Introduction to Scrutate i Cieli (Turin, 2010)


The reliable reconstruction and analysis of historical documents is one of the primary tasks of rational ufology. Ufology without historical memory, without documents, without real archives and scholars specialized in this field is like a tree without roots. One of the reasons why ufology is so often forced to yield, on the one hand, to the first gust of sensationalism, wild speculation and fundamentalism, and, on the other, to crude and vague skepticism always running the risk of collapsing and disappearing without a trace is precisely the fact that it still lacks a rigorous historical consciousness.

It is as if ufology inevitably unfolded along two lines of research, both necessary and not at all separable: a vertical dimension and a horizontal one.

In the second case, ufological research is not particularly interested in the past or the future: it operates within the dimension of the present and of contemporary events. This is a dimension extensive in space but narrow in time, focused especially on continuously accumulating new and non recurring cases, on all kinds of events, on their commentary and evaluation, and, above all, on field investigations of sightings.
In practice, this is the dimension that dominates the interests and actions of groups of all orientations and countries, and is certainly favored indirectly by a general tendency in our society either to forget events or to interpret them even those far removed in time in a strongly ideological manner.

However, the logical framework imposed by rational ufology makes it impossible to ignore another goal: that of collecting the legacy of the past and projecting into the future the life of the organizations in which enthusiasts so often work. In this case, ufology no longer acts only within the dimension of spatial extension, but even more pressingly within that of temporal duration.

And since ufology, for better or worse, after more than fifty years of existence, truly begins to have a history of its own, the organizations that gather researchers should take care to preserve, as meticulously as possible, material that is as fragile and perishable as everything related to our subject, in order to secure its use and enjoyment by future generations.

There are therefore two main categories of activities on which ufologists particularly interested in the vertical dimension of the discipline should focus:

1. To find, classify, preserve in good condition and make available to their colleagues the historiographical sources and

2. To save publications and other new documents from complete disintegration, so that they may become part of the bibliographic and documentary heritage as the most recent layers and sediments.

In my view, one of the mistakes in perspective made by ufologists concerned with reconstructing the early years of the phenomenon has been to overvalue and overemphasize the opinions, actions and writings of those who, in that early phase, tended toward “exotic” hypotheses about the nature of the events first and foremost, of course, the so called “interplanetary hypothesis,” as it was then called.

Let me be clear: this is by no means intended to deny the role often central for later developments played by these individuals, nor to attack their character in any way. Rather, it is to stress that, for a better understanding of the events of those years, it is essential to place them back into their proper context.

From this effort which the author has tried to carry out for the key developments that took place in various countries during 1950 there emerges a picture much more complex than previously believed. Once one grants that behind the flying saucers there were objectively new manifestations, and not merely hoaxes, misunderstandings or fabrications, the prevailing idea that these objects might be aircraft of unusual design and superior performance is confirmed not only by analysis of public opinion, but also by the attitude of:
 

• the American military then engaged in studying the phenomena,

• scientists, and

• political authorities.

This shows that another frequent error has been to neglect in depth knowledge of the international political climate of the Cold War, of the aeronautical technologies of the time, of military and scientific structures, of the media system, and so on.
This makes it easier to understand why, in the autumn of 1947, the American military gave serious attention to the possibility that the flying saucers were developments of circular aircraft designed and built in Germany between 1932 and 1945 by the brothers Reimar and Walter Horten, who later became Luftwaffe officers. This concern is now documented by numerous and detailed files found in the archives of the German Air Force.

Similarly just to give another example the episode of the mysterious “ghost rockets” (which certainly did not lead the press and military intelligence to think of “Martians”, but of far more concrete alternatives), reported in many locations in Greece on 1 September 1946, takes on a different dimension once we remember that on that very day, in a climate of high tension, an institutional referendum was held on the Greek peninsula. The monarchy won, and this was the event that led the country, within a few months, into a civil war between pro communist guerrilla groups and the government, which was soon supported by the United States.

To isolate episodes of this kind from their rich, complex and fascinating context is to condemn them to pointless debates of very little scientific value whereas what we ought to aim for is the construction of a rigorous historiography of ufology, based on general, academically sound sources.

This work documents at least to the extent allowed by the still limited resources of ufological historiography how in 1950, for the first time since the beginning of the phenomenon, many countries around the world were affected by more or less massive waves of alleged UFO sightings.

Beyond the obvious recognition of a social phenomenon whose scale no one had previously suspected, what emerges and this is one of the author’s main historiographical theses is that:

• just as in the summer of 1946 the colossal wave of “ghost rockets” marked the real beginning of the modern ufological era,

• so too did the events of 1950 mark the moment when the global extent of the “flying saucer” phenomenon was first recognized, thanks to a series of sightings outside the United States.

These sightings, despite recent documentation efforts by researchers gathered around American historian Jan L. Aldrich and his “Project 1947”, cannot be compared with what happened in the summer of 1947 during the first major wave of flying saucers in the United States.
In 1950, sightings in many parts of the world, especially in Latin European countries and South America, were triggered by a similar wave in the United States between March and May, peaking in the first month. But this time, thanks to the decisive role of certain powerful ideas and of the mass media, the wave crossed the borders of North America as never before, acquiring for the first time a life and dynamic of its own. These events thus marked the beginning of the globalization of the flying saucer phenomenon.

However, events in the United States will remain in the background in this work, except where they concern aspects still little known even to specialists, or circumstances of particular importance that help clarify the Italian and international picture of that year. This is both for reasons of economy and because those American events have already been reconstructed in substantial detail. At least in part (and documentation has increased significantly since those books appeared), sources relating to the U.S. are available in the three volumes of historian Loren E. Gross’s UFOs: A History, in which he devoted a chapter to that year.

If possible, and if further important material becomes available, I will not hesitate to publish a second, improved edition of this work. In particular, I hope to receive clarifications and additional information from my foreign colleagues about 1950 in their respective countries a field in which we still have much to learn. Any further developments will, in any case, be summarized in the publications of the Italian Center for UFO Studies, alongside the continuing efforts of Operation Origins.

I dedicate this work to Lucia, whose patience with a man so obsessed with ufology is one of the (many) reasons she remains so interesting in my eyes.