A mere week after the Arnold sighting, flying saucers seemed to be engulfing America. The Pacific Northwest had the heaviest concentration of activity. Newspaper coverage of flying saucers was intense, and interesting sightings occurred into July. On the first of the month, an Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce official saw a “disc-like, bluish object following a zigzag path in the northwestern sky” over New Mexico. Another report from New Mexico came from the Navajo reservation in the northwestern part of the state. Flying saucer reports came from the east, too. Meteorologist E. E. Unger, who ran the U.S. Weather Bureau at Louisville, Kentucky, believed he saw one. In eastern Canada, four people on Prince Edward Island saw objects “traveling at great speed high in the sky.” One witness described them as “shapeless, but glistening in the sunlight.”8
On July 3, an astronomer in South Brookville, Maine, saw a UFO about one hundred feet in diameter. Air Material Command publicly explained it as birds or insects, although the air force’s Project Grudge later listed the sighting as an “unusually well-supported incident” with no explanation. That evening in Denver, several people reported seeing “projectiles” variously described as “too fast for an airplane and not fast enough for a falling star,” “not moving at all,” and “traveling at great speed.”9
Activity increased yet more on Friday, July 4. One sighting that occurred near Boise, Idaho, received a great deal of attention, since the objects were witnessed by Capt. Edward J. Smith and his copilot, Ralph Stevens, of United Airlines. Smith was a highly regarded pilot with much experience in the air. While en route to Portland, Smith and Stevens saw nine disc-like objects. Smith’s stature prompted an FBI investigation into the sighting, which credited him as reliable. In Portland, many people, including police officers, saw a large number of UFOs in the middle of the afternoon, in formation and alone. In Redmond, Oregon, a car full of people saw four disc-shaped UFOs streak past Mount Jefferson. In Seattle, a Coast Guard yeoman took the first publicly known photograph of a UFO, a circular object moving against the wind. The photo showed a round dot of light.10
MAKING SENSE OF IT
It is easy to see why flying saucers elicited such strong interest. Here were clearly seen objects that did not look like airplanes, and often moved at incredible speeds. Were they even real? If so, what could they be? The most widely discussed possibilities were experimental military craft (Arnold’s initial opinion), experimental civilian-designed craft, foreign (e.g., Soviet) craft, atmospheric and meteorological phenomena, and mass hysteria. No one wrote about aliens.
It is reasonable to assume that so many well-observed strange sightings would be of interest to the U.S. military. Publicly, however, the military’s attitude was varied. A July 3 article said the Air Research Center at Wright Field was looking into the matter, “and all service intelligence agencies are at work on them.” According to the army spokesman, “If some foreign power is sending flying discs over the United States, it is our responsibility to know about it and take proper action.” The next day, an army air force spokesman discounted the secret weapon theory—nothing in America’s possession could have caused the sightings. He dismissed the Arnold sighting as not realistic enough to deserve further study, and dismissed the whole flying saucer phenomenon. Perhaps the whole thing was meteorological. Air Material Command, he noted, was trying at this moment to determine that very possibility. 11
Behind the public facade, however, the military wondered about more serious implications. After reviewing what documents he could find a few years later, Capt. Edward Ruppelt, who for several years managed the air force’s Project Blue Book, believed the air force during this time established “a project to investigate and analyze” all UFO reports. He described their attitude as “a state of near panic.” Donald Keyhoe later obtained military sources who told him that the air force at this time ordered its pilots “to down a UFO for examination, by shooting, or by running and bailing out.” We know that the army air force, the Army Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), and the FBI were all doing a great deal of field work regarding UFOs, interviewing witnesses and trying to determine just what these things were.12
Within this context, let us move on to the most controversial event in the entire history of the UFO phenomenon, the crash at Roswell, New Mexico.
ROSWELL, ROSWELL!
