Chapter 5 Chapter 5 UFO

Charles Ford died in 1932, 15 years before the UFO craze started.It is a pity that he did not live long enough to witness this madness, for in many respects it is a triumphant symbol of pure Fordism.Mysterious objects appear in the sky.These objects defy both "official" and "scientific" explanations.The Fordists invented some wild hypotheses to explain, and ordinary people, as well as those seemingly clever authors and editors, are also seriously discussing them.As we shall see below, Ford himself collected hundreds of newspaper clippings of mysterious lights and objects appearing in the sky, and made detailed speculations about their extraterrestrial origin.But first, let us briefly describe the major events in the history of flying saucer fantasy in chronological order.

Things started suddenly on Tuesday, June 24, 1947.Kenneth Arnold, owner of a firefighting equipment company in Boise City, Idaho, is flying his plane over the Cascade Mountains in Washington State.Arnold used to be the top football player in North Dakota State, 35-36 years old.He is using his plane to deliver fire protection equipment.As he approached Mount Rainier, he saw nine circular objects in a diagonal line passing at high speed within 25 miles of his plane.He estimated that they were slightly smaller than a DC 4, since one of these aircraft happened to be flying by at this time.Arnold later wrote that these things flew "as if linked together" and "sprinted" between the mountains with "erratic movement".

Arnold told a reporter in Pendleton, Oregon, that the objects "fly like a saucer thrown across water."The next day, news agencies spread the story across the country, using the word "saucer" to describe the objects.In fact, Arnold's original statement did not describe the shape of these objects as saucers.But the word spread like wildfire, and so did the flying saucer craze.Newspapers across the country received calls in succession from excited people who had seen "flying saucers" over their farms, towns and cities.Most of these stories were published in newspapers and circulated by wire with little or no verification.If the word "flying saucer" was not used by the eyewitness, the local newspaper or wire agency staffer added it; if the word "flying saucer" was not mentioned in the report, the newspaper that received the telegram probably had it in the headline Use the word.Within a few weeks, news of the flying saucer was spreading across the US states as well as Canada, Australia, the UK and Iran.

Occasional sky objects of other shapes appear in news reports.Some are shaped like fireballs, ice cream cones, spinner caps, car tires, or a cigar-old wingless craft with rows of glowing windows and long orange exhaust pipes belching out of the belly blue flame.David Lawrence revealed in his "US News" that these flying saucers were the secret aircraft of the United States, "a cross between a helicopter and a high-speed jet plane".According to Walter Winchell's inside information, these strange platters came from the Soviet Union.Andrei Gromyko revealed with rare confidence that these flying saucers may have been thrown by a discus thrower in the Soviet Union, and he himself did not know that there would be such a great force.

Three soldiers died while investigating the flying saucer.The first tragedy occurred shortly after the initial discovery of the flying saucer.Arnold had seen a report that a bizarre aircraft shaped like a car tire had spewed boulders that looked like lava on Mauri Island, a few nautical miles off the coast near Tacoma, Washington.Arnold flew to Tacoma to investigate.He suddenly found another group of about 25 small amber flying saucers (2 to 3 feet in diameter) on the road. The whole Mauritius incident, which turned out to be a hoax, was elaborately concocted by two men who wanted to sell fake stories to thriller magazines.Both men eventually confessed to it all.Arnold, however, was so convinced of the hoax that he called USAF Intelligence in Hamilton Field, California, to report it, and two officers were flown to the scene.On the way back, the left engine of the B-25 bomber they were flying caught fire.Two soldiers on the same plane were ordered to parachute and landed safely. After 11 minutes, the plane crashed and two officers fell to their deaths.

According to Arnold's several nonsense accounts of the incident, the plane carried a small box of samples of the mysterious lava.But reports say no trace of the box has been recovered from the wreckage of the plane.Arnold asked, "Should it be said that these two men died before the plane they were piloting crashed, so that their plane lost or completely lost control?" His power and intrigue are thwarting his efforts to reveal the truth. The second tragedy, perhaps the most dramatic event in the history of UFO mania.The tragedy happened in January 1948 at an Air Force base near Fort Knox, Kentucky.People found a round white object in the sky, so Air Force Captain Thomas Mantel Jr. drove a P-51 fighter jet to take off and chase it.The object rises rapidly.When Mantell tracked up to 18,000 feet, he reported to the ground that "when climbing to 20,000 feet, if he cannot approach, he will give up the pursuit."This is his last flood message.Apparently, he became dizzy at this altitude, so when he reached about 30,000 feet, the plane unfortunately plummeted.

At first, the military dismissed the UFO craze as an illusion.However, reports about flying saucers continued to come in day after day, and the Air Force set up a "Flying Saucer Project" to conduct detailed investigation and research. Fifteen months later, they reported finding evidence that could only suggest that it was a hoax, an illusion, or a misrepresentation of familiar aerial objects such as balloons as flying saucers.Later, President Truman also officially denied that the military was engaged in the creation of spacecraft similar to the shape of flying saucers. In February 1951, the Air Force Research Office circulated a 10-page report on the Navy's development of a giant sounding balloon for the study of cosmic rays.The report detailed that these giant plastic sacs, up to 100 feet in diameter, could easily be mistaken for flying saucers.These balloons can reach altitudes of 100,000 feet and are mostly propelled by jet streams at speeds of more than 200 miles per hour.If the witnesses thought the balloon was far away from its actual distance, the velocity would be overestimated.

From a distance, the round main body shape of the balloon cannot be seen at all, and it looks like a saucer.Seen from below, the centrally suspended utensil under the balloon could easily be mistaken for a "hole", thus giving the saucer the shape of a car tire.If viewed from the side, the saucer appears to be flying upright, like a rolling wheel. Viewed through a telescope or binoculars, the balloon appears more flattened by a strange optical illusion.The shape of the object seen from the monocular is not the same as that seen nearby.Not to mention seeing with the eyes.As a result, a spherical object looks much like a flat object when viewed through a telescope.

In addition, the plastic surface of the sounding balloon looks like metal when reflected by sunlight.Most reports say that the flying saucer is silvery white.After sunset, the ground is already dark, and the balloon can shine brightly in the sky for up to 30 minutes.The report released by the Navy said, "If one is imaginative, one side of the balloon will reflect light, and it will be regarded as an atomic engine glowing. The tail of the balloon, filled with instruments, may be regarded as an exhaust pipe. The sun's rays can make this The airbags made of plastic were glowing red."

The first sounding balloons were launched in 1947, the year the first reports of flying saucers appeared.What Arnold first saw over the Cathcart Mountains was very consistent with the above-mentioned scene.He estimated the group of objects, smaller than an airplane, was about 25 miles away.At such distances they could only be points, and since Arnold saw these objects only with the naked eye and without any equipment, his estimates of their actual size, shape, distance, and speed were unreliable.For the estimation of speed, the distance must first be known exactly; and unless the size of the object is first known exactly, the distance cannot be estimated.

Likewise, all the details of Air Force Captain Mantell's tragic death suggest that he was chasing a sounding balloon.Not only that, but it was known that there was one such balloon in the area on the day of his fatal climb.Even the description of the hundreds of small "flying saucers" that flew over Farmington, New Mexico on March 17, 1950, read like balloons, though of course they couldn't have been sounding balloons.They are white and round.They are "flapping their wings and flying", as if chasing each other in the sky, playing a "hide and seek game". All the people who have seen the flying saucer have a common opinion, that is, the flying saucer has no sound.Of course, this situation precludes any known method of propulsion, but this is precisely the way balloons travel.Observers sometimes insisted that what they saw could not be a balloon because it was traveling against the wind.However, they forget that the wind direction in the stratosphere can be completely different from the wind direction on the ground.At the time of the Navy's report, the United States had launched 270 sounding balloons around the country, and these balloons often stayed in the air for more than 30 hours.Lost balloons are often found by news reports as flying saucers! After the Navy released the news about the sounding balloons, reports of flying saucers declined significantly.And the green fireball galloping across the southwestern sky captured the public's imagination.But in the spring and summer of 1952, when mysterious pulses of light appeared and disappeared on radar screens, there was a new wave of UFO sightings in the nation's capital and a dramatic UFO scare. The emergence of flying saucer fever seems to involve many factors.While the vast majority of reliable reports can be explained by sounding balloons (either singly or in groups), there are many other types of balloons flying in the sky.Climate measuring balloons often have constant or flashing lights and metal contraptions of various shapes.Balloons used as radar targets towed large aluminum foil targets.Missiles, specially designed experimental aircraft, and possibly some flying saucers are also responsible. In addition, one has to take into account the many illusions that result from errors of observation, such as seeing airplanes, birds, Venus, reflections of light from clouds, and similar phenomena as flying saucers.Donald Menzel, a professor of astrophysics at Harvard University, has theorized that flying saucers are hallucinations caused by extraordinary climatic conditions.He is also publishing a book, The Truth About UFOs, to illustrate his theories.Generally speaking, such hallucinations are rare, but under the stimulation of certain hysterical emotions, the number of hallucinations will be greatly increased, and they will naturally spread widely.Even fantasies that do not arise from external causes can be produced in the minds of neurotics if the masses believe them. Finally, there are some lies and half-lies.Pranksters, pushy people, psychopaths, etc., have literally written a book about the lies they have concocted about Butterfly over the past few years.Regrettably, the energy to expose these lies is not as strong as the one that made them up. It is even more difficult to expose the half-lies, which always have some basis in fact, but are greatly exaggerated.For example, an observer sees a balloon but thinks it is a flying saucer.If other people find this suspicious, it will make him very angry.In order to convince others, he embellished and exaggerated what he saw.This shortcoming is so natural that there is no reason to think that it would not be the case in the hundreds of alleged UFO sightings. Of course, it is also possible to test some kind of aircraft that looks like a saucer and flies silently, but the official must keep it absolutely secret.However, this scenario seems unlikely.Official denials by the military and by the president say there is no such thing as a flying saucer.Naturally, it would never be possible to prove that flying saucers never existed in the past.In the next few decades, you may meet some people who still believe in flying saucers.But there is now every reason to think that the flying saucer craze will fade into history as merely another instance of massive delusion. At this point, the reader can't help but ask, "What does all this have to do with pseudoscience?" The answer is that it would have been, had it not been for the widespread belief that flying saucers are not only real, but spaceships from another world. Nothing to do with pseudoscience.Numerous articles have been published in magazines, and three hardcover books have been published by reputable book companies, all confirming the existence of flying saucers. The first to publicize such extraterrestrials was Destiny Magazine, a small-format low-level magazine devoted to articles on telepathy, spiritualism, and other occult subjects.Its publisher, Raymond Palmer, once edited a science fiction magazine "Amazing Stories".It was while editing this magazine that Palmer became the perpetrator of the biggest lie of all science fiction lies.It was a book called Shaffer's Complete Mystery Tales, and it included a series of stories that originally appeared in Palmer's magazine in 1945.It was expanded upon by Palmer from a brief account of Richard Shaffer, a welder in Pennsylvania.Schaffer described in great detail the activities of a race of dwarves called the Daeros, based on "the memory of the race."These degenerate creatures inhabit giant cavities beneath the Earth's surface.The Dailuo people use telepathy and occult light to cause various disasters on the earth, such as wars, fires, plane crashes, ship sinking and mental breakdowns.Judge Clutter was kidnapped by the Daeros: the monsters even stole the manuscript from Palmer's desk! Schaefer's story is vivid, as if it is true, so convincing that thousands of innocent readers will be fascinated by it.But a growing number of adult sci-fi authors objected to Palmer's publication of the stories and protested so severely that the publishers were finally forced to stop publishing the stories.Schaefer's recent work, disseminated by Palmer, refers to flying saucers as the work of the Titans.The Titans were originally the masters of the Daeros, who fled to outer space 20,000 years ago, and are now making a comeback. Therefore, in the spring of 1948, Arnold published his first article on flying saucers, "I Saw a UFO," in the first issue of "Destiny Magazine", so he could not get credit for being the first.Palmer recently announced that he and Arnold had collaborated on a book on flying saucers, which he had printed at his own expense, and would soon be published. Arnold also wrote several articles for Destiny Magazine.His article "Glow in Nevada" (Fall 1948) describes strange reddish or yellow plates seen at night in the Grand Canyon of Ranchi, Oregon, near McDermott, Nevada.He writes, "More than 50 shepherds in the area have seen the mysterious lights, and dogs have been noticed barking at the glowing plates. This proves that they are not only seen by humans, but also by other animals. See.” Another article by Arnold, “Space visitors here? (Summer 1948), describing some bluish-green-purple globules.This was seen by a fisherman in Ontario, and Arnold suspected that they were spaceships from another planet.His most recent article, "The Real UFO," appeared in another of Palmer's magazines, Other Worlds. Arnold self-published a 15-page booklet called "Flying Saucers I Saw."This pamphlet, too, is like a flying saucer and will convince some that it is real.Mauri's lies have been taken for granted, and there's even a picture of a giant flying saucer in the shape of a car tire spewing lava.Arnold revealed that a reporter in Tacoma had written an article about the incident and then died suddenly of unknown cause (presumably killed by the UFO man).A plane crashed at Mount Rainier, killing 32 Marines.It is said that this incident is also related to flying saucers, because the crash occurred shortly before Arnold first discovered the flying saucer.Also, in 1947 a suspension bridge near Riggins, Idaho, was mysteriously set on fire by "something" so hot that the steel cables burned like logs. Arnold agreed with a report that a flying saucer, when being chased by the pilot of the plane, followed the pilot's usual thinking and took evasive action.He also published a photo of the so-called "radar angel" in two pages.It was a white spot of light that sometimes appeared on radar screens, but it was not clear what it had to do with flying saucers.There is also a picture of a 14-inch-tall mummy of a man.The mummy was found in the Rocky Mountains in 1932 and is now in the collection of someone in Casper, Wyoming.According to Arnold, these circumstances lend credence to the report that several very small men were found on board the crashed flying saucer (an article by Ray Palmer in the April 1950 issue of Destiny Magazine) article about this mummy).He also believes that the reported mysterious submarine found off the coast also has some ominous connection to flying saucers. Arnold also published much of Ford's "material" on mysterious objects in the sky, and said he had collected many similar reports himself. The second magazine to promote the spaceship claim was Facts.In the January 1950 issue of the magazine, an article by Donald Kehoe began: After eight months of intense research, Fact Magazine has come to the following conclusions: 1.For the past 175 years, Earth has been under the looming observation of intelligent beings from another planet. 2.The urgency of observation and the frequency of visits have increased significantly in the past two years Two months later, Facts published another article about flying saucers, written by serving Navy Lieutenant Colonel Robert McLaughlin.The article has further development.He said the flying saucer was piloted by some Martians who could fit inside a 20-inch saucer.By McLaughlin's own admission, "It is astonishing that intelligent beings would be so small. But we must not dismiss any possibility." in the form of thrusters, and concluded that it may have 3 motors that use light radiation (from an atomic power source) "to propel a highly shielded curved reflector". The most recent article advocating the idea of ​​aliens appeared in the February 7, 1952 issue of Life magazine, by which time other magazines and newspapers had all but dismissed the flying saucer news.This article was probably the main reason for the resurgence of flying saucer coverage in the months that followed.Even Einstein was impressed by these reports, and specially issued a statement saying that he was not surprised by the flying saucer.Father Francis Connell, dean of the Divinity School at the Catholic University, pointed out that the Catholic faith does not rule out the possibility of intelligent life on other planets.Father Cornell said, "If these supposedly rational beings had the immortal bodies of Adam and Eve, it would be foolish for our superjet or rocket pilots to try to put them to death. Because they are unkillable." Donald Kehoe's UFOs Are Real, published in 1950 by Fawcett Publishing, publisher of Fact magazine.The book recounts the efforts of a journalist and ex-Marine Corps pilot to collect such material, though it is all naive from a scientific point of view.He described his research results in chronological order, just like writing a fantasy novel.As the story unfolds, it can be seen that the author is becoming more and more suspicious, and the actions of military officials are not fair to him.Therefore, he gradually came to the conclusion that the Air Force set up the "UFO Research Project" not only for investigation and research, but to conceal the truth and conceal the fact that the UFO was coming to another planet from the public. Kehoe was convinced that the earth had been under the regular observation of another planet or planets for at least two centuries.He believes that observations of this kind increased in 1947 due to the curiosity of the cosmic beings aroused by our series of atomic bomb explosions.Their visit is part of the "remote observation" and will continue indefinitely. It seems that they do not intend to make contact with the earth immediately. There may be some obstacles that are not yet clear. Finish". Kehoe believed that it was not Mantell who was chasing the spaceship, but that the space beings somehow killed him from afar.Kehoe writes in the previous chapter, "The secret of spaceship capabilities is more serious than the hydrogen bomb. This capability may one day determine the fate of our world." A book by Frank Sculley, Behind the UFO, published by Henry Holt in 1951.The book was so scientifically erroneous and far-fetched that it wasn't a surprise when the September 1952 issue of Fact magazine revealed the book to be a lie.Sculley is a columnist covering Hollywood for Change magazine. The subject of Sculley's book is that flying saucers flew from Venus to Earth at the speed of light (or faster) by "magnetic propulsion" and were piloted by Venusians.These Venusians were exactly like people on Earth, but only 3 feet tall, with teeth but no cavities.There is a mysterious "magnetism expert", Sculley called him "Dr. Gee", and Sculley mainly got his materials from him.4 saucers landed, 3 crashed, but the 4th flew away.The bodies of dozens of Venusians among the crashed craft are now being studied in an undisclosed government laboratory. According to Sculley, these flying saucers are made of a hard and extremely light metal completely unknown to our chemists.The dimensions of each spaceship are divisible by 9.The ship's cockpit rotates with unusual gear ratios. "People cannot enter the spaceship, even if a diamond drill worth 35,000 US dollars is used, it is in vain."The Venusians carried "heavy water" for drinking, as well as compressed biscuits.There is a very small radio, the principle of operation is unknown.A number of pamphlets were also found, with picturesque fonts, which experts are trying to decipher. The third and most recent book on the flying saucer problem is Is Another World Watching Us? by Gerald Herd, published by Harper's in 1951. "This is the most appalling of the 3 books about flying saucers.It's appalling because Heard, a sincere mystic, probably believed what he wrote.He has written many academically insightful works on religion, psychology, anthropology, etc., as well as some mystery novels.He wrote more carefully than either Kehoe or Sculley, sometimes citing Shakespeare and John Stuart Mill, and throughout all his reasoning he rattled off his objectivity and impartiality. Hurd thinks flying saucers come from Mars.Given the saucer's small size and extreme speed, he concluded that only insects with small, rigid shells would be strong enough to withstand the devastating inertial forces of a sudden turn.These and other lines of thought convinced him that the spaceship was piloted by a Martian "super bee," about two inches long, possessing intelligence many times that of a human being.Here is what Hurd describes the shape of the bee: A creature with eyes like brilliant diamonds, a head like a sapphire, a bust like an emerald, a belly like a ruby, wings like opal, and legs like topaz, was the only body worthy of that superior mind.I'm sure people's reaction to it will be: "A crown made of living gems!" It's a shame how shabby our slimy, dingy bodies look by comparison! Admittedly...we have to admit that it is difficult to make friends with animals with more than two legs... Both Hurd and Kehoe believed that the aliens were scouts who had come to Earth to investigate the circumstances of the explosion.Our sun is a Cepheid variable or pulsating star (of course it isn't), so our star could explode if it disrupted the sun's delicate chemical balance, Hurd said.Our atomic bombs have increased the size of sunspots on the sun, and sunspots "may portend unforeseen troubles. Just as dark scars on our faces sometimes indicate that something is wrong somewhere in our body... Could these things be wrong for the sun?" Wouldn't it be impossible for a Martian, deeply terrified, to see these signs?" Hurd believed that these scouts from Mars were gathering intelligence about us, but were careful to avoid direct contact with us.They have built a huge "cosmic mothership" as a satellite of the earth.From this mother ship, small saucer-shaped craft launch their scouting missions.He suspects that the two satellites of Mars are not natural satellites at all, but man-made docks for launching Mars spacecraft! There are six pictures of flying saucers printed on the cover of the book.Only two are still visible.It was photographed by farmer Paul Trent of McMinnville, Ore., and appeared in the June 26, 1950, issue of LIFE magazine.Trent's UFO looks like the top of a trash can thrown in the air. Both Hurd and Kehoe believe that science has established the existence of intelligent life on Mars.The truth is, humans have not made any evidence.At best, some vague color variations on Mars can only be explained by seasonal changes in the planet's vegetation.The so-called canals on Mars have very dubious historical origins.These canals were first reported by an Italian astronomer in 1877 and later defended by the American astronomer Silval Lowell.Unfortunately, later observers used better telescopes and still couldn't see these canals even though their observation capabilities were greatly improved.Modern astronomers agree that these "canals" are purely subjective assumptions in the minds of Lowell and others, and have no actual basis. They only saw these canals in fantasy. It is astonishing how credulous the public is about the evidence for life on neighboring planets.The most interesting example is the famous "Moon Hoax" made up by the "New York Sun" in 1835.The paper published a series of articles reporting what the great British astronomer Sir John Herschel had seen from a new telescope in Cape Town, South Africa.These articles described life on the Moon, accompanied by illustrations of ape-like animals "averaging 4 feet in height, covered with short, glossy copper-colored . . . they are unquestionably simple and merry creatures, though some of their amusements do not accord with our earthly notions of politeness." This made-up story was originally a satire, but it was believed to be true by about half of the residents of New York City. Not convinced! On All Hallows Eve 1938, Orson Welles radioed Welles' Star Wars broadcast to the American public in what seemed like a similar prank, but one that caused even more ideological confusion. confusion.The broadcast began with dance music, interrupted by a series of brief news reports.The first report was a gas explosion on Mars.The second segment is the New Jersey earthquake.Finally, a brief broadcast from Growells Mill, New Jersey, describing a group of monsters with bulging eyes and armed with death ray weapons that emerged from a large cylindrical spaceship.Other cylindrical spaceships also landed on Earth, and these monsters were going to destroy most of New York before they died of the germs to which they had no resistance. Six million people listened to the broadcasts, and it is estimated that close to a million people thought the broadcasts were real and were somewhat horrified.Thousands of people wept, prayed, shut their windows, fled their homes to keep out the poisonous gas, or thought the end of the world was imminent; phone lines went down for hours, and panic spread from coast to coast.But the greatest hysteria occurred among the poorly educated inhabitants of the southern states.If the "moon hoax" was believed in 1835, and the Martian invasion was believed in 1938, then, in the 10 years that can split atoms and make radar waves bounce off the moon, flying saucers are widely believed. It may not be difficult to understand the statement that it is a spaceship. Charles Ford devoted a chapter in one of his books to the problem of observing cigar-shaped objects in the sky.He concluded: "Although some of the accounts are not very specific, but based on fragmentary descriptions, I personally believe that those huge torpedo-shaped objects that occasionally visit, or occasionally break into the earth's atmosphere, A space route beyond geography has been opened up." Many of the strange objects Ford speaks of are disc-shaped, though of course Ford did not use the word.For example, in 1870 a sea captain saw a gray saucer, or a dark round object "moving at great speed, with something beside it." The latter was an employee of the Norwich shipping company at Saw in Moosehead, England on a moonlit night in 1908."It seems too big to say it's a kite. Also, its movement appears to be controlled because it's flying against the wind," they said. Ford has several explanations for these findings.He wrote, "Perhaps there are people on Mars who are secretly reporting to their own governments about our world." Man-made objects pass within a few miles of our vicinity, like irregular ships passing many islands, without any attempt to communicate with us...." Ford's boldest hypothesis is that humans belong to higher intelligent beings who occasionally visit Earth to check on their subjects.He said, "...certain beings have a legal claim to man on earth, acquired from his former master by force or pearls and the like. . . . All this, through the centuries, has been Some of them, known to some of the sorcerers of our earth, act as chiefs among us, or as foremen or overseers, guiding us by instructions received from somewhere...  " “I think of us as one property,” Ford wrote, a casual remark that prompted Eric Russell to write one of the most famous science fiction novels of recent years, “Ominous Fences.”Russell, the main British correspondent for the Ford Association, took many of Ford's speculations with a grain of salt. Incidentally, the Ford Association didn't mind flying saucer fever at all. In 1947 Thayer devoted the entirety of Issue 19 of Doubt to an article on flying saucers, but there has been little coverage of the issue since then. But one suspects that if Ford had survived to the age of flying saucers, he would have read with relish the plethora of legends about flying saucers in the sky that members of the Ford Society had written.And he can't help but chuckle at the military's efforts to convince a bewildered public that what's going on over their heads isn't an ominous omen!