Denver Post, p. 6, July 6, 1947
Drawing of flying saucer (above). Caption: The drawing shows [artist's] conception of the interior of a flying disc, always providing there are such things, and that they are man-made... The disc jockeys at the controls, reading from left to right, are NOT Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and Superman. [Who in the comics and movie serials of the time were all emblematic of space travel and interactions with aliens. See, e.g., Superman Sunday comic from 1948 defeating an invasion from Mars, and a Buck Rogers comic below from the end of 1947 where he defeats an alien fleet of rocket ships.]
Denver Rocky Mountain News, p. 10, Letters to Editor, July 6, 1947
Those Flying Discs
Editor: After reading and hearing about those discs flying over Washington, Oregon and Oklahoma, my buddy and I have come to the conclusion that those fellows really saw them. As far as we can figure out they are space ships and have come from Mars. Scientists have been talking about building space ships to travel to the Moon and other planets, but it seems as though someone else has already beat the Earth-people in traveling through space. We suggest that you contact some space patrol at once and find out why we were not warned of their coming aforehand. Had we been notified we could have prepared a warm welcome for them. T-SGT. DAVID CADENHEAD, SGT. A. N. DEANGELIS, Fitzsimons Hospital.SE
What Do You Think The Flying Saucers Are, That Have Been Sighted All Over The U.S.?M
MARY CASSIDY, housewife, route C, Peru--Might be anything. Maybe they are machines carrying men from Mars. In this day and age, anything is possible. I think we can expect the works now.
Lima (OH) News, July 7, 1947
Wapak Saucer-Seer Lacks Nerve To Tell
WAPAKONETA, July 7 (UP) -- The nation's most embarrassed saucer-seer today was Richard L. Bitters, editor of The Wapakoneta Daily News, and former Lima newsman. Bitters revealed that he and his wife saw a number of the objects on the night of June 23 -- two days before they were first reported in the Pacific northwest. But Editor Bitters sat on his scoop two weeks before he could get up the nerve to report it.
"It was about 9:30 p.m. while walking home from a movie (which, however, was not a 'Man from Mars' picture) that my wife and I noticed a disc-like missile flying in a northward direction," Bitters said. “The flying saucers failed to maintain an even course in the sky but proceeded to weave in and out of view. As mystery phraseology would term it, a downright 'spooky' feeling prevailed each time the silvery discs made their appearance."
FACT OR FANTASY?
What They Say 
What Is It?
What is the Flying Discus? Does it mean the end of the world? Is it a new secret weapon? Who is testing it out? The Men From Mars? The Russians? Our own scientists? Is it all just a lot of hooey? Is it a freak of nature? Are the people who claim to have seen them simply bilious and seeing spots? Is it radioactivity caused by the atom bomb? Is it the cosmic ray?
In other words: Is it fact or fancy? ...Mayor Garnet Coulter: I think it's a Martian contractor at work. These flying saucers are probably a new type of construction material he wants us to use when we build the new city hall.
Flying Saucer Reported Here
Don't ever sell Gastonia short. If people from 39 different states, District of Columbia and Canada swear they saw cracked atoms, tracer bullets from Mars, silver saucers, or what have you, floating through the heavens then why can't three upstanding citizens of Gastonia see the same phenomena?
Editorial: The Flying Saucers
Of course dozens of theories are offered to explain the whole business. However, in our opinion they are not meteors, they are not ice crystals, and they are not projectiles sent here by Mars to scare us into conniption fits. The mystery boils down to two possibilities.
(A) They are experimental weapons dispatched here by a foreign power...we shall describe as R----a.
(B) They are also experimental weapons developed by our own defense services being tried out in secret. Naturally neither the Army nor the air forces will admit they know what it all means -- if they know.
'SAUCERS' AROUSE NATIONWIDE INTEREST (headline)
Flying Discs Are Reported By Hundreds
One Group Bays Eight Discs As Big As Five Room Houses Landed On Mountain
By International News Service
...A sample polling of citizens on San Francisco streets showed that two theories were holding the lead among the uninformed:
1. That something on Mars is trying to send a message to earth.
2. That those war-time Japanese paper balloons still are coming over, after wandering about the Pacific since V-J Day.
Lewiston (MN) Daily Sun, p. 4, Editorial, Monday, July 7, 1947
THE FLYING SAUCERS
…the fact the dinguses have been sighted over Augusta [MN] puts a different face on the matter, and there is no longer any doubt the mysterious saucers really do exist. Of course dozens of theories are offered to explain the whole business. However, in our opinion they are not meteors, they are not ice crystals, and they are not projectiles sent here by Mars to scare us into conniption fits. The mystery boils down to two possibilities: (A) They are experimental weapons dispatched here by a foreign power… (B) They are also experimental weapons developed by our own defense services being tried out in secret…
Vidette (IN) Messenger, p. 6 (Editorial page), July 7, 1947
Fact Or Fancy
“…Spotting the celestial saucers is rapidly becoming a national pastime, with the only equipment necessary being an imagination and a gullible audience. What you see in the heavens is entirely up to you with one exception: the object should have some resemblance to a disc… It may oscillate, gyrate, vacillate or even titillate; it may hover, come and go, or flash across the horizon at unprecedented speed… What are the mysterious flying discs: men from Mars, spots before the eyes of a jittery America or a secret weapon?”
Melbourne (Australia) The Age, p. 2, July 7, 1947
"Flying Saucers" Mystify
"The Age" Special Correspondent in New York and A.A.P.
Americans are baffled by reports of "Flying Saucers" which, according to observers, are round metallic discs racing high across the sky singly or in groups.
...Explanations include:--(1) Signals from Mars, (2) "saucer hysteria" by people possibly emotionally upset by fear of atomic war, (3) new experimental navy planes known as "flying pancakes," (4) weather kites released by meteorological bureaus, (5) something to do with atomic experiments, (6) reflections from motor car spotlights, and (7) meteors.
Elyria (OH) Chronicle-Telegram, July 7, 1947
Says "Saucers" Are Nothing To Get Up In The Air About
CHICAGO -- R.L. Farnsworth said today the "flying saucers" reportedly racing through U.S. skies aren't anything to get up in the air about. "People have been seeing things in the sky for years," he said. ...He's a member of the Fortean Society, a club for experts on the unusual things -- on land and in the air -- people have seen and thought they have seen through the centuries. The club was founded in honor of Charles Fort, a diligent man who devoted his life to collecting four volumes of odd happenings.
"This isn't the first time people have seen legitimate spots in the sky." Farnsworth said. "It happened at least three times in the last century, and plenty of other times, too. Nobody ever found out what any of the objects were." Farnsworth said he wouldn't be surprised at anything the alleged saucers turned out to be. He's president of the U.S. Rocket Society and is planning a trip to the moon some day, "Nothing surprises me," he said. "I wouldn't even be surprised if the flying saucers were remote control electronic eyes from Mars."
Chicago Sun, p. 2, Tuesday, July 8, 1947
Rocket Expert Hints Disks Are Visitors From Venus
…R. L. Farnsworth of Glen Ellyn, a member of the U.S. Rocketry Society, contributed to the interplanetary theory yesterday to the mass of scientific information expounded since the first appearance of the mysterious disks. It is possible, he said, that the planet Venus has evolved a form of life able to fly by use of electric currents… If the flying disks were really fish from Venus, they might not be able to live long in the atmosphere of Earth on an exploratory voyage.
“This isn’t the first time people have seen legitimate spots in the sky,” said Farnsworth. “It happened at least three times in the last century and plenty of other times, too. Nobody ever found out what any of the objects were.” Mysterious bodies whirling though the skies were seen in 1851 by the Rev. W. Read, an English astronomer; in 1863, by Henry Waldner, a Swiss astronomer, and in 1880 by residents of Kattenau, Germany. Farnsworth, who hopes to make a trip to the moon some day, belongs to the Fortean Society, a club of experts on odd happenings through the centuries. He wouldn’t be surprised, he said, if the disks proved to be electronic eyes from Mars…”
Rochester (IN) News-Sentinel, p. 1, July 7, 1947
Rochester Folk Blame ‘Sky Discs’ On Imagination
…A more scientific approach was made by Deputy Sheriff Porter Rhodes who became intensely interested through the mounting pile of accounts of “space ships.” He dug into his research laboratory with a fervor which produced a Popular Mechanics magazine showing blueprints and photograph of a pancake plane which closely resembles the descriptions given by the “see-ers” of the “saucers.”
Chicago Daily Times, p. 3, July 7, 1947
‘Flying discs’ called real by 2 air veterans
By HENRY HEIL
Two aviation veterans who gazed from high altitudes at the world-disturbing “flying saucers” agreed today the weird devices were real. But they differed on theories of their origin. In Chicago on business, Capt. Emil J. Smith, of Seattle, Wash., United Air Lines pilot for nearly 14 years, declared: “These flying saucers are man-made, I am certain. There are definite indications that they may be controlled from the ground. It’s my further belief they are being used in some experimental operation by our own armed forces.”
But Kenneth Arnold …a pilot for nearly 15 years, is not so certain that the strange contraptions are made on this planet. Arnold, who was the first to sight the “saucers” on June 24… said he hoped the devices were really the work of the U.S. Army. But he told the TIMES in a phone conversation: “If our government knows anything about these devices, the people should be told at once. A lot of people out here are very much disturbed. Some think these things may be from another planet. But they aren’t harming anyone and I think it would be the wrong thing to shoot one of the down—even if can be done. Their high speed would completely wreck them…”
Another world—Arnold, in pointing to the possibility of these discs being from another world, said, regardless of their origin, they apparently were traveling to some reachable destination. Whoever controlled them, he said, obviously wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. …He said discs were making turns so abruptly in rounding peaks that it would have been impossible for human pilots inside survived the pressure. So, he too thinks they are controlled from elsewhere, regardless of whether it’s from Mars, Venus, or our own planet.
Salt Lake City Deseret New, p. 3, July 7, 1947
Author of ‘Discs’ Story To Seek Proof
BOISE AP Kenneth Arnold, whose June 24 story that he had seen flying saucers over Washington State has created the biggest to-do since Orson Welles Man From Mars broadcast startled the nation several years ago, is going hunting for the peculiar objects which now have been reported seen in 36 states and Canada. …Arnold’s story… also brought him quantities of fan mail, he revealed today. Fans Want to Help—“None of the writers has called me screwball,” he said. “They really want to help figure this thing out.” Many of the correspondents placed religious interpretation on his report he said, and “one fellow in absolute seriousness wrote that he believed the flying saucers were responsible for peculiar fog conditions recently in Los Angeles.” Other writers suggested the discs were visitations from another planet.
Chicago Herald-American, p. 2 (letter to editor), July 7, 1947
Buck Rogers Takes Blame
Glen Ellyn, Ill., July 7
City Editor, Chicago Herald-American,
Did not want to make this public, but feel it my duty to inform country that the mysterious flying pancakes are merely some experiments I am conducting in connection with new Buck Rogers episode. Please assure the people of this great nation that there is no cause for hysteria.—Dick Calkins [Cartoonist of Buck Rogers comic strip; See item Dec.1947, Buck Rogers in a flying saucer fighting off invading space fleet]
Denver Rocky Mountain News, p. 1 (Headline story), July 7, 1947
DISC ARMADAS CROSS DENVER, SCORES SAY
--Scores Watch Saucers Sail Across Sky Here
“…People are on edge,” a prominent Denver psychiatrist said. “They’re scared and insecure about the possibility of ‘Buck Rogers’ atomic warfare. “They have a fear of being annihilated.”
Tucson (AZ) Daily Citizen, p. 1, Monday, July 7, 1947
Pale Balloons May Be ‘Discs’
“All this talk about ‘flying saucers,’ ‘yo-yos,’. and ‘clams’ is most mystifying. [Discussion of 6 weather balloons sent up every day locally by American Airlines and Army Signal Corp]. …at the risk of being called an unbeliever, I’m going to tell my wife and kiddies not to be worrying too much about the advent of ‘men from Mars’.” Besides Ed Goyette of the Chamber of Commerce says, "There are limited housing facilities available to newcomers in Tucson, be they men from Mars or Anytown, U.S.A."
Toledo (OH) Blade, p. 2, Monday, July 7 , 1947 (Reprinted from New York Times)
Space Flights Predicted by Prof. Lyman Spitzer, Jr.
By Dr. Waldemar Kaempffer
Visitors From Mars? …That there may be intelligent life on Mars is probable to some astronomers, says Dr. Spitzer. Assuming that life on Mars developed earlier than it did on earth, the Martians may have been civilized for millions of years compared with our thousands. “In such a case, Martian scientific knowledge, and Martian understanding of nature would, of course, be enormously greater than ours,” Dr. Spitzer concludes. In fact, men from Mars may have already visited earth. “Unless they had spent some time in a large city or had landed sufficiently recently to be photographed,” he said, “we would have no record of their having been here. Any few men who had seen them would probably not be believed by anyone else.”
Harlington (TX) Valley Morning Star, p. 21, July 27, 1947
Men from Mars May Already Have Visit[ed] Earth, Says Prof
NEW YORK (UP) Dr. Lyman Spitzer, Jr., associate professor of astrophysics [at Yale University] …disagreed with many other astronomers in saying that Mars probably is the best bet for man to find life other than his own planet. Some scientists believe that Venus may be more suitable for life, although Spitzer said Mars may be the first rocket stop. In fact, he believes that “men from Mars” may already be on this planet, or at least have visited here. "Unless they had spent more time in a large city or had landed sufficiently recently to be photographed," he said, "we would have no record of their having been here. Any few men who had seen them probably would not be believed by anyone else.”
Los Angeles Times, p. 2, Man-in-the-street interviews, July 7, 1947
FLYING ‘WHATSITS’ SUPPLANT WEATHER AS NO. 1 TOPIC ANYWHERE PEOPLE MEET
California conversation dealt less with weather yesterday, turned, instead, to a discussion of dervish disks. While youngsters cupped their hands over their eyes and stared into the ether for the “flying saucers,” oldsters theorized. People talked disks at the beach. They talked them on the street corner. Ministers mentioned them in some churches. Almost everybody had an opinion. …Miss Mabel Brotherton, Bakersfield: “Somebody is experimenting. I’m not letting the reports perturb me, for I think Uncle Sam is responsible for whatever objects people are seeing. Of course, there is the Martian angle. We are sending projectiles miles high to take pictures of earth, and if Mars is inhabited, people there may be trying similar experiments. But I discredit that possibility. We haven’t reached that stage of scientific achievement, and I doubt the Martians have. [Other very common opinions were Russian secret weapons (2 people) or tests of U.S. secret weapons (4 other people); one, an aviator in WWI, thought they were some unusual atmospheric condition.]
The Windsor (Ontario) Star, p. 7, Letter to Editor, July 7, 1947
Maybe Orson Welles Had Something!
Maybe Orson Welles wasn’t so far out at that. The reports of “Flying Saucers” seen above this continent are too numerous and circumstantial to be disregarded entirely from the standpoint of possible interplanetary visitors to the earth. It may also be recalled that reports of similar occurrences have come in the past two years from Sweden and Great Britain. Even the esoteric gobbledygook of crackpot mystics who advance fantastic, full-blown accounts of extra-terrestrial civilizations, of which the entire details have been “revealed” to them, cannot do away with the facts that:
(a) Interplanetary flight is scientifically possible, and
(b) That intelligent life possibly—indeed, probably—exists on other worlds.
The most interesting aspect of the “Flying Saucer” stories is the close approximation all accounts bear to what we might logically expect to be the first revelation of extra-terrestrial visitors.
*Space vessels would likely be shaped as oblate spheroids.
*Their flight would be rapid and soundless.
*If powered by advanced developments of electronic forces, they might well exhibit a shining or luminous appearance.
*If vessels were of small size, a number would probably navigate in company—if one large one were the main transport, it would probably carry smaller craft for exploration of any planet investigated.
*Brief and distant appearances of the exploratory craft would be the first indication of such visitors as the main base of the expedition would naturally be located at first in some isolated and solitary region until the crew collected basic data about Earth and its inhabitant.
…This does not, of course, prove that “Flying Saucers” are interplanetary visitors, but the facts give support to such a hypothesis. This being so, the following questions arise:
*Would such visitors be a variation of the human animal, or completely non-human?
*Would it be possible to establish communication with a race of beings intelligent enough to create space vehicles?
*Could they understand our intentions, motives and habits, or we, theirs?
*Have we a means of tracing their origin? Locating their terrestrial base?
*Have we any defence against them?
*Has any thought been given by authorities toward means of making contact with them if they should land in an inhabited area?
We should do all we can to prevent, if these speculations prove well-founded, an “Orson Welles” type of scare, but we should be prepared to face whatever may happen in the near future. LOGICIAN Windsor
Denver Rocky Mountain News, p. 1, July 8, 1947
Denver Gapes Skyward To See Flying Saucers
…Arctic Civilization Suspected—The Voice of the Brotherhood of the White Temple, Dr. M. Doreal, whose church is completing a mountain refuge from atomic war, reported his observations: “Inside the Arctic Circle, there is buried civilization which legend says was destroyed by balls of fire. I’m wondering if some expedition party has rediscovered it? Maybe that’s where the disks are coming from.”
…Looked Like ‘Ball of Cotton’—“I thought at first it was a ball of cotton,” Mike Miller… said, “But I called my brother Dale, who was an anti-aircraft gunner in the South Pacific, and he said it must be one of the saucers from Mars that the neighbors are talking about…”
Miami (FL) Herald, p. 1B, July 7, 1947
Flying Discs Reported Over Miami—Anglers See Objects
…The airborne discs have been the subject of much discussion and have been described as space ships from Mars by an occult magazine editor, “saucer hysteria” by a psychiatrist and “spots in front of peoples’ eyes” by an astronomer…
Vidette (IN) Messenger, July 7, 1947
REPORTS SPOTTING 'DISC' HERE (headline)
Man Insists He and Wife Saw Object
A Valparaiso man today added his testimony to the growing list of American citizens who are convinced there is "funny business" going on in U.S. skies... According to his story, the local man and his wife were driving to Valparaiso from Hebron and were in the vicinity of the Porter county home when he spotted the celestial "saucer." The phenomenon looked like a "new moon," Kueniger said... "After about ten seconds it seemed to turn on its side and when the sun reflected on it, the object looked like a big mirror. It turned on its side again and simply disappeared..."
http://www.saturdaynightuforia.com/html/articles/articlehtml/itseemedimpossible-partsix.html
Don't Worry, Discs Aren't Coming From Outer Space
If you have been worried about the flying discs, particularly in the fear they might be something from out of space, you may rest assured they are not.
That is the opinion of Dr. Raymond T. Birge, professor of physics at the University of California and chairman of the Department of Physics on the Berkeley campus, who declared today it would be physically impossible for inter-stellar objects to fly about as the discs are described.
"If they were from out of space they would come in and land with a bang," he explained. "They would not fly about parallel to the earth. Anything coming from out of space would arrive so fast you wouldn't see it. The attraction of the earth would bring it in at a speed of seven miles a second..."
Northwest Arkansas Times, July 7, 1947
Discs Reported Over Farm Of Henry Seay
The only man in the Fayetteville vicinity reporting to have seen a "flying saucer" -- Henry Seay, a farmer -- is unimpressed by reports from elsewhere in the nation that the "saucers" are invaders from outer space or remote control aircraft.
"Maybe the things which people have seen in Texas are man-made machines," Seay said today, "but what I saw was entirely natural. I believe they were caused by whirl winds high in the air." According to Seay's theory, the oval-shaped, glowing bodies which swept over his farm two miles north of Fayetteville on Highway 71 Friday and Saturday nights were a product of wind and soil erosion.
"There are glowing sands in many parts of the country," he said, "I believe the saucers I saw were simply sand sucked into the air by whirl winds." He recalled seeing similar "saucers" years ago in North Carolina. The things are fairly common there, he said, where many of the natives believe they are spirits of the dead. Glowing sands, fox fire and St. Elmo's fire are also common in that region, he said..
.
OFFICIAL WASHINGTON OPINION OF DISCS VARIES CONSIDERABLY
Officials Shake Their Heads, But Saucer Stories Persist
By William F. McManamin
Washington, D.C.—(UP)—Official Washington was sure today that it knew what the flying saucers were NOT—but it hadn’t the faintest idea what they were. The army air forces said they had the matter under investigation. Preliminary study has revealed that the flying discs are not: 1. Secret bacteriological weapons designed by some foreign power, 2. New-type army rockets, 3. Space ships. …Officially, the AAF said it is “keeping an open mind” because the disks have been reported by so many normally responsible persons… Skeptics got a rude awakening when a guided missile expert attached to the naval research laboratory claimed to have seen one of the saucers. Dr. C. J. Zohn said he and two fellow-scientists spotted it June 29 near White Sands, N.M. But when he reported the find to the army, he said, he got nothing but knowing smiles… High-ranking U.S. army officers… discounted theories that the disks might be secret weapons for use in bacteriological warfare. They said it was significant that none of the disks had yet registered on army radar… Dr. L. R. Hafsted, executive secretary of the Joint Research and Development Board, said he couldn’t figure out why people wasted so much time talking about the saucers. He could describe them, he said, in one word—“poppycock!”
[Note: The Pentagon's Joint Research and Development Board was later implicated in 1950 as containing a top secret group of scientists looking into the "modus operandii" of the saucers. See Smith Papers. It is interesting that a JRDB rep was already debunking the saucers on the same day the Pentagon was denying they were "space ships". Further, the JRDB met at the Pentagon with acting Army Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Hoyt Vandendberg in a suddenly called meeting the morning of July 8, 1947. This was simultaneous with another meeting of staff officers at Roswell discussing what was happening there. See Vandenberg and Haut pages. See also JRDB head Dr. Vannevar Bush denying any knowledge of the saucers in other stories.]
‘Flying Saucers’ Still a Mystery
ARMY ONLY SURE OF WHAT THEY’RE NOT
By ROBERT W. FENWICK—Denver Post Rocky Mountain Empire Editor
The mystery of the flying saucers was back Tuesday where it was a week ago with one possible exception. The army said it knew not what they were. The army air forces said they were investigating, but were certain the strange disks were not: 1—Secret bacteriological weapons designed by some foreign power. 2—New type army rockets. 3—Space ships…
The Washington Daily News, p. 2, July 8, 1947
The Saucers
1. They’re Not Real 2. They’re From Another Dimension
3. One’s Worth $3000 4. Einstein Never Heard of ‘Em
WASHINGTON—Official Washington was sure today it knew what the flying saucers were NOT—but it hadn’t the faintest idea what they were. The AAF said preliminary study has revealed that the flying discs are not: 1. Some foreign power’s secret bacteriological weapons;2. New-type Army rockets, and 3. space ships.
LOS ANGELES—R. Dewitt Miller, authority on psychic phenomena, said today there are at least 100 cases in the last 150 years, in which “disc-like” objects have been seen in the sky. Mr. Miller advances three theories for the present saucers: (1) A new weapon; (2) from Mars or some where outside the earth, and (3) from some other dimension of time and space.
HOLLYWOOD-- Orson Welles, the original man from Mars broadcaster, said today he didn’t have a thing to do with the flying discs. “Once was enough,” he finished.
Eugene (OR) Register-Guard, p. 1, July 8, 1947
Army Reports ‘Disk’ Found in New Mexico
(Article carried in many newspapers)
…(Editor’s Note: R. Dewitt Miler, one of the world’s foremost authorities on psychic phenomena and author of “Forgotten Mysteries,” has spent 15 years accumulating authenticated case histories of inexplicable happenings…)
BY R. DEWITT MILLER
LOS ANGELES—(U.P.) There have been thousands of reliable reports during the last 150 years of strange things seen in the sky. There are at least 100 cases in which the queer objects were said to have “disk-like” form. Never have reports of strange sky phenomena been so widespread and so uniform as the “flying saucers.” …It seems to me the three most likely explanations—and at this point only guesses—are: 1. The Army and Navy are experimenting with a new weapon. Although they have denied it, there is much in favor of this explanation. 2. The disks actually are from Mars or somewhere outside the earth. The fact that similar objects were seen before the invention of aircraft strengthens this explanation. There has been increasing evidence of life on some other planets. If they are Martians, I would like to meet one. 3. They are things out of other dimensions of time and space. Certain thinkers in abstract science long have held that some other dimensional being conceivably could enter our world.
Toledo (OH) Blade, p. 4, July 8, 1947
Welles Disclaims Link to Saucers
Chicago Times, July 8, 197
Welles recalls hoax scare
Dunkirk (NY) Evening Observer, p. 3, July 8, 1947
WELLS NOT OVERLY IMPRESSED BY DISCS
Hollywood (UP) – Orson Welles, who once “scared the shirts” off Americans with an invasion from Mars broadcast, said today he didn’t have a thing to do with the flying saucers. “Once was enough,” he said. The actor-producer-writer… pointed out that during his 1938 radio hoax dozens of Americans reported seeing space ships landing. “People are imaginative and gullible,” he said. “I’ll bet 10 to 1 this will file out.”
The Victoria (TX) Advocate, p. 6, Afternoon, Tuesday, July 8, 1947
Discs Seen as Invaders From Mars
Advocate Reporter Explains New Celestial Mystery
By Carl Hooper
…The flying saucers are visitors from outer space. They may be from Mars, may be from Venus, may be from almost anywhere except the earth. For all anyone knows, they’re from the moon… The best guess is that the discs are from Mars. Mars is the nearest the earth… If Mars is inhabited, its civilization is probably older and more advanced than ours, because there is reason to believe it is an older planet… If the visitors had enough fuel (probably atomic energy) to make the trip to earth, they would certainly have enough left over to fly around for a while after they got here—the fact that they made the trip at all presupposes a practically inexhaustible supply of power. What, then, could be more natural than for the interplanetary commuters to take a sight-seeing tour of the country, taking serial snapshots, outrunning the curious native aircraft… and trying to judge the hospitality they would meet if they landed? If they decided the earth was worth colonizing but that its inhabitants were incorrigible, they might very well turn around and go back to Mars, returning in five or six years with an invading armada. The present crop of discs, of course, is hardly more than a task force… Say there were a dozen discs, each manned by Martian scientists. By the time the creatures got ready to go home, they’d probably have the place mapped out, and with the data they could supply, their superiors would have an easy time arranging for an invasion later on. Of course, they discs may land yet. Perhaps they have, and simply haven’t been seen or reported. And it’s always possible that they either have visited other countries and have not been reported or have not yet visited them but are planning to…
Take the ridiculous hypothesis of the alarmists, for example—the idea that the discs are a Russian secret weapon. Let these people realize that the Russians would in case parade a secret weapon before us… As to the theory that the discs are an American secret weapon, Army, Navy, and government sources in general have said, time after time, that they are completely mystified by the discs, a statement it would be perfectly ridiculous for them to make if they were working on something of the sort, in which case the proper comment would be “no comment”…
Now for the scientific evidence in favor of the interplanetary hypothesis. To make a trip through space, an object has to depend almost entirely on gravitational attraction... A spaceship might use power to clear the gravitational field of its own planet…
Toledo (OH) Blade, p. 4, July 8, 1947
Vet Airline Pilots Say It Isn’t So
ATLANTA, Ga., July 8 (UP)—Veteran airline pilots here today poured cold water on the report of flying discs, asserting that they had seen nothing in the sky during thousands of miles of travel but “airplanes and clouds.” …T. P. Ball, chief pilot for Delta Airlines, attributed it all to “imagination—unless I get a better explanation or see one myself. It certainly doesn’t seem to be the first wave of an invasion from Mars.”
On July 8th UP reported from Atlanta that airline pilots were throwing cold water on the reports. … T. P. Ball, chief pilot for Delta Airlines, termed all reports to be “imagination” …It certainly doesn’t seem to be the first wave of an invasion from Mars.”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, p. 6 (Editorial), July 8, 1947
Flying Imaginations
There was need for something like the flying saucers to relieve the summer doldrums… The American public hasn’t had so much fun since Orson Welles’ invasion from Mars… There was a happier time when the saucers would have been dismissed philosophically as a natural phenomenon, the meteors mistaken for “ghost rockets” last year in Sweden. But man’s mastery of the air, his constant progress toward self-destruction makes any aerial phenomenon, real or imagined, a matter of concern. We wish we could still believe that any disturbance in the sky was just a prank of nature. Now, however, one must also reckon with the possibility that if people really do see something unusual it may be the handiwork of man, threatening the world with some hideous new surprise.
Florence (SC) Morning News, p. 4 (editorial page), Tuesday, July 8, 1947
‘Flying Saucers’
Whether meteoric, atomic, planetary or imaginary, so-called ‘flying saucers,’ reported seen catapulting through the heavens from coast to coast, fit realistically into the temper of the times. With talk of Russia and atoms and rockets and jet planes and supersonics and radar and other mysteries holding the spotlight, the pattern isn’t upset by ‘flying saucers’. To the man of average unscientific intelligence, this new phenomenon is no more inexplicable than is his ordinary radio or the explosive potential of uranium. …They may be visitants from other planets hurling pieplates at us from some space ship anchored above the stratosphere. They may be atoms escaping from Oak Ridge…
Chicago Daily Times, editorial page, July 8, 1947
Editorial Opinion of The TIMES
Discs or Delusions?
All we know about the disc jitters sweeping the nation is, as Will Rogers used to say, what we read in the papers…We suppose that many of the flying saucers that have been sighted are optical illusions. But to many usually-qualified observers, such as airplane pilots, have been “seeing things” to brush off the entire series as mass hysteria or chain reaction optical illusions. It has been suggested the flying saucers are part of a “super-secret” military research program, but that’s denied in Washington. If it was “super-secret,” such a denial would be necessary anyway. But the military authorities themselves are out looking for the discs, although the right-hand may not know what the left is doing. We have a hunch a good deal of the uneasiness caused by the discs lies in the silence of our War Department. If our military men do know the answers, the public’s concern would be lessened. But the very fact that our military men SEEM buffaloed too, isn’t good for the nerves. The next war, if it comes, could begin under just as mysterious circumstances, and the military would have to react quicker than they seem to have in the case of the flying saucers.
It has further been suggested that the strange objects may be visitors from a distant planet. We used to laugh at theories like that but since the atomic bomb went off at Hiroshima, we don’t laugh so much at the Superman or Buck Rogers comics any more. If the flying discs are visitors from Mars, we hope they’ll land soon. Maybe they’ve got the answers to the world jitters that we were suffering from long before the first saucer was sighted. On second thought, maybe it would be better if they’d go back to wherever they came form and just leave us alone.
St. Petersburg (FL) Times, p. 32, (Man-in-the-street interviews), July 8, 1947
Everybody’s Baffled By Flying Disks But They Have Plenty of Explanations
…Only one person of those interviewed however, took the “I’ll Believe It When I See It” stand on the matter. When asked her views as to possible explanation of the flying puzzles, Mrs. G. C. Parsons… said: “Of course I could put forth some idea about invaders from Mars, since just about any explanation would be as logical, but I still think it’s strictly a matter of somebody’s imagination…”
St. Petersburg (FL) Times, p. 6 (Editorial), July 8, 1947
Those Spots Before Our Eyes
Some folks call this the silly season. …many Americans claim to have seen, heard, and even photographed flying saucers, cavorting around in the sky. We have theories ranging from the sober suggestion that the army or navy may be experimenting with radio-controlled aircraft of a new pattern to the tongue-in-cheek guess that scientists from Mars may be checking up on rumors that there is life on the earth… Americans are taking a ribbing from British cousins, in retaliation for all the fun we have poked at their Loch Ness “monster.” Communist commentators in Europe are chortling over what they interpret as signs of jitters in a country that has been moving steadily to the right… At the moment Americans are kidding themselves, too, and fairly bursting with curiosity. But there is, after all, a very thin and intangible barrier between fantasy and reality, between the incredible and the believable. Man conceived the idea of mechanical flight centuries ago, yet there were Americans in this century who scoffed when told that the crazy Wright brothers had lifted a powered kite off the sands at Kitty Hawk. It seems only yesterday that atomic weapons were reserved for Buck Rogers and others of his comic strip kind, but the atomic age opened with terrifying impact upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since the dawn of the atomic age nations have been testing supersonic planes, perfecting rockets so they can travel incredible distances, looking toward a perhaps not-distant era of push-button warfare…
St. Petersburg (FL) Evening Independent, p. 14, Editorials, July 8, 1947
A Matter of Opinion
By William Wiley
“…When they first started telling about flying saucers I thought it was a lot of bunk… When I first heart about it, I thought people were going nuts like they did when Orson Welles put on his man from Mars broadcast. …It may be the army or navy is fooling around with something… I remember a few months ago I read about something like this happening in England and Sweden. The Swedes were seeing some kind of rocket gadgets going over at night and didn’t know what they were. Then a little while later, there were stories in the paper of something flying over England at night. They thought it was some kind of fast plane. They even picked it up on radar. But as far as I know they never found out what it was.” [ This 1948 USAF Top Secret document shows that
Swedish experts thought they were extraterrestrial.]
Denver Post, p. 8, July 8, 1947 (Editorial)
Rhymatorial: Flying Disks
Obscure is the wherefore and why, the when and the how come and who of the fast-flying disks in the sky seen by the well-favored few. Each analyst has his own views. Some hint of a Soviet plot; others seek out psychic clues, hysteria, likely as not… Logic is useless and quaint when men from Mars are our lodgers. And reason’s voice is quite faint in a world straight out of Buck Rogers…
Milwaukee Journal, p. 3, July 9, 1947 (widely reported story)
Shakespeare and the Bible Find Way Into Disk Theories
…In Oshkosh, Mrs. Florence Jackowski, a Bible reading housewife, reread Chapters 36 through 38 of the Book of Job and felt that she had found the answer to the national enigma. She said that the passage said in effect: “When man becomes too vain and smart, some divine being will send things of various sizes and shapes through the air to confound and confuse man.” A heavenly hoax—and high time.
Milwaukee Journal, p. 3, July 9, 1947 (widely reported story)
‘Time to Ease Tensions’
Toledo (OH) Blade, p. 3, July 9, 1947
Senator Sees Possible World Order Help
WASHINGTON, July 9 (AP)—Sen. Glen H. Taylor (D. Idaho) said today he almost hoped the flying saucers will turn out to be space ships from another planet. “They would end our petty arguments on earth,” the “singing cowboy” told a reporter. He said the “mere possibility” that the spinning circles might be hostile would “unify the peoples of the earth as nothing else could.” Senator Taylor, who is plugging hard for a United States of the world, added, “you’d have world government so quick it would make your head spin.” The senator said that no matter what the saucers are they “can’t be laughed off. If they’re something we’ve invented,” he said, “we’d better take note that other people can invent them too. If it’s the Russians, we’d better look at our ‘hole card’ and realize we’re not the only ones with inventive genius. Even if it’s only a psychological phenomenon, Senator Taylor says, it’s a sign of what the world’s coming to…
Shanghai North China Daily News, July 10, 1947
Captive ‘Flying Disc’ Is Weather Device
July 9--UP--…In Washington, Senator Glen Taylor of Idaho said today he almost hopes the “flying saucers” will turn out to be space ships from another planet. Would Unify Earth. He said, “They would end our petty arguments on earth. The mere possibility that the spinning circles might be hostile would unify the peoples of the earth as nothing else would “unify the peoples of the earth as nothing else could.” Senator Taylor, who is plugging hard for a United States of the world, added, “You’d have world government so quick it would make your head spin. No matter what the saucers are they can’t be laughed off. If they’re something we’ve invented, we better take note that other people can invent them too. If it’s the Russians, we’d better look at our hole card and realize we’re not the only ones with inventive genius. Even if it’s only a psychological phenomenon, Senator Taylor says, it’s a sign of what the world’s coming to…”
AP Wires Burn With 'Captured Disk' Story
…Fort Worth Roswell's celebrated "flying disk" was rudely stripped of its glamour by a Fort Worth army airfield weather officer who late today identified the object as a weather balloon. …That was the word that many editors had been hoping for. The people who had been debunking the flying disk story weren't quite certain whether they wanted a solution to be found. Of course, a big story on flying disks would be fine, most of them thought, but it's a good story as it is. A solution might be more than embarrassing. It might be calamitous. What if there really were "men from Mars!"
Bradford (PA) Era, p. 1, July 9, 1947
Salt Lake City Deseret News, p. 1, July 9, 1947 (+Many other newspapers)
(Drawing of finned flying saucer with pilot) “Here’s flying saucer as envisioned after hearing latest ‘eyewitness’ reports. This saucer has everything but the cup and a man from Mars in the cockpit.”
