Documents / Hearing transcript
This is the printed record of a July 29, 1968 symposium on unidentified flying objects held by the Committee on Science and Astronautics of the U.S. House of Representatives, chaired by Rep. J. Edward Roush. The committee heard statements from six scientists: J. Allen Hynek, James E. McDonald, Carl Sagan, Robert L. Hall, James A. Harder and Robert M. L. Baker. It also printed papers from Donald Menzel, Stanton Friedman, Frank Salisbury and others. Hynek argued that puzzling UFO reports from competent witnesses deserve serious scientific study.
“Nevers”43 pages
241 sages to the souls who presently claim contact! V. Secret Weapons It is possible that secret devices being tested by earthly governments are misinterpreted as extraterrestrial machines. That this explantion might account for the phenomenon as a whole is, however, quite unreasonable. To begin with, the performances of the UFO's makes our present rockets ap- pear puny indeed. Could any modern government suppress such a capability for nearly 20 years (since 1947)? Most convincing is the fact that the UFO phenomenon goes way back into history. UFO enthusiasts, for example, often cite the first two chapters of the Book of Ezekiel in the Old Testament as an excellent example of a flying saucer sighting, (Menzel and Boyd, 1963, indicate that it was probably a sundog, but this is a far-fetched ex- planation for the details reported by Ezekiel] Vallee (1965) documents the sight- ings previous to 1947. He states that he has on file more than 300 UFO sightings prior to the 20th century, al- though he apologizes because he has never had the time to make a thorough search. He considers his cases to be only a small sample of those which might be available. They were care- fully chosen for their high quality, roughly conforming to the criteria of good sightings described above. Some 60 of these 300 accounts occurred previous to 1800, and the remainder were recorded during the 19th century. The great majority of these more re- cent accounts were recorded in the sci- entific literature, particularly that of astronomy (often in the annals of the various astronomical observatories). It is important to emphasize that these are accounts which are not readily ex- plainable as natural phenomena. Classic, for example, are the observa- tions in Nuremberg (April 14, 1561) and in Basale (August 7, 1566) which have been analyzed in some detail by Jung (1959). Both of these sightings involved large inclined tubes in the sky from which spheres originated, an event occurring sometimes in more re- cent times (Vallee, 1965, cites 13 ex- amples between 1959 and 1964). Spheres and discs appeared to fight each other in aerial dances. The in- habitants of these two relatively large cities observed this strange pheno- menon for a long interval of time on the dates given. A great attempt was made to con- sider the scientific accounts of the 19th century in terms of the natural uni- verse. They were referred to as inter- esting cases of ball lightning or bolide meteors. Nevertheless, the descrip- tions are of discs and wheels and the like, and the behavior follows very closely that of the modern UFO. These "meteors" would move slowly, appear to hover, change directions, accelerate at great speeds, have an apparent di- ameter two or three times that of the full moon, etc. In one instance, called ball lightning, an object slowly emerged from the ocean, moved against the wind, hovered close to the ship from which it was observed, and then rushed away in the sky and dis- appeared in the southeast (for details, see Vallees book, 1965). Sightings during the early part of this century were relatively few. The so-called Miracle of Fatima (Vallee, 1965; Walsh, 1947), which took place on October 13, 1917, in a field at Fa- tima, a small village some 62 miles north of Lisbon, Portugal, is a fascinat- ing tale, to say the least. Today it would be considered a contactee story, since three children were supposedly contacted at monthly intervals (always on the 13th of the month), beginning in May, by a beautiful, "transparent" woman dressed in white, who arrived in a globe of light. Following the first visit, other witnesses besides the chil- dren observed strange events (a buz- zing noise, etc.), but only the children saw the "vision." At the time of the miracle itself, some 70,000 people were gathered in the field by Fatima to wait for the promised sign. It had been raining when suddenly the "sun" ap- peared through the dense cloud cover. It was a strange sun, however, looking like a flattened disc with a very definite contour, not appearing as a dazzling object, but rather having a clear, changing brightness which one could compare to a pearl. The disc began turning, rotating with increasing speed as the crowd began to cry with anguish. It then began falling toward the earth "reddish and bloody, threatening to crush everybody under its fiery wake." After an interval of dancing before the crowd, it retreated back through the clouds and disappeared forever. It would be difficult to imagine a sighting which fits the above criteria better than this one. It is also difficult to imagine that the Fatima "sun" was a secret weapon being developed by Russia or the United States! Some Representative Sightings Since the study of the UFO's must be based on the reports, let us consider a few sightings exemplifying various points. I. The Arnold Sighting, Mt. Rainier, Washington, June 24, 1947. Although Vallee (1965) calls our attention to a fascinating wave of sightings in Scan- dinavia during the summer of 1946, it did not occur to anyone at that time to consider these as extraterrestrial spaceships, but only as secret rockets being developed by Russia or the United States. The current sightings date back to that of Kenneth Arnold. Other better sightings exist for the same period, and even for several days be- fore (as early as April), but Arnold turned his story over to the newspapers, the term "flying saucer" was coined, and the world's attention was focused on the phenomenon. Arnold saw a formation of silvery discs flying from one peak or ridge to another around Mount Rainier in the state of Washington. By timing the elapsed period from one landmark to another, he was able to estimate their speed at not less than 1,200 miles per hour. Menzel and Boyd (1963) "ex- plain" Arnold's sighting as a mirage brought about by inversion layers in the atmosphere which made the peaks appear to be separated from the moun- tains below them. Presumably, their apparent motion would be due to the motion of Arnold's airplane. A second explanation proposed by these authors is that Arnold saw the lens-shaped clouds which sometimes occur in the area. They present pictures of such clouds (which look exactly like lens- shaped clouds and not at all like the objects described by Arnold). They further cast aspersions upon Arnold's reliability as a witness by describing in some detail his subsequent actions in attempts to get publicity, etc. Arnold is supported in his story, however, by the fact that it fits per- fectly into the pattern of sightings dur- ing that period. Various authors (Hall, 1964; Lorenzen, 1962) have summa- rized these events, and among them a recurring theme is that of formations
Hearing transcript, from the govinfo collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 256 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.