The Sun from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • 15

I really something in the air SUNDAY SUN ft GUARDIAN JULY 13 1958 15 WHAT NOW? (British space travel expert Arthur Clarke said 1 this week that flying saucers may be real He I quoted reports from US rocket scientists JN the past five years people all over the United States have reported seeing mysterious ob jects flying in the sky Now the US Air orce has launched a secret scientific search to discover once and for all what these ob jects are Spurring on the search is ever growing fears of danger from the skies During the past two weeks Air orce offi cials have begun ex periments to verify the radically new theory of Dr Donald Menzel of Harvard University The astronomer sug gested that flying saucers are optical illu sions caused by perature i which projects images of earthly lights on the sky This has already proved one of the most exciting explanations of flying saucers offered to the Air orce Asked about 'the Air revived concern over flying saucers after almost ignoring them for two years Gen Hoyt Vandenberg chief of staff said: Air orce is interested to anything that takes place in the air With the present world unrest we can not afford to be com The Air orce has collected more than 800 sightings of flying saucers and reports continue to flow in from outposts like Alaska and Newfound SIb RUPPELT we have no land and from vital atomic installation sites This is a job for the detectives of the Air orce the officers of the Air Technical In telligence Com mand working behind a shield of secret planning and classified documents at heavily gua rded Wright Patterson Air orce Base Ohio Visual sighting re ports can never give Intelligence a urate data on speeds alti tudes size and com position of the objects seen To get these facts a methodical and scienti fic plan of great breadth has now been blue printed Under ATIC direc tion a physicist at the University of California Pl LU The body's wonderful elf cleansing system depends on the kidneys to filter impurities and waste matter from the bloodstream When through faulty kidney action these harmful impurities accumulate the result is often backache symptoms of rheamatism or joint and muscle pains So it is very wise to take a few De Pills occasionally because this good diuretic is specifically to stimulate sluggish kidneys to function in a normal healthy way They also have a soothing cleansing effect oo the urinary channels De Pills have bees helping men and women in this way for more than 60 years See for yourself the good effect a course of De Pills can have on your general health and fitnesa Get a supply today prices VS and AUttk atopjalotoj Iff i The effective formula 4 c4mH printed on every Pachet tfDo Witf Pills at Los Angeles is de veloping and testing a special camera photograph flying saucers Key to the new ap paratus is a detraction grid consisting of a piece of glass etched with infinitely fine lines This grid breaks down the image into slivers from which scientists can deter mine its composition If the saucers prove to be bodies which glow the grid will re cord the material they are made of If their light comes from a fuel supply or a reflection the grid will identify the light Cine theodolites the instruments with which the Air orce tracks guided missiles are also being converted to the hunt for flying saucers Tracking crews will be able to fix their exact location and movement patterns then photo graph them with cameras built into the theodolites The Air orce hopes to use radar in the fly ing saucer hunt on a big scale By combining existing radar telescopes and cameras phot ographs can be taken of any solid objects spotted in the day time and of glowing objects at night Modified Navy sonai sound detection equip ment will also be used The absence of any reported sound is one characteristic of most reports on flying saucers The brand new search for original scientific data is the climax of five years of official Air orce knowledge of the saucers Air orce officers were aware of the phenomena well before they sprang into public print During World War II mysterious objects were reported seen over Ger man rocket plants lying saucers blossomed into a national and inter national scare in June 1947 when Kenneth Arnold of Boise Idaho reported sighting nine disks while piloting his private plane over Mount Rainier Wash ington But even 15 davs be fore this nation rousing event flying saucers (then called silver balls) were seen over certain rural areas of com munist occupied Hun gary When flying saucers after Arnold's report threatened to cause a national panic the Air orce grew alert General Vandenberg became interested and Project Grudge was organised Reports from all over the world were collect ed and analysed for two years In August 1949 the Air orce decided to close down Project Grudge It compiled the data on 375 sightings in a report which asserted LYING SAUCERS photographed with special defraction grid would look like this The saucer's light (right) breaks down into fine lines Scientists can work out its origin a No 1 people £1 IGHTER crashed mysteriously while 1413 7 can any orce has al that 2354 pc re from sin Thev are from per 1102 pc from pilots while NAMX ADDRESS Only 3000 Tickets 51 a flying saucer over a US base in 1948 Pilot Captain Montell was killed seen by a Pentagon re presentative who noted that a number of con centrations duplicated exactly the area of atomic energy installa tions In their search for an answer intelligence men have tried without suc cess to correlate the un explained sightings with publicity about flying saucers increased war tension tides or atomic bomb detonations None of them fits Long ago the Air orce gave up the easy idea that all the excite ment is just the result of mass hysteria Air orce officers feel the final solution to the flying saucer mystery will be found under one or more of the following headings lying saucers can turn out to be misinter pretations of known ob jects such as balloons or jet planes The mystery may prove to be caused by phenomena of nature or optics Saucers could prove to be man made They may turn out to be a for eign development most possibly Russian Or although this is constantly and emphat ically denied they may be part of a secret US development project lying saucers could be interplanetary space ships or missiles not crazy they are not crackpots They are see ing something we have to find out The reports have been broken down on 16000 cross filed cards and have already been ana lysed for frequency of sightings types of in formants and reported shapes The Air orce now knows for example that 1803 pc of the reports came general military sonnei Air orce aloft The Air so learned of the reports noted disc or sphere shapes 825 1 pc cigar or rocket shapes 1 255 pc flying wings and 06 pc groups of lights They also found that 38 pc could be classi fied as astronomical bodies 13 pc as balloons I 10 pc as too nebulous to 1 be valuable 22 pc as birds and aircraft 2 pc as hoaxes and 15 pc as unexplained CITIZENS' LEAGUE REHABILITATION ART UNION that flying saucers did not exist and attributed sightings to pretation of various conventional mass hysteria war nerves hoaxes hypno sis illusions vertigo publicity stunts and psychopathological per sons The report gave these reasons to all of the 375 sightings but 34 These 34 the report said were reports that could not be ex They still baffle Intelligence to day Last October two in telligence men in the Unconventional Aircraft Group discovered that they had nearly 800 re ports gathered in their files more than twice the number on hand when the 1949 report was written Project Grudge was revised (its name was changed to Project Blue Book) and in charge was placed 1st Lieut Edward Ruppelt of Ames Iowa a World War II 29 bombar dier with two Distin guished lying Crosses 33 combat missions and a degree in aeronauti cal engineering The unexplained 15 pc puzzles the Air orce Useful reports con tinue to arrive at the rate of 10 per month Lieutenant Ruppelt keeps 63 sightings on the top of his file These are the most de tailed and most mysti fying They come from pilots ship observers an Air orce colonel civilian scientists wea ther observers and telligence officers None of these 63 be identified with certainty These sightings were pinpointed on a map Soon afterward it was of ttti APPLICATION OM 1 1 per MT 0 Hm CTBL Rmi Heer Metesref Street Sydney Please forward by return poet tickets in Uie Art Union for the ord Consul Sedan (Block Letter Pteasel Project per sonnel found that re ports have come from scientists airline pilots civilians Air orce fliers balloon observers and radar operators Most have come from the United States but others from Russia Africa Japan India Australia and even Antarctica One i 1 1 i once colonel put feel ings bluntly ports came cere GOOD ODDS and GOOD PRIZE PARIS Saturday A SPECIAL office of the rench Min istry of Information has been opened in Paris called the Department of ly ing Saucers The new office collects details of re ports including one from five officials of Le Bourget airport who reported saucer flying over Paris at 800mph Said the rench Interior Ministry: have interviewed five other people who saw the saucer and their accounts are all basically the same We are con vinced flying saucers are something more than a Valued ct £1OM DRAWN VERY 9 th AUGUST Promoter: Hoe Anderton MLC Hon OfgnotMr: A Hopwood a ta Give yourself A Sporting Chance to win this ord Consul nd give the CITIZENS TB LEAGUE ekenee io continue Ih REHABILITATION end WELARE WORK KB 4 7 a a a.