Written off Roswell some years ag

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by zoobyshoe
Fascinating!

I look forward to seeing a photo of the clarifying memo. (Remember: I cannot access pdf, adobe, java)

Was the USSR found painted inside one of the saucers in English or Cyrillic script (CCCP)? Makes a huge difference.

-Zooby

I will try to post these later tonight if I have time; the reading of these memos is slow and tedious. I didn't spot the appropriate memos on the first [quick] pass.

The letters indicated were USSR.

What strikes me first are two possibilities: First, perhaps there was a toy of some kind being used. This seems unlikely since the flying saucer idea was only one month old [June of '47 - Kevin Arnold] when this started in July. Next, if it was a toy flung by kids then somewhere in the FBI files this should be indicated. It will take me some weeks to read all of the files. For now, I doubt this was something found on store shelves. The professional and consistent appearance of many of these saucers would then seem to rule out kids or even drunken goodtimers as hoaxers.

Next, it could have been the Soviets or some other enemy of the US at the time trying to create panic. Since radar was being used, I don't see US airspace regularly being invaded by Russian aircraft. I guess they could have been dropped from a high altitude spy plane [Soviet equivalent of the U2?]. Another possibility is that operatives on the ground were flinging these things. Also, they could have been dropped from balloons; perhaps the electronics were a timing device. In the reading I have done so far, the purpose of the circuitry has not been discussed.

Then of course we have the possibility that the military was doing this. What comes to mind for me is the "Red Scare" and the beginning of the cold war just a few years later. Also, true believers might argue that this was done to discredit the genuine saucer stories...and without more information we might speculate endlessly. Nonetheless, these are the only possibilities that I have managed thus far.

Any other ideas?

 

[zoobyshoe]

I don't know if you grew up in snow country, but when I was a kid there was a universally used thing that was made of aluminum, about three feet in diameter, round and dished. You sat in it and slid down snowy hills. There were two leather handles at the edges 180 degrees apart to hold on. The edge was curled over to form a lip. If you took the handles off and put two together like a clamshell, you'd have a very professional looking lenticular disc. Eventually they started making them out of plastic. (The plastic ones sucked.) I haven't the vaguest idea when these things came on the market. When WWII ended it freed up all the aluminum, though, so it could have been as early as '47. They were certainly on the market by '57.

So you are saying the USSR was in English letters?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by zoobyshoe
I don't know if you grew up in snow country, but when I was a kid there was a universally used thing that was made of aluminum, about three feet in diameter, round and dished. You sat in it and slid down snowy hills. There were two leather handles at the edges 180 degrees apart to hold on. The edge was curled over to form a lip. If you took the handles off and put two together like a clamshell, you'd have a very professional looking lenticular disc. Eventually they started making them out of plastic. (The plastic ones sucked.) I haven't the vaguest idea when these things came on the market. When WWII ended it freed up all the aluminum, though, so it could have been as early as '47. They were certainly on the market by '57.

So you are saying the USSR was in English letters?

I remember these. The specific details from the FBI reports should help a little here; I don't remember the exact diameter of these saucers.

As I recall, and I will check on this when I review the docs again, the FBI agents words were "the inside was painted white...with the letters USSR painted in red".

I will find the exact quote...

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I don't know how much Greg will let me get away with here. I will try posting the first two pertinent docs. I have another one about a CIA agent killed in an airplane crash; the local papers reported that the plane was carrying recovered flying saucers. see p29/69 of the pdf.

Also, the letters USSR were painted in white in one report. I am quite sure at least one other mentions these letters in red.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Here is the next doc. These may take some time to appear...if they ever do. Zooby, I am sending you a PM. Please check your inbox.

For those with Adobe, please see the FBI pdf file; pp 29,36,38, and 57.

http://foia.fbi.gov/ufo/ufo1.pdf

Here is the definitive doc the shows clear knowledge that the La case is a phony.
See p 4 of 79
http://foia.fbi.gov/ufo/ufo2.pdf

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Zooby, the file size limitation prevents me from posting the last doc mentioned; you would never be able to read it. The doc is marked "VERY URGENT" and is dated 7/7/47 - one week before the Hoover addendum of July 15th; and prior also to the date of the main Hoover doc of 7/10/47.

The special agent's (SA) memo states that a thin, aluminum, 16 inch diameter disk was retrieved. It was seen flying through the air with flames coming out of the sides. It crahsed and the fire went out. The memo further states that the disk was taken by G2 before the SA arrived. It was rigged with some electronics. The document source location is New Orleans.

One sentence of the memo is missing; followed by one blacked out word, then a hypen, then in quotes "made in USA". The rest of the description then continues.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Quite fascinating.

I have no idea what G2 is.

When you say one sentence of the memo is missing, what do you mean? What is it that makes you aware of a sentence that isn't there?

So, there are two separate documents. One has relevant references on several pages, and the other on one page?

-Zooby16 inches? If I recall correctly the original flying saucers (Kevin Arnold?) were reported to be quite small, but I never had a sense of how big he really thought they were. Anyway, if the Kevin Arnold(?) story said they were small then it would explain why these hoaxed ones were so small.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Originally posted by zoobyshoe
Quite fascinating.

This stuff is a kick in the butt.

I have no idea what G2 is.

G-2
Army or Marine Corps component intelligence staff officer (Army division or higher staff, Marine Corps brigade or higher staff)

When you say one sentence of the memo is missing, what do you mean? What is it that makes you aware of a sentence that isn't there?

An extra space between sentences clearly contains missing text. It could have just been a bad copy that didn't translate to the document when digitized by the scanner.

So, there are two separate documents. One has relevant references on several pages, and the other on one page?

-Zooby

Hoovers quotes is cited which makes clear the unreadable text - the La. case. [EDIT: Note that you were right - La. case - I just couldn't argue the point without absolute certainty] The one page references the the recent activity which includes La., and then the last document is the report from the field agent in New Orleans.

16 inches? If I recall correctly the original flying saucers (Kevin Arnold?) were reported to be quite small, but I never had a sense of how big he really thought they were. Anyway, if the Kevin Arnold(?) story said they were small then it would explain why these hoaxed ones were so small.

Here is his description. Also, sorry, my fault, it's Kenneth Arnold.

Kevin Arnold was the character on The Wonder Years

He was looking down at the ground when suddenly he noticed a series of bright flashes off to his left. He looked for the source of the flashes and saw a string of nine very bright disk shaped objects, which he estimated to be 45 to 50 feet in length. They were traveling from north to south across the nose of his airplane. They were flying in a reversed echelon (i.e., lead object high with the rest stepped down), and as they flew along they weaved in and out between the mountain peaks, once passing behind one of the peaks. Each individual object had a skipping motion described by Arnold as a "saucer skipping across water."

http://www.nicap.dabsol.co.uk/arnoldrup.htm

His sighting was typical of many that place the size of most discs at 30 to 50 feet in diameter.

Edit: Besides Zooby, size doesn't matter! Really the lack of proper perspective due to the size vs distance [if you don't know the distance you can't estimate the size] problem often nulls the significance of size.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Here are some more interesting details found from this period of time. As mentioned earlier, according to the FBI info, a CIA agent was killed in a plane that crashed while in route from Portland, Oregon to Los Angeles. The Ca. papers reported that witnesses observed that the plane carried flying saucers. The FBI doc "assumes" that the agent was returning from an interview with a witness to a saucer; and that these were likely collected from hoaxes. The FBI was told by the CIA that the agent was on a Top Secret mission. FBI pdf 1; p29

Next, a possibly meaningless but interesting comment is made by a physicist who dropped by a FBI field office [Edit: note that I had said UFO field office before the edit]in Stamford, Conn., on July 7th. He was working locally with a physics group and wanted to mention first that he knew of such sighting in Italy during WWII. Next, he points out that recent reports of saucer activity include sightings in Mexico City, New Orleans, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Halifax, Newfoundland, Paris, Milan, Bologna, and Yugoslavia and Albania. He then points out that by putting a string around a globe of the earth, one sees that all of the above mentioned cities form a direct orbit. See p 56 of FBI pdf #1.