'WE NEVER SAID THAT!'

Several books, reports and news pieces have someone from the Air Force asserting vigorously that they NEVER said 'Flying saucers' came from another planet!   That may be true, however, it seemed just about everybody else was saying it.

Early in 1950 (February) a Navy researcher stated "Saucers Are Interplanetary."  Commander Robert B. McLaughlin, skipper of the destroyer Bristol and in charge of a research unit on missiles said that although officially debunked, they are really "spaceships from another planet."  He said they frequently zoomed over the White Sands proving grounds in New Mexico. There a group of Navy experts and scientists were testing secret weapons.  In May 1949 a group of five trained observers using precision instruments were tracking a strange object "about 105 feet in diameter."

In a March issue of True magazine he stressed they were space ships from another planet, operated by...intelligent beings.  A former classmate of McLaughlin at Annapolis, Cmdr H.H. (Swede) Larson, executive officer of the Navy's experimental guided missile ship made the statement that, although McLaughlin was "in all respects a very capable and reputable officer not given to wild statements", he still thought his friend's statement needed further verification. [Story carried widely. Appeared in Sapulpa Daily Herald, Feb.23, 1950, pg. 1]

Summer of 1952 - the time of the famous Washington D.C. "Flap" and the emergence of mirages and temperature inversions as rationalizations - R.L. Farnsworth then President of the U.S. Rocket Society, was quoted across the nation for his assertion that "there is a possibility they are interplanetary space ships...interplanetary travel is possible." [Story carried widely. Appeared in Sweetwater Reporter (TX), July 28, 1952, pg. 1, 8]


General Hoyt S. Vandengberg, 2nd Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force (1948-1953) would several times in the 1952 window appear to verbally remind other branches that it was the Air Force that  investigated and researched the skies.  The Air Force...so step back the Navy and all others.