Brief UFO timeline based on mainstream news reports

Battle of Los Angeles incident. One or more objects appear above the West Coast. One of these hovers above L.A. for 30 minutes with anti-aircraft batteries firing on it continuously. The object does not seem to be affected by it at all and moves on.

Extremely fast red, green, white, blue, and yellow balls of light with fiery tails appear over the skies of Europe. According to Time Magazine, a Swiss army plane collided with one of the objects, killing all 3 occupants. Other witnesses on water or in the air claim to have had near misses with some of these things. The press speculates that these "ghost rockets" may have been launched from the Russian-controlled Peenemunde, the former Nazi missile base. At the end of the summer, reports come from Denmark, Norway, Spain, Greece, French Morocco, Portugal, and Turkey. After that, the phenomenon suddenly left.

The first widely reported flying saucer flap in the U.S., marking the beginning of a large UFO wave. The wave peaks in the first 2 weeks of July.

The Roswell incident. After having reviewed debris from the crash site, a local air base sends out a report that it has retrieved a flying saucer. When word reaches the Pentagon and White House the story rapidly changes to a weather balloon. However, there's every indication that the crash is some sort of psywar opeation of the Air Force.

The National Security Act creates the National Security Council, the Department of Defense, and the first peace time civilian intelligence agency, the CIA. The Air Force, Navy, and Army are merged with the DOD and now fall under the leadership of the secretary of defense. The national security state is born.

Project Sign is established after 3 months of planning. It is later followed up by Project Grudge and Blue Book.

The "ghost rockets" are back and are first seen in countries like North Jutland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Germany. The phenomenon spreads to all of Europe and even to South-America. This time many witnesses report that the fireballs move slowly. In March 1948 the reports die out again.

The "Green Fireball" phenomenon appears in the United States, especially in the southwest, where all the top secret military research institutions are located. These balls are very large, pale green, noiseless "meteors", which never seem to crash. In the latter part of 1949 the reports die out.

UFOs are frequently spotted at Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska. Coincidentally, in the midst of such a flap, a USAF Douglas C-54 Skymaster with 44 people on board vanishes over land. It is never found back, despite intensive search and rescue operations.

UFOs are spotted and sometimes tracked on radar in Korea.

The famous Washington, D.C. sightings. During the latter part of July, UFOs are spotted and tracked on radar above Washington D.C. One picture captures them flying above the Capitol. The lights react intelligently to the scrambled jet fighters.

Sightings of flying saucers and other UFOs has been on the increase since 1947. They are seen by many many pilots. At this point reports of them start to decrease, however, because the Air Force tends to ridicule and silence each civilian pilot that makes a report of his sighting. In February 1954 Scripps Howard writes: "Commercial airline pilots report between five and 10 flying saucer sightings each night."

In September a large noisy UFO is spotted above Rome, tracked on radar for 39 minutes. For a few seconds it stops in mid-air, then shooting straight up into the air. Sightings are going on for five days at that point. 40 days later there's another sighting. It is observed and reported by United States ambassador Clare Boothe Luce. In December, the New York Times reports: "President Eisenhower said today an Air Force official had assured him that flying saucers were not invading the earth from outer space." Guess there were a lot of sightings.

A new UFO wave kicks off in Europe, first starting in the west and then moving to the south and over the USSR. In 1955, the sightings in Europe drop off, although they never completely disappear. In the U.S. sightings by all kinds of people, including civilian and military pilots, become ever more frequent. The Air Force cracks down on the reports, undoubtedly under the guidance of the White House or at least the CIA, but the result is that less and less pilots report them.

450 civilian pilots protest against the Air Force's policy of ridiculing pilots that report UFOs. For a brief period sightings had been on the rise again.

Betty and Barney Hill claim they were abducted by a type of Grey alien. Many additional reports will follow within a decade, although most of this type of research is funded by Hans Adam II von Liechtenstein and Laurance Rockefeller and is utterly bogus.

Air Force Major Robert White reports a small UFO about 40 feet away from his X-15 rocket plane's window, while flying 59 miles above the surface of the earth.

A lot of UFO activity, including sightings in Michigan by about 150 people for several hours over a period of two nights. Twelve police officers are among the witnesses and a group of 87 coeds with their mentors observe a round glowing object fly past their second story windows. They make notes for several hours. One of the interestig observations they make is that the object dims its light as soon as police cars come near it. The UFOs moves around in a swamp for most of the time, making this the first official incident of "swamp gas".

The first reports about cattle mutilations appear in the papers.

The official UFO study of the Air Force, Project Blue Book, is finally wrapped up. As expected, it concludes that there's nothing to the UFO phenomenon. A former head of the project, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, completely disagrees with this conclusion. The same goes for J. Allen Hynek, the astronomical consultant to Project Blue Book.

The cattle mutilations start to become a major issue to farmers in many U.S. states and by 1979 the phenomena has claimed the lives of over 10,000 head of cattle. Night-time helicopters are often reported in the vicinity of mutilated cattle. Helicopter pilots take alternative routes or are flying 500 feet higher in order to evade angry stockmen with big guns.

In October and November a rash of helicopter-sounding, but unidentified UFOs visit nuclear missile sites in Montana, Michigan, and Maine. Sometimes they are tracked by radar (up to 40 minutes), but are also seen by pilots and ground crews. The objects turn out to be too fast for a KC135 tanker plane to follow. (Maximum speed is about 650 mph. Today's world record for the helicopter is 250 mph) On one occasion, when two F-106 jet fighters are scrambled, the UFO temporarily disappears - something that seems to happen a lot. Another object that visits an air force base in Maine, disappears towards the Canadian border.

Major UFO sighting over Tehran, Iran. The colored, fast-flashing object is tracked by Iranian ground radar, seen independently by the crew of a commercial airliner and pursued by an Iranian F4-Phantom. When the fighter prepares to launch an AIM9 missile at a smaller second UFO that emerged from the larger object, the F4's electronic system goes dead, only to be reactivated again when it veers away. A report is compiled by American officials. The first black triangles are reported.

The first black triangles are filmed. Also: completely made up reports about giant underground bases where humans and aliens are working together - or fighting each other - start to appear. This type of story telling soon becomes the norm, with the large new age radio show Coast to Coast AM at the center of this "alternative" network of "whistleblowers".

The black triangle phenomenon appears over Belgium. The craft are seen by about 10,000 witnesses. The Belgian Air Force acknowledges the amazing maneuvers of one of the objects they were chasing (pulled 46G when it sped away). Popular pictures made of these triangles appear to be fake.

The black triangle phenomenon appears all over the U.S. in ever increasing frequency. In March 1997 there is the famous Phoenix Lights incident.

With their Cometa Report France seems to push for more openness about the UFO topic.

For those who are wondering, Steven Greer and his Disclosure Project is filtered out of ISGP's list of UFO reports. ISGP spent considerable time proving he is a scam artist, part of the whole Coast to Coast AM network.

Joint Iranian-Russian UFO investigation. Apparently there are many UFO sightings in Iran, prompting the government to start their own investigation of UFOs, together with the Russians. Most sightings occur near sensitive military sites and nuclear power plants. Mexico and Brazil seem to be pushing for more openness about the UFO topic.

Many UFO files from Britain become accessible to the public. It turns out that there have been many sightings over the last decade by both radar personnel and pilots. One UFO that showed up on radar appears to have been 10 miles long and 2 miles wide. However, in these modern times, there always remains the possibility of manipulation.