Case file · Government program
Avrocar: the USAF's real flying saucer
A secret US-funded Avro Canada project to build a disc-shaped VTOL aircraft (Project 1794 / Silver Bug).
1959 CE · 43.68, -79.62 · status: official
The account
Avro Canada's engineers proposed a supersonic saucer fighter, and the US Army and Air Force funded a scaled-down test vehicle, the VZ-9 Avrocar. It flew only a few feet off the ground, was unstable, and was cancelled in 1961. The declassified files show that human-built 'flying saucers' were a genuine Cold War project.
The sceptical view
It never flew properly, so it can't explain high-performance UFO reports. It does show that classified aircraft programmes produced saucer-shaped hardware.