In the year 1948 the “Skyhook” balloons were an official secret. These giant plastic bags, shaped something like a teardrop, a hundred feet and more in diameter, were part of a classified research project sponsored by the United States Navy, and few except the researchers and technicians involved knew of their existence. Carrying cases of heavy instruments, the balloons were launched from various Air Force bases to collect information about the atmosphere high above the earth, the winds in the stratosphere, and the incidence of cosmic rays. Soaring upward, they traveled in courses determined by the winds and changed in direction and speed as they shifted from one wind stream to another. Even at heights of 60,000 feet these objects with their highly reflecting surfaces could be seen from the ground (see Figure 4). Such balloons were especially noticeable against dark-blue skies, which are much more common in the western United States than in the eastern areas. They could reach heights of 100,000 feet, higher than our planes could go. Once considered as a means for collecting information for Military Intelligence, a task later assumed by the U-2 jets, they could travel across the entire continent and even across the oceans. If the plastic skin developed a leak, the resulting loss of gas altered both the appearance and the behavior of the balloon; if the leak became great enough the balloon shriveled and eventually fell to the earth. At high altitudes where the cold was extreme, the skin might become brittle and the balloon would burst into fragments to be dispersed by the winds and vanish.

Although these balloons were sometimes visible at distances of fifty or sixty miles and were very conspicuous, officially they did not exist until 1950 when Dr. Urner Liddel of the Office of Naval Research released the facts behind the Skyhook balloon program. He pointed out then that the balloons had given rise to many reports of flying saucers. If the Skyhook project had been public knowledge in 1948 and if information about their launching and movements had not been a matter of security, a courageous pilot might still be alive today and the infant flying-saucer myth would have died long ago. There can be little question that Captain Mantell crashed in trying to intercept a Skyhook balloon, an object he had never heard of.

The Mantell Tragedy

The basic facts of the Mantell case, the second of the “classic”^[B] UFO sightings, are familiar to all who have studied flying-saucer phenomena[III-1, p. 51]. Early on the afternoon of January 7, 1948, the Kentucky State Highway Patrol received a large number of calls from the towns of Maysville, Owensboro, and Irvington, reporting a strange object moving west at high speed. Alerted by the police, officials at Godman Air Force Base, near Ft. Knox, began looking for the unknown craft. They soon located the object but could not identify it. Watching it through binoculars, various observers described its shape as circular, like a teardrop, or rounded and tapered like a parachute or an ice-cream cone. At about 2:30 P.M. (all times in this account are E.S.T.), as they were discussing the object, a flight of four P-51 planes approached the base from the south. Led by Captain Thomas Mantell, the planes were being ferried from Marietta Air Base, Georgia, to Standiford Field near Louisville. The tower operator at Godman thereupon radioed Captain Mantell for assistance:

“We have an object out south of Godman here that we are unable to identify and we would like to know if you have gas enough and if so could you take a look for us if you will.”

The ferry had been planned as a low-level flight and none of the planes had been serviced with oxygen. Captain Mantell, a combat pilot in World War II, nevertheless agreed to help out: “Roger. I have the gas and I will take a look for you if you will give me the correct heading and any information you have on locating the object.”

The talk between Godman tower and Captain Mantell was not recorded and transmission was sometimes garbled. Although many persons heard the exchange of remarks during the next critical minutes and agreed on the general content, no two remembered exactly the same words; therefore the official reports[III-2] represent only the best possible reconstruction of the conversation that took place.

One plane, short of fuel, continued on to Louisville. The other three circled and began to climb. At about 2:45 Mantell notified the tower that he was at about 15,000 feet: “I have an object in sight above and ahead of me, and it appears to be moving at about half my speed or approximately 180 miles an hour.” One of his wing men said: “What the hell are we looking for?” When Godman asked Mantell to describe the object, he said: “It appears to be a metallic object, or possibly a reflection of sun from a metallic object, and it is of tremendous size. I’m going to 20,000 feet.”

The other two pilots, who had seen nothing and were alarmed at flying so high without oxygen, leveled off at 15,000 feet. Mantell was then above 22,000 feet and still climbing. In ship-to-ship conversation he said that he would go to 25,000 feet for about ten minutes, then come down. When all further attempts to call Mantell went unanswered, the other pilots discontinued the search and went on to their base; although one returned after refueling and equipping himself with a mask and oxygen, he found nothing in the area.

At about 3:15 Mantell radioed that the object was “directly ahead of me and slightly above, and is now moving at about my speed or better. I am trying to close in for a better look.” He did not call again. Less than an hour later searchers found the crashed plane. Mantell was dead. His shattered watch had stopped at 3:18.

During the period of search, ground observers at Godman Field had been able to watch the UFO, gradually diminishing in size, and about 3:50 it disappeared from view. Within a few minutes, however, observers farther south in Kentucky and Tennessee were reporting an unknown object in the sky.

A hundred rumors sprang up immediately after the tragedy: that the UFO was a Russian missile; was a weird machine from outer space that had deliberately or accidentally knocked the plane out of the air when it got too close; that Captain Mantell’s body was riddled with bullets; that the plane had completely disintegrated before striking the ground; that the wreckage was radioactive.

Investigators rushed in to find the cause of the fatal crash and brought confusion with them. Some facts could be quickly established. There were no bullet wounds. The plane had not burned on impact and was not radioactive. The left wing had come off while in the air and landed 100 feet from the main crash area. Parts of the plane were scattered on a line north to south within six tenths of a mile of the central wreckage. The emergency canopy lock was in place and apparently no attempt had been made to release it. The throttle was set at one fourth open, mixture control at “Idle cut-off,” and prop control at “Full increase r.p.m.”

From this evidence investigators concluded that because of lack of oxygen Mantell had lost consciousness at about 25,000 feet, while his plane continued to climb to about 30,000 feet; leveling off, it then began a gradual turn to the left because of engine torque, and went into a spiraling dive that produced a speed and a structural stress greater than the plane could stand—the plane was “red-lined” (Air Force jargon for the limit of safety) at 525 mph. Pilots who have flown the P-51 in combat conditions have agreed with this conclusion and have suggested that, as the plane fell, Mantell may have regained consciousness, realized what was happening, pulled the throttle back and tried to pull back on the control, thus producing a stress so great that the wing was torn off and the plane then fell vertically.

As an immediate result of this tragic accident, Air Force officials recommended that all pilots be briefed again on the use of oxygen and the effects of lack of oxygen. New orders were issued; that no pilot go above 12,000 feet without oxygen under any circumstances; that no aircraft be cleared for cross-country flight unless it had been serviced with oxygen; that classes in the use of oxygen start immediately for all pilots and crew members; that all aircraft be equipped with oxygen; and that all pilots carry mask, helmet, goggles, and gloves on all flights.

The cause of the crash was known. But investigators had still to solve the problem: what was the unknown object that Mantell had been chasing?

An Air Force official had announced to the press that the unknown had been the planet Venus. This explanation, while not impossible, was not very probable. The position of Venus that afternoon had indeed been very close to that of the unknown object. But with a stellar magnitude of -3.4, less than half its maximum brilliance, in the daylight sky the planet would have been visible, if at all, only as an exceedingly small, bright point of light. Furthermore this answer did not fit the pattern of sightings. The accompanying map (see Figure 5) of the Ohio-Kentucky-Tennessee region illustrates the succession of events:

All but the last observation in this series suggested a balloon flight, but a quick check with the weather stations in the area failed to turn up any record of a routine launching. Air Force investigators knew about the Skyhook project and could have obtained information on secret launchings, even though it was classified. But, since many of the investigators in these early days of the saucer era were more than half convinced that the unknown had been an interplanetary vehicle, they abandoned the inquiry at this point and officially labeled the case an Unknown. Flying-saucer addicts pounced on this conclusion as proof that the object had actually been a spaceship, that the Air Force knew it to be a spaceship and was deliberately concealing the news from the public.

A Probable Solution of the Mantell Case

Although the case remained unsolved for nearly four years, the original analysis of the evidence, carried out by Dr. J. Allen Hynek, scientific consultant for the Air Force, made certain facts clear from the beginning. The final sightings in Ohio, so inconsistent with the general pattern of the other observations, obviously were not related to the reports from Kentucky and Tennessee. The object seen at Columbus had undoubtedly been the planet Venus, glowing brilliantly on the sunset horizon (see Chapter IV). But the object that traveled southwest over Kentucky and Tennessee had almost certainly not been Venus. At least two objects—balloons or other aircraft—must be involved. It was possible, though not probable, that the unknown over Godman Field had been the planet Venus, or it might have been still a third object. The senior author of this book, after studying the facts available at the time and analyzing the weather conditions prevailing that winter afternoon, suggested that the object could have been a “mock sun” created by ice crystals in the cirrus clouds at high altitudes[III-3, p. 22].

The final solution of these UFO mysteries often depends on one key fact. Without it, the puzzle may never be solved. With it, all the pieces fall into place. The “mock sun” theory (see p. 244) remained the most probable explanation until, some time after the Skyhook project had been declassified, ATIC investigators discovered the key fact: At the time of the Mantell crash, the Clinton County Air Force Base, in southern Ohio, had been a launching site for Skyhook balloons. Unfortunately records for the day of Captain Mantell’s death were not available, and the men who had worked on the balloon project could no longer remember whether they had launched a Skyhook on that particular day. If an unacknowledged balloon had been in the area, however, only one more piece was needed to complete the puzzle: What path would the balloon have followed?

The records at Wright-Patterson Field show that the winds that afternoon would have carried a balloon over exactly the course the UFO followed: from southern Ohio west into Kentucky. It would have climbed rapidly and at about 35,000 feet would have entered the southward-flowing jet stream; shifting direction, the balloon would have traveled south at a high rate of speed, still climbing. Somewhere south or southwest of Godman Field it would have climbed through the jet stream to enter a region of calm at about 60,000 feet; slowing down, it would have drifted south or southeast into Tennessee. Of its fate after that we can only guess[III-4, p. 19].

Without the Skyhook records for the day in question, this solution cannot be called absolutely certain. But the chances of its being correct are overwhelmingly high—infinitely higher than the probability that Mantell died while chasing a spaceship from another planet.

A Radiosonde over Virginia

In the years that followed, the pattern of sightings in the Mantell case has often reappeared but, fortunately, without the same tragic outcome. After each Skyhook launching, a flood of UFO sightings came in to ATIC from towns that lay under the path of the balloon. The Skyhook project sometimes was able to relocate a “lost” balloon by following newspaper reports of flying saucers.

By the summer of 1952 the existence of giant balloons was no longer classified information. When on June 15 an unidentified flying object appeared over several towns in Virginia and followed a course that closely resembled that of the Mantell UFO, Air Force investigators recognized the pattern and began looking for a balloon as the probable explanation. The reports were as follows[III-1, p. 192]:

Investigators first of all checked with officials at Lowry Air Force Base, which served as a plotting center for all Skyhook balloons, but there were none in the East that day. Next they checked the possibility that the UFO had been a weather balloon, but nearby weather stations replied that none of their balloons could have been responsible for the sightings. After calling other stations within a 150-mile radius of Gordonsville with negative results, investigators called the weather station at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A radiosonde (a small balloon attached to an instrument for taking soundings in the upper atmosphere) had been released that afternoon, but had been lost about sixty miles southeast of the station when it apparently sprung a slow leak and leveled off at 60,000 feet. The weather man at Pittsburgh offered to plot its probable course as determined by the prevailing winds, and soon telephoned Dayton to report that the UFO was probably their balloon.

Southeast of Pittsburgh above 50,000 feet there was a strong current of air that fed into a stronger southerly stream flowing parallel to the Atlantic coast, just east of the Appalachian Mountains. The balloon would have floated along in this current like a log floating down a river, and should have arrived in the neighborhood of Gordonsville and Blackstone in the late afternoon or early evening. The UFO had been sighted near Gordonsville between 4:43 and 5:43 P.M., and near Blackstone between 7:35 and 8:00 P.M. The unknown was thus clearly identified as the lost radiosonde.

Skyhook and Pibal UFOs

The year 1952 was a big year for experimental balloons—and for UFO sightings. Weather balloons in clusters, 100-foot Skyhooks, radiosondes, pibals (pilot balloons sent up to show the direction and speed of the wind) were released on schedule all over the continent. Launchings were recorded and the balloons were tracked, as far as possible, so that for any given day or area ATIC could consult a map and try to correlate the position of a known balloon with that of a reported flying saucer. When a balloon was lost, any UFO sightings it caused were not always easy to account for until—and unless—the balloon could be found again.

These spheres of gas vary in size from a few inches in diameter to some two hundred feet. Often they look and behave very unlike the popular concept of a “normal” balloon, and under the right conditions they can fool even the most wary observer—particularly if he is more or less expecting to see something strange.

A man on the ground or even in a plane, watching the maneuvers of an object some 20,000 to 100,000 feet above him, finds it impossible to make an accurate estimate of its true height, diameter, distance, or speed. Strong windcurrents can change the orientation of the sphere, and the particular angle of vision of the observer can make the object look wholly unlike a balloon. It may assume the shape of a disk, a lens, a teardrop, a parachute, a sausage. Temperature inversions can produce a double image of a balloon so that it looks like a linked pair. Balloons released in pairs or clusters may seem to be traveling in formation under intelligent control. Sunlight, moonlight, or the lights of a city reflected from the surface may cause them to look white, gray, amber, red, silvery, or metallic. Since balloons often carry a heavy instrument load, they may give a radar return that indicates a solid object.

When balloons develop a leak, they may drop some distance at high speed and then level off, as though under intelligent control. At the extreme cold of high altitudes they may burst and suddenly vanish. High in the sky at morning and evening twilight they may appear to be self-luminous, taking their light from the invisible sun just as our artificial satellites do. They often travel high above the air lanes, higher than any plane can go, where varying wind streams may propel them at great velocities, slow them until they seem to hover and be almost stationary, abruptly change the direction of their motion so that they reverse course, dive toward the earth, or ascend rapidly into the sky.

At night all these illusions are magnified because the observer has fewer visible reference points by which to evaluate the true shape, distance, and type of motion of these wandering spheres. They can deceive even the most hardheaded and able pilot. The pilot is only human when he doubts that any balloon can fool him—until it does.

The Guantánamo “Dogfight”

An American Navy pilot, practicing night flying over the Guantánamo City base in Cuba on the night of September 24, 1952, engaged in a “dogfight” with a balloon that exhibited all the characteristics associated with this type of flying saucer. It seemed to take evasive action, deliberately elude the pilot, make head-on passes, and respond to every move of the plane with a countermove.

The pilot was at 4000 feet and slowly climbing when he spotted an orange light approaching the city from the east at 10,000 to 15,000 feet. Realizing that the object was not a Navy plane, he tried to intercept it, but the light had started a left turn and he could get no closer than eight to ten miles. The object appeared to be as large as a Navy bomber and had a greenish tail five or six times the diameter of the light, visible only intermittently. When he reached 10,000 feet, the light was still circling left and climbing in a ten- to fifteen-mile orbit. To keep the nose of the relatively slow TBM on the light required about 40 degrees of bank. At 12,000 feet the light was still climbing faster than the plane; the pilot then stopped climbing and reversed from a left to a right turn. The light seemed also to reverse direction.

All attempts at interception seemed to be met by purposeful evasive action, and the object seemed to be guided by intelligence. When the pilot followed the light to the north, it shifted to west, then south, at about 25,000 feet. Suddenly it began to climb at an angle of approximately 60 degrees and at a terrific rate. Although it had been a large bright glow, it now appeared as a very small red point which would have blended with the stars had it not been moving. It then started a rapid descent. By this time the pilot was over the base and headed northeast to intercept the light as it descended. He described the ensuing “dogfight”[III-2]:

“The light appeared to level out rapidly, and I missed it on the first run and started a tight port turn. As I headed for a point that would give me a 90-degree collision course for the light, it appeared to accelerate and crossed my bow at an incredible speed. I immediately went into a tighter turn and the next intercept was the same except that I was almost on the light, as it flashed from starboard to port. At this close range nothing but the light could be seen, and it was a brilliant white, approximately fifteen feet in diameter. After each run, the light appeared to go out one-quarter to one-half mile, and slowing in speed, continuing in a port turn. As I pulled out of the third run the light appeared to start another rapid descent towards Caimanera. This time I went into a steep dive to follow, when the light appeared to shallow its dive and head towards the control tower. My altitude was 6000 to 8000 feet, descending at a speed of better than 200 knots. The light was below me and going at more than twice my speed. As I approached the north shore of the Bay, at approximately 2000 feet descending, the light seemed to veer to port, pass over the army dredge, steady out on an easterly heading, level out over the mangroves, slow down rapidly over the cove ... hover over the water momentarily, and then fade from sight.” After the plane landed, harbor police searched the area but found nothing.

When the pilot was informed that he had been fighting a lighted weather balloon, released that night from the Naval Air Station at Guantánamo Bay, he may very naturally have felt incredulous. Instead of arguing, however, he helped carry out an experiment. On the following night the station released another lighted balloon, at about the same time, and the pilot took off to try an intercept. After comparing the experience with that of the night before, he concluded that he had indeed fought a balloon:

“Many of the illusions seen on the previous night could be duplicated by maneuvering the plane appropriately. I tracked the balloon to 12,000 feet and made runs on it from as far away as ten miles. I could always intercept and pass it at any predetermined position, as against the fact that I could not get close to the other light, which at the time appeared to be moving away at each attempt at approach.”

There were other differences, too. The rate of ascent was faster on the first night, and the second balloon did not exhibit a tail. Discussion with members of the Aerology Department brought out the explanation of these differences. The first night had been clear, with a bright moon that transformed the accompanying light into a flickering tail. On the second night the dew point was higher and the atmosphere was hazy so that no tail was visible, the balloon looked smaller, and showed an orange glow instead of a bright white.

The rapid climb of the first balloon could be attributed to a vertical air current, or to an air layer of variable density, or both. A balloon often develops leaks at high altitudes and then descends to an intermediate altitude where the loss of gas and the denser atmosphere cause it to hover. One wind balloon, released earlier from the same base, had developed a leak, started spinning, covered a horizontal distance of about a mile, and then dropped into the water. Similarly, the first balloon probably developed a large hole and fell very rapidly for a while until the loss of gas and the increase in atmospheric pressure caused it to shrink and close the hole, slowing its descent.

Some of his impressions, he decided, were the result of making tight turns at high speed: “The last fast descent could be due to the fact that I may have cut the balloon with my prop on the third run, causing the light to fall free. My last three-quarter turn was diving to port in a position northeast of the light, which could have produced the illusion of the light arcing across Caimanera and the Bay and settling into the water. The light’s crossing from starboard to port could have been the result of my plane being in a vertical turn and the light descending straight down instead of going horizontally. At the time of intercept I thought my wings to be almost level, the light traveling in a flat circle, but due to the afore-mentioned vertigo, a pilot cannot rely on his senses to establish attitude.”

The pilot concluded: “Considering all the facts and an observation of known light on the night of the twenty-fifth, it is my opinion that the light on the night of the twenty-fourth was a balloon, with its accompanying light, which had been released from the Naval Air Station.”[III-2]

The Wallops Island UFO

Perhaps the most spectacular (and short-lived) UFO in history appeared at 6:55 P.M. E.S.T. on April 1, 1960, along the east coast. A bright-yellow streak of fire shot up from the horizon into the eastern sky and slowly changed into a huge zigzag pattern. With the streak of fire appeared a large reddish sphere, reported by some observers to be as large as the full moon and many times brighter than a planet. Visible along the entire eastern seaboard, the brilliant object slowly moved eastward, followed by a trail of greenish sparks. While still at high altitude out over the Atlantic Ocean, it suddenly vanished—as though it had simply taken off into outer space. Switchboards in eastern cities were jammed as witnesses called newspapers, universities, and nearby observatories to report a comet, a fireball, or a flying saucer.

Newspapers immediately printed a full explanation of this April Fool’s Day apparition: a scheduled but unannounced rocket launching from Wallops Island, Virginia. The yellow fire was debris from the rocket, reflecting the rays of the setting sun; contrary winds in the upper atmosphere produced the zigzag form. The luminous globe was a full-scale model of the Echo satellite—an inflated balloon 100 feet in diameter, carried aloft by the rocket. Dry powder escaping through holes in the balloon produced the greenish tail. The object had “vanished” when the balloon fell back into the earth’s shadow and was thus no longer visible.

Although the newspapers published a full explanation within a day or two, some saucer enthusiasts continued to treat the apparition as a mystery. In its Special Bulletin for May the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (see Chapter XIII) included the incident under “Recent UFO Sightings.” Three months after the launching the organization conceded (UFO Investigator, July-August, 1960) that the UFO of April 1 was probably the giant balloon sent up from Wallops Island.

On August 12, 1960, the counterpart of this balloon went into orbit and became the satellite Echo, which is still circling the earth, shining like a star of the first magnitude near dawn or sunset.

Weather Balloons and Saucers

In the early years of the saucer era balloons accounted for some 25 per cent of the unidentified flying objects reported to ATIC. The pattern of these sightings is unmistakable, and the identity of balloon and UFO is often certain—as certain as any evidence can be. Nevertheless many such identifications are resolutely rejected by the saucer enthusiasts. It would be pointless to discuss all the UFO reports of this class, but we can summarize a few of the most famous.

In the winter of 1953, a flying saucer was reported to have circled around a B-36 bomber and blinked a light as though signaling. Investigators from ATIC determined the following facts:

At 1:13 A.M. on February 6, 1953, the pilot of a B-36 plane bound for Spokane, Washington, was near Rosalia when he sighted a round white light below him, circling and rising at a speed estimated at 150 to 200 knots as it proceeded on a southeast course. The B-36 made a sharp descending turn toward the light, which was in view for a period of three to five minutes, but the pilot could not identify it.

At 1 A.M., thirteen minutes before the sighting, the United States Weather Bureau station at Fairchild Air Force Base had released a pibal balloon. Winds aloft at altitudes of 7000 to 10,000 feet were from the northwest with a speed of about fifty knots. Computations showed that the existing winds would have carried the balloon to the southeast, and it would have been over Rosalia, which is 12.5 nautical miles southeast of Fairchild Air Force Base, in about fifteen minutes. The plane sighted the unknown near Rosalia thirteen minutes after the launching. The balloon carried white running lights which accounted for the blinking described, and the circling climb of the UFO is typical of a balloon’s course. Thus all the evidence supports ATIC’s conclusion that the UFO was a weather balloon[III-2].

A similar sighting had occurred near Hamilton Air Force Base, California, on the afternoon of August 3, 1952—toward the end of the summer’s saucer scare (Chapter VII)—when several pairs of saucers supposedly engaged in dramatic duels in full view of the base. Ample evidence supports the Air Force conclusion that the UFOs were balloons. The two objects were first seen at 4:15 P.M. Ground observers at the Air Force base, with the aid of binoculars, described them as silver in color, circular in shape, 60 to 100 feet in diameter, and traveling from east to west at an estimated speed of 400 to 450 miles an hour. One object was at about 12,000 feet, the other at about 18,000 feet; as they moved to the west a distance of about fifteen miles, passing over the heads of the observers (but not circling the base), the higher object dived to about the level of the lower, and they bobbed about each other for about an hour and a quarter. Toward the end of this period they were visible only intermittently because they were seen against the sun. Three additional pairs of objects (a total of eight) came into view fifteen to twenty miles west of the observers and, buffeted by the winds, appeared to carry on a dogfight; momentarily they appeared in a “diamond” formation extending over an area of about four miles. Since the witnesses were looking into the sun at objects fifteen or twenty miles away, they found it difficult to follow the course of any one for any length of time.

The objects looked like balloons, behaved like balloons, and weather balloons had been released in the area that day. Conclusion: the saucers were weather balloons[III-2].

A number of other publicized cases listed as “Unknown” were in all probability balloons. Since a probability, however good, is not the same as an established fact, these sightings remain in the Unknown category even though their actual explanation is reasonably certain. Such a case was that near Hermanas, New Mexico, which, like that a few weeks earlier at Hamilton Air Force Base, may have been stimulated by the 1952 saucer panic in Washington (Chapter VII).

On August 24, 1952, an Air Force colonel was flying from California to Georgia in an F-84-G plane at an air speed of about 290 miles an hour. At 10:15 A.M. M.S.T., when near Hermanas, New Mexico, he observed two round, silvery objects about six feet in diameter some two miles north of him and traveling east at high speed; they showed no trail or exhaust. During the three minutes they were in view, one object suddenly began a right turn while the second accelerated rapidly; they changed in shape and in color, became elongated and gray, and then disappeared. A few minutes later over El Paso, Texas, he saw two similar silvery objects, also traveling east. During the ten minutes they were in view, one object seemed to climb straight up for 2000 or 3000 feet, followed immediately by the second one. Assuming that the same pair of objects was involved in both sightings, the observer concluded that they were going much faster than any plane, and reported the incident to ATIC.

The behavior described is typical of that of balloons. Rising into a new wind stream, they may move rapidly and change their orientation so that they look sausage-shaped instead of round; reflecting the sun at a different angle, they look gray rather than silver. Investigators checked with Biggs Air Force Base, White Sands, and El Paso International Airport; both White Sands and El Paso had released weather balloons at 8:00 that morning which had traveled southeast and burst some time before the sighting at Hermanas. Since no single recorded balloon could account for the sighting, it was listed as Unknown[III-2].

This inquiry can scarcely be called thorough. No check seems to have been made at Holloman Air Force Base or at more distant bases whose weather balloons might well have traveled into the area. The investigators apparently accepted the pilot’s assumption that the objects in the two sightings were identical and were therefore traveling at incredible speeds; yet there was no evidence to support the assumption. It is far more probable that he was observing two sets of objects, not one. The estimates of size, distance, and speed are all uncertain because no fixed reference point existed. The report does not state whether the objects seemed to be above or below the plane, and does not give the exact heading of the objects.

The objects looked and behaved like balloons. Another possibility is that they were fragments from the balloons that had burst earlier. But the explanation of this incident remains unknown because too few facts were determined.

Plastic UFOs and the “Stack of Coins”

A burst balloon has caused many a saucer scare, but the invasion of Farmington, New Mexico, on Saint Patrick’s Day 1950 was one of the most dramatic. The “saucers” began to fly about 10:15 A.M. M.S.T., and soon filled the air. In numbers estimated from 500 to thousands, for the next hour the gleaming saucer-shaped objects soared over the town, moving erratically at incredible speeds, darting in and out among each other in what one writer has called “the greatest exhibition of magnetic flight that has ever happened in this universe.”[III-6] (See Chapter IX.)

The explanation is more prosaic. A Skyhook balloon had been launched that morning from Holloman Air Force Base near White Sands, New Mexico. Near Farmington, in the cold atmosphere at 60,000 feet the balloon had become brittle, burst, and disintegrated into hundreds of tiny pieces of plastic. Light as feathers, shining in the sunlight, they floated over the town and away[III-1, p. 106].

A similar episode occurred on July 27, 1952, the day after the second Washington “invasion.” The dramatically named “stack of coins” sighting at Manhattan Beach, California, was reported by an aircraft engineer, formerly a Navy pilot, and was confirmed by seven other witnesses.

At 6:35 P.M. P.S.T., just before sunset, a bright silvery object appeared high in the sky, elliptical in shape and apparently solid. The size was estimated to be about that of a dime held at arm’s length. As the observers watched, it turned to the south and gracefully broke apart into seven smaller objects, as smoothly as a stack of coins separating. The three lead objects assumed a V position, the others followed in two pairs, and the whole formation then turned northeast and quickly disappeared. ATIC investigators, still buried in a mass of equally spectacular reports, could provide no solution to the mystery, and another fleet of saucers had apparently been added to the summer’s list.

Immediately concluding that the objects were from outer space, UFO-philes pondered the meaning of the incident. One author suggested that the disks might have been seven different ships that, when first observed, had been stacked like coins and attached to each other by some magnetic force, so that all could be directed as one[III-5].

This sighting has remained technically an unknown chiefly because the descriptions fail to give the necessary information. What direction did the object come from? How long was it in sight? What balloons had been released in the area that day? At what time? What were the winds at high altitudes? The winds at low levels were from the west, and at altitudes from 20,000 to 50,000 feet they were from the east; but what were they in the region above 70,000 feet, the probable location of the object? Even without these facts, a reasonable explanation can be offered: the unknown was a radiosonde balloon that burst at a high altitude.

The sun was low on the western horizon. A balloon at a great height reflects the sun brilliantly from its rubber or plastic skin and gleams like a giant metallic sphere. These balloons usually soar to 70,000 to 90,000 feet before they burst from the cold. The fragments then disperse in an impressively uniform pattern, and may disappear quickly. The radiosonde package and attached parachute fall rapidly at such heights. They are not noticed by the witnesses because the chute usually does not open fully until after the package has fallen some distance into the beginning twilight near the earth’s surface.

This explanation of the “stack of coins” cannot be proved, of course, but every detail of the incident is consistent with the behavior of a bursting balloon[III-2].

Jets and Contrails

Weather balloons are not the only air-borne objects that have been mistaken for interplanetary craft. Flying saucers reported over Durango, Colorado, early in August 1952 turned out to be four T-33 Air Force jets flying at 30,000 feet, so high that no sound reached the ground.

A low-flying jet, enveloped in an aura of cloud made by the jet itself, can look like a strange object. This condensation phenomenon, called a contrail, occurs when areas of low pressure develop on the wing surface; the air cools by expansion in the slowly moving boundary layer in contact with the wing. Both the depth of the boundary layer and the drop in pressure increase with increasing air speed, but each depends very closely on the aerodynamic qualities of the wing. An excellent photograph of one such disk produced by a Canberra jet was taken on February 4, 1956, along the coast of Africa near Accra on a morning when the condensation phenomenon occurred several times during air maneuvers. The weather was fine, the sky cloudless with a few patches of haze over the sea, and visibility was more than eight miles. During the display the air speed of the jets was usually too low or the air too dry for the aura to form. “But over the cliff edge where the sea-breeze was just beginning to break through in patches the air would be moist enough to condense about 1½ gm. of water droplets in each cubic metre of air, quite sufficient to produce the observed effect. The effect is increased by higher speeds at the end of a dive (when the angle of incidence of the aerofoil is least) ... but it is likely that the patchy onset of the sea-breeze was the most important contributing factor.”[III-7]

A flying saucer reported from Johannesburg, South Africa, on April 11, 1958, belongs in this category. Hundreds of witnesses reported a mysterious starlike object maneuvering in the northern sky on three successive nights at speeds in excess of 2000 miles an hour. Most observers agreed that “The Thing” could not have been any known aircraft because its speed was too great; it sometimes hovered stationary in the air, and repeatedly changed color from white to red to deep scarlet. One member of an Interplanetary Club who watched it through binoculars described the UFO as saucer-shaped, with a rim like a soup plate around the edge.

Members of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Minitrack Station, near Johannesburg, were amused by the variety of reports on “The Thing.” The mysterious object in the night skies was in fact a South African Air Force Dakota aircraft, flying back and forth so that the Minitrack Station could test the calibration of its tracking instruments. In addition to the usual navigation lights, the aircraft had carried a bright, flashing light so that it could be photographed[III-7a].

A flight of bombers refueling in mid-air at night can be a startling spectacle and more than once has been reported as a gathering of flying saucers.

Such an incident occurred in Florida on October 31, 1955, when a disk jockey at Gainesville broke into his radio program about ten o’clock in the evening to announce that flying saucers were over the station. Many of his listeners hurried out of their houses to look at the Halloween visitors, clearly visible in the night sky. One reporter stated that he had seen four to six objects, oblong in shape, brilliantly glowing, red and orange, traveling soundlessly in a straight-line formation that later changed to a V[III-8]. Both the radio station and the police station were swamped with telephone calls from frightened citizens, most of whom calmed down when they learned the explanation: a flight of bombers had been refueling at an altitude of 32,000 feet.

The Killian Case

The most famous UFO sighting of this type is the Killian case. On the evening of February 24, 1959, an American Airlines plane was flying from Newark to Detroit. At about 8:45 P.M., when the plane was near Bradford, Pennsylvania, the pilot, Captain Killian, noticed some puzzling lights above and to the left of his plane. There seemed to be three, their colors changing from yellow to light orange, dimming and brightening in intensity and shifting their relative positions. At first he supposed he was looking at the constellation Orion, for the lights had the same configuration as the stars in Orion’s “belt,” but when the lights changed position and he could see Orion itself in addition to the lights, he discarded his first theory. He considered the possibility of a jet tanker refueling operation, but decided the lights were moving too slowly. He couldn’t think of any ordinary explanation—but he had long wondered what truth there was in the idea of flying saucers and had thought there must be something to it.

Over the loud speaker he remarked to the passengers that American Airlines had a special treat for them which they could see by looking out of the left windows. He continued to watch the lights as he flew west toward Detroit, and radioed two other American Airlines planes in the area. Learning that their pilots were also watching the unusual spectacle, he notified Air Traffic Control (ATC) in Detroit. The lights remained in view for about forty minutes, all the way to Detroit, and the pilot lost sight of them only when he began to let down through the haze for a landing.

Reporters and photographers were waiting to interview him, and next day’s Detroit Times carried a banner headline, “Mystery Discs Trail Plane Here,” over a picture of Captain Killian flanked by the plane’s two pretty hostesses, all three smiling as they held up to the camera three ordinary kitchen saucers[III-9]. After checking with the Detroit ATC, who did not know of any scheduled refueling operation, the pilot reported his experience to officials of American Airlines, and next day returned to New York where again he was besieged by reporters and photographers. Meanwhile, following standard CIRVIS procedure (Communication Instruction for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sighting from Aircraft), the manager of operations of American Airlines reported the incident to ATIC at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

In New York the day after the sighting Captain Killian gave a telephone interview to Radio Station WCHS, Charleston, West Virginia, describing his experience. Following the customary procedure, intelligence officers from Mitchell Air Force Base questioned him and filled out the usual report form[III-2]. In the radio interview and in the talk with intelligence officers Captain Killian made the same statements he had made to American Airlines officials: he didn’t know what the lights were, and he couldn’t tell how far away they had been because he didn’t know their size or their altitude[III-10].

Not for months had such a good flying-saucer story appeared, and the newspapers made the most of it. Among the first to assert that the unknown lights had been flying saucers was the UFO Research Committee of Akron, Ohio (see Chapter XIII). Members of the committee had received the news by telephone, even before Captain Killian’s plane landed at Detroit, from the pilot of a United Airlines plane who had watched the lights on his flight to Akron. During the days following, Captain Killian’s copilot gave an interview on Long John Nebel’s after-midnight radio program in New York. Captain Killian himself described the UFOs to members of a New York UFO organization, Civilian Saucer Intelligence (CSI), and appeared on several radio and TV programs. Both saucer addicts and newsmen besieged Air Force representatives, demanding an immediate explanation of the sighting. Finally, on February 28, only two days after receiving the report from American Airlines, ATIC yielded to public pressure and produced a tentative theory: it was possible that the pilots might have sighted the stars of Orion, as Captain Killian had first suggested. However, the release added, no definite conclusion could be reached until all the facts had been studied.

Promptly rejecting the possibility that he might have been looking at Orion, Captain Killian stated in an interview with the New York Herald Tribune, “I am sure there are people on other planets and that they have solved the problem of space travel.... I sincerely believe that their vehicles are coming close to earth.”

While the saucer believers were keeping the story alive, applauding Captain Killian and denouncing the Air Force, the experts at ATIC had been collecting facts and trying to analyze them. The basic piece of evidence was Captain Killian’s own report to American Airlines, made a few hours after the incident took place. After describing the circumstances of the sighting, the appearance and behavior of the lights, the statement continues:

“The only possible explanation other than flying saucers could be a jet-tanker refueling operation. Never having witnessed refueling operations at night, I am not aware of the lighting of the jet tanker.

“My air speed during this complete flight was 250 knots indicated. I also do not know the air speed of tankers during operation if this could be so. I contacted ATC to find out if they had any airplanes on a clearance and no three airplanes were given.

“In summary, it was difficult for me to believe they were jets because of low speed and configuration. If they weren’t jets I still don’t know any more than I did before even though I watched them for forty minutes before. Due to the dark and strong lights I was not able to ascertain any size or shape. The altitude of the objects was 30 degrees above my horizon. Distance away is unknown.”[III-2]

Almost equally important was the evidence of other witnesses. During the forty-minute period of observation, the crews of five other planes, all flying west in the Pennsylvania-Ohio region, had watched the lights for varying lengths of time. Several persons on the ground in and near Akron had seen them between 9:15 and 9:30.

Air Force investigators methodically gathered the facts and made their analysis and on March 16, only twenty days after the sighting, they released a summary to the press. The mysterious lights belonged to normal terrestrial aircraft. Although ATC at Detroit had apparently not had the information when first asked, three B-47 bombers of the Strategic Air Command had been carrying out a night refueling operation from KC-97 tankers at the time and place reported. The tanker has several groups of lights which, from a distance, can seem to be one or more lights, and would have looked very much like the three objects described by Captain Killian. Such a refueling operation takes from about forty minutes to more than an hour.

Captain Killian had been flying at an altitude of 8500 feet, and he had given the location of the unknowns as 30 degrees above his horizon; this agreed with the position of the tankers, which were operating at an altitude of 17,000 feet. Captain Killian had been flying west at an indicated air speed of 250 knots; the refueling tankers had also been flying west at a true air speed of 230 knots (ca. 270 mph). Since the courses of plane and tankers were roughly parallel, the tankers had remained in view and would have arrived over Akron at about 9:15, the time that ground observers reported the lights.

Everything checked. Every detail of the incident was accounted for[III-11]. Nevertheless the solution caused an explosion in the camps of the saucer enthusiasts, who called it, among other things, imaginative. Forgetting that the “Orion” theory suggested immediately after the sighting had been only tentative, UFO addicts ridiculed it and asked why the experts had later offered a different explanation—which they greeted with equal ridicule[III-12].

Captain Killian, too, had apparently forgotten his first report. On March 24, a month after the sighting, in an interview by the Long Island Daily Press he stated that the things he saw could not have been tankers; that he knew what B-47 bombers and KC-97 tankers looked like, and how they looked in operation at night (Original statement to American Airlines: “Never having witnessed refueling operations at night, I am not aware of the lighting of jet tankers.”) Also, he told the Daily Press, the objects he saw were at least triple the size of any known tanker or bomber. (Original statement to American Airlines: “Due to the dark and strong lights I was not able to ascertain any size or shape.”) Furthermore, he asserted, the unknowns had been far too fast for a tanker, and had moved at a speed of about 2000 miles an hour. (Original statement to American Airlines: “... it was difficult for me to believe they were jets because of low speed.”)

In rejecting the Air Force explanation of this incident, flying-saucer addicts ignored several embarrassing questions: If Captain Killian actually saw interplanetary craft, how did he fail to see the earthly aircraft operating at the same time and place? If the unknowns moved at a speed of 2000 miles an hour, how did Captain Killian and the crews of several other planes, flying at less than 300 miles an hour, keep the unknowns in sight for forty minutes? In that length of time the UFOs should have covered most of the distance to the Pacific.

Few persons, given the facts by responsible officials, would persist in denying the reality of the tankers and conjuring up a fleet of flying saucers to occupy the relevant cubic area of space. To the true enthusiast, however, these refueling planes remain incontrovertible proof that spacecraft are among us.

... And Kites and Soap Bubbles

Objects need not be as large as Skyhook balloons or jets to start a flying-saucer scare. Brightly illuminated advertising blimps have caused many UFO reports. Unfamiliar circumstances or a faulty perspective can manufacture spaceships out of things as small as seeds, spider webs, scraps of paper, or toy balloons.

In the autumn of 1947, during the first months of the saucer scare, many such UFOs were reported. One experienced observer, formerly a combat pilot, reported a flying saucer overhead at a height he estimated as 5000 feet. More careful study showed that the object was at a height of only about 250 feet and was suspended from small balloons. Later he learned that, as a joke, some boys had launched a paper saucer carried by helium-filled toy balloons. During this same period when everyone was talking about flying saucers, spaceships reported over an Iowa town one night turned out to be glowing bits of paper drifting from a fireplace chimney[III-13].

On March 16, 1961, according to the British radio, a resident of East Suffolk reported to the police that he had seen a spaceship land in a nearby field. Investigators soon found the craft: a fuel tank that had fallen from a passing plane.

A fleet of UFOs appeared late one afternoon in July 1961 to an observer driving west along Highway 54 from El Paso, Texas, to Alamogordo, New Mexico. It had been raining in the mountains, and wind and dust storms had forced the driver to stop several times during his trip, but now the sun was shining between patches of dark cloud in the western sky. Driving toward the outskirts of Alamogordo, he was startled to see a V-shaped formation of huge saucers flying directly toward him. Stopping his car, he saw that they were glowing a deep red, were moving at high speed, and seemed to be as high as the clouds. When they had reached a point nearly overhead, they suddenly seemed to drop down toward the observer. Rapidly revising all his first estimates of size, height, and speed, he recognized their true identity. They were merely a group of tumbleweeds that had been carried aloft in the strong winds and were soaring past at a height of only 100 feet. Illumination from the setting sun had produced their weird reddish glow.

A spectacular flying saucer hovered near the Smithsonian satellite-observing station in Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles, on the night of October 17, 1961. The station crew observed it with binoculars, by apogee telescope, and photographed it with the Baker-Nunn satellite camera. A brilliantly glowing object, it shone in the eastern sky, moving erratically and fluctuating in brightness. After watching it for nearly an hour and finding that the nearby airport could not observe the object, the observers concluded that it must be less distant than it seemed, and set out by car to try to get a closer look. About a mile and a half from the station they stopped, and solved the mystery. A plantation manager and his servant stood in a field, hanging on to one end of a 1200-foot kite string. At the other end, high in the sky, soared a kite; hanging from it was a lighted pressure lantern[III-14] (see Plate IIa).

In 1954 malfunction of a sewage-disposal plant in western Pennsylvania produced one of the most spectacular saucer reports on record. An oversupply of detergent, whipped by a stiff breeze, foamed into a mountainous tower of bubbles. A sudden gust of wind broke the tower and launched a colossal mass of bubbles as large as a ten-story building. This brilliant, scintillating, super-giant bubble bath rose to great heights and drifted for miles. Widely reported as a UFO, this apparition was merely an unusual by-product of modern technology. The UFOs photographed over Kentucky on July 7, 1947, were probably vapor trails, a less familiar sight then than now; or they might possibly have been the smoke trails from an exploding meteor (see Plate IIb).

A saucer incident that might have become a classic Unknown occurred in Denver at 10 A.M. on a summer’s day in 1950. A man was sitting on the shady porch of his house, reading. Beyond the porch roof the sun shone brightly. Glancing up from his book, he was startled to see a formation of perhaps a dozen spherical objects, shining iridescently, traveling toward the distant mountains. As he watched, those in the front of the procession seemed to vanish instantly while others appeared out of nowhere to join the parade at the rear. Measuring their size against the mountain background, he decided they were “immense” and they moved at fantastic speed, covering the thirty or so miles to the mountains in a matter of five or six seconds.

Too stunned to take action, he was still numb from shock when he heard a faint “Hello,” and looked up—to realize that the little girl across the street was blowing soap bubbles. If the man had jumped up when he first saw the objects and had rushed into the house to telephone the nearest saucer club, he might never have found out that the “spaceships” were only bubbles[III-15].