What is the full form of UFO? The term “UFO” is an abbreviation of the phrase Unidentified Flying Object.” Unidentified flying object.
That phrase wasn’t written twice in error.
It was written that way not to emphasize what it is, but what it is not. There is no mention of flying saucers, aliens, little green men or anything else besides a description of something until now is unidentified.
When was the term UFO first used
It is difficult, at least to any degree of accuracy, to determine when the first of what is commonly known as a UFO was actually used. This is especially true when you consider that the term is so nondescript. If you agree with some of those who have written popular books on the topic such as German author Erich Anton Paul von Daniken, who published his book Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past in 1968, UFOs have visited earth since practically the beginning of time, but defining the term has caused considerably more trouble and debate.
This is especially true when you consider that in popular use the term UFO is most often used as a description of alien beings and their means of transportation, i.e. flying saucers, spaceships, and others.
The first time that the term “UFO” was used in print was in a book published in 1950 titled Flying Saucers Are Real, written by a Marine Corps pilot named Donald Edward Keyhoe, who turned to writing fiction in 1922 after he suffered serious injury as a result of an airplane crash on the island of Guam. After his long convalescence, he started writing as a hobby but eventually returned to active duty to finish his career.
Unfortunately, with his injuries still giving him trouble, he turned to writing as a freelance occupation. It was during this time that he ended up writing for the U.S. Department of Commerce as well as the National Geodetic Survey, his work appearing in several leading publications by this time. Pulps and Glossies Keyhoe had already enjoyed some popular success as a writer before his work started appearing in many of the pulp and glossy publications of the era, most notably Weird Tales, one of the most prestigious of the genre, which turned out fantasy and science fiction throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
It should also be noted that even for those publications that Keyhoe wrote for that were among the more traditionally oriented such as the Saturday Evening Post, Reader’s Digest, and The Nation, his work included differing measures of science fiction and fantasy, a fact that is not lost on those who were critical of his work with UFOs.
First Sighting In June 1947, the first of what is generally considered to be a sighting of a UFO in the United States was made by an American aviator and businessman named Kenneth Arnold, who claimed to have seen nine unusual objects that he witnessed flying in tandem near Mt. Rainier in Washington. It is also important to note that Arnold also witnessed similar objects on subsequent occasions.
In all of the reports that Arnold gave authorities, he described objects that were very similar. He reported all of them as being“half-moon shaped” or “shaped like a pie plate,” and described their movement as erratic, “like a fish flipping in the sun.” Soon, the press started describing these objects as being like “flying saucers” and “flying discs.”
Enter the U.S. Air Force Since the U.S. Air Force was already charged with the investigation of aircraft that might be deemed a threat to the country, it was also tasked with the investigation of UFOs as part of its mandate. This didn’t start until 1949 after Arnold had become almost an overnight celebrity, followed by Keyhoe, who was initially skeptical of his claims. True, a men’s magazine that was popular at the time, enlisted the help of Keyhoe to follow the growing interest in UFOs on the part of the public but found themselves stymied by incomplete and often contradictory information being given to them by the Pentagon.
True’s editor, Ken Purdy, hired Keyhoe for his help since he had written for the magazine previously and continued to have sources within the military as well as the Pentagon.
Unearthly Intelligence
Despite his later reputation as a writer of fantasy and science fiction, Keyhoe was able to use his experience as an aviator to more objectively evaluate the forms, speeds, light technology and flight maneuvers of the objects being described by those who had claimed to have seen them. Initially skeptical, Keyhoe finally decided that he not only believed in these reports but by their very nature, were the products of unearthly intelligence. Further, he eventually charged that the U.S. government was trying to suppress all of the information it had collected on the subject over the years.
Eventually, True published an article written by Keyhoe titled UFOs Are Real, which essentially blew the top off of a number of different instances of what many people called UFO occurrences that happened at about this time. The primary occurrence was that which happened in mid-1947 on a ranch in the New Mexico town known as Roswell.
What Happened at Roswell?
The event that eventually became known as the Roswell UFO Incident began when the U.S. Air Force issued a press release on July 8, 1947, explaining how personnel from Roswell Army Air Field’s 509th Operations Group had recovered a “flying disc,” which had crashed. The purpose of the device was nuclear test monitoring, but in an effort to cover the true nature of the device’s purpose, the release described it as a weather balloon. The base even called a news conference in an effort to quell rumors that began to swirl about the true nature of the craft, an “unidentified flying object,” even going so far as to display parts of the craft that had been recovered.
A few days after the news conference a ranch foreman named William Brazel announced that several weeks before the base had made its claim, he and his son had discovered pieces of what the base was describing as their “weather balloon,” eventually telling the local sheriff about his discovery. Soon thereafter, the sheriff and a man wearing “plain clothes” took Brazel to the location in the desert where he had made his discovery and picked up remaining debris.
To a great extent, the events of Roswell have died down over the past 70 years, but in the meantime hundreds of people who have had various things to do with the event have come forward to speak and give their recollections of the Roswell incident. But although the events have been elaborated on and glorified over the years, the Air Force continues to maintain their position that the debris recovered on that day was a weather balloon.
Whether this is the complete truth or not is a matter for debate, but continuing events in other areas of the world would prove more problematic.
The Battle of Los Angeles UFO Incident
Frayed nerves and itchy trigger fingers can sometimes grow to take on new meanings of their own, especially when a country has been newly attacked, growing suspicions of UFOs. Such is the case with an incident that took place over the skies of Los Angeles, 24-25 February 1942, after an anti-aircraft artillery barrage took place, supposedly aiming at a purported enemy attack. Unfortunately, since the country had been attacked only three months before at Pearl Harbor, as well as a lesser known Bombardment of Ellwood near Santa Barbara, California, the initial report was that the response had been warranted, but after Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox called a press conference to call the incident a “false alarm,” conspiracy rumors flared.
Project Blue Book
By the time The Battle of Los Angeles occurred, the regular reporting of UFO incidents were not only happening, but they were getting the attention of the upper echelons of government, including that of General Nathan Twining, chief of staff of the Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It was on Twining’s orders that the first of several investigations, Sign, was started to examine first, if UFOs were a real threat to national security and second, to analyze UFO-related data scientifically.
Project Sign was headed by an Air Force officer, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who collected thousands of data cases surrounding UFOs. It is important to note that Ruppelt was a respected aviator and an aeronautical engineer who was eventually called “the last genuine effort to analyze UFOs,” but because several US generals were so dissatisfied with the state of the UFO investigation, it was closed in favor of Project Grunge, which had as its purpose to debunk the UFO phenomenon.
Despite the fact that the Air Force, in essence, trashed Ruppelt’s final report, his final summary of his work concluded that flying saucers were real aircraft, not made by either the United States or the Soviet Union, and were likely extraterrestrial in origin.
During his work on Grunge, Ruppelt fired several of his associate stating that they were either too-pro or too-con theories that were on one side or the other of the UFO controversy. The end result of all these turnovers as well as to take amore objective look at the information collected was Project Blue Book, a project that Ruppelt was also asked to oversee. Unfortunately, by this time Ruppelt was issuing statements that the effort over UFOs by the Air Force was an “organized crisis,” essentially becoming a public relations effort by the government.
An independent group called the Robertson panel was organized to evaluate the findings of Project Blue Book, but Ruppelt, who was often called the “high water mark” of the UFO investigation effort, concluded their effort was only designed to rubber stamp the findings of the CIA and little more. As a result, in 1953, Ruppelt was placed on temporary duty, only to return a few months later to find his staff reduced from more than 10 to two, effectively ending his project. Ruppelt was soon after this asked by Keyhoe to form an independent investigating group, but Ruppelt declined to get involved citing health problems. He died shortly thereafter of a heart attack at the age of 37.
Post Project Blue Book
Many of the reports created by Ruppelt and his Project Blue Book were found to be lacking in physical evidence and as a result forwarded to the Pentagon. Air Force Chief of Staff supported this conclusion and had many of these destroyed and the investigations closed. Thanks in great part to several well-publicized events having to do with extraterrestrials in the years since, including the first so-called face to face contact in the form of the Barney and Betty Hill case, interest in UFOs and extraterrestrials has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years.
And if it hasn’t been from the publicity of the actual case it has been the fame of those associated with it such as the work of the late astronaut/moonwalker Edgar Mitchell that has had us coming back for more with information about UFOs, aliens, and much more.
Mitchell never claimed to have seen UFOs or aliens during his space trips, but he believes whole-heartedly that they exist. He was so strong in his beliefs that after his career with NASA was over, the space agency sued him to quiet his contentions that extraterrestrial life was not only possible in other places in the universe, but that it was, at least in his mind, a foregone conclusion.
Even theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking has been vocal about his beliefs in the existence of UFOs and extraterrestrials saying, “We probably won’t find aliens anytime soon, but we had better hope we don’t since they will likely try to destroy humanity." Hawking has spoken frequently about this prospect since 2010, warning that an advanced civilization would have no trouble wiping out the human race just like we might wipe out a colony of ants.