A Mexican Airship in 1900?
The annals of ufology contain a fascinating and enigmatic chapter known as the “Airship Flap” or “The Great Airship Wave” of 1896–1897…
A Mexican Airship in 1900?
The annals of ufology contain a fascinating and enigmatic chapter known as the “Airship Flap” or “The Great Airship Wave” of 1896–1897. This peculiar period, meticulously studied by respected researchers such as Jerome Clark and Lucius Farish, represents a significant precursor to the modern UFO phenomenon, which would erupt half a century later with Kenneth Arnold’s famous sighting.
The wave was extensively documented in seminal works such as Robert Emenegger’s government-consulted book, “UFOs: Past, Present, and Future,” and Ralph and Judy Blum’s “Beyond Earth: Man’s Contact with UFOs.” This event was characterized by a sudden and widespread outbreak of reports across the United States, from California to the Midwest, of mysterious, slow-moving aerial vessels.
Witnesses described them not as the silent, glowing discs of the later 20th century, but as technologically advanced, propeller-driven dirigibles and blimps, often equipped with powerful searchlights. Many accounts included detailed descriptions of their bizarre architecture, with some craft being likened to the futuristic flying fortresses depicted in Jules Verne’s 1886 novel, “Robur the Conqueror.”
The presence of these anachronistic machines — possessing capabilities beyond known human technology of the era — constitutes one of the most compelling “high-strangeness” periods in paranormal history, blurring the lines between speculative fiction, mass psychology, and potential unexplained aerial phenomena.
The photograph included here adds a tangible, yet confusing, dimension to this mystery. It depicts a large, rudimentary, and somewhat precarious-looking airship adorned with the branding “El Buen Tono,” a long-vanished tobacco company based in what is now Mexico City’s Mercado de San Juan area.
This artifact immediately presents a historical puzzle: its provenance is conflicted, with one source (skyscrapercity.com) dating it to 1900, while an official institution (Instituto Nacional de Estudios de las Revoluciones de Mexico) claims it is from 1907. This discrepancy is central to its potential connection to the earlier Airship Flap.
The mystery of its origin deepens with two competing historical narratives. Was this particular contraption the creation of Joaquin de la Cantolla y Rico, a pioneering Mexican balloonist celebrated for his public ascensions as early as the 1850s? If so, and if the earlier 1900 date is correct, it would firmly place the craft as a known, terrestrial, albeit unusual, promotional vehicle with no direct link to the 1896–97 sightings.
Alternatively, was it, as suggested in Jose Villela’s “Breve Historia de la Aviación en México” (1975), a craft imported by businessman Ernesto Puigbet in 1907 and piloted by an American aerialist known only as “the famous Mr. Hamilton”?
This later date would further disconnect it from the main Flap but showcase the very real, if uncommon, existence of such airships in the public consciousness. Ultimately, resolving the precise history of the “El Buen Tono” airship is a task best left to dedicated aviation historians who can scour import records, newspaper archives, and company histories.
However, its existence prompts a broader and more provocative ufological question: if such a clearly terrestrial, flammable, and rickety advertising balloon could capture public attention and be documented photographically, could other, simpler “airships” of this kind — perhaps lost to official history — have been responsible for at least a fraction of the sightings that comprised what Ralph Blum poetically termed “The Great American Magical Mystery Airshow”?
It serves as a crucial reminder that within the fog of a mystery wave, there likely exists a spectrum of explanations, ranging from identifiable prosaic objects like this tobacco blimp to truly unexplained phenomena that remain, to this day, entirely unidentified.
KEN PFEIFER AND JOHN MOONER WORLD UFO PHOTOS AND NEWS
https://johnmoonerchief.substack.com
My Books: ufologist-publishing.weebly.com
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