We are approaching the anniversary of a very big week for the United States and for the world because between July 19th and July 27th of 1952 was the peak of intense UFO sightings in a year that had been filled with them. Over the course of the previous four years the US Air Force had recorded observations of 615 UFOs. In 1952 alone, that number jumped to 717.

USA National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, via Wimikedia Commons.

The media noticed, particularly in that one week in July when many of the reported UFOs were spotted in the air over Washington DC. Headlines across the nation proclaimed the news. The Cedar Rapids Gazette announced: “SAUCERS SWARM OVER CAPITAL.” The front page of the Standard-Sentinal out of Hazelton, Pennsylvania declared: “RADAR SPOTS MORE ‘FLYING WHATSITS’ OVER WASHINGTON, and in Monroe, Louisiana, the front page of the Monroe News-Star featured the headline: “RADAR SPOTS ‘FLYING SAUCERS’ IN BACKYARD OF NATIONAL CAPITAL.”

Of course most of the articles do acknowledge various versions of the official government response, provided in the largest Pentagon press conference since World War II, that there was no national security concern at all, and that the sightings could be attributed to natural phenomenon like air temperature inversions and meteorite activity.

The UFO media frenzy seems to have been touched off by an April article in Look magazine that asked the question, “HAVE WE VISITORS FROM SPACE?” Then it steadily built because the eyewitnesses to UFOs weren’t just the usual crazies, but also included more credible people like both military and civilian pilots as well as air traffic controllers, some of whom were insistent that their observations didn’t perfectly fit the explanations.

I did see a series of UFOs earlier this spring over my house. That is until my husband identified them as a Space X satellite launch. Still a pretty cool thing to get to see.

Of course the most likely truth rarely gets in the way of a good sensational headline, or even a slanted story, of the variety that will sell a lot of news to the hysterical people who most want to consume it. That was certainly true in 1952, just as it was during the Summer of the Shark in 2001, when everyone became so afraid to go into the water that the number of shark attacks was down a little bit, and just as it has been every single year, before or since, that there has been nationwide media coverage. 

Yes, that includes now. But before you get mad at me, it also includes every year the other political flavor held more power, too. Because media is a business designed, like all businesses, to make a grab for our attention and resources. It’s most successful when we’re scared and angry and maybe a little irrational, which is why it works very hard to keep us that way. 

Am I suggesting that there isn’t any truth to the sensational, terrible, nation-ending, world altering stories we are consuming in the media every day? Well, not exactly, but often with a little distance and the slight change in perspective it might offer, we can start to see things a bit more clearly.

I suppose I can’t really say for certain that DC wasn’t visited by flying saucers in July of 1952, but I have read that when digital filters were added to radar equipment in the 1970s, there was a sharp reduction in reported UFO sightings. And that really can only mean one thing. Clearly, flying saucer cloaking technology also saw vast improvement at that time.