U.S. NAVY DENIES LATEST FLYING SAUCER REPORT

WASHINGTON - (AP) - The United States navy says, in comment on the latest flying saucer report: (1) It has not developed any pancake-shaped jet planes and (2) it is not experimenting with any saucer-shaped missile.

A navy spokesman commented Monday night on an article in U.S. news and world report which said engineers have concluded that the oft-reported saucers are jet-powered planes of a new design developed by the navy. The magazine said the saucers may have sprung from experiments by Charles H. Zimmerman for the national advisory committee for aeronautics.

At Langley air force base in Virginia, Zimmerman said he worked on an experimental pancake-shaped model plane during the war - which the navy said flew last in 1947 - but he didn't regard it as a forerunner to the flying saucer.

To conclude that it was, he said, "obviously the wrong conclusion."

N.A.C.A. officials said the model Zimmerman developed later became a navy craft known as the XF5U, or "flying pancake." The navy said a full-scale experimental model never got off the ground.

Radio Commentator Henry J. Taylor said Monday night that many "flying saucers" really are U.S. controlled jet fighter planes.

On his ABC broadcast, he referred to the XF5U. He called it a navy experimental fighter of "incredible speed."

Doubt Existence "Flying Saucers"

KEY WEST, FLA. - (AP) - The White House Tuesday pooh-poohed the idea of existence of "flying saucers" as a secret weapon of the United States or any other country.

President Truman=s press secretary, Charles G. Ross, said neither the president or any of his staff has any knowledge whatsoever of the mysterious flying objects reported from time to time.

"Do you think it likely that there would be any secret weapon project under way without the president knowing about it?" Ross was asked.

"I think it extremely unlikely," he said.

Sudbury, Ontario, DAILY STAR, 5 October 1950, page 3

AIR FORCE SEIZES FLYING DISC FILMS

Great Falls, Mont., Oct. 5 (AP) - Nick Mariana said today that the United States air force has taken his color movies of two silver discs that buzzed over a baseball park here on Aug. 15.

Mariana said he turned the color films over to the air technical command here at the request of a special investigator of the command.

Mariana is the manager of the Great Falls team in the Pioneer Baseball League. He said when he saw the discs over the ball park, he focused his camera and photographed them.

They appear on the film for about three seconds. He said he was advised by the investigating officials to not release any further information concerning the film.

Hardware From Outer Space?
Deny U.S. Has Parts of "Saucer"
By VERN HAUGLAND

WASHINGTON (AP) - A spokesman today termed without basis an assertion that the United States Air Force has recovered pieces of "flying saucers" and just isn't telling the public about them.

The air force position, he said, is that "given enough factual data," every "flying saucer" report over the last six years could be explained in natural, earthly, non-sensational terms.

"We don't think the so-called saucers come from outer space or from a foreign government," the spokesman said.

Bill Nash, a Pan American World Airways pilot, told the Greater Miami Aviation Association recently that he was convinced that, "The air force has collected hardware from outer space."

"I do not believe the air force cares to make all its findings public so long as the United States is threatened by unfriendly powers," Nash said.

SAW SIX

Nash was quoted as having reported sighting unidentified objects while flying from New York to Miami on a date not specified.

Nash said he and his crew saw six objects, later joined by two others.

"From their manoeuvres, there is no doubt in my mind these objects were controlled by intelligent beings," Nash said. "When you have seen them, you realize they were not made on this planet."

The defence department officer currently handling "saucer" queries said that to date, more than 80 per cent of the sightings, both visual and by radar, have been identified as of known objects. From 10 to 15 per cent had been outright hoaxes.

"The others probably could be explained if our knowledge of physics was greater," he said. "There are many things about the sky that science still doesn't understand."

USAF Can't Find Flying Saucers

DAYTON, Ohio (AP) - An official of the air technical intelligence centre at nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base says the service has found no evidence of flying saucers in the last 10 years.

The official, who declined to be identified, told the Dayton Journal Herald Wednesday that the air force investigated 5,700 reported sightings of flying saucers between 1947-57.

And he said no landing impression or footprint or any so-called flying saucer or crew member has been found by the air force.

MYSTERIOUS FLYING OBJECTS SIGHTED
USAF Says No Evidence Flying Saucers Exist

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Air Force says its investigations of 5,700 reported sightings of flying saucers in the last 10 years have produced "no physical or material evidence" that such things exist.

The defence department issued this report Wednesday night after sightings of mysterious flying objects were reported this week from various parts of the United States. Some of the reported objects were said to glow with a strange light and to have caused auto engines to stall.

Sightings of flying saucers have been reported from time to time during the last decade. Investigation of them has been handled by the air technical intelligence centre at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio.

There have been suggestions that the new rash of sightings was inspired by Russia's launching of earth satellites.

The USAF said "there is no physical or material evidence, not even a minute fragment, that a so-called flying saucer was ever found."

It also said there is no evidence that the alleged objects are interplanetary space ships, that they indicate developments beyond the range of current scientific knowledge, or that they pose any threat to the U.S. security.

At Long Beach, Calif., Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed the U.S. Air Force's "flying saucer detail" from 1951 to 1953, said in an interview:

"During my tenure we had reports of radiation and induction fields in connection with UFO (unidentified flying objects). However, the information was sketchy, and we never were able to pin it down."

"These detailed reports by seemingly skilled observers should add a whole new dimension to the UFO investigation."

Ruppelt said some associates believed the objects were from outer space. He said he personally does not think there is sufficient evidence to make any conclusion.

Can't Locate Flying Saucer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Air Force says it has looked into five recent reports of mysterious lights and strange objects from the sky - and there isn't a flying saucer in the lot.

The air force report Friday gave the most severe description - "hoax" - to the most vivid of the stories that began circulating after Soviet satellites turned attentions skyward. This was a Kearney, Neb., man=s account of being shown around the interior of a spaceship by its German-speaking crew.

But the air force technical investigators also dismissed as exaggerations or misunderstood natural phenomena stories of a huge glowing object touching ground near Levelland, Tex., and causing automobiles to stall; somewhat similar reports from near Alamogordo, N.M.; bright lights seen from a Coast Guard cutter in the Gulf of Mexico and by planes patrolling near White Sands, N.M.

As for the various reports of automobile engines stalling in the vicinity of mysterious objects, the report suggested that, rather than mysterious rays, the cause likely was thunderstorms soaking ignition systems and, in one case, an automobile mechanic's mistake.

No Saucers Air Force Probe Finds

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Air Force said today that after 15 years of investigating flying saucers, there is no evidence that any of the 7,369 unidentified flying objects checked were spacecraft swooping in from distant planets.

To date, no unidentified flying object has given any indication of threat to the national security, the air force said in summing up its investigations from 1947 through last year.

It said its Project Blue Book has turned up no evidence that any of the unidentified sightings represented technological advances "beyond the range of our present-day scientific knowledge," or that any of the UFOs were "extraterrestrial vehicles under intelligent controls."

At year's end, only 10 of the 1961 sightings still were classified as unidentified. Most of the rest were traced to aircraft, balloons, satellites, astronomical phenomena, birds, lights, hoaxes and other causes.

U.S. Air Force Doesn't Believe in Flying Saucers

DAYTON, Ohio (AP) - The U.S. Air Force doesn't believe in flying saucers.

That's not just a snap conclusion, but is based on the investigation of more than 9,000 reported unidentified flying objects by Project Blue Book, the air force's - and in fact the U.S. government's - agency charged with analysis of aerial phenomenon.

"There is nothing to indicate that any of these phenomena are extraterrestrial in nature," said Maj. Hector Quintanilla Jr., a serious, 42-year-old physicist in charge of the project.

Take, for example, the numerous sightings in at least eight states - mostly in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas - this summer. Quintanilla claims the many persons who reported seeing UFOs actually were looking at the planet Jupiter and four prominent stars. He said atmospheric conditions "gave them a scintillating effect" and made them appear close together and in formation.

What about reports that Tinker Air Force Base at Oklahoma City and the weather bureau at Wichita, Kan., spotted the UFOs on radar?

WRONG CONCLUSIONS

"They never said they had spotted these particular UFOs," Quintanilla replied.

"They said they had sighted something they couldn't identify and since everyone was seeing things, people put two and two together.

"The radar sighting at Tinker was on the opposite side of the spectrum to the reported UFO sightings."

Fine, but what was it radar had fixed on?

"A building, we think at this point. An inversion - an atmospheric condition brought on by the meeting of fronts and varying temperatures - caused the radar beams to bounce off and fix on something on the ground. The Tinker fix remained stationary on the radarscope for 40 minutes, indicating something not moving. Don't forget, the sighted UFOs were reported as moving."

The major explained that inversions are responsible for many UFO sightings involving radar. If the ricocheted radar beam fixes on a truck or a train moving away from the radar facility, he said, it gives the impression of a high-flying unidentified object.

"The first thing I do when I get a reported sighting is check the weather in the area and my Universe."

STUDIES STARS

His Universe is a large, round, movable map-like affair on which all the planets and major stars of the universe surround the earth. It can be moved so that the position of any planet or star can be set to show what area it was visible from at any given second.

He said his Universe and the weather bureau provide the solution to the majority of UFO sightings.

Evidence compiled by Blue Book in its 18-year history places all UFOs in one of 10 categories:

1 - High-flying balloons. "There is much balloon activity, much of it governmental, much private. Some of them get away and are hard to trace, but we can usually solve them by finding out who put it up, where and the direction the wind was blowing."

2 - High-flying aircraft, illuminated by the sun after the sun had set on the ground.

3 - Nightly reflections in the atmosphere of distant light sources on the ground.

4 - Satellites, both U.S. and Russian.

5 - Meteorites, fireworks, flares and chaff.

6 - Pieces of satellite decay.

NOT METEORITES

"Satellite decay," he said, "is a recent addition. These are pieces of junk from satellites that fall back to earth from space. As they pass into the atmosphere and burn up, they give off a red-hot glow which lasts several minutes. We have often found pieces of this decay shortly after it was sighted, have analyzed it and identified it as from earth satellites. These look similar to meteorites, but travel much slower.

7 - Planets Venus and Jupiter, or other astronomical bodies.

8 - Searchlights illuminating off cloud layers and the like.

9 - Jet engine exhausts, condensation trails.

10 - Hoaxes or mirages. "So far this year, there has been only one reported hoax."

Quintanilla admits there are 663 unsolved UFO sighting cases - nearly half of them in the peak year of 1952, when 1,501 sightings were reported. But, he adds: "None has ever given any indication of being a threat to our national security . . . of being beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge . . . or as being extraterrestrial."

Despite his scientific approach to UFO, what does he think of the possible existence of an advanced life in outer space?

"It would be egotistical for man to believe that God had chosen earth as the only planet in the universe where he had placed life," he said.

Sky Saucers Don't Exist Official Tells Congress

WASHINGTON (UPI) - Flying saucer fans, the word from the top at the Pentagon is that there aren't any - either ours or somebody else's.

That's what Defence Secretary Robert S. McNamara told congressmen Wednesday. Gen. Earle G. Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he agreed. He said all the service chiefs did, too.

Their statements were reported by members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee after McNamara and Wheeler testified in support of President Johnson's $3.5 billion dollar foreign aid bill.

Rep. Cornelius E. Gallagher, D-N.J., was reported to have brought up the recent reports of saucer sightings when he asked McNamara if he thought potential new foreign aid clients had been trying to make contact with earth.

McNamara said he was sure this wasn't the case.

Gallagher then asked McNamara if he could "categorically deny" the possibility that Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) reported seen in Michigan and elsewhere had extra-terrestrial implications.

McNamara, who incidentally, used to make his home at Ann Arbor where some sightings have been reported, replied that he could deny this categorically. Members quoted him as saying the defence department would have an intense interest in any such manifestation because of its security aspects.

The defence chief said all reported UFO sightings had been investigated by the military and there was no evidence to support the theory they might be controlled vehicles from outer space or anywhere else.

U.S.A.F. Has Open Mind About Unidentified F. O.'s

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Air Force said today it has an open mind about unidentified flying objects and makes no attempt to hush talk about flying saucers.

A spokesman, asked about allegations that the air force tries to squelch UFO reports, said:

"In the first place, we'd be utterly foolish to try to keep people from telling about something they've seen with their own eyes. Our job is to explain what is seen - not necessarily to change anybody's mind."

The air force has a special public relations office which answers thousands of letters a year from inquisitive persons.

Last year, it turned out 3,717 replies to letters about UFOs. The count for January and February already has run over 800 requests for information of explanations, and scores are being received in the wake of recent Michigan sightings.

Based on the bulk of its findings, the air force has decided that most people do not see interplanetary space ships but bright stars, balloons, satellites, comets, fireballs, aircraft, moving clouds, vapor trails, missiles, reflections, mirages, searchlights, birds, kites, spurious radar indications, fireworks or flares.

The answers the air force has been able to turn up have led it to these conclusions:

1. No UFO has ever given any indication of threat to U.S. national security.

2. There is no evidence that UFO's represent technological developments or principles beyond present-day scientific knowledge.

3. There is no evidence that any UFOs are "extra-terrestrial vehicles."

Deny Clues On Outer Space Visit

WASHINGTON (AP) - A secret report on an investigation of flying saucers will say there is no scientific evidence to indicate that these unidentified flying objects are spaceships from another world.

Informed sources told The Associated Press that this will be the primary thrust of the report on a two-year study by a team of non-government scientists.

The sources said the report will not claim that the study produced proof that UFO's are not manned surveillance craft from outer space. "You can't prove a negative," the sources said.

Neither, they said, will it question the possibility that intelligent life exists beyond the earth. Instead, it will emphasize that the investigation uncovered no scientific evidence to support contentions by various individual scientists and private organizations that flying saucers are visitors from a distant planet.

The study, financed by a $500,000 grant from the air force, was made by a team of scientists under the direction of Dr. Edward U. Condon of the University of Colorado.

The 1,000-page report has been turned over, at the Air Force's request, to a special appraisal committee of the National Academy of Sciences, which refuses to divulge any information, even the names of committee members.

Findings of the academy committee are to be attached to the report for release by the air force, now tentatively scheduled for Friday.

"No Evidence" of Extraterrestrials
U.S. Report Shoots Down Flying Saucer Tales

WASHINGTON (CP) - A top-level group of American scientists today challenged theories that flying saucers are spaceships from distant planets.

A $500,000 report commissioned by the U.S. Air Force said a two-year investigation uncovered no evidence that flying saucers, or unidentified flying objects (UFOs), were of extraterrestrial origin.

The 1,485-page report was endorsed by the National Academy of Sciences which said there seemed to be no reason to doubt its conclusions without evidence more convincing than now available.

But it seemed certain to set off a new furore from groups which claim the air force tried to suppress information suggesting UFOs might be real and be a threat to U.S. security.

None of the scientists involved in the investigation is a government official or employee.

The report suggested dropping further investigations.

FINDS NOTHING NEW

"Our general conclusion is that nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the last 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge," the report said.

"Further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified" at this point in the interest of science.

The scientists, headed by Colorado's Dr. Edward U. Condon, acknowledged their conclusions are bound to stir new controversy among flying saucer-believers as well as other dedicated scientists who want to keep an open mind on the matter.

One of the several flying saucer groups - the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena - scheduled a Friday news conference to discuss the "Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects." The group charged last May the Condon study lacked impartiality.

Among the study's major points:

- "No direct evidence whatever of a convincing nature now exists for the claim that any UFOs represent spacecraft visiting earth from another civilization."

- About 90 per cent of all UFO reports "prove to be quite plausibly related to ordinary objects" such as planes, satellites, balloons, street lights, beacons, clouds or other natural phenomena.

- Defence needs probably could be carried out "without the continuance" of the air force's Project Blue Book which has investigated UFO reports since 1947, but this is a matter for the defence department to decide.

- Suggestions by some people that the government possesses extraterrestrial spacecraft and has their crews in secret captivity are "fantastic nonsense."

- Allegations the government has attempted an official cover-up of the flying saucer matter have no "actual basis whatever."

- Some public school students are being "educationally harmed by absorbing unsound and erroneous" reading materials on UFOs, and "we strongly recommend" teachers stop giving them credit for reading saucer books and articles.

PRESENT 35 PHOTOS

The scientists presented 35 cases where UFOs were photographed, or appeared to have been.

Nine were said to give evidence of "probable fabrication," seven of possible fabrication, seven were classified as natural or man-made phenomena and 12 provide insufficient data for analysis.

None proved to be "real objects with high strangeness."

Since the air force's Project Blue Book began investigating "flying saucers" in 1947, there have been 12,097 UFO sightings, 697 of which remain "unidentified."

The report covered case studies of 59 UFO reports, recounted the history of UFO sightings, looked at UFO study programs in foreign countries and focused on 20 years of past U.S. study of UFO phenomena.

UFO reports around the world vary so greatly, the report said, "it is impossible" to relate them to a single explanation.

"This means that a general explanation peculiar to any one country has to be ruled out, since it is utterly improbable that the secret military aircraft of any one country for example would be undergoing test flights in different countries," the report stated.

"Similarly, it is most unlikely that military forces of different countries would be testing similar developments all over the world at the same time in secrecy from each other."

Science Study
UFOs Not Ships From New Earth
By DONALD H. MAY

WASHINGTON (UPI) - Man cannot expect to be visited by space ships from other solar systems in the next 10,000 years, and probably not even then, according to a scientific study for the Air Force made public today.

The University of Colorado study on "Unidentified Flying Objects" (UFOs) concluded that "no direct evidence whatever of a convincing nature now exists for the claim that any UFOs represent spacecraft visiting earth from another civilization."

The 1,500-page report, compiled under a two-year Air Force contract, hedged by saying that its conclusion, based on present evidence, was not a prediction for the future.

But it then went on to think some cosmic thoughts on the vastness of the universe, the comparatively tiny technological achievements of man and the extreme unlikelihood of interstellar travel as practised routinely in science fiction.

"Travel of men over interstellar distances in the foreseeable future seems now to be quite out of the question," said study director Dr. Edward U. Condon, physics professor at Colorado and former head of the National Bureau of Standards, in a summary chapter.

The report noted that the vastness of space is such that, based on the speed of light, "The news of Christ's life on earth could not yet have reached as much as a tenth of the distance from the earth to the centre of our galaxy."

"Human beings now know enough to destroy all life on earth," it said, "and they may lack the intelligence to work out social controls to keep themselves from doing so. If other civilizations have the same limitation, then it might be that they develop to the point where they destroy themselves utterly before they have developed the technology needed to enable them to make long space voyages."

The report estimated that a civilization=s life span might be 100,000 years (the geological age of the earth is some 5 billion years) and said it was extremely unlikely that two nearby civilizations in interstellar space would reach a peak of development at the same time.

" . . . We consider that it is safe to assume that no ILE (Intelligent Life Elsewhere) outside of our solar system has any possibility of visiting earth in the next 10,000 years," the report said.

"It is regarded by scientists today as essentially certain that ILE exists," the report said, "but with essentially no possibility of contact between the communities on planets associated with different stars. We therefore conclude that there is no relation between ILE at other solar systems and UFO phenomenon as observed on earth."

This, it said, leaves only the question of travel to earth from other planets in our own solar system. Of these, it said, only Venus and Mars seem capable of supporting life. It said Venus is too hot for advanced life though "some primitive forms may exist." It said astronomers generally now reject the idea of any intelligent life on Mars.

The report declared: "Our general conclusion is that nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge. Careful consideration of the record as it is available to us leads us to conclude that further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby."

No evidence was reported of U.S. government "secrecy" on UFOs, and no evidence that they are a defence hazard.

The report saw no need for a new federal agency to study the subject, and no need for the Air Force to continue to maintain a special unit to study UFOs. It suggested that the Air Force only continue "intelligence and surveillance" from its bases. But it said this was a question for defence officials to answer.

First 'yes' then 'no'
No pictures taken of UFO

There were no photographs taken of the Sudbury UFO Tuesday morning, a base spokesman at CFS Falconbridge now says.

On Tuesday, The Star was told by North American Air Defence command (NORAD) District 22 headquarters at North Bay to contact national defence headquarters in Ottawa for information about the UFO. A spokesman there said one of the station personnel had grabbed a camera and taken a picture of the bright object in the southern sky.

The Star was told: "They weren't sure how the photographs would turn out."

Later Tuesday afternoon the public information office at headquarters in Ottawa told The Star that it was all right for the photographs to be released to the press. When contacted, the Falconbridge base said the photographs, which had not been developed, could be picked up Wednesday morning.

When The Star called Falconbridge Wednesday morning Major Robert Oliver said there had been no photographs taken, nor any messages sent to Ottawa that mentioned photographs. He said he had investigated and had found "no one who had grabbed a camera."

On Friday The Star received a message to call the Falconbridge radar base and was told again, "definitely no photographs were ever taken."

The base spokesman added: "Since the object was 30 nautical miles away, any photographs probably wouldn't have turned out anyway." (Thirty nautical miles equals 36 statute miles, the kind most of us are familiar with.)

Well thought-out answer

We have no idea how many unidentified flying objects might have been sighted in the Sudbury district in the close-to-100 years that have passed since permanent settlements developed here, but there have probably been a few dozen reported.

Among the more recent occasions when people were seeing things - and the phrase can be taken in either of its two meanings - was in mid-November, 1975, a little more than three years ago. Things appeared on the radar screens of the armed forces base near Falconbridge and the NORAD complex at North Bay. At least eight policemen claimed to have seen strange things in the night sky. Ordinary people spotted flashing lights and unusual shapes too.

Sightings were spread out over two nights and American F-106 fighter-interceptor planes swooped over Sudbury from bases in northern Michigan. The North Bay NORAD base would have provided planes, but did not have any properly equipped for tracking down unknown objects described in many different ways.

What was it or were they? Because of its persistency on radar screens and descriptions of speed and appearance, the head of a government-sponsored UFO investigation group in Chicago said it was definitely no hoax. A National Research Council expert in Ottawa said it was the planets Jupiter and Venus. Local policemen said if he thought that he was having hallucinations.

Know what they were seeing all along? Crystallized ice in the atmosphere, that's what. But that enlightening tidbit is not a part of the story as it unfolded back in 1975. That's the pronouncement of the National Research Council . . . made public just this week.

That's reversing the field on the Jupiter-Venus opinion given at the time, but better right and late than wrong for evermore. It's fascinating to ruminate on all the heavy thinking going on all through those three years in the Ottawa NRC headquarters.