The case was closed.
I had read the report of this sighting but I hadn"t paid too much attention to it because it had been "solved." But one day almost two years later I got a telephone call at my office at Project Blue Book.
It was a master sergeant, the master sergeant who had been operating the radar at the lab. He"d just heard that the Air Force was again seriously investigating UFO"s and he wanted to see what had been said about the Dayton Incident. He came over, read the report, and violently disagreed with what had been decided upon as the answer. He said that he"d been working with radar before World War II; he"d helped with the operational tests on the first microwave warning radars developed early in the war by a group headed by Dr. Luis Alvarez. He said that what he saw on that radarscope was no ice cloud; it was some type of aircraft. He"d seen every conceivable type of weather target on radar, he told me; thunderstorms, ice-laden clouds, targets caused by temperature inversions, and the works. They all had similar characteristics--the target was "fuzzy" and varied in intensity. But in this case the target was a good, solid return and he was convinced that it was caused by a good, solid object. And besides, he said, when the target began to fade on his scope he had raised the tilt of the antenna and the target came back, indicating that whatever it was, it was climbing. Ice-laden clouds don"t climb, he commented rather bitterly.
Nor did the pilot of one of the F-51"s agree with the ATIC a.n.a.lysis.
The pilot who had been leading the two-ship flight of F-51"s on that day told me that what he saw was no planet. While he and his wing man were climbing, and before the clouds obscured it, they both got a good look at the UFO, and it was getting bigger and more distinct all the time. As they climbed, the light began to take on a shape; it was definitely round. And if it had been Venus it should have been in the same part of the sky the next day, but the pilot said that he"d looked and it wasn"t there. The ATIC report doesn"t mention this point.
I remember asking him a second time what the UFO looked like; he said, "huge and metallic"--shades of the Mantell Incident.
The Dayton Incident didn"t get much of a play from the press because officially it wasn"t an unknown and there"s nothing intriguing about an ice cloud and Venus. There were UFO reports in the newspapers, however.
One story that was widely printed was about a sighting at the naval air station at Dallas, Texas. Just before noon on March 16, Chief Petty Officer Charles Lewis saw a disk-shaped UFO come streaking across the sky and buzz a high-flying B-36. Lewis first saw the UFO coming in from the north, lower than the B-36; then he saw it pull up to the big bomber as it got closer. It hovered under the B-36 for an instant, then it went speeding off and disappeared. When the press inquired about the incident, Captain M. A. Nation, commander of the air station, vouched for his chief and added that the base tower operators had seen and reported a UFO to him about ten days before.
This story didn"t run long because the next day a bigger one broke when the sky over the little town of Farmington, New Mexico, about 170 miles northwest of Albuquerque, was literally invaded by UFO"s.
Every major newspaper carried the story. The UFO"s had apparently been congregating over the four corners area for two days because several people had reported seeing UFO"s on March 15 and 16. But the seventeenth was the big day, every saucer this side of Polaris must have made a successful rendezvous over Farmington, because on that day most of the town"s 3,600 citizens saw the ma.s.s fly-by. The first reports were made at 10:15A.M.; then for an hour the air was full of flying saucers. Estimates of the number varied from a conservative 500 to "thousands." Most all the observers said the UFO"s were saucer- shaped, traveled at almost unbelievable speeds, and didn"t seem to have any set flight path. They would dart in and out and seemed to avoid collisions only by inches. There was no doubt that they weren"t hallucinations because the mayor, the local newspaper staff, ex- pilots, the highway patrol, and every type of person who makes up a community of 3,600 saw them.
I"ve talked to several people who were in Farmington and saw this now famous UFO display of St. Patrick"s Day, 1950. I"ve heard dozens of explanations--cotton blowing in the wind, bugs" wings reflecting sunlight, a hoax to put Farmington on the map, and real honest-to- goodness flying saucers. One explanation was never publicized, however, and if there is an explanation, it is the best. Under certain conditions of extreme cold, probably 50 to 60 degrees below zero, the plastic bag of a skyhook balloon will get very brittle, and will take on the characteristics of a huge light bulb. If a sudden gust of wind or some other disturbance hits the balloon, it will shatter into a thousand pieces. As these pieces of plastic float down and are carried along by the wind, they could look like thousands of flying saucers.
On St. Patrick"s Day a skyhook balloon launched from Holloman AFB, adjacent to the White Sands Proving Ground, did burst near Farmington, and it was cold enough at 60,000 feet to make the balloon brittle. True, the people at Farmington never found any pieces of plastic, but the small pieces of plastic are literally as light as feathers and could have floated far beyond the city.
The next day, on March 18, the Air Force, prodded by the press, shrugged and said, "There"s nothing to it," but they had no explanation.
_True_ magazine came through for a third time when their April issue, which was published during the latter part of March 1950, carried a roundup of UFO photos. They offered seven photos as proof that UFO"s existed. It didn"t take a photo-interpretation expert to tell that all seven could well be of doubtful lineage, nevertheless the collection of photos added fuel to the already smoldering fire.
The U.S. public was hearing a lot about flying saucers and all of it was on the pro side. For somebody who didn"t believe in the things, the public thought that the Air Force was being mighty quiet.
The subject took on added interest on the night of March 26, when a famous news commentator said the UFO"s were from Russia.
The next night Henry J. Taylor, in a broadcast from Dallas, Texas, said that the UFO"s were Uncle Sam"s own. He couldn"t tell all he knew, but a flying saucer had been found on the beach near Galveston, Texas. It had USAF markings.
Two nights later a Los Angeles television station cut into a regular program with a special news flash; later in the evening the announcer said they would show the first photos of the real thing, our military"s flying saucer. The photos turned out to be of the Navy XF- 5-U, a World War II experimental aircraft that never flew.
The public was now thoroughly confused.
By now the words "flying saucer" were being batted around by every newspaper reporter, radio and TV newscaster, comedian, and man on the street. Some of the comments weren"t complimentary, but as Theorem I of the publicity racket goes, "It doesn"t make any difference what"s said as long as the name"s spelled right."
Early in April the publication that is highly revered by so many, _U.S._ _News_ _and_ _World_ _Report_, threw in their lot. The UFO"s belonged to the Navy. Up popped the old non-flying XF-5-U again.
Events drifted back to normal when Edward R. Murrow made UFO"s the subject of one of his TV doc.u.mentaries. He took his viewers around the U.S., talked to Kenneth Arnold, of original UFO fame, by phone and got the story of Captain Mantell"s death from a reporter "who was there." Sandwiched in between accounts of actual UFO sightings were the pro and con opinions of top Washington bra.s.s, scientists, and the man on the street.
Even the staid New York _Times_, which had until now stayed out of UFO controversy, broke down and ran an editorial ent.i.tled, "Those Flying Saucers--Are They or Aren"t They?"
All of this activity did little to shock the military out of their dogma. They admitted that the UFO investigation really hadn"t been discontinued. "Any substantial reports of any unusual aerial phenomena would be processed through normal intelligence channels,"
they told the press.
Ever since July 4, 1947, ten days after the first flying saucer report, airline pilots had been reporting that they had seen UFO"s.
But the reports weren"t frequent--maybe one every few months. In the spring of 1950 this changed, however, and the airline pilots began to make more and more reports--good reports. The reports went to ATIC but they didn"t receive much attention. In a few instances there was a semblance of an investigation but it was halfhearted. The reports reached the newspapers too, and here they received a great deal more attention. The reports were investigated, and the stories checked and rechecked. When airline crews began to turn in one UFO report after another, it was difficult to believe the old "hoax, hallucination, and misidentification of known objects" routine. In April, May, and June of 1950 there were over thirty-five good reports from airline crews.
One of these was a report from a Chicago and Southern crew who were flying a DC-3 from Memphis to Little Rock, Arkansas, on the night of March 31. It was an exceptionally clear night, no clouds or haze, a wonderful night to fly. At exactly nine twenty-nine by the c.o.c.kpit clock the pilot, a Jack Adams, noticed a white light off to his left.
The copilot, G. W. Anderson, was looking at the chart but out of the corner of his eye he saw the pilot lean forward and look out the window, so he looked out too. He saw the light just as the pilot said, "What"s that?"
The copilot"s answer was cla.s.sic: "No, not one of those things."
Both pilots had only recently voiced their opinions regarding the flying saucers and they weren"t complimentary.
As they watched the UFO, it pa.s.sed across the nose of their DC-3 and they got a fairly good look at it. Neither the pilot nor the copilot was positive of the object"s shape because it was "shadowy" but they a.s.sumed it was disk-shaped because of the circular arrangement of eight or ten "portholes," each one glowing from a strong bluish-white light that seemed to come from the inside of whatever it was that they saw. The UFO also had a blinking white light on top, a fact that led many people to speculate that this UFO was another airliner. But this idea was quashed when it was announced that there were no other airliners in the area. The crew of the DC-3, when questioned on this possibility, were definite in their answers. If it had been another airplane, they could have read the number, seen the pa.s.sengers, and darn near reached out and slugged the pilot for getting so close to them.
About a month later, over northern Indiana, TWA treated all the pa.s.sengers of one of their DC-3 nights to a view of a UFO that looked like a "big glob of molten metal."
The official answer for this incident is that the huge orange-red UFO was nothing more than the light from the many northern Indiana blast furnaces reflecting a haze layer. Could be, but the pilots say no.
There were similar sightings in North Korea two years later--and FEAF Bomber Command had caused a shortage of blast furnaces in North Korea.
UFO sightings by airline pilots always interested me as much as any type of sighting. Pilots in general should be competent observers simply because they spend a large part of their lives looking around the sky. And pilots do look; one of the first things an aviation cadet is taught is to "Keep your head on a swivel"; in other words, keep looking around the sky. Of all the pilots, the airline pilots are the cream of this group of good observers. Possibly some second lieutenant just out of flying school could be confused by some unusual formation of ground lights, a meteor, or a star, but airline pilots have flown thousands of hours or they wouldn"t be sitting in the left seat of an airliner, and they should be familiar with a host of unusual sights.
One afternoon in February 1953 I had an opportunity to further my study of UFO sightings by airline pilots. I had been out at Air Defense Command Headquarters in Colorado Springs and was flying back East on a United Airlines DC-6. There weren"t many pa.s.sengers on the airplane that afternoon but, as usual, the captain came strolling back through the cabin to chat. When he got to me he sat down in the next seat. We talked a few minutes; then I asked him what he knew about flying saucers. He sort of laughed and said that a dozen people a week asked that question, but when I told him who I was and why I was interested, his att.i.tude changed. He said that he"d never seen a UFO but he knew a lot of pilots on United who had. One man, he told me, had seen one several years ago. He"d reported it but he had been sloughed off like the rest. But he was so convinced that he"d seen something unusual that he"d gone out and bought a Leica camera with a 105-mm. telephoto lens, learned how to use it, and now he carried it religiously during his flights.
There was a lull in the conversation, then the captain said, "Do you really want to get an opinion about flying saucers?"
I said I did.
"O.K.," I remember his saying, "how much of a layover do you have in Chicago?"
I had about two hours.
"All right, as soon as we get to Chicago I"ll meet you at Caffarello"s, across the street from the terminal building. I"ll see who else is in and I"ll bring them along."
I thanked him and he went back up front.
I waited around the bar at Caffarello"s for an hour. I"d just about decided that he wasn"t going to make it and that I"d better get back to catch my flight to Dayton when he and three other pilots came in.
We got a big booth in the coffee shop because he"d called three more off-duty pilots who lived in Chicago and they were coming over too. I don"t remember any of the men"s names because I didn"t make any attempt to. This was just an informal bull session and not an official interrogation, but I really got the scoop on what airline pilots think about UFO"s.
First of all they didn"t pull any punches about what they thought about the Air Force and its investigation of UFO reports. One of the men got right down to the point: "If I saw a flying saucer flying wing-tip formation with me and could see little men waving--even if my whole load of pa.s.sengers saw it--I wouldn"t report it to the Air Force."
Another man cut in, "Remember the thing Jack Adams said he saw down by Memphis?"
I said I did.
"He reported that to the Air Force and some red-hot character met him in Memphis on his next trip. He talked to Adams a few minutes and then told him that he"d seen a meteor. Adams felt like a fool. h.e.l.l, I know Jack Adams well and he"s the most conservative guy I know. If he said he saw something with glowing portholes, he saw something with glowing portholes--and it wasn"t a meteor."
Even though I didn"t remember the pilots" names I"ll never forget their comments. They didn"t like the way the Air Force had handled UFO reports and I was the Air Force"s "Mr. Flying Saucer." As quickly as one of the pilots would set me up and bat me down, the next one grabbed me off the floor and took his turn. But I couldn"t complain too much; I"d asked for it. I think that this group of seven pilots pretty much represented the feelings of a lot of the airline pilots.
They weren"t wide-eyed s.p.a.ce fans, but they and their fellow pilots had seen something and whatever they"d seen weren"t hallucinations, ma.s.s hysteria, balloons, or meteors.
Three of the men at the Caffarello conference had seen UFO"s or, to use their terminology, they had seen something they couldn"t identify as a known object. Two of these men had seen odd lights closely following their airplanes at night. Both had checked and double- checked with CAA, but no other aircraft was in the area. Both admitted, however, that they hadn"t seen enough to cla.s.s what they"d seen as good UFO sighting. But the third man had a lulu.
If I recall correctly, this pilot was flying for TWA. One day in March 1952 he, his copilot, and a third person who was either a pilot deadheading home or another crew member, I don"t recall which, were flying a C-54 cargo airplane from Chicago to Kansas City. At about 2:30P.M. the pilot was checking in with the CAA radio at Kirksville, Missouri, flying 500 feet on top of a solid overcast. While he was talking he glanced out at his No. 2 engine, which had been losing oil. Directly in line with it, and a few degrees above, he saw a silvery, disk-shaped object. It was too far out to get a really good look at it, yet it was close enough to be able definitely to make out the shape.
The UFO held its relative position with the C-54 for five or six minutes; then the pilot decided to do a little on-the-spot investigating himself. He started a gradual turn toward the UFO and for about thirty seconds he was getting closer, but then the UFO began to make a left turn. It had apparently slowed down because they were still closing on it.
About this time the copilot decided that the UFO was a balloon; it just looked as if the UFO was turning. The pilot agreed halfway--and since the company wasn"t paying them to intercept balloons, they got back on their course to Kansas City. They flew on for a few more minutes with "the darn thing" still off to their left. If it was a balloon, they should be leaving it behind, the pilot recalled thinking to himself; if they made a 45-degree right turn, the "balloon" shouldn"t stay off the left wing; it should drop "way behind. So they made a 45-degree right turn, and although the "balloon" dropped back a little bit, it didn"t drop back far enough to be a balloon. It seemed to put on speed to try to make a turn outside of the C-54"s turn. The pilot continued on around until he"d made a tight 360-degree turn, and the UFO had followed, staying outside. They could not judge its speed, not knowing how far away it was, but to follow even a C-54 around in a 360-degree turn and to stay outside all of the time takes a mighty speedy object.