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Edward R Murrow 50-04-07 (x) Case Of The Flying Saucer
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Edward R Murrow 50-04-07 (x) Case Of The Flying Saucer
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- [00:00]
Edward R. Murrow
Step into the world of power, loyalty and luck. I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse. With family, cannolis and spins mean everything. Now you want to get mixed up in the family business. Introducing the godfather@champacasino.com test your luck in the shadowy world of the Godfather slot. Someday I will call upon you to do a service for me. Play the Godfather now at champacasino. Com. Welcome to the family. No purchase necessary VGW Group void where prohibited by law 21/ terms and conditions apply. This is Edward R. Murrow. We're going to talk about flying saucers. We're going to talk about them from the standpoint of reporters, not as comedians, not as sensationalists. For the past three years, a large number of perfectly sane and reliable people have been involved in this flying saucer business. Even those of us who have never seen one have become involved. We read about them, talk about them, wonder about these reports of strange phenomena in the skies. So almost from the start, CBS has been following the story. We have been collecting material on flying saucer observations for many months, checking, cross checking, trying to track down leads, no matter how far afield they took us. This tonight is our report. We frankly admit that we don't know whether flying saucers actually exist. We've never seen one. We are going to bring you the facts at hand, what they add up to. Well, that's for you to decide. That's up to you. It all began just a little less than three full years ago. It began in the sky over western Washington, up there in the hip pocket of the country. Early one June morning in 1947, a C46 Marine transport with 32 Marines aboard crashed in the vicinity of Mount Rainier. An air search was immediately organized to locate the downed plane. Among the many service and private fliers who participated in this search was Mr. Kenneth Arnold, a businessman of Boise, Idaho, a veteran pilot in forest fire control work, a man with six years experience flying over the rugged terrain in and around Mount Rainier. Yesterday morning, we spoke to Mr. Arnold over the phone. We asked him to repeat for us in his own words what he saw in the sky over Mount Rainier on June 24, 1947. We recorded what he said, and we're going to play it for you now. The slight beep that you will hear intermittently is required by law to let both parties of a phone conversation know they are being recorded. Here now is Mr. Kenneth Arnold.
- [02:37]
Kenneth Arnold
It was while I was searching for this crash that I noticed a terrific blue Flash past those of my airplane. I noticed that the flash came from a chain of very peculiar looking objects that were rapidly approaching mountaineer at about 170 degrees. This chain of objects were nine in number. I assumed at the time they were a new formation or a new type of jet, though I was baffled by the fact that they did not have any tails. It passed almost directly in front of me, but at a distance of about 23 miles, which is not very great in the air. I judged their wingspan to be at least 100ft across. The sighting did not particularly disturb me at the time, except that I had never seen planes of that type.
- [03:37]
Edward R. Murrow
Mr. Arnold, after landing, made a routine report of what he had seen to a Civil Aeronautics Administration representative. Promptly forgot the matter until the wheels of publicity began to turn. The floodgates opened.
- [03:51]
Kenneth Arnold
I never could understand at that time why the world got so upset about this as these things didn't seem to be a menace. Believe they had something to do with our army and Airport.
- [04:02]
Edward R. Murrow
On three different occasions Mr. Arnold was questioned by military intelligence. They expressed doubt as to the accuracy of some of his reported observations.
- [04:11]
Kenneth Arnold
That's right. Now, of course, some of the reports they did take from newspapers which did not quote me properly. Now when I told the press, they misquoted me. And in the excitement of it all, one newspaper and another one got it so, and that nobody knew just exactly what they were talking about.
- [04:30]
Edward R. Murrow
I guess here's how the name flying saucer was born.
- [04:35]
Kenneth Arnold
These objects more or less fluttered like they were, oh, I'd say bolts on very rough water or very rough air of some type. And when I described how they flew, I said they flew like you take a saucer and throw it across the water. Most of the newspapers misunderstood and misquoted. They said that I said that they were saucer like I said they flew in a saucer like fashion.
- [05:02]
Edward R. Murrow
That was an historic misquote. While Mr. Arnold's original explanation has been forgotten, the term flying saucer has become a household word. Few people realize that Mr. Arnold has reported seeing these same strange objects in the sky on three other occasions. He says that some pilots in the Northwest have reported seeing them on eight separate occasions. We asked for his own personal opinion on the nature of what he and the others had seen.
- [05:29]
Kenneth Arnold
I don't know how best to explain that. I more or less have reserved an opinion as to what I think. Naturally, being a natural born American, if it's not made by our science or our army air forces, I'm inclined to believe that it's of an extraterrestrial origin.
- [05:49]
Edward R. Murrow
Extraterrestrial origin? You mean you think there's a possibility they may be coming out of space from other planets? I suppose that's pretty hard for people to take seriously.
- [05:58]
Kenneth Arnold
Well, I'll tell you this much. All the airline pilots, none of us have appreciated being laughed at. We made our reports essentially to begin with because we thought that if our government didn't know what it was, it was only our duty to report it to our nation and to our Air Force out of it. I think it's something that is of concern to every person in the country and I don't think it's anything for people to get hysterical about. That's just my frank opinion of it.
- [06:28]
Edward R. Murrow
So that's how it all began. That was the trigger action. Kenneth Arnold's story went scudding over the news wires. Radio and newspapers picked it up. And then within days the country broke out into a flood of flying saucer observations. Many of these reports, a great many of them, obviously could be discounted. Others, reports from perfectly competent, sober and reliable observers, found no easy answer in the face of this. Late in 1947, the Chief of Staff of the Air Forces at that time, General Carl Touhy Spaatz, sent a directive to the Air Materiel Command located at Wright Field, Ohio. The Air Materiel Command is directed to set up a project whose purpose is to collect, collate, evaluate and distribute to interested government agencies and contractors all pertinent information concerning sightings of phenomena in the atmosphere which can be construed to be of concern to the national security. So was born between 300 and 400 miles per hour. Remember, these were trained observers, Air Force men. The objects reportedly traveled in a straight line, taking the mean reported speed 350 miles per hour and the time in sight 1/2 hour. The objects must then have traveled 175 miles while in sight. If the objects were of such proportions as to be seen at that distance, it is believed that more details could have been observed at the first sighting. The Air Materiel Command opinion on the Muroc Air base sightings was this. This report is a result of misinterpretation of the nature of real stimuli, probably research balloons. Another report. On January 7, 1948, Tech. Sgt. Quinton A. Blackwell, chief operator of the control tower at Godman Field, an Air Force base at Fort Knox, Kentucky, spotted a strange object hovering over the south portion of the field. In a matter of minutes, a flight of four P51 fighter planes approaching the field were contacted by radio and Asked to chase the object, leader of the flight was Captain Thomas F. Mantell Jr. Veteran of the Normandy invasion with some 3,000 flying hours to his credit. At 2:45, Mantell reported by radio, object.
- [08:43]
Captain Thomas Mantell
Directly ahead and above and moving about half my speed. Going up to take a look at.
- [08:50]
Edward R. Murrow
3:15, Mantell reported again, object still ahead.
- [08:54]
Captain Thomas Mantell
And above, moving at about my speed or faster. 360 miles per hour. The thing looks metallic and is of tremendous size. I'm trying to close in for a better look.
- [09:05]
Edward R. Murrow
By now Mantell and his flight were at about 15,000ft. They had no oxygen equipment. At 18,000ft, the escorting planes turned back, but Mantell kept climbing. His next report came from 20,000ft.
- [09:18]
Captain Thomas Mantell
Going to 25,000. If no closer, will abandon search.
- [09:23]
Edward R. Murrow
That was the last report from Captain Thomas Mantell. At approximately 25,000ft, it is believed he blacked out for want of oxygen. His plane climbed another 5,000ft and then went into a dive. When it crashed, parts of it were scattered around an area covering one sixth of a mile. Project Saucer's conclusion. It seems probable that the object observed was the planet Venus. Later, in a report dated April 27, 1949, this conclusion was reversed. Further investigation showed the elevation in azimuth readings of Venus and the object as reported at specified time intervals just didn't jibe. The object Captain Mantell chased to his tragic death is now officially marked unidentified. In all, project saucer investigated 375 cases. The report takes in 244 different observations. Just yesterday, we asked Major General William F. McKee, Assistant Vice Chief of Staff, United States Air Forces, to summarize the conclusions reached by Project Saucer. He said, during two years of thorough investigation, no evidence was found which would indicate that the reported flying saucers were anything but the result of natural phenomena. On the other hand, all the evidence indicated that the reports of unidentified flying.
- [10:47]
Captain Thomas Mantell
Objects could be accounted for under three.
- [10:50]
Edward R. Murrow
Major one misinterpretation of various conventional objects.
- [10:56]
Captain Thomas Mantell
Two, a mild form of hysteria, three or simple hoaxes.
- [11:03]
Edward R. Murrow
It has been suggested that what people.
- [11:05]
Captain Thomas Mantell
Actually have been seeing is the result of some of our own secret experiments.
- [11:10]
Edward R. Murrow
Guided missiles or new types of planes or flying weapons. This is emphatically not the case. None of the three military departments nor.
- [11:20]
Captain Thomas Mantell
Any other agency in government is conducting.
- [11:23]
Edward R. Murrow
Experiments, classified or otherwise, with disc shaped flying objects which could be a basis for the reported phenomena. On December 27, 1949, Project Saucer went out of existence. The flying saucers, however, refused to follow the project into limbo. Just possibly one of the reasons behind the stubbornness of the saucers to accept the mantle of oblivion was an article that appeared in True magazine just about the time Project Saucer was abandoned. It had previously been shown pretty conclusively that the number of sighting reports over a period of months usually followed closely the amount of publicity given to flying saucer observations. A lot of stories, a lot of sightings, few stories, few sightings. Psychologists call this mass suggestion. But to return to the True magazine article printed In December of 1949, some percentage of the new wave of flying saucer reports can certainly be chalked off to mass suggestion. But again, as in the first reports, there remained that same unexplained percentage of reliable trained observers who claim to have seen some objects or object wheeling, whirling, zooming, slicing or hovering in the sky. Douglas Gourley of Laguna Beach, California is an example. Here's his story. I served 14 months as an anti aircraft observer with a search flight battery and also 18 months as a seacoast and anti aircraft observer with another searchlight battery. I was driving north March 21 on 101 highway at about 3:00 in the afternoon when my attention was distracted by the sunlight reflecting off some objects. I counted eight of them proceeding directly out to sea at 2,000ft altitude. They gave the appearance of being made out of aluminum, and I could observe a perfect circle outline of these craft. They were going, I would say, approximately 150 miles an hour. They were definitely a powered craft of some sort. Here's a report from Selma, Alabama.
- [13:24]
Douglas Gourley
We were riding along the open country and had been observing a very beautiful sunset. And as the sun dipped over the western horizon, I looked to my right and there in the sky were three small lights, which to me appeared to be three very small clouds. I looked steadily and I said, no, they are not clouds, they are airplanes. Then I called my husband's attention to it and he said, no, those are not airplanes, they are lights. And we observed them very closely, but being in motion ourselves, to us they were motionless because we didn't stop. But as we rode along for something over a mile, they hung there in the sky. And they were to us had the appearance of tubes, of fluorescent light, of beautiful silvery pink tinged moonlight.
- [14:29]
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Edward R. Murrow
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Edward R. Murrow
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- [15:31]
Douglas Gourley
And I said to my husband, that gives me a feeling that God is trying to say something to us. And we have had that feeling within us since.
- [15:45]
Edward R. Murrow
By mid March of this year, the flood of flying saucer sightings had hit a new peak. Into many of these reports, there now crept a new and somewhat eerie tone, the feeling that these flying saucers were something out of this world, possibly interplanetary aircraft sent from some distant celestial sphere to investigate what manner of life managed to exist here on Earth. In line with this, we went to Dr. Donald Menzel, professor of astrophysics at Harvard University and associate director of the famous Harvard Observatory, to find out just how feasible any such idea might be. Dr. Menzel had this to say. Well, I suppose that anything is possible, but I consider it extremely unlikely. Well, what could these flying bodies actually be? Dr. Menzel? Sun shining from a very distant plane, shining so that you could see that there was an object there, but the plane so far away that you couldn't hear it. Weather balloon. You have the bright round patch at fairly high altitude, sometimes three or four of them attached together, and then again just pieces of paper carried aloft. When it gets up to two or three hundred feet, you can't tell whether it's 100ft or a thousand or 10,000ft away. Prior to the middle of March, most observations, certainly all those which could be credited to reliable sober sources, stated that the object seen was a good distance away, a distance that ranged from a few miles to 10 and 20. But on March 16, a physician, a man who holds a private pilot's license, reported that he had seen some strange, unidentifiable type of flying body at close range. Dr. Craig Hunter of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, had this experience.
- [17:29]
Captain Thomas Mantell
We're going north on Route 153 from Clearfield, Pennsylvania towards Penfield, Pennsylvania and about nine miles out of Clearfield. And I begin to hear a hissing, whistling sort of a sound, something that I was completely strange to me. And then I looked up into the sky and coming from a south easter easterly direction to a northwesterly direction, was this flying disc, or for the want of a better name, a flying saucer. It was, I would say, around 150ft around in circumference. And there was three distinct parts of it. There was another circle, a metal circle which rotated around this inner circle and an outside circle which are about one third of the area on each side was covered with openings somewhat similar to an airliner opening. Now this inner circle rotated anti clockwise very slowly and it went over me practically right over my head. And I would say it was traveling at a speed approximately 60 to 70 miles per hour. I would say that the plane was approximately 250 to 300ft above me, not over 400ft. It was of a dirty aluminum color and I got a tendency to indicate the southern edge as sloping up, which would indicate to me that it was about 15 to 20ft thick at the center. It would give you the idea that it was a rocket type of combustion. Rather, it didn't give you the indication of a make and break like a motor or anything like that. It was a continuous hissing, whistling sound. The conditions were very, very fine for observing it. I mean that it was just as clear as a bell and I could distinctly see each and every detail as to the outline of it.
- [19:29]
Edward R. Murrow
In order to check the whole question of design, to find out whether or not a saucer like object such as the one described by Dr. Hunter, could maintain itself in flight according to the basic laws of aerodynamics. We call for the opinion of one of the nation's outstanding aeronautical engineers. Hall Hibbard is vice president and chief engineer of Lockheed Aircraft. And here is what he has to say over the beep recording telephone.
- [19:51]
Kenneth Arnold
Well, my feeling is that it is possible to build and fly something that looks lighter, shorter, just from a tech standpoint, but I do not believe that there is such a thing at this time. I do not know of anything that would be considered in that category. I am very familiar with pretty much what's going on in the way of research and development. And I know nothing that would be considered as flying saucers or flying saucer material. You can make something that looks like a saucer fly if anybody would ever want to do it. But I do not believe it would be possible with Our present knowledge to have them make the speed and everything that everybody has been.
- [20:56]
Edward R. Murrow
The flying saucer story came back into sharp focus on Monday of the present week. On that day, the United States News and World Report, a national news magazine, and Henry J. Taylor, a radio commentator, both came out with flat statements that flying saucers actually exist. Mr. Taylor said that there are two or more different objects that have been cited and labeled flying saucers. One of these objects, the true flying saucer, A according to Mr. Taylor, is a missile, round in shape, varying in size from 20 inches to 250ft in diameter. Some are guided, others are not. The U.S. news & World Report article mentions nothing about these objects. The magazine, however, describes a jet propelled aircraft of revolutionary design that agrees in some details with Mr. Taylor's second secret aircraft, a piloted plane capable of high speeds and high maneuverability. Both accounts agree that the present model stemmed directly from the XF5U1, the so called flying pancake, a small edition of which was built and flown in 1942. Last night we put a special recording line into the home of Mr. Charles H. Zimmerman of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, the man who originally designed the XF5U1. We asked him about the plane, what whether it ever actually flew. This aircraft never flew. The official designation of the aircraft was the XF5U1, which was to be a high performance Navy fighter. However, a low powered, lightly loaded version of this craft, called the V173, made a large number of successful flights. I conceived the original idea for this craft back in 1933 as a top plane designer. We asked Mr. Zimmerman to give us his opinion as to whether or not a plane could be built that could hover like a helicopter, then take off at almost supersonic speeds. He said it would be possible using modern turboprop engines to build a machine of this type which would be capable of hovering and of also flying at all forward speeds up to possibly 550 or 600 miles per hour. To follow through on the problem of whether or not disk shaped objects could actually fly, we got in touch with Mr. David C. Prince, Vice President of the General Electric Company and Chief of its General Engineering and Consulting Laboratory. Mr. Prince was having no part of flying saucers. My thought is simply that the ability of some people to kid themselves is extraordinary. For instance, the effect of searchlights on clouds has been taken to be flying discs. Even radar evidence is not conclusive here because rain in the clouds would show up on a radar screen. The only saucer shaped aircraft which we know has flown, and that only a few times is a propeller powered disk developed by naca. As a matter of fact, a cigar shaped craft with a single revolving wing, jet powered, could be faster and certainly would be much more maneuverable in flight. This plane might look like a disk because of the halo created by its rapidly revolving wing. Such a craft would have flight characteristics similar to a hummingbird's. Late this afternoon, we tried to tote up the score. On one desk we had a pile of clippings, news reports, recordings of eyewitness accounts of flying saucer observations. We had the Taylor broadcast, the U.S. news & World Report article. On another desk we had our project Saucer report, the transcripts of our conversations with leading scientists and engineers who, to use a gentle phrase, discounted the possibility of any such thing as a flying saucer. On that desk too, was the news ticker dispatch from the United States submarine base at Key West, Florida, a dispatch that quoted President Truman's press secretary, Charles Ross as saying that President Truman has no knowledge of any secret project by this government that would give substance to the existence of such objects. Ross also said that both the air Force and the navy deny that such objects exist. We tried to add it all up. We admit that now, as before we started our case, we have no opinion. The figures just don't add up. So we went to the public, we went to the man and the woman on the street to see how they were reacting to this barrage of positive sightings. And just as positive denials. We wondered how they felt. They told us, well, I think there's.
- [25:45]
Douglas Gourley
More to it than meets the eye, and I think it's more to it than what they're writing about.
- [25:50]
Edward R. Murrow
Personally, I don't think such thing exists. I don't see how it could.
- [25:53]
Captain Thomas Mantell
I have a confidence that something on.
- [25:56]
Edward R. Murrow
That order may exist. I lived in North Carolina in 1903 when the reporter for the New York World was fired for reporting that the Wright brothers flew.
- [26:08]
Douglas Gourley
Some say they're stars, some say their enemy action and all kinds of things. But I really don't know.
- [26:15]
Captain Thomas Mantell
There must be something to it.
- [26:16]
Douglas Gourley
Purely imagination.
- [26:17]
Edward R. Murrow
I didn't believe it at first, but.
- [26:19]
Douglas Gourley
Now I'm beginning to believe it.
- [26:20]
Edward R. Murrow
No such thing as a flying saucer.
- [26:22]
Douglas Gourley
Well, I believe President Truman, like the rest of us, has the right to his own opinion.
- [26:27]
Edward R. Murrow
And now, just in case all this has added to the celestial confusion about your heads, we've summarized the data we've been able to gather, sorted out the points of agreement and disagreement among those who claim to have seen Flying saucers. Here is what we found. Nearly all these observers are in agreement on the color of the objects. It's a metallic color, they say, something like aluminum or silver. Almost everybody agrees the objects are generally disc shaped, but with wide variations, sometimes balloon like or resembling a giant rubber ball. Still others describe them as elongated, cigar shaped things. Speed of the saucers has been estimated at from 0 to 1200 miles an hour. And when we get into the question of maneuverability, the observers seem not to be able to find the precise or adequate words. They say that the saucers hover, accelerate and decelerate rapidly. They say that some of the objects flutter, oscillate, drift, whirl or float. There seems to be no fixed pattern of flight in cases where more than one or two disks have been reported. But several persons have said that in group flights, one of the disks seems to be of a distinct color, indicating possibly that this off colored disc was the monitor or the control disk. For the others, a small percentage of the observers said the disks bore light. And in five cases at points as far apart as Alabama and California, the viewer said the disks suddenly disappeared in flight. But when we get around to estimating altitudes at which the objects were sighted, we find that some observers say they saw them at 250ft. Others guess the disks were at 40,000ft in the sky. While one observer estimated the number of disks seen at 100, nearly all thought the number was less than 10. And about half those who claimed to have seen the objects said they saw only single saucers. Well, these are the things men and women in various parts of the United States say they have seen in the sky. Men of science and high government officials cast a skeptical eye at these reported sightings of celestial phenomena. So far in the course of this broadcast, there have been no reliable reports of the sighting of any new flying saucers. Frankly, we don't know the answer. We wonder, do you believe in flying saucers? You'll be listening to the Case of the Flying Saucer, a special report narrated by Edward R. Murrow. The case of the flying Saucer was based on extensive research collected with the aid of CBS affiliated stations and CBS newsmen across the country. Portions of this broadcast were transcribed. This program was written by Irv Tunick, directed by John Dietz and produced by Robert Bendick and Irving Gitlin.
- [29:29]
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Edward R. Murrow
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