h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

wow. A stray thought that occurred to me when reading this.

Large perfectly spherical things in the sky, blown about by a wind whose direction might be radically different to what people see, feel, and experience at lower levels. You'd see something circular in the sky doing its own thing regardless of what you think is the prevailing wind; you might suppose it's independently powered and under direct intelligent control. There is also a tendency under bright sunlight for things high up to gleam and glitter as if made of metal.

Washington State saw the first (or among the first) reported UFO's in the modern UFO craze shortly after WW2.

I'm wondering: how long could something credibly stay up there once launched? could one or two have stayed in the jet stream indefinitely?

Arnold's UFO sightings were over Washington State in the late 1940's. If these things had been in the jetstream and for some reason stayed there, could they have gone global - circled the world at a relatively high latitude and passed over the USA quite a few times - and potentially been seen by a lot of people?

Could Imperial Japan have inadvertently contributed to the UFO panic?

Tenuous, yes, but you can't help wondering!

That's an amazing thought. And provocative.