The shoot-down of a Chinese ‘spy balloon’ and three other mysterious objects over North America has kicked off a flurry of renewed media interest in UFOs.
But current speculation about the military value of balloons for long-range espionage ignores the long history of balloon systems employed by the US intelligence agencies.
These top secret Cold War programs triggered off UFO flaps during the 1950s years before the arrival of the U2 spyplane and more recent satellite surveillance systems.
Declassified documents from Western intelligence agencies also reveal how the military monitored media reports of UFO sightings in order to track their balloons to the targets.
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David Clarke is Associate Professor in the Department of Media Arts and Communication at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. He teaches media law and his research specialism is contemporary legend. Previously he worked as a journalist for The Sheffield Star and Yorkshire Post and spent four years working as a Press Officer in local government. His PhD in Folklore and was completed at the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition, University of Sheffield, in 1999. From 2008-13 he acted as consultant and curator of the MoD UFO files project with The National Archives. His books include The Angel of Mons (2004) and How UFOs Conquered the World: the history of a modern myth (2015). In 2018 he co-founded the Centre for Contemporary Legend at Sheffield Hallam University. This blog covers his twin research interests in journalism and folklore. The views expressed in the contents are entirely his own.
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