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<title>The Vehicles (Ufology, by James M. McCampbell)</title>
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<p class="exergue">........ the scientific world at large is in for a shock when it becomes aware of the
  astonishingnature of the UFO phenomenon and its bewildering complexity <span class="source">- James E. McDonald</span>
</p>
<p>The belief that people are poor observers is widely held; they are easily mistaken about what they have seen, or they
  fail to notice details correctly. Experiments by psychologists, on the contrary, have shown that the inherent ability
  of people to absorb visual information is very great. Subjects in one experiment were shown 600 different pictures in
  rapid succession. Shortly thereafter they were able to identify new ones that had been added to the collection, with
  an average accuracy over 98%. Their score fell to only 92% when the test was delayed for one week. Not only is the
  power of visual recognition evidently quite strong for most people, their retention is also good, at least for short
  periods. In discussing UFO sightings before a Congressional Committee, a noted psychologist explained that, even in
  unexpected and stressful situations, ". . . the average witness often retains an accurate, almost photographic record
  of the event." (1) A person's recollection of an event can be recovered in considerable detail on the basis of
  recognition. The victim of a criminal attack, for example, may recognize his assailant in a line-up although he may be
  unable to describe him accurately. Similarly, the use of graded sketches of eyes, noses, and mouths permits a witness,
  with the help of a police artist, to develop a satisfactory portrait of a suspect that could not be done solely from a
  description. People simply are limited in their ability to describe what they have seen or to communicate an
  experience. Because advanced psychological techniques involving recognition have seldom been employed in eliciting
  information from UFO witnesses, the available data is handicapped by being almost exclusively descriptive in nature.
  This fact has undoubtedly frustrated progress in this field.
</p>
<h2>Discs</h2>
<p>Nine large discs flying near Mt. Rainier, Washington, set off the modern hubbub about UFOs. They were sighted by
  businessman Kenneth Arnold from his own plane in June 1947. He estimated that they were 100 ft in diameter and
  traveling at least 1,200 miles per hour.(2) These objects resembled pie plates, but news paper accounts of "flying
  saucers" introduced a new expression into English. The term eventually became obsolete, however, as people began
  reporting objects with shapes very unlike saucers: the more generic term "unidentified flying objects" became more
  suitable.
</p>
<p>Even a cursory examination of a file of sighting reports will impress the researcher that most of the objects
  appeared to be discs. Seldom will the descriptions be entirely clear, and some will admit alternative interpretations.
  An object described merely as "round" may have been a disc, but it may also have been a sphere, or a cylinder viewed
  from one end. An object may have appeared "oval shaped," while in reality it was only a disc that was tipped slightly
  off the line of vision. It is not always easy to establish the exact shape of the reported objects, nor even to select
  several categories of shapes that are mutually exclusive and free from ambiguity. At any rate, the disc-shaped UFO
  with a diameter about 10 times its thickness is almost universally accepted as standard. This point was raised in an
  Air Force report (3) as early as 1949, and it has been verified by several statistical studies. Because various and
  non-compatible categories were selected in the independent studies, results cannot be directly compared. However, the
  National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena found that the discs in Air Force cases through 1963 ranged from
  26% to 56%, depending upon several reasonable assumptions regarding the ambiguities just mentioned. (4) The author
  independently analyzed 447 short-range sightings that occurred in the decade from November 23, 1958, through November
  22, 1968. These sightings should have provided the witnesses excellent opportunities to observe the shapes. In 77
  instances in which the shapes were noted, roughly 50%of the objects appeared to be discs. (5) A similar result may be
  calculated from still another study, although it is extremely difficult to determine which of the 33 categories used
  in it should be taken as discs. (6)
</p>
<p>The most important contribution of this last investigation is an organized disclosure of different types of UFOs
  within the general category of discs. One must be cautious here, for while the primary common feature is axial
  symmetry in the vertical direction, some of the shapes could easily be labeled something other than "disc." The
  researcher obtained 150 photographs of UFOs from which were culled those showing mere blobs of light devoid of any
  details. He then made sketches of the remaining 63 objects at the same scale, and suppressing all backgrounds,
  assembled the images in a single diagram. Rather than displaying a general uniformity or a clustering of a few types
  as would be expected, these sketches show a wide diversity of appearances.
</p>
<p>One object had been photographed at different angles by the same witness. In a few other instances, the same type of
  UFO had apparently been photographed by different people at different places and times. Of special interest in this
  regard is a photograph taken at McMinnville, Oregon, in June 1950 that stumped the Condon staff. An almost identical
  object was photographed by a French military pilot near Rouen, France, in March 1954. Another pair of photographs also
  seem to depict the same type of object that is easily distinguishable from the McMinnville-Rouen pair. One of these
  pictures was taken near Rio de Janeiro in May, 1952, while the other was taken from a fighter plane in Argentina about
  2 years later.
</p>
<p>Also included in the 63 diagrams were 7 instances in which hoaxes were suspected or had been proved. Setting these
  cases aside, along with the duplications above, still leaves a total of about 500 different UFO models in this general
  category. Variations of shape in this category that appear to be most common are:
</p>
<ol type="a">
  <li> Discs having one or both sides that are convex, thus resembling either a discus or a lens, and</li>
  <li>Discs with a dome on the top sometimes giving the appearance of a hat or a World War I helmet.</li>
</ol>
<h2>Fuselages</h2>
<p>A famous sighting that was carried by Project Blue Book as an "unknown" took place early one morning in the spring of
  1966. While driving near Temple, Oklahoma, a man had to stop his car because a large object was blocking the highway.
  Its shape reminded him of the fuselage of a Douglas C-124 Globemaster. He could detect no appendages, such as wings,
  engines, or tail, although there was a transparent blister on the top. Its surface was very smooth. As the witness
  approached, the object rose into the air and departed at high speed. (7) During the summer of 1973, a similar object
  was observed from a distance of a city block as it hovered and maneuvered over Macon, Georgia. Five people described
  it as a "long tube" like a cigar, being larger than a light plane but smaller than a Boeing 727. (8) According to the
  previous statistical studies, these elongated UFOs apparently account for about 10% of all sightings. They have been
  aptly compared to airplane bodies as more explicit descriptions have indicated that they are rather blunt on one end
  but somewhat tapered on the other.
</p>
<h2>Spheres</h2>
<p>Throughout the spring of 1973, hundreds of sightings were reported in southern Missouri. Notices of this activity
  were carried in specialty periodicals, but few, if any, metropolitan newspapers commented on it. (9) Several teams of
  investigators converged upon the area, including the principals of the International UFO Bureau. These investigators,
  during a total of 11 days of research over a period of several weeks, located 200 people who had seen a UFO and tape
  recorded interviews with them. They, themselves, also experienced two sightings. On one occasion, the relative size of
  the object was compared to a pea held at arms length, giving ample opportunity to observe its shape, to discern some
  structural details, and to estimate its size. It was a sphere about 15 ft in diameter. (10)
</p>
<p>Near the end of the war in Vietnam a spherical object with a luminous, orange glow was sighted at high altitude over
  Hanoi where it remained nearly stationary for about an hour and a half. Thinking that some kind of air raid was
  imminent, the North Vietnamese fired three anti-aircraft missiles at it. They were completely ineffective, however, as
  none could reach the extreme altitude of the spherical UFO. (11)
</p>
<p>These two examples will illustrate the dozens of reports of this relatively common type. They seem to be most often
  perfectly spherical but some variations occur, as follows:
</p>
<ol type="a">
  <li> Flattened spheres or spheroids, and</li>
  <li>Spheres with a flange around the equator like the rings of Saturn.</li>
</ol>
<h2>Potpourri</h2>
<p>Witnesses have used a wide assortment of words and comparisons in describing UFOs. While some of them may be synonyms
  for the major types discussed above, it appears that many are not. Because some of the more odd-ball expressions have
  been used several times in widely scattered sightings, the descriptions are more likely to be valid than mere bumbling
  attempts at communication. Typical, but rarely occurring, examples are: football, water tank, dumbbell, plates
  rim-to-rim, oval, mushroom, egg, toy top, diamond, parachute, cone, cushion,<br> hamburger sandwich, lampshade.
</p>
<p> Assuming that a few of these allusions are moderately accurate leads to a proliferation of UFO models that begins to
  stretch the imagination. But that discomfort is an inadequate basis for discounting the record. A native boy, suddenly
  transported from the familiar bush of his homeland to a freeway in Los Angeles, would be amazed at the diversity of
  vehicles passing by. He might quickly realize that part of the reason was related to their different purposes. He
  could see that the size of the load was important, pickup trucks and huge trailer rigs being used to haul different
  amounts of freight. Similarly for the number of passengers carried by sports cars versus buses. Much less obvious to
  him would be the very important influence of competition among the manufacturers and personal preference of the buyers
  concerning economy, image, and convenience. This little allegory cannot explain the multiplicity of UFO types. It
  should serve, however, to prevent a setback in an investigation proven to be uncomfortably complex.
</p>
<p>It is known, at least, that highly specialized vehicles may display weird configurations. Consider the Lunar
  Excursion Module. It is designed exclusively to lower two men gently onto the surface of the moon and lift them back
  into lunar orbit for a rendezvous with a companion vehicle. Major determinants of its design are the need to fly in a
  vacuum and a gravitational field that is only one-sixth that on earth. By its ungainly aspect it mimics a giant insect
  much better than a proper spacecraft.
</p>
<h2>Size</h2>
<p>Another old bugbear has plagued the study of UFOs: theoretically, the size of an unknown object flying through the
  sky at a considerable distance cannot be judged at all. A relatively small object at short range may subtend the same
  angle at the observer's eye as a larger object farther away. Without some additional point of reference, therefore,
  the estimated size of a UFO is of little value. But the circumstances of many sightings provide the necessary clues.
  Very great distance is suggested when an object is obscured by atmospheric haze in comparison to another whose
  distance is known. Also, the relationship of a UFO to its surroundings often helps. A UFO may be seen rising from
  behind a row of trees, passing in front of a mountain range, hovering under a cloud bank, or fleeing from a military
  jet. For limited ranges, the depth perception afforded by having two eyes provides a subjective measure of the
  distance. Disturbances on the ground directly under a UFO may be located. At low altitude, the width of a UFO can be
  readily assessed if it is seen to block a two-lane highway. Marks left on the ground by a landed UFO are a very
  reliable basis for judging its size. As these reference points have been involved in thousands of sightings, the data
  on UFO sizes is far from meaningless, especially when they are derived from close-hand observations.
</p>
<p>One would expect the conventional methods of statistics to be most helpful in analyzing the size data. By separating
  cases involving only discs, for example, one should discover estimated sizes clustering about the actual dimensions of
  several different models. But that has not been the author's experience. The data simply display no such tendency.
  Contamination of the sample is suspected to be the cause of this difficulty, namely, unwitting inclusion of various
  types of UFOs within a particular classification. In addition, people are known to be rather poor at estimating
  dimensions.
</p>
<p>The diameters of discs, nevertheless, have been estimated to cover the enormous range from about 2 ft to 300 ft.
  Familiar objects with corresponding dimensions would be a large serving tray and a football field. But let there be no
  mistake here, several different models of UFOs are involved and this disparity has nothing to do with human error.
  Other shapes have also been estimated at various sizes:
</p>
<table cellpadding="4">
  <tr>
    <th>Shape</th>
    <th>Dimension (feet)</th>
    <th>Range Of Size (feet)</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Cylinder</td>
    <td>length</td>
    <td>12 to 210</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Egg</td>
    <td>length</td>
    <td>9 to 75</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Sphere</td>
    <td>diameter</td>
    <td>6 to 21</td>
  </tr>
</table>
<p>Perhaps this situation would come into sharper focus with a large-scale analysis of the data using a computer. For
  the present, one can only depend upon the most reliable estimates made at close range and a general acquaintance with
  the literature. References are regrettably omitted here because of the prodigious scale of the data-retrieval problem.
  The primary UFO types appear to be:
</p>
<ul>
  <li> PROBES: Spheres and discs between 1- and 3-ft diameter that are almost certainly sensing devices, either
    preprogrammed or remotely controlled. They have been seen to emerge from standard craft, fly around for extended
    periods, then return for pick up. The kind of measurements that they take can only be guessed.
  </li>
  <li>SMALL: Three principal types eventually belong to this group;
    <ol type="a">
      <li>An egg-shaped machine about 6- to 8-ft long that flies with the long axis vertical, comparable in
        size to a compact sedan.
      </li>
      <li>An elongated cylinder without external appendages that flies in the direction of its axis, comparable
        in size to the body of a jet fighter.
      </li>
      <li>A spherical object about 15 ft in diameter.</li>
    </ol>
  </li>
  <li>STANDARD: This group, accounting for about half the sightings is dominated by the basic disc with numerous
    variations. Most common size is about 25- to 35-ft diameter.
  </li>
  <li>LARGE: Several different types. Most frequently reported is a disc about 100 ft diameter. An<br> even larger one,
    several stories tall inside, probably has a diameter between 250- and<br> 300-ft. A large cigar-shaped craft should
    also be included here.
  </li>
  <li>CARRIER: Seen only at very high altitude is a gigantic, cigar-shaped machine that is probably twice<br> as large
    as an aircraft carrier and, perhaps, as much as 1 mile in length. Smaller craft have<br> been seen to be discharged
    from them in large numbers.
  </li>
</ul>
<h2>Structural Details</h2>
<p>Usually, the exterior surface of UFOs is reported to be extremely smooth. Many witnesses have commented upon this
  aspect, expressing surprise that they were unable to detect any line of adjoining plates on the surface or any rivets.
  In a few instances, a door has been seen to open in the side where the witness could not detect an outline before it
  started to move. Also, upon closing, the line demarking the door opening could no longer be discerned, although the
  witness was only a few feet away. (12) This characteristic of the surface may be related to electrical conduction in
  the skin as explored in a later chapter.
</p>
<p>The exterior surface is not normally broken by any kind of structural feature although openings have been observed in
  great numbers. In a study of 50 such cases, openings were shown to be usually round or rectangular but sometimes of
  irregular shape. Their arrangement occurred in different patterns on different types of UFOs. (13) These windows seem
  to be most common on the fuselage-shaped vehicles,. usually being dispersed in a single row of 4 or 5 along the side.
  The number, shape, and location of windows seems to vary considerably on other types. A thorough study of this detail
  should help to delineate specific UFO models, but again, this task would be too cumbersome without a computer.
</p>
<p>A most interesting feature on some models is an elevator that is lowered while the UFO remains hovering several feet
  above the ground. This detail is so unique that it alone may isolate a particular type. These vehicles have evidently
  visited West Virginia (1965), Minnesota (1967), and Nebraska (1967). (14) It is quite possible that a careful plot of
  similar sightings in which all factors were compatible would reconstruct the itinerary of an individual craft.
</p>
<p>The literature is full of accounts of other structural elements such as landing gear, stairways, balustrades, and
  antennas. More than once, people have looked in the windows of landed vehicles to discover chairs, benches, tables,
  lights, and control consoles. Others have gone inside. This very important area should receive much more attention
  than it has in the past.
</p>
<p>Footnotes</p>
<p>1. Shepard, Roger N., "Some Psychological Techniques For The Scientific Investigation of<br> Unidentified Aerial
  Phenomena," Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings<br> before the Committee on Science and Astronautics,
  U.S. House of Representatives,<br> Ninetieth Congress, Second Edition, p.226, U.S. Government Printing office, July
  29, 1968.<br> 2. Keyhoe, Donald E., Flying Saucers From Outer Space, p.31, Holt, 1953.<br> 3. Project Grudge Report
  No. l02-AC-49/15-lOO, U.S. Air Force, 1949, quoted in Hall,<br> Richard H., Editor, The UFO Evidence, p.143, National
  Investigations Committee on Aerial<br> Phenomena, 1964.<br> 4. Hall, Richard H., Editor, The UFO Evidence, p.143,
  National Investigations Committee on<br> Aerial Phenomena, 1964.<br> 5. Data extracted from case summaries in Vallee,
  Jacques, Passport to Magonia, p.273 ff,<br> Regnery, 1969. Considering synonyms as indicated by the "equal" marks, the
  selected<br> categories and the number of instances assigned to them were:<br> * Disc round 31<br> Egg = oval 7<br>
  Cylinder = cigar = elongated = fuselage 13<br> Hemisphere = dome = helmet 5<br> * Plate = saucer 5<br> * Lip-to-lip
  dishes 4<br> Cone 2<br> Sphere 3<br> Mushroom 3<br> Top 1<br> Lampshade 1
</p>
<p> * These categories were all considered to be discs.</p>
<p>6. Shepard, Roger N., "Some Psychological Techniques For The Scientific Investigation of<br> Unidentified Aerial
  Phenomena," Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, Hearings before<br> the Committee on Science and Astronautics,
  U.S. House of Representatives, Ninetieth<br> Congress, Second Edition, p.232, U.S. Government Printing Office, July
  29, 1968.<br> 7. Complete Directory of UFOs, An illustrated History of Unexplained Sightings From Project<br> Blue
  Book, The Official Guide to UFOs, p.47, Science and Mechanics Publishing Company,<br> 1968.<br> 8. Personal
  communication.<br> 9. Missouri UFO Still on the Scene, UFO Investigator, p. 2, National Investigations Committee<br>
  on Aerial Phenomena, May, 1973.<br> 10. Hewes, Hayden C., Earthprobe, published by International UFO Bureau, P.O. Box
  1281,<br> Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 73101, 1973.<br> 11. San Francisco Chronicle, September 30, 1972.<br> 12. Vallee,
  Jacques, Passport To Magonia, p.24, Regnery, 1969.<br> 13. Hall, Richard E., Editor, The UFO Evidence, p.145.,
  National Investigations Committee on<br> Aerial Phenomena, 1964.<br> 14. Vallee, Jacques, Passport to Magonia,
  Appendix Cases 644, 812, and 902, Regnery, 1969.
</p>
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