The latest batch of disclosed UFO documents has been released on war dot gov. In the first SIGN report, one hundred sightings were recorded and appraised, from July 1947 to January 1948. The persistent data of the most peculiar incidents were not easily explained:
This report from Air Materiel Command HQ, dated “23 APR 1948,” shows that eight decades ago the American military was taking the UFO subject seriously. The report shows military personnel and hired academics debating and tabulating witnesses’ reports and puzzling over the mysterious data with no small amount of seriousness.
On the Fourth of July a dozen UFO sightings were reported in the Pacific Northwest, and duly tabulated. Here are three from Oregon:
Note that these were reported 20 days before the “flying saucer” craze began further north, near Mount Rainier, in the most famous UFO sighting of all time (because much was made of it at the time; because we got the term “flying saucer” from a misunderstanding in the reportage; and because the event is often cited). Nineteen forty-seven was a busy year for UFO sightings, and the Kenneth Arnold observation and report of nine wobbly-but-super-fast craft while flying over the Cascades in Washington State made the national new. Here it is reported merely as sighting no. 17:
Towards the end of the report a determination on one incident was made that it was, indeed, a hoax. Appended to the report is a long article on “The Biology of the Flying Saucer,” which is not what you might suspect from the title.
There is a great deal more of interest in this fourth “tranche” of de-classified UFO documents, as well as a lot of dubious minor stuff that does not bear very much attention.
This is how governments disclose secrets?
Apparently.