Project 1794: Air Force Built Flying Saucers In The 1950s

People report seeing flying saucers every year. A recently declassified military file suggests that some of those UFOs could have been created in the good ol’ USA.

Turns out that the the Air Force was working on creating a flying saucer of its own in the 1950s. The classified plans, dubbed Project 1794, aimed to create a supersonic flying saucer.

CNet reports that the recently de-classified report was published by the National Archives this week.

The material shows that the U.S. Air Force was working with a Canadian company to create a flying saucer. The project never really got off the ground but Wired reports that a prototype design was created for Project 1794.

The Air Force was aiming to create a flying saucer that would travel “between Mach 3 and Mach 4 at a height of “over 100,000 ft.” The vehicle would be able to travel at least “1,000 nautical miles.”

Wired notes that if the project was completed and if it lived up to expectations the Air Force Flying Saucer would have had an average top speed of 2,600 mph.

So why was the project cancelled? According to CNet, the prototypes cost a little over $3 million (which translates to about $26 million today) and didn’t come close to meeting expectations. The prototype was able to get three feet off the ground (999,997 feet below the goal) and could only travel at about 35 mphs (2,565 mph below expectations).

It’s pretty easy to see why Project 1794 was cancelled in 1961.

Or was it….