Page:Miller - Flying saucers, fact or fiction.pdf/6



chapter 1

Flying Saucer History

INCE THE 24TH OF JUNE, 1947–when pilot Kenneth Arnold reported observing nine shining, "saucer-like" objects flying at 1,200 miles per hour over the Cascade mountain range of Western Washington-the controversy of the flying saucers has been raging.

But many do not know that Arnold's report was not the beginning. No one can say when the phenomena of unidentifiable aerial objects began any more than one can say when history began.

The U.S. Air Force has admitted investigating several UFO reports in late 1946 and early '47, prior to the Arnold sighting. Their official investigation, however, did not actually begin until mid-1947.

During the latter years of World War II, both Allied and Axis Intelligence records were overladen with reports of glowing, almost ghost-like phenomena. The objects were termed "foo-fighters." Both sides thought they were newly developed and secret weapons of the enemy.

For the UFO accounts in the years prior to the Second World War, all such re searchers are indebted to such intensive investigators as Charles Fort and Desmond Leslie.

Fort collected these enigmatic data from libraries on two continents until his untimely death in 1932. Fort's four primary books on the unusual and the unknown are The Book of the Dammed (originally pub lished 1919), New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931), and Wild Talents (1932). These volumes now comprise the 1125 pages of The Books of Charles Fort, published in 1941 for the Fortean Society by Henry Holt and Co. These books are now classics in literature, as well as UFO research. Perhaps many feel as New York Times reviewer Maynard Shipley must have when he wrote, "Reading Fort is a ride on a comet."

Desmond Leslie, who co-authored Flying Saucers Have Landed with George Adam ski, has researched far into archaic records and has come up with a monumental work.