Conflicting Reports on Mystery Objects
The "Flying Saucer" mystery deepens.
Reuter reports today indicate that the mysterious objects have been seen not only in the U.S.A. -- where reports have come from 41 states -- but in Canada, Australia and South Africa.
Statements regarding the size of the discs vary from "as big as gramaphone records" to "a diameter of 200 feet with a centre hole."
Meanwhile, the World Inventors Congress has offered a thousand dollars reward for the delivery of a "flying saucer" to their exhibition at Los Angeles this week.
Concrete evidence too has not been wanting, so far three reports of "discs" or parts of discs being reported. While one discovery reports a "flimsy construction" with material "some sort of tin foil," another speaks of diecast metal an eighth of an inch thick melting only at a heat of 6,300 degrees, and third speaks of "rock-like metal" which rained down from a huge flying disc.
In the meantime at Sydney Professor of Physiology, H. P. Cotton of the Sydney University conducted an experiment with his class of 450 students and demonstrated that, when one looks at a clear sky concentrating on a fixed point while standing perfectly still rapidly-moving bright, oval-shaped objects are seen. This he explained was due to the red corpuscles of the blood having (sic) in front of the retina.
The first concrete evidence was announced last night when United States Army Air Force authorities at Roswell, New Mexico, revealed that a flying disc had been found on the airfield.
General Roger Ramey, Commander of the Eighth Air Force with headquarters at Fort Worth Texas, received the object from Roswell Army Air Base. It is being shipped by air to the Army Air Force Research Centre at Wright Field, Ohio.
In a telephone conversation with Army Air Force Headquarters in Washington he described the object as a "flimsy construction almost like a box."
So far as investigation could determine no one had seen the object in the air, the General added. Asked what the material seemed to be, Air Force officials in Washington described it as "apparently some sort of tin foil."
It would have had a diameter of about 20 to 25 feet if reconstructed, the officials added. Nothing in its apparent construction indicated any capacity for speed and there was no evidence of a power plant. The discs construction seemed too flimsy to have enabled it to carry a man.
Army Air Force Headquarters said later that the officer who had seen the object held a strong opinion that it might be a meteorological device. "There is some indication that the object might have been attached to a balloon which squares with the description of meteorological equipment we have in use," it was stated.
Meanwhile a man in Oelwein, Iowa, claimed that a flying saucer had crashed into his front yard last night. He said that he found a piece of metal in his yard six and a half inches in diameter and about an eighth of an inch thick. Planes were overhead at the time of the object's descent, he said. The man, Lloyd Bennett, stated that he had a piece of the material analysed by a metallurgist who said that the disc appeared to be of some diecast metal which only melted at a heat of 6,300 degrees.
A Chicago report says that a piece of rocklike metal, alleged to have dropped from one of the "Flying Saucers" arrived yesterday for analysis by metallurgists of Chicago University.
The sender, Mr. Harold Dahl, of Tacoma, Washington State, said that on June 25 over Puget Sound, near the Canadian border, he and two companions on board a small boat saw what appeared to be huge silver doughnuts coming down between the clouds.
He anchored his boat and went ashore and watched the objects through binoculars. He saw five objects floating around a sixth. They were about 200 feet in diameter with a centre hole surrounded by what appeared to be a row of portholes.
The ships, as Mr. Dahl described them, came level at about fifteen hundred feet and then rose rapidly to a height of nearly a mile.
At this point, according to Mr Dahl, the centre ship began trailing a substance that rained down upon the water and along the shore. Pieces of the "metal rain" smashed a part of the wheel house of his boat and broke a searchlight lens on deck.
The South African report says that two Johannesburg residents have reported that they saw "flying saucers" over the city early yesterday.
They said that the objects were about as big as gramaphone records and were revolving at a great speed in a "V" formation. The objects disappeared in a cloud of smoke, they added.
Six people claimed to have seen "flying saucers" in the skies over Sydney in the last 24 hours.
One man said he saw a bright, oval-shaped object in the sky at night at a height of about ten thousand feet. His description was identical with those of the objects reported to have been seen in the skies over Canada and parts of the U.S.A. -- (Reuter)