Book · 1963
The World of Flying Saucers: A Scientific Examination of a Major Myth of the Space Age
Also known as The World of Flying Saucers
Donald H. Menzel and Lyle G. Boyd · Doubleday
Glimpses
Although most of the things seen have later been explained as unusual but normal phenomena, some enthusiasts continue to regard them as mysterious, and thus help perpetuate the myth that the “saucers” are actually spaceships from other planets, busily carrying out a patrol of the earth.
Of the established facts, none requires a new theory to account for it; and no evidence exists that even faintly suggests, to the expert, that interplanetary visitors are involved.
If the Skyhook project had been public knowledge in 1948 and if information about their launching and movements had not been a matter of security, a courageous pilot might still be alive
Air Force investigators and scientists have been able to account for almost every reported “spaceship” as the result of failure to identify some natural phenomenon. Some were the product of delusion or deliberate hoaxes.
No such report suggests the possibility that interplanetary craft are cruising in our skies.
The World of Flying Saucers (Doubleday, 1963), by the Harvard astrophysicist Donald Menzel and the writer Lyle Boyd, is the most thorough sceptical study of UFO reports of its era. With access to the Air Force's files, granted in 1959, it works through the main types of report and classic cases: the Mantell crash (a Skyhook balloon), the 1952 Washington radar sightings (temperature inversions), stars and planets distorted by the atmosphere, mirages, ball lightning, hoaxes and contactees. It calls the spaceship interpretation "a major myth of the Space Age".
It is the counterweight to Ruppelt and Keyhoe in this archive. Menzel's critics, notably the atmospheric physicist James McDonald and J. Allen Hynek, argued that he forced explanations onto cases whose details did not fit them; some of his solutions, such as Mantell's balloon, are widely accepted, others less so. The book's copyright was not renewed and it is in the public domain in the United States; the full text is in this archive's search, chapter by chapter.
Sources: Menzel and Boyd, The World of Flying Saucers (Project Gutenberg) · Wikipedia — Donald Howard Menzel
Facts and claims
- claimed Menzel and Boyd write that the Air Force opened its UFO files to them without restriction in 1959, and use them to give explanations for classic cases (preface). — Donald H. Menzel Source: menzel-world-of-flying-saucers.html
- claimed They attribute the July 1952 Washington radar sightings to temperature inversions and abnormal moisture recorded by the Weather Bureau on those nights, conditions that regularly produce radar “angels” (chapter 8). — Donald H. Menzel Source: menzel-world-of-flying-saucers.html
- claimed They argue that the 1948 death of Capt. Thomas Mantell, chasing a UFO, was caused by a then-secret Navy Skyhook balloon, and that he might have lived had the project been public (chapter 3). — Donald H. Menzel Source: menzel-world-of-flying-saucers.html
Connected files
People
- Donald H. Menzel (authored by)
Programs
- Project Blue Book (about)
Incidents
- Washington, D.C. UFO incident (about)
Mentioned in this file
- Edward J. Ruppelt (Person)
- Donald Keyhoe (Person)
- J. Allen Hynek (Person)
More books
- The Hynek UFO Report
- The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects
- Forbidden Science: Journals 1957–1969
- The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry
- UFOs: A Scientist Explains What We Know (And Don't Know)
- Flying Saucers and Science: A Scientist Investigates the Mysteries of UFOs