70 years ago, a letter launched the Air Force
investigation of an “Unidentified Aerial Object.”
Martin W. Peterson lived
in Cincinnati, Ohio, but held a seasonal job as a summer
school metal shop teacher in Warren, Minnesota. While there in 1948, his
friend Walter Sirek found a strange object embedded
in the ground behind Nish’s Tavern. It was a metal disc-like object with fins
like a rocket. When they examined it, they found it to be about two feet in diameter,
and the fins on either side of the jet or rocket exhaust port had scorch marks.
Peterson photographed Sirek holding the object
but did not report the discovery to the authorities.
After the 1950 publication
of Donald Keyhoe’s book, The Flying Saucer Saucers Are Real, the
resulting publicity caused a friend to suggest to Peterson that he should
submit his evidence to the US government. In his letter dated June 19, 1950,
Peterson sent in a short letter reporting the saucer discovery:
Dear Sir:
I am anxious to know what this contraption is. It was
found with its point buried in the hard ground in my home town some time ago.
I have enclosed my return addressed envelope for an
answer and the snap shots.
Yours most
sincerely,
Martin
W. Peterson
Enclosed were four snapshots, which were
subsequently labeled exhibits A - D.
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| Only three of the four photos were collected in Air Force files, each with Sirek's face obscured. |
 |
The two versions found in published versions of Project Blue Book Records.
On the lower set we've superimposed Sirek's photo from Cosmopolitan. |
The Air Force launched an extensive inquiry
that involved an analysis of the photographs object which included dispatching
agents from the Chicago Office of Special Investigations to check on the credibility
of Peterson and to interview him and any other witnesses.
National Press
The newspapers first got word of the story when Air Force
files were opened to columnist Bob Considine. As a result, Considine wrote a four-part series on flying saucers, and in the final installment prominently discussed the
Minnesota saucer, exposing it as a fake, apparently an unintentional hoax. The story as printed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
(Missouri) Nov. 19, 1950:
Hoax Aspect of Flying Saucer Story
Practical Jokers Keep Air Force Busy Solving Their
Fakes
Drew Pearson also mentioned the episode in his
nationally syndicated “Washington Merry-Go-Round” column on Nov. 25, 1950.
For Cosmopolitan magazine, January, 1951, Bob Considine repackaged his saucer series into a long article, “The disgraceful flying Saucer hoax.” The excerpt on the saucer rocket:
On June 19,
1950, the Air Materiel Command received a letter from one Martin W.
Peterson. Enclosed were four snapshots of a friend holding an odd object
with a saucerlike body. From its thin sides, there protruded what appeared to
be the tip of a spear and the fins and exhaust-pipe assembly of a miniature
V-2.
Peterson was located in Warren, Minnesota.
So was his friend, the saucer man — Walter Sirek, a gas-station
attendant. Sirek told the investigators that he had found the strange
device two years before, imbedded in the earth behind Nish’s Tavern, in
Warren. He had figured, he said, that it was the work of a local tinsmith
named Art Jensen. Jensen, when questioned, remembered putting something
of the sort together at the request of a Warren hardware man named Ted Heyen
and a radio repairman named Robert Schaeffer — as a gag entry in a local
newspaper “saucer contest.” An acetylene torch had been played over the
tail surfaces to give them the appearance of having been scorched by gases
escaping from the hauntingly familiar “engine” encased in the saucer.
Heyen and Schaeffer tired of their gadget after
a time and threw it away. Sirek found it. Peterson, visiting Sirek
shortly thereafter, took snapshots of Sirek holding the contraption — and two
years later sent them to the Air Materiel Command.
It took this particular investigative chain
reaction from June nineteenth to September twenty-seventh to run its
course. Agents had to be transported from Wright Field, Washington, and
elsewhere to the points of inquiry, fed, housed, and paid. The fruits of
their labors were a few apologies and the saucer — which had been made of the
lid of an automatic washing machine, a sawed-off curtain-rod spear, tin tail
assembly, and an “engine” composed of a disemboweled midget radio and an old
insecticide bomb.
More malicious gagsters have taken the trouble to buy and crudely assemble mounds of scrap steel and iron, burn the junk into an unrecognizable tangle, and report to the Air Force that a saucer had crashed and burned on their property. However plain the hoax, the Air Force often feels that it must take samples of the "wreckage" for study in its Wright Field laboratories or in other metallurgical centers.
And nothing can be done about such frauds. A man who pilfers a three-cent stamp from the Post Office Department can be fined and sent to a Federal prison. One who turns in a false alarm that routs out the local fire department on a Halloween night can also be jailed, as can a man who writes a check for a dollar when he has no bank funds to cover it. Yet the most callous and cynical saucer-hoaxers will continue to go scot free, with a cackle of delight, until a penal act is created to check such offenses.
Considine got one fact wrong. The Air Force’s analysis
of the object was based only on the photos, the object itself was never recovered.
The file notes than in light of the confession, “no attempt was made to locate
the ‘aerial object.’ …the large amount of junk at the city dump… is
periodically covered over by earth by a bulldozer.”
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| Walter Sirek and the “Unidentified Aerial Object.” |
While this man-made saucer was not created for a hoax, it ended up sending the Air Force on a wild goose chase. Nevertheless, it provides a good example as to the kind of work put into saucer investigations, and reveals how much was often spent chasing so little.
For more details on the Air Force’s investigation, see
the file in Project Blue Book.
. . .
Trivia Across Time
Two familiar names coincidentally pop up in the story. Coast
to Coast hardware employed Ted Heyen, and his saucer building partner was a
radio repairman named Robert Schaeffer. In more recent years, Coast
to Coast A.M. is a radio show is broadcasting wild UFO stories, the sort which
are often debunked by skeptic Robert Sheaffer.
