The U.S. Air Defense Command ordered its fighter pilots to shoot these “saucers” down, but the UFOs proved to be much faster and more agile than the best American jets. Foto from 28 July 1952. These events had a profound effect upon William’s parents and the author himself when he observed UFOs up close in the 1960s and again in 2011. The 1960s Prince Edward County, Virginia event on the Bass family farm bordered on traumatic.