Discs · UAP Case Archive

Start with the summer of 1947.

Before June 1947 there were almost no saucers in the record. Within two weeks of Kenneth Arnold's flight, police, airline crews, picnickers and amateur photographers across the West were reporting discs.

On June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold saw nine bright objects flying in a chain between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams. He told a reporter they flew "like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water." He was describing their motion. The press turned it into a shape, and "flying saucer" was born.

Ten days later, on the Fourth of July, Portland patrolman Kenneth McDowell saw five large discs east of the city and called it in. Police radio sent out an all-car alert, and two patrol cars radioed back that they were watching discs too. That evening the crew of United Air Lines Flight 105 watched nine objects for about 12 minutes against the sunset. Captain E. J. Smith called them "flat and round-ish," like "a pancake standing on end." Before takeoff he had joked that he would believe in the discs when he saw them.

On July 8, a press release from Roswell Army Air Field announced the capture of a "flying disc." No one had seen anything fly. The rancher had found rubber strips, tinfoil and paper, and the Army took the story back the next day.

The summer of 1947, sorted

CorrectedArnold's "saucer" described motion, not shape. His later drawing is a crescent.
ExplainedRoswell's "flying disc" was debris from Project Mogul, a classified balloon array, according to the Air Force in 1994.
OpenThe Portland police discs, seen by several officers and filed by the Army Air Forces as Incident 5.
OpenUnited Flight 105, watched by a pilot, first officer and stewardess for about 12 minutes.

What the record shows.

Thirty-three cases from 1878 to 2006. These patterns run through them.

One summer dominates.

Ten cases come from June to August 1947. Before Arnold, the only saucer comparison on record is a Texas farmer's in 1878, and he meant its size.

Airline crews and police are the best witnesses.

Three United Air Lines crews in 1947. Portland and Oregon State Police the same summer. Japan Air Lines Flight 1628 in 1986, and about a dozen United employees at O'Hare in 2006.

Photographs are central, and most are contested.

Ryman, Weaver, Rhodes, the Trents, Mariana, Newhouse, Baraúna, Heflin and Walters all produced images. Only the Trent photos drew a cautiously favorable official analysis, and later studies argue for a model.

The same odd phrase turns up twice.

"Two saucers, one inverted on top of the other" was a Navy photographer's description in Utah in 1952, and a French farmer's in 1981. Other witnesses said pancake, skeet targets, heel of a shoe, hat, dome, Saturn and walnut.

Landings are their own group.

Kelly-Hopkinsville, Boianai, the Hills, Falcon Lake, Walton, Dechmont Woods, Trans-en-Provence and Ariel School add occupants, traces or injuries. They are also where hoaxes and suggestion are proposed most often.

Future astronauts saw them first from airplanes.

Gordon Cooper over West Germany and Deke Slayton over the Mississippi, both in 1951, reported discs while flying fighters. Slayton's is a Blue Book unknown.

Often told wrong.

The saucer story has gathered errors since its first week. Here is what the earliest records say.

The story you may have heardWhat the record shows

The first flying saucer was seen in Texas in 1878.

John Martin said the object was "about the size of a large saucer." He meant how big it looked, and he thought it resembled a balloon. Census records list several farmers of that name, so the witness can't be pinned down.

Kenneth Arnold saw flying saucers.

He said the objects moved like a saucer skipped across water. His shape descriptions changed over time, ending with a crescent. Reporters supplied "flying saucer."

A flying saucer was seen at Roswell.

No one reported seeing anything in flight. The rancher found debris, and "flying disc" was the press release's label for it.

Westall's teachers and students all saw a saucer.

Science teacher Andrew Greenwood described a silvery "rod." Student accounts at the time ranged from a weather balloon to a humped disc, and from one object to five.

Stefan Michalak saw a saucer land at Falcon Lake.

He first saw two red, glowing cigars. They looked oval, then disc-shaped, only as they came closer.

All disc cases.

Listed oldest first. Each card says what kind of evidence the case rests on. Use the wave filter to read the summer of 1947 on its own.

Near and small, or far and large?

A camera records angles, not sizes. A model the size of a hubcap ten meters away and a craft the size of a house a kilometer away can fill exactly the same part of the frame.

That is why the famous saucer photos are so hard to settle. Investigators look for what the camera can't hide: how sharp the object is next to things at a known distance, how much haze softens it, and whether anything could be holding it up.

At McMinnville, critics argue the object hangs from the overhead power lines. At Gulf Breeze, a styrofoam model turned up in the photographer's former attic and reproduced his pictures almost exactly.

Left off this page.

These are often counted as saucers, but the witnesses described something else.

Chiles-Whitted, 1948A cigar, on the Cigars page.
Lubbock Lights, 1951Lights in an arc or V, on the Crescents page.
Washington, D.C., 1952Lights, not discs.
Levelland, Socorro and PascagoulaEggs and ovals, on that page.
Kecksburg, 1965An acorn, on the Cones and bells page.
Nimitz, 2004A Tic Tac, on that page.