The article below was published in the newspaper The Statesman Journal, Salem, Oregon, USA, page 1, on July 1, 1947.
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EL PASO, Tex. June 30 -- (AP) -- Troy Prendergrass came up today with a solution to the flying disk mystery.
He said he found one.
He said he chased a flying disc Sunday afternoon until it landed in Ash Canyon, in the southwest corner of Elephant Butte lake in New Mexico.
The disc was a five by eight inch piece of tinfoil.
Pendergrass said he and his friends were watching birds in the sky at 1 p.m. when they first saw the flying object.
"It was so bright we couldn't tell how big it was or how far away it was."
He said that the tin foil was slightly heavier than that used for gum wrappers and was very crinkled.
It looked like it had been wrapped around a round object, he related. He said it ws partially burned and melted.
A Biggs Field (Texas) officer said he saw a piece of silvery insulation material picked up from the ground and carried 1.000 feet by a gust of wind, and said that was a possible answer to the source of the tinfoil.
The material was being used in large quantities at Biggs Field, he said.
LA GRANDE, Ore., June 30 -- (AP) -- A minister listened to more reports of flying saucers today and opined that the end of the world is at hand.
The Rev. Lester Carlson, pastor of the Gospel Tabernacle church, declared that the shiny flying disks reported in many western states were the advance guard of the second coming of Christ.
The millennium, added the reverend, will come at any minute.
Leland Jones, LaGrande high school student, said he and two Catholic nuns saw nine of the disks late last week. They were weaving in and out of formation. Jones said, "They looked bright and round, and seemed to have fins."
Mrs. Morton Elder, a farm wife living south of Pendleton, said she saw seven of the objects flying speedily toward the northwest at 11 a.m. Sunday. They hummed, she said, like a musical top.
One theory - - that the disks might be a new navy plane called the "Flying Flapjack" - - blew up when the navy said it had only one such plane, which has never left Connecticut.
