The article below was published in the daily newspaper The Las Cruces Sun-News, Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA, pages 1 and 6, on July 6, 1947.
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By ASSOCIATED PRESS
The nation was baffled today by "flying saucers" reported seen in 31 states by hundreds of persons, and conjectures came from scores of named an unnamed sources throughout the country.
Official government sources took a "let's see one" stand on the phenomenon, and no scientist proffered a detailed explanation.
But the Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express quoted an unnamed California Institute of Technology scientist in nuclear physics as suggesting that the saucers might be the result of experiments in "transmutation of atomic energy."
California Institute of Technology later denied the report that one of its scientists had suggested a nuclear explanation for the discs, with Dr. C. C. Lauritsen, head of the school's nuclear physics department saying he believed the discs "have nothing to do with nuclear physics."
The unnamed scientist quoted by the Los Angeles Herald and Express said, according to the paper, that "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 partially rocket-propelled on the takeoff."
The newspaper described him as a researcher on the Manhattan atomic project and said he asked that his name be withheld.
The paper said such experiments as he described 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."
An official at the atomic energy commission in Washington said it was conducting "no such experiments" as the California scientist suggested.
At Columbus, Ohio, Louis E. Starr, national commander-in-chief of the Veteran of Foreign Wars, asserted at a VFW convention that he was expecting information from Washington about "the fleets of flying saucers." "Too little is being told the people of this country," Starr declared.
Two Chicago astronomers said the discs are probably "man-made." The undulating, flashing objects "couln't be meteors," said Dr. Gerald Kuiper, directir of the University of Chicago's Yerkes observatory at William's Bay, Wis.
"We realize," said Dr. Oliver Lee, director of Northwestern University Dearborn observatory,
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"that the Army and Navy are working on all sorts of things we know nothing about."
Lee said the discs might represent the same sort of things as sending radar signals to the moon, one of the greatest technological achievements of the war and accomplished in absolute secrecy."
Credence in the saucers - widely laughed off at their first reported appearance June 25 - grew as hundreds of observers, many of them trained fliers, reported seeing them.
A crowd of 200 observed a disc at Hauser Lake, Idaho, on the Fourth on July. A group of 60 picnickers saw them at Twin Falls, Idaho. And in Portland, Ore., so many residents witnessed them that same day that the police department sent out an all-ears broadcast.
A United Air Lines pilot of 11 years of experience walked up the ramp to his plane at Boise, poking that "I'll believe in these discs when I see them." Ten minutes later he radioed, shaken, from his plane that he had spotted five of them.
An army Air Forces official in Washington said the AAF was "completely mystified" by the saucer reports.
Although no general alert had been sent out for radar screening of the heavens, he said "reports on the interception of any suspicious object or ground radar screens will be carefully evaluated."
