Flying Saucer literature multiplies. The Astronomer-Royal disposed of Mr. Gerald
Heard's Riddle of the Flying Saucers in the Spectator a month ago. Since then I have been reading Donald Keyhoe's The Flying Saucers are Real (Hutchinson, 2s.), pressed on me by a University Professor who is completely convinced, and Behind the Flying Saucers, by Frank Scully (Gollancz, 10s. 6d.). • Are the - books worth reading ? Yes, they are. Both of them are "good copy," particularly the cheaper one, which records the results of an investi- gation into the whole affair conducte1 for the New York magazine, True, by a man who had been both a balloon pilot and an aeroplane pilot. There are three classic cases—of Kenneth Arnold, who started the whole excitement by reporting nine- shiny objects flying over some mountains in Washington State in June, 1947 ; of Captain Mantel, who, in January, 1948, chased—something--to a height of 20,000 feet over Godman Air Force base in Kentucky, and then
crashed to his death, whether through lack of oxygen or through aggressive action by the something ; of Lieut. G. F. Gorman, who had a 27-minute dog-fight with what might have been a flying saucer at Fargo, North Dakota ; two control officers and a civilian in another aeroplane saw the whole affair. Then there were the 50 or more inhabitants of Farmington, New Mexico, who saw " hundreds " of flying saucers one day in March, 1950. Last and best are the stories of the saucers that crashed—saucers made of a metal as light as aluminium but incredibly strong, with a crew of sixteen little men, 40 inches high (home-port the planet Venus ?), all dead, burned chocolate colour by some unexplained blast of heat. The sense or nonsense of it all ? Search me, as they say in flying-saucer country. But the United States Air Force, after investigating 270 reports of flying-saucer incidents had to admit that there were 34 stories for which it could find no explanation.
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