Unidentified Airships

The first known or printed reference to a mysterious airship was in the March 29, 1880, issue of the Santa Fe weekly New Mexican.  The newspaper reported that late on the evening of the 26th, observers in the village of Galisteo Junction had observed the passage of a large balloon and heard them merry shouts of its passengers.  From the craft were dropped a cup of very peculiar workmanship and a magnificent flower with a slip of exceedingly fine silk like paper, on which were some characters resembling those on Japanese tea chests.  The next evening a Chinese-American visitor said he recognized the paper as a message from his girlfriend, a passenger on the ship, which he said was on its way to New York City.

Like many other airship pails reported in the late 19th century American press, this one is almost certainly wholly fictional, but in the years ahead more credible reports would be made in the United States and other countries.  Though American papers in particularly tend to treat such sightings as jokes, and were themselves responsible for many hoaxes, there seems no doubt that such airships had they been in the later decades of the 20th century, would have passed as unidentified flying objects.  In fact, sightings of airship like objects, cigar shaped objects with multicolored lights along the sides and flashing searchlights, continue to the present.

An outbreak of airship reports occurred along the border of Germany and Russian pollen in early 1892.  As would be the case with laser airship scares, the Germans were thought to have developed advanced aircraft which could fly against the wind (unlike the balloons) and harbor for extended periods of time.  No such aircraft existed at the time, nor had any been developed, despite numerous contemporary rumors to the contrary by 1896, when the great American airship scare erupted in California.

Beginning in mid-November number as witnesses in both urban and rural portions of the state reported seeing fast-moving or stationary nocturnal lights assumed to be connected to airships.  Daylight sightings typically were of a device which “somewhat resembled a balloon traveling and with what appeared to be means both before and the hiring the bottom light”, as the San Francisco called of November 22 put it, or of a “great black cigar with a fishlike tail at least 100 feet long” with a surface which “looked as if it were made of aluminum” as the Oakland Tribune of December 1 head in.  In some cases, observers reported seeing propellers.

All the while much press attention was paid to the claims of San Francisco attorney George D.  Collins, who swore on his “word of honor” that he had not only represented the airship inventor but had seen the marvelous invention himself.  The inventor was rumored to be E.  H.  Benjamin, a dentist and of Maine native who was known to be an habitual tinkerer.  Benjamin told a Call reporter that his “inventions have to do with dentistry” but harassed by those who suspected he was not telling the truth, he went into hiding.  Reporters who broke into his office found nothing but copper dental fillings. 

And unidentified flying object sightings continue to this day.