a thirty-mile stretch of countryside near London on September 9,
1962. Falling without warning from clear skies, it left a blue stain
that wouldn’t wash off. Investigation showed that the substance came
from jet planes taking part in Britain’s annual giant air show at
Farnborough. The jets were using the blue dye to color their vapor
trails and make a more spectacular display.
_Other Mysterious Fragments_
In the spring of 1960 Mrs. Coral Lorenzen, director of the Aerial
Phenomena Research Organization, publicly challenged the truth of
the Air Force statement that “no physical or material evidence, not
even a minute fragment of so-called ‘flying saucer’ has ever been
found.”[XI-20] Mrs. Lorenzen announced that she had in her possession
two fragments of an extraterrestrial vehicle that had met with disaster
in the earth’s atmosphere. Without specifying the date and location
of the event, the identity of the witnesses, or any corroborative
details of the alleged disaster, she merely said that several persons
had witnessed the catastrophe. She went on to assert, somewhat
astonishingly, that “the gratifying aspect of this case, however,
is that we do not have to depend on the testimony of witnesses to
establish the reality of the incident for the most advanced laboratory
tests indicate that the residual material could not have been produced
through the application of any known terrestrial techniques.”[XI-21]
Sending a letter and two photographs of the fragments to Colonel
Lawrence J. Tacker, then in the Office of Information, United States
Air Force, she simultaneously released to the press copies of both
letter and photographs, and suggested that the Air Force could
“vindicate” itself by analyzing the material. The newspaper photographs
showed one fragment about four inches long and two inches wide
resembling petrified wood in appearance, and a smaller piece shaped
roughly like a flattened cupcake, whose surface showed pits and whorls
like those on the trailing end of a meteorite.
Two days later, without waiting for a reply from Washington, Mrs.
Lorenzen through the newspaper amplified her challenge. If the Air
Force wanted to examine the mysterious fragments, she said, they would
first have to agree to certain conditions[XI-22]:
“(1) APRO officers, together with duly appointed Air Force liaison
personnel, would establish a board of experts representing both
military and civilian UFO researchers.
“(2) This board of experts would decide what meaningful tests need to
be performed on the material in question.
“(3) The board then would select a qualified testing agency to perform
these tests under its cognizance.”
In all its history, the United States Air Force can surely have
received no more extraordinary proposition. Whatever he may have felt,
Colonel Tacker merely suggested that Mrs. Lorenzen could submit the
material to ATIC for analysis.
The fragments were never forwarded to the Air Force.
Eventually APRO published some information about the “disaster.” Early
in September 1957 a group of fishermen on a beach near Ubataba, Brazil,
had supposedly sighted a disk-shaped object flashing down toward the
sea. The UFO had suddenly veered upward and exploded, showering down
fragments and sparks like fireworks. Several pieces had been obtained
by a Brazilian representative of APRO, who submitted them to a chemist
for complete tests including spectrographic and X-ray diffraction
analyses.
The analyses have apparently never been published. Although they
evidently showed the presence of at least three elements common on
earth--magnesium, hydrogen, and oxygen--APRO somehow deduced that the
fragments in their original state had consisted of pure magnesium and
that the hydroxide must have formed when they came in contact with the
water. The final conclusion stated that the object consisted, at least
in part, of 100% magnesium. Similarly, perhaps, a cook might assert
that since chocolate fudge consists, at least in part, of 100 per cent
sucrose, fudge must originally have been composed entirely of pure
sugar, except for a little chocolate and milk it picked up in passing
through the kitchen.
From the few facts available a positive identification of the fragments
is impossible. The description of the object seen by the fishermen fits
that of a meteor that broke into pieces near the end of its flight.
In the photographs the fragments look like ordinary meteorites, which
often contain a fair amount of magnesium (see _Chapter_ V). There is
no evidence to suggest that the fishermen’s “wrecked spaceship” was
anything but an exploding meteor.
In the last fifteen years the Air Force has patiently analyzed dozens
of odd substances ranging from angel hair to pancakes. The statement
made in 1960 by General Thomas D. White, Chief of Staff, United States
Air Force, still holds true:
“By an act of Congress the United States Air Force is charged with the
Air Defense of the United States. Rapid identification of anything
that flies is an important part of air defense. Thus the Air Force
initiated and continues the unidentified flying object program. Under
this program all unidentified flying object sightings are investigated
in meticulous detail by Air Force personnel and qualified scientific
consultants. So far, not a single bit of material evidence of the
existence of spaceships has been found.”[XI-23]
[XI-1] Ormond, R. “I Found a Little Green Man,” _Flying Saucers_
(August 1957).
[XI-2] Scully, F. _Behind the Flying Saucers._ New York: Popular
Library, 1951.
[XI-3] Cahn, J. P. “Flying Saucers and the Mysterious Little Men,”
_True_ magazine (September 1952).
[XI-4] Lorenzen, C. E. “The Reality of the Little Men,” _Flying
Saucers_ (December 1958), p. 26.
[XI-5] Michel, A. _The Truth about Flying Saucers._ New York: Criterion
Books, 1956.
[XI-6] Maney, C. A., and Hall, R. _The Challenge of Unidentified Flying
Objects._ Washington, D.C., 1961.
[XI-7] Crompton, J. _The Spider_, London: Collins, 1950.
[XI-8] CRIFO _Orbit_, November 2, 1956.
[XI-9] CRIFO _Orbit_, December 7, 1956.
[XI-10] Air Force Files.
[XI-11] Boston _Globe_, November 24, 1960.
[XI-12] Barker, G. “Chasing the Flying Saucers,” _Flying Saucers_
(September 1961), p. 33.
[XI-13] Palmer, R. “NICAP: National Non-investigations Committee On
Aerial Phenomena,” _Flying Saucers_ (September 1961), p. 4.
[XI-14] Palmer, R. Editorial, _Flying Saucers_ (March 1962), p. 2.
[XI-15] _UFO Investigator_ (July-August 1961).
[XI-16] Keyhoe, D. E. _The Flying Saucer Conspiracy._ New York: Henry
Holt & Co., 1955.
[XI-16a] “There’s Intelligent Life on the Moon!” _Flying Saucers_ (May
1959), p. 73.
[XI-17] _UFO Critical Bulletin_ (January-February 1958).
[XI-18] _UFO Critical Bulletin_ (July-August 1957).
[XI-19] _UFO Critical Bulletin_ (March-April 1958).
[XI-20] News Release No. 98–60, Department of Defense, January 29, 1960.
[XI-21] Alamogordo (N. Mex.) _Daily News_, March 13, 1960.
[XI-22] Alamogordo (N. Mex.) _Daily News_, March 15, 1960.
[XI-23] Tacker, L. J. _Flying Saucers and the U. S. Air Force._
Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1960.
_Chapter_ XII
SPECIAL EFFECTS
Some flying-saucer reports, at first glance, do not seem to belong
in any of the ordinary categories of sightings such as mistaken
identification of air-borne objects or astronomical phenomena. Each
of these atypical UFOs forms a class of its own and, when explained,
proves to be the “special effect” of a unique situation. Many are
misidentified lights or reflections, but since each one derives from a
peculiar combination of circumstances that may not have occurred before
and is not likely to occur again, accounting for them often requires a
certain amount of luck as well as patient detective work.
Let us suppose, for example, that an Iowa farmer telephones the county
sheriff one Tuesday afternoon to report that he has just seen a tiger
running through his cornfield. When the sheriff arrives an hour
later and can find no trace of a tiger, he is baffled; he knows the
farmer is neither demented nor a hoaxer, and must have seen something
remarkable--but what? The mystery remains unsolved until the sheriff
learns from a feature story in Sunday’s paper that on the preceding
Tuesday afternoon a trailer truck, carrying a shipment of animals for
the Des Moines zoo, had a flat tire while traveling on Highway X near
the junction with Route Y. During the stop to repair the tire, a giant
eland had escaped from its cage in the trailer; it had been recaptured
and the truck had then continued its journey and delivered its cargo
intact.
The sheriff can now reconstruct the peculiar combination of events that
produced the “tiger” theory. He knows that the section of Highway X
where the truck stopped runs parallel to the far side of the farmer’s
cornfield. The newspaper account tells him that a giant eland is a
large antelope with short, twisted horns and a tawny-colored coat with
dark stripes. He concludes that the farmer, having only a few seconds’
glimpse of a strange animal among the corn, had observed the eland’s
stripes but had failed to notice its horns, and had therefore mistaken
it for a tiger.
_The Role of Unusual Coincidence_
Analogous unlikely coincidences account for many flying-saucer reports.
The factors that encourage the misinterpretation may be the particular
time or place at which the phenomenon appears, the kind of weather, the
experience, physical state, or mood of the observer, his unawareness
of a certain fact, or any combination of these and other relevant
circumstances.
A fairly simple case of this type was the reported landing of a
spacecraft near an Army barracks (often referred to in saucer
publications as the “Nike site”) in a rural area of Maryland, shortly
before dawn on the morning of September 29, 1958. The sergeant on duty
that morning left the orderly room at 4:25 A.M. and started to the
barracks to waken the troops. The sky was clear, with bright moonlight.
Hearing a whirring sound like a pitched baseball with a loose cover, he
looked up toward the west to see a brilliant round white object soaring
through the sky from north to south, and breaking up into smaller
pieces as it traveled. It disappeared behind the roof of the mess hall,
directly to the west, after being in view about two seconds. Hurrying
around the south side of the mess hall to search the western horizon,
he observed a very bright white, pulsating light at ground level,
apparently in a wooded area some four or five miles west of the battery
site, as though the glowing object had landed there. He reported the
incident to an officer, who measured the azimuth position of the
unknown. The glow remained in one place but diminished with increasing
daylight until it was no longer visible.
Air Force investigators arrived that afternoon. They had already
received many reports that a brilliant fireball had flashed through
the sky at 4:25 A.M., the time in question, and had been observed by
many witnesses in the area between Washington, D.C., and Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, but no fireball could account for the ground light.
The next morning at 5:15 A.M. an intensely white, fluctuating light
was observed at the same place and was studied through binoculars
until daylight made it invisible; it could be seen only from the west
side of the mess hall, and one step to the right or left would hide
it from the observer. Traveling toward the position of the unknown,
investigators found a dairy barn three miles away, and on a direct line
of sight from the place the UFO had been observed. On one end of the
barn was a 200-watt floodlight with a white reflector, still burning.
On questioning the farmer, they learned that until recently the light
had been burned out and had not been in use. The early hour of sunrise
during the summer had provided all the light he needed to milk his
cows. With the shorter days of autumn, however, he had needed the light
and had replaced the bulb only a few days before. On the morning of the
sighting, he had turned on the light a few minutes before the sergeant
had noticed it[XII-1].
Thus several unrelated factors had combined to produce the illusion
of a landed space vehicle: 1) only a week earlier, newspapers had
publicized the alleged landing of a flying saucer in Sheffield Lake,
Ohio (see _Chapter_ XIII); 2) a brilliant fireball had appeared; 3) a
farmer had turned on a floodlight, previously out of use for several
months; 4) the meteor had disappeared and the floodlight had appeared
in roughly the same position as viewed by the observer.
_The Problem of Unknown Lights_
At night, when an observer notices a light appearing out of the
darkness, he usually cannot see the object that produces or carries the
light. Under familiar conditions on the ground or in the air he usually
interprets the light correctly, by a kind of informed guesswork, as
that of an automobile, an advertising sign, an airport beacon, a
plane, a star, etc. But if it appears under unfamiliar conditions or
in unexpected circumstances, he has to make an uninformed guess based
on largely unconscious estimates of its size, distance, height, color,
and rate of movement. To the driver of a car on a dark country road,
a single light suddenly appearing ahead may indicate a plane or a
star low in the sky or something on the road itself--a motorcycle, a
car with only one headlight working, a workman’s lantern, a pedestrian
carrying a flashlight, or something else. A double light may mean
another automobile, two motorcycles traveling parallel, an animal whose
eyes shine in the approaching headlight, or something else. The driver
cannot be sure he interprets the light correctly until he passes it and
can see the object itself or until he can identify it in some other way.
_Michigan’s Flying Bird Cage_
A UFO sighting based on mistaken identification of strange lights
occurred in the early morning hours of March 22, 1959, near Ann Arbor,
Michigan. The night was clear, the moon was nearly full, and visibility
was unusually good. At about 1:30 A.M. a man and his wife driving on
a country road suddenly noticed a strange object hovering in the sky
south of the road. According to their report to the Air Force, the UFO
was an elongated oval with a dome on top, something like a bird cage,
and brilliantly illuminated by two shafts of intense pale-yellow light
that sprang from the bottom and converged over the top. Frightened at
this apparition, the witnesses could provide only uncertain estimates
of distance and size. The object seemed to be twenty to thirty feet in
diameter, was at an altitude of about 200 feet when first seen, and
was hovering about two miles away. As they drove on, the object seemed
to move and travel parallel with the car for about a mile. Then the
yellow lights dimmed and a circle of eight or ten red lights suddenly
appeared on the underside, the UFO rose vertically, very rapidly, and
vanished in a few seconds. It had been in view for a period of five to
ten minutes.
Checking the most probable explanations first, ATIC officials found
that the nearby Willow Run Airport had had no aircraft in the vicinity
at the time and that no star or planet seemed to be involved. Further
investigation showed that the flying bird cage was actually the radio
telescope of the University of Michigan. The telescope was installed
on the top of Peach Mountain and was clearly visible from the road
on which the witnesses were traveling. On the underside of the
eighty-five-foot “dish” was a wire-mesh structure that suggested the
bird cage. At the time of the sighting the dish was facing in the
direction of the witnesses and was illuminated by a floodlight as
well as by the bright moonlight. It had seemed to be following the
car only because the car itself was moving. The astronomers operating
the telescope were rotating the dish from the horizon to the zenith,
and the yellow lights dimmed because the witnesses were seeing less
and less of the surface. The “circle” of red lights was the red
aircraft-warning lights on the WUOM radio tower, which lay in a direct
line between the telescope and the witnesses. When the dish reached the
zenith and was pointed to the sky overhead, the operating crew turned
off the floodlights. The dish was no longer visible to the witnesses,
who interpreted the sudden disappearance as a sudden vertical ascent
into the sky[XII-1].
_UFOs from Reflections_
Reflections from the bright sun have produced many elusive UFOs. All
pilots are familiar with the luminous objects that sometimes appear in
the air below a plane on a sunny day, particularly when the plane is
flying over wooded terrain that is partly obscured by atmospheric haze.
The sun has been reflected momentarily from a broad shiny surface, such
as the metal roof of a farm building; because of the contrast between
the bright surface and the dark forest surrounding it, the image
appears to be a UFO floating high in the air.
Sometimes the sun shines on a bright metallic surface, such as the
chrome trim of an automobile, and by chance is reflected directly into
the eyes of a passer-by. If he then glances at the sky he may see a
whole fleet of UFOs; the bright flash has produced a temporary chemical
change in the retina so that for a moment or two the eye sees a series
of saucer-shaped images of the sun. A photographer’s flashbulb or a
bright flash of lightning can produce similar after-images.
Some startling UFOs have been produced by reflections from an object
that the witness was not able to see or did not recognize. One night
in the spring of 1961 an amateur astronomer reported that a huge
cigar-shaped flying saucer was hovering in the sky several thousand
feet above the Harvard College Observatory. Investigation showed that
the “UFO” was a reflection from a small oblong insulator on an electric
wire strung between two buildings. Faintly illuminated from below
by the lights from the unshaded windows, it seemed to be an immense
and brilliantly glowing object high in the sky. The witness at first
refused to believe that he could so mistake the evidence of his own
eyes. Next morning, however, he returned to the scene and was able to
see that what had appeared the night before to be a giant spaceship was
only a small insulator a few feet above his head.
The bright sun reflected at a particular time from an object invisible
to the observer often produces a puzzling phenomenon, such as the
flying saucer reported from Danby, California, early in October 1958.
About 4:00 in the afternoon on October 2, three prospectors standing
near a tungsten mill at Railroad Danby noticed a sudden bright glow in
the northwest sky which remained visible for about 2½ hours and then
disappeared. When a glow appeared again the following day at the same
time and place, the observers tried to identify it by using a small
telescope and saw a bright, oblong object hovering above the horizon;
it was the color of aluminum, approximately fifteen feet long, five
feet high, and about four miles away. Getting into a car, the men drove
in the direction of the object and searched the supposed location on
foot for several hours, but could find no trace of the UFO.
Several days later, realizing that the object reappeared every day at
about the same time and place, two of the men decided to investigate
further. Studying the object through a pair of powerful binoculars,
they could see guy wires coming from it and rods radiating from the guy
wires. Remembering that two tall radio antennas used by the highway
patrol stood in approximately the same location, the witnesses found
the explanation, which Air Force investigators confirmed. The antennas,
placed some twenty feet apart, extended about twenty feet above the
trees. The cigar-shaped hovering object was a special effect depending
on a particular combination of circumstances: only during the first
part of October, and only late in the afternoon, did the sun’s rays
strike the antenna in such a way that the reflection was visible to an
observer at Railroad Danby[XII-1].
_Sundogs in Utah and France_
Sundogs are another special effect resulting from a peculiar
combination of circumstances, and they continue to supply their quota
of good UFO reports. Tiny ice crystals floating in a layer of quiet
air and reflecting a bright sun are responsible for producing sundogs.
A thin layer of such crystals may be invisible to the observer; a
thick layer appears as the familiar cirrus clouds. Sunlight filtering
through such an ice fog is reflected in each crystal so that a pattern
of bright spots of light forms in the sky, an image of the sun that
sometimes rivals the sun itself in brilliance. These images are called
mock suns, sundogs, or parhelia when they accompany the sun (and mock
moons, moondogs, or paraselenae when they accompany the moon). They
appear in the sky at a position a given distance from the sun and
usually have a trace of red on the edge nearest the sun.
Occasionally a sundog makes a complete circle of light surrounding
the sun with four bright patches, one above, one below, and one on
either side. Sometimes two circles will appear, one within the other,
surmounted by an inverted arc and traversed by a cross, like the
spokes of a wheel whose center is the sun. The complicated structure
of a fully developed mock sun--which is extremely rare--can suggest
to the imaginative an enormous chariot in the sky and can terrify the
superstitious. There is little doubt that this phenomenon inspired the
two visions of Ezekiel described in the Bible.
Mock suns have been the cause of many UFO sightings. Even after several
publications [see [XII-1a]] explained how the sun reflected from ice
crystals could account for some of the reported flying saucers, this
idea was largely ignored by early investigators who had a limited
training in the physical sciences.
Sundogs are relatively uncommon. Few airmen, even those with long
experience, have learned to recognize them. In a poll of both
commercial and military pilots, Dr. Menzel found that only one in
five knew what a sundog was and how it might look in the sky. Two of
three generals in the Air Force, similarly, were unfamiliar with the
phenomenon. Like balloons, sundogs have a silvery metallic sheen. When
observed from the ground, they seem to hover or move very sluggishly;
to a witness in the air they seem to move rapidly, to pace the plane,
or to take evasive action as though under intelligent control. When
enough data are available, and the time of day and the position of
the unknown relative to the sun are appropriate, a mock sun should be
considered as a possible explanation of the UFO.
A sundog seen from a plane can suggest a spectacular and fantastic
structure, like the one reported over Rheims, France, at 2:30 P.M.
local time on March 31, 1960. The pilot and crew of a C-47 plane
described the unknown as like a gigantic spool of thread some twelve
feet tall. The neck of the spool, about six feet in diameter, seemed to
be capped at top and bottom by disks eight or ten feet in diameter. The
upper disk was reddish, the lower, blue-green. The plane was flying at
6000 feet and had just passed from a storm area into a region of calm
with unlimited visibility. The UFO remained in view for about sixty
seconds, then suddenly vanished. From an analysis of the data, the
position of the unknown relative to the sun and the observers, and the
weather situation, Air Force investigators positively identified the
object as a mock sun[XII-1].
One of the most recent sightings of this type occurred on October 2,
1961, a few minutes after noon[XII-1]. A civilian pilot who was just
taking off from the Utah Central Airport at Salt Lake City noticed a
bright silvery disk in the air ahead of his plane. He supposed it to
be another aircraft crossing his course. When he was air-borne, he
was surprised to find that the object, now an elongated pencil shape,
still appeared in the same position where he had first seen it and
hence could not be a plane. Puzzled, he radioed the control tower and
reported the UFO. Looking south as directed by the pilot, the tower
operator easily found the object, a bright spot in the sky directly
below the sun and apparently hovering over the town of Provo, forty
miles to the south.