The game of spotting flying saucers broadened yesterday to include Massachusetts and Vermont, as stories about the discs continued to swirl fully as rapidly as the objects themselves.
Explanations of the phenomena ranged from the theory that they were radio-controlled flying missiles sent aloft by U. S. military scientists, to the suggestion that they might be merely sunlight reflected on wing tanks of jet-propelled planes.
One That Didn't Move
A Spokane, Wash., woman insisted the objects she saw were about the size of a five-room house
but a
Clearwater, Fla., woman said the disks she observed resembled pie pans.
At Rutland, Vt., a woman reported she and her husband witnessed a brilliant object in the night sky which she assumed to a flying saucer, although it was stationary.
But at Cambridge, Mass., a housewife said she saw a group of white, flying saucers whirling around and going at a
tremendous speed
.
The Massachusetts and Vermont reports brought to 40 the number of states in which the objects have been observed.
Thinks He Saw 'Em First
With New England getting into the game, the Harvard University astronomical observatory took note of the reports, but said, it had had no luck so far in photographing one of the discs.
The mysterious saucers first were reported June 25 in the state of Washington, but Charlie T. Hamlet, superintendent of the Kingsport, Tenn., Times News composing room, said yesterday he had seen the discs 2 years ago.
They were of a bright aluminium object and were going at terrific speed, Hamlet said, explaining he kept quite secret them because of the Oak Ridge atomic bomb plant, then a war secret.