Report on the UFO Wave of 1947 By Ted Bloecher - Introduction By Dr. James E. McDonald

The Report on the UFO Wave of 1947 discusses the first contemporary wave of UFO sightings in this country, which reached its peak on July 6 – 7, 1947. It includes a detailed chronology of more than 850 UFO cases for June and July with complete references, primarily from 140 newspapers in 90 cities in the United States and Canada, but also from the files of NICAP and Project Blue Book, as well as references from a number of publications on UFOs.

About 250 of these reports are discussed in detail, with reference to patterns of appearance and behavior of the objects reported, to special types of witnesses, and to other special features. A summary of the period, the pattern of press coverage, and its effects on the subject, are discussed. Maps are provided to illustrate the daily distribution of sightings for the period.

Introduction

Just over twenty years ago, the problem of the Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) burst into public attention. In a single two-week period in the summer of 1947, the UFO problem was laid in confusing disorder before the American public by means of banner headlines and wire-stories in profusion.

In retrospect, it seems clear that the visible record of 1947 emergence of the UFO problem is primarily a journalistic record. Although scientists, the military, and a few governmental spokesmen took minor parts in the dramatic entry of UFOs onto the modern scene, newspapermen wrote and delivered the key lines that made the journalists role in the drama preeminent. Hence, to reconstruct that eventful public emergence of the UFO problem, one must turn to the nation’s newspapers and review the day-by-day (sometimes hour-byhour) unfolding of the evidence — evidence that something of truly unusual nature was occurring. A few writers have already nibbled at the edge of a journalistic review of that curtain-raising two-week episode in late June and early July, 1947.

In the present book, Bloecher gives us what will probably come to be regarded as the definitive analysis of that important episode in UFO and journalistic history. His approach was straightforward: Because his professional work takes him to many parts of the country, he began several years ago to devote maximum possible time to digging into local library files of newspapers, in order to extract original 1947 press material reporting the UFO problem in all its dimensions.

As his files grew he turned to other sources, including Air Force Project Blue Book files and files of independent investigatory groups. From all this, he has assembled and put into far clearer order than could have been apparent to 1947 readers a systematic recounting of the 1947 birth of the UFO problem. This book is the result of his studies. I commend it to the attention of all serious students of the UFO problem.