What bugs me about it is why would the US authorities, after Pearl Harbour, permit its citizens to be shown evidence of America’s potential vulnerability to invasion by air?

Okay, maybe that was the picture’s point – look, see, nothing gets by us! But the shape of it bugs me, too. If the British authorities’d handled this, rather than allow our public’s imagination to run potentially rampant by being exposed to the idea of an unknown technology that’d make people go, “Bli’me! What the hell’re the enemy throwing at us, now?”, they’d've doctored the image to something more explicable, something less menacing.

But looking at the shape itself: yes, it could be a ‘classic’ spinning top type flying saucer – a pretty compelling image, especially at a time when such shapes weren’t yet part of the visual lexicon of the age – but that pointed top it has’d also be there if it was, say, some kind of highly reflective balloon-like structure dangling from a cable below an out of sight plane.

What I’m suggesting is, what if the whole thing was some kind of display deliberately put on with the purpose of manipulating public opinion? For instance, at the time, California must’ve had a higher than average number of Japanese descended citizenry, and if there was any kind of political resistance to the idea of interning them a stunt like this might’ve been intended to reduce that resistance.

Then, again, maybe it was an authentic UFO.