Part 3

Who or what killed it? One version says that the publisher, William B. Ziff, ordered the series stopped because so many fans had quit buying the magazine. Palmer himself has given various explanations. He stopped the stories, he said at first, when he realized that such material did not really belong in a fiction magazine. Later he explained that he killed the mystery because he intended to go into publishing for himself and didn’t want to leave his successor to handle “this hot potato.”[II-19] Later still, he implied that publishing the stories was dangerous; that he had learned too much about the “hidden world,” the sinister forces responsible for the plane crash that followed the Tacoma hoax. Said Palmer, “I wanted no more dead men on my hands.”[II-11]

_The Maury Island Fragments_

The Maury Island Mystery, a complex and eventually tragic affair, occurred near Tacoma, Washington, less than 100 miles from the place where Arnold had sighted the nine disks. In this mystery, too, Palmer was involved. According to their story, two harbor patrolmen named Harold A. Dahl and Fred L. Crisman on June 31 had observed a group of six flying disks that hovered over their boat near Maury Island and jammed their radio when they tried to notify the authorities. One of the disks had seemed to be disabled, had showered down lavalike metallic fragments that damaged the boat and killed the dog on board; the disks had then disappeared but the fragments remained as proof of the visit. The men also claimed to have taken some pictures that showed the six objects but were fogged as though by radiation. Back on shore, they had not telephoned the newspapers nor had they notified any government officials. Instead, they had mailed a box of the fragments to Ray Palmer, to prove that they had actually seen an accident to a flying saucer[II-20].

Crisman was no stranger to _Amazing Stories_. A science-fiction fan, he apparently had accepted the Shaver stories as literal truth. More than a year before the Maury Island episode he had written to Palmer, warning him that the knowledge contained in the Shaver stories was too dangerous to print. Identifying himself as an ex-Air Force pilot who had flown the Hump, Crisman explained that when he was in Burma, he had been exploring a cave when a dero attacked him with a mysterious ray that made a hole the size of a dime in his arm. Palmer had kept up the correspondence[II-21] and, some months later, received a telephone call from Crisman, then in Texas: for $250, said Crisman, he would descend into a cave and take some actual pictures of the mysterious underground machines that Shaver had described. The result of this offer is not known, but in July 1947 Palmer received another letter from Crisman; he had witnessed an accident to a flying saucer and was sending a box of the fragments as proof[II-22].

Palmer considered buying the story for _Fate_, but first he asked Arnold, living close to the scene, to investigate the tale. Arnold agreed. Thus the first man to report flying saucers became also a victim of the first flying-saucer hoax.

With an advance of $200 for expenses, Arnold flew to Tacoma and into a nightmare of mystery. The two men were elusive, their story full of discrepancies, their manner evasive. Wondering at first whether the affair was a hoax, Arnold finally attributed the strange behavior of the men to their fear of hostile saucers. Alarmed, he called in the help of Army Intelligence. Two officers arrived from Hamilton Air Force Base, California, and made a careful investigation. They found that Dahl and Crisman were not “harbor patrolmen” but salvagers of floating lumber; their boat was scarcely seaworthy and showed no evidence of major repairs; they couldn’t remember what they had done with the pictures they mentioned; and although the saucer accident was supposed to have occurred nearly six weeks earlier, they had never notified the authorities or even mentioned it to a reporter. The only evidence offered for the truth of their tale was the collection of “strange” fragments which were later found to be slag from a local smelter plant. Similar fragments could be found by the ton on Maury Island[II-20].

The officers concluded that they had wasted their time on a flagrant hoax, but the bewildered Arnold insisted that they take some of the fragments for analysis. Unhappily, on the way back to the base the plane crashed and although two passengers parachuted to safety, both officers were killed. At once fantastic rumors sprang up: that the Tacoma “disks” had been spaceships, and that the beings who operated the craft had been forced to arrange the plane crash so that no one could analyze the fragments of their disabled spaceship. Arnold himself seemed to believe that the crash had resulted from extraplanetary sabotage, but investigation showed a more ordinary cause. A burned exhaust stack had set the left wing afire; the blazing wing had then broken from the fuselage and torn off the plane’s tail.

For a time government officials considered placing a charge of fraud against the two men who had started the unhappy chain of events. After further questioning, both had admitted that their “sighting” had been a hoax, planned merely to make their story more salable, but when first Arnold and then Military Intelligence had entered the picture, the hoax had simply gotten out of hand. Since the men obviously had never intended the tragic outcome and were not directly responsible for it, the idea of prosecution was abandoned[II-1].

_Science Fiction Adopts the Saucers_

No longer editor of _Amazing_, Palmer continued to promote the cause of flying saucers in the pages of _Fate_. During the early nineteen-fifties, the boom years of science fiction, he started other magazines--_Search_, _Mystic Universe_, _Other Worlds Science Stories_. After a time, _Fate_ began to concentrate on tales of the mystic and occult, while _Other Worlds_ eventually took over the flying-saucer theme.

Starting as an orthodox magazine of science fiction, _Other Worlds_ flourished until the general slump in the market caused it to suspend publication. Revived after a time, it has undergone several changes of editorial policy reflected in its changing names: _Other Worlds Science Stories_, _Flying Saucers from OTHER WORLDS_, _FLYING SAUCERS from Other Worlds_, _Flying Saucers the Magazine of Space Conquest_, and, since the spring of 1961 when the magazine became pocket-size, just _Flying Saucers_. Classic science fiction long ago vanished from its pages and all articles are “true” accounts of flying saucers and similar Fortean incidents.

_Flying Saucers_ is probably unique in modern publishing history. Issued monthly or bimonthly at a price of thirty-five cents, the magazine does not pay its authors because, as the editor explains, “_Flying Saucers_ is _not_ a commercial project.” Published by Palmer Publications, edited by Palmer, containing liberal amounts of editorial comment and at least one article by Palmer, a typical issue in 1960[II-6] contained sixty-six pages and carried a small number of advertisements for telescopes, binoculars, Rosicrucian and similar mystic publications. The remaining ads featured books and magazines issued by Palmer Publications, Amherst, Wisconsin; books issued by Amherst Press, also of Amherst, Wisconsin; Saucerian Books, published under the aegis of Gray Barker, a contributing editor to _Flying Saucers_. “Austrogen,” described as a face cream or clay for skin ailments, was obtainable from Palmer at a dollar an ounce. Another ad recommended something (the wording does not specify exactly what, perhaps a powder?) that helps make good chili. Readers could buy this too, from Palmer, for a dollar a pound or $3.50 for five pounds. A combination dandruff remover, itch preventer, and restorer of hair color personally recommended by Palmer sold for $5.00 a bottle, number of ounces not specified.

The dandruff remover was also recommended by Kenneth Arnold, whose flying disks had started the saucer epidemic. Arnold was advertising his “World Society of Flying Saucer” which would “hold no meetings, no minutes, no by-laws, no restrictions or regulations, no records outside of actual membership, no presidents, no vice-presidents, no secretary, or board of directors.” For only $5.00 those who joined the society would receive twelve issues of _Flying Saucers_ (which if ordered from Palmer Publications would have cost $4.00), plus an official membership card. Arnold also offered for sale a crescent-shaped lapel pin in solid silver, supposedly just like the “original” saucers he had sighted in 1947; and, for the ladies, the saucers in pendant form. The addition of seven-point diamonds was optional.

The magazine has grown smaller, but its main theme is still flying saucers, which until recently have been interpreted as interplanetary vehicles. In December 1959, however,[II-23] Palmer announced in a lead article that flying saucers were _not_ from outer space after all; instead, they came from secret earth bases located under the north and the south poles. The earth is actually shaped like a doughnut, not like a pear, he says, and has openings at both poles where the saucer people reside. Whether they are manned by dero or tero he has not said.

In the autumn of 1962, Arnold entered the arena of politics and was the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor of Idaho, but lost. Shaver became a dairy farmer, a Wisconsin neighbor of Palmer’s, but in science-fiction circles his name will never die. Recently he has been advertising the sale of alleged pre-Deluge and pre-Ice-Age “art stones” described as rare, voluptuous, exciting, and usable as ornaments for wall or mantel, or simply as book ends.

Palmer has now revived the Shaver Mystery and is reprinting the entire series in book form “with the fiction removed,” under the general title of _The Hidden World_. In advertising the new project he stated, “This magazine concerns flying saucers. Flying saucers are a part of the Shaver mystery--integrally so.” He abandoned the stories in _Amazing_, he says, not because an outraged publisher insisted, but because he believed the stories to be true. “That is the true motive. I was convinced that not only was there a ‘hidden world,’ but it was one of immense ramification, and the caves of the dero, flying saucers, military espionage, the political science of the world, and even some phases of religion, specifically those of the ‘cult’ variety, were inextricably linked.” In announcing that he intended to end the secrecy that had existed for so long, and to tell the truth after seventeen years of “sugar-coating” the facts, he did not explain exactly why he feels it is safe to publish the “truth” now, when it was not safe seventeen years ago. He says only, “... there have been good reasons for the delay--had it been done from the beginning, the pitfalls that would have crushed it could not have been avoided.”[II-11]

At the tenth annual World Science Fiction Convention, held in Chicago in September 1952, fans and fellow editors awarded to Palmer a bronze plaque honoring him as a “son of science fiction,”[II-24] a citation he fully merits. As long as flying saucers continue to make good copy and sell magazines, Palmer will probably keep them soaring--whether their home bases are other planets or polar caves. As one of his colleagues once commented:

“... in these times of drab and unconvincing falsehood, there is still something to be thankful for. A Palmer promotion has the touch of genius. It has zing, sparkle, and true showmanship. It can be spotted a mile away by the bright lights. The thing to do is sit back and enjoy it.”[II-19]

_Mirage or Wave Clouds?_

What did Kenneth Arnold actually see, that June afternoon in 1947? No absolutely certain answer is possible after so long a time. The disks were probably a mirage (see Figure 3) in which the peaks of the mountains seemed to float above the mountain chain[II-25]. An alternative but much less probable explanation is that he observed orographic clouds, a type unique to mountainous country, which often appear to stand more or less motionless and can assume dramatic shapes. “Grindstone” clouds, shaped like thick, solid disks (see Plate Ia), are common phenomena in the valleys just east of the Sierra Nevada in California and in the mountainous regions of Washington, Colorado, and New Mexico--areas where flying-saucer reports have tended to concentrate[II-26]. One of the most spectacular types of mountain cloud, it closely resembles the “_pile d’assiettes_” or “stack of plates” formation in which the cloud assumes a flat, round shape like a plate or a saucer, and two or more are piled together in a neat stack, as in Plate Ib[II-27]. Another picture of a “stack of plates” (which some observers reported as a hovering flying saucer) was made on May 31, 1953, near Jindabyna, Snowy Mountains, New South Wales, and reproduced in _Weather_ in November 1954 Plate 47. The cloud formed over a tub-shaped depression in the mountains and remained stationary for more than an hour[II-28].

[Illustration: _Figure 3._ Mirage of mountain peaks. Top, normal view of mountain chain; bottom, mirage in which some of the peaks seem to be detached and above the peaks, like saucers.]

Such clouds reflect the undulations of lee waves formed in the atmosphere when stable currents of air flow over obstacles such as hills or mountains. An up-and-down wave motion may be impressed upon the air, provided that temperature and wind conditions are suitable. As the air describes its wavelike path, it alternately warms and cools, the warming taking place as it sinks into the wave trough and the cooling as it ascends to the wave crest. If the air is very dry, the undulating current will not be visible to the eye, although the updrafts and downdrafts will readily be felt by aircraft that chance to pass through them. On the other hand, if the air before entering the wave is moist enough, the cooling in the wave crest will cause water droplets to condense and a cloud to appear.

In the vicinity of an isolated peak the cloud may assume the form of a cap covering the summit, or it may be displaced slightly downwind and resemble a lens or disk. Not infrequently a series of lenticular clouds will appear, trailing downwind at regular intervals of a few miles. Although these wave clouds are usually stationary, they sometimes move at great speed, especially when the air temperature is changing rapidly.

From a study of a remarkable photograph made in 1956, R. J. Reed of the University of Washington has offered the suggestion that the disks Arnold saw were actually wave clouds in rapid motion.

On the afternoon of December 29, 1956, a photographer for the Seattle _Times_ was on top of Pigtail Peak near White Pass, Washington (not far from the area where Arnold’s nine disks had appeared), taking ski pictures for the rotogravure section of the Sunday _Times_. The weather was beautiful. Down in the pass temperatures hovered near freezing, but the slopes were warmed by sunlight that filtered down through thin cirrus clouds and raised the temperature to a balmy fifty degrees. Just at sunset a strange object suddenly appeared off toward the northeast horizon. Several skiers urged the photographer to take a picture of the “flying saucer,” but since it was still far away and indistinct, he waited. The first object, now followed by a second one, moved rapidly toward Mount Rainier, began to sharpen in outline, and both were soon so clearly visible that he was able to snap his unusual picture. The photograph shows two apparently solid, disklike objects, flattened, brilliantly white but dark at the bottom, apparently linked together by white streamers, skimming toward the mountain peak (Plate Ia).

Recognizing the close resemblance between the objects in the photograph and those Arnold described, Reed made a full analysis of the weather conditions prevailing at the time the picture was taken. From radiosonde data provided by the Seattle-Tacoma Airport, he obtained measurements of the size of the clouds, their height above the mountains, wind directions, and temperature and humidity at mountain height and cloud height. Obviously the pattern of weather conditions that prevailed that day was suitable for the formation of saucerlike clouds.

To test the hypothesis that Arnold also had seen such clouds, he then obtained records of the weather data for June 24, 1947, to determine whether atmospheric conditions on the two dates were basically similar. “To be comparable, winds would have to be blowing from the north or northwest in Mr. Arnold’s case since the objects were sighted to the south and southeast of the peak. The air would have to be dry at lower elevations and moisture would have to be spreading in at higher levels. An inspection of the historical maps reveals that, indeed, all these conditions were met.”[II-29]

Reed concludes that, although we can never know for certain, the implication that the _Times_ photographer and Kenneth Arnold viewed essentially the same phenomenon seems “inescapable.” This interesting hypothesis, however, requires the presence of undulating air currents and turbulence great enough to endanger a plane in flight. Since Arnold specifically mentioned the smooth, calm flying, the mirage explanation remains the most probable one.

[II-1] Air Force Files.

[II-2] Arnold, K., and Palmer, R. A. _The Coming of the Saucers._ Amherst, Wisconsin: privately printed, 1952.

[II-3] _Fate_, Vol. I, No. 1 (Spring 1948).

[II-4] _Fate_, Vol. I, No. 2 (Summer 1948).

[II-5] _Fate_, Vol. I, No. 3 (Fall 1948).

[II-6] _Flying Saucers, The Magazine of Space Conquest_ (June 1960).

[II-7] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XXX, No. 4 (April 1956).

[II-8] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XVIII, No. 1 (January 1944).

[II-9] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XIX, No. 4 (December 1945).

[II-10] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XVIII, No. 5 (December 1944).

[II-11] _Flying Saucers, The Magazine of Space Conquest_ (November 1960).

[II-12] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XIX, No. 1 (March 1945).

[II-13] Palmer, R. A. “An Open Letter to Paul Fairman,” _Other Worlds Science Stories_ (June 1952), pp. 151–56.

[II-14] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XIX, No. 3 (September 1945).

[II-15] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XX, No. 6 (September 1946).

[II-16] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XX, No. 4 (July 1946).

[II-17] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XXI, No. 2 (February 1947).

[II-18] _Amazing Stories_, Vol. XXI, No. 6 (June 1947).

[II-19] Fairman, P. W. “Personalities in Science Fiction,” _If_ (May 1952), pp. 63–67.

[II-20] Ruppelt, E. J. _The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects._ Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1956.

[II-21] _Flying Saucers, The Magazine of Space Conquest_ (December 1958).

[II-22] _Flying Saucers from Other Worlds_ (June 1957).

[II-23] _Flying Saucers, The Magazine of Space Conquest_ (December 1959).

[II-24] _Other Worlds_ (July 1953).

[II-25] Tacker, L. J. _Flying Saucers and the U. S. Air Force._ Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1960.

[II-26] Ives, R. L. “Areas of Occurrence of ‘Grindstone’ Clouds,” _Weatherwise_, Vol. XI (1958), p. 201.

[II-27] Scorer, R. S. “Lee Waves in the Atmosphere,” _Scientific American_, Vol. CCIV (1961), p. 124.

[II-28] Kraus, E. B. “Flying Saucer?” _Weather_ (November 1954).

[II-29] Reed, R. J. “Flying Saucers over Mount Rainier,” _Weatherwise_, Vol. XI (1958), p. 43.

_Chapter_ III

AIR-BORNE UFOS: BALLOONS TO BUBBLES

In the year 1948 the “Skyhook” balloons were an official secret. These giant plastic bags, shaped something like a teardrop, a hundred feet and more in diameter, were part of a classified research project sponsored by the United States Navy, and few except the researchers and technicians involved knew of their existence. Carrying cases of heavy instruments, the balloons were launched from various Air Force bases to collect information about the atmosphere high above the earth, the winds in the stratosphere, and the incidence of cosmic rays. Soaring upward, they traveled in courses determined by the winds and changed in direction and speed as they shifted from one wind stream to another. Even at heights of 60,000 feet these objects with their highly reflecting surfaces could be seen from the ground (see Figure 4). Such balloons were especially noticeable against dark-blue skies, which are much more common in the western United States than in the eastern areas. They could reach heights of 100,000 feet, higher than our planes could go. Once considered as a means for collecting information for Military Intelligence, a task later assumed by the U-2 jets, they could travel across the entire continent and even across the oceans. If the plastic skin developed a leak, the resulting loss of gas altered both the appearance and the behavior of the balloon; if the leak became great enough the balloon shriveled and eventually fell to the earth. At high altitudes where the cold was extreme, the skin might become brittle and the balloon would burst into fragments to be dispersed by the winds and vanish.

[Illustration: _Figure 4._ Shapes of various balloons. A, Skyhook at launching; B, Skyhook at high altitude; C, radiosonde or pibal; D, balloon cluster; E, blimp or sausage-shaped balloon.]

Although these balloons were sometimes visible at distances of fifty or sixty miles and were very conspicuous, officially they did not exist until 1950 when Dr. Urner Liddel of the Office of Naval Research released the facts behind the Skyhook balloon program. He pointed out then that the balloons had given rise to many reports of flying saucers. If the Skyhook project had been public knowledge in 1948 and if information about their launching and movements had not been a matter of security, a courageous pilot might still be alive today and the infant flying-saucer myth would have died long ago. There can be little question that Captain Mantell crashed in trying to intercept a Skyhook balloon, an object he had never heard of.

_The Mantell Tragedy_

The basic facts of the Mantell case, the second of the “classic”[B] UFO sightings, are familiar to all who have studied flying-saucer phenomena[III-1, p. 51]. Early on the afternoon of January 7, 1948, the Kentucky State Highway Patrol received a large number of calls from the towns of Maysville, Owensboro, and Irvington, reporting a strange object moving west at high speed. Alerted by the police, officials at Godman Air Force Base, near Ft. Knox, began looking for the unknown craft. They soon located the object but could not identify it. Watching it through binoculars, various observers described its shape as circular, like a teardrop, or rounded and tapered like a parachute or an ice-cream cone. At about 2:30 P.M. (all times in this account are E.S.T.), as they were discussing the object, a flight of four P-51 planes approached the base from the south. Led by Captain Thomas Mantell, the planes were being ferried from Marietta Air Base, Georgia, to Standiford Field near Louisville. The tower operator at Godman thereupon radioed Captain Mantell for assistance:

[B] A “classic” in the literature of flying saucers is a particularly dramatic UFO incident whose specific cause has not yet been found or, if found, cannot be absolutely proved from the evidence available. Lacking a completely airtight explanation, official investigators classify the case as Unknown. Saucer fans classify it as proof that flying saucers exist.

“We have an object out south of Godman here that we are unable to identify and we would like to know if you have gas enough and if so could you take a look for us if you will.”

The ferry had been planned as a low-level flight and none of the planes had been serviced with oxygen. Captain Mantell, a combat pilot in World War II, nevertheless agreed to help out: “Roger. I have the gas and I will take a look for you if you will give me the correct heading and any information you have on locating the object.”

The talk between Godman tower and Captain Mantell was not recorded and transmission was sometimes garbled. Although many persons heard the exchange of remarks during the next critical minutes and agreed on the general content, no two remembered exactly the same words; therefore the official reports[III-2] represent only the best possible reconstruction of the conversation that took place.