Frank Scully
Frank Scully was an American journalist and Variety magazine columnist who in 1950 published Behind the Flying Saucers, one of the first books to claim that the US government had recovered crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft. The book detailed an alleged crash retrieval event at Aztec, New Mexico, drawing primarily on claims made by oil businessman Silas Newton and his associate Leo Gebauer. Despite the subsequent fraud conviction of Newton and Gebauer in an unrelated scam, Scully's book remains significant in UAP history both for its early date and for the fact that Robert Sarbacher — a DoD Research and Development Board consultant — told Wilbert B. Smith that the book's contents were "fundamentally correct."
| Role | American journalist and author; popularizer of the Aztec UFO crash story |
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Behind the Flying Saucers (1950)
Published in September 1950, Behind the Flying Saucers was the first major book-length treatment of UFO crash retrievals, predating the public emergence of the Roswell story by several decades. Scully presented it as a journalistic investigation based on sources within the scientific community, describing small humanoid occupants, advanced metallurgy, and US government efforts to study recovered craft. The book sold well and shaped public expectations about what UFO crashes might involve.
The credibility of the book was severely damaged in 1952 when Silas Newton — one of Scully's primary sources — was exposed as a con man in an unrelated oil leasing fraud. This exposure was widely used to categorize Scully's claims as fabrication.
Sarbacher's Endorsement
Despite the controversy surrounding the book's primary sources, Robert Sarbacher told Wilbert B. Smith in their 1950 Washington meeting that he had read Behind the Flying Saucers and that its contents were "fundamentally correct." This endorsement — from a physicist who served on the DoD Research and Development Board and who had access to official UAP reports — is cited by researchers as evidence that the Aztec narrative may contain genuine elements independent of Newton and Gebauer's fraudulent claims.
Significance in UAP History
Scully's book established the template for crash retrieval narratives that would define UAP discourse for decades: circular craft, small humanoid occupants, recovered materials, government concealment. Whether or not the specific Aztec case he described is authentic, Behind the Flying Saucers framed how the subject was subsequently interpreted and investigated by researchers and the public.