Part 12 (2/2)
The night before a Mid-Continent Airlines DC-3 was taxiing out to take off from the airport at Sioux City, Iohen the airport control tower operators noticed a bright bluish-white light in the west The tower operators, thinking that it was another airplane, called the pilot of the DC-3 and told hi the field As the DC-3 lined up to take off, both the pilots of the airliner and the tower operators saw the lightin, but since it was still soiven per up speed, both the pilot and the copilot were busy, so they didn't see the light approaching But the tower operators did, and as soon as the DC-3 was airborne, they called and told the pilot to be careful The copilot said that he saw the light and atching it
Just then the tower got a call fro instructions and the operators looked away froht
In the DC-3 the pilot and copilot had also looked away froht for a few seconds When they looked back, the bluish-white light had apparently closed in because it was hter and it was dead ahead In a split second it closed in and flashed by their right wing--so close that both pilots thought that they would collide with it When it passed the DC-3, the pilots saw e object that looked like the ”fuselage of a B-29”
When the copilot had recovered he looked out his sideto see if he could see the UFO and there it was, flying formation with them
He yelled at the pilot, who leaned over and looked just in time to see the UFO disappear
The second look confirmed the Mid-Continent crew's first is They saw nothing ht--no s, no exhaust
The tower hadthe other airplane and the pilot and the copilot didn't have ti on All the tower operators could say was that seconds after the UFO had disappeared the light that they had seen was gone
When the airliner landed in Omaha, the crew filed a report that was forwarded to the Air Force But this wasn't the only report that was filed; a full colonel froer on the DC-3 He'd seen the UFO too, and he wasreport and I wondered what the official reaction would be The official reaction was a great big, deep belly laugh
This puzzled ating all UFO reports
I continued to eavesdrop on the discussions about the report all day since the UFO expert was about to ”investigate” the incident He sent out a wire to Flight Service and found that there was a B-36 so, and fro on the B- 36 When Washi+ngton called to get the results of the analysis of the sighting, they otten the B-36 treatment because the case was closed
I'd only been at ATIC two days and I certainly didn't class ence expert, but it didn't take an expert to see that a B-36, even one piloted by an experienced idiot, could not do what the UFO had done--buzz a DC-3 that was in an airport traffic pattern
I didn't know it at the time but a siht of May 29, 1950, the crew of an Aton National Airport, and they were about seven miles west of Mount Vernon when the copilot suddenly looked out and yelled, ”Watch it--watch it” The pilot and the engineer looked out to see a bluish-white light closing in on theht turn while the UFO passed by on the left ”froher than the airliner During this time the UFO passed between the full moon and DC-6 and the crew could see the dark silhouette of a ”wingless B-29” Its length was about half the dia out the tail end
Seconds after the UFO had passed by the DC-6, the copilot looked out and there it was again, apparently flying for Then in a flash of blue fla a left turn toward the coast
The pilot of the DC-6, whoti saucers, as they were then known, for several weeks but I kept them in mind and one day I asked one of the old hands at ATIC about them--specifically I wanted to know about the Sioux City Incident Why had it been sloughed off so lightly? His ansas typical of the official policy at that time ”One of these days all of these crazy pilots will kill theround will be locked up, and there won't be anysaucer reports”
But after I knew the people at ATIC a little better, I found that being anti-saucer wasn't a unanience officers took the UFO reports seriously One anized back in 1947, was convinced that the UFO's were interplanetary spaceshi+ps He had questioned the people in the control tower at God the UFO, and he had spent hours talking to the crew of the DC-3 that was buzzed near Montgoar-shaped UFO that spouted blue flame” In essence, he knew UFO history from _A_ _to_ _Z_ because he had ”been there”
I think that it was this controversial thinking that first aroused my interest in the subject of UFO's and ledthat stood out tounindoctrinated in the ways of UFO lore, was the schizophrenic approach so many people at ATIC took On the surface they sided with the belly-laughers on any saucer issue, but if you were alone with them and started to ridicule the subject, they defended it or at least took an active interest I learned this one day after I'd been at ATIC about a month
A belated UFO report had co it, so I asked him if I could take a look at it when he had finished In a few minutes he handed it to me
When I finished with the report I tossed it back on my friend's desk, with soot a reaction I didn't expect; he wasn't so sure the whole world was nuts-- maybe the nuts were at ATIC ”What's the deal?” I asked hihly checked out every report and found that there's nothing to any of them?”
He toldtime
He hadn't ever worked on the UFO project, but he had seenHe just plain didn't buy a lot of their explanations ”And I'm not the only one who thinks this,” he added
”Then why all of the big show of power against the UFO reports?” I re saucer,” he answered about half bitterly, ”and to stay in favor it behooves one to follow suit”
As of February 1951 this was the UFO project
The words ”flying saucer” didn't cootten all about the tords and was deeply engrossed in -15 The Mig had just begun to show up in Korea, and finding out more about it was a hot project