Selected UFO Sightings, 1947–49
June 14 or July 7, 1947
Ranch foreman Mac Brazel discovers unusual debris in a sheep field near Roswell, New Mexico. Military explanations given during the following week veer between “flying disc” and “weather balloon.” Note: One of the foundational incidents of UFO study, Roswell involves government obfuscation, sensational official documents (possibly real, possibly forged), and allegations of an extraterrestrial spacecraft and recovered alien bodies.
June 24, 1947
While flying above Mount Rainier, Washington, Idaho businessman and private pilot Kenneth Arnold observes nine vaguely delta- shaped objects in the sky at nine thousand feet. Arnold’s description of the craft is partially misinterpreted by the press, which coins the term “flying saucer.” Note: See chapter seven for the story of this seminal UFO sighting.
July 4, 1947
The pilot and co-pilot of a United Airlines DC-3 flying at eight thousand feet in a cloudless, twilight sky eight minutes out of Boise, Idaho, witness five disc-shaped objects on approach angle toward the plane; followed by a second formation of four discs. Both groups quickly pass out of sight, at speeds beyond the limits of standard aircraft. Captain Emil (E. J.) Smith describes the craft as “flat on the bottom, rounded on top.” Note: Captain Smith had previously been openly skeptical about flying saucers.
August 14, 1947
Artist R. L. Johannis hails a pair of child-sized humanoids that have stepped from a thirty-foot disc at Villa Santina, Italy—only to be enveloped in a dark vapor and sent sprawling, dazed, onto his back. The creatures—about three feet tall and dressed in blue coveralls with red belts—appropriate Johannis’s easel and return with it to their craft.
January 7, 1948
A P-51 Mustang piloted by Captain Thomas Mantell out of Godman Field Army Air Force Base, Kentucky, crashes while in pursuit of an unidentified flying object.
Ground contact with Mantell is lost when the P-51 is at fifteen thousand feet; the plane goes down shortly afterward. Note: The official causes of Captain Mantell’s pursuit and death remain points of dispute.
March 25, 1948
Two men discover a crashed, dome-shaped saucer near Aztec, New Mexico, and a clutch of tiny alien bodies. Note: The Aztec UFO tale is among the most famous UFO account from the early post-Arnold period. The witnesses, Leo GeBauer and Silas Newton, were not quite as they portrayed themselves, and although the case was investigated by numerous sympathetic UFOlogists, neither details nor the witnesses bear up well under serious scrutiny.
Opinions, though, continue to differ widely. For details of the crash at Aztec, see chapter fifteen.
April 24, 1949
A weather-balloon crew observes a dull-white ellipsoid, with a yellow cast to the underside, in the daytime sky above the White Sands (New Mexico) Proving Ground. Because the crew has been releasing and monitoring balloons, the unidentified object is tracked by an ML-47 theodolite, which incorporates a twenty-five-power telescope mounted to record elevation (vertical attitude) and azimuth (horizontal bearings).
After about sixty seconds of telescopic and unaided observation by crew leader Charles Moore and four Navy enlisted men, the object pauses in its angular movement before disappearing following a sudden, rapid ascent. Note: The presence of trained observers and the theodolite (which allowed quantifiable tracking) gives this sighting particular gravity. The object appeared in a cloudless sky, and emitted neither noise nor vapor trail or other exhaust. For details of the crash at Aztec, see chapter fifteen.