The Passaic UFO photographs are a set of photographs purportedly taken in Passaic, New Jersey by George Stock on July 31, 1952. Allegedly depicting a domed flying saucer, the images were widely published in contemporary media. [1] Ufologist Kevin D. Randle called the Passaic photos the "most spectacular" of the 1952 flap but characterized them as a hoax. [2]
The modern UFO era began with the Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting, igniting the 1947 flying disc craze. By 1952, several supposed UFO photographs had been published, including the Rhodes UFO photographs, the McMinnville UFO photographs, and the Mariana UFO film.
The July 1947 Twin Falls saucer hoax featured a domed saucer about 3 feet (0.91 m) in diameter made of two cymbals and a plexiglass dome. In 1951, the film The Day The Earth Stood Still premiered, featuring a domed saucer which lands in Washington D.C. [3]
On April 7, Life magazine published the Flying Saucer article under the title "Have We Visitors From Space?", becoming the most reputable outlet to seriously consider the possibility that flying saucer reports might be caused by extra-terrestrial spaceships. [4] [5] Publicity surrounding the piece is believed to have contributed to the subsequent wave of reports that summer. [6] [7] In the four years prior, the US Air Force had chronicled a total of 615 UFO reports; during the 1952 flap, they received over 717 new reports. [8] Ruppelt recalled: "During a six-month period in 1952... 148 of the nation's leading newspapers carried a total of over 16,000 items about flying saucers." [9]
On two successive Saturday nights, July 19 and 26, UFOs were reported over the nation's capitol. Three days later, on July 29, Air Force Major Generals John Samford, USAF Director of Intelligence, and Roger M. Ramey, USAF Director of Operations, held a well-attended press conference at the Pentagon. In his opening comments, he noted that, out of the hundreds of UFO reports in recent years investigated by the Air Force, there was "a certain percentage of this volume of reports that have been made by credible observers of relatively incredible things" but that none of them posed any national security threat. [10]
On August 1, during the 1952 UFO flap, local press reported on the photos, [11] attributing them to John H. Riley, then aged 28, who was a self-described professional photographer and performed photo processing in Passaic. [11] Riley reported that he and friend George J. Stock had witnessed the object the prior morning, July 31, while at Stock's home. [11]
Riley recalled that the object was heading southeast as a "leisurely pace" before coming to a halt and hovering overhead. Riley claimed "It was so near, it could have been hit with a rifle". He described the object as 30 feet (9.1 m) wide and estimated it was hovering at 200 feet (61 m). [11] He described the object as silent. [11] Riley claimed the object tilted as it began moving towards the southwest, ultimately travelling out of sight. [11]
Initial press accounts noted the novel presence of a "dome"-like shape atop the depicted disc, writing "The pictures may not exactly fit the descriptions of flying saucers you've heard about". [11]
On November 19, 1952, George Stock was interviewed by an Air Force investigator and acknowledged having taking the pictures. The Air Force Office of Special Investigation conducted interviews with acquaintances of Riley and Stock. During that investigation, Air Force Special Agent George H. Wertz created a sketch of the object allegedly photographed by Stock. [12]
In December 1952, photographs of an alleged domed flying saucer were published by George Adamski. In 1967, Look magazine reprinted the images. The images were widely republished within the UFO community, including the works of Otto Binder, Kevin Randle, and Jerome Clark. [13]
In 2009, Weird NJ reported that "Passaic County is to UFO buffs what Coney Island is to hot dog lovers". [14] In 2015, the George Stock images were among those uploaded to the CIA's official website. [15] [16]
An unidentified flying object (UFO), or unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP), is any perceived airborne, submerged or transmedium phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. Upon investigation, most UFOs are identified as known objects or atmospheric phenomena, while a small number remain unexplained.
UFO conspiracy theories are a subset of conspiracy theories which argue that various governments and politicians globally, in particular the United States government, are suppressing evidence that unidentified flying objects are controlled by a non-human intelligence or built using alien technology. Such conspiracy theories usually argue that Earth governments are in communication or cooperation with extraterrestrial visitors despite public disclaimers, and further that some of these theories claim that the governments are explicitly allowing alien abduction.
George Adamski was a Polish-American author who became widely known in ufology circles, and to some degree in popular culture, after he displayed numerous photographs in the 1940s and 1950s that he said were of alien spacecraft, claimed to have met with friendly Nordic alien Space Brothers, and claimed to have taken flights with them to the Moon and other planets.
Project Blue Book was the code name for the systematic study of unidentified flying objects by the United States Air Force from March 1952 to its termination on December 17, 1969. The project, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, was initially directed by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt and followed projects of a similar nature such as Project Sign established in 1947, and Project Grudge in 1949. Project Blue Book had two goals, namely, to determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, and to scientifically analyze UFO-related data.
Kenneth Albert Arnold was an American aviator, businessman, and politician.
On January 7, 1948, 25-year-old Captain Thomas F. Mantell, a Kentucky Air National Guard pilot, died when he crashed his P-51 Mustang fighter plane near Franklin, Kentucky, United States, after being sent in pursuit of an unidentified flying object (UFO). Mantell pursued the object in a steep climb and disregarded suggestions to level his altitude. At high altitude, he blacked out from a lack of oxygen; his plane went into a downward spiral and crashed. The incident was among the most publicized of early UFO reports. Later investigation by the United States Air Force's Project Blue Book indicated that Mantell died chasing a Skyhook balloon, which, in 1948, was a top-secret project that he would not have known about.
The Maury Island incident refers to claims made by Fred Crisman and Harold Dahl of falling debris and threats by men in black following sightings of unidentified flying objects in the sky over Maury Island, Washington, United States. The pair claimed that the events had occurred on June 21, 1947. The incident is widely regarded as a hoax, even by believers of flying saucers and UFOs.
The Flying Saucers Are Real by Donald Keyhoe, was a book that investigated reports of UFOs by United States Air Force fighters, personnel, and other aircraft, between 1947 and 1950.
The Robertson Panel was a scientific committee which met in January 1953 headed by Howard P. Robertson. The Panel arose from a recommendation to the Intelligence Advisory Committee (IAC) in December 1952 from a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) review of the U.S. Air Force investigation into unidentified flying objects, Project Blue Book. The CIA review itself was in response to widespread reports of unidentified flying objects, especially in the Washington, D.C. area during the summer of 1952.
Green fireballs are a type of unidentified flying object (UFO) that has been reported since the early 1950s. Early sightings primarily occurred in the southwestern United States, particularly in New Mexico. Although some ufologists and ufology organizations consider green fireballs to be of artificial extraterrestrial origin, mainstream explanations have been provided, including natural bolides.
Edward James Ruppelt was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). He is generally credited with coining the term "unidentified flying object", to replace the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" – which had become widely known – because the military thought them to be "misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO for short."
Project Sign or Project Saucer was an official U.S. government study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) undertaken by the United States Air Force (USAF) and active for most of 1948. It was the precursor to Project Grudge.
Project Grudge was a short-lived project by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) to investigate unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Grudge succeeded Project Sign in February, 1949, and was then followed by Project Blue Book. The project formally ended in December 1949, but continued in a minimal capacity until late 1999.
The Mariana UFO incident occurred in August 1950 in Great Falls, Montana. The film footage of the sighting, filmed by local baseball coach Nick Mariana, is believed to be among the first ever taken of what came to be called an unidentified flying object. The U.S. Air Force, after a short investigation, concluded that what had actually been sighted were the reflections of two F-94 jet fighters, a claim that would later be retracted.
From July 12 to 29, 1952, a series of unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings were reported in Washington, D.C., and later became known as the Washington flap, the Washington National Airport Sightings, or the Invasion of Washington. The most publicized sightings took place on consecutive weekends, July 19–20 and July 26–27. UFO historian Curtis Peebles called the incident "the climax of the 1952 (UFO) flap"—"Never before or after did Project Blue Book and the Air Force undergo such a tidal wave of (UFO) reports."
The Coming of the Saucers is a 1952 book by original 'flying saucer' witness Kenneth Arnold and pulp magazine publisher Raymond Palmer. The book reprints and expands early articles the two had published in Palmer's Fate magazine. The work blends first-person accounts attributed to Arnold with third-person summations of UFO reports.
The Flight 105 UFO sighting occurred on July 4, 1947, when three crew members aboard a United Airlines flight reported seeing multiple unidentified flying objects in the skies over the Pacific Northwest. The incident was among at least 800 similar sightings in the United States within a few weeks in the summer of 1947, but the first report by professional pilots. The U.S. military ultimately attributed what the crew members saw to "ordinary aircraft, balloons, birds, or pure illusion".
The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects is a 1956 book by then-retired Air Force UFO investigator Edward J. Ruppelt, detailing his experience running Project Bluebook. The book was noted for its suggestion that a few UFO sightings might be linked to spikes of atomic radiation. Contemporary media summarized four topics discussed in the book:
"Have We Visitors From Space?" was an article on Flying Saucers by H. B. Darrach Jr. and Robert Ginna that appeared in the April 7, 1952 edition of Life magazine. The piece was strongly sympathetic to the hypothesis that UFOs might be the product of extraterrestrials. Publicity surrounding the piece is believed to have contributed to the 1952 UFO flap, a subsequent wave of reports that summer.
On the night of January 29, 1952, amid the Korean War, four American military personnel aboard two different B-29 bombers reported seeing an orange globe-shaped light over two different cities in northern Korea: Wonsan and Sunchon. Air Force UFO experts argue that widespread reporting of the incident contributed to the 1952 UFO flap that culminated in sightings over the nation's capital.
