The World of Flying Saucers: A Scientific Examination of a Major Myth of the Space AgeMenzel, Donald H. (Donald Howard)
Science
The World of Flying Saucers: A Scientific Examination of a Major Myth of the Space Age
Menzel, Donald H. (Donald Howard)
Unidentified flying objects
Tuesday morning’s chief contribution to the UFO epidemic was not to be
laughed off so easily, for it was made by trained military personnel.
At 5:10 A.M. on November 5, the Coast Guard cutter _Sebago_, traveling
north in the Gulf of Mexico, detected an erratically maneuvering UFO on
the radarscope. The swiftly moving object would race across and off the
scope, only to reappear almost immediately from another direction and
position and again move off the scope at incredible speed. After ten
minutes the radar target vanished, but watchers on the deck glimpsed a
glowing object, brilliant as a planet; it streaked across the sky just
above the northwest horizon and vanished. The unknown radar targets
then returned and continued to fill the scope with their incredible
movements until 5:37, when they finally disappeared and did not return.
This mystery, too, yielded to orderly investigation. Air Force radar
experts made a detailed analysis of the data and positively identified
the mysterious returns. They had not come from the complex air traffic
overhead, as had first been suggested, nor from a fantastically
maneuverable spaceship. They were merely false targets produced by
the weather conditions (see _Chapter_ VIII). The brilliant light that
flashed across the sky was not reported by the radarscope and had no
relation to the radar returns. In view for a few seconds at most,
brilliant in the morning twilight (the sun rose some fifty minutes
later), the flash of light was probably a distant meteor--November is
rich in meteor displays.
_The Saturnian Visitors_
Tuesday evening while the nation was still wondering about the flying
eggs in New Mexico and the invisible UFOs that buzzed the _Sebago_,
welcome comic relief appeared. A man named Schmidt, a grain buyer,
announced that during the afternoon he had visited with the crew of
a flying saucer that had landed to make repairs. While driving in
the country near Kearney, Nebraska, he said, he had noticed a bright
flash about a quarter of a mile away. Going closer to investigate, he
perceived a huge silvery ship a hundred feet long, thirty feet wide,
and fourteen feet high, which had landed in a dry river bed. The motor
of his car then died. He got out and was walking toward the ship when a
light shot out and paralyzed him. The ship opened and two men emerged.
After searching him for concealed weapons, they released him from
paralysis and invited him into the ship, where he spent half an hour
chatting with these strangers and their female companions, mostly in
High German and English. (He knew that they came from outer space but
not until some weeks later, when they paid him a second visit, did he
discover that they were natives of the planet Saturn.)[IX-14] After he
left the ship it rose straight up into the sky and disappeared, while
he hurried back to town to report to the sheriff, to broadcast an
account of his experience over the local radio, and to give his story
to the newspapers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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