1.9 MiB
812
812 — Agobard, the archbishop of Lyon, France, writes De Grandine et Tonitruis (“On Hail and Thunder”), in which he condemns pagan folk beliefs, such as the notion of a “certain region called Magonia, from which ships, navigating on clouds, set sail to transport back to this same region the fruits of the earth ruined by hail and destroyed by the storm.” He cites an episode in which some foolish peasants capture “three men and one woman who they said had fallen from these ships.” Brought out in front of an enraged mob, Agobard intervenes and prevents their lynching, persuading the crowd that the charges are false and absurd. Some ufologists interpret this as a visitation from an alternate reality or an abduction case, while Jean-Louis Brodu observes that in the 9th century the atmosphere was likened to an ocean in which aerial ships could navigate from point to point on the earth. Miceal Ross argues that Magonia is a corruption of Magonianus, relating to the city of Mahón, the port of the island of Menorca, Spain. (Jean-Louis Brodu, “Magonia: A Re-Evaluation,” Fortean Studies 2 (1995): 198–215; Miceal Ross, “Anchors in a Three-Decker World,” Folklore 109 (1998): 63–75; Vallée, Magonia, pp. 23–24; Clark III 1213–1214; Vallée and Aubeck, Wonders in the Sky, Tarcher, 2009, pp. 70–73; Pierre Chambert-Protat, “Florus de Lyon et les Extra- terrestres,” Florus de Lyon, November 4, 2014; Pierre Lagrange, “Agobard, la Magonie et les ovnis,” Actualité, no. 440 (October 2017): 28–29; Wikipedia, “Magonia (mythology)”)
1547
December 15 — Mariners in the port of Hamburg, Germany, see a fireball moving to the south. Its rays are so hot that passengers cannot remain inside the ships. Thinking the vessels are about to burn, they hide and take cover. (Simon Goulart, Thrésor d’histoires admirables et mémorables de nostre temps, Geneva, 1600, vol. 1, p. 55)
1561
April 4 — Dusk. A “frightening vision” is seen in the sky above Nuremberg, Germany, said to be observed by many.
Printer Hans Glaser describes in his broadside many blood-red, blue, and black balls or discs near the Sun. “They were three alongside each other, sometimes four in a square, and several alone, and between these balls blood- colored crosses” are seen. Two “great pipes” (cannon) are also observed, and everything starts to “fight against each other.” The battle lasts about one hour, then the burning balls fall to the earth and vanish on the ground.
Although cited as a possible early UFO report, the narrative is simply about a battle in the sky by phantom armies told as an allegory of what awaits an unrepentant humanity on Judgment Day. (Hans Glaser, Himmelserscheinung
über Nürnberg am 14. April 1561, Holzschnitt, 1561; Carl Jung, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, Mentor ed., 1969, pp. 103–104, between pp. 120–121; Ulrich Magin, “A UFO in the Year 1561,” Fortean Times 283 (February 2012): 40–42)
1638
1638 — English clergyman and philosopher John Wilkins writes The Discovery of a World in the Moone, in which he highlights the similarities of the Earth and the Moon (seas, mountains, atmosphere) and concludes that the Moon is likely to be inhabited by living beings, whom the calls “Selenites.” (Maria Avxentevskaya, “How 17th Century Dreamers Planned to Reach the Moon,” Real Clear Science, December 2, 2017)
1638 — Night. John Everett and two companions are crossing the Muddy River near Boston, Massachusetts, in a boat when a “great light” appears above them. It darts back and forth across the river, sometimes hovering and “flaming up,” for about 2–3 hours. After they stop watching it, they discover that their boat has moved about one mile against the current to the place where they had embarked. (John Winthrop, The History of New England from 1630 to 1649, Little, Brown, 1853, vol. 1, pp. 349–350)
1663
August 15 — 12:00 noon. The faithful gathered in a church in a village near Lake Zarobozero, Vologda Oblast, Russia, hear a loud noise outside and see a large ball of fire descend from the north and then head south following the lake, low over its surface. The fireball seems to measure about 140 feet across and has blue smoke issuing from its sides. Two fiery rays extend from its front part. Less than an hour later, a similar fireball reappears over the same lake. Moving from south to west, the object again disappears. It reappears a third time a short while later, this time larger than before, and stays over the lake for an hour and a half. Peasants in a boat try to get close to it, but the heat is too intense. The water of the lake is illuminated to a depth of 30 feet, and fish are seen swimming away from the object, which then flies off to the west. (Akty istoricheskie, sobranye i izdanye Arkheografischeskaia Kommissiia, Vol. 4, Saint Petersburg, 1842, pp. 331–332; Hobana and Weverbergh 54–61; Jacques Vallée and Chris Aubeck, Wonders in the Sky, Tarcher, 2009, pp. 215–217; Thomas E. Bullard, “Defending UFOs,” IUR 34, no. 2 (March 2012): 31; Stonehill and Mantle, Russia’s USO Secrets, Flying Disk, 2020, pp. 157–161)
1665
April 8 — 6:00 p.m. Numerous wonders are seen in the sky over Stralsund, Germany, including ships, large flocks of birds, fire, and smoke, as well as a dark “round flat form like a plate and like a big man’s hat” that hovers above St. Nicholas Church for one hour. Witnesses include several fishermen who later complain of tremors in their hands and feet. (Eine abgebildete Beschreibung von dem wunderbarlichen Stralsundischen Lufft-Kriege und Schiff-streite, Leipzig, 1665; Chris Aubeck and Martin Shough, Return to Magonia: Investigating UFOs in History, Anomalist, 2015, pp. 23–38)
1686
1686 — French philosopher Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle writes Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, in which he speculates on extraterrestrial life. He imagines Venusians to be “little black people, scorched with the Sun, full of fire, very amorous.” (Wikipedia, “Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds”)
1737
December 5 — 5:00 p.m. Physician Thomas Short witnesses a blood-red luminous display in the sky around Sheffield, England, which moves from west to north and then to the east. The cause seems to be one or more clouds in which are embedded brilliant lights as bright as the full moon that give off slow-moving streamers or rays. The
display is accompanied by unseasonable heat and lasts until 10:30 p.m. Short hears that a similar phenomenon is seen at the same time in Venice, Italy, and Kilkenny, Ireland, where it appears as a bursting fireball. (Thomas Short, “An Account of Several Meteors,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 41 (1741): 625–627)
December 6 — Afternoon. A large, blood-red object is seen in the western sky at Bucharest, Wallachia [now Romania]. It lingers for two hours before splitting up then reuniting once again. The phenomenon is said to have occurred at night in the Banat region. (Hobana and Weverbergh 222; Romania 4)
1741
September 21 — Dawn. Parson-naturalist Gilbert White wakes up at his vicarage in Selborne, Hampshire, England, and finds the neighboring clover fields matted all over with a thick coat of cobwebs, laced with dew. The dogs are blinded by it when they attempt to hunt. At 9:00 a.m. more cobwebs fall from the sky and continue until dusk. They are “perfect flakes or rags; some near an inch broad, and five or six long, which fell with a degree of velocity that showed they were considerably heavier than the atmosphere.” The fall extends to the neighboring villages of New Alresford and Bradley. (Gilbert White, The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789), Letter XXIII)
1742
December 16? — 8:40 p.m. Physician Cromwell Mortimer, secretary of the Royal Society, is walking through St. James’s Park in Westminster, London, England, when he sees a light ascend from behind the trees and houses in the southwest. When it reaches 20° against the sky, it takes a horizontal path with an undulating motion before disappearing in the northeast after a full 30 seconds. The front part is luminous with a frame-like structure behind it, and it has a faint trail. The date is questionable since Mortimer calls this a “Thursday” and December 16 was a Sunday. ([A Note by Cromwell Mortimer], Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 43 (1745): 524–525)
1745
July 14 — Astronomer George Costard observes a meteoric stream of fire that persists for at least one hour at Standlake Broad west of Oxford, England. (“Part of a Letter from the Reverend Mr. Geo. Costard to Mr. John Catlin, concerning a Fiery Meteor Seen in the Air on July 14, 1745,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 43 (1745): 522–524)
1749
November 4 — 11:50 a.m. The crew of the HMS Montagu watches a large blue fireball, apparently low on the water, head directly toward them from the northeast and explode some 150 feet away from the ship, causing some damage to the mast, before it continues on toward the southwest. The incident takes place in the North Atlantic Ocean some 240 miles west of Cape Finisterre, Spain. (Chalmers, “An Account of an Extraordinary Fireball Bursting at Sea,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 46 (1752): 366–367; Chris Aubeck and Martin Shough, Return to Magonia: Investigating UFOs in History, Anomalist, 2015, pp. 67–75; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, Redemption of the Damned, vol. 2, Anomalist, 2021, pp. 105–114)
1755
March — German philosopher Immanuel Kant publishes Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, in which he theorizes that distance from the Sun determines the intelligence level of a world’s inhabitants; thus, the people who live on Mercury are the stupidest, and the Venusians are only dimly brighter—making any Jupiterians and Saturnians much smarter than earthlings. (Wikipedia, “Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens”)
1756
1756 — Scottish astronomer James Ferguson writes Astronomy Explained upon Sir Isaac Newton’s Principles, proclaiming the certainty of a plurality of inhabited worlds “peopled with myriads of intelligent beings, formed for endless progression in perfection and felicity.” (James Ferguson, Astronomy Explained upon Sir Isaac Newton’s Principles, 8th ed., London, 1790, p. 6; Matthew Goodman, The Sun and the Moon, Basic Books, 2008,
1758
1758 — Swedish theologian and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg writes in The Earths in the Universe that that he has conversed with spirits from Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Saturn, Venus, and the Moon, as well as spirits from planets beyond the solar system. From these encounters, he concludes that the planets are all inhabited and that such an enormous undertaking as the universe cannot have been created for just one race on one planet. (Emanuel Swedenborg, The Earths in the Universe, London, 1875; Richard Smoley, “Is There Really Life on Other Planets?” Swedenborg Foundation, February 15, 2019)
1759
April 27 — 4:00 p.m. Following a clap of thunder, a flat, pale object is seen “dancing” in the sky over Longdon, Somerset, England. It is joined by three similar objects, all of which move from west to east for 30 seconds and disappear in a cloud. (London Universal Chronicle, May 5, 1759; Chris Aubeck and Martin Shough, Return to Magonia: Investigating UFOs in History, Anomalist, 2015, pp. 83–96)
1762
August 9 — 12:00 noon. An amateur astronomer named de Rostan is observing the Sun at Lausanne, Switzerland, when he notices a large, spindle-shaped body moving across the solar disc from east to west at a slower rate of speed than sunspots move. It is surrounded by a thin “nebulosity.” An observer named Croste in Solothurn, Switzerland, also observes the object, but French astronomer Charles Messier, who is also taking solar measurements in Paris, France, does not see it. It remains visible until September 7, when it passes the Sun’s western limb. (“Observation Astronomique,” Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sciences, 1766, pp. 106–107; “An Account of a Very Singular Phaenomenon Seen in the Disk of the Sun,” Annual Register, 1766, pp. 120–122; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, Redemption of the Damned, vol. 2, Anomalist, 2021, pp. 33–45)
1767
September 9 — A cloud “like a house on fire” that soon takes on a pyramidal form is seen traveling along the course of the River Isla near Coupar Angus, Perth, Scotland. It moves northeast to the confluence of the River Ericht and follows that stream to the west toward Blairgowrie where it disappears. It is accompanied by strong winds that destroy two houses. (Annual Register 1767, pp. 127–128)
1777
June 17 — 11:46 a.m. French astronomer Charles Messier views a large number of round, dark-brown globules passing in front of the disc of the sun for 5 minutes from west-southwest to east-northeast. He sees them through an achromatic refractor at the naval observatory located in the Hôtel de Cluny in Paris, France. His estimate of their size (one-600th the size of the solar disc) puts them near the limit of resolution for his telescope, but Messier claims the objects are far away and in focus. (Charles Messier, “Observation singulaire d’une prodigieuse quantité de petits globules qui ont passé devant le disque du soleil, le 17 juin 1777,” Mémoires de l’Academie Royale des
Sciences, 1777, pp. 464–472; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, Redemption of the Damned, vol. 1, Anomalist, 2019, pp. 7–18)
1783
1783 — British astronomer William Herschel has been observing the lunar surface since the mid-1770s in Bath, England, and writes journal entries in which he details sightings of immense trees, forests, and pastures, comparing it to the English countryside. By 1778, he is seeing circular formations that he thinks are towns and villages. He also notes canals, roads, and patches of vegetation, but never writes about it publicly, since he knows that telescopic observations can be tricky. (George Basalla, Civilized Life in the Universe, Oxford University, 2006, pp. 51–52)
August 18 — 9:15–9:30 p.m. An unusually bright bolide is observed in the British Isles on a clear, dry night. Analysis indicates that the meteor has entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the North Sea, before passing over the east coast of Scotland, England, and the English Channel; it finally breaks up, after a passage within the atmosphere of around 1,000 miles, over southwestern France or northern Italy. Perhaps the most prominent witness is Tiberius Cavallo, an Italian natural philosopher who happens to be among a group of people on the terrace at Windsor Castle, Berkshire, England, at the time the meteor appears. (Wikipedia, “1783 Great Meteor”; Tiberius Cavallo, “Description of a Meteor, Observed Aug. 18, 1783,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 74 (1784): 108–111; Charles Blagden, “An Account of Some Late Fiery Meteors,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 74 (1784): 202–232; Martin Beech, “The Great Meteor of 18th August 1783,” Journal of the British Astronomical Association 99 (1989): 130–134; Kaushik Patowary, “The Great Meteor of 1783,” Amusing Planet, September 8, 2021)
1790
June 12 — 5:00 a.m. Several farmers in Alençon, Normandy, France, see a large globe surrounded by flames and making a whistling sound. The object slows, oscillates, and moves toward the top of a hill, unearthing some plants along the slope. The heat is so intense that grass and small trees start burning. In the evening the sphere is still warm.
Witnesses include two mayors, a doctor, and three other authorities in addition to the dozens of peasants who are present. A kind of door opens and a person emerges. He is dressed in a tight-fitting suit and, seeing all the people, says some words that are not understood. He runs into the woods. The sphere explodes silently, throwing pieces everywhere, and these pieces burn until they are powder. The original source is allegedly from a June 17 report by a Police Inspector Liabeuf and forwarded to the French Academy of Sciences. However, the Academy reported in 2006 that it has no knowledge of such a report in its archives. Probable hoax. (Alberto Penoglio, “Antichi Visitatori dal Cielo,” Clypeus 3, n. 3 (1966): 13–14; Vallée, Magonia, pp. 60–61; “1790 UFO Crash or Time Traveller?” Cool Interesting Stuff, June 1, 2014)
1798
September 10 — Before midnight. Schoolmaster Alexander Campbell and one other person observe a “remarkable comet, or meteor” at Alnwick, Northumberland, England. It rapidly increases in brightness, changing from a star-like object to a shape like “two half-moons, back to back, having a short luminous stream between the two backs” over the course of 5 minutes. (Annual Register 1798, p. 83)
1803
February 22 (or March 24) — An attractive young woman aged 18–20 years old arrives on a beach aboard a “hollow ship” (Utsuro-bune) that looks like a rice cooking pot or incense burner in Hitachi province, Japan. Fishermen bring her inland to investigate further, but the woman is unable to communicate in Japanese. She is dressed in a foreign fashion made of unknown fabrics and is clutching an ornate box also marked with the unknown script. The vessel is covered in hieroglyphs that no one can decipher. The fishermen return her and her vessel to the sea,
where it drifts away. Accounts of the tale appear in three texts: Toen shōsetsu (1825), Hyōryū kishū (1835), and Ume-no-chiri (1844), but no official records mention it. (Wikipedia, “Utsuro-bune”; Kazuo Tanaka, “Did a Close Encounter of the Third Kind Occur on a Japanese Beach in 1803?” Skeptical Inquirer 24, no. 4 (July/August 2000): 37–60; Masaru Mori, “The Female Alien in a Hollow Vessel,” Fortean Times 48 (Spring
1987): 48–50; Junji Numakawa, “On a UFO-Shaped Boat in 1803,” UFO Criticism 1, no 1 (January 2001): 2–3; Tanaka Kazuo, “‘Utsurobune’: A UFO Legend from Nineteenth-Century Japan,” nippon.com, June 26, 2020; Shoichi Kamon [pseud. of Tanaka Kazuo], The Mystery of Utsuro-bune: Ancient UFO Encounter in Japan?
Flying Disk Press, 2019)
1808
May 16 — 4:00 p.m. Swedish lichenologist Erik Acharius watches a stream of dark-brown spherical objects moving slowly through the sky in a straight line over Biskopsberga, near Skänninge, Sweden. Some hover temporarily and speed up, while others fall to earth. The objects appear in the western sky and stream to the east for 2 hours. Some are apparently linked together in groups of three, six, or eight, and all of them have some kind of trail. A few of them fall in the vicinity of K. G. Wettermark, who has also been observing. They resemble soap bubbles and dissipate quickly, leaving a film like cobweb. (Erik Acharius, “Besynnerligt Meteor-Phenomén,” Konglige Svenska Vetenskapsakademiens Handligar, ser. 2, vol. 29 (July/September 1808): 215–218; “Account of an Extraordinary Meteoric Phenomenon,” North American Review 3 (1816): 320–322; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, Redemption of the Damned, vol. 1, Anomalist, 2019, pp. 18–29)
1819
August 13 — 8:00–9:00 p.m. A brilliant white fireball streaks across the sky at Amherst, Massachusetts. The next morning, Erastus Dewey finds a strange substance 20 feet from his front door and assumes it is residue from the meteorite. It is about 8 inches in diameter, resembles an upside-down salad dish, and consists of buff-colored pulpy substance with an overwhelmingly bad smell. It is covered with a nap that, when removed, causes the interior to liquefy and form a starchy substance. A couple days later, it largely dissipates. Geologist Edward Hitchcock thinks it is some kind of “gelatinous fungus” common to the area in the late summer. (Rufus Graves, “Account of a Gelatinous Meteor,” American Journal of Science 2 (1820): 335–337; Edward Hitchcock, “On the Meteors of Nov. 13, 1833,” American Journal of Science 25 (1834): 354, 362–363)
1820
February 12 — 10:45 a.m. A German astronomer and cleric named Steinheibel watches a clearly defined dark orange-red spot traversing the disc of the Sun in about five hours. (Joseph Johann von Littrow, “Further Note on the Supposed Observation of an Intra-Mercurial Planet on the 12th of February, 1820,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 22 (1862): 276)
1824
1824 — Bavarian astronomer Franz von Gruithuisen of Munich, Germany, writes Discovery of Many Distinct Traces of Lunar Inhabitants, Especially of One of their Colossal Buildings, in which he announces his discovery of a city on the Moon in the rough terrain to the north of Schröter crater that he names the Wallwerk. This region contains a series of somewhat linear ridges that have a fishbone-like pattern, and, with the small refracting telescope he is using, can be perceived as resembling buildings complete with streets. His claims are readily refuted using more powerful instruments. Gruithuisen also thinks that the mysterious “ashen light” observed on Venus’s dark side is due to a festival of fire in honor of the “ascension of a new emperor to the throne of the planet.” Later, he speculates that the illumination is caused by burning jungles to create new farmland. (“Gruithuisen’s Lunar City,” whatsupinthesky.com; David Dunér, “Venusians: The Planet Venus in the 18th-Century Extraterrestrial Life
Debate,” Journal of Astronomical Data 19, no. 1 (2013): 162; Andrew May, “The Lost Ruins of the Moon,”
Fortean Times 358 (October 2017): 56)
1826
April 1 — 4:00 p.m. Stone mason Johannes Becker hears a noise resembling thunder at Rastpfuhl, northwest of Saarbrücken, Germany, and sees a grayish object “like two pieces of tin” approaching the earth with lightning speed and expanding itself like a sheet before falling to earth, apparently not far away. After one minute there is another sound like thunder and a strong whirlwind, as if coming from an impact. Pastor Köllner collects testimony from other nearby witnesses and visits the supposed landing site but finds no burn marks or meteoritic stones. (Ernst Chladni, “Über eine merkwürdige meteorische Erscheinung, am 1 April 1826, nicht weit von Saarbrücken,” Annalen der Physik und Chemie 7 (1826): 373–377; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, Redemption of the Damned, vol. 1, Anomalist, 2019, pp. 31–38)
1829
August 20 — 11:00 p.m. A man on the York Road east of Leeds, England, sees a moon-like object split into two halves, the upper half of which gives off an apparent shaft of light. He sees two human figures visible to the waist, one of which has a red cloth around its head. The object is visible for more than one hour and is seen by others, during which time a cloud passes in front of it. (“Celestial Phenomena,” York Herald, August 22, 1829, p. 2; Chris Aubeck and Martin Shough, Return to Magonia: Investigating UFOs in History, Anomalist, 2015, pp. 111–125)
1835
May 11 — At the Palermo Observatory in Italy, astronomer Niccolò Cacciatore detects a starlike object in the Southern sky between the constellations Virgo and Crater moving at a slow rate that might indicate a planet beyond Uranus. It is nowhere to be seen during his next observation on May 14. (“Supposed New Planet,” American Journal of Science 31 (1837): 158–159)
August 25–31 — The New York Sun publishes a series of six articles on the alleged discovery by English astronomer John Herschel of plants, animals, and winged people on the lunar surface. Using a huge and powerful telescope, Herschel supposedly sees herds of bison-like quadrupeds, a spherical amphibious creature, and a bipedal beaver that lives in huts. The humans are man-bats “covered, except on the face, with short and glossy copper-colored hair, and had wings composed of a thin membrane, without hair, lying snugly upon their backs.” The article is an elaborate hoax. Herschel hasn’t observed life on the moon at all, nor is Herschel even aware of the story until much later. The announcement causes enormous excitement throughout America and Europe. Authorship of the article is usually attributed to Richard Adams Locke, a reporter who is working for The Sun at the time. Locke publicly admits to being the author in 1840, in a letter to the weekly paper New World, although his intent is satire, not misinformation. (Wikipedia, “Great Moon Hoax”; Richard Adams Locke, The Moon Hoax, Gowans, 1859)
1838
1838 — Scottish minister and science writer Thomas Dick publishes Celestial Scenery: The Wonders of the Planetary System Displayed, in which he suggests that every planet in the Solar System is inhabited. At his home in Broughty Ferry, Dundee, he computes that the Solar System contains 21.9 trillion inhabitants, 53.5 billion of them on Venus. This is done comparing the surface area of each planet and the population density of England. (Thomas Dick, Celestial Scenery, Harper, 1838)
1845
June 18 — 10:30 p.m. The British brig Victoria, captained by George Henry Caithness, is becalmed in the Strait of Sicily about 30 miles southwest of Licata, Sicily, Italy, when a huge wind suddenly blows from the east for two hours. Then the wind suddenly stops, and the crew feels an overpowering heat and smells a sulfuric stench. At this moment three “luminous bodies” emerge from the sea about one-half mile away and remain visible for 10 minutes. Shortly thereafter the wind picks up again. (This could be a magma plume from an undersea volcanic vent.) Around 7:10 p.m., at Ainab, Lebanon, two objects five times as large as the moon, joined by “streamers or appendages,” are observed in the west and remain visible for one hour, moving slowly on an easterly course. The objects are so bright they are painful to look at. A possible outgassing event from the Madrepore subsea vent. (“Atmospherical Phenomena,” London Morning Chronicle, August 8, 1845, p. 5; The Athenaeum, August 19, 1848, p. 833; James Glaisher, et al., “Report on Observations of Luminous Meteors, 1860–61,” Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1861, pp. 30–31; Chris Aubeck and Martin Shough, Return to Magonia: Investigating UFOs in History, Anomalist, 2015, pp. 139–152; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, Redemption of the Damned, vol. 2, Anomalist, 2021, pp. 115–126)
1847
March 19 — 8:30 p.m. A woman and her companion are in Highbury East, London, England, when they notice what seems to be a fire balloon ascending slowly in the west, seemingly over Hampstead. It shoots out “several fiery coruscations” and turns into an intensely radiant cloud, which moves on further west. Its light shines down on the houses below. Suddenly another bright cloud appears above the first. After 2–3 minutes, a fiery ball drops from the upper cloud to the lower one, followed by two others. Soon after this, both clouds disappear. (“Meteoric Stones,” Littell’s Living Age 56 (1858): 503)
1850
September 15 — 6:20 p.m. Senior medical officer Elisha Kent Kane and other crew members of the USS Advance, participating in the First Grinnell Expedition to the Arctic to determine the fate of the lost Franklin Northwest Passage expedition, watch a balloon-like object over the Wellington Channel between Cornwallis and Devon islands, Nunavut, Canada. It is floating slowly northward and appears to be 2 feet long by 18 inches wide. After a short time, a small object appears below it. (Elisha Kent Kane, The U.S. Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, Harper and Brothers, 1854, p. 190)
1854
March 21 — 9:30 p.m. People in Washington, D.C., see a brilliant light in the sky overhead “like a coal of fire glowing,” red in color and stationary. It is visible for 20–30 minutes before it fades away. (“Atmospherical Phenomenon,” Gettysburg (Pa.) Adams Sentinel, March 27, 1854, p. 1)
1855
January 22 — 10:00 p.m. A witness walking in the public square in New Haven, Connecticut, sees a brilliant red fireball in the sky near the star Gamma Draconis. At first it is stationary but after 15 seconds it moves slowly toward the east with a slight undulatory motion. It passes below the star Eta Ursae Majoris and disappears not far from Denebola in the constellation Leo. The object is visible for 10 minutes. (“Meteoric Phenomenon,” New York Times, January 25, 1855, p. 1)
1857
June 19 or 20 — Sunset. A large cloud moves in over Carbondale, Pennsylvania, from the northwest, accompanied by considerable wind. It emits a dark-looking substance that falls to the ground, where it becomes highly luminous. It moves toward a large barn and passes through its center, setting it on fire, and continues on in a straight course for the woods, burning up the underbrush. It makes a path about 16 feet wide for a distance of 3 miles, and it finally stops against an outcrop of anthracite coal 60 feet in thickness. It leaves a sulfurous mass behind. (“Extraordinary Meteoric Phenomenon,” Baltimore (Md.) Sun, June 27, 1857, p. 1)
1860
July 20 — 9:40 p.m. A poem by Brooklyn, New York, poet Walt Whitman, “Year of Meteors (1859-60),” published in a later edition of Leaves of Grass, describes a “strange huge meteor-procession dazzling and clear shooting over our heads.” For many years, no one could identify the event. Then in 2000, Texas State University–San Marcos physicist Donald W. Olson discovered a painting by Hudson River artist Frederic Edwin Church depicting two large meteors streaming across the sky and dated July 20, 1860. An examination of contemporary newspapers revealed that this was probably Whitman’s meteor procession. Around 9:40 p.m., two meteors with trails, one behind another, are seen in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Norfolk, and other locations in the East, proceeding slowly from northwest to southeast for nearly one minute. They are as bright as Venus. A rare event, and little understood until 1913, a meteor procession occurs when an earth-grazing meteor breaks apart and the fragments travel across the sky in the same horizontal path. Olson and his colleagues finally publish their discovery in the July 2010 issue of Sky & Telescope. (“The Wonders of the Heavens: The Meteor Train,” Brooklyn (N.Y.) Evening Star, July 21, 1860, p. 2; “The Meteor of Friday Night,” New York Herald, July 22, 1860, p. 1; “Texas State Astronomers Solve Walt Whitman Meteor Mystery,” Office of Media Relations, Texas State University, May 28, 2010; David Dickinson, “Remembering the Great Meteor Procession of 1860,” Universe Today, July 20, 2013)
August 2 — 11:00 p.m. Another seeming procession of two meteors is observed in Norfolk, Virginia, moving with an undulating motion in the western sky in a northerly direction. One of the lights is clear red and the other is greenish, and they both emit flashes of light, leaving a sparkling trail. The phenomenon is also seen in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Some unnamed contemporary scientists compare it to the July 20 meteor procession. (“Another Splendid Meteor,” Baltimore (Md.) Sun, August 6, 1860, p. 1)
1862
November — Early morning. Magistrate Osman Edward Middleton hears a “peculiar rushing noise” at Morpeth, New South Wales, and looks up to see a dark object traveling rapidly toward the southeast. It appears to be revolving on its axis. ([Letter], Sydney (N.S.W.) Morning Herald, November 20, 1866, p. 5; Chris Aubeck and Martin Shough, Return to Magonia: Investigating UFOs in History, Anomalist, 2015, pp. 167–173)
1865
1865 — French novelist Jules Verne publishes From the Earth to the Moon. It tells the story of the Baltimore Gun Club, a post–American Civil War society of weapons enthusiasts, and their attempts to build an enormous Columbiad space gun and launch three people—the Gun Club’s president, his Philadelphian armor-making rival, and a French poet—in a projectile with the goal of a lunar landing. (Wikipedia, “From the Earth to the Moon”)
December — The British Board of Trade asks Trinity House to investigate the “false lights” of the Durham, England, coast, mysterious revolving lights seen above a rocky headland at Whitburn by mariners negotiating a hazardous stretch of the northeast coast. Between 1860 and 1870, more than 150 ships are wrecked on the rocks near Whitburn after following a light or lights in the sky that they wrongly believe are from a lighthouse at the mouth of the Tyne. A commission led by Rear Admiral Richard Collinson meets in Sunderland on December 28 to
interview witnesses and determine whether salvagers are responsible for the lights that are causing shipwrecks. Although the commission decides that the false lights are not deliberately lit, they are puzzled about the true cause. The lights and wrecks continue until January 1871 when the Souter Lighthouse is erected on Lizard Point. (“False Lights on the Durham Coast,” Newcastle Weekly Courant, January 12, 1866, p. 5; David Clarke, “Britain’s First X-File?” August 14, 2010; David Clarke, “The False Lights of Durham,” Fortean Times 266 (October 2010): 40–42; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, Redemption of the Damned, vol. 1, Anomalist, 2019, pp. 77–79)
1866
June 21 — The US Hydrographic Office is established by Congress. It is assigned to the Navy Bureau of Navigation and collects reports from ships’ officers on observations of various marine phenomena, hazards, and other activities. Among the reports collected are meteors, ball lightning, and other celestial and meteorological phenomena. (Wikipedia, “United States Hydrographic Office”)
1867
November 4 — 3:00–4:00 p.m. James E. Beveridge is passing the mill by the Waterworks Reservoir in Chatham, England, when he and the miller see numerous black discs moving in the air to the west, some in groups, others scattered. They are visible for more than 20 minutes. In passing in front of the sun they appear like large cannon shot. Several groups pass over his head, disappearing suddenly, and leaving puffs of grayish brown smoke. (“Three Strange Stories,” Symons’s Monthly Meteorological Magazine 2 (1867): 130)
1868
June 8 — 9:50 p.m. John Lucas Sr., an observer at Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford University, England, notices a comet- like object with a trail a bit west of Polaris. As he is pointing it out to some others, it begins moving west. It moves in a straight line at first, then moves south for a bit, then continues to the north. They watch it for 4 minutes until it disappears below the northwestern horizon. (“Remarkable Meteor,” English Mechanic 7 (July 10, 1868): 351)
July 25 — Engineer Frederick William Birmingham of Parramatta, New South Wales, watches a bizarre procession of the faces of two prominent Australians (Archbishop of Sydney Frederic Barker and New South Wales Premier James Martin) through the air as well as a vessel he calls an “ark.” He hears a voice suggesting that “That’s a machine to go through the air.” The voice comes from a “spirit” whom he describes as “like a neutral tint shade and the shape of a man in his usual frock dress.” After the ark maneuvers for a while in the air, the spirit says, “Have you a desire or do you wish to enter upon it?” He is then lifted up and carried through the air into the object about 60 feet away. The spirit guides him into the “pilot house” of the machine where he is given some papers with formulas on them that will help him construct a flying machine. He observes another UFO-like craft on March 9, 1873, and later attempts to build a mechanical replica of what he has seen. (Bill Chalker, “The Mystery of a Machine to Go through the Air: A UFO Vision?” 1998; Clark III 60–65; “Did Frederick William Birmingham Build a Flying Machine Based on His Bizarre 1868 UFO ‘Vision’ in Parramatta, NSW, Australia?” TheOzFiles, November 30, 2013; Chris Aubeck and Martin Shough, Return to Magonia: Investigating UFOs in History, Anomalist, 2015, pp. 185–190)
1869
1869 — French poet and inventor Charles Cros is convinced that pinpoints of light observed on Mars and Venus are the lights of large cities on those planets. He spends years petitioning the French government to build a giant mirror to communicate with the Martians and Venusians by burning giant lines on the deserts of those planets. (Alissa Walker, “A French Inventor Once Proposed a Giant Mirror to Burn a Message on Mars,” Gizmodo, October 16, 2014)
August 7 — 12:00 noon. Four or five witnesses watch a luminous object land in a vacant lot about 200 yards north of the village of Adamstown, Pennsylvania. It is originally square-shaped but shoots up into a column about 3–4 feet high and 2 feet thick. The object glitters like a “column of burnished silver.” It gradually fades away and disappears after 10 minutes. No unusual traces are found on the lot. (“Singular Phenomenon,” Lancaster (Pa.) Daily Evening Express, August 10, 1869, pp. 2–3)
August 7 — About 4:45 p.m. During a total solar eclipse, four amateur observers in St. Paul’s Junction [possibly a railroad stop between Maynard and West Union], Iowa, both with and without instruments independently notice a bright object below the lunar disc and just outside the solar corona. There are no visible stars in that position in the sky. (“Was It the Intra-Mercurial Planet?” Astronomical Register 7 (1869): 227–228; John Russell Hind, “Stellar Objects Seen during the Eclipse of 1869,” Nature 18 (1878): 663–664)
1870
March 22 — 6:30 p.m. Capt. Frederick William Banner, master of the barque Lady of the Lake, is sailing in the North Atlantic 400 miles north of the Equator and 860 miles from the coast of West Africa when he sees a “curious- shaped” light-gray cloud in the south-southeast. It is circular, with four rays or arms extending from the center to the edge, and a curved tail. It is visible for about 50 minutes until it is too dark to see. (Frederick William Banner, “Extract from Log of Barque ‘Lady of the Lake,’” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 1 (1873): 157; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, Redemption of the Damned, vol. 1, Anomalist, 2019, pp. 89– 109)
September 26 — A luminous object with a tail is seen in the constellation Lyra by Reginald Brabazon, 12th Earl of Meath, second secretary of the British legation to the North German Confederation, in Berlin, Germany. Possibly a light pillar reflection caused by a bright arc-light source at a military installation on Eiswerder island. (Brabazon, “A Meteor,” London Times, September 30, 1870, p. 9; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, Redemption of the Damned, vol. 1, Anomalist, 2019, pp. 111–116)
1871
1871 — English astronomer Richard A. Proctor writes Other Worlds Than Ours, in which he discusses the question of the plurality of worlds in the light of new facts. He suspects that Venus is likely the “abode of living creatures not unlike the inhabitants of earth.” (Richard A. Proctor, Other Worlds Than Ours, Appleton, 1871)
August 1 — 10:43 p.m. Astronomer Jérôme Eugène Coggia at Marseille Observatory, France, watches a slow, blood-red fireball move across the sky and change course twice before falling to the earth. He sees it for 20 minutes and 20 seconds. Possible earth-grazing meteor or a candle balloon. (Jérome Eugène Coggia, “Observation d’un bolide, faite à Observatoire de Marseille le 1er août,” Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des Sciences 73 (1871): 397–399; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, Redemption of the Damned, vol. 1, Anomalist, 2019, pp. 117–119)
1873
1873 — English-American geologist and psychometrist William Denton of Wellesley, Massachusetts, publishes volume 3 of The Soul of Things, in which he describes his astral visit to Mars along with his sister Anna Cridge and wife Elizabeth. He finds it harbors a thriving civilization with a technology based on aluminum. He reports that they soar above traffic on their individual fly-cycles and seem particularly fond of air travel, with as many as 30 Martians occupying some of the large flying conveyances. (William Denton, Soul of Things, Wellesley, Mass.: Elizabeth M. F. Denton, 1873, vol. 3, pp. 171–267)
Late March — Evening. Thomas Inman and his son are traveling home from the village of Taylorsville [now Philo], Ohio, and are possibly in Bristol Township when they see a bright light descending swiftly with a roaring noise. It strikes a short distance in the road [probably Lawrence Road] ahead of them, flickers and flares, then fades. A
man dressed in a suit of black carrying a lantern emerges from the object. He walks a few paces and steps into a buggy, which Inman has not noticed before. The buggy begins to move silently and quickly, even though there is no horse attached to it, until it reaches a deep gully, into which it plunges and disappears. Historian William Alexander Taylor, who supplies the story to the New York Herald, vouches for the witnesses. (“Very Like a Whale,” New York Herald, April 8, 1873, p. 7; Clark III 1123–1124; Chris Aubeck and Martin Shough, Return to Magonia: Investigating UFOs in History, Anomalist, 2015, pp. 175–191)
1874
April 24 — 3:30 p.m. Chemist and astronomer Vojtěch Šafařík of Prague [now in the Czech Republic] sees “an object of so peculiar a character that I do not know what to make of it.” It is a dazzling white object slowly crossing the moon. He first sees it in front of the moon, then watches it against the “deep blue sky like Sirius or Vega in daylight.” (Vojtěch Šafařík, “Telescopic Meteors,” Astronomical Register 23 (1885): 205–211)
August 13 —11:00 p.m. A large, “luminous electric cloud” flies over the western edge of Pascagoula, Mississippi, from the northwest to the southeast. It illuminates the ground and emits heat so intense that some witnesses think their houses are about to ignite. When last seen over the Gulf of Mexico, it renders the spars and rigging of a ship “distinctly visible.” (“Singular Phenomenon,” Pascagoula (Miss.) Star, August 22, 1874, p. 2)
1876
December 21 — 8:30–8:45 p.m. A bright bolide that explodes and breaks up into a group of 20–100 smaller balls is seen over a wide swath of the US from Topeka, Kansas, to western Pennsylvania. Over Columbus, Ohio, it is described as “a cluster or flock of meteors seemingly huddled together, like a flock of wild geese, and moving with the same velocity and grace of regularity. The color of their light was a yellowish red, like red rocket-balls.” A stony chondrite falls 3 miles northwest of Rochester, Indiana, at the same time. (James Glaisher, et al., “Report on Observations of Luminous Meteors during the Year 1876–77,” Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science 47 (1877): 98, 149–152; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, Redemption of the Damned, vol. 1, Anomalist, 2019, pp. 144–145)
1877
October — Astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli reports seeing canali on the Martian surface from Brera Observatory in Milan, Italy, during the Great Opposition. While the term “canals” indicates an artificial construction, its proper translation as “channels” implies that the observed features are natural configurations of the planetary surface. From the incorrect translation into the term “canals,” various assumptions are made about life on Mars; as these assumptions are popularized, the canals become famous, giving rise to waves of hypotheses, speculation, and fiction about the possibility of intelligent life on Mars—the Martians. (Wikipedia, “Martian canal”)
1878
January 22 — John Martin is out hunting near his ranch 6 miles north of Dallas, Texas, when he notices a dark object high in the southern sky. It is so bright it hurts his eyes as it moves with great speed to directly over his head. The object is “about the size of a large saucer” and looks like a large balloon. It speeds away rapidly. (“A Strange Phenomena,” Dallas Daily Herald, January 23, 1878, p. 4; Patrick Gross, “The First Publicized Flying ‘Saucer’ Report?”; “Dallas 1878,” Texas UFO Museum and Research Library, February 5, 2014)
July 29 — About 12:30 p.m. Astronomers James Craig Watson, director of the Ann Arbor (Mich.) Observatory,
and Lewis Swift, an amateur from Rochester, New York, both claim to see a planet-like object close to the Sun during the total solar eclipse. Watson, observing from Separation, Wyoming, places the object about 2.5° southwest of the Sun and estimates its magnitude at 4.5. Swift, observing from a location near Denver, Colorado, sees what he takes to be an intra-mercurial planet about 3° southwest of the Sun. He estimates its brightness to be
the same as that of Theta Cancri, a fifth-magnitude star which is also visible during totality, about six or seven minutes from the object. Both Watson and Swift describe the object as red in color. Watson says it has a definite disc, unlike stars, which appear as shimmering pinpoints of light. (James C. Watson, “On the Discovery of an Intra-Mercurial Planet,” American Journal of Science, ser. 3, 16 (1878): 230–233; Lewis Swift, “Letter from Mr. Lewis Swift, Relating to the Discovery of Intra-Mercurial Planets,” American Journal of Science, ser. 3, 16 (1878): 313–315; Richard Baum and William Sheehan, In Search of Planet Vulcan: The Ghost in Newton’s Clockwork Universe, Plenum, 1997, pp. 185–223)
1880
March 22 — About 6:00 a.m. A large number of brilliantly luminous bodies are seen to rise from the horizon and pass from east to west at Kattenau, East Prussia [now Furmanovka, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia]. They move through space “like a string of beads.” Possible meteor procession. (“A Remarkable Phenomenon,” Nature 22 (May 20, 1880): 64; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, Redemption of the Damned, vol. 1, Anomalist, 2019, pp. 169– 170)
March 26 — Night. The train depot operator and a few friends are walking at Galisteo, New Mexico, when they hear loud voices and laughter coming from a “large balloon” shaped like a fish approaching from the west. A flower is dropped from the car of the balloon to which is attached a slip of silk-like paper on which Chinese characters are written. The next morning, searchers find a cup of peculiar workmanship, but both artifacts are purchased by a “wealthy young Chinaman” and a “collector of curiosities” who visits town on March 28, although this part of the tale seems facetious and racist. The yarn is typical of sensational newspaper hoaxes that have no basis in reality. (“Galisteo’s Apparition,” Santa Fe Weekly New Mexican, March 29, 1880, p. 3; “Solved at Last,” Santa Fe Weekly New Mexican, April 5, 1880, p. 4; Clark III 69–70, 592; Patrick Gross, URECAT, December 3, 2007)
June? — David Muckle and W. R. McKay of East Kent [now Chatham-Kent], Ontario, are in a field on Muckle’s farm when they hear a loud explosion and see a cloud of stones flying upward. They go to the spot and find a circular area, 16 feet across, that has been swept clean of vegetation. (“A Curious Phenomenon,” Rock Hill (S.C.) Herald, July 7, 1880, p. 4)
Early July — A train is running on the Chattanooga Railroad near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in a thunderstorm when the engineer sees a large ball of fire rushing down the rails to the engine. As it passes under the locomotive, he feels a shock that jars the entire train. There is a loud explosion “opposite the ladies’ car” and a telegraph pole is splintered from top to bottom. (“Passengers Shocked by Lightning,” Memphis (Tenn.) Public Ledger, July 15, 1880, p. 2; Mark Rodeghier, “UFO/Vehicle Very Close Encounters,” IUR 27, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 5)
July 28 — 6:00 p.m. C. A. Youngman and Ben Flexner are looking out a drugstore window at 2nd and Chestnut streets in Louisville, Kentucky, when they see something in the air coming from the direction of the Ohio River bridge. As it approaches them, it appears to be a man surrounded by machinery, which he is working with his hands and feet. The object is too high to make out the details of its construction. The man moves off to the south, pedaling constantly. Around 8:00 p.m., the Royster family of Madisonville, Kentucky, watches a circular flying object with a ball at each end moving above the train depot. (“More Monkeying,” Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal, July 29, 1880, p. 4; “The Flying Machine,” Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal, August 6, 1880, p. 4)
September 30 —9:45 p.m. A brilliant object is seen crossing the sky in Columbus, Georgia, at a very low altitude. Coming from the south, it heads northeasterly in a horizontal line. It appears made of three perfectly developed balls of an equal size and equidistant from each other. The first ball emits a tail that envelops the two following and extends behind them. The tail is luminous except at the far end, where it is indistinct and nebulous. It is visible for a full 50 seconds and continues on its course without falling. (“Wonders of a Meteor,” Marion (Ohio) Star, October 5, 1880, p. 3)
1881
Late October — An unusual fall of spider web occurs near the coast of Lake Michigan at Milwaukee, Green Bay, Fort Howard, Sheboygan, and Ozaukee County, Wisconsin. The webs seem to come from “over the lake” and fall
from a great height. The strands are from 2 feet to several yards long, strong in texture, and very white. No spiders are seen. (“A Rain of Spider Webs,” Scientific American 45 (1881): 337)
1882
July 6 — 10:30 p.m. Amateur astronomer N. S. Drayton in Jersey City Heights, New Jersey, watches a red object without a trail move across the sky from the constellation of Ursa Minor to Capricorn in 45 seconds. (N. S. Drayton, “A Supposed Meteor,” Scientific American 47 (July 22, 1882): 53)
November 17 — 6:00 p.m. An auroral beam is observed from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, London, by astronomer Edward Walter Maunder and by John Rand Capron from his private observatory on Hog’s Back, Surrey, England, in association with a geomagnetic storm. The beam is described in detail in various ways, including as a “beam,” “spindle,” “definite body” with a Zeppelin-like shape and pale green color, passing from horizon to horizon above the moon. The phenomenon transits the sky in approximately 75 seconds. (Wikipedia, “November 1882 geomagnetic storm”; J. Rand Capron, “The Auroral Beam of November 17, 1882,” Philosophical Magazine, ser. 5, 15 (1883): 318–339; Edward Walter Maunder, “A Strange Celestial Visitor,” The Observatory 39 (May 1916): 213–215; Paul Fuller, “The Life and Times of John Rand Capron (1829–1888),” The Antiquarian Astronomer 8 (March 2014): 21–45)
1883
February 5 — 6:45 p.m. A witness at Lake Glasfjorden, near Arvika, Sweden, spots a meteor-like object high on the horizon moving from southeast to northwest. It makes several minor course changes, varies its color from white to yellow, and emits some sparks. After 18 seconds, it changes its course to the southeast and is so low to the ground that its light is reflected in the lake. By this time, it has a distinct tail. Total duration is 50 seconds. (“On February 5, at 6.45 p.m.,” Nature 27 (March 1, 1883): 423)
August 12–13 — Astronomer José Árbol y Bonilla, director of the El Cerro de la Bufa Meteorological Observatory in Zacatecas, Mexico, is observing the sun by eyepiece projection when he and an assistant see a large number of small bodies crossing the solar disc. Over the course of two days, they count a total of 447 dark objects. They seem bright as they approach the sun but are dark as they pass across its face. He takes several photographs and suspects that they are relatively near the earth. Mexican astronomers in 2011 suggested that a comet may
have split into several pieces; these objects were estimated to have had a size of between 150 and 3,350 feet, and to have passed only 334 to 5,000 miles from the Earth; they thought a fragmented Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks was one possibility, in which case Earth barely avoided multiple Tunguska events or even a mass extinction; this was reported in the media and disputed in October 2011; but the source of these objects could also have been comet C/1883 D1 (Brooks-Swift) or even a third, unknown comet that year; the event also coincided with the
annual Perseid meteor shower; even migrating birds cannot be ruled out. (José Á. y Bonilla, “Passage sur le disque solaire d’un essaim de corpuscles,” L’Astronomie 4 (1885): 347–350; Hector Javier Durand Manterola, Maria de la Paz Ramos Lara, and Guadalupe Cordero, “Interpretation of the Observations Made in 1883 in Zacatecas (Mexico): A Fragmented Comet That Nearly Hits the Earth,” Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (2011); “Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred Kilometers in 1883,” MIT Technology Review, October 17, 2011; “Did a Massive Comet Almost Wipe Out Humans in 1883?” The Week, January 8, 2015; “OT- 1883 Zacatecas Observation of Objects before Sun Were Not 12P/Pons-Brooks Fragments,” October 17, 2011; Phil Plait, “Did a Fragmenting Comet nearly Hit the Earth in 1883? Color Me Very Skeptical,” Bad Astronomy, October 17, 2011; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, Redemption of the Damned, vol. 1, Anomalist, 2019, pp. 189–207)
1884
June 6 — 1:00 p.m. Rancher John W. Ellis and some of his ranch hands in south-central Dundy County, Nebraska, allegedly see a blazing object fall from the sky and crash into many pieces, burning the grass and fusing the sand. The light is so intense it blinds one of them. The newspaper suggests it is a “vessel belonging originally to some
other planet.” The remains of the object are said to have dissolved in a rainstorm. However, the tale is actually a fictional story written by a correspondent in Benkelman. (“A Celestial Visitor,” Lincoln (Neb.) Daily State Journal, June 8, 1884, p. 5; “The Magical Meteor,” Lincoln (Neb.) Daily State Journal, June 10, 1884, p. 4;
Jerome Clark, “Spaceship and Saltshaker,” IUR 11, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1986): 12, 21; Clark III 593)
July 3 — 8:30 p.m. L. C. Yale of Norwood, New York, watches an object with a long tail move slowly from east to west.
It has a “nucleus like a globe, as large as the moon, surrounded by a bright ring, two dark lines crossing the nucleus in vertical direction, the lines larger in the middle, straight on inside, curved on outside, tapering both ways to points.” The general appearance is of a “gigantic sword of fire, moving handle first.” (“A Great Meteor,” Illustrated Science Monthly 2 (1884): 136)
1885
February 16 — Night. During a severe snowstorm, a bright light suddenly flashes in the high rocks on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River some five miles northwest of Port Jervis, New York. The snow-covered hill glows like red-hot iron for several feet around, gleaming through the storm for several minutes, then growing dim and disappearing. (“Mysterious Light,” Wichita (Kan.) Beacon, March 25, 1885, p. 1)
February 25 — 5:00 a.m. Sailing in the North Pacific some 800 miles west of Victoria, British Columbia, Captain John Waters of the barque Innerwick and his mate see the sky turning fiery red. Suddenly a large fireball appears above the ship and falls hissing into the sea about 150 feet away from them, causing a wave of water to impact the ship. Electrical discharges run through the rigging and the masts. (“Frightful Experience at Sea,” Sacramento (Calif.) Record-Union, March 3, 1885, p. 1; “Notes and News,” Science 5 (1885): 242–243; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, Redemption of the Damned, vol. 2, Anomalist, 2021, pp. 177–199)
1886
1886 — French novelist Jules Verne publishes Robur the Conqueror, which describes the appearance of mysterious objects and strange lights in the sky all over the world. It turns out that the sightings are of a flying machine, invented by the novel’s anti-hero Robur, who kidnaps people and takes them on board the airship. (Wikipedia, “Robur the Conqueror”)
October 24 — Night. Nine persons who are sleeping in a hut some 10 miles from Maracaibo, Venezuela, are awakened by a loud humming noise and a dazzling light that illuminates the interior. The people begin to pray but they start vomiting as extensive swellings appear on the upper part of their bodies, especially around the face and lips. They feel no heat, although the light has a smoky appearance and a peculiar smell. The next morning, the swellings subside but leave black blotches. By November 2, the skin peels off and the blotches are round sores. Portions of their hair falls off. Trees around the hut show no damage until November 2, when they suddenly wither. The symptoms are similar to those of ionizing radiation syndrome. (Warner Cowgill, “Curious Phenomenon in Venezuela,” letter, Scientific American 55 (December 18, 1886): 389; Clark III 949; Patrick Gross, UFO Reports from the Past)
1887
March 19 — 5:00 p.m. Captain Cornelis Dirks Swart of the Dutch bark J.P.A. sees a “meteor in the shape of two balls” during a storm in the North Atlantic about 590 miles northeast of Bermuda. One ball is black and the other is luminous and oblong. The luminous object descends with a roar and lights up the ship and surrounding water. The crew feels heat from the object even as solid lumps of ice fall on the deck and the rigging becomes iced. The side of the ship where it falls turns partially black and the copper plating is blistered. The wind increases to “hurricane force.” (“Rare Electrical Phenomenon at Sea,” American Meteorological Journal 4 (July 1887): 98–99; Chris Aubeck and Martin Shough, Return to Magonia: Investigating UFOs in History, 2015, pp. 205–217; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, Redemption of the Damned, vol. 2, Anomalist, 2021, pp. 201–210)
November 12 — Midnight. Captain R. F. Moore of the English steamer SS Siberian, sailing 10 nautical miles off Cape Race, Newfoundland, watches an enormous fireball rising from the sea to the height of 15 feet. It travels against the strong wind and comes close to the ship, then turns to the southeast and disappears. The object is seen for about 2 minutes. Moore says he has seen this phenomenon before and considers it a sign of stormy weather. (“Globular Lightning,” Science 10 (1887): 324; Thomas Corwin Mendenhall, “On Globular Lightning,” American Meteorological Journal 6 (February 1890): 437, 442–443; Theo Paijmans, “Fiery Objects Rising from the Oceans,” Charles Fort Institute Blogs, July 6, 2007; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, Redemption of the Damned, vol. 2, Anomalist, 2021, pp. 151–174)
1888
Early September — 3:15 p.m. During a severe thunderstorm, after a flash of lightning and a peal of thunder, witnesses see a huge flame at Highland Lake, near Winsted, Connecticut. The water is parted for yards by a huge ball of fire at least 10 feet in diameter, and billows rise on either side to a height of 20 feet. The light moves toward the head of the lake with great velocity. When it is within 100 yards of the shore, another flash of lightning strikes, and the fireball disappears. The waters of the lake remain disturbed for hours. (“A Ball of Fire on a Lake,” Hagerstown (Ind.) Exponent, September 12, 1888, p. 3)
1889
February 7 — 6:00 p.m. A cylindrical luminous object passes over Oella, Maryland, at only several hundred feet altitude.
It lights up the village “as brilliantly as if by a strong electric lamp.” It curves and appears to descend to the ground one mile away. It follows the course of the Patapsco River to the north for several seconds. (“A Brilliant Meteor,” Washington (D.C.) Evening Star, February 9, 1889, p. 6)
1891
June 13 — Day. An unnamed witness claims to see a “meteor” explode with a loud noise over the Wasson & Miller flour mill and cotton gin in Dublin, Texas. The object looks like “a bale of cotton suspended in the air after having been saturated in kerosene oil and ignited, except that it created a much brighter light” that dazzles people standing several hundred feet away. The object shatters into pieces before it hits the ground, the fragments setting the grass and weeds on fire. In addition to the fragments is a scrap of paper with writing in a strange language. (“Dublin 1891,” Texas UFO Museum and Research Library, February 5, 2014)
July 12 — 7:00 p.m. Residents of Theodore Street in Ottawa, Ontario, see over the rifle range a cigar-shaped balloon with a bright light on one end and a fan on the other traveling from south to north. (MacLeod (Ont.) Gazette, July 16, 1891; Clark 45)
September 2 — 8:00 p.m. Alonzo M. Swan and L. D. Dodson (an equestrian recovering from an illness) are camped in Coyote Canyon [now within the Sandia National Laboratory complex], New Mexico, to benefit from the mineral springs there when they see a brilliant light rise above a mountain to the south. As it moves closer against the wind, they see it has a series of “electric arc lights” around it and a “pole” or rudder that is similarly lit. The object is in view for nearly two hours. Another lighted object appears from the southwest and approaches the first object, but clouds prevent any further observation. Swan sees a lighted object again on September 4, although this time it could be a star. (“Strange Mid Air Ships,” Albuquerque (N.Mex.) Weekly Citizen, September 12, 1891, p. 3; Chris Aubeck and Martin Shough, Return to Magonia: Investigating UFOs in History, Anomalist, 2015, pp. 219–237)
1892
January? — George W. Crusselle and S. D. Cuthereil from the USS Thetis are wandering among the salt water lagoons on the west coast of Baja California, Mexico, when they see a luminous object with smooth edges about 30 feet in
diameter approaching from the ocean at an altitude of 50 feet. It changes shape from circular to an hourglass and moves swiftly to the surface of a lagoon, covering it with a “brilliant halo of light.” It rises moments later, changing its shape frequently, and moving swiftly in a zigzag fashion. After 15 minutes it disappears inland. (George W. Crusselle, “The Coast Survey,” Atlanta Constitution, April 10, 1892, p. 9)
March 23 — Evening–1:00 a.m. Residents of Warsaw, Poland, watch a balloon over the city that casts rays of light from an electrical apparatus. It remains stationary until 1:00 a.m., then it takes off to the west. Other supposed balloons are seen March 22 or earlier over Kaunas Fortress, Lithuania; and Modlin Fortress (in Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki), Sosnowiec, Dąbrowa Górnicza, and Dąbrowice, Poland. As they remain stationary for as long as 40 minutes, some assume they are piloted by German spies. (“Spying by Balloon,” New York Evening World, March 25, 1892,
p. 1; “Balloons As German Spies,” New York Times, March 26, 1892, p. 3; “Steering Military Balloons,” Birmingham Daily Post, March 31, 1892, p. 8; Clark 45; Brett Holman, “The Phantom Balloon Scare of 1892,” Airminded, July 11, 2009)
April 16 — Witnesses at Przemyśl Fortress, Poland, see a bright point of light in the north that seems to be a sphere emitting searchlight beams above and below it. The object is hovering at an altitude of 2,100 feet and begins circling. (Poland 7–8)
June 1 — Night. A large balloon carrying a searchlight and four passengers passes over Newark, New Jersey, descending as low as 20 feet from the ground. (Trenton (N.J.) Times, June 2, 1892; Clark III 70)
June 19 — Night. J. L. Shaw of Conyers, Georgia, sees a mysterious light in the sky from which balls of fire fall to the ground near him. (“Saw Balls of Fire,” Atlanta Constitution, June 21, 1892, p. 10)
August 30 — 11:00 p.m. Several people in Waxahachie, Texas, see a “kind of balloon” with colored lights passing over the northern part of the city after hearing a man shouting a greeting. (“What Was It?” Galveston (Tex.) Daily News, September 2, 1892, p. 6; Clark III 70)
September 20 — Large quantities of a white, thread-like substance fall from the sky during a rainstorm at Gainesville, Florida. Samples are sent to arachnologist George Marx of the US Department of Agriculture, who performs a chemical analysis that shows it to be from migrating spiders. (“Spider Web from the Clouds,” Scientific American 67 (1892): 325)
1893
February 24–25 — 10:00 p.m. Charles James Norcock, captain of the corvette HMS Caroline, is sailing about 16 miles south of Jeju Island, South Korea, in the Korea Strait when the officer of the watch observes some round lights resembling “Chinese lanterns festooned between the masts of a lofty vessel.” They are moving slowly north and appear to be in the air between the ship and the Hallasan volcano on Jeju. They are visible until roughly 12:00 midnight, sometimes appearing as a mass, other times strung out more in an irregular line. The ship’s crew observes them again the next night as they are sailing east from Port Hamilton [now the Korean islands of Geomundo]. This time they are visible until dawn. Although there are some odd characteristics of this observation, the likeliest explanation is that they are inferior mirages of distant fishing boats, as atmospheric conditions are favorable on these dates. (Charles J. Norcock, “An Atmospheric Phenomenon in the North China Sea,” Nature 48 (1893): 76–77; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, Redemption of the Damned, vol. 1, Anomalist, 2019, pp. 253–281)
August 18 — Sunrise. People living near the small hamlet of Leslie in Cumberland County, Kentucky, notice that the sun has a peculiar color. Thousands of small discs, seemingly about the size of a wagon wheel, appear in the sky, all of them in motion. They appear round in shape from far away, but when closer to the ground they change to triangles, squares, or odd forms. Their colors vary: Some are bright red, others green or black, but when they are close to the ground they are all a deep purple color. All are silent. The phenomenon lasts about one hour, during which time the villagers fear it is judgment day. (“Judgment Day,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 20, 1893, p. 9)
1894
February? — Capt. Corning of the British schooner W. and H. Witherspoon sees several lights rise from the Gulf of Mexico off the west coast of Florida. They ascend to a height of 25 feet, explode, and disappear. (“Cum Grano Salis,” Lowell (Mass.) Daily Sun, February 8, 1894, p. 1)
May — During the opposition of Mars, the idea that Schiaparelli’s canali are really irrigation canals made by intelligent beings is first hinted at, and then adopted as the only intelligible explanation, by American astronomer Percival Lowell in Flagstaff, Arizona, and a few others. The visible seasonal melting of Martian polar icecaps fuels speculation that an advanced alien race indigenous to Mars has built the canals to transport the water to drier equatorial regions. Newspaper and magazine articles about Martian canals and “Martians” capture the public imagination. Lowell publishes his views in three books: Mars (1895), Mars and Its Canals (1906), and Mars As the Abode of Life (1908). He remains a strong proponent for the rest of his life of the idea that the canals were built for irrigation by an intelligent civilization. (Wikipedia, “Martian canal”)
June 7 — Astronomers Percival Lowell and William H. Pickering at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, see two “dazzling white specks” for a few moments on the south polar cap of Mars. The most likely explanation is the reflection of sunlight from ice on the surface or ice crystals in clouds. (Percival Lowell, Mars, Houghton, Mifflin, 1897 ed., pp. 86–87)
July 20 — Sunset. Bernard Parry and his wife are near Marriott [now Marriott-Slaterville], Utah, when they see a “small black cloud” in the northeast quickly approaching them. It grows bigger, then smaller, as they watch it. When it is only 450 feet away, it stops and hovers. Its sides seem to be folded up toward the center. Many small black-and- white objects (birds?) are moving in its center. Suddenly the object pivots to the east and moves away toward Ogden. (Ogden (Utah) Standard, July 26, 1894)
Late November — 11:00 p.m.–2:00 a.m. Mennonite farmers Henry W. J. Smith and Benjamin W. Blue see a luminous ball in the northeastern sky about 30° above the horizon some 3 miles west of Manchester, Kansas. The object, in the shape of a “casket,” shoots toward the west 3° then returns to its original position. As it maneuvers near them, it opens several times, revealing various entities each time, from a crowned man to a “haughty woman” and a military leader. The original report appears in the Evangelical Visitor. (“Battle in the Heavens,” Wilkes-Barre (Pa.) Times, October 6, 1894, p. 6)
1895
1895 — French parapsychologist Albert de Rochas is asked to hypnotize a family friend, “Mireille,” who is suffering from some ailment. In one of her sessions, Mireille describes how she is rising in space, which she describes as luminous and peopled with phantoms. Subsequent sessions reveal that she has visited Mars and other planets in astral form. Mars has canals, of course, but also Martians who are less intelligent than earthlings. (Hilary Evans, “Martians of the 1890s,” IUR 11, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1986): 8–9)
August — US psychical researcher James Hyslop begins investigating a case of automatic writing by Sarah Harper Cleaveland (“Mrs. Smead”) in Onondaga County, New York. She keeps records of her planchette experiments and puts them at Hyslop’s disposal. In August, she makes several references to the planet Mars and Jupiter. She provides a crude map of Jupiter’s surface, and the planet is said to be the “babies’ heaven.” At the next sitting, she draws a map of Mars, the different zones named in the Martian language; she gives several communications about the inhabitants and the canals. Martian revelations cease for another 5 years until September 1900, when the communications return in a developed state. She draws men, boats, houses, and flowers, named in Martian and written in hieroglyphic characters. Some of the sketches (a self-winding double clock) are very ingenious, while others (a Martian airship) are peculiar but unconvincing. (Hilary Evans, “Martians of the 1890s,” IUR 11, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1986): 6–7)
August 31 — 8:00 p.m. Oxford English Dictionary lexicographer James Murray watches a “brilliant luminous body” move slowly over the Oxford University campus in Oxford, England, toward the east. At roughly the same time, other observers in London see a similar meteor pass over slowly for about 5 minutes, and A. Warren Melhuish
sees it at Margate, Kent, around 10:15 p.m. (J. A. H. Murray, “Remarkable Meteoric (?) Appearance,” London
Times, September 4, 1895, p. 3; “Remarkable Meteoric Appearance,” London Times, September 6, 1895, p. 8)
1896
July 1 — 6:00 p.m. A mysterious balloon passes over Winnipeg, Manitoba, to the east at an estimated 2,000 feet. It is lost to view after 20 minutes (“A Mysterious Balloon,” Winnipeg Manitoba Morning Free Press, July 2, 1896, p. 4; “They Think It’s Andreé’s,” Chicago Tribune, July 2, 1896, p. 1; Clark III 70)
July 3 — The chief of the Kispiox people and a group of Canadian trappers see a brightly lit balloon traveling north near Blackwater Lake, British Columbia. The same day, a First Nations boy sees something similar at the Skeena River, British Columbia. (“It Was No Dream,” Winnipeg Manitoba Morning Free Press, August 13, 1896, p. 2; Brett Holman, “Believing Is Seeing,” Airminded, May 2, 2010)
Mid-July — Night. Chester N. Crotsenburg, a postal clerk on the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railway, is on a train heading north from Princeton, Missouri, when he notices a round, dull-rose-colored light low on the western horizon. It then rises in height to 45°, and appears to be pacing the train, keeping a half-mile or one mile distance. After the train reaches Lineville, Iowa (13.7 miles away), it passes out of sight behind buildings. Possibly the moon. (“Ball Lightning,” Monthly Weather Review 26 (August 1898): 358; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, Redemption of the Damned, vol. 1, Anomalist, 2019, pp. 291–304)
August 11 — Charles Abbott Smith of San Francisco, California, is granted a patent for a cylindrical airship with a cone- shaped bow, “two wings hinged at the upper part of the vessel,” and a compartment for machinery and passengers. (US Patent, “Air-ship,” granted August 11, 1896)
October — Evening. A Miss Hagstrom is riding a bicycle on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland, California, when she notices an object with a powerful headlight moving toward the west and gradually descending. (“Saw the Mystic Flying Light,” San Francisco Call, November 22, 1896, p. 13)
Late October — Fruit rancher Constant T. Musso and his family in Bowman, California. watch three bright lights moving toward the east at about 100 mph. (“Mission of the Aerial Ship,” San Francisco Call, November 25, 1896, p. 1)
Early November? — Evening. Some of the employees at the Sutro Heights estate [now Sutro Heights Park in the Richmond District] of San Francisco, California, Mayor Adolph Sutro watch a brilliant light approaching from the sea at a height of 500 feet. Two lights are visible, one a “misty-looking mass” and the other a searchlight. The object disappears in the direction of the city and turns to the north just before it passes from view. Another report suggests that the object passe over Seal Rocks and shone its searchlight on the seals. (“The Apparition of the Air,” San Francisco Call, November 24, 1896, p. 1)
Early November — 8:00 p.m. Louis Charmak and one other person in Woodland, California, notice three bright lights in the southwestern sky moving toward the northeast. As they reach Main Street, they rise another 100 feet in the air. They are close together and followed by a white trail of light. (“Was It an Airship?” Woodland (Calif.) Daily Democrat, November 24, 1896, p. 3)
November 17 — Afternoon and evening. A mystery airship wave begins in California when residents of the Oak Park neighborhood of Sacramento see a high-flying object moving slowly in a circle, leaving a trail of smoke. Around 6:30 p.m., a light resembling an electric arc lamp appears in the night sky above Sacramento. Horse trainer David Carl notices it close to the ground and hears a voice saying, “We are too low down here. Send her up higher.” Hundreds watch as it passes at low altitude for 30 minutes, avoiding buildings and hills. Some people claim to hear voices, either arguing or singing. R. L. Lowry sees four men pushing the vessel by its wheels. The witnesses include streetcar workers Charles Lusk and Granville C. Snider, who watch the object rise and fall as it moves southwest. (Wikipedia, “Mystery airship”; “Voices in the Sky,” Sacramento (Calif.) Evening Bee, November 18, 1896, p. 1; “Strange Craft of the Sky,” San Francisco Call, November 19, 1896, p. 1; Loren E. Gross, UFOs: A History, 1896, The Author, 1974; Thomas E. Bullard, The Airship File, The author, 1982; Clark III 70–75)
November 20 — Afternoon. D. H. Risdon is working in an orchard near Tagus, California, when he spots an object “like an immense sheet” moving against the wind at a “considerable elevation.” (“Saw the Mystic Flying Light,” San Francisco Call, November 22, 1896, p. 13)
November 20 — 5:30 p.m. Passengers on a streetcar in Oakland, California, notice a “peculiar-looking contrivance” high in the sky and moving in a westerly direction toward San Francisco. It has a powerful headlight and another light
on the bottom. It is also seen over Folsom, San Francisco, Sacramento, Modesto, Manteca, Sebastopol, and several other cities later in the evening and is reportedly viewed by hundreds of witnesses. (“Saw the Mystic Flying Light,” San Francisco Call, November 22, 1896, p. 13; Wikipedia, “Mystery airship”)
November 22 — San Francisco attorney George D. Collins announces that he represents the airship inventor, a “very wealthy man who has been studying the subject of flying machines for fifteen years” and who moved to California from Maine in 1889. He claims the airship is a 150-foot metal contraption with two canvas wings 18 feet wide and shaped like a bird’s tail. It has been built in Oroville and is now hidden in the San Francisco, California, area as the inventor deals with technical problems. However, people in Oroville sense a hoax, as they know of no such inventor. On November 24, Collins complains to the San Francisco Call that another newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner, has been printing falsehoods about him, including an interview with another attorney, Frederick Bradley. Suspicion falls on an itinerant dentist from Maine, Elmer H. Benjamin, who insists his only inventions are dental fittings. A prominent citizen of Oakland, George H. Carleton, claims to know the inventor but has been sworn to secrecy. Former California Attorney General William H. H. Hart soon claims to represent the mystery inventor, who has fired Collins for talking too much. But Hart is also blabbing prolifically, saying that two or three airships exist (a second built in an eastern state) and his role is to “consolidate both interests.” Hart asserts that the airship can carry four men and 1,000 pounds of dynamite for dropping on Havana, Cuba. (Clark III 71–73; “A Lawyer’s Word for That Airship,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 22, 1896, p. 36; “Collins Sticks to His Airship Story,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 23, 1896, p. 12; San Francisco Chronicle, November 24, 1896, p. 9; “Have We Got ‘Em Again?” Sacramento Bee, November 23, 1896, p. 1; “Coy Mr. Collins and His Airship,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 24, 1896, p. 9; “The Apparition of the Air,” San Francisco Call, November 24, 1896, p. 1; “Mission of the Aerial Ship,” San Francisco Call, November 25, 1896, p. 1; “Hart Stands by His Ship,” “Hart Confirms the Story from Sacramento,” San Francisco Call, November 26, 1896, p. 1; “Three Airships, Says Hart,” San Francisco Call, November 29, 1896, p. 1; Michael Busby, Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery, Pelican, 2003, pp. 249–315)
November 22 — 5:30 p.m. Another mystery light moving in a wavering fashion toward the southwest is seen in Sacramento, California, by many people. At times it disappears, then flashes out again with renewed brilliance. Edward Carragher, owner of the Saddle Rock Restaurant, views the light through binoculars and is able to see a large object supporting an arc lamp. Cigar store vendor Jacob Zemansky watches the undulating light through a telescope until it fades into nothingness. (“Have We Got ‘Em Again?” Sacramento Bee, November 23, 1896, p. 1; “A Winged Ship in the Sky,” San Francisco Call, November 23, 1896, p. 1)
November 22 — 7:05 p.m. M. H. Cohen, a conductor on the Hayes Street line, sees an aerial light at about 300–400 feet altitude when he is at Market and 8th streets in San Francisco, California. Other people on the streetcar also watch the light, which is moving across the Golden Gate and flashing periodically. When the streetcar disembarks at 1st Street at 7:13 p.m., Cohen and the others see the light over the Twin Peaks downtown. At the top of Pierce Street hill, Cohen sees it returning from Twin Peaks, and at 7:51 p.m. he watches it from Ashbury Street. Airships are seen later at Oakland, Alameda, San Leandro, San Jose, California, and Tacoma, Washington. (“The Apparition of the Air,” San Francisco Call, November 24, 1896, p. 1)
November 23 — 7:00 p.m. A bright light is seen west of Chico, California, traveling to the northwest. The same or similar light is seen west of Red Bluff, California flying west at about 2,000 feet. After a few minutes it descends to 1,000 feet. It disappears over the Coast Range. (“Mission of the Aerial Ship,” San Francisco Call, November 25, 1896, p. 1)
November 24 — 6:45 p.m. Several passengers on a train crossing the bay from San Francisco to Oakland, California, see an airship alternately stop, hover, and move on. Minutes later, 6th Street in Oakland is overflowing with onlookers as the object passes above Broadway, flashing its light. One spectator is watching through binoculars and says the airship’s turns causes the searchlight to shine in different directions. Among the witnesses are Col. Thomas F. Garrity, city electrician George H. Carleton, George Hatton of the Oakland Tribune, and Melvin Holmes. (“Mission of the Aerial Ship,” San Francisco Call, November 25, 1896, p. 1)
November 25 — Evening. A mystery light flies in circular patterns around Sacramento, California, at a rapid rate of speed. Observers include Deputy Secretary of State George A. McCalvy, District Attorney Frank D. Ryan, and E.
D. McCabe, the governor’s personal secretary. It is three times as large as Venus, also visible. The light is observed for 20 minutes then reappears later in the evening. A Professor Dodge of Galt, California, claims he can make out the “outlines of a dark body” just above the light. (Clark III 73; “Hart Confirms the Story from Sacramento,” San Francisco Call, November 26, 1896, p. 1)
November 25 — 6:00 p.m. Col. H. G. Shaw and Camille Spooner are riding in a carriage near Lodi, California, when their horse stops suddenly. Looking up, they see three slender beings about 7 feet tall. Shaw walks up to them and asks them where they are from; they reply in an odd warbling language. He notes that they are hairless and wear no
apparent clothing. The eyes are large and lustrous, and they each seem to be carrying and egg-shaped light and a breathing apparatus under the left arm. Shaw claims the beings try to lift him but they are not strong enough. They then notice a 150-foot airship hovering 20 feet above the water close to a bridge. The three beings float to the craft, open a door in the side, and disappear inside. The ship flies quickly out of sight. Shaw speculates that the beings are from Mars. (“Three Strange Visitors,” Stockton (Calif.) Evening Mail, November 27, 1896, p. 1; Patrick Gross, UFOs in the Daily Press)
November 26 — 7:00 p.m. Farmer John Bawl and his family see an airship moving to the southwest over his residence on Monroe Street near Franklin Street in San Jose, California. It is lunging sharply from side to side and has a pair of flapping wings and a red light on the bottom. Musician and President of the University of the Pacific Moses Smith Cross also sees the strange aerial light when he is visiting a colleague two blocks away. (“It Flitted over San Jose,” San Francisco Call, November 28, 1896, p. 1; “Three Airships, Says Hart,” San Francisco Call, November 29, 1896, p. 1)
November 26 — 8:00 p.m. Electrician Case Gilson and three other men see an unlighted airship in a clear sky 1,000 feet over Oakland, California. It is flying northward against the wind and looks like a “great black cigar with a fishlike tail.” The body is at least 100 feet long and looks as if it is made of darkened aluminum. It is seen again at 8:30
p.m. and disappears in the direction of San Francisco. (Clark III 73; “Says He Saw It,” Oakland (Calif.) Tribune,
December 1, 1896, p. 1; “Saw the Airship at Close Range,” San Francisco Call, December 2, 1896, p. 14)
November 27 — 10:00 p.m. A prominent attorney and others in Woodland, California, see a cluster of lights attached to an apparent airship moving at an altitude of about 500 feet at about 25 mph. It remains visible for an hour. (“More Airship Stories,” Woodland (Calif.) Daily Democrat, November 29, 1896, p. 2)
November 28 — Percy Drew watches an enormous airship with a red light over Oakland, California. (“Says He Saw It,”
Oakland (Calif.) Tribune, December 1, 1896, p. 1)
December 1 — Harry Lytle watches an airship as it flies toward the southwest over the Coast Ranges 3 miles north of Rumsey, California. He claims to recognize it as an “aircycle,” kind of a winged balloon with a pedal-driven propellor, plans for which he submitted to E. W. Brown of Davis, California, and which they constructed in 1893. He calls it the Nonesuch. On an alleged test flight to Los Angeles on March 2, 1893, the device was stolen by some “hoboes.” He assumes the airship is his stolen invention. (“The Mystery Solved,” Woodland (Calif.) Daily Democrat, December 8, 1896, p. 3)
December 4 — 6:30 p.m. Travelers on a freight train between Dixon and Elmira, California, see two large, bright lights moving parallel with them at about 1,000 feet altitude. The lights outdistance the train and disappear to the southwest. (Clark III 74; “The Airship Again,” Woodland (Calif.) Daily Democrat, December 7, 1896, p. 3)
December 26 — Early morning. Dairy farmer Ezekiel Sergeant and a hired man have just finished milking their cows near Wilmington, Delaware, when they hear strains of music in the air. Then a bottle falls at Sergeant’s feet and breaks into pieces. He sees an enormous, fish-shaped airship with extended wings, a large tail, and a bright searchlight.
Amid the shattered glass he finds a slip of paper allegedly written by Capt. James Dashiel and Thomas Murphy on the airship Icarus that is sailing from Salt Lake City to Cuba. (“Saw an Air-Ship,” Philadelphia (Pa.) Times, December 28, 1896, p. 5)
1897
Mid-January — Just after sunset. People in Acampo, California, see an airship the size of a small house, seemingly built of canvas, and moving to the southeast. It looks “like a cigar box with a spark of fire in it.” (“Airship Reported Again,” Stockton (Calif.) Evening Mail, January 22, 1897, p. 5)
January 31 — 9:30 p.m. A “large, glaring light,” apparently from an airship, is seen for nearly 30 minutes west of Hastings, Nebraska, hovering, ascending, descending, and moving at a “most remarkable speed.” (“See an Air Ship at Hastings,” Omaha (Neb.) Daily Bee, February 2, 1897, p. 2)
February–July — The mystery airship wave continues, from Nebraska and Colorado to Texas and Ohio. Hoaxes and pranks pollute the information pool in a major way during this era and the planet Venus and other celestial objects undoubtedly play a major role, but many airship reports emanate from manifestly sober, puzzled citizens, and they continue long after the initial excitement subsides. To all appearances, they are objects of some kind, but since newspapers rarely question witnesses critically about details at this time, little can be deduced from the mass of reports. (Loren E. Gross, The Mystery of Unidentified Flying Objects—A Prelude, 1896–1949, The author, 1971; Roger L. Welsch, “This Mysterious Light Called an Airship: Nebraska Saucer Sightings, 1897,” Nebraska
History 60 (1979): 92–113; Daniel Cohen, The Great Airship Mystery, Dodd, Mead, 1981; Thomas E. Bullard, The Airship File, The author, 1982; Jerome Clark, “Airships: Part I,” IUR 16, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1991): 4–23; Jerome Clark, “Airships: Part II,” IUR 16, no. 2 (Mar./Apr. 1991): 20–21, 24; Michael Busby, Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery, Pelican, 2004; Jerome Clark, “UFOs or Mystery Airships?” IUR 31, no. 4 (March 2008): 8–14, 29; J. Allen Danelek, The Great Airship of 1897, Adventures Unlimited, 2009; Dennis Crenshaw and P. G. Navarro, The Secrets of Dellschau: The Sonora Aero Club and the Airships of the 1800s, Anomalist, 2009; Clark III 75–90)
February 4 — Night. A dozen people returning home from a prayer meeting in Inavale, Nebraska, see a bright light passing overhead. Six smaller lights are placed at intervals around a larger dark body. After 10 minutes it returns at a lower altitude, now visible as a conical object 30–40 feet long with two sets of wings and a large rudder.
Voices can be heard plainly. (“Air Ship Is Seen at Inavale,” Omaha (Neb.) Daily Bee, February 6, 1897, p. 6) February 17 —Night. Hy Smith, Charles Braternitz, and Harry Reese see a bright light moving to the east just west of Big
Springs, Nebraska. The light repeatedly rises up about 300 feet then descends quickly, sending out sparks. (“Seen near North Platte,” Kearney (Neb.) Hub, February 18, 1897, p. 3)
Mid-February — Residents of Valley Falls, Kansas, can see the outlines of an airship behind a large light that passes over the town. (“The Supposed Kansas Airship,” Atchison (Kan.) Daily Globe, February 27, 1897, p. 4)
February 26 — 10:15 p.m. People at the railway depot in Falls City, Nebraska, see an object with a large searchlight in the northern sky. According to dispatcher Ike Chidsey, it is moving west at 60 mph and also has a red light. Chidsey alerts other Missouri Pacific train stations to the west. Over the next four and a half hours, the object is seen over Stella, Beatrice, Wymore, Hastings, Kenesaw, and Hartwell. (“The Supposed Kansas Airship,” Atchison (Kan.) Daily Globe, February 27, 1897, p. 4)
March 13 —Night. A bright fireball appears in the west over North Loup, Nebraska, moving up and down erratically. It occasionally throws out sparks. (“That Strange Light Again,” Lincoln Nebraska State Journal, March 16, 1897, p. 5)
March 14 — 9:30 p.m. An object with a “big engine headlight” flies over South Omaha, Nebraska, and remains visible for 30–40 minutes. It is moving to the west and disappears behind some buildings. One of the witnesses is Isaac J. Copenharve, a compositor for the Omaha Bee. (“Visions of an Air Ship,” Omaha (Neb.) Daily Bee, March 16, 1897, p. 7)
March 23–26 — Night. Residents of Belleville, Kansas, watch a lighted airship moving at 75 mph and “lighting up the houses and city like an immense meteor.” It hovers for 20–30 minutes, changes direction, and is seen on four nights in succession. At 9:20 p.m. on March 25, workers at the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad depot and others in Belleville watch a bright light pass above the city for 45 minutes. It disappears to the northwest and reappears two more times. (“Say They Saw an Air-Ship,” Kansas City (Mo.) Times, March 27, 1897, p. 5; “It Flies at Night,” Kansas City (Mo.) Journal, March 28, 1897, p. 2)
March 27 — 8:30 p.m. A blood-red light appears in the western sky over Topeka, Kansas, moving northward parallel with the horizon until after 20 minutes it disappears “with a flicker.” Among the witnesses is Kansas Gov. John W. Leedy, who describes it as a “very strange light.” Harold T. Chase, editor of the Topeka Capital, is on the State House steps with Leedy and says the object is a large, oblong shape. (“Strange Light in the Sky,” Topeka (Kan.) Daily Capital, March 28, 1897, p. 1; “Neither Star Nor Planet,” Kansas City (Mo) Times, March 29, 1897, p. 1; “Airship Is Seen by Gov. Leedy,” Chicago Tribune, March 29, 1897, p. 4)
April 1 — 8:00 p.m. Strange lights appear in the sky south of Kansas City, Kansas, zigzagging and crossing the horizon. (“Air Ship Headed toward Omaha,” Omaha (Neb.) Daily Bee, April 3, 1897, p. 9)
April 1 — 9:00 p.m. J. E. Gunn, proprietor of the Commercial Hotel, and other residents of Everest, Kansas, watch a 30- foot-long object that looks like a canoe suspended from a balloon. Two wings are visible on each side. Its light appears to dim when the object is moving and glows brightly when hovering. (“Air Ship Headed toward Omaha,” Omaha (Neb.) Daily Bee, April 3, 1897, p. 9)
April 1 — Night. Residents of Galesburg, Michigan, see a brilliant white light passing overhead. It is attached to a black object that emits a crackling sound. Human voices are heard distinctly. (“The Airship Story Spreads,” Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Evening Gazette, April 2, 1897, p. 1)
April 2 — Evening. People in Wesley, Iowa, view a cone-shaped object with windows in the side through which light is visible. It is traveling slowly toward the northwest. (“Wesley Saw the Air Ship,” Algona (Iowa) Republican, April 7, 1897, p. 8)
April 4 — 12:15 a.m. Dairy farmer Dick Butler is returning to his farm in Wolf Creek Township, Iowa, after delivering milk in Sioux City when he notices an electric-like light on his right about 200 feet away in a cornfield. He can
see a dark object with light coming through its windows. It appears to be a “long, narrow car, resembling a corset box in shape,” some 30–35 feet long and 6–7 feet high. Above the car floats a cigar-shaped bag about the same length and 8–10 feet thick. When his horses see the object, they bolt and tumble his wagon into the ditch. By the time Butler recovers, the object is moving briskly in a descent to the south. He watches it as it moves out of sight. (“Air Ship Again,” Marshalltown (Iowa) Evening Times-Republican, April 9, 1897, p. 3)
Early April — An airship allegedly lands near Elburn, Illinois, where some farmers run across it. It is made of “some light substance like aluminum.” Two aeronauts are repairing the vehicle and will only say that they are flying from the Pacific to the Atlantic by following the Chicago and North Western Railway. (“That Blooming Ship,” Rockford (Ill.) Daily Republic, April 12, 1897, p. 1)
April 6 — 2:00 a.m. James Southard gets lost on his ranch near Peru, Nebraska, looking for strayed cattle. He notices a light on a bar in the Missouri River, and it turns out to be on a landed airship 200 feet long, whose crew are apparently repairing its searchlight. The aeronauts answer all of Southard’s questions, telling him that “the craft is loaded with several tons of dynamite and is bound for Cuba” to bomb Spanish ships. (“Boarded the Airship,” Auburn (Neb.) Granger, April 9, 1897, p. 3)
April 8 — 8:00 p.m. Many people in towns along the Burlington, Cedar Rapids, and Northern Railroad from West Liberty to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, see an object with a “bright glaring headlight,” a glistening steel body, and wings on either side. It makes a hissing noise as it glides through the air. By 10:00 p.m., it fades from view to the north of Cedar Rapids. (“Airship Appears in Iowa,” Chicago Record, April 9, 1897, p. 1)
April 9 — 8:30 p.m. Hundreds of people in Chicago, Evanston, Niles Center, and Schermerville, Illinois, see an airship earing multicolored lights and swinging a huge white searchlight from side to side. Nearly 800 witnesses on Davis Street in Evanston watch the object, estimated to be 400 feet in length. Using binoculars, the outline of a structure can be seen behind the powerful light. By 9:30 p.m., the airship is last seen over South Chicago. Northwestern University astronomer George W. Hough, director of the Dearborn Observatory, tells the newspapers he is sure the airship is the star Alpha Orionis (Betelgeuse). (“See Airship or a Star,” Chicago Tribune, April 10, 1897, pp. 1–2; “California Airship on the Wing,” Chicago Tribune, April 11, 1897, p. 1)
April 10 — Evening. Witnesses in Marshfield, Wisconsin, see a cone-shaped airship with a bright headlight moving south of town. (“Hides in the Woods,” Chicago Chronicle, April 11, 1897, p. 3)
April 10 — 10:00 p.m. A noise draws residents of Platte City, Missouri, outside where they can see a hovering object 100 feet long and 20 feet wide. Two immense wings on either side are moving up and down. Greenish light beams shine down on Main Street from its back and front. Suddenly there is a hissing sound and explosions and the object moves away to the northeast. (“Saw the Airship,” Buffalo (N.Y.) Enquirer, April 12, 1897, p. 1)
April 10 — 10:30 p.m. Policemen, firemen, and many other residents of Jacksonville, Illinois, see a bright light moving swiftly from east to west a few hundred feet in the air. The light sways from side to side and throws out beams several hundred feet in length. When it is above the city, the object the light is attached to can be seen as metallic and long with possible wings. Some witnesses can hear voices. The object reverses direction over Jacksonville, throwing its searchlight in all directions, and disappears to the east. (“The Airship over Quincy,” Quincy (Ill.) Morning Whig, April 11, 1897, p. 8)
April 10 — 11:00 p.m. A bright white light with red and green lights on either side of it is observed by many residents of Quincy, Illinois, flying low above the Mississippi River on the city’s west side. At one point it is no more than 400–500 feet above the ground. The light is attached to a metallic cigar-shaped object. Two wings extend from the sides and on top is some kind of superstructure. Witnesses estimate its length to be 50–100 feet. The object ascends, moves east, then south, then west, hovers above South Park for a few minutes, then moves north and stops again. It reverses direction and leaves toward the south at “tremendous speed.” (“The Airship over Quincy,” Quincy (Ill.) Morning Whig, April 11, 1897, p. 8)
April 11 — 12:30 a.m. John Peterson, E. K. Rowley, George Moody, Bayard Taylor French, and other residents of Hawarden, Iowa, see a conical object about 60 feet long with four sets of 15-foot wings. It is flying so low (about 600 feet) that they can hear machinery, voices, and laughter. Two red lights are positioned on the tail end and a large searchlight is in the front. After three minutes it moves off to the north. (“Another Wonderful Tale,” Des Moines (Iowa) Leader, April 13, 1897, p. 3)
April 11 — 5:30 a.m. An alleged photo of an airship is taken at 4356 East Ravenswood Park in Rogers Park, Chicago, Illinois, by an ex-policeman named Walter R. McCann and George A. Overrocker, who provide copies to several newspapers. The Chicago Tribune photo editor pronounces it a fake because it looks like it is taken by a Kodak with a small lens that cannot achieve a panoramic view. A later report claims that McCann has photographed a piece of canvas on which an airship is painted. (“Airship Myth Yet Soars,” Chicago Tribune, April 12, 1897, p. 5; “Airship Is All a Joke,” Chicago Chronicle, April 13, 1897, p. 2; Wautauga (N.C.) Democrat, April 27, 1897, p. 1; Clark III 78; Wikimedia Commons, “Mystery airship 1897”)
April 11 — 12:15 p.m. Gary Carlton Jr. watches a flat object looking like a “big piece of yellow canvas” pass over Bloomington, Illinois, at a high altitude toward the northeast. (“The Air Ship,” Bloomington (Ill.) Daily Pantagraph, April 12, 1897, p. 5)
April 11 — 7:45 p.m. John Lee and others in Benton Harbor, Michigan, watch an airship rapidly moving north-northwest for 15 minutes. With the naked eye it looks like a huge ball of fire, but through opera glasses it resembles a cluster of soft yellow lights. (“Air Ship Seen Here,” Benton Harbor (Mich.) Evening News, April 12, 1897, p. 1)
April 11 — 8:00 p.m. R. G. Adams and his parents at 3126 Fourth Avenue South in Minneapolis, Minnesota, watch a lighted, cigar-shaped object flying low towards the southwest. Through binoculars it appears to be 18–20 feet long. A square light that changes from white to green to red, depending apparently on its speed, is on top.
Hundreds of other people also see the object over the next four hours, maneuvering above Lake Minnetonka and eventually receding into the northeast. (“Does He Hail from Mars?” St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press, April 12, 1897, p. 4; “Wonder! Mysterious Airship Seen by Stuart Mackroth,” Minneapolis Tribune, April 13, 1897, p. 1)
April 11 — 9:00 p.m. An airship approaches Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from the northeast over Lake Michigan and heads toward the southwest. It stops and hovers 1,000 feet above City Hall for 15 minutes. (“Airship Myth Yet Soars,” Chicago Tribune, April 12, 1897, p. 5)
April 11 — After 10:30 p.m. Stuart Mackroth is riding a bicycle just east of Minnetonka Mills, Minnesota, when a flying machine “shaped like an ordinary boat” passes overhead. It has red and green lights on each side and a powerful electric light in front. Inside he can see men, women, and children, all moving about “as if very busy.” (“Wonder! Mysterious Airship Seen by Stuart Mackroth,” Minneapolis Tribune, April 13, 1897, p. 1)
April 11 — 11:15 p.m. A bank clerk in Decatur, Illinois, sees an object “like two monster cigars with three bright headlights” moving to the north. (“Saw the Air Ship,” Decatur (Ill.) Evening Republican, April 12, 1897, p. 8)
April 12 — Morning. F. L. Bullard, engineer on the Fast Mail train on the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad, says he caught sight of an airship moving parallel with the train shortly after his Engine 950 left downtown Chicago.
The train is moving at 70 mph, and by the time it reaches Lisle, Illinois, the object is far ahead. Bullard estimates it is moving at 100–150 mph. (“Air-Ship Distances a Train,” St. Louis (Mo.) Globe-Democrat, April 13, 1897, p. 6)
April 12 — 8:00 p.m. During a rainstorm in Lincoln, Illinois, more than 50 people stand on Pulaski Street to watch a light moving to the northeast. John Fitzgerald sees a V-shaped object with a bright searchlight moving rapidly toward Lincoln. It changes course, the light changes from white to green, and the object disappears behind clouds. (“Was It the Airship?” Lincoln (Ill.) Weekly Courier, April 13, 1897, p. 8)
April 13 — Before sunrise. Augustus Rodgers, a farmer living two miles south of Louisville, Kentucky, goes outside to attend to his livestock. He sees an oblong object, some 40 feet long by 15 feet tall, flying about 400 feet in the air at 100 mph. His wife comes out to watch it with him, and they both see “a form like that of a man” standing in the front and directing its course. (“Airship Passed in the Night,” Louisville (Ky.) Evening Post, April 13, 1897, p. 6)
April 13 — Night. Mayor Charles Merritt Seely and other people in Canton, South Dakota, watch a winged airship passing to the north over the town with a red light in front and a green light in back. (“Airship Is Seen by Moonlight,” Omaha (Neb.) Daily Bee, April 15, 1897, p. 1)
April 13 — 11:15 p.m. Frederick Chamberlain and O. L. Jones are riding one mile west of Lake Elmo, Minnesota, when they notice a figure in a clearing, walking around as if he is looking for something. They turn off the road to investigate and hear a cracking sound followed by a rushing noise. A moment later they notice a gray-white object that looks like the top of a covered wagon. It has two rows of four red or green lights. The object rises quickly at a sharp angle to clear the treetops. They can make out no machinery or wings or rudders or even an outline of the object. In the mud, Chamberlain finds 14 footprints, each 2 feet long, 6 inches wide, “arranged seven on each side, and in an oblong pattern.” Adam Thielen, a nearby farmer, independently sees a dark object with red and green lights flying overhead about the same time. (“Adam Saw the Airship Light,” St Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press, April 15, 1897, p. 5)
April 14 — Early morning. Marble merchant David W. Paul is traveling with a party of workmen from Burlington to Frankfort, Indiana. When they are at the middle fork of Wildcat Creek, they hear a “swishing, roaring sound” and see an object with a blinding white searchlight and smaller green and yellow lights. The object is cigar-shaped with wings or fins. It descends to just above the treetops, hovers there for a moment, then rises and noisily shoots off to the southwest. (“That Mysterious Airship,” Indianapolis Sentinel, April 15, 1897, p. 6)
April 14 — 4:30 a.m. Farmers see an airship land about 3 miles northwest of Howard City, Michigan, and some go to investigate. Inside the craft is a “strange man” dressed in heavy furs although he seems “to have no use for them, as he was almost naked and seemed to be suffering from the heat.” The man is 9.5 feet tall and speaks in a musical language that, however, sounds like bellowing. One farmer gets too close, and the giant kicks him severely enough to break his hip. (“Trip of the Airship,” Saginaw (Mich.) Courier-Herald, April 17, 1897, p. 5)
April 14 — 3:00 p.m. An airship looking like an “immense bird” approaches Gas City, Indiana, from the northwest. As it draws nearer, witnesses see that it is cigar-shaped and “propelled by broad canvas wings.” The object lands briefly one mile from town, terrifying some farm animals. As a crowd rushes toward it, it takes off and vanishes to the east. (“In Daylight,” Cincinnati (Ohio) Enquirer, April 15, 1897, p. 1)
April 14 — 3:00 p.m. A brownish cigar-shaped object with wings passes south of Marion, Indiana, coming from the northwest. Six passengers can be seen on board. (“Six Men Seen in the Airship,” Cincinnati (Ohio) Enquirer, April 15, 1897, p. 1)
April 14 — 7:30 p.m. An airship 100 feet long and 20 feet high in the center lands in a meadow three-quarters of a mile west of Birmingham, Iowa. A large crowd of men and boys sets out to examine the object, but when they are within several hundred feet, it rises with a loud whirring sound and moves away to the northwest. Two men can be distinctly seen inside, one carrying a lantern that he waves as the airship ascends. (“Airship Positively Seen,” Burlington (Iowa) Hawk-Eye, April 16, 1897, p. 2)
April 14 — 8:00 p.m. James McKensie is feeding hogs on his farm north of Casstown, Ohio, when he hears an odd noise like a flock of geese passing overhead. Looking up, he sees an object with wings and a rudder flying slowly along about 150 feet in the air, and he distinctly hears music. As it disappears, he thinks he hears a human voice, and something large and white is thrown overboard. (“Talking Heard by the Citizens,” Cincinnati (Ohio) Enquirer, April 16, 1897, p. 1)
April 14 — Just after 9:00 p.m. Farmhand John Halley and vintner Adolf Wenke see an airship land on Jefferson Street three miles west of Springfield, Illinois. They supposedly converse with one of its occupants, a bearded scientist who is outside the craft. Inside, they can see another man and a woman. The scientist says little other than “as soon as Congress recognizes Cuban belligerency his air ship would be heard from.” (“Mystery Solved,” Springfield (Ill.) News, April 15, 1897, p. 1)
April 14 — Night. Many persons in Mount Vernon, Illinois, including Mayor Barton C. Wells, allegedly see an object “resembling the body of a huge man swimming through the air with an electric light on his back.” (“Airship’s Travels,” Cincinnati (Ohio) Commercial Tribune, April 16, 1897, p. 1)
April 14 — Night. A man in Denton, Texas, is watching the stars with binoculars when he notices a shadow crossing the Moon. It is caused by a large cigar-shaped object with wings moving slowly to the southeast. In the front it has a powerful searchlight, and along the side appear a row of lighted windows. It remains in sight for 20 minutes. A woman also sees possibly the same object “bounding along through space like a balloon.” (“The Air Ship Again,” Dallas (Tex.) Morning News, April 15, 1897, p. 4)
April 14 — Night. The Rio Grande Railroad operator at Cresson, Texas, sees an object about 60 feet long and “resembling the top of a passenger coach in shape” with a powerful searchlight in the front and several smaller lights on the sides. It is moving to the southwest at a “terrific rate of speed” and has wings “something like that of a bat.” It turns to the southeast after passing the station and disappears in the clouds after a few minutes. (“Sighting the Air Ship,” Dallas (Tex.) Morning News, April 16, 1897, p. 5)
April 15 — Late evening. Telegraph repairman Patrick C. Byrnes is operating a railroad handcar about 7 miles west of Cisco, Texas, when he sees a light a little distance from the track on the south side. Knowing there is no farmhouse in the area, he goes to investigate. It is a landed cigar-shaped airship about 200 feet long and 50 feet across at its widest point. Several men are repairing its searchlight, and they tell him that the craft is loaded with several tons of dynamite for bombing Spanish troops and ships in Cuba. (“Oft-Seen Air-Ship,” Fort Worth (Tex.) Register, April 18, 1897, p. 11)
April 15 — Night. An airship with red, green, and white lights lands on a farm near Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Five witnesses see an odd-looking man in a fur coat emerge and walk to a farmhouse belonging to Melvin Bannister, whose dogs are barking fiercely. The stranger points a lantern-like device at them and sends them running. Bannister answers the door and converses awkwardly with the man, who is speaking an odd language, but loans him a hammer, some nails, and a can of skim milk. The man returns the tools, along with a strange coin. The airship takes off with a whizzing sound. (“Brunswick and Drammen,” Eau Claire (Wis.) Leader, April 17, 1897, p. 7)
April 15 — 8:15 p.m. Willie Mahon, ex-Marshal French, and other residents of Dunkirk, Ohio, watch a winged object “as large as a wagon bed” pass over the town toward the east. It has propellers on each end, a red light in front, and a greenish-yellow light on the tail. Voices can be heard coming from the object. (“Seen at Dunkirk,” Kenton (Ohio) News-Republican, April 16, 1897, p. 4)
April 15 — 9:00 p.m. Residents of Farmersville, Texas, notice a dim light traveling toward the city from the south at 60– 80 mph. Thinking it might be a meteor heading toward the Earth, more people gather outside to watch. City Marshal Brown is in the western part of town making his rounds, and the “ship or balloon” passes overhead about 200 feet in the air. Brown can see two men in the object and something like a large Newfoundland dog. He can
hear them talking but cannot understand what they are saying. (“Airship Seen in Galveston,” Galveston (Tex.) Daily News, April 18, 1897, p. 2)
April 15 — Between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. A cigar-shaped airship with a row of red lights along the sides passes above Emerson, South Dakota. (“That Ubiquitous Airship,” Sioux City (Iowa) Journal, April 17, 1897, p. 6)
Mid-April — 3:00 p.m. Railroad conductor Capt. Jim Hooton is hunting near Homan, Arkansas, when he hears a loud mechanical sound like an air brake. Investigating, he discovers an airship undergoing repairs. The aeronauts are not very communicative, so once the repairs are complete, they reenter the airship and take off with a loud hissing sound. (“Saw the Air Ship,” Little Rock Arkansas Gazette, April 22, 1897, p. 3)
Mid-April — Early evening. J. W. Lansing sees a cigar-shaped airship twice in Grinnell, Iowa. It moves in various directions, sometimes against a strong wind. (“He Saw It,” Springfield (Ill.) News, April 26, 1897, p. 1)
Mid-April – Night. F. Crocker is sitting near the window of his apartment on Barr Street in Fort Wayne, Indiana, when he notices a yellowish light coming from the west. It seems attached to a pear-shaped object with the apex pointed downward. Two yellow rays of light come from its sides as it sways to and fro in the air. He calls R. J. (or R. T.) and J. L. Tretheway, who live in the apartment below his, and they also glimpse the object, which is in sight for 20 minutes. (“Sighted Here,” Fort Wayne (Ind.) Weekly Gazette, April 15, 1897, p. 1)
Mid-April — Between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. A man in Eldridge, North Dakota, sees an airship that looks like a car attached to a large, kite-shaped structure with wings. It stops and changes course. At one point the man is close enough to hear a humming sound. Some of the time it displays colored lights; at other times it is completely dark. (“He Saw the Air Ship,” Jamestown (N. Dak.) Weekly Alert, April 22, 1897, p. 8)
April 16 — 12:03 a.m. An airship and a smaller “trailer which followed it very closely” are seen by residents of Danvers, Illinois. The objects are made of aluminum-like material, and its “occupants were dressed in western style.” (“The Aerial Mystery,” Bloomington (Ill.) Daily Pantograph, April 17, 1897, p. 5)
April 16 — 12:30 a.m. A group of people returning home from a lodge meeting in Bay City, Michigan, notice a large conical object approaching from the south and slowly descending to about 50 feet altitude above Center Avenue. A red light appears at either end of a body that is apparently 50–75 feet long. It shines with a dull red glow, as if there are lights on its upper side. The object moves away to the northeast. (“Air Ship a Reality,” Saginaw (Mich.) Courier-Herald, April 16, 1897, p. 1)
April 16 — Morning. A large object passes slowly over Linn Grove, Iowa, heading north. Five men—James Evans, F. G. Ellis, Ben Buland, David Evans, and Joe Croskey—jump into a rig and follow it 4 miles north of town where it has landed. But when the pursuers get within 2,100 feet of the airship, it spreads out four massive wings and ascends again. The two occupants have extremely long beards and make desperate efforts to conceal themselves. They toss two enormous boulders “of unknown composition” out of the airship. (“More Air Ship Fakes,” Indianapolis Journal, April 17, 1897, p. 1)
April 16 — While wandering in the hills east of Springfield, Missouri, W. H. Hopkins, a traveling insurance agent, spots a landed airship in a clearing. Next to it is a nude female with hair down to her waist. As she picks flowers, she speaks in an unknown language with a musical voice and fans herself as if the day is hot. In the shade cast by the craft lies a naked man with shoulder-length hair and a long beard. After a few minutes, Hopkins approaches the woman, who shrieks and runs toward the man. Hopkins speaks soothingly and the two aeronauts relax. Hopkins asks where they come from, and they point upward, pronouncing a word that sounds like “Mars.” The two examine Hopkins’s clothing, hair, and watch with great curiosity. They show him the interior of the ship but take off shortly afterward, “laughing and waving their hands.” (“Golden Haired Girl Is in It,” St. Louis (Mo.) Post- Dispatch, April 19, 1897, p. 1)
April 16 — 8:00 p.m. Howard R. Bolander, superintendent of the Ohio Bicycle Works in Marion, Ohio, is looking at the night sky when he sees the light from a cigar-shaped object moving to the southwest. Its light looks like an incandescent lamp. (“Is Your Credulity in Condition for the Only True Airship Story?” Marion (Ohio) Daily Star, April 17, 1897, p. 9)
April 16 — Night. Judge John Spencer Bounds is riding in a buggy in Hillsboro, Texas, when his horse whirls around in fright. A brilliant light as if from an arc lamp shines on him for less than a minute and then moves over to a nearby field. The light suddenly ascends to an altitude of 1,000 feet. As he watches, the searchlight blinks out and smaller lights surrounding a dark object become visible. The object moves slowly to the south and disappears. (“Seen near Hillsboro,” Dallas (Tex.) Morning News, April 17, 1897, p. 8)
April 16 — 12:00 midnight. C. G. Williams is walking across a field two miles south of Greenville, Texas, when he comes across a brilliant light and a large, cigar-shaped object resting on the ground. Three aeronauts emerge from it; two go to work on the ship, and the third approaches Williams and asks him to mail some letters. The man tells him that the airship runs on electricity and that his invention was perfected in a small town in New York State. (“C. G. Williams Saw It,” Dallas (Tex.) Morning News, April 19, 1897, p. 5)
April 17 — 1:30 a.m. R. E. Draughon, a night watchman at a lumber plant in Beaumont, Texas, sees a “globular” object with a bright light the size of a star in one end. It is moving to the northwest at a high altitude. (“Seen at Beaumont,” Dallas (Tex.) Morning News, April 18, 1897, p. 4)
April 17 — 6:00 a.m. An airship is said to collide with the tower of Judge James Spencer Proctor’s windmill in Aurora, Texas, causing it to explode and strew debris over several acres. The pilot (reportedly “not of this world,” or a “Martian” according to an alleged Army Signal Service officer named Thomas Jefferson Weems from nearby Fort Worth), does not survive the crash and is buried “with Christian rites” at the Aurora Cemetery. Wreckage from the crash site is either dumped into a nearby well located under the damaged windmill or ends up with the alien in the grave. Adding to the mystery is the story of Brawley Oates, who purchases Judge Proctor’s property around 1935. Oates cleans out the debris from the well in order to use it as a water source, but later develops an extremely severe case of rheumatoid arthritis, which he claims is the result of contaminated water from the wreckage dumped into the well. As a result, Oates seals up the well with a concrete slab and places an outbuilding on the spot in 1945. The entire yarn is widely regarded as a hoax, although Proctor’s windmill apparently did exist. (Wikipedia, “Aurora, Texas, UFO incident”; “A Windmill Demolishes It,” Dallas Morning News, April 19, 1897, p. 5; Donald B. Hanlon, “Texas Odyssey of 1897,” Flying Saucer Review 12, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1966): 9–10;
H. Michael Simmons, “Once upon a Time in the West,” Magonia, no. 20 (August 1985); Wallace O. Chariton, The Great Texas Airship Mystery, Wordware, 1991; Thomas E. Bullard, “Defending UFOs,” IUR 34, no. 2 (March 2012): 8–10; Clark III 316–318, 592–593; “Aurora 1897,” Texas UFO Museum and Research Library, February 5, 2014; Mutual UFO Network, “Aurora, TX Crash, 1897,” May 14, 2021)
April 17 — 8:30 p.m. A large white light attached to a cigar-shaped object passes over Trenton, Tennessee, at an altitude of about 1,500 feet. It has a red light on the left side and a green light on the right. The object remains in sight for 5 minutes then disappears to the east. (“Trenton Has ‘Em,” Memphis (Tenn.) Commercial Appeal, April 18, 1897,
p. 4)
April 17 — 9:00 p.m. George Alverson, Alex Oxford, and Charley Hunter are walking on Manchester Street near the Cincinnati Southern Railway trestle bridge in Lexington, Kentucky. An airship lands and settles in a vacant lot about 600 feet away. They hurry forward but are stopped by a man who has just emerged from the machine. He is carrying a bucket, which he fills with water from a nearby spring. He declines to answer any of their questions, reenters the airship, and flies away to the southeast. (“Talked with the Airship Man,” Cincinnati (Ohio) Enquirer, April 19, 1897, p. 5)
April 18 — 8:30 p.m. W. E. Roe, captain of the Ohio River packet T. M. Barnsdall, as well as watchman Elmer Hardy and engineer Litus Kinnard, sees a light high in the air above the river as the riverboat is lying at Sistersville, West Virginia. It seems to be moving to the northwest but at other times it retraces its course. Around 12:00 midnight it disappears over a hill to the west. (“The Airship Seen near Marietta,” Marietta (Ohio) Daily Register, April 19, 1897)
April 18 — 9:30 p.m. An object with lights on both ends is seen southeast of Lyons, Nebraska, traveling to the northwest. Some young observers estimate it is moving at 4–6 mph. When the object is south of Bancroft it makes 2–3 large circles and then moves to the southwest. (“Airship’s Lamp Is Lighted,” Omaha (Neb.) Daily Bee, April 20, 1897,
p. 5)
April 19 — 1:30 a.m. As people are returning from a party at the Armory Hall in Natchitoches, Louisiana, they see a bright light attached to a massive airship in the form of a balloon with a cigar-shaped undercar. The light dims while it is over the city and intensifies again when it has passed beyond it. It moves in undulations and is visible for 30 minutes. (“The Airship Seen in Louisiana,” New Orleans Daily Picayune, April 21, 1897, p. 6)
April 19 — 2:00 a.m. A man in El Paso, Texas, sees a cigar-shaped object with lighted portholes on each side. The object approaches from the east and passes overhead at 500 feet. Voices from the craft are heard. (“The Air Ship Seen in El Paso,” El Paso (Tex.) Herald, April 20, 1897, p. 4)
April 19 — 12:00 noon. George Dunlap, a man known to Davis H. Tucker, physician at the Harlem Prison Farm [now the Jester State Prison Farm] in Fort Bend County, Texas, is riding in the country near Lake Charles, Louisiana, when he sees an airship moving toward him about half a mile distant. It makes a loud whistling noise, scaring his horses and causing him to be thrown from the buggy. As the horses flee, the ship lands, a rope comes down, and two men rush over to apologize. They are the owner Mr. Wilson (formerly of Fort Worth, Texas) and his friend Scott Warren. The man is taken into the airship and introduced to two others, a Mr. Waters and a Hispanic man. Wilson tells him the airship is sustained by a gas, and that several of them have been built. (“Was Aboard an Airship,” Dallas (Tex.) Morning News, May 16, 1897, p. 18)
April 19 — 9:00 p.m. A bright light moves from the northwest over Cochransville [now a ghost town], Monroe County, Ohio, where it hovers for 20 minutes, flashing red, white, and green lights. Through binoculars a cone-shaped
object with large fins on either side can be discerned. It is apparently 180 feet long. (“Hovered over the Town,”
Cincinnati (Ohio) Commercial Tribune, April 20, 1897, p. 2)
April 19 — 10:30 p.m. Rancher Alexander Hamilton, his son Will, and his hired hand Gid Heslip are awakened by a noise in the cattle pen of their ranch at Yates Center, Kansas. They watch as a 300-foot-long, cigar-shaped airship with a carriage underneath descends to about 30 feet above the ground. Two men, a woman, and three children are heard talking in the carriage. They see a calf caught in a nearby fence with a cable knotted around its neck that connects to the airship above. They cut the cable and the airship floats away. A few weeks later, Hamilton admits he made the story up. (Clark III 130, 593; Jerome Clark, “The Great Airship Hoax,” Fate 30, no. 2 (February 1977): 94–97; Jerome Clark, “The Leroy, Kansas, Calfnapping Hoax of 1897,” Flying Saucer Review 22, no. 6 (April 1977): 26; Daniel Cohen, The Great Airship Mystery, Dodd, Mead, 1981, pp. 92–102)
April 19 — After 11:00 p.m. John R. Ligon, an agent for a brewery in Houston, and his son Charley notice lights in a pasture a few hundred yards away near Beaumont, Texas. They walk over and discover four men moving around a large dark object, who ask for water. They accompany Ligon to his house, each bringing two baskets, which they fill and return. One of the men identifies himself as “Wilson” and says they are traveling in a flying machine that has been over the Gulf of Mexico and is now headed toward Iowa. Ligon says the airship is 130 feet long and 20 feet wide, propelled by four large wings and powered by electricity. Wilson gives Ligon a tour of the ship and says it is one of five built in a small Iowa town. Rabbi Aaron Levy of Beaumont also claims to have met aeronauts from a landed airship near the city around the same time. (“Inspected the Air Ship,” Houston (Tex.) Daily Post, April 21, 1897, p. 2; “The Airship,” New Orleans Daily Picayune, April 25, 1897, p. 7; Jerome Clark, “Mystery Aeronauts of Texas,” IUR 33, no. 3 (December 2010): 5–6; Clark III 81–82)
April 20 — Henry Heintz of Elkton, South Dakota, patents an airship consisting of a cigar-shaped balloon and a structure for passengers beneath it. At some point he allegedly brings his invention out for a test flight in front of the Elkton blacksmith shop. The airship rises 8 feet into the air before plopping to the ground. (US Patent, “Air Ship,” granted April 20, 1897; Ruth Becken, A History of Elkton, [City of Elkton,] 2000, p. 94)
April 20 — 10:00 p.m. Sheriff Henry W. Baylor of Uvalde, Texas, sees a bright light and hears strange voices behind his house. He finds a landed airship and its crew of three men, one of whom is named “Wilson” (from Goshen, New York), who inquires after an acquaintance, C. C. Akers of Eagle Pass, Texas. After procuring water from a hydrant in Baylor’s yard, the men board the airship, which speeds away northward toward San Angelo. County Clerk Henry J. Bowles sees the airship as it passes over Getty Street in Uvalde. Akers tells a reporter in Galveston that he knew a New Yorker named Wilson when he lived in Fort Worth in 1876–1877. Baylor’s seemingly compelling testimony disintegrates after he confesses in late May to making the whole story up, possibly in collusion with Akers. (“The Airship in West Texas,” Galveston (Tex.) Daily News, April 24, 1897, p. 3; “The Airship at Uvalde,” Weimar (Tex.) Mercury, May 1, 1897, p. 6; “Airship Story Exploded,” Weimar (Tex.) Mercury, May 22, 1897, p. 7; Jerome Clark, “Mystery Aeronauts of Texas,” IUR 33, no. 3 (December 2010): 6–7;
Clark III 82–83)
April 21 — 12:30 a.m. An employee of the Picayune newspaper in New Orleans, Louisiana, steps outside the office and sees an airship, 50–60 feet long and bearing a powerful searchlight. He returns to tell his colleagues, but by the time they come out, the airship is gone. (“The Airship,” New Orleans Picayune, April 21, 1897, p. 9)
April 21? — 8:00 p.m. A man is riding his horse between Lancaster and Baltimore, Ohio, when something scares his horse. He sees an object with two brilliant white lights on either end landing in a nearby field. He tethers his horse and approaches the object, which seems as large as a house. Inside he can see two men conversing, so he walks up to ask them questions. One of the aeronauts seems to be Japanese and the other speaks English with a British accent. The craft is called the Aeribarque, and they are on a test flight. The aeronaut says that they often land in remote areas and come to nearby towns for supplies or mechanical parts, posing either as tourists or “harmless cranks trying to invent perpetual motion.” After giving the witness a demonstration of the electrical lighting system, they take off into the sky. (“Aeribarque, That’s It’s Official Name,” Cincinnati (Ohio) Enquirer, April 25, 1897, p. 9)
April 21 — 11:00 p.m. Confectioner John S. Scheer, Frank King, and Frank Mulick of Erie, Pennsylvania, watch a cigar- shaped, winged object moving north at a relatively high rate of speed. It has a large propeller on its tail end, but it flies silently and disappears over Lake Erie. (“Passed over Erie,” Erie (Pa.) Daily Times, April 22, 1897, p. 8)
April 22 — 7:30 p.m. Prominent citizens, including the mayor, observe a low-flying airship heading slowly southwest above Kenly, North Carolina. Its sails “resembled mosquito netting to the naked eye.” The outlines of two people aboard are plainly visible. (“Men Seen in the Airship,” Raleigh (N.C.) News and Observer, April 25, 1897, p. 4)
April 22 — 10:10 p.m. A ball of fire is seen moving slowly and horizontally from southwest to northeast over Kokomo, Indiana. Some people can distinguish the faint outlines of a cigar-shaped object and wings. The light is white with a reddish tint and no more than 300 feet in altitude. The witnesses include Harry M. Grimes, William E.
Sollenberger, and banking executive Frank McCarty. (“The Mysterious Air Ship,” Kokomo (Ind.) Daily Tribune,
April 23, 1897, p. 4)
April 22 — 11:00 p.m. John M. Barclay wakes up when he hears a whirring noise that causes his dogs to bark wildly outside his home near Rockland, Texas. He goes outside and sees an oblong airship with wings and brilliant lights. When he first sees it, the object is hovering 150 feet above the ground. It circles a few times then lands in a nearby pasture. Barclay goes down to investigate with his Winchester rifle, but the lights go out as he gets closer. Some 90 feet away from the airship he is stopped by a man who asks him to put his rifle down. He identifies himself as “Smith” and gives Barclay $10 to purchase lubricating oil, two chisels, and bluestone. When Barclay returns with the materials, the aeronaut will only say he is from “anywhere,” adding that “we will be in Greece tomorrow.” (“Supplies for Airship,” Houston (Tex.) Post, April 25, 1897, p. 13)
April 22 — 12:00 midnight. Frank Nichols, a farmer living 2 miles east of Josserand, Texas, is awakened by a whirring noise. Outside, he sees a huge airship in his cornfield. Before he can get close, two men with buckets ask him if they can draw water from his well. Nichols consents and in return they give him a tour of the vessel, whose motive power is “highly condensed electricity.” One aeronaut tells him that five airships have been built in an Iowa town. (“That Airship,” Houston (Tex.) Post, April 26, 1897, p. 2)
April 23 — Night. Henry A. Hooks and A. W. Hodges of Kountze, Texas, allegedly meet two aeronauts named Wilson and Jackson when their airship suffers a gas leak and lands. (“That Airship,” Houston (Tex.) Post, April 25, 1897,
p. 5)
April 24 — An airship in need of repairs lands near Stringers Ridge on the other side of the river from Chattanooga, Tennessee. An unnamed journalist talks to one of the aeronauts, who identifies himself as Prof. Charles Davidson of Sacramento, California, the inventor of the airship, which can travel as fast as 93 mph. (“Is This a Reality?” Knoxville (Tenn.) Morning Tribune, April 25, 1897, p. 1)
April 24 — 11:00 p.m. Howard Warn is outside his home in Toledo, Ohio, when he notices bright, multicolored lights moving rapidly toward the southwest. The lights are attached to a cigar-shaped object at an altitude of 500 feet. He calls his father, Milo S. Warn, and they watch the lights until the object disappears into heavy clouds to the southwest. (“Say They Saw the Airship,” Cleveland (Ohio) Plain Dealer, April 28, 1897, p. 5)
April 25 — Evening. As some residents of Merkel, Texas, are leaving a church service, they notice a heavy, anchor- shaped object being dragged by a large rope that is attached to an airship in the sky not far above them. After 10 minutes, a small figure dressed in a blue sailor suit starts climbing down the rope. But when he sees people watching him, he cuts the rope and returns to the airship, which moves away to the northeast. The anchor goes on exhibit at a local blacksmith shop. (“Anchor of the Airship,” Houston (Tex.) Post, April 28, 1897, p. 5)
April 25 — Night. William F. Whittier, editor of the Sunbury (Ohio) News-Item, sets up his camera in the printing office to take lightning photographs. He manages to take a photo of a nearby lightning strike and develops it the following morning. The negative shows not only the lightning but the outline of what seems to be an airship.
Whittier makes many copies of the photo and sells them to Sunbury residents. (“Fairy Story: A Sunbury Editor Takes a Photograph,” Dayton (Ohio) Daily Journal, April 28, 1897)
April 28? — 8:00 p.m. Hiram C. LaGrone hears a disturbance among his horses on his ranch at Deadwood, Texas.
Stepping outside, he sees a brilliant, multicolored light approaching from the southwest. It slows, hovers, then lands in a field. LaGrone walks up and discovers five men, two of whom take rubber bags and procure water from his well. The other three tell him that this is one of five airships touring the country (and the same one that landed in Beaumont on April 19). (“The Airship,” Houston (Tex.) Post, April 30, 1897, p. 7)
May 2 — 1:00 a.m. Edwin Shaffer is driving a rig about one-half mile west of Cassville, Indiana, when he encounters a landed airship 40 feet long. The object spooks his horse, which will not run past it. Shaffer claims the airship is crewed by midgets who speak no English. (“The Air Ship at Cassville,” Kokomo (Ind.) Daily Tribune, May 4, 1897, p. 8)
May 4 — 9:00 p.m. Louis Dumhoff, a physician living at 112 Garfield Place in Cincinnati, Ohio, sees a red, egg-shaped light, “the rays escaping in the center and at each end.” It passes to the southeast in about 5 minutes, moving in a zigzag, up-and-down course. Conductor J. C. Gaupel and attorney W. J. Klein also see the light in the same neighborhood. (“Airship,” Cincinnati (Ohio) Enquirer, May 5, 1897, p. 7)
May 6 — During a rainstorm five miles west of Hot Springs, Arkansas, Deputy Sheriff John McLemore and Constable John J. Sumpter Jr. see a light in the sky descend behind a hill one half-mile away. After seeing two persons carrying lights, they draw their rifles and demand to know who is there. A man with a long, dark beard tells them that he and two others are traveling around the country in an airship and hope to end up in Nashville, Tennessee. He invites the officers to take a ride and transport them to somewhere dry, but they tell him they prefer to get wet.
They return to the spot 40 minutes later and the airship is gone. (“Swore They Saw It,” Little Rock Arkansas Gazette, May 9, 1897, p. 1; “Swear They Saw It,” Arkadelphia (Ark.) Southern Standard, May 14, 1897, p. 2)
May 9 — 8:00 p.m. Abe Parker of Norwalk, Ohio, sees an object with 10–12 bright white and red lights moving slowly over the town for about 10 minutes. Other witnesses report hearing music coming from it. An unnamed young witness, who follows the object out of town for about one mile after it passes over Main Street, says the shadow cast by the object is round. (“That Airship Again,” Cleveland (Ohio) Plain Dealer, May 11, 1897, p. 3)
May 11 — 10:00 a.m. John E. Hopley is one of a small group of people in Sandusky, Ohio, who watch a “fleecy white bulk” floating far away to the west. Through binoculars the object looks like a white bird with long black wings. Hopley guesses that it is 1–2 miles high, 20 miles away, and 60–80 feet long. (“The Air Ship: John E. Hopley Sees This Modern Invention,” Bucyrus (Ohio) Evening Telegraph, May 11, 1897, p. 4)
July 4 — 7:45 p.m. Hundreds of witnesses in Lexington, Kentucky, see a lighted object silhouetted against a storm cloud in the southwest moving to the north at 500 feet altitude. When it nears the city, the light goes out and it disappears after passing over the western part of the city. (“The Air Ship or Its Twin Brother Passes over Lexington,” Lexington (Ky.) Morning Herald, July 5, 1897, p. 5)
July 29 — Sunset. Farmer Andrew Henderson sees a large, unlighted, oblong object with a suspended car and a huge sail drifting to the northeast over his farm three miles from Whitemouth, Manitoba. He estimates it is only a half-mile away. (“Could It Be Andree?” Winnipeg Manitoba Free Press, July 31, 1897, p. 1; “Big Balloon Story,” Winnipeg Manitoba Free Press, August 2, 1897, p. 1)
August 26 — 6:45 p.m. An airship with an attached car is seen moving steadily southwest above Asheville, North Carolina, by Dr. Willard P. Whittington and two other men who are standing on Grove Street. It is about one mile in altitude. (“Maybe It Was Andree on His Return?” Charlotte (N.C.) Observer, August 27, 1897, p. 3)
August 28 — 3:00 a.m. Luther Myers hears dogs barking outside his home in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. When he looks through the window, he sees a rapidly moving airship with a light on each end. It has a propeller and rotates as it moves forward. (“Our Closeby Neighbors,” Chambersburg (Pa,) Valley Spirit, September 1, 1897, p. 5)
September 7 — 2:00 p.m. V. H. Hollingsworth and his family in Ellsworth (between Sherman and Denison), Texas, see an unusual object approaching from the east. It has a fan-like wheel on front and fin-like projections on the side. (“The Air Ship,” Marshall (Tex.) Evening Messenger, September 9, 1897, p. 2)
November 2 — 12:45 p.m. Engineer Charles W. West sees a balloon of unusual size passing southwest above Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. It looks like an inclined cylinder with rounded ends and has a car suspended from it. After 20 minutes it passes out of sight. (“Saw the Man Who Saw the Ship,” Boston Daily Globe, November 5, 1897, p. 3)
November 19 — 11:00 p.m. A telegraph operator in Kellogg, Iowa, sees a bright, bluish light moving rapidly to the southwest. He notifies the operator at Colfax, Iowa, and people in the depot there also see it. (“See the Airship,” Chicago (Ill.) Chronicle, November 20, 1897, p. 2)
December 5 — Early morning. Engineer John J. Hussey and fireman John Henderson of the Great Northern Railroad in northern Minnesota see a “large, white long light which seemed surrounded by some dark objects” near Deerwood. Other employees of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railways also view the light (“Was It an Air-Ship,” Saint Paul (Minn.) Globe, December 7, 1897, p. 2)
1898
1898 — English author H. G. Wells publishes The War of the Worlds, one of the earliest stories to portray a conflict between humans and an extraterrestrial race. The novel is the first-person narrative of both an unnamed protagonist in Surrey and his younger brother in London as southern England is invaded by Martians. (Wikipedia, “The War of the Worlds”)
January 10 — 9:00 p.m. Residents of Rome, Georgia, watch a blue light “attached to some dark and indistinguishable object” as it flies from the northwest to the east. (“Star-Gazing in Rome,” Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution, January 11, 1898, p. 4)
February 4 — Mid-day. The postmaster of Greifswald, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state, Germany, and 11 other persons see an object crossing the Sun’s disk. They watch the object approach the Sun for 15 minutes, take one hour to pass, and stay visible for another hour until clouds obscure it. (Martin Brendel, “Ueber ein 1898 Febr. 4 in Greifswald beobachtetes Phänomen,” Astronomische Nachrichten 145 (1898): 333–334)
May 2 — Dusk. Bystanders in front of the Pearson building in downtown New Castle, Pennsylvania, notice a bright arc light moving in from the southwest just below the clouds and remaining visible for 5 minutes. (“A Mysterious Light,” New Castle (Pa.) News, May 4, 1898, p. 10)
June 1 — 8:30 p.m. Harry McCandliss is riding in the country near Emporia, Kansas, when he sees a cigar-shaped object flying toward the northwest at about 300 feet. It is suspended from a balloon and is peppered with electrical lights. At one point the lights go out then reappear. A searchlight beam in the front skitters in different directions. It ascends to 600 feet and is lost to view. ([News note], Emporia (Kan.) Gazette, June 2, 1898, p. 4)
October 4 — 9:00 p.m. A brilliant object passes over Italy, Greenville, Garland, and Blossom, Texas. Initially moving in an easterly direction, it seems to change course and shoot upwards then burst, throwing out three distinct objects, one red, the other white, and the last one blue. The red and blue lights die out, but the white one continue a few seconds before it too bursts, emitting a shower of sparks. Blossom merchant Dick Moore says the light is so glaring that he thinks his “house was falling on him.” About 2.5 miles north of Sherman, 12-year-old George Campbell is riding with his father when they see the fireball descending, apparently coming as close as 3 feet above the ground before moving upward; they can hear a buzzing noise and think the object is about 10 feet in diameter. (“Aerial Phenomena in Texas,” Dallas (Tex.) Morning News, October 5, 1898; “The Meteor,” Dallas Morning News, October 7, 1898; Theo Paijmans, “High Strangeness in Texas,” Fortean Times 286 (May 2012): 30)
October 4 (or 3) — Night. At Fort Washita, Oklahoma, Mrs. William Peveto (possibly Mary Peveto) watches a fireball (probably the same one as October 4) descend. A few minutes later, distracted by the meteor, she is standing in her kitchen when a “female ghost” appears and chats with her for a few minutes, saying that if she would follow her, she will lead her to a fortune. Peveto becomes terrified, and the entity flees through a closed door. The entity visits her again on other nights, again talking about treasure in the basement. They continue until February 1899 when they occur nightly. At one point the ghost claims to have been murdered years ago in Fort Washita and shows her strangle marks around her neck. Poltergeist phenomena (tables moving) occur and a male ghost also talks to her. Peveto becomes ill and apparently moves away from the place. (“Ghosts at Old Fort Washita,” Dallas (Tex.) Morning News, October 20, 1898; “Old Fort Washita Ghosts: Mrs. Peveto Contributes Another Uncanny Chapter to the Record,” Dallas (Tex.) Morning News, March 26, 1899; Theo Paijmans, “High Strangeness in Texas,” Fortean Times 286 (May 2012): 30–31)
1899
1899 — Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla is working in his laboratory near Colorado Springs, Colorado, when he observes unusual signals from his receiver that he speculates are communications from another planet. He mentions them in a letter to a reporter in December 1899 and to the Red Cross Society in December 1900.
Reporters treat it as a sensational story and jump to the conclusion Tesla is hearing signals from Mars. In 1901, Tesla writes that it has not been immediately apparent to him that he is hearing “intelligently controlled signals” and that the signals could have come from Mars, Venus, or other planets. It is possible that he is intercepting Guglielmo Marconi’s European experiments in July 1899—Marconi may have transmitted the letter S (dot dot dot) in a naval demonstration, the same three impulses that Tesla hinted at hearing in Colorado—or signals from another experimenter in wireless transmission. Brian Dunning of the Skeptoid podcast attributes Tesla’s signals to pulsars, which are not identified until 1968. (Nikola Tesla, “Talking with the Planets,” Colliers Weekly 26 (February 9, 1901): 4–5; Margaret Cheney, Tesla: Man Out of Time, Dorset Press, 1989 ed., pp. 111–113; Daniel Blair Stewart, Tesla: The Modern Sorcerer, Frog, 1999, p. 372; Michael D. Swords, “Radio Signals from Space, Alien Probes, and Betty Hill,” IUR 29, no. 4 (July 2005): 11; W. Bernard Carlson, Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age, Princeton University, 2013, p. 315; Brian Dunning, “The Black Knight Satellite,” Skeptoid podcast, no. 365, June 4, 2013)
1899 — Swiss psychologist Carl Jung investigates his 15-year-old cousin, Hélène Preiswerk (“S.W.”), in Basel, Switzerland, who claims to be a spiritualist medium. Her trances frequently involve journeys to other planets. She
claims that Martians have flying machines, and they irrigate the land with canals and artificial lakes. (Hilary Evans, “Martians of the 1890s,” IUR 11, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1986): 7–8)
Mid-January — Late night. People returning from a dance near McMahan, Texas, see a group of stars in formation, moving in one direction. A few miles further east, hunters camping on a hilltop see the full outline of an airship with headlights and windows. (Dallas (Tex.) News, January 25, 1899; Clark III 86)
January 26 — 11:00 p.m. People outside the opera house in McAlester, Oklahoma, watch an airship “like a railway car suspended from a large balloon-like arrangement” pass overhead. It shines a bright searchlight along the ground. ([News note], Garfield County (Okla.) Democrat, February 9, 1899, p. 4)
June 1 — Late evening. Observers in Kamen-Rybolov, Primorsky Krai, Russia, see a blue sphere about 28 inches in diameter flying silently from south to north near the steamboat Kazak Ussuriyskiy moored on Lake Khanka. It is seen for 20 minutes, then it returns later in the evening flying north to south at greater speed, disappearing 11 minutes later. (Stonehill and Mantle, Russia’s USO Secrets, Flying Disk, 2020, p. 113)
July 4 — 4:30 p.m. A mystery balloon floats across the sky in Spokane, Washington, from southwest to northeast. Before it disappears, it ascends so high that “nothing but a small black ball far up in the heavens could be discerned.” (“Who Owns the Big Balloon?” Spokane (Wash.) Chronicle, July 5, 1899, p. 2)
October — Midnight. Physician Malcom McKinnon is driving home to Fosston, Minnesota, in his carriage when a dazzling ball of white light crosses the road ahead about one-quarter of a mile away, lighting up the road like daylight. It resembles an electric arc lamp and moves slowly from north to southeast about 3 feet above the ground, throwing the field furrows into visible relief. As it passes closer, McKinnon sees that it is clearly “disk shaped, about the size of an umbrella.” It is in sight for 30 minutes. (Minneapolis Minnesota Journal, October 25, 1899; Chris Aubeck and Martin Shough, Return to Magonia: Investigating UFOs in History, Anomalist, 2015,
pp. 239–251)
1900
1900 — Psychic medium Catherine-Elise Müller (under the pseudonym “Hélène Smith”) of Geneva, Switzerland, becomes famous with the publication of Des Indes à la Planete Mars (From India to the Planet Mars)
by Théodore Flournoy, professor of psychology at the University of Geneva. The medium and the psychologist remain very close until 1900, when the book is first published, documenting her various series of somnambulatory trances in which she experiences a civilization on Mars and her former lives: the “Martian” cycle, “Ultramartian” cycle, “Hindu,” “Oriental,” and “royal” cycles. She writes out the Martian communications on paper and translates them into French, popularizing automatic writing. (Society for Psychical Research, PSI Encyclopedia, “Hélène Smith”; Hilary Evans, “Martians of the 1890s,” IUR 11, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1986): 4–6)
Summer — Dusk. A 12-year-old girl is walking back to her farm from Cadwst, Denbighshire, Wales, when a large disc- shaped object about 14 feet in diameter silently passes above her and over a nearby meadow. (Lorenzen, UFOs: The Whole Story, Signet, 1969, pp. 13–14)
Mid-summer — 3:00 a.m. Perrian A. McGilvra, 14, is returning on horseback from a dance near Reedsburg, Wisconsin, when his horse begins acting up. He sees a large, dark, dirigible-shaped object passing over a grove of poplar trees. The trees bend like they are in a strong windstorm, but he notices no wind. The object flies over his head with a whooshing sound. The horse remains frightened even after the object leaves. (Clark III 1161)
December — Percival Lowell at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, records a shaft of light that projects from a “well-known geographical point” on Mars for 70 minutes. (“Science Notes,” Scientific American 84 (1901): 179)
1901
Summer — Day. A 10-year-old boy is walking home to Bournbrook, West Midlands, England, through a path behind his family’s garden when he comes upon a large box-shaped device with a small, centrally placed turret. The only opening is a door, through which two small men (less than 4 feet tall) in military uniforms (but no insignia), each
wearing an odd-looking cap with a wire sticking up on both sides, step out. One stays by the door, but the other walks toward the boy and waves him away. The beings go back in the craft, a bright flash surrounds it, and it shoots into the air with a whooshing sound. (Clark III 261; Jenny Randles and Philip Barnet, “Humanoids Encountered in 1901?” Flying Saucer Review 24, no. 5 (March 1979): 28–29; “UFO Britannia: Part 1, The Early Years,” Above Top Secret, December 19, 2012; Jenny Randles, “The ‘Wes’ Effect 1: The Hut That Flew,” Fortean Times 309 (Christmas 2014): 27)
1902
May 13 — 8:00 p.m. A blue-colored fireball appears over Austin, Texas, and ascends into the sky until it disappears. (Austin (Tex.) Daily Tribune, May 14, 1902; Clark III 1168)
1903
March 17 — Mid-evening. Madge Brosius, 12, and her father Charles see a “huge object like a gigantic ripe cucumber with slightly tapered ends” over the family farm in Helmer, Indiana. Its inside is illuminated, and it has 8 windows in two rows of four each. Her father estimates it is 100 feet long. It begins moving away from him as he moves toward it, zigzagging like a child’s balloon losing air. (Madge Brosius Allyn, “The Flying Cucumber of 1903,” Fate 24, no. 3 (March 1971): 45–47; Clark III 1162)
September 29–October 3 —An implement dealer named U. G. Griffith is on his way home in Van Meter, Iowa. As he approaches, he notices a strange point of light like a spotlight emanating from the top of the Mather & Gregg’s building. He approaches cautiously, but the light sails across the street. He tells others about the experience, and over the next few days several people report a half-human, half-animal entity with large bat-like wings. The townsfolk chase the creature toa local mine shaft, down which it disappears, never to be seen again. (Clark III 1216–1218; Craig Woolheater, “The Van Meter Visitor,” Cryptomundo, May 9, 2013; Chad Lewis, Noah Voss, and Kevin Lee Nelson, The Van Meter Visitor, On the Road, 2013)
December 17 — Inventors Orville and Wilbur Wright make the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier- than-air aircraft with the Wright Flyer 4 miles south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. (Wikipedia, “Wright Flyer”)
1904
1904 — Late afternoon. Wirt M. Covert, 17, and Arthur B. Eldert are returning on horseback from a grocery store in Dixboro, Michigan, when they see a large object in the air moving west behind the steeple of the Dixboro United Methodist Church. He compares its shape to the Confederate ironclad Virginia and it has a thick mast sticking up from its center and orange light shining through some windows. Suddenly it rises at about a 60° angle over the hills, tipping its mast back, and disappears. (NICAP case file)
February 28 — Mid-evening. The steamer USS Supply is transporting the ill Governor of Guam, William Elbridge Sewell, from Guam to San Francisco, California. About 300 miles west-southwest of San Francisco, commanding Lt. Frank Herman Schofield observes three objects “beneath the clouds, their color a rather bright red.” As they approach the ship they appear to soar, passing above the broken clouds. After rising above the clouds, they appear to “be moving directly away from the earth. The largest had an apparent area of about six suns. It was egg-shaped, the larger end forward. The second was about twice the size of the sun, and the third, about the size of the sun.
Their near approach to the surface appeared to be most remarkable.” The objects are in sight for over two minutes by three people. Barry Greenwood thinks they are meteors, but Bruce Maccabee is not so sure. (Frank H. Schofield, “Remarkable Meteors,” Monthly Weather Review 32 (March 1904): 115; Bruce Maccabee, “Even More Remarkable,” IUR 9, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1984): 14–15; Bruce Maccabee, “Meteors? Even More Remarkable,” 2005; NICAP, “Three Red Objects Sighted from USS Supply”; Barry Greenwood, “The USS Supply Sighting of 1904,” UFO Historical Revue, no. 2 (September 1998): 2–6; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, Redemption of the Damned, vol. 1, Anomalist, 2019, pp. 329–351)
June — 10:00 p.m. When Tony Darby goes outside to the well on his farm 5 miles north of Rolling Prairie, Indiana, he notices two round, orange-colored, silent objects hovering 5–6 feet from the ground near the barn. He estimates they are the size of wagon wheels. One of the objects is 2 feet behind and to the left of the other. Running back to the house, he calls for his mother and brother, and all three walk toward the objects, which move away slightly then stop when the witnesses stop. Soon the objects move steadily away to the northeast, still maintaining their relative positions, at about the speed of a man walking. They pause briefly in a small hollow, then continue over a small hill and out of sight. (Lore and Deneault, pp. 91–92)
1905
1905 — Frederick Spencer Oliver’s book A Dweller on Two Planets is published posthumously. It is a narrative channeled by Oliver in Yreka, California, through automatic writing and mental dictations by a spirit calling itself Phylos the Tibetan, an Atlantean who reveals his story from 1883 to 1886. The book deals with deep esoteric subjects including karma and reincarnation and describes Phylos’s final incarnation in 19th century America where his Atlantean karma plays itself out. In that incarnation (as Walter Pierson, gold miner and occult student of the Theo-Christic Adepts) he travels to Venus in an astral body while his physical form remains at a temple inside Mount Shasta, California. (Wikipedia, “A Dweller on Two Planets”; Frederick Spencer Oliver, A Dweller on Two Planets, Baumgardt, 1905)
August 3 — 1:30 a.m. Farmer John A. Jackson is driving a herd of hogs from Silsbee (a former settlement 6 miles southwest of El Centro) to Imperial, California, when a bright light flashes on him from above. He is momentarily blinded, and the hogs start running away. Jackson sees it is a searchlight from an airship about 100 feet long and propelled by wings that move up and down. It has smaller lights along the sides. Jackson wakes up W. E. Wilsie, who lives nearby, and they watch it disappear to the northeast. Another farmer, A. J. Morey, also glimpses the airship. (“Aerial Navigation in Imperial Valley,” Imperial (Calif.) Press, August 5, 1905, p. 4)
1906
1906 — Herbert Vern DeMott, 10, watches an object come down near his family’s water well in Mitchell, South Dakota.
As he approaches it, a door rolls back and he is welcomed inside by two human-like occupants who are sitting inside on camp stools. They converse with him fluently, but he does not know where they come from. He sees a lever that apparently can cut off the earth’s “magnetism,” allowing the object to rise. The occupants take water from the farm’s horse trough to be “used in making electricity.” (“DeMott Rock Study Crosses Continents,” Albany (Oreg.) Democrat-Herald, August 27, 1973, p. 11; Clark III 261; Patrick Gross, URECAT, July 22, 2009)
January 4 — Night. Martin Meyerson is on the beach at Paia, Maui, Hawaii, when he sees a green object with the shape and diameter of the full moon appear from behind the southern slopes of the Wailuku Mountains. It is so bright it illuminates the cane fields below, then travels like a “slow-pitched baseball” and disappears behind Mount Haleakala to the southeast. (Clark III 1168)
September 16 — Late afternoon. Hundreds of people in Indianapolis, Indiana, see a “cigar-shaped object” like an airship pass over the city. It is seen first in Irvington and then floats over the southern side of the business district where it is distinctly seen from downtown. Some estimate it to be 2,000 feet in the air; the watchman at the courthouse tower looks at it through binoculars but cannot see any detail. It disappears to the west. (“Ship Founders in Air,” Indianapolis Star, September 17, 1906, p. 1)
October 7 — 5:00 p.m. An airship again floats over the southeastern portion of Indianapolis, Indiana, and is seen by many as it turns northeast and disappears in the distance. (“Ship Floats over City: Hundreds See It in Flight,” Indianapolis Star, October 8, 1906, p. 3)
November — Dusk. Roy Russell and four other cotton-pickers are taking a brief respite from work 10 miles southeast of Anadarko, Oklahoma, when they see a fiery object shaped like a stovepipe. From an initial altitude of 60 feet, the object sinks down, comes toward them, and passes within 16 feet at eye level. Then it seems to flatten out and just
blacks out. Another similar object follows and then several others. Russell watches them for 20 minutes. (“Recalls Fiery 1906 U.F.O.,” Des Moines (Iowa) Tribune, May 4, 1966, p. 36)
1907
April 20–26 — The Nashville American prints some tall tales about encounters with occupants of a balloon who land briefly in various places (usually near a spring) around central Tennessee. The witnesses include a farmer named
W. A. Smith, Walter Stephenson, Herman Schubert, Asa Hickerson, and A. Mollycoddle. The aeronauts are dressed strangely, play music, and speak a foreign language. (Nashville (Tenn.) Sunday American, April 21–23, 28, 1907; “Here’s a Weird Tale,” Cincinnati (Ohio) Enquirer, April 25, 1907, p. 6; Theo Paijmans, “The Tennessee Aeronaut Flap of 1907,” Fortean Times 313 (May 2014): 28–29)
Summer — While playing along the shore of a lake near Vilppula [now Mänttä-Vilppula], Finland, a group of boys see a light come from over the water and settle on the beach nearby. A door opens, and human-like beings emerge, sending the youths running. Searchers who come to the site later find traces and footprints. (Clark III 261; Center for UFO Studies, HUMCAT Index 1900-1909, p. 7)
July 2 — Just before 12:00 noon. Bishop John Stephen Michaud is talking with Vermont ex-governor Urban A. Woodbury at the corner of Church and College streets in Burlington, Vermont, when they hear a loud explosion and see a torpedo-shaped object about 6 feet long and 8 inches in diameter suspended in the air about 300 feet away. It is dark, with several tongues of flame issuing from it at various points, as if its covering is ruptured. It slowly begins to move to the southeast. The explosion has either knocked down or stunned a horse in College Street. A strong downpour of rain ensues shortly afterward. Although described as a “possible case of ball lightning,” the object appears more likely to have been an exploded balloon that someone has attached fireworks to in preparation for a Fourth of July celebration. (William H. Alexander, “A Possible Case of Ball Lightning,” Monthly Weather Review 35 (July 1907): 310–311; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, Redemption of the Damned, vol. 1, Anomalist, 2019, pp. 354–372, reprinted in “Revisiting the Bishop’s Torpedo,” Fortean Times 387 (Christmas 2019): 44–51)
July 7 — 6:40 p.m. W. E. Thomas is watching a vivid sunset in Phoenix, Arizona, when he sees a “blue disk floating in the heavens apparently close to the sun.” It passes in front of the sun, completely covering it. Other discs appear until there are seven of them. His wife also sees the objects, which are constantly in motion, changing directions and sometimes moving in a straight-line formation. The disks are visible for another hour until sunset, when they are last seen as blue blotches. (“Phoenix Man Sees Blue Stars,” Tucson (Ariz.) Citizen, July 11, 1907, p. 4)
1908
March 30 — 10:15 p.m. F. W. Longbottom in Queens Park, Chester, England, is photographing the Whirlpool Galaxy (NGC 5194) in Canes Venacti with a 12.25-inch reflector. When the plate is developed, it shows an unknown nebulous object some 25 minutes of arc northeast of the galaxy. He does not see the object when he examines the same spot again on April 6. (F. W. Longbottom, “Comet or ———?” The Observatory 31 (1908): 215–216)
May — Late evening. Helen C. Peterson sees a string of lighted beads in the sky over Great River, Long Island, New York. The first light stops and as the others reach it, they seem to bump into it. It grows a little bigger, appearing like a large star. Suddenly it begins to spin like a pinwheel, but without sparks. The motion stops and what looks like a very bright star takes off at great speed toward the southeast. (Clark III 1168–1169)
June 30 — 7:14 a.m. A large explosion takes place near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate [now Krasnoyarsk Krai], Russia. Evenki natives and Russian settlers in the hills northwest of Lake Baikal observe a column of bluish light, nearly as bright as the sun, moving across the sky. About 10 minutes later, there is a flash and a sound similar to artillery fire. Eyewitnesses closer to the explosion report that the source of the sound moves from the east to the north of them. The sounds are accompanied by a shock wave that knocks people off their feet and breaks windows hundreds of kilometers away. The explosion over the sparsely populated eastern Siberian taiga flattens 770 square miles of forest and possibly causes up to three human casualties. The event is generally attributed to the air burst of a meteoroid. It is classified as an impact event, even though no impact crater has been found. The object disintegrates at an altitude of 3–6 miles rather than hitting the surface of the Earth. The
area is so remote that the site is not inspected until 1927 by a team led by Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik, who finds a zone about 5 miles across where trees are scorched and devoid of branches but still standing upright. More exotic explanations for the event include a black hole impact, antimatter, a UFO crash (as recently as 2004 by Russian ufologist Yuri Labvin), a nuclear explosion, and an inadvertent experiment by Nikola Tesla. (Wikipedia, “Tunguska event”; Hobana and Weverbergh 10–30; John Baxter and Thomas Atkins, The Fire Came By: The Riddle of the Great Siberian Explosion, Doubleday, 1976; Surendra Verma, The Mystery of the Tunguska Fireball, Thriplow, 2005; Vladimir Rubtsov, The Tunguska Mystery, Springer, 2009; Phil Plait, “Aliens Saved Tunguska!” Bad Astronomy, May 29, 2009; Mark Peplow, “Rock Samples Suggest Meteor Caused Tunguska Blast,” Nature, June 10, 2013)
Summer — Repeated sightings of unidentified airships, sometimes flying against the wind, take place in Denmark. They usually have wings and searchlights; on one occasion, an antenna is seen jutting from the front end. Other reports are of oddly shaped clouds from which a searchlight emanates, sweeping the ground. (Willy Wegner, “The Mystery ‘Airship’ over Denmark in 1908,” The UFO Register 8, no. 1 (November 1977): 3–8; Clark III 1163)
July 25 — About 6:00 p.m. A “large airship sailing very high” is seen passing from north to south over the Forestville neighborhood of Bristol, Connecticut. It seems to be an elongated gas bag under which a framework with a propeller is suspended. After “maneuvering” a while, it stops and circles over Lake Compounce then changes course toward the southwest. An East Bristol man named Wilson later claims it was a pig-shaped balloon he had sent up for his daughter’s birthday party, but “balloon” sightings continue in Massachusetts through December. (“Large Airship Seen Sailing over East Part of Bristol, Ct.,” Boston Herald, July 26, 1908, p. 16; “The Lake Compounce Airship,” Willimantic (Conn.) Daily Chronicle, July 29, 1908, p. 26; Clark III 1163)
July 26 — A special agent force in the Department of Justice, forerunner of the FBI, is created by Attorney General Charles Bonaparte. Its first chief is Stanley Finch. Attorney General George W. Wickersham renames the force the Bureau of Investigation in March 1909. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, Timeline, March 31, 2002)
October — Skipper J. H. Stockman of the smack Superb is fishing in the North Sea 35 miles out of Lowestoft, Suffolk, England, when he sees a large “star” rise out of the water and approach his ship. He signals it with a red flare, and to his surprise he is immediately answered with a red flare above him. He then shows a white flare and receives a blue flare in response. The object appears sausage-shaped and carries a single light. It disappears in the direction of the Netherlands. (East Anglian Daily Times, May 20, 1909; Norfolk News, May 22, 1909; Clark III 1163; David Clarke, “Scareships over Britain: The Airship Wave of 1909,” Fortean Studies 6 (1999); Patrick Gross, URECAT, August 17, 2013)
1909
1909 — Night. Frederick G. Hehr sees a bright white light executing a “curious dance” over a village one mile away in East Frisia, Lower Saxony, Germany. A minute later the light suddenly streaks in his direction, coming within 300 feet as it passes by at 60 feet altitude. Three seconds later it is gone. (“Report from the Readers,” Fate 4, no. 5 (July 1951): 95–96; Clark III 1169)
March 4 — 8:25 p.m. Charles Maberly, an organist at St. Michael’s Church in Lambourne, Berkshire, England, is returning home from choir practice when he sees a bright searchlight attached to a torpedo-shaped dirigible heading west at 200 feet altitude. He walks for about 50 yards watching it. As it passes out of sight, he hears three explosions at regular intervals. (London Evening News, May 18, 1909; Carl Grove, “The Airship Wave of 1909: A Preliminary Survey,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1970): 9)
March 23 — 5:15 a.m. Police Constable James Kettle of Peterborough, England, sees a powerful light about 1,200 feet in the air above Cromwell Road making an engine-like buzz. The light is on a dark, fast-moving oblong object. It is in view for about 3 minutes. (Peterborough Advertiser, March 27, 1909; “Aerial Mystery,” London Standard, May 17, 1909, p. 7; Carl Grove, “The Airship Wave of 1909: A Preliminary Survey,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1970): 9; David Clarke, “Scareships over Britain: The Airship Wave of 1909,” Fortean Studies 6 (1999))
May 9 — 11:20 p.m. Miss H. M. Boville notices from her bedroom window at Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England, a “large dark object looming out of the sky” and traveling slowly from the east. After a few seconds it remains nearly stationary for a few minutes in front of her window, and she sees the outline of a torpedo-shaped airship about
1,300 feet in altitude. It rises higher then travels swiftly to the west toward London. It shows two powerful searchlights at each end very briefly. (London Evening News, May 15, 1909; Carl Grove, “The Airship Wave of 1909: A Preliminary Survey,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1970): 10; David Clarke, “Scareships over Britain: The Airship Wave of 1909,” Fortean Studies 6 (1999))
May 13 — Night. C. W. Allen and two other men are motoring through Kelmarsh, Northampton, England, when they hear a loud explosion in the air followed by the rumbling of an engine. Allen sees an oblong dark shape, perhaps 100 feet long, with lights in front and behind moving at an altitude of 500–600 feet. They dimly perceive some men on a platform below it. It passes out of sight at 20 mph northeast toward Peterborough. (East Anglian Daily Times, May 13, 1909; Carl Grove, “The Airship Wave of 1909: A Preliminary Survey,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1970): 11; David Clarke, “Scareships over Britain: The Airship Wave of 1909,” Fortean Studies 6 (1999))
May 13 — 9:45 p.m. Fred Harrison of King’s Lynn, Norfolk, England, sees a “long, dark object” moving swiftly overhead just above treetop level. It carries a searchlight that illuminates the road, farm buildings, trees, and everything it touches. (“Mystery of the Air,” London Daily Express, May 14, 1909, p. 1; David Clarke, “Scareships over Britain: The Airship Wave of 1909,” Fortean Studies 6 (1999))
May 16 — 1:30 a.m. A Mrs. Wigg, who lives near Belle Vue Park on Yarmouth Road, Lowestoft, Suffolk, England, wakes up to an engine-like sound. She looks out her window and sees a long, dark, bottle-shaped object pass by at a low altitude. She thinks she can see a man in front, steering the craft. Other people in Lowestoft hear engine sounds and flashes of light around the same time. (East Anglian Daily Times, May 18–19, 1909; Norfolk News, May 19, 1909, p. 13; David Clarke, “Scareships over Britain: The Airship Wave of 1909,” Fortean Studies 6 (1999))
May 17 — The subject of mystery airships is brought up in a debate in the House of Commons. Arthur Fell, MP for Great Yarmouth, England, had asked Secretary of State for War Richard Haldane if he could give the number of dirigibles, either built or in progress of being built, in Germany. Haldane replies that 7 dirigible airships have been built and another 5 are under construction. Horatio Myer, MP for Lambeth North, follows up by asking Haldane: “Will the honourable gentleman, in any report he may circulate, tell us about a certain dirigible supposed to be hovering about our coast?” The question is greeted with laughter and Haldane does not reply. (Neil R. Storey, Zeppelin Blitz: The German Air Raids on Great Britain during the First World War, History Press, 2015)
May 18 — 11:00 p.m. Charles Lethbridge (part-time dock worker and Punch-and-Judy showman) is traveling on a “spring cart” from Senghenydd on his way home to Cardiff, South Wales. At the summit of Caerphilly Mountain he sees a long, tube-shaped object sitting on the grass by the roadside, with two men busily working on something. They are wearing heavy fur coats and fur caps that fit tightly over the heads. Lethbridge proceeds to about 60 feet of them when they notice him and start jumping up and jabbering in a foreign language. They quickly pick up something from the ground, then jump into a little carriage suspended from the object (with wheels at the bottom), which rises into the air in a zig-zag fashion. When it clears the telegraph wires, two electric lights shine out and the craft heads toward the southeast. Lethbridge returns to the site with a newspaper reporter and they find signs of trampling in the grass for about 45 feet. They also pick up a small red French military label, letterhead from a London stockbroker, many newspaper clippings with references to airships or the German army, and a tin box with paste for polishing metal. (“Airship Mystery,” The Guardian (London), May 20, 1909, p. 7; “Mystery of the Air,” London Daily Express, May 20, 1909, p. 1; Nick Redfern, “UFOs over Wales: A 1909 Wave,” Mysterious Universe, May 23, 2016; Brett Holman, “What the Showman Saw,” Airminded, November 17, 2014)
May 19 — 1:15 a.m. Robert Westlake, railroad signalman at King’s Junction in the Queen Alexandra Dock at Cardiff, Wales, sees a cigar-shaped object flying swiftly at perhaps 2,600 feet and making a whizzing noise. It has two lights and is moving eastward. Some dock workers who are loading the SS Arndale also see the object for “a minute or two.” It passes over the Bristol Channel towards Weston-super-Mare. Aeronaut Percival G. Spencer says that he recently sold several of his “man-lifting” 25-foot-long model airships to advertising firms in the UK, one of them in Cardiff. (London Globe, May 19, 1909; Brett Holman, “Wednesday, 19 May 1909,” Airminded, May 19, 1909; London Standard, May 21, 1909; Brett Holman, “Friday, 21 May 1909,” Airminded, May 21,
May 19 — 11:30 p.m. A lone motorcyclist observes a glowing light traveling in a straight trajectory overhead near Wroxham, Norfolk, England. As it passes, the motorcycle headlight fails. It begins working again after the UFO passes. (East Anglian Daily Times, May 21, 1909; Norfolk News, May 22, 1909; Mark Rodeghier, UFO Reports Involving Vehicle Interference, CUFOS, 1981, p. 1; Brett Holman, “Saturday, May 22, 1909,” Airminded, May 22, 2009)
May 19 — 12:00 midnight. A Mr. Chatten, grocer’s assistant, is cycling home to Tharston, Norfolk, England, when he is dazzled by a bright light with a bluish tinge overhead. It switches off for a few seconds, and Chatten can see a
long, cigar-shaped object 300–400 feet above him, moving rapidly toward Norwich. On its underside is a framework with a yellow light at each end. (“Airship Mystery,” London Daily Telegraph, May 21, 1909, p. 12; Brett Holman, “Saturday, May 22, 1909,” Airminded, May 22, 2009)
July–August — A mystery airship wave begins in New Zealand with numerous sightings of unusual nocturnal lights and airships seen in both daytime and nighttime. The sightings are at first most intense over the southern end of South Island. In the following weeks the reports appear to move northward and by August, Australia also falls under the grip of what press accounts call “aerialitis.” (Bill Chalker, “Early Australian Historical Encounters,” 1997; Tony Brunt, “The New Zealand UFO Wave of 1909,” Ufocus NZ, July 22, 2020; Clark III 65–67; Brett Holman, “Scareships over Australia—1,” Airminded, October 20, 2010; Brett Holman, “Scareships over Australia—II,” Airminded, October 23, 2010; Brett Holman, “Scareships over Australia—III,” Airminded, October 25, 2010; Robert E. Bartholomew, “The Great Zeppelin Scare of 1909,” NZ Skeptics, May 1, 1998; Hilary Evans and Robert E. Bartholomew, Outbreak!, Anomalist, 2009, pp. 479–483)
July 23 — 12:00 noon. Mrs. James Russell and several schoolchildren in Kelso, New Zealand, see an airship shaped like a boat that flies toward them from the east, circles above the school, and returns in the same direction. It seems to have a propeller. (Bill Chalker, “Early Australian Historical Encounters,” 1997; Bryan Dickeson, “The ‘1909 Kelso Airships’ of New Zealand,” Ufocus NZ, July 22, 2020)
July 30 — 5:00 a.m. Two men working on a dredge on the Mataura River north of Gore, New Zealand, see a lighted object descend out of the mist. It appears to be a narrow, boat-shaped craft that circles the dredge over a period of several minutes, rising and falling like a bird, and varying its speed. Two figures can be seen inside. It disappears into the mist, leaving behind a yellow glare. (Bill Chalker, “Early Australian Historical Encounters,” 1997; Tony Brunt, “The New Zealand UFO Wave of 1909,” Ufocus NZ, July 22, 2020)
August 3 — Night. A man is riding in Waipawa, New Zealand, when his horse becomes nervous. He sees a large, gray, torpedo-shaped object passing overhead. Three persons are visible in it, one of whom shouts to him in an unknown language. The object rises to a great height, showing lights fore and aft. After circling around, it disappears behind a hill. (Clark III 261; Hawkes Bay Herald, August 6, 1909; Tony Brunt, “The New Zealand UFO Wave of 1909,” Ufocus NZ, July 22, 2020)
August 7 — 10:30 p.m. Four young men at brick kilns near the railway station in Goulburn, New South Wales, see a bright, pale blue light arise from behind some hills to the east. After ascending, it circles back in the direction it came from. The object is said to be visible every night from August 5–10. (“The Goulburn ‘Airship,’” Sydney (N.S.W.) Morning Herald, August 11, 1909, p. 10; Bill Chalker, “Historical Australian UFO Reports,” UFO Research Australia Newsletter 4, no. 3 (Nov.–Dec. 1983): 27)
August 9 — 7:30–8:00 p.m. A flying object with lights on its front and back sails at a great altitude from west to east over Concord, New Hampshire, eventually disappearing into a cloud. Capt. Lyman Jackman at first thinks it is a balloon, but its estimated speed of 45–50 mph against the wind leads him to think otherwise. (“Air Ship or Meteor,” Concord (N.H.) Evening Monitor, August 10, 1909, p. 3) At about the same time, Bertha Niles of Vale Perkins, Quebec, watches a similar lighted object moving west to east. (“Air Ship or What?” Concord (N.H.) Evening Monitor, August 13, 1909, p. 7)
August 9 — Night. Residents of Moss Vale, New South Wales, watch a large lighted object like an airship float over the town. (“Is It an Airship?” Sydney (N.S.W.) Morning Herald, August 10, 1909, p. 7)
August 18 — 2:30 a.m. Four men (Capt. Edward P. Sisson, Ernest T. Newton, Prentice Lanphear, and Edward M. Knapp) at the Coast Guard life-saving station on the south side of Fishers Island, New York, see a winged airship 60 feet long and 20 feet wide. Moving swiftly against the wind, it moves in from the northeast, its engines whirring and a dazzling white light at its head. Two dark figures can be seen in the center of the object. Visible for 3 minutes, the object moves off to the west. (“Fishers Islanders See Big Aeroplane,” Providence (R.I.) Journal, August 19, 1909, p. 1)
August 22 — Evening. Residents of Upper Montclair, New Jersey, watch a mystery airplane that emits a large puff of smoke. It descends and flies off to the north. (“Airship over Montclair,” New York Times, August 24, 1909, p. 2)
September — 7:30 p.m. E. B. Hanna of South Windham, Connecticut, watches a high-flying, meandering “searchlight” along Windham Center Road for about an hour. After heading toward him, it changes direction and moves southward. (“What Mr. Hanna Saw May Have Been the Worcester Airship,” Willimantic (Conn.) Chronicle, December 14, 1909, p. 8)
September 3 — 9:00 a.m. Several hundred residents of Bloomingdale, Indiana, see a “dirigible balloon” pass over the city for 15 minutes. The car beneath the gas bag is plainly visible. (“Sights Strange Airship,” Indianapolis Star, September 4, 1909, p. 5)
September 20 — During the opposition of Mars, astronomer Eugène Antoniadi uses the 83cm aperture telescope
at Meudon Observatory in Paris, France, to observe Mars. He sees no canals. The outstanding photos of Mars taken at the new Baillaud dome at the Pic du Midi Observatory in the French Pyrenees also bring formal discredit to the Martian canal theory, and the notion of canals begins to fall out of favor. Around this time, spectroscopic analysis also begins to show that no water is present in the Martian atmosphere. (Wikipedia, “Martian canal”)
September 30 — Evening. A balloon “supposed to be from Chicago” passes over Edinburgh, Indiana. Its anchor somehow gets entangled in high-tension wires of the traction station for the Indianapolis, Columbus, and Southern interurban rail. It moves south to Taylorsville a few minutes later, and it is so low to the ground that the occupants are able to talk to passersby. (“Tramp Balloon Snaps Wires,” Indianapolis Star, October 1, 1909, p. 9)
October — 10:30 p.m. Rev. Ruth Smith and some church members are riding in a wagon in La Porte, Indiana, when the horses rear and a blinding light splashes across the road. A large structure resembling two inverted bowls, separated by a row of lights, is hovering, with several phosphorescent beams extending to the ground. It is encircled in a corona of light and begins moving slowly. After 15 minutes, it blinks out. (Lore and Deneault, p. 97; Clark III 1169)
December 13 — 10:00 p.m. A. W. Norris of Mabelvale, Arkansas, sees a bright, bobbling light moving through the air about 300 feet above him from the south. (“Airship Flies near Little Rock, Perhaps,” Little Rock Arkansas Gazette, December 15, 1909, p. 7)
December 22 — 6:30 p.m. Many residents of Worcester, Massachusetts, see a “brilliant ray” emitted by a large black object 1,000 feet high in the southwestern sky. After circling over the town, the object heads to the west, where it is seen over Marlboro. It returns to Worcester between 7:00 and 7:30 p.m., flying at low altitude and sporting a searchlight. One policeman thinks he sees enormous wings; others detect one or two figures inside. The airship is attributed to a Worcester businessman named Wallace E. Tillinghast, who has told the Boston Herald on December 12 that he has invented a heavier-than-air monoplane and has made more than 100 test flights at night to Boston and New York City. But Tillinghast never offers his aircraft for public viewing, and people gradually realize it is a hoax. (“Tells of Flight 300 Miles in Air,” Boston Herald, December 13, 1909, p. 1; “Airship Seen in Two Cities,” Boston Globe, December 23, 1909, p. 1; Clark III 1165; Stephen Whalen and Robert E. Bartholomew, “The Great New England Airship Hoax of 1909,” New England Quarterly 75, no. 3 (September 2002) :466–376; Hilary Evans and Robert E. Bartholomew, Outbreak!, Anomalist, 2009, pp. 483–486)
December 23 — 10:00 p.m. Thousands of citizens of Boston, Massachusetts, and neighboring communities see an airship with lights flying at an altitude of around 400 feet. Alex Randall of Revere reports wings, tail, and propeller, but other observers only see a cylindrical shape at most. (“Skyship of Mystery Flies above Boston,” Boston Journal, December 24, 1909, p.1; Clark III 1165)
December 24 — In Providence, Rhode Island, author H. P. Lovecraft sees what people are claiming is Tillinghast’s airplane bearing a powerful searchlight, but he identifies it as the planet Venus. (“City Is Airship Mad,” Providence (R.I.) Journal, December 25, 1909, p. 2; “Providence Men See Searchlight in Sky,” Providence (R.I.) Journal, December 25, 1909, p. 14; H. P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays, Volume 3: Science, ed. S. T. Joshi, Hippocampus, 2005, p. 99; Clark III 1165)
1910
January 12 — 9:30 a.m. An unknown cigar-shaped aircraft is seen moving over Chattanooga, Tennessee, to the northeast.
It returns on January 13. (“Airship in the Air,” Chattanooga (Tenn.) Daily Times, January 13, 1910, p. 7; “Another Airship Flying,” Chattanooga (Tenn.) Daily Times, January 14, 1910, p. 6; Patrick Gross, URECAT, February 20, 2013)
January 12 — 4:30 p.m. An unknown airship flies high over Huntsville, Alabama, against the wind, from southwest to northeast, disappearing over the crest of Chapman Mountain. (“Strange Airship,” Huntsville (Ala.) Journal, January 13, 1910, p. 1)
January 14 — 6:55 p.m. Two men on Summit Hill in Knoxville, Tennessee, see a large airship moving south. Its outlines are distinct. The men hear a hum of machinery and see sparks from “its motors.” (“Positive That They Saw an Airship,” Knoxville (Tenn.) Journal, January 15, 1910, p. 7)
Summer — Morning. Lawrence J. Crone is playing on a baseball field in the Violetville neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland, when he sees a metallic, brown, blimplike object, more than 100 feet long, hovering above a pine tree 200 feet away. It has a row of colored, rectangular windows. Through one he can see as many as 20 strange entities taking turns looking at him. Their heads are pointed, and they are dressed in light-colored garments with a fur-like texture. Each has small dots for eyes and a slit for a mouth. Two other young men also see the object and are badly frightened. (Clark III 262; Patrick Gross, URECAT, February 20, 2013)
Summer — Night. Carl H. Darden is riding near Vernal, Utah, when he notices that his horse is acting strangely. He dismounts and walks the horse into a clearing, where he sees a row of lights a few feet above the ground. They are attached to a huge, hovering disc. After watching it a while, he steps toward it, and it makes a buzzing sound as if in warning. As he advances, it rises slowly into the sky until it reaches an altitude of several hundred feet, when it suddenly streaks off to the north. (Clark III 1169)
October 25 — 5:30 p.m. A mystery airship is seen at Minderoo Station, Western Australia, by Mrs. A. J. Roe, wife of the station manager. She says it “looked compact, like a dirigible balloon, but it appeared to be squarer and more like an aeroplane. The sun shone on it, and flashes came from it, as though reflected from something revolving, or from metal work.” Three station hands also see the object. (“Mysterious Airship Sighted at Onslow,” Sydney (N.S.W.) Morning Herald, December 5, 1910, p. 9; Bill Chalker, “Early Australian Historical Encounters,” 1997; Brett Holman, “Scareships over Australia—IV,” Airminded, October 27, 2010)
October 27 — 1:10 a.m. An airship with a powerful headlight and red and green taillights is seen flying at 600 feet above Swift Current, Saskatchewan. Observers at Irvine, Alberta, see it at 4:45 a.m. going west. It is also seen at Medicine Hat, Alberta, flying southwest. (“Unknown Aeronaut in Alberta,” Calgary (Alberta) Herald, October 27, 1910, p. 1)
October 29 — 5:30 a.m. Two objects flying at a great altitude are seen over East Providence, Rhode Island, by newspaper workers and others up early. They are too distant to be recognized as dirigibles or balloons, but they resemble luminous pumpkins. One is far ahead of the other, but both are “cutting pigeon wings, looping aerial loops, circling and diving like birds and generally doing skylark stunts.” (“Aviators Seen High Up in Air near City,” Providence Journal, October 30, 1910, p. 1)
1911
January 9 — Harvard astronomer William H. Pickering tells the Boston Post that he believes Venus is populated by “huge monsters and lizards such as roamed the earth ages ago.” He adds that “If human life exists on Venus, the people do not live as we do.” (“Olden Monsters Inhabit Venus?” Chicago Tribune, January 9, 1911, p. 8)
May 5 — 5:00 p.m. William Nixon is working at his father’s sawmill 18 miles from St. George, Queensland, Australia, when he sees a flying machine carrying two men, one of whom is dressed in dark clothing. He estimates it is traveling from south to northwest at about 1,000 feet. (“Mysterious Airships,” Perth West Australian, May 15, 1911, p. 5)
July 22 — Evening. A ball of fire the size of the full moon is seen for several hours at Durango, Colorado. For a time it grows even larger, then diminishes in size until it disappears entirely. (“Large Ball of Fire Is Seen in the Sky,” Reno (Nev.) Evening Gazette, July 25, 1911, p. 1)
August 3 — 9:00 p.m. Adam H. McCullough and his wife Carrie are driving on Brinkerhoff Avenue in Mansfield, Ohio, when they notice a light, as brilliant as an arc light, in the northern sky. It has an apparent size of 6 inches and looks to be about 50 feet up. It remains visible for several minutes then fizzles out. (“A Phenomenon,” Mansfield (Ohio) News, August 4, 1911, p. 10)
1912
April 8 — Sunset. Charles Tilden Smith at Little Bedwyn, Wiltshire, England, observes the apparent fan-shaped shadow of a stationary object 45° in the sky against the altostratus cloud layer. The dark patch remains stationary against the moving clouds and is visible for 30 minutes. Meteorologist Charles John Philip Cave suspects the object is a
pilot balloon. (Charles Tilden Smith, “Clouds and Shadows,” Nature 89 (1912): 168; Charles J. P. Cave, “Clouds and Shadows,” Nature 89 (1912): 268)
Fall — About 2:30 p.m. C. F. Rowling, 15, and two friends see three perfectly round, pale-green objects less than a mile away in the northern sky over Alameda, California. They are traveling in parallel with the horizon in a vertical formation (one atop the other) and heading west. They are completely silent and 75–100 feet in diameter. He watches them for 10 seconds before they pass behind some trees. (Clark III 1170)
October 14 — 7:00 p.m. Noise from an unseen aircraft startles the residents of Sheerness, Kent, England. Nearby at Eastchurch, residents light flares to guide the craft in case it needs to land. The incident comes up in a debate in Parliament on November 21. MP William Joynson-Hicks asks First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill whether the government has any zeppelins capable of traveling at 60 mph, but Churchill answers no. However, some authorities conclude that the incident is caused by the intrusion of the LZ 13 Hansa Zeppelin over British airspace. (“The Alleged Visit of a Foreign Airship,” London Times, November 22, 1912, p. 8; Brett Holman, “The Sheerness Incident,” Airminded, October 14, 2007; Brett Holman, “Secrets of the German Aërial Fleet—I,” Airminded, May 29, 2013; Hilary Evans and Robert E. Bartholomew, Outbreak!, Anomalist, 2009, pp. 486–487; UFOFiles2, p. 6)
1913
January 4 — 5:00 a.m. Council worker John Hobbs hears aerial motors at Dover, England, and sees a light speeding toward him from the sea in a northeasterly direction. It is moving steadily despite a gale-force wind. Two other people, tradesman Mr. Langley and Police Constable Pierce, hear the noise but do not see the object. (“Unknown Aircraft over Dover,” London Times, January 6, 1913, p. 6; “Mysterious Airship,” London Daily Telegraph, January 6, 1913; Brett Holman, “Monday, 6 January 1913,” Airminded, January 6, 2013)
January 6 — 10:00 p.m. Two lights “thought to be the lamps of an airship” maneuver in the sky over Lavernock Battery, Vale of Glamorgan, Wales. (“Mystery Airships,” London Daily Express, January 7, 1913, p. 5; Brett Holman, “Friday, 10 January 1913,” Airminded, January 10, 1913)
January 17 — 4:45 p.m. Capt. Lionel Lindsay, chief constable of Glamorganshire, watches a large, fast-moving object above Cardiff, Wales, leaving in its wake a dense volume of smoke. Other witnesses see the light moving west from Cardiff at considerable speed. (“An Airship over Cardiff,” London Times, January 21, 1913, p. 10; Brett Holman, “Tuesday, 21 January 1913,” Airminded, January 21, 2013)
January 25 — 7:00–8:30 p.m. Several people see a mysterious aircraft over the Clubmoor neighborhood of Liverpool, England. It is traveling about 25 mph and carries a brilliant light. (“Aircraft over Liverpool,” London Times, January 28, 1913, p. 13; Brett Holman, “Tuesday, 28 January 1913,” Airminded, January 28, 2013)
January 25 — 8:25 p.m. Villagers of Chancery, Ceredigion, Wales, watch a mystery airship with searchlights that turns south and leaves in the direction of Carmathenshire. (“Mystery Airship,” London Daily Express, January 30, 1913, p. 1; Brett Holman, “Thursday, 30 January 1913,” Airminded, January 30, 2013)
January 27 — 9:00 p.m. A resident of Stretford, Greater Manchester, England, sees an aircraft “like a huge ball” passing silently overhead in a southerly direction. He estimates its speed at 40 mph and its altitude as 700 feet. It has a yellowish light that later turns light red. When it is over Eccles, it turns westward in the direction of Liverpool. (“Is It a German Airship?” London Daily Express, January 31, 1913, p. 5; Brett Holman, “Friday, 31 January 1913,” Airminded, January 31, 2013)
January 29 — 8:00 p.m. An airplane with a powerful searchlight is seen over Iași, Romania, coming from the direction of Russia. It maneuvers over the town for 10 minutes and then moves toward the barracks. Troops are mustered out and signals are given for the aviator to land. Two warning shots are fired, but the lights go out and the object disappears. Other mystery aircraft are seen this month at military barracks in Focşani, Brăila, and Târgovişte. (“‘Russian Aeroplane’ Scare in Roumania,” Manchester Guardian, January 31, 1913, p. 9; Romania 8–9)
February 1 — Evening. A Russian airplane equipped with a searchlight is seen maneuvering over Lvov, Ukraine. Another mystery plane, making signals, is spotted over Ternopil, Ukraine. (London Globe, February 4, 1913, p. 3; “Airplane Fired at,” London Daily Express, February 3, 1913, p. 7)
February 2 — 7:30 p.m. Police Constable Church at Aberavon, Wales, watches an airship flying for an hour over Swansea Bay and the Mumbles. (“Another Mysterious Airship,” London Times, February 3, 1913, p. 6; Brett Holman, “Monday, 3 February 1913,” Airminded, February 3, 2013)
February 2 — 8:45 p.m. Mr. Trubshaw of East Croydon, England, sees an airship come in from the southeast and disappear rapidly to the northwest. Rays of light stream from it on the right and the left and downward. Others see the object, said to be moving with the wind. (“Mysterious Fly-by-Night,” London Daily Express, February 3, 1913, p. 7)
February 2 — 9:25 p.m. Robert Lawrence Thornton sees an airship pass over his house in Framfield, East Sussex, England. (“The Mystery Airships,” London Daily Express, February 4, 1913, p. 1)
February 5 — Evening. Numerous witnesses in Newport, Cardiff, and Neath, South Wales, watch a “dirigible” carrying a bright light pass in a northwesterly direction. (“The ‘Mysterious Airship,’” Manchester Guardian, February 6, 1913, p. 9; Brett Holman, “Thursday, 6 February 1913,” Airminded, February 6, 2013)
February 9 — 9:00 p.m. An earth-grazing meteor procession is seen from locations across Canada, the northeastern United States, and Bermuda, and from many ships at sea, including eight off Brazil, giving a total recorded ground track of over 7,000 miles. The meteors are particularly unusual in that there is no apparent radiant—no point in the sky from which the meteors appear to originate. Witnesses are surprised to see a procession of between 40 and 60 bright, slow-moving fireballs moving from horizon to horizon in a practically identical path. Individual fireballs are visible for at least 30 to 40 seconds, and the entire procession takes some 5 minutes to cross the sky. Subsequent observers also note a large, white, tailless body bringing up the rear, but the various bodies making up the procession continue to disintegrate and travel at different rates throughout their course, so that by the time observations are made in Bermuda, the leading bodies are described as “like large arc lights in appearance, slightly violet in colour,” followed closely by yellow and red fragments. Research carried out in the 1950s by Alexander D. Mebane uncovers a handful of reports from newspaper archives in the northern United States. At Escanaba, Michigan, the Press states the “end of the world was apprehended by many” as numerous meteors travel across the northern horizon. In Batavia, New York, a few observers see the meteors and many people hear a thundering noise, while other reports are made in Nunda and Dansville, New York (where several residents again think the world is ending) and Osceola, Pennsylvania. The observations are analyzed in detail later in 1913 by the astronomer Clarence Chant, leading him to conclude that as all accounts are positioned along a great circle arc, the source is a small, short-lived natural satellite of the Earth. One curious feature of the reports, highlighted by Mebane, is that several appear to indicate a second meteor procession on the same course around 5 hours later, although the Earth’s rotation means that there is no obvious mechanism to explain this. One observer,
A. W. Brown from Thamesville, Ontario, reports seeing both the initial meteor procession and a second one on the same course at 2:20 a.m. the next day. Chant’s original report also refers to a series of three groups of “dark objects” that pass on the same course as the previous meteors from west to east over Toronto on the afternoon of February 10, which he suggests are “something of a meteoric nature.” (Wikipedia, “1913 Great Meteor Procession”; Clarence A. Chant, “An Extraordinary Meteoric Display,” Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 7 (1913): 145–191; Alexander D. Mebane, “Observations of the Great Fireball Procession of 1913 February 9, Made in the United States,” Meteoritics 1, no. 4 (1956): 406–421; Condon, pp. 570–571; Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman, The Canadian UFO Report, Dundurn Press, 2006, pp. 31–35; “Sample Press Coverage of the 1913 Meteor Procession,” UFO Historical Revue, no. 12 (September 2006): 7; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, Redemption of the Damned, vol. 1, Anomalist, 2019, pp. 383–385)
February 21 — Evening. An airship is seen at several locations around Selby, North Yorkshire, England. It alternately flies and hovers, flashing a searchlight and skirting the roofs of houses before vanishing to the north at “great speed.” At one point a group of businessmen waiting for a train at the Church Fenton railway station are treated to the sight of a powerful searchlight running along the tracks. Other witnesses hear the whir of motors as the vehicle passes by. (“The Fly-by-Night,” London Daily Express, February 24, 1913, p. 7; “Night Raids by Air,” London Daily Express, February 25, 1913, p. 1; Brett Holman, “Monday, 24 February 1913,” Airminded, February 24, 2013; Brett Holman, “Tuesday, 25 February 1913,” Airminded, February 25, 2013)
February 25 — 8:00 p.m. Coast guards at Hornsea, Yorkshire, England, see a bright light traveling to the west and report it to the Admiralty. Roberrt Falconer Jameson watches it through binoculars and sees that the lights are attached to a cone-shaped craft. A little later, the object appears over Hull, seen by crowds in the city center and Paragon Interchange for over an hour. It alters its course frequently and hovers occasionally. (“Airship Mystery,” London Daily Telegraph, February 26, 1913, p. 11; Brett Holman, “Wednesday, 26 February 1913,” Airminded, February 26, 2013)
March 13 — 6:00 p.m. Two women walking along a forest road by the Schwielowsee between Caputh and Ferch, Brandenburg, Germany, observe an airship catch fire and explode. The fire brigades of three villages, 40 riflemen from a local garrison, and several police officers and medical attendants rush to the scene. They search the woods south of Potsdam until early morning but find nothing. Though the women are considered trustworthy, they are
accused later of hoaxing the report. Later, airman Lt. Zwickau claims that he was firing rockets while flying from Leipzig to Döberitz in order to see his way in the night. (“An Airship Catastrophe near Potsdam?” Berliner Tageblatt, March 13, 1913, p. 3; “The Tale of the Airship,” Berliner Tageblatt, March 13, 1913, p. 4; “Phantom Airships,” London Daily Telegraph, March 14, 1913, p. 15; “Mysterious Airship near Berlin,” Manchester Guardian, March 14, 1913, p. 8; Brett Holman, “Friday, 14 March 1913,” Airminded, March 14, 2013)
April 8 — 8:23 p.m. An airship reappears over Cardiff, Wales, once again seen traveling at high speed to the southwest by Chief Constable Lionel Lindsay. (“The Cardiff Aerial Mystery Again,” Manchester Guardian, April 9, 1913, p. 9; Brett Holman, “Wednesday, 9 April 1913,” Airminded, April 9, 2013)
May (or May 1914) — Morning. Silbie J. Latham, 12, is working with his brothers Sid and Clyde on a cotton farm 2.5 miles west of Farmersville, Texas. Their two dogs, on the other side of a picket fence 50–75 feet away, begin barking and howling. The boys stop work and go to investigate. They see a little man, dark green in color and 18 inches high, who “looked like he was sitting on something.” His arms are hanging down by his sides. He has a Mexican-looking hat on, but no other clothes. Right after the boys get there, the two dogs jump him and tear him to pieces. Blood and internal organs spew out, but it doesn’t cry out. The boys go back and check the spot the next day, but the remains are gone. (Clark III 262; Patrick Gross, URECAT, October 19, 2006)
June 29 — Sunset. An aerial object passes over Lansing, Michigan, from southeast to northwest at a great height. It moves swiftly, taking only 3 minutes. (“Strange Aircraft Passes over Lansing at Great Rate of Speed Sunday,” Lansing (Mich.) State Journal, June 30, 1913, p. 3; Clark III 1167)
October — Swiss astronomer Fritjof Le Coultre at the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland reports seeing “bluish-white flashes” on Mars for 17 consecutive nights. Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, also observes them.
However, astronomer Guillaume Bigourdan at the Paris Observatory thinks the flashes are merely “auto- suggestion.” (“Is Mars Trying to Signal Us?” Santa Cruz (Calif.) Evening News, November 24, 1913, p. 1)
1914
1914 — 3:00 p.m. Hans M. Schnitzler, 7, is sitting in his front yard in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, when he hears a musical humming sound and sees a 30-foot domed object about 25 feet away hovering about 10 feet above the ground across the street in front of a church. An opening appears and eight small entities emerge and begin singing a melody over and over again. Then they return inside. The object rises slowly and disappears behind the church. He remembers the melody and plays it on his harmonica years later. (“Correspondence,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 3, no. 6 (Dec. 1982/Jan. 1983): 3)
March — Twilight. A farmer is returning to his house at Lajoumard, Haute-Vienne, France, when he sees a round, green, luminous object hovering just above a hilltop. Several small beings emerge, walk around the machine, and go back inside. The object takes off. (Clark III 262; Patrick Gross, URECAT, March 3, 2013)
Summer — Mid-afternoon. For about 60 minutes at Mount Lyndhurst Station, South Australia, an unusual substance floats by at a constant altitude. Some pieces, 6–8 inches long, fall to earth and leave no trace. (Keith Basterfield, “Angel Hair: An Australian Perspective,” IUR 27, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 6)
June — 4:00 a.m. Gustav Herwagen sees a cigar-shaped object with luminous portholes in a field next to his house in Hamburg, Germany. Near it are 4–5 dwarfs about 4 feet tall. He walks toward them, but they flee inside the ship, which ascends and disappears. (Clark III 262; Patrick Gross, URECAT, November 28, 2007)
August — William J. Kiehl, 18, is with seven others in a small cove along the shore of Georgian Bay, Ontario. They see a strange machine on the surface of the lake. Two little men wearing square masks and purple-green coveralls are working with a hose leading from the water to inside the UFO. Three other figures, dressed in khaki, are adjusting some rods that are pulsating with various colors. The beings notice the group watching them and run into the machine, which starts vibrating with colors. It starts to ascend, but one being has not made it inside and is hanging on. After hovering 12 feet in the air to balance itself, it rapidly accelerates upward. A likely hoax. (“Old-Timer Tells of Outer Spacemen in Letter to Wanaque Police Officer,” Paterson (N.J.) News, August 15, 1966, p. 9; Clark III 262; Lorenzen, Encounters with UFO Occupants, Berkley Medallion, 1976)
August 10–11 — Night. Maj. Becke, commander of defenses at Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, England, reports that two or three cigar-shaped airships are seen above the Vickers shipyard. Soldiers fire upon them with machine guns and the only anti-aircraft battery on the west coast. (UFOFiles2, p. 7–8)
August 11–September 9 — Many British residents in South Africa observe a mystery monoplane that is assumed to be on a German reconnaissance mission. Most of the sightings are at night and at a distance. The government issues a statement on August 29 that there are no Union airplanes in South Africa, so any mystery aircraft are assumed to be enemies and should be fired upon. (“The Aeroplane,” Cape Times, August 21, 1914; “Aeroplanes in the Union,” Cape Times, August 22, 1914, p. 7; “Mysterious Airship at Sanday,” Pretoria News, August 24, 1914, p. 5; “Aeroplane Mystery,” Johannesburg Star, August 26, 1914, p. 4; “The Mysterious Aeroplane,” Cape Argus, August 27, 1914, p. 5; “Aviator Discusses Air Visitors,” Cape Times, September 5, 1914, p. 5; Hilary Evans and Robert E. Bartholomew, Outbreak! Anomalist, 2009, pp. 487–489)
August 13 — 7:30 p.m. High Constable Hobson and numerous residents of Sweaburg, Ontario, see “two large aeroplanes” pass from east to west. Sporadic sightings of mystery airplanes continue in the region for the next two weeks. (“Reports Aeroplanes over Oxford Village,” London Free Press, August 13, 1914, p. 2; “Three Aeroplanes Scan Topography of the Province, London (Ont.) Free Press, September 5, 1914, p. 8; Barry Greenwood, “And Yet More in 1914!” UFO Historical Revue, no. 12 (September 2006): 6; Hilary Evans and Robert E. Bartholomew, Outbreak! Anomalist, 2009, p. 491)
August 14 — Afternoon. A large ball of fire sweeps over the southeast portion of Montpelier, Vermont, seen by employees of the C. P. Gill stone cutting plant near the Winooski River. It is accompanied by a loud noise. One man says the heat of the object has scorched his hands. The plant motor stops as the object passes over, and insulation from some electrical wires is found burned off. (“Great Ball of Fire,” Rutland (Vt.) Daily Herald, August 18, 1914, p. 5)
Autumn (or 1915) — Dusk. A man is having an outdoor meal with his family in Bujoreanca, Romania, when they see a reddish object moving to the east 60 feet above the ground, causing trees to bend from its movement, and making a whistling noise. It leaves a trail of glowing sparks and reappears for 6–7 days in the same position. (Hobana and Weverbergh 224)
September — Two schoolboys named Uden and Hopkins are wandering along Caerphilly Mountain, South Wales, when they encounter an unexpected mist. Two white humanoid figures with piercing eyes and unusually tall hats are standing at the edge of it. They approach, and the boys take off. (Clark III 262–263; Patrick Gross, URECAT, March 5, 2013; Center for UFO Studies, HUMCAT Index 1910–1939, p. 9)
September 9 — Mid-day. Amateur astronomer William Herbert Steavenson points his 3-inch refracting telescope in West Norwood, south London, England, at the planet Mercury, then about 8° distant from the Sun, when a round, luminous object the apparent size of the planet, but brighter, speeds across his field, passing centrally from south to north in about 3 seconds. A few seconds later, another appears going in the same direction. More follow, and the display continues until at least 3:00 p.m. when the sky becomes overcast. He watches several hundred bodies pass; about half are perfectly round and the rest are dumbbell shaped. All the objects are well defined and intrinsically brighter than Venus. The prevailing color is yellowish white. Steavenson sends a telegram to the Rev.
T. E. R. Phillips at Ashstead, Surrey, but the sky is now overcast and he cannot confirm the observation. Steavensen thinks high-altitude seeds are the most likely explanation. (W. H. Steavenson, “Bright Objects Observed near the Sun,” Journal of the British Astronomical Association 25 (1914): 36–38)
October 10 — Afternoon. Albert Alfred Buss is observing the sun using a spectrographic telescope at Manchester, England, when he sees an “absolutely black spindle-shaped object” against the sun. (Albert Alfred Buss, “Cosmic and Terrestrial Flotsam and Jetsam,” English Mechanic 100 (October 14, 1914): 256)
November 21 — Some 20–30 people watch an airship flying at 2,300 feet descend to about 1,300 feet and shine a searchlight on a passing ship near Skjaervser lighthouse on the island of Mindlandet, Nordland, Norway. (“Airship at Tjølta,” Morgenbladet, November 25, 1914, p. 2; Clark III 1167–1168)
December 15 — 4:10 p.m. The crew of a Hull trawler, the SS Ape, is streaming toward Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, England, when they see a “black object astern” which gradually approaches them. It turns and heads for the Lincolnshire coast where it vanishes in the fog. (UFOFiles2, p. 8)
1915
February 14 — 9:15 p.m. The mayor and three city constables of Brockville, Ontario, see the lights of unknown aircraft crossing the St. Lawrence River heading for Ottawa. They can hear the sound of motors. A second flying machine is heard as it crosses the river from the direction of Morristown, New York. Three balls of fire drop from it into the river. Two more objects pass from the east and west ends of Brockville. The mayor, who has seen one of the planes flash a searchlight beam that lights up a city block, tells the police chief to alert the mayor and police chief in Ottawa. At 9:30 p.m., the mayor of Gananoque, Ontario, reports that two invisible aircraft are heard flying over his town. Prime Minister Robert Borden hears about the reports and orders the lights on Parliament Hill to be turned off at 11:15 p.m. The entire city follows suit 5 minutes later. The airplanes do not reappear, but Ottawa is placed on high alert. Later, Brockville police find two paper balloons that might explain the sightings. (“Ottawa in Darkness Awaits Airplane Raid,” Toronto Globe, February 15, 1915, pp. 1–2; “Scare in Ottawa over an Air Raid,” New York Times, February 15, 1915, p. 1; Brett Holman, “The Air Raid That Didn’t,” Airminded, February 13, 2014; Hilary Evans and Robert E. Bartholomew, Outbreak! Anomalist, 2009, pp. 492–493; Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman, The Canadian UFO Report, Dundurn Press, 2006, pp. 36–38)
February 15 — Early morning. Residents in a Toronto, Ontario, suburb notify police of a “strange aeroplane” hovering above their homes. Later, a man in Guelph sees “three moving lights passing over” the Ontario Agricultural College. He alerts other residents in his boarding house and they watch the silent lights until dawn. (Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman, The Canadian UFO Report, Dundurn Press, 2006, pp. 37–38)
April 26 — Possibly the first UFO film ever made, The Mysterious Airship premieres in the United States. A lost two-reel French short produced by the Ideal Film Company in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and distributed by United Film Service, the film does involve a mysterious airship built by aeronauts, but it is more of a murder mystery. (“United Film Service,” The Moving Picture World 24 (May 1, 1915): 806; Barry Greenwood, “UFO Feature Film: In 1914!” UFO Historical Revue, no. 12 (September 2006): 2–4; Barry Greenwood, “The Mysterious Airship: An Early Silent Film, Update,” UFO Historical Revue, no. 14 (May 2015): 1–3; Internet Movie Database, “The Mysterious Airship”)
Late June — Just before dawn. Cecilia Peel Yates of Ashburton, Devon, England, is awakened by her dogs barking. She sees outside her bedroom window a bright light in the sky bearing north. It disappears in the direction of Haytor rocks on Dartmoor. This incident is followed by others at Hexworthy and Dartington in July and August, so much so that British Naval Intelligence sends two officers out to investigate. (Nick Redfern, “UFOs and the Military, 1915: Pt. 1,” Mysterious Universe, May 7, 2014; Nick Redfern, “UFOs and the Military, 1915: Pt. 2,” Mysterious
Universe, May 8, 2014)
September 4 — 9:30 p.m. Two British Naval Intelligence officers, Lt. Col. William Price Drury and Lt. C. Brownlow, on Dartmoor, Devon, England, watch a “bright white light, considerably larger in appearance than a planet” ascend steadily from a meadow to a height of 50–60 feet. It then swings 300 feet or so to the left and suddenly vanishes. The officers have been investigating reports of similar lights seen in the region during the summer. In December, GHQ Home Forces issues a 16-page confidential report on the investigation and concludes there is “no evidence on which to base a suspicion that this class of enemy activity ever existed” and that 89% of the reports are explained. Some “moving lights in the air” are attributed to marsh gas. (Nick Redfern, “UFOs and the Military, 1915: Pt. 1,” Mysterious Universe, May 7, 2014; UFOFiles2, pp. 11–12)
1916
1916? — Mrs. Whiteland of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, England, sees from an open window a “round platform” on which nearly a dozen men wearing blue uniforms and little round hats stand gripping a handrail. It is moving in the air about 30 feet above the house and coming from the direction of a nearby marsh. It moves toward a railway yard and disappears behind some houses. (Clark III 263; “The Aldeburgh Platform,” Flying Saucer Review 15, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1969), pp. 23–24; “The Aldeburgh Platform,” parts 1–3; David Halperin, “UFOs, Screen Memories, and the Aldeburgh Platform Mystery,” April 8, 2016; Chris Aubeck and Martin Shough, Return to Magonia: Investigating UFOs in History, Anomalist, 2015, pp. 299–314)
January 31 — 8:25 p.m. Royal Flying Corps Lieut. Reginald Maxwell is cruising his B.E.2c biplane at 10,000 feet near Romford, Essex, England, patrolling for German Zeppelins. He sees an “artificial light” to the north. He follows it northeast for 20 minutes, but it moves higher and he loses it in the clouds. At the same time, Royal Flying Corps pilot Sub-Lieut. J. Eric Morgan, also flying a B.E.2c at 5,000 feet near Rochford, Essex, and looking for Zeppelins, sees an object about 100 feet away with a row of windows “like a railway carriage with the blinds drawn.” He tries to close on it, but his engine is malfunctioning. When he fires his pistol at it, the lights rise and rapidly disappear. Morgan is forced to make a crash landing. (Capt. Joseph Morris, The German Air Raids on Great Britain, 1914–1918, Sampson, Low, Marston, 1925, pp. 81–82; David Clarke, “Britain’s First Military UFO Encounter?” Part 1 and Part 2, The Real UFO Project, 2004; UFOFiles2, p. 10; Patrick Gross, “Pilots UFO Sightings,” August 10, 2021, and “Near Rochford,” August 2, 2021)
February 29 — 4:30 a.m. John Tullyson, head watchman at Globe Elevators, and John Gustavson at the Carnegie Coal Dock in Superior, Wisconsin, hear an engine noise and see a large flying object “50 feet wide and 100 feet long,” with three lights, “one on each end and one in the middle.” Moving swiftly at 600 feet altitude, the object carries a long rope trailing behind it with a large object attached to it. Three “men” are inside the craft, one of them sitting in the front of the machine. The other two seem to be looking around. Possible Chinese lantern or airplane. (“Mysterious Aeroplane Continues Nocturnal Trips over Superior,” Superior (Wis.) Telegram, February 29, 1916,
p. 5; Clark III 263; Patrick Gross, URECAT, March 16, 2013)
March 12 — Early evening. Claude D. McGee is walking home from a trip to a ranch outside Lowry, South Dakota, when he sees a strange glowing light in the hills ahead of him. Suddenly the light swings in a huge arc down into the valley but stays close to the wall of hills where it comes to rest. It stays there a few moments then swings back to where it had been about 2 miles away. It repeats the action twice then disappears. (Clark III 1171)
May 4 — Evening. Astronomers Charles Dillon Perrine and Anna Estelle Glancy observe an object resembling a comet at the National Observatory in Córdoba, Argentina. It is moving remarkably fast, moving 10° toward the sun within an hour and passes below the horizon. It has a prominent tail of 8°–10° in length. (“Comet or Meteor?” Scientific American 115 (1916): 493)
July 19 — 10:30 p.m. Walter H. Eager and another witness in Huntington, West Virginia, watch a nebulous object in the shape of a dirigible that slowly fades from view. Possibly a light pillar created by a nearby blast furnace. (Walter
H. Eager, “An Unusual Aurora,” Scientific American 115 (1916): 241; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht,
Redemption of the Damned, vol. 1, Anomalist, 2019, pp. 391–397)
December 17 — On the Western front in Europe, Canadian soldier Maurice Philipp Tuteur and two sergeant majors watch a Zeppelin-like object rise into the clouds in the rear of their lines. It darts ahead at an estimated speed of 200 mph, turns around, darts backward, and shoots up and disappears. (“I Saw a Flying Saucer,” Flying Saucers, May 1959, pp. 6–18, 78; Clark III 1170)
1917
April — Night. Residents of the African American neighborhood of Charlotte, North Carolina, report hearing strange, motor-like noises in the air at night for several nights. Some have fleeting glimpses of the swiftly moving dark objects that are causing the noise. (“The Colored People Are Seeing Visions,” Charlotte (N.C.) News, April 11, 1917, p. 13)
April 13 — Early morning. Two National Guardsmen from Company L of the Sixth Massachusetts Infantry are stationed on the bridge linking Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and Kittery, Maine, when they hear the noise of an airplane. They see an unidentified aircraft circling near the bridge. When it descends, apparently to make a pass at the bridge, one of the guardsmen panics and fires his rifle at it. It moves off and disappears in the distance. Other vague reports continue through April 30. (“Hunt for Aircraft Base,” Manchester (N.H.) Union, April 14, 1917, pp. 1, 3; Hilary Evans and Robert E. Bartholomew, Outbreak! Anomalist, 2009, pp. 496–497)
May 13 — Three shepherd children at the Cova da Iria in Fátima, Portugal—Lúcia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto—report seeing a woman “brighter than the sun, shedding rays of light clearer and stronger than a crystal goblet filled with the most sparkling water and pierced by the burning rays of the sun.” The woman
wears a white mantle edged with gold and holds a rosary in her hand. She asks them to devote themselves to the Holy Trinity and to pray “the Rosary every day.” The children had seen an “angel” at the cove since the spring of 1916. (Wikipedia, “Our Lady of Fátima”)
June 13 — The three children at Fátima, Portugal, again see the lady, who reveals that Francisco and Jacinta will be “taken to heaven” soon, but Lúcia will live longer to spread the message. The lady also purportedly reveals to the children a vision of hell and entrusts a secret to them, described as “good for some and bad for others.” (Wikipedia, “Our Lady of Fátima”)
August 13 — Some 18,000 people have been flocking to Fátima and nearby Aljustrel, Portugal, drawn by reports of visions and miracles. The assembled multitude hears thunder and witnesses lightning in a clear blue sky. Then the sun grows pale and a cloud hovers above the oak tree where the apparitions usually appear. Provincial administrator Artur de Oliveira Santos, believing that these events are politically disruptive, takes the children into custody, jailing them before they can reach the Cova da Iria. Santos interrogates and threatens the children to get them to divulge the contents of the secrets. ()
August 19 — Instead of the promised apparition in the Cova da Iria on August 13, the children see the Virgin Mary at nearby Valinhos, Portugal. She asks them again to pray the rosary daily, speaks about the miracle coming in October, and asks them “to pray a lot.” ()
Late Summer — 12:30 p.m. John Boback is walking along railroad tracks in Youngstown, Pennsylvania, when he hears a swishing sound and sees an elliptical object about 100 feet away on the ground in a pasture. It has portholes emitting ligt from the interior and a smooth surface. Moments later the object ascends smoothly in a gradual climb and flies away to the east. (Lore and Deneault, pp. 104–105)
Early September — Witnesses at Salida, Colorado, watch distant moving lights flicking on and off over a period of several days. Through a telescope, one light appears to be a revolving wheel with lights on it. (Arlene Shovald, “Edwards’ UFO Sighting Not Salida’s First,” Salida (Colo.) Mountain Mail, September 7, 1995; Clark III 1171)
September 13 — With the three children in attendance, the crowd at the Cova da Iria, Portugal, see a “luminous globe” sail across the sky. A white cloud envelops the children and the oak tree. A rain of white roses is said to have fallen out of the heavens but dissolves just before landing. Behind the cloud, the crowd can see Lúcia talking to the invisible lady. ()
October — Seven-year-old Elizabeth Klarer and her older sister Barbara have their first alleged encounter with a UFO on their parents’ farm Connington in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands, South Africa. While playing outside the farmhouse, Elizabeth claims to witness a giant orange-red wheel rolling across the sky. The plummeting object, also described as a fiery pockmarked meteor or planetoid, is intercepted by a silver disc bathed in a pearly luster. Around this time Elizabeth begins receiving occasional telepathic messages from a friendly space alien named Akon. (Clark III 657; Elizabeth Klarer, Beyond the Light Barrier, Howard Timmins, 1980)
October 13 — After some newspapers report that the Virgin Mary has promised a miracle for the last of her apparitions, a huge crowd, possibly between 30,000 and 100,000, including reporters and photographers, gathers at Cova da Iria, Portugal. What happens then becomes known as the “Miracle of the Sun.” Various claims are made as to what really happened. The three children report seeing a panorama of visions during the event, including those
of Jesus, Our Lady of Sorrows, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and Saint Joseph blessing the people. Father John de Marchi, an Italian Catholic priest and researcher who wrote several books on the subject, included descriptions by witnesses who believe they observed a miracle created by Mary, the mother of Jesus. After a period of rain, the dark clouds break and the Sun appears as an opaque, spinning disc in the sky. It appears significantly duller than normal and casts multicolored lights across the landscape, the people, and the surrounding clouds. The Sun then seems to careen towards the earth before zigzagging back to its normal position. Witnesses report that their previously wet clothes become “suddenly and completely dry, as well as the wet and muddy ground that had been previously soaked because of the rain that had been falling.” Not all witnesses report seeing the Sun “dance.” Some people only see the radiant colors, and others, including some believers, see nothing at all. The only known picture of the Sun taken during the event does not show anything unusual. No unusual solar phenomena are observed by scientists. Some theologians, scientists, and skeptics have offered alternative explanations that include psychological suggestibility of the witnesses, temporary retinal distortion caused by staring at the intense light of the Sun, a sundog, and optical effects caused by natural meteorological phenomena. The Miracle of the Sun is interpreted by others as a UFO event. Investigator Joe Nickell thinks that the effects are “a combination of factors, including optical effects and meteorological phenomena, such as the sun being seen through thin clouds,
causing it to appear as a silver disc. Other possibilities include an alteration in the density of the passing clouds, causing the sun’s image to alternately brighten and dim and so seem to advance and recede, and dust or moisture droplets in the atmosphere refracting the sunlight and thus imparting a variety of colors.” (Wikipedia, “Miracle of the Sun”; Clark III 484–485; “O Milagre do Fátima,” Ilustração Portuguesa, no. 610 (October 29, 1917): 353– 355; John de Marchi, The True Story of Fatima, St. Paul, Minn.: Catechetical Guild Educational Society, 1956; Joe Nickell, “The Real Secrets of Fatima,” Skeptical Inquirer 33, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 2009): 14–17; Jeffrey S. Bennett, When the Sun Danced, University of Virginia, 2012; Auguste Meessen, “Apparitions and Miracles of the Sun,” in Science, Religion, and Conscience, Actas do Forum International, Centro Transdisciplinar de Estudos da Consciência, October 23–25, 2003, Santos, 2005)
1918
Winter? — Edwin T. Bauhan and other soldiers at Rich Field in Waco, Texas, see a noiseless, flame-colored, cigar-shaped object 100–150 feet long flying overhead at an altitude of 500 feet. (Lore and Deneault, p. 105; Clark III 1170; “1918 Sighting,” Civilian Saucer Investigation Quarterly Bulletin 1, no. 4 (Winter 1954): 10–11)
March 1 — Early morning. A woman at Tahunanui Beach, Nelson, New Zealand, sees two distinct “seaplanes” flying together near the surface of the water. They soon diverge, one going in the direction of the eastern hills and both getting lost in the clouds. (“Seaplanes over Tasman Bay,” Nelson Colonist, March 2, 1918, p. 4; Brett Holman, “The Mystery Aeroplane Scare in New Zealand—1,” Airminded, August 28, 2013)
Summer — 7:30 p.m. At an isolated ranch 60 miles from Malta, Montana, 9-year-old Theodore Warren sees a cigar- shaped “airship” with windows that shine with greenish light. It flies in from the mountains in the east and hovers above the ranch house. He watches it for a while, and then it “whooshes” away to the northwest. (Ione Warren Conway, “A UFO(?) from the Past,” IUR 7, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1982): 16)
August 12 — After 5:00 p.m. Two women at Durie Hill, Whanganui, New Zealand, see an airplane moving swiftly off the South Spit heading toward the south. It disappears behind Landguard Bluff. Other witnesses come forward to corroborate the sighting. (“Aeroplane off Wanganui,” Wanganui Chronicle, August 13, 1918, p. 4; Brett Holman, “The Mystery Aeroplane Scare in New Zealand—IV,” Airminded, October 26, 2013)
August 13 — Evening. Mr. C. Rawlinson is cycling to a dance on Carrington Road, New Plymouth, New Zealand, when he sees a bright star against some mountains about 6 miles away. It starts flashing red and white and moves closer and downward, then rises to 400–500 feet and performs other maneuvers. He rides home to tell his sisters, who also see the light until about 8:30 p.m., when it moves off to the sea. (“Local and General,” Wellington Dominion, August 14, 1918, p. 4; Brett Holman, “The Mystery Aeroplane Scare in New Zealand—IV,” Airminded, October 26, 2013)
October — During operations against the Bolshevik Army in Tulgas, Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia, soldiers of the US 339th Infantry Regiment watch a round object the color of burnished copper, with a faint light and vapor obscuring much of its shape. (Letter to J. Allen Hynek; Jan Aldrich)
1919
1919 — Wireless inventor Guglielmo Marconi claims that he has detected large-wavelength radio signals from Mars. He claims the most frequent signal is the Morse code for “S,” or three short dots. The signals, however, are subsequently traced to an experiment conducted by chemist Irving Langmuir at the General Electric Laboratories in Schenectady, New York. (“‘Hello, Earth! Hello!’” White Earth (Minn.) The Tomahawk, March 18, 1920, p. 6)
January 22 — After 10:00 p.m. A brilliant light the size of a tennis ball appears in a garden at Shuttlewood, Derbyshire, England. When the witness approaches it, it moves away at a leisurely pace and passes through wire netting. It follows the top of a hedge, turns right, and ascends until it finds a break in the high branches of a tree, where it hovers for 3 minutes before flying on. The witness then notices his neighbor’s farm is illuminated with bright white light. Several minutes later, the sphere returns to the garden, hovers another 3 minutes, then approaches the witness. As it does so, it turns from white to orange. It moves away, stops above a neighbor’s garden, travels
along a hedge, traverses a field, and circles a row of houses before soaring into the sky and disappearing. The light is seen for 40 minutes. (Mark Ian Birdsall, “The Luminous Pearl of 1919,” Quest International 10, no. 2 (1991): 26–27; Clark III 1171)
June 2 — 9:30 a.m. A tiny circular cloud appears in an otherwise cloudless sky over Ottertail, Minnesota. Suddenly it expands to several times its size. Seconds later, the window that the witness is watching through starts to shake and creak. By the time it stops, the cloud has expanded more and now has a ragged appearance, bending toward the earth. A black object shoots out of the bottom of the cloud, leaving a vapor trail, and begins making 6–7 barrel rolls. It then peels off in a straight line, headed north. (Clark III 1170; “Supersonic Jet in 1919?” IUR/Frontiers of Science 3, no. 6 (Jan./Feb. 1982): 14–15)
July — 11:00 a.m. A young brother and sister who live on a farm near Webster City, Iowa, hear a strange chirping sound while out playing. They turn and see a brown-green object under a tree near a creek 75 feet from them. They notice a similarly colored figure standing in a door that has been lowered down. It makes strange guttural sounds. They see another figure running toward the stream leading to a pond. This smaller one dips up some water into a can. The larger figure seems to be hurrying the smaller figure back into the object. The door slams shut with a metallic sound, and the vehicle rises up quickly with its three legs still out and goes over a hill. The soil where the object had been is covered with round spots that resemble cane marks. (Clark III 263; Patrick Gross, URECAT, July 23, 2009)
Late summer — 10:00 p.m. Harry Anderson, 13 (or 16), is out riding with his family and two friends when their car runs out of oil east of Barron, Wisconsin. A passing farmer offers to give them some oil, and Harry accompanies him 2 miles away to his farmhouse. Harry walks back to the car alone and sees 20 little men walking in single file towards him. Their heads are bald, and the figures are dressed in leather “knee pants” held up by suspenders. They are mumbling but pay no attention to him. Terrified, he continues and does not look back. ([Jerome Clark], “Encounters with Little Men,” Fate 31, no. 11 (November 1978): 83–86; Clark III 263; Patrick Gross, URECAT, July 24, 2009)
December 1 — Boni & Liveright publishes Charles Fort’s first book of scientific anomalies, The Book of the Damned. Fort gathers reports of objects or “vessels” that he humorously speculates might be visitors from a multitude of worlds that have come to earth over the centuries. Among his wilder expressions is the suggestion that floating land masses in the sky harbor civilizations and oceans. Fort also speculates that someone is fishing for us and that an alien race considers us its property, warning off all interlopers. It receives positive reviews from Ben Hecht and Booth Tarkington. (Wikipedia, “The Book of the Damned”; Clark III 506–507; Jim Steinmeyer, Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural, Tarcher, 2008, pp. 173–174; Ulrich Magin, “The Book of the Damned,” Fortean Times 386 (December 2019): 38–43)
1920
1920 — Day. Stanley Clason, 10, is walking across his uncle’s pasture in northern Montana when he sees an object traveling from northwest to southeast. It has a “long, slim, pointed shape” and appears “silvery in color.” (“Report from the Readers,” Fate 7, no. 4 (April 1954): 115–116; Clark III 1171)
Summer — 11:00 p.m. A group of young people, including sisters Louise and Marie Grasset, returning from a dance at Nontron, Dordogne, France, observe small beings in the air above a wooded area. Luminous balls surround the figures, who are giving off “musical sounds.” (Clark III 264; Patrick Gross, URECAT, October 3, 2017)
June 3 — Day. Jesse Clark Linch is fishing on a pond near Mount Pleasant, Iowa, when he sees a soundless, blue, disc- shaped object emerge from behind a grove of 100-foot-high maple trees. It flies across the pond and lands 15 feet away. Linch gets up and walks toward it, but it rises up, slowly moves over some trees to the west, and disappears. (“Mini UFO Landed near Mt. Pleasant in 1920,” The UFO Examiner 2, no. 2 (June 1978): 8, 19; “Man Visited by Strange Object While Fishing in Iowa in 1920,” MUFON UFO Journal, no. 382 (February 2000): 12; Clark III 1170)
Late October — 3:00 a.m. C. B. Alves sees four flying discs 50 miles north of Freeport, Texas, when he is out fishing with some friends. They look like two big silver plates set edge to edge. Each appears to be about 25 feet in diameter and 10 feet thick at the center. (“Report from the Readers,” Fate 8, no. 2 (February 1955): 122–123; Clark III 1170)
1921
1921 — An 8-year-old is playing in the hillocks near a canal in Marseille, France. He is suddenly accosted by two tall, slender men wearing apparent diving suits who drag him into a strange looking “tank.” After a while, an opening appears in the ceiling, and in a few moments he finds himself back on the ground. He must walk all afternoon to get back to the place where the UFO picked him up 5 minutes earlier. (Clark III 264; [Letter], “J’ai voyagé en soucoupe,” Paris-Match, no. 291, October 23, 1954; Patrick Gross, URECAT, September 7, 2006)
Late July — 2:00 a.m. Annie Baker of 39 Highland Road, Southsea, Portsmouth, England, sees a “strange looking bladder like monster the shape of an airship only much wider” during a thunderstorm. It is luminous and remains stationary for several minutes but moves away and disappears quickly. (UFOFiles2, pp. 13–15)
July 29 — The Council on Foreign Relations is incorporated. Founded by corporate lawyer Elihu Root, the organization brings diplomats, high-level government officials, and academics together with lawyers, bankers, and industrialists to engineer foreign policy. The first issue of Foreign Affairs is published in September 1922. (Wikipedia, “Council on Foreign Relations”)
September — The British Air Ministry has asked the public to submit reports on observations of ball lightning to its Meteorological Office. The results are summarized by geophysicist Harold Jeffreys, who notes very little uniformity in the observations, with little agreement on size, duration, color, or shape. (Harold Jeffreys, “Results of the Ball Lightning Inquiry,” Meteorological Magazine 56 (September 1921): 208–211; UFOFiles2, pp. 13–16)
September 1 — J. H. C. Macbeth of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company announces that inventor Guglielmo Marconi is convinced he has intercepted wireless signals from Mars while cruising in the Mediterranean Sea on his mobile laboratory and yacht, the Electra. The signals are regular and “produced high in the meter band.” One of them resembles the letter “V” in the Marconi Code. (“Marconi Sure Mars Flashes Messages,” New York Times, September 2, 1921, p. 1; Michael D. Swords, “Radio Signals from Space, Alien Probes, and Betty Hill,” IUR 29, no. 4 (July 2005): 11)
October 9 — Harvard University astronomer William Henry Pickering claims that he has discovered, through two years of observation, vegetation growing in lunar craters that contain water and a source of heat. They seem to form strips or “canals” that vary according to season. (“Says 2 Crops a Day Grow on the Moon,” New York Times, October 9, 1921, p. 6)
1922
1922 — Starting this year, ghost lights are seen every year until 1932 in the desert near the Oregon Canyon Ranch, McDermott, Nevada. They look like lanterns or car headlights in the distance. More than 50 of the sheepherders in the area have seen the lights, including Tito Bengoa, the brother of Frank and Christopher Bengoa of the King’s River Ranch near Orovada. (Kenneth Arnold, “Phantom Lights in Nevada,” Fate 1, no. 3 (Fall 1948): 96–98)
Summer — A teenage couple, William O’Brien and Irma (later married surname is Hinz), walking home from a movie in Detroit, Michigan, see a large disc-shaped object hovering above a vacant lot on South Dragoon Street.
Rectangular windows surround the perimeter of the UFO’s base. Seated at those windows are 20 or so bald- headed beings with close-set eyes. They stare at the witnesses, who become unnerved and leave. (Clark III 264; Center for UFO Studies, HUMCAT Index 1910–1939, p. 21)
Summer — Many witnesses in Warsaw, Poland, see a silvery object, shaped like two hemispheres divided by a rotating ring, that shoots a beam of light and ascends with a loud noise. (Bronislaw Rzepecki, “UFOs and Ufologists in Poland,” IUR 11, no. 2 (Mar./Apr. 1986): 15; Poland 8)
1923
1923 — Two DePauw University college students, Andrew Wallace Crandall and Herrick Greenleaf, watch a revolving red object pass over Greencastle, Indiana. The object, round and glowing, moves silently from northeast to southwest, then vanishes. (Lore and Deneault, p. 106)
1923 — A photograph shows a domed disc hovering near the church tower in Sebeş, Romania. (Romania 10-11)
October — Boni & Liveright publishes New Lands by Charles Fort, who writes about odd aerial and astronomical observations: “It seems no more incredible that up in the seemingly unoccupied sky there should be hosts of living things than that the seeming blank of the ocean, should swarm with life.” (Wikipedia, “New Lands”; Jim Steinmeyer, Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural, Tarcher, 2008, pp. 198–199; Clark III 507, 1098)
1924
January — 1:00 a.m. Perry G. Powers and Duncan Miller are returning to a ranch when they see a beam of light shining on the snow in the Osage Hills, Oklahoma. It emanates from a large oval-shaped object with white dots of light on the side and blue flame at the trailing end. It makes a slight hissing noise and moves out of sight over the horizon in less than 3 minutes. (UFOEv, p. 129; “1924 Sighting,” Civilian Saucer Investigation Quarterly Bulletin 1, no. 4 (Winter 1954): 10)
August 22 — Mars enters an opposition closer to Earth than at any time in the century before. In the US, a National Radio Silence Day is promoted during a 36-hour period in August 21–23, with all radios quiet for 5 minutes on the hour, every hour, just in case the Martians take the opportunity to communicate with Earth. At the US Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., an SE-950 radio receiver is lifted 1.9 miles above the ground in a dirigible tuned to a wavelength between 8 and 9 kilometers, using a “radio photo message continuous transmission machine” recently invented by Amherst College and Charles Francis Jenkins of Washington. The program is led by retired astronomer David Peck Todd with the military assistance of Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Edward Walter Eberle, with William F. Friedman (US Army chief cryptographer), assigned to translate any potential Martian messages. The device records radio signals on chemically treated film. One signal consists of a “fairly regular arrangement of dots and dashes along one side” and on the other “at almost evenly spaced intervals … curiously jumped groups each taking the forms of a crudely drawn human face.” Todd tells a reporter, “It may not be a message from Mars, but if it isn’t from Mars, where is it from?” Astronomer Frederick E. Fowle of the Smithsonian thinks they are “disturbances introduced by solar or terrestrial causes not yet understood.” Other scientists suggest the images are caused by static discharge from a passing trolley car, malfunctioning radio equipment, or the natural symphonic radio waves produced by Jupiter. (Jerome Clark, “Conversations with Martians,” IUR 29, no. 3 (Fall 2004): 20; Michael D. Swords, “Radio Signals from Space, Alien Probes, and Betty Hill,” IUR 29, no. 4 (July 2005): 11–12; Kristen Gallerneaux, “Reaching for Mars,” Past Forward, August 23, 2016; Jessica Leigh Hester, “Everybody Shut Up! We’re Listening for Mars,” Atlas Obscura, August 3, 2018)
Fall — Dusk. A hunter in a rowboat on Okanagan Lake, British Columbia, sees a faint blue light moving from northeast to southwest. It temporarily disappears behind a mountain but reappears and approaches the boat, passing it at a distance of 200 feet and a speed of 30–40 mph. The object is pearly silver in color with faint dark blue light at the rear. After moving a quarter mile away, it ascends and disappears at terrific speed. (Clark III 1171–1172)
1925
1925 — Thomas Green is riding with another young man on a farm near Moora, Western Australia, when they come across an object “like two saucers placed edge on edge” resting on a paddock. Some oval-shaped windows are visible, and it is resting on four legs splayed outwards. The two decide to return home. Several days later they return and find the earth “scuffed about” on the spot. (Bill Chalker, “Historical Australian UFO Reports,” UFO Research Australia Newsletter 4, no. 3 (Nov./Dec. 1983): 28)
June — 2:30 a.m. A driver stops his Ford Model T to watch a 300-foot-long, cigar-shaped object flying south toward Chicago, Illinois. Red sparks are peeling away from its nose and it has multicolored lights. As it passes in front, the driver feels a heat wave. (San Diego (Calif.) Evening Tribune, August 12, 1965; Clark III 1171)
1926
1926 (or 1927) — 3:00 p.m. A 14-year-old girl is tending cows in a meadow between Brzezie and Ujazd, Poland.
Suddenly the cows become agitated and pull on their halters. She notices three cement-colored spherical objects some 650 feet away in a field to the north. In front of each is a small entity dressed in greenish uniforms. (Poland 9)
January — Aviator Bert Acosta is flying somewhere between Wichita, Kansas, and Colorado Springs, Colorado, when he notices 6 or so objects that look like manhole covers flying off his starboard wing 600 feet away. They keep pace with his plane for 5 minutes. Finally they turn, change course, and fly away. (Jacques Vallée, Anatomy of a Phenomenon, Ace ed., 1965, p. 49; Patrick Gross, “Pilots UFO Sightings,” August 6, 2021)
June — After midnight. Farmer Ion Bunescu is with his horses on the Leurda plateau near Colun, Romania, when he sees a light ascend from the village of Cârța. An illuminated globe moves toward him with a light so strong that it brightens the River Olt some 2.5 miles away. (Hobana and Weverbergh 224–225; Romania 9–11)
August — Dusk. Frank Tezky and his father watch 6 disc-shaped objects in Westmont, Illinois. Five smaller discs are trailing in a straight line behind a much larger one, moving west beneath cirrus clouds, which reflect the light cast by the objects. (Clark III 1170)
Late September — 11:00 p.m. An Air Mail pilot named Colin Murphy is repeatedly buzzed by a huge glowing object one hour after he takes off in his DH-4 biplane from Salt Lake City, Utah. The object is a 90-foot-long cylinder with no wings or propeller. Every time the object approaches closer than 150 feet, his engine sputters and misfires. He is forced to land in a sheep pasture, whereupon the object shoots away to the south. Possible hoax. (Patrick Gross, “Pilots UFO Sightings,” August 5, 2021)
October 27 — Attorney and “telepathist” Hugh Mansfield Robinson, who has been in contact with a female Martian entity named Oomaruru since 1918, convinces the central radio office in London, England, to send out a message, “MMM opesti nipitia secomba” over the airwaves. He intends for it to be picked up by Martian wireless. The next day, he claims that Oomaruru telepathically told him that only the first three letters had been received. Robinson describes the Martians as 7–8 feet tall with large ears, a wealth of black hair, and almond eyes. Over the years he continues receiving messages from Oomaruru while in a trance and attempting to send signals to Mars. Psychic investigator Nandor Fodor, who has attended some of Robinson’s séances, calls him “as slippery as a human eel.” (Earl J. Johnson, “Imagination Runs Wild about Visit of Martian Realm,” Pomona (Calif.) Bulletin, October 28, 1926, p. 1; “Doctor Files Mars Message by Radio ‘At Sender’s Risk,’” Vancouver (B.C.) Sun, October 28, 1926,
p. 18; Nandor Fodor, The Haunted Mind, Garrett, 1959, pp. 259–269; Clark III 1018–1019; Marc Hartzman, “Earth to Mars in the 1920s: The Strange Case of the Man Who Tried to Contact Martians via Radio,” Weird Historian, February 22, 2018)
November — Early evening. Playing hide-and-seek with friends in Bolton, Lancashire, England, Henry Thomas slips into a backyard and finds three figures dressed in odd suits made of silvery gray rubber tubes. They are looking into a window in the back of a house. A tube extends from their helmets into a tank on each figure’s back. They turn to look at him and he sees their heads are pale and “shaped like lightbulbs” and they have slits for mouths. Thomas runs away. (“1926: Humanoid Hide and Seek,” ThinkAboutIt; Clark III 264)
1927
1927 — For a few weeks, 10-year-old Cecil “Danny” McGann, his family, and other farmers in the area of Fernvale, New South Wales, are terrorized by dancing aerial lights during the night, the unusual deaths of their cattle and pigs, mystery intruders, apparitions, circular areas of scorched grass, large and unfamiliar birds, bizarre noises, and
strange men in odd suits. McGann is still terrified of this series of events when he relates them to UFO investigator Bill Chalker in 1985. (Clark III 485–491; Bill Chalker, “Physical Traces,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, p. 190)
Summer — Reece Andrew Lacey, 9, sees a large fish-like object with “big fins extended outward near the front, and small, short ones near the rear” in Wolfe County, Kentucky. (“Report from the Readers,” Fate 11, no. 2 (December 1958): 111–112; Clark III 1171)
July — Agricultural engineer Gheorghe Achimescu sees a smoke-gray, cylindrical object fly silently from west to east over the village of Nicolae Bălcescu, Romania, at an altitude of 650–950 feet. He estimates it is about 50 feet long with a diameter of 10 feet. (Hobana and Weverbergh 152–153)
August 5 — Explorer Nicholas Roerich and others in his caravan observe a UFO near Qinghai Lake, Tibet. “We all saw, in the direction north to south, something big and shiny reflecting sun, like a huge oval moving at great speed.
Crossing our camp this thing changed in its direction from south to southwest, and we saw how it disappeared in the intense blue sky. We even had time to take our field glasses and saw quite distinctly the oval form with the shiny surface, one side of which was brilliant from the sun." (Nicholas Roerich, Altai-Himalaya, Frederick A. Stokes, 1929, pp. 361–362; Brad Sparks, “Analysis: Roerich Case, Aug. 5, 1927”)
Late summer — Long delayed echoes—radio echoes that return to the sender several seconds after a radio transmission has occurred—are first observed by civil engineer and amateur radio operator Jørgen Hals from his home
near Oslo, Norway. The cause of LDEs remains unknown, although A. G. Shlionsky has proposed 15 different explanations. (Wikipedia, “Long delayed echo”; Carl Størmer, “Short Wave Echoes and the Aurora Borealis,” Nature 122 (1928): 681; Sverre Holm, “The Five Most Likely Explanations for Long Delayed Echoes,” March 16, 2004; Sverre Holm, “15 Possible Explanations for Long Delayed Echoes,” November 6, 2007)
October 18 — Richard Sweed is driving west on the outskirts of Bakersfield, California, when he sees a bluish-gray metallic disc with portholes take off from the ground at a 45° angle. It is about 60 feet in diameter and makes a whining sound. He examines the spot where the object had rested and finds the sand “fused like glass crystals.” (Lorenzen, UFOs: The Whole Story, Signet, 1969, p. 18)
1928
January 3 — Kansas journalist Charles Benedict Driscoll begins writing about ball lighting in his syndicated column, “The World and All,” keeping the subject alive for many years. (Charles B. Driscoll, “The World and All,” Lexington (Ky.) Herald, January 3, 1928, p. 4)
May — Mystic and white supremacist William Dudley Pelley claims he has an out-of-body experience in which he travels to other planes of existence devoid of corporeal souls. He describes his experience in an American Magazine article titled “My Seven Minutes in Eternity,” expanded to a book 1933 as Seven Minutes in Eternity. In later writings, he describes the experience as “hypo-dimensional.” During this event, he meets with God and Jesus, who instruct him to undertake the spiritual transformation of America. He later claims that the experience gives him the ability to levitate, see through walls, and have out-of-body experiences at will. (William Dudley Pelley, “Seven Minutes in Eternity” with Their Aftermath, Robert Collier, 1929; Clark III 1285)
Summer — A 6-year-old girl sees a black, faceless, 5-foot-high figure with a large head and dangling arms in a field off Anstey Lane, Leicester, England. She thinks it is a scarecrow but notices a “large globe on legs” near the figure. She wakes up her father (who is resting in the open air) but when she turns around, the scarecrow and the globe are gone. (Pauline Berger, “The Disappearing Scarecrow,” Flying Saucer Review 15, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1969): 29; Clark III 264)
June 13 — 9:00–10:00 p.m. Something like a “great blurred electric light” appears over Miami, Florida, for more than 30 minutes. One witness, amateur astronomer R. C. Fahrion, describes it as a comet without a tail, but it does not move, is of an “enormous size,” and disappears very suddenly. (“Miami Astronomers Unable to Identify Light in Sky,” Miami Herald, June 14, 1928, p. 1; “Miamians Watch Sky Mystery, Mistaken for Tailless Comet,” Miami News, June 14, 1928, p. 12; Clark III 1172)
Early November — 10:30 p.m. Norman H. Sabie and Thorsten Sabie are driving cattle near Milton, North Dakota, watch a round, metallic object, like a “soup bowl turned upside down,” speed by at a low altitude (15–20 feet), emitting 4–5 rays of light that illuminate the ground and startle cattle. It makes a sound like air pouring through a tube. (UFOEv, p. 129; Clark III 1170)
November 28 — French diplomatic scholar Henri Pensa writes that a silvery object trailing fire is seen in Rodez, Aveyron, France, coming from the “direction of Mars.” He says that in the winter of 1927–1928, he has seen a bright light, usually between 8:00 and 11:00 p.m., that brightens the landscape. (Giuseppe Stilo, “Francia, 1928: Marte Attacca?” Cielo Insolito, October 2, 2019)
1929
1929 — In Hertford, England, a 5-year-old girl and her 8-year-old brother have such an unsettling experience that they do not talk about it themselves until about 1960, and the woman herself does not reveal it to outsiders until 1970.
They are playing in a garden when they hear engine sounds and see a tiny (12 or 15 inches wide) biplane coming over the fence from the direction of an orchard. It swoops down, nearly hitting a trash can, and lands for a few seconds before resuming its flight. While it is stationary, the girl can see a “perfectly proportioned tiny pilot wearing a leather flying helmet, who waved to us as he took off.” (Gordon Creighton, “A Weird Case from the Past,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1970): 30; Clark III 1173)
June 12 — 11:00 p.m. As he is driving home at Ferme-Neuve, Quebec, Levis Brosseau, 20, sees something like a black cloud with a yellow light resting on a hillside. He gets out to investigate and discerns a structured object 50 feet in diameter. Outside of it, 4–5 small men of yellowish color are moving quickly about. Soon the object flies overhead, “purring like a milk separator,” and he hears two voices arguing. (Center for UFO Studies, HUMCAT Index 1910–1939, p. 31; Clark III 264)
September — Medical student William Walton is crossing a street in Oak Park, Illinois, when he sees a very bright yellowish-white light like two saucers pressed together. It approaches his position, and he hears a humming sound like the throbbing of a turbine and feels heat and pressure. The object passes over him at about 100 feet altitude, but the force knocks him to his knees. After it passes, he detects an odor of sulfur. (Linda Zimmerman, More Hudson Valley UFOs, Eagle Press, 2017)
1930
1930 — 10:00 a.m. A woman is driving the family car in an isolated hilly area of Texas when she rounds a curve and sees a huge object about 100 feet across by the side of the road. A small door is open with steps leading down to the ground. One side of the object is braced up by two slender legs with round plates for feet. A man of normal size comes walking toward her and forces her to stop. He seems to speak to her telepathically, telling her to leave the road and make a shortcut through a gully. Some 8–10 other figures walk forward, much smaller and with slanted eyes. They are wearing tan coveralls and tight caps. Despite potential damage to her car, she drives through the gully as the larger man walks alongside. The next thing she remembers is walking up to her porch at her home 15 miles away. It is around 12:00 midnight. In March 1968, having read Interrupted Journey about the Betty and Barney Hill case, she writes to the Colorado project and offers herself for hypnosis and research. Edward Condon files the letter under “psychological” and does not respond. (Michael D. Swords, “Too Close for Condon: Close Encounters of the 4th Kind,” IUR 28, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 4–5; Patrick Gross, URECAT, August 29, 2019)
1930 — Day. Schoolboys and teachers at the Barton Hill Academy in Bristol, England, watch a cigar-shaped metallic object speed across the sky faster than a dirigible. (Lorenzen, UFOs: The Whole Story, Signet, 1969, pp. 16–19)
1930 — 9:30 p.m. Two men walking along a lane at Tomintoul, Scotland, see a white light “like a meteor.” When it gets brighter, they can see figures moving inside it. The witnesses think it is a ghost light. (Clark III 264; Patrick Gross, URECAT, September 20, 2018)
Spring (or spring 1931) — 7:00 p.m. As he walks down a country road near Newberry, Michigan, high school student Ralph Newman sees a “distinctly green fireball” in the low eastern sky that moves from south to north. About the size of the full moon, its light brightens the countryside, then it vanishes. (Clark III 1175)
May — Day. A top-shaped object 40 feet wide lands in a garden in Greensboro, North Carolina. Mr. and Mrs. J. T. Rankin and their two daughters can see the head and shoulders of a figure inside wearing a tight-fitting outfit and helmet. Some 5–10 minutes later the object ascends quietly and is gone. (Center for UFO Studies, HUMCAT Index 1910–1939, p. 33; Clark III 264; Patrick Gross, URECAT, September 15, 2018)
1931
January 1 — 1:00 a.m. J. Stewart Childerhose and his brother, two farmers of Cobden, Ontario, see an object with a brilliant white light on its front illuminating treetops on the shore of Muskrat Lake. Green and white lights twinkle on its tail end. It moves in a rectangular path, then speeds up suddenly and climbs out of sight. (Lore and Deneault, p. 108)
January 26 — Author Tiffany Thayer founds the Fortean Society during a dinner with Charles Fort in the Savoy-Plaza Hotel in New York City in order to promote his books and ideas. (Wikipedia, “Fortean Society”; Jim Steinmeyer, Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural, Tarcher, 2008, pp. 239–241)
February — Charles Fort writes in Lo!, published this month, that “Unknown, luminous things, or beings, have often been seen, sometimes close to this earth, and sometimes high in the sky. It may be that some of them were living things that occasionally come from somewhere else.” (Wikipedia, “Lo!”; Jim Steinmeyer, Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural, Tarcher, 2008, pp. 235–243; Clark III 507–508, 1098)
May — 4:30 p.m. Pasquale Masala is out riding his horse with a friend a few miles southeast of Paulilatino, Sardinia, Italy. When they reach a megalithic tomb known as Nuraghe Trudumeddu, they dismount to enjoy the view. Suddenly, a strange object the size and shape of a football emerges from the partially blocked entrance of the tomb. It travels at a height of about 3 feet above the ground at a constant speed of about 10–15 mph and enters a thick patch of undergrowth. Marsala runs after it for about a half mile and notices that the bushes part in front of the object and close up after it passes. His companion is frightened and insists on returning to the village. (Mary Boyd, “An Early Italian Cross-Country Case,” Flying Saucer Review 20, no. 3 (December 1974): 21; 1Pinotti 13– 14)
June 6 — Aviator Francis Chichester sees a dull gray-white “airship” as he is making the first solo flight in a Gypsy Moth seaplane from New Zealand to Australia over the Tasman Sea. (Francis Chichester, The Lonely Sea and the Sky, Hodder and Stoughton, 1964, p. 165; Keith Basterfield, “Aviator Francis Chichester’s Classic Sighting: Is the Date Wrong?” Unidentified Aerial Phenomena–Scientific Research, May 29, 2018; Patrick Gross, “Francis Chichester Sighting, 1931”)
Summer — Alice May Williams of Auckland, New Zealand, begins writing letters over a two-year period to Edison Pettit and Seth Barnes Nicholson, astronomers at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, California, describing her encounters with telepathic aliens who fly in a circular machine “like a great big lamp.” She writes that “The Planet mars is inhabited by human spirits like us can talk eat & drink wear clothes, but have great power. They are something people of this earth have never seen.” Their ships “are round like the moon with airtight shutter at the front, glass. The machine must be built with some light material, airproof fireproof, waterproof. The inside must be like a room, 2 beds tables & chairs.” Much of her information seems to be derived from articles in the Auckland Star about conditions elsewhere in the solar system. (David Herkt, “Who No: Letters from Alice May Williams,” Speaker: Public Address, September 3, 2012)
1932
1932 — Danish pilots Lt. Col. Peter Grunnet and Lt. Tage Andersen are flying an H.M.II (Heinkel HE 8) seaplane over eastern Greenland as part of a photogrammetric survey. Suddenly, Andersen notices they are being followed by a hexagonal metallic object about a mile behind them. (Rufus Drake, “UFO Crisis over Greenland,” Saga, October 1976, pp. 36–38, 54, 60; Patrick Gross, “Pilots UFO Sightings,” August 8, 2021)
April or May — Terry F. Lapeza sees an aluminum-like disc with yellowish lights or “portholes” on the underside, about 100 feet in diameter over Durham, New York. It is moving north at about 300 mph. (UFOEv, p. 129)
Early summer (or early summer 1933)— 7:30 p.m. Teenager Fred W. Van Sant and his brother Milton see 7–8 “meteors flying in a bunch” over hills east of Oakland, California. They maintain the same altitude from east to west in a great arc. The objects are silent and are so bright they seem to be emitting their own light. (NICAP case file; Clark III 1175)
June —Evening. Reuben D. Knight is standing on the porch of his farmhouse near Wattsburg, Pennsylvania, when he notices a bright speck of light approaching from some woods to the south. Growing in size, it comes to within 4 feet of him and appears as a silvery-blue ball about 14 inches in diameter. It travels in a loop and circles back to the woods in a steady path of 35–40 mph. After it circles past him again, he calls his wife and she sees the ball make a final loop before it disappears in the woods. (NICAP case file; Clark III 1175; Patrick Gross, URECAT, August 19, 2018)
1933
1933 — Earl J. Duncan and a Native American boy are in a truck near Fort Washakie, Wyoming, on the Wind River Indian Reservation. As they reach the crest of a hill, they see three perfectly round, pulsating, orange-red balls about 900 feet away. They are moving “in absolute alignment” about 20 feet from the ground toward the nearest mountain range. After 5 minutes of silent movement they disappear over a nearby mountain. (NICAp case file; Clark III 1175)
Summer — For weeks, strange lights in the sky are reported around Tobin Lake, Saskatchewan. Curious about the reports, two young men and a woman drive to the lake from Napawin. On their way they see a glow near the horizon, so they park and trek a quarter mile into the woods where they can see a large, oval-shaped craft sitting on legs.
From an open central doorway shines a bright orange glow; a ladderlike stairway extends downward with a dozen figures dressed in silver suits moving up and down the steps. They appear to be repairing the craft. The witnesses watch for 30 minutes when they decide to return to their truck and get closer. Two nights later they return and find imprints and burn marks, which they photograph. Two of them write an article that they submit to magazines, which refuse to publish what they consider outlandish fiction. (John Brent Musgrave, “Saskatchewan, 1933: UFO Stops for ‘Repairs,’” Flying Saucer Review 22, no. 6 (April 1977): 16–17; Clark III 264; Patrick Gross, URECAT, July 15, 2009)
Summer — 2:30 a.m. A man who still insists on anonymity in 1964 is driving near Cherryville, Pennsylvania, when his car gets a flat tire. As he is jacking it up, he sees a faint violet light in the field on his right. Curious, he walks about 200 feet toward the light and sees a bell-shaped object about 10 feet in diameter and 6 feet high on the grass. Light is issuing from a circular door about 1 foot in diameter. He pushes it and it swings open. Putting his head inside, he cannot see much because of the peculiar light coming from the ceiling. The chamber inside is about 6 feet in diameter, 4 feet high, and full of tubing and dials on a console. An ammonia scent pervades the room, which is notably chilly. The man then walks around the object, touching the surface, which is slick, metallic, and cold. After 10 minutes, he goes back to the car, replaces the tire, and drives home. (“Flying Saucer Spotted in 1933,” Allentown (Pa.) Sunday Call-Chronicle, February 16, 1964, pp. B1–B2; Clark III 1175–1176; “1933 Sighting Reported,” APRO Bulletin, July 1964, pp. 7–8; Patrick Gross, URECAT, July 16, 2009)
Summer — Night. Frank Van Keuren is fishing with others along the waterway off Beach Haven, New Jersey. Suddenly they are illuminated by a searchlight coming from an object moving slowly and silently about 1,000 feet in the air. It goes on to circle some radio towers about 8 miles away, flooding them with light. (Lorenzen, UFOs: The Whole Story, Signet, 1969, pp. 19–20)
June 1 — English mountaineer Frank Smythe, during the British Mount Everest Expedition in the Himalaya Mountains of Nepal, is heading for camp at 27,500 feet when he sees two dark objects floating in the blue sky. In shape they resemble kite balloons, except that one appears to possess short squat wings. As they hover motionless, they seem to pulsate in and out as though they are breathing. A minute or two later they disappear behind mountain mist. (Frank S. Smythe, Camp Six: An Account of the 1933 Mount Everest Expedition, Hodder and Stoughton, 1937,
pp. 264–265; Barry Greenwood, “UFOs on Mt. Everest in 1933,” UFO Historical Revue, no. 5 (July 1999): 2–3)
June 13 — An unknown aircraft allegedly crashes at Magenta, just west of Milan, Italy. The Italian government establishes a top-secret group, Gabinetto Ricerche Speziale/33, to examine the craft. It is headed by Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano, and Air Marshal Italo Balbo, with scientific support from Guglielmo Marconi and astronomer Gino Cecchini. Debris is reportedly stored in the hangars of the SIAI- Marchetti aircraft company in Vergiate, Varese. Journalists are ordered to keep silent about the incident due to
national security. (Good Need, pp. 12–15; Roberto Pinotti and Alfredo Lissoni, Gli “X-Files” del Nazifascismo,
2001; 2Pinotti 179–197)
July 5 — Evening. Four RAF Hawker Fury I biplanes flying over Sussex, England, encounter a gigantic light that shines directly into the center of their formation from a higher altitude. Two Hawkers experience mechanical trouble and separate. Capt. Nigel Tompkins and Lt. Bruce H. Thomas make emergency landings when both their planes’ engines quit. On his way down, Thomas passes so close to the light that it causes burns on his face and hands.
Probable hoax. (History of the III Fighter Squadron, RAF, London Press, 1947; Jan Aldrich, “Aircraft/UFO Encounters Prior to 1942,” Project 1947; Patrick Gross, “Pilots UFO Sightings,” August 3, 2021)
July 31 (or August 1) — 9:15 p.m. Somewhere between Butt Valley Reservoir and Humbug Valley, California, high- school science teacher Paul M. Barry Jr. is skywatching when he sees two objects shoot across the sky. They are solid, prolate spheroids with a green luminescence. Their brightness changes considerably as they approach the zenith and diminish as they approach the horizon. He thinks they are 8–10 miles distant. The two objects disappear and are followed by a third. (Clark III 1175)
Fall — 11:45 p.m. A chemist in Contra Costa County, California, hears a humming sound outside coming from the northeast. Looking out the window, he sees the yard bathed in a steady blue-purple light. Suddenly the light goes out and the humming ends with a “pow” sound. (Lorenzen, UFOs; The Whole Story, Signet, 1969, p. 19)
Late November — After sunset. A lone observer sees what appears to be an aircraft land on ice-covered lake Fjosoken, Sorsele, Sweden. It takes off and circles the lake for one hour, during which time it projects a powerful searchlight on the lake’s surface. However, local police interview the witness and suspect that he was looking at Venus. (Swords 361)
December 24 — 6:00 p.m. Witnesses in Kalix, Norrbotten, Sweden, see beams of light coming from a machine that seems to be searching the ground below. The beams are “blinding.” The sighting is part of a wave of “ghost flier” reports of gray monoplanes without identifying markings that are reported over rural areas of Scandinavia from November 15, 1933, through February 11, 1934. The Swedish Military Record Office accumulates 96 reports from Sweden, 234 from Norway, and 137 from Finland, and the Swedish Air Force undertakes at least two reconnaissance missions in search of the mystery planes. More than 50% of the reports take place between 5:00
p.m. and 7:00 p.m., when Venus is low over the horizon. (Strange Company 7; Hilary Evans and Robert E. Bartholomew, Outbreak! Anomalist, 2009, pp. 497–499; Swords 361–363; Anders Liljegren, “Ghost Flier Mystery Still Unresolved,” AFU Newsletter 41 (September 2001): 1–3)
December 28 — The 4th Swedish Flying Corps begins an investigation of the ghost flyers. (John A. Keel, “Mystery Aeroplanes of the 1930s, Part 2,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1970): 12)
December 30 — Swedish customs sends a request for air support to Gen. Eric Virgin, head of the Swedish Air Force, to help apprehend the ghost fliers who could be smuggling liquor into Sweden. However, he is cautious and wants more information to evaluate. (Swords 361–362; Good Above, p. 13)
1934
January — George Adamski, who has been a lecturer and counselor on spiritual topics since about 1928, opens the Monastery of the Royal Order of Tibet at 758 Manzanita Drive, Laguna Beach, California. The monastery serves as his home and headquarters until 1940. (George M. Eberhart, “George Adamski—New Age Meets the Space Age,” IUR 21, no. 2 (Summer 1996): 20; “Laguna Beach, 1932–1940: From Temple to Ranch,” The Adamski Case, September 27, 2019)
January 2 — 3:45 a.m. Olof Hedlund is taking a walk in Sorsele, Västerbotten, Sweden, when he hears an engine above him. There is a full moon and visibility is good. He sees an airplane fly over the city from the west, passing directly above the train station. It turns three times in wide circles, then it takes off to the north, following the railroad tracks. It is at about 1,300 feet altitude and visible for 15 minutes. (John A. Keel, “Mystery Aeroplanes of the 1930s, Part 2,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1970): 12)
January 9 — A mystery airplane is seen again over Västerbotten province, Sweden. The Swedish Air Force loses two aircraft trying to discover where the plane is based. (“Mystery Plane Reported,” New York Times, January 10, 1934, p. 11; Strange Company 7–8)
January 10 — Gen. Pontus Reuterswärd, chief of armed forces in Upper Norrland, Sweden, recommends to officials of Norrbotten County that they request assistance from the Air Force to deal with the ghost fliers. Norrbotten administrator Bernard Gärde is skeptical of the “vague and unreliable” reports at first. (Swords 361–362)
January 22 — A mystery aircraft flies over the military fortress at Boden, Norrbotten, Sweden, seen by 30 soldiers, and Reuterswärd alerts the press that planes had flown over restricted military areas. (John A. Keel, “Mystery Aeroplanes of the 1930s, Part III—The Landings,” Flying Saucer Review 17, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1971): 17; Swords 362)
January 27 — Swedish MP Arvid Lindman puts a question to Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson, asking what action the government plans to take about the ghost fliers. (Swords 362)
February 1 — Night. A mystery aircraft flies in circles for two hours over central London, England. Its engine is noisy, and its course can be clearly seen by its lights. On February 6, Under-Secretary of State for Air Philip Sassoon claims that it was an RAF plane carrying out a training exercise in coordination with ground forces. (John A. Keel, “Mystery Aeroplanes of the 1930s, Part 2,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1970): 13)
February 2 — Prime Minister Hansson tells the Swedish Parliament that most ghost flier sightings are misidentifications or fantasy, while others are unsolved. (Swords 362)
February 2 — Night. A large unidentified airplane is seen over eastern Finland close to the Russian frontier, apparently scouting the district. Flights of ghost planes and mysterious lights have been seen for the past month over Helsinki and Vyborg, Finland, as well as Sweden and Norway. The Scandinavian mystery fliers continue to be seen into 1935. (“Finnish Alarm Grows over ‘Ghost’ Planes,” New York Times, February 4, 1934, p. 9; Strange Company 8–9)
February 12 — Norrbotten, Sweden, administrator Bernard Gärde officially requests assistance of the Air Force with the ghost fliers. But air surveillance has actually been taking place since early January. (Swords 362)
March 4 — Sweden calls off its hunt for the ghost fliers, although sightings are still being reported. Even though 24 airplanes participated in the search, no Swedish pilot has seen a ghost flier. Soldiers on the ground occasionally report sound from a motor or lights in the sky. (Swords 362–363)
April 30 — Gen. Reuterswärd tells the press that several ghost flier reports in January had been of real, unidentified aircraft involved in a violation of Sweden’s airspace. MP Elof Lindberg accuses him of not being competent enough to draw such a conclusion. (Good Above, p. 13; Swords 363)
June 11 — Night. Two mystery airplanes circle around London, England: “The machines were low enough for their outlines, as well as their navigation lights, to be clearly visible against the sky.” Regulations prohibit RAF planes from flying over London at less than 5,000 feet. (John A. Keel, “Mystery Aeroplanes of the 1930s, Part 2,” Flying Saucer Review 16, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1970): 13)
Summer — Day. 9-year-old Coral E. Lightner and two friends watch a white object “like an open umbrella without the ribs or spurs” glide silently through the sky from the west-southwest to the northwest over Barron, Wisconsin. It moves silently with a slight undulation before it disappears after 20 seconds. (Lorenzen, FS Hoax, pp. 15–16; “The Wisconsin Flying Saucer That Changed UFO Research Forever,” Wisconsin Frights, September 20, 2018)
August 9 — Around 5:00 a.m. Musician Leon M. Thompson is boating on Keuka Lake in western New York when he notices an odd cloud on the west side of the lake. It is in the form of an elongated cone some 60–75 feet in length and 10–15 feet in diameter at its largest point. Suddenly the sky lights up in a flash and the cloud emits a fireball that arcs across the lake to the east and leaves a fiery train. It falls on a cottage and throws up a cloud of mist or steam that slowly dissipates. (“Ball of Fire Brings Thrill to Fisherman,” Elmira (N.Y.) Star-Gazette, August 4, 1934, p. 5; Chris Aubeck and Martin Shough, Return to Magonia: Investigating UFOs in History, Anomalist, 2015, pp. 315–328)
1935
1935 — 10:00 p.m. Edward Winters of the US 4th Coast Artillery Regiment watches a dull-red, Zeppelin-shaped object flying over the Panama Canal Zone at high speed from the Pacific to the Atlantic for about 30 minutes. Later it returns, moving in the opposite direction farther away. (NICAP case file)
1935 — Astronomer Arthur M. Harding writes that “Surely there must be some forms of life on Venus that are not so very different from what we find on earth.” (Arthur M. Harding, Astronomy: The Splendor of the Heavens Brought Down to Earth, Garden City Publishing, 1935, p. 408)
January 10 — Charles Spayde, the operator of a telegraph station west of Lima, Ohio, claims that he has been receiving a “series of strange, unintelligible signals” that are broad in wavelength and “come in all over the dial.” He is convinced they are not static or mechanical disturbances and they do not originate on this planet. (Jerome Clark, “Conversations with Martians,” IUR 29, no. 3 (Fall 2004): 20)
January 22 or 23 — 8:00 p.m. A woman in Vienna, Virginia, sees a lightning-like flash in the southwest that flares up several times then dies down. It seems to come from a “great blazing light, almost a ball of fire,” that is moving around the horizon. It is lost to view in the southeast. (“A correspondent from Vienna, Va., writes,” Science 81 (1935): 294)
Spring — Night. A Mr. Aerts sees a brilliant circular object “like aluminum” in the sky above the roofs of nearby houses in Mechelen, Belgium. It lands and he sees two small occupants come out of the rear; they wear square helmets with short antennas and are apparently examining the exterior surface. (Center for UFO Studies, HUMCAT Index 1910–1939, p. 42; Clark III 265)
April 5 — Dusk. A farmer named Mora sees a large, round, brilliant object descend and hover just above the ground near his property in Aznalcázar, Seville, Spain. Several small beings appear and stroll around it. (Clark III 264–265; Patrick Gross, URECAT, April 9, 2007)
May — Radu Popescu and his cousin are walking by the Olt River near Drăgășani, Romania, when they come upon what seems to be a Romany wagon. They see five figures—one next to the object, two farther away, and another two next to a boat on the shore. Suddenly the figures run toward the object, something black covers it, an antenna appears, and it rises up above the river. It turns to a white color as it moves away. (Romania 121–122)
July 1 — The US Division of Investigation officially becomes the Federal Bureau of Investigation. (Federal Bureau of Investigation, Timeline, March 31, 2002)
July 8 — The Swedish Chief of Staff releases its final report on ghost fliers. After concluding that 42 of the 487 reports investigated by Sweden, Norway, and Finland are of actual aircraft violating borders, the military admits the phenomenon is at least partially real. (Swords 363)
1936
1936 — Atmospheric physicist William Jackson Humphreys, after examing 280 cases, argues that ball lightning is caused by persistence of vision, meteorites, will-o’-the-wisp, brush discharge, and other natural phenomena. (W. J. Humphreys, “Ball Lightning,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 76 (1936): 613–626)
1936 — Late evening. Mrs. E. P. Higgins and another member of the Canal Zone Astronomical Society observe a moving orange-red star passing from north to south near Miraflores Lake, Panama. Suddenly it halts and travels in three small circles from right to left. (Lore and Deneault, pp. 112–113; Clark III 1176)
January — George Adamski’s Royal Order of Tibet publishes Universal Jewels of Life as a free monthly newsletter for those attending his meetings in Laguna Beach, California. Besides Adamski, talks are also given by Marguerite Weir, Alice Wells, and others. Beginning in May, the Royal Order has a weekly 15-minute slot on local radio stations KFOX in Long Beach and KMPC in Los Angeles. He also publishes Wisdom of the Masters of the Far East, a summary of his “ageless wisdom” teachings. (“Laguna Beach, 1932–1940: From Temple to Ranch,” The Adamski Case, September 27, 2019)
August 17 — A metallic disc with a diameter of 33–40 feet is seen flying soundlessly near Venice, Italy. It has windows and alternating white and red lights. Two fighters from a nearby air base attempt to intercept it but cannot reach it. After maneuvering for an hour and passing above Mestre, Veneto, it appears more like a torpedo-shaped object.
Two other smaller, domed discs are also seen following it. A report on the incident is sent to Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano. (Good Need, p. 12; Roberto Pinotti and Alfredo Lissoni, Gli “X-Files” del Nazifascismo, 2001)
Fall — Before 12:00 midnight. Louie R. Lindblad and five companions from Texarkana, Arkansas, are fox hunting in Bowie County, Texas [around the current site of the Red River Army Depot] when they observe numerous star- like objects in a circular formation. Occasionally a light would fly across the circle and take up another position until they all seem to relocate. They watch the display for about 30–40 minutes. (MUFON UFO Journal, no. 150, August 1980, p. 12)
October — Night. Holger Berg and another worker at the Civilian Conservation Corps in Eklutna, Alaska, are walking south toward Anchorage when the see a light approaching them from the south. It is attached to a cigar-shaped object embedded in a blue-green haze and making a strange buzzing noise. As the object passes directly overhead, they notice it actually has a triangular shape and multicolored lights on its tail end. Frightened, they dive into a nearby snowbank then run back to Eklutna. (Marler 64–66)
October 10 — 4:15 a.m. Capt. Mario Rossi, flight instructor at the airfield at Orbetello, Grosseto, Italy, is flying a Savoia- Marchetti SM.62 at 12,465 feet over Talamone, Italy, when he sees an unusual light ahead of his plane. He follows the light, which is at a slightly higher altitude and moving at nearly 440 mph. Rossi loses it after flying into a cloud for 12 minutes and finding himself over Elba. (Ernesto Thayaht, “Three Sightings in Italy,” Flying Saucer Review 1, no. 3 (July/Aug. 1955): 6; 1Pinotti 15–16; “Pilots UFO Sightings,” August 7, 2021)
Winter — Robert Damion, an astronomer of Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France, who has a private observatory in the Alps, claims that for several nights a “certain portion of the sky in the vicinity of Mars” has been lit up with a deep bluish tint for 40 seconds each time. He is convinced that Mars is trying to signal Earth. (“Strange Light from Mars Called Signal to Earth,” Ogden (Utah) Standard-Examiner, March 11, 1936, p. 12)
1937
January — A man who later becomes an administrator in a Missouri state agency chases a disc-shaped object in his private aircraft over Van Buren, Missouri. (Harley D. Rutledge, Project Identification: The First Scientific Field Study of UFO Phenomena, Prentice-Hall, 1981, p. 213)
January 1 — Noon. Pilot Howard S. Behr is flying a Curtiss-Wright CW-15 Sedan at 3,000 feet over Virginia on his way to Raleigh, North Carolina. Suddenly he sees an object beginning to cross his flight path about 1,000 feet below him. It looks like a gondola, gun-metal gray in color, with both of its ends turned up. He estimates it is about 35– 40 feet long and traveling at 150 mph. It moves off to his left and disappears. (Jerome Clark, Strange Skies: Pilot Encounters with UFOs, Citadel, 2003, p. 6; Patrick Gross, “Pilots UFO Sightings,” August 7, 2021)
January 4 — New ghost flier sightings around the fortress at Boden, Norrbotten, Sweden, have prompted Gen. Pontus Reuterswärd to alert Minister of Defence Janne Nilsson about the possibility of foreign spies. (Swords 363)
Late January — Ghost fliers return to Västerbotten, Sweden. A light is seen wandering near the horizon east of Umeå. A light brighter than a headlight is reported from a community near Dorotea. A light similar to position lights on an aircraft flies over a village outside Stensele. (Swords 363)
February 11 — 9:00 p.m. The crew of the fishing vessel Fram is departing Kvalsvik, Norway, when they notice a “large aeroplane” with red and green glowing lights resting on top of the water. The captain turns the boat around to offer assistance, but the object’s lights go out and it is cloaked in a “cloud of smoke” and vanishes. (Strange Company 11)
February 15 — MP Elof Lindberg demands in the Swedish Parliament that a commission with civil experts, not military, should investigate the ghost flier intrusions. He suspects the military has embellished the reports to direct more resources to the northern region and to the Air Force in general. (Swords 363)
May 19 — Lindberg’s request for a civilian ghost flier investigation is rejected by Swedish Minister of Defence Janne Nilsson, who explains that no new facts have surfaced and few new observations have been reported. (Swords 363)
May 30 — Amateur astronomer Latimer J. Wilson of Nashville, Tennessee, is observing Mars through a 12-inch reflector when he sees a series of intermittent bright flashes across the south polar cap. A line of tiny white spots seems to extend across the cap, some coalescing to swell in a brilliant white spot that quickly becomes yellow, then red- yellow, the “phenomenon passing from left to right across the polar cap.” (Latimer J. Wilson, “Apparent Flashes Seen on Mars,” Popular Astronomy 45 (1937): 430; Walter H. Haas, “Flashes on Mars Observed in 1937 and Some Random Remarks,” The Strolling Astronomer 45, no. 1 (Winter 2003): 43–45)
Summer — An object allegedly falls from the sky in Langenau [now Czernica, Poland] into a field belonging to Eva Braun’s family and is retrieved by German soldiers. It supposedly winds up in Wernher von Braun’s laboratory, but the story is probably mythical. (Poland 116–117)
September — Tiffany Thayer publishes the first issue of the Fortean Society Magazine (retitled Doubt in 1944) in New York City. (Fortean Society Magazine 1, no. 1 (September 1937); Clark III 516)
September 10–12 — George Adamski’s Royal Order of Tibet organizes a festival in Laguna Beach, California, dramatizing the “teachings of the universal masters” and a round-table discussion focusing on the “present day needs in unifying all mankind.” (“Laguna Beach, 1932–1940: From Temple to Ranch,” The Adamski Case, September 27, 2019)
1938
1938 — The Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation begin contributing large amounts of money to the Council on Foreign Relations. They create various Committees on Foreign Relations throughout the country, which later become governed by the American Committees on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., funded by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation. Influential men are chosen in several cities and are brought together for discussions in their own communities as well as participating in an annual conference in New York. These local committees serve to influence local leaders and shape public opinion to build support for the council’s policies, while also acting as “useful listening posts” through which the Council and US government can “sense the mood of the country.” (Wikipedia, “Council on Foreign Relations”)
1938 — Harvey L. Sperry, 13, sees a white, vapor-like object moving at 5–10 mph at less than 100 feet altitude from north to south in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Its rim seems to be “composed of two interwoven parts revolving and moving in opposite directions.” (Lore and Deneault, p. 136; Clark III 1176)
February — Raymond A. Palmer is hired as editor of Amazing Stories magazine, owned by Ziff-Davis in Chicago, Illinois. He immediately sets out to enliven the periodical, which is close to folding. Concentrating on “space opera” stories, he expands its size to more than 200 pages and encourages readers to contribute content. (Wikipedia, “Raymond A. Palmer”)
Summer — Midnight. Artist Malcolm B. Perry sees what looks like a Navy blimp moving east to west over Somerville, Massachusetts. It has apparent portholes in the sides, and he can see the silhouette of someone looking at him. Other figures are taking turns looking through portholes. It disappears below some low clouds. (Lorenzen, UFOs: The Whole Story, Signet, 1969, pp. 20–21; “1938: Perry’s Alien,” UFO Roundup 5, no. 37 (September 4, 2000);
Clark III 265)
July 25 — 11:30 p.m. A lieutenant and his aide see a strong light coming from a hovering lens-shaped object near Guadalajara, Spain. It is over 35 feet in diameter and 15 feet high. A platform with two moving figures is lowered from underneath. A blue beam from the object shines on the witnesses, who feel a sudden chill. The platform rises back up, and the object glows with an intense white light and flies away. (Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, A Catalogue of 200 Type I UFO Events in Spain and Portugal, CUFOS, 1976, p. 2; Clark III 265)
October — Dusk. A man is in a cornfield with his father near Alger, Ohio, when an object moves up and hovers about 500 feet above the field. The tractor motor stops running. The object is about 100 feet in diameter and has a ring of pulsating, multicolored lights around it. Soon it makes a right-angle turn and vanishes in the sky, after which they get the tractor working again. (Michael D. Swords, “The Timmerman Files,” IUR 26, no. 4 (Winter 2001–2002): 14)
October 22 — Italian Lt. Col. Mario Pezzi reaches a record altitude of 56,850 feet in a Caproni Ca.161. It is still the highest a manned, propeller-driven biplane has gone. (Wikipedia, “Mario Pezzi (aviator)”)
October 30 — 8:00 p.m. “The War of the Worlds” episode of the American radio drama anthology series The Mercury Theatre on the Air, directed and narrated by actor and future filmmaker Orson Welles, is an adaptation of H. G. Wells’s novel The War of the Worlds (1898). It is performed and broadcast live in New York City as a Halloween episode over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. The episode becomes famous for allegedly causing panic among its listening audience, though the scale of that panic is disputed as the program has relatively few listeners. In the days after the adaptation, widespread outrage is expressed in the media. The program’s news-
bulletin format is described as deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the broadcasters and calls for regulation by the FCC, which declines. Some government agencies in the US, Germany, and Russia take note of how segments of the population are easily manipulated into thinking fiction is fact. According to Annie Jacobsen, the confusion allegedly inspires Joseph Stalin to create a similar scenario with a fake alien crash in the US. (Wikipedia, “The War of the Worlds (1938 radio drama)”; John Gosling, Waging the War of the Worlds: A History of the 1938 Radio Broadcast and Resulting Panic, Including the Original Script, McFarland, 2009; Jacobsen, Area 51, pp. 22, 211)
December 17 — The process of nuclear fission is discovered by chemist Otto Hahn and his assistant Fritz Strassmann at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut für Chemie in Berlin, Germany, producing barium by bombarding uranium with neutrons. (Atomic Heritage Foundation, “Atomic Timeline”)
1939
1939? — Sisters Lucile and Allene Holt, daughters of Rev. Turner Hamilton Holt, claim they are separately told by their father, a cousin of Secretary of State Cordell Hull, that Hull personally showed Holt a wrecked circular craft of some kind and glass jars holding unknown creatures. These are stored in a sub-basement of the US Capitol building in Washington, D.C. Both sisters are told the story when Holt is a minister at the Shenandoah Christian Church in Greenwich, Ohio, before 1947, but researchers can find no confirmation in any of Hull’s papers or memoirs. (William E. Jones and Eloise G. Watson, “Pre–World War II ‘Creature’ Retrieval?” IUR 26, no. 4 (Winter 2001–2002): 6–9, 12)
January 13 — The process of nuclear fission is explained theoretically in Stockholm, Sweden, by Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Robert Frisch, who compares it to the biological fission of living cells. (Atomic Heritage Foundation, “Atomic Timeline”)
January 25 — A Columbia University team conducts the first nuclear fission experiment in the US in the basement
of Pupin Hall on the south side of 120th Street in New York City. The experiment involves placing uranium oxide inside an ionization chamber and irradiating it with neutrons, then measuring the energy released. The results confirm that fission is occurring and hints strongly that it is the isotope uranium-235 that is undergoing fission. (Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Simon & Schuster, 1986, pp. 267–270)
January 26 —The Carnegie Institution of Washington holds a press conference at the Fifth Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics in D.C. to announce the discovery of nuclear fission. (Atomic Heritage Foundation, “Atomic Timeline”)
Late summer — A girl sleeping in the back yard of her home in Fort Worth, Texas, is awakened by a whirring noise. She sees a small object approaching from the east at an altitude of 20–30 feet. When it gets close, it descends to the level of her bed and hovers briefly at the foot, so close that she can touch it. It has the shape of an “old-time Mississippi steamboat with a deck around the bottom.” Strata or veins run through it, and a soft, blue-green glow surrounds it. It is 3 feet around and 1 foot high. It rises suddenly and disappears. (“Woman Says Strange Object Flew by Her Bed in Yard,” Fort Worth (Tex.) Star-Telegram, March 24, 1950, p. 23; Clark III 1176)
Early August — George Pârvu and four other schoolchildren are playing in an open field in Armășești, Romania, when they see a bright light in the sky moving in a zigzag fashion. It circles a few times then descends in their direction, getting bigger and brighter. The egg-shaped object hovers silently at an altitude of 230–260 feet. Suddenly it becomes a dull coppery color and lands about 140 feet away. Two of the children flee but Pârvu and two others remain. The bottom of the object has a ring of small turbine blades that look like paddles in a water mill. It seems to be 16 feet high. A hatch opens and two little men about 4 feet tall come out, dressed in gray diving suits. They walk toward the children, one of them holding a rectangular box pointing at the ground. The children approach them, holding hands, but when they are about 23 feet away the other man points a thick stick-like device at them and they are no longer able to move forward. The little men bow in their direction, waist deep, then turn around and reenter the object, which takes off. The children find a circular area of yellowed grass where the object had been. Pârvu feels energized, but one of the other boys is temporarily sick. Pârvu encounters what he perceives to be the same object in August 1944, August 1949, and the summer of 1954 (in the center of Bucharest). (George Pârvu, La voia destinului, CNI Coresi, 2011; Romania 124–128)
August 2 — Hungarian-American physicist Leo Szilárd writes a confidential letter to President Roosevelt, in consultation with fellow Hungarian physicists Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner. He has persuaded Albert Einstein to sign it as well. The letter warns that Germany might develop atomic bombs and suggests that the United States should start its own nuclear program. It results in the establishment of research into nuclear fission by the US government, and ultimately to the creation of the Manhattan Project. Delayed by the outbreak of war in Europe, the letter is eventually hand-delivered to Roosevelt by economist Alexander Sachs on October 11. Roosevelt gives the letter to his aide, Brig. Gen. Edwin “Pa” Watson with the instruction: “Pa, this requires action!” (Wikipedia, “Einstein–Szilard letter”; Atomic Heritage Foundation, “Atomic Timeline”)
October — An egg-shaped object with 8 spots like portholes is observed through an astronomical reflector telescope at Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. (Richard H. Hall, From Airships to Arnold, UFO Research Coalition, 2007, p. 17)
October 21 — After reading Szilárd’s letter, Roosevelt creates an Advisory Committee on Uranium, which meets for the first time at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C. The committee consists of NBS Director Lyman James Briggs, Army Lt. Col. Keith F. Adamson, and Navy Cmdr. Gilbert C. Hoover. It is attended by physicists Fred L. Mohler from the National Bureau of Standards and Richard Brooke Roberts from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and Szilárd, Wigner, and Teller. Einstein is invited but declines to attend. Adamson is skeptical about the prospect of building an atomic bomb, but is willing to authorize $6,000 (equivalent to
$107,000 in 2018 dollars) for the purchase of uranium and graphite for Szilárd and Enrico Fermi’s experiments into producing a nuclear chain reaction at Columbia University. (Wikipedia, “S-1 Executive Committee”)
November 13 — 7:00 a.m. A building foreman is driving past a deserted farm near Brockworth, Gloucester, England, when he hears a high-pitched humming sound. He watches a gray, bell-shaped object hovering about 20 feet above a field 100 feet away. He estimates it is about 25 feet across. Dark window-like patches are visible on the side. A “curtain” of blue-green light emanates from the underside. After about two minutes, the green light retracts into the base of the object. The object then tilts to an angle of about 80° and moves away without a sound. (Jenny Randles and Peter Warrington, Science and the UFOs, Basil Blackwell, 1985, p. 3; Jenny Randles, “Beam Me Up,” Fortean Times 381 (July 2019): 29–30)
1940
1940 — Astronomer Royal Harold Spencer Jones publishes Life on Other Worlds, an essay on the cosmos, the possibility of life arising, science’s tools, the development of the Earth, solar system bodies without atmospheres, the giant gas planets, Venus, Mars, the origin of solar systems, and possibilities for life beyond the solar system. (H. Spencer Jones, Life on Other Worlds, Macmillan, 1940; Michael D. Swords, “SETI/ETI and UFOs,” JUFOS 5 (1994): 141–142)
March — George Adamski moves from Laguna Beach to a property along the Star Route in Valley Center, California, about 9 miles from where Palomar Observatory is under construction to set up a spiritual retreat. He acquires a 15-inch telescope to create an interest in astronomy. (“Palomar Mountain, 1940–1960: From Obscurity to World Fame,” The Adamski Case, September 22, 2019)
March — US physicist John R. Dunning and colleagues at Columbia University verify the hypothesis of Danish physicist Niels Bohr that fission is more readily produced in the rare uranium-235 isotope than the abundant uranium-238 isotope. Dunning begins investigating gaseous diffusion as a process for enriching uranium. (Atomic Heritage Foundation, “Atomic Timeline”)
March — Otto Robert Frisch and Rudolf Peierls, two researchers at the University of Birmingham in England—who ironically have been assigned to investigate nuclear weapons by Australian physicist Mark Oliphant because, as enemy aliens in Britain, they are ineligible to participate in secret war work—issue the Frisch-Peierls memorandum. It contradicts the common thinking of the time that many tons of uranium would be needed to make a bomb, requiring delivery by ship. The calculation in the memorandum shows that a bomb might be possible using as little as 1–10 kilograms of pure uranium-235, which would be quite practical for aircraft to carry. (Wikipedia, “Frisch–Peierls memorandum”; Atomic Heritage Foundation, “Atomic Timeline)
March 22 — Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 8381, creating the three security levels for the most important documents: Restricted, Confidential, and Secret. (US President, Executive Order No. 8381, “Defining Certain Vital Military and Naval Installations and Equipment,” March 22, 1940)
Spring — Afternoon. Walking down a street in Hinsdale, Illinois, William T. Powers sees five disc-shaped objects in the northern sky. They are traveling together at 100–200 mph and disappear into a cloud. (Clark III 1177)
April 10 — The first meeting of the MAUD Committee in England, established in response to the Frisch-Peierls memorandum to determine if an atomic bomb is feasible, meets in the Royal Society committee room in Burlington House, London. The original members are physicists George Paget Thomson, James Chadwick, John Cockcroft, Mark Oliphant, and Philip Burton Moon; physicists Patrick Blackett, Charles Drummond
Ellis, and chemist Norman Haworth are subsequently added, along with a representative of the Director of Scientific Research at the Ministry of Aircraft Production (MAP). (Wikipedia, “MAUD Committee”)
Mid-May — 9:00 a.m. Lavern P. Zewiske and his father Paul are checking some recently planted corn on their farm near Fairbank, Iowa. A gray object with multiple hooked “hairs or tentacles” moving around on the bottom passes overhead at 500–1,000 feet. (“Out of the Past,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 5, no. 5 (Oct./Nov. 1984): 6)
May 21— President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorizes the FBI to conduct electronic surveillance and wiretapping on US spies, saboteurs, or suspicious individuals. (“Warrantless FBI Electronic Surveillance,” US Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Final Report, April 23, 1976, pp. 271–351)
Summer (or summer 1941) — Near St. Clair, Pennsylvania, as he is walking along a country road, young Frank Sever hears a loud noise in the nearby woods. He sees something like an “aluminum building” partly concealed in the trees. A short distance from it he sees “six small men milling about or looking for something on the ground.” Thinking they are ghosts, he runs. Later he comes back and confirms there is no building on the spot. (Clark III 265)
August 11 — The RAF Bomber Command issues a report on “Phenomena Connected with Enemy Night Tactics” concerning unidentifiable aircraft observed by bombing crews over the coast of Holland and the Ruhr Valley of Germany. The report suggests the sightings are either due to observer strain or German “experimental apparatus.” (Strange Company 16–17)
1941
1941 — A physicist and his wife are traveling notrh on US Highway 99 north of Bakersfield, California, and pull off to the side to watch a long, slender object of a blazing red, green, and yellow color moving about 8 miles east of them. It is traveling at about 50 mph at an altitude of 200–300 feet and is clearly outlined against the foothills. It seems to be several times longer than a bomber. (“Recent Sightings,” APRO Bulletin, January 1957, p. 5)
Early spring — 9:00–9:30 p.m. Rev. William Guy Huffman of the Red Star Baptist Church in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, is summoned to an apparent airplane crash one Saturday. When he arrives at the scene, about 15 miles from town, he finds a weird-looking craft “broken and scattered all around,” but smooth and rounded without edges or seams. A cockpit with a chair facing an instrument panel remains intact. Police officers, military men, and plain-clothes individuals are sifting through the wreckage. He also sees three non-human bodies about 4 feet tall with long arms, oversized heads, and large eyes. He says a prayer for them, and afterward sees someone take a photo of an alien propped up by the arms between two plainclothesmen. The following evening, he is given a copy of the photo by a member of his congregation (thought to be Garland D. Fronabarger), but he loans it later to someone who never returns it. Huffman’s wife Floy reveals the story to her granddaughter, Charlette Mann, on her deathbed in 1984, who relates the story to ufologist Leonard Stringfield. (Clark III 343–344; Paul Blake Smith, MO41: The Bombshell before Roswell, W&B Publishers, 2015; Billy Booth, “1941 Cape Girardeau, Missouri Crash,” liveabout.com, February 5, 2019; Kevin Randle, “Cape Girardeau UFO Crash, 1941,” A Different Perspective, December 5, 2019)
March — The Chain Home radars placed around the English coastline detect a formation of blips moving across the English Channel. RAF fighters are sent to intercept, but their crews see nothing and the blips fade. The radar returns are characterized as radar “angels,” invisible targets in the clear atmosphere. (David Clarke, “The Radar Angels,” Fortean Times 195 (May 2005): 36–37)
March 17 — The Western Defense Command is established as the command formation of the US Army responsible for coordinating the defense of the Pacific Coast and training soldiers prior to their deployment overseas. (Wikipedia, “Western Defense Command”)
May — With the help of the American Legion, volunteers are recruited into the Aircraft Warning Service, the civilian arm of the Army’s Ground Observer Corps. On the east coast, the AWS is under the auspices of the Army Air Force’s 1st Interceptor Command based at Mitchel Field near Uniondale, New York. On the west coast, the AWS is under the auspices of the 4th Interceptor Command based in Riverside, California. On both coasts, observation posts, information centers, and filter centers are established. (Wikipedia, “Aircraft Warning Service”; Project 1947, “Aircraft Warning Service (AWS): Freeman Observation Post #52”)
June 20 — The Army Air Corps becomes the US Army Air Forces to provide the air arm greater autonomy. (Wikipedia, “United States Army Air Forces”)
June 26 — The first draft of the final report of the MAUD Committee is written by George Paget Thomson and circulates among committee members. It concludes that an atomic bomb is feasible. Vannevar Bush receives a copy.
Without the help of the MAUD Committee the Manhattan Project would have started months behind. Instead, they are able to begin thinking about how to create a bomb, not whether it is possible. (Wikipedia, “MAUD Committee”)
June 28 — Roosevelt establishes the Office of Scientific Research and Development; Vannevar Bush is appointed director. It subsumes the National Defense Research Committee, whose Uranium Committee becomes the Uranium Section of the OSRD, soon renamed the S-1 for security reasons. To the S-1 Section, Vannevar Bush adds American physicist Samuel King Allison, Russian-American physicist Gregory Breit, American physicist Edward Condon, physicist Lloyd P. Smith, and Henry DeWolf Smyth. American physicist Ross Gunn is dropped in line with an NDRC policy not to have Army or Navy personnel in the sections. Lyman James Briggs remains the chairman, with American physicist George B. Pegram as the vice chairman. (Wikipedia, “Office of Scientific Research and Development”)
Late June — About 5:30 p.m. Helen Michailoff and her mother are in Odessa, Ukraine, when they see a raspberry-red object slowly moving east and emitting smoke. Thinking it is a bomb, they rush to the basement, but there is no explosion. (“Out of the Past,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 4, no. 5 (Oct./Nov. 1983): 4)
July 3 — The Northrop N-1M, an experimental “flying wing” aircraft with a 38-foot wingspan, is first flown at Baker Dry Lake in the Mojave Desert, California, by test pilot Vance Breese for several hundred yards. He reports that the aircraft can fly no higher than 5 feet. After this is corrected, the N-1M takes another 28 flights through November. (Wikipedia, “Northrop N-1M”)
July 11 — Roosevelt establishes the Office of the Coordinator of Information, a forerunner of the Office for Strategic Services, headed by lawyer William J. Donovan. It is tasked with collecting and analyzing national security information. (Wikipedia, “Office of the Coordinator of Information”)
September — Night. Seaman Mar Doroba, Anthony Kornilak, and others on the British troopship SS Pulaski in the Mozambique Channel see a “strange globe glowing with greenish light, about half the size of the full moon.” They watch it for more than an hour before it disappears. (Strange Company 17; Lore and Deneault, pp. 130–131)
October 2 — German test pilot Heini Dittmar attains an unofficial airspeed record of 623 mph in a rocket-powered Messerschmidt Me 163A at Peenemünde, Germany. (Wikipedia, “Heini Dittmar”)
Early October — A possible UFO crash/retrieval takes place during preparations for the US Army’s Carolina maneuvers in south central North Carolina (possibly in or around the Uwharrie National Forest). The sketchy story is based on the participation of Pvt. Guy B. Simeone, who relates a few details about a crash and dead “little people” to his family in a letter and phone call. Walter N. Webb reports on his investigation of the incident in 1996. (Walter N. Webb, “An Anecdotal Report of a UFO Crash/Retrieval in 1941: Part 1,” IUR 21, no. 4 (Winter 1996): 20–28; Walter N. Webb, “An Anecdotal Report of a UFO Crash/Retrieval in 1941: Part 2,” IUR 22, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 28–32)
October 9 — Roosevelt approves an atomic weapons program after meeting with Office of Scientific Research and Development Director Vannevar Bush and Vice President Henry A. Wallace. On Bush’s advice, Roosevelt chooses the US Army to run the project rather than the Navy, although the Navy has shown far more interest in the field, and is already conducting research into atomic energy for powering ships. Bush’s negative experiences with the Navy has convinced him that it would not listen to his advice and cannot handle large-scale construction projects. (Cameron Reed, “Manhattan Project Mystery,” Forum on the History of Physics, Spring 2012)
Early December — Army Lt. Walter Hanson and his wife are stranded in the Georgia countryside when they run out of gas. They see a star-like object that swiftly moves in circles counterclockwise. Suddenly it stops and takes off obliquely. (Strange Company 17–18; Lore and Deneault, p. 140)
December 8 — Around noon. Red Cross volunteer Yoshio Taketa is resting on the lawn of the Kuhio School in Honolulu, Hawaii, with 9 others. The smoke is still rising from the Pearl Harbor attack to the west. One of them notices a round white object at about 20,000 feet overhead. It floats away slowly. (Clark III 501)
December 18 — With the US at war, funding for an atomic bomb is now available in amounts undreamed of the year before. At the S-1 Section meeting, American physicist Ernest Lawrence asks for $400,000 for electromagnetic separation, and the section immediately recommends granting it. MIT physicist Karl Taylor Compton is allocated
$340,000 for nuclear reactor research at Columbia and Princeton, and $278,000 at the University of Chicago. Another $500,000 is earmarked for raw materials. His proposed schedule is no less breathtaking: to produce a nuclear chain reaction by July 1942, and an atomic bomb by January 1945. In January 1942, he creates
the Metallurgical Laboratory, centralizing the work at the University of Chicago. (Wikipedia, “S-1 Executive Committee”)
December 22 —Electrical engineer George Bogner stops his car at the corner of St. Agnes Avenue and Pleasant Street in Utica, New York, to watch a round, metallic object speed silently across the sky. He estimates it at 100 feet in diameter and moving at 300 mph. (Strange Company 18; Lore and Deneault, pp. 140–141)
1942
1942 — Naval Intelligence Officer Bernard M. Baruch Jr. develops a submarine reporting network, Communication Instruction for Reporting Enemy Sightings on which CIRVIS is modeled in 1948. (US Naval War College, Master Script for “Communication Instruction for Reporting Enemy Sightings,” undated; NICAP, “Capt. Bernard Baruch Jr.”)
1942 — 1:00 a.m. A woman returning home in Prouvy, Nord, France, finds herself face-to-face with three small entities with large round heads and short beards. They have large, luminous yellow eyes and wear tight, one-piece suits with a metallic sheen that leave only their faces exposed. The beings stare at her without moving, so she goes inside to get her husband, but by the time they return the entities have gone. (Center for UFO Studies, HUMCAT Index 1940–1949, p. 3; Clark III 265; Patrick Gross, URECAT, September 26, 2007)
February 24–25 — The Battle of Los Angeles takes place, a rumored enemy attack and subsequent anti-aircraft barrage over Los Angeles, California. Air raid sirens sound throughout Los Angeles County on the night of February 24. A total blackout is ordered, and thousands of air raid wardens are summoned to their positions. At 3:16 a.m., the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade begins firing .50 caliber machine guns and 12.8-pound anti-aircraft shells into the air at reported aircraft; more than 1,400 shells are eventually fired. Pilots of the 4th Interceptor Command are alerted, but their aircraft remain grounded. The artillery fire continues sporadically until 4:14 a.m. The “all clear” is sounded and the blackout order lifted at 7:21 a.m. Several buildings and vehicles are damaged by shell fragments, and five civilians die as an indirect result of the anti-aircraft fire. Three are killed in car accidents in the ensuing chaos and two die of heart attacks attributed to the stress of the hour-long action. The incident is front-page news along the Pacific coast and earns some mass media coverage. Within hours of the end of the air raid, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox holds a press conference, saying the entire incident was a false alarm due to anxiety and “war nerves.” Knox’s comments are followed by statements from the Army on February 26 that reflect General George C. Marshall’s belief that the incident was caused by commercial airplanes used as a psychological warfare campaign to generate panic. Some contemporary press outlets suspect a cover-up. Rep. Leland M. Ford (R-Calif.) calls for a congressional investigation, saying, “none of the explanations so far offered removed the episode from the category of ‘complete mystification’ ... this was either a practice raid, or a raid to throw a scare into 2,000,000 people, or a mistaken identity raid, or a raid to lay a political foundation to take away Southern California’s war industries.” The Japanese government, after the war ended, declares that they had flown no airplanes over Los Angeles during the war. In 1983, the US Office of Air Force History attributes the event to a case of “war nerves” triggered by a lost weather balloon and exacerbated by stray flares and shell bursts from adjoining batteries. A number of fake documents about this incident have been circulated by Timothy S. Cooper. (Wikipedia, “Battle of Los Angeles”; Clark III 1176–1177; NICAP, “Battle of Los Angeles”; Lore and Deneault, pp. 74–87; Good Above, pp. 15–17; Good Need, pp. 17, 31; “No Bombs Dropped, No Planes Shot Down,” Los Angeles Herald Express, February 25, 1942, p. 1; “Japanese Carry War to California Coast,” Life, March 9, 1942, pp. 19–23; Brett Holman, “New Light on the Battle of Los Angeles,” Airminded, April 20, 2011; David Marler, “The Battle of LA
UFO Incident,” OpenMindsTV YouTube channel, October 9, 2018; Strange Company 19–22; Robert Wood, “‘Leaked’ Documents Shed New Light on Outcome of ‘Battle of Los Angeles,’” MUFON UFO Journal, June 2010, pp. 3–7; US Office of the Chief of Military History, “History of the Western Defense Command, 17 March 1941–30 September 1945,” five ms. vols., Appendix no. 5, “Chronology of Enemy Operations on Pacific Coast of Continental United States,” pp. 25–27; History, Fourth Anti-Aircraft Command, January 9, 1942, to July 1, 1945,
pp. 112–124; Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, The Army Air Forces in World War II: Vol. 1, Plans and Early Operations, Office of Air Force History, 1948, pp. 283–286; Lorraine Boissoneault, “The Great Los Angeles Air Raid Terrified Citizens—Even Though No Bombs Were Dropped,” Smithsonian Magazine, January 19, 2018; Patrick Gross, “Los Angeles, February 25, 1942”)
February 26 — Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall writes Roosevelt that as many as 15 unknown commercial aircraft, flying at various speeds up to 200 mph and at elevations from 9,000 to 18,000 feet, were responsible for the Battle of Los Angeles. (presidentialufo.com, “General George Marshall Secret Memo to President Roosevelt about the Unidentified Objects over Los Angeles on February 25, 1942”; Good Above, pp. 17, 446)
February 26 — Royal Netherlands Navy cruiser HNLMS Tromp, returning to Australia after the Battle of Badung Strait (off Bali in Indonesia), reports a large, aluminum disc speeding above it in the Timor Sea and maneuvering for nearly 4 hours. It departs at an estimated 3,500 mph. (“Australasia,” Flying Saucer Review 3, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1957): 6)
March 5 — Benjamin Smith, formerly of the Army Air Corps, sees several blinking lights moving slowly over the Middle River adjacent to Essex, Maryland. They circle the river two or three times then disappear. Smith reports the incident to local police, who then inform Naval Intelligence. (Towson (Md.) Union News, March 6, 1942; Jan Aldrich)
March 9 — The Air Service Command becomes a major Army Air Forces unit to support logistical functions. (Wikipedia, “Air Materiel Command”)
Spring — Rev. Robert H. Moore and six other persons attending the Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, watch a small, light-gray, rectangular object over the northern part of town for 10 minutes. (Lore and Deneault, p. 142)
April 1 — The Materiel Division of the Air Service Command assumes responsibility for R&D and procurement and is redesignated as the Air Corps Materiel Command. (Wikipedia, “Air Materiel Command”)
May — 3:00 p.m. Abdon Gonzales Tello, 13, and other boys see a silvery, cigar-shaped object in the sky to the west of Miraflores, Peru. Its ends are cut off at sharp angles, and it takes 20 seconds to proceed to the south and out of sight. (Lorenzen, UFOs: The Whole Story, Signet, 1969, p. 22)
June — Col. James C. Marshall is selected to head the Manhattan Project. (Wikipedia, “Manhattan Project”)
June 13 — Roosevelt establishes the Office of Strategic Services, a wartime intelligence agency, with Gen. William J. Donovan at its head. (Wikipedia, “Office of Strategic Services”)
June 19 — Roosevelt abolishes the S-1 Section and replaces it with the S-1 Executive Committee, tasked with the technical and contractual aspects of producing an atomic bomb, while the Army handles engineering, construction, and site selection. American chemist James B. Conant is appointed as its chairman, and Lyman James Briggs, Karl Taylor Compton, Ernest Lawrence, and American chemists Eger V. Murphree and Harold C. Urey as its other members. Roosevelt approves the committee’s recommendation to move to the pilot plant stage and build piles to produce plutonium and electromagnetic, centrifuge, and gaseous diffusion plants to produce uranium-235. (Wikipedia, “S-1 Executive Committee”)
June 25 (or March 25) — Midnight. Flight Lt. Roman (Ray) Sabiński of the 301 Polish Bomber Squadron is flying an RAF Wellington bomber after returning from a run on the Ruhr Valley, Germany; he sees a bright copper-colored light the “size of the moon” following the aircraft over the Zuiderzee in Holland. When it gets within 200 yards, the rear gunner shoots at it with all four machine guns. After two minutes, it moves at terrific speed to the port side, and the front gunner starts firing at it. Sabiński takes evasive action, but the object keeps pacing him.
Finally, it moves in front of the bomber, stays there a while, then takes off at fantastic speed. (Strange Company 23–25; Gordon W. Creighton. “Foo Fighters,” Flying Saucer Review 8, no. 2 (March/April 1962): 15; Patrick Gross, “Pilot Reports”)
Late 1942? — According to records released in August 2010, Prime Minister Winston Churchill supposedly classifies for 50 years an alleged UFO incident because of fears it could create mass panic. The incident allegedly involves an
RAF reconnaissance plane returning from a mission in Europe. The aircraft is over or near the English coastline when it is allegedly intercepted by a strange metallic object that matches the aircraft’s course and speed for a time before shooting away. The plane’s crew photograph the object, which “hovered noiselessly” near the aircraft before moving off. According to the documents, details of the cover-up emerge when a man writes to the government in 1999 seeking to find out more about the incident. He describes how his grandfather, who served with the RAF, was present when Churchill and Gen. Dwight Eisenhower discussed how to deal with the encounter. However, the evidence is hearsay and somewhat questionable. (UFOFiles2, pp. 20–21)
Summer — 5:50 p.m. An RAAF pilot is on flying patrol off the Tasman Peninsula, Tasmania, following reports by fishermen of strange lights on the waters of Bass Strait. A “singular airfoil of glistening bronze color” appears out of a cloudbank. It’s about 150 feet long, 50 feet in diameter, and has a dome on top. It accompanies his plane for a few minutes before departing at “a hell of a pace.” It turns again and dives into the ocean, throwing up a “whirlpool of waves.” (Bill Chalker, “Australian A.F. UFO Report Files,” APRO Bulletin 30, no. 10 (October 1982): 6–7)
Late summer — Pvt. Albert Lancashire, 27, is standing guard at Cresswell radar station near Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, Northumberland, England, when he sees a cloud-enshrouded light approaching from the North Sea. As it descends, he is drawn up into it by a beam. Small men grab him and carry him into the craft, where he sees other human figures of normal height, including an apparent captain with dark hair and goggles. He is made to lie down on a couch or table. He has only vague memories of what happens next, but he thinks a medical exam is performed. He wakes up back at his sentry post. (Center for UFO Studies, HUMCAT Index 1940–1949, p. 4; “New Time Lapse Case from England Uncovered,” MUFON UFO Journal 107 (October 1976): 1–18; Clark III 265)
August — Evelyn M. Howell and two other adults see a huge cigar-shaped object hovering near them between Lafayette Township and Newton, New Jersey. It has “two rows of windows” that give off blue, green, white, and red fluorescent lights. They watch it for 10 minutes, after which it silently and slowly takes off. Howell and her husband see a similar object on the drive home to Ogdensburg, New Jersey. (Clark III 1178)
August 5 — Early morning. The Navy destroyer USS Helm is on its way to the Solomon Islands in preparation for the Guadalcanal landings. A radio blackout is in effect. An aircraft approaches, a full alert is sounded, and three cruisers (Vincennes, Quincy, Astoria) and seven other ships open fire on it. The object is not hit and proceeds to circle around the fleet. An anonymous sailor on security detail on the Helm watches it through binoculars and sees it as 90 feet in diameter, oval, with a round dome on top. The ships continue to fire on the UFO, which attains extremely high speeds. Commanding Officer Chester Edward Carroll later hears that the aircraft is neither German nor Japanese. (Strange Company 27–28)
August 12 — Day. Sgt. Stephen J. Brickner of the 1st Marine Division on Tulagi in the Solomon Islands is cleaning his rifle when an air-raid warning is sounded. He dives into his foxhole looking to the sky. He hears a roaring sound unlike that of an aircraft. Soon he sees a formation of more than 150 silvery objects, in straight lines of 10 or 12. The objects seem to wobble slightly. They are flying faster than Japanese planes and are soon out of sight. (Good Above, p. 18; Strange Company 28–29)
August 13 — The Manhattan Engineering District, with Brig. Gen. James C. Marshall as district engineer, is established by Chief of the US Army Corps of Engineers Maj. Gen. Eugene Reybold. (Wikipedia, “Manhattan Project”)
August 29 — Army Air Corps control tower operator Pvt. Michael Solomon sees two small reddish objects descend near the AAC Advanced Flying School at Columbus, Mississippi, then speed away. He later contacts government officials and officers from the school in attempting to confirm his sighting. (Clark III 1177; Jan Aldrich)
September 23 — Col. Leslie Groves is promoted to brigadier general and becomes director of the Manhattan Project. The Military Policy Committee, consisting of Vannevar Bush (with James B. Conant as his alternative), Maj. Gen.
Wilhelm D. Styer, and Rear Adm. William R. Purnell, is created to oversee the project. (Wikipedia, “Manhattan Project”)
September 25 — RAF Bomber Command’s Operational Research Section releases a report titled “A Note on Pyrotechnic Activity over Germany.” An unnamed Flak Liaison Officer has coordinated the reports from No. 3 and No. 5 Groups and determines there are two types of phenomena: a ball of fire that is shot from the ground and drips multicolored fragments, and multi-part flares. Another type involves “small coloured balls” that climb to 7,000 feet. (Strange Company 32)
September 29 — US Under Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson authorizes the Corps of Engineers to acquire 56,000 acres in Tennessee for Site X, which will become the Oak Ridge, Tennessee, laboratory and production site. (Wikipedia, “Oak Ridge, Tennessee”)
October 7 — Land at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is acquired by eminent domain for Clinton Engineer Works. (Wikipedia, “Clinton Engineer Works”)
October 19 — Leslie Groves approves J. Robert Oppenheimer to coordinate the scientific research of the Manhattan Project at the Site Y laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. (Wikipedia, “Manhattan Project”)
November 15 — Teams under physicists Herbert L. Anderson and Walter Zinn have constructed 16 experimental nuclear reactors under the Stagg Field stands at the University of Chicago. (Wikipedia, “Metallurgical Laboratory”)
November 25 — The Los Alamos site in New Mexico is acquired for Project Y. (Wikipedia, “Project Y”)
November 28 — 10:40–10:45 p.m. Capt. Lever and the No. 61 Squadron crew of an RAF Lancaster are returning from a bombing raid on Turin, Italy, when about 10–15 miles southwest of the city they see an object 200–300 feet long traveling southeast at a speed of 500 mph. It has four pairs of red lights spaced along its body and is flying on a level course. Five minutes later, as the Lancaster approaches the Alps at 14,000 feet, the crew sees the object again traveling southwest up a valley. It disappears when the red lights go out. (UFOFiles2, pp. 25–26; Strange Company 34–35; Good Need, pp. 18–19, 32)
December — A Technical Data Laboratory is established at Wright Field near Dayton, Ohio, as part of the Army Materiel Command. Its operations include the evaluation of foreign aircraft and related equipment. (US Air Force, “National Air and Space Intelligence Center Heritage,” July 31, 2015)
December — 8:00 p.m. RAAF Lt. Bruce Clyde Lumsden is flying a Hawker Hurricane heading for the French coast. About 7,000 feet over the mouth of the River Somme, France, he observes two orange lights climbing, one slightly above the other. He completes a full turn, putting the lights behind him on the port side. They now appear brighter and larger. When they reach his altitude, they stop climbing and stay at his altitude. He makes another full turn, but the objects stay with him. Lumsden dives to 4,000 feet, but the lights match his maneuvers. He increases his speed to 260 mph and gradually leaves them behind. His squadron mates do not believe him, but the next night another squadron member has a similar encounter with a green light. (Strange Company 36)
December 2 — Chicago Pile-1, the first nuclear reactor, goes critical at the University of Chicago under the leadership and design of Enrico Fermi, achieving a self-sustaining reaction just one month after construction was started. (Wikipedia, “Chicago Pile-1”)
December 27 — The Northrop N-9M, a prototype flying wing bomber with a wingspan of 60 feet, makes its first test flight at Jack Northrop Field [now Hawthorne (Calif.) Municipal Airport] with pilot John Wescott Myers.
Through May, 44 more flights are made, nearly all terminated by mechanical failures. (Wikipedia, “Northrop N- 9M”)
1943
January 15 — During a US bombing raid over Cherbourg, Manche, France, several crews see “large numbers of projectiles resembling ‘schools of flying fish,’ about a foot long and similar to incendiary bombs, coming up from a direction of the town.” (Strange Company 38)
January 16 — Leslie Groves approves development of the Hanford site in Washington State for plutonium production. (Wikipedia, “Hanford Site”)
February 9 — Land for a plutonium production complex is acquired at Hanford, Washington. (Wikipedia, “Hanford Site”) February 18 — Construction begins for Y-12, a massive electromagnetic separation plant for enriching uranium at Oak
Ridge, Tennessee. (Wikipedia, “Y-12 National Security Complex”)
April 1 — Los Alamos Laboratory is established in New Mexico and begins operations. (Wikipedia, “Project Y”)
April 5 — 9:50 a.m. Flight instructor Gerry A. Casey and a student pilot in a Boeing-Stearman Model 75 watch a radiant- orange, elliptical disc dive at their aircraft near Long Beach, California. There is no propellor and it has a rounded hump above and below. It hovers alongside with a slight wobble, then accelerates, turns from orange to white, and climbs out of sight in 2 seconds. (Project 1947, “UFO Reports, 1943”; Gerry A. Casey, “UFO: The Time for the Telling Has Come,” Tacoma (Wash.) Western Flyer, July 7, 1989, via UFO Newsclipping Service 241 (August 1989), p. 3; Patrick Gross, “Observation at Long Beach, 1943”)
April 9 — 5:00 p.m. Kazimierz Bzowski and other resistance fighters are monitoring a fire in the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland. They notice a flying object approaching them at about 60 mph. Through binoculars it appears to be a sphere colored with tangled strips of both raspberry and blue-green colors. Bzowski estimates it is at an elevation
of 200 feet and is about 25 feet in diameter. They observe German and Lithuanian snipers on Bonifraterska street shooting at it, although the bullets seem to pass through it. The object alters course and heads toward Old Town, then stops dead and shoots away at great speed. (Poland 13)
May — Capt. Gordon W. Cammell is flying an RAF Lancaster bomber back over the English Channel when he and his entire crew see a “huge orange ball on or near the sea” 7,000–8,000 feet below them. Over the next 10 minutes, they watch it project a bright and constant light. (Strange Company 41)
May 19 — The Northrop N-9M flying wing bomber prototype crashes 12 miles west of Muroc Army Air Base [now Edwards AFB], California, killing its pilot Max Constant. (Wikipedia, “Northrop N-9M”)
May 26 — Late night. Capt. Ray Smith and copilot Sgt. Gordon N. Cockcroft are flying at 18,000 feet in a Halifax bomber on a run near Essen, Germany, when they see a silvery-gold cylindrical object, larger than their aircraft, on the port side. It has several evenly spaced portholes. It is hovering at a 45° angle. After 20–30 seconds it climbs away at high speed. (“Correspondence,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 3, no. 5 (Oct./Nov. 1982): 4–6; Strange Company 40; Project 1947, “UFO Reports, 1943”; John Hanson and Dawn Holloway, Haunted Skies: The Encyclopaedia of British UFOs: Volume 1, 1940–1959, Fortean Words, 2010)
June — The Army Air Force’s Air Tactical Service Command meets with Lockheed Aircraft Corporation in Burbank, California, to ask them to develop a jet fighter. (Wikipedia, “Skunk Works”)
June 2 — Construction begins on K-25, the gaseous diffusion plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. (Wikipedia, “K-25”)
July — Lockheed Engineer Kelly Johnson and other associate engineers hand-deliver a proposal for the XP-80 jet fighter to the Air Tactical Service Command. Two days later, the go-ahead is given to Lockheed to start development, and the Skunk Works is born in Burbank, California, with Johnson at the helm. The name supposedly comes from the L’il Abner comic strip, which has a place called “Skonk Works” where a strong beverage is brewed from skunks, old shoes, and other ingredients. (Wikipedia, “Skunk Works”)
July 18 — A French prisoner in a German labor camp near Gdynia, Poland, is walking to work along the Baltic Sea when he sees a flat, metallic object embedded in the sand. A human figure is standing next to it, apparently trying to dig it up. When he passes by, the figure, apparently an Asian woman with long blonde hair and dressed in a tight- fitting overall, turns in his direction. The witness assumes she is the famous German aviator Hanna Reitsch and helps her dig the experimental aircraft out of the sand. The object is 20 feet in diameter and looks like two metallic saucers put together. The woman touches the witness’s chest with her hand and points to the sky. She touches her belt and a door in the object opens. She crawls inside, the door closes, and the object ascends and departs at a tremendous speed. (Jean Sider, Ultra Top-Secret: Ces OVNIs qui font peur, Axis Mundi, 1990)
September — During an air battle between the Germans and Russians, a member of the Spanish Blue Division fighting with the Germans near Pushkin outside Leningrad [now Saint Petersburg], Russia, notices a disc-shaped object above the planes. It appears to be observing the battle, then disappears at a fantastic speed. (Antonio Ribera, Platillos Volantes en Iberoamerica y España, Santiago Pomaire, 1968, pp. 411–412)
September — Ray Palmer, editor of Amazing Stories magazine, receives a letter from a reader named Richard S. Shaver, who claims to have discovered “Mantong,” a proto-language that is the source of all earthly languages. In Mantong, each sound has a hidden meaning, and by applying this formula to any word in any language, one can decode the secret meaning. Palmer applies the formula to several words and realizes Shaver might be onto something. (Wikipedia, “Richard Sharpe Shaver”; Clark III 609; Walter Kafton-Minkel, Subterranean Worlds, Loompanics, 1989, p. 136)
September 6 — 9:50 a.m. During an aerial fight over Stuttgart, Germany, the crews of two aircraft of the 384th Bomb Group, commanded by Capt. Raymond P. Ketelson, observe two round objects “resembling silvery discs” floating downward through the aircraft formation. One hits the wing of a B-17 bomber, setting it on fire. The bomber does not return from the mission. (Strange Company 43)
Autumn — A Polish bomber unit based in England claims that silver-blue balls of fire appeared near their wing on six missions when they raided the Nazi V-1 weapons plant in Peenemünde, Germany. RAF intelligence officer Michael Bentine debriefs them later and asks, “But what did it do to you?” They reply, “Nothing.” Bentine points out, “Well it was not a very effective weapon, was it?” (UFOFiles2, p. 20; David Clarke and Andy Roberts, “The Foo Fighters: The RAF Experience,” The Real UFO Project, January 2003)
October — 9:00 p.m. Wilberta Finley, an air spotter for the Civil Air Patrol, notices a “huge dark aerial object approaching” her home in Santa Barbara, California, facing the Goleta Valley. Moving low and soundlessly, it
barely skims over a nearby hill. From its front a beam of light shoots down, and at intervals it swings from side to side as if scanning the hills and homes below. (“Report from the Readers,” Fate 11, no. 11 (November 1958): 116–118; Clark III 1178)
October 10 — Construction begins for the first reactor at the Hanford site in Washington. (US Department of Energy, Office of History and Heritage Resources, “Hanford Becomes Operational,” August 7, 2013)
October 14 — Night. A group of B-17s from the 384th Bombardment Group are returning from a mission over Germany when they see a cluster of silver-colored discs in the path of their formation and closing with the bombers. The crews talk back and forth, discussing and confirming the sight before them. They describe the objects as “about one inch thick and three inches in diameter…gliding down slowly in a very uniform cluster.” One of the bombers goes directly through the cluster “with absolutely no effect on engines or plane surface,” even though one is heard to strike the tail assembly. A mass of black debris about 3-4 feet long is also observed. (Clark III 502; Martin Caidin, Black Thursday, Dell, 1962, pp. 188–190; Frank Edwards, Flying Saucers—Here and Now! Lyle Stuart, 1967, pp. 77–78)
October or November — 11:00 p.m. 2Lt Thomas J. Duzynski is stationed at Camp Ibis on the west side of the Dead Mountains Wilderness northwest of Needles, California. Taking a stroll outside his tent, he notices an elliptical- shaped object traveling to the south at high speed parallel to the ground between himself and the mountains. It banks sharply, almost on edge, and gains altitude, disappearing in seconds. (Lorenzen, UFOs: The Whole Story, Signet, 1969, pp. 22–23)
November — Ray Palmer publishes an article, “An Ancient Language?” on the language of Mantong in the January 1944 issue of Amazing Stories and enters into correspondence with Richard S. Shaver, who responds with a 10,000- word document titled “A Warning to Future Man.” Shaver writes of advanced prehistoric races who built underground cities before abandoning Earth for another planet because of damaging radiation from the Sun.
Those ancients also abandoned some of their own offspring here, a minority of whom remained noble and human “Teros,” while most degenerate over time into a population of mentally impaired sadists known as “Deros”— short for “detrimental robots.” Shaver’s robots are not mechanical constructs, but robot-like due to their savage behavior. These Deros still live in the cave cities, according to Shaver, kidnapping surface-dwelling people by the thousands for meat or torture. Deros can be blamed for nearly all misfortunes, from minor “accidental” injuries or illnesses to airplane crashes and catastrophic natural disasters. Though generally confined to their caves, the Deros sometimes travel in spaceships or rockets, and have dealings with equally evil extraterrestrials. Shaver claims to possess first-hand knowledge of the Deros and their caves, insisting he had been their prisoner for several years. The article stirs considerable reader interest, and the pages of Amazing Stories are soon filled with stories and articles about the “Shaver mystery.” (Wikipedia, “Richard Sharpe Shaver”; [Richard] S. Shaver, [Letter], “An Ancient Language?” Amazing Stories 18, no. 1 (January 1944): 206–207; [Ray Palmer,] “Mantong: The Language of Lemuria,” Amazing Stories 19, no. 1 (March 1945): 71, 206; Walter Kafton-Minkel, Subterranean Worlds, Loompanics, 1989, pp. 136–137; Clark III 872; Richard Toronto, War over Lemuria: Richard Shaver, Ray Palmer, and the Strangest Chapter of 1940s Science Fiction, McFarland, 2013)
November 4 — The X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, goes critical. The Y-12 plant is separating uranium- 235 from natural uranium, which is 99.3% uranium-238, by using calutrons to perform electromagnetic isotope separation. (Wikipedia, “X-10 Graphite Reactor”)
December? — Matt P. Dillingham is on evening duty adjacent to Mullinix Field [now Bonriki International Airport] on Tarawa Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. He begins receiving radar plots showing a north-south track to the west moving at 750 mph. It disappears, but two other targets on the same trajectory appear, moving at the same speed. The same targets are repeated for several nights following. (“Out of the Past,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 4, no. 6 (Dec. 1983/Jan. 1984): 6)
December 2 — Night. Some 105 German Junkers Ju 888 bombers attack the port of Bari, Italy, a key supply center for Allied forces. 28 Allied ships are sunk, including the US Liberty ship SS John Harvey, which is carrying mustard gas intended for retaliation in case German forces use chemical warfare. Liquid sulfur mustard from the bombs spills into waters already contaminated by oil from the other damaged vessels. The many sailors who abandoned their ships into the water become covered with the oily mixture. The wounded are pulled from the water and sent to medical facilities whose personnel are unaware of the mustard gas. Medical staff focus on personnel with blast or fire injuries. Within a day, the first symptoms of mustard poisoning appear in 628 patients and medical staff, including blindness and chemical burns. That puzzling development is further complicated by the arrival of hundreds of Italian civilians also seeking treatment, who have been poisoned by a cloud of sulfur mustard vapor that blows over the city when some of John Harvey’s cargo exploded. As the medical crisis worsens, little
information is available about what is causing the symptoms, because US military command want to keep the presence of chemical munitions secret from the Germans. By the end of the month, 83 of the 628 hospitalized military victims have died. The number of civilian casualties, thought to have been even greater, cannot be accurately gauged since most have left the city to seek shelter with relatives. (Wikipedia, “Air raid on Bari”)
December 11 — US bombers conduct a daylight raid on Emden, Germany, and observe an unknown object about the size of a Thunderbolt aircraft over the target area. It passes below the bombers in a straight line and at terrific speed, leaving a vapor trail that persists. (Strange Company 51–52)
December 14 — Night. British 255 Night Fighter Squadron leader Patrick Hardy Vesey Wells is flying his Bristol Beaufighter on a patrol mission around Naples, Italy, when he and his navigator notice a small bright light behind them. It stays on their tail, moving from side to side. After 1–2 minutes it goes off in another direction. (Strange Company 52)
Winter — Day. While on a bombing mission over central Germany, Sgt. Louis Kiss, a tail gunner on the Phyllis Marie, a B-17 of the 390th Bombardment Group, sees an odd-looking sphere approach the plane from behind and below. It seems to be the size of a basketball and shimmery gold. The object hovers just above one wing, then passes over the top to the other wing where it hovers again. Soon it moves to the rear and gets caught in the B-17’s backwash and disappears. (“First Official Foo-Fighter Records Discovered,” Just Cause, no. 32 (June 1992): 4–5)
Winter — 3:00 p.m. Harry G. Barnes, a member of the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department stationed at No. 1 Precinct, sees three oval-shaped objects in V-formation speeding eastward across the northeast sky. The objects have pulsating, greenish-red exhausts that occasionally flare and curl around them. (UFOEv, p. 64; Clark III 1177)
1944
1944 — During a mission to bomb oil fields in Romania, a Russian Tupolev Tu-2 piloted by Maj. Bajenov and Boris Surikov are flying over southwest Ukraine at an altitude of 3 miles when a large, elliptical object approaches them. The bomber starts shaking, the oil pressure rises, and Surikov feels a strong electrostatic charge. Even after the object passes, the bomber’s wings are covered with glowing discharges. (Good Need, pp. 21–22)
1944 — George Adamski and his followers move closer to Palomar Mountain, California, along the Road to the Stars where his long-time associate Alice K. Wells sets up a roadside café, Palomar Gardens. According to coworker Charlotte Blodget, “Each member of the group shared in the manual labor that went into this effort, and since heavy restrictions were still in effect regarding materials [in the war’s aftermath], anything available had to serve.” Adamski builds a “small observatory” to house his 15-inch telescope to study the skies. (“Palomar Mountain, 1940–1960: From Obscurity to World Fame,” The Adamski Case, September 22, 2019; George M. Eberhart, “Palomar Gardens Café,” IUR 30, no. 3 (May 2006): 9)
January 15 — The Materiel Command becomes the AAF Materiel Command. (Wikipedia, “Air Materiel Command”)
February — 2:30 a.m. An Australian Beaufort bomber is flying at 4,500 feet over Bass Strait, Australia, when it is joined by an object like a “dark shadow” with a flickering flame coming out of its rear. It appears only 100–150 feet away and stays with the bomber for 18–20 minutes, during which time its radio and direction-finding instruments fail. It shoots away at 700 mph. (Bill Chalker, “Australian A.F. UFO Report Files,” APRO Bulletin 30, no. 10 (October 1982): 7)
February 9 — RAF No. 5 Group issues a report of its investigation on “Rocket Phenomena,” concluding that the air crews are seeing either rockets fired from aircraft, parachute rockets, or high-explosive projectiles at maximum altitudes of 18,000 feet. Reports of objects changing their course are either defects causing erratic flight or light flak tracers reaching their highest point and descending. (Strange Company 57–58)
February 20 — 2:30 a.m. Two guards of the 3rd Marine Division on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands see what they first assume are the headlight beams of a truck coming from a swamp about three-quarters of a mile from their position. It moves laterally about 50 feet and they see it is a circular light about 50–60 feet long and 20 feet high. It then rises into the air about 25 feet and heads in the direction of the guards at about 45 mph. It makes a 45° turn and passes about 100 feet above the trees of a coconut grove. Several days later, a 200-foot cut in the reeds is discovered in the approximate spot where the light originated. (Alvin G. McNish, “Letter,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 5, no. 5 (Oct./Nov. 1984): 2)
February 23 — Brig. Gen. George C. McDonald is appointed assistant chief of staff for intelligence for the newly created US Strategic Air Forces in Europe. “Many months preceding the collapse of Germany, McDonald recognized the
imperative need for the creation of a new type of intelligence activity to investigate and exploit air intelligence objectives in Germany and liberated countries. This unique system was established and consisted of a great number of highly qualified technical and scientific personnel to exploit all the worldwide aeronautical research developments of Germany. This resulted in the collection of priority intelligence information of value in the prosecution of the war against Japan; technical and non-technical information of immediate operational significance and value; as well as a substantial portion of important documents and personnel of the German Air Ministry that enabled the US Army Air Forces to undertake long-range research with respect to many valuable- phases of air doctrine, research, employment, organization, procedure, and plans of the German air force.” Among the personalities involved in the operation are some who will become involved in UFO investigations in the future: Col. John A. O’Mara, Col. Howard H. McCoy, Col. Harold E. Watson, and Col. Malcolm D. Seashore. (Wikipedia, “United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe”)
February 24 —Night. Southwest of Saint-Quentin, Aisne, France, three silver objects are seen by an RAF bomber returning from a mission over Schweinfurt, Germany. They resemble Zeppelins but move independently of the wind. (Strange Company 60)
March — An Army Air Force pilot flying a B-17 sees a fast-moving, glowing green object light up the cockpit and speed out of sight over the horizon at Carlsbad, New Mexico. (UFOEv, p. 19)
March 1 — The first prototype H.IX V1, an unpowered glider with fixed tricycle landing gear, is tested in Germany, but there is an accident when the pilot attempts to land without first retracting an instrument-carrying pole extending from the aircraft. The design is taken from the Horten brothers and given to Gothaer Waggonfabrik. (Wikipedia, “Horten Ho 229”)
Spring (or 1945) — Two grammar school teachers are driving in the mountains near Auberry, California, when their car stalls and they see a cigar-shaped object with lighted portholes along the side hovering in a nearby ravine. They watch it for several minutes until it begins moving slowly out of the ravine, ascends, and shoots away to the west at a tremendous speed. The car engine remains stalled for a while, then starts by itself. (“Past Sightings Come to Light,” APRO Bulletin, Jan./Feb. 1968, p. 5)
April — Late afternoon. Near the Eastern front in western Slovakia, a man is standing on a hill near his home when he sees a dark round object moving at high speed to his right for less than one minute. It moves at a steady speed and is followed by another object about 20 seconds later. As many as 6 others appear, and five are visible at one time, each beginning as a pinpoint of light, growing bigger, then decreasing back to a pinpoint. The display lasts for about 5 minutes. (“Correspondence,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 3, no. 5 (Oct./Nov. 1982): 2)
April 5 — The Y-12 plant at Oak Ridge has sent 200 grams of enriched uranium to Los Alamos. Italian-American physicist Emilio Segrè receives the first sample and within 10 days discovers that the spontaneous fission rate is too high for use in a gun-type fission weapon (because of pu-240 isotope present as an impurity in the pu-239). (Atomic Heritage Foundation, “Atomic Timeline”)
April 26 — Night. RAF pilot Arthur Horton of the 622 Squadron is returning from a bombing mission to Essen, Germany, when he is followed by four orange balls of light with “short stubby wings” and emitting sparks, two on each side of the aircraft. He takes evasive action with his Lancaster, but the objects follow all his maneuvers for 10 minutes. When they reach the coast of Holland, they seem to “burn themselves out.” (Strange Company 64–65; UFOFiles2, pp. 16, 18)
May 29 — The Aircraft Warning Service is deactivated. (Wikipedia, “Aircraft Warning Service”)
June — 12:30 p.m. David A. K. Morris, a fitter with Service Unit 10 of the Royal New Zealand Air Force, takes a swim with a friend at Torokina Beach, Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea. They see “a huge, dark-gray, seemingly metallic, bulbous mass hanging out of a large cumulus cloud.” It moves silently, its outline fading into the cloud and out of sight. It resembles a Zeppelin or the R101 airship, only bigger. (D. Morris, “RNZAF Camp UFO Sighting of 1944,” Ufocus NZ, July 22, 2020)
June — Edward W. Ludwig is commanding a small, Coast Guard–manned cargo vessel near Palmyra Atoll. While looking for a lost Navy patrol plane, he observes a bright aerial sphere that alternately moves and stops for 30 minutes. (“True Mystic Experiences,” Fate 3, no. 8 (December 1950): 82–87)
June 10? — The Liberty ship SS George E. Badger is off Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, when gunner Edward Breckel sees a “dark ellipsoidal object” on the horizon about 5 miles away. “Blunted on each end like a sausage,” the silent craft remains in view for 3 minutes, moving slowly at about 15 feet above the surface of the water. (Strange Company 67; “The Case for the ‘Sea-Saucer,’” CRIFO Orbit 1, no. 10 (January 7, 1955): 5)
Early July — 10:30 a.m. During Allied operations in the area around Loreto, Castelfidardo, and Osimo, in Ancona province, Italy, Antoni Szachnowsky, of the 2nd Polish Artillery Regiment, notices an egg-shaped, glistening, metallic, motionless object. The Polish Army anti-aircraft gun fires on it, then the German batteries join in.
Eventually both sides stop, and the object remains motionless for a minute. Then it tilts at a 45° angle, moves rapidly upward, and disappears. (“1944: An Italian Foo-Fighter?” UFO Sightings Italia, no. 2, March 2002)
July 4 — Oppenheimer reveals Segrè’s final measurements to the Los Alamos staff, and the development of the gun-type plutonium weapon “Thin Man” is abandoned. Designing a workable implosion design (Fat Man) becomes the top priority of the laboratory, and design of the uranium gun-type weapon (Little Boy) continues. (Atomic Heritage Foundation, “Atomic Timeline”)
July 6 — German test pilot Heini Dittmar attains an unofficial airspeed record of 702 mph in a rocket-powered Messerschmidt Me 163B at Lagerlechfeld, Bavaria, Germany. (Wikipedia, “Heini Dittmar”)
July 9 — Afternoon. After a successful air strike by the US 449th Bombardment Group against the Concordia-Vega refinery at Ploești, Romania, witness Grigore Zmeuranu sees a round, yellowish object flying from the north at a speed about 3-4 times that of an aircraft. It leaves a short vapor trail, moves over the bombed area, and returns silently in the same direction. (Hobana and Weverbergh 226–227; Strange Company 71)
July 17 — The Air Service Command and the AAF Materiel Command are placed under AAF Materiel and Services. (Wikipedia, “Air Materiel Command”)
Late July — Evening. Jaakku Kivistö is serving in the Finnish Army as a noncommissioned medical officer stationed on a farm near Impilahti, Karelia [now Russia], by Lake Ladoga. He notices a large object next to the corn-drying building on a steep hillside that he at first takes for a military truck. As he walks closer, he sees it is reddish in color, moving slowly about 150–230 feet in the air, 100 feet long, and has a row of black windows. It moves off quickly in the direction of the lake and vanishes. (“A Close Encounter from the Year 1944,” Nordic UFO Newsletter, 1985, no. 1, pp. 3–5)
Summer — 5:00 p.m. François Panes watches a cigar-shaped object at an altitude of about 5,000 feet above the Kamensko Forest north of Blovice, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic], glittering brightly with no wings, no rudder, and no propeller. It is about 150 feet in diameter and 300–400 feet long. The object is lit up from underneath. It slowly descends, after which it rises up again and vanishes into the blue sky after 10–15 minutes. (Hobana and Weverbergh 215–216)
Summer — Fred Wieland and some friends are riding their bicycles on a footpath adjacent to the Grand Central Parkway in Queens, New York City. As they climb a hill, they look up and see a cigar-shaped object “broadside” to them. It is of smooth metallic construction with no windows or openings. They race to the top of the hill for a better look, but by then the object has completely disappeared. (Clark III 1178)
Summer — Mid-day. Franceen Andron is at Camp McCain, southeast of Grenada, Mississippi, when she sees a large, fat, cigar-shaped object that changes from dull black to gray to “fog blue.” It is joined by three smaller discs that appear below it after emerging from a cloud. The large object disappears first, followed by the discs, which race away in different directions. (NICAP case file)
Summer — Day. Asa Howard Jr. is outside the barracks at RAF Molesworth in Cambridgeshire, England, when he and other airmen see a pencil-shaped, metallic object moving faster than a jet about a mile away. While watching it for about 2 minutes, they see it pass behind a small cloud before it disappears. (NICAP case file)
August — Night. Officer George Todt of the 38th Regiment, Second Infantry Division, is between Saint-Lô and Vire, Normandy, France, when he sees a cherry-red light one-fifth the size of the moon moving silently west at 120 mph towards Omaha Beach. It stops over the American lines and hovers for 14 minutes. It expands and contracts regularly every few seconds. Col. Francis Henry Boos and another officer also observe it. (Strange Company 78– 79)
August 11 — Shortly after midnight. Capt. Alvah M. Reida is piloting a B-29 bomber based at Kharagpur, India, on a bombing mission over Palembang, Sumatra, Indonesia, when his right gunner and copilot notice a sphere “probably five or six feet in diameter, of a very bright and intense red or orange in color” that constantly throbs, at about 12,500 feet, pacing them about 1,500 feet off the starboard wing. It keeps up with the B-29, then flying at 210 mph. Reida tries to shake it off his plane, but it stays in the same relative position until, after 8 minutes, it makes an abrupt 90° turn and accelerates rapidly, disappearing in the overcast. (UFOEv, p. 23; Strange Company 71–75; Good Above, p. 19)
August 11 — Night. RAF Warrant Officer Ronald R. Claridge is over France aboard a No. 7 Squadron Lancaster bomber returning from a bombing run on La Pallice, La Rochelle, Charente-Maritime, France, when his radar screen goes blank. Another crewman shouts to look at a vast disc-shaped object with a long row of lights on their starboard
side. They watch it for 3 minutes, then it shoots away in a flash of light. Later he draws a watercolor painting to show how the UFO dwarfed the bomber. (UFOFiles2, pp. 26–27)
Mid-August — 11:00 a.m. During the Warsaw Uprising in Poland, Zenon Sergisz notices a German bomber passing by, as well as three bright points of light that descend as the bomber moves away. The lights are flattened spheres that move low behind some buildings then rise up at an angle and disappear. (Poland 14–15)
August 17 — The Allied command creates the Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee (CIOS), charged in part with investigating the strange balls of fire. (Strange Company 79)
Late August — Sgt. Ness and another man of the mine-laying platoon of the 175th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division, see a large rectangular object “like a railroad boxcar” with no apparent source of propulsion move steadily at about 90 mph over the front lines near Brest, Brittany, France, and out to sea. At one point the object passes in front of the moon, briefly obscuring it from view. (Lore and Deneault, pp. 120–121)
Late August — 4:20 p.m. A nurse, Mrs. E. M. Church, on her way to a tram station in Christchurch, New Zealand, sees an object like an “upturned saucer” resting on the ground near the road. It seems to be 20 feet across and 9 feet high. Two beings, not quite 4 feet tall, are inside, visible through a rectangular window. A third stands motionless, just outside an open door. All three seem to be looking toward the lights of a nearby fairground. The nurse cannot decide if their skin color is green or they are dressed in green, but all are encased in a transparent oblong box. The head takes up half of their bodies and there are no apparent legs or arms. She inadvertently makes a noise, and the outside figure notices her. Its helmet flips over automatically, and it drifts inside the object, which rises up and disappears in the clouds. (Center for UFO Studies, HUMCAT Index 1940–1949, p. 12; Clark III 265)
August 31 — The Army Air Forces Air Technical Service Command is formed as the result of the merging of the Materiel and Air Service Commands. (Wikipedia, “Air Materiel Command”)
September — Dusk. Three Oak Ridge workers (a man named Nelson, A. C. Butler, and Albert Profitt) are driving 2 miles southeast of Oliver Springs, Tennessee, when a strange object appears about 50 feet ahead of them at the level of their windshield. It is glossy white in color and about 30 feet long and 4 feet wide. Nelson eases the car up to the object, but it withdraws; when he stops, it also stops. Soon the light rises high in the air and disappears over Black Oak Ridge. (Lorenzen, UFOs: The Whole Story, Signet, 1969, pp, 23–24)
September — 9:00 p.m. Canadian Army Lance Cpl. Carson Yorke is just outside Antwerp, Belgium, during a German bombardment. He steps out of his vehicle and sees a glowing globe traveling at about 30 mph and 40 feet altitude from the front lines toward the city (in the same course that the German V-2s are following). It seems to be 3–4 feet in diameter and looks “as though it was cloudy glass with a light inside.” It disappears from view, then is followed by another, then five others in succession. (Jerome Clark and Lucius Farish, “The Mysterious ‘Foo Fighters’ of WW II,” Saga UFO Report, Spring 1975)
September 2 — Two chemists are killed, and Arnold Kramish almost killed, after being sprayed with highly corrosive hydrofluoric acid while attempting to unclog a uranium enrichment device that is part of the pilot thermal diffusion plant at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. (Wikipedia, “Arnold Kramish”)
September 6 — The Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee holds its first meeting in London, England. Present are Air Commodore K. C. Buss (Air Ministry), Gen. George C. McDonald (AAF Director of Intelligence), Lt.
Col. Lewis F. Powell Jr., Col. Howard McCoy (chief of the Air Technical Section), Howard P. Robertson (CalTech physicist), and Cmdr. Ian Fleming (Admiralty). (Strange Company 80)
October — Late night. Members of a family who live in an isolated area on the outskirts of Rochester, Pennsylvania, are awakened by a loud noise and flash of light. The father goes to the door, where he sees a 4.5-foot-tall figure dressed in a brown robe. Fifteen feet to its left are five other figures dressed in luminous brown metallic suits.
Their heads seem large, with only a slit for a mouth. The arms are long, with long thin fingers. Three of them enter the house and the father accompanies them to a landed craft nearby. He remembers nothing else when he wakes up in the morning. A round, burned circle 20 feet from the house and 25 feet in diameter is found the next day. (Clark III 265–266)
October — Nellie Carlin and another woman are about to drive to work in St. Paul, Minnesota, when they see what seems to be an airplane about to crash. It abruptly stops 20 feet above their heads, revealing itself to be a brown, bullet- shaped object with a flat end “like frosted glass with a bright light behind it.” It makes a crackling noise, turns right, and ascends at great speed. (Clark III 1178)
Late October — 9:30 p.m. 1Lt. J. B. Douglas Jr. and other soldiers of the 489th Armored Field Artillery near Weert, Netherlands, watch a bright silvery object through field glasses moving silently from northwest to southwest through an arc of 90° in about 30–45 minutes. (UFOEv, pp. 30, 129)
October 28 — Physicist David T. Griggs, a civilian adviser on radar to the War Department, is asked by Gen. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold to look into incidents of unusual aerial phenomena in Europe and interview pilots. He later moves his investigation to the Pacific Theater. His report to Arnold at the end of the war has never been located. He was interviewed by James E. McDonald on April 10, 1969. (Michael D. Swords, “David Griggs and the Foo Fighters,” IUR 31, no. 1 (January 2007): 17–19)
October 30 — Late night. RAF Flight Engineer Maurice Juberley of the 640 Squadron is returning from a bombing mission over Köln, Germany. His Halifax III is flying at 19,000 feet above the clouds when the rear gunner reports a ball of orange fire closing in on them. He orders an evasive maneuver and loses the light. (Strange Company 86)
Early November — Night. Lieut. Col. Oris B. Johnson’s 422d Night Fighter Squadron, equipped with P-61 Black Widow fighters, reports seeing 15–20 mystery objects every night over Germany, either alone or in formations of four.
Johnson says he could accept that the reports are rocket planes or night fighter jets. (Strange Company 87)
November 3 — The Japanese Army launches the first of some 9,300 Fu-Go bomb-bearing fire balloons intended to land in North America to instill fear and terror. About 300 are found or seen in America. It is likely that more of them land in unpopulated areas. On November 4, a US Navy patrol craft discovers one of the first Fu-Go balloons floating off San Pedro, Los Angeles, California. National and state agencies are placed on heightened alert status when balloons are found in Wyoming and Montana before the end of the month. (Wikipedia, “Fu-Go balloon bomb”; Franklin Matthias, “Japanese Balloon Bombs Fu-Go,” Atomic Heritage Foundation, August 10, 2016)
November 4 — Night. RAF Lancaster bombers over Solingen, Germany, report what they call “scarecrow” dummy airplanes that explode with a sheet of flame and dense black smoke. (“German Dummy Planes Explode Amid Our Own,” New York Times, November 6, 1944, p. 3)
November 12 — 9:30 p.m. A radio station in Santiago, Chile, broadcasts a version of The War of the Worlds in Spanish in which Martians land in Puente Alto, causing a panic and the death by heart attack of at least one person in Valparaíso. (John Gosling, Waging the War of the Worlds: A History of the 1938 Radio Broadcast and Resulting Panic, Including the Original Script, McFarland, 2009, pp. 99–102)
November 16 — 11:55 p.m. Lt. J. L. Besmond, officer of the day on the USS Gilliam, enroute from Oro Bay, Papua New Guinea, to Leyte Gulf, Philippines, observes an unusual object at a distance of 21 miles. Fire Control Officer P. Kendall Bruce describes it as a bright green globe that rises from behind the ship and moves in a “perfect parabola at great speed, finally disappearing behind the horizon to the north.” (NICAP, “UFO Observed from USS Gilliam”)
November 24 — Capt. William D. Leet’s B-17 crew (part of the 2nd Bombardment Group, 5th Wing of the Fifteenth Air Force) is returning from bombing a target at Klagenfurt, Austria. While flying over northeastern Italy near Trieste, Leet notices a blinding light and feels an intense heat. It goes away quickly, but seconds later he sees a “round amber light” sitting off the left wingtip of the B-17. It is bright and perfectly circular. Leet orders the gunners not to shoot at it. Sgt. Harris, the upper gunner, thinks it is 10 feet in diameter and 150–300 feet away. The object stays with them over the Adriatic Sea for 50 minutes, until it “just turned off” like a light bulb. (Strange Company 90–93)
November 29 — 3:00 p.m. Reginald Herbert Mortimer and his daughter Frances are on the Bruce Peninsula between Lake Huron and Georgian Bay, Ontario, when they hear a hissing sound behind them and see 9 disc-shaped objects pass overhead at approximately 2,000 feet. Moving three abreast in a square configuration, they are lost to sight over the lake. (Clark III 1179)
November 29 — Night. A Bristol Beaufighter crew (pilot Lieut. Edward A. Schlueter and radar observer Lieut. Donald J. Meiers of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron, and intelligence officer Capt. Fred B. Ringwald as observer) is on a bombing mission and flying above the Rhine River north of Strasbourg, Bas-Rhin, France. They see “eight to 10 bright orange lights off the left wing…flying through the air at high speed.” Neither the airborne radar nor ground control registers anything nearby. Schlueter and Meiers also see red lights on November 26 above Mannheim, Germany. (Zoe Crasney, “What Were the Mysterious ‘Foo Fighters’ Sighted by WWII Night Flyers?” Smithsonian Air and Space Magazine, August 2016; Strange Company 93–95)
November 30? — As the USS Gilliam is transporting troops from Leyte Gulf to Lingayen Gulf, Luzon, Philippines, Lieut.
JG Kendall Bruce, fire control officer on the ship, observes a bright green, globe-shaped object rising out of the nearby headlands and disappears to the north, It is too slow for a missile. [Same event as November 16?] (NICAP, “UFO Observed from USS Gilliam”; Strange Company 95–96)
December 13 — SHAEF in Paris, France, issues a press release identifying the fireballs as a “new German weapon” and that the Ninth Air Force has reported seeing “many silver balls floating in the air above enemy territory.” An
Army Air Force spokesman says on December 20 that the silver balls have “no detectable effects” on Allied planes. He does not know whether or not they are metallic. (Strange Company 96, 101)
December 14–28 — Numerous balls of light are reported by the Night Fighter Squadrons during bombing raids over Germany. Pilot and operations officer Charlie Horne of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron suggests calling the objects “foo fighters,” a name gleaned from the men’s favorite comic strip, “Smokey Stover” by cartoonist Bill Holman. The comic follows the escapades of a madcap fire fighter who calls his fire truck the “Foomobile.” Smokey Stover often states, “where there’s foo, there’s fire.” (“More Foo-Fighter Records Released,” Just Cause, new ser., no. 33 (September 1992): 2–6; Strange Company 96–111; Swords 3–5; “The Foo Fighters of World War II, Part One,” Saturday Night UFOria; Clas Svahn, “The Origin of the Expression ‘Foo Fighter,’” IUR 25, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 18; Don Berliner, with Marie Galbreath and Antonio Hunneeus, UFO Briefing Document: The Best Available Evidence, Dell, 2000, pp. 47–49; Barry Greenwood, “Foo Fighter Archive Donated to UHR,” UFO Historical Revue, no. 17 (December 2015): 2–8)
December 23 — Night. Navy Lt. George Arents III and copilot Lt. Elon Forster are flying a military DC-3 at 9,000 feet between Blackstone and Richmond, Virginia, when they notice a cigar-shaped object hovering below them at about 4,000 feet. It appears to be 200 feet long and has two horizontal rows of blue-lighted windows and a flaming exhaust coming out of its tail. (Jan Aldrich)
Late December through February 1945 — Radar operators at Naval Air Station Pasco, Washington, report unusual blips that appear out of nowhere and proceed from northwest to southeast. A Grumman F6F Hellcat fighter is scrambled on at least two occasions with orders to shoot down anything that appears to be hostile, but nothing is seen. In another incident, Lt. JG Clarence R. Clem accompanies Lt. Commander Richard Brown and Ensign C. T. Neal to a waiting aircraft and Brown takes off in pursuit of a ball of fire that quickly leaves him behind as it speeds off to the northwest and is lost to radar. On another occasion, naval officer R. W. Hendershot, flying an SNJ aircraft, is asked by ground radar to make contact with two high-altitude blips flying at the speed of a single- engine Piper Cub. Though he can see nothing, he is convinced the blips are real. (Strange Company 142; Nukes 43–44; Project 1947, “UFOs over Hanford: Cdr. R. W. Hendershot,” June 22, 2014; Robert L. Hastings, “Reports Confirm UFO Activity at the Hanford Nuclear Weapons Plant during World War II,” UFOs & Nukes, August 9, 2015; Headquarters Fourth Air Force, “Air Defense Measures at Hanford Engineering Company,” January 23, 1945; Robert L. Hastings, “Former US Navy Pilot Says Huge Fireball Maneuvered above the Hanford Atomic Plant during World War II,” UFOs & Nukes, October 5, 2015)
1945
January — Ray Palmer edits, rewrites, and publishes Richard S. Shaver’s description of the cave-dwelling Dero for the March 1945 issue of Amazing Stories under the title “I Remember Lemuria.” The issue sells out and generates quite a response. Between 1945 and 1949, many letters arrive attesting to the truth of Shaver’s claims (tens of thousands of letters, according to Palmer). The correspondents claim that they, too, have heard strange voices or encountered denizens of the Hollow Earth. (Wikipedia, “Richard Sharpe Shaver”; Richard S. Shaver, “‘I Remember Lemuria,’” Amazing Stories 19, no. 1 (March 1945): 12–70; Walter Kafton-Minkel, Subterranean Worlds, Loompanics, 1989, pp. 137–144; Clark III 872, 1069; Richard Toronto, War over Lemuria: Richard Shaver, Ray Palmer, and the Strangest Chapter of 1940s Science Fiction, McFarland, 2013; David Halperin, “The Shaver Mystery—Richard Shaver, Ray Palmer, and the Quest for Lemuria (Part 1),” July 4, 2014)
January 2 — 2:30 a.m. USAAF Lieut. Jack Green and navigator Lieut. Warren Barber, 653rd Bombardment Squadron, are conducting a reconnaissance flight in a Mosquito over the Netherlands and northern Germany when they encounter two balls of fire on three occasions pacing their plane. Barber describes them as a “pair of fog lights, shooting up to 60 or 70,000 feet.” (Strange Company 114–116, 208–209)
January 2 — The New York Times publishes an article stating that the foo fighters are German weapons. Lieut. Donald J. Meiers of the 415th Night Fighter Squadron says he has been followed by foo-fighters twice. “A foo-fighter picked me up at 700 feet and chased me 20 miles down the Rhine Valley [Germany]. I turned to starboard and two balls of fire turned with me. I turned to the port side and they turned with me. We were going 260 miles an hour and the balls were keeping right up with us.” (“Balls of Fire Stalk U.S. Fighters in Night Assaults over Germany,” New York Times, January 2, 1945, pp. 1, 4; Strange Company 117–118)
January 2 — Col. Clayton Lawrence Bissell, in the Pentagon’s Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, sends SHAEF in Paris a classified message seeking an explanation for the red balls of fire pacing planes. No response has been located to date. ([Clayton Lawrence] Bissell, [message], January 2, 1945; Project 1947, “UFO Reports, 1945”)
January 16 —Lt. Col. Leavitt Corning Jr. of the XII Tactical Air Command sends a secret memo to the assistant chief of air intelligence requesting further information on the “Night Phenomenon.” (Strange Company 126–127)
January 20 — First Tactical Air Force Executive Officer Maj. Samuel V. Boykin responds to Corning asking for more particulars about the reports. (Strange Company 127)
January 22 — British prisoners being force-marched out of the German Heydebreck labor camp (near modern Kędzierzyn-Koźle, Poland) see a four-engine bomber overhead. Behind it is a “brilliant light” that is following it closely. (Clark III 503)
January 30 — 12:10 a.m. A 415th Night Fighter Squadron crew observes two amber-colored “lights in the air at 2,000 feet” between Wissembourg, Bas-Rhin, France, and Landau, Germany. They seem to be about a foot in diameter and 20–50 feet apart. The lights follow their Bristol Beaufighter, closing in to about 1,000 feet before disappearing. (Strange Company 129)
January 30 — Capt. Fred B. Ringwald, intelligence officer for the 415 Night Fighter Squadron, responds to Corning’s January 16 request by offering a summary of 14 foo fighter reports from December 14, 1944, to January 29, 1945. (Strange Company 129–132)
February — Meade Layne founds the Borderland Sciences Research Associates in San Diego, California, and publishes the first issue of its newsletter, The Round Robin. Working with local medium Mark A. Probert, who channels “etheric” entities from discarnates with advanced knowledge of spirit and cosmos, Layne and BSRA seek to explore the mysteries of the invisible world. (Borderland Sciences Research Associates, [History]; Clark III 876; Håkan Blomqvist, “Round Robin and Contactee History,” Håkan Blomqvist’s Blog, March 30, 2014)
February 2 — The first Hanford plutonium arrives at Los Alamos. (Atomic Heritage Foundation, “Atomic Timeline”)
February 2 — The first flight of the H.IX V2 is made in Oranienburg, Germany. All subsequent test flights and development are done by Gothaer Waggonfabrik in Gotha. By this time, the Horten brothers are working on a turbojet-powered design for the Amerika Bomber contract competition and do not attend the first test flight. The test pilot is Leutnant Erwin Ziller. Two further test flights are made in February. There are reports that during one of these test flights, the H.IX V2 undertook a simulated dogfight with a Messerschmitt Me 262, the first operational jet fighter, and that the H.IX V2 outperformed the Me 262. However, the Me 262 is considered by many as unsuitable for fighter missions, being slow in turning. (Wikipedia, “Horton Ho 229”)
February 7 — Afternoon. Several F6F fighters on patrol (one piloted by Ensign Norman P. Stark) from the USS Wasp aircraft carrier anchored at Ulithi Atoll in the Caroline Islands are told to investigate a radar target at 30,000 feet some 10 miles west of the fleet. Before they can reach altitude, the object moves back to the west at high speed. They catch a brief visual glimpse of it. (LCDR Norman P. Stark, “A WWII F6F Navy Fighter Pilot’s Experiences in the Pacific,” Battle of Saipan, January 1, 2000)
February 10 — The Chicago Tribune and Washington Times-Herald reveal Bill Donovan’s plans for a postwar intelligence agency and publishes a secret memo he has sent to Roosevelt proposing its creation. The article compares the proposed agency to the Gestapo. Knowing that Americans want a smaller federal government after the war, Roosevelt is not entirely sold on Donovan’s proposal, although Donovan feels reasonably confident that he can talk the president into the idea. J. Edgar Hoover disapproves of Donovan’s plan, which he sees as a direct threat to FBI authority, even though Donovan has stressed that his agency will operate only abroad, not domestically. (Walter Trohan, “Super-Spy Idea Denounced As New Deal OGPU,” Chicago Tribune, February 10, 1945, p. 1; Central Intelligence Agency, “Origins of CIA,” August 3, 2005; Mark Riebling, Wedge: From Pearl Harbor to 9/11, Simon & Schuster, 2002, pp. 59–61)
February 11 — Air Commodore Colin McKay Grierson, RAF assistant chief of staff A2, refers Ringwald’s report to the Air Ministry. (Strange Company 133–134)
Mid-February — As their C-47 prepares to land at Biggs Field, Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas, S/Sgt Ralph Bayer is alarmed to see an aircraft approaching from the left and only 900 feet below them. The object is about 30 feet long and a dull, flat gray in color, and it travels in a straight course 500 feet above the ground until it disappears. (Clark III 1178)
February 18 — Disaster strikes during the third test flight of the H.IX V2 in Gotha, Germany. Erwin Ziller takes off without any problems to perform a series of flight tests. After about 45 minutes, at an altitude of around 800 meters, one of the Jumo 004 turbojet engines develops a problem, catches fire and stops. Ziller is seen putting the aircraft into a dive and pulling up several times in an attempt to restart the engine and save the precious prototype. He undertakes a series of four complete turns at a 20° angle. Ziller does not use his radio or eject from the aircraft. He already is unconscious as a result of the fumes from the burning engine. The aircraft crashes just outside the boundary of the airfield. Ziller is thrown from the aircraft on impact and dies from his injuries two weeks later.
The prototype aircraft is completely destroyed. (Wikipedia, “Horton Ho 229”)
February 22 — Night. A B-24 bomber flying near Chichijima in the Ogasawara (Bonin) Archipelago, Japan, sees an object trailing exhaust. It is also picked up on radar and follows the plane for about 20 miles before disappearing off the screen. (Project 1947, “UFO Reports, 1945”)
March — The K-25 gaseous diffusion plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, begins production. (Wikipedia, “K-25”)
March — A man is squirrel hunting in a wooded area near Belfast, Maine, when he sees a huge, elongated object just above the trees. He runs after it, thinking it is a dirigible about to crash. The object crashes into the trees at the far edge of a clearing, splitting a huge pine tree down the middle. He smells burned rubber. The object seems to be as big as several B-36 bombers. As he stands there stunned, the lowest end of the craft begins to rise and he hears a humming sound of increasing intensity. After it rises to a horizontal position, it begins to spin faster and faster and the hum becomes very intense. Suddenly one end spews a shower of fine, silvery threads that glint in the sunlight. The object begins to change to a white metallic color and it takes off straight up at fantastic speed. (“I Saw a Flying Saucer,” Flying Saucers, May 1959, pp. 6–18, 78; Clark III 1178–1179)
March — Ray Palmer travels to Barto, Pennsylvania, and spends a weekend with Richard Shaver and his wife. He witnesses Shaver’s channeling trances and the different voices describing the cavern world that he generates during his sleep. (Wikipedia, “Richard Sharpe Shaver”; Walter Kafton-Minkel, Subterranean Worlds, Loompanics, 1989, pp. 137–144; Clark III 872, 1069; Richard Toronto, War over Lemuria: Richard Shaver, Ray Palmer, and the Strangest Chapter of 1940s Science Fiction, McFarland, 2013; David Halperin, “The Shaver Mystery—Richard Shaver, Ray Palmer, and the Quest for Lemuria (Part 1),” July 4, 2014)
March 10 — A Japanese Fu-Go balloon strikes a high-tension wire on the Bonneville Power Administration in Washington State. The balloon causes sparks and a fireball that results in the power being cut. Coincidentally, the largest consumer of energy on this power grid is the Hanford site of the Manhattan Project, which suddenly loses power. The officer in charge at Hanford, Col. Franklin Matthias, says “it shut down the plant cold, and it took us about three days to get it back up to full power again.” (Franklin Matthias, “Japanese Balloon Bombs Fu-Go,” Atomic Heritage Foundation, August 10, 2016)
March 12 — Nearly a week after the US Army launches Operation Lumberjack to cross the Rhine River, the Ho 229 is included in the Jäger-Notprogramm (Emergency Fighter Program) for accelerated production of inexpensive “wonder weapons.” The prototype workshop is moved to the Gothaer Waggonfabrik (Gotha) in Friedrichroda, Germany. In the same month, work commences on the third prototype, the Ho 229 V3. (Wikipedia, “Horton Ho 229”)
March 18 — Grierson writes to Samuel V. Boykin that the Air Ministry thinks the fireballs are either Me-262’s or flak rockets. (Strange Company 147)
March 18 — Night. A 416th NFS crew is flying a Mosquito 25 miles northwest of Florence, Italy. Suddenly a light is flying alongside them at 13,000 feet. It doesn’t appear on the radar screen. The pilot turns the plane toward the light, keeping on its tail, pursuing at 260 mph and climbing to 16,000 feet. Suddenly the light disappears. (Strange Company 148)
Late March — At least two residents of Dresden, Germany, see a round, flat, silver-colored object without propellors or wings hovering silently in the air. It suddenly disappears like a “burst soap bubble.” (“Weltrundschau,” Weltraumbote, no. 32/22 (July/Aug. 1958): 14–15; Clark III 503)
March 22 — 1:00 p.m. The USS New York is off New Guinea preparing to rejoin the Seventh Fleet. Gunner Cpl. Donald Pratt is preparing for a Japanese attack when he sees a shiny silver object hovering directly over the battleship. It remains stationary over the ship for 30 minutes and is tracked on ship radar. Two antiaircraft guns fire on the object, but it does not move or seem affected. Capt. Kemp C. Christian Sr. orders the guns to stop. Immediately the object shoots up and away at a fantastic rate of speed. (Strange Company 151–152)
March 25 — Around 10:30 p.m. Company A of the US 44th Armored Infantry Battalion is bivouacked on a hill along the Autobahn between Mannheim and Darmstadt, Germany, when 6–7 circular, glowing, yellow-orange objects approach at 150 feet, roughly following the road. They are not in strict formation and seem individually controlled. John G. Norris recalled that after 5–6 minutes they are hidden by the trees. (Strange Company 153– 154)
March 26 — During an air operation, Lieut. Calvin P. Lamb (pilot), Lieut. James G. Holmes (radar observer), and Sgt. John W. McIsaac (gunner) notice lights on an airborne object. The lights follow them through a few turns but move away as the crew orbits north of Iwo Jima, Japan. They give chase, obtaining a slight target on the aircraft radar, then the object pulls out of sight. A similar lighted object is again seen March 28 by Lieut. William F. Sill (pilot), Flight Officer George W. Hayden (radar observer), and PFC William Brasvell (gunner). (Project 1947, “UFO Reports, 1945”)
April — During operations around Okinawa, Japan, the radar crew on the aircraft carrier USS Independence frequently notices strange radar returns that move at slow speeds (30–70 mph). Aircraft and destroyers sent to search for them never find anything. These radar ghosts are usually detected 25–30 miles away at an altitude of 1,500 feet, but occasionally 3,500 feet. The primary diagnostic for these false returns is their speed. The Navy nicknames them the “ghost of Nansei-shoto” after the Japanese name for the Ryukyu Islands, of which Okinawa is one. (Strange Company 183–186)
April — Ray Palmer publishes a second story by Richard Shaver, “Thought Records of Lemuria,” in the June issue of Amazing Stories. Here it is revealed that Shaver’s knowledge of the cave world and Lemuria isn’t really a “racial memory,” as the first story had asserted. Shaver, working in a factory, heard voices speaking to him, apparently through his welding gun. (Richard S. Shaver, “Thought Records of Lemuria,” Amazing Stories 19, no 2 (June 1945): 16–52)
April 3–4 — US B-29 bombers over Honshu, Japan, encounter numerous balls of light tagging along with them. (Strange Company 157–159)
April 7 — Walter and Reimar Horten, German designers associated with wingless aircraft, are arrested by US troops near Göttingen, Germany. (Lance Cole, Secret Wings of World War II: Nazi Technology and the Allied Arms Race, Pen & Sword, 2015)
April 10 — 11:00 p.m. James L. Hendry sees from his porch in Jeffersontown, Kentucky, a bright light that seems to be directly above Fisherville, 3 miles to the east. Its brightness fluctuates and it seems to be moving directly toward his location, casting a light beam downward. After 10 minutes, it goes out “like a snuffed candle.” (“A Meteor?” Louisville Times, April 14, 1945; Project 1947, “UFO Reports, 1945”)
April 10 — As part of the Manhattan Project, 18 people in the US are injected with plutonium in doses ranging from 95 to 5,900 nanocuries without their knowledge or consent. The intent is to study how plutonium is absorbed into the digestive tract. The last experiment is conducted on July 18, 1947. (Wikipedia, “Unethical human experimentation in the United States”)
April 12 — Roosevelt dies at Warm Springs, Georgia. Harry S. Truman is sworn in as president. ()
April 17 — Maj. Gen. James P. Hodges writes a memorandum to Gen. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, saying that infrared devices are now available to take photographs of “balls of fire” in the Pacific. (Project 1947, “UFO Reports, 1945”)
April 22 — The USS Lewis Hancock is northeast of Okinawa, Japan, when the SG radar picks up an unidentified target at 6 miles heading their way at 70–115 mph. Its movements are erratic. Two miles out, the ship identifies a “tight formation of more than fifty birds.” (Strange Company 184)
April 24 — The USS Audubon is headed for Okinawa, Japan, with US Army passengers and equipment. Radar operators pick up “unidentified aeroplanes” heading their way. The screens show a blip, alternately fuzzy and strong, some 8 miles away headed down the starboard side at 25 mph. Still, nothing can be seen visually, and the radar operator suggests that it is a flock of birds. (Strange Company 184–186)
April 25 — 9:45 a.m. Acting Squadron Leader Kit Francis Williams of the RAF 617 Bomber Squadron is flying a Lancaster with 25 other aircraft to bomb Hitler’s headquarters at Berchtesgaden, Germany, in the Bavarian Alps. Just after a turn near Kaiserslautern, Germany, at 16,500 feet, Williams witnesses an object like a large woolly blanket that takes up his entire windshield. He thinks it could be as much as 4–5 miles wide. It moves vertically and is gone in an instant. Suddenly his aircraft loses its electrical power and loses one of its bombs. He and his bomber and engineer get severe headaches. They return to base in England after regaining power. (Keith Basterfield, “Observation by Pilot over Germany, 1945,” Unidentified Aerial Phenomena—Scientific Research, November 14, 2016)
April 26 — Gen. Curtis LeMay’s XXI Bomber Command’s Air Intelligence staff produces a 5-page report representing the most up-to-date information and theories on the balls of fire but cannot find a good explanation for them. (Strange Company 162–163)
May — German scientist Viktor Schauberger, who has been using inmates from the Mauthausen concentration camp to help him develop new aircraft and submarine engines, is captured by Allied forces in Leonstein, Austria.
Supposedly his devices and documents, which allegedly include a prototype flying saucer, are kept under lock and key. He is released in March 1946 and moves to Linz, Austria, but the Americans do not confiscate his workshop and laboratory materials, although they prohibit him from further military experimentation. (Wikipedia, “Nazi UFOs”)
May 3 — Early morning. Nine B-24’s with the 11th Bombardment Group’s 431st Squadron are heading out on a bombing mission against Japanese air installations on Truk [now Chuuk] Atoll in Micronesia. One plane over Fala Island sees two objects at their altitude of 11,000 feet, changing from cherry red to orange then white, then
dying out and turning cherry red again. Both follow the B-24 through all sorts of evasive actions. (“B-24 Sights Circles of Light,” UFO Historical Revue, no. 2 (September 1998): 8; Strange Company 163–165; NICAP, “May 2, Truk Atoll Sighting”)
May 5 — A pregnant woman, Elsie Mitchell, and five children are killed when they discover a Japanese Fu-Go balloon bomb that has landed in the forest of Gearhart Mountain near Bly in southern Oregon. (Wikipedia, “Fu-Go balloon bomb”)
May 23 and 25 — Night. In the wake of two B-29 raids on Tokyo, Japan, both nights, businessman Iomoyo Okado looks up from his air raid shelter and sees slow-moving “roundish objects, like hot cakes, about 20 square yards” in diameter, and silent. They are blue or gray in color. (“‘Flying Hot Cakes’ over Tokyo in 1945,” St. Joseph (Mo.) News-Press, July 12, 1947, p. 6; Clark III 503)
Summer — After 5:00 p.m. Future ufologist Ann Druffel is on a bus returning from her summer job in Long Beach, California, when she sees out of the left-hand window a bright, stationary, yellowish-white light in the northeastern sky. It looks like Venus but has a yellow color. She gets off the bus and still watches it, walking home. Soon she sees it is moving slowly to the northwest. She gets her mother to view it as well. Druffel thinks it is too high to be a coastal defense balloon. Druffel watches it for 90 minutes, after which it takes on some “activity.” Some 10–15 pieces of light begin separating from it, fading from view after moving several diameters away from the large object. (Ann Druffel, “UFO Sightings by UFO Researchers: The ‘Inaccessible Cases,’” MUFON UFO Journal, no. 139 (September 1979), pp. 14–15; Herbert S. Taylor, “Satellite Objects: A Further Look,” IUR 29, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 3–4)
Summer — Future ufologist Illobrand von Ludwiger sees an object like a black plate, whose diameter is one-eighth that of the Moon, flying against the wind below the clouds, in Stendal, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. (Margaret Sachs, The UFO Encyclopedia, Putnam, 1980, p. 357)
Summer — Radioman Robert S. Crawford and 13 other sailors aboard the US Army Transport Delarof see a large, dark sphere rise out of the ocean east of Adak in the Aleutian Islands, Alaska. The UFO, showing darkly against the setting sun, climbs almost straight up for a few moments, then it arcs into level flight, and circles the ship two or three times. All the observers are convinced it is a large object. Crawford estimates the UFO is 150–250 feet in diameter. The gun crews hold their fire. After several minutes, it disappears to the south. (NICAP, “Large Object Emerges from Sea near the Delarof”; “The Question of Submerging UFO’s,” UFO Investigator 4, o. 5 (March 1968): 4)
June 1 — The Army Air Force approves a Northrop-recommended change for installing eight jet engines in each of two modified YB-35 piston-driven flying wings, which are redesignated YB-49s. (Wikipedia, “Northrop YB-49”)
June 1 — 7:30 p.m. A shiny, tubular object, 5–6 feet long, is observed over Morganton, North Carolina. It streaks toward the northwest, blue flame shooting from the rear. After it vanishes in the mountains near Lake James, witnesses hear an explosion. (Loren E. Gross, The Mystery of Unidentified Flying Objects—A Prelude, 1896–1949, The author, 1971, p. 156)
June 9 — XXI Bomber Command Air Intelligence issues an Air Intelligence Report on the balls of fire in the Pacific Theatre. The Truk sighting is attributed to an unknown Japanese experimental aircraft, though not a jet. (Strange Company 177–180)
July — The 9th Bombardment Group on Tinian in the Northern Marianas: “During our night missions in June and July a UFO phenomenon was reported. Our air crews started sighting balls of fire, i.e., glowing objects about the size of a full moon which flew around in the vicinity of our flying patterns over Japan. One of our crews reported that one of the objects followed their airplane halfway to Iwo Jima. I saw them on two missions. I don’t remember any reports of any hostile action by these objects and the reports of sightings stopped after a couple of months. The object of these reports was dismissed by some experts as the planet Venus. And, after these reports started coming in, some crews did mistake the rising full moon as one of these balls of fire. Some reports speculated that these balls of fire were exhausts from a Japanese development called a Baka Bomb, but exhaust flames can only be seen from the rear; and these objects appeared to have the same size and intensity in whatever direction they were traveling. I have never heard of any official assessment as to what these objects were. I had an occasion to ask General LeMay about them several years after the war and he had no explanation. I am sure that what I saw was neither Venus nor the moon nor a Baka Bomb.” (Lorenzen, UFOs: The Whole Story, Signet, 1969, p. 24; Henry
C. Huglin, “Group Commander’s Reminiscences,” in Lawrence S. Smith, et al., History of the 9th Bombardment Group (VH), 9th Bomb Group Association, 1995, pp. 27–28)
July — In northern Okinawa, Japan, on a bluff looking toward the South China Sea, Artillery Capt. William A. Mandel sees a cigar-shaped object with a lighted tail moving at eye level at about 200 –300 mph at an elevation of no
more than 400 feet. He estimates its length at 30–40 feet and its diameter at 6–8 feet. (Project 1947, “UFO Reports, 1945”)
July — When several balloon-shaped objects appear above Selfridge Field [now Selfridge Air National Guard Base] near Mount Clemens, Michigan, the base commander asks for a volunteer to attack them as possible Japanese balloon bombs. Jean Kisling, serving with a Free French Air Force detachment as an instructor on P-47 Thunderbolts, accepts the challenge. He chases one “well beyond the service ceiling of the P-47D” and opens fire with 8 machine guns. The object shoots away sideways on edge, leaving a contrail. (Good Need, p. 24)
July 1 — The Air Technical Service Command is moved into T-2 Intelligence. (Wikipedia, “Air Materiel Command”)
July 16 — The first detonation of a nuclear weapon (an implosion-style plutonium-based bomb) takes place at the Trinity site on what is now the White Sands Missile Range near Alamogordo, New Mexico. At this time, the bomb’s price tag, adjusted for inflation, is $28 billion. (Wikipedia, “Trinity (nuclear test)”)
Mid-July — Noon. Pilot Rolan D. Powell and five other F6F Hellcat pilots at Naval Air Station Pasco, Washington, are scrambled after radar reports a fast-moving object over the nearby Hanford facility. They see a bright object with a saucer-like appearance at. It is the size of three aircraft carriers, side-by side, oval shaped, very streamlined like a stretched-out egg and, and pinkish in color. It hovers in a fixed position at 65,000 feet and then goes straight up and disappears. (NICAP, “Huge Saucer over Nuclear Reactor—Radar/Visual”; Strange Company 188; Patrick Gross, “Alleged UFO Intercept Attempt at Hanford Nuclear Plant, July 1945”)
July 20 — The Joint Chiefs of Staff establish Operation Overcast, a forerunner to Project Paperclip, a secret recruitment program to aid in postwar military research. The Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency is established to conduct the operation. (Wikipedia, “Operation Paperclip”)
July 24 — President Truman discloses to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin that the United States has atomic weapons. Stalin feigns little surprise, since he already knows this through espionage. (Gene Dannen, “Truman Tells Stalin, July 24, 1945”)
August — The Army Signal Security Agency persuades ITT, RCA, and Western Union to continue the wartime cable intercept program, both foreign and domestic, now called Project SHAMROCK. No courts, no warrants. It remains secret from Congress and the President. (Wikipedia, “Project SHAMROCK”)
August — 5:00 a.m. Ilona Johansson-Paasonen, staying in a sauna along lake Längelmävesi, Finland, wakes up and sees a 35-foot dazzling ball of fire streaking in her direction along the opposite shore. She throws herself to the floor, but when nothing happens she looks outside and sees a big dog, frozen in terror, its gaze fixed on the lake and a dark log-like object, 6 feet long, gliding through the water with a tall, slender man at the prow. He is dressed in a green coverall. On the other side another man sits steering an engine enclosed within a big glass bulb. (Ilona Johansson- Paasonen, “Humanoideja Längelmävedellä?” Vimana 1970, no. 3/4, pp. 22–24; Ilona Johansson-Paasonen, “Humanoids at Längelmävesi,” FSR Case Histories 13 (February 1973): 3–4; Clark III 266)
August 6 — 8:15 a.m. An atomic bomb (a fission weapon containing 64 kilograms of Uranium-235, Little Boy) is detonated 1,900 feet above Hiroshima, Japan, by the Enola Gay. The weapon is considered very inefficient, with only 1.7% of its material fissioning, but it is enough to obliterate the city. Some 78,000 people die instantly or immediately afterward in the firestorm. By the end of the year, another 25,000 will also sicken and die from radiation exposure. (Wikipedia, “Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki”)
August 7 — During a press conference with the Seattle Times, Col. Franklin Matthias, officer in charge at the Hanford Engineer Works in Washington, admits the plant has had problems with aerial intrusions, but that radar has been installed and an arrangement made with the Navy to intercept any unidentified aircraft. (Project 1947, “UFOs over Hanford: Commander R. W. Hendershot”)
August 9 — 11:01 a.m. Another atomic bomb (an implosion-type plutonium weapon, Fat Man) is dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, by Bockscar. Although the bomb is more powerful than the one used on Hiroshima, its effects are confined by hillsides to the narrow Urakami Valley. At least 35,000–40,000 people are killed, and 60,000 others are injured. (Wikipedia, “Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki”)
August 10 — 3:00 a.m. Pianist Doris La Fountain is driving home along Market Street after finishing a concert at a night club in East Paterson [now Elmwood Park], New Jersey. She is accompanied by music store proprietor Thomas Brino and James Shaw of Clifton, New Jersey. For about 5 minutes they watch a brilliant red and green rectangular object maneuver at ground level about 70 feet away. It shoots off into the sky and disappears. (“Seeing Saucer Sweet Music to a Pianist,” New York Daily News, September 8, 1957, Passaic-Bergen Sec., p. 22; Lore and Deneault, p. 145)
August 16 — A UFO allegedly crashes near San Antonio, New Mexico, and is discovered by Jose Padilla, 9, and Remigio Baca, 7, when they are looking for a cow. The crashed saucer has created a gouge, and they can see entities moving around inside. They collect two shiny metal parts from the periphery of the crash site. A recent analysis
shows that the metal is of terrestrial origin. (Paola Leopizzi Harris, “The Reme Baca and Jose Padilla Witness Case,” The UFO Chronicles, November 30, 2010; John Greenewald, “Analysis of Two Metallic Parts Purportedly from a Crashed Unidentified Aerial Object (San Antonio, New Mexico, August 16, 1945),” The Black Vault, February 1, 2017; Jacques Vallee and Paola Leopizzi Harris, Trinity: The Best-Kept Secret, StarWorksUSA, 2021; Kevin D. Randle, “Trinity: The Best Kept Secret—A Critique,” A Different Perspective, June 2, 2021; Jacques Vallée, “The Other Lessons of Trinity,” Trinity blog, December 6, 2021; Kevin D. Randle, “Jacques Vallée and Ten Unexplained UFO Cases and Metallic Debris,” A Different Perspective, December 16, 2021)
August 21 — Manhattan Project physicist Harry Daghlian is conducting an after-hours experiment at the remote Omega Site of the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico when his hand slips. The test assembly he has built—a ball of plutonium surrounded by tungsten carbide bricks—goes critical. He sees a momentary blue flash and is struck by a wave of gamma and neutron radiation amounting to more than 500 rem. He disassembles the experiment, walks away, and admits himself to medical care. He falls into a coma and dies on September 15, the first person to die accidentally from close exposure to nuclear fission. (Adam Higginbotham, Midnight at Chernobyl, Simon & Schuster, 2019, pp. 30–31)
August 28 — Twelve 5th Air Force intelligence specialists flying on a C-46 approaching Iwo Jima (in the Ogasawara Islands, Japan) see three white, teardrop-shaped objects paralleling the plane. Navigational needles go wild, the engine sputters, and the plane falters until the objects speed away. One of the passengers is future UFO investigator Leonard Stringfield. (Stringfield, Situation Red, Fawcett Crest, 1977, pp. 9–10; Strange Company 191–193, 209–211; NICAP, “C-46 Encounters Objects / Magnetic Compasses ‘West Wild’”)
September — The first group of seven German rocket scientists arrive at Fort Strong in Boston harbor, Massachusetts, through Operation Overcast: Wernher von Braun, Erich W. Neubert, Theodor A. Poppel, August Schultze, Eberhard Rees, Wilhelm Jungert, and Walter Schwidetzky. By the end of the year, they and two other groups are moved to Fort Bliss, Texas, and White Sands, New Mexico, as “War Department Special Employees.” (Wikipedia, “Operation Paperclip”)
September — The US Army atomic bomb production unit, Z Division, named for its director, Jerrold R. Zacharias from Los Alamos, New Mexico, moves to Oxnard Field, New Mexico, from Wendover Field [now Airport], Utah, to be closer to Los Alamos. This marks the beginning of Sandia Base [now part of Kirtland AFB]. Nearby Kirtland Field is used as a B-29 base for aircraft compatibility and drop tests. By October, all the staff and facilities at Wendover are transferred to Sandia. As reservist officers are demobilized, they are replaced by about 50 hand- picked regular officers. (Wikipedia, “Manhattan Project”)
September — Policy adviser Ferdinand Eberstadt writes for Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal a report recommending a complete realignment of national security organizations. (Wikipedia, “Eberstadt Report”)
September 20 — The OSS is dissolved by Executive Order, effective October 1, scattering personnel through the Departments of State and War. The Research and Analysis Branch is transferred to the State Department. The War Department takes over Secret Intelligence (SI) and Counter Espionage (X2), which are rolled up into the Strategic Services Unit (SSU) headed by Brig. Gen. John Magruder, the former OSS Deputy Director of Intelligence who oversees the OSS liquidation. Most of the other personnel are cashiered. (Wikipedia, “Office of Strategic Services”)
September 26? — Night. Machinist Mate First Class George M. Reynolds, attached to the submarine tender USS Beaver with Submarine Squadron 45, anchored in Buckner Bay, Okinawa, Japan. He is on the main deck when he sees a bluish light move to the south, turn right, go over to the west, stop, and stand still. When it moves again, it goes back to the general area it started from. (Strange Company 195–196)
October — 8:00 p.m. While driving a car between Bryan and Stryker, Ohio, Gerald M. Kryling and his wife Thelma approach a bright light about 50 feet in the air and 20 feet from the road near some high-tension wires. It appears to be a 35-foot oval object with an amber-colored opening like a window that has shadows moving around inside. It takes off horizontally at great speed and then moves straight up. (CUFOS case file)
October 9 — Brig. Gen. George C. McDonald, AAF director of intelligence, writes to Maj. Gen. Elwood Richard Quesada in answer to a request for the investigation into wartime “balls of fire.” Exhaustive investigations of German technical personnel and US and UK sources reveal no confirmation of German involvement with the phenomena. (Macdonald–Quesada correspondence, October 1945)
November — Operation Overcast is renamed Project Paperclip. (Wikipedia, “Operation Paperclip”)
December — Lt. Col. Jo Chamberlin’s article on foo fighters appears in American Legion Magazine. Intelligence officers have ordered him not to state his military rank or position, but he is a special aide to Gen. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold. (Jo Chamberlin, “The Foo Fighter Mystery,” American Legion Magazine 39, no. 6 (December 1945): 9, 43–47; “Foo Fighter Archive Donated to UHR,” UFO Historical Revue, no. 17 (December 2015): 2–8)
December 5 — A training flight (Flight 19) of five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers disappears while over the Atlantic Ocean. The squadron’s flight plan is scheduled to take them due east from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for
141 miles, north for 73 miles, and then back over a final 140-mile leg to complete the exercise. The flight never returns to base. A report by Navy investigators concludes that flight leader Lt. Charles C. Taylor mistook small islands offshore for the Florida Keys after his compasses stopped working, resulting in the flight heading over open sea and away from land. The report is later amended by the Navy to read “cause unknown” to avoid blaming Taylor for the loss of five aircraft and 14 men. One of the search-and-rescue aircraft deployed to look for them,
a PBM Mariner with a 13-man crew, also disappears. The report attributes the loss of the PBM aircraft to an explosion in midair while searching for the flight. According to contemporaneous sources, the Mariner has a history of explosions due to vapor leaks when heavily loaded with fuel, as it might have been for a potentially long search-and-rescue operation. A tanker off the coast of Florida sees an explosion and a widespread oil slick when fruitlessly searching for survivors. The weather is becoming stormy by the end of the incident. None of the Avenger bombers have been found. (Wikipedia, “Flight 19”; Larry Kusche, The Bermuda Triangle Mystery— Solved, Harper & Row, 1975, pp. 97–122; Larry Kusche, The Disappearance of Flight 19, Harper & Row, 1980)
1946
1946 — The US nuclear stockpile consists of 9 atomic bombs. (Ryan Crierie, “U.S. Nuclear Stockpile, 1945–2009”)
1946 — Dancers on the roof of a nightclub in Istanbul, Turkey, watch the rapid passage of four square-shaped lights,
reddish in color and aligned side by side, moving from the east and disappearing in the west in less than 60 seconds. One witness, meteorologist and RAF pilot George Raymond Leatherbarrow, estimates their altitude at 50,000 feet based on reflections on cirrus clouds. (G. R. Leatherbarrow, “Two Early UFO Cases from the Middle East,” Awareness 5, no. 3 (Autumn 1976): 4–5; Clark III 1177)
1946 — American astrophysicist Charles Greeley Abbot writes that he thinks Earth might make contact with Venusians, coming into “fluent communication by wireless with a race brought up completely separate, having their own systems of government, social usages, religions, and surrounded by vegetation and animals entirely unrelated to any here on earth.” (Charles Greeley Abbot, The Earth and the Stars, Van Nostrand, 1946, p. 110; Roger D. Launius, “Venus-Earth-Mars: Comparative Climatology and the Search for Life in the Solar System,” Life 2, no. 3 (2012): 255–273)
1946 — A farmer named Gunyon in Westerham, Kent, England, calls the British Technical Intelligence staff asking that the Air Ministry come and remove one of these “darned contraptions” which has fallen on his farm. The intelligence officers ask for directions and are told to drive from Croydon to Westerham, turning onto a lane when they reach a pub called The White Dog. Amid great security, two staff cars are dispatched, but fail to find the farm. They locate a pub called The White Hart and a farmer named Bunyan, who strenuously denies having made the call. Although the incident appears to be a hoax, few people can reach the Technical Intelligence staff and convince them to make a field visit. Indeed, the intelligence officers believe that former Air Intelligence scientist Reginald Victor Jones, who has been skeptical of foo fighters and ghost rockets, is behind the affair. Jones writes that a signal is received from Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s staff in Tokyo, asking for confirmation of a report that a Russian flying bomb had recently crashed in England. The other Director of Intelligence on the Air Staff, Air Commodore Roland Eugene Vintras, suggests to Jones that this might tie in with the “Westerham Incident.” (R.
V. Jones, Most Secret War, Hamish Hamilton, 1978, pp. 507–513; “UFO Britannia: Part 2—World War Foo and Post War Cover Ups,” Above Top Secret forum, December 19, 2012)
January 10 — The Air Materiel Command at Wright Field, Ohio, issues a restricted-access document, German Flying Wings Designed by Horten Brothers by Capt. N. LeBlanc, detailing the drawings, photos, models, and documents relating to aircraft designed by Nazi aircraft designers the Horten brothers that were recovered in Germany by Allied forces. (N. LeBlanc, German Flying Wings Designed by Horten Brothers, Air Material Command, Technical Intelligence summary report no, F-SU-1110-ND, January 10, 1946; H. P. Dabrowski, The Horten Flying Wing in World War II: The History and Development of the Ho 229, Schiffer, 1991; Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, “Roswell and the Flying Wing,” IUR 18, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1993): 3; John Powell, “The Horten Flying Wings,” War Bird Forum, July 2019)
January 18 — 11:00 p.m. A US C-54 transport plane is at 7,000 feet over the French countryside on its way to Paris, France. Suddenly the pilot sees a brilliant “shooting star” about 35° above the horizon. It streaks down below the eastern horizon, then reappears and moves in a hyperbola before falling again. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 1)
January 22 — President Truman creates a National Intelligence Authority (State, War, Navy, Chief of Staff, and a presidential representative with the DCI as a non-voting member) for policy and coordination and a Central Intelligence Group for operations under it. Rear Adm. Sidney Souers heads the CIG as Director of Central Intelligence. (Wikipedia, “National Intelligence Authority”)
February 21 — 8:30 p.m. One or more meteors are seen in west Finland and the counties of Västerbotten, Västernorrland, Kopparberg [now Dalarna], Gävleborg, Uppsala, Östergötland, and Skaraborg [now Västra Götaland] in Sweden. It supposedly sets a farmhouse on fire in Vaasa province, Finland. It leaves a long trail of smoke in the sky. (Archives for the Unexplained, “Case XXX: The Meteor That Did Not Start a Fire”)
March — The Air Technical Service Command becomes the Air Materiel Command. (Wikipedia, “Air Materiel Command”)
March 5 — 6:00 p.m. João Prestes is returning on foot from a fishery on the banks of the Tietê River to his sister’s home in Araçariguama, São Paulo, Brazil. As he is entering the house, a light from outside strikes and envelopes him. He becomes dizzy and confused but manages to get up and go inside. He summons Araci Gomide, a nurse who has served in the military with him. Gomide describes his friend as being literally cooked, with his flesh detaching from his bones, injuries on his feet and ankles, and his feet clenched like the claws of a bird. His arms are burned and the flesh on his fingers is falling off. His chest, neck, and face also seem to be burned but not charred or red. Prestes dies on the way to a hospital in Santana di Parnaíba at 3:00 a.m. (Clark III 166–167; Brazil 17–21; Pablo Villarubia Mauso, “The Incredible Saga of João Prestes,” UFO Casebook)
March 6 — The Western Defense Command is deactivated. (Wikipedia, “Western Defense Command”)
March 14 — Dusk. Paul Cummings Jr. is driving east on US Highway 136 about 10 miles east of Havana, Illinois, with Douglas Gowdy. A bright orange ball appears in the road about 1 mile ahead, gliding down the highway only one foot above the pavement and possibly touching both shoulders of the road. When it is within 2,000 feet, Cummings pulls the car over and stops, and they rush out to lie down in a ditch, fearing an explosion. When they look up again, the object is nowhere in sight. (Lorenzen, UFOs: The Whole Story, Signet, 1969, pp. 26–27)
April 2 — The Strategic Services Unit is transferred to the new Central Intelligence Group and becomes the Office of Special Operations. (Wikipedia, “Strategic Services Unit”)
April 25 — While ice fishing at Anima Nipissing Lake, Ontario, Don Cameron and his family watch 12–14 small disc- shaped objects descend at a 45° angle about 75 feet away. They come spinning down on the ice, rise 2 feet into the air, then come down again. Cameron walks toward them, and they ascend and shoot away at the same angle and direction. They find black marks on the snow and ice. (Clark III 1179)
April or May — Around 12:00 noon. Richard R. Hill and Stanley Ogdrzyiak are driving in an open convertible on the Country Club Road near Lafayette, New York. Suddenly they see a gleaming, metallic, cigar-shaped object in the sky. It remains motionless at 5,000–10,000 feet altitude, which at that height would make it 300–400 feet long.
After 2 minutes, it disappears instantaneously. (“Case 84,” CRIFO Newsletter 2, no. 3 (June 3, 1955): 4; Clark III
May — Day. Navy Lieutenant Andrew A. Titcomb is on leave and picking oranges at his wife’s family home at La Grange, north of Titusville, Florida, when he hears a whistling noise and sees a dark “flying football” directly overhead at about 1,000 feet elevation moving at 125 mph. It appears 15–20 feet in diameter and flies in an arc to the southeast. It disappears in a cloudbank. (UFOEv, p. 6; Clark III 1179)
May 13 — The Soviets establish a rocket center called NII-88 [now TsNIIMash] at Kaliningrad [now Korolyov], Russia, northeast of Moscow. Missile designer Sergei Korolev is appointed chief designer of Section 3 on long-range missiles. Stalin declares Korolev’s name a secret, which it remains until his death in 1966. Russia keeps dozens of its captured German scientists here, working on special projects until 1955. (Wikipedia, “TsNIIMash”)
May 13 — A rocket is seen traveling over Helsinki, Finland, in a southwesterly direction at 1,000 feet. It supposedly moves at supersonic speed, emitting a magnesium-like light and a trail of smoke. (Jan L. Aldrich, comp., The Ghost Rocket File, Fund for UFO Research, 2000, p. 10)
May 18 — 10:45 p.m. Gösta Carlsson, later to become founder and owner of Cernelle AB, is walking in the forested area of Kronoskagen near Ängelholm, Sweden, when he sees a disc-shaped machine more than 50 feet in diameter. On
the top is a cupola with oval windows, and beneath it are an oblong “fan,” two legs, a small ladder, and openings. A man dressed in a white, one-piece outfit gestures to Carlsson to stop. Two other occupants, three of them women, all wearing suits and transparent helmets, are nearby. One of the males points a boxlike device at the witness, who leaves the scene but returns by a different route 30 minutes later, just in time to see the UFO depart. A concrete model of the UFO is dedicated in 1963 as a memorial. (Wikipedia, “UFO-Memorial Ängelholm”; Sven-Olof Fredrickson, “The Ängelholm Landing Report,” Flying Saucer Review 18, no. 2 (Mar./Apr. 1972): 15– 17; Anders Liljegren, “High-Quality Investigation of 1946 CEIII Case,” AFU Newsletter, no. 38 (March 1995): 2–3; Clark III 528–529; Clas Svahn, “Gösta Carlssons möte,” Riksorganisationen UFO-Sverige, July 10, 2018; Håkan Blomqvist, “UFO-Sweden Memories: Ängelholm 1996,” Håkan Blomqvist’s Blog, July 1, 2020; Clas Svahn and Gösta Carlsson, Mötet i gläntan: Sveriges mest kända närkontakt med UFO, 3rd ed., Parthenon, 2021)
May 21 — Two motorists report an elongated craft resembling a rocket or Zeppelin over Stora Mellösa, Sweden. One of the witnesses sees two short wings, although the other cannot see any despite watching the object for 5 minutes. (Swords 12)
May 24 — 2:20 a.m. Witnesses in Landskrona, Sweden, see a wingless, cigar-shaped object, spurting sparks from its tail. About 300 feet above the ground, it is moving at airplane speed toward the southwest. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 1; Göran Jansson, “Spökraketerna 1947,” January 2005, p. 6)
May 28 — The Aftonbladet newspaper in Stockholm, Sweden, is the first to use the term “Spökraket” (ghost rocket) in a headline. (Swords 12)
May 31 — 11:43 a.m. A huge, metallic, wingless cigar moves rapidly at 1,000 feet altitude over Katrineholm, Sweden. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., pp. 2–3)
Summer — Late evening. Two women on a walk in Johannesburg, South Africa, see an aerial object hovering 5 feet above the roof of a nearby hotel. It is shaped like a saucer with a round, golden ball in the center, evenly split between the top and bottom sections. They hear a clicking noise, and the ball drops through the saucer until it is level with the roof. More clicks are heard, and the ball rises through and above the saucer 8–9 feet. In the space between the ball and the disc the witnesses see two figures larger than normal height (7 feet), fair-complexioned and broad-shouldered, with short wavy hair. They are wearing white uniforms with stiff collars and stand motionless until the object floats away and is lost to view. (John Judge, “Near-Landing in 1946 in Johannesburg,” Flying Saucer Review 24, no. 5 (March 1979): 14–16; Clark III 266)
Summer — Day. Eleanor Hancock is in Colorado Springs, Colorado, looking southwest toward Cheyenne Mountain when two shining silver objects appear, moving rapidly in tandem from east to west toward the escarpment. Just before they reach the mountain, they turn sharply upward, still in formation, and disappear. (Clark III 1179)
June 6 — The Joint Research and Development Board is created by the Secretaries of War and the Navy to coordinate research efforts. (Joint Research and Development Board, Organization Authority Record, June 6, 1946)
June 9 — Night. An enormous light drops earthward over Sala, Sweden, leaving a long, fiery trail. An explosion is heard.
(Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 3)
June 9 — 10:17 p.m. A rocket-like light passes over Helsinki, Finland, at 10,000 feet leaving a smoke trail and making a distant rumble. A luminous afterglow lasts 10 minutes. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 3)
June 10 — Lieut. Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg replaces Souers as director of the CIG. He expands it and wins the right to collect intelligence in Latin America. (CIA Historical Staff, Chronology 1946–65, vol. 1, 1946–1955, p. 9)
June 12 — The Swedish Defense staff secretly orders reports of unknown rockets to be collected by military and civilian defense units in Sweden. (Anders Liljegren and Clas Svahn, “The Ghost Rockets,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, p. 33)
June 18 — A first-strike scenario, the Pincher war plan, is created by the US military to strike Moscow and the Caucasus with 50 nuclear weapons if the Soviets invade the Middle East. It is never officially approved, but the Joint Chiefs agree to use it for planning purposes. (Phillip S. Meilinger, “The Early War Plans,” Air Force Magazine, December 1, 2012)
June 25 — A four-engine Northrop XB-35 flying wing bomber makes its first test flight from Jack Northrop Field [now Hawthorne Municipal Airport] to Muroc Army Air Field [now Edwards AFB] in California. (Wikipedia, “Northrop YB-35”)
June 26 — The commander of the military district in Morjärv, Sweden, issues instructions on how to report incidents with “certain kind of light phenomena’ that might be associated with “tests made by foreign powers with guided weapons.” (Swords 12).
July — Amazing Stories publishes four short articles in its September 1945 issue by William C. Hefferlin, each describing a wonderful new invention that has come to the author, according to editor Ray Palmer, “from Tibet by mental telepathy.” One of the inventions is a “circle-winged airplane.” In later issues, Hefferlin and his wife Gladys go on to describe the Rainbow City, an underground Martian city beneath Antarctica where the flying saucers originate. (“A Description of Rainbow City from the Hefferlin Manuscript (Hollow Earth)”; Walter Kafton- Minkel, Subterranean Worlds, Loompanics, 1989, pp. 160–167; Clark III 610)
July — Day. A long, silver-colored cigar appears suddenly out of the haze over Crane Beach, Ipswich, Massachusetts, moves noiselessly over the water, then disappears suddenly. (Lore and Deneault, p. 148; Clark III 1179)
July — 2:00 p.m. Hans Sorensen is cycling near Viskinge, Denmark, when he sees three discs flying silently overhead. The underside is uneven and dull gray, but they are like “polished mirrors” on top. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 16)
July 1 — Able nuclear test, Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands. Radio-controlled autopilots are installed in eight B-17 bombers, converting them into remote-controlled drones that are then loaded with automatic cameras, radiation detectors, and air sample collectors. Their pilots operate them from mother planes at a safe distance from the detonation. The drones can fly into Able’s mushroom cloud, which would have been lethal to crew members. (Wikipedia, “Operation Crossroads”)
July 3 — The Joint Research and Development Board is established. Essentially it is Vannevar Bush’s existing cadre of brain trust from the still active Office of Scientific Research and the postwar Joint New Weapons Committee. Added to this are other reconstituted R&D committees and advisers like Lloyd Berkner of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The original founding members are physicist Alfred Lee Loomis, biologist Caryl Parker Haskins, physicist Luis Walter Alvarez, physicist William Shockley, and George Doriot. Two military representatives each from the Army, Navy, and Air Force complete the board’s membership. Counting Bush, this makes a board of 12. (Michael Hall and Wendy Connors, “The Research and Development Board: Unanswered Questions,” IUR 26, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 7–8)
July 6 — A special ghost rocket investigations committee is formed with Col. Bengt Jacobsson from the Royal Swedish Air Force Materiel Administration as chairman. Other members are Henry Kjellson and Eric Malmberg from the Air Administration; Maj. Nils Ahlgren and Capt. Gerdt Stangenberg from the Air Defense department; chemist Gustaf Ljunggren; physicist Martin Fehrm; and Olof Kempe from the Defense Radio Institute. They hold at least 12 meetings, beginning on July 10. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 13; Anders Liljegren and Clas Svahn, “The Ghost Rockets,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987,
p. 33; Swords 12)
July 6 — Astronomer Bertil Lindblad, after consulting with the Swedish Defense staff on ghost rocket reports, remarks that the “adjective ‘cigar-shaped’ is something new.” (Anders Liljegren and Clas Svahn, “The Ghost Rockets,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, p. 33)
July 9 — A journalist finds three dubious fist-size fragments, one of iron and the other two slag-like, after a bright projectile is seen over a beach at Njurunda, Sweden. (Göran Jansson, “Spökraketerna 1947,” January 2005, p. 12; Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 14)
July 9 — 2:30 p.m. Erik and Asa Reuterswärd take a photo of a greenish-white daylight meteor by a lake at Guldsmedshyttan, northwest of Lindesberg, Sweden. They are atop a forest watchtower and have a good view of the object. The image is circulated to newspapers throughout Sweden; however, the photo probably shows an unusual daylight meteor, not a ghost rocket. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., pp. 12–13; Clas Svahn, “The 1946 Ghost Rocket Photo,” `IUR 27, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 12–14, 23; Swords 13–14; Clas Svahn, “Spökraketerna: Den Största Gåtan,” Riksorganisationen UFO-Sverige, March 7, 2017)
July 9 — 2:30 p.m. Two people on the north side of Vaxön, Sweden, watch a glowing white object with a blue-white tail streak across the sky in about 2 seconds, disappearing to the southeast. Around the same time, a witness at Järna Station in Södertälje sees an object “like a glass flask in a thermos” descending from a high altitude. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 6)
July 9 — 2:30 p.m. A member of the US legation sees a silent ghost rocket falling rapidly over Stockholm, Sweden, according to a July 11 telegram from State Department official Christian M. Ravndal to Washington, D.C. Hundreds of other observations take place over central Sweden. Ravndal suggests that the Soviets are trying to intimidate the Swedes. (Göran Jansson, “Spökraketerna 1947,” January 2005, p.11; Clark III 524, 527; Good Above, p. 20; Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p.p. 6, betw. 12–13)
July 9 — 2:35 p.m. Efrain Johnson sees a strange, cigar- or sugarloaf-shaped object to the east of Ockelbo, Sweden. It shines like silver and appears “like some glistening mass.” It falls to the ground and is gone in a few moments. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 6)
July 9 — About 3:00 p.m. A housewife near Sörbo, Sweden, is washing on the shore of Södra Barken when she sees a falling object coming from the northeast. It changes color from blue to green and has a long tail. It tumbles into the lake about 320 feet away. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., pp. 6–7)
July 9 — 3:30 p.m. A young man in Mockfjärd, Sweden, sees a silver-colored star diving toward the ground with a whistling noise. It comes down about 490 feet away from him, and he is blinded by the intense light. He thinks it crashes into Mt. Landholm. A powerful burning smell lingers for 15 minutes. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 7)
July 9 — 3:35 p.m. Many people see a bright red, rocket-like object moving swiftly over Turku, Finland, and leaving a short trail. It casts shadows on the ground. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 7)
July 10 — A brilliantly glowing projectile trailing luminous smoke crashes into a beach near Norrvikssand, Sweden.
Airline pilot Torvald Linden and other witnesses find a shallow crater a little more than 3 feet in diameter. A mass of slag-like material, some of it reduced to powder (which burns the hands when touched) is found at the site and collected into bags. A journalist from Svenska Dagbladet on July 11 finds a “burnt-brown object with a hollow cylinder” with a diameter of about 1–2 inches. Military authorities take over the site. The debris is taken to Dr. B. Backlund at a laboratory in Kubikenborg, who finds it contains paper with microscopic black-and-white squares like a screen. Some porous, rust-colored fragments are also present. The same day, the beach is visited by Lt. Col. Rudberg, Capt. C. Ljungdahl, and Capt. R. Westlin, who conclude that the material has been in the area for a long time. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., pp. 10–12)
July 10 — 2:30 p.m. A bluish flying cigar 10–12 times the diameter of the full moon in length passes over Stockholm, Sweden. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 9)
July 12 — Swedish Intelligence agrees to cooperate in sharing ghost rocket information with the British military attaché in Stockholm, Sweden, Maj. de Salis. (Swords 20)
July 12 — Day. The railway station master at Gryon, Vaud, Switzerland, is watching a B-24 Liberator flying overhead at 15,000 feet when he also sees a “flying bomb” looking like a big star traveling northeast at about 250 mph. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 14)
July 12 — 10:00 p.m. Inga Eriksson is in her garden in Usta, Örebro, Sweden, when she hears a sharp, sizzling sound in the air and sees three silvery triangular objects traveling horizontally from east to west. They are visible only for 2 seconds, but her mother notes that the electrical power has gone out in their home. (AFU case file)
July 15 — The Swedes provide the British attaché with analytical reports of all observations to date. (Swords 20)
July 16 –18 — US Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal makes an unexpected visit to Stockholm, Sweden, to meet with the Swedish Defense Minister Allan Vougt and two members of the special committee on ghost rockets. (Anders Liljegren and Clas Svahn, “The Ghost Rockets,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, p. 35)
July 18 — Two British intelligence officers arrive in Stockholm to meet with their counterparts in Sweden. One is from the Air Ministry (Squadron Leader Barrie Heath) and the other (Maj. Malone) is from MI10(a), a branch of the Directorate of Military Intelligence. (Swords 20)
July 18 — 12:00 noon. Sigvat Skaug and his son, who live along Lake Mjøsa in southeastern Norway, and his sister Åse Tandberg watch two rocket-like objects about 7 feet long pass over their heads at a very low altitude. They fall simultaneously into the lake, throwing the water several feet into the air. The objects look like V-1 rockets and come in low from the west at about 150 feet, causing the trees to sway. They fall into the lake about 1.2 miles from the western shore and 4.3 miles from Minnesund. (NICAP, “‘Ghost Rocket’ Crashes into Lake”; Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., pp. 18–19; Göran Jansson, “Spökraketerna 1947,” January 2005, pp. 19–20; Clas Svahn and Anders Liljegren, “The Kölmjärv Ghost Rocket Crash Revisited,” AFU Newsletter 27 (Jan./Dec. 1984): 1–5; Swords 16; Clark III 526)
July 18 — Three workers see a ghost rocket above Ortviken, Sweden. Shortly afterward, Gunnar Falck watches a silvery cylinder moving over the northern part of Sundsvall. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 17)
July 19 — 11:15 a.m. In the village of Bölebyn, Sweden, Leonard Danielsson and his sons Kjell, Dan, and Hans see an “aeroplane” moving against the wind to the southwest. The boys say it looks like a large, metallic milk canister. It travels from horizon to horizon in about 20 minutes before disappearing in the northwest. (Swords 17)
July 19 — 11:30 a.m. Kurt Larsson, 11, is fishing at the north end of Lake Kattisträsket, Sweden, when he hears a roaring sound. A huge column of water rises out of the lake as if a mine has detonated. Military officers from Boden
investigate, but the lake is too muddy to send in a diver. They conclude that whatever fell is buried in 15 feet of mud. (Swords 24)
July 19 — 11:45 a.m. Many witnesses see a gray, winged rocket crash into Lake Kölmjärv, Sweden, with a loud bang close to the southwest bank. Knut Lindbäck says it generates a high plume of water when it hits the surface, “followed by another cascade as if something had detonated.” Water lilies and other aquatic plants are torn up and thrown on the shore. Lieut. Karl-Gösta Bartoll from the Boden engineer corps arrives the next day to supervise the salvage operation. Engineers Roland Rynniger and lab technician Torsten Wilner from the Defense Research Department also arrive with a Geiger counter. A three-week search turns up no traces of metal, even though the evidence points to an underwater explosion. (NICAP, “‘Ghost Rocket’ Crashes into Lake”; Göran Jansson, “Spökraketerna 1947,” January 2005, pp. 20–26; Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., pp. 20, 76; Clas Svahn and Anders Liljegren, “The Kölmjärv Ghost Rocket Crash Revisited,” AFU Newsletter 27 (Jan./Dec. 1984): 1–5; Swords 17–20, 24; Clark III 525, 526)
July 19 — 3:00 p.m. Karl and Tyra Axberg are sitting on the porch of their cabin on Lake Vassarajärvi in Norrbotten County, Sweden, when they hear a loud noise. A projectile comes in at a very low angle and hits the water at a 30° angle, continuing underwater for about 600 feet. A military team led by Karl-Gösta Bartoll can find no trace of a “ghost bomb.” (Swords 24–25)
July 19 — 3:40 p.m. Ingrid Hansson is sunbathing with her father on a floating jetty at the northern end of Lake Marmen, near Sunnanå, Sweden. She hears a violent roaring over the water and looks up to see an object bouncing along the surface, stirring up a wake. The object has created a water column 66 feet high upon impact. (Swords 25)
July 19 — Maj. Gen. George C. McDonald prepares a memorandum for the Commander of the Army Air Forces Gen. Carl Spaatz on reports of “rockets” over Scandinavian countries. (Jan L. Aldrich, comp., The Ghost Rocket File, Fund for UFO Research, 2000, pp. 9–11)
July 24 — 1:20 p.m. Engineer Tennlund sees a small cigar-shaped object with a pair of small wings south of Vålberg, Värmland, Sweden. It comes from the direction of Norway (west) at great speed with no sound. Tennlund thinks it crashes into Vänern lake. (Anders Liljegren and Clas Svahn, “The Ghost Rockets,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, p. 35)
July 25 — The Swedish military states that ghost rockets are not meteors. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 23)
July 25 — Baker nuclear test, Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. (Wikipedia, “Operation Crossroads”; Fran Ridge, “The Baker Blast: Cause for Alarm?” May 4, 2013)
July 27 — British Air Attaché Capt. Henderson informs the Foreign Office in London, England, that cooperation with Swedish Air Staff should be kept from the Americans. (David Clarke and Andy Roberts, Out of the Shadows, Piatkus, 2002; Joel Carpenter, “Guided Missiles and UFOs: A Tangle of Fear, 1937–53, Part Two”; Swords 20)
July 28 — Night. Sections of Oslo, Norway, are shaken by two violent aerial explosions. An “intense white light” accompanies the blasts. (London Daily Telegraph, July 29, 1946; Clark III 526)
July 29 — Norway begins censoring ghost rocket reports just as Sweden is doing. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 25)
July 30 — 1:15 p.m. Two objects shaped like dark crosses are seen in the sky over Filipstad, Värmland, Sweden. (Anders Liljegren and Clas Svahn, “The Ghost Rockets,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, p. 35)
July 30 — 3:12 p.m. William Jorgensen, a soldier at the fort at Oskar-Fredriksborg, Stockholm, Sweden, sees a silent flying object with short wings at a distance of about 6,560 feet. It is moving faster than a jet aircraft. (Anders Liljegren and Clas Svahn, “The Ghost Rockets,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, p. 35)
July 30 — 5:00 p.m. A customs officer on the Norway-Sweden border watches a silvery torpedo with short wings. The object moves in from the south but changes direction with a sharp turn and continues east with a whining sound. (Anders Liljegren and Clas Svahn, “The Ghost Rockets,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, p. 35)
August — Day. Charles A. Johnson is driving on US Highway 41 along Lake Michigan north of Chicago, Illinois, when he sees three silver discs going from east to west in a triangular formation. (Clark III 1179)
August — 8:30 p.m. A young man sees a pan-shaped object near a road in Sint-Niklaas, Belgium. A small entity holding an acacia branch is nearby. The being enters the object through an opening on the underside. Afterward, traces of burning on the ground are detected. (Center for UFO Studies, HUMCAT Index 1940–1949, p. 20; Clark III 266)
Early August — An astronomer and meteorologist is looking at some clouds through a telescope in Stockholm, Sweden, and sees a luminous object that he estimates is about 90 feet long, torpedo-shaped, and metallic. It has a “tapered tail that spewed glowing blue and green smoke and a series of fire balls.” The object explodes with a terrific flash. (“Sweden Plans Radar Fight on ‘Rockets,’” Los Angeles Times, August 13, 1946, p. 1; Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 39)
August 1 — President Truman signs the Atomic Energy Act, transferring the control of atomic energy from military to civilian hands, effective on January 1, 1947. It categorizes information on atomic energy as “born classified,” even if it is not created by any US government agency. “Restricted Data” is not a level of classification; rather, a document can be classified as Confidential, Secret, or Top Secret, while also containing Restricted Data. In addition, a document containing Restricted Data can also contain Critical Nuclear Weapon Design Information. In this way, a document can be classified as Secret (S), Secret//Restricted Data (S//RD), or Secret//Restricted Data- Critical Nuclear Weapon Design Information (S//RD-CNWDI), depending on the type of information it contains. (Wikipedia, “United States Atomic Energy Commission”)
August 1 — Truman approves the establishment of the Office of Naval Research for “planning, fostering, and encouraging scientific research” in relation to naval power and national security. (Wikipedia, “Office of Naval Research”)
August 1 —Col. Edwin Kennedy Wright, Vandenberg’s executive assistant at the Central Intelligence Group, sends a memorandum to President Truman saying the ghost rockets conform to a V-1 shape and seem to be launched from the USSR. The report notes that the missiles can turn and fly circular courses, seemingly indicating radio control. Most information comes from the military attaché in Sweden and the conclusions are from the director of intelligence for the War Department general staff. (Swords 21–23; Jan Aldrich, “Investigating the Ghost Rockets,” IUR 23, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 10, 12)
August 1 — 6:00 p.m. AF Capt. Jack E. Puckett is flying over Tampa, Florida, in a C-47 transport and sees a long cylinder twice the size of a B-29 with luminous portholes. After 3 minutes, it disappears at a speed of 1,500 mph. (“Rocket Craft Encounter Revealed by World War 2 Pilot,” UFO Investigator 1, no. 2 (Aug./Sept. 1957): 15; UFOEv, p. 19)
August 5 — 6:26 p.m. A luminous object is seen by a motorist near Landskrona, Skåne, Sweden. ()
August 5 — 11:00 p.m. A fast-moving, silent, circular object glitters in the sun over Skåne, Sweden, as it heads toward the south-southwest at a high altitude. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 28)
August 6 — The US delegation in Budapest, Hungary, reports that a German scientist now working for the Russians has revealed that the Soviets have developed guided rockets called V-3 and V-4 that are able to fly a round trip of 700 miles. (Jan Aldrich, “Investigating the Ghost Rockets,” IUR 23, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 10)
August 7 — A Top Secret message from the Commander-in-Chief Air Forces, Pacific, to Gen. Lauris Norstad, War Department Operations, requests guidance on the current classification of the substitute code word “Majestic” for Operational Plan Olympic (the invasion of Northern Japan). The plan has been downgraded to Restricted (Message CM1472 IN). The answer is that both code words had been declassified by the JCS on October 8, 1945 (Message CM96908 OUT 8 Aug 1946). (Jan Aldrich; Murray Bott, “Military Codenames ‘Olympic’ and ‘Majestic,’” UFO UpDates, April 4, 2002)
August 7 — Swedish Lt. Lennart Neckman of the Defense Staff’s Air Defense Division sees a clear, yellow flame passing low and slow over the countryside. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 30)
August 8 — Chief of Swedish Air Defense Maj. Nils Ahlgren says that some of the rockets are seen at low altitude, maneuver in half circles, and appear to come from the south. (Göran Jansson, “Spökraketerna 1947,” January 2005, p. 36)
August 11 — 8:47 p.m. Astronomer Bertil Lindblad sees an exploding fireball in Ljugarn on Gotland, Sweden. (Göran Jansson, “Spökraketerna 1947,” January 2005, p. 38)
August 11 — 9:00–10:00 p.m. Hundreds of people in central and southern Sweden see “ghost bombs” that fly from south to north, giving off a brilliant blue-white light. Sometimes two of the objects are seen flying together. Some witnesses see smaller silver balls come out of the larger objects, which are variously described as cylinders and torpedoes with a “wide nose” and “fire-spurting tail.” Stockholm is said to be “near the boiling point” with ghost rocket speculation. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., pp. 33– 39; Göran Jansson, “Spökraketerna 1947,” January 2005, pp. 38–40; Clark III 525; Anders Liljegren and Clas Svahn, “The Ghost Rockets,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, p. 37; Don Berliner, with Marie Galbreath and Antonio Huneeus, UFO Briefing Document: The Best Available Evidence, Dell, 2000, pp. 50–53)
August 12 — 10:00 a.m. A twin-engine Saab 18 Swedish Air Force bomber crashes and explodes near Valdshult, Jönköping, Sweden, killing three airmen. Rumors circulate that it collided with a ghost rocket, but an investigation indicates that the pilot lost control. (Good Need, pp. 39–40)
August 12 — 8:15 p.m. A torpedo-shaped ghost rocket moves slowly over a seaport town in southern Sweden, barely grazing the roofs and trailing smoke. It continues out to sea and seems to come down on a small island. Two men
go out to investigate, but the island is too overgrown to allow a search. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., pp. 40–41)
August 13 — Capt. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, US naval attaché in Paris, forwards as top secret a report by the French government on ghost rocket activity in Scandinavia. It states that “a good number of these projectiles are of the V- 1 type in the form of a torpedo with two small wings.” A map shows them originating in the Leningrad [now St. Petersburg] area, Russia. (Swords 21; Good Need, pp. 38–39; Jan Aldrich, “Investigating the Ghost Rockets,” IUR 23, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 11)
August 13 — The Hungarian report of August 6 causes Maj. Gen. Stephen J. Chamberlin, Army assistant chief of staff for intelligence, to ask Budapest for further information. Top-secret requests are sent to military attachés in London, Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki, and Copenhagen asking for listings of all ghost rocket reports, as well as V-3 and V-4 missiles. The military attaché in Oslo reports that a Soviet ship in the north Baltic Sea has been transmitting code to shore stations regarding the ghost rockets. The military attaché in Moscow asks other European officials about where the rockets originate and gets several answers, which he forwards on to Chamberlin: Hiiumaa island, Estonia; Latvia; or Peenemünde, Germany. Gen. Joseph T. McNarney of the US Forces in Europe Theater replies that Peenemünde is a likely origin, since the site has been refurbished. The military attaché in Stockholm suspects Hiiumaa, Peenemünde, or Parikkala in Finland, while the naval attaché in Stockholm thinks that Łeba, Poland, is the launch site. (Jan Aldrich, “Investigating the Ghost Rockets,” IUR 23, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 10–11)
August 13 — The New York Times says the ghost rocket situation is extremely dangerous and that Sweden will not tolerate such violations. (“Swedes Use Radar in Fight on Missiles,” New York Times. August 13, 1946, p. 4)
August 13 — The US naval attaché and the Assistant US military attaché in Stockholm interview three Swedish Air Force officers assigned to the General Staff who say that they believe the objects are rockets. (Joel Carpenter, “Guided Missiles and UFOs: A Tangle of Fear, 1937–53, Part Two”; Swords 21)
August 13 — Afternoon. A troop of Boy Scouts in Denmark see a rocket-like object moving quickly at an altitude of 1,600 feet. They can see small side wings and fins. A blue-white light streams from the bottom, and it diverges from a straight course to a 35° curve. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 43)
August 13 — 8:00 p.m. A cigar-shaped object flies past a witness at Karlskrona, Sweden, at a distance of only 150 feet. Only 5 feet long, it emits a faint green light and trails smoke from the rear. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 43)
August 14 — The New York Times reports that Secretary of State Dean Acheson is “very much interested” in the ghost rockets. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 46; “2 Swedes Escape a ‘Ghost Rocket,’” New York Times, August 14, 1946, p. 11)
August 14 — 10:02 a.m. Swedish Air Force pilot Lieut. Gunnar Irholm and his signaler, Cpl. Möller, are flying a B-18A bomber at 650 feet 4 miles northeast of Malingsbo in central Sweden when they see a dark cigar-shaped object approaching on their left. It has no visible wings, rudders, lights, flame or projections of any type. It appears to follow the terrain at 370–430 mph, maintaining the same height, then vanishes into a storm cloud. (“Ghost Rockets over Scandinavia,” Intelligence Review, no. 49, January 9, 1947, US Department of Defense; Don Berliner, Marie Galbraith, and Antonio Huneeus, Unidentified Flying Objects Briefing Document, UFO Research Coalition, December 1995, pp. 33–35; Swords 15–16; “Cigar Sighted from B-19 Bomber,” AFU Newsletter, no. 44 (September 2002): 1–4)
August 15 — Night. Several residents of the east side of Waterloo, Iowa, see an object buzzing rapidly around some trees. It gradually ascends, surrounded by a cloud of white vapor, and disappears high in the sky. One person calls it “a great white bird; another, a bomb.” Mrs. Russell Lampman says that the object is “6 feet, 3 inches tall, like a large man, and rather rectangular in shape.” She and her husband watch it for an hour after it starts hovering about 20– 25 feet above a nearby alley. (Al Starr, “Street Scene,” Waterloo (Iowa) Sunday Times, August 18, 1946, p. II-1; “Well, We Saw It First!” Waterloo Daily Courier, July 7, 1947, p. 2; Project 1947, “UFO Reports: 1946”)
August 16 — Col. L. H. Johnson, US naval attaché in Stockholm, transmits a “Top Secret Report R334-46 of 13 August 1946 Subject: SWEDEN Guided Missiles Rocket Sightings Over Sweden.” It concludes: “No tangible evidence to date as to nature or origin of rockets reported over Sweden, although Swedish Defense Staff insists that they are rockets.” (Joel Carpenter, “Guided Missiles and UFOs: A Tangle of Fear, 1937–53, Part Two”; Jan L. Aldrich, comp., The Ghost Rocket File, Fund for UFO Research, 2000, pp. 32–35)
August 16 — A missile produces an enormous explosion over Malmö, Sweden, that shakes or breaks many windows.
Some witnesses think they can see fragments of the object falling to earth. (“Windows Broken by Rocket Bomb,” Manchester Guardian, August 17, 1946, p. 6; Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 50)
Late August — Margaret Sprankle, a civilian employee at Tinker AFB near Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, is returning from work when she sees, about 300 feet away, a large, metallic, lens-shaped structure about 75 feet in diameter. On the lower right side are 12–14 square windows; in each, visible from the shoulders up, is a figure. Their heads are very round. The object rotates 90° on its vertical axis and silently flies northwest and disappears in seconds. (Center for UFO Studies, HUMCAT Index 1940–1949, p. 22; Clark III 266)
August 18 — 8:00 or 10:00 p.m. An aerial object like a 9-foot cigar is seen moving slowly on the north side of Copenhagen, Denmark. It explodes with extraordinary force. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 53)
August 19 — The US military attaché in Moscow reports on the visit of Maj. Stig Wennerström of the Swedish Air Force, who reveals that radar indicates the ghost rocket launch site is at Peenemünde, Germany. The rockets appear to be radio-controlled, carry no warheads, are self-destructive, and are plotted over a range of 620 miles. Sometimes they follow zigzag courses. (Jan Aldrich, “Investigating the Ghost Rockets,” IUR 23, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 12)
August 19 — Two US experts on aerial warfare, aviation legend General Jimmy Doolittle and British Group Captain Douglas Bader, and General David Sarnoff, president of RCA, arrive in Stockholm, Sweden, ostensibly on private business, and independently of each other. The official explanation is that Doolittle, who is now vice-president of the Shell Oil Company, is inspecting Shell branch offices in Europe, while Sarnoff, a former member of General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s London staff, is studying the market for radio equipment. However, the story indicates that the Chief of the Swedish Defense Staff, Col. C. R. Kempf, makes no secret that he “was extremely interested in asking the two generals advice and, if possible, would place all available reports before them.” However, Doolittle denies the correlation to Barry Greenwood in 1984, and researchers have found no evidence to support a collaboration. (Joel Carpenter, “Guided Missiles and UFOs: A Tangle of Fear, 1937–53, Part Two”; Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., pp. 53–54; Clark III 527; Swords 21, 24)
August 21 — The General Staff in Norway issues a memorandum to the press asking it not to mention any ghost rockets seen over the country and to pass on all reports to the military Intelligence Department. In Sweden, the ban is limited to any mention of where the rockets are seen to land or explode. (London Daily Telegraph, August 22, 1946; Good Above, p. 21)
August 22 — 3:00 p.m. Photographer Gösta Skog takes a color film of a ghost rocket at Getå, 100 miles south of Stockholm, Sweden. The cigar-shaped object appears out of a cloud at 3,000 feet, trailing exhaust. The film turns out to be overexposed. (Clas Svahn, “Spökraketerna: Den Största Gåtan,” Riksorganisationen UFO-Sverige, March 7, 2017; Swords 14–15)
August 22 — Director of the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) Lt. Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg writes a top secret memo to President Truman via Adm. William D. Leahy, stating that the “weight of evidence” points to Peenemünde (which has become a Soviet naval base), East Germany, as the origin of the ghost rockets, and that a US military attaché in Moscow has been told by a “key Swedish Air Officer” [Wennerström] that radar course-plotting leads to the conclusion that Peenemünde is the launch site. CIG speculates that the missiles are extended-range developments of V-1s being aimed for the Gulf of Bothnia for test purposes and “do not overfly Swedish territory specifically for intimidation; self-destruct by small demolition charge or burning.” (Joel Carpenter, “Guided Missiles and UFOs: A Tangle of Fear, 1937–53, Part Two”; Barry Greenwood, “Significant Ghost Rocket Documents Available,” UFO Historical Revue, no. 15 (June 2015): 1–8)
August 23 — The British Foreign Office states that English radar experts, including Reginald Victor Jones, having returned from Sweden, had “submitted secret reports to the British government on the origin of the rockets.” (Good Above, p. 21)
August 24 — Stockholm Air Attaché Maj. Gen. Alfred A. Kessler Jr. informs the War Department that the Ghost Rockets are an “unintentional hoax which developed naturally but which exploited by Defense staff by implication and lack of frankness possibly interest defense budget and to alert west against east.” (Joel Carpenter, “Guided Missiles and UFOs: A Tangle of Fear, 1937–53, Part Two”)
August 24 — Admiral Henry Kent Hewitt, Commander of US Naval Forces in Europe, writes a letter to the US naval attaché in Oslo, Norway, on “Rocket Bombs or Guided Missiles over Norway and Sweden.” Two “missiles” have fallen into a lake near Oslo, and the US Navy is “very interested.” ([Adm. Henry Kent Hewitt], Letter to US Naval Attaché, Oslo, “Rocket Bombs or Guided Missiles over Norway and Sweden,” August 24, 1946)
August 24 — Evening. A Norwegian student and a Swedish engineer are boating on a small river “somewhere in Sweden” when a light approaches them from the southeast. It resembles a full moon and emits an intense light: “As it passed immediately overhead, it grew so bright you could see a well as on a sunny day.” The object, about 10 feet long, releases four stars that fall silently to the ground. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., pp. 58–59)
August 26 — The US military attaché in Stockholm reports that the Swedes, possibly worried about a Soviet veto of their application for UN membership, have canceled their request for British radar equipment. (Jan Aldrich, “Investigating the Ghost Rockets,” IUR 23, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 13)
August 29 — The American embassy in Stockholm tells the State Department that the ghost rockets are probably Soviet missiles. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 63A; [Memo on telegram of August 27, 1946]; Good Above, pp. 22, 447)
September — German rocket engineer Walter Ziegler tells Army CIC that 400 men from his former rocket group at Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW) in Munich, Germany, are invited by Russian military officers to a fancy dinner, wined and dined, then taken home. Several hours later, all 400 are woken up by the Russians and forced to take a trip. (Ziegler is not among them.) They are transported by train to a small town (“Kubischew”) outside Moscow, Russia, where they remain and work on secret military rocket projects under terrible conditions. (Jacobsen, Area 51, p. 42)
September 1–2 — Late night and early morning. Rocket-shaped objects are seen over northern Greece, according to Prime Minister Konstantinos Tsaldaris. Physicist Paul Santorinis is placed in charge of an investigation. He rules out Russian missiles, but the Army ends the investigation in 1947. (Clark III 525; Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., pp. 62–63; Good Above, p. 23)
September 7 — British pilot Edward Mortlock Donaldson attains an airspeed record of 616 mph in a Gloster Meteor F Mk 4 at Littlehampton, England. (Wikipedia, “Edward Donaldson (RAF officer)”)
September 9 — The scientific advisor to MI6, English physicist Reginald Victor Jones, considers the ghost rockets a social panic phenomenon. An RAF Intelligence report, “Investigation of Reported Missile Activity over Scandinavia,” identifies eight types of ghost rocket sightings: iron cylinder, magnesium-like light, white core surrounded by blue-green, shining ball with tail, torpedo-shape, black object with flame, small rocket, small missile. It takes the daytime reports seriously but concludes are probably only a few genuine reports of actual missiles. (Joel Carpenter, “Guided Missiles and UFOs: A Tangle of Fear, 1937–53, Part Two”; Swords 26–27; Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., pp. 63–64)
September 11 — The Chief of Naval Intelligence requires naval attachés to forward information on Soviet rocket research and operations including launches from submarines. (NARA, US Naval Intelligence files; Jan Aldrich)
September 11 — Jack Northrop grounds the XB-35, which has suffered gearbox and propeller control problems, until the Army Air Force can fix its propulsion system. (Wikipedia, “Northrop YB-35”)
September 11 — 2:00 p.m. Justin B. Rinaldi is standing in a friend’s backyard in Engle, New Mexico, when he hears a loud whirring sound and sees a black object whiz by. It is pointed at one end, has a narrow body, and what appear to be fins on the tail. It is traveling fast at an altitude of 75 feet. Rinaldi sees it hit a clump of trees at a ranch house and the “branches parted like a great force had struck.” He and friends go to the site but can find nothing. (“Flying Disc Tales Bring 2 Reports from Engle Area,” Albuquerque Journal, June 29, 1947, p. 1; Clark III 530)
September 12 — Cmdr. Robert A. Winston, acting naval attaché in Stockholm, Sweden, writes to the London naval attaché in a secret air mailgram that he suspects there is a secret British-Swedish collaboration on ghost rocket information designed to keep the US from learning the truth. (Jan Aldrich, “Investigating the Ghost Rockets,” IUR 23, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 13)
Mid-September — Two luminous globes that shine “like an electric arc” are seen flying in a straight line over Longwy, Meurthe-et-Moselle, France. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 66)
September 18 — Two greenish globes, one following close behind the other, zoom over Castanheira, Portugal. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 67)
September 21 — Chemist Gustaf Ljunggren of the Swedish National Defense Research Institute summarizes for the Swedish Defense staff his analysis of 27 finds of mysterious substances, allegedly from ghost rockets. None are radioactive and all have mundane explanations. (Anders Liljegren and Clas Svahn, “The Ghost Rockets,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, pp. 33–34)
September 22 — 3:15 a.m. A rocket-shaped object is seen for 90 seconds over Florence, Italy. It makes an abrupt turn, then speeds south toward Rome. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. 69)
September 30 — David Sarnoff, in a speech at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, says that the “ghost bombs are no myth but real missiles.” (Joel Carpenter, “Guided Missiles and UFOs: A Tangle of Fear, 1937–53, Part Two”; “Sarnoff Predicts Weather Control and Delivery of the Mail by Radio,” New York Times, October 1, 1946,
p. 1, 48)
Fall — 9:00 p.m. Gladys McCage and her 4-year-old son see a yellowish-orange light coming from the northwest at a “terrific speed” toward their farm 8 miles north of O’Neill, Nebraska. Its color changes to red as it approaches, and soon it is hovering above the witnesses. They run toward the house and the cigar-shaped object swings up to the northeast. McCage says it is as big as a football field, has windows, and is making a loud noise. A yellowish- blue-green flame is shooting out near the back, and it is traveling too fast for any plane at the time. (Clark III 530)
October — Ray Palmer publishes a letter from Maurice Doreal (pseudonym of Claude D. Dodgin) of the Brotherhood of the White Temple in Denver, Colorado, regarding the “Shaver mystery.” Doreal claims intimate knowledge of the subterranean realms, which he claims are inhabited by the Black Brotherhood and protected by “space-warps.” In 1949 Doreal claims to have visited caves inside Mount Shasta, California, inhabited by Atlantean masters. He equates Shaver’s Dero with an evil group of Lemurians. (Walter Kafton-Minkel, Subterranean Worlds, Loompanics, 1989, pp. 154–160; Charmaine Ortega Getz, “The (Sort of) Amazing Story of Maurice Doreal and the Brotherhood of the White Temple Revealed at Last,” Weird Colorado, September 6, 2015)
October 1 — The US Military Attaché in London, England, writes a top-secret memo to the War Department complaining that the British “may not have given us all information on reported rockets over Scandinavia.” (Jan L. Aldrich, comp., The Ghost Rocket File, Fund for UFO Research, 2000, p. 73)
October 9 — Evening. George Adamski and some associates are watching a meteor shower associated with Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner when they see a “gigantic spacecraft” hovering above the mountain ridge south of Mount Palomar, California. He claims to meet a military officer a few weeks later who assures him that the object was indeed from another world. Others in San Diego see an object with a long, tube-shaped fuselage, giant wings, and two red lights. The medium Mark Probert later tells the press that he has established psychic communication with the occupants and the object is called the Kareeta. (“Sparks Fly As Comet Passes Earth,” Los Angeles Daily News, October 10, 1946, p. 3; Colin Bennett, Looking for Orthon, Paraview, 2001, pp. 28–29; Harold T. Wilkins, Flying Saucers on the Attack, Citadel, 1954, pp. 41–48; Curt Collins, “1946, Before Saucers, Kareeta: UFO Contact in California,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, August 8, 2017)
October 10 — 4:00 a.m. Waltraut Anlauf, a telephone operator in Friedland Refugee Camp, Lower Saxony, Germany, sees small, elongated flashes at a great height in the sky. They look like cigars and are luminescent white in front and bluish-white in back. She sees about 10 objects pass per minute. Sometimes there is an interruption of about 10 minutes, and then new groups appear. The sighting lasts one hour. Possibly these are part of the Taurid meteor shower. (Clark III 529)
October 10 — The defense staff in Sweden admits it cannot explain the ghost rockets because reports are too vague.
About 80% appear to be meteors (“celestial phenomena”), although radar has tracked a few unusual targets. The report concludes that they are not V-type bombs. (“Swedish Inquiry Fails to Solve Rocket Case,” New York Times, October 11, 1946, p. 3; Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed.,
pp. 71–72; Good Above, p. 23)
October 21 — Two persons on the shore of a lake in southern Sweden hear a whistling sound in the air, like a “flock of birds.” They see an object moving over the trees at a low altitude. It is dart-shaped and has short wings and a “ball-shaped tip.” It falls into the lake and possibly explodes on impact. (Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed., p. p. 74)
November — The War Department issues a press release on how German scientists are helping out at Wright Field, Ohio. (Dolan, p. 12)
November 29 — A top secret Air Intelligence report, “Significant Developments of Scientific Warfare in Russia,” designates the ghost rockets as “V-5” weapons produced by the Siebel Works in Halle, Germany. (Jan Aldrich, “Investigating the Ghost Rockets,” IUR 23, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 13)
December 3 — The Swedish military reports that about 100 impacts were investigated by the Defense Research Institution and not found to be rockets. (Joel Carpenter, “Guided Missiles and UFOs: A Tangle of Fear, 1937–53, Part Three”)
December 10 — Gen. Curtis LeMay answers an inquiry from Assistant Secretary of War for Air Stuart Symington about establishing interim projects at the Air Materiel Center (AMC). LeMay’s answer: The Commander of AMC on his own volition may establish an interim project; however, to continue the project it must be approved for the next budget cycle. (Air Force Historical Research Agency, Maxwell AFB; Jan Aldrich, “Secret Twining Letter: ‘The Reported Phenomena Are Real,’” October 11, 2008)
December 23 — Jacobsson’s ghost rocket committee issues its final report on 987 ghost rocket cases, stating that 225 reports had been made in full daylight. More than 100 reports describe spool-shaped objects with or without wings. It concludes: “Despite the extensive effort, which has been carried out with the means available, and seven
months after the first observations, no actual proof that a test of rocket projectiles has taken place over Sweden has been found.” (Swords 26; Loren E. Gross, UFO’s, a History: 1946, the Ghost Rockets, The Author, 1988 ed.,
pp. 75–76; Anders Liljegren and Clas Svahn, “The Ghost Rockets,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, p. 36)
1947
1947 — Cmdr. Bernard Baruch Jr. makes 44 trips at his own expense to lobby for the implementation of the peacetime Communication Instruction for Reporting Enemy Sightings (CIRES) message system. He meets with DCI Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, Rear Adm. Roscoe Hillenkoetter, Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington, Rear Adm. Earl
E. Stone, Vice Adm. Arthur W. Radford, Rear Adm. John E. Gingrich, Adm. DeWitt Clinton Ramsey, Maj. Gen. Robert W. Harper, Lieut. Gen Idwal H. Edwards, Vice Adm. Ralph Riggs, Capt. Richard Burke (USCG), and about 20 other officials. (NICAP, “Capt. Bernard Baruch, Jr.”)
1947 — 11:00 p.m. Air Force pilot Edwin T. Yeoman is returning home with his wife Eva after going to a movie in Sacramento, California. As they drive northeast, they see a stationary light hovering at an altitude of 3,000–4,000 feet above Roseville. After watching it for 5 minutes, the light gets brighter, rises vertically for several thousand feet, makes an abrupt 90° turn, and shoots across the horizon from east to west. (CUFOS case file)
January 1 — The civilian US Atomic Energy Commission assumes responsibility for nuclear energy from the wartime Manhattan Project. The Armed Forces Special Weapons Project assumes responsibility for all aspects of nuclear weapons remaining under military control. (Wikipedia, “United States Atomic Energy Commission”; Wikipedia, “Armed Forces Special Weapons Project”)
January 9 — The US Defense Department’s Intelligence Review, no. 49, contains a four-page summary of ghost rocket sightings and suggests some may have been Soviet test missiles or jet airplanes. (“Ghost Rockets over Scandinavia,” Intelligence Review, no. 49, January 9, 1947, US Department of Defense; Don Berliner, Marie Galbraith, and Antonio Huneeus, Unidentified Flying Objects Briefing Document, UFO Research Coalition, December 1995, pp. 33–35)
January 16 —11:30 p.m. An RAF Mosquito plane chases an unidentified target detected on radar at RAF Trimley Heath Radar Station [now closed] near Felixstowe, Suffolk, England, moving at a speed calculated to be faster than sound at an altitude of 38,000 feet over the North Sea, 50 miles north of the Netherlands acoast. It descends to 17,000 feet and takes controlled, evasive action. The plane pursues it for 40 minutes, even though the pilot cannot see it visually, until he loses it over the Norfolk coast. (UFOFiles2, p. 29; ClearIntent, p. 151; Sparks, p. 16; David Clarke, “Operation Charlie,” 2002; Martin L. Shough, “A New Study of the British ‘Ghost Airplanes’ of 1947,” April 2009)
January 17 — 11:37 p.m. After two unidentified targets similar to yesterday’s are reported by RAF Neatishead, northeast of Norwich, England, over the North Sea, another radar track enters the Eastern Sector area, and an RAF Mosquito piloted by Flight Lt. William Kent is scrambled to 18,000 feet. Kent attempts to close in, but his onboard radar is unable to keep it on track because the target is “jerking violently” and taking evasive action.
After 20 minutes, the target descends below 2,000 feet and is lost from ground radar. Unofficially the radar operators give the intruder a name—Charlie—and when the Air Ministry later begins a concerted effort to solve the mystery, its code name is “Operation Charlie.” (Martin L. Shough, “A New Study of the British ‘Ghost Airplanes’ of 1947,” April 2009)
January 20 — In London, Ben Lockspeiser, chief scientist for the UK Ministry of Supply, after meeting with Swedish scientists and air force authorities, informs the American naval attaché in London, England, Cmdr. Jenkins, that the Swedes doubt the rockets are from Russia but prefer that the US and UK continue to think so. Natural phenomena and popular imagination are considered the causes. (Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 January 1st–June 23rd, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2000, pp. 3–5)
January 23 — Night. Three senior RAF officers are visiting RAF Neatishead in Norfolk, England, for an interception exercise when an unidentified radar target makes another appearance at 28,000 feet. RAF Mosquitos from Yorkshire are scrambled, but by the time the aircraft reach the area, the target is gone. (Martin L. Shough, “A New Study of the British ‘Ghost Airplanes’ of 1947,” April 2009)
January 27 — RAF Flying Officer Stewart of the Northern Signals Area, after investigating the Operation Charlie radar incidents at RAF Neatishead, England, issues a report, no longer extant, that suggests that some of the targets are radiosonde balloons released by the USAAF’s 8th Weather Squadron in Downham Market, Norfolk. However,
RAF and Air Ministry sources continue to refer to the sightings as unexplained over the following months. (Martin L. Shough, “A New Study of the British ‘Ghost Airplanes’ of 1947,” April 2009)
January 29 — Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson and Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal issue a memorandum that formally establishes the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, a new agency to take over responsibility for the aspects of nuclear weapons that still remain under the military. It is to be jointly staffed by the Army and Navy. Los Alamos Laboratory’s ordnance engineering Z Division and AFSWP establish themselves at Sandia Base, New Mexico, bringing the strict secrecy that has prevails at Los Alamos. (Wikipedia, “Armed Forces Special Weapons Project”)
February 6 — Around 7:30 a.m., Frederick Walter Flavel and his wife Emma are walking to their house in Lock, South Australia, when they see five gray, oblong objects rise apparently from the sea and move from northwest to southeast. At 9:00 a.m., Ronald Ernest Ellis and two other railroad workers in Port Augusta, South Australia, watch five white or light-pink egg-shaped objects moving across the sky from north to south at about 6,000 feet. They quiver, cast shadows on the ground, and move out of sight in a few seconds. (NICAP, “Five Objects Cast Shadows”; Chris Aubeck and Martin Shough, Return to Magonia: Investigating UFOs in History, Anomalist, 2015, pp. 329–350)
February 8 — A US Navy Privateer bomber flying over Sweden picks up signals that might be directing rockets. (Letter from US Naval Forces Europe, London, to Chief of Naval Operations; Jan Aldrich)
February 17 — Capt. J. B. Pearson Jr., US naval attaché in London, England, sends an intelligence report to the Chief of Naval Intelligence about his conversation with Col. Westergard, head of the Airplane Design Section for the Swedish Air Ministry. Westergard tells him some 40% of the 1,000 ghost rocket sightings are “reliable.” They seem to originate in Peenemünde, Germany, and fly toward Finland. The best observation is from an artillery officer who sees an object in his optical range finder and follows it for about 90 seconds. It is in level flight at 4.5 miles distance and is about 36 feet long and torpedo shaped. (Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 January 1st–June 23rd, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2000, p. 7)
February 28 —Capt. Emmet O’Beirne, Chief of the Defensive Air Branch, writes a memorandum to the chief of the USAF Office of Air Intelligence about the branch’s interview with H. W. Flickinger, vice president for exports at Republic Aircraft Corp. after his return from Sweden: “He stated that he had seen one of the Swedish ‘spook rockets’ in flight, which resembled the V-1 buzz bomb but was somewhat smaller. The noise of this missile was more that of a rocket than like a V-1.” (Jan Aldrich)
March 21 — A cigar-shaped object with smoke coming from its tail is seen flying from east to west at considerable height over southern Sweden by several witnesses. It looks metallic and is about 60 feet long, flying slowly. The object seems to turn around and fly back eastward briefly. (“‘Phantom Bomb’ Returns to Skies over Sweden,” New York Times, March 22, 1947, p. 8; Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 January 1st–June 23rd, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2000, p. 9)
April — The June 1947 issue of Amazing Stories is devoted in its entirety to “proofs” of Richard Shaver’s claims and includes four of his novellas. Vincent Gaddis has written a prescient article on UFOs, titled “Visitors from the Void.” (David Halperin, “The Shaver Mystery—Richard Shaver, Ray Palmer, and the Quest for Lemuria (Part 2),” July 11, 2014; Richard S. Shaver, “Formula from the Underworld,” Amazing Stories 21, no. 6 (June 1947):
10–29; Vincent H. Gaddis, “Visitors from the Void,” Amazing Stories 21, no. 6 (June 1947): 159–161)
April — 11:00 a.m. US Weather Bureau meteorologist Walter A. Minczewski watches a silvery disc through a theodolite while tracking a ceiling balloon in Richmond, Virginia. It is traveling east to west at less than 15,000 feet and has a flat bottom and a dome on top. (NICAP, “Silvery Disc Seen through Theodolite”; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, p. 62; Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 January 1st–June 23rd, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2000, pp. 17–21; Sparks, p. 16)
April 15 — The US Naval Attaché in Stockholm issues a secret intelligence report, “Sweden: Guided Missiles, Alleged Rockets over Sweden.” Both the naval and military attachés agree that there is nothing to the ghost rocket episode. No foreign missiles have overflown or landed in Sweden, according to the evidence a, vailable. “Swedish officials prefer to dismiss it as an unexplained press sensation.” (Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 January 1st–June 23rd, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2000, p. 16)
April 17 — Col. Oliver G. Haywood Jr. of the Atomic Energy Commission writes a memorndum to Harold A. Fidler at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, saying: “It is desired that no document be released which
refers to experiments with humans and might have adverse effect on public opinion or result in legal suits. Documents covering such work should be classified ‘secret.’” (Advisory Committtee on Human Radiation Experiments, memo, “Documents Retrieved from Oak Ridge Operations: The Atomic Energy Commission’s Declassification Review of Reports on Human Experiments and the Public Relations and Legal Liability Consequences,” December 6, 1994; Wikipedia, “Unethical human experimentation in the United States”)
Late April or early May — 12:05 p.m. Mrs. William Down and Mrs. H. G. Olavick of Tucson, Arizona, see an unusual, fleecy cloud in an otherwise cloudless sky. Moving around it in “yo-yo fashion” are a number of small discs with a dull-white finish. They move up and down and sideways, occasionally disappearing into or behind the cloud.
They watch the objects for 5–7 minutes, then all the discs disappear above the cloud, while a larger object emerges from the cloud and moves eastward. Behind it comes a V-formation of nine of the smaller discs, which then climbs at high speed toward the northeast and disappears in 2–3 seconds. The witnesses assume the objects are some new type of aircraft. (Bloecher, p. ix; Herbert S. Taylor, “Satellite Objects and Cloud Cigars,” IUR 29, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 4)
May — 9:00 p.m. Harry Bentrup Jr. is on his porch in Jennings, Missouri, when a circular object surrounded by a ring of luminous green lights swoops in quickly from the east, hovers above him for 15 seconds, then takes off to the west. (MUFON case file)
May 1? — Mrs. W. C. Clark of Memphis, Tennessee, watches two objects “like tennis balls” fly over her yard. (“Three Memphians Say They Saw Objects,” Memphis (Tenn.) Commercial Appeal, July 7, 1947, p. 2)
May 1 — Rear Adm. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter replaces Hoyt Vandenberg as Director of Central Intelligence. ()
May 5 — Hillenkoetter writes to Baruch, saying that his CIRES plan is “on the verge of being put into effect.” (Jan Aldrich)
May 10 — Rose Slawuta of Newark, New Jersey, sees a shining, elliptical object with a gold band around it approaching fron the west. (Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger, July 7, 1947; Bloecher, p. I-2)
May 14 — 8:30 p.m. A spherical object 3-4 feet in diameter is seen over Budapest, Hungary, passing southeast to northwest at about 3,000 feet altitude in a flat trajectory. (Allied Control Commission for Hungary; George Mitrovic, The Gateways to the Gods, Kindle, 2012)
May 15 — 4:11 p.m. A Hermes test missile (V-2) at White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico, goes off course and lands 6 miles east of Alamogordo five and a half minutes after launch. Commanding Officer Lt. Col. Harold R. Turner blames “peculiar phenomena” for the accident. The official explanation is that the V-2 had a defective fin. Trade consultant and former state representative Jon Andrew Kissner finds evidence in 1994 that possibly another object was seen in the vicinity of the rocket after the launch that might have been responsible for the failed test. (“V-2 Goes Astray, Lands in Six Miles of Alamogordo,” Las Cruces (N.Mex.) Sun-News, May 16, 1947, p. 1; Good Need, pp. 55–57; Wikipedia, “Hermes program”)
May 17 or 19 — 8:30 p.m. Byron B. Savage, an RCA field engineer, sees a frosty-white or silvery elliptical object about the size of a B-29 heading northwest at 10,000 feet over Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, at three times the speed of a jet (about 1,800 mph). As it noiselessly passes overhead, it appears to be circular. (NICAP, “Round and Flat Object Observed by Field Engineer”; Oklahoma City Times, June 26, 1947; Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 January 1st–June 23rd, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2000, pp. 27–28; Sparks, p. 16)
May 19 — Around 12:30 p.m. Navy veteran Dean A. Hauser and six other Pike’s Peak Railway workers (including Ted Weigand, Marion Hisshouse, T. J. Smith, L. D. Jamison) at Manitou Springs, Colorado, are taking a lunch break when they watch a silver object come in from the northwest, hover overhead, and gyrate at 1,000 feet. The UFO is moving “erratically in wide circles” and reflects light like it is made of metal. After 20 minutes it disappears in a straight line to the west-northwest. (“Manitou Vets Relate Story: Another ‘Disk’ Seen,” Denver Post, June 28, 1947, p. 1; Bloecher, p. I-1; Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 January 1st–June 23rd, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2000, pp. 29–30)
Late May — 11:00 a.m. Colden R. Battey, a physician from Augusta, Georgia, is fishing 10 miles off St. Helena Sound, near Beaufort, South Carolina. He notices a formation of four disc-like objects flying overhead in a southeasterly direction at a terrific rate of speed. The discs appear to be spinning on their axes and are at an estimated altitude of 20,000 feet. They are silvery and appear highly polished, and on their undersides Battey can see a circular rim or projection, about one-quarter of the way from the edges. No sound is heard as they fly overhead. The formation speeds out of view in less than 20 seconds. (NICAP, “Four Discs Flying Overhead”; Bloecher, p. I-2)
May 29 — 7:30 p.m. A Hermes II test missile (a modified V-2) is launched from White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico to test the “Organ,” a series of ramjet air intakes designed to take pressure measurements. The missile travels south instead of north and lands in the Tepeyac Cemetery, 3 miles south of Juárez, Mexico, creating an
international incident. It leaves a crater 50 feet wide and 24 feet deep. German scientists Wernher Von Braun and Ernst Steinhoff are conducting the test. (Wikipedia, “Hermes program”; J. Terry White, “The Hermes II Incident,” White Eagle Aerospace, May 2, 2011)
June — AMC civilian engineer W. R. Presley takes a muddy photo of a UFO at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. It is most likely a photographic flaw. (Hynek UFO Report, p. 142)
June 2 — Private pilot Forrest Wenyon is flying over Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and sees a silvery, jar-shaped object cross in front of his plane. It has a silver-white, fiery exhaust. (NICAP, “Jar-Shaped Object Crosses in Front of Aircraft”; Bloecher, p. III-9; Sparks, p. 16)
June 4 — Project Mogul flight number 4 is allegedly launched from Alamogordo Army Air Field. (Kevin D. Randle, “The Project Mogul Flights and Roswell,” IUR 19, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1994): 6–7, 23; Robert J. Durant, “Project Mogul Still a Flight of Fancy,” IUR 26, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 17–27; David Rudiak, “The Phony Mogul Balloon Trajectory,” 2002; Kevin D. Randle, “Mogul and Roswell,” A Different Perspective,” July 11, 2013; Kevin D. Randle, “A Few Facts about Project Mogul,” A Different Perspective, August 12, 2013; Kevin D. Randle, “Truth about Mogul,” A Different Perspective, April 4, 2016)
June 9 — A still-unlocated air intelligence summary is released, alleging that the Soviets in eastern Siberia are producing (or may be able to produce) 1,400 (or 1,800) aircraft based on the Horten brothers’ VIII-type, low-aspect, disc- shaped design by 1952. A Russian aviation historian thinks that the factories in question are at the time producing copies of the German Messerschmidt Me 262 jet fighter. A correct, more detailed summary of the intelligence report is published in December 1948 in Air Intelligence Report Number 100-203-79, “Analysis of Flying Object Incidents in the U.S.” (Jan Aldrich)
June 10 — 3:30 p.m. Gyorik Ferenc and others on Arena Street [modern Dózsa György út] in Budapest, Hungary, watch four yellow-red discs moving toward the northwest in a straight-line formation for about 30 seconds. They are about 165 feet apart. The objects make a small arc around a corner of a park before disappearing. (Project Blue Book record; Joe Brill, “UFOs behind the Iron Curtain,” Skylook, no. 76, March 1974, p. 8)
June 12 — 6:15 p.m. Lovena Erickson sees two high-speed, round objects at a high altitude over Weiser, Idaho. They move up and down twice and leave a vapor trail that persists for more than an hour. (NICAP, “June 12, 1947, Weiser, Idaho”; Bloecher, p. II-8; Sparks, p. 17)
June 18 — Day. E. H. Sprinkle is one of a half-dozen Eugene, Oregon, residents who spot a formation of round objects “racing overhead” on a course to the northeast. Watching from Skinner’s Butte outside town. Sprinkle takes a snapshot of the objects with an inexpensive camera as they race over. Enlargements of the photograph show “seven dots” in a formation “shaped like an X or a Y, lined up across the sky.” Newspaper photographers say the dots “might be a fault in the developing process” that sometimes appears on a negative that has not been agitated properly in the developer. (“Local Man Asserts Flights Seen Here,” Eugene (Oreg.) Guard, June 26, 1947, p. 1; Bloecher, p. IV-3)
June 19 — USAAF Col. Albert Boyd reaches a world airspeed record of 624 mph in a Lockheed P-80R Shooting Star at Muroc AFB [later Edwards AFB], California. (Wikipedia, “Albert Boyd”)
June 19 — Maj. Gen. Stephen Chamberlin, head of War Department Intelligence, authorizes three electronic signals intelligence flights between July 1 and August 1 to look for radio signals over the Baltic Sea. The Swedish military is told that they are training flights. (Jan Aldrich)
June 21 — 11:55 a.m. Guy R. Overman watches several silvery objects moving below a plane at Spokane, Washington. (NICAP, “Eight Disc-Shaped Objects As Big As a House”; Bloecher, p. II-18; Sparks, p. 17)
June 21 — Log salvager Harold A. Dahl is patrolling east of Maury Island, Washington, with his 15-year-old son Charles and two crewmen when he allegedly sees six doughnut-shaped objects. Five of them are circling the sixth, which seems distressed. When it is directly above the boat at 500 feet, it supposedly spews some hot slag-like material that breaks Charles’s arm and kills his dog. Dahl claims he filmed the objects. (Clark III 721; John A. Keel, “The Maury Island Caper,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, pp. 40–43)
June 22 — Dahl claims he is visited by a mysterious dark-suited man who knows all about the sighting. He tells his associate Fred L. Crisman, and they allegedly go to the beach to pick up fragments. Dahl mails Ray Palmer in Chicago, Illinois, some fragments. (Clark III 721; Kenn Thomas, Maury Island UFO: The Crisman Conspiracy, IllumiNet, 1999; Charlette LeFevre and Philip Lipson, “The Maury Island UFO Incident,” February 2014)
June 22 — Edward Louis DeRose in Greenfield, Massachusetts, sees a small, round-shaped, silvery-white object moving in a northwesterly direction faster than a speeding plane at an estimated altitude of 1,000 feet. The object stays in view for 8–10 seconds until obscured by a cloud bank. It reflects the sunlight strongly as if is made of polished aluminum or silver. (Air Force Base Intelligence Report, “Flying Discs,” July 30, 1947; Kevin D. Randle, “Roswell, Nathan Twining, and the Mini-EOTS,” A Different Perspective, October 6, 2014)
June 22 — 3:30 p.m. G. Oliver Dickson sees a shiny disc “a little like a blimp” flying north to south about 3,000 feet above Mount Franklin just north of El Paso, Texas. He estimates it is about 40 feet across and 5 feet thick. (“More El Pasoans Report Seeing ‘Flying Discs’ in Southwest,” El Paso (Tex.) Times, June 29, 1947, pp. 1–2)
June 22 — Evening. Yale University astrophysicist Lyman Spitzer is speaking on WTIC radio in Hartford, Connecticut, and speculates that if life on Mars developed a bit earlier than on earth, it is possible that Martians have been civilized for millions of years. “Unless they had spent some time in a large city or had landed sufficiently recently to be photographed, we would have no record of their being here,” he says, and that “any few men who had seen them would probably not be believed by anyone else.” (“Mars May Be Peopled, Says Yale Speaker,” Hartford (Conn.) Courant, June 23, 1947, p. 1; Clark III 455)
June 23 — Afternoon. Disabled stunt pilot Richard Rankin views 10 flat, circular objects flying in a V-formation over his house in Bakersfield, California. About two hours later, 7 of the objects are seen flying in the opposite direction. (Bloecher, p. II-3; Sparks, p. 17; Kevin D. Randle, “More Pre-Arnold UFO Sightings,” A Different Perspective, June 30, 2013)
June 23 — 9:30 p.m. Richard L. Bitters and his wife Martha are returning from a movie in Wapakoneta, Ohio, when they see a saucer-like object flying an uneven course in the sky. (“Saucer Just Didn’t Fit Editor’s Idea of a ‘Scoop,’” Madison Wisconsin State Journal, July 7, 1947, p. 2; Bloecher, p. III-6)
June 24 (or 30) — Afternoon. Bill Schuening, a farmer, is driving his pickup truck down a remote rural road 25 miles north of Pendleton, Oregon, when he hears a loud humming sound. Coming over a rise, he sees in a nearby field a large disc-shaped object hovering 5–6 feet off the ground. He can also see two short (3 feet tall) figures wearing green suits and white helmets standing underneath the object. The figures suddenly vanish, and the craft then shoots towards the Columbia River, makes a big circle, and flies towards the mountains. (NICAP, “Man Sees Figures Standing near Disc”; Clark III 267; Patrick Gross, URECAT, November 7, 2018)
June 24 — 1:50 p.m. Railroad engineer Charles Kastl sees 9 or 10 spinning discs in the air about 12 miles east of Joliet, Illinois. They are a string of flat circular objects “going faster than anything I’ve ever seen.” Kastl can see no connecting link between them, but they act as though the leading disc has a motor in it to power the others, because when it flips, the others do as well. When it rights itself, the others also right themselves. (“Flying Discs Seen by Railroad Man,” Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette, June 28, 1947, p. 2; Schopick, pp. 1–2; NICAP, “Engineer Reports 10 Shiny Flat Discs”; Kevin D. Randle, “The June 23, 1947 UFO Sighting,” A Different Perspective, March 20, 2013)
June 24 — 3:00 p.m. Boise, Idaho, businessman Kenneth Arnold, flying his CallAir Model A-2 from Chehalis to Yakima, Washington, sees a string of nine objects flying in an echelon formation past Mount Rainier, Washington. At first he assumes they are jets, but he can see no trails. They cover the 50-mile distance between Rainier and another peak in 1 minute 42 seconds. He estimates their speed to be at least 1,200 mph. The objects swerve in and out of the smaller peaks, flipping from side to side in unison, dipping, and presenting their lateral surfaces, which reflect the bright sunlight and cause the flashes he saw earlier. They are in view for about two and a half minutes and are last seen heading south over the last high peak of Mount Adams. Arnold tells the airport staff about it in Yakima at 4:00 p.m. and they call ahead to Pendleton, Oregon, to alert them of Arnold’s arrival at an air show and his story. A large crowd awaits him, and a discussion follows. The consensus is that Arnold has seen guided missiles. But no such technology exists at the time that can match the objects’ description and performance, and the late 1990s explanation that Arnold observed a flight of white pelicans is equally improbable. Researcher Martin Shough concludes in 2010: “Examination of the sighting report in detail improves its evident internal consistency, rather than degrading it, and study of the principal contending explanations reveals that they are each very much less attractive when tried out in quantitative detail against the best information than they may appear at first sight.” (Wikipedia, “Kenneth Arnold UFO Sighting”; [Project Blue Book file]; NICAP, “Kenneth Arnold Sighting”; Center for UFO Studies, [clippings and reports]; Kenneth Arnold and Ray Palmer, The Coming of the Saucers, Palmer, 1952, pp. 9–13; Bloecher, p. I-2–3; Patrick Gross, “The Kenneth Arnold Sighting, June 24, 1947”; Kim Hansen, “UFO Casebook,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, pp. 48–53; John A. Keel, “Kenneth Arnold and the F.B.I.,” Flying Saucer Review 32, no. 5 (August 1987): 2–12; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 1, 1947, The Author, February 1991, pp. 5–9; Bruce Maccabee, “The Arnold Phenomenon: Part One,” IUR 20, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1995): 14–17; Bruce Maccabee, “The Arnold Phenomenon: Part Two,” IUR 20, no. 2 (Mar./Apr. 1995): 10–13, 24; Michael David Hall and Wendy Ann Connors, Alfred Loedding and the Great Flying Saucer Wave of 1947, Rose Press, 1998, pp. 14–22; Don Berliner, with Marie Galbreath and Antonio Huneeus, UFO Briefing Document: The Best Available Evidence, Dell, 2000, pp. 54–59; Martin Shough, “The Singular Adventure of Mr. Kenneth Arnold,” June 2010; Bruce Maccabee, Three Minutes in June: The UFO Sighting That Changed the World, The Author, 2017; Nigel Watson, “Was It a Bird? Was It a Plane?” Fortean Times 355 (July 2017): 46–49; Clark III 169)
June 24 — 3:30 p.m. Idaho Lieutenant Governor Donald S. Whitehead and Justice of the Peace Jacob M. Lampert see an object with a brilliant head and a smoky tail from an office window in downtown Boise, Idaho. It dips from view after about 20 minutes. (“Whitehead, Lampert, Join ‘Disc List,’” Boise Idaho Statesman, July 3, 1947, p. 9; Bloecher, pp. III-18–19)
June 24 — Afternoon. Fred M. Johnson, a prospector in the Mount Adams, Oregon, area, sees 5-6 oval objects with tails about 30 feet in diameter. He watches one through a telescope. They are not flying in any sort of formation and as they bank in a turn, the sunlight flashes off them. As they approach, Johnson notices that his compass begins to spin wildly. When the objects finally vanish in the distance, the compass returns to normal. Johnson’s report is the very first “unidentified” case in the Project Sign files. (NICAP, “Prospector Compass Incident”; Bloecher, p. IV- 3; Clark III 170–171; Bruce Maccabee, “The Arnold Phenomenon: Part Three,” IUR 20, no. 3 (May/June 1995): 6–7; Martin Shough, “The Singular Adventure of Mr. Kenneth Arnold,” June 2010, pp. 106, 109–110; Randle, Levelland, 2021, pp. 58–59)
June 25 — Kenneth Arnold goes to the East Oregonian office in Pendleton, Oregon, and speaks with reporters Nolan Skiff and William C. Bequette. Arnold says the “saucer-like” objects were racing over the Cascade Mountains with a peculiar weaving motion “like the tail of a Chinese kite.” Bill Bequette writes the first saucer news story for the newspaper. He does not use the term “flying saucer,” but headline writers in other papers use it (such as the Philadelphia Inquirer on June 26), and reporters start picking it up. (“Impossible! Maybe, But Seein’ Is Believin’, Says Flier,” Pendleton East Oregonian, June 25, 1947, p. 1; “Flying Saucers Puzzle Pilot,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 26, 1947, p. 1; Clark III 170; Kenneth Arnold and Ray Palmer, The Coming of the Saucers, 1952, Palmer, pp. 13–15; Pierre Lagrange, “A Moment in History: An Interview with Bill Bequette,” IUR 23, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 15, 20; “Saturday Night Uforia: ‘It Seems Impossible—But There It Is,’” Daily Kos, April 18, 2009; Phil Wright, “The Sighting,” Portland East Oregonian, June 16, 2017)
June 25 — Shortly after 12:00 noon. W. I. Davenport is working on the roof of a house at 82nd Street and Holmes Road in Kansas City, Missouri, when he hears the sound of a motor. Looking up, he sees 9 objects approaching from the east. They are aluminum-colored and leave vapor trails. (“Puzzle in Sky Whiz,” Kansas City (Mo.) Star, June 26, 1947, p. 6)
June 26 — 2:00 a.m. Mrs. J. M. Harrison watches a large fireball pass toward the northwest from her residence at 4639 South Oakenwald, Chicago, Illinois. It breaks up into two dozen small discs that whirl around rapidly. (“Dr. Urey Scoffs at ‘Atom Angle’ to Flying Disks,” Chicago Tribune, July 6, 1947, p. 8)
June 26 — Kenneth Arnold is interviewed live on KWRC radio in Pendleton, Oregon, by broadcaster Theodore A. “Ted” Smith. (Patrick Gross, “About the June 25, 1947, Interview on WKPG Radio by Bill Bequette”; “Kenneth Arnold Interviewed by Bill Bequette [actually Ted Smith],” Nutsandbolts UFO YouTube channel, December 12, 2010)
June 26 — Northrop delivers a second four-engine XB-35 flying wing aircraft to Muroc AFB [now Edwards AFB], California. (Wikipedia, “Northrop YB-35”)
June 27 — 9:50 a.m. Mrs. W. B. Cummings is driving about 5 miles southeast of San Antonio, New Mexico, when she sees a bright silver object descending quickly in the east. It leaves a short white trail. White Sands officials say there has been no missile testing since June 12. (“More El Pasoans Report Seeing ‘Flying Discs’ in Southwest,” El Paso (Tex.) Times, June 29, 1947, p. 1)
June 27 — Pentagon Army AF Public Relations Officer Capt. Tom Brown says the army has no idea what the discs are. (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 1, 1947, The Author, February 1991, p. 16)
June 27 — In a United Press dispatch from Pendleton, Oregon, Kenneth Arnold expresses frustration over the furor that his saucer sighting has caused. A preacher has called him from Texas to say that the flying discs are “harbinger of doomsday.” A woman recognizes Arnold in a Pendleton café and runs out shrieking that he is “the man who saw the men from Mars.” He says the whole thing has gotten out of hand: “Half the people I see look at me as a combination Einstein, Flash Gordon, and screwball. I wonder what my wife back in Idaho thinks.” (“Report of ‘Flying Saucers’ Causes Furor; Texas Preacher Calls Flock for World’s End,” Medford (Oreg.) Mail Tribune, June 27, 1947, p. 1)
June 27 — Day. Capt. Robert D. Dwan, a pilot out of Alamogordo Army Air Field [now Holloman AFB], New Mexico, is flying a private plane near Engle, New Mexico, at 3,000 feet, when he looks down and sees a “ball of fire, with a fiery blue tail behind it.” The object is about 2,000 feet below him, and he is “certain it is a meteorite.” The object disintegrates as he watches it. (Bloecher, pp. III-9–10)
June 27 — Afternoon. Clyde Homan sees two groups of loosely bunched objects, rocking back and forth as they fly noiselessly above Woodland, Washington. The objects are bright, flat, and moving at an estimated 600 mph. (Bloecher, pp. II-1–2)
June 28 — 1:15 p.m. Lieut. Eric B. Armstrong, flying an F-51 at 6,000 feet 30 miles north of Lake Mead, Nevada, sees a formation of 5–6 objects streak by his plane. They are in close formation at an estimated speed of 285 mph. (NICAP, “Formation of 5–6 Objects Head toward P-51”; Bloecher, p. III-10; Sparks, p. 17)
June 28 — 9:20 p.m. Two pilots and two intelligence officers (Capt. Wilson H. Kayko, Capt. John H. Cantrell, 1st Lt. Theodore Dewey, and Capt. Redman) at Maxwell Field [now Maxwell AFB] in Montgomery, Alabama, see a bright light zigzagging across the sky for 25 minutes. When it is directly overhead, the UFO makes a sharp 90° turn and disappears to the south. (NICAP, “Object Zig-Zags with Bursts of Speed”; Bloecher, p. III-3; Sparks, p. 18)
June 29 — 1:15 p.m. Carl J. Zohn, a guided missile expert with the Naval Research Laboratory, is 20 miles east-northeast of Las Cruces, New Mexico, to observe a V-2 rocket launch scheduled for July 3. Between 1:00 and 1:30 p.m., he is riding out to the testing grounds with John R. Kauke and NRL scientist Curtis C. Rockwood (and his wife Nancy) when they see a silvery disc flying at 8,000–10,000 feet. It has no appendages, wings, tail, or propellers. After about 60 seconds it disappears. (NICAP, “Naval Research Lab Rocket Scientists See Silver Discs”; Bloecher, p. III-18; Sparks, p. 18; Evelyne Tsezana, “Grandpa Zohn Saw UFOs in New Mexico,” Geni, April 6, 2011)
June 30 — 9:10 a.m. Naval Lt. William G. McGinty is flying a P-80 from Williams AFB [now Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport], Arizona, near the Grand Canyon when he observes two circular objects diving at inconceivable speed and landing 25 miles south of the canyon. (NICAP, “P-80 Pilot Sees Circular Objects Dive and Land”; Bloecher, p. II-12; Sparks, p. 18)
June 30 — Eighth Air Force Brig. Gen. Roger M. Ramey and intelligence officer Col. Alfred Kalberer hold a press conference in Fort Worth, Texas, on the flying discs. Ramey thinks people are “seeing heat waves.” Kalberer labels the sightings as “Buck Rogers stuff.” (Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 June 24th–July 6th, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2000, p. 17)
June 30 — Around this time the Air Force Research and Development office of the Air Materiel Command organizes an informal project at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, to collect UFO reports in the interests of national security. The project officer at Wright Field is Lt. Col. Edward G. Nabell Jr. (Sparks, p. 13)
Summer — Naval Cmdr. L. H. Witherspoon sees a disc-shaped UFO flash over the airport at Pittsburg, Kansas. (UFOEv, p. 30)
Early July — A cyclist near Amfreville-la-Mi-Voie, Seine-Maritime, France, encounters an oval object, 10 feet long and 5 feet high, resting on the road 100 feet in front of her. Two small beings dressed in outfits and headgear are busy around it. When she honks her horn, the entities scurry into the object, entering it through a 20-inch opening. The UFO rises, oscillates, and streaks away. (Clark III 267; Patrick Gross, URECAT, August 81, 2006)
July 1 — Day. Animal ecologist Charles K. Gunn, his wife, and two passengers are driving near North Bedeque, Prince Edward Island, when they see a bright, shapeless object speeding along in the sky for 30 seconds. (Bloecher, p. III-18)
July 1 — A target is picked up on radar at Chitose Air Base, Hokkaido, Japan, moving 16 miles north at speeds in excess of 500 mph. The blip instantly reverses course four times, breaks into two objects, then merges into one again. (Col. James F. Olive Jr., “Radar Pick-Ups of High-Speed Targets in the Far East,” Memorandum for Assistant Chief of Air Staff, Washington, D.C., September 26, 1947)
July 1 — Col. Alfred Kalberer holds another press conference in Fort Worth, Texas, and brings astronomer Oscar Monnig along to comment that the discs are “an interesting study in human psychology.” (Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 June 24th–July 6th, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2000,
pp. 23–24)
July 1 — Night. Albuquerque, New Mexico, Chamber of Commerce official Max Hood sees a bluish disc zigzagging for about 30 seconds. (Bloecher, p. III-17; Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 June 24th–July 6th, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2000, pp. 23)
July 1 — 10:10 p.m. Meteorologist Ellwood E. Unger and his wife watch a round, orange, luminous object going about 100 mph after they leave a movie theater in Louisville, Kentucky. (Bloecher, p. III-2; Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 June 24th–July 6th, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2000,
p. 23)
July 1? — 11:00 p.m. Mrs. A. M. King is with another passenger on the deck of the Union-Castle Mail SS Llandovery Castle as it is steaming through the Mozambique Channel. They notice a star-like object traveling fast toward the ship. It shines a strong beam of light on the water within 150 feet of the ship, then descends, the beam shortening and becoming brighter as it nears the water. Soon the light switches off and they can see a metallic object that looks like a cigar with the end cut off. It remains about 20 feet above the sea, moving parallel with the ship. King
estimates it is about four times the length of the ship and four times as tall. After a few seconds, a large flame erupts from the rear of the object. It vanishes soundlessly in the darkness. (Lorenzen, FS Hoax, pp. 18–19)
July 1–3? — According to Annie Jacobsen’s informant, EG&G engineer Alfred O’Donnell, the upcoming Roswell, New Mexico, crashes are the result of a psychological warfare operation by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to fly into US airspace two disc- or wing-shaped aircraft based on a Horton brothers design obtained at the end of World War II. One craft allegedly contains living dwarves or children (human guinea pigs) who had been surgically altered using similar methods to those used in Auschwitz concentration camp by Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. This aircraft is remotely controlled by the crew of the second craft. The idea is to land the first aircraft in a visible location in the US, perhaps in Washington, D.C. The children would exit the craft and present themselves to the highest echelons of the government. However, the two aircraft crash in the New Mexico desert and, he claims, the Atomic Energy Commission is put in charge of the remains. (Jacobsen, Area 51, pp. 367–374; Kremlin 30–36)
July 1–3 — US Signal Corps radar sites in southern New Mexico and one at Kirtland Air Force Base near Albuquerque allegedly track an object “flitting around” the sky, frequently returning but finally disappearing on the night of July 4. Much of this story originates with now-discredited Roswell witness Frank Kaufmann, who claims he was ordered to bring a group of radar experts to Alamogordo to evaluate unexplained radar targets at White Sands Missile Range. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, p. 159; Kevin D. Randle, A History of UFO Crashes, Avon, 1995, p. 8; Jim Wilson, “Roswell Plus 50,” Popular Mechanics 174 (July 1997): 48–53; Kevin D. Randle, “Frank Kaufmann, Roswell Witness,” IUR 27, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 8, 17–19; Mark Rodeghier, “Frank Kaufmann Exposed,” IUR 27, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 9–11, 26)
July 2 — 8:00 p.m. Spectators at a baseball game at the Cincinnati (Ohio) Milling Machine Company watch two slow- moving discs hovering above the field for 10 minutes. (“100 at Ball Game Tell of Seeing Two Mystery Saucers,” Cincinnati (Ohio) Post, July 7, 1947, p. 1)
July 2 — 9:50 p.m. Mr. and Mrs. Dan Wilmot see an oval object like two inverted saucers pass over their house moving northwest in Roswell, New Mexico. (Sparks, p. 19; Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, p. 159; Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, “When and Where Did the Roswell Object Crash?” IUR 19, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1994): 13–14)
July 3 — 8:55 a.m. William F. LeFevre watches a shiny, mirror-like disc zoom over River Drive near West 8th Street in Denver, Colorado, at several thousand feet and make a 45° turn before vanishing toward the southwest. (Denver Post, July 5, 1947; Michael David Hall and Wendy Ann Connors, Alfred Loedding and the Great Flying Saucer Wave of 1947, Rose Press, 1998, p. 44)
July 3 — Morning. Project Mogul Flight number 8, a cluster of plastic balloons, is launched from Holloman AFB, New Mexico. (Kevin D. Randle, “The Project Mogul Flights and Roswell,” IUR 19, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1994): 6–7, 23)
July 3 — 2:30 p.m. Amateur astronomer John F. Cole watches a group of 10 objects moving northwest near Harborside, Maine, at 600–1,200 mph. Each is 50–150 feet wide. The objects are milling about in loose formation like a “swarm of bees” for 10–15 seconds. (NICAP, “Astronomer Observes Ten Large Objects”; Bloecher, p. III-18; Sparks, p. 19; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, p. 60)
July 3 — The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the Air Research Center at Wright Field, Ohio, and the army intelligence service are looking into the flying discs. An INS dispatch states that Commander of the Army Air Force Gen. Carl Spaatz has asked Wright Field to look into such reports. Air Materiel Command’s Lt. Gen.
Nathan F. Twining tells Idaho Evening Statesman reporter David N. Johnson that officials are indeed looking into the discs and that Wright Field has no comparable technology. Lieut. William C. Anderson, Wright Field public relations officer, says there is no confirmation that the discs exist. Maj. Paul Gaynor says the Army Air Force needs more concrete information. German scientists working at Wright Field are asked about the discs, but they say they have heard nothing about any such experiments in Europe. (“Army Gets Around to Checking ‘Flying Discs’ and Is Mystified,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 3, 1947, p. 1; Dave Johnson, “AAF Investigates Reports of Mysterious Air Objects,” Boise Idaho Daily Statesman, July 3, 1947, pp. 1, 9; “Military Says ‘No Results’ in Disc Probe,” Boise Idaho Daily Statesman, July 4, 1947, p. 2; “Weird ‘Flying Saucers’ Seen over 10 States,” New York Daily News, July 4, 1947, Final ed., p. 8)
July 3 — 5:45 p.m. Farmer Ewen McNeill in Village Green, east of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, sees a black, rocket-shaped projectile trailing a blindingly white flame and a smoke trail pass overhead as he is working his fields. It seems to be flying at 10,000 feet and is visible for 15 seconds. Around the same time, a resident of Augustine Cove watches an “object the size of an apple” traveling south at high speed. (Bloecher, p. II-17; Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, p. 64)
July 3 — 6:30 p.m. Mrs. Walter Johnson and her family see 8–9 discs flying out of the southern sky 6 miles west of Saint Maries, Idaho, over the St. Joe River. The objects came in “very fast, slow down jerkily, then flutter to the ground like leaves.” Mrs. Johnson thinks the objects are about the size of a “five-room house.” When they reach a clearing in the timber, they appear to “settle Down” a few at a time. Mrs. Johnson reports the sighting to intelligence officers at the Spokane Army Air Base [now Fairchild AFB], and an intensive air search is carried out by two missions of the National Guard’s 116th Fighter Group. Local sheriff’s deputies also make a ground search, but no traces of alanding can be found. (“‘Saucer’ Reports Increase As Sky Is Searched in Vain,” Spokane (Wash.) Spokesman-Review, July 7, 1947, pp. 1, 6; “Dishman Residents Saw ‘Flying Saucers’ Land,” Spokane (Wash.) Spokesman-Review, July 7, 1947, p. 6; Bloecher, p. II-12)
July 3 — 7:30 p.m. Project Mogul Flight number 9, a cluster of plastic balloons, is launched from Holloman AFB, New Mexico. (Kevin D. Randle, “The Project Mogul Flights and Roswell,” IUR 19, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1994): 6–7, 23)
July 4 — 3:00 a.m. Lenora Woodruff wakes up in her home at 184 S. Arlington Avenue, East Orange, New Jersey, when several airplanes fly overhead. She looks out and sees a “strange goldenish platter” moving swiftly across the sky. It disappears in a second. (“South Plainfield Woman Reports Seeing ‘Flying Saucer’ Formation,” Bridgewater (N.J.) Courier-News, July 5, 1947, p.1)
July 4 — After 4:00 a.m. Mrs. Martin Kole is awakened in her home in Alexandria, Virginia, by something shining through her bedroom window. She sees a large, roiund object hovering in the southwestern sky. She watches it for a few minutes, then goes back to bed. (Bloecher, p. II-6)
July 4 — The United Press service rounds up theories about the flying discs. It quotes Army Air Force “experts” saying that the sightings might be caused by weather conditions, or meteorites, or foreign aircraft that it is “our responsibility to know about it and take proper action.” Occultist Ole J. Sneide from San Francisco, California, thinks they are “oblate spheroid space ships from other planets” with hidden bases on the dark side of the moon. This is apparently the first public mention of an extraterrestrial origin for flying saucers in the media. (“U.S. Stops ‘Laughing Off’ Stories of Flying Disks,” Hollywood (Calif.) Citizen-News, July 3, 1947, p. 1; “Flying Disks Said ‘Space Ships’ from Other Solar Systems,” Bryan (Tex.) Eagle, July 3, 1947, p. 8; “Buck Rogers Special,” Santa Rosa (Calif.) Press Democrat, July 4, 1947, p. 2; Curt Collins, “A 1947 Pioneer of the UFO Extraterrestrial Hypothesis,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, December 16, 2021)
July 4 — 10:30 a.m. CAA official Irving C. Allen is flying a small aircraft near Moscow, Idaho, when he sees a white disc moving north for 5 minutes as it crosses his path several miles in front of him. (Bloecher, p. III-10)
July 4 — 11:00 a.m. C. J. Bogne and other witnesses in a car near Redmond, Oregon, see four discs flying past Mt.
Jefferson on a straight course at high speed. (Ruppelt, p. 20; Bloecher, p. II-9; Sparks, p. 19)
July 4 — 11:00 a.m. Harry Hale, production manager of the Portland Oregonian, sees one shiny disc moving swiftly just west of Beaverton, Oregon. (“Air Liner Crew Confirms Flying Disks over State; Many Seen during Day over City,” Portland Oregonian, July 5, 1947; Project 1947, “UFO Reports, 1947”)
July 4 — 1:05–5:30 p.m. Many people in Portland, Oregon—including KOIN newsman Frank Cooley, deputy Clark County Sheriff Fred Krives, Portland police officer Kenneth A. McDowell, and Oregon highway patrol Sgt. Claude Cross—view five large discs moving at high speed to the east, two flying south and three to the east, with an oscillating or wobbling motion, sudden 90° turns or zigzagging. Radio reports alert other officers (including Walter Lissy, Robert Ellis, and Earl Patterson, all WWII veterans) who see the metallic objects that look like a disc or hubcap or pie-pan or half-moon flashing in the sun. No vapor trail or noise (except possible humming) is reported. (NICAP, “Seven Discs Observed by Many Witnesses”; Bloecher, pp. II-9, III-15; Sparks, p. 20; “Air Liner Crew Confirms Flying Discs over State; Many Seen during Day over City,” Portland Oregonian, July 5, 1947; Project 1947, “UFO Reports, 1947”; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, p. 58; Michael David Hall and Wendy Ann Connors, “Alfred Loedding: New Insight on the Man behind Project Sign,” IUR 23, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 5)
July 4 — 2:50 p.m. Seven people at Twin Falls Park, seven miles east of Twin Falls, Idaho, watch a group of discs in a rough V-formation flying at great speed. A second flight of 9–10 objects circle overhead in a loose formation. They gain altitude rapidly and move to the west. (“Flying Saucer Mystery Grows,” Tucson (Ariz.) Daily Citizen, July 5, 1947, p. 4; Bloecher, p. II-5)
July 4 — 5:00 p.m. Nova Hart and his wife Marveline are picnicing off Old Saint Charles Road west of Pattonville, Missouri. They see a saucer-shaped object, ribbed like a “parachute canopy,” gliding slowly (50–60 mph) and silently from south to north about 300 feet off the ground. It seems to have a propellor attached to a red conical structure on its underside and is about 20–25 feet in diameter. (Bloecher, p. II-14)
July 4 — After 5:00 p.m. Private pilot Dan Whelan and passenger Duncan Underhill are flying at 5,000 feet west of Long Beach, California, when they see a disc about 2,000 feet above them, traveling at 400–500 mph. They estimate it
is 40–50 feet in diameter and flying north-northwest. (“‘Air Disc’ Mystery Grows, Baffles U.S.,” Hollywood (Calif.) Citizen-News, July 5, 1947, pp. 1, 3; Bloecher, p. III-10)
July 4 — 5:45 p.m. Coast Guard Yeoman Frank Ryman photographs a round disc over his home at 12321 22nd Street NE, Lake City, Seattle, Washington. The object is in sight for 4–5 minutes and is seen by at least 20 others, traveling 500 mph. The photo shows a small, blurred white oval against a background of sky, but when enlarged the object is quite distinct. The Air Force explains it as a weather balloon. (“Observers Report Discs over Entire Western Area,” Salt Lake City Deseret News, July 5, 1947, p. 1; Bloecher, pp. IV-3–4; London UFO Research Unit, “Seattle, Washington, America, North America”; Michael D. Swords, “Can You Learn Anything from UFO Photos, Part Two,” The Big Study, July 5, 2012; Kenneth Lloyd Larson, “A Summer 1947 Sighting,” IUR 20, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1995): 19–20)
July 4 — 6:30 p.m. United Press correspondent John C. Corlett, along with artist V. H. Selby and their wives, see a white disc speeding over Boise, Idaho, at an altitude of about 10,000 feet. It takes about 3 seconds to disappear. (“View of ‘Flying Saucers’ over Ontario Dumbfounds Veteran Pilot, Other Crew Member of Airliner,” Portland Oregonian, July 5, 1947; Project 1947, “UFO Reports, 1947”)
July 4 — 7:00 p.m. George Aster and others at Hauser Lake, Idaho, watch a flying disc for 30 minutes as it hovers with a lateral oscillation about 30° above the horizon at an estimated 20,000 feet. It shoots straight up and vanishes when a small aircraft approaches it. (“Disks Seen Here Today, Is Report,” Spokane (Wash,) Spokesman- Review, July 7, 1947, p. 1; Bloecher, pp. II-6–7)
July 4 — Sunset. Henry Seay, a farmer living 2 miles north of Fayetteville, Arkansas, watches three yellow discs flying overhead to the southwest, dropping sparks, and frightening his cattle and horses. The following night it happens again and the cows go into a panic, running off to the other side of the pasture. Some kind of dust falls on Seay, although it does not burn. After several seconds, the object rises up vertically 30–40 feet and shoots off horizontally at 50 mph. (Bloecher, p. IV-1)
July 4 — Sunset. M. K. Leisy, a junior intern at the Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital at 44th and Market streets
in Philadelphia, is reading on the porch of the hospital when he hears a loud roar. A large transport plane passes overhead, but he also sees a dark sphere with a luminous halo around it moving below the clouds at a moderate speed. It disappears into the clouds. (“Flying Discs Seen over City,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 5, 1947, pp. 1, 3; Bloecher, pp. II-14–15)
July 4 — 9:12 p.m. United Air Lines Flight 105 pilots Capt. Emil J. Smith and First Officer Ralph Stevens are flying from Boise, Idaho, to Seattle, Washington, when they see a formation of five discs over Emmett, Idaho, silhouetted against the sunset. Stewardess Marty Morrow sees them as well. The objects appear to merge and speed away to the northwest. Another group appears and arranges itself in a straight line. The nine objects are seen at least 12 minutes over a distance of 45 miles. (“View of ‘Flying Saucers’ over Ontario Dumbfounds Veteran Pilot, Other Crew Member of Airliner,” Portland Oregonian, July 5, 1947; Project 1947, “UFO Reports, 1947”; NICAP, “5 Discs Sighted by United Flight”; Bloecher, pp. III-10–11; Sparks, p. 20; Kenneth Arnold and Ray Palmer, The Coming of the Saucers, 1952, Palmer, pp. 18–19; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, pp. 41–42)
July 4 — The first of the special flights from Washington, D.C., arrives at Roswell Army Air Field [now closed], New Mexico (presumably to investigate the radar reports claimed by Frank Kaufmann). On the plane is Warrant Officer Robert Thomas. Thomas and his companions are in uniform upon arrival, but quickly change to civilian clothes. Thomas wants an on-site briefing as soon as it can be arranged. These men remain at RAAF throughout the later retrieval. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, pp. 160–161)
July 4 — During a thunderstorm near Corona, New Mexico, W. W. “Mack” Brazel hears a tremendous thunderclap that sounds like an explosion but is somehow different from the rest of the thunder. Others in the area report the same phenomenon. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, p. 160)
July 4 — 11:27 p.m. Army Signal Corps radar sites in southern New Mexico supposedly continue to track a mysterious object. Kirtland AFB’s commander scrambles a fighter jet piloted by Kenny Chandler to locate the object, but he cannot find it. Before midnight, Frank Kaufmann allegedly sees a brilliant glow on the radar display, pulsates a number of times, then explode in a starburst. The belief is that the object has now crashed. Jim Ragsdale and “Trudy Truelove” supposedly see a bright flash of light and hear a roaring sound that passes overhead. Ragsdale knows that something has struck the ground close to their campsite. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, p. 160; Jacobsen, Area 51, p. 36; Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, “When and Where Did the Roswell Object Crash?” IUR 19, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1994): 14; Kevin
D. Randle, “The Truth about the Jim Ragsdale Story,” IUR 21, no. 3 (Fall 1996): 13–16, 29–30; Jim Wilson, “Roswell Plus 50,” Popular Mechanics 174 (July 1997): 48–53; The Roswell Files, “Jim Ragsdale,” April 11, 1998; Kevin D. Randle, “Frank Kaufmann, Roswell Witness,” IUR 27, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 8, 17–19; Mark Rodeghier, “Frank Kaufmann Exposed,” IUR 27, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 9–11, 26; Kevin D. Randle, “Jim Ragsdale’s Roswell Tale,” A Different Perspective, April 22, 2015)
July 5 — 3:00 a.m. Acting on what he claims are orders from Brig. Gen. Martin F. Scanlon of the Army's Air Defense Command, discredited Roswell witness Frank Kaufmann returns to Roswell Army Air Field from Alamogordo to alert Colonel William H. Blanchard, Roswell AAF commanding officer, about a potential crash. (Jim Wilson, “Roswell Plus 50,” Popular Mechanics 174 (July 1997): 48–53)
July 5 — 5:00 a.m. Archaeologists, including William Curry Holden, working the sites around Roswell, New Mexico, stumble across an impact site where an object has crashed. One of them heads to the closest phone to tell Sheriff George A. Wilcox of the discovery of the remains of a crashed aircraft of some kind. Wilcox calls the local fire department to alert them about the crash. One truck, with Dan Dwyer on it, responds to the call. The site is about 35–40 miles north of Roswell. The Roswell Fire Department, escorted by members of the Roswell Police Department, makes a run along Pine Lodge Road northwest of Roswell. They are among the first civilians to stumble across the impact site. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, pp. 33–36; Thomas J. Carey, “The Search for the Roswell Archaeologists: Casting the Net,” IUR 18, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1993): 3–8, 23–24; Thomas J. Carey, “The Continuing Search for the Roswell Archaeologists: Closing the Circle,” IUR 19, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1994): 4–12; Kevin D. Randle and Anthony Bragalia, “Two Roswell Witnesses, Reconsidered,” IUR 32, no. 3 (July 2009): 6–8, 24)
July 5 — 5:01 a.m. Project Mogul Flight number 10, a cluster of plastic balloons, is launched from Holloman AFB, New Mexico. (Kevin D. Randle, “The Project Mogul Flights and Roswell,” IUR 19, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1994): 6–7, 23)
July 5 — 5:30 a.m. According to discredited Roswell witness Frank Kaufmann, a small contingent of men from Roswell Army Air Field in New Mexico drive north on what is now US Highway 285. Near mile marker 132, they turn off the road and began driving across the desert, stopping from time to time to cut the barbed-wire fencing. They discover a heel-shaped craft measuring about 25 feet long and 12 feet wide embedded in a cliff. The soldiers find civilians on the site already. Besides the archaeologists, a local man named Larry Campbell (later called Jack Armstrong or Cactus Jack) also claims to have been there. They escort them off while others secure the area. Five bodies are allegedly found on the site. The impact site is cleaned and secured by 11:30 a.m. Annie Jacobsen has interviewed Alfred O’Donnell, later an engineer at EG&G, who tells her that one of the objects crashed and was recovered by the Joint Chiefs, including the airframe, propulsion equipment, and the power plant. It has no wings or tail. The fuselage is round and there is a dome on top. Inside there are Cyrillic letters stamped or embossed in a ring running around the inside. Army intelligence officers suspect that the craft is the brainchild of German airplane engineers, Walter and Reimar Horten, working for the Russian military. A frantic search to find what happened to the brothers allegedly takes place; informants like Austrian physicist Adolf Smekal of Frankfurt, Germany, provide leads, with confusing results for several months. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, p. 161; Thomas J. Carey, “The Strange Saga of ‘Cactus Jack,’” IUR 22, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 3–11; Jim Wilson, “Roswell Plus 50,” Popular Mechanics 174 (July 1997):
48–53; Jacobsen, Area 51, pp. 36–40)
July 5 — 10:00 a.m. W/O Robert Thomas and his crew proceed to the impact site. The bodies, originally covered by sheets, are now in lead-lined body bags. Only those with the highest clearance are allowed close to the center of the impact. Guards are posted, facing out, to keep the curious away. According to researcher Kathy Kasten, the dead bodies are taken to Roswell Army Air Field, but one is still alive and taken to Fort Stanton [now closed] in Lincoln, New Mexico, whose Marine Hospital was used to confine troublesome German and Japanese detainees during World War II. Allegedly, aerospace physician William Randolph Lovelace II travels there from Albuquerque to examine the survivor, who reportedly dies one week later and is buried in the Fort Stanton cemetery. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, p. 161; Nick Redfern, The Roswell UFO Conspiracy, Lisa Hagan, 2017, pp. 204–221)
July 5 — Following the rain the night before, Brazel inspects the pastures surrounding the J. B. Foster ranch house southeast of Corona, New Mexico. Riding with him is the young son of the Proctors, William D. Proctor. During the inspection, Brazel discovers a large debris field. Scattered on the slopes and into the sinkhole and depressions are plastic-like beams, pieces of lightweight balsawood-like material only stronger, light metallic foil (which doesn’t stay bent or folded, resumes its original shape, and won’t tear), and heavy-gauge monofilament. The debris is thick enough that the sheep refuse to cross the field and are driven around it to water more than a mile away. Brazel, taking a few scraps of the material, heads to the home of his closest neighbors, Floyd and Loretta Proctor. He shows them “a little sliver” of material that he can neither burn nor cut. Some of the beams have
symbols on them that reminds Brazel of Chinese ideograms. The Proctors suggest he take it into town to show the sheriff. (Don Schmitt and Kevin D. Randle, “Did a Balloon Crash at Roswell?” IUR 15, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1990): 4–5; Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, pp. 27– 32, 161; Michael D. Swords, “Roswell: Clashing Visions of the Possible,” IUR 22, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 11–13, 33– 35; Robert A. Galganski, “The Roswell Debris Field: Size Doesn’t Matter,” IUR 25, no. 4 (Winter 2000–2001): 14–19, 30; Donald R. Burleson, “Roswell Trajectory Feasibility,” Center for UFO Studies; Michael D. Swords, GrassRoots UFOs: Case Reports from the Timmerman Files, Fund for UFO Research, 2005, pp. 125–127)
July 5 — 2:30 p.m. Automobile dealer Kjell Qvale and dozens of others see a triangular formation of silvery discs flying south near Auburn, California. They appear directly overhead and are in view for 3–4 minutes, disappearing one at a time, but not over the hdorizon. (“Skeptical Experts Call Disc Reports ‘Mass Illusion,’” San Francisco Examiner, July 8, 1947, p. 1; Bloecher, p. II-5)
July 5 — Later that evening, Brazel removes the large, circular piece of the debris from the range. Brazel either loads it into the back of his truck or drags it along behind. He stores it in a livestock shed about three miles north of the crash site. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, p. 163)
July 6 — Brazel gets up early, completes his chores, and then drives into Roswell, New Mexico, about 75 miles away. He stops at the office of Sheriff George A. Wilcox. Contrary to published reports, Wilcox is excited about the find and suggests the military at the Roswell Army Air Field [now closed] be notified. While waiting for the military officers to arrive, Wilcox dispatches two of his deputies to the ranch. They have only the directions given by Brazel, but both men are familiar with the territory; and Wilcox believes they will be able to find the debris field. KGFL reporter Frank Joyce calls Wilcox, who tells him Brazel is in his office with an interesting story. Brazel allegedly gets on the phone with Joyce and mentions debris and a stench from dead bodies. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, pp. 163–164)
July 6 —1:45 p.m. Maj. A. B. Browning and the crew of a B-25 flying over Clay Center, Kansas, see a silvery disc about 30–50 feet in diameter slightly lower than their plane. It paces them for a while then shoots off. (NICAP, “30–50ʹ Circular Object Paces B-25, Accelerates”; Bloecher, p. III-11; Sparks, p. 21)
July 6 — Day. Army Air Corps Capt. James H. Burniston and his wife watch a round, flat object that oscillates on its lateral axis of travel three quarters of the way across the sky in a few seconds at Fairfield-Suisun Army Air Field [now Travis AFB] near Fairfield, California. (NICAP, “Round Flat Object Size of C-54”; Bloecher, p. III-3; Sparks, p. 21)
July 6 — 2:45 p.m. David A. Kenney, an aircraft instruments engineer, and two others watch an oval-shaped UFO flying at a high altitude for nearly 2 minutes near Encampment, Wyoming. (Bloecher, p. III-17; David Kenney, “Right Place, Right Time,” IUR 30, no. 4 (August 2006): 28)
July 6 — Afternoon. Francis Howell and his wife are in their yard at 317 Ash Street in Tempe, Arizona, when they see an object floating down to the ground with a kite-like motion. It appears to be about 2 feet across and made of aluminum. It disappears behind some trees. The Howells and some neighbors walk toward the place where it apparently has landed, and they see the disc ascend at a 45° angle and move at high speed toward the northwest. (“Tempeans See ‘Disc,’” Phoenix Arizona Republic, July 7, 1947, p. 1; Bloecher, p. II-13)
July 6 — Colonel William H. Blanchard, Roswell AAF commanding officer, entrusted with oversight of the first and only atomic-bomb strike force in the world, the 509th Bomb Group, orders Jesse A. Marcel, the air intelligence officer, to investigate the debris report. Marcel immediately drives to the sheriff’s office. Marcel interviews Brazel, examines the pieces of the material that Brazel brought in, and decides he had better visit the ranch to examine the field for himself. Marcel, taking some of the debris with him, returns to the base and reports to Blanchard on what he has seen. Blanchard, convinced that he is in possession of something highly unusual, perhaps Soviet, alerts the next higher headquarters. Marcel and Blanchard all know this is from not any type of balloon. Marcel returns to the sheriff’s office with the senior counterintelligence agent assigned to the base, CIC Captain Sheridan W. Cavitt. They escort Brazel back to his ranch and examine the debris field. Acting on orders from Major General Clements McMullen, deputy commander of the Strategic Air Command, Blanchard obtains more of the debris from the sheriff’s office. It is sealed in a courier pouch and loaded on an airplane to be flown on to the Fort Worth Army Air Field, where it is given to Colonel Thomas J. DuBose for transport on to Washington, D.C. After Marcel and Cavitt leave with Brazel, the two deputies return to say they did not find the debris field but observed a burned area in one of the pastures. There the sand has been turned to glass and blackened. It looks as if something circular has touched down. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, pp. 37–40, 164; Good Need, p. 89; Nukes 482–483)
July 6 — 8:45 p.m. Army Staff Sgt. Ira L. Livingston watches a procession of glowing round objects moving at 500 mph over Birmingham, Alabama. A new one appears every 5 seconds. Many others report UFOs in the area between
8:00 and 9:00 p.m. Robert Crossland, a copy reader for the Birmingham Age-Herald, takes a photo that shows two round white spots close together. (Bloecher, pp. III-3–4, IV-4; Michael David Hall and Wendy Ann Connors, Alfred Loedding and the Great Flying Saucer Wave of 1947, Rose Press, 1998, pp. 67–68)
July 6 — 9:00 p.m. Because of the distance to the ranch over roads that are less than adequate, Brazel, Marcel, and Cavitt do not arrive until after dark. They stay at the “Hines” house (an old ranch house close to the debris field), eat cold beans, and wait for daylight. Marcel runs a Geiger counter over the large piece of wreckage Brazel has stored in the cattle shed. He detects no sign of radiation. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, p. 165)
July 7 — 2:00 a.m. A special flight (the first) leaves Roswell AAF for Andrews AAF in Washington, D.C. Some of the debris and the bodies are on that flight. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, p. 165)
July 7 — Brazel takes Marcel and Cavitt out to the debris field. It is three-quarters of a mile long and 200–300 feet wide. A gouge starting at the northern end of it extends for 400–500 feet toward the other end. It looks as if something has touched down and skipped along. The largest piece of debris is recovered at the southern edge of the gouge. The debris is as thin as newsprint, but incredibly strong. There is foil that, when crumpled, unfolds itself without a sign of a wrinkle, I-beams that flex slightly and have some symbols on them, and material resembling Bakelite.
Marcel and Cavitt walk the perimeter of the field and then range out looking for more details or another crash site but find nothing else. Finally, they return and spend the remainder of the day collecting debris. They load the rear of Marcel’s car and then the jeep carryall driven by Cavitt. About dusk they begin the trip back to Roswell. (Don Schmitt and Kevin D. Randle, “The Roswell Material,” IUR 16, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1991): 10–11; Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, pp. 27–29, 165; Kevin D. Randle, “Don’t Bother Me with the Facts…,” IUR 18, no. 3 (Jan./Feb. 1993): 16–17, 24; Robert A. Galganski, “The Roswell Debris: A Quantitative Evaluation of the Project Mogul Hypothesis,” IUR 20, no. 2 (Mar./Apr.
1995): 3–6, 23–24; Charles B. Moore, Robert G. Todd, Mark Rodeghier, and Kevin D. Randle, “Project Mogul and the Roswell Crash: An Exchange,” IUR 20, no. 2 (Mar./Apr. 1995): 7–9, 19–22; Kevin D. Randle, “Bessie Brazel’s Story,” IUR 20, no. 3 (May/June 1995): 3–5, 24; Robert A. Galganski, “Roswell: Connecting the Debris Field and the Impact Site,” IUR 21, no. 2 (Summer 1996): 11–17; Robert A. Galganski, “The Glue Explanation Just Won’t Stick,” IUR 22, no. 4 (Winter 1997–1998): 3–7; Robert A. Galganski, “An Engineer Looks at the Project Mogul Hypothesis,” IUR 23, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 3–6, 32; Thomas J. Carey, “Will the Real Sheridan Cavitt Please Stand Up?” IUR 23, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 14–21; Kent Jeffrey, “Roswell: Anatomy of a Myth,” Journal of Scientific Exploration 12, no. 1 (1998): 79–101; Michael D. Swords, “A Different View of ‘Roswell: Anatomy of a Myth,’” Journal of Scientific Exploration 12, no. 1 (1998): 103–125; Robert M. Wood, “Critique of ‘Roswell: Anatomy of a Myth,’” Journal of Scientific Exploration 12, no. 1 (1998): 127–140; Thomas J. Carey and Donald R. Schmitt, “Mack Brazel Reconsidered,” IUR 24, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 13–19; Robert A. Galganski, The Roswell Debris Field: An Engineer’s Perspective, Fund for UFO Research, 2002; Kevin D. Randle, “Bessie Brazel Schreiber and the Roswell Crash,” A Different Perspective, September 19, 2015)
July 7 — AMC commander Lieut. Gen Nathan Twining unexpectedly flies to Alamogordo AAF and Kirtland AAF in New Mexico, remaining there until July 11. Army Air Forces Commander Gen. Carl Spaatz is supposedly “vacationing” in Washington State. He tells reporters he knows nothing about the flying discs. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, p. 165)
July 7 — A hoax in Shreveport, Louisiana. A 16-inch aluminum disc with smoke coming out of it is found. Army investigators find “Made in USA” on the disc. It is one of many homemade gadgets, weather balloon radar targets, circular saws, and other disc-like debris that people find or make in order to have some fun in the press or with gullible saucer-seekers. (Sparks, p. 21; “Speaking of Pictures: A Rash of Flying Disks Breaks Out over the U.S.,” Life, July 21, 1947, p. 14; ClearIntent, p. 149; Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, “Secret Projects and Open Eyes: A Response,” IUR 19, no. 3 (May/June 1994): 15–17; Kevin D. Randle, “The Hoover Memo Again,” A Different Perspective, July 29, 2015; Maurizio Verga, “Here They Are! Early Crashes of Flying Saucers, a Visual History,” Cielo Insolito, no. 6 (March 2018): 8–27)
July 7 — 9:55 a.m. Newspaper editor John Brackett and his wife Wilma see an object streak across the sky in Reno, Nevada, leaving a trail of bluish-white vapor. It is high in the sky and traveling at about 1,000 mph. (“Tiny Speck Whizzes across Sky Here at Unbelievable Rate of Speed; Many Reno Persons See Small Object,” Reno Nevada State Journal, July 8, 1947, p. 14; Bloecher, pp. III-7–8)
July 7 — 11:30 a.m. Flight instructor Kenneth Jones out of Elkhart, Wisconsin, is practicing take-offs and landings with a student near Koshkonong. They watch a disc descending vertically on edge through the alto-cumulus clouds at 6,000 feet, stop at 4,000 feet, assume a horizontal orientation, and fly horizontally for 15 seconds, covering 23 miles at 5,500 mph. At one point it heads straight towards them on a course of about 120°, then stops again
(apparently overhead) and disappears. (Bloecher, p. III-11; Sparks, p. 22; Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 July 7th–July 10th, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2001, p. 9)
July 7 — Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg’s activity log: 1:10 p.m., answers a Toronto Star reporter’s question about possible secret military aircraft. Vandenberg says no AAF planes are looking for discs, but National Guard planes are looking into the discs on their own. 1:50 p.m., Stephen Leo, public relations officer for AF Secretary Stuart Symington, calls concerning the Shreveport, Louisiana, incident. 1:55 p.m. Leo and Gen. Curtis LeMay discuss the discs. Col. Warren, at Ellington Field [now Ellington Airport] in Houston, Texas, calls concerning the Shreveport disc. 4:20 p.m., Col. Warren calls back and says the incident is a hoax. (David Rudiak, “Lt. Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg and Roswell,” Roswell Proof, 2001)
July 7 — 2:30 p.m. Capt. Robert J. Southey and Clem Hackworthy are flying a private aircraft near East Troy, Wisconsin, when they see a fast-moving silver object flying southeast from Eagle to Muskego, covering 17 miles in 20 seconds (approximately 3,060 mph). They try to photograph it, but it quickly disappears, then suddenly reappears about 10 miles away. (Bloecher, pp. III-11–12; Sparks, p. 22; Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 July 7th–July 10th, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2001, p. 9)
July 7 — A meeting is held in the office of Brig. Gen. George F. Schulgen, chief of the Requirements Intelligence branch of Army Air Force Intelligence. It is decided to investigate five flying disc incidents with “qualified” observers and obtain detailed statements: two in Seattle, Washington; one in Boise, Idaho; one in Palm Springs, California; and one in Washington State. (Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 July 7th–July 10th, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2001, p. 16)
July 7 — John Philip Bessor of Zelienople, Pennsylvania, writes to the US Air Force to offer his own theory that UFOs are “a form of space animal, or creature, of a highly attenuated (ectoplasmic?) substance, capable of materialization and dematerialization, whose propellant is a form of telekinetic energy.” (“Report from the Readers,” Fate 4, no. 4 (May/June 1951): 88; John P. Bessor, “Are the Saucers Space Animals?” Fate 8, no. 12 (December 1955): 6–12; Curt Collins, “The 1947 ET Hypothesis of John P. Bessor,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, February 15, 2019)
July 7 — 5:20 p.m. Radar technician David W. Chase watches a disc-shaped object passing overhead at Medford, Oregon.
It appears to be flying at 600–700 mph on edge at right angles to the surface of the earth, though following its contours at 500–1,000 feet. The object gives off a bright light. (Bloecher, p. III-18; Ray Palmer, “New Report on the Flying Saucers,” Fate 4, no. 1 (January 1951): 63–81)
July 7 — 7:45 p.m. Five students on a practice baseball field at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, see three metallic oval objects flying swiftly and silently in a triangular formation overhead. They seem to be about 10 feet in diameter and are flying east over the Olentangy River. They are out of sight within 10 seconds. (Bloecher, p. II- 6)
July 7 — 9:00 p.m. Orrin Williams and his wife Albertine, along with Mr, and Mrs. Cecil Grant, are fishing on Great Pond near Rome, Maine, when they see a “spinning rocket” come out of the southern sky and stop abruptly overhead, where it hovers as a ball of fire. A similar object comes from the east, passing close by the first one. A third object approaches from the east and stops by the first object before moving on. The first object then retraces its path to the south at high speed. The display lasts several minutes. (Bloecher, p. II-10)
July 7 — 9:00 p.m. William A. Rhodes, an independent scientist and inventor in Phoenix, Arizona, takes two photos of a dark, heel-shaped disc at his home at 4333 N. 14th Street. The photos are reproduced in the July 9 issue of the Arizona Republic. A few weeks later, an Army Air Corps Intelligence officer from Hamilton Army Airfield [now closed] in Novato, California, visits Rhodes and takes the prints and negatives, but Rhodes is unable to get them back. However, Kenneth Arnold obtains them on a later visit to Hamilton, and they wind up with James E. McDonald. Rhodes actually has an informal top-secret clearance because of his invention of a degaussing device for ships. He dies in 2007 at the age of 90. (NICAP, “The Rhodes Photo Case”; Bloecher, p. IV-4; Michael D. Swords, “Can You Learn Anything from UFO Photos, Part Two,” The Big Study, July 5, 2012; Swords 53, 54)
July 7 — 9:30 p.m. Charles Crockett, 15, is walking along Western Avenue in Manchester, Maine, when he sees a cluster of luminous objects to the west, just above the treetops on the north end of Cobboseecontee Lake. They are still visible when he arrives home and alerts his mother and grandmother. Possible searchlight beams. (“‘Flying Saucers’ Still Seen Flitting in N.E. Sky,” Bangor (Maine) Daily News, July 8, 1947, pp. 1–2; Bloecher, p. II-20)
July 7 — 10:15 p.m. Louisville Times photographer Al Hixenbaugh is at Preston Street and Bickels Lane in Louisville, Kentucky, when he notices three “fiery balls” in the sky. He takes a 5-second exposure, capturing two of the objects that show as slightly curved streaks. He estimates they are 1–2 miles away, moving at 200 mph, and at an altitude of 1,000–2,000 feet. Robert Delara of 2745 West Market Street also sees the three objects shooting northward. (Louisville (Ky.) Times, July 8, 1947; “‘Flying Liver Pills’ over Kentucky,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July
9, 1947, p. 1; Bloecher, pp. IV-4–5; “La Fotografía (y la Pélicula) Al Hixenbaugh 1,” Marcianitos Verdes, February 5, 2017)
July 8 — 2:00 a.m. Marcel stops at home in Roswell to show his wife Viaud and son Jesse Jr. some of the Corona, New Mexico, crash debris. Over the next hour they examine it on the kitchen floor. Marcel Sr. says it is a flying saucer. Marcel is not breaking regulations since nothing has yet been classified. With the help of his son, Marcel loads it into the car to be taken to Roswell AAF. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, p. 166; Robert J. Durant, “C. B. Moore’s Mogul Tape,” IUR 23, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 7–9, 32; Robert A. Galganski, “Probing the Roswell Thin-Strut Debris,” IUR 24, no. 3 (Fall 1999): 8–12,
30; Karl T. Pflock, et al., “Debris Details,” IUR 24, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 28–29)
July 8 — 6:00 a.m. Marcel and Cavitt visit with Blanchard in his quarters and tell him what they have seen. Blanchard calls base Provost Marshal Maj. Edwin D. Easley and orders him to post guards on the roads around the debris field. Armed guards encircle the primary areas, denying access to anyone without official business. Easley is directed to locate Brazel and have him escort the MPs to the debris field. Blanchard calls Eighth Air Force headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, and advises them of the new find. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, p. 166)
July 8 — 7:30 a.m. The regular 9:00 a.m. Roswell Army Air Field staff meeting is moved up 90 minutes. The main topic for discussion is Marcel and Cavitt reporting an extensive debris field near Corona in Lincoln County, New Mexico, approximately 75 miles northwest of Roswell. A preliminary briefing is provided by Blanchard about the separate impact site approximately 40 miles north of Roswell. Samples of wreckage are passed around the table. Pieces that resemble metal foil, paper-thin yet extremely strong, and pieces with unusual markings along their length are handed from man to man, each voicing their opinion. No one is able to identify the crash debris. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, p. 166)
July 8 — 9:00 a.m. Cavitt and Lewis S. Rickett, who has returned from an assignment in Carlsbad, New Mexico, drive a staff car to the impact site north of Roswell, followed by MPs. They are stopped by the guards who are still posted. When they arrive, they see that a small containment of debris remains that Rickett is allowed to examine. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, p. 166)
July 8 — 9:30 a.m.–9:20 p.m. Five separate UFO sightings take place at Muroc AFB [now Edwards AFB] in southern California, the Air Force’s aircraft testing and development center. Ruppelt says these are the first sightings “that really made the Air Force take a deep interest in UFOs.” At 9:30 a.m., 1st Lt. Joseph C. McHenry and three others see three discs heading in a westerly direction. At 10:10 a.m., XP-84 test pilot Maj. Jowell C. Wise sees a yellowish-white object at 10,000 feet traveling about 200 mph. At 11:50 a.m., Maj. Richard R. Shoop, Col. S. A. Gilkey, and Capt. John P. Stapp are sitting in an observation truck at Rogers Dry Lake and see a round, white aluminum-like object descending from 20,000 feet for about 90 seconds; it has two knobs or thick fins on the top. Around 4:00 p.m., a pilot flying an F-51 some 40 miles south of Muroc sees a “flat object of a light-reflecting nature”; it is flying too high for him to climb up to it. At 9:20 p.m., spherical objects are again seen in the area, this time at 8,000 feet and moving against the wind at 300 mph. (NICAP, “Observers Sight Saucer over Base”; NICAP, “Object Observed by Four Witnesses in Observation”; NICAP, “Object Descends to Ground Level, Rises”; NICAP, “Flat Object with Fin Observed by F-51 Pilot”; Bloecher, pp. III-4, 12; Clark III 783–784; Sparks, pp. 22–23; Patrick Gross, “The Muroc Army Air Field Incidents”)
July 8 — 11:00 a.m. Col. William Blanchard dictates a press release about the Roswell recovery to Public Information Officer Lt. Walter Haut, who delivers the release to radio stations around noon (the first apparently to Frank Joyce at KGFL) and the newspapers in Roswell, New Mexico. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, p. 167)
July 8 — The Army Air Force issues a press release saying that, based on a “preliminary study,” the flying discs are not secret bacteriological weapons designed by a foreign power, experimental army aircraft, or spaceships. However, Army and Navy officials are not certain what they are. (“‘Saucer’ Dept.—All Designs,” Racine (Wis.) Journal Times, July 8, 1947, p. 6)
July 8 — Rep. Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Tex.) requests information on the flying discs from the War Department. Someone from Gen. Carl Spaatz’s office writes back on July 21 to tell him the Army Air Forces are looking into it, but there is “no indication” that the discs are “new or unusual missiles or aircraft.” (Swords 38)
July 8? — British radio and TV entertainer Hughie Green is driving across the US. About 250 miles west of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he hears an announcement that a flying saucer “had crashed in New Mexico and that the Army were moving in to investigate. Later the program was interrupted again and quite a few details were given.” When he arrives at Philadelphia, there is nothing in the newspapers or on the radio. (“Star Puzzled,” Flying Saucer Review 1, no 1 (Spring 1955): 3; Clark III 319; “Hughie Green: ‘Peripheral Witness to Roswell?’” Above Top Secret forum, October 20, 2012)
July 8 — 1:00 p.m. Marcel goes on a B-29 special flight (the second) to Fort Worth Army Air Field, Texas, with the wreckage to report to Gen. Roger M. Ramey. The pilot is Lt. Col. Payne Jennings Jr. with Lt. Col. Robert Barrowclough riding in the bombardier’s seat. Only a few packages are loaded onto the plane. One, a triangular package about two feet long, is wrapped in brown paper. The other three are about the size of shoe boxes. They are so light that it feels as if there is nothing in them. When it lands in Fort Worth, the enlisted soldiers on the plane are ordered to remain aboard until a guard is posted and Marcel gets off taking one of the packages that he has been carrying on his lap. According to Flight Engineer M/Sgt. Robert Porter, the soldiers go to the mess hall once the guard is posted. The remaining debris is transferred to a B-25 that is flying to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. Marcel goes to Ramey’s office and puts the package on his desk. They both go to a map room, where Marcel shows him where the debris was found. When they return to Ramey’s office, Marcel sees that the package he brought has been substituted by a torn-up weather balloon. Ramey proposes a plan that possibly originates from his bosses at the Pentagon. Attention needs to be diverted from the more important impact site north of Roswell by acknowledging the Corona location. Too many civilians are involved, and the press is already alerted. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, pp. 167–168; Thomas J. Carey and Donald R. Schmitt, “Flight to Fort Worth: From Complicity to Cover-Up,” IUR 25, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 7–13, 30)
July 8 — 2:26 p.m. Haut’s press release about the recovered disc reaches the Associated Press wire. The story announces: “The army air forces here today announced a flying disc had been found” the previous week. It says that the disc is recovered by intelligence officers of the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell Army Air Field [now closed], New Mexico, with the help of local ranchers and the Chavez County Sheriff’s Office. It adds that the disc is being loaned by Maj. Marcel “to higher headquarters.” (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, p. 167)
July 8 — 2:30 p.m. Blanchard decides it is time to “go on leave.” Too many phone callers into the base are asking to speak with him. He, along with a few members of his staff, drive out to the Corona, New Mexico, debris field. Those left at the base are told to inform the reporters that the colonel is now on leave. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, p. 167; Kevin D. Randle, “When a Leave Is Not a Leave: Col. Blanchard and the Roswell Timeline,” IUR 19, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1994): 18–20; Karl T. Pflock, “Taking Liberties with a Leave,” IUR 20, no. 2 (Mar./Apr. 1995): 18)
July 8 — 2:41 p.m. The press release is put on the United Press wire. ()
July 8 — 3:50 p.m. An Army National Guard pilot flying near Mount Baldy, California, observes a flat object, reflecting light, about the size of a fighter. He gives chase, attempting to keep it in sight, but is unable to do so. (Air Force Base Intelligence Report, “Flying Discs,” July 30, 1947; Kevin D. Randle, “Roswell, Nathan Twining, and the Mini-EOTS,” A Different Perspective, October 6, 2014)
July 8 — 4:26 p.m. Thomas Dale is flying a small plane at 2,800 feet over Alton, New Hampshire, with passenger Jere Stetson. They see a metallic object some 2 miles away to the east and some 1,500 feet below their aircraft. It approaches them at great speed before veering to the north. They estimate it is 20 feet long and “not exactly round.” (Bloecher, p. III-12)
July 8 — 4:30 p.m. The Roswell Daily Record carries the “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer” story. In Fort Worth, Texas, Ramey issues a statement saying the Roswell officers were fooled and that the material is a Rawin target device suspended by a Neoprene rubber balloon. (“Rawin” is a method of determining wind speed and direction by using radar or radio waves to track a balloon carrying either a radar-sensitive target or radio transponder.). The debris is switched for the newspaper photographer, James Bond Johnson, at a press conference held by Ramey and Col.
Thomas J. DuBose in late afternoon. Johnson takes six photos of the debris and leaves after 20 minutes. One of the photos shows Ramey holding a piece of paper (the “Ramey memo”) with words written on it; unfortunately, the resolution is inadequate to decisively “deblur” the text using modern technological methods. A weather officer, Maj. Irving Newton, is called in to identify the debris as from a balloon. A photo of Newton with the debris is taken by another photographer. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, pp. 41–43, 168; Donald R. Schmitt and Kevin D. Randle, “Fort Worth, July 8, 1947: The Cover-Up Begins,” IUR 15, no. 2 (Mar./Apr. 1990): 21–23; Donald R. Schmitt and Kevin D. Randle, “The Fort Worth Press Conference: The J. Bond Johnson Connection,” IUR 15, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1990): 5–16; Robert A. Galganski, “Probing the Roswell Thin-Strut Debris,” IUR 24, no. 3 (Fall 1999): 8–12, 30; Donald R. Burleson, “Deciphering the Ramey Memo,” IUR 25, no. 2 (Summer 2000): 3–6, 32; Robert A. Galganski, “The Roswell Debris Field: Size Doesn’t Matter,” IUR 25, no. 4 (Winter 2000–2001): 14–19, 30; James Houran and Kevin D. Randle, “Interpreting the Ramey Memo,” IUR 27, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 10–14, 26–27; Donald R. Burleson, “On Blobs and Chiaroscuro,” IUR 27, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 24; James Houran and Kevin D. Randle, “‘A Message in a Bottle’: Confounds in Deciphering the Ramey Memo from the Roswell UFO Case,” Journal of
Scientific Exploration 16, no. 1 (2002): 45–66; Barry Greenwood, “An Observation on the Ramey Memo,” UFO Historical Revue, no. 11 (March 2004): 1–8; James Houran, A Search for Meaning in the Ramey Document: From the Roswell UFO Case, Fund for UFO Research, 2006; Dennis Balthaser, “Interview: James Bond Johnson (Roswell Wreckage Photographer),” The UFO Chronicles, March 27, 2006; Barry Greenwood, “Ramey Memo Redux: Line 5,” UFO Historical Revue, no 13 (September 2009): 5–19; Kevin D. Randle, Roswell in the 21st Century, The Author, 2016; Nick Redfern, The Roswell UFO Conpsiracy, Lisa Hagan, 2017, pp. 232–238)
July 8 — 5:17 p.m. Special Agent Percy Wyly II in the Dallas, Texas, FBI office sends a teletype headed “Flying Disc, Information Concerning” to J. Edgar Hoover and Strategic Air Command in Cincinnati, Ohio, expressing some doubt about the balloon explanation: “telephonic conversation between [Eighth Air Force] and Wright Field had not borne out this belief. Disc and balloon being transported to Wright Field by special plane for examination.” Wyly receives this information from Maj. Edwin M. Kirton at Fort Worth. Roswell mortician Glenn Dennis, intrigued by inquiries from the base about small caskets, visits the base hospital but is turned away forcibly; a nurse friend (possibly 1st Lt. Adeline “Eileen” M. Fanton) warns him to leave before he gets into trouble and supposedly tells him that three alien bodies had been found. Other witnesses to recovered bodies include T/Sgt Ernest R. Robbins, Maj. Edwin D. Easley, Ruben and Pete Anaya, New Mexico Lieutenant Governor Joseph Montoya, Sgt. Melvin E. Brown (who says the bodies looked Asian), Capt. Oliver “Pappy” W. Henderson, Staff Sgt. Robert A. Slusher, and Charles H. Forgus. ([Wyly’s teletype message]; Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, pp. 168–169; Good Need, pp. 91–93; Mark Rodeghier and Mark Chesney, “Who’s the Dummy Now? The Latest Air Force Report,” IUR 22, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 10; Nick Redfern, The Roswell UFO Conspiracy, Lisa Hagan, 2017, pp. 97–100)
July 8 — 6:29 p.m. An Associated Press story goes out that a Fort Worth Army Air Field officer (Newton) has identified the Roswell debris as a weather balloon. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, pp. 46–52, 168)
July 9 — 1:00 a.m. William Valetta sees 5–6 domed discs streaking eastward as he stands outside his house at 4328 South Emerald Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. They make a swishing noise and he sees a blue flame underneath each of them. Smoke seems to be coming from the tops. (Bloecher, pp. II-13–14)
July 9 — RAAF officers locate Mack Brazel and take him to the base for questioning, then to the Roswell Daily Record
and radio station KGPL for a revised, sanitized version of his story, this time saying he found the debris on June
14. Copies of Haut’s original press release are recovered. Three fully loaded C-54’s carry debris to Los Alamos, New Mexico, via Kirtland AFB, according to Robert E. Smith, First Air Transport Unit. A crate allegedly carrying alien bodies is flown from Roswell to Fort Worth in a B-29, according to Staff Sgt. Robert A. Slusher, who says he was on board. (Don Schmitt and Kevin D. Randle, “Roswell, July 9, 1947,” IUR 14, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1989): 4–6, 23; Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, pp. 53–58, 169–171; Kevin D. Randle, “Bessie Brazel’s Story,” IUR 20, no. 3 (May/June 1995): 3–5, 24; Thomas J. Carey and Donald R. Schmitt, “Mack Brazel Reconsidered,” IUR 24, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 13–19; Kevin D. Randle, “Bessie Brazel Schreiber and the Roswell Crash,” A Different Perspective, September 19, 2015)
July 9 — The FBI interviews Capt. Emil J. Smith and copilot Ralph Stevens at Boise (Idaho) Municipal Airport about their July 4 sighting. (ClearIntent, p. 151; Good Above, pp. 253–254)
July 9 — US Sen. Glen H. Taylor (D-Idaho) says he hopes the saucers will turn out to be space ships from another planet, whose hostility might end all our “petty arguments on earth.” (“‘Can’t Laugh Off Saucers,’ Says Senator,” Boston Globe, July 9, 1947, p. 5)
July 9 — The US Army Air Force issues classified orders requiring reports of any “saucer-like” objects to be investigated and passed on to T-2 Technical Intelligence at Wright Field, Ohio, with summaries sent to the Pentagon.
However, most of the early cases still go directly to the Air Force Office of Intelligence at the Pentagon. (Michael David Hall and Wendy Ann Connors, “Alfred Loedding: New Insight on the Man behind Project Sign,” IUR 23, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 6)
July 9 — 10:30 a.m. President Truman meets with Sen. Carl Hatch (D-N.Mex.).
July 9 — 10:35 a.m. Assistant Secretary of War for Air Stuart Symington meets with Lt. Gen. James Doolittle and Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg. The conversation is presumably about the flying discs. (Donald R. Schmitt, UFO Crash at Roswell II, Moonset, 2001)
July 9 — 10:50 a.m. Doolittle, Vandenberg, and Symington meet in the office of Army Chief of Staff Dwight D. Eisenhower. Maj. Gen. Lauris Norstad, director of the Plans and Operations Department, is also present. (Donald R. Schmitt, UFO Crash at Roswell II, Moonset, 2001)
July 9 — 11:58 a.m. Vandenberg calls President Truman. ()
July 9 — 12:50 p.m. Vandenberg and Symington meet with the Joint Chiefs. ()
July 9 — 12:17 p.m. Idaho Statesman aviation editor and former B-29 pilot David N. Johnson, flying in an Idaho Air National Guard AT-6 Texan, sees a black object standing out against the clouds as he prepares to land at Gowen Field [now Boise Airport], Boise, Idaho. Johnson takes 10 seconds of 8mm motion-picture film (but it shows no trace of the object). It makes a slow roll, then makes a stair-step climb, then disappears into the clouds. (NICAP, “AT-6 Encounters Black Disc”; Bloecher, pp. III-12–13; Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 July 7th–July 10th, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2001, pp. 39–43, 55; Sparks, p. 23)
July 9 — 2:30 p.m. Vandenberg and Symington meet again. ()
July 9 — 4:17 p.m. Vandenberg meets with Maj. Gen. Emmett O’Donnell Jr., director of information for the Army Air Force. (Donald R. Schmitt, UFO Crash at Roswell II, Moonset, 2001).
July 9 — Late afternoon. 1Lt Chester P. Barton, stationed at Roswell Army Air Field in New Mexico, is sent by Maj. Edwin D. Easley to go to the crash site and report back to him about what is going on. He gets no closer than about 50 feet from the wreckage, which appears to have burned. He is convinced it is the remains of a B-29 bomber. He remains at the site for about 90 minutes then reports back to Easley. (Joseph Stefula, “The Roswell Testimony of Chester P. Barton,” IUR 26, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 21–23, 29–31)
July 9 — Brig. Gen. George F. Schulgen, chief of the Requirements Intelligence branch of Army Air Force Intelligence, requests FBI help with the problem of the flying discs from Special Agent S. Wesley Reynolds. Army intelligence claims they are not Army or Navy craft. He says that Air Corps Intelligence is utilizing all its scientists to study the cases to see whether they are natural or artificial or inspired by “individuals of Communist sympathies with the view to causing hysteria and fear of a secret Russian weapon.” (E. G. Fitch, [FBI memo], July 10, 1947; ClearIntent, p. 148; Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 July 7th–July 10th, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2001, p. 14)
July 9 — Shortly after 5:00 p.m. Electrician Raymond Edward Lane and his wife are picking huckleberries near Midland, Michigan, when they hear a kind of “puff” noise nearby. Looking up, they see a ball of white, sparkling fire, like a Fourth of July sparkler, about the size of a bushel basket, no more than 100 feet away. It is hovering several feet above a stretch of sand. After about 10 or 15 seconds, the light goes out and the object vanishes. The only thing that remains is a peculiar dark substance on the sand and some metallic fragments. Lane collects fragments of the material in a tin can and brings them the next morning to Robert S. Spencer, a senior researcher at the Dow Chemical Company materials research laboratory in Midland. Spencer goes to the site with Lane and Dow’s internal security chief Edward Fales. Spencer has the Dow spectroscopy laboratory analyze the fragments and reports that the shiny pellets are largely silver mixed with a bit of silicon. They conclude that it consists of fused sand. By the end of September, the lab has analyzed ashlike powder found at the site. It turns out to be thorite that is slightly radioactive, mixed with magnesium hydroxide and other trace minerals. The conclusion is that the sighting is the result of some kind of home-made fireworks experiment, although Dow chemist John Josef Grebe suspects it might have been a small missile. (NICAP, “Object Hovers over Sand”; Bloecher, pp. IV-2–3; Joel Carpenter, “The Midland Fireball: Dow Chemical, UFOs, and Evidence,” IUR 23, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 28–32)
July 9 — 11:30 p.m. Constable Eric Kearsey sees four yellowish discs flying in close formation above Grand Falls, Newfoundland. He calls other people to watch them as well. They are moving at high speed to the east with a dipping motion. At 11:40 p.m., an egg-shaped object “the size of a barrel head” passes overhead in the same direction. (St. John’s (Newf.) Evening Telegram, July 9, 1947; Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 July 7th–July 10th, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2001, pp. 45–46)
July 10 — FBI agent E. G. Fitch forwards Schulgen’s request to Assistant Director of the Domestic Intelligence Division
D. Milton “Mickey” Ladd at FBI headquarters in a memo titled “Flying Disks.” Ladd adds a note saying that the “Bureau does not believe it should go into these investigations” because many cases are “pranks.” Associate FBI Director Clyde Tolson adds, “I think we should do this,” while J. Edgar Hoover writes, “I would do it but before agreeing to it we must insist upon full access to discs recovered. For instance in the La. Case the Army grabbed it and would not let us have it for cursory examination.” (E. G. Fitch, [FBI memo], July 10, 1947; RosRept, pp. 25– 26; Good Above, p. 541; Kevin D. Randle, “The Hoover Memo Again,” A Different Perspective, July 29, 2015)
July 10 — Roswell debris and bodies have been flown from Fort Worth to Wright Field, according to future Brig. Gen.
Arthur Exon, then stationed at Wright Field, Ohio, who says that a special unit is created to study them. The story is slightly corroborated by Jack G. Tiffany Jr., whose father Jack G. Tiffany Sr. is one of the crew members that flies debris from Fort Worth to Dayton. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, pp. 61–66; Thomas J. Carey and Donald J. Schmitt, Inside the Real Area 51, New Page, 2013, pp. 165–175; Nukes 483–486)
July 10 — 10:00 a.m. John H. Janssen, aviation editor of the Morristown Daily Record, takes a photo of four luminous objects as he is flying his Piper J-3 Cub at 10,000 feet over Morristown, New Jersey. Three of the objects are silvery white, while the fourth is a dull metallic color. (“‘Flying Saucers’ Invade Morristown; 4 Discs
Photographed near Airport,” Paterson (N.J.) Evening News, July 11, 1947, p. 10; NICAP, “07-10-1947 USA, New Jersey, Morristown”)
July 10 — 10:30 a.m. Lt. Gen. Curtis LeMay, deputy chief of Air Staff for Research and Development at the Pentagon, meets with Vandenberg, Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves, and Lt. Gen. Robert Miller Montague. ()
July 10 — 12:15 p.m. Doolittle and Vandenberg meet with Truman. ()
July 10 — 2:40 p.m. Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson meets with Groves and Montague. ()
July 10 — 4:25 p.m. A V-2 launch is aborted at White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico, after 32 seconds due to an early yaw. Gen. Gen. Nathan Twining stops at White Sands before returning to Wright Field, Ohio. ()
July 10 — 4:47 p.m. University of New Mexico astronomer Lincoln LaPaz, his wife Leota, and two daughters, Jean and Mary, are driving west on Highway 60 near Fort Sumner, New Mexico, when they see a sharply outlined, white ellipsoidal object wobbling in the sky to the west about 25 miles away. They watch it for about 30 seconds, then it disappears behind a cloud, but reappears 5 seconds later further to the right. He estimates its size as 245 feet long and 100 feet thick at the maximum, with a horizontal speed of 120–180 mph and a vertical speed of 600–900 mph. It moves silently with no vapor trail. It resembles no known aircraft. (NICAP, “200ʹ Ellipsoidal Object Sighted by La Paz Family”; H. B. Darrach Jr. and Robert Ginna, “Have We Visitors from Space?” Life, April 7, 1952, p. 84; Bloecher, p. III-19; Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 July 7th–July 10th, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2001, p. 58; Sparks, p. 24; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, p. 60)
July 10 — 5:30 p.m. Three civilian airline mechanics (John N. Mehrman Jr., Robert Leidy, and John E. Woodruff) at Ernest Harmon AFB [now Stephenville International Airport] are returning from a fishing trip and driving up a mountain road near Stephenville Crossing, Newfoundland. They see a bluish-black exhaust trail that has cut through some clouds leaving a “hole.” Woodruff sees a disc-shaped object the apparent size of a C-54 transport plane coming out of the clouds and traveling at a terrific rate of speed. The hole remains in the cloud for more than an hour. Leidy takes two Kodachrome photos of the exhaust trail. The sighting later impresses Project Sign personnel to the extent that they ask questions about UFO effects on clouds. (NICAP, “Harmon Field Photo”; Sparks, p. 24; Michael D. Swords, “Can You Learn Anything from UFO Photos, Part Two,” The Big Study, July 5, 2012; Swords 38–39; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 1, 1947, The Author, February 1991, pp. 44– 45; Chris Rutkowski, “The Cold, Hard Facts about UFOs in Canada,” IUR 34, no. 1 (Sept. 2011): 8–9; Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman, The Canadian UFO Report, Dundurn Press, 2006, pp. 49–50; Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 167, 264–267)
July 10 — Mac Brazel is still being held at a guest house on the Roswell, New Mexico, base. The officers try to convince him not to say anything about what he has seen. They also try to prevent him talking to reporters. He is given a physical by doctors at the base hospital. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, p. 172)
July 11 — Debriefings of all military participants in the debris recovery operation take place. They are taken into a room in small groups and told that the recovery is highly classified and not to talk about it. Military personnel warn civilians around Roswell, New Mexico, that they are not to talk about what happened. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, pp. 72–76, 172)
July 11 — 11:00 a.m. USAAF Col. Bruce H. Perry and Maj. William E. Geyser, 59th AACS Group, see a round 2–3 foot or 10-foot aluminum or silver-metallic sphere traveling at great speed to the south of Elmendorf AFB [now Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson], Anchorage, Alaska. Estimated altitude is 3,000–4,000 feet. (NICAP, “Round 3ʹ Aluminum Object at Great Speed”; Sparks, p. 24)
July 12 — Kenneth Arnold is interviewed at the Hotel Owyhee in Boise, Idaho, by Lt. Frank M. Brown and Capt. William
L. Davidson, who have flown in from Hamilton Army Airfield [now closed] in Novato, California. He also submits a written statement to Army Air Force intelligence, referring to the objects as “saucer-like.” At the end of the report he draws a picture of what the objects appeared to look like at their closest approach to Mt. Rainier, Washington. He writes, “They seemed longer than wide, their thickness was about 1/20th their width.” As to motion, Arnold writes, “They flew like many times I have observed geese to fly in a rather diagonal chain-like line as if they were linked together.” (James Easton suggests in 2007 that Arnold may have seen pelicans, based on their movements, but this seems unlikely.) While they are at Arnold’s house, Brown and Davidson hear that pilot Emil J. Smith is in Boise on a layover, and all three go to the airport to talk to him. (Kenneth Arnold and Ray Palmer, The Coming of the Saucers, Palmer, 1952, pp. 21–23; Kenneth Arnold, “Confidential,” Project 1947; Frank M. Brown, “Memorandum for the Officer in Charge,” July 16, 1947; James Easton, “Kenneth Arnold and the Pelicans,” UFO Conjectures, April 4, 2007; Martin Shough, “The Singular Adventure of Mr. Kenneth
Arnold,” June 2010; Michael David Hall and Wendy Ann Connors, “Alfred Loedding: New Insight on the Man behind Project Sign,” IUR 23, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 6)
July 12 — The FBI conducts a shorter follow-up interview with Capt. Emil J. Smith. (ClearIntent, p. 153)
July 12 — 6:30 p.m. USAAF Maj. Edward Graham and others at Elmendorf AFB [now Joint Base Elmendorf- Richardson], Anchorage, Alaska, see a balloon-like grayish object, 10 feet long, flying northwest at 100 mph at an altitude of 1,500 feet and following the contour of mountains 5 miles away. It is paralleling the course of a landing C-47. (Sparks, p. 24)
July 12 — 6:35 p.m. Seamen John C. Kennedy and Ben Bobberly are on duty at Naval Air Station Seattle at Sand Point [now closed and redeveloped as Magnuson Park], Seattle, Washington. They notice a silvery disc-shaped object flying overhead to the east at 12,000 feet. At about the same time, Arnold Bergh and James Calahan watch three silvery discs flying quickly north from their location near North 82nd Street and 11th Avenue in Seattle. (Bloecher, p. III-6)
July 13 — 5:48 p.m. Warren Baker Eames is driving with his wife Alice on State Highway 2 near Gardner, Massachusetts, when they see a large, silvery, disc-shaped object in the sky ahead, moving west. As they watch, its nearest edge dips down toward them and it accelerates in a sudden burst of speed to the west-northwest. (Bloecher, p. III-1)
July 15 — Mack Brazel is returned home after an extensive interrogation at Roswell AAF, New Mexico. (Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, The Truth about the UFO Crash at Roswell, Evans, 1994, p. 173)
July 15 — 12:15 p.m. Col. Frank A. Flynn is flying a Vultee BT-13 Valiant over Concord, California, when a group of 12–15 objects approaches and passes him. At first he takes them for birds, but he can see no necks or wings and they are moving in excess of 200 mph. They are moving in a see-saw fashion at three different altitudes about 200 feet apart, and they appear to be about 15 feet across, white on the top and gray and black on the bottom. At their closest point, they are about one mile away. Flynn turns his plane around to pursue them, but they outdistance him quickly. (Bloecher, p. III-13)
July 16 — An initial report on the Ernest Harmon AFB case in Newfoundland is written up by a base intelligence officer. (Michael David Hall and Wendy Ann Connors, “Alfred Loedding: New Insight on the Man behind Project Sign,” IUR 23, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 8)
July 19 — The antiaircraft command base of the Chinese Nationalist Government Air Force spots a UFO over Lanzhou City, Gansu, China. It is 50 feet long and has an apparent rudder and two jet pipes in the back. About 8:00 p.m., witnesses in Gansu province watch a red object cross the sky in 2 seconds. (Paul Dong, The Four Major Mysteries of Mainland China, Prentice-Hall, 1984, p. 3)
July 21 — A more detailed report on the Ernest Harmon AFB incident is sent to the Pentagon. (Michael David Hall and Wendy Ann Connors, “Alfred Loedding: New Insight on the Man behind Project Sign,” IUR 23, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 8)
July 21 — Life magazine publishes a pictorial news story on the flying discs. (“Speaking of Pictures: A Rash of Flying Disks Breaks Out over the U.S.,” Life, July 21, 1947, pp. 14–16)
July 22 — Ray Palmer writes to Kenneth Arnold and tells him about the Maury Island, Washington, case, asking him to look into it. (Jason Colavito, ed., “Inquiry into Richard Shaver and Ray Palmer, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1947”; Kenneth Arnold and Ray Palmer, The Coming of the Saucers, Palmer, 1952, p. 21)
July 23 — Day. John H. Janssen, aviation editor of the Morristown Daily Record, is flying his Piper J-3 Cub at 6,000 feet near the Morristown Airport in New Jersey. He sees a flash of light, the engine gives out, and the plane seems to be motionless. Then he sees two UFOs (this time with portholes) and manages to get the propeller going again.
This is one of the first cases of “vehicle interference” UFO cases involving an airplane. (NICAP, “07-10-1947 USA, New Jersey, Morristown”; John H. Janssen, “My Encounter with Flying Disks,” Fate 2, no. 3 (September 1949): 12–16)
July 23 — José C. Higgens and some assistants are surveying a field in Campina do Amoral in the Colônia Goio-Bang, located between Luiziana and Mamboré, Paraná, Brazil. On hearing a sharp sound, they see a grayish-white disc- shaped object about 100 feet in diameter, which soon lands and rests on curved metal feet. His assistants flee, but Higgens goes up to examine it. He sees a small, glass window, then two odd-looking beings observing him curiously. A door opens in the craft, and three other hairless beings dressed in transparent overalls. They have large, round eyes with eyebrows and pronounced eyelashes. Their legs are disproportionately long and they are about 7 feet tall. One points a small tube at Higgens. They are speaking in an unknown, sonorous language. He walks toward the door and can see only a small cubicle, bordered by another door, and several portholes. Higgens by gestures asks where they are from and the leader draws a map in the dirt, indicating a seventh planet, presumably Uranus. He eludes them by pretending to look for his wife and goes into a hidden spot in the woods. After 30 minutes the beings climb into the object and take off. (Wikipedia, “Caso José Higgens”; Clark III 576–
577; Brazil 21–23; Mark Cashman, “Behavioral Classification System for UFO Occupants,” IUR 24, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 18)
July 25 — Intelligence agents from the Fourth Air Force, Lt. Frank M. Brown and Capt. William L. Davidson, visit Kenneth Arnold in Boise, Idaho, and tell him to contact them if he runs across any interesting UFO evidence. ()
July 25 — A memorandum over the signature of Maj. Lester M. Garrigues states that by order of Col. Blanchard, the nine men who had been assigned duties in the recovery of the Roswell, New Mexico, crash are relieved from duty on that project. However, it is now largely considered a forgery by Frank Kaufmann. Garrigues has assumed duties in China prior to this and is no longer in Roswell. (Kevin D. Randle, “Frank Kaufmann, Roswell Witness,” IUR 27, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 8, 17–19; Mark Rodeghier, “Frank Kaufmann Exposed,” IUR 27, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 9–11,
July 25 — Day. Leonard Robertson is riding his motorcycle northeast of Dumas, Texas, when he sees a flash of light to his left. An oval object like a bubble is floating over a field about one mile away. Suddenly the object explodes, so Robertson takes a side road to the field where he retrieves a piece of metal “lighter than aluminum foil” about 30 inches long and 24 inches wide. There are two small holes in it and the center seems to be burned. (“Perryton Man Displays Proof of Saucer Story,” Amarillo (Tex.) Daily News, August 6, 1947, p. 1; “Salvage from Mystery
Blast,” Amarillo (Tex.) Daily News, August 9, 1947, p. 5; Curt Collins, “The Texas UFO Crash Debris Photo from July 1947,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, May 21, 2020)
July 26 — President Truman signs the National Security Act, a major restructuring of the military and intelligence agencies. It creates a unified National Military Establishment (Army and Navy) and a Department of the Air Force, both under the new Secretary of Defense. The Joint Research and Development Board becomes the R&D brain center. Each of the three service secretaries maintains quasi-cabinet status. It establishes the National Security Council to advise the president and the Central Intelligence Agency, the first peacetime intelligence agency in the US. The CIA is prohibited from conducting domestic surveillance, but Allen Dulles ensures it can handle “other functions” affecting “national security” without scrutiny from Congress or (sometimes) the president. Much of the CIA’s funding initially comes from wealthy Americans. The act creates the first black military and intelligence budget. (Wikipedia, “National Security Act of 1947”)
July 27 — Ray Palmer wires Kenneth Arnold $200 to investigate the Maury Island, Washington, case. (Kenneth Arnold and Ray Palmer, The Coming of the Saucers, 1952, Palmer, pp. 23–24)
July 27 — Capt. Davidson and Lt. Brown interview Richard Rankin. The FBI finds that the CIC agents have also interviewed Kenneth Arnold, Capt. Emil J. Smith, Flight Officer Ralph Stevens, and Boise Stateman Editor David
N. Johnson about their UFO sightings. Leverett G. Richards, aviation editor of the Portland Oregonian, informs the FBI of this information. He also calls Lieut. Gen. Nathan Twining, who leaves “the impression that the AAF instituted this investigation to wash out the disc reports since they are definitely not of AAF origin.” (Memo for FBI Director from Mr. D. M. Ladd, August 14, 1947)
July 28 — After assessing the Ernest Harmon AFB, Newfoundland, report, Gen. Schulgen orders Col. Howard M. McCoy, deputy commander of T-2 intelligence at Wright Field, Ohio, to send a top-level assessment team (possibly Alfred Loedding or Col. William R. Clingerman Jr.) to Stephenville “immediately” and report directly to the Pentagon afterwards. McCoy suspects German or Russian technology. (Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 33–34; Swords 39)
July 28 — 8:34 p.m. Capt. Charles F. Gibian and First Officer Jack Harvey are piloting United Air Lines Flight 105 and descending above Mountain Home, Idaho, in preparation for landing in Boise. Harvey sees an object that seems to be another aircraft ahead of them and to the south, but it rapidly moves to the northwest in a weaving fashion, diminishing in size and vanishing from view. (“United Air Lines Crew Reports Sighting Flying Saucer between Mountain Home and Boise,” Boise Idaho Daily Statesman, July 29, 1947, pp. 1–2; Bloecher, pp. III-13–14)
July 29 — A memo from FBI agent E. G. Fitch says that Special Agent Reynolds has met with Gen. Schulgen again, who assures him that “all discs recovered would be made available for the examination by the FBI agents.” (ClearIntent, pp. 149–150)
July 29 — 6:55 a.m. Kenneth Arnold is flying to Tacoma, Washington, to investigate the Maury Island mystery. As he is over Union, Oregon, preparing to land at La Grande to refuel, he sees a cluster of 25 small (24–30 inches) brass- colored discs with a spot in the middle moving at a terrific speed. They come within 1,200 feet of his aircraft before veering away. At La Grande, he phones aviation editor David N. Johnson about his sighting, then reaches Tacoma at dusk. He gets a room (502) at the Winthrop Hotel, where a room and a bath have already been mysteriously reserved for him. Harold A. Dahl visits Arnold that night, then takes him to Fred Crisman’s place to see some Maury Island fragments. Arnold thinks it looks like lava. (Kenneth Arnold and Ray Palmer, The Coming of the Saucers, Palmer, 1952, pp. 25–38; Bloecher, pp. I-15–16, III-14; Clark III 720–721)
July 29 — 2:50 p.m. Assistant Base Operations Officer Capt. William H. Ryherd and ex-AAF B-29 pilot 1Lt Ward Stewart see two round, shiny, white objects near Hamilton Army Airfield [now closed] in Novato, California. The objects are 15–25 feet in diameter and are flying at about 750 mph at an altitude of 6,000–10,000 feet heading south. One object flies straight and level; the other weaves from side-to-side like an escort fighter. (Bloecher, p.
July 30 — Arnold calls United Airlines pilot Capt. Emil J. Smith and asks him to come listen to the Maury Island, Washington, story. Smith arrives in Tacoma in the afternoon and cross-examines Dahl and Crisman. Smith stays with Arnold at the Winthrop Hotel. Journalist Ted Morello of United Press calls Arnold and says that a crackpot has been calling him, explaining everything that is going on in the hotel room, including conversations with Smith when they are alone. They try but fail to locate a listening device in the room. (Kenneth Arnold and Ray Palmer, The Coming of the Saucers, Palmer, 1952, pp. 38–46; Clark III 721)
July 30 — The FBI issues a policy statement on “Flying Discs,” saying that sightings should be investigated to see whether an “individual might be desirous of seeking personal publicity, causing hysteria, or playing a prank.” (“Flying Disks,” Section B, Bureau Bulletin no. 42, Series 1947, in Black Vault FBI documents compilation, p. 48; ClearIntent, p. 150)
July 30 — A memo with the subject line, “Recovery ‘Flying Discs,’” purportedly written by Maj. Edwin D. Easley, acknowledges that the Roswell, New Mexico, crash could “represent an interplanetary craft of some kind.” However, it is now largely considered a forgery by Frank Kaufmann. (Kevin D. Randle, “Frank Kaufmann, Roswell Witness,” IUR 27, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 8, 17–19; Mark Rodeghier, “Frank Kaufmann Exposed,” IUR 27,
no. 3 (Fall 2002): 9–11, 26)
July 30 — The Garrett Estimate, an Air Force Base Intelligence Report on “Flying Discs”—an informal estimate of the situation based on 16 reports selected by Collections Officer Lt. Col. George D. Garrett—says that the “flying saucer situation is not all imaginary or seeing too much in some natural phenomena. Something is really flying around.” Also, “Lack of topside inquiries . . . give more than ordinary weight to the possibility that this is a domestic project, about which the President, etc., know.” The study is passed up the line to Gen. George Schulgen and Hoover at the FBI for comment, subtly indicating that investigating a domestic project is a waste of time. (Air Force Base Intelligence Report, “Flying Discs,” July 30, 1947; Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 32–33, 57–61; Swords 39, 474–475; Kevin D. Randle, “Roswell, Nathan Twining, and the Mini-EOTS,” A Different Perspective, October 6, 2014)
July 31 — Crisman and Dahl bring heavy fragments and white metal from the Maury Island case to the Winthrop Hotel room in Tacoma, Washington. They cannot locate the photos. Arnold calls Brown and Davidson at Hamilton Army Airfield in Novato, California. They quickly depart for Tacoma. Morello calls Arnold and says his informant knows that Brown and Davidson are on their way in a B-25. They arrive in the late afternoon. The five men talk until 11:00 p.m., when Crisman offers to go home and get more Maury Island fragments. He returns with slightly different, more slag-like rock stuffed in a large cereal box, which is loaded into Brown’s army vehicle.
Brown and Davidson leave to go back to Hamilton for Air Force Day the next day. Morello calls again and says his informant told him everything about what has just taken place. (Kenneth Arnold and Ray Palmer, The Coming of the Saucers, Palmer, 1952, pp. 46–57; [FBI teletype, August 6, 1947], pp. 87–88)
July 31 — Capt. Edward Ruppelt: “By the end of July 1947, the UFO security lid was down tight. The few members of the press who did inquire about what the Air Force was doing got the same treatment that you would get today if you inquired about the number of thermonuclear weapons stock-piled in the U.S.’s atomic arsenal. . . [At T-2 there was] confusion almost to the point of panic." (Ruppelt, p. 22)
August — USAF fighter pilot W. Boyce sees a hovering disc above Media, Pennsylvania. (UFOEv, p. 33)
August — T-2 Intelligence and Army Air Force Intelligence hold meetings over the next two months and prepare documents requesting an authorized project to investigate UFOs, per General LeMay’s 1946 instructions. ()
August — The Air Materiel Command headquarters replaces T-2 Intelligence with the Technical Intelligence Department, tasked with producing reports and estimates on foreign air weapons. It begins to develop a photoanalysis capability. ()
August — The Denver Post runs a story that claims the military is building a secret base consisting of huge caverns for atomic weapons defense purposes. The article says the new base is in the Manzano Mountains southeast of Sandia Base, New Mexico. The military responds by issuing a statement that operations and construction near Sandia Base are top secret. In fact, however, the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project is building one of several bases around the country that will be used for nuclear weapons storage. The AFSWP code-names the base “Site Able.” (Wikipedia, “Sandia Base”)
August 1 — Brown and Davidson make a stop at McChord Field near Tacoma, Washington, to speak with intelligence officer Maj. George Sander, then board the B-25 for Hamilton Army Airfield [now closed] in Novato, California. It explodes and crashes near Kelso, Washington, at 1:30 a.m., 20 minutes after taking off, when the left engine catches fire. An army hitchhiker and engineer parachute to safety. Brown and Davidson fail to signal distress or bail out. After hearing the news, Arnold calls Palmer and offers to return his money. Palmer says to just mail him some fragments. Arnold and Smith visit Morello and Dahl and Crisman. They talk to Tacoma Times reporter Paul Lantz in the hotel lobby, who writes the article “Sabotage Hinted in Crash of Army Bomber at Kelso.” Debris from the crash is not discovered until 2007. (“Air Force Day Marred As B-26 Crashes Here,” Longview (Wash.) Daily News, August 1, 1947, p. 1; “‘Flying Saucers’ Figure in Two Air Crash Deaths,” Galveston (Tex.) Daily News, August 3, 1947, pp. 1, 5; Kenneth Arnold and Ray Palmer, The Coming of the Saucers, Palmer, 1952, pp. 57–72; Charlette LeFevre and Philip Lipson, “The Maury Island UFO Incident,” February 2014; Leslie Slape, “Marker Placed near Kelso to Honor Pilots in ‘47 Crash,” Longview (Wash.) Daily News, August 3, 2007, p. 9)
August 3 — Smith contacts Maj. Sander, who relieves Arnold and Smith of all their fragments. He shows them a smelting lot where he finds similar pieces of slag. Smith and Arnold check out of the Winthrop Hotel in Tacoma, Washington. (Kenneth Arnold and Ray Palmer, The Coming of the Saucers, Palmer, 1952, pp. 73–84)
August 4 — Pilots Capt. Jack Peck and Vince Daly see a smooth UFO northwest of Bethel, Alaska, dead ahead as they are flying a DC-3 for Al Jones Flying Service. Peck hauls back on his controls to bring his plane up to safer altitude. Now 1,000 feet higher, the pilots glance downward and spot the UFO closer but on a changed course. Still dark against the sky, it looks to be as large as a C-54. Intrigued, Peck dives on the object as it pulls away, doing his best to get a better view, but it speeds up to an estimated 500 mph and is lost to view in four minutes. (NICAP, “Smooth Black Object Crosses Path of DC-3”; Harold D. Johnston, “Matters of National Interest,” August 5, 1947; Sparks, p. 25)
August 6 — An FBI memo from E. G. Fitch to D. Milton Ladd identifies either Brown or Davidson as a CIC agent on a top secret mission. (Jason Colavito, ed., “Inquiry into Richard Shaver and Ray Palmer, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1947”)
August 7 — The Seattle, Washington, FBI office interrogates Crisman and Dahl and announces the Maury Island incident is a hoax. The FBI file notes that Dahl stated that “if questioned by the authorities he was going to say it was a hoax because he did not want any further trouble over the matter.” Dahl’s daughter Louise admits in 2007 that the whole story was made up, as did her brother Charles in the late 1960s, who called Crisman a “smooth-talking con artist.” The affair had started as a joke and blossomed into something worse. Associated Press reporter Elmer Vogel says that Dahl’s wife had compelled him to tell Vogel the truth. Morello also speaks to Crisman, who admits the story is baseless. (Clark III 721; Kenneth Arnold and Ray Palmer, The Coming of the Saucers, Palmer, 1952, pp. 105–111; Jason Colavito, ed., “Inquiry into Richard Shaver and Ray Palmer, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1947”; Kenn Thomas, Maury Island UFO: The Crisman Conspiracy, IllumiNet, 1999; Anthony Bragalia, “Maury Island No Longer a Mystery: A UFO Hoax Exposed!” UFO Digest, July 8, 2010; Brian J. Robb, “Conspiracy Central: The Life and Lies of Fred Lee Crisman,” Fortean Times 355 (July 2017): 32–39)
August 8 — Lt. Col. Donald L. Springer, assistant chief of staff for army intelligence at the Fourth Air Force, who has just returned to Hamilton Army Airfield [now closed] in Novato, California, from Tacoma, Washington, says “there is not sufficient evidence or testimony available to this headquarters to conclude whether or not the reports of so- called flying disks in the Tacoma area or any other area have any basis of fact.” He adds that the Maury Island crash “did not occur.” (“Fourth Air Force Drops Disc Inquiry; Search Held Futile,” San Francisco Examiner, August 9, 1947, p. 5)
August 9 — John Derry, serving as acting general manager of the Atomic Energy Commission, proposes a set of guidelines that restate the proposition that secrecy can be based on reasons other than national security. The definition of Confidential that he proposes goes beyond the Army and Manhattan Project rules: “CONFIDENTIAL: Documents, information or material, the unauthorized disclosure of which, while not endangering the National security, would be prejudicial to the interests or prestige of the Nation or any Governmental activity, or individual, or would cause administrative embarrassment, or be of advantage to a foreign nation shall be classified CONFIDENTIAL.” The Derry memo calls for review by a classification board assembled from the AEC’s regional sites. In September, this board assembles in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The available documentation does not show that Derry’s proposed rules go into effect, but it does show that the Classification Board blesses the illustrations of matter that “should be graded” Secret or Confidential. The former category includes “certain selected human administration experiments performed under MED [Manhattan Engineer District].” (US Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, “Final Report,” October 1995, chapter 13)
August 13 — 1:00 p.m. Albert Clarence Urie and his two sons Billy and Kenneth see a straw hat–shaped, sky-blue object about 10 wide, 10 feet high, and 20 feet long. It has “pods” on the side emitting flames and is flying along the Snake River Canyon six miles west of Blue Lakes Ranch near Twin Falls, Idaho. The UFO is moving up and down towards them at 1,000 mph and an altitude of 75 feet about 1/2 mile away. Urie is about 300 feet from the object, which is about level with him and silhouetted against the canyon wall. It disappears behind a hill about one mile away. Hynek, for Project Blue Book, later identifies it as an “atmospheric eddy.” (“Flying Saucer Reported Flashing Down Canyon at 1,000 Miles Per Hour; Two Others Seen,” Twin Falls (Idaho) Times-News, August 15, 1947, pp. 1, 8; NICAP, “Snake River Case”; Hynek UFO Report, p. 34; Sparks, p. 26; Story, pp. 337–338; Patrick Gross, “Snake River, August 13, 1947”)
August 13 — The San Francisco Examiner’s Washington Bureau hears a rumor from a US intelligence source that Soviet agents have been ordered to solve the mystery of flying saucers. It reports that the Kremlin believes that the discs are connected with Army experiments in anti-radar weaponry. (San Francisco (Calif.) Examiner, August 14, 1947, p. 1)
August 14 — The first Gallup poll on UFOs shows that 90% of Americans have heard of flying saucers; 33% don’t know what they are, 39% consider them hoaxes or misidentifications, 16% consider them US or Russian secret weapons. The ETH is not mentioned. (Project 1947, “August 1947 Gallup Poll”; Robert J. Durant, “Evolution of Public Opinion on UFOs,” IUR 18, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1993): 9–10)
August 14 — Shortly after 9:00 a.m. Italian artist and author Luigi Rapuzzi (who uses the pseudonym L. R. Johannis) is hiking along the left bank of the Torrente Chiarzò near Raveo, Udine, Italy, when he sees a vivid red, metallic, domed disc on the riverbank about 165 feet ahead. It is about 33 feet wide and embedded in a cleft in the rock about 20 feet above thqwe stream. Looking around, he sees two “boys” on the edge of a grove of trees. He shouts at them and points to the object, walking toward them, but notices they are actually odd-looking dwarfs who are approaching him stiffly. They are about 3 feet tall and wearing dark blue coveralls with red collars, cuffs, and belts. Their greenish heads are covered in tight-fitting, brownish caps. He looks at them in astonishment for 2–3 minutes, then waves his geologist’s pick at them and asks where they come from. One of the entities raises its right hand to its belt, which emits a puff of smoke that knocks Rapuzzi to the ground as if from an electric shock. As he is lying there, one of them grabs his pick and he notices its green hand has 8 claws. They climb up the rock and into the disc, which soon shoots straight out and into the air, hovering briefly at an angle, then vanishes.
Rapuzzi feels a blast of wind that blows him across the ground. His pick is missing. (NICAP, “Professor Encounters ‘Lens’ and Creatures”; “The Villa Santina Case,” in Charles Bowen, ed., The Humanoids, special issue of FSR, Oct./Dec. 1966, p. 2; 1Pinotti 19–30)
August 14 — 10:40 a.m. Three men of the 147th Airways and Air Communications Service Squadron at Harmon Field, Guam, see two small crescent-shaped objects zigzagging at 1,200 feet. They disappear in the clouds and another object emerges and proceeds west. (Lt. Col. Donald L. Springer, “Flying Disc,” August 27, 1947; Sparks, p. 26)
August 14 — The FBI concludes that the plane carrying Davidson and Brown was not sabotaged, nor was it carrying actual flying disc parts. (Memo for FBI Director from Mr. D. M. Ladd, August 14, 1947)
August 15 — In response to the August 13 San Francisco Examiner report, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover asks the agency to look into whether Soviet spies are looking into whether the flying discs are a secret US technology. Assistant Director of the Domestic Intelligence Division D. Milton “Mickey” Ladd at FBI headquarters assures FBI Deputy Director Edward Allen Tamm that he is unaware of any such effort. (Memo to Assistant FBI Director E. A. Tamm from Agent D. M. Ladd, August 15, 1947)
August 15? — 9:30 p.m. Maj. Elmer H. Hammer of the 28th Bombardment Wing at Rapid City Army Air Base [now Ellsworth AFB] near Box Elder, South Dakota, sees 12 objects flying at 6,000–10,000 feet in a tight diamond formation at 300–400 mph. The objects level off at approximately 5,000 feet and make a gentle large-radius turn of about 110° to the right about 4 miles away. They start climbing at an angle of 30–40° and appear to accelerate rapidly in the climb. The objects are approximately 100 feet long and have a brilliant yellow-white luminous glow. (NICAP, “12 B-29-Sized Elliptical Objects Seen”; Hynek UFO Report, p. 40; Sparks, p. 26)
August 17 —A forest ranger at a fire lookout tower on Mt. Josephine, Skagit County, Washington, observes an object shaped like a huge clam that appears to fall tipped at an angle northeast of the fire tower. It slows to a stop, levels off, and floats “leisurely as if suspended by a cord” for a few minutes and finally moves off to the southeast with ever increasing speed. (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 1, 1947, The Author, February 1991, p. 61)
August 19 — FBI memo to D. M. Ladd from E. G. Fitch on “Flying Discs” mentions SAC Reynolds’s conversation with Lt. Col. George Garrett, who strongly suspects the Army or Navy is testing some new technology, condluding that “there were objects seen which somebody in the Government knows all about.” However Gen. Stephen Chamberlin and the War Department claim to have no involvement. (Memorandum from E. G. Fitch, “Flying Discs,” August 19, 1947)
August 19 — 9:30 p.m. H. H. Hedstrom (executive director of the Twin Falls Housing Authority) and three policemen (Richard A. Frazier, H. E. Roundtree, and Richard Scott) in Twin Falls, Idaho, see a formation of 12 objects flying in diamond formation at terrific speed. (NICAP, “August 19, 1947, Twin Falls, Idaho”; Hynek UFO Report, p. 39; Sparks, p. 26)
August 20 — An Anglo-American intelligence team releases a report on secret German weapons. Foo fighters are said to be caused by a rocket-propelled plane launched straight up from the ground, intercepting Allied bomber formations by firing a spray of rocket shells from the nose. The pilot then parachutes back to the ground, a chute opens on the rocket, and it is recovered for re-use. (New London (Conn.) Day, August 20, 1947; Jan Aldrich)
August 22 — Col. Robert Taylor III, Collection Branch of Army Air Force Intelligence, summarizes the findings of Lt. Col. Garrett’s investigations of UFOs in a letter to Gen. Curtis LeMay, Deputy Chief of Air Staff for Research and Development. Taylor requests any information on AAF projects that might give rise to such UFO reports. (Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 August 1st–December 31st, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2001, p. 27; Swords 39–40)
August 24 — The name Joint Research and Development Board is changed to simply Research and Development Board. (Michael Hall and Wendy Connors, “The Research and Development Board: Unanswered Questions,” IUR 26, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 8)
August 25 — USMC Maj. Marion Eugene Carl attains a world airspeed record of 651 mph in a Douglas Skystreak at Muroc AFB [now Edwards AFB], California. (Wikipedia, “Marion Eugene Carl”)
August 28 — Microwave Early Warning radar on Shika Island off Fukuoka, Japan, picks up a target moving 450–478 mph at an altitude of 1,500 feet. It changes course, climbs, and is tracked to a distance of 62 miles. (NICAP, “Target Tracked in a Climb”; Sparks, p. 27)
August 29 — Gen. LeMay answers Col. Taylor’s August 22 request stating that there is no such project as described. (Swords 41)
Late August — Brig. Gen. George F. Schulgen passes the updated Garrett Estimate on to Air Materiel Command head Gen. Nathan Twining with a request for a statement on the discs so an authorized UFO project can be requested. Col. Howard McCoy asks for a meeting between Alfred Loedding (aeronautics engineer at T-3), Lt. Col. George Garrett (Collections), and Charles Carroll (a math and missiles expert who has been correlating UFO sightings with approaches of planetary bodies) “in order to set up a system for evaluating the information being received.” These four will later form the core of the ETH-friendly faction at Project Sign. (RosRept, p. 13; Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 33–35; Letter to T-2 from Executive Air Intelligence Requirement Division, September 3, 1947; Sparks, p. 13; Swords 42, 43)
September — Astronomer Lincoln LaPaz arrives in Roswell, New Mexico, and rediscovers the area of blackened ground earlier found by two of Wilcox’s deputies. He speaks to some witnesses and determines there might have been more than one object. ()
September 3 — A memo from Col. R. H. Smith at Air Defense Command headquarters at Mitchel Field on Long Island, New York, states that the intent of USAF cooperation with the FBI was to “relieve the numbered Air Forces of the task of tracking down all the many instances which turned out to be ash-can covers, toilet seats, and whatnot.” (ClearIntent, p. 156; Michael Hesemann and Philip Mantle, Beyond Roswell, Marlowe, 1997, p. 66)
September 3 — Dale Edwards and three friends are camping out in the Desolation Wilderness area west of Lake Tahoe, California, when one of them spots a huge gray UFO accompanied by a rush of warm air. The next day they encounter a circle, 40 feet in diameter, of recently burned grass and skunk cabbage. (“True Mystic Experiences,” Fate 2, no. 3 (September 1949): 74–82)
September 5 — In response to the Garrett Estimate, Gen. Curtis LeMay states in a memo, copied to the FBI, that “a complete survey of research activities discloses that the Army Air Force has no project with the characteristics similar to those which have been associated with the Flying Discs.” (Michael D. Hall and Wendy A. Connors, Alfred Loedding and the Great Flying Saucer Wave of 1947, Rose Press, 1998, p. 83)
September 5 — In Washington, D.C., Alfred Loedding (as Wright Field T-2’s liaison with the Pentagon) meets with Garrett and Carroll. Flying disk reports at the Pentagon are transferred to Wright Field, Ohio, shortly afterwards. (Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 34)
Mid-September — Twining passes the Garrett Estimate on to Col. Howard McCoy, Maj. Gen. Alden Crawford (chief of T-3), Gen. Franklin O. Carroll (director of research and development), Col. C. K. Moore (aircraft laboratory chief), Col. Russell Minty (power-plant laboratory chief), and Brig. Gen. Edgar P. Sorenson (Air Institute of Technology commander). They each study Garrett’s report and hold a conference on the discs. (Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 33)
September 16 — An incoming radar target is picked up at Itazuke Air Base [now Fukuoka Airport], Fukuoka, Japan, moving 840–900 mph, then fading out. (Col. James F. Olive Jr., “Radar Pick-Ups of High-Speed Targets in the Far East,” Memorandum for Assistant Chief of Air Staff, Washington, D.C., September 26, 1947)
September 17 — The US Senate confirms James Forrestal as the first Secretary of Defense. ()
September 18 — The reorganization of military and intelligence agencies under the National Security Act takes effect.
The US Army Air Forces is disbanded and becomes the US Air Force. ()
September 19 — FBI Special Agent Harry M. Kimball in San Francisco passes Col. R. H. Smith’s memo up the chain to Hoover. (ClearIntent, p. 156)
September 19 — A dubious document, allegedly written on this date by DCI Adm. Roscoe Hillenkoetter and titled “Examination of Unidentified Disc-Like Aircraft near Military Installations in the State of New Mexico: A Preliminary Report,” has been circulated by Timothy S. Cooper. It purports to verify the “recovery of unidentified planform aircraft” in two locations on July 6. (Good Need, p. 95)
September 19 — 5:30 p.m. A geophysicist employed by the Humble Oil and Refining Company is testing a weather radar at Grand Isle, Louisiana, when the radar detects an object moving in a southwesterly direction at about 1,000 mph. It persists for about one minute, so he records it in his notebook and discusses the sighting with other scientists. No visual sighting is made. (Houston Press, March 24, 1950; Jan L. Aldrich, “Project 1947: A Progress Report,” March/April 1996)
September 21 — Arrangements are made to transfer UFO files from Garrett’s office in the Pentagon to Alfred Loedding at AMC. (Swords 43)
September 23 — Head of Air Materiel Command Gen. Nathan Twining responds to Schulgen’s request for UFO information with a classified letter composed by Col. McCoy with the assistance of Alfred Loedding, “AMC Opinion Concerning ‘Flying Disks.’” Twining notes the discs are “real and not visionary or fictitious.” Reports (based on the cases in the Garrett Estimate) include “extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and action which must be considered evasive.” Twining gives three reasons to study the discs: They might represent a deep-black domestic project; to pick up physical evidence; and to find out if they are nuclear- propulsion devices from Russia or elsewhere. The letter lists common descriptions of the objects and recommends that USAF “issue a directive assigning a priority, security classification, and code name for a detailed study of the matter.” This will ultimately result in Project Sign. Henceforth all disc reports are to be sent to the Army and Navy Research and Development Board, the USAF Scientific Advisory Group, the Atomic Energy Commission, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, Project RAND, and the Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft project at Oak Ridge. Twining promises a detailed “Essential Elements of Information” (EEI) to be formulated immediately so that all agencies will have guidance. (Lt. Gen. Nathan Twining, “AMC Opinion Concerning ‘Flying Disks,’” September 23, 1947; RosRept, p. 14; Swords 42, 476–478; Good Above, pp. 260–
September 24 — DCI Hillenkoetter, in a letter to AMC, designates T-2 and the Air Intelligence branch of the US Navy Bureau of Aeronautics as National Assets. He indicates that he does not plan to duplicate air technical intelligence assets within the CIA. (Jan Aldrich)
September 24 — President Truman meets with Vannevar Bush, chairman of the Research and Development Board, at the White House. Secretary of Defense James Forrestal is also present. (Stanton T. Friedman, Top Secret / MAJIC, Marlowe, 1996, pp. 68–69)
September 24 — A fake memo from President Truman to Secretary of Defense James Forrestal allegedly establishes a top-secret control group, Operation Majestic Twelve (MJ-12), to deal with the UFO problem. (Clark III 360; Joe Nickell and John R. Fischer, “The Crashed-Saucer Forgeries,” IUR 15, no. 2 (Mar./Apr. 1990): 4–20; Ted R. Spickler, “The Truman MJ-12 Letter,” IUR 16, no. 3 (May/June 1991): 12–13; Good Above, p. 551)
September 24— Col. Miles E. Goll, in a memo signed for Col. McCoy, asks about a radar case in Japan that Charles Carroll had mentioned to Alfred Loedding in their meeting of September 5. (Dr. Carroll’s UFO files; Jan Aldrich)
September 25 — A memorandum from Maj. Robert J. Thomas lists the names of nine military personnel in charge of events in the aftermath of the Roswell, New Mexico, recovery. However, it is now largely considered a forgery by Frank Kaufmann. (Kevin D. Randle, “Frank Kaufmann, Roswell Witness,” IUR 27, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 8, 17–19; Mark Rodeghier, “Frank Kaufmann Exposed,” IUR 27, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 9–11, 26)
September 26 — A memorandum from Col. James F. Olive Jr., Chief of Air Intelligence Division, to the Assistant Chief of the Air Staff, A-2, summarizes three radar trackings of high-speed targets in Japan (Chitose Air Base, July 1; and MEW Radar Station, Fukuoka, August 28 and September 16). It concludes that there is insufficient information to state that they involved aircraft or missiles but supports the conclusion that they were not natural phenomena. The report is forwarded to T-2 on September 29. (Col. James F. Olive Jr., “Radar Pick-Ups of High-
Speed Targets in the Far East,” Memorandum for Assistant Chief of Air Staff, Washington, D.C., September 26, 1947).
September 27 — Hoover notifies USAF Maj. Gen. George C. McDonald, assistant chief of air staff, that he is advising all FBI agents to discontinue all flying disc investigations. (Letter, J. Edgar Hoover to Gen. George C. McDonald, September 27, 1947; ClearIntent, p. 158; Michael Hesemann and Philip Mantle, Beyond Roswell, Marlowe, 1997,
September 30 — Vannevar Bush is appointed head of the new Research and Development Board in the National Military Establishment. (Research and Development Board: History and Functions, US National Military Establishment, June 1, 1948)
Fall — Claude Degler, under the pseudonym John Chrisman, publishes a single issue of the first flying saucer fanzine, Weird Unsolved Mysteries. (Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 August 1st–December 31st, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2001, pp. 56–69; Curt Collins, “Claude Degler, One of the Ufologists That Time Forgot,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, July 15, 2021)
Early October — Private pilot Selman E. Graves claims to have witnessed part of the recovery of a crashed UFO in Paradise Valley, Arizona, on property owned by his friend, Walt Salyer. (Good Above, pp. 394–397)
October 1 — Bureau Bulletin 59 ends all FBI cooperation with the Air Force on UFO investigation, although the FBI continues its own inquiries. (ClearIntent, p. 159)
October 1 — A letter from Truman to Vannevar Bush appears to bear the original Truman signature used in the MJ-12 fake memo. ()
October 7 — Capt. R. V. A. Therien of the Royal Swedish Navy states at USAF headquarters that some ghost rockets have been observed making 180° turns, and about 33 of the incidents are considered factual. (Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 August 1st–December 31st, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2001, p. 76)
October 14 — Bernt Balchen, Norwegian Airline director and former USAF Colonel, gives USAF headquarters information about two radar locations and a rocket firing incident observed in the Petsamo region (Pechengsky District) of Finland, recently ceded to Russia. Gen. Alfred A. Kessler Jr., former US military attaché in Sweden, disputes Therien’s information. He says only two ghost rocket sightings are possibly factual, but there is no evidence to authenticate them. (Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1947 August 1st–December 31st, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2001, p. 76)
October 14 — Test pilot Chuck Yeager unofficially breaks the sound barrier (670 mph) for the first time in an experimental rocket-powered Bell X-1 at Muroc [now Edwards] AFB, California. (Wikipedia, “Chuck Yeager”)
October 20 — A farmer named Britton sees two cigar-shaped UFOs traveling a straight course at high speed about one mile in height in trail formation near Dayton, Ohio. They leave a slight vapor trail then disappear suddenly. (NICAP, “Farmers Observes Two Cigars”; Keyhoe, FSTS, p. 89; Sparks, p. 29)
October 21 — A preliminary EEI document, indicating that the radar detection of UFOs near Fukuoka, Japan, on September 16 has played a role in concerns about disc maneuverability, is circulated to the European Command by Lieut. Col. Malcolm D. Seashore, former acting chief of the Analysis Section at AMC under McCoy. It expresses concern about German/Russian technology and adds disc characteristics of hovering, disappearance, quick grouping, and sudden appearance. (“‘Flying Disc’ Information Request to European Command, October 1947”; Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 35; Swords 43, 479–484)
October 21 — The jet-propelled Northrop YB-49 makes its first test flight from Jack Northrop Field in Hawthorne, California, reaching Muroc AFB in 32 minutes. (Wikipedia, “Northrop YB-49”)
October 28 — Brig. Gen. George F. Schulgen, Chief of USAF Intelligence Requirements Division, writes a five-page report based on the characteristics listed in the September 23 Twining letter (though in greater detail) and the preliminary EEI of October 21. Titled “Intelligence Requirements on Flying Saucer Type Aircraft: Draft of Collection Memorandum,” it lists things investigators should try to determine about UFO propulsion, control, construction, arrangement, landing gear, and power plant. It considers the objects “to be a manned aircraft, of Russian origin, and based on the perspective thinking and actual accomplishments of the Germans” (page 5, paragraph 4). [However, a fake version of this document has the phrase “it is the considered opinion of some elements that the object may in fact represent an interplanetary craft of some kind…. The presence of an unconventional or unusual type of propulsion system cannot be ruled out and should be considered of great interest.” Other deletions and additions are present in the fake document.] (George F. Schulgen, “Intelligence Requirements on Flying Saucer Type Aircraft: Draft of Collection Memorandum,” October 30, 1947 [PDF of real memo, pp. 1–6, PDF of fake memo, pp. 7–12]; RosRept, p. 35; Good Above, p. 262; Robert G. Todd, “Fake Air
Force Memo Exposed,” The Roswell Files; Robert G. Todd, “Fake Air Force Memo Exposed, Part 2,” The Roswell Files; Robert G. Todd, “Fake Air Force Memo Exposed, Part 3,” The Roswell Files; Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 35–36)
November — Former Messerschmidt test pilot Fritz Wendel tells US Army CIC that the Horten brothers were working on an advanced aircraft in Heiligenbeil, East Prussia [now Mamonovo, Russia] right after the war. The airplane is 33 feet long, shaped like a half-moon, and has no tail. It can fly to 12,000 feet. Wendel’s story is corroborated by a German informant named Prof. George, who describes a later Horten craft as able to fly at 1,200 mph because it is propelled by rockets. (Jacobsen, Area 51, pp. 41–42)
November 6 — Chuck Yeager again makes an unofficial airspeed record of 891 mph in a Bell X-1 at Muroc AFB, California. (Wikipedia, “Chuck Yeager”)
November 10 — Lt. Col. Walker sends a memo to his field commands in Germany in response to the September 23 Twining letter. It calls for a discreet canvass into finding German engineers who might know of similar technology. (“The Walker Memo,” The Roswell Files)
November 12 — Early morning. US Navy Second Officer Williamson on the USS Ticonderoga 40 miles north or south of Cape Blanco, Oregon, sees two fireballs with fiery tails heading northwest at 700–900 mps. Possible meteors. (Sparks, p. 29)
November 18 — Boise Idaho Statesman Aviation Editor David N. Johnson, having heard of the USS Ticonderoga sighting, writes to Gen. George E. Stratemeyer at Mitchel Field, New York, for information and asking eight questions about the Army’s investigation. Stratemeyer passes the query on to Garrett and Taylor. (Swords 43)
December 8 — Pilots observe a reddish light moving at moderate speed over Las Vegas, Nevada. It emits a flash of green light and shoots upwards at a “tremendous speed.” (UFOEv, p. 149)
December 11 — Garrett and Taylor write a memorandum to the USAF Public Relations Office outlining the proper answers to questions such as Johnson has asked. (Swords 44)
Decembre 14 — 12:20 a.m. Six staff sergeants at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, watch a domed disc with a glowing green corona surrounding it moving slowly at a slightly tilted angle. It skims the treeline (causing the tops of the trees to wave slightly) and takes off to the northwest. They estimate it is 50–75 feet in diameter and flying at 200 feet altitude. (Project 1947 case file)
December 16 — Army Lt. Col. Harry H. Pretty in Berlin writes a memo to the Deputy Director of Intelligence in Berlin stating that the Horten brothers (Reimer and Walter) have been located in Göttingen, Germany. He says they are eccentric and quarrelsome. Though they were responsible for the Horten Ho 299 (a prototype fighter/bomber flying wing design), his investigation concludes that no saucer design “ever existed nor was projected by any of the German air research institutions.” (Lt. Col. Harry H. Pretty, “Horten Brothers (Flying Saucers),” December 16, 1947)
December 17 — US Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Carl Spaatz tells the Idaho Statesman he does not rule out the possibility of the flying disks being “foreign experimentation.” He adds that the Air Force is still investigating and he still wants people to report their sightings. (“Spaatz Leaves Door open on Chance ‘Flying Discs’ Are of Foreign Origin,” Boise Idaho Statesman, December 17, 1947, p. 1)
December 18 — Pentagon Col. James F. Olive Jr. (chief of AFOAI) and Lieut. Col. J. E. Thomas of the Offensive Air section (AFOAI-OA) respond to a request by deputy chief of Air Staff for Research and Development Gen. Curtis LeMay on the status of flying disc analysis. They complete their reanalysis of the earlier documents from the Pentagon and Wright-Patterson, rewrite a new EEI indicating a potentially serious but puzzling phenomenon, and turn this over to Chief of Air Force Intelligence McDonald for his signature. (“Analysis of ‘Flying Disc’ Reports,” December 18, 1947; Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 36; Swords 43, 485–491)
December 19 — The Research and Development Board has its first meeting. ()
December 22 — The final EEI, called “Analysis of Flying Disc Reports,” is issued by Chief of USAF Intelligence George
C. McDonald, who concurs with AMC’s recommendation of September 23 and forwards it to director of USAF Research and Development Gen. Laurence Cardee Craigie for a reply. Gen. Charles Cabell, the new chief of AFOIR, signs off on this. (“Analysis of ‘Flying Disc’ Reports,” December 18, 1947; Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 36)
December 26 — At the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago, Illinois, University of Iowa astronomer Charles C. Wylie proposes a coast-to-coast sky patrol to report on rockets, meteors, or flying saucers. He says that “mass hysteria” about saucers could have been prevented with a sky patrol in place. (“Sky
Patrol Recommended by Scientist,” Richmond (Va.) Times Dispatch, December 27, 1947, p. 8; Loren E. Gross,
UFOs, a History: Volume 1, 1947, The Author, February 1991, p. 76)
December — By now, ATIC has received 156 UFO reports. Aerodynamicists at ATIC and AMC agree that no German design can match UFO performance. The USAF Aeromedical Laboratory says that even if such a craft can be built, the human body cannot withstand the maneuvers, and USAF materials specialists say that no known material can withstand them either, as well as the heat of high speeds. Ruppelt later writes, “Why couldn’t these people, whoever they might be, stand these horrible maneuver forces? Why judge them by earthly standards? I found a memo to this effect was in the old Project Sign files.” (Ruppelt, p. 28)
December 30 — Gen. Laurence C. Craigie, director of USAF R&D and successor to Gen. Curtis LeMay (who has returned to Europe), advises the AMC commanding general that USAF policy is not to ignore UFO reports, but to collect, evaluate, and act on the information. He establishes Project Sign (Project HT-304 under USAF Technical Instruction no. TI-2185) in a memo titled “Flying Discs.” Alfred Loedding, who is convinced that the flying discs are extraterrestrial, may have come up with the “Sign” designation. It carries a 2A restricted classification. (Gen. Laurence C. Craigie, “Flying Discs,” Memorandum to Commanding General, Air Materiel Command, December 30, 1947; Sparks, p. 11; Condon, p. 896; “Report by the Director of Intelligence, USAF, to the Joint Intelligence Committee on Unidentified Aerial Objects,” April 28, 1949, p. 2; Michael David Hall and Wendy Ann Connors, “Alfred Loedding: New Insight on the Man behind Project Sign,” IUR 23, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 24). Craigie, after his retirement from the Air Force in 1955, indicates that he believes UFOs are a waste of time and only approved Project Sign because of internal USAF politics. (Joel Carpenter)
1948
1948 — David T. Keating, an employee of the USAF Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft group, is flying with the 166th Fighter Squadron of the Ohio National Guard out of Lockbourne AFB [now Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base] in Lockbourne, Ohio. While executing a flip of his P-51 at 18,000 feet, he sees a silvery disc zoom above his plane. He goes in pursuit of it at 325 mph and closes to within 240 feet of it. It seems to be 40 feet in diameter and 6 feet thick, with a vertical stabilizer rudder on the end. He keeps flying after it even when he loses sight of it. “About 10 miles south of the Ohio River,” he claims, “I spotted litter on a hillside and a path that had obviously been ripped up by a crashing plane.” Short on fuel, he returns to Lockbourne. He persuades his major to fly over the crash scene, and they send a truck to retrieve the remains. (Helen Knox, “Ridge Newcomer Tells of Game of Tag with ‘Saucer,’” The Oak Ridger, September 18, 1950; Clark III 325)
1948 — An airman stationed in Arizona is called out with a scientific team to examine a flying saucer that has crashed near Taos, New Mexico. When he arrives, the area is roped off and under military guard. The object is metallic with a flat circular airfoil. The cabin at the top center is too small for a normal-sized human. He is told by workers on the scene that bodies of “little men” have been removed from the craft. They discover that the ship is constructed of interlocking sections pinned together, but they cannot locate a power plant, except possibly some electromagnets below the cabin. (L. J[ames] Lorenzen, “Aimé Michel’s Orthotenic Lines,” APRO Bulletin, July 1958, pp. 6–7; Clark III 325)
1948 — British author and ex-MI5 operative Bernard Newman publishes a novel titled The Flying Saucer, the first book to use that phrase in its title. The story revolves around a group of scientists who create a fake Martian threat in order to bring the world together. Plot elements include a trio of staged saucer crashes (in New Mexico, Russia, and the UK), propaganda, and even an alien autopsy. (Bernard Newman, The Flying Saucer, Gollancz, 1948; Andrew May, “The Flying Saucer,” Retro-Forteana, June 30, 2013; Kremlin 43–45)
1948? — Sylvia Hall, 11, wakes up at her home on the corner of Riggs Road and Lateral 1 Road south of Yakima, Washington, when her bedroom fills with bluish-white light pouring in through the closed west window. Some 100 feet above the ground is a huge bright cloud. Gliding down from it in groups of four on something like a ramp are tall people with bluish-silvery robes. She watches them for 10 minutes, then she has an overpowering desire to go back to bed. She tells no one about the experience until she is an adult. (Greg Long, “Strangeness at Yakima,” IUR 19, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1994): 16–17)
January 6 — 3:00 p.m. Bernice Zaikowski, 61, of Chehalis, Washington, hears a “sizzling and whizzing” sound and looks up to see a “birdman” hovering 200 feet above her barn. She watches “a man equipped with long silver wings fastened over the shoulders with a strap” ascend rapidly, hover, bank, then fly away. “He flew in an upright position and appeared to be manipulating controls strapped to his chest.” The wings do not flap; instead they retract close to his body during ascent, and are extended to hover or proceed in horizontal flight. Zaikowski says
five other adult witnesses and a number of children also see the birdman. (“‘Flying Man’ Is Chehalis Report,” Coos Bay (Oreg.) World, January 21, 1948, p. 2; Lyle Zapato, “The Birdmen of Cascadia,” ZPi blog, March 24, 2007; Clark III 270)
January 7 — 1:00 p.m. Kentucky State Police telephone Commanding Officer Col. Guy F. Hix’s office at Godman Army Airfield in Fort Knox, Kentucky, reporting an unidentified object near Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Another call to Hix comes from state police at about 1:10 p.m. of an observation by a civilian in Madisonville, Kentucky, through a Finch telescope of a cone-shaped object about 100 feet tall by 43 feet wide, at an altitude of 4 miles and moving at 10 mph. This is apparently General Mills Skyhook balloon Flight B, which passes about 40 miles to the southwest of Madisonville. Other reports come in from Lexington and Mannsville, Kentucky. (Sparks, p. 30)
January 7 — 1:20–2:10 p.m. Army Flight Service reports to Godman Army Airfield control tower that the object is over Irvington then Owensboro, Kentucky. Godman Tower Operator Tech/Sgt Quinton A. Blackwell, Capt. James F. Duesler Jr., Base Air Inspector Lt. Col. E. Garrison Wood, and other USAF personnel see a round or ice-cream- cone-shaped white or silver object with a revolving red streamer toward the south beginning at 1:50 p.m. Many others see it as well after 2:07 p.m., such as Operations Officer Capt. Cary W. Carter and Col. Guy F. Hix. (Sparks, p. 30)
January 7 — 2:50 p.m. Capt. Thomas F. Mantell Jr., a 25-year-old Kentucky Air National Guard pilot, and three others are flying F-51D fighters to Louisville, Kentucky. After Mantell reports his position to Standiford Field in Louisville, Tech/Sgt. Quinton A. Blackwell at Godman Army Airfield at Fort Knox breaks in over the radio to request Mantell to intercept and identify the object. The object maintains a constant angular position as seen from Godman as it apparently moves away at about 240–300 mph at an altitude of 50,000–60,000 feet during most of Mantell’s pursuit. Flying at 300 mph and gradually climbing to about 22,000–23,000 feet, Mantell gradually overtakes the UFO from below, past Bowling Green, Kentucky, at about 3:10 p.m. In one of his last radio reports, Mantell says the UFO “appears to be a metallic object or possibly reflection of sun from a metallic object, and it is of tremendous size.” At 3:15 p.m., at 22,500 feet with oxygen running low, two other F-51Ds quit the chase.
Mantell continues to 25,000, blacks out, and crashes at 3:18 p.m. about 4 miles south-southwest of Franklin, Kentucky. The UFO disappears from view behind a cloud at Godman at 3:50 p.m. The Project Sign staff, still not yet formally organized, are under pressure to come up with some kind of answer, so they quickly float Venus (offhandedly suggested by Ohio State University astronomer J. Allen Hynek) as an explanation. This implausible explanation is not even believed by the Air Force, but it remains unchallenged for several years. In 1952, Ruppelt reopens the case and identifies the object as a secret Skyhook balloon, although he cannot confirm a launch that day. Army veteran Clifford Stone finds later that there had been no Skyhook launches since late December.
However, Barry J. Greenwood and Robert Todd tentatively identify the balloon as one launched from Camp Ripley near Little Falls, Minnesota, on January 6. (Wikipedia, “Mantell UFO incident”; NICAP, “The Mantell Case”; Clark III 706–710; Ruppelt, p. 31; Good Above, pp. 262–263; Good Need, pp. 104–105; Sparks, pp. 30– 31; Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 37; “The Mantell UFO: A Smoking Gun, Maybe!” Just Cause, no. 39 (March 1994): 9–10; “The Mantell UFO: A Smoking Gun, Maybe! Part Two” Just Cause, no. 40 (June 1994): 8–12; Christopher D. Allan, “The Mantell Case—50 Years Later,” IUR 23, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 7–9, 31–32; Michael D. Swords, GrassRoots UFOs: Case Reports from the Timmerman Files, Fund for UFO Research, 2005, pp. 137–138; Kevin D. Randle, “The Mantell Analyses,” A Different Perspective, September 21, 2017; Center for UFO Studies, [clippings and documents on Mantell case]; Swords 51–52; Francis Ridge, The Mantell Incident: An Anatomy of a Re-Investigation, The Author, 2010; Flight Handbook, USAF Series F-51D Aircraft, January 20, 1954)
January 7 — 4:45–7:06 p.m. USAF 1Lt. Paul I. Orner tracks an unidentified white light with red coloration in a weather theodolite at Godman Army Airfield in Fort Knox, Kentucky, for more than 2 hours. (Sparks, p. 31)
January 7 — 7:15 p.m. Air Traffic Controller and pilot Alex A. Boudreaux and VHF Direction-Finding (DF) Operator and amateur astronomer Frank M. Eisele, 103rd AACS Squadron, at Lockbourne AFB [now Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base] in Lockbourne, Ohio, spot a bright object to the southwest of the airfield that appears and disappears intermittently. Fighter pilot USAF Capt. Charles E. McGee sees the object on runway 23 landing approach when he is at about 1,800 feet. The light seems to be at about 3,000 feet to the southwest about 4–5 miles away, then later on the ground to the west about 6–7 miles away. USAF VHF DF Operator and pilot Albert
R. Pickering, Detachment 733, 103rd AACS Squadron, is awakened by the sudden emergence of a lighted amber- colored round or oval object about the size of a C-47 or larger [60+ feet] dropping out of the overcast bank 10,000 feet overhead. Lockbourne Control Tower at the same time radios a report of the object, which then maneuvers over to Commercial Point about 3–5 miles away to the west-southwest, then makes three full 360° circles over one spot in 30-40 seconds per turn over the runway, at a speed of more than 500 mph, leaving a luminous, amber- colored trail or exhaust about 5 times its length. Then the UFO goes to another location and does more 360°
turns. At one point, it disappears into the overcast for one minute, then reappears. Just before departing, it hovers or “appeared to touch down” on the grass extension past the end of the Lockbourne AFB runway for 10 seconds then leaves at 120° (ESE) heading into the overcast. It is also sighted by the pilot of a C-45 at 5,000 feet off the right wing at 7:53 p.m. (NICAP, “Object Circles Base at High Speed / Touches Down”; Sparks, p. 32)
January 7 — 7:35 p.m. Base personnel at Clinton County AFB [now Wilmington Air Park] near Wilmington, Ohio, where Skyhooks are launched a couple years later, watch a quickly maneuvering object. It dances up and down and changes from red to green before speeding to the southwest. Sgt. LeRoy Ziegler thinks he can detect a faint exhaust trail. Project Sign calls it Venus, because it disappears about the time Venus does. (NICAP, “Object Circles Base at High Speed / Touches Down”; NICAP, “Part 2-11: ‘…Was Not the Planet Venus,” June 4, 2006)
January 9 — 11:30 p.m. Eastern Airlines pilot Hugh DuBose, flying a DC-3 aircraft at 3,000 feet altitude near Cartersville, Georgia, observes a circular object with a flat top cross his flight path at the same altitude and then turn earthward. The object is light sky-blue in color and is traveling at an estimated speed of 400 mph. (NICAP, “Object Passes DC-3, Turns”; Sparks, p. 32)
January 21 — Col. Riley F. Ennis, chief of the Army Intelligence Division, in a memo reiterates the Schulgen Draft of Collection Memorandum and stresses the need to investigate Soviet development of a jet-propelled flying wing aircraft. (Department of the Army, “Unconventional Aircraft,” Intelligence Collection Memorandum number 7, January 21, 1948)
January 22 — Project Sign officially launches at Wright Field. The primary investigators are Capt. Robert R. Sneider (project chief), Alfred Loedding (T-3 engineer), Lawrence Truettner (T-2 engineer), and Col. Albert Deyarmond (analyst in Intelligence Analysis Division). Also involved are Maj. Raymond Llewellyn (chief of special projects branch), Lt. Howard W. Smith, George W. Towles, and others as assigned. How much interest Col. Howard McCoy takes in the project is unknown. Its task is to collect, collate, evaluate, and distribute information on sightings in the atmosphere “which can be considered of concern to national security.” Ruppelt later says that to be considered an “unknown,” it has to come from a competent observer and contain a reasonable amount of data. (Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 36–37; Sparks, p. 11; Ruppelt, p. 10; NICAP, “Project Sign Begins, 22 Jan 1948”; Michael David Hall and Wendy Ann Connors, “Alfred Loedding: New Insight on the Man behind Project Sign,” IUR 23, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 24)
January 23 — Col. William E. Clingerman, writing for Col. Howard McCoy at Wright Field, asks Lt. Col. George Garrett of Air Force Intelligence for all files on “Swedish incidents” in 1946 and 1947. He receives at least 44 documents, none of which have been released. (Jan Aldrich, “Investigating the Ghost Rockets,” IUR 23, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 13; Swords 30)
January 26 — Project Sign becomes formally operational as Project HT-304. Lt. Col. James C. Beam becomes its first project director. (Sparks, p. 13)
January 31 — The Research and Development Board dismisses flying saucers as “a mirage induced by mass self- hypnosis” in stories that appear in newspapers of this day. (“‘Flying Discs’ Book Declared Closed,” Pendleton East Oregonian, January 31, 1948; Project 1947, “UFO Reports, 1948”; Swords 52–53)
February — 2:00 a.m. Glancing out his window while getting a drink of water, farmer C. Bruce Stevenson notices a bight orange-amber glow near his farm buildings a few miles from Circleville, Ohio. He expects to find the buildings on fire, but instead there is a large, domed flying saucer gliding silently over the roof of his pig house about 100 feet away. The UFO, about 60 feet in diameter, maintains a slow speed and low altitude until it disappears from sight. (“Bruce Stevenson Reveals Close-Up View of Saucer,” Circleville (Ohio) Herald, August 2, 1952, pp. 1–2; “Bruce Stevenson Certain Saucer Wasn’t Reflection,” Circleville (Ohio) Herald, August 7, 1952, p. 1; Project 1947, “UFO Reports, 1948”; Pete Hartinger, “America’s First Classic Close Encounter,” Pickaway Quarterly, Fall 1996, pp. 11–13)
February 4 — Capt. Richard W. Geuss, acting assistant adjutant general, writes a memo on behalf of Lieut. Gen. George
E. Stratemeyer, to ADC and USAF commanding generals on “Investigation and Reporting of ‘Flying Disc’ Incidents.” It specifies that Air Force commanders are charged with evaluating military UFO incidents, in cooperation with CIC personnel and local FBI offices. Even hoaxes are to be passed on to the FBI. (Capt. Richard W. Geuss, “Investigation and Reporting of ‘Flying Disc’ Incidents,” February 4, 1948)
February 12 —Brig. Gen. Charles P. Cabell, chief of the Air Intelligence Requirements Division, sends a secret memo to Maj. Gen. Samuel E. Anderson. director of Plans and Operations, stating that the Commanding General of AMC feels that the responsibility for collecting information on “flying disks” should be complemented by a requirement that all USAF installations “provide a minimum of one each aircraft, with necessary crews, on a continuous alert basis. These aircraft should be equipped with gun camera, and such armament as deemed advisable, in order to
secure photographs necessary to the obtainment of all possible data on any reported and sighted unusual phenomena, of the ‘flying disk’ type, in the atmosphere.” (Good Above, p. 263)
February 18 — 5:00 p.m. A smoke trail begins over Nebraska and runs south. A bolide explodes over Norcatur, Kansas, and the concussion from the blast breaks windows and rocks buildings over a wide area of Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. A huge shower of meteoritic stones fall over a large area of Norton County, Kansas, and Furnas County, Nebraska. Two Army B-29 bombers circle the area until nightfall. A farmer near Stockton, Kansas, sees a hovering object that leaves a bare spot in the ground. Kenneth Arnold is persuaded that reports of the Norton County meteorite fall might actually have been UFO-related. Astronomer Lincoln LaPaz directs the recovery of the massive achondritic meteorite in 1948. More than 100 stones are recovered, including one weighing about one ton. (Wikipedia, “Norton County (meteorite)”; “Norton County,” Meteorite Recon, October 8, 2015; Luna
Meteorite Hunters, “Norton County, KS Fall 18FEB1948 More Than 60 Years Ago,” February 26, 2009; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1948, The Author, 1988, pp. 15–16; Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 37–40)
February 20 — 2:00 a.m. In Palm Beach, Florida, lawyer and writer Charles Francis Coe and his son Alan see a globe of light shooting across the sky to the northeast at terrific speed. Coe calls it a “ray or blob of light” and insists it is not a meteor. (“Mystery ‘Globe’ Seen by Editor,” Palm Beach (Fla.) Post, February 21, 1948, p. 1; “True Mystic Experiences,” Fate 1, no. 3 (Fall 1948): 105–113; Kenneth Arnold and Ray Palmer, The Coming of the Saucers, Palmer, 1952, p. 139)
February 20 — 1:15 p.m. Six surveyors, including Idaho Power Company surveyor E. G. Hall, see a small flat, heart- shaped UFO flying in the sky at Emmett, Idaho. Through his theodolite it looks fuzzy across its back edge as if “dipped in cream.” He says it was about the size of a Piper Cub airplane and flying point first below the cloud level at between 2,000 and 4,000 feet. (Emmett (Idaho) Messenger, February 26, 1948; Kenneth Arnold, “Are Space Visitors Here?” Fate 1, no. 2 (Summer 1948): 13)
March 3 — Maj. Gen. Samuel E. Anderson, USAF Director of Plans and Operations at the Pentagon, rejects a proposal by Col. Howard McCoy and Brig. Gen. Charles P. Cabell for stationing fighter aircraft at all bases on continuous alert for UFOs. It costs too much and proper interceptions are unlikely. He orders all bases to send UFO information to Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio. (Maj. Gen. S. E. Anderson, “Flying Discs,” March 3, 1948; Good Above, pp. 263–264)
March 12 — Maj. Earl S. Browning Jr., in a memo to the European command of the 970th CIC, writes that the Horten brothers have been located and interrogated by US officials. Walter Horten has remained in Germany as an officer in the German Air Force. He thinks that sufficient types of flying wing prototypes existed when the Russians invaded Germany and may have served as models for flying discs. Reimar Horten had emigrated to Argentina when the war ended. (Jacobsen, Area 51, p. 43)
March 17 — Memo on “Flying Discs” from Maj. Gen. George C. McDonald, director of USAF intelligence, to the AMC commander, considers Col. McCoy’s proposal to maintain fighters on alert for UFOs “unfeasible.” (Maj. Gen.
George C. McDonald, “Flying Discs,” March 17, 1948)
March 17–18 — The USAF Scientific Advisory Board meets in Room 3E-869 of the Pentagon, with physicist Theodore von Kármán presiding. Col. McCoy is present and speaks briefly about Project Sign, saying it has over 300 reports, many of them from experienced observers: “I can’t even tell you how much we would give to have one of those crash in an area so that we could recover whatever they are.” (Howard McCoy, “Scientific Advisory Board Conference Held 17–18 March 1948, Room 3E-869, the Pentagon, Washington, D.C.”)
March 23 — RAF pilot John Cunningham reaches an altitude of 59,430 feet in a de Havilland Vampire turbojet. (Wikipedia, “John Cunningham (RAF officer)”)
March 25 — 5:00 a.m. According to writer Frank Scully, who hears the tale from a scientist he refers to as “Dr. Gee” and a Texas oilman, a UFO crashes on a rocky plateau off Hart Canyon Road east of Aztec, New Mexico. When Air Force investigators and government scientists arrive on the scene, they crawl through a broken porthole and find the bodies of 16 small humanlike beings (3–3.5 feet tall) dressed in the “style of 1890.” Their skin is charred a chocolate color, apparently as a result of the rush of terrestrial air through the shattered window. After a thorough study, the scientists conclude that the “vehicle probably flew on magnetic lines of force.” Segments of the craft, as well as the bodies, are supposedly transported to Wright Field in Ohio. Dr. Gee, who claims to have been on the scene, said the UFO is likely from Venus, as Martians “would probably be three or four times as large as human beings.” Soon afterward, a crash occurs in Arizona and 16 bodies are taken from the wreckage. A third spaceship goes down near Phoenix with 2 dead occupants. The story turns out to be a hoax dreamed up by two con men named Silas Newton and Leo GeBauer (“Dr. Gee,” although Scully claims this was a composite character incorporating 8 informants, one of whom is said to be geophysicist Carl A. Heiland). The hoax is loosely based on
a 1949 science fiction film titled The Flying Saucer. GeBauer and especially Newton are in later years involved in various swindles and fraudulent mining claims. In 1987, William S. Steinman and Wendelle C. Stevens release UFO Crash at Aztec, which draws on speculation, rumor, unnamed informants, and paranoia to defend and embellish the original story. The latest to champion the Aztec crash is a North Carolina man named Scott Ramsey, who with his wife Suzanne has spent thousands of dollars looking for and interviewing witnesses and trying to prove it involves a real UFO crash and coverup in his 2015 book The Aztec UFO Incident. Ramsey thinks the object was tracked on radar by Air Force Station P-8 near El Vado Dam. (Wikipedia, “Aztec, New Mexico UFO hoax”; Frank Scully, Behind the Flying Saucers, Holt, 1950; J. P. Cahn, “Flying Saucers and the Mysterious Little Men,” True, September 1952, pp. 17–19, 102–112; J. P. Cahn, “Flying Saucer Swindlers,” True, August 1956, pp. 36–37, 69–72; William S. Steinman and Wendelle C. Stevens, UFO Crash at Aztec, UFO Photo Archives, 1987; Clark III 1044–1047; William E. Jones and Rebecca D. Minshall, “Aztec, New Mexico—A Crash Story Reexamined,” IUR 16, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1991): 11–15, 23; Good Above, pp. 388–394; Good Need,
pp. 117–123; Jerome Clark, review of The Aztec Incident, in Journal of Scientific Exploration 26, no. 3 (2012): 709–716; Scott Ramsey, Suzanne Ramsey, and Frank Thayer, The Aztec UFO Incident, New Page, 2015; Curt Collins, “Flying Saucer Swindlers: Silas Newton and the UFO Crash,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, April 5, 2020)
Spring — Ray Palmer and Flying magazine editor Curtis Fuller publish the first issue of Fate magazine at Clark Publishing Company in Chicago, Illinois. It features a first-hand story and a 30-page UFO roundup by Kenneth Arnold, as well as a history of unconventional aircraft by Curtis Fuller. Palmer and Fuller use the shared pseudonym “Robert N. Webster.” The issue sells a healthy 50,000 copies. It is still being published in 2022. (Kenneth Arnold, “I Did See the Flying Disks!” Fate 1, no. 1 (Spring 1948): 4–10; Kenneth Arnold, “The Mystery of the Flying Disks,” Fate 1, no. 1 (Spring 1948): 18–48; Robert N. Webster [Curtis Fuller], “What Were the ‘Doughnuts’?” Fate 1, no. 1 (Spring 1948): 12–17; Clark III 872)
Spring — Kenneth Arnold visits the Landing Aids Experiment Station in Arcata, California, and interviews Kenneth W. Ehlers, a radar technician (and later physicist) working on airport operational systems, including radar. He has been accumulating information on unidentified radar targets (he calls them “gizmos”) that cannot be seen with the naked eye and sending reports on their flight paths to Navy meteorologist Florence Van Straten and Luis Walter Alvarez, the inventor of Ground Control Approach System radar. In many cases, the target indicates a small solid target flying around 30 mph. The targets always fly in the same path from northwest to southeast, along the coast. Sometimes they come to a complete halt; at other times they split into two objects, merging later. Ehlers notes that the targets have been attributed to insects, but he is skeptical. Later, he suspects they might be plasmas occurring at the inversion layer, but that does not explain their behavior. (Wesley Price, “The Sky Is Haunted,” Saturday Evening Post 220, no. 36 (March 6, 1948): 13; Ray Palmer, “New Report on the Flying Saucers,” Fate 4, no. 1 (January 1951): 63–81; “Landing Aids Experiment Station,” Transocean Air Lines; Greg Long, “In Search of Gizmos: A 1947 Radar Case,” IUR 19, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1994): 15–20)
Spring? — President Truman asks Col. Robert B. Landry, his USAF aide, to provide him with quarterly verbal reports on the state of UFO information and research. He does so to the end of 1952, with possibly 18 briefings in all. (James
R. Fuchs, “Oral History Interview with Robert B. Landry,” Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, February 28, 1974)
April — Morning. US Weather Bureau meteorologist Walter A. Minozewski at the Richmond, Virginia, weather station and his staff catch sight of a bright metallic, elliptical disc while they are tracking a small ceiling balloon at 15,000 feet. He checks his observation through a theodolite telescope. The disc flies just below the balloon and remains in sight for 15 seconds, appearing much bigger than the balloon. It has a flat, level bottom and a dome on top. It remains on a westward heading at high speed, then vanishes off into the distance. (Ruppelt, p. 41; Bloecher, p. I-1)
April 1 — 9:55 a.m. USAF 1stLt. Robert W. Meyers is leading a flight of four P-47s from the 67th Fighter Group about 9 miles southeast of Sorsogon City, Luzon, Philippines. At 1,500 feet, he notices an unusual silvery object about 3 miles to the east. Shaped like a flying wing or half-moon with a “turtle back,” it resembles no military craft in use at the time. The object flies below the squadron at 200 mph and an altitude of about 1,000 feet. Meyers estimates it is about 30 feet wide and 20 feet long. When he attempts to contact the other three P-47s, he realizes his radio is dead. As he makes a 270° left turn to get a closer look, the object makes a 90° left turn and moves away at tremendous speed. It is only visible for about 5 seconds. (NICAP, “P-47 Flight Encounters Half-Moon Object”; Sparks, p. 33)
April 5 — Afternoon. At Holloman AFB, near Alamogordo, New Mexico, three highly trained balloon observers (Joseph Olson, Johnson, and Chance) are working on a secret project for the Air Force’s Watson Laboratories. They see
two objects. One observer follows one object, and the others follow the second as they diverge. All are certain that the objects aren’t balloons. They are large, whitish, roundish, very high, faster than any aircraft, and perform rapid, erratic motions. One object is lost at a low altitude. The other goes up quickly and seems to just disappear. The observation lasts about 30 seconds. The case is deemed important enough to send Alfred Loedding and one of Clingerman’s assistants, Lt. Col. James C. Beam (the head of Project Sign), to New Mexico to interview Project Mogul scientist James W. Peoples and the other witnesses. Unfortunately, they are gone when Sign arrives. (They are later interviewed at the USAF Watson Laboratory complex in Red Bank, New Jersey.) The witnesses are very sure of themselves and the case is classed as “Unidentified.” While at Holloman, Loedding and Beam talk with Lt. Herbert G. Markley, who has worked with the Watson team. Markley remembers one of them speaking of unusual radar returns from their equipment, but later the Watson personnel say that these were probably just “angels” (spurious echoes due to atmospheric microstructures, insects, equipment malfunction, or other stimuli). Markley does report that UFOs are seen around Holloman often. He himself has seen a disc in late August 1947 and flat, round aeroforms on at least two further occasions. (NICAP, “Team Watches 35-Meter Disc”; Ruppelt, p. 71; Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 40–41; Sparks, p. 33; Project 1947, “Holloman AFB UFO Sightings”)
April 9 — Viola Johnson of Longview, Washington, and another witness see three “flying men” circling the town. She says they are “dressed in khaki-colored flying suits with helmets over their faces.” (Clark III 777)
April 15 — 6:17 a.m. The X-Ray nuclear device is detonated near Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. B-17 pilotless drone aircraft are flown through the cloud, and a drone light tank is used to recover soil samples from the crater. Unfortunately, it becomes bogged and must be towed out 10 days later. (Wikipedia, “Operation Sandstone”)
April 23 — A preliminary 25-page report, written by Project Sign’s Col. Howard McCoy and Lt. Col. James C. Beam, summarizes UFO reports received through February 1, with attached memos and documents. It is addressed to Chief of Staff Hoyt Vandenberg and Director of Intelligence Charles P. Cabell. The Rhodes photos and 99 other cases are listed. A comment by chemist Irving Langmuir is appended, noting his doubts about the reality of flying discs. (Col. Howard M. McCoy, “Project Sign,” April 23, 1948; Swords 54–55)
April 27–28 — Physicist Joseph Kaplan, a member of the USAF Scientific Advisory Board, visits the Kirtland AFB Office of Special Investigations, AEC’s Sandia Base, and Los Alamos in New Mexico, under orders from Theodore Von Kármán, chairman of the USAF Scientific Advisory Board, to review UFO reports and investigations from the area. Kaplan and Lincoln LaPaz meet with security personnel at Los Alamos. Kaplan reports that “these occurrences relate to the National Defense of the United States” and should be investigated scientifically.” (Good Above, p. 266)
May — An article on secret Skyhook balloons (without mentioning the project name) by Devon Francis is published in Popular Science. (Devon Francis, “New Balloons Explore Roof of the Airways,” Popular Science, May 1948, pp. 98–104)
May 5 — An Efficiency Rating report is written up for Alfred Loedding from Miles E. Goll, which mentions his work as a monitor for Project Sign. (Miles E. Goll, “Efficiency Rating of Mr. Alfred C. Loedding,” May 5, 1948)
May 7 — Afternoon. Mr. and Mrs. Fordyce J. Kaiser and their housekeeper Jean Bray, at 251 W. Waldorf Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, see 50–60 unusual objects, apparently moving very high and fast, traveling in straight lines with slight zigzagging. They are shiny like bright aluminum with silvery trails. Lt. Col. James C. Beam of Project Sign goes to investigate. On the way back, he consults with astronomer Paul Herget of the Cincinnati Observatory in Ohio, who thinks the objects are meteors and recommends Ohio State University astronomer J. Allen Hynek in Columbus as a project consultant. (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1948, The Author, 1988, pp. 28–29; Sparks,
p. 34; Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 41; Swords 55–56) May 12 — European Command HQ sends the director of intelligence at the US Forces in Austria a memo alleging that
Walter Horten has admitted he has been in contact with the Russians. (Jacobsen, Area 51, p. 43)
May 14 — Douglas Aircraft Company creates the RAND Corporation, a global think tank to offer research and analysis to the US military. It is financed by the US government, endowments, corporations, universities, and private individuals. (Wikipedia, “RAND Corporation”)
May 15 — During the Zebra nuclear detonation at Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands, a manned aircraft accidentally flies through the mushroom cloud. Because the pilot and crew “suffered no ill effects,” the Air Force decides that piloted aircraft could collect samples. The Los Alamos, New Mexico, personnel assigned to remove the filters from the B-17 drones have apparently carried out the same procedure on X-Ray and Yoke without problems, but this time three of them suffer radiation burns on their hands serious enough to be hospitalized and need skin grafting. One of the men who carries out the procedure for Yoke is then also found to have burns on his hands and is also hospitalized but is discharged on May 28. Once again, the drone tank gives trouble and bogs in the crater,
but the soil samples are retrieved by the backup drone tank. Both tanks are subsequently dumped in the ocean. (Wikipedia, “Operation Sandstone”; Jacobsen, Area 51, p. 224)
May 15 — A piston-driven YB-35 flying wing bomber makes its first and only flight at Edwards AFB in California. (Wikipedia, “Northrop YB-35”)
May 17 — Day. William A. Bonneville sees a bright white ball, three times as bright as a locomotive headlight, sail over the hills to the northwest between Plevna and Miles City, Montana. It moves south, then west, repeating these maneuvers for 20 minutes until it flies into a dark cloud. It is silent, and a long, bright light shoots out from beneath. (Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 41–44)
Late May — 11:40 a.m. Sgt. T. G. Jones and three other officers and two crew are aboard a York transport aircraft, accompanied by a formation of six Meteor jets, cruising at 10,000 feet above the Oxford/Bicester area in England, bound for RAF Acklington. Visiting US Maj. Robin Olds is in one of the jets. They encounter a 100-foot oval object with three bumps or protrusions on the bottom, as Jones describes it through binoculars. Ground radar tracks the object, which is stationary and above 25,000 feet. Two jets go up to try to get a better look and get within a few thousand feet. The object departs vertically at a speed of 1,500 mph. (Jenny Randles, UFO Conspiracy, Cassell, 1987, pp. 92–93)
May 28 — 3:00 p.m. USAF Reserve 1st Lt. Alexander Kokolonis is flying a C-47 at 6,000 feet six miles east of Monroe, Michigan, when he sees out of the navigator’s window three discs 2 miles to the left. He estimates they are 300– 400 feet in diameter, silvery-gold, and traveling well over 500 mph. They are seen for only 10–15 seconds.
Shortly afterwards, Kokolonis sees two similar objects and he alerts M/Sgt Ernest Davis Jr., who also sees them. (NICAP, “Air Force Transport Buzzed by 3 UFOs”; Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 45)
May 31 — 1:20 p.m. A cigar-shaped object moves through the sky from the northwest at terrific speed over Wilmington, North Carolina. Mrs. H. D. Alspach, Mrs. Charles Colvin, and Mrs. Isabell Hufham see the object emit smoke. It appears about 3 feet long. It slows down over the Cape Fear River, veers off to the east, and then speeds away at a high altitude. (NICAP, “Cigar Slows Down Then Speeds Up”; Sparks, p. 34)
Summer — USAF Maj. Edwin A. Jerome reports that a high-speed radar target appears during an inspection visit at Goose Bay AFB [now CFB Goose Bay], Labrador. It is calculated at going 9,000 mph at an altitude of 60,000 feet. The commanders assume that the US equipment is faulty, but the Canadians have tracked the same target. The following day, an object hovers over the base at 45,000 feet and moving only 10 mph. (NICAP, “Edwin Jerome Radar Case”; UFOEv, pp. 83–84; Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, pp. 151–152; Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman, The Canadian UFO Report, Dundurn Press, 2006, pp. 51–52; Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, p. 264)
Summer [possibly 1958] — Early afternoon. Aircraft instrumentation engineer Victor G. Didelot watches an elliptical UFO moving rapidly west to east roughly parallel to the shoreline of Lake Erie in Erie, Pennsylvania. It suddenly and silently ascends vertically at three times its horizontal speed and disappears. (UFOEv, pp. 55–56)
Summer — Physicist Carl A. Mitchell sees three luminescent greenish discs, one second apart, passing across the sky above Easton, Pennsylvania, from north to south. (UFOEv, p. 49)
June 5 — A jet-propelled Northrop YB-49 crashes north of Muroc [now Edwards] AFB in California after completing a number of maximum forward center-of-gravity tests, killing its pilot, Maj. Daniel Forbes (for whom Forbes AFB in Topeka, Kansas, is named), copilot Capt. Glen Edwards (for whom Edwards AFB is named), and three other crew members. The aircraft suffers structural failure, with both outer wing sections becoming detached from the center section. (Wikipedia, “Northrop YB-49”)
June 16 — Soviet test pilot Arkady Ivanovich Apraksin is flying at an altitude of 6.5 miles above a solid layer of clouds south of the Kapustin Yar site, Astrakhan Oblast, Russia. He sees an unconventional aircraft in the shape of a cucumber with cones of light radiating from it descending across his path. The base tells him it has tracked the object on radar and given it instructions to land, but it does not respond. Apraksin is ordered to intercept it and open fire if it refuses to land. When he closes to within 6 miles, the light beams open up like a fan and shine into his aircraft, blinding him. The plane’s electrical systems malfunction. He glides the plane to a safe landing after the UFO disappears. Apraksin is interrogated heavily. (Good Above, p. 221; Joe Brill, “UFO’s behind the Iron Curtain,” Skylook, no. 87, February 1975, pp. 14–15)
June 18 — The National Security Council issues Directive 10/2, calling for covert action against the USSR, and granting the authority to carry out covert operations against “hostile foreign states or groups” that could, if needed, be denied by the US government. To this end, the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) is created inside the new CIA. Frank Wisner, the head of the OPC, answers not to the CIA director, but to the secretaries of defense, state, and the NSC, and the OPC’s actions are a secret even from the head of the CIA. Most CIA stations have two
station chiefs, one working for the OSO, and one working for the OPC. (“Note on U.S. Covert Actions,” from Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XII, Western Europe, Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute, US Department of State)
June 29 — ATIC’s chief of operations, C. A. Griffith, writes to a military representative in Norway to send all UFO reports to Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio. (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1948, The Author, 1988, pp. 32–33)
June 30 — A couple are driving near Hecla, South Dakota, when they see an unusual star. They stop the car and get out, but it is not moving. They drive on and stop again. A few pieces break off the original star and arrange themselves in a triangle formation. They all now look like polished aluminum; they rise to a great height and vanish. (Michael
D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 45–46; Sparks, p. 35; Swords 57)
July — 1:00 p.m. Former Air Force pilot Don Newman and three friends watch a disc-shaped, domed UFO, about 100 feet in diameter, maneuvering over Pasco, Washington. “The exterior finish appears to be spun or burnished aluminum.” The object slows, then accelerates rapidly, dives, and climbs over the area. (UFOEv, p. 38; NICAP, “Summary of letter from Witness to Major Keyhoe, dated March 10, 1958”)
July 1 — A Maj. Hammer is flying above Rapid City AFB [now Ellsworth AFB], South Dakota, when he sees 21 brilliant, yellow-white, oval-shaped objects. They are about 100 feet in diameter and flying in a tight diamond formation. They make a high-speed dive, level, make a perfect turn in formation, angle upwards at 30°–40°, and accelerate out of sight. He estimates their cruising speed at 500 mph. (Swords 57–58; Sparks, p. 35)
July 4 — Day. Edward E. Thompson watches a brilliant spherical UFO for five minutes while sitting in Johnson Park in Camden, New Jersey, across from the Cooper Free Public Library. (“Report from the Readers,” Fate 1, no. 4 (Winter 1949): 93–94)
July 7 — A silver, disc-shaped object allegedly crashes some 30 miles south-southwest of Laredo, Texas. US servicemen are reportedly dispatched from a nearby military base to cordon off the UFO crash site until a special US retrieval team arrives to examine the wreckage and carry it away to a military base in San Antonio, Texas. Supposedly the badly burned body of a nonhuman entity is recovered from the crash site. Ufologist Leonard Stringfield hears rumors of the crash in 1977, but few further details emerge. Early in 1978, Stringfield describes the humanoid found at the crash site as “about 4 feet, 6 inches tall, completely hairless, with hands that had no thumbs.” That description seems to fit the body shown in two photographs that are mailed to Willard F. McIntyre in December 1978. The body depicted in the photos sent to McIntyre has come to be known as the “Tomato Man” due to its large, roundish head. Many UFO researchers, including Ron Schaffner and Kevin Randle, believe the body is that of a human pilot who is badly disfigured by intense heat following a plane crash. They argue that one of the photos shows a pair of eyeglasses, such as a human pilot would wear, near the body. (William S. Steinman and Wendelle C. Stevens, UFO Crash at Aztec, UFO Photo Archives, 1986, pp. 402–422; Kevin D. Randle, A History of UFO Crashes, Avon, 1995, p. 188; Good Above, pp. 397–398; “Laredo 1948,” Texas UFO Museum and Research Library, March 8, 2009; Noe Torres and Ruben Uriarte, The Other Roswell: UFO Crash on the Texas– Mexico Border, Roswell Books, 2008)
July 9 — Caramia and Carpenter, two officers of the USAF 72nd Reconnaissance Group, are fishing at Fielding Lake, Alaska, when they hear a loud roar and notice about 20 gray discs or spheres moving at 500 mph in loose formation from west-northwest to east-southeast at about 5,000 feet. (Barry Greenwood, “The Estimate of the Situation: Well, Not Exactly!” UFO Historical Revue, no. 16 (July 2015): 5–10)
July 9 — 9:47 p.m. While on the ground in Osborn, Ohio, the USAF Project Sign officer who had flown to investigate the Hecla case, sees a self-luminous, yellow-white object flying at 500–600 mph. It seems to pulse its lights at 3- second intervals as it moves away. (Swords 58; Sparks, p. 35)
July 14 — Day. Charles W. Shangle Jr. watches two groups of about 16 UFOs maneuvering at 300–600 mph over Boise, Idaho. Two of the objects exhibit a “falling leaf” motion. (“True Mystic Experiences,” Fate 2, no. 1 (May 1949): 75–79)
July 17 — 4:50 p.m. Two Kirtland AFB sergeants on a fishing trip with their families five miles south of San Acacia Diversion Dam, New Mexico, see a group of 7 aluminum-like, spherical objects approach from the south at 20,000 feet pass overhead at 1,500 mph. They first appear like snub-nosed jet fighters of an unknown type, shifting from V -ormation to L-formation to circular formation to no regular formation. A regular pulsating flashing light appears in the group at 30° from zenith to the north, and at this oblique angle the objects do not appear circular. There is no noise or trail. (NICAP, “Two Military Families Report Seven Objects”; Swords 58)
July 20 — The Netherlands government reports that a wingless, cigar-shaped object with two decks of windows is seen flying rapidly on four separate occasions by two Dutch citizens over The Hague (and/or Arnhem). (NICAP, “High V-2-Like Craft Observed”; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1948, The Author, 1988, p. 86)
July 21 — The USAF Research and Development division sends a formal letter to the RAND Corporation authorizing them to select scientists to evaluate the possibility that the flying discs might be human-built spaceships. RAND’s reply is not known. (Swords 58)
July 24 — 1:45 a.m. A bright object is seen at Robins AFB in Houston County, Georgia, by ground maintenance crewman Walter Massey, who sees a “stream of fire” in the north. As it moves overhead, it seems more cylindrical. It moves off to the west. (NICAP, “July 24, 1948, 0250E, Warner Robins AFB, Georgia”)
July 24 — 2:45 a.m. Capt. Clarence S. Chiles and copilot John B. Whitted are flying an Eastern Airlines DC-3 at 5,000 feet, 20 miles southwest of Montgomery, Alabama, when they see an object about 100 feet long moving rapidly toward them on their right. Torpedo-shaped and wingless, the object has flames jetting 50 feet from its rear. There are two rows of square windows through which a bright light is glowing. They only see it for 5–10 seconds. It is half a mile away and moving at about 700 mph. After it passes the plane it swoops into a cloud bank at 6,000 feet. One passenger, Clarence L. McKelvie of Columbus, Ohio, also sees it. (Wikipedia, “Chiles-Whitted UFO Encounter”; NICAP, “Chiles-Whitted Case”; Kenneth Arnold and Ray Palmer, The Coming of the Saucers, Palmer, 1952, pp. 90–91; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, pp. 42–43; Clark III 234–236; UFOEv, p. 48; Sparks, p. 36; Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 46–47; Swords 58–60; Good Above, pp. 264, 479; Joel Carpenter, “Watershed: The Chiles-Whitted ‘Rocketship’ Sighting,” 2002; Martin Shough, “Analysis of the Chiles-Whitted Sightings, July 24, 1948,” February 2011; Kevin D. Randle, “Chiles/Whitted and Skepticism,” A Different Perspective, January 21, 2016)
July 25 — Chief of Air Force Intelligence Gen. Charles Cabell phones McCoy’s office at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio.
Sign is ordered to get into the field immediately and investigate the Chiles-Whitted case. By that afternoon, Loedding, Deyarmond, and Llewellyn (now apparently director of Project Sign) are flown by Capt. Clarence Groseclose to Atlanta, Georgia. (Sparks, p. 13; Swords 60)
July 26 — Loedding, Deyarmond, and Llewellyn interview Chiles and Whitted in the Henry Grady Hotel, Atlanta, Georgia. They are impressed with their account. Mulling the case through September, Project Sign is disturbed even more than the Mantell incident, according to Ruppelt. Capt. Sneider considers the shape aerodynamically feasible; consultant J. Allen Hynek says it might be a fireball but considers that “far-fetched.” (Swords 60)
July 26 — Aeronautical engineer Molt Taylor speculates to the Associated Press that “If we can build such craft, what is to prevent others from doing so, assuming that a similar order of intelligence exists on other planets? You and I may see the day when we will be united with Russia defending this planet against attack from space.” (“It May Be Men from Mars, Expert Says of ‘Saucers,’” San Francisco Examiner, July 28, 1948, p. 32; Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1948, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2000, p. 65)
July 27 — Air Intelligence Memorandum on “Pattern of Flying Saucers” requires that a study be made by the Air Intelligence Division to examine the pattern of tactics of reported UFOs and develop conclusions as to their probability. This leads to the EEI “Analysis of Flying Object Incidents in the United States” (100-203-79) of December 10. The JIC report gives the incorrect date as August 6. (Col. Brooke E. Allen, “Analysis of Flying Object Incidents in the U.S.,” October 11, 1948; “Report by the Director of Intelligence, USAF, to the Joint Intelligence Committee on Unidentified Aerial Objects,” April 28, 1949, p. 2; Jan L. Aldrich, “New Top Secret Document Revealed,” Project 1947)
July 29 — 9:18 a.m. James Toney and Robert Huggins, both employees of an Indianapolis, Indiana, rug cleaning firm, are in a truck headed west when they see a shiny, propeller-shaped, aluminum object with 10–12 small cups protruding from either blade. It is 6–8 feet long and flying silently above the trees at 30 feet altitude some 300 feet away heading south. It approaches to about 100 feet at its closest. The object glides across the road at 25–30 mph in a slight descent then makes a 20° bank to the east and goes down in a wooded area. Toney and Huggins stop the truck and get out to look, but the object has disappeared behind trees. A later search finds no traces. (NICAP, “Close Encounter with ‘Propeller-Shaped’ Object”; Sparks, p. 36)
July 31 — 8:25 a.m. Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Swigert of south-central Indianapolis, Indiana, see a cymbal-shaped or domed- disc object to the west of their home. It is about 20 feet across, 6–8 feet thick, white without any shine but shadowing on upper right. It flies straight and level from horizon to horizon, west to east heading 90°. They estimate its altitude as 2,000 feet covering a distance of 5 miles in 10 seconds. It shimmers in the sun as if spinning, is silent, and has no trail. (NICAP, “Cymbal-Shaped Object Observed by Couple”; Sparks, p. 37)
August 5 — This date given by Edward Ruppelt for the lost “Estimate of the Situation,” in which Project Sign concludes that UFOs are interplanetary, is probably too early. See September 30. ()
August 15 — Morning. Future ufologist Walter H. Andrus Jr., his wife Genevieve, and son Donald see four UFOs flying in formation east to west over downtown, Phoenix, Arizona. They simply vanish in sequence, then the first three reappear one at a time in the northwest where they pass out of sight to the west. (Story, pp. 17–18)
August 21 — A possible Russian rocket trail is seen over Katrineholm, Sweden, that remains visible for three hours “resembling a brilliant star surrounded by streamers of fire like the tentacles of an octopus.” However, there is no known record of a launch on this date of a V-2 or R-1 missile from the Russian base at Kapustin Yar, Astrakhan Oblast, Russia. It may be the same object viewed by Swedish Armed Forces Supreme Commander Helge Jung of an “aerial explosion considered to be some form of guided missile originating from Estonian islands, possibly Dagö or Osel.” (“‘Sky Octopus’ Seen above Swedish Town,” Richmond (Ind.) Palladium-Item, August 23, 1948,
p. 2; “Sky Octopus over Sweden,” Fate 2, no. 1 (May 1949): 35; Jan Aldrich, “Investigating the Ghost Rockets,”
IUR 23, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 14)
September — About this time Capt. Robert R. Sneider becomes a co-chief of Project Sign with Lt. Howard W. Smith. (Sparks, pp. 13–14)
September 1 — The CIA Office of Policy Coordination is formally established with the responsibility to engage in “propaganda, economic warfare, preventive direct action, including sabotage, antisabotage, demolition and evacuation procedures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups, and support of indigenous anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world.” (Wikipedia, “Office of Policy Coordination”)
September 15 — USAF Maj. Dick Johnson reaches an official airspeed record of 671 mph (slightly more than Yeager’s first record) in a North American F-86A-3 Sabre at Muroc [now Edwards] AFB, California. (Wikipedia, “North American F-86 Sabre”)
September 16 — Before dawn. Fred Scott, 63, is walking around Grassy Mountain, Malheur County, Oregon, when he looks up and sees two “flying persons” to the south. They are 150–250 feet up, one following the other at a distance of 8–10 feet. Their wings are narrow and rounded at the tip and do not flap. Their legs are unusually short. They remain visible while Scott walks for at least another mile. (Center for UFO Studies, HUMCAT Index 1940–1949, p. 43; Clark III 270)
September 23 — 9:40 a.m. At Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, a group of people are waiting for an airplane at the landing strip when one of them notices something glint in the sun. It is a flat, circular object, high in the northern sky. The appearance and relative size is the same as a dime held edgewise and slightly tipped, about 50 feet away. (NICAP, “Flat Dime On-Edge Observed by Lab Personnel”; Sparks, p. 38)
September 26 — 2:00 p.m. P. L. Lewis sees a white object moving rapidly across the sky at Port Hope, Ontario, then disappear when it is nearly overhead. Other white objects follow at about 50 mph in a northeasterly direction, accompanied by strands of spider web. Lewis speculates that the objects are balls of spiders’ threads, held together by thistledown. (P. R. Bishop, “Cobwebs or Flying Saucers?” Weather 4 (1949): 121–122; Philip J. Imbrogno, Files from the Edge: A Paranormal Investigator’s Explorations into High Strangeness, Llewellyn, 2010, p. 54)
September 30? — Project Sign officer Capt. Robert R. Sneider has decided that the time has come to climax Project Sign’s task and write the required “Estimate of the Situation.” Every intelligence operation’s task is ultimately to present such a best-guess summary, strongly backed with as much fact as possible. Using the Chiles-Whitted case as the core and collecting around it many cases from the summer of 1947 to September 1948, Sneider composes the document. The most recent case known to have been listed in the document is the September 23 Los Alamos National Laboratory sighting in New Mexico. Two prominent USAF intelligence officers (Ruppelt and Dewey J. Fournet Jr.) see the document in 1952. “It was a rather thick document with a black cover and it was printed on legal-sized paper. Stamped across the front were the words TOP SECRET.” Ruppelt says the Estimate concludes that the best evidence indicated an extraterrestrial origin for UFOs. Sneider is probably the primary author.
Deyarmond, Loedding, and Truettner almost certainly are part of the writing. Llewellyn certainly looks in. All these people, as well as higher-ups in Clingerman’s and McCoy’s offices, must approve it, at least in some sense. And an Estimate of UFOs as extraterrestrial is no small thing to assent to. The Estimate is probably addressed to Chief of Staff Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, but it really is meant for Director of Intelligence Gen. Charles Cabell. It is probably sent near the end of September, just before the George Gorman “UFO dogfight” in Fargo, North Dakota, on October 1. It probably lands in Garrett’s Collections office and is hand-carried to Cabell. Cabell may or may not be shocked. With a pro-ETH Wright-Patterson intelligence group on one side, an anti-ETH Pentagon Intelligence Requirements Office on the other, and open-minded collections officers and the powerful Research and Development chief (Gen. Donald L. Putt) in between, Cabell doesn’t want to decide this on his own. He hands the Estimate further upstairs to Vandenberg himself, who rejects it and bats it back to Cabell with a strong
sense of disapproval. Ruppelt adds that some months later the Estimate is completely declassified and “all but a few copies” are destroyed. (Ruppelt, p. 45; Clark III 436–437; Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 48–51; Hynek UFO Report, pp. 13–14; Michael D. Swords, “The Lost Words of Edward Ruppelt,” IUR 20, no. 2 (Mar./Apr. 1995): 14–15; Swords 62)
October — Vannevar Bush resigns as chairman of the Research and Development Board, passing the job on to Karl Taylor Compton. (Michael Hall and Wendy Connors, “The Research and Development Board: Unanswered Questions,” IUR 26, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 9)
October 1 — The first Joint Army-Navy-Air Force Publication (JANAP) 146, based on Bernard Baruch Jr.’s CIRES system, is issued. It consists of instructions for military and civilian personnel on how to report sightings of enemy aircraft, missiles, submarines, and surface vessels. This version does not include UFOs. It is tabled shortly afterward by Maj. Gen. Cabell. (Antonio F. Rullán, “Blue Book UFO Reports at Sea by Ships: Analysis of the Blue Book Ship Database,” December 10, 2002, pp. 8–9; Swords 122)
October 1 — 8:30 p.m. 2d Lieut. George F. Gorman of the North Dakota National Guard, flying an F-51 near Fargo, North Dakota, spots an object traveling east to west. He describes it as a light 6–8 inches in diameter displaying incredible movements. He repeatedly gives chase beginning at 9:07 p.m., but each time is outmaneuvered by the light, which moves up to 600 mph. On his first pass he gets as close as 500 feet from the light at about 5,000 feet altitude. Gorman climbs to 14,000 feet but stalled out, unable to intercept the light, which is at about 16,000 feet. The light makes evasive and aggressive maneuvers, such as seeming to try to ram the F-51. When it drops to 11,000 feet, Gorman attempts to dive at it, but the light pulls up, rises vertically, and disappears at high speed.
The light is also seen by airport control tower operators Lloyd D. Jensen and Manuel E. Johnson, as well as others on the ground and pilot Arthur E. Cannon flying a Piper Cub at 1,600 feet. Jensen watches the dogfight through 6x30 binoculars, the UFO appearing perfectly round with sharp edges and no fuzzy outline. Project Sign personnel arrive within hours and interview the witnesses. Eventually they conclude the object was a balloon, with evasive maneuvers the product of Gorman’s imagination, since ground observers do not see anything comparable. Some ufologists, among them Aimé Michel and James E. McDonald, have rejected the balloon explanation. (Wikipedia, “Gorman dogfight”; NICAP, “Gorman (Fargo) Case”; Ruppelt, pp. 41–43; Sparks, p.
39; Michael D. Swords, GrassRoots UFOs: Case Reports from the Timmerman Files, Fund for UFO Research, 2005, p. 138; Clark III 536–537)
October 7 — A document from Project Sign to Garrett and Cabell is an upbeat Sneider report on the initial investigation of the Gorman dogfight, making the object sound extremely unusual and intelligent in behavior. This is almost like a supplement to the Estimate. (Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 50)
October 7 — A set of letters, composed not by Sneider but actually by Samuel Z. Hunnicutt, a member of T-2 and the Sign team, and approved by MCI heavyweights McCoy, Clingerman, and Leland Money, goes out to the CIA, US Army Intelligence, and the Office of Naval Intelligence. The query: What domestic technological developments do you know of that might explain UFOs and help us differentiate them from inimical (Soviet) foreign developments? (Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 50)
October 12 (or 22) — Project Sign’s Col. William R. Clingerman writes a letter to USAF Chiefs of Staff requesting a study of UFOs by the RAND Corporation, similar to the one made by USAF R&D in July, especially the possibility that “some of the unidentified aerial objects that have been reported both in the United States and in foreign lands may have been experimental spaceships. it is believed more likely that they represent the effort of
a foreign nation, rather than a product from beyond the Earth.” (Col. W. R. Clingerman, “Request for Study by Rand Project,” October 12(?), 1948; Swords 58, 492–493)
October 15 — 11:05 p.m. On night patrol, 1st Lt. Oliver “Bud” Hemphill Jr. of the 68th Fighter Squadron is flying a Northrup F-61 Black Widow some 50 miles northwest of Fukuoka, Japan, when the crew picks up an object on radar going 200 mph. As he closes to intercept, the object speeds up to 1,200 mph then slows down again. The plane tries closing in six times, but each time the object speeds away. On one pass the crew sees the object’s silhouette, which looks like a “rifle bullet” 20–30 feet long. The object “seems cognizant of the whereabouts of the F-61 at all times.” Radar operator Barton Halter thinks it is a “new type of aircraft.” (NICAP, “F-61 ‘Black Widow’ Radar Case”; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, pp. 69–70; Hynek UFO Report, pp. 134–137; Sparks, p. 40)
October 20 — The US Air Force Security Service is activated at Arlington Hall in Washington, D.C., with the mission of cryptology and communications security. (Wikipedia, “United States Air Force Security Service”)
October 29 — Five US Air Force pilots observe a silvery object over Neubiberg Air Base [now closed] near Munich, Germany. The object disappears at a terrific speed after having remained over the air base more than 30 minutes. A similar object is seen days before by another group of American pilots. (Jan Aldrich, “Early Top Secret UFO Document Discovered,” 2000)
Late 1948 — The search for a suitable US location for nuclear testing, codenamed “Project Nutmeg,” commences under the direction of expert meteorologist and Navy Captain Howard B. Hutchinson. The government is looking for a place where nuclear tests would have little impact on the American people or the American economy. Five primary sites are considered: Dugway Proving Ground, Utah; Alamogordo–White Sands Guided Missile Range, New Mexico; an area in Nevada between Fallon and Eureka; the Tonopah–Las Vegas Bombing and Gunnery Range (the site finally chosen in 1950, now part of Nellis Air Force Base); and the Pamlico Sound area off the coast of North Carolina. (“Project Nutmeg: The Birth of the Nevada Test Site,” National Nuclear Security Administration, June 2004; Philip Howard, “Project Nutmeg,” Village Craftsmen, April 21, 2012; Diane Tennant, “How Outer Banks Almost Became a Nuclear Test Site,” Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, January 27, 2013)
November 1 — Radar operator M/Sgt Francis H. Mills at Goose Bay AFB [now CFB Goose Bay], Labrador, tracks an object too large for a bird, too small for a plane, flying at 60 mph. Not confirmed visually. (NICAP, “600 MPH Track at Goose Bay”; NICAP, “October 29, October 30, and November 1, 1948, Incident Nos. 188, 195, and 196: Goose Bay, Labrador,” June 28, 2009; Sparks, p. 42)
November 3 — Against most predictions, Harry S. Truman wins the US presidential election against Republican Thomas
E. Dewey. Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, like everyone else, expects to have a new boss in January. His relationship with Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington has deteriorated, and he has not obtained a budget consensus from the Joint Chiefs. His mental health, physical condition, and authority are deteriorating. He is convinced that “foreign-looking men” are following him and that Symington is spying on him. Secret Service Chief Urbanus E. Baughman begins to think Forrestal is suffering from a “total psychotic breakdown.” ()
November 3 — Gen. Charles Cabell writes a firm letter to Wright Field in Ohio, asking Project Sign for another Estimate.
It is possibly composed by Maj. Aaron “Jere” Boggs or Col. Edward H. Porter at the USAF Defensive Air Branch. While admitting that the objects seem real, it also cautions that they are not identified. (Read: You may not identify them as extraterrestrial craft.) (Maj. Gen. C. P. Cabell, “Flying Object Incidents in the United States,” November 3, 1948; Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 50– 51, 62; Swords 62, 64)
November 4 — A USAF Europe document transmits some information on the Swedish ghost rockets. “They have been reported by so many sources and from such a variety of places that we are convinced that they cannot be disregarded and must be explained on some basis which is perhaps slightly beyond the scope of our present intelligence thinking.” One of the objects was observed crashing into a lake by Swedish Gen. Helge Jung and his party. A salvage operation was unsuccessful. USAF officers visit Swedish Air Intelligence officials who have reached the conclusion that “these phenomena are obviously the result of a high technical skill which cannot be credited to any presently known culture on earth.” The document is distributed to the CIA (which in response to a FOIA request claims no record), Armament Intelligence Branch, and AMC. (“USAFE 14, TT 1524, Top Secret,” November 4, 1948; Jan Aldrich, “Early Top Secret UFO Document Discovered,” 2000; Swords 62–63; Good Need, p. 115)
November 6 — Two UFOs, maneuvering like planes in a dogfight, are tracked on USAF radar over Wakkanai, Japan. (NICAP, “Target Circles Radar Site”; Keyhoe, FS from OS, p. 34; Sparks, p. 42)
November 8 — A letter is sent with Col. McCoy’s signature to Gen. Cabell. Written by Sign operative Albert Deyarmond, it is overtly submissive but covertly rebellious. It contains several comments agreeing with Cabell that the UFO phenomenon is not identifiable and that no concrete physical proof exists to identify it. At the same time it drops all sorts of hints, doubtless the same arguments used in the original Estimate, that the objects really are extra- terrestrial whether the Pentagon thinks so or not: It mentions the ETH; it mentions plotting waves against planetary approaches and finding a correlation; it mentions the books of Charles Fort as indicating that this has been going on for at least a century; it mentions that odd shapes (like the Chiles-Whitted case) can fly but require more advanced power plants than we have. (Col. H. M. McCoy, “Flying Object Incidents in the United States,” November 8, 1948; Michael D. Swords, “The McCoy Letter,” IUR 22, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 12–17, 27; Michael
D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 51, 63–64; Swords 62, 65, 494–
November 12 — Project Sign personnel travel to the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., to attempt to convince Cabell and Vandenberg on the ETH. It includes Sneider, and perhaps Deyarmond, Loedding, Truettner, and McCoy. On the Pentagon side, Boggs and Cabell are there and perhaps Vandenberg, and they are having none
of the ETH. Back at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio, Deyarmond and Truettner begin writing a sanitized Project Sign report. More scientific oversight is requested for Sign personnel. The Scientific Advisory Board and George Valley of MIT are to be made aware of all cases. So too are Boggs’s office, ONI, and maybe even the NBS. Hynek is to be formally commissioned for an assessment, as well as Irving Langmuir and Project Rand. (Col. H.
M. McCoy, “Transmittal of Project ‘SIGN’ Incident Summaries,” November 12, 1948; Swords 65; Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 51–52)
Mid-November — Late afternoon. Clifford DeWitt Fife hears a whirring in the air near Nevada, Missouri. He looks up and sees a hovering, disc-like object. Two bright objects drop down out of the disc about 200–300 feet, then speed off to the southwest. The large object moves off to the northeast. (Nevada (Mo.) Daily Mail, November 30, 1948; Herbert S. Taylor, “Satellite Objects: A Further Look,” IUR 29, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 7)
November 18 — 10:00 p.m. USAF Reserve pilot Lt. Henry G. Combs is flying a T-6 Texas combat trainer when he sees an object flying west to east over Andrews AFB, Maryland. It has one continuously glowing white light. He makes a pass to check on it, but it takes evasive action and he duels with it for 10 minutes. The object performs very tight curves and quick accelerations to 600 mph. (NICAP, “The Lt. Combs / T-6 Encounter”; Sparks, p. 42; Richard H. Hall, Uninvited Guests, Aurora, 1988, pp. 236–237)
November 23 — 10:00 p.m. US Army Col. William P. Hayes sees a bright white, round light “larger than a basketball” descend slowly as he is driving 10 miles east of Vaughan, New Mexico. It explodes without a sound some 400– 500 feet above the ground. (NICAP, “Another Object in Vertical Descent Explodes near Colonel”; Sparks, p. 43; Clark III 539)
November 23 — 10:20 p.m. The first [although see October 15] documented radar-visual UFO case takes place at Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base in Bavaria, Germany. A UFO is seen circling at 27,000 feet. An F-80 pilot sent to intercept it describes it as bright red. It climbs abruptly to 50,000 feet at 900 mph. A second F-80 pilot verifies the report. (NICAP, “Grnd Visual / Grnd Radar Track Object at 27,000ʹ”; Ruppelt, p. 46; Sparks, p. 43)
November 24 — Writer Sidney Shalett has asked for USAF cooperation in writing an article on UFOs for the Saturday Evening Post. In a “Memorandum for the Record,” the USAF Directorate of Intelligence indicates that “publicity of this nature is undesirable but, if such articles are written, they will be less harmful to the national interest if a degree of guidance in their preparation is exercised.” Signed November 24 by Cabell, Director of Intelligence. ([Maj. Gen. Charles P. Cabell], “Memorandum for Record,” November 24, 1948)
November 30 — Maj. Gen. Charles P. Cabell, in an Air Staff Summary Sheet, admits that he has tried to dissuade the press from publishing articles like Shalett’s. Cabell has asked Secretary Forrestal for permission to feed Shalett some statistics, but the memo is apparently never sent. (Maj. Gen. C. P. Cabell, “Publicity on Flying Saucer Incidents,” Air Staff Summary Sheet, November 30, 1948; “Memorandum for Mr. Forrestal” [unsent])
November 30 — Letter from Howard McCoy at AMC Dayton to Commanding General, Air Defense Command, Mitchel AFB [now closed], Long Island, New York. “It is requested that all reports of unusual sightings by radar stations of your command be made directly to this Headquarters by the most expeditious means.” (NICAP, “1948 UFO Chronology”)
November 30 — An interim report by Project Sign, one that apparently takes seriously the possibility that UFOs represent interplanetary probes, is accidentally destroyed. USAF Intelligence later requests a replacement copy from TID at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio. A recent FOIA to the National Archives answers that such a document would be in Project Blue Book files, but it is not. (Jan Aldrich)
December — A first-strike war plan (Sizzle) is developed to use 133 nuclear aerial bombs against 70 cities of the USSR. (“Nuclear ‘Pincher’: The START II Treaty, the American ‘Escalation of Superiority’ Strategy, and Russia’s Strategic Nuclear Forces,” from Sovetskaya Rossiya, April 8, 1995)
December 3 — 8:15 p.m. Sgt. Bruce Earlin McFarland, control tower operator at Fairfield-Suisun AFB [now Travis AFB] at Fairfield, California, watches for 25 seconds a round, white light fly with variable speed (200–400 mph) and a bouncing motion, finally disappearing after a rapid, erratic climb to 20,000 feet. (NICAP, “Fairfield-Suisun AFB, Dec. 3, 1948, UFO Report”; Sparks, p. 43)
December 5 —9:05 p.m. Pilot Capt. William R. Goade is flying a USAF C-47 from Denver to Phoenix. Just west of Las Vegas, New Mexico, he and his copilot Maj. Roger Carter spot a bright green flash. Some 22 minutes later, an identical flash rises from the east slope of Sandia Peak and follows a parabolic curve as the C-47 passes 20 miles northeast of Albuquerque. Capt. Ernest Van Lloyd and the crew of Pioneer Airlines Flight 63 also see the second object, described as first orange, then green. (NICAP, “AFOSI Case 8: AF C-47 Pilot Observes UFO Similar to Green Flare”; Clark III 539; Sparks, p. 43)
December 6 —Lt. Col. Doyle Rees, commander of the Seventeenth District AFOSI at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, orders an investigation into the previous night’s green fireball. (Clark III 539)
December 6 — Project Sign is ordered to send copies of all its future cases and analyses to Maj. Boggs of the Office of Defensive Air, the ONI, and the USAF Scientific Advisory Board. (Swords 65)
December 6 — 10:55 p.m. Atomic Energy Security Service Officer Joseph Toulouse sees a greenish flare one-third the apparent size of the moon at Sandia Base outside Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is visible for 3 seconds before it arcs downward and vanishes. (NICAP, “AFOSI Case 10: AESS Observed Green Flare Directly over Sandia Base”; Clark III 539; Sparks, p. 44)
December 8 — Two AFOSI officers, Capts. Melvin E. Neef and John J. Stahl Jr., interview every agency that might know something about green-flare operations but come up short. That evening, they are flying a T-7 out of Kirtland AFB, Albuquerque, New Mexico, at 5,000 feet when they see a brilliant green light, larger and more brilliant than a meteor or flare, traveling a flat trajectory 2,000 feet above them. They see it for 2 seconds before it burns out. (NICAP, “AFOSI Case 11: Agents in T-7 Observe Intense Green Fireball at 13,000ʹ”; Clark III 539; Sparks, p.
December 9 — Capt. Neef informs Lincoln LaPaz, director of meteoritics at the University of New Mexico, about the green fireball sightings. He says they do not sound like any meteors he is familiar with. (Clark III 539)
December 10 — The revised Project Sign report is issued, Air Intelligence Report Number 100-203-79, “Analysis of Fly- ing Object Incidents in the U.S.” (AIR 203) [Some copies are confusingly dated April 28, 1949.] This is the cul- mination of Sign’s work since early August, augmented by ONI collaboration over the past two months. UFOs are not extraterrestrial (the idea is hardly noticed). UFOs are probably real, but if so, there is a small chance that they are Soviet and therefore dangerous. All in all, the word “Soviet” dominates the commentary. (US Air Force, Directorate of Intelligence, Analysis of Flying Object Incidents in the U.S.: Summary and Conclusions, Air Intelligence Report 100-203-79, December 10, 1948; copy, dated April 28, 1949; Bruce Maccabee, “Hiding the Hardware,” IUR 16, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1991): 7–8; Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 52; Swords 65–66; Good Above, pp. 265, 480–481)
December 12 — 9:02 p.m. Lincoln LaPaz and two USAF officers (Sandia Base Intelligence Officer Lt. Allan B. Clark and Sandia’s AF-Civil Air Patrol Liaison Officer Maj. Charles L. Phillips) see a green fireball near Bernal, New Mexico. He calculates that it is flying directly over Los Alamos National Laboratory, and it maintains its horizontal flight at the low altitude (for a meteor) of 8–10 miles. LaPaz arranges with the Atomic Energy Security Service to set up a patrol with Speed Graphic cameras to try to photograph the fireballs. (NICAP, “AFOSI Case 13: LaPaz, Captain, CAP Intel Officer Observed Green Fireball”; Clark III 539–540; Good Above, p. 266; Joel Carpenter, “Green Fireball Chronology,” October 6, 2011)
December 13 — Project Sign files are sent to the Navy by Col. William R. Clingerman. (NICAP, “Project ‘SIGN’ Files Sent Directly to the Navy,” December 13, 1948)
December 13 — Aeronautical engineer James E. Lipp writes an 8-page memo to Brig. Gen. Donald Putt on “Special Design and Performance Characteristics That Are Believed to Distinguish Spaceships.” Rejecting out of hand any links between UFO sightings and space travelers, it later appears as an appendix in the Project Grudge report. (James E. Lipp, “Special Design and Performance Characteristics That Are Believed to Distinguish Spaceships,” December 13, 1948)
December 16 — Astronomer J. Allen Hynek is officially tasked by Project Sign with studying UFO cases for astronomical explanations. (AMC contract W33-038-1118).
December 16 — Brig. Gen. Donald Putt, Director of USAF Research and Development, orders that the code word Sign be changed to Grudge (since the Air Force bears a grudge against UFO reports, according to Ruppelt), effective in February. Morale plummets. (“Report by the Director of Intelligence, USAF, to the Joint Intelligence Committee on Unidentified Aerial Objects,” April 28, 1949; Sparks, p. 11)
December 20 — Sneider sends his summary of the Chiles-Whitted case, Air Intelligence Report number 102-122-79, to Cabell. It is later called “The Ghost of the Estimate” by some researchers. (Capt. Robert R. Sneider, [untitled memorandum], December 20, 1948; Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 52)
December 20 — In a confidential memo to Lt. Col. Doyle Rees, LaPaz argues that the green fireball he saw on December 12 was no meteor he has ever studied. He writes that the object moved far too slowly to have been a meteor and left no “trail of sparks or dust cloud” as would be typical of meteors flying at low altitudes. Other anomalous characteristics were the intense lime-green color, low altitude of only 8–10 miles yet exhibiting no sound, flat rather than arced trajectory, and turning on and off like a light switch. The interest in green fireballs inspires the creation of an informal group, the Los Alamos Astrophysical Association, whose members, all scientists and engineers with security clearances, are permitted to examine some classified Project Sign reports. This is essentially the beginning of Project Twinkle. (Clark III 540; World History Project, “Project Twinkle Established to Monitor Green Fireball Sightings”)
December 20 — 8:54 p.m. Shortly after they have packed up their Speed Graphic cameras provided by LaPaz to try to photograph the green fireballs, personnel (William D. Wilson, Buford G. Truett, Clifford E. Strang, and George S. Skipper) at an Atomic Energy Security Service post west of Los Alamos, New Mexico, spot a blue-white fireball moving in a nearly flat trajectory. Two objects separate from the main body and trail behind it. Thanks to an independent observation at another site, LaPaz is able to triangulate its flight path as 7–8 miles, west to east toward Los Alamos. (NICAP, “AFOSI Case 14: AESS OP Sighted Green Fireball with Triangulation”; Sparks, p. 46)
December 29 — The Fourth Army sums up the UFO situation in the southwest in a statement. In December 5–28, there were 23 reports of “flares or moving lights.” All but two are in New Mexico and are an intense white or greenish- white light. (Clark III 540)
1949
1949? — Evening. USAF Brig. Gen. William M. Garland is stationed at Mather AFB [now Sacramento Mather Airport] in Sacramento, California. He and a few other people, including some command pilots, are sitting in their yard when they see a “bright, silvery, round object” going too fast for an airplane. (Jan L. Aldrich, “Brigadier General William Madison Garland, USAF”)
1949 — 1:00 a.m. A group of soldiers of the 2nd Armored Division stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, are tasked with standing guard over a plateau in a remote, fenced-off part of the base. After a few weeks, they see bright lights in the sky. They approach the plateau and descend slowly and silently. Suddenly, part of the plateau opens up and they can see light coming from inside. The lights descend into the opening, which closes over them. (Michael D. Swords, “Timmermania: A Step Too Far into the Timmerman Files?” IUR 27, no. 4 (Winter 2002–2003): 9; Michael D. Swords, GrassRoots UFOs: Case Reports from the Timmerman Files, Fund for UFO Research, 2005,
p. 146)
1949 — Day. A student pilot is flying a two-seat Taylorcraft over Los Angeles, California. Just as he turns to a westerly flight heading, he sees an object speeding across the sky from north to south. Suddenly it stops abruptly, and the pilot heads toward the object climbing to within a few hundred feet. An intense flash of white comes from its tail and in less than a minute it is completely out of sight. (“Recently Reported,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 2, no. 10 (October 1981): 5)
January — Project Sign personnel begin to be reassigned. Loedding disappears from project records. Deyarmond’s attention goes elsewhere. Truettner makes one last serious attempt at interviewing about nuclear propulsion (at Oak Ridge, Tennessee) and is given a negative opinion on UFOs by Col. Ralph L. Wassell. He, too, disappears from the project. The civilian members are relieved of their duties and reassigned to other intelligence tasks within T-2. For Loedding in particular, his role and prestige are never the same. After a few further years of intelligence work, both he and Truettner leave AMC. For the higher military ranks (Llewelyn and Sneider), all we know is that they are soon no longer involved, perhaps not even assigned to the same base. Even Clingerman and McCoy become less involved, perhaps because they have also heard that their tenures will soon be up and they will be sent to school and then transferred. The only persons left active on the project are two of the lower ranks: Lieut. Howard W. Smith and civilian George W. Towles. Their job is reduced basically to collection and filing. In this condition, or worse, the Air Force commitment to a UFO investigation project will remain until the summer of 1951. (Michael D. Swords, “Project Sign and the Estimate of the Situation,” JUFOS 7 (2000): 52–53)
January — Early morning. Sarah Elizabeth Lampe watches an odd, disc-like electrical discharge, about 3 feet in diameter, that persists for “fully two minutes” during the Big Snow, 8 miles from Beatty, Nevada. (“True Mystic Experiences,” Fate 4, no. 2 (March 1951): 84–89)
January 1 — The CIA Office of Scientific Intelligence is established. Willard Machle becomes assistant director for scientific intelligence. Problems almost immediately involve recruitment and filling positions with competent professionals. (Rear Adm. R. H. Hillenkoetter, “Scientific Intelligence,” January 4, 1949)
January 1 — 5:00 p.m. Pilot Thomas A. Rush and his wife are in a private plane flying east of Jackson, Mississippi. They see a cigar-shaped object, 60 feet long and 10 feet wide, cross their path at an altitude of 1,500–1,600 feet. It is only about 500 feet distant. The speed is approximately 200 mph, and it accelerates to 400–500 mph. The object makes a 50° turn and is visible for 10–12 seconds. (NICAP, “Cigar-Shaped Object Encountered by Bush Pilot”; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1949, January–June, The Author, 1988, pp. 1–2; Sparks, p. 46)
January 4 — 2:00 p.m. USAF pilot Capt. Paul R. Stoney, on the ground at Hickam Field [now part of Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam] near Honolulu, Hawaii, sees a flat, white, elliptical object about the size of a T-6 aircraft, circle
at about 3,000 feet while oscillating to the right and left. It is apparently several miles off the base and slowly circling. It is bright white on the underside and darker on top and possesses no other structures. It proceeds for 15 minutes to make “rhythmical undulation” maneuvers in a cyclical manner. The “object seemed to maneuver under control at all times completing 360° turns and 90° turns.” The object then “departed climbing (into the northeast) at accelerated speed out of sight.” (NICAP, “Disc Circles, Maneuvers, Climbs into the NE”; Sparks, p. 47)
January 5 — The USAF Technical Information Division at Wright-Patterson AFB near Dayton, Ohio, transmits Project Sign’s list of UFO incidents to the Air Weather Service for analysis and recommendations. (Jan Aldrich)
January 6 — 5:30 p.m. PFC Everitt sees a bright-white, diamond-shaped light in horizontal flight from southeast to northwest above the Ordnance section at Kirtland AFB, Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is about 1,500–2,000 feet altitude and flying faster than a jet. Possible meteor. (NICAP, “Diamond-Shaped Light”; Sparks, p. 47)
January 7 — The Research and Development Board writes a memo to USAF Intelligence on the green fireballs. It is signed by David Z. Beckley, chief of the R&DB Technical Intelligence Branch. (Michael Hall and Wendy Connors, “The Research and Development Board: Unanswered Questions,” IUR 26, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 10)
January 10 — FBI special agent Charlton C. McSwain sends a memo to J. Edgar Hoover enumerating the views of an AMC resident engineer (identified only as “Mr. E”) with the Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft project at Oak Ridge National Laboratories in Tennessee that the flying discs are human-made nuclear missiles originating in Russia. (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1949, January–June, The Author, 1988, pp. 6–10)
January 11 — Angered over his opposition to defense economization policies and meeting secretly with Thomas Dewey’s Republicans, Truman tells Forrestal that Louis A. Johnson will soon replace him as Secretary of Defense. ()
January 13 — Col. Eustis L. Poland of US Army Intelligence (G-2) sends a memo on behalf of the Commander of Fourth Army at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, to the Director of Army Intelligence concerning the green fireballs. It recommends a scientific study because “these incidents are of such great importance, especially as they are occurring in the vicinity of sensitive installations.” (Col. Eustis L. Poland, “Unconventional Aircraft,” January 13, 1949; Good Above, pp. 265, 482)
January 24 — An FBI memo from D. M. Ladd to Hoover documents speculation on a Soviet nuclear-powered disc by USAF Col. Clyde D. Gasser of the Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft (NEPA) project at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Gasser reports rumors coming from Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio that nuclear-powered disc-shaped planes might be making incursions into US airspace and returning to the USSR over the North Pole. (D. M. Ladd, “Flying Discs,” January 24, 1949)
January 27 — 10:20–11:20 p.m. Capt. Eckerman Sannes, acting chief of the Aircraft Branch at Eglin AFB near Valparaiso, Florida, and his wife are driving slowly on Cortez Road between Bradenton and Cortez, Florida, when they observe a “cucumber-shaped” object. The object, seen through binoculars, seems as long as two Pullman cars, with 7 lighted, square windows. It is throwing sparks and approximately 8–10 miles away. In the first sighting at 10:20 p.m., the object approaches from the south going north, moving from an altitude of 8,000 feet in a gradual descent until lost behind trees. In the second sighting at 11:20 p.m., the object is seen in the north, heading south and making a gradual turn to the west. It descends then climbs with a bouncing motion (up 4,000 feet, down 2,000 feet) at about 400–500 mph, resulting in an overall climb and loss to view at an altitude of around 40,000 feet. The bouncing appears to start after the final 270° course change to the west. (NICAP, “Two Sightings of Object with Lighted Windows”; Sparks, p. 49)
January 30 — 5:54 p.m. Hundreds of people see a green meteor come out of the northwest and vanish southwest of Roswell, New Mexico. It is completely silent. (NICAP, “AFOSI Case 18: Green Fireball Event Witnessed in New Mexico”; Commanding Officer, Kirtland AFB, “Nr. OSI-1-90,” January 31, 1949; Clark III 540; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1949, January–June, The Author, 1988, pp. 15–16; Sparks, p. 49)
January 31 — Kirtland AFB in New Mexico notifies the Pentagon that it will launch an immediate investigation of the green fireballs, noting that “local commanders [are] perturbed by implications of phenomena.” LaPaz speaks to dozens of witnesses of the January 30 fireball and manages a rough triangulation of the fireball’s 143-mile path from Amarillo to Lamesa, Texas. He estimates its speed at 25,000–50,000 mph, with a beginning altitude of 60,000 feet and a final altitude around 40,000 feet. LaPaz accompanies search teams to bring back any fragments. They end up in the area of Lamesa but give up after a few days of fruitless search. He later tells AFOSI agent Paul Ryan that the fireballs are artificial, perhaps radio-controlled missiles directed by enemy agents in the Southwest. (Commanding Officer, Kirtland AFB, “Nr. OSI-1-90,” January 31, 1949; Clark III 540)
January 31 — The FBI field office in San Antonio, Texas, issues a memo on UFOs, “Protection of Vital Installations.” It is sent to Hoover, G-2, ONI, OSI, and mentions a meeting among these groups on UFOs, “considered top secret by intelligence officers of both the army and the air forces.” (SAC, San Antonio, “Protection of Vital Installations, Bureau File #65-58300,” January 31, 1949; ClearIntent, p. 149; Good Above, pp. 267, 483)
February — Chemist H. Marshall Chadwell, from the New York office of the Atomic Energy Commission, is appointed assistant director of scientific intelligence at the CIA. (Jan Aldrich)
Early February — Writer Sidney Shalett is given a guided tour of AMC at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio, a glimpse of low-interest UFO cases, and a few conservative opinions by Air Force personnel. (Swords 73)
February 1 — Col. Hanna (?), assistant chief of the Power Plant Laboratory (at Wright-Patterson?) and project engineer for Project Sign, meets with other Project Sign personnel and concludes that nuclear-powered UFOs are improbable. (Project Status Report on Project Sign, February 4, 1949; Jan Aldrich)
February 8 — UCLA geophysicist Joseph Kaplan meets with LaPaz at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He finds LaPaz’s understanding of the green fireball reports unsettling. He discusses the matter with Capt. Melvin Neef and Maj. William Godsoe (Fourth Army Intelligence liaison officer at Sandia Base). He promises to alert Scientific Advisory Board chairman Von Kármán and urge an investigation. (Clark III 540)
February 11 — Kaplan meets in Washington, D.C., with Von Kármán, who is impressed enough to write Gen. Charles P. Cabell that the green fireballs look like a serious issue that needs to be addressed, perhaps by LaPaz. (Swords 79, 497)
February 11 — Project Sign releases a final sanitized report, “Unidentified Aerial Objects: Project ‘Sign,’” Technical Report F-TR-2274-1A, authored by Lawrence Truettner and Albert B. Deyarmond and approved by Col.
Clingerman (chief of USAF Technical Intelligence Division) and Col. Howard McCoy (chief of the Intelligence Department). 72 pages are visible in the NICAP copy and 1,537 pages (some illegible) are available on the Blue Book microfilm. Its conclusions are based on 273 reports (243 US and 30 foreign) and it summarizes the characteristics of four types of UFOs: flying discs, cigar-shaped objects, spherical objects, and balls of light. It acknowledges the possibility that “these aerial objects are visitors from another planet” and refers to commentary in Appendix D by James Lipp of the RAND project. “No definite and conclusive evidence is yet available that would prove or disprove the existence of these unidentified objects as real aircraft of unknown and unconventional configuration. It is unlikely that positive proof of their existence will be obtained without examination of the remains of crashed objects. Evaluation of reports of unidentified objects is a necessary
activity of military intelligence agencies. Such sightings are inevitable, and under wartime conditions rapid and convincing solutions of such occurrences are necessary to maintain morale of military and civilian personnel. In this respect, it is considered that the establishment of procedures and training of personnel is in itself worth the effort expended on this project.” Truettner and Deyarmond, in a between-the-lines rebuke of Cabell’s order not to consider the ETH, recommend that if enough cases are examined and proven to have no security risks, then the project should be terminated. The report is distributed to AMC, USAF Intelligence Directorate, ONR, Cambridge Labs, Air Weather Services, Hynek at Ohio State University, the RAND Project, and the USAF Scientific Advisory Board. (L. H. Truettner and A. B. Deyarmond, Unidentified Aerial Objects: Project “Sign,” Air Materiel Command Technical Report no. F-TR-2274-IA, February 1949; Sparks, p. 12; Swords 72)
February 12 — Project Sign officially becomes Project Grudge. (Sparks, p. 12)
February 12 — Another realistic Spanish-language radio version of The War of the Worlds is broadcast in Quito, Ecuador, causing panic, a riot, and a major fire. (John Gosling, Waging the War of the Worlds, McFarland, 2009, pp. 102– 113)
February 15 — Maj. Gen. Cabell sets out a revised list of Air Intelligence reporting requirements for “unconventional aircraft.” (Maj. Gen. C. P. Cabell, “Unconventional Aircraft,” Air Intelligence Requirements Memorandum no. 5, February 15, 1949)
February 16 — A Conference on Aerial Phenomena is held at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico with military representatives Lincoln LaPaz, Norris E. Bradbury, Marshall Holloway, Frederick Reines, and Edward Teller in attendance. Representatives from Project Grudge are noticeably absent. LaPaz tells the attendees that while most meteors are blue-green, the green fireballs are described as pale green or yellow-green. Normal meteors rarely move in long, horizontal paths with nearly constant velocities. He says there are 10 incidents that strongly fit the pattern and 20 others that might. The scientists agree to set up a series of instrument stations to photograph and analyze the fireballs. Teller thinks the fireballs might be electrical-optical phenomena. Navy Commander Richard S. Mandelkorn, who is in attendance, writes in his report that “there is cause for concern of the continued occurrences of unexplainable phenomena of this nature in the vicinity of sensitive installations.” (Cmdr. Richard S. Mandelkorn, Report of a Trip to Los Alamos, New Mexico, 16 February 1949, February 18, 1949; Lt. Col. Doyle Rees, [Minutes of February 16 Conference on Aerial Phenomena, Los Alamos], March 29, 1949; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1949, January–June, The Author, 1988, pp. 23–53; Swords 79–80; Good Above, pp. 265–266)
February 17 — 5:57 p.m. University of New Mexico Professor of Civil Engineering Marvin May sees a brilliant white object in the west at 6° elevation for less than 6 minutes in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The object is first round
then shifts to an ellipse as it approaches, then it appears to be elongated like a bent pipe with corners, one full moon in length. It makes a slight climbing turn to the north, shifts to peach color as it makes a rapid sharp turning climb to the south, disappearing in cloudless sky by diminishing in size and brightness. At the same time, 100 guards at Sandia Base, New Mexico, including the officer of the guard, see a yellow-orange cigar-shaped object for seven minutes. (NICAP, “AFOSI Case 24: Vertical Climb, Then Leveled Off”; Sparks, p. 50)
February 18 — Cabell writes Von Kármán and says he has a transcript of the Los Alamos meeting and that Hynek is studying the green fireballs topic. He adds: “It seems unlikely that domestic incidents can be attributed to the activity of a foreign power or a science unknown to our specialists.” (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1949, January–June, The Author, 1988, pp. 12–13)
February 18 — A Fourth Air Force letter quotes Project Sign’s requirements for radar reporting, as stated by the Continental Air Command (NORAD’s predecessor) on February 4. The USAF Air Defense Command is subordinate to ConAC at this time. The requirements admit that a “large number of targets appearing on radar screens remain unidentified.” It refers to McCoy’s November 30, 1948, letter on Sign’s preference for radar tracks of aerial objects that show extremely fast or slow speeds, vertical or near vertical ascent or descent, extraordinary maneuverability, and extreme altitudes. (Clark III 810)
February 23 — McCoy sends Capt. Roger Groseclose and Lt. Howard Smith to Kirtland AFB’s Office of Special Investigations to discuss the green fireballs with LaPaz and Neef and to mollify them for not showing up at the February 16 conference. (Clark III 541)
February 24 — Groseclose and Smith have an unpleasant exchange with Neef, LaPaz, Agent Jack Boling, and Army Maj. Godsoe, who says it’s not worth AFOSI’s time to conduct investigations for AMC. The AMC officers retort that the fireballs are not an Army concern. Groseclose and Smith say they are concerned with all anomalous aerial phenomena. Disgusted, Godsoe leaves the room. Groseclose and Smith then turn on LaPaz, criticizing him for only sending AMC raw data and not finished analyses. LaPaz says he is on leave as a volunteer and must go back to the University of New Mexico, unless he sees a contract. However, AMC agrees to set up a network of observation posts with cameras, transits, and trained personnel. (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1949, January–June, The Author, 1988, pp. 11, 14–15; Clark III 541)
February or March — 4:30 p.m. A representative of the International Petroleum Company, a subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey, is driving noth along the Pan-American Highway about 6 miles south of Lima, Peru, when he sees a metallic disc hovering low above the desert on his right. He walks over to it, and three mummy-like creatures about 5 feet tall emerge. They speak to him in both English and Spanish, explaining to him that they come from another star system, are concerned about our use of atomic energy, use solar power, no longer have sex, and reproduce by subdividing. They invite him inside the disc, which from the inside has transparent walls. He sees no instruments, only a padded ledge. (Lorenzen, UFOs over the Americas, Signet, 1968, pp. 122–148)
March — Strategic Air Command head Gen. Curtis LeMay delivers the first SAC Emergency War Plan, which calls for dropping 133 atomic bombs on 70 cities in the USSR within 30 days. LeMay predicts that World War III will last no longer than 30 days. (Wikipedia, “Curtis LeMay”)
March 2 — Sidney Shalett provides the USAF Directorate of Intelligence a draft of his upcoming article for review. The Air Force is not pleased, objecting to Shalett stating an “official” USAF position, his claim that the Air Force is his sole source of information (although it is), a quote by Irving Langmuir criticizing Project Sign, and any inference that the Air Force and Navy are not cooperating. (Swords 73)
March 6–7 — 8:30 p.m. Army Pvts. Martin Fensterman and Frank Luisi, on security patrol near Killeen Base [now West Fort Hood], Texas, a nuclear weapons storage site, see a flash of pale blue light in the sky to the northeast. At 8:55 p.m., a quarter mile away, Pvt. Harold Moore sees a white light with an orange trail flash across the western horizon. At 9:00 p.m., from inside the base boundary, Sgt. Hubert Vickery and Pfc. John Ransom notice a pale blue-white light streaking across the western sky low over the horizon. Between 1:15 and 2:00 a.m., four more security patrols report burst of lights like a flash bulb. (SAC, San Antonio, “Protection of Vital Installations, Bureau File 65-58300,” March 22, 1949; Clark III 541–542; Sparks, pp. 50–51; “Fort Hood Sightings, 1949,” Texas UFO Museum and Research Library, February 5, 2014)
March 8 — 1:03 a.m. Two infantrymen half a mile apart at Killeen Base, Texas, see apparently separate streaking bright lights (one white, the other yellowish red). The latter one covers 60° of sky, appearing and disappearing at about the same angle above the horizon. Cpl. Luke Sims is able to run 10 paces to a field telephone before it vanishes. All observers insist these are not meteors and are more like flares. (NICAP, “Killeen Base, Camp Hood, Texas, OSI Case 39”; SAC, San Antonio, “Protection of Vital Installations, Bureau File 65-58300,” March 22, 1949; Clark III 542; Sparks, p. 52)
March 13 — 9:53 p.m. Two MPs guarding the Technical Area at Sandia Base, New Mexico, see a silent, spherical object, bluish- or greenish-white, with a flaming blue tail twice as long as the body, which is apparently half the size of the full moon. (NICAP, “March 13, 1949, Sandia Base, NM, OSI Case 40”; Sparks, p. 52)
March 15 —A memo on UFOs to Willard Machle by a Dr. Stone from the CIA Office of Scientific Investigation dismisses the idea of UFOs as foreign aircraft and suggests they are misidentifications of other phenomena. (ClearIntent, p. 113)
March 17 — Seven sightings of large, green, red, and white flares take place at Killeen Base, Texas, including the previously skeptical Capt. Horace McCulloch, assistant G-2 of the Second Armored Division at Camp Hood, who is driving between Camp Hood and Killeen Base to prepare a test firing of some flares to prove that recent sightings are not anomalous. McCulloch puts the entire base on alert. (Clark III 542; Sparks, p. 52)
March 22 — SAC San Antonio, Texas, sends a memo to FBI headquarters regarding the January 31 communication on Protection of Vital Installations, emphasizing that USAF and the Army consider the matter “secret.” Fourth Army Intelligence is now calling UFOs “unconventional aircraft” and ATIC’s office is now Project Grudge. It also discusses green fireball cases. (SAC, San Antonio, “Protection of Vital Installations, Bureau File 65-58300,” March 22, 1949)
March 25 — J. Edgar Hoover sends a memo to a large number of FBI offices indicating that “flying discs are believed to be man-made missiles rather than natural phenomenon,” probably made in Russia. (John Edgar Hoover, “Flying Discs,” March 25, 1949; ClearIntent, p. 161)
March 28 — James Forrestal leaves office in a formal ceremony. He rides back to the Pentagon with his opponent Stuart Symington, who talks to him about something troubling. Forrestal appears traumatized. Forrestal sits in his office, dazed and incoherent, repeating, “You are a loyal fellow.” ()
March 31 — Forrestal is flown to Hobe Beach, Florida, to stay with his friend Under Secretary of State Robert A. Lovett, where his wife is vacationing. He meets with psychiatrist William C. Menninger (who diagnoses “severe depression” of the type “seen in operational fatigue during the war”) and psychologist Capt. George N. Raines from the Naval Hospital at Bethesda, Maryland. Forrestal has several hysterical episodes when they are there, ranting about Communists following him, and perhaps one suicide attempt. ()
March 31 — CIA’s H. L. Bowers writes a memo to Dr. Machle, “Notes and Comments on Unidentified Aerial Objects-- Project Sign,” stating that Deyarmond thinks UFOs will turn out to be another “sea serpent.” Nonetheless, they must be investigated. (Document released to Brad Sparks but not in subsequent CIA FOIA releases; Good Above, p. 330)
March 31 —11:50 p.m. Lieut. Frederick Davis, on patrol east of Killeen Base, Texas, sees a reddish-white ball of fire passing horizontally above the base airstrip. After 10–15 seconds it disappears without descending. He notes interference on the telephone line when he calls the report in. (NICAP, “Field Telephone Affected by BOL”; Clark III 542; Sparks, p. 53)
April 2 — Menninger and Raines fly Forrestal to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, where he can be treated quietly. On the drive to the hospital from the airport, Forrestal attempts to jump out of the car but is restrained. Forrestal declares he does not expect to leave the hospital alive. He is admitted under the care of Raines, who diagnoses him with involutional melancholia and places him in a VIP suite on the 16th floor.
Forrestal’s personal diaries are removed from his old office and taken to the White House, where they remain for a year. ()
April 3 — Broadcaster Walter Winchell announces on his radio program that the “flying saucers, never explained by anyone in authority are now definitely known to have been guided missiles shot all the way from Russia.” (“Anatomy of a Hoax, Part Two,” Saturday Night Uforia)
April 5 —10:00 p.m. A huge green fireball with a red afterglow is seen streaking approximately 300 feet above the southern slope of Fejarito Mountain, near Los Alamos, New Mexico. It disappears behind the mountain. Another fireball is seen at 11:00 p.m., and the next two nights. (NICAP, “1949 UFO Chronology”; Sparks, p. 54)
April 8 — In response to Winchell’s claim, the Air Force admits it is impossible to “deny categorically” that the flying saucers originate in Russia. A spokesman says that some unknown incidents are placed in a classified category, denied to everyone except authorized military personnel. (“Air Force Isn’t Committing Self on Flying Disks,” Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette, April 8, 1949, p. 22)
April 9 — Forrestal has been treated for one week at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland,with narcosis through sodium amytal. For the next 30 days, he undergoes a regimen of insulin sub-shock combined with psycho-therapeutic interviews. Raines says the treatment occasionally throws Forrestal into a confused state with a great deal of agitation and confusion. ()
April 14 — Col. Reid Lumsden, commander of the AFOSI district office at Kelly AFB [now Kelly Field Annex] in San Antonio, Texas, hands the Army reports of flares at Killeen Base to Col. William Carpenter, deputy director of special investigations at the Pentagon. Carpenter promises to investigate. (Clark III 542)
April 16 and 18 — Mysterious flares are again observed at Killeen Base, Texas. (Brad Sparks and Jerome Clark, “The Southwestern Lights, Part Three,” IUR 10, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1985): 10; Clark III 542)
April 18 — The US Air Force Security Service moves its headquarters from Arlington Hall in Washington, D.C., to Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. (Wikipedia, “Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency”)
April 19 — AFOSI at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, sends to USAF headquarters a list of all green fireball reports it has investigated (39 in all) from December 5 to April 12. The common characteristics of most of the incidents are: “a. Green color, sometimes described as greenish-white, bright green, yellow-green, or blue green. b. Horizontal path, sometimes with minor variations. c. Speed less than that of a meteor, but more than any known type of aircraft. d. No sound associated with observation. e. No persistent trail or dust cloud. f. Period of visibility from one to five seconds.” (“The Scientific Advisory Board to the Chief of Staff, United States Air Force, Conference,” November 3, 1949; Clark III 541; Swords 133–135)
April 22 — 9:05 a.m. A round, flat, thin, metallic disc is seen traveling west to east, dropping slowly, over Cliff, New Mexico. (Sparks, p. 55)
April 24 — 10:30 a.m. General Mills meteorologist Charles B. Moore and four Navy Skyhook balloon launch crewmen (Navy Chief Fire Controlman William Akers, Davidson, Fitzsimmons, Moorman) see a white, round object, shadowed yellowish on one side, cross the sky from the south to the east, three miles north of Arrey, New Mexico. Joseph Gordon Vaeth is present as the Navy representative in charge of ground handling. Moore tracks it for 60 seconds on a theodolite. The distance is unknown, but assuming the object is 57 miles away, it would have a velocity of 18,000 mph, a width of 40 feet, and a length of 100 feet; but this is speculative. (NICAP, “White Sands Incident / C. B. Moore Case”; R. B. McLaughlin, [Letter to J. A. VanAllen], May 12, 1949; J. Gordon Vaeth, 200 Miles Up: The Conquest of the Upper Air, Ronald Press, 1951; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, pp. 63–64; ClearIntent, pp. 114–115; UFOEv, pp. 2–3; Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 72–73; Sparks, pp. 56–57; Brad Sparks and Jerome Clark, “The Southwestern Lights, Part Three,” IUR 10, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1985): 8–9; Kevin D. Randle, “Charles Moore, New Mexico UFOs, and the Air Force,” IUR 20, no. 5 (Winter 1995): 3–4; Michael D. Swords, “1952: Ruppelt’s Big Year,” IUR 28, no. 4 (Winter 2003–2004): 10; Michael D. Swords, “Balloons, Missiles, and UFOs,” IUR 29, no. 1 (Spring 2004):16–17; Swords 84–85; Clark III 541)
April 25 — 6:30 a.m. A man named Abreu and a friend are fishing at Springer Lake, northwest of Springer, New Mexico, when they hear a high-pitched whistle and see a number of silvery-white balls passing overhead quickly. They reappear repeatedly over the next hour. (NICAP, “Various Formations Observed”; Clark III 541; Sparks, p. 57)
April 25 — Lt. Col. Doyle Rees wires AFOSI headquarters to ask if he can send two of his men to AMC to find out if Project Grudge plans to do anything about the green fireballs. Before Rees has a response, Joseph Kaplan arrives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, having been directed there by AF Intelligence Director Maj. Gen. Charles Cabell and Scientific Advisory Board Chairman Theodore Von Kármán, who wants Kaplan to set up a field investigation. They emphasize that Grudge is not to be informed. (Clark III 542; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1949, January–June, The Author, 1988, p. 52)
April 27 — Rees, Kaplan, and LaPaz brief Armed Forces Special Weapons Project personnel at Sandia Base, New Mexico. LaPaz outlines plans for a network of visual, photographic, spectrographic, and radar observations covering Los Alamos, Sandia, and White Sands. Scientist William D. Crozier of the New Mexico School of Mines offers to handle air sampling. Rees urges that the Killeen Base in Texas be included. Kaplan, who says the project is “of extreme importance” because “these occurrences relate to the National Defense of the United States,” recommends LaPaz to handle the project. (Lt. Col. Doyle Rees, “Unknown (Aerial Phenomena),” May 12, 1949; Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1949 January–June, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2000, pp. 60–62; Clark III 542)
April 27 — USAF Directorate of Intelligence briefs the USAF Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations on UFOs. “Investigations continue in an effort to find definite explanations for the many unidentified aerial objects which have been reported during the past two years.” (“Unidentified Aerial Objects,” Air Brief, Special Study Part Two, April 27, 1949)
April 27 — A 22-page memorandum for the press (629-49) on “Project Saucer” is released by the Pentagon Office of Public Information, scheduled deliberately to coincide with part one of Shalett’s article in the Saturday Evening Post. The writer is unknown, but it is more pro-ETH than the current Project Grudge mentality, listing several
solid and dramatic cases. It concludes: “The ‘saucers’ are not a joke. Neither are they a cause for alarm to the population.” The discrepancy between Shalett’s mostly dismissive tone and the positivity of the Project Saucer statement causes Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe to wonder if there is a major disagreement about UFOs within the Air Force. (National Military Establishment, Office of Public Information, “Project ‘Saucer,’” April 27, 1949; Swords 74–75)
April 27 — 9:20 p.m. Two Army patrolmen southeast of Killeen Base, Texas, see a blinking violet light no more than 1.5 inches in diameter and only 10–12 feet from them, 6–7 feet above the ground. During the 60-second observation, the light passes through the branches of a tree. At 9:25 p.m., 2 miles away, four Army soldiers see a 4-inch light with a 2–4-inch metallic cone attached to the back. It silently approaches them in a level flight at 60–70 mph. It disappears to the southwest at a distance of 150 feet. At about 9:37 p.m., a 2-inch-wide white light appears 100 feet away to the northwest, flying in a zig-zag fashion in a level path 6 feet above the ground. It vanishes abruptly. A third light shows up at 9:39 p.m. in the west-southwest. (NICAP, “Close Encounters with Drones/Probes at Weapons Storage Site”; Sparks, pp. 57–58; Brad Sparks and Jerome Clark, “The Southwestern Lights, Part Three,” IUR 10, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1985): 10; Clark III 542)
April 28 — USAF Director of Intelligence Charles Cabell sends a report on “Unidentified Aerial Objects” to the Joint Intelligence Committee. It summarizes the history of Project Sign up to its redesignation as Grudge and adds an appendix on “Unidentified Aerial Objects: Fact and Discussion,” which is basically a short version of the sanitized February 11 Sign report, with some green fireball information added. It recommends sending reports of unidentified “light phenomena” to the scientific community and reports of “atomic powered craft of unusual design” to the AEC. It concludes that “There are numerous reports from reliable and competent observers for which a conclusive explanation has not been made” and that some “involve configurations and described performance which might conceivably represent an advanced aerodynamical development. A few unexplained incidents surpass these limits of credulity. It is unlikely that a foreign power would expose a superior aerial weapon by a prolonged ineffectual penetration of the United States.” This essentially resurrects the ETH as a possibility, without clearly stating it. (“Report by the Director of Intelligence, USAF, to the Joint Intelligence Committee on Unidentified Aerial Objects,” April 28, 1949; Jan Aldrich, “Top-Secret 1949 Document,” IUR 23, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 3–6, 31; Swords 76–77)
April 28 — Some printed copies of Air Intelligence Report 100-203-79, “Analysis of Flying Object Incidents in the United States,” bear this date, although it was originally released December 10, 1948. (US Air Force, Directorate of Intelligence, Analysis of Flying Object Incidents in the U.S.: Summary and Conclusions, Air Intelligence Report 100-203-79, December 10, 1948; copy, dated April 28, 1949)
April 28 — Kaplan, LaPaz, Rees, and Neef meet with security officers at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to discuss green fireball observations at that facility. (Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1949 January–June, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2000, pp. 62–63)
April 28 — 8:00 a.m. Businessman and private pilot Leon A. Faber is flying at 3,000 feet near the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Indiana, when he sees a metallic disc moving east about 10,000 feet away. He is chatting with some ham radio operators on the ground during the 5 minutes the object is in sight before it disappears. (NICAP, “Flying Saucer Observed from Aircraft”)
April 28 — 5:45 p.m. Howard Hann [Hamm?], a Mr. Hubert [Huber?], and Tex Keahey see a very large, bright, sausage- shaped object travel from northeast to southwest over the rim of the Catalina Mountains near Tucson, Arizona, over a period of 12 minutes. The object is shiny metallic and reflects the sun, apparently revolving as it moves like the “slow roll of an airplane.” There is no noise, nor is there exhaust or a vapor trail. There are no wings or engines or “protuberances of any sort.” It appears to be traveling at 300–600 mph. (NICAP, “Cigar-Shaped Object Observed in Daylight”)
April 28 — 8:30 p.m. Several security patrols at Killeen Base, Texas, report nine separate sightings of lights southeast of the base. Most change color from white to red to green. On one occasion, four lights appear together; on another, 8–10 show up in each other’s company. No debris or evidence of flares are found. (Brad Sparks and Jerome Clark, “The Southwestern Lights, Part Three,” IUR 10, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1985): 10; Clark III 543; Sparks, p. 58)
April 29 — The April 30 issue of the Saturday Evening Post with part one of Sidney Shalett’s “What You Can Believe about Flying Saucers” hits the newsstands. The USAF Public Relations Office has cooperated fully with Shalett, who sets out a fairly even-handed introduction to the phenomenon. (Sidney Shalett, “What You Can Believe about Flying Saucers, Part One,” Saturday Evening Post, April 30, 1949, pp. 20–21, 136–139; Swords 73)
April 30 — Hynek turns in his astronomical analysis of Sign’s 237 cases. His contract with Sign is over. (J. Allen Hynek,
The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 199–200; Hynek UFO Report, p. 17; O’Connell 45)
May 4 — The US Fourth Army creates an operational plan for a green fireball observation and tracking network at Killeen Base in Camp Hood, Texas. Although it lacks cameras, it has four six-man observation posts equipped with instruments to obtain directional bearings. One of the posts serves as the plotting center to coordinate and triangulate UFO sightings. Each day, a roving patrol gets new orders. (Brad Sparks and Jerome Clark, “The Southwestern Lights, Part Three,” IUR 10, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1985): 10–12; Clark III 543; Thomas Tulien, ed., Proceedings of the Sign Historical Group UFO History Workshop, Sign Historical Group, November 2001, pp. 43–44).
May 5 — 10:00 a.m. The Fourth US Army has approached AFOSI in San Antonio to offer assistance in investigating green fireballs and the Killeen lights. They arrange a meeting with AFOSI, ONI, CIC, the FBI, and the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project at Camp Hood, Killeen, Texas, the first of several weekly meetings. Army and Navy officials agree that the fireballs remain unexplained. AFSWP personnel believe they are natural phenomena; AFOSI and FBI give no opinion. The Fourth Army urges AFOSI to create an observation system, even though it had just secretly created one of its own on May 4. (Brad Sparks and Jerome Clark, “The Southwestern Lights, Part Three,” IUR 10, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1985): 10–11; Clark III 543)
May 5 — 11:40 a.m. Army officers Maj. Charles D. May Jr., Maj. James N. Olhausen, and Capt. Molloy C. Vaughn on the Waco no. 4 firing range at Fort Bliss, Texas, watch for 30–50 seconds two oblong white discs pass through a field of fire. They are flying at about 200–250 mph at an altitude of 1,000 feet. The objects make a shallow turn. (NICAP, “May 5, 1949, 1140 MST, Fort Bliss, Texas”; Sparks, p. 59)
May 6 — Soviet test pilot Arkady Ivanovich Apraksin takes a new airplane for a flight at the Kapustin Yar site, Astrakhan Oblast, Russia. At its maximum ceiling of 9.3 miles, he encounters a cucumber-shaped object, similar to the one he encountered on June 16, 1948, that directs cones of light at his aircraft from a distance of 6–7 miles. The lights cause his communications equipment to fail and damage part of his plexiglass cockpit canopy that results in a loss of air pressure. He manages to land on the banks of the Volga River 30 miles from Saratov. He wakes up in a hospital in Saratov. He again undergoes intense interrogation, psychotherapy, and medical procedures. (Good Above, pp. 221–223; Joe Brill, “UFO’s behind the Iron Curtain,” Skylook, no. 87, February 1975, p. 15)
May 6 — Col. Lumsden of the San Antonio, Texas, AFOSI office informs headquarters that the “matter has reached a fairly serious stage and some positive action is necessary.” He does not send this message to Project Grudge. Headquarters responds quickly and orders him to investigate all sightings but reminds him to inform AMC. (Brad Sparks and Jerome Clark, “The Southwestern Lights, Part Three,” IUR 10, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1985): 11; Clark III 543)
May 6 — Part two of Shalett’s article on UFOs appears in the May 7 issue of the Saturday Evening Post, which takes a more skeptical tone than the first part, with the Gorman case receiving a particularly harsh thrashing. However, he treats Chiles-Whitted favorably and ends with some hints on how to make good observations. Within a few days, the frequency of UFO reports hits an all-time high. USAF issues another long press release completely debunking UFOs, but it has no effect. (Sidney Shalett, “What You Can Believe about Flying Saucers, Part Two,” Saturday Evening Post, May 7, 1949, pp. 36, 184–186; Swords 74; Ruppelt, p. 63)
May 9 — An article in Time magazine reports on the Air Force press release, remarking that “Spinners of yarns about flying saucers, including a score or so of Air Force pilots, stuck stoutly to their stories.” (“Things That Go Whiz,” Time, May 9, 1949; “Anatomy of a Hoax, Part Six,” Saturday Night Uforia)
May 9 — Editor Ken Purdy asks Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe to investigate the flying saucer mystery for True magazine, warning him to watch out for “fake tips” from the Pentagon. Keyhoe is initially skeptical, but after talking to his old friends Adm. Delmer S. Fahrney and Adm. Calvin M. Bolster, his opinion changes. (Keyhoe, The Flying Saucers Are Real, Gold Medal, 1950, pp. 18–22, 44)
May 9 — Naval Unit Commander Robert B. McLaughlin, with several other officers, witnesses a white object overhead during the launch of a WAC Corporal B rocket at White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico. It disappears “in a blinding burst of speed to the west.” (R. B. McLaughlin, [Letter to J. A. VanAllen], May 12, 1949; Sparks, p. 61)
May 12 — Commander McLaughlin writes to his friend, atmospheric physicist James Van Allen, describing the Moore theodolite case and his own sighting a few days earlier. He thinks they must involve technology because they have been seen accelerating and maneuvering. (R. B. McLaughlin, [Letter to J. A. VanAllen], May 12, 1949)
May 12 —9:30 p.m. Astronomer Donald H. Menzel leaves Holloman AFB on Highway 70 for Alamogordo, New Mexico. Shortly after noticing the star Antares, he sees another fuzzy object in the sky nearer to the horizon. A second object appears three degrees to the south. Determining that the objects are not Castor and Pollux or reflections, Menzel watches them another 4 minutes. Both objects vanish abruptly. (Donald H. Menzel, Flying Saucers, Harvard University, 1953, pp. 3–4, 99–100; Sparks, p. 62; J. Allen Hynek, “Vignettes of UFO History: Dr. Menzel Reports a UFO!” IUR 7, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1982): 11; Clark III 741–742)
May 18 — George N. Raines leaves Washington, D.C., for four days to attend a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. He says Forrestal seems “somewhat better,” having regained 12 pounds. ()
May 18 — Walter Winchell, in his “On Broadway” syndicated column, writes: “The N.Y. World-Telegram on Saturday [May 14] confirmed this reporter’s exclusive report of several weeks before—which newspapermen have denied—about the Flying Saucers . . . Said the front-page piece in the W-T: ‘Air Force people are convinced the flying disc is real. The clincher came when the air force got a picture recently of three discs flying formation over Stephenville, Newfoundland. [The July 10, 1947, hole-in-the-cloud case?] They outdistanced our fastest ships.
Some air force men believe the discs are a new type flying machine utilizing gyroscopic principles’ . . . At the time we added that the reality of the flying discs or saucers could not be denied truthfully.” (“Anatomy of a Hoax, Part Two,” Saturday Night Uforia)
May 19 — Wright-Patterson Air Material Intelligence Commander Col. Howard McCoy forwards a copy of the Project Sign final report to the Research and Development Board, along with some appendices that later find their way into the Project Grudge final report. (Michael Hall and Wendy Connors, “The Research and Development Board: Unanswered Questions,” IUR 26, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 10)
May 19 — The Fourth Army’s observation system near Killeen Base, Texas (without cameras, but with four 6-man observation posts equipped with instruments), is revealed to the intelligence community at one of its weekly meetings. Two trucks serve as a roving Artillery Patrol observation post linked to the Killeen plotting center by radio. AFOSI Lt. Col. Doyle Rees has meanwhile set up a 24-hour visual observation post in the Sandia Mountains near Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is equipped with a wide-angle-lens camera fitted with a spectrographic grating. (Brad Sparks and Jerome Clark, “The Southwestern Lights, Part Three,” IUR 10, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1985): 12; Thomas Tulien, ed., Proceedings of the Sign Historical Group UFO History Workshop, Sign Historical Group, November 2001, pp. 43–44; Clark III 543)
May 21 — 1:30 p.m. An F-82 is dispatched from Moses Lake AFB [now Grant County International Airport] in Washington State to intercept a UFO that is hovering in restricted air space over the Hanford Atomic Works at an altitude of 17,000–20,000 feet. The silvery disc is seen from the ground at Hanford and on radar. Before the F-82 can take off, the disc speeds away faster than a jet fighter. It disappears from ground radar and the F-82 cannot locate it. (NICAP, “Hanford AEC Plant / F-82/RV Case”; Sparks, p. 63; Hynek UFO Report, p. 141)
May 22 — 1:45 a.m. At the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, Forrestal is awake and refuses a sedative. Five minutes later, the Navy corpsman guarding him finds the room empty. Forrestal’s body is found on a third-floor roof below the 16th-floor kitchen, No suicide note is found other than part of a translation of Sophocles’s tragedy Ajax that he is copying. (Wikipedia, “James Forrestal”; J. C. Hawkins, Betrayal at Bethesda: The Intertwined Fates of James Forrestal, Joseph McCarthy, and John F. Kennedy, The Author, 2017; David Martin, The Assassination of James Forrestal, McCabe, 2019)
May 24 — 5:00 p.m. Five witnesses (NACA Ames Research Lab employees Don Heaphy, Gilbert Rivera and his wife, Mrs. Roy L. McBeth, and Mrs. William McBeth) on a fishing boat on the Rogue River, Oregon, near Elephant Rock, see a round, silvery object the size of a transport aircraft. It comes from the east, then turns southwest and leaves no exhaust trail. The disc appears flattened and has a wrinkled surface with a vertical stabilizer fin. The time of observation is less than 3 minutes. (NICAP, “The Rogue River Incident”; Sparks, p. 64; Swords 83–84; Bruce Maccabee, “An Assessment of the UFO Sighting at Rogue River, Oregon (May 24, 1949),” December 2009)
May 27 — 2:25 p.m. Pilot and businessman Joseph Shell, ferrying an SNJ trainer for North American Aviation from Red Bluff, California, to Burns, Oregon, sees 5–8 oval objects, twice as long as wide and one-fifth as thick, around Hart Mountain, Oregon. They fly in trail formation, with an interval equal to 3–4 times their length, except that the second and third are closer together. (NICAP, “Pilot Encounters 5–8 Egg-Shaped Metallic Objects”; Sparks, p. 65)
May 31 — The Air Force Office of Special Investigations sends Project Grudge a copy of Rees’s report on Kaplan’s visit on April 28, the trip that USAF Intelligence had arranged to explore the possibility of a clandestine investigation separate from Grudge. Thus AMC learns of the conspiracy to keep it in the dark, but Rees fails to mention the involvement of USAF Intelligence. (Brad Sparks and Jerome Clark, “The Southwestern Lights, Part Three,” IUR 10, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1985): 15)
May 31 — The Navy review board, convened by Adm. Morton D. Willcutts, completes hearings on James Forrestal’s death. The cause of death is remarkably inconclusive, and the investigation leaves many questions unanswered. ()
Summer — The gouge is said to be still visible in the debris field near Corona, New Mexico. Mack Brazel, having found various scraps and bits for the past two years, mentions to someone in a bar in Corona that he has some material. The next day, a Capt. Armstrong and three others from Roswell Army Air Field supposedly confiscate the pieces. ()
Summer — 4:00 p.m. The French Navy patrol boat La Rusé (formerly the USS PC-472) encounters a cigar-shaped bluish object about one mile away off Casablanca, Morocco. The crew watches it for 1 minute until it shoots toward the horizon and out of sight. (Lorenzen, UFOs: The Whole Story, Signet, 1969, p, 36)
June 6 —9:05 p.m. Two observation posts at Killeen Base, Fort Hood, Texas, spot a hovering orange light. Lts. Virgil Williams and Marvin L. Jones are at one site and Lts. Bernard G. Raferty and Alfred H. Jones are at the other. When they triangulate its location, they find it is 3 miles south of one observation post and 4.5 miles south of the plotting center, hovering 5,280 feet in the air. It is 30–70 feet in diameter. Suddenly it starts moving in level flight, then bursts into small particles. The duration is less than 3 minutes. This observation involves the first real- time triangulation of a UFO sighting. (Brad Sparks and Jerome Clark, “The Southwestern Lights, Part Three,” IUR 10, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1985): 12; Clark III 543; Sparks, p. 66; Thomas Tulien, ed., Proceedings of the Sign Historical Group UFO History Workshop, Sign Historical Group, November 2001, p. 43)
June 14 — 3:35 p.m. A crew of Navy engineers under Capt. Robert Bright McLaughlin is testing an Air Force V-2 rocket at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. When the V-2 attains a speed of 2,000 feet per second in its upward flight, it is joined by two smaller circular objects that pace it, one on each side. One then passes through the rocket’s exhaust, joins the other, and together accelerate upwards leaving the V-2 behind. Five other missile observation crews also see the objects. (NICAP, “Two UFOs Pace V-2 Rocket”; Robert McLaughlin, “How Scientists Tracked a Flying Saucer,” True, March 1950, pp. 25–27, 96–99; Sparks, p. 66; Swords 92–93)
June 22 — Three women (one a schoolteacher, another a biologist working at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and a third who is the wife of a member of the Security Division, AEC, Oak Ridge) observe an odd trio of “flying saucers” for about 15 minutes: “It was described as consisting of two identical rectangular-shaped objects which appeared to be coordinated in movement and which moved in wave-like motion. The third object was circular in shape and appeared to be in level flight between and above the two rectangular objects. The rectangular objects appeared to be bright metal on top but dark underneath, while the color of the circular object was the same as that of frosted glass. The ‘flying saucer,’ when last sighted, was in level flight and was flying in a northwesterly direction. The weather was clear with high cumulus clouds. The ‘flying saucer’ flew at speed of from 10 to 15 mph over an area just about the center of Oak Ridge.” (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1949, January–June, The Author, 1988, pp. 83–84)
June 29 — 6:30 p.m. A former US Air Force tech sergeant observes three separate flights of three V-shaped or triangular objects from his front porch in Baltimore, Maryland. The objects veer sharply into a cloud at 2,500 feet altitude and then fly around it repeatedly. They have the ability to reverse their course 180° instantaneously. Through binoculars, they look like black, open boomerangs. More objects join them until there are 15–20, and he watches them for two hours. The formation moves from southeast to northeast and disappears. Fifteen other witness also see the display. (Marler 126–128)
July 3 — 10:40 a.m. Aeronautical engineer Molt Taylor, airport manager at Longview, Washington, is preparing for an air show when someone points out an object in the sky to the northwest. He announces it over the PA system to the crowd of 150–200 observers, including pilots, who watch a metallic disc cross to the southeast with a falling-leaf motion. Estimated altitude is 30,000 feet at 300 mph, with the approximate size of 100 feet. A second object is seen at 10:49 a.m. for 2 minutes. A third sighting takes place at 11:25 a.m. An object approaches from the west at about the same altitude, oscillating at 48 per minute, and disappears into the sun. (NICAP, “Metallic Discus Object Observed by 150–200 Observers”; Sparks, p. 67; Swords 82–83; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, pp. 48–49)
July 13 — Kaplan responds to a July 1 letter from Gen. Charles P. Cabell inquiring about his April visit to Los Alamos, New Mexico. He explains that he has deliberately waited two months to report because he wanted to have a cooling off period from the deep impression the New Mexico witnesses had on him. Moreover, he wants to see if the green fireballs are still reported (they are) before he recommends a full-scale instrumented program. He says that Norris Bradbury, the Los Alamos lab director, has urged that a classified scientific conference be held to discuss the phenomena. Kaplan suspects that the fireballs are an auroral phenomenon, but concedes that their horizontal motion and southern appearance are “difficult to explain.” He recommends a photographic and spectrographic patrol that would stay on to look out for the fireballs. (Brad Sparks and Jerome Clark, “The Southwestern Lights, Part Three,” IUR 10, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1985): 15)
July 24 — 12:03 p.m. Henry Clark, manager of a flying service, is flying a Piper PA-16 Clipper at 19,000 feet 10 miles northwest of Mountain Home, Idaho, when he sees a tight formation of 7 delta-shaped objects, 35–55 feet in diameter near his plane. They make a perfect and unbanked right turn 1,500 feet ahead of his plane, then they turn right again, passing the aircraft at about 450–500 mph. Clark’s engine runs rough during the sighting, which lasts
10 minutes. After he lands, he finds all his spark plugs burned out. When Blue Book investigates the case, they confiscate the spark plugs. (NICAP, “Piper Clipper Encounters Seven Delta-Shaped Objects”; Sparks, p. 68)
July 24 — 8:30 p.m. An Air Force major and captain watch seven bluish-white lights pass over Fort Worth, Texas, in a V formation, moving rapidly from south to north. The distance between the lights does not vary during the 4–5 seconds they are visible. (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1949 July–December, The Author, 1988, p. 13)
July 24 — A green fireball is seen falling close to Socorro, New Mexico. The next day, scientist William D. Crozier collects dust samples from the School of Mines campus at Socorro. The samples contain copper particles of unusually large size. (Clark III 543–544; Sparks, p. 68)
August — George Adamski publishes Pioneers of Space, detailing his out-of-body visits to the Moon, Mars, and Venus. In private correspondence he later explains “how one may venture from one place to another, while his physical is in one place and he is in another. That is the way I have written this book. I actually have gone to the places I speak of.” (George Adamski [ghost-written by Lucy McGinnis], Pioneers of Space, Leonard-Freefield, 1949; “Palomar Mountain, 1940–1960: From Obscurity to World Fame,” The Adamski Case, September 22, 2019)
August — Actor, producer, and director Mikel Conrad, in promoting his soon-to-be-released film The Flying Saucer, claims that the movie contains actual footage of a spaceship recovered in Alaska by government agents. He produces a bogus FBI agent to “confirm” the story. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations interviews Conrad, who admits to perpetrating a publicity hoax. (Jerome Clark, “A Catalog of Early Crash Claims,” IUR 18, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1993): 16; Internet Movie Database, “The Flying Saucer”)
August 8 — 11:30 p.m. Six airmen and tower operators at Medford Municipal Airport [now the Rogue Valley International–Medford Airport] in Oregon see 1–7 shiny objects traveling at variable speeds at an estimated altitude of 30,000 feet. They fly in formation for a while, then break off and return to formation again. Control tower operators using binoculars seem to distinguish wings on the objects. They remain visible until around 12:30
a.m. (NICAP, “Winged Objects Cavort over Airport”)
August 10 — USAF’s AMC issues a final 600-page report, “Unidentified Flying Objects—Project Grudge,” Technical Report 102-AC-49/15-100, or “The Grudge Report,” authored by Lt. Howard W. Smith and George W. Towles. Hynek’s April analysis is included as an appendix. Based on 237 cases, Hynek finds that 32% can be explained astronomically. Others say 12% are balloons, 33% are other misidentifications, hoaxes, or insufficient information. That leaves 23% (55) classed as unknowns. Despite this, witnesses are mostly deluded, hysterical, lying, or crazy, and “further study along present lines would only confirm the findings presented herein.” The report concludes there is little evidence to prove UFOs are real and do not represent a security threat. It recommends that press releases be created to “aid in dispelling public apprehension.” On the other hand, it suggests that military and government agencies interested in “psychological warfare” be informed of the findings. Appendix D is written by USAF Scientific Advisory Board member George E. Valley, who writes that extraterrestrial civilizations “might observe that on Earth we now have atomic bombs and are fast developing rockets. In view of the past history of mankind, they should be alarmed. We should, therefore, expect at this time above all to behold such visitations.” Project Grudge enters a period of dormancy until July 1950. The report is classified Secret until August 1, 1952. (Lt. Howard W. Smith and George W. Towles, “Unidentified Flying Objects—Project Grudge,” Air Materiel Command Technical Report 102-AC-49/15-100; Hynek UFO Report, p. 18; Sparks, p. 12)
August 10 — The National Military Establishment is renamed the Department of Defense to unify the Army, Navy, and Air Force under the Secretary of Defense. It establishes the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (Wikipedia, “United States Department of Defense”)
August 17 — Lincoln LaPaz submits the fifth of a series of reports on “anomalous luminous phenomena.” He notes that “Many of the green fireballs now appearing descend in nearly vertical paths, whereas, in earlier months almost all of the green fireballs observed moved almost horizontally. There appears to be a concentration of New Mexico incidents near weekends, especially on Sunday and near the hour of 8:00.” (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1949 July–December, The Author, 1988, pp. 28–29)
August 16 — A young girl in Wola Drzewiecka, Poland, sees a dark green object nearby like two bowls put together and about 5 feet in diameter. She walks right up to it and touches its metallic surface with her index finger, getting a mild electric vibration and making her fingertip turn red. The object begins rotating, then rises up and disappears to the south at an altitude of 50 feet. In the distance she sees another object that she says remained in the same spot for several days. (Poland 18–19)
August 18 — LaPaz and USAF scientists meet with William D. Crozier to find out about his July 25 dust collection in Socorro, New Mexico. Crozier says he thinks the copper particles may have come from a campus building, although samples from the open country contain the same particles. LaPaz notes that copper is extremely rare in
meteorites, although it might explain the yellow-green color of the fireballs. He suggests that further air and ground samples be taken in areas where the fireballs are seen. (Clark III 543–544)
August 19 — Two prospectors, Buck Fitzgerald and Mase Garney, report that a flying saucer crashed near them in Death Valley, California. Two little men jump out and start running. The prospectors chase them over a sand dune, but lose them. (“‘Little Men’ in Flying Disc,” San Francisco Examiner, August 20, 1949, p. 2; Clark III 269; Patrick Gross, URECAT, August 22, 2006)
August 19 — 8:15–11:00 p.m. Rev. Gregory Miller, pastor of the St. Peter and Paul Church in Norwood, Ohio, has purchased from Army surplus an 8-million-candlepower searchlight for his church carnival. Sgt. Donald R. Berger of ROTC of the University of Cincinnati is to operate it. During the festivities, Berger’s sweeping searchlight suddenly flashes across a stationary circular object in the sky. Miller and others join in and observe. When Berger moves the searchlight away, the disc continues to glow. Hundreds of calls are received by Cincinnati Post and Cincinnati Enquirer offices regarding fireballs and comet-like objects all across the Cincinnati area this first night. The searchlight picks up the same or similar objects on nine further occasions, the last being on March 10, 1950. (“More Proof That ‘Saucers’ Exist,” CRIFO Orbit 1, no. 5 (August 6, 1954): 1–2; NICAP, “The Ohio Searchlight Incident”; Patrick Gross, “The Norwood Searchlight Incident”)
August 20 —10:45 p.m. Astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, his wife, and mother-in-law see a formation of rectangular bluish- green lights at Las Cruces, New Mexico, for about 3 seconds. (NICAP, “Tombaugh Observes UFO Formation”;
H. B. Darrach Jr. and Robert Ginna, “Have We Visitors from Space?” Life, April 7, 1952, p. 89; “Dr. Clyde Tombaugh Provides Details on His Own Famous Sighting,” CSI News Letter, no. 10 (December 15, 1957): 27; UFOEv, p. 53; Sparks, p. 70; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, pp. 59–60; Clark III 1129–1130; Swords 81–82)
August 29 — 7:00 a.m. The Soviet Union secretly conducts its first successful nuclear weapon test (First Lightning) at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan. The design is very similar to the first US “Fat Man” plutonium bomb. The project is led by physicist Igor Kurchatov. (Wikipedia, “RDS-1”)
September 1 — Col. John W. Schweizer of AFOIN writes to the director of USAF Intelligence: “reports that fall in the ‘fireball’ category will no longer be included in HQ Air Materiel Command and Directorate of Intelligence, HQ USAF, investigative activity on unidentified aerial incidents.” AMC hands green fireball reports over to the USAF Cambridge Research Laboratory at Hanscom AFB in Bedford, Massachusetts. AFOIN rejects an Army request for further facilities to study the green fireballs from field locations. (Clark III 543)
September 14 — The Geophysical Sciences Branch of the Air Force Research and Development orders the new AMC commander Lt. Gen. Benjamin Chidlaw to have the Cambridge Research Laboratory in Massachusetts evaluate the New Mexico and Texas green fireball cases and consider the creation of an instrumented network. AMC is directed to send representatives from Boston to a meeting in New Mexico. (Lt. Col. John McK. Tucker, “Light Phenomena,” September 14, 1949; Brad Sparks and Jerome Clark, “The Southwestern Lights, Part Three,” IUR 10, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1985): 16; Clark III 544)
September 14 — 9:30–10:00 p.m. Two residents of Lubbock, Texas, see 9 clusters of objects “similar to ducks flying in formation,” bright silver and roughly round in shape. There are as many as 50 objects in all the formations except one. They seem to be traveling at 5,000 feet altitude, going north to south. Each light is visible for about 10 seconds, but it takes 30 minutes for all the objects to pass overhead. One witness is convinced the objects are ducks. (Clark III 692–693)
September 26 — 6:30 p.m. Lester Wolfe and five others 5 miles southeast of Lexington, Nebraska, are threshing wheat when they see three objects coming from the general direction of the sun (southwest). As the objects move, they give off a dazzling brilliance. They maintain a level flight with two of the objects changing positions as they fly. The power of the illumination remains constant throughout the incident (no pulses or flashes). Once the objects reach a direction northwest of the observers, they make a smooth 90° turn straight upwards and climb rapidly out of sight. Dean Wolfe is a recent graduate of a two-year course in aeronautical design and thinks the objects look like domed discs when viewed face forward, but are more like stubby, wingless, tailless fuselages when seen from the side. About 5 miles away, Don, Minnie, Elmer and Irene Ballheim see two fast-moving objects flying in the distance at level flight before abruptly turning straight up and flying upward. This group of people does not know their distant neighbors. (NICAP, “90-Degree Turn Straight Up”; Swords 83–84)
September 27 — 1:30 and 3:00 a.m. At least five observers at Sandia Base, New Mexico, see fireballs of various colors traveling either in an arc or in tangent to the Earth. (Francis Ridge, “The Nuclear Connection Project: The New Mexico Sightings,” September 3, 2005; Sparks, p. 71)
September or October — A Swiss Air Force officer sees a silvery disc 20 feet in diameter with jagged edges above Payerne, Vaud, Switzerland. He observes it flying at about 700 mph for 12 seconds. (Center for UFO Studies, [Payerne case file])
Fall — A radar-tracking UFO case takes place at a key atomic base (probably Los Alamos, New Mexico). The base radar scope covers 200 miles of sky up to 100,000 feet. A legitimate radar contact tracks five apparently metallic objects at a great height moving south and crossing the radar scope in less than 4 minutes (an average of about 4,500 mph). (H. B. Darrach Jr. and Robert Ginna, “Have We Visitors from Space?” Life, April 7, 1952, p. 89)
Fall — Night. Donald Bushwell and his wife are traveling along a straight highway in New Mexico. Suddenly a disc about 50–60 feet across comes straight down the road toward them about 4 feet off the ground. It raises up a little before reaching the car and passes overhead. As it does so, his radio turns to static. (Tulsa (Okla.) Tribune, December 10, 1957; Schopick, p. 77)
October 10 — 1:07 a.m. A bluish-green fireball is seen moving to the northeast at 45° above the horizon at Sandia Base, New Mexico. Duration is from 4 to 15 seconds. (Francis Ridge, “The Nuclear Connection Project: The New Mexico Sightings,” September 3, 2005)
October 11 — The Navy releases only a brief summary of its findings in the death of James Forrestal. The complete transcript is not released until 2004. (Ayn Rand Institute Watch, “The Willcutts Report on the Death of James Forrestal”)
October 12 — Columnist Frank Scully writes an article in Variety alleging that the US government has retrieved crashed spaceships in the southwestern desert. (Frank Scully, “Scully’s Scrapbook,” Variety, October 12, 1949; Clark III 595, 1044)
October 14 — At another conference in Los Alamos, New Mexico, attended by 16 representatives of AFOSI, AMC (Joseph Kaplan and Maj. Frederic C. E. Oder), Fourth Army, the FBI, AFSWP, and Los Alamos scientists (Edward Teller, George Gamow, and Stanislaw Ulam), the green fireballs are identified as probably atmospheric in origin, but more observational data is needed. LaPaz and Neef speak at length. Oder’s Cambridge Research Laboratory at Hanscom AFB in Bedford, Massachusetts, is selected for a field project, under LaPaz’s supervision. (Brad Sparks and Jerome Clark, “The Southwestern Lights, Part Three,” IUR 10, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1985): 16; Clark III 544; Swords 81; Good Above, pp. 266–267)
October 14 — 1:15 p.m. Harley C. Marshall, manager of public relations at Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, is driving away from the observatory when he sees a perfect “V of V’s” formation of about 16–18 silver objects without tails or wings overhead traveling at high speed to the northwest and emitting a sound like jets. He stops and watches them disappear behind the cloud cover. Returning to the observatory, he phones electrician Benjamin B. Traxler, who at 1:20 p.m. sees one dark UFO traveling to the southwest. Marshall checks the Navy Electronics Laboratory Geiger counter on site and sees that the needle has jumped off the scale for several seconds. For the next 10 days, another 21 incidents of off-scale cosmic-ray detector incidents occur at scattered times, fitting a periodic 1.5-hour time schedule, a phenomenon not seen before or after, and unexplainable by equipment failure or radio interference from aircraft. Two representatives of the Office of Naval Research and two from the Naval Electronics Laboratory in Point Loma, California (Joseph P. Maxfield and G. L. Bloom), visit the observatory to investigate the readings, but not before they stop in at Alice Wells’s Palomar Gardens Café on the way in. After George Adamski claims he has seen increased UFO activity in the area (including a sighting about the same time as another observation by Traxler on October 21), they ask him if he would send them any photos he might take with one of his telescopes. He gives them a copy of a telescopic photo he took in February 1949 with his 15-inch reflector. The Naval Electronics Lab later attributes the photo to “electric discharge which frequently occurs in cameras during film pulling in dry or cold climates.” Several Navy aircraft of differing prop and jet types are flown near the observatory using radio, altimeter, and radars on October 21 and November 2 in an unsuccessful effort to trigger the Geiger counter. (NICAP, “Geiger Counters Detect UFO Presence”; Clark III 38, 949–950; Sparks, pp. 74–75; Swords 86–87; Maurice Weekley and George Adamski, “Flying Saucers As Astronomers See Them,” Fate 3, no. 6 (September 1950): 56–59; Colin Bennett, Looking for Orthon, Paraview, 2001, pp. 29–30)
October 23 — 7:15–10:45 p.m. Rev. Gregory Miller has set up his searchlight once again at St. Peter and Paul Church in Norwood, Ohio. Sgt. Berger turns on the light and picks up a large object in the beam. At about 10:00 p.m., the searchlight picks up two distinct groups of five triangular objects that seem to emerge from the main disc. They descend on the beam then turn out of it. The same performance is repeated 30 minutes later. About 50 persons, including newspaper reporters observe the objects. Miller takes several photographs and asks Sgt. Leo Davidson of the Norwood police department to film the display. He uses three rolls, 25 feet each, and a Hugo-Meyer F-19- 3" camera with telephoto lens. Davidson also takes 10 still photographs of the large disc-shaped object that flies in
and out of the searchlight beam, using a Speed-Graphic camera with a 14-inch Wallensach telephoto lens. Two of these are exceptional shots, showing both the parent object and the smaller group. These two pictures are last seen by Time-Life correspondent Harry Mayo, who has prepared a feature story for Time, which was to include them. But Mayo’s story and Miller’s photos were not used in Time or Life and, in spite of requests by Miller, these two photos are never returned. (Harry Mayo, “What Glows on Here? Norwood Muses,” Cincinnati Post, April 6, 1950, p. 1; “More Proof That ‘Saucers’ Exist,” CRIFO Orbit 1, no. 5 (August 6, 1954): 1–2; NICAP, “The Ohio Searchlight Incident”; Patrick Gross, “The Norwood Searchlight Incident”)
November 3 — Joseph Kaplan brings the green fireball plan to the USAF Scientific Advisory Board at the Pentagon. By this time, he is convinced the fireballs are a rare type of meteor. But others are puzzled by the brightness, trajectories, and soundlessness, Kaplan says, “This high selectivity of direction seems to indicate that some group was trying to pinpoint Los Alamos with a new sort of weapon.” (Clark III 544)
November 3 — Karl Taylor Compton resigns as chairman of the Research and Development Board around the same time that Lawrence R. Hafstad succeeds Lloyd Berkner as executive secretary. (Michael Hall and Wendy Connors, “The Research and Development Board: Unanswered Questions,” IUR 26, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 9)
November 3 — 11:00 a.m. USAF Capt. William H. Donnelly is driving south about 2 miles north of Rosarito, Baja California, Mexico, with a friend when he sees four objects to the east at a high altitude. All are oval and a metallic white color. They are constantly changing formation, moving up and down, back and forth. The objects continue to fly south rapidly and move in a horizontal line and disappear from sight in 20–40 seconds. (Jan Aldrich)
November 11 — 6:30 p.m. USNR Commander J. R. Bodler is in charge of a merchant vessel (possibly the USS Hemminger) in the Strait of Hormuz between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. He observes a huge, pulsating submarine light wheel, some 1,000–1,500 feet in diameter, one mile from his ship. It is revolving around an ill-defined center with streaks of light like searchlight beams moving counterclockwise “like the spokes of a gigantic wheel.” He thinks it is caused by natural phosphorescence, stimulated by some marine life. (J. R. Bodler, “An Unexplained Phenomenon of the Sea,” US Naval Institute Proceedings 72 (January 1952): 66–67; Carl Feindt, waterufo.net)
November 27 — 5:49 p.m. Civil Aeronautics Administration Chief Controller W. W. Jones watches a blue-white fireball moving 5°–7° per second over Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico. (Francis Ridge, “The Nuclear Connection Project: The New Mexico Sightings,” September 3, 2005)
November 27 — 6:00 p.m. Kirtland AFB Deputy Base Commander Lt. Col. Charles E. Lancaster Jr. is driving near McIntosh, New Mexico, when he sees a green fireball descend near Albuquerque. (Sparks, p. 77)
December — Capt. Bernard Baruch Jr. suggests to Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg that UFOs be added to JANAP 146 as required reporting subjects and that civilian pilots report UFO sightings according to military chains of command. (Swords 122)
December 2–3 — The US government releases radioactive fission products at the Hanford Site plutonium production facility in eastern Washington in an operation called Green Run. The radioisotopes are supposed to be detected by US Air Force reconnaissance. Sources cite 5,500–12,000 curies of iodine-131 are released and an even greater amount of xenon-133. The radiation is distributed over 500,000 acres encompassing three small towns and causes the cessation of intentional radioactive releases at Hanford until 1962, when more experiments commence. There are some indications that many other tests are conducted in the 1940s prior to Green Run, although this is a particularly large test. Evidence suggests that filters to remove the iodine are disabled during the test. (Wikipedia, “Green Run”)
December 4 — 5:00 p.m. Mario Restier is returning home from his father’s place in Volta Redonda, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, when he notices a disc land about 32–50 feet from the road. He hears a voice telling him not to be afraid and asking if he wants to know what it’s all about. Two beings about 5 feet 5 inches emerge from the UFO wearing togas and helmets. Restier asks them if they believe in God, and they answer, “God is one.” Encouraged, he enters the craft where he is offered a trip, put in a tub filled with liquid, and taken on a trip to a city on another world. He is shown a screen that depicts human nature, ambitions, and violence. After about 6 hours, he is returned to the spot where he was abducted. Returning to his father’s house, he finds it is April 14, 1950, and has lost nearly four months of earth time. (Brazil 23–24)
December 20 — Following consideration by the Defense Department’s Research and Development Board, Joseph Kaplan’s green fireball project is approved by AMC. (Col. B. G. Holzman, “Light Phenomena,” December 20, 1949; Brad Sparks and Jerome Clark, “The Southwestern Lights, Part Three,” IUR 10, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1985): 16; Clark III 544)
December 24 — The January 1950 issue of True magazine is published, with Donald Keyhoe’s article, “The Flying Saucers Are Real.” Keyhoe argues that the Air Force knows UFOs are real, alien, and covering up information from the public in order to avoid panic: “For the past 175 years, the planet Earth has been under systematic close- range examination by living, intelligent observers from another planet.” The Air Force finds itself buried in letters, telegrams, and phone calls demanding information about flying saucers. (Donald E. Keyhoe, “The Flying Saucers Are Real,” True, January 1950, pp. 11–13, 83–87)
December 27 — USAF announces that Project Grudge is terminated. Its files are put into storage. The Grudge report is released again, reiterating that UFOs are the “result of (1) misinterpretations of various conventional objects; (2) a mild form of mass hysteria; or (3) hoaxes.” (Clark III 932–933)
1950
1950 — N. Meade Layne publishes The Ether-Ship Mystery and Its Solution, which identifies UFOs as emanating from the etheric world, which coexists with and interpenetrates ours. The etherians must lower their “vibrational” rate in order to enter our realm. UFOs are “thought-constructs” that can take many forms and densities. He considers the etherians benign. (Meade Layne, The Ether-Ship Mystery and Its Solution, Borderland Sciences Research Associates, 1950)
1950 — William Ortiz, a deaf-mute, claims to have the first of three close encounters (the others in 1969 and 1975) with large-eyed aliens in UFOs in Colombia. After the first two events, he finds his hearing temporarily restored. The entities communicate to him using hand signals. (“First Reported CEIII Alien Communicating with Deaf-Mute,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 3, no. 4 (Aug./Sept. 1982): 1, 3)
January — The Ground Observer Corps, an organization of civilians who watch the skies for enemy airplanes, is created by the US Air Defense Command. (Wikipedia, “Ground Observer Corps”)
January — On the Seattle, Washington, to Anchorage, Alaska, route, an air freighter is paced for five minutes by a UFO. When the pilots try to close in, the craft zooms away at terrific speed. Later, the airline head reports that intelligence officers quizzed the pilots for hours. “From their questions,” he said, “I could tell they had a good idea of what the saucers are. One officer admitted they did, but he wouldn’t say any more.” (Donald E. Keyhoe, The Flying Saucers Are Real, Gold Medal, 1950, p. 10)
January — Keyhoe meets with Gen. Sory Smith, director of public relations for the Air Force; Maj. Jesse E. Stay and Jack
T. Shea, press officers; and Maj. Jere Boggs, Pentagon liaison to Project Grudge. Most of the interview involves questions for Boggs. Keyhoe is given two looseleaf notebooks with summaries of “Project Saucer” cases. His request to visit Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio to look at the actual case files is turned down weeks later. (Donald E. Keyhoe, The Flying Saucers Are Real, Gold Medal, 1950, pp. 147–154)
January 7 — 10:15 p.m. The assistant maintenance officer at Holloman AFB is driving south of Corona, New Mexico, when he sees a green fireball. It descends at a 60° angle, then levels out and travels 10° east before dropping out of sight behind a mountain. When first seen, it is yellowish-white, changes to orange as it descends, then turns bright blue-green as it levels out and disappears. (NICAP, “January 7, 1950, Corona, NM, OSI Case 161”: Clark III 544; Sparks, p. 78)
January 9 — Time magazine reports on rumors of crashed saucers and small humanoids in New Mexico. (“Visitors from Venus,” Time, January 9, 1950)
January 12 — The AF Directorate of Intelligence quietly cancels the special intelligence collection directives to various government agencies for reporting UFO incidents, though routine intelligence channels still require UFO reporting, per AFCIR-CC7, “Reporting of Information on Unconventional Aircraft.” Cancellation is a follow-up to the widely announced closure of “Project Saucer.” AFOIN Director Gen. Charles P. Cabell believes that in fact AMC is taking its UFO project underground by announcing the closure. Months later Cabell discovers that AMC Intelligence under Col. Harold E. Watson is not running a secret UFO investigation, and Cabell is forced to make up for AMC’s negligence by conducting his own UFO investigations via his AF Intelligence staff. (Maj. Gen. C. P. Cabell, “Reporting of Information on Unconventional Aircraft,” January 12, 1950; Swords 498)
January 12 — 11:25 p.m. A B-29 aircraft is flying over the Gulf of Mexico (southwest of Florida) on a course of 260° when three objects are noted on the radar scope orbiting the B-29 from all quadrants. The objects are noticed by the radar operator, aircraft commander, navigator, and bombardier. One object is first sighted on a bearing of 330° traveling south. The objects travel across the scope in approximately 15–20 seconds on the 100-mile range setting. In a few minutes this object is joined by two others, which disappear in a few minutes. At short ranges the object is large and well-defined on the radar scope. The object goes off for about 100 miles, turns and comes in as
if for an attack, passes through the center of the scope, and emerges on the other side. The estimated speed of the object is 2,500–3,000 mph. The one object remains on the radar scope for approximately 30 minutes, following the B-29 all the time. The radar operator switches ranges on the scope and picks up the object on the 20- and 50- mile settings. Twice the object comes to within 20 miles of the aircraft and then apparently has the ability to hover, because the movement on the radar scope ceases for 5–15 seconds. After altering course the object no longer appears, but the radar is jammed for approximately 10 minutes. The crew makes no visual sighting. (NICAP, “B-29 Radar Tracks Objects”; Clark III 58; Sparks, p. 79)
January 16 — The AFOSI office at Offutt AFB in Omaha, Nebraska, sends a message that recounts stories from Denver, Colorado, about crashed saucers in the southwest. The metal allegedly “defied analysis.” Bodies are said to be 3 feet tall. (Richard H. Hall, Uninvited Guests, Aurora, 1988, p. 74)
January 16 — Tsuneo Saheki of the Osaka Planetarium in Japan sees an explosion on Mars, 60 miles high and 900 miles in diameter. Thomas Dobbins and William Sheehan investigate and find that this and other Martian flashes are likely caused by solar reflections on patches of ice crystals on the surface of Mars. (“‘Terrific Explosion’ on Mars Reported by Japanese Observers,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 27, 1950, p. 13; John J. O’Neill, “Mars Blast Puzzles Science,” Ottawa (Ont.) Citizen, July 16, 1952, p. 30; “Some Curious Objects: Meteoritic Perhaps,” The Strolling Astronomer 4, no. 5 (May 1, 1950): 8–9; Thomas Dobbins and William Sheehan, “Solving the Martian Flares Mystery,” 2002)
January 22 — 2:40 a.m. Navy patrol pilot Lieut. Smith makes a routine security flight out of Naval Air Station Kodiak [now Coast Guard Base Kodiak], Alaska. He obtains a radar reading on an object 20 miles north. It quickly vanishes. At 2:48, he tracks a similar object 10 miles southeast. Kodiak radar reports no known aircraft in the vicinity, but they are seeing the same track. At 3:00 a.m., the tug USS Tillamook is south of Kodiak when one of the men on deck sees a “very fast-moving red glow light, which appeared to be of exhaust nature.” The object comes from the southeast, moves clockwise around Kodiak, and returns to the southeast. Another officer sees it for 30 seconds and describes it as a “large ball of orange fire.” At 4:40 a.m., Lieut. Smith picks up another blip moving so fast that it leaves a trail on his screen. His crew sees the UFO close a five-mile gap in 10 seconds, an apparent speed of 1,800 mph. Witnesses report two orange lights that rotate around a common center. The object makes a sharp turn and heads directly towards Smith’s plane. Smith considers this a threatening situation and turns off his lights; the UFO flies by and disappears. At least 35 copies of Smith’s report are sent to FBI, CIA, AFOSI, and the State Department. None are ever officially released or published. (NICAP, “USN P2V3 Patrol Plane and USS Tillamook Encounter”; ClearIntent, pp. 165–166; Clark III 58; Sparks, p. 80; Swords 90–91)
January 24 —4:50 p.m. USAF Capt. G. B. Edwards and copilot Theron C. Fehrevach are flying a C-45 transport plane from Pope AFB [now Pope Field], Fayetteville, North Carolina, to Bolling AFB [now Joint Base Anacostia- Bolling], Washington, D.C. While at 5,000 feet near Blacksburg, Virginia, Fehrevach notices a dark, 200–250 foot in diameter, hemispherical parachute-shaped object above them about 5–10 miles away. A large black smoky region is below it, possibly obscuring the lower portion of a sphere. The UFO is darker than the 50% cloud cover and “easy to distinguish as not being cloud.” The object moves smoothly without any noticeable turn radius.
Edwards puts the C-45 into a climb to 7,000 feet so they are at the same altitude as the UFO and turns to head directly toward it. Army Courier Service passenger 1st Lt. John H. Van Santen is alerted by Fehrevach and also sees the object move right then left again, then they all see the object recede at high speed and disappear. About 90 seconds later the object reappears about 30°–45° to the right of their heading, then oscillates right to left. It moves horizontally to dead ahead again and disappears by receding in the distance at high speed. (NICAP, “C-25 Transport Crew Encounters Object”; Martin Shough and Wim van Utrecht, “Blackstone, Virginia, USA: January 24, 1950,” September 30, 2015; Swords 91)
Late January — Gen. Charles Cabell, possibly inspired by the Kodiak, Alaska, case, sends a letter to ATIC asking why Project Grudge has ended, because he never disbanded it. ATIC responds that Grudge is no longer a special project and that UFO reports will be processed through normal intelligence channels. (Ruppelt, pp. 69–70)
January 26 — 4:00 p.m. Lt. Col. Lester F. Mathison, commanding officer of the 625th Aircraft and Warning Squadron at Elmendorf AFB [now Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson], Anchorage, Alaska, notices three reddish objects above the cirrus cloud layer at 25,000–30,000 feet. They are moving to the north in a sightly curled trail fashion and disappear into some clouds. (“Extract: History of the 57th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, January 1–March 31, 1950 (Elmendorf AFB, Alaska),” UFO Historical Revue, no. 8 (February 2001): 7–8)
February 1 — Harry S. Truman issues Executive Order 10104 and creates the “Top Secret classification” designation. (US Office of the Federal Register, “Executive Order 10104”)
February 1 — A meteor-like object spewing smoke is seen by many people over Tucson, Arizona. The radio operator at Davis-Monthan AFB asks 1st Lieut. Roy L. Jones Jr. to investigate it in his B-29, but he cannot catch up with it. Edwin Francis Carpenter, head of the University of Arizona astronomy department, says he is certain the object is not a meteor. (Donald E. Keyhoe, The Flying Saucers Are Real, Gold Medal, 1950, pp. 10–12; Sparks, p. 81)
February 2 — Lincoln LaPaz, citing the press of academic duties, withdraws from Project Twinkle. (Clark III 544) February 5 — 5:10 p.m. Four people at Falmouth Airport [now part of Frances Crane Wildlife Management Area north of
Hatchville, Massachusetts] see two illuminated cylindrical objects in the western sky. The witnesses include Marvin R. Odom, owner of the airport, and Lt. Philip Foushee Jr. of Otis AFB [now Otis Air National Guard Base] near Mashpee. As the objects are maneuvering, a fireball drops from one. Five minutes later they both climb at high speed and disappear from view. (NICAP, “Feb. 5, 1950; Teaticket, Mass.”; Hyannis (Mass.) Cape Cod Standard Times, February 6, 1950; Sparks, p. 81)
February 8 — AFOSI Letter #85 is issued, directing Air Force personnel to relay UFO sightings to the Pentagon or AMC only if they are of “priority Counterintelligence interest.” (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 5, January– March 1950, The Author, 1983, p. 18)
February 20 — LaPaz writes to Peter H. Wyckoff of the USAF Cambridge Research Laboratories in Massachusetts that a “fireball project” ought not be pursued because any objects that are not meteors are probably US test missiles. But he concedes he might be wrong and says in that case, “intensive, systematic investigation of these objects should not be delayed.” (Clark III 544)
February 21 — Project Twinkle, with the assistance of Land-Air, Inc., has set up its first operations post, manned by two observers who scan the sky over Holloman AFB, New Mexico, with theodolite, telescope, and camera. (Clark III 544; Thomas Tulien, ed., Proceedings of the Sign Historical Group UFO History Workshop, Sign Historical Group, November 2001, p. 45)
February 22 — Navy pilots and others see two glowing UFOs, confirmed by radar, above the Naval Air Station at Key West, Florida. A plane is sent to investigate but it is “hopelessly outdistanced.” After hovering momentarily at a high altitude (50 miles?), they speed away. (Donald E. Keyhoe, The Flying Saucers Are Real, Gold Medal, 1950, p. 12; Sparks, p. 81)
February 24 — 7:30 p.m. USAF Cpl. Lertis E. Stanfield and other Holloman AFB Photographic Branch project staff at an observation post at Datil, New Mexico, take five photos (using a Cineflex camera with 3-inch focal length lens) of a circular, luminous white object that changes to red and green. Its angular velocity is greater than 0.5°/min in azimuth calculated by Lincoln LaPaz. The object moves in a smooth straight-line motion from about 8:00–9:30
p.m. to the west, blinking red and green. It disappears at high altitude. (NICAP, “AFOSI Case 175; Datil Observation Post Photographs Object”; Sparks, p. 82)
February 26 — 2:45 p.m. Three witnesses observe a bronze-colored object that looks like two cigarette ashtrays placed face to face over Vancouver, British Columbia. It slows down as it passes overhead and wobbles as it moves along. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, p. 64)
March — James J. Rodgers is named a chief of Project Grudge. (Sparks, p. 14)
March — Naval Commander Robert Bright McLaughlin, in charge of a team of Navy scientists at White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico, writes about the Charles B. Moore sighting of April 24, 1949, in a True magazine article and speculates on saucer propulsion systems. McLaughlin writes that the saucers are indeed “spaceships from another planet, operated by animate, intelligent beings.” The Navy, having gotten a preview of the article, removes him from White Sands and gives him an assignment at sea aboard the destroyer USS Bristol. (Robert B. McLaughlin, “How Scientists Tracked a Flying Saucer,” True, March 1950, pp. 25–27, 96–99; Ruppelt, pp. 70– 72; Swords 94–95)
March — According to Karl T. Pflock, two CIA agents clandestinely visit Aztec, New Mexico, UFO crash storyteller Silas Newton and tell him that, although they know he is lying, they want him to continue spreading the tale as disinformation. The two agents later wind up involved in the Psychological Strategy Board created in 1951. (Kremlin 37–42)
March 3 — At Selfridge AFB [now Selfridge Air National Guard Base] near Mount Clemens, Michigan, a lone UFO causes multiple radar trackings and is logged at speeds up to 1,500 mph. (NICAP, “Object Descends Vertically, Levels Out”; Patrick Gross, “Selfridge AFB, Michigan, March 3, 1950”; Sparks, p. 83)
March 8 — Mid-morning. TWA pilot Capt. W. H. Kerr reports to the CAA that he and two other TWA pilots (D. W. Miller and Malvern H. Rabeneck) are watching a UFO hovering at high altitude near Dayton, Ohio. The CAA has already received about 20 other reports about it from Vandalia, Ohio. ATIC control tower operators at Wright- Patterson AFB pick it up visually and on radar (“a good, solid target”). Four F-51 interceptors are sent up. They see it as a huge, round, metallic object, but clouds move in. The object climbs vertically out of sight at high speed.
ATIC calls it the planet Venus, with radar returns from ice-laden clouds. (NICAP, “Three Aircraft Spot UFO / Radar Track at ATIC”; UFOEv, p. 84; Ruppelt, pp. 72–75; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 5, January– March 1950, The Author, 1983, pp. 32–37)
March 9 — 7:45 p.m. A crew of three radar controllers at Selfridge Air Force Base [now Selfridge Air National Guard Base] near Mount Clemens, Michigan, is busy monitoring the night flying units of the 56th Fighter-Interceptor Group. 1st Lt. Francis E. Parker, 1st Lt. Frank K. Mattson, Sgt. McCarthy, and Cpl. Melton observe an intermittent target on the height range indicator (HRI) scope of the CPS-4 radar at 47,000 feet altitude and higher. Further indications of what Parker describes as a well-defined, clear target like an aircraft are picked up with increasing regularity over the next 45–60 minutes. During this time, the target seems to stay in the area where the F-80s are flying, but 20,000 feet above them. The radar operators are monitoring two different systems—a CPS-5 radar operating on long-wave frequencies at 40,000 feet, and a CPS-4 radar operating on short-wave frequencies—and the target appears on both scopes simultaneously without fade. The speed varies from a hover in low-density air to nearly 1,500 mph, well in excess of the fastest operational jet at the time, and a climb rate of up to 7,000 feet per minute. (NICAP, “The Selfridge AFB Incident”; Sparks, p. 84; Hynek UFO Report, pp. 123– 125, 295–297; Clark III 1047–1049; Martin L. Shough, “Radar and the UFO,” UFOs 1947–1987, Fortean Tomes, 1987, pp. 215–217)
March 10 — A publisher and others see a bright disc hover over Orangeburg, South Carolina, for 15 minutes. It speeds away, leaving a trail. (UFOEv, p. 149)
March 13 — Early morning. Army Signal Corps (Reserve) Maj. Taylor in Clarksburg, California, is sleeping when an odd droning noise wakes him up. Going outside, he notices the noise is coming from a brilliant light in the sky, one- half the size of the full moon. It sways for about 15 minutes, then moves away. (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 5, January–March 1950, The Author, 1983, p. 49)
March 13 — Day. At the Central Airport in Mexico City, Mexico, Santiago Smith (weather observer for Mexicana de Aviación), J. de la Vega of the airport commander’s office, and others see a total of four UFOs passing overhead. Smith observes one of them through a theodolite, describing it as the shape of a “half-moon.” (UFOEv, p. 44; “‘Saucers’ No Illusion: Hundreds See Shy Visitors,” Oakland (Calif.) Tribune, March 14, 1950, p. 9; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 5, January–March 1950, The Author, 1983, pp. 50–51)
March 15 — An Air Force Captain Hall, flying in Guatemala, hears from other pilots at La Aurora Airport in Guatemala City that large, fast, and highly maneuverable objects have flown directly over the runway. The stories also appear in the local press. When Hall returns to Brookley Air Force Base [now Mobile Aeroplex at Brookley] in Mobile, Alabama, he is interrogated by a USAF intelligence officer and told: “Listen, there is no such thing as a flying saucer. You won’t discuss them.” (Swords 96)
March 16 — The efforts of Kaplan and Maj. Oder to start a fireball research project come to fruition when the AF Geophysical Research Directorate headed by Oder issues a letter directive authorizing Project Twinkle. A $20,000 half-year contract is signed with Land-Air, Inc. which operates the phototheodolites at White Sands, New Mexico. Land-Air is to set up a 24-hour watch at a location in New Mexico to be specified by the Air Force, and the phototheodolite operators at White Sands are to film any unusual objects that happen to fly past. The official contract gives April 1 as the starting date. ()
March 16 — Just before 12:00 noon. Chief Petty Officer Charles Lewis sees a flying disc streak across the sky at Naval Air Station Dallas [later Grand Prairie Armed Forces Reserve Complex] near Dallas, Texas. It buzzes a high- flying B-36. It hovers under the bomber for a moment, then flies off and disappears. NAS Commander Capt.
Milton Adolphus Nation vouches for Lewis and says that the base tower operators had seen a UFO 10 days before. (NICAP, “Disc Buzzes B-36”; “‘Flying Saucers’ Sighted by Two,” Dallas Morning News, March 18, 1950; Ruppelt, p. 75)
March 16–18 — 11 a.m.–noon. Former Army Engineer Capt. and Farmington Times business manager Clayton J. Boddy Jr. and dozens of others watch 12–15 shiny “saucer-like discs” cavorting around the sky over Farmington, New Mexico. They hover, then move in great bursts of speed. The objects appear three days in a row. (NICAP, “The Farmington Invasion”; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 5, January–March 1950, The Author, 1983, pp. 56–64; Sparks, p. 84; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, pp. 47–48)
March 18 — 8:40 a.m. Private pilot Robert Fisher, flying a Beechcraft Bonanza over Bradford, Illinois, encounters an oval object with a metallic sheen. He can still see the object when it flies behind some thin clouds. It moves away at an estimated speed of 600–1,000 mph. (UFOEv, p. 38)
March 18 — The USAF publicly denies that UFOs are secret missiles or space-exploration devices. (Donald E. Keyhoe,
The Flying Saucers Are Real, Gold Medal, 1950, p. 13)
March 20 — 9:26 p.m. Chicago and Southern Airlines Capt. Jack Adams and First Officer G. W. Anderson Jr., flying a DC-3 at 2,000 feet and heading west from Memphis, Tennessee, to Little Rock, Arkansas, see a circular disc 100 feet in diameter approximately over Hazen, Arkansas. In the top center of the object is an extremely bright light blinking at an estimated 3 flashes per second. The bottom of the object appears to have 9–12 symmetrical oval or circular portholes in a circle approximately 75% of the distance from the center to the outer edge. The object passes directly in front of the airliner at a distance of not more than 2,640 feet and approximately 1,000 feet higher than the airliner. They watch the object for 25–35 seconds. Adams estimates its speed is greater than 1,000 mph. (NICAP, “DC-3 Encounters 100ʹ Disc”; Little Rock Arkansas Gazette, July 24, 1955; Sparks, p. 85; Swords 95–96; Tom Howell YouTube channel, “UFO from the 1950s,” October 3, 2006)
March 21 — 1:00–1:30 p.m. Sergeant Woods at Sandia Base, New Mexico, reports four round, silvery objects to the northeast. The objects appear to be more maneuverable than any known aircraft. The maneuvers are similar to those in dogfights involving two aircraft, but there seems to be no similarity to a conventional plane. They make right-angle turns and reverse direction instantaneously. The duration is about 30 minutes. Other witnesses at Sandia and Kirtland AFB report similar observations. (NICAP, “Base Personnel Sight Strange Objects”; Sparks, p. 85)
March 22 — 11:00 a.m. Eleven sergeants in the 4925th Test Group watch a UFO northwest of Kirtland AFB, New Mexico. The shape is “similar to a flying wing air craft and tan in color, turning to brown around the edges.” It first travels northwesterly at 25,000–30,000 feet, then turns north and disappears with a tremendous burst of speed. (NICAP, “Atomic Test Group Witnesses UFO in Broad Daylight”; Sparks, p. 85)
March 22 —FBI agent Guy L. Hottel writes to FBI headquarters about a rumor that three UFOs have crashed and are recovered in New Mexico. They are 50 feet in diameter and “each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed flyers and test pilots.” It goes on, “According to Mr. [redacted], informant, the saucers were found in New Mexico due to the fact that the Government had a very high-powered radar set-up in that area and it is believed the radar interferes with the controlling [sic] mechanism of the saucers." The informant is probably Silas M. Newton or Leo GeBauer. On March 25, 2013, the FBI issues a release saying that the Hottel memo was simply a second- or third-hand claim “that we never investigated. Some people believe the memo repeats a hoax that was circulating at that time, but the Bureau’s files have no information to verify that theory.” (Guy Hottel, “Flying Saucers, Information Concerning,” March 22, 1950; Richard H. Hall, Uninvited Guests, Aurora, 1988, pp. 326–327; Good Above, p. 527; Federal Bureau of Investigation, “UFOs and the Guy Hottel Memo,” March 25, 2013; Robert L. Hastings, “The March 22, 1950 FBI Memo on Crashed Flying Saucers,” UFOs & Nukes, April 18, 2011)
March 26 — Vice-Admiral Louis Mountbatten, in a letter to his friend Charles Eade, editor of the London Sunday Dispatch, rejects the idea that flying saucers are secret weapons, admitting that “they do not come from our Earth…. Maybe it is the Shackletons or Scotts of Venus or Mars who are making their first exploration of our Earth.” (UFOFiles2, p. 37)
March 26 — Day. Bertram A. Totten, a clerk at the Library of Congress, is flying his plane at 5,000 feet over Fairfax County, Virginia, when he spots an aluminum-colored disc about 40 feet in diameter and 10 feet thick flying 1,000 feet below him. He dives toward it, but it speeds up into the overcast. It glints when the sun hits it, and he notices a vapor trail. (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 5, January–March 1950, The Author, 1983, pp. 79–80)
March 26 — 4:00 p.m. Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt interviews airline pilots Jack Adams and G. W. Anderson about their March 20 UFO sighting on her NBC television program, Today with Mrs. Roosevelt. (“Anatomy of a Hoax, Part Five,” Saturday Night Uforia)
March 26 — 8:50 p.m. CAA Tower operator Marie H. Matthews and United Airlines employees Robert Higbee and Fred Hinkle see a brilliant light northeast of Hubbard Field [now Reno–Tahoe International Airport] outside Reno, Nevada. It hangs motionless for 5–6 minutes, then moves slowly across the sky with a green light on either side of it. It suddenly zooms upward into a cloud bank. (UFOEv, pp. 44–45)
March 27 — 10:30 a.m. USAF antiaircraft radar operator Cpl. Bolfango tracks a stationary target on radar over the Motobu Peninsula, Okinawa, Japan, at 18 miles range for 10 minutes at 13,000 feet. The object then moves on a 220° heading for 16.9 miles in 2 minutes (about 500 mph) to a point over a mountain, where it is lost. (NICAP, “Tracked Stationary Target at 18 Miles”; Sparks, p. 85)
March 27 — Radio broadcaster Henry J. Taylor, on his syndicated radio program Your Land and Mine, announces the “wonderful news” that saucers are in fact US secret weapons, which will reassure the nation when the US Air Force confirms it. Within days, the story is twisted to specifically credit the Navy’s alleged “top secret” project the Flying Flapjack Vought XF5U. The story is apparently disinformation planted by ex-Hollywood writers in the
CIA Office of Policy Coordination’s Political and Psychological Warfare staff headed by Joseph Bryan III, a future president and board chairman of NICAP. (“Radio Man Certain U.S. Is Owner of ‘Flying Saucer’ Missile Secret,” Miami (Fla.) News, March 29, 1950, p. 9; NICAP, “1950 UFO Chronology”; Swords 97; Curt Collins, “1950 Disclosure: UFOs Are Made in the USA,” November 9, 2018)
March 28 — In response to a request from J. Edgar Hoover to his aide D. Milton (“Mickey”) Ladd on “just what are the facts re ‘flying saucers,’ agent S. Wesley Reynolds interviews Maj. Boggs and Lieut. Col. John V. Hearn Jr. of Air Force Intelligence, who tell him that most UFOs are misidentifications and weather balloons. (Swords 95; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 5, January–March 1950, The Author, 1983, pp. 84–85)
March 28 — Samuel Eaton Thompson is on his way home to Centralia, Washington, from Markham. He drives through a wooded area between Morton and Mineral and decides to stop to take a break. On foot, he comes upon a large, globe-shaped craft hovering above a clearing. Naked children with dark tans and blond hair are playing on steps that lead from an open door to the side of the UFO. Several naked adults—humanoid, attractive, and also deeply tanned—then appear at the ship’s door. After realizing that Thompson means them no harm, they beckon him closer. The crew consists of 20 adults and 25 children, the latter from about 5–15 years of age. Thompson claims to have spent the next 40 hours with the humanoids. They are from Venus, he learns, and have stopped at Earth despite the fact that other Venusian saucers have been shot at by Earth-based military forces. The Venusians further claims that they are vegetarian and that they never grow ill. Thompson also claims the Venusians are naïve and childlike; they do not know who has built their flying saucers and seem to possess little to no curiosity. He goes back to get a camera and tries to take photos, but the object is too bright to appear on film. Thompson returns home on March 30. (“Centralian Tells Strange Tale of Visiting Venus Space Ship in Eastern Lewis County,” Centralia (Wash.) Daily Chronicle, April 1, 1950; Clark III 1127–1129; Jerome Clark, “The Coming of the Venusians,” Fate 34, no. 1 (January 1981): 49–55; Patrick Gross, URECAT, November 16, 2018)
March 31 — Syndicated columnist Drew Pearson publishes “Worried about Flying Saucers?” in which he sympathizes with the Air Force, which has to reply to groundless public excitement. His USAF contact has told him, “there ain’t no such animal.” Pentagon Public Relations Officer Maj. DeWitt Searles tells the press that all UFO cases are the result of misinterpretations, mass hysteria, and hoaxes: “As far as the Air Force goes, there’s no such thing as a flying saucer.” (Drew Pearson, “Worried about Flying Saucers?” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, March 31, 1950, p. 5; “Major Debunker of Flying Saucers, Keeps Saying, ‘No, No, 1,000 Times No,’” Rock Island (Ill.) Argus, March 31, 1950, p. 18; Swords 96–99)
Spring — Commander Augusto Vars Ortega of the Chilean Navy takes about 1,200 feet of color film of UFOs—one above the other, turning at tremendous speeds—in Antarctica. When NICAP asks the Chilean Embassy about the film in 1956, it tells Keyhoe that the film is classified and not available. (Dan Lloyd, “Things Are Hotting Up in the Antarctic,” Flying Saucer Review 2, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1965): 5)
April — Daytime. While working on her lawn in Canby, Oregon, Ellen Jonerson glances over at her neighbor’s yard and sees a 12-inch-tall man with his back turned to her. When he turns around, she sees that he has a heavily tanned face, is of stocky build, and wears overalls and a plaid shirt. There is a skullcap on his head. She dashes inside to call a friend, then runs outside again in time to see the figure “waddling” away. He walks under a parked car and disappears. Kenneth Arnold, who interviews her, is convinced of her sincerity. (Center for UFO Studies, HUMCAT Index, 1950–1951, p. 2; Clark III 270)
April 1 — Project Twinkle officially begins. ()
April 4 — Presidential press secretary Charlie Ross states that Truman has conferred with his two top military advisers, Rear Adm. Robert Dennison and Brig. Gen. Robert B. Landry, and that they claim the US has no such technology. Furthermore, the Air Force study has concluded there are no such things as flying saucers. Caltech aeronautics professor Clark Blanchard Millikan agrees, saying: “If anyone should know about such a project, I should know—and I know of no development in the aircraft or guided missile field.” (Swords 97–99)
April 5 — Sen. Richard Russell Jr. (D-Ga.) states to the press that he is “completely baffled” by flying saucer reports that are made by many pilots who would not be fooled by hallucinations or clouds. Sen. Millard Tydings (D-Md.), chair of the Armed Services Committee, says he thinks saucers might be experimental US aircraft “in embryo stage.” Rep. Albert J. Engel (R-Mich.) thinks the same. Sen. Kenneth S. Wherry (R-Neb.) says the saucers are “like our foreign policy. It is in a state of confusion and no one seems to know what it is all about.” (“Congress Split about Saucers,” Miami (Fla.) News, April 5, 1950, pp. 1, 6; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 6, April–July 1950, The Author, 1990, pp. 9–10; Swords 98)
April 6 — 4:45 p.m. Lt. John J. Sevila, a pilot with the 131st Fighter Squadron, hears a sound like a flight of jet airplanes and rushes out of his house in Springfield, Massachusetts, to see them. Instead, he sees a perfectly circular object moving slowly westward at an altitude of 25,000 feet. He watches it for 5 minutes as it moves at a speed of 50–
100 mph. When the sun hits it directly, it shines like a mirror. (The Thunderbolt 1, no. 12 (April 1950): 5; Jan Aldrich)
April 7 — A CAA control tower operator at Logan Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, watches a blue light split into two lights that revolve around each other for 10 minutes. (Hynek UFO Report, pp. 65–68; Sparks, p. 86)
April 7 — Newsman Edward R. Murrow produces the first extended TV commentary on UFOs, “The Case of the Flying Saucer” on CBS. He begins with the Kenneth Arnold case, mentions Muroc AFB cases and Mantell, and quotes both True magazine and Donald Menzel. Also on the show are Henry J. Taylor, engineer Charles H. Zimmerman, and Charlie Ross, as well as people on the street. (“Transcript of Ed Murrow–Kenneth Arnold Telephone Conversation,” CUFOS Associate Newsletter 5, no. 1 (Feb./March 1984): 3; Edward R. Murrow, “The Case of the Flying Saucer [audio only],” Bryce Zabel YouTube channel, February 24, 2018)
April 7 — US News and World Report comes out with a story on saucers that hints they are top-secret, jet-propelled Navy aircraft “that can outfly other planes.” (“Flying Saucers—the Real Story: U.S. Built First One in 1942,” US News and World Report 28, no. 14 (April 7, 1950): 13–15; Michael D. Swords, “Balloons, Missiles, and UFOs,” IUR 29, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 18)
April 7 — The National Security Council presents President Truman with Report 68 (NSC-68), a 56-page top secret policy paper that provides the “blueprint for the militarization of the Cold War.” It advocates a large expansion in the military budget, the development of a hydrogen bomb, and increased military aid to US allies for the containment of Communist expansion. It essentially warns Truman that the US is losing the Cold War. Truman does not approve it until 1951. (Wikipedia, “NSC-68”)
April 8 — Paul Limerick, commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Shelby, North Carolina, watches a round, aluminum-colored object with four other people for 2 minutes. It follows a horizontal course toward the southwest without making a sound, then shoots straight up and disappears. (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 6, April–July 1950, The Author, 1990, p. 13)
April 10 — 7:00 p.m. Several University of California, Berkeley, graduate students, including Garniss H. Curtis, Robert Scott Creely, and Louis I. Briggs, watch a bright light moving against the wind at about 10–15 mph at 1,500 feet altitude about 3–4 miles away from Berkeley, California, for two hours. It turns slowly to the south then turns around and heads slowly back. Four high school students in Monterey, California, see a gleaming object over San Francisco in the early afternoon. (NICAP case file; “Saucer Visits San Francisco, Schoolboys Say,” Los Angeles Times, April 12, 1950, p. 17)
April 14 — RAND Corporation writer Jean M. Hungerford writes a 32-page research memorandum for the US Air Force titled “The Exploitation of Superstitions for Purposes of Psychological Warfare.” She uses recent examples of religious miracles that were used in Western propaganda, as well as horoscopes, chain letters, and folklore. (Jean
M. Hungerford, “The Exploitation of Superstitions for Purposes of Psychological Warfare,” USAF Project Rand Research Memorandum, RM-35, April 14, 1950)
April 17 — Newsweek publishes an article, “Flying Saucers Again,” on crashed saucers. (“Flying Saucers Again,”
Newsweek, April 17, 1950, p. 29)
April 17 — More than 15 people report seeing a UFO for 20 minutes at 2,000 feet on the eastern horizon at Los Alamos, New Mexico. One scientist watches the object through a telescope and says it looks flat, circular, metallic, and roughly 9 feet in diameter. It moves faster than any conventional aircraft. (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 6, April–July 1950, The Author, 1990, p. 26; Sparks, p. 86)
April 24 — 10:00 p.m. Bruno Facchini steps outside his house on the outskirts of Abbiate Guazzone, Varese, Italy, and notices something flashing near a power line. He goes to investigate and encounters a landed disc with an open door and steps leading down. Three or four men in diving suits and helmets are inside. One seems to be welding a pipe. Facchini speaks to them, but they respond with growling sounds. One points a small “camera” at him that emits a beam that knocks him over. Facchini lies still while the repairs are completed, and the UFO takes off. (Pino Carminati Ghidelli, “Un Diaco è Atterrato,” Notiziario UFO, no. 37 (Jan./Feb. 1971): 19–22; Antonio Giudici, “The Case of Bruno Facchini,” Flying Saucer Review 20, no. 6 (April 1975): 30–32; Ezio Barnardini, “Facchini: Un CE3 Rivisitato,” Notiziario UFO, no. 104 (March 1985/Jan. 1986): 4–7; Clark III 267; Marcus Lowth, “Bruno Facchini’s Extraterrestrial Encounter in Varese, Italy,” UFO Insight, September 5, 2020; 1Pinotti 30–40; Patrick Gross, “Abbiate Guazzone, Italy, April 24, 1950”)
April 25 — Early morning. Military security patrols at the deactivated Dugway Proving Ground in western Utah view a series of unusual lights and objects moving above an ammunition storage area. One object is “surrounded by an aura of spears of light jutting diagonally from the main body.” (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History, Volume 6: April–July 1950, The Author, 1990, p. 34)
April 25 — 3:00 p.m. Enrique Hausmann Muller takes a film of a bright, circular UFO with rays of flame spinning off its edge in a pinwheel fashion in Montuïri, Majorca, Balearic Islands, Spain. Probable hoax. (UFOEv, p. 88; Loren E.
Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 6, April–July 1950, The Author, 1990, p. 32; Matías Morey Ripoll, “El Caso Hausmann: Una Aproximación desde Ibiza,” UFO Fotocat Blog, September 20, 2019; Centro Ufologico Nazionale, [Hausmann photo])
April 27 — While preparing for an MX-776A Shrike air-to-ground missile test at White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico, Charles Riggs, a member of the Project Twinkle cinetheodolite camera crew supplied by Land-Air Inc., sees, tracks, and manages to film four high-flying objects streaking across the sky. Another station also tracks the objects. The photos show only a smudgy dark object, but the triangulation results in a calculation by mathematician Wilbur L. Mitchell and Capt. Perry Bryant of the objects’ size as 30 feet in diameter and 150,000 feet in altitude. (NICAP, “Cinetheodolite Film Taken by Tracking Station”; Ruppelt, p. 88; Clark III 544–545; Sparks, p. 88; Thomas Tulien, ed., Proceedings of the Sign Historical Group UFO History Workshop, Sign Historical Group, November 2001, p. 44; Good Above, pp. 354–355; Bruce Maccabee, “The White Sands Films,” IUR 21, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 22–25)
April 27 — 8:25 p.m. TWA Flight 117 pilot Capt. Robert Adickes and Flight Officer Robert F. Manning are flying near Goshen, Indiana, when they see a bright-red disc-shaped UFO behind their DC-3. It overtakes the plane in about 2 minutes. Stewardess Gloria Henshaw and 11 passengers (including Boeing engineers C. H. Jenkins and Dean C. Bourland and executives E. J. Fitzgerald and S. N. Miller) also see the object. It veers off at 400 mph, drops down to 1,500 feet, and disappears. (NICAP, “Adickes TWA DC-3 Case”; Sparks, p. 89; Donald E. Keyhoe, “Flight 117 and the Flying Saucer,” True, August 1950, pp. 24–25, 75–79; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, pp. 46–47)
May 5 — 11:30 p.m. Capt. Marcellus D. O’Sullivan, 1Lt. William J. Reisinger, and three enlisted men of the 625th Aircraft and Warning Squadron at Elmendorf AFB [now Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson], Anchorage, Alaska, see a reddish-orange object hovering in the sky for 5 minuites. It puts on a burst of speed and disappears over the horizon. (“From History: 57th Fighter Interceptor Wing (Alaska), January–June 1950,” UFO Historical Revue, no. 5 (July 1999): 8)
May 11 —7:30 p.m. Evelyn Trent, who lives on a farm nine miles from McMinnville, Oregon [near Sheridan, Oregon], is walking back to her farmhouse after feeding rabbits. Before reaching the house, she sees a slow-moving, metallic disk-shaped object heading in her direction from the northeast. She yells for her husband Paul, who is inside the house; he comes out and also sees the object. After a short time, he goes back inside to get a camera and manages to take two photos of the object before it speeds away to the west. Paul Trent’s father briefly sees the object before it flies away. The Trents assume they have seen some exotic military aircraft. They do not develop the film in the camera until they use it up and show the photos only to a few friends. Eventually it reaches the cover of Life magazine, but the Trents show no desire to make any money from the photos. Although the Colorado project initially thinks the photos seem genuine, three Interface Pilote pour l’Analyse de Clichés d’OVNIs researchers in 2013–2015 claim to find evidence of a model suspended from a string. Researcher Brad Sparks finds major mathematical and scientific errors in IPACO’s work, which actually supports a UFO conclusion. (Wikipedia, “McMinnville UFO Photographs”; “Farmer Trent’s Flying Saucer,” Life, June 26, 1950, p. 29; NICAP, “Trent / McMinnville Photos”; Story, pp. 223–226; Sparks, p. 90; Hynek UFO Report, pp. 244–245; Condon, pp. 396– 407; Bruce S. Maccabee, “On the Possibility that the McMinnville Photos Show a Distant Unidentified Object (UO),” Proceedings of the 1976 CUFOS Conference, Center for UFO Studies, 1976, pp. 152–163; Bruce S. Maccabee, “The McMinnville Photos,” The Spectrum of UFO Research, CUFOS, 1988, pp. 13–57; Bruce S. Maccabee, “The Trent Farm Photos,” April 2000; Bruce S. Maccabee, “The Trent Farm Photos Appendix,” April 2000; Bruce S. Maccabee, “The McMinnville Photos,” May 2000; Michael D. Swords, “Can We Learn Anything from UFO Photos? Part Five,” The Big Study, July 15, 2012; Antoine Cousyn, François Louange, and Geoff Quick, “The McMinnville Pictures,” Interface Pilote pour l’Analyse de Clichés d’OVNIs, May 2014; Clark III 702–704)
May 15 — Afternoon. Architect Enrique Carotenuto Bossa is driving in an isolated region in Bahía Blanca Partido (possibly between Macachín and Estación Hidalgo Ferrocarril Sarmiento), La Pampa, Argentina, when he sees a metallic disc resting on the ground to the left of the highway. He stops the car to investigate, approaches it, and sees an open door in its side. He goes inside and sees a “curved divan with three seats, two of which were occupied by small beings covered from head to foot (except for an opening for the face (in a kind of tight-fitting overall of a brown color.” The bodies are about 4 feet tall, and their faces seem charred or burnt. In front of them is a screen with “rays playing on it,” and on top of the screen is a rotating globe. The engineer runs out and drives back to his hotel. He returns the next day with two companions and finds only an ash heap. But they look up and see three UFOs—one a cigar-shaped object and two discs, hovering above them at 1,800 feet. The discs merge
with the cigar and speed away. (El Universal (Caracas, Venezuela), May 7, 1955; “Man Enters Grounded Disc,” APRO Bulletin, August 1955, pp. 1–3; Clark III 327–328; Willy Smith, “The Curious Case of the Argentine Crashed Saucer,” IUR 11, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1986): 18–19; Roberto E. Banchs and Richard W. Heiden, “Crash Landing in the Pampas,” IUR 24, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 4–10, 30; Roberto Banchs, “General Acha (LP): Un Accidentado Aterrizaje (Priemra Parte),” Marcianitos Verdes, July 4, 2009)
May 20 — 12:15 p.m. Meteorologist Seymour L. Hess is strolling the grounds of Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, when he notices a round, gray-colored object approaching from the southeast at about 12,000 feet altitude. He follows it with a 4x spyglass as it passes in front of a small cumulus cloud. Hess estimates it is about 4 feet in diameter and moving about 100 mph. (UFOEv, p. 3; Condon, pp. 245–248; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, pp. 61–62)
May 21 —A second Gallup poll on UFOs is released, showing that 5% of respondents think “these flying saucers” are “comets, shooting stars, something from another planet.” (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 6, April–July 1950, The Author, 1990, pp. 48-49; Robert J. Durant, “Evolution of Public Opinion on UFOs,” IUR 18, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1993): 10–11)
May 21 — 3:50 p.m. T/Sgt Edward Eles, Earl DuQuoin, and four other airmen of the 187th Fighter Squadron of the Wyoming National Guard are on the airfield at the Municipal Airport in Cheyenne, Wyoming, when they see a V- shaped formation of four round, pure-white discs flying in a northerly direction. In a matter of seconds, the objects change formation and make a sharp right-angle turn, flying single file, and speed out of sight. (Cheyenne Wyoming State Tribune, May 22, 1950, p. 1)
May 24 — During an MX-674 Tarzon controllable vertical bomb test at Holloman AFB, New Mexico, Floyd Fannon and other USAF crew members see eight unidentified objects. They separately track and film two of the objects down the North American Aviation missile firing range. Project Twinkle cinetheodolite station P-8 films one object to the northeast for 6 frames (1.0 sec) moving uniformly to the south. Cinetheodolite station P-10, located 5.7 miles down range to the north from P-8 and 7 feet higher, films another object, hence no triangulation is possible. (NICAP, “Cinetheodolite Film Taken by Tracking Station”; Sparks, p. 91; Good Above, pp. 354–355; Bruce Maccabee, “The White Sands Films,” IUR 21, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 22–25)
May 25 — Lt. Col. Doyle Rees of the USAF Office of Special Investigations writes a confidential memo to Brig. Gen. Joseph F. Carroll, Director of Special Investigations. In part, it states: “In a liaison meeting with other military and government intelligence and investigative agencies in December 1948, it was determined that the frequency of unexplained aerial phenomena in the New Mexico area was such that an organized plan of reporting these observations should be undertaken. The organization and physical location of units of this District were most suitable for collecting these data, therefore, since December 1948, this District has assumed the responsibility for collecting and reporting basic information with respect to aerial phenomena in this general area.” (NICAP, “Summary of Observations of Aerial Phenomena, New Mexico Area, Dec 1949 to May 1950”)
May 29 — 9:20 p.m. Capt. Willis T. Sperry, copilot Bill Gates, flight engineer Robert Arnholt, a stewardess, and several passengers on an American Airlines DC-6 airliner headed southwest out of Washington, D.C., en route to Nashville, Tennessee, are flying at 7,500 feet at 250 mph. About 7 miles west of Mount Vernon, Virginia, Gates alerts Sperry to a bright blue or bluish light ahead of them and increasing in size. Sperry makes an evasive 45° turn to the right and the object passes from 11 o’clock to 7 o’clock position to the left at a slightly higher altitude. The light very briefly passes between the aircraft and the upper part of the moon, revealing an object with a long silhouette (somewhat reminiscent of a submarine) without visible wings or empennage. The blue light is on the front of the object. Sperry turns left back onto his original course to get the object back in view, but it apparently stays stationary for about 30 seconds. Gates then notices the object circling around to the right side. Sperry banks right again, while the object paces the airliner about 20–30 seconds before it climbs to the east at a 30° angle at “fantastic” speed and disappears. (Wikipedia, “Sperry UFO Case”; NICAP, “Capt. Willis Sperry Sighting”; Loren
E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 6, April–July 1950, The Author, 1990, pp. 52–53; Project 1947, “UFO Reports 1950”; Sparks, p. 91)
May 29 — A shiny, bright object streaking across the sky is spotted by two cine-theodolite stations at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, just before firing a test missile. The object is tracked and photographed by both stations. After the films are developed, it turns out that the stations had photographed different objects. Analysts estimate that the objects were higher than 40,000 feet, traveling more than 2,000 mph, and over 300 feet in diameter. (Ruppelt, p. 89; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 6, April–July 1950, The Author, 1990, p. 36)
Summer — Physicist Enrico Fermi first formulates the “Fermi Paradox” during a casual conversation (in Los Alamos, New Mexico?) with fellow physicists Edward Teller, Herbert York, and Emil Konopinski. While walking to
lunch, the men discuss recent UFO reports and the possibility of faster-than-light travel. The conversation moves on to other topics, until during lunch Fermi allegedly says suddenly, “But where is everybody?” (although the exact quote is uncertain). (Wikipedia, “Enrico Fermi”)
Summer — Evening. An 8- or 10-foot-disc lands in a field behind Mrs. Mason Vaughan’s house in Beaverdam, Virginia. From an open cockpit a “man with unusual goggles or headpiece” looks out. Surprised, the disc takes off abruptly, breaking off a limb from an oak tree on the way up. (Clark III 267; Center for UFO Studies, HUMCAT Index 1950–1951, p. 20)
June 1 — A pilot on patrol from RAF Tangmere in West Sussex, England, sights a “bright circular metallic object” that speeds past his Gloster Meteor jet fighter at 20,000 feet. As he undergoes a debriefing by squadron intelligence, he finds out that four RAF controllers at the radar station at RAF Wartling near Eastbourne have, at the same time, tracked an “unusual response” that vanishes from their screens, moving at terrific speed. (David Clarke, “Flying Saucer Working Party,” Dr. David Clarke Folklore and Journalism, January 3, 2015)
June 8 — Gen. Earle E. Partridge of the Fifth Air Force, responsible for the Korean Theatre, writes to Commanding Gen.
George E. Stratemeyer, asking for an analysis of certain UFO cases. (Swords 100–101)
June 12 — Eastern Airlines executive Eddie Rickenbacker tells the press that if flying saucers “do exist, you can rest assured that they are ours.” (Swords 100)
June 12 — 4:00 p.m. Working in a quarry somewhere in California, geologist John Zimmerman and civil engineer Charles Fisher are watching a jet aircraft speeding through the sky and leaving a vapor trail. Suddenly Zimmerman notices that the vapor trail has been cut. Looking more closely, he notices a metallic disc making vertical loops around the jet. Two other discs come into view and perform the same aerobatics. (Wells Alan Webb, Mars, the New Frontier, Fearon, 1956, p. 124; UFOEv, p. 50)
June 17 — Oskar Linke and his 11-year-old daughter Gabriele are walking toward Haselbach, Thuringia, East Germany, in the twilight when she notices something about 420 feet away. It appears to be two men dressed in shiny metallic clothing who are stooped over and looking at something on the ground. Linke approaches to 30 feet away, looks over a small fence, and sees a large object about 40 feet in diameter that looks like a huge frying pan. It has two rows of holes in its periphery and a black conical tower about 9 feet high. The two men suddenly jump inside. The inside lights up, the object starts humming and rises slowly from the ground, rotating like a top. It rises from the ground with the aid of a central cylinder and is surrounded by flames, then takes off in the direction of Stockheim. Later he finds a circular depression in the ground at the spot. Linke resettles in West Berlin in 1951. He tells his story to a notary there on July 1, 1952, which is how it turns up in the Western press and explains a confusion in the date of the sighting. (NICAP, “CE III by Two Witnesses / Oskar Linke Case”; Central Intelligence Agency, “‘Flying Saucers’ in East Germany,” July 9, 1952; Andreas Müller, “Das Haselbach-UFO von 1950: Die Augenzeugin spricht,” grenzWissenschaft-aktuell.de, January 26, 2016; Sparks, p. 92; Good Above, pp. 513–514)
June 21 — 1:35 a.m. Control tower operators Cpl. Roger G. Pryor and S/Sgt. Ellis R. Lorimer and airways communications staffer S/Sgt. Virgil Cappuro watch a flying disc speeding at 1,000–1,500 mph over Hamilton AFB [now closed] in Novato, California. The object shoots blue flame and makes a roar like thunder as it makes five passes over the base. They observe it through binoculars for 25 minutes. (NICAP, “Disc Makes Five Passes at Control Tower”; Sparks, p. 92)
June 24 — A cigar-shaped UFO paces a United Airlines plane (Capt. E. L. Remlin, First Officer David Stewart, and observer Capt. Samuel B. Wiper) for 20 minutes near Daggett, California. The object is also seen by the crew of another airliner and a navy transport plane. The Navy pilot sees for 3 minutes a dark gray object with heat radiation at the tail end. He estimates altitude as 50,000–100,000 feet and a speed of 1,000–1,500 mph. The crews discuss the matter with two CAA ground stations. (NICAP, “Three Aircraft Crews Observe UFO”; UFOEv, p. 31; Sparks, p. 93)
June 25 — North Korea invades South Korea, beginning the Korean War. (Wikipedia, “Korean War”)
June 27 — President Truman orders US air and sea forces to help South Korea. (Wikipedia, “Korean War”)
June 27 — 4:15 p.m. Al Hixenbaugh, a photographer for the Louisville Times, is at the corner of Longest and Everett avenues in Louisville, Kentucky, when he hears the sound of a DC-3 airplane overhead. He looks up and sees the plane as well as a large disc with a slight corona around it. He shoots 50 feet of film with his 16mm movie camera as the object remains motionless for 10 seconds before it starts getting smaller and disappears to the west. (Louisville (Ky.) Times, June 28, 1950, p. 1; “How to Film UFO’s,” Saucers 6, no. 3 (August 1958): 3; Sparks, p.
June 30 — Midnight. Rev. Ross Vermillion, a former bomber pilot, and his wife are driving 9 miles west of Kingman, Kansas, when they see a bright red light hovering over US Hwy 54 near Cunningham, Kansas. They estimate it to be about 250 feet in diameter with a small canopy on top. The family of druggist Dwayne Mulnix of Meade,
Kansas, also sees the object and they stop and watch it for about 20 minutes along the highway. They begin to drive closer, but it speeds away. As seen in the bright moonlight, the object looks made of bright metal and has an elliptical body “as big as the cross-section of a B-29” with a rotor turning counterclockwise around its body. (NICAP, “WWII Pilot Tells of Seeing Flying Saucer”; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 6, April–July 1950, The Author, 1990, pp. 66–69)
June 30 — 11:15 p.m. Two navy men (Petty Officer Carter and Able Seaman Connelly) at Royal Canadian Naval Air Station Shearwater, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, are pulling duty on radar watch from dusk until dawn. They report four separate radar contacts bearing 160° at 5 miles over 90 minutes. Visual confirmation of two glowing objects is made by a chief petty officer in North Dartmouth. (NICAP, “Navy Men Report Radar Contact”)
July — USAF Director of Intelligence Maj. Gen. Charles P. Cabell orders secret UFO field investigations to be conducted by his staff Technical Capabilities Branch in the Evaluation Division under Maj. Milton D. Willis. These begin this month and last until October 1951 when Cabell is replaced by Gen. John A. Samford. (Clark III 936)
July — Editor Curtis Fuller’s article, “The Flying Saucers: Fact or Fiction?” appears in Flying magazine. (Curtis Fuller, “The Flying Saucers: Fact or Fiction?” Flying 47 (July 1950): 16–17, 59–61)
July — Armed Forces Special Weapons Project concludes a top secret study, named Project Nutmeg, to search for an atomic weapons site in the continental US. AFSWP concludes that a site on the Air Force’s Las Vegas Bombing and Gunnery Range in Nevada is the right place. President Truman approves the location, known as Frenchman Flat. (Wikipedia, “Sandia Base”; “Project Nutmeg: The Birth of the Nevada Test Site,” National Nuclear Security Administration, June 2004)
July — Mid-day. Electronics engineer Cliff Booth is having lunch in his office at a private contractor’s building at Holloman AFB, New Mexico, when he gets a call that a UFO has been reported by one of the range stations. Booth and an Askania cinetheodolite operator are asked to drive to another range station with a manually operated Askania and look for the object. Through the finders on the theodolite the object presents a side view to the observers and appears to be cigar-shaped and metallic, with a straw-colored iridescent radiance or luster. It also has fins one-third of the way back from the front of the fuselage and a row of at least three oblong ports extending to the rear of the object and located above the center line of the fuselage. The ports are a dark smoky gray but not luminescent. The object hovers in an almost horizontal position, elevation 20°–25°, azimuth northeast. Shortly after the men focus the instrument on the object to take a film, it begins maneuvering. Turning toward the camera, the object moves in, and the men can see the front—a round shape with the fins extending out from the sides. It then drops abruptly, as though beginning to fall, but stops. It moves toward the camera, turns sideways, then drops as before, but this time it exposes the side view again. The operator leaves to report the coordinates to headquarters, and when he returns the object is gone. The men turn over their exposed film to the Data Reduction Division for development and analysis. A week or so later they are called in and questioned by a young first lieutenant unknown to them who asks them over and over again if they have taken pictures and to describe the object they had seen. Then they are asked if they can identify the film of the object they photographed. One of the men becomes angry about the questioning, telling the officer he had seen what he reported, had photographed the object, and is convinced it is some sort of a vehicle from outer space. He is shown a film of 14 frames on a Recordak projector. The black-and-white presentation shows a blurred ellipsoid with a dark center, but no
details. (Puzzled about the film, he later talks to a mathematician-analyst employed by Land-Air, Inc.; she conjectured the object had been oscillating in the air, preventing a stable image.) The men are then told by their superiors to forget the whole thing. (Lorenzen, FS Hoax, pp. 27–29; Project 1947, “APRO Files: Coral E. Lorenzen, Holloman Air Force Base UFO Sighting, July, 1950”)
July — 1:45 p.m. A Civil Aviation Authority flight engineer observes a “wingless, fuselage-shaped” object maneuvering over Cincinnati, Ohio. The object climbs at a steep angle to 16,000–18,000 feet, hesitates, dives, and speeds away to the west. (UFOEv, p. 45)
July 2 — Dusk. While picnicking on the shore of Sawbill Bay on Marmion Lake, western Ontario, an anonymous employee of the Steep Rock Iron Mine claims to have seen a UFO resting on the water’s surface. A hatch opens and 10 figures, 3–4 feet tall, emerge, wearing shiny, metallic clothing. They seem to be drawing in lake water with a hose. The object soon rises and hovers, then swiftly takes off. The story appears in the mine’s house newsletter, then gets picked up by some Canadian newspapers and Fate magazine in its February/March 1952 issue. However, Robert Badgley, a Scarborough, Ontario, member of APRO, finds in 1974 that Steep Rock employee Gordon Edwards had written the fictitious tale to entertain readers of the newsletter and to satirize saucer stories. (“Steep Rock Flying Saucer,” Fate 5, no. 2 (February–March 1952): 68–72; “1950 Steep Rock Lake, Ontario Case Possible Hoax,” APRO Bulletin 26, no. 5 (November 1977): 5; John Robert Columbo, UFOs
over Canada, Hounslow, 1991, pp. 32–41; Patrick Gross, URECAT, January 31, 2007; Hammerson Peters, “The Little Green Men of Steep Rock Lake,” Mysteries of Canada, September 7, 2018)
July 4 — Evening. Aerojet engineer Daniel Fry is alone during the holiday at White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico, when a flying saucer appears and hovers just above the ground. Fry approaches and strokes its surface when a voice booms, “Better not touch the hull, pal, it’s still hot.” After some conversation with the disembodied extraterrestrial named Alan, he is invited on board the craft, which flies him to New York and back in 30 minutes. Fry has further encounters and becomes a celebrity on the contactee circuit. He finally meets Alan in person in 1961. (Daniel Fry, The White Sands Incident, New Age, 1954; Clark III 518–520)
July 6 — A memo by Lt. Col. F. D. McGarrachy, USAF chief of General Investigations Division, expresses strong interest to acquire motion pictures of UFOs taken by civilians, perhaps in cooperation with the FBI, but not in a way to arouse public suspicion of USAF interest. (Hynek UFO Report, pp. 54–56)
July 7 — Gen. Cabell, through his aide Col. Barber, sends a notice to AMC Intelligence Chief Col. Harold E. Watson, that despite the official closing of Project Grudge, the Air Force still desires to receive UFO reports and take them seriously. Project Grudge begins to be reactivated as Project 10073. (Sparks, p. 12; Swords 101–102, 498–499)
July 11 — Two Navy aircraft crews from NAS Millington [now Naval Support Activity Mid-South] in Tennessee, across the Mississippi River from Osceola, Arkansas, see a domed disc pass in front of them. Airborne radar confirms it. The object first appears as a round ball; after it crosses their flight path, it appears like an upside-down shallow bowl. (“Millington Men Report Seeing ‘Flying Saucer’ and Tracing It,” Memphis (Tenn.) Commercial Appeal, July 12, 1950, p. 1; NICAP, “Air, Radar/Visual over Arkansas”; Sparks, p. 93)
July 18 — Bruce Bliven summarizes flying saucer news in a Look magazine article. (Bruce Bliven, “Flying Saucers: Myth or Menace?” Look, July 18, 1950, pp. 12–18)
July 19 — A memo by Col. Bruno W. Feiling, chief of the USAF Technical Analysis Division, on “Investigation of Flying Saucer Reports” says that UFO investigation takes up too much time. (Hynek UFO Report, p. 57)
August — Engineer Eric A. Walker becomes executive secretary of the Research and Development Board. He later refers to a real group called MJ-12 and admits attending meetings at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio concerning “recovered UFOs.” (Michael Hall and Wendy Connors, “The Research and Development Board: Unanswered Questions,” IUR 26, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 11)
August — A CIA memo sent to FBI headquarters, “Summary of Aerial Phenomena in New Mexico,” discusses the green fireballs and notes that OSI is concerned with the phenomena seen over sensitive installations. It reiterates that Lincoln LaPaz does not think they are meteors. (ClearIntent, pp. 167–168)
August — Keyhoe’s article on the Adickes case of April 27, “Flight 117 and the Flying Saucer,” appears in True
magazine. (Donald E. Keyhoe, “Flight 117 and the Flying Saucer,” True, August 1950, pp. 24–25, 75–79) August — 2:00 p.m. Hugh O’Neill views a cigar-shaped object hovering silently about 2–5 miles off the Big Sur coast at
Anderson Creek, California, at an elevation of 500–1,000 feet. It moves swiftly away to the south, then returns less than 2 minutes later and slowly circles above the ocean twice for 90 seconds, disappearing again to the south. (Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, New Directions, 1957, p. 75; Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs a History: 1950 August–December, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2000, p. 3)
August 4 — A memo from Army Maj. Ulysses Grant Carlan states that UFOs since July 30 have been seen at the Hanford Site in Washington State. They are above 15,000 feet. Jets attempting interception fail. The AEC says that the investigation is continuing. (Maj. U. G. Carlan, “Flying Discs,” August 4, 1950; Good Above, pp. 267, 485; Nukes 46; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 6, April–July 1950, The Author, 1990, p. 71)
August 4 — The crew (Master Nils Lewring, Chief Mate Jacob Koelwyn) of the M/V Marcala in the North Atlantic between Nova Scotia and the US Eastern seaboard watch an aluminum-colored cylinder-shaped UFO, apparently 10 feet in diameter, 50–100 feet above the surface. It initially moves 25 mph, makes no noise, wobbles slightly, disappears over the horizon, then reappears. The ship’s captain watches the object through binoculars for 90 seconds. One of the other witnesses describes the sighting as “one of the most frightening experiences I have ever had.” (NICAP, “Object 100ʹ above Sea Observed by Ship MV Marcala”; ClearIntent, pp. 115–116; Good Above, pp. 340–341)
August 12 — 1:30 p.m. Mr. and Mrs. Bud Oliver are at the state forestry lookout tower on Round Top Mountain north of Medford, Oregon, when they see two UFOs, one disc-shaped, the other oblong. They are about 100 feet apart, and the oblong one is tumbling in the air end over end. (“Lookouts Report Seeing ‘Saucers’ North of Medford,” Medford (Oreg.) Mail-Tribune, August 17, 1950, p. 9)
August 14 — 11:27 a.m. Flight Lt. Stan J. Hubbard and two other officers at Farnborough Airfield, Hampshire, England, hear a humming noise. Hubbard looks up and sees a flat gray disc, about 100 feet in diameter, at an altitude of
700–1,000 feet. He watches it for 30 seconds as it flies at a speed of 800–1,000 mph and makes a series of S- turns, oscillating as it moves. The other two officers see nothing. (David Clarke, “Flying Saucer Working Party,” Dr. David Clarke Folklore and Journalism, January 3, 2015; Good Need, pp. 149–151; David Clarke and Andy Roberts, Out of the Shadows, Piatkus, 2002, pp. 87–93; UFOFiles2, pp. 40–42)
August 15 — 11:30 a.m. Nicholas Mariana and his secretary Virginia Raunig are inspecting the Great Falls, Montana, baseball stadium in preparation for a game. He walks up to the grandstand and notices two fast-moving bright lights “like two new dimes in the sky.” He rushes to his car, parked 60 feet away, and gets his 16mm movie camera from the glove compartment. He films the objects passing behind a water tower, which provides a frame of reference for measuring distance, size, altitude, azimuth, and speed. In October he takes it to an Air Force officer for analysis. USAF notes that two jet interceptors were in the area and might be the objects on the film, but Mariana and Raunig had seen those too. Controversy soon arises when Mariana claims that the first 35 frames of his film—which he says most clearly show the UFOs as rotating disks—are missing. People in the Great Falls area who view Mariana’s film support him. They claim that the missing frames clearly show the UFOs as spinning, metallic disks with a “notch or band” along their outer edges. USAF personnel deny this accusation and insist that they have removed only a single frame of film that was damaged in the analysis. In 1952, Blue Book reviews the film; so does Robert M. L. Baker Jr. in 1954, and the Colorado project in 1967. All studies of the film agree that it was not faked and that the objects appear to be disc-shaped. (Wikipedia, “Mariana UFO incident”; NICAP, “Nick Mariana / Montana UFO Color Film”; “Nick Mariana UFO Footage 1950 Great Falls Montana,” parkerdonaldmusic YouTube channel, September 29, 2012; “Air Force Takes over Films of Flying Disks,” Spokane (Wash.) Chronicle, October 5, 1950, p. 8; “Colored Films on Saucers to Be Shown,” Twin Falls (Idaho) Times-News, October 19, 1950, p. 17; Clark III 767–769; UFOs Yes, 81–108; Condon, pp. 407–415; Margaret Sachs, The UFO Encyclopedia, Putnam, 1980, pp. 127–128; Barry Greenwood, “On the Question of Tampering with the 1950 Great Falls UFO Film,” UFO Historical Revue, no. 7 (September 2000): 1–8; Michael D. Swords, GrassRoots UFOs: Case Reports from the Timmerman Files, Fund for UFO Research, 2005, pp. 138–139; Michael D. Swords, “Can You Learn Anything from UFO Photos? Part Three,” The Big Study, July 7, 2012; Patrick Gross, “The Great Falls, Montana, UFO Color Film, August 15, 1950”)
August 15 — A top secret meeting on UFOs takes place at the Metropole Building on Northumberland Avenue in London, England. It is chaired by Hugh Young, deputy director of intelligence, and attended by representatives of the Secret Intelligence Service and Wing Commander Myles Formby of the Air Ministry’s technical intelligence branch. Young explains that Henry Tizard, chief scientific advisor to the Ministry of Defence, feels that reports of flying saucers should not be dismissed without investigation and has asked that a working party be set up to look into significant reports. RAF Fighter Command is advised that all future reports of aerial phenomena should go to the Flying Saucer Working Party. (David Clarke and Andy Roberts, Out of the Shadows, Piatkus, 2002, pp. 77– 78; Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: January 1, 1947–December 31, 1959, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2003, p. 35)
August 20 — An FBI informant meets with George Adamski at Alice Wells’s restaurant, the Palomar Gardens Café, south of Mount Palomar, California. In addition to the standard flying saucer tales, Adamski mentions that the Federal Communications Commission has established contact with people from other planets who apparently have a communist economic system. He also predicts that Russia will dominate the world for the next 1,000 years. (Kremlin 63–71)
August 23 — FBI memo from Alan H. Belmont to D. Milton Ladd on green fireballs. (A. H. Belmont, “Summary of Aerial Phenomena in New Mexico, Miscellaneous—Information Concerning,” August 23, 1950)
August 30 — 10:45 a.m. During a Bell Aircraft MX-776 Shrike missile test (for the later Rascal air-to-ground strategic missile) a USAF M/Sgt and eight Bell Aircraft employees at Holloman AFB, New Mexico, see two glaringly bright circular or elliptical objects maintaining relative position to each other following the B-50 Superfortress launch aircraft from above on both the dry run and hot run prior to missile release. The objects give a “strong glare at all times” (not reflected sunlight), maneuver at high estimated speeds up to 10 times the B-50 (roughly 2,500 mph) for short distances, leave no vapor trails, hover, accelerate rapidly, and make abrupt “square” turns with apparent size changing to indicate ascent and descent. (NICAP, “Two Objects Filmed during Shrike Missile Test”; Sparks, p. 98; Maj. R. G. Illing, “Aerial Phenomena,” September 13, 1950; Swords 115)
August 31 — 10:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. After V-2 missile launch no. 51 at Holloman AFB, New Mexico, Project Twinkle cinetheodolite crews track and film multiple objects sporadically several times from different directions at very high speeds over the course of 3 hours. Cinetheodolite station P-5 films an object using a one-frame-per-second 60 cm focal length camera with 35 mm color film. Frames 593 and 595 (2 seconds of nearly 10 minutes of film) show its elevation angle changing. An attempted interception by four F-86 jets from Kirtland AFB for one hour fails to locate the objects, which apparently return after the jets leave. Cinetheodolite observers note an object
with definite shape and 3D depth but indistinct edges and no smoke or trail. The object seems to “rock or oscillate.” It is lost when the observer looks away to get an angle reading. (NICAP, “Objects Filmed after V-2 Launch”; Sparks, p. 99)
September — 7:00 a.m. Three US Navy planes on a combat mission 100 miles south of the Yalu River in Korea are approached from below by two huge discs, at least 600–700 feet in diameter, traveling at 1,000–1,200 mph. The radar shows them as 1.5 miles away. Suddenly the objects halt, back up, and begin a jittering motion, keeping pace with them, circling above and below. When one pilot readies his guns, the aircraft radar goes haywire, apparently jammed. His radio transmitter is blocked by a buzzing noise. The discs are silvery and shaped like a “coolie’s hat, with oblong ports from which emanated a copper-green colored light which gradually shifted to pale pastel-colored lights.” A shimmering red ring circles the top portion of the disc. The objects soon speed away in the direction from which they had come. (Haines, Korea, pp. 28–30; Lorenzen, FS Hoax, pp. 30–32)
September — The first US Army large-scale aerosol vulnerability test occurs in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, using two types of bacteria (Bacillus globigii and Serratia marcescens) and fluorescent particles. Six simulated attacks are conducted, with the conclusion that it is feasible to attack a seaport city with biological aerosol agents from a ship offshore. The first open-air tests with biological simulants are conducted in 1950 in various locales, one of which is off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia. (Wikipedia, “United States biological weapons program”; David R. Franz, Cheryl D. Parrott, and Ernest T. Takafuji, “The U.S. Biological Warfare and Biological Defense Programs,” in Medical Aspects of Chemical and Biological Warfare, Office of the US Surgeon General, 1997, chap. 19)
September — George Adamski first receives national exposure as coauthor of an article in Fate on his fake UFO photographs. A follow-up article in July 1951 features even more dramatic photos. (Clark III 39; Maurice Weekley and George Adamski, “Flying Saucers As Astronomers See Them,” Fate 3, no. 6 (September 1950): 56– 59; George Adamski, “I Photographed Space Ships,” Fate 4, no. 5 (July 1951): 64–74; George Noory, “Fate Flashback: ‘Flying Saucers’ in the 1950’s,” Coast to Coast AM, August 18, 2016)
September 5 — 4:09 p.m. Flight Lt. Stan J. Hubbard is standing on the watchtower at Farnborough Airfield, Hampshire, England, with five other officers, one of whom is Wing Commander Frank Jolliffe. They all see, at a range of 10– 15 miles, a light gray disc following a rectangular flight path, consisting of a “falling leaf, horizontal flight, an upward “falling leaf,” then another horizontal stretch. The Working Party concludes they have imperfectly viewed some conventional aircraft. (David Clarke, “Flying Saucer Working Party,” Dr. David Clarke Folklore and Journalism, January 3, 2015; Good Need, pp. 150–151; David Clarke and Andy Roberts, Out of the Shadows, Piatkus, 2002, pp. 87–93; UFOFiles2, p. 41)
September 8 — Henry Holt publishes Frank Scully’s Behind the Flying Saucers, the first book on UFOs. It sensationally claims that the US government has retrieved a crashed flying saucer and several dead pilots. Rep. Edward H. Jenison (R-Ill.) condemns the book as contributing to mass hysteria during a time of war in Korea. USAF Public Information Officer Clare Welch estimates that 3–4 million people have heard about saucers, thanks to the book. (Frank Scully, Behind the Flying Saucers, Holt, 1950; John L. Cotton, et al., “Flying Saucers and Frank Scully,” in KNW 2333: The Scientific Method, Critical and Creative Thinking (Debunking Pseudoscience), Southern Methodist University; Swords 103; Curt Collins, “Operation Hush-Hush: The UFO Crash and ET Bodies Cover- Up,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, February 9, 2018)
September 8 — Air Force Intelligence Collection Division’s Collection Control Branch (AFOIN-CC-1) at the Pentagon issues a new intelligence reporting directive requiring special handling and reporting of UFO incidents, “Reporting of Information on Unconventional Aircraft,” thus reversing the cancellation directive of January 12, 1950. The action reflects the increasing interest by AFOIN Director Gen. Cabell and his dissatisfaction with AMC inaction on UFO study at Wright-Patterson AFB. (NICAP, “1950 UFO Chronology”)
September 13 — The Air Force responds to producer Howard Hawks’s request for the use of military locations, personnel, and equipment for his upcoming film The Thing from Another World by refusing to participate and objecting to any display of USAF personnel or equipment on the grounds that “it is our policy not to participate in any proposal that will perpetuate this hoax.” (Swords 103–104)
September 15 — Canadian engineer Wilbert B. Smith attends a classified briefing with physicist Robert I. Sarbacher of the US Defense Dept.’s Research and Development Board. Smith asks if there is any truth to the Scully crash- and-retrieval story and Sarbacher replies, “The facts reported in the book are substantially correct.” He says that UFOs are “classified two points higher even than the H-bomb.” In 1983, Sarbacher confirms the comment to Stanton T. Friedman, although he clarifies that he was speaking about crashed UFOs in general. He tells UFO researcher William Steinman in November 1983 that he “was invited to participate in several discussions associated with the reported recoveries” of UFOs, but is unable to attend the meetings. He claims Vannevar Bush,
Eric A. Walker, and John von Neumann are “definitely involved” in the program and probably J. Robert Oppenheimer as well. (Clark III 1029–1031; Good Above, pp. 519–521; Northern Ontario UFO Research and Study, “Dr. Robert Sarbacher,” March 1, 2010; Wilbert B. Smith, [Sarbacher interview notes], September 15, 1950; Dolan II 320; Robert I. Sarbacher, [Letter to William Steinman], November 29, 1983)
September 21 —MIT research associate and Air National Guard Maj. Myron Herbert Ligda and Joseph V. Connelly are testing radar near Provincetown, Massachusetts, under contract to the US Signal Corps, when they track an unknown object on a converging course with two F-86s. The clear target passes the planes at a speed of at least 1,200 mph, makes a right turn, then passes directly over or under the F-86s. (NICAP, “SCR-615B Tracks UFO”; Hynek UFO Report, pp. 139–141; Sparks, p. 100; Swords 104)
September 25 — JANAP 146(A) is issued: “Communications Instructions for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings from Aircraft,” the start of CIRVIS reporting for commercial and military pilots. This adds UFOs to the list of sighting categories. All UFO reports are to be sent to the Air Defense Command at the Pentagon and to the Secretary of Defense. AMC at Wright-Patterson is not mentioned. (Swords 123)
September 25 — The Air Force Intelligence office, apparently at the request of Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, orders all copies of the December 10, 1948, revised Project Sign report destroyed. (Good Need, p. 114)
September 26 — 10:00 p.m. Policemen John Collins and Joseph Keenan are patrolling on Vare Avenue near 26th Street in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, when they see something like a parachute drifting down ahead of them at treetop level. It is about 6 feet in diameter and settles in an open field. After summoning Sgt. Joseph Cook and Patrolman James Casper, they go into the field to investigate. When they turn their flashlights on it, it gives off a purplish glow, “almost a mist, that looked as though it contained crystals.” Collins touches it and it dissolves in his hand, leaving an odorless, sticky residue. It completely evaporates in 25 minutes. This event inspires producer Jack H. Harris to ask his friend Irvine H. Millgate to come up with a story for what eventually becomes the 1958 horror film The Blob. (Clark III 1102; “Flying ‘Saucer’ Just Dissolves,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 27, 1950, pp. 1–2; Rebekah McKendry, “The Supposedly True Story behind the Classic Film The Blob!” 13th Floor, October 21, 2015)
October — Donald Keyhoe’s True article is expanded into a paperback book, The Flying Saucers Are Real, which sells 500,000 copies. It brings many interested civilians and military people to accept UFO reality, government withholding of information, and the extraterrestrial hypothesis. (Donald E. Keyhoe, The Flying Saucers Are Real, Gold Medal, 1950; Wikipedia, “The Flying Saucers Are Real”)
October — J[ack?] L. Rohn is named a chief of Project Grudge. (Sparks, p. 14)
October — The Flying Saucer Working Party is created in the UK by Ministry of Defence Chief Science Adviser Henry Tizard, assisted by Louis Mountbatten and Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, both who have quietly concluded that flying saucers are real. It has five members, representing UK intelligence branches. Its charge is to study UFO reports. (Wikipedia, “Flying Saucer Working Party”; Mark Rodeghier, “Britain’s Secret UFO Study,” IUR 26, no. 4 (Winter 2001–2002): 21–23)
October 3 — Geochemist J. D. Laudermilk watches a disc moving with a wobbling motion at 750 mph behind a mountain peak near Pomona, California. (UFOEv, p. 49)
October 5 — A California Central Airlines plane, piloted by Capt. Cecil Hardin and Flight Officer Jack Conroy, is buzzed by a wing-like UFO with 8 bright lights between San Fernando and Van Nuys, California. Bands of blue light are visible across its width. (“Now Add This to Saucer Mysteries,” Los Angeles Daily News, October 6, 1950, p. 2; NICAP, “Mysterious Object Buzzes Airliner”; UFOEv, p. 34)
October 7 — Walter Bedell Smith takes over as director of central intelligence. ()
October 12 — The Oak Ridger columnist Robert Sharon Allen reports that the Atomic Energy Commission Security Service has issued a questionnaire to be used when UFOs are reported at its installations. (Robert S. Allen, “AEC Wants Info on Flying Saucers Seen near A-Plants,” The Oak Ridger, October 12, 1950; Project 1947, “Robert S. Allen Introduction”)
October 12–November 5 — Some 15 radar and visual sightings of UFOs take place over restricted airspace at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. After the observation on October 23, an unexplained increase in alpha-beta background radiation is detected; after the November 29 sighting, an alpha and gamma ray increase is correlated with unidentified radar targets in the area. (ClearIntent, pp. 171–173; Memo from Strategic Air Command Knoxville to Director of FBI, “‘Flying Saucers’ Observed over Oak Ridge Area,” October 25, 1950; J. Edgar Hoover, [teletype in response], December 5, 1950; Bruce S. Maccabee, “NCP-14: Saucers over Oak Ridge,” from UFO–FBI Connection, Llewellyn, 2000, pp. 163–181; Francis Ridge, “The Oak Ridge Sightings including All the Tennessee Blue Book Unknowns,” September 22, 2005; Sparks, pp. 100–102; Clark III 950; Swords 106–107; Hynek UFO Report, pp.
October 13 — J. Edgar Hoover sends a teletype message to the Special Agent in Charge in Los Angeles, California, asking him to determine whether Frank Scully is the same man who has been active in communist activities since the 1930s. (Anthony Bragalia, “J. Edgar Hoover’s Saucer Crash Secrets,” UFO Explorations, April 2011)
October 15 — 4:20 p.m. After taking off from Raleigh, North Carolina, Miami Airlines DC-4 pilot Capt. George A. Woodward and copilot William Bardsley see four round, metallic objects descending slowly near Pope AFB [now Pope Field] at Fort Bragg. They look like two saucers fitted together and are about 100 feet in diameter, flying in a line about 25 feet apart. The pilots pursue the objects for about 3 minutes, but the objects recede then shoot away at tremendous speed. Around the same time, a similar object crosses the path of an Air Force jet near Pope AFB. (NICAP, “Pilots Report 100-Ft Round Objects”; NICAP, “Aluminum-Like Object Crosses Path of Jet”)
October 18 — USAF Brig. Gen. Ernest Moore writes a memo to Col. Harold E. Watson at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio, advising him of the standing policy of releasing no details about UFO case investigations. A form letter is to be used: “We have investigated and evaluated incident and have found nothing of value and nothing which would change our previous estimates on this subject.” (Swords 102–103, 500)
November 5 — Four Pan American Airways employees (Fred Wilkinson, Patrick Joseph Maloney, Fred Perrior, and E. Newman) see a bright object fly east to west over Heathrow Airport, London, at 1,000 mph. (London Sunday Dispatch, November 12, 1950; “Saucers over England,” Fate 4, no. 2 (March 1951): 18)
November 7 — A military pilot flying a Douglas AD-4Q Skyraider near Lakehurst, New Jersey, engages in a dogfight with a steady white light that he at first mistakes for an aircraft. He gets on its tail, then the light reverses suddenly and passes 100–200 feet above his plane at incredible speed. He again tails it and the same thing happens. The light continues to “turn about me in wide, climbing turns, making about two orbits to my one.” He abandons chase at 11,500 feet. (NICAP, “Light Makes 5–6 Head On Passes at Navy Plane”; Hynek UFO Report, pp. 68–70; Sparks, p. 102)
November 16 — Col. Harold E. Watson at AMC brings in news columnist Bob Considine for an in-depth interview on flying saucers. Watson says: “I’ve seen lots of flying saucers…and every single saucer turned out to be the sun shining off the wing or body of a distant DC-4, or jet, or a weather balloon, or it was a reflection off a water-tank or something else that is readily explainable.” He characterizes witnesses as crackpots, religious fanatics, publicity hounds, or practical jokers. Considine asks him about airline pilot witnesses. Watson accuses them of being fooled by optical tricks and the power of suggestion. (Swords 107–108)
November 17 — Telenews Productions releases a 9½-minute short film, The Flying Saucer Mystery, apparently the first UFO documentary. The film’s main focus is on the best new evidence of 1950, the alleged first authentic photographs and motion picture film of flying saucers, the two snapshots by farmer Paul Trent, and the film shot by Louisville (Ky.) Times photographer Al Hixenbaugh on June 27, 1950. It also features UFO witness Arthur Weisberger of Tucson, Arizona, describing his sighting, apparently the only record of the event, as well as Donald
E. Keyhoe and Admiral Calvin M. Bolster. The film is apparently only shown for a few months and rotates among the Telenews Theaters across the nation. It is lost for decades until it resurfaces in the 1990s. (“Flying Saucer Mystery,” historycomestolife YouTube channel, July 3, 2010; Curt Collins, “The First UFO Documentary: The Flying Saucer Mystery,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, January 9, 2020)
November 21 — Wilbert Smith writes a top secret memo to the Canadian Controller of Telecommunications claiming that he has talked to Canadian embassy staff in Washington, D.C., who tell him that the UFOs are the “most highly classified subject in the US government” (what Sarbacher told him) and that a “concerted effort is being made by a small group headed by Dr. Vannevar Bush.” Sarbacher later verifies the information, saying the small group existed within the Research and Development Board. (W. B. Smith, “Memorandum to the Controller of Telecommunications,” November 21, 1950; NICAP, “The Smith Memo, November 21, 1950”; Good Above, pp. 183, 464–466; Michael Hall and Wendy Connors, “The Research and Development Board: Unanswered Questions,” IUR 26, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 10–11)
November 26–27 —11:50 p.m. A “mysterious lighted object” flashing red, white, and green lights is seen above Huron (South Dakota) Regional Airport. Weather Bureau observer Gene Fowler, Winfield Henry of the Civil Aeronautics Administration, and Gordon Moore and Chet Fuqua, ground personnel at Western Airlines, go up to the roof of the airport administration building for a better look. Fowler is able to watch it through a theodolite used for weather balloons for 8 minutes. He says, “The azimuth reading changed from 147 degrees to 161 degrees during that period and went up seven degrees vertically.” The Rapid City weather bureau and Aberdeen CAA in South Dakota estimate the object is 40–50 miles northwest of Bismarck, North Dakota. The object reappears at 1:30 a.m. and is visible, sometimes hovering, until 3:00 a.m. when it disappears to the northwest. In Aberdeen, CAA aircraft communicator William B. Hiller sees a star-like object at 2:00 a.m. and watches it for 90 minutes. It changes colors, glowing white, green, and red alternately. (“Mysterious Sight May Be ‘Saucer,’” Rapid City
(S.Dak.) Journal, November 27, 1950, p. 3; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 7, August–December 1950,
The Author, 1982, pp. 59–60)
November 27 — Bill Blair, a commercial pilot and flight instructor, watches six elliptical objects in loose echelon formation over Evansville, Wisconsin. They are making noises like a helicopter and are flying at 500 mph at 10,000 feet. (UFOEv, p. 34)
December — The US seaplane tender USS Gardiners Bay is steaming up the channel from Incheon, South Korea, when the crew sees two mysterious, smoke-trailing objects that strike the water at tremendous speed. Two columns of water rise to 100 feet in height. No aircraft are sighted overhead. (Sanderson, InvRes, p. 43; “Sighting Flying Discs Again?” Naval Aviation News 32, no. 2 (February 1951): 26)
December — Science writer Gerald Heard publishes The Riddle of the Flying Saucers in the UK, in which he speculates that with conditions on Mars being severe, the only intelligent beings that can exist there would be advanced insects. A US edition is published in April 1951 as Is Another World Watching? The Riddle of the Flying Saucers. (Gerald Heard, The Riddle of the Flying Saucers, Carroll and Nicholson, 1950; Lyle Zapato, “Of Bees and Men: The Riddle of the Flying Saucers,” ZPi blog, January 27, 2015)
December 2 — Cmdr. Charles Peter Edwards, Canadian Deputy Minister of Transport for Air Services, approves Wilbert
B. Smith’s proposed plan to use the Department of Transport lab and field facilities during off-hours to gather quality UFO data. It is called Project Magnet. (“What Was the Truth about Project Magnet?” Flying Saucer Review 10, no. 4 (July/Aug. 1964): 29; Clark III 1078; Good Above, pp. 183–184)
December 5 — Engineer Lt. Col. John R. Hood disperses radiation counters around the Oak Ridge, Tennessee, National Laboratory’s restricted area. The intent is to map the presence of any unusual radiation, in the wake of numerous UFO reports over the facility. He also sets up a source of radioactive material to see if its presence has an effect on the air above it. If the air is unusually ionized, it might be the source of the anomalous radar targets. He also mentions using a magnetometer array, but there is no documentation of the result of this effort. (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 7, August–December 1950, The Author, 1982, pp. 64–65; Swords 107)
December 6 — 10:30–11:04 a.m. The ConAC Air Defense Controller notifies the HQ USAF that a number of unidentified aircraft are approaching the northeast area of the United States and that there is no reason to believe they are friendly. By radar contact it is determined that approximately 40 aircraft are in the flight at 32,000 feet on a course of 200° northeast of Limestone, Maine. The White House is notified at 10:31 a.m., and President Truman discusses the reports in a meeting with UK Prime Minister Clement Attlee. (NICAP, “Radar-Inspired National Alert”; Bruce Maccabee, “Immediate Saucer Alert! The Mystery of December 6, 1950,” July 1999; Clark III 824; Sparks, p. 103)
December 6 — While F-94s are being tested at Dyess AFB near Abilene, Texas, radar catches a UFO on a high-speed intercept course with the planes. Some personnel see the object shortly afterward. Col. Robert B. Willingham claims it is not a missile. It makes 90° turns at high speed. NORAD tracks it and the object is said to crash near the Mexican border near Del Rio, Texas. Willingham and a copilot take a light aircraft to the site but are escorted away. They do see part of the crash field and pick up a small piece of metal from the ground. Willingham takes it to a Marine Corps metallurgy lab in Hagerstown, Maryland, for analysis but never sees it again. (Kevin D. Randle, A History of UFO Crashes, Avon, 1995, pp. 192–193; Clark III 338; “Del Rio 1955,” Texas UFO Museum and Research Library, March 22, 2010; Kevin D. Randle, “Del Rio UFO Crash and MJ-12,” A Different Perspective, July 21, 2010; Kevin D. Randle, “MJ-12’s Fatal Flaw and Robert Willingham,” IUR 33, no. 4 (May 2011): 4–7)
December 6 — 5:00 p.m. Former aircraft purchasing agent Harry Lamp and four boys spot a 75-foot silver object hovering at 3,000 feet above the northern part of Fort Myers, Florida. Through 10x binoculars Lamp sees it is 3–4 feet thick at the edges and 14 feet thick in the center, which revolves as it hovers. The object has a red rim with two white and two orange jets along it. It flies away at high speed. (NICAP, “Large Object with Bubble on Top”)
December 6 — Dubious MJ-12 documents refer to a UFO crash on the Mexico side of the US border in the area between El Indio, Texas, and Guerrero, Coahuila, Mexico. (“El Indio 1950,” Texas UFO Museum and Research Library, February 5, 2014)
December 8 — The FBI office in Richmond, Virginia, sends a telegram to FBI headquarters saying that local Army Intelligence has been put “on immediate high alert for any data whatsoever concerning flying saucers.” It adds, “CIC advises data strictly confidential and should not be disseminated.” (Auerbach, [teletype memo], December 8, 1950; ClearIntent, p. 175)
December 10 — 7:30 p.m. RAF Group-Captain B. S. Cartmel and two friends are at the Wilderness Golf Course near Sevenoaks, Kent, England, when they see a bright light moving east to west in complete silence. It maintains a steady height of 3,000 feet moving at 130–150 mph and is visible for 5 minutes. (Good Above, pp. 28–29)
December 12 — The AFSWP’s Project Nutmeg officially selects the Tonopah–Las Vegas Bombing and Gunnery Range, Nevada, for domestic nuclear testing. (Wikipedia, “Nevada Test and Training Range”)
December 13 — 4:55 p.m. J. G. F. Moult and his mother are sitting at their home in Kimberley, South Africa, when they observe a bright object “like a huge mirror in the sky,” hovering, and moving laterally and up and down for about 3 minutes. It goes behind a cloud but can still be seen, appearing like a “piece of magnesium wire burning with a bright, purplish-white light.” It dives through the clouds, turns sharply, and shoots out of sight. (David Marais, “The Outspan Magazine, January 1, 1954”)
Late December — USAF Capt. J. E. Broyles sees an aluminum-like oval object with a conical tail moving slowly in the sky near Cheyenne, Wyoming. (UFOEv, p. 20)
December 26 — Harvard University historian William L. Langer, special assistant for intelligence analysis to US Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, organizes the CIA Office of National Estimates, a forerunner of the National Intelligence Council. (Central Intelligence Agency, “Staff Conference: Minutes of Meeting Held in Director’s Conference Room, Administration Building, Tuesday, 26 December 1950, at 1100 Hours”)
December 27 — Sunset. A TWA flight, piloted by Capt. Art Shutts, is enroute from Chicago to Kansas City. Near Bradford, Illinois, Shutts notices a bright white light ahead of the plane, also flashing red and green occasionally. It begins to “wobble and swerve unsteadily,” then streaks back and forth in a north-south line through an arc of 10–30°, changing direction abruptly. He notices that the horizon near the UFO appears to vibrate as if light is distorted, especially after the object puts on a burst of speed. It dims to a pinpoint and begins to slowly move south. Suddenly it lurches, accelerates rapidly, zooms upward at a 45° angle, makes a nearly square turn, plunges downward, and disappears below the horizon to the north. It is visible for 25 minutes. (UFOEv, p. 40)
1951
1951 — While flying an F-86 Sabrejet over West Germany, USAF pilot Gordon Cooper sees several metallic discs flying at a high altitude. He claims to “have two days of observation of many flights of them, of different sizes, flying in fighter formation, generally from east to west over Europe.” (Gordon Cooper and Bruce Henderson, Leap of Faith: An Astronaut’s Journey into the Unknown, HarperCollins, 2000, pp. 80–81; “UFO Sightings by Astronauts,” Syti.net, January 30, 2001; “Astronaut Gordon Cooper Talks about UFOs,” Elhardt YouTube channel, December 27, 2007)
1951 — The intelligence unit of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing puts out periodic intelligence reports through 1953 that cover ground and air operations, unusual incidents, and UFO reports in Korea. The UFO reports are in a different category from unidentified aircraft. Some of these reports do not appear in Project Blue Book. (Jan Aldrich)
1951 — The Atomic Energy Commission uses its parallel system of secret-keeping to conduct controversial research, development, and engineering on aircraft and pilot-related projects, entirely without oversight. ()
1951 — Marc Thirouin founds the first UFO group in France, the Commission Internationale d’Enquêtes sur les Soucoupes Volantes, in Paris. It begins publishing Ouranos in June 1952 and issues 32 numbers through 1966, reviving in 1972 after Thirouin’s death with a new series that lasts until 1980. (Ouranos, no. 1)
January — Author and journalist Bob Considine’s article appears in Cosmopolitan, debunking all UFO stories as delusions and hoaxes, and quoting a weary Air Force Col. Harold E. Watson, who has replaced McCoy in Project Grudge. It offends people so badly that many pilots afterward refuse to report UFO sightings to the Air Force.
USAF Public Information Officer Clare Welch, who has set this interview up, believes the Air Force has better things to do and is out of step with Cabell’s renewed interest. (Bob Considine, “The Disgraceful Flying Saucer Hoax!” Cosmopolitan, January 1951, pp. 32–33, 100–102, republished by Project 1947; Swords 113–114)
January 1 — 7:00 a.m. Katie Sowell watches an object about 30–50 feet in diameter, like two “upside down saucers” revolving counterclockwise and darting low over her farmhouse near Oak Grove, Louisiana. It has rectangular, opaque windows. It is seen for 15–20 minutes at close range. It banks and disappears, going straight up. (Huntsville (Ala.) Times, February 5, 1974; Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1951, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2000, pp. 1–2)
January 1 — The Air Defense Command, inactivated since July 1, 1950, is reinstated as a major command at Mitchel AFB [now closed] in Long Island, New York. The HQ is moved to Ent AFB [now the US Olympic Training Center] in Colorado Springs, Colorado, a week later. (Wikipedia, “Aerospace Defense Command”)
January 16 — Raymond Dugan and Raymond E. Stiles, members of the General Mills Aeronautical Research Laboratory balloon project, observe a round disc near their Skyhook balloon over Artesia, New Mexico. The balloon is at a height of 112,000 feet. A short time later, Dugan, Stiles, and four civilian pilots at Artesia Airport see two similar
objects circling the same balloon that then fly off to the northeast. (NICAP, “Two Discs Approach Skyhook”; Project Blue Book, [Artesia documents]; J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 69–70; Sparks, p. 104; Swords 166)
January 20 — 9:20 p.m. Sioux City, Iowa, CAA Control Tower operator John M. Williams sees an odd light in the west.
Capt. Lawrence W. Vinther and copilot James F. Bachmeier of Mid-Continent Airlines Flight 9 takes off and Vinther is asked by the tower to look for the light. While still in a climbing turn at about 1,000 feet, the pilots spot the object to the north-northwest at about 8,000 feet and 4 miles away. It looks like a B-29 fuselage with wings but no engines and blinks some lights like running lights. The object comes towards the DC-3, flies across the nose within 200 feet, then suddenly reappears on the other side, paralleling them for 2–3 seconds. The object then flies under them and disappears to the northwest. This is one of the first reports to make it into the CIRVIS system specified by JANAP 146. (NICAP, “UFO Buzzes DC-3”; Lawrence W. Vinther, “Another Saucer Mystery,” Flying 48 (June 1951): 23, 56, reprinted by Project 1947; Ruppelt, p. 84; Jan Aldrich; Sparks, p. 104; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, pp. 43–44)
January 21 — 4:20 p.m. A UFO that appears to be over the restricted area at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, is sighted on the radarscope of an F-82 fighter. The GCI gives the go-ahead to intercept the target. The radar set on the F-82 is locked on and the run begins. The interception is unsuccessful, and the fighter returns to base. In all, three passes are made at targets, all with radar indications, but they cannot be completed since the target is over the restricted area that includes the X-10 plant. (NICAP, “F-82 Attempts Intercept of UFO over AEC Plant / Radar”; Sparks, p. 104)
January 22 — 11:00 a.m. USAF pilots Capt. Ernest W. Spradley Jr. of Aerial Photo Lab and Capt. James E. Cocker of All-Weather Flying Division (both based at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio), a General Mills Aeronautical lab project engineer named McAleese, and another airman are flying in a C-47 heading east about 50 miles southeast of Holloman AFB, New Mexico, at about 10,000–12,000 feet, tracking a Project Gopher plastic balloon at about 50,000–70,000 feet, when they see a bright star-like object adjacent to the pear-shaped balloon. As they approach and fly under the balloon, they notice the object descend to the balloon’s level and grow larger in apparent size until about one-quarter to one-half the size of the 70-foot balloon. It appears to be round and flat like a dime, milky white or silvery in color, with a clear outline. Cocker and McAleese leave the cockpit and go to the astrodome to observe the object. After 3 minutes they see the object separate from the balloon and head west at high speed. After about 1 minute it emits a series of 3 bright photoflashes at one-second intervals and disappears from sight. (NICAP, “C-47 Crew Encounter Object near ‘Gopher’”; NICAP, “White Object Paces Balloon”; Sparks, p. 105; Swords 114–115)
January 27 — An Air Force B-50D bomber drops the first atomic bomb, the Able blast, for testing in the US onto a dry lake bed known as Frenchman Flat, inside the Nevada Test Site. (Wikipedia, “Operation Ranger”)
January 29 — USAF Lt. Col. Milton D. Willis replies to Robert B. Sibley, president of the Aero Club of New England, who has written Secretary of the Air Force Thomas K. Finletter asking that the UFO project be reinstated because pilots are indeed seeing something that could be extraterrestrial. Willis writes that, although the UFO project is disbanded, the Air Force still investigates incidents and sends them to AMC if necessary, and an officer (Willis himself, who has replaced Boggs) monitors all UFO reports. As an aside to his superiors, Willis in a memo notes that “there have been several incidents, during the last six months, which cannot be explained and further investigation may be necessary.” (Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1951, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2000, pp. 7 –8; Swords 113)
February 9 — 9:55 p.m. The crew (including Lt. Fred W. Kingdon Jr. and US Naval Reserve Lt. Graham E. Bethune) and passengers of a US Navy R5D transport flying west from Keflavík, Iceland, at 10,000 feet about 212 miles northeast of Gander, Newfoundland, observe a large orange-rimmed UFO with a dark center. It is about 400 feet in diameter and first seen moving above the surface of the ocean. As the plane approaches, the object changes colors, executes a sudden 180° turn and disappears over the horizon. Over time, several attempts to disguise the participants have resulted in confusion over the date. (NICAP, “The Bethune Encounter”; NICAP, “Huge Object Rushes up from Ocean Surface”; Keyhoe, FSTS, pp. 9–26; “Casebook: February 8, 1951,” UFO Investigator, no. 54 (September 1970): 3; “Casebook: February 8, 1951,” UFO Investigator, no. 55 (October 1970): 3; Keyhoe, Aliens from Space, Signet ed., 1974, pp. 78–79; “Unidentified Flying Object: A Provocative Tale,” Naval Aviation News, June 1973, pp. 18–19, reprinted by Project 1947; Good Above, pp. 268, 486; Good Need, pp.
137–139; Graham E. Bethune, “Lights on the Surface,” 1999; Kevin H. Knuth, Robert M. Powell, and Peter A. Reali, “Estimating Flight Characteristics of Anomalous Unidentified Aerial Vehicles,” Entropy, September 25, 2019; Patrick Gross, “The Bethune Flight 124 Airmiss in 1951”)
February 13 — William Webster, chair of the Defense Department’s Research and Development Board, convenes a press briefing at the Pentagon and announces that “Careful studies have been made [referring to the upcoming article in Look]. I don’t believe anyone who has the opportunity to be informed and to look into this thing believes there is a flying saucer as such. As far as I know there is nothing to the flying saucers.” (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 8, 1951, The Author, 1983, pp. 13–14)
February 19 — 7:20 a.m. Capt. Jack Bicknell and Radio Officer D. W. Merrifield are flying a Lockheed Model 18 Lodestar aircraft out of Nairobi, Kenya, when they see a bright object hanging motionless about 10,000 above Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanganyika [now Tanzania]. They watch it for 3 minutes, then tell the passengers about it. Bicknell observes it through binoculars and sees a “metallic, bullet-shaped object which must have been over 200 feet long.” It has a vertical fin at one end, and at regular intervals along the fuselage are vertical dark bands. It remains completely stationary for 17 minutes. Two passengers take photos of it. Then it begins rising and moving eastward, disappearing at 40,000 feet. It leaves no vapor trail. (NICAP, “Lodestar Crew Sees Stationary Silver Elongated Object”; “The Flying Saucer: Captain Bicknell’s Own Story,” Nairobi (Kenya) Sunday Post, February 25, 1951, p. 15; Center for UFO Studies, [case documents]; UFOEv, p. 124; Sparks, p. 105; Patrick Gross. “February 19, 1951, Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa”; Barry Greenwood, “Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanganyika, February 19, 1951: Photo Located,” UFO Historical Revue, no. 16 (July 2015): 1–4)
February 19 — Aviation Week praises the upcoming article in Look identifying UFOs as balloons. (Robert H. Wood, “Saucers, Secrecy, and Security,” Aviation Week 54 (February 19, 1951): 50, reprinted by Project 1947)
February 20 — The Air Intelligence Training Bulletin publishes a facetious news item on how to recognize flying saucers, but implies they are all reflections. (“Recognition of Flying Saucers,” Air Intelligence Training Bulletin, February 20, 1951)
February 25 — Project Twinkle head and chemist Anthony O. Mirarchi at the USAF Cambridge Research Laboratory in Massachusetts tells the Associated Press that he thinks UFOs are not “just balloons” (in response to Liddel’s upcoming article) and urges a full investigation of what could be experiments by a “potential enemy of the United States.” He says that UFO reports show “maneuvered motion” that are not characteristic of a natural phenomenon. He says the “Navy report is erroneous. It lulls people into a false sense of security.” He reminds the nation of the critical installations in New Mexico, including Los Alamos, and argues that they are a target of reconnaissance: “If they were launched by a foreign power, then they could lead to a worse Pearl Harbor than we have ever experienced.” He blasts the US government for a policy of “suicide by secrecy.” The FBI and Air Force mull prosecuting Mirarchi for violating AFR 205-1. (“A.F. Scientist Warns Saucers Major Threat,” Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, February 26, 1951, p. 1; “Scientist Fears Flying Saucers Portend a Worse ‘Pearl Harbor,’” Oklahoma Daily Oklahoman, February 26, 1951, p 1; Swords 119–120; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 8, 1951, The Author, 1983, pp. 18–19)
February 27 — Physicist Urner Liddel, Office of Naval Research, says in a Look magazine article that there is not a single reliable UFO report that is not attributable to the cosmic [Skyhook] balloons. The article is based on Liddel’s study in ONR’s Research Reviews in March. He claims to have studied “hundreds” of sightings in detail (probably from Project Grudge). As for UFOs sighted by Skyhook scientists themselves, he discounts them because these technicians are not aware of mirages and internal reflections in optical devices. (Richard Wilson, “A Nuclear Physicist Exposes Flying Saucers,” Look, February 27, 1951, pp. 60–64; Swords 117–118; Urner Liddel, “Bogies at Angels 100,” Research Reviews, March 1951, pp. 1–6)
March — A ghost light is seen in Suffolk County, Virginia, and investigated by Nansemond County Deputy Sheriff Hurley Jones, who sees the light three times. It looks like a car headlight 5 feet off the ground, three times. Jeston Reid said his father had seen the light in the 1870s. The location is apparently either Turlington Road or Jackson Road [they intersect] south of Suffolk, since locals say the old railroad along the Jackson and Whaleyville logging road used to run down that way, and the light has also been compared to a locomotive headlight. Some 200 people have been gathering along the road, hoping to catch a glimpse. (“Mystery Light Is a Puzzle in Nansemond,” Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, March 6, 1951, p. 2; “Nansemond’s Mystery Light Is Nothing New to Old- Timers,” Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, March 7, 1951, p. 2; “Mysterious Suffolk Light Has Deputy Believing in Ghosts,” Statesville (N.C.) Daily Record, March 8, 1951, p. 1)
March — 11:30 p.m. Operations Officer Robert Wood is aboard the USS Dyess approximately 125 miles southeast of Cape May, New Jersey, when he picks up a radar target coming in from due east at a speed of 98–104 mph and an altitude of 3,000–4,000 feet. It stops and hovers about 30 miles away. Wood notifies the bridge, and the captain orders the ship to change course toward the object. About 30 minutes later, the UFO suddenly takes off toward the north at 3,000 mph, getting to within 35–40 miles south of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, before it zooms
straight up. Altitude-determining radar tracks the object to 100 miles altitude. (“March, 1951: Approximately 125 Miles SE of Cape May, N.J.,” Project 1947)
March 14 — A group of nine Bell Aircraft engineers are flying at 15,000 feet in a B-50 Superfortress near Holloman AFB, New Mexico, during a test of a secret Bell aircraft. They spot a group of unknown objects flying in a confusing “swirl” that breaks into a V-formation and back to a “swirl,” then a V again. The objects are slightly higher than the aircraft and seem to be moving at high velocity. The engineers insist the objects are not geese, which actually can fly this high. (This may be the same incident as the August 30, 1950, case at Holloman.) (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 8, 1951, The Author, 1983, pp. 21–22)
March 15 — 10:20 a.m. George F. Floate, chief engineer of the Delhi Flying Club, and two assistants observe a swirly white cloud moving from north to south at about 4,000 feet altitude near the club’s hanger in New Delhi, India. The cloud is about 700 feet in length. At the end of it a bullet-shaped object appears, approximately 100 feet long and as big around as a C-47 fuselage. The witnesses shout out, and 17–20 people rush out of the hanger and see the object. It heads south for about 3 minutes where it makes an apparent loop, coming back over the field. At the top of the loop it is out of sight, but it is seen again in its dive. After recovering straight and level flight, the UFO proceeds to the southwest until it is lost to sight. Its speed is estimated at three times greater than the cruising speed of a British Vampire jet. The total duration is about 7 minutes. (NICAP, “20+ Top Shelf Witnesses / Metallic Cigar”; Sparks, p. 106)
Early spring — Dusk. US Army Pfc. Francis P. Wall is on maneuvers with the 27th Infantry Regiment near Cheorwon, South Korea, when he sees an orange light like a jack-o-lantern coming down a mountain. Artillery airbursts do not seem to harm it. As it approaches, it turns into a brilliant blue-green disc pulsating with light. Wall asks permission to shoot and fires a round from his M-1 rifle at it. The object starts moving erratically from side to side, flashes on and off, and makes an engine-like noise. It sweeps the soldiers with a beam of light, and they feel a burning and tingling sensation. They retreat to their bunkers and continue to watch the object, which is still lighting up the area, and then it shoots away at a 45° angle. (Haines, Korea, pp. 18–27; Richard F. Haines, “GI Fires on UFO in Korea,” IUR 15, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1990): 23–24)
April 4 — The Truman administration forms the Psychological Strategy Board to coordinate and plan for psychological operations. The board is composed of the Under Secretary of State, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and
the Director of Central Intelligence, or their designated representatives. The board’s first director is Gordon Gray, later National Security Advisor during the Eisenhower administration. The board is created in response to the growth of Office of Policy Coordination covert activities during the Korean War. The PSB is tasked with creating propaganda that will subconsciously turn people away from communism and toward democracy. It is abolished in 1953. (Wikipedia, “Psychological Strategy Board”)
April 7 — Howard Hawks’s film The Thing from Another World opens, starring Margaret Sheridan, Kenneth Tobey, and James Arness, about a crashed flying saucer found in the Arctic. It ends with the haunting lines by Douglas Spencer: “Watch the skies, everywhere! Keep looking. Watch the skies!” (Internet Movie Database, “The Thing from Another World”)
April 11 — Air Defense Command issues a memo on “Unconventional Aircraft” to all USAF facilities, encouraging them to report sightings in a timely manner. (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 8, 1951, The Author, 1983, pp. 25)
April 17 — Project Grudge’s Col. Harold E. Watson notes that JANAP 146 has no provision for UFO reports to be sent to Wright-Patterson AFB under the CIRVIS system. (Jan Aldrich)
April 21 — Drones are again used in the series of thermonuclear tests designated Operation Greenhouse at Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. During the Easy detonation, two T-33 drones are lost. One receives heavy damage from the shock wave, loses control, and crashes; the other refuses to respond to control signals and crashes on uninhabited Bogullua Island. The Air Force concludes that unmanned samplers are unreliable. (M/Sgt Leland B. Taylor, History of Air Force Atomic Cloud Sampling, US Special Weapons Center, January 1963, pp. 34–37; Jacobsen, Area 51, p. 225)
April 23 — Col. Harold E. Watson writes a memo to the USAF Director of Intelligence, explaining his view that “little if any results” have been obtained from Project Grudge other than the objects are not from a foreign power. But since there is still dome doubt, all reports should be forwarded to AMC at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio . (Swords 121)
May 21— Wright-Patterson’s Technical Intelligence Department (T-2) becomes the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) and is assigned to the Directorate of Intelligence in the Pentagon. Project Grudge goes along with it. (Sparks, p. 12; Clark III 936)
May 22 — 3:20 a.m. American Airlines pilot Capt. W. R. Hunt observes a blue-white, star-like object gyrating around the airplane at 21,000 feet for 20 minutes about 100 miles southwest of Dodge City, Kansas. It moves backward and forward, then up and down, then dives below the plane and speeds away. (“Mysterious Bright Light ‘Plays Tag’ with Airliner over Kansas,” Iola (Kan.) Register, May 22, 1951, p. 1; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 8, 1951, The Author, 1983, p. 26)
June — Project Grudge only has one person on staff to investigate UFO reports, Lt. Jerry W. Cummings, who reorganizes the system and uses a more open-minded approach. (Jacobs, UFO Controversy in America, Signet ed., 1976, pp. 56–57; Sparks, p. 14; Swords 121)
June — The UK Flying Saucer Working Party produces its six-page final report for the Ministry of Defence’s Directorate of Scientific Intelligence, DSI/JTIC Report number 7, Unidentified Flying Objects, classified Secret. The CIA’s chief scientist, H. Marshall Chadwell, attends the meeting when the report is delivered. The report admits that no systematic investigation has been undertaken, but from the evidence examined, including reports by RAF pilots, explanations can probably be found for most reports. Copies are also submitted to Canada as well as US and UK officials. (Joe McGonagle, “Flying Saucer Working Party: Commentary,” part 2, The Real UFO Project; Good Need, pp. 149–152; David Clarke, “Flying Saucer Working Party,” Dr. David Clarke Folklore and Journalism, January 3, 2015; UFOFiles2, pp. 38–40; Mark Rodeghier, “Britain’s Secret UFO Study,” IUR 26, no. 4 (Winter 2001–2002): 21–23; Ian Ridpath, “Report of the UK Government’s Flying Saucer Working Party (1951 June),” Ian Ridpath’s UFO Skeptic Pages, January 2021)
June 1 — 10:00 p.m. An ATIC official at Wright-Patterson AFB is driving west near Dayton, Ohio, when he sees a large, bluish-white light moving parallel to the car. It looks like a “stubby cigar.” After 15–20 seconds, it makes a right- angle turn, becomes circular, and rapidly disappears. Its speed is “faster than an airplane, slower than a meteor.” (UFOEv, p. 23)
June 19 — Day. Mechanic Joseph Matiszewski hears a whistling sound as he is walking in Sønderborg, Denmark, and sees an object land in a nearby meadow. Approaching to within 150 feet of it, he finds himself paralyzed and notices that birds have stopped singing and cows seem frozen in place. Four men with brown skin and wearing black shiny suits and translucent helmets emerge from the object and send Matiszewski some telepathic messages. Eight smaller objects are ejected from the large one and float above it. Other figures inside the craft and on its deck appear to be making repairs. The objects ascend to about 300 feet and climb rapidly after that. The paralysis subsides. (Patrick Gross, URECAT, July 1, 2007)
June 22 — Life magazine reporter Robert Emmett Ginna Jr. visits Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio for the first time to gather information on “Project Saucer” for an article. The visit is coordinated by Jack T. Shea, special assistant to the director of public relations. (Jan Aldrich; Michael D. Swords, “1952: Ruppelt’s Big Year,” IUR 28, no. 4 (Winter 2003–2004): 8)
June 25 — The UK Flying Saucer Working Party is disbanded. (Good Need, p. 152)
Summer — A dubious story surfaces in 1956 that three UFOs had appeared above Mexico City International Airport at the same time as a visit by US Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall. (However, there is no record of a visit by Marshall at this time; apparently his first visit to Mexico was a vacation in Cuernavaca in February 1952.) According to the story, Marshall tells a “highly placed American” and “prominent medical scientist” that UFOs are interplanetary and friendly, but they have crashed accidentally on three occasions. In 1965, the American informant is revealed to be Rolf Alexander, who is in fact Allan Alexander Stirling, a New Zealand seaman who had jumped ship in 1920 and entered the US illegally. To support himself he promoted various dubious health cures while concocting a fictitious personal history. His activities were interrupted by prison sentences for mail fraud and embezzlement, and in 1954–1960 he claimed the ability to break up clouds with his psychokinetic abilities. (“Let’s Talk Space: ‘Flying Saucers’ Are Real,” Flying Saucer Review 2, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1956): 2–4; “Rolf Alexander, M.D.,” Flying Saucer Review 11, no. 2 (Mar./Apr. 1965): 9; RosRept, p. 99)
July — The radiation-counter network set up at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, in December 1950 by Lt. Col. John R. Hood hits paydirt when a UFO appears, sighted both visually and on radar over the facility. He finds that the radiation counters have detected a significant rise in some kind of emission. Hood wants to expand the equipment, adding a debris-catching pursuit plane. However, information is lacking on this case and any follow- up. (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 8, 1951, The Author, 1983, p. 42)
July 1 — 10:50 p.m. Four night pilots of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing in different areas around Seoul, Korea, simultaneously report a large green ball, very bright and trailing streaks of red then blue, passing overhead at 10,000–15,000 feet. (Haines, Korea, p. 31; Sparks, p. 106)
July 4? — 10:00 p.m. Future ufologist Irena Scott and her sister Sue are sleeping at their home in Galena, Ohio, when they wake to see a small glowing light circling their bedroom in a meandering movement, but never bumping into anything. It circles the room three times, maintaining the same shape, brightness, and size (less than one inch).
After a few minutes, it moves in tight circles around the chandelier, then spirals downward, makes a noise, and emits tiny lights. Terrified, they rush out of the room and tell their father, who inspects the room but finds nothing. (Irena Scott, “Bedroom Light,” IUR 13, no. 2 (March/April 1988): 14–15)
July 9 — Day. USAF Lt. George H. Kinmon II, stationed at Lawson AFB [now Lawson Army Airfield] with the 117th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing, is flying an F-51 over Dearing, Georgia, when he sees a white disc “completely round and spinning in a clockwise direction.” It makes a headlong pass at his aircraft. It travels at “tremendous speed” and leaves no vapor trail. (NICAP, “Aerial Encounter with Disc”; “Saucer Attacked Me, Pilot Declares,” Cleveland Press, July 30, 1952, p. 1, reprinted in Saucer Attack, April 1998; Sparks, p. 107; UFOEv, p. 23; Richard H. Hall, Uninvited Guests, Aurora, 1988, pp. 328–330)
July 14 — Morning. During a guided missile launch, two radar operators at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, catch a fast-moving object on their scope. At the same time, a tracker watching a B-29 with binoculars sees a large UFO near the bomber. Another observer sights the UFO and, with a 35mm camera, shoots 200 feet of film. The UFO shows on the film as a round, bright spot. The film has never been released. (NICAP, “White Sands Radar/Visual”; Sparks, p. 107; Project 1947, “Radar and Visual UFO Sighting, White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico—July 14, 1951”; Good Above, pp. 354–355)
July 25 — Personnel at Holloman AFB, New Mexico, write a report compiling the results of an organized skywatch of UFOs at the base. Several photos are taken. The report does not conclude what the objects are, but it does establish that some kind of objects have been seen. (“Status of Project Blue Book,” T52-6888, [1952], p. 1)
August — In an article in Popular Science, the editors ask UFO witnesses what they think the objects are. About 70% believe they are intelligently controlled devices, either man-made or extraterrestrial. (“What Were the Flying Saucers? Eyewitnesses Believe They Saw Secret Aircraft,” Popular Science 159 (August 1951): 74–75, 228)
August 3 — 11:00 p.m. Walter N. Webb, nature counselor at Camp Big Silver on the shore of Silver Lake in southern Michigan, 3 miles south of Pinckney, is showing two boy campers some celestial objects through a reflecting telescope. He sees a glowing, yellowish light moving westward at a low elevation in an undulating path over hills to the south. It disappears behind the hills before he can train his telescope on it. (UFOEv, p. 50)
August 11 — Former USAF pilot Robert O. Dodge watches three disc-like UFOs in formation over Portland, Oregon. (UFOEv, p. 34)
August 15 — US test pilot Bill Bridgeman attains an unofficial altitude of 79,494 feet in a Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket, an air-launched rocket plane powered by the XLR-11 liquid fuel rocket engine. (Wikipedia, “Bill Bridgeman”)
Mid-August — 10:30 a.m. Mining engineer Alfred Roos hears a swishing sound at his ranch 10 miles east of Silver City, New Mexico. He looks up and sees two lens-shaped UFOs swooping at tremendous speed then hovering. They go back and forth between his location and Fort Bayard, two miles to the northwest, where they finally disappear into a cloud. (UFOEv, p. 56)
Mid-August — Midnight. A witness is on his porch in Waco, Texas, looking at the sky when he sees a V-shaped formation of 10–20 round, luminous objects silently pass over from west to east in a matter of seconds. (Lorenzen, UFOs: The Whole Story, Signet, 1969, pp. 41–42)
August 17 — 11:30 a.m. Otto Bock, a German scientist with a specialty in optics who came to the US as part of Operation Paperclip, observes a high-altitude, metallic object through his 20x telescope for about 4 hours. He says the sighting is confirmed by four other persons. (Project 1947, “Letter to Donald Keyhoe: Otto Bock, August 22, 1951”)
August 20 — The CIA, approved by DCI Roscoe Hillenkoetter, starts Project ARTICHOKE to study hypnosis, morphine addiction, and LSD to produce amnesia and other vulnerable states in subjects, as a way of exploring interrogation methods. (Wikipedia, “Project ARTICHOKE”; [Central Intelligence Agency], “Project Artichoke,” declassified(?), January 31, 1975)
August 23 — Frank Wisner succeeds Allen Dulles as CIA Deputy Director of Plans in the Office of Policy Coordination, with Richard Helms as chief of operations. In this position, Wisner is instrumental in supporting pro-American forces that toppled Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 and Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala in 1954. Sometime this year he visits Richard M. Bissell Jr. and asks him to finance OPC operations by diverting some Marshall Plan funds, presumably for covert black ops. (Jacobsen, Area 51, pp. 45–46)
August 25 — Evening. Joseph Bryant and his wife, at 407 West Powell Street, Brownfield, Texas, see a loose group of glowing lights heading north to south. They are a “little bigger than a star.” A few minutes later a second group flies over, and then a third, which circles around the house. This time Bryant can hear them, and he identifies
them as plovers. When he hears about the Lubbock lights, he is sure the professors are seeing plovers. (Clark III 691–692)
August 25 — 9:10 p.m. Three Texas Technical College professors (geologist Wilbur Irvin Robinson, chemist Aaron Gustav “Gus” Oberg, and petroleum engineer William Lyon Ducker Jr.) are sitting in a backyard at Lubbock, Texas, when they see a fast-moving, semicircular formation of 20–30 lights, as intense as bright stars but larger. Blue-green and silent, they move across the sky in seconds. A second group appears and repeats the performance. Others, including Carl Hemminger at Texas Tech, report seeing the same objects the same night. J. Russell Heitman, head of the Texas Tech journalism department, says he had seen an identical group of lights several days earlier. The professors watch 10–12 such flights through November 1 (including on September 1 and 5), sometimes accompanied by colleagues Ellis Richard Heineman, E. F. George, Grayson Mead, and John Brand.
Some researchers, including Ruppelt and Hynek, think the witnesses are seeing migrating plovers attracted to Lubbock’s new vapor street lights, although Ruppelt changes his mind later. (Wikipedia, “Lubbock Lights”; NICAP, “The Lubbock Lights / Carl Hart Photos”; Clark III 688–690; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: Volume 8, 1951, The Author, 1983, pp. 45–55; Swords 130–132; “Lubbock 1951,” Texas UFO Museum and Research
Library, November 15, 1999)
August 25 — Around 9:58 p.m. Hugh Young, a security guard at Sandia Base, and his wife Emily are in their trailer home in east Albuquerque, New Mexico, and watch a large object like a flying wing, but 1.5 times as large as a B-36, flying at 80 feet at about 300 mph. It has glowing white lights on the trailing edge of the wing and is completely silent. (NICAP, “Flying Wing over Sandia Base”; Clark III 691; Sparks, p. 108)
August 26 — 8:28 p.m. A radar station at Larson AFB [now Grant County International Airport], near Moses Lake, Washington, tracks a UFO at 13,000 feet going 950 mph on two different sets, AN/CPS-1 and AN/CPS-4, for about 6 minutes. An F-86 is scrambled, but radar contact is lost before the plane gets off the ground. An electronic signal is received from this object that appears to be a mode-one IFF response from an AN/APX-6 transponder.
This response is received twice at approx.115 miles and 80 miles from the radar station. (NICAP, “Two Radars Track 900 MPH Target; Clark III 692; Ruppelt, pp. 96–98, 108–109; Sparks, p. 108)
August 27 — At a conference at Holloman AFB, New Mexico, on the green fireballs, Project Twinkle’s Maj. Edward A. Doty expresses skepticism about the project. Meteorologist Bernard “Duke” Gildenberg tells those assembled that he has never seen anything out of the ordinary, nor has astronomer Clyde Tombaugh. The commanding officer at Holloman wants to cease allocating funds for the project. (Clark III 545)
August 28 — Project Twinkle personnel talk to LaPaz about the green fireballs and he insists they are not meteors. (Clark III 545)
August 30 — 11:30 p.m. A Texas Tech freshman named Carl Hart Jr. sees the same formation of 18–20 lights over Lubbock, Texas, and takes five photos. He gets the roll of film developed the next day and takes it to the Lubbock Morning Avalanche, which puts them out on the Associated Press wire. ATIC examines the photos and notes that the “two rows of spots behaved differently. One row only shows slight variation from a precise V formation throughout, whereas the other now appears to pass from above the first row, through it to a position below.” Biologist James Cecil Cross looks at the Lubbock photos under a microscope and rules out the bird explanation. See also Life, Apr. 7, 1952. While investigating the Lubbock Lights, Ruppelt also learns that several people in and around Lubbock claim to have seen a “flying wing” moving over the city. Among the witnesses is the wife of Dr. Ducker, who reports that in August 1951 she observed a “huge, soundless flying wing” pass over her house.
Ruppelt knows that USAF does possess a “flying wing” jet bomber, and he feels that at least some of the sightings are caused by the bomber, although he cannot explain why, according to the witnesses, the wing makes no sound as it flies overhead. Ruppelt says that in addition to Project Grudge investigators, another group of people who, “because of their association with the government, had complete access to our files” (scientists convinced of the ETH) were also looking into the Lubbock cases. In March 1955, Ducker sends Ruppelt a telegram indicating that he has figured out that the lights are a “natural phenomenon” and requests no further publicity in his book.
However, Texas Tech mathematics professor Ralph Sylvester Underwood has also observed three flights and estimates the objects are at 2,000 feet altitude and flying at 700 mph—much too fast for birds. (NICAP, “The Lubbock Lights / Carl Hart Photos”; “‘Flying Whatsits’ Stir Dispute in Area,” Lubbock (Tex.) Morning Avalanche, September 6, 1951; Clark III 690–693; Ruppelt, pp. 96–110; Kevin D. Randle, “Carl Hart and the Lubbock Lights,” IUR 18, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1993): 17–19; Michael D. Swords, “Classic Cases from the APRO Files,” IUR 24, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 22; “Lubbock 1951,” Texas UFO Museum and Research Library, November 15, 1999; Donald R. Burleson, “New Findings on the Lubbock Lights,” IUR 26, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 3–5; “Lubbock Lights and Roswell,” Texas UFO Museum and Research Library, December 7, 2005; Michael D. Swords, “Can We Learn Anything from UFO Photos? Part Five,” The Big Study, July 15, 2012; Swords 131– 132)
August 31 — 12:45 p.m. Mrs. Tom Tilson and one or two other women are driving north on Hwy 70 near Matador, Texas, when they see to the west a pear-shaped object the length of a B-29 fuselage (100 feet). It is aluminum or silver-yellow with a port or some type of aperture on the side, and it moves with its smaller end forward, drifting slowly at about 150 feet altitude. It then shoots up in a circular fashion and out of sight after a few seconds. (Clark III 692; Sparks, p. 109)
September — 9:00 p.m. Louise McDougall is sitting on the lawn outside her trailer park in Bloomington, California, when she has the feeling someone is watching her. She looks up and sees a flying saucer hovering some 20 feet up. It is lenticular, perhaps 100 feet in diameter, and dull silver metallic in appearance. There are tall, rectangular windows in its lower half, in which can be seen against an amber glow four men, in one-piece “jump suits,” with shoulder- length hair. She turns a spotlight on the saucer, whereupon it shoots off silently at incredible speed. About 15 minutes later it returns, hovering in the same spot, the figures still visible at the windows. After 6 or 7 minutes, it takes off again to the southeast. McDougall’s husband and three other people also see it. (Clark III 267; Patrick Gross, URECAT, September 15, 2006)
September 6 — The Air Force issues JANAP 146(B), “Communications Instructions for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings from Aircraft.” All UFO reports are to go to the Air Defense Command in the Pentagon (which presumably will send them to AMC at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio), the Secretary of Defense, and to the nearest US military command. (Swords 123)
September 10 — 11:10 a.m. At the Army Signal Corps radar center at Fort Monmouth [now closed], New Jersey, a student operator demonstrating radar functions to a group of visiting officers picks up a target that is moving too fast to be tracked automatically. The object seems to be following the coastline. He follows it off and on for 3 minutes, after which it disappears to the northeast, flying at 700 mph. About 25 minutes later, a T-33 jet trainer piloted by Lt. Wilbert S. Rogers, with Maj. Edward Ballard as passenger, spots a “silver-colored object about the size of a fighter plane” flying at 900 mph at 5,000–8,000 feet over Sandy Hook. It makes a 90° banking turn and disappears out to sea. At 3:15 p.m., a second radar tracking occurs, but this slower object turns out to be a balloon. (NICAP, “The Fort Monmouth Radar Incident”; NICAP, “The Sandy Hook / T-33 Incident”; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, p. 66; Clark III 513– 515; Sparks, p. 110; Thomas Tulien, ed., Proceedings of the Sign Historical Group UFO History Workshop, Sign Historical Group, November 2001, pp. 45–46; Swords 124–127; Good Above, pp. 269, 487)
September 11 — 10:50 a.m. Two radars at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, pick up another object moving at 1,000 mph. At 1:30 p.m., another radar target appears, apparently hovering. Overcast conditions prevent a visual sighting. The radar then shows it ascending at a rapid rate then streaking to the south at 700+ mph. (Clark III 514)
September 12 — Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, officials send ATIC and USAF headquarters a three-foot-long teletype describing the sightings. ATIC’s new chief, Col. Frank Dunn, gets a wire from Gen. Charles Cabell, who wants somebody from ATIC to find out what’s going on. Dunn sends Lt. Jerry Cummings (head of Project Grudge) and Lt. Col. Nathan R. Rosengarten (chief of the ATIC Aircraft Performance Section). (Clark III 514–515; Ruppelt, pp. 93–94; Swords 126; Good Need, pp. 164–165)
September 13 — 9:30 p.m. T/Sgt Warner B. Maupin and Cpl. John W. Green track two objects on radar at Goose Bay AFB [now CFB Goose Bay], Labrador, on a collision course. One of them tries to warn the supposed aircraft of an imminent collision and is surprised to watch one avoid danger by moving to the right. A third unidentified target joins the other two. The incident lasts more than 15 minutes. (Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman, The Canadian UFO Report, Dundurn Press, 2006, p. 53; Sparks, p. 110; Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, p. 261)
September 18 — The Day the Earth Stood Still, directed by Robert Wise and starring Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal, premieres in New York City. The ultimate flying saucer science-fiction movie, the plot revolves around an alien who lands in a UFO in Washington, D.C., and demands that atomic testing cease. Lock Martin, who is more than 7 feet tall, plays the robot Gort. (Internet Movie Database, “The Day the Earth Stood Still”)
September 18 — 10:20 p.m. USAF B-36 radar operator Maj. Paul E. Gerhart and navigator Maj. Charles J. Cheever are flying northwest at 239 mph over the Hudson Strait in northern Canada when they pick up radar interference coming from an unidentified aircraft moving away from them to the east about 32 miles away. The anti-jamming device on their radar is turned on at 11:20 p.m. but does not affect the jamming on the radar scope. At 11:35 p.m., a UFO is seen visually on the right side of the B-36, which is flying at 18,000 feet over southwest Baffin Island, Nunavut. The object has all-white “unconventional running lights” and two white flashing tail lights, travels about 35 mph faster than the B-36, crosses the front from right to left heading toward the north-northwest, and is in view about 20 minutes. While the object is still visible at 11:50 p.m., the B-36 autopilot and APQ-24 radar set
malfunction, the latter coming back a few minutes later when the object disappears. ECM operators S/Sgt. Donald
E. Jenkins and S/Sgt. Doty T. Larimore on two B-36 flights over Labrador on September 19 detect carrier wave signals at several frequencies and some radar-like pulses at other frequencies, all below 1,000 MHz. (NICAP, “B- 36 Radar Picks up Object Seen Visually”; Sparks, p. 111)
September 23 —At March AFB [now March Air Reserve Base] near Long Beach, California, two F-86 jets try to intercept an object in controlled orbit at around 55,000 feet, but they run low on fuel and have to land. Two more F-86s are scrambled, with the same results. Three of the pilots report seeing a “silver airplane with highly swept- back wings,” although one of them says the UFO looks round and silver. (NICAP, “Swept Wing Aircraft at above 50,000ʹ / Tracked by GCI”; Ruppelt, pp. 94–95, 111, 113–114; Sparks, p. 112)
Fall — Navy pilot Lt. Cmdr. Marvin C. Davies is flying a plane off a CVE class aircraft carrier near Korea when the crew tracks a radar target 3 miles astern. The object has apparently been circling the fleet at an altitude of 5,000 feet and speeds of “slow” to 1,000 mph. The UFO has been tracked on 14 ship radars for 7 hours. It stops circling and takes up a position behind the plane’s wingman, remaining there 5 minutes, then departing at high speed. (Project 1937, “UFO Reports, Korea”; UFOEv, p. 84)
October — Per Sundh is appointed head of a unit at the Swedish Defence Staff responsible for investigating UFO reports. He remains in charge until October 1954. During that time the department handles 6,000 reports, of which 400 are investigated and 40 remain unexplained. Their astronomical consultant is Bertil Lindblad, an astronomer at Stockholm University, Sweden. Sundh says that his personnel always took even the weirdest observations seriously. (Swords 364–365)
October 1 — 10:00 a.m. At the Pentagon, Cummings and Rosengarten brief Cabell, his staff, and a representative from Republic Aircraft Corporation who “supposedly represented a group of top US industrialists and scientists.” The meeting is recorded with a wire recorder. Edward Ruppelt, later head of Project Blue Book, hears the recording before it is ordered destroyed and keeps detailed notes about the meeting. Cabell supposedly learns that Grudge is effectively dead and demands to know “who in hell has been giving me these reports that every decent flying saucer report is being investigated?” Cabell says there is a great deal of doubt in his mind as to what the saucers are and that the Grudge report is the “most poorly written, inconclusive piece of unscientific tripe” he had ever read. He orders Grudge to reactivate itself, and Cummings and Rosengarten go back to Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio to do just that. (Clark III 514–515; Ruppelt, pp. 93–94; Swords 127–128, 501–502; Michael Hall, “When UFOs Were Serious Business: Then and Today,” IUR 28, no. 4 (Winter 2003–2004): 4)
October 4 — 2:00 a.m. Two French aviation officers are camped out several miles northwest of the village of Tessalit, Mali. A luminous dark-yellow disc approaches slowly from the east, loses altitude, makes a 90° turn, accelerates, and ascends at high speed. (Patrick Gross, “Tessalit, Mali, October 4, 1951”)
October 9 — 1:42 p.m. A fast-moving, silvery UFO shaped like a “flattened tennis ball” is sighted by a Civil Aviation Administration Chief Aircraft Communicator Roy Messmore at Hulman Municipal Airport [now Terre Haute Regional Airport], five miles east of Terre Haute, Indiana. At 1:45 p.m., private pilot Charles Warren, flying at 5,000 feet east of Paris, Illinois, sees a silvery “flattened orange” object that appears stationary to his left rear. It picks up speed and heads to the northeast. Project Blue Book plots the sighting and concludes that both cases involve the same object. (NICAP, “October 9, 1951, Hulman CAA / Pilot Case”; NICAP, “Pilot Radios Terre Haute: Observes ‘Flattened Orange’”; Sparks, p. 114; Swords 129)
October 10 — 10:10 a.m. Engineer and pilot Joseph J. Kaliszewski, flying with copilot Jack Donaghue on a Skyhook balloon tracking mission for General Mills 10 miles east of St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, notices a strange object crossing the sky from west to east, much higher and behind the balloon, which is at 20,000 feet. The UFO has a peculiar glow. It comes into sight at a slight dive, then levels off and slows down, makes a sharp left turn, climbs at an angle of 50–60° into the southeast with terrific acceleration, and disappears. It is seen for about 2 minutes. (NICAP, “The Kaliszewski Sightings”; UFOEv, p. 56; Sparks, p. 114)
October 11 — 6:30 a.m. Joseph J. Kaliszewski and Dick Reilly are flying at 10,000 feet north of Minneapolis, Minnesota, observing a balloon when they see a brightly glowing object to the southeast of the University of Minnesota airport moving at high speed from west to east. It has a halo around it with a dark under surface. It crosses rapidly, slows down, and starts to climb slowly in lazy circles. Observers Doug Smith and Dick Dorion at the General Mills tracking station at the University of Minnesota watch the object through a theodolite. They watch another object 2 hours later. (NICAP, “The Kaliszewski Sightings”; UFOEv, p. 56; Sparks, p. 114; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, pp. 44–45)
October 16 — 11:01 a.m. Air Force pilots flying three F-94 fighters out of McChord AFB [now Joint Base Lewis- McChord] and naval ground personnel see a round, gray object flying soundlessly at high speed and high altitude
west of Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Oak Harbor, Washington. Photos taken from the F-94s show the object. After 50 minutes, the aircraft abandon the chase. The Air Force attributes the sighting to Venus. (NICAP, “3 F-94’s Encounter Round Grey Object / Photos Taken”; Clark III 391–392; Sparks, p. 115)
October 20 — Frank B. Jewett Jr., director of the Aeronautical Research Laboratory at General Mills Corporation, writes to Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Eugene M. Zuckert about UFOs seen by his personnel. ((Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1951, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2000, p. 51)
October 22 — Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt officially takes over a revitalized Project Grudge, relieving Lt. Jerry W. Cummings and 2d Lt. Henry Metscher. He learns from some scientists and engineers who visit ATIC frequently that “UFOs were being freely and seriously discussed in scientific circles.” (Ruppelt, p. 114; Sparks, p. 14; Clark III 933)
October 22 — The Directorate of Intelligence provides answers to the problem that Col. Harold Watson identified with the CIRVIS reporting system. (Michael Hall and Wendy Connors, “Flying Saucers: Behind the Cold War Veil of Military Intelligence (Part II),” European Journal of UFO and Abduction Studies 3, no. 1 (March 2002): 32)
October 30 — 6:40 a.m. A group of servicemen are preparing to observe the Buster Charlie atomic test at Area 7 of the Nevada Test Site. Just before the blast, they see at an altitude of a few thousand feet a formation of 18 silvery, rotating, disc-shaped objects, each with a dome, arranged in six groups of three stretched out in a horizontal row. They fly low over the test site, hover for 30–60 seconds, and depart at an angle, disappearing in seconds. (Nukes 68–71)
November — Maj. Gen. Cabell is promoted to staff director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is replaced as director of Air Force Intelligence by Maj. Gen. John A. Samford. (Clark III 936)
November 1 — The Air Force issues a Ground Observer’s Guide for use by members of the Ground Observer Corps, a WWII Civil Defense program reinstated during the Korean War to protect against enemy attack. (US Department of the Air Force, Ground Observer’s Guide, AF Manual 50-12, November 1, 1951)
November 2 — 7:15 a.m. The crew of an American Airlines DC-4 is flying east of Abilene, Texas, at 4,500 feet. They see a bright-green, projectile-shaped object, about the same size as their airliner, streak past at about same altitude and same easterly heading. The object leaves a trail then explodes, shooting red balls of fire in all directions. (Keyhoe, FS Conspiracy, pp. 92–93; Nukes 74–75; Sparks, p. 115)
November 3 — 9:00 p.m. A green fireball is sighted in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma. Capitol Airways pilot H. R. DeHoney is flying at 11,000 feet about 20 miles south of Flagstaff, Arizona, watches the object speed by as a bright blue-green ball that leaves a streak of brilliant red fire. (Nukes 75–76; “Mystery Meteor Startles NM, Arizona,” Santa Fe New Mexican, November 4, 1951, p. 13)
November 6 — Ruppelt flies to Reese AFB [now Reese Technology Center] in Lubbock, Texas, to begin his investigation of the Lubbock lights, accompanied by OSI agent Howard Bossert. (Clark III 691)
November 7 — Evening. A steamship captain and crew watch an elongated orange object with six glowing “portholes” speed toward Ontario over Lake Superior. (UFOEv, p. 146)
November 8 — Ruppelt and an officer from Reese AFB visit Brownfield, Texas, to investigate UFO sightings there. (Clark III 691)
November 9 — Since October 30, seven green fireballs of exceptional size have been seen over a seven-state area in the American Southwest. Lincoln LaPaz, director of the University of New Mexico Institute of Meteoritics, says that frequency is exceptional: “In fact, there has never been a rate of meteorite fall in history that has been one fifth as high as the present fall. If that rate should continue, I would suspect the phenomenon is not natural.” The fireballs travel in straight lines and are completely silent. (“Southwest’s 7 Fireballs in 11 Days Called ‘Without Parallel in History,’” New York Times, November 10, 1951, pp. 1, 14; Nukes 76–79)
November 11 — 8:45 p.m. Thomas Bartis and his older brother Francis are driving through New Haven, Connecticut, when they see a huge yellow fireball with a greenish-blue tail streak through the sky. Probable bolide. (“Second Fireball Is Sighted,” Meriden (Conn.) Record-Journal, November 12, 1951, pp. 1, 10)
November 20 — 6:42 p.m. A vivid green fireball is reported from Dodge City, Kansas, and Lubbock and Big Springs, Texas. Two Air Force pilots landing at Kirtland AFB, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and a Trans World Airlines pilot also see the fireball. (Nukes 78)
November 24 — 3:53 p.m. Air Force Capt. William Fairbrother is flying a P-51 over Mankato, Minnesota, at 25,000 feet when he sees a white object shaped like a flying wing. It hovers at first, then it passes 100 feet above and to the left of his aircraft. He immediately turns to follow but loses sight of it. (Sparks, p. 115)
November 24 — 6:24 p.m. A Capital Airlines Flight 94 pilot and several control tower and other ground observers in four different locations in Michigan (Grand Rapids, Coopersville, Battle Creek, and Selfridge AFB near Mount Clemens) see a large round object flying west at 500–1,000 feet at about 1,000 mph. (Sparks, p. 116; Swords 130)
November 27 — Geophysicist Louis Elterman releases the final report on Project Twinkle. Basically, it admits that the low frequency of occurrence of the fireballs does not justify the $50,000 a year required for a useful monitoring facility. It speculates that “the earth may be passing through a region in space of high meteoric population. Also, the sun-spot maxima in 1948 perhaps in some way may be a contributing factor.” (Louis Elterman, Project Twinkle Final Report, Atmospheric Physics Laboratory, November 27, 1951; Clark III 544–545)
November 30 — Project Grudge issues its first Status Report, classified “confidential.” (US Air Force, Projects Grudge and Blue Book Reports 1–12, NICAP, 1968, pp. 1–19)
December — Ed J. Sullivan, a technical writer for North American Aviation, holds a meeting of engineers, scientists, and journalists in Los Angeles, California, who have been following the UFO phenomenon. They form Civilian Saucer Investigation to collect reports and forward them on to ATIC. Its most prominent member is Walther Riedel, German rocket scientist retrieved by Project Paperclip. (Michael D. Swords, GrassRoots UFOs: Case Reports from the Timmerman Files, Fund for UFO Research, 2005, pp. 139–140; Clark III 241–242)
December 5 — Early morning. Swedish Prince Carl Bernadotte and a friend, Berl Gutenberg, are driving near Stockholm, Sweden, when they see a bright flash of light illuminate the sky. Bernadotte stops the car and opens the door to listen for sounds. They go immediately to the Stockholm Criminal Investigation Department, who reports the incident to the Security Police and the military UFO desk. The report is instantly classified, even though the object is probably a meteor. (Swords 366)
December 11 — Project Twinkle closes down. (Clark III 545)
December 12 — 3:50 p.m. USAF Capt. Donald “Deke” Slayton, flying a P-51 fighter at 10,000 feet, sees a whitish or gray object off his left wing about one mile away and 1,000 feet below his flight level about five miles southeast of Hastings, Minnesota. It looks like a kite at first, then like a weather balloon, then two rapidly revolving discs that overlap with centers about 1 foot apart. He attempts an intercept, but the UFO increases speed and disappears. (NICAP, “‘Deke’ Slayton / P-51 Encounter”; Sparks, p. 117)
December 19 — Ruppelt travels to the Pentagon with ATIC Chief Col. Frank Dunn. They visit with Maj. Gen. John A. Samford, who has replaced Cabell as USAF director of intelligence and who seems “familiar with the general aspects of the problem.” Samford’s aide, Gen. William M. Garland, tells them that ATIC has the sole authorization to carry out UFO investigations for the entire US military (not exactly true), and they discuss security problems posed by UFOs at sensitive installations. Ruppelt reveals that his preliminary analysis of UFO sighting patterns has uncovered a disturbing correlation of unexplained sightings around nuclear weapons facilities and highly classified nuclear stockpile sites and some SAC strategic air bases. Gen. Samford orders ATIC to conduct an exhaustive statistical study to verify Ruppelt’s findings, using the newly established ATIC Project WHITE STORK contract with the research think tank Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio (which eventually spends $100,000 on the study, Subproject PPS-100, confirming Ruppelt’s pattern). (Ruppelt, pp. 115–116)
December 26–27 — Ruppelt and Col. Sanford H. Kirkland Jr. of ATIC meet with members of the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, and ask them to help out with the USAF evaluation of UFO reports: first, a study of witness perception and recall, then a statistical study of UFO reports. (“Seven Status Reports for Project Stork,” CUFON; Clark III 929)
December 28 — Project Grudge issues Status Report #2 and a Special Report three days later. (US Air Force, Projects Grudge and Blue Book Reports 1–12, NICAP, 1968, pp. 21–53)
1952
1952 — The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is established in Livermore, California, as an offshoot of the UC Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley. It is intended to spur innovation and provide competition to the nuclear weapon design laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Edward Teller and Ernest Lawrence, director of the Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley, are regarded as its cofounders. Los Alamos and Livermore soon establish a rivalry, fighting for weapons contracts and feasibility-study awards. (Wikipedia, “Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory”)
1952 — José Manuel Rodríguez Delgado, a Spanish physiologist at Yale University, coauthors what he claims is the first peer-reviewed paper describing deep-brain stimulation of humans. Over the next two decades, he implants electrodes in some 25 subjects. Most are schizophrenics and epileptics at the now-defunct State Hospital for Mental Diseases in Howard, Rhode Island, where Delgado’s occasional collaborator Hannibal Hamlin is a staff psychiatrist. Delgado is reticent discussing his experiments on humans. He is more enthusiastic recalling research
on monkeys, chimpanzees, and gibbons, which he kept both at Yale and in open-air compounds in the Bahamas and New Mexico. He explores the effects of stimulation not only on individuals but also on groups. In one demonstration, he implants a stimoceiver (a tiny electrode able to receive and transmit signals over FM radio waves) in a macaque who terrorizes his cage-mates. Delgado installs a lever in the cage that, when pressed, activates the stimoceiver in the bully and pacify him. A female in the cage soon figures out the lever’s significance and yanks it often and with gusto. (John Horgan, “Tribute to Jose Delgado, Legendary and Slightly Scary Pioneer of Mind Control,” Cross-Check, Scientific American blog, September 25, 2017)
1952 — World War II air intelligence records are transferred from the Pentagon to Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, Alabama. This shift is probably why Blue Book’s Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt later cannot find anything about foo- fighters during his trips to USAF intelligence to locate reports not forwarded to ATIC. (Jan Aldrich)
1952 — The Argentine Navy establishes a temporary inquiry commission dedicated to the UFO phenomenon at its Puerto Belgrano Naval Base in Punta Alta, Argentina. (Milton Hourcade, “Argentina: UFO Declassification,” U.A.P.S.G.–G.E.F.A.I., July 29, 2020)
1952? — An anonymous occupation soldier in Austria meets a diving suit–clad being who paralyzes him, pulls him inside a UFO, and flies him to an otherworldly place he takes to be Mars. He sees other humans who do not acknowledge him. Then he is returned to his base. (Prince George (B.C.) Citizen, December 11, 1957; Clark 2)
1952 — 6:30 a.m. A carpool of people on their way to work at United Airlines in San Mateo, California, observe five smaller objects merging with a much larger, diamond-shaped object. The big one is about 150–200 feet long, charcoal or gunmetal in color, and is hovering 50–75 feet above some salt flats. The UFOs are directly in front of them to the east, about 1,500–1,800 feet away. One of the witnesses, airplane mechanic Leonard L. Musel, said the smaller objects entered the large object through a “transparent tail or sleeve.” After they were aboard, the bigger UFO turned edgewise and zoomed off at a fantastic speed. (Herbert S. Taylor, “Satellite Objects: A Further Look,” IUR 29, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 7)
1952 — Night. USAF Pvt. Sinclair Taylor is on guard duty at Camp Okubo in Uji, on the southern outskirts of Kyoto, Japan, when he hears flapping sounds and sees what seems to be an enormous bird. As it gets closer to him, Taylor sees that it is a winged man well over 7 feet tall with a wingspread of 7 feet. Taylor fires at it repeatedly with his rifle and thinks he hit it, but he can’t find the body. (Clark III 778)
January — Jim and Coral Lorenzen found the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.
Soon, a man claiming to have an intelligence background becomes an active supporter and tries to lead the Lorenzens into “metaphysical areas of research.” Coral Lorenzen rebuffs these attempts. She discovers what seem to be the impressions of an intelligence report about her on one of his letters. In the summer, two suspicious men posing as building contractors seem to be lurking around her home as well as the homes of the APRO treasurer and secretary the same day. (Lorenzen, Encounters with UFO Occupants, Berkley Medallion, 1976, pp. 1–2, 248– 251; Clark III 49)
January — Some 74% of the CIA’s money goes toward covert operations. It has already infiltrated many US labor, business, church, university, student, and cultural groups, usually channeling the money through foundations. This year it begins HTLINGUAL, a secret project to intercept mail destined for the USSR and China. It also targets domestic peace and civil rights activists. It lasts until 1973, photographing 2 million envelopes and opening 215,000 letters. (Frank J. Donner, The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America’s Political Intelligence System, Knopf, 1980; Jim Keith, Mind Control, World Control: The Encyclopedia of Mond Control, Adventures Unlimited, 1997; David Wise, The American Police State: The Government Against the People, Random House, 1976)
January 1 —10:54 p.m. Warrant Officer W. J. Yeo (a master telecomm specialist) and Sgt. D. V. Crandell watch a silent, reddish-orange object circle and maneuver for nearly 9 minutes at RCAF Station North Bay, Ontario. It appears to be very large and travels at supersonic speed. (“‘Saucers’ Seen Here: 2 Sighted at RCAF Station,” North Bay (Ont.) Nugget, April 15, 1952, pp. 1–2; Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, p. 92)
January 3 — Brig. Gen. William M. Garland, Assistant for the Production of Intelligence, writes a secret memorandum for General John A. Samford that lays down the investigative shortcomings of Project Grudge and suggests policies and agendas for the immediate future. Garland mentions that the aircraft inventions and models by the Horten brothers had fallen into the hands of the Soviets at the end of World War II. (Brig. Gen. William M. Garland, “(Secret) Contemplated Action to Determine the Nature and Origin of the Phenomena Connected with the Reports of Unusual Flying Objects,” January 3, 1952; Swords 141–143; Kremlin 34)
January 6 — Contactee George Van Tassel, living at Giant Rock in the Mojave Desert near Landers, California, receives the first of many psychic messages from extraterrestrial starship commanders. This one is from “Lutbunn, senior
in command of first wave, planet patrol, realms of Schare. We have your contact aboard 80,000 feet above this place.” Other messages soon come from Elcar, Clota, Totalmon, Latamarx, Noma, Leektow, Luu, Oblow, Kerrull, Locktopar, Molca, Clatu, Hulda, Lata, Singba, and others. One of his contacts, Ashtar, will become a metaphysical superstar, and in the years ahead many contactees will channel communications from him. These aliens seek to raise humanity’s “vibrationary attunement” so that earthlings will not threaten the wise and peace- loving space people. Van Tassel reprints many of these messages in a misleadingly titled book, I Rode a Flying Saucer! (George W. Van Tassel, I Rode a Flying Saucer! The Mysteries of the Flying Saucers Revealed, New Age, 1952; Clark III 1218–1219)
January 8 — Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, agrees to help out the Air Force with analyzing UFO reports. (Clark III 929)
January 20 — 7:20 p.m. Two master sergeants, both intelligence specialists, are walking down a street at Fairchild AFB near Spokane, Washington, when they notice a large, bluish-white, spherical object approaching from the east. It passes north of their position, traveling horizontally and silently, and disappears in the west. They notice it has a long blue tail. It travels underneath low cloud cover at 4,700 feet at 1,400 mph. (NICAP, “Large Sphere with Blue Tail at 500ʹ,”; Ruppelt, p. 12; Sparks, p. 118)
January 21 — 9:50 a.m. A Navy pilot lieutenant commander in a TBM Avenger chases a white, dome-shaped object over Mitchel AFB [now closed] on Long Island, New York. It accelerates rapidly, makes a 180° turn, and heads out to sea. He estimates it is traveling at least at 300 mph. It looks like a parachute canopy and has a dark undersurface. Although there is a balloon in the area, but its flight path is completely different. (NICAP, “TBM Chases Climbing and Accelerating Object”; Ruppelt, pp. 121–123; Sparks, p. 118)
January 22 — 12:20 a.m. At a northern Alaska outpost, Murphy Dome Air Force Station, radar captures a UFO traveling 1,500 mph at 23,000 feet. When an F-94 is sent to intercept, the target stops, slows down, reverses course, and heads directly for the radar station. It comes within 30 miles, then disappears from the screen. The F-94 heads back to refuel, and a second fighter is scrambled. This pilot gets a strong radar return. At first, the object is almost stationary, but then it dives suddenly, at which point ground radar picks it up again. A third F-94 is sent up, also tracks the object on radar, and closes to within 900 feet. At this point, the pilot pulls away to avoid a collision, as the UFO is nearly immobile. Since none of the pilots obtained a visual sighting, the Air Force concludes that the radar returns are weather-related, although the pilots strongly dispute this. (NICAP, “Alaskan Radar Case”; Ruppelt, pp. 123–127; Sparks, pp. 119–120)
January 29 — On his trip to the Pentagon to brief Gen. William M. Garland, Ruppelt visits the AFOIN offices and discovers they have more complete files than ATIC in Dayton, Ohio, does. He arranges to have copies made of the missing files for him at Project Grudge (though multiple visits are required to obtain the copies and Ruppelt probably does not succeed in getting everything). The offices with UFO files include the Technical Capabilities Branch (TCB) of the Evaluation Division and the Collection Control Branch of the Collection Division. (NICAP, “The 1952 Sighting Wave”)
January 29 — Brig. Gen. William M. Garland, USAF Assistant for Production of Intelligence, and his staff are briefed at the Pentagon on the status of Project Grudge by Edward Ruppelt, who with his colleagues at ATIC has prepared sighting maps that show a concentration of cases at White Sands and Los Alamos, New Mexico; Killeen Base, Texas; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and Dayton, Ohio (where Wright-Patterson AFB is situated). At this meeting, Garland introduces a new intelligence policy that emphasizes the use of instrumentation for intelligence collection, including the detection and tracking of UFOs (the basis for terminating Project Blue Book as an intelligence function). As an interim last-chance measure to prove whether anecdotal sightings have any value, Garland approves Ruppelt’s publicity plan to draw in UFO reports from the public so that triangulations might be obtained. This leads to Garland secretly backing the Life magazine article. Apparently on the same day, Garland gives the welcoming address to the secret MIT Lincoln Laboratory (Ruppelt calls it the Beacon Hill group) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he tells the assembled scientists to study ways USAF intelligence methodology can be revolutionized through the use of technology. (Later Garland sends Ruppelt, Col. Sanford H. Kirkland Jr. of ATIC, and Lt. Col. William A. Adams of AFOIN, to brief the Lincoln Lab scientists on UFOs on March 26 and in April 1952, respectively) (“Status of Project Blue Book,” T52-6888, [1952]; NICAP, “The 1952 Sighting Wave”; Swords 144; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1952, January–May, The Author, 1993, p. 12)
January 29 — Evening. Violet M. Winstead and her husband are at an open-air movie theater on Guam when they and others at the theater see an orange light passing silently overhead. (Violet M. Winstead, Letter, IUR 9, no. 1 (Jan./Feb. 1984): 3)
January 29 — Night. A bright orange, disc-shaped object, also described as a “huge ball of fire,” paces two B-29s on the same night, 80 miles from each other over the towns of Wonsan and Sunchon, North Korea. (NICAP, “Rotating
Light Seen by B-29 Crew”; NICAP, “B-29 Crew Followed by UFO”; Haines, Korea, pp. 33–37; Sparks, p. 121; Patrick Gross, “UFO US Military Reports, Korea, 1952”)
January 31 — Ruppelt releases Project Grudge Status Report #3, in which he reviews the geographic distribution of UFO reports, states the project’s obstacle, and includes a list of 15 cases reported to ATIC in January. (Swords 144; US Air Force, Projects Grudge and Blue Book Reports 1–12, NICAP, 1968, pp. 55–64)
February 2 — 7:35 p.m. Radar operators aboard the aircraft carrier USS Philippine Sea pick up an unidentified target off the east coast of Korea. It is first detected at a distance of 25 miles; when it closes to 20 miles, it makes a wide turn to the east directly away from the carrier, accelerating from 600 to 1,800 mph at 52,000 feet altitude. It splits into two targets 5–12 miles apart on a slightly zigzag course to the north. They disappear about 110 miles away. Observers on the carrier see three exhaust flames. (NICAP, “USS Philippine Sea Tracks Approaching Target”; Hynek UFO Report, pp. 126–127; Sparks, p. 121)
February 8 — Dewey Fournet, on the Pentagon’s UFO desk, writes to Ruppelt at ATIC for help in interpreting the Korean sightings. Ruppelt has brought in an expert from Wright-Patterson AFB’s Engineering Division, Peter A. Stranges of the Propulsion Branch Power Plant Group, to help with the analysis, which he passes on to Fournet and Garland. Stranges compares the Wonsan sighting to the foo fighters of World War II. (Swords 144–145).
February 20 — 3:00 p.m. Rev. Albert Baller is sitting in a train at the station in Greenfield, Massachusetts, when he sees a “sharp flash of light about 35° or more above the horizon.” Looking upward, he sees three perfectly circular, silver objects approaching in a V-formation. They are moving at about the “speed of a second hand on a watch.” They stop and hover for 10 seconds. The lead object reverses and pulls into a line with the other two between them. Then they depart in a direction at right angles to their approach. (UFOEv, p. 69)
February 20 — Joseph and Stewart Alsop examine the January 29 Korean incidents in their syndicated column, “Problems of Scientific Development.” They suspect a Russian origin. (Swords 145–146)
February 21 — Sen. Richard Russell Jr. (D-Ga.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, requests further information on the January 29 Korean UFO incidents in a letter to Secretary of the Air Force Thomas K. Finletter. (Project 1947, “UFO Documents, 1952, Korea”)
February 21 — Far East Air Forces Commander Lieut. Gen. Otto P. Weyland tells reporters that “no conclusive evaluation had been made at the present time” on the Wonsan/Sunchon, Korea, sightings of January 29–30. (“Nothing Conclusive on Globes: Weyland,” Stars and Stripes, Pacific edition, February 22, 1952; Project 1947, “UFO Documents, 1952, Korea”)
February 22 — The now-completed Site Able is renamed Manzano Base, New Mexico, and turned over to the operational control of the Air Force. What appear to be secure bunkers are visible to people (mostly military personnel) who go to a recreational camping area nearby known as Coyote Canyon. The military, however, never officially confirms the nature of the activities at Manzano Base [now part of Kirtland Air Force Base]. At one point, a military spokesman says that Manzano Base has nothing to do with Sandia Base. Manzano has since been identified as the first of six original National Stockpile Sites for nuclear weapons. The other original NSS installations similar to Manzano are: Site Baker at Killeen Base, adjacent to Gray AFB [now Robert Gray Army Airfield] at Fort Hood, Texas; Site Charlie at Campbell AFB [now Campbell Army Airfield] near Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and adjacent to Fort Campbell; Site Dog at Bossier Base, adjacent to Barksdale AFB near Bossier City, Louisiana; Lake Mead Base, adjacent to Nellis AFB, Nevada; and Medina Base, adjacent to Lackland AFB [now Joint Base San Antonio], Texas. (Wikipedia, “Sandia Base”)
February 23 or 24 — 11:15 p.m. The navigator on a B-29 bomber sees a pulsating bluish cylinder while the aircraft is evading antiaircraft fire near Sinuiju, North Korea. It arrives high and fast, makes several turns, and levels out underneath the aircraft. (Sparks, p. 122)
February 25–27 — Life magazine reporter Robert Emmett Ginna Jr. visits USAF headquarters at the Pentagon to gather information for his UFO article. He talks with Brig. Gen. Joseph F. Carroll, Director of Special Investigations. Brig. Gen. William M. Garland tells him that he has considered firing a guided missile at a UFO to bring it down and requests that Ginna delay publishing an article until the Air Force has come to a more definite conclusion.
Ginna also talks to Lt. Col. Doyle Rees of OSI. (Jan L. Aldrich, “Have We Visitors from Space?” Project 1947) February 29 — Project Grudge issues a secret Status Report #4, classified “secret.” (US Air Force, Projects Grudge and
Blue Book Reports 1–12, NICAP, 1968, pp. 65–78)
March or April — 5:00 a.m. Two women cryptographers in the US Naval Reserve stationed at the US Naval Training Center at Port Deposit, Maryland, are out taking a walk outside the base on a dirt road. They notice a red light off to one side above the trees. It starts moving toward them and stops about 100 feet above the road in front of them, about 300 feet away. The object is a 250-foot black disc with two large red lights at each side, an illuminated
dome, and smaller lights along the rim. A hole opens in the bottom and phosphorescent white sparks drop toward the ground and disintegrate when they hit the road. The two reservists sprint the quarter-mile back to the base. (NICAP case file)
March 1 — The 4602nd Air Intelligence Service Squadron is activated under ADC to collect air combat intelligence. (CUFON, “4602d AISS Unit History Sampler”)
March 3 — Robert Emmett Ginna Jr. of Life visits ATIC at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio, to obtain material for his UFO article. Walther Riedel, former German rocket scientist at Peenemünde, Germany, tells Ginna he has kept notes on UFO sightings from all over the world: “I am completely convinced that they have an out-of-world basis.” He also meets with visits Air Force UFO spokesman Albert M. Chop. AMC claims it is investigating every serious UFO report, but it can’t find the files he requests. Ginna becomes suspicious. (“Status of Project Blue Book,” T52-6888, [1952]; Jan L. Aldrich, “Have We Visitors from Space?” Project 1947; Michael D. Swords, “1952: Ruppelt’s Big Year,” IUR 28, no. 4 (Winter 2003–2004): 9; Swords 120–121)
March 5 — The Air Force sends a letter, signed by Lieut. Gen. Nathan Twining, to Secretary Finletter in response to Sen. Russell’s February 21 inquiry. It offers two possible explanations: aircraft exhaust from a Soviet Lavochkin La-9 or La-11 fighter aircraft, or spotlights carried on enemy aircraft that have intercepted US bombers. (Project 1947, “UFO Documents, 1952, Korea”; Swords 145)
March 7 — Physicist Joseph Kaplan visits ATIC to discuss methods of obtaining more information on green fireballs using a special diffraction grid to be placed on patrol cameras that can be used as a field spectrometer. (“Status of Project Blue Book,” T52-6888, [1952])
March 10 — 6:45 a.m. Clarence K. Greenwood, inspector of engineering metals, sees two dark objects come from behind him at an altitude of 5,000–7,500 feet while he is waiting for a bus in Oakland, California. They pick up speed, one of them moving in a pendulum-like motion. He thinks they are about 45 feet long. (UFOEv, pp. 56–57)
March 14 — Evening. US Secretary of the Navy Dan A. Kimball is flying to Hawaii when he sees two discs moving at 1,500 mph. The UFOs circle his plane twice, then move on 50 miles east to another Navy plane carrying Adm. Arthur W. Radford. The UFOs circle Radford’s plane then zoom up out of sight. Kimball sends a report to the Air Force, but hears nothing back, despite USAF demanding reports from all Navy witnesses. Kimball threatens to initiate Naval reports on UFOs through ONR to be kept separate from Blue Book. Keyhoe hears about this from both Kimball and Chief of ONR Adm. Calvin M. Bolster. The report is never made public. (NICAP, “Admiral Radford & Navy Sec. Kimball Planes Buzzed”; NICAP, “Navy Secy Dan Kimball’s Pilot’s Sighting, March 14, 1952”; Swords 165)
March 19 — Ruppelt and other representatives of ATIC meet with the commander of the Air Defense Command, Gen.
Benjamin W. Chidlaw, and Gen. Grandison Gardner and his staff in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on getting radar scope camera films as UFOs are being tracked. “They agreed with it in principle and suggested that I work out the details with the Director of Intelligence for the ADC, Brigadier Gen. Woodbury M. Burgess.” Chidlaw promises to issue a directive to all units explaining procedures in UFO situations, including the scrambling of interceptors. This is issued, apparently in April. Burgess assigns Maj. Vernon L. Sadowski of his staff to be liaison to Project Grudge., and the Ground Observer Corps is brought into the UFO reporting net. (Ruppelt, pp. 128–129; “Status of Project Blue Book,” T52-6888, [1952])
March 25 — Project Grudge becomes a separate organization under the title Aerial Phenomena Group and is renamed Project Blue Book, apparently by Lt. Col. Charles Cooke, which he thinks has “no overtones.” Ruppelt says it is based on the books provided for taking college tests at Iowa State University. (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1952, January–May, The Author, 1993, pp. 20–21; Sparks, p. 12; Ruppelt, p. 131; Clark III 916)
March 26 — Day. Henry C. Davis is looking out at the ocean through his second-floor window in Long Beach, California, and listening to the radio. He spots two yellow discs in the sky about one mile high and 2 miles away. He thinks they are 1,000 feet apart and moving southeast to northwest at 100 mph. As they pass, his radio goes to static twice. (Schopick, p. 78)
March 26 — Ruppelt meets with the MIT scientists he calls the Beacon Hill Group, which recommends that Blue Book use “sound detection apparatus” in areas of UFO activity. (Clark III 916)
March 26 — Five trials are conducted through April 21 by the US Army Chemical Corps under Operation Dew. The tests release zinc cadmium sulfide along a 100-to-150-nautical-mile line approximately 5–10 nautical miles off the coast of Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Two of the trials disperse clouds of zinc cadmium sulfide over large areas of all three states. The tests affect over 60,000 square miles of populated coastal region. The Dew I releases are from a Navy minesweeper, the USS Tercel. The conclusion is that long-range aerosol clouds can obtain hundreds of miles of travel and large-area coverage when disseminated from ground level under certain meteorological conditions. (Wikipedia, “Operation Dew”)
Late March? — Ruppelt meets with two RCAF officers and briefs them on the new procedures. (Ruppelt, p. 130)
March 29 — 11:20 a.m. Near Misawa, Japan, USAF Lt. David Conant Brigham is flying a T-6 target plane on a practice intercept mission for two F-84s. The first F-84 overtakes him at 6,000 feet when the T-6 pilot notices a small disc gaining on the interceptor. The UFO curves toward the F-84, decelerates rapidly, then flips on edge in a 90° bank. It flies between the two aircraft, pulls away, flips again, passes the F-84, crosses in front, and accelerates out of sight in a near vertical climb. Both pilots notice the object, which comes within 30–50 feet of the T-6. The pilot estimates it is only 8 inches in diameter. There is a ripple around the edge. (NICAP, “Brigham/T6 Case: UFO Makes Pass at F-84”; UFOEv, p. 5; Keyhoe, FS from OS, p. 192; Sparks, p. 123)
March 29 — Two fiery discs are sighted over the uranium mines in the southern part of the Belgian Congo near Elisabethville [modern Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo]. With a diameter of approximately 36– 45 feet, they travel in a precise and light manner, both vertically and horizontally. They emit hissing and buzzing sounds. Changes in elevation from 2,400 to 3,000 feet are accomplished in a few seconds. The discs often move down to within 60 feet of the treetops. A Commander Pierre of the Belgian Air Force sets out in pursuit in a fighter plane from the city airport. On his first approach he comes to within about 260 feet of one of the discs.
Suddenly they hover in one spot then takes off in a unique zigzag flight to the northeast at an estimated speed of 930 mph. Pierre gives up his pursuit after about 15 minutes. (NICAP, “Two Discs over Uranium Mines / Jet in Pursuit”; Sparks, p. 123; Good Above, p. 512)
March 29 — 6:40 p.m. Carl J. Henry, chairman of the Industrial Commission of Missouri, along with several others, watches a cylinder-shaped, silver UFO for 2 minutes almost directly overhead in Butler, Missouri. It is moving silently in a northwesterly direction leaving no trail or exhaust. He estimates its length at 100 feet. (UFOEv, p. 68)
March 29 — 10:45 p.m. Donald F. Stewart and George Tyler III are driving northbound on the Governor Ritchie Highway in Glen Burnie, Maryland. A 50-foot silvery domed disc with two portholes and an apparent hatch appears from the northeast and hovers above their car, causing the engine to fail, magnetizing the wiring, and cracking the paint. Stewart takes a sub-machine gun from the back of the car and debates whether to fire it at the object, which remains in view for 3 minutes before turning n its edge and speeding away to the southwest. Tyler changes his story later, denying he was involved. Possible hoax. (NICAP, “E-M Effects on Car from Domed Disc”; Sparks, p. 124; Hynek UFO Report, pp. 196–198; Randle, Levelland, 2021, pp. 61–64, 229)
March 31 — Battelle begins its UFO study (referred to as P-47S and nicknamed Little Stork) under the supervision of William T. Reid, folding it into Project Stork, an initiative to examine the Soviet Union’s technological warfare capabilities. Almost all of the UFO analysis involves compiling IBM punch cards based on data forwarded by Project Blue Book files. (Clark III 929; Jennie Zeidman, “I Remember Blue Book,” IUR 16, no. 2 (Mar./Apr.
1991): 7–8; Jennie Zeidman and Mark Rodeghier, “The Pentacle Letter and the Battelle UFO Project,” IUR 18, no. 3 (May/June 1993): 4–12, 19–21; Michael Hall, “Was There a Second Estimate of the Situation?” IUR 27, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 12)
March 31 — ATIC Chief Frank Dunn writes to Gen. Garland requesting that Project Blue Book be entirely declassified in order to make it easier to encourage civilian pilots to send in reports. That is a bit too much openness for Garland, who compromises by reclassifying certain case investigations as “Restricted,” a relatively low level. (Swords 146)
March 31 — Project Blue Book issues its Status Report #5. (US Air Force, Projects Grudge and Blue Book Reports 1–12,
NICAP, 1968, pp. 81–94)
Spring — Occultist George Hunt Williamson and his wife Betty move to Prescott, Arizona, and immerse themselves in UFO literature. (Michael D. Swords, “Strange Days,” IUR 30, no. 4 (Aug. 2006): 21)
April? — Amateur astronomer W. Gordon Graham sees a UFO “like a smoke ring, elliptical in shape, and having two bright pinpoints of light along its main axis” at London, Ontario. It sails overhead from west to east. (London (Ont.) Free Press, May 1, 1952; UFOEv, p. 49)
April — Secretary of the Navy Dan Kimball, upset with the way the Air Force has treated his UFO sighting, sets up an independent Navy probe of UFOs under Lt. Commander Fred Lowell Thomas of the Office of Naval Research. The project lasts through 1952, but probably not much longer. (NICAP, “Navy Secy Dan Kimball’s Pilot’s Sighting, March 14, 1952”)
April — Ruppelt again meets with MIT Lincoln Laboratory scientists (the Beacon Hill group) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to brief them on Blue Book’s progress. Afterward, he asks them about the flashes seen on Mars in 1951, and a general discussion of life on other planets ensues. Michael D. Swords suspects that some of those present are physicist George Valley Jr., engineer Julius Adams Stratton, physicist Albert G. Hill, and chemical engineer Walter G. Whitman. (Edward J. Ruppelt, “Are There Men on Mars? Or Other Worlds?” IUR 23, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 10–12, 31)
April — Albert K. Bender, a factory worker in Bridgeport, Connecticut, announces the formation of the International Flying Saucer Bureau. (Clark III 189, 623)
April 2 — On the eve of the release of the bombshell Life magazine article, Ruppelt and his boss, ATIC Technical Analysis Division Chief Col. Sanford H. Kirkland Jr., give an extraordinary briefing, technically unclassified but in fact quasi-classified, to a group of aerospace engineers and saucer buffs organized as Civilian Saucer Investigation of Los Angeles. These include aeronautical consultant Felix W. A. Knoll, technical writer Ed J. Sullivan, and North American Aviation project engineer Walther A. Riedel. The briefing takes place at the Mayfair Hotel in Los Angeles, California, along with national media reporters and the Life magazine reporters who give them advance copies of the Darrach/Ginna article in exchange. (“Minutes of Meeting of Civilian Saucer Investigations Held Wednesday, April 2, 1952, 8:00 PM in the Mayfair Hotel, Los Angeles, California,” April 2, 1952, transcribed by Sign Historical Group; Willard D. Nelson, “When Blue Book Met the Ufologists,” IUR 12, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1987): 21–24; Ruppelt, p. 175)
April 2 — 9:00 a.m. While on a fishing trip to Lake Mead, Nevada, with his wife and M/Sgt Lester Gossett, M/Sgt Sheldon Smith observes a large silver UFO at a high altitude. It looks like a B-36 without wings. Smith observes it right after a flight of F-86s overfly the area at about 15,000 feet. After watching the hovering object for about an hour at a much higher altitude than the vapor trails from the F-86s, it suddenly disappears. (NICAP, “B-36 without Wings”)
April 3 — The Air Force publicly announces that it has not stopped investigating and evaluating UFO reports. ()
April 7 — Henry B. Darrach Jr. and Robert Ginna’s article, “Have We Visitors from Space?” appears in Life and reports on the revitalized USAF project. It comes close to advocating the ETH, and its primary sources are high-ranking Air Force officers. (H. B. Darrach Jr. and Robert Ginna, “Have We Visitors from Space?” Life, April 7, 1952, pp. 80–96; NICAP, “Scholarly Commentary on LIFE Article of April 7, 1952”; Michael D. Swords, “1952: Ruppelt’s Big Year,” IUR 28, no. 4 (Winter 2003–2004): 8–9)
April 7 — During war games taking place in the vicinity of Lampasas, Texas, nicknamed Operation Longhorn, the Air Force announces that a new “aerial light” attached to a B-26 aircraft is in use that makes an “attacking bomber look like a ball of fire in the sky.” It is essentially a bright magnesium searchlight (dubbed a “Hell Roarer” flare) that can illuminate a battlefield for nighttime photography. USAF Public Information Officer Capt. Irving Rappaport implies it could be mistaken for a flying saucer. (“Light Makes Bomber Resemble Ball of Fire,” Chambersburg (Pa.) Public Opinion, April 7, 1952, p. 3; “It’s No Saucer! Strange Objects in the Sky Are Nothing New in Dayton,” Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, November 9, 1952, magazine supplement, p. 7; Curt Collins, “UFOs: Confusing the Public,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, January 27, 2022)
April 12 — 8:30 p.m. W/O E. H. Rossell and Flight Sgt. Reginald McRae are driving on RCAF Station North Bay, Ontario, when they see a bright amber disc arrive from the southwest, move across the airfield, stop, and then take off in the opposite direction at an angle of 30° at terrific speed. (NICAP, “Amber Disc Stops, Reverses Direction”; Yurko Bondarchuk, UFO Sightings, Landings, and Abductions, Methuen, 1979, pp. 92–94)
April 16 — ADC becomes frantic about a possible Soviet attack. Air Force Intelligence warns Brig. Gen. Woodbury Burgess, at ADC Headquarters, Ent AFB [now the US Olympic Training Center] in Colorado Springs, Colorado, that a classified source (possibly an electronic intercept) has provided an “indication” of ominous Soviet military activity. With the simultaneous appearance of two waves of unidentified targets, there is no alternative. At 3:10 a.m., ADC Commander Gen. Frederic H. Smith Jr. orders America’s first nationwide Air Defense Readiness alert. (NICAP, “UFOs and Alert Scare, April 1952”; “Radar Scare,” Miami (Fla.) Herald, April 19, 1952, p. 23; “3 Plane Vapors Cause Alert at Alaska Stations,” Long Beach (Calif.) Independent, April 18, 1952, p. 18)
April 17 — 12:58 a.m. Four high-altitude contrails heading east-southeast toward Alaska are seen by NORAD defense observers at Nunivak Island, Alaska. (NICAP, “Another Radar-Inspired National Alert”)
April 17 — 5:10 a.m. Radar at Caswell Air Force Station [now closed] in Limestone, Maine, tracks five unknown targets headed southwest into the US. Three are later identified as off-course civilian airliners, while two remain unidentified. A nationwide Air Defense Readiness Alert is declared at 5:11 a.m. SAC is notified to prepare launch of nuclear missiles. The alert is canceled at 7:40 a.m. (NICAP, “Another Radar-Inspired National Alert”)
April 17 — 12:05 p.m. Air Force T/S Orville Lawson, Rudy Toncer (sheet metal shop foreman), and sheet metal shop workers R. K. Van Houtin, Edward Gregory, and Charles Ruliffson at Nellis Air Force Base, near Las Vegas, see 18 circular objects flying an easterly course that carry them over or very close to the Nevada Test Site. They watch the objects for about 30 seconds. (“Work Crew Spots Flying Saucers over A-Test Site,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 18, 1952, p. 1; NICAP, “April 17, 1952: Nellis AFB, Nevada Large Group of Circular UFOs”; Nukes 83)
April 17 — Dewey Fournet Jr. responds to a reporter from the Baltimore Sun who has asked about details of the Blue Book investigation with a two-and-a-half-page memo, vagued up a bit, but essentially saying that “nothing detrimental to our national security has materialized from these incidents.” (Swords 147)
April 18 — 12:07 p.m. Detachment 21 of the 618th Aircraft and Warning Squadron, Japan Air Self-Defense Force, picks up a radar target over the Korea Strait north of Kyushu Island, Japan, moving at 2,700 mph. (NICAP, “Object Tracked at 2,700 MPH”; Sparks, p. 127)
April 19 — 9:20 p.m. USAF Brig. Gen. Edwin M. Day is reclining on a patio in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, when he sees an object traveling parallel to the ground at a constant altitude (between 10,000 and 20,000 feet) and moving in his direction. Its speed is greater than a jet’s. It breaks into two parts at one point but maintains its constant course. He follows it visually for 5–6 seconds until it disappears to the north-northeast. (“When UFOs Were Serious Business: Then and Today,” IUR 28, no. 4 (Winter 2003–2004): 5–6)
April 20 — 9:15 p.m. Naval aviation student Edmund Kogut and his wife Shirley are at a drive-in movie theater in Flint, Michigan, when they see several groups of UFOs fly over. There are 2–9 objects in a group and about 20 groups, all flying in a straight line except for some changes in direction accomplished unlike any known aircraft. They are shaped like conventional aircraft but have an odd reddish glow surrounding them. (NICAP, [Flint, Michigan, case documents]; Sparks, p. 128)
April 22 — The Canadian Defence Research Board establishes a UFO study group that meets for the first time today. Project Second Storey, formed by Omond M. Solandt, DRB chairman, meets at least five times. It is chaired by astrophysicist Peter M. Millman and includes Wilbert B. Smith and representatives from Naval Intelligence, Military Operations and Planning, and the Defence Research Board. At its April 24 meeting, it decides to meet with the US government on UFO matters. (“Project Second Storey Minutes, 1952.04.24”; Clark III 1078; Good Above, p. 186; Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman, The Canadian UFO Report, Dundurn Press, 2006, p. 225– 226)
April 23 — 9:30 a.m. R. C. Munroe, engineering standards section head for Raytheon Manufacturing Company, notices an object near an AT-6 Texan trainer aircraft above Lexington, Massachusetts. He estimates its altitude at 40,000 feet. It decelerates abruptly and goes into a flat turn. He writes, “It is inconceivable to me that any human being could have withstood the deceleration or acceleration displayed by this aircraft.” (UFOEv, p. 57)
April 23 — 10:45 a.m. Engineers Carl Hawk and Marvin Harvey are at Sandia Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico, when they look up to watch a jet fighter as it shoots to the north above the Sandia Mountains. They also notice a soundless, flat, rectangular, wing-like object streaking through the sky from east to west above Tijeras Canyon. The object is completely black except for a distinct, bright yellow “V” on its bottom. Two slight points extend from its rear corners. Hawk estimates that it is passing overhead at 2,000 feet altitude at 200–400 mph and is roughly 60 feet wide by 20 feet long. They watch it for 10 seconds until it disappears in a cloud above downtown Albuquerque. (“What Soared Against Duke City Sky That Day in April, 1952?”Albuquerque (N.Mex.) Tribune, November 21, 1957, p. 8)
April 24 — An Air Force Intelligence memorandum to Col. Frank Dunn, chief of ATIC, transmits nine reports (not released) of unidentified submarine objects reported to the Office of Naval Intelligence. (Good Need, pp. 141, 145)
April 25 — 11:00 a.m. A biochemist and a bacteriologist are driving to their office in San Jose, California, when they see a metallic-looking disc rotating around a vertical axis and wobbling. It is moving slowly over the office and is about 4–5 feet in diameter. It flies in a slow arc. Then they see a black object hovering at a high altitude under an overcast. This one is about 100 feet in diameter. Two identical objects come into view out of the clouds. The three objects “jittered about like boats in a stream.” Then the small disc stops spinning, hovers, then shoots upwards, followed by one of the black objects. The remaining two objects linger another minute or so, then take off separately. The episode lasts 15 minutes. The biochemist calls Moffett Field in Santa Clara County, but hangs up before reporting the sighting, which they describe as a “most disturbing experience.” The object “utilized some propulsion method not in the physics books.” (NICAP, “Scientist Sighting / Extraordinary Propulsion Implied”; Richard H. Hall, Uninvited Guests, Aurora, 1988, pp. 241–242)
April 25 — Battelle releases its first status report on Project Stork, noting that it has selected a panel of consultants, initiated a news clipping service, and devised a coding scheme for UFO reports. (“Seven Status Reports for Project Stork,” CUFON)
April 29 — Secretary of the Air Force Thomas K. Finletter issues Air Force Letter 200-5, which directs intelligence officers at every base to report UFOs immediately to ATIC and all major USAF commands. It enables Project Blue Book staff to communicate directly with any Air Force base without going through the normal chain of command, and provides for wire transmission of reports to ATIC, followed with details via air mail. AFL 200-5 is modified by AFR 200-2 in 1953. (Department of the Air Force, “Unidentified Flying Objects Reporting,” Air Force Letter 200-5, April 29, 1952; Ruppelt, pp. 132–133)
April 29 — An Air Force memorandum written to justify a trip by Lt. Col. E. Sterling and Stefan Possony to Europe mentions that their work for USAF Intelligence’s “Special Study Group” is to evaluate Soviet advanced aerial
delivery systems, as well as to shed “some much needed light” on the “vexing ‘flying saucer’ problem.” It adds that the “Air Force cannot assume that flying saucers are of non-terrestrial origin, and hence, they could be Soviet.” (Michael D. Swords, “1952: Ruppelt’s Big Year,” IUR 28, no. 4 (Winter 2003–2004): 10; Swords 151)
April 30 — Project Blue Book issues its Status Report #6. (US Air Force, Projects Grudge and Blue Book Reports 1–12,
NICAP, 1968, pp. 95–112)
April 30 — 6:00 p.m. Six members of the 3rd Platoon, Heavy Mortar Company, 180th Infantry Regiment at the front lines around Panmunjeom, Korea, see two silvery wingless objects, one behind the other, flying in a valley in a southeasterly direction. Pfc H. B. Webb thinks they are flying at 900–1,000 mph. Some slower northbound F-86 Sabre jets pass above them. They make a rumbling sound. (Haines, Korea, p. 63)
May — Army radar specialist Jay Nogle is stationed near Washington, D.C., when he picks up an unknown target on his M33 scope at an altitude of 18,000 feet about 130 miles from the capital (which would put it over eastern Pennsylvania). Two other Army units also detect the object, which remains stationary for 30 minutes before moving. By the time the object reaches the edge of the radar scope, it is traveling at 1,000 mph. The report goes all the way to the Pentagon, where orders are given to fire on it if it returns. Nogle says that radar targets are frequently seen in May or June, and units have their antiaircraft guns loaded after the first incident. When fighters are scrambled from McGuire AFB [now part of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst] in Burlington County, New Jersey, the targets move speedily out of range. (Swords 153)
Early May — 10:00 p.m. A senior CIA official is having a lawn party at his home near Alexandria, Virginia, for some VIPs. He and two others notice a light approaching silently from the west. It stops then climbs almost vertically, stops again, then levels out. Then it goes into a nearly vertical dive, levels out, and streaks off to the east. (Ruppelt, pp. 135–136; Swords 148)
Early May — A meeting is held in the Pentagon office of Stefan Possony, acting chief of the Directorate of Intelligence Study Group under Maj. Gen. John A. Samford to hear Harvard University astronomer Donald Menzel express his views. Present are Possony, Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt, ATIC chief Col. Frank Dunn, Brig. Gen. William M. Garland, Possony’s assistant Leslie Rosenzweig, and one other officer. Menzel announces that he has solved all UFO reports and claims to have helped out in the development of the cameras in Project Twinkle. His attitude irks everyone in the meeting. When he asks the Air Force to support his views in upcoming publications in Time and Look, Gen. Garland gets angry. Col. Dunn says that Blue Book would have put some money into more formal versions of his experiments, but he can only offer a statement that Menzel has told them of his theory. Now Menzel gets agitated, saying it is no theory. He refuses to leave them a copy of his book to pass on to Joseph Kaplan and J. Allen Hynek. In the evening, Possony speaks with astronomer Francis J. Heyden at Georgetown University, who tells him that Menzel’s work is based on no more than a “couple of meaningless high school physics experiments.” (Clark III 743; Michael D. Swords, “Strange Days, Part 2,” IUR 32, no. 2 (December 2008): 9; Swords 152)
May 1 — 9:10 a.m. Air intelligence officer Maj. Rudolph Pestalozzi and an airman standing outside the Davis-Monthan AFB base hospital, Tucson, Arizona, watch two shiny, round objects overtake a B-36 flying above. The objects slow down to match the plane’s speed and remain in formation with them for 20 seconds. Then they make a sharp, no-radius turn away from the B-36, moving away a bit. Then one of the objects stops and hovers. Both are silent, and the crew estimates they have a diameter of 20–25 feet and a thickness of 10–12 feet. (NICAP, “The Case of the Missing Report”; Hynek UFO Report, pp. 109–112, 292–294; Sparks, p. 131; Good Need, pp. 166– 167)
May 1 — 10:50 a.m. At George AFB [now Southern California Logistics Airport] near Victorville, California, five independent witnesses in the base control tower see a group of five white discs moving in formation for about 30 seconds. The objects appear very maneuverable, seem to almost collide, then break away in a right-angle turn.
They are traveling an estimated 900–1,200 mph and are 1,000–1,200 feet in diameter. Four miles away at Apple Valley, California, the base’s wing director of personnel, playing on a golf course, sees one of the UFOs at the same time. (NICAP, “George AFB / Apple Valley, CA Radar Case”; Hynek UFO Report, pp. 107–109; Sparks, p. 131; Swords 147–148; Good Need, p. 166; Michael D. Swords, “Intelligent Motions,” IUR 33, no. 1 (March 2010): 10, 15)
May 1 — 1:45 p.m. Albuquerque Journal composing room employee Eugene Cline sees four silvery objects seemingly playing tag with a formation of 12 Air Force bombers—either B-29s or B-50s—flying west over Albuquerque, New Mexico. The round objects are keeping up with the planes at the same altitude, moving in a “tumbling or pitching manner.” One object shoots straight up and takes off in a southerly direction. About the same time, workmen (one of them Howard Burgess) erecting an antenna at nearby Sandia Base watch three UFOs pass directly overhead. One comes from the west and moves south; another comes from the north and moves south;
and a third, tan-colored rather than silver like the others, passes low overhead and looks like a “cylinder tumbling end over end.” Burgess and the others are debriefed and sworn to secrecy about what they have witnessed. (“Flying Saucers Play Tag with Bombers over City,” Albuquerque (N.Mex.) Journal, May 2, 1952, p. 2; Nukes 56–58)
May 7 — 12:22 a.m. Mrs. Hanley Marks sees a light-green, ball-shaped object fall from the sky into the Sandia Mountains, New Mexico, from her home in the Bel-Air neighborhood of Albuquerque. (“Fireball Falls near Sandias Early Today,” Albuquerque Journal, May 7, 1952, p. 1; “Green Fireball Falls in Southwest, Three Here Report,” Albuquerque Journal, May 7, 1952, p. 9)
May 7 — 12:15 p.m. A Captain Morris and three enlisted men at Keesler AFB, Biloxi, Mississippi, see one or two aluminum or silver cylindrical objects darting in and out of the clouds 10 times. ([Blue Book case report]”; Sparks, p. 131)
May 7 — 4:30 p.m. Magazine writer Ed Keffel, in the company of João Martins, takes five photographs of a UFO over Barra da Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In the first, the UFO resembles an airplane coming directly toward them over a large group of trees. The second shows the object as disc-shaped. The third photo is taken as the object tilts slightly, showing both the top with a slight dome and the now obvious disc shape. More trees, including a very tall palm, can be seen in the photograph. The fourth picture, taken as the object tilts the other way, shows a raised ring on the bottom. The final picture is taken as the object is nearly vertical, seen over part of the ocean and some distant hills. The UFO disappears shortly afterward. NICAP does not see any negatives and is skeptical. The Colorado project finds a “glaring internal inconsistency” in the illumination and dismisses the photos as hoaxes. Today, the best evidence seems to suggest the case is a hoax, perpetrated by two magazine writers who wanted an interesting story. (NICAP, “Barra da Tijuca Photos”; Olavo T. Fontes, “The Barra da Tijuca Disc,” APRO Special Report no. 1 (October 1961): 1–6; Condon, pp. 83, 415–418; Swords 460–461; Cláudio Tsuyoshi Suenaga, “Os 90 Anos do O Cruzeiro, a Revista que Inaugurou a Era Moderna dos Discos Voadores no Brasil,” October 11, 2018)
May 8 — 2:27 a.m. Pan American Airways pilot Clayton C. Gallagher and his copilot, flying a Lockheed Constellation aircraft at 8,000 feet en route from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to New York, see a light, 10 times the size of an airplane landing light, approach them over the Atlantic Ocean east of South Carolina. It streaks past their left wing about a quarter mile away, followed by two smaller orange balls of fire. Probable meteor. (NICAP, “Three UAO Sighted by Constellation Crew”; Sparks, p. 131)
May 8 — Air Force Secretary Thomas Finletter and his staff (including his special assistant, covert CIA agent Joseph Bryan III) receive a secret one-hour briefing on UFOs from Ruppelt and Lt. Col. R. J. Taylor that covers USAF investigations over the previous five years. Finletter asks questions about some specific sightings. (Ruppelt, p. 138)
May 10 — 3:00 p.m. USAF Lt. Col. Maurice G. Bechtel and his wife are in the yard of their home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when they see two silvery disc-shaped objects flying straight and level, one after the other, moving southwest to northeast at above 20,000 feet. The first object seems to waver on its axis, the second object follows a similar path but at a higher altitude. The first object is the size of a B-36 at high altitude. Bechtel alerts the radar station but it is unable to track the objects. (NICAP, “Two Discs Observed by Lt. Colonel and Wife”; Sparks, p. 132)
May 10 — 8:30 p.m. A British scientist and others at Paphos, Cyprus, see a luminous circular object rise from the sea and waver back and forth before fading from sight directly overhead. (Sparks, p. 132; Good Above, p. 540)
May 10 — 10:45 p.m. Four employees of DuPont Corporation at the AEC’s Savannah River Laboratory near Jackson, South Carolina, see four disc-shaped objects approach, then two other discs pass high overhead from different directions. They are a luminous yellow-gold color and move at a high rate of speed. One of the discs approaches at such a low altitude that it must ascend to pass over some tall tanks at the facility. One witness says that the objects are weaving from left to right while continuing on a steady course. The case is investigated by the FBI and passed on to the Pentagon and the Atomic Energy Commission. (NICAP, “Objects Sighted near Vital Installation”; Sparks, p. 132; Nukes 84)
May 12 — 8:45 p.m. A UFO is seen by Walker AFB T/Sgt. Raymond Bare in a car in downtown Roswell, New Mexico. The object is blue-green in color, and its estimated altitude above the terrain is 20,000–30,000 feet. It appears to be about 40–50 miles distant over some low mountains east of Ruidosa. The object travels three times over approximately the same south-to-north / east-to-west, swaying, triangular course. Rate of speed cannot be precisely estimated but is faster than that of jet aircraft. Intensity of color brightness varies with the object’s altitude. The Air Force explains it as the planet Venus, but Venus is on the other side of the earth at the time. (NICAP, “High-Speed Object Maneuvers over Mountains”; Clark III 390–391; Sparks, p. 132)
May 13 — 8:55 p.m. Aeronautical engineer Donald R. Carr sees a meteor-like object descend over National City, California, flying a curving path to the northwest. At 9:25 p.m., Carr watches a similar object, seemingly returning from the north. (UFOEv, p. 4)
May 13 — 10:33 p.m. James Richardson and three other amateur astronomers (among them Cyril Thomas Wyche and Harry B. Mooney), set up telescopes at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, when they see a diamond formation of 4 oval, reddish-yellow or reddish-brown luminous objects nearly overhead. They disappear after 3 seconds moving through a 12° arc. The apparent size is a half dollar at arms length. They wobble in flight. (NICAP, “Diamond Formation of 4 Objects Observed by Astronomers”; Willy Smith, “Blue Book Pearls: Greenville, S.C.,” IUR 20, no. 3 (May/June 1995): 8–9, 24; Sparks, p. 133; Michael D. Swords, “Intelligent
Motions,” IUR 33, no. 1 (March 2010): 10, 15)
May 15 — USAF Intelligence Special Study Group Chief Lieut. Col. E. Sterling and Stefan Possony begin a five-week temporary duty trip to Europe to study Soviet missiles and aircraft. As a side project they study “flying saucers” that might be of Soviet origin. No documents have yet been found on this trip’s results. (Swords 151)
May 15 — 6:35 p.m. The pilot of an F-51 assigned to the 18th Fighter Bomber Group flying at 9,000 feet over North Korea encounters a silver object estimated to be 50 feet in diameter. It appears ahead of him to the right and begins climbing at 1,000 mph to the east, pauses, then descends into some haze. (Haines, Korea, pp. 39–40)
May 15 — 8:00 p.m. Two F-86E pilots of the 61st Fighter-Interceptor Wing are on a mission in North Korea when they see a silvery disc larger than a MiG aircraft 20 miles away and below them at 8,000–10,000 feet. Seen for only 3– 5 seconds, the object is traveling at 1,200–1,500 mph in a rolling maneuver. (Haines, Korea, p. 39)
Late May — 1:00–3:00 a.m. Royal Canadian Navy Commander George R. McFarlane is officer of the watch on the Canadian warship HMCS Iroquois in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Guam en route to Korea. He sees many different lights, some single, others in formations of 3, 5, or 6, appearing and disappearing instantly.
Suddenly one of the objects appears off the port bow at close range and low elevation. McFarlane and the signalman on watch see that the light is attached to a disc-shaped object with two dozen black windows running along its side. It hovers nearby for at least 15 minutes. (Good Need, pp. 142–143)
May 23 — After 11:00 p.m. Lockheed worker Orfeo Angelucci is driving home on Victory Boulevard from his job in Burbank, California, when he senses a force and sees a red, glowing UFO. After a while he begins to follow it, and after he crosses the Los Angeles River and turns onto Forest Lawn Drive, he gets to within 30 feet of it when it hovers. Just before it streaks away, two smaller green globes, 3 feet in diameter, shoot out of it and approach him. He hears a voice saying, “Don’t be afraid, Orfeo, we are friends.” This begins his contact with benevolent beings from other planets. (Orfeo Angelucci, The Secret of the Saucers, Amherst Press, 1955, pp. 1–15; Bryant and Helen Reeve, Flying Saucer Pilgrimage, Amherst Press, 1957, pp. 222–232; Clark III 127–129)
May 25 — 9:27 a.m. An Air Force captain in charge of the navigation section of Combat Crew Training School at Randolph AFB near San Antonio, Texas, his wife, and another pilot see a group of about 12 orange-white, tear- drop shaped lights in 3 groups of 4 moving from west to east at 2,000 mph and 10,000 feet altitude. They hear deep, soft intermittent noise. (Ruppelt, p. 140; Sparks, p. 134)
May 26 — 3:20 a.m. Ground radar alerts the crew of an F-94 Starfire interceptor jet over North Korea that an unidentified target is on its tail. The jet turns, locks onto the object with onboard radar at 21,000 feet and begins to close. Both the pilot and radar operator see a brilliant white light straight ahead. The UFO performs a steady climbing turn and accelerates away at a tremendous speed. The jet loses the object at a distance of 7,800 feet after 15 seconds of contact. (Haines, Korea, pp. 40–44)
May 28 — 1:45 p.m. Albuquerque, New Mexico, fire department employees Martin Romero and Don Atteberry see two circular objects, one shiny silver and the other orange or light brown, performing fast maneuvers on three different occasions over the course of an hour above the northeast part of the city. (NICAP, [Blue Book case documents]; Sparks, p. 135)
May 28 — 8:30–8:40 p.m. A green fireball about one-third the size of the full moon is seen in Albuquerque, New Mexico, from eight ground points and five aircraft. Lincoln LaPaz pinpoints the fall near Santa Fe. Around the same time, the crew of a Flying Tiger Line C-46 near Otto, New Mexico, sees a green fireball rise up and drop steeply down. (“2 Green Fireballs Seen by Many, LaPaz Reports,” Albuquerque Journal, May 29, 1952, p. 2)
May 28–29 — During a night refueling mission at 8:10 p.m., the crews of five USAF B-29 bombers see green spherical objects. The primary sighting takes place near Albuquerque, New Mexico, and involves three B-29s flying at 15,000 feet. Another sighting takes place around 11:30 p.m. about 10 miles southwest of Tulsa, Oklahoma. That crew is flying at 25,000 feet. Three hours later the final sighting takes place near Enid, Oklahoma, also with a B- 29 at 25,000 feet. The aircrews making these reports do not think the objects are meteorites. (NICAP, “Five B-29 Bomber Crews Observe Green Objects”; Sparks, p. 135)
May 30 — USAF Maj. William D. Leet, copilot on a C-54 transport mission at 8,500 feet near Oshima, Japan, sees a dark object hovering in clouds for 7 minutes. It disappears, speeding away in seconds. (NICAP, “C-54 Crew Encounters Round Black Object”; Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1952 January–May, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2000, pp. 82–83; Sparks, p. 136)
May 31 — About 4:00 a.m. Over Cheorwon, South Korea, several US soldiers see a bright UFO that looks like a falling star, except that it stops falling and begins to climb again. It then moves northeast at 150 mph, reverses course twice, then climbs at a 45° angle and fades from sight. One guard hears a pulsating sound. An F-94 attempts to intercept the brilliant white object, which takes clearly evasive maneuvers and pulls away at 30,000 feet. (NICAP, “Jerky Object Observed and Tracked on Radar”; Hynek UFO Report, pp. 87–90 ; Haines, Korea, pp. 63–64; Sparks, p. 136; Patrick Gross, “UFO US Military Reports, Korea, 1952”)
May 31 — Project Blue Book issues its Status Report #7. (US Air Force, Projects Grudge and Blue Book Reports 1–12,
NICAP, 1968, pp. 113–130)
May 31 — 9:30 p.m. Mr. R. Baits is on the beach at Derna, Libya, with three companions when he notices a soft orange- yellow light traveling soundlessly toward them from inland at great speed and in a straight line. Suddenly, as it reaches a point overhead, it swerves to the east over the town, gaining height. After a few seconds it moves to the south and begins zigzagging until it fades away into the background of stars. (Newcastle (UK) Evening Standard, June 13, 1952; Jan Aldrich)
June — Ruppelt has four officers, two airmen, and two civilians on his permanent Blue Book staff (including Lt. Anderson G. Flues, Robert M. Olsson, and Kerry Rothstien), as well as a number of scientific consultants, including Hynek. In the Pentagon, Maj. Dewey Fournet Jr. is a full-time Blue Book liaison. (Ruppelt, p. 140)
June — In the wake of mass public and governmental interest in UFOs kindled by the provocative Life magazine article, CIA intelligence experts Sidney N. Graybeal (Chief, Guided Missiles Branch, Weapons and Equipment Division, Office of Scientific Intelligence) and Irl D’Arcy Brent (Chief, Ground Branch, W&E Division, OSI) prepare a summary of the UFO subject for the CIA/OSI hierarchy based on the past several years of OSI intelligence (and OSI predecessor documents going back to ghost rockets of 1946) and mentioning sightings going back to the Bible. The possibility of swamp gas in Michigan as an explanation for UFOs is suggested by Brent (foreshadowing the Hynek swamp-gas fiasco in Michigan in 1966). This report has never been acknowledged or released by the CIA despite FOIA litigation. Its existence and contents are revealed in Brad Sparks’s interviews with Brent and Graybeal and other OSI officials in 1975–1976. (NICAP, “The 1952 Sighting Wave”)
June — Jet pilots allegedly discover the wreck of a flying disc on Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago, Norway. It is taken to Narvik, where it is identified as either a Russian or extraterrestrial device. Other variants of the legend claim it is a Nazi device or that it is actually discovered on Heligoland, Germany, in the North Sea. Nick Redfern suspects the story is planted by either Soviet or US intelligence. (“Auf Spitzbergen landete Fliegende Untertasse,” Saarbrücker Zeitung, June 28, 1952; Hessische Nachrichten, July 26, 1954; E. W. Grenfell, “First Report on the Captured Flying Saucer,” Sir! September 1954, pp. 16–17, 56–57; Le Lorrain, October 15, 1954; Verdens Gang, December 19, 1954; Condon, pp. 90–91; William Steinman and Wendelle C. Stevens, UFO Crash at Aztec, UFO Photo Archives, 1987, pp. 353–366; Ole Jonny Brænne, “Legend of the Spitsbergen Saucer,” IUR 17, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1992): 14–20; Kremlin 45–46)
June — Sunset. In Tombstone, Arizona, Navy Lieut. Cmdr. John C. Williams, his wife Josephine, and a guest see a “huge circular object” flying toward them from the direction of Tucson. Suddenly it stops in mid-flight, hovers, then reverses direction and retraces its course. A few seconds later it returns, stops gain, and appears to oscillate and tilt from one side to the other. Again it reverses its course, repeating everything 2–3 more times. (UFOEv, p. 31)
Early June — 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. Violet M. Winstead and her husband are driving in a narrow valley somewhere between Charleston and White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, when they see a number of lights on a bridge crossing the valley. They begin blinking off, one by one. When they get to the bridge, they see no street lights. (Violet M. Winstead, Letter, IUR 9, no.1 (Jan./Feb. 1984): 3)
June 1 — 2:40 a.m. A cargo ship anchored at the wharf in Port-Gentil, Gabon, observes a mysterious object fly from behind the city, make a double loop, pass over the roadstead, and then dive toward the sea. (ClearIntent, p. 119)
June 1 — Morning. The chief of a radar test section for Hughes Aircraft Company tracks an unidentified target coming across the San Gabriel Mountains north of Los Angeles, California. It is moving at 180 mph toward Santa Monica at an altitude of 11,000 feet. The object suddenly triples its speed to 550 mph, turns, and climbs over Los Angeles at 35,000 feet per minute. The target then levels out for a few seconds, goes into a high-speed dive, and levels out again at 55,000 feet. They lose the blip somewhere near Riverside. (NICAP, “Radar Tracks Object Which Suddenly Climbs to 55,000 Feet”; Ruppelt, pp. 141–143)
June 4 — Air Force Secretary Finletter issues a press release about his May UFO briefing, saying, “No concrete evidence has yet reached us either to prove or disprove the existence of the so-called flying saucers. There remain, however, a number of sightings that the Air Force investigators have been unable to explain. As long as this is true, the Air Force will continue to study flying saucer reports.” (Keyhoe, FS from OS, p. 51)
June 6 — 8:42 a.m. Flight Sgt. Kenneth Dudley Smith from the 77th RAAF Squadron at Kimpo Air Base [now Gimpo International Airport] in Seoul, Korea, observes a dull silver object in the shape of a coin performing spinning and tumbling maneuvers for 4 minutes at 345 mph. Flight Sgt. Kenneth Fawner also sees the UFO for 30 seconds. ([Blue Book case documents]; Sparks, p. 137)
June 6 — Battelle issues its second status report on Project Stork to ATIC. It describes a “tentative” data sheet for observers to fill out, a more detailed coding scheme, an example of an IBM punch card that will be used, and plans for statistical studies. (“Seven Status Reports for Project Stork,” CUFON; “Seven Status Reports for Project Stork, Part 2,” CUFON; Clark III 929)
June 8 — 10:50 a.m. Four flat, round, shiny objects in a diamond formation are seen in Albuquerque, New Mexico, from the ground by Mr. and Mrs. J. D. Markland. The objects are approximately 15,000 feet in altitude and traveling 300 mph. There is no audible sound. They are first seen at about 60° above the horizon to the north and are traveling to the southwest at approximately 240°. (NICAP, “Diamond Formation of Flat Objects Observed”; Sparks, p. 138; Michael D. Swords, “Intelligent Motions,” IUR 33, no. 1 (March 2010): 10, 15)
June 8 — During a launch of a pibal balloon at Calgary, Alberta, a silvery ellipse with a sharp outline reflecting sunlight and an aspect ratio of 8:1 crosses the field of vision of the observer’s theodolite. (Jan Aldrich; Project Magnet Case V)
June 9 — Astronomer Donald H. Menzel writes in Time magazine that most UFOs are light reflections caused by ice crystals, refractions, or temperature inversions. (“An Astronomer’s Explanation: Those Flying Saucers,” Time, June 9, 1952; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1952, June–July 20th, The Author, 1986, p. 9)
June 11 — 6:44 p.m. Two round objects, dark blue with gray centers, are seen moving southwest to northwest for 40 seconds at 500 mph and 6,000 feet altitude several miles east of O’Hare Airport in Chicago, Illinois. One passes the other before disappearing. (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1952, June–July 20th, The Author, 1986, pp. 10–11)
June 13 — 1:00 a.m. M. Veillot and M. Damiens, air traffic control operators at Paris–Le Bourget Airport, France, watch a prominent orange-red light hover in the sky for about one hour. Eventually it begins moving and crosses the sky southwest of the airport, accelerating rapidly. The light is also seen by M. Navarri, the pilot of an approaching Air France plane. (Michel, Truth About FS, 165–166)
June 15 — 8:32 a.m. A meteorological assistant on reserve army maneuvers sees a large silver disc in the sky southeast of Halifax, Nova Scotia. It moves southwest for 30 seconds at an altitude of 5,000–8,000 feet and then rises and merges in 2–5 seconds with altocumulus clouds at 11,000–12,000 feet. Its diameter is about 100 feet and speed at least 800 mph. (Good Above, p. 184)
June 15 — 4:20 p.m. A round shiny object is seen over Gordonsville, Virginia. At 4:25 p.m., the crew of a commercial airliner reports a silver sphere over Richmond, Virginia. At 4:33 p.m., a Marine fighter jet is scrambled from Marine Corps Base Quantico in Prince William County, Virginia, and attempts to intercept a target south of Gordonsville but fails and returns to base. At 5:43 p.m., an Air Force fighter attempts to intercept the same shiny sphere but after reaching 35,000 feet turns back. At 7:35 p.m., a UFO emitting a golden glow is seen over Blackstone, Virginia. Fighter jets from Langley AFB in Hampton, Virginia, are scrambled, but the object is gone by the time they get there at 8:05 p.m. (Ruppelt, pp. 194–195)
June 15 — 11:50 p.m. Edward Duke, a former Navy radar technician, sees an unidentified cigar-shaped object in the vicinity of Standiford Field [now Louisville International Airport], Louisville, Kentucky. It has a light on either side of the fuselage and a reddish hue on the trailing end. The object appears to be moving at about 400–500 mph and maneuvers around in several directions for 15 minutes, then descends and flies away to the northeast. ([Blue Book document]; Sparks, p. 138)
June 17 — 1:28 a.m. A USAF F-94 pilot sees a light like a bright star cross the nose of his jet at blinding speed over Cape Cod, Massachusetts, for 15 seconds. (Sparks, p. 138)
June 17 — Astronomer Donald Menzel writes in an article in Look magazine about how he creates temperature-inversion UFOs in his laboratory. (Donald H. Menzel, “The Truth about Flying Saucers,” Look 16, no. 13 (June 17, 1952): 35–39; NICAP, “The Truth about Flying Saucers, Look Magazine”)
June 17 — 7:30–10:20 p.m. Many witnesses at McChord AFB [now Joint Base Lewis-McChord] south of Tacoma, Washington, see 5–6 yellowish discs, tracked by radar and theodolite. Several F-94s are scrambled. (NICAP, “1– 5 Silver Yellow Objects Stop and Start”; Sparks, p. 138)
June 17 — 8:45 p.m.. Orville Foster, a US Weather Bureau observer at the Pueblo (Colorado) Memorial Airport, watches a UFO through the bureau’s theodolite. It circles leisurely for 10 minutes, then disappears toward the northeast. (“‘Flying Saucer’ Sighted at Pueblo,” Leadville (Colo.) Herald-Democrat, June 18, 1952; Project 1947, “UFO Reports, 1952”)
Mid-June — Ruppelt briefs Maj. Gen. John A. Samford and his staff, two Navy captains from ONI, and “some people I can’t name.” The meeting is contentious. One USAF colonel argues that Blue Book’s investigation is biased against the ETH, which launches an emotional debate. Ruppelt is directed to “take further steps to obtain positive identification” of UFO reports. (Ruppelt, pp. 147–149)
June 18 — 5:00 p.m. USAF Capt. Erie P. Ashton and 2nd Lt. Clifton Ashley, while flying a B-25 about 100 miles east of March AFB [now March Air Reserve Base] in southern California, sight a silver object at approximately 11,000 feet in altitude off their left wing. The object is longer than it is wide and is in sight for about 39 minutes. (NICAP, “UFO Paces B-25”; Sparks, p. 138)
June 18 — According to Sgt. Richard Doty’s 1980s disinformation, the living alien retrieved in 1949 (EBE-1) and kept at Los Alamos, New Mexico, dies of unknown causes. (Clark III 364)
June 19 —2:37 a.m. At Goose Bay AFB [now CFB Goose Bay], Labrador, radar men pick up a UFO track. 2nd Lt. A’Gostino and others outside see a strange, red-lighted object come in over the field. The radar blip suddenly enlarges, as if the device has banked, exposing a larger surface to the radar beam. The watching airmen see the red light wobble or flutter. After a moment the light turns white and quickly disappears. Apparently, the unknown craft has gone into a steep climb. Keyhoe assumes the radar and visual sightings are simultaneous, but Blue Book records indicate they are separate. (NICAP, “Target Suddenly Enlarges”; Keyhoe, FS from OS, p. 52; Sparks, p. 139; Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman, The Canadian UFO Report, Dundurn Press, 2006, pp. 55–56)
June 19 — 1:30 p.m. Four silvery UFOs are seen by many witnesses in Tacoma, Washington, flying silently at a high altitude. Unofficial sources report that the objects are tracked on radar at McChord AFB [now Joint Base Lewis- McChord] in Tacoma and jets are scrambled. (Tacoma (Wash.) Reporter, June 20, 1952; Shoot 9; Michael D. Swords, “Intelligent Motions,” IUR 33, no. 1 (March 2010): 11, 15)
June 19 — 6:00 p.m. Army Capt. Harold Hermann and his wife see a round, silver UFO speeding across the sky at Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania. (“‘Flying Saucers’ Sighted,” New York Times, June 24, 1952, p. 26)
June 19 — 9:50 p.m. A former Army Air Force ground crew member sees a UFO flying in a swirling motion over the backyard of his home in Trenton, New Jersey. (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1952, June–July 20th, The Author, 1986, p. 17)
June 20 — 3:03 p.m. A flight of four US Marine Corps captains and pilots (Bobbie Foster, Richard Francisco, Teddy L. Pittman, and Ronnie A. McDonald) of F4U-4B Corsair fighters with the 7302nd Squadron over central Korea see a silvery-white object passing below them, banking into a left turn. As the object circles around, Foster dives toward the object, which appears to be 10–20 feet in diameter. It flies away at an estimated speed of 1,000 mph and disappears toward friendly lines. (NICAP, “F4U-4B Corsairs Encounter Circling UFO”; Sparks, p. 139)
June 21 — 12:30 p.m. T/Sgt. Howard Davis, flight engineer of a B-29 bomber flying at 8,000 feet altitude near Kelly AFB [now Kelly Field] in San Antonio, Texas, sees a small, flat object with a sharply pointed front and rounded rear. It is white with a dark blue center and red rim and trails sparks as it dives past the B-29 at a distance of 500 feet in one second. (NICAP, “B-29 Encounters Flat Object with Pointed Front”; Sparks, p. 140)
June 21 — 10:58 p.m. A Ground Observer Corps spotter at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, sees a small (6–8 inches in diameter), slow-moving UFO near the AEC plant. GCI radar obtains the target, but it fades from the scope. An F-97 on combat air patrol engages in a “dogfight” with the object, which makes “ramming attacks” at the aircraft. It blinks until it speeds away. (NICAP, “Radar Visual near AEC Plant”; Ruppelt, p. 43; Sparks, p. 139)
June 22 — 10:45 p.m. Two US Marine sergeants see a 4-foot diameter orange object dive at a runway from the north, dropping from 800 to 100 feet altitude over the west end of the runway at Pyeongtaek military base, South Korea, shooting 2–5-foot red flames. It then heads west at about 300–450 mph for 2–3 seconds, hovers briefly over a hill, turns 180° in 45–60 seconds, flashes, heads east a half mile, flashes again, and blinks out. No sound. (Hynek UFO Report, pp. 82–83; Sparks, p. 140)
June 23 — 1:30 a.m. USAF ADC radar operators Lt. A. N. Robinson Jr. and Airman Ray H. Foote, plus 5 other controllers, officers, and maintenance technicians at Kirksville Air Force Station in Missouri, track a hard target with a clear sharp return about the size of a B-29. It suddenly appears 85 miles north-northwest of the station, moving at a constant speed of about 3,600+ mph on a straight path for about 125 miles for 2 minutes. Then it vanishes. A second target appears at 1:35 a.m. (NICAP, “Seven ADC Men Track 3,600 MPH Target”; Michael D. Swords, “Case Missing,” IUR 19, no. 6 (Nov./Dec. 1994): 20; Sparks, p. 141)
June 23 — 3:30 a.m. Secretary Martha Milligan sees a bullet-shaped object emitting a burnt-orange exhaust fly straight and level over Oak Ridge, Tennessee. (NICAP, “June 23, 1952: Oak Ridge, Tenn.”; Sparks, p. 141)
June 23 — 10:00 a.m. National Guard Lt. Col. Oren Laramore Depp [Johnny Depp’s grandfather] sees two objects looking like giant soap bubbles reflecting yellow and lavender colors flying in line over Owensboro, Kentucky. (Sparks, p. 141)
June 23 — 4:05 pm. Airport weather observer Rex Thompson sees a round disc with a metallic shine flash and flutter like a flipped coin for 5–7 minutes over Geiger Field [now Spokane International Airport], Spokane, Washington. (NICAP, “June 23, 1952: Spokane, Wash.”; Sparks, p. 140)
June 23 — 9:00 p.m. 2d Lt. K. Thompson sees a very large light flying straight and level for 10 minutes at McChord AFB [now Joint Base Lews-McChord] near Tacoma, Washington. (Sparks, p. 140; Michael D. Swords, “Intelligent Motions,” IUR 33, no. 1 (March 2010): 11, 15)
June 24 — The first issue of Ouranos is published by the Commission Internationale d’Enquêtes sur les Soucoupes Volantes, in Paris. (Ouranos, no. 1)
June 25 — Wilbert B. Smith writes an “Interim Report on Project Magnet,” in which he states: “If, as appears evident, the flying saucers are emissaries from some other civilization, and actually do operate no magnetic principles, we have before us the fact that we have missed something in magnetic theory but have a good indication of the direction in which to look for the missing quantities.” (Good Above, p. 185)
June 25 — 8:30 p.m. Mrs. Daniel Norbury and Lawrence Matheis see a bright yellow-white, egg-shaped object, sometimes with a red tail, make seven circles over Chicago, Illinois. (NICAP, “June 25, 1952: Chicago, Illinois”; Sparks, p. 141)
June 27–30 — Ruppelt visits McChord AFB in Tacoma, Washington, to look into recent sightings there. Capt. Harnnagy of the 4704 Air Defense Wing Intelligence tells him that the objects are always seen in the northern sky around 8:00 p.m. (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1952, June–July 20th, The Author, 1986, pp. 23–24)
June 28 — 1:20 p.m. Two observers at the Cargo Air Service hangar at Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque, New Mexico, see two silvery discs high in the sky and moving to the south. They noiselessly climb nearly vertically at high speed, one going south-southeast, the other heading almost due east. The observation lasts 30 seconds. (J. Allen Hynek, THE UFO Experience, Ballantine ed., 1974, pp. 68–69; Sparks, p. 142)
June 29 — 5:45 p.m. Three Air Force police officers of the 83rd Air Base Squadron at O’Hare Airport in Chicago spot a flat, oval object as it hovers between two radio towers about 7 miles away. It is bright silver in color, encircled by white haze, and appears about 30 feet in diameter. During the next 45 minutes the object moves to the southwest and then back north. It accelerates instantaneously to a speed faster than a jet fighter. ([Blue Book documents]; Sparks, p. 143)
June 30 — Ruppelt says that by this time there is a split in opinion in the military about what to do about UFOs. One group assumes that UFOs are interplanetary, and information must be withheld at a top-secret level. “The enthusiasm of this group took a firm hold in the Pentagon, at Air Defense Command headquarters, on the Research and Development Board, and many other agencies.” (Ruppelt, pp. 152–153)
Summer — Denis Plunkett forms a British branch of Albert K. Bender’s International Flying Saucer Bureau in Bristol, England. When Bender closes down IFSB in late September 1953, the branch becomes the British Flying Saucer Bureau, with his son E. L. Plunkett as president. It publishes Flying Saucer News from Spring 1953 to Spring 1956 and Flying Saucer News Bulletin from February 1955 through 1957. (Flying Saucer News, no. 1 (Spring 1953); Flying Saucer News Bulletin, no. 1 (February 1955))
Summer — Night. Radar at MacDill AFB in Tampa, Florida, picks up a target at 40,000 feet flying at 460 mph. A nearby B-29 volunteers to investigate, searching until midnight. The pilot, a USAF colonel, finally reports a visual sighting of the UFO, flying at 40,000 feet and 250 mph and appearing as a glowing white light shaped like a football. The object changes course and disappears at high speed. (UFOEv, p. 25)
July — Edgar Jarrold begins the Australian Flying Saucer Bureau in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia’s first civilian UFO organization, following his personal observation of two fast-moving yellow lights in the sky over Fairfield, New South Wales. (“Saucers on His Mind,” Sydney (N.S.W.) Morning Gazette, February 2, 1954, p. 7; Clark III 632)
July — Afternoon. A man driving a car near Schenectady, New York, sees an oblong object hovering nearby. A gondola lowers from the object and a bunch of “Navy officers in white hats” rush to the windows. All are wearing huge dark glasses. The gondola goes back up, and three smaller UFOs appear and go inside the bigger one. (Center for UFO Studies, HUMCAT Index 1952–1953, p. 10; Clark III 267)
July — The administration and faculty of Ohio Northern University, in Ada, Ohio, announce the formation of Project A: Investigation of Phenomena, saying that members of the engineering, pharmacy, law, and liberal arts colleges will examine the evidence for UFOs under the direction of Dean Warren L. Hickman. Project A personnel seek reports from the public and collect newspaper clippings. The project receives a disappointing 54 completed
questionnaires, far lower than the 200 they would like for a scientific sampling. However, they do estimate that about 20% involve “unnatural phenomena.” After unsuccessful attempts to obtain reports from Civilian Saucer Investigation in Los Angeles and other groups, the university closes the project down in mid-1954. (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1952, August, The Author, 1986, p. 3; Clark III 916; Curt Collins, “Project A: The Short Life of a UFO Study,” September 21, 2018)
July 1 — J. Robert Moskin‘s article appears in Look magazine. It features Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg’s declaration that “we cannot afford to be complacent” about UFOs. Keyhoe says that the article has upset the “silence group” in the Pentagon. (J. Robert Moskin, “Hunt for the Flying Saucer,” Look. July 1, 1952, pp. 37–41; Keyhoe, FS from OS, pp. 52–53)
July 1 — 7:25 a.m. A Ground Observer Corps spotter sees a UFO headed southwest across Boston, Massachusetts. Two F-94s are scrambled. Erwin W. Nelson and his wife at Lynn, Massachusetts, notice two vapor trails from the climbing jets, look around, and see in the west a bright silver “cigar shaped object about six times as long as it was wide” heading over Boston at a very high altitude. An identical UFO is following the first some distance back. No vapor trails are visible. The witnesses watch the F-94s search back and forth far below the UFOs. At 7:30, USAF Capt. Robert E. Metcalf, petroleum officer for the 6520th Test Support Wing, and USAF air policemen M/Sgt James Stiner and M/Sgt Joseph R. Bosh, 6520th Air Police Squadron, at Hanscom Field,
Bedford, Massachusetts, see the two jets, look for what they are intercepting, and see to the east a 100-foot-long silvery ellipse “fatter than a cigar” traveling southwest. At two points, the object seems to hover, then continues at about 40,000 feet. The object’s path intersects contrails of the two jets heading southeast. Metcalf loses sight of the object on his way to the tower after a few minutes, then sees it again at about 7:40 a.m., noting it has increased distance “considerably,” but finally loses sight of it at the tower. ([Blue Book document]; UFOEv, p. 160; Ruppelt, pp. 150–151; Sparks, p. 144)
July 1 — 8:40–9:15 a.m. Two silvery objects move south along the East Coast and hover near Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, for about 5 minutes at 50,000 feet. As radar at Fort Monmouth detects the objects, they put on a burst of speed and head southwest toward Washington, D.C., confirmed visually. At about 12:00 noon, a physics professor at George Washington University in D.C. sees a grayish UFO hovering and arcing back and forth across the sky for about 8 minutes. He guesses about 500 people are watching the object. (NICAP, “Objects Tracked at 50,000ʹ, G/V”; Ruppelt, pp. 151–152; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1952, June–July 20th, The Author, 1986, pp. 36– 37; Sparks, p. 144)
July 2 — 11:10 a.m. As he is driving on a highway seven miles north of Tremonton, Utah, US Navy Chief Petty Officer Delbert C. Newhouse and his wife see a strange object in the sky. Newhouse pulls the car to the side of the road, gets out, and watches 12–14 UFOs at about 10,000 feet. Looking like “two pie pans, one inverted on top of the other,” they are clustered in a loose formation, “milling around.” He takes about 75 seconds worth of film through the telephoto lens of his 16mm movie camera, though the objects have receded a bit to shiny points of light. At one point a single object leaves the pack, heading east, and Newhouse holds the camera still so the UFO crosses the field of view. He repeats the procedure 3-4 times. Blue Book obtains the film and sends it to the USAF Photo- Reconnaissance Laboratory and the Navy’s Photo Interpretation Laboratory. Both analyses eliminate the possibility of aircraft or birds. (NICAP, “The Tremonton, Utah / Newhouse Color Film”; “Delbert Newhouse UFO Footage, 1952, Tremonton, Utah,” parkerdonaldmusic YouTube channel, September 29, 2012; Ruppelt, pp. 220–222; UFOEv, pp. 88, 112; Hynek UFO Report, pp. 235–239; Condon, pp. 418–426; “Turner on Tremonton,”
IUR 3, no. 5 (May 1978): 6; Swords 149; Clark III 1203–1204; Kevin D. Randle, “Newhouse’s Tremonton, Utah Movie Revisited,” A Different Perspective, December 12, 2013; Patrick Gross, “Tremonton, Utah, UFO Color Film of July 2, 1952”)
July 3 — 4:15 a.m. A witness on the Manitou Beach Highway near Rome Center, Michigan, watches two circular lights about 20 feet in diameter flying horizontally at tremendous speed at only a few hundred feet altitude. (NICAP, “July 3, 1952: Selfridge AFB, Mich.”; Sparks, p. 145)
July 3 — 11:50 p.m. Mrs. J. D. Arbuckle sees two bright pastel-green discs fly straight and level very fast for 6 seconds over Chicago, Illinois. The next day the Air Force public information office at O’Hare Airport says it has received 16 reports of UFOs over Chicago in the past week. An Air Force spokesman says that jet patrols are on alert 24 hours a day. (Sparks, p. 145; “Deny Reports of ‘Saucers’ Alerts,” Waterloo (Iowa) Courier, July 4, 1952, p. 1)
July 5 — 6:00 a.m. Four commercial pilots flying at 9,000 feet above the Hanford atomic site in Washington State observe a disc just below a deck of wispy clouds directly above their C-46. The witnesses are Capt. John Baldwin, Capt. George Robertson, H. D. Shenkel, and Steven Summers. Baldwin says that the disc stands still at first and then seems to back away and change shape, becoming flat, gaining speed, and then disappearing. Robertson says “we couldn’t pick it up on our radar. We reversed our course and went back, but we couldn’t spot it again.” (NICAP, “C-46 Crew Observe Disc over AEC Plant”; Hynek UFO Report, p. 53; Sparks, p. 145; Swords 149)
July 5 — 7:58 p.m. Oklahoma State Patrolman Arthur Myers Hamilton is flying five miles south-southeast of Norman, Oklahoma, in a State Patrol airplane when he sees three dark discs 4–8 miles away at 6,000 feet hover for 15 seconds then fly away, silhouetted against a dark cloud. (NICAP, “Three Dark Discs Sighted from State Patrol Airplane”; Sparks, p. 145)
July 7 — Battelle issues its third status report on Project Stork to ATIC. It mentions that Hynek has been consulted on the observer’s data sheet, suggested some changes, and is in the process of interviewing astronomers about any potential sightings made by them. The group has studied and coded UFO reports from 1948. (“Seven Status Reports for Project Stork,” CUFON)
July 8 — A commissionaire on duty at an army depot in Ottawa, Ontario, sees a bright orange light about a quarter size of the full moon travel from south to north, turn, and travel south again. (Jan Aldrich; Project Magnet Case X)
July 9 — 12:45 p.m. USAF Maj. Claude K. Griffin is driving one mile north of Colorado Springs, Colorado, when he sees a luminous white object shaped like an airfoil moving slowly and erratically like a corkscrew. He estimates its size at 100 feet, distance at 15–20 miles, and altitude at 30,000 feet, heading northwest. Griffin stops the car to watch for 12 minutes. USAF Maj. E. R. Hayden and his wife come out of their house and look at the object in a 4x rifle scope. He describes it as rectangular, silver on one side, and black on the other. It flutters as it moves slowly north-northwest above 20,000 feet 20 miles away. It gains altitude and gradually diminishes to a black dot, then accelerates to a high speed and disappears. ([Blue Book documents]; Sparks, p. 145)
July 9 — 5:30 p.m. Farmer John Mittl watches an aluminum, oval-shaped object silently change direction and attitude above his farm 2 miles east of Kutztown, Pennsylvania, finally tipping on end and departing. He manages to take three photos. (Claude Falkstrom and Curt Collins, “John Mittl: From Unsolved UFOs to Astral Encounters,” The Saucers That Time Forgot,” July 13, 2018)
July 10 — 8:18 p.m. Capt. James E. Lundy and First Officer Leon Blanks are flying a National Airlines C-60 airplane 15 miles south of Quantico, Virginia, when they see an object resembling an aircraft landing light. The object becomes brighter as it approaches from the north. It then performs a climbing turn away from the aircraft and its appearance changes, resembling a light emitted by a red flare. Visible for 10 minutes, it is flying too fast for any known aircraft. (NICAP, “Light Maneuvers near C-60 Airliner”; Sparks, p. 146)
July 10 — Night. A Marine pilot on night maneuvers near Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, spots two green objects shoot straight across the sky at terrific speed at a high altitude. (“Radar Sees ‘Saucers,’ AF Investigating,” July 22, 1952, pp. 1A, 6A)
July 10 — Night. Forty crew members of the Canadian destroyer HMCS Crusader off Korea see two shiny discs and track them on radar. The radar fix places them at 10,560 feet altitude and 7 miles distant. (NICAP, “Naval Destroyer Observes Two Discs / Tracks on Radar”)
July 11 — The Air Technical Liaison Office, Directorate of Intelligence for the Far East Air Force, prepares Intelligence Report #29-52, detailing Air Force, Navy, and Marine radar UFO reports for 1950–1952 in Korea and Japan. (Capt. Charles J. Malven, “FLYOBRPT: Japan/Korea Area,” IR-29-52, July 11, 1952)
July 12 — 8:42 p.m. O’Hare AFB weather observer Capt. W. J. Shea and a civilian, Jane Morrison, watch three lights, one main red light with smaller white lights on each side, traveling 500 mph at 40,000–50,000 feet over Montrose Beach, Chicago, Illinois, from the west-northwest. They accelerate to the south and make a 180° turn heading north-northwest, then disappear. The UFO is seen by 400+ people, with 14 others making reports to the 4706th Defense Wing located at O’Hare Airport. (Ruppelt, p. 153; Sparks, pp. 146–147)
July 12 — 9:04 p.m. Two USAF F-86 Sabre jets with the 62nd Flight Squadron are flying at 22,000 feet on a routine training mission (or on a scramble mission) over Arlington Heights, Illinois. Capt. Robert W. Casey Jr., after coming out of a right turn, sees an oblong yellowish lighted object with an exhaust moving in a straight course about 15 miles away south of Elgin, Illinois, at 22,000 feet traveling at 800 mph. The F-86 pursues at maximum speed, but the object pulls away. Both pilots hear a strange radio transmission on their restricted communications channel during the pursuit saying the name of the pursuit pilot, Casey, in an ethereal “ghost-like” monotone.
Apparently, this is a prank by Casey’s fighter pilot buddies at the 62nd who are monitoring his channel, though this is later officially denied by the 62nd. (NICAP, “F-86 on Scramble Mission / Strange Radio Transmission”; Sparks, p. 147)
July 13 — 4:00 a.m. Capt. William Bruen, piloting National Airline Flight 611 heading north from Jacksonville, Florida, sees a round ball of bluish-white light about 60 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., hovering to the west then ascending to the airliner’s altitude of 11,000 feet, then parallel course off left wing at about 2 miles distance. It takes off upwards at 1,000 mph when Bruen turns on all aircraft lights. (NICAP, “Light Ascends, Paces Aircraft, Takes Off Vertically”; Hynek UFO Report, pp. 90–91; Sparks, p. 148)
July 14 — The Ground Observer Corps expands into Operation Skywatch, consisting of 750,000 volunteers aged 7 to 86 years old working around the clock in shifts at more than 16,000 posts and 73 filter centers to detect a sneak
attack against the United States. The expansion follows an Army announcement from a few weeks earlier that antiaircraft guns and personnel are on continuous duty in key areas. (Radomes.org, “Ground Observer Corps,” January 31, 2001; Shoot 21–22)
July 14 — 9:12 p.m. Some 8,000 feet above the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland/Virginia, Capt. William B. Nash and copilot First Officer William H. Fortenberry, flying a Pan American Airways DC-4, see six crimson dots at 30°. The dots are streaking in their direction like tracer bullets. As they get closer, they resolve into reddish-orange circles, about 100 feet in diameter and 15 feet thick, with sharply defined edges. Nash says they are holding a “narrow echelon formation.” When they are nearly underneath the aircraft, “they flipped on edge, the sides to the left of us going up and the glowing surfaces facing right. While all were in the edgewise position, the last five slid over and past the leader so that the echelon was now tail foremost.” Then they all flip over again into a flat attitude. Two new, brighter UFOs join the formation, and the lights of all eight objects blink out then come on again. They all speed westward (Nash estimates 6,000–12,000 mph) and climb in a graceful 45° arc. The entire sighting lasts only 15 seconds. Possible corroboration comes from a sighting in Camden, New Jersey, although the date is uncertain. (Wikipedia, “Nash-Fortenberry UFO sighting”; “Miami Pilots Spot 8 Saucers Flying in Formation,” Miami (Fla.) Herald, July 16, 1952, pp. 1A, 8A; NICAP, “Nash / Fortenberry Case”; Sparks, p. 150; William B. Nash and William H. Fortenberry, “We Flew Above Flying Saucers,” True, October 1952, pp. 65, 110–112; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, p.
47; Clark III 791; Good Above, pp. 269–270; “The Pilot’s Tale,” Saturday Night Uforia; Swords 149–150; Shoot 22–24; Michael D. Swords, “Classic Cases from the APRO Files,” IUR 24, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 21–22; Thomas Tulien, “The 1952 Nash/Fortenberry Sighting Revisited,” IUR 27, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 20–23, 27–28, reprinted in
Project 1947; Michael D. Swords, “Intelligent Motions,” IUR 33, no. 1 (March 2010): 11, 15)
July 15 — The Lorenzens publish the first issue of the APRO Bulletin. (APRO Bulletin 1, no. 1 (July 1952))
Mid-July — Ruppelt says that rumors persist that the Air Force is braced for an expected invasion by UFOs. “Had these rumormongers been at ATIC in mid-July they would have thought that the invasion was in full swing.” He talks to a scientist “from an agency that I can’t name” about the build-up of UFO reports. From his study of reports, the scientist predicts that “within the next few days they’re going to blow up and you’re going to have the granddaddy of all UFO sightings. The sighting will occur in Washington or New York, probably Washington.” Brad Sparks identifies the scientist as Stefan T. Possony, acting chief of the AFOIN Special Study Group and adviser to Gen. John A. Samford. (Ruppelt, pp. 154–155, 157; NICAP, “The 1952 Sighting Wave”)
July 16 — 9:35 a.m. US Coast Guard photographer Seaman Shell R. Alpert sees several bright lights through a window screen (no glass) from his position inside the photo lab at Coast Guard Air Station Salem [now Winter Island Marine Park], Massachusetts, while cleaning a camera. He watches them for 5–6 seconds, calls out to Hospitalman 1st Class Thomas E. Flaherty from sick bay to see them. The objects dim then brighten suddenly. Alpert grabs a camera and films 4 roughly elliptical irregular blobs of light in formation through the screen, on Super XX cut film 4-by-5-inch format. The lights disappear suddenly in a flash. The photo is explained as showing reflections of light sources from inside the building, but this ignores the fact that the window is open, and the camera is not pointed through glass. (UFOEv, p. 88; Sparks, p. 151; Joe Nyman and Barry Greenwood, “The July 1952 Coast Guard Photo Revisited,” IUR 26, no. 4 (Winter 2001–2002): 3–5, 25–30; Michael D. Lampen, “Mystery Alpert Objects,” IUR 27, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 27; “The Photographer’s Tale,” Saturday Night Uforia, December 3, 2012)
July 16 — 9:00 p.m. Paul R. Hill, an aeronautical research engineer, is watching the sky with his future wife, Frances Hoback, on Chesapeake Avenue (near LaSalle Avenue) in Hampton, Virginia, when he notices two amber- colored lights coming in over Hampton Roads from the south at 500 mph. They slow down and make a U turn, moving side by side until they revolve around each other at a high rate of speed in a tight circle 200–300 feet in diameter. A third UFO comes racing up from the direction of Virginia Beach and falls in several hundred feet below the other two, making a V formation. A fourth UFO comes in from up the James River and joins the group, which heads south at 500 mph. “Their ability to make tight circling turns was amazing.” Around 9:03 p.m., the four UFOs have moved out of sight to the south. (NICAP, “Two Pairs of Objects Maneuver Overhead”; [Blue Book documents]; UFOEv, p. 57; Sparks, p. 150)
July 17 — 6:30 p.m. A woman leaving Yarmouth Harbour, Nova Scotia, on the SS Yarmouth watches seven silvery objects in an inverted triangular formation for 2 minutes. They hover momentarily, descend slowly, and disappear. (Chris Rutkowski, Canada’s UFOs: Declassified, August Night, 2022, pp. 268–269)
July 17 or 18 — 10:10 p.m. T/Sgt. Thurman C. Mahone and A/3c Gene A. Jennings at Lockbourne AFB [now Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base] in Lockbourne, Ohio, see an amber-colored, elliptical-shaped object with
a small flame at the rear, periodically increasing in brightness. It moves swiftly, giving off a resonant beating sound. (NICAP, “July 18, 1952: Lockbourne, Ohio”; Sparks, p. 151)
July 18 — Early morning. American Airlines pilot Capt. Paul L. Carpenter, First Officer George Fell, and Flight Engineer Quilici watch several dull-red objects with a “yellowish tinge” speeding around in the air at an altitude of 25,000– 30,000 feet near Denver, Colorado, during a non-stop flight from Los Angeles to Chicago. A maximum of three objects are seen at one time over a 2-minute period. Carpenter says they seem to be about 100 miles away. The first object is moving south by southeast. One minute after it disappears, two more come into view going westward and another one eastward. “The two traveling westward disappeared about two seconds then reappeared traveling eastward.” (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1952, June–July 20th, The Author, 1986, p. 60)
July 18 — Capt. Edward Ruppelt tells the press in Dayton, Ohio, that ground radar has tracked UFOs at speeds of 1,500– 2,000 mph, that jet fighters scrambled to intercept them have failed, and that “persons making these reports actually see something in the sky,” but the Air Force does not know what they are. (“‘Saucer’ Sightings Spur AF’s Drive to End Mystery,” Dayton (Ohio) Journal Herald, July 18, 1952, pp. 1, 10; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1952, June–July 20th, The Author, 1986, p. 66)
July 18 — 6:10 p.m. André Frégnale is hiking near Lac Chauvet, Puy-de-Dôme, France, when he sees a disc flying west to east in a straight line at constant speed. He immediately takes two photos when the object is at its largest apparent size, then two others when it is moving away to his left. It is in view for 50 seconds. (“Une soucoupe volante,” Le Méridional, July 25, 1952, pp. 1, 8; Pierre Guérin, “A Scientific Analysis of Four Photographs of a Flying Disk near Lac Chauvet (France),” Journal of Scientific Exploration 8, no. 4 (1994): 447–469; Alain Delmon, “Les Cas Solides: Lac Chauvet, France, 1952,” Les OVNIs: Intelligences non-humaines ou mythe moderne?, December 26, 2003)
July 18 — 9:45 p.m. Three Air Force officers and four enlisted men at Patrick AFB, near Cocoa Beach, Florida, see a series of hovering and maneuvering red-orange lights moving in a variety of directions. (NICAP, “Hovering and Maneuvering Lights”; Sparks, p. 151)
July 19 — 2:55 a.m. An experienced civilian pilot watches an elliptical-shaped object with a light fringe over Williston, North Dakota, for 5 minutes. It descends fast and makes a 360° then a 180° turn. (Sparks, p. 151)
July 19 — Lincoln LaPaz tells newspapermen in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that UFOs “can reverse directions and cruise back and forth; they travel at high speeds in wide sweeping circles…. They travel at high altitudes and can be followed as long as 3½ minutes.” (“Luminous Objects Flooding Southwest Skies Not Shooting Stars or Meteorites, Says LaPaz,” July 20, 1952, p. 1; Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1952, June–July 20th, The Author, 1986, p. 67)
July 19 — 10:00 a.m. Engineer John A. Anderson and other technicians at the Savannah River Atomic Site near Aiken, South Carolina, watch a greenish glowing object dart back and forth silently and erratically at high speed above the plant. It is in view for 2 minutes, moving constantly and changing direction at sharp angles. The object disappears over the horizon at “tremendous velocity.” (NICAP, “Multiple Witnesses Observe Strange Maneuvering Object”; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, p. 51; Nukes 47–48)
July 19 — 4:30 p.m. Agricultural engineer Pedro Bardi and others on a farm in the Madre de Dios region of Peru see a UFO flying at 325 feet shortly after their short-wave radio goes dead. Bardi says it is a bit smaller than a DC-3 and is making a buzzing sound. It shows up 4 minutes later at Puerto Maldonado, 75 miles away, and Customs Administrator Domingo Troncosco photographs it. The photo shows an elongated object trailing smoke, passing over the top of a tree and in front of a cumulus cloud. (Curt Collins, “The Case of the Smoking Saucer,” In Honor of Jim Moseley, November 3, 2014; Curt Collins, “Jim Moseley: The Case of the Smoking Saucer,” The Saucers That Time Forgot, August 18, 2018)
July 19 — 10:00 p.m. Six luminous round objects are seen by a Chicago, Illinois, woman moving horizontally and vertically as they cavort around in the sky. The same night, a UFO is seen by three witnesses at the Ground Observer Corps post at the city hall in Elgin, Illinois. (Loren E. Gross, UFOs, a History: 1952, June–July 20th, The Author, 1986, p. 68)
July 19 — 11:35 p.m. USAF pilot Capt. Charles John Powley and his wife Janet see two star-like lights maneuver, hover, and speed up for 5–7 minutes over Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. (NICAP, “Three Groups of Witnesses See Strange Lights”; Sparks, p. 151; Michael D. Swords, “Intelligent Motions,” IUR 33, no. 1 (March 2010): 12, 15)
July 19–20 — 11:40 p.m. Air traffic controller Edward Nugent at Washington National [now Ronald Reagan National] Airport’s Air Route Traffic Control (ARTC) in D.C. picks up a formation of seven objects on his long-range radar. They are southeast of Andrews AFB [now Joint Base Andrews] in Prince George’s County, Maryland, moving along at 100–130 mph. Two of the targets suddenly accelerate and vanish off the scope within seconds.
One apparently reaches a speed of 7,000 mph. A second, shorter-range radar in the airport control tower (operated by Howard Cocklin and Joseph Zacko Jr.) and another at Andrews AFB has also tracked the objects. For 6 hours, between 8 and 10 UFOs are tracked on radar. Senior Air Traffic Controller Harry G. Barnes says that “They followed no set course, were not in any formation, and we only seemed to be able to track them for about three miles at a time…. I can safely deduce that they performed gyrations which no known aircraft could perform.” Several Capitol Airlines pilots (one of them Capt. S. C. “Casey” Pierman) see the objects visually as white or orange lights in restricted air space over the White House and Capitol. Ground observers at Andrews (Capt.
Harold C. May, Staff/Sgt Charles Davenport) watch red or orange lights. Radar and visual sightings are also taking place at Bolling AFB [now Joint Base Anaconda-Bolling] in Washington, D.C. By 3:00 a.m., the UFOs are all gone, just as two F-94 interceptors arrive belatedly from New Castle AFB [now New Castle Air National Guard Base] in Delaware. The jets depart, and the UFOs return, observed by Capt. Howard Dermott, a Capitol Airlines pilot, and Sgt. Davenport at Andrews. Radar trackings continue, the last at 5:30 a.m. Civilian radio engineer E. W. Chambers sees five huge discs circling in a loose formation; they tilt upward and leave in a steep ascent. Blips appear on radar for at least another day, until the evening of July 20. (Wikipedia, “1952 Washington,
D.C. UFO incident”; NICAP, “The Washington National Sightings”; NICAP, “Andrews Tower Radar Confirms Washington Target”; “Washington’s Blips: ‘Somethings’ over the Capital Are Traced on Radar,” Life, August 4, 1952, pp. 39–40; Ruppelt, pp. 158–161; James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings, US House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 29, 1968, pp. 71–72; Clark III 1250–1252; Swords 154–155; Sparks, p. 151; Condon, pp. 153–157, 862–867; Kevin D. Randle, Invasion Washington: UFOs over the Capitol, HarperTorch, 2001, pp. 32– 58; Michael D. Swords, GrassRoots UFOs: Case Reports from the Timmerman Files, Fund for UFO Research, 2005, p. 139; Shoot 28–34)
July 19 — 12:00 midnight. A part-time farmer named Constantine and a hired hand named Davis are curing tobacco when they see two cigar-shaped objects—one hovering, the other moving to the east—for 3–4 minutes near Centerville, Virginia. Both objects are translucent, lit from within, and emit an exhaust from one end. They both ascend until they disappear. (Sparks, p. 151)
July 21 — 10:00 a.m. Ruppelt first hears about the National Airport sightings in D.C. when he buys a newspaper in the Washington National Airport terminal. He has been to Andrews AFB in Maryland the day before with his boss Col. Donald L. Bower, and no one had said anything. At 1:00 p.m., Maj. Dewey Fournet calls Ruppelt to come to a briefing with Capt. Berkow, a USAF intelligence officer from Bolling AFB in D.C. Ruppelt hears that President Truman is personally interested and wants a full investigation, but Bower orders Ruppelt to return to Wright- Patterson AFB in Ohio. (Ruppelt, pp. 158–159; Thomas Tulien, ed., Proceedings of the Sign Historical Group UFO History Workshop, Sign Historical Group, November 2001, pp. 46–47)
July 21 — 10:30 a.m. Radar used to measure wind velocity in the upper atmosphere at Dobbins Air Force Base, Marietta, Georgia, detects an unusual object flying at 50,000 feet. Observing the blip are four radar technicians who state that “it could have been an electromagnetic phenomenon but they did not believe it was.” A second blip appears on the radar moving toward the wind-finding weather balloon and passing through it three separate times. USAF officials report “in private conversations” that the object moves at 1,200 mph, slows considerably for 3–5 minutes, then disappears. The Civilian Defense director in Atlanta, George M. “Pup” Phillips, receives a report of the object but has “no details.” Col. Murray C. Woodbury, commander of the 35th Air Division at Dobbins, checks with “defense officials in Washington” before telling the press that such reports are sent to the Air Technical Intelligence Center (Project Blue Book) in Dayton, Ohio, for evaluation. Surprisingly, he admits, “We try to intercept such objects and identify them, but so far we have been unsuccessful.” (NICAP, “Blip Makes Passes on Wind-Finding Target”; Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1952 July 21st–31st, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2001, p. 3; Sparks, p. 152)
July 21 — 6:30 p.m. USAF pilot Capt. Edward E. Dougher and WAF Lt. Josephine J. Stong, separated by one mile on the ground in Wiesbaden, Germany, see 4 bright yellowish lights. Dougher watches them separate, with two climbing and two flying away level in the opposite direction. His wife Barbara joins him as they fly away. Stong sees two reddish lights fly in opposite directions for 10–15 minutes. (NICAP, “Separated Witnesses Observe Maneuvering Lights”; Sparks, p. 152; Michael D. Swords, “Intelligent Motions,” IUR 33, no. 1 (March 2010): 12, 15)
July 22 — At Wright-Patterson AFB, Ruppelt meets with ATIC electronics specialist Capt. Roy L. James (who harbors a “personal dislike for UFOs”). He tells Ruppelt that weather conditions caused the Washington radar returns. ()
July 22 — Pikes Peak Broadcasting Company President Joseph H. Rohrer gives a lecture (one of a series) on flying saucers at a chamber of commerce meeting in Pueblo, Colorado. He mixes a few genuine cases with some crashed saucer fiction, claiming that 7 discs have been retrieved by the US government, three of them forced down in Montana. One occupant has survived, he says, a little man 3 feet tall who is later kept alive in a secret site in
California. Rohrer claims he has been inside a 100-foot-diameter disc in 1942, but he has made up these stories for entertainment purposes. (“Flying Saucer Talk Startles Chamber Membership Meeting,” Pueblo (Colo.) Chieftain, July 23, 1952, p. 3; Keyhoe, FS from OS, pp. 111–113; James W. Moseley and Karl T. Pflock, Shockingly Close to the Truth! Confessions of a Grave-Robbing Ufologist, Prometheus, 2002, pp. 90–92; Patrick Gross, URECAT, August 6, 2018)
July 22 — 10:00 p.m. Eubert T. White and his wife see three silvery objects whizzing across the sky above Worcester, Massachusetts, “like planes in attack formation.” One of the objects has a bluish glow in the front and a reddish tint behind it. (“Strange Objects in Worcester Sky,” Lawrence (Mass.) Eagle, July 23, 1952; Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: 1952 July 21st–31st, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2001, p. 14; Shoot 36)
July 22 — 10:20 p.m. A bluish-green UFO is seen over Boston, Massachusetts, and a few minutes later it is picked up by GCI radar. When Ground Control vectors an F-94 toward the UFO, the pilot sees the UFO near Braintree and locks on to it with his own radar. But the object easily leaves the jet behind. (NICAP, “F-94B Chases Object / With Airborne Radar Tracking”; Keyhoe, FS from OS, p. 67; Sparks, pp. 154–155)
July 22–23 — 10:30 p.m. An air traffic control tower operator at MacDill AFB in Tampa, Florida, watches for 30 minutes a red-greenish-blue object to the west-southwest at about 45° elevation with 2 other objects to the north of it, smaller and lower in elevation. He sights another object to the south-southeast about 30° elevation at 11:30 p.m. MacDill radar tracks an object at 12:03 a.m. 37 miles away at 41,200 feet altitude heading almost directly toward the base at 532 mph. It also tracks an object to the south-southeast at an altitude of 41,000 feet (reportedly Navy and CAA radars also track the object). At 12:08 a.m., the pilot and copilot of a B-29 bomber on landing approach are vectored by MacDill tower operator to investigate the UFO. They see a high-speed object at 40,000 feet heading towards MacDill and traveling faster than the B-29. The B-29 fire control radar locks onto the object and prepares to fire just as the UFO changes course and disappears at 4,600 mph. Four airmen at the MacDill radar site see an object as it passes nearly overhead. MacDill radar loses the object at about 12:15 a.m. Civilians in Tampa also see two yellowish-orange discs maneuvering around the air base. (Sparks, p. 156; Tampa (Fla.) Daily Times, July 23, 1952, p. 1)
July 22–23 — 10:50 p.m. Crews of several USAF F-94 jet interceptors from Dover AFB, Delaware, make 13 visual sightings and one radar tracking of blue-white lights around Trenton, New Jersey, continuing until 12:45 a.m. White, green, and blue lights are seen by ground observers and F-94 pilots moving in arcs and blinking out suddenly. One F-94 crew gets a radar lock-on from 30,000 feet away of an object the size of an F-94. At 9,000 feet distance, the object makes a sharp right turn, suddenly drops in height, and disappears. (Sparks, p. 156)
July 23 — 2:15 a.m. Seaman Henry J. Arnpriester is on watch at Nahant (Massachusetts) Coast Guard Station [now closed] when he sees two bluish lights approximately 5 feet in diameter. They appear as flat, disc-shaped objects having no aerodynamic features and move without sound or exhaust trail at a speed faster than a four-engine airliner at an altitude of 1,100 to 2,000 feet. When they are approximately 1.5 miles from the point of observation, they execute an extremely sharp turn similar to the path of a ball bouncing off a wall. (Lt. Col. Robert S. Jones, “Spot Intelligence Report,” July 29, 1952; Sparks, p. 156)
July 23 — 7:36 a.m. US Navy radar at Jamestown, Rhode Island, tracks a high-speed target heading north at 42,000 feet.
It is confirmed by ADC radar at Camp Hero [now closed] at Montauk Point, New York. F-94s and F-86s are scrambled unsuccessfully from Westover AFB [now Westover Air National Guard Base] in Chicopee, Massachusetts. (NICAP, “Jets Scrambled / High Speed Object at 45,000ʹ Feet”; Sparks, p. 156)
July 23 — 8:40 a.m. The crews of three USAF F-94 jet interceptors see a large silver object, shaped like a long pear with 2–3 squares beneath it, flying at 170–210 mph over Pottstown, Pennsylvania. A smaller object, delta-shaped or swept-back, flies around it at 1,150-1,720 mph. ([Blue Book document]; Sparks, p. 157)
July 23 — 12:50 p.m. Crews of two USAF F-94 jet interceptors flying at 35,000–46,000 feet altitude near Altoona, Pennsylvania, see three cylindrical objects in a vertical-stack formation fly at an altitude of 50,000–80,000 feet for 20 minutes. (NICAP, “July 23, 1952: Altoona, Penna.”; Sparks, p. 157)
July 23 — 7:00–8:00 p.m. Owner Edwin C. Johnston and more than 20 employees of Aircraft Hydroforming at Culver City, California, see a bright silvery elliptical object that moves northwest over the Northrup aircraft plant in nearby Hawthorne, then stops and hovers. Two small discs emerge and circle around the area before rejoining the mother ship. The object then climbs straight up out of sight at tremendous speed. (“Aircraft Co. Owner Sees ‘Discs’ Four Nights in Row,” Redlands (Calif.) Daily Facts, July 24, 1952, p. 9)
July 23 — 7:15 p.m. Many witnesses at Lockbourne AFB [now Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base] in Lockbourne, Ohio, including visiting Capt. Eugene E. McManus from Turner AFB [now Naval Air Station Albany] in Albany, Georgia, observe four round, fluorescent white objects hovering near the base at 75,000 feet. An Air force pilot named Capt. Swartz in Flight Service at Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, Ohio, radios in the report that the objects
are balloons. Two F-84 jets are scrambled at 8:15 p.m. and identify them as a balloon cluster. The objects, seen over many other areas of central Ohio (Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt says he was called out to see it over Wright- Patterson), are probably USAF reconnaissance balloons sent up from Clinton County Airport in Wilmington, Ohio. (NICAP, “July 23, 1952, Lockbourne, Ohio, UFO Report”; Clark III 395–398)
July 23 — Night. Contactee Orfeo Angelucci feels compelled to walk over the Glendale-Hyperion Bridge in Glendale, California. He feels an odd sensation and suddenly sees in front of him a soap-bubble-like object that turns into a metallic craft. He gets aboard and is taken on his first trip into outer space. (Orfeo Angelucci, The Secret of the Saucers, Amherst Press, 1955, pp. 18–36)
July 24 — 3:40 p.m. Two USAF pilots, Lt. Col. John L. McGinn and Lt. Col. John R. Barton, are flying a B-25 out of Hamilton AFB [now closed] in Novato, California, for Colorado Springs. They are over Carson Sink, Nevada, at 11,000 feet when they see three unknown objects make a left bank and fly to within 400–600 yards of the plane. They are three bright silver, delta-wing craft with no tails and no canopies. The pilots see a clean upper triangular wing with a definite ridge that runs from the nose to the tail. They estimate the speed as at least three times that of any conventional jet. (Wikipedia, “Carson Sink UFO incident”; NICAP, “B-26 Crew Encounters 3 Triangular UFOs”; NICAP, “The Carson Sink Case”; Sparks, p. 157; Ruppelt, pp. 10–12; Michael Hall, “When UFOs Were Serious Business: Then and Today,” IUR 28, no. 4 (Winter 2003–2004): 5; Michael D. Swords, “Intelligent Motions,” IUR 33, no. 1 (March 2010): 12, 15)
July 25 (or April 25) — 3:00 a.m. Carlo Rossi is on his way to a fishing spot on the Serchio river near San Pietro a Vico, Lucca, Italy. He notices an odd light above the river and finds that it belongs to an enormous disc-shaped object with a transparent dome. It is about 82 feet in diameter and apparently taking up water through a long tube. The object is standing in the river on three legs and has a ladder reaching down next to the tube. Rossi thinks it is hovering by means of propellors. Suddenly a porthole opens, and a human figure looks out and notices him. Rossi begins to leave, but a green ray passes above his head and he feels an electric shock. The object takes off and disappears to the west. (“Le Nostre Analisi: Precisazioni sul Caso di S. Pietro e Vico (1952),” Notiziario UFO, no. 67 (July/Sept. 1975): 4–9; Patrick Gross, URECAT, September 12, 2006; 1Pinotti 42–46)
July 25 — Capt. J. W. Titus of the 140th Wing Medical Group sees two oval-shaped objects flying in formation at 400– 600 mph in Portales, New Mexico. They are silent and leave no vapor trail. At one point, they make an abrupt 80° turn and fly off to the north. (Nukes 85–86)
July 26–27 — 8:15 p.m. Flying saucers return to the nation’s capital, only one week after a massive number of radar- visual UFO sightings above restricted air space in Washington, D.C. At 8:15 p.m., pilot Capt. Berkow and a stewardess of a National Airlines flight near Washington National Airport [now Ronald Reagan National] see several objects resembling the glow of a cigarette high above them. The lights move at around 100 mph. Soon, the airport and Andrews AFB in Maryland are tracking a dozen UFOs throughout much of the sky, all traveling 90– 100 mph. By midnight, two F-94s are scrambled from New Castle AFB in Delaware to intercept them. National Airport staff hustle newspaper reporters away from the air traffic control tower, saying that interceptions are classified (but Project Blue Book chief Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt suspects that the Air Force does not want the press around when they finally get a good look at a saucer). The UFOs are seen on radar for 2 hours, but when the jets approach, the blips disappear. When the pilots return to base, they show up again. Reports are reaching Langley AFB about rotating objects that give off alternating colors over Newport News, Virginia. Another F-94 is scrambled, the pilot gets a radar lock, and the target speeds away. At National Airport, the objects reappear shortly before dawn, and two more F-94s are scrambled. The pilots obtain radar locks; again, the objects speed away. USAF press spokesman Albert M. Chop is in the airport radar tower and notes that everyone there believes the targets are “very probably caused by solid metallic objects.” One F-94 pilot, Lieut. William Patterson, says, “I saw several bright lights. I was at my maximum speed, but even then I had no closing speed.” A USAF air intelligence report later states that the radar crew is emphatic that the returns are solid and not temperature inversions. In 1969, however, Colorado project physicist Gordon David Thayer concludes that the radar events involved temperature inversions. He believes the visual sightings were caused by meteors and scintillating stars. University of Arizona atmospheric physicist James McDonald disagreed, arguing that Thayer’s own data did not support his conclusion. Colorado project psychologist Michael Wertheimer interviews many of the radar operators; nearly all disagree with the inversion explanation and maintain that all experienced radar operators have no trouble identifying such phenomena. (NICAP, “The Washington National Sightings”; Richard Hall, “The Washington Invasion, July 26/27, 1952”; Clark III 1252–1255; Ruppelt, pp. 163–167; Condon, pp. 157–158, 862– 867; Swords 156–159; Good Above, pp. 270–272; Patrick Gross, “The Washington D.C. UFO Flap of 1952”; Sparks, p. 158; Kevin D. Randle, Invasion Washington: UFOs over the Capitol, HarperTorch, 2001, pp. 68– 76,127–148, 253–260; Shoot 42–47)