Analysis of Flying Object Incidents in the United States, 1948

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might be further reduced with the following considerations in mind:

Silver disks or balls have, for the greater part, been observed in daylight and a number under clear weather conditions with visibility unlimited. In most instances, balls of fire have been observed at night. Cigar, or pencil-shaped objects have been sighted in fewer numbers but with about equal distribution in daylight and at night. A few accounts tell of the disks having a rough cigar-shape when viewed while maneuvering. Some of the disks are described as having luminosity in daylight. It therefore is possible that a single type of object may be involved in all sightings, and differences in description may result from viewing the objects at various angles and under differing conditions of visibility.

The above tends to indicate that some type object has been seen and the possibility exists that the object or objects seen are conventional domestic devices, such as weather balloons, test rockets, or jet-equipped aircraft with pancake or flying wing configurations.

The possibility exists that the reporting of flying objects may have been influenced by earlier reports on similar incidents in Scandinavia and Central Europe. The publication in newspapers of details on such incidents, both foreign and domestic, may have induced some of the description provided in reported domestic incidents. However, one of the earliest reported sightings in the U.S. was the one observed by U.S. Weather Bureau personnel in April 1947, at Richmond, Virginia, and on the basis of this one report it appears that the disks are not balloons. It would seem that this sighting was not influenced by the reports of foreign incidents, the newspaper accounts of domestic incidents, nor by misidentification of a conventional object.

Although reported domestic incidents are widely scattered throughout the U.S., frequency of sighting and number of observers per sighting

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