balloons, 31–33.
_See also_ Balloons
White, T. D., 237
White Pass, Wash., 28, Pl. Ia
White Sands, N.M., 92, 180
Whitted, J. B., 108.
_See also_ Chiles-Whitted sighting
Wilkins, H. P., 228
Wilkins, H. T., 16
Witnesses, UFO beliefs of, 52, 54, 80, 104, 106, 110, 168, 259, 269
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, UFO sighted from, 70–72
X
Xenochemistry, 231
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs
and outside quotations.
Each Plate in the original book contained two or three photographs and
one shared caption. In this eBook, each photograph has its own caption.
This book uses endnotes following each chapter. In the original book,
the endnote numbers began at “1” for each chapter. In this eBook, those
numbers are retained, but are preceded by the chapter number and a
hyphen to make them unique.
A few endnotes include an “a” suffix.
Many references to endnotes that reference another book are followed by
a pair of square brackets containing the page number in that other book.
The book also has four footnotes that originally were at the bottoms of
pages, but have been moved here to follow the paragraphs that reference
them. They use simple “abcd” references.
The superscript on page 194 is shown as ^{33} and the subscripts in
Figure 8 are shown as _{1} or _{2}.
Three endnotes are unreferenced (XII-14, XIII-2 and XIII-6); several
are referenced more than once.
The index was not systematically checked for proper alphabetization or
correct page references.
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