EXPERIENCERS: ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF CONTACT ~ The 1940s: Contact, War, Technology and the Birth of the Modern UFO Era
Janet Kira Lessin and Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D.
INTRODUCTION: BEFORE ROSWELL, THE STORY WAS ALREADY UNDERWAY
The 1940s may require an entire volume of Experiencers: One Hundred Years of Contact. The decade contains far more than Roswell and the first newspaper reports of “flying saucers.” It begins with wartime stories of contact and unusual technology, passes through the Foo Fighter encounters and the birth of the atomic age, and then erupts into a wave of sightings, crashes, military investigations, government secrecy, and direct communication that establishes many of the themes that will continue throughout the next eighty years.
By 1947, the phenomenon could no longer remain hidden at the edges of public awareness. Kenneth Arnold’s encounter near Mount Rainier helped place the words “flying saucer” into everyday language, but Arnold did not begin the story. He arrived in the middle of it.
Before Arnold came the German contact traditions, Cape Girardeau, the Battle of Los Angeles, the Philadelphia Experiment, Richard Shaver’s extraordinary experiences, the Foo Fighters of World War II, the first atomic bomb, another crash near the Trinity test area, the Scandinavian Ghost Rockets and the contact communications of Mark Probert and Meade Layne.
After Arnold came an avalanche.
Pilots, airline crews, military officers, scientists, civilians and intelligence agents reported objects that appeared capable of flight beyond known aircraft of the period. Roswell occurred inside this enormous wave rather than apart from it. Within months, the FBI and Army Air Forces were collecting reports, and by the end of 1947 the United States had created Project SIGN to investigate them.
The central question running beneath this entire history is larger than the question of whether extraterrestrial visitors were present. Who was communicating with whom, what information passed between them, what technology resulted, and how much did human governments understand about the forces with which they dealt?
SECTION I: THE KNOWLEDGE BEFORE THE WAR
Nikola Tesla and the Question of Technological Contact
A useful prelude begins with Nikola Tesla, whose extraordinary mental experiences and technological insights preceded the decade but influenced much of what followed. Tesla described intense flashes of light, vivid internal visions, and the ability to conceive and operate complex machines within his mind before constructing them. At Colorado Springs in 1899, he detected repeating electrical signals that he believed could represent intelligent communication from another world. His interest in interplanetary communication continued for years, and his death in January 1943 places him directly beside later stories concerning unconventional electromagnetic research and the Philadelphia Experiment.
Tesla therefore introduces one of the central questions of this series: whether some technological breakthroughs arrived through forms of contact that their recipients understood as inspiration, telepathy, communication, or what experiencers today might call downloads.
Maria Oršić, Vril and the German Contact Network
The German contact tradition adds another dimension. Maria Oršić and the women associated with the Vril story received communications related to Aldebaran and technical information about unusual craft. The larger question is not whether Adolf Hitler personally met extraterrestrials. He would not have needed to do so if information passed through intermediaries into German engineering and military programs.
Germany entered the war with advanced research in rockets, jet aircraft, guided weapons, and other technologies that later transformed both American and Soviet aerospace programs. Our investigation should follow Maria, the Vril group, German engineers, the development of unconventional craft stories, and the fate of German technology after the war, while tracing the surviving sources so readers can see how the story developed.
SECTION II: AMERICA ENTERS THE MYSTERY
Cape Girardeau, Missouri — 1941
In the United States, the Cape Girardeau case presents a craft-and-being recovery story dating back to 1941. Baptist minister William Huffman was called to a crash site in Missouri to minister to the dead and encountered a metallic craft and small nonhuman bodies. His granddaughter, Charlette Mann, later preserved the family account.
The case deserves its own chapter because it predates Roswell by six years and introduces a pattern that will recur throughout the decade: civilians encounter something extraordinary, military personnel arrive, secrecy follows, and the story survives through witnesses and family testimony.
The Battle of Los Angeles — 1942
The Battle of Los Angeles in February 1942 places the phenomenon over one of America’s largest cities. Searchlights converged on an object or objects in the night sky while anti-aircraft batteries fired more than a thousand rounds. Thousands of residents witnessed the event.
The incident also brings Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration into the story and gives us a natural place to examine later accounts that connect Roosevelt with unusual technology, Tesla, and extraterrestrial contact.
The Philadelphia Experiment — 1943
The Philadelphia Experiment follows in 1943. The USS Eldridge became associated with electromagnetic invisibility, displacement, teleportation, and eventually time travel. Although the story became public later through Morris K. Jessup and Carlos Allende, its importance extends far beyond a single wartime experiment.
Later accounts connect Philadelphia with Al Bielek, Edward and Duncan Cameron, Preston Nichols, Montauk and Stewart Swerdlow. In those narratives, people who passed through the electromagnetic field aboard the Eldridge reached another time, while the technologies developed through Philadelphia evolved into the Montauk Chair, portals and experiments involving consciousness.
The Philadelphia story therefore becomes one of the major technological threads of the series and continues far beyond the 1940s.
SECTION III: CONTACT DURING THE WAR
Richard Shaver and the Hidden Civilizations
During the war, Richard Shaver brought another form of contact into public consciousness. His experiences involved technologically advanced beings, hidden civilizations, telepathy and machines capable of affecting human thought and behavior. Editor Ray Palmer published Shaver’s material in Amazing Stories, where it generated an enormous response from readers who said they had experienced similar phenomena.
Palmer later became closely connected with Kenneth Arnold and the Maury Island investigation. The progression from Shaver to Palmer to Arnold shows that the contact movement did not suddenly appear after Roswell. A network of experiencers, publishers and investigators was already forming.
Foo Fighters: The Unidentified Aircraft of World War II
Wartime pilots added another piece of the puzzle through the Foo Fighters. Allied aircrews encountered luminous objects that approached, paced and maneuvered around their aircraft, particularly during 1944 and 1945. Men such as Edward Schlueter, Donald Meiers and Frederic Ringwald became part of the documented history of these encounters.
Allied crews initially suspected advanced German weapons, yet German pilots also reported unusual aerial phenomena. This raises a larger question that will follow us throughout the series: if both sides saw the objects and both suspected the enemy, were the objects connected with either side at all?
SECTION IV: THE ATOMIC AGE CHANGES EVERYTHING
Trinity and the Birth of the Nuclear Era
The atomic age began at Trinity, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945. From that moment, UFO activity and nuclear facilities begin to appear together with remarkable frequency.
Trinity therefore becomes more than the beginning of nuclear warfare. It marks a turning point in the history of contact.
José Padilla and Reme Baca — The 1945 New Mexico Crash
Only weeks after Trinity, José Padilla and Reme Baca encountered a crashed object near San Antonio, New Mexico. Their story includes a craft, occupants, military recovery activity, and material connected with the object.
The proximity to Trinity makes this case especially significant because it begins a pattern that continues through Roswell, White Sands, Los Alamos, Sandia and the Green Fireball investigations.
SECTION V: 1946 — THE YEAR BEFORE THE FLYING-SAUCER EXPLOSION
The Scandinavian Ghost Rockets
The year 1946 provides a bridge between wartime encounters and the great American UFO wave. Hundreds of Ghost Rockets appeared over Scandinavia, prompting an investigation by Swedish authorities and interest from British and American intelligence agencies.
These reports demonstrate that governments were already treating unusual aerial phenomena as an intelligence problem before Kenneth Arnold and Roswell.
Harry Truman and the Postwar Intelligence System
President Harry Truman enters UFO history before Roswell. In January 1946, Truman reorganized American foreign intelligence, and that new system began feeding information into the White House at precisely the time the Ghost Rocket mystery was unfolding in Europe.
Later stories of direct presidential contact can be integrated into a chronology that already establishes Truman’s proximity to the phenomenon.
Mark Probert and Meade Layne: Contact Before the Contactee Era
Another important development occurred in 1946, through the work of Mark Probert and Meade Layne. Probert became associated with unusual aerial phenomena and communications concerning the intelligences behind the craft, while Layne developed the concept of Ether Ships that traveled not simply from another planet but from another level of reality.
Their work predates George Adamski’s famous contact by several years and demonstrates that communication with the intelligences behind UFOs was already part of the emerging phenomenon before the 1950s.
SECTION VI: 1947 — THE DAM BREAKS
Kenneth Arnold and the Birth of the Flying-Saucer Age
Kenneth Arnold’s June 24 encounter near Mount Rainier transformed public awareness and helped place the term “flying saucer” into everyday language. Arnold’s importance extends far beyond that sighting because he became an investigator in his own right and soon entered the Maury Island story.
The Great Flying-Disc Wave
The months surrounding Arnold’s encounter produced an enormous wave of reports from pilots, military personnel, police officers, families, and civilians across North America. Continued historical research has identified thousands of reports associated with the 1947 wave.
Roswell occurred during this extraordinary period of widespread aerial activity rather than as an isolated event.
Emil J. Smith and United Airlines Flight 105
Captain Emil J. Smith initially dismissed Arnold’s report, then encountered unusual wingless objects himself while piloting United Airlines Flight 105 on July 4. His copilot, Ralph Stevens, and stewardess, Marty Morrow, also saw them.
Within days, a skeptical professional pilot had become a witness.
Maury Island and the Deaths of Davidson and Brown
Maury Island brought together Harold Dahl, Fred Crisman, Ray Palmer and Kenneth Arnold, then drew Army intelligence officers William Davidson and Frank Brown into the investigation.
Davidson and Brown died in a B-25 crash after leaving the case. Their deaths deserve a separate examination because they connect the emerging UFO phenomenon directly with military intelligence.
William Rhodes and the Phoenix Photographs
William Rhodes photographed an unusual object over Phoenix during the height of the 1947 wave. His photographs entered military and intelligence interest and provide another example of physical documentation accompanying eyewitness testimony.
Muroc: Discs Over America’s Experimental-Aircraft Center
Military personnel at Muroc Army Air Field, later Edwards Air Force Base, reported unusual craft over one of America’s most important experimental aviation centers.
These were witnesses who knew aircraft and worked where some of the nation’s most advanced aircraft were tested.
SECTION VII: ROSWELL — A STORY WITH MANY WITNESSES
Roswell should not be treated as a single chapter. Mac Brazel, Jesse Marcel, Walter Haut, William Blanchard, Roger Ramey and Sheridan Cavitt each occupy different positions in the story and deserve individual treatment before the wider witness network is assembled.
Mac Brazel: The Man Who Found the Debris
Brazel found the unusual material on the Foster ranch and reported it to local authorities.
Jesse Marcel: The Intelligence Officer
Major Jesse Marcel, intelligence officer for the 509th Bomb Group, handled and transported the material and later became one of the central witnesses in the case.
William Blanchard and Walter Haut: The Flying-Disc Announcement
Base commander William Blanchard and public information officer Walter Haut were connected with the announcement that the 509th had recovered a flying disc.
Roger Ramey: The Story Changes
When the material reached Fort Worth and General Roger Ramey, the public explanation changed and the famous photographs followed.
Sheridan Cavitt and the Counterintelligence Trail
Cavitt represents another important intelligence perspective on what happened at the recovery site.
The Wider Roswell Witness Network
Only after the principal figures receive their own treatment should the story expand to townspeople, military personnel, medical personnel, families and later witnesses whose accounts broaden Roswell from debris recovery into craft-and-occupant recovery.
SECTION VIII: THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT RESPONDS
J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI
During the summer of 1947, the FBI entered the UFO story at the request of Army Air Forces intelligence. J. Edgar Hoover took an interest in recovered objects as reports continued to come in from across the country.
General Nathan Twining
Lieutenant General Nathan Twining’s September 1947 memorandum became one of the foundational military documents of the period and helped move the phenomenon from scattered reports toward formal investigation.
Project SIGN
By the end of 1947, the Air Force had established Project SIGN. UFO investigation had entered the machinery of national security, with scientists, military officers and intelligence analysts tasked with determining what these objects were.
SECTION IX: 1948 — THE PHENOMENON MOVES CLOSER
Thomas Mantell: A Pilot Dies in Pursuit
Captain Thomas Mantell died while pursuing an unidentified object over Kentucky in January 1948. His case became one of the earliest deaths permanently associated with a military UFO pursuit.
Chiles and Whitted: A Close Encounter in the Air
Eastern Air Lines pilots Clarence Chiles and John Whitted encountered a luminous structured craft at close range in July 1948. Their report strongly influenced Project SIGN investigators.
The Estimate of the Situation
Project SIGN personnel prepared the famous Estimate of the Situation, which presented an interplanetary explanation to senior Air Force leadership.
George Gorman and the Fargo Dogfight
World War II fighter pilot George Gorman engaged in what resembled an aerial contest with a brilliant object over Fargo, North Dakota.
Aztec: The Other New Mexico Recovery Story
The Aztec story places another crashed craft and its recovered occupants in 1948 and brings Silas Newton, Leo Gebauer, and later Frank Scully into the expanding crash-retrieval history.
SECTION X: UFOs AND THE NUCLEAR HEARTLAND
Lincoln LaPaz and the Green Fireballs
Late in the decade, brilliant green fireballs appeared around Los Alamos, Sandia and other sensitive installations. Scientist Lincoln LaPaz became a central investigator while military intelligence, atomic agencies and scientific laboratories examined the phenomenon.
The pattern now stretched across several years: Trinity, Padilla and Baca, Roswell, White Sands, Los Alamos, Sandia and the Green Fireballs.
The relationship between contact and nuclear technology had become one of the central mysteries of the modern era.
SECTION XI: 1949 — SCIENTISTS, COMMUNITIES AND A CHANGING GOVERNMENT RESPONSE
Clyde Tombaugh: The Astronomer Becomes a Witness
Astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto, became a witness in August 1949 when he saw an unusual formation of luminous objects near Las Cruces with his wife and mother-in-law.
The Norwood Searchlight Encounters
In Norwood, Ohio, searchlight operator Donald Berger, Reverend Gregory Miller, police personnel, and members of the public watched recurring luminous objects. Photographs and motion-picture film entered the story.
This case is especially valuable because it involved a community rather than a lone witness.
Project GRUDGE
By 1949, Project SIGN gave way to Project GRUDGE. The phenomenon did not disappear, but the institutional posture toward it began to change.
Project Twinkle
The continuing Green Fireball activity eventually led toward Project Twinkle, providing a natural bridge into the 1950s.
CONCLUSION: WHAT THE 1940s LEFT BEHIND
By the end of the 1940s, the modern contact story had taken recognizable shape. Individuals had reported communication with nonhuman intelligences. Military pilots had encountered unusual objects in wartime and peacetime skies. Children and civilians had described crashed craft and beings. Professional pilots, military officers, scientists and astronomers had become witnesses. Unusual objects appeared near nuclear facilities, while government agencies collected reports, created investigative programs and debated where the craft came from.
The decade also leaves us with larger questions that will carry through the rest of the series. Did more than one nonhuman group participate in contact? Did technological information enter human society through selected individuals, engineers, governments or military programs? Why did the phenomenon appear so closely connected with war and nuclear weapons? Were human nations simply competing with one another, or were larger forces influencing events through several sides at once?
The 1950s will change the nature of those questions. George Adamski, Orfeo Angelucci, Daniel Fry, George Van Tassel, Truman Bethurum, Howard Menger, George King, Elizabeth Klarer, Buck Nelson, Valiant Thor, Frank Stranges and many others move the story from distant objects in the sky toward sustained encounters with the occupants themselves.
The 1940s establish the modern mystery. The 1950s bring humanity face to face with the visitors.
WHO ACTUALLY SAW THE ALIENS?
Not every witness in the 1940s saw extraterrestrial beings. Many saw only craft, lights, unusual aerial objects or phenomena they could not identify. Others reported direct encounters with occupants, recovered bodies, telepathic communication or contact with intelligences they understood as nonhuman.
Maria Oršić and the Vril women received communications from beings associated with Aldebaran, but the core story centers on the transmission of information and technological designs rather than on a conventional face-to-face encounter.
Rev. William Huffman, in the Cape Girardeau story, saw the occupants directly. He described small nonhuman bodies at the 1941 crash site along with the unusual craft.
Witnesses to the Battle of Los Angeles saw the object or objects in the sky, but no occupants were reported.
The Philadelphia Experiment witnesses experienced the ship, electromagnetic effects, displacement, and later connections with Montauk. Direct encounters with nonhuman beings become more prominent in the later Montauk accounts than in the original Philadelphia story itself.
Richard Shaver described contact with nonhuman and ancient beings associated with hidden civilizations beneath the Earth. His experiences included communication, telepathy, and interaction with both benevolent and hostile entities.
Foo Fighter pilots and crews saw luminous objects maneuver around their aircraft but did not report seeing occupants.
José Padilla and Reme Baca reported seeing beings associated with the crashed craft they encountered in New Mexico in 1945.
Ghost Rocket witnesses saw unusual aerial objects, but the Scandinavian reports did not generally include visible occupants.
Mark Probert experienced communication with nonhuman intelligences associated with unusual craft. His contact belongs more to the telepathic and mediumistic category than to a simple visual encounter with a physical being.
Meade Layne worked with the communications and developed the Ether Ship interpretation, but he was principally an investigator, interpreter, and recipient of information rather than a witness to physical occupants.
Kenneth Arnold saw nine extraordinary craft near Mount Rainier but did not see their occupants during his famous June 1947 encounter.
Emil J. Smith, Ralph Stevens and Marty Morrow saw formations of unusual craft from United Airlines Flight 105 but did not report seeing beings inside them.
Harold Dahl and the Maury Island witnesses reported unusual craft and physical effects, but the central Maury Island story does not include a clear face-to-face encounter with occupants.
William Rhodes photographed an unusual craft over Phoenix but did not report visible occupants.
The Muroc witnesses saw unusual craft over the experimental flight center but did not report seeing beings.
Mac Brazel encountered strange debris in the Roswell story but did not become one of the principal witnesses to bodies.
Jesse Marcel handled unusual material and described its extraordinary properties, but his best-known testimony concerns the debris rather than direct observation of beings.
Walter Haut, William Blanchard, Roger Ramey, and Sheridan Cavitt hold important positions in the Roswell command-and-recovery story, but claims of direct observation of bodies vary among the witnesses and in later testimony. The broader Roswell witness network includes people who described recovered nonhuman bodies, and those individuals should receive separate treatment in the dedicated Roswell articles.
Thomas Mantell pursued an unidentified object but never reported seeing occupants before his death.
Clarence Chiles and John Whitted saw a structured luminous craft at close range but did not report seeing beings inside it.
George Gorman maneuvered against a brilliant object over Fargo but did not see an occupant.
The Aztec story includes recovered nonhuman bodies associated with a crashed craft. The witnesses who handled or observed those occupants will need to be identified individually when we develop the Aztec chapters.
Lincoln LaPaz investigated the Green Fireballs but did not report seeing beings associated with them.
Clyde Tombaugh saw unusual luminous objects but did not see occupants.
Donald Berger, Gregory Miller, and the Norwood witnesses observed recurring aerial objects, some of which were captured by searchlights and cameras, but the central 1949 Norwood accounts do not include visible occupants.
The distinction matters. Throughout the series, we will separate craft witnesses, direct-contact experiencers, witnesses to nonhuman beings, witnesses to recovered bodies, telepathic contactees, and investigators so readers can see exactly what each person experienced.
