Flying Saucers and UFOs   are Alien Spacecraft                                                  

• What UFO really means.  
• Flying Saucers are vehicles.
• The first Flying Saucers.
• Sizes and shapes of Flying Saucers.                                                        

No More UFOs

A suggestion: try to stop using the term UFO. I know this is a tall order. UFO is part of our national vocabulary and is ingrained in our culture. Even on this website I use the term because it's easy to say and write quickly. But, whenever possible, try to use the term flying saucer or alien spacecraft instead. Here are some reasons why:

UFO originally meant Unconventional flying object, not unidentified flying object. The military has known since the 1940s that these were intelligently piloted craft. To confirm this, simply review the Air Force intelligence documents from 1958, which appear in the Government Information section.

The term flying saucer has been used in hundreds of government and military intelligence documents precisely because they are known to be flying, piloted craft. A change in mind-set is needed. It is not just a matter of semantics; it is similar to the difference between referring to someone as a victim or a survivor.

If you saw what appeared to be a boat several miles out in the ocean, you would not say, "Hey, I see a UFO, an unidentified floating object." You would make the assumption it is an example of an intelligently piloted craft that we commonly call a boat. Whether you were actually right or wrong is beside the point. It may actually have been a whale or a buoy. However, you empowered yourself to make an intelligent assessment and committed to it. When you say this you are saying you have some idea of what you saw and people will generally take your assessment at face value.

However, when you say you saw a UFO, you are confirming in your own words that what you saw is unidentified; you have no idea what you saw, or if you saw anything at all, so why should anybody listen?

Craft, Not Clouds

Flying saucers are not like clouds just drifting by. They are more like cars on a freeway; they contain "people" (alien beings) in them and they are on their way to or from a specific destination. Please spend some time thinking about this, since it is an important concept. When you fully embrace this idea you will begin to see the flying-saucer phenomenon in a new light, and some more of the pieces will begin to fall into place.

Commercial pilots report being paced by Alien saucers

Origin of the Term

The first reported modern-day sighting of flying saucers occurred on June 24, 1947. A private pilot, Kenneth Arnold, spotted nine disk-shaped objects flying in formation over the Cascade Mountains in the state of Washington. Based on this sighting the term flying saucers was born. The following July 29, 1947, Arnold saw approximately twenty-five more alien spacecraft that flew within four hundred yards of his plane. An official CIA account of Kenneth Arnold's sightings is included in the Government Documents section.

Keep in mind the year these sightings occurred: 1947. In 1947 flying craft of any kind, even airplanes, were rarely seen by citizens. In 1947 it is estimated that less than 1 percent of the American population had ever seen a helicopter. And, for all intents and purposes, there was no television.

 Kenneth Arnold spotted these crescent disks in 1947

Sizes and Shapes of Flying Saucers

Besides the classic "saucer" shape of these alien craft, there are many other forms that have been seen by civilians and noted in military documents. Alien spacecraft sightings have also been reported in ancient texts as well as in the Bible. There are as many configurations of craft as there are shapes of cars and trucks on our planet. Here are some of the ones seen most often:

Saucer or Disk-shaped Craft

These come in different configurations and sizes. Some have small domes or cupolas on top, and some do not. The dome configuration can be rounded or square. These are known to be primarily scout ships and short-range research vehicles.

Cigar-shaped Craft

These vehicles are generally larger than saucers. They are known to be small mother ships containing eight to ten saucer-shaped craft. They are long and cylindrical with a taper at both ends; thus the name.

Huge 'Cigar' craft release smaller flying saucers

Triangle-shaped Craft

These ships are huge; many stretch over several miles along a single edge. These are the craft that were sighted over Belgium in the wave of sightings taking place there in 1989-1990. It is estimated that over 70 percent of the entire population of Belgium saw these craft firsthand, and as a result, Belgium is the only country that officially recognizes the existence of flying saucers.

Super-sized 'Triangle' ships are seen world wide

Boomerang

These craft are also gigantic. They differ somewhat from the triangle-shaped craft in that one arm of the boomerang ship is longer than the other. These are the sort of craft that have been seen and videotaped by thousands of citizens in Phoenix, Arizona in March and April 1997.

Giant Cylinders

Very large craft, a thousand feet or more in length (picture a 70 story building on its side). These craft are not tapered. Many photographs of these have been taken. In photos they look just like a giant, hovering telephone pole on its side and don't look like a craft at all.

The Roswell Craft

One of the most famous flying saucers of all time, the Roswell craft was not really shaped like a flying saucer. Researcher and forensic artist Bill McDonald has reconstructed the Roswell alien spacecraft from several eyewitness testimonies. Bill received confirmation from contacts he has within the U.S. intelligence community. It was McDonald's re-creation of the craft that the Testor Model Company used for their commercially sold scale model.

Roswell Craft hit by lightning

McDonald's intelligence agency sources have stated that Jack Northrup and Kelly Johnson, who were the founders of Northrop and Lockheed's "Skunk Works," had direct access to the data and configuration measurements of the Roswell spacecraft.1 It was said that this information was adapted and applied to the development of the X-33 and X-38 aerospace shuttle planes, NASA's space shuttles, the VentureStar, U.S. Stealth aircraft, TR-3 Black Manta.

The Roswell craft inspired a military vehicle that looks very much like the V-shaped Stealth aircraft the U.S. military built years later.

 

Other Characteristics of Flying Saucers

There are a few characteristics of flying saucers that are not generally known to the public at large. Although these characteristics are never depicted in the movies, you should know about them.

The Wobble

Flying saucers often wobble when they fly. It is very pronounced at lower speeds, giving the saucer a surreal look. It is often this characteristic which first draws the viewer's attention.

This wobble immediately distinguishes the flight of a flying saucer from that of an airplane. It was the wobble that attracted pilot Kenneth Arnold's attention to the first saucers, which he spotted in 1947.

When a saucer is caught on videotape, people often think the tape is fake because of the wobble. It is reminiscent of a model rocket wobbling on a string like in the old Buck Rogers movies. The wobble is thought to be caused by fluctuations of waves in the electromagnetic fields that the saucers use to overcome gravity. To imagine how it looks, think of a high-speed boat bouncing off the water as it moves forward.

Morphing Disks

Another characteristic of these alien craft is morphing; that is, the shape of the saucer changes right before your eyes. Often a saucer will elongate and become a cigar-shaped craft. This transmutation effect has also been caught on videotape.

Jaime Maussan, a reporter and investigator for a show similar to our 60 Minutes in Mexico, has thousands of videotapes, all from different individuals, showing this morphing capability. Maussan has collected over five thousand videotapes of flying saucers from the citizens of Mexico, including many videos taken of the same craft shot at the same time from many different parts of Mexico City. In Mexico, Jaime Maussan is as well known and as well respected as Dan Rather or Peter Jennings.

Jaime Maussan has videotapes that show over fifty flying saucers at one time. They often hold themselves stationary while forming strange designs, like some kind of array of symbols in the sky. This isn't as dramatic as landing on the White House lawn, but it's pretty close.

In March 1998 Jaime told me, "Nobody in Mexico laughs at UFOs. Nobody. They are frequently around the volcano, which now has the strongest electromagnetic field in the world.  There have been times when all the traffic in Mexico City was stopped, with millions of people standing outside their cars pointing to the skies. Yet, not one American newspaper has ever carried the story."2

 

Hyperspace Jumps

Videotapes have also captured what have come to be known as "hyperspace jumps." This is when a flying saucer will jump a distance of fifteen to twenty miles in less than one-tenth of a second. Basically the craft is disappearing and reappearing in another location almost instantly. To the viewer, from a distance it looks like a "jump."

Different Names for Flying Saucers

Flying saucers are a world-wide phenomenon. They are called different things in different countries. In Mexico they are known as "flying plates." In China they are known as "flying woks." In many European countries they are known as "flying shields." This term originated in ancient times and continues in use today in Europe. For background on the origin of this term, see Section Two: UFOs In History.

Sizes of the Craft

Just as with the shapes, there is a wide variety of sizes. Most of the flying saucers we see are scout ships and are about thirty feet across. Their size is often deceiving because although there are larger disks, which are also seen, they are sometimes seen at a great distance and they appear smaller than they actually are.

Some Are Huge

As I mentioned earlier, some of these ships appearing in our atmosphere are huge! People regularly report seeing craft several miles across. A woman in Phoenix was driving with her two sons when a boomerang craft flew over them and hovered over the isolated stretch of highway where they were traveling. Out of fear, she accelerated to over eighty-five miles per hour. One of her teenage sons decided to time how long it would take them to get from beneath the craft. He started timing well after they had driven under the craft, and it took them just over two minutes at eighty-five miles an hour to get from under the wingspan of the ship. That makes the wingspan approximately three miles across!

Satellite Photos

Some of these large craft have been caught on film by our orbiting weather satellites. Judging by the grid on the camera lens and knowing the distance of the satellite's orbit, calculations show these craft to be hundreds of miles across! I have included more of these satellite photos in Section: “Watch The Skies.”

Satellite images routinely pick up Alien spacecraft

Estimating Sizes

I don't know about you, but I have difficulty gauging sizes and distances. For instance, if someone says an object is three hundred feet away, I don't have a clue how far that is. On the state driving test, the words "stay a hundred feet behind the next vehicle" mean nothing to me. But, I do like football, so I can gauge a hundred yards pretty accurately.  I also get a clear picture if someone tells me a building is ten stories tall. For some reason, it's easy for me to relate to.

Now I use the reference of a building to help me understand how big something is. For example, it is often reported that flying saucers are about fifty feet across. Translated, this means it was as long as a four-story building on its side. That's pretty big. Bigger than the words fifty feet seem to indicate to me.

Six hundred Feet Across

We found several military sources who have seen craft six hundred feet across. That's a forty-five story building on its side. That's large!

Building sized spacecraft

Folding Space

Just a little teaser to whet your imagination. Aliens beings have the ability to "fold" space. I cover this in more detail later, but here's what this means in relation to space-craft size: Often, the inside of the saucer is much larger than it appears to be from the outside. People who have worked on recovered craft often recall doing a double-take when they first stick their heads inside of a flying saucer. They can't believe it can be that big inside and they pull their head out to look at the outside of the craft. They are in total disbelief. What appears to be a thirty-foot craft on the outside is three times that size on the inside.

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Artwork Courtesy of:

James Neff

Mark McCandlish

Bill McDonald