A Texas Must Read: Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery

Michael Busby is a Texan who has authored one of the most riveting works of nonfiction you’re ever likely to read, a book destined to stand as a classic in the field of UFO research. Indeed, it offers an answer to the riddle of the earliest wave of UFOs in the modern era. From late 1896 to mid-1897, starting in California and trailing off in the Lone Star State, thousands of witnesses saw strange flying craft in the skies. Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery is at once illuminating, enthralling, and expertly researched.

Before newspaper headlines about crash debris in Roswell, before pilot Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of “flying saucers” in 1947, even before Zeppelins took to the skies, Americans from all walks of life saw airships passing overhead. These Victorian-era UFOs were reported in thousands of newspaper articles. Farmers, lawyers, ranchers, and doctors all gave eyewitness accounts. Thanks to modern researchers like Busby, these witnesses can now be verified to have been genuine citizens, living in the time and place of their sightings. They spotted mysterious, Jule Verne-like airships. Some even saw the craft land for repairs or to take on water. A few spoke to the crewmen and were even granted tours of the airships. One of the most startling parts of Busby’s book is when the names given to witnesses by the alleged crewmen are verified, like the witnesses themselves, as having been real, flesh-and-blood human beings.

Busby’s work seeks to trace the origins of the airships back to engineers and inventors who came over to America fleeing the German Civil War in the 1840s. After arriving in New York City, some of these brilliant minds partnered with the inventor Dr. Solomon Andrews, who built one of the first airships and successfully demonstrated its flight during the American Civil War. Busby examines the possibility that men who served in the Army of the Potomac became knowledgeable of Dr. Andrews’ craft and in the post-war decades these same men sought to perfect his airship prototype, finally resulting in the astonishing events of 1897.

If you’re intrigued by tales of UFOs or stories of the strange and mysteries, Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery is indispensable reading. Busby’s careful research, relying on primary sources and inductive reasoning, makes his work stand out from the crowd of ufology books. It serves as nothing less than the key to unriddling the 19th century origins of the modern UFO phenomenon and proof that there are far stranger things in heaven and earth than tales of little green men from Mars.

Photo: Author Michael Busby

The book reaches toward a fiery climax with the tale of the 1897 Aurora, Texas airship crash. Students of UFO tales and Texas mysteries alike should be familiar with the newspaper story that claimed an airship, piloted by a “man not of this world,” crashed into a windmill in the small town of Aurora in April 1897. Now you can find out the hidden truth behind the legend! Get your copy here. Read Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery now and discover the Texas location of the airship’s daytime hideout. Busby employs a critical reading of eyewitness accounts, noting time and place, to triangulate the most likely location where the airship was landing during daylight hours.

Michael Busby was born in Montague County, Texas and raised on his great-great grandfather’s ranch near the Red River. When he graduated high school, Busby enlisted in the Marines and went on to serve in Vietnam. His only regret during his time in the corps was not taking advantage of an offer to receive helicopter training. After eight years in the corps, he embarked on a career as a Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency contractor. A soldier and scholar, he received his Bachelor of Science Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Dallas and pursued an MBA at the University of Iowa and a software engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon University. His work, often classified, took him through war-torn countries all around the world. In 1979 he had a close call escaping a firing squad south of Tehran. Unable to reach the American embassy for evacuation, he hid out for a time in a foreign embassy, then masquerading as a member of a flight crew, he took a plane out of Iran. Before retiring, he worked at the Naval Air Warfare Center. Busby now lives in the beauty of the Ouachita Mountains of southeastern Oklahoma. His book Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery was the result of many years of deep research and critical analysis. A compelling read, the book is sure to become a classic not only of UFO research but Texas literature as well. Get your copy here and follow Michael Busby on Facebook.