On April 16, 1897, in the midst of the great panic, residents of Lynn Grove, Iowa, watched a flying machine slowly float over their heads and then briefly land outside the city. When the ship took off again, it erupted "two boulders of unknown origin." Much the same thing happened on June 21, 1947, near Morey Island, when one of six objects observed by Harold Dahl emitted a rain of "small whitish metal particles", they were red-hot, as steam rose when they hit the water.
As you know, flying saucers are often credited with a whitish metallic shade, but in this incident we are dealing with some metal shavings erupted from the "seized" ship.
For some unknown reason, the intelligence department of the 4th Army of the US Air Force investigated the scene only on June 31, ten days later. Captain William Davidson and Lt. Frank Brown were unable to locate the "small, whitish metal particles," but Kenneth Arnold, hired by Faith magazine to investigate the case, gave them what looked like "porous lava particles" and made history with the famous incident 24 June, from which the post-war panic began. Arnold sent "his" remains for analysis to the chemistry laboratory at the University of Chicago, where they were classified as "volcanic slags." The rest of the shavings that reached the A-2 intelligence agents were missing as the plane carrying the agents to Hamilton AFB crashed near Kelso, Washington. Later, the leadership of McCord AFB confirmedthat there was "classified material" on board the plane and, while the crew commander and technician landed safely by parachute, the agents died in the crash.
Ironically, it was during the search for the crashed aircraft of the navy "C-46" that Arnold observed nine unidentified objects at once, flying in formation over Mount Rainier, on the border of the USA and Canada.
Unsurprisingly, after the disaster of agents A-2, Dahl and his immediate superior, Fred Christman, possibly under pressure from Unit A-2, stated that the UFO remains were simply mineral formations collected on Mori Island, all intended to draw press attention to UFO stories. Thus ended the history of Mori Island. In at least these two cases, UFOs left behind real material traces. As for the rest of the post-war UFOs, they set the standard for all subsequent flying saucers.
There has been so much talk about the island of Mori that it is impossible to separate the truth from fiction and fantasy. Whatever may be said by those who consider this entire incident a hoax, this was the first post-war encounter with a UFO, and the description given by Dahl went down in history, becoming a "model" for many subsequent descriptions. Dal said that the UFOs from Mori Island looked like "inflated cameras", there were no protruding parts in their design, their diameter was 30 meters, there was a "hole" in the center, windows were located along the perimeter, there was an observation window at the bottom (perhaps it was there was a central "hole"). They looked like metal and were capable of hovering motionless in the air and making a quick vertical takeoff.
When four days later, Kenneth Arnold met with "his" UFOs, neither he nor anyone else had heard of the incident on Morey Island. However, an experienced mountain rescuer provided a similar description. At first he thought that these nine objects were P-51 aircraft, but then he saw that they had no tail or other protruding parts, except for the cockpit with curtained windows, and the entire fuselage resembled a gracefully curved wing or boomerang. The objects had incredible maneuverability and flew horizontally like a speedboat on water.
Arnold was a pilot, but not a military man. Therefore, we turn to the book "Exploration of Unidentified Flying Objects" by Captain Edward Ruppelt, the most diligent and honest UFO researcher in the Air Force. On June 28 at 3.30 pm, four days after the incident with Kenneth Arnold, while flying an F-51 near Lake Mead, Nevada, he saw a formation of five or six "rounded objects" to his right. That evening, four Air Force officers, two pilots and two reconnaissance officers from Maxwell Base in Montgomery, Alabama, saw a bright light zig-zagging across the sky at great speed and turning sharply 90 degrees before disappearing.
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On July 4, in Eelam, Portland, Oregon, several people driving a car near Raymond saw four disc-shaped objects flying over Mount Jefferson. At one o'clock in the afternoon, a policeman in the parking lot behind the Portland police station saw five large disc-shaped objects in the sky, flying at high speed and swinging on their horizontal axis. A few minutes later, other police officers, former pilots, saw three similar objects flying one after the other, and four patrolmen in the harbor watched flying discs swaying as they flew, similar to "chrome hub caps". In addition, many other Portland residents saw similar objects around this time.
During the night, a United Airlines team flying near Emmett, Idaho reported five UFOs with thin and smooth bottoms and uneven tops; two days later, the B-25 crew saw a luminous disc-shaped object flying below the plane; then a pilot flying over Fairfield-Suisun, California, saw something swinging on a horizontal axis, crossing three-quarters of the sky in a few seconds.
But the incident that really threw the Air Force into confusion occurred on July 8 at Moorok Air Force Base, a top-secret California test facility.
At 10 am, the test pilot saw what he first thought was a meteorological balloon, until he noticed that it was moving against the wind. Looking more closely, he saw that it was a spherical, yellowish object. As it turned out later, a little earlier, other officers noticed three similar objects, only silvery, moving in the same direction. Two hours later, a team of engineers at Rogers Dry Lake, adjacent to Muroku, observed a round object of material similar to white aluminum, near two B-82s and one A-2, which were conducting an experiment with an ejection seat. When the chair with the dummy fell, the object followed, moving against the wind, it was oval in shape with two protruding parts on top, possibly thick stabilizers (keels) or a nose. These ledges crossed from time to time,which assumed that the object was slowly spinning or wiggling. The object moved silently, and there were no signs of engine operation. It looks like it was painted with aluminum paint. Four hours later, the F-51 pilot, flying at an altitude of 6.6 kilometers, noticed a "flat object with a light reflecting surface" that did not have vertical stabilizers or wings. He tried to chase him, but he could not rise to such a height.but could not rise to such a height.but could not rise to such a height.
A rather distinct image of a UFO looms. It is a semicircular or circular object, usually domed, with portholes at the top or bottom, resembling an overturned saucer or two saucer stacked together. Its surface is usually whitish-gray or resembles metal. In level flight, they jump slightly, are able to abruptly change course, take off and descend vertically, and perform theoretically impossible maneuvers at very low or very high speeds. Most of them wobble but are silent and it is impossible to determine the type of engine.
If what Dahl was talking about was a hoax, it was brilliantly conceived, because the UFOs described above fit the description of the "flying wing" and "hunched profile", which were then developed at the National Physics Laboratory and other aviation institutions throughout America and Canada.
We have already talked about the importance of control over the boundary layer, which can be achieved with the help of suction and a special design of the aircraft. As a result of the experiments, Armstrong Whitworth's AW-52 Boomerang twin-engine jet aircraft of the Armstrong Whitworth's "flying wing" type appeared. When one of the AW-52s crashed, further work on them ceased; but it was followed by aircraft with even greater wing sweep of striking triangular shape, such as the aircraft of the Hawker Siddeli group, Avro 698 and Avro 707B, and others. These were undoubtedly the forerunners of the absolutely circular supersonic aircraft known as the "flying saucer", which was seen over secret military installations.
As similar as these descriptions were, the physical reality of UFOs remained in doubt. These doubts, ironically, began to recede after the "classic" UFO incident. It was also the first time that a human being was killed by a UFO.
The Mantell Incident began at 1.15 pm on January 7, 1947, when the Kentucky Highway Patrol informed dispatchers at the Godman Base, Louisville control tower that many people from Maysville, a small town 128 kilometers east of Louisville, claim to have seen a strange aircraft. … Although there were no planes in the air in the area, the police called again after 15-20 minutes and said that reports of the "strange ship" had come from Owensboro and Irvington, west of Louisville. Most of the witnesses said the object was "round, about 85-100 meters in diameter" and was moving westward at high speed.
Controllers still had no information about the planes in the air, but they calculated that a UFO flying north of Godman from Maysville to Owensboro might return.
And so it happened. At 1.45 a.m. the object passed over Godman and was seen by controllers from the tower, the chief of controllers, an intelligence officer and several other personnel; everyone who watched the UFO with binoculars said they could not identify it.
At 2.30 in the air four "F-51" took off. One of them returned to the base due to lack of fuel, the other three climbed to an altitude of 3300 meters, pursuing a strange object. At 2.45 am the commander of the leading aircraft, Captain Thomas Mantell, reported to the tower: "I see something ahead and above me, I continue to climb." This was confirmed by all the people at the KDP. This was followed by phrases that not everyone could confirm: “I saw the object. It is huge and, apparently, metal … It is gaining height again. " Then Captain Mantell said, "I'm getting close to twenty thousand feet" (6600 meters), and this was also confirmed by all the officers.
Flank planes, located at an altitude of 5 thousand meters, saw Mantell rising higher and higher, out of sight, and tried to contact him. They were forced to return to base at Standford Field, north of Godman, while Mantell crashed in his plane.
Although the words of Mantell about the object, which rises higher and higher, people retold each other, they cannot be confirmed by the state of the base, and the official authorities suggested that Mantell mistaken the planet Venus for a UFO, rose too high and did not have enough oxygen. However, the team of the project "Sign, ATIC" soon discovered that this was impossible. On the other hand, there are two witnesses, including one astronomer, who saw a hot air balloon in the sky at the same time, and Project Sign's research revealed that the Clinton County base may have been conducting a secret experiment in Northern Ohio. The meteorological conditions were such that a balloon launched from Ohio could be seen from Godman even at an altitude of 20 thousand meters, so Mantell could have died in pursuit of this particular balloon.
Two facts are against this. First, people who knew Mantell closely could not believe that such an experienced pilot like him chased the balloon for 20 minutes and did not understand what it was. One of his close friends confirmed that Mantell was a very careful pilot, and it is impossible to believe that he did not pay attention to the lack of oxygen. "The only thing I can assume," he said, "was that Mantell was pursuing something that seemed to him more important than his life and his family."
According to Ruppelt's book, another detail that casts doubt on this hypothesis is the fact that people who used the first skyhooks "remember" that in 1947 balloons were actually launched from the Clinton County base, but not a single person could not confirm that the tests were carried out on that same unfortunate day.
Summing up the story, Ruppelt writes: “If this balloon was launched from Clinton County Air Force Base on January 7, 1947, then somewhere in the archives of the Air Force or Navy there must be records on. this account. I couldn't find any trace."
What the unfortunate Captain Mantell was chasing - a balloon or a UFO - we will never know, but we know for sure that many eyewitness testimonies coincide with this description. Mantell's death prompted the Air Force to take a different look at the UFO phenomenon. But what really shook them up was an event that happened 18 months later.
At 2.45 a.m. on July 24, 1948, on a scheduled flight from Houston, Texas to Atlanta, Georgia, pilots Clarence Chiles and John Whitguid saw a strange light rapidly approaching straight ahead. Chiles, the captain, turned sharply to the left. The UFO passed about 230 meters to the right and then sharply rushed upward.
Chiles and Whittid got a good look at the car, and both claimed that it looked like the fuselage of a B-29, but emitted a "bright blue light" from below, and a "17-meter orange-red tail of fire" stretched from the back. On the plate were "two rows of windows from which there was a bright light." (Two years later, on March 31, 1950, pilots of another DC-3, flying from Memphis, Tennessee, to Little Rock, Arkansas, nearly collided with a UFO, which they said was disk-shaped, such a conclusion they made because of “8 or 10 windows in a circle, with a bright bluish-white light.”) A few minutes after the Chiles and Wattida incident, the commander of the Robins Base, Macon, Georgia, noticed a “very bright light” overhead. moving at high speed. Another pilot, flying at the same time near the border of the states of Virginia and North Carolina,saw a bright star falling towards Montgomery, Alabama.
These messages were summarized by ATIC, and, according to Ruppelt, it turned out that the UFO flew almost over Macon, after almost colliding with the airliner, and it turned towards Macon when it was last seen.
Since the testimony of the commander of the crew of the Robins base and the pilot flying near the border of Virginia and North Carolina confirm this theory, the Air Force was forced to admit that this phenomenon is real and that serious investigation needs to be carried out.
The team of the project "Sign, ATIS" submitted an official report for consideration, and the UFO ceased to be a myth.
As for the shape and maneuverability of the saucer, the necessary evidence was presented, but the size and supernatural speed were still in doubt. Navy Captain R. McLaughlin in 1948-1949 worked on a secret project "skyhook" at White Sands, New Mexico. On April 24, 1949, at 10 am, when McLaughlin and his team were preparing to launch a huge balloon (30 meters in diameter), everyone saw a UFO in an absolutely clear sky. It was quite high, but still it was possible to make out an elliptical structure of a whitish-silver color. The team watched the UFO using a theodolite, chronometer and 25x telescope, then it fell from an elevation angle of 45 degrees to 25 degrees, then took off sharply and disappeared. Even if the figures obtained with the help of the theodolite were slightly reduced, it turned out,that the UFO was 11 meters wide and 30 meters long, flying at an altitude of 89 kilometers at a speed of 11 kilometers per second, or 40 thousand kilometers per hour.
As Captain Ruppelt writes, there were natural doubts about the accuracy of the measurements. But even if they had not been produced at all, the speed and altitude of the UFO were still amazing. We must not forget that many of the McLaughlin team viewed the object through a telescope, and everyone assures that it was "flat and oval."
Shortly after the publication of the article about the incident, Captain McLaughlin was again transferred to the Navy. But he went down in UFO history, as thanks to this incident, the extraordinary speed and altitude of the flying saucer became indisputable.
Three years later, when the Robertson Commission published its famous recommendations for "exposing" UFOs (more on that later), they immediately came to the attention of Captain Ruppelt, head of the Blue Project, who was convinced that UFOs were real aircraft, designed on the basis of advanced technologies. Although there were plenty of UFO encounters, Ruppelt wanted to select those cases that would help him prove that UFOs are ships controlled by an intelligent being. He found three such cases. The first occurred near the Ganeda Air Base (now Tokyo National Airport) in Japan in late August 1952. The UFO was first spotted by two control tower controllers, they noticed a bright large light in the sky to the northwest over Tokyo Bay. Using 7x50 binoculars, they saw that the light had a constant brightness, was round in shape,it appeared to be the top of a dark object, four times the diameter of the emitted light. Then, when the object moved, the dispatchers noticed another, dim, light. in the lower part. The UFO was monitored using radar, intelligence officers also saw how it flew back and forth along the Tokyo Bay, sometimes hovering in the air, and then stalling and accelerating instantly to 480 km per hour. The UFO chased the F-94, but managed to escape.but he managed to escape.but he managed to escape.
This incident was investigated by FEAF scouts, and then no less thoroughly - by Captain Ruppelt. All came to the conclusion that it was not a meteorological instrument or a star, and that visually and on the radar one could see that the object was solid and mobile. They also proved that the UFO made standard turns, the distances between the two turning points were the same. Ruppelt noticed that the drawing of the UFO flight path reminded him of his own cross path, which he practiced during the Second World War. The UFO deviated from this trajectory only when it was pursued by the F-94.
The next incident took place on the night of July 29, 1952, when the F-94 was trying to intercept a UFO over Eastern Michigan. This case is even more revealing, since it was possible to explain any movement of the UFO. He first turned 180 degrees as the F-94 approached him. Then he alternately picked up and dropped speed: picked up when the plane came close, and dropped when he was not even visible on radars.
Obviously, such a flight could not have been accidental, in support of this statement Ruppelt cites a third case - a report from an F-84 pilot who was chasing a strange object over Rapid City, South Dakota. According to the pilot and the radar operators who spotted the object, it slowed down and accelerated so that there was exactly 4800 meters between it and the F-84. The chase continued until the F-84 discovered a leak in the fuel tank; he was forced to return to base. Both the pilot and the operators speculated that the UFO was supposed to have an automatic warning radar connected to a power system. This ability was possessed by all modern UFOs, from German "fireballs" to the more advanced vehicles that leap over mountain peaks and elude military vehicles.
By the mid-50s, the head of the British Air Force, Lord Dowing, believed in the reality of UFOs, but did not divulge his opinion about what it was. Hermann Obert, the father of German rocketry, has made a public announcement that these are interplanetary spaceships. The Belgian senator demanded that the Minister of Defense answer the question of what a UFO is. The French General Staff has established a special committee to study UFO reports. The English magazine Iroplein conducted its own investigation, but could not come to any definite conclusions. In the countries behind the Iron Curtain, the UFO problem was also widely discussed, but most agreed that it was a form of capitalist propaganda. In the United States, two civilian UFO organizations have been established: Aerial Phenomena Research (APRO), Tucson, Arizona,and National Research Committee for Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), Washington. Members of both organizations included renowned scientists, ex-military and Air Force personnel.
UFOs are flat, domed, double-domed, hemispherical discs in the form of a sphere, ellipse, triangle, cylinder. They are capable of silently flying at high speeds, making vertical takeoff and landing, hovering in the air, abruptly changing course, automatically flying along landmarks and disappearing without a trace. They are in most cases silver or white metal, they have portholes and other openings, they swing around a horizontal axis. Most of them are reminiscent of German designs from World War II: "a wide ring revolving around a fixed domed cockpit" or "a large rotating ring with a central stationary cockpit for the crew." These UFOs were visible on radar, surveyed by theodolites, and hid when chased.
In short, UFOs, or flying saucers, are not as alien as they seem, and may have been created on Earth.
