The One and Only Time a Flying Saucer was Real

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the United States was gripped by a veritable flying saucer mania. Following the alleged crash of an alien spacecraft near Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947, sightings of flying saucers, mysterious lights, and other UFOs exploded across the country. As we covered in our previous video The Top-Secret Cold War Project Behind the Roswell Incident, most of these sightings later turned out to be of secret U.S. Air Force spy balloons, though some have speculated that more advanced experimental aircraft may also have been involved. Indeed, in the late 1950s the U.S. Air Force did actually try to develop its own flying saucer. Had it worked, this bizarre but innovative aircraft, developed in cooperation with Canada, may very well have revolutionized aerial warfare. This is the story of the Avro Canada VZ-9AV Avrocar. The introduction of nuclear weapons instantly changed the face of modern warfare. In the early days of the Cold War, military strategists predicted that the majority of airfields would be destroyed within the first few hours of a nuclear exchange. Considerable energy was thus devoted to developing aircraft which could take off and land vertically, allowing them to operate from unprepared fields. The complex technical challenges involved attracted an entire generation of talented designers, including a young English aeronautical engineer named John Carver Meadows - or “Jack” - Frost. Born in Walton-Upon-Thames in 1915, Frost was introduced to aviation at the age of 15 when his high school Latin teacher took him up for a flight in his biplane. After graduating from St. Edward’s School, Oxford with honours in mathematics, chemistry, and physics... This is an abridged version of a video on our channel TodayIFoundOut which you can check out and subscribe to here:    / @todayifoundout