Seventy years ago this summer, something crashed in southeastern New Mexico that has since become part of American folklore.

Almost everyone knows the story of the farmers who in 1947 recovered pieces from “a flying disc” outside Roswell. That of course was how the Army itself in a news release described the unidentified flying object that appeared to have crash-landed at a ranch there in June or July of that year.

In the 1990s, the U.S. Department of Defense revealed the material came from a high-altitude balloon that was part of Project Mogul — a top secret program in the late 1940s — that used such balloons to listen for Soviet nuclear weapons tests high in the atmosphere. But that, of course, didn’t end the conspiracy theories from those who believe — to paraphrase — that the truth is still out there.

What almost no one knows about the events of June and July 1947, is that during those two months there had been a rash of UFO sightings all over the United States that had led to a kind of hysteria across the continent — including here at the Jersey Shore.

“Flying Discs Cause Wonder,” read a July 5, 1947, headline in the Asbury Park Press; three days before the Roswell Daily Record reported its now famous headline: “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch In Roswell Region.”

On July 5, the Press published dispatches from across the country – Philadelphia, Seattle, eastern Michigan – of strange accounts of “flying discs” and “flying saucers” ranging from ordinary people to Coast Guard personnel.

Indeed, almost every other day that July there was a story in the Press about this bizarre phenomena that had captured the zeitgeist of post-war America.

On July 9, the first local account of a UFO sighting came from the Osbornville section of Brick Township.

Cliff Carlson called the Press the night before to report that he had seen “one of those now-famed speeding saucers” streaking east across the sky at an altitude he guessed was between 3,000 and 4,000 feet.

“It was going so fast, I couldn’t believe it,” Carlson said.

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On July 10, the Press proclaimed that the “City’s First ‘Flying Disc’ Is Reported,” referring to Asbury Park:

“The first ‘flying disc’ report in Asbury Park came today from Mrs. Harry Milberg, 1309 Fourth Avenue, who said she saw a ‘round, silver-looking disc shoot downward from the sky and run into nothing.’”

Milberg said she had awakened at about 1:25 a.m. to take some medicine and looked out the window in time to see the disc dart about the night sky before it seemed to plummet into a home across the street from hers.

By July 13, the Press ran a front page story out of the laboratories at Camp Evans in Wall Township, where some of the best scientists in the western world were gathered to work on technologies at what was then the dawn of the Space Age.

“Discs Mystery To Evans But Could Be Weather Gadgets,” the headline read, which was accompanied by photos of weather balloons operated at the time by the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

“Like most reputable men of science, officials at the Army’s Evans Signal Laboratory, Wall Township, origin of the Radar To The Moon experiments, evince professional interest in the reports but are frank to say they don’t know what the discs may be and are reserving their opinion until they see one, or at least talk to some reputable person who has,” the article read.

“Delbert Deisinger, West Long Branch, a scientist on the staff of the director of engineers, suggested that the luminous saucer-like projectiles possibly might be gadgets falling from weather balloons which are in use in all parts of the country.”

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Official scientific explanations did little to satisfy the imaginations of ordinary Americans, who wanted to believe that there was something more to the phenomena.

Even advertisers got in on the fun. A local bus line, Coast Cities Coaches, took an ad out in the Press on July 11 titled: "The Mystery of the Flying Discs!"

"Buy yourself a stockpile of our bus tokens and forget the flying discs," the tongue-in-cheek ad trumpted.

On the Op-Ed page, a columnist warned that whatever they were — national security was at risk.

"In this era of flying discs, top General Eisenhower says this nation must guard itself well against insane attack, and Congress is getting on with it," read the opinion piece.

This was still an innocent moment in American history but also one that came just two years after the end of World War II and the start of the Cold War.

When people saw lights in the sky they could not explain, they were not dismissed as kooks but listened to as potential witnesses.

No serious person believed the men in those flying discs were little and green, but they could very well have been red.

Erik Larsen: 732-682-9359 or elarsen@gannettnj.com



