Monday 7 July

Sightings were already worldwide by Monday. In England a clergyman's wife had her attention drawn skyward by "a dark ring with clear-cut edges" speeding across the sky s1The New York Times, 9 July 1947, p. 10. In Mexico five discs were spotted over Mexicali and two over Ciudad Juarez s2Panama City, Panama, StarHerald, 8 July 1947.

Back in the United States at 2:30 AM. PST in Tacoma, Washington, two police officers saw glowing, turning, discs moving overhead on an erratic course. At first the objects would glow red, then turn purple, and work into a blue-white hue before returning to a red color. They noted one central saucer which appeared to act as a sort of flagship. Around it, smaller saucers were said to make repeated sorties to the larger disc s3Ted Morello, "Tacoma Police Sight Soaring Discs," Tacoma (Washington)Times, 1 July 1947, p. 1. This same type of strange phenomena was then repeated by a woman in Palmdale, California. She also described seeing a "mother saucer" with a bunch of little saucers playing around it s4Palmdale, California, South Antelope Valley Press, 10 July 1947, p. 1. At Riverside, California, an even more fantastic report came to light. There, a man stated that he saw six discs the size of small plates hovering over a power line while he was outside trying to find the cause of the static on his radio s5Riverside, California, The Riverside Daily Press, 8 July 1947, p. 1. By 6:21 A.M. PST yet another case comes from Colton, California, where eight silvery egg or disc-shaped objects were observed silently flying by in a straight line. One of the craft was described as elliptical-shaped and "flashing" s6Redlands, California, Daily Fact, 1 July 1947.

About two hours later a disc was sighted in Lawton, Oklahoma, headed west. Then just five minutes later near San Carlos, California, at 10:35 A.M. PST témoin and his mother observed 30 strange objects circle overhead at about 2,000 feet. Miramon compared them to the size of an automobile and round and silvery in appearance s7Sacramento, California, Bee, Associated Press news story, 7 July 1947. By that afternoon near Glenn, California, two farmers harvesting barley noticed the sun reflecting off three "rows" of discs flying overhead. They estimated that there were at least twenty-five craft flying at great speed, moving with an up and down and side to side tipping motion. Before they passed out of sight the three row formation changed into a perfect V formation s8Willows, California, The Willows Journal, 9 July 1947, p. 1. Still another sighting occurred near Sacramento:

William Smith, a photographer for the Bee, saw a round object which appeared to be tumbling over and over, alternately showing a dark and a bright side. It was unlike any plane he had seen as a former Naval aviator. He went for his camera, but when he returned it was gone s9Ibid.

Another very interesting article describes a disc sighting that morning at the Rodgers Airport in Springfield, Missouri:

A flying saucer was spotted over Springfield yesterday by three observers at the Rodgers airport, a city policeman reported last night.

The officer, Frank Walker, who flies a plane in his spare time, said he took off from the Rodgers airport yesterday morning, bound on a short pleasure cruise toward Ozark and back.

Walker said his trip was uneventful, and he didn't sight any of the shiny discs personally, but when he returned to the airport later three friends who had watched his takeoff told of seeing an object "trailing" him for some distance.

"They said it was flat-shaped and shiny," Walker said, "and that it appeared to have some sort of fins on it" The fellow who first saw it thought I was towing a target of some kind. Altogether, three persons saw it, I believe.

Walker said the men told him the object appeared to be rolling over steadily. He said the observers reported that the discs followed him for some distance toward the northeast and vanished as Walker's plane turned toward the southwest s10"Flying Saucer Seen Near City," Springfield, Missouri, Daily News, 8 July 1947.

In Los Angeles, California, pilot témoin, while flying a war surplus P-38 fighter for the Fairchild Photogrammetric Engineers Company, told of a very close aerial encounter he had with a UFO. Baird and an assistant, George Suttin, were mapping the region between Helena and Yellowstone Park for the Reclamation Bureau. They were at 32,400 feet traveling at 360 miles per hour when a flying disc appeared 100 yards behind their aircraft. It had a pearl gray color and looked to be around fifteen feet in diameter and four feet thick with a type of plexiglass canopy or dome on top. When the disc started to overtake the P-38, Baird took evasive action, causing it to be suddenly buffeted with strong air currents or propwash. Baird believed the saucer may have broken up during the maneuver because after the encounter it appeared to split into two clamshell-like sections and lose altitude over the Tobacco Root Mountains of western Montana s11"Pilot Says He Knocked Down Disc," St. Joseph (Missouri) News-Press, 1 July 1947, p. 1; and The New York Times, 8 July 1947, pp. 1, 46.

Although unheard of at the time, many UFO reports in later years would describe similar aerial separations. Often appearing as if an aircraft had broken-up in flight―rather, they seem to indicate some sort of complex change or maneuver. Interestingly, after this sighting made headlines, the Fairchild Company became so inundated with phone calls that a plant spokesman soon stated the incident had never really happened and was just the result of some wild talk. But it was JJ. Archer, Baird's boss, who branded it a hoax, not Baird or Suttin s12Captain Kevin D. Randle, The UFO Casebook (New York: Warner Books, 1989), p. 220.

That is not an infrequent problem with UFO reports. After the fact, some witnesses, or their friends, will make a similar claim simply to put an end to the nuisance of public interest. Sorting out the actual reports from the hoaxes in such a case, especially after so many years, is often impossible.

Another air-to-air sighting took place that morning seven miles north of the Shreveport Municipal Airport. The Shreveport, Louisiana, Times, states:

Sgt. témoin, 26, of Squadron K, Barksdale Field was flying when he saw a bright silver object shaped like a saucer. Thomas said that he flew toward the object for five minutes, and then veered to the right and left, trying to determine his distance from it but without success. It looked about the size of the moon and looked thin as it turned" s13Shreveport, Louisiana, Times, 8 July 1947.

Boise Evening Statesman aviation writer Dave Johnson became keenly interested in such sightings. He was friends not only with Kenneth Arnold but came to know Captain Smith of the United Airlines Flight 105 Case too. In fact, up until 1953 when unnamed military officials suggested he tone down his enthusiasm, Johnson investigated many of the more significant UFO sightings. The following article is very revealing because it documents his first efforts to learn more about this strange phenomenon:

Idaho Newsman-Pilot Given 'Dream Assignment'
'Get Picture of Saucers Or Bring One Back Alive'

By DAVE JOHNSON
(Idaho Statesman Aviation Editor)

Boise―July 6--AP--FIew instruments this afternoon for a couple of hours with the Idaho national guard. A lieutenant colonel sat up in front and watched for discs while I struggled with the gauges and the radio beam. We got back into Gowen field's pattern, and the control tower called to report some people in Ontario, Ore., had told the CAA they saw some saucers wheeling through the sky. Now, there's one thing about these saucers. I've never seen one, so on the way home I dropped into the Statesman office with an idea. That was to take the Early-Bird No. 3, our airplane, and be up tonight and prowl around the airways, just looking.

Gets Expense Dough

I broached that to the city editor and blew the foam off of it, and a you-know-what look spread over his face, just like somebody had tossed a brick into a mud puddle. He talked for a few minutes and I listened. The upshot of it was that I walked out of the office with expense dough in my pocket and a date with Kenneth Arnold, the Boise man who two weeks ago saw the discs come roaring around Mt Rainier in Washington.

I have one of those things called a general assignment. I'm going disc hunting with Arnold in the Statesman plane.

Started In Idaho

The city editor had said:

"Dave, I was just about to give you a call and discuss this damn saucer business with you. The thing started here in Boise with Arnold and it is getting out of hand. The wire services are moving more copy on it than any single story in years except the war, and no ' one knows any more about it now than when they were doubting this fellow Arnold who first reported seeing whatever it is that is being looked at, real or imaginary."

"As I said before, this business started in Boise and it is up to us if we can do it to help get it brought down to earth. I hope you can lasso one of the damn things and bring it in for display, but on the other hand, it might be a good idea to be ready to duck if you see something skipping along."

Dream Assignment

I might interject here that the boss doesn't fly.

"Crank up your airplane," he said, "and go up around the Hanford atom plant area in Washington and stay there until you either find something or give it up. See if this fellow Arnold wants to go along (he jumped at the chance) and take the best camera equipment you can find and stay as long as you want to."

Such an assignment- stay as long as you want to- is not to be accepted lightly. "Fly around that area," said the city editor, "because my hunch is that if these things can come from any place they are coming from some project like Hanford. The army has denied this possibility but the army has been making denials a major business for years. In one case an Army man said there's nothing to get excited about, "if there were anything to the saucers the army would have notified us."

Also... Good Luck!

If you see anything that answers the description―or the hundreds of descriptions-- grab a picture and high-tail for Boise." "Oh yes," he added. "Good luck to you."

They take the insurance out of my check.I phoned Arnold. We are taking off bright and early in the morning. Arnold has a new movie camera with a telephoto lens and we're fortified for pictures. From somewhere up in eastern Washington tomorrow night you'll hear from us, providing, of course, we don't run into something that proves these reports to be the McCoy and it runs over us.

The city desk says he'll stand behind us." s14Lewiston, Idaho, Daily Tribune, 1 July 1947.

Saucer sightings also came from Spokane, Washington; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Osburn, Idaho; Lakeview, Oregon; Rutland, Vermont; Wisconsin; and 17 cases originated in Illinois s15"Who Has The Saucer? 40 States Join Game," Associated Press news story, 8 July 1947; and St. Louis (Missouri) Post Dispatch, 8 July 1947.

A very notable incident on the 7th, for example, occurred around noon near Willow Springs, Illinois, when Robert Meegan and his 14 year old son John heard a buzzing noise overhead. They were working in the fields on their farm near the Des Plains River not far from the Argonne National Laboratories. Looking up they saw "13 round objects all going east, single file in a straight line." They described the objects as round with flat bottoms estimated about as big as a house and bluish-grey in color. They stated that the craft flew on a straight and level course toward the east s16Chicago (Illinois) Times, 1 July 1947.

By noontime that day Deputy Army Air Force Chief of Staff Hoyt Vandenberg gave up any hope of getting to regular business. His entire day proved to be dominated by phone calls on the sightings. In fact, while at Hensley Field in Dallas, Texas, that afternoon, he stated publicly that the Army Air Force was receiving thousands of queries on the disc sightings s17Austin, Texas, Statesman, 1 July 1947, p. 1.

The discs reports that came out of Wisconsin, via Boiling Field and the state's Civil Air Patrol, were even more stunning than those in Illinois and must have attracted the General's attention. The first began at 11:45 A.M. CST when a flight instructor, Kenneth Jones, and his student in a private aircraft at 800 feet spotted a "saucer" near Koshkonong, Wisconsin. It descended from the clouds vertically and edgewise until stopping to hover at 4,000 feet. The craft then took off at a speed estimated at 6,000 miles per hour―calculated by the 25 mile distance the object covered between Koshkonong to Elkhorn in fifteen seconds. At the end of its speedy run the object suddenly stopped and hovered, then disappeared in the distance.

At 2:30 P.M another set of airborne witnesses reported a saucer near East Troy, Wisconsin. Pilot Wing Supply Officer Captain témoin (Burlington Civil Air Patrol) and a passenger, Clem Hackworthy, were at 3,500 feet when they saw a flying disc below them at 2,500 feet. It then covered the 22 mile distance between Eagle to Muskego in twenty seconds, placing its speed at 3,960 miles per hour. These two cases represent the best sightings of 1947, but are never discussed because their investigative case files are today missing from the Blue Book files released to the National Archives. Further information may never be found although the few details presented here come from a recent discovery by researcher Jan Aldrich s18Declassified FBI files and Fourth Air Force Files, "microfilm record 33764-1036," US Air Force Historical Agency, Maxwell AFB, Montgomery, Alabama.

An early investigated case from 1947 that did survive the years, reports a sighting at 4:00 P.M. MST in Phoenix, Arizona. In this instance William A. Rhodes captured two photographs of an elliptical, flat, gray, heel-shaped object flying between 400 and 600 miles per hour.

The images reveal a dark irregularly-shaped disc that looks surprisingly like the description of a sighting made between 1:00 and 4:00 P.M. EST that same day, but on the opposite side of the country just east of Lakeland, Florida. That report came from a man who heard a swishing noise followed by the appearance of five shiny unidentifiable objects moving northeast. After the encounter, the observer made a model of one of the objects. The photo of his replica, although of very poor quality, is still in the archival files and shows a cloverleaf-shaped craft with a small vertical fin and a dome on top s19Project Blue Book Files, Roll No. 1, Cases 46 and 43, listed as Incidents 40 and 84 in 1947 era documents.

California produced more sightings by late afternoon: The most notable involved two teenagers. At 3:10 P.M. PST they observed a flat glistening object fly in from out over the ocean. It then rapidly lost altitude and dove into the water about 400 yards from shore. As it hit, a tall column of water rose up, and the unknown craft could momentarily be seen on the surface before it disappeared beneath the turning waves s20San Rafael, California, The Willows Journal, 9 My, 1947, p. 14. Another good sighting that day occurred around 4:40 P.M. MST. This report should have made it into Air Force files with an accompanying investigation but did not. Thus, all we have is a newspaper clipping. The most interesting aspect of the account tells of possible electromagnetic disturbances being generated as a result of the UFO encounter. Termed EM effects, it is a common component of later sightings but rarely documented in the earlier incidents:

Sergeant témoin, Bergstrom Field aerial radioman reported seeing one of the flying saucers bound toward San Antonio as his plane was leaving there. Other members of the crew also saw the disc. "I think it was about 18 feet in diameter and looked as though it was made of glass," Sgt. Clifton said. "It was extremely bright and kept flashing." Sgt Clifton said that the crew figured that it must have been flying 1,440 miles an hour because it overtook and passed their plane in such a short time. It was round and was flying at a slightly tilted angle. "The disc seemed to be spinning as it flew," Sgt. Clifton reported. "It blurred radio reception slightly." Lieutenant Charles O. Anderson was piloting the plane which the disc passed about 4:30 p.m. s21"In Air, On Ground, They're Everywhere," Austin, Texas, American, 8 July 1947.

Another interesting EM effect befell the town of Acampo, California, the night before around dawn. Citizens of that community noted a "spectacular glow in the sky" accompanied by a loud roar just before a complete area-wide power failure. Not long after that a mysterious flying object was seen at low altitude over the nearby town of Lodi. In later years very similar UFO related blackouts have occurred, but this is one of the earliest examples of such an event s22United Press article, 7 July 1947; and Lodi, California, Lodi News-Sentinel, 1 July 1947, p. 1. One curious discovery from interviews conducted with Alfred Loedding's relatives, reveal that he was one of the first officials to recognize this important facet. Other early investigators only theorized about nuclear propulsion as a possible power plant for the discs. Loedding, for whatever reason, seemed to have a very clear understanding that many of the UFOs displayed electromagnetic properties.

Around 5:20 P.M. a secretary in the Engineering Department of Dupont's Chester, Pennsylvania, division had a more common encounter when witnessing five dull gray objects fly over in a V-formation s23Wilmington, Delaware, Journal Every Evening, 11 July 1947. Much further south a strange encounter occurred over the Gulf of Mexico:

Captain Marian Ruffner of Midnight Pass was proceeding in her deep sea fishing boat when she saw something that she first thought was a dirigible heading out over the Gulf. It was heading southwest, moving fast and appeared to be round and flat. It appeared and disappeared as she watched. "It flashed in the sun and appeared to be silver in color." Mrs. Ruffner described herself as "flabbergasted" by the sight of an object that she had previously taken as a joke. She reported that she was cold sober at the tirne s24Sarasota, Florida, Herald, 8 July 1947, p. 1.

That night at 6:30 P.M. EST a Tampa, Florida, man, George Gortez, and several others saw a V formation of three "golden colored" objects slowly flying overhead s25Winter Haven, Florida, Daily Chief, 8 July 1947, p. 1. Further west at 8:30 P.M. CST John W. Hawkins and Virgil Ashley reported seeing a "flying disc" pass over St. Joseph, Missouri, at a high speed heading toward the north. They noticed the craft while sitting out in the back yard of the Ashley home, one mile north of the city. The UFO appeared luminous and disc-shaped with a silver glow. Estimated to have been around 300 feet in the air, it gave off a faint buzzing sound. Then at 9:17 P.M. a phone call came into the St. Joseph Gazette, stating that a flying disc had just been spotted over the city. Reporters looked outside but did not see anything s26"Newsroom Deserted as a Saucer Skims Overhead," St. Joseph (Missouri) Gazette, 8 July 1947, p. 3. Around that same time period a single disc was seen over St. Louis, and University City, Missouri s27St. Louis, Missouri, Post-Dispatch, 8 July 1947.

Back east on the Atlantic coast at 9:30 P.M. EST a "flying saucer" zoomed over Wilmington, North Carolina heading north.. Witnesses noted its high rate of speed and unusual brightness with an orange tint s28Raleigh, North Carolina, Times, 1 July 1947, p. 1. About the same time two college kids, Albert Dugan and Charles Cross, reported seeing a large luminous object speed overhead just ten miles outside of Raleigh, North Carolina. They initially thought it to be a star, but then realized the object was an elliptical flying machine that radiated blue lights from its edges as it moved in a circular orbit. After about three minutes it vanished into the clouds which were later confirmed by the Weather Bureau to be at a ceiling of 5,500 feet. An independent observation also described a luminous object moving north over Asheville, North Carolina s29Asheville, North Carolina, Citizen, 8 July 1947. Before the day was out, Mexico City claimed several saucer sightings, reporting discs identical to those seen all over the United States s30The Yuma Sun & Arizona Sentinel, 8 July 1947, p. 1.