The Flying Saucer Mystery (1952) | Vintage UFO Documentary | Donald E. Keyhoe

From out of nowhere, the flying saucer mystery is with us. What is the flying saucer? What do people see and sometimes photograph? What's behind the daily reports of aerial phenomena in the nation's press? After more than five years of study, there is still no agreement, even among the experts. We can say that the recent sightings are in no way connected with any secret development by any agency of the United States. With all due respect to the Air Force, I believe that some of them will prove to be of interplanetary origin. In my position in the research and development organization of the Bureau of Aeronautics and of the Navy Department, I am thoroughly familiar with both our aircraft and our guided missiles programs and can state without reservation that the Navy has no saucer-shaped aircraft or missile in any of these programs. I glanced up and there were three flying saucers in a V, approximately a half a mile away from me at an altitude of 350 feet. They appear to be hovering in midair with what I believe to be a spinning action. What are these shadowy voyagers of the atmosphere? While our forefathers were still dreaming of flight decades ago, they sketched these aerial vehicles of the future. Strangely, some of them resemble the saucers of today. When we went to work to make reality out of these dreams, we fashioned crude rocket-propelled devices such as these. While unsuccessful in themselves, they proved to be our first fumbling efforts to master the techniques of jet and rocket propulsion. If the flying saucers are of this earth, this may be how they were born, but their later growth and maturity cloaked in official secrecy. When the smoke of the war blew away in 1945, we found ourselves suddenly arrived in the age of rocket propulsion. However, since then, the lid has been on. Other than announcements of ever-increasing altitudes reached by the rockets, we have had no reports, though we know millions are being spent on them. To our knowledge, the engines in the B-47 are the most powerful in use today, yet the announced speed of this airplane is only 600 miles per hour, a mere fraction of the velocity of the disks. Only if radically new area dynamics are in use could the disks be powered by jet engines of today. This is a thunder jet executing a loop, hazardous in a jet plane because of the centrifugal force the pilot must withstand during the pullout. Yet characteristic of the saucers is their fantastic maneuverability. Disks moving at many times the speed of sound suddenly reverse direction. Flight surgeons say any human pilot attempting this would perish instantly. Likewise, saucer reporters agree that the new jet helicopter was not what they saw. If not conventional aircraft then, what did they see? They appeared to be 50 feet in diameter with what appeared to be a dome on the top with, I can't be sure, but I believe I saw the sun glinting off of, well, windows or observation portals of sorts. Is this what Weisberger saw? This disk was photographed by an Oregon farmer as it hovered low over his field. Experts say these are actual photographs of a flying saucer. The farmer sighted the same spinning action and estimated the diameter of the disk at 20 to 30 feet. In Kentucky, a motion picture photographer attracted by a strange noise overhead trained his camera on this disk. Here, the wobbling motion mentioned in so many reports is clearly seen. A Coast Guard photographer snapped this phenomena when it appeared briefly over Salem, Massachusetts. The incandescent seen here was bright enough to stand out in broad daylight. What may have been the same phenomena was photographed at night by August Roberts, who has this to say about it. What do you think it was? I think it was from outer space, but friendly. Like many of the saucer reports, the latest and most credible to be received comes not from America, but from behind the Iron Curtain. Seen on the ground by the refugee mayor of a small East German town, its crew was startled by the screams of the mayor's daughter. The first eyewitness report of a supposed Soviet guided missile tells of a saucer-shaped object. The moment the crew disappeared in the cylinder, the disk rose with a humming noise, until the thing was standing on the cylinder like a big mushroom. Then he said the disk began rotating, red, blue, and green flames spurted out from the holes in it. He thinks they were for yet propulsion, these holes. He saw the thing rise straight up from the ground and move off parallel with the ground once it had gained height. It moved faster, he said, than any fighter plane he had seen, and it made a terrible roaring noise. From such reports as these arise many theories to explain the disks. Undismayed by the attacks of True Magazine, Frank Scully, author of a book, Behind the Flying Saucers, offers his views. Of course, to assume that there's no intelligence equal to ours anywhere else in the universe is to belittle the universe, because we don't show much intelligence, obviously. But the likelihood of other planets elsewhere in other planetary systems, in other universes, of having not only what we got, but lots more, since the planets might be older, their intelligences could be much more mature, more advanced. They could have even passed through an atomic age long ago. Or they could have been souls that never were fouled up like our Adam and Eve and never went through all this. And if they are perfect souls elsewhere, the thing is, they are not killable. They're immortal already. So the idea of the Air Force telling them to shoot them down is idiotic. Next, a more conventional theory is advanced by physicist Noel Scott. The expression flying saucers is a catch-all term for unusual lights occurring in the sky. It is possible that some of these lights are caused by masses of electrically charged particles of air. Electrified air can assume many different colors, such as yellow, red, pink, orange, green, and blue. This experiment demonstrates that charged masses of air can be made to move in formation, change course, change brightness, appear, disappear, and reappear. These electrified masses of air produce no sound but can be detected by radar. The atmospheric conditions necessary for producing this phenomena are certainly not prevailing conditions that exist in the upper atmosphere. However, it is not altogether improbable that there may be occasional local conditions responsible for this glow, which might be interpreted as flying saucers. In the Engineer Research and Development Laboratories, Fort Belvoir, Virginia, Dr. Scott shows how to make your own flying saucers. Some say the apparitions are the result of light refracting from what is called an inversion layer, such as an oasis will appear in the desert. In a glass bell, Dr. Scott reproduces weather conditions which prevailed during many of the recent sightings. If Dr. Scott's theories are correct, what you are looking at now is an actual flying saucer. It is possible that even the headlights of your car can create them. With the Air Force hard-pressed for an accounting of the mysterious invaders, this explanation is popular. But General James Samford points out even this theory does not explain all the reports. However, there have been a certain percentage of this volume of reports that have been made by credible observers of relatively incredible things. It is this group of observations that we now are attempting to resolve. We have, as of date, come to only one firm conclusion with respect to this remaining percentage, and that is that it does not contain any pattern of purpose or of consistency that we can relate to any conceivable threat to the United States. According to the General, these weather balloons are the flying saucers that many people see. Still, he cautions that a few reports cannot be so easily explained. It is these reports that interest Donald Kehoe, sponsor of a theory that is growing in popularity. After one year's investigation, I believe that the flying saucers seen by veteran airline and Air Force pilots are objects from another planet. The Air Force itself has officially admitted that flying saucers exist. This statement appears in Project Saucer Case No. 75. Not only that, the Air Force has officially analyzed the motives of possible visitors from space. Here is a direct quotation from the official report. Such a civilization might observe that on Earth we now have atomic bombs in our fast developing rockets. In the past history of mankind, they should be alarmed. We should therefore expect at this time above all to behold such visitations. Is there another civilization somewhere in space apprehensively watching our rapid progress with the atom? Are we under surveillance by an intelligence that has revealed itself to us only in the form of ghostly apparitions? Does this power foresee our ability to travel through space in rockets propelled by the atomic power we are learning to control? An incredible theory, and it is doubted by many, but it is not likely to be disproved in the public mind while our scientists are predicting interplanetary travel within the lifetime of those living today. As the debate continues, so do reports of new saucers, some following in the pattern already established, others entirely new, creating more speculation and endless discussion. Project Saucer, the official Air Force investigation of the phenomena, has been reopened. Now installations are alerted to attempt to intercept any of the strange visitors that may be sighted. While millions listen and watch, the great flying saucer mystery remains unsolved.