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Most of the reports are certainly imaginary; many of the "sighters" are newspaper delivery boys, excitable old ladies and other people with no technical training. But a considerable number of technical men have sighted, or believed they have sighted, mysterious flying objects. In New Mexico, the rocket experts of White Sands Proving Ground and Holloman Air Force Base are interested—and baffled.
Baffled too are many of the aerodynamic experts who work for the great aircraft manufacturers of Southern California. Some of them, led by Ed Sullivan; a technical writer for North American Aviation, Inc., builders of the Sabrejet, have formed an organization called the Civilian Saucer Investigation to give proper scientific analysis to the swarming rumors. The organization maintains a post-office box (Box 1971, Main Post Office, Los Angeles 53), and invites all "sighters" to report accurately everything odd they see in the sky.
Sullivan, a sighter himself (30 luminous, zigzagging objects over the Los Angeles area), apparently believes that the saucers are space ships from some other planet. He does not think they are either U.S. or Russian super-aircraft.
Most impressive believer is Dr. Walther Riedel, a scar-faced German rocket expert who was chief designer at the Peenemunde V-2 center and now works for North American Aviation, Inc. Riedel has seen nothing strange himself, but for years he has kept records of sightings all over the world. He is convinced that there are strange craft in the sky, and that they come from outer space.
Advanced Planet. The saucers cannot be of terrestrial origin, Riedel reasons, because: 1) their skin temperatures must be too high for any material known on earth; 2) they perform maneuvers that require a pilot, but which would kill any human pilot; 3) their propulsive systems leave no trails at high altitude, as all systems known on earth do. Therefore, thinks Riedel, the things must come from a planet where air and space technology is more advanced than on earth.
Skeptics—and there are still a few, even in Southern California—ask the following questions:
1) Why have none of the space ships crashed on earth and been found?
2) Why are there no firm reports of saucer-sightings by radar, which would give a flying object's speed and distance?
3) How can a conspicuous flying object pass over metropolitan Los Angeles (pop. 4,000,000) and be seen by only two or three people?
Until such questions are answered, the flying-saucer problem will continue to fascinate psychologists as well as physicists.