Part 27 (1/2)

Colonel S H Kirkland and I once spent a whole day briefing and talking to the Beacon Hill Group, the code na scientists and industrialists This group, forhest of military probleave ain at Sandia Base our briefings were given in auditoriuave s at National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics laboratories, at Air Research and Development centers, at Office of Naval Research facilities and at the Air Force University Then we briefed special groups of scientists

Normally scientists are a cautious lot and stick close to proven facts, keeping their personal opinions confined to sn on a door that says ”Classified Briefing in Progress,” inhibitions collapse like the theories that explain all the UFO's away People say just what they think

I could jazz up this part of the UFO story as so many other historians of the UFO have and say that Dr So-and-So believes that the reported flying saucers are from outer space or that Dr Whositz is firmly convinced that Mars is inhabited I talked to plenty of Dr

So-and-So's who believed that flying saucers were real and ere absolutely convinced that other planets or bodies in the universe were inhabited, but ere looking for proven facts and not just personal opinions

However, some of the questions we asked the scientists had to be answered by personal opinions because the exact answers didn't exist

When such questions caest and most representative cross section of personal opinions upon which to base our decisions In this category of questions probably the most frequently discussed was the possibility that other celestial bodies in the universe were populated with intelligent beings The exact answer to this is that no one knows

But the consensus was that it wouldn't be at all surprising

All the briefings ere giving added to our work load because UFO reports were still co in in record aton sightings had had some effect because the nuust, but this was still far above the nore of twenty to thirty reports a month

September 1952 started out with a rush, and for a while it looked as if UFO sightings were on the upswing again For soan to get reports fro, for about a week or te'd have a half dozen or so new reports Georgia and Alabama led the field Many of the reports came from people in the vicinity of the then new super-hush-hush Atoia Andfroht, when the reports began to pour in, was that the newspapers in these areas were possibly stirring things up with scare stories, but our newspaper clipping service covered thefor publicity, none showed up In fact, the papers only barely s As they cah our identification process; they were checked against all balloon flights, aircraft flights, celestial bodies, and the MO file, but more than half of thean to coence officers at all of the majorto find out if they could shed any light on the cause of the sightings One man, the man as responsible for UFO reports made to Brookley AFB, just outside of Mobile, Alabas ”They're all nuts,” he said

About a week later his story changed It seeht in a row that UFO's had been reported near Mobile, this man and several of his assistants decided to try to see these famous UFO's; about 10:00PM, the tiathered around the telephone in the man's office at Brookley AFB Soon a report caator who answered the phone asked was, ”Can you still see it?”

The ansas ”Yes,” so the officer took off to see the UFO

The sa happened twice more, and two more officers left for different locations The fourth ti the call was fro up a UFO on radar, so the boss himself took off He saw the UFO in air out over Mobile Bay and he saw the return of the UFO on the radarscope

The nexthe called me at ATIC and for over an hour he told me what had happened Never have I talked to foursaucer believers

We did quite a bit of work on the co at Brookley First of all, radar-visual sightings were the best type of UFO sightings we received There are no explanations for how radar can pick up a UFO target that is being watched visually at the same time Maybe I should have said there are no proven explanations on how this can happen, because, like everything else associated with the UFO, there was a theory During the Washi+ngton National Sightings several people proposed the idea that the sa the radar bea the target to appear to be in the air They went on to say that we couldn't get a radar-visual sighting unless the ground target was a truck, car, house, or soreat distance The second reason the Brookley AFB sighting was so interesting was that it knocked this theory cold

The radar at Brookley AFB was so located that part of the area that it scanned was over Mobile Bay It was in this area that the UFO was detected We thought of the theory that the same inversion layer that bent the radar beaet to appear to be in the air, and we began to do a little checking There was a slight inversion but, according to our calculations, it wasn't enough to affect the radar More iet appeared there were no targets to pick up--let alone lighted targets We checked and rechecked and found that at the ti else that would give a radar return in the area of Mobile Bay in which ere interested

Although this sighting wasn't as glanificant because it was possible to show that the UFO couldn't have been a lighted surface target

While ere investigating the sighting we talked to several electronics specialists about our radar-visual sightings One of the most frequent cohtings occur at night?”

The ansas siust 1, just before dawn, an ADC radar station outside of Yaak, Montana, on the extreme northern border of the United States, picked up a UFO The report was very si at Brookley except it happened in the daylight and, instead of seeing a light, the crew at the radar station saw a ”dark, cigar-shaped object” right where the radar had the UFO pinpointed

What these people saw is a mystery to this day

Late in September I made a trip out to Headquarters, ADC to brief General Chidlaw and his staff on the past few s, which we had originally set up with ADC, had suffered a bit in the suiving us the fullest co-operation, but we hadn't been keeping thehly read in as ould have liked to I'd finished the briefing and was eating lunch at the officers'

club with Major Verne Sadowski, Project Blue Book's liaison officer in ADC Intelligence, and several other officers I had a hunch that so these people Then finally Major Sadowski said, ”Look, Rupe, are you giving us the straight story on these UFO's?”

I thought he s up a little, so I said that since he had copies of most of our reports and had read theht across the board

Then one of the other officers at the table cut in, ”That's just the point, we do have the reports and we have read theence is so hesitant to accept the fact that so around in our skies-- unless you are trying to cover up so”

Everyone at the table put in his ideas One radar man said that he'd looked over several dozen radar reports and that his conclusion was that the UFO's couldn't be anything but interplanetary spaceshi+ps He started to give his reasons when another radar man leaped into the conversation