KEYHOE PRESSES THE AIR FORCE In the 1950s the Air Force’s most forceful critic, retired Marine Corps Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe, caused Pentagon UFO debunkers no end of consternation. A respected aviation journalist, Keyhoe wrote an explosive article, “The Flying Saucers Are Real,” for the widely read men’s magazine True (January 1950 issue). Not only … Read more
UFO Encounters, Sightings, Visitations, and Investigations: AN “ESTIMATE OF THE SITUATION” By late July 1948 Project Sign investigators had come to an incredible conclusion: Visitors from outer space had arrived. They had begun with suspicions. Now they now had the proof. The proof was . . . well, it depends on which of two versions … Read more
BUBBLES FROM OUTER SPACE Not all unidentified flying objects are potential alien spacecraft. Some are much stranger. Consider, for example, the strange phenomena that passed over Biskopsberga, Sweden, early in the 19th century. It was a cloudless afternoon on May 16, 1808, and a hard wind blew from the west; the sun over the village … Read more
ELINT YS. UFO Possessing the most sophisticated electronic intelligence (ELINT) gear available to the U.S. Air Force, the RB-47 could handle anything. Unfortunately, in the morning hours of July 17, 1957, over the southern United States, an RB-47 came across something it was unprepared for. In the first hint of what was to come, one … Read more
A ROARING UFO AND FIGURES AT SOCORRO Officer Lonnie Zamora was chasing a speeder south of Socorro, New Mexico, late on the afternoon of April 24, 1964, but he was about to enter UFO history. No less than the head of Project Blue Book would later tell a CIA audience that Zamora’s experience was the … Read more
UFOs: THE OFFICIAL STORY From the beginning, society—in the persons of prominent scientists, government officials, military officers, journalists, and ordinary citizens—would make things disagreeable for those who insisted they had seen strange flying objects and those who believed them. Wherever there were “flying saucers,” there was also ridicule, dished out in generous portions to anyone … Read more
UFO Encounters, Sightings, Visitations, and Investigations: THE FIRST UFOLOGIST Although these strange sky objects were reported with increasing frequency, the press and the scientific community treated each sighting as a one-time occurrence. There was no sense that such events, far from being isolated, were part of a larger phenomenon. Even the air¬ ship wave of … Read more
A little remembered cartoon character named Smokey Stover used to declare, “Where there’s foo, there’s fire.” So when enigmatic aerial phenomena kept pace with airplanes and ships in both the European and Pacific theaters during World War II, someone called them “foo fighters.” The name stuck. Nobody knew for sure what the foo fighters were, … Read more
UFO Encounters, Sightings, Visitations, and Investigations: THE ARRIVAL OF UFOs In the 19th century, however, accounts of UFOs took on a more believable tone. As day dawned June 1, 1853, students at Burritt College in Tennessee noticed two luminous, unusual objects just to the north of the rising sun. One looked like a “small new … Read more
RUSTLERS FROM MARS On April 23, 1897, a Kansas newspaper, the Yates Center Farmer’s Advocate, reported an incredible story. On the evening of April 19, local rancher Alexander Hamilton, his son, and a hired man saw a giant cigarshaped ship hovering above a corral near the house. Hamilton claimed that in a carriage underneath the … Read more
