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ESCAPE into DIMENSION X and Learn the Secret
of
THE OUTER LIMIT!
During the summer of 1952 it seemed that the flying saucer scare reached something of a crescendo with reports of UFOs filling the headlines and investigators’ notebooks virtually on a daily basis. Indeed, July 1952 was especially laden with saucer reports with the most dramatic reports reserved for July 19 and 20 when mysterious blips appeared on radar screens at Andrews Air Force Base and at Washington National Airport; amazingly, the mysterious blips returned a week later. In both instances, aircraft scrambled to investigate the radar signals, but the pilots could find nothing. Sensational headlines followed, and an aroused Truman Administration demanded answers. The Air Force suggested that the mysterious blips were nothing more than temperature inversions and that there was no cause for alarm. Whatever the true cause or causes of the flying saucer phenomenon, the media had sunk its teeth into the story with vigor, and every new sighting and allegation seemed to receive the attention due a major earthquake.
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Excerpted from Smokin’ Rockets: The Romance of Technology in American Film, Radio and Television 1945-1962 by Patrick Lucanio and Gary Coville. Available this summer from McFarland and Company (224 pp. $32. mcfarlandpub.com). |