Mystery airship
Encyclopedia
Mystery airships or phantom airships are a class of unidentified flying object
s best known from a series of newspaper reports originating in the western United States and spreading east during 1896 and 1897. According to researcher Jerome Clark
, airship reports were made worldwide, early as the 1880s, and late as the 1890s. Mystery airship reports are seen as a cultural predecessor to modern extraterrestrial-piloted flying saucer-style UFO claims. Typical airship reports involved unidentified lights, but more detailed accounts reported ships comparable to a dirigible. Reports of the alleged crewmen and pilots usually described them as human looking, although sometimes the crew claimed to be from Mars. It was popularly believed that the mystery airships were the product of some genius inventor not ready to make knowledge of his creation public. Thomas Edison
was so widely speculated to be the mind behind the alleged airships that in 1897 he "was forced to issue a strongly worded statement" denying his responsibility.
Mystery airships are unlikely to represent test flights of real human-manufactured dirigibles as no record of successful airship flights are known from the period and "it would have been impossible, not to mention irrational, to keep such a thing secret." Contemporary American newspapers were more likely
to print manufactured stories and hoaxes than modern ones are and newspapers often would have expected the reader to be in on the fact that the outlandish stories were hoaxes. Period journalists did not seem to take airship reports very seriously, as after the major 1896-1897 flap concluded the subject was not given further investigation. Instead, it was allowed to very quickly drop off the cultural radar. The subject only received further attention when ufologists revived studies of the airship reports as alleged early UFO sightings.
in 1896. Afterwards, reports and accounts of similar airships came from others areas, generally moving east. Some accounts during this wave of airship reports claim that occupants were visible on some airships, and encounters with the pilots were reported as well. These occupants often appeared to be human, though their behaviour, mannerisms and clothing were sometimes reported to be unusual. Sometimes the apparent humans claimed to be from the planet Mars.
Historian Mike Dash
described and summarized the 1896-1897 series of airship sightings, writing;
an locations, some from New England
and from New Zealand
. (Clark 2000, 123) Later reports came from the UK in 1912 and 1913. However, by this time airship technology was well advanced (Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin having been flying his massive passenger-carrying airships for nearly a decade by this time), making the prospect that these may have been small, private airships rather than evidence of extra-terrestrial visitation or newspaper hoaxes more reasonable.
writes that "One curious feature of the post-1887 airship waves was the failure of each to stick in historical memory. Although 1909, for example, brought a flood of sightings worldwide and attendant discussion and speculation, contemporary accounts do not allude to the hugely publicized events of little more than a decade earlier." (Clark 2000, 123)
Clark writes that attempts to "uncover the truth about the late-nineteenth-century airship scare comes up against some unhappy realities: newspaper coverage was unreliable; no independent investigators ('airshipologists') spoke directly with alleged witnesses or attempted to verify or debunk their testimony; and, with a single unsatisfactory exception, no eyewitness was ever interviewed even in the 1950’s, when some were presumably still living."(Clark 1998, 37)
The "single unsatisfactory exception" Clark cites is a former San Francisco Chronicle
employee interviewed via telephone by Edward J. Ruppelt
in 1952. Ruppelt wrote that the man "had been a copy boy ... and remembered the incident, but time had cancelled out the details. He did tell me that he, the editor of the paper, and the news staff had seen 'the ship', as he referred to the UFO. His story, even though it was fifty-six years old, smacked of others I’d heard when he said that no one at the newspaper ever told anyone what they had seen; they didn’t want people to think they were 'crazy.'"
Jacobs notes that "Most arguments against the airship idea came from individuals who assumed that the witnesses did not see what they claimed to see. This is the crucial link between the 1896-97 phenomenon and the modern unidentified flying object phenomenon beginning in 1947. It also was central to the debate over whether unidentified flying objects constituted a unique phenomenon." (Jacobs, 33-34)
In 2009, American Author J. Allan Danelek wrote a book entitled The Great Airship of 1897 (Adventures Unlimited Press) in which he makes the case that the mystery airship was the work of an unknown individual, possibly funded by a wealthy investor from San Francisco, to build an airship prototype as a test vehicle for a later series of larger, passenger carrying airships. In the work, Danelek not only lays out a plausible scenario, but demonstrates how the craft might have been built using materials and technologies available in 1896 (including speculative line drawings and technical details). The ship, Danelek proposes, was built in secret to safegard from patent infringement as well as to protect investors in case of failure. Noting that the flights were initially seen over California and only later over the Midwest, he speculates that the inventor was making a series of short test flights, moving from west to east and following the main raillines for logistical support, and that it was these experimental flights that formed the basis for many – though not all – of the newspaper accounts from the era. Danelek also notes that the reports ended abruptly in mid-April of 1897, suggesting that the craft may have met with disaster, effectively ending the venture and permitting the sightings to fall into the realm of mythology. While highly conjectural, the book does make a reasonable case for the craft having been of terrestrial rather than extraterrestrial origin.
es, pranks, publicity stunt
s and hallucination
s. One man suggested the airships were swarms of lightning beetles
misidentified by observers (Jacobs, 30).
Jacobs believed that many airship tales were due to “Enterprising reporters perpetrating journalistic hoaxes.” (Jacobs, 16) However, Jacobs notes that many of these accounts “are easy to identify because of their tongue-in-cheek tone, and accent on the sensational.” (ibid.) Furthermore, the supposed authors of many such newspaper hoaxes make their hoax obvious "by saying – in the last line – that he was writing from an insane asylum (or something to that effect)." (Jacobs, 17-18)
's 1886 novel Robur the Conqueror
). In fact, two French army officers and engineers, Arthur Krebs
and Charles Renard
, had successfully flown in an electric-powered airship called the La France as early as 1885, making no fewer than seven successful flights in the craft over an eleven month period. Also during the 1896-1897 period, Bosnian inventor David Schwarz
built an aluminum-skinned airship in Germany that successfully flew over Templehof before being irreparably damaged during a hard landing. Both events clearly demonstrated that the technology to build a practical airship existed during the period in question, though if reports of the capabilities of the California and Midwest airship sighted in 1896-97 are true, it would have been considerably more advanced than any airship built up to that time.
Several individuals, including Lyman Gilmore
and Charles Dellschau
, were later identified as possible candidates for being involved in the design and construction of the airships, although little evidence was found in support of these ideas.
, all from 1897, include the Washington Times
, which speculated that the airships were "a reconnoitering party from Mars
"; and the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, which suggested of the airships, "these may be visitors from Mars, fearful, at the last, of invading the planet they have been seeking." (Jacobs, 29) In 1909, a letter printed in the Otago Daily Times
(New Zealand
) suggested that the mystery airship sightings then being reported in that country were due to Martian
"atomic-powered spaceships." (Clark 2000, 123)
Unidentified flying object
A term originally coined by the military, an unidentified flying object is an unusual apparent anomaly in the sky that is not readily identifiable to the observer as any known object...
s best known from a series of newspaper reports originating in the western United States and spreading east during 1896 and 1897. According to researcher Jerome Clark
Jerome Clark
Jerome Clark is an American researcher and writer, specializing in unidentified flying objects and other anomalous phenomena; he is also a songwriter of some note....
, airship reports were made worldwide, early as the 1880s, and late as the 1890s. Mystery airship reports are seen as a cultural predecessor to modern extraterrestrial-piloted flying saucer-style UFO claims. Typical airship reports involved unidentified lights, but more detailed accounts reported ships comparable to a dirigible. Reports of the alleged crewmen and pilots usually described them as human looking, although sometimes the crew claimed to be from Mars. It was popularly believed that the mystery airships were the product of some genius inventor not ready to make knowledge of his creation public. Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...
was so widely speculated to be the mind behind the alleged airships that in 1897 he "was forced to issue a strongly worded statement" denying his responsibility.
Mystery airships are unlikely to represent test flights of real human-manufactured dirigibles as no record of successful airship flights are known from the period and "it would have been impossible, not to mention irrational, to keep such a thing secret." Contemporary American newspapers were more likely
Yellow journalism
Yellow journalism or the yellow press is a type of journalism that presents little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers. Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism...
to print manufactured stories and hoaxes than modern ones are and newspapers often would have expected the reader to be in on the fact that the outlandish stories were hoaxes. Period journalists did not seem to take airship reports very seriously, as after the major 1896-1897 flap concluded the subject was not given further investigation. Instead, it was allowed to very quickly drop off the cultural radar. The subject only received further attention when ufologists revived studies of the airship reports as alleged early UFO sightings.
The 1896-1897 wave
The best-known of the Mystery Airship waves began in CaliforniaCalifornia
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
in 1896. Afterwards, reports and accounts of similar airships came from others areas, generally moving east. Some accounts during this wave of airship reports claim that occupants were visible on some airships, and encounters with the pilots were reported as well. These occupants often appeared to be human, though their behaviour, mannerisms and clothing were sometimes reported to be unusual. Sometimes the apparent humans claimed to be from the planet Mars.
Historian Mike Dash
Mike Dash
Mike Dash is a Welsh writer, historian and researcher. He is best known for his books and articles looking at unusual historical events, anomalous phenomena, and strange beliefs.-Biography:...
described and summarized the 1896-1897 series of airship sightings, writing;
Specific cases
- The Sacramento Bee and the San Francisco Call reported the first sighting of the flap on November 18, 1896. Witnesses reported a light moving slowly over SacramentoSacramentoSacramento is the capital of the state of California, in the United States of America.Sacramento may also refer to:- United States :*Sacramento County, California*Sacramento, Kentucky*Sacramento – San Joaquin River Delta...
on the evening of November 17 at an estimated 1,000 foot elevation. Some witnesses said they could see a dark shape behind the light. A witness named R. L. Lowery reported that he heard a voice from the craft issuing commands to increase elevation in order to avoid hitting a church steeple. Lowery added "in what was no doubt meant as a wink to the reader" that he believed the apparent captain to be referring to the tower of a local brewery, as there were no churches nearby. Lowery further described the craft as being powered by two men exerting themselves on bicycle pedals. Above the pedaling men seemed to be a passenger compartment, which lay under the main body of the dirigible. A light was mounted on the front end of the airship. Some witnesses reported the sound of singing as the craft passed overhead.
- The November 19, 1896 edition of the Stockton, CaliforniaStockton, CaliforniaStockton, California, the seat of San Joaquin County, is the fourth-largest city in the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California. With a population of 291,707 at the 2010 census, Stockton ranks as this state's 13th largest city...
Daily Mail featured one of the earliest accounts of an alleged alien craft sighting. Colonel H. G. Shaw claimed that while driving his buggy through the countryside near Stockton he came across what appeared to be a landed spacecraft. Shaw described it as having a metallic surface which was completely featureless apart from a rudder, and pointed ends. He estimated a diameter of 25 feet and said the vessel was around 150 feet in total length. Three slender, 7 feet (2.1 m), apparent extraterrestrials were said to approach from the craft while "emitting a strange warbling noise." The beings reportedly examined Shaw's buggy and then tried to physically force him to accompany them back to the airship. The aliens were said to give up after realizing they lacked the physical strength to force Shaw onto the ship. They supposedly fled back to their ship, which lifted off the ground and sped out of sight. Shaw believed that the beings were Martians sent to kidnap an earthling for unknowable but potentially nefarious purposes. This has been seen by some as an early attempt at alien abduction; it is apparently the first published account of explicitly extraterrestrial beings attempting to kidnap humans into their spacecraft.
- The mystery light reappeared over Sacramento the evening of November 21. It was also seen over Folsom, San Francisco and Oakland later that same evening and was reportedly viewed by hundreds of witnesses.
- One witness from ArkansasArkansasArkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
– allegedly a former state senator Harris – was supposedly told by an airship pilot (during the tensions leading up to the Spanish American War) that the craft was bound for CubaCubaThe Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, to use its "Hotchkiss gunHotchkiss gunThe Hotchkiss gun can refer to different products of the Hotchkiss arms company starting in the late 19th century. It usually refers to the 1.65-inch light mountain gun; there was also a 3-inch Hotchkiss gun...
" to "kill SpaniardsSpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
". (Jacobs, 10)
- In one account from TexasTexasTexas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, three men reported an encounter with an airship and with "five peculiarly dressed men" who reported that they were descendant from the lost tribes of Israel; they had learned English from the 1553 north poleNorth PoleThe North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is, subject to the caveats explained below, defined as the point in the northern hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface...
expedition led by Hugh WilloughbyHugh Willoughby (sea captain)Sir Hugh Willoughby of Risley, Derbyshire was an early English Arctic voyager. He was sent out on 10 May 1553, as captain of the Bona Esperanza with two other vessels under his command and with chief pilot Richard Chancellor, by a company of London merchants known as the Company of Merchant...
.
- February 2, 1897, the Omaha Bee reported an airship sighting over Hastings, Nebraska the previous day.
- An article in the Albion Weekly News reported that two witnesses saw an airship crash just inches from where they were standing. The airship suddenly disappeared, with a man standing where the vessel had been. The airship pilot showed the men a small device that supposedly enabled him to shrink the airship small enough to store the vessel in his pocket. A rival newspaper, the Wilsonville Review, playfully claimed that its own editor was an additional witness to the incident and that he heard the pilot say "Weiver eht rof ebircsbus!" The phrase he allegedly heard at the airship landing site is "Subscribe for the Review" transliterated backwards.
- On April 10th, 1897 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a story reporting that one W. H. Hopkins encountered a grounded airship about 20 feet in length and 8 feet in diameter near the outskirts of Springfield, Missouri. The vehicle was apparently propelled by 3 large propellers and crewed by a beautiful nude woman and a bearded man, also nude. Hopkins attempted with some difficulty to communicate with the crew in order to ascertain their origins. Eventually they understood what Hopkins was asking of them and they both pointed to the sky and "uttered something that sounded like the word 'Mars.'"
- An April 16th 1897 a story published by the Table Rock Argus claimed that a group of "anonymous but reliable" witnesses had seen an airship sailing overhead. The craft had many passengers. The witnesses claimed that among these passengers was a woman tied to a chair, a woman attending her, and a man with a pistol guarding their apparent prisoner. Before the witnesses thought to contact the authorities the airship was already gone.
- An account by Alexander Hamilton of Leroy, Kansas supposedly occurred about April 19, 1897, and was published in the Yates Center Farmer’s Advocate of April 23. Hamilton, his son, and a tenant witnessed an airship hovering over his cattle pen. Upon closer examination, the witnesses realized that a red “cable” from the airship had lassoed a heifer, but had also become entangled in the pen’s fence. After trying unsuccessfully to free the heifer, Hamilton cut loose a portion of the fence, then "stood in amazement to see the ship, cow and all rise slowly and sail off." (Jacobs, 15) Some have suggested this was the earliest report of cattle mutilationCattle mutilationCattle mutilation is the apparent killing and mutilation of cattle under unusual or anomalous circumstances...
(In 1982, however, UFO researcher Jerome ClarkJerome ClarkJerome Clark is an American researcher and writer, specializing in unidentified flying objects and other anomalous phenomena; he is also a songwriter of some note....
debunkedDebunkerA debunker is an individual who attempts to discredit and contradict claims as being false, exaggerated or pretentious. The term is closely associated with skeptical investigation of, or in some cases irrational resistance to, controversial topics such as U.F.O.s, claimed paranormal phenomena,...
this story, and confirmed via interviews and Hamilton's own affidavitAffidavitAn affidavit is a written sworn statement of fact voluntarily made by an affiant or deponent under an oath or affirmation administered by a person authorized to do so by law. Such statement is witnessed as to the authenticity of the affiant's signature by a taker of oaths, such as a notary public...
that the story was a successful attempt to win a Liar's Club competition to create the most outlandish tall taleTall taleA tall tale is a story with unbelievable elements, related as if it were true and factual. Some such stories are exaggerations of actual events, for example fish stories such as, "that fish was so big, why I tell ya', it nearly sank the boat when I pulled it in!" Other tall tales are completely...
).
- An accountAurora Texas UFO IncidentThe Aurora UFO Incident is a UFO incident that reportedly occurred on April 17, 1897 in Aurora, Texas, a small town in the northwest corner of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The incident reportedly resulted in a fatality from the crash...
from Aurora, TexasAurora, TexasAurora is a city in Wise County, Texas, United States. The population was 853 at the 2000 census.Aurora was also a town in Jefferson County, Texas, near the mouth of Taylor Bayou on Sabine Lake...
(as related in the Dallas Morning News) reported that an airship had smashed into a windmillWindmillA windmill is a machine which converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails or blades. Originally windmills were developed for milling grain for food production. In the course of history the windmill was adapted to many other industrial uses. An important...
– later determined to be a sump pumpSump pumpA sump pump is a pump used to remove water that has accumulated in a water collecting sump basin, commonly found in the basement of homes. The water may enter via the perimeter drains of a basement waterproofing system, funneling into the basin or because of rain or natural ground water, if the...
– belonging to a Judge Proctor, then crashed. The occupant was dead and mangled, but the story reported that presumed pilot was clearly "not an inhabitant of this world." (Jacobs, 17) Strange "hieroglyphicLogogramA logogram, or logograph, is a grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme . This stands in contrast to phonograms, which represent phonemes or combinations of phonemes, and determinatives, which mark semantic categories.Logograms are often commonly known also as "ideograms"...
" figures were seen on the wreckage, which resembled "a mixture of aluminum and silverSilverSilver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...
... it must have weighed several tons.”"(ibid.) (In the 20th Century, unusual metallic material recovered from the presumed crash site was shown to contain a percentage of aluminum and iron admixed.) The story ended by noting that the pilot was given a "Christian burialChristian burialA Christian burial is the burial of a deceased person with specifically Christian ecclesiastical rites; typically, in consecrated ground. Until recent times Christians generally objected to cremation, and practised inhumation almost exclusively, but this opposition has weakened, and now vanished...
" in the town cemetery. In 1973, MUFON investigators discovered the alleged stone marker used in this burial. Their metal detectors indicated a quantity of foreign material might remain buried there. However, they were not permitted to exhume, and when they returned several years later, the headstone – and whatever metallic material had lay beneath it – was gone.
1909-1913
There was a series of mystery airship sightings in 1909. Some came from various EuropeEurope
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an locations, some from New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
and from New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
. (Clark 2000, 123) Later reports came from the UK in 1912 and 1913. However, by this time airship technology was well advanced (Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin having been flying his massive passenger-carrying airships for nearly a decade by this time), making the prospect that these may have been small, private airships rather than evidence of extra-terrestrial visitation or newspaper hoaxes more reasonable.
Later research
Jerome ClarkJerome Clark
Jerome Clark is an American researcher and writer, specializing in unidentified flying objects and other anomalous phenomena; he is also a songwriter of some note....
writes that "One curious feature of the post-1887 airship waves was the failure of each to stick in historical memory. Although 1909, for example, brought a flood of sightings worldwide and attendant discussion and speculation, contemporary accounts do not allude to the hugely publicized events of little more than a decade earlier." (Clark 2000, 123)
Clark writes that attempts to "uncover the truth about the late-nineteenth-century airship scare comes up against some unhappy realities: newspaper coverage was unreliable; no independent investigators ('airshipologists') spoke directly with alleged witnesses or attempted to verify or debunk their testimony; and, with a single unsatisfactory exception, no eyewitness was ever interviewed even in the 1950’s, when some were presumably still living."(Clark 1998, 37)
The "single unsatisfactory exception" Clark cites is a former San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
employee interviewed via telephone by Edward J. Ruppelt
Edward J. Ruppelt
Edward J. Ruppelt was a United States Air Force officer probably best-known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects...
in 1952. Ruppelt wrote that the man "had been a copy boy ... and remembered the incident, but time had cancelled out the details. He did tell me that he, the editor of the paper, and the news staff had seen 'the ship', as he referred to the UFO. His story, even though it was fifty-six years old, smacked of others I’d heard when he said that no one at the newspaper ever told anyone what they had seen; they didn’t want people to think they were 'crazy.'"
Jacobs notes that "Most arguments against the airship idea came from individuals who assumed that the witnesses did not see what they claimed to see. This is the crucial link between the 1896-97 phenomenon and the modern unidentified flying object phenomenon beginning in 1947. It also was central to the debate over whether unidentified flying objects constituted a unique phenomenon." (Jacobs, 33-34)
In 2009, American Author J. Allan Danelek wrote a book entitled The Great Airship of 1897 (Adventures Unlimited Press) in which he makes the case that the mystery airship was the work of an unknown individual, possibly funded by a wealthy investor from San Francisco, to build an airship prototype as a test vehicle for a later series of larger, passenger carrying airships. In the work, Danelek not only lays out a plausible scenario, but demonstrates how the craft might have been built using materials and technologies available in 1896 (including speculative line drawings and technical details). The ship, Danelek proposes, was built in secret to safegard from patent infringement as well as to protect investors in case of failure. Noting that the flights were initially seen over California and only later over the Midwest, he speculates that the inventor was making a series of short test flights, moving from west to east and following the main raillines for logistical support, and that it was these experimental flights that formed the basis for many – though not all – of the newspaper accounts from the era. Danelek also notes that the reports ended abruptly in mid-April of 1897, suggesting that the craft may have met with disaster, effectively ending the venture and permitting the sightings to fall into the realm of mythology. While highly conjectural, the book does make a reasonable case for the craft having been of terrestrial rather than extraterrestrial origin.
Hoaxes or misidentification
During the 1896-1897 wave, there were many attempts to explain the airship sightings, including suggestion of hoaxHoax
A hoax is a deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as truth. It is distinguishable from errors in observation or judgment, or rumors, urban legends, pseudosciences or April Fools' Day events that are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes.-Definition:The British...
es, pranks, publicity stunt
Publicity stunt
A publicity stunt is a planned event designed to attract the public's attention to the event's organizers or their cause. Publicity stunts can be professionally organized or set up by amateurs...
s and hallucination
Hallucination
A hallucination, in the broadest sense of the word, is a perception in the absence of a stimulus. In a stricter sense, hallucinations are defined as perceptions in a conscious and awake state in the absence of external stimuli which have qualities of real perception, in that they are vivid,...
s. One man suggested the airships were swarms of lightning beetles
Firefly
Lampyridae is a family of insects in the beetle order Coleoptera. They are winged beetles, and commonly called fireflies or lightning bugs for their conspicuous crepuscular use of bioluminescence to attract mates or prey. Fireflies produce a "cold light", with no infrared or ultraviolet frequencies...
misidentified by observers (Jacobs, 30).
Jacobs believed that many airship tales were due to “Enterprising reporters perpetrating journalistic hoaxes.” (Jacobs, 16) However, Jacobs notes that many of these accounts “are easy to identify because of their tongue-in-cheek tone, and accent on the sensational.” (ibid.) Furthermore, the supposed authors of many such newspaper hoaxes make their hoax obvious "by saying – in the last line – that he was writing from an insane asylum (or something to that effect)." (Jacobs, 17-18)
Human airships
Some argued that the airship reports were genuine accounts. Steerable airships had been publicly flown in the US since the Aereon in 1863, and numerous inventors were working on airship and aircraft designs (the idea that a secretive inventor might have developed a viable craft with advanced capabilities was the focus of Jules VerneJules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...
's 1886 novel Robur the Conqueror
Robur the Conqueror
Robur the Conqueror is a science fiction novel by Jules Verne, published in 1886. It is also known as The Clipper of the Clouds. It has a sequel, The Master of the World, which was published in 1904.- Plot summary :...
). In fact, two French army officers and engineers, Arthur Krebs
Arthur Krebs
Arthur Constantin Krebs was a French officer and pioneer in automotive engineering....
and Charles Renard
Charles Renard
Charles Renard was a French military engineer. After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 he started work on the design of air ships at the French army aeronautical department. Together with Arthur C...
, had successfully flown in an electric-powered airship called the La France as early as 1885, making no fewer than seven successful flights in the craft over an eleven month period. Also during the 1896-1897 period, Bosnian inventor David Schwarz
David Schwarz (aviation inventor)
David Schwarz was a Hungarian aviation pioneer of Jewish descent.Schwarz created the first flyable rigid airship. It was also the first airship with an external hull made entirely of metal. He died before he could see it finally fly...
built an aluminum-skinned airship in Germany that successfully flew over Templehof before being irreparably damaged during a hard landing. Both events clearly demonstrated that the technology to build a practical airship existed during the period in question, though if reports of the capabilities of the California and Midwest airship sighted in 1896-97 are true, it would have been considerably more advanced than any airship built up to that time.
Several individuals, including Lyman Gilmore
Lyman Gilmore
Lyman Wiswell Gilmore, Jr. was an aviation pioneer. In Grass Valley, California, USA, he built a steam-powered airplane and claimed that he flew it on May 15, 1902. Due to the requirement of a heavy boiler and the dependency on coal as a power source, the flights would have been short...
and Charles Dellschau
Charles Dellschau
Charles August Albert Dellschau was an American outsider artist of Prussian birth.-Life:Dellschau was a butcher by trade who, after his retirement in 1899, filled at least 13 notebooks with drawings, watercolor paintings and collages depicting fantastical airships.He lived and worked in an attic...
, were later identified as possible candidates for being involved in the design and construction of the airships, although little evidence was found in support of these ideas.
Claims of extraterrestrial origin
Early citations of the extraterrestrial hypothesisExtraterrestrial hypothesis
The extraterrestrial hypothesis is the hypothesis that some unidentified flying objects are best explained as being extraterrestrial life or non-human aliens from other planets occupying physical spacecraft visiting Earth.-Etymology:...
, all from 1897, include the Washington Times
Washington Times-Herald
The Washington Times-Herald was an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C.. It was created by Cissy Patterson, when she bought the Herald and the Times from William Randolph Hearst, and merged them. The result was a '24 hour' newspaper, with 10 editions per day, from morning to...
, which speculated that the airships were "a reconnoitering party from Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
"; and the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, which suggested of the airships, "these may be visitors from Mars, fearful, at the last, of invading the planet they have been seeking." (Jacobs, 29) In 1909, a letter printed in the Otago Daily Times
Otago Daily Times
The Otago Daily Times is a newspaper published by Allied Press Ltd in Dunedin, New Zealand.-History:Originally styled The Otago Daily Times, the ODT was first published on November 15, 1861. It is New Zealand's oldest surviving daily newspaper - Christchurch's The Press, six months older, was a...
(New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
) suggested that the mystery airship sightings then being reported in that country were due to Martian
Martian
As an adjective, the term martian is used to describe anything pertaining to the planet Mars.However, a Martian is more usually a hypothetical or fictional native inhabitant of the planet Mars. Historically, life on Mars has often been hypothesized, although there is currently no solid evidence of...
"atomic-powered spaceships." (Clark 2000, 123)