OVNI. Bahamas

New York, New York, TIMES, 30 July 1952, pages 1 & 10

Air Force Debunks 'Saucers' As Just 'Natural Phenomena'
Intelligence Chief Denies a Menace Exists - 'Objects' Believed to Be Reflections, but 'Adequate' Guard Will Be Kept
By AUSTIN STEVENS
Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON, July 29 - Air Force headquarters skimmed away into the broken dishware bin today the latest wave of "flying saucers." It called them "natural phenomena" and announced through high-ranking general officers that henceforth the Air Force would treat reports of the disks with "adequate but not frantic" attention.

Bedeviled by a new series of sightings of mysterious glowing objects in the air over the Capital and elsewhere, the Air Force called a press conference at the Pentagon to give out what information it had.

At the end of one hour and twenty minutes of exchange between a large group of reporters and the Air Force's chief "saucer" students, Maj. Gen. James A. Samford, Chief of Intelligence, agreed to the following summary of his views:

• So-called "flying saucers" constitute no menace to the United States.

• None of the several thousand "saucer" reports checked by the Air Force in the last six years has disclosed the existence of any material flying object, except where the report emanated from an observer's sighting of a United States plane or missile and his mistaking it for something else.

• The United States has nothing in its arsenal of weapons, either existing or developmental, that has an unlimited speed and no mass, characteristics attributed to many alleged "saucers."

• Radar is capable of playing tricks for which it was not designed; so is the human eye.

Appearing before the press in by no means a scoffing mood but, instead, in an agreeable atmosphere of willingness to discuss everything they knew, the Air Force officials said they considered it the service's "obligation" to continue to investigate saucer reports.

General Samford insisted, in the face of recent reports here from both skilled pilots and radar operators who has sighted "objects," that the great need in "saucer" investigation was a method of measurement. Even trained pilots, whose word is not doubted, he indicated, are not capable of properly assessing the make-up of the fiery objects that they have been reporting.

Out of today's conference emerged a favorite theory, but one that the experts conceded did not answer everything.

It is that in the kind of weather that has existed here - hot and humid - there is created something known as a temperature inversion. This, it was explained, is the existence of a layer of cooler air stretched between two hot layers. This condition can cause certain reflections of light for both the human eye and the far-from-infallible radar screen, which was designed to detect solid objects.

For example, ground lights during inverted temperature periods might very well appear reflected in the clouds as globes of light. These reflections could be picked up both by airborne pilots and by ground operators of radar apparatus, according to General Samford and the staff of specialists he brought to the news conference.

Third Time in Ten Days

Three times in the last ten days, it was disclosed, the Capital area has reported flying objects, some stationery, others moving at various speeds.

The latest report came today from operators of the Civil Aeronautics Administration radar apparatus at National Airport, who said their equipment had picked up numerous objects from 2:30 to 6 A. M. A spokesman said as many as twelve unidentified objects had appeared on the radar screen at one time but that "no visual sightings were made." Consequently, he added, the near-by Andrews Air Force Base was not notified and no jet fighters were dispatched to investigate.

General Samford's staff attempted to explain the supposedly moving objects as sightings of separate phenomena.

As an example of how ground objects or lights can be reflected into the clouds and mistakenly identified, one Air Force expert told of a pilot who nearly crashed his plane into the ground while chasing an "object" that had appeared in his airplane's radar screen.

The Air Force experts said that although they had run down more than 1,000 supposed sightings of "saucers" or other objects in recent years, only 20 per cent of the reports from creditable sources remained unexplained.

Recalling that signs in the sky of one sort or another dated at least to Biblical times. General Samford said that one reason for the "saucer" flurries was undoubtedly the great increase in man-made activity in the air. He also cited "jumpiness" because of war fears and, without quite saying so, the desire of some persons to seek publicity.

He also said that a trained Air Force pilot, or an experienced radar operator, assigned to chase "saucers" or define them on his radar screen, also were subject to "curiosity stimulus" that would result in overemphasis.

No Geographical Pattern Seen

General Samford, who was joined in the discussion by Maj. Gen. Roger Ramey, Operations Chief of the Air Force, said that he was satisfied not only that none of the "saucer sightings" represented the flight of any vehicle, missile or anything else material but also that the geographical pattern of the sightings represented nothing significant.

That there have been a large number of so-called "sightings" around such installations as those of the Atomic Energy Commission, General Samford attributed to the "sensitiveness" of the areas and the staff. It did not follow, he said, that the reports from critical defense areas were any more accurate or reliable than those received from an Iowa cornfield.

It was also brought out that radar had for many years been picking up "blips" on its screens created by other things than aircraft.

In announcing that its investigation of "saucer" phenomena would go forward, the Air Force said that it was purchasing 200 relatively inexpensive cameras equipped with defraction grids that, when focused on light phenomena, would disclose the source of the light.

Consideration also is being given to the purchase of a special telescope with a wide angle lens that could photograph large sections of the sky and show up the appearance of light phenomena.

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"Sightings" Increase Here
Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES

WHITE PLAINS, N. Y., July 29 - The Air Raid Filter Center here, clearing house for information from observation posts in twenty-six counties of the New York area, reported an increase today in the discovery of "unidentified airborne objects" since the 139 posts of the area had gone on 'round-the-clock duty July 14.

Headquarters of the Eastern Air Defense Force near Newburgh, in command of this center and others, replied that strange objects in the air had been reported in the last twenty-four hours in southwestern Indiana, Jersey City, Plainfield, N. J., and Tarrytown.

"In the normal performance of its assigned mission," the headquarters said, it sends fighter intercept aircraft aloft "whenever unknown aerial objects are detected in its area with sufficient definiteness to warrant attempted interception."

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Investigating Off Florida

KEY WEST, Fla., July 29 (AP) - Navy officials said today "we're investigating thoroughly" reports of a fiery object that streaked across the sky Saturday evening. A destroyer escort was sent to sea, but officers would not elaborate.

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"Missiles" Over the Bahamas
Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES

NASSAU, the Bahamas, July 29 - From a remote settlement here where the people probably never heard about "flying saucers" came a report today that about two weeks ago a group of persons had seen flying objects "streaming across sky." They described them as noiseless, whiter and much faster than any plane, and spoke of them as guided missiles.

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'Saucer' a 'Radar Ghost'
By WILLIAM L. LAURENCE

Mirages on the radarscope, which have started the latest mass delusion about the "flying saucers," are phenomena that became well known to the Navy in World War II.

These deceptive "radar ghosts" have led warships to shell an empty ocean in the belief that they were firing at an enemy. They are sometimes produced by a layer of warm air, and a wag in scientific circles here remarked yesterday that such a layer of superheated air might have just arrived over Washington from the Chicago political conventions.

The effect of atmospheric irregularities on radar waves was the subject of a special study during the war by the Wave Propagation Committee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, of which Prof. Donald H. Menzel, Harvard University astrophysicist, was chairman.

The explanation for the widespread rumors and credulity about the myth of the "flying saucers" must be sought, however, not in the realm of the physical sciences, but in the sphere of mass psychology. No matter what evidence may be presented to debunk them, the rumors will continue to spread for a time until the novelty wears off and the public takes up a new fantasy.

Fashions in Fantasies

There are fashions in fantasies, depending on the times and the seasons. In the Nineteen Twenties there was the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland, which was "seen" by hundreds. In the Gay nineties, the newspapers were filled with reports about a mysterious cigar-shape "airship" allegedly "seen" over many parts of the country.

It was believed for a time that the present mystery of the so-called flying saucers had been cleared up by Dr. Urner Liddel, Chief of the Nuclear Physics Branch of the Office of Naval Research.

In February, 1951, he announced that what had been described as "flying saucers" were plastic, unmanned sounding balloons with diameters of a hundred feet, called "skyhooks." The balloons had been sent up as high as twenty miles since 1947 (the year when "flying saucers" were first reported) for the purpose of gathering information about cosmic rays and the upper atmosphere.

Dr. Liddel and his scientific colleagues had examined hundreds of reports about "flying saucers," and they found that nearly all came from honestly mistaken persons. Sunlight reflected by an aircraft, wind-blown objects, light on a weather balloon, a running light on a plane, a meteor, the planet Uranus in certain positions accounted for what honest observers believed were "saucers."