Since 1947, United States media coverage has speculated that UFO reports might be linked to atomic sites.
In June 1947, the start of the Cold War led to domestic UFO reports being taken seriously by both military and media. On July 6, 1947, media nationwide claimed that the ongoing "flying saucer" craze was linked to "transmutation of atomic energy", though experts later dismissed that claim as gibberish.
In 1968, Air Force debunker J. Allen Hynek, in the wake of controversy over his claim that a UFO report had been caused by swamp gas, floated the suggestion that reports might be tied to the atomic phenomenon.
By the 1990s, legends had spread of UFOs interfering with a missile test and taking a nuclear missile complex offline. In the 1964 missile test, a witness described UFO interference and was sworn to silence. It was later explained as the misidentification of then-classified decoy warheads. In 1967, a UFO sighting coincided with a missile complex malfunction. This was later explained as the result of an EMP test.
Both anecdotal observations and statistical studies suggest that UFO reports are more common near military or atomic sites. The Air Force conducted a rudimentary spatial analysis in the 1950s that seemed to confirm increased UFO reporting around "technologically interesting" sites. In 2015, French economists provided the first publicly available statistical analysis confirming that, within their dataset of sightings over France, reports of UFO were correlated with atomic sites to a highly significant degree. Experts argue that this link could simply be due to the unprecedented scrutiny of airspace around strategically important sites, while believers in extraterrestrial space visitors have long suggested that benevolent aliens were concerned about human use of atomic weapons.
Background By 1947, US national security concerns led to unprecedented scrutiny of airspace near US atomic sites and increased media coverage of UFO reports in US airspace.
1940s weapons development
Atomic weapons were developed by the US Military during World War II as a part of the Manhattan Project.The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects Uranium enrichment was performed at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, while plutonium production took place at Hanford, Washington. Bomb design and construction took place at Los Alamos, New Mexico. As a result, air power had increased greatly in both lethality and range over the course of World War II: in the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, 350 Japanese aircraft killed 2,500 people in a sneak attack after flying a few hundred miles, but by the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just two American bombers killed up to 250,000 people after flying a full 1,500 miles.
During the war, Japan deployed intercontinental balloon bombs that started wildfires and in one case even took out power at the Hanford plutonium production facility; a domestic censorship campaign successfully prevented Japan from learning the weapons had, in fact, reached the United States. Inspired by the Japanese balloons, the US created their own high-flying balloons in Project Mogul, an attempt to detect potential Soviet atomic tests.
Meanwhile, Germany had developed rockets, jet fighters, and designs for an intercontinental bomber. Soviet and American governments both learned of Axis technical advances and employed Axis scientists in their race for technical superiority after the war.
Increased scrutiny of US airspace Direct US atomic attack against Soviets had been a possibility since 1945, when the nation unveiled the first intercontinental bomber, able to reach the Soviet Union from American soil."Video: Biggest Bomber, 1946/08/15." Universal Newsreel, 1946. Retrieved: 20 February 2012. By 1946, Army officials feared a Soviet surprise attack on US atomic facilities.Peebles, p. 90 Soviet bombers had developed the range to strike Hanford and still return to base, or even to strike Los Alamos or Oak Ridge in a one-way attack. Atomic sites were among the first places in the United States to operate radar, supported by spotters for visual confirmation and squadrons of fighters to defend against potential threats.
The start of the Cold War in the summer of 1947 affected how media covered reports of unidentified anomalies in the sky. In earlier eras, such reports were covered as religion, folklore, or tall tales, but the development of atomic weapons and intercontinental vehicles meant even a small number of adversarial overflights could have huge national security implications. Writing in 2020, Skeptical Inquirer author Eric Wojciechowski argued: "From all the available evidence, it appears that in 1947, the U.S. military was accepting anecdotal reports of flying saucers at face value. Perhaps they did so as a precaution to ensure no foreign threats were present. Missing something such as advanced enemy aircraft over one’s own territory could have been disastrous."
Chronology Since 1947, public discourse has linked some notable UFO incidents and atomic sites.
Supposed flying discs allegedly break sound barrier
Early in 1947, the Army and Navy independently announced plans to break the sound barrier before the end of the year. On June 24, Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying between Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams a distance of 42 miles in the span of 102 seconds. If Arnold's report were correct, the objects had been traveling at a supersonic rate of 1,200 miles per hours, nearly double the then-current airspeed record of 623 miles per hour.
Unlike prior stories of unexplained airborne sightings, Arnold's report was covered in media nationwide. An Army spokesman in D.C. told press that the only known object capable of those speeds was a V-2 rocket, which they argued would not be mistaken for a disc-shaped aircraft.
The sound barrier would not actually be broken for another four months, until October 11 when American test pilot Chuck Yeager piloted the rocket-propelled Bell X-1. When Aviation Magazine reported on the record-breaking flight in December 1947, the Air Force denied the claim; the Air Force would not announce the achievement until the following June.
Roswell and atomic weapons
After debris was found on a Corona ranch in New Mexico, on July 8, press announced that Army Air Forces at Roswell had recovered a "flying disc". Press at the time noted the 509th at Roswell was the Army's atomic bomb group. In subsequent decades, Roswell's status as the only unit charged with atomic weapons delivery gave rise to legends that the Corona debris was linked to atomic bombers at Roswell, but Corona was actually a significant distance from Roswell, and two other Army Air Fields were closer to the debris site than Roswell.
Initially dismissed as a weather balloon, by the 1970s Air Force Officers began to admit the weather balloon story had been part of a cover-up. In the 1990s, an Air Force report concluded the debris had come from a Project Mogul balloon designed to detect Soviet atomic tests. Mogul Balloons, like the Japanese Fu-Go balloons that inspired them, were top secret.
First public claims of a link between UFO reports and atomic sites
During the 1947 craze, flying discs and atomic weaponry became linked in the public consciousness.G. Arnold, Ch. 12 On July 6, headlines proclaimed "Discs Atom Products, A-Bomb Scientist Says". Articles cited an unnamed "noted scientist in nuclear physics" affiliated with CalTech who had been part of the Manhattan Project. The scientist declared "People are not 'seeing things'" and said flatly that experiments in "transmutation of atomic energy" being conducted at Muroc Lake California; White Sands, New Mexico; Portland, Oregon, and elsewhere were responsible for the "flying discs".While Portland is not typically associated with atomic research, national media stories about Hanford often carried the dateline of Portland. In one case, a headline misstated the location of the first atomic energy plant as being Portland, rather than Hanford. Papers observed that the "... bulk of the flying disc reports have generated in a wide circle through Idaho, Washington, and Oregon surrounding the Hanford works". Col. F. J. Clarke, commander of Hanford, denied knowledge of any connection. Harold Urey, atomic scientist in Chicago, dismissed the report as "gibberish", as did Atomic Energy Commission chair David E. Lilienthal.
During the investigation of the Maury Island Incident, supposed saucer witness Harold Dahl reported receiving an anonymous letter that speculated the flying discs were objects that had become visible due to radiation in the atmosphere.Kenneth Arnold, Coming of the Saucers, 1952: pp. 54–55: "The night I had gone to Dahl's secretary's home, after he handled me the piece of lava-like rock he had been using as an ash-tray, he got up abruptly and started searching through all the papers in the kitchen. He was looking for a letter, he said, that was interesting. When he returned to the piano bench a few minutes later he told me he couldn't locate it but would give me a brief of general contents. Dahl said this anonymous writer told him that the flying disks were actually manned by beings such as we, only less dense, so to speak, than we are. Due to the atomic explosions, the radiation now released in the atmosphere had caused these things to become visible to us on Earth."
Mantell crash near Oak Ridge
Fighters at Fort Knox, Kentucky were tasked with providing air defense to the Oak Ridge facility. On January 7, 1948, a flight of four fighters were dispatched to pursue a UFO. One pilot, 25-year-old Captain Thomas F. Mantell, climbed to above 22,000 feet; his wingman did not follow him as neither plane was equipped with oxygen to allow flight at that altitude. Mantell crashed to his death, presumably after having lost consciousness due to lack of oxygen. The Air Force later concluded the UFO had been a Skyhook balloon, a classified project of which Mantell would have had no knowledge.
Green Fireballs
On December 5, 1948, multiple agencies met to investigate the reports by astronomer Lincoln LaPaz of green fireballs. By 1949, orders were issued for fighters to fire on any potentially hostile aircraft over Hanford or Oak Ridge.https://www.google.com/books/edition/Surprise_Attack/0oRLEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA119&printsec=frontcover In the early days of the Korean War, pilots reported UFOs over Hanford; Hanford reports continued through 1950, later joined by similar reports over Oak Ridge. Ruppelt detailed two 1952 incidents: On July 21, a ground observer at Oak Ridge reported a UFO which was allegedly detected on radar. A similar event occurred at Hanford on December 10.Ruppelt,p43
In 1952, the Life Magazine article Have We Visitors From Space? reported that in the fall of 1949, an unnamed Air Force officer charged with "command of the radar equipment that keeps watch over a certain atomic installation" reported an unusual radar return suggesting "five apparently metallic objects" which traversed the 300-mile range of the radar scope in less than four minutes. Publicity surrounding the piece is believed to have contributed to the 1952 UFO flap, a subsequent wave of reports that summer.
Contactees and nuclear war The 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still featured a benevolent spaceman who comes to Earth with a warning about atomic weapons. The follow year, new age figure George Adamski began claiming contact with benevolent "space brothers" who were similarly concerned about atomic weapons.Peebles, p. 95
White Sands region