October 14, 1949 — Mt. Palomar Observatory, CA
1:15 p.m. Harley C. Marshall, manager of public relations at Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, is driving away from the observatory when he sees a perfect “V of V’s” formation of about 16–18 silver objects without tails or wings overhead traveling at high speed to the northwest and emitting a sound like jets. He stops and watches them disappear behind the cloud cover. Returning to the observatory, he phones electrician Benjamin B. Traxler, who at 1:20 p.m. sees one dark UFO traveling to the southwest. Marshall checks the Navy Electronics Laboratory Geiger counter on site and sees that the needle has jumped off the scale for several seconds. For the next 10 days, another 21 incidents of off-scale cosmic-ray detector incidents occur at scattered times, fitting a periodic 1.5-hour time schedule, a phenomenon not seen before or after, and unexplainable by equipment failure or radio interference from aircraft. Two representatives of the Office of Naval Research and two from the Naval Electronics Laboratory in Point Loma, California (Joseph P. Maxfield and G. L. Bloom), visit the observatory to investigate the readings, but not before they stop in at Alice Wells’s Palomar Gardens Café on the way in.
After George Adamski claims he has seen increased UFO activity in the area (including a sighting about the same time as another observation by Traxler on October 21), they ask him if he would send them any photos he might take with one of his telescopes. He gives them a copy of a telescopic photo he took in February 1949 with his 15-inch reflector.
The Naval Electronics Lab later attributes the photo to “electric discharge which frequently occurs in cameras during film pulling in dry or cold climates.” Several Navy aircraft of differing prop and jet types are flown near the observatory using radio, altimeter, and radars on October 21 and November 2 in an unsuccessful effort to trigger the Geiger counter. [Eberhart]
Blue Book Documents:
Source:
Brad Sparks, Blue Books Unknowns Catalogue, Case 293-294, pp. 74–75;
James W. Moseley, ed. Special Adamski Expose Issue. Saucer News 27 (October 1957): 2-3,5;
McDonald, James E. Letter to William T. Sherwood (February 6, 1969);
Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: April–July 1950, The Author, 1982, pp. 7-8;
Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: July-December 1949, 2nd Edition, The Author, 1988, p. 50-52;
Loren E. Gross, The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs, a History: July-December 1949, Supplemental Notes, The Author, 2000, pp. 41,44;
Eric Herr, “George Adamski: An Historical Note,” Flying Saucer Review 34, no. 3 (September 1989): 15;
Eric Herr, “Adamski: ‘Pure Fiction’?,” MUFON UFO Journal, no. 264 (April 1990): 13;
Colin Bennett, Looking for Orthon, Paraview, 2001, pp. 29–30;
Michael Swords and Robert Powell, UFOs and Government, pp. 86–87;
Jerome Clark, The UFO Encyclopedia, 3rd Ed., pp. 38, 949–950;
Jerome Clark, The UFO Encyclopedia, 4th Ed., pp. 1063-1064;
Not Included:
Maurice Weekley and George Adamski, “Flying Saucers As Astronomers See Them,” Fate 3, no. 6 (September 1950): 56–59;
NICAP, “Geiger Counters Detect UFO Presence”;