Flying saucer

A flying saucer is a purported disc-shaped UFO. In science fiction, reported UFO sightings, and UFO conspiracy theories, they are typically piloted by nonhuman beings.^[1] The term "flying saucer" or "flying disc" can be used generically for a mysterious flying object. The term was coined in 1947^[2] but has gradually been supplanted since 1952 by the United States Air Force term unidentified flying object, (UFO). Early reported sightings of unknown "flying saucers" usually described them as silver or metallic, sometimes reported as covered with navigation lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability.

History[edit]

Precursors[edit]

Reports of fantastical aircraft predated the first flying saucers.^[3] In antiquity, mysterious lights in the sky were interpreted as spiritual phenomena.^[4] In the 1800s, many newspapers reported massive airships with glowing lights and humming engines. These are often seen as precursors to "flying saucer" and "UFO" sightings.^[5] On January 25, 1878, the Denison Daily News printed an article in which John Martin, a local farmer, had reported seeing an object resembling a balloon flying "at wonderful speed". Martin, according to the newspaper account, said it appeared to be about the size of a saucer from his perspective, one of the first uses of the word "saucer" in association with a UFO.^[6] During the 1940s, allied pilots reported encountering foo fighters they believed were advanced axis aircraft.^[4]

Before the term "flying saucer" was coined or the 1947 wave of sightings, depictions of streamlined saucer-shaped aircraft or spacecraft had appeared in the popular press by at least 1911.^[7] In particular, commentators like Milton Rothman have noted the appearance of the "flying saucers" concept in the fantasy artwork of the 1930s pulp science fiction magazines, by artists like Frank R. Paul.^[8][9] Frank Wu, a notable contemporary science fiction illustrator, has written:^[8]

The point is that the idea of space vehicles shaped like flying saucers was imprinted in the national psyche for many years prior to 1947, when the Roswell incident took place. It didn't take much stretching for the first observers of UFOs to assume that the unknown objects hovering in the sky had the same disk shape as the science fictional vehicles.

Origins[edit]

1947 flying disc craze
Headline from July 6, 1947
Events
Kenneth Arnold Flight 105 Roswell Rhodes photographs Twin Falls hoax Maury Island hoax

The modern flying saucer concept, including the association with aliens, can be traced to the 1947 Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting.^[10][4] On June 24, 1947, businessman and amateur pilot Kenneth Arnold landed at the Yakima, Washington airstrip. He told staff and friends that he'd seen nine unusual airborne objects.^[11] Arnold estimated their speed at 1,700 miles per hour, beyond the capabilities of known aircraft.^[10] Newspapers soon contacted Arnold who provided interviews. The East Oregonian reported "saucer-like" aircraft. In a June 26 radio interview, Arnold described them as "something like a pie plate that was cut in half with a sort of a convex triangle in the rear".^[12][13] Headline writers coined the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" (or "disc").^[10][14] According to Arnold, reporters had misunderstood his description of how they flew "like a saucer" skipping across the water. The circular shape of typical flying saucers may be due to reporters mistaking Arnold's "saucer-like" description of motion.^[10]

Arnold's story incited a wave of hundreds of flying saucer reports.^[10] The most widely publicized of these was the sighting by a United Airlines crew on July 4 of nine more disc-like objects pacing their plane over Idaho, not far from Arnold's initial sighting. On July 8, the Army Air Force base at Roswell, New Mexico issued a press release saying that they had recovered a "flying disc" from a nearby ranch, the so-called Roswell UFO incident, which was front-page news until the military issued a retraction saying that it was a weather balloon.

The public was divided on the potential cause of the saucers.^[15]: 206 Newspapers initially reported that Arnold suspected them to be experimental Soviet aircraft.^[11] A Gallup Poll found that 90% of Americans were aware of the saucer stories, 16 percent believed they were secret military weapons, and less than one percent believed they were alien craft.^[15]: 206 One report from Seattle, Washington, described a hammer and sickle painted onto a flying disc.^[15]: 207 Throughout 1947, the saucers became increasingly associated with the idea of extraterrestrial life.^[10]

Flying saucer reporting declined by the end of summer. Newspapers had reported hoaxes by those looking to profit from the saucers and the Roswell incident which was quickly retracted as balloon debris.^[16] In the July 7 Twin Falls saucer hoax, a widely reported crashed disc from Twin Falls, Idaho, was found to have been created by four teenagers using parts from a jukebox.^[17] The Air Force's Air Materiel Command collected over a hundred reports at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.^[18] Air Force General Nathan Twining established Project SAUCER, later renamed Project Sign,^[19] the first in a series of UFO investigations by the US Government.^[20]

Development[edit]

By 1950, the term flying saucer had become synonymous with purported extraterrestrial spacecraft. In a 1950 interview on flying saucers, Kenneth Arnold said, "if it's not made by our science or our Army Air Forces, I am inclined to believe it's of an extra-terrestrial origin".^[10] The McMinnville photographs were reported as alleged photographs of alien spacecraft.^{[15]: 207–208}

Many of the alleged flying saucer photographs of the era are now believed to be hoaxes. The flying saucer is now considered largely an icon of the 1950s and of B movies in particular, and is a popular subject in comic science fiction.^[21] The term "flying saucer" was gradually supplanted by "UFO" and later "UAP".^[22] Flying saucers ceased to be the standard shape in UFO reports.^[23] One theory posits that as the use of the term flying saucer in popular culture decreased, so too did sightings.^[24]

Popular culture[edit]

After 1947, the flying saucer quickly became a stereotypical symbol of both extraterrestrials and science fiction, and features in many films of mid-20th century science fiction. The 1949 film serial Bruce Gentry – Daredevil of the Skies featured the first cinematic depiction of a flying saucer. ^[25] Cinema returned to the trope in films such as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), The Atomic Submarine (1959), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), , as well as the television series The Invaders. As the flying saucer was surpassed by other designs and concepts, it fell out of favor with straight science-fiction moviemakers, but continued to be used ironically in comedy movies, especially in reference to the low-budget B movies which often featured saucer-shaped alien craft.

However, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer gave its high production value film Forbidden Planet (1956) a flying saucer called the United Planets Cruiser C-57D, presenting a plausible human exploration, faster-than-light starship of the 23rd century. The 1964 Italian movie Il disco volante featured a flying saucer, while the 1965 James Bond movie Thunderball featured Ernst Stavro Blofeld's yacht Disco Volante. In the television series Lost in Space (1965-1968), the Robinson family had a disc-shaped spaceship. Saucers appeared in the television series Babylon 5 (1994-1998) as the standard ship design used by a race called the Vree. Doctor Who has featured many different designs of flying saucer in its history, most notably the saucers used by the Daleks. Aliens in the film Independence Day (1996) attacked humanity in giant city-sized saucer-shaped spaceships.

The sleek, silver flying saucer in particular is seen as a symbol of 1950s culture; the motif is common in Googie architecture and in Atomic Age décor.^[27] The image is often invoked retrofuturistically to produce a nostalgic feel in period works, especially in comic science fiction; both Mars Attacks! (1996)^[28] and Destroy All Humans!^[29] draw on the flying saucer as part of the larger satire of 1950s B movie tropes.

The Twilight Zone episodes "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", "Third from the Sun", "Death Ship", "To Serve Man", "The Invaders" and "On Thursday We Leave for Home" all make use of the iconic saucer from Forbidden Planet.

In 2017, the flying saucer emoji was added to Unicode.^[30][31]

Explanations[edit]

In addition to the extraterrestrial hypothesis, a variety of possible explanations for flying saucers have been put forward. One of the most common states that most photos of saucers were hoaxes; cylindrical metal objects such as pie tins, hubcaps and dustbin lids were easy to obtain, and the poor focus seen in UFO images makes the true scale of the object difficult to ascertain.^{[citation needed]}

Another theory states that most are natural phenomena such as lenticular clouds and balloons, which appear disc-like in some lighting conditions.^[32] Fata Morgana, a type of mirage, may be responsible for some flying saucers sightings, by displaying objects located below the astronomical horizon hovering in the sky, and magnifying and distorting them. Similarly some unidentifieds seen on radar might also be due to Fata Morgana-type atmospheric phenomena, though more technically known as "anomalous propagation" and more commonly as "radar ghosts".

References[edit]