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
Everything checked. Every detail of the incident was accounted
for[III-11]. Nevertheless the solution caused an explosion in
the camps of the saucer enthusiasts, who called it, among other
things, imaginative. Forgetting that the “Orion” theory suggested
immediately after the sighting had been only tentative, UFO addicts
ridiculed it and asked why the experts had later offered a different
explanation--which they greeted with equal ridicule[III-12].
Captain Killian, too, had apparently forgotten his first report. On
March 24, a month after the sighting, in an interview by the Long
Island _Daily Press_ he stated that the things he saw could not have
been tankers; that he knew what B-47 bombers and KC-97 tankers looked
like, and how they looked in operation at night (Original statement
to American Airlines: “Never having witnessed refueling operations at
night, I am not aware of the lighting of jet tankers.”) Also, he told
the _Daily Press_, the objects he saw were at least triple the size of
any known tanker or bomber. (Original statement to American Airlines:
“Due to the dark and strong lights I was not able to ascertain any
size or shape.”) Furthermore, he asserted, the unknowns had been far
too fast for a tanker, and had moved at a speed of about 2000 miles an
hour. (Original statement to American Airlines: “... it was difficult
for me to believe they were jets because of low speed.”)
In rejecting the Air Force explanation of this incident, flying-saucer
addicts ignored several embarrassing questions: If Captain Killian
actually saw interplanetary craft, how did he fail to see the earthly
aircraft operating at the same time and place? If the unknowns moved at
a speed of 2000 miles an hour, how did Captain Killian and the crews of
several other planes, flying at less than 300 miles an hour, keep the
unknowns in sight for forty minutes? In that length of time the UFOs
should have covered most of the distance to the Pacific.
Few persons, given the facts by responsible officials, would persist
in denying the reality of the tankers and conjuring up a fleet of
flying saucers to occupy the relevant cubic area of space. To the true
enthusiast, however, these refueling planes remain incontrovertible
proof that spacecraft are among us.
_... And Kites and Soap Bubbles_
Objects need not be as large as Skyhook balloons or jets to start
a flying-saucer scare. Brightly illuminated advertising blimps
have caused many UFO reports. Unfamiliar circumstances or a faulty
perspective can manufacture spaceships out of things as small as seeds,
spider webs, scraps of paper, or toy balloons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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