Seven years before the Wright
Brothers’ first flight, Americans were boggled by strange objects in
the sky. The phrase “unidentified flying object” hadn’t been
invented, so many observers called them “airships.”
The Great Airship Wave of
1896-1897, which has spawned books and contemporary UFO studies,
started in November 1896 when an airship with a bright light was
seen in Sacramento, Calif., says Thomas “Eddie” Bullard, a librarian
at Indiana University, folklorist, and UFO author who researched the
phenomenon extensively.
“The story went out that
someone had invented a successful flying machine, and reports of
this airship, or at least its supposed headlight, spread up and down
California and into Nevada,” he says.
Sightings continued westward,
until they hit Illinois in April. Illinois reported the most
sightings of any state, Bullard says.
From Cairo to Chicago,
newspapers reported sightings of “a gigantic aerial boat” or an “air
ship” with colored lights.
“Airships in the sky appear
to be all the rage,” the Illinois State
Journal reported on April 12,
1897.
“Monday night the mysterious
air ship which has been seen in Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois and
Wisconsin, paid a visit to Lincoln [Illinois],” said the April 13,
1897 Lincoln Daily Courier. Fifty people standing on Pulaski Street saw the
“rapidly moving, V-shaped” ship. “It came toward Lincoln with a
headlight as large as an arc electric lamp.”
The same day, Springfield’s
Illinois State Register spoofed the sightings in a shameless commercial
twist. “The airship that has been causing so much mystery . . . has
finally been discovered and found to have been the advertising
medium of that great and standard work . . . the genuine
Encyclopaedia Britannica.” The “article” encouraged readers to buy the
Encyclopedia
at the Register’s special rate.
Two days later, however,
“hundreds” of Springfieldians, including some of its elite and state
legislators, saw the airship.
“A number of persons standing
on the corner of Fifth and Monroe streets about 7:30 o’clock last
evening saw a large, brilliant light in the heavens. The light was
moving rapidly and was at a great height,” the April 16 Register said. Some
observers climbed to the “roof garden” of the Odd Fellows building
(one of Springfield’s tallest buildings at that time, located
at the southeast corner of Fourth and Monroe streets) to get a
better look.
The day before, Adolph Winkle
and John Hulle (spellings varied) reported that they had seen the
airship land and talked to its passengers. “Of course, no one
believed the story,” retorted the April 16 Register.
The Decatur paper seemed to
take them seriously, though. Its April 16 Daily Republican said:
“Farmhand John Halley and local vineyard owner Adolf Wenke said that
it landed three miles west of the city along the Jefferson street
road. They said a long bearded man emerged and inquired where he
was. Inside the car was seated another man and also the scientist’s
wife. He said they usually rested during the daytime in remote parts
of the country in order to conceal the vessel’s huge wings. When
they asked the scientist his name, he smiled and pointed to the
letter M, which was painted on the side of the car. After bidding
the farmers farewell, he pressed a button and the ship flew
off.”
Airship sightings died out
the next month.
Theories about the sightings
varied: drunken observers, hoaxes, planets or stars mistaken for
ships, and Martians. However, many people hoped that they were proof
that Americans had finally invented a flying machine.
In Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery (Pelican Publishing Co., 2004), author Michael
Busby explains his unique conspiracy theory: that the airships were
real, funded by magnate George Hearst (William Randolph Hearst’s
father), who used them to get the U.S. entangled in the war with
Cuba.
Bullard says the sightings
were “hot air”:
“There are no genuine UFOs
among the 1897 airships. . . . Many honest and reliable people
reported a light in the sky, but their description of how the light
sank slowly toward the horizon makes it clear they were looking at
Venus or another heavenly body. Other honest people reported a
structured object with lights, moving in a manner and direction no
heavenly body could manage, but these people were the victims of a
hoax. What they saw was a fire balloon [hot air] . . . a form of
Fourth of July ‘firework’ available in drug stores year ’round. A
follow-up of sightings . . . often revealed the jokesters or
reported the burnt-out carcass of the balloon had landed in some
farmer’s field, now and then starting a fire.”
The remaining sightings were
lies, he says, concocted by locals or — gasp! — the press for the
sake of entertainment and sales.
Contact Tara McClellan McAndrew at TMcand22@aol.com
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