Part 16 (1/2)

The known eles and the photos, have been dragged back and forth across every type of paper upon which written material appears, froes Saucer addicts have studied and offered the case as all-conclusive proof, with photos, that UFO's are interplanetary Dr Donald Menzel of Harvard studied the case and ripped the sightings to shreds in _Look_, _Ti_ _Saucers_, with the theory that the professors were hts But none of these people even had access to the full report This is the first time it has ever been printed

The only other people outside Project Blue Book who have studied the coroup who, due to their associations with the government, had complete access to our files

And these people were not pulp writers or wide-eyed fanatics, they were scientists--rocket experts, nuclear physicists, and intelligence experts They had banded together to study our UFO reports because they were convinced that so reported were interplanetary spaceshi+ps and the Lubbock series was one of these reports The fact that the forhts were in different shapes didn't bother them; in fact, it convinced theht operate were correct

This group of scientists believed that the spaceshi+ps, or at least the part of the spaceshi+p that cahly swept-back wing configuration And they believed that for propulsion and control the craft had a series of se Various coet various flight attitudes The lights that the various observers saw differed in arrangeht attitudes

(Three years later the Canadian Government announced that this was exactly the way that they had planned to control the flying saucer that they were trying to build They had to give up their plans for the development of the saucer-like craft, but now the project has been taken over by the US Air Force)

This is the cohts as it is carried in the Air Force files, one of the htings ever to be reported to Project Blue Book Officially all of the sightings, except the UFO that was picked up on radar, are unknowns

Personally I thought that the professors' lights ht fro They weren't birds, they weren't refracted light, but they weren't spaceshi+ps The lights that the professors saw--the backbone of the Lubbock Light series--have been positively identified as a very commonplace and easily explainable natural phenoe exactly the way the ansas found because it is an interesting story of how a scientist set up cohts and how he spent severaltheory after theory until he finally hit upon the answer Telling the story would lead to his identity and, in exchange for his story, I promised the man complete anonymity But he fully convincedheard hundreds of explanations of UFO's, I don't convince easily

With the htings by the professors--the other phases becoood UFO reports

CHAPTER NINE

The New Project Grudge

While I was in Lubbock, Lieutenant Henry Metscher, as helpingout the many bits and pieces of infors and Lieutenant Colonel Rosengarten had brought back from Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, and he had the answers

The UFO that the student radar operator had assu at a terrific speed because he couldn't lock on to it turned out to be a 400-otten fouled up on his procedures for putting the radar set on auto by the two officers in the T-33 jet fell apart when Metscher showed how they'd seen a balloon

The second radar sighting of the series also turned out to be a balloon The frantic phone call fro on the object's altitude was to settle a bet Some officers in headquarters had seen the balloon launched and were betting on how high it was

The second day's radar sightings were caused by another balloon and weather--both enhanced by the firs on over Jersey

The success with the Fort Monone to our heads and ere convinced that with a little diligent digging we'd be knocking off saucers like an ace skeet-shooter With all the confidence in the world, I attacked the Long Beach Incident, which I'd had to drop to go to Lubbock, Texas But if saucers could laugh, they were probably zipping through the stratosphere chuckling to themselves, because there was no neat solution to this one

In the original report of how the six F-86's chased the high-flying UFO over Long Beach, the intelligence officer who hts, therefore this wasn't the answer

The UFO could have been a balloon, so I sent a wire to the Air Force weather detach Beach Municipal Airport I wanted the track of any balloon that was in the air at 7:55AM on Septe for the answers to an to sort out old UFO reports It was a big job because back in 1949, when the old Project Grudge had been disbanded, the files had just been du case drawers full of a heterogeneous mass of UFO reports, letters, copies of letters, andbecause the ht in a copy of a wire that had just arrived It was a report of a UFO sighting at Terre Haute, Indiana I read it and told Metscher that I'd quickly whip out an answer and get back to helping him sort But it didn't prove to be that easy

The report from Terre Haute said that on October 9, a CAA employee at Hulman Municipal Airport had observed a silvery UFO Threeeast of Terre Haute, had seen a similar object

The report lacked many details but a few phone calls filled me in on the complete story

At 1:43PM on the ninth a CAA e across the ralance up at the sky--why, he didn't know--and out of the corner of his eye he caught a flash of light on the southeastern horizon He stopped and looked at the sky where the flash of light had been but he couldn't see anything He was just about to walk on when he noticed what he described as ”a pinpoint” of light in the same spot where he'd seen the flash In a second or two the ”pinpoint” grew larger and it was obvious to the CAAthe airport at a terrific speed As he watched, the object grew larger and larger until it flashed directly overhead and disappeared to the northwest The CAA man said it all happened so fast and he was so amazed that he hadn't called anybody to coar and watch the UFO But when he'd calht for about fifteen seconds and during this time it had passed from horizon to horizon

It was shaped like a ”flattened tennis ball,” was a bright silver color, and when it was directly overhead it was ”the size of a 50- cent piece held at arth”

But this wasn't all there was to the report Aa pilot radioed Terre Haute that he had seen a UFO He was flying from Greencastle, Indiana, to Paris, Illinois, when just east of Paris he'd looked back and to his left There, level with his airplane and fairly close, was a large silvery object, ”like a flattened orange,” hanging motionless in the sky He looked at it a few seconds, then hauled his plane around in a tight left bank He headed directly toward the UFO, but it suddenly began to pick up speed and shot off toward the northeast The time, by the clock on his instru at Terre Haute

When I finished calling I got an aeronautical chart out of the file and plotted the points of the sighting The CAA employee had seen the UFO disappear over the northwestern horizon The pilot had been flying from Greencastle, Indiana, to Paris, Illinois, so he'd have been flying on a heading of just a little less than 270 degrees, or alht west He was just east of Paris when he'd first seen the UFO, and since he said that he'd looked back and to his left, the spot where he saw the UFO would be right at a spot where the CAA man had seen his UFO disappear Both observers had checked their watches with radio tis, so there couldn't be more than a few seconds' discrepancy All I could conclude was that both had seen the same UFO

I checked the path of every balloon in the Midwest I checked the weather--it was a clear, cloudless day; I had the two observers'