In 1950, the public had been told that flying saucers are real, but there was even more exciting news circulating. A scientist disclosed that four spaceships had been captured by the US government - and we should expect another flying saucer landing soon. The story was issued by United Press (UP) and published as front page news by many papers across the USA on October 20, 1950.
Hartford Courant Oct. 20, 1950
The Minneapolis Star Oct. 20 1950
The "scientist" was oil man Silas M. Newton, billed in the news as a geophysicist. The Newton story began circulating in late 1949, and spread faster than a virus, and by early 1950, several variations of it were in circulation.
... the story got from Silas Newton to J. Edgar Hoover: Newton told George Koehler (employed at radio station KMYR in Denver), who told Morley Davies, who told Ford dealers Murphy and van Horn, who told auto dealer Fick, who told the editor of the Kansas City Wyandotte Echo. By that time, Koehler had become "Coulter," just like a game of "gossip" (or a game of "pi")!
This article was picked up in the news, where it caught the interest of the OSI. The OSI agent passed the story on to Guy Hottel of the FBI, and he gave the 8th-hand story to Hoover. http://www.nmsr.org/aztec.htm
The FBI Hottel Memo
A version of Silas Newton's story was recorded by agent Guy Hottel of the FBI New Orleans office on March 31, 1950. It's a real document, but it has often been misrepresented, taken out of context. Since it surfaced in the 1970s, the "Hottel Memo" has been frequently cited as evidence of a government cover-up of recovered UFOs, and also falsely linked to another incident, the alleged flying saucer crash known as the "Roswell Incident."
The document itself can be viewed at the FBI Vault:
Silas Newton's story really caught fire when it was picked up in a national magazine. Frank Scully was a Hollywood gossip columnist, with "Scully's Scrapbook" dishing up tinsel town gab for Variety magazine. Scully was also a respected reviewer of literature and wrote a few books of his own. In 1949, he published two Variety columns on the discovery of flying saucers (Aztec) and a follow-up piece Jan. 11, 1950 with 20 questions he thought the Air Force should answer, accusing the US Government of covering things up.
Newton and Scully
Those columns laid the foundation for what is arguably, the most influential book in UFO history, Behind the Flying Saucers, the original story of the cover-up of small alien bodies retrieved from captured UFOs in New Mexico. The tale also featured other elements that would later resurface in the resurrection and expansion of the story of the saucer debris taken to Roswell, such as the recovery and scientific examination of the spaceship's strange light metal, advanced technology and the dead aliens it contained.
The saucer story itself was thin, barely fleshed out from Scully's sketchy columns, but he added details about how oilman Silas Newton had heard about the discs from the mysterious magnetic research scientist Scully called "Dr. Gee," and there was extensive discussion of how the saucers were constructed on the "System of Nines," and flew using magnetic propulsion. Newton was interested in using that alien magnetic technology to detect oil, and that would come to play an important role in his future.
The story was a hoax, part of a scam by Newton to provide an exotic technological origin for the "doodlebug" he was selling with partner Leo GeBauer, a device that was supposed to magnetically detect oil deposits beneath the earth. He was tried and found guilty of fraud in 1953.
Before: Co-defendant Leo GeBauer, his attorney, and Silas Newton
After: Newton Sentenced
Here's a short version of the Silas Newton Aztec hoax, a non-UFO article examining the episode as just as an oil swindle. It's from the site of the The American Oil & Gas Historical Society:
Although the hoax had its critics, it took two years before it was debunked by J.P. Cahn in "The Flying Saucers and the Mysterious Little Men" in True Magazine, Sept. 1952, and in a follow-up piece in True Magazine, Aug. 1956, "Flying Saucer Swindlers." Newton and Scully exploited the hopes and fears of those interested in the UFO mystery, promoting the belief that extraterrestrials were visiting Earth and that there was a Government conspiracy to hide it. When the hoax was exposed, the story was largely forgotten, but the alien and cover-up concepts were adopted as canonical beliefs. The Air Force was portrayed as a villain in Newton's story and Scully's book, and it continued to be a source of irritation. In 1965, answering a request for information about it, the Air Force replied:
For more on the Frank Scully book, see the previous STTF article,
As for Silas Newton's 1950 prediction that a flying saucer would soon land, he was off. It happened in 1952, according to the story told by George Adamski.
In part one, we examined The First UFO Documentary: The Flying Saucer Mystery. During the big UFO flap of 1952, the documentary got a new life with the help of Sterling Films. Billboard magazine, Aug 23, 1952, announced the film had been revised for a new release.
The new version was longer at 12½ minutes and featured many changes. Since their first release, the Air Force had officially announced it was back in the UFO investigation business with Project Blue Book, so there was a lot to cover.
The narration was new, and several scenes were replaced with new sequences, such as the report by witness Oskar Linke and author Frank Scully. It also featured footage from the July 29, 1952, press conference given by Air Force Major General John A. Samford, the one given to address the Washington, D.C. UFO radar incidents. There was also some new evidence, a UFO picture taken by Shell Alpert, a U.S. Coast Guard, photographer, and another captured by August C. Roberts (an early member of Al Bender’s International Flying Saucer Bureau).
Shell Alpert and his UFO photo
Oskar Linke’s story was carried newspapers across the US in July, a sensation because up until that time, there had been no credible reports of contact with saucer occupants. Linke said that he and his daughter “saw two figures who appeared to be wearing metallic overalls” get in the saucer and take flight. US headlines stated, “Now Saucers Carry Pilots” and “Flying Disc, Crew, Seen By Red Refugees.” Interestingly, it was later made clear that Linke’s sighting had occurred way back on June 17, 1950, but he was afraid to talk about it until away from the Soviets.
Gabriele and Oskar Linke, and The Argus, Melbourne, Australia June 30, 1952
Perhaps the most peculiar addition to the 1952 version was the inclusion of author Frank Scully, but besides Donald Keyhoe, he was the most prominent UFO personality at the time. Scully talked about the Air Force’s orders that UFOs be intercepted, then went into his position that saucers were flown by aliens, probably an ancient civilization advanced far beyond earth.
The film’s character was markedly different than the 1950 version. They did have Dr. Scott for skeptical balance, but it seemed that the producers read the April 7, 1952, Life magazine article that asked,”Have We Visitors From Space?” Their answer was yes.
As we did with the 1950 release, we've prepared a transcript of the 1952 revision. Below is a list of the people in the 1952 version and the time they appear in the film:
0:55 Gen. John A. Samford, USAF (news clip) 1:06 Donald E. Keyhoe (news clip) 1:12 Admiral Calvin Bolster, USN (1950 clip) 1:35, 4:04 Arthur Weisberger, witness (1950 clip) 5:05 August C. Roberts, witness 5:22 Oskar Linke and his daughter, Gabriele, witnesses 6:40 Frank Scully, author,”Behind the Flying Saucers” 7:47 Noel W. Scott, U.S. Army Engineers physicist 9:48 Gen. John A. Samford, USAF (news clip) 10:38 Donald E. Keyhoe, “The Flying Saucers are Real” (1950 clip)
Transcript: The Flying Saucer Mystery, 1952
Narrator:
From out of nowhere flying saucer mystery is with us. What is the flying saucer? What do people see, and sometimes photograph? What's behind the daily reports of aerialphenomena in the nation's press? After more than five years of study, there is still no
agreement even among the experts.
General James A. Samford:
“We can say that the recent sightings are in no way connected with any secret
development by any agency of the United States.
Donald E. Keyhoe:
“With all due respect to the Air Force, I believe that some of them will prove to be of interplanetary origin.”
Admiral Calvin Bolster, USN:
“In my position in the research and development organization of the Bureau ofAeronautics and of the Navy Department I am thoroughly familiar with both our aircraft and our guided missile programs, and can state without reservation that the Navy has no saucer-shaped aircraft or missile in any of these programs.”
Arthur Weisberger:
“I glanced up and there were three flying saucers in a V, approximately a half a mile away from me at an altitude of 350 feet. They appeared to be hovering in midair with that I believe to be a spinning action.”
Narrator:
What are these shadowy voyagers of the atmosphere? While our forefathers were
still dreaming of flight decades ago, they sketched these aerial vehicles of the future. Strangely, some of them resemble the saucers of today. When we went to work to make reality out of these dreams, we fashioned crude rocket-propelled devices such as these. While unsuccessful in themselves, they proved to be our first humbling efforts to master the techniques in jet and rocket propulsion. If the flying saucers are of this earth, this may be how they were born, with their later growth and maturity cloaked in official secrecy.
When the smoke of the war blew away in 1945, we found ourselves suddenly arrived in
the age of rocket propulsion. However, since then, the lid has been on. Other than announcements of ever-increasing altitudes reached by the rockets, we have had no reports. Though we know millions are being spent on them. To our knowledge, the engines in the B-47 are the most powerful in use today. Yet the announced speed of this aeroplane is only 600 miles per hour, a mere fraction of the velocity of the discs. Only if radically new area of dynamics are in use, could the discs be powered by jet engines of today.
This is a thunder-jet executing a loop, hazardous on a jet plane because of the centrifugal force, the pilot must withstand during the pull-out, yet characteristic of the saucers is their fantastic maneuverability. Discs moving at many times the speed of sound suddenly reverse direction. Flight surgeons say any human pilot attempting this would perish instantly. Likewise, saucer reporters agree that the new jet helicopter was not what they saw. If not conventional aircraft then, what did they see?
Arthur Weisberger:
“They appeared to be 50 feet in diameter, with what appeared to be a dome on the top with, I can't be sure but, I believe I saw the sun glinting off of, well, windows or observation portholes of a sort.”
(Trent photos)
Narrator:
is this what Weisberger saw? This disc was photographed by an Oregon farmer as it hovered low over his field. Experts say these are actual photographs of a flying saucer. The farmer sighted the same spinning action and estimated the diameter of the disc at 20 to 30 feet.
(Al Hixenbaugh film)
In Kentucky, a motion picture photographer attracted by a strange noise overhead trained his camera on this disc. Here, the wobbling motion mentioned in so many reports is clearly seen.
(Shell Alpert photo)
A Coast Guard photographer snapped this phenomena when it appeared briefly over Salem, Massachusetts. The incandescence seen here was bright enough to stand out in broad daylight.
(August C. Roberts photo)
What may have been the same phenomena was photographed at night by August Roberts who has this to say about it.
Interviewer (off camera):
“What do you think it was?
August C. Roberts:
“I think it was from outer space, but friendly.”
(Gabriele & Oskar Linke)
Narrator:
“Like many of the saucer reports, the latest and most credible have received comes not from America but from behind the Iron Curtain. Seen on the ground by the refugee mayor of a small East German town, its crew was startled by the screams of the mayor's daughter. The first eyewitnessed report of the supposed Soviet guided missile, tells of a saucer-shaped object.
Translator for Oskar Linke:
“The moment the crew disappeared in the cylinder, the disc rose with a humming noise, until the thing was standing on the cylinder like a big mushroom. Then, he said, the disc began rotating, red, blue and green flames bursted out from the holes in it. He thinks they were for its propulsion (?). He saw the thing rise straight up from the ground, and move off parallel with the ground. Once it had gained height, it moved faster, he said, than any fighter plane he has seen, and it made a terrible roaring noise.”
Narrator:
From such reports as these arise many theories to explain the discs. Undismayed by the attacks of True magazine, Frank Scully, author of a book Behind the Flying Saucers, offers his views.
Frank Scully:
“Now of course, if you assume that there’s no intelligence equal to ours anywhere else, everywhere else, in the universe, is to belittle the universe, because we don't show much intelligence, obviously. But, the likelihood of other planets elsewhere in other planetary systems and other universes of having not only what we got, but lots more, since the planets might be older, their intelligences could be much more mature, more advanced - they could have even passed through an atomic age long ago. Or, they could have been souls that never were fogged up like our Adam and Eve, and never went through all this. And if they are perfect souls elsewhere, the thing is, they're not killable they’re immortal already, so the idea of the Air Force telling them to shoot them down is idiotic.”
Narrator:
Next, a more conventional theory is advanced by physicist Noel Scott.
Noel W. Scott:
“The expression flying saucers is a catch-all term for unusual lights appearing in the sky. It is possible that some of these lights are caused by masses of electrically-charged particles of air. Electrified air can assume many different colors, such as yellow, red, pink, orange, green, and blue. This experiment demonstrates that charged masses of air can be made to move in formation, change course, change brightness, appear, disappear and reappear. These electrified masses of air produce no sound, but can be detected by radar. The atmospheric conditions necessary for producing this phenomena are certainly not prevailing conditions that exist in the upper atmosphere. However, it is not altogether improbable that there may be occasional local conditions responsible for this glow which might be interpreted as flying saucers.”
Narrator:
In the Engineer Research and Development Laboratories, Fort Belvoir, Virginia, Dr. Scott shows how to make your own flying saucers. Some say the apparitions are the result of light refracting from what is called an inversion layer, such as an oasis will appear in the desert. In a glass bell, Dr. Scott reproduces weather conditions which prevail during many of the recent sightings.
Dr. Scott's theories are correct. What you are looking at now is an actual flying saucer. It's possible that even the headlights of your car can create them. With the Air Force hard-pressed for an accounting of the mysterious invaders, this explanation is popular, but General James Samford points out even this theory does not explain all the reports.
General James A. Samford:
“However there have been a certain percentage of this volume of reports that have been made by credible observers of relatively incredible things. It is this group of observations that we now are attempting to resolve. We have as a 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 all of consistency that we can relate within it to any conceivable threat to the United States.”
Narrator:
According to the general, these weather balloons are the flying saucers that many people see. Still, he cautions that a few reports cannot be so easily explained. It is these reports that interest Donald Keyhoe, sponsor of a theory that is growing in popularity.
Donald E. Keyhoe:
“After a one year’s investigation, I believe that the flying saucers seen by veteran airline and Air Force pilots are objects from another planet. The Air Force itself has officially admitted that flying saucers exist. This statement appears in Project Saucer case number 75. Not only that, the Air Force has officially analyzed the motives of possible visitors from space. Here is a direct quotation from the official report:
‘Such a civilization might observe that on earth we now have atomic bombs and are fast developing rockets. In the past history of mankind, they should be alarmed. We should therefore expect at this time, above all, to behold such visitations.’”
(Atom bomb footage)
Narrator:
Is there another civilization somewhere in space, apprehensively watching our rapid progress with the atom? Are we under surveillance by an intelligence that has revealed itself to us only in the form of ghostly apparitions? Does this power foresee our ability to travel through space in rockets propelled by the atomic power we are learning to control? An incredible theory, and it is doubted by many, but it is not likely to be disproved in the public mind while our scientists are predicting interplanetary travel within the lifetime of those living today.
As the debate continues, so do reports of new saucers, some following in the pattern already established, others entirely new, creating more speculation and endless discussion. Project Saucer, the official Air Force investigation of the phenomena, has been reopened. Now, installations are alerted to attempt to intercept any of the strange visitors that may be sighted.
While millions listen and watch, the great flying saucer mystery remains unsolved.
(End)
. . .
For Further Information on the UFO Cases Featured in the 1952 Film
General James A. Samford UFO Press Conference, July 29, 1952:
Saturday Night Uforia has the text from Project Blue Book's files transcript.
A special thanks to Issac Koi for his help in obtaining the transcripts of the two versions of this documentary. Isaac has been working to preserve and share UFO literature and history for many years, and has several projects underway with the AFU in Sweden. Check the AFU site for a wealth of rare UFO documents and literature. http://files.afu.se/Downloads/
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.
The Saucers That Time Forgot series on Robert Spencer Carr and the revived UFO crash stories stemmed out of an investigation into when the name “Hangar 18” was first used. The first known published mention of Hangar 18 we located was in the news story reporting Robert S. Carr’s university debate about the reality of extraterrestrials visitations:
The Tampa Tribune Jan. 16, 1974: “Does USAF have UFOs?” by Frank Bentayou: “One of the best-kept secrets of the United States Government is that in Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, there are two flying saucers of unknown origin, a University of South Florida instructor said yesterday.”
If Carr wasn’t the first to name it, he is certainly responsible for making the name Hangar 18 famous. However, the notion that the US government had captured flying saucers goes much further back. Here are some of the most notable early claims of retrieved UFOs, especially those said to be hidden in an Air Force hangar.
1947: Fakes, Foil from Roswell, Slag from Maury Island and Beyond
Within weeks, maybe days, of Kenneth Arnold’s famous sighting, jokers and hoaxers got started producing fake flying saucers. Reports also came in from Roswell and elsewhere of balloon-launched rawin targets mistaken for flying saucers, with the fakes and mistakes often got more coverage than genuine sightings. Some of the stories talked about the discs being captured or turned over to authorities, and that fueled rumors that an actual flying saucer was in the hands of the military.
1949 - 1950
The January 8, 1950, edition of the Atchison, Kansas Daily Globe, reprinted the Dec. 31, 1949 Amarillo Globe-News page one story by editor Wes Izzard, an anonymously sourced account of the Silas Newton Aztec crashed saucer story:
“... the government has collected several flying saucers and are analyzing them at a secret base in California. This base is not far from Los Angeles.”
January 11, 1950: Variety, “Air Force Asked Twenty Questions” by Frank Scully:
4. Did the Air Force ever make public what the "Explosives," looking like a dismantled flying saucer, were, which they transported in army trucks from a western research base to Dayton, Ohio?
In Behind the Flying Saucers, Scully has a scene where he and Silas Newton meet with Dr. Gee for an interview.
Newton asked, "Where is the little ship?""We have that one in the laboratories at the present time," replied Dr. Gee. "As soon as I get your appointment through I will be authorized to let you inspect it."In time Newton's appointment came through, but by then the ship had been dismantled and reported shipped to Dayton, and all comment thereafter proscribed, denied, or ignored. (Dayton was referring to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.)
In the section summarizing saucer news stories, Scully mentions his own ‘Twenty Questions,” and comes closest to the Wright Field/Hangar 18 legend:
“Queries indicate that flying saucers were dismantled in New Mexico and Arizona and shipped back to Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio and never heard of since.”
Civilian Saucer Investigation's Ed Sullivan, "To the Man with the Pickle Jar."
“CSI has received hundreds of letters from people seeking the facts behind reports of crashed flying saucers, unknown metals which defy laboratory analysis, mysterious top-level rendezvous in the Australian Bush, and the little man from outer space preserved in a pickle jar... a captured saucer being held under wraps at March Field, as rumor has it.”
Sullivan went on to say that the stories are not backed by any evidence:
“In answer, let us say that we do not believe that any facts are in anyone's possession to support such claims... If there were one single iota of fact, certainly someone, somewhere, would be willing to bring it out into the open.”
1953
Silas Newton had been attending early flying saucer conferences, but at the end of 1953 was facing conviction for fraud for oil swindling, selling phony oil-detection devices he claimed used technology from crashed flying saucers. James Moseley interviewed Newton on Dec. 29, 1953.
“Newton told me that there are two hangars at White Sands at which captured flying saucers are kept. About 15 or 16 saucers are now in government hands. Ordinarily, saucers float toward the earth... saucers contain a mechanism so... it comes gently to rest... The reason some saucers have crashed is that something goes wrong with this mechanism.”
James W. Moseley: Unpublished manuscript
Bill Nash and the Wright Field Story
There was a story circulating among UFO researchers that there was a captured flying similar to what Scully had said, held in secret by the Air Force at “Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio.” Pan American World Airways pilot, Bill Nash became heavily involved in the flying saucer discussion after his own encounter of July 14, 1952, known as the Nash-Fortenberry UFO sighting. He frequently mentioned the "Wright Field Story” in his correspondence, and it later played into him making a sensational claim during a lecture.
In his Oct. 19, 1953 letter to Maj. Donald Keyhoe, Nash discussed two rumors from an anonymous source involving captured discs. While appearing on a WJZ television program in the fall of 1952 to discuss UFOs:
Before the program, some tall man… took me down the TV hall…He said that the reason that the saucers were over Wash. in droves in July was because the Air Force had operated a radio found in a cracked up saucer. That the "Wright Field Story” was true - The Air Force had several saucers.
In their final issue, the organization wanted to leave readers with a summary of what their research had determined. Regarding landed or crashed UFOs:
There is no factual evidence to support any claim that a "flying saucer" has ever landed or set down on the ground, even momentarily. (After discussing a It is also easy to understand how a tall tale recounted in a friendly circle can spread until it is accepted as authentic "flying saucer" lore. During the past two years we have followed such a story of a “captured flying saucer” from March Field, where it was kept under a tarpaulin, progressively through three southern California aircraft plants. This is the one made of the transparent metal, which cannot be machined with a diamond fly-cutter. At last report it had been loaded on a truck at the Hughes Aircraft Company plant and was headed for some unknown destination."
Another good quote from the opening:
People want to know what the UAOs are, and where they come from. They aren’t particularly concerned whether the objects are finally proved to be natural phenomena or whether they may be coming from another planet. Just as long as brass curtains cut off from the public the findings of the various governmental investigations, and no other qualified agency is available to give part of the answers, these same people will continue to accept the irresponsible statements of those who would have us believe that the "little men" have landed, or that there is a Venusian living in Pasadena.
Bill Nash again.
Filling in for his friend, Norman Bean, Bill Nash gave a lecture on flying saucers in March for the Greater Miami Aviation Association. At the end he was asked why he thought the Air force was keeping secrets about saucers. In his answer, Nash gave his opinion based on some rumors he heard, saying he was convinced that the "the Air Force has collected hardware from outer space." There was a reporter in the audience and Nash’s speculative remark became headline news.
The Day, New London, Conn. Mar 23, 1954
WASHINGTON, March 23 (AP)--A spokesman today termed without basis as assertion that the Air Force has recovered hunks of 'flying saucers' and just isn't telling the public about them... Bill Nash, a Pan American World Airways pilot, told the Greater Miami Aviation association recently 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.”
In exchanges from the same period with Capt. Joe Hull of Capital Airlines (author of the Airline Pilot magazine article, "The Obituary of the Flying Saucers"), Nash tried to persuade Hull of UFO reality. In his letter of April 18, 1954, he went deeper into the rumors that ultimately formed the Hangar 18 legend.
He told Hull about this Miami lecture that started the “hardware” controversy, and repeated the WJZ story he told Keyhoe about meeting the mysterious man with saucer secrets.Nash reports how his friend Norman Bean had been told by an AF major that there was “a saucer at Wright Field,” but he couldn’t be quoted. He said Bean also had several reports from “GI’s who saw the thing on a flat-car, but this is a vague one.”Nash goes on to tell about hearing (what he considered to be a deathbed confession) the “Wright Field Story," how “a flying saucer had been found after landing… and the thing had been brought to Wright Field.”
The Wright Field Story by James W. Moseley
The rumors Bill Nash had heard about a captured saucer were widely circulated and reached Jim Moseley, publisher of Saucer News (then called Nexus). From April to May 1954, Jim heard the story and tape recording from Gene Wolfer, about a woman from the Army who was sick with cancer, and through detective work, Moseley tracked down the source to interview her.
She was Vivian Walton, not a WAC, but a former civilian employee of the Signal Corps of Army at Columbus, Ohio. She said that in 1952, a landed (unmanned) saucer was taken through Columbus Army Supply Depot where it where it was photographed before being taken to Wright Field. Moseley checked with the photographer she reluctantly named, who described Walton as “a night girl on the teletype,” without access to secret materials, and was unable to confirm any portion of her saucer story. She’d seemed sincere, but also discussed details like little bodies and the saucer’s magnetic propulsion that couldn’t have come from the experience she described. In Vivian Walton’s library, Moseley spotted a familiar volume, Behind the Flying Saucers.
“It is perhaps significant that the only saucer book that the Walton’s have is Scully’s.”
Moseley’s report on his investigation sensationalized it a bit, emphasizing the ambiguity between the claims versus the denials. It was published in the Sept. 1954 in Nexusas “The Wright Field Story, or Who's Lying?”
In 1971, the story was expanded into non-fiction book ghost written by Gray Barker, The Wright Field Story, with some added Saucerian flair and drama. There was no mention of a “Hangar 18” in the story or book until it was reprinted in 1992 with some sensational (not in a good way) new material by Timothy Green Beckley.
Hangar 27?
Valor (The Magazine of Soulcraft), October 9, 1954
Desmond Leslie was the co-author with George Adamski of Flying Saucers Have Landed. When interviewed by George Hunt Williamson for Valor, Leslie said he’d investigated the story of a landed flying saucer held at a California Air Force base. An anonymous witness, "an Air Force man" told him that "President Eisenhower had a 'look-see' at the craft during his Palm Springs vacation." The "rumored saucer at Muroc was actually there," under guard, "in hangar 27."
1955
The Flying Saucer Council of America' magazine, The Vimana March 15, 1955, published a story, “Mexican Saucer Landing of 1949 Appears Verifiable... from Three Different Sources” Two versions of the Silas Newton story are given as corroboration, then a 2nd-hand story from an anonymous man’s son: “his son revealed to him, when he was stationed at Wright-Patterson Air base... a huge-semi-truck came into the Air Base, with heavily canopied material jutting out, of immense size... it was shortly driven to a far hangar (was it No. 27? ) where no windows or accessible doors could be discerned.” Frank Scully related either this or a near episode in his ‘Behind the Flying Saucers’ and George Adamski certifies that the above incident is more than likely factual...”
May 23, 1955: Gossip columnist Dorothy Kilgallen sent an INS wire that "the scientific and aeronautic authorities of Great Britain, after having examined the remains of a mysterious airship… have come to the conclusion that these strange flying objects do not represent optical illusions, nor are they Soviet inventions, but that we have to deal with objects that really fly and that originate from some other planet." It’s believed that she was reporting on the hoax of a flying saucer crash in Spitzbergen, Norway. For a detailed examination of this episode, see Patrick Gross’ page, UFOs at close sight.
Flying Saucer News-Service Research Bulletin Oct 20, 1955 relates a far less specific rumor. Not only was the hangar unnumbered, the name of the base wasn't disclosed, just that the saucer was "being housed in a hangar near the northeast sector" at an “eastern air base.” The Bulletin was published in Ohio, so they weren’t describing Dayton’s Wright Field.
1964
Barry Goldwater was supposedly denied entry to see the saucer secrets at Wright Patterson AFB. The name Hangar 18 or Blue Room seems to have been retroactively attached to this tale in later accounts, not used in describing it originally. The earliest version of this story we were able to locate was in 1974, connected with the news of Robert Spencer Carr’s Aztec revival.
Carr contends that Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) had tried to see UFO material at Wright-Patterson during a visit to the base. Radio station WBSR, Pensacola, reached Goldwater's Phoenix office, where a spokesman said that in 1964. when Goldwater was at the base for a ceremony, he asked to enter a building that he heard contained UFO material. The spokesman said Goldwater was told no one was allowed into the building.
AP story printed in The Circleville Herald, Oct 12 1974
1965
Aztec's
"Little Men"
... again
Interplanetary Intelligence Report Vol. 1, No. 4, Nov. 1965, was published by Hayden C. Hewes. It featured a picture of the infamous German 1950 April Fool's Day "Man from Mars" on page 18.
The photo is described as one of the "little men" from the Aztec, NM crash, the debris from which they say was trucked to Wright-Patterson AFB.
The text is all recycled material from Frank Scully's Behind the Flying Saucers, just accompanied by a hoaxed picture the book inspired.
Fuller repeated a rumor that helped get the juices flowing again.
There have been, I learned, after I started the research, frequent and continual rumors (and they are only rumors) that in a morgue at Wright-Patterson Field, Dayton, Ohio, lie the bodies of a half dozen or so small humanoid corpses, measuring not more than four and a half feet in height, evidence of one of the few times an extraterrestrial spaceship has allowed itself either to fail or otherwise fall into the clutches of the semicivilized Earth people.
The rumors continued to circulate, resurface and multiply over the years, but few took them seriously until Robert Spencer Carr relaunched the Aztec story in 1974 with his Hangar 18 story.
. . .
The Blue Room at Wright-Patterson?
The Blue Room, a 1920 novel by Cosmo Hamilton
There’s also supposed to be a mysterious “Blue Room” at Wright-Patterson where they hide the UFO secrets, or maybe that’s another name for Hangar 18. Like with the Hangar 18 term, it’s hard to pinpoint its origin. Maybe it started as a verbal gaffe by John R. Blandford, chief counsel for the House Armed Services Committee?
The Secretary of the Air Force, Harold Brown appeared before the House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services, Washington, D.C., March 31, 1966. After discussing other topics, the chairman turned to the upcoming “Unidentified Flying Objects Hearing by Committee on Armed Services” to be held on April 5, 1966, an inquiry requested by Michigan Representative Gerald Ford.
Brown answered a few questions in preparation for the inquiry:
Secretary Brown: We have an investigation going. Of course we have been doing this since 1948, you know, Mr. Chairman, and in 1965, for example, we investigated almost 900 reports. We will put out a written report which the committee can use to answer these questions.Whether we will ever satisfy all the people who have seen or think they have seen unidentified flying objects, I doubt. But I think we should try to at least satisfy the committee and the Congress.
The Chairman: Yes, sir.
Mr. Blandford: May I suggest to have the officer in charge of this program, at Wright Patterson, here Tuesday morning to indicate that we did have the people who had it — what do they call it, the blue room ?
Secretary Brown: Blue Book.
Mr. Blandford: Have that individual here so it can appear in the record.
"Blue Room" was a familiar name, from restaurants to books and movies. Blandford may not have been the first person to say it instead of Blue Book.
Source:
United States. Congress. House. Committee on Armed Services. Subcommittee No. 3,, . (1966). Hearings on military posture and H.R. 13456 to authorize appropriations during the fiscal year 1967 for procurement of aircraft, missiles, naval vessels, and tracked combat vehicles, and research, development, test, and evaluation for the Armed Forces, and to maintain parity between military and civilian pay, and for other purposes: before the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, Eighty-ninth Congress, 2nd session. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. (1966)
Thanks and acknowledgements to those who provided support, materials, and background detail for this project. Claude Falkstrom, my co-author, for his work in digging deeper and finding the stories behind the stories, particularly in the case of Lawrence Brill. Martin Kottmeyer for reference materials from his own Hangar Minus One. Isaac Koi, for his dedication to the preservation of UFO literature, which helped greatly in the research of this project. Also, thanks to those who provided other details, materials and verification: Lance Moody, Brad Sparks, Roger Glassel, Robert Sheaffer, and Rich Hoffman.
