The information and analysis placed upon these pages in this section of the Quester Files is the result of 30 years of research and investigation into the phenomenon of “UFOs.” It is 30 years in which I have not spoken about the topic in specifics or often even in general. However, my contribution to the subject has been significant, even though it was unintentional significance. In relation to my investigation into the cause of missing aircraft and ships in the Bermuda Triangle I added one of the most disturbing cases to the dossier of “UFOlogy.” I discovered and published for the first time the transcript and then the actual FAA audio of a pilot reporting a “weird object” before he vanished.

     The results of my far less publicized investigation into the existence, reality, and origins of UFOs has turned up much equally alarming information. What is presented here is merely a foundation. Its presentation will be crisp and brief, to the point. A laborious thesis is for a book, and I seriously doubt I will write that. For something as different as the results of my investigation, internet web pages are best. They allow one to make frequent comparison to maps, photos, and timelines.

     I earned this unique praise from a New York Times bestseller: “The danger of Gian J. Quasar’s fascination with mysteries often assigned to ‘paranormal causes’ is that readers will assume his writing is tainted with secret advocacy and bias— like the majority of hacks who litter this field. Readers, rest easy. Quasar is a superb writer and researcher, and stands alone at the top of this unusual field. Through Quasar, the genre is elevated (finally!) to equal, even exceeds, the highest standards of investigative journalism . . .”

     I intend to live up to this praise here. The results here are of an objective investigation into a tangible phenomenon. These pages are not a personal journal of inquiring into subjective experiences.

Overview

On June 24, 1947, pilot Ken Arnold reported 9 saucer-like objects skipping along between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams in Washington State, USA. Judging by how they advanced between two definite topographical features in the mountains, he estimated their speed at 1,700 miles per hour. Since no known aircraft could travel that fast, he was captivated. Instinctively, he assumed they were secret US experimental aircraft. When he landed, he reported the phenomenon. He described their unusual dipping and wobbling pattern of flying. “You know they would skip and sail and give off these flashes. Take a saucer and skip it across the water and it’s erratic.” Newspapers far and wide reported Flying Saucers! The term, phenomenon, and mass interest was born. Hundreds of sightings were reported through the rest of the year.

     By that autumn, the Air Force had determined the phenomenon was real. On September 23, 1947, General Nathan Twining, head of Air Materiel Command, wrote to Army Air Command, specifically General George Schulgen, Head of Intelligence. He stated in summary: “The phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious.” Moreover, “There are objects probably approximating the shape of a disc, of such appreciable size as to appear to be as large as man-made aircraft.” They were “Metallic or light reflecting surface . . .” and “Circular or elliptical in shape, flat on bottom and domed on top.” The saucers were not associated with sound, and their normal speeds were often in excess of 300 knots.

     By 1949, there was only one logical theory. The FBI noted (in a March 14, 1949, memorandum) another Air Force analysis. The saucers were first seen over the Pacific Northwest, a flight vector that would indicate the saucers came over Alaska and Canada and then into the United States. During an edgy Cold War, the Pentagon suspected Mother Russia. Eventually, however, this was discounted. Unable to account for the phenomenon, the Air Force launched a formal investigation which eventually coalesced into Project Blue Book, but on the whole they presented a very skeptical face to the popular theory the flying saucers were spaceships from another planet.

     Project Blue Book was not just a shallow, public face. Originally, it had a very real purpose: monitor the phenomenon. It was an economical, but very viable way of doing so. It gave a central focus for all citizens to phone in and report their sightings. It didn’t need to be expressed openly by the Air Force; but all things considering, this reporting network could easily tip off the Air Force if another power on Earth had, in fact, developed any unusual unconventionally performing craft and was using it for surveillance purposes over the United States.

     There was a very good reason to think this was possible. The technology for flying saucers was well understood.

     Saucer buffs were so enthralled by General Twining’s once SECRET memo (it was released decades later) blatantly admitting the saucers existed that they overlooked another very certain statement contained therein: “It is possible within the present U.S. knowledge— provided extensive detailed development is undertaken— to construct a piloted aircraft which has the general description of the object in subparagraph (e) above [Circular or elliptical in shape, flat on bottom and domed on top] which would be capable of an approximate range of 7000 miles at subsonic speeds.”

     Furthermore, “Any development in this country along the lines indicated would be extremely expensive, time consuming and at the considerable expense of current projects and therefore, if directed, should be set up independently of existing projects.”

     We must keep this in mind as we proceed. . .

Shape and Structure

     The details of how the phenomenon developed and then evolved in the popular forum into its current form is not important here. The sightings are. They describe or purport and assert to describe an actual heavier-than-air object resembling a saucer. This lends itself to analysis. Hundreds of sightings came in throughout 1947 and each year thereafter during The Great Flap (1947-1952) which culminated in 1952 with 1,501 reported sightings. Considering there were thousands of sightings altogether, plus thousands thereafter over the following years, mathematic probability tells us the actual object inspiring the reports will be accurately described enough times so that analysis will reveal its correct features. This description, firmly established, then becomes a gold standard by which to assess each additional reported case.

     With thousands of reports, it becomes a daunting task to engage in just the first two steps of Scientific Method: Observe, Classify. But it is possible, and this page will present the basics of what this analysis yields.

     At nighttime they are a glowing, often speeding light of various colors of the spectrum. At slower speeds or in lower atmosphere the light is often cyan. At faster speeds it is red, then orange to yellow, and at truly incredible speeds it is white. An orange, fireball light is very common. Altitude levels may also affect the color. Daytime sightings are the most important. This gives us a physical shape of a discus or “saucer.” These saucers were brushed aluminum to chrome in brightness, and often attracted attention (as in Arnold’s sighting) by the glint of sunlight sparkling off them.

     When asked for details by the Air Force investigators, Ken Arnold said that the craft he saw actually resembled pie pans with their trailing end bitten off. He drew a picture for the investigators. Later, in the published The Coming of the Saucers (Fate, 1952, written by Ken Arnold and Ray Palmer), he somewhat apologized for not clarifying that the lead craft looked like a flying batwing. The others trailed in two groups, waffling back and forth like they were tethered together on a rope (like on a kite’s tail) or as geese fly in a strong wind.

           Ken Arnold’s drawing for the Air Force is a half oval airfoil. Below, Arnold showing a drawing of what the lead ship looked like. Both are starkly different than the popular concept of a flying saucer today.

Oval airfoils

       Subsequent reports of flying saucers from pilots and trained observers established that the shape was actually an oval or ellipse and not an oval with its trailing end bitten off. Since Ken Arnold saw the saucers from an extreme distance, it is possible the trailing part of the airfoil was merely invisible, an illusory effect. The oval shape to “saucers” was especially established by scientists at White Sands Missile Proving Grounds. Artwork based on Commander Robert McLaughlin’s analysis at White Sands was published in a significant article in the March 1950 edition of True magazine. The significant Utah Film of 1952 taken by Navy photographer Delbert Newhouse also indicated an oval shape to the craft.

   The true flying saucer as suggested by the White Sands observation and theodolite tracking.

     Combined with many other sightings, various sizes were established to these oval discs. The largest size was 105 feet. Smaller sizes were estimated at 60 feet, with the most common being an oval between 30 and 40 feet. The smallest were ovals or ellipsoids 10 x 12 feet that resembled an egg cut in half lengthwise, with a flat bottom. Small 20 inch discs were also observed, significantly at White Sands following a missile launch.

     Going back in history, before the hype and therefore before the hyperbole and the probability of distortion, an historical example confirms this oval shape. It was published in 1929 in Altai Himalaya, the travel diary of adventurer Nicholas Roerich. The sighting occurred in the remote area bordering the Gobi Desert in 1926. It is contained on pages 361-362 of the first edition. It follows:

     “On August 5th— something remarkable! We were in our camp in the Kukunor district not far from the Humbolt Chain. In the morning about half-past nine some of our caravaneers noticed a remarkably big black eagle flying above us. Seven of us began to watch this unusual bird. At this same moment another of our caravaneers remarked ‘There is something far above the bird.’ And he shouted in his astonishment. We all saw, in a direction from north to south, something big and shiny reflecting the sun, like a huge oval moving at great speed. Crossing our camp this thing changed in its direction from south to southwest. And we saw how it disappeared in the intense blue sky. We even had time to take our field glasses and saw quite distinctly an oval form with shiny surface, one side of which was brilliant with the sun.”

     Despite the remarkable consistency in these early reports, this oval shape did not remain the popularized view of flying saucers. It had to vie with another shape. Most commonly this other shape was a round disc with a flat bottom and a low dome on top. It was about 30 to 50 feet in diameter. The disc part of it rotated around the dome. This type of report began around 1949/1950 and was very clear in a close-up 1950 Kansas encounter. This will prove significant.

Rotating disc with dome on top

     No early researcher was as passionate and certain that flying saucers were from outer space as Major Donald E. Keyhoe (Rt). He became the most prolific and respectable writer on the subject. He moved freely within Pentagon and Washington/Defense circles, and was a conduit to his mass readership of officially cleared UFO reports (cleared by Air Technical Intelligence initially). He repeatedly stressed that the Air Force secretly believed the flying saucers were interplanetary vehicles. He also stressed Pentagon consternation over the solution to the flying saucer mystery. When they finally cut off information from the public, he also became the chief proponent for government conspiracy theories. He essentially laid the entire foundation for the narrative of government coverup that remains with us today.

   Right, Donald Keyhoe— he was implacable and respectable.

     In his first book Flying Saucers are Real (1950), he was suspicious of a source he called “John Steele” feeding him information that the flying saucers were British experimental craft. According to “Steele,” as Keyhoe summarized his information, “The saucers were rotating disks with cambered surfaces— originally a Nazi device. Near the end of the war, the British had seized all the models, along with the German technicians and scientists who had worked on the project. . .The first British types had been developed secretly in England, according to this account. But the first tests showed a dangerous lack of control; the disks streaked up to high altitudes, hurtling without direction. Some had been seen over the Atlantic, some in Turkey, Spain, and other parts of Europe. The British had then shifted operations to Australia, where a guided missile test range had been set up.” In short, they eventually perfected them.

     Keyhoe came to believe this “Steele” was a Pentagon agent trying to plant disinformation so he wouldn’t continue to promote the terrifying truth that flying saucers were from outer space. Keyhoe deeply believed that no earthbound technology could be responsible for the saucers’ airfoil shape, maneuverability, and reported fantastic speeds. Any attempt therefore to dissuade him had some ulterior and eventually government or Air Force conspiracy behind it.

     It is a fact, however, that the above described disc, which has inspired the popular image of the flying saucer today, is the most consistently photographed UFO over a period of 3 decades. This is why it supplanted the oval shape of the original flying saucer. Moreover, the pattern of its sightings over the decades to come associates it with the locations already mentioned by “Steele” in 1950, indicating that this mysterious “John Steele” did in fact have some level of accurate information. Examples follow:

     Darmstadt, Germany, August 1953; Drakensberg, South Africa, 1956; Corsica, February 1971; Vaucluse Beach, Australia, 1965; Indiana 1977.

     Certain clarifications of the photos should be made. Elizabeth Klarer took the Drakensberg photo and later went barking mad, believing she was in communication with aliens and had incubus inside her— not the only example of where someone is profoundly affected by a mere sighting. The drawing of the landed saucer on Vaucluse Beach is the only example of this saucer landed. Australia was vexed in 1966 with “saucer nests.” These were areas of matted grass or reeds where something circular, about 28 feet in diameter, had set down, causing the grass to be swirled in a circular motion as if by the wash of a rotating disc.

   Left, saucer nest near Tully, Australia, 1966.

   From reports and pictures, this type of saucer was in operation from late 1949 to the late 1970s.

   Denis Crowe, the witness who drew the sketch of it on the sand at Vaucluse Beach, noted that it was actually 2 cones. The center cone or dome was of lighter gray/silver metal than the ring or disc, which was of a darker gray. The photos above also show this two tone hue.

       From the consistency seen in the pictures, this is a tangible object. As such, explaining it becomes a key part of this (my) investigation.

     No more than 2 of this type of design were ever seen together at a time. Two examples are important— In 1950, Nick Mariana took the famous Montana Film. This film showed 2 discs traveling over Great Falls, Montana. Mariana stated the discs were rotating. In October 1955, US Senator Richard Russell and his two companions were on a train in the Trans-Caucasus region between Atjaty and Adzhijabul, of then Soviet Union. Near dusk, they reported 2 of just such discs lifting off.

   “One disc ascended almost vertically, at a relatively slow speed, with its outer surface revolving slowly to the right, to an altitude of about 6000 feet, where its speed then increased sharply as it headed north. The second flying disc was seen performing the same actions about one minute later. The take-off area was about 1-2 miles south of the rail line. . .”

     According to “Steele,” already by 1950 such saucers were associated with locations within reach of British territory. Among these locations, interestingly, was Turkey. The location above in the 1955 sighting is just east of Turkey. Great Falls, Montana, is, of course, within easy flying reach of British Canada.

     However, sightings of such a disc were not limited to British areas. Near Kingman, Kansas, such a disc (or similar) was hovering a few hundred feet over the road on June 30, 1950, and sped away when a car approached. The exact summary: “Rotating, saucer-shaped UFO hovered; took off with terrific acceleration as minister (former USAF pilot) started to drive his car under it.” (The UFO Evidence, NICAP, 1964). The chief witness referred to was Rev. Ross Vermilion, a former B-29 pilot.

     Another sighting was accompanied by radar confirmation. This was on July 11, 1950, when such a craft crossed the path (within a mile) of two Navy planes near Osceola, Arkansas. The crew of one plane, pilot Lt (j.g) J.W. Martin, R.E. Moore (enlisted) and G.D. Wehner (electronics engineer), reported it looked like “a World War I helmet seen from the side, or a shiny, shallow bowl turned upside down.” It would be about a month later (August 15) that Nick Mariana would film two such discs over Great Falls, Montana.

     World War I “Brodie Helmet.”

     The domed flying saucer with the rotating outer disc became a vital image for Keyhoe. His 1953 bestseller Flying Saucers from Outer Space inspired the 1956 SCI-FI Harryhausen classic Earth verses the Flying Saucers, in which the alien saucers were modeled on the dome with the rotating outer disc. Along with Canadian electronic scientist Wilbert Smith (within conversations reproduced in Flying Saucers From Outer Space) Keyhoe had developed the theory that the rotating disc indicated that the saucers used the magnetic field as an energy source creating some form of magnetic ‘sink,’ thus explaining their phenomenal power and speed. Keyhoe would serve as the movie’s technical consultant.

     Having once received the best of his UFO reports from the Air Force, Keyhoe became enraged when they ceased and started a policy of debunking. He became even more convinced of Air Force conspiracy when information circulated that there was indeed a secret US saucer program underway. He remained so conspiracy bound that for him this could only be explained as another Air Force attempt to cover up the saucers as interplanetary vehicles. He had entitled his next book The Flying Saucer Conspiracy. Before its 1955 release, he wrote a letter to fellow UFO chronicler Coral Lorenzen, the head of the No. 1 internationally popular A.P.R.O. (Aerial Phenomena Research Organization). “It’s obvious they [US Air Force] are worried about the steady increase in UFO sightings (which they also deny) and are trying to make the public believe that new secret Air Force devices are the explanation. Though they said they were just starting to test such a machine, many papers will paraphrase or cut and cause the impression that this is the real answer. The whole thing is a deliberate coverup, a conspiracy to keep the public in ignorance of the important events of the past two years.”

     There were two cornerstones to Keyhoe’s implacability on the interplanetary origin of flying saucers. The first was his reliance on the conclusion of Project Sign, which was the first study the Air Force undertook in 1947/1948 under Colonel H.M. McCoy. They alone concluded the saucers were interplanetary. Chief of the Air Force, Hoyt Vandenberg, rejected this as too presumptuous. Keyhoe, however, continued to assert the conclusion as final and representing behind-the-scenes the collective Air Force opinion. Second, he became friendly with Canadian physicist Wilbert Smith. On a trip to Washington DC in 1950, Smith had discovered through conversations with US physicist Dr. Robert Sarbacher that the subject of flying saucers was the highest classified secret in the US government, even more secret than the H bomb. Although there is no record he explicitly told Keyhoe of this conversation, Keyhoe’s published writings reveal Smith stressed the US government interest in saucer propulsion. Keyhoe’s interpretation of these key facts never changed. This was a coverup of alien visitation to Earth.

     Keyhoe would go out of his way to minimize the success or even development of US saucer projects. In the December 1963/January 1964 issue of NICAP’s (National Investigating Committee on Aerial Phenomena) The UFO Investigator newsletter, he summarized their repeated failures or, apparently, their lack of progressing to more than chalkboard concepts, including the Ryan Disc, a quilted saucer with a dome and fin and antennae.

Glowing domes, bells, and hemispheres

     Reports of UFOs escalated in August 1965, starting the Western Flap which culminated in the second great flying saucer flap in history. However, the saucers were quite different now than previously reported, as we will soon see. One of the most significant sightings was the Spaur/Neff sighting by two Portage County, Ohio, sheriffs named Dale Spaur and Wilbur L. Neff. Starting near dawn on April 17, 1966, they “chased” the low flying object, which was traveling around 100 mph, all the way from Deerfield, Ohio, into Pennsylvania. Their sighting was complimented by two other police officers. They described it as some form of disc emitting a downward cone of light. There was a fin or antenna on the top.

   Above, the Ryan Disc; Left, drawing of the Ohio UFO by Dale Spaur.

     Throughout 1966 and 1967 sightings continued and public interest mounted upward in intensity, with the sightings in Michigan finally inspiring local congressman Gerald Ford (Minority Leader) to request pivotal Congressional hearings to probe into the question of UFO reality. This flap also prompted Congress to initiate the Condon Committee to investigate all UFO information, which would culminate in the highly charged surroundings of the Condon Report in 1969. The conclusion of the report was that the sightings did not represent any technology beyond that of present day human science.

     For years after, Keyhoe and every proponent of the outer space theory vociferously condemned the Condon Report as rigged and biased. Their protests, though powerful in many ways, had a terrible obstacle to surmount. The Air Force followed the publication of the Condon Report with a decisive act. They discontinued their famous Project Blue Book which was the official investigation of UFOs. For a public largely not committed to the details of the question, this was a powerful gesture on the Air Force’s part that they truly believed the UFO phenomenon was all bunkum and the Condon Report was conclusive.

       During the Great Flap of 1965-1967 the UFO types most frequently seen are as follows:

   1, left, the Dexter, Michigan, UFO of 1966, which caused such widespread reports that Congress got involved. Here it is highlighted by Lt. Colonel Hector Quintanilla (head of Blue Book at the time of the sighting), for a TV audience in 1974. It was a dazzling, bright array of colors. But while hovering at low energy it was a glowing bell or hemisphere, quilted bronze-brown color, with blinking side lights of red and cyan. It had a large red glowing “porthole” in the center.

Flat top domed saucer, no rotating disc

   2, above right, the drawing by Stephen Michalak of the flying saucer he approached in May 1967. It had landed in a Canadian wood near Falcon Lake. He believed it to be a secret US aircraft. He approached it and heard human voices speaking inside, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.

   A rare example of the “Michalak” type of flying saucer captured in a photograph— here over Lake Tiorati, New York, December 18, 1966. In appearance it is essentially a US space capsule with a flange around it.

     This type of saucer was the kind most clearly reported in the 1970s. It was noted for a flat top dome, like a US space capsule, and then a flange around it, and a heavy undercarriage.

     In the 1980s, a man named Bob Lazar popularized this exact saucer image by claiming he saw one docked in a bay at the top secret Area 51, Groom Lake, US Nevada desert, where he worked as a “scientist.” Due to the dominant popular notion of flying saucers as alien spacecraft from another planet, his claims excited an entire sub-genre within “UFOlogy”— the belief in crashed alien flying saucers, largely in the US Southwest deserts.

   The Lazar flying saucer realized as a Testors model kit. It is based on his own drawing of what he saw at the top secret base.

     On the whole, pro-saucer buffs tout such sightings as proof we’ve recovered an alien spacecraft. These pro-UFO factions are quick to decry any notion there was ever any successful US, British, or Soviet black projects along similar lines. And quite naturally these governments deny they have such craft. Therefore for pro-saucer researchers there can be no earthly explanation for such saucers seen in the custody of US bases.

     The mainstream instinctively rejects the phenomenon and decry such accounts as part of conspiracy theories. There is no middle ground. For those who don’t want to believe, it is simply easier to ridicule those who make the reports.

     For those today who adamantly believe flying saucers are from outer space there is a powerful piece of support. It is the one that Donald Keyhoe religiously relied upon. It is, in fact, Project Sign’s conclusion in 1948. Sign’s conclusion was based solely on investigation of the strange oval discs reported flying through the atmosphere, sometimes in flocks. There were no circular discs with domes on them back then. There were only these shiny ovals streaking through the atmosphere. Though buried within the annals of the phenomenon, they have continued to be sighted unto the present day in circumstances that cannot be hoaxed.

     When the Pentagon admitted yet again in 2017 that they had continued to investigate flying saucers, it was implicit in the information they released that it was this type of oval saucer that continued to confound explanation. In 2017, the consultant for the Pentagon project, Luis Elizondo, was allowed to have cleared and released the radar and tracking video of US Air Force F-18 Super Hornets chasing a flock of oval discs over the Pacific Ocean in 2004. One pilot, David Fravor, has spoken on several mainstream TV shows, including Tucker Carlson, describing what he saw as a giant “tic-tac” about 40 feet long.

       It is beyond the purpose of this introductory page to develop the sub-genre of crashed flying saucers. However, it should be noted that out of all the claims of crashed saucers, one case and one case only describes the oval shaped discus. It is largely obscure, possibly because it does not fit within the narrative of domed flying saucers. The story surfaced in the 1970s through a respected UFO investigator, Ray Fowler. It is the claim of Arthur Stansel that in May 1953 he was seconded (along with many other scientists) in a bus with blacked-out windows to a remote desert location somewhere in Arizona. An oval object had skidded to a landing in the hard desert. He had measured the craft as oval— in other words, a giant tic-tac. This incident and its implications will be developed in other pages.

     Thus independently we have 4 major types that have been repeatedly seen over the decades and they even follow a pattern. 1— oval airfoils; 2— the famous dome with rotating outer ring; 3— a space capsule with a flange, thus also approximating a domed flying saucer; 4— the glowing bell or hemisphere “saucer” seen over Michigan and many other places. The last 2 appeared most frequently in the 1960s and continued on unto the present.

   Sibley Co. (Minnesota) deputy sheriff Art Strauch’s night color photo, October 21, 1965, of a glowing saucer can now be identified.

     The development of patterns in UFO reports, what they verify or debunk in terms of the popular folklore of UFOlogy, is better expounded elsewhere. For the purposes here, we establish these 4 types in their context.

     And the one to tackle first is the one I discussed the least here: the glowing bell/hemisphere. During full energy output, the plasma glow envelops the craft and extends out in a halo around it— thus it looks like a glowing domed saucer. Snippets about the secret project have, in fact, been released. Following these basic facts allow us to put together a disturbing pattern.

     Before we go back and reestablish the true mystery of “flying saucers” and start anew, we must understand how we got where we are today. To understand this, we have to establish exactly what is tangible. Something tangible leaves a distinct impression in the witness that fills their voice and body language with conviction. This inspires the investigator with confidence. This tangibility came in the 1960s because of Lightcraft and its secret use. It was seen by hundreds of thousands. It was photographed many times. It filled the witnesses with conviction. And this certainty was palpable. Their accounts and the photos convinced a nation that there was something real to the UFO phenomenon. Thus in the wake of the Second Great UFO Flap in history, we were willing to believe in the theories that followed. This juncture brought us through the 1970s and alien abductions, cattle mutilations, and even crashed saucers at Roswell, New Mexico. Ironically, they are all connected, even though for Roswell that might seem anachronistic.

     All are connected because each one has tangibility attached to it. The claim of alien abduction is not without tangible evidence, especially when the sheer volume of similar accounts is presented to the public. Dead cattle and their surroundings are as powerfully tangible as a homicide crime scene; and behind crashes there is debris. Roswell only became popular in the 1980s, but it seemed believable because UFOs had become so believable starting in 1965. It claims evidence going back to 1947 and the beginning.

     Something tangible can be investigated. This is starkly different than assessing subjective claims.

     Thus PHASE 1 of our quest must begin at the Second Great Flap of 1965-1967. By the multiplicity, clarity, and circumstances of the sightings it gave us the UFO phenomenon that we have bequeathed to subsequent generations. We start here so we may come forward to the beginning. Seeded by General Nathan Twining’s statement is Lightcraft.