“FLYING SAUCERS”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27275, 29 December 1949, Page 5

“FLYING SAUCERS”

Vehicles From Another Planet American Magazine’s Claim NZPA—Copyright NEW YORK, Dec. 27. The sensational claim that the socalled “ flying saucers ” are space vehicles from another planet was made today by the magazine True in an article signed by Donald Keyhoe, former information chief for the aeronautics branch of the United States Commerce Department. The magazine said that its conclusions were based on eight months’ investigation. The article said: “For the past 175 years the planet Earth has been under systematic close range examination by living intelligent observers from another planet. The intensity of this observation and the frequency of visits to the Earth’s atmosphere, by which it is being conducted, have increased markedly in the past two years.” The article added that the flying discs vary “in no important particular from the well-developed American plans for the exploration of space which are expected to come to fruition within the next 50 years. There are reasons to believe, however, that some other race of thinking beings is a matter of two centuries and a-quarter ahead of us.” The article said that “project saucer,” operated by United States Army Air Force investigators and charged with solving the mystery, was receiving and evaluating reports of sighted flying discs 'at the rate of 12 a month. Sightings were closely checked by teams of air intelligence officers and technicians. “ Rocket experts, astronomers, guided missile consultants, aero-medical men, and other specialists work on a hush-hush basis,” the article said. These interplanetary vehicles had been identified, and classified as three main types —small non-pilot, carrying a disc-shaped aircraft equipped with some form of television or impulse transmitter; a metallic disc-shaped aircraft operating on the heliocopter principle, and dirigible-shaped wingless aircraft. , . . The air force promptly discounted the magazine’s claim, and said: “Air force studies of flying saucers lend no support to the view that they come from another planet.”