And the Flying Saucers?

Julius Evola discusses the UFO phenomenon in a little known article from the magazine "Roma" in 1953. (The first of three articles)

On the so-called flying saucers, for some years there has been much talk, discussion, and controversy, with highs and lows of interest depending on the type and frequency of the sightings. In this regard, many have remained skeptical. We ourselves, we confess it, were among them; but, in the end, we came to the conviction that the affair is more complex than it seems. Contributing to this was the knowledge of documentation which we previously ignored, which is collected in a recent publication by Donald E. Keyhoe, former major of the U.S. Marine Corps, titled Flying Saucers from the Outer Space (New York, 1953).

The importance of the book lies in the official and verified character of the data it contains, because this data was directly provided to the author by the Press Office and the secret service of the American air forces (on this point, the book includes an official statement). We did not know that the United States had taken the matter so seriously as to establish, already in 1949, a special investigation center, called the Office of Project Sign, or Office for the Blue Book. Nor did we know the nature of many sightings and the frequency of the appearance of the saucers, which lingered over the city for over two hours performing maneuvers and various evolutions.

In the cited book, the embarrassment of the American air forces is described in a fairly vivid and dynamic way. Having initially made efforts to reduce everything to illusions or hoaxes, they found themselves more and more faced with irrefutable evidence, and therefore with the problem of whether or not to inform the public, to alarm it, or to lull it into a sense of precarious security.

In terms of documentation, we did not know that the secret service of the American air forces possesses, in addition to photographs, actual films of saucers, taken both from the ground and from airplanes. The reports of saucer sightings that reached that service amount to a couple of thousand, and many of them were transmitted by expert and trustworthy pilots, both military and civilian. After a strict verification, it was recognized that at least 25 percent of the cases cannot be explained with hypotheses that reduce the saucers to an illusion.

For example, recourse was had to the theory of the so-called temperature inversions: in the atmosphere, layers of hot and cold air can overlap, which can give rise to a refraction of rays and the appearance of reflected images, in motion or of the kind of mirages in deserts. Now, such an explanation had to be excluded, both because the necessary meteorological conditions were not present, and for a fundamental fact: there was a simultaneity of the saucer sightings by radar and of the direct visual observations, with perfect concordance of the one with the others. Thus, it could not have been a matter of fleeting and unreal reflections.

But the most decisive element is that the saucers seem to be controlled. They are guided, they perform precise maneuvers. This excludes that it could be a matter of some other unstudied atmospheric phenomenon. On the other hand, their speed, calculated also by radar, is dizzying, exceeding 7000 miles per hour. Furthermore, turns, curves, reversals of course, and instant, almost vertical ascents have been observed, such that no aircraft built so far would be able to perform them. Usually, the saucers evade approach: given their speed, they have easily outpaced even the fastest jet fighters when these tried to intercept them. Additionally, certain cases of mysterious air disasters have also been recorded.

The only element that, despite everything, may leave one perplexed is that, apart from certain sporadic unverified reports, no saucer has ever fallen to the ground, to the point of being able to recover remains and wreckage. Now, it is inconceivable that any machine is so immune to every mishap. This is even more valid in the hypothesis of some secret terrestrial weapon, for example Russian. Moreover, the American secret service has had to exclude this hypothesis.

As for Keyhoe, the author of the cited book, he is convinced that the saucers are machines coming from spaces outside our planet. He even reports the hypotheses of Wilbur B. Smith, chief scientist of an office also established by Canada for the investigation of saucers. According to Smith, the saucers could be moved by a means of electrostatic propulsion, based on a provoked fall of potential of atmospheric magnetic fields. They would be composed of a part or central cabin, immobile, thermally insulated, containing instruments for remote guidance, for radio and television recordings, and then of a rotating ring capable of overheating and becoming incandescent, so much as to produce the colors and the transitions of color of the lights most often observed in the saucers. Smith does not express an opinion about the possibility that living creatures are found on the saucers, which would then have to be such as to resist the effects of the temperatures and of terrifying speed and accelerations. If anything, such creatures could be aboard a kind of space aircraft carrier, from which the saucers could be launched and which would keep them under control in their exploratory actions.

Indeed, Keyhoe takes things very seriously and believes precisely that the saucers are carrying out reconnaissance around our planet and especially in the United States, with intentions that not reassuring: whence the frequency of sightings located precisely over strategically important points. The same American air forces, faced with the otherwise inexplicable fact that the saucers appear to be controlled, have ended up not excluding that they might be interplanetary machines. Speculations aside, sufficient concrete and verified data place every unprejudiced mind in front of an enigma, beyond what, in this regard, may be reduced to illusion or hoax.