Front matter (continued 9)

Mixed in with the fact that there are few really qualified observers on this earth is the power of suggestion. About the time someone yells "UFO!" and points, all powers of reasoning come to a screeching halt.

We saw this happen day after day.

Few people I ever talked to, once they had decided they were looking at a UFO, stopped to calmly say to themselves, "Now couldn't this be a balloon, star, planet, or something else explainable?"

In one instance I traveled halfway across the United States to investigate a report made by a high ranking man in the State Department. An experienced observer. It was evening by the time I got to talk to him and after he'd excitedly told me all the pertinent facts, how this bright fight had "jumped across the sky," he said, "Want to see it? It's still there but it's not jumping now."

We went outside and there was Jupiter.

Then, there was the UFO over Dayton, Ohio, in the summer of 1952.

I first heard about it at home. It was about six in the evening when the phone rang and it was one of the tower operators at Patterson Field.

The tower operators at Lockbourne AFB in Columbus, Ohio, 60 miles east of Dayton, had spotted "three fiery spheres flying in a V- formation" over their base. Two F-84's had been scrambled to intercept and they were in the air right now. So far, the tower operator told me, the intercept had been unsuccessful because the objects were traveling "two to three thousand miles an hour" and were too high for the old F-84's.

He was monitoring the two jets' radio conversation and he put his telephone near the speaker.

I heard:

"At 28,000 and still above us."

"High speed."

"Headed toward Wright-Patterson."

"Low on fuel, going home."

I made it to my car in record time and took off toward Wright- Patterson, about twelve miles from where I was living.

It was still light, although the sun was low, and as I drove I kept looking toward the east. Nothing. I reached the gate, showed my pass to the guard, and had just written the whole thing off as another UFO report when I saw them.

They convinced me.

Off to the east of the airbase were three objects that can best be described as three half-sized suns.

By the time I arrived at base operations there were three or four dozen people on the ramp, all looking up.

The standard comment was: "Look at them go."

About this time a C-54 transport taxied up and stopped. It was the "Kittyhawk Flight" from Washington and I knew several people who got off.

One passenger, an officer from ATIC, ran up to me and handed me a roll of film.

"Here's some pictures of them," he said breathlessly. "I never thought I'd see one."

The next passengers I recognized were two other officers, Ph.D. psychologists from the Aero Medical Laboratory. I knew them because they had visited Blue Book many times collecting data for a paper they were writing on UFO's.

The title of the paper was to be: The Psychological Aspects of UFO Sightings.

Almost climbing over each other in their effort to tell their story they told me how they had watched the UFO's from the C-54. Both had seen them "dogfighting" between themselves.

"How fast were they going?" I asked.

"Like hell," was their only answer but the way they said it and the looks on their faces emphasized their statement.

The crowd on the ramp had increased by now and some of the newcomers had binoculars. The men with the binoculars were the focal point of several individual groups as they watched and gave blow-by-blow accounts.

Some of the crowd were talking about jet fighters and it suddenly dawned on me that just across the parking lot was the operations office of the local ADC jet outfit, the 97th Fighter Interceptor Squadron.

I ran over to interceptor operations and went in. I knew the duty officer because several times before the 97th people had chased balloons over Dayton. When I told him about the UFO's all I received was a rather uninterested stare. When I said they were over the base he did me the courtesy of going out to look.

He came running back in and hit the scramble button. Three minutes later two F-86's were headed UFOward. They soon disappeared but their vapor trails kept the tense crowd informed of their progress.

And believe me there was tension.

As the vapor trails spiraled up, first as two distinct plumes, and later only one—as they blended at altitude—more than one pilot standing on the ramp expressed his thankfulness for his unenviable position—on the ground watching.

The vapor trails thinned out and disappeared right under the three UFO's and it was obvious that the two jets had closed in.

Here were three that didn't escape.

That night the 97th Fighter Interceptor Squadron added three more balloons to their record. The F-86's had been able to climb higher than the F-84's.

The next morning photos confirmed the balloons. They had been tethered together and carried an instrument package.

I had been fooled. Two Ph.D psychologists who had studied UFO's had been fooled. A C-54 load of "experienced observers" (many pilots) had been fooled. The tower operators had been fooled and so had a hundred others.

This was an interesting sighting and we used to discuss it a lot. All of the observers later agreed that what made them so excited was the tower operator's announcement: "F-84's from Lockbourne are chasing three high speed objects." This set the stage and from then on no one even considered the fact that if the objects had been traveling 2000 or 3000 miles an hour they would have been long gone in the fifteen minutes we watched them.

Secondly, I found out that the C-54, a slow airplane, had actually overtaken and passed the balloons between Columbus and Dayton but none of the passengers I talked to had stopped to think of this.

And I'm positive that in our minds the balloons, which were about 40 feet in diameter and at 40,000 feet, looked a lot larger than they actually were.

I know the power of suggestion plays an important role in UFO sightings. Once you're convinced you're looking at a UFO you can see a lot of things.

But then there's the "unknowns."

Any good saucer fan—wild eyed or sober—will magnanimously concede that a certain percentage of the UFO sightings are the misidentification of known objects. They drag out the "unknowns" as the "proof."

Technically speaking, an "unknown" report is one that has been made by a reliable observer (not necessarily experienced). The report has been exhaustively investigated and analyzed and there is no logical explanation.

To this, the Air Force says: "The Air Force emphasizes the belief that if more immediate detailed objective observational data could have been obtained on the 'unknowns' these too could have been satisfactorily explained."

I think the Case of the Lubbock Lights is an excellent example of this. It is probably one of the most thoroughly investigated reports in the UFO files and it contained the most precise observational data we ever received. Scientists from far and near tried to solve it. It remained an "unknown."

The men who made the original sightings stuck by the case and furnished the "more detailed objective observational data" the Air Force speaks of.

The mysterious fights appeared again and instead of looking for something high in the air they looked for something low and found the solution.

The world famous Lubbock Lights were night flying moths reflecting the bluish-green light of a nearby row of mercury vapor street lights.

I will go a step further than the Air Force, however, and quote from a letter from ex-Lieutenant Andy Flues, once an investigator for Project Blue Book. Flues' statement sums up my beliefs and, I'm quite sure, the beliefs of everyone who has ever worked on Projects Sign, Grudge or Blue Book.

Flues wrote: "Even taking into consideration the highly qualified backgrounds of some of the people who made sightings, there was not one single case which, upon the closest analysis, could not be logically explained in terms of some common object or phenomenon."

The only reason there are any "unknowns" in the UFO files is that an effort is made to be scientific in making evaluations. And being scientific doesn't allow for any educated assuming of missing data or the passing of judgment on the character of the observer. However, this is closely akin to being forced to follow the Marquis of Queensbury rules in a fight with a hood. The investigation of any UFO sighting is an inexact science at the very best. Any UFO investigator, after a few months of being steeped in UFO lore and allowed a few scientific rabbit punches, can make the best of the "unknowns" look like a piece of well-holed Swiss cheese.

But regardless of what I say, or what the Air Force says, or what anyone says, we are stuck with flying saucers. And as long as people report unidentified objects in the air, it's the Air Force's responsibility to explain them.

Project Blue Book will live on.

No responsible scientist will argue with the fact that other solar systems may be inhabited and that some day we may meet those people. But it hasn't happened yet and until that day comes we're stuck with our Space Age Myth—the UFO.