Aliens On Earth.com Resources for those who are stranded here Our Bookstore is OPEN Over 5000 new & used titles, competitively priced! Topics: UFOs - Paranormal - Area 51 - Ghosts - Forteana - Conspiracy - History - Biography - Psychology - Religion - Crime - Health - Geography - Maps - Science - Money - Language - Recreation - Technology - Fiction - Other - New Search... for keyword(s)   in Page Titles in Book Title/Author in Contents of Pages ---other searches--- Metacrawler Yahoo FAST Search Google Altavista Dogpile Inference Find Northern Light IWon.com MSN Search Las Vegas Sun Mothership -> UFO -> Updates -> 1997 -> Apr -> Here

From: Gary <galevy@pipeline.com>
Date: Sun, 13 Apr 1997 12:44:26 -0400
Fwd Date: Sun, 13 Apr 1997 13:20:08 -0400
Subject: Re: First Use of the term 'flap'?

> From: ad897@freenet.durham.org (John Koopmans)
> Subject: Re: UFO UpDate: First Use of the term 'flap'?
> To: updates@globalserve.net (UFO UpDates - Toronto)
> Date: Sat, 12 Apr 1997 19:55:31 -0400 (EDT)

> Gary [Levy] writes:

> > Date: Sat, 05 Apr 1997 01:34:44 -0500
> > From: Gary <galevy@pipeline.com>
> > Reply-To: galevy@pipeline.com
> > To: UFO Updates Mailing List <updates@globalserve.net>
> > Subject: First Use of the term "flap"

> > I would like to locate the first use of the term "flap" in the UFO
> > literature.  If anyone has a reference for this or is familiar
> > with how this term came to be applied please email me.

> I've seen a lot of discussion about the word "flap", obscure references
> to early works, and even a mention of Edward J. Ruppelt, but no mention
> that it was in his book "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects",
> (Copyright 1956) that he not only defined the term "flap" as applying to
> UFO's, but in fact devoted a whole chapter to it (Chapter Eleven).

> To quote from his book, pages 187-188:

> "In Air Force terminology a "flap" is a condition, or situation, or state
> of being of a group of people characterized by an advanced degree of
> confusion that has not quite yet reached panic proportions. It can be
> brought on by any number of things, including the unexpected visit of an
> inspecting general, a major administrative reorganization, the arrival
> of a hot piece of intelligence information, or the dramatic entrance of a
> well-stacked female into an officers' club bar."

> "In early June 1952 the Air Force was unknowingly in the early stages of
> a flap - a flying saucer flap - the flying saucer flap of 1952."

> John Koopmans

Thanks John,

For those of you who pick up a copy of Ruppelt's report and can't find
the above quotation please note that in the Fieldcrest Publishing 1965
reprint edition of the 1956 book the pagination is different.  The above
quote is on page 141 of Chapter eleven (The Big Flap).

Gary Alevy