It is very unlikely that anyone would see an Arup heel-shaped airplane and believe it was made by aliens, so this is just a mildly interesting flying shape coincidence.
Here is the sort of “heel” shaped black UFO photographed by William Rhodes in Phoenix, AZ on July 7, 1947 a day or two after the main famous Roswell UFO crash of 1947.
Question: Did the rounded end of this flying heel photographed in 1947 (just after the Roswell crash) lead or trail?
William Albert Rhodes, an amateur astronomer and inventor, took photographs of a disc-like object flying above Phoenix, Arizona on July 7, 1947. The photographs, known as the Rhodes UFO photographs or shoe-heel UFO photos, were published by the Arizona Republic on July 9, 1947. Rhodes described the object as silent and making three passes over his home, leaving two trails of vapor.
Not Roswell Craft
First, note that the flying heel aircraft are noisy propeller driven small airplanes.
Second, research shows no silent jet engines existed in 1947.
Dr. J. Allen Hynek found the evidence compelling with no obvious alternate explanation, and even Project Blue Book acknowledged similarities between Rhodes’ sighting and other UFO reports of that era. The government considered his report as one of the best-attested cases of UFO sightings
Real Heel Craft
Dr. Cloyd Snyder, a podiatrist from South Bend, Indiana, developed the Arup S-1 glider, also known as the Snyder Glider or Dirigiplane, in 1932. Inspired by the gliding properties of heel-lifts, Snyder’s experimental aircraft featured a unique design with a clear plastic leading edge on the wing to aid visibility. The glider had a distinctive “Half Pie” appearance and was test flown by Glen Doolittle, with Raoul Hoffman re-engineering it by adding a motorcycle engine and stronger landing gear. The Arup S-1 had a crew of 1, a length of 14 ft, a wingspan of 20 ft, and was powered by a Heath-Henderson B-4 engine producing 26 hp[1].
Snyder’s early experiments with gliders led to the formation of the Arup Manufacturing Corporation in 1932, where he refined his initial designs with the help of engineers like Raoul Hoffman and test pilot Glenn Doolittle. The subsequent variations of the Arup S-1, particularly the S-2 and S-4 models, proved to be more durable and practical, making numerous flights during the mid-1930s and impressing organizations like NACA, CAA, and the Army[1].
I made a note from July 8, 2008 which says the Arup S2 was “a propeller driven craft, a flying wing demonstrated for the Army, invented in South Bend Indiana. It was a 780lb machine with a 37 Hp motor which could reach 97 mph.”
Roswell UFO Details
The crash at Roswell in 1947 was initially said to involve a flying saucer. Here is the text of the first newspaper report from July 8, 1947 in the Roswell Daily Record:
No Details of Flying Disk Are Revealed
Roswell Hardware Man and Wife Report Disk Seen
The intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment group at Roswell Army Air Field announced at noon today, that the field has come into possession of a flying saucer.
According to information released by the department, over authority of Maj. J. A. Marcel, intelligence officer, the disk was recovered on a ranch in the Roswell vicinity, after an unidentified rancher had notified Sheriff Geo. Wilcox, here, that he had found the instrument on his premises.
Major Marcel and a detail from his department went to the ranch and recovered the disk, it was stated. After the intelligence officer here had inspected the instrument it was flown to higher headquarters.
The intelligence office stated that no details of the saucer’s construction or its appearance had been revealed.
Mr. and Mrs. Dan Wilmot apparently were the only persons in Roswell who seen what they thought was a flying disk. They were sitting on their porch at 105 South Penn. last Wednesday night at about ten o’clock when a large glowing object zoomed out of the sky from the southeast, going in a northwesterly direction at a high rate of speed.
Wilmot called Mrs. Wilmot’s attention to it and both ran down into the yard to watch. It was in sight less then a minute, perhaps 40 or 50 seconds, Wilmot estimated. Wilmot said that it appeared to him to be about 1,500 feet high and going fast. He estimated between 400 and 500 miles per hour.
In appearance it looked oval in shape like two inverted saucers, faced mouth to mouth, or like two old type washbowls placed, together in the same fashion. The entire body glowed as though light were showing through from inside, though not like it would inside, though not like it would be if a light were merely underneath.
From where he stood Wilmot said that the object looked to be about 5 feet in size, and making allowance for the distance it was from town he figured that it must have been 15 to 20 feet in diameter, though this was just a guess.
Wilmot said that he heard no sound but that Mrs. Wilmot said she heard a swishing sound for a very short time. The object came into view from the southeast and disappeared over the treetops in the general vicinity of six mile hill.
Wilmot, who is one of the most respected and reliable citizens in town, kept the story to himself hoping that someone else would come out and tell about having seen one, but finally today decided that he would go ahead and tell about it. The announcement that the RAAF was in possession of one came only a few minutes after he decided to release the details of what he had seen.
The Wilmot account does not describe a heel shaped craft. That one “looked oval in shape like two inverted saucers, faced mouth to mouth.”
Confusion
The idea that what crashed at Roswell could have been an Arup heel lift vehicle, especially one jet-powered which was somehow also slient, is not supported by the available information. The Roswell incident is commonly associated with a high-altitude balloon crash rather than an advanced vehicle like the one mentioned. The prevailing theory is that the debris found at Roswell was from a classified government project involving high-altitude balloons.
Citations
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arup_S-1
[2] https://www.historynet.com/flying-heel-lift/
[3] http://www.aviation-history.com/garber/vg-bldg/schneider_SG38-1_f.html
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snyder_Buzzard
[5] https://www.norcalsoaring.org/ncsa-history.html
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arup_S-4
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arup_S-2
