Gyroscopic Aerial Phenomena
This photograph was taken in Hawthorne, New Jersey, by a young woman named Bette Malles. The Los Angeles Times featured a story on the photograph in their March 12th, 1950 edition. They quote Miss Malles, who worked as an assistant in a Los Angeles Medical Office, and was an amateur photographer, as having said: "I saw something queer and photographed it with my miniature camera, but I don't pretend at all to know what it was.. I was about to take a picture of a small plane flying over a Hawthorne air field when I suddenly saw something shining closer by and to my left. I quickly snapped the shutter and this is what I got..."
Harold T.Wilkins' classic book Flying Saucers On The Moon (U.S.title Flying Saucers On The Attack) included the photograph, and also this one, taken in the same year, over the Armco Steel Corporation blast furnace plant at Hamilton, Ohio.
The staff cameraman, Mr.B.Ruoff, had set up his camera for a night view of the furnaces, and had picked up three anomalous aerial forms (not the most prominent lights in above photo, which are part of the building). Two are on the right-side, and one on the left-side - all three in the top half of the picture. Here are the two on the right of Mr.Ruoff's photo -
At left: Object lower in sky in photo. At right: Object at (apparently) higher altitude.
A drawing by George Van Tassel that first appeared in his periodical Proceedings, December 1953, looks to be consistent with the aerial phenomena photographed by Bette Malles and B.Ruoff three years earlier -
The drawing was reproduced, in 1957, in Bryant & Helen Reeve's book Flying Saucer Pilgrimage, along with brief commentary: '..It shows his concept of the "light motor" which activates a small saucer. Lenses at top gather and concentrate unseen "light" energy which is then transformed into the forces required to produce levitation, directional motion and an independent force-field.'
Harold T.Wilkins' second book Flying saucers Uncensored, published in 1955, includes a personal account by Robert Frenhoff, science teacher at a school in Yonkers, New York, of what he'd seen while hosing the lawn, at 9.40pm, on July 30th, 1954:
'I happened to glance up into the evening sky, when I was surprised to see a queer thing like a child's gyroscope or spinning top, whirling along at a great altitude. It was mainly yellow, but had a crimson glow at the edges which might have been an exhaust. I shouted to my wife and she and neighbours rushed out to look at it. It moved around in a fantastic manner. One moment it would hover near the Great Bear constellation, apparently, and then in a sudden rush, dart away at an angle of ninety degrees; then stop short as if it had hit a brick wall. There was no way of estimating its immense height in the sky. It repeated these hovering and rushing manoeuvres until close on midnight.'
Here's an account from Flying Saucer Review's World Roundup Of UFO Sightings And Events, concerning the photograph that follows, which is also taken from this book: 'At 10:10 p.m. on September 29 (1957), Corporal P.Stokes, serving with the R.A.F. in Cyprus, noticed that there was a considerable amount of forked lightning over the Troodos Mountain range. As he had always wanted to photograph lightning, he got his Paxette 11M camera out and loaded it with H.P.3 film. The camera has an interchangeable lens and uncoupled rangefinder. He went with his brother onto the roof of their billet and pointed the camera at "brief" and held the plunger down until a large flash appeared. He then recocked and did the same again for another five exposures. The flashes were in the clouds all the time, so Corporal Stokes could not actually photograph the lightning itself, but only the flash. A friend, Quinton Pearce, joined Corporal Stokes and his brother on the roof. But the whole time that they were there none of them saw any unidentified objects in the sky, and yet there is one in the photograph! It was not until the film was printed that the object was found in the picture. Corporal Stokes has sent several prints to FLYING SAUCER REVIEW, together with the negatives. He has since tested his camera with other film, and has offered to allow his camera to be examined if that should be necessary.'
[Close-up of the 'object' scanned from book reproduction of photo]
This next illustration accompanies three sightings by a Mrs.Rydon of Duluti House, Arusha, Tanganyika, on the evenings of December 5th & December 6th, 1961, published in Volume 8 No.2 of Flying Saucer Review -
There is a building in Jerusalem, Israel, called The Shrine Of The Book. It was designed and constructed between 1957 and 1965, and closely resembles Mrs.Rydon's illustrations of what she saw in 1961, with the upper point of the conical protrusion severed. The architects who designed this building are Frederick Kiesler & Armand P.Bartos -
Fate published an article by George D.Fawcett, in their February 1962 issue, entitled 'A Camera Eye Analysis of 411 Flying Saucers.' According to Mr.Fawcett, the article '..dealt with the various classifications of UFO types by shapes on film.. and gyroscopic shaped objects accounted for 1.5% of those objects photographed.
Three years later, another article by George Fawcett was published in Flying Saucers, entitled 'More To Gyroscopic Puzzles In The Skies - UFO Types?' Here Mr.Fawcett, (referring back to and inspired by an article by George Bruce in Flying Saucers Dec.1964 issue) gave some examples of gyroscopic shaped objects. He included the two photographs from 1950 I detailed earlier, and four others...
The earliest of these was a photograph taken on December 12th, 1962, at Lincolnshire, England, by TV Times photographer Peter Bolton. This was a single '..object above a Vulcan bomber, ready for action at Coningsby R.A.F.Station. Another sighting occurred on September 16th, 1963, when '..Michael Blake, a Southampton schoolboy saw a similar object and sketched it..' According to George Fawcett '..Two R.A.F. boy entrants at Cosford Training Establishment, Shropshire, claim that they saw a similar object actually land five days before Bolton took his photograph...'
The fourth example cited by Mr.Fawcett is a sighting from March 26th, 1963: 'Chief photographer Dick Taarud recorded a similar object hovering over Iowa State Penitentiary at Fort Madison, Iowa near a water tank.. He did not see the object, which appeared on his film when it was developed 6 days later..'
[Short magazine article about this photo here]
Here's a close-up of just the 'object' -
This next close-up is part of a photograph taken from Cradle Hill, Warminster, at 11.00 p.m. on March 28th, 1970. It was shot by a Mr.N.Foxwell. There were other witnesses who saw an unidentified phenomenon in the sky, although it seemed to them different to what appeared on the photo -
[Scanned from reproduction of the first photo by Mr.Foxwell in FSR 16-4]
The final sighting case in this file is presented through relevant quoted excerpts from the May and June 1973 issues of The Emergency Press:
'The Piedmont, Missouri sightings continue to get newsprint space. The Detroit News had two articles concerning it: ONE MAKING HEADLINES! when Wm. Clark, their reporter, was sent out to investigate them, seeing a moving light himself, that he could no further identify. Reporting on Maude Jefferis, photography teacher there, who, on March 14, 1973, photographed a UFO at long range. Dennis Holvis, manager of KPWB radio station there, Dennis Kenney, a KPWB announcer, Carl Laxton, a Piedmont real estate broker, familiar with the countryside, went with Mrs.Jefferis into the Brushy Creek area to try to photograph a saucer that had been reported by others, as well as other sightings reported, some making low-level hoverings..as well as looping or passing swiftly overhead in the night skies since February 21, 1973. Hundreds of people had seen them.. Dr.Allen Hynek, self-styled analyzer of saucer photos/sightings, since retired from the position of "civilian authority" for USAF (altho he has never had a close flying saucer sighting himself)..was called in by Missouri State Representative, Jerry Howard and labeled the photo the result of "lens flare." /// NEEDLESS TO SAY, MRS. JEFFERIS WAS UP IN ARMS AND THREATENED TO "SKIN HIM ALIVE" HAD HE BEEN NEAR AT THE TIME. "I'M EITHER GOING TO GET A RETRACTION OUT OF HIM OR THERE'S GOING TO BE FIREWORKS," SHE SAID. /// Hynek said he had taken a picture from the exact same position as Mrs. Jefferis with her camera. There was nothing unusual visible in the sky when the picture was snapped, but the resulting photograph contained "the same gyroscoping image that appeared in Mrs. Jefferis' photo, the result," he said.."of a lens flare from a bright vapor light that adjoins the patio of Mrs. Jefferis' home." /// Mrs. Jefferis says..they ran the negatives through the developer in her dark room. Hynek looked at the negatives and pointed to a little high light in the twig of a tree. Hynek NEVER saw the finished photos, Hynek said she had showed him "other photos of strange lights which are puzzling to me," when questioned later. (EDITOR: HAS ANYONE CONSIDERED THAT HYNEK MAY STILL BE THE SECRET REP OF THE USAF TO CONTINUE TO DENY ALL UFO!).
'Mrs. Maude Jefferis, photography high school teacher of Piedmont, Mo., who had made the headlines when Dr. Allen Hynek, civilian UFO "authority," had decided photo she took of UFO only camera's lens flare..had previously seen objects before taking the photo-in-controversy. 4 at one time, she said..the center one hovering, as though a communications center, the others coming up to it, as if making a rendezvous. the Post-Dispatch photographers disputed Hynek's 'lens flare' theory. It would be widespread over the negative, rather than the small speck that appears in Mrs. Jefferis's photograph-in-question..which she later blew up, looking like a gyroscope...'
Here is a poster designed by Kazumasa Nagai, which was one of a series of posters issued by the Museum of Modern Art in Toyama, to announce an exhibition. (The colours are bright, with a black background)
[Source: Graphis Annual 1986]
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