A
flying saucer (also referred to as a flying disc) is a
type of described flying craft with a disc or
saucer-shaped
body, commonly used generically to refer to any anomalous flying object.
In 1947 the term was coined but was later officially supplanted by the
United States Air Force in 1952 with the broader term
unidentified flying objects or UFO's . Early reported sightings of
unknown "flying saucers" usually described them as silver or metallic,
sometimes reported as covered with
navigation lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or
moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar
craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability.
While disc-shaped flying objects have been interpreted as being
sporadically recorded since the
Middle Ages, the first highly publicized
sighting by
Kenneth Arnold on June 24 1947, resulted in the creation of the
exact term by U.S. newspapers. Although Arnold never specifically used
the term "flying saucer", he was quoted at the time saying the shape of
the objects he saw was like a "saucer", "disc", or "pie-plate", and
several years later added he had also said "the objects moved like
saucers skipping across the water." Both the terms flying saucer
and flying disc were used commonly and interchangeably in the
media until the early 1950s.
Arnold's sighting was followed by thousands of similar sightings
across the world. Such sightings were once very common, to such an
extent that "flying saucer" was a synonym for UFO through the 1960s
before it began to fall out of favor. More recently, the flying saucer
has been largely supplanted by other alleged UFO-related vehicles, such
as the
black triangle.[citation
needed] The term UFO was, in fact, invented in
1952, to try to reflect the wider diversity of shapes being seen.
However, unknown saucer-like objects are still reported, such as in the
widely publicized
2006 sighting over Chicago-O'Hare airport.
Many of the alleged flying saucer photographs of the era are now
believed to be
hoaxes. The flying saucer is now considered largely an icon of the
1950s and of
B-movies in particular, and is a popular subject in
comic science fiction.[1]
Beyond the common usage of the phrase, there have also been man-made
saucer-like craft. The first flying disc craft was called the
Discopter and was patented by
Alexander Weygers in 1944. Other designs have followed, such as the
American
Vought V-173 / XF5U "Flying
Flapjack", the British
GFS Projects flying saucer, or the British "S.A.U.C.E.R." ("Saucer
Aircraft Utilising Coanda Effect Reactions") flying saucer, by inventor
Alf Beharie.
Sightings
News notice printed in Nuremberg, describing the 4th
April 1561
Nuremberg mass sighting. Discs and spheres were said to
emerge from large cylinders. From
Wickiana collection in Zurich.
A manuscript illustration of the 10th-century
Japanese narrative,
The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, depicts a round flying machine
similar to a flying saucer.[2][3]
A record of a saucer-shaped object is from 1290 of a silver disc
flying over a village in
Yorkshire.[4]
Disc-like flying objects were occasionally reported throughout the
millennium. For example, in a mass sighting over
Nuremberg in 1561, discs and spheres were reported emerging from
large cylinders. (woodcut at left) They are also claimed by ufologists
to frequently show up in religious artwork.[5][6]
Possibly the first well-documented instance to specifically compare
the objects to saucers, and the first to be widely reported, was the
Kenneth Arnold sighting on June 24, 1947, while Arnold was flying
near
Mount Rainier.[4]
He reported seeing 9 brightly reflecting vehicles, one shaped like a
crescent but the others more disc- or saucer-shaped, flying in an
echelon formation, weaving like the tail of a kite, flipping and
flashing in the sun, and traveling with a speed of at least 1,200 miles
per hour (1,900 km/h).[7]
In addition to the saucer or disc shape (Arnold also used the terms "pie
plate" and half-moon shaped), he also later said he described the motion
of the craft as "like a saucer if you
skip it across water", leading to the term "flying saucer" and also
"flying disc" (which were synonymous for a number of years).
Immediately following the report, hundreds of sightings of usually
saucer-like objects were reported across the United States and also in
some other countries. The most widely publicized of these was the
sighting by a
United Airlines crew on July 4 of nine more disc-like objects pacing
their plane over
Idaho,
not far from Arnold's initial sighting. On July 8, the Army Air Force
base at
Roswell, New Mexico issued a press release saying that they had
recovered a "flying disc" from a nearby ranch (the so-called
Roswell UFO incident, which was front-page news until the military
issued a retraction saying that it was a weather balloon.
On July 9, the Army Air Force Directorate of Intelligence, assisted
by the
FBI, began a secret study of the best of the flying saucer reports,
including Arnold's and the United Airlines' crew. Three weeks later they
issued an intelligence estimate describing the typical characteristics
reported (including that they were often reported as disc-like and
metallic) and concluded that something was really flying around. A
follow-up investigation by the
Air Materiel Command at
Wright Field, Ohio arrived at the same conclusion. A widespread
official government study of the saucers was urged by General
Nathan Twining. This led to the formation of
Project Sign (also known as Project Saucer) at the end of 1947, the
first public Air Force UFO study. This evolved into
Project Grudge (1949–1951) and then
Project Blue Book (1952–1970).
The term "flying saucer" quickly became deeply ingrained in the
English
vernacular. A Gallup poll from August 1947 found that 90% had heard
about the mysterious flying saucers or flying discs, and a 1950
Gallup poll found that 94% of those polled had heard the term,
easily beating out all other mentioned commonly used terms in the news
such as "Cold
War", "universal
military training", and "bookie."
Air Force statistics indicated that the basic saucer-shape continued
to be the most commonly reported one through the 1950s and 1960s until
Project Blue Book ended in 1970. There have been some claims, still
undocumented by scientific study, that reports of saucers began to
decline in the 1970s, being supplanted by other craft such as black
triangles, cylinders, and amorphous shapes. It has also been asserted
that despite the increase in portable
cameras,
photographs dwindled as
Cold
War and
Space Race interest decreased and a number of notable images were
exposed as fakes.[citation
needed]
Explanations
A lenticular cloud. Studies show such clouds account for
less than 1% of flying saucer reports.
[citation
needed]
In addition to the
extraterrestrial hypothesis, a variety of possible explanations for
flying saucers have been put forward. One of the most common states that
most photos of saucers were hoaxes; cylindrical metal objects such as
pie tins,
hubcaps and
dustbin lids were easy to obtain, and the poor focus seen in UFO
images makes the true scale of the object difficult to ascertain.[citation
needed] However, some photos and movies were deemed
authentic after intensive study. An example was the saucer-like object
photographed by farmer
Paul Trent near
Portland, Oregon in 1950, which passed all tests when studied by the
Condon Committee in the 1960s.[8]
Another theory states that most are natural phenomena such as
lenticular clouds and
balloons, which appear disc-like in some lighting conditions.[9]
A third theory puts all saucer sightings down to a form of
mass hysteria. Arnold described the craft he saw as saucer-like but
not perfectly round (he described them as thin, flat, rounded in front
but chopped in back and coming to a point), but the image of the
circular saucer was fixed in the public consciousness. The theory posits
that as the use of the term flying saucer in popular culture decreased,
so too did sightings.[10]
However, one Air Force commissioned study contradicted some of these
contentions. A scientific and statistical analysis of 3200 Air Force
cases by the
Battelle Memorial Institute from 1952 to 1954 found that most were
indeed due to natural phenomena, about 2% were due to hoaxes or
psychological effects and only 0.4% were thought due to clouds. Other
very minor contributors were birds, light phenomena such as
mirages
or
searchlights, and various miscellany such as
flares or
kites. The vast majority of identified objects (about 84%) were
explained as balloons, aircraft, or astronomical objects. However, about
22% of all sightings still defied any plausible explanation by the team
of scientists, and percentage of unidentifieds rose to 33% for the best
witnesses and cases. Thus when carefully studied, a substantial fraction
of reports (given the available data) is currently not understood.
Fata Morgana (mirages) and flying saucers
Fata Morgana of distant islands distorted images beyond
recognition
Fata
Morgana, a type of
mirage,
may be responsible for some flying saucers sightings, by displaying
objects located below the astronomical
horizon
hovering in the sky, and magnifying and distorting them.
Similarly some unidentifieds seen on
radar
might also be due to Fata Morgana-type atmospheric phenomena, though
more technically known as "anomalous
propagation" and more commonly as "radar ghosts". Official UFO
investigations in France suggest:
As is well known, atmospheric ducting is the explanation for
certain optical mirages, and in particular the arctic illusion
called "fata morgana" where distant ocean or surface ice, which is
essentially flat, appears to the viewer in the form of vertical
columns and spires, or "castles in the air."
People often assume that mirages occur only rarely. This may be true
of optical mirages, but conditions for radar mirages are more
common, due to the role played by water vapor which strongly affects
the atmospheric refractivity in relation to radio waves. Since
clouds are closely associated with high levels of water vapor,
optical mirages due to water vapor are often rendered undetectable
by the accompanying opaque cloud. On the other hand, radar
propagation is essentially unaffected by the water droplets of the
cloud so that changes in water vapor content with altitude are very
effective in producing atmospheric ducting and radar mirages.
Fata Morgana was named as a hypothesis for the mysterious Australian
phenomenon
Min Min light[11]
Earth-based
examples
The
Avrocar, a one-man flying saucer style aircraft
The first documented patent for a lenticular flying machine was
submitted by
Romanian inventor
Henri Coanda.[citation
needed] He made a functional small scale model
which was flown in 1932 and a patent was granted in 1935
[12]
At a Symposionum organized by the Romanian Academy in 1967 Coanda said:
"These airplanes we have today are no more than a perfection of a
toy made of paper children use to play with. My opinion is we should
search for a completely different flying machine, based on other
flying principles. I consider the aircraft of the future, that which
will take off vertically, fly as usual and land vertically. This
flying machine should have no parts in movement. The idea came from
the huge power of the cyclons" [sic][13]
Other attempts have been made, with limited success, to produce
manned vehicles based on the flying saucer design. While some, such as
the
Avrocar and
M200G Volantor have been produced in limited numbers, most fail to
leave the drawing board. The Avrocar, with
vertical takeoff and landing, was originally intended to replace
both the Jeep
and the
helicopter in combat situations, but proved to be inadequate for
both. In spite of a powerful turbojet, it could not rise more than four
or five feet off the ground, i.e., out of
ground effect.[14]
Thus, the
Avrocar could be seen as a prototype for the early generations of
hovercraft, lacking only a 'skirt' to make it a truly effective
example of the type. Unmanned saucers have had more success; the
Sikorsky Cypher is a saucer-like
UAV which uses the disc-shaped shroud to protect rotor blades.
Some more advanced flying saucers capable of spaceflight have been
proposed, often as
black projects by aeronautics companies. The
Lenticular Reentry Vehicle was a secret project run by
Convair
for a saucer device which could carry both
astronauts and
nuclear weapons into orbit; the nuclear-powered system was planned
in depth, but is not believed to have ever flown. More exotically,
British Rail worked on plans for the
British Rail "Space Vehicle" a proposed, saucer-shaped craft based
on so far undiscovered technologies such as
nuclear fusion and
superconductivity, which was supposed to have been able to transport
multiple passenger between planets, but never went beyond the
patent
stage.[1]
There is at least one design that received a US patent in 2005:
U.S. Patent 6,960,975 It claims to be "propelled by the pressure of
inflationary vacuum state".
Additionally, a professor at the
University of Florida has begun work on a Wingless
Electromagnetic Air Vehicle (WEAV) for
NASA which
has received public interest because of its coincidental resemblance to
a flying saucer.[15][16][17]
In popular culture
Long before the Kenneth Arnold sighting of 1947 and the adoption of
the term "flying saucer" by the press, spacecraft of human or alien
origin were often illustrated as classic flying saucers in the popular
press, dating back to at least 1911.[18]
After 1947, the flying saucer quickly became a stereotypical symbol
of both extraterrestrials and
science fiction, and features in many films of mid-20th century
science fiction, including
The Atomic Submarine,
The Day the Earth Stood Still,
Plan 9 from Outer Space,
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, as well as the television series
The Invaders. As the flying saucer was surpassed by other
designs and concepts, it fell out of favor with straight science-fiction
movie makers, but continued to be used
ironically
in comedy movies, especially in reference to the low-budget
B movies
which often featured saucer-shaped alien craft.
MGM, however, gave its high production value 1956 film
Forbidden Planet a flying saucer called the United Planet's
Cruiser C-57D, presenting a plausible human exploration,
faster-than-light starship of the 23rd century.
In the TV show
Lost in Space, the Robinson family had a disc-shaped space ship.
The saucer design did, however, make a temporary comeback on the
television series
Babylon 5 as the standard ship design used by a race called the
Vree, described in the series as one of Earth's long-standing allies
who had visited Earth in the distant past, and who bore a strong
resemblance to the "Greys".
Aliens in the film
Independence Day attacked humanity in giant city sized saucer shaped
space ships.
The sleek, silver flying saucer in particular is seen as a symbol of
1950s culture; the motif is common in
Googie architecture and in
Atomic Age décor.[19]
The image is often invoked
retrofuturistically to produce a
nostalgic feel in period works, especially in
comic science fiction; both
Mars Attacks![20]
and
Destroy All Humans![21]
draw on the flying saucer as part of the larger satire of 1950s B movie
tropes.
The Twilight Zone
episodes
"The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", "Third from the Sun", "Death
Ship", "To
Serve Man", "The
Invaders" and "On Thursday
We Leave for Home" all make use of Forbidden Planet's iconic
saucer.
References
External links