GE's UFO Lectures: Flying Saucers - Fact or Fancy?

The Post-Standard from Syracuse, New York Nov. 21, 1966, featured news of an upcoming UFO lecture by Edward J. Patrick, "Flying Saucers - Fact or Fancy?" A special thanks to Robert Barrow for sending us his clippings on this event he attended in Syracuse so long ago.

After the event, an article in the same newspaper summarized Patrick's lecture.

Syracuse Post-Standard, Dec. 1, 1966

Engineer Says Self-Styled Experts Cause UFO Mystery

Syracuse Post-Standard, Dec. 1, 1966

The fact that a GE engineer was speaking about UFOs added some respectability to things, and while he was skeptical, he did consider the topic worthy of discussion. One of Patrick's lectures was mentioned in NICAP's The UFO Investigator from Jan-Feb 1966, in the article, "Millions Learn of NICAP UFO Evidence." It was cited among their discussion of positive  attention towards the UFO topic.

Missiles, Space and Flying Saucers

General Electric was a big contractor for the US government, and their Missile and Space Division was working on military and aerospace projects such as guided missile technology, NASA's space re-entry vehicles and classified strategic programs. It's puzzling why they were involved in lectures on flying saucers. While researching the background on the original clippings, we found that Patrick's UFO lectures continued into 1968, but curiously, there were other lectures by the same name.

IEEE Almanack, April 1967,
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Philadelphia Section

Who was that unnamed GE scientist? This clip from Standard-Speaker, April 28, 1966 gives us a clue:

UFO Speaker's Name Listed Incorrectly
The speaker at Tuesday's Kiwanis Club... was Roland Swank, not Richard Socky, as previously published. Both men are employees of the General Electric Missile and Space Division, Mr. Socky was announced as the speaker and was unable to attend. Mr. Swank substituted for him and the Standard-Speaker reporter was not informed of the change. Mr. Swank's topic was "Unidentified Flying Objects."

GE's Missile and Space Division in Philadelphia had at least five people giving the "Fact or Fancy" lecture. Besides Edward J. Patrick and Roland Swank, the same talk was being given by Robert Hersch, Paul Usavage, and Eugene Rygwalski. Some of those guys formed their own UFO organization.

Swank's Systems Management Associates, Inc. 

The Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 20, 1966, had an article, "Flying Saucer Evidence Compiled by Engineers" by Stephen J. Sansweet that told how GE engineers Roland P. Swank, Gene E. Rygwalski and Robert L. Ewing got started. “They work for a large firm they prefer not to identified – because it has government contracts – and they fear of being pressured to stop their investigation."

Three engineers and about 30 other men, mostly scientist or engineers, have incorporated a group – Systems Management Associates, to gather data on what they call “Unidentified Observations."

Swank, the SMA spokesman, said his interest in UFOs was aroused in November 1961, when he and some co-workers or asked to speak on the subject. “If we were going to talk about UFOs, we felt we owed it to the public to find out what we were talking about," Swank said. Over the years the interest grew. Last February, 30 men formed the Organization for Scientific Analysis and Research. This was incorporated into the SMA two weeks ago.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 20, 1966

Unfortunately the article does not name any participants beyond the three principals, so we can't know just who else from GE was involved in the SMA. We found that the group had been corresponding with Richard Hall, who wrote in NICAP’s Affiliate/Subcommittee Newsletter, March 9, 1966, “A Subcommittee consisting of General Electric scientists, engineers and technicians in Philadelphia is about to be approved. Co-chairman will be Eugene Rygwalski, (mathematician)..." However, we found nothing to show the group ever was formally connected to NICAP. An article in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 12, 1966, shows that SMA was not always backing winners:

Systems Management Associates co-sponsored in Philadelphia on Friday night the appearance of one of the world’s foremost trackers of flying saucers and assorted other  UFOs, Dr. Daniel Fry.

Roland P. Swank and other engineers from General Electric continued to lecture on UFOs all under the same title, "Fact or Fancy," at clubs, schools, churches - anywhere- through 1968.

Standard-Speaker, Hazleton, Pennsylvania April 23, 1966

The Pittsburgh Press, December 8, 1966

Delaware County Daily Times, November 11, 1967

Flying Saucer Company Policy

An article in Delaware County Daily Times,  October 8, 1968 stated,  "A series of lectures will be given by personnel of the General Electric Company's Missile and Space Division at the Rose Tree Media Adult School." The topics generally looked to what the future of technology would bring:  space exploration, computer use in industry, geology, weather satellite technology, and once again, Edwin J. Patrick lectured on "Flying Saucers - Fact or Fancy?," and it was noted that, "He has given more than 200 talks to technical and civic groups and is the author of an article on UFO's."

How far back did these GE flying saucer lectures go? A calendar of events in the Nov. 11, 1957 Aviation Week magazine showed a listing for one in Feb. 1958.

Feb. 19— "Are Flying Saucers Fact or Fancy?", Dr. Hugh Winn, Missile and Ordnance Systems Department, GE, Engineers Club, 1317 Spruce St„ Philadelphia, Pa. 

The Pennsylvania Villanova University newspaper documents a slightly earlier one, Dec. 3, 1957:

The Villanovan, Dec. 11, 1957

 The American Engineer from Nov. 1956 is the earliest version of the lecture we found.

“Flying Saucers—Fact or Fancy?” Asks GE Speaker 

At a recent meeting of the Valley Forge Chapter of the Pennsylvania SPE, Dr. Hugh Winn, General Electric Company, Philadelphia, Pa., gave an interesting talk to about seventy members and guests on the subject— “Flying Saucers—Fact or Fancy?” Dr. Winn, who works in the Special Defense Projects Department, opened his talk with a reminder that we have five normal senses, illustrating each with an example. From this he brought out the fact that some times our senses lead us to illusions— or thinking that something is—that isn't. He gave examples of instances where a person had reported seeing objects flying through space, but which could not be authenticated by other individuals. Dr. Winn told of flying objects that have been seen with the aid of scientific instruments, such as radar and the camera. The saucer-type objects which were seen for about five hours over Washington, D.C., in 1952 were judged by radar to be flying from 250 to 7,500 miles per hour, he said. On other occasions cigar-shaped objects with estimated speeds up to 21,000 miles per hour were reported. The saucer objects appeared to give off a bluish glow, Dr. Winn stated. There have been numerous written accounts of objects seen in the sky during the past 2,000 years, he said, and maybe flying objects are not new.

It's clear that GE's UFO lecture program inspired Swank's independent SMA group, but there was some significant overlap between them, at least up until 1968. After that, it seems the SMA was on their own and eventually fell on hard times. Delaware County Daily Times, May 14, 1976, reported on the end of Swank's UFO group:

The Unidentified Observation Reporting Center in Berwyn, after nine years of reporting sightings and the frustration of where to go and what to do next with them as forced it to close active operations. According to a spokesman at the Center, the work was begun in 1967 by a group of 45 scientists and engineers who found who soon found themselves faced with the riddle of how to prove the existence of something with no evidence. “We could determine the 'are nots,'" said the spokesman. "They are not helicopters, they are not spotlights, they are not planes, etc. But how can you say what they actually were. Where do you go from there?"

Despite the end of the Centers operations, Swank lectured on: The Daily Intelligencer from Doylestown, Pennsylvania on October 27, 1976, contained the last talk we located.

The program will be "Unidentified Observations--Fact or Fantasy" presented by Roland Swank. The subject of the UFO phenomena is one of increasing interest. Swank is a member of Systems Management Associates, Inc., whose prime function is the performance of scientific UFO investigations. Swank has been a systems evaluation engineer with the General Electric Company since 1950.

Beyond that, Roland Swank also continued to correspond with UFO colleagues at least as late as 1979, but his SMA group left few tracks and is now mostly forgotten.

GE: "Progress is our most important product."

We were unable to find much more about the origins of the General Electric lecture program, but have to wonder why it was promoted by GE's Missile and Space Division for fourteen years or so. The most curious thing is that the program seems to have thrown both some water and gasoline on the fiery UFO topic.

If any of our readers have more information on the GE UFO lectures or Swank's, Systems Management Associates, Inc., please send an update to us here at The Saucers That Time Forgot.

UFO Sightings by the Stars from DC Comics, 1975

DC Comics' supernatural thriller anthology Ghosts #40 July 1975,  was an unusual place to find a UFO story, but it included the two-page tale, "Eyes from Another World." The art was by John Calnan, the writer was uncredited, but was probably by Leo Dorfman. The issue was edited by Murray Boltinoff and Paul Levitz.

The story opens with an aerial UFO encounter from June 1947, but not that of the famous Kenneth Arnold. Instead, Captain James R. Howard's BOAC  Labrador  sighting of  June 29, 1954 is shifted to 1947 with the magic of dramatic license.  The story emphasizes the sightings of flying saucers by celebrities and narrated by Sammy Davis Jr. 

Instead of focusing on famous cases with credible witnesses, the comic centers on  entertainers and celebrity saucer sightings. Besides Sammy Davis Jr,  it also features Muhammad Ali, Arthur Godfrey and Buddy Rich.  Here's scans of the original artwork from a comic book saucer story that time forgot.

John Mittl: from Unsolved UFOs to Astral Encounters

by Claude Falkstrom and Curt Collins

The "Unknowns," the cases Project Blue Book labelled "Unidentified," are the ones that interest UFO researchers the most. These are the cases are highly prized, as they provide the strongest evidence that some UFOs could be something unearthly. One such case is the report of John Mittl. While a few may know about his 1952 UFO report, not many know about his Mittl's UFO lectures, research or subsequent sightings.

John Mittl first became known for taking four photographs of a disc-like object July 9, 1952 from his farm in Kutztown, Pennsylvania. He wrote to the Air Force about the sighting, and the story was covered in newspapers and broadcast on radio by the legendary Frank Edwards.

The Morning Call July 31, 1952

Saturday Night Uforia hosts a page collecting the surviving Project Blue Book documents on the case, classified as "Unidentified."

Much More to Mittl

Mittl was only 22 at the time of the sighting, but was a man of many interests and talents, a former prize-winning member of the Future Farmers of America.

The_Morning Call Sept. 29. 1947

He was also a rock hound and gemstone cutter, and this is as good a place as any to mention that he was a vegetarian, and that his favorite dish was fried hot peppers.

The Morning Call Dec. 6, 1956, The Morning Call Jun. 16, 1960

Besides UFOs, photography, agriculture, herpetology and nature conservation, Mittl was interested in the occult. In 1960 he published a paper, "Astral Projection (Modus Operandi) by John Mittl PS.D, MS.D, D.D."

Astral projection is the term from Theosophy for the act of sending one's spiritual self or soul on an out-of-body trip. Mittl described what he provided the reader:

A simple method of instruction whereby the sincere student of the occult may readily learn to project his astral body and learn some of the deep secrets of the spiritual phase of exsistence, as well gain deeper insight into the realms of eternal life, knowing that death of the present physical body is not the end, but the beginning of our absolute ubiquity.

It's not known where Mittl studied to master the discipline, but one institution advertised in Popular Mechanics magazine offering three of the exact degrees he stated:

Within Astral Projection," he discussed the potential benefits of it as a means of exploration. "You may also desire a solution to Life's Mysteries as well as problems in your own personal life. The mystery of flying saucers may be revealed to you while on an Astral Flight."

Paranormal radio pioneer Long John Nebel in his 1961 book, Way Out World, compared Mittl to George Adamski and the Contactees:

Somewhat less dramatic, somewhat less physical, than his West Coast competitors is John Mittl of Pennsylvania. A vegetarian and recluse who petitioned long and hard to be on the all-night session, he told an interesting tale, but hardly soared to the heights of imagination attained by (Howard) Menger and (Orfeo) Angelucci. Mittl described many “contacts” achieved under dreamlike astral conditions. He spoke freely of etheric type saucers and other such things. However, it appeared that he was not really in his proper field because I recently got a brochure from him announcing that he was available for lectures on special theories of diet and nutrition.

Nebel was unaware of what all he was missing, like Mittl's expertise in snakes. There was no talent for that in the other Contactees. Mittl was also a attuned to the world around us, sensitive to animals and nature itself.

Standard Speaker Nov. 23, 1964

Despite his other interests, he still made time for flying saucers.

The Morning Call Nov. 9, 1964

Fourteen Years Later

Many witnesses become famous for a single UFO encounter or photograph, but Mittl's 1952 pictures were lost amidst the big flap of 1952. His time arrived in 1966.

“Our Space Age” was a daily syndicated illustrated feature written by Otto Binder and illustrated by Carl Pfeufer. Its main thrust was covering NASA's space exploration, but also covered Binder's other big interests, science-fiction and UFOs. In January 1966, it presented a six-part story on the otherworldly adventures of John Mittl. 

The Daily Journal Jan. 10-11-12 1966

The Daily Journal Jan. 13-14-15, 1966

The Morning Call from Allentown, Pennsylvania, Oct. 10, 1966 featured a lengthy illustrated article detailing Mittl's experiences and outlook.

Mittl was interviewed around the same time for The National Tattler, discussing his psychic experiences with UFOs, and making some predictions, such as the impeachment of President Johnson.

Mittl was still lecturing in 1979. From The Morning Call, Feb. 12, 1979, "Allentonian aims to prove flying saucers are spiritual."

Mittl said everybody can see the saucers when they materialize, but they are "still not physical. No one ever found one that crashed," he said. He explained that many continuous "sightings" by various people over the years was not an indication of "game playing" by UFOs. but simply showed some people were prepared to see them.

After that, Mittl doesn't seem to have gotten much press, at least for his UFO interest, but legendary psychic Harold Sherman mentioned him favorably in his 1986 book, The Dead Are Alive: They Can and Do Communicate With You. Sherman told how he'd recommended Mittl's classes,  and they helped a desperate friend reconnect with his departed wife via astral projection.

Forty Years Later

We're always interested to see what became of the participants in UFO stories through the march of time. John Mittl was interviewed by The Morning Call again in 1992, about his investigations and his thoughts on the physical nature of UFOs.

"I was always looking for one that would crash. I was like everybody else until I began to think about it... I found out after I did astral projection that there is no `physical' ship'."

Mittl made the papers again in 1996, based on one of his more earthly hobbies.

John Mittl briefly had a blog, Peppers & Projection in December 2009, which published some mementos from his UFO days. Sadly, his memories of those incredible experiences were later lost due to the onset of dementia. As of 2014,  he was living in Sandpoint, Idaho at the Valley Vista nursing facilities.

Despite his many other UFO experiences, Project Blue Book has only information about John Mittl's historic photograph case from 1952. As we've seen here, there was a lot more to his story.

UFOs on TV: The 1952 Washington, DC Saucer Flap

Life magazine played a pivotal role in UFO history, with their issue dated April 7, 1952, featuring the cover with the bold declaration, "There Is A Case For Interplanetary Saucers." H. B. Darrach Jr. and Robert Ginna's article, "Have We Visitors from Space?" made history, providing millions of readers with a non-threatening introduction to the hypothesis of an extraterrestrial origin for flying saucers. However it wasn't the magazine's final word on the topic.

Life magazine, April 7, 1952 and August 4, 1952 

 

After the July 19 and 26, 1952 radar events in Washington, DC, flying saucers were front page news again, and a matter of national security. Life magazine responded, both in print and on television.

Billboard Aug. 9, 1952

LIFE Brings UFOs to Television

We, the People, was a half-hour news magazine show. The description from the 1952 print ad run in national newspapers:

We, the People is produced by the editors of LIFE! see it every Friday evening on NBC-TV 

WHAT will you see on "We, the People" during the important weeks ahead? Each week, the television cameras of "We, the People" will present some important aspect of the political scene! 

WHY did Gulf invite the editors of LIFE to produce "We, the People'  months are bound to be important ones in the political history of the country and in order to bring to the people an interesting and dramatic presentation of all sides of the picture, we have invited the editors of LIFE magazine to produce 'We, the People,' and to bring to the program their great journalistic background and resources.

We the People focused most often focused on politics in Washington, and when the city was seemingly invaded by fling saucers, they aired a special episode on the topic. From UFOs: A History August 1952 by Loren E. Gross:

Since UFOs had appeared over the Nation's Capital two weekends in a row, some thought that perhaps the manifestations might happen a third time, so TV station WNBW, which originated the program "We the People," rented a big DC-3 airliner, filled it with 20 newsmen, and then had the plane circle over Washington between 8:30 and 9:00 p.m. On the ground in the radar room of Washington National there were more newsmen and TV cameras. The "We the People" program opened in the radar room as a TV host looked into the camera lens and announced: "You may be the first television audience to see a flying saucer." Moreover, in the chartered DC-3 orbiting above a reporter told the video audience: "If during the next half hour there are any reports on these mysterious blips we're going to head straight for them --stand by!" What happened was told in newspaper headlines the next day...

The Flying Saucers

We, the People, August 1, 1952, "The Flying Saucers." Here's a partial transcript of the program, with photos and links to view some clips from it.

NARRATOR: Tonight, you may be the first television audience to see a flying saucer. This is the radar tower that sweeps the skies over Washington D.C. Three times within the last two weeks, this radar antenna has picked up strange, unidentified objects. They were seen on this screen by dozens of radar experts who are going to tell you of their experiences in a moment. Right there, that blip is a chartered plane carrying special equipment for this special telecast.

  

GEORGE SKINNER: ... over (Washington) National Airport in our nations capital. We've been circling over Washington for more than an hour, passing through the exact points in the sky where strange objects have been seen. As it grows darker, conditions are improving. If during the next half hour, there are any reports on these mysterious blips, we're going to head straight for them. Stand by!

Yes, tonight we'll tell you the story America has been talking about all week, the story of what seem some people call flying saucers and for the background on tonight report, here is Frank Blair in the editorial offices of Life magazine in New York. 

Tonight you may be the first television audience to see a flying saucer. This is the radar tower that sweep the skies over Washington, DC. Three times within the last two weeks, this radar antenna has picked up strange and identified objects. They were seen on the screen by dozens of radar expert were going to tell you of their experiences in a moment. Right there, that blip is a chartered plane caring a special equipment special telecast.

Frank Blair

FRANK BLAIR: For the past three months, the editors of Life have been bringing you a special political campaign and convention series on this We the People program. Each of our political programs dealt with men and events, politics and parties, personalities and rivalries. Tonight, we have left the political arena for the arena where men's minds in an imagination take over from established facts and provable theories. We're going to examine that unfathomable area of outer space for the lead story in the country today. Just this morning, jet fighters raced aloft over Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio to an intercept a reported saucer. Returning pilots swore it was a light that could not have been a reflection and that it evaded them at a very high rate of speed. However, you will hear an Air Force spokesman say that the phenomena in our skies can probably be explained and we will hear experts and observers who say that as yet they have not been explained.

We'll bring you the dramatic story of what happened over our nations capital just one week ago tonight and during the entire half hour, one of our reporters will be standing by in a plane over Washington, ready to describe any lights or unnatural phenomenon that may appear. We will give you the amazing story of the flying saucers after this word from Bill Rogers.

(Commercial)

FRANK BLAIR: The story of the flying saucers begins at the Air Route Control Center of the CAA in Washington D.C.

David Brinkley

DAVID BRINKLEY: This is David Brinkley in the radar room at Washington National Airport. These men and women you see here are radar experts and technicians employed here by the Civil Aeronautics Administration. They work eight hour shifts in this room and they spend their time checking on everything that moves in the air over a 2,800 mile area. On these radar screens last Saturday, they saw something strange and unusual and at the moment unexplainable, it was not an airplane, it was not a cloud, nobody knows what it was. But all these people here stood enraptured and looked at it. Watching with them was Clay Blair Jr. who is LIFE Magazine's military correspondent. Come in, Clay, will you?

Clay Blair, Jr, Pentagon reporter for Life and Time

CLAY BLAIR JR.: Hi.

DAVID BRINKLEY: He was out here at the time. Clay, will you tell us what you were doing and what you saw?

CLAY BLAIR JR.: My job is to cover the Pentagon for Time and LIFE and I've being doing that for two years. Part of that job is to cover the airports and when CAA Andrews Air Force Base picked these blips up on the radar, I made a six­-day investigation of the story. I thought it was a pretty exciting story and I went to Andrews Air Force Base and talked to the radar operators, people in the tower, I talked to people in the tower here at National Airport and to Harry Barnes and his radar operators here. Then last Saturday, I went back to the office, filed my story, then went home. Before I left, I told Harry Barnes here in the CAA if he ever got any of these blips on the radar to call me again. As soon as I got home, phone rang, Harry said, he had blips all over the radar. So I got in my car and tore down to the airport. Sure enough, he had blips all over the radar and I stayed here for about six hours, tracking the blips with him and watching the Air Force jet interceptors come down and chase it, uh, so­-called blips, and then..­.

DAVID BRINKLEY: Well, I've got an explanation from this room somebody like the Air Force, did it have any?

CLAY BLAIR JR.: Well, I went back to the Pentagon after I left here, I got a couple hours sleep and I talked to the Secretaries of Defense and the high ranking Air Force officers and I must say that up until Tuesday, there was no clear explanation from the Air Force.

DAVID BRINKLEY: But the United States Air Force is responsible for keeping us protected and informed on things that happen in the air. So Major General John A. Samford, the Air Force's Chief of Intelligence last Tuesday had a news conference and this is what he had to say.

MAJOR GENERAL JOHN A. SAMFORD (recording): Of this great massive report, we have been able adequately to explain the great bulk of them, explain them to our own satisfaction. We've been able to explain them as hoaxes, as erroneously identified friendly aircraft, as meteorological or electronic phenomena or as light aberration. However, there've been a certain percentage of this volume of report that have been made by credible observers of relatively incredible things. It is this group of observation that we now are attempting to resolve. We have, as of date, come to only one firm conclusion with respect to this remaining percentage and that is that it does not contain any pattern of purpose, or of consistency that we can relate with any ­­ to any conceivable threat to the United States.

DAVID BRINKLEY: That was Major General Samford of the Air Force expressing the Air Force's attitude. Now, before the editors of LIFE present their viewpoint on this flying saucer thing, let's hear another report from the We the People plane, which is flying overhead now. Our camera is pointed skyward ready to pick you up at any time if any time you have any visual evidence of anything. So George Skinner , will you come in and tell us what you see and where you are? 

GEORGE SKINNER: All right, David . We're flying at 5,000 feet now. We're under radar control. And in our plane, we'd like to mention that there are representatives of IMS, AP, UP and the Washington Star. Our pilot Byron Mole and co­pilot Bob Berthold have been helping me keep a sharp lookout for anything that looks a bit suspicious in the sky. So far, we have seen nothing. The sun is setting, it's a beautiful sight up here, there is a slight haze and we feel that perhaps when it gets just a little bit darker, we would have a better opportunity of seeing anything if it should be up here. We'll be back for another report. Right now we turn you over into David Brinkley on the ground.

DAVID BRINKLEY: Thank you, George. We'll be standing by here in the radar room, ready to call you back in at any time. But in the meantime, let's go back to LIFE's editorial offices in New York.

FRANK BLAIR: Reports of strange flying objects in the sky are older than the United States. Some of them reported in scientific journals that date back to the 16th century, but they've usually been classed with Loch Ness Monsters and relegated to the Sunday supplements. Until World War II showed us that some of the most fantastic dreams can be very real, like atomic bombs, for instance. And since the close of the war, hundreds of reports of strange objects in the sky have been filed with the Air Force and most of them have been easily explained, experimental jet aircraft, weather balloons, reflected ground lights, unusual cloud formations, and so on. But here is a picture that was released just today by the United States Coast Guard. It shows four luminous objects in formation in the sky over Salem, Massachusetts and this picture was taken at 9:35 AM on July 16th by a Coast Guard photographer and it was released just today by the Coast Guard. Now here on this map, are pinpointed locations where some thirty saucers have been sighted and are still unexplained.

JUNE '47­ WASH.­ PILOT ARNOLD

NARRATOR: Item, June 24th, 1947 between Chehalis and Yakima in the state of Washington, private pilot Kenneth Arnold sighted nine saucer­like things flying like geese in a chain-like line. He estimated the speed of the saucers at 1,200 miles per hour.

JAN. '48­ FORT KNOX KY.­ CAPT. MANTELL, USAF

NARRATOR: Item, January 7th, 1948 over Fort Knox, Kentucky. Captain Thomas Mantell and two other Air Force fighter pilots chased a strange object like an ice cream cone with red on top to 20,000 feet. Captain Mantell kept going while the others turned back. Captain Mantell's plane was found the next day scattered over a half mile of farmland.

JAN. 51 - SIOUX CITY IOWA - CAPT. VINTHER

NARRATOR: Item, January 20th, 1951 Mid-Continent Airlines plane over Sioux City, Iowa. The pilot Captain Lawrence Vinther tells his own story.

CAPTAIN LAWRENCE VINTHER: This is Captain Vinther, Mid-Continent Airlines. When we took off, circled to the field, we followed this light in a much smaller circle than it was making. The most interesting and most astounding part of what we saw, and the thing came within approximately 200 feet of us, was when it came down across our nose and back behind us, at about a 160 degree angle, we wondered where the thing had gone. Time we could turn around, thing was - - reversed its direction and it was going to the same way we were and we know of nothing on the drawing boards, to say nothing of in the air, which can do that.

DOWNEY, CALIFORNIA - MR. SULLIVAN, WRITER

NARRATOR: And from the ground, the testimony of a technical writer of the Aerophysics Department of North American Aviation in Downey, California, Mr. Ed Sullivan.

ED SULIVAN (recording): Two other technical writers and myself were just before quitting time, this happened Advance up into the sky and we saw four objects sprayed in from the East like out of the mouth of a Roman candle. They swung off to the north making a clean right hand turn and our eyes, of course started following them. Then we were amazed to see more of them coming and more and more until finally a full 90 degree of the azimuth filled with the speeding lights, like stars of great magnitude.

AUG -NOV ‘51 - LUBBOCK, TEXAS- DR. ROBINSON GEOLOGIST

Carl Hart Jr's version of the Lubbock Lights

NARRATOR: And down in Lubbock, Texas, reports of lights that street across the sky on a clear dark sky observed by Dr. W. I. Robinson, Professor of Geology and two fellow professors from Texas Technological College. On 12 separate occasions between August and November 1951, these gentlemen saw flights of luminous objects. On the night of August 30th, Carl Hart Jr., a student made photographs of the lights.

NARRATOR: And finally, just six months ago in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a man who makes his living taking pictures.

C. E. REDMAN: My name is C. E. Redman of 2108 East Gold, a commercial photographer in Albuquerque, New Mexico. On the morning of February 18th of this year at 6:43 a.m., I was startled to see two bright objects in the sky over Tijeras Canyon, east of Albuquerque at an estimated distance of 20 miles and 4 miles high. They had a diameter of about a 136 feet, one was standing on edge, the other horizontal. They gave off a very brilliant blue white light, was soundless and definitely not vapor trails from aircraft. After watching them for about 4 minutes they just they appeared to start dropping down.

NARRATOR: And another Albuquerque Observer.

Redman and Morris from LIFE magazine.

FEB ‘52 NEW MEXICO - EX SGT. MORRIS, USAF

W. S. MORRIS: I am W. S. Morris, 418 Dartmouth Drive, Southeast Albuquerque, New Mexico. February 18th, 1952, I saw two flying saucers over Tijeras Canyon at 6:45 a.m. they were not moving and had the appearance of a very bright blue white color. They were approximately 50 yards of above one of these Sandia Peaks, which is about 9,000 feet high and approximately 2 miles from where I was standing. They remained in a stationary position, one in a horizontal plane the other inclined at a 45 degree angle above and to the right. They disappeared instantly without a trace, I did not hear any sound during the time I'm sure of the objects. They had the appearance of a coffee cup turned upside down on a saucer.

NARRATOR: Allen Dumont, an Air Force photographer stationed in Illinois, states that he saw something like this.

JUNE ‘51 - ILLINOIS - ALLEN DUMAS

ALLEN DUMAS: (Transcript ends) From a July 1952 newspaper article: "Allen C. Dumas, Culver City, Calif., claims to have made this photo of a saucer he saw a year ago. It looked like 'two straw hats stuck together' with a dome on the top and bottom."

Allen Dumas clip.

The rest of the program is not transcribed, but the next segment discusses the possibility of flying saucers as "artificial devices created and operated by a high intelligence, and no power plant has been made or known on this earth that could account for the performance of these devices."

Extraterrestrial speculation clip. 

They check in with the George Skinner with the journalists on the plane, but he has no saucers to report. George Skinner plane clip. 

Dr. Walther Riedel

The far-out portion of the program was represented by a guest described in the 1964 book, The UFO Evidence: 

"A former German rocket scientist, Dr. Walther Riedel, headed the now defunct Civilian Saucer Investigation of Los Angeles, which attained national prominence in 1952 after being publicized in Life and Time. Dr. Riedel stated his opinion that UFOs were of Extraterrestrial origin."

On We, the People, asked about his view about flying saucers, Riedel said, “I’m firmly convinced that all these phenomenas are based on visits from outer space, from other planets, or from satellites of our solar system."

Dr. Walther Riedel clip 1 -  Dr. Walther Riedel clip 2 -  Dr. Walther Riedel clip 3

James Ritchey being interviewed by Clay Blair

James Ritchey of the CAA was on duty monitoring the radar a the airport during the events of the previous Saturday night. Ritchey was interviewed by David Brinkley and Clay Blair, who him to describe the experience.

JAMES RITCHIE: Well, on Saturday night so we were working here when all of a sudden we got about 12 pips appeared, kind of a shotgun effect, and they were moving from the northwest to the southeast. We tried them all the way across until they got down around Mount Vernon. We had an aircraft heading northbound, an  air carrier, that’s a commercial aircraft headed northbound. We asked, we gave the pilot traffic, told him he had traffic, and he took a look. He said he had a light there, said he couldn’t see anything else. He said it didn’t look like an airplane because it was a steady white light. We vectored him over - and he was in close proximity to another one of the pips on our screen, so he said he’d like to see another one, did we have any more of them. So we vectored him on over to Andrews Field where he saw....

DAVID BRINKLEY: (pointing to the radar screen) Did it look like one of these, one of these spots here?

JAMES RITCHEY:  It was, a little bit weaker than they are, slightly smaller, however it traveled along as these are. These pips appeared to be going about 40 miles an hour.

(Interruption to discuss basics of radar equipment.)

This air carrier was vectored on over to Andrews. He saw another. We asked him to describe it, he said he couldn't describe it, it was just a small white light. Shortly after that we had another aircraft coming down from the northwest, and we vectored it, and he saw one, and we asked him what he saw when he got close to his traffic. He said he saw a yellow and red and yellow light.

James Ritchey, in the hot seat on temperature inversions.

Clay Blair asks about General Samford and the Pentagon's explanation that the radar returns were caused by temperature inversions. Ritchey seems a bit uncomfortable in his reply, seeming caught between the brass and his own experience:

JAMES RITCHEY: I haven’t talked to General Samford, I’m sure he knows a lot more about this stuff than I do. However, I can't think that that explains the lights that we see tearing across the sky that these pilots have reported, the pilots seeing lights. However, that no doubt, can be explained by some sort of weather phenomenon, too. I’m sure the Air Force is going to try to do it, they're going to try to point things out and make everybody satisfied that that's what they're seeing, it’s something caused by weather inversion.

James Ritchey clip 1    James Ritchey clip 2   James Ritchey clip 3   James Ritchey clip 4

Thank you and goodnight. (Just a guess)

The program ended with some closing words from Frank Blair from the offices of Life magazine. Sadly, the stunt that opened the program failed to produce. No flying saucer - or even a radar blip - was spotted during the show. The news coverage centered solely on the negative results.

Gettysburg Times - Aug 2, 1952

NBC Saucer Hunt For TV Program Proves Fruitless

Blytheville, Arkansas Courier Aug. 2, 1952

WASHINGTON -- A bunch of news reporters went hunting flying saucers last night.
They zoomed and banked over the capital city for more than an hour to a chartered airliner, looking for anything strange in the sky.

And not a thing suspicious did they see.

It was the National Broadcasting Company's idea. Someone there had a hunch a saucer other two might show up, just in time to be televised on last night's "We the People" program.

After all, airport radar had picked up strange unidentified objects over Washington three nights within the past two weeks.

So the broadcasters hired a plane, invited newspapermen and photographers to come along, and assigned announcer George Skinner to radio back reports.

And to the persons at the program's opening in the radar control center at Washington national Airport, they announced hopefully that "you may be the first television audience to see a flying saucer."

They did not.

Sunday Herald, Aug. 3, 1952

Thirty minutes in the air on live television was an ambitious attempt, but insufficient to document a phenomenon that seems so elusive. Nevertheless, the half-hour program packed in a lot and was an outstanding presentation of the events, witness testimony, and the conflicting positions and beliefs of those studying the topic.

. . .

Further Resources

The story of a photo falsely associated with a real UFO case:
Photo Fakery: Washington, DC Flying Saucers 1952

Project 1947: July 1952 - Washington, D.C., Area Radar-Visual Sightings and Related Events.
http://www.project1947.com/fig/1952d.htm

"Radar Employee Tells of 12 Objects Seen on Radarscope" by James M. Ritchey
Chester, Pennsylvania Times - July 29, 1952: Saturday Night Uforia 

James Ritchey radio interview from Aug. 3, 1952 (approx. 3 minutes):
UFOLOGY: A Primer In Audio 1939 -1959 "Faded Discs" by Wendy Connors

Major General John A. Samford of the Air Force on Flying Saucers from 1952:
General John A. Samford's 1952 UFO Disclosure

NICAP: The Washington National Sightings reports and documents, including to Project Blue Book case files: http://www.nicap.org/520719wns_dir.htm