FLYING SAUCER
In view of the fact that the flying saucer epidemic has now reached New Zealand, the following report, contained in the “United States News,” January 6, 1950, should be of interest.
After two years spent running down rumours and reports of mysterious flying saucers, the Air Force closed down its investigation last week with this conclusion: There is no such thing. The flying saucers that hundreds of people think they have seen are really: (1) Misinterpretation of various conventional objects; (2) a wild form of mass hysteria; or (3) jokes—I am, etc.
NOLA WEBB
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This One Made Noise
DUNEDIN, Today (PA)—A “flying saucer” was seen over the suburbs of Dunedin yesterday morning, flying at a height of approximately 5000 to 6000 feet, according to a man who stated this morning that he and his wife watched it for 20 minutes.
The observer was Mr. J. P. Burke, an experienced pilot with eight years’ flying to his credit, and a former club captain of the Otago Aero Club. He said he was awakened at 2.45am by a ringing metallic noise, very similar to that made by a jet engine with throttle back. The next minute, as he was wakening his wife, he saw a “flying saucer” through his bedroom window. For fully three minutes it flew a straight level course under 6000 feet. It began a gradual climb, disappearing out of sight when it reached the cloud layer, which he estimated to be at 10000 feet.
The “flying saucer,” he said, looked exactly like an inverted cylinder, with a raised portion on the upper central portion, and directly underneath was an oblong part. The whole was making a ringing noise, with a greenish blue phosphorescent light, and was about the size of a Dakota aircraft.
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Think You’ve Seen A Saucer?
Two correspondents to “The Post” report having seen objects on Saturday night which they consider may fall into the category of “flying saucers.”
The first correspondent says that at about 10.10am on Saturday, while travelling from the city to Picton, he saw “two objects in the sky, moving at high speed. There was a strange sound and sparks were flying out from the back part. They were avoid in shape, and one was flying above the other all the time. The ‘saucers’ were of two different colours—the highest was a bluish colour, and the lower one was greenish. They emitted a phosphorescence which was quite spectacular.
“They circled at high speed and then parted. One flew off in a southerly direction, and the other seemed to fly off in a south-westerly direction.”
FROM PLIMMERTON.
“I hope you will not think this absurd, but I think I have seen a flying saucer,” reads the second letter. “At Plimmerton on Saturday night I saw a green, luminous object to the east, travelling south at great speed towards Wellington. It was followed by a hissing noise, and had a band of brighter dots around it which may have been windows.
It was round like a ball, I think, and definitely not the lights of a plane, which I at first thought, because it was going too fast, and was too bright.”
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Strange Objects In The Sky
(Special to the “Evening Post.”)
PALMERSTON NORTH, Today.—Four reports of strange objects in the sky have been received. They are from independent witnesses, one at Feilding, one at Kelvin Grove, and two others at Palmerston North.
They say they saw a strange phenomenon between 9.45 and 9.50 o’clock on Saturday night and at about 12.45 am on Sunday.
A Feilding resident states that one of the objects was green in colour and travelling in a south-westerly direction towards Palmerston North. The “saucer” was egg-shaped and moving at a fairly high speed and accompanied by a faint hissing sound. While watching this green object approach Palmerston North, he saw a similar object, blue in colour, approaching from the Hawke’s Bay direction. The blue seemed to be slightly above the green, and they then proceeded together on a more or less southerly course, with the blue just above the green.
Two other witnesses independently corroborate this account almost to the letter.