We’ve observed UFOs for 75 years; pilots have perished pursuing them, and we need explanations because we are unable to stop them

You might name the Rolling Stones or Coronation Street if you were asked to name examples of long-lasting contemporary phenomena.

However, another one — “flying saucers” — was born out of a false statement today, 75 years ago.

Without the well-known phrase “flying saucers,” it is impossible to imagine our language.

However, nobody was aware of them or took the prospect of extraterrestrial visitors seriously prior to June 24, 1947.

Pulp periodicals and television serials would have used it.

This all changed when a pilot by the name of Kenneth Arnold spent an hour looking for a military plane disaster in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State when he noticed something extraordinary.

Arnold could see a row of nine quickly moving, brightly reflective objects from his aeroplane.

One had a side that appeared to be “heel-shaped.”

Using the time it took them to travel between well-known geographical landmarks, he determined their speed to be around 1,300 mph, which is twice as fast as any then-currently-flying man-made aircraft.

The Counter-Intelligence Corps’ Frank Brown conducted an interview with the agent shortly after the incident, and the agent later wrote: “If Mr. Arnold can write a report of the character that he did while not having seen the objects that he claimed to see, it is the opinion of the interviewer that Mr. Arnold is in the wrong business, that he should be writing Buck Rogers fiction.”

Arnold quickly found himself responding to inquiries everywhere he went once journalists learned of his story.

The term “flying saucers” originated because someone misunderstood the way he described the objects’ motion—”like a saucer if you skip it across water”—for their actual shape.

A long-lasting phenomena started.

The military soon began referring to these enigmatic invaders as “flying discs,” and soon reports of them began to come in from all across the world and the United States.

The sightings baffled the intelligence officers for the Air Force. Project Sign, the first of three investigative initiatives, was established in December 1947.

Its mandate? To gather information, examine it, and ascertain the nature and origin of these flying discs.

The reports went on while Sign looked for solutions. Air National Guard pilot Thomas Mantell perished in January 1948 while pursuing a “flying saucer,” going above the recommended altitude because he was lacking air.

Official analysis determined the UFO to be a weather balloon.

In October 1948, George Gorman, another military pilot, engaged in a dogfight with a swiftly moving light that made head-on passes at his F-51 Mustang.

He survived and told the story.

Airline crews reported seeing massive objects with rows of “windows” or lights along their sides, and some were forced to dodge potential collisions with these objects in midair.

The military seemed helpless to stop these unauthorised invaders from flying over the US.

During their brief existences, Project Grudge and Sign both gathered a large number of reports.

Military intelligence had not advanced after countless hours of examination in 1948 or 1949.

In 1952, Blue Book, a third programme, was developed. It lasted until 1969, but despite that, it seemed to be little more than a public relations stunt, with commonplace explanations being offered for remarkable events.

The dearth of knowledge has persisted to this day, but UFO reports persisted even after it was cancelled.

The Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, a fourth American military UFO investigative programme, was established in 2020, and a new organisation with an unpronounceable set of initials is now being constructed.

However, it still appears that no one knows why this is happening.

Kenneth Arnold would have probably shaken his head in disgust if you had asked him if we would still be wondering what “flying saucers” were 75 years later.

“Dawn of the Flying Saucers,” a study of UFO contacts between 1946 and 1949, and “UFOs Before Roswell,” a thorough analysis of the “Foo Fighter” UFO phenomenon during World War 2, are both written by Graeme Rendall.