(John Kelly, Washington Post, 11/18/2023)
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.
Promising to revolutionize aviation, Caldwell sold stock for his Gray Goose Airways, which he said would utilize unique technology. Government regulators were not impressed. The inventor left Maryland in a hurry, leaving behind experimental aircraft. (Evening Star Collection/D.C. Public Library via Washington Post)
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.
Continue reading at the Washington Post
