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noise. All of this added up to either something outlandish or something imaginary. For several weeks the saucers and the stories about them flew around the country and almost everyone laughed. Espe- cially news commentators and cartoonists, who had a field day with flying saucers and flying soupbowls and other forms of aerial crockery. Then it ended. The saucers stopped flying. Whatever they were, they hadn't really done anything. They hadn't hurt anyone or dented any fenders or squashed anyone's geraniums. It was almost as if they hadn't been here in the first place. And if they hadn't made any detectable impact on Amer- ican life, perhaps they were no more than a new form of mass hysteria, similar to that which resulted from Orson Welles' 1938 War of the Worlds radio program. Real things make their presence known in more than fanci- ful tales. They are recognized by experts. They produce changes. But the "flying saucers" hadn't resulted in a single show of concern from any scientist. The government—mainly the U.S. Army Air Forces—said they were not American exper- imental airplanes or rockets. The press was nearly unani- mously flippant in its treatment of the phenomenon. Who can pay attention to a few casual bystanders when the people who should know and who should be concerned haven't shown a hint of interest? By all indications, the great "flying saucer" scare of 1947 came and went in a few weeks, leaving behind nothing more tangible than memories. Funny memories and puzzling memo- ries, to be sure. But just memories. The argument against their existence as anything real and solid seemed pretty obvious: If flying saucers were real and were flying over the United States with regularity, then there should be the occasional crash. All known manmade vehicles crash, and in 1947 the flying saucers were assumed to be man- made, if indeed they were anything at all. If they never crash, and every indication was pointing to a complete lack of acci- dents, then it would seem they couldn't be actual, manmade devices. CRASH AT CORONA