A flying saucer, or flying disc, is a purported type of disc-shaped unidentified flying object (UFO). The term was coined in 1947 by the United States (US) news media for the objects pilot Kenneth Arnold claimed flew alongside his airplane near Mount Rainier, in Washington State. Newspapers reported Arnold's story with speed estimates implausible for aircraft of the period. The story preceded a wave of hundreds of sightings across the United States, including the Roswell incident and the Flight 105 UFO sighting. A National Guard pilot died in pursuit of a flying saucer in 1948, and civilian research groups and conspiracy theories developed around the topic. The concept quickly spread to other countries. Early reports speculated about secret military technology, but flying saucers became synonymous with aliens by 1950. The more general military terms unidentified flying object (UFO) and unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) have gradually replaced the term over time.
In science fiction, UFO sightings, UFO conspiracy theories, and broader popular culture, saucers are typically piloted by nonhuman beings. Most reported sightings describe saucers in the distance and do not mention a crew. Descriptions of the craft vary considerably. Early reports emphasized speed, but the descriptions shifted over the decades to the objects mostly hovering. They are generally said to be round, sometimes with a protrusion on top, but details of the shape vary between reports. Witnesses describe flying saucers as silent or deafening, with lights of every color, and flying alone or in formation. Size estimates range from small enough to fit in a living room to over in diameter. Sightings are most frequent at night. Astronomer Donald Howard Menzel concluded that the reports were too varied to all be describing the same type of objects. Experts have identified most reported saucers as known phenomena, including astronomical objects such as Venus, airborne objects such as balloons, and optical phenomena such as sun dogs.
1950s pop culture embraced flying saucers. The discs appeared in film, television, literature, music, toys, and advertising. Their reports influenced religious movements and were the subject of military investigations. The shape became visual shorthand for alien invaders. During the 1960s, saucers waned in popularity as UFOs were reported and depicted in other shapes. Discs ceased to be viewed as the standard shape for alien spacecraft but are still often depicted, sometimes for their retro value to evoke the early Cold War era.
History Precursors
Reports of fantastical aircraft predate the first flying saucers. In antiquity, mysterious lights in the sky were interpreted as spiritual phenomena. In the 1800s, many newspapers reported massive airships with glowing lights and humming engines. These are often seen as precursors to flying saucer and UFO sightings. On January 25, 1878, the Denison Daily News printed an article in which John Martin, a local farmer, reported an object resembling a balloon flying "at wonderful speed". The newspaper said it appeared to be about the size of a saucer from his perspective, one of the first uses of the word "saucer" in association with a UFO. An outbreak of a number of sightings of mystery airships occurred in America in 1896 and 1897. During World War II, Allied pilots reported balls of light following their planes. They named the lights foo fighters and believed they were advanced Axis aircraft.
Many aspects of the typical flying saucer first appeared in science fiction. French sociologist Bertrand Méheust noted, for example, Jean de La Hire's 1908 novel La Roue fulgurante (The Lightning Wheel). In the novel, a flying disc-shaped machine abducts the protagonists via a beam of light. Science fiction magazine Amazing Stories began publishing "The Shaver Mystery" in 1945. Written by Richard Sharpe Shaver and edited by Raymond A. Palmer, they were science fiction tales about technologically advanced "detrimental robots" that abducted humans, but the stories were presented as a true account of Shaver's life. Until the magazine ceased printing The Shaver Mystery, Amazing Stories''' letter column was regularly full of readers sharing their own purportedly true sightings of the robots.
Before the flying saucer was coined as a term, fantasy artwork in pulp magazines depicted flying discs. Skeptical physicist Milton Rothman noted the appearance of so-called flying saucers in the fantasy artwork of 1930s pulp science fiction magazines, by artists such as Frank R. Paul. One of Paul's earliest depictions of a flying saucer appeared on the cover of the November 1929 issue of Hugo Gernsback's pulp science fiction magazine Science Wonder Stories. Science fiction illustrator Frank Wu wrote:
Origins
The modern flying saucer concept, including the association with aliens, can be traced to the 1947 Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting. On June 24, 1947, businessman and amateur pilot Kenneth Arnold landed at the Yakima, Washington airstrip. He told staff and friends that he'd seen nine unusual airborne objects. Arnold estimated their speed at 1,700 miles per hour, beyond the capabilities of known aircraft. Newspapers soon contacted Arnold for interviews. The East Oregonian reported his supposed aircraft as "saucer-like". In a June 26 radio interview, Arnold described them as "something like a pie plate that was cut in half with a sort of a convex triangle in the rear". Headline writers coined the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" (or "disc") for the story. Arnold later told CBS News that the early coverage "did not quote me properly [...] when I described how they flew, I said that they flew like they take a saucer and throw it across the water. Most of the newspapers misunderstood and misquoted that, too. They said that I said that they were saucer-like; I said that they flew in a saucer-like fashion." The circular shape of typical flying saucers may be due to reporters mistaking Arnold's "saucer-like" description of motion.
Arnold's story preceded a wave of hundreds of flying saucer reports. Lieutenant Governor of Idaho Donald S. Whitehead claimed he saw a fast-moving object resembling a meteor around the time of Arnold's sighting. In early July, head of Air Materiel Command Nathan F. Twining told reporters that "anyone seeing the objects" should contact Wright Field. The next widely publicized report was the sighting by a United Airlines crew on July 4 of nine more disc-like objects pacing their plane over Idaho.
The public was divided on the potential origin of the saucers. Arnold told military intelligence officers he suspected the discs were experimental aircraft, and early newspapers reported Arnold saying, "I don't know what they were—unless they were guided missiles." News media speculated on a Soviet origin, and many war veterans connected them to the foo fighters seen during World War II. A Gallup Poll found that 90% of Americans were aware of the saucer stories, and 16 percent believed they were secret military weapons, most likely American. The most common explanation given was some type of illusion or mirage. Less than one percent believed they were alien craft. One report from Seattle, Washington, described a hammer and sickle painted onto a flying disc. The stories spread to other countries, where they were influenced by local political and social concerns. In Europe, which was still recovering from the Second World War, saucers were often reported with rocket-like features. German newspapers reported flying saucers that exploded or had tails of fire. The names for the discs were largely derived from the English "flying saucer" including the French soucoupe volante, Spanish platillo volante, Portuguese disco voador, Swedish flygande tefat, German fliegende Untertasse, and Italian disco volante.
The 1947 sightings peaked in the days after the Fourth of July and declined rapidly through mid-July. Multiple organizations offered $1,000 rewards for hard proof. In the widely reported July 7, 1947, Twin Falls saucer hoax, four teenagers in Idaho fabricated a crashed disc from jukebox parts. On July 8, the Army Air Force base at Roswell, New Mexico, issued a press release saying that they had recovered a "flying disc" from a nearby ranch; the so-called Roswell UFO incident made front-page news. International media covered the military's announcement of a crashed disc, but within 24 hours were reporting the military's retraction and explanation that the material was balloon debris. By July 11, the most widely reported story was a North Hollywood resident's claim that a 30-inch galvanized iron disc containing glass radio tubes had crashed in his garden. Newspapers quoted Fire Battalion Chief Wallace Newcombe's assessment, "It doesn't look to me like it could fly."
The Air Force collected over a hundred reports at Wright Field, now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Air Force General Nathan Twining established Project SAUCER, later renamed Project Sign, the first in a series of UFO investigations by the US Government. Other national governments followed suit. Canada began Project Magnet in 1950 and Project Second Storey in 1952. The United Kingdom launched the Flying Saucer Working Party in 1950, which attributed saucer reports to meteorological phenomena, astronomical phenomena, misidentification, optical illusions, misconceptions, or hoaxes.
Development
By the 1950s, the term "flying saucer" was widely associated with extraterrestrial life. After commercial pilots Clarence Chiles and John Whitted reported a glowing cylindrical object flying past their plane in 1948, the US Air Force began to seriously investigate the possibility of an alien origin, but also concluded that reported discs "seem inconsistent with the requirements for space travel." In a 1950 interview on flying saucers, Kenneth Arnold said, "if it's not made by our science or our Army Air Forces, I am inclined to believe it's of an extra-terrestrial origin". This extraterrestrial hypothesis was accompanied by other unusual theories. Meade Layne speculated that they came from an alternate dimension. Many people claimed to be the inventors of the discs but could offer no evidence. From 1947 to 1970, there was a broad range of overlapping and contradictory explanations for the saucers' origin and purpose, even among proponents.
Beliefs about flying saucers were influenced by pulp science fiction. Amazing Stories editor Ray Palmer transitioned from publishing the purportedly true Shaver Mystery, to publishing and organizing UFO investigations. In 1946, Palmer published Fred Crisman's letters about his encounters with underground beings. The following year, Crisman sent Palmer pale metallic fragments along with a report from his employee, Harold Dahl, about a malfunctioning flying saucer. Palmer recruited Kenneth Arnold to investigate Crisman and Dahl's Maury Island incident. The fragments turned out to be slag from a local smelter, but the men in black that Crisman and Dahl claimed were following them would become a common element in later UFO literature. Gray Barker popularized the idea of "men in black" who intimidate or silence UFO witnesses in his book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. Palmer launched the magazine Fate in 1948, claiming to offer "the truth about flying saucers". It was the first of many non-fiction paranormal magazines, a genre that flourished in the 1950s.