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Abstract
Beginning in 1947, with the first waves of UFO sightings, and continuing in the subsequent decades, debates on the existence and gestalt of extraterrestrial life gained unprecedented prominence. Initially an American phenomenon, flying saucer reports quickly became global in scope. Contemporaneous with efforts to legitimize the possibility of spaceflight in the years before Sputnik, the UFO phenomenon generated as much sensation in Europe as in the USA. In the public imagination, UFOs were frequently conflated with technoscientific approaches to space exploration. As innumerable reports of sightings led to a transnational movement driven by both proponents and critics, controversial protagonists such as ‘contactee’ George Adamski became prominent media celebrities. Incipient space experts including Willy Ley, Arthur C. Clarke, and Wernher von Braun sought to debunk what they considered a great swindle, or, following C.G. Jung, a modern myth evolving in real-time. Yet they failed to develop a response to the epistemic-ontological challenge posed by one wave of UFO sightings after another. Studying a phenomenon whose very existence has been non-consensual since its genesis presents a particular challenge for historians. Posing complex questions of fact and fiction, knowing and believing, and science and religion, this article analyzes the postwar UFO phenomenon as part of a broader astroculture and identifies transcendental and occult traditions within imagined encounters with extraterrestrial beings.
Acknowledgements
Research for this article was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. I am grateful to all members of the Emmy Noether Research Group ‘The Future in the Stars: European Astroculture and Extraterrestrial Life in the Twentieth Century’ at Freie Universität Berlin, the two anonymous reviewers and all those who commented on earlier versions, including Philippe Ailleris, Eberhard Bauer, Peter Becker, Ralf Bülow, Pierre Lagrange, Robert Poole and Diethard Sawicki. Special thanks go to Martin Collins, William R. Macauley and, as always, Anna Kathryn Kendrick.
Notes
1. Winston Churchill to Lord Cherwell, July 28, 1952, TNA PREM 11/855; Allingham, Flying Saucer from Mars, 11.
2. Jung, ‘Ein moderner Mythus.’
3. Quoted after Lagrange, ‘Ghost in the Machine,’ 227; Darrach and Ginna, ‘Have We Visitors from Space?,’ 81.
4. At least so he claimed in 1956: ‘UFO is the official term that I created to replace the words “flying saucers”’ (Ruppelt, Report, 1).
5. Clarke, ‘Flying Saucers,’ 97; Ailleris, ‘Lure of Local SETI,’ 5–6; Jacobs, UFO Controversy, 3–4; Sagan, ‘Unidentified Flying Object,’ 368. It is for this reason that I continue to use both terms as they are commonly referred to, even if – as some believe – they might be falsely over-homogenizing a multifaceted phenomenon, discredited by their close connotation with science fiction and hindering a ‘serious’ approach to explaining their provenance. The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edn, Oxford: Clarendon, 1989, vol. 18: 807) defines a ‘UFO’ as ‘an unidentified flying object; a “flying saucer”;’ and a ‘flying saucer’ as ‘the fanciful name given to various unidentified disc- or saucer-shaped objects reported as appearing in the sky’ (ibid., vol. 5: 1121). Interestingly enough, the most reserved and least essentialist definition forms the basis of the infamous 1968 Condon Report, named after physicist Edward U. Condon (1902–1974), the director of the US Air Force-funded University of Colorado UFO Project (1966–1968). Here, the major criterion was not the inexplicable objects in the sky themselves but rather the observational reports which they stimulated, thus avoiding any interpretative presumptions or reality claims: ‘An unidentified flying object (UFO, pronounced OOFO) is … defined as the stimulus for a report made by one or more individuals of something seen in the sky … which the observer could not identify as having an ordinary natural origin, and which seemed to him sufficiently puzzling that he undertook to make a report of it to police, to governmental officials, to the press, or perhaps to a representative of a private organization devoted to the study of such objects’; see Condon, Final Report of the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, 9–10, 481, here 9.
6. With regard to a chronology of events, two further points must be made: First, the question of whether similar aerial phenomena reported prior to 1947 (for instance, ‘airships’ in the United States in 1896–1897, ‘foo fighters’ in Western Europe in 1944 and the Scandinavian ‘ghost rockets’ in 1946) could or even should have been classified retrospectively as ‘UFOs.’ This matter, while oft-discussed by ufologists themselves, lies beyond the scope of this article as I do not address questions of the phenomenon’s ‘realness.’ Second, the so-called Roswell incident, a reputed UFO crash occurring in New Mexico on July 8, 1947, just a fortnight after the Arnold sighting, is often taken to be a second foundational moment but wrongly so. ‘Roswell’ only became an ‘incident’ in 1980, with the publication of Charles Berlitz’ and William Moore’s The Roswell Incident, and did not invade popular culture before the early 1990s. See Saler, Ziegler and Moore, UFO Crash at Roswell, 16–17.
7. Waldron, ‘After 25 Years;’ Trench, ‘Editorial.’ For Arnold’s own account, see ‘I Did See the Flying Disks!’ and The Coming of the Saucers, co-authored with science fiction author and editor Ray Palmer (1910–1977).
8. See, in chronological order, Jacobs, UFO Controversy; Dick, Biological Universe, 267–320; Peebles, Watch the Skies!; Dean, Aliens in America (here 204, n46); Saler, Ziegler and Moore, UFO Crash at Roswell; Denzler, Lure of the Edge (xvii; 192, n20); and Bullard, Myth and Mystery. Recent edited collections include Lewis, The Gods Have Landed; Partridge, UFO Religions; and Tumminia, Alien Worlds. But see Lagrange’s work on France; Grünschloß, Wenn die Götter landen, on Germany; Clarke and Roberts, Flying Saucerers, on Great Britain; and Cabria García, Entre ufólogos, creyentes y contactados, on Spain. For a comprehensive – and in many ways exemplary – review essay of the major sociological, psychological and psychiatric approaches to the UFO phenomenon which, however, lacks any historical dimension and/or geographical focus, see Saliba, ‘UFO Contactee Phenomena.’
9. Hynek, ‘Are Flying Saucers Real?’
10. Wendt and Duvall, ‘Sovereignty,’ 607, 612 [my emphasis].
11. Coined by literary scholar Wolfgang Iser in 1976, a Leerstelle – literally an ‘empty spot’ – is a textual gap, a vacancy which needs to be filled by the reader; see his Akt des Lesens, here 284–85.
12. See, in chronological order, journals such as Ouranos: Revue internationale pour l’étude des soucoupes volantes et problèmes connexes (Paris, 1952–1967); Flying Saucer Review (London, 1955–); Weltraumbote: Unabhängige Monatsschrift zur Verbreitung der Wahrheit über die ‘Fliegende Untertassen’ genannten ausserirdischen Raumschiffe, zum Kampf gegen die Atomspaltung und für die Vorbereitung des neuen, geistigen Zeitalters (Zurich, 1955–1961); Le Courrier interplanétaire: organ trimestriel de l’Union Mondial d’Avancée Humaine (Lausanne, 1955–1969); UFO Nachrichten (Wiesbaden, 1956–1988); Phénomènes spatiaux (Paris, 1964–1977); and BUFORA Journal and Bulletin (London, 1964–1989). Rasmussen, UFO Literature; other useful bibliographies include Beard, Flying Saucers; Smith, Extraterrestrial Intelligence; Catoe, UFOs; and, above all, Eberhart, UFOs and the Extraterrestrial Contact Movement.
13. There are, as always, exceptions. They include, most famously, Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken and Stanley Schachter’s 1956 pioneering study When Prophecy Fails and C.G. Jung’s brief 1958 book ‘Ein moderner Mythus.’ To a lesser extent, see also Gardner, Fads and Fallacies, 55–68; and Schäfer, ‘Flying Saucer Story,’ both written with an educational and somewhat polemic impetus in mind. In the summer of 1948, only a year after the Arnold sighting, Herbert Hackett, author of the first sociological analysis published, came to the conclusion that the flying saucer was an ‘excellent subject in that it is almost wholly a manufactured concept, lasting for a short period of time, and, so, easy to study;’ Hackett, ‘The Flying Saucer,’ here 869.
14. Lagrange, ‘Close Encounters of the French Kind,’ 153 [emphasis in original]; Jung, ‘Ein moderner Mythus,’ 337: ‘jenes Gerücht von runden Körpern, die unsere Tropo- wie Stratosphäre durchstreifen.’
15. US government-funded investigations included Project Sign (1948), Project Grudge (1949) and Project Blue Book (1951–1969), culminating with the publication of the so-called Condon Report in 1969. See Jacobs, UFO Controversy, 44–56, 67–68, and Dick, Biological Universe, 274–78, but the key text remains the controversial report itself: Condon, Final Report of the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects.
16. See the introduction to this special issue of History and Technology and Geppert, ‘European Astrofuturism, Cosmic Provincialism,’ 6–9.
17. The term ‘alternative history of the Space Age’ is borrowed from Benjamin, Rocket Dreams, 4.
18. While ‘alien abduction’ became widely discussed only in the late 1980s, in retrospect the 1961/1966 case of Betty and Barney Hill is usually said to have constituted its starting point; Dean, Aliens in America, 48–50, 131.
19. On the nexus of outer space and the limits to futuristic thought during the long 1970s, see the contributions to the symposium Envisioning Limits: Outer Space and the End of Utopia, Berlin, April 19–21, 2012; details at www.limits.geschkult.fu-berlin.de (last accessed May 20, 2012). A publication is currently in preparation by Alexander C.T. Geppert and William R. Macauley.
20. Denzler, Lure of the Edge, 80.
21. ‘“Flying Saucers” in the Sky’; ‘Transatlantic Whizz’; ‘Transatlantisches Sausen,’ 19; ‘Untertassen,’ 33; Haffner, ‘Schluß mit dem Untertassen-Spuk?’; ‘Die Berichte über die Fliegenden Untertassen haben im ganzen, westlichen Bereich unseres Erdballs Verwirrung, Zweifel, Panik und Hysterie gestiftet.’ Nolan, ‘Those Flying Saucers’; Hynek, ‘Are Flying Saucers Real?’; Girvan, ‘Global Thinking,’ 1.
22. Vallée, Challenge to Science, 90–93, 125, 143 (Figure 24); Jacobs, UFO Controversy, 151, 194, 200, 264; Denzler, Lure of the Edge, 183, n57.
23. TNA AIR 2/18183, AIR 2/18950-60 and AIR 2/19126; Hansard 753 (November 9, 1967): c160W and 757 (January 22, 1968): c40W. A rudimentary analysis of the UFO-related coverage in the Times of London between 1947 and 1975 gives a different picture. During that period, altogether 86 relevant articles were published, an average of three per year. Peaks, however, occurred in 1953 (8 articles published), 1959 (6), 1966 (9) and 1967 (11), rather than in 1957–1958 (2) or 1973–1974 (2).
24. For the present, at least, social scientists have been able to demonstrate so-called ‘credibility effects,’ that is, direct and significant impact of different news reports on the willingness to believe in the existence of UFOs. See Sparks, ‘Does Television News About UFOs Affect Viewers’ UFO Beliefs?,’ 290–91.
25. Ramet, ‘UFOs over Russia,’ 81, 86; Binyon, ‘Russia Has Flying Saucers Too.’
26. The standard history of the Space Age, McDougall’s … the Heavens and the Earth, does not mention the UFO phenomenon, but it is cursorily discussed in two other standard works, McCurdy’s Space and the American Imagination, 72–74, and Burrows’ This New Ocean, 140–41, the latter arguing (in the opposite direction) that it was ‘great for space because it made it alluring for ordinary people.’
27. For this notion, see Oberth, Wählerfibel, 7.
28. On the genesis of the first space fads and the establishment of transnational expert networks after 1927, see Geppert, ‘Space Personae,’ 284–85, and Bainbridge, Spaceflight Revolution, 36. On the rise of space experts and the fledgling field of astronautics in Great Britain during the postwar years, see the contributions by James Farry and David A. Kirby, and by William R. Macauley in this issue.
29. The two standard works are Guthke, Mythos der Neuzeit, here 298 [Last Frontier, 339]; and Dick, Biological Universe. Battaglia, ‘Insiders’ Voices,’ 19.
30. See Arnold’s ‘Are Space Visitors Here?,’ 21; for a summary of alternative explanations, see ‘Nolan, Those Flying Saucers.’
31. Keyhoe, Flying Saucers Are Real, here 70–75; Keyhoe, Flying Saucers from Outer Space; Scully, Behind the Flying Saucers; Heard, Riddle of the Flying Saucers. For a comparative review essay, see Ley, ‘More About Out There’; for a devastating review of Heard’s book by Sir Harold Spencer Jones, then British Astronomer Royal, see his ‘Flying Saucer Myth.’
32. Jacobs, UFO Controversy, 101. Haas; ‘Steht die Erde unter Kontrolle?’; Drews, ‘Sie kommen von einem anderen Planeten.’ See also Haffner, ‘Schluß mit dem Untertassen-Spuk?’
33. Heard, ‘Is Another World Watching Us?’ [emphasis in original]; see also the Sunday Express issues of October 29, November 12 and November 26, 1950. Ley, ‘More About Out There’; Muirfield, ‘Silence in the Press,’ here 18; Clarke and Roberts, Flying Saucerers, 21–24.
34. Keyhoe, Flying Saucers Are Real, 6, 163, 204–05 (quotation). Keyhoe first made these claims in an article (‘Flying Saucers Are Real’) that True magazine published in January 1950. For his reception in West Germany, see ‘Untertassen,’ here 34.
35. Darrach and Ginna, ‘Have We Visitors from Space?’ The article provoked an unprecedented response from Life’s readers which was summarized a month later; see Ginna, ‘Saucer Reactions.’
36. Schäfer, ‘Flying Saucer Story,’ 141; Menzel, Flying Saucers, 272.
37. Trench, ‘Editorial.’ Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light, 107–30.
38. Mischo, ‘Kaleidoskop der Heilserwartungen,’ 29; Sharp, ‘An Appraisal of the Present UFO Position,’ 20, 22; Lorenzen, Flying Saucers, 44–46; Thirouin, ‘Les observations mondiales en 1956,’ 47. The distance between Earth and Mars varies between 55 and 401 million kilometers; as a consequence of their perihelic opposition – that is, Sun, Earth and Mars forming a straight line – they were only 56 million kilometers apart in September 1956.
39. Heinz-Hermann Koelle, ‘Rechenschaftsbericht über das 1. Vierteljahr 1950,’ Protokollbuch der Gesellschaft für Weltraumforschung (1948–1952), January 26, 1950, DTB, I.3.008VV, 1/02, 64: ‘Eine offizielle Stellungnahme zu den “fliegenden Untertassen” soll nicht erfolgen.’
40. Clarke, ‘Flying Saucers,’ 97; ‘Flying Saucers,’ 225 [both emphases in respective originals]. For the three reviews see Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 13, no. 2 (March 1954): 119–22 [Arthur C. Clarke on Leslie/Adamski, Flying Saucers Have Landed]; Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 13, no. 3 (May 1954): 186–88 [Alan E. Slater on Menzel, Flying Saucers]; and Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 15, no. 5 (September–October 1956): 289–90 [Arthur C. Clarke on Ruppelt, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects].
41. Clarke, ‘Memoirs of an Armchair Astronaut,’ 413; Clarke, ‘Review of Philip J. Klass, UFOs Explained’; and Clarke, ‘Flying Saucers.’
42. Ley, ‘Unidentified Flying Objects’; Ley, correspondence with Kenneth H. Ford, here Ley to Ford, July 8, 1956, WLC/NASMA, 1/8. It might not have helped to strengthen their position that neither Clarke nor Ley were ready to exclude the UFOs’ alleged extraterrestrial origin entirely, however unlikely such a possibility might be.
43. Weltraumbote 16/17 (March/April 1957): 23.
44. Heard, ‘Is Another World Watching Us?,’ 1; Crowther, ‘Outer Space Comes of Age,’ 91.
45. For instance, ‘Science-Fiction on the Screen’ or ‘Utopie: Das Ding.’ Out of a rich body of literature on (although almost exclusively American) science fiction films, see only Meehan, Saucer Movies, here 35–48; and Vizzini, ‘Cold War Fears, Cold War Passions,’ here 33–34.
46. Stupple, ‘Mahatmas and Space Brothers’; Denzler, Lure of the Edge, 34–67; Hague, ‘Before Abduction.’
47. For this famous classification system, see Hynek, UFO Experience, 29, 88, 110, 138, who distinguishes three different kinds of encounters: A ‘close encounter of the first kind’ (CEI) is defined as an encounter without interaction between the UFO and the environment or the observers; to constitute a ‘close encounter of the second kind’ (CEII) a physical ‘mark’ or visible record is required; while the third kind (CEIII) consists of those cases in which the presence of ‘occupants’ in or about the UFO is reported. Necessitated by the increase in abduction stories, a fourth category (CEIV) was later added to describe ‘actual’ contact, with face-to-face communication between human and extraterrestrial. Steven Spielberg’s 1977 Hollywood blockbuster Close Encounters of the Third Kind directly derived its title from Hynek’s classification system. Spielberg hired Hynek as a consultant and gave him a minor role in the film.
48. Leslie and Adamski, Flying Saucers Have Landed; Adamski, Inside the Space Ships. With sales exceeding 250,000 copies, Flying Saucers Have Landed was translated into German, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Italian and ...French. See ‘Talking of Flying Saucers;’ and Hallet, Le Cas Adamski, A–K.
49. ‘Kontakte mit der Venus,’ 56; ‘The Queen & the Saucers’; Naumann, ‘Bierdeckel statt fliegender Untertassen’; ‘Auf der Venus gibt es Kühe,’ 49.
50. Leslie and Adamski, Flying Saucers Have Landed, 185; Adamski, Inside the Space Ships, 73–83, 160–61.
51. Leslie and Adamski, Flying Saucers Have Landed, 194: ‘Now, for the first time I fully realised that I was in presence of a man from space – A HUMAN BEING FROM ANOTHER WORLD!’ [emphasis in original]; ‘Auf der Venus gibt es Kühe,’ 52. Däniken, Erinnerungen an die Zukunft.
52. Bethurum, Aboard a Flying Saucer; Fry, The White Sands Incident; Angelucci, The Secret of the Saucers; Menger, From Outer Space to You. In 1969, the Flying Saucer Review published an entire special issue on worldwide landings of UFOs and their alleged occupants; see Bowen, Humanoids.
53. Michel, ‘Meeting With the Martian,’ 43; Michel, ‘The Little Men,’ 72. For an in-depth analysis of Dewilde’s account of his alien encounter, see Miller, ‘Seeing the Future of Civilization.’
54. Allingham, Flying Saucer from Mars. Christopher D. Allan, ‘Who invented the Martian? An Analysis of a UFO Whodunit,’ undated report, BIS, 54-D; see also Clarke and Roberts, Flying Saucerers, 91–93. There are no traces of Moore’s involvement in this potential hoax in his autobiography although he does acknowledge the UFOs’ historical significance when discussing the occurrences of 1954: ‘So far as I was concerned, the whole chain of events began with flying saucers’; see Moore, Autobiography, 19. While Moore has never publically admitted to having authored the hoax, he published in 1972 a book entitled Can You Speak Venusian? on the various myths of the Space Age in which he did cite his putative alter ego Allingham (97, 100–01).
55. Clarke, ‘Review of Desmond Leslie and George Adamski, Flying Saucers Have Landed,’ 119, 122.
56. The locus classicus in this context is When Prophecy Fails, Festinger’s 1956 case study, one of the few in-depth analyses of an individual UFO cult, that led to the development of the theory of cognitive dissonance.
57. UFO, created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, pilot episode, ‘Identified,’ first aired on September 16, 1970. In 1964, Brinsley le Poer Trench had named an almost identical set of three ‘w’-questions – ‘1. Where do they come from? 2. Who crews them? 3. Why are they coming?’ – as the three most important questions in UFO research; see his ‘The Three W’s.’ It seems plausible that the series’ producers, Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, had familiarized themselves with the state of the art in contemporaneous British ufology before production began in 1969, as they did on other occasions.
58. ‘So wurde die Weltöffentlichkeit getäuscht,’ cover illustration.
59. TNA AIR 2/18116; British Unidentified Flying Object Research Association, Guide to the UFO Phenomenon, 3–6; ‘Uforia by Bufora at Night.’
60. Michel, Mystérieux objets célestes; on Michel see in particular Miller, ‘Seeing the Future of Civilization,’ here 253–56. Jacobs, ‘UFOs and the Search for Scientific Legitimacy,’ 229.
61. Hynek quoted after Salisbury, ‘Scientist and the UFO,’ 16; ‘Playboy Panel: UFOs,’ 85.
62. Asimov, ‘A Science in Search of a Subject,’ 52. Basalla, Civilized Life in the Universe, 135–39.
63. Peter Masefield, ‘By 1970 a Link with Men of Other Worlds,’ Sunday Express (January 10, 1960); quoted after Muirfield, ‘Silence in the Press,’ 18. Masefield (1914–2006) was president of the Royal Aeronautical Society at the time.
64. Cryptozoology, the search for elusive animals whose existence is not consensually acknowledged (Bigfoot/Sasquatch; Yeti; the Monster of Loch Ness etc.), shares many of the same characteristics and used a milder version of the same argument for self-legitimization during its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. Notably, Willy Ley published in this field as well and actively engaged in extensive correspondence with both scientists and the general public, apparently with considerably less professional doubt and skepticism than in the case of UFOs. See Regal, Searching for Sasquatch, 27–29, 131–56.
65. Within a little more than a decade, scholarly interest in the history of the occult, nineteenth-century spiritism and Western esotericism has moved from the fringes to mainstream historiography. See only the contributions in Geppert and Braidt, Orte des Okkulten, in lieu of a much more comprehensive body of literature.
66. See Oberth, ‘Flying Saucers Come from a Distant World,’ 5; ‘Gibt es UFOs?,’ 100; and his 1966 book Katechismus der Uraniden. ‘Es gibt fliegende Untertassen’; Vorstandssitzungen der Gesellschaft für Weltraumforschung, 1948–1955, August 5, 1954, DTB, I.3.008VV, 1/04; ‘Ambassador from Mars.’
67. Oberth, ‘Wir werden beobachtet,’ 28: ‘Allem Anschein nach sind die UFOs eine Art Wachtposten, die bloß beobachten und berichten sollen, denn eine Menschheit, die geistig über unsere Erfinder- und Forschergabe verfügt, aber politisch und moralisch auf unserer Stufe stehengeblieben ist, stellt eine Gefahr für den ganzen Kosmos dar.’ Oberth, ‘Gibt es UFOs?,’ 101. Oberth’s claims were reported by newspapers as varied as BILD (‘Saison der Untertassen’), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (‘“Liebesstrahlen” auf dem Ufo-Kongreß’) and The Times (“‘Ambassador from Mars;”’ ‘Spatial Etiquette’).
68. Jung, ‘Ein moderner Mythus,’ 337.
69. Hague, ‘Before Abduction,’ 440; see also Lagrange, ‘Ghost in the Machine,’ 226–30.
70. On transcendence within astroculture, see only Bjørnvig, ‘Transcendence of Gravity,’ and Noble, Religion of Technology, 115–42.