Part 15 (1/2)

Before long his vigil was rewarded when the lights ot two pictures A third forot three ht and early Hart said he took the roll of unexposed fil shop He explained that he did all of his fil in this friend's lab He told the friend about the pictures and they quickly developed them

I stopped Hart at this point and asked why he didn't get est news photos of the century

He said that the lights had appeared to be so diatives; had he thought that he did have soood pictures he would have awakened his friend to develop the negatives right away

When he developed the negatives and saw that they showed an iested that he call the newspaper At first the paper wasn't interested but then they decided to run the photos I later found out that they had done so of their own

We ith Hart into his back yard to re-enact what had taken place He described the lights as being the sareen color as those seen by the professors The forhts Hart saere always flying in a perfect V He traced the path froh an open patch of sky over the back yard, to a point where they disappeared over the house Frohts had crossed about 120 degrees of open sky in four seconds This 30-degree-per-second angular velocity corresponded to the professors' eatives, thanked him for his information, and left

Armed with a list of naence officer and I started out to try to get a cross-section account of the other UFO sightings in the Lubbock area

All the stories about the UFO's were the saenerallynorth to south A few people had variations One lady saw a flying Venetian blind and another a flying double boiler One point of interest was that very few clai the professors' story in the paper, but this could get back to the old question, ”Do people look up if they have no reason to do so?”

We talked to observers in nearby towns Their stories were the same

Two of them, tower operators at an airport, reported that they had seen the lights on several occasions

It was in one of these outlying towns, Lahty years old, who gave us a good lead He had seen the lights and he had identified them Ever since he had read the story in the papers he had been looking One evening he and his ere in their yard looking for the lights All of a sudden two or three appeared They were in view for several seconds, then they were gone In a few hts did a repeat performance

The man adhts and launched into his background as a native Texan, with range wars, Indians, and stagecoaches under his belt What he was trying to point out was that despite the range wars, Indians, and stagecoaches, he had been scared His wife had been scared too We had sohts but we finally made it The third tihts eentleman had immediately identified it as a plover, a water bird about the size of a quail

Later that night, and on several other occasions, they had seen the sa stories of the old west Texas, we left

Our next stop was the federal gaot the lon on plovers We explained our interest and the warden was very helpful He had been around west Texas all of his life so he was familiar ildlife The oily white breast of a plover could easily reflect light, but plovers usually didn't travel in more than pairs, or three at thein a flock of fifteen to thirty but, of course, this wasn't impossible Ducks, yes, but probably not plovers He did say that for some unknown reason there were more than the usual number of plovers in the area that fall

I was anxious to get the negatives that Hart had lent us back to the photo lab at Wright Field, but I had one more call to e object hovering near their car, but I also wanted to write my report before I left Lubbock Two Air Force special investigators from Reese AFB offered to talk to the ladies, so I stayed at the air base and finished ators ca to the ladies and doing a little discreet checking into their backgrounds

The two ladies, a hter, had left their home in Matador, Texas, 70 ust 31 They were driving along in their car when they suddenly noticed ”a pear-shaped” object about 150 yards ahead of them It was just off the side of the road, about 120 feet in the air It was drifting slowly to the east, ”less than the speed required to take off in a Cub airplane” They drove on down the road about 50 ot out of the car The object, which they esti along slowly There was no sign of any exhaust blast and they heard no noise, but they did see a ”porthole” in the side of the object In a few seconds the object began to pick up speed and rapidly cliht spiraling ation showed that the two ladies were ”solid citizens,”

with absolutely no talents, or reasons, for fabricating such a story

The daughter was fairly familiar with aircraft Her husband was an Air Force officer then in Korea, and she had been living near air bases for several years The ladies had said that the object was ”drifting” to the east, which possibly indicated that it was ation it was found that it was ators had worked all day and hadn't cohtest indication of an answer

This added the final section to my now volu as I rode to the airport to catch an airliner back to Dayton I tried to put the whole puzzle together It was hard to believe that all Fd heard was real Did a huge flying wing pass over Albuquerque and travel 250 miles to Lubbock in about fifteen minutes?

This would be about 900 ton pick up the sa wallReese AFB It was 1,300to people, we decided that the lights were apparently still around Lubbock at 11:20PM and the radar picked the about 780 miles per hour This was fairly close to the 900-mile-per-hour speed clocked by the two radars The photos of the Lubbock Lights checked with the description of what the AEC employee and his wife had seen in Albuquerque nobody in Lubbock, however, had reported seeing a ”flying wing” with lights All of this i around in my mind when I stepped out of the staff car at the Lubbock airport

My plane had already landed so I checked in at the ticket counter, picked up a ot into the airplane I sat down next to aa Stetson hat and cowboy boots I soon found out he was a retired rancher froe of the paper was an account of a large meteor that had flashed across New Mexico, west Texas, and Oklaho to the newspaper account, it was very spectacular and had startled a good many people in Lubbock I was interested in the story because I had seen this ht and I could easily understand how such things could be called UFO's

My seat partnerthe story of the meteor because he coht him to the airport, had seen it We talked about the s and left a perfect opening for hihts He asked ue stories I hoped that this would stave off any detailed accounts of stories I had been saturated with during the past five days, but it didn't I heard all the details all over again

As he talked on, I settled back into happen Pretty soon it caed to a half-proud, half-apologetic tone I'd heard this transitionto tell about the UFO that he had seen He was going to tell how he had seen the bluish-green lights I rong; what he said knocked e professors had seen their for nobody in Lubbock knew about the story, not even their friends He didn't want anyone to think he and his ere ”crazy” He was telling er Just after dark his wife had gone outdoors to take so the paper Suddenly his wife had rushed into the house, as he told the story, ”as white as the sheets she was carrying” As close as he could remember, he said, this was about tenHe stopped at this point to tell hty” and she ”never made up tales” This character qualification was also standard for UFO storytellers The reason his as so upset was that she had seen a large object glide swiftly and silently over the house

She said it looked like ”an airplane without a body” On the back edge of the ere pairs of glowing bluish lights The Albuquerque sighting! He said he didn't have any idea what his wife had seen but he thought that it was an interesting story