REPORT ON THE UFO WAVE OF 1947 By Ted Bloecher Introduction By Dr. James E. McDonald Senior Physicist Institute of Atmospheric Physics University of Arizona © Copyright 1967 By Ted Bloecher All Rights Reserved This book was reproduced (2005) by Jean Waskiewicz, and Francis Ridge with exclusive permission from the author and is presented here in its updated form as an ongoing project. Working closely on this project is author Ted Bloecher and Project 1947's Jan Aldrich. We welcome any additional information or corrections on erroneous information already contained in the report, as part of this updated version. These can be sent to Jean Waskiewicz at [email protected] TABLE OF CONTENTS SECTION PAGE Abstract and Daily chart Introduction iii Preface xiii Section I - Summary of the period I (1 to 16) Reports Before June 1947 1 The Importance of Arnold's Sighting 2 Other Reports, June 1 – 24 3 The Element of Fear 3 After June 24 4 Explaining the Inexplicable 4 June Roundup 6 The Buildup of July 1 – 3 7 The July 4th Deluge 7 The Voice of Confusion 8 Crest of the Wave, July 6 – 7 10 The Triumph of Ridicule 11 The Crest Breaks, July 8 – 9 12 Hoaxes and Mistakes 13 Ebb tide, July 10 and After 14 The Maury Island "'Mystery" 15 Aftermath 16 Addendum on CE III Reports New addition Section II - Patterns of Appearance and Behavior II (1 to 20) Loose Formations 1 Straight-line Formations 2 V and Triangular Formations 3 Hovering Objects 6 Abrupt Changes in Elevation 8 Circling Maneuvers 9 Sudden Stops and Reversals of Flight 10 Various and General Maneuvers 10 Low-swooping and Car-buzzing Reports 11 Landings and Take-offs 12 Protuberances: Domes, Fins or Knobs 13 Appendages: Antennas, Legs, Propellers, or Tails 14 Small Objects 16 Torpedo or Cylindrical objects 16 Cone-shaped objects 17 Propeller shaped Objects 17 V and Winged-shaped objects 18 Satellite Object Reports 18 Section III - Special Types of Witnesses III (1 to 19) Businessmen 1 Educators 1 Meteorologists and Weather Observers 2 Army and Army Air Corps Personnel 3 Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard Personnel 5 Newsmen and Editors 6 Doctors 8 Airline, Military, and Private Pilots 9 Police and Law-enforcement officers 14 Public Officials 16 Engineers and Technicians 17 Scientists 18 Section IV - Empirical Evidence IV (1 to 6) Animal Reactions 1 Fragments, Ashes, and Traces 1 Electromagnetic Effects 3 Photographs 3 ( i ) Section V - Chronology and References (88 pages) Case Number Cross Reference to Section/Page Numbers New addition Terms Methods and Conventions Used 1 Cases 1 to 853 Listed by Case Number (The chronology is now in a PDF document which is 108 pages) 2-76 References Listed by Case Number 77-88 Credits 88 Section V Addenda New addition Appendix 1 to 14 Additional Data on Sightings 1 Listing of Newspapers Consulted, by States 7 Listing of Books and Magazines Consulted 10 Map of United States Time Zones for 1947 11 Time Zone Chart 12 Localities that Observed Daylight Saving Time 13 Statistical Chart, by States, for June and July, 1947 14 Index 1 to 7 ILLUSTRATIONS Maps Map #1 (June 1 - 15) Facing I - 2 Map #2 (June 16 - 20) Facing I - 2 Map #3 (June 21 - 23) Facing I - 3 Map #4 (June 24) Facing I - 3 Map #5 (June 25 - 26) Facing I - 4 Map #6 (June 27 - 28) Facing I - 4 Map #7 (June 29 - 30) Facing I - 5 Map #8 (July 1 - 2) Facing I - 5 Map #9 (July 3) Facing I - 6 Map #10 (July 4) Facing I - 7 Local Map A Portland, Oregon, July 4 Facing I - 8 Local Map B Bay Area, California, July 5 Facing I - 8 Map #11 (July 5) Facing I - 9 Map #12 (July 6) Facing I - 10 Local Map C Bay Area, California, July 6 Facing I - 11 Local Map D Birmingham, Alabama, July 6 Facing I - 11 Map #13 (July 7) Facing I - 12 Local Map E Chicago, Illinois, July 7 Facing I - 13 Local Map F Seattle, Washington, July 7 Facing I - 13 Map #14 (July 8) Facing I - 14 Map #15 (July 9 – 10) Facing I - 15 Map #16 (July 11 – 15) Facing I - 16 Map #17 (July 20 – 30) Facing II - 1 Drawings Chart Illustrating Number of Cases Daily Frontispiece Case 39 - June 24, near Mt. Rainier, Washington I - 3 Case 306 - July 5, Bethesda, Maryland II - 15 Case 84 - June 27, Seattle, Washington II - 20 Case 46 - June 24, Seattle, Washington II - 20 Case 838 - July 13, Gardner, Massachusetts III - 1 Case 352 - About July 5, Seattle, Washington III - 19 Case 675 - July 7, Phoenix, Arizona (1) (2) IV - 5 Case 790 - July 9 or 10, Morristown, New Jersey IV – 6 Photographs Case 257 - July 4, Lake City, Washington Facing IV - 2 Case 651 - July 7, near Pontiac, Michigan Facing IV - 3 Case 683 - July 7, Louisville, Kentucky Facing IV - 4 Case 675 - July 7, Phoenix, Arizona (1) (2) IV – 5 ( ii ) Abstract The Report on the UFO Wave of 1947 discusses the first contemporary wave of UFO sightings in this country, which reached its peak on July 6 - 7, 1947. It includes a detailed chronology of more than 850 UFO cases for June and July with complete references, primarily from 140 newspapers in 90 cities in the United States and Canada, but also from the files of NICAP and Project Blue Book, as well as references from a number of publications on UFOs. About 250 of these reports are discussed in detail, with reference to patterns of appearance and behavior of the objects reported, to special types of witnesses, and to other special features. A summary of the period, the pattern of press coverage, and its effects on the subject, are discussed. Maps are provided to illustrate the daily distribution of sightings for the period. © Copyright 1967 By Ted Bloecher All Rights Reserved The little harlots will caper, and freaks will distract attention, and the clowns will break the rhythm of the whole with their buffooneries -- but the solidity of the procession as a whole: the impressiveness of things that pass and pass, and keep on and keep on and keep on coming. The irresistibleness of things that neither threaten nor jeer nor defy, but arrange themselves in mass-formations that pass and pass and keep on passing. So, by the damned, I mean the excluded. Charles Fort, from The Book of the Damned Chart Illustrating Number of Cases Daily, June 15 - July 15 I N T R O D U C T I O N Just over twenty years ago, the problem of the Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) burst into public attention. In a single two-week period in the summer of 1947, the UFO problem was laid in confusing disorder before the American public by means of banner headlines and wire-stories in profusion. In retrospect, it seems clear that the visible record of 1947 emergence of the UFO problem is primarily a journalistic record. Although scientists, the military, and a few governmental spokesmen took minor parts in the dramatic entry of UFOs onto the modern scene, newspapermen wrote and delivered the key lines that made the journalists role in the drama preeminent. Hence, to reconstruct that eventful public emergence of the UFO problem, one must turn to the nation's newspapers and review the day-by-day (sometimes hour-by- hour) unfolding of the evidence -- evidence that something of truly unusual nature was occurring. A few writers have already nibbled at the edge of a journalistic review of that curtain-raising two-week episode in late June and early July, 1947. In the present book, Bloecher gives us what will probably come to be regarded as the definitive analysis of that important episode in UFO and journalistic history. His approach was straightforward: Because his professional work takes him to many parts of the country, he began several years ago to devote maximum possible time to digging into local library files of newspapers, in order to extract original 1947 press material reporting the UFO problem in all its dimensions. As his files grew he turned to other sources, including Air Force Project Blue Book files and files of independent investigatory groups. From all this, he has assembled and put into far clearer order than could have been apparent to 1947 readers a systematic recounting of the 1947 birth of the UFO problem. This book is the result of his studies. I commend it to the attention of all serious students of the UFO problem. ( iii ) Doubtless, most other readers will be as stunned as I was to realize that already in the first two weeks after Kenneth Arnold's Mt. Rainier report of June 24, 1947, press reports of other American sightings of highly unconventional aerial objects numbered not the dozen or so that most of us might recall, but many hundreds. Since Bloecher is careful to concede that his own searching cannot possibly have gleaned every last report from the 1947 press files, we can safely round upwards his collection of about 800 reports to an estimate that at least some thousand sightings of unidentified objects probably occurred within the United States in midsummer 1947, the bulk of these coming within a rather sharply defined wavecrest centered on about July 7. As Bloecher properly emphasizes, this clearly marks the episode as one of the outstanding sighting-waves on record. (It would be most unwise to draw the conclusion that a thousand reports in about two weeks earns this episode the distinction of being the outstanding wave on record; unfortunately no other UFO researcher has done for other American waves the same kind of diligent searching that Bloecher has accomplished for the 1947 episode.