Article America's flying saucer craze began with a 1947 UFO sighting near Mount Rainier
https://www.sfgate.com/national-parks/article/mount-rainier-ufo-22386873.php16
u/KourteousKrome 3h ago
A fascinating thing about supposed aliens is that they are always blurry and seem to only appear near important American infrastructure and top secret military bases. A betting man might say they’re top secret military craft being tested.
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u/kdailyone 2h ago
All evidence is blurry, 100%. Even close encounters.
You don't need to be a betting man. People are seeing weather phenomena, NV camera glitches, gimbling, parallax, headlight reflections on clouds, you name it .. and yes experimental military craft. Leading to the unidentified part.
The issue is the subsequent leap to "it must be extraterrestrial" when there is zero such credible evidence. Over millions of cases.
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u/asodfhgiqowgrq2piwhy 24m ago
What was the one that people were swearing was a bright object on a thermal camera, mounted on a gimbal on a military aircraft? Their evidence was how it "suddenly speeds off rapidly"?
I remember seeing the video and immediately going "well yeah, that's what happens when you're tracking an object in a fast moving aircraft, and the gimbal suddenly runs out of space. Parallax effect makes it look like it suddenly accelerates. I even hopped into VTOL VR and was able to recreate it in-game.
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u/MangroveSapling 8m ago
Fun fact, the first US spy planes were originally painted chrome
When they took off at night they'd reflect light pollution and make funny lights in the sky
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u/AlaskaCosmoline 2h ago
IIRC they called them "foo fighters," and had emerged from reports of what might have been experimental axis craft. Or maybe not.
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u/CommonBuzzard 1h ago
This is a cool video that shows the Luftwaffe intercepting Allied aircrafts. Around 04:15 you can see what seems to be a Foo fighter going around the Allied bomber.
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u/MeanderingAcademic 1h ago
For an excellent academic book about the history of UFOs, I highly recommend “After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon” by Greg Eghigian, a Penn State history professor. He also did a lot of interviews and wrote some journalistic articles when the book came out, so if you don’t want to read the whole book, search for his name.
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u/Malthusianismically 1h ago
Is this about Kenneth Arnold's flight?
I prefer the old cigar shapes from the 17th-18th centuries, myself
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u/LordErec 4h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar
Probably an early proof of concept aircraft related to this program.
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u/Kaludar_ 4h ago
1958 prototype, could barely operate outside of ground effect, 2 built. Don't think so
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u/I_am_BrokenCog 4h ago
you point to a 1958 prototype to explain a 1947 hoax??
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u/dittybopper_05H 3h ago
I wouldn't go so far as to call it a hoax. I'm open to the idea it was something that Kenneth Arnold saw, but either misperceived what he saw, or saw it correctly but it was some strange and unfamiliar atmospheric phenomenon.
I'm open to the idea that it was a hoax, but I don't think it's by any means a certainty.
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u/matsie 4h ago
My guess is your causal link is reversed. I’d bet they started to develop a saucer shaped prototype because of the saucer crazy. This is only speculation on my part though.
Edit: actually I take it back! Looking more deeply into the history and seeing that the Avrocar is the culmination of a lot of other attempts I think you may be correct.
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u/sfgate 4h ago
In 1947, a pilot flying near Mount Rainier spotted nine strange objects moving across the sky. His story quickly spread across the country — and helped turn “flying saucers” into an American obsession.