The Air Force had said that there was nothing cla.s.sified about Project Blue Book yet NICAP hadn"t seen every blessed sc.r.a.p of paper in the Air Force UFO files. This was unwarranted censorship!

While Congress was right in the middle of such important and crucial problems as foreign policy, atomic disarmament, racketeering, integration and a dozen and one other problems, NICAP began to bedevil every senator and representative who was polite enough to listen.

It"s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease and in November 1957, the United States Senate Committee on Government Operations began an inquiry concerning UFO"s.

I gave my testimony and so did others who had been a.s.sociated with Project Blue Book.

A few weeks later the inquiry was dropped.

But NICAP had made its name. Of all of the thorns that have been pounded into the UFO side of the Air Force, NICAP drove theirs the deepest.

In the midst of all this mess Admiral Fahrney, General Wedemeyer and General del Valle, politely, and quietly, resigned from NICAP"s board of governors.

Neither the loss of these famous names nor the defeat at the hands of the Air Force has stopped NICAP. They continue to forge ahead, undaunted.

In many UFO incidents they have actually uncovered additional, and sometimes interesting, information.

NICAP Director Don Keyhoe has taken a beating, being accused of profiteering, trying to make headlines, and other minor social crimes. But personally I doubt this. Keyhoe is simply convinced that UFO"s are from outer s.p.a.ce and he"s a dedicated man.

While the big NICAP-Air Force battle was going on the UFO"s were not waiting to see who won. They were still flying.

At Ellington AFB, Texas, a Ground Observer Corps team spotted a UFO and pa.s.sed it on to a radar crew. Although the radar crew couldn"t pick it up on their sets they saw it visually. The lieutenant in charge told investigators how it crossed from horizon to horizon in 45 seconds.

On March 9, several pa.s.sengers on a New York to San Juan, Porto Rico airliner were injured when the pilot pulled the big DC-6 up sharply to miss a "large, greenish white, clearly circular-shaped object"

which was on a collision course with the plane. The pilots of several other airliners in the same airway confirmed the sighting.

Two weeks later jet interceptors were scrambled over Los Angeles to look for a UFO.

According to the records, the first report of the brilliant and mysterious, flashing, red light came from a man in the east part of Pasadena. But his report was quickly lost in the shuffle as more and more calls began to come in. As the flashing light crossed the Los Angeles Basin from southeast to northwest hundreds of people saw it.

Traffic was tied up on the Rose Parade famous Colorado Boulevard as drivers stopped their cars to get out and look. As it neared the Air Defense Command Filter Center in Pasadena the filter center personnel, those that could be spared, went out and looked. They saw it. Police switchboards lit up a solid red as it crossed the San Gabriel Valley.

Near midnight a CAA radar picked up unidentified targets near the Oxnard AFB, at Oxnard, California (northwest of Los Angeles), and at almost that identical time people on the airbase saw the light

This did it, and two powerful jets, equipped with all weather radar, came screaming into the area.

But it was the same old story--no contact--the UFO was gone.

The midwest was visited on the morning of May 23rd, when five observers in Kansas City saw four silver, disc-shaped objects flying in formation at extremely high speed. At one point during their flight two of the objects broke formation and veered off but soon rejoined. It took the objects only four minutes to cross the sky.

There were other reports during the first half of 1957, 250 of them to be exact, and many could be cla.s.sified as "good." But they were nothing compared to those that were to come.

On November 3, 1957, a rash of sightings broke out in Texas and they had a brand new twist. To do things up right the powers that guide the UFO picked the town of Levelland only 27 miles west of Lubbock, the home of the now traditional "Lubbock Lights."

It was with a tug of nostalgia that I read about these reports because five years before, almost to the day, Lubbock had plunged the Air Force, and me, into the UFO mystery on a grand scale.

According to the best interpretation of the maze of conflicting stories, facts and rumors about these famous sightings the only positive fact is that there were scattered storm clouds across West Texas on the night of November 4, 1957. This was unusual for November and everyone in the community was just a little edgy.

It was early in the evening, at least early for West Texas on a Sat.u.r.day night, when Pedro Saucedo, a farm worker, and his friend Joe Salaz, started out in Saucedo"s truck toward Pett.i.t, ten miles northwest of Level-land. They had just turned off State Highway 116 and were heading north on a country road when the two men saw a flash of light in an adjacent field. Saucedo, a Korean War Veteran, and Salaz didn"t pay much attention to the light at first. They only noticed that it was coming closer. "It seemed to be paralleling us and edging a little closer all the time," Saucedo later recalled.

Still neither man paid any attention to the light. They drove on, Saucedo watching the road and Salaz talking.

Then it hit.

The first signal of something wrong was when the truck"s headlights went out; then the engine stopped. Before Saucedo could hit the starter again he glanced over his left shoulder. A huge ball of fire was "rapidly drifting" toward the truck. Without a second"s hesitation Saucedo did what the Korean War had taught him to do when in doubt, he shoved open the car door and hit the dirt.

Salaz just sat.

"The "Thing" pa.s.sed directly over my truck with a great sound and rush of wind," Saucedo later told County Sheriff Weir Clem, after he"d started his truck and had driven back to Levelland. "It sounded like thunder and my truck rocked from the blast. I felt a lot of heat."

The "Thing," which disappeared across the prairie, looked like a "fiery tornado."

Five years before and a little east of where Saucedo and Salaz were "buzzed" I had talked to two women who described almost an identical UFO. And it remains "unknown" to this day.

In Levelland, the two men"s story would have been enough to keep Sheriff Clem busy for the rest of the night but between the hours of 8:15P.M. and midnight on the 2nd the "Levelland Thing" struck five more times.

James D. Long, a Waco truck driver, came upon "it" four miles west of Levelland and fainted as it roared over his truck. Ronald Martin, another truck driver, was stopped east of Levelland, as was Newell Wright, a Texas Tech student. Jim Wheeler, Jose Alvarez and Frank Williams added their stories to the melee.

All of those who had been attacked told Sheriff Clem a similar story: "The "Thing" was shaped something like an egg standing on end.

It was fiery red, more like a red neon light. It was about 200 feet long and was about 200 feet in the air. When it came close to cars the engines would stop and the lights would go out."

"Everyone," Sheriff Clem said, "seemed very excited."

That night everyone in West Texas saw UFO"s. Sheriff Clem saw a brilliant light in the distance. Highway patrolmen Lee Hargrove and Floyd Cavin reported similar brilliant lights at the same time but from a different location. The control tower operators at the Amarillo Airport, to the north, saw a "blue, gaseous object which moved swiftly and left an amber trail."

There were dozens more. It was a memorable Sat.u.r.day night in Levelland.

But unbeknown to Sheriff Clem or the residents of West Texas, they weren"t alone on the visitor"s list.

At 2:30A.M. on Sunday morning, only a few hours after the "Thing"

raised havoc around Levelland, an army military police patrol was cruising the supersecret White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico.

Here is their report as they gave it to Air Force UFO investigators:

"At approximately 0230, 3 November 1957, Source, together with PFC ------, were on a routine patrol of the up range area of the White Sands Proving Ground when Source noticed a "very bright" object high in the sky. This object slowly descended to an alt.i.tude estimated to be approximately 50 yards where it remained motionless for about 3 minutes, then it descended to the ground where the light went out.

The object was not blurred or fuzzy, emitted no vapor or smoke. The object was in view for about 10 minutes, and Source estimated that it was approximately 2 or 3 miles away. It was estimated to be between 75 and 100 yards in diameter and shaped like an egg. Source stated that it was as large as a grapefruit held at arm"s length. The weather was cold, drizzling and windy, and Source stated no stars were visible. After the light went out Source and PFC ------ continued north to the STALLION SITE CAMP and reported the incident to the Sergeant of the Guard who returned to the area but failed to find anything."

The flap was on.

On Monday, the 4th, the "Levelland Thing" struck again near the White Sands Proving Ground. James Stokes, a 20-year Navy veteran, and an electronics engineer, had the engine of his new Mercury stopped as "a brilliant, egg-shaped" object made a pa.s.s at the highway. As it went over, Stokes said, "it felt like the radiation of a giant sun lamp."

Stokes said there were ten other carloads of people stopped but if this is true no one ever found out who they were.

The Air Force wrote off Stokes" story as, "Hoax, presumably suggested by the Levelland, Texas, reports."

Maybe the Air Force didn"t believe James Stokes but when the Coast Guard Cutter _Seabago_ radioed in their report from the Gulf of Mexico wheels began to turn--fast.

On Tuesday morning, the 5th, the _Seabago_ was about 200 miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi River on a northerly heading. At 5:10A.M. her radar picked up a target off to the left at a distance of about 14 miles. This was really nothing unusual because they were under heavily traveled air lanes.

The early morning watch is always rough and as the small group of officers and men in the Combat Information Center quietly watched the target, with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, it moved south, made a turn, and headed back to the north again. A few of the men noticed that the turn looked "a little different," but this early in the morning they didn"t give it much thought.