Timeworn Arizona UFO Stories

Picture is from: http://www.educatinghumanity.com/2013/05/all-time-ufo-hotspots-from-around-the-world.html

Arizona has had millions of UFO sightings all over the state for decades.  While researching some of the areas where most of the reports were witnessed, I came across these old stories from the 1940’s to the 1960’s.  I found them interesting and decided to share them with you.

On July 7, 1947, a Phoenix man, simply called Rhodes, was walking in his yard and heading to his garage when all of a sudden he heard the roar of a jet.  It sounded like it was traveling towards him, but when the 30 year old gazed to the sky a few seconds later; he noticed a gray disc hovering over the horizon in the northeast section of the city.  He described it as being “elliptical in shape, 20 to 30 feet in diameter, and appeared about 5,000 feet in the air.  The disc seemed to have a cockpit and a tail.”  He noticed thingamajig had swirled towards Earth to approximately 2,000 feet, and then shot straight up at a rate of 400 to 600 miles per hour.  Rhodes did manage to snap off a couple of pictures of the object as it zig-zagged in the sky.   After only 60 seconds, the disc-shaped flying saucer vanished in the western skies.

On April 28, 1949, a Tucson florist and a couple of friends, witness a “sausage-like object” above the edge of the Catalina Mountains.  It was dusk and the sun was bright so the florist could see the silver tint off the body from the item.  The form appeared to be a sausage with no wings, windows or notable gaps where a being could get in or out of the object.  It gave the impression that it was revolving, or as they put it, “a hot dog cooking at Circle K” and hurried along at a speed of 500 miles per hour while hovering about 5 to 10 miles over the ground.  This episode lasted roughly 12 minutes.

On May 9, 1949, a Tucson Air Force sergeant, saw not one but two unexplainable silver discs in the sky while relaxing at his home located in the northeast portion of Tucson.  He reports that “the objects were flat, silver, reflective and perfectly round” and figured them to be about “10,000 feet in the air”.  They moved towards the northwest, then zipped left, quickly right, and then disappeared over the Catalina Mountains.  He also reported them flying at speeds of 750 to 1,000 miles per hours, all with no visible haze and in dead silence.  He has labored with all types of planes for many years and has never seen anything like this.

On January 27, 1953, a Cottonwood man was standing outside his house and observing a plane flying above.  As the plane vanished in the east, he saw something a bit unusual.  He noticed a bright yellow-orange light appear in the dark skies.  He was curious to see what it was so he went in the house and retrieved his binoculars to get a closer look.  The object was moving south and created of two lights, the more brilliant one in front and dimmer light in the back.  “It moved too fast for a blimp and emitted too much light for a jet”, he said in his letter.  “The lights never blinked, and he never heard a noise.”  He followed the object for 5 minutes before it disappear in the darkness.  Air Force conclusion: probably an aircraft. (Previous to this report, the Air Force did not include conclusions about the possible origins of the sightings.)

On April 8, 1958, two 20 year old men witnessed an UFO hurtling across the sky from north to south while they were cruising through Mesa.  This disc shape object had a strange orange light shining from the windows.  Their first thought was it seemed to just be a falling star, and from their viewpoint appeared to be the size of a grapefruit.  It moved at an incline of 1,500 feet, ascended at a sharp scale straight up and continued to increase its speed.  This show lasted about 10 seconds before it disappeared.  Air Force conclusion: It may have been a military aircraft on a classified mission, according to a report.

On November 26, 1965, a husband, wife and son in Phoenix noticed what they thought was a flare-up in the sky.  They equated it as “Fourth of July fireworks”, but with a “perfect circle of blue star-like objects”.  Shortly afterwards, they spotted a collection of 30 to 50 objects headed south over Phoenix.  They then witnessed, around 10 to 15 seconds later, an assortment of lights started.  They described it as “swarming like bees, resolving into two undulating ‘V’ formations”, before merging into one V shaped object while moving south and vanishing in the night.  The husband was an astronomer and a teacher of aircraft identification during World War II.  His qualifications helped him to summarize the events of the night.  Air Force conclusion: The officer submitting the report wrote "Other (BIRDS)" in the conclusion box on the record.