“I know the people involved,” he replied, “and I don’t think the
pilot was nuts.  I can’t give you the report, because Colonel ------
told me to destroy it.  But I did think you should know about it.” 
Later he burned the report.

The problems involved in this report are typical.  There are certain definite facts that can be gleaned from it; the pilot did see something and he did shoot at something, but no matter how thoroughly you investigate the incident that something can never be positively identified.  It might have been a hallucination or it might have been some vehicle from outer space; no one will ever know.  It was a ufo.

The ufo story started soon after June 24, 1947, when newspapers all over the United States carried the first flying saucer report.  The story told how nine very bright, disk-shaped objects were seen by Kenneth Arnold, a Boise, Idaho, businessman, while he was flying his private plane near Mount Rainier, in the state of Washington.  With journalistic license, reporters converted Arnold’s description of the individual motion of each of the objects—­like “a saucer skipping across water”—­into “flying saucer,” a name for the objects themselves.  In the eight years that have passed since Arnold’s memorable sighting, the term has become so common that it is now in Webster’s Dictionary and is known today in most languages in the world.

For a while after the Arnold sighting the term “flying saucer” was used to describe all disk-shaped objects that were seen flashing through the sky at fantastic speeds.  Before long, reports were made of objects other than disks, and these were also called flying saucers.  Today the words are popularly applied to anything seen in the sky that cannot be identified as a common, everyday object.

Thus a flying saucer can be a formation of lights, a single light, a sphere, or any other shape; and it can be any color.  Performance-wise, flying saucers can hover, go fast or slow, go high or low, turn 90- degree corners, or disappear almost instantaneously.

Obviously the term “flying saucer” is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance.  For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name:  unidentified flying objects.  Ufo (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short.

Officially the military uses the term “flying saucer” on only two occasions.  First in an explanatory sense, as when briefing people who are unacquainted with the term “Ufo”:  “Ufo—­you know—­flying saucers.”  And second in a derogatory sense, for purposes of ridicule, as when it is observed, “He says he saw a flying saucer.”

This second form of usage is the exclusive property of those persons who positively know that all UFO’s are nonsense.  Fortunately, for the sake of good manners if for no other reason, the ranks of this knowing category are constantly dwindling.  One by one these people drop out, starting with the instant they see their first ufo.