The 1947 Flying Disc Craze: America's First Flying Saucer Wave

1947 was a tense year. The Truman Doctrine came in March. The Marshall Plan followed in June. Then, on June 24, pilot Kenneth Arnold reported nine objects near Mount Rainier. They would "flip from side to side, in unison, flashing brightly as they did so." They moved, he said, "like a saucer if you skip it across water." Within days, reports were coming in from across the country.

The numbers climbed through late June. On July 4, they surged. At 1:05 p.m. in Portland, Oregon, police officers, harbor patrolmen, county deputies and KOIN radio newsman Frank Cooley reported five large discs. At Twin Falls Park, Idaho, about 60 picnickers watched 35 discs over 20 minutes. In Seattle, Coast Guard yeoman Frank Ryman photographed a small bright disc against a dark sky.

That evening, United Air Lines Flight 105 left Boise at 9:04 p.m. Over Emmett, Idaho, Captain Emil J. Smith and First Officer Ralph Stevens saw "four or five somethings," "smooth on bottom and rough appearing on top." Neither wings nor tails were visible. Then a second group of four appeared. The crew watched for nearly fifteen minutes.

July 6 brought 157 sightings. July 7 brought 162. In Detroit, there were about 500 witnesses. In Phoenix, William A. Rhodes took his photographs. Near Palmdale, California, smaller objects came out of a larger disc, like "mama hen with her baby chicks."

July 8. Muroc Army Air Field, a secret test base in California. Observers saw silver objects, one "flying in a tight circle, neither losing nor gaining altitude." Hours later, a major and a colonel watched "a thin metallic object" hover over the field for eight minutes. The same day, Roswell made its announcement.

On July 3, Air Materiel Command at Wright Field announced an investigation. On July 4, the Army Air Forces dropped its inquiry, citing a "lack of concrete evidence." Lt. Col. Harold R. Turner blamed "jet planes," then "meteorites." On July 10, Brig. Gen. George F. Schulgen asked the FBI to help question witnesses. J. Edgar Hoover wrote by hand that the Bureau must insist on "full access to discs recovered," because "in the La. case the Army grabbed it."

On September 23, Air Materiel Command, under Lt. Gen. Nathan Twining, gave its opinion. "The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious." The memo led to Project Sign.

By July 10 the wave had largely subsided. The recovered objects proved mundane: tinfoil, a saw blade with tubes and wires, packing washers. On July 11, a 30.5-inch disc in Twin Falls turned out to be the work of four teenagers, built from radio tubes, wires and parts of an old phonograph. The FBI and Army declared it a hoax. Ryman's photo, the first published picture of a "flying saucer," was later judged a weather balloon. A British Pathé newsreel had US Navy men blaming their research balloons. Still, an August Gallup poll found that 90% had heard of flying saucers. Only about 50% knew of the Marshall Plan.

In 1967, Ted Bloecher gathered more than 850 cases from 140 newspapers in 90 cities for NICAP, with an introduction by James E. McDonald. After July 6, he wrote, the press "freely gave over its obligation." One of his witnesses, Coral Lorenzen, later founded APRO. J. Allen Hynek and Edward J. Ruppelt questioned Arnold's account. Howard Henry Peckham saw a "rare opportunity to witness the birth and development of a modern myth."