In Bible times UFOs were interpreted as angels or
demons. In AD 584, Bishop Saint Gregory of Tours claimed to have seen brilliant
rays of light in the sky which he thought were signs of divine displeasure.
In AD 793, flashes of lightning and fiery dragons were seen flying through
the air in the north of England. In AD 900, a flying ship was seen above
the city of Lyon in France, which meant to the people that the unidentified
craft represented some demonic visitation.
The late 1800s led to the modern UFO age, however,
and this beginning led to man's best interpretation of the phenomenon,
that of extraterrestrial origins.
Between 1896 and 1897, great airships were described
by hundreds of witnesses as resembling a large cigar shaped object that
moved slowly through the night skies of America, especially in the midwest.
No such airship existed in the United States at the time. However, the
first successful airship was constructed in 1952 by Henri Giffard, but
that was overseas at Europe. America didn't have successful airships until
1914, which was 44 years later, which poses the question to what these
people were seeing at that time hoaxes, secret inventors, or alien visitors?
Perhaps some of the sightings were the inventions
of some kind of secret inventor of some sorts. The sightings did take place
at the height of the industrial revolution, which was around 1880. Many
stepped forward at the time and attempted to get full credit for the UFO
sightings, claiming they were inventors, yet they couldn't be trusted for
reasons such as lack of evidence.
Not all of the airship pilots were reported human,
though. Two men told the Stockton Evening Mail of their encounter near
Lodi, California. They described three tall strange beings with large narrow
feet and delicate hands. Each creature was hairless with small ears and
mouth. Their eyes were large and lustrous. When they failed in their attempt
to abduct the two of them, they fled into a cigar shaped craft and left.
Whether they were hoaxers, or secret inventors,
we may never know. Perhaps it was a combination of things, along with the
human ability to miss-perceive objects as their true form.
Reports of UFO sightings just before World War I
are then on the ice, although some do exist.
In 1937, just before the first World War, the Finnish
General Staff published a study of the 1933 - 1934 wave. Of 111 reports,
10 sightings remained unexplained. The report said: "The mysterious phenomenon
were usually observed for only a short time and never from two places at
the same time."
There were some UFO sightings reported in World
War I, but they cannot even be compared to the big flaps of World War II.
By autumn 1944 reports were so commonplace over
France, Germany, and surrounding areas that crews had nicknamed the lights
"Foo Fighter", apparently after a comic strip popular at the time. "Foo"
was, presumably, a corruption of the French word "fue", which means fire.
Foo fighters were reported as about 3 feet in diameter,
that glowed green, orange, &/or red. They were known to tale the aircraft
of allied and axis planes, but did no apparent damage.
When the first "flying saucers" arrived a couple
years later, the secret files on the foo fighters were re-examined by the
US Army and Air Force to see if they might be the same phenomenon and they
concluded that Foo Fighters were rare, electrical activity, such as a ball
of lightning.
Novelist W.A. Harbinson, however, took a very different
view in his fictional epic "Geniesis", based on research initiated by foo
fighter stories. Harbinson claimed that there really was a German secret
weapon - a small, jet powered, remote controlled disc, effectively a prototype
of a larger (manned) versions that would have flown had the war not ended
when it did.
According to post-war German accounts that Harbinson
traced, the device was designed by Rudolph Schriever in spring 1941, first
tested in June 1942, and flown in earnest in August 1943. Schriever reportedly
built a full scale circular craft some 137 feet in diameter that was scheduled
to fly in April 1945. The test was abandoned with the advance of the Allies
on Berlin, the death of Hitler, and the end of the war in Europe. But Harbinson
found evidence that the working full scale prototype was built in the Haz
Mountains during 1944 and secretly flown on February 1945.
Right up to his death in the late 1950s, Harbinson
concluded that by the persistent sightings of disc like UFOs were the result
of continuing secret development of his own invention, perhaps by Nazi
scientists who had fled Germany and set up a base in some remote region.
In September 1992, Barry Greenwood started reading
a three foot thick file of all the mission records for the 415th, between
autumn 1944 and spring 1945. He found that sightings continued right up
to the end of the war. Amazingly, foo fighter sightings were reported during
February 1945, right up to the end of the war. There were two of them,
both within a few hours of the Harz Mountains.
By 1945, pulp science fiction comic books were very popular
with adolescents and often featured alien contact and even, occasionally,
saucer shaped objects in the sky.
After the war ended no secret weapons of this kind
were found in German hands. Captured air crew, scientists, and intelligence
officers affirmed that Nazi fighters had been seeing the foo fighters to
and assumed it was an Allies secret weapon!
"Foo Fighters" are what UFO experts now call "LITS."
The term "LITS" stands for "Lights In The Sky." They are now the most common
UFO sighted in the world, accounting for over 60% of the reports.
1947 was truly the year for the rising of the UFO
phenomenon. It was the year that spawned the flying saucer and the Roswell
story. These were the years that the government was more interested into
the UFO phenomenon than the public.
The date was June 24, 1947 a Tuesday; time, just
before 3 PM. The pilot was Kenneth Arnold, a private pilot who was searching
for the remains of a Marine Curtiss C-46 Commando Transport plane. that
had a $5,000 reward. But what Arnold found was on Mount Rainier, and was
much more valuable.
At an altitude of about 9,200 feet, Arnold noticed
9 objects he would later describe as "flying saucers" to the press. Appeared
to be in motion the way "rocks would skip across water," as Arnold would
describe it. He clocked the objects and estimated that they were going
at speeds at 1,200 mph.
It soon came to be that others had reported the
similar sightings in similar regions of the Mountain, which collaborated
with Arnold's story. The press ate up the term "flying saucer" and there
it was, the birth of term UFO-ologists grew to hate.
The next big thing to hit UFO-ology was early July,
1947, just outside of a little town called Roswell. The Roswell Incident
of July 1947 is believed by experts to be the single most significant incident
in UFO-ology.
Supposedly, on July 4th, Independence Day, was the
day that something crashed in Max Brazzel's field. Whether it was a plane
or a craft not of this world, we don't know 100% sure, in fact, we may
never know.
There is so many different accounts and differences
to the story that one might find it exhaustible to attempt to comprehend
all of the accounts that were reported.
There is however, one connection, that it was a
UFO crash and that there were reported extraterrestrial biological entities
that were discovered in and outside of the craft, some alive, and some
dead. The craft and its occupants where shipped to the 509th bombardment
unit military installation.
Of you want more details I suggest that you check
out the "Roswell Files" featured on my web site.
The waves of flying saucer reports in 1947 led to
a top secret investigation by the US Air Force and had a serious affect
on the US military authorities.
On September 23rd, 1947, General Nathan Twining,
head of AMC (Air Material Command), wrote to Intelligence Officer Brigadier
General George Schulgen to conclude firmly that "The phenomenon reported
is something real and not visionary or fictitious." He urged that a code
named secret project should be mounted to study the data on a permanent
basis, so as to allow the "information gathered [to] be made available
to other branches of military and to scientific agencies with government
connections."
Twining's suggestion was endorsed by Schulgen and
on December 30th the chief of staff at the Air Force, Major General Craigie,
approved the project and ordered the creation of Project Sign, which was
launched on January 22nd, 1948.
Sign employed various experts to assist - they ranged
from intelligence officers to scientific consultants who were asked to
comment on relevant cases. On of the first employed was a young astronomer
then at Ohio University, Dr. J Allen Hynek who later became a Professor
at Northwestern University in Chicago.
Hynek said that he was admitted into Project Sign
for two principal reasons: he did not believe in flying saucers and would
try very hard to find an answer to all sightings, and, by chance, he was
the closest astronomer to Wright Patterson Air Force. None the less, the
invitation changed his life. Hynek did his best with many sightings, but
never compromised his scruples. If he could not find a credible solution,
he said so.
Project Sign was soon convinced that some sightings were
real, but its members split down the middle as to what that meant.
The group had produced a summary "Estimation of
the Situation." arguing that the best answer to the escalating evidence
was that the flying discs were alien origin. The file went to chief of
staff General Hoyt Vandenberg, who rejected it, arguing that it was a based
upon eye-witness testimony alone and had no physical evidence in support.
Staff from Sign tried to change his mind but he refused to budge.
Project Sign now seized the upper hand and began
to press their case that all sightings were explicable. The August 8th
report was terminated, although a few private copies appear to have been
retained. This "holy grail" of ufo-ology has never been found when requested
under the Freedom of Information Act.
The staff of Sign who had backed the Extraterrestrial
hypothesis were reassigned. Six months later, in February 1949, Sign produced
a rapid "final" report. This stressed how many cases could be readily explained,
suggested an increase in staff so as to place UFO officers on every air
base, and implied that, given this sort of effort, most cases could probably
be resolved and the entire mystery soon eliminated. But it failed to admit
that it had failed to find an answer to 1/5th of the sightings it had investigated
out of 237.
The Air Force chose to downgrade instead of increase
the Sign status. Effectively, it became part of a larger study and was
given a new code named - Grudge.
On August 1949, Grudge published its final results
- assessing 250 sightings and failing to identify 23% which was worse than
Sign despite of its new tactics! Grudge warned that sightings might be
used by Communist infiltraters to mask an insurrection.
On December 27, 1949 the Pentagon announced that
Grudge was to be axed. It was to stay limbo for two more years.
Later, a new kind of UFO was being seen, called
"green fireballs" and the seriousness of the matter hit the air force right
between the eyes when these kind of UFOs where hovering over key military
installations.
Thanks to the green fireballs, Project Twinkle emerged.
Project Twinkle was the first scientific experiment to seek UFOs but it
was not to be the last.
Twinkle contracted Land Air Incorporated to develop an
automatic system to enable the fireballs to be filmed by two cameras at
once, which would provide much useful data about the objects. Spectrographs
and equipment to measure electromagnetic emissions were also obtained.
If the green fireballs were a US weapon this project would make no sense
at all. By late 1951 Project Twinkle had been closed down without reaching
any firm conclusions.
Then came 952, the year of the Washington DC UFO
flap, where UFOs flew over regulated air space. 1952 was the biggest wave
ever of UFO activity in the US, triggering massive global interest on the
subject, which gave Project Grudge a massive boost.
The Air Force chose Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, in
hopes of destroying the UFO problem once and for all, and others, in minority,
hoped that Ruppelt could prove that they we were being visited by an advanced
extraterrestrial race.
Ruppelt secured an independent status as the Aerial
Phenomena Group, with a new code name - it became "Project Blue Book" in
March 1952. Ruppelt made a number of suggestions to improve Blue Book and
to upgrade the science within Blue Book.
Project Blue Book began to explain away as many sightings
as possible. It is now accepted by most serious ufo-ologists that they
were often right to do so and that 90% of all UFOs were really identified
flying objects (IFOs).
A number of scientific establishments were on the
government short list during 1966, but the job went to the University of
Colorado in Boulder. Quantum physicist Dr. Edward Condon was given the
task of coordinating the Condon project.
The Condon project, which began work in October
1966, in a blaze of publicity, was extended will into the summer of 1968,
with a total budget of half a million dollars, which was a lot of money
in those days. In 1968 the members sat down to prepare its final report,
which was to be released to worldwide anticipation in January, 1969.
But major traumas were to split the Condon team
up before the final report could be made, which left the project irrevocably
tarnished. It ended up that Condon wrote the conclusions to the thousand
page official report by himself. But the results turned out bad and anyone
who would have read through to context would have opposite conclusions
as Condon had! Condon concluded that "further extensive study of UFOs probably
cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby."
Days after the Condon report was published, Allen
Hynek, creator of the sighting classification system and one of the best
UFOologists ever, was notified that his twenty one years with the study
of Blue Book was over. Project Blue Book was closing down following the
recommendations of the Condon report.
From the shutting down of Project Blue Book up to
today, the U.S. government hasn't commented on that they have lost interest
in the UFO subject nor admitted that they still are continuing to investigate
the phenomenon.
Although since 1969 the government hasn't really
commented whether they have lost or gained interest in the UFO phenomenon,
people are still certain more than ever that "the truth is out there."
These were and are the years the public was and is more interested in the
UFO phenomenon than the government.
Thanks to projects such as the FOIA we might have
a glimpse as to what the truth is, but I truly doubt so. If there was a
government cover-up involved, which there very much so appears to be, then
the secrecy has gone far past the FOIA and National Archives.
Programs like SETI have been initiated and the search
for aliens is on. It is hard to distinguish further investigation into
the UFO phenomenon anymore than what we have done in the early 1940s to
the late 1960s, thanks to the fact that the US government is not even funding
any type of UFO study anymore to any organization what so ever.
UFOs have penetrated earth in cultural aspects.
Every day it seems that there is another UFO book published or another
tv episode with aliens in it. Now we have radio shows dedicated to the
truth.
The governments attempts to weaken the UFO community
by extremely low funding has only made us stronger and has only increased
our will rather than braking it.
In 1998 a panel of scientists had concluded that
some sightings are accompanied by physical evidence that deserves scientific
study. But the panel was not convinced that any of this evidence points
to a violation of known natural laws or the involvement of an extraterrestrial
intelligence.
The review was organized and directed by Peter Sturrock,
professor of applied physics at Stanford University, and supported administratively
by the Society for Scientific Exploration, which provides a forum for research
into unexplained phenomena. The international review panel of nine physical
scientists responded to presentations by eight investigators of UFO reports,
who were asked to present their strongest data. Von R. Eshleman, professor
emeritus of electrical engineering at Stanford, cochaired the panel.
Disagreeing with the Condon Report, the panel of
scientists concluded that "It may be valuable to carefully evaluate UFO
reports to extract information about unusual phenomena currently unknown
to science." To be credible to the scientific community "such evaluations
must take place with a spirit of objectivity and a willingness to evaluate
rival hypotheses" that has so far been lacking, it added.
The reviewers made observations which stated that the
UFO problem is not a simple one, and it is unlikely that there is any simple,
universal answer, that in the UFO field, there is a possibility that scientist
could learn something knew, that studies should concentrate on cases that
include as much independent physical evidence as possible, continuing contact
between the UFO/Scientfic community could be productive, and that institutional
support for research in the UFO field is desirable.
With the scientific community corroborating the
UFO subject as well, we are but one step closer to solving the mystery
of the cosmos.
