Special Preface

We must be cautious of the hubris of the present. When UFOs first appeared in numbers during the great flying saucer wave of 1947, few people made the jump to an extraterrestrial hypothesis. The subject of this book, Alfred Loedding, is significant because he did eventually lean toward that assumption. Because he played such an instrumental role in the first official Air Force investigation into the phenomena, it is important to analyze the progression of his theories.

For the best part of the summer of 1947 most serious minds studying the flying disc mystery, like Alfred Loedding, considered that a domestic secret project might account for the sightings. After eliminating that possibility, the "foreign origin" option was exhaustively explored. By 1948 foreign origin became a catch word for visitors from outer space, but in 1947 it meant only one thing?Russians. In fact, worries that the Soviet Union may have gleaned a Nazi super weapon at the end of the Second World War remained in the minds of Air Force officials up through 1952. But by late 1947 some aeronautical engineers, like Alfred Loedding, began to consider that "flying saucers" may represent intelligently controlled machines from another world. Why? What was the mind set in 1947 that could rationalize such a conclusion? What was his perspective? Where was the proof?

It is very difficult with our 1998 view of popular culture to consider a time when there was no extensive set of preconceptions on extraterrestrial life. Without a Steven Spielberg to help us dream, or a Star Wars trilogy and a thousand other such productions dating back to 1949, we would not have the present-day mind set that we do. Yet, that is not to say there was not already some basis for the consideration of alien visitation.

The best way for us to understand one early perspective is to look at Halloween night 1938. During that famous evening the dramatic actor Orson Welles produced and narrated a radio drama based on H.G. Wells' book, The War of the Worlds. Like the famous account of a Martian invasion, the radio play was a frightening success. Unfortunately for many East Coast listeners, it seemed so real that thousands flew into a panicked frenzy?actually believing aliens were landing in Grovers Mill, New Jersey. The nation was certainly in a vulnerable state of paranoia due to the brewing storm clouds in Europe. The Second World War would begin just one year later on September 1st and Americans knew that they would soon be impacted by Hitler's madness.

Many authors have used the panic caused by Orson Welles' radio drama as a foretelling explanation for later UFO sightings. In other words, a belief has arisen that the radio drama planted a seed in the public's mind?a self-fulfilling prophecy for extraterrestrial visitation. The historian, however, will realize the concept of extraterrestrial life had already been firmly ingrained in the public's mind since 1894 when Percival Lowell founded the Lowell Observatory near Flagstaff, Arizona.

Lowell believed he saw signs through his huge telescope of canals on the Martian landscape -- proving to him the existence of intelligent life there. Some scientists agreed while others were skeptical, but until the first Mars probes of the 1960s and 1970s showed just how lifeless the planet's surface actually was, many people kept an open mind about the possibility. UFOs, never the less, continued to be seen after we realized the near planets were uninhabited. Why?

UFOs are just that, unidentified objects in the atmosphere. Most of these turn out to be identified or IFOs?always representing something of physical reality regardless of what they turn out to be. For years debunkers have tried to use science fiction stories as an impetus behind UFO reports. But the stimulus for the sightings is real, not imagined. Orson Welles had no more responsibility than Percival Lowell for UFOs because as Alfred Loedding finally realized, whatever they represent, they are a real phenomena. True, no proof has surfaced to tell us what the UFO phenomenon represents. The continuing record of sightings detailed in this book will demonstrate clues to its anomalous nature just as it did to Loedding. In the case of UFOs it seems the truth may be very extraordinary. That, at any rate, is what Loedding came to suggest. And for that reason it is perhaps best to remember the words of the late Dr. Carl Sagan who stressed that finding such extraordinary truths always requires extraordinary evidence. Unfortunately, if Loedding ever did come across conclusive evidence, it has not yet been discovered. As a result, this book studies the events of 1947 that we do know and presents them just as Alfred Loedding lived them.

We can not disavow that Loedding might have had some cultural preconceptions in the back of his mind. He did draft a formal conclusion to Air Force officials in mid 1948, stating that flying discs may represent extraterrestrial visitation. But, he based his famous Estimate Of The Situation draft on fact, not fiction. It was, however, rejected in part due to fears of generating another War of the Worlds fiction-like panic.

Beyond that no one can say if popular culture tainted the history of man's modern interpretation of UFO sightings. The point for the sake of objectivity had to be presented. Following is presented the story of Alfred Loedding and the great flying saucer wave of 1947.