Flying saucer

A flying saucer (also referred to as a flying disc) is a descriptive term for a supposed type of flying craft having a disc or saucer-shaped body, commonly used generically to refer to an anomalous flying object. Reported sightings of unknown "flying saucers" usually describe them as silver or metallic, sometimes covered with navigation lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability.

While disc-shaped flying objects have been interpreted as being sporadically recorded since the Middle Ages, the first recorded use of the term "flying saucer" for an unidentified flying object was to describe a probable meteor that fell over Texas and Oklahoma on June 17, 1930. The highly publicized sighting by Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947 near Roswell, New Mexico, resulted in the popularity of the term "flying saucer" by U.S. newspapers. Both the terms flying saucer and flying disc were used commonly and interchangeably in the media until the early 1950s.

Many of the alleged flying saucer photographs of the era are now believed to be hoaxes. The flying saucer is now considered largely an icon of the 1950s and of B-movies in particular, and is a popular subject in comic science fiction.

Flying saucer in The House of Daniel
By 1934, flying hubcaps (so dubbed by the locals) had become a common sight in the skies above Roswell, New Mexico, although few non-Roswellians were aware of them. Flying in formations of eight or ten in a V shape, like a Canada goose flock, the craft were dead quiet and didn't buzz like aeroplanes, and turned much more agilely than flying carpets. The Army Air Corps did not regard the hubcaps as a threat, and no other authority regarded them as a matter for any concern, so the flying hubcaps were left alone.

Flying saucer in "The Star and the Rockets"
After a mysterious aircraft crashed near the town in 1947, Roswell embraced its association with flying saucers in a tongue-in-cheek way which didn't take the matter seriously. Roswell citizen Joe Bauman regarded the whole matter as silly, until his encounter with three strange men in 1954.