The article below was published in the daily newspaper Samedi-Soir, Paris, France, on April 12, 1952.
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"American military aircraft are instructed to try to intercept flying saucers."
This statement, made this week by an official spokesman for the U.S. Air Force, had the effect of a bombshell. It had been rumored for some time that the American air force had revised its point of view on flying saucers: after refusing to believe in their existence, it had opened an investigation into them.
But it was not imagined that the conclusion of this research could be so positive.
Thus, for the experts, flying saucers now exist. Better still, they agree to recognize that they could be "space ships", extraterrestrial objects, coming from other planets, manufactured and piloted by beings possessing technical knowledge superior to that of man.
The very day that the American aviation announced that it now believed in the existence of saucers, the great American magazine Life published under the title: "Do we have visitors from space?" a well-documented article on the concerns of officials and their experts. The fact that this magazine was published at the same time as the official statement seems to indicate that the elements of his article were taken from a good source.
In any case, there is so much concern, across the Atlantic, about the saucers, that the US Air Force has seen fit to ask all Americans to watch the skies and notify the nearest air base as soon as a suspicious object is seen.
This instruction has already produced results.
A strangely shaped object was seen by four experienced pilots over Benson (Arizona). It was eleven o'clock in the morning. Alerted by the official statements, Skeet Taylor, who was at Benson airfield, radioed Chick Logan, who was then piloting a plane over Benson.
Warned in time, Logan was able to set off in pursuit of the craft. "This object," he said after ladfing, "was five or six times larger than a B.29. It was oblong in shape and had no wings. It didn't exactly look like a saucer. I climbed as high as I could to try to catch up with it. But I plateaued at 5,000 meters. The craft seemed to be flying 12,000 meters above me. It was very bright and shone like polished aluminum. I have been flying for 23 years and have never seen anything like it."
This is the first account to follow the new official instructions. There will be others.
It was an incident in the skies of Korea that prompted the Air Force intelligence services to join the side of the flying saucer proponents.
On January 19, the crews of two Superfortresses saw unconventional aircraft flying over them at incredible speed. When questioned by their superiors, the airmen maintained their testimony and expressed the conviction that these machines could not have been manufactured and flown by men. These witnesses were too experienced, too accustomed to aerial observation, for their statements to be dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders.
Explanations were given for the strange phenomenon they had witnessed. None appeared truly satisfactory. This is not the first time that men have failed to understand such phenomena. It is recognized in Washington that while many "saucers" are only weather balloons or meteors, the presence of some is not
