NEVADA UFO ROUND-UP
by Skylaire AlfvegrenOn June 24, 1947, the modern era of UFOs was ushered in when pilot Kenneth Arnold witnessed a formation of nine boomerang-shaped craft which moved “like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water” while flying near Mount Rainier, Washington. A journalist bastardized his description of the crafts’ movement and the term “flying saucer” was born.
A mere four days after Arnold’s sighting, Air Force F-51 pilot Lt. Armstrong, flying 30 miles north of Lake Mead, reported a formation off his right wing of five or six white discs flying at an altitude of 6,000 feet. Three weeks earlier, a reddish UFO was sighted above Las Vegas. Witnesses claimed it emitted a flash of light before shooting heavenward.
1947 was a banner year for strange objects in the sky, and everything from “flying saucers” to “flying washtubs” and “flying Cardinal’s hats” were reported. Newspapers ran sensational articles speculating that the saucer flap was the result of atomic testing in the Pacific.
On March 26, 1950, just a few days after the infamous UFO invasion in Farmington, New Mexico, officers and civilians at the Air Force’s Indian Springs gunnery range took turns peering into an anti-aircraft scope to watch “something bright in the sky.” In Reno, a CAA control tower operator watched a similar maneuvering light source. The Los Angeles Times ran a piece about the sightings entitled “Planet or Saucer? Mystery Sky Visitors Sighted by Air Force.”
On May 7, 1950, nine miles south of Ely, a couple and their grandson watched a silvery-white object hover 100 feet in the air. It wavered back and forth for ten minutes “as if attempting to rise” before suddenly flying off at high speed.
On June 24, three years to the day of Arnold’s sightings, something extraordinary blazed across Nevada’s night sky. The saga began when two United Airlines pilots, their crew and passengers spied an object “somewhat cylindrical or dirigible-like” in shape. Captain E. L. Remlin, First Officer David Stewart and Captain Sam B. Wiper, along with dozens of passengers aboard the UAL Mainliner agreed upon a description: the cigar-shaped UFO had a bluish center, a bright orange tint and was flying horizontally at about 20,000 feet, considerably faster than the plane at a distance of about 20 miles.
The pilots logged it with CAA ground control at the Silverlake checkpoint just north of Baker, California, at 8:08pm. The “ship” was also reported by two military planes and sighted by at least four other commercial airliners. Two of the CAA operators at the checkpoint watched the object in disbelief for ten minutes. The pilot who made the initial report described it as gun-metal grey, with an appearance of heat radiation near the rear, which he could make out when the object jolted west.
