The Passaic UFO Photographs (George J. Stock)

Summer 1952. America was in the middle of its biggest wave of flying saucer reports. Radar and visual sightings over Washington, D.C. on July 19 and 26 had made headlines, and on July 29 the Air Force faced the press at the Pentagon. Two days later, the story came to Passaic, New Jersey.

July 31, 1952. About 10 a.m. George J. Stock was at his home at 221 Brooks Avenue with his father, William J. Stock. According to the Air Force report, an object approached slowly from due east, at a speed not exceeding five miles per hour.

It was a disc. "Dull metallic grey in color," Stock said, with "a dome-like structure on upper side." He put it at between sixty and eighty feet in diameter and eight feet high. No portholes, antennas, rivets or seams. It did not "make the least bit of noise or sound of any kind."

It hovered almost directly over his head for a few minutes. Then it moved a short distance north and hovered again. It turned up on its edge and, at about a forty-five degree angle, made a complete 360 degree turn. Just before it moved off, a vapor ring formed around its entire outer edge. The ring grew more dense as the object got further away.

On August 1, the Paterson Morning Call gave a different account, crediting John H. Riley, 28, a friend of Stock's. In his telling the object was heading southeast at a "leisurely pace," then stopped and hovered overhead, near enough, he said, to have been hit with a rifle. He judged it about 30 feet wide, some 200 feet up, and silent. It tilted as it began moving southwest and travelled out of sight. Later retellings by Wendelle Stevens moved the sighting to July 29 at about 4:30 p.m.

The Air Force Office of Special Investigations sent Special Agent George H. Wertz. He interviewed Stock in November 1952 and established that Stock, not Riley, had taken the pictures. Riley had tried to sell them to East Coast newspapers. A neighbour, Mrs. Anna Koch, called the family "rational and sane."

Stock's home and machine shop were searched. Nothing was found "capable of producing or resembling object." Admiral Carl P. Holden confirmed that the experimental radar and microwave equipment at a plant about two miles away had not been in operation that day. The object did not resemble local street or playground lights. Wertz drew a sketch from the photographs and Stock's description, and the pictures were filed in the Air Technical Intelligence Center archives at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Project Blue Book reportedly classified the case as a hoax, though supporters argue its own investigation pointed the other way. Kevin D. Randle called the Passaic pictures the "most spectacular" of the 1952 flap, yet judged them a hoax. The domed shape is usually compared to a lady's sun hat, and sceptics suggested a saucer and an upturned tea cup. Sceptics read the credit dispute as a warning sign. Supporters see ordinary opportunism.

The photographs never went away. They ran in magazines and fanzines through the 1960s and 1970s, and in books by Otto Binder, Jerome Clark and Nigel Watson. One image was later reported to have been posted by the CIA. Weird N.J. summed up the region: "Passaic County is to UFO buffs what Coney Island is to hot dog lovers."