fan group to ‘expose’ our ‘hoax’ (which was a compliment, by the way,
because it was termed the ‘biggest ever attempted in modern science
fiction history’). We are waiting for this expose, [_sic_] with
interest--because we are curious to know how a hoax which is not a hoax
can be exposed as a hoax. We realize that a lot of our readers find it
difficult to believe that we ourselves believe one single word of what
Mr. Shaver tells us in his stories, but we’ll keep on presenting the
evidence as it comes in, and you can judge for yourself.”[II-14]
Readers continued to object and many stopped buying the magazine, but
Palmer persisted with ambiguous hints that spaceships were really here.
A full year before the first flying-saucer report he wrote:
“If you don’t think space ships visit the earth regularly, as in this
story [‘Cult of the Witch Queen’], then the files of Charles Fort and
your editor’s own files are something you should see.... And if you
think responsible parties in world governments are ignorant of the
fact of space ships visiting earth, you just don’t think the way we
do.”[II-16]
In succeeding months he became more and more explicit. In September
1946 he told one correspondent, “As for space ships, ... personally we
believe these ships do visit the earth. You, or any observer, would be
inclined to call it something else if you did see one.”[II-15] In the
spring of 1947 he replied to a reader who asked for concrete evidence
that Shaver’s stories were true: “... the mystery is not just ‘are
there caves with dero and tero in them?’ but it has to do with space
ships, other inhabited worlds, and so on.”[II-17]
In June 1947, the month the first flying saucers were reported, the
issue of _Amazing Stories_ was an addict’s dream[II-18]. The cover
featured “The Shaver Mystery, the Most Sensational True Story Ever
Told”; the four stories, 90,000 words, were all under the byline of
Richard S. Shaver. The entire magazine--editorial comments, discussion
columns, and most of the feature articles--was devoted to the
supernatural world of Shaver.
But the end was near. _Amazing_ published its last Shaver story, “Gods
of Venus,” in the summer of 1948; as far as the magazine was concerned,
the mystery was dead.
Who or what killed it? One version says that the publisher, William B.
Ziff, ordered the series stopped because so many fans had quit buying
the magazine. Palmer himself has given various explanations. He stopped
the stories, he said at first, when he realized that such material
did not really belong in a fiction magazine. Later he explained that
he killed the mystery because he intended to go into publishing for
himself and didn’t want to leave his successor to handle “this hot
potato.”[II-19] Later still, he implied that publishing the stories
was dangerous; that he had learned too much about the “hidden world,”
the sinister forces responsible for the plane crash that followed
the Tacoma hoax. Said Palmer, “I wanted no more dead men on my
hands.”[II-11]
_The Maury Island Fragments_
The Maury Island Mystery, a complex and eventually tragic affair,
occurred near Tacoma, Washington, less than 100 miles from the place
where Arnold had sighted the nine disks. In this mystery, too, Palmer
was involved. According to their story, two harbor patrolmen named
Harold A. Dahl and Fred L. Crisman on June 31 had observed a group
of six flying disks that hovered over their boat near Maury Island
and jammed their radio when they tried to notify the authorities. One
of the disks had seemed to be disabled, had showered down lavalike
metallic fragments that damaged the boat and killed the dog on board;
the disks had then disappeared but the fragments remained as proof
of the visit. The men also claimed to have taken some pictures that
showed the six objects but were fogged as though by radiation. Back on
shore, they had not telephoned the newspapers nor had they notified any
government officials. Instead, they had mailed a box of the fragments
to Ray Palmer, to prove that they had actually seen an accident to a
flying saucer[II-20].
Crisman was no stranger to _Amazing Stories_. A science-fiction fan,
he apparently had accepted the Shaver stories as literal truth. More
than a year before the Maury Island episode he had written to Palmer,
warning him that the knowledge contained in the Shaver stories was too
dangerous to print. Identifying himself as an ex-Air Force pilot who
had flown the Hump, Crisman explained that when he was in Burma, he had
been exploring a cave when a dero attacked him with a mysterious ray
that made a hole the size of a dime in his arm. Palmer had kept up the
correspondence[II-21] and, some months later, received a telephone call
from Crisman, then in Texas: for $250, said Crisman, he would descend
into a cave and take some actual pictures of the mysterious underground
machines that Shaver had described. The result of this offer is not
known, but in July 1947 Palmer received another letter from Crisman; he
had witnessed an accident to a flying saucer and was sending a box of
the fragments as proof[II-22].
Palmer considered buying the story for _Fate_, but first he asked
Arnold, living close to the scene, to investigate the tale. Arnold
agreed. Thus the first man to report flying saucers became also a
victim of the first flying-saucer hoax.
With an advance of $200 for expenses, Arnold flew to Tacoma and into
a nightmare of mystery. The two men were elusive, their story full of
discrepancies, their manner evasive. Wondering at first whether the
affair was a hoax, Arnold finally attributed the strange behavior of
the men to their fear of hostile saucers. Alarmed, he called in the
help of Army Intelligence. Two officers arrived from Hamilton Air Force
Base, California, and made a careful investigation. They found that
Dahl and Crisman were not “harbor patrolmen” but salvagers of floating
lumber; their boat was scarcely seaworthy and showed no evidence of
major repairs; they couldn’t remember what they had done with the
pictures they mentioned; and although the saucer accident was supposed
to have occurred nearly six weeks earlier, they had never notified
the authorities or even mentioned it to a reporter. The only evidence
offered for the truth of their tale was the collection of “strange”
fragments which were later found to be slag from a local smelter plant.
Similar fragments could be found by the ton on Maury Island[II-20].
The officers concluded that they had wasted their time on a flagrant
hoax, but the bewildered Arnold insisted that they take some of the
fragments for analysis. Unhappily, on the way back to the base the
plane crashed and although two passengers parachuted to safety, both
officers were killed. At once fantastic rumors sprang up: that the
Tacoma “disks” had been spaceships, and that the beings who operated
the craft had been forced to arrange the plane crash so that no one
could analyze the fragments of their disabled spaceship. Arnold himself
seemed to believe that the crash had resulted from extraplanetary
sabotage, but investigation showed a more ordinary cause. A burned
exhaust stack had set the left wing afire; the blazing wing had then
broken from the fuselage and torn off the plane’s tail.
For a time government officials considered placing a charge of fraud
against the two men who had started the unhappy chain of events. After
further questioning, both had admitted that their “sighting” had been a
hoax, planned merely to make their story more salable, but when first
Arnold and then Military Intelligence had entered the picture, the
hoax had simply gotten out of hand. Since the men obviously had never
intended the tragic outcome and were not directly responsible for it,
the idea of prosecution was abandoned[II-1].
_Science Fiction Adopts the Saucers_
No longer editor of _Amazing_, Palmer continued to promote the
cause of flying saucers in the pages of _Fate_. During the early
nineteen-fifties, the boom years of science fiction, he started other
magazines--_Search_, _Mystic Universe_, _Other Worlds Science Stories_.
After a time, _Fate_ began to concentrate on tales of the mystic and
occult, while _Other Worlds_ eventually took over the flying-saucer
theme.
Starting as an orthodox magazine of science fiction, _Other Worlds_
flourished until the general slump in the market caused it to suspend
publication. Revived after a time, it has undergone several changes
of editorial policy reflected in its changing names: _Other Worlds
Science Stories_, _Flying Saucers from OTHER WORLDS_, _FLYING SAUCERS
from Other Worlds_, _Flying Saucers the Magazine of Space Conquest_,
and, since the spring of 1961 when the magazine became pocket-size,
just _Flying Saucers_. Classic science fiction long ago vanished from
its pages and all articles are “true” accounts of flying saucers and
similar Fortean incidents.
_Flying Saucers_ is probably unique in modern publishing history.
Issued monthly or bimonthly at a price of thirty-five cents, the
magazine does not pay its authors because, as the editor explains,
“_Flying Saucers_ is _not_ a commercial project.” Published by
Palmer Publications, edited by Palmer, containing liberal amounts of
editorial comment and at least one article by Palmer, a typical issue
in 1960[II-6] contained sixty-six pages and carried a small number of
advertisements for telescopes, binoculars, Rosicrucian and similar
mystic publications. The remaining ads featured books and magazines
issued by Palmer Publications, Amherst, Wisconsin; books issued by
Amherst Press, also of Amherst, Wisconsin; Saucerian Books, published
under the aegis of Gray Barker, a contributing editor to _Flying
Saucers_. “Austrogen,” described as a face cream or clay for skin
ailments, was obtainable from Palmer at a dollar an ounce. Another
ad recommended something (the wording does not specify exactly what,
perhaps a powder?) that helps make good chili. Readers could buy this
too, from Palmer, for a dollar a pound or $3.50 for five pounds. A
combination dandruff remover, itch preventer, and restorer of hair
color personally recommended by Palmer sold for $5.00 a bottle, number
of ounces not specified.
The dandruff remover was also recommended by Kenneth Arnold, whose
flying disks had started the saucer epidemic. Arnold was advertising
his “World Society of Flying Saucer” which would “hold no meetings, no
minutes, no by-laws, no restrictions or regulations, no records outside
of actual membership, no presidents, no vice-presidents, no secretary,
or board of directors.” For only $5.00 those who joined the society
would receive twelve issues of _Flying Saucers_ (which if ordered from
Palmer Publications would have cost $4.00), plus an official membership
card. Arnold also offered for sale a crescent-shaped lapel pin in solid
silver, supposedly just like the “original” saucers he had sighted in
1947; and, for the ladies, the saucers in pendant form. The addition of
seven-point diamonds was optional.
The magazine has grown smaller, but its main theme is still flying
saucers, which until recently have been interpreted as interplanetary
vehicles. In December 1959, however,[II-23] Palmer announced in a lead
article that flying saucers were _not_ from outer space after all;
instead, they came from secret earth bases located under the north and
the south poles. The earth is actually shaped like a doughnut, not like
a pear, he says, and has openings at both poles where the saucer people
reside. Whether they are manned by dero or tero he has not said.
In the autumn of 1962, Arnold entered the arena of politics and was
the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor of Idaho, but lost.
Shaver became a dairy farmer, a Wisconsin neighbor of Palmer’s, but in
science-fiction circles his name will never die. Recently he has been
advertising the sale of alleged pre-Deluge and pre-Ice-Age “art stones”
described as rare, voluptuous, exciting, and usable as ornaments for
wall or mantel, or simply as book ends.
Palmer has now revived the Shaver Mystery and is reprinting the entire
series in book form “with the fiction removed,” under the general
title of _The Hidden World_. In advertising the new project he stated,
“This magazine concerns flying saucers. Flying saucers are a part
of the Shaver mystery--integrally so.” He abandoned the stories in
_Amazing_, he says, not because an outraged publisher insisted, but
because he believed the stories to be true. “That is the true motive.
I was convinced that not only was there a ‘hidden world,’ but it was
one of immense ramification, and the caves of the dero, flying saucers,
military espionage, the political science of the world, and even some
phases of religion, specifically those of the ‘cult’ variety, were
inextricably linked.” In announcing that he intended to end the secrecy
that had existed for so long, and to tell the truth after seventeen
years of “sugar-coating” the facts, he did not explain exactly why he
feels it is safe to publish the “truth” now, when it was not safe
seventeen years ago. He says only, “... there have been good reasons
for the delay--had it been done from the beginning, the pitfalls that
would have crushed it could not have been avoided.”[II-11]
At the tenth annual World Science Fiction Convention, held in Chicago
in September 1952, fans and fellow editors awarded to Palmer a bronze
plaque honoring him as a “son of science fiction,”[II-24] a citation he
fully merits. As long as flying saucers continue to make good copy and
sell magazines, Palmer will probably keep them soaring--whether their
home bases are other planets or polar caves. As one of his colleagues
once commented:
“... in these times of drab and unconvincing falsehood, there is still
something to be thankful for. A Palmer promotion has the touch of
genius. It has zing, sparkle, and true showmanship. It can be spotted a
mile away by the bright lights. The thing to do is sit back and enjoy
it.”[II-19]
_Mirage or Wave Clouds?_
What did Kenneth Arnold actually see, that June afternoon in 1947?
No absolutely certain answer is possible after so long a time. The
disks were probably a mirage (see Figure 3) in which the peaks of
the mountains seemed to float above the mountain chain[II-25]. An
alternative but much less probable explanation is that he observed
orographic clouds, a type unique to mountainous country, which often
appear to stand more or less motionless and can assume dramatic shapes.
“Grindstone” clouds, shaped like thick, solid disks (see Plate Ia),
are common phenomena in the valleys just east of the Sierra Nevada in
California and in the mountainous regions of Washington, Colorado,
and New Mexico--areas where flying-saucer reports have tended to
concentrate[II-26]. One of the most spectacular types of mountain
cloud, it closely resembles the “_pile d’assiettes_” or “stack of
plates” formation in which the cloud assumes a flat, round shape like
a plate or a saucer, and two or more are piled together in a neat
stack, as in Plate Ib[II-27]. Another picture of a “stack of plates”
(which some observers reported as a hovering flying saucer) was made on
May 31, 1953, near Jindabyna, Snowy Mountains, New South Wales, and
reproduced in _Weather_ in November 1954 Plate 47. The cloud formed
over a tub-shaped depression in the mountains and remained stationary
for more than an hour[II-28].
[Illustration: _Figure 3._ Mirage of mountain peaks. Top, normal view
of mountain chain; bottom, mirage in which some of the peaks seem to be
detached and above the peaks, like saucers.]
Such clouds reflect the undulations of lee waves formed in the
atmosphere when stable currents of air flow over obstacles such as
hills or mountains. An up-and-down wave motion may be impressed upon
the air, provided that temperature and wind conditions are suitable.
As the air describes its wavelike path, it alternately warms and
cools, the warming taking place as it sinks into the wave trough and
the cooling as it ascends to the wave crest. If the air is very dry,
the undulating current will not be visible to the eye, although the
updrafts and downdrafts will readily be felt by aircraft that chance
to pass through them. On the other hand, if the air before entering the
wave is moist enough, the cooling in the wave crest will cause water
droplets to condense and a cloud to appear.
In the vicinity of an isolated peak the cloud may assume the form of a
cap covering the summit, or it may be displaced slightly downwind and
resemble a lens or disk. Not infrequently a series of lenticular clouds
will appear, trailing downwind at regular intervals of a few miles.
Although these wave clouds are usually stationary, they sometimes move
at great speed, especially when the air temperature is changing rapidly.
From a study of a remarkable photograph made in 1956, R. J. Reed of
the University of Washington has offered the suggestion that the disks
Arnold saw were actually wave clouds in rapid motion.
On the afternoon of December 29, 1956, a photographer for the Seattle
_Times_ was on top of Pigtail Peak near White Pass, Washington (not
far from the area where Arnold’s nine disks had appeared), taking ski
pictures for the rotogravure section of the Sunday _Times_. The weather
was beautiful. Down in the pass temperatures hovered near freezing,
but the slopes were warmed by sunlight that filtered down through thin
cirrus clouds and raised the temperature to a balmy fifty degrees. Just
at sunset a strange object suddenly appeared off toward the northeast
horizon. Several skiers urged the photographer to take a picture of the
“flying saucer,” but since it was still far away and indistinct, he
waited. The first object, now followed by a second one, moved rapidly
toward Mount Rainier, began to sharpen in outline, and both were soon
so clearly visible that he was able to snap his unusual picture. The
photograph shows two apparently solid, disklike objects, flattened,
brilliantly white but dark at the bottom, apparently linked together by
white streamers, skimming toward the mountain peak (Plate Ia).
Recognizing the close resemblance between the objects in the photograph
and those Arnold described, Reed made a full analysis of the weather
conditions prevailing at the time the picture was taken. From
radiosonde data provided by the Seattle-Tacoma Airport, he obtained
measurements of the size of the clouds, their height above the
mountains, wind directions, and temperature and humidity at mountain
height and cloud height. Obviously the pattern of weather conditions
that prevailed that day was suitable for the formation of saucerlike
clouds.
To test the hypothesis that Arnold also had seen such clouds, he then
obtained records of the weather data for June 24, 1947, to determine
whether atmospheric conditions on the two dates were basically similar.
“To be comparable, winds would have to be blowing from the north or
northwest in Mr. Arnold’s case since the objects were sighted to the
south and southeast of the peak. The air would have to be dry at lower
elevations and moisture would have to be spreading in at higher levels.
An inspection of the historical maps reveals that, indeed, all these
conditions were met.”[II-29]
Reed concludes that, although we can never know for certain, the
implication that the _Times_ photographer and Kenneth Arnold viewed
essentially the same phenomenon seems “inescapable.” This interesting
hypothesis, however, requires the presence of undulating air currents
and turbulence great enough to endanger a plane in flight. Since Arnold
specifically mentioned the smooth, calm flying, the mirage explanation
remains the most probable one.
[II-1] Air Force Files.
[II-2] Arnold, K., and Palmer, R. A. _The Coming of the Saucers._
Amherst, Wisconsin: privately printed, 1952.
[II-3] _Fate_, Vol. I, No. 1 (Spring 1948).
[II-4] _Fate_, Vol. I, No. 2 (Summer 1948).
[II-5] _Fate_, Vol. I, No. 3 (Fall 1948).
[II-6] _Flying Saucers, The Magazine of Space Conquest_ (June 1960).
[II-7] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XXX, No. 4 (April 1956).
[II-8] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XVIII, No. 1 (January 1944).
[II-9] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XIX, No. 4 (December 1945).
[II-10] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XVIII, No. 5 (December 1944).
[II-11] _Flying Saucers, The Magazine of Space Conquest_ (November
1960).
[II-12] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XIX, No. 1 (March 1945).
[II-13] Palmer, R. A. “An Open Letter to Paul Fairman,” _Other Worlds
Science Stories_ (June 1952), pp. 151–56.
[II-14] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XIX, No. 3 (September 1945).
[II-15] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XX, No. 6 (September 1946).
[II-16] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XX, No. 4 (July 1946).
[II-17] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XXI, No. 2 (February 1947).
[II-18] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XXI, No. 6 (June 1947).
[II-19] Fairman, P. W. “Personalities in Science Fiction,” _If_ (May
1952), pp. 63–67.
[II-20] Ruppelt, E. J. _The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects._
Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1956.
[II-21] _Flying Saucers, The Magazine of Space Conquest_ (December
1958).
[II-22] _Flying Saucers from Other Worlds_ (June 1957).
[II-23] _Flying Saucers, The Magazine of Space Conquest_ (December
1959).
[II-24] _Other Worlds_ (July 1953).
[II-25] Tacker, L. J. _Flying Saucers and the U. S. Air Force._
Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1960.
[II-26] Ives, R. L. “Areas of Occurrence of ‘Grindstone’ Clouds,”
_Weatherwise_, Vol. XI (1958), p. 201.
[II-27] Scorer, R. S. “Lee Waves in the Atmosphere,” _Scientific
American_, Vol. CCIV (1961), p. 124.
[II-28] Kraus, E. B. “Flying Saucer?” _Weather_ (November 1954).
[II-29] Reed, R. J. “Flying Saucers over Mount Rainier,” _Weatherwise_,
Vol. XI (1958), p. 43.
_Chapter_ III
AIR-BORNE UFOS: BALLOONS TO BUBBLES
In the year 1948 the “Skyhook” balloons were an official secret.
These giant plastic bags, shaped something like a teardrop, a hundred
feet and more in diameter, were part of a classified research project
sponsored by the United States Navy, and few except the researchers
and technicians involved knew of their existence. Carrying cases of
heavy instruments, the balloons were launched from various Air Force
bases to collect information about the atmosphere high above the earth,
the winds in the stratosphere, and the incidence of cosmic rays.
Soaring upward, they traveled in courses determined by the winds and
changed in direction and speed as they shifted from one wind stream to
another. Even at heights of 60,000 feet these objects with their highly
reflecting surfaces could be seen from the ground (see Figure 4). Such
balloons were especially noticeable against dark-blue skies, which
are much more common in the western United States than in the eastern
areas. They could reach heights of 100,000 feet, higher than our planes
could go. Once considered as a means for collecting information for
Military Intelligence, a task later assumed by the U-2 jets, they could
travel across the entire continent and even across the oceans. If the
plastic skin developed a leak, the resulting loss of gas altered both
the appearance and the behavior of the balloon; if the leak became
great enough the balloon shriveled and eventually fell to the earth.
At high altitudes where the cold was extreme, the skin might become
brittle and the balloon would burst into fragments to be dispersed by
the winds and vanish.
[Illustration: _Figure 4._ Shapes of various balloons. A, Skyhook at
launching; B, Skyhook at high altitude; C, radiosonde or pibal; D,
balloon cluster; E, blimp or sausage-shaped balloon.]
Although these balloons were sometimes visible at distances of fifty or
sixty miles and were very conspicuous, officially they did not exist
until 1950 when Dr. Urner Liddel of the Office of Naval Research
released the facts behind the Skyhook balloon program. He pointed
out then that the balloons had given rise to many reports of flying
saucers. If the Skyhook project had been public knowledge in 1948 and
if information about their launching and movements had not been a
matter of security, a courageous pilot might still be alive today and
the infant flying-saucer myth would have died long ago. There can be
little question that Captain Mantell crashed in trying to intercept a
Skyhook balloon, an object he had never heard of.
_The Mantell Tragedy_