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What Are Flying Saucers and UFOs?

By Joy Healey

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Published: 27Oct2008
Word count: 1106
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The UFO story started soon after June 24, 1947, when newspapers all over the United States carried the first flying saucer report.

The story told how nine very bright, disk-shaped objects were seen by Kenneth Arnold, a Boise, Idaho, businessman, while he was flying his private plane near Mount Rainier, in the state of Washington. With journalistic license, reporters converted Arnold's description of the individual motion of each of the objects, "like a saucer skipping across water", into "flying saucer," a name for the objects themselves.

In the years that passed since Arnold's memorable sighting, the term has became so common that it found a place in Webster's Dictionary and is known today in most languages in the world.

For a while after the Arnold sighting, the term "flying saucer" was used to describe all disk-shaped objects that were seen flashing through the sky at fantastic speeds. Before long, reports were made of objects other than disks, and these were also called flying saucers. Today the words are popularly applied to anything seen in the sky that cannot be identified as a common, everyday object.

Thus a flying saucer can be a formation of lights, a single light, a sphere, or any other shape; and it can be any color. Performance wise, flying saucers can hover, go fast or slow, go high or low, turn 90-degree corners, or disappear almost instantaneously.

Obviously the term "flying saucer" is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short.

Officially the military uses the term "flying saucer" on only two occasions. First in an explanatory sense, as when briefing people who are unacquainted with the term "UFO": "UFO, you know, flying saucers." And second in a derogatory sense, for purposes of ridicule, as when it is observed, "He says he saw a flying saucer."

This second form of usage is the exclusive property of those persons who positively know that all UFOs are nonsense. Fortunately, for the sake of good manners if for no other reason, the ranks of this knowing category are constantly dwindling. One by one these people drop out, starting with the instant they see their first UFO.

Some weeks after the first UFO was seen on June 24, 1947, the Air Force established a project to investigate and analyze all UFO reports. The attitude toward this task varied from a state of near panic, early in the life of the project, to that of complete contempt for anyone who even mentioned the words "flying saucer."

This contemptuous attitude toward "flying saucer nuts" prevailed from mid-1949 to mid-1950. During that interval many of the people who were, or had been, associated with the project believed that the public was suffering from "war nerves."

Early in 1950 the project, for all practical purposes, was closed out; at least it rated only minimum effort. Those in power now reasoned that if you didn't mention the words "flying saucers" the people would forget them and the saucers would go away. But this reasoning was false, for instead of vanishing; the UFO reports got better and better.

Airline pilots, military pilots, generals, scientists, and dozens of other people were reporting UFO's, and in greater detail than in reports of the past. Radars, which were being built for air defense, began to pick up some very unusual targets, thus lending technical corroboration to the unsubstantiated claims of human observers.

As a result of the continuing accumulation of more impressive UFO reports, official interest stirred. Early in 1951 verbal orders came down from Major General Charles P. Cabell, then Director of Intelligence for Headquarters, U.S. Air Force, to make a study reviewing the UFO situation for Air Force Headquarters.

The study was given the code name Project Blue Book. It was under the supervision of "EJR" of impeccable credentials until late in 1953. During the Second World War EJR was a B-29 bombardier and radar operator. After the war, he went back to college and not long after, received a degree in aeronautical engineering. To keep his reserve status while in school, he flew as a navigator in an Air Force Reserve Troop Carrier Wing.

While compiling Project Blue Book, EJR and members of his staff traveled close to half a million miles. They investigated dozens of UFO reports, and read and analyzed several thousand more. These included every report ever received by the Air Force.

There were ten regular staff on Project Blue Book plus many paid consultants representing every field of science. All had Top Secret security clearances so that security was no block in our investigations. Behind this organization was a reporting network made up of every Air Force base intelligence officer and every Air Force radar station in the world, and the Air Defense Command's Ground Observer Corps. This reporting net sent Project Blue Book reports on every conceivable type of UFO, by every conceivable type of person. What did these people actually see when they reported a UFO? Putting aside truly unidentifiable flying objects for the present, this question has several answers.

Often it has been positively proved that people have reported balloons, airplanes, stars, and many other common objects as UFOs. The people who make such reports don't recognize these common objects because something in their surroundings temporarily assumes an unfamiliar appearance.

Unusual lighting conditions are a common cause of such illusions. A balloon will glow like a "ball of fire" just at sunset. Or an airplane that is not visible to the naked eye suddenly starts to reflect the sun's rays and appears to be a "silver ball". Pilots in F-94 jet interceptors chase Venus in the daytime and fight with balloons at night, and people in Los Angeles see weird lights.

So did Project Blue Book prove that UFOs exist? The hassle over the word "proof" boils down to one question: What constitutes proof? Does a UFO have to land at the River Entrance to the Pentagon, near the Joint Chiefs of Staff offices? Or is it proof when a ground radar station detects a UFO, sends a jet to intercept it, the jet pilot sees it, and locks on with his radar, only to have the UFO streak away at a phenomenal speed? Is it proof when a jet pilot fires at a UFO and sticks to his story even under the threat of court-martial? Does this constitute proof?

Project Blue Book recorded the facts; but you must decide for yourself.

Do UFOs exist? What are they? Is the evidence credible? "Project Blue Book" a fascinating and authoritative e-book about unidentified flying objects. It is far more than an e-book; it is a report, and it is the first time that anyone, either military or civilian, has brought together in one document all the facts about this fascinating subject. Learn more at http://www.ufo-secret-report.com/

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