Rhodes UFO photographs

Rhodes UFO photographs

Type	Case (photographs)
Also known as	Shoe-heel UFO photographs; Incident 40
Date	Late afternoon or dusk, 7 July 1947
Place	4333 North 14th Street, Phoenix, Arizona
Photographer	William Albert Rhodes (born 1916), musician, inventor and amateur astronomer
Camera	Kodak Brownie box camera
First published	The Arizona Republic, 9 July 1947
Investigated by	AAF intelligence, CIC, FBI, Air Materiel Command (Project Sign), Project Grudge, AFOSI
Verdicts	Windblown paper (Langmuir, Air Force); probable hoax (Blue Book card)

The Rhodes UFO photographs, sometimes called the shoe-heel UFO photographs, are two pictures of a disc-like object said to have been taken over Phoenix, Arizona, on 7 July 1947 by the amateur astronomer and inventor William Albert Rhodes. The Arizona Republic printed them on its front page two days later, near the end of the 1947 flying-disc craze, and they were among the first photographs of a "flying saucer". The case was examined for more than two years by Army Air Forces intelligence, the Counter Intelligence Corps, the FBI and the Air Force's early UFO projects, which filed it as "Incident 40". Discussion of the pictures has continued into the 21st century.^[1][2][4]

Background

On 24 June 1947 the civilian pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying over Washington State, and from his description the press coined the term "flying saucers". By 27 June objects were being reported nationwide, and over the 4 July weekend sightings spiked, including the first report by an airline crew in flight. Sightings reached Arizona in the second week of July. On 7 July The Arizona Republic reported that a Tempe resident, Francis Howell, had seen a circular object about two feet (60 cm) across floating to earth near his home, which rose at a 45-degree angle towards Phoenix when he approached. On 8 July the paper reported two "silvery balls", estimated at about twice the size of an aeroplane, north of Phoenix.^[1][4]

Rhodes, born on 29 December 1916 in Garden City, Kansas, was a graduate of Phoenix Union High School. In 1940 the Republic had reported on the radio-control system he devised for a model aeroplane, which needed one receiver instead of the usual two. He told investigators he had worked at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Washington early in the Second World War, and then at Falcon Field near Phoenix, a field leased by the British government for training, where he taught instrument flying, aircraft identification and gunnery. In 1947 he was a musician by trade who spent most of his time on electronics, radio, astronomy and photography in a workshop behind his house, which he called the "Panoramic Research Laboratory and Observatory".^[1][4]

The sighting

According to the Republic's story, Rhodes was walking to his workshop when he heard the loud "whoosh" of what he took for a Lockheed P-80 jet. He grabbed a camera from his bench and, from a small mound behind his house, saw the object banking in tight circles at about 1,000 feet under an overcast sky. He photographed it by sighting along the side of his box camera, wound on his last piece of film, and took a second picture as it circled back and shot away. After the first pass, he said, it made no sound, even when it zoomed off to the southwest. It made three passes over his home and left twin vapour trails from the points of its rear edge. The first picture appeared somewhat cigar-shaped, with motion lines suggesting it was turning edge-on or in a flat spin; the second, taken as it banked, showed an object "much in the shape of a heel of a shoe, with a small hole in the center". The paper said aircraft-recognition experts would not hazard an opinion.^[1][4]

Rhodes gave a fuller account to investigators. In the version recorded by the Counter Intelligence Corps, the sighting came at about 4 p.m., just after a thunderstorm. He heard a jet-like noise to the east, then saw an elliptical grey object, 20–30 feet across, appear from the northeast at about 5,000 feet and 400–600 mph. It spiralled down to about 2,000 feet and then climbed west at 45 degrees into cumulus cloud, in view for about 60 seconds. It had two points on its tail and a flush, cockpit-like canopy, did not spin, and made no sound while in sight, which he thought might be because of leaves rustling in a 10–15 mph wind. At first he thought it might be the Navy's new "Flapjack" aircraft, shown on the cover of the May 1947 Mechanix Illustrated, but it had no landing gear or propellers. He called to his wife, but it had gone before she came out.^[2][4]

Details vary between the records. The FBI's account gives the time as about 5 p.m., the size as 20 to 50 feet and the speed as about 100 mph; the first military memo says the pictures were taken at sunset; and the newspaper says dusk. Rhodes told the FBI that the newspaper story, from a three-minute interview, had been "blown up" until he barely recognised it, and that he had not connected the object with the flying-disc reports. He also said he was surprised the object came out dark against a light sky, and that the light spot in the centre was a "green house", or canopy.^[3][4]

Publication

On 9 July 1947 the Republic ran the photographs on its front page under the headline "Mystery 'Whatsis' Photographed over Phoenix", with a story by Robert C. Hanika calling them the first clearly recorded photographs of a flying disc. The paper described Rhodes as an amateur radio operator and model-aeroplane maker known in the model-aircraft world for advances in radio control. The pictures were printed as cropped, upside-down enlargements. Their impact was blunted because the same day the Roswell Army Air Field announced it had recovered a "flying disc", which dominated the national headlines.^[1][2][3][4]

Investigation

Files released in 2015 detail the official investigation. On 8 July, before publication, copies of the photographs were obtained from the Republic's managing editor; some accounts attribute this to the FBI, while the memo itself, dated 14 July, was written by Special Agent Lynn C. Aldrich of Army Air Forces intelligence at Williams Field, Chandler. It records that the pictures were taken with a size-620 box camera and that the object made three circles near Rhodes's home at an estimated 1,000 feet. Brigadier General George Schulgen of Air Force intelligence had ordered base intelligence officers to gather such reports, and they were passed to Colonel Howard McCoy's group at Air Materiel Command, Wright Field.^[1][4]

The 1947 interview

Rhodes was interviewed at his home by George Fugate Jr. of the Counter Intelligence Corps at Hamilton Field and Special Agent Brower of the FBI's Phoenix office. The FBI record dates the interview to 29 August 1947, though Fugate's memo of 2 September gives 9 August. At Fugate's request, Brower showed his credentials but did not reveal Fugate's identity, and Rhodes was told only that they were representatives of the U.S. government; Brower thought this "a peculiar procedure" but none of his business. Rhodes gave them prints and agreed to bring the negatives next day, asking for them back. Brower insisted that Rhodes be told who Fugate was and that the negatives would probably not be returned, and on 30 August Rhodes handed them over on that understanding. He told Fugate he still had the negative of one photograph but could not find the other. Writers have since pointed to the anonymous government visitors as an early prototype of the "Men in Black".^[1][2][4]

Project Sign

McCoy's group became Project Sign, and on 19 February 1948 Lewis C. Gust, chief of the Technical Projects Office, reported that the image was "of true photographic nature", not a flaw in the emulsion or development, and that its "tail" matched the distortion expected from the camera's shutter and the object's speed. Between 5 and 8 May 1948 Lieutenant Colonel James C. Beam and Alfred Loedding, Sign's senior civilian engineer and an authority on flying-wing aircraft, visited Rhodes in Phoenix. They found him working as a nightclub pianist, apparently sincere and keen on science. Rhodes said he had been an aircraft-recognition instructor and that the object was definitely not windblown, was about 2,000 feet away, and showed a large vent across its whole trailing edge as it turned away. He lent them his camera. In a follow-up letter to McCoy he estimated the object at 20–30 feet across with no visible rudders, and calculated that it must have passed the speed of sound as it climbed into the clouds. He mentioned photographs held by another Phoenix man, Lewis Larmore, some of which he thought looked faked. He declined an invitation to Wright-Patterson because of his debts and work.^[3][4]

Agents also found that the science-fiction magazine Amazing Stories, which had been printing readers' UFO reports, had published a letter from Rhodes asking how to sue the government to get back his photographs and negatives, although he had never asked the government for them. Fugate, re-interviewed in 1949, remembered mainly the expensive-looking radio equipment in Rhodes's home, which seemed out of keeping with his station in life, and thought him a publicity seeker. A report noted that Rhodes's "character and business affiliations are presently under investigation". In 1949 the Air Force internally published its first secret study of UFOs, Analysis of Flying Object Incidents in the United States, which included the Rhodes photographs.^[1][4]

Project Grudge

In early 1949 the Air Force reorganised its investigation as Project Grudge. Its consultant astronomer, J. Allen Hynek, wrote that no astronomical explanation seemed possible and that the case was especially important because the photographs closely resembled Arnold's drawings (Incident 17); he called it "one of the most crucial in the history of these objects" and urged that it be reopened, the camera examined and the negatives preserved. But he added that there remained "the strong possibility that the entire incident is spurious", and that if so this should be publicised to quash irresponsible saucer reporting. Grudge asked Gust to clarify his findings; he explained that a box camera's rotary shutter could produce the elongated tail and that heavy development and hard paper could produce the high contrast.^[2][4]

In May 1949 Colonel William Clingerman of the Technical Intelligence Division asked the Air Force Office of Special Investigations to look into Rhodes's standing and his laboratory, noting that photographic experts could not agree whether the pictures could have been taken as described and that the developing and printing were "extremely crude". The investigation, completed in August 1949, checked the Better Business Bureau, Chamber of Commerce, credit bureau, police and FBI files. Neighbours described Rhodes as an excellent neighbour devoted to community projects, honest and loyal, though high-strung and egotistical, and "a genius" at radio and electronics; they said he had been given an honorary Doctor of Science degree by Columbia University for a magazine article, and that "Panoramic Research Laboratory" was a name he devised to impress people. The report also recorded his credit history, that his mother was born in Russia, that his wife's teaching salary was the family's only steady income, and that he was "not religious" and a registered Democrat who did not vote in the last election. It found nothing against him.^[2][4]

Explanations

Windblown debris

An Air Force report stated that it had consulted four "expert photographers", who disagreed with each other as to whether the pictures could have been taken under the conditions described. It noted that a grey object 2,000 feet (600 m) away seemed unlikely to appear pure black on the print, and that although Rhodes called himself chief of staff of a laboratory specialising in photography, the negative was carelessly cut, faultily developed, covered with streaks and had faded noticeably over six months. Finally, the chemist Irving Langmuir studied the photographs and, after learning that a thunderstorm had just passed, dismissed the object as paper swept up by the wind. In view of the witness's apparent character, the report said, Langmuir's conclusion "seems entirely probable". Project Blue Book designated the case "Incident 40", and its record card evaluates the pictures as a probable hoax.^[1][4]

Potential hoax

On the same day Rhodes said he took his pictures, it was reported that the FBI was investigating a letter received by the Los Angeles Examiner claiming that the flying discs were atomic-powered Soviet craft; a "top-flight atomic scientist" consulted by the paper judged the letter "not all nonsense". One historian argues that Rhodes modelled his fake on this story: the supposed Russian device was said to be only 18 inches (46 cm) thick and kidney-shaped, with the pilot lying prone, which broadly matches Rhodes's U-shaped object and flush canopy. The historian suggests this could either confirm the Russian rumour or show that Rhodes faked his story, since the Soviet letter was printed the same day as the claimed flyby. The writer at Saturday Night Uforia who transcribed the declassified files, by contrast, concluded that the investigations uncovered oddities in Rhodes's life but "no smoking gun", leaving his credibility a matter of belief.^[1][4]

Legacy

Raymond A. Palmer, who had made his name as editor of Amazing Stories from 1938, blended fact and fiction into a UFO conspiracy theory, as in the Shaver Mystery. In the first issue of his magazine Fate, in spring 1948, he reprinted the Rhodes photographs and the original Republic article, citing them, with "a great many witnesses", as proof positive that the objects were flying disks of unknown design. He asked why other papers had not followed up pictures that he claimed were "the hottest news in the world" that day, and used them again in The Coming of the Saucers, his 1952 book with Kenneth Arnold. In a 1958 issue of his magazine Flying Saucers, Palmer claimed the army had seized every copy of the paper in a house-to-house canvass, along with its plates and the negatives, and that only his magazine had secured a copy beforehand. The Republic columnist Dan Dedera pointed out that the three editions had a circulation of about 64,000, so such a confiscation would have needed many army divisions. Gerald Heard's 1950 book The Riddle of the Flying Saucers also discusses the photographs.^[1][3]

In July 1952, during a new wave of sightings, Rhodes and Harry E. Lang, fellow amateur astronomers and both engineers at AiResearch, told the Republic they had calculated that a spacecraft leaving Mars at its May 1952 opposition would arrive between late June and late July, matching the wave, though they insisted this proved nothing. Rhodes said the FBI had borrowed his negatives and never returned them, and that he could not say whether his object came from Mars. In August 1952 the Republic reporter Orren Beaty wrote that he had seen glowing objects near Las Cruces, close to White Sands, New Mexico, in 1947, and was startled by their "tremendous likeness" to the object Rhodes photographed. Rhodes was interviewed by KSAZ-TV in 1998, and Arizona media have continued to discuss the photographs.^[1][4]

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Rhodes UFO photographs”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.