PROJECT 1947

From the Canadian Department of National Defense Archives, File: HQ 940-5 (Project Second Story) comes the following report submitted to Air Force Headquarters from Edmonton, Alberta, on 6 August 1952:

1.  The following flying saucer sighting reports have been received at this GHQ.

2.  Two disc-like objects were sighted at 2200 hrs P.S.T. on 19 July over Stewart Lake (64:20N 125:15W) by the pilot of a Waco aircraft and one member of the survey party. One object of similar design sighted at 12:25 hrs P.S. 10 July approximately fifty miles N.W. of Wrigley, N.W.T. by the pilot of the Waco aircraft which sighted other two objects on 19 July. All objects were travelling North at great speed.

3.  An oval shaped, silver colored object with projecting tail was sighted at 1355 hrs M.S.T. 5 Aug over the Hudson Bay Co. post at Hay Lakes (5840N 11840W) by..., Hudson Bay Co. employee, at approximately one thousand feet The object manoeuvered horizontally, vertically, spiralled and also hovered directly over the post. There was definitely no motor sound, and the object was estimated as larger than a Lancaster, with speed beyond estimate. This report was verified by Mr..., Manager of the Hudson Bay Co. post at Hay Lakes, who observed it at approximately six thousand feet South East of the post....

This report from the Hudson Bay Company employees indicates a possible lead. The Manitoba Provincial Archives contains the Hudson Bay Company records. For well over 200 years the company maintained posts all over Canada. The post managers kept journals in which they recorded meteorological observations, significant events and the day's business. Several UFO researchers suggested that these journals also may contain reports of aerial phenomena. I checked two rolls of microfilm which cover eight posts for different periods from 1864 to 1902. There were no reports of meteors, ball lightning or UFOs in this sample. However, it is suggested that more modern records should be checked.

NEW YORK:   Mysterious objects were reported to have flown over Washington early today.  The civil aeronautics traffic control centre says its radar picked them up over a five-hour period.

      An official said the objects travelled at about 100 to 120 m.p.h. in a 10 miles' arc around the capital.

      This placed them in the same area in which other strange things were seen last Saturday and the Saturday before.

      Last Saturday a jet pilot reported sighting "steady white lights," but said that his 600 m.p.h. aircraft had been unable to close in on them.

      The civil aeronautics officer said that radar at the control centre had picked up strange "blips" on the screen at intervals between 1.30am and 6.00am today.

      Sometimes, he said, the radar had charted as many as eight or 12 of the objects at the same time.

      No jet fighters were sent up to investigate the latest mystery.

      The Air Defence Command said this had been because "we were too busy with other things, and besides those things were not hurting anybody."

      Last night an Air Force spokesman said that because of the menace of a possible enemy, fighter aircraft had been placed on a 24-hour alert to investigate any unusual aerial objects.

      The American public is demanding why it took two hours to get the interceptor planes in the air last Saturday after radar observers had reported the mysterious "objects" over Washington.

      Even the staid New York Times joins in "caning" the Air Force.

      "Why did the pilots of the jet planes fail to catch up with the objects over Washington?   Unless these questions are answered in simple language belief in visitors from outer space will be strengthened in those who cannot distinguish between speculation and scientific reasoning," the paper says.

      In Albuquerque, New Mexico, Dr. Lincoln La Paz, director of the Institute of Meteoritics at the University of New Mexico, said--

      "These discs are not mirages. Radar proves that.

      "Furthermore any suggestion that these come from the depth of space is fantastic.   Their origin is earth.

     "The question is, 'Where on earth?'"

"No Danger From Saucers," says U.S. Air Force

WASHINGTON:  The United States was confident that there was no danger from flying saucers or other mystery aerial objects, the US Air Force announced yesterday.

      The director of Air Force Intelligence (Maj-Gen. John Samford) told correspondents, "Six years' analysis of mysterious object sightings has revealed no pattern that shows anything remotely consistent with any menace to the United States."

      The general said his personal opinion was that the unexplained "blips" of light appearing on radarscopes at Washington National Airport were the result of temperature inversion.

      Radar showed the air over Washington was full of flying objects yesterday, but an airliner directed to one of the sightings could not find anything.

      Air Force officials raised the possibility that devices dropped from planes to jam radar may have floated from the Canadian border, where air exercises were in progress.

"Hold Fire"

Mr. Robert Farnsworth, president of the U.S. Rocket Society, yesterday appealed to American armed forces to hold their fire when they saw the mystery objects.

     In telegrams to President Truman, the Secretary of Defence, and the Secretary of the Army, he said -- "I respectfully suggest that no offensive action be taken against the objects.

      "Should they be extraterrestrial, such action might result in the gravest consequences, as well as possibly alienating us from beings of far superior powers."

      A salesman told police at Enid (Oklahoma) that his car had been almost swept from the road last night by a huge flying saucer which had swooped low at high speed.

      Mr. Sid Eubanks said that the object, which he described as a "yellow-green, then yellow-brown streak about 400 feet long," had dived low over the road, turned round and then disappeared in seconds.

      In Jersey City, a volunteer air defense observer, Mr. August Roberts, handed to the police what he claimed to be a photograph of a flying saucer over New York.

      The photograph, which was printed in some New York papers, showed a bright, nearly cylindrical object, moving across the night.

     SCIENCE:

      Blips on the Scopes

      Air traffic was light at Washington Airport one midnight last week, and the radar scope of the Civil Aeronautics Authority was almost clear.   At 12:40 a.m. a group of bright blips showed.   The operator estimated that they were about 15 miles southwest of Washington.   Then the blips disappeared abruptly and reappeared a few seconds later over northeast Washington.   The operator called his boss, Senior Controller Harry Barnes, 39, a graduate of the Buffalo Technical Institute who has worked for the CAA as an electronics expert since 1941.   The operator told Barnes: "Here are some flying saucers for you."

      Barnes laughed at first, but the blips kept popping up all over the scope.  They sometimes hovered, sometimes flew slowly and sometimes incredibly fast.   Technicians checked the radar; it was in good working order.

      Over the White House.  Barnes began to worry when he saw the blips apparently flying over the White House and other prohibited areas.   He called the airport control tower.   Sure enough, its radar showed the strange blips too.   When the towermen measured the speed of a fast blip, they found that it had flown for eight miles at 7,200 m.p.h.

      Now the blips on Barnes's scope were moving towards Andrews Air Force Base about ten miles to the east.   Barnes called the Andrews tower.   Nothing strange showed on its radar, but both towermen and an enlisted man on the field saw a single, round, orange light drifting in the southern sky.   That was enough for Barnes.   He called the Air Defense Command and reported an unidentified object was over the Washington area.   Then he told an airline pilot, C.S. Pierman of Capital Airlines, who was about to take off for Pittsburgh, to watch for mysterious objects.   Pierman climbed to 6,000 ft. and headed northwest. Barnes & Co. saw a group of strange blips cluster around the blip made by Pierman's plane and Pierman spotted a white light "like a falling star."   It sped away, and its blip disappeared from Barnes's scope.

      Air Force to the Rescue.  Over from a Delaware base came a flight of radar-equipped F-94 jet fighters.   Before they reached Washington, all the blips vanished.   The jets saw nothing at all.   But when the jets departed the blips reappeared, playing all over the scope.  Barnes said: "like a bunch of kids."   He called all airliners flying near Washington, asked their pilots to report any strange objects.   One pilot saw a white light, moving fast.   But during all this uproar, other radars near Washington (e.g. Quantico and Fort Meade) saw nothing unusual.

      All the rest of the week, a few strange blips appeared now & then.   Then on Saturday night they broke out all over, criss-crossing the capital as they had the week before.   This time, the radar at Andrews was seeing the things too.   One blip hung over Bolling Field, across the Potomac from the airport, but observers at Bolling saw nothing in the sky.   Some airline pilots saw mysterious lights; others saw nothing.

      The Saucer Flies Again.   Down from Delaware roared another flight of night fighters.  This time the blips did not vanish.   They stayed on the ground scopes while the jets screamed among them.   But only one pilot saw a light, another saw a doubtful blip on his scope.   It vanished before he could shoot.

      What were the mysterious blips?  The Air Force, unless it was trying to conceal some mysterious gadget of its own (e.g. a radar countermeasure), was as baffled as everyone else.   As might be expected the phantom invasion touched off a whole new rash of flying-saucer stories.   But if the men from Mars were really overhead, the oddest part of the whole story was the fact that among all the conflicting reports, no radar outside of a ten-mile radius in Washington reported seeing anything unusual at any time.

NEW YORK:   The US Air Force revealed last night that it had received a report from the only man in the world to claim he had his hair singed by a flying saucer.

      The story, told by Mr. S.J.D. Desvergers, a scout-master, "was receiving further study from a scientific viewpoint," an Air Force intelligence officer said.

      Desvergers, an ex-Marine said he was riding in a car on Tuesday night with three Scouts on the edge of Florida Everglades when he saw flashing lights.

      He walked through the brush, leaving the Scouts in the car and telling them to call the police if he were not back in 10 minutes.

      He saw an object "large enough for six or eight men to stand in."

      "It was about 10 feet high in the centre, about 30 feet in diameter and shaped like a half rubber ball, tapering down to a three-foot thickness on the side," he added.

      "There was a phosphorescent effect around the side."

      "I believe I was under and near it for about three minutes."

      "It was only 10 feet from the ground.   It made a hissing sound like a tyre going down."

      Desvergers said "they" (apparently meaning those in the object) shot a ball of fire at him that seemed to "float slowly at his face."

      The hair on his arm was singed and three holes about one-eighth of an inch in diameter were burned in his scout cap.

      He then "blacked out."   When he awoke he had no sense of feeling.

      "Even now I have a tingling as when your foot loses circulation and goes to sleep," he said.

      By the time he came to, Deputy Sheriff Mott Partin, summoned by the three Scouts had arrived.

      Partin said Desvergers "looked like a wild man" when he came out of the brush.

      Mr. Partin added that when he went into the woods, the grass "seemed to be scorched or blistered" in a small clearing.

      No trace of the object has been found.

      Desvergers claimed "the people in the object were as afraid of me as I was of them."

      He "and high-ranking officers from Washington," whom he refused to identify, were substantially in agreement on what the object was, he said.

      "I know what it is, and it's of vital importance," he told a reporter.   "But it's better for me not to go any further for the public good, because it might cause panic."

Windsor, Ont., Aug. 28--(C.P.)--Gabriel Durocher said he saw a luminous disc-shaped object 30 feet in diameter in a field south of here early today.

     'It was sort of blue all over and glowed like phosphorus.'

      He ran to within 30 feet of the object and 'started yelling at it,' he said.

     'Then I saw these sparks come out of one part of the sides. They were blue and yellow and red. The saucer started spinning and there was [a] sort of blue mist formed under it and went straight up and away.'

     The Windsor Daily Star received four telephone calls from residents who said they spied "something" hovering over the area where Gabriel said he saw his 'object.'"

     This remarkable analysis, which sheds the first real light on the true nature of the so-called "flying saucers," is the joint work of three People Today editors who interviewed America's top physicists and military and civilian experts on ultrasonic flight.   Their conclusions, which appear in the current issue of People Today, came independently.

     Flying saucers are guided missiles, both American and Soviet.  The inescapable conclusion from world-wide reports is that the Red saucers are launched from Atomgrad No. 3, a heavily-guarded missile center in a barren waste near the Finnish border.  Swedish authorities have detected their passage as they hurtled across Scandinavia in a direct line for this hemisphere.  Other Red launching sites are in Siberia.

     The Soviet missiles are crewless, between 50 and 75 ft. in length, about 14 ft. deep.  Rockets provide their main power source but they also carry auxiliary motors, possibly jets.  Ovoid in shape, they reach altitudes of 80-100,000 ft., attain speeds in excess of 2,500 mph.

     Loaded with cameras and electronic observation devices, the missiles seem to have but one mission at present -- to reconnoiter U.S. atomic and military installations.  They could as easily carry atomic warheads.

     The Soviet missiles are remote-controlled.  Red submarines, posted strategically in a chain across the Atlantic, are equipped with electronic monitor boards to guide the missiles through each sub's "control area."  Thus, a missile originally launched on a course that would place it over Washington, D.C., may be diverted by a sub off Nova Scotia (where unidentified subs have been reported) to a course aimed at the Brookhaven Laboratories on Long Island, close to Manhattan.

     The Red saucers need not return to base to deliver their reconnaissance data.  Their findings, including aerial photos, automatically beamed to a sub or other secret station, are reproduced and delivered to intelligence headquarters in Moscow.  To prevent its falling into non-Red hands, each missile carries a high-explosive destructor charge which can blow it to bits the instant a button on the sub is pushed.

     The Soviet long-range snorkel submarine program for guided missile work was reported by Allied intelligence as far back as '48.  These subs, developments of the Germany type XXVI, which had a 1,160 ton displacement, can cruise under water at the phenomenal speed of 24 knots and remain submerged indefinitely.

     For 36 months the U. S. has been working frantically to keep ahead of Russia in the guided missile field. Dr. Karl Compton, one of the nation's great scientists, has envisioned huge, crewless missiles screaming through the ionosphere 6,000 mph.  Said Dr. Compton in 1949: "...the picture of smashing a vital electronic development on the outskirts of Moscow from a launching pad somewhere in the United States in not pure fantasy."

     Today, U.S. rockets are being launched from the Joint-Services proving grounds on Cape Canaveral in Florida.  These rockets carry electronic devices, can carry atomic warheads.  Should one go out of control, a scientist at the base bits the "destructor button" on his control board and an explosive charge in the rocket blows it up.  Military authorities will admit that flights of as long as 500 miles have been made by these guided missiles over the Caribbean. Reports of saucers and other mysterious "objects" sighted in this area frequently refer to these missiles.  Our officials aren't worried about these reports.  They are jolted, however, by the 400-odd "unexplained" saucers and fireballs which have crisscrossed our skies, appearing in their biggest concentrations over vital atomic and defense centers.

     "Of course flying saucers are real," declared a regular U.S. Air Force officer stationed in New Mexico.   "They are not mass delusions. Don't be sucked in by denials in publicity used to cover up AF investigations. Flying saucers are regularly seen over Los Alamos."      During WW II, U.S. pilots in Europe and in the Pacific reported glowing globes, mostly green, which followed their planes at fixed distances, made no hostile moves.  They just "seemed to watch," pilots reported.  Intelligence took it seriously.

     In 1945 following detailed reports by B-29 crew flying missions over Honshu, the 21st Bomber Command's intelligence officers decided that the fireballs were remote-controlled guided missiles.  Recently, fireballs have been seen over Korea, Alaska and the southwest U.S.  The Pentagon is particularly disturbed because they resemble American developments which were considered exclusive and top secret.

     Attempts to pass the fireballs off as meteors were spiked by Dr. Lincoln LaPaz, head of the Institute of Meteorics at the University of New Mexico. "I have never seen a natural meteor with the characteristics of the yellow-green fireballs," he told People Today.  "Meteors blow up with a loud explosion. These disintegrate with complete absence of sound.  Sightings here and in Scandinavia lead me to believe that fireballs and the so-called saucers may be guided missiles -- some possibly ours, some possibly Russian. In any case, they are Earth-born.

     "It is possible that the yellow-green fireball is not the missile itself but the remaining part of a missile in the final phase of self-destruction.  It does not explode -- it simply evaporates in a flash of light."

     Said Dr. LaPaz: "Compare the saucers with the atomic bomb.  If someone had asked a Manhattan Project official for an explanation of the brilliant mushroom of light at Alamogordo, he would have received a blank stare and been told that no such thing ever happened."

     A "Flying Saucer," the aerial phenomena which has authorities baffled in their attempt to determine its identity and makeup, was observed by two youths in the Concord street area shortly before 1:30 a. m. today.

     The young men, Raymond Sharkey, 20 Birchwood road, Methuen, and Robert Sullivan, 61 Arlington street, hurriedly advised authorities at the Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee of their observation.

     Sullivan said that the "saucer," which he described as elliptical in shape, made no noise in its flight which appeared to be sideways. "In fact," he said, "it looked like a little white cloud and was flying at a terrific rate of speed.

     "It was flying very high and we were able to observe it for about ten seconds before it disappeared from our view over one of the tall buildings.  It was heading north.

      "We just can't believe it.  I was skeptical once, and thought it was a reflection people saw but I've changed my mind now," Sullivan declared.

Topcliffe, England --(AP)-- "Operation Mainbrace" headquarters here opened a new signal file today:

     "Flying saucer sightings and movements."

     The Air Ministry said it was investigating a report of a silver-colored circular object moving through the sky about 15,000 feet up at a speed faster than a shooting star.

     During the brief glimpse -- between 15 and 30 seconds -- the object was reported to have switched its course and then seemed to descend.

     When sighted by one of the women about 4:20 am in the southeast sky, it was at first thought to be a "very bright harvest moon."

     However, this person realized quickly that it was too bright, and also much out of place in the sky at that time of morning to be a "harvest moon."

     It was about this time the viewer realized it was a round object, with blinking lights around its lower part.

     Although there was a ground haze in the area, the person reported the lights flashed red, green and amber, blinking alternately.

     The sphere moved up and down and from side to side, remaining in the southeast throughout, and being watched about 25 minutes before disappearing in the same direction.      A few minutes after its disappearance, it reappeared again, but not as near, one observer saying it "looked four or five times larger than a star."

     However, at the (sic) distance, the lights, still blinking alternately appeared red, green and white, the amber missing and the white an addition.

     It moved from side to side, also up and down, staying in its southeast position about 15 minutes before finally disappearing for good.      Five persons in all witnessed the "flying object," the others being called by the first to observe it, but none was informed of what was seen in the sky.

     The group is well known at the Station, located on Six Mile Rd., three miles from Belle Glade.  None wished use of his name.

     Mysterious objects in Fairfax skies were observed for three hours last night by Fairfax police officers and a woman near Centreville.

     "It beats anything I ever saw," said Pvt. Julian Burke.  "l don't know what they were.  It wasn't my imagination because other officers saw them and we were all dead sober."

     The "flying saucers" were reported by Mrs. F.L. Hazelwood, who lives on Route 645, about one mile South of Centreville.  Pvt. Burke, investigating the report, said he watched the objects from Mrs. Hazelwood's house for an hour.

     He said he saw four at one time.  He described them as round, orange-colored objects, about as big as a three-gallon bucket.  He said it was very foggy and the objects appeared to be darting in and out of clouds.

     He said when he first arrived at the Centreville home the objects were closest and appeared to be about 2,000 feet away.  In his description, the officer said the balls would appear first as a small light and then get big as they seemed to get closer.  They disappeared in the same way, he said.

     When the objects would disappear from sight, he said, they still made a white light for a while like a car light shining through the fog, except that they were "very bright."

     He said Sgt. John Wahl also came out to investigate after he radioed back his observations. Burke said he and Wahl watched the objects together for about 20 minutes.

     They returned to the police station about 2 a.m.   There, he said, they saw another similar object.  This time it also was watched by Pvt. Marvin Harrel, desk officer on duty at the time, and two other officers on the night shift, Pvts. Dunn and Lloyd.

     Meanwhile, police had notified the control tower at National Airport of the objects shortly after 1 a.m.  The tower reported that they could not pick up anything on the radar scopes, nor could they see anything.  A Civil Aeronautics spokesman said an American Airline flight passed over Springfield in Fairfax County about the time the "saucers" were reported but the plane couldn't make the type light described.

     The Naval Observatory in Washington this morning said it had no reports of any unusual lights in the sky last night.  A spokesman said a meteor would l probablly be an orange color but that meteors can be seen only for a few seconds and wouldn't act like those described by police.

     Burke said the object seen at the police station disappeared in the direction of Washington.  After the last one had disappeared police reported the objects to the Department of Defense on instructions from the airport control tower.

     Mrs. Hazelwood says the saucer had a strange smell that made her husband think something was cooking in the backyard.

Mysterious balls of fire "bright enough to light the ground" were viewed over Fairfax and Centreville, Va., early today.

     Four Fairfax County policemen sighted the objects when they went to investigate a report of a resident of (sic) near Centreville that she had seen strange lights in the sky.

     Police Pvt. Julian Burke described the sight this way:

     "They came out of the clouds like headlights, then brightened up all at one time."

     There appeared to be three or four bright objects, he said, "going in and out of the clouds."

     With him were Sergt. John Wahl and Pvts. Richard Lloyd and Douglas.   They had gone to investigate "several big balls of fire" reported by Mrs. F. L. Hazelwood of Route 645, about a mile south of Centreville.

     The objects were visible for more than three hours, the policeman said.  They were viewed between 12:50 a m. and 4 a.m.

     Pvt. Burke said over the Centreville area the objects seemed fairly close to the earth and "bright enough to light the ground."  Later, when the policemen returned to Fairfax, the objects appeared to be directly above the police station and high in the air.

     Officials in the control tower at Washington National Airport, apprised of the report, scanned the skies and their radar screen.  They said they saw nothing.  An airplane was in the area at the time, they said. But, they added, this was for a short time only.

     Andrews Air Force Base officials reported no unusual "blips", on the radar screen there.

     Fort Belvoir, where Army physicists have created glowing rings in bell jars, said no experiments were being conducted early today.  The engineer post also ruled out the searchlight possibility, asserting that its lights had not been in use since Friday night.

     The Fairfax County police said that when the objects last were sighted about 4 a.m. they appeared to be headed toward the District.

     The first of numerous calls to police was made by Mrs. Hazelwood, who complained her yard was filled with bright lights and a vile odor.

     Mrs. Hazelwood's daughter Marie told Fairfax officers the odor made her mother ill and was bad enough to make her father get up and go out to see if anything nearby was burning.

CAPE DRUM (AP)-- The Air Force has no comment on an unidentified flying object that reportedly paid a half-hour visit to the Northern New York camp.

     Military authorities said yesterday that the object hovered over the base last Monday night. The information at first had been classified as confidential.

     Eight soldiers said the object was about 200 feet across and trailed red-orange sparks. It circled rapidly and sometimes hovered, they reported.

Poughkeepsie, Sept 26 (AP) -- Civil Defense observers today reported seeing six colorful flying objects that disappeared when a jet plane arrived on the scene to investigate.

     Mrs. Arthur D. Benson, supervisor of ground observers at Dover Plains, said ten ground observers saw the objects in the sky the night of September 11th near the Connecticut border.

     She described the objects as "flashing on and off" -- a greenish color with red flash.

     She said she called the civil defense information filter center at White Plains, which advised her to hold the line open to give a running report while a jet plane was sent to investigate.

     Mrs. Benson said when the plane appeared the objects changed to a bluish color and disappeared.

     Military authorities said yesterday an unidentified object zoomed through a half hour of weird aerial gyrations over this base last Monday.

     The incident was classified as confidential military information until yesterday.

     The object was described by camp officials as 20 feet in diameter with an exhaust tail of reddist (sic) orange sparks.

     Eight soldiers who saw the object reported it sounded like the whine of a generator or rotating disks.  Griffis Air Base at Rome was notified of the incident immediately, officials stated.

     The observers said the object hovered, circling rapidly, and occasionally stopped completely.

     Air Force officers from Griffis Base questioned the men about characteristics of the object the next day.

     The Air Force would not comment.