Montana's Dubious UFO Landing of 1964

Late April 1964: The USA was abuzz with the news of a dramatic sighting in Socorro, New Mexico, that has since gone down in history as one of the most famous and credible UFO events of all time, the close encounter of police officer Lonnie Zamora. Before the month was over, possible corroboration came, a multi-witness report from Montana of a similar object landing and also leaving traces on the ground. 

The professionals responding to the scene, police officers, journalists and Air Force investigators, were impressed, but unfavorably. They thought the trace evidence pointed to a copycat hoax, not a UFO. Nevertheless, the five children who were the sole witnesses to the saucer landing stood by their story.

The Canyon Ferry Five

The events of April 29, 1964, as reconstructed below from witness testimony, media accounts and Project Blue Book documents. 

The place: Canyon Ferry Village, about 20 miles east of Helena, Montana.

The witnesses: Linda Davis, 11, Tom Davis, 15, Pete Rust, 13, Diane Flittner, 15, Linda Flittner, 16. Bill Bahny, 17, was not a witness, but became involved after the sighting.

The Canyon Ferry Five

The date: April 29, 1964, Wednesday evening around 9:30 P.M.

G.D. “Bert” Davis was the supervisor of the Bureau of Reclamation’s project at Canyon Ferry Reservoir. Davis and his wife Louise were out for the evening, and Linda and Tom, their two children were home, but not alone. With them were friends Diane and Linda Flittner and Pete Rust. The kids said they were playing hide and seek when the UFO appeared. 

Linda Davis, was inside the house and first spotted a glow through the curtains from her bedroom window. She rushed outside to tell her brother Tom and the other kids, ran to the fence where they saw a car-sized glowing oval-shaped object descending from a height of about 20 feet. It was about 150 feet away from them and it landed for less than a minute, then rose back into the air and whooshed off like a rocket. They found a patch of scorched grass and a singed cactus surrounded by an imperfect square formed by four holes in the ground, as if left by the UFO’s landing gear.

Project Blue Book evidence photo.

The kids recruited an older friend, Bill Bahny, 17, to call the sheriff’s office about the sighting, but he was told an adult should be involved in making the report. After this, apparently Bahny or the others called local radio stations about the sighting. About an hour later, Mr. and Mrs. Davis got home. The kids showed them the site, and Mrs. Davis said, “There was a funny smell around the holes, not like grass burning, sort of like diesel fuel.” An adult (probably one of Davis parents) called the sheriff, and two deputies were sent out to investigate. To preserve the scene, Bert Davis staked off the area with string and used white wooden frameworks from their rose garden to protect each of the four holes. 

Witness Linda Davis poses at the landing site. The Montana Standard Butte, May 1, 1964 

April 30, Thursday

The next day was a flurry of activity. Area newspapers printed the first articles on the story, and curious neighbors, newsmen, police and Air Force investigators swarmed over the scene. Sheriff Dave Middlemas said that they were initially doubtful of the report because it was so close to Vigilante Day, a popular time for kids to play pranks, but nevertheless, he had notified the Air Force. 

When newsmen asked the kids if they’d heard about the Socorro, New Mexico, UFO reported by police officer Lonnie Zamora, one replied, “Oh, yes. We heard all about it last night on the radio.”

Mrs. Cyril Taylor and her evidence kit.

Neighbor Peg Taylor was a saucer buff, and she tried to help the investigation. "She showed Linda Davis a picture from the book Flying Saucer from Mars, and asked, “Did it look like this?” Linda said, “Yes, it did.” Taylor replied, “Well, you probably saw a flying saucer.”

The Great Falls Tribune, May 1, 1964

The Billings Gazette reported Thursday that some skeptics believed the UFO story was a prank to set up a saucer-themed float in the Vigilante Day parade that Friday in Helena. The next day they reported that “Sheriff’s officers are skeptical. …the holes… could have been dug with a shovel. Loose dirt had been dumped in several spots within 50 feet of the holes.”

The Billings Gazette, May 1, 1964

On Thursday, five Air Force investigators arrived from Malmstrom AFB. They examined the “landing site” and interviewed the kids for three hours. Some news stories reported that some other people in the area had seen a bright light in the sky that night, and UPI story of May 1 reported that “Residents in the area reported there was a black out or snowy reception on their television at the time and reported sighting.”

The Billings Gazette, May 3, 1964

The Daily Inter Lake (Kalispell, MT), May 1, 1964

May 1, Friday 

The press continued, but the newspapers were not the only ones to cash in on  the saucer fever.

 The Independent Record, May 1, 1964

The Missoulian, May 1, 1964

The Canyon Ferry saucer was often mentioned in the press on the Socorro sighting, and chiefly interesting because of the landing site similarities.

El Paso Times, May 2, 1964

The Air Force "Leak"

On May 5,  it was reported that an Air Force spokesman said the case “was determined to be a hoax perpetrated on a younger sister and the show got out of control.”

The Billings Gazette, May 5, 1964

The hoax allegation didn't go over well with the children's parents.

The Independent Record, May 5, 1964

Apparently the “Air Force spokesman” had not been authorized to make the hoax statement, and they issued a denial.

The Billings Gazette, May 6, 1964

(NICAP’s) The UFO Investigator, July-Aug. 1964 carried a report on the Socorro case and briefly covered Canyon Ferry, stating: 

"The NICAP investigation has turned up conflicting information on the validity of the sighting, some of it backing up the Air Force conclusion of ‘a hoax..., a child's prank.’” The report concluded by saying, “A NICAP member spoke with two of the parents, getting a firm denial of any hoax from one, and a statement that he believed it was a hoax from the other. In an editorial on May 12, the Missoula, Mont., Sentinel sa1d that no one seemed to know where the Air Force got the idea the case was a hoax, and suggested the explanation - rather than the sighting - was a fabrication.”

What Project Blue Book Files Reveal

NICAP had suspected the Air Force conclusion of a hoax was itself a hoax, but the documents prove otherwise. The Project Blue Book 26-page file was labeled, “Canyon Ferry Reservoir, Montana, April 30, 1964,” and it includes documents, clippings and 11 photographs of the alleged landing site and burn marks.

View of the site and residences from the Canyon Ferry Reservoir shoreline.

Lt. Col. Harold L. Neufeld of Malmstrom AFB prepared the 5-page report summarizing their Canyon Ferry investigation, which had lasted four hours visiting the area, three of those hours interviewing witnesses. His team included a legal and information officer, as well as a photographer to document the evidence.

View towards the shore.

Neufeld noted that the holes supposedly caused by the UFO landing, “did not appear to have been caused by great weight. Rather the holes appeared to have been crudely dug or scooped out.” Describing the interviews of the children, “The witnesses were often vague and evasive and their respective stories contained such wide divergences to convince the interrogators that the entire event was a fanciful hoax.” 

There were six alleged witnesses, one of whom was not interviewed at his father’s request.” Of the five, “Four witness used the word ‘fluorescent’ to describe the lighting of the object.” Overall, their descriptions of the event were similar, “These consistencies indicated rehearsing by the witnesses.” They also found it suspicious that none of their parents had been told until more than an hour later, but, “The witnesses immediately notified the local radio stations of the alleged sighting.” The PBB record card for the case classifies it as a hoax, and the comments state: “Investigating officials consider case a Hoax with children recreating the marks of the Socorro sighting as carried in the local newspaper.”

The Canyon Ferry case always stood in the shadow of Lonnie Zamora’s Socorro, NM, sighting, but through the years, it is still included in many UFO histories and databases.

The Word of a Witness

The final local coverage of the Canyon ferry story was the editorial from The Missoulian on May 12, 1964, and it defended the witnesses against the allegations of the Air Force.

The Missoulian, May 12, 1964

The APRO Bulletin, July 1964, expressed a similar point of view in, “Kids Called Hoaxers By U.S.A.F,” stating: 

“We must, if we retain our reason and our ethics, believe the Davis and the Rust children and doubt the ‘findings’ of the experts, if indeed the reports of same were honest.  … We cannot believe that the truth and the details are being withheld by authorities to spare feelings - the kids have already felt the full impact of the ridicule as a result of the AF investigation and subsequent public announcement about the ‘prank.’ It is clear that the facts are being withheld at least in this instance and we can only wonder why.”

In 2012, ufologist Joan Bird was researching the Canyon Ferry case for her book, Montana UFOs and Extraterrestrials. She was able to locate two of the original players, Bill Bahny and Tom Davis. Bird wrote that, “When I interviewed Bahny in 2012, he told me he wouldn’t have called [the sheriff] if he’d thought it was a prank. 'They seemed genuinely scared.'” More significantly, she was able to reach one of the primary witnesses, Tom Davis. As an adult, Davis preferred the spelling of his name as Thom. 

Joan Bird spoke with Thom Davis by telephone on June 20, 2012. From chapter 4, "The Canyon Ferry Sighting - or Socorro Copycat?":

“...I was able to find Thom Davis, who still lives in the Helena area. According to Thom, it was a hoax. The 'witnesses' dug the holes, poured a little gas on the ground, and lit it. They colluded in the story of the glowing white object and its take-off over Canyon Ferry. Davis also reiterated what was said in the Blue Book report that the youths had been listening to KOMA radio out of Oklahoma City and heard about a UFO sighting in Socorro, New Mexico.”

So, it seems the Canyon Ferry case ended as it began, with a phone call. Over the decades, unsupervised kids have been responsible for very some interesting UFO reports. Kids of all ages.

Pennsylvania’s UFO Crash of 1949

 

The 1949 Pennsylvania Crashed Disc, part of our series on Captured Flying Saucers

A flying saucer was seen crashing by multiple witnesses in Laporte, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1949. Somehow it was kept out of the papers until the disc was turned over to the Army. What’s so strange is that the saucer was left where it crashed for over two months. 

Laporte is a borough and township in Pennsylvania the county seat of Sullivan County in the USA.

Moths before the sighting, Major George D. Stephens was transferred to the Army’s Susquehanna Sub-Depot of Letterkenny Ordnance Depot in late spring 1949. Chances are, he never expected to be in charge of a UFO investigation.

The News-Chronicle, Shippennsburg, PA, June 7, 1949

On August 5, 1949, an unidentified flying object crashed in Laporte at about 10 P.M., in a park near the county courthouse. The county supervisor, M. R. Stepp lived nearby and was a witness himself. Stepp was responsible for relaying much of the witnesses’ testimony, but it’s unclear how much he experienced for himself. About 50 people claimed to have heard multiple explosions connected with the crash and saw the object in flames on the ground, and a smaller number of people claimed to have seen the saucer burning in flight beforehand. The disc lay on the scorched grass where it landed in the park, and the next day about 500 people came around to see it.

The saucer was about 4 feet in diameter, weighed about 25 pounds. It appeared to be manmade, perhaps a military device. An alpha numeric project number was stenciled on its surface, something like XK-5360. According to Stepp, he UFO had  been decked out with a jet tube, condensers, relays, transformers and some other equipment, until curious children step stripped it down for souvenirs. The saucer sat there as a conversation piece for over two months until Samuel W. Nichols was there on business from nearby Williamsport and heard about the crash. He spread the word and set things in motion, and that's how Major Stephens and the US military became involved. The next week, the story hit the press in the Williamsport Sun-Gazette, Oct. 15, 1949.

Williamsport Sun-Gazette, Oct. 15, 1949

 

The saucer story was reported nationally by the United Press. The next day, even though the investigation was not complete, Major Stephens was quoted by the Associated Press as saying the saucer was a hoax. “It was somebody’s joke.”

The Evening Star, Washington, DC, October 16, 1949, Page A-36

Sheriff C. Raymond Kschinka of Sullivan County revealed how the saucer had gone unreported to the U.S. military for two months, and why he had let the saucer lie in the park. “It was something for people to look at.”

The Evening Sun, Hanover, Pennsylvania, October 17, 1949

The Official Investigation

The Project Blue Book file on the investigation is only five pages long. On  Oct, 14 the disc was brought to the Susquehanna Army Sub-Depot where Major George Stephens had it examined. Project Grudge had a file card and a 4-page report and photograph by the Army's Col. Frederick R. Pitts and Col. R. W. Daniels from Oct. and Nov. 1949. Unfortunately, it’s mostly illegible due to the poor quality reproduction. 

Negative image of the photo from the PBB saucer file.

Project Grudge: 5 Aug 1949, La Porte, Penna The file card's short summary:

“Obj. rptd descended at low alt (50’) with evidence of minor explosions & light. Obj. recovered and made of thin sheet iron or steel. Donut shaped. The entire obj. weighing 20 pounds, was painted a dull black.” Evaluation: “Hoax”

There’s little doubt the Air Force got this one right. But…

What about the multiple witnesses who reported seeing the flaming saucer in flight? 

. . .

  

The Crashed Saucers of 1947

For STTF readers who enjoy captured saucer cases, we have a recommendation. An excellent article in English appeared in the Italian magazine, CIELO INSOLITO #6, March 2018, “Here they are! Early crashes of flying saucers: a short visual history” by Maurizio Verga. It’s a superb collection of newspaper photographs of captured UFOs from 1947, with a focus mainly on hoaxed saucers, but also includes a section on the publicity stunts that exploited the saucer fever of the time.

Here they are! Early crashes of flying saucers: a short visual history by Maurizio Verga (PDF)

 

 

The September 1962 UFO Flap of New Jersey

 

Flying saucers didn't seem to be a topic of interest in Oradell (NJ) at the end of the summer of 1962. The Record, a daily newspaper based in Hackensack and serving Bergen County, had published only two flying saucers articles that year: one about the recently formed New Jersey Association of Aerial Phenomena (NJAAP), and another on the 15-year anniversary of Kenneth Arnold's famous sighting.

But the testimonies of three Oradell teens in mid-September would cause a local sensation. Their UFO report mobilized police and USAF resources, brought together a crowd of a hundred one evening to wait for an apparition, and seemingly generated a spate of saucer reports in the area. All of this before some anonymous Bergen teens issued a belated anonymous confession, alleging that everything stemmed from a hoax.

Space had been in the news that week, but it was centered around NASA, particularly on a local boy headed for orbit. Wally Schirra, who was scheduled to liftoff on Sept. 28, had been born in Hackensack and grown up in Oradell.  On Sept. 13th, the Mercury astronaut was the subject of a CBS special hosted by Walter Cronkite, "Our Next Man in Space."

The Sighting That Launched the Flap

Shortly before 8:00 P.M. on Saturday 15, 1962, David Finley and Steve Nagy, both age 13 of Oradell, and Robert Decker, 15, of Emerson saw a UFO. The three were on the Oradell Ave. bridge overlooking the reservoir when they saw a bright object about 3/4 of a mile away over the water. The UFO hovered close to the dam, splash-landed into the water, and then swiftly flew away with out a sound. The three boys ran to the nearby police station to breathlessly report what they'd seen. Project Blue Book files show the Oradell police took a report, sent officers to investigate, and had the boys make sketches of the object. The Record said, “The boys described the object as an oval with a band around the middle and spots on the upper half. A fin was drawn protruding from the lower half.”

UFO sketches by the original 3 witnesses, David Finley, Steve Nagy, and Robert Decker

      

Key locations in the saga of the Oradell sighting.

The Record, Sept. 17, 1962

The next night, Sunday 16, David Finley went back with two other friends and the trio also saw a UFO. “We didn’t believe Finley till we saw it,” one boy said. Drawings from the new witnesses were also collected by the police.

UFO sketches by Paul Bitetti and Ed Lombi.

The Record reported on Tuesday 18 that two more witnesses emerged to the first sighting, the Saturday UFO “splash,” both 16-year olds from the nearby borough of Emerson, William Cooper and Alfred Tauss. The paper said Cooper described the UFO as a light, “many times brighter than a star, that moved quickly back and forth over the pines.”

The Record, Tuesday, 18, 1962

The second article was pivotal in turning the story into a UFO flap, by treating the Emerson boys' story as corroboration of the first. The Record stated the boys' report raised the number of witnesses to eight "who saw something land in reservoir." No, only the three original witnesses reported seeing a possible landing. The adult man mentioned in the first article said he saw nothing, that he'd only heard a large splash. The various testimonies of seven boys were lumped together as if it was objectively one single incident. The two new witnesses were more than 6000 feet away from the Oradell Ave, bridge when they saw a bright light and heard a noise. Only one teen was heard from - and his mother - not the second witness. 

The story was reported as if verified fact; nothing was questioned. The newspaper accounts also omit the detail that police questioned two other boys present at the time of the sighting. They were fishing from the south side of the bridge, but “These boys reported seeing no flying object.”

The media attention fueled the saucer fever, but it also spread by word of mouth. The original witnesses probably all attended River Dell High School. Between the newspaper coverage and the kids spreading the word at school, there was a crowd gathered Tuesday night to see a saucer.

A similar scene from Close Encounters of the third Kind

Tuesday evening about 100 people, mostly teenagers, gathered on the Oradell Ave. bridge. The Record, Wed. Sept. 19 reported the crowd saw nothing, but there were several accounts of other sightings in the area, including that of two sets of police officers who had seen something in the early morning that one said, “ might have been a searchlight.” The story stated that the local police chiefs were skeptical and that “Oradell Chief George Brugnoli guessed that the boys Saturday and Sunday saw a bird on his way south for the winter. He said birds with 4-foot wing spans stop off at the reservoir every year on their way south.”

The Record, Sept. 19, 1962

The Record on Sept. 20 reported the varied UFO sightings as if they were a single object lurking in the locale: “20 persons waited in vain for the flying saucer reportedly seen in the area every night since Saturday.” However, they reported that, “Sightings… have been reported now by about a dozen persons, including police in Westwood and Oradell.”  

Meanwhile, saucer fever had spread to the nearby borough of Hawthorne. Paterson Evening News reported the Hawthorne reports as if they were a continuation of the UFO “sighted early this week throughout the state.” The Oradell and stories from Hawthorne and other parts got conflated as a Jersey “flap,” but they were really several distinctly different events.

Paterson Evening News, Sept. 21, 1962

At least one local businesses tried to cash in on the flap. The Lucky Strike Lanes invited spacemen to come bowl with them.

The Record, Sept. 24, 1962

The Confession of “The Bergenfield Pranksters”

On the 25^th, some cold water was thrown on the UFO business. “The Bergenfield Pranksters” sent a letter to Oradell police, claiming, “Our flying saucer was made of a balsa wood frame filled with helium balloons for natural buoyancy. Power was supplied by a radio controlled by a 1/8-horsepower model airplane with a variable-pitch propeller.” Apparently a small group of teenage boys, the group seemed to claim causing only the Saturday and Sunday incidents, saying, “Please do not think the boys that reported this were involved, because to them, it was a flying saucer.” If a hoax, that left a lot of other reports at different times and locations unexplained. However, there were a lot of inexperienced observers out, and the local press was portraying every report of stray shape or light in the sky as a UFO sighting.

The Record, Sept. 25, 1962

The newspapers had already caused a lot of confusion by lumping reporting every sighting as connected and of equal value. At least one Hawthorne sighting had been conclusively explained as the rocket stage of the TIROS 6 satellite launch from Cape Canaveral on Sept. 18. Some of the early morning sightings sound very much like planets seen before dawn, and some of the other accounts were likely from excitable teens mistaking airplane lights for a saucer.

The Bergenfield Pranksters’ letter might explain the original weekend incidents, but not all that followed over in several surrounding towns. Philip J. Del Vecchio’s article in Paterson Evening News, Sept. 28, 1962, rejected the confession as explaining the sightings in Hawthorne. The two boroughs are about 11 miles away from one another, and he stated the speed, brilliance, or performance of the UFOs, “could not have been produced by amateurs.”

Paterson Evening News, Sept. 28, 1962

The Project Blue Book Non-Investigation

Project Blue Book had separate files for Oradell and Hawthorne incidents. Their conclusion of the original sighting based on the limited data available: “misidentification of a bird.” It appears their information was limited to data from the Oradell police investigation. The file stated, “No attempt at analysis of many other reptd sightings.” 

The Hawthorne file merely contains two news saucer magazine clippings and a letter from a citizen asking about the UFO reports. The Air Force replied, “The [Hawthorne] sightings… have never been officially reported… Therefore, we are not able to effect an evaluation”

Project Blue Book: Oradell, NJ,  Sept. 15 - 24, 1962 (23 pages).

Project Blue Book: Hawthorne, NJ, Sept. 13 - 24, 1962 (4 pages).

Project Blue Book: Newark, NJ, Sept. 21, 1962 (13 pages).

The Saucer Organization and Magazine Coverage

Saucer clubs and magazines were happy to have a slug of new stories to discuss. Most merely summarized the newspaper coverage, but a few added some rumors and sensational details.

The NJAAP Bulletin, Sept. - Oct. 1962, “UFO Lands in Reservoir Climax to N.J. ‘Flap,’” reported that, “the parents of the witnesses were called up by local police and told that their sons should refrain from speaking about the matter "since the government requested a secrecy policy." Another tidbit about the Sept. 19^th saucer watch at the bridge: “The heavy rain dampened the spirits of many yet 20 people still turned out… Nothing was seen save the rumor that Oradell police shot at a 14-foot man with shotguns.” John Nove was following the story and provided most of the information used in presenting the NJAAP report.

NICAP’s UFO Investigator, Oct. – Nov. 1962, “Disc Landing reported in New Jersey,” included some details from a about the Hawthorne sighting of Sept. 21. “Officer George Jediny, in a report to NICAP, said the UFO – which he sketched as a disk – seemed to revolve.” They dismissed any suggestion that the cases were explained as a hoax, rejecting the confession letter from the “The Bergenfield Pranksters.”

Saucer News, Dec. 1962, “Saucer ‘Flap’ in Northern New Jersey,” a summary provided by Edward J. Babcock, Jr., of the NJAAP. It concluded by saying of the confession: "It seems impossible that this explanation could account for all the sightings described above.” (Clipped in Project Blue Book files.)

Saucers, Space & Science, Dec. 1962, “The Oradell, New Jersey Incident of September, 1962,” a story drawn from the report by The NJAAP Bulletin.

The NJAAP Bulletin, Feb. 1963, “New Jersey UFO Flap,” covered and updated the story to cover events not included in their original report.

APRO Bulletin, May 1963, "Saucer Dunks In Reservoir,” was late to the party, but provided a good summary. They rejected the confession letter, and said, “There is more to this than meets the eye, especially when we consider the other sightings of objects in the vicinity of water deposits during 1962.”

The 1964 NICAP book edited by Richard Hall, The UFO Evidence, presented the New Jersey flap and the kitchen sink.

The UFO Evidence, 1964

In Fate magazine, April 1967, Timothy Green Beckley wrote in discussing the 1966 Wanaque flap saying, “New Jersey seems to seethe with UFO activity. The nearby town of Oradell (about 15 miles from Wanaque) saw a gigantic flap in September, 1962. At that time more than 25 witnesses saw a craft dive into the Oradell Reservoir and emerge sometime later.” He concludes by saying, that perhaps, “conjecture that the UFOs may be draining water from the Reservoir is not so bold after all.”

 

 The Rest is History

The press, for the most part, was satisfied with the confession letter from “The Bergenfield Pranksters,” so the New Jersey flap seemed to end as it had begun, with some boys telling a story about UFOs. 

The Record, Sept. 29, 1962

For whatever reason, the saucer fever and sightings in Oradell died down before Wally Schirra’s space launch on Oct.3.

     

The Oradell bridge in 2019.

The local media rode the saucer story. The police were annoyed by it. The Air Force dismissed it. The saucer fiends seized on it, and the incidents went down in UFO history as a major local flap.