The article below was published in the newspaper The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, on pages 1 and 7, on July 7, 1947.
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(From AP and UP Dispatches)
CHICAGO, July 7. -- Army pilots were ready today for another air search for the mysterious "flying saucers" now reported seen in 36 states.
Equipped with telescopic cameras, 11 army planes searched the Pacific northwest yesterday without finding any trace of the flying discs which have been reported over scores of communities the preceding two days.
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At Sioux Falls, S. D., a coast guard plane already in the air was ordered to investigate a silvery disc with a short tail which a man said he saw shoot across the heavens. The pilot found nothing but empty sky.
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Now reports of disc-like "flying saucers" skimming through the skies today added to the mystery which has baffled the nation since June 25.
There is no satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon.
Yesterday they were reported to have been seen in more than a dozen states, and in southwestern Ontario.
Most observers agreed the objects are round or oval. Guesses as to their size have ranged from that
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of a five-room house or a large airplane to one description of "a silver ball, six inches in diameter."
The army, the navy and the atomic energy commission all disclaimed any connection with the mystery. An army spokesman in Washington said the A. A. F. had been checking into the reports "and we still haven't the slightest idea what they could be."
LOS ANGELES, July 7 (AP) -- The Evening Herald and Express quoted an unnamed "scientist in nuclear physics" at California Institute of Technology Saturday, as suggesting thet "transmutation of atomic energy" experiments might be responsible for the flying saucers.
The newspaper described him as a researcher on the Manhattan atomic project and said he asked that his name be withheld. It quoted him:
"These saucers so-called are capable of high speeds but can be controlled from the ground. They are 20 feet in width in the center and are partly rocket propelled on the take off."
The paper said such experiments are being conducted at Muroc Dry Lake, Calif., White Sands, N. M., Portland, Ore., and elsewhere. It further quoted the scientist:
"People are not 'seeing things.' such flying discs actually are in experimental existence."
In Chicago, Dr. Harold Urey, atom scientist at the University of Chicago, commented:
"Transmutation of atomic energy sounds like gibberish. You can transmute metals, not energy."
Lester Barlow, internationally known explosives inventor of Stanford, Conn., expressed the belief that the saucers were man made, probably radio controlled flying missiles, and that the reason the great majority of reports of sighting them came from the west was that military authorities preferred to use vast and relatively unpopulated spaces for experiments.
To: Kenneth Arnold or Newspapers 1940-1949.
