Frank Arthur Russell worked in manufacturing for an engineering firm at Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, England. However, his fame came from the craft built in his back yard as a hobby. In the 1930s he made news was for making various things, from a model glider, a canoe to a houseboat. In the 1940s he built a one-man submarine to search for Atlantis.
The Bigglesworth Chronicle, May 5, 1939, 1949 submarine photo and caption.
In 1958 Frank Russell was in the news for having built a flying saucer. Russell began flying the saucer around the end of 1957. The flying saucer itself was small, made of aluminum foil stretched across a 4-foot wire frame. The otherworldly performance of the UFO was due to an elaborate series of illusions produced by stage magic techniques. The “rotation” of the craft was produced by lights on the end of a rod circling from a small battery-powered motor. Russell flew the saucer only on dark nights, in order to conceal the nylon line and surplus meteorological balloon from which it was suspended.
The saucer's performance was driven by a timer, which after four and a half minutes of spectacle would kill the lights, then launch a fireworks rocket. That produced the illusion that the saucer had shot off into space at great speed. Under cover of darkness, he’d reel the contraption in and hide it until the next flight. As Russell himself said, “it really looked very effective.” For six months the saucer flew and the town and investigators were persuaded that they were seeing something extraordinary - perhaps from another world.
The People, May 4, 1958
Amateur UFO investigator John Whitworth had been tracking the saucer for months, but hearing that Russell made high-flying kites, he became suspicious. When accused, Russell confessed and grounded the saucer. The Daily Mail quoted Russell as saying, “I did this partly as a joke and partly as a contribution to science, to show how easily people could be hoaxed.”
The Daily Mail, May 27, 1958
The Daily Mail, May 28, 1958
Russell’s confession originally only named himself as the hoaxer, but he later admitted he had two accomplices, Jim Bates, and “Peter.” According to the story in The Daily News, January 4, 1959, “It’s Still a Gullible World” by Tom Allen, “Biggleswade officials were looking around for ideas to attract tourists. Russell put his idea to two friends, Jim Bates, 40, a member of the town council, and another man who still insists upon anonymity.” Allen wrote the town’s reaction to the faux spaceship, saying, “Scores of eyewitnesses saw the saucer. Space-age home guard patrols were established to be ready in case the Martians dropped in to visit.”
The Daily News, January 4, 1959
The Daily News story revealed that another hoax was in the works, “Russell himself is unrepentant. Winking roguishly, he recently confided, “I have something else up my sleeve. But I’m not telling what it is.”
Project F.A.R. team and the monument
Frank Russell passed away in 1991, but Bedfordshire rediscovered his exploits in 2018 and placed a monument there to remember him. The Project F.A.R. aerial balloon was also launched in his honor.
The U.S. Air Force took notice of the Frank Russell case. While Project Blue Book did not have a proper file on the events, there is one document relating to the news coverage of it. The handwritten comment at the bottom of the document says, “Very, very funny!” and is followed by remarks indicating the hoax had been responsible for 10 UFO sighting reports. https://www.fold3.com/image/8846102
The term “mother ship” dates back to at least the 19th century to describe the home sailing ship from which the smaller boats were launched. The military adopted the concept and terminology, as in a 1922 issue of Aviation magazine that quoted an officer describing plans to use an airship as a flying aircraft carrier: “Just as the aircraft of the Navy are cared for by a mother ship or airplane carrier, so must the Army craft be supplied from an aerial mother ship.”
Legendary science fiction author E. E. "Doc" Smith adopted the mother ship concept for interplanetary space ships in the pages of Amazing Stories around 1930.
Illustrations from E. E. Smith's Triplanetary, 1934
Where science fiction goes, flying saucers are sure to follow. Early July 1947 saw several “sightings of ‘companion ships’ associated with larger ‘mother discs,’ according to news stories cited in Alfred Loedding and The Great Flying Saucer Wave of 1947 by Michael D. Hall and Wendy A. Connors.
Project Blue Book files contain a report, “Appendix D,” from J. E. Lipp of RAND Corporation Missiles Division to Brigadier General Putt of the Air Force, dated December 13, 1948
“This present letter gives, in very general terms a description of the likelihood of a visit from other worlds as an engineering problem...” In discussing the propulsion of space ships, Lipp wrote:
“Two possibilities thus are presented. First, a number of space ships could have come as a group. This would only be done if full-dress contact were to be established. Second, numerous small craft might descend from a mother ship which coasts around the Earth in a satellite orbit. But this could mean that the smaller craft would have to be rockets of satellite performance, and to contain them the mother ship would have to be truly enormous.” See the file at https://www.fold3.com/image/1/11885469
Donald Keyhoe’s 1950 article in True magazine, Jan.1950 didn’t mention the term mother ship, but touched on the concept: “The sudden spurt of sightings in 1947 might indicate that we have attracted attention.... and that an orbiting satellite base has been established, or re-established after an absence.”
In“Hawthorne People All Saw Something; and Say It Must Have Been Flying Saucers!” from Nevada State Journal April 7, 1950,the story reported that “two of the strange aircraft made their appearance and performed for almost ten minutes high above the town.
“... Most observers expressed the belief that the ‘disc’ planes are radio-controlled because of the tremendous speed and maneuverability would make it almost impossible to have the operation directed by a human pilot. Carrying this theory farther, these observers expressed the belief that the conventional plane which appeared at the same time as the two unidentified objects could be a ‘mother’ ship for the smaller units or at least was associated in the radio control of the flight and maneuvers.”
Harmon W. Nichols, a staff correspondent for United Press, wrote a story about John Matthews, a sales manager for the A. O. Smith company and his thoughts on flying saucers. Matthews had built a few flying saucer models, and Nichols described him as a scientist. From the La Grande Observer June 28, 1950. Mathews thought the objects were vehicles under intelligent control, possibly from Mars from a larger space vehicle:
“People have seen what they thought were flying saucers in the sky, but none has ever landed. My theory is that they are brought down from one of the planets and dropped from a ‘mother’ plane. The up-pressure is so great that instead of falling where we can look at them they go back to the mother ship. Sounds silly, but that is what I think.”
United Press ran a news story carried in many papers on July 6, 1950 about John Keller of Dowagiac, Michigan, reporting that “he saw a low-flying air force C-54 launch a flying saucer.” Most versions ended with a mention that his two young sons also witnessed the event, but the Statesville Daily Record, carried two extra paragraphs with some speculation:
“This report would seem to bear out recently reported theory that the saucers were being launched from a mother ship. The observer expressed the opinion that the saucers never came to land because, in some way, they nullify gravity and thus can allow return to ship which they were launched.
Keller’s report would appear to be the first of an eye-witness of such a launching. It would also appear to cast doubt on the theory the saucers are interplanetary vehicles.”
The UFO Experts Speak
In Donald Keyhoe’s 1950 book, The Flying Saucers Are Real, he mentioned the concept of a mother-ship, but in the terrestrial military sense, while discussing the possibility that saucers were controlled by the British, based on captured German technology at the end of World War II:
“Some of the disk missiles were supposed to have been launched from a British island in the South Pacific; others came all the way from Australia. Still others were believed to have been launched by a mother ship stationed between the Galapagos Islands and Pitcairn.”
In the months after the book was released, Canadian scientist Wilbert Smith met and corresponded with Donald Keyhoe, later described in Keyhoe’s 1953 book, Flying Saucers from Outer Space. Of Smith’s saucer notions, Keyhoe said:
“Though he admitted it was pure speculation, Smith also had sketched his ideas of how discs could be berthed on the larger craft. Each mother ship could have small cup-shaped niches in its sides, into which the disc turrets would fit, with the rest of the saucers lying flat against the parent ship's side.”
In the bestselling (but later discredited) 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers, Frank Scully discussed the information he’d derived from Meade Layne’s Borderland Sciences Research Associates (BSRA):
“A widely circulated story that these saucers originated from a mother ship at least ten miles long and more than five hundred miles above our earth, a giant airship thought to be revolving around the earth at enormous speed, but slowing down even so, seemed to derive from Oahspe, according to borderland scientists. This is a book which described Etherians as ancestors of both the Chinese and Aryan races-originators of the Sanskrit language, but long removed as taxpayers on this earth.”
Is Another World Watching? was the US title for Gerald Heard’s The Riddle of the Flying Saucers published in the UK in 1950. Heard thought that a mother ship might be responsible for the tragic death of captain Thomas Mantell in 1948:
“This was a very mother of disks, and perhaps that poetic phrase may be quite near being an exact description — perhaps it was the mother ship in which the smaller craft, like dinghies hauled on board a schooner, can take refuge after their exploratory flights, as Noah's dove came back to rest in the Ark. It may have been anything between seven hundred and perhaps a thousand feet across.”
Speaking of arks, perhaps the first melding of the mothership concept with saucers was in the comic book, Airboy #88, June 1951, which features a little-known UFO story, "The Great Plane From Nowhere!" The 13-page story is about a plane-shaped interplanetary spaces ship that carries a fleet of smaller saucer-shaped scout ships.
“Another expert figures that the saucers are from outer space, visitors from another planet. In his opinion, they are guided missiles controlled from a mother space ship that operates in outer space— much like our idea of a satellite vehicle.”
In the movies, there was a mothership of sorts in the 1953 film The War of the Worlds adapted from H. G. Wells' novel. A meteor turns out to be the interplanetary delivery device for invading Martian war machines. In the photo below, the invaders rise from the crash site.
The 1953 book, Flying Saucers Have Landed by Desmond Leslie and George Adamski firmly established the mothership connection with UFOs. Leslie talks about information received from BSRA:
“Lastly, Meade Layne’s group gives a brief account of an immense torpedo-shaped carrier- craft, or mother-ship, a kind of interplanetary aircraft carrier which brings the smaller saucers through space, releasing them when it has entered the atmosphere. Its length they give as about 7,000 feet, with a crew of 2.000; figures which sound quite fantastic.”
In Adamski’s account of his talk with the man from Venus, he states that:
“I laughed with him, and then asked if he had come directly from Venus to Earth in that?
He shook his head in the negative and made me understand that this craft had been brought into Earth’s atmosphere in a larger ship... So I asked if the large craft might be called a ‘Mother‘ ship?
He seemed to understand the word ‘mother ‘for now his nod of affirmation was accompanied by an understanding smile."
Donald Keyhoe’s 1953 book, Flying Saucers from Outer Space contained several passages discussing mother ships seriously besides Wilbert Smith’s comments:
“Mother ships, large rocket or ‘cigar-shaped’ machines usually reported at very high altitudes. Sizes estimated by trained observers, from 600 feet to more than 1,000 feet in length; some indications they may be much larger. Color, silvery. Speed recorded by radar, over 9,000 m.p.h., with visual estimates of more than 20,000. No violent maneuvers reported.”
George Adamski claimed to have photographed a Venusian mothership releasing saucers on March 5, 1951, but waited until the release of his 1955 book, Inside the Space Ships to disclose the images to the public. He also revealed an alien told him how their scout ships operated:
“These smaller craft are incapable of generating their own power to any great extent and make only relatively short trips from their carriers before returning for recharge. They are used for a kind of shuttle service between the large ships and any point of contact or observation, and are always dependent on full recharging from the power plant of the Mothership.”
With George Adamski and Donald Keyhoe both supporting the same flying saucer concepts, the interplanetary mothership took its place in UFO canon. Stephen Spielberg found the idea interesting enough that he used the appearance of massive mothership UFO as the climax of his 1977 film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. From there, the UFO mothership has become a cultural mainstay.
There are always new people being drawn into the UFO field with little familiarity in the work that has gone before. Time and again, old thoroughly debunked UFO tales gets rediscovered by a careless or clueless researcher, becoming "news" in a never-ending cycle.
A short clip from the Warner Brothers library, edited as commentary by Claude Falkstrom, "On ufology and progress."
James A. Lee (1900 -1979) is one of the ufologists that time forgot. When Lee is mentioned in UFO literature, it’s generally for his role in investigating the famous UFO case in Levelland, Texas. Even then, it’s often only in passing, as in these two books from key authors on the saucer subject:
Flying Saucers: Top Secret by Donald Keyhoe, 1960, chapter, November Crisis:
“The great ‘flap’ of 1957 began on November 2... It began near Levelland, Texas, on Highway 116. The cases described were confirmed for NICAP by Sheriff Weir Clem and NICAP member James Lee, exactly as they were reported to the Air Force.”
J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience A Scientific Inquiry, 1972, Footnote #6 to chapter 10, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
There is much more to the story of James A. Lee and his research, but only a fraction of it was documented, mostly through newspaper stories. Thanks to the work of STTF’s Claude Falkstrom, we've pieced together a clearer picture of Lee and his UFO work.
A Student of the Universe
James A. Lee was born near Abilene, Texas, and had an interest in science and the mysteries of the universe. In 1929 he began selling healthcare accessories, and in 1941 opened the the Lee Medical Supply Company, which sold hearing aids, “rubber household gloves, walking canes and many other items, Lee was also a life-long amateur short-wave radio operator, from 1924 on his “ham” radio to communicate with others as far away as Hawaii.
James A. Lee, 1965
Lee was a member of the the Ancient and Mystic Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC). On their behalf, in 1933 Lee presented a copy of Rosicrucian Principles for the Home and Business to the local library to help spread the word. Lee’s studies over three decades of exotic books helped him develop a hypothesis for the origin of tornadoes in 1954. He was convinced that scientists were wrong about space being a vacuum, and that it was filled by Ether, the solvent of all matter. Tornadoes were leftover energy from God’s creation of the world: “When the earth was created, space or the ethers began to spin... this whirling element measured millions and millions of miles across. He went on to say that, “There is no such force as gravity... All things are forced to the earth by the vortex of ethers...” Therefore, when conditions were right, it was these whirling ethers that sometimes formed tornadoes.
Lee’s radio hobby developed into a network in the early 1950s “composed of hams (amateur radio operators) throughout the Southwest who are interested in technical and scientific data. Hams from at least 42 cities and towns take part in the information-swapping sessions which start a 9 p.m. Mondays. Lee was the informal leader of the group which “ delved into science, UFOs, astronomy and other related subjects.” They originally called themselves “The Screwball Net” for several years, but around 1955 adopted a new name, “The Interplanetary Space Patrol.”
Space and Saucers
Lee was a member of the National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), the relatively conservative UFO organization headed by retired Major Donald Keyhoe, the man who popularized the hypothesis that: flying saucers were real, they came for outer space, and that the US government covered it up. Lee followed Keyhoe’s lead, and he spoke about publicly about the UFO topic, including it in his lecture for the Hardin–Simmons University’s Science Club, “A Study of the Universe” on March 1, 1957.
Saucers were just part of Lee’s interest in space, though. In March 1957, he was seeing to gather thirty volunteersand $1,500 to establish a “Moonwatch station” in Abilene to monitor the planned US launch of earth satellites which were to begin launching in January 1958. The chairman of the Smithsonian Institute’s technical steering committee met with Lee in Abilene and added his support. Selection of volunteers began in April.
May took Lee back to the UFO business, and he travelled to George Van Tassel’s Interplanetary Spacecraft convention at Giant Rock in California. Contactee Howard Menger was one of the feature speakers, but James Lee wasn’t listening. According to theInternational News Service story published in The Tyler Morning Telegraph, May 5, 1957:
“James A. Lee of Abilene, Texas was cruising the desert area in his special car rigged with an ‘infrared beam’ detector designed to track spacecraft that may have been spying on the flying saucer meeting.” (More later about Lee’s “Space Wagon.”)
A Message from Space
The Soviets beat the US into space, and in October 4, James Lee was one of the ham radio operators listening to the transmitted beeps of the satellite Sputnik 1 as it orbited the earth. James A. Lee had a lecture on UFOs scheduled for Sunday Nov. 3 at 2 p.m. at the Terry County Amateur Radio Club at Brownfield, Texas. The night before, two space-related things happened. Sputnik 2 launched from Russia on November 3, 1957, and at almost the same time, one of the most famous UFO sightings occurred in the United States, in the Levelland, Texas area, just 29 miles away from whereLee was to lecture.
Late in the evening of November 2, 1957, several independent reports of a giant lighted object were phoned into the office of Sheriff Weir Clem in Levelland, Texas. Some of the callers reported that their vehicle’s engines were stopped during the sighting, apparently electromagnetic interference. Here’s a link to summary of the Levelland case hosted at the NICAP site. It’s by J. Allen Hynek from his 1972 book, The UFO Experience, pages 123-128.
Levelland Video from WKY-TV:
Sheriff Weir Clem and witness Newell Wright interviewed
On hearing of the UFO sightings, Lee rushed to Levelland and shadowed Sheriff Clem as he questioned the witnesses. Lee was interviewed for the radio and newspapers, and stories appeared in nationally via news services. Lee made the bold assertion that the Levelland UFO “was a space craft from one of the neighboring planets.” Lee phoned in a report to NICAP, and the case was the lead story in their magazine, The UFO Investigator, Jan. 1958.
“Unfortunately for Donald Keyhoe, the one NICAP investigator on the scene in Texas was a Mr. James Lee of Abilene. Lee was not the most objective UFO detective. Compounding the problem was the fact Lee headed his own UFO group, 'The Interplanetary Space Patrol,' a name which sounded like a TV show starring Captain Video. Lee was his own 'boss' thus hard to rein in. Statements on November 6th was more about "mass space ship" invasions then discussions of evidence, but while written documents by Lee may have to be treated with caution, it seems he and his fellow investigator Roger Bowen tape recorded interviews with Levelland witnesses, data of value if they are ever found in someone's attic today.”
The Ballinger UFO Investigation
Another UFO sighting in the area was discovered, one from Nov. 1, about 230 miles to thesoutheast of Levelland. A big mysterious light had been seen over an oil rig in Ballinger, Texas, and once again, Lee traveled to investigate.Loren Gross' UFOs: A History: 1957: November 7th-12thprovides clippings and commentary on the Ballinger UFO investigation.
“NICAP's James Lee rolled into Ballinger, Texas, on the 8th of November to gather more data. It was hard to miss Lee when he came to town. He drove a 1949 Cadillac with special control panel just above the dashboard. The panel was filled with gadgets, dials, and all sorts of controls. Lee nicknamed the vehicle the "Space Wagon." The controls were for more than just show. Lee had a complex short-wave radio transmitter in his car so he could communicate with other ham operators.
Lee had plenty of opinions about UFOs but that didn’t mean he was speaking with Keyhoe's blessing.”
A prime example of Lee speaking his opinions without NICAP's blessing from The Abilene Reporter-News, Nov. 9, 1957:
James A. Lee... whose hobby is the study of flying saucers makes these assertions he says are based on interviews with various witnesses of the saucer occurrences:
1. That "there is a probability something big will happen this month," as "indicated" by messages received from the unidentified flying objects by certain U.S. residents.
2. "Beings" in the saucers have learned English and their voices exist on recorded tapes in this country.
3. Saucers must be from other planets, possibly Mars or Venus, and the smaller saucers ostensibly sighted on earth are remotely-controlled by mother ships.
4. The Pentagon in Washington was deliberately “buzzed” by saucers several years ago.
The Abilene Reporter-News, Nov. 9, 1957
The Final Years
For some reason, by 1958 James Lee’s enthusiasm for the Moonwatch project died. He said, “I don’t think such a station is necessary now. You can see these satellites without using complicated equipment. Lee also had a negative opinion of rockets for space travel, saying, “They’re not practical for space travel.” He thought solar or magnetic powered flight was the way to go.
The Abilene Reporter-News, Feb. 2, 1958
Lee continued to lecture, speaking about astronomy, outer space, and sometimes, saucers. He continued to be a member of NICAP and responded to their 1961 request for ham radio operators to attempt the creation of a national “UFO Network,” similar to the one he ran in Texas.
NICAP’s The UFO Investigator, July-Aug. 1961
The Abilene Reporter-News, Jan. 1, 1965
Lee continued to be a UFO proponent, but was less active publicly. Due to health problems, Lee retired from his medical supply business in 1969. He died ten years later on September 5, 1979.
The July 7, 1965, Abilene Reporter-News contained a letter to the editor by Lee replying to a news story containing authorities' prosaic explanations for flying saucers. James A. Lee's last known comments on UFOs blasted the skeptics. “Weather balloons? How ridiculous can intelligent people be?
The Abilene Reporter-News, July 7, 1965 . . .
Sources, Clippings and Further Information
The most detailed news story on James A. Lee and his UFO work appeared in The Abilene Reporter-News, Nov. 6, 1957. The complete text follows.
Did Abilenian's Talk Bring Levelland ‘Saucer’?
By Warren Burkett, Reporter-News Staff Writer
The "dateline" is Abilene, Texas, November 6, 1957.
Here is the statement:
"We are referring to the statement of Dr. Donald Menzel of Harvard College Observatory. His remarks to the effect that the Texas 'Bright Lights' are nothing more than a mirage is, to say the least, ridiculous and not based on known facts.
"The days of the skeptics are numbered and they had better find a good place to hide away, for even the entire population of our large cities will see these ships as they come in from outer space. They will soon come in large numbers for all to see, and the skeptics will not have a leg left to stand on.
"There is no need for alarm over the situation at this time."
This statement, given Wednesday morning to one of the nation's news wire services, is signed: "Jim Lee, Director, Interplanetary Space Patrol."
Jim Lee, director, Interplanetary Space Patrol is James Lee of 1834 Bellinger St. in Abilene. He is a 57-year-old businessman, tall and grey-haired. He was born in the tiny community of Hodges about 15 miles north of Abilene. He is married and has two sons, went as far as the 10th grade in Hodges school, buys and reads every book published by Harvard University, talks about his family with loving pride, studies until midnight every night and sleeps beneath one of the largest headboard bookcases in existence reaching almost to the wall on either side of his bed.
He builds amateur radio sets and helped a blind man build and operate his own radio set and provides him with recorded tapes from the books in Lee's library He speaks in a calm reasonable fashion things. about the doggondest things.
He's currently in the news from Boston. Mass, to California be cause of the mysterious lights which were seen Saturday night and Sunday morning near Levelland, Tex. By 5 p.m. Sunday,Lee accompanied by blind Roger Bowen, 38, of Hodges, reached Levelland. There they interviewed all who had seen the lights, felt their effects and speculated on what they saw.
Lee is convinced these Levelland lights are a space ship from another planet. He notes that the glowing object was seen on four roads around Levelland. And being seen was the purpose of the visit from these interplanetary visitors, says Lee.
Lee says these aerial phenomena are often seen where Lee and others who believe like himself are scheduled to speak on 1. "unidentified flying objects," 2. visitors from outer space and 3. un known beings who direct the operation of the "lights in the sky" with a plan and a purpose.
Why should these "beings" make the "lights" appear near where they are to be discussed? "It's a mailer of conditioning the minds of the people," Lee says. "Remember," he declared, "I don't buy all these stories. That's the problem, we get took in quite often." But, says Lee, where there are qualified observers such as newsmen, law enforcement officers or reports confirmed by ship or airplane radar, he believes.
Why did the lights appear Saturday and Sunday? Lee was scheduled to deliver his illustrated lecture on "unidentified flying objects" to the Terry County Amateur Radio Club at Brownfield, 29 miles south of Levelland. Why did the "space ships" appear at Levelland instead of Brownfield? Lee says the roads are more traveled around Levelland, and the "lights" would be seen by more people.
And Lee's free lecture in this tiny radio club shack at Brownfield was delivered at 2 p.m. that Sunday afternoon, complete with his forecast that more of the objects would be sighted. About 150 persons heard him, Lee says.
Lee has been called by more than a dozen radio stations scattered all across the United States since he returned from Levelland, equipped with tape-recorded statements from the people who saw the lights.
"I can tell you it takes guts to say these things," Lee declares, "I'm hubbing up against the big shots now." He's contradicted statements from engineers and scientists including Dr. Donald H. Menzel, director of the Harvard College Observatory, a man big in Lee's own field of self-study for 20 years, astronomy. And that's about the same length of time he's been fascinated by the thoughts of space travel.
If Lee's contention that the mysterious lights are being used to condition the people of the world to the appearance of things from outer space, Abilene may see the lights next Monday night. That's the next meeting date for the Interplanetary Space Patrol, a group of 100 amateur radio operators who tune together around the world each Monday night at 9 p.m. and talk about space visitors. This Monday is the night when Lee's special guest will be Ray Stanford of Corpus Christi, a 19-year-old man who spotted a "flying saucer" on Padre Island, off Texas' Gulf Coast, in 1954.
The Project Blue Book file on the Levelland case makes no direct mention of James A. Lee, but it contains several news clippings featuring his investigation and opinions on the sighting.
From 1954 to 1960, there were three UFO teleplays by the same author, Dewitt Copp, a flying saucer witness himself, a pilot and author with an interesting career path. The bio of DeWitt S. Copp, 1916-1999 from his book, Frank M. Andrews: Marshall’s Airman, 2003:
"The name DeWitt Copp is known within the Air Force community primarily as the author of the widely acclaimed two volume series on the development of air power before and during World War II, A Few Great Captains and Forged in Fire, first published in the early 1980s by the Air Force Historical Foundation. Earlier, Mr. Copp, known as “Pete” to his friends, had served as a pilot in the Army Air Forces during World War II and afterwards wrote a number of books and films on military and civilian aviation. A onetime history teacher and global newsman, he worked in Europe and the Far East as a correspondent for the Washington weekly Human Events, and for the North American Newspaper Alliance. His novels Radius of Action and The Far Side won wide acclaim here and abroad, and his drama, The Long Flight, was featured on NBC television. He also served for several years as a member of the former Air Force Historical Advisory Committee. He lived in Manchester Center, Vermont, with his wife Susan, until his death in 1999."
“Copp has served on the staff of "Voice of America" as a writer-editor and with the United States Information Agency as policy officer on Soviet disinformation.”
Copp’s obituary in the New York Times provided many additional details of interest:
"Mr. Copp wrote more than 30 books, fiction and nonfiction, and many articles about the cold war and espionage, as well as another passion, aviation. A flight instructor and pilot, he served in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Later as the international marketing director of the Weather Engineering Corporation, he helped develop equipment that created artificial rain by using airplanes that dropped silver-iodide crystals into clouds."
After discussing some of his non-fiction works, there’s a casual mention of some of his other jobs:
"Mr. Copp also taught history and civics at St. Luke's School in Wilton, Conn., and worked for the Central Intelligence Agency."
Exactly when the CIA work began they did not say. In the early 1950s, Copp was having a good run selling teleplays to the networks. He also did volunteer work with the Ground Observer Corps. Due to the Soviet menace, once again civilians were asked to watch the skies:
Ground Observer Corps was reformed during the Cold War as an arm of the United States Air Force Civil Defense network which provided aircraft tracking with over 200,000 civilian volunteers... established in early 1950... By 1952 the program was expanded in Operation Skywatch with over 750,000 volunteers... The program ended in 1958 with the advent of the automated 1959 USAF radar network...
(From the description of the Civil Defense Ground Observer Corps film, “The Sky is Your Target,” by PeriscopeFilm.)
Illustrations from LIFE magazine, Feb 8, 1943.
New Canaan, Connecticut, is a residential suburb just forty miles from downtown Manhattan, and it housed a Ground Observer Corps tower, with a glass enclosed platform from which volunteers could operate. On Dec. 30, 1955, DeWitt Copp was on watch there when he spotted something spectacular:
The Kokomo Tribune, June 20, 1956
“TV-Radio Highlights” by Margaret Burhman
U.F.O.
Perhaps by chance, Copp had written an episode of a television crime show featuring a flying saucer that was broadcast the year before. It was a fictional story, with a premise similar to his own sighting, a volunteer skywatcher who’d seen a flying saucer.
“Man Against Crime” (later syndicated as “Follow That Man”) was a half-hour crime drama featuring the adventures of hard-boiled detective, Mike Barnett. Copp’s episode aired in early 1954, and was titled, “U.F.O.”
The Honolulu Advertiser March 14, 1954
'Man Against Crime’ Concerns Flying Saucer
Mike Barnett, played by Ralph Bellamy, becomes involved with a flying saucer and other unidentified flying objects during “U.F.O.” episode on the NBC-TV “Man Against Crime” series tonight on KONA Channel 11. at 9:30.A high school professor reports a flying saucer during his turn as an airplane spotter, but is ridiculed by the townsfolk. Barnett is asked to investigate.The search starts with the finding of mysterious footprints and a dead man. Barnett solves the death in a surprising finish, but still wonders about flying saucers.
The episode itself is rare, but the best later description of it seems to be from The Early Shows: by Richard Irvin, 2018: “Mike Barnett and journalist Ed Butler investigate a reported sighting of an unidentified flying object. They find that two men — Phil Rice (Phil Lipson) and Tom Gorman (Jim Boles) were attempting to prank a professor into thinking he witnessed a UFO.”
The Kinross Incident
DeWitt Copp had his own UFO sighting in Dec. of 1955, but the same month an important book was released. In it, Donald E. Keyhoe introduced the Kinross incident as a UFO case in The Flying Saucer Conspiracy:
"It was the evening of November 23, (1953) and wintry darkness had settled over Michigan. At an isolated radar station Air Defense operators were watching their scope in a routine guard against possible enemy attack. Suddenly the "blip" of an unknown machine appeared on the glass screen... In less than two minutes an F-89 from Kimross (sic) Field was streaking toward the locks. At the jet's controls was Lieutenant Felix Moncla, Jr., a veteran at 26. Behind him was Lieutenant R. R. Wilson, 22-year-old Oklahoman, acting as radar observer. ... the strange craft changed course... The UFO, flying as fast as a jet airliner, was heading toward Lake Superior... the F-89 raced after it... Nine more minutes ticked by... The two blips had suddenly merged into one... locked together, as if in a smashing collision... boats joined the hunt as American and Canadian flyers crisscrossed a hundred-mile area. But no trace was ever found of the missing men, the F-89--or the unknown machine..."
The Air Force did not consider the missing plane a UFO case, and had no file for it in Project Blue Book. There’s brief mention of it in another case file, though.
Donald Keyhoe made the incident famous, a staple of UFO literature, and there’s no doubt that Dewitt Copp was influenced by it. Fran Ridge’s NICAP site hosts a page with an excellent collection of links to coverage of the controversy: UFO Intercept/Missing F-89 Case, November 23, 1953, Kinross AFB, Michigan
Keyhoe’s book also introduced many to “angel hair,” supposedly dropped by UFOs. “A mass of a strange white substance... Apparently the ‘angel's hair’ was some kind of a fuel exhaust confined specifically to the cigar-shaped saucers.” He described how in one case, the witnesses reported a saucer that “left a 3-mile trail of milky-white asbestos-like strands which settled over trees, bushes, and telephone lines.” They recovered a sample. “When they pulled one strand into a thread... it could hardly be broken. But a few moments after they had touched it, the substance disappeared.”
Flying Object At Three O'Clock High
After his own sighting in 1955, Copp was driven to write a teleplay about UFOs. To do so, he conducted some research and worked some UFO cases and terminology into the script. Besides Keyhoe’s book, he was reading ORBIT, the monthly newsletter by Leonard Stringfield of Civilian Research, Interplanetary Flying Objects (CRIFO)
Instead of appearing in a science fiction program, Copp’s story reached a mainstream audience on a well-respected NBC program. Kraft Television Theatre was an anthology, broadcast live, presenting a different teleplay each week. Perhaps the most interesting aspect is that NBC chose to highlight the author in the promotion of the episode, particularly in regards to the fact that he was an experienced aviator - but especially the part about Copp being a UFO witness himself.
The Indianapolis Star June 20, 1956
The Pittsburgh Press June 20, 1956
From a period newspaper listing for the show, which neglected to mention the role played by actor George Peppard, who also appeared in it, one of his earliest screen roles:
"Kraft TV Theatre — Everett Sloane, Biff McGuire, Robert Simon in 'Flying Object At Three O'clock High,' story of an Air Force investigation of a collision between an unidentified flying object and a plane carrying secret data to Washington, WRCA-TV (4), 9 p.m."
The story opened with two radar operatives watching in horror as a UFO swallowed up an F-101 on their screen. Jets were scrambled to pursue the UFO, but were unable to catch it. Biff McGuire played the reporter trying to cover the story, while Everett Sloane played the Colonel protecting the Air Force’s deep secrets about flying saucers. The episode was well-received, and both the UFO community and the Air Force had something to say about it. The New York-based Civilian Saucer Intelligence wrote in CSI News Letter, June 24, 1956:
"UFO Fiction on TV: On Wednesday, June 20, at P.M., Kraft Theatre (Channel 4) presented drama called 'Flying Object at 3 O'clock High', by DeWitt Copp. The plot concerned the "kidnapping" of an Air Force jet by UFO, and the Air Force's attempts to hush up the affair. Although the play went off the deep end during the last act, showing the pilot returned by the UFO in dying condition, up to that point it was outstanding in its adherence to reality. The Kinross case and the angel-hair phenomenon were referred to. The Air Force was depicted (following Keyhoe) as knowing all about the extraterrestrial nature of the saucers, but paternalistically keeping it from the public's knowledge. The acting was on decidedly more convincing level than that in (Unidentified Flying Objects: The True Story of Flying Saucers) the Greene-Rouse film. Mr. Copp and Kraft deserve our thanks for well-done job showing knowledge and taste. Probably its qualities were lost on the public at large, if we may judge by Jack O'Brian's review (N.Y, Journal-American): he found it 'an extended Space Cadet caper.'"
Project Blue Book mentioned the show in passing in a report from Colonel H.K. Gilbert, dated 16 October 1956, “ Subject Analysis of Material Allegedly from Flying Saucer.” He notes that:
“In August of this year, the Kraft TV hour, among others, gave this so called “angels – hair” nationwide attention in a science fiction drama whereby this gossamer-like substance is shown vanishing without leaving any residue before the eyes of ATIC chiefs.
Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond was a half-hour ABC anthology series, and its specialty was stories of the occult or the paranormal. UFOs were a bit out of their range, but Copp wrote an atmospheric piece that fit well with the mood of the series.
Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond“Encounter” April 12, 1960
From the newspaper description of the episode:
"An airplane pilot is mysteriously abducted out of the sky, disappears for days, then suddenly reappears minus his plane 1,000 miles from his last known position in "Encounter." The pilot had taken that 'one step beyond.' Robert Douglas, a fine character actor, lends his talent to this strange tale. He has the role of the pilot's boss."
Fortunately, this broadcast is much more readily available than Copp’s other UFO shows, and can even be found on YouTube.
All the UFO action takes place offscreen, but there’s a discussion of flying saucers, the Kinross case, in particular, and once again, “angel hair” is a big part of the story. When the missing pilot somehow reappears days later a thousand miles away, the team flies to pick him up. On the way, Blake, the pilot, muses about flying saucers, “We’re on the verge of space exploration ourselves. Why is it so hard to believe that others may have beaten us to it?”
Copp's plot sounds like it was another take on his earlier story for Kraft, the abduction of a pilot by a UFO, but minus the military cover-up angle. It also bears a a great similarity to Graham Doar’s “The Outer Limit,” but as if it were told solely from the point of view of the people on the ground, not from the pilot. The mystery that “proves” the involvement of aliens is the same, though; the return of a vanished pilot long after he should have perished due to his plane running out of fuel.
“Encounter” seems to be Copp’s last UFO story, though. He wrote one other TV show in 1963, but otherwise focused on his books which were chiefly about aviation, espionage and war. about the closest thing to UFOs would be his 1978 book, A Different Kind of Rain, which was fiction, but based on Copp’s own experience of weaponizing weather by seeding clouds.
DeWitt Copp, died at the age of 80 in Burlington, Vermont on Nov. 29, 1999.
Postscript
Maybe this is one for the weird coincidences department, but Dewitt Copp had an interesting association with a notable government figure with ties to the intelligence community and to UFO studies. When Captain Edward J. Ruppelt was preparing his 1956 book, The Report On Unidentified Flying Objects, he made notes on the significant players, including the ones behind the scenes. One of them was Dr. Stefan T. Possony:
"Steve Possony was the acting chief of the D/I (Directorate of Intelligence) special study group and he had a direct channel to (General John A.) Samford. Steve was pretty much sold on the whole thing. He did a lot of investigating on his own hook and he had Father Hayden (Francis J. Heyden), the astronomer, as his special consultant. Steve and his crew used to cruise all over the U.S. and Europe and during these travels they picked up a lot. Steve was behind (Dewey) Fournet 100% and tended to push him. He was smart enough to know that the UFO situation was hot so he used Fournet, who was a reserve and didn’t plan to stay in the Air Force any longer than he had to, to try out his ideas. Possony didn’t much care what he said, however, and he used to go to battle with any or all of the more vocal skeptics. He really got teed off at (Dr. Donald Menzel) and went to all ends to find out everything about the man. It turned out to be very interesting. Possony had a good reputation in the Air Force. Besides being a fairly sharp intelligence man, he is a professor at Georgetown University and he has written quite a bit on strategy and concepts of airpower."
Here’s a clipping showing Copp and Possony together on the staff of the American Security Council: Washington Report, a right-wing anti-communist organization.
In the introduction to his article, “The Invisible Hand of Strategy. A Brief Introduction to Psychology Strategy”, Defence and Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy. No. 1, January 31, 1996, they described him in this way:
"DR STEFAN T. POSSONY, one of the founders of both Defense & Foreign Affairs publications and the International Strategic Studies Association, was called "the greatest strategic philosopher of the 20th Century". But he was also one of the very few people who looked at the overall discipline of "psychological strategy", and all of its component parts, including propaganda, disinformation, psychological warfare, psychological operations: however they are defined."
It's interesting that two saucer buffs like Dr. Possony and Dewitt Copp wound up working together, but then, it's a small world.
