A flying saucer is a purported disc-shaped UFO. In science fiction, reported UFO sightings, and UFO conspiracy theories, they are typically piloted by nonhuman beings.[1] The term "flying saucer" or "flying disc" can be used generically for a mysterious flying object. The term was coined in 1947[2] but has gradually been supplanted since 1952 by the United States Air Force term unidentified flying object (UFO), the downside of which being that, according to the term, absolutely anything can be a UFO. 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.
History
Precursors
Reports of fantastical aircraft predate the first flying saucers.[4] In antiquity, mysterious lights in the sky were interpreted as spiritual phenomena.[5] In the 1800s, many newspapers reported massive airships with glowing lights and humming engines. These are often seen as precursors to "flying saucer" and "UFO" sightings.[6] On January 25, 1878, the Denison Daily News printed an article in which John Martin, a local farmer, reported object resembling a balloon flying "at wonderful speed". The newspaper said it appeared to be about the size of a saucer from his perspective, one of the first uses of the word "saucer" in association with a UFO.[7] During the 1940s, allied pilots reported encountering foo fighters they believed were advanced axis aircraft.[5]
Many aspects of the typical flying saucer first appeared in science fiction. French sociologist Bertrand Méheust noted, for example, Jean de La Hire's 1908 novel La Roue fulgurante (The Lightning Wheel). In the novel, a flying disc-shaped machine abducts the protagonists via a beam of light.[8][9][10]: 206–8 Science fiction magazine Amazing Stories began publishing "The Shaver Mystery" in 1945. Written by Richard Sharpe Shaver and edited by Raymond A. Palmer, they were science fiction tales about technologically-advanced "detrimental robots" that abducted humans, but were presented as a true account of Shaver's life.[1][11]: 1 Until the magazine ceased printing Shaver's stories, Amazing Stories's letter column was regularly full of readers sharing their own purportedly true sightings of the robots.[11]: 3
Before the term "flying saucer" was coined, fantasy artwork in pulp magazines depicted flying discs.[3] Commentators like Milton Rothman have noted the appearance of the "flying saucers" concept in the fantasy artwork of the 1930s pulp science fiction magazines, by artists like Frank R. Paul.[12][13] One of the first depictions of a "flying saucer", by illustrator Frank R. Paul appeared on the November 1929 issue of Hugo Gernsback's pulp science fiction magazine Science Wonder Stories.[3] Frank Wu, a notable contemporary science fiction illustrator, has written:[12]
The point is that the idea of space vehicles shaped like flying saucers was imprinted in the national psyche for many years prior to 1947, when the Roswell incident took place. It didn't take much stretching for the first observers of UFOs to assume that the unknown objects hovering in the sky had the same disk shape as the science fictional vehicles.
Origins
The modern flying saucer concept, including the association with aliens, can be traced to the 1947 Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting.[14][5] On June 24, 1947, businessman and amateur pilot Kenneth Arnold landed at the Yakima, Washington airstrip. He told staff and friends that he'd seen nine unusual airborne objects.[15] Arnold estimated their speed at 1,700 miles per hour, beyond the capabilities of known aircraft.[14] Newspapers soon contacted Arnold for interviews. The East Oregonian reported his supposed aircraft as "saucer-like".[16] In a June 26 radio interview, Arnold described them as "something like a pie plate that was cut in half with a sort of a convex triangle in the rear".[17][18] Headline writers coined the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" (or "disc") for the story.[14][19] Arnold later told CBS news that the early coverage "did not quote me properly [...] when I described how they flew, I said that they flew like they take a saucer and throw it across the water. Most of the newspapers misunderstood and misquoted that, too. They said that I said that they were saucer-like; I said that they flew in a saucer-like fashion."[20] The circular shape of typical flying saucers may be due to reporters mistaking Arnold's "saucer-like" description of motion.[14]
Arnold's story incited a wave of hundreds of flying saucer reports.[14] The next widely publicized report was the sighting by a United Airlines crew on July 4 of nine more disc-like objects pacing their plane over Idaho.[21] 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.[22]
The public was divided on the potential cause of the saucers.[23]: 206 Newspapers initially reported that Arnold suspected them to be experimental Soviet aircraft.[15] A Gallup Poll found that 90% of Americans were aware of the saucer stories, 16 percent believed they were secret military weapons, and less than one percent believed they were alien craft.[23]: 206 One report from Seattle, Washington, described a hammer and sickle painted onto a flying disc.[23]: 207 Throughout 1947, the saucers became increasingly associated with the idea of extraterrestrial life.[14] The stories spread to other countries where they were influenced by local political and social concerns. In Europe, still recovering from the Second World War, saucers were often reported with rocket-like features. German newspapers reported flying saucers that exploded or had tails of fire.[24]
Flying saucer reporting declined by the end of summer. Newspapers had reported hoaxes by those looking to profit from the saucers and the Roswell incident which was quickly retracted as balloon debris.[25] In the July 7 Twin Falls saucer hoax, a widely reported crashed disc from Twin Falls, Idaho, was found to have been created by four teenagers using parts from a jukebox.[26] The Air Force's Air Materiel Command collected over a hundred reports at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.[27] Air Force General Nathan Twining established Project SAUCER, later renamed Project Sign,[28] the first in a series of UFO investigations by the US Government.[29] In the following years, other national governments would follow suit. Canada began Project Magnet, and the United Kingdom launched the Flying Saucer Working Party in 1950, which attributed saucer reports to meteorological phenomena, astronomical phenomena, misidentification, optical illusions, misconceptions, or hoaxes.[30][31]
Development
By 1950, the term flying saucer was widely associated with extraterrestrial life. In a 1950 interview on flying saucers, Kenneth Arnold said, "if it's not made by our science or our Army Air Forces, I am inclined to believe it's of an extra-terrestrial origin".[14] This extraterrestrial hypothesis was accompanied by a range of other unusual theories. Meade Layne speculated that they came from an alternate dimension.[32]: 16 Under editor Ray Palmer, Amazing Stories had run Richard Sharpe Shaver's purportedly true stories. Fred Crisman had written to Palmer about fighting Shaver's purported evil beings in an underground cavern. Within a month of the first flying saucer reports, Crisman sent Palmer metal fragments and an account from his employee Harold Dahl about a malfunctioning flying saucer.[33][34] Palmer recruited Kenneth Arnold to investigate Crisman and Dahl's Maury Island incident. The metal turned out to be slag from a local smelter, but the men in black that Crisman and Dahl claimed were following them would become a common element of later UFO accounts.[33][34] Gray Barker popularized "men in black" who intimidate or silence UFO witnesses in his book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers.[35] Palmer launched Fate (magazine) in 1948 claiming to offer "the truth about flying saucers".[4]: 54 It was the first in a wave of non-fiction paranormal magazines that would thrive in the 1950s.[11]: 3
A flying saucer movement developed during the 1950s.[4] It was influenced by scientific research, occult practices, pop culture, existing religions, and earlier myths.[36]: 275 In reports and in popular media like the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still, saucers and their pilots were characterized as messengers.[36]: 275 The first wave of so-called contactees, George Hunt Williamson, George Van Tassel, Truman Bethurum, George Adamski, and Orfeo Angelucci claimed to have ridden aboard the saucers and brought back messages for humanity.[32]: 103–119 New religions and institutions arose around the contactees.[32]: 4 Van Tassel's Aetherius Society built the Integratron, a domed structure near Landers, California, intended to facilitate further contact with aliens, physical rejuvenation, and time travel.[32]: 132 According to George King, he founded the Ashtar Command—a new religious movement influenced by theosophy—at the direct instruction of an extraterrestrial.[32]: 140 Some existing religions began to incorporate flying saucers.[36]: 280 The Nation of Islam taught that the end of the world would be brought about by the "Mother Wheel" or "Mother Plane", a flying saucer half a mile wide.[36]: 280–281 During the same time that Margaret Murray's "Old Religion" or witch-cult hypothesis was being discredited in academic circles, its core idea—a lost civilization remembered in myth—was being embraced in pulp fiction, occult groups, and the growing UFO movement.[37] Several authors speculated that ancient astronauts piloting UFOs were the cause of myths and religions. Schoolteacher Robert Dione wrote God Drives a Flying Saucer to reframe biblical miracles and the Miracle of the Sun as the work of humanoid aliens piloting flying saucers. Later, Erich von Däniken released Chariots of the Gods?, a work of pseudoscience that attributed ancient artifacts and monuments to its purported ancient astronauts.[38]
Ufology developed as a parallel social movement.[39]: 63 Well-known Variety columnist Frank Scully published Behind the Flying Saucers in 1950. The book presents the Aztec, New Mexico crashed saucer hoax as the true account of an alien craft that "gently pancaked to earth like Sonja Henie imitating a dying swan" and was recovered by the United States government. It describes one of the hoaxers—who were convicted of fraud for selling nonfunctional dowsing equipment to the oil industry based on the claim that it was based on alien technology—as a doctor with "more degrees than a thermometer".[40][32]: 34 Donald Keyhoe took a more serious "nuts and bolts" approach to the idea of the government covering up alien life in his 1950 book The Flying Saucers Are Real.[32]: 18, 109 When the popular and respected Life magazine ran "Have We Visitors From Space?" in 1952 taking seriously ideas of alien visitors, a wave of sightings followed.[41]: 123 The 1952 sightings spurred Leonard H. Stringfield to form an early UFO investigation group the "Civilian Investigating Group for Aerial Phenomena" and publish research on UFOs.[4]: 96 Albert K. Bender started his own "International Flying Saucer Bureau" in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1952.[4]: 97 Influenced by these works, James W. Moseley began to tour the country interviewing witnesses and distributing a newsletter for the growing saucer subculture.[4]: 98
Within a decade of the first saucer sightings, reports had spread to many countries where local groups and ufologists emerged.[4]: 103 Antonio Ribera started Centro de Estudios Interplanetarios in Spain, and Edgar Jarrold founded the Australia Flying Saucer Bureau.[4]: 104 In France, UFO groups overlapped with occult groups and the anti-nuclear movement.[4]: 108 Reports have been more often made in the countries where UFO groups are in operation, such as the United States, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina.[42] By the end of the decade, The Case for the UFO author Morris K. Jessup reflected on his field, "This embryonic science is as full of cults, feuds, and dogmas as a dog is of fleas. There are probably more opinions about the nature and purpose of UFO's as there are Ufologers."[43][4]: 115
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UFO photography emerged as a subgenre of documentary photography, showing often blurry or abstract discs framed by otherwise everyday settings.[44] Notable examples include the McMinnville photographs,[45][46][23]: 207–208 the Passaic UFO photographs,[47] and the photographs of contactee George Adamski.[44] Some of the alleged flying saucer photographs of the era were hoaxes, done with everyday objects like hubcaps.[48] German rocket scientist Walther Johannes Riedel analyzed George Adamski's UFO photos and found them to be faked. The UFO's "landing struts" were General Electric light bulbs with logos printed on them.[49][50] UFO researcher Joel Carpenter identified the body of Adamski's "flying saucer" as the lampshade from a 1930s pressure lantern.[51][52]
Flying saucers are now considered retro and emblematic of the 1950s and of B movies in particular.[53][54] The term "flying saucer" was gradually supplanted by "UFO" and later "UAP".[55] Discs ceased to be the standard shape in UFO reports.[56][57] Recent reports more often describe triangular UFOs.[58]
Description
Flying saucer sightings differ in their descriptions of appearance, movement, and purpose.[59] In a 1963 overview of flying saucers, astronomer Donald Howard Menzel found some broad traits across sightings, but noted that "no two reports describe exactly the same kind of UFO."[59] Menzel found saucers were usually reported as round, but included objects shaped like dining saucers, teardrops, cigars, kidney beans, the planet Saturn, and yarn spindles.[59] Saucers often were reported with a dome or knob-shaped protrusion on the top side.[59] Size estimates ranged from 20 feet to thousands of feet in diameter.[59] Menzel found saucers reported in nearly every color, often glowing or flashing.[59] The sightings had little consistency in reported movement or sounds. Some witnesses reported silent objects; others reported a roar or thunderclap.[59] Sightings were most often during the night.[59] If the saucer's crew was described by the witness, they were usually extraterrestrial.[60]
Flying saucers have been consistently described and depicted as ahead of contemporary technology.[23]: 209 When comparing the 1947 saucer reports to the mystery airships of the 1800s, sociologist Robert Bartholomew found that the claimed observations "reflected popular social and cultural expectations of each period".[23]: 209 The mystery airship sightings of the 1800s included details like metal hulls, propellers, searchlights, and large wings.[23]: 195 The 1947 sightings—occurring months before Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier—emphasized the "incredible speed" of flying saucers.[61]: 171 The majority of 1947 reports emphasized speed.[61]: 173 This fell to 41 percent in 1971, and 22 percent in 1986.[61]: 173 In the 1950s, hovering flying saucers were associated with contactees and hoaxes;[61]: 174 by 1986 almost half of reported UFOs were claimed to hover slowly or motionlessly.[61]: 174
Flying saucers in popular media underwent a similar change in movement.[61]: 173–175 Early films like The Flying Saucer (1950) and film serials like Bruce Gentry – Daredevil of the Skies (1949) show saucers streaking past at high speeds.[61]: 175 The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) mentions high speeds tracked by radar but also includes a slow landing scene.[61]: 175 The 1960s television series The Invaders prominently features a slow landing scene in every episode.[61]: 175 Many later iconic flying saucer films, including Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Fire in the Sky (1993), depict hovering and slow movements.[61]: 175
Popular culture
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. The 1949 film serial Bruce Gentry – Daredevil of the Skies featured the first cinematic depiction of a flying saucer. [63] Cinema returned to the trope in films such as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), The Atomic Submarine (1959), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), 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 moviemakers, 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.
However, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer gave its high production value film Forbidden Planet (1956) a flying saucer called the United Planets Cruiser C-57D, presenting a plausible human exploration, faster-than-light starship of the 23rd century. The 1964 Italian movie Il disco volante featured a flying saucer, while the 1965 James Bond movie Thunderball featured Ernst Stavro Blofeld's yacht Disco Volante. In the television series Lost in Space (1965-1968), the Robinson family had a disc-shaped spaceship. Saucers appeared in the television series Babylon 5 (1994-1998) as the standard ship design used by a race called the Vree. Doctor Who has featured many different designs of flying saucer in its history, most notably the saucers used by the Daleks. Aliens in the film Independence Day (1996) attacked humanity in giant city-sized saucer-shaped spaceships.
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;[64] Notable flying saucer structures include Seattle's Space Needle and Los Angeles International Airport's Theme Building.[65][66] Architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who collaborated on the design of the flying saucer in "The Day The Earth Stood Still", went on to use the flying saucer as an architectural motif.[67][68] The image is often invoked retrofuturistically to produce a nostalgic feel in period works, especially in comic science fiction; both Mars Attacks! (1996)[69] and Destroy All Humans![70] 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 the iconic saucer from Forbidden Planet.
In 2017, the flying saucer emoji was added to Unicode.[71][72]
Explanations
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]
Another theory states that most are natural phenomena such as lenticular clouds and balloons, which appear disc-like in some lighting conditions.[73] 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".
References
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