Every ten years, a new issue dedicated to the birth of UFOs (although it would be more accurate to say of the flying saucers) and this one was no exception. The 'birth' of UFOs is a disputable notion in itself, as they were not 'born' at the time, but only came then into popular consciousness. The article about the life of Fred Lee Crisman was delightful, but needed a more detailed presentation of the Maury Island affair and other Crisman's involvments. However, it's important to remind how flying saucers were from the beginning mired in muddy waters. Coming to the The Invaders connection, certainly, a number of links can be drawn between the Quinn Martin's series and the 'conspiracy' world, if only through the topics dug by various episodes ; but I'd have liked to know why exactely Crisman believed that David Vincent was based on him. Unfortunalely, Brian J. Robb repeats the mistake made too often, notably by psychosocios, that the press had described Arnold's objects as flying like "a saucer flying skipping across water". A mistake that Nigel Watson doesn't make in his article, the round shape (either of a pie plate, a saucer or a disk) definitely refering to the shape – although Arnold would change his version years later.
However, in the editorial, I was worried that the redactors were seemingly annoyed by the use of the word 'pelicanist' to refer to sociopsychologists, even calling this practice abuse. Deniers are good adepts at using abuse and scorn. At the very least, it is only fair to return the favour to people who indeed deserve it, as they advocate really ludicrous 'explanations' and ignore all logic. The charlatans who should have been the subject of the redactors' ire, instead of being provided a platform.
Is it too strong a word ? Not in my opinion, as there is a tendency in Fortean Times to give room to a variety of the most astounding explanations, as if they had any credibility (here Arnold and pelicans, but also Mothman as a crane, or outside ufology the Hans Egede sea serpent as an ejaculating whale, etc...). Such explanations seem sometimes to be endorsed by Peter Brookesmith (whose attempt at justification in the last issue is not really convincing, notably when he can't help to write that he is not interested in UFOs, but in how alien abductions are constructed and disseminated). Easton could have spared himself all the trouble if he had read Arnold's words more carefully, when he stated that he had initially believed that he was seeing birds, which ruled out his 'explanation' from the start. That was indeed all that Arnold 'wished' to see, birds, and there was not the slightest evidenced that he 'wanted', secretly or not, his sighting to be coloured by anything including 'Cold War anxiety' – he did try later to find connections with military aeronautical developments, which was only a natural move to find a possible explanation.
The flying wing hypothesis, while weak, has at least a semblance of plausibility. Low, for various reasons ; the least not being that if we are to accept Arnold's description (and in any case, he depicted only one object as being crescent-shaped), the speed was much too fast. One of the reasons that this shape was dropped by avionics engineers a few years later (and re-used only at the time of the B2 stealth plane) being that flying wings were unfit for great speeds. Additionally, all evidence drawn from archives shows that no flying wing prototype was ready to fly at the time. Watson's article provides a good picture of aeronautical research in the late 40s, but in the end, he underlines this fact.