Comments
A very similar Reuters Roswell account also appeared in a Canadian newspaper from July 10. Other Reuters news items reported here also appeared in an earlier Reuters Roswell story from July 9 in the Ceylon Observer.
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This hoax disk story was widely reported in the U.S. press.
This is very similar to the description Kirton fed the FBI office in Dallas, except they were told more specifically that it was a radar target. See FBI telegram. The FBI was also told that Wright Field disagreed with that assessment and the "disk" was being forwarded to Wright Field for further inspection. Kirton, BTW, was one of Ramey's intelligence officers, but identified here as a "duty officer."
* Unique item. Truman says there were no plans to investigate the flying saucers. I have never seen this statement, even in the U.S. newspapers, who reported only that Truman said he knew nothing more about the saucers than what he read in the newspapers. In reality, AAF intelligence in Washington had started an investigation on July 9, in cooperation with the FBI, analyzing about 18 of the best flying saucer reports. They concluded 3 weeks later that "something was really flying around."
This is a famous case in UFO history, though generally believed to be a hoax. It eventually involved AAF intelligence and Kenneth Arnold, who filed the first famous flying saucer report on June 24, and eventually had many bizarre twists. The lengthy treatment here is unusual.
These international reports were briefly mentioned in American wireservice stories. A few more details are provided here.
"FLYING SAUCERS"
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MORE ABOUT MYSTERY DISCS
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ONE TURNS OUT TO BE A
WEATHER BALLOON
WASHINGTON, JULY 9
The first example of the "Flying Saucers," mysterious disc-shaped objects intriguing Americans by their reported appearance over 41 states to fall into the hands of the United States Army Air Force has turned out to be an observation balloon such as is used by eighty weather stations throughout the States. Brigadier-General Roger Ramey, Commander of the Eighth Air Force with Headquarters at Fort Worth (Texas), went to the microphone at [a] Fort Worth radio station and announced that the mysterious object, found on a ranch near Roswell (New Mexico), and passed to the Army authorities was a weather balloon.
Meanwhile another report of the actual finding of a "Flying disc" came from a tobacco wholesaler, Mr. Lloyd Bennett, in Celewin [sic] (Iowa), who said a piece of metal, six and a half inches in diameter and about one-eighth inch thick, had "crashed into his front yard.
Mr. Bennett said he had a highly polished piece of the disc examined by a metallurgist, who said it took a heat of 6,300 degrees to melt a chip of it. The disc appeared to be a type of die-cast metal.
Estimates of the size of the "flying saucers", which have been said to shoot through the air at the speeds up to 1,200 miles an hour, vary from six inches to that of a "five roomed house".
Before Brigadier General Ramey's broadcast, Major Edwin Kirton, duty officer at Eighth Air Force Headquarters at Fort Worth, quoted him as saying: "It looks like a hexagonal object covered with tinfoil or other shining material suspended from a balloon of about 20 feet diameter. ---Reuter.
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NO WHITE HOUSE INVESTIGATION
Mr. Charles G. Ross, President Truman's Press Secretary, said yesterday that no official investigation was under way, so far as the White House is concerned, regarding the "Flying Saucers". With North Carolina as the latest State to report spotting the flying discs, they have now been in 41 States. The World Inventors Congress has offered a thousand-dollar reward for delibery of a "Flying Saucer" to their Exhibition at Los Angeles this week.---Reuter.
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EYE-WITNESS ACCOUNT OF
"METALLIC RAIN"
CHICAGO, July 8.
A piece of rock-like metal, alleged to have dropped from one of the "Flying Saucers" which have been reoprted sighted from 38 American States, arrived here today for analysis by metallurgists of Chicago University. The sample was accompanied by one of the most detailed accounts reported of the "Airborne Discs."
The sender, Mr. Harold Dahl, of Tacoma (Washington State), said that the substance was dropped in heavy rain on June 25 over Puget Sound, near the Canadian Border from a huge circular flying machine.
He said that he and two companions on board a small boat saw what appeared to be a huge silver dough-nuts coming down between the clouds.
"I anchored the boat and went ashore and watched the objects through binoculars," Mr. Dahl said. I saw five objects rotatating around a sixth. They were about 200 feet in diameter with a centre hole, surrounded by what appeared to be a row of portholes."
The "ships" as Mr. Dahl described them, hung level about 1,500 feet, and then rose rapidly to a height of nearly a mile. At this point, according to Mr. Dahl, the central ship began raining a substance that rained down upon the water and along the shore. Pieces of the "metal rain" smashed a hole in the wheel-house of his boat and broke a searchlight lens on deck. Some of the substance which, he said, was picked up on the beach was sent along to back up his story.---Reuter.
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"SAUCERS" SEEN IN JOHANNESBURG
JOHANNESBURG, July 9
Two Johannesburg residents have reported that they saw "Flying Saucers" over the City early yesterday.
They said that the objects were about as big as gramophone records and were revolving at a great speed in a V-formation. The objects disappeared in a cloud of smoke, they added.---Reuter
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REPORTS FROM SYDNEY
SYDNEY, July 8
Six people claimed to have seen the "Flying Saucers" in the skies over Sydney in the last 24 hours.
One man said he saw a bright, oval-shaped object in the sky at night at a height of about 10,000 feet. His description was identical with those of the objects reported to have been seen in the skies over Canada and parts of the U.S.A. ---Reuter.
