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U.S. News & World Report

is not yet publicly disclosed. It cannot be proved until a public announcement is made or until a saucer crashes away from its home base—which is highly unlikely because of its jet helicopter action that makes take-offs and landings almost completely safe. But there are these factors that point to an answer:

Official inquiry by the Air Force, in the face of overwhelming evidence that the saucers are real, was called off last December. This indicates clearly that top Air Force officials know where the saucers originate and are not concerned about them, as they would be if these aircraft were from Russia or Mars. These officials, at the same time, denied emphatically that a secret Air Force project is responsible.

Best use of fully developed saucer aircraft, however, could be made in wartime not by the Air Force, but by the Navy. All fleet operations now require an air cover, even in antisubmarine warfare, and a plane that can rise like a helicopter could be used from any Navy combat ship, not only from big, expensive aircraft carriers. It was for that reason that the first U.S. flying saucer was purchased by the Navy after the original model was tested in 1942. That first full-size aircraft, built by Chance-Vought, was thoroughly tested by Navy engineers. Then a statement was released that this project had been dropped. Early experimenting with saucers, thus, centered in the Navy.

Big spending on missile aircraft centers in the Navy now, too. More than twice as many dollars were spent by the Navy last year as by the Air Force on secret guided-missile research. There is no public accounting for these millions, the only Government funds aside from atomic-energy dollars that still are being spent with great secrecy.

Surface indications, then, point to research centers of the U.S. Navy's vast guided-missile project as the scene of present flying-saucer development. That project has the scientists, the engineers, the dollars, the motive, and the background of early Navy development of saucer-type aircraft. This likelihood will remain, despite any future denials by the Navy front office, until secrecy is lifted on the big missile program.

But, regardless of just where these saucers are being built now, the evidence points to a U.S. development that will mean a radical change in aircraft design in coming decades. In war, this combination of helicopter and fast jet plane will easily outfly any present types of military aircraft. In peacetime, the safety of a nearly crash-proof aircraft may be expected to revolutionize civil air transport. It all points to a big advance in the science of flying.

APRIL 7, 1950

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FANCY: SPACE SHIPS, MONSTERS, MARTIANS, MAYHEM

NOCTURNAL 'INVASION'

SURPRISE PACKAGE FROM MARS

A PLANE DESIGNER'S DAYDREAM

HOME-MADE SAUCER

-photos from Bettman, Acme, Wide World

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The real thing is strictly a one-planet proposition

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