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A Washington Post article last month about the 50th anniversary of the “Exorcist” movie included a Post front page from 1949 recounting the story the novel is based on. As soon as I saw the paper, I recognized another A1 story, from my ancestral homeland, Glen Burnie. It was about the great Glen Burnie flying saucer caper of 1949. That was many years ago, but it seems like you should do an update.
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— Neil Litzau, Crownsville, Md.
The Aug. 20, 1949, front page featured the aforementioned satanic scoop — headlined “Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held in Devil’s Grip” — along with more mundane articles about the Pentagon budget, the FCC and the prospects of home rule for the District.
And then there was this eye-catching headline below a three-column photo of what looked like the destroyed remains of an alien spaceship: “First ‘Saucer’ Is Located By Air Force.”
The story was about wreckage discovered in an Anne Arundel County, Md., tobacco shed. One broken machine looked like a primitive helicopter. The other craft was topped by two cloth-covered, saucerlike discs, 16 feet in diameter.
Maryland state troopers had made the discovery, dispatched to Glen Burnie, Md., at the behest of investigators from Bolling Air Force Base. An Air Force officer told the Associated Press there was “a good chance” the craft were prototypes of the mysterious flying saucers that were bedeviling pilots across the country.
The month that E.T. came to D.C.
The flying saucer era began on June 24, 1947, when a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine unidentified objects flying in a diamond formation over Mount Rainier.
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“That kicks off this really intense summer of flying saucer sightings,” said Garrett M. Graff, author of the newly published “UFO: The Inside Story of the U.S. Government’s Search for Alien Life Here — and Out There.”
In 1947, sightings were reported in more than 34 states and Canada.
“One is the Roswell crash in July, which is now infamous but at that time was just another incident in the near daily headlines, grainy photographs and weird reports of flying saucers all across the country,” Graff said.
After World War II, the United States had hustled Nazi scientists out of Europe to jump-start our space program. The fear was the Soviets had done the same and these UFOs were the result.
Said Graff: “The Air Force is genuinely concerned about what these things are, not at that point because anyone thinks aliens are visiting Earth, but because they’re concerned this is some transformative [Soviet] technology that could upend the balance of power in the Cold War.”
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The tobacco shed saucers were neither alien, nor Russian. They were the creation of an inventor named Jonathan E. Caldwell. Well, “inventor” may be too kind.
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Caldwell was born in Ontario in 1883. His exploits first appear in American newspapers in 1929, when his company, Gray Goose Airways, starts looking for investors. Based then in Colorado, Gray Goose promised to revolutionize aviation with an airplane designed to “fly like a bird.” It would take off and land vertically.
Two years later, Gray Goose was advertising shares for 50 cents. An illustration depicted what looked like a galleon topped by horizontal sheets. Far from airworthy, it looks airworthless.
Caldwell left Colorado after being sued by investors. He landed in New Jersey. In 1932, regulators there lodged a complaint against Gray Goose, which was then promoting airplanes with flapping wings. According to the New York Times, “The complaint declares that thousands of dollars of corporate funds were wasted on the construction of planes which could not work and that construction has begun on a ‘rotor wing type’ plane.”
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“Rotor wing” describes the things Caldwell built at a rented farm in Maryland. Supporters claimed one of his inventions actually flew to a height of 40 feet during a demonstration at Benning Racetrack, crashing only because of pilot error.
Caldwell, his wife, Olive, and their son, Carl, lived in the Baltimore-Washington area for about 10 years. Maryland regulators also became skeptical of Gray Goose Aviation and the family suddenly decamped again. “Caldwell, his wife and son disappeared from the farm in the Winter of 1940, leaving behind furniture, personal effects and bundles of soiled laundry,” the Baltimore Sun wrote.
With UFOs still in the news in 1949, an investor in Gray Goose recalled the earlier demonstration flight. Perhaps Caldwell was responsible for the mystery sightings.
And that’s why the military went to investigate. But just a day after that unnamed officer had said the busted remains in the tobacco shed were probably flying saucer prototypes, the Air Force backpedaled, releasing an official statement: “The Air Force states that the two experimental aircraft found near Baltimore have absolutely no connection with the reported phenomena of the flying saucers.”
The AP tracked down a bemused Caldwell in Las Vegas, where he was working on an aircraft with wings that resembled water wheels. He said of his flying saucer experiments: “If the Air Force wants to know anything about it they’re welcome to whatever I know.”
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Caldwell died in 1956. Ufologist Joel Carpenter explored Caldwell’s life on his ufxufo.org website. Carpenter, who died in 2014, seemed undecided on whether Caldwell thought of himself as an aviation pioneer or a canny swindler.
Whichever it was, wrote Carpenter: “For two days, at least, he was the man who invented flying saucers.”
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