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magnetic fields. company of British Engineers. Tracks of the vanished men ended abruptly, "the footmarks all pointed straight ahead, but nothing beyond, sideways, or backwards." 7. The Busy Saucer Summer of 1965 Until 1965, 1952 had been the biggest year for flying saucers with a record 1,501 sightings. Official sightings for 1965's busy saucer summer are still being weighed and evaluated, but it appears that several thousand UFO's of all sizes, shapes, and weird descriptions were sported by what the Air Force had grudgingly to admit were "above average" saucer viewers. Never before had so many people become so worked up about UFO's, and never before had the nation's newspapers become so openly critical of the Air Force's method of handily explaining away every sighting with the same tired dismissals of weather balloons and the planet Venus. Last summer, everyone was talking about flying saucers - most, for the first time, seriously. People were beginning to demand that something be done about the strange interlopers from the skies. Citizens insisted that Air Force and government officials tell all that they might know about unidentified flying objects. In the summer of 1965 UFO's became subject to everyone's scrutiny and were at last removed, in the average man's mind, from the exclusive province of the crank, kook, or cultist. For the first time, one could discuss flying saucers at a cocktail party without being immediately censured and labeled "some kind of a nut." The massive saucer flap ("flap" being Air Force jargon for large groups of people acting in a confused manner, just a few degrees below panic) began on July 1st, when, almost simultaneously, an unidentified flying object was reported as having been sighted over France, and a saucer over the Santa Maria airport in the Azores stopped all electric clocks. On July 3rd, Chilean, British, and Argentine personnel stationed in the Antarctic reported seeing several glowing objects in the sky. Argentina stated that the objects had interfered with instruments measuring The Antarctic reports were made even more exciting on July 9th, when Mario Jahn Barrera, commander of the Chilean base, radioed that a corporal had taken color pictures of a UFO. Commander Barrera described the object as "a mysterious, lens-shaped flying object, maneuvering and moving at great speed ... (in color) yellowish red, changing to green, yellow, and orange."