Random Notes —
The Flying Saucer Investigators — Days
When Beer Was Beer — November 1957
An organisation called the Civilian Saucer Investigation instituted at Auckland to prove or disprove the existence of flying saucers has been affiliated to an international body of saucer investigators. One can but wish members good hunting and good luck.
The evidence at present has been conflicting. Many people have seen flying saucers. Included in the total there are undoubtedly people who have been seeing things that had no existence outside their own imagination. But also included in the list are experienced pilots and others. It is unlikely that all have reported products of their own imagination. There is also included in the list a number of people who may well have seen some natural phenomenon akin to flying saucers. Such things as meteors and certain high altitude effects produce presentations like the flying saucer and may have caused confusion.
Flying saucers have been reported over a period of nearly 100 years and thus cannot be classed as new. But the number seen during the last 10 years has greatly exceeded the total reported previously. It would thus seem that there may be more than one source of these phenomena of the sky. One thing that is significant is that their speeds in nearly every case have been given as around 5000 to 10,000 miles an hour, compared with some 30,000 miles an hour, which is a round speed for meteors. Furthermore, at least one person who saw a flying saucer at close range reported that there were people on board.
It is thus possible lightly to dismiss all the evidence already available. This evidence suggests that we have a choice of three sources of origin: Man-made products, visitors from another world, or natural phenomena. It may well be that the real truth is a combination of some of these or all of them. It might be that the detonation of our atomic bomb has been picked up in other worlds and investigation expeditions have been sent to see what we are doing. But the most likely cause is still a local one. The flying saucer design is by no means new. Suggestions along similar lines were made as long ago as the beginning of the century, but for lack of motive power little was done. Meanwhile, it is significant that there have been no definite denials from any responsible authorities that they have not been experimenting with flying saucers. Some years ago there was reason to suggest that at least one type of flying saucer was undergoing tests by at least one major power.
At the moment the matter rests there, but the chances of some flying saucers being of local origin would appear to be in the ratio of three to two.