UFOs in the daily Press:

FLYING SAUCERS AND LITTLE MEN STILL AROUND

By George D. Fawcett

Whatever the truth is, it appears that UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) created a massive wave of global reports throughout 1972. Thousands of unknown flying objects (the newest name given them by the U.S. Air Force after 25 years of investigations) were seen in the skies of every major nation from over 40 countries and all 50 states in the U.S.

The influx of the UFO reports included landings, radar trackings, near collisions, ground occupant reports, pilot reports, electromagnetic noise incidents, electro-magnetic interference effects, and scientific studies on soil samples, metal traces, animals, and humans.

The worldwide concern over the UFOs was underscored when a series of strange orange UFO trigger air raid alarms and air searchlights in Buenos Aires and were unable to reach them at their maximum altitude. Again, on September 14, two Air Defense Command F106 fighter jets (each armed with four air-to-air missiles) were dispatched from the Homestead Air Force Base near Miami, Florida, to chase a UFO reported from widely separated areas by pilots, ground observers, FAA officials and flight controllers. On radar, the UFO appeared to be six to eight times larger than normal aircraft. The UFO evaded the jets at a 15,000-foot altitude. On June 26 at Ft. Beaufort, South Africa, frightened farmers and police “shot at and hit” a terrifying UFO at a distance of less than 45 feet. The bullets bounced off the edge of the UFO with a "metallic thud," then it left the area at rapid speed.

Air Force, Navy, and civilian "radar trackers" at the Patuxent Naval Station, Md.; Dover Air Force Base, Del.; Davis-Monthan AFB, Tucson, Ariz.; Naval Air Station, South Weymouth, Mass.; Hanscom Field, Bedford, Mass.; Fairchild AFB, Spokane, Wash.; Palm Beach and Miami International Airports, Fla., were plagued with good "hard returns" on their radar screens that remained unexplained. Radarmen in England, Australia, New Zealand, Alaska, Japan, Finland, and elsewhere were having the same problems with the mysterious UFOs. International boundaries were being violated quite often and little could be done about it, except to try to continue to classify the information surrounding UFOs detected on scientific instrument under security regulations.

The most fascinating of all UFO reports involved such objects seen not in the skies but on the ground. Such reports came from a variety of widely separated locations in six states and seven foreign countries. Starry-eyed residents watched UFOs from Tokoroa, New Zealand; Davis AFB, Calif.; Laurens, Boone, and New Sharon, Iowa; Min; Kit Carson County and Wyandotte County, Kan.; Novi, Mich.; Norton Sound, Alaska; Burlington, Colo.; Franca; Aucamena, Mexico; Passy-sur-Eure, France; and Tasmania, New Zealand, Australia. Such UFOs frightened farmers and police officers, sickened animals, drained radio power, burned trees, left scorched areas in fields, frightened rural inhabitants, and left circular depressions (from 2 to 50 feet in diameter), tripod landing gear marks, other depressions and markings on the ground, soil changes, denuded vegetation, etc.

In these UFO landings, both metallic and non-metallic residues such as aluminum, calcium, iron, titanium, magnesium, potash, copper, silicon, zinc, and tin were found. Most often detected smells at such areas include sulfuric and ammonia-like odors.

In June, hundreds of navy personnel panicked at the sight of a disc-shaped UFO at Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. In July, a soccer match was halted temporarily while thousands of fans watched a long cigar-shaped UFO with eight small satellite objects maneuvering above the stadium at Campos, Brazil. In August, a group of girl scouts fled from an overnight camp at Droitwich, England, when a 30-foot UFO appeared 10 feet above the ground nearby. In August, hundreds reported a yellow UFO with wing-like structures over Hawahetta, Ceylon. In September, police in dozens of cities in Kansas were swamped by phone calls by excited residents who spotted UFOs, as did police themselves.

N.C., the Tar Heel State, didn't miss out on the wave of 1972 UFOs, as such reports were received from: Newton, Shelby, Hickory, Maiden, Winston-Salem, Mount Airy, Charlotte, Eden, Stoneville, Mooresville, Lewisville, Kernersville, and Cullowhee, to mention a few of the towns and cities on the UFO survey tour.

Commercial, military, and private pilots flying A7 combat planes at the Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, Ariz.; aboard Argentinean Airline Avione 748 jets bound for Austria, piloting Lufthansa Boeing 737s and Austrian Airlines DC-9 over Linz, Austria; and airline pilots over Durban, South Africa, as well as Eastern and Iberia pilots and pilots over West Palm Beach, Fla.; and two United Airline pilots piloting KLM Royal Dutch Airlines over Okinawa were just a few of the many flyboys who chased and/or were paced by UFOs on their airborne radars and by ground observers who reported head-on passes and near collisions with the reported objects.

While UFO photographs and movie films were being taken in Strongsville, Ohio; Mart, Texas; Quincy, Ill.; Cando, N.D.; Corrientes, Argentina; Des Moines, Iowa; Cape May, N.J.; Colby, Kan.; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Naha City, Okinawa, motorists on the ground were having their share of UFO troubles also.

UFOs took a great deal of interest in frightening motorists by pacing autos and trucks in N.C., England, Ark., Ill., Kan., Calif., Iowa, Fla., Wisc., Japan, and Australia. One such pursuit resulted in a car wreck in Sherwood, Australia, on July 3. Such commonplace occurrences number in the thousands worldwide over the past quarter-century and no end appears to be in sight. Ground observers in Poland, Germany, France, and Switzerland made numerous cigar and saucer-shaped UFO sightings public for the first time. Larger objects (usually cigar-shaped) were seen releasing smaller objects (usually saucer-shaped) above Melville, Australia; Tucson, Ariz.; St. Louis, Mo.; and Campos, Brazil in the month of July alone. Not at all unlike "Project Acoline in Reserve" for a comparison. UFO occupants were reported on the ground in Balls Ferry, Calif. On January 21, and their uniforms were reported to be "lump-like pouch coats."

Kuraby, Queensland, Australia, also had a UFO pilot reported landing. Were these UFOs making surveys? The UFO problem is far from being resolved, and with the smallest number of such reports in 1972 was the smallest number of reported sightings in years, as there were still over 2,000 cases out of a total of over 1,800 similar observations.

Electro-magnetic (E-M) effects are the most interesting aftereffects. Dogs, cows, sheep, birds, and horses panicked and fled at UFO sightings in N.C., Kan., Texas, New Zealand, and Penn. Car motors, household radios, radios, and motors and power systems were stopped by UFOs in England, Kan., Mo., France, Austria, and Canada. Cows were burned, as were cars and several humans in UFO close approaches in Larned, Kan., and at Lake Claire, Canada, on February 28 and April 15.

UFOs in 1972, like UFOs in 1947, are still around and require a serious new, high-level worldwide scientific investigation.