[[VI-9]] Menzel, D. H. Personal files.
[[VI-10]] Ruppelt, E. J. The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., reprint, 1960.
[[VI-11]] Life magazine, April 7, 1952.
[[VI-12]] Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1955.
[[VI-13]] Case 201, CRIFO Orbit, Vol. III (Oct. 5, 1956).
[[VI-14]] Major William T. Coleman. Personal communication.
Chapter VII
PANIC
The summer of 1952, the period that Captain Ruppelt called “the big flap,” offers a history of the UFO mania in capsule form. If the newspapers were to be believed, the heavens were crowded with armadas of spaceships both visible and invisible. There was even a monster story to add spice to the tales.
Yet the panic was largely an artificial creation. All spring the nation’s movie-goers had been flocking to see a well-made thriller, The Day the Earth Stood Still, in which a mysterious glowing object appears in the sky over Washington, D.C., and lands in the middle of the city. The object proves to be a flying saucer from another planet, whose inhabitants want only to help the human race. Looking something like a huge poached egg, a hump in the center sloping down to a circular rim, the pictured vehicle offered a dramatic example to anyone in the mood to see a spaceship but not quite sure how it should look. In fact, many of the saucers described in the months and years following were obviously based on this model.