1911 UAP Archive — six documented cases spanning Britain and North America in the last pre-war years of empty skies. Charles Tilden Smith's stationary shadow observation reported to Nature remains the year's most credentialed case. Sources: Janet & Colin Bord, Modern Mysteries of Britain; Peter Rogerson, INTCAT 1901–1919, 2013; Nature, 1911.
1911: UFO|UAP & Alien Sightings Archive
Nineteen eleven sits at an extraordinary technological threshold. The Wright Brothers had made their first flight just eight years earlier. Powered aviation was still the preserve of experimenters and daredevils. Commercial aviation did not yet exist. The skies over Britain, Europe, and North America were essentially empty of any manufactured flying machine capable of routine or sustained flight. Against this backdrop, 1911 produced a documented record of anomalous aerial activity spanning at least six countries and six distinct case types — a mystery airship flying under the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, unidentified craft hovering over cities and towns in Kent, a rectangular object transiting the moon’s face at Lockport, Illinois, and two large unseen objects casting fan-shaped shadows onto moving clouds over Wiltshire reported in the pages of the respected British scientific journal Nature. In a year when human flight was barely a decade old, these objects were not human aircraft. The technology did not exist.
The cases of 1911 are also notable for the range of witness types they involved. A respected observer submitting to Nature. A six-year-old girl who would remember a low-hovering black cigar with a visible cabin for the rest of her life. Anonymous crowds in Kent watching unidentified craft hover over their towns. A single witness on the Isle of Man watching small red uniformed figures march in a field. Charles Smith’s shadow observation over Chisbury Wiltshire — two stationary shadows cast against rapidly moving clouds by unseen intercepting objects — is one of the earliest physical optical effect cases in the 20th century record, submitted by a named observer to a peer-reviewed scientific publication. The 1911 archive is thin by the standards of later decades, but what it contains is of unusually high quality.
Date: 1911
Location: Isle of Man England
Time: Unknown
Summary: A witness saw a large crowd of “little beings” all dressed in red and all resembling soldiers drilling by marching back and forth on a field. No other information.
Source: Janet & Colin Bord, Modern Mysteries of Britain
Date: 1911
Location: New York, New York
Time: Unknown
Summary: “Mystery airship” flies under the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City
Source: Not listed
Date: 1911
Location: Chisbury, Wiltshire, England
Time: Unknown
Summary: Charles Tilden Smith reported the following case to the respected British science journal, Nature. For over half and hour Smith observed two fan shaped or triangular ‘heavy shadows’ cast onto clouds overhead. The clouds were moving rapidly, but the shadows remained stationary in the sky. From time to time the unidentified apparitions varied in size. Smith concluded that two large unseen objects in the west were intercepting the Sun’s rays.
Source: Nature (British scientific journal), 1911; Charles Tilden Smith correspondence.
Date: 1911
Location: Kent, England
Time: Unknown
Summary: Mysterious airships hover over cities and towns in Kent.
Source: Not listed
Date: 1911
Location: Lockport, Illinois
Time: Unknown
Summary: Witnesses watched, as an object appeared to traverse the moon’s face for about three minutes. It was rectangular with absolutely flat ends, about two-thirds the diameter of the full moon in length.
Source: Not listed
Date: Summer 1911
Location: Chesterfield, Derbyshire, U-K.
Time: Unknown
Summary: British ufologist David Clarke told about a letter from an alleged witness “Mary B” reporting her sighting in the summer of 1911 as she was 6-year-old, near Chesterfield, Derbyshire, U-K. She claimed that while on a farm she saw a long, black, cigar shaped object hovering 1.5 meters or so from the ground. It was carrying two lights and a cabin in which she could see a man.
Source: “INTCAT 1901 – 1919 – International Catalog of Entity Reports”, by Peter Rogerson, U-K., 2013, at intcat.blogspot.fr/2012/08/intcat-1901-1920.html
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Empty Skies, Full Record — 1911 and the Pre-Aviation Anomalous Aerial Phenomena Catalogue
Nineteen eleven is the year the archive stops being able to explain what people were seeing by appealing to aviation technology. In 1911 there were no commercial aircraft, no military aviation programs producing unidentified craft, and no technology capable of producing a rectangular object that traversed the moon’s face for three minutes over Lockport, Illinois. Charles Tilden Smith’s shadow observation over Chisbury Wiltshire is the year’s standout case — a named, credentialed observer reporting to Nature that two stationary unseen objects were casting fan-shaped shadows against rapidly moving clouds for over thirty minutes. The shadows varied in size. The objects never became visible. This is not a folk account. It is a submission to a peer-reviewed scientific journal in 1911 by a man who knew how to observe and knew what the observation meant. The archive holds Smith’s shadows alongside Mary B’s low-hovering black cigar with the man in the cabin and the red-uniformed little beings marching on the Isle of Man as the three most analytically significant entries of the year.
The British entries dominate the 1911 record — Isle of Man, Wiltshire, Kent, Derbyshire — which is consistent with the documented 1909–1913 British mystery airship wave, one of the most sustained pre-war UAP activity patterns over any single country. Britain in this period was simultaneously developing its first military aviation capability and documenting aerial objects it could not explain. The American entries — Brooklyn Bridge and Lockport Illinois — are isolated rather than part of a wave, which places 1911 in a transitional moment between the 1896–1897 American Mystery Airship Wave and the broader pre-war anomalous aerial activity that would accelerate through 1912 to 1916.
From Charles Tilden Smith’s report to Nature, 1911 — the two heavy shadows cast against moving clouds:
Smith concluded that two large unseen objects in the west were intercepting the sun’s rays.
Date: 1911
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