A UFO Invasion (In Broad Daylight No Less)..

"The idea of benign or hostile space aliens from other planets visiting the earth [is clearly] an emotional idea. There are two sorts of self-deception here: either accepting the idea of extraterrestrial visitation by space aliens in the face of very meager evidence because we want it to be true; or rejecting such an idea out of hand, in the absence of sufficient evidence, because we don't want it to be true. Each of these extremes is a serious impediment to the study of UFOs." -excerpt of a lecture given by U.S. astrophysicist Carl Sagan in 1969.

"Saw in the Portland paper a short time ago in regards to an article in regards to the so called flying disc having any basis of fact. I can say am a prospector and was in the Mt Adams district on June 24th the day Kenneth Arnold of Boise Idaho claims he saw a formation of flying disc. And I saw the same flying objects at about the same time. Having a telescope with me at the time I can asure you they are real and noting like them I ever saw before they did not pass verry high over where I was standing at the the time. plobly 1000 ft. they were Round about 30 feet in dimater tapering sharply to a point in the lead end in an oval shape. with a bright top surface. I did not hear any noise as you would from a plane. But there was an object in the tail and looked like a big hand of a clock shifting from side to side like a big magnet. There speed as far as i know seemed to be greater than anything I ever saw. Last view I got of the objects they were standing on edge Banking in a Cloud." - Letter from Fred M. Johnson of Portland, Oregon, to Lt. Col. Donald L. Springer, dated August 20, 1947.

As you can see on the map above that graphically demonstrates the hot spots for the 1947 UFO wave in the U.S., Idaho was the center of the storm. But just behind it was New Mexico. Other important areas were most of the states that surround Idaho: Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, and Oregon. Arizona, or just west of New Mexico, were factors as well. Also significantly higher than average were California and Colorado (1.64 & 1.49Xs the U.S. state average at the time). My UFO Day Cycles were peaking on Friday (Day Cycle A) and Sunday/Monday (Day Cycle B), fitting in line with the peak in sightings from Friday, July 4 to Tuesday July 8, 1947. The 5+ year cycle was also peaking a few months before this. Sunspot activity was also at record levels then.

The method used to indicate sighting intensity by state on the map unfortunately does so with some exaggerated emphasis on such low density states as Montana and Alaska. The emphasis should be on Idaho and New Mexico, with the western portion of the U.S. in general being the stage for the UFO invasion (which, although not nearly as intense, is where it has been unfolding lately as well). Idaho is often one of the better states to be able to witness a UFO in, but it usually doesn't lead all the rest. Something was definitely going on there. Don't know why the UFOs during their first big wave of activity in the U.S. in the modern era chose that state to usher themselves in to our world (and then stick around for a month or two) but that is just what happened.

Apparently, on July 2nd, or two days before the most intense period of the 1947 wave began, there was a crash of a mysterious/unknown aerial craft into the New Mexican desert near Roswell. Rancher Mac Brazel found it in a field the next day and not long afterwards reported and delivered some of the wreckage to the sheriff. The lawman then reported it to the Army-Air Force at Roswell. The debris was retrieved by the military on July 7th and shipped to a secure location out of the state shortly thereafter.

Although there have been larger waves since the 1947 one, such as in the summer of 1952 in the U.S. and in the fall of 1954 in France, this one stood out perhaps more than the others when looking at the July 4-8 period. The following are reports that happened during that period of time as given by Edward J. Ruppelt (former head of the USAF's Project Blue Book) in his 1956 book entitled "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (see Amazon link at the end of the article). One thing that distinguished this wave over most was that there were many more daytime sightings then (only UFO landings are rarer) than is typical (although they are usually less rare during waves). In other words, the Flying Saucers were bolder, less covert than they normally are.

At 1pm over Portland, Oregon on July 4th, a policeman witnessed flying disks maneuvering in the sky at high speed. Two were going south and three east. Shortly afterwards there were two separate reports by multiple police officers (some former pilots) who also witnessed at least three of the disks. In Vancouver, across the Colombia river, sheriff's deputies saw approximately two dozen of the chrome hub cap shaped objects.

The next sighting, according to Ruppelt, was one that caused the Air Force to really start to take the UFO situation seriously. It happened over a super secret military test center in the Mojave Desert of California which is now called Edwards AFB. At 10am on July 8th, several airmen saw three aluminum colored spherical objects, estimated to be around two miles in the air and traveling around 200 miles an hour. Just before noon that same day in Nevada at the secret Air Force test range at Rogers Dry Lake (now Area-51), four technicians in an observation truck witnessed a similar object descending from the sky and appearing to move slower than a conventional military jet. It was seen for 90 seconds before disappearing behind a mountain range. "No smoke, flames, propeller arcs, engine noise, or other plausible or visible means of propulsion were noted." Four hours later, an F-51 pilot was flying at 20,000 feet, 40 miles south of what is now Edwards AFB, when he saw a bogey. It had no vertical fin or wings but didn't appear to be a weather balloon and he flew higher and faster to pursue it, but couldn't reach it. He then reported it to nearby air bases who said that there were no other aircraft in the area.