Alfred Loedding and the Great Flying Saucer Wave of 1947

We must be cautious of the hubris of the present. When UFOs first appeared in numbers during
the great flying saucer wave of 1947, few people made the jump to an extraterrestrial hypothesis.
The subject of this book, Alfred Loedding, is significant because he did eventually lean toward that
assumption. Because he played such an instrumental role in the first official Air Force investigation
into the phenomena, it is important to analyze the progression of his theories.

For the best part of the summer of 1947 most serious minds studying the flying disc mystery, like
Alfred Loedding, considered that a domestic secret project might account for the sightings. After
eliminating that possibility, the "foreign origin" option was exhaustively explored. By 1948 foreign
origin became a catch word for visitors from outer space, but in 1947 it meant only one thing—
Russians. In fact, worries that the Soviet Union may have gleaned a Nazi super weapon at the end of
the Second World War remained in the minds of Air Force officials up through 1952. But by late
1947 some aeronautical engineers, like Alfred Loedding, began to consider that "flying saucers" may
represent intelligently controlled machines from another world. Why? What was the mind set in
1947 that could rationalize such a conclusion? What was his perspective? Where was the proof?

It is very difficult with our 1998 view of popular culture to consider a time when there was no
extensive set of preconceptions on extraterrestrial life. Without a Steven Spielberg to help us dream,
or a Star Wars trilogy and a thousand other such productions dating back to 1949, we would not
have the present-day mind set that we do. Yet, that is not to say there was not already some basis for
the consideration of alien visitation.