Miscellaneous Mysteries: The Airship Solution
Since I have been accused of staying in the past when the solution for the UFO phenomenon rests in the present, I thought I’d point out that sometimes the past leads the way to the future. Back in 1896 and 1897 there was a wave of “UFO” sightings throughout this country (A 1912 airship seen here). Every aspect of the modern era was present from alien abduction to UFO crashes. There were cattle mutilations, contacts, claims of rides, and everything else. And just as in the modern era, there were lots of theories about what was really going on.
Many of those classic cases have been “solved.” Jerry Clark took care of the great Alexander Hamilton calf-napping. The Aurora, Texas UFO crash has been researched and researched and only recently was it the subject of another UFO TV documentary. When it was over, and the had excavated the well that was supposed to be the location of some of the mysterious wreckage we knew nothing more about the case. The only thing they found in the well was a snake.
There was on theory proposed in 1897 that makes sense to me. And it is one that could be applied to the modern era, if we take a look at our history and understand it.
The Des Moines Register in 1897 put forth another theory about the reliability, and the genesis of the airship, at least in Iowa. The reporters noted that the airship was mentioned in Cedar Rapids on April 14 and on the next night it was seen near Fairfield. It was also seen near Evanston, Illinois “worrying the Chicago papers greatly.” The most remarkable account of the airship came on April 15 near Pella, Iowa. According to the newspaper, “many people, among them the Western Union operator had seen the machine… if it was true, the Pella airship looked like a sea serpent, a balloon, a winged cigar, a pair of balloons hitched together with a car swung between them, a car with an aero plane and three sails, and 19 or 20 other things.” The Register article continued by reporting that the telephone in the Leader(another Iowa newspaper office) rang and the town of Stuart was “found to be clamoring for fame.” They had seen the airship. The story went out over the wire and the Western Union operator said that he could produce dozens of witnesses if anyone cared. He said that the airship had come from the southeast, was traveling about fifteen miles an hour and had a red light in front and a green one in the rear. The operator’s feelings were hurt when he was asked if it was an April Fool’s joke.
While the conversation between the newspaper reporters and the telegrapher was evolving into a heated argument, a report came in that the airship was now over Panora, Iowa. The Western Union operator there said that they had seen the airship over their own town coming from the direction of Stuart. It was now moving faster, but had the same appearance as it did in Stuart which the Register labeled as a “neat attempt at getting around the description.” As the argument increased in intensity, the number of telegrams about the airship also increased. From Clinton, Iowa came a telegram saying the airship had flown over the town on April 10. Although the airship was reported to have been seen by several prominent and reputable citizens, the telegram was almost apologetic in its tone.
Immediately came a telegram from Ottumwa reporting they had seen the airship more than once. “An Eldon (Iowa) operator discovered the airship at 7:25 p.m. Ottumwa was prepared for its appearance. It was seen here by half the population. All agreed that it appeared as a red light moving up and down and traveling northwest. Albia caught sight of it at 8:10 and at 9 o’clock it was still visible… This was the third time that it has been seen in Albia.” The Register reported, “The fact seems to be that the airship has been exploited beautifully by telegraphers along certain lines of the railroad. They managed it beautifully for awhile and never allowed it to travel too far too fast.” The reports were always well done showing a certain amount of genius. But the rest of the public began to take a hand and the airship reports got too numerous.
Some would conflict and it became evident that someone would have to have a whole fleet of airships for all the sightings to be true.
What all this suggests is that the vast majority of the airship stories were hoaxes. Some originated by individuals such as Alexander Hamilton or the people in Cedar Rapids, others were initiated by the newspapers looking for something spectacular to report, and the last bunch were created by the telegraphers along the railroads who were bored late in the evening.
It is now clear that there was no great airship invention just before the turn of the last century. Heavier-than-air flight would become a reality in six years.
Airplanes would soon begin flying across the country, then across the oceans, and finally around the world. Great airships would be built by the military to search for enemy subs, or to hover above battlefields so that generals could gather intelligence about enemy movements. Eventually there would even be airship flights across the Atlantic. These would end when the Hindenburg exploded in New Jersey in 1939.
But there is no evidence that a human inventor had flown a Great Airship in 1896 or 1897 anywhere in the country. Although some stories suggested the announcement of the airship’s was about to be made to the world, it never was.
Or, those on their way to Cuba to bomb the Spanish never made it to drop those bombs.
A few modern investigators have suggested that there was a solid core of airship sightings. Something had to trigger the tales in 1896. They have suggested that we examine, more closely, those stories told in the Sacramento area in November 1896. Those might provide a clue as to where and why these stories began to circulate. It might be that some kind of airship was seen in northern California but then newspapers in other parts of the country climbed on the bandwagon.
There are no witnesses left to tell us what they really saw in 1896 and 1897 and we have no real records or photographs to examine. Few have interviewed anyone who was around in 1897 and who claimed to have seen the great airship.
Ed Ruppelt, while chief of Air Force’s Project Blue Book, wrote that he had had a long conversation with a man who had been a copy boy at the San Francisco Chroniclein the time of the airship. He remembered almost nothing about those long ago events except to tell Ruppelt that the editors and a few others at the newspaper had seen the airship themselves. But even if that was true, there were so many tales invented by newspaper editors and reporters that a single, fading memory of a copy boy means very little today. Maybe something unusual was seen near San Francisco and Sacramento.
Maybe there had been some kind of cigar-shaped object flying over California so long ago. Those seeing it did the best they could in describing it, using the terminology available to them at that time. Maybe there was a sighting or two of something that was not invention, imagination, delusion, misidentification or outright fabrication in the fall of 1896.
What we know today is that the vast majority of the airship cases can be explained as hoaxes but they shouldn’t be completely ignored. They provide us with an insight that will help us better understand the UFO situation as it stands today.
And that is why the airship stories are so frightening for UFO researchers today. How many of those stories mirror the reports made at present? Everything we find in the modern UFO era was predicted by the airship stories in 1897. That means that if we can write off the airship stories as hoaxes and misidentifications, why can’t we do the same thing today? The evidence we find is just as nebulous and nearly unobtainable.
Of course we can argue that we have better information, we have instruments that help us record the flying saucers, and we have many more, trained witnesses. The UFO of today isn’t quite the same thing as the airship of the 19thcentury because the airship, for the most part was a human invention and the flying saucers are alien in origin, and that is the difference.
But the real point here is that studying history can lead us to insights in the present. We see the mistakes made then and can try to avoid them today. We’re not always successful, but we do have a path to follow if we can stay on it. So, sometimes the past tells us a little about the future.