About the scareship 1

ABOUT THE SCARESHIP

Carl Grove

In 1969-70, I spent a few days at the British Museum

Newspaper Library researching some early British UFO reports: the
two waves of sightings of mysterious airships that occurred in 1909
and 1913. My intention was to write up a formal report on each for
the Flying Saucer Review (FSR), but I quickly realised that whereas
the sightings reported in 1909 were of a generally high quality, those
in 1913 were clearly contaminated with a high percentage of
unreliable cases. In particular, the planet Venus, unusually bright at
that time, seems to have been responsible for many of the reports. I
therefore concentrated on the 1909 cases, and subsequently
published a survey of the most interesting cases in FSR.

Since that period, a number of other researchers such as Nigel

Watson and Granville Oldroyd have continued to take an interest in
the 1909 events; and recently David Clarke has conducted a major
survey of the wave from the viewpoint that the sightings result
purely from the psychosociological context: in a period of high
anxiety prior to the onset of WWI, people were mistaking a variety of
conventional phenomena for German Zeppelins preparing the
ground for an invasion. Similar arguments have been put forward,
for example by Jung, for later UFO sightings being associated with
the psychic tensions arising from the Cold War.

While I am greatly impressed by the immense effort Clarke has

put into his research, I cannot accept his conclusions, and I continue
to feel that some of the better sightings can be related to more
modern UFO phenomena. In this short article I want to set forth
some of my reasons for taking this stance. Let me emphasize that I do
not have any clear explanation for the core UFO phenomenon. I
know that many sightings are dubious, some are hoaxes, some have
been engineered by intelligence operatives, some result from black
research projects. But there is plenty of evidence that something odd
is going on: an apparently intelligently-controlled phenomenon,
associated with high-energy physics of an unknown kind, and also
linked with reports of humanoid entities.

Let me begin by trying to understand how airship reports

About the scareship 2

might be generated by a stressful period of pre-war speculation and

uncertainty. Aerial navigation has been achieved. Aeroplanes exist.
Airships exist. They can reach Britain and bomb civilian
populations. I am a nervous suggestible person and I see a vague
light or cloud which I interpret as "an airship." What factors will
influence my subjective exeriences?

Firstly, as David Clarke has pointed out, airships were hot

news items. Articles about airships, their inventors, their size, flight
characteristics, performance, range, speed, and so on, were
appearing daily in the British press. I think we can take it that the
average potential witness would have a considerable background
knowledge of these devices, and that this knowledge would inform
their misperception of the phenomena that triggered the sighting. In
short I would describe something very much like a Zeppelin.

But, as we can see from even a cursory examination of the 1909

sighting reports, what was seen by the witnesses was actually
something only superficially like a Zeppelin. A cigar shaped object
flying in the sky, yes; but in many other respects something very
different. Let us examine the differences.

1. Configuration. An airship was a cigar shaped object with a cabin

hung underneath, and some reports do conform to this model. But
many do not: we have reports of a bottle shaped object with a human
figure at the front, apparently steering; something with a kind of
platform hanging underneath with two men on it; another, "oblong"
in shape, with what appeared to be men on a platform below; a tube-
shaped object, on the ground, with a small carriage with wheels
underneath, and so on. Why, when pictures of airships were so
commonplace, would anyone describe something so much at variance
with the Zeppelin's appearance?

2. Performance. As we all know, airships were slow. In a strong

headwind they barely moved. And yet many of the reports describe
objects moving at high speed: "at a tremendous pace," "at a good
pace," "travelling very fast against the wind," "flying swiftly,"
"remained immovable... then... travelled very swiftly;" "travelling
swiftly;" "it disappeared in ten seconds;" "at a rapid pace," and so
on. Moreover, airships were sluggish and slow to change direction;
whereas a lot of witnesses innocently described manoeuvres beyond
the capabilities, not only of contemporary airships, but of more
About the scareship 3

recent aircraft. We have examples of "right angled turns" and even,

in the Caerphilly case, a zig-zag movement of the type later
associated with flying saucers. In the St. Olaf case the "large"
airship "suddenly appeared" and directed a bank of searchlights on
the vessel, before swinging away towards another ship a mile away,
hovering over and directing its lights upon that, before making off
"at a sharp rate." What the witnesses were seeing may have looked
like an airship, but in this case alone (one of the most reliable) it
exhibited performance characteristics of an entirely different order.

3. Searchlights. Jacques Vallee regards the extraordinarily intense

luminous phenomena associated with UFOs as one of their key
features, and has derived estimates of the energy required to produce
such strong lighting effects. Again, the scareship, despite its
appearance, acted more like a modern UFO. It carried unusually
bright searchlights. One witness, who had seen Naval searchlights,
said the airship carried lights that were brighter. And Navy
searchlights, judging by photos, were huge, heavy affairs, to say
nothing of the batteries required to power them. Yet we have
accounts which describe "a brilliant searchlight;" "a brilliant
flashing light;" "powerful lights;" "(it) lit up the road, the farm
buildings, the trees and everything it touched, so it was like day. I
could even read the printing on some bills on the wall;" "showing...
two very powerful searchlights at either end;" "a piercing
searchlight;" "a dazzling light" directed upon the witness from
above; "the rays sometimes lighting up almost the full extent of (the
nearby area)." I can think of no natural phenomenon that can come
close to duplicating such effects; the only similar reports I can think
of are recent UFO incidents. And carrying not just one, but five such
lights, as reported by the skipper of the St. Olaf, was to be beyond
the capability of any normal aircraft for decades to come.

4. Motor noises. Many of the witnesses described engine noises assoc-

iated with the airship sighting: "the noise of a motor or small
engine;" "I heard what I took to be a motor car some 400 yards
distant;" "a whirring noise overhead;" "the tock-tock-tock of a
swiftly-running motor-engine;" "the steady buzz of the engines;"
"the throbbing of a motor;" "a soft buzzing noise;" "peculiar
whirring noise;" and so on. There are even a few cases involving
completely silent objects. Not a single witness described the deafening
roar of a genuine low-flying Zeppelin.
About the scareship 4

We can best sum up the evidence by saying that the witnesses

were not describing an airship so much as a good imitation of an
airship. And the characteristics that make it seem like an imitation
are precisely those characteristics that define the core UFO
phenomenon today.

Now the idea that a society facing possible war with a deadly
enemy might generate reports of aerial phenomena is not new. It has
been used to explain modern UFOs as a consequence of the stresses
caused by the Cold War. Before going into more detail I would note
in passing that there is scarcely any country or culture that does not,
at some time or other, endure these types of stress. In order to
establish a causal relationship between social tensions and sightings
of strange things in the sky, one would need to systematically survey
many hundreds of societies at many different historical times. It is
not enough to take one or two examples where aerial phenomena
have been seen at stressful times and to infer a causal linkage from
this. Moreover, you need to explain, for example, why UFOs were
seen in large numbers during the early years of the Cold War, but
during the period 1960-1963, which was arguably its most stressful
and alarming phase (the Cuban missile crisis, the assassination of
President Kennedy), the numbers of reported sightings actually
declined.

There is also one feature of the sightings which Clarke (and

other researchers who take the same line) have failed to account for,
or even, I think, consider. If fear of German invasion led to spurious
airship reports, some of which involved sightings of human like
pilots, why are there no sightings described of people in German
uniforms, rifles, guns, and other military paraphernalia?

So I am not convinced that the sightings "were the product of a

collective delusion," nor that fear of an invasion "allowed a range of
ambiguous phenomena to be interpreted in an exotic fashion." Some
of the reports were somewhat ambiguous, but many were, to my
mind, highly detailed, and described in a lucid and sensible manner
that contrasts greatly with the hysterical tone adopted by many press
reporters. What kind of "ambiguous phenomenon" would begin to
account for these reports? And, more importantly, precisely what
psychological mechanisms are involved in this process? Simply
stating that the scareship can be accounted for in what seems like a
superficially plausible explanation, is not really good enough. We
About the scareship 5

need to specify the mechanisms involved in sufficient detail to be able

to generate predictions that can be tested objectively. Unless a
theory can be falsified by data, it is not a scientific theory. It may be a
literary or a historical theory, it may become a consensus, but if it
lacks testability it remains fundamentally flawed.

I will close with a personal comment. Eight years ago I moved

from the London area to Bury St Edmunds, right in the middle of the
East Anglian region. I have to say that, in my experience of dealing
with older members of the community, I would find it difficult to find
a group of people less likely to imagine phantom airships due to pre-
invasion panic syndrome (for want of a better phrase). There is a
down-to-earth East Anglian character which is associated with
calmness, common-sense, and non fantasy proneness. Read the more
detailed witness statements. There is no speculation, no jumping to
conclusions, no attempting to push home the "German invader"
theory. When I first began researching the 1909 wave I found these
reports impressive, and I have seen nothing in David Clarke's
excellent survey to make me change my mind.

Carl Grove  2011

NOTES AND REFERENCES

Clarke, D. Scareships over Britain: The Airship Wave of 1909.

(Undated m.s.) I applaud the author's detailed examination
of the contemporary social and historical scene, although I
don't think it explains the events of that year.

Grove, C. The airship wave of 1909: A preliminary survey.

FSR, 1970, 16(6), and 1971, 17(1).

Vallee, J. Estimates of optical power output in six cases of unex-

plained aerial objects with defined luminosity characteristics.
J. of Scientific Exploration, 1998, 12(3), 345-8.

Vallee, J. Confrontations, 1990. Unfortunately, none of the cases

studied by Vallee are comparable with the airship cases, where
directed beams were described.