by Don Lincoln
The public was not as quick to give up on Martian canals as was the scientific community. First, they were not as close to the data as the astronomers were and, second, they had received a steady barrage of stories, speculating on Martian culture and how the civilization must be frantically trying to save itself. It was a gripping saga and not one that can easily be forgotten. Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Barsoom saga (Barsoom being Burrough’s Martian name for Mars) began in 1912 with A Princess of Mars, and we will learn more of this iconic series of stories in chapter 3.
Wrap Up
The idea that we are fellow travelers in this universe is not a new one. As we have seen here and can be followed up in the suggested reading, there have been centuries of arguments over the question of extraterrestrial life; they were theological, philosophical, and quasi-scientific. However it wasn’t until the last years of the nineteenth century that the thought of life of non-earthly origins became a common topic of conversation outside the circles of the highly educated.
The reasons for the broader dissemination are various. First, the scientific instrumentation became better, allowing for more definitive arguments among academics. After all, questions like the existence of extraterrestrial life or intelligence is an empirical one, and there is no chance that a theological or philosophical discussion will definitively resolve the debate. Improvements in telescopes and the new technique of spectroscopy allowed for solid discussions, well informed by hard data. However the improved science doesn’t explain the change in the level to which the public was informed. For this, you need a communication method. In the 1800s, improvements were made in printing technology and the way in which the printed material was brought to the public. Technology made it much easier for people to learn about the sorts of things that interested them, as evidenced in the tremendous response to the moon hoax.
As we will see in chapter 3, the first half of the twentieth century showed an increase of what we now call science fiction. While stories of extraterrestrials are not the only tales written in that genre, the Alien ones became somehow respectable, given the vast number of newspaper articles people had read about Mars. This is not to say that our version of Aliens hasn’t evolved since the first decade of the twentieth century. Indeed, our current view of Aliens differs dramatically from the speculations of Lowell, Wells, and their contemporaries. To understand how that came to be, we must turn to a world convulsed in war.
TWO
ENCOUNTERS
Deep Throat: Mr. Mulder, why are those like yourself who believe in the existence of extraterrestrial life on this Earth not dissuaded by all the evidence to the contrary?
Mulder: Because all the evidence to the contrary is not entirely dissuasive.
Deep Throat: Precisely.
Mulder: They’re here, aren’t they?
Deep Throat: Mr. Mulder, they’ve been here for a long time.
X-Files, Season 1, Episode 2
The X-Files was a highly successful science fiction television show that ran from 1993 to 2002. In it, two FBI agents, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, are tasked with investigating odd reports that are stored in the classified “X-Files.” While something like two-thirds of the episodes were devoted to the “monster of the week” (e.g., investigating whether a vampire or werewolf was involved in a string of murders), the remaining episodes were used to develop a storyline about Aliens on earth and the government’s cover-up of what they know.
This television show is an excellent example of how the media, entertainment industry, UFO devotees, and people who claim to have been abducted by extraterrestrials have interacted with one another and shaped one another’s views. Fact (meaning honestly believed reports of UFO sightings and abductions) and fiction are inextricably interwoven, leading to a narrative that is well known to society. A 2008 poll showed that 36% of Americans believe the Earth has been visited by Aliens and that 80% think the government knows more than it’s telling. Ask a random stranger (which I’ve been doing lately, generating some peculiar looks) what Aliens look like and what happens if you are abducted by them, and you get stories that are broadly similar; short, gray humanoids, with huge foreheads, small chins, and pupil-less black eyes. Further, the Aliens are inexplicably fascinated with the human reproductive system, probing it with various silver-colored implements. How can people with the most miniscule interest in Aliens be so aware of the abduction narrative? That kind of penetration of the culture takes years. In the following chapters, we’ll take some time to explore how that story developed and was disseminated.
We’ve talked a bit about earlier media and public interest in the moon, Mars, and Martians, but it was the 1940s where our tale of Alien contact began to take off. As we move forward, we need to keep a very important thing in mind. Students of UFO-ology have at their disposal an enormous literature to read. Tens of thousands of tales of “real” Alien contact have resulted in hundreds of books and many websites. Governments around the world have launched dozens of inquiries into the question of Alien visitation. Anyone who wants to immerse themselves in the literature of this culture has a daunting task before them. But we’re not going to do that.
In this book, we’re not interested in this obscure sighting or that unexplained abduction tale. We are interested instead in the “big” stories, the ones that got a lot of publicity, for only the ones that had extensive (and ongoing) media coverage are able to enter into the public consciousness. It will likely not surprise you that many elements of the stories that people tell about their contact with Aliens were already present in fiction accounts, which we look at closely in chapters 3 and 4. However, our current concern is to understand how a flight by a solo pilot in the 1940s or a long drive by an interracial couple in the early 1960s could change our collective vision of extraterrestrial life. Our tale begins in earnest over the skies of Europe, as the Allies tried to push the Nazi armies back into Germany.
Foo Fighters
Carl von Clausewitz wrote in his book On War, “The great uncertainty of all data in war is a peculiar difficulty, because all action must, to a certain extent, be planned in a mere twilight, which in addition not infrequently—like the effect of a fog or moonlight—gives to things exaggerated dimensions and unnatural appearance.” He was writing on the difficulty for commanders to get full situational awareness and its effect on their subsequent decision making. But war is an adrenaline-raising situation that has an effect on a combatant’s perception. Incomplete information, conflicting reports, and high stress mean that mistakes will be made.
Let’s face it. Being in a B-17 over the skies of Germany between 1943 and 1945 pretty much guaranteed that you would be a little tense. Something about the strafing by the Luftwaffe and tons of antiaircraft flak objecting to your visit is bound to add a little excitement to your day. I imagine that a pilot in a P-51 Mustang flying combat air patrol and tagging along for the ride probably shared in the bombardiers’ heart-pounding experience.
These are the kinds of men who reported what is now generally accepted as the first observations of the phenomenon that would later be called flying saucers. Airmen over Europe began making reports of seeing balls of light that shadowed their airplanes as they flew through the skies. The balls of light would cling to wing tips, even when a pilot pushed his fighter over in a dive that approached speeds of 360 mph. Other balls of light would tail them or travel in parallel paths but not be in contact with the plane. Occasionally, a pilot could outrun the lights. “Kraut fireballs” or “foo fighters,” as they became known, were not seen as potential extraterrestrials, but rather in terms of possible Nazi weapons to explain and counter.
A report in the January 2, 1945, issue of the New York Times quoted a pilot as saying, “There are three kinds of these lights we call ‘foo-fighters.’ One is red balls of fire which appear off our wing tips and fly along with us; the second is a vertical row of three balls of fire which fly in front of us and the third is a group of about fifteen lights which appear off in the d
istance—like a Christmas tree up in the air—and flicker on and off.”
The report goes on to state that foo fighters were thought to be German in origin and both a psychological as well as a military weapon, although “it is not the nature of the fire-balls to attack planes.” A second pilot thought at first that they were “some new form of jet-propulsion plane after us. But we were very close to them and none of us saw any structure on the fire balls.”
This report was not the only one. An Associated Press report from Paris two weeks earlier (December 13, 1944) said that the Germans had thrown silvery balls against pilots doing daytime bombings and that these balls appeared both individually and in clusters. This report was repeated in the January 15, 1945, issue of Time magazine. However, this article showed that the reports of foo fighters did encounter skepticism. Some scientists dismissed the balls as persistent visions induced by pilots seeing flak bursts. Others suggested St. Elmo’s fire or ball lightning.
It is interesting to read what kinds of wilder speculation appeared in the press. In the Time magazine article, “front-line correspondents and armchair experts had a Buck Rogers field day,” guessing that the balls of fire were a weapon remotely controlled via radio (which was dismissed as being absurd, given that the balls exactly tracked some plane’s movements), as well as other prosaic phenomenon. A few more ideas that were kicked around were that the foo fighters were intended to (1) dazzle pilots, (2) serve as aiming points for antiaircraft gunners, (3) interfere with the plane’s radar, or (4) interfere with the operation of the plane’s motor, perhaps stopping the plane in midair. But, in the context of this book, which is the view of Aliens in the public eye, it is relevant that extraterrestrial origin wasn’t one of the suggestions. Modern UFO enthusiasts point to foo fighters as the first hints of Alien contact, but this wasn’t in the minds of the people reporting bright lights in the sky. They had a war to fight. But the idea of Aliens was about to begin.
UFO 1947
June 24, 1947, was a turning point in what we collectively think when we turn our eyes to the night sky. Kenneth Arnold was a businessman and a pilot. He never flew a bomber or fighter above Europe, but he certainly encountered men in the hangar who had. Arnold was flying his private plane near Mount Rainier in Washington State when he reported seeing nine brilliantly lit objects, flying across the face of Rainier. He described them as being flat, like a pie pan, and thin enough that they were hard to see. They were sort of half-moon shaped, convex in the rear and oval in the front (figure 2.1). The objects moved independently, but in a line, like the tail of a kite.
Arnold was flying at 9,200 feet at a speed of about 115 mph. He judged the objects as being at about 10,000 feet and estimated their speed at about 1,800 mph, although he allowed that there might be a mistake in his estimates and so he stated 1,200 mph was a more reasonable guess.
When he landed in Yakima, Washington, Arnold told the manager of the airport, who didn’t believe him. While in Yakima, Arnold talked to other people who happened to be at the airport. Arnold then flew on to Pendleton, Oregon, where an air show was going on. He was unaware that someone from Yakima had called ahead and told people there that he had seen something odd flying in the air of southern Washington.
FIGURE 2.1. This picture appears in Kenneth Arnold’s The Coming of the Saucers to give an idea of what he saw in 1947. You will note that the term “flying saucer” does not accurately describe this shape. Copyright Ray Palmer.
In Pendleton, he told his story to aviator friends, who weren’t surprised, nor did they discount it. First, Arnold was known to be a man of excellent character, and, second, some of the pilots had heard similar stories while flying sorties over occupied Europe. Whether foo fighters or some new airplane being tested by the Army Air Force, the observation was a curiosity but not something to get incredibly worked up about. The most noteworthy factor, and perhaps the reason that the press became involved, was the speed that he quoted for the aircraft. Going 1,200 mph was awful fast for 1947. It’s pretty fast even for today.
It wasn’t until the next day that Arnold spoke to reporters, when he stopped by the offices of the East Oregonian, a newspaper in Pendleton. He told them his story, which they regarded as plausible enough to publish and put on the news wire for further dissemination. And that, as they say, was when things got crazy. The story was picked up by United Press International and the Associated Press. Some big newspapers carried the story. The Chicago Tribune ran a story two days later on page one, titled “See Mystery Aerial ‘Train’ 5 Miles Long.” However there was no mention of UFOs or flying saucers. The report quoted Arnold as saying they were fast, reflective, and moved like the tail of a Chinese kite, as if the craft were connected by a string. It further reported that the Army wasn’t doing high-speed tests in the area.
The term “flying saucer” seems to have been coined by accident. Arnold told reporters that the nine objects he saw were flat and shiny like a pie pan and that they looked like a little fish flipping in the sun. On June 26 the Chicago Sun ran an article “Supersonic Flying Saucers Sighted by Idaho Pilot.” However, this seems to be an addition by an editor or headline writer. Much later, Arnold recalled that he had told the first reporters he spoke with that “they flew erratic, like a saucer if you skip it across the water,” and this phrase seemed to turn into “flying saucer,” which was then used and reused by newspapers. However, in the early newspaper articles, Arnold is never quoted as saying the phrase; instead he maintained his description of a kite tail and flat, shiny, pie plates. Thus the term “flying saucer” seems to have been a headline writer’s creative embellishment; yet subsequent reports in the press spread the term “saucers.”
Over the course of the next month, there were hundreds of reports of flying saucers as well as many clear hoaxes. A July 4 sighting by a United Airlines flight crew was deemed to be particularly respectable and received more press coverage than Kenneth Arnold’s initial story. The saucer sightings were quite varied, with some saucers said to literally be the size of pie pans and others the size of airplanes. While the original report mentioned a silver aircraft, subsequent ones were colorful and glowing.
Scientific speculation was extensive. A Los Angeles evening paper claimed that an unidentified physicist from California Institute of Technology had suggested that the saucers were experiments in the “transmutation of atomic energy.” This was a reasonable (although scientifically uninformed) speculation for the time, coming as it did just a couple years after the public became aware of the power hidden in the nucleus of the atom. The atomic hypothesis was rejected by the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, David Lilienthal. He interrupted a reporter who was repeating the story and said, “Of course, I can’t prevent anyone from saying foolish things.” A little later, Caltech issued a denial that anyone from that university had said flying saucers could be some sort of atomic experimentation.
Others speculated that the phenomena was mass hysteria or akin to sightings of the Loch Ness monster. Optical illusion, persistence of vision, and other similar causes were suggested.
One of the earliest suggestions of extraterrestrial origins came from a July 6 editorial in the New York Times, where the idea that “they may be visitants from another planet launched from spaceships anchored above the stratosphere” was airily dismissed. Arnold did say more than once that he considered that flying saucers could originate from somewhere other than Earth. On July 7, Arnold told the media that he had received lots of mail from people offering various explanations for what he had seen, from religious ideas to claims of extraterrestrial origins. In the Chicago Times, he is reported to have said, “Some think these things may be from another planet.” He followed by noting that the speed at which the saucers maneuvered would induce acceleration forces that would kill humans. The story quotes further: “So, he too thinks they are controlled from elsewhere, regardless of whether it’s from Mars, Venus, or our own planet.” The ET idea had started to leak into the public are
na. Arnold later mentioned the idea in a 1950 radio broadcast by Edward R. Murrow called The Case for Flying Saucers. He said, “If it’s not made by our science or our Army Air Forces, I am inclined to believe it’s of an extraterrestrial origin.”
By July 7, 1947, saucer reports had come in from thirty-nine U.S. states and from overseas in Australia and many locations in Europe. However, the bulk of the observations came from the U.S. northwest. Across the nation, large and organized flights of pilots would take off from an area a hundred at a time to go out and look for unexplained aerial phenomena, with no success.
Things began to get silly, with clumps of dirt being reported as crashed saucers, or the top of a furnace, or saw blades with some electrical components welded to them. Some students soldered together two cymbals, tossed it in someone’s yard, banged on the door, and ran away. An anxious inhabitant called the police and reported a crashed saucer. By July 18, the New York Times reported that the summer’s chic women’s hats were being modeled after flying saucers. And on July 8, a 25-year-old turtle named Flying Saucer won the eighth annual turtle derby in Chesterton, Indiana.
Eventually news coverage about flying saucers gave way to pieces that debunked some flying saucer sightings. For instance, there were examples of the University of Chicago or Princeton University releasing high-altitude research balloons that were carrying instrumentation for meteorological or cosmic ray studies. Given the massive publicity about the saucers, it is inevitable that people would call the police and newspapers and report a new sighting. After a year or two, the media began to get a little bored with these reports, and they tapered off. But, by 1949, the military had concluded that there was something to the UFO reports and had agreed that they would put some resources into the question. This is unsurprising, considering how frequently the extraterrestrial idea made it into the papers. By far, the most common explanation for UFOs (other than imagination and hysteria) was secret weapons programs. The U.S. military knew that they weren’t launching test planes that could fly more than a thousand miles an hour, so it is inevitable that those tasked with defending a country would want to find out if some other country had a new offensive capability that they needed to counter.