The Saucer Dance (July 9, 1947)

July 9, 1947, as headlines were either about General Ramey 'emptying the saucer' from Roswell or news that atomic secrets stolen a year earlier had been returned (and not recently). 

In the Dallas-Ft. Worth area a local dance instructor from the Arthur Murray Dance Studio, demonstrated her newly created dance: The Saucer Dance. 

 Citing that there were just too many people seeing and talking about the odd objects she set it to music, and some dance steps. 

The events of 1947 - unidentified flying object-wise - fall into three general categories.

January though May - Thing are going on but we will ignore it and hope it goes away. Sightings are limited to isolated areas in the United States or in foreign nations where it is fairly easy to wave the hand and mutter, "loonies!"

May through September - May through June there is a uptick in reports (some from highly qualified individuals) but since they cannot be seeing the things they say - they aren't. Bluff and derogatory remarks, ridicule, flat out denials and verbalized questions about the soberness or  trustworthiness of anyone claiming to see such things that "cannot be there." July 4th holiday and there is an explosion of sightings - across the country and before massed crowds of people outside at picnics and similar celebrations - suddenly they cannot be laughed off due to the numbers, geographical spread, and quality of those reporting. At the end of July an official report is being compiled that identifies the common shape (disc, round, curved front and flat tail end), the common speed range (300- 1000 mph) and extreme maneuvers (80 degree turns, rapid moves that would have been intolerable to a pilot to the current knowledge), etc. In this time period a combination of dire hints of death sentences (in case they are atomic project products), large scale ridicule of any and all witnesses, and a series of probable hoaxing events to aid visuals to the picture - the number of reports and stories go down. 

October through December - the topic is sometimes termed "the almost forgotten flying saucers" of earlier in the year. Yet, by late December the Air Force is forming the first of several investigative or record gathering projects labeled "SIGN".  It is born from several "estimates of the situations" and "analysis of flying disc" reports generated in and for the Office of Intelligence for the Air Force. As of December 22, 1947 those documents can only state  the objects being seen are real, not all can be explained away as misidentifications or natural phenomena, and they did not have a clue where those mysterious remaining ones came from (although they had compiled the probable physicality of the objects based on dozens of high quality reports.

The government, according to those reports, did not know what the objects were in those best quality cases. Did they turn out the lights, shut the door , and go hit a dance floor trying out that "Saucer Dance?"

That remains a mystery - like so much about those early months and years.