Page Content (OCR)
up by the press and quickly distorted into "flying saucers." The experienced pilot's report of a group of objects having uncon- ventional shape, unconventional flying characteristics, and startling speed attracted the immediate attention of the country—including, one can reasonably assume, the U.S. Army Air Forces. This report was soon joined by hundreds of others of "flying saucers" or "flying discs," traveling singly or in formations, from every state. Many came from highly qualified observers, such as the pilot and co-pilot of a United Airlines DC-4 and several officers at the secret Army Air Forces test base of Muroc Field, California (later renamed Edwards Air Force Base). The high-water mark of this first American wave of UFO sightings came on the July Fourth weekend, when several hun- dred sightings were recorded in a few days, continuing at a high rate even after the holiday, although most Americans had re- turned to work. The saucers were said to have flown at high speeds and at low speeds, at high and at low altitudes. They flew silently and sometimes with soft whirring or buzzing sounds. But one thing no one reported seeing them do was come into contact with the land, either intentionally as if landing, or unintentionally as when crashing. NT ape nee ee ee ee de A Leen dn kk eee RW AL net Lee Newspapers and radio broadcasts were full of stories about the mysterious flying discs, along with a long list of explana- tions from scientists who should have known better and ordi- nary people who couldn't be expected to know what they were talking about. They must be airplanes, or balloons, or ice crys- tals, or hailstones that had somehow become flattened (no one ever explained how) so they would skim across the sky and give the impression of flying. They might be the glowing tailpipes of jets. They were spots before the eyes. They were optical illu- sions. Or they were simply the figments of wild imagination. One thing was obvious: They couldn't possibly be what people were describing! There were no round flying machines, or disc-shaped ones. There wasn't anything that could streak along at 1,700 mph within the atmosphere without making A HISTORY OF MODERN SIGHTINGS