in the news 1952
PART TWENTY-SEVEN
Above: From the August 13, 1952 edition of Pacific Stars and Stripes (full story below). First published as far back as the United States' civil war, it has been published continuously since 1942 in Europe and since 1945 in the Pacific. Although an independent media organization, it is authorized by the U.S. Department of Defense and appears on United States military bases across the world.
NINETEEN FIFTY-TWO might be remembered for many things, large and small. The election of Dwight Eisenhower as President of the United States. Fifty thousand American families afflicted by Polio. The British A-bomb. The first issue of Mad magazine. The theory of the Big Bang.
But for those of a certain bent, 1952 will also be remembered for the second great 'flying saucer flap' which climaxed with the reports of radar and visual sightings over the nation's capital in late July.
Part of the story of that event-filled year is now available in declassified government files. But for the public back then -- at a time when only one in three families in America had a television set -- the story was mostly found in the newspapers and magazines.
This then is a look back at those stories, as they first appeared in print...
AUGUST 13, 1952:
Pittsfield, Massachusetts Berkshire Evening Eagle - 13 Aug 52
Notes and Footnotes
Flying saucers; transatlantic department: The first reports of mysterious Things in the sky came from Sweden right after the war. Unexplained vapor trails were seen in the sky, and then they reported some kind of engine tumbled into the country. The Swedes announced they were draining a lake near the Finnish border to find it, and that ended the story. Soon after, the Greeks reported funny flying Things; then Portugal, Spain and finally all Europe got on the bandwagon except Andorra and Lichtenstein. Later, in 1947, the first saucers were seen in the U.S. by pilot Kenneth Arnold.
So matters rested until the recent radar sightings over Washington, D.C. Then one Andre Fregnole snapped pictures of saucers near Paris, which French experts said looked suspiciously like weather balloons, and a housewife and four children sighted a formation over Holland. Each Thing had a nucleus like a tennis ball, surrounded by glittering rings. From behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany comes a vague report that a saucer was found there on the ground.
French magazines, which take things in their stride, are having a droll heyday over the saucers, calling them "soucoupes volantes," and making hay rapidly lest the whole business be suddenly exploded.
Tokyo, Japan Pacific Stars and Stripes - 13 Aug 52

Strange Objects In Our Skies
EDITOR'S NOTE: Pacific Stars & Stripes presents here a brief discussion of the series of reports of flying disks and other strange objects in the sky, reported at intervals by observers of varying degrees of repute since 1947. There have been many explanations of the flying saucers but no explanation has been completely satisfactory nor does this discussion pretend to offer the final word.
ACTUAL PHOTOGRAPH of "something" over Riverside, Cal., in November of last year was made by Guy Marquand, Jr. Picture has been studied and pronounced authentic but the object shown has never been identified (ACME TELEPHOTO)
By Sgt John McPARTLAND
Staff Writer
OUR ENGINEERS and scientists believe we could build a crude spaceship with our present technical abilities. Maybe not a very good spaceship but one that could at least attempt the little voyage to our moon, a quarter-million miles away. The first ones we built might not be successful. But before long the clever, conferring minds of men would build a ship to out to planets of our sun's system and return.
We are in about the same position in respect to spaceships today as were the inventors and tinkerers with the automobile two generations ago or the air-dreamers who were trying to build a flying machine 50 years back.
We think we know how to, but we don't yet know who will pay to build the first spaceship -- unless we are already in fact and in secret attempting to build a space rocket for military use -- and we aren't sure that our first ones would work. As with motor cars and airplanes at the same stage of development, most of our people aren't much interested and what little interest they have is mildly jeering amusement.
OUR SPACE STATION in the sky may be built within a few years. John Carlton of A.P. drew this sketch of a man-made satellite designed by rocket-expert Werner von Braun. While this is not a space-ship the saucer design is evident.
But the important thing is that we now believe spaceships are possible. And if they are possible some other life-form on some other planet may have built them already, may have been using them for thousands of years or may have perfected their first ones only recently.
It is as if we were primitive people living on a great island in the sea. We use canoes and little boats but we have never yet dared the great sea about us with its unknown shores. Recently we have begun to dream about building sea-going ships and now we think we know how to build them. but before we attempt out first one we see white sails on the horizon of the sea. Ships -- big, strange, from an unknown land -- sail into our small harbor. We are excited and a little frightened as we send our canoes paddling out to meet the huge, alien craft. Back in the hills of our island the villagers laugh at the news -- "There can't be any such ships or any land except our island," they say knowingly. But the strange ships are there.
By definition a spaceship is a directed vessel with a source of energy great enough to overcome the force of gravity and to propel it over the millions of miles between the planets or the light-years of distance between the stars. If it is to have living passengers, regardless of their shape or species, it must provide for their safety, comfort, and needs of life.
But there is no reason to expect a spaceship to have living passengers: if it is an "explorer" it can see with camera eyes, hear by microphone and feel by radar, taste and smell by sampling qualitative chemical analysis, recording and remembering all this on film, magnetized wire or in [Illegible] of selectron tubes. An explorer without life but able to outmatch any living thing in its ability to make a complete record of an alien planet.
It is possible that the strange objects in our skies may be spaceships from other planets. Any planet which is bathed in solar energy can sustain some form of life (life is only -- on our earth -- a colloidal organization of solar energy) and we have found no place on our planet too cold, too hot, too dry, or too wet to permit some kind of life to survive. There are even bacteria which live in concentrated sulphuric acid. The life forms of other planets need not be of the carbon-oxygen pattern of the Earth; a silicon-fluorine life form is possible which could endure amazing ranges of heat and cold but which would burst into [Illegible] in the oxygen of our atmosphere.
Our planet's gravity would make Martians unpleasantly heavy and might crush visitors from a moon of Jupiter, but would be about the same as their home planet to life-forms from Venus. Likewise Earth's share of the sun's heat would be searing to Martians, and probably chillingly scant to Venusians. The giant-protein molecules which are our virus disease forms, our bacteria, and our air-borne spores might be deadly destruction to intruders from space, but likewise those intruders might bring parasites that could ravage this Earth with new plagues.
There is no reason to expect the crew of alien spaceships to be even remotely human in shape or in their concepts any more than you would expect life-forms from the bottom of the sea to be human or to think in human terms.
But we believe that we could build spaceships, therefore --
OUR SPACESHIPS are still in the future but the Matador is a step on the ladder to the stars. Its electronic brain is in its alloy belly, and it rides a jet blast for hundreds of miles. Compare this to the first airplane of the Wright brothers less than 50 years ago and then imagine what man may build 50 years from now. Other intelligences may have climbed the ladder into space eons ago.
GUIDED MISSILES?
ABOUT TEN YEARS AGO the Nazis began to build jet and rocket weapons, designed to travel hundreds of miles, at a secret laboratory on Peenemunde island in the Baltic sea.
In the summer of 1944, the first of these long-range missiles -- the pulse-jet V-l, about 15 feet long -- began to fall on London. Later that year the 3000-m.p.h. V-2 rockets began to shoot across the Channel to smash into England. Both of these weapons were comparative failures, costing Hitler more in military production than they gained in military damage, but the so-called rocket experts like Von Braun who produced them are now in the United States and are still fumbling with chemical fuel rockets (because the minor-league German scientists never got far enough to work with atomic power). Some of their beer-and-sausage cousins are in Russia building guided missiles for Stalin. While we are building atomic powered aircraft and atomic powered submarines, these so-called experts are still telling us that atomic power is worthless since the Nazis didn't learn to use it.
WE MOVE toward space ships by gradual stages such as this first pilotless jet bomber, the Air Force's B-61 Matador. Now operational, the Matadors compose the 1st Pilotless Bomber Squadron at the USAF Missile Test Center, Cocoa, Fla. (ACME TELEPHOTO)
Guided missiles are being tested by the United States at Banana River in Florida; at White Sands, New Mexico; at Muroc in California, and out over the Pacific from Point Mugu, just north of Los Angeles. There is no doubt but that some of the "flying saucers" have been guided missiles seen in flight -- the great new Hughes Aircraft guided missiles plant is close to the scene of the "green fire-ball" flurry across the skies of Arizona and New Mexico last spring.
Something that may have been a guided missile crashed into a tank in New Mexico during the green fire-bail epidemic. All that can be said is that there are guided missiles, they can travel at great speed over long distances, and they can be guided in flight by remote control.
There are no known missile test ranges near the Pacific northwest where the first "saucers" were seen five years ago.
WHAT ARE THEY? and where have they come from? Jacque Fresco drew this conception of a transparent metal turret with a series of cambered blades on the disc's surface shown at the top of the page. Thousands of Americans have reported seeing objects similar to this since 1947.
NATURAL PHENOMENA?
WE WANT TO FEEL SECURE upon our little ball of earth whirling around its yellow star, one of a billion stars in our galaxy, and our galaxy is lost in the infinity of galaxies in space. We have enough problems getting money for beer and putting off the rent without needing to realize that everything we know about life and that everything we hope for in our future could be changed completely and irrevocably in one flashing second as the first alien spaceship landed on the earth.
The Aztecs were proud and mighty people, masters of their world when the ships of Cortez landed. Within ten years there was no Aztec world; two-thirds were dead and those who lived were slaves of the alien Spaniards from a land no Aztec wise man had dreamed existed.
So we say the strange objects in our skies are reflected lights. They are hallucinations. They are practical jokes. Meteors. Weather balloons. Anything but subjects, that cannot be explained by familiar understanding.
Much can be said for these explanations. Maj. Gen. Roger M. Ramey, heading the Air Force's investigation of these reports of strange objects in the sky, says that six years of study has convinced him that there are no spaceships or unknown guided missiles involved; "We are reasonably convinced that they are not material, solid objects. Of 1500 serious reports investigated by the Air Force, only about 300 remain to be explained."
TIME magazine's collection of experts discovered a meteorologist who has advanced a theory that layers of warm air over cold air produce optical reflections of light which look like discs in the sky. LIFE magazine, TIME'S broad-beamed sister, has a collection of experts who indicated in the April 7, 1952, issue that these objects had been verified. It is seldom that LIFE and TIME disagree.
Maybe they are reflected lights or weather balloons. But we humans have won the tournament of the species upon our world and maybe we are ready for a bigger league.
(SUGGESTED REFERENCES: LIFE magazine, April 7, 1952; "The Book of the Damned," Charles Fort; "Conquest of Mexico," Prescott.)
Corona, California Daily Independent - 13 Aug 52
Corona Ring Around
If a man from Mars read one edition of one of our metropolitan newspapers -- assuming he could read English – he'd be so scared by the violence of the stories that he'd crank up his flying saucer and hie himself back to the peace and quiet of his own planet.
Judging from just one issue of the Los Angeles Times (which is a conservative newspaper at that) the Mars man would be aghast at the things that happen to earthmen. Yesterday's issue of the Times was no more spectacular than any other one, but, skimming through it, here are stories I found which happened in Southern California:
-- a freeway crash involved two persons inn a narcotics quiz
-- a baby drowned in a wading pool
-- another baby almost drowned in a canal but was rescued
-- a woman was on trial for the gunshot muurder of her doctor husband
-- a man was arrested on assault and kidnaapping charges
-- another man was picked up on suspicion of being a bank robber
-- a great search was in progress to appreehend a young man accused of committing a sex murder
-- an automobile hit a streamliner
-- a truck careened down a hill and killedd a woman
-- a 170-pound woman was fined for strikinng a 130-pound man
-- a man was picked up in a theft and burgglary case
-- a man was under charge of assault in a quarrel following an automobile crash
-- thieves broke into a nightclub
-- there were 86 divorces listed
-- and 76 deaths.
All this crime, violence, and heartbreak would seem to indicate that a person wouldn't be safe to set his foot outside the house in Southern California. But if the man from Mars landed his flying saucer somewhere else and looked at a metropolitan paper in that area, too, he'd find the same frightening records there. (Maybe that's why flying saucers are sighted first one place and then another. Maybe the men from Mars are looking, without any luck, from place to place to find a spot they think it would be safe to land.)
To be sure, terrible things do happen all the time. Evil, death, and unhappiness are everywhere -- and everywhere they make the headlines.
But, for most of us, life is a busy, pleasant, routine affair. We have our jobs to do, yards to work in, friends to visit, and, perhaps, a hobby. But these things, which concern millions of people, don't make the headlines because these things are peaceful and undramatic. Most of us live peaceful and undramatic lives while only a handful create the headlines that shock us every day. But the man from Mars wouldn't know this -- and perhaps it's just as well.
Statesville, North Carolina Daily Record - 13 Aug 52
Down In Iredell...
MORE SAUCERS -- Two more Iredell county residents have reported seeing flying saucers Monday night.
Ralph Spencer of Barium says he saw several rapidly-moving objects streaking across the sky and Staff Sgt. Clyde Reavis also saw them. Spencer was in Barium at the time and Reavis was in Statesville.
A group in Mooresville last night sat out looking for saucers but the mysterious visitors failed to oblige them.
Hamilton, Ohio Daily News Journal - 13 Aug 52
Another Saucer Seen
"Flying saucers" or meteors?
Four New Miami youths claim to have spotted their second "flying saucer." The youths, Barbara Ashcraft, 13, Gloria Eubanks, 14; Arnold Ashcraft, 15, and Joe Blanton, 12, said they saw a large yellow, saucer-shaped object in the skies above Hamilton as they were walking east on Augspurger Ave., New Miami, Sunday night.
Barbara said the "saucer" was larger than a star and was proceeding south when it vanished from sight. She explained that the object left a trail of gray smoke and light orange flame.
The group saw its first saucer about two months ago, Barbara said, but thought it was their imagination. "This time we were sure," she said.
Madison, Wisconsin Capital Times - 13 Aug 52
No Saucers Here; Just Shooting Stars
Just in case you wondered, those bright objects you saw darting about the skies Tuesday night were not flying saucers.
"Definitely not," says Prof. C.M. Huffer of the University of Wisconsin astronomy department. Rather they were a shower of meteors which are seen each year when the earth intersects the orbit of an old, disintegrating comet which passed by in 1862.
The phenomena is known as the Perseids Meteor Shower. Tuesday night's display was only the beginning of the show which is expected to continue about five days.
The meteor particles which broke off from the comet and are still circulating in its orbit were witnessed by Madison residents Tuesday night as the "shooting stars" whizzed by in great dipping swoops. The flashing lights brought an avalanche of calls to the University and newspaper offices.
Billings, Montana Gazette - 13 Aug 52
Square Flying Saucer Is Latest Object Sighted in Oklahoma
Holdenville, Okla., Aug. 12. -- They're seeing square flying saucers now.
C.A. Holland, assistant Hughes county attorney, reported Tuesday he saw an unidentified object "moving at tremendous speed" through the sky over his home near Wetunka. He said the object was square.
Big Spring, Texas Daily Herald - 13 Aug 52
Saucer Platoon Is Spotted Here
A platoon of "flying saucers" visited Big Spring Tuesday night, but they apparently didn't tarry long.
Mrs. J.F. Hendrix, 911 E. 12th, saw the discs from her back yard at 9:20 p.m. She said they were about as large as ordinary dinner plates, all strung out in a straight line, and silvery colored. The saucers seemed pretty low and they went over in a hurry.
The flying things sailed over just east of the baseball park, from north to south, Mrs. Hendrix said. By the time she called her husband, the craft had travelled out of sight.
Ogden, Utah Standard Examiner - 13 Aug 52
Cameraman Can't Catch 'Silver Ball'
By RALPH COLLINS
That was a weather balloon flying over Ogden this morning, not a "flying saucer" as some people thought, and it was about 20,000 feet above ground.
I flew out in a light plane to take pictures of the silvery flying object after people in North Ogden and the northern part of Ogden had alerted us about it.
We got up to 9000 feet in our light plane and were in the vicinity of Woodruff, Utah. From there it obviously was a weather balloon, such as the air force uses, but it didn't look any closer to us than it did on the street in front of The Standard-Examiner office.
Head Toward "Ball"
Charles Christensen, pilot for Utah Western Aviation, and I took off from Ogden municipal airport and took a 15 degree heading from the airport toward the round, silver ball.
That course took us directly to Willard peak. Our small plane didn't have enough soup to get over the mountains, so we flew around the mountains there hunting an updraft that would boost us over.
We didn't find any so we flew round back of the mountains and climbed in a circle until we got altitude. Climbing in spirals, we got in the vicinity of Woodruff, Utah and our altitude showed 9000. The balloon was still away above and ahead of us, still going away.
We turned around and flew back to the airport.
[Note: No picture accompanied this story.]
Long Beach, California Press Telegram - 13 Aug 52
Beach Combing
IT WAS with relief I learned on my return from a long trip that people in this area had not been lax this summer about their sky watching, and had sighted a number of flying saucers.
The sightings here had evidently not made the national telegraph news wires, at least I saw nothing in the eastern press to assure me that the home community had kept up with the Joneses in the saucer business.
But it had, and I'm ashamed for having any doubts about it.
New Castle, Pennsylvania News - 13 Aug 52
Reports Are Denied That Norway Has "Flying Saucers"
OSLO, AUG. 13 -- Norwegian officials disclaimed knowledge today of a German writer's claim that the Norwegian air force is in possession of an undamaged Russian-made atomic-powered flying saucer type craft.
(British officials, including a spokesman at the air ministry in London, likewise said they had no information to substantiate such a story).
The story appeared last Friday in the German aviation monthly magazine Der Flieger, and Waldemar Beck, the author, quoted as his source only "a Norwegian report."
Blytheville, Arkansas Courier News - 13 Aug 52
Israel Reports Flying Saucer
JERUSALEM -- Israel got into the flying saucer act today.
The Jerusalem Post reported that a resident of Haifa had spotted a bright green elliptical object with a broad, rapidly revolving belt around its middle flying through the sky.
Redlands, California Daily Facts 13 Aug 52
Southland Rocket Experts Give 'Saucer' Explanation
LOS ANGELES -- Two Southern California rocket engineers came up today with a scientific explanation of flying saucers that puts them back on the dinner table where they belong.
Rollin W. Gillespie and Winthrop K. Coxe, who met two years ago while working on secret rocket projects at the Aerojet plant in Azusa, decided they "couldn't buy" the man from Mars flying saucer theory and set out on a campaign of their own.
"Stories like the one about a saucer landing in the desert and sprouting legs, while six little men 18 inches tall climbed out," said Gillespie, made the pair start searching for the truth.
Vortex Rings
According to their theory, said Coxe, flying saucers are electromagnetic vortex rings. He explained there are two types -- the saucer and the global or egg-shaped variety.
In the first type the disc is a magnetic field with the ions or charged particles in a central position inside, he said. The globe type has the ions on the outside giving the object a rounder appearance. These objects are activated and give off luminous glow. They could appear orange, yellow, blue or white, according to their activation, they said.
Have No Weight
The saucers have no weight and therefore can travel in any direction at any speed, depending on what they bump into in the way of counterfields in the atmosphere. Once they are generated, said Coxe, they are self-sustaining and only lose energy by their luminosity and aerodynamic drag. They would have the ability to give radar echoes.
Coxe said he agreed with the recent theory of Dr. Donald H. Menzel of Harvard university that the discs are caused by inversion layers and reflection of light, but "that only figures in about 10 percent of the cases."
"The only things our theory doesn't explain," said Coxe, "are the cigar-shaped bodies that have rows of lights along their sides."
Lima, Ohio News 13 Aug 52
EDITOR'S NOTE: Two Southern California rocket engineers, Winthrop
K. Coxe and Rollin W. Gillespie, came up today with what they claim is an airtight solution of the mystery of the "flying saucers." The Aerojet rocket engineers, employed on secret projects for the U.S. armed forces, relate in the following first of two exclusive articles for International News Service the groundwork for their "simple" solution.
By WINTHROP COXE
and ROLLIN W. GILLESPIE
LOS ANGELES -- Flying saucers are real.
But you can discard your theories of little pilots 18 inches tall, with over-sized heads and rest easy. Discs or saucers are natural phenomena.
Flying saucers are natural phenomena, just like lightning, meteors or the aurorae of the northern and southern lights.
We believe we have worked out engineering principles that account for all the reliable facts about flying saucers -- and they wash out these years of wild reports, amazing descriptions and fantasies of space-ships, Martians and Russians.
A FLYING saucer is caused by an electromagnetic vortex in the air. And the key to the saucers is contained in the word "spin."
We have sifted all available material and reports for years.
Every observation as to appearance, color, brightness, distance, speed direction and other behavior of the saucers was carefully catalogued.
And we have proved that they are nothing more than formations of ions which are electrified particles forming about a core of magnetism. And they spin around the magnetic field at such speeds as to provide the weird lights.
Every observation that appeared to come from more than one person, or from persons who seemed reliable, got special attention.
STORIES like the one about a saucer landing in the desert and sprouting legs, while six little men, 18-inches tall, climbed out -- well, we didn't buy that one.
From all the other descriptions, however, we found a pattern that we knew was worth study.
We identified the two main types of saucers.
One was the ball-shaped or egg-shaped object. In this class are ball lighting, "foo fighters" and colored spheres of light.
The other class includes the more descriptive objects. In our theory of electrified ions in a vortex, all have the following properties, which accounts for all the descriptions of saucers:
(1) They appear as solid bodies;
(2) Are self luminous at night and shine against the daytime sky;
(3) Have almost any size from inches to hundreds of yards across;
(4) Travel at wide ranges of speed from slow-flying aircraft to velocities like meteors that whip through the air at from four to 40 miles a second;
(5) Change direction (acceleration) at a pace only possible because they have low mass;
(6) Give radar echoes;
(7) Accompany or retreat from aircraft, but cannot contact aircraft.
Our conclusion from these observations is that flying saucers or discs are not hardware, have no pilots, are not directed.
(Tomorrow's concluding article will describe the "spin-theory" and will account for practically everything that saucers have been reliably observed doing over the years.)
AUGUST 14, 1952:
Lima, Ohio News 14 Aug 52
'Saucers' Just Electrified Particles Spun Harmlessly by Magnetic Forces
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second of two articles written exclusively for International News Service by rocket engineers Winthrop H. Coxe and Rollin W. Gillespie, who claim to have solved the mystery of the flying saucers.
By WINTHROP H. COXE
and ROLLIN W. GILLESPIE
LOS ANGELES -- The key to flying saucers resides in a simple, elementary physics exercise.
Flying saucers -- or discs, as you will -- are groups of electrified ions caught in an electromagnetic vortex in the air.
The saucers are phenomena of nature that appear as solid objects, but actually they are no more than vast swarms of electrical particles, whirling in the air at tremendous speeds.
Our research found answers to all the questions: Why do they fly in formation? Why do they look like space ships with windows for passengers? Why cannot a plane get close to them? And sometimes why do they seem to follow planes? Why are some ball-shaped and others disc-shaped?
IN SEARCHING the facts about saucer flights and the laws of electromagnetics, we discovered that the known types of saucers as recorded, fell into two classes:
1. Clearly stated records of simple scenes wherein the discs moved, changed course, changed brightness, appeared, vanished, re-appeared and ducked and dodged planes.
2. Reports that saucers flirted about the sky showing windows for
pilots or passengers, landed and discharged midget men.
The class two observations -- the anthropomorphic touch, or mythology about misunderstood natural phenomena -- we threw out the window like a discarded saucer.
BUT flying saucers are real -- and as natural as lightning or meteors or eclipses. They are formations of ions which are electrified particles forming about a core of magnetism.
In the laboratory, any studious schoolboy can wind a wire around an iron bar, send through the wire a current of electricity and produce a magnetic field.
It is possible to take out the magnet and keep the magnetic field.
That is what happens in the sky when a saucer is formed by a spin force acting on the ring of ions.
The magnetic field has a tendency to draw in upon itself, hence a rounded field will flatten out the core of ions until these tiny whirling particles form a flat disc -- the familiar form of the saucers.
JUST as there are big bolts and little bolts of lightning, so there can be larger and small saucers made of whirling, spinning rings of ions.
It is also possible for the magnetic field and the electrical, or ion field, to change places. When this happens, we get the "fireball" -- like the green ones sighted over Arizona and New Mexico a few months ago.
When ions get to spinning, it is like a smoke ring or a child whirling a July Fourth sparkler -- and the ions holding their shape provide the saucer. These ions are made visible at night by light, and by day because they have a different refractive index from the air and are visible against the sky background.
Being electromagnetic, they can, when near enough to the metals of an airplane, set up a counter electric field in the plane. Thus they repel each other -- like north poles of magnets repel other north poles.
THAT is why saucers have played around but never touched any plane.
You can explain the chain of saucers by the simple series of north-south, north-south, north-south polarities of these ion groups. Chains of magnets are familiar in laboratories.
And you can explain the tremendous speeds and sharp changes in direction by the mere fact that a stronger group of pocketed ions can attract across the sky a smaller saucer at supersonic speeds.
A human cannot survive too many "G's" -- or the force of gravity that is multiplied many times by sudden changes of direction a high speeds -- but a swarm of glowing ions has so little mass or weight that it can shift direction without gravity effects. The principal argument against saucers as man-piloted is that "G" pressure would crush a human, no matter how good a pressure suit is available.
Thus, our theory explains everything reliable known about discs.
They are real -- but there is nothing to fear from them.
Elyria, Ohio Chronicle Telegram 14 Aug 52

AEROJET ROCKET ENGINEERS Rollin W. Gillespie (left) and Winthrop K. Coxe display a diagram in Los Angeles to illustrate what they say is an elementary explanation of "flying saucers." They say the flitting discs are nothing more than formations of ions -- electrified particles -- accumulating about a magnetic core. This natural phenomenon, they say, can flit about a plane, but the magnetic field which builds up about the plane will not let the "saucer" get close. Gillespie and Coxe work on a super-secret government job. (International Soundphoto)
Lima, Ohio News 14 Aug 52
ONU Sets Up 'Project A' To Check Saucer Reports
ADA -- Ohio Northern Thursday became the world's first university formally to undertake a study of flying saucers.
Institution of Northern's "Operation Flying Saucer" was announced by Dr. F. Bringle McIntosh, university president.
Officially, "Operation Flying Saucer" is known as Project A, Investigation of Phenomenon, but Dr. McIntosh, said the phenomenon to be studied will be flying saucers. Prime object of the study is to settle the question of the reality of the elusive saucers, reported across the country for the last five "years.
The university will mobilize the full abilities of its faculty to gather, correlate and evaluate all possible reports on flying saucers. When the information has been studied thoroughly, the university will make known its findings to any interested individual or organization.
DESCRIBED as an "objective, long-range project," the study is the first to bring to bear on the question of flying saucers the combined knowledge and training of an entire university faculty.
In announcing the project, Dr. McIntosh told The Lima News:
"The American people are much concerned about the future of their nation and its place in the leadership of the world. The mounting interest in the phenomenon, the so-called, 'flying saucer,' is indicative of this general concern of our people.
"WE BELIEVE THAT a university like Ohio Northern has a distinct responsibility to hold itself in readiness to be of assistance in the discovery and interpretation of the facts which center around such phenomena. Our university is in rather a unique position to be of assistance at a time like this.
"We are an independent Christian university. We have 'no ax to grind' other than the discovery of the truth and the proper interpretation of the same. Having a College of Engineering, College of Law and College of Pharmacy, as well as a College of Liberal Arts, we feel that, we possess a broad foundation for service in matters like these.
"I have therefore asked our faculty to hold itself in readiness to be of assistance in all these matters. I have appointed a committee of the faculty to direct the efforts of the university in whatever may be asked of us.
"Dr. Warren Hickman, dean of the university, is chairman of the committee, with Eric Turner, director of admissions, as vice chairman. His committee will be composed of Hugh Harp, professor of mathematics and astronomy; Dean Lawrence-Archer of the engineering college; Marion Tinsler, professor of philosophy; David Markle, professor of psychology and sociology; Robert Price, professor of English; Robert Hillard, professor of history and C.E. Wintringham, director of alumni and public relations.
"They will welcome any information from any part of the country, bearing upon the appearance of the so-called 'flying saucers.' While these investigations and studies will be extra-curricular in nature, the intelligence of the total faculty will be brought to bear on the information submitted.
"WITH THE FLYING SAUCER, something that has had the world upset for the last five years, we believe it is time somebody did something about it," Dr. Hickman asserted. "We may find it a mistake, an astral body, army research, flights from outer space, atomic reactions, etc. -- but whatever it is, we must find an accurate answer.
"This project of the faculty is designed to be of service, but it depends entirely upon the cooperation of the American public. We have no preconceived ideas but are out to find what we can in a long-range project.
"We are asking people all over the country who have seen flying saucers during the last five years to write Project A, Ohio Northern, Ada, Ohio, asking for a data form. This will be mailed and upon its return, properly filled with the information requested, will be received by a centralizing agency where it will be studied from all angles.
"The data will be collected, categorized, analyzed and synthesized by departments, preparatory to a progress report. Faculty members are working out their own methods of approach in the different departments. A later report will show what progress each department has made.
"We are calling on the departments of mathematics, astronomy, psychology, physics, chemistry, electrical and mechanical engineering, history, philosophy, and probably others, as the project expands," the chairman explained. "Our job is to collect information and, thru detailed data and study, make complete reports. The information will be classified according to day and month, night flights, cloudy or sunny days, etc.
"The breakdown will be as far as states, cities, open country, etc., and the reports, which should begin within the next 60 days, will contain as much specific data as can be provided.
When this is completed, any agency in the country can feel free to write for information."
Central headquarters for the project will be in the office of the dean of men, the chairman indicated.
BASIC OBJECTIVES of the project are:
1 -- Objectively to collect data from all possible sources dealing with "flying saucers" and to analyze this data in the various departments of the university:
2 -- To make public the results of research of a private institution unhampered by bureaucratic restrictions:
3 -- To stimulate and promote objective study of all types of illusory phenomena by individual observers.
4 -- To issue a report in which the steps taken by our researchers are outlined in order to aid in instructing the general public in the process of thinking according to the scientific method. It is hoped that this will lead to more logical appraisal of phenomena observed in all walks of life.
5 -- To aid In creating more accurate observers for the civilian air defense program.
TURNER, IN introducing the idea to the faculty on Thursday said:
"Thruout the U.S. today there is considerable interest in that phenomena known as flying saucers. The press, radio and journals have devoted large amounts of time and space in following the reports of people and making the sightings known.
"As a result, the public has developed an interest in this matter
which has had few precedents, yet little has been done to screen information adequately and to aid in presenting a scientific appraisal of phenomena to the general public. The government has established headquarters for centralization of information from which science investigations and reports are supposed
to follow.
"Up until now, except for a few scattered opinions from scientists and statements denying credulity of saucer reports, there have been no releases of information from the complete collection and file of reported sightings, nor any detailed analysis.
"There appears to be the need for some private institution unhampered by restrictions and devoted completely to objectivity to collect data and distribute the resulting reports, after a careful analytical study, to the general public. This we are attempting to do."
Albuquerque, New Mexico Tribune 14 Aug 52
Britain Ready To Mass Produce Speedy Missiles
Great Britain's speedy, pilotless missiles, now ready to go into mass production, are the closest things to "flying saucers" we know about.
The missiles can flash through the air at 2000 miles per hour. The British claim they can twist and turn with four or five times the maneuverability of the best fighter aircraft. Moreover, the missiles can slow down, because their newly developed rocket motors can be operated on a fraction of their power if necessary.
One of the great steps forward, the British add, is that the missiles can be guided accurately to any target, such as a high-flying enemy bomber. "They can be steered or, better still, can steer themselves through the air with great accuracy," manufacturers assert. And they can rise to heights no bomber has ever attained.
Jumps the Gun
Great Britain, as is usual, has "jumped the gun" on the latest military aerial warfare development by permitting its aircraft industry to announce details of its missile development. Although the United States may be just as far, or even more advanced in this field, details of this country's most powerful and fast missiles are restricted.
One instance is the B-61 Matador pilotless bomber now being test-flown over the long-range missile test center at Cocoa, Fla. Aside, from a retouched photograph of a launching, details of the Matador and its performance and future use are military secrets. Many other missiles of various types have been developed and tested and are in mass production in U.S. aircraft factories.
More than 100 firms are turning out missiles in Great Britain in a new "guided rocket industry."
Rocket motors "so powerful that they will leave the jet engines behind in a standing start," are being used in the missiles. But the fuel problem still exists, just as it does here.
Intercept Bombers
A rocket motor giving 2000 pounds thrust uses 600 pounds of fuel per minute. At 2000 miles per hour, about 36,000 pounds of fuel would be used in one hour. If used to intercept bombers, however, the range would be short and the amount of fuel used comparatively low.
Latest rocket motors are using liquid fuel so that the rate at which the fuel is used can be controlled. These motors also can be cooled and are easily switched on and off. Solid fuel motors could not. Fuels include combinations of alcohol, hydrocarbons and analine with various types of oxidants such as liquid oxygen, nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide. The British are testing use of gasoline, and even turbine kerosene in missiles.
Ludington, Michigan Daily News 14 Aug 52
Report Seeing Flying Saucers
Don Miller of 210 North Gaylord avenue, his son Douglas and Gary Hansen, who were swimming Wednesday afternoon in Lake Michigan at the first bend of the road on M-116 north of Ludington, saw what they believe were three "flying saucers."
Mr. Miller explained that they were swimming about 3 p.m. and during the time heard whirring, roaring and hissing sounds like motors for some time, but could not locate the origin. After they came into shore and were sunning on the beach they saw one object, "like an aluminum speck," descend in a vertical position.
"A short time later two more came down and maneuvered under and over the original object we saw, which appeared to be hovering in an almost stationary position," Mr. Miller said. "The children said, 'It's a flying saucer.' Others on the beach also heard the roaring of motors, which seemed to be about a quarter of a mile off shore, and saw the objects."
Mr. Miller said they appeared to be round, flat disks and when flashing in the sunlight were nearly blinding. He said the procedure lasted from 10 to 12 minutes and, when they disappeared, they went straight up in a V shape. "I have seen many jet planes, and these moved much faster than jets," Mr. Miller said.
Burlington, Iowa Hawk Eye Gazette - 14 Aug 52
Smorgasbord
By Lloyd Maffitt
Two phenomena have been reported to this scrivener. The Hawk-Eye Gazette's distinguished sports editor, J. Ballard Lundgren, reports he saw a flying saucer at Naperville, Ill., while enroute to Chicago on his recent vacation, and Mrs. Rose Trienens, 1429 Thul street, reports a giant peach, 11 inches in circumference, was picked from a Hale Alberta tree in her yard.
Winona, Minnesota Republican-Herald 14 Aug 52
4 Grand Rapids Fishermen Spot 'Flying Saucer'
GRAND RAPIDS, Minn. -- A party of four fishermen told Civil Defense officials here Wednesday that they watched a strange, brilliant object shoot up and down in the sky last night -- "just like a drunken driver."
Attorney J.D. Murphy, local Civil Defense director, said two of the men were visibly nervous as they described the incident. Murphy said he would make an official report.
Stephen Brubaker of Middletown, 0., said he first noticed the object as it switched from a pale yellow to a bright red color. He said it plunged down towards the horizon for about three seconds, stopped suddenly and shot upwards again.
"It circled and went to and fro," Brubaker said, "just like a drunken driver. Sometimes it went slow, other times it went fast. It sure scared me."
"Elmer Woodrey of Middletown also was in the boat on Pokogama Lake and he said he would have "gone swimming" had the object come any closer.
Woodrey said the thing appeared to have a streamer behind it and was much bigger than a shooting star.
"My impression was that it was something not man-made," said Robert Kale of Des Moines, Ia. Kale said the speed was "terrific."
The only member of the party who said he was not scared was Kale's father, L.G. Kale of Grand Rapids, who was "too busy catching fish."
Murphy said Civil Defense observers in the tower here, about seven miles from the lake, reported seeing nothing unusual in the sky at the time of the reported incident.
Lubbock, Texas Evening Journal 14 Aug 52
Airlines Pilot Chases Mysterious Orange Light
Others Sight Sky "Object"
DALLAS, Aug. 14 -- Capt. Max M. Jacoby, chief pilot for Pioneer Airlines, reported Thursday that he saw and chased a mysterious orange light within 15 to 25 miles of Love Field Wednesday night.
He refused to call the light a "flying saucer" or to try to explain its origin. But he said he had never seen anything like it in 16 years of flying.
Jacoby, Capt. J.W. McNaulty and a maintenance man took a two-engine Pacemaster up for a routine test flight. Jacoby saw the light first and called the attention of the others to it.
Saw Large Light
"I looked out the left window of the cockpit (at 3,000 feet altitude) and saw a large light," he said. "Then it suddenly started moving northwest. So I turned the plane on a course that would intercept it at about 40 degrees.
"It went across and completely out of sight. It dived down. But the body of the thing did not change when it tuned. It was bright, then it began to die down.
"I was still flying on this heading (about 240 miles an hour) when the light reappeared. It was dim at first, then it got bright. And Captain McNaulty timed it. It was at the brightest point about 10 seconds. Meanwhile, I turned again to line up with this light and it went out of sight in a southeasterly direction. We were unable to find it again."
Orange In Color
"The body of the light was fairly constant," he said. "It was orange in color and at the periphery was fuzzy. It was differential in speed . . . it just went off and left us."
Jacoby said he thought they might be seeing an optical illusion. But he brought the nose of the plane up and lined it up with a star. The star remained constant, he said, so he knew it wasn't an illusion.
He couldn't tell whether it was just a light or whether it was a light coming from an object. Since he could not tell how far we was from it, he refused to guess exactly how big it was.
Penn Yan, New York Chronicle Express - 14 Aug 52
Interim Publisher Burns Because Readers Don't See Flying Saucers!!
Look folk! Just because some political speeches carry the assertion it is impossible to get very much desired newspaper space in Yates county, is no reason some of you who "have seen flying saucers" should not let us know at the Chronicle-Express!
Practically every newspaper with which we exchange has carried reports of some of its readers sighting a flying saucer. Don't tell us, with so many of our readers situated on hill tops around Penn Yan, and with quite a few of them volunteer airplane spotters, no one has seen a flying saucer!
With only a two month acquaintance it doesn't seem wise to berate the village and county police officials, as has been our custom where we were better known. What do they do nights would be the embarrassing question put to them. But, with only a nodding acquaintance so far, that doesn't seem diplomatic, do you think, here in Yates county?
And, when we ask for reports on flying saucers, we mean the real kind -- not those the Mrs. Jiggses toss out the door after certain male folk.
Come on, Yates! You did fine in "My Bonnie Has Gone to the Fair," now let's beat the rest of 'em, by taking a picture of the ones you see. That's what we need!
Helena, Montana Independent Record - 14 Aug 52
Hunting the Flying Saucers
Everybody, it seems, is engaged in arguments -- pro or con -- on flying saucers, and recent weeks have produced more ammunition for both sides of the controversy. Certain "objects" in the sky over "Washington, D.C., have made blips on a radar screen. They have been vainly pursued by jet planes.
These developments are held by some to dispose of the theory that reports of such "objects" are the figment of overactive human imagination. When folks report seeing flying saucers, they are not necessarily in their cups.
But the "objects" are not necessarily supernatural or interspacial, either; and they have thus far proved too silent, shy and harmless to be of Russian origin. The air force, tired of a barrage of rumors, is going on the offensive. Planes have been alerted to intercept and identify such unexplained "objects" and, if possible, clear up the mystery once and for all.
Meanwhile the air force, subject to such identification, remains officially skeptical. Interspacial visitors, phooey, it says. Contradicting the claims of some flying saucer "experts," the air force insists that the flight patterns of the "objects" show no indication that they are being "controlled by a reasonable body."
The next chapter of this science-fiction serial which has turned fiction into newspaper headlines may prove to be the final one. With air force jets snorting on their trail, flying saucers will not find it easy to remain incognito much longer.
Paris, Texas News - 14 Aug 52
Keeping Us Scared
One of the four freedoms we were told was the goal of the New Deal, was freedom from fear. We have not reached that goal. In fact, we are being fed fear every day, whether we like it or not. We are being told that Russia has atom bombs enough to blow us to kingdom come, and is likely to begin using them any minute. We have sky watchers and flying saucers and the expression of beliefs that we are in imminent danger.
To counteract any fear we may have we are told that the high command in Washington is taking care of everything, and will continue to do so if we will supply the tax money. Scaring us is an effective way to get it. Scared people will stand for anything.
Oak Park, Illinois Oak Leaves - 14 Aug 52
Flying Saucers Are Fun, Let's Not Solve Them
WITH what we think is remarkable restraint, this journal has held its silence on the subject of flying saucers, blimps, discs, or whatever the headline writers are calling the current nocturnal apparitions.
Not that we propose to rush in now and settle the question just like that. We aren't that smart and furthermore we think the whole thing has an angle to it that perhaps should be explored a little.
The angle is that the flying-whatever-they-are offer an escape from other worries of the moment. For instance, when one sets to thinking about them, he is for a while distracted from the high price of meat, other edibles, other commodities.
They also offer him some surcease from the political bickering which is always with us, but breaks out into a rash every two or four years. This is good, clean fun but it can become a bit tiring after a time. Not that we would do away with it for a moment, but we would like to come up for air once in a while. Pondering the flying saucers permits this.
Also while he is having a go with them, he forgets that he really should be thinking about fixing that garage door, cleaning out the basement, or other messy jobs around the house that he has put off too long. If he is a sports fan, such study takes his mind off the misadventures of the Cubs and White Sox, who are doing anything but flying high.
Yes, let's keep the saucers around for a while, and let's not give too much encouragement to those bright people who are trying to arrive at some conclusions about them.
We like it better this way.
Notes:
1. The Marquand photo included in the article "Strange Objects In Our Skies" was later admitted to be a hoax.
2. The Blue Book listing of sightings for August 11-14, 1952 does list a case file for "Big Springs, Texas" on August 12, which may refer to the report given in "Saucer Platoon Is Spotted Here". However any paperwork from that file is not easily locatable, and in fact may not exist in declassified files. The incident in the Blue Book listing was evaluated as "insufficient data".
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