Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954), Saturday 25 February 1950, page 2
Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners' Advocate (NSW : 1876 - 1954), Saturday 25 February 1950, page 1
The latest on the Flying Saucer
Greatest Mystery of Our Times
HE Flying Saucer Mystery, in my opinion, is the biggest mystery
Tmodern man ever has had to face. Here, briefly, is how it began:
On June 24, 1947. Kenneth Arnold, a Boise, Idaho, business man,
flying his own plane near Mount Rainier, Washington, sighted a fleet
of nine gleaming disks skidding above and along the snowy mountain
chain. He judged they were going 1700 mph.
Since then, there have been similar sightings from Southern Cali-
fornia to Newfoundland-in fact. all around the world. Commander
Augusto Orrego sighted a group of such saucers spinning high in the
air above the Chilean Navy base in Antarctica. They have been seen
over the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines; over the Arabian Red
Sea; over the Mediterranean; over France and Britain. New sightings
are taking place week by week.
And what do the sighters say they see? A disk, a thing like a huge
quoit - sometimes one, sometimes several. The
disk travels faster than any jet-the best obser-
vers report the highest rate of speed-yet it can ro
- am
hang as still as a star. Then, without warning, d
they testify, off it shoots, so fast that the eye t
can hardly track it. G
It can make a right angle turn at this headlong
speed and can stop dead. It makes no sound. of
Often it travels on edge, as though it were a car confronting modem
wheel rolling along the sky. Most eerie of all, Navy's recent ann
the hol dis glws wth ts on ucann liht. disks are weather b:
the hol dis glws wth ts on ucann liht. The four-year-old
So at night it can be seen by its own phosphor- been enlivened by
escence. Seen in daylight, observers report, the ings this past sprin
rim of the disk "shimmers." ance of two new
mof tedFrank Scully's Beh4
Some trained observers also report another kind (Popular Library,2
of mystery air ship-a long black tube with rows Another World Watc
of strange lights. An internationally
lecturer, Heard fori
What is the explanation of these sky-craft? the B.B.C., pioneere
"War-fear-bysteria" was the first. "The whole significant psychica
- lives in California.A
thing's hallucination caused by international jit- works are Pan,ra
ters." But, if that were true, the sightings since History and The Et
36
1947 should have been the first, and they were not. Long before there
were planes or dirigibles, observers now and then did notice strange
vessels flying in the high sky. Away back in the last century, there
were solitary visitors, looking us over. Today we have flotillas of them.
The second explanation was advanced last February by the Office of
Naval Research. What observers had taken for flying saucers, we were
told, were really plastic weather balloons.
Does this explanation cover the facts? It does not. Some of the
objects were balloons, no doubt. Many certainly were not. From scores
of first-rate observations, let us quickly review six cases that prove
the saucers are not balloons but a new kind of super-sky-craft with
prodigious powers.
First there is the well-known case of Naval Commander Robert
McLaughlin and a
In this report, based
n the latest eye-witness
nd circumstantial evi-
ence from all parts of
he world, the eminent
British scientific writer
eraM Heard offers an
atonishing explanation
what has been called
he greatest mystery
1man. He rejects the
iouncement that the
balloons.
Id Saucer mystery has
sensational new sight-
g and by the appear-
best-selling books-
nd the Flying Baucers
250) and Heard's is
hing? (Harper, $2.75.)
y-known author and
merly broadcast over
ed many of Britain's
al experiments, now
Among his published
x ana Time, God in
ernal Gospel.
number of his fellow workers at White Sands
Rocket Proving Ground intNew Mexico. A flying
saucer actually rushed into view while a team
from that base, equipped with a theodolite tele-
scope, was observing a drifting balloon. Their
special instruments enabled this team to gauge
the height and the speed of such visitors, which
were seen several times. On was 56 miles high
and was going 18,000 mph.
Or take Case Two. In July 1948, Pilot Clarence
S. Chiles and his co-pilot John B. Whitted were
flying an Eastern Airlines passenger plane near
Montgomery, Alabama, on their standard course.
Suddenly a huge black cigar-shaped object, lit
down its length with uncanny lights and giving
out a great wake of flame, rushed at them head
on. By a masterly maneuver the huge cigar swung
up and out of their way and they felt their own
plane heave in the stranger's wash.
The third, fourth and fifth cases also involved
airline captains and co-pilots-all unusually re-
liable witnesses. While flying over Arkansas,
K
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Ix
A
I
j p
Captain Jack Adams and co-pilot G. W. Anderson of Chicago and
Southern Airlines saw a disk sweeping around them in a great curve
of inspection. A blinding blue-white light flashed from its top; along
its rim, fluorescent patches made it glow.
This Disk Was Seen by Passengers and Crew
Case Four--that of Captain R. Adickes and co-pilot R. Manning-
is even odder. These two pilots roused their passengers near South
Bend (Ind.) to watch a bright red disk that had rushed up beside
them, rolling along on its edge like a glowing cartwheel.
The fifth case is that of two pilots-Captain W. T. Sperry and Co-
pilot W. Gates-who, between Washington, D. C., and Nashville, saw
a disk shining dazzling blue-white and racing around them.
The sixth case, however, beats all of these in the uncanny. It con-
cerns Aviation Editor Janssen of the Morristown (N. J.) Daily Record,
who one day took a photo of four "disks" in flight. A few weeks
later two other disks approached a plane in which he was flying and
--they held him up! He says his engine stopped as two disks poised
above him and yet, he was surprised to learn, his plane did not fall.
When the disks made off, his plane's nose went down, the engine
started and he flew back to his field.
This story tends to confirm the account of Captain Charles Lane
and a co-pilot who in 1945, flying at 24,000 feet over The Hump
between China and India, suddenly saw a white disk-shaped object
rushing up behind them. at terrific speed. It rose above them. Lane's
instrument board "went haywire." He switched off the motors but the
plane's nose did not go down. The two pilots felt a slight joggle. The
plane had been stopped.
Then the disk above them suddenly swooped off into the sky. Lane
switched on the engines and they started up.
Captain Lane has no doubt he had the same experience as Mr.
Janssen and co-pilot.
Here, then, are six cases that blow the balloon theory to pieces.
Obviously these men are not frauds. hysterics or ignoramuses. It
would be hard to find better witnesses.
Are "All" Saucers Really Weather Balloons?
Interest in flying saucers is like undulant fever, high one day, sub-
normal the next. The latest slump occurred last February following
the Office of Naval Research statement that all saucers were really
weather balloons. Since February. however, sightings have continued
to come in, as fast as snowflakes in a storm.
Naturally, the Naval Research Office report dealt only with the
balloons the N.R.O. sent up. These only travel some hundreds of
coNTWaE ON NNT PAE
37
by Gerald Heard
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