Space Ships, Flying Saucers and Clean Noses

Space Ships, Flying Saucers and Clean Noses

By Ray Palmer

May, 1950

Let’s assume that a space ship from another solar system landed at Aberdeen Proving Grounds…

Would the American people be told about it? Would it be attacked without warning, thereby violating the Constitution of the United States which provides that only Congress can declare war? Or would (providing intelligent contact was made with the crew of the space ship) a “secret” classification be placed on the whole matter, and at the discretion of high Army brass, would events be considered Army “property” and information received be used solely for Army purposes, and be withheld from any possible benefit for the Citizen? Would such information be turned (assuming it ws technical knowledge greatly advanced over our own) to the purposes of armament rather than the purposes of peacetime technology? Would the American Citizen who wanted to know what was going on be told it was “none of his business?” Lastly, would he find himself “in trouble if he insisted it was his business? What kind of trouble? Would the advent of a space ship junk the American Constitution? Just who is to decide just what the duty of the “guardians of National safety?” Has the average American anything to say about it?

First, let it be perfectly clear that, provided we are attacked by enemies from outer space, the American Army has been hired to defend us. As tax-paying citizens of America, we shall require that the men whose salaries we pay for the purpose of shooting at invading space creatures, proceed with the shooting. Congress, hired for the purpose of declaring war when necessary, will back them up legally.

Today, all over the world, the military has “first crack” at any technological advancement. If it can be used for either offensive or defensive war, it is appropriated. If there is anything left over, it goes to the civilian, provided such use won’t give the “enemy” any “vital” armament information.

Those who argue for preparedness have their point, and I won’t dispute them. They fear Russia and perhaps with good reason. Apparently Russia fears us, and perhaps with equally good reason. Just a few moments thought on how much of my money is being spent for offensive weapons scares even me. I don’t trust me at all. But that’s the mental outlook of the whole world today, and it will take a great spiritual revival to change it-or a war which will leave us all flat broke, and incapable of waging another or even preparing for it. It’s that mental outlook, which is one of psychotic suicidal tendencies, a mental disease, which is responsible for our army of “defense” which so interferes with our freedom, our privacy, our progress, our happiness, our peacefulness. Actually we can’t blame the brass for the polish we have given it by our stupid lack of interest in our welfare. We are too lazy and selfish to do our own work, and creating a peaceful world is hard work, so we let the hired help do it. Paradoxically, we hire warriors to make peace. How visitors from space must laugh at such stupidity, be amazed, and depart, shaking their heads.

What I am doing is “hitting back.” When FATE first began its flying saucer investigations, it conducted itself in what it considered an absolutely fair way. It resorted to no “smear” tactics. It did not wax “sarcastic.” It did not “belittle”. It still refuses to resort to such tactics. But it will speak out in indignation, and defend itself. So, here it goes.

I wish to quote, first, a typical recent newspaper story quoting Army Intelligence. I will present it word for word, and then I will proceed to take it apart, as it deserves.

Army Tired of Reports

Flying Disks’ Little Men Never There To Probers

Ya’ seen any little 30-inch men around?

From the phone calls and scattered reports, it would sound as if the Wellsian invasion of Men From Mars is at hand.

At least three reports of these little guys landing in flying saucers have now been made. In one case, a bunch of them wearing gray uniforms and armed to the teeth spilled out of a flying disk.

Where are they?

When Army Intelligence officers investigate the possibility of an interplanetary invasion, the little men are not there.

Tired after a two-year chase of 240 rumors (by actual count) of flying disks, Army Intelligence officers at Wright-Patterson Field, Dayton, O., are refusing to “run down every silly story that comes along.”

However, Army Intelligence still classifies as secret a portion of its investigation.

“It’s nothing fearsome,” an officer explained hastily.

Previous to the report of six 30-inch men “burned and charred in a flying turtle disk” in the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico, Arm Intelligence sifted a similar report in Wisconsin.

A farmer said he watched a disk land.

“Out of the saucer came a bunch of little men,” he reported. “They were dressed in gray uniforms with red shoulder bars and wore red caps.”

Investigation revealed that the Wisconsin farmer has been discharged from the Army for mental reasons, Army Intelligence said.

The probe was dropped right there.

A popular magazine now publishes a report by two Death Valley prospectors of a 24-foot disk landing in the desert at a speed of 300 miles an hour.

The prospectors, Buck Fitzgerald and Maze Garney, asserted they chased two 24-inch gents over a sand dune before losing them.

Army Intelligence refused to swallow that one. Magazines such as this, it said, seldom have any evidence to support their fantasies.

There you have it. The “popular magazine” referred to its FATE. The news story said it (FATE) “now publishes a report.” Actually FATE only repeated the report published by International News Service, and printed in hundreds of the nation’s newspapers. Therefore, the “suggestion,” by inference, that FATE was the originator of the report, is a sample of how attempts are made to mislead. Does the use of the word “now” simply mean that Army Intelligence got “on the ball” the minute they read FATE to attempt to discredit the magazine? We think so. To sock it in solid, they add that snide remark at the end of the article (which is certainly not “news”) that “magazines such as this seldom have any evidence to support their fantasies.”

Right there is a sample of research, Army Intelligence style. They label the story a “fantasy” without investigating. How do they know it is a fantasy, if they do not investigate? Is it fair to judge without evidence? The Army says that’s the way they judge. They admit it in part.

Well, maybe the Army dropped the Wisconsin investigation “right there”, but FATE didn’t. FATE went up there and discovered the following:

In and around the Waupaca area, Stevens Point, Wisconsin Rapids, dozens of reports were made, simultaneously, by farmers and small city folk, of “flying disks,” All agreed that they were “tiny and brilliant” and flying both swiftly and slowly, and maneuvering in a way that eliminated the possibility of meteoric phenomenon. At least one person was injured by one. They either struck the ground and exploded violently, or exploded low over the ground. Fragments picked up looked like pieces of plaster of paris. Fragments were remarkably few in number considering the apparent dimensions of the objects. All the reports FATE investigated were from honest, sane, hard-working farmers, at least one of them a very good friend of mine.

What these objects were, FATE has no theory to explain. All it knows is that they were seen, they maneuvered intelligently, they exploded, they left visible residue like plaster, they injured at least one person, they appeared in dozens of different localities in a hundred-mile area, and there were no little men, in uniforms or otherwise.

As for the Death Valley report, FATE covered that two issues ago. We pointed out there here, also, the Army seemed to go to great lengths to investigate in a particularly inept manner. Actually, we believe they investigated the matter thoroughly, and found it worthy of hushing up. But we don’t believe they know any more than we learned from our Wisconsin investigation. In short, they are as baffled as we, but wouldn’t admit it.

If the saucers were not founded on fact, why would they spend two years of investigated the Sierra Madre turtle-disk affair, and the charred corpses of the six 30-inch men, although it is very explicit about establishing he insanity of the Wisconsin farmer (whose name, by the way, is what?) If there were no charred corpses, they ought positively to state the fact. Now we’re suspicious. We think there might possibly have been charred corpses, since it wasn’t denied.

But of course, we are not to be given any information such as this. We citizens aren’t supposed to be told, if there are spaceships from other worlds coming here, and actual other world beings’ corpses found in their burned ship. We wonder why we can’t be told? This is news.

We have already reproduced the non-secret portion of the official Project Saucer report made up by Wright-Patterson Army Intelligence officers. This non-secret report says the flying saucers are real. That there is a secret portion to the report leads us to believe that the information in it is even more sensational. Isn’t it any of we taxpayers business? Are we in danger of being eaten by the nasty Martians, and not even being given the courtesy of providing our own salt?

“Ya’ seen any little 30-inch men around?”

Whoever wrote that story ought to write for radio comedians-he’s funny as a crutch.

And, since Army Intelligence won’t report on the Mexico story, we will. Here it is: (the story is by Sam Petok, Free Press Staff Writer, who got his information second hand from Alma Lawson, a Los Angeles business woman, who got it from a “sober and conservative scientist friend” whose name she refused to divulge. Pretty lousy evidence, but since Army Intelligence chose to mention the matter in showing how little evidence FATE has to support its fantasies, we’ll have to present matter with as exact information as it is possible to secure.)

Interplanetary Saucers Discovered in Mexico?

Those fascinating flying saucers which fired the imagination of Americans two summers ago have come south of the Rio Grande with an almost plausible twist.

It has been reported that dwarf men from another planet have penetrated the earth’s atmosphere in a huge disk.

Two reports of silvery “platos voladores” as the disks are called in Mexico, were made almost simultaneously by commercial fliers about two weeks ago-one at Nogales, 60 miles south of Tucson, Ariz., and another at Tampico, 75 miles north of Mexico City on the Gulf of Mexico.

A third report was that a huge “plato volador” has made a soft landing on a mesa deep in the mountainous reaches of the Sierra Madre.

A native shepherd is said to have discovered the disk. Inside it, he reportedly found the charred and burned bodies of six men, all no taller than 30 inches.

Alma Lawson, a Los Angeles business woman, confided she had received this “authentic” information from a “sober and conservative” scientist friend whose name she refused to divulge.

She said he had been in the scientific expedition which visited the site about 15 days ago. Among the men were several physicists from the University of California, Miss Lawson said.

“The disk did not come from Russia,” she declared. “All the information has been kept a closely guarded secret by both the American and Mexican Governments for fear o throwing the world into a turmoil.”

Quizzed by the baffled but interested United States Embassy at Mexico City, the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs dismissed the report as unfounded.

“We have no information on which to base any comment,” it said.

At the outset a degree of credulity was given Miss Lawson’s statement that both government had ordered top-ranking American doctors and military men to the Capital, allegedly to examine the bodies.

Embassy officials, however, explained there was no secrecy involved in the congregation here of American Brass.

They are attending the Twelfth International Congress of Military Medicine and Pharmacy. Officials from 30 nations are meeting in Mexico City to set up an international code of military medicine.

The Lawson plato volador was a brownish metal, differing in color from the two disks reportedly seen by the pilots. About 100 feet in diameter, Miss Lawson said, the flying saucer was “so hard a hack-saw could not cut it.”

She said her scientist friend had told her that the disk was shaped like a turtle and had a dirigible-like suspended cabin about 15 feet long.

Inside were the charred bodies of the midget men from another world, she said. One was sitting at the controls.

Miss Lawson said she had been informed that all six perished when the disk crashed into the earth’s atmosphere, the friction setting them afire.

Automatic controls apparently guided the ship to a “soft and easy” landing.

The midget men bore all the physical and anatomical similarities to the human beings inhabiting the earth. Miss Lawson said she was informed by the scientist.

“This is 100 percent reliable,” she insisted. “All of this information comes from an authentic source who is a very conservative man.

“I have been asked not to reveal his name because the investigation is continuing quietly from Washington,” she said.

FATE has no faith in this story. The story, as it stands, is heresay. If it is true, and it might be, we’ll certainly get no information out of Army Intelligence and if said scientist were to come out and back Miss Lawson up, he’d be left high and dry with his “fantasy,” simply because he couldn’t show a “fried corpse” of a little man, or even a fragment of a plato volador. If he had a fragment, it would be termed “metallic rock found all through the Sierra Madre Mountains.” Only, if you actually hunted for it, as at Tacoma, Washington, you’d find it singularly hard to find. All this, as the story by Miss Lawson states, “for fear of throwing the world into a turmoil.”

Recently I was in New York city, where I met Stuart Rose, one of the editors f the Saturday Evening Post. I had arranged to meet with him on a story regarding another matter, and during the course of discussion, I resorted to a little trickery as follows:

“Mr. Rose, you ran one of my articles a few months ago.”

“Is that so?” said Mr. Rose.

“What article was that?”

“The Flying Saucer story, which you ran in two installments.”

“Oh yes, peculiar thing, that was…”

Here’s where I resorted to a little trickery. Said I casually: “Yes, wasn’t it? I had a letter from the General the other day, admitting that the whole thing was inspired by the Army, and that the Post was only acceding to a request that the article be featured as a special favor.”

Said Rose. “I still don’t understand that whole affair. It was the craziest thing. I never did know what it was all about.”

“ Apparently it was an effort to reassure the American people regarding the flying saucers,” I said.

“Many people are quite worried about them. And by the way, it certainly was no a very nice trick to play on the Post to announce, the very day the magazine appeared on the news stands, that the flying saucers were “no joke.”

Mr. Rose didn’t say anything to that, but in his shoes I would have been very annoyed. It made a liar out of the Post.

“By the way,” I went on. “I appreciate all the publicity the article gave to FATE. It helped our sale substantially.

Mr. Rose smiled wryly. “The Post never gives publicity like that, he said. “I can well understand your appreciation. But his was certainly unusual.”

“ I could really give you a flying saucer story,” I remarked.

Mr. Rose could not have looked more disinterested.

In the light of this conversation, it would seem that little more need be said regarding the Post’s saucer story. It was a fiasco that is typical of the lack of liason between the branches of the Army. The Army inspires a story about how unreal the flying saucers are, while the Air Force at Wright-Patterson Airfield releases a story about how real they are. We prefer to agree with the Air Force.

Just to support that agreement, we’ll present a few of the more recent flying disk reports.

Dave Johnson, aviation editor of the Idaho Statesman, went aloft with the deliberate intention of staying up until he saw a flying saucer. Here is his account:

“Three days of aerial search paid of Wednesday when for 45 seconds I watched a circular object dart about in front of a cloud bank. The object was round. It appeared black, although as it maneuvered in front of the clouds, I saw the sun flash from it once. I was flying at 14,000 feet west of Boise. I saw it clearly and distinctly. It was rising sharply and jerkily toward the top of the towering bank of clouds. At that moment it was round in shape. The object was turning so that it presented its edge to me. It then appeared as a straight black line. Then, with its edge still toward me, it shot straight up. When I landed, three men of the Idaho National Guard said they had seen an object performing similar maneuvers in the same area.”

Dallas, Texas. A woman at Alvarado saw a bright, moonlike disk in the sky between 5 and 6 P.M. And, Mrs. Ramsey C. Johnson, 929 South Oak Cliff Boulevard saw something large and white, going very fast.

Fort William, Ontario. Residents of Hymers, Ontario, saw a huge streak of fire race through the sky from the southwest. They saw it reached a point due west of Hymers, performed a loop, then moved south to disappear over the horizon.

Florida. W.R. Davis and P.L. Moore, Miami Weather Bureau, described an object somewhat smaller than a full moon. It lit up the sky to the northwest and fell vertically, leaving a luminous, weaving trail. The trail was S shaped. The object was also sighted at Cedar Keys, with a tail estimated 50 to 60 miles long. The phenomenon was seen as far north as Brunswick, Georgia.

Salem, Oregon. A dozen persons reported that while they were watching the maneuvers of a number of airplanes they observed a flying saucer en route north. After proceeding north for some distance, it turned around and headed south. It halted twice after making the turn. The observations were made from Fairmount Hill, one of the outstanding residential sections.

Seattle, Washington. Three mountain climbers were buzzed by a flying saucer that was round, almost transparent and sounded like a buzzsaw. Roge Hamilton, his wife, Patricia, and Dick Hamilton said they sighted the object near Snow Lake on the Snoqualmie Pass. It went so fast none of them had time to take a picture.

John J. O’Neill, NHYT News Service, had his telescope pointed at the moon, when a dark body moved across its face from east to west in about one and one half seconds. It was approximately oval, with an angular dimension of between six and ten seconds of arc, was in sharp focus, and cut in a straight, sharply defined path. It was small, but could have been seen by the naked eye. It was obviously a celestial object and not a night-flying bird, dark airplane, or other such terrestrial object. It was obviously moving in space between in space between the earth and the moon. If a satellite of Luna, the high velocity with which it was moving would require that it be very close to the moon. If its distance was only 4000 miles from the Earth, it would be moving with a velocity of 12 miles per second, and would be about 500 feet in diameter.

Louella O. Parsons, famous movie columnist, reported the fantastic story of 900 feet taken of the flying saucers in Alaska.

Over a year ago, Mikel Conrad was in Alaska filming “Arctic Manhunt” when he heard from the Eskimos of strange flying disks. He made a trip into the Frozen North to see for himself. Then he reported to Washington. The government sent a man to Alaska and asked Conrad for the film he had taken. He turned it over to them. After examination, it was placed in a sealed vault in Los Angeles. Now the film has been released to Conrad, who is incorporating it into a film called “Flying Saucer.” Howard Irving Young is writing the film Conrad is a producer and director for Colonial Pictures.

Boston. Farmer Joseph E. Panek, of South Sedick Road doesn’t believe a thing unless he sees it. He, his wife Clara, and a neighbor, Michael P. Bednasz were putting corn in a silo. Panek looked up and saw an object, round like a ball or a saucer, traveling very fast, maybe 1000 miles per hour, from west to east. It was light and silvery-looking and left no smoke or noise. Both his wife and neighbor saw it when he shouted.

Milford, Ohio. 6,000-7,000 saw a flying saucer during the St. Gertrude festival at Madeira. Sgt. Berger, operating a searchlight owned by the St. Peter and Paul Church at Norwood caught the disk in his beam. The saucer immediately moved up and out of sight. Berger caught it again, two hours later, and this time it did try not try to move up. It was under continuous observation for two and one half hours more. Berger estimates it was at an elevation of seven or eight miles. It was apparently 100 to 150 feet in diameter. It seemed to be made of aluminum or some shiny material. The longer the light remained on the disk, the greater the intensity of its glow became. Berger experimented- he moved the light, and the disk remained visible, glowing brightly. Then it moved back into the beam of its own accord.

A Milford family drove over, informed Berger that from their viewpoint the disk seemed to be two globes, one above the other. Looking straight up, reported Berger, was like looking at the bottom of a plate.

Temagami, Ontario. A jagged, sustained flash of blinding light that lasted for several minutes was seen moving between Timmins and Temagami. It was a tremendous bluish-white flash, and the illumination remained in the heavens for between 6 and 7 minutes. It was not the aurora borealis.

Osborne, Kansas. Delmar Remick, looked up when he heard geese honking. He saw a flying saucer in the air about a mile up, heading northwest. It remained in view 6 or 7 seconds, moved at terrific speed. Its only other motion was a sort of little flip about every half-second.

There are hundreds more such reports, from every area. They cannot be denied. There is something going on in the sky which is beyond the knowledge of our scientists. The fact remains, there are “flying saucers” and they perform with incredible ability.

In the introduction to this article, we asked what would happen to a citizen who tried to learn something about the mythical space ship that landed at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, insisting that it was his business too. We inferred he might be in trouble, and we asked what kind of trouble.

Well, we have an answer to that which is based on experience. No, we haven’t seen a space ship at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, But we know what kind of trouble John Q. Citizen can get into if he happens to turn onto a road labeled “Brass.” Telling you about it will give you some idea of what really would happen if that space ship landed, and was classified by the army. “Classified’ means “none of your darn business.”

Easter Sunday, 1941, several conditions existed which are important: 1. The United States was not at war. 2. Canada was. December 7th was still three quarters of a year away.

On that Sunday, the writer drove from Chicago to Sault Ste. Marie. With him went a young girl whose husband-to-be was stationed with the armed forces at the famous locks. She wanted to see the young man. It was as simple as all that.

As often happens in that north country, it snowed. Huge drifts made it impossible to drive back. So, leaving both the young girl and the car there, we returned to our job in Chicago.

A month later opportunity came to return and retrieve the car, and we hoped, attend a wedding. As it turned out, there was no wedding, and we set out to return to Chicago-from the Canadian side of the river.

At the ferry an immigrations official motioned us to park the car. “Routine check,” he said briefly.

It was far from routine. We were separated, and questioned. After some six hours I finally reached the decision that something was decidedly wrong about the setup. I requested to be conveyed to the American authorities. Since I had paid my ten cents on the ferry, declared my name and status as an American citizen, and thus entered Canada legally, I requested to return the same way.

After several hours wait, American army officers arrived. I was driven across in an army car, my own car nowhere visible. I did not see it again for a week. When I did, I found that it had literally been taken apart. I am sure not even the battery cells were overlooked in one of the most systematic searches I have ever seen.

Briefly, the Colonel summed it up for me.

“You are,” he said, “the cleverest spy we have ever run across.”

“Spy!” I gasped. “Clever?”

“Yes,” he said. “For one whole month we’ve had dozens of our best men trailing that car, and were unable to discover how contacts were made between the girl and the mastermind.”

“The mastermind?”
  “Yes! You. Anybody who could evade our search of the area for that length of time is supremely clever.”
  “I am flattered-but confused,” I confessed. “Perhaps the reason you couldn’t find me here was because I was in Chicago. And just what is it I am supposed to be masterminding?”
  “Perhaps I had better refresh your memory,” he said. “First, in searching your baggage, we found the photo you took of the airport in that yellow plane Saturday morning.”

“Photo-yellow plane?”

“Yes. Yesterday morning you flew over the area in an unmarked plane. We shot at you, but missed. We haven’t found the plane yet, but now that we have you, it’ll only be a matter of time.”

“I wish I could help you,” I offered. “But go on. I am beginning to get interested in this little joke. I have some friends in the army, but I didn’t know any of them were stationed here.”

“This is no joke,” he assured me. “But to get on, a month ago you…” His voice trailed off and he turned and produced a wooden box with a hold drilled in one side of it about an inch in diameter. Mounted in the hole was a piece of glass that certainly was not a lens. Inside the box were several dry cell batteries hooked up in series. There was nothing else.

“What is it?” asked the Colonel.

“I give up,” I said helplessly. “It looks like a doorbell.”

“Don’t try to be funny,” he said dangerously. “You’ll make it a lot easier for yourself if you confess.”

“What is it you want me to confess?’

“All right, if that’s the way you want it. A month ago you used this death ray to shoot down six of our barrage balloons.”

“I did?” I faltered weakly.

“Yes. And the same night you instigated a riot on the Canadian side which resulted in a pitched battle between United States Artillerymen and Canadian troops. In that battle a house was burned down, a man burned to death, and a small child suffered a broken leg and exposure which resulted in pneumonia and death. You have been positively identified as being on the scene. Do you deny it?”

“I don’t deny being there,” I admitted. “But my amazing participation I cannot remember. As I remember it, that night a storm stated, an electric storm, which later developed into a snowstorm which stopped all auto traffic. During the electrical storm, several barrage balloons were struck by lightning. One of them fell on a house on the Canadian side. It burned. Because it was an American barrage balloon, Canadian troops surrounded the house to prevent any altering of evidence, or something of the sort. Several American Negro soldiers, insisting they saw a face at the window, attempted to rescue the inmates. A battle resulted. It turned out that a man was burned in the fire, and a little girl jumped out of the window, suffered a broken leg, and because it was cold and wet, obviously contracted the pneumonia you mention. But the rest of it sounds absolutely fantastic to me.’

“You threw this death ray into the river,” he accused, “but didn’t throw it far enough. It landed on the bank, in the weeds, and we found it.”

I looked at the box. “If that is a death ray,” I said, “I am an Eskimo.”

At that moment a lieutenant entered the room, whispered in the Colonel’s ear. He turned to me triumphantly.

“We’ve caught your confederate,” he announced.

“Amazing,” I said. “Who is he?”
  “The operator of the steam shovel in the new lock. He has just sabotaged the whole thing for months, but uprooting the adjoining lock and flooding the whole workings. We’ve got you now!”

Then began a grilling that made the rest of it seem like child’s play. To me, only one incident stands out as important. I had written eight single-spaced typewritten pages of my impressions of the relations between Canadians and Americans at the Sault, and I now realized that it in the light of all these other fantastic accusations, the statements therein would be construed at the very least as seditious. I had these sheets in a legal-sized envelope. Two men, a Captain and a Lieutenant searched me. I emptied every pocket at their instructions, transferring this tremendously large and noisy envelope from pocket to pocket, just on the hope that they might not see me do it. It was impossible-but like everything else that happened on that crazy trip, the impossible happened, they seemed to be as blind as bats. Later I tore up the sheets and flushed them down the toilet.

During the week that followed (it took that long, they said, to develop the negative of the airfield and discover that it really was a picture of Hiawatha Falls, as I had claimed, and the runways were really a cable fence protecting persons from falling into it) I despaired of ever seeing Chicago again.

When I demanded to know what were the charges against me, the Major told me any charges I wanted. He suggested a few. “The Mann Act, for instance. I have several soldiers who will confirm the immortal purposes for which you transported Miss-across the Michigan State line…”

“Skip it,” I said hastily. “But I want to see a lawyer.”

“I’m a lawyer,” he said. “And a good one.”

“At least let me call my boss and tell him why I’m not at my desk.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

In short, I insisted on my Constitutional Rights, found I had none. I was held incommunicado. I was not allowed to see a lawyer. I was treated, in at least one instance, violently, although I must admit it was a Canadian who did it, and who came off second best-my nose didn’t bleed.

All because Army Intelligence was looking for a mystery yellow plane which had ignored a challenge in flying over the area; because lightning had obviously struck a series of barrage balloons; because a small boy’s attempt at a “gadget” had been found beside the river; because your “mastermind spy” was editor of a science fiction magazine, and therefore knew all about death rays-and just happened to be there!

Funny? Yes, it was. But my rights as a citizen were violated, and although it is true that I could have raised a stink about it later, the stink would have gotten exactly nowhere.

More than $50,000 of taxpayers’ money was spent flying my fingerprints to Washington, flying Army Intelligence men to every member of my family, every acquaintance, every business associate, and in absolutely fantastic investigation. I suffered extreme loss of reputation, incurred the suspicion of numerous persons, lost important and valuable business contacts, lost financially, and got pushed around. And the funniest line of the whole comic opera was the parting shot of the Colonel, who had turned America upside down to find just one thing against my record to justify having me (I felt almost sure) shot on the spot (which could have been done, by the simple expedient of shipping me back to Canada where my “crimes” had occurred.)

Said the Colonel: “We’ve found that you have a clean record, but if you’ll take my advice for the future, keep your nose clean!”

I can think of only one way to do it successfully, where the Brass is concerned-go to bed and stay there!

I’ve often wished that Colonel would come to my office looking for a job-I’ve prepared an application blank that is a lulu. Come sneaking into my office, secretly plot to take over my job and blow up my printing presses, will he!

Recently, Professor George Adamski of Palomar Gardens gave a speech before the Rotary Club of Fallbrook, California. According to Professor Adamski, the flying saucers seen by many at various times during the past few years are huge space ships from some planet, probably Mars!

“Ghost ships were discovered and pronounced real two years ago,” said Professor Adamski. “Saucers, seen by thousands, are not flights of fancy, but ships from planets. These ships have been seen by radar on the other side of the moon. They are better than 700 feet long. They have approached as close as 30 to 40 miles above the earth, flying at speeds of 2 to 3 miles per second.

“These space ships will land here soon, from which planets we do not know, but science now claims that all planets are inhabited.

“Photos of Mars taken from Mt. Palomar have proven the canals on Mars are man-made, built by an intelligence far greater than any man’s on earth.

“Science and the Navy know that we can land a ship of 40 men on the moon; and the next war we will require another planet to fight from. In line with this endeavor, Westinghouse is now building a cosmic ray motor run by light.

“Science is now working on a combination of radar and television that promises within two years the home-set will get space pictures at any distance.”

According to Professor Adamski, the saucers merely appeared to be close to the earth. Their passengers were evidently merely getting a close-up look-see of our puny efforts of doing-over the world, but hesitated to come too close or land for fear of our anti-craft guns.

He placed America in the kindergarten, scientifically and intellectually, while the supermen from Mars, Jupiter and a billion satellites will soon be dropping on our acres.

But he kicked the Orson Welles theory out of the window. Mars-men will be friendly. In fact, so different from Americans that the Navy has started an intensive training of crewmen in courtesy. This group will also be the first to be sent to the moon.

Professor Adamski points out that the news is already obsolete. All knowledge of space ships is a military secret until such time as new knowledge supplants it. What is told the public is no longer important.

There is no reason to believe that of the millions and possibly billions of stars and planets floating in endless space, our earth should be the only one that is inhabited and that our intelligence exceeds that of any of the others.

We do know that the atmosphere of Mars contains much less oxygen than the atmosphere of the earth. In fact the air is so rarefied that an oxygen-filled human from this earth would probably blow up if he stepped out of a pressurized cabin of a space ship to the soil of Mars, and by the same token, the body of Marsman would probably collapse if he emerged from his space ship when he reached the earth.

Professor Adamski’s book, “Pioneers of Space” will be off the press in two weeks. The Navy has already ordered 50.

FATE reads this account of Professor Adamski’s speech with skepticism. It strikes us as being filled with romance and quite a bit of hot air; yet it mentions several things we wonder about, namely those radar observations of space ships on the other side of the moon, meaning, no doubt, beyond its orbit, not on its other side, which never faces the earth. An object 700 feet long at that distance would be quite some gnat in the Polo Grounds. And the observation by Palomar of the Martian canals, and positive identification as canals. We haven’t had that confirmed; rather, it has been denied. Westinghouse is certainly building something, if it is building such a motor as is described. We’d like to see it.

We’d like to read his book. We hope it makes more sense than his speech. But we have given it to you for what it is worth.

Now, finally, we have gotten the complete report given by Captain C.S. Chiles and co-pilot John Whitted, of Eastern Airlines concerning the “space ship” they saw. On Saturday morning, July 24, 1948, at 2:45 A.M. they were flying at about 5,000 feet and were watching faint flashes of lightning ahead of them…

We had our eyes focused on the point from which the thing came. From the right and slightly above us came a bright glow and the long, rocket-like ship quickly took form in the distance.

“It’s a jet job,” I said to Whitted, my co-pilot.

Then it grew larger and pulled up alongside. It appeared to be about 100 feet long, with a huge fuselage, probably three times as large as that of a B-29.

“It’s too big for a jet, but what the devil is it?” said Whitted.

There were two rows of windows and it appeared definitely to be a two-decker. The lights from the inside were a ghastly white, like the glow of a gas light-the whitest we’d ever seen.

There was a long shaft on the ship’s nose that looked like it might have been part of the radar controls. The ship acted that way, too, for just after it pulled alongside us, it whipped quickly upward at a very sharp angle. It certainly was maneuverable, because it made that turn fast as lightning. It disappeared into the clouds and reappeared again for several times before we lost sight of it.

There appeared to be windshields come back from two or three of the front windows. Whether those apertures were all windows, or whether some of them were breathers to feed oxygen to a fire inside, we don’t know. The more we think about the white glare, the fluorescent glow underneath and the cherry-red flame it belched behind, the more we’re convinced it was a rocket ship.

John piloted a heavy bomber with the 20th Air Force during the war and I served in all theaters with the Air Transport Command, so we’ve seen about every kind of known aircraft. This monster was like nothing we’d seen before. It was too close to us, and too clear in detail to be anything but a manmade ship.

We’ve considered, of course, the remote possibility that it was a ship from another planet. We prefer to believe that it’s one of our own ships that’s still a military secret. I’d certainly hate to know that our airforce would have to face a fleet of machines like that.

We were both stunned, and didn’t say anything for several minutes. It was so awe-inspiring that it just paralyzed us for the moment.

Then I said to John, “Am I crazy?”

“I’m crazy, too,” he said.

“I’m going back and see what the passengers saw, if you’ll take over,” I told John, and I rushed back to the passengers.

They were all asleep but one. He asked me what it was that just passed us, said it went by so fast he couldn’t make it out. He said he was too startled to note details. He is C.L. McKelvie, an amateur photographer of Columbus, Ohio.

McKelvie had a camera on a strap around his neck. He said he didn’t have time to snap a picture. It occurred to me that I also had a camera with me. I was too busy looking at it to think of the camera.

Lots of persons think we’re kidding, but the more we think about it the more serious we are about it…

FATE gives you the complete and unvarnished story here. Any other version is untrue.

Now, let’s summarize what is actually known of the flying saucers. We’ll merely list the facts without embellishments, and when we have finished, challenge anyone to say there aren’t flying saucers.

As for Army Intelligence, we suggest they read Buck Rogers with great care, and then at leas they’ll know as much about space ships as the average American Boy. And if they’re keeping anything from his tender mind, don’t bother! He’s the lad who’s going to Mars, when Americans go there, not the “guys” who write this “inspired” poppycock we see in newspapers and magazines these days. Writers such as these seldom have any evidence to support their fantasies.