UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS INCLUDING ROSWELL

UFOs - GENERAL -

Almost every civilization in history has recorded the sighting of strange objects and lights in the skies even if only by painting it on the walls of caves.

Unexplained objects in the sky nowadays are almost always called (what else?) Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) or, when the media wish to sensationalist it, 'flying saucers' even if they do not look like flying saucers, and some of the general public, perhaps because of the media, also assume them to be even when just odd lights are seen.

It is also said that there are UFO reports in the Bible and other ancient religious texts too. In old reports descriptions of UFOs have ranged from coloured balls of light to glowing wheels, cigar, disk, and crescent shapes. Really, not a lot different from what is seen today.

Before I go any further I must point out that today all man-made objects in the sky, especially aeroplanes, have a unique identification number which is broadcast continually so they can be identified on radar.

Anything without one is therefore classed as 'unidentified'. However it is to be assumed that some military aircraft turn them off if need be. There are also many known things that are miss-identified by the untrained eye also. Plus, of course the fact that the broadcast identification numbers cannot be seen by the naked eye!

There are also many strange things in the sky that are now known to be purely natural even though in the past they were even classed as 'myths'. Few people know that the specialists know what they are though.

Perhaps one of the first well-publicised UFO sightings happened in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1561 (relatively close to the time of the emergence of the printing press, so perhaps that is understandable.) A newssheet described blue, red and black balls or plate-shapes and crosses and tubes as well which seemed to be in battle above the city. It is perhaps a clue to something that the technology of many of the aerial objects seen over the centuries always seems to be a few steps ahead of the as then contemporary known technology, even if that technology has only been mentioned in SF stories! It has to be remembered, too, that if you mentioned seeing such things in less 'enlightened' times you would have been burnt at the stake!

However, It was not until a famous sighting in 1947 that the term 'Flying Saucer' was published. Then again, it is possible that that is the first time such obvious shapes were seen close-up in detail.

It was a Kenneth Arnold who informed reporters that while flying a private aeroplane near Mount Rainier in Washington State, USA, that he had seen nine objects flying in formation over the mountain and as a trained pilot he estimated the speed to be more than 1,600 MPH (2,500 kilometres.) A remarkable speed for an aircraft even today. In his description he said that the objects moved like - "A saucer skipping across the water." After that first report, that description was shortened to 'Flying Saucer' and it soon became fashionable to call all UFOs flying saucers even if they were not that shape at all! Perhaps as part of the start up of an attempt to ridicule all such sightings.

It is possibly interesting to note that In 1945, on the 16th of July, American scientists conducted the first test of an atom bomb at Alamogordo, New Mexico., 250 miles (400 kilometres) south of Los Alamos. That blast was equal to the force of around 40,000 pounds (18,000 kilograms) of dynamite which was 2,000 times greater than the most powerful bomb in existence at the time, it would have  generated massive radio waves, too. Not long after they dropped two larger ones on Japan. Surely enough to attract anyone's attention!

Due in the main to their paranoia, the United States government has collected records of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of UFO sightings, including photos of potential UFOs and dialogues with people who claim to have seen them, even though at times the government declared they had no official interest in such things.

Of course, because these things showed no respect to a countrys' airspace, not only in the USA but in fact the rest of the world, UFOs were at first considered to be a potential security risk. Due to the climate of the time, the Americans at first thought it was the Russians, and although the Russians said nothing, as usual, regarding what was happening in Russia, it is not clear who they blamed for the intrusion in to their airspace.

In the USA, the information gathered on these sightings was originally classified as secret if not top secret, to the point that it was said that the incoming and outgoing stream of Presidents did not even have 'The Need To Know'. When the reports were later declassified, albeit via many private court cases, they showed, in their opinion, that 90% of all UFO sightings could be 'easily' explained.

Most of the sightings, they said, turned out to be celestial objects, such as stars or bright planets like Venus, or atmospheric events such as auroras or meteors falling through the atmosphere. Many other sightings turned out to be such objects as weather balloons, satellites, aircraft lights, or formations of birds. Very often these sightings were accompanied by unusual weather conditions.

One problem was, however, that in many instances, these explanations were also given to reports that an idiot could see that the official line was nonsense and usually an insult to the 'qualifications' of the witness/s. This resulted in not only some of the witnesses being ridiculed by the government and press but vice versa too. It, for

example, did not say why, all of a sudden, people thought commonplace objects to be something they weren't. Venus, for example, has been in our skis a long time!

Many of the released reports also had so many lines blacked out that is was impossible to tell what they had originally said. In the UK and most other countries, too, there is no such thing as the Freedom Of Information Act, so much of what our ongoing governments have on file will not see the light of day for around 100 years.

During 1948 the USAF started the government's first official UFO panel which they named - Project Sign,  a sign of what, was not made clear as far as I can tell. It was said that this studied 243 sightings.

It was later replaced by the just as oddly titled, Project Grudge, which examined another 244 sightings. Or perhaps the same ones because there was also a rumour around saying that the clear-cut sightings of real unidentified craft were filed away from all eyes.

Those two were not the only panels and I do not know why they kept disbanding them and forming others, but in March 1952, one called - Project Blue Book - was started which was said to be the most purposeful of the UFO panels. This group even employed a number of scientists, including physicists, engineers, meteorologists, and an astronomer, so just how qualified the previous groups had been is open to debate.

Project Blue Book was given three (officially declared) directives - To explain all reported sightings of UFOs (true explanations or not); To work out if UFOs posed a threatto the security of the USA (which after 5 years would have been toolate perhaps?); And third, to ascertain whether UFOs were using anyadvanced technology that the USA could use. The latter being an odddirective because it was so obvious that whatever they were, theywere far in advance of anything we had, and also unless they capturedwhatever they were and to date they have never admitted if they have or not. That directive is also, possibly, an admission that they DID think or even know them to be real and solid craft.

Very possibly, too, one of the main unofficial directives was to startridiculing many of the witnesses and to also fake many reports andfindings and hand them to the press. It was not long after the war do not forget and old habits die hard, and the Russians were still considered to be a serious threat for many many years afterwards,war allies or not. There was even a government department that did nothing put churn out false information.