UFOs on TV: The 1952 Washington, DC Saucer Flap

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

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

 

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

Billboard Aug. 9, 1952

LIFE Brings UFOs to Television

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Flying Saucers

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

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

  

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

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

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

Frank Blair

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

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

(Commercial)

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

David Brinkley

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

Clay Blair, Jr, Pentagon reporter for Life and Time

CLAY BLAIR JR.: Hi.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JUNE '47­ WASH.­ PILOT ARNOLD

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

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

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

JAN. 51 - SIOUX CITY IOWA - CAPT. VINTHER

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

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

DOWNEY, CALIFORNIA - MR. SULLIVAN, WRITER

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

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

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

Carl Hart Jr's version of the Lubbock Lights

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

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

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

NARRATOR: And another Albuquerque Observer.

Redman and Morris from LIFE magazine.

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

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

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

JUNE ‘51 - ILLINOIS - ALLEN DUMAS

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

Allen Dumas clip.

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

Extraterrestrial speculation clip. 

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

Dr. Walther Riedel

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

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

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

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

James Ritchey being interviewed by Clay Blair

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

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

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

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

(Interruption to discuss basics of radar equipment.)

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

James Ritchey, in the hot seat on temperature inversions.

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

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

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

Thank you and goodnight. (Just a guess)

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

Gettysburg Times - Aug 2, 1952

NBC Saucer Hunt For TV Program Proves Fruitless

Blytheville, Arkansas Courier Aug. 2, 1952

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

And not a thing suspicious did they see.

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

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

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

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

They did not.

Sunday Herald, Aug. 3, 1952

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

. . .

Further Resources

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

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

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

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

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

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

The UFO and Bermuda Triangle Cruise with Charles Berlitz

The Bermuda Triangle Cruise 
In our earlier story on Lawrence Brill and the PSI (Psychic, Spiritual and Intuition) Conferences, The 1974 Tampa Flying Saucer Symposium, we saw that follow-up events were planned, both on land and at sea. Brill did not see live to see his dream of a psychic and UFO conference aboard a sea cruise come true. But in 1975, someone tried something pretty close.

Charles Berlitz was the best-selling author of The Bermuda Triangle which also dabbled a bit in UFO lore (long before he co-authored The Philadelphia Experiment and The Roswell Incident with William Moore). Berlitz was the headliner for a Bermuda Triangle sea cruise that also featured one of Lawrence Brill’s stars from PSI Conferences, Page Bryant, psychic radio talk show host from Tampa.

Page Bryant, from her The Earth Changes Survival Handbook, 1983

The  Pez Espada IV cruise was hosted by WFTL (850 AM) West Palm Beach, Florida. A long article by Jim Gallagher in the Detroit Free Press, May 25, 1975, told the story, warts and all:

What led WFTL to finance the Pez adventure, however, was more a concern for profits than for losses. According to Ted Agnew, afternoon newsman at the station (and no relation to the former vice-president) management at WFTL was looking for a publicity gimmick to attract listeners during its spring rating review period. Realizing that the Bermuda Triangle has become big business Berlitz's book has been No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list for two dozen weeks and two paperbacks on the Triangle have sold considerably more than a million copies each they decided to send a ship into the area and have Agnew do live broadcasts from onboard. 

From another section,

Besides Berlitz, the other experts on board were Page Bryant, a corpulant housewife who claims to be a psychic, and Dr. Manson Valentine, an aging zoologist (his specialty is beetles) who believes in the existence of extraterrestrial beings. "We have some very sophisticated friends and ancestors in outer space," Valentine said. However, he has yet to make contact with any of them. Not that he hasn't tried. "I've been telling them for years to come out and show themselves, to talk to me man-to-man," he confided. "But they just won't do it and I'm certainly miffed with them.'" Valentine believes the Triangle disappearances are related to UFO traffic in the area. The exhaust systems of the UFOs, he said, upset the magnetic stability there. Valentine supplied Berlitz with much of the material included in his book "The Bermuda Triangle.

(For a larger view of the newspaper article below, clink on the caption/link.)

Detroit Free Press, May 25, 1975

The second part of the article provides the details on the (low-grade) UFO sighting during the voyage.

Before the voyage began, Ms. Bryant made four predictions: the ship would have engine trouble, there would be a fire at sea, UFOs would be sighted on Friday evening, and the Pez would not fall victim to the Triangle curse. Each was borne out by later events...

At a post-cruise press conference, Allen Moore asked Ted Agnew about the UFOs. "I saw a light... much larger than the running light of an airplane." 

It wasn't much of a UFO, just a light in the sky, but the WFTL promoter pushed to glorify it.

 Moore wouldn't give up, "But it was unidentified, so it would be a UFO," he insisted.

Detroit Free Press, May 25, 1975

Berlitz continued to dabble with the UFO topic in his books, in 1977 with another Bermuda Triangle book, Without a Trace, and in 1978 with William Moore The Philadelphia Experiment, and then together again with Moore in 1980, with UFOs front and center in a book about a crashed flying saucer, The Roswell Incident.

Without Charles Berlitz, these stories probably would have never reached the mainstream public, at least in bestselling books. Berlitz died on December 18, 2003, but the legends he published will be circulated forever.

"Linguist Charles Berlitz Dies" by Adam Bernstein, Washington Post, December 31, 2003.

The UFO Anniversary and the Giant New York Convention of 1967

John Keel, Gray Barker and Jim Moseley

On the 20th anniversary of the historic Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting of June 22, 1947, there was an epic event to mark the occasion, the 1967 New York UFO Convention presented by Saucer News,
James W. Moseley and the Congress of Scientific Ufologists.

Some changes to the final programming were made by the time of the event. Kenneth Arnold himself decided not to attend, as did Ray Palmer. Other guests were added to the roster, most notably actor Roy Thinnes, star of the hit ABC television series, The Invaders, a show about a crusading flying saucer witness.

Donald Keyhoe and his National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon, disapproved of the convention including Contactees, and NICAP published an article in their journal, The UFO Investigator, before the event, condemning it.

The UFO Investigator, May-June 1967 (PDF)

Despite the condemnation from NICAP, the convention went on to be a hit, reportedly the largest indoor UFO convention at the time.

John Keel, lecturing to a packed house.

NICAP did get in a word after the show, though in the forma of a newspaper article by the director of their Connecticut faction.

George W. Earley (circa 2007)

George W. Earley at the time was president of NICAP-CONN, the Connecticut Affiliate of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon, and employed as Aerospace Administrative Engineer at United Aircraft. He wrote an unfavorable review of the NYC saucer convention for the Hartford Courant, July 9, 1967:

"Hippies, Old Ladies, Over 30 Types Orbit in Flying Saucer Circles."

Hartford Courant, July 9, 1967

When James Moseley, congress chairman and publisher of "Saucer News," opened the Saturday session, a surprise guest was discovered in the audience Dr. Edward U. Condon.

A hard-nosed approach to saucer spotting was taken by James Randi, a radio - television personality who has been a UFO buff for many years. The amateur astronomer snapped: "I'm getting damned tired of sitting on a cold car bumper at 4 a.m. waiting for Venus to rise so some fool can tell me it is a flying saucer."

"You people," he said "have got to stop believing everything you are told. There are liars and frauds among us right now, but in among all the trash and nonsense perpetrated in the name of ufology, I think there is a small grain of truth."

The Fall 1967 issue of Moseley's Saucer News carried photographs from the convention, may of them contributed by George W. Earley himself.

For more on the historic 1967 convention, see the article by Rick Hilberg,
"Jim Moseley's Giant UFO Show" at
https://www.jimmoseley.com/jims-greatest-hits/

and

Saucer News NYC Convention Memories a photo essay by Karl Machtanz

Captured UFOs and Building Hangar 18: A Chronology

Captured Saucers in Hangars and Related Tales

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

Sampling of crashed saucers covered in previous STTF articles.

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.”

1952 

CSI Quarterly Bulletin, Sept. 1952

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. 

(More on Bill Nash and Wright Field in 1954.)

1954

CSI Quarterly Bulletin, Jan. 1954

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 Nexus as “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.

(Note: Found in Project Blue Book, erroneously connected to the Atlanta shaved monkey hoax file.)

1966

John Fuller, Incident At Exeter

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)

A digital copy can be found at the Internet Archive.

. . .

Acknowledgements

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.