To pick up the history of the UFO the best place to start is Cincinnati, Ohio, in the late summer of 1955. For some unknown reason, one of those mysterious factors of the UFO, reports from this Hamilton County city suddenly began to pick up. Ma.s.s hysteria, the old crutch, wasn"t a factor because neither the press, the radio nor TV was even mentioning the words "flying saucer."

The reports weren"t much in terms of quality. Some lady would see a "bobbing white light"; or a man, putting his car away, would see a "star jump." These reports, usually pa.s.sed on to the Air Force through the Air Defense Command"s Ground Observer Corps, merely went on the UFO plotting board as a statistic.

But before long, in a matter of a week or two, the ma.s.s of reports began to draw some official attention because the Ground Observer Corps spotters themselves began to make UFO reports. At times during the middle of August the telephone lines from the GOC observation posts in Hamilton County (greater Cincinnati) to the filter center in Columbus would be jammed. Now, even the most cynical Air Force types were be-grudgingly raising their eyebrows. These GOC observers were about as close to "experts" as you can get. Many had spent hundreds of hours scanning the skies since the GOC went into the operation in 1952 to close the gaps in our radar net. Many held awards for meritorious service. They weren"t crackpots.

But still the cynics held out. This was really nothing new. The Project Blue Book files were full of similar incidents. In 1947 there had been a rash of reports from the Pacific Northwest; in 1948 there had been a similar outbreak at Edwards Air Force Base, the supersecret test center in the Mojave Desert of California; in 1949 the sightings centered in the midwest. None had panned out to be anything.

Then came the clincher.

On the night of August 23rd, shortly before midnight, reports of a UFO began to come in from the Mt. Healthy GOC observation post northwest of Cincinnati. Almost simultaneously, Air Defense Command radar picked up a target in that area. A minute or two later the Forestville and Loveland GOC posts, also in Hamilton County, made sightings. Now, three UFO"s, described as brilliant white spheres, swinging in a pendulum-like motion, were on the ADC plotting boards- confirmed by radar. All pretext of ignoring the UFO"s was dropped and at 11:58P.M., F-84"s of the Ohio Air National Guard were scrambled.

They were over Cincinnati at 12:10A.M. and made contact. Boring in at 20,000 feet, at 100% power, they closed but the UFO"s left them as if they were standing still.

The battle in the Cincinnati sector was on.

Almost every night more UFO"s were reported by the GOC. Attempts were made to scramble interceptors but there were no more radar contacts and a jet interceptor without ground guidance is worthless.

At the height of this activity it was decided that more information was needed by the Air Defense Command. Maybe from a ma.s.s of data something, some kind of clue, could be sifted out. The answer: establish a special UFO reporting post. The man to operate this post was tailor-made.

On September 9, Major Hugh McKenzie of the Columbus Filter Center contacted Leonard H. Stringfield in Cincinnati. Stringfield, besides being a very public minded citizen, was also known as a level-headed "saucer expert." Sooner or later, usually sooner, he heard about every UFO sighting in Hamilton County. He was given a code, "Foxtrot Kilo 3-0 Blue," which provided him with an open telephone line to the ADC Filter Center in Columbus. He was in business but he didn"t have to build up a clientele--it was there.

For the next few months Stringfield did yeoman duty as Cincinnati"s one-man UFO center by sifting out the wheat from the chaff and pa.s.sing the wheat on to the Air Force. As he told me the other day, half his nights were spent in his backyard clad in shorts and binoculars. Fortunately his neighbors were broad-minded and the UFO"s picked relatively warm nights to appear.

Most of the reports Stringfield received were duds. He lost track of the number. The green, red, blue, gold and white; discs, triangles, squares and footb.a.l.l.s which hovered, streaked, zigzagged and jerked, turned out to be Venus, Jupiter, Arcturus and an occasional jet. A fiery orange satellite which hovered for hours turned out to be the North Star viewed through a cheap telescope, and the "whole formation of s.p.a.ce ships" were the Pleiades.

Then it happened again.

On the evening of March 23rd Stringfield"s telephone rang. It was Charles Deininger at the Mt. Healthy GOC post. They had a UFO in sight off to the east. Could Stringfield see it? He grabbed his extension phone and ran outdoors. There, off to the east, were two, large, low flying lights. One of the lights was a glowing green and the other yellow. They were moving north.

"Airplane!"

This was Stringfield"s first reaction but during World War II he had made the long trek up the Pacific with the famous Fifth Air Force and he immediately realized that if it was an airplane it would have to be very close because of the large distance between the lights. And, as a clincher, no sound came through the still night.

He dialed the long distance operator and said the magic words, "This is Foxtrot Kilo Three Dash Zero Blue." Seconds later he was talking to the duty sergeant at the Columbus Filter Center. A few more seconds and the sergeant had his story.

Another jet was scrambled and this time Stringfield, via a radiotelephone hookup to the airplane, gave the pilot a vector.

Stringfield heard the jet closing in but since it was a one-way circuit he couldn"t hear the pilot"s comments.

Once again the UFO took off.

This was a fitting climax for the Cincinnati flap. As suddenly as it began it quit and from the ma.s.s of data that was collected the Air Force got zero information.

In the mystery league the UFO"s were still ahead.

Although the majority of the UFO activity during the last half of 1955 and early 1956 centered in the Cincinnati area there were other good reports.

Near Banning, California, on November 25, 1955, Gene Miller, manager of the Banning Munic.i.p.al Airport and Dr. Leslie Ward, a physician, were paced by a "globe of white light which suddenly backed up in midair," while in Miller"s airplane. It was the same old story: Miller was an experienced pilot, a former Air Force instructor and air freight pilot with several thousand hours flying time.

Commercial pilots came in for more than their share of the sightings in 1956.

On January 22, UFO investigators talked to the crew of a Pan American airliner. That night, at 8:30P.M., the Houston to Miami DC- 7B had been "abeam" of New Orleans, out over the Gulf of Mexico.

There was a partial moon shining through small wisps of high cirrus clouds but generally it was a clear night. The captain of the flight was back in the cabin chatting with the pa.s.sengers; the co-pilot and engineer were alone on the flight deck. The engineer had moved up from his control panel and was sitting beside the co-pilot.

At 8:30 it was time for a radio position report and the co-pilot, Tom Tompkins, leaned down to set up a new frequency on the radio controls. Robert Mueller, the engineer, was on watch for other aircraft. It was ten, maybe twenty seconds after Tompkins leaned down that Mueller just barely perceived a pinpoint of moving light off to his right. Even before his thought processes could tell him it might be another airplane the light began to grow in size. Within a short six seconds it streaked across the nose of the airliner, coming out of the Gulf and disappearing inland over Mississippi or Alabama.

Tompkins, the co-pilot, never saw it because Mueller was too astounded to even utter a sound.

But Mueller had a good look. The body of the object was shaped like a bullet and gave off a "pale, luminescent blue glow." The stubby tail, or exhaust, was marked by "spurts of yellow flame or light."

The size? Mueller, like any experienced observer, had no idea since he didn"t know how far away it was. But, it was big!

One sentence, dangling at the bottom of the report was one I"d seen many, many times before: "Mr. Mueller _was_ a complete skeptic regarding UFO reports."

During 1956 there was a rumor--I heard it many times--that the Air Force had entered into a grand conspiracy with the U.S. news media to "stamp out the UFO." The common people of the world, the rumor had it, were not yet psychologically conditioned to learn that we had been visited by superior beings. By not ever mentioning the words "unidentified flying object" the public would forget and go on their merry, stupid way. I heard this rumor so often, in fact, that I began to wonder myself. But a few dollars invested in Martinis for old buddies in the Kittyhawk Room of the Biltmore Hotel in Dayton, or the Men"s bar in the Statler Hotel in Washington, produces a lot of straight and reliable information--much better than you get through official channels. There was no "silence" order I learned, only the same old routine. If the files at ATIC were opened to the public it would take a staff of a dozen people to handle all the inquiries.

Secondly, many of the inquiries come from saucer screwb.a.l.l.s and these people are like a hypochondriac at the doctor"s; nothing will make them believe the diagnosis unless it is what they came in to hear. And there are plenty of saucer screwb.a.l.l.s.

One officer summed it up neatly when he told me, "It isn"t the UFO"s that give us the trouble, it"s the people."

As a double check I called several newspaper editors the other day and asked, "Why don"t you print more UFO stories?" The answers were simple, it"s the old "dog bites man" bit--ninety-nine per cent have no news value any more.

On May 10, 1956, the man bit the dog.

A string of UFO sightings in Pueblo, Colorado, hit the front pages of newspapers across the United States. Starting on the night of May 5th, for six nights, the citizens of Pueblo, including the Ground Observer Corps, saw UFO"s zip over their community. As usual there were various descriptions but everyone agreed "they"d never seen anything like it before."

On the sixth night, the Air Force sent in an investigator and he saw them. Between the hours of 9:00P.M. and midnight he saw six groups of triangular shaped objects that glowed "with a dull fluorescence, faint but bright enough to see." They pa.s.sed from horizon to horizon in six seconds.

The next day this investigator was called back to Colorado Springs, his base, and a fresh team was sent to Pueblo.

The man _really_ chomped down on the dog in July and the UFO _really_ made headlines.

Maybe it was because a fellow newspaper editor was involved, along with the Kansas Highway Patrol, the Navy and the Air Force. Or, maybe it was simply because it was a good UFO sighting.

About the time Miss Iowa was being judged Miss USA in the 1956 Miss Universe Pageant at Long Beach, the city editor of _Arkansas_ _City_ _Daily_ _Traveler_, and a trooper of the Kansas State Highway Patrol were sitting in a patrol cruiser in Arkansas City. It was a hot and muggy night. Occasionally the radio in the cruiser would come to life. An accident near Salina. A drunk driving south from Topeka.

Another accident near Wichita. But generally South Central Kansas was dead. The newspaper editor was about ready to go home--it was 10 o"clock--when the small talk he and the trooper had been making was brought to an abrupt finale by three high pitched beeps from the cruiser"s radio. An important "all cars bulletin" was coming. Twenty- five years as a newspaperman had trained the editor to always be on the alert for a story so he reached down and turned up the volume.

Within seconds he had his story.

"The Hutchinson Naval Air Station is picking up an unidentified target on their radar," the voice of the dispatcher said, with as much of an excited tone as a police dispatcher can have. "Take a look."

Then the dispatcher went on to say that the target was moving in a semi-circular area that reached out from 50 to 75 miles east of Hutchinson. A B-47 from McConnell AFB at Wichita was in the area, searching. The last fix on the object showed it to be near Emporia, in Marion County.

The two men in the patrol cruiser looked at each other for a second or two. Like all newspaper editors, this man had had his bellyful of flying saucer reports--but this was a little different.

"Let"s go out and look," he said, fully doubting that they would see anything.

They drove to a hill in the north part of the city where they could get a good view of the sky and parked. In a few minutes an Arkansas City police car joined them.

It was a clear night except for a few wispy clouds scattered across the north sky.

They waited, they looked and they saw.