Author: Kenneth Arnold, Raymond Palmer
Date: 2025-07-07T23:00:00+00:00
Description: Description The Coming of the Saucers is a book by Kenneth Arnold and Raymond Palmer, first published in 1952. It chronicles one of the most influential early UFO encounters in modern history—Kenneth Arnold’s 1947 sighting of nine unidentified flying objects near Mount Rainier, Washington. This event is widely considered the beginning of the modern UFO era and the origin of the term “flying saucers.” The book combines Arnold’s firsthand accounts with related sightings, official responses, and speculative commentary, laying the groundwork for the cultural and conspiratorial fascination with ext
Publisher: Global Grey ebooks

The Coming of the Saucers
by Kenneth Arnold and Raymond Palmer

First published in 1952

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. How The “Big Story” Happened

2. The Tacoma Affair

3. The Mysterious Informant

4. Death Takes A Hand

5. “Get Out - For Your Own Good!”

6. “Project Saucer” Report

7. Comments On The “Project Saucer” Report

8. One Thousand Years Of Flying Saucers

9. The Strange Foo Fighters

10. Foreign Sightings

11. Reports From American Observers

12. Analysis Versus Opinion

Acknowledgements

OUR SINCERE APPRECIATION TO ...

CAPTAIN E.J. SMITH -- for a big hand -- and a good eye.[1]

CO-PILOT RALPH STEPHENS -- he saw them too.

STEWARDESS MARTIE MORROW -- and so did she.

J.EDGAR HOOVER -- for the many nice chats we had for his operatives. COLONEL DONALD L. SPRINGER -- a very busy man.

MAJOR GEORGE SANDER -- “Quick, Major, the slag!”

CAPT. WM. L. DAVIDSON

1st LT. FRANK M. BROWN -- who died in the performance of their duty. VELMA BROWN DAVE JOHNSON

MAJOR WALKER -- who didn’t fool anyone.

FRED CRISMAN -- for the wildest stories ever told.

HAROLD DAHL -- who could enjoy a movie while the world exploded. THE MYSTERY TELEPHONE CALLER -- who deserves a horrible fate. TED MORELLO - for meaning well.

PAUL LANCE -- whose death we regret.

EVELYN WHITMAKER

ARMY INTELLIGENCE -- for it’s courteous personnel.

FOURTH AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE - the mystery men of the U.S.A. PROJECT SAUCER -- spending money like water.

HAROLD T. WILKINS -- a whale of a good researcher.

CURTIS FULLER

COLONEL PAUL WIELAND -- for his patience.

BEATRICE MAHAFFEY -- for just plain work.

MILDRED MURDOCH -- for more just plain work.

WILLIAM A. RHODES -- his camera didn’t lie.

DICK RANKIN

FATE MAGAZINE - for the facts.

AMAZING STORIES MAGAZINE -- more truth than fiction.

TRUE MAGAZINE

SATURDAY EVENING POST -- not so true.

RICHARD S. SHAVER

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN CHEMICAL ANALYSIS DEPARTMENT THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE -- who sent us valuable information and pictures.

Our wives, DORIS and MARJORIE, our children, KISKA, CARLA, LINDA, JENNIFER and RAYMOND - for their patience and the anxious moments we caused them.

THE LITTLE MEN FROM VENUS -- who weren’t there at all.

Introduction

It is my impression that everyone, no matter what part they play in this existence that seems to go on into infinity, has a special purpose or a special task or a special reason for being what they are and for doing the things they do. I don’t say that we are placed here by a divine Providence to accomplish a great mission. Nothing so egotistical. perhaps it is purely a personal reason: merely to add to our own experience; our mental growth, our ability to become a functional part in a whole of society which may be more vast than we dream.

When I was a boy I collected green grasshoppers. I went swimming in a swimming hole like the other boys; but unlike them, it seems, I learned how by such apparently foolish waste of time as watching tadpoles swim and trying to imitate their motions. When I was twelve it was terribly important that I become a Boy Scout. Again it was because of the little things in Nature that I loved to study that I wanted to don that uniform. I realized that a great ambition the day my mother proudly pinned an Eagle badge on my shirt front in a court of honor in Minot, North Dakota. It was during scouting that swimming and diving became one of my most enjoyed activities and I served several years as a field representative for the American Red Cross life saving service. I developed myself to a healthy robustness.

Then I took up riding motorcycles - and nearly killed myself. The scars I still have remind me that a life carelessly and adventurously lived can become a bit complex.

I had my first airplane ride from Earl T. Vance of Great Falls, Montana when I was fourteen years old. I’ll never forget that day on the north hill at Minot. it seemed the greatest thrill of my life. When I was sixteen I took my first flying lesson. I had no money to pay, but my father furnished the gasoline for the plane from his filling station in Crosby, North Dakota. How I wished I could continue flying! But it was far too expensive at that time. As a little boy my head was always on the cloud. The reason I enjoyed bird study, I think, was because I so envied their ability to fly.

Then, suddenly being a football player seemed important. Glen Jarrett, my Minot High School coach, somehow achieved enough coordination between my brain and my limbs to enable my being placed on the All-State North Dakota football teams in 1932 and 1933. Finishing high school, even with football, was quite a struggle; education from books didn’t seem nearly as necessary as going fishing.

Somehow I graduated, and went on to the university of Minnesota with the promise of a job from Bernie Bierman, at that time head football coach there. Except for my promised job, my total assets amounted to $57.00 and a model T. Ford. About all I remember of my short-lived college career was the dishes I washed for Chris Copilis of the Bridge Cafe on Fourteenth and Fourth in Minneapolis, Minnesota. My football interests vanished with a knee injury that put an end to them.

The depression was at it’s deepest point when I took up selling. I drafted from sportswear into fire control work. I stayed with selling fire extinguishers because I felt it was doing some good for humanity besides giving me an income to provide for my wife, two daughters, one partly-paid-for home, an airplane, and pets of various shapes and colors.

Since 1944 I have spent more than 4,000 hours in the air flying in mountainous country. I call on my customers in five western states by plane and I take an active part in the Idaho Search and Rescue mercy flights as well as acting as a deputy sheriff for the Ada County, Idaho, Sheriff’s Aerial Posse. I also act as relief deputy Federal United States Marshal, and frequently fly Federal prisoners up to McNeil Island Federal penitentiary.

I has been nearly five years since my original observation of the formation of flying saucers over the Cascade Mountains. it is not difficult for me to recall the true events as they took place, since everything that happened was dictated on sound records within a very short period afterward.

What I saw over the Cascades in the State of Washington, as impossible as it may seem, is fact. I never asked, wanted, nor expected any notoriety for accidentally being in the right spot at the right time to observe that chain of nine mysterious objects.

I reported something any would have reported. if, reasoning along patriotic lines alone, I had not reported by observations, I would have been rightfully considered disloyal to my country. My observations were not due to any particular sensitivity of eyesight, nor to any abnormal or supernatural ability. Am positive that any pilot at the same place at the same time would have observed what U did. By no stretch of imagination can I classify my observations in the categories of illusion, hallucination, apparition or vision.

Since that day I have been repeatedly questioned and investigated by such agencies as Military Intelligence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Bureau of Internal Revenue, Central Intelligence, Marine Intelligence, private detective agencies, individuals, and just plain busybodies.

I have been subjected to ridicule, much loss of time and money, newspaper notoriety, magazine stories, reflections on my honesty, my character, my business dealings. In short, the amount of actual persecution that has come about (whether intended as such or not) because of my accidental involvement in what has become the strangest story ever told, has been a continual source of amazement to me.

To me the search has not ended. But participation of the sort involved in the fatal “Tacoma Incident” in which two Central Intelligence military investigators lost their lives and a two hundred thousand dollar aircraft was destroyed is something that I would refuse to enter into again - largely because it is my conviction that nothing concrete will be learned by such obtuse methods. This thing is big. It is something to which we most certainly ought to have the answer. It is my conviction that the facts already at hand must not be buried beneath a mass of official stupidity and a smokescreen of variant idiocies. it is time the truth was sifted from the untruth, the facts from the fakery, the real flying saucer from the fanciful.

It may be the most vitally important fact of our time!

KENNETH ARNOLD Boise, Idaho, February 10, 1952

1. How The “Big Story” Happened

It was Tuesday, June 24, 1947. I had just finished installing some fire fighting apparatus for Central Air Service at Chehalis, Washington. The job finished, I began a chat with Herb Critzer, chief test pilot for Central Air Service.

We talked, among other things, about the possible location of a lost C-46 Marine transport which had gone down in the mountains. I decided to look for it. it meant a $5,000 reward and I hoped that via my proposed route to Yakima, Washington, I might be lucky enough to find it. I decided to spend enough time in the air in the vicinity of Mount Rainier to make a good attempt at locating the wreckage.

I was flying a specially designed mountain airplane, and having had considerable experience in this type of flying, I felt qualified to undertake the dangerous search. I took off from Chehalis, Washington airport at approximately two o’clock in the afternoon with the intention in mind of delaying my trip to Yakima for at least an hour, which I would spend on top, and in and around the high plateau of Mount Rainier. I flew directly toward this plateau, which has an elevation varying from nine to over ten thousand feet.

There are a number of things that are extremely important in handling aircraft on a search mission over mountainous terrain. Number one is a meticulous ground inspection of your airplane before beginning; not one of the ordinary checks such as gasoline and oil, but inspection of all wiring and movable parts of the aircraft which in any might cause a forced landing in treacherous country. This is very necessary. The consumption of gas is best judged in an aircraft not by gasoline gauge alone, but by knowing that your tank is full, knowing it’s capacity, and the number of gallons your engine consumes each hour. An eight-day clock with a sweep second hand is one of the essentials in my aircraft. By 1947 I had learned through experience that care and thoroughness of a planned flight is the best insurance that a pilot can have.

I did plan this flight in this manner on June 24, 1947. It was during this search and while making a turn of 180 degrees over Mineral, Washington, at approximately 9200 feet altitude, that a tremendously bright flash lit up the surfaces of my aircraft. I was startled. I thought I was very close to collision with some other aircraft whose approach I had not noted. I spent the next twenty to thirty seconds urgently searching the sky all around - to the sides, above and below me - in an attempt to determine where the flash of light had come from. The only actual plane I saw was a DC-4 far to my left and rear, apparently on it’s San Francisco to Seattle run. My momentary explanation to myself was that some lieutenant in a P-51 had given me a buzz job across my nose and that it was the sun reflecting from the surface of his wings as he passed that has caused the flash.

Before I had time to collect my thoughts or to find any close aircraft, the flash happened again. This time I caught the direction from which it had come. I observed, far to my left and to the north, a formation of very bright objects coming from the vicinity of Mount Baker, flying very close to the mountain tops and traveling at tremendous speed.

At first I couldn’t make out their shapes as they were still at a distance of over a hundred miles. I could see the formation was going to pass directly in front of me, as it was flying at approximately 170 degrees. I watched as these objects rapidly neared the snow border of Mount Rainer, all the time thinking to myself that I was observing a whole formation of jets. In group count, such as I have used in counting cattle and game from the air, they numbered nine. They were flying diagonally in an echelon formation with a larger gap in their echelon between the first four and the last five.

What startled me most at this point was the fact that I could not find any tails on them. I felt sure that, being jets, they had tails, but figured they must be camouflaged in some way so that my eyesight could not perceive them. I knew that Air Force was very artful in the knowledge and use of camouflage. I observed the object’s outlines plainly as they flipped and flashed along against the snow and also against the sky. Since this formation of craft was at almost right angles to me and was traveling from north to south, I was in an excellent position to clock their speed. I determined to make an attempt to do so.

It was a beautifully sunny afternoon and the giant bulks of both Mount Rainier and Mount Adams made perfect markers. Now, clocking speeds by only your sweep second hand cannot be entirely accurate because several seconds could be lost in breaking your gaze to observe your clock. I recall that when the first craft of this formation jetted to the southward from the snow-based cleft of Mount Rainier my second hand was approaching the top of my hour dial and the time was within a few seconds to one minute of three. I can’t distinctly remember whether the eight day clock on my instrument panel was set on pacific time, Mountain time, daylight saving time, or slow time. I never thought of checking this with my wristwatch. I believe my eight day clock was on Mountain time.

I was fascinated by this formation of aircraft. They didn’t fly like any aircraft I had ever seen before. In the first place, their echelon formation was backward from that practiced by our Air Force. The elevation of the first craft was greater than that of the last. they flew in a definite formation, but erratically. As I described them at the time, their flight was like speed boats on rough water or similar to the tail of a Chinese kite that I once saw blowing in the wind. Or maybe it would be best to describe their flight characteristics as very similar to a formation of geese, in a rather diagonal chain-like line, as if they were linked together. As I put it to newsmen in Pendleton, Oregon, they flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.

Another characteristic of these craft that made a tremendous impression on me was how they fluttered and sailed, tipping their wings alternatively and emitting those very bright blue-white flashes from their surfaces. At the time I did not get the impression that these flashes were emitted by them, but rather than it was the sun’s reflection from the extremely highly polished surface of their wings.

Even though they held a constant direction they swerved in and out of the high mountain peaks which are found on the hogsback of the Cascade mountains between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams. I determined my distance from their pathway to be in the vicinity of twenty-three miles because I knew where I was and they revealed their true position by disappearing from my sight momentarily behind a jagged peak that just juts out from the base of Mount Rainier proper. considering that I was flying all this time in the direction of their formation, this determination can be only approximate, but it is not too far off.

Between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams there is a very high plateau with quite definite north and south edges. Part of this chain-like formation traveled above this plateau toward Mount Adams, while part of the formation actually dipped below the near edge. As the first unit of these craft cleared the southernmost edge of this background, the last of the formation was just entering the northern edge. I later flew over this plateau in my plane and came to a close approximation that this whole formation of craft, whatever they were, formed a chain in the neighborhood of five miles long.

As the last of this group of objects sped past and seemed to gather altitude at a point beyond the southernmost crest of Mount Adams, I glanced at the sweep second hand of my instrument clock. As closely as I could determine, this strange formation of aircraft had covered the distance between Mount Rainier to the north and Mount Adams to the south in one minute and forty-two seconds.

I can say honestly that I was amazed, thinking all the time: what will these aeronautical engineers dream up next? Although readily explaining it all in this way in my mind; I definitely did have an eerie feeling about the whole experience. I tried to focus my mind on a continued search for the downed C-46 which had crashed some months earlier with thirty-two Marines aboard, but somehow the $5,000 didn’t seem important. I wanted to get on to Yakima and tell some of the boys what I had seen.

Around airports pilots are continually arguing abut how fast our Army and Navy jets and missiles really can go. Most pilots conceded that the fastest aircraft that had been invented at that time could go in the vicinity of seven hundred miles per hour. Up to this point I hadn’t done any paper figuring on the distance and time, but I felt sure this formation of strange craft was traveling in excess of a thousand miles an hour.

It was about four o’clock in the afternoon when I landed at Yakima and went straight to Al Baxter, general manager of Central Aircraft. I met him in his outer office and rather breathlessly asked to see him in private. He dropped whatever it was he was doing and in his private office I related the story of my observation and drew him pictures of what I had seen. I recall that he looked at me in a rather puzzled way, but seemed quite positive that I hadn’t gone crazy and wasn’t seeing things. He called in several of his flight pilots and helicopter instructors to listen to my story.

The high point of my enthusiasm got it’s top knocked off when one of the helicopter pilots said, “Ah, it’s just a flight of those guided missiles from Moses Lake.”

I proceeded to gather my scattered wits together, got back in my airplane, and took off for Pendleton, Oregon. I remembered that I had forgotten to mention the fact that one of those craft looked different from the rest., was darker and of a slightly different shape, and that I hadn’t told the Yakima boys that I had clocked the speed of this formation within fairly accurate limits. While flying to Pendleton I took my map from its snap folder on the extreme edge of my instrument panel, grabbed a ruler, and began figuring mathematically miles per hour. Figuring and flying my airplane at the same time was a little confusing, and I thought my figures were wrong and that I had better wait until I landed at Pendleton to do some serious calculating.

When I landed at the large airfield at Pendleton there was quite a group of people to greet me. When I got out of my plane no one said anything. They just stood around and looked at me. I don’t recall just how the subject came up in those first few minutes after I had landed, but before very long it seemed everybody around the airfield was listening to the story of my experience.

I mentioned the speed I had calculated but assured everybody that I was positive that my mathematics were lousy.

I don’t know how many fellows sat down and started figuring it out. When it kept coming out in excess of seventeen hundred miles an hour I thought “Holy smoke, we’re taking the measurement of distance far too high up on both Mount Rainier and Mount Adams.” So we took a measurement of the very base, as closely as it could be determined, and which I knew from the map was far below the snow line. The distance was 39.8 miles. Even covering this distance, which was so far on the conservative side that I knew it was incorrect, we still had a speed of over thirteen hundred and fifty miles per hour. To me, that evening, that was that. They were guided missiles, robotly controlled. I knew that speeds of this velocity the human body simply could not stand, particularly considering the flipping, erratic movements of these strange craft.

After talking to the editor of the East Oregonian newspaper, I was fairly convinced that it was some new government invention along the line of guided missiles. I could almost tell what this editor thought when the story went scudding over the news wires - that the government had taken this way to announce a new principle of flight.

I could have gone to sleep that night if the reporters, newsmen, and press agencies of every conceivable description had left me alone. I didn’t share the general excitement. I can’t begin to estimate the number of people, letters, telegrams and phone calls I tried to answer. After three days of this hubbub I came to the conclusion that I was the only sane one in the bunch. From then on, if I was to go by the number of reports that came in of other sightings and of which I kept close track, I thought it wouldn’t be long before there would be one of these things in every garage. In order to stop what I thought was a lot of foolishness and since I couldn’t get any work done, I went out to the airport, cranked up my airplane, and flew home to Boise.

It wasn’t long after I arrived home when Dave Johnson called on me.

Dave Johnson is aviation editor of The Idaho Statesman newspaper, and a man of respected ability and intelligence in matters related to military and civilian aviation. When I caught the look in his eye and the tone of his words, flying saucers suddenly took on a different and a serious significance. the doubt he displayed of the authenticity of my story told me, and I am sure he was in a position to know, that it was not a new military guided missile and that if what I had seen was true it did not belong to the good old U.S.A. it was then I really began to wonder.

No one could have watched the news wires closer than I did between June 28 and July 3. Not only flying saucers were being seen, but phenomena of one kind or another appeared to be happening everywhere. At home we began to feel like we were living in Grand Central Station. When my friend, Colonel Paul Wieland, who had just returned from Germany where he had served o the Malmedy case and on the Nuremberg trials as a judge, phoned me and said “Let’s go fishing,” I took him up on it, but quick. We got our tackle together, left our wives home to guard the for, and took off for Sekiu, Washington. Sekiu is way out on the Olympic Peninsula. The fishing should have been at it’s best, and it was a long way from people.

We had a beautiful flight and the afternoon of the following day landed in what I think is the only cow pasture in Sekiu. All during the flight I had my newly purchased movie camera ready -just in case. The only part of our conversation up to the time we arrived in Sekiu that I thought really interesting was when Colonel Paul told me definitely that artillery shells could be seen quite easily traveling at six to seven hundred miles an hour if you are in the right position, and they are quite small compared to a plane. It seems that some press reporter had made the remark that aircraft traveling at speeds of twelve hundred miles an hour or more would be invisible to eyesight. This only confirmed in my mind that my calculation and timing were not nearly so inaccurate as some newspaper experts were leading people to believe.

After tying the airplane solidly to a couple of fence posts we got permission to leave our plane there. The rancher was extremely kind and drove us down to the village by the ocean inlet. We were all set for a good rest with the prospect of good fishing the next day when we found out that most of the fishermen were not in their boards and had not even gone out fishing. The water was as red as blood. Thousands of Chinook salmon with which the inlet was teeming were dying from a mysterious red tide. I looked at Colonel Paul, and the Colonel looked at me. It was all very puzzling. in talking to the townspeople we found that they had buried a man that morning who had eaten oysters evidently infected y the peculiar, red, jelly-like substance that could be found everywhere in the sea.

The next morning, in spite of the red tide, we took a short boat trip around the inlet. Even if the fish were worth eating they couldn’t have been caught. Hundreds of them were leaping out of the water, some as high as six feet, trying to shake off the jelly-like substance that was poisoning them. There was nothing for us to do but turn around and fly home. In leaving the cow pasture that day and circling high over the little village of Sekiu we could plainly see the edges of the red water below us. It looked to me rather like a gob of something had fallen out of the sky. Even through the scientists had a name for it, I admitted red tides into my collection of phenomena along with flying saucers.

It was on this same day, July 5, 1947 that I met Captain E.J. Smith and co-pilot Ralph Stephens. Colonel Paul Wieland and I took our last disappointed look at Sekiu and the red water and headed towards Seattle, flying at an elevation of about 4,000 feet. The sky was clear as crystal and we had a brisk west wind on our tail of about twenty miles per hour. it wasn’t until I landed at Boeing Field to gas up my plane that I heard about the sighting and experience of United Airlines flight trip 105 which had left Boise, Idaho at 9:04 p.m. the night before.

No better person in all of the personnel of United Airlines could have been picked to verify my story that we were not alone in the air than Captain E.J. Smith.

He is probably the most highly thought of and respected veteran pilot that flies the air lanes. His sighting was supported and verified by the entire crew of his DC-3.

About eight minutes after take off from Boise’s municipal airport he and co-pilot Ralph Stevens first observed five disks flying what appeared to be a loose formation. Not believing their own eyes they called Martie Morrow, stewardess, to the cockpit. They did not tell her what they were seeing through the windshield of their plane. They asked her to look, so in no way could the power of suggestion have influenced her observation. Upon looking through the window of the cockpit, she exclaimed “Why, there’s a formation of those flying disks!” While they were watching these five disks seemed to take off at a tremendous speed and four more came into view. Three of these disks clustered together and the fourth was flying by itself far off in the distance. They were under observation for more than ten minutes.

I was so excited about their observation that I think I purchased every paper at the Terminal Building newsstand. In one of the papers there was even a photograph, the first photograph of a flying disk that I had seen. It had been taken by Frank Ryman, a Coast Guard yeoman. He had taken his picture the night before.

In my excitement I completely forgot about Colonel Paul Wieland who was standing by my airplane. I rushed madly uptown to the Seattle offices of the International News Service to see the blown-up prints of the picture. I remember what a tough time I had finding the international News Service. I don’t know how many hills Seattle has, but by the time I reached their office I was completely out of breath.

I asked to see the picture. Their reporter appeared happy enough to show it to me but demanded to know who I was. I had become reporter-shy by this time but had no alternative but to give him my name. When I did, he grabbed me by my arm and rushed me from his office down to the anteroom of the news building. There for the first time I met Captain E.J. Smith and his copilot, Stevens.

They were gazing with lifted eyebrows at the photograph that had been taken by Frank Ryman. As I recall it, I felt like a runt compared to big Smithy. He towered head and shoulders above me and when I shook hands with him it was like shaking hands with the big transport he flies. A kinder or more friendly man I have never met and Ralph Stevens was justly proud to fly co-pilot with such an airman. After the International News Service had taken our picture observing this photograph, we all went out for coffee, all talking at the same time of our unusual experience.

Here is the story as Big Smithy told it to me.

“We landed our DC-3 at Boise, Idaho shortly before nine last night and, afraid to be late in schedule, we took off promptly at 9:04. The weather was perfect. It was a funny thing, but just before take-off as I was climbing aboard our DC-3 someone in the crowd piped up and asked me if I had seen any flying saucer. Up to this time I not only hadn’t seen any, but really didn’t believe there were such things, though I was polite to the inquirer and yelled back at him that I would believe them when I saw them. Brother you could have knocked me over with a feather when about eight minutes after take-off, at exactly 7,100 feet over Emmett, Idaho, we saw not one, but nine of them. At first I thought it was a group of planes returning from some Fourth of July celebration, but then I realized the things weren’t aircraft, but were flat and circular.

The first group of five appeared to open and close in formation, then veered to the left of the transport. At this time I picked up my radio microphone and called the Ontario, Oregon C.A.A. radio communication station which was about 45 miles north and west from Boise. I didn’t tell them what I was seeing but said ‘Step outside and look to the southwest, about fifteen miles, and see what you can find.’ The operator came back over the microphone, stating he saw nothing. At this time my co-pilot informed me the first group of disks had disappeared. it was then the second group, three together and the fourth off by itself appeared.”

“By then the transport had reached 8,000 feet altitude and was cruising over the rugged country leading to the Blue Mountains, towards Pendleton, Oregon. My co-pilot saw exactly what I did when he started that these objects seemed to merge, then disappear, then came back in sight, and finally they vanished again to the northwest. This second group seemed to be higher than our flight path and when they did leave, they left! Fast! I positively know they were nothing from the ground in the way of fireworks, reflections, or smoke. I know they were not aircraft that I am familiar with. I don’t know how fast they were going, but we all saw them. They were flat on the bottom, circular, and seemed rough on top. They were bigger than our aircraft.”

When Big Smithy got through telling me this, and in spite of my own experience, I kept repeating to myself “It’s just amazing - simply amazing! Positively amazing!” Big Smithy’s sighting somehow made mine seem small and insignificant.

We were finishing our third cup of coffee when it dawned on me that I had left Colonel Paul all alone at the airport. I hadn’t even told him where I was going. I quickly shook hands with Smithy and Stevens, said jokingly that I’d see them on Mars or someplace, and hot-footed it back to the airport. Poor Colonel Paul - there he was still standing by my plane with a really lost look on his face. It was probably the first time since be became a full colonel in the artillery that he had been left all alone. I could see he hardly knew how to cope with the situation. It’s lucky he has a big heard or I would surely have been bawled out. He’s just the man who could have done it! After I had explained to him what he had taken place, he settled down behind me in the cockpit grumbling about his fishing and we took off for Boise, Idaho, and home.

For the next week I think all I did was read mail.

Everybody was having a wonderful time solving the mystery. Not one letter that I recall, and I have most of them still in my files, had even a note of criticism. This, to me, was rather surprising since most of the newspapers were having a terrifically good time trying to make the public believe we were crazy, seeing visions, or recording corpuscles on the retina of our eyeballs. I was astounded at what newspapermen could dream up. News reporting must be a fascinating business.

During the month of July 1947 everyone appeared to be taking full advantage of our fundamental right of freedom of speech. I don’t know what Captain Smith, Ralph Stevens, or Martie Morrow were thinking and doing but I was trying to keep my mouth shut and was spending my time gathering all the accounts I could of the strange phenomena that were happening. I began to note that foreign sightings of disk-like objects were starting to come in.

I was requested to send in a full report of my experience to the commanding officer of Wright-Patterson Field, which I was happy to do. I offered publicly to submit myself freely to a physical or mental examination by the military for any determination they might wish to make as to the capabilities of my five senses. On June 24, 1947 I held a health certificate which qualified me to fly as a commercial pilot. I still hold a valid commercial pilot’s health certificate.

It was while going through my mail about the fifteenth of July that for some reason or other I gave attention to one particular letter that I had received. it was from a Mr. Raymond A. Palmer. it was written on stationary with the letter head of THE VENTURE PRESS. I didn’t know who Raymond Palmer was and I had never heard of the Venture Press. At the time, had I known who he was, probably wouldn’t have answered his letter. It wasn’t have been because he wasn’t a sincere or a good man, but later I found he was connected with the type of publications that I not only never read but had always thought a gross waste of time for anyone to read. I never was much interested in reading anyhow. It had always been much more interesting for me to do things even though most of the time I did them wrong. Some people call my kind of person “the one who learns it the hard way” and after what has happened I think, “How true, how true!”

This letter from Mr. Palmer was far from being anything sensational, but somehow it had a tone of softness and sincere interest that appealed to me. I think I read that latter at least ten times. Finally I answered it. I was intensely interested in finding out who Raymond Palmer was and inquired from all my friends as well as the newspaper offices here in Boise. Nobody that I ran into had ever heard of either him or Venture Press.

His next letter arrived about a week later. In it he expressed his desire to pay me if I would write down my experience for him. This didn’t particularly appeal to me. I had received other letters and other offers. However, since Mr. Palmer was so interested, I sent him a carbon copy of the report I had sent the commanding officer of Wright-Patterson Field.

In the next letter I received from Mr. Palmer, he told me that he had heard that two harbor patrolmen at Tacoma, Washington had had a very unusual experience - a Mr. Harold A. Dahl and a Mr. Fred L. Crisman claimed that they had not only seen a group of flying saucers but that they had in their possession some fragments that came from one of them. Mr. Palmer wrote that he had a definite interest in the case and would send me expense money if I could find the time to go up there and investigate the authenticity of their story as well as ship some of the fragments, if I could obtained them, to him at Evanston, Illinois. I just let the letter sit for a few days to think it over.

In the meantime, I was visited by two representatives of A-2 Military Intelligence of the Fourth Air Force, Lieutenant Frank M. Brown and Captain William Davidson. I was very happy to see them. I couldn’t figure out why such an efficient body as Military Intelligence hadn’t called on me before. Their visit was most interesting and my wife, Doris, and I were both impressed by their kindness and their consideration of the very peculiar position flying saucers had put me in.

We met them at the Hotel Owybee in Boise. They treated us to a very wonderful dinner. We discussed various phases of my original observation. They said, frankly and openly, they didn’t know what the flying saucers were. They had never seen one, they told us, but ever since my first report they were practically bug-eyed from watching the sky themselves.

That evening at about 9:30 Captain Smith was coming through Boise on his flight to the east from Seattle. I told Davidson and Brown that I intended to go out and say hello to Big Smithy. They were highly elated with the opportunity to meet Captain Smith for, as Brown said, he was on their list to call on. It was like killing two birds with one stone, so to speak.

After dinner we drove out to the Boise Municipal Airport. I was rather surprised to find Dave Johnson, the aviation editor for The Idaho Statesman, there. I wondered how he knew. Then it occurred to me that the military wanted to talk to him also. Only a few days previously he had attempted to photograph a disk-like object which he had observed from his National Guard AT-6 airplane, while he was flying at 14,000 feet over Anderson Dam, a few miles to the east of Boise.

Characteristic of our other meetings, everybody was talking at the same time. As a result, during the brief stay that Smithy had between flights, none of us found out much. I did learn in the course of the conversation that Davidson and Brown had flown to Boise especially to see me in a military A-26 bomber. I was really impressed! About all I knew about planes was from the puddle-jumpers I had always flown and because these military craft are so big and so powerful I guess I had the idea that brains were sticking out all over anyone who could fly them.

After leaving the terminal in our car, Doris and I invited Davidson and Brown to come out to our home where we could talk under quieter circumstances. Our two children had been put to bed and we had the house to ourselves. I fully realized the seriousness of their visit and tried to cooperate in every way I possibly could. I stuck absolutely to the facts. I didn’t consider my opinion important. I drew pictures for them and recounted my original observation as accurately as I could. For some reason, and I don’t know why, I did not tell them that one of the flying disks in the formation I observed appeared different from the rest.

In fact, I never even told Doris. I thought it was the angle from which I observed this particular one which made it look different and I wasn’t completely positive about it. It was rather odd too, because I kept thinking about this one flying saucer that looked different and I always intended to tell someone about it. However, every time I would be puzzling over the matter no one seemed to be around to tell it to.

Before leaving that night, Davidson and Brown went through all the mail I had received outside of what various newsmen had helped themselves to. I noticed the mail they selected to take was mostly of the nature of societies or organizations that had written me asking for full accounts of my original experiences. I was happy they did go though my mail as I didn’t feel capable of evaluating much of the contents of the letters I had received.

When we returned them to their hotel, Brown and Davidson quietly but firmly impressed me with the idea that if anything of an usual nature came to my attention or if I needed help in any way I was to phone them or write them collect in care of A-2, Fourth Air Force, Hamilton Field, California. They also mentioned that it would probably be better for all concerned if I refused to discuss my experiences further with outsiders. I can say that I was extremely impressed with my first meeting with Military Intelligence officers. Their courtesy, politeness, and consideration was beyond reproach.

The next day I found out that Dave Johnson of The Idaho Statesman also had been requested to send in a complete written report of his observation to the commanding officer of Wright-Patterson Field, Dayton, Ohio. It was that afternoon as we were walking down Capitol Boulevard in Boise that I talked to Dave about the letter that I had received from R.A. Palmer. I asked him if he thought it would be right for me to accept expense money to flying to Tacoma, Washington and investigate the sighting and fragments in relation to Harold A. Dahl and Fred L. Crisman. Dave thought that I would be silly not to accept the money. He suggested that a good way to find out if this Mr. R.A. Palmer was sincere was to write or wire him for the expense money first.

I did so that afternoon, requesting $200. The $200 was at Western Union waiting for me the next morning. I was quite surprised and I think that Dave was, too. Dave, being a hard-headed newspaper man, just couldn’t believe an unknown party, so to speak, would be tossing money around that way. So there I was with the $200 and now the responsibility to go to Tacoma and investigate the matter.

2. The Tacoma Affair

It was on the morning of July 29, 1947 that I took off from a private cow pasture near my home. It was about 5:30 a.m. I never told anyone of my plans as to when I was going to leave Boise or at what date I would arrive in Tacoma, though a number of my friends did know of my proposed trip. That day no one but my wife knew I had gone and I took off so early in the morning that I was quite sure no one else knew or made any special note of my leaving. I mention this here, and further stress another important point. I rarely file a flight plan. I do not recall a flight I made in the entire year of 1947 where I did file a flight plan. My plane at that time was not equipped with a radio, only a small receiver to obtain weather reports.

It was a beautiful summer morning the day I left Boise and I promptly climbed my aircraft to an altitude of 7,000 feet, flying the airway route to Pendleton, Oregon. I had only about half a tank of gasoline when I left and planned on stopping at La Grande, Oregon for refueling. A refuel at la Grande would carry me through to Tacoma. I stored no gasoline in the cow pasture that I had been using as a landing field and 5:30 in the morning was too early to obtain gas in Boise.

It was a perfect day to fly. The air was sharp, moist, clear as crystal and smooth as silk. There is something of a real thrill in flying on a day like that, with the endless drone of your motor telling you that everything is working perfectly. Within an hour I was over Baker, Oregon. I can recall how the city sparkled in the sunlight as it lay below me, nestled in between two huge ranges of mountains. I began to let down over North Powder, Oregon in preparation to land at La Grande when I noticed above me and about ten miles to the right the Empire Airlines’ old Boeing, also coming into land at La Grande. There is something about having company in the air that always seems pleasant and friendly. I rocked my wings at him in a gesture of hello and continued my let down until I was directly over Union, Oregon at 5,000 feet.

I recall looking at my instrument clock which read about five minutes of seven. As I looked up from my instrument panel and straight ahead over the La Grande valley I saw a cluster of about twenty to twenty-five brass-colored objects that looked like ducks. they were coming at me head on and at what seemed a terrific rate of speed. I grabbed my camera and started rolling out film. Even though I thought they were ducks when I first saw them, I wasn’t taking any chances.

The sun was at my back and to my right. These objects were coming into the sun. I wasn’t sighting through the viewfinder on my camera but was sighting along the side of it. As this group of objects came within 400 yards of me they veered sharply away from me and to their right, gaining altitude as they did so and fluttering and flashing a dull amber color. I was a little bit shocked and excited when I realized they had the same flight characteristics of the large objects that I had observed on June 24. These appeared to be round, rather rough on top, and to have a dark or a light spot on top of each one. I couldn’t be absolutely positive of this because it all happened so suddenly. I attempted to make a turn and follow them but they disappeared to the east at a speed far in excess of my airplane. I knew they were not ducks because ducks don’t fly that fast.

After a few minutes I gave up the chase and continued to let down at La Grande. I phoned Dave Johnson from there and related my experience but told him not to print it. I knew he had more than a newsworthy interest now in flying disks. I questioned the whole crew of the Empire Airlines ship to see if they had seen this cluster of objects, too. If they had seen them, they would not admit it, but there is a good possibility they did not see them. they were on almost their final approach at the La Grande airfield, their plane being much faster than mine, and this cluster of objects at the time would have been seven to nine hundred feet above them.

I heard later that several farmers in the vicinity of Union had observed what they thought a peculiar cluster of birds that same morning. I did not know this until much later. actually, they flew in a cluster more like blackbirds than ducks but each one was larger than a duck, I should judge some twenty-four to thirty inches in diameter. they rather wheeled on edge, flipping as they went as efficiently as when they were flat in reference to the surface of the ground. That morning I was pretty disappointed that no one around the airfield had seen them, to my knowledge.

I am fully familiar with La Grande valley, the reservoirs, streams and lakes that are all over this area in the summer and you can be sure, on the conservative side, that I felt positive these things were not birds. I was curious as to what my movie film had recorded. Later, after it was developed, I found that my movie try was not very successful. Only one or two of these objects could be found on my film and you could see them only under a jeweler’s glass.

I gassed up and flew on over almost the same route I had flown the day I observed the flying disks at Mount Rainier. It was later afternoon when I arrived at the Chehalis County Airport. I hadn’t fully made up my mind as to whether I would stay overnight in Chehalis or fly on to Tacoma that night. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going or why, although at the airport I think the subject of flying disks did come up for a short while. I steered the conversation away from the subject as it is pretty embarrassing to know that something is true and yet not be able to show any physical evidence of your conviction. After some forty-five minutes of hanger flying, I decided I would go on to Tacoma that evening.

It was dusk when I landed at Barry’s Airport which is a little airfield located down on the mud flats. I am sure that neither Barry nor his wife recognized me as the man whose picture had been in the newspapers connected with flying disk stories. I had Barry gas my airplane and tie it up for the night. I then proceeded to call all the hotels in town to see if I could get a room for the night. Barry’s wife kept saying that getting a room in Tacoma was really difficult and that the housing shortage had been very acute there.

I don’t know how many hotels and rooming houses I called. Finally, as a last resort and just for a lark, I called the Winthrop. I really didn’t expect to find a room there as it was the largest and most prominent hotel in the city of Tacoma. it was sure to be full. I was quite shocked when I spoke to the room clerk and heard him say, “Yes, Mr. Arnold, we have a room and bath for you.”

I recall asking him several times if he was sure that room was for Kenneth Arnold. He muttered something and evidently went back to his cards and papers. He came back over the telephone to tell me that yes, he had a room for me. I was positive he was mistaken. I though maybe he did have a room reserved for a Mr. Kenneth Arnold, but it couldn’t be me. I explained it to myself by thinking that another person by the same name had ordered the room and just by coincidence I happened to fall heir to it. I know the clerk didn’t know me. I had never stayed at that hotel before in my life. However, I was desperate for a room and thought it was all a happy coincidence. Even if another Kenneth Arnold did show up after I had moved in he might be kind enough to let me share the room with him. When I think of it now it seems terribly odd but at the time I didn’t give it much thought.

I went directly to the hotel, still puzzling over whose room I was going to get. While in Tahoma I wanted to be as quiet as possible about my presence. I thought that this flying disk business had gotten too far out of hand as it was.

When I arrived at the hotel, I demanded to see the room clerk who had given me the room. My conscience was beginning to bother me and I was sure the room clerk was mixed up. The clerk on duty told me that the room clerk I had talked to on the telephone was now off duty and he didn’t know where I could reach him. There was quite a group of people waiting to talk to the clerk so rather than explaining it all to him I signed the register, grabbed the key, and went up to Room 502.

It had twin beds and a bath. I was tired and dirty and once planted there it was going to be awfully hard to move me out. While preparing my bath, I grabbed the telephone book and begin looking for a Harold A. Dahl. There were several Dahl’s in the book. I phoned an H.A. Dahl and found that he was the fellow I had come to see. Mr. Dahl was not too anxious to talk to me. In fact, the first thing he said was why didn’t I go back home and forget the whole business.

I thought this rather strange since so much smoke as his experience has caused, the story getting clear to Chicago and back to me, must mean that there was something to it. Mr. Dahl stated that he refused to talk about or discuss the matter of his experience or flying disks with anyone. I think I was on line half an hour before I convinced him that whether his story was true or false, I had come all this way to talk to him and doggone it, I wouldn’t go back home without an audience. He said that he had had nothing but tough luck ever since the whole business started and that probably he and I both would be better off if we left the subject alone. His last words on the phone, however, were that he would come to the hotel to see me within half an hour.

I was tired and hungry. I had intended to make an appointment with Mr. Dahl for the next day but I was fairly bursting with curiosity as to what he would look like and what his experience has really been. I knew there were such things as flying saucers and if he had any pieces of one I could sure use some tangible evidence.

I was just dressing after my bath when Harold Dahl rapped on my door. I opened the door, still in the process of dressing, and I can honestly say I was never more surprised. I had always pictured in my mind that I person as superstitious as Mr. Dahl sounded over the phone would be a slightly built, sensitive type of character. Well, there he stood, over six feet two inches tall and well over two hundred pounds, as two fisted a lumberjack looking fellow as I ever saw. I am five feet ten and a half inches tall and weigh more than two hundred and fifteen pounds. I have never considered myself to be a small man but I suddenly thought maybe I had been a little too demanding and persistent over the phone.

I invited him in a little apologetically and started firing questions at him. He moved the large chair from near the dresser in between the two beds and let me rave on for a little while, not answering a single thing I asked him. He finally said, “Wait a minute, Mr. Arnold, not so fast. In talking with you there are quite a number of things I want you to consider, if you want me to tell my story to you. In fact, I think I better go home.” He got up as if to leave, then continued. “Mr. Arnold, I still think it would be good advice to you. This flying saucer business is the most complicated thing you ever got mixed up in.”

Right then and there I felt he was speaking the truth, but I wanted to untangle what seemed to me an awful mess. it seemed like nobody wanted to put the public straight on any of it. Not that I thought it was my job, particularly, but I’d been given $200 for expenses to interview this fellow. If I was conservative I certainly wouldn’t spend the whole $200 just listening to a man’s story and reporting on it. Little did I know that I was going to spend six days at it and get mixed up in the doggonedest mystery a man could ever dream of.

For nearly two hours, Harold Dahl told me of all the sad experiences he had had since the 21st of June when he reported his sighting. He said you couldn’t blame any of the experiences he had to anyone, but just by coincidence he nearly lost his job, just by coincidence he nearly lost his son, his wife had become ill, that he had lost a tremendously good boom of logs that he had salvaged from the bay when an unusual tide had somehow broken the moorings one night. This was a major loss to his finances as the boom was worth over $3500. The engines on their boar wouldn’t start in the mornings; the boat sprang leaks. All in all, he had had a horrible time in keeping from going completely broke financially and from losing his family and home through sickness or accident.

I tried to assure Harold that everybody has their ups and downs, that his tough luck could in no way be attributed to his sighting of flying saucers or to the fragments he had in his possession. I wanted to get to the bottom of this, regardless, and I didn’t want to be frustrated by his superstitions. After what amounted to downright pleading on my part he finally related the following story.

“On June 21, 1947 in the afternoon about two o’clock, I was patrolling the east bay of Maury Island close in to the shore. this practically uninhabited island lies directly opposite the city of Tacoma about three miles from the mainland. This day the sea was rather rough and there were numerous low-hanging clouds. I, as captain, was steering my patrol boat close to the shore of a bay on Maury Island. On board were two crewmen, my fifteen-year-old son and his dog.

As I looked up from the wheel on my boat I noticed six very large doughnut-shaped aircraft. I would judge they were at about 2,000 feet above the water and almost directly overhead. At first glance I thought them to be balloons as they seemed to be stationary. However, upon further observance, five of these strange aircraft were circling very slowly around the sixth one which was stationary in the center of the formation. It appeared to me that the center aircraft was in some kind of trouble as it was losing altitude fairly rapidly. The other aircraft stayed at a distance of about two hundred feet above the center one as if they were following the center one down. The center aircraft came to rest almost directly overhead at about five hundred feet above the water.

All on board our boat were watching these aircraft with a great deal of interest as they apparently had no motors, propellers, or any visible signs of propulsion, and to the best of our hearing they made no sound. In describing the aircraft I would say they were at least one hundred feet in diameter. Each had a hole in the center, approximately twenty-five feet in diameter. they were all a sort of shell-like gold and silver color. Their surface seemed of metal and appeared to be burled because when the light stone on them through the clouds they were brilliant, not all one brilliance, but many brilliances, something like a Buick dashboard. All of the aircraft seemed to have portholes equally spaced around the outside of their doughnut exterior.”

“These portholes were from five to six feet in diameter and were round. there also appeared to have a dark, circular, continuous window on the inside and bottom of their doughnut shape as though it were an observation window. All of us aboard there boat were afraid this center balloon was going to crash in the bay, and just a little while before it stopped lowering, we had pulled our boat over to the beach and got out with out harbor patrol camera. I took three or four photographs of these balloons.

The center balloon-like aircraft remained stationary at about five hundred feet from the water while the other five aircraft kept circling over it. After about five or six minutes one of the aircraft from the circling formation left it’s place in the formation and lowered itself down right next to the stationary aircraft. In fact, it appeared to touch it and stayed stationary next to the center aircraft as if it were giving some kind of assistance for about three or four minutes.

It was then we heard a dull thud, like an underground explosion or a thud similar to a man stamping his heel on damp ground. Immediately following this sound the center aircraft began spewing forth what seemed like thousands of newspapers from somewhere on the inside of it’s center. These newspapers, which turned out to be a white type of very light weight metal, fluttered to earth, most of them lighting in the bay. It then seemed to hail on us, in the bay and over the beach, black or darker type metal which looked similar to lava rock. We did not know if this metal was coming from the aircraft but assumed that it was, as it fell at the same time that the white type metal was falling. However, since these fragments were of a darker color, we did not observe them until they started hitting the beach and the bay. All of these latter fragments seemed hot, almost molten. When they hit the bay, steam rose from the water.

We ran for the shelter under a cliff on the beach and behind logs to protect ourselves from the falling debris. In spite of our precaution, my son’s arm was injured by one of the falling fragments and our dog was hit and killed. We buried the dog at sea on our return trip to Tacoma.”

“After this rain of metal seemed over, all of these strange aircraft lifted slowly and drifted out to the westward, which is out to sea. They rose and disappeared at a tremendous height. The center aircraft, which had spewed the debris, did not seem to be hindered in it’s flight and still remained in the center of the formation as they all rose and disappeared out to sea.

We tried to pick up several pieces of the metal or fragments and found them very hot - in fact, I almost burned my fingers - but after some of them had cooled we loaded a considerable number of the pieces aboard the boat. we also picked up some of the metal which had looked like falling newspapers.

My crew and I discussed this observance for awhile and I attempted to radio from my patrol boar back to my base. The static was so great it was impossible for me to reach my radio station. This I attributed to the presence of these aircraft, as my radio had been in perfect operating order and the weather would not have causes this amount of interference.

The wheelhouse on our boat had been hit by the falling debris and damaged. We immediately started our engines and went directly to Tacoma, where my boy was given first aid at the hospital there. Upon reaching the dock I had to tell my superior officer how the boar had been damaged and why the dog had not returned with us. I related our experience to Fred L. Crisman, my superior officer. I could plainly see that he did not believe it and I guess I don’t blame him, but we gave him the camera with it’s film and the fragments of metal we had loaded aboard as proof of our story. Fred L. Crisman decided he would at least go and investigate the beach where I judged at least twenty tons of the debris had fallen.

I might add that these strange aircraft appeared completely round, but seemed a little squashed on the top and on the bottom as if you placed a large board on an inner tube and squashed it slightly. The film from our camera, developed, showed these strange aircraft, but the negatives were covered with spots similar to a negative that has been close to an x-ray room before it has been exposed except that the spots prints white instead of black as in the usual case.”

This was the story that Harold A. Dahl related to me the evening of July 29, 1947 in Room 502 in the Winthrop Hotel in Tacoma, Washington.

Harold had moved from the chair to the bed and sat rather stooped over, wringing his hands as if terribly worried about something. I asked him what he was worried about and he said that he only hoped that in relating his experience he wouldn’t have any more bad luck or that he would wish any on me. He seemed to hesitate, then he started talking again.

Harold Dahl went on to tell me that early the very next morning after he had his experience a gentleman called at his home and invited him to breakfast. I was about seven o’clock. According to Dahl this wasn’t particularly unusual. He said that many lumber buyers did call on people in his type of work with the purpose of buying salvaged logs and that they frequently called on him very early in the morning.

This gentleman, Dahl continued, wore a black suit, was of medium height, and there was nothing unusual about his appearance. However, he seemed more the type of man who would be a insurance salesman or who followed a less strenuous type of work than logging. He appeared to be about forty years of age.

Dahl accepted his invitation and they walked out to the curb. Dahl noticed that he drove a 1947 Buick sedan. Since Dahl had to go downtown anyway, this average looking gentleman suggested that Dahl drive his own car and follow him. While driving downtown Harold was unable to get the license number of the cart he was following. He made no special point to do so. He felt sure the fellow wanted to buy some salvaged logs or equipment from him. It happens almost every morning in harbor patrol work.

It did seem rather funny, as Harold put it, that this gentleman was taking Harold to breakfast in the uptown section of Tacoma rather than in the lower dock section which is the usual place where loggers and salvage operators congregate. Finally he stopped in front of a little nook cafe and motioned for Harold to follow him.

By this time Dahl’s curiosity was aroused, almost to the point of asking him right on the curb what he wanted. They went inside and ordered their breakfast. The minute this man sat down in the booth he began relating in great detail the experience that Harold and his crew had had the day before. He did this with such accuracy, Harold said, it was shocking. This man talked as if he had been on the boat with them the entire trip. Harold knew he had never seen the man before. He was completely baffled at what he was hearing.

After the man finished he made the remark, “What I have said is proof to you that I know a great deal more about this experience of yours than you will to believe.” He made the flat statement that Harold and his crew had made an observation that shouldn’t have happened for some mysterious reason, and he was giving him some sound advice. This man told Harold that if he loved his family and didn’t want anything to happen to his general welfare, he would not discuss his experience with anyone.

Harold told me, “I don’t put much stock in what this fellow said. He sounded like some kind of a crackpot to me. I didn’t think it was amazing how he knew what we had seen. Why a total stranger would make such an issue of something no one could help did have me rather puzzled. I didn’t have any intention of keeping my experience a secret when I went back to the docks that morning. I discussed my experience openly and truthfully with many other seamen at the pier that morning. I asked for Fred Crisman, my superior officer, and found out he had taken one of the boats out alone. the last anyone knew of him that morning was that he had headed towards Maury Island.”

That afternoon Fred L. Crisman returned with the boat and, according to Dahl, he didn’t have much to say. He did stop criticizing Dahl for seeing things, and he started making arrangements for the repair of the boat that Harold had been operating.

I sat there on the edge of the bed looking at Dahl. I was thinking that before I came to Tacoma I was sure I had heard everything. Dahl’s story was the wildest thing I had ever listened to and still, as far as I could tell, he was deadly earnest about every bit of it.

There was quite a long silence. it must have been about five minutes. I, frankly, couldn’t think of anything to say. Finally Harold Dahl got up from where he had been sitting on the edge of the bed. He suggested that he take me out to his secretary’s house where he had quite a few of the fragments he had brought back from Maury Island, that is, if I would care to see them. I did. By this time I had completely forgotten about maybe saving any of my $200 expense money.

We left the hotel and drove in Harold’s car out to his secretary’s home. it was a rather unpretentious looking little house, standing all alone on a corner. The evening was bright and clear and it took us ten minutes to get there. I noticed particularly the streets and the avenue we took. I thought to myself, ‘I may go out there in the morning and look it over in the daylight.’

This was the first time I had ever played investigator and I guess I thought investigators would make notes of that kind. I know now I would have been better off to let Perry Mason do the job. I couldn’t believe Harold Dahl’s story, even though I could see absolutely no reason to doubt his sincerity and could find nothing that he could gain from telling a lie.

We pulled up in front of a house, got out and walked up a rather cracked sidewalk to a wooden porch. The porch had no screens and there were no rugs on the floor. I remember the white spindle-like porch supports. Harold knocked on the side of the doorway and then opened the screen door. It was hinged on the west and opened on the east. There was enough light from the street light so that I could see the house was of about a 1912 vintage and could have used another coat of white paint.

I turned the doorknob of the main door. It was hinged on the east and opened inward from the west. The door was of a dark wood like mahogany. Although not hand carved, it gave a hand-carved effect. The doorknob was oblong with little raised grapes or insignia on it. The window in the front door was the etched picture kind of glass.

Upon entering the house, I saw a piano to my left against the wall. A bedroom led directly off to the right of the front room. The entire front room was very narrow with a slight archway between the farther end of the front room and a small open dining room. Another archway tunneled into the kitchen in the rear. Next to the piano by the west window was a large radio, about a 1937 model, with it’s wires trailing through the edge of the window panel to the outside.

I could see from the reflected light of the room the aerial going up outside the house. The base of the aerial was made of two 2x2s. there was a piano bench at the piano. On top of the piano were several kewpie dolls such as you win at sideshows, trimmed with ostrich feathers, and some inexpensive plaster-of-paris animal figurines.

Harold went directly through the front room and dining room into the kitchen. A woman about forty years of age, Harold’s secretary, was in the kitchen. She was deeply engrossed in writing checks and doing book work. papers, receipts, and notes were laid every available place in the kitchen.

I was following close behind Harold. I thought he was leading me to the fragments he had spoken of. He introduced me to his secretary. I can’t recall her name. I had been told she was a widow and had several children and that this was her home. I gathered that her book work was generally done down at some office at the docks, but that she had brought the books and the check book home to catch up on her work since it was nearing the end of July.

Harold turned from his secretary and asked me to return to the front room and help myself to a chair. Within a few seconds he followed, sat on the edge of the piano bench and handed me a dark colored rock ash tray. He said, “Here is one of the fragments from Maury Island. We’ve been using it as an ash tray.”

I remember saying, “Why, Harold, that’s only a piece of lava rock!”

Harold said, “Well, I don’t know much about metals, but this is some of the stuff that hit our boat and there must be about twenty tons more of it over on the shores of Maury Island. I don’t have any of the white metal here but Fred Crisman has a whole box full in his garage. We’re go over there right away if you’d like to see that, too.”

“Oh, that isn’t too important,” I said. “Not tonight, I’ll have a look at it tomorrow.” If I had only read some of the clippings I had stuffed into my coat pocket before I left Boise this lava rock would really have rung a bell in my mind. Since June 24 I had been collecting clippings and listening to stories so hot and heavy that I had little chance to digest some of the things I should have known.

The rest of the evening we spent talking about hunting and fishing. Harold drove me back to my hotel a little after midnight. Just before parting with Dahl that evening in front of the hotel I asked if he would have Mr. Crisman come to see me in the morning.

I was really tired that night and went to bed completely forgetting that I had had no supper.

I would probably have slept until noon the next day if I hadn’t been awakened by a banging on my door. it was about 9:30 in the morning. Both Crisman and Dahl had come to see me.

Fred Crisman was a short stocky fellow, dark complexioned, a happy-go-lucky appearing person, very cheerful and extremely alert. He was practically bubbling over to tell me his story. Up until this time I hadn’t heard about his experience.

Crisman began telling me how furious he was with Harold Dahl when he returned to the docks with his “wild tale” and the damaged boat. He said he had cussed Harold out for damaging the boat.

Harold broke in, saying, “Yah, Crisman thought we’d all been drunk.”

Fred Crisman piped up with, “I certainly did think they had gotten drunk. The only thing I couldn’t figure out was how poor navigation could account for all the damage to the boat - all of it done on the wheelhouse and the upper deck. It looked like they had taken a sledge hammer and tried to sink it from the top down.”

Crisman was evidently talking from experience. I guess that in times before when liquor was aboard one of his boats it was always the bottom of the craft that had been damaged from crashing into rocks or whatever men do with a boat when they are drunk.

“My curiosity rose,” Fred Crisman continued, “when I considered the peculiar way the boat had been damaged. I sneaked off the next morning early to go over to Maury Island to see if there actually was twenty tons of this debris on the beach like Dahl said. On arriving at Maury Island I did find all the debris, lava rock and some of the white metal that Harold had told me about.”

“Now,” Fred said, “to make the story worse, while I stood looking at these fragments, holding a few pieces in my hand, one of the same kind of aircraft that Harold described to me came right out of a large far cumulus cloud and made a wide circle of this little bay.

The aircraft was banked at about a ten degree angle. It had no visible means of propulsion. It was more like a large inner tube with round eyes or portholes around it on the outside. It made no noise, and circled the bay as if it was looking for something. it did not seem slightly squished as Harold described the six the day before.

I hold a commercial pilot’s license. I flew over a hundred missions in fighter aircraft over Burma in the last war and I feel qualified to describe it accurately. Harold doesn’t know how to fly. I would say the portholes around this strange airplane were about five feet in diameter. Also I would say it had a definite observation window and the whole surface appeared to be metal, burled and of a brassy color - almost golden. As the sun hit it, it showed more brilliance than a solid polished surface would show.”

I had the feeling as Crisman talked that, solid as appeared, he definitely wanted to domineer the conversation and trends of thought about the entire Maury Island incident.

Harold Dahl seemed more in favor of taking little or no part in further discussion of the subject. Dahl in no way attempted to sell his story to me or to review it any further. He didn’t try to convince me of the truth of what he had already told me.

This was July 30, 1947 and by now it was about eleven o’clock in the morning. I had gotten dressed during the discussion and ordered breakfast to be sent up to all three of us. While eating breakfast I reached in my coat pocket and took out a number of newspaper clippings and offs and ends I had hurriedly put in my pocket in Boise. oddly enough, the top clipping of the handful, which I had barely glanced at before, mentioned cinder or lava ash particles that had fallen from the sky near Mountain Home, Idaho the twelfth day of July after a formation of flying saucers had passed over that area. The man who picked up portions of this ash sent it to the state chemical laboratory for analysis.

Right then and there I became inwardly excited about the fragments I had seen the night before. I wanted some immediately and even through our meetings had been entirely in the talking stage I put a great deal more credence in Dahl’s and Crisman’s stories of their experiences. I seemed all of a sudden to wake up and wanted to get to doing things. I told Dahl I would like to see the photographs he had taken, even if they were bad, and asked Crisman for some of the white metal as well as other fragments he had stored in his garage.

Then I really got an idea - Smithy! I asked Crisman and Dahl if they would mind if I asked Captain E.J. Smith of United Airlines to come down and help us try to get to the bottom of this thing. I explained to them that Big Smithy had become involved in this thing innocently, too. I was sure he would be as anxious to obtain some physical evidence of flying saucers as I was. Somehow at the point I completely forgot about Mr. Raymond Palmer back in Evanston, Illinois. Suddenly I was finding out things for myself, not for Mr. Palmer.

Dahl and Crisman said they didn’t care if I asked Big Smithy over. I got busy on the telephone right then and called United Airlines, Flight Operations, at Boeing Field in Seattle. They gave me Captain Smith’s phone number and luckily I was able to reach him. I told Captain smith what I had bumped into in Tacoma and asked him if he would like to come over. He told me he had the afternoon off and would like to join in the investigation. I said I’d fly up to Seattle right away, meet him in front of the Terminal Building, and fly him back to Tacoma. Not only did I like Captain Smith’s company, but felt he was much more qualified to determine the authenticity of Dahl’s and Crisman’s stories than I was.

Dahl had some odds and ends to take care of down at the dock so Fred Crisman drove me to Barry’s Airport in his Ford roadster. I climbed in my plane and took off for Seattle. By the time I got there Smithy was waiting for me. I didn’t know exactly what to believe. Big Smithy seemed to be enthusiastic about the whole thing. After paying our check at the newsstand we went out, climbed in my plane and took off for Tacoma.

I bet Big Smithy will never forget that flight. He’d been flying DC-6s from Seattle to Chicago and what a comedown it was to the funny looking little one engine plane I own. About the only thing on my ship that is metal is the engine. I’ll never forget Captain Smith chuckling at my airspeed only registering a hundred and five miles per hour. After a number of assurances on my part that my plane was really safe, he settled down to enjoy the ride.

3. The Mysterious Informant

We arrived in Tacoma about three o’clock and parked my airplane at Barry’s Airport. Fred Crisman was waiting and drove us up to my hotel. He let us out, saying he would go down, pick up Dahl, and be back in about an hour. I told Captain Smith as we were walking into the hotel that I, for one, didn’t want any newspaper reporters around or any publicity about what we were doing. I asked him not to tell United Airlines what he was doing in Tacoma with me. There were a number of things about the stories of Crisman and Dahl that didn’t quite ring true but at that time, it was beyond me to evaluate what I had heard and seen. We went directly to my room. I phoned an order for coffee and rolls and then brought Captain Smith up to date on everything that had happened.

A little over an hour and a half later Crisman and Dahl arrived. Dahl and Crisman told Captain Smith their stories separately. I showed him the news clipping about the disks and lava ash and told him that neither Crisman or Dahl had seen the clipping or knew anything about it.

I recall Captain Smith taking off his suit coat, throwing it on the back of a chair, and saying to me, “Ken, whether you like it or not, you’re got a roommate. I’m going to stay here until I find out what gives!” I was tickled to death. I thought, ‘Boy! Now we’re going to get to the bottom of things!’

We were engrossed with our coffee and rolls for about fifteen minutes. No one said too much, but I know everybody was doing a lot of thinking. Captain Smith finally broke the silence, thereby starting a cross examination which covered every possible phase of everybody’s relationship and experiences up to the present date. It took an hour and a half and I don’t think J. Edgar Hoover could have done a better job.

When Smithy got through we weren’t any farther ahead than we were when we started. Somehow Crisman’s and Dahl’s stories couldn’t be broken down. After this Smithy was more convinced than ever that he wanted to stay a few days with me to see how everything came out. He asked Crisman to drive him up to Seattle so he could get his automobile and a toothbrush. He phoned United Airlines and cancelled his flights for the next day on the excuse that he was visiting a friend. I know he didn’t tell United Airlines what he was doing. He and Crisman left, saying they’d be back within a couple of hours.

Harold Dahl made the excuse that his wife wasn’t feeling well and that he had to go home to supper. He said he would come back later on in the evening. I locked the room and went out for a cup of coffee. I was gone about an hour. I’ll never forget the feeling I had in the pit of my stomach. Somehow it seemed like we weren’t getting any place and I kind of wished I was back home.

It must have been about seven-thirty or eight o’clock when Captain smith returned. He hadn’t had any supper and he suggested we drive someplace. His car was a light green deluxe model Town and Country Chrysler. I told Smithy that no one but plutocrats could afford buggies like that. We drove out to the edge of Tacoma, talking about the events of the day. We had dinner in a rather secluded cafe that I think Captain Smith knew about for it was strange to me.

We got back to the hotel just a little before Crisman and Dahl arrived. I sort of relaxed and let Captain Smith take over as he seemed to have a good system. I remember that before Dahl and Crisman left, Smith asked to see a bunch of the fragments, both the white and the lava rock kind; he also wanted to see the pictures, and he wanted to go to Maury Island to see the debris that had been so talked about and that was supposed to be there on the beach.

Dahl and Crisman agreed to everything he asked. They invited us to have breakfast with them the next morning at a little logger’s cafe where we would have the opportunity to meet their harbor patrol crews. We accepted their invitation and they left.

It was about ten o’clock. Smithy and I thought that now we were getting someplace. We were both pretty tired. Smithy walked over and flopped on my bed. In doing so he knocked the pillow off my bed, revealing that I had a .32 automatic pistol. He became very interested in it and asked me if I was worried about something. I remember feeling rather sheepish about it. I said that I honestly didn’t know why I had brought it along, that I rarely carried it with me.

I explained to Smithy that it had been a present from Colonel Paul Wieland of Provo, Utah. Smithy sure liked that pistol and asked me if I would sell it as it was just the size he would like to carry with him when he flew. The conversation drifted from Colonel Paul to red tides to the crashed C-46 Marine transport which had finally been found that month on the southwest side of Mount Rainier. We did a great deal of laughing and joking about the crazy things people were saying about flying saucers.

We were, in fact, laughing and joking just a little bit artificially. We both had a peculiar feeling that we were being watched or that there was something dangerous about getting involved with Crisman and Dahl. First was out suspicion of a hoax. Second was our suspicion that Russian espionage was baiting us on the whole affair for a very simple season - to find out if actually we knew that these flying saucers were made in the United States and were a military secret.

We reasoned this way, that our relationship with Russia was not on too friendly a basis and we both knew we had given reports that were accurate and correct as far as we had observed these strange craft. It was publicly known that we had been interrogated by Military Intelligence. Russian agents might assume that we had been secretly assured that these craft were of our own manufacture. By watching us or getting us involved in something of this kind, we might privately confide in each other what, supposedly, the military had secretly assured us. Thus a foreign government would have an assured knowledge of what these things were and where they came from in case they were being sighted over their own country.

At this time we didn’t even dream of the possibility that they could come from another world. Although Smithy and I did not talk much about it that evening, we both felt safer with a gun in our possession.

We had just settled down to go to sleep when the phone rang. It was Ted Morello of United Press. I later found out he was UP’s head man in Tacoma with offices in the Tacoma Times Building. I immediately started to hang up on him when he said, “Hold on a minute. Some crackpot has been phoning us here, telling us verbatim what has been going on in your hotel room for the last day.”

I told him we would not admit or deny anything. Morello proceeded to tell me, step by step, what we had been doing. I was amazed at the accuracy of what he told me but I didn’t let on to Morello that it was true.

We had both been bothered several times by a reporter from the Tacoma Times named Paul Lance earlier in the day. He had met us in the lobby and tried to strike up a conversation with us and he came up to our room several times that afternoon attempting to get a story. We had questioned Paul Lance as to how he knew we were there and his suspicion that it had something to do with flying saucers. We had absolutely refused to talk to any reporters and Paul Lance was no exception. Both Smith and I suspected Dahl or Crisman of leaking out the information as to what was going on in our room.

Ted Morello of United Press not only told me but I turned the phone over to Captain Smith. He was equally amazed at what Morello knew, particularly when he quoted things that had been said in the room that evening when neither Dahl or Crisman were present. We thanked Morello for his kindness, told him he was all wet - which was not true - and as Smithy set the phone back on the stand we both began to worry.

We were sure someone had a Dictaphone planted in our room. We spent the next hour tearing that room apart,, from the mattresses to the transoms. It was a corner room and we had a definite advantage. We were five stories up on two sides and with heavy panels between us and the hallway and the adjoining room on the west and the south. We could not find any wires or any microphone behind, underneath, or on anything in that room. I didn’t dare say how I felt but Smithy was visibly concerned and disturbed. for the next half hour, before we finally went to sleep, we carried on our conversation in whispers.

The next morning, July 31, Captain Smith and I were awakened by Crisman and Dahl. Their arms were loaded with heavy lava rock fragments and Crisman has a number of pieces of the white metal that he said came from the aircraft that Harold Dahl had told about. Captain Smith and I were starting to inspect the fragments when Crisman broke in, saying that the men from their crews were down at the cafe waiting for us for breakfast.

We hurriedly dressed, locked the fragments in the room, left the hotel, got in our respective cars and drove to the lower section of town where there was a little workingman’s cafe. There, seated at a large round table covered with an oilcloth were two or three brawny looking men. We could tell by the various greetings between these men, Crisman and Dahl that they were associates in their salvage and harbor patrol work, presumably their crew members. Captain Smith and I were introduced and we took places around the table. We could smell the bacon frying and the hot cakes cooking in the kitchen. I remember it smelled mighty good.

These men seemed to be very friendly and appeared to have every confidence in their superior officers. We did not ask them to verify the stories of Crisman and Dahl on June 21 on Maury Island. No attempt to settle anything was made at breakfast. We all had healthy appetites and it was more or less a meeting of friendly exchange of words.

I took movies of Captain Smith, Fred L. Crisman and Harold Dahl and of their respective automobiles just after breakfast outside the cafe. All four of us then returned to Room 502 in the Winthrop Hotel where Captain Smith and I proceeded to inspect every piece of the fragments that Crisman and Dahl had brought us.

All of the pieces of the dark lava-like substance were perfectly smooth on one side looked like it had been subjected to terrific head. The metal or lava was extremely heavy, a little brass colored. Even a small piece of this dark metal, about the size of a person’s hand and about an inch thick, was quite a labor to lift with one hand.

Someone suggested that these fragments could have been the lining of some kind of power tube. When we lined up all the pieces, following the cure of the smooth surface, we saw that they could have been a lining of a tube of some kind about six feet in diameter. From his speculation everything seemed to be shaping up in a sense that we could understand.

Fred Crisman handed us a piece of the white metal. Both Smith and I would grant that it was very light, but no more of than the ordinary aluminum which certain sections of all large military aircraft are made of. If this was truly the light metal that Harold Dahl said was spewed from these strange aircraft we knew, or thought we knew, that it was a fake. We had seen hundreds of piles of this stuff in salvage dumps many places throughout the United States where surplus Army bombers had been junked.

There was only one unusual thing about this white metal that made us stop and wonder. On one piece that Crisman handed us we could plainly see that two parts of it had been riveted. However, the rivets were not round, they were square and long rivets. I had never seen that type of rivet used in the aircraft we manufacture and I don’t think Smithy had either. This piece of metal did not correspond with Harold Dahl’s original description of the extremely light white metal.

So far this was the only flaw that we had found. Neither Captain Smith nor I let on to Crisman or Dahl that we thought this white metal was a fake. This discovery, instead of helping to clear up the mystery, only deepened it. We couldn’t figure out, if Crisman was pulling a hoax, what he could possibly gain by it.

He must have known, being a pilot himself, that we would recognize this white metal. We would have identified it quite easily if it hadn’t been for the square rivets and Dahl’s story.

After we had looked over the metal and had discussed it, we asked to see the pictures. Harold Dahl said that he had given the camera with it’s film to Fred Crisman. Crisman described what the pictures looked like but said he was unable to locate them that morning before coming to the hotel. He was sure he had left them in his office down at the docks and would obtain them for us that afternoon.

This was when I suggested that we call Davidson and Brown of Military Intelligence. They had asked me to call or wire them collect if anything unusual came up and we figured this was certainly unusual. I know that we were thinking of the same thing. We thought if there was any hoax to these stories the prospects of being interrogated by Military Intelligence would cause Crisman and Dahl to show their hand.

I remember when I said, “Let’s call in Military Intelligence,” Smithy could hardly contain himself. He rather reluctantly and dryly, but seriously from all outward appearance, answered, “It might be a good idea.”

Crisman was very enthusiastic about the prospect of Military Intelligence taking over the investigation. Harold Dahl got a rather frightened look on his face and didn’t want to have anything to do with it. He said right then and there, “If you call them in, I won’t talk to them. My story is true. Fred Crisman knows it and he can tell it for me. I have a peculiar feeling this whole business is going to end up in a lot of bad luck for somebody. I’d just as soon go to a show and forget it from here on out.”

Captain Smith said, “I don’t know what you’re so superstitious about. I think it’s a lot of nonsense.” Harold Dahl still insisted that he didn’t want any part of Military Intelligence but he said he would be available to us if we wanted him. I got on a telephone and called, collect, as Lt. Frank Brown had insisted I should.

Military Intelligence, Fourth Air Force, Hamilton Field, California. I called specifically person to person to Lt. Frank Brown, giving my name to the operator so Brown would know who was calling him. I heard vaguely the conversation on the other end of the line as the telephone operator got hold of Lt. Brown at Hamilton Field. He refused to take the call collect on the military line. He told the operator to notify me that he would call me back immediately from an off the base pay telephone.

I had been adhering to the instructions he had given me in Boise to the letter and I couldn’t understand why he had refused my call on a military line. He couldn’t have known what I was going to talk to me about. But then, my impression of Lt. Frank Brown was that not only was he a brilliant fellow, but he probably took all possible precautions against any leak of information which might throw discredit upon their military operation.

It was only a few minutes until I heard his quarters going into a pay phone and I had him on the line. You could tell Lt. Brown’s voice anywhere. He had a slow, easy southern drawl. He was the kind of chap who apparently could take anything in his stride.

I told him that both Captain Smith and I were in Tacoma, Room 502 at the Winthrop Hotel. We had met a couple of harbor patrolmen who had told us of a very unusual experience they had had with flying saucers on Maury Island. I didn’t describe the type of aircraft that they had seen or give him any strong hints of what we had been told. I made it plain that neither Captain Smith nor I felt fully capable of judging whether we were being made the victims of some hoax or whether these fellows’ story was really true. I did say they offered some metal as proof of their story and that it looked like pieces of lava rock to me.

Lt. Brown came back over the phone saying, “Sit tight. If we don’t call you back within an hour, we’ll be there.”

There was nothing to do then but sit around and wait. The conversation turned to lighter subjects. Captain Smith was discussing airplanes with Fred Crisman and I began talking to Harold Dahl about the fishing around Tacoma. We talked on subjects such as these for little over an hour.

The only phone calls we received in that time were from reporter Paul Lance and from Ted Morello of United Press. When Ted Morello phoned he said that this crackpot character had been phoning him from a pay telephone, limiting his conversations to about fifteen or twenty seconds. He had him on the other line and asked us to count noses there in the room. Ted Morello said it was the same voice that had been calling him so often the last two days. Knowing that all four of us involved were in the room at the time, it discounted the possibility that the phone calls were being made by either Dahl or Crisman. Ted Morello didn’t tell us what this mysterious informant was talking about. He was evidently checking up on or trying to find out who this informant was.

A few minutes later Paul Lance, the reporter for the Tacoma Times phoned, asking if we could see him. We all agreed that we didn’t want to talk to a newspaper reporter. I had turned the telephone over to Captain Smith and he politely hung up. Within a very few minutes someone knocked on our door. Captain Smith went to the door and there stood Paul Lance.

I knew him the moment I saw him. He had tried to talk to me once in the lobby. He was a rather small man, sandy-haired, and physically handicapped, apparently from one childhood disease. He looked healthy and sound. Smithy took him by the arm and practically hauled him into the room, asking roughly what he wanted. Paul Lance was a little shocked. For some reason, I don’t know why, Smithy quickly frisked him. I don’t recall what Paul Lance said. Before he could say what he had come for, Smithy ushered him out into the hallway, telling him we didn’t want to be disturbed and that whatever we were doing was none of his business.

Captain Smith and I, particularly, were at a point of nervous tension. I think it was brought on by all these unusual circumstances as well as making the decision to call in Military Intelligence. Neither of us wanted to impose on Lt. Brown or Captain Davison. We all knew that by now the hour had passed for any return phone call from them and that they would be in Tacoma within the next hour or so.

Harold Dahl gave us a phone number where he could be reached. He muttered something about Crisman being able to take care of everything all right as far as his part went, and left the room.

Captain Smith invited Crisman to go downstairs with him. Having all the confidence in the world in Smithy, I didn’t ask about it but thought it was for a private conversation. They left, too.

4. Death Takes A Hand

I was alone in the room when Frank Brown phoned from the hotel desk, saying they were on their way up. I told him that Smith and Crisman had stepped out for a few minutes but that I would be waiting for them. It was about 4:30 p.m., July 31.

They came right up. Captain Davidson stepped into the room first. He was smiling and seemed very friendly. He was a short stocky fellow of medium complexion, rather round faced. I recall that when he smiled it showed up a long scar on his face very prominently. I had noticed this scar before when he visited at my home. I always meant to ask him where he got it.

As he and Lt. Brown were finding a chair, Captain Davidson said he has something to tell me. I said I thought that Captain Smith and I were entitled from a personal standpoint to know what they had found out. We knew that investigating flying saucer stories had been a full time job for them. We were interrupted by Smithy and Crisman at this point.

When things settled down I told Brown and Davidson that we had run on to what we felt was some tangible evidence of flying saucers but before we showed it to them we wanted to know how far they had gotten in their investigation. Davidson said that they had found out quite a few very interesting things. He motioned me over to my bed, took a piece of paper from his pocket and drew a picture. It was a disk, almost identical to the one peculiar flying saucer that had been worrying me since my original observation - the one that looked different from the rest and that I had never mentioned to anyone.

As he showed me the drawing, he said, “This is a drawing of one of several photographs we consider to be authentic. We just received it at Hamilton Field.”

I turned to Lt. Brown for verification. He nodded his head and stated, “That’s right. It came from Phoenix, Arizona the other day. We have prints of it at Hamilton Field but the original negatives were flown to Washington D.C.”

“If you ever get down to Hamilton Field we want you to call on us. We will be glad to have the files opened so you can see this picture.” Brown continued.

Excitedly I explained why and how I knew the picture was authentic. I told them that I didn’t know why I hadn’t mentioned it before but I was positive they were on the right track. I explained that it was identical to that one craft that had looked different than the rest. I hadn’t been able, I said, to be absolutely positive as to whether it was really different or whether it was the angle from which I observed it until I saw Captain Davidson’s drawing. Was I anxious to see the real photograph! I thought, “I’ve got to make a trip to Hamilton Field to see this and hear how it was taken.”

For the next two and a half hours Fred L. Crisman related Harold Dahl’s story. He handed Davidson and Brown some of the fragments that were lying in a pile on the floor. There were twenty-five to thirty pieces. They were handling these while listening to Crisman’s story. Captain Smith and I interrupted several times in corrections of Crisman’s story of Dahl’s experience. They were not major corrections.

After this session we ordered dinner to be served in the room. We discussed all the phases of this peculiar business - the mysterious telephone informant, Ted Morello, Paul Lance, and the persistency of the press in trying to et a story from us. Before we realized it, it was nearly midnight. Crisman was reviewing some of his own experiences. He told Brown and Davidson that he would go home and get a box of the fragments and would bring them down immediately so they could take them to Hamilton Field.

All of a sudden, Brown and Davidson lost all their enthusiasm. They weren’t interested any more. They got up to leave. Captain Smith and I invited them to stay the rest of the night with us. The room we had was large and we proposed having two fold-down beds brought in. They would have none of it. They were flying back at once.

I think we argued for over fifteen minutes that it was senseless to fly back to Hamilton Field that night. Everyone was tired. Since Smithy and I had more or less shoved the responsibility of the rest of the investigation on them, we felt greatly relieved.

Lt. Brown broke into our insistence on their staying the rest of the night. He explained that they absolutely couldn’t stay as the next day, August 1, was Air Force day and every plane at Hamilton Field had to be there to take part in the maneuvers. He said that they had flown to Tacoma in a B-25 Bomber that had just gone through a complete major overhaul bringing it up to date with all the latest Air Force equipment installed plus two brand new engines. It had to be on the flight line and ready in the morning.

Later Captain Smith and I thought their excuse to getting back to Hamilton Field was rather flimsy in consideration of the prominent interest that had shown in coming to Tacoma. We both recalled that during the first part of the conversation Lt. Brown had told us that just the night before they had returned to Hamilton Field from seeing Dick Rankin in Portland, Oregon and that they hadn’t had much rest for the last two days. We both knew that rest is very important if you are flying aircraft of any kind as lack of it has a direct effect on your alertness.

Crisman in the meantime had left the room to go get the box of fragments. After phoning McChord Field for a military vehicle to come and pick them up, Davidson and Brown got up from their chairs again and prepared to leave. Smith and I accompanied them downstairs to the lobby and stood chatting with them during the short wait for their car.

My mind wad going around in circles. I recall how badly I felt that I had asked Brown and Davidson to come to Tacoma. Even though they were as polite and nice as you could ask, they gave me the impression they thought Smith and I were the victims of some silly hoax. When we offered them pieces of the fragments from our room to take with them they were just not interested. Neither did they seem a bit enthusiastic about the box of fragments Fred Crisman had gone to get.

I remembered, as e were standing on the curb, that I had forgotten to tell them about the anonymous letter Harold Dahl had received after his story became known. The night I had gone to Dahl’s secretary’s home, after he handled me the piece of lava-like rock he had been using as an ash-tray, he got up abruptly and started searching through all the papers in the kitchen. He was looking for a letter, he said, that was interesting. When he returned to the piano bench a few minutes later he told me he couldn’t locate it but would give me a brief of it’s general contents.

Dahl said this anonymous writer told him that the flying disks were actually manned by beings such as we, only less dense, so to speak, than we are. Due to the atomic explosions, the radiation now released in the atmosphere had caused these things to become visible to us on Earth. These flying disks, which were all shapes and sizes, were the vehicles which the gods of this Earth used to protect this Earth from outside dark influences or enemies. actually flying disks were under a severe attack by other beings who were enemies of the people and life on this planet.

The impression I got from what he told me about this letter was that the flying disks were supposedly the intelligence called gods by the Indians and by all those who claim they have appeared for help from them and I have received it.

I thought of this while standing saying farewells to Davidson and Brown. I remember I felt happy at the time that I did not mention it to them. Since they had apparently lost interest in the investigation, telling them something like that would probably only convince them further that Harold Dahl’s and Fred Crisman’s experiences were just a lot of baloney, the best way to find out would be to go out to Maury Island and see if there was twenty tons of this lava rock on the beach. If it was, and could be demonstrated that it was foreign to the natural formations on Maury Island, this might help substantiate the truthfulness of Dahl’s and Crisman’s stories.

Just as the Army command car pulled up in front of the hotel Fred L. Crisman came racing up. He double-parked his Fort roadster and started taking a large Kellogg corn flakes box out of the trunk of his car. We assumed it was the fragments. Captain Davidson told their chauffeur to wait a second. He helped Crisman unload this box from the trunk of his car, lifted the trunk of the command car, and put it in.

I was standing close by and offered to help lift the box. By the street lights and the hotel lights I could see the top of the box flapping open. Inside the box were a great number of large chunks of material that looked similar to the fragments we had in our room. Somehow, though, they looked more rocky and less metallic.

I remember this distinctly. In bending back one of the loose cardboard flaps on the top of the box I handled one of the pieces. All of the pieces I could see, and the one I handled, were much thicker than any of the pieces we had in our room. While was taking place Captain Smith was bidding farewell to Lt. Brown. I yelled “Goodbye and good luck” as the command car drove away. As Smithy and I stood there anyone would have seen we were mixed up. It was very obvious. This was the screwiest situation that we had ever been in.

Fred Crisman in the meantime parked his automobile and the three of us went out for coffee and doughnuts. Crisman left for home, wherever that was. We never knew where he lived but he had said he wasn’t married. Big Smithy and I returned to our hotel room thinking it would be a relief in the morning to get out of that town and go home.

We hadn’t any more than gotten into out room than the phone started to ring. This time it was Ted Morello, telling use what this mysterious telephone informant had told him had taken place in our room. He insisted that we either definitely deny or confirm this information. This time his voice seemed less like a man looking for a news story. It had a pleading tone to it as if he was only interested in our welfare. It was truly fantastic how this mysterious telephone informant was giving him such accurate information.

I did not deny or confirm anything but handed the telephone to Captain Smith. He listened for awhile to what Morello was saying and then hung up. It was certainly puzzling. Smithy and I speculated on the fact that maybe a small transmitter had been planted somewhere on one of us or was in the room and we had not found it. Maybe someone blocks away with a receiver was picking up everything we talked about. that was the only logical explanation for it unless Crisman or Dahl, through some type of communication, was getting this information to the press.

We figured this was certainly a cute way to pull a hoax, if that was what was being pulled on us. However, we just couldn’t figure out why anyone would go to all that trouble. Anyhow, it was Military Intelligence’s problem now. I recall Smithy interrupting our ponderings on the subject by singing or attempting to sing, the song that was popular then about the leaky faucet. We both had a good laugh. We thought that song was just about as silly as we were getting to be. We retired to bed, taking the careful precaution to look all the doors and to close the transom.

We arose the next morning of August first about nine o’clock. We were cheerful and happy, chuckling about how lucky we were that we were not connected with Military Intelligence. If they were going to figure this thing out they would sure have to go some. Of course, it could be ignored, which might happen, but somehow Captain Smith and I didn’t think it would be.

Before returning to our respective homes that day we were going to take a boat ride out of Maury Island with Fred Crisman. In parting the night before we had made an appointment with him for ten o’clock. He was going to pick us up and take us down to his boat so we could look it over for the damage he had told us about and which had been repaired. Also we had mentioned to Crisman that we would like to take a ride over to Maury Island and take a look at those fragments on the beach.

About this time, I again began to think of Ray Palmer in Evanston, Illinois, the man who had sent me the expense money for this trip. I had taken movies of almost everything concerning the investigation. The morning sun made the room bright and cheery and even though the light was not good for exterior movie film I took a picture of Captain Smith sitting in the window, handling the fragments. I placed my oldest daughter’s picture near him to more or less identify the fact that I was there.

Captain Smith said he thought he’d take a bath. It was still only about 9:20 a.m. I recall he had just gotten into the tub when the telephone rang. It was Fred Crisman.

He said, “Did you hear over the radio this morning that a B-25 exploded and crashed some twenty minutes after takeoff from McChord Field about 1:30 this morning? I think you and I know who was aboard that plane!”

An ice cold chill went down my spine. I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I yelled at Smithy who was singing in the bath tub. I told him what had happened. I flopped into a chair, all of a sudden too weak to stand up. Captain Smith got out of the tub, white as a sheet. He was dripping wet as he raced across the room and grabbed the telephone.

He asked Crisman to repeat, then hurriedly asked him to hang up. Captain Smith immediately called McChord Field. He was even whiter when they verified the accident. I think they verified that two of the men aboard the B-25 parachuted to safety, or it was United Press that verified this, I’m not sure.

Things happened so fast and furious there for about an hour I don’t think either Smithy or I knew which way was up. We called United Press and talked to Ted Morello. Smithy got dressed and we were just leaving the room when Fred Crisman came racing breathlessly down the hall. He appeared to be as excited as Captain Smith and I were upset. We all went back into the room.

Suddenly I didn’t want to play investigator any longer.

I decided to call Mr. Raymond Palmer in Chicago and get out of this mess. I placed my call and got my connection. This was the first time I ever talked to Ray Palmer. I offered to give him back the $200 expense money. I told him that I felt inadequate to investigate this situation. Two lives and a government bomber had been lost and I felt it had a direct relationship. I said that I wouldn’t give him the story, even.

Fred Crisman interrupted before I finished talking to Palmer. He said that he would verify the crash or something like that. I went on listening to Palmer. He told me to keep the money and that maybe it would be best to forget about investigating any further. He warned me not to carry any of the fragments aboard my plane and suggested that if we wanted to keep any to mail them to ourselves or to him. He advised me to prevent Smith from taking any fragments. He didn’t tell me why but I felt the advice was good. Mr. Palmer told me not to become too upset and then I gave the phone to Crisman.

Crisman talked briefly to Palmer, assuring him that the B-25 actually had crashed. later Raymond Palmer told me that he recognized Crisman’s voice. He was positive that it was the same voice that had called him long distance on other occasions from various parts of the country. Brother, what a mess.

By this time I was thinking that Crisman was peculiar from another standpoint. The day before I had asked him how he and Dahl had become known to Raymond Palmer in Chicago. Crisman had said that he became acquainted with him through Venture Magazine which he purchased from the newsstands. In my estimation that placed Crisman in the position of trying to cover up something. I knew there was no such magazine published at that time by Raymond Palmer.

We told Crisman we were going over to United Press where Ted Morello had invited us to hear a recorded interview. It was taken in the hospital where one of the two men who parachuted out of the B-25 was recuperating from a broken leg he had suffered in his fall.

We assured Crisman that we still wanted to go down and see his boat and made an appointment with him for about an hour from then at the dock where his boat was.

He told us his mechanic was having trouble getting the engine in the boat started. While Smithy and I were at the United Press office Crisman was going to return to his boat and try to help his mechanic put it in running order.

Captain Smith and I walked out of the hotel and over to the United Press building. It was just across the street from the hotel. There we met Ted Morello. I think we were both a little surprised to find that Ted Morello was also physically handicapped, due apparently to some childhood disease, although he looked robust and healthy. He was a very dark man, standing about five feet seven inches tall.

He motioned us with his arm to follow him. We went into a back room that was a little like a small auditorium. Off to the side he turned on the recorder play-back. I cannot recall the exact words of this man who had parachuted from the B-25 but will briefly summarize what Captain Smith and I heard.

He started that he was an Army man who was hitch-hiking a ride with the B-25 back to California. He had just returned from some military duty and was taking advantage of the custom that many Army planes offered to military personnel when they were flying empty in the particular direction of a military man might be going. Such rides were free and fast. Since he had heard that this B-25 was going to return shortly to California he had put his name into Mcchord Field for a ride.

He stated that he didn’t know who the pilot and co-pilot were and the engineer, Sergeant Mathews, was also a stranger to him. Shortly before they took off the pilot and co-pilot loaded a heavy cardboard box aboard the B-25. He noticed it particularly because it seemed very heavy for one man to carry. This box was placed over to one side of the compartment that he and the engineer occupied.

The pilot warmed up the engines and everything seemed satisfactory prior to take-off. they took off in the B-25 and started climbing up to a safe altitude. In the neighborhood of fifteen to twenty minutes after the take-off it was noticed that the left engine was on fire. Sgt. Mathews, the engineer, followed some emergency procedure and seemed worried. Later I found out that what he had actually done was pull the value on the emergency fire fighting system for that engine. It did not work.

Then Lt. Brown, or as this fellow put it, the tall co-pilot, squeezed through the doorway and commanded them to strap on their parachutes. There were parachutes for all of them there. Lt. Brown had his harness on but did not have his parachute snapped to his harness. He harshly commanded them both to jump. Lt. Brown quickly told him how to pull the rip cord then he was sure he was clear the ship and actually forcibly shoved him out of the plane into the night.

His parachute opened okay.

For some nine to eleven minutes, while floating down to Earth, he watched the burning engine and the airplane as it proceeded high above him and to the south. He assumed that all aboard had parachuted. He landed, knew he had hurt his leg, and some people brought him to the hospital.

By that time Smith and I knew that both Davidson and Brown had crashed and died with the plane. We did not tell Ted Morello their names. In fact, I think the only thing we said was, “Wow! What an experience!” We were completely noncommittal, still keeping our mouths shut.

Ted Morello made no attempt to pry information out of us but tried as hard as he could to make us understand he was out friend. The whole business had gotten so far out of hand, he said, that he was now only interest in our personal safely. It was satisfactory with him if we did not talk about anything that had transpired. I recall Morello making the remark, “I’ll tell you, boys, when my informants can’t get information in this neck of the woods, brother, there’s sure something wrong!”

We felt that Morello meant what he was saying. We thanked him kindly for letting us listen o the recorded interview, got Smithy’s car out of the garage across the street from the hotel and drove down to the pier where we were met by Crisman. We all walked out on the pier and down the stairway to Crisman’s boat. I took movies of the boat and of Captain Smith looking at the superstructure, then I went aboard the boat, too.

This was the boat that Crisman said the damage had happened to. It was kind of a grayish color, a very small type of partially enclosed inboard fishing boat. It in no wise looked like harbor patrol boats that I had seen in pictures. After inspecting the boat we could see where some repairs had apparently taken place, but nothing like the repairs to damage as described by either Fred Crisman or Dahl in the hotel room had led us to expect.

We questioned Crisman further about the photographs that Dahl had taken of the strange craft on Maury Island. Crisman said, “I don’t know what could have happened to those pictures. I couldn’t find them around my office. I looked everywhere. Apparently I’ve taken them up to my mountain cabin along with a number of other things I took up there a while back.” He suggested that we drive up there and see. I acted polite enough in declining his invitation but thought to myself, “How big a sucker do you think I am?”

After inspecting the top surface and cabin of the boat, Captain Smith and I went down to the engine room. A rather foreign looking gentleman of slight build was tinkering with something on the motor. He made the remark to Fred Crisman that the engine wouldn’t work. I know that I thought it was a pretty junky looking affair and apparently ill taken care of. While Captain Smith was standing in the doorway, the mechanic took Crisman by the arm, pulled him to one side, and whispered to him.

Crisman turned to us and said, “The mechanic’s having a hard time getting the engine going. It’ll take him about an hour to repair it.” The engine did not look like a bold or a screw had been turned on it. Captain Smith and I both noticed that. I think I know something about motors, and I know Captain Smith does. Not only did this seem fishy to us, but frankly, I wouldn’t travel a hundred yards to sea in a boat in that condition. I think Smithy thought the same thing because he motioned to me and said, “Let’s go back up town.”

We gave up the idea of going to Maury Island, at least in that kind of contraption. Fred Crisman seemed a little apologetic, but didn’t say anything further. As we left in Smith’s car Crisman yellowed at us that he would call us as soon as the boat was repaired. He still thought, I guess, that we wanted to go to Maury Island in his boat.

That was the last time I ever saw Fred Crisman.

Captain Smith and I were both thoroughly disgusted with our continuance of the investigation. We had lunch up town and returned to the hotel, I guess in kind of a daze. We met Paul Lance in the hotel lobby briefly and continued to our room. I suggested that we take some of the fragments and send them to ourselves by mail or something of that kind but we took no action.

I also suggested we but some movie film and place it next to these fragments that were strewn all over the room to see if anything about them would cause white spots on unexposed film. Certainly if they were radioactive this would substantiate that Crisman had the photographs as Harold Dahl and he claimed.

Somehow we didn’t do anything about that, either. I did take my movie camera which had some unexposed film in it and laid it on top of the dresser next to a bunch of the fragments. I might mention here that when my film was developed there were no white spots on it or black ones either. All of my pictures turned out very well. Captain Smith and I just sat around, wondering what in the dickens the score was.

Finally the telephone rang. It was Ted Morello. This mysterious informant had phoned again and now he was predicting things. He said this man just told him on the other line that Captain Smith would be called Tuesday, August fifth, to Wright-Patterson Field, Dayton, Ohio to be interrogated by Military Intelligence. He told him that Kenneth Arnold’s plane had been shot at while flying over Washington and Oregon on numerous occasions and that Captain Smith’s airliner had also been shot at over Montana.

He went on to tell Morello that the B-25 bomber from Hamilton Field had been shot down by a 20mm. cannon. A recent crash at LaGuardia Field, New York was caused by sabotage, he claimed, the gust locks having been left on purposely to sabotage the plane. Also the passenger transport that crashed carrying singer Grace Moore to her death in Copenhagen, Denmark, had similarly been sabotaged. Ted Morello said that he would like to see us that evening if we would be kind enough to come over to the pressroom.

This is what I later found out about the above predictions. Captain Smith told me that he was not called Wright-Patterson nor was he interrogated by Military intelligence. If either of our places were shot at in the air it was something of which we were unaware. The official military explanation of the B-25 bomber was that it was simply an accident caused by the loss of an exhaust collector ring on the left engine.

It was never completely explained by the military why Lieutenant Frank M. Brown and Captain William Davidson did not notify anyone by radio signifying their distress nor why they hadn’t parachuted also. According to the hitchhikers remark a good ten minutes elapsed between the time he was shoved out of the B-25 until the fire reached serious proportions and the plane started to dive to Earth near Kelso, Washington. The estimated altitude of his jump was 10,000 feet. It takes a long time to descend from that height by parachute. Staying from his ‘chute, he said he watched the burning plane a long time before getting near the Earth.

Regarding the prediction that Captain Smith’s airliner had been shot at over Montana that was wrong as he did not fly over Montana. Concerning the airline crash on take-off at LaGuardia Field, about a month after this it was determined by the Civil Aeronautics Administration and their investigators that the gust locks had been left on accidentally. I was unable to find any official explanation of the Copenhagen crash.

5. “Get Out - For Your Own Good!”

By the afternoon of the first of August, 1947, both Captain Smith and I were wanting to heed Ted Morello’s advice and leave town. We expected, however, to be contacted by Military Intelligence regarding Brown and Davidson so decided to stay another day. We were sure there would be some kind of investigation.

In the course of our frightening experiences I had sent a number of wires to my wife, Doris, in Boise that frightened her as to my safety. I called long distance to my mother in Albany, Oregon, telling my bother who answered the phone that I didn’t know if I would see them again but wanted them to know where I was. In fact, I was so suspicious of somebody recording my conversations that I asked my brother to take my mother out in the yard and tell her that I felt in extreme danger of some kind.

I’ve thought since that this was slightly senseless. I could only have caused them undue worry. Then, again, maybe it was the best thing I ever did. Mother often prayed for my safety. She never has had as much confidence in an airplane as in an automobile. I guess I wanted some kind of help but for the life of me I didn’t know what kind of help I wanted nor did I have the least idea to where to ask for it. I knew that Doris was doing all that she could to rescue me from the situation. I could tell when I phoned her that she felt I needed rescuing from something. Captain Smith was also doing some phoning and letter writing but I don’t know what it was about.

I’ll never forget when I went out the door of the room to go downstairs to buy a packet of cigarettes. I had to walk down five flights. That same day all the hotel help had gone on strike and the Hotel Winthrop was being picketed. I sure thought that town had gone haywire. Everything seemed to be topsy turvy.

Upon purchasing my cigarettes at the newsstand, I saw and brought the final edition of the Tacoma Times newspaper. It had just been delivered. Large block type headlines red ink stated: SABOTAGE HINTED IN CRASH OF ARMY BOMBER AT KELSO, and a sub-headline read: Plane May Hold Flying Disk Secret.

The story was written by Paul Lance, the reporter we had refused to talk to. The following is taken verbatim out of the August 2, 1947 final edition of the Tacoma Times.

The mystery of the ‘Flying Saucers’ soared into prominence again Saturday when the Tacoma Times was informed that the crash Friday of an army plane at Kelso may have been caused by sabotage.

The Times informant, in a series of mysterious phone calls reported that the ship had been sabotaged ‘or shot down’ to prevent shipment of flying disk fragments to Hamilton Field, California, for analysis.

The disk parts were said by the informant to be those from one of the mysterious platters which plunged to earth on Maury Island recently.

Lending substance to the caller’s story is the fact that TWELVE HOURS BEFORE THE ARMY RELEASED OFFICIAL IDENTIFICATION, he correctly identified the dead in the crash to be Captain William L. Davidson, pilot and First Lieutenant Frank M. Brown.

CLASSIFIED MATERIAL

At the same time, he informed the Times, Kenneth Arnold, Boise businessman who first sighted the flying saucers, and United Airlines Captain E.J. Smith, who also sighted them, were in secret conference in Room 502 at the Hotel Winthrop. A check confirmed the information but neither Smith nor Arnold would disclose the nature of the conference nor the reason for their being in Tacoma.

According to the anonymous caller platter fragments were loaded aboard a B-25 at McChord Field Friday for shipment to the California field. Half an hour after the take-off the plane crashed near Kelso, Washington. Two enlisted men,

Master Sergeant Elmer L. Taff and Technician Fourth Grade Woodrow D. Mathews parachuted to safety.

At McChord field an intelligence officer confirmed the mystery caller’s report that the ill-fated craft ha been carrying ‘classified material.’

HINT SABOTAGE

Major George Sander explained: ‘Classified material means there was a somewhat secret cargo aboard the plane. No one was allowed to take pictures of the wreckage until the material was removed and returned to McChord Field.’

He declined to say what constituted ‘classified material.’

The theory of sabotage was borne out by the statement of the two crash survivors that one of the engines burst into flames and that regular fire apparatus installed in the engine for such emergencies failed to function.

NAMES REVEALED

Notified of the information passed along by the anonymous informant, Captain Smith said: ‘When the story breaks it will be given general release but it will NOT come from this room.’

At the time he was in the Hotel Winthrop in conference with Arnold Saturday, Smith and he and Arnold would deny anything that was printed about the secret sessions held in the hotel. However, he was visibly disturbed and expressed consternation when notified late Saturday that the names of the dead pilot and co-pilot had been revealed before the army released them.

According to the telephone callers, both the dead officers were members of military intelligence at Hamilton field.

Due to the fact that this newspaper was printed and on the stands Friday evening, August 1, but was distributed to their subscribers the next morning, Saturday the second, the references to happenings on Saturday actually were happenings of Friday, August 1. The statement that ‘Captain Smith and visible disturbed’ is referring to earlier that same day when Captain Smith and I returned to the hotel after inspecting Fred Crisman’s boat. Paul Lance met us in the lobby, tried to talk to us, and Smith made the statement referred to. We were delayed by two minutes by Paul Lance. I took this paper up to Captain Smith. I don’t know how he felt but I was plain scared. this whole thing had long since ceased to be laughing matter under any circumstances.

We attempted to reach Fred Crisman at the phone number he had given us when we did not receive the call from him that his boat had been repaired. There was no answer. We attempted to reach Harold Dahl. There was no answer. We sent out a drag net of calls to all the theaters and placed we thought Dahl might frequent. Finally we reached him. When he arrived at our hotel he told us that Crisman had left a message saying he was going to have to be gone for a few days.

Right after Dahl told us that, Morello called and told that the mysterious telephone informant had just notified him that Fred L. Crisman had boarded an Army bomber that afternoon and was now being flown to Alaska. Morello asked us if we knew whether this was true. We were simply flabbergasted when we called McChord field and found out that an Army bomber had taken off that afternoon for Alaska. There was no way that we could check who the passengers or personnel were aboard it.

You never saw such a confused bunch of guys in your life as we three were. Another thing seemed rather peculiar. With people disappearing and getting killed Harold Dahl has been calmly sitting in a movie theater all afternoon. He had been notified before he went to the movie by Crisman and by his radio as to what had happened in the last twelve or fourteen hours. All Smithy could do was stand and shake his head. I wanted to stick my head out of the window and scream!

We sat Dahl down in a chair and told him firmly that we didn’t want him to disappear. Both of us were positive that Military Intelligence at either McChord or Hamilton Field would be interviewing us soon. We were the reason that the two intelligence officers had come to Tacoma and we were the last people to see them alive outside of military personnel. We figured they would want to talk to all three of us. Harold promised us that he would be handy. We told him to return to his show if he wished. We just wanted to be sure he knew what had taken place. He left Captain Smith and I went out to supper before going over to see Ted Morello.

Ted Morello was as hospitable a person as you could ever meet. He showed us every courtesy. He invited us into a black room just off a small glassed-in area where the newswire teletype machine was ticking off news events from different parts of the country. After closing the door he made it clear that he didn’t intend to print anything about all this but we wanted us to know what he had been up against and to give us some advice. Smithy and I sat and listened.

Ted Morello said, “When I first heard about you fellows being in town I really didn’t think much about it. Paul Lance was the one who smelled the story. Then his mysterious telephone informant kept calling and pestering the life out of us. We tried every conceivable way to trace his calls with no success. We really tried. we tried to find out information at McChord Field and drew a blank and we have informants out there who practically smell the runways for news.”

He stopped a moment, then asked, “Did you know the B-25 that stopped there the other day was under military armed guard every minute it was at the field?”

Captain Smith and I said no and shook our heads. Ted Morello continued, “I don’t know how to impress upon you two fellows that I am not after a news story now. You’re involved in something that is beyond our power here to find out anything about. We’re exhausted every avenue attempting to piece what has happened together so it makes some sense. I’m just giving you some sound advice. Ger out of this town until whatever it is blows over. If you want to talk anything over with me I will give you my promise that it won’t be printed. I’m concerned with your welfare. I think you are nice fellows and I don’t want to see anything happen to you if I can prevent it.”

He went into the teletype room and tore of a recent release from the UP wire. Earlier that day Dick Rankin, a famous pilot, had sent word over the wires that Davidson and Brown had talked to him about his reports of flying saucers. He felt that Davidson and Brown were really hot on the trail of finding out what the saucers were and, for some reason, he appeared to think their lives were in danger.

Apparently his wire release over UP was with the intention of notifying Brown and Davidson to get some place of safety. No place in the release that I remember did it announce or let on that he knew Davidson or Brown had been killed.

Dick Rankin could be classified as an authority of aviation matters. He learned to fly in 1920 under the tutelage of his brother, Tex Rankin, who was known in his time as the world’s foremost stunt pilot.

In many respects, Dick was every bit as good a pilot as his brother, Tex. He did everything from wing walking in 1924 to becoming an A-number-one stunt pilot and won every contest that he entered in 1929, 1930 and 1931. Dick could do almost everything in the book when it came to handling an airplane. He once performed an outside loop with an OX5 Waco. That was an outstanding feat in the early days of flying. even most modern aircraft were restricted against such a maneuver, let alone the courage a pilot must have to attempt it.

In order to give the reader some background and possibly more meaning to the Dick Rankin news release that Ted Morello read to Captain Smith and me, I am going to quote from an article written by Evelyn Whitmaker and published in the Air Traveler in September 1948. Dick Rankin was not only an expert in the field of aviation but had unusual extra-sensory perception that many people would rank in the “believe-it-or-not” category. Dick’s life was once saved by a dream.

He was always having dreams, which the next morning he would tell Tex, or ‘Jack,’ as he called Tex. the latter used to get quite provoked at Dick and his crazy dreams and sometimes would walk away, refusing to listen. The morning after Dick had this particular dream, in 1928, Dick arrived at the old Portland Flouring Mills and reported to Tex that he refused to fly his ship until the tail assembly had been examined, as he had had a dream that he and his student were killed due to broken wires in the tail assembly.

Again Tex scoffed and proceeded to ignore Dick, after telling him to ‘stop being silly’ and to take care of his students. This time, however, Dick refused to be so easily pushed aside. He would not fly until the fabric was ripped from the tail and the controls carefully examined, since the dream was too vivid to ignore. Hot words flew between the two brothers but Dick won out - simply because Tex figured he would cure Dick once and for all of his silly dreams.

Dick slashed the linen with his pen-knife and discovered three control wires severed and the fourth ready to give way. Tex stated that had Dick and his student taken off with the ship in that condition, they would have been killed on the first round. Tex was amazed, but Dick wasn’t. Tex told all of us at the airport that never again would he laugh at Dick and his dreams.

To me it was also unusual to find that as a result of an automobile accident in 1940, Dick is today partially paralyzed from the hips down. In knowing this about Dick Rankin, I caught myself wondering by what queer quirk of fate did physically handicapped people become directly associated with my life and flying saucers. There was Paul Lance, Ted Morello and now Dick Rankin, all through disease or accident affected from the waist down and all appeared to want desperately to offer a helping hand.

I am quite sure that Captain Smith was not familiar with Dick Rankin as he didn’t offer to talk about him. I recall bringing up the subject several times that evening. I had flown with Tex Rankin, not too long before his crash and untimely death at Klamath Falls, Oregon. Somehow I placed a good deal of credence on Dick’s opinion. I knew that Tex admired his brother and I don’t think there’s a pilot in the country who didn’t admire Tex.

We thanked Ted Morello for his kindness and we did confirm a number of things he asked us about. We both felt better as we left the building. We felt we had found a real friend in Ted Morello and for some reason even Paul Lance’s approaches were no longer interpreted as just a reporter looking for a story.

We went back across the street to the hotel where I sent several wires and Smithy spent about an hour writing letters. I don’t remember how many calls had been left in the form of notes in our hotel box. I do know that the important call we were expecting from Military Intelligence was not there. We picked up our key at the desk and proceeded to walk up five flights to our room.

That long evening of august first Captain Smith and I simply sat around the room and looked at each other, every minute expecting Military Intelligence to get in touch with us. I recall Dave Johnson of The Idaho Statesman phoning and wanting to know what we were doing. He was so insistent I turned the phone over to Captain Smith and finally Smithy admitted to Dave that we had been seeing Dahl and Crisman and had been in conference with Military Intelligence. He told him that Captain William Davidson and Lieutenant Frank M. Brown were the intelligence officers who had been there and that now they were dead. By no means could we not did we attempt to tell him the complete story.

Captain Smith also told Maurice Roddy of The Chicago Tribune practically the same thing when he phoned. I never could figure out why Smithy said, “We only have six pieces of fragments.” These fragments were still strewn all over the room. I figured that if he said we had a whole pile of them we’d probably be overrun by souvenir hunters. I think Captain Smith thought six was a good round figure. Neither of us had actually counted the number of fragments we had.

That night we went to bed feeling pretty clammy and cold inside. Somehow the leaky faucet song that we laughed at so hilariously the night before didn’t seem funny any more.

All we did the next day, Saturday, August 2 was hang around the room, going out only to eat, anticipating a call every minute from either McChord or Hamilton Field. Smithy phoned McChord Field and talked to someone there in the Intelligence Division, telling them exactly where we were if they wanted to see us. I remember him hanging up the phone with a rather discouraged look on his face. We wanted someone to talk to us and there we sat like a couple of dead ducks.

We didn’t know if the fragments were worth sending home to ourselves. We had given up trying to get to Maury Island and though we were positive that Harold Dahl’s story was true in many respects it seemed our efforts had been wasted. Outside of the fragments on the floor we couldn’t prove a thing. We were utterly confused and frustrated.

In the afternoon Harold Dahl stopped by for a brief visit, not having very much to say. He left after inviting us to breakfast the next morning at a small cafe along the main highway from Seattle to Portland on the eastern outskirts of Tacoma. I thought several times that day that I should go out to Barry’s Airport and inspect my airplane. I phoned out there and everything seemed to be all right and my plane hadn’t been disturbed.

We did absolutely nothing but wait the rest of the day. As far as we knew nothing further happened that shed any light on the mystery of the whole business. We decided we should stay there until the military did get in touch with us. Captain Smith mentioned before he went to sleep that night that he simply had to get back on his airline runs or he was going to be out of a job. I don’t know how many flights he can cancelled.

At this point I would like impress upon the reader that these events, people, and places are not fictional nor ghost stories nor figments of my imagination. Not only can every person involved verify this to be the truth but I have hotel receipts, newspapers, and photographs to substantiate this that I have written as being true.

The next morning, August 3, was bright and sunny. The weather while we were in Tacoma was exceptionally good. The visibility was wonderful. We could see Maury Island out across the bay from our hotel window; in fact, photographing it from our northwest window was as close as I ever got to it. I remember remarking to Captain Smith that if we didn’t get out of that hotel room pretty soon the suspense would drive us crazy. About nine o’clock we met Harold Dahl and his secretary at the little roadside cafe. We all had bacon and eggs.

While we were eating Captain Smith suddenly got up and went to the pay phone. He made a call to someone, then came back to the booth and told me he was going to be gone for about an hour. I asked him where he was going.

“I’m sorry, Ken,” he said, “I can’t tell you. But you return to the hotel and stay in the room and wait for me and don’t leave the room under any circumstances. Lock the doors! I’ll be back to the hotel not later than twelve o’clock noon. You’ve got to trust me and don’t worry about me coming up missing or something.”

I was glad he said that but somehow I was so spooked I didn’t believe he’d ever get back. The investigation had gotten underway with six men and now there were only three of us. Harold Dahl appeared to be of us to be kind of shaky. We didn’t think he’d last long in a pinch.

For the last two days we had definitely felt a misgiving of a feeling of oppression like a dark cloud had encompassed our minds. Now Smithy was going to do something to try to shake it off.

“Okay, Smithy,” I told him, “I’ll be expecting you at twelve noon and I’ll do exactly as you say.”

I went back to the hotel. I didn’t even recall whether Dahl and his secretary dropped me off or whether Captain Smith dropped me off en route to wherever he was going. Brother, I didn’t like him leaving me! I’d had enough mystery. When he refused to tell me where he was going it sent cold chills up and down my backbone.

I carried out his orders. I went up to my hotel room and locked the doors. I watched my wrist watch like a hawk and I checked my time with the telephone company several times. I walked around for awhile liked a caged lion but spent most of my time gazing out of the windows. Twelve o’clock - and no Captain Smith. Twelve-thirty came - and - no Smithy. One o’clock - and still no Smithy.

I was really getting worried. It wasn’t until nearly two o’clock that I heard a knock on my hotel room door. I was nearly frantic. I felt heavily the responsibility of starting this investigation and getting all these nice people involved in it. Was I glad to see Captain Smith when I opened the door! With him was a military man. Captain Smith quickly introduced him to me as Major Sander of S-2 Army Intelligence of McChord Field.

Captain Smith said, “I’ll tell you, Ken, where I went and what I did.”

What a relief that was. At last I was going to hear something. That didn’t account for my elation. I was elated because I was so doggone glad to see Smithy.

Smithy started talking. “I phoned McChord Field from the cafe. I told Major Sander I wanted to see him. I drove out to the base. I didn’t tell you where I was or whom I was going to see for the simple reason that I wanted to tell my story separately from yours and unknown to you. Then Major Sander could compare my interpretation of everything that has happened with yours independently of each other.”

I said, “That’s swell, Smithy. Boy, am I glad to see you!”

Major Sander was a middle-aged man about five feet eleven inches tall. He had a pleasant smile and blue eyes and spoke in the softest voice I think I have ever heard a major use. He took a chair over by the window. I went over and half reclined on the bed and started telling him everything I knew that had taken place. I don’t think I left out a thing. Captain Smith said nothing.

After I had finished Captain Smith made the remark to Major Sander, “You see, all this must have happened because our stories are the same,” or something to that effect.

Major Sander made the quiet remark that he was positive that Smith and I had been made the victims of a hoax. Of course, it hadn’t been completely evaluated yet. It was something that would take a couple of weeks to come to a positive decision about. He asked us not to discuss the matter any further with anyone and told us that in approximately two weeks, through his office or thought the office of A-2 Military Intelligence of the Fourth Air Force, an explanation would be forthcoming to each of us privately. I remember thinking, “Well, in two weeks I’ll know what in the dickens happened in Tacoma.”

Major Sander had such a quiet, positive, reassuring way about him that at that particular moment all of the things about Crisman and Dahl that didn’t ring true suddenly came to our minds. At least, they did to mine and from the shrug of Captain Smith’s shoulders I was certain the same things were going through his mind.

“I am very certain,” Major Sander continued, “that the B-25 crash was just another one of those accidents. it’s too bad that a misleading story was printed in the newspaper.”

Right there I looked at Captain Smith. We knew that the story, if it was misleading, was so from only one standpoint - that no definite proof had been established regarding the possible sabotage of the B-25. We let his remark go. We were so blamed happy. at least we felt free to leave Tacoma and go home.

Major Sander got up from his chair and made some remark about the fragments on the floor. He nonchalantly started picking up a few. I remember him saying that they would have these analyzed for the sake of being through but that he wanted us to take a drive with him. He was going to show us thousands of tons of this stuff. Apparently these supposed fragments from a flying disk were really something else. We brightened up. We were going to be shown and that made us happy.

Major Sander started gathering up and wrapping the fragments in a hotel towel with the intention of taking them with him. There were lots of fragments on the floor and all around and both Smithy and I started helping him pick them up. I ran into a piece that looked like it would make a good ash tray. Almost at the same time Smithy ran into another piece that he put in his pocket, saying it would make a good paper weight. I said, “Yeh, I think I’ll take a piece of this home, too, for an ash tray. I’ll reminds me of the screwiest adventure I ever had.”

Major Sander had gathered up all the pieces and piloted them on top of several towels. He started to bundle them up, stopped short, turned to me and said, “We don’t want to overlook even one piece. I would like to have them all.”

That gave me a start. I handed him my piece and Captain Smith’s eyes met mine over Major Sander’s back. The Major put out his hand to Captain Smith for his piece. He like myself, willingly gave it to him.

Maybe Major Sander was not conscious of what Captain Smith and I mentally said to one another. I thought, “This Major Sander is a pretty smooth guy, but he’s not smooth enough at this point to convince me that these fragments aren’t pretty important in some way.” I suddenly felt that no one had played a hoax on anybody! I thought, “Major Sander is a phony dressed up in a lot of sheer intelligence as to how psychologically to handle men.” I had bumped into a few of these fellow in my life. From the things they say it is pretty tough to decipher what they really mean. these thoughts ran thought my mind in spite of my very real desire to come to a definite conclusion about this whole affair.

Major Sander proceeded to wrap everything up in a bundle. I offered to help carry it downstairs and he insisted on doing that himself. When we reached the south entrance of the hotel lobby, Major Sander opened the trunk of his car and placed the wrapped fragments in the trunk. It was a civilian car. I remember making the remark that we shouldn’t steal the hotel towels as they would certainly bill me for them. We were short of towels in the room anyhow. Major Sander motioned for Captain Smith and me to get in his car. He was going to take us out and how us something. He didn’t tell us where he was going to take us but by this time we didn’t much care.

We drove clear out on the point of the peninsula. Soon we arrived at a large sign that read “Tacoma Smelting Company” or something like that. He drove along the road into those grounds. There were literally piles of lava-like smelter slag. At first glance it looked identical to the fragments Major Sander had taken from our room and loaded the into the trunk of his car.

All of the sudden I thought, “Well, I’ll be darned! I guess Major Sander is right. Someone has played a hoax on us.”

At that moment we wanted to believe so. If Major Sander had not stopped the car and invited us to get out and look at the smelter slag we would have left Tacoma happy that we had been fooled.

He drove down a little side road among the piles of slag, stopped the car, and we all got out. Captain Smith and I started picking up pieces and inspecting them. It looked a lot like the box of fragments we had been handling in our room for the past three days. We had handled them, weighed them, looked at them and felt the touch of them in our hands. When we picked up pieces of slag and held them in our hands we kind of looked at each other.

I don’t know what Smithy was thinking. I thought, “Yes, it looks like the same stuff, it’s heavy like the same stuff, but it doesn’t feel like the same thing.”

The smelter slag that I picked up looked more like the box of supposed fragments that Fred Crisman had given Captain Davidson and Lt. Brown. I remembered feeling one of the pieces as Crisman and Davidson were transferring that heavy box from Crisman’s car to the trunk of the command car.

I can’t very well explain or demonstrate the difference in the feel of things such as this. To give you an idea as to how I evaluated this in my mind, close your eyes and have someone hand you a rock, a piece of brass, a piece of steel, a piece of aluminum, and a piece of copper. if you try this, as I have many times, you will notice that each one of these items has a particular feel to your fingers. It is something that your memory of feeling retains.

Neither Smithy nor I bothered to take any samples of the smelter slag. Major Sander didn’t offer us any of our own fragments from the trunk of his car so we could compare them with the smelter slag. I believe both of us thought of this. Major Sander, however, had seemed a little touchy about letting us get our hands on the fragments again after he wrapped them up. Neither of us said anything about it.

At this point, if there is such a thing as hypnosis or hallucination that could have affected us in this evaluation, we would certainty have been affected to believe conclusively that all the fragments were smelter slag from this very smelter.

This dump was handy to town. the stories of Crisman and Dahl did not ring complete true. And Captain Smith and I, if we had a desire at all, wanted to believe that the whole thing was a hoax. For some reason we couldn’t convince ourselves it was all as simple as the Major put it.

As we left the dump both Smithy and I seemed to be trying hard to convince Major Sander that we believed him. We had told him our stories separately. If he had thoroughly understood what we had told him, and thought that either one of us had an ounce of intelligence, he would have known that he had not completely convinced us of anything. It seemed unfair to judge Major Sander. Evidently Captain Smith invited him to come to town and give us his opinion. that is what I assumed and I certainly didn’t want to say anything that would seem critical of Major Sander’s attempt to clear up the mystery.

Major Sander drove us back to the hotel where he bade us goodbye, once again assuring us that within a couple of weeks we would be told the outcome of the characters involved in the investigation as well as what really caused the crash of the B-25. We thanked him. Even though it was a relief to have everything in military hands at last, we were still left wondering.

As Smithy and I walked up the stairs I was thinking that it was odd how Major Sander knew just the right side road to take out at the smelter and how he stopped only where there were pieces of slag that closely resembled the pieces of stuff we had. There were dumps all around and yet he proceeded into the smelter grounds quite a long way and made a little turn before stopping and letting us out. I thought that he must have been there before.

I wished we had hidden a few of the fragments. It would have been interesting to have had them chemically analyzed by a chemist who didn’t know where they had come from. If we had been alert this would have been done easily, we well as taking a few of the smelter fragments and having them analyzed and then comparing the two.

Again, I rightly thought, “Why should I be suspicious of Military Intelligence not giving us the right dope?” After all, like all policemen to some extent, they are supported by the tax payers of the country which included Captain Smith and myself, and I thought that the personnel had been properly trained to exercise their talents for the protection and benefit of all of us. It was a pleasant thought to take home with us.

I packed my suitcase and we checked out of the Hotel Winthrop with a sigh of relief. I intended to go directly to Barry’s Airport. However, as we got into Captain Smith’s car I thought of Harold Dahl. He had seemed to sincere and even though we couldn’t figure it all out we should at least say goodbye. Captain Smith thought it would be nice to see Harold and say goodbye too. Harold had mentioned he was going to be working all day on some book work at his secretary’s house. We decided to take a quick run out there. I had taken special note of the location the night I rode out there with Harold and it was only a ten minute ride.

I had Smithy take exactly the same route and we arrived at the little white house on the corner. As we pulled up to the curb I could see that the house was empty. I exclaimed to myself, “No! It can’t be!” I knew Captain Smith saw that I had suddenly become upset.

In every respect that house was the same house, located in the same place, where I had been the first night I met Harold Dahl. I got out of the car and walked up to the house, just as I had done that first night. I was completely baffled.

As I stepped up on the porch my weight caused the same squeak. The screen door was ajar. There were cobwebs extended from the main entrance door to the screen. There was the frosted glass window, exactly as I recalled it. I opened the screen and there was the door knob and all the other aspects of the door as I remembered it, exactly as I had seen it four nights before. Speaking of cold chills, I felt like someone had poured a whole bucket of ice water down my neck. I could not believe it.

The house looked completely deserted and as if it had not been lived in for at least three months. I rushed around to the side of the house where I had noticed the radio aerial. Sure enough, there was the aerial, made out of two 2x2s with the aerial wire leading in the side of the window. I had never heard of anything like this except in dreams. I was panicky.

I raced around the side of the house and peered in the window. The rooms were all the same as I remembered, even to the kitchen nook and the color of the paint on the inside. I returned to the front door ad tried it. It was locked. I remembered that door knob so well. When Harold Dahl, four nights before had motioned me to go in, I had taken hold of the door knob. This time I took hold of the door knob the same way. It felt exactly the same in my hand. The screen door and the main door were hinged exactly as before. I turned around and stood on the walk, mumbling to myself, “Incredible! Absolutely incredible!”

I was really beginning to doubt my sanity. suddenly the thought flashed into my mind, “I’ve just gotten the streets mixed up. I must have the streets mixed up. This must have a home that was built at the same time by the same contractor, and I’m just on the wrong street or at the wrong address.”

Captain Smith had gotten out of his car and was standing looking at me ad looking at the house. If I was mistaken t was one which looked just like this one. I wondered what a vacant house was doing in Tacoma. I had heard how acute the housing shortage was and that every available house was occupied with long waiting lists of families trying to find some place to live. This house looked like it has been vacant for months. There wasn’t a stick of furniture inside, just dust, dirt, and cobwebs everywhere.

I jumped back into Captain Smith’s car and asked him to go back to the avenue so I could retrace myself. We did, and still came to the same house. I had him race up and down all the streets in the close vicinity. There wasn’t another house within blocks and blocks that even resembled this one.

I finally gave up looking. I wanted to get in my plane and fly home. As we drove away I told Smithy my utter confusion. He just stared down the road, not saying a thing. Maybe he thought I was kind of buggy, I don’t know.

As we pulled up at Barry’s Airport I suggested that he and I both inspect my airplane very carefully. He helped me inspect my ship from it’s nose to it’s tail. It appeared sound and airworthy.

This house thing kept racing though my mind. I knew that on the coast cobwebs form very fast. but heavens, I couldn’t figure how cobwebs in the amount that were in and around that house could form in a few days time. Even if Dahl’s secretary had moved the same night I was there it wasn’t time enough. I tried to chalk it all up to mistaken directions and thought that at some later date I would get in touch with Harold Dahl and ask him about it.

I have since tried to phone Harold Dahl on many occasions and have been unable to locate him. less than a month after all this occurred I attempted to call him and the operator told me they had no H.A. Dahl in their phone books. I don’t see how this could be possible. I had seen his name in the phone book and had called him myself. I was quite sure that new books hadn’t come out within this month and decided that the long distance operator I talked to when I attempted my call was mistaken. I had had enough of playing investigator and the quicker I forgot about it, I told myself, the better of I would be. This wasn’t the solution of this case, however, as I well know now. Today it is still a big mystery as to what actually took place in Tacoma as it was on August 3, 1947.

I started my airplane, warmed it up good, checked both my magnetos at full throttle, checked my gas lines, fuel valves and so on. Everything seemed to be in perfect order. Although it was rather late in the day it was only about a four-hour flight to Boise. When I got the weather sequence on my radio I knew I would have a twenty to thirty miles per hour tail wind at the higher altitudes.

I was anxious to get going! I shoved the throttle clear to the instrument panel and took off, feeling a little unsteady about everything but glad I was going home at last. As I circled the airport, I could still see Captain Smith looking up at me. I headed for home.

I climbed to an altitude of about eight thousand feet. I felt a lot better after crossing the Cascades and started to let down over the Columbia River with the intention of landing at Pendleton, Oregon to get gasoline. Everything was running smoothly.

I landed at Pendleton and the boys there gassed up my airplane. I got out of the cockpit to stretch my legs but stayed close to my plane. I signed my credit slip and with a full gas tank was ready to take off again for home. I wasn’t tarrying as the hours of daylight were numbered. I had navigation lights but I didn’t have a battery in my ship to operate them so had to make it home before dark.

I recall flipping my controls to indicate to the tower operator I was going to take off. The tower operator knew me and knew I had a receiver. He always came over the receiver to me if for some reason I should hold. Everything seemed fine. My plane was running well. Again I shoved the throttle clear to the stop. My engine roared and I was off the ground.

I reached an altitude which I would judge was around fifty feet. My engine stopped cold. It was as if every piston had frozen solid. It never even gave a dying bark.

To take off and have an engine stop at that low altitude is probably the most dangerous thing that can happen in an airplane. you don’t have enough speed to sustain you for a normal landing in most craft. your speed to sustain you for a normal landing most craft. Your only choice for putting her down is straight ahead, with no power and little or no lift from the surfaces of your wings.

Instinctively I dove the plane straight at the ground until I must have been within ten feet of the runway, then came back on the stick as fast as I dared in an attempt to level off without causing an abrupt stall. My little airplane came though. I was sinking fast, but I set it down on all three points.

The shock was pretty hard. My left landing gear was badly bent and my left spar was broken in two. At the moment I didn’t know what had happened. I though the engine had frozen. I was unhurt. I jumped out of the cockpit, ran around to the front of the plane and turned the propeller. It was loose and easy. People came running out to see what was the matter.

I was curious to see if my engine would start again. I scooted around the wing and back into the cockpit. There I discovered what had caused my engine to stop. Until this is written, I have kept this secret to myself.

My fuel valve was shut off.

I knew instantly there was only one person who could have shut that fuel valve off - and that was myself. I turned the fuel valve back on. One of the fellows swing the propeller. My engine started immediately and ran smoothly. I taxied my plane rather limpingly into the hanger. I was scared stiff. I didn’t tell anyone what had happened for the simple reason that no one would believe me. The realization that my thought or mind in some peculiar way was being controlled or dictated to or that it could have caused this to happen would seem perfectly preposterous to anyone who had no experienced what I had just experienced.

I was in no respect accustomed to turning my fuel valve off. I only did so when my plane was either leaking gas through the carburetor float or when I put it away in storage. I elected not to say anything to anyone until I had some logical reason within my mind to explain why I could do such a ridiculous thing. The care and precautions I had always exercised before taking off and which had become an established habit for me for over three years had somehow failed.

I had to have time to think this out and I knew it had to be done by myself.

6. “Project Saucer” Report

On April 27, 1949 the Air Materiel Command at Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio released a report of it’s Flying Saucer investigations (popularly termed “Project Saucer”) to date. The following is a digest of this report.

On Tuesday, June 24, 1947, a Boise, Idaho, businessman named Kenneth Arnold looked from his private plane and spotted a chain of nine saucer-like objects playing tag with the jagged peaks of Washington’s Mr. Rainier at what he described as a “fantastic speed.”

Arnold’s report set off a veritable celestial chain reaction. Within a few days, the fabulous “flying saucers” had spun into the national spotlight. Observers reporting sighting flying “chromium hub caps,” flying “dimes,” flying “tear drops,” flying “gas lights,” flying “ice cream cones,” and flying “pie plates.”

But to military intelligence, this sky potpourri came under a single heading - that of “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.” Exhaustive investigations of each reported sighting were launched. And Project “Saucer” was born.

Now almost two years later, Project “Saucer” is neither gone nor forgotten so far as the U.S. Air Force’s Air Materiel Command at Wright Field, is concerned.

Official birthday for “Saucer” was January 22, 1948. Since then, the Command’s Technical Intelligence Division, charged with the collection, investigation and interpretation of data relative to unidentified flying objects, has looked into more than 240 domestic and 30 foreign incidents. With assistance from several other government and private agencies, and with the entire facilities of the Wright Field laboratories at their disposal. Project “Saucer” personnel have come up with identification of about 30 percent of the sightings studied thus far as conventional aerial objects. It is expected that further probing of incidents in relation to weather balloon locations, etc., will provide commonplace answers to at least an equal number of the sky riddles.

Answers have been - and will be - drawn from factors such as guided missile research activity, weather and other atmospheric sounding balloons, astronomical phenomena, commercial and military aircraft flights, flights of migratory birds, shots from flare guns, practical jokers, victims of optical illusion, the phenomena of mass hallucination, and so forth.

But to date there are still question marks in the “Saucer Story.”

Although occasional sightings of strange aerial objects were reported as far back as January of 1947, it was the Mt. Rainier incident that touched off the saucer sensation late the following June.

Kenneth Arnold, representative of a fire control equipment firm in Boise, Ida., was en route from Chehalis, Wash., to Yakima, Wash., on June 24 in a privately-owned plane when he saw the reflection of a bright flash on his wing. Arnold said he looked around and observed a chain of nine peculiar aircraft approaching Mt. Rainier.

“I could see their outline quite plainly against the snow as they approached the mountain,” he reported. “They flew very close to the mountain tops, directly south to southeast down the hog’s back of the range, flying like geese in a diagonal chain-like line as if they were linked together.”

Arnold observed that the objects seemed smaller than a DC-4 on his left, but he judged their wing span to be as wide as the furtherest engines on either side of the DC-4’s fuselage.

“They were approximately 20 or 25 miles away, and I couldn’t see a tail on them,” he declared. “I watched for about three minutes ... a chain of saucer-like things at least five miles long, swerving in and out of the high mountain peaks. They were flat like a pie pan and so shiny they reflected the sun like a mirror.”

“I never saw anything so fast.” He told investigators.

Today, no one knows just what Arnold did see on Mt. Rainier. But the objects have been judged to be of non-astronomical origin according to an interim report submitted recently on Project “Saucer” by Prof. Joseph A. Hynek, Ohio State University astro-physicist and head of the

O.S.U. Observatory.

Dr. Hynek is working under contract with AMC on an independent investigation of “Saucer” incidents to determine what percentage may definitely be attributed to astronomical phenomena.

In his review of the Arnold incident, however, Dr. Hynek has come up with what he terms “certain inconsistencies” in Arnold’s estimates of size, speed and performance of his flying “saucers.”

“It appears probable,” Hynek reports, “that whatever objects were observed were traveling at subsonic speeds and may therefore have been some sort of known aircraft.”

In the days that followed Arnold’s observation, the disk reports began to snowball. At Muroc, Calif., a group of Air Force officers reported spotting spherical objects of a disk-like shape whirling through the sky at a speed in excess of 300 m.p.h.

In Portland, Ore., several policemen told investigators they saw a group of disks that “wobbled, disappeared and reappeared” several times. They were described as resembling “shiny chromium hub caps.”

These objects were not of astronomical (stars, planets, meteors, etc.) origin, according to Dr. Hynek’s report.

Regarding the Portland incident, he stated “there is nothing whatever in this incident to suggest that the objects observed were of astronomical origin. the maneuvers of the objects and the relatively long time they were in sight definitely preclude their being astronomical.”

Only a few days after Arnold’s sighting, a disk was reported seen over his hometown of Boise - “A half-circle in shape, clinging to a cloud and just as bright and silvery looking as a mirror caught in the rays of the sun.”

Early in August, 1947, two pilots for a Bethel, Ala., flying service told investigators they spotted a huge black object “bigger than a C-54” silhouetted against the brilliant evening sky. In order to avoid collision they said they pulled up to 1,200 feet and watched the object cross their path at right angles.

The two pilots told of swinging in behind the object and following it at 170 m.p.h. until it outdistanced them and disappeared from sight about four minutes later. They described it as “resembling a C-54 without motors, wings or visible means of propulsion ... smooth surfaced and streamlined.” No balloons were reported in the area.

A few days later at Ft. Richardson, Alaska, two officers told of sighting a spherical object about 10 feet in diameter flying through the air at tremendous speed, leaving no vapor trail.

Another incident still in ‘Saucer’s” Unidentified File took place 5,000 feet above sea level in the Cascade Mountains. Fred M. Johnson, a Portland prospector, told authorities he noticed a strange reflection in the sky and, looking up, spotted five or six disks about 30 feet in diameter. Johnson said he grabbed his telescope and watched the disks approximately 50 seconds while they banked in the sun. He described them as being round with tails, making no noise and no flying formation.

Johnson said while the disks were in sight, the hand on his compass-watched weaved wildly from side to side.

Perhaps the most super-sized “saucer” ever sighted was one an Oklahoma City man reported as “seeming to be the bulk of six B-29’s.” The observer, who holds a private pilot’s license, spotted the object from the ground. He said at first it looked like a big white plane, but moving closer became perfectly round and flat with no protrusions. He heard no sound and reported the speed as “probably three times that of a jet.”

Tragedy struck at the flying saucer story early in 1948. On January 7 an unidentified object that looked like “an ice cream cone topped with red” was sighted over Godman Air Force Base, Ft. Knox, Ky., by several, military and civilian observers. The Godman tower requested a flight of four National Guard F-51’s in the vicinity to investigate the phenomena.

Three of the planes closed in on the object and reported it to be metallic and of “tremendous size.” One pilot described it as “round like a tear drop, and at times almost fluid.”

The flight leader, Capt. Thomas F. Mantell, contacted the Godman tower with an initial report that the object was traveling at half his speed at 12 o’clock high.

“I’m closing in now to take a good look,” He radioed.

“It’s directly ahead of me and still moving at about half my speed ... the thing looks metallic and of tremendous size. It’s going up now and forward as fast as I am ... that’s 360 m.p.h.” Captain Mantell reported from his F-51. “I’m going up to 20,000 feet and if I’m no closer I’ll abandon chase.”

The time was 1515 hours.

That was the last radio contact made by Mantell with the Godman tower.

Later that day his body was found in the wreckage of his plane near Ft. Knox.

Five minutes after Mantell disappeared from his formation, the two remaining planes returned to Godman. A few minutes later, one resumed the search - covering territory 100 miles to the south as high as 33,000 feet - but found nothing.

Subsequent investigation revealed that Mantell had probably blacked out at 20,000 feet from lack of oxygen and had died of suffocation before the crash.

The mysterious object which the flyer chased to his death was first identified as the Planet Venus. However, further probing showed the elevation and azimuth readings of Venus and the object at specified time intervals did not coincide.

It is still considered “Unidentified.”

On the same day, about two hours later, a sky phenomena was observed by several watchers over Lockbourne Air Force Base, Columbus, O. It was described as “round or oval, larger than a C-47, and traveling in level flight father than 500 m.p.h.” The object was followed by Lockbourne observation tower for more than 20 minutes. Observers said it glowed from white to amber, leaving an amber exhaust trail five times it’s own length. it moved like an elevator and at one time appeared to touch the ground. No sound was heard. Finally, the object faded and lowered toward the horizon.

Perhaps the most fantastic saucer sighting in Technical Intelligence records was the widely-publicized “space ship” which two Eastern Air Lines pilots reported encountering in the skies around Montgomery, Ala., last July. Presumably the object was seen by ground observers at Robbins Air Force Base, Macon, Ga., about an hour before. All reports agreed it was going in a southerly direction, trailing various colored flames and that it behaved like a normal aircraft insofar as disappearing from the line of sight was concerned.

The pilots, Capt. C.S. Chiles and John B. Whitted, described the phenomena as a “wingless aircraft, 100 feet long, cigar shaped and about twice the diameter of a B-29 with no protruding surfaces.”

“We saw it at the same time and asked each other. ‘What in the world is this?’” Chiles told investigators. “Whatever it was, it flashed down toward us and we veered to the left. It veered to it’s left and passed us about 700 feet to our right and above us. Then, as if the pilot had seen us and wanted to avoid us, it pulled up with a tremendous burst of flame from the rear and zoomed into the clouds, it’s prop wash or jet wash rocking our DC-3.”

The flame-shooting mystery craft, as described by the Eastern Air Lines pilots, had no fins, but appeared to have a snout similar to a radar pole in front, and gave the impression of a cabin with windows above.

Captain Chiles declared the cabin, “appeared like a pilot compartment, except brighter.” He said the illumination inside the body itself approximated the brilliance of a magnesium flare.

“We saw no occupants,” He told investigators. “From the side of the craft came an intense, fairly dark blue glow that ran the entire length of the fuselage ... like a blue fluorescent factory light. The exhaust was a red-orange flame. with a lighter color predominant around the outer edges.”

The pilots said the flame extended 30 to 50 feet behind the object and became deeper in intensity as the craft pulled up into a cloud. it’s speed was said to be about one-third faster than common jets.

In their investigation of the incident, Project “Saucer” personnel screened 225 civilian and military flight schedules and found that the only other aircraft in the vicinity at the time was an Air Force C-47. Application of the Prandtl theory of lift to the incident indicated that a fuselage of the dimensions reported by Chiles and Whitted could support a load comparable to the weight f an aircraft of this size at flying speeds in the subsonic range.

The object is still considered “Unidentified.”

A unique chapter in the saucer story was written last October by Lt. George F. Gorman of the North Dakota National Guard who said he had a 27-minute dogfight with a flying saucer in the skies over Fargo.

Gorman, manager of a Fargo construction company, told this story to project investigators.

On the night of October 1, 1948, he was preparing to land at the Fargo airport after a routine F-51 patrol flight. Cleared by the tower to land, Gorman noticed what appeared to be the tail light of another plane bout 1,000 yards away. He queried the tower and was told that the only other aircraft over the field was a Piper Cub which he could see outlined plainly below him. He saw no outline of anything around the moving light.

Gorman closed in to take a look at the mystery light.

“It was about six to eight inches in diameter, clear white and completely round with a sort of a fuzz at the edges,” He said. “It was blinking on and off. As I approached, however the light suddenly became steady and pulled into a sharp left bank. I thought it was making a pass at the tower.”

“I dived after it and brought my manifold pressure up to 60 inches, but I couldn’t catch up with the thing. It started gaining altitude and again made a left bank.” Gorman told investigators.

“I put my F-51 into a sharp turn and tried to cut the light off in it’s turn. By then we were at about 7,000 feet. Suddenly it made a sharp right turn and we headed straight at each other. Just when we were about to collide I guess I got scared.”

I went into a dive and the light passed over my canopy at about 500 feet. Then, it made a left circle about 1,000 feet above, and I gave chase again.”

Gorman said he cut sharply toward the light which was once more coming at him. When collision again seemed imminent, the object shot straight into the air. Gorman climbed after it to 14,000 feet when his plane went into a power stall. the object turned in a northwest north heading and disappeared.

During the ‘dogfight” Gorman said he noticed no deviation on his instruments, no sounds, odors or exhaust trails from the object.

It’s speed, he said, was excessive. At times during the chase, his F-51 was under full power with speed varying from 300 to 400 m.p.h. In all, the light was observed more than 27 minutes. Gorman described it as having depth although it appeared flat.

The mystery light was also seen by L.D. Jensen, Airport Traffic Controller at Fargo, who watched it with a pair of binoculars. He said he was unable to distinguish any shape or form other than what appeared to be the tail light of a very fast-moving craft.

In a certified statement, Gorman, who was pilot instructor for French military students World War II, said he was convinced there was “thought” behind the maneuvers. He declared, “I am also convinced that the object was governed by the laws of inertia because it’s acceleration was rapid but not immediate, and although it was able to turn fairly tight at considerable speed, it still followed a natural curve.”

The object could out-turn and outspeed the F-51 and was able to attain a much steeper climb and to maintain a constant rate of climb far in excess of the Air Force fighter.

“When I attempted to turn with the object I blacked out temporarily due to excessive speed,” Gorman stated. “I am in fairly good physical condition and I do not believe there are many pilots who could withstand the run speed effected by the light and remain conscious.”

From a psychological aspect, the Gorman incident raised the question, “It is possible for an object without aeronautical configuration to appear to travel at variable speeds and maneuver intelligently?”

Preliminary study of more than 240 domestic and 30 foreign incidents by Astro-Physicist Hynek indicates that an over-all total of about 30 percent probably can be explained away satisfactorily as astronomical phenomena.

On July 20, 1947, observers off the Newfoundland coast reported seeing a series of silver or reddish flashes in the sky, although the object from which they came was not visible. Dr. Hynek states in his report these flashes were probably nothing more than a fireball.

Early in the saucer sensation - mid-July of 1946 - capture of a “flying disk” excited residents of Jackson, Ohio. later, however, the “saucer” was identified as a U.S. Army signal Corps Radiosonde Transmitter used for gathering weather data.

Various weather and research balloons have been found at the source of a great number of saucer incidents. One of the most startling occurred last November at Camp Springs, Md. From a plane, an object illuminated by a continuous glowing white light was observed flying on a 360 degree pattern west to east over Andrews Air Force Base. As the pilot made a pass to check on the object he said it took definite evasive action. He switched his wing and tail navigation lights of, but as he again tried to close in, the “saucer” flew up and over his plane. He reported the mystery craft’s speed as seeming to alternative from 80 m.p.h. to 500 or 600 m.p.h. The pilot said it appeared like an oblong ball with one light and no wings or exhaust flames visible. Smaller than a T-6 aircraft, this “saucer” was reported to be highly maneuverable and capable of nearvertical flight.

The mystery was cleared up when the object was identified positively as a cluster of cosmic ray research balloons.

Columbus, O., residents had their eyes on the skies early last August when several citizens reported seeing a round flying object 20 to 30 feet in diameter, with a constant gray-black perimeter in transparent center. the object seemed to move at a slow, steady pace over the city, making no noise and occasionally issuing a thin trail of smoke. this was later positively identified as a carnival balloon.

Often Wright Field laboratories are called on to make analysis of objects claimed to be fragments salvaged from “flying disks.” The “flaming wheel” which fell on Bellefontaine, O., last December and stirred up the populace to a new saucer scare lost it’s mystery origin in Wright Field labs. Remains of the “wheel” was in reality a pistol flare fired from the ground.

The nation’s practical jokers and publicity seekers also have played a role in Project “Saucer.”

One of the biggest tempests was stirred up by two Tacoma, Wash., men, Fred Crisman and Harold A. Dahl. In July, 1947, a few days after Kenneth Arnold’s Mt. Rainer saucers hit the headlines, Dahl reported sighting six disks from a boat in which he was patrolling off Maury Island, Washington.

Dahl said one of the disks fluttered down to earth and disintegrated, showering his boat with fragments which caused some damage and killed his pet dog. He and Crisman then attempted to sell the story to a Chicago adventure magazine which in turn contacted Kenneth Arnold in Boise and asked him to check it’s authenticity.

From Tacoma, Arnold summered two officers from Army A-2 Intelligence to aid in the investigation of Dahl and Crisman’s claim. At a meeting in the Winthrop Hotel, Dahl produced some fragments which he alleged came from the disk, which damaged his boat. He related his entire story of the incident to Arnold, Smith and the two Army Intelligence men. The next day the two officers left to return to Hamilton Field, Calif., to participate in an Air Force Day program, taking some of the fragments with them for technical analysis.

But tragedy struck en route. The plane crashed, killing both officers although the crew chief and a hitch hiker - the other two passengers - parachuted to safety.

Later, under questioning, Crisman and Dahl broke and admitted that the fragments they had produced were really unusual rock formations found on Maury Island and had no connection with “Flying Disks.”

They admitted telling the Chicago magazine that the fragments “could have been remnants of the disks” in order to increase the sale value of their story.

During the investigation, Dahl’s wife consistently urged him to admit that the entire affair was a hoax, and it is carried as such in Project “Saucer” files.

A flying disk became big business in Black River Falls, Wis., where the finder charged 50 cents admission for a look at the “saucer’ until local police stepped in and shut it up in a bank vault. The contrivance, which was fashioned from plywood and cardboard was supposedly seen in flight near Black River Falls shortly before an electrician said he found it lying in deep grass on the town fairgrounds. After analysis at Mitchel Field, the following report was made: “This contrivance is patently a hoax ... it will be held for a reasonable length of time and then disposed of in the nearest ash receptacle.”

Of such things are some of the saucers made.

But the hoaxes and the crank letters in reality play a small part in Project “Saucer.”

Actually, it is a serious, scientific business of constant investigation, analysis and evaluation which thus far has yielded evidence pointing to the conclusion that much of the saucer scare is no scare at all, but can be attributed to astronomical phenomena, to conventional serial objects, to hallucinations and to mass psychology.

When an incident comes to the attention of Project “Saucer” personnel, it is first investigated by existing intelligence agencies in the vicinity of the sighting - usually a nearby Air Force base, the FBI, or the local police. In some cases, personnel from the AMC’s Technical Intelligence Division fly to the scene for one-the-spot interrogation.

A standard questionnaire is filled out by the observer under guidance of interrogators and any supplementary information available is gleamed by investigators. Standard questions are stated simply and slanted so that they may be answered with reasonable accuracy by the most inexperienced observers. In each case, time, location, size and shape of object, approximate altitude, speed, maneuvers, color, length of time in sight, sound, etc. are carefully noted. This information is sent in it’s entirety, together with any fragments, soil specimens, photographs, drawings, etc., pertinent to the incident to Headquarters, AMC. Here highly trained evaluation teams take over. The information is broken down and filed on summary sheets, plotted on maps and graphs and integrated with the rest of the Project material, thus giving an easily comprehended over-all picture of Project “Saucer.”

Then, duplicate copies of the data on each incident are sent to other investigating agencies including technical labs within AMC. These reports are studied in relation to many factors such as guided missile research activity, weather and many other atmospheric sounding balloons launchings, commercial and military aircraft flights, flights of migratory birds and a myriad of other considerations which might furnish explanations.

Based on the possibility that the objects could be unidentified and unconventional types of aircraft, technical analysis is made of some of the reports to determine aerodynamic, propulsion and control features which would be required for objects to perform as described.

Generally, the flying objects are divided into four groups: flying disks, torpedo or cigar shaped bodies with no wings or fins visible in flight, spherical or balloon-shaped objects, and balls of light. the first three groups are capable of flight by aerodynamic means and cab be propelled and controlled by methods known to aeronautical designers. As for the lights, their actions - unless they were suspended from a higher objects or were the product of hallucination -remain thus far unexplained.

Eventually, reports from assisting laboratories and agencies are sent back to Project “Saucer” headquarters, often marking incidents closed. The project, however, is a young one - much of it’s investigation is still underway.

Currently, a psychological analysis is being made by AMC’s Aero Medical laboratory to determine what percentage of incidents are probably based on errors of the human mind and senses. Available preliminary reports now indicate that a great number of sightings can be explained away as ordinary occurrences which have been misrepresented as a rule of these human errors.

Much of the work of “Saucer” personnel involves precise graphing, charting and pin pointing at incidents. A frequency graph compiled recently showed that saucer sightings began in this country on a small scale in January of 1947, and reached their peak in July of that year, shortly after the Mt. Rainier incident. They then fell off sharply for the rest of the year, but reoccurred in relative frequency in January, July and November of 1948. Reports coming to AMC now indicate a current low level of sighting - about 12 a month at present.

Since flying saucers first hit the headlines almost two years ago there has been wide speculation that the aerial phenomena might actually be some form of penetration of the Earth from another planet.

Actually, astronomers are largely in agreement that only one member of the solar system besides Earth is capable of supporting life. That is Mars.

On Mars there exists an excessively slow loss of atmosphere, oxygen and water against which intelligent beings, if they do exist there, may have protected themselves by scientific control of physical conditions. This might have been done, scientists speculate, but the construction of homes and cities underground where the atmospheric pressure would be greater and thus temperature extremes reduced. The other possibilities exist, of course, that evolution may have developed a being who can withstand the rigors of the Martian climate, or that the race - if it ever did exist - has perished.

In other words the existence of intelligent life on Mars, where the rare atmosphere is nearly devoid of oxygen and water and where the nights are much colder than our Arctic winters, is not impossible but is completely unproven.

The possibility of intelligent life also existing on the Planet Venus is not considered completely unreasonable by astronomers. The atmosphere of Venus apparently consists mostly of carbon dioxide with deep clouds of formaldehyde droplets, and there seems to be little or no water. Yet, scientists concede that living organisms might develop in chemical environments which are strange to us. Venus, however, has two handicaps. Her mass and gravity are nearly as large as the Earth (Mars is smaller) and her cloudy atmosphere would discourage astronomy, hence space travel.

Reports of strange objects seen in the skies have been handed down through the generations. However, scientists believe that if Martians were now visiting Earth without establishing contact it could be assumed that they have just recently succeeded in space travel and that their civilization would be practically abreast of ours. They find it hard to believe that any technically established race would com here, flaunt it’s ability in mysterious ways over the years, but each time simply go away without ever establishing contact.

Astronomers, however, feel it particularly unlikely that a Martian civilization would be within a half century of our own state of advancement. Yet in the past 50 years we have just began to use aircraft and in the next 50 we will almost certainly start exploring space. Thus, it appears that space travel from another point within the solar system is possible but very unlikely. Reports in Project “Saucer” files call the odds against it “at least a thousand to one.”

Outside the solar systems other stars - 22 in number - besides the sun have satellite planets. The sun has nine. One of these, Earth, is ideal for existence of life. Therefore, astronomers believe it reasonable that there could be at least one ideally habitable planet for each of the 22 other eligible stars.

In this line of reasoning the theory is also employed, of necessity, that man represents the average in advancement and development.

Therefore, one half of the other habitable planets would be behind man in development and the other half ahead. It is also assumed that any visiting race could be expected to be far in advance of man. Thus, the chance of space travelers existing on planets attached to neighboring stars is a very much greater than the chance of space-traveling Martians. The one can be viewed as almost a certainty (if you accept the thesis that the number of inhabited planets is equal to those that are suitable for life and that intelligent life is not peculiar to Earth). Whereas the possibility of space visitors from Mars is very slight indeed.

There is only one stumbling block to a trip from such a distant planet to Earth but it is a formidable block.

The nearest eligible star is one called Wolf 359. This is eight light years away. Traveling at one-tenth the speed of light - that is 18,000 miles per second - it would take a space ship pilot 80 years for a one-way trip to Earth. And this speed is completely beyond the reach of any predicted level of rocket propulsion.

If a process could be created to convert nuclear material into jet energy the time could be cut from 60 to 16 years from Wolf359 to Earth.

The problems involved in the creation of the long idealized “Buck Rogers” type space ship are myriad. While a special purpose rocket can be made as maneuverable as is desired with a very high performance, a high performance space ship would be large and unwieldy and could hardly be designed to maneuver frivolously in the Earth’s atmosphere as the reported disks have done.

Also, such an aircraft could not carry sufficient fuel to make repeated descents into the Earth’s atmosphere.

Scientists say a vertically descending rocket might well appear as a luminous disk to a person standing directly below. Yet observers at a distance would surely be able to identify the rocket as such - and the exhaust should be easy to see.

With few exceptions all disks have been reported within the continental limits of the United States, whereas spacemen could be expected to scatter their visits more or less uniformly over the globe: the small area covered by the disk barrage points strongly to the belief that the flying objects are of Earthy origin, be they physical or psychological.

Thus, although visits from outer space are believed to be possible, they are thought to be highly improbable. In particular, detailed reports made on individual incidents and the over-all picture of Project “Saucer” point to the fact that actions attributed to the flying objects reported during the past two years are inconsistent with the requirements for space travel.

The possibility that the “Saucers” were supported by means of rays or beams was investigated and debunked. By “rays” or “beams” are meant either purely electro-magnetic radiation or else radiation which is largely corpuscular like cathode rays, cosmic rays or cyclotron beams.

Any device thus propelled would have to be fundamentally a reaction device. The basic theory of such devices is that a given amount of energy is most efficiently spent if the momentum thrown back or down is large. This means that a large mass should be given a small acceleration -a theorem well understood by helicopter designers.

Beams or rays to the contrary, a small mass is given a very high velocity, and consequently enormous powers - greater than the world’s total power capacity - would be needed to support even the smallest object by such means.

Several unorthodox means of supporting or propelling a solid object have been considered, including the fiction writer’s old standby, the anti-gravity shield, but all have been found impractical. This, in the opinion of investigating scientists lends credence to the assumption that the unidentified flying objects are supported an propelled by some normal means, or else are not solids.

Possibilities that the saucers are foreign aircraft have also been considered. But the reported performance of the disk’s is so superior to anything we have yet approached in this country that it is believed that only an accidental discovery of a “degree of novelty never before achieved” could suffice to explain such devices.

The possible existence of some sort of strange extraterrestrial animals has been remotely considered, as many of the objects described acted more like animals than anything else. However, there are few reliable reports on extraterrestrial animals.

All of the information so far presented in Project “Saucer” on the possible existence of space ships from another planet propelled by an advanced type of automatic power plane has been largely conjecture.

To sum up, no definite conclusive evidence is yet available that would prove or disprove the possibility that a portion of the unidentified objects are real aircraft of unknown or unconventional configuration.

Many sightings by qualified and apparently reliable witnesses have been reported. However, each incident has unsatisfactory features, such as the shortness of time the object was under observation, the great distance from the observer, vagueness of description or photographs, inconsistencies between individual observers, lack of descriptive data, etc.

In so far as the aerodynamic superiority of the disk-like phenomena is concerned, the circular platform has not been used in representative aircraft, either military or civilian, because the induced drag is excessively high.

Spherical or balloon shaped objects are also usually considered as efficient aircraft. Drag is high and the energy expanded to develop life by aerodynamic means is excessive.

The obvious explanation for most of the spherical shaped objects reported, as already mentioned, is that they are meteorological or similar type balloons. This, however, does not explain reports that they travel at high speed or maneuver rapidly. But “Saucer” men point out that the movement could be explained away as an optical illusion or actual acceleration of the balloon caused by gas leak and later exaggerated by observers.

There are scores of possible explanations for the sources of different type sightings reported. Many of the aerial phenomena have been positively identified. However, the correct tagging of the remaining percentage is still the job of Project “Saucer.”

The “Saucers” are not a joke.

Neither are they a cause for alarm to the population. Many of the incidents already have answers. Meteors. Balloons. Falling stars. Birds in flight. testing devices, etc. Some of them still end in question marks.

It is the mission of the AMC Technical Intelligence Division’s Project “Saucer” to apply the periods.

This ends the official report by Project “Saucer.” But pertinent to it are the following two items.

From the June 5, 1949 issue of Walter Winchell’s column “Up and Down Broadway”:

The N.Y. World-Telegram has confirmed this reporter’s exclusive report of several weeks before - which newspapermen have denied - about the Flying Saucers ... Said the frontpage in the W-T.

Air Force people are convinced the flying disk is real. The clincher came when the Air Force got a picture recently of three disks flying in formation over Stephensville, Newfoundland (the great transatlantic air base).

They outdistanced our fastest ships. some Air Force men believe the disks are a new flying machine utilizing gyroscopic principles.

From the May 14, 1949 issue of the Washington Daily News:

Some Air Force men thing they know what those flying disks are and where they came from.

They believe disks are new-type flying machine utilizing gyroscopic principle; that they come from Spain.

They say Nazi scientists, known to have been working on gyroscopic flight during war, dropped from sight after row with Hitler. Intelligence reports hint they escaped to Spain. Captured documents indicate Germans had gone further than any with use of gyroscopic principles for flight.

Air Force people are convinced flying disk is real. They say it is not produced in this country. they feel sure it us not produced in Russia.

Clincher came when Air Force got picture recently of three disks flying in formation over Stephensville, Newfoundland. Not close-up, because they outdistanced our fastest ships, but close enough to be convincing.

7. Comments On The “Project Saucer” Report

In reading the fabulous report of Project “Saucer,” it is necessary to bear in mind several pertinent facts. First is that apparently the armed forces do not let their left hand know what their right hand is doing. thus, on precisely the same day that the Wright Field Air Materiel Command treated the saucers seriously, and declared they were no “joke,” and in effect, admitted that they existed beyond all doubt, but that their nature was undetermined, Intelligence was busy cooking up a two-part article in The Saturday Evening Post (presumable authored by Sidney A. Shallett) which was designed to pooh-pooh the whole business and laugh it all away.

The first portion of this article appeared simultaneously with the Wright Field report, and the impact of an “official” report placed against the “heresay” of the Post article did little to enhance the reputation of either the Post or author, Sidney Shallett. It would be quite impossible for Shallett to look anything but sheepish in the face of such a ringing denunciation.

Lest the statement just made be denied, I quote here a letter signed by Alethea Redfern, Secretary to the Director of Intelligence, and addressed to Mrs. Velma Brown, wife of Frank M. Brown, the flier killed in the Tacoma affair. This is a personal letter, not written on official stationery, and no caution us given to refrain from quoting the letter so no confidence is being violated.

I will try to give you the Colonel’s [Colonel Donald L. Springer, in command of the Fourth Air Force, Hamilton Field, Calif.] viewpoint concerning any articles written about the flying saucers. There have been several magazines published in Chicago, bordering on the sensational and fantastic, which dealt with the flying saucers or flying disks. None of them are authentic but deal only in conjecture and imagination. You are at liberty to say anything you wish concerning the disks, but the Colonel cautions you to base every remark on absolute fact and to be able to substantiate anything you say. You might be required to prove your statements unless you state definitely that you are only assuming - or that you believe, etc.

There was recently published in The Saturday Evening Post a very good article about the disks released by the Air Force.

Confirmation of this fact was secured by Ray Palmer, who spoke personally to Stuart Rose, one of the editors of the Post, who seemed unwilling to discuss the matter after being tricked into admitting the Air Force officers parked all over his office has done little else but annoy him.

It is interesting to note that the Army investigated reports six months before the saucers became headline news. Obviously, then, before the public ever heard of them. Also, the employment of Prof. Joseph A. Hynek indicates the seriousness with which saucer investigation was being made.

When statement is made that “certain inconsistencies” exist in “Arnold’s estimates of size, speed, and performance of his saucers” it is noted that these inconsistencies are not listed. Worse, a definite attempt to insert a false note is contained in the statement that “whatever objects were observed were traveling at sub-sonic speeds and may therefore have been some sort of known aircraft.” there is only one word to describe that statement. It’s deliberately false.

In commenting on the Gorman incident, Project Saucer has this to say, “From a psychological aspect, the Gorman incident raised the question, ‘Is it possible for an object without appreciable shape or known aeronautical configuration to appear to travel at variable speeds and maneuver intelligently?’.”

Note the “key” words in this clever little brushing aside of the whole matter; Psychological. A slap at Gorman’s “psychic” tendencies. Possible. A complete evasion of the fact that the thing was not only possible, but did travel as described. Appear. In other words, actually the object didn’t do what Gorman said it did, it only appeared to. Project Saucer makes no other comment, except this one which is designed to cause the casual reader to conclude that Gorman was slightly balmy and Project Saucer was just being polite in not putting it bluntly.

However, popeyed with it’s knowledge of the amazing facts about flying saucers, Project Saucer cannot refrain, in it’s report, from including numbers of sightings which are apparently authentic, and which they admit cannot be explained. Why they select the Arnold and Gorman reports for special (and biased) reproach is a mystery. Why not be fair all around?

Then, to make the authentic instances fall into the same “fairy tale” category (by association) they quote instances which, even to the most casual citizen, are patently frauds, and should not even be considered. I wouldn’t require Dr. Hynek to classify these instances for the junk file.

Most asinine comment is made on the Camp Springs, Md., incident which is labeled as “the most startling.” Let’s quote it: “The mystery was cleared up when the object was positively identified as a cluster of cosmic ray balloons.” Nothing more. Just that. Yet it alternated 80 to 500 or 600 miles per hour and took evasive action. A single object. Allow us a “solution” of our own? It was a grain of puffed rice, shot too enthusiastically from a gun by the makers of breakfast cereal. And if such sarcastic remarks injure the feelings of Project Saucer, may we point out that they are not original, but only typical of the many snide references to our mental health, eyesight, physical health, powers of observation, imagination, childishness, etc. made in public pronouncements and official releases regarding saucers?

And now we come to the “biggest tempest,” the “hoax” stirred up by Fred Crisman and Harold A. Dahl at Tacoma, Washington. First the statement is made by Project Saucer that Crisman and Dahl “broke” later under questioning and admitted that the fragments were unusual rock formations found on Maury Island and had no connection with flying disks. It also said that the pair admitted telling the Chicago magazine that the fragments “could have come from the disks” in order to increase the sale value of their story. It further said that during the investigation, Dahl’s wife consistently urged him to admit that the entire affair was a hoax.

When FATE magazine (Evanston, Illinois) published the report made public by Project Saucer, Fred Crisman wrote a letter to the editor, threatening to sue unless the above false statements were retracted. they were not retracted, of course, because they were official releases by Project Saucer. But whether they were false or not should rest on other and more positive factors.

These factors follow:

If the fragments were “unusual rock” fragments found on Maury Island (or as another official news release from Colonel Springer of Hamilton Field stated -were natural rock formations found all up and down the west coast), then Major Sander of S-2 Army Intelligence at McChord Field in Tacoma was trying to create a false impression when he showed Captain Smith and Kenneth Arnold a slag pile in a local smelter dump and insisted this was the actual source of the fragments he so carefully did not permit them to retain.

Crisman and Dahl did not submit the fragments to the Chicago magazine in an effort to sell a story. They never asked for any money for the fragments, nor did they submit a story, only an explanatory letter. There can be no doubt about that, since Ray Palmer, one of the authors of this book, was the editor to whom the fragments were sent and the editor of the Chicago magazine Project Saucer mentions.

That either man “confessed” to a hoax is the least proven item in Project Saucer’s statement. Today neither of these men can be found, having mysteriously disappeared. In the case of Dahl, he left a home, a business, and apparently all his interests, unclaimed. But let science itself have a word to say here about the “fragments” from the particular slag piles pointed out by Major Sander. let the reader decide for himself if they are identical. Of if either one is a “natural rock”

Analysis of Original Fragments High Constituents -- Calcium, Iron, Zinc, Titanium.

Middle Constituents -- Aluminum, Manganese, Copper, Magnesium, Silicon.

Low Constituents -- Nickel, Lead, Strontium, chromium.

Traces -- Silver, Tin, Cadmium.

Nothing of an unusual nature exists in this combination except the unusually high quantity of calcium and titanium. It is interesting to note that titanium, one of the high-constituent metals, is now believed to be the key metal in constructing missiles or ships capable of space travel. Also calcium has an affinity for particles of radium, and the ability to capture them and prevent contamination of surrounding areas.

Analysis of Tacoma Slag Fragments

1. The crude sample is magnetic. This indicates the presence of the mineral magnetite (iron oxide, Fe3O4), free iron or both. Both appear to be present in this sample.

2. About 21% of the sample is soluble in hydrochloric acid. This is the iron-iron oxide fraction. The acid insoluble fractions are obviously different chemical individuals, both fractions were analyzed separately.

3. The acid soluble fraction is 49.7% Fe (iron). Qualitative tests showed a small amount of Zn (zinc), a trace of Cd (cadmium) and Mo (molybdenum). No nickel, cobalt or copper are found in this fraction. The remainder of this sample is largely oxygen.

4. The acid insoluble fraction has the following analysis:

% SiO2      49.2

% Fe2O3      30.2      % Fe      21.2

% CaO BaO      13.1      % Ca & Ba      9.35

% MnO      1.1      % Mn      0.87

The remainder of the material is aluminum, titanium, magnesium and alkali oxides together with small amounts of other metals. No cobalt or nickel were found in this fraction.

5. A mineralogical analysis under the petrographic microscope shows that the sample is a very complex mixture of silicates and oxides, typical of an artificial slag.

On the basis of the above five points, the material is slag from the production of steel. the presence of appreciable amounts of iron in the slag suggests that it is slag from an open hearth furnace. The structure of the material and the fact that it contains no cobalt or nickel eliminate the possibility that the sample is of meteoric origin. the structure and presence of free iron and magnetite make it very unlikely that the material is a natural lava.

And there we have it.

The samples first sent by Crisman and Dahl were not slag nor were they natural rock. What were they? If the Tacoma affair was not a hoax, then they were portions of a flying disk!

Now let us examine the strange facts discernible in Ken Arnold’s story of his adventure at Tacoma.

When Arnold arrived at Barry’s Airport, he kept his identity secret. Also, no possibility existed that anyone in Tacoma could have known he was coming. Yet when he tried to get a room in the town (where rooms were practically impossible to get) he found that one had been reserved for him at the Hotel Winthrop. Reserved in the name of Kenneth Arnold! Who reserved it? Another Kenneth Arnold? If so, he never showed up to claim his room.

Reaching Mr. Dahl by phone, his initial reaction was to advise Mr. Arnold to go home and forget the whole business. His reason for this advice was based on superstition, superstition which seemed highly illogical in a man of the physical proportions of Mr. Dahl. Later, in the hotel room, Dahl who had a story to tell, did no talking at first, allowing Arnold to take the lead, and then, instead of telling his story, again urged Arnold to go home. Then, making as if to leave, he made it an implied threat. But Arnold was not to be scared out, and insisted on the story he had come to get. Only after every attempt to get him to leave had failed did Dahl comply. And Dahl was the man who had already told that story to Ray Palmer via the mail, in Chicago, even sending a cigar-box full of fragments to back it up. Here was Ray Palmer’s personal representative, and he went to great lengths to kill the story.

All during the stay in room 502 Ted Morello and Paul Lance at the Tacoma Times were receiving phone calls from a mysterious informant who repeated verbatim conversations that were going on in the room, even when Crisman and Dahl were in the room. There is only one way that could have been done: the room was wired for sound. It was cleverly wired, too, for no portable installation could be found by Smith and Arnold, though they made a thorough search for one. It was the sort of installation that would require cooperation on the part of the hotel; or would use highly technical and expensive equipment such as it is rumored secret service organizations possess.

After telling his story, Dahl again attempted melodramatically to scare Arnold out. He wrung his hands, told Arnold of the stranger who had been able to recount Harold’s entire adventure as though he had been present (how?) the next morning, and had inferred he’d witnessed something he shouldn’t have, and that if he loved his family he would not discuss it with anyone. But unafraid, he had promptly reported the matter to an editor of a magazine. Now, however, he is terribly afraid, not to tell still another person, but for the welfare of that person.

Yet, when Arnold suggested to bring in still another person, Captain Smith, he did not object in the least. Both Crisman and Dahl were in hearty accord with this idea. Further, when it was suggested that Army Air Force Intelligence be called in, Crisman was almost enthusiastic. Right there is where any pair of hoaxers would have begun backpedaling mightily. These new developments would have spelled trouble in big letters.

No matter how Arnold and Smith tried, they could never get to the crux of the situation, getting out of Maury Island and seeing the twenty tons of fragments with their own eyes, or getting to see the pictures Dahl had taken which supposedly showed the saucers clearly, though the negative was spotted as though by exposure to x-rays. The negatives were always somewhere else, finally up in the hills in a remote cabin.

Sometime in the course of talks with Crisman and Dahl, it is suggested that the fragments brought to the hotel room seemed curved, and might be parts of the lining of a jet or tube about six feet in diameter. Sure enough, when lined up, they do bear this out. Yet they were scattered fragments, only a few among thousands, only a few pounds of a total of over twenty tons. Peculiar indeed, when you think about it, that they should be related fragments. But then the white metal turns out to be perfectly familiar, and Crisman and Dahl, at least one (Crisman) a former air force pilot, with a good record in Burma, would know that it would be familiar; recognizable to Arnold and Smith as portions of military aircraft gone to the salvage dump. Now we aren’t trying to scare anybody out, we are trying to make it obvious that we are pulling a hoax so Arnold and Smith will leave in disgust and so report the incident to Ray Palmer.

When the Intelligence men arrived, Brown saw Arnold alone, showed him drawings of what he said were authentic pictures of flying saucers, and was very cooperative. Later, when they should really have been excited, after Crisman had been around long enough to get his story across, both Intelligence men dropped interest as though it were a dead fish, and left in high gear. they did not even intend to take any of the important fragments, until Crisman, dashing away, came panting up with a whole boxful and literally forced them upon the Intelligence men. Only they aren’t the same kind of fragments.

Now, suddenly, Ted Morello becomes very solicitous for the welfare of Smith and Arnold . He pleads with them. They ought to go home. But he hasn’t a very good reason.

Next morning, Crisman phones, this time with information that is enough to scare anybody out of town. Brown and Davidson are dead. Their plane has crashed. Brother, there’ll be hell to pay, explaining to Uncle Sam how you happened to get two of his best men killed and a very expensive plane wrecked. Why, this little hoax might well land everybody in jail.

In an inspection of the “harbor patrol” boat, it is obviously not a harbor patrol boat. The “repairs” are not as extensive as Crisman had given them to understand. The excuse of working on the motor turns out to be false - not a nut has been turned on it. The craft itself appears extremely unseaworthy.

And it develops Crisman knew Ray Palmer; and lies when he tries to explain it. actually all his acquaintance with Palmer amounted to was a very grim letter warning the editor to “lay off’ what was then known as “the Shaver Mystery,” a secret underground menace, in which a fantastic story was told by Crisman of being in a cave in Burma in search of this “underground menace” and being “rayed” by an unseen being and having a hole the size of a dime burned in his arm. A letter from Palmer believed not at all. Yet, when Crisman talked to Palmer on the phone that night of August 1, from Tacoma, Palmer recognized the voice as one he’d heard before over other phones, always from different portions of the country, always with a fantastic story designed to get him to “lay off’ the Shaver Mystery.

Then finally, Crisman vanishes from the scene, aboard an Army bomber, bound for Alaska. A flight no civilian could have boarded.

Earlier, when a visit is paid to the house where Dahl first showed Arnold the fragments, it is deserted and cobwebbed! Dahl has never been seen since, although Arnold has tried several times to find him. Neither is Crisman to be found in Tacoma, although, reputedly, both men had good prospects there, being interested in logging and lumber operations, even having several $5,000 deals pending.

Was the Tacoma affair a hoax? Whose?

Who was in a position to know the contents of Kenneth Arnold and Ray Palmer’s mail? who made the reservation for Kenneth at the Winthrop?[2]

Yes, who!

There is only one thing the Tacoma affair proves - the saucers are very real indeed! important enough to go to a lot of trouble to scare out the only two men doing any serious investigation of an unofficial nature. Project Saucer states that with few exceptions, all disk sightings have been limited to the continental limits of the United States.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Hundreds of authenticated sightings are listed, quite a few of them reproduced in this book.

One prize statement is the following: “There are few reliable reports on extra-terrestrial animals.” But those few, gentlemen! Those few! Where did you get them? Are they well substantiated? Can you prove them? Are they as real as flying saucers? P.T. Barnum would love you!

But in one instance we can agree heartily with Project Saucer’s voluminous report: The flying saucers are not a joke!

8. One Thousand Years Of Flying Saucers

Flying saucers, if they are interplanetary machines have been looking over this green spinning globe not for years but for centuries!

This is proven by extensive research into the archives of the British Royal Society dating back 288 years, from medical chroniclers, from 17th century astronomers’ ephemeredes - English, German, Hollander, French and Italian - from old magazines in a day when none but the wealthy rear or wrote for such journals, and from very rare volumes in Latin or other modern tongues.

In the 16th, 17th and specially the 18th century many of these strange spectacles took the form of surprising lights. These were definitively not the aurora borealis, which was well known to astronomers and northern people then as now.

These phenomena often took the form of burning streams of light. Such lights were seen over London in 1560 and 1564, and over Brabant, in what is now Belgium in 1575, when a professor of medicine, Cornelius Gamma of the University of Louvain, described them. Often the lights were so powerful that one could see the smallest pin or screw on the ground by their powerful illumination. They seemed to be extremely powerful searchlights, projected from the skies to the ground.

In the year 1773 comes the first report of the appearance of one of those gleaming aluminum like bodies that in 1946-50 were called “flying saucers.” In broad daylight on Dec. 8, 1733 a Mr. Cracker of Fleet, a small township in Dorset, England, was startled to see, as he says:

Something in the sky which appeared in the north, but vanished from my sight, as it was intercepted by trees, from my vision. I was standing in a valley. The weather was warm, and sun shone brightly. On a sudden it re-appeared, darting in an out of my sight with an amazing coruscation. The color of this phenomenon was like burnished, or new washed silver. It shot with speed like a star falling in the night. But it had a body much larger and a train longer than any shooting star I have seen. At my coming home, one Brown told me that the body and the train seemed 20 feet long. Next day, Mr. Edgecombe informed me that he and another gentleman had seen this strange phenomenon at the same time as I had. It was about 15 miles from where I saw it, and steering a course from E. to N.

Another of these cosmic visitants took the form of a slender pyramid. It was seen about 15 minutes after sunset on April 3, 1707. I was perpendicular to the horizon, of musty red color, and visible for an hour. “I have never seen anything like it,” said the observer, a parson named Derham, fellow of the Royal Society.

A mysterious object shaped like a trumpet appeared on three occasions in the English skies -1710, 1744 and 1745. It was seen first on May 18, 1710 by Ralph Thoresby, F.R.S., over Leeds, Yorkshire, at 9:45 p.m.

A queer apparition like a trumpet, with a broad end. It moved north to south, with the broad end foremost. As it moved it emitted light. People were startled to see their own shadows with no moon or sun in the sky ... it was seen from three other countries ...

The same or similar cosmic machine was seen, 34 years later, on May 27, at 11:11 p.m., by Henry Baker, F.R.S., who reported:

This strange phenomenon moved SW, to NW. It seemed to be not half a mile up in the sky over Somerset Gardens, London, where I watched it. A white clear light like a flame was emitted from it’s head and body. The color of the flame was like sulphur.

Next year, on July 14, 1745, an identical cosmic visitant was seen at 8 p.m. by a parson at Stanlake Broad, Norfolk, Eng. All the data suggest strongly that here was some extraterrestrial machine.

But the most amazing report of all was made by a fellow of the British Royal Society going home from a meeting of the society, in the evening of Dec. 16, 1742. It was a year after the globe of fire had been seen over Peckham, London. As this man entered St. James’s Park, London, he was startled to see, suddenly rise above the trees of the park a weird apparition. There is what he said:

A sudden light rose from behind the trees and houses to the south and west, which at first I thought was a rocket of large size. but when it rose 20 degrees (above the skyline) it moved parallel to the horizon, and moved like this.

He drew an undulating line.

It went on in the direction of north by east. It seemed very near but it’s motion was slow. A light flame was turned backward by the resistance of air made to it’s passage. From one end, the strange object emitted a bright glare and fire like that of burning charcoal. That end was like a frame made of bars of iron. It was quite opaque to my sight. At one point on the longitudinal frame, or cylinder, issued a train of light more bright at one point, on the rod or frame, than it was at the end, where it was transparent for more than half it’s length. The head of this strange object seemed about half a degree in diameter, and the tail three degrees in length.

The observer signed himself merely “C.M.” He may, like some Americans in our day, not have cared to risk the scoffing of the armchair cynics and skeptics.

Another mystery took the form of a strange rolling cloud in whose center glowed a remarkable sphere of fire. this phenomenon came across the quiet countryside northwest of Newry, County Down, Ireland, at 12 noon on January 1, 1751. Two men who saw it believed that the end of the world was near at hand.

Here is the report of an observer:

This strange body of fire came across country for 15 miles, after two men had seen the terrifying thing rise, at 12 noon, off the mountains of Morn (Mourne), near Newry. The fire appeared in a cloud reaching fro the sky to the ground. It was, or appeared, six yards square, and it’s forward motion was very slow, so very slow that any person who had presence of mind might have gone out of it’s way. It’s course was direct ... and it turned continually around like a whirlwind, giving out a great noise in the air, and a smell like sulphur. Trees in an orchard were split from top to bottom, roofs lifted off dwelling houses, and a woman killed in the highway.

Surely, here was a mystery that would have warmed the heart of that sardonic humorist, the late Charles Fort, who did so much of his research in the British Museum at Bloomsbury. But what on Earth or in the sky was it? No meteor ever moved at this slow rate of locomotion, with a rotary action!

People at Koln, Germany, and Edinburgh, saw a strange phenomenon on March 10, 1756. In a clear sky, at from 7 to 8 p.m. there appeared a pencil of light. It shone like what we should today call the emission of exhaust and incandescent gases, the motor being a “tail” facing toward the north. It remained stationary for about an hour. Then it vanished with neither sparks, smoke or emission of gases. The same visitant had appeared over Avignon, France at 6;10 p.m.

What looked like a “football” of immense size seemed to descend from the sky over Colchester, England, at 8 p.m., on December 31, 1758. It vanished “like a squib without a report.”

Machines like cones now began to appear in the night skies. At Edinburgh, Scotland, one swam into the sky at 9 p.m. on November 26, 1758. it’s velocity was very great. Sparks came from it as it passed, and so powerful a light was projected that the most minute object could be seen in the streets. The same machine appeared over Glasgow as a globe of fire like a full moon. It seemed to divide into three parts, and then ascended through the atmosphere!

Edinburgh had another bad shock at 9 p.m. on August 18, 1783, when there suddenly appeared in the sky a globe of fire of “uncommon magnitude.” It’s speed was immense and it had a rotary motion about it’s axis. It was like a sphere with a cone for a tail! the cone may have been the exhaust emission of gases. Terrified people, looking up into the sky, heard come from it a sound like the working of a powerful motors! Glasgow saw the strange object two nights later.

Down south at Greenwich, near the famous Observatory but 12 days later, at 9:11 p.m., on August 30, 1783, the same great ball appeared in the sky, but now it was seen to have a consort sphere! It’s motion was not rapid, but the light it emitted was astounding in it’s brilliance. It went SSE. In 1785, two years later, on December 26, at 9 p.m. an identical blazing sphere was seen over Edinburgh, Dublin, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Plymouth and Chelsea, London.

Astronomers of that day were set searching their records and they found that for seven hours in 1716 the same type of cosmic machine had been seen all over England. It was, be it noted, visible for seven hours! It was seen to be brilliantly colored and to “emit a pure light.”

New England, U.S.A. had a turn on May 10, 1760, when a most remarkable object, like a blazing sphere appeared in the broad light of day. Over Roxbury and Bridgewater the thing went round in a circle and a noise as if working machinery came from it. It threw out so powerful a light that even in strong sunshine it cast a shadow! The circle over which it flew had a diameter of 80 miles.

In 1762 and 1764, Oxford, England, was startled by lights like a blazing arch in the sky from 8 to 10 p.m. In 1766 London was startled by the same mysterious arch. At Oxford an old college don named Swinton, who spent one and a half hours watching this light from the quadrangle of Christ’s Church College, swore that he had seen nothing like it in his life and was positive it was not the aurora borealis. Into the streets of Bideford, Devon, on December 5, 1762, terrified people poured at 8:50 p.m. to look at a large body in the sky like a twisting serpent, which descended slowly in the sky and from which shone a dazzling light. It was like a sun and lit up the dark streets with a moontide blaze. It seemed to go out by degrees as though the light had been turned off.

Twice in the 18th century there appeared in the skies of old England and Scotland a strange body like a house on fire. It was seen for an hour over Oxford, on the night of October 24, 1769. The whole hemisphere of the sky seemed to blaze. London and Windsor Castle saw it. Tiberius Cavallo, F.R.S. watched a cosmic body, like this, from the terrace of the royal castle.

It was first stationary and appeared oblong. Then it moved, emitting prodigious light. It vanished to the south-east, lighting up the sky like day. It jetted gases from a tail and there came a rumble like an explosion. At first it moved horizontally to the horizon, then vertically, ascending. It was seen at York, about 180 miles north, where horses in fields trembled at the glare it threw out. A church dignitary there heard two great explosions. It was later seen over Ireland, where it now assumed the form of a parabolic body with a vividly red and blue luminous tail.

But this strange body, like a house on fire in the sky, had been seen two years earlier - in September 1767 at Couper Angus, Scotland, and in most startling a guise!

Said a very old and rare Scottish magazine:

Over the water near Couper Angus there came a thick dark smoke, which rose to reveal a large luminous body like a house on fire. It took a pyramidal form, rolled forward with great, impetuosity and rushed up the river Erick with great speed. It carried away a large cart, lifted in the air a man riding a horse, stunned him, and cut a house in a half, as well as destroying an arch of a new bridge. Then it vanished.

In 1775 there appeared in the sky at 8:30 p.m. on May 8, a strange ball of light with a slow motion. It shone like the full moon and passed over Waltham Abbey, Hertfordshire. Our ancestors in the 18th century and earlier were not exactly all fools or visionaries as many modern scientists imply. It is hoped that these comparative observations at widely separated dates may convince some of the authenticity of the reports.

On September 10, 1798, at 11;40 p.m. a body shaped like an apothecary’s pestle, or cylinder, suddenly appeared out of a cloud over the town of Alnwick, Northumberland. It was seen by a schoolmaster and another man. It went in and out of the cloud and then a small (narrow, but long) streamer seemed to cut the “pestle” below it’s center. A cloud again hid it, and when the strange object reappeared, it looked like a hammer and the streamer had assumed two horns or prongs, like those of a fork. Again a cloud hid it. This time, it reappeared with the form of two half moons, back to back, with a short thick luminous stream of some radiant energy flowing between the two globes. At each reappearance the phenomenon became more brilliant until the stars in the sky looked like mere specks. It was visible for five minutes and then vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

I have not space to enumerate the many occasions in the 18th century, and in 1811 when in the sky over various parts of England and over Armagh, Ireland, strange bright searchlights swept the sky. In 1811, people in Northern Ireland were so struck with these lights in the sky that they sent for fire engines. It may be noted that searchlights using acetylene, or other sources of illumination, were not known or used till a late date in the 19th century.

On the morning of August 12, 1883, Senor Jose A.Y. Bonilla, director of the Astronomical Observatory of Zacatecas, Mexico, was investigating sun spots when he was amazed to see pas, apparently across the solar disk, a small luminous body. Hardly had he recovered from his surprise when he was startled to see a succession of these same singular bodies passing over the solar disk. In two hours he counted 283 of them. Then clouds interrupted the view. Some were dark and black, others perfectly round. There were traveling from east to west. actually they were all luminous bodies but their light was absorbed by the actinic ray of the sun as they appeared to cross it’s disk. In point of fact, these mysterious travelers of outer space were traversing the vault of space between the moon and the Earth. On the following morning, he counted 1,166 of these mysterious bodies still apparently crossing the solar disk!

What were these strange cosmic objects?

Only a fraction of what had ever appearance of being an interplanetary army or fleet of some thousands of space ships were seen voyaging between the Earth and the moon far out in space, on august 12 and 13, 1883. Camille Flammarion, the famous French astronomer, who saw the photographs made by Senor Bonilla, was mystified. He tentatively suggested insects, birds, or dust particles in the upper atmosphere. But Bonilla did not agree.

One thing is clear; these bodies, whatever they may have been or from whence they came, had -like many of the so-called “flying saucers” - no hostile intention regarding our own planet.

Again on March 22, 1880, at Kattenau, Germany, about dawn, says Nature (London, Eng. scientific journal):

An enormous number of luminous bodies rose from the horizon and passed in a horizontal direction from east to west. They appeared in a zone or belt and shone with a remarkably brilliant light.

I have no space here to cite the numerous strange objects seen in the skies over land and sea in all parts of the world between 1830 and 1914. I can only refer briefly to a few occasions - one at Chisbury, Wilts, England, another above Fort Worth, Texas - when a strange shadow was seen on the surface of the clouds. It was cast by some unseen body about the clouds!

1852: Globes of light seen in the air over Swabia (S.W. Bavaria, or Bayern, Germany) on May 22.

1877: March 23. Dazzling balls of fire appeared from a cloud, and moved slowly over Venice, France. Visible for more than one hour. Similar balls seen in sky over Venice eight or ten years before. October 5. Mysterious balls like electric lights seen over West Wales coast. They appeared and vanished suddenly. High velocity.

1880: July 30. At night, in a ravine near St. Petersburg (now Leningrad), Russia, a large sphere and two smaller ones, all illuminated, seen for three minutes moving along a ravine. They vanished noiselessly.

1893: May 25. Captain Charles J. Norcock, of H.M.S. Caroline, saw globular lights for two hours in sky at 10 p.m. between Shanghai and Japan in East China Sea. These balls of light were also seen the same night for seven and one-half hours by Captain Castle of H.M.S. Leander. He changed the ship’s course to chase them but they fled from him.

1896: A U.S. postal clerk saw a round red light rise 100 feet over a train he was in at night, at Trenton, Maryland. It rose higher and went north. At first it outsped the train, then it fell behind.

1950: October 30, from 10:50 to 11 p.m. Two brilliant blue spherical lights traveled at a terrific speed over Devon, England, from north to south. they came inland from over the Bristol Channel. Numerous eyewitnesses included naval men at Devonport.

December 2: in daytime. Noiseless globes of fire vanished in a flash of light over Towyn, Merioneth, Wales. At Penzance, Cornwall, players in football matches stopped play to watch a long black object, with a flaming tail four miles long, rush across the sky. At Looe, East Cornwall, a blue light, “like a sausage,” rushed across the sky.

December 7: Balls of light seen by farmers in Cumberland, England. All descriptions tally.

9. The Strange Foo Fighters

One of the most baffling mysteries of the Second World War were strange aerial apparitions in the shape of blazing balls which were encountered over Truk Lagoon, in the skies of Japan, the West Rhine area of Alsace-Lorraine and over the Bavarian Palatinate. There were met by U.S. night fighters pilots at night, by U.S. day bomber squadrons and by some British air pilots.

These weird balls of fantastic and variable speeds, glowed from an orange to red and white and back to orange and appear to have been sighted first at 10 p.m. on November 23, 1944, by a U.S. pilot in the area north of Strasbourg in Alsace-Lorraine. Three nights later they were again seen by a U.S. pilot flying in the same area.

Just before the Allies overran and captured the secret German experimental stations east of the Rhine these balls vanished. But in no such station was the slightest clue discovered even hinting that the Nazi technicians had invented and flown these mysterious blazing balls.

Over Japan, Nipponese air pilots met the blazing balls and took them to be secret and mysterious aerial devices of the Americans or the Russians. On the other hand, equally mystified U.S. pilots supposed that the balls were a curious device thought up by Japan as a last-ditch expedient to stave off mass-bombing raids.

One pilot chatting in the mess with others who had met the balls on night flights - and had been “ribbed” by intelligence officers who heard their reports - had a brain wave. “Let’s call the so and so’s foo fighters,” he said. The name stuck. It seems to have been suggested by a comic strip in which one “Smokey Stover” said: “Yeah, if there’s foo, there’s fire.” Probably the slang word foo is a corruption of the French word feu, or fire.

A foo fighter was seen from the ground by Harold T. Wilkins on November 2, 1950:

At 6:20 p.m. I went into the garden of this house at Bexleyheath, Kent, which stands on a low hill and had a commanding view of a region of Kent just twelve miles from Charing Cross, in central London. I merely sought a breath of fresh air and was looking for nothing. Glancing up casually into the starry sky, I suddenly saw a yellow luminous ball appear in the southern quadrant of the sky.

It flew silently, with no gas or spark-emission, on a level trajectory and at no great velocity. It vanished into a belt of cumulus cloud near the zenith. It did not reappear. Was no sort of balloon, weather or cosmic. Was no meteor, and no sort of pyrotechnic. It’s altitude was about 2,500 feet up and it shone with lunar brilliancy.

Next morning the London Daily Telegraph reported that on the same night but one hour and forty minutes later people in the Herts-Bucks border, some twenty-five miles west, were mystified by a strange orange light flashing across the sky and visible for some seconds. Some thirty miles west of the Herts-Bucks border is the British Ministry of Supply’s atomic station of Harwell, Berks.

Exactly three weeks earlier - October 12, 1950 - a woman cycling from Gloucester City, England, reached the Barnwood suburb of the town when, as she told the local newspaper:

I was startled at 11;15 p.m. that night to see four lights, like huge stars, stationary over Barnwood. After a few moments their lights began to wink in and out ...

Two friends tell me they saw these lights that same night and they two of them moved over a hill about two miles away. I refuse to believe they were airplanes.

It was at 10 p.m. on November 23, 1944, when Lieutenant Edward Schluter, U.S. pilot of the 415th Night Fighter squadron, stationed at Dijon, in south central France, took off from Dijon, on a routine patrol to intercept German planes west of the Rhine between Strasbourg and Mannheim. As the crow flies he had to fly 150 miles on a patrol that would take him east over the Vosges mountains, a very lonely, grim and isolated range buttressing the westward approaches to the Rhine. Schluter is a finely built man, the last word in aeronautical efficiency, and a very experienced night fighter of the Second World War. He is a native of Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

With him, in the darkened cockpit of the plane, were the radar observer, Lieutenant David J. Meiers, and an intelligence officer, Lieutenant F. Ringwald. Nothing happened till their plane had crossed the Vosges and they had sighted the shining waters of the Rhine, rolling rapidly toward Mainz.

The sky that night was clear, with light clouds. Visibility was good and the moon was in the first quarter. U.S. radar stations, covering all U.S. pilots in that area, had not notified the crew of any other plane in the sky. Some way to the east, Schluter could see the white steam jetted from the smokestack of a German freight locomotive, running in black-out conditions with fire-box door clamped up and blinded.

At this time, in 1944, Germany stood at bay and the Allies were closing in on her. Some 20 miles north of Strasbourg, Lieutenant Ringwald, the U.S. intelligence officer, glanced to the west and noticed eight or ten balls of red fire moving at an amazing velocity. They seemed to be in formation and could be seen clearly from the darkened cockpit of the U.S. night fighter.

“Say,” said Ringwald to Schluter, “look over there at the bright lights on those hills yonder. What are they?”

Schluter: “Hell, buddy, there are no hills over there! I should say they were stars. You don’t need me to tell you that it is not east to guess at the nature of lights on night flights ... Not when they are distant, as these are.”

Ringwald: “Stars, d’ye say? I don’t reckon they are stars. Why, their speed is terrific!”

Schluter: “Maybe they are just reflections from our own plane. We are going pretty fast.”

Ringwald: “I am certain, absolutely sure, that those lights are not reflected from us.”

Schluter gazed hard at the lights. they were now off his port wing. He got into radio telephone with one of the ground radar stations.

“There are about ten Heinie night fighters around here in the sky. Looks as if they are chasing us and their speed is high. I’ll say it is!”

U.S. Radar Station: “You guys must be nuts! Nobody is up there but your own plane. Ain’t seein’ things are you?”

Meiers in the plane glanced at the radarscope. No enemy planes showed up on the screen! Schluter now maneuvered the fighter for action and headed towards the lights. They were blazing red. Suddenly they seemed to vanish into thin air! Two minutes later they reappeared but now a long way off. It looked as if they were aware of being chased. Six minutes later the balls did a glide, leveled out, and vanished.

None of the occupants of the U.S. night fighter could make out what the red balls were. Schluter guessed they might be some German experimental devices like the red, green, blue, and white and yellow rockets that flashed up amid the flak of antiaircraft batteries when a big enemy raid was on.

But the bewildered night fighter pilots did not let this mystery spoil their mission. Lieutenant Schluter that night bombed hell out of eight fast German freight trains on the Rhine railroads. Back at the base at Dijon, knowing they would not be believed by intelligence higher-ups and might be charged with hallucinations and war neurosis, Schluter and his two companions said nothing. They made no report to base at Dijon.

On November 27, 1944, another act in the foo fighter drama was staged. Lieutenant Henry Giblin, native of Santa Rosa, California, was flying a U.S. night fighter in the Alsace-Lorraine region, south of Mannheim-am-Rhein. He had with him Lieutenant Walter Clearly of Worchester, Mass., as radar-observer. As they were approaching the German town of Speyer on the Rhine south of Mannheim, they got a shock. Some 1,500 feet above their own plane a “hell of a huge fierce fiery orange light” shot across the night sky at an estimated speed of 250 miles per hour.

Again U.S. ground radar stations reported when called: “No enemy machines in the vicinity. Only your own plane in the sky over there.”

Giblin and Cleary decided to say nothing to intelligence. fearing ridicule from higher quarters. It is not wise for a war-time flyer to take such a risk. let some one else do the reporting! No other observations of queer things in the sky came the way of the U.S. 415th Night Fighter squadron until three days before Christmas, 1944. On December 22, 1944, Lieutenant David McFalls, of Cliffside, N.C. and Lieutenant Edward Baker, radar observer, of Hemat, Calif., were flying

10,000 feet just south of Hagenau in the old German Reichsland. Hagenau is 20 miles north of Strasbourg and 16 miles west of the Rhine.

Here is the report of U.S. pilot Giblin:

At 0600 (six p.m.), near Hagenau, at 10,000 feet altitude, two very bright lights climbed toward us from the ground. They leveled off and stayed on the tail of our plane. they were huge bright orange lights. They stayed there for two minutes.

On my tail all the time. They were under perfect control. Then they turned way from us, and the fire seemed to go out.

On the night of December 24, 1944, McFalls and Baker had another amazing experience. Here is their report:

A glowing red ball shot straight up at us. It suddenly changed into an airplane which did a wing over! then it dived and disappeared.

In 1947, Kenneth Ehlers, of the Landing Aids Experimental Station at Arcata, California, directed a C-47 pilot to fly of a certain location, because of the appearance on his radarscope of what are technically called “discontinuities.” There appeared to be three signals, denoting that three aircraft were passing over the airfield at Arcata. Yet, when the pilot reached the spot in the air, he saw nothing nor did this instruments record any electrical reactions.

So far in 1944 the pilots of the 415th squadron had seen these weird balls at night and despite the ridicule of higher-ups and the medical and psychiatric skeptics, other reports began to be made. In the Pacific theater pilots began to be warned before starting out on mission that if they met strange phenomena in the sky they need not conclude that they were suffering from hysteria, war-induced neurosis, or hallucinations.

Pilots talking war “shop” in the messes called the balls krauts, or kraut balls. British night fighter pilots thought the foo fighters were secret German experimental devices, perhaps intended to strike fear in a war of nerves. Some U.S. intelligence officers supposed they were radio controlled objects sent up to baffle radar, in the same way of the foil “window” that was dropped to confuse the radar watchers.

There is the case of a U.S. bomber pilot of the 8th U.S. Air Force. He reported that he saw 15 foo fighters following his plane at a distance, with their lights winking on and off. A U.S. P-47 pilot saw 15 foo fighters by day at or near Neustadt in the same Rhenish area, some 40 miles west of the Rhine and 55 miles northwest of Strasbourg.

Here is his report:

We were flying west of Neustadt when a golden sphere, which shone with a metallic glitter, appeared, slowly moving through the sky. The sun was not far above the sky line, which made it difficult to say whether or not the sun’s rays were reflected from it or whether the glow came from within the ball itself.

A second P-47 (Thunderbolt) pilot also saw the same or another “Golden or phosphorescent, ball which appeared to be about four or five feet in diameter flying 2,000 feet up.”

By this time the higher-ups in the U.S. Air Force had been forced to take notice of the increasing reports of level-headed pilot-observers. I was no longer enough to wave these reports away with a smile and half-serious reference to hallucination and combat neuroses. Nor were the men satisfied at the explanation that they were flares. Whoever saw a flare that behaved as did the foo fighters? Flares are not maneuverable.

The final attempt at a brush-off came from New York, in January, 1945 when “scientists” insulted the intelligence of the men of 415th. The New York scientific wallahs said the men of the 415th and the 8th Air Force had been seeing St. Elmo’s lights! It may be noted that St. Elmo’s lights are seen on sea and land in times of electrical meteorological conditions. they have been seen at the top of Pike’s Peak, from ships’ mast heads, and from the tops of towers and spires. In the days of Julius Caesar there was one occasion when these lights flashed from the tops of the spears of his legionaries.

In our own time the White Star Liner Germanic in mid-Atlantic, ran into a heavy thunderstorm at 1 a.m. Electrical flames one and a half inches long jetted from the foremast truck and small balls, one-half inch to two and one-half inches in diameter, ran up and down the mast but were “tied” to it.

But what possible resemblance could there have been between these weird foo fighters, under intelligent control, and St. Elmo’s lights?

In 1945 the foo fighters made their appearance in the seas of the Far East - the other side of the globe from the German Rhine - over Japan, and over Truk Lagoon. Crews of U.S. B-29 bombers reported to intelligence that balls of fire of mysterious types came up from below their cockpits over Japan, hovered over the tails of their bombers, winked their lights from red to orange, then back from red to white. It was the same thing that had happened a few months before on the other side of the globe over the Rhine! Here too the weird balls were inoffensive - just nosey and exploratory, albeit, unnerving.

One night a B-29 pilot rose into a cloud in order to shake one of these balls of fire. When this plane emerged from the cloud-bank the ball was still following him! He said it looked to be about three and one half feet wide and glowed with a strange red phosphorescence. It was spherical, with not one sign of any mechanical appendage such as wings, fins or fuselage. It followed the bomber for five or six miles and he lost sight of it as the dawn light rose over Mount Fujiyama, some 60 miles southerly of Tokyo. Here it seemed to vanish into thin air!

The B-29’s found that even at top speed they could not outdistance these balls of fire. Some

12,000 feet up over Truk Lagoon in the Caroline archipelago, a pilot of a B-24 Liberator was startled by the sudden appearance of two glowing red lights that shot up fro below and for 75 minutes followed on his tail.

One flaming ball turned back while the other still dogged his bomber. It maneuvered in such a way as to suggest intelligent direction from some remote control. It came abreast of the Liberator, then it shot ahead, and for 1,500 yards held the lead. After that it fell behind. It’s speed was immensely variable. As dawn came, the strange ball climbed some 16,000 feet above him into the sunshine. In the night hours the pilot noticed changes in the colors of the ball, which were precisely what had been seen over the Rhine, in 1944. It was just a sphere with no appendages.

The pilot radioed to base and had the reply: “No; no enemy planes are near you. Your own bomber is the only one up there, as the radarscope shows.”

Now while the foo fighters were making their appearance in the Far Eastern theater, they were, at about the same time in January, 1945, again sighted by pilots of the U.S. 415th Night Fighter squadron. These pilots reported to U.S. intelligence at the Dijon base, that over Western Germany they had met the blazing balls alone, in pairs, and in formations. One pilot said that three formations of these lights, red and white in color, followed his plane. He suddenly reduced speed and apparently took them off guard. They came on with undiminished speed and then, to avoid any collision, also reduced speed and fell back, though still dogging him.

From ground radar came the usual reply: “Nothing up there but your own plane!”

On another occasion, when the queer formation of foo fighters got on the tail of a U.S. night fighter of 415th squadron, the perplexed and exasperated pilot swung his craft around and headed for them at top speed! As he came, the lights vanished into thin air. They simply were no longer there.

Note what this pilot reported:

“As I passed where they had been I’ll swear I felt the propeller backwash of invisible planes!”

Came the reply from a derisive ground radar station: “Are you fellows all loco? You must be crazy! You’re up there all alone!”

The puzzled pilot flew on and, glancing back, was now startled to see that the balls had reappeared about half a mile astern of his plane. He thought to himself: “I’ll show these spook planes a trick!” The night was starry but, near the zenith, was a bank of cumulus cloud. He headed his plane at top speed right into the mass of cloud. Then he throttled back and glided down for about 1,800 feet. He turned the machine around and headed back from the cloud the way he had entered it, but on a much lower level. Sure enough, the balls had been caught napping! They emerged from the cloud ahead but now on a course opposite to his own!

It is true that, when the Allies overran Germany, no more foo fighters were seen. On the other hand, when secret German experimental stations were seized and their secrets examined by intelligence men, nothing was found blueprinting plans for blazing balls that can be made visible or invisible in the wink of an eyelid! Such a discovery would have been the most tremendous accomplishment of mid-twentieth century science! It could not have been kept secret!

10. Foreign Sightings

Reports of flying saucers from other countries have been numerous than has been supposed, but most of them have one fault in common: they do not contain the necessary detail to give them factual and confirmable stature. Most are fragmentary, and come through the news services merely as an “item,” mostly without verification, and many times without even names or dates. However, we have selected a few reports which bear some semblance to factual reporting, and we present them in defense of the fact that the sightings of flying disks is a world-wide phenomenon. The question has been asked: “Why do they not appear in other countries?” The answer is, they do.

1899: Austria. Mrs. Cecelia Gawert, a resident of Lower Austria at that time, during the harvest season, saw a disk-shaped object which was very high and shone with silver and gold. It was going very fast, and disappeared over the mountains. It made no noise. Mrs. Gawert now lives at 38 Post Ave., New York City.

July 8, 1947: Zabool, Iran. Strange starlike bodies were seen at this point, and also at Shosef and Sarbisheh near the Afghan frontier. After cavorting about the sky, the objects exploded loudly, leaving a cloud of smoke.

October 25, 1947: Hymers, Canada. More than 50 townspeople saw a strange object swoop into sight from the south, remain stationary for fifteen minutes, then flash back in the direction from which it had come. Frank Sutch described it as a long streak of fire. Heat waves were coming from it. It was dark at the nose end, as bright as the sun, and hurt the eyes to look at. It came from the southwest, as Frank Sutch saw it, then turned directly toward him. After a few seconds it curved upward, wheeled around, and started south again. Mrs. A.H. Verlotte saw it do a somersault then turn south toward the Minnesota border, 30 miles away. It looked like electric light waves coming from it, she said. Mrs. C.A. McGregor, school teacher, said it remained in her view for quite a few minutes and was observed by all the children. It was not a comet or fireball, she was sure.

November 5, 1947; Persian Gulf. Richard Carruthers, Jr. aboard the tanker Chipola, saw eight round objects flying in a group, pass within a half-mile of the ship, make a climbing turn in echelon formation and pass out of sight. Four aboard the ship saw the lights, but opinion was varied as to whether they were white or blue.

June 18, 1949: Two farmers at Kent, England, reported they saw tailless blobs of light spinning across the heavens.

February 1, 1950: St. John’s, Newfoundland, Pat Walsh, telephone company electrician and navy veteran, reported seeing a tear-shaped object as bright as a fluorescent light race of St. John’s ad head out to sea. It was in sight for at least twelve seconds and it seemed to be following an arch-like flight at extremely high speed. Mrs. C. Vaughn also saw the object.

February 23, 1950: Santiago, Chile. Commander Augusto Vars Orrego, head of the Chilean Antarctic Base of Arthur Prat, saw, on several occasions during the Antarctic night, flying saucers, one above the other, turning at tremendous speeds. Photographs were taken.

March 2, 1950: Mexico City. Luis Enrique Erro, head of the Tonantzintla Observatory near Puebla, says an exceptional object flew thought space and crossed the field of his Schmidt telescope. Luis Munch, fellow astronomer who was operating the camera of the telescope, photographed the object. In the film, it showed as a broad white streak diagonally across a jet black field. Professor Lauro Herrera was assisting Munch. The photograph was taken just before dawn. The object appeared to be about the diameter of the moon and at least as bright.

March 10, 1950: Edmonton, Alberta. F. Arnold Richards, civic employee, saw objects with a whitish-bluish flame shooting out of the wide end of the object. three objects appeared in all.

March 11, 1950: Juarez, Mexico. Roberto Antorena, Amilcar Lopez Sousa and Manuel Espejo, customs and border officials, saw a top-like disk traveling high in the sky and headed for the mountains on the edge of El Paso.

March 11, 1950: Juarez, Mexico. Luis Herrara, travel agency owner, saw a strange disk-shaped object over the city for fifteen minutes. At the same time, John E. Baird of El Paso saw a globular object near Deming, New Mexico.

March 13, 1950: Mexico City. Santiago Smith, a chief weather observer for the Mexico City airport, trained a telescope on an object shaped like a half-moon, one of four flying bodies crossing the airport at 35,000 to 40,000 feet.

March 13, 1950: Monterey, Mexico. Francisco Martinez Soto, government airport inspector, saw an object moving in a straight line and changing it’s altitude by one and one-half degrees in three minutes.

March 16, 1950: Delhi, Ontario. Paul Rapai, Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Hertel and Steve Fodor saw a mysterious objects whirling against the horizon at 4 a.m. It looked like the moon but appeared duller. It rolled on it’s side at one point and seemed to have a saucer-like shape. It moved in jerks, as if controlled. It moved faster than a jet toward the horizon, then suddenly rose sharply and disappeared. It seemed to get bigger and duller when it moved, brighter and smaller when it stood still. It swished silently from north to south, hovering up and down alternatively.

March 16, 1950: Miraflores, Peru. Julian Guardiol, Swiss engineer, was with members of his family when he saw a disk flying from the south. It was giving off a red yellow glow, and progressed to where they were walking. It stopped directly above them at about 4,500 feet altitude and remained in that position for five minutes. Then it flew northward at tremendous speed. The object glowed brightest around the rim.

March 16, 1950: San Jose Purua, Mexico. Dr. W.C. Behen (of Lansing, Michigan) made both photographs and movies of a double truncated cone, silver in color and eight or nine thousand feet in the air. The object would disappear from time to time, but would reappear to hover in one area for several minutes. It appeared at 1 p.m. and was observed through powerful field glasses.

March 24, 1950: Jalapa, Mexico. The newspaper El Universal reported at least 300 flying disks flying above the city. They began to disappear about sundown.

June 7, 1950: London, England. An R.A.F. pilot radioed his base: “Strange object seen. Looks like a flying saucer.” Radar operators at the base picked up a strong “blip” on their screens. The air ministry withheld all information.

Nov. 5, 1950: Four Pan American Airways employees saw a brilliantly lighted object fly east to west over the airport at Heathrow, England. It flew a straight line and did not describe a curve. Fred Wilkinson, former R.A.F. flight engineer, now on the Pan Am. operational staff, thought at first it was a jet, but it’s shape, brilliant light and the presence of a blue flame from it’s tail made him revise his opinion. He estimated it’s speed at 1,000 miles per hour. Patrick Joseph Maloney, ex-R.A.F. gunner, described it as a bright white light, metallic colored, elongated, but as it went out of sight it seemed to become spherical. Fred Perrior, ex-antiaircraft gunner and aircraft spotter saw it first as cigarette-shaped, becoming round as it disappeared. E. Newman, maintenance man, saw it as a bluish-green light, lasting for a few seconds. It traveled on a straight line but he was certain it was no aircraft or meteor.

Nov. 12, 1950: Edward Leslie Docker, wholesale fruit dealer in Hindpool Road, Barrow-in-Furness, England, saw a huge cigar-shaped object from the window of his office. the center was aluminum in color, the ends were darker. Estimated to be flying at about 4,000 feet, moving through broken clouds at 80 miles per hour. Approximately 100 feet long. Also seen by John Clarke, ex-R.A.F. man, who said it was too big for an airplane and was tapered at both ends.

Nov. 12, 1950: Fairbanks, Alaska. C.G. Kelly, Reeves Airway pilot, approaching an airfield eight miles southwest of Anchorage, saw an object overhead traveling at 1,000 miles per hour, it’s brightness increasing in intensity until it was too blinding to look at. Then there was an explosion, and the object vanished in a northeasterly direction. The object was reported from Kodiak to Fairbanks, and was seen from Seward, Portage and Skwentna. Anti-aircraft batteries at Anchorage opened fire on the object as it whizzed overhead.

January, 1951; Belgium Congo. Two disks were sighted handing over the Uranium mining pits, and upon being observed, were pursued by planes. They made off in a peculiar zig-zag course. One of the planes, a Spitfire, came close enough to see a whirling rim on one of the saucers. In a few moments the disks easily outdistanced the Spitfires and disappeared.

February 19, 1951: Two pilots and nine passengers of the regular plane from Nairobi to Mombasi, Africa, saw a huge cigar-shaped vessel, at first quite stationary over the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, then, as the plane came closer, rise rapidly at what was estimated to be 1,000 miles per hour and disappear at 44,000 feet. The vessel was judged to be about 200 feet long, brilliantly polished save for four duller bars which ran vertically down it’s body. It had a huge fin or paddle-rudder at the stern. There was no exhaust. All told, the craft was in view for 17 minutes. One of the passengers is reported to have taken a photo of the object, although this photo has been remarkable by it’s absence.

11. Reports From American Observers

The vast number of authentic American sightings precludes even a partially complete resume of them. We have given here merely a representative selection, including some of the personal reports we have had from individuals as well as those which have been publicized.

The reader is not to assume from the dates given that from their range of frequencies any particular astronomical deductions can be made; a complete listing of sightings would be necessary to make any such study. Yet it is noted there were are several periods where it seemed there were “peaks” in this frequency of sightings. Some of these peaks are quite deceiving, indicating only the times when the press was “hot” on the subject. The actual act of the matter is that most observation peaks depend strictly on the weather and the season of the year. Taken all in all, the volume of reports tends to level out, and it could be assumed that no actual significant peaks exist.

Many of these reports have been personally investigated, and in some instances, tape recordings have been made of the reports of informants. Only the vital information of each sighting is given, and all personal detail is reported.

* * *

July 7, 1947: David W. Chase, Phoenix, Oregon. radar technician, saw an object about five miles south of Medford, Oregon, at 5:20 in the evening. It passed to the easy, going 6-700 miles per hour at approximately 10,000 feet. It was in view from 60 to 70 seconds before disappearing over the horizon. The total view of the course was about 150°. The saucer was flying on edge, at right angles to the plane of the Earth. The large surface area visible was either reflecting or giving off a tremendous amount of light which was the color of an arc welder’s light - a bright blue-white - and the motion of the saucer in flight made Chase think of a bright faceted stone such as a diamond under a brilliant light. The source of the saucer was over small hills and mountains 500 to 1,000 feet in height. The saucer seemed to be flying the contour of the terrain, bobbing up and down, but not in a steady rhythm.

July 9, 1947: Dave Johnson, aviation editor of the Idaho Statesman, set off on an aerial search for the disks which lasted three days. On the third day, he saw a circular object bank about in front of a cloud bank for 45 seconds. It was round. It appeared black. As it maneuvered, he saw the sun flash from it once. Johnson was flying at 14,000 feet west of Boise, Idaho. He saw it clearly and distinctly, lowering his plexiglass canopy so that there would be no reflection or distortion.

It was rising sharply and jerkily toward the top of the towering bank of clouds. Then the object turned it’s edge toward him, appearing as a straight, black line. Then it shot straight up. It was moving very fast, and was very large. Upon landing, three Idaho National Guardsmen were waiting for him. They had seen a similar object in the same area, performing as he had seen it perform.

August 6, 1947: Mr. and Mrs. Jim Reid and children, Owen Fletcher, dock Benningfield and bob Patterson of Robert Lee, Texas, saw an object in the sky at about 10 p.m. in the shape of a luminous disk. It was larger and faster than a plane. It maneuvered in the sky for twenty minutes, then vanished in the direction of San Angelo. Fifteen minutes later it returned, this time in the shape of a long log. The sky was clear, with no clouds. The nearest searchlight, with a range of 35 miles, was 100 miles away. It floated back and forth in the air and was much larger than any plane any of them had ever seen. It moved swiftly, but without noise. It continued it’s capers for more than a half hour. Finally, it took on the shape of a long cigar with a thin, smoky trail, then vanished in the distance.

August 8, 1947; Mrs. Jay Eagle, Upton, Wyoming, saw a flying disk at sundown. She saw a flash, darting across the sky, then another flash. It disappeared for a few seconds, then reappeared, farther away. It was traveling at a great rate of speed. It wasn’t bright, appearing to be an orange colored glow. It seemed to be turning as it traveled, and at each turn, disappeared or seemed to, as it presented it’s thin aspect. Mrs. Engle’s children, upon reaching home from town, reported the same object.

August 9, 1947: Aubrey V. Brooks, Box 67, Nipomo, California, was vacationing with his wife and cousin and wife at Rock, and was camp at an elevation of 8,500 feet. It was mid-morning and he had been practicing with a .22 rifle at the base of a peak to the west. Suddenly his cousin’s wife looked up and asked “What are those?” and pointed. Over the peak came three nearly straight lines of whitish objects, one line behind the other. There was no count made of their number, but it was estimated, that there were 15 to 20 in each line. As they came overhead, the formation broke up and the objects moved in and around the back and forth, appearing to stay in the same level, but not banking at all. As first they appeared to be round, but as they came overhead they assumed the shape of a valentine heart with the cleft absent. in the center of the objects was a darkish mark which appeared to be a circular mark. The objects were colored like frosted glass through which light was shining. There was no glint as of metal. As they drew directly overhead, Brooks fired at one of them with his rifle, which was futile, as they were several thousand feet above the peak. Several seconds later one object was observed returning in the direction form which all had come. One group swerved to the left, while the other two groups continued in their original direction. The group on the left disappeared instantly, as though they had presented their thin sides to the observers. The other two groups continued east, and gradually disappeared. They appeared to be as wide as an auto appears two city blocks distant.

Sept. 13, 1947: E.L. Lynn, 1040 Knox Ave, Bellingham, Wash., saw a large black object the size of the moon. It was very black, then it became a light yellow, then a light pink. finally it began to shine like a very bright tin pan. It was about 20 miles distant and two miles high, he estimated. It was in view for five or six seconds and traveling five times as fast as the Alaska Plane which passes overhead frequently.

Feb. 21, 1948: Charles Francis Coe, editor of the Palm Beach times, and his son, saw a ray or blob of light sweeping in from the southwest over West Palm Beach, Fla., at 2 a.m. It curved over the Atlantic and headed northeast in a wide arc as though following the curve of the Earth.

May 17, 1948: Fred Granger, aircraft communicator stationed at the Seattle-Tacoma, Wash., airport spotted what appeared to be four stars or lights with red and green flashes shooting from them at intervals. The four lights were northwest of the city, approximately 25 degrees above the horizon. They were in a sort of loose pyramid position. They were visible between 10 p.m. and midnight. At 11:30 p.m. Mr. and Mrs. Young, 9045 7th Ave., N.W. Seattle, saw three bright red flashes in the northwest. A few minutes later Mrs. Young saw what appeared to be a skyrocket.

July 26, 1948: Rev. L.S. Eberly and wife, of Valley City, N.D. noticed a bright light . The spheroid, just above the trees, was dark in the center and radiated light rays near the outer rings. It was observed for an hour. on the following morning a similar object appeared, and Rev. Eberly call Robert Downs, the Times-Record employee, who also observed the object.

July 27, 1948: Mobile, Alabama. At 9:16 p.m. at least twelve persons saw an oval ball of fire followed by about 400 feet of bluish-white flame. It was apparently about half as big as the moon, and some observers saw it as a cigarshaped object with a red flame flaring into white at the tail. It seemed to flow, also, from one end to the other. It was traveling between 800 and 900 miles per hour, as estimated by a Brookley Air Force Base pilot who requested that this name be withheld. among those who saw this object were Perry Browning, Jr., Rosedale Rd., Brookley, Mrs. Jessie Taylor, 206 St. Joseph St. and two guests, C.R. Bryan, 59-C Moreland Dr., Prichard and three other persons with him at the time.

Summer, 1948: Billy Rose, Newspaper Columnist, was visiting Paul Osbourne, playwright, at Newtown, Conn. It was a clear, moonlit night. Present were Mr. Osbourne and his wife, Josh Logan and his wife and author John Hersey and his wife. At 10 p.m. they noticed three searchlights poking into the air. A few minutes later three objects appeared, seeming to be at least 200 feet in diameter and flying at an altitude of 3,000 to 5,000 feet. Their edges gave off a ghostly glow very much like a blue neon light through a heavy fog. When the searchlights cut off, the disks vanished among the stars.

September 23, 1948; Mr. and Mrs. A.J. Kaus, Caroline Beach, N. Carolina, saw a huge ball of clear, white light while traveling from Mountain Home to Boise, Idaho. It was between two layers of cloud at approximately 2,000 feet elevation. It flared twice, strongly at first, then weaker, then held steady for a few seconds and went out. The light was round in shape, with jagged edges.

October 9, 1948: Leroy Griffin and Homer Gray, Osage, Wyoming, saw a huge shiny object, luminous and shaped like a disk. It remained in view for two minutes then divided into two parts and disappeared.

Feb. 18, 1949: Ben Cole Jr., Northbrook, Illinois, saw a flaming object hurtle out of the east at 6;11 a.m. and disintegrate in a fiery shower south of Chicago. At the same time, 40 miles away, Ed Mahler, 1722 W. 56th St., saw a rocket half a block long speeding from east to south. The front was shaped exactly like a rocket. The tail seemed to fall to pieces as it dived into a large cloud. It did not make any noise.

March 25, 1949: Residents of Bend, Oregon, saw two flying disks cavorting in the skies, mirroring the rays of the sun as they dipped through the clouds. Traffic was soon blocked by observers. World War II aviator Vernon Leverett estimated their height at well over 10,000 feet, and their size about that of a large washtub. The objects finally headed west and disappeared.

April 14, 1949: Clifford Cline, Branch County, Mich., farmer, saw a dishshaped object with an orange center and light outer edge.

April, 1949; White Sands proving Ground, Scientists (reported Commander Robert B. McLaughlin, USN) were tracking a weather balloon 57 miles northwest of the grounds. A strange object, see by every person, crossed above the balloon. It was tracked with a theodolite. The object was saucer-shaped. It was about 105 feet in diameter, and was estimated to be flying at 56 miles about the Earth. It was traveling at approximately 5 miles per second. Suddenly it swerved, shooting upward at an angle of five degrees, climbing an additional 25 miles in something like ten seconds. the observation lasted for a full minute before the object disappeared from sight. Observers said it was shaped like a discus and was a flat white in color. It did not seem to have an exhaust trail, not any lights. Naturally, there was no sound.

April 28, 1949: Leon Faber, Sandwich, III., saw a bright shining object moving east while flying his plane over the Gary-Michigan City, Ind., area at an elevation of 6,000 feet. The object seemed to be 10,000 feet away, about the apparent size of a basketball. It was on it’s flat side and just disappeared suddenly without getting any smaller.

May 7, 1949: Benjamin F. Smith, Oakland, California, saw two rows of square objects flying in the regular airliner levels traveling from south to north. They moved at tremendous speed and made no sound.

May, 1949: White Sands Proving Ground. Commander Robert B. McLaughlin, USN, was standing outside his office. A missile was being fired. Losing sight of it, a lieutenant commander pointed out another object, white in color, proceeding slowly westward. It picked up speed, passed overhead, and disappeared over the Organ mountains. A moment later the missile that had been fired fell to the ground in the center of the area designated for it. When first sighted, the object had been going at approximately 1 mile per second. It was at a height of twenty-five miles, and when it accelerated, it did so at a rate far beyond the capabilities of any present-day rocket. Passing within 5 degrees of the sun, it remained visible. No method of propulsion was visible.

July 9, 1949: Alexandria, Va. C.S. Dupree saw a light reflected on the sidewalk, looked up and saw a saucer shaped object traveling very fast. It was not bright, but quite visible. He watched it for three minutes before it disappeared behind a large open pecan tree. At the same time Miss Bobbie Owens saw an object that looked like a flying saucer while swimming in the city pool. It was shiny, but not an airplane. It faded out to the southwest after several minutes.

July 10, 1949: George G. Wunsch and wife Caroline, 7017 Tulip Street, Tacony, Pa., and Barry McGuigan and his wife, of 4101 Spruce Street, West Philadelphia, Pa., saw nine strange disks, with a dull illumination visible beneath the evening’s cloud cover. They moved considerably faster than an airliner, but were clearly visible. These disks appeared off and on during a period from 9:30 to 11 p.m.

July 12, 1949: Mrs. Toni Ververka, Jacksonville, Fla., was awakened about 5 a.m. by a tremendous roar quite unlike several bombers not did it resemble the whine of a jet. Out of the southeast, about 500 feet high, she saw a golden light. The machine carried no running lights. The entire object seemed suffused from beneath with a glow that surged with each increase in roar. It increased and diminished at a rate something like counting one-two-three ... pause; one-two-three ... pause. The object was curving toward the northwest. As it passed, she could see violet flashes spurting into a short comet’s tail. Viewed from the rear, the object seemed to waver up and down similar to that of a phonograph disk on an uneven center. Fifteen minutes later another, or the same one, came back, only much higher. In another fifteen minutes a third came. These objects were also witnessed by Mr. Ververka, Mrs. Lamar Ingram and her husband and son, and Joe Noll, WMBR radio station employee.

July 14, 1949: Joe Snyder, 606 S/ 5th St., Fort pierce, Fla. was awakened at daybreak by a noise that sounded like a train or a jet plane. He ran outside where he saw a bright light high in the sky. It looked like a light shining against a huge mirror. As it gained elevation, red rays seemed to emanate from it’s center. It was visible for 20 to 30 minutes before it finally disappeared from sight.

July 14, 1949: Lawrence McDonald, observer at the Orlando, Fla., airport, twice saw a bright and high-flying object approaching from the northeast. It was a bright, unshielded white light that sounded like a motorboat struggling.

July 17, 1949: Mrs. Hazel Armstrong, 1507 Durham, Brownwood, Texas, said an object passed over her house at 1 a.m. without sound. It glittered like a big diamond, as big as a person’s head. It came over at about a height of thirty feet, floating slowly. It touched a pecan tree and gave off sparks. It went out of sight to the south. Then everything lighted up that way, and there came a rumbling noise, like an explosion. A very bright light lit up the area to the south. The sparks that it gave off were of all colors. It was floating against the wind.

July 24, 1949: An aviator who refused to allow his name to be used, but who is vouched for by the Idaho Statesman, newspaper at Boise, Idaho, saw seven V-shaped objects about the size of fighter planes flying within 1,500 or 2,000 feet of his plane. The objects, flying in a tight but unfamiliar formation, were flying at a tremendous rate of speed. They were in the shape of a V with a solid, circular body under the nose of the V. There was no evidence of any means of propulsion, no propellers, no smoke trails. There were no markings of any kind. The color was of a shade he couldn’t describe and hadn’t seen before. There was not a moving thing on the objects. They were under observation for two minutes, about ten miles west of Mountain Home, at about 10,000 feet elevation. The objects were flying at 9,000 or 9,500 feet.

July 26, 1949: Dr. H.G. LauBach, Mitchell, Nebraska, saw a saucer flying on a southwesterly course at 3;10 p.m. It resembled an upside-down saucer, whirled as it moved through the sky, occasionally tipping sideways, and flew at an altitude of between 5,000 and 7,000 feet. It was in sight for three minutes before vanishing over a range of hills. It sailed thought three clouds and reappeared each time with unabated speed. It was guessed to be about 25 feet in diameter, and traveled approximately 25 ground miles in three minutes.

July 31, 1949: David Boye, Columbus, O., saw a silver object that looked like a space ship between 7; 15 and 7;20 p.m. It had red stripes on the side and port holes. David Walker, also of Columbus, saw two headlights in the sky but one of them blinked off, at the same time.

August 15, 1949 Edgar Thompson of Deer Lodge, Montana, saw an object a bright silver in color, shaped like a disk, heading toward Butte at a terrific speed. As it moved, it turned around like a ball, and as it turned the color changed to a darker gray. It did not make any noise and traveled in a straight line,. Mrs. Thompson and a hired man also saw the object.

August 22, 1949: Mr. Peter Mohan, his sister Mrs. John Hughes, and a niece, Miss Mary Jane Hughes, saw a silver disk-shaped object about five miles in the distance at Deer Lodge, Montana, at 1 p.m. They watched it for several minutes.

August 29, 1949: Marvin Miles, Los Angeles Times reporter, told of flying objects seen by the personnel of White Sands Proving Ground. Two senior officers (unnamed) and an enlisted man (also unnamed) saw them during a high-missile flight. One officer applied a ballistic formula to one observation through a photo theodolite which showed the object as 35 to 40 miles high, an egg-shaped craft of fantastic size traveling at from 3 to 4 miles per second. The observer was tracking a balloon when the object swept across the balloon’s path and cavorted for some ten seconds, taking turns up to 22 times the force of gravity, before it disappeared. it had no visible means of propulsion. This occurred on August 26th. On June 14, 1949, the enlisted man saw an object at 3:35 p.m. while tracking a V-2 test rocket with a 20-power elevation telescope, an instrument that can follow a missile to altitudes of 100 miles or more. It was metallic, but neither it’s size nor speed would be estimated.

August 30, 1949: Roger Hamilton and wife, Patricia, and Dick Hamilton, Seattle, Wash., were climbing Snoqualmie Pass near Snow Lake when they were buzzed by a round object, almost transparent, and sounding like a buzzsaw. It went to fast none of the three had any chance of take a picture.

November 7, 1949: Delmar Remick and Merwin Legg of Osborne, Kansas, heard geese honking, and upon looking up to see them, found a flying saucer in the air a mile up and moving northwest. It was moving rapidly, but took six or seven seconds to get out of sight. It moved with a little flip every half second.

November 25, 1949: A.A. Prurok, F.S. Ray, and F.W. Ray of Inez and Houston, Texas, saw a strange object in the sky at 2:30 p.m. halfway between Edna and Inez. At first sight it appeared to be at an altitude of 10,000 feet and about two miles distant from the highway. there was no sound. Along the thin edge of the disk the air seemed to be in a state of turbulence such as would be caused by hear waves from an exhaust. This caused a kind of steam to encircle the lower edge of the disk. Something shiny could be seen on top as if the disk were tiled at a slight angle. It made several lazy maneuvers, banking and turning so that the leading edge formed an elliptical circle. When in level flight it looked like a cigar, or a saucer held level with your eyes and upside down. proceeding toward Inez, the disk paralleled the road, then with another graceful banking turn, started for the horizon. A filling station attendant at Inez watched it and saw it plainly, while it made one more banking maneuver before it disappeared.

January 29, 1950: C. Frank Quintana, 43 Vrain Street, Denver, Colorado, saw a silvery-green ship poised about fifty feet over a hillside on the slope of South Table mountain, which he had been climbing. His attention had been attracted by a whirring noise. Quintana lay on the ground and watched during the next few minutes while the object landed slowly in a small ravine and then shot upward and out of sight at tremendous speed. It was shaped like a ball, flattened at top and bottom. It was between forty and seventy feet in diameter with what appeared to be a horizontal band about three feet wide revolving about the center. A luminous, greenish light flashed from the base of the object, and Quintana felt a rush of air, and detected a pungent odor which remained in the area after the ship ascended.

March 10, 1950: Publisher J.L. Sims and five employees of the Orangeburg, South Carolina, Times, saw a disk about the size and color of the new moon, only brighter, hovering over the city for 15 minutes, after which it sped away, leaving a vapor trail. It appeared to turn slowly in the air, from vertical to parallel with the horizon, when vertical again, before it disappeared to the west.

March 11, 1950: Mrs. Sam Raguindin of Chualar, California, was driving with her mother and two children south of Salinas. A saucer swooped down over her automobile. At first she thought it was a falling star until it swooped toward her car. It looked like two dinner places placed together. It came down to about 2,000 feet and as it came close, gave off a strong bluish-white light that hurt the eyes like a welder’s torch. It looped the loop, then sped away in a southerly direction at a great rate of speed. later, Hiram Don, Chinese market owner, in Salinas, saw the object, and said it appeared bright in front and had a long, fiery tail. It was traveling quite close to the ground.

March 12, 1950: E.L. Ekberg, Gering, Nebraska, police officer, saw a brilliant light 20 to 25 feet in diameter, a half-mile west of Gering shortly after 7 a.m. It appeared to be about 100 feet in the air and traveling very fast. It was so bright he had to look away from it. The object glowed steadily, with a very white light. There was no appearance of burning, or smoke, nor any flame. At first it appeared to be flat and wide, later triangular, hour-glass shaped, and round. When first sighted, it lighted up the countryside. He called the light to the attention of twenty other persons. State Safety Patrolman Dale Justice reported that he and Trooper Victor Hansen saw the object and attempted to follow the light, traveling about seven miles before giving up the chase. The light appeared to be suspended, dangling like a pendulum, weaving back and forth, and was a very brilliant white.

March 16, 1950: Chief Petty Officer Charley Lewis, Dallas, Texas, saw a disk streak at a B-36 bomber, follow under it for a second or two, then break away at 45 degree angle. The disk was oblong and flat and hurtled through the air at incredible speed. It appeared to be twenty-five feet in diameter and first appeared at about 10,000 to 15,000 feet elevation. It was a very bright object as it raced toward the bomber, and got directly beneath it, as it hung momentarily. The saucer was in sight only fifteen seconds in all.

March 17, 1950: More than 150 persons in Farmington, N.M. saw a fleet of flying saucers stunting and maneuvering over town. The objects appeared at 10:30 a.m. Clayton J. Boddy, a former B-29 gunner, observed them to be “almost loafing” to traveling at speeds far greater than any jet plane he had ever observed. there were as may as 500 disks in sight at one time, and all were silvery except for one which was red which seemed to be the leader. They flew in all positions, both vertically and horizontally. They remained in sight for almost two hours.

March 17, 1950: Robert Gregory of Perosky and Pete Shantz of Ironton (Michigan) sighted a disk at 1:12 p.m. EST and observed it for twelve minutes. It was very high and resembled a saucer. It hovered overhead for seven minutes, then turned on it’s edge and dropped vertically for a long distance before flattening out and sailing away. It disappeared into the east. The sighting was at Ironton, which is about 14 miles southeast of Petosky.

March 22, 1950: Dr. Craig Hunter, Washington D.C., saw an object while driving on the highway near Clearfield, PA. It was visible for nearly three minutes and was flying about 60 or 70 miles per hour at an altitude of between 250 and 500 feet. It was a dirty metallic color, shaped like a saucer with a stationary outer rim and inner portion with a rotating 10 inch ring between. It seemed to have small portholes or vents around the outer ring, seemed about 20 feet thick and 250 or more feet long.

March 26, 1950: Bertram T. Totten, clerk at the Congressional Library, Washington D.C., sighted a flying saucer over Fairfax County. It was an aluminum-colored disk about forty feet in diameter and about ten feet thick. Totten was flying his plane at 5,000 feet when he spotted the disk whirling along 1,000 feet below him. He dived towards it, but before he could get close, it zoomed up into the overcast. It went up at a speed of several hundred miles faster than his own speed, about 150 miles per hour. He saw no propulsion gear, or controls on the saucer, but did note vapor trails like those from aircraft engines. The metallic disk glinted when the sun hit it through broken clouds.

March 27, 1950: C.W. Hughes, 1228 N. Boston Place, Tulsa, Oklahoma, reported as many as twenty-five flying saucers at 6:16 a.m. He was on his front porch to get the morning paper when he saw two of them. A bit later three more appeared, then groups of two and three and finally groups of four or five. They were flying at an elevation of about 1,000 feet. He ran in to get his wife, but she arrived too late to see the objects. Hughes saw them again as he returned to the porch. They were silver-colored, and appeared to be throwing a reflection from the sun, which had not yet risen above the horizon. They were blunt-nosed, rather flat, and rounded at the front with quite a long edge on the front side - like a seagull would fly with it’s wings dropped down. They were shaped something like pie pans except for the drooping wings. They seemed to be not more than two feet in diameter, but impossible to determine exactly as he did not know the height. They remained in sight about three minutes. At the same time, Mrs. Helen Andrews, Lyons, Colorado, Visiting the home of Mr. and Mrs. W.R. Green, Garnett Road, Tulsa, sighted two disks just as the sun was rising. They seemed luminous, with a soft, fluorescent glow. All three persons saw the disks for nearly an hour. One kept it’s distance slightly above the other. Each disk was like a saucer, with the lower one traveling on it’s edge, like a plate rolled across a table. They would hang in the sky dead still for a moment, then dart away at great speeds. The higher saucer was about five times the size of the lower disk. No estimation could be made of size or altitude.

March 31, 1950: Capt. Jack Adams and co-pilot G.W. Anderson, Jr. veterans of 7,000 and 6,000 flying hours for the Chicago and Southern Air Lines, en route in their DC-3 from Memphis to Little Rock, were within 40 miles of Little Rock at 2,000 feet when they saw a lighted, fast-moving object. The time was 9:29 p.m. It was about 1,00 feet above the DC-3 and about half a mile away. It zoomed at terrific speed (as much as 700 to 1,000 miles per hour) in an arc above and ahead of the transport, moving from south to north. It remained in full view about 30 seconds. It had no navigation lights, but other lights, as though from 8 to 10 windows or ports on the lower side, were visible. The lights were a phosphorescent quality, soft and fuzzy. The object was circular. There was no reflection, no exhaust and no vapor trail. There was a bright white light flashing intermittently from the top of the thing, the strongest blue-white light either man had ever seen. As it passed, it’s underside was exposed. The object then continued in a straight line and disappeared.

April 8, 1950: David Lightfoot, Amarillo, Texas, was fishing about ten miles northwest of Amarillo when he and his companion, Charles Lightfoot, a cousin, saw an object pass only a few feet over their heads. David pursued it and it landed just beyond a small hill. It was about the same circumference as an automobile tire, and about eighteen inches thick. It was rounded on the bottom, with a top resembling a flat plate. The top part was separate from the bottom part by about one inch of space, but were held together by some sort of screw in the middle. The area between the two parts was red, as though it were on fire. The top half was spinning as David approached, but a “spindle” jutting from the top was still, as though connected to the bottom part. It was blue-gray in color and had no opening other than the divided section. He touched it, and it felt slick “like a snake” and hot. Before he could get a firm hold, it began spinning faster, and made a whistling noise and took off. It released some sort of gas or spray in the process which turned his arms and face bright red and caused small welts. It took off without wobbling, and disappeared in less than ten seconds.

April 20, 1950: Jack Robertson, Lufkin, Texas, pharmacist, observed a round, flying object about eight feet in diameter while driving nine miles west of Lufkin at night. He got out of his car to see the object, which was hovering twenty feet above his head, giving off a dull red glow. It took off with a ”whooshing roar” and soon was out of sight. Five minutes later he felt a burning sensation on his face. His clothing was not burned. The bottom of the object was rounded, like a globe, it appeared to be made of aluminum, but darkness prevented seeing any further details. Sparks flew from a slot in the object’s bottom as it took off. While he had been in his car, it had stayed about 200 feet ahead of him.

April 27, 1950: Capt. Robert Adickes and First Officer Robert Manning, Trans-World Airline pilots, saw a round glowing mass in the air as they flew over South Bend, Ind. The object was in sight for six or seven minutes as it overtook their plane at 2,000 feet and cruised along a parallel course. When the object flew alongside, it was definitely round with no irregular features at all, and about 10 to 20 per cent as thick as it was round. It was very smooth and streamlined and glowed evenly with a bright red color as if it were heated stainless steel. It was so bright it gave off a light. It left no vapor, no flame. It appeared to fly on edge like a wheel going down a highway. As Adickes banked north in an effort to get a closer look, it would veer away, keeping the same distance. When he turned directly toward it, it took off at a speed judged to be twice that of the airliner, or 400 miles per hour. It went down to 1,500 feet and streaked out of sight over South Bend. Passenger Jacob Goelzer said it looked like a spinning exhaust, all aflame. C.W. Anderson said it looked like a big red light bulb, fading off fast.

April 30, 1950: Louis and Wilfred Wedemyer, Mount Joy, Iowa, were moving hog houses on a bright and clear day when they saw a round flat, saucershaped object spinning in the sky and appearing to be white hot. It did not seem to be moving as fast as an ordinary plane. Suddenly it exploded in the air, looking just like fireworks, the kind that spray out like a fountain into the air. There was no tail on it, like a meteor. It just seemed to disintegrate. For a few seconds there was no noise, then a low rumble that lasted almost half a minute. There were no clouds in the sky. The same day the same object was seen in Burlington, Iowa, and in Muscatine. The time was the same: 10:00 a.m.

May 24, 1950: Mrs. Clyde Seevers, one of sixteen Montrose, Colorado, ranchers who saw two sky objects for five minutes, said that the objects were as broad as a large airplanes wings and were absolutely round and smooth without any sign of windows, motors or tail assembly. They were very bright, like galvanized tin. They flew soundlessly and seemed to float along. They sailed down to about 600 feet approaching close to her ranch, then turned east toward Montrose and soaped up swiftly, disappearing. The other fifteen ranchers said that’s what they saw too.

May 29, 1950: Capt. Willis T. Sperry, flying American Airlines DC-6 flight No.49, New York to San Francisco, had departed from Washington at 9:15 EST bound for Nashville. Visibility was 50 miles, at least. At 7,500 feet (30 miles out of Washington) First Officer Bill Gates called his attention to a brilliant, diffused, bluish light of fluorescent type. It was 25 times the magnitude of the brightest star. momentarily it seemed to stop, possibly five seconds, and changed it’s course to parallel the DC-6 on the left, still at the same altitude as it passed between the DC-6 and the moon. Both men, and Flight Engineer Robert Arnholt, saw it silhouetted against the moon in the shape of a torpedo or submarine, except that there were no protruding fins or external structure. It appeared to be perfectly streamlined, but it’s color could not be determined, it appearing black against the moon. Compared to jet aircraft speed, it was fantastically greater. It passed out of sight in the east in only one minute. When the object first appeared, Sperry started a turn to the right, then when it changed it’s course to one paralleling the DC-6, Sperry turned to the left so as to be able to follow it’s path. Even so, it went to the rear of the plane, circled around to the right far enough so the Gates saw it on his side before reversing it’s direction and going out of sight to the east.

June 22, 1950: Three Air Force men, Cpl. Garland L. Pryor of White Hall, Mont., Staff Sgt. Ellis Lorimer and Staff Sgt. Virgil Capurro of San Leandro, Calif., saw a flying “ice cream cone” streak across the sky at Hamilton Field three times. It was visible on as a cone-shaped blue-white flame. The of Hamilton Field control tower lists it only as an unknown object traveling at a very high rate of speed, 1,000 to 1,500 miles per hour at an elevation of between 2,000 and 5,000 feet.

June 26, 1950: Capt. E.L. Remlin and First Officer David Stewart, and observer Capt. Sam B. Wiper observed a mysterious object while flying their UAL Mainliner at 14,000 feet between Las Vegas and the Silver Lake check point eight miles north of Baker, New Mexico. It had a bluish center with a bright orange tint and was flying horizontally at about 20,000 feet, much faster than the Mainliner. It was abut 20 miles distant. It was also seen by Las Vegas CAA men and reported by an Air Force and a Navy plane in the general area.

June 29, 1950: Hubert Hutt, postoffice worker at Fort Collins, Colorado, saw an object in the sky at 9:40 a.m. which appeared simultaneously with an airliner at about 3,000 elevation. It was at about 4,500 feet, traveling northwest. It looked like a silvery snowball and looked as though it were circled by a kind of ring. It was extremely maneuverable.

July 9, 1950: John Sokol, 1018 Outer Drive, Coldbrook, Pa., saw a strange white column at about 5,000 feet elevation, at 2:30 p.m. It seemed to be hovering over the Schenectady general depot, U.S. Army. Sokol went to the police station and called the cylinder to the attention of patrolmen Edward Harrison and James Hill. They saw something that looked like a huge cigarette suspended from a cloudbank. The object definitely had substance, and was not smoke or a cloud formation. The police notified county airport officials who stated an investigation was being launched by fighter planes of the Air National Guard. Later, planes were observed circling the strange cylinder, emitting black smoke which etched a circle around the white object. At 4:20 p.m. the planes were still circling the object. When next the police looked, the object was gone, but the planes still circled. Air National Guard officials commented: “No comment.”

July 13, 1950: Dr. C.L. Quixley, Ocala, Florida, reported 12 or 13 flying saucers over his Greenville Terrace home about 8:45 a.m. They were round and sort of opalescent like soap bubbles. They were traveling about ten in a line, with three off to one side in a checkmark formation. They came in from the northeast toward Jacksonville, and played around in a circle, then disappeared toward the southwest. They sounded a little like an ordinary plane in a dive, but more shrill.

July 29, 1950: Jim graham, chief test pilot for Capital Aviation Company of Springfield, Illinois, reported his plane struck by a mysterious object which looked like a blue streak and had a trail of reddish flame. the object hit his propeller and then suddenly there was the brightest light he had ever seen in his life. There was no sound and it did not rock his plane. There was no damage to his craft. The occurrence was at midnight n clear weather. Four other Springfield residents volunteered independently that they had seen a mysterious streak in the sky.

August 12, 1950: William Schocke, Yuma, Colorado, saw along with dozens of other persons in Main Street, a dark disk-shaped object with a dim glow around it’s rim. When it reached a point just above a drugstore, it abruptly ceased lateral flight and sliced straight upward, disappearing behind low-hanging clouds.

September 10, 1950: Lt. Wilbert S. Rogers and Capt. Edward Ballard, Mitchell Field, New York, Air Force jet pilots, chased a mysterious round flying object for thirty miles and couldn’t catch it. They estimated it’s speed at 900 miles per hour. They sighted the object over Sandy Hook, New Jersey, while on a routine flight in a T-33 jet plane. It was white, or silver-colored and about the size of the fighter plane. When they sighted the object , they were traveling at 450 miles per hour at 20,000 feet.

November 21, 1950: Perry Torbergson and Jack Anderson, both on the editorial staff of the Columbia Basin News at Pasco, Washington, watched an object in the sky for eight minutes. It was a shiny, cigar shaped object in the vicinity of the Hanford atomic plant near sundown. It was shaped like a cigar and glistened brightly. Pasco’s downtown streets were packed with people watching the object. It disappeared on a southwesterly course. It stopped and hung in the air over the plant.

December 7, 1950; Observed by Guy Fox, E.G. Painter, John Smith, Lovon Horrocks, Joe McMullen, Doc Rasmussen and Joe Shell of Rangely, Oklahoma[3] , a shining aluminum-colored object hovered for more than a minute over the Oil Basin, then moved rapidly to the east. It was a flat, disk-like object which seemed to rotate as it hovered and on top had a dome-like structure. At regular intervals a flash seemed to come from the object. Altitude was approximately 2,000 feet in a clear, blue sky.

January 20, 1951: Capt. Larry W. Vinther and co-pilot James F. Bachmeier, flying a Mi-Continent Airline plane, saw a strange object over Sioux City, Iowa. The object had straight wings, no exhaust glow and no jet pods or engines visible. Vinther was on the ground getting tower clearance for take-off when the tower asked him to check on a strange light in the sky. After take-off, Vinther spotted the light and climbed toward it. He was a plane which had an unknown kind of navigation lights in addition to a strong white light underneath it’s fuselage. The object’s light all blinked on and off five or six times as the two craft drew close to each other, approaching from opposite directions. Vinther had just turned his head from watching the ship go past his wing when there it was again, flying right behind him about 200 feet to the left and going in the same direction. Said Vinther: “You just can’t turn an airplane around that fast at that speed.” The strange plane flew alongside for about four seconds, then dropped down and was lost from sight.

February 14, 1951: Capt. J.E. Cocker (All-Weather Flying Division) and Capt. E.W. Spradley (Aerial Photographic Division), Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, while tracking a large weather balloon, saw an object hovering at 50-60,000 feet. It was flat and looked like a dime. It was a milky color. Just before it disappeared there were three brilliant flashes, like photo flashes.

August 27, 1951: Dr. W.L. Ducker, head of the Texas Tech College petroleum engineering department, and Dr. A.G. Bert, professor of chemical engineering, and Dr. W.I. Robinson, professor of geology, all saw two strange formations like strings of beads in crescent shape, hurtling through the sky over Lubbock, Texas, at a speed which carried them from horizon to horizon in three seconds. They felt no shock waves, indicating the apparent formation was in the stratosphere, 50,000 feet above the Earth or higher. They estimated the speed must have been 1,800 miles per hour if the objects were a mile high. If they were at 50,000 feet, the speed must have been 18,000 miles per hour. Shape could not be determined, but each gave off a glow as of reflected light.

September 11, 1951: Lt. Wilbert S. Rogers, Mitchell Air Force Base, New York, saw a round object speeding about 900 miles per hour over the New Jersey coastline.

12. Analysis Versus Opinion

What are the flying saucers? That is the big question in the minds of a great many people. That they are real is not a matter for conjecture; the evidence presented in this book precludes that. They can be accepted by even the most skeptical as a factual phenomenon. In this report, great care has been used to avoid the faults of other writers on the subject, whose use of fiction has been no worse then their misuse of the facts - and even the deliberate twisting of those facts to suit their own hypotheses. We have presented no theory. We have presented no report that cannot be substantiated by witnesses whose word is valid. Best of all, we have presented those photographs which it was possible to obtain, and though none of them offer the degree of detail necessary to be indisputable evidence in themselves, they are conclusive when coupled with the testimony of those who snapped the pictures and of the witnesses with them at the time. The difficultly of photographing an aerial object, even an ordinary plane, with the average person’s camera is well understood; and when the element of surprise is present, it is well-nigh impossible. The presence of any image at all is distinctly a lucky happenstance.

There are several things that the saucers are not.

They are not the product of the United States military arm. If the military of this country possesses an aircraft designed on the principle of the flying disk, it is a secret development designed and produced since the first disks were sighted in 1947 (i.e., those “firsts” which resulted in the sensational news headlines of June and July of that year). Nothing is known of such a development and any conjecture about it would be both fruitless and silly.

They are not a development of the Russian government, and for much the same reasons. Nor are we theorizing as to whether they have since imitated them; we can only hope that they have not been successful in any such attempt.

They represent an advance in mechanical science far beyond the ability of any other nation, and cannot be theorized as being a product of any of them. This includes such nations as Spain and Argentina, both of which have been the subject of much imaginary hot air.

No astronomer has yet substantiated the claims of those who say that they are from another planet, or even another solar system. All reports concerning disks that have crashed with little men in them have been impossible to substantiate. In each instance, those purveying such stories have balked when their source had been demanded.

The material in this book is evidential. It is by no means complete.

There are many thousands of reputable sightings. We, ourselves, have seen them on eleven different occasions. Three sets of Kodachrome movies have been made by us of mysterious objects in the sky, none of them capable of being reproduced in this book; in fact the objects themselves can only be seen in the film by means of a magnifying glass, or when projected on a fine screen. Taken by themselves, they are worthless, since a reflection from an ordinary plane could account for the flashes on the film. Yet the performance of the objects during the filming, and before and after, do not allow for such a prosaic interpretation.

Most recent report, prior to the publication of this volume, is the report from Korea, from our own Army Intelligence, which is as follows:

Objects, globe or disk-shaped, bright orange in color and sending off occasional flashes of bluish light, were seen by crew members of two B-29 bombers at widely separated points around midnight on January 29, 1952. One sighting was over Wonsan, the other over Sunchon. Two crew members in each plane made the sighting and confirmed each other’s observations. The Wonsan objects flew alongside the plane for five minutes, while the Sunchon disks flew parallel to the b-29 for one minute. The impression of both crews was that the objects were globular. No attempt has been made by the Air Force to discount the sightings, but full investigations were said to have been instituted. The results of those investigations have not been revealed.

On February 3, 1952, six days after the Korean sightings, Ray Palmer, one of the compilers of this book, sighted an object at ten seconds past 6 p.m. CST. The time was determined through the coincidence of checking on the local FM station as to whether or not it’s 6 p.m. program would begin “on the second.” It did not; it was five seconds late. And five seconds later, the author was facing the row of windows which give a view toward Spring Creek which flows directly past his home. Across the creek, some 300 feet from the house, along a private roadway which runs east to west, an orange globe, emitting blue flashes, sped past at approximately 180 miles per hour (determined later by measurement of the course over which it flew and the time in view). It was approximately fifteen feet off the ground and passed between a slope in the background and the trunks of large trees in the foreground. The object was approximately the size of a basketball, and the light it emitted illuminated the ground beneath it and the slope behind it. The appearance of the glove was suggestive of the exhaust of a jet or rocket although it left no train behind it, not did it seem elongated as might be expected of such a method of propulsion. If an object was being propelled by the orange, globular glow, it was not visible.

Whether this object was identical to those seen by the bomber crews over Korea cannot be determined, as no factual data can be obtained from that source. Only one fact is important - there can be no orange disks or globes which emit blue flashes traveling through the air of this planet in more than one place.

Thousands of people have seen strange things in the sky, and sightings are continuing at the rate of as many as twelve each month (according to those officially recognized and reported by our Intelligence Services) and at a very much greater rate as determined by individual reports which sift through to us from all sources. How many sightings are not reported cannot be estimated. Certainly there are many. What are the flying disks? We are hardly so brash as to say. But keep your weather eye aloft and keep your camera handy - you may be the one to secure the information necessary to answer the greatest question of our day.

And when you develop your film, if you see the insignia of either the United States or the Soviet Air Force on the objects you have captured with your lens, turn them over to the nearest Military Intelligence branch and keep your mouth shut about them.

It’ll save you a lot of trouble.

Besides, they wouldn’t be the flying saucers we’re talking about!

But if you photograph any little men, send the photo to us. We’ll print it in a new book we’re preparing in which factual data about a lot of things is badly needed.

THE END

***************

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Notes

[←1]

Captain Emil J. Smith, his first name is never quoted in the book and he is identified here for that reason

[←2]

In the original document this was incorrectly identified as the Windsor

[←3]

Regarding the location, Rangely, Oklahoma - no such place exists - even allowing for mistakes in spelling