In 1954 malfunction of a sewage-disposal plant in western Pennsylvania produced one of the most spectacular saucer reports on record. An oversupply of detergent, whipped by a stiff breeze, foamed into a mountainous tower of bubbles. A sudden gust of wind broke the tower and launched a colossal mass of bubbles as large as a ten-story building. This brilliant, scintillating, super-giant bubble bath rose to great heights and drifted for miles. Widely reported as a UFO, this apparition was merely an unusual by-product of modern technology. The UFOs photographed over Kentucky on July 7, 1947, were probably vapor trails, a less familiar sight then than now; or they might possibly have been the smoke trails from an exploding meteor (see [Plate IIb]).
A saucer incident that might have become a classic Unknown occurred in Denver at 10 A.M. on a summer’s day in 1950. A man was sitting on the shady porch of his house, reading. Beyond the porch roof the sun shone brightly. Glancing up from his book, he was startled to see a formation of perhaps a dozen spherical objects, shining iridescently, traveling toward the distant mountains. As he watched, those in the front of the procession seemed to vanish instantly while others appeared out of nowhere to join the parade at the rear. Measuring their size against the mountain background, he decided they were “immense” and they moved at fantastic speed, covering the thirty or so miles to the mountains in a matter of five or six seconds.
Too stunned to take action, he was still numb from shock when he heard a faint “Hello,” and looked up—to realize that the little girl across the street was blowing soap bubbles. If the man had jumped up when he first saw the objects and had rushed into the house to telephone the nearest saucer club, he might never have found out that the “spaceships” were only bubbles[[III-15]].
[[III-1]] Ruppelt, E. J. The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1956.
[[III-2]] Air Force Files.
[[III-3]] Menzel, D. H. Flying Saucers. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953.
[[III-4]] Tacker, L. J. Flying Saucers and the U. S. Air Force. Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1960.
[[III-5]] Keyhoe, D. E. Flying Saucers from Outer Space. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1953.
[[III-6]] Scully, F. Behind the Flying Saucers. New York: Popular Library, Inc., 1951, p. 144.
[[III-7]] Sarson, P. B. “Aircraft Condensation Aura,” Meteorological Magazine, London, Vol. LXXXV (1956), p. 217.