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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Flying Saucers are Real, by Donald E. Keyhoe
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Flying Saucers are Real
+
+Author: Donald E. Keyhoe
+
+Release Date: September 15, 2002 [eBook #5883]
+[Most recently updated: February 5, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: John B. Hare
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLYING SAUCERS ARE REAL ***
+
+
+
+
+The Flying Saucers are Real
+
+by Donald E. Keyhoe
+
+
+New York
+
+Fawcett Publications, 1950
+
+{scanned at sacred-texts.com, March 2002}
+
+This book is in the public domain because it was not renewed in a timely
+fashion at the US Copyright Office, as required by law at the time.
+
+
+Contents
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+ CHAPTER II.
+ CHAPTER III.
+ CHAPTER IV.
+ CHAPTER V.
+ CHAPTER VI.
+ CHAPTER VII.
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+ CHAPTER IX.
+ CHAPTER X.
+ CHAPTER XI.
+ CHAPTER XII.
+ CHAPTER XIII.
+ CHAPTER XIV.
+ CHAPTER XV.
+ CHAPTER XVI.
+ CHAPTER XVII.
+ CHAPTER XVIII.
+ CHAPTER XIX.
+ CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+
+
+_To Helen,
+with love_
+
+
+
+
+Donald E. Keyhoe, who relates here his investigation of the flying
+saucers, writes with twenty-five years of experience in observing
+aeronautical developments.
+
+He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. He flew in
+active service with the Marine Corps, managed the tour of the historic
+plane in which Bennett and Byrd made their North Pole flight, was aide
+to Charles Lindbergh after the famous Paris flight, and was chief of
+information for the Aeronautics Branch, Department of Commerce.
+
+
+
+
+Author’s Note
+
+
+ON APRIL 27, 1949, the U.S. Air Force stated:
+
+_“The mere existence of some yet unidentified flying objects
+necessitates a constant vigilance on the part of Project ‘Saucer’
+personnel, and on the part of the civilian population._
+
+_“Answers have been—and will be—drawn from such factors as guided
+missile research activity, balloons, astronomical phenomena. . . . But
+there are still question marks._
+
+_“Possibilities that the saucers are foreign aircraft have also been
+considered. . . . But observations based on nuclear power plant
+research in this country label as ‘highly improbable’ the existence on
+Earth of engines small enough to have Powered the saucers._
+
+_“Intelligent life on Mars . . . is not impossible but is completely
+unproven. The possibility of intelligent life on the Planet Venus is
+not considered completely unreasonable by astronomers._
+
+_“The saucers are not jokes. Neither are they cause for alarm.”_[1]
+
+ [1] Project “Saucer” Preliminary Study of Flying Saucers.
+
+
+On December 27, 1949, the Air Force denied the existence of flying
+saucers.[2]
+
+ [2] 2. Air Force Press Release 629-49.’
+
+
+On December 30, 1949, the Air Force revealed part of a secret Project
+“Saucer” report to members of the press at Washington. The official
+report stated:
+
+“It will never be possible to say with certainty that any individual
+did not see a space ship, an enemy missile, or some other object.”
+
+Discussing the motives of possible visitors from space, the report also
+stated:
+
+“Such a civilization might observe that on Earth we now have atomic
+bombs and are fast developing rockets. In view of the past history of
+mankind, they should be alarmed. We should therefore expect at this
+time above all to behold such visitations.”
+
+(In its April 22 report, Project “Saucer” stated that space travel
+outside the solar system is almost a certainty.)
+
+On February 22, 1950, the Air Force again denied the existence of
+flying saucers. On this same date, two saucers reported above Key West
+Naval Air Station were tracked by radar; they were described as
+maneuvering at high speed fifty miles above the earth. The Air Force
+refused to comment.
+
+On March 9, 1950, a large metallic disk was pursued by F-51 and jet
+fighters and observed by scores of Air Force officers at Wright Field,
+Ohio. On March 18, an Air Force spokesman again denied that saucers
+exist and specifically stated that they were not American guided
+missiles or space-exploration devices.
+
+I have carefully examined all Air Force saucer reports made in the last
+three years. For the past year, I have taken part in a special
+investigation of the flying-saucer riddle.
+
+I believe that the Air Force statements, contradictory as they appear,
+are part of an intricate program to prepare America—and the world—for
+the secret of the disks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+It was a strange assignment.
+
+I picked up the telegram from my desk and read it a third time.
+
+NEW YORK, N. Y., MAY 9, 1949
+
+HAVE BEEN INVESTIGATING FLYING SAUCER MYSTERY. FIRST TIP HINTED
+GIGANTIC HOAX TO COVER UP OFFICIAL SECRET. BELIEVE IT MAY HAVE BEEN
+PLANTED TO HIDE REAL ANSWER. LOOKS LIKE TERRIFIC STORY. CAN YOU TAKE
+OVER WASHINGTON END?
+
+KEN W. PURDY, EDITOR, TRUE MAGAZINE
+
+I glanced out at the Potomac, recalling the first saucer story. As a
+pilot, I’d been skeptical of flying disks. Then reports had begun to
+pour in from Air Force and airline pilots. Apparently alarmed, the Air
+Force had ordered fighters to pursue the fast-flying saucers. In one
+mysterious chase, a pilot had been killed, and his death was
+unexplained. That had been seventeen months ago. Since then, the whole
+flying-saucer riddle had been hidden behind a curtain of Air Force
+secrecy.
+
+And now, an assignment from True magazine on flying saucers.
+
+Twenty-four hours later, I was in Ken Purdy’s office.
+
+“I’ve had men on this for two months,” he told me. “I might as well
+warn you, it’s a tough story to crack.”
+
+“You think it’s a Russian missile?” I asked him. “Or an Air Force
+secret?”
+
+“We’ve had several answers. None of them stacks up. But I’m positive
+one was deliberately planted when they found we were checking.”
+
+He told me the whole story of the work that had been done by the staff
+of True and of the reports sent in by competent writers. The deeper he
+delved into the mystery, the tougher the assignment got. The more I
+learned about flying saucers, the less I knew.
+
+“There’s one angle I want rechecked,” Purdy said.
+
+“You’ve heard of the Mantell case?”
+
+I nodded.
+
+“O.K. Try to get the details of Mantell’s radio report to Godman Tower.
+Before he was killed, he described the thing he was chasing—we know
+that much. Project ‘Saucer’ gave out a hint, but they’ve never released
+the transcript. Here’s another lead. See if you can find anything about
+a secret picture, taken at Harmon Field, Newfoundland—it was around
+July 1947. I’ll send you other ideas as I get them.”
+
+Before I left, Purdy wished me hick and told me that he would work in
+closest harmony with me.
+
+“But watch out for fake tips,” he said. “You’ll probably run into some
+people at the Pentagon who’ll talk to you ‘off the record.’ That
+handcuffs a writer. Look out they don’t lead you into a blind alley.
+Even the Air Force statements and the Project ‘Saucer’ report
+contradict each other.”
+
+For six months, I worked with other investigators to solve the mystery
+of the disks. We checked a hundred sighting reports, frequently
+crossing the trail of Project “Saucer” teams and F.B.I. agents. Old
+records gave fantastic leads. So did Air Force plans for exploring
+space. Rocket experts, astronomers, Air Force officials and pilot gave
+us clues pointing to a startling solution. Many intelligent
+persons—including scientists—believe that the saucers contain spies
+from another planet.
+
+When this first phase was ended, we were faced with a hard decision. We
+had uncovered important facts, We knew the saucers were real. If it was
+handled carefully, we believed the story would be in line with a secret
+Air Force policy.
+
+It was finally decided to publish certain alternate conclusions. The
+Air Force was informed of _True’s_ intentions; no attempt was made to
+block publication.
+
+In the January 1950 issue of _True_, I reported that we had reached the
+following conclusions:
+
+1 The earth has been observed periodically by visitors from another
+planet.
+
+2. This observation has increased markedly in the past two years.
+
+“The only other possible explanation,” I wrote, “is that, the saucers
+are extremely high-speed, long-range devices developed here on earth.
+Such an advance (which the Air Force has denied) would require an
+almost incredible leap in technical progress even for American
+scientists and designers.”
+
+Nation-wide press and radio comment followed the appearance of the
+article. This publicity was obviously greater than the Air Force had
+expected. Within twenty-four hours the Pentagon was deluged with
+telegrams, letters, and long-distance calls. Apparently fearing a
+panic, the Air Force hastily stated that flying-saucer reports—even
+those made by its own pilots and high-ranking officers—were mistakes or
+were caused by hysteria.[3]
+
+ [3] Air Force press release 629-49, December 27, 1949.
+
+
+But three days later, when it was plain that many Americans calmly
+accepted _True’s_ disclosures, the Air Force released a secret project
+“Saucer” file containing this significant statement:
+
+“It will never be possible to say with certainty that any individual
+did not see a space ship, an enemy missile or other object.”
+
+In this same document there appears a confidential analysis of Air
+intelligence reports.[4] It is this summary that contains the official
+suggestion Of. space visitors’ motives. After stating that such a
+civilization would obviously be far ahead of our own, the report adds:
+
+ [4] Air Force Project “Saucer” December 30, 1949.
+
+
+“Since the acts of mankind most easily observed from a distance are
+A-bomb explosions, we should expect some relation to obtain between the
+time of the A-bomb explosions, the time at which the space ships are
+seen, and the time required for such ships to arrive from and return to
+home base.”
+
+(In a previous report, which alternately warned and reassured the
+public, the Air Force stated that space travel outside the solar system
+is almost a certainty.[5])
+
+ [5] Air Force report M-26-49, Preliminary Studies on Flying saucers,
+ April 27, 1949.
+
+
+Since 1949 there has been a steady increase in saucer sightings. Most
+of them have been authentic reports, which Air Force denials cannot
+disprove. In January, mystery disks were reported over Kentucky,
+Indiana, Texas, Pennsylvania, and several other states. On the Seattle
+Anchorage route, an air freighter was paced for five minutes by a
+night-flying saucer. When the pilots tried to close in, the strange
+craft zoomed at terrific speed. Later, the airline head reported that
+Intelligence officers had quizzed the pilots for hours.
+
+“From their questions,” he said, “I could tell they had a good idea of
+what the saucers are. One officer admitted they did, but he wouldn’t
+say any more.”
+
+Another peculiar incident occurred at Tucson, Arizona, on February 1.
+Just at dusk, a weird, fiery object raced westward over the city,
+astonishing hundreds in the streets below. The Tucson Daily Citizen ran
+the story next day with a double-banner headline:
+
+FLYING SAUCER OVER TUCSON?
+
+B-29 FAILS TO CATCH OBJECT
+
+
+Flying saucer? Secret experimental plane? Or perhaps a scout craft from
+Mars? Certainly the strange aircraft that blazed a smoke trail over
+Tucson at dusk last night defies logical explanation. It was as
+mystifying to experienced pilots as to groundlings who have trouble in
+identifying conventional planes.
+
+Cannonballing through the sky, some 30,000 feet aloft, was a fiery
+object shooting westward so fast it was impossible to gain any clear
+impression of its shape or size. . . .
+
+At what must have been top speed the object spewed out light colored
+smoke, but almost directly over Tucson it appeared to hover for a few
+seconds. The smoke puffed out an angry black and then be came lighter
+as the strange missile appeared to gain speed”
+
+The radio operator in the Davis-Monthan air force base control tower
+contacted First Lt. Roy L. Jones, taking off for a cross-country flight
+in a B-29, and asked him to investigate. Jones revved up his swift
+aerial tanker and still the unknown aircraft steadily pulled away
+toward California.
+
+Dr. Edwin F. Carpenter, head of the University of Arizona department of
+astronomy, said he was certain that the object was not a meteor or
+other natural phenomenon. . . .
+
+_Switchboards Swamped_
+
+Switchboards at the Pima county sheriff’s office and Tucson police
+station were jammed with inquiries. Hundreds saw the object. Tom
+Bailey, 1411 E. 10th Street, thought it was a large airplane on fire.
+[A later check showed no planes missing.] He said it wavered from left
+to right as it passed over the mountains. Bailey also noticed that the
+craft appeared to slow perceptibly over Tucson. He said the smoke
+apparently came out in a thin, almost invisible stream, gaining
+substance within a few seconds.
+
+
+This incident had an odd sequel the following day. Its significance was
+not lost on the Daily Citizen. It ran another front-page story,
+headlined:
+
+WHAT DO YOU MEAN ONLY VAPOR TRAIL?
+
+
+As though to prove itself blameless for tilting hundreds of Tucson
+heads skyward, the U.S. Air Force yesterday afternoon spent hours
+etching vapor trails through the skies over the city.
+
+The demonstration proved conclusively to the satisfaction of most that
+the strange path of dark smoke blazed across the evening sky at dusk
+Wednesday was no vapor trail and did not emanate from any conventional
+airplane.
+
+The Wednesday night spectacle was entirely dissimilar. Then, heavy
+smoke boiled and swirled in a broad, dark ribbon fanning out at least a
+mile in width and stretching across the sky in a straight line. Since
+there was no proof as to what caused the strange predark manifestation,
+and because even expert witnesses were unable to explain the
+appearance, the matter remains a subject for interesting speculation.
+
+
+There is strong evidence that this story was deliberately kept off the
+press wires. The Associated Press and other wire services in Washington
+had no report. Requests for details by Frank Edwards, Mutual
+newscaster, and other radio commentators ran into a blank wall. At the
+Pentagon I was told that the Air Force had no knowledge of the sighting
+or the vapor-trail maneuvers.
+
+On February 22 two similar glowing objects were seen above Boca Chica
+Naval Air Station at Key West. A plane sent tip to investigate was
+hopelessly outdistanced; it was obvious the things were at a great
+height. Back at the station, radarmen tracked the objects as they
+hovered for a moment above Key West. They were found to be at least
+fifty miles above the earth. After a few seconds, they accelerated at
+high speed and streaked out of sight.
+
+On the following day Commander Augusto Orrego, a Chilean naval officer,
+reported that saucers had flown above his antarctic base.
+
+“During the bright antarctic night,” be said, “we saw flying saucers,
+one above the other, turning at tremendous speeds. We have photographs
+to prove what we saw.”
+
+Early in March, Ken Purdy phoned the latest development in the
+investigation. He had just received a tip predicting a flurry of saucer
+publicity during March. It had come from an important source in
+Washington.
+
+“You know what it probably means,” he said. “The same thing we talked
+about last month. But why were we tipped off in advance?”
+
+“It’s one more piece in the pattern,” I said. “If the tip’s on the
+level, then they’re stepping up the program.”
+
+Within three days, reports began to pour in—from Peru, Cuba, Mexico,
+Turkey, and other parts of the world. Then on March 9 a gleaming
+metallic disk was sighted over Dayton, Ohio. Observers at Vandalia
+Airport phoned Wright-Patterson Field. Scores of Air Force pilots and
+groundmen watched the disk, as fighters raced up in pursuit. The
+mysterious object streaked vertically skyward, hovered for a while
+miles above the earth, and then disappeared. A secret report was rushed
+to the Civil Aeronautics Authority in Washington, then turned over to
+Air Force Intelligence.
+
+Soon after this Dr. Craig Hunter, director of a medical supply firm,
+reported a huge elliptical saucer flying at a low altitude in
+Pennsylvania. He described it as metallic, with a slotted outer rim and
+a rotating ring just inside. On top of this sighting, thousands of
+people at Farmington, New Mexico, watched a large formation of disks
+pass high above the city.
+
+Throughout all these reports, the Air Force refused to admit the
+existence of flying saucers. On March 18 it flatly denied they were Air
+Force secret missiles or space-exploration devices.
+
+Three days later, a Chicago and Southern airliner crew saw a
+fast-flying disk near Stuttgart, Arkansas. The circular craft, blinking
+a strange blue-white light, pulled up in an arc at terrific speed. The
+two pilots said they glimpsed lighted ports on the lower side as the
+saucer zoomed above them. The lights had a soft fluorescence, unlike
+anything they had seen.
+
+There was one peculiar angle in the Arkansas incident. There was no
+apparent attempt to muzzle the two pilots, as in earlier airline cases.
+Instead, a United Press interview was quickly arranged, for nation-wide
+publication. In this wire story Captain Jack Adams and First Officer G.
+W. Anderson made two statements:
+
+“We firmly believe that the flying saucer we saw over Arkansas was a
+secret experimental type aircraft—not a visitor from outer space. . . .
+
+“We know the Air Force has denied there is anything to this
+flying-saucer business, but we’re both experienced pilots and we’re not
+easily fooled.”
+
+The day after this story appeared, I was discussing it with an airline
+official in Washington.
+
+“That’s an odd thing,” he said. “The Air Force could have persuaded
+those pilots—or the line president—to hush the thing up. It looks as if
+they wanted that story broadcast.”
+
+“You mean the whole thing was planted?”
+
+“I won’t say that, though it could have been. Probably they did see
+something. But they might have been told what to say about it.”
+
+“Any idea why?”
+
+He looked at me sharply. “You and Purdy probably know the answer. At a
+guess, I’d say it might have been planned to offset that Navy
+commander’s report—the one on the White Sands sightings.”
+
+The White Sands case had puzzled many skeptics, because the Pentagon
+had cleared the published report. The author, Commander R. B.
+McLaughlin, was a regular Navy officer. As a Navy rocket expert, he had
+been stationed at the White Sands Rocket Proving Ground in New Mexico.
+In his published article he described three disk sightings at White
+Sands.
+
+One of the disks, a huge elliptical craft, was tracked by scientists
+with precision instruments at five miles per second. That’s 18,000
+miles per hour. It was found to be flying fifty-six miles above the
+earth. Two other disks, smaller types, were watched from five
+observation posts on hills at the proving ground. Circling at
+incredible speed, the two disks paced an Army high-altitude rocket that
+had just been launched, then speeded up and swiftly outclimbed the
+projectile.
+
+Commander McLaughlin’s report, giving dates and factual details, was
+cleared by the Department of Defense. So was a later nation-wide
+broadcast.
+
+Then the Air Force made its routine denial.
+
+Why was McLaughlin, a regular Navy officer subject to security
+screening, permitted to give out this story? Was it an incredible
+slip-up? Or was it part of some carefully thought-out plan? I believe
+it was part of an elaborate program to prepare the American people for
+a dramatic disclosure.
+
+For almost a year I have watched the behind-the-scenes maneuvers of
+those who guide this program. In the following chapters I have tried to
+show the strange developments in our search for the answer; the
+carefully misleading tips, the blind alleys we entered, the unexpected
+assistance, the confidential leads, and the stunning contradictions.
+
+It has been a complicated jigsaw puzzle. Only by seeing all parts of
+this intricate picture can you begin to glimpse the reasons for this
+stubbornly hidden secret.
+
+The official explanation may be imminent. When it is finally revealed,
+I believe the elaborate preparation—even the wide deceit involved—will
+be fully justified in the minds of the American people.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+It has been over two years since the puzzling death of Captain Thomas
+Mantell.
+
+Mantell died mysteriously in the skies south of Fort Knox. But before
+his radio went silent, he sent a strange message to Godman Air Force
+Base. The men who heard it will never forget it.
+
+It was January 7, 1948.
+
+Crowded into the Godman Field Tower, a group of Air Force officers
+stared up at the afternoon sky. For just an instant, something gleamed
+through the broken clouds south of the base.
+
+High above the field, three P-51 fighters climbed with swift urgency.
+Heading south, they quickly vanished.
+
+The clock in the tower read 2:45.
+
+Colonel Guy Hix, the C.O., slowly put down his binoculars. If the thing
+was still there, the clouds now hid it. All they could do was wait.
+
+The first alarm had come from Fort Knox, when Army M.P.’s had relayed a
+state police warning. A huge gleaming object had been seen in the sky,
+moving toward Godman Field. Hundreds of startled people had seen it at
+Madisonville, ninety miles away.
+
+Thirty minutes later, it had zoomed up over the base.
+
+Colonel Hix glanced around at the rest of the men in the tower. They
+all had a dazed look. Every man there had seen the thing, as it
+barreled south of the field. Even through the thin clouds, its
+intermittent red glow had hinted at some mysterious source of power.
+Something outside their understanding.
+
+It was Woods, the exec, who had estimated its size. Hix shook his head.
+_That_ was unbelievable. But something had hung over Godman Field for
+almost an hour. The C.O. turned quickly as the loud-speaker, tuned to
+the P-51’s, suddenly came to life.
+
+“Captain Mantell to Godman . . . Tower Mantell to Godman Tower . . .”
+The flight leader’s voice had a strained tone.
+
+“I’ve sighted the thing!” he said. “It looks metallic—and it’s
+tremendous in size!”
+
+The C.O. and Woods stared at each other. No one spoke.
+
+“The thing’s starting to climb,” Mantell said swiftly. “It’s at twelve
+o’clock high, making half my speed. I’ll try to close in.”
+
+In five minutes, Mantell reported again. The strange metallic object
+had speeded up, was now making 360 or more.
+
+At 3:08, Mantell’s wingman called in. Both he and the other pilot had
+seen the weird object. But Mantell had outclimbed them and was lost in
+the clouds.
+
+Seven minutes dragged by. The men in the tower sweated out the silence.
+Then, at 3:15, Mantell made a hasty contact.
+
+“It’s still above me, making my speed or better. I’m going up to twenty
+thousand feet. If I’m no closer, I’ll abandon chase.”
+
+It was his last report.
+
+Minutes later, his fighter disintegrated with terrific force. The
+falling wreckage was scattered for thousands of feet.
+
+When Mantell failed to answer the tower, one of his pilots began a
+search. Climbing to 33,000 feet, he flew a hundred miles to the south.
+
+But the thing that lured Mantell to his death had vanished from the
+sky.
+
+Ten days after Mantell was killed, I learned of a curious sequel to the
+Godman affair.
+
+An A.P. account in the New York Times had caught my attention. The
+story, released at Fort Knox, admitted Mantell had died while chasing a
+flying saucer. Colonel Hix was quoted as having watched the object,
+which was still unidentified. But there was no mention of Mantell’s
+radio messages—no hint of the thing’s tremendous size.
+
+Though I knew the lid was probably on, I went to the Pentagon. When the
+scare had first broken, in the summer of ’47, I had talked with Captain
+Tom Brown, who was handling saucer inquiries. But by now Brown had been
+shifted, and no one in the Press Branch would admit knowing the details
+of the Mantell saucer chase.
+
+“We just don’t know the answer,” a security officer told me.
+
+“There’s a rumor,” I said, “it’s a secret Air Force missile that
+sometimes goes out of control.”
+
+“Good God, man!” he exploded. “If it was, do you think we’d be ordering
+pilots to chase the damned things?”
+
+“No—and I didn’t say I believed it.” I waited until he cooled down.
+“This order you mentioned—is it for all Air Force pilots, or special
+fighter units?”
+
+“I didn’t say it was a special order,” he answered quickly. “All pilots
+have routine instructions to report unusual items.”
+
+“They had fighters alerted on the Coast, when the scare first broke,” I
+reminded him. “Are those orders still in force?”
+
+He shook his head. “No, not that I know of.” After a moment he added,
+“All I can tell you is that the Air Force is still investigating. We
+honestly don’t know the answer.”
+
+As I went out the Mall entrance, I ran into Jack Daly, one of
+Washington’s veteran newsmen. Before the war, Jack and I had done
+magazine pieces together, usually on Axis espionage and communist
+activity. I told him I was trying to find the answer to Mantell’s
+death.
+
+“You heard anything?” I asked him.
+
+“Only what was in the A.P. story,” said Jack. “But an I.N.S. man told
+me they had a saucer story from Columbus, Ohio—and it might have been
+the same one they saw at Fort Knox.”
+
+“I missed that. What was it?”
+
+“They sighted the thing at the Air Force field outside of Columbus. It
+was around sundown, about two hours after that pilot was killed in
+Kentucky.”
+
+“Anybody chase it?” I asked.
+
+“No. They didn’t have time to take off, I guess. This I.N.S. guy said
+it was going like hell. Fast as a jet, anyway.”
+
+“Did he say what it looked like?”
+
+“The Air Force boys said it was as big as a C-47,” said Jack. “Maybe
+bigger. It had a reddish-orange exhaust streaming out behind. They
+could see it for miles.”
+
+“If you hear any more, let me know,” I said. Jack promised he would.
+
+“What do you think they are?” he asked me.
+
+“It’s got me stumped. Russia wouldn’t be testing missiles over here.
+Anyway, I can’t believe they’ve got anything like that. And I can’t see
+the Air Force letting pilots get killed to hide something we’ve got.”
+
+One week later, I heard that a top-secret unit had been set up at
+Wright Field to investigate all saucer reports. When I called the
+Pentagon, they admitted this much, and that was all.
+
+In the next few months, other flying-disk stories hit the front pages.
+Two Eastern Airline pilots reported a double-decked mystery ship
+sighted near Montgomery, Alabama. I learned of two other sightings, one
+over the Pacific Ocean and one in California. The second one, seen
+through field glasses, was described as rocket-shaped, as large as a
+B-29. There were also rumors of disks being tracked by radar, but it
+was almost a year before I confirmed these reports.
+
+When Purdy wired me, early in May of ’49, I had half forgotten the
+disks. It had been months since any important sightings had been
+reported. But his message quickly revived my curiosity. If he thought
+the subject was hot, I knew he must have reasons. When I walked into
+his office at 67 West 44th, Purdy stubbed out his cigarette and shook
+hands. He looked at me through his glasses for a moment. Then he said
+abruptly:
+
+“You know anything about the disks?”
+
+“If you mean what they are—no.”
+
+He motioned for me to sit down. Then he swiveled his chair around, his
+shoulders hunched forward, and frowned out the window.
+
+“Have you seen the Post this week?”
+
+I told him no. “There’s something damned queer going on. For fifteen
+months, Project ‘Saucer’ is buttoned up tight. Top secret. Then
+suddenly, Forrestal gets the _Saturday Evening Post_ to run two
+articles, brushing the whole thing off. The first piece hits the
+stands—and then what happens?”
+
+Purdy swung around, jabbed his finger at a document on. his desk.
+
+“That same day, the Air Force rushes out this Project ‘Saucer’ report.
+It admits they haven’t identified the disks in any important cases.
+They say it’s still serious enough—wait a minute—“he thumbed through
+the stapled papers—” ‘to require constant vigilance by Project “Saucer”
+personnel and the civilian population.’”
+
+“You’d think the _Post_ would make a public kick,” I said.
+
+“I don’t mean it’s an out-and-out denial,” said Purdy. “It doesn’t
+mention the Post—just contradicts it. In fact, the report contradicts
+itself. It looks as if they’re trying to warn people and yet they’re
+scared to say too much.”
+
+I looked at the title on the report: “A Digest of Preliminary Studies
+by the Air Materiel Command, Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, on ‘Flying
+Saucers.’”
+
+“Have the papers caught it yet?” I asked Purdy.
+
+“You mean its contradicting the _Post_?” He shook his head. “No, the
+Pentagon press release didn’t get much space. How many editors would
+wade through a six-thousand-word government report? Even if they did,
+they’d have to compare it, item for item, with the Post piece.”
+
+“Who wrote the _Post_ story?”
+
+Purdy lit a cigarette and frowned out again at the skyscrapers.
+
+“Sidney Shallett—and he’s careful. He had Forrestal’s backing. The Air
+Force flew him around, arranged interviews, supposedly gave him inside
+stuff. He spent two months on it. They O.K.’d his script, which
+practically says the saucers are bunk. Then they reneged on it.”
+
+“Maybe some top brass suddenly decided it was the wrong policy to brush
+it off,” I suggested.
+
+“Why the quick change?” demanded Purdy. “Let’s say they sold the _Post_
+on covering up the truth, in the interests of security. It’s possible,
+though I don’t believe it. Or they could simply have fed them a fake
+story. Either way, why did they rush this contradiction the minute the
+_Post_ hit the stands?”
+
+“Something serious happened,” I said, “after the _Post_ went to press.”
+
+“Yes, but what?” Purdy said impatiently. “That’s what we’ve got to find
+out.”
+
+“Does Shallett’s first piece mention Mantell’s death?”
+
+“Explains it perfectly. You know what Mantell was chasing? The planet
+Venus!”
+
+“That’s the Post’s answer?” I said, incredulously.
+
+“It’s what the Air Force contract astronomer told Shallett. I’ve
+checked with two astronomers here. They say that even when Venus is at
+full magnitude you can barely see it in the daytime even when you’re
+looking for it. It was only half magnitude that day, so it was
+practically invisible.”
+
+“How’d the Air Force expect anybody to believe that answer?” I said.
+
+Purdy shrugged. “They deny it was Venus in this report. But that’s what
+they told Shallett—that all those Air Force officers, the pilots, the
+Kentucky state police, and several hundred people at Madisonville
+mistook Venus for a metallic disk several hundred feet in diameter.”
+
+“It’s a wonder Shallett believed it.”
+
+“I don’t think he did. He says if it wasn’t Venus, it must have been a
+balloon.”
+
+“What’s the Air Force answer?” I asked Purdy.
+
+“Look in the report. They say whatever Mantell chased—they call it a
+‘mysterious object’—is still unidentified.”
+
+I glanced through the case report, on page five. It quoted Mantell’s
+radio report that the thing was metallic and tremendous in size. Linked
+with the death of Mantell was the Lockbourne, Ohio, report, which tied
+in with what Jack Daly had told me, over a year before. I read the
+report:
+
+“On the same day, about two hours later, a sky phenomenon was observed
+by several watchers over Lockbourne Air Force Base, Columbus, Ohio. It
+was described as ‘round or oval, larger than a C-47, and traveling in
+level flight faster than 500 miles per hour.’ The object was followed
+from the Lockbourne observation tower for more than 20 minutes.
+Observers said it glowed from white to amber, leaving an amber exhaust
+trail five times its own length. It made motions like an elevator and
+at one time appeared to touch the ground. No sound was heard. Finally,
+the object faded and lowered toward the horizon.”
+
+Purdy buzzed for his secretary, and she brought me a copy of the first
+_Post_ article.
+
+“You can get a copy of this Air Force report in Washington,” Purdy told
+me. “This is the only one I have. But you’ll find the same answer for
+most of the important cases—the sightings at Muroc Air Base, the
+airline pilots’ reports, the disks Kenneth Arnold saw—they’re all
+unidentified.”
+
+“I remember the Arnold case. That was the first sighting.”
+
+“You’ve got contacts in Washington,” Purdy went on. “Start at the
+Pentagon first. They know we’re working on it. Sam Boal, the first man
+on this job, was down there for a day or two.”
+
+“What did he find out?”
+
+“Symington told him the saucers were bunk. Secretary Johnson admitted
+they had some pictures—we’d heard about a secret photograph taken at
+Harmon Field, Newfoundland. The tip said this saucer scared hell out of
+some pilots and Air Force men up there.
+
+“A major took Boal to some Air Force colonel and Boal asked to see the
+pictures. The colonel said they didn’t have any. He turned red when the
+major said Symington had told Boal about the pictures.”
+
+“Did Boal get to see them?” I said.
+
+“No,” grunted Purdy, “and I’ll bet twenty bucks you won’t, either. But
+try, anyway. And check on a rumor that they’ve tracked some disks with
+radar. One case was supposed to be at an Air Force base in Japan.”
+
+As I was leaving, Purdy gave me a summary of sighting reports.
+
+“Some of these were published, some we dug up ourselves,” he said. “We
+got some confidential stuff from airline pilots. It’s pretty obvious
+the Air Force has tried to keep them quiet.”
+
+“All right,” I said. “I’ll get started. Maybe things aren’t sewed up so
+tightly, now this report is out.”
+
+“We’ve found out some things about Project ‘Saucer,’ said Purdy.
+“Whether it’s a cover-up or a real investigation, there’s a lot of
+hush-hush business to it. They’ve got astronomers and astrophysicists
+working for them, also rocket expects, technical analysts, and Air
+Force Special Intelligence. We’ve been told they can call on any
+government agency for help—and I know they’re using the F.B.I.”
+
+It was building up bigger than I had thought.
+
+“If national security is involved,” I told Purdy, “they can shut us up
+in a hurry.”
+
+“If they tell me so, O.K.,” said Purdy. He added grimly, “But I think
+they’re making a bad mistake. They probably think they’re doing what’s
+right. But the truth might come out the wrong way.”
+
+“It is possible,” I thought, “that the saucers belong to Russia.”
+
+“If it turns out to be a Soviet missile, count me out,” I said. “We’d
+have the Pentagon and the F.B.I. on our necks.”
+
+“All right, if that’s the answer.” He chuckled. “But you may be in for
+a jolt.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Just the idea of gigantic flying disks was incredible enough. It was
+almost as hard to believe that such missiles could have been developed
+without something leaking out. Yet we had produced the A-bomb in
+comparative secrecy, and I knew we were working on long-range guided
+missiles. There was already a plan for a three-thousand-mile test
+range. Our supersonic planes had hit around two thousand miles an hour.
+Our two-stage rockets had gone over two hundred miles high, according
+to reports. If an atomic engine had been secretly developed, it could
+explain the speed and range of the saucers.
+
+But I kept coming back to Mantell’s death and the Air Force orders for
+pilots to chase the saucers. If the disks were American missiles, that
+didn’t jibe.
+
+When I reached the lobby, I found it was ten after four. I caught a
+taxi and made the Congressional Limited with just one minute to spare.
+In the club car, I settled down to look at Purdy’s summary.
+
+Skipping through the pages, I saw several familiar cases. Here and
+there, Purdy had scrawled brief comments or suggestions. Beside the
+Eastern Airline report of a double-decked saucer, he had written:
+
+“Check rumor same type seen over Holland about this date. Also, similar
+Philippine Islands report—date unknown.”
+
+
+I went back to the beginning. The first case listed was that of Kenneth
+Arnold, a Boise businessman, who had set off the saucer scare. Arnold
+was flying his private plane from Chehalis to Yakima, Washington, when
+he saw a bright flash on his wing.
+
+Looking toward Mount Rainier, he saw nine gleaming disks outlined
+against the snow, each one about the size of a C-54.
+
+“They flew close to the mountaintops, in a diagonal chainlike line,” he
+said later. “It was as if they were linked together.”
+
+The disks appeared to be twenty to twenty-five miles away, he said, and
+moving at fantastic speed. Arnold’s estimate was twelve hundred miles
+an hour.
+
+“I watched them about three minutes,” he said. “They were swerving in
+and out around the high mountain peaks. They were flat, like a pie pan,
+and so shiny they reflected the sun like a mirror. I never saw anything
+so fast.”
+
+The date was June 24, 1947.
+
+On this same day there was another saucer report. which received very
+little notice. A Portland prospector named Fred Johnson, who was
+working up in the Cascade Mountains, spotted five or six disks banking
+in the sun. He watched them through his telescope several seconds. then
+he suddenly noticed that the compass hand on his special watch was
+weaving wildly from side to side. Johnson insisted he had not heard of
+the Arnold report, which was not broadcast until early evening.
+
+Kenneth Arnold’s story was generally received with amusement. Most
+Americans were unaware that the Pentagon had been receiving disk
+reports as early as January. The news and radio comments on Arnold’s
+report brought several other incidents to light, which observers had
+kept to themselves for fear of ridicule.
+
+At Oklahoma City, a private pilot told Air Force investigators he had
+seen a huge round object in the sky during the latter part of May. It
+was flying three times faster than a jet, he said, and without any
+sound. Citizens of Weiser, Idaho, described two strange fast-moving
+objects they had seen on June 12. The saucers were heading southeast,
+now and then dropping to a lower altitude, then swiftly climbing again.
+Several mysterious objects were reported flying at great speed near
+Spokane, just three days before Arnold’s experience. And four days
+after his encounter, an Air Force pilot flying near Lake Meade, Nevada,
+was startled to see half a dozen saucers flash by his plane.
+
+Even at this early point in the scare, official reports were
+contradicting each other. just after Arnold’s story broke, the Air
+Force admitted it was checking on the mystery disks. On July 4 the Air
+Force stated that no further investigation was needed; it was all
+hallucination. That same day, Wright Field told the Associated Press
+that the Air Materiel Command was trying to find the answer.
+
+The Fourth of July was a red-letter day in the flying-saucer mystery.
+At Portland, Oregon, hundreds of citizens, including former Air Force
+pilots, police, harbor pilots, and deputy sheriffs, saw dozens of
+gleaming disks flying at high speed. The things; appeared to be at
+least forty thousand feet in the air—perhaps much higher.
+
+That same day, disks were sighted at Seattle, Vancouver, and other
+northwest cities. The rapidly growing reports were met with mixed
+ridicule and alarm. One of the skeptical group was Captain E. J. Smith,
+of United Airlines.
+
+“I’ll believe them when I see them,” he told airline employees, before
+taking off from Boise the afternoon of the Fourth.
+
+Just about sunset, his airliner was flying over Emmett, Idaho, when
+Captain Smith and his copilot, Ralph Stevens, saw five queer objects in
+the sky ahead. Smith rang for the stewardess, Marty Morrow, and the
+three of them watched the saucers for several minutes. Then four more
+of the disks came into sight. Though it was impossible to tell their
+size, because their altitude was unknown, the crew was sure they were
+bigger than the plane they were in. After about ten minutes the disks
+disappeared.
+
+The Air Force quickly denied having anything resembling the! objects
+Captain Smith described.
+
+“We have no experimental craft of that nature in Idaho—or anywhere
+else,” an official said in Washington. “We’re completely mystified.”
+
+The Navy said it had made an investigation, and had no answers. There
+had been rumors that the disks were “souped-up” versions of the Navy’s
+“Flying Flapjack,” a twin-engined circular craft known technically as
+the XF-5-U-1. But the Navy insisted that only one model had been built,
+and that it was now out of service.
+
+In Chicago, two astronomers spiked guesses that the disks might be
+meteors. Dr. Girard Kieuper, director of the University of Chicago
+observatory, said flatly that they couldn’t be meteors. “They’re
+probably man-made,” he told the A.P. Dr. Oliver Lee, director of
+Northwestern’s observatory, agreed with Kieuper.
+
+“The Army, Navy, and Air Force are working secretly on all sorts of
+things,” he said. “Remember the A-bomb secrecy—and the radar signals to
+the moon.”
+
+As I went through Purdy’s summary, I recalled my own reaction after the
+United Airlines report. After seeing the Pentagon comment, I had called
+up Captain Tom Brown, at Air Force Public Relations.
+
+“Are you really taking this seriously?” I asked him.
+
+“Well, we can’t just ignore it,” he said. “There are too many reliable
+pilots telling the same story—flat, round objects able to outmaneuver
+ordinary planes, and faster than anything we have. Too many stories
+tally.”
+
+I told him I’d heard that the Civil Air Patrol in Wisconsin and other
+states was starting a sky search.
+
+“We’ve got a jet at Muroc, and six fighters standing by at Portland
+right now,” Brown said.
+
+“Armed?”
+
+“I’ve no report on that. But I know some of them carry photographic
+equipment.”
+
+Two days later an airline pilot from the Coast told me that some
+fighters had been armed and the pilots ordered to bring down the disks
+if humanly possible. That same day, Wright Field admitted it was
+checking stories of disk-shaped missiles seen recently in the Pacific
+northwest and in Texas.
+
+Following this was an A.P. story, dated July 7, quoting an unnamed Air
+Force official in Washington:
+
+“The flying saucers may be one of three things:
+
+“1. Solar reflection on low-hanging clouds. [A Washington scientist,
+asked for comment, said this was hardly possible.]
+
+“2. Small meteors which break up, their crystals catching the rays of
+the sun. But it would seem that they would have been spotted falling
+and fragments would have been found.
+
+“3. Icing conditions could have formed large hailstones, and they might
+have flattened out and glided a bit, giving the impression of
+horizontal movement even though falling vertically.”
+
+By this time everyone was getting into the act.
+
+“The disks are caused by the transmutation of atomic energy,” said an
+anonymous scientist, supposed to be on the staff of California Tech.
+The college quickly denied it.
+
+Dr. Vannevar Bush, world-famous scientist, and Dr. Merle Tuve, inventor
+of the proximity fuse, both declared they would know of any secret
+American missiles—and didn’t.
+
+At Syracuse, New York, Dr. Harry Steckel, Veterans Administration
+psychiatrist, scoffed at the suggestion of mass hysteria. “Too many
+sane people are seeing the things. The government is probably
+conducting some revolutionary experiments.”
+
+On July 8 more disks were reported. Out at Muroc Air Force Base, where
+top-secret planes and devices are tested, six fast-moving silvery-white
+saucers were seen by pilots and ground officers.
+
+That afternoon the Air Force revealed it was working on a case
+involving a Navy rocket expert named C. T. Zohm. While on a secret Navy
+mission to New Mexico, in connection with rocket tests, Zohm had seen a
+bright silvery disk flying above the desert. He was crossing the desert
+with three other scientists when he saw the strange object flashing
+northward at an altitude of about ten thousand feet.
+
+“I’m sure it was not a meteor,” said Zohm. “It could have been a guided
+missile, but I never heard of anything like it.”
+
+By this time, saucer reports had come in from almost forty states.
+Alarm was increasing, and there were demands that radar be used to
+track the disks. The Air Force replied that there was not enough radar
+equipment to blanket the nation, but that its pilots were on the
+lookout for the saucers.
+
+One report mentioned a curious report from Twin Falls, Idaho. The disk
+sighted there was said to have flown so low that the treetops whirled
+as if in a violent storm. Someone had phoned Purdy about a disk tracked
+by weather-balloon observers at Richmond, Virginia. There was another
+note on a sighting at Hickam Field, Honolulu, and two reports of
+unidentified objects seen near Anchorage, Alaska.
+
+A typed list of world-wide sightings had been made up by the staff at
+_True_. It contained many cases that were new to me, reports from
+Paraguay, Belgium, Turkey, Holland, Germany, and the Scandinavian
+countries. At the bottom of this memo Purdy had written: “Keep checking
+on rumor that the Soviet has a Project Saucer, too. Could be planted.”
+
+From the mass of reports, John DuBarry, the aviation editor of _True_,
+had methodically worked out an average picture of the disks: “The
+general report is that they are round or oval (this could be an
+elliptical object seen end-on), metallic looking, very bright—either
+shining white or silvery colored. They can move at extremely high
+speed, hover, accelerate rapidly, and outmaneuver ordinary aircraft.
+
+“The lights are usually seen singly—very few formations reported. They
+seem to have the same speed, acceleration, and ability to maneuver. In
+several cases, they have been able to evade Air Force planes in night
+encounters.”
+
+Going over the cases, I realized that Purdy and his staff had dug up at
+least fifty reports that had not appeared in the papers. (A few of
+these proved incorrect, but a check with the Air Force case reports
+released on December 30, 1949, showed that _True’s_ files contained all
+the important items.) These cases included sightings at eleven Air
+Force bases and fourteen American airports, reports from ships at sea,
+and a score of encounters by airline and private pilots.
+
+Witnesses included Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force officers;
+state and city police; F.B.I. agents; weather observers, shipmasters,
+astronomers, and thousands of good solid American citizens. I learned
+later that many witnesses had been investigated by the F.B.I. to weed
+out crackpot reports.
+
+I ended up badly puzzled. The evidence was more impressive than I had
+suspected. It was plain that many reports had been entirely suppressed,
+or at least kept out of the papers. There was something ominous about
+it. No matter what the answer, it was serious enough to be kept
+carefully hidden.
+
+If it were a Soviet missile, I thought, God help us. They’d scooped up
+a lot of Nazi scientists and war secrets. And the Germans had been far
+ahead of us on guided missiles. But why would they give us a two-year
+warning, testing the things openly over America? It didn’t make sense.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+I went to the Pentagon the next morning. I didn’t expect to learn much,
+but I wanted to make sure we weren’t tangling with security.
+
+I’d worked with Al Scholin and Orville Splitt, in the magazine section
+of Public Relations, and I thought they’d tell me as much as anyone.
+When I walked in, I sprang it on them cold.
+
+“What’s the chance of seeing your Project ‘Saucer’ files?”
+
+Al Scholin took it more or less dead-pan. Splitt looked at me a moment
+and then grinned.
+
+“Don’t tell me you believe the things are real?”
+
+“Maybe,” I said. “How about clearing me with Project ‘Saucer’?”
+
+Al shook his head. “It’s still classified secret.”
+
+“‘Look, Don,” said Splitt, “why do you want to fool with that saucer
+business? There’s nothing to it.”
+
+“‘That’s a big change from what the Air Force was saying; in 1947,” I
+told him.
+
+He shrugged that off. “The Air Force has spent two years checking into
+it. Everybody from Symington down will tell you the saucers are bunk.”
+
+“That’s not what Project ‘Saucer’ says in that April report.”
+
+“That report was made up a long time ago,” said Splitt. “They just got
+around to releasing it.”
+
+“Then they’ve got all the answers now?”
+
+“They know there’s nothing to it,” Splitt repeated.
+
+“In that case,” I said, “Project ‘Saucer’ shouldn’t object to my seeing
+their files and pictures.”
+
+“What pictures?”
+
+“That one taken at Harmon Field, Newfoundland, for a starter.”
+
+“Oh, that thing,” said Splitt. “It wasn’t anything—just a shadow on a
+cloud. Somebody’s been kidding you.”
+
+“If it’s just a cloud shadow, why can’t I see it?”
+
+Splitt was getting a little nettled.
+
+“Look, you know how long it takes to declassify stuff. They just
+haven’t got around to it. Take my word for it, the flying saucers are
+bunk. I went around with Sid Shallett on some of his interviews. What
+he’s got in the _Post_ is the absolute gospel.”
+
+“It’s funny about that April twenty-seventh report,” I said, “the way
+it contradicts the _Post_.”
+
+“I tell you that was an old report—”
+
+“I wouldn’t say that,” Al Scholin put in. “The Air Force doesn’t claim
+it has all the answers. But they’ve proved a lot of the reports were
+hoaxes or mistakes.”
+
+“Just the same,” I said, “the Air Force is on record, as of April
+twenty-seventh, that it’s serious enough for everybody to be vigilant.
+And they admit most of the things, in the important cases, are still
+unidentified. Including the saucer Mantell was chasing.”
+
+“That business at Godman Field was some kind of hallucination,”
+insisted Splitt.
+
+“I suppose all those pilots and Godman Field officers were hypnotized?
+Not to mention several thousand people at Madisonville and Fort Knox?”
+
+“Take it easy, you guys,” said Al Scholin. “You’ve both got a right to
+your opinions.”
+
+“Oh, sure,” said Splitt. He looked at me, with his grin back. “I don’t
+care if you think they’re men from Mars.”
+
+“Let’s not go off the deep end,” I said. “Tell me this: Did Shallett
+get to see any secret files at Wright Field?”
+
+“Absolutely not.”
+
+“Then he had to take the Air Force word for everything?”
+
+“Not entirely. We set up some interviews for him.”
+
+“One more thing—and don’t get mad. If it’s all bunk, why haven’t they
+closed Project ‘Saucer’?”
+
+“How do I know? Probably no one wants to take the responsibility.”
+
+“Then somebody high up must not think it’s bunk,” I said.
+
+Splitt laughed. “Have it your own way.”
+
+Before I left, I told them I was working with _True_.
+
+“I want to be on record,” I said, “as having told you this. If there’s
+any security involved—if you tell me it’s something you’re working
+on—naturally I’ll lay off.”
+
+Al Scholin said emphatically, “It’s not an Air Force device, if that’s
+what you mean.”
+
+“Some people think it’s Russian.”
+
+“If it is, I don’t know it,” said Al, “and neither does the Air Force.”
+
+After I left the magazine section, I tried several officers I knew. Two
+of them agreed with Splitt. The third didn’t.
+
+“I’ve been told it’s all bunk,” he said, “but you get the feeling
+they’ve trying to convince themselves. They act like people near a
+haunted house. They’ll swear it isn’t haunted—but they won’t go near
+it.”
+
+Later, I asked a security major for a copy of the Project “Saucer”
+report.
+
+“We’re out of copies right now,” he said. “I’ll send you one next
+week.”
+
+I asked him bluntly what he thought the saucers were.
+
+“I doubt if anybody has the full answer,” he said seriously. “There’s
+been some hysteria—also a few mistakes. But many reports have been made
+by reliable pilots, including our own. You can’t laugh those off.”
+
+As I drove home, I thought over what I’d heard. All I had learned was
+that the Air Force seemed divided. But that could be a smoke screen. In
+less than twenty-four hours, I received my first suspicious tip. It was
+about ten A.M. when my phone rang.
+
+“Mr. Keyhoe? This is John Steele,” said the voice at the other end.
+(Because of the peculiar role he played, then and later, I have not
+used his real name.) “I’m a former Air Force Intelligence officer. I
+was in the European theater during the war.”
+
+I waited. He hesitated a moment.
+
+“I heard you’re working on the flying-saucer problem,” he said quickly.
+“I may have some information that would interest you.”
+
+“Mind telling me who told you I was on it?” I asked.
+
+“No one, directly. I just happened to hear it mentioned at the Press
+Club. Frankly, I’ve been curious about the flying saucers ever since
+’45.”
+
+That startled me, but I didn’t tell him so. “Do you have any idea what
+they are?” Mr. Steele said.
+
+“No, I’ve just begun checking. But I’d be glad to hear what you’ve
+got.”
+
+“I may be way off,” said Steele. “But I’ve always wondered about the
+‘foo fighters’ our pilots saw over Europe near the end of the war.”
+
+I thought for a second. “Wasn’t that some kind of antiaircraft missile
+fired from the ground?”
+
+“No. Intelligence never did get any real answer, so far as I know. They
+were some kind of circular gadgets, and they actually chased our planes
+a number of times. We thought they were something the Nazis had
+invented—and I still think so.”
+
+“Then who’s launching them now?”
+
+“Well, it’s obviously either Russia or us. If it is the Soviet—well,
+that’s what’s worried me. I don’t think it should be treated like a
+joke, the way some people in the Pentagon take it.”
+
+I stared at the phone, trying to figure him out.
+
+“I’d like to talk it over with you,” I said. “Maybe you’ve got
+something.”
+
+“I’ve given you about all I know,” Steele answered. “There was an
+Intelligence report you might try to see—the Eighth Air Force files
+should have it.”
+
+“Wait a minute,” I said. “Give me your number, in case I find
+anything.”
+
+He gave it to me without apparent hesitation. I thanked him and hung
+up, still wondering.
+
+If it was an attempt at a plant, it was certainly crude. The mention of
+his former Air Force connection would be enough to arouse suspicion,
+unless he counted on his apparent frankness to offset it.
+
+And what about the Press Club angle? That would indicate Steele was a
+newspaperman. Could this be merely an attempt to pump me and get a lead
+on True’s investigation? But that would be just as crude as the other
+idea. Of course, he might be sincere. But regardless of his motives, it
+looked bad. Arid who had told him about me?
+
+I thought about that for a minute. Then I picked up the phone and
+dialed Jack Daly’s number. “Jack, do you know anyone named John
+Steele?” I asked him. “I think he’s a newspaperman.”
+
+“Nobody I know,” said Jack. “Why, what’s up?”
+
+I explained, and added, “I thought maybe you knew him, and he’d heard
+about it from you.”
+
+“Hell, no,” said Jack. “You ought to know I wouldn’t leak any tip like
+that.”
+
+“It wouldn’t be a tip—I don’t know anything about this deal yet. By the
+way, when you were on the _Star_ did you handle anything on ‘foo
+fighters’?”
+
+“No, that was after I left there. Bill Shippen would have covered that,
+anyway.”
+
+I told him I would look it up in the _Star’s_ morgue. Jack said he
+would meet me there at three o’clock; in the meantime he would see what
+he could find out about Steele.
+
+Jack was a little late, and I went over the _Star’s_ file on the foo
+fighters. Most of the facts were covered in a story dated July 6, 1947,
+which had been inspired by the outbreak of the saucer scare. I copied
+it for later use:
+
+
+During the latter part of World War Two, fighter pilots in England were
+convinced that Hitler had a new secret weapon. Yanks dubbed these
+devices “foo fighters” or “Kraut fireballs.”
+
+One of the Air Force Intelligence men now assigned to check on the
+saucer scare was an officer who investigated statements of military
+airmen that circular foo fighters were seen over Europe and also on the
+bombing route to Japan.
+
+It was reported that Intelligence officers have never obtained
+satisfactory explanation of reports of flying silver balls and disks
+over Nazi-occupied Europe in the winter of 1944-45. Later, crews of
+B-29’S on bombing runs to Japan reported seeing somewhat similar
+objects.
+
+In Europe, some foo fighters danced just off the Allied fighters’
+wingtips and played tag with them in power dives. Others appeared in
+precise formations and on one occasion a whole bomber crew saw about 15
+following at a distance, their strange glow flashing on and off. One
+foo fighter chased Lieutenant Meiers of Chicago some 20 miles down the
+Rhine Valley, at 300 m.p.h., an A.P. war correspondent reported.
+Intelligence officers believed at that time that the balls might be
+radar-controlled objects sent up to foul ignition systems or baffle
+Allied radar networks.
+
+There is no explanation of their appearance here, unless the objects
+could have been imported for secret tests in this country.
+
+
+I read the last paragraph twice. This looked like a strong lead to the
+answer, in spite of the Air Force denials. There was another, less
+pleasant possibility. The Russians could have seized the device and
+developed it secretly, using Nazi scientists to help them. Perhaps the
+Nazis had been close to an atomic engine, even if they did fail to
+produce the bomb.
+
+Jack Daly came in while I was reading the story again.
+
+“I got the dope on Steele,” he said. “He does pieces for a small
+syndicate, and I found out he was in the Air Force. I think he was a
+captain. People who know him say he’s O.K.—a straight shooter.”
+
+“That still wouldn’t keep him from giving me a fake tip, if somebody
+told him it was the right thing to do.”
+
+“Maybe not,” said Jack, “but why would they want to plant this
+foo-fighter idea?”
+
+I showed him the clipping. He read it over and shook his head.
+
+“That’s a lot different from disks three hundred feet in diameter.”
+
+“If we got the principle—or Russia did-building big ones might not be
+too hard.”
+
+“I still can’t swallow it,” said Jack. “These things have been seen all
+over the world. How could they control them that far away—and be sure
+they wouldn’t crash, where somebody could get a look and dope out the
+secret?”
+
+We argued it back and forth without getting anywhere. “I’d give a lot
+to know Steele’s angle,” I said. “If you hear anything more on him,
+give me a buzz.”
+
+Jack nodded. “I’ll see what I can do. But I can’t dig too hard, or
+he’ll hear about it.”
+
+On the way out, I found a phone booth and called Splitt.
+
+“Foo fighters?” he said. “Sure, I remember those stories. You think
+those are your flying saucers?”
+
+I could hear him snicker.
+
+“Just checking angles,” I said. “Didn’t the Eighth Air Force
+investigate the foo fighters?”
+
+“Yes, and they found nothing to back up the pilots’ yarns. just war
+nerves, apparently.”
+
+“How about a look at the Intelligence report?” I asked.
+
+“Wait a minute.” Splitt was gone for twice that time, then he carne
+back. “Sorry, it’s classified.”
+
+“If all this stuff is bunk, why keep the lid on it?” I demanded. I was
+getting sore again.
+
+“Look, Don,” said Splitt, “I don’t make the rules.”
+
+“Sure, I know—sorry,” I said. I had a notion to ask him if he knew John
+Steele, but hung up instead. There was no use in banging my head
+against the Air Force wall.
+
+The next day I decided to analyze the Mantell case from beginning to
+end. It looked like the key to one angle: the question of an Air Force
+secret missile. Unless there was some slip-up, so that Mantell and his
+pilots had been ordered to chase the disk by mistake, then it would be
+cold murder.
+
+I couldn’t believe any Air Force officer would give such an order, no
+matter how tremendous the secret to be hidden.
+
+But I was going to find out, if possible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+For more than two weeks, I checked on the Godman Field tragedy. One
+fact stood out at the start: The death of Mantell had had a profound
+effect on many in the Air Force. A dozen times I was told:
+
+“I thought the saucers were a joke-until Mantell was killed chasing
+that thing at Fort Knox.”
+
+Many ranking officers who had laughed at the saucer scare stopped
+scoffing. One of these was General Sory Smith, now Deputy Director of
+Air Force Public Relations. Later in my investigation, General Smith
+told me:
+
+“It was the Mantell case that got me. I knew Tommy Mantell. very
+well—also Colonel Hix, the C.O. at Godman. I knew they were both
+intelligent men—not the kind to be imagining things.”
+
+For fifteen months, the Air Force kept a tight-lipped silence.
+Meantime, rumors began to spread. One report said that Mantell had been
+shot, his body riddled with bullets; his P-51, also riddled, had simply
+disintegrated. Another rumor reported Mantell as having been killed by
+some mysterious force; this same force had also destroyed his fighter.
+The Air Force, the rumors said, had covered up the truth by telling
+Mantell’s family he had blacked out from lack of oxygen.
+
+Checking the last angle, I found that this was the explanation given to
+Mantell’s mother, just after his death, she was told by Standiford
+Field officers that he had flown too high in chasing the strange
+object.
+
+Shallet, in the _Saturday Evening Post_ articles, described Project
+“Saucer’s” reconstruction of the case. Mantell was said to have climbed
+up to 25,000 feet, despite his firm decision to end the chase at
+20,000, since he carried no oxygen. Around 25,000 feet, Shallett quoted
+the Air Force investigators, Mantell must have lost consciousness.
+After this, his pilotless plane climbed on up to some 30,000 feet, then
+dived. Between 20,000 and 10,000 feet, Shallett suggested, the P-51
+began to disintegrate, obviously from excessive speed. The gleaming
+object that hypnotized Mantell into this fatal climb was, Shallett
+said, either the planet Venus or a Navy cosmic-ray research balloon.
+
+The Air Force Project “Saucer” report of April 27, 1949, released just
+after the first Post article, makes these statements:
+
+“Five minutes after Mantell disappeared from his formation, the two
+remaining planes returned to Godman. A few minutes later, one resumed
+the search, covering territory 100 miles to the south as high as 33,000
+feet, but found nothing.
+
+“Subsequent investigation revealed that Mantell had probably blacked
+out at 20,000 feet from lack of oxygen and had died of suffocation
+before the crash.
+
+“The mysterious object which the flyer chased to his death was first
+identified as the Planet Venus. However, further probing showed the
+elevation and azimuth readings of Venus and the object at specified
+time intervals did not coincide.
+
+“It is still considered ‘Unidentified.’
+
+The Venus explanation, even though now denied, puzzled me. It was plain
+that the Air Force had seriously considered offering it as the answer
+then abandoned it. Apparently someone had got his signals mixed and let
+Shallett use the discarded answer. And for some unknown reason, the Air
+Force had found it imperative to deny the Venus story at once.
+
+In these first weeks of checking, I had run onto the Venus explanation
+in other cases. Several Air Force officers repeated it so quickly that
+it had the sound of a stock alibi. But in the daytime cases this was
+almost ridiculous.
+
+I knew of a few instances in World War II when bomber crews and
+antiaircraft gunners had loosed a few bursts at Venus. But this was
+mostly at night, when the planet was at peak brilliance. And more than
+one gunner later admitted firing to relieve long hours of boredom.
+Since enemy planes did not carry lights, there was no authentic case,
+to my knowledge, where plane or ground gunners actually believed Venus
+was an enemy aircraft.
+
+Checking the astronomer’s report, I read over the concluding statement:
+
+“It simply could not have been Venus. They must have been desperate
+even to suggest it in the first place.” Months later, in the secret
+Project “Saucer” report released December 30, 1949, I found official
+confirmation of this astronomer’s opinions. Since it has a peculiar
+bearing on the Mantell case, I am quoting it now:
+
+
+When Venus is at its greatest brilliance, it is possible to see it
+during daytime when one knows exactly where to look. But on January 7,
+1948, Venus was less than half as bright as its peak brilliance.
+However, under exceptionally good atmospheric conditions, and with the
+eye shielded from direct rays of the sun, Venus might be seen as an
+exceedingly tiny bright point of light. . . . However, the chances of
+looking at just the right spot are very few.
+
+It has been unofficially reported that the object was a Navy cosmic-ray
+research balloon. If this can be established, it Is to be preferred as
+an explanation. However, if one accepts the assumption that reports
+from various other localities refer to the same object, any such device
+must have been a good many miles high—25 to 50—in order to have been
+seen clearly, almost simultaneously, from places 175 miles apart.
+
+If all reports were of a single object, in the knowledge of this
+investigator no man-made object could have been large enough and far
+enough away for the approximate simultaneous sightings. It is most
+unlikely, however, that so many separated persons should at that time
+have chanced on Venus in the daylight sky. It seems therefore much more
+probable that more than one object was involved.
+
+The sighting might have included two or more balloons (or aircraft) or
+they might have included Venus and balloons. For reasons given above,
+the latter explanation seems more likely.
+
+
+Two things stand out in his report:
+
+1. The obvious determination to fit some explanation, no matter how
+farfetched, to the Mantell sighting.
+
+2. The impossibility that Venus—a tiny point of light, seen only with
+difficulty—was the tremendous metallic object described by Mantell and
+seen by Godman Field officers.
+
+With Venus eliminated, I went to work on the balloon theory. Since I
+had been a balloon pilot before learning to fly planes, this was fairly
+familiar ground.
+
+Shallett’s alternate theory that Mantell had chased a Navy research
+balloon was widely repeated by readers unfamiliar with balloon
+operation. Few thought to check the speeds, heights, and distances
+involved.
+
+Cosmic-ray research balloons are not powered; they are set free to
+drift with the wind. This particular Navy type is released at a base
+near Minneapolis. The gas bag is filled with only a small per cent of
+its helium capacity before the take-off.
+
+In a routine flight, the balloon ascends rapidly to a very high
+altitude-as high as 100,000 feet. By this time the gas bag has swelled
+to full size, about l00 feet high and 70 feet in diameter. At a set
+time, a device releases the case of instruments under the balloon. The
+instruments descend by parachute, and the balloon, rising quickly,
+explodes from the sudden expansion.
+
+Occasionally a balloon starts leaking, and it then remains relatively
+low. At first glance, this might seem the answer to the Kentucky
+sightings. If the balloon were low enough, it would loom up as a large
+circular object, as seen from directly below. Some witnesses might
+estimate its diameter as 250 feet or more, instead of its actual 70
+feet. But this failure to recognize a balloon would require incredibly
+poor vision on the part of trained observers—state police, Army M.P.’s,
+the Godman Field officers, Mantell and his pilots.
+
+Captain Mantell was a wartime pilot, with over three thousand hours in
+the air. He was trained to identify a distant enemy plane in a split
+second. His vision was perfect, and so was that of his pilots. In broad
+daylight they could not fail to recognize a balloon during their
+thirty-minute chase.
+
+Colonel Hix and the other Godman officers watched the object with
+high-powered glasses for long periods. It is incredible that they would
+not identify it as a balloon.
+
+Before its appearance over Godman Field, the leaking balloon would have
+drifted, at a low altitude, over several hundred miles. (A leak large
+enough to bring it down from high altitude would have caused it to land
+and be found.) Drifting at a low altitude, it would have been seen by
+several hundred thousand people, at the very least. Many would have
+reported it as a balloon. But even if this angle is ignored it still
+could not possibly have been a balloon at low altitude. The fast flight
+from Madisonville, the abrupt stop and hour-long hovering at Godman
+Field, the quick bursts of speed Mantell reported make it impossible.
+To fly the go miles from Madisonville to Fort Knox in 30 minutes, a
+balloon would require a wind of 180 m.p.h. After traveling at this
+hurricane speed, it would then have had to come to a dead stop above
+Godman Field. As the P-51’s approached, it would have had to speed tip
+again to 180, then to more than 360 to keep ahead of Mantell.
+
+The three fighter pilots chased the mysterious object for half an hour.
+(I have several times chased balloons with a plane, overtaking them in
+seconds.) In a straight chase, Mantell would have been closing in at
+360; the tail wind acting on his fighter would nullify the balloon’s
+forward drift.
+
+But even if you accept these improbable factors, there is one final
+fact that nullifies the balloon explanation. The strange object had
+disappeared when Mantell’s wingman searched the sky, just after the
+leader’s death. If it had been a balloon held stationary for an hour at
+a high altitude, and glowing brightly enough to be seen through clouds,
+it would have remained visible in the same general position. Seen from
+33,000 feet, it would have been even brighter, because of the clearer
+air.
+
+But the mysterious object had completely vanished in those few minutes.
+A search covering a hundred miles failed to reveal a trace.
+
+Whether at a high or low altitude, a balloon could not have escaped the
+pilot’s eyes. It would also have continued to be seen at Godman Field
+and other points, through occasional breaks in the clouds.
+
+I pointed out these facts to one Air Force officer at the Pentagon.
+Next day he phoned me:
+
+“I figured it out. The timing device went off and the balloon exploded.
+That’s why the pilot didn’t see it.”
+
+“It’s an odd coincidence,” I said, “that it exploded in those five
+minutes after Mantell’s last report.”
+
+“Even so, it’s obviously the answer,” he said.
+
+Checking on this angle, I found:
+
+1. No one in the Kentucky area had reported a descending parachute.
+
+2. No cosmic-ray research instrument case or parachute was found in the
+area.
+
+3. No instruments were returned to the Navy from this region. And _all_
+balloons and instruments released at that time were _fully accounted
+for_.
+
+Even if it had been a balloon, it would not explain the _later_ January
+7th reports—the simultaneous sightings mentioned by Professor Hynek in
+the Project “Saucer” report. This includes the thing seen at Lockbourne
+Air Force Base two hours after Mantell’s death.
+
+Obviously, the saucer seen flying at 500 m.p.h. over Lockbourne Field
+could not have been a balloon. Even if there had been several balloons
+in this area (and there were not, by official record), they could not
+have covered the courses reported. In some cases, they would have been
+flying against the wind, at terrific speed.
+
+Then what was the mysterious object? And what killed Mantell?
+
+Both the Air Force and the _Post_ articles speculate that Mantell
+carelessly let himself black out.
+
+Since some explanation had to be given, this might seem a good answer.
+But Mantell was known for coolheaded judgment. As a wartime pilot, he
+was familiar with signs of anoxia (oxygen starvation). That he knew his
+tolerance for altitude is proved by his firmly declared intention to
+abandon the chase at 20,000 feet, since he had no oxygen equipment.
+
+Mantell had his altimeter to warn him. From experience, he would
+recognize the first vague blurring, narrowing of vision, and other
+signs of anoxia. Despite this, the “blackout” explanation was accepted
+as plausible by many Americans.
+
+While investigating the Mantell case, I talked with several pilots and
+aeronautical engineers. Several questioned that a P-51 starting a dive
+from 20,000 feet would have disintegrated so thoroughly.
+
+“From thirty thousand feet, yes,” said one engineer. “If the idea was
+to explain it away, I’d pick a high altitude to start from. But a
+pilotless plane doesn’t necessarily dive, as you know.
+
+“It might slip off and spin, or spiral down, and a few have even landed
+themselves. Also, if the plane started down from twenty thousand, the
+pilot wouldn’t be too far blacked out. The odds are he’d come to when
+he got into thicker air—admitting he did blur out, which is only an Air
+Force guess. I don’t see why they’re so positive Mantell died before he
+hit the ground—unless they know something we don’t.”
+
+One of the pilot group put it more bluntly.
+
+“It looks like a cover-up to me. I think Mantell did just what he said
+he would—close in on the thing. I think he either collided with it, or
+more likely they knocked him out of the air. They’d think he was trying
+to bring them down, barging in like that.”
+
+Even if you accept the blackout answer, it still does not explain what
+Mantell was chasing. it is possible that, excited by the huge,
+mysterious object, he recklessly climbed beyond the danger level,
+though such an act was completely at odds with his character.
+
+But the _identity_ of the thing remains—officially—a mystery. If it was
+some weird experimental craft or a guided missile, then whose was it?
+Air Force officers had repeatedly told me they had no such device.
+General Carl Touhy Spaatz, former Air Force chief, had publicly
+insisted that no such weapon had been developed in his regime.
+Secretary Symington and General Hoyt Vandenberg, present Air Force
+chief, had been equally emphatic. Of course, official denials could be
+expected if it were a top-level secret. But if it were a secret device,
+would it be tested so publicly that thousands would see it?
+
+If it were an Air Force device, then I could see only one answer for
+the Godman Field incident: The thing was such a closely guarded secret
+that even Colonel Hix hadn’t known. That would mean that most or all
+Air Force Base C.O.’s were also in ignorance of the secret device.
+
+Could it be a Navy experiment, kept secret from the Air Force?
+
+I did a little checking.
+
+Admiral Calvin Bolster, chief of aeronautics research experimental
+craft, was an Annapolis classmate of mine. So was Captain Delmer S.
+Fahrney, head of the Navy guided-missile program. Fahrney was at Point
+Mugu, missile-testing base in California, and I wasn’t able to see him.
+But I knew him as a careful, conscientious officer; I can’t believe he
+would let such a device, piloted or not, hover over an Air Force base
+with no warning to its C.O.
+
+I saw Admiral Bolster. His denial seemed genuine; unless he’d got to be
+a dead-pan poker player since our earlier days, I was sure he was
+telling the truth.
+
+The only other alternate was Russia. It was incredible that they would
+develop such a device and then expose it to the gaze of U.S. Air Force
+officers. It could be photographed, its speed and maneuverability
+checked; it might crash, or antiaircraft fire might bring it down, The
+secret might be lost in one such test flight.
+
+There was one other explanation: The thing was not intended to be seen;
+it had got out of control. In this event; the long hovering period at
+Godman Field was caused by the need for repairs inside the flying
+saucer, or repairs to remote-control apparatus.
+
+If it were Air Force or Navy, that would explain official concern; even
+if completely free of negligence, the service responsible would be
+blamed for Mantell’s death. If it were Russian, the Air Force would of
+course try to conceal the fact for fear of public hysteria.
+
+But if the device was American, it meant that Project “Saucer” was a
+cover-up unit. While pretending to investigate, it would actually hush
+up reports, make false explanations, and safeguard the secret in every
+possible way. Also, the reported order for Air Force pilots to pursue
+the disks would have to be a fake. Instead, there would be a secret
+order telling them to avoid strange objects in the sky.
+
+By the time I finished my check-up, I was sure of one thing: This
+particular saucer had been real.
+
+I was almost positive of one other point-that the thing had been over
+30 miles high during part of its flight. I found that _after_ Mantell’s
+death it was reported simultaneously from Madisonville, Elizabethtown,
+and Lexington—over a distance of 175 miles. (Professor Hynek’s analysis
+later confirmed this.)
+
+How low it had been while hovering over Godman, and during Mantell’s
+chase, there was no way to determine. But all the evidence pointed to a
+swift ascent after Mantell’s last report.
+
+Had Mantell told Godman Tower more than the Air Force admitted? I went
+back to the Pentagon and asked for a full transcript of the flight
+leader’s radio messages. I got a quick turn-down. The reports, I was
+told, were still classified as secret. Requests for pictures of the
+P-51 wreckage, and for a report on the condition of Mantell’s body,
+also drew a blank. I had heard that some photographs were taken of the
+Godman Field saucer from outside the tower. But the Air Force denied
+knowledge of any such pictures.
+
+Puzzling over the riddle, I remembered John Steele, the former
+Intelligence captain. If by any chance he was a plant, it would be
+interesting to suggest the various answers and watch his reaction. When
+I phoned him to suggest luncheon, Steele accepted at once. We met at
+the Occidental, on Pennsylvania Avenue. Steele was younger than I had
+expected—not over twenty-five. He was a tall man, with a crew haircut
+and the build of a football player. Looking at him the first time, I
+expected a certain breeziness. instead, he was almost solemn.
+
+“I owe you an apology,” he said in a careful voice after we’d ordered.
+“You probably know I’m a syndicate writer?”
+
+I wondered if he’d found out Jack Daly was checking on him.
+
+“When you mentioned the Press Club,” I said, “I gathered you were in
+the business.”
+
+“I’m afraid you thought I was fishing for a lead.” Steele looked at me
+earnestly. “I’m not working on the story—I’m tied up on other stuff.”
+
+“Forget it,” I told him.
+
+He seemed anxious to reassure me. “I’d been worried for some time about
+the saucers. I called you that night on an impulse.”
+
+“Glad you did,” I said. “I need every tip I can get.”
+
+“Did it help you any?”
+
+“Yes, though it still doesn’t fit together. But I can tell you this:
+The saucers are real, or at least one of them.”
+
+“Which one?”
+
+“The thing Captain Mantell was chasing near Fort Knox, before he died.”
+
+“Oh, that one.” Steele looked down at the roll he was buttering. “I
+thought that case was fully explained. Wasn’t he chasing a balloon?”
+
+“The Air Force says it’s still unidentified.” I told him what I had
+learned. “Apparently you’re right—it’s either an American or a Soviet
+missile.”
+
+“After what you’ve told me,” said Steele, “I can’t believe it’s ours.
+It must be Russian.”
+
+“They’d be pretty stupid to test it over here.”
+
+“You said it was probably out of control.”
+
+“That particular one, maybe. But there have been several hundred seen
+over here. If they found their controls were haywire, they wouldn’t
+keep testing the things until they’d corrected that.”
+
+The waiter came with the soup, and Steele was silent until he left.
+
+“I still can’t believe it’s our weapon,” he said slowly. “They wouldn’t
+have Air Force pilots alerted to chase the things. And I happen to how
+they do.”
+
+“There’s something queer about this missile angle,” I said. “That
+saucer was seen at the same time by people a hundred and seventy-five
+miles apart. To be that high in the sky, and still look more than two
+hundred and fifty feet in diameter, it must have been enormous.”
+
+Steele didn’t answer for a moment.
+
+“Obviously, that was an illusion,” he finally answered. “I’d discount
+those estimates.”
+
+“Even Mantell’s? And the Godman Field officers’?”
+
+“Not knowing the thing’s height, how could they judge accurately?”
+
+“To be seen at points that far apart, it had to be over thirty miles
+high,” I told him. “It would have to be huge to show up at all.”
+
+He shook his head. “I can’t believe those reports are right. It must
+have been sighted at different times.”
+
+I let it drop.
+
+“What are you working on now?” Steele asked, after a minute or two.
+
+I said I hadn’t decided. Actually, I planned a trip to the coast, to
+interview pilots who had sighted flying disks.
+
+“What would you do if you found it wasn’t a Soviet missile?” said
+Steele. He sounded almost too casual.
+
+“If security was involved, I’d keep still. But the Air Force and the
+Navy swear they haven’t any such things.”
+
+Steele looked at me thoughtfully.
+
+“You know, _True_ might force something into the open that would be
+better left secret.” He smiled ironically. “I realize that sounds
+peculiar, since I suggested the Russian angle. But if it isn’t
+Russian—though I still think it is—then we have nothing to worry
+about.”
+
+I was almost sure now that he was a plant. During the rest of the
+luncheon, I tried to draw him out, but Steele was through talking. When
+we parted, he gave me a sober warning.
+
+“You and _True_ should consider your moral responsibility, no matter
+what you find. Even if it’s not actual security, there may be reasons
+to keep still.”
+
+After he left me, I tried to figure it out. If the Air Force was back
+of this, they must not think much of my intelligence. Or else they had
+been in such a hurry to get a line on _True’s_ investigation that they
+had no choice but to use Steele. Of course, it was still possible he
+was doing this on his own.
+
+Either way, his purpose was obvious. He hoped to have us swallow the
+Soviet-missile answer. If we did, then we would have to keep still,
+even though we found absolute proof. Obviously, it would be dangerous
+to print _that_ story.
+
+Thinking back, I recalled Steele’s apparent attempt to dismiss the
+Mantell case. I was convinced now. The Godman Field affair must hold an
+important clue that I had overlooked. It might even be the key to the
+whole flying saucer riddle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Shortly after my talk with Steele, I flew to the Coast. For three weeks
+I investigated sightings that had been reported by airline and private
+pilots and other competent witnesses.
+
+At first, the airline pilots were reluctant to talk. Most of them
+remembered the ridicule that had followed published accounts by other
+airline men. One pilot told me he had been ordered to keep still about
+his experience—whether by the company or the Air Force, he would not
+say. But most of them finally agreed to talk, if I kept their names out
+of print.
+
+One airline captain—I’ll call him Blake—had encountered a saucer at
+night. He and his copilot had sighted the object, gleaming, in the
+moonlight, half a mile to their left.
+
+“We were at about twelve thousand feet,” he said, when we saw this
+thing pacing us. It didn’t have any running lights, but we could see
+the moonlight reflecting from something like bright metal. There was a
+glow along the side, like some kind of light, or exhaust.”
+
+“Could you make out the shape?” I asked.
+
+Blake grinned crookedly. “You think we didn’t try? I cut in toward it.
+It turned in the same direction. I pulled up about three hundred feet,
+and it did the same. Finally, I opened my throttles and cut in fast,
+intending to pull tip if we got too close. I needn’t have worried. The
+thing let out a burst of reddish flame and streaked up out of sight. It
+was gone in a few seconds.”
+
+“Then it must have been piloted,” I said.
+
+“If not, it had some kind of radar-responder unit to make it veer off
+when anything got near it. It matched every move I made, until the last
+one.”
+
+I asked him what he thought the saucer was. Blake hesitated, then he
+gave me a slow grin.
+
+“Well, my copilot thinks it was a space ship. He says no pilot here on
+earth could take that many G’s, when the thing zoomed.”
+
+I’d heard some “men from Mars” opinions about the saucers, but this was
+an experienced pilot.
+
+“You don’t believe that?” I said.
+
+“No,” Blake said. “I figure it was some new type of guided missile. If
+it took as many G’s as Chuck, my copilot, thinks, then it must have
+been on a beam and remote-controlled.”
+
+Later, I found two other pilots who had the same idea as Chuck. One
+captain was afraid the flying saucers were Russian; his copilot thought
+they were Air Force or Navy. I met one airline official who was
+indignant about testing such missiles near the airways.
+
+“Even if they do have some device to make them veer off,” he said, “I
+think it’s a risk. There’ll be hell to pay if one ever hits an
+airliner.”
+
+“They’ve been flying around for two years,” a line pilot pointed out.
+“Nobody’s had a close call yet. I don’t think there’s much danger.”
+
+When I left the Coast, I flew to New York. Ken Purdy called in John
+DuBarry, _True’s_ aviation editor, to hear the details. Purdy called
+him “John the Skeptic.” After I told them what I had learned Purdy
+nodded.
+
+“What do you think the saucers are?” asked DuBarry.
+
+“They must be guided missiles,” I said, “but it leaves some queer gaps
+in the picture.”
+
+I had made up a list of possible answers, and I read it to them:
+
+“One, the saucers don’t exist. They’re caused by mistakes, hysteria,
+and so on. Two, they’re Russian guided missiles. Three, they’re
+American guided missiles. Four, the whole thing is a hoax, a
+psychological-warfare trick.”
+
+“You mean a trick of ours?” said Purdy.
+
+“Sure, to make the Soviets think we could reach them with a guided
+missile. But I don’t think that’s the answer—I just listed it as a
+possibility.”
+
+DuBarry considered this thoughtfully.
+
+“In the first place, you’d have to bring thousands of people into the
+scheme, so the disks would be reported often enough to get publicity.
+You’d have to have _some_ kind of device, maybe something launched from
+highflying bombers, to give the rumors substance. They’d certainly do a
+better job than this, to put it over. And it wouldn’t explain the
+world-wide sightings. Also, Captain Mantell wouldn’t kill himself just
+to carry out an official hoax.”
+
+“John’s right,” said Purdy. “Anyway, it’s too ponderous. It would leak
+like a sieve, and the dumbest Soviet agent would see through it.”
+
+He looked back at my list. “Cross off Number One, There’s too much
+competent testimony, beside the obvious fact that something’s being
+covered up.”
+
+“That leaves Russian or American missiles,” I said, “as Steele first
+suggested. But there are some points that just won’t fit the missile
+theory.”
+
+“You’ve left out one answer,” said Purdy.
+
+“What’s that?”
+
+“Interplanetary.”
+
+“You’re kidding!” I said.
+
+“I didn’t say I believed it,” said Purdy. “I just say it’s possible.”
+
+DuBarry was watching me. “I know how you feel. That’s how it hit me
+when Ken first said it,”
+
+“I’ve heard it before,” I said. “But I never took it seriously.”
+
+“Maybe this will interest you,” Purdy said. He gave me a note from Sam
+Boal:
+
+“Just talked with D———-,” the note ran. (D———- is a prominent
+aeronautical engineer, the designer of a world-famous plane.) “He
+believes the disks may be interplanetary and that the Air Force knows
+it—or at least suspects it. I’m enclosing sketches showing how he
+thinks the disks operate.”
+
+“He’s not the first one who told us that,” said Purdy. “We’ve heard the
+same thing from other engineers. Over a dozen airline pilots think
+they’re coining from out in space. And there’s a rocket expert at
+Wright Field who’s warned Project ‘Saucer’ that the things are
+interplanetary. That’s why I’m not writing it off.”
+
+“Have you read the Project ‘Saucer’ ideas on space travel?” DuBarry
+asked me. I told him my copy hadn’t reached me. He read me some marked
+paragraphs in his copy of the preliminary report:
+
+“‘There has been speculation that the aerial phenomena might actually
+be some form of penetration from another planet . . . the existence of
+intelligent life on Mars is not impossible but is completely unproven .
+. . the possibility of intelligent life on the Planet Venus is not
+considered completely unreasonable by astronomers . . . Scientists
+concede that living organisms might develop in chemical environments
+which are strange to us . . . in the next fifty years we will almost
+certainly start exploring space . . . the chance of space travelers
+existing at planets attached to neighboring stars is very much greater
+than the chance of space-traveling Martians. The one can be viewed as
+almost a certainty . . .’”
+
+DuBarry handed me the report. “Here—I practically know it by heart.
+Take it with you. You can send it back later.”
+
+“I know the space-travel idea sounds silly at first,” said Purdy, “but
+it’s the only answer that explains all the sightings-especially those
+in the last century.”
+
+He asked DuBarry to give me their file of historic reports. While John
+was getting it, Purdy went on:
+
+“Be careful about this man Steele. After what he said about ‘moral
+responsibility’ I’m sure he’s planted.”
+
+I thought back to Steele’s warning. I told Purdy: “If he had the space
+thing in mind, maybe he’s right. It could set off a panic that would
+make that Orson Welles thing look like a picnic.”
+
+“Certainly it could,” Purdy said. “We’d have to handle it carefully-if
+it turned out to be the truth. But I think the Air Force is making a
+mistake, if that’s what they’re hiding. It could break the wrong way
+and be serious.”
+
+John DuBarry came back with the file of old reports.
+
+“It might interest you to know,” he said, “that the Air Force checked
+all these old sightings too.”
+
+The idea was still a difficult one for me to believe.
+
+“Those space-travel suggestions might be a trick,” I said. “The Air
+Force may be hinting at that to hide the guided-missile secret.”
+
+“Yes, but later on they deny the space thing,” said Purdy. “It looks as
+if they’re trying to put people on guard and then play it down, so they
+won’t get scared.”
+
+As I put the historic reports file in my brief case, Purdy handed me a
+letter from an investigator named Hilton, who had been working in the
+Southwest. I skimmed over his letter.
+
+Hilton had heard of some unusual night sightings in New Mexico. The
+story had been hushed up, but he had learned some details from a pilot
+at Albuquerque.
+
+One of these mysterious “flying lights” had been seen at Las Vegas, on
+December 8, 1948—just one month before Mantell was killed in Kentucky.
+It was too dark to make out the shape behind the light, but all
+witnesses had agreed on its performance. The thing had climbed at
+tremendous speed, its upward motion shown by a bright green light.
+Though the green glow was much brighter than a plane’s running light,
+all plane schedules were carefully checked.
+
+“I think they were trying to pin it on a jet fighter,” the Albuquerque
+pilot told Hilton. “But there weren’t any jets near there. Anyway, the
+thing climbed too fast. It must have been making close to nine hundred
+miles an hour.”
+
+The Air Force had also checked balloon release times—apparently just
+for the record, since no balloon could even approach the saucer’s
+terrific ascent. Again, they drew a blank.
+
+“From the way this was hushed up,” Hilton commented, “they seem to be
+worried about this group of sightings. I’ve heard two reports that the
+F.B.I. is tied into the deal somehow, but that’s as far as I can get.”
+
+“See if you can get any lead on that,” Purdy told me. “That F.B.I.
+business puzzles me. Where would they come in?”
+
+I said I would try to find out. But it was almost four months before we
+learned the answer: The F.B.I. men had been _witnesses_. (This was
+later admitted in an obscure cross-reference in the final Project
+“Saucer” report. But all official answers to the strange green-light
+sightings had been carefully omitted. The cases concerned were 223,
+224, 225, 226, 227, 230, and 231, which will be discussed later.)
+
+“When you go back to Washington,” said Purdy, “see what reaction you
+get to the interplanetary idea.”
+
+I had a pretty good idea what the reaction would be, but I nodded.
+“O.K. I’ll go flag a space ship and be on my way.”
+
+“O.K.—gag it up,” said Purdy. “But don’t sell it short, If by any
+chance it’s true, it’ll be the biggest story since the birth of
+Christ.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+It was dark when the airliner limousine reached La Guardia Field. I had
+intended taking an earlier plane, but DuBarry persuaded me to stay over
+for dinner.
+
+We dropped into the Algonquin, next door to _True’s_ office building.
+Halfway through dinner, I asked John what he thought of the
+space-travel answer.
+
+“Oh, it’s possible,” he said cautiously. “The time and space angles
+make it hard to take, but if we’re planning to explore space within
+fifty years, there’s no reason some other planet people couldn’t do it.
+Of course, if they’ve been observing us for over a century, as those
+old sightings seem to indicate, they must be far ahead of us, at least
+in technical progress.”
+
+Later on, he said thoughtfully, “Even though it’s possible, I hate to
+think it’s the answer. just imagine the impact on the world. We’d have
+to reorient our whole lives—and things are complicated enough already.”
+
+Standing at the gate, waiting for my plane to be called, I thought over
+that angle. Assuming that space travel was the solution—which I still
+couldn’t believe-what would be the effect on the world?
+
+It was a hard thing to picture. So much depended on the visitors from
+space. What would their purpose be? Would they be peaceful or hostile?
+Why had they been observing the earth so intensively in the past few
+years?
+
+I could think of a hundred questions. What would the space people be
+like? Would they be similar to men and women on earth, or some fearsome
+Buck Rogerish creatures who would terrify the average
+American—including myself?
+
+It was obvious they would be far superior to us in many ways. But their
+civilization might be entirely different. Evolution might have
+developed their minds, and possibly their bodies, along lines we
+couldn’t even grasp. Perhaps we couldn’t even communicate with them.
+
+What would be the net effect of making contact with beings from a
+distant planet? Would earthlings be terrified, or, if it seemed a
+peaceful exploration, would we bc intrigued by the thought of a great
+adventure? It would depend entirely on the space visitors’ motives, and
+how the world was prepared for such a revelation.
+
+The more I thought about it, the more fantastic thc thing seemed.
+
+And yet it hadn’t been too long since airplane flight was considered an
+idiot’s dream. This scene here at La Guardia would have seemed pure
+fantasy in 1900—thc huge Constellations and DC-6’s; the double-decked
+Stratocruisers, sweeping in from all over the country; the big ships at
+Pan-American, taking off for points all over the globe. We’d come a
+long way in the forty-six years since the Wright brothers’ first
+flight.
+
+But space travel!
+
+The gateman checked my ticket, and I went out to the Washington plane.
+It was a luxury ship, a fifty-two-passenger, four-engined DC-6,
+scheduled to be in the capital one hour after take-off. By morning this
+plane, the Aztec, would be in Mexico City.
+
+The couple going up the gangway ahead of me were in their late sixties.
+Fifty years ago, what would they have said if someone had predicted
+this flight? The answer to that was easy; at that time, high-school
+songbooks featured a well-known piece entitled “Darius Green and His
+Flying Machine.” Darius, it seems, was a simple-minded lad who actually
+thought he could fly.
+
+Fifty years. That was the time the Air Force had estimated it would
+take us to start exploring space. Would Americans come to accept space
+travel as matter-of-factly as the people now boarding this plane? The
+youngsters would, probably; the older ones, as a rule, would be a
+little more cautious.
+
+In the oval lounge at the rear of the plane, I took out the file of old
+sighting reports. Glancing through it, I, saw excerpts from
+nineteenth-century astronomical and scientific journals and extracts
+from official gazettes. Most of the early sightings had been in Great
+Britain and on the Continent, with a few reports scattered around the
+world. The American reports did not begin until the latter part of the
+century.
+
+The DC-6 rolled out and took off. For a few minutes I watched the
+lights of Manhattan and Greater New York twinkling below. The Empire
+State Building tower was still above us, as the plane banked over the
+East River.
+
+We climbed quickly, and the familiar outline of Manhattan took shape
+like a map pin-pointed with millions of lights.
+
+Any large city seen from the air at night has a certain magic, New York
+most of all. Looking down, I thought: What would a spaceman think,
+seeing this brilliantly lighted city, the towering skyscrapers? Would
+other planets have such cities, or would it be something new and
+puzzling to a visitor from space?
+
+Turning back to the old reports, I skipped through until I found the
+American sightings. One of the first was an incident at Bonham, Texas,
+in the summer of 1873.
+
+It was broad daylight when a strange, fast-moving object appeared in
+the sky, southwest of the town. For a moment, the people of Bonham
+stared at the thing, not believing their eves. The only flying device
+then known was the drifting balloon. But this thing was tremendous, and
+speeding so fast its outlines were almost a blur.
+
+Terrified farmers dived under their wagons. Townspeople fled indoors.
+Only a few hardy souls remained in the streets. The mysterious object
+circled Bonham twice, then raced off to the cast and vanished.
+Descriptions of the strange machine varied from round or oval to
+cigar-shaped. (The details of the Bonham sighting were later confirmed
+for me by Frank Edwards, Mutual network newscaster, who investigated
+this case.)
+
+Twenty-four hours after the Bonham incident, a device of the same
+description appeared at Fort Scott, Kansas. Panic-stricken soldiers
+fled the parade ground as the thing flashed overhead. In a few seconds
+it disappeared, circling toward the north.
+
+Until now, I had supposed that the term “saucer” was original with
+Kenneth Arnold. Actually, the first to compare a flying object with a
+saucer was John Martin, a farmer who lived near Denison, Texas. The
+Denison Daily News of January 25, 1878, gives the following account:
+
+
+From Mr. John Martin, a farmer who lives some six miles south of this
+city, we learn the following strange story: Tuesday morning while out
+hunting, his attention was directed to a dark object high up in the
+southern sky. The peculiar shape and velocity with which the object
+seemed to approach riveted his attention and he strained his eves to
+discover its character.
+
+When first noticed, it appeared to be about the size of an orange,
+which continued to grow in size. After gazing at it for some time Mr.
+Martin became blind from long looking and left off viewing it for a
+time in order to rest his eyes. On resuming his view, the object was
+almost overhead and had increased considerably in size, and appeared to
+be going through space at wonderful speed.
+
+When directly over him it was about the size of a large saucer and was
+evidently at great height. Mr. Martin thought it resembled, as well as
+he could judge, a balloon. It went as rapidly as it had come and was
+soon lost to sight in the heavenly skies. Mr. Martin is a gentleman of
+undoubted veracity and this strange occurrence, if it was not a
+balloon, deserves the attention of our scientists.
+
+
+In the file, I saw a memo DuBarry had written:
+
+“I would take the very early reports with caution. For instance, the
+one on August 9, 1762, which describes an odd, spindle-shaped body
+traveling at high speed toward the sun. I recall that Charles Fort
+accepted this, along with other early sightings, as evidence of space
+ships. But this particular thing might have been a meteor—meteors as
+such were almost unknown then. The later reports are more convincing,
+and it is also easier to check the sources, especially those from 1870
+on.”
+
+From 1762 to 1870, the reports were meager. Some described mysterious
+lights in the sky; a few mentioned round objects seen in daylight. Even
+though they were not so fully documented as later ones, one point
+struck me. In those days, there was no telegraph, telephone, or radio
+to spread news rapidly and start a flood of rumors. A sighting in
+Scotland could not be the cause of a similar one two days later in the
+south of France.
+
+Beginning in 870, there was a series of reports that went on to the
+turn of the century. In the London _Times_, September 26, 1870, there
+was a description of a queer object that was seen crossing the moon. It
+was reported as elliptical, with some kind of tail, and it took almost
+thirty seconds to complete its passage of the moon. Then in 1871, a
+large, round body was sighted above Marseilles, France. This was on
+August 1. It moved slowly across the sky, apparently at great height,
+and was visible about fifteen minutes.
+
+On March 22, 1880, several brilliantly luminous objects were reported
+seen at Kattenau, Germany. Sighted just before sunrise, they were
+described as rising from the horizon and moving from east to west. The
+account was published in the _British Nature Magazine_, Volume 22, page
+64.
+
+The next report in the file mentioned briefly a strange round object
+seen in the skies over Bermuda. The source for this account was the
+Bermuda Royal Gazette. This was in 1885. That same year, an astronomer
+and other witnesses reported a gigantic aerial object at Adrianople,
+Turkey. On November 1, the weird apparition was seen moving across the
+sky. Observers described it as round and four to five times the size of
+the moon.
+
+This estimate is similar to the Denison, Texas, comparison with an
+orange. The object would actually be huge to be seen at any great
+height. But unless the true height were known, any estimate of size
+would be guesswork.
+
+On March 19, 1887, two strange objects fell into the sea near a Dutch
+barkentine. As described by the skipper, Captain C. D. Sweet, one of
+the objects was dark, the other brightly luminous. The glowing object
+fell with a loud roaring sound; the shipmaster was positive it was not
+a meteor.
+
+In New Zealand, a year later, an oval-shaped disk was reported speeding
+high overhead. This was on May 4, 1888. About two years after this,
+several large aerial bodies were sighted hovering over the Dutch East
+Indies.
+
+Most accounts described them as roughly triangular, about one hundred
+feet on the base and two hundred feet on the sides. But some observers
+thought they might be longer and narrower, with a rounded base; this
+would make them agree with more recent stories of cone-shaped objects
+with rounded tops seen in American skies.
+
+On August 26, 1894, a British admiral reported sighting a large disk
+with a projection like a tail. And a year after this, both England and
+Scotland buzzed with stories of triangular-shaped objects like those
+seen in the Dutch East Indies. Although many officials scoffed at the
+stories, more than one astronomer stuck to his belief that the
+mysterious things might be coming from outer space. Since planes and
+dirigibles were then unknown, there was no one on earth who could have
+been responsible for them.
+
+In 1897, sightings in the United States began to be more frequent. One
+of the strangest reports describes an incident that began on April 9.
+Flying at a great height, a huge cigar-shaped device was seen in the
+Midwest. Short wings projected from the sides of the object, according
+to reports of astronomers who watched it through telescopes.
+
+For almost a week, the aerial visitor was sighted around the Midwest,
+as far south as St. Louis and as far west as Colorado. Several times,
+red, green, and white lights were seen to flash in the sky; some
+witnesses thought the crew of this strange craft might be trying to
+signal the earth.
+
+On April 16, the thing, whatever it was, disappeared from the Midwest.
+But on April 19, the same object—or else a similar one—appeared over
+West Virginia. Early that morning the town of Sisterville was awakened
+by blasts of the sawmill whistle. Those who went outside their homes
+saw a strange sight. From a torpedo-shaped object overhead, dazzling
+searchlights were pointing downward, sweeping the countryside. The
+thing appeared to be about two hundred feet long, some thirty feet in
+diameter, with stubby wings and red and green lights along the sides.
+For almost ten minutes the aerial visitor circled the town, then it
+swung eastward and vanished.
+
+The next report was published in the U.S. Weather Bureau’s monthly
+_Weather Review_. On page 115 in the March 1904 issue, there is an
+account of an odd sighting at sea. On February 24, 1904, a mysterious
+light had been seen above the Atlantic by crew members of the U.S.S.
+_Supply_. It was moving swiftly, and evidently at high altitude. The
+report was attested by Lieutenant Frank H. Schofield, U.S.N.
+
+On July 2, 1907, a mysterious explosion occurred, in the heavens near
+Burlington, Vermont. Some witnesses described a strange, torpedo-shaped
+device circling above. Shortly after it was seen, a round, luminous
+object flashed down from the sky, then exploded, (_Weather Review_,
+1907, page 310.)
+
+Another cigar-shaped craft was reported at a low altitude over
+Bridgewater, Massachusetts, in 1905. Like the one at Sisterville, it
+carried searchlights, which swept back and forth across the
+countryside. After a few moments, the visitor rose in a steep climb,
+and the searchlights blinked out.
+
+There was no report for 1909 in America, though an odd aerial object
+was sighted near the Galapagos Islands. But in 1910, one January
+morning, a large silvery cigar-shaped device startled Chattanooga.
+After about five minutes, the thing sped away, appearing over
+Huntsville, Alabama, shortly afterward. It made a second appearance
+over Chattanooga the next day, then headed east and was never seen
+again.
+
+In _Popular Astronomy_, January 27, 1012, a Dr. F. B. Harris described
+an intensely black object that he saw crossing the moon. As nearly as
+he could tell, it was gigantic in size—though again there was no way to
+be sure of its distance from him or the moon. With careful
+understatement, Dr. Harris said, “I think a very interesting and
+curious phenomenon happened that night.”
+
+A strange shadow was noted on the clouds at Fort Worth, Texas, on April
+8, 19, 3. It appeared to be caused by some large body hovering
+motionless above the clouds. As the cloud layer moved, the shadow
+remained in the same position. Then it changed size, diminishing, and
+quickly disappeared, as if it had risen vertically. A report on this
+was given in the Weather Bureau _Review_ of that year, Number 4-599.
+
+By 1919, dirigibles were of course well known to most of the world.
+When a dirigible-shaped object appeared over Huntington, West Virginia,
+in July of that year, there was no great alarm. It was believed to be
+an American blimp, though the darkness—it was eleven at night—prevented
+observers from being sure. But a later check-up proved it was not an
+American ship, nor was it from any country possessing such craft.
+
+For some time after this, there were few authentic reports. Then in
+1934, Nicholas Roerich, head of the American-Roerich expedition into
+Tibet, had a remarkable experience that bears on the saucer riddle.
+
+On pages 361 and 362 of his book _Altai Himalaya_, Roerich describes
+the incident. The expedition party was in the wilds of Tibet one
+morning when a porter noticed the peculiar actions of a buzzard
+overhead. He called Roerich’s attention to it; then they all saw
+something high in the sky, moving at great speed from north to south.
+Watching it through binoculars, Roerich saw it was oval-shaped,
+obviously of huge size, and reflecting the sun’s rays like brightly
+polished metal. While he trailed it with his glasses, the object
+suddenly changed direction, from south to southwest. It was gone in a
+few moments.
+
+This was the last sighting listed before World War II.
+
+When I had finished, I stared out the plane window, curiously
+disturbed. Like most people, I had grown up believing the earth was the
+center of everything—life, intelligence, and religion. Now, for the
+first time in my life, that belief was shaken.
+
+It was a curious thing. I could accept the idea that we would
+eventually explore space, land on the moon, and go on to distant
+planets. I had read of the plans, and I knew our engineers and
+scientists would somehow find a way. It did not disturb my belief in
+our superiority.
+
+But faced with this evidence of a superior race in the universe, my
+mind rebelled. For years, I had been accustomed to thinking in
+comic-strip terms of any possible spacemen—Buck Rogers stuff, with
+weird-looking space ships and green-faced Martians.
+
+But now, if these sightings were true, the shoe was on the other foot.
+We would be faced with a race of beings at least two hundred years
+ahead of our civilization—perhaps thousands. In their eyes, we might
+look like primitives.
+
+My conjectures before the take-off had just been idle thinking; I had
+not really believed this could be the answer. But now the question came
+back sharply. How would we react to a sudden appearance of space ships,
+bringing that higher race to the earth? If we were fully prepared,
+educated to this tremendous adventure, it might come off without
+trouble. Unprepared, we would be thrown into panic.
+
+The lights of Philadelphia showed up ahead, and a thought struck me.
+What would Philadelphians of 1776 have thought to see this DC-6 flying
+across their city at three hundred miles an hour? What would the
+sentries at Valley Forge have done, a year later, if this lighted
+airliner had streaked over their heads?
+
+Madness. Stampede. Those were the plain answers.
+
+But there was a difference now. We had had modern miracles, radio,
+television, supersonic planes, and the promise of still more miracles.
+_We_ could be educated, or at least partly prepared, to accept space
+visitors.
+
+In fifty years we had learned to fly. In fifty years more, we would be
+exploring space. Why should we believe such creative intelligence was
+limited to the earth? It would be incredible if the earth, out of all
+the millions of planets, proved the only inhabited spot in the whole
+universe.
+
+But, instinctively, I still fought against believing that the flying
+saucers were space ships. Eventually, we would make contact with races
+on other planets; they undoubtedly would someday visit the earth. But
+if it could be put off . . . a problem for later generations to handle
+. . .
+
+If the disks proved American guided missiles, it would be an easier
+answer.
+
+Looking through the Project “Saucer” report DuBarry had loaned me, I
+read the space-travel items, hoping to find some hint that this was a
+smoke screen. On page 18, in a discussion on Mars, I found this
+comment:
+
+“Reports of strange objects seen in the skies have been handed down
+through the generations. However, scientists believe that if Martians
+were now visiting the earth without establishing contact, it could be
+assumed that they have just recently succeeded in space travel, and
+that their civilization would be practically abreast of ours. This
+because they find it hard to believe that any technically established
+race would come here, flaunt its ability in mysterious ways over the
+years, but each time simply go way without ever establishing contact.”
+
+There could be several answers to that. The Martians might not be able
+to live in our atmosphere, except in their sealed space ships. They, or
+some other planet race, could have observed us periodically to check on
+our slow progress. Until we began to approach their level of
+civilization, or in some way caused them concern, they would probably
+see no reason for trying to make contact. But somehow I found a vague
+comfort in the argument, full of holes though it was.
+
+Searching further, I found other space-travel comments. On one page,
+the Air Force admitted it was almost a certainty that space travelers
+would be operating from planets outside the solar system. But on the
+following page, I discovered this sentence: “Thus, although visits from
+outer space are believed to be possible, they are thought to be highly
+improbable.”
+
+What was the answer? Was this just a wandering discussion of
+possibilities, badly put together, or was it a hint of the truth? it
+could be the first step in preparing America for a revelation. It could
+also be a carefully thought-out trick.
+
+This whole report might be designed to conceal a secret weapon. If the
+Air Force or the Navy did have a secret missile, what better way to
+distract attention? The old sighting reports could have been seized on
+as a buildup for space travel hints.
+
+Then suddenly it hit me. Even if it were a smoke screen, what of those
+old reports? They still remained to be answered. There was only one
+possible explanation, unless you discarded the sightings as lies. That
+meant discrediting many reliable witnesses—naval officers, merchant
+shipmasters, explorers, astronomers, ministers, and responsible public
+officials.
+
+Besides all these, there had been thousands of other witnesses, where
+large groups had seen the objects. The answer seemed inevitable, but I
+held it off. I didn’t want to believe it, with all the changes it might
+bring, the unpredictable effect upon our civilization. If I kept on
+checking I might find evidence that would bring a different explanation
+for the present saucers.
+
+DuBarry had put another group of reports in the envelope; this series
+covered the World War II phase and on up to the outbreak of the saucer
+scare in the United States. Some of it, about the foo fighters, I
+already knew. This was tied in with the mystery rockets reported over
+Sweden. The first Swedish sightings had occurred during the early part
+of the war. Most of the so-called “ghost rockets” were seen at night,
+moving at tremendous speed. Since they came from the direction of
+Germany, most Swedes believed that guided rockets were the answer.
+
+During the summer of 1946, after the Russians had taken over
+Peenemunde, the Nazi missile test base, ghost rockets again were
+reported flying over Sweden. Some were said to double back and fly into
+Soviet areas. Practically all were seen at night, and therefore none
+had been described as a flying disk. Instead, they were said to be
+colored lights, red, green, blue, and orange, often blurred from their
+high speed.
+
+But there was a puzzling complication. Mystery lights, and sometimes
+flying disks, were simultaneously reported over Greece, Portugal,
+Turkey, Spain, and even French Morocco. Either there were _two_
+answers, or some nation had developed missiles with an incredibly long
+range.
+
+By January 1947, ghost-rocket sightings in Europe had diminished to
+less than one a month. Oddly enough, the first disk report admitted by
+Project “Saucer” was in this same month. The first ’47 case detailed by
+Project “Saucer” occurred at Richmond, Virginia. It was about the
+middle of April. A Richmond weather observer had released a balloon and
+was tracking it with a theodolite when a strange object crossed his
+field of vision. He swung the theodolite and managed to track the
+thing, despite its high speed. (The actual speed and altitude—the
+latter determined by a comparison of the balloon’s height at various
+times—have never been released. Nor has the Air Force released this
+observer’s report on the object’s size, which Project “Saucer” admitted
+was more accurate than most witnesses’ estimates.)
+
+About the seventeenth of May 1947, a huge oval-shaped saucer ten times
+longer than its diameter was sighted by Byron Savage, an Oklahoma City
+pilot. Two days later, another fast-flying saucer was reported at
+Manitou Springs, Colorado. In the short time it was observed, it was
+seen to change direction twice, maneuvering at an unbelievable speed.
+
+Then on June 24 came Kenneth Arnold’s famous report, which set off the
+saucer scare. The rest of the story I now knew almost by heart.
+
+When the DC-6 landed at Washington, I had made one decision. Since it
+was impossible to check up on most of the old sightings, I would
+concentrate on certain recent reports—cases in which the objects had
+been described as space ships.
+
+As I waited for a taxi, I looked up at the sky. It was a clear summer
+night, without a single cloud. Beyond the low hill to the west I could
+see the stars.
+
+I can still remember thinking, _If it’s true, then the stars will never
+again seem the same_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Next morning, in the broad light of day, the idea of space visitors
+somehow had lost its menace. If the disks were space ships, at least
+they had shown no sign of hostility, so far as I knew. Of course, there
+was Mantell; but if he had been downed by some weapon on the disk, it
+could have been self-defense. In most cases, the saucers retreated at
+the first sign of pursuit.
+
+My mind was still reluctant to accept the space-travel answer, in spite
+of the old reports. But I kept thinking of the famous aircraft designer
+who thought the disks were space craft; the airline pilots Purdy had
+mentioned; Blake’s copilot, Chuck. . . .
+
+Now that I recalled it, Blake had been more embarrassed than seemed
+called for when he told about Chuck. Perhaps he had been the one who
+believed the saucers were space ships, instead of his absent copilot.
+
+After breakfast, I went over the list of sightings since June 1947.
+There were several saucers that actually had been described as
+projectile-like ships. The most famous of all was the Eastern Airlines
+case.
+
+It was 8:30 P.M., July 23, 1948, when an Eastern Airlines DC-3 took off
+from Houston, Texas, on a flight to Atlanta and Boston. The airliner
+captain was Clarence S. Chiles. During the war, he had been in the Air
+Transport Command, with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He had 8,500
+flying hours. His first officer was John B. Whitted, a wartime pilot on
+B-29’s. Both men were known in Eastern as careful, conservative pilots.
+
+It was a bright, moonlit night, with scattered clouds overhead. The
+DC-3 was twenty miles west of Montgomery, at 2:45 A.M., when a
+brilliant projectile-like craft came hurtling along the airway.
+
+Chiles saw it first and took it to be a jet plane. But the next instant
+both pilots saw that this was no jet fighter.
+
+“It was heading southwest,” Chiles said later, “exactly opposite to our
+course. Whatever it was, it flashed down toward us at terrific speed.
+We veered to the left. It veered sharply, too, and passed us about
+seven hundred feet to the right. I saw then that it had no wings.”
+
+The mystery ship passed on Whitted’s side, and he had a fairly close
+look.
+
+“The thing was about one hundred feet long, cigar-shaped, and
+wingless,” he described it. “It was about twice the diameter of a
+B-twenty-nine, with no protruding fins.”
+
+Captain Chiles said the cabin appeared like a pilot compartment, except
+for its eerie brilliance. Both he and Whitted agreed it was as bright
+as a magnesium flare. They saw no occupants, but at their speed this
+was not. surprising.
+
+“An intense dark-blue glow came from the side of the ship,” Chiles
+reported. (It was later suggested by engineers that the strange glare
+could have come from a power plant of unusual type.) “It ran the entire
+length of the fuselage—like a blue fluorescent light. The exhaust was a
+red-orange flame, with a lighter color predominant around the outer
+edges.”
+
+Both pilots said the flame extended thirty to fifty feet behind the
+ship. As it passed, Chiles noted a snout like a radar pole. Both he and
+Whitted glimpsed two rows of windows.
+
+“Just as it went by,” said Chiles, “the pilot pulled up as if he had
+seen the DC-three and wanted to avoid its. There was a tremendous burst
+of flame from the rear. It zoomed into the clouds, its jet wash rocking
+our DC-three.”
+
+Chiles’s estimate of the mystery ship’s speed was between five hundred
+and seven hundred miles an hour.
+
+As the object vanished, Chiles went back into the cabin to check with
+the passengers. Most had been asleep or were drowsing. But one man
+confirmed that they were in their right senses. This passenger,
+Clarence McKelvie of Columbus, Ohio, told them (and a Project “Saucer”
+team later) that he had seen a brilliant streak of light flash past his
+window. It had gone too swiftly for him to catch any details.
+
+The A.P. interviewed Mr. McKelvie soon after he landed, and ran the
+following story:
+
+“Kennett Square, Pa., July 24 (AP) . Clarence L. McKelvie, assistant
+managing editor of the American Education Press, said he was the only
+passenger on the EAL Houston-Boston plane who was not asleep when the
+phantom craft was sighted.
+
+“‘I saw no shape or form,’ Mr. McKelvie said. ‘I was on the right side
+of the plane, and suddenly I saw this strange eerie streak out of my
+window. It was very intense, not like lightning or anything I had ever
+seen.’
+
+“The Columbus man said he was too startled and the object moved too
+quickly for him to adjust his eyes to it.”
+
+In Washington, Air Force officials insisted they could shed no light on
+the mystery. Out in Santa Monica, General George C. Kenney, then chief
+of the Strategic Air Command, declared the Air Force had nothing
+remotely like the ship described.
+
+“I wish we did,” General Kenney told reporters. “I’d sure like to see
+that.”
+
+The publicized story of this “space ship” set off another scare—also
+the usual cracks about screwball pilots. But Chiles and Whitted were
+not screwballs; they were highly respected pilots. The passenger’s
+confirmation added weight. But even if all three had been considered
+deluded, the Air Force investigators could not get around the reports
+from Robbins Air Force Base.
+
+Just about one hour before the DC-3 incident, a strange flaming object
+came racing southward through the night skies over Robbins Field, at
+Macon, Georgia. Observers at the air base were astounded to see what
+appeared to be a huge, wingless craft streak overhead, trailing a
+varicolored exhaust. (The witnesses’ description tallied with those of
+Chiles and Whitted.) The mystery ship vanished swiftly; all observers
+agreed that it disappeared from the line of sight just like a normal
+aircraft.
+
+While I was working on this case, a contact in Washington gave me an
+interesting tip.
+
+“Within forty-eight hours after that Eastern sighting, Air Force
+engineers rushed out blueprint plans and elevations of the ‘space
+ship,’ based on what the two pilots told them.”
+
+Whether or not this was true, I found that the Air Force engineers did
+compute the probable speed and lift of the mystery craft. The ship was
+found to be within the bounds of aerodynamic laws for operations in our
+atmosphere. Here is the Air Force statement:
+
+“Application of the Prandtl theory of lift indicated that a fuselage of
+the dimensions reported by Chiles and Whitted could support a load
+comparable to the weight of an aircraft of this size, at flying speeds
+in the sub-sonic range.” (This supports Chiles’s estimate of 500-700
+m.p.h.)
+
+Four days after the space-ship story was published, a Navy spokesman
+was quoted as hinting it might have been a high-atmosphere rocket gone
+astray from the proving grounds in New Mexico. The brief report
+appeared on the editorial page of the Washington _Star_ on July 28,
+1947. It ran as follows:
+
+“The Navy says that naval technicians have been testing a
+3,000-mile-per-hour rocket in New Mexico. If one went astray, it could
+travel across our continent in a short time.”
+
+At first glance I thought this might be the real answer to the
+Chiles-Whitted case. But after a few minutes I saw it was almost
+impossible.
+
+First, rockets at White Sands are launched and controlled with utmost
+care. There have been no reported cases of such a long-distance
+runaway.
+
+Second, if such a rocket had gone astray, it would certainly have
+caused wild confusion at White Sands until they found where it landed.
+Hundreds of people would have known about it; the story would be
+certain to leak out.
+
+Third, such a rocket would have had to travel from White Sands to
+Macon, Georgia, then circle around south of this city for over forty
+minutes. (If it had kept on at the speed observed at Robbins Field, it
+would have passed Montgomery long before the DC-3 reached the area.) In
+addition, the rocket would have had to veer sharply away from the
+airliner, as both pilots testified, and then zoom into the clouds. No
+high-atmosphere test rocket has automatic controls such as this would
+require. And if it had gone astray from White Sands, the station’s
+remote control would no longer be guiding it.
+
+The Eastern Airlines “space ship,” then, was not just a fugitive
+rocket. But it could be a new type of aircraft, something
+revolutionary, developed in absolute secrecy.
+
+Other airline pilots had reported flying disks racing along the
+airways, though none that I knew of had described projectile-like
+objects. Chiles and Whitted insisted the mystery ship was not a disk,
+and the report from Robbins Field agreed on this point. Man-made
+devices or not, it seemed fairly certain there was more than one type
+of saucer.
+
+The more I studied the evidence, the harder it was to believe that this
+was an earth-made ship. Such a wingless rocket ship would require
+tremendous jet power to keep it in the air. Even our latest jet bombers
+could not begin to approach its performance.
+
+Going back over the Project “Saucer” preliminary report, I found strong
+evidence that the Air Force was worried. In their investigation,
+Project teams had screened 225 military and civilian flight schedules.
+After nine months, they reported that the mysterious object was no
+conventional aircraft.
+
+On April 27, 1949, the Air Force admitted that Project “Saucer” had
+failed to find the answer. The “space ship” was officially listed as
+unidentified.
+
+“But Wright Field is still working on it,” an Air Force officer told
+me. “Both Chiles and Whitted are responsible pilots, and McKelvie has a
+reputation for making careful statements. Even without the Robbins
+Field confirmation, no one could doubt that they saw something.”
+
+The Chiles-Whitted “space ship” was not the first of this type to be
+reported. Another wingless aircraft was sighted in August 1947, by two
+pilots for an Alabama flying service. It was at Bethel, Alabama, just
+after sunset, when a huge black wingless craft swept across their
+course. Silhouetted against the evening sky, it loomed larger than a
+C-54. The pilots saw no wings, motors, or jet exhausts.
+
+Swinging in behind the mystery ship, they attempted to follow. But at
+their speed of 170 m.p.h. they were quickly outdistanced. Careful
+checking showed there were no other planes nearby that could have been
+mistaken for this strange craft.
+
+On New Year’s Day, 1948, a similar rocket-shaped object was sighted at
+Jackson, Mississippi. It was first seen by a former Air Force pilot and
+his passenger, and later by witnesses on the ground. Before the pilot
+could begin to close in, the odd wingless ship pulled away. Speeding up
+from 200 to 500 m.p.h., it swiftly disappeared.
+
+Besides these two cases, already on record, I had the tips Purdy had
+given me. One wingless ship was supposed to have been seen three or
+four days before the Chiles-Whitted sighting; like the thing they
+reported, the unidentified craft was a double-decked “space ship” but
+moving at even higher speed. At first I ran into a stone wall trying to
+check this story. Then I found a lead conforming that this was a
+foreign report. It finally proved to be from The Hague.
+
+The tip had been right. This double-decked, wingless ship had been
+sighted on July 20, 1948—four days before the Eastern case. Witnesses
+had reported it at a high altitude, moving at fantastic speed.
+
+While working on this report, I verified another tip. We had heard a
+rumor of a space-ship sighting at Clark Field, in the Philippine
+Islands. Although I didn’t learn the date, I found that there was such
+a record.
+
+(In the final Project “Saucer” report, the attempt to explain away this
+sighting was painfully evident. Analyzing this case, Number 206, the
+Air Force said: “If the facts are correct, there is no astronomical
+explanation. A few points favor the daytime meteor
+hypothesis—snow-white color, speed faster than a jet, the roar,
+similarity to sky-writing and the time of day. But the tactics, if
+really performed, oppose it strenuously: the maneuvers in and out of
+cloud banks, turns of 180 degrees or more, Possibly these were
+illusions, caused by seeing the object intermittently through clouds.
+The impression of a fuselage with windows could even more easily have
+been a sign of imagination.”
+
+(With this conjecture, Project “Saucer” listed the sighting as
+officially answered. The Hague space-ship case was unexplained.)
+
+In following up the Jackson and Bethel reports, I talked with two
+officials in the Civil Aeronautics Administration. One of these was
+Charley Planck, who handled public relations. I found that the pilots
+concerned had good records; C.A.A. men who knew them discounted the
+hoax theory.
+
+“Charley, there’s a rumor that airline pilots have been ordered not to
+talk,” I told Planck. “You know anything about it?”
+
+“You mean ordered by the Air Force or the companies?” he said.
+
+“The Air Force _and_ the C.A.A.”
+
+“If the C.A.A.’s in on it, it’s a top-level deal,” said Charley. “I
+think it’s more likely the companies—with or without a nudge from the
+Air Force.”
+
+While we were talking, an official from another agency came in. Because
+the lead he gave me was off the record, I’ll call him Steve Barrett. I
+knew Steve fairly well. We were both pilots with service training; our
+paths had crossed during the war, and I saw him now and then at
+airports around Washington.
+
+When the saucer scare first broke, Steve had been disgusted. “Damn
+fools trying to get publicity,” he snorted. “The way Americans fall for
+a gag! Even the Air Force has got the jitters.”
+
+So I was a little surprised to find he now thought the disks were real.
+
+“What sold you?” I asked.
+
+“The radar reports,” said Steve. “I know of half a dozen cases where
+they’ve tracked the things. One was in Japan. The thing was climbing so
+fast no one believed the radarmen at first. Then they got some more
+reports. One was up in Canada. There was a case in New Mexico, and I
+think a Navy destroyer tracked a saucer up in the North Atlantic.”
+
+“What did they find out?” said Charley Planck.
+
+Steve shrugged. “I don’t know all the answers. Whatever they are, the
+things can go like hell.”
+
+I had a hunch he was holding back. I waited until he had finished with
+Charley, and then went, down the hall with him. “You think the saucers
+are guided missiles?” I said.
+
+“If I thought so, I wouldn’t be talking,” he said flatly, “That’s not a
+dig at you. But I was cleared last year for some secret electronics
+work, and it might be used in some way with guided missiles.”
+
+“I didn’t know that, Steve.”
+
+“It’s O.K.,” he said. “I don’t mind talking, because can’t believe the
+saucers are guided missiles. Maybe few of the things sighted out in the
+Southwest have beer our test rockets, but that doesn’t explain the
+radar reports in Canada and Japan.”
+
+“I’d already heard about a radar case in Labrador,” I told Steve. He
+looked at me quickly.
+
+“Where’d you pick that up;”
+
+“_True_ passed it on to me,” I said.
+
+“They’ve had some trouble tracking the things, they maneuver so fast,”
+said Steve. “It sounds crazy, but I’ve been told they hit more than ten
+thousand miles an hour.”
+
+“You believe it.?”
+
+“Well, it’s not impossible. Those saucers were tracked about fifty
+miles up, where there’s not much resistance.”
+
+The elevator door opened. Steve waited until we were outside of the
+Commerce Building.
+
+“There’s one other thing that gets me,” he said. “Unless the radar boys
+are way off, some of those saucers are enormous. I just can’t see a
+guided missile five hundred feet in diameter.” He stopped for a moment.
+“I suppose this will sound screwy to you—”
+
+“You think they’re interplanetary,” I said.
+
+Steve was quickly on the defensive. “I haven’t bought it yet, but it’s
+not as crazy as it sounds.”
+
+Without mentioning names, I told him about the aircraft designer and
+the airline pilots.
+
+“They’re in good company,” said Steve. “You know the Air Institute?”
+
+“Sure—the Air Force school down at Montgomery.”
+
+“Six months ago, I was talking with an officer who’d been instructing
+there.” Steve looked at me, deadly serious. “He told me they are now
+teaching that the saucers are probably space ships.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Three days after my meeting with Steve Barrett, I was on a Mainliner
+300, starting, a new phase of the saucer investigation. By the time I
+returned, I hoped to know the truth about Project “Saucer.”
+
+As the ship droned westward, fourteen thousand feet above the
+Alleghenies, I thought of what Steve had told me. I believed, that he
+had told me about the radar tracking. And I was fairly sure he believed
+the Air Institute story. But I wasn’t so certain the story itself was
+true.
+
+It would hardly be a gag; Steve wasn’t easily taken in. It was more
+likely that one Institute officer, or perhaps several, believed the
+saucers were space craft and aired their personal opinions. The
+Institute wasn’t likely to give an official answer to something that
+Project “Saucer” still declared unsolved.
+
+If it were possible to get an inside look at Project “Saucer”
+operations, I could soon tell whether it was an actual investigation or
+a deliberate cover-up for something else. Whichever it was, the wall of
+official. secrecy still hid it.
+
+As a formality, I had called the Pentagon again and asked to talk with
+some of the Project officers. As I expected, I was turned down. The
+only alternative was to dig out the story by talking with pilots and
+others who had been. quizzed by Project teams. I had several leads, and
+_True_ had arranged some interviews for me.
+
+My first stop was Chicago, where I met an airline official and two
+commercial pilots. I saw the pilots first. Since they both talked in
+confidence, I will not use their right names. One, a Midwesterner I
+already knew, I’ll call Pete Farrell; the other, a wartime instructor,
+Art Green.
+
+Pete was about thirty-one, stocky, blue-eyed, with a pleasant,
+intelligent face. Art Green was a little older, a lean, sunburned,
+restless man with an emphatic voice. Pete had served with the Air Force
+during the war; he was now part owner of a flying school, also a pilot
+in the Air National Guard. Green was working for an air charter service
+
+We met at the Palmer House. Art Green didn’t need much prompting to
+talk about Project “Saucer.” After reporting a disk, seen during a West
+Coast Right, he had been thoroughly grilled by a Project “Saucer” team.
+
+“They practically took me apart,” he said irritably. “They’ve got a lot
+of trick questions. Some of ’em are figured out to trip up anybody
+faking a story. The way they worked on me, you’d think I committed a
+murder.
+
+“Then they tried to sell me on the idea I’d seen a balloon, or maybe a
+plane, with the sun shining on it when it banked. I told them to go to
+the devil—I knew what I saw. After seventeen years, I’ve got enough
+sense to tell a ship or a balloon when I see it.”
+
+“Did they believe you?” I asked him.
+
+“If they did, they didn’t let on. Two of ’em acted as if they thought I
+was nuts. The other guy-I think he was Air Force Intelligence—acted
+decent. He said not to get steamed up about the Aero-Medical boys; it
+was their job to screen out the crackpots.
+
+“And on top of that, I found out later the F.B.I. had checked up on me
+to find out if I was a liar or a screwball. They went around to my
+boss, people in my neighborhood—even the pilots in my outfit. My
+outfit’s still razzing me. I wouldn’t report another saucer if one flew
+through my cockpit.”
+
+Pete Farrell hadn’t encountered any Project “Saucer” teams personally,
+but he had some interesting angles. Some of the information had come
+from commercial and private pilots in the Midwest, part of it through
+National Guard contacts.
+
+“I can tell you one thing,” Pete said. “Guard pilots got the same order
+as the Air Force. If we saw anything peculiar flying around, we were to
+do our damnedest to identify it.”
+
+“What about trying to bring one down? I’ve heard that was in one
+order.”
+
+Pete hesitated for a second. “Look, I told you that much because it’s
+been in the papers. But I’m still in the Guard. I can’t tell you the
+order itself. It was confidential.”
+
+“Well, I’m not in the Guard,” said Art Green. He lit a cigarette, blew
+out the match. “Why don’t you look into the Gorman case? Get thc dope
+on that court-martial angle.”
+
+I’d heard of the Gorman case, but the court-martial thing was new to
+me. Gorman, I recalled, was a fighter pilot in the North Dakota Air
+National Guard. He had a mystifying encounter with a strange,
+fast-moving “light” over Fargo Airport in the fall of 1948.
+
+“That case is on my list,” I told Green. “But I don’t remember anything
+about a court-martial.”
+
+“It wasn’t in the papers. But all the pilots up that way know about it.
+In his report, Gorman said something about trying to ram the thing. The
+idea got around that Air Force orders had said to try this. Anyway, it
+got into the papers and Gorman almost got court-martialed. If his
+family hadn’t had some influence in the state, the Air Force probably
+would have pushed it.”
+
+“Are you sure about this?” I said. “You know how those things build
+up.”
+
+“Ask Gorman,” he said. “Or ask some of the pilots at Fargo.”
+
+Before I left them, Green double-checked my report on his sighting,
+which Hilton had forwarded. As in the majority of cases, he had seen
+just one disk. It had hovered at a very high altitude, gleaming in the
+sun, then had suddenly accelerated and raced off to the north.
+
+“I couldn’t tell its size or speed,” said Green. “But if it was as high
+as I think, it must have been pretty big.”
+
+Pete told me later that Green believed the disk had been at least
+twenty miles high, because it was well above clouds at thirty thousand
+feet.
+
+“It’s kind of hard to believe,” said Pete. “The thing would have to be
+a lot bigger than a B-twenty-nine, and the speed over two thousand
+miles an hour.”
+
+“You know what they said about the Mantell saucer,” I reminded him.
+“Some of the Godman Field people said it was at least three hundred
+feet in diameter.”
+
+“I’ve heard it was twice that,” said Pete.
+
+“You know any Kentucky National Guard pilots?” I asked.
+
+“One or two,” said Pete. “But they couldn’t tell me anything. It was
+hushed up too fast.”
+
+That evening I talked with the airline official, whom I knew well
+enough to call by his first name. I put it to him bluntly.
+
+“Dick, if you’re under orders not to talk, just tell me. Fm trying to
+find out whether Project ‘Saucer’ has muzzled airline pilots.”
+
+“You mean the ones who’ve sighted things? Perhaps, in a few cases. But
+most of the pilots know what happened to Captain Emil Smith, on United,
+and those Eastern pilots. They keep still so they won’t be laughed at.
+Also the airlines don’t like their pilots to talk for publication.”
+
+“I’ve heard of several cases,” I said, “where Air Force Intelligence is
+supposed to have warned pilots to keep mum. Two of the reports come
+pretty straight.”
+
+He made a gesture. “That could be. I’m not denying that airline
+pilots—and that includes ours—see these things all the time. They’ve
+been sighted on the Seattle-Alaska route, and between Anchorage and
+Japan. I know of several saucers that pilots have seen between Honolulu
+and the mainland. Check with Pan-American—you’ll find their pilots have
+seen them, too.”
+
+“What happens to those reports?”
+
+“They go to Operations,” said Dick. “Of course, if something really
+important happens, the pilot may radio the tower before he lands. Then
+the C.A.A. gets word to the Air Force, and they rush some Intelligence
+officers to quiz the pilots. if it’s not too hot, they’d come from
+Wright Field—regular Project ‘Saucer’ teams. Otherwise, they’d send the
+nearest Intelligence officers to take over temporarily.”
+
+I asked him if he had ever been in on one of thee sessions. Dick said
+he hadn’t.
+
+“But a couple of pilots talked to me later. They said these Air Force
+men seemed quite upset about it; they pounced on everything these boys
+said about the thing’s appearance—how it maneuvered and so on.”
+
+“What do your pilots think the saucers are?”
+
+Dick gave me a slightly ironic grin. “Why ask me? Captain Blake says
+you’ve been getting it firsthand.”
+
+“I wasn’t pulling a fast one,” I protested. “We’re not going to quote
+actual names or sources, unless people. O.K. it.”
+
+“Sure, I know that,” said Dick. “But you’ve got thc answer already.
+Some pilots say interplanetary, some say guided missiles. A few—a very
+few—still think it’s all nonsense, because they haven’t seen any.”
+
+“What do you think?”
+
+“I don’t know the answer,” said Dick, “but I’m positive of one thing.
+Either the Air Force is sitting on a big secret, or they’re badly
+scared because they don’t know the answer.”
+
+During the next week or so, I covered several northwest and mountain
+states. Although I was chiefly trying to find out about Project
+“Saucer,” I ran onto two sightings that were not on my list.
+
+One of these had occurred in California, at Fairfield Suisan Air Force
+Base. A Seattle man who had been stationed there gave me the details.
+It was on the night of December 1918, with unusually high winds
+sweeping across the airfield. At times the gusts reached almost seventy
+miles an hour. Suddenly a weird ball of light flashed into view, at a
+height of a thousand feet. As the men on the base watched it,
+astonished, the mysterious light abruptly shot skyward. In an
+incredibly short time, it reached an altitude of twenty thousand feet
+and vanished.
+
+“Was there any shape outlined behind the light?” I asked the Seattle
+man.
+
+“Nobody saw any,” he replied. “It looked just like I said—a ball of
+light, going like a streak.”
+
+“Did it leave any smoke behind it?”
+
+“You mean like an engine, or a jet?” He shook his head. “Not a thing.
+And it didn’t make a sound—even when it shot up like that.”
+
+“Did you hear any guesses about it, or reports later on?”
+
+“Some major who didn’t see it said it must have been a balloon. Anybody
+with brains could see that was screwy. No balloon ever went up that
+fast—and besides, the thing was going against the wind.”
+
+The second incident occurred at Salmon Dam, Idaho, on August 13, 1947.
+When I heard the date, it sounded familiar. I checked my sightings file
+and saw it was the same day as the strange affair at Twin Falls, Idaho.
+
+In the Twin Falls case, the disk was sighted by observers in a canyon.
+There was one interesting difference from the usual description. This
+disk was sky-blue, or else its gleaming surface somehow reflected the
+sky because of the angle of vision. Although it was not close to the
+treetops, the observers were amazed to see the trees whip violently
+when the disk raced overhead, as though the air was boiling from the
+object’s swift passage.
+
+At Salmon Dam, that same day, two miners heard an odd roaring sound and
+stared into the sky. Several miles away, two brightly gleaming disks
+were circling at high speed.
+
+“It was like two round mirrors whirling around the sky,” one of the men
+was later quoted as saying. “They couldn’t have been any ordinary
+planes; not round like that. And they were going too fast.”
+
+During this part of my trip, I also was told that one saucer had fallen
+into a mountain lake. This came to me secondhand. The lone witness was
+said to have rushed over to his car to get his camera as the disk
+approached. When it plunged toward the lake, he was so startled that he
+failed to snap the picture until the moment it struck. This story
+sounded so flimsy that I didn’t bother to list it.
+
+Months later, a Washington newsman confirmed at least part of the lake
+story. When he first related it, I thought he had fallen for a gag.
+
+“I heard that yarn,” I said. “Don’t tell me you believe it?”
+
+“I come from Idaho,” he told me. “And I happen to know the fellow who
+took the picture. Maybe it wasn’t a disk, but something fell into that
+lake.”
+
+“Did you see the picture?”
+
+“Yes, at the Pentagon.” At my surprised look, he added, “That was long
+before they clamped down. I was talking to an Air Force officer about
+this lake thing, and he showed me the picture.”
+
+“What did it look like?”
+
+“You couldn’t tell much about it-just a big splash and a blur where
+something went under. Maybe a magnifying glass would bring it out, but
+I didn’t get a chance to try it.”
+
+It was early in 1950 when he told me this. I asked at the Pentagon if
+this picture was in the Wright Field files, and if so whether I could
+see it. My inquiries drew blank looks. No one remembered such a
+photograph. And even if it were in the Project “Saucer” files, I
+couldn’t see it.
+
+This was more than two months after Project “Saucer” had been
+officially closed and its secrets presumably all revealed.
+
+The rest of my interviews during this 1949 trip helped to round out my
+picture of Project “Saucer” operations.
+
+Some witnesses seemed afraid to talk; a few flatly refused. I found no
+proof of official pressure, but I frequently had the feeling that
+strong hints had been dropped.
+
+Though one or two witnesses showed resentment at investigators’
+methods, most of them seemed more annoyed at the loss of time involved.
+One man had been checked first by the police, then by the sheriff’s
+office; an Air Force team had spent hours questioning him, returning
+the next day, and finally the F.B.I. had made a character check. What
+he told me about the Air Force interrogation confirmed one of Art
+Green’s statements.
+
+“One Intelligence captain tried to tell me I’d seen a weather balloon.
+I called up the airport and had them check on release schedules. They
+said next day it didn’t fit any schedules around this area. Anyway, the
+wind wasn’t right, because the thing I saw was cutting into the wind at
+a forty-five-degree angle.”
+
+Other witnesses told me that investigators had suggested birds,
+meteors, reflections on clouds, shooting stars, and starshells as
+probable explanations of what they had seen. I learned of one pilot who
+had been startled by seeing a group of disks racing past his plane. Air
+Force investigators later suggested that he had flown through a flock
+of birds, or perhaps a cluster of balloons.
+
+On the flight back to Washington, I reread all the information the Air
+Force had released on Project “Saucer.” Suddenly a familiar phrase
+caught my eye. I read over the paragraph again:
+
+“Preliminary study of the more than 240 domestic and thirty foreign
+incidents by Astro-Physicist Hynek indicates that an over-all total of
+about 30% can probably be explained away as astronomical phenomena.”
+
+_Explained away_.
+
+I went through the report line by line. On page 17 I found this:
+
+“Available preliminary reports now indicate that a great number of
+sightings can be explained away as ordinary occurrences which have been
+misrepresented as a result of human errors.”
+
+On page 22 I ran onto another use of the phrase:
+
+“The obvious explanation for most of the spherical-shaped objects
+reported, as already mentioned, is that they are meteorological or
+similar type balloons. This, however, does not explain reports that
+they travel at high speed or maneuver rapidly. But ‘Saucer’ men point
+out that the movement could be explained away as an optical illusion or
+actual acceleration of the balloon caused by a gas leak and later
+exaggerated by observers. . . . There are scores of possible
+explanations for the scores of different type sightings reported.”
+
+Explained away . . . It might not mean anything. It could be just an
+unfortunate choice of words. But suppose that the real mission of
+Project “Saucer” was to cover up something. Or that its purpose was to
+investigate something serious, at the same time covering it up, step by
+step. The Project “Saucer” teams, then, would check on reports and
+simultaneously try to divert attention from the truth, suggesting
+various answers to explain the sightings. Back at Wright Field,
+analysts and Intelligence officers would go over the general picture
+and try to work up plausible explanations, which, if necessary, could
+even be published.
+
+“Explaining away” would be one of the main purposes of Project
+personnel. These words would probably be used in discussions of ways
+and means; they would undoubtedly would be used in secret official
+papers. And since this published preliminary report had been made up
+from censored secret files, the use of those familiar words might have
+been overlooked, since, read casually, they would appear harmless. If
+the report had been thrown together hastily, the use of these telltale
+words could be easily understood, and so could the report’s strange
+contradictions.
+
+As an experiment, I fixed the idea firmly in mind that Project “Saucer”
+was a cover-up unit. Then I went back once more and read the items
+quoted above. The effect was almost startling.
+
+It was as though I were reading confidential suggestions for diverting
+attention and explaining away the sightings; suggestions made by
+Project members and probably circulated for comment.
+
+“Now, wait a minute,” I said to myself. “You may be dreaming up this
+whole thing.”
+
+Trying to get back to a neutral viewpoint, I skimmed through the other
+details of Project operations, as described in the report.
+
+The order creating Project “Saucer” was signed on December 30, 1947.
+(The actual code name was not “Saucer,” but since for some reason the
+Air Force still has not published the name, I have followed their usage
+of “Saucer” in its place.)
+
+On January 22, 1948, two weeks after Captain Mantell’s death, the
+project officially began operations. (Preliminary investigation at
+Godman Field had been done by local Intelligence officers.) Project
+“Saucer” was set up under the Air Materiel Command at Wright Field.
+
+Contracts were made with an astrophysicist (Professor Joseph Hynek),
+also a prominent scientist (still unidentified), and a group of
+evaluation experts (Rand Corporation). Arrangements were made for
+services by the Air Weather Service, Andrews Field; the U. S. Weather
+Bureau; the Electronics Laboratory, Cambridge Field Station; the A.M.C.
+Aero-Medical Laboratory; the Army and Navy Departments; the F.B.I.; the
+Department of Commerce, Civil Aeronautics Administration; and various
+other government and private agencies. In addition, the services of
+rocket experts, guided-missile authorities, space-travel planners, and
+others (in the defense services or assigned to them) were made
+available as desired. Under the heading “How Incidents Are
+Investigated,” the Project “Saucer” report says:
+
+
+But the hoaxes and crank letters in reality play a small part in
+Project “Saucer.”
+
+Actually, it is a serious, scientific business of constant
+investigation, analysis and evaluation which thus far has yielded
+evidence pointing to the conclusion that much of the saucer scare is no
+scare at all, but can be attributed to astronomical phenomena, to
+conventional aerial objects, to hallucinations and to mass psychology.
+
+But the mere existence of some yet unidentified flying objects
+necessitates a constant vigilance on the part of Project “Saucer”
+personnel and the civilian population. Investigation is greatly stepped
+up when observers report incidents as soon as possible to the nearest
+military installation or to Headquarters, A.M.C., direct.
+
+A standard questionnaire is filled out under the guidance of
+interrogators. In each case, time, location, size and shape of object,
+approximate altitude, speed, maneuvers, color, length of time in sight,
+sound, etc., are carefully noted. This information is sent in its
+entirety, together with any fragments, soil photographs, drawings,
+etc., to Headquarters, A.M.C. Here, highly trained evaluation teams
+take over. The information is broken down and filed on summary sheets,
+plotted on maps and graphs and integrated with the rest of the
+material, giving an easily comprehended over-all picture.
+
+Duplicate copies on each incident arc sent to other investigating
+agencies, including technical labs within the Air Materiel Command.
+These are studied in relation to many factors such as guided missile
+research activity, weather, and many others, atmospheric sounding
+balloon launchings, commercial and military aircraft flights, flights
+of migratory birds and a myriad of other considerations which might
+furnish explanations.
+
+Generally, the flying objects are divided into four groups: Flying
+disks, torpedo or cigar-shaped bodies with no wings or fins visible in
+flight, spherical or balloon-shaped objects and balls of light. The
+first three groups are capable of flight by aerodynamic or aerostatic
+means and can be propelled and controlled by methods known to
+aeronautical engineers. As for the lights, their actions—unless they
+were suspended from a higher object or were the product of
+hallucination—remain unexplained.
+
+Eventually, reports are sent back to Project “Saucer” headquarters,
+often marking incidents closed. The project, however, is a young
+one-much of its investigation is still under way.
+
+Currently, a psychological analysis is being made by A.M.C.’s
+Aero-Medical laboratory to determine what percentage of incidents are
+probably based on errors of the human mind and senses. Available
+preliminary reports now indicate that a great number can be explained
+away as ordinary occurrences which have been misrepresented as a result
+of these human errors.
+
+
+Near the end of the last page, a paragraph summed tip the report.
+
+“The ‘Saucers’ are not a joke. Neither are they cause for alarm to the
+population. Many of the incidents already have answers. Meteors.
+Balloons. Falling stars. Birds in flight. Testing devices, etc. Some of
+them still end in question marks.”
+
+From what I had learned on this trip, I strongly doubted the answer
+suggested. All but the “testing devices.” What did they mean by that?
+It could be a hint at guided missiles; they had already mentioned
+guided-missile research activity in another spot.
+
+But if _that_ was what lay behind this elaborate project, they would
+hardly be hinting at it. If the answer was space travel, then such
+hints made sense, They would be part of the cover-up plan.
+Everyone—including the Soviet Union—knew we were working on guided
+missiles. It would do no harm to use this as one of the “myriad
+explanations” for the flying saucers.
+
+I was still trying to figure it out when my plane let down for the
+landing at Washington. I had hoped by this time to know the truth about
+Project “Saucer.” Instead, it was a deeper mystery than ever.
+
+True, I had found out how they operated—outside of Wright Field. Some
+of the incidents had been enlightening. By now, I was certain that
+Project “Saucer” was trying hard to explain away the sightings and hide
+the real answer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+When I reached home, I found a brief letter from Ken Purdy.
+
+
+Dear Don:
+
+The Mantell and Eastern cases both look good. I don’t see how they can
+brush them off. It looks more like the interplanetary answer to me, but
+we won’t decide on treatment until we’re sure. [I had suggested two or
+three angles, if this proved the real answer.]
+
+Who would be the best authority to check our disk operation theory and
+give us more details on directional control? I’d like to have it
+checked by two more engineers.
+
+
+KEN
+
+
+Next day, I dug out my copy of Boal’s interview with D———, the famous
+aircraft designer.
+
+“Certainly the flying saucers are possible,” the designer had told
+Boal. “Give me enough money and I’ll build you one. It might have to be
+a model because the fuel would be a problem. If the saucers that have
+been seen came from other worlds, which isn’t at all Buck Rogerish,
+they may be powered with atomic energy or by the energy that produces
+cosmic rays—which is many times more powerful—or by some other fuel or
+natural force that our research hasn’t yet discovered. But the circular
+airfoil is quite feasible.
+
+“It wouldn’t have the stability of the conventional airplane, but it
+would have enormous maneuverability—it could rise vertically, hover,
+descend vertically, and fly at extremely high speed, with the proper
+power. Don’t take my word for it. Check with other engineers.”
+
+Before looking up a private engineer I had in mind, I went to the
+National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. The N.A.C.A. is America’s
+most authoritative source of aerodynamic knowledge. I knew they had
+already tried out disk-shaped airfoils, and I asked about this first. I
+found that two official N.A.C.A. reports, Technical Note 539 and Report
+431, discuss tests on circular and elliptical Clark Y airfoils. Both
+reports state that these designs were found practical.
+
+Later, I talked with one of the top engineers in the N.A.C.A. Without
+showing him D———’s sketch, I asked how a disk might operate.
+
+“It could be built with variable-direction jet or rocket nozzles,” be
+said. “The nozzles would be placed around the rim, and by changing
+their direction the disk could be made to rise and descend vertically.
+It could hover, fly straight ahead, and make sharp turns.
+
+“Its direction and velocity would be governed by the number of nozzles
+operating, the power applied, and the angle at which they were tilted.
+They could be pointed toward the ground, rearward, in a lateral
+direction, or in various combinations.
+
+“A disk flying level, straight ahead, could be turned swiftly to right
+or left by shifting the angles of the nozzles or cutting off power from
+part of the group. This method of control would operate in the earth’s
+atmosphere and also, using rocket power, in free space, where
+conventional controls would be useless.”
+
+The method he had described was not the one which D——— had outlined.
+
+“What about a rotating disk?” I asked the N.A.C.A. man. “Suppose you
+had one with a stationary center, and a large circular section rotating
+around it? The rotating part would have a camber built into it, or it
+would have slotted vanes.”
+
+He gave me a curious look, “Where’d you get that idea about the
+camber?”
+
+I told him it had come to me from _True_.
+
+“It could be done,” he said. “The slotted-vanes method has already been
+tried. There’s an engineer in Glendale, California, who’s built a
+model. His name’s E. W. Kay.”
+
+He gave me a few details on how a cambered or slotted-vane rotating
+disk might operate, then interrupted himself to ask me what I thought
+the saucers were.
+
+“They’re either interplanetary or some secret development,” I said.
+‘What do you think?”
+
+“The N.A.C.A. has no proof they even exist,” he answered.
+
+When I left the building a few minutes later, I was still weighing that
+statement. If the Air Force or the Navy had a secret disk device, the
+N.A.C.A. would almost certainly know about it. The chances were that
+any disk-shaped missile or new type of circular aircraft would first
+have been tested in the N.A.C.A. wind tunnels at Langley Field. If the
+saucers were interplanetary, the N.A.C.A.—at least top officials—would
+probably have been in on any discussion of the disks’ performance.
+Either way, the N.A.C.A.’s official attitude could be expected to match
+the Pentagon’s.
+
+After lunch, I took a taxi to the office of the private engineer. Like
+D———, he has asked that he not be quoted by name. The name I am using,
+Paul Redell, will serve that purpose. Redell is a well-known
+aeronautical engineer. He has worked with major aircraft companies and
+served as a special consultant to government agencies and the
+industries. He is also a competent pilot.
+
+Although I had known him several years, he refused at first to talk
+about the saucers. Then I realized he thought I meant to quote him. I
+showed him some of the material I had roughed out, in which names were
+omitted or changed as requested.
+
+“All right,” Redell said finally. “What do you want to know?”
+
+“Anything you can tell us. But first, your ideas on these sketches.” I
+showed him D———’s drawings and then gave him the high points of the
+investigation. When I mentioned the mystery-light incident at Fairfield
+Suisan Air Force Base, Redell sat up quickly.
+
+“The Gorman case again!”
+
+“We heard about some other ‘light’ cases,” I said. “One was at Las
+Vegas.”
+
+“I know about that one. That is, it you mean the green light—wait a
+minute!” Redell frowned into space for a few seconds, “You say that
+Fairfield Suisan sighting was on December third? Then the Las Vegas
+sighting was only a few days later. It was the first week of the month,
+I’m positive.”
+
+“Those light reports have got me stumped,” I said. “A light just can’t
+fly around by itself. And those two-foot disks—”
+
+“You haven’t worked on the Gorman case?” asked Redell.
+
+I told him I hadn’t thought it was coming up on my schedule.
+
+“Leave these sketches here,” he said. “Look into that Gorman sighting.
+Then check on our plans for space exploration. I’ll give you some
+sources. When you get through, come on back and we’ll talk it over.”
+
+The Gorman “saucer dogfight” had been described in newspapers; the
+pilot had reported chasing a swiftly maneuvering white light, which had
+finally escaped him. Judging from the Project “Saucer” preliminary
+report, this case had baffled all the Air Force investigators. When I
+met George Gorman, I found him to be intelligent, coolheaded, and very
+firmly convinced of every detail in his story. I had learned something
+about his background. He had had college training. During the war, he
+had been an Air Force instructor, training French student pilots. In
+Fargo, his home, he had a good reputation, not only for veracity but as
+a businessman. Only twenty-six, he was part owner of a construction
+company, and also the Fargo representative for a hardware-store chain.
+Even knowing all this, I found it hard at first to believe some of the
+dogfight details. But the ground observers confirmed them.
+
+It was about nine o’clock in the evening, October 1, 1948. Gorman, now
+an Air National Guard lieutenant, had been on a practice flight in an
+F-51 fighter. The other pilots on this practice patrol had already
+landed. Gorman had just been cleared by the C.A.A. operator in the
+Fargo Airport tower when he saw a fast-moving light below his circling
+fighter.
+
+From his altitude, 4,500 feet, it appeared to be the tail light of a
+swiftly flying plane. As nearly as he could tell, it was 1,000 feet
+high, moving at about 250 m.p.h. Gorman called the tower to recheck his
+clearance. He was told the only other plane in the area was a Piper
+Cub. Gorman Could see the Cub plainly outlined below him. There was a
+night football game going on, and the field was brightly lighted. But
+the Cub was nowhere near the strange light.
+
+As the mystery light raced above the football field. Gorman noticed an
+odd phenomenon. Instead of seeing the silhouette of a plane, he saw no
+shape at all around the light. By contrast, he could see the Cub’s
+outline clearly.
+
+Meantime, the airport traffic controller, L. D. Jensen, had also
+spotted the queer light. Concerned with the danger of collision—he said
+later that he, too, thought it a plane’s tail light—he trained his
+binoculars on it. Like Gorman, he was unable to distinguish a shape
+near the light. Neither could another C.A.A. man who was with him in
+the tower, a Fargo resident named Manuel E. Johnson.
+
+Up in the F-51, Gorman dived on the light, which was steadily blinking
+on and off.
+
+“As I closed in,” he told Project “Saucer” men later, “it suddenly
+became steady and pulled up into a sharp left turn. It was a clear
+white and completely roundabout six to eight inches in diameter.
+
+“I thought it was making a pass at the tower. I dived after it and
+brought my manifold pressure up to sixty, but I couldn’t catch the
+thing.”
+
+Gorman reported his speed at full power as 350 to 400 miles per hour.
+During the maneuvers that followed, both the C.A.A. men watched from
+the tower. Jensen was using powerful night glasses, but still no shape
+was visible near the mysterious light. The fantastic dogfight continued
+for twenty minutes. Gorman described it in detail.
+
+“When I attempted to turn with the light, I blacked out temporarily,
+owing to excessive speed. I am in fairly good physical condition, and I
+don’t believe there are many, if any, pilots who could withstand the
+turn and speed effected by the light and remain conscious.”
+
+During these sharp maneuvers, the light climbed quickly, then made
+another left bank.
+
+“I put my fifty-one into a sharp turn and tried to cut it off,” said
+Gorman. “By then we were at about seven thousand feet, Suddenly it made
+a sharp right turn and we headed straight at each other. Just when we
+were about to collide I guess I lost my nerve. I went into a dive and
+the light passed over my canopy at about five hundred feet. Then it
+made a left circle about one thousand feet above and I gave chase
+again.”
+
+When collision seemed imminent a second time, the object shot straight
+into the air. Gorman climbed after it at full throttle.
+
+Just about this time, two. other witnesses, a private pilot and his
+passenger, saw the fast-moving light. The pilot was Dr. A. D. Cannon,
+an oculist; his passenger was Einar Nelson. Dr. Cannon later told
+investigators the light was moving at high speed. He thought it might
+be a Canadian jet fighter from over the border. (A careful check with
+Canadian air officials ruled out this answer.) After landing at the
+airport, Dr. Cannon and Mr. Nelson again watched the light, saw it
+change direction and disappear.
+
+Meanwhile, Gorman was making desperate efforts to catch the thing. He
+was now determined to ram it, since there seemed nothing solid behind
+it to cause a dangerous crash. If his fighter was disabled, or if it
+caught fire, he could bail out.
+
+But despite the F-51’s fast climb, the light still outdistanced him. At
+14,000 feet, Gorman’s plane went into a power stall, He made one last
+try, climbing up to 17,000 feet. A few moments later, the light turned
+in a north-northwest direction and quickly disappeared.
+
+Throughout the dogfight, Gorman noticed no deviation on his
+instruments, according to the Project “Saucer” report. Gorman did not
+confirm or deny this when I talked with him. But he did agree with the
+rest of the Project statement. He did not notice any sound, odor, or
+exhaust trail.
+
+Gorman’s remarks about ramming the light reminded me of what Art Green
+had said. When I asked Gorman about the court-martial rumor, he gave me
+a searching glance.
+
+“Where did you hear that?”
+
+“Several places,” I told him. “At Chicago, in Salt Lake City—in fact,
+we’ve been hearing it all over.”
+
+“Well, there’s nothing to it,” Gorman declared. He changed the subject.
+
+Some time afterward, a Fargo pilot told me there had been trouble over
+the ramming story.
+
+“But it wasn’t Gorman’s fault. Somebody else released that report to
+the A. P. The news story didn’t actually say there was an Air Force
+order to ram it, but the idea got around, and we heard that Washington
+squawked. Gorman had a pretty rough time of it for a while. Some of the
+newspapers razzed his story. And the Project ‘Saucer’ teams really
+worked on him. I guess they were trying to scare him into saying he was
+mistaken, and it was a balloon.”
+
+When I asked Gorman about this, he denied he’d had rough treatment by
+the Project teams.
+
+“Sure, they asked about a thousand questions, and I could tell they
+thought it might be a hoax at first. But that was before they quizzed
+the others who saw it.”
+
+“Anybody suggest it was a balloon?” I said casually.
+
+“At first, they were sure that’s what it was,” answered Gorman. “You
+see, there was a weather balloon released here. You know the kind, it
+has a lighted candle on it. The Project teams said I’d chased after
+that candle and just imagined the light’s maneuvers—confused it with my
+own movement, because of the dark.”
+
+Gorman grinned. “They had it just about wrapped up—until they talked to
+George Sanderson. He’s the weather observer. He was tracking the
+balloon with a theodolite, and he showed them his records. The time and
+altitudes didn’t fit, and the wind direction was wrong. The balloon was
+drifting in the opposite direction. Both the tower men backed him up.
+So that killed the weather-balloon idea.”
+
+The next step by Project “Saucer” investigators had been to look for
+some unidentified aircraft. This failed, too. Obviously, it was only
+routine; the outline of a conventional plane would certainly have been
+seen by Gorman and the men in the tower.
+
+An astronomical check by Professor Hynek ruled out stars, fireballs,
+and comets—a vain hope, to begin with. The only other conventional
+answer, as the Project report later stated, was hallucination. In view
+of all the testimony, hallucination had to he ruled out. Finally, the
+investigators admitted they had no solution.
+
+The first Project “Saucer” report, on April 27, 1949, left the Gorman
+“mystery light” unidentified.
+
+In the _Saturday Evening Post_ of May 7, 1949, Sidney Shallett analyzed
+the Gorman case, in the second of his articles on flying saucers.
+Shallet suggested this solution: that Gorman had chased one of the
+Navy’s giant cosmic-ray research balloons. Each of these huge balloons
+is lighted, so that night-flying planes will not collide with the gas
+bag or the instrument case suspended below. Shallett concluded that
+Gorman was suffering from a combination of vertigo and confusion with
+the light on the balloon.
+
+As already mentioned, these huge Navy balloons are filled with only a
+small amount of helium before their release at Minneapolis. They then
+rise swiftly to very high altitudes, unless a leak develops. In
+Shallett’s words, “These balloons travel high and fast. . . .”
+
+Fargo is about two hundred miles from Minneapolis. Normally, a
+cosmic-ray research balloon would have reached a very high altitude by
+the time it had drifted this far. The only possible answer to its
+low-altitude sighting would be a serious leak.
+
+If a leaking balloon had come down to one thousand feet at Fargo, it
+would either have remained at that height or kept on descending. The
+mystery light was observed at this altitude moving at high speed. If a
+Cub’s outline was visible against the lighted football field, the
+massive shape of even a partly deflated balloon would have stood out
+like an elephant. Even before release, the partially inflated gas bags
+are almost a hundred feet tall. The crowd at the football game would
+certainly have seen such a monstrous shape above the glare of the
+floodlights, for the plastic balloons gleam brightly in any light rays.
+The two C.A.A. men, watching with binoculars, could not possibly have
+missed it.
+
+For the cosmic-balloon answer to be correct, this leaking gas bag would
+have had to rise swiftly to seventeen thousand feet—after a loss of
+helium had forced it down to one thousand. As a balloon pilot, I know
+this is impossible. The Project “Saucer” report said unequivocally:
+“The object could outturn and outspeed the F-51, and was able to attain
+a much steeper climb and to maintain a constant rate of climb far in
+excess of the Air Force fighter.”
+
+A leaking balloon? More and more, I became convinced that Secretary
+Forrestal had persuaded some editors that it was their patriotic duty
+to conceal the answer, whatever it was.
+
+That thought had begun to worry me, because of my part in this
+investigation. Perhaps John Steele had been right, and we shouldn’t be
+trying to dig out the answer. But I had already told Purdy, and he had
+agreed, that if national security was involved, we would drop the thing
+completely.
+
+By the time I had proved the balloon answer wrong, I was badly puzzled.
+The idea of a disembodied light was the hardest thing to swallow that
+I’d come across so far.
+
+And yet there were the other light reports—the strange sighting at
+Fairfield Suisan Field, the weird green lights at Las Vegas and
+Albuquerque. And there was the encounter that Lieutenant H. G. Combs
+had had one night above Andrews Field, near Washington, D. C.
+
+This incident had occurred on November 18, 1948, six weeks after
+Gorman’s experience. Combs, flying with another lieutenant named
+Jackson, was about to land his T-6, at 9:45 P.M., when a strange object
+loomed up near him. It looked like a grayish globe, and it gave off an
+odd, fuzzy light.
+
+Combs chased the weird object for over ten minutes, during which it
+appeared to evade every move he made. Once, its speed was nearly six
+hundred miles an hour, as closely as he could estimate. In a final
+attempt to identify it, Combs zoomed the T-6 up at a steep angle and
+flashed his landing lights on it. Before he could get a good look, the
+globe light whirled off to the east and vanished.
+
+Since Combs’s story had been in the newspapers, Project “Saucer”
+evidently had felt in wise to give some explanation. When I read it, in
+the preliminary report, I was amazed. Here was the concluding sentence:
+
+“The mystery was cleared up when the object was identified positively
+as a cluster of cosmic-ray research balloons.”
+
+Even one of the giant balloons would have been hard to take as the
+explanation. Combs was almost sure to have collided with it in his
+head-on passes. But an entire cluster! I tried to picture the T-6
+zooming and twisting through the night sky, with several huge balloons
+in its path. It would be a miracle if Combs got through without hitting
+one of them, even if each balloon was lighted. But he had seen only one
+light; so had Lieutenant Jackson. That would mean all the rest of the
+balloons were unlighted—an unbelievable coincidence.
+
+It was not until months afterward that I found Project “Saucer” had
+withdrawn this “solution.” In its final report, this case, Number 207,
+was listed in the “Unidentified” group. How the balloon-cluster
+explanation ever got into the first report is still a mystery.
+
+When I talked with Gorman, I told him I was baffled by the idea of a
+light maneuvering through the skies with no airfoil to support it.
+
+“I know,” he said. “It got me, too, at first.”
+
+“You mean you know the answer?” I demanded.
+
+“It’s just my personal opinion,” said Gorman. “But I’d rather not have
+it printed. You see, I got some ideas from all the questions those
+Project teams asked me. If my hunch turns out to be right, I might be
+talking about an official secret.”
+
+I tried to pry some hint out of him, but Gorman just smiled and shook
+his head.
+
+“I can tell you this much,” he said, “because it’s been mentioned in
+print. There was _thought_ behind every move the light made. It wasn’t
+any radar-responder gadget making it veer away from my ship.”
+
+“How do you know that?”
+
+“Because it reacted differently at different times. If it had been a
+mechanical control, it would have turned or climbed the same way each
+time I got near it. Instead, it was as if some intelligent mind was
+directing every turn like a game of chess, and always one move ahead of
+me. Maybe you can figure out the rest.”
+
+That was all I could get out of him. It bothered me, because Combs’s
+report indicated the same thing. I had a strong temptation to skip the
+space-plans research and tell Redell what Gorman had told me. But
+Redell had an orderly mind, and he didn’t like to be pushed.
+
+Reluctantly, I gave up the idea. I had a feeling Redell knew the answer
+to the mystery lights, and it wasn’t easy to put off the solution.
+
+The letter that came from Art Green, while I was working on the space
+plans, didn’t make it easier:
+
+
+Dear Keyhoe:
+
+Just heard about your Seattle visit. That Fairfield Suisan thing is on
+the level; several Air Force pilots have told me about it.
+
+When you get to Fargo, ask Gorman what they found when they checked his
+ship with a Geiger counter. If he says it was negative, then he must be
+under orders. I happen to know better.
+
+
+Yours,
+ART GREEN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+My first step, in checking on our space plans, was to look up official
+announcements. I found that on December 29, 1948, Defense Secretary
+James Forrestal had released this official statement:
+
+“The Earth Satellite Vehicle Program, which is being carried out
+independently by each military service, has been assigned to the
+Committee on Guided Missiles for co-ordination.
+
+“To provide an integrated program, the Committee has recommended that
+current efforts be limited to studies and component design.
+Well-defined areas of such research have been allocated to each of the
+three military departments.”
+
+Appropriation bills had already provided funds for space exploration
+plans. The Air Force research was indicated by General Curtis E. LeMay,
+who was then Deputy Chief of Air Staff for Research and Development. In
+outlining plans for an Air Engineering Design Center at Wright Field,
+General LeMay included these space-exploration requisites:
+
+“Flight and survival equipment for ultra-atmospheric operations,
+including space vehicles, space bases, and devices for use therein.”
+
+The idea of exploring space is, of course, nothing new. For many years,
+writers of imaginative fiction have described trips to the moon and
+distant planets. More recently, comic books and strips have gone in
+heavily for space-travel adventures.
+
+As a natural result of this, the first serious rocket experiments in
+this country were labeled screwball stunts, about on a par with efforts
+to break through the sonic barrier. The latter had been “proved”
+impossible by aeronautical engineers; as for rocket flight, it was too
+silly for serious consideration. Pendray, Goddard, and other rocket
+pioneers took some vicious ridicule before America woke up to the
+possibilities.
+
+Meantime, German scientists had gone far ahead. Their buzz bomb, a
+low-altitude semi-guided missile, was just the beginning. Even the
+devastating V-2, which soared high into the stratosphere before falling
+on England, was just a step in their tremendous space program. If the
+Nazis could have hung on a year or two more, the war might have had a
+grimly different ending.
+
+When the Allies seized Nazi secrets, some of the German plans were
+revealed. Among them was one for a huge earth satellite. From this
+base, which would circle the earth some five hundred miles away,
+enormous mirrors would focus the sun’s rays on any desired spot. The
+result: swift, fiery destruction of any city or base refusing to
+surrender.
+
+First publication of this scheme brought the usual jeers. Many people,
+including some reputable scientists, believed it had been just a
+propaganda plan that even Goebbels had discarded as hopeless.
+
+Then the Pentagon announced the U.S. Earth Satellite Vehicle Program,
+along with plans for a moon rocket, The artificial satellite is to be a
+large rocket-propelled projectile. In its upward flight, it will have
+to reach a speed of 23,000 miles an hour, to escape the earth’s pull of
+gravity. At a height of about 500 miles, special controls will turn the
+projectile and cause it to circle the earth. These controls will be
+either automatic or operated from the ground, by radar. Theoretically,
+once such a vehicle is beyond gravity’s magnetism, it can coast along
+in the sky forever. Its rocket power will be shut off; the only need
+for such power would be if the satellite veered off course. A momentary
+burst from the jets would be sufficient to bring it back to its orbit.
+
+Circling the earth in about two hours, this first satellite is expected
+to be used as a testing station. Instruments will record and transmit
+vital information to the earth—the effect of cosmic rays, solar
+radiation, fuel required for course corrections, and many other items.
+
+A second space base farther out will probably be the next step. It may
+be manned, or it may be under remote control like the first. Perhaps
+the first satellite vehicle will be followed by a compartmented
+operating base, a sort of aerial aircraft carrier, with other rocket
+ships operating to and fro on the earth shuttle. The moon rocket is
+expected to add to our information about space, so that finally we will
+emerge with an interplanetary space craft.
+
+The first attempts may fail. The first satellite may fall back and have
+to be guided to an ocean landing. Or its controls might not bring it
+into the planned orbit. In this case, it could coast on out into space
+and be lost. But sooner or later, effective controls will be found.
+Then the manned space ships will follow.
+
+Once in free space, there will be no gravitational pull to offset. The
+space ship and everything in it will be weightless. Shielding is
+expected to prevent danger from cosmic rays and solar radiation.
+
+The danger from meteorites has been partly discounted in one scientific
+study. (“Probability that a meteorite will hit or penetrate a body
+situated in the vicinity of the earth,” by G. Grimminger, _Journal of
+Applied Physics_, Vol. 19, No. 10, pp. 947-956, October 1948) In this
+study, it is stated that a meteorite is unlikely to penetrate the thick
+shell our space vehicles will undoubtedly have. However, this applies
+only to the earth’s atmosphere. Longer studies, using remote-controlled
+vehicles in space, may take years before it will be safe to launch a
+manned space ship. Radar or other devices may have to be developed to
+detect approaching meteorites at a distance and automatically change a
+space ship’s course. The change required would be infinitesimal, using
+power for only a fraction of a second.
+
+But before we are ready for interplanetary travel, we will have to
+harness atomic power or some other force not now available, such as
+cosmic rays. Navigation at such tremendous speeds is another great
+problem, on which special groups are now at work. A Navy scientific
+project recently found that strange radio signals are constantly being
+sent out from a “hot spot” in the Milky Way; other nebulae or “hot”
+stars may be similarly identified by some peculiarity in their radio
+emanations. If so, these could be used as check points in long-range
+space travel.
+
+Escape from the earth’s gravity is possible even now, according to
+Francis H. Clauser, an authority on space travel plans. But the cost
+would be prohibitive, with our present rocket motors, and practical
+operations must wait for higher velocity rocket power, atomic or
+otherwise. (“Flight beyond the Earth’s Atmosphere, “_S.A.E. Quarterly
+Transactions_, Vol. 2, No, 4, October 1948.)
+
+Already, a two-stage rocket has gone more than 250 miles above the
+earth. This is the V-2-Wac Corporal combination. The V-2 rocket is used
+to power the first part of the flight, dropping off when its fuel is
+exhausted. The Wac Corporal then proceeds on its own fuel, reaching a
+fantastic speed in the thin air higher up.
+
+Hundreds of technical problems must be licked before the first
+satellite vehicle can be launched successfully. Records on our V-2
+rockets indicate some of the obstacles. On the take-off, their present
+swift acceleration would undoubtedly kill anyone inside. When
+re-entering the earth’s atmosphere the nose of a V-2 gets red-hot.
+
+Both the acceleration and deceleration must be controlled before the
+first volunteers will be allowed to hazard their lives in manned
+rockets. Willi Ley, noted authority on space-travel problems, believes
+that pilots may have to accept temporary blackout as a necessity on the
+take-off. (Two of his books, _Rockets and Space Travel_ and _Outer
+Space_, give fascinating and well-thought-out pictures of what we may
+expect in years to come.)
+
+Some authorities believe that our space travel will be confined to our
+own solar system for a long time, perhaps forever. The trip to the
+moon, though now a tremendous project, would be relatively simple
+compared with a journey outside our system. Escape from the moon, for
+the return trip, would be easier than leaving the earth; because of its
+smaller mass, to escape the moon’s gravitational pull would take a
+speed of about 5,000 miles an hour, against 23,000 for the earth.
+Navigation would be much simpler. Our globe would loom up in the
+heavens, much larger and brighter than the moon appears to us. Radar
+beams would also be a guide.
+
+The greatest obstacle to reaching far-distant planet is the time
+required. In the Project “Saucer” study of space travel, Wolf 359 was
+named as the nearest star likely to have possibly inhabited areas. Wolf
+359 is eight light-years from the earth. The limiting speed in space,
+according to Einstein’s law, would be just under the speed of
+light—186,000 miles per second. At this speed, Einstein states, matter
+is converted into energy. It is a ridiculous assumption, but even if
+atomic power, or some force such as cosmic rays, made an approach to
+that speed possible, it would still take eight years to reach Wolf 359.
+The round trip would take sixteen.
+
+There have been a few scientists who dispute Einstein’s law, though no
+one has disproved it. If the speed of light is not an absolute limit
+for space ships, then travel to remote parts of the universe may
+someday be possible.
+
+Otherwise, a trip outside our solar system could be a lifetime
+expedition. Most space travel would probably be limited to the planets
+of our sun—the moon, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and the others.
+
+Although it may be many years before the first manned space ship leaves
+the earth, we are already at work on the problems the crews would face.
+I learned some of the details from a Navy flight surgeon with whom I
+had talked about take-off problems.
+
+“They’re a lot further than that” he told me. “Down at Randolph Field,
+the Aero-Medical research lab has run into some mighty queer things.
+Ever hear of ‘dead distance’?”
+
+“No, that’s a new one.”
+
+“Well, it sounds crazy, but they’ve figured out that a space ship would
+be going faster than anyone could think.”
+
+“But you think instantaneously,” I objected.
+
+“Oh, no. It takes a fraction of a second, even for the fastest thinker.
+Let’s say the ship was making a hundred miles a second—and that’s slow
+compared with what they expect eventually. Everything would happen
+faster than your nerve impulses could register it. Your comprehension
+would always be lagging a split second behind the space ship’s
+operation.”
+
+“I don’t see why that’s so serious,” I said.
+
+“Suppose radar or some other device warned you a meteorite was coming
+toward you head-on. Or maybe some instrument indicated an error in
+navigation. By the time your mind registered the thought, the situation
+would have changed.”
+
+“Then all the controls would have to be automatic,” I said. I told him
+that I had heard about plans for avoiding meteorites. “Electronic
+controls would be faster than thought.”
+
+“That’s probably the answer,” he agreed. “Of course, at a hundred miles
+a second it might not be too serious. But if they ever get up to speeds
+like a thousand miles a second, that mental lag could make an enormous
+difference, whether it was a meteorite heading toward you or a matter
+of navigation.”
+
+One of the problems he mentioned was the lack of gravity. I had already
+learned about this. Once away from the earth’s pull, objects in the
+space ship would have no weight. The slightest push could send crewmen
+floating around the sealed compartment.
+
+“Suppose you spilled a cup of coffee,” said the flight surgeon. “What
+would happen?”
+
+I said I hadn’t thought it out.
+
+“The Randolph Field lab can tell you,” he said. “The coffee would stay
+right there in the air. So would the cup, if you let go of it. But
+there’s a more serious angle—your breath.”
+
+“You’d have artificial air,” I began.
+
+“Yes, they’ve already worked that out. But what about the breath you
+exhale? It contains carbon dioxide, and if you let it stay right there
+in front of your face you’d be sucking it back into your lungs. After a
+while, it would asphyxiate you. So the air has to be kept in motion,
+and besides that the ventilating system has to remove the carbon
+dioxide.”
+
+“What about eating?” I asked. “Swallowing is partly gravity, isn’t it?”
+
+He nodded. “Same as drinking, though the throat muscles help force the
+food down. I don’t know the answer to that. In fact, everything about
+the human body presents a problem. Take the blood circulation. The
+amount of energy required to pump blood through the veins would be
+almost negligible. What would that do to your heart?”
+
+“I couldn’t even guess,” I said.
+
+“Well, that’s all the Aero-Medical lab can do—guess at it. They’ve been
+trying to work out some way of duplicating the effect of zero gravity,
+but there’s just no answer. If you could build a machine to neutralize
+gravity, you could get all the answers, except to the ‘dead distance’
+question.
+
+“For instance, there’s the matter of whether the human body would even
+function without gravity. All down through the stages of evolution,
+man’s organs have been used to that downward pull. Take away gravity,
+and your whole body might stop working. Some of the Aero-Medical men
+I’ve talked with don’t believe that, but they admit that long trips
+outside of gravity might have odd effects.
+
+“Then there’s the question of orientation. Here on earth, orienting
+yourself depends on the feeling you get from the pull of gravity, plus
+your vision. just being blindfolded is enough to disorient some people.
+Taking away the pull of gravity might be a lot worse. And of course out
+in space your only reference points would be distant stars and planets.
+We’ve been used to locating stars from points on the earth, where we
+know their position. But how about locating them from out in space,
+with a ship moving at great speed? Inside the space ship, it would be
+something like being in a submarine. Probably only the pilot
+compartment would have glass ports, and those would be covered except
+in landing—maybe even then. Outside vision might be by television, so
+you couldn’t break a glass port and let out your pressure.
+
+“But to go back to the submarine idea. It would be like a sub, with
+this big difference: In the submarine you can generally tell which way
+is down, except maybe in a crash dive when you may lose your
+equilibrium for a moment. But in the space ship, you could be standing
+with your feet on one spot, and another crewman might be—relative to
+you—standing upside down. You might be floating horizontally, the other
+man vertically. The more you think about it, the crazier it gets. But
+they’ve got to solve all those problems before we can tackle space.”
+
+To make sure I had the details right, I checked on the Air Force
+research. I found that the Randolph Field laboratory is working on all
+these problems, and many more.
+
+Although plans arc not far enough advanced to make it certain, probably
+animals will be sent up in research rockets to determine the effect of
+no gravity before any human beings make such flights. The results could
+be televised back to the earth.
+
+All through my check-up on space exploration plans, one thing struck
+me: I met no resistance. There was no official reticence about the
+program; on the contrary, nothing about it seemed secret.
+
+Even though it was peacetime, this was a little curious, because of the
+potential war value of an earth satellite vehicle. Even if the Nazi
+scheme for destruction proved just a dream, an orbiting space base
+could be used for other purposes. In its two-hour swing around the
+earth, practically all of the globe could be observed-directly, by
+powerful telescopes, or indirectly, by a combination of radar and
+television. Long-range missiles could be guided to targets, after being
+launched from some point on the earth. As the missiles climbed high
+into the stratosphere, the satellite’s radar could pick them up and
+keep them on course by remote control.
+
+There were other possibilities for both attack and defense. Ordinarily,
+projects with wartime value are kept under wraps, or at least not
+widely publicized. Of course, the explanation might be very simple: The
+completion of the satellite vehicle was so remote that there seemed no
+need for secrecy. But in that case, why had the program been announced
+at all?
+
+If the purpose had been propaganda, it looked like a weak gesture. The
+Soviets would not be greatly worried by a dream weapon forty or fifty
+years off. Besides that, the Pentagon, as a rule, doesn’t go for such
+propaganda. There was only one conventional answer that made any sense.
+If we had heard that the Soviets were about to announce such a program,
+as a propaganda trick, it would be smart to beat them to it. But I had
+no proof of, any such Russian intention.
+
+The date on Secretary Forrestal’s co-ordination announcement was
+December 30, 1948. One day later, the order creating Project “Saucer”
+had been signed. That didn’t prove anything; winding up the year,
+Forrestal could have signed a hundred orders. I was getting too
+suspicious.
+
+At any rate, I had now analyzed the Gorman case and checked on our
+space plans. Tomorrow I would see Redell and find out what he knew.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+When I called Redell’s office I found he had flown to Dallas and would
+not be back for two days. By the time he returned, I had written a
+draft of the Gorman case, with my answer to the balloon explanation.
+When I saw him, the next morning, I asked him to look it over.
+
+Redell lighted his pipe and then read the draft, nodding to himself now
+and then.
+
+“I think that’s correct analysis,” he said when he finished. “That was
+a very curious case. You know, Project ‘Saucer’ even had psychiatrists
+out there. If Gorman had been the only witness, I think they’d have
+called it a hallucination. As it was, they took a crack at him and the
+C.A.A. men in their preliminary report.”
+
+Though I recalled that there had been a comment, I didn’t remember the
+wording. Redell looked it up and read it aloud:
+
+“‘From a psychological aspect, the Gorman incident raised the question,
+“Is it possible for an object without appreciable shape or known
+aeronautical configuration to appear to travel at variable speeds and
+maneuver intelligently?”’”
+
+“Hallucination might sound like a logical answer,” I said, “until you
+check all the testimony. But there are just too many witnesses who
+confirm Gorman’s report. Also, he seems like a pretty level-headed
+chap.”
+
+Redell filled his pipe again. “But you still can’t quite accept it?”
+
+“I’m positive they saw the light—but what the devil was it? How could
+it fly without some kind of airfoil?”
+
+“Maybe it didn’t. You remember Gorman described an odd fuzziness around
+the edge of the light? It’s in this Air Force report. That could have
+been a reflection from the airfoil.”
+
+“Yes, but Gorman would have seen any solid—” I stopped, as Redell made
+a negative gesture.
+
+“It could be solid and still not show up,” he said.
+
+“You mean it was transparent? Sure, that would do it!”
+
+“Let’s say the airfoil was a rotating plastic disk, absolutely
+transparent. The blurred, fuzzy look could have been caused by the
+whirling disk. Neither Gorman nor the C.A.A. men in the tower could
+possibly see the disk itself.”
+
+“Paul, I think you’ve hit it,” I said. “I can see thc rest of it—the
+thing was under remote control, radio or radar. And from the way it
+flew rings around Gorman, whoever controlled it must have been able to
+see the F-51, either with a television ‘eye’ or by radar,”
+
+“Or by some means we don’t understand,” said Redell. He went on
+carefully, “In all these saucer cases, keep this in mind: We may be
+dealing with some totally unknown principle—something completely beyond
+our comprehension.”
+
+For a moment, I thought he was hunting at some radical discovery by
+Soviet—captured Nazi scientists. Then I realized what he meant.
+
+“You think they’re interplanetary,” I murmured.
+
+“Why not?” Redell looked surprised. “Isn’t that your idea? I got that
+impression.”
+
+“Yes, but I didn’t think you believed it. When you said to check on our
+space plans, I thought you had some secret missile in mind.”
+
+“No, I had another reason. I wanted you to see all the problems
+involved in space travel. If you accept the interplanetary answer, you
+have to accept this, too—whoever is looking us over has licked all
+those problems years ago. Technically, they’d be hundreds of years
+ahead of us—maybe thousands. It has a lot to do with what they’d be up
+to here.”
+
+When I mentioned the old sighting reports, I found that Redell already
+knew about them. He was convinced that the earth had been under
+observation a long time, probably even before the first recorded
+sightings.
+
+“I know some of those reports aren’t authentic,” he admitted. “But if
+you accept even one report of a flying disk or rocket-shaped object
+before the twentieth century, then you have to accept the basic idea.
+In the last forty years, you might blame the reports on planes and
+dirigibles. But there was no propelled aircraft until 1903. Either all
+those early sightings were wrong, or some kind of fast aerial machine
+has been flying periodically over the earth for at least two centuries.
+
+I told him I was pretty well convinced, but that _True_ faced a
+problem. There was some conflicting evidence, and part of it seemed
+linked with guided missiles. I felt sure we could prove the
+space-travel answer, but we had to stay clear of discussing any weapons
+that were still a secret.
+
+“I can’t believe that guided missiles are the answer to the Godman
+Field saucer and the Chiles-Whitted case, or this business at Fargo.
+But we’re got to be absolutely sure before we print anything.”
+
+“Well, let’s analyze it,” said Redell. “Let’s see if all the saucers
+could be explained as something launched from the earth.”
+
+He reached for a pad and a pencil.
+
+“First, let’s take your rotating disk. That would be a lot simpler to
+build than the stationary disk with variable jet nozzles. With a disk
+rotated at high speed you get a tremendous lift, whether it’s slotted
+or cambered, as long as there’s enough air to work on.”
+
+“The helicopter principle,” I said.
+
+Redell nodded. “The most practical propulsion would be with two or more
+jets out on the rim, to spin your rotating section. But to get up
+enough speed for the jets to be efficient, you’d have to whirl the disk
+mechanically before the take-off. Here’s one way. You could have a
+square hole in the center; then the disk launching device would have a
+square shaft, rotated by an engine or a motor. As the speed built up,
+the cambered disk would ride up the shaft and free itself, rising
+vertically, with the jets taking over the job of whirling the cambered
+section.
+
+“The lift would be terrific, far more than any normal aircraft. I don’t
+believe any human being could take the G’s involved in a maximum power
+climb; they’d have to use remote control. When it got to the desired
+altitude, your disk could be flown in any direction by tilting it that
+way. The forward component from that tremendous lift would result in a
+very high speed. The disk could also hover, and descend vertically.”
+
+“What about maneuvering?” I asked, thinking of Gorman’s experience.
+
+“It could turn faster than any pilot could stand,” said Redell. “Of
+course, a pilot’s cockpit could be built into a large disk; but there’d
+have to be some way of holding down the speed, to avoid too many G’s in
+tight maneuvers.”
+
+“Most of the disks don’t make any noise,” I said. “At least, that’s the
+general report. You’d hear ordinary jets for miles.”
+
+“Right, and here’s another angle. Ram jets take a lot of fuel. Even
+with some highly efficient new jet, I can’t see the long ranges
+reported. Some of these saucers have been seen all over the world. No
+matter which hemisphere they were launched from, they’d need an
+eight-thousand-mile range, at least, to explain all of the sightings.
+The only apparent answer would be some new kind of power, probably
+atomic. We certainly didn’t have atomic engines for aircraft in 1947,
+when the first disks were seen here. And we don’t have them now, though
+we’re working on it. Even if we had such an engine, it wouldn’t be tiny
+enough to power the small disks.”
+
+“Anyway,” I said, “we’d hardly be flying them all over everywhere. The
+cost would be enormous, and there’d always be a danger of somebody
+getting the secret if a disk landed.”
+
+“Plus the risk of injuring people by radiation. just imagine an
+atomic-powered disk dropping into a city. The whole idea’s ridiculous.”
+
+“That seems to rule out the guided-missile answer,” I began. But Redell
+shook his head.
+
+“Disk-shaped missiles are quite feasible. I’m talking about range,
+speed, and performance. Imagine for a moment that we have disk-type
+missiles using the latest jet or rocket propulsion—either piloted or
+remote-controlled. The question is, could such disks fit specific
+sightings like the one at Godman Field and the case at Fargo?”
+
+Redell paused as if some new thought had struck him.
+
+“Wait a minute, here’s an even better test. I happen to know about this
+case personally. Marvin Miles—he’s an aviation writer in Los
+Angeles—was down at White Sands Proving Ground some time ago. He talked
+with a Navy rocket expert who was in charge of naval guided-missile
+projects. This Navy man—he’s a commander in the regular service—told
+Miles they’d seen four saucers down in that area.”
+
+“You’re sure he wasn’t kidding Miles?” I said. Then I remembered
+Purdy’s tip about a White Sands case.
+
+“I told you I checked on this myself,” Redell said, a little annoyed.
+“After Miles told me about it, I asked an engineer who’d been down
+there if it was true. He gave me the same story, figures and all. The
+first saucer was tracked by White Sands observers with a theodolite.
+Then they worked out its performance with ballistics formulas.”
+
+Redell looked at me grimly.
+
+“The thing was about fifty miles up. And it was making over fifteen
+thousand miles an hour!”
+
+One of the witnesses, said Redell, was a well-known scientist from the
+General Mills aeronautical research laboratory in Minneapolis, which
+was working with the Navy. (A few days later, I verified this fact and
+the basic details of Redell’s account. But it was not until early in
+January 1950 that I finally identified the officer as Commander Robert
+B. McLaughlin and got his dramatic story.)
+
+“Here are two more items Miles told me,” Redell went on. “This Navy
+expert said the saucer actually looked elliptical, or egg-shaped. And
+while it was being tracked it suddenly made a steep climb—so steep no
+human being could have lived through it.”
+
+“One thing is certain,” I said. “That fifty-mile altitude knocks out
+the rotating disk. Up in that thin air it wouldn’t have any lift.”
+
+“Right,” said Redell. “And the variable jet type would require an
+enormous amount of fuel. Regardless, those G’s mean it couldn’t have
+had any pilot born on this earth.”
+
+According to Marvin Miles, this White Sands saucer had been over a
+hundred feet long. (Later, Commander McLaughlin stated that it was 105
+feet.) If this were an American device, then it meant that we had
+already licked many of the problems on which the Earth Satellite
+Vehicle designers were supposed to be just starting. Their statements,
+then, would have to be false—part of an elaborate cover-up.
+
+“If we had such an advanced design,” said Redell, “and I just don’t
+believe it possible—would we gamble on a remote-control system? No such
+system is perfect. Suppose it went wrong. At that speed, over fifteen
+thousand miles an hour, your precious missile or strato ship could be
+halfway around the globe in about forty-five minutes. That is, if the
+fuel held out. Before you could regain control, you might lose it in
+the sea. Or it might come down behind the Iron Curtain. Even if it were
+I smashed to bits, it would tip off the Soviets. They might claim it
+was a guided-missile attack. Almost anything could hap pen.”
+
+“It could have a time bomb in it,” I suggested. “if it got off course
+or out of control, it would blow itself up.”
+
+Redell emphatically shook his head. “I’ve heard that idea before, but
+it won’t hold up. What if your ship’s controls went haywire and the
+thing blew up over a crowded city? Imagine the panic, even if no actual
+damage was done. No, sir—nobody in his right mind is going to let a
+huge ship like that go barging around unpiloted. It would be criminal
+negligence.
+
+“If the White Sands calculations were correct, then this particular
+saucer was no earth-made device. Perhaps in coming years, we could
+produce such a ship, with atomic power to drive it. But not now.”
+
+Redell went over several other cases.
+
+“Take the Godman Field saucer. At one time, it was seen at places one
+hundred and seventy-five miles apart, as you know. Even to have been
+seen at all from both places, it would. have to have been huge—much
+larger than two hundred and fifty feet in diameter. The human eye
+wouldn’t resolve an object that size, at such a distance and height.”
+
+It was an odd thing; I had, gone over the Mantell case a dozen times. I
+knew the object was huge. But I had never tried to figure out the
+object’s exact size.
+
+“How big do you think it was?” I asked quickly. This could be the key I
+had tried to find.
+
+“I haven’t worked it out,” said Redell. “But I can give you a rough
+idea. The human eye can’t resolve any object that subtends less than
+three minutes of arc. For instance, a plane with a hundred-foot wing
+span would only be a speck twenty miles away, if you saw it at all.”
+
+“But this thing was seen clearly eighty-seven miles away—or even more,
+if it wasn’t midway between the two cities. Why, it would have to be a
+thousand feet in diameter.”
+
+“Even larger.” Redell was silent a moment. “What was the word Mantell
+used—‘tremendous’?” I tried to visualize the thing, but my mind balked.
+One thing was certain now. It was utterly impossible that any nation on
+earth could have built such an enormous airborne machine. just to think
+of the force required to hold it in the sky was enough to stagger any
+engineer. We were years away—perhaps centuries—from any such
+possibility.
+
+As if he had read my thoughts, Redell said soberly, “There’s no other
+possible answer. It was a huge space ship—perhaps the largest ever to
+come into our atmosphere.”
+
+It was clear now why such desperate efforts had been made to explain
+away the object Mantell had chased.
+
+“What about that Eastern Airlines sighting?” I asked.
+
+“Well, first,” said Redell, “it wasn’t any remote-control guided
+missile. I’ll say it again; it would be sheer insanity. Suppose that
+thing had crashed in Macon. At that speed it could have plowed its way
+for blocks, right through the buildings. It could have killed hundreds
+of people, burned the heart out of the city.
+
+“If it was a missile, or some hush-hush experimental job, then it was
+piloted. But they don’t test a job like that on any commercial airways.
+And they don’t fool around at five thousand feet where people will see
+the thing streaking by and call the newspapers.
+
+“To power a hundred-foot wingless ship, especially at those speeds,
+would take enormous force. Not as much as a V-two rocket, but
+tremendous power. The fuel load would be terrific. Certainly, the pilot
+wouldn’t be circling around Georgia and Alabama for an hour, buzzing
+airliners. I’ll stake everything that we couldn’t duplicate that space
+ship’s performance for less than fifty million dollars. It would take
+something brand-new in jets.”
+
+Redell paused. He looked at me grimly. “And the way I’d have to soup it
+up, it would be a damned dangerous ship to fly. No pilot would
+deliberately fly it that low. He’d stay up where he’d have a chance to
+bail out.”
+
+I told him what I had heard about the blueprints the Air Force was said
+to have rushed.
+
+“Of course they were worried,” said Redell. “And probably they still
+are. But I don’t think they need be; so far, there’s been nothing
+menacing about these space ships.”
+
+When I got him back to the Gorman case, Redell drew a sketch on his
+pad, showing me his idea of the disk light. He estimated the
+transparent rim as not more than five feet in diameter.
+
+“Possibly smaller,” he said. “You recall that Gorman said the light was
+between six and eight inches in diameter. He also said it seemed to
+have depth—that was in the Air Force report.”
+
+“You think all the mechanism was hidden by the light?”
+
+“Only possible answer,” said Redell. “But just try to imagine crowding
+a motor, or jet controls for rim jets, along with remote controls and a
+television device, in that small space. Plus your fuel supply. I don’t
+know any engineer who would even attempt it. To carry that much gear,
+it would take a fair-sized plane. You could make a disk large enough,
+but the mechanism and fuel section would be two or three feet across,
+at least. So Gorman’s light must have been powered and controlled by
+some unique means. The same principle applies to all the other light
+reports I’ve heard. No shape behind them, high speed, and intelligent
+maneuvers. That thing was guided from some interplanetary ship,
+hovering at a high altitude,” Redell declared. “But I haven’t any idea
+what source of power it used.”
+
+Until then, I had forgotten about Art Green’s letter. I told Redell
+what Art had said about the Geiger counter.
+
+“I knew they went over Gorman’s fighter with a Geiger counter,” Redell
+commented. “But they said the reaction was negative. If Green is right,
+it’s interesting. It would mean they have built incredibly small atomic
+engines. But with a race so many years ahead of us, it shouldn’t be
+surprising. Of course, they may also be using some other kind of power
+our scientists say is impossible.”
+
+I was about to ask him what he meant when his secretary came in.
+
+“Mr. Carson is waiting,” she told Redell. “He had a four-o’clock
+appointment.”
+
+As I started to leave, Redell looked at his calendar.
+
+“I hate to break this up; it’s a fascinating business What about coming
+in Friday? I’d like to see the rest of those case reports.”
+
+“Fine,” I said. “I’ve got a few more questions, too.”
+
+Going out, I made a mental note of the Friday date. Then the figure
+clicked; it was just three months since I’d started on this assignment.
+
+Three months ago. At that time I’d only been half sure that the saucers
+were real. If anyone had said I’d soon believe they were space ships,
+I’d have told him he was crazy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Before my date with Redell, I went over all the material I had, hoping
+to find some clue to the space visitors’ planet. It was possible, of
+course, that there was more than one planet involved.
+
+Project “Saucer” had discussed the possibilities in it! report of April
+27, 1949. I read over this section again:
+
+
+Since flying saucers first hit the headlines almost two years ago,
+there has been wide speculation that the aerial phenomena might
+actually be some form of penetration from another planet.
+
+Actually, astronomers are largely in agreement that only one member of
+the solar system beside Earth is capable of supporting life. That is
+Mars. Even Mars, however, appears to be relatively desolate and
+inhospitable, so that a Martian race would be more occupied with
+survival than we are on Earth.
+
+On Mars, there exists an excessively slow loss of atmosphere, oxygen
+and water, against which intelligent beings, if they do exist there,
+may have protected themselves by scientific control of physical
+conditions. This might have been done, scientists speculate, by the
+construction of homes and cities underground where the atmospheric
+pressure would be greater and thus temperature extremes reduced. The
+other possibilities exist, of course, that evolution may have developed
+a being who can withstand the rigors of the Martian climate, or that
+the race—if it ever did exist—has perished.
+
+In other words, the existence of intelligent life on Mars, where the
+rare atmosphere is nearly devoid of oxygen and water and where the
+nights are much colder than our Arctic winters, is not impossible but
+is completely unproven.
+
+The possibility of intelligent life also existing on the planet Venus
+is not considered completely unreasonable by astronomers. The
+atmosphere of Venus apparently consists mostly of carbon dioxide with
+deep clouds of formaldehyde droplets, and there seems to be little or
+no water. Yet, scientists concede that living organisms might develop
+in chemical environments which are strange to us. Venus, however, has
+two handicaps. Her mass and gravity are nearly as large as the Earth
+(Mars is smaller) and her cloudy atmosphere would discourage astronomy,
+hence space travel.
+
+
+The last argument, I thought, did not have too much weight. We were
+planning to escape the earth’s gravity; Martians could do the same,
+with their planet. As for the cloudy atmosphere, they could have
+developed some system of radio or radar investigation of the universe.
+The Navy research units, I knew, were probing the far-off Crab nebula
+in the Milky Way with special radio devices. This same method, or
+something far superior, could have been developed on Venus, or other
+planets surrounded by constant clouds.
+
+After the discussion of solar-system planets, the Project “Saucer”
+report went on to other star systems:
+
+
+Outside the solar system other stars—22 in number—have satellite
+planets. Our sun has nine. One of these, the Earth, is ideal for
+existence of intelligent life. On two others there is a possibility of
+life.
+
+
+Therefore, astronomers believe reasonable the thesis that there could
+be at least one ideally habitable planet for each of the 22 other
+eligible stars.
+
+After publication of our findings in _True_, several astronomers said
+that many planets may be inhabited. One of these was Dr. Carl F. von
+Weizacker, noted University of Chicago physicist. On January 10, 1950,
+Dr. von Weizacker stated: “Billions upon billions of stars found in the
+heavens may each have their own planets revolving about them. It is
+possible that these planets would have plant and animal life on them
+similar to the earth’s.”
+
+After narrowing the eligible stars down to twenty-two the Project
+“Saucer” report goes on:
+
+
+The theory is also employed that man represents the average in
+advancement and development. Therefore, one-half the other habitable
+planets would be behind man in development, and the other half ahead.
+It is also assumed that any visiting race could be expected to be far
+in advance of man. Thus, the chance of space travelers existing at
+planets attached to neighboring stars is very much greater than the
+chance of space-traveling Martians. The one can be viewed as almost a
+certainty (if you accept the thesis that the number of inhabited
+planets is equal to those that are suitable for life and that
+intelligent life is not peculiar to the Earth) .”
+
+
+The most likely star was Wolf 359—eight light-years away. I thought for
+a minute about traveling that vast distance. It was almost appalling,
+considered in terms of man’s life span. Of course, dwellers on other
+planets might live much longer.
+
+If the speed of light was not an absolute limit, almost any space
+journey would then be possible. Since there would be no resistance in
+outer space, it would be simply a matter of using rocket power in the
+first stages to accelerate to the maximum speed desired. In the latter
+phase, the rocket’s drive would have to be reversed, to decelerate for
+the landing.
+
+The night before my appointment with Redell, I was checking a case
+report when the phone rang. It was John Steele.
+
+“Are you still working on the saucers?” he asked. “If you are, I have a
+suggestion—something that might be a real lead.”
+
+“I could use a lead right now,” I told him.
+
+“I can’t give you the source, but it’s one I consider reliable,” said
+Steele. “This man says the disks are British developments.”
+
+This was a new one. I hadn’t considered the British. Steele talked for
+over half an hour, expanding the idea. The saucers, his informant said,
+were rotating disks with cambered surfaces—originally a Nazi device.
+Near the end of the war, the British had seized all the models, along
+with the German technicians and scientists who had worked on the
+project.
+
+The first British types had been developed secretly in England,
+according to this account. But the first tests showed a dangerous lack
+of control; the disks streaked up to high altitudes, hurtling without
+direction. Some had been seen over the Atlantic, some in Turkey, Spain,
+and other parts of Europe.
+
+The British then had shifted operations to Australia, where a
+guided-missile test range had been set up. (This part, I knew, could be
+true; there was such a range.) After improving their remote-control
+system, which used both radio and radar, they had built disks up to a
+hundred feet in diameter. These were launched out over the Pacific, the
+first ones straight eastward over open sea. British destroyers were
+stationed at 100-mile and later 500-mile intervals, to track the
+missiles by radar and correct their courses. At a set time, when their
+fuel was almost exhausted, the disks came down vertically and landed in
+the ocean. Since part of the device was sealed, the disks would float;
+then a special launching ship would hoist them abroad, refuel them, and
+launch them back toward a remote base in Australia, where they were
+landed by remote control.
+
+Since then, Steele said, the disks’ range and speed had been greatly
+increased. The first tests of the new disks was in the spring of 1947,
+his informant had told him. The British had rushed the project, because
+of Soviet Russia’s menacing attitude. Their only defense in England,
+the British knew, would be some powerful guided missile that could
+destroy Soviet bases after the first attack.
+
+In order to check the range and speeds accurately, it was necessary to
+have observers in the Western Hemisphere—the disks were now traversing
+the Pacific. The ideal test range, the British decided, was one
+extending over Canada, where the disks could be tracked and even
+landed.
+
+If the account was right, said Steele, a base had been set up in the
+desolate Hudson Bay country. Special radar-tracking stations had also
+been established, to guide the missiles toward Australia and vessels at
+sea. These stations also helped to bring in missiles from Australia.
+
+Some of the disk missiles were supposed to have been launched from a
+British island in the South Pacific; others came all the way from
+Australia. Still others were believed to have been launched by a mother
+ship stationed between the Galapagos Islands and Pitcairn.
+
+It was these new disks that had been seen in the United States, Alaska,
+Canada, and Latin America, Steele’s informant had told him. At first,
+the sightings were due to imperfect controls; the disks sometimes
+failed to keep their altitude, partly because of conflicting radio and
+radar beams from the countries below. Responding to some of these mixed
+signals, Steele said, the disks had been known to reverse course, hover
+or descend over radar and radio stations, or circle around at high
+speeds until their own control system picked them up again.
+
+For this reason, the British had arranged a simple detonator system,
+operated either by remote control or automatically under certain
+conditions. In this way, no disk would crash over land, with the danger
+of hitting a populated area. If it descended below a certain altitude,
+the disk would automatically speed up its rotation, then explode at a
+high altitude. When radar trackers saw that a disk was off course and
+could not be realigned, the nearest station then sent a special signal
+to activate the detonator system. This was always done, Steele had been
+told, when a disk headed toward Siberia; there had previously been a
+few cases when Australian-launched disks had got away from controllers
+and appeared over Europe.
+
+I listened to Steele’s account with mixed astonishment and suspicion.
+It sounded like a pipe dream; but if it was, it had been carefully
+thought out, especially the details that followed.
+
+At first, Steele said, American defense officials had been completely
+baffled by the disk reports. Then the British, learning about the
+sightings, had hastily explained to top-level American officials. An
+agreement had been worked out. We were to have the benefit of their
+research and testing and working models, in return for helping to
+conceal the secret. We were also to aid in tracking and controlling the
+missiles when they passed over this country.
+
+“And I gather we paid in other ways,” Steele said. “My source says this
+played a big part in increasing our aid to Britain, including certain
+atomic secrets.”
+
+That could make sense. Sharing such a secret would be worth all the
+money and supplies we had poured into England. If America and Great
+Britain both had a superior long-range missile, it would be the biggest
+factor I knew for holding off war. But the long ranges involved in
+Steele’s explanation made the thing incredible.
+
+“How are they powered? What fuel do they use?” I asked him.
+
+“That’s the one thing I couldn’t get,” said Steele. “This man told me
+it was the most carefully guarded secret of all. They’ve tapped a new
+source of power.”
+
+“If he means atomic engines,” I said, “I don’t believe it. I don’t
+think anyone is that far along.”
+
+“No, no,” Steele said earnestly, “he said it wasn’t that. And the rest
+of the story hangs together.”
+
+Privately, I thought of two or three holes, but I let that go.
+
+“If it’s British,” I said, “do you think we should even hint at it?”
+
+“I don’t see any harm,” Steele answered. “The Russians undoubtedly know
+the truth. They have agents everywhere. It might do a lot of good for
+American-British relations. Anyway, it would offset any fear that the
+saucers are Soviet weapons.”
+
+“Then you’re not worried about that angle any more?”
+
+Steele laughed. “No, but it had me going for a while. It was a big
+relief to find out the disks are British.”
+
+“What’s the disks’ ceiling?” I asked, abruptly.
+
+“Oh—sixty thousand feet, at least,” said Steele. After a moment he
+added quickly, “That’s just a guess—they probably operate much higher.
+I didn’t think to ask.”
+
+Before I hung up, he asked me what I thought, of the British
+explanation.
+
+“It’s certainly more plausible than the Soviet idea,” I said. I thanked
+him for calling me, and put down the phone. I was tempted to point out
+the flaws in his story. But I didn’t.
+
+If he was sincere, it would be poor thanks for what he had told me. If
+he was trying to plant a fake explanation, it wouldn’t hurt to let him
+think I’d swallowed it. When I saw Redell, I told him about Steele.
+
+“It does look like an attempt to steer you away from the interplanetary
+answer,” Redell agreed, “though he may be passing on a tip he
+believes.”
+
+“You think there could be any truth in the British story?”
+
+“Would the British risk a hundred-foot disk crashing in some American
+city?” said Redell. “No remote control is perfect, and neither is a
+detonator system. By some freak accident, a disk might come down in a
+place like Chicago, and then blow up. I just can’t see the British—any
+more than ourselves—letting huge unpiloted missiles go barging around
+the world, flying along airways and over cities. Certainly, they could
+have automatic devices to make them veer away from airliners—but what
+if a circuit failed?”
+
+“I go along with that,” I said.
+
+“I don’t say the British don’t have some long-range missiles,” Redell
+broke in. “Every big nation has a guided-missile project. But no guided
+missile on earth can explain the Mantell case and the others we’ve
+discussed.”
+
+I showed him the material I had on the Nazi disk experiments. Redell
+skimmed through it and nodded.
+
+“I can tell you a little more,” he said. “Some top Nazi scientists were
+convinced we were being observed by space visitors. They’d searched all
+the old reports. Some sighting over Germany set them off about 1940.
+That’s what I was told. I think that’s where they first got the idea of
+trying out oval and circular airfoils.
+
+“Up to then, nobody was interested. The rotation idea uses the same
+principle as the helicopter, but nobody had even followed that through.
+The Nazis went to work on the disks. They also began to rush
+space-exploration plans—the orbiting satellite idea. I think they
+realized these space ships were using some great source of power we
+hadn’t discovered on earth. I believe that’s what they were after—that
+power secret. If they’d succeeded, they’d have owned the world. As it
+was, that space project caused them to leap ahead of everybody with
+rockets.”
+
+When I asked Redell how he thought the space ships were powered, he
+shrugged.
+
+“Probably cosmic rays hold the answer. Their power would be even
+greater than atomic power. There’s another source I’ve heard mentioned,
+but most people scoff at it. That’s the use of electromagnetic fields
+in space. The earth has its magnetic field, of course, and so does the
+sun. Probably all planets do.
+
+“There’s a man named Fernand Roussel who wrote a book called _The
+Unifying Principle of Physical Phenomena_, about 1943. He goes into the
+electromagnetic-field theory. If he’s right, then there must be some
+way to tap this force and go from one planet to another without using
+any fuel. You’d use your first planet’s magnetic field to start you off
+and then coast through space until you got into the field of the next
+planet. At least, that’s how I understand it. But you’d be safer
+sticking to atomic power. That’s been proved.”
+
+Most of our conversations had been keyed to the technical side of the
+flying-saucer problem. But before I left this time, I asked Redell how
+the thought of space visitors affected him.
+
+“Oh, at first I had a queer feeling about it,” he answered. “But once
+you accept it, it’s like anything else. You get used to the idea.”
+
+“One thing bothers me,” I said. “When I try to picture them, I keep
+remembering the crazy-looking things in some of the comics. What do you
+suppose they’re really like?”
+
+“I’ve thought about it for months.” Redell slowly shook his head. “I
+haven’t the slightest idea.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+That evening, after my talk with Redell, the question kept coming back
+in my mind. What were they like? And what were they doing here?
+
+From the long record of sightings, it was possible to get an answer to
+the second question. Observation of the earth followed a general
+pattern. According to the reports, Europe, the most populated area, had
+been more closely observed than the rest of the globe until about 1870.
+By this time, the United States, beginning to rival Europe in
+industrial progress, had evidently become of interest to the space-ship
+crews.
+
+From then on, Europe and the Western Hemisphere, chiefly North America,
+shared the observers’ attention. The few sightings reported at other
+points around the world indicate an occasional check-up on the earth in
+general. Apparently World War I had not greatly concerned the space
+observers. One reason might be that our aerial operations were still at
+a relatively low altitude.
+
+But World War II had drawn more attention, and this had obviously
+increased from 1947 up to the present time. Our atomic-bomb explosions
+and the V-2 high-altitude experiments might be only coincidence, but I
+could think of no other development that might seriously concern
+dwellers on other planets.
+
+It was a strange thing to think of some far-off race keeping track of
+the earth’s progress. If Redell was right, it might even have started
+in prehistoric time; a brief survey, perhaps once a century or even
+further spaced, then gradually more frequent observation as cities
+appeared on the earth.
+
+Somewhere on a distant planet there would be records of that long
+survey. I wondered how our development would appear to that
+far-advanced race. They would have seen the slow sailing ships, the
+first steamships, the lines of steel tracks that carried our first
+trains.
+
+Watching for our first aircraft, they would see the drifting balloons
+that seemed an aerial miracle when the Montgolfiers first succeeded.
+More than a century later, they would have noted the slow, clumsy
+airplanes of the early 1900’s. From our gradual progress to the big
+planes and bombers of today, they could probably chart our next steps
+toward the stratosphere—and then space.
+
+During the last two centuries, they would have watched a dozen wars,
+each one fiercer than the last, spreading over the globe. Adding up all
+the things they had seen, they could draw an accurate picture of man,
+the earth creature, and the increasingly fierce struggle between the
+earth races.
+
+The long survey held no sign of menace. If there had been a guiding
+purpose of attack and destruction, it could have been carried out years
+ago. It was almost certain that any planet race able to traverse space
+would have the means for attack.
+
+More than once, during this investigation, I had been asked: “If the
+saucers are interplanetary, why haven’t they landed here? Why haven’t
+their crews tried to make contact with us?”
+
+There was always the possibility that the planet race or races could
+not survive on earth, or that their communications did not include the
+methods that we used. But I found that hard to believe. Such a superior
+race would certainly be able to master our radio operations, or
+anything else that we had developed, in a fairly short time. And it
+should be equally simple to devise some means of survival on earth,
+just as we were already planning special suits and helmets for
+existence on the moon. During a talk with a former Intelligence
+officer, I got a key to the probable explanation.
+
+“Why don’t you just reverse it—list what we intend to do when we start
+exploring space? That’ll give you the approximate picture of what
+visitors to the earth would be doing.”
+
+Naturally, all the details of space plans have not been worked out, but
+the general plan is clear. After the first successful earth satellites,
+we will either attempt a space base farther out or else launch a moon
+rocket. Probably many round trips to the moon will be made before going
+farther in space. Which planet will be explored first, after the moon?
+
+According to Air Force reports, it is almost a certainty that planets
+outside the solar system are inhabited. But because of the vast
+distances involved, expeditions to our neighboring planets may be tried
+before the more formidable journeys. More than one prominent astronomer
+believes that life, entirely different from our own, may exist on some
+solar planets. Besides Mars, Jupiter, and Venus, there are five more
+that, like the earth, revolve around the sun.
+
+One of the prominent authorities is Dr. H. Spencer Jones, Astronomer
+Royal. In his book _Life on Other Worlds_, Dr. Jones points out that
+everything about us is the result of changing processes, begun
+millenniums ago and still going on. We cannot define life solely in our
+own terms; it can exist in unfamiliar forms.
+
+“It is conceivable,” Dr. Jones states in his book, “that we could have
+beings, the cells of whose bodies contained silicon instead of the
+carbon which is an essential constituent of our cells and of all other
+living cells on the earth. And that because of this essential
+difference between the constitution of those cells and the cells of
+which animal and plant life on the earth are built up, they might be
+able to exist at temperatures so high that no terrestrial types of life
+could survive.”
+
+According to Dr. Jones, then, life could be possible on worlds hotter
+and drier than ours; it could also exist on a very much colder one,
+such as Mars.
+
+Even if a survey of the sun’s planets proved fruitless, it would decide
+the question of their being populated. Also, it would provide valuable
+experience for the much longer journeys into space.
+
+No one expects such a survey until we have a space vehicle able to make
+the round trip. One-way trips would tell us nothing, even if volunteers
+offered to make such suicidal journeys.
+
+The most probable step will be to launch a space vehicle equipped with
+supplies for a long time, perhaps a year or two, within the solar
+system. Since Mars has been frequently mentioned as a source of the
+flying saucers, let’s assume it would be the first solar-system planet
+to be explored from the earth.
+
+As the space ship neared Mars, it could be turned to circle the planet
+in an orbit, just like our planned earth satellite vehicle. Once in
+this orbit, it could circle indefinitely without using fuel except to
+correct its course.
+
+From this space base, unmanned remote-control “observer” units with
+television “eyes” or other transmitters would be sent down to survey
+the planet at close range. If it then seemed fairly safe, a manned unit
+could be released to make a more thorough check-up.
+
+Such preliminary caution would be imperative. Our explorers would have
+no idea of what awaited them. The planet might be uninhabited. It might
+be peopled by a fiercely barbarous race unaware of civilization as we
+know it. Or it might have a civilization far in advance of ours.
+
+The explorers would first try to get a general idea of the whole
+planet. Then they would attempt to examine the most densely populated
+areas, types of armature, any aircraft likely to attack them. Combing
+the radio spectrum, they would pick up and record sounds and signals in
+order to decipher the language.
+
+As on earth, they might hear a hodgepodge of tongues. The next step
+would be to select the most technically advanced nation, listen in, and
+try to learn its language, or record it for deciphering afterward on
+earth.
+
+Our astronomers already have analyzed Mars’s atmosphere, but the
+explorers would have to confirm their reports, to find out whether the
+atmosphere at the surface would support their lungs if they landed. The
+easiest way would be to send down manned or unmanned units with special
+apparatus to scoop in atmosphere samples. Later analysis would tell
+whether earthlings would need oxygen-helmet suits such as we plan to
+use on the moon.
+
+But before risking flight at such low altitudes, the explorers would
+first learn everything possible about the planet’s aircraft, if any.
+They would try to determine their top ceiling, maximum speed,
+maneuverability, and if possible their weapons. Mitch of this could be
+done by sending down remote-control “observer” disks, or whatever type
+we decide to use. A manned unit might make a survey at night, or in
+daytime with clouds nearby to shield it. By hovering over the planet’s
+aircraft bases, the explorers could get most of the picture, and also
+decide whether the bases were suitable for their own use later.
+
+It might even be necessary to lure some Martian aircraft into pursuit
+of our units, to find out their performance. But our explorers would
+above all avoid any sign of hostility; they would hastily. withdraw to
+show they had no warlike intentions.
+
+If the appearance of our observer units and manned craft caused too
+violent reactions on the planet, the explorers would withdraw to their
+orbiting space vehicle and either wait for a lull or else start the
+long trip back home. Another interplanetary craft from the earth might
+take its place later to resume periodic surveys.
+
+In this way, a vast amount of information could be collected without
+once making contact with the strange race. If they seemed belligerent
+or uncivilized, we would probably end our survey and check on the next
+possibly inhabited planet. If we found they were highly civilized, we
+would undoubtedly attempt later contact. But it might take a long time,
+decades of observation and analysis, before we were ready for that
+final step.
+
+We might find a civilization not quite so advanced as ours. It might
+not yet have developed radio and television. We would then have no way
+of getting a detailed picture, learning the languages, or communicating
+with. the Martians. Analysis of their atmosphere might show a great
+hazard to earthlings, one making it impossible to land or requiring
+years of research to overcome. There might be other obstacles beyond
+our present understanding.
+
+This same procedure would apply to the rest of the solar-system planets
+and to more distant systems. Since Wolf 359 is the nearest star outside
+our system that is likely to have inhabited planets, one of these
+planets would probably be listed as the first to explore in far-distant
+space. It would be a tremendous undertaking, unless the speed of light
+can be exceeded in space. Since Wolf 359 is eight light-years from the
+earth, even if a space ship traveled at the theoretical maximum—just
+under 186,00 miles a second—it would take over sixteen years for the
+round trip. Detailed observation of the planet would add to this
+period.
+
+If we assume half that speed—which would still be an incredible
+attainment with our present knowledge—our space explorers would have to
+dedicate at least thirty-two years to the hazardous, lonely round trip.
+However, there has never been a lack of volunteers for grand
+undertakings in the history of man.
+
+It is quite possible that in our survey of the solar-system planets we
+would find some inhabited, but not advanced enough to be of interest to
+us. Periodically, we might make return visits to note their progress.
+Meantime, our astronomers would watch these planets, probably
+developing new, higher powered telescopes for the purpose, to detect
+any signs of unusual activity. Any tremendous explosion on a planet
+would immediately concern us.
+
+Such an explosion, on Mars, was reported by astronomers on January 16,
+1950. The cause and general effects are still being debated. Sadao
+Saeki, the Japanese astronomer who first reported it at Osaka, believes
+it was of volcanic nature.
+
+The explosion created a cloud over an area about seven hundred miles in
+diameter and forty miles high. It was dull gray with a yellowish tinge
+and a different color from the atmospheric phenomena customarily seen
+near Mars. Saeki believes the blast might have destroyed any form of
+life existing on the planet, but even though the telescopic camera
+recorded a violent explosion, other authorities do not believe the
+planet was wrecked. The canals first discovered on Mars by Giovanni
+Schiaparelli, about 1877, are still apparent on photographs.
+
+Mars is now being carefully watched by astronomers. If there are more
+of the strange explosions, the planet will be scanned constantly for
+some clue to their nature. If a mysterious explosion on Mars, or any
+other planet, were found of atomic origin, it would cause serious
+concern on earth. Suppose for a moment that it happened many years from
+now, when we will have succeeded in space explorations. At this time,
+let us assume our explorers have found that Mars is experimenting with
+high-altitude rockets; some of them have been seen, rising at
+tremendous speed, in the upper atmosphere of Mars.
+
+Then comes this violent explosion. A scientific analysis of the cloud
+by astrophysicists here on earth proves it was of atomic origin.
+
+The first reaction would undoubtedly be an immediate resurvey of Mars.
+As quickly as possible, we would establish an orbiting space base—out
+of range of Martian rockets—and try to find how far they had advanced
+with atomic bombs.
+
+Samples of the Martian atmosphere would be collected and analyzed for
+telltale radiation. Observer units would be flown over the planet, with
+instruments to locate atom-bomb plants and possibly uranium deposits.
+The rocket-launching bases would also come under close observation. We
+would try to learn how close the scientists were to escaping the pull
+of gravity. Since Mars’s gravity is much less than the earth’s, the
+Martians would not have so far to progress before succeeding in space
+travel.
+
+The detailed survey by our space-base observers would probably show
+that there was no immediate danger to the earth. It might take one
+hundred years—perhaps five hundred—before the Martians could be a
+problem. Eventually, the time would come when Mars would send out
+space-ship explorers. They would undoubtedly discover that the earth
+was populated with a technically advanced civilization. Any warlike
+ideas they had in mind could be quickly ended by a show of our superior
+space craft and our own atomic weapons—probably far superior to any on
+Mars. It might even be possible that by then we would have finally
+outlawed war; if so, a promise to share the peaceful benefits of our
+technical knowledge might be enough to bring Martian leaders into line.
+
+Regardless of our final decision, we would certainly keep a lose watch
+on Mars—or any other planet that seemed a possible threat.
+
+Now, if our space-exploration program is just reversed, it will give a
+reasonable picture of how visitors from space might go about
+investigating the earth. Such an investigation would tie in with the
+general pattern of authentic flying-saucer reports:
+
+1. World-wide sightings at long intervals up to the middle of the
+nineteenth century.
+
+2. Concentration on Europe, as the most advanced section of the globe,
+until late in the nineteenth century.
+
+3. Frequent surveys of America in the latter part of the nineteenth
+century, as we began to develop industrially, with cities springing up
+across the land.
+
+4. Periodic surveys of both America and Europe during the gradual
+development of aircraft, from the early 1900’s up to World War II.
+
+5. An increase of observation during World War II, after German V-2’s
+were launched up into the stratosphere.
+
+6. A steadily increasing survey after our atomic-bomb explosions in New
+Mexico, Japan, Bikini, and Eniwetok.
+
+7. A second spurt of observations following atom-bomb explosions in
+Soviet Russia.
+
+8. Continuing observations of the earth at regular intervals, with most
+attention concentrated on the United States, the present leader in
+atomic weapons. (Saucers have been reported seen over the Soviet Union,
+but the number is unknown. There is some evidence that Russia has an
+investigative unit similar to Project “Saucer.”)
+
+There are other points of similarity to the program of American space
+exploration that I have outlined. Most of the extremely large saucers
+have been at high altitudes, some of them many miles above the earth.
+At that height, a space ship would be in no danger from our planes and
+antiaircraft guns and rockets. The smaller disks and the mystery lights
+have been seen at low altitudes. Occasionally a larger saucer has been
+seen to approach the earth briefly, as at Lockbourne Air Force Base, at
+Bethel, Alabama, at Macon and Montgomery, and other places. It has been
+suggested that this was for the purpose of securing atmospheric
+samples. It could also be to afford personal observation by the crews.
+
+The numerous small disks seen in the first part of the scare, in 1947,
+fit the pattern for preliminary and close observation by
+remote-controlled observer units. As the scare increased, the daytime
+sightings decreased for a while, and mystery lights began to be seen
+more often. This apparent desire to avoid unfavorable attention could
+have been caused by our pilots’ repeated attempts to chase the strange
+flying objects.
+
+Authentic reports have described sightings; over the following Air
+Force bases: Chanute, Newark, Andrews, Hickam, Robbins, Godman, Clark,
+Fairfield Suisan, Davis-Monthan, Harmon, Wright-Patterson, Holloman,
+Clinton County Air Force Base, and air bases in Alaska, Germany, and
+the Azores. Saucers have also been sighted over naval air stations at
+Dallas, Alameda, and Key West, and from the station at Seattle. They
+have been reported maneuvering over the White Sands Proving Ground,
+over areas containing atomic developments, above the Muroc Air Base
+testing area, and over the super-secret research base near Albuquerque.
+
+Several times saucers have paced both military and civil aircraft;
+their actions strongly indicate deliberate encounters to learn our
+planes’ speed and performance.
+
+It seems obvious that both the planes and the bases were being
+observed, and in some cases photographed by remote-control units or
+manned space ships.
+
+Although I thought it improbable that the location of our uranium
+deposits would be of interest to space men, a Washington official told
+me it would be relatively simple to detect the ore areas with airborne
+instruments.
+
+“The Geological Survey has already developed special Geiger counters
+for planes,” he told me. “They had a little trouble from cosmic-ray
+noise. They finally had to cover the Geigers with lead shields.
+Whenever an important amount of radiation is present in the ground, the
+plane crew gets a signal, and they spot the place on their map. It’s a
+quick way of locating valuable deposits.”
+
+When I told him what I had in mind, he suggested an angle I had not
+considered.
+
+“Mind you,” he said, “I’m not completely sold on the interplanetary
+answer. But assuming it’s correct that we’re being observed, I can
+think of a stronger reason than fear of some distant attack. Some
+atomic scientists say that a super-atomic bomb, or several set off at
+once, could knock the earth out of its orbit. It sounds fantastic, but
+so is the A-bomb. It’s just possible that some solar-planet race
+discovered the dangers long ago. They would have good reason to worry
+if they found we were on that same track. There may be some other
+atomic weapon we don’t suspect, even worse than the A-bomb, one that
+could destroy the earth and seriously affect other planets.”
+
+At the time, I thought this was just idle speculation. But since then,
+several atomic scientists have confirmed this official’s suggestion.
+One of these was Dr. Paul Elliott, a nuclear physicist who worked on
+the A-bomb during the war.
+
+According to Dr. Elliott, if several hydrogen bombs were exploded
+simultaneously at a high altitude, it could speed up the earth’s
+rotation or change its orbit. He based his statement on the rate of
+energy the earth receives from the sun, a rate equal to some four
+pounds of hydrogen exploded every second. Still other atomic scientists
+have said that H-bomb explosions might even knock a large chunk out of
+the earth, with unpredictable results.
+
+A dramatic picture of what might happen if the earth were forced far
+out of its orbit is indicated in the much-discussed book _Worlds in
+Collision_, by Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky, recently published by
+Macmillan. After many years of research, Dr. Velikovsky presents strong
+evidence that the planet Venus, when still a comet resulting from
+eruption from a larger planet, moved erratically about the sky and
+violently disturbed both the earth and Mars.
+
+When the comet approached the earth, our planet was forced out of its
+orbit, according to Worlds in Collision. For a time, the world was on
+the brink of destruction. Quoting many authentic ancient records,
+including the Quiché manuscript of the Mayas, the Ipuwer papyrus of the
+Egyptians, and the Visiddhi-Magga of the Buddhists, Dr. Velikovsky
+describes the cataclysm that took place. “The face of the earth
+changed,” he writes in his book. The details, reinforced by the
+Zend-Avesta of the Persians, tell of tremendous hurricanes, of a major
+upheaval in the earth’s surface, of oceans rushing over many parts of
+the land, while rivers were driven from their beds. Some of the events
+in this period are mentioned in the Bible.
+
+Professor Horace M. Kallen, former dean of the New School of Social
+Research, strongly endorses Dr. Velikovsky’s statements: “It is my
+belief that Velikovsky has supported his theses with substantial
+evidence and made an effective and persuasive argument.”
+
+Many other authorities endorse this work, which is documented with
+impressive references. But even if this particular account is not
+accepted, all astronomers agree that the effect of a comet passing near
+the earth would be appalling. _Worlds in Collision_ states that Mars,
+like the earth, was pulled out of its orbit by the comet’s erratic
+passage. It may be that this near disaster to the earth and Mars is
+known on other solar planets, or remembered on Mars itself, if the
+planet is inhabited.
+
+The possibility of super-bomb explosions on the earth understandably
+disturb any dwellers on other solar-system planets.
+
+This may be what was back of the Project “Saucer” statement on the
+probable motives of any visitors from space. I mentioned this Air Force
+statement in an earlier chapter, but it may be of interest to repeat it
+at this time. The comment appeared in a confidential analysis of
+Intelligence reports, in the formerly secret Project “Saucer” document,
+“Report on Unidentified Aerial and Celestial Objects.” It reads as
+follows:
+
+“Such a civilization might observe that on earth we now have atomic
+bombs and are fast developing rockets. In view of the past history of
+mankind, they should be alarmed. We should therefore expect at this
+time above all to behold such visitations.
+
+“Since the acts of mankind most easily observed from a distance are
+A-bomb explosions, we should expect some relation to obtain between the
+time of the A-bomb explosions, the time at which the space ships are
+seen, and the time required for such ships to arrive from and return to
+home base.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+It was early in October 1949 when I finished the reversal of our
+space-exploration plans. I spent the next two days running down a
+sighting report from a town in Pennsylvania. Like three or four other
+tips that had seemed important at first, it turned out to be a dud.
+
+When I got back home, I found Ken Purdy had been trying to reach me. I
+phoned him at True, and he asked me to fly up to New York the next day.
+
+“I’ve just heard there’s another magazine working on the saucer story,”
+he told me.
+
+“Who is it?” I said.
+
+“I don’t know yet. It may be just a rumor, but we can’t take a chance.
+We’ve got to get this in the January book.”
+
+That night I gathered up all the material. It looked hopeless to
+condense it into one article, and I knew that Purdy had even more
+investigators’ reports waiting for me in New York. Flying up the next
+morning, I suddenly thought of a talk I’d had with an air transport
+official. It was in Washington; I had just told him about the
+investigation.
+
+“If they are spacemen,” he said, “they’d probably have a hard time
+figuring out this country by listening to our broadcasts. Imagine
+tuning in soap operas, ‘The Lone Ranger,’ and a couple of crime yarns,
+along with newscasts about strikes and murders and the cold war. They
+might pick up some of those kid programs about rocket ships. A few days
+of listening to that stuff—well, it would give them one hell of a
+picture.”
+
+Except for some hoax reports, this was the first funny suggestion I’d
+had about the spacemen. But now, thinking seriously about it, I
+realized he had an important point. It was possible that men from
+another planet might have to reorient even their way of thinking to
+understand the earth’s ways. It would not be automatic, despite their
+superior technical progress. Evolution might have produced basic
+differences in their understanding of life. Humor, for instance, might
+be totally lacking in their make-up.
+
+What would they be like?
+
+I’d tried to imagine how they might look, without getting anywhere. Dr.
+H. Spencer Jones hadn’t helped much with his _Life on Other Worlds_. I
+couldn’t begin to visualize beings with totally different cells,
+perhaps able to take terrific heat or bitter cold as merely normal
+weather.
+
+There were all kinds of possibilities. If they lived on Mars, for
+instance, perhaps they couldn’t take the heavier gravity of the earth.
+They might be easily subject to our diseases, especially if they had
+destroyed disease germs on their planet—a natural step for an advanced
+race.
+
+It was possible, I knew, that the spacemen might look grotesque to us.
+But I clung to a Stubborn feeling that they would resemble man. That
+came, of course, from an inborn feeling of man’s superiority over all
+living things. It carried over into a feeling that any thinking,
+intelligent being, whether on Mars or Wolf 359’s planets, should have
+evolved in the same form.
+
+I gave up trying to imagine how the spacemen might look. There was
+simply nothing to go on. But there were strong indications of how they
+thought and reacted. Certain qualities were plainly evident.
+
+_Intelligence_. No one could dispute that. It took a high order of
+mentality to construct and operate a space ship.
+
+_Courage_. It would take brave men to face the hazards of space.
+
+_Curiosity_. Without this quality, they would never have thought to
+explore far-distant planets.
+
+There were other qualities that seemed almost equally certain. These
+spacemen apparently lacked belligerence; there had been no sign of
+hostility through all the years. They were seemingly painstaking and
+extremely methodical.
+
+It was still not much of a picture. But somehow, it was encouraging.
+Glancing down from the plane’s window, I thought: How does this look to
+them? Our farms, our cities, the railroads there below; the highways,
+with the speeding cars and trucks; the winding river, and far off to
+the right, the broad stretch of the Atlantic. What would they think of
+America?
+
+Manhattan came into sight, as the pilot let down for the landing. An
+odd thought popped into my mind. How would a spaceman react if he saw a
+Broadway show?
+
+Not long before, I had seen South Pacific. I could still hear Ezio
+Pinza’s magnificent voice as he sang “Some Enchanted Evening.”
+
+Was music a part of spacemen’s lives, or would it be something new and
+strange, perhaps completely distasteful?
+
+They might live and think on a coldly intelligent level, without a
+touch of what we know as emotion. To them, our lives might seem
+meaningless and dull. We ourselves might appear grotesque in form.
+
+But in their progress, there must have been struggle, trial and error,
+some feeling of triumph at success. Surely these would be emotional
+forces, bound to reflect in the planet races. Perhaps, in spite of some
+differences, we would find a common bond—the bond of thinking,
+intelligent creatures trying to better themselves.
+
+The airliner landed and taxied in to unload.
+
+As I went down the gangway I suddenly realized something. My last vague
+fear was gone.
+
+It had not been a personal fear of the visitors from space. It had been
+a selfish fear of the impact on my life. I realized that now.
+
+It might be a long time before they would try to make contact. But I
+had a conviction that when it came, it would be a peaceful mission, not
+an ultimatum. It could even be the means of ending wars on earth.
+
+But I had been conditioned to this thing. I had had six months of
+preparation, six months to go from complete skepticism to slow, final
+acceptance.
+
+What if it had been thrown at me in black headlines?
+
+Even a peaceful contact by beings from another planet would profoundly
+affect the world. The story in _True_ might play an important part in
+that final effect. Carefully done, it could help prepare Americans for
+the official disclosure.
+
+But if it weren’t done right, we might be opening a Pandora’s box.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+That morning, at _True_, we made the final decisions on how to handle
+the story. Using the evidence of the Mantell case, the Chiles-Whitted
+report, Gorman’s mystery-light encounter, and other authentic cases,
+along with the records of early sightings, we would state our main
+conclusion: _that the flying saucers were interplanetary_.
+
+In going over the mass of reports, Purdy and I both realized that a few
+sightings did not fit the space-observer pattern. Most of these reports
+came from the southwest states, where guided-missile experiments were
+going on.
+
+Purdy agreed with Paul Redell that any long-range tests would be made
+over the sea or unpopulated areas, with every attempt at secrecy.
+
+“They might make short-range tests down there in New Mexico and
+Arizona-maybe over Texas,” he said. “But they’d never risk killing
+people by shooting the things all over the country.”
+
+“They’ve already set up a three-thousand-mile range for the longer
+runs,” I added. “It runs from Florida into the South Atlantic. And the
+Navy missiles at Point Mugu are launched out over the Pacific. Any
+guided missiles coming down over settled areas would certainly be an
+accident. Besides all that, no missile on earth can explain these major
+cases.”
+
+Purdy was emphatic about speculating on our guided-missile research.
+
+“Suppose you analyzed these minor cases that look like missile tests.
+You might accidentally give away something important, like their range
+and speeds. Look what the Russians did with the A-bomb hints Washington
+let out.”
+
+It was finally decided that we would briefly mention the guided
+missiles, along with the fact that the armed services had flatly denied
+any link with the saucers.
+
+“After all, interplanetary travel is the main story,” said Purdy. “And
+the Mantell case alone proves we’ve been observed from space ships,
+even without the old records.”
+
+The question of the story’s impact worried both of us. public
+acceptance of intelligent life on other planets would affect almost
+every phase of our existence-business, defense planning, philosophy,
+even religion. Of course, the immediate effect was more important.
+Personally, I thought that most Americans could take even an official
+announcement without too much trouble. But I could be wrong.
+
+“The only yardstick—and that’s not much good—is that ‘little men’
+story,” said Purdy. “A lot of people have got excited about it, but
+they seem more interested than scared.”
+
+The story of the “little men from Venus” had been circulating for some
+time. In the usual version, two flying saucers had come down near our
+southwest border. In the space craft were several oddly dressed men,
+three feet high. All of them were dead; the cause was usually given as
+inability to stand our atmosphere. The Air Force was said to have
+hushed up the story, so that the public could be educated gradually to
+the truth. Though it had all the earmarks of a well-thought-out hoax,
+many newspapers had repeated the story. It had even been broadcast as
+fact on several radio newscasts. But there had been no signs of public
+alarm.
+
+“It looks as if people have come a long way since that Orson Welles
+scare,” I said to Purdy.
+
+“But there isn’t any menace in this story,” he objected. “The crews
+were reported dead, so everybody got the idea that spacemen couldn’t
+live if they landed. What if a space ship should suddenly come down
+over a big city—say New York—low enough for millions of people to see
+it?”
+
+“it might cause a stampede,” I said,
+
+Purdy snorted. “it would be a miracle if it didn’t, unless people had
+been fully prepared. if we do a straight fact piece, just giving the
+evidence, it will start the ball rolling. People at least will be
+thinking about it.”
+
+Before I left for Washington, I told Purdy of my last visit to the
+Pentagon. I had informed Air Force press relations officials of True’s
+intention to publish the space-travel answer. There had been no attempt
+to dissuade me. And I had been told once again that there was no
+security involved; that Project “Saucer” had found nothing threatening
+the safety of America.
+
+At this time I had also asked if Project “Saucer” files were now
+available. The Wright Field unit, I was told, still was a classified
+project, both its files and its photographs secret. This had been the
+first week in October.
+
+When I asked if there was any other information on published cases, the
+answer again was negative. The April 27th report, according to Press
+Branch officials, was still an accurate statement of Air Force opinions
+and policies. So far as they knew, no other explanations had be n found
+for the unidentified saucers.
+
+‘I in absolutely convinced now,” I told Purdy, “that here’s an official
+policy to let the thing leak out. It explains why Forrestal announced
+our Earth Satellite Vehicle program, years before we could even start
+to build it. It also would explain those Project ‘Saucer’ hints in the
+April report.”
+
+“I think we’re being used as a trial balloon,” Purdy said thoughtfully.
+“We’ve let them know what we’re doing. If they’d wanted to stop us, the
+Air Force could easily have done it. All they’d have to do would be
+call us in, give us the dope off the record, and tell us it was a
+patriotic duty to keep still. Just the way they did about uranium and
+atomic experiments during the war.”
+
+He still did not have the name of the other magazine supposed to be
+working on the saucers. But it seemed a reliable tip (it later proved
+to be true), and from then on we worked under high pressure.
+
+In writing the article, I used only the most authentic recent
+sightings; all of the cases were in the Air Force reports. When it came
+to the Mantell case, I stuck to published estimates of the strange
+object’s size; a mysterious ship 250 to 300 feet in diameter was
+startling enough. At first, I chose Mars to illustrate our space
+explorations. But Mars had been associated with the Orson Welles
+stampede. Most discussions of the planet had a menacing note, perhaps
+because of its warlike name.
+
+In the end, I switched to a planet of Wolf 359. The thought of those
+eight light-years would have a comforting effect on any nervous
+readers. The chance of any mass visitation would seem remote, if not
+impossible. But it would still put across the space-travel story.
+
+As finally revised, the article, written under my byline, stated the
+following points as the conclusions reached by _True_:
+
+1. For the past 175 years, the earth has been under systematic
+close-range examination by living, intelligent observers from another
+planet.
+
+2. The intensity of this observation, and the frequency of the visits
+to the earth’s atmosphere, have increased markedly during the past two
+years.
+
+3. The vehicles used for this observation and for interplanetary
+transport by the explorers have been classed as follows: Type I, a
+small, nonpilot-carrying disk-shaped craft equipped with some form of
+television or impulse transmitter; Type II, a very large, metallic,
+disk-shaped aircraft operating on the helicopter principle; Type III, a
+dirigible-shaped, wingless aircraft that, in the Earth’s atmosphere,
+operates in conformance with the Prandtl theory of lift.
+
+4. The discernible patterns of observation and exploration shown by the
+so-called flying disks varies in no important particular from
+well-developed American plans for the exploration of space, expected to
+come to fruition within the next fifty years. There is reason to
+believe, however, that some other race of thinking beings is a matter
+of two and a quarter centuries ahead of us.
+
+Following these points, I added a brief comment on the possibility of
+guided missiles, adding that the Air Force had convincingly denied this
+as an explanation of any sightings. As Purdy had suggested, I carefully
+omitted ten minor cases that I thought might be linked with
+guided-missile research. If disclosing the facts about space travel
+helped to divert attention from any secret tests, so much the better.
+
+“_True_ accepts the official denial of any secret device,” I stated,
+“because the weight of the evidence, especially the world-wide
+sightings, does not support such a belief.”
+
+Most readers, of course, would know that some guided-missile
+experiments were going on, and that _True_ was fully aware of it. But
+our main purpose would be achieved.
+
+The fact that the earth had been observed by beings from another planet
+would be fully presented. Some readers, of course, would reject even
+the fact that the saucers existed. Others would cling to the idea that
+they were of earthly origin. But the mass of evidence would make most
+readers think. At the very least, it would plant one strong suggestion:
+_that we, men and women of the earth, are not the only intelligent
+species in the universe_. When the article was finished, it was tried
+out on True’s staff, then on a picked group that had not known about
+the investigation. One editor summed up the average opinion:
+
+“It will cause a lot of discussion, but the way it’s written, it
+shouldn’t start any panic.”
+
+The January issue, in which the story ran, was due on the stands
+shortly after Christmas. With my family, I had gone to Ottumwa, Iowa,
+to spend the holidays with my mother and sister. While I was there, the
+story broke unexpectedly on radio networks.
+
+Frank Edwards, Mutual network newscaster, led off the radio comment. He
+was followed by Walter Winchell, Lowell Thomas, Morgan Beatty, and most
+of the other radio commentators. The wire services quickly picked it
+up; some papers ran front-page stories.
+
+The publicity was far more than I had expected. I phoned a reporter in
+Washington whose beat includes the Pentagon.
+
+“The Air Force is running around in circles,” he told me. “They knew
+your story was due, but nobody thought it would raise such a fuss. I
+think they’re scared of hysteria. They’re getting a barrage of wires
+and telephone calls.”
+
+That night, as I was packing to rush back east, he called with the
+latest news.
+
+“They’re going to deny the whole thing,” he said. “But’ I heard one
+Press Branch guy say it might not be enough —they’re trying to figure
+some way to knock it down fast.”
+
+Next day, while changing trains at Chicago, I saw the Air Force
+statement. The press release was dated December 27, 1949. Without
+mentioning _True_, the Air Force flatly denied having any evidence that
+flying saucers exist. After examining 375 reports, the release said,
+Project “Saucer” had found that they were caused by:
+
+1. Misinterpretation of various conventional objects.
+
+2. A mild form of mass hysteria or “war nerves.”
+
+3. Individuals who fabricate such reports to perpetrate a hoax or to
+seek publicity.
+
+Evaluation of the reports of unidentified flying objects, said the Air
+Force, demonstrates that they constitute no direct threat to the
+national security of the United States.
+
+Then came the clincher: Project “Saucer,” said the Air Force, had been
+discontinued, now that all the reports had been explained.
+
+It was plain that the release had been hastily prepared. It completely
+contradicted the detailed Project “Saucer” report, issued eight months
+before, that had called for constant vigilance, after admitting that
+most important cases were unsolved. Anyone familiar with the situation
+would see the discrepancy at once.
+
+From Washington I flew to New York, where I found _True_ in a turmoil.
+Long-distance calls were pouring in. Letters on flying saucers had
+swamped the mail room. Reporters were hounding Purdy for more
+information.
+
+A hurried analysis of the first hundred letters showed a trend that
+later mail confirmed. Less than 5 per cent of the readers ridiculed the
+article. Between 15 and 20 per cent said they were not convinced; a few
+of these admitted they could not refute the evidence. About half the
+readers accepted the possibility; most of these said they saw no reason
+why other planets should not be inhabited. The remainder, between 25
+and 30 per cent, said they were completely convinced.
+
+Even the disbelievers asked for more information. The intelligence
+level of the average letter was gratifyingly high. Comments came from
+scientists, engineers, airline and private pilots, college professors,
+officers of the armed services, and a wide variety of others—including
+far more women than _True’s_ readership usually includes.
+
+Several confidential tips had come in when I arrived. Most of them were
+from usually reputable sources. We were given evidence that Project
+“Saucer” was still in operation; since its true code name was not
+“Saucer,” it could be continued without violating the Air Force press
+release. This same information was received from a dozen sources within
+the next two weeks. We were also told that there had been 722 cases,
+instead of 375.
+
+Meantime, a number of astronomers had come out with statements, pro and
+con. One of these was Dr. Dean B. McLaughlin, of the University of
+Michigan.
+
+“No one knows what the saucers are as yet,” Dr. McLaughlin said. “They
+could be anything, and I’m willing to be convinced once the evidence is
+presented.”
+
+Dr. Bart J. Bok of Harvard was on the fence: “After all,” he said, “all
+sort of things float around in space. But I’m not convinced the saucers
+are anything apart from the earth.”
+
+Another Harvard astronomer, Dr. Armin J. Deutsch, took an oblique poke
+at True and me. “I don’t think anyone—and that includes
+astronomers—knows enough about them to reach any conclusions.”
+
+After this came the comment of Dr. Carl F. von Weizacker—that billions
+of stars may have planets, and many could be inhabited.
+
+Within a few days we had a huge stack of clippings, some supporting
+_True_, some deriding us. In the midst of all this, I read scientists’
+comments on Einstein’s new unified-field theory, which had been printed
+about the time _True_ appeared on the stands. A discussion by Lincoln
+Barnett, author of _The Universe and Dr. Einstein_, explained the basic
+premise—that gravitation and electromagnetic force are inseparable. As
+I read it, I thought of what Redell had said. If gravitation were a
+manifestation of electromagnetic force, was it possible that an
+advanced race had found a way—as unique as splitting the atom—to offset
+gravity and utilize that force?
+
+It was during these first tense days that we ran down the White Sands
+story. This also ended another puzzle—the identity of the magazine that
+we had feared might scoop us. The race had been closer than we knew.
+The editors of a national magazine had learned of Commander McLaughlin
+and the sightings at White Sands. Two of the staff had carefully
+investigated the details. Convinced that the report was accurate, they
+had planned to run the story in an early issue.
+
+Since _True_ had appeared first with the space-travel story, the
+editors agreed to release the McLaughlin report for use in our March
+issue. The basic facts were in close agreement with what Redell had
+told me.
+
+The ellipsoid-shaped saucer had been tracked at a height of 56 miles,
+its speed 5 miles per second. This was 18,000 miles per hour, even
+faster than Redell had said. The strange craft, 105 feet in length, had
+climbed as swiftly as Marvin Miles had described it—an increase in
+altitude of about 25 miles in 10 seconds.
+
+Commander McLaughlin stated in his article that he was convinced the
+object was a space ship from another planet, operated by animate,
+intelligent beings. He also described two small circular objects, about
+twenty inches in diameter, that streaked up beside a Navy high-altitude
+missile. After maneuvering around it for a moment, both disks
+accelerated, passed the fast-moving Navy missile, and disappeared.
+
+It is Commander McLaughlin’s opinion that the saucers come from Mars.
+Pointing out that Mars was in a good position to see our surface on
+July 16, 1945, he believes that the flash of the first A-bomb, at
+Alamogordo Base, a point not far from White Sands, was caught by
+powerful telescopes.
+
+During the first week of January, I appeared on “We, the People,” with
+Lieutenant George Gorman. When I saw Gorman, before rehearsals, he
+seemed oddly constrained. I had a feeling that he had been warned about
+talking freely. During rehearsals, he changed his lines in the script.
+When the writers argued over a point, Gorman told them:
+
+“I can say only what was in my published report—nothing else.”
+
+The day before the broadcast, a program official told me they had been
+told to include the Air Force denial in the script. That afternoon I
+learned that the Air Force planned to monitor the broadcast.
+
+Meantime, an A.P. story carried a new Air Force announcement. Formerly
+secret Project “Saucer” files would be opened to newsmen at the
+Pentagon, giving the answers to all the saucer reports.
+
+Just after my return to Washington, I saw an I.N.S. story that was
+widely printed. It was an interview with Major Jerry Boggs, a Project
+“Saucer” Intelligence officer who served as liaison man between Wright
+Field and the Pentagon. Major Boggs had been asked for specific answers
+to the Mantell, Chiles-Whitted, and Gorman cases.
+
+The answers he gave amazed me. I picked up the phone and called the Air
+Force Press Branch. After some delay, I was told that Major Boggs was
+being briefed for assignment to Germany. An interview would be almost
+impossible.
+
+“He wasn’t too busy to talk with I.N.S.,” I said. “All I want is thirty
+minutes.”
+
+Later, Jack Shea, a civilian press official I had known for some time,
+arranged for the meeting. I was also to talk with General Sory Smith,
+Deputy Director for Air Information.
+
+Major Jesse Stay, a Press Branch officer, took me to General Smith’s
+office for the interview. Both Jesse and Jack Shea, pleasant, obliging
+chaps who had helped me in the past, tried earnestly to convince me the
+saucers didn’t exist. Jesse was still trying when Major Boggs came in.
+
+Boggs looked to be in his twenties, younger than I had expected. He was
+trim, well built, with a quietly alert face. Two rows of ribbons
+testified to his wartime service. When Jesse Stay introduced me, Boggs
+gave me a curiously searching look. It could have been merely his usual
+way of appraising people he met. But all through our talk, I had a
+strong feeling that he was on his guard.
+
+I had written out some questions, but first I mentioned the I.N.S.
+story.
+
+“Were you quoted correctly on the Mantell case?” I asked.
+
+“Yes, I was.” Major Boggs looked me squarely in the eye. “Captain
+Mantell was chasing the planet Venus.”
+
+It was so incredible that I shook my head. “Major, Venus; was
+practically invisible that day. We’ve checked with astronomers. Is that
+the official Air Force answer?”
+
+“Yes, it is,” Boggs said. His eyes never left my face. I glanced across
+at General Sory Smith, then back at the intelligence major.
+
+“That’s a flat contradiction of Project ‘Saucer’s’ report. Last April,
+after they had checked for fifteen months, they said positively it was
+_not_ Venus. It was still unidentified.”
+
+Boggs said, in a slow, unruffled voice, “They rechecked after that
+report.”
+
+“Why did they recheck, after fifteen months?” I asked him. “‘They must
+have gone over those figures long before that, for errors.”
+
+If my question annoyed him, Boggs gave no sign.
+
+There’s no other possible answer,” he said. “Mantell was chasing
+Venus.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+For a moment after Boggs’s last answer, I had an impulse to end the
+interview. I had a feeling I was facing a sphinx—a quiet, courteous
+sphinx in an Air Force uniform.
+
+I was sure now why Major Jerry Boggs had been chosen for his job, the
+all-important connecting link with the project at Wright Field. No one
+would ever catch this man off guard, no matter what secret was given
+him to conceal. And it was more than the result of Air Force
+Intelligence training. His manner, his voice carried conviction. He
+would have convinced anyone who had not carefully analyzed the Godman
+Field tragedy.
+
+I made one more attempt. “Do the Godman Field witnesses—Colonel Hix and
+the rest—believe the Venus answer?”
+
+“I haven’t asked them,” said Boggs, “so I couldn’t say.”
+
+“What about the Chiles-Whitted case?” I asked. “You were quoted as
+saying they saw a meteor—a bolide that exploded in a shower of sparks.”
+
+“That’s right,” said Boggs.
+
+“And Gorman was chasing a lighted balloon?”
+
+Again the Intelligence major nodded. I pointed, out that all three of
+the cases mentioned had been listed as unidentified in the April
+report.
+
+“They’d had those cases for months,” I said. “What new facts did they
+learn?”
+
+Boggs said calmly, “They just made a final analysis, and those were the
+answers.”
+
+We looked at each other a moment. Major Boggs patiently waited. I began
+to realize how a lawyer must feel with an imperturbable witness. And
+Boggs’s unfailing courtesy began to make me embarrassed.
+
+“Major,” I said, “I hope you’ll realize this is not a personal matter.
+As an Intelligence officer, if you’re told to give certain answers—”
+
+He smiled for the first time. “That’s all right—but I’m not hiding a
+thing. There’s just no such thing as a flying saucer, so far as we’ve
+found out.”
+
+“We’ve been told,” I said, “that Project ‘Saucer’ isn’t closed—that you
+just changed its code name.”
+
+“That’s not so,” Boggs said emphatically. “The contracts are ended, and
+all personnel transferred to other duty.”
+
+“Then the announcement wasn’t caused by _True’s_ article?”
+
+Both General Smith and Major Jesse Stay shook their heads quickly.
+Boggs leaned forward, eyeing me earnestly.
+
+“As a matter of fact, we’d finished the investigation months ago—around
+the end of August, or early in September. We just hadn’t got around to
+announcing it.”
+
+“Last October,” I said, “I was told the investigation was still going
+on. They said there were no new answers to the cases just mentioned.”
+
+“The Press Branch hadn’t been informed yet,” Boggs explained simply.
+
+“It seems very strange to me,” I said. “In April, the Air Force called
+for vigilance by the civilian population. It said the project was
+young, much of its work still under way.”
+
+Jesse Stay interrupted before Boggs could reply.
+
+“Don, the Press Branch will have to take the blame for that. The report
+wasn’t carefully checked. There were several loose statements in it.”
+
+This was an incredible statement. I was sure Jesse knew it.
+
+“But the case reports you quoted came from Wright Field. As of April
+twenty-seventh, 1949, all the major cases were officially unsolved.
+Then in August or early September, the whole thing’s cleaned up, from
+what Major Boggs says. That’s pretty hard to believe.”
+
+No one answered that one. Major Boggs was waiting politely for the next
+question. I picked up my list. The rest of the interview was in
+straight question-and-answer style:
+
+Q. Do you know about the White Sands sightings in April 1948? The ones
+Commander R. B. McLaughlin has written up?
+
+A. Yes, we checked the reports. We just don’t believe them.
+
+Q. One of the witnesses was Charles B. Moore, the director of the Navy
+cosmic-ray project at Minneapolis, He’s considered a very reputable
+engineer. Did you know he confirms the first report—the one about the
+saucer 56 miles up, at a speed of eighteen thousand miles per hour.
+
+A. Yes, I knew about him. We think he was mistaken, like the others.
+
+Q. Mr. Moore says it was absolutely sure it was not hallucination. He
+says it should be carefully investigated.
+
+A. We did investigate. We just don’t believe they saw anything.
+
+Q. Could I see the complete file on that case? Also on Mantell, Gorman,
+and the Eastern Airlines cases?
+
+A. That’s out of my province.
+
+Q. If Project “Saucer” is ended, then all the files should be opened.
+
+A. Well, the summaries have been cleared, and you can see them.
+
+Q. No, I mean the actual files. Is there any reason I shouldn’t see
+them?
+
+A. There’d be a lot of material to search through. Each case has a
+separate book, and some of them are pretty bulky.
+
+Q. There were 722 cases in all, weren’t there?
+
+A. No, nowhere near that.
+
+Q. Then 375 is the total figure—I mean the number of cases Project
+“Saucer” listed?
+
+A. There were a few more—something over four hundred. I don’t know the
+exact figure.
+
+Q. I’ve been told that Project “Saucer” had the Air Force put out a
+special order for pilots to chase flying saucers. Is that right?
+
+A. Yes, that’s right.
+
+Q. Did that include National Guard pilots?
+
+A. Yes, it did. When the project first started checking on saucers we
+were naturally anxious to get hold of one of the things. We told the
+pilots to do practically anything in reason, even if they had to grab
+one by the tail.
+
+Q. Were any of those planes armed?
+
+A. Only if they happened to have guns for some other mission, like
+gunnery practice.
+
+Q. We’ve heard of one case where fighters chased a saucer to a high
+altitude. One of them emptied his guns at it.
+
+A. You must mean that New Jersey affair. The plane was armed for
+another reason.
+
+Q. No, I meant a case reported out at Luke Field. Three fighters took
+off, if the story sent us is correct. Apparently it made quite a
+commotion. That was back in 1945.
+
+A. It might have happened. I don’t know.
+
+Q. What was this New Jersey case?
+
+A. I’d rather not discuss any more cases without having the books here.
+
+Q. Has Project “Saucer” released its secret pictures?
+
+A. What pictures? There weren’t any that amounted to anything. Maybe
+half a dozen. They didn’t show anything, just spots on film or weather
+balloons at a distance.
+
+Q. In the Kenneth Arnold case, didn’t some forest rangers verify his
+report?
+
+A. Well, there were some people who claimed they saw the same disks.
+But we found out later they’d heard about it on the radio.
+
+Q. Didn’t they draw some sketches that matched Arnold’s?
+
+A. I never heard about it.
+
+Q. I’d like to go back to the Mantell case a second. If Venus was so
+bright—remember Mantell thought it was a huge metallic object—why
+didn’t the pilot who made the search later on—
+
+A. Well, it was Venus, that’s positive. But I can’t remember all the
+details without the case books.
+
+Q. One more question, Major. Have any reports been received at Wright
+Field since Project “Saucer” closed? There was a case after that date,
+an airliner crew—
+
+At this point, Major Jesse Stay broke in.
+
+“It’s all up to the local commanders now. If they want to receive
+reports of anything unusual, all right. And if they want to investigate
+them, that’s up to each commander. But no Project ‘Saucer’ teams will
+check on reports. That’s all ended.”
+
+There at the last, it had been a little. like a courtroom scene, and I
+was glad the interview was over. Major Boggs was unruffled as ever. I
+apologized for the barrage of questions, and thanked him for being so
+decent about it.
+
+“It was interesting, getting your viewpoint,” he said. He smiled, still
+the courteous sphinx, and went on out.
+
+After Bogs had left, I talked with General Smith alone. I told him I
+was not convinced,
+
+“I’d like to see the complete files on these cases I mentioned,” I
+explained. “Also, I’d like to talk with the last commanding officer or
+senior Intelligence officer attached to Project ‘Saucer.’”
+
+“I’m not sure about the senior officer,” General Smith answered. “He
+may have been detached already. But I don’t see any reason why you
+can’t see those files. I’ll phone Wright Field and call you.”
+
+I was about to leave, but he motioned for me to sit down.
+
+“I can understand how you feel about the Mantell report,” General Smith
+said earnestly. “I knew Tommy Mantell very well. And Colonel Hix is a
+classmate of mine. I knew neither one was the kind to have
+hallucinations. That case got me, at first.”
+
+“You believe Venus is the true answer?” I asked him.
+
+He seemed surprised. “It must be, if Wright Field says so.”
+
+When I went back to the Press Branch, I asked Jack Shea for the
+case-report summaries that Boggs had mentioned, He got them for me—two
+collections of loose-leaf mimeographed sheets enclosed in black
+binders. So these were the “secret files”!
+
+Across the hall, in the press room, I opened one book at random. The
+first thing I saw was this:
+
+“A meteorologist should compute the approximate energy required to
+evaporate as much cloud as shown in the incident 26 photographs.”
+
+Photographs. Major Boggs had said there were no important pictures. I
+tucked the binders under my arm and went out to my car. Perhaps these
+books hinted at more than Boggs had realized. But that didn’t seem
+likely. As liaison man, he should know all the answers. I was almost
+positive that he did.
+
+But I was equally sure they weren’t the answers he had given me.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+That night I went through the Project “Saucer” summary of cases. It was
+a strange experience.
+
+The first report I checked was the Mantell case. Nothing that Boggs had
+said had changed my firm opinion. I knew the answer was not Venus, and
+I was certain Boggs knew it, too.
+
+The Godman Field incident was listed as Case 33. The report also
+touches on the Lockbourne Air Base sighting. As already described, the
+same mysterious object, or a similar one, was seen moving at five
+hundred miles an hour over Lockbourne Field. It was also sighted at
+other points in Ohio.
+
+The very first sentence in Case 33 showed a determined attempt to
+explain away the object that Mantell chased:
+
+“Detailed attention should be given to any possible astronomical body
+or phenomenon which might serve to identify the object or objects.”
+
+(Some of the final Project report on Mantell has been given in an
+earlier chapter. I am repeating a few paragraphs below, to help in
+weighing Major Boggs’s answer.)
+
+These are official statements of the Project astronomer:
+
+“On January 7, 1948, Venus was less than half its full brilliance.
+However, under exceptionally good atmospheric conditions, and with the
+eye shielded from the direct rays of the sun, Venus might be seen as an
+exceedingly tiny bright point of light. It is possible to see it in
+daytime when one knows exactly where to look. Of course, the chances of
+looking at the right spot are very few.
+
+“It has been unofficially reported that the object was a Navy cosmic
+ray balloon. If this can be established it is to be preferred as an
+explanation. However, if reports from other localities refer to the
+same object, any such device must have been a good many miles high—25
+to 50—in order to have been seen clearly, almost simultaneously, from
+places 175 miles apart.”
+
+This absolutely ruled out the balloon possibility, as the investigator
+fully realized. That he must have considered the space-ship answer at
+this point is strongly indicated in the following sentence:
+
+“If all reports were of a single object, in the knowledge of this
+investigator no man-made object could have been large enough and far
+enough away for the approximate simultaneous sightings.”
+
+The next paragraph of this Project “Saucer” report practically
+nullified Major Boggs’s statement that Venus was the sole explanation:
+
+“It is most unlikely, however, that so many separate persons should at
+that time have chanced on Venus in the daylight sky. It seems therefore
+much more probable that more than one object was involved. The sighting
+might have included two or more balloons (or aircraft) or they might
+have included Venus (in the fatal chase) and balloons. . . . Such a
+hypothesis, however, does still necessitate the inclusion of at least
+two other objects than Venus, and it certainly is coincidental that so
+many people would have chosen this one day to be confused (to the
+extent of reporting the matter) by normal airborne objects. . . .”
+
+Farther on in the summaries, I found a report that has an extremely
+significant bearing on the Mantell case. This was Case 175, in which
+the same consultant attempts to explain a strange daylight sighting at
+Santa Fe, New Mexico.
+
+One of the Santa Fe observers described the mysterious aerial object as
+round and extremely bright, “like a dime in the sky.” Here is what the
+Project “Saucer” investigator had to say:
+
+“The magnitude of Venus was -3.8 (approximately the same as on January
+7, 1948). it could have been visible in the daylight sky. It would have
+appeared, however, more like a pinpoint of brilliant light than ‘like a
+dime in the sky.’ It seems unlikely that it would be noticed at all. .
+. . Considering discrepancies in the two reports, I suggest the moon in
+a gibbous phase; in daytime this is unusual and most people are not
+used to it, so that they fail to identify it. While this hypothesis has
+little to correspond to either report, it is worth mentioning.
+
+“It seems far more probable that some type of balloon was the object in
+this case.”
+
+Both the Godman Field and the Santa Fe cases were almost identical, so
+far as the visibility of Venus was concerned. In the Santa Fe case,
+which had very little publicity, Project “Saucer” dropped the Venus
+explanation as a practically impossible answer. But in Case 33, it had
+tried desperately to make Venus loom up as a huge gleaming object
+during Mantell’s fatal chase.
+
+There was only one explanation: Project “Saucer” must have known the
+truth from the start-that Mantell had pursued a tremendous space ship.
+That fact alone, if it had exploded in the headlines at that time,
+might have caused dangerous panic. To make it worse, Captain Mantell
+had been killed. Even if he had actually died from blacking out while
+trying to follow the swiftly ascending space ship, few would have
+believed it. The story would spread like wildfire: _Spacemen kill an
+American Air Force Pilot!_
+
+This explained the tight lid that had been clamped down at once on the
+Mantell case. It was more than a year before that policy had been
+changed; then the first official discussions of possible space visitors
+had begun to appear.
+
+_True’s_ plans to announce the interplanetary answer would have fitted
+a program of preparing the people. But the Air Force had not expected
+such nation-wide reaction from _True’s_ article; that much I knew.
+Evidently, they had not suspected such a detailed analysis of the
+Godman Field case, in particular. I could see now why Boggs, Jesse
+Stay, and the others had tried so hard to convince me that we had made
+a mistake.
+
+It was quite possible that we had revived that first Air Force fear of
+dangerous publicity. But Mantell had been dead for two years. News
+stories would not have the same impact now, even if they did report
+that spacemen had downed the pilot. And I doubted that there would be
+headlines. Unless the Air Force supplied some convincing details, the
+manner of his death would still be speculation.
+
+Apparently I had been right; this case was the key to the riddle. It
+had been the first major sighting in 1948. Project “Saucer” had been
+started immediately afterward. In searching for a plausible answer,
+which could be published if needed, officials had probably set the
+pattern for handling all other reports, “Explaining away” would be a
+logical program, until the public could be prepared for an official
+announcement.
+
+As I went through other case reports, I found increasing evidence to
+back up this belief.
+
+Case 1, the Muroc Air Base sightings, had plainly baffled Project men
+seeking a plausible answer. Because of the Air Force witnesses, they
+could not ignore the reports. Highly trained Air Force test pilots and
+ground officers had seen two fast-moving silver-colored disks circling
+over the base.
+
+Flying at speeds of from three to four hundred miles an hour, the disks
+whirled in amazingly tight maneuvers. Since they were only eight
+thousand feet above the field, these turns could be clearly seen.
+
+“It is tempting to explain the object as ordinary aircraft observed
+under unusual light conditions,” the case report reads. “But the
+evidence of tight circles, if maintained, is strongly contradictory.”
+
+Although Case 1 was technically in the “unexplained” group, Wright
+Field had made a final effort to explain away the reports. Said the Air
+Materiel Command:
+
+“The sightings were the result of misinterpretation of real stimuli,
+probably research balloons.”
+
+In all the world’s history, there is no record of a
+three-hundred-mile-an-hour wind. To cover the distance involved, the
+drifting balloons would have had to move at this speed, or faster. If a
+three-hundred-mile wind had been blowing at eight thousand feet,
+nothing on earth could have stood it, Muroc Air Base would have been
+blown off the map. What did the Muroc test pilots _really_ see that
+day?
+
+While searching for the Chiles-Whitted report, ran across the Fairfield
+Suisan mystery-light case, which I had learned about in Seattle. This
+was Case 215. The Project “Saucer” comment reads:
+
+“If the observations were exactly as stated by the witnesses, the ball
+of light could not be a fireball. . . . A fireball would not have come
+into view at 1,000 feet and risen to 20,000. If correct, there is no
+astronomical explanation. Under unusual conditions, a fireball might
+appear to rise somewhat as a result of perspective. The absence of
+trail and sound definitely does not favor the meteor hypothesis, but .
+. . does not rule it out finally. It does not seem likely any meteor or
+auroral phenomenon could be as bright as this.”
+
+Then came one of the most revealing lines in all the case reports:
+
+“In the almost hopeless absence of any other natural explanation, one
+must consider the possibility of the object’s having been a meteor,
+even though the description does not fit very well.”
+
+One air-base officer, I recalled, had insisted that the object had been
+a lighted balloon. Checking the secret report from the Air Weather
+Service, I found this:
+
+“Case 2 15. Very high winds, 60-70 miles per hour from southwest, all
+levels. Definitely prohibits any balloon from southerly motion.”
+
+_This case is officially listed as answered_.
+
+In Case 19, where a cigar-shaped object was seen at Dayton, Ohio, the
+Project investigator made a valiant attempt to fit an answer:
+
+“Possibly a close pair of fireballs, but it seems unlikely. If one were
+to stretch the description to its very limits and make allowances for
+untrained observers, he could say that the cigar-like shape might have
+been illusion caused by rapid motion, and that the bright sunlight
+might have made both the objects and the trails nearly invisible.
+
+“This investigator does not prefer that interpolation, and it should he
+resorted to only if all other possible explanations fail.”
+
+_This case, too, is officially listed as answered_.
+
+Case 24, which occurred June 12, 1947, twelve days before the Arnold
+sighting, shows the same determined attempt to find an explanation, no
+matter how farfetched.
+
+In this case, two fast-moving objects were seen at Weiser, Idaho, Twice
+they approached the earth, then swiftly circled upward. The Project
+investigator tried hard to prove that these might have been parts of a
+double fireball. But at the end, he said, “In spite of all this, this
+investigator would prefer a terrestrial explanation for the incident.”
+
+It was plain that this report had not been planned originally for
+release to the public. No Project investigator would have been so
+frank. With each new report, I was more and more convinced that these
+had been confidential discussions of various possible answers,
+circulated between Project “Saucer” officials. Why they had been
+released now was still a puzzle, though I began to see a glimmer of the
+answer.
+
+The Chiles-Whitted sighting was listed as Case 144. As I started on the
+report, I wondered if Major Boggs’s “bolide” answer would have any more
+foundation than these other “astronomical” cases.
+
+The report began with these words:
+
+“There is no astronomical explanation, if we accept the report at face
+value. But the sheer improbability of the facts as stated, particularly
+in the absence of any known aircraft in the vicinity, makes it
+necessary to see whether any other explanation, even though farfetched,
+can be considered.”
+
+After this candid admission of his intentions, the Project consultant
+earnestly attempts to fit the two pilots’ space ship description to a
+slow-moving meteor.
+
+“It will have to be left to the psychologists,” he goes on, “to tell us
+whether the immediate trail of a bright meteor could produce the
+subjective impression of a ship with lighted windows. Considering only
+the Chiles-Whitted sighting, the hypothesis seems very improbable.”
+
+As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, observers at Robbins Air Force
+Base, Macon, Georgia, saw the same mysterious object streak overhead,
+trailing varicolored flames. This was about one hour before Chiles and
+Whitted saw the onrushing space ship.
+
+To bolster up the meteor theory, the Project consultant suggests a
+one-hour error in time. The explanation: The airliner would be on
+daylight-saving time.
+
+“If there is no time difference,” he proceeds, “the. object must have
+been an extraordinary meteor. . . . in which case it would have covered
+the distance from Macon to Montgomery in a minute or two.”
+
+Having checked the time angle before, I knew this was incorrect. Both
+reports were given in eastern standard time. And in a later part of the
+Project report, the consultant admits this fact. But he has an
+alternate answer: “If the difference in time is real, the object was
+some form of known aircraft, regardless of its bizarre nature.”
+
+The “bizarre nature” is not specified. Nor does the Project “Saucer”
+report try to fit the Robbins Field description to any earth-made
+aircraft. The air-base observers were struck by the object’s huge size,
+its projectile-like shape, and the weird flames trailing behind. Except
+for the double-deck windows, the air-base men’s description tallied
+with the pilots’. With the ship at five thousand feet or higher, its
+windows would not have been visible from the ground. All the observers
+agreed on the object’s very high speed.
+
+Neither of the Project “Saucer” alternate answers will fit the facts.
+
+1. The one-hour interval has been proved correct. Therefore, as the
+Project consultant admits, it could not be a meteor.
+
+2. The Robbins Field witnesses have flatly denied it was a conventional
+plane. The Air Force screened 225 airplane schedules, and proved there
+was no such plane in the area. No ordinary aircraft would have caused
+the brilliant streak that startled the DC-3 passenger and both of the
+pilots.
+
+Major Boggs’s bolide answer had gone the way of his Venus explanation.
+I wondered if the Gorman light-balloon solution would fade out the same
+way. But the Project report on Gorman (Case 172) merely hinted at the
+balloon answer. In the Appendix, there was a brief comment: “Note that
+standard 30 inch and 65 inch weather balloons have vertical speeds of
+600 and 1100 feet per minute, respectively.”
+
+In all the reports I have mentioned, and on through both the case
+books, one thing was immediately obvious. All the testimony, all the
+actual evidence was missing. These were only the declared conclusions
+of Project “Saucer.” Whether they matched the actual conclusions in
+Wright Field secret files there was no way of knowing.
+
+But even in these sketch reports, I found some odd hints, clues to what
+Project officials might really be thinking.
+
+After an analysis of two Indianapolis cases, one investigator reports:
+
+“Barring hallucination, these two incidents and 17, 75 and 84 seem the
+most tangible from the standpoint of description, of all those
+reported, and the most difficult to explain away as sheer nonsense.”
+
+Case 17, I found, was that of Kenneth Arnold. But in spite of the above
+admission that this case cannot be explained away, it is officially
+listed as answered.
+
+Case 75 struck a familiar note. This was the strange occurrence at Twin
+Falls, Idaho, on which _True_ had had a tip months before. A disk
+moving through a canyon at tremendous speed had whipped the treetops as
+if by a violent hurricane. The report was brief, but one sentence stood
+out with a startling effect:
+
+“Twin Falls, Idaho, August 13, 1847,” the report began. “There is
+clearly nothing astronomical in this incident. . . . Two points stand
+out, the sky-blue color, and the fact that the trees ‘spun around on
+top as if they were in a vacuum.’”
+
+Then came the sentence that made me sit up in my chair.
+
+“Apparently it must be classed with the other bona fide disk
+sightings.”
+
+_The other bona fide sightings!_
+
+Was this a slip? Or had the Air Force deliberately left this report in
+the file? If they had, what was back of it—what was back of releasing
+all of these telltale case summaries?
+
+I skimmed through the rest as quickly as possible looking for other
+clues. Here are a few of the things that. caught my eye:
+
+Case 10. United Airlines report . . . despite conjectures, no logical
+explanation seems possible. . . .
+
+Case 122. Holloman Air Force Base, April 6, 1948. [This was the
+Commander McLaughlin White Sands report.] No logical explanation. . . .
+
+Case 124. North Atlantic, April 18, 1948 . . . radar sighting . . . no
+astronomical explanation. . . .
+
+Case 127. Yugoslav-Greek frontier, May 7, 1948 . . . information too
+limited. . . .
+
+Case 168. Arnheim, The Hague, July 20, 1948 . . . object seen four
+times . . . had two decks and no wings . . . very high speed comparable
+to a V-2. . . .
+
+Case 183. Japan, October 15, 1948. Radar experts should determine
+acceleration rates. . . .
+
+Case 188. Goose Bay, Labrador, October 29, 1948. Not astronomical . . .
+picked up by radar . . . radar experts should evaluate the sightings .
+. . .
+
+Case 189. Goose Bay, Labrador, October 31, 1948 . . . not astronomical
+. . . observed on radarscope. . . .
+
+Case 196. Radarscope observation . . . object traveling directly into
+the wind. . . .
+
+Case 198. Radar blimp moving at high speed and continuously changing
+direction. . . .
+
+Case 222. Furstenfeldbruck, Germany, November 23, 1948 . . . object
+plotted by radar DF at 27,000 feet . . . short time later circling at
+40,000 feet . . . speed estimated 200-500 m.p.h. . . .
+
+Case 223 . . . seventeen individuals saw and reported object . . .
+green flare . . . all commercial and government airfield questioned . .
+. no success. . . .
+
+Case 224. Las Vegas, New Mexico, December 8, 1948 . . . description
+exactly as in 223 . . . flare reported traveling very high speed . . .
+very accurate observation made by two F.B.I. agents. . . .
+
+Case 231 . . . another glowing green flare just as described above. . .
+.
+
+Case 233 . . . definitely no balloon . . . made turns . . . accelerated
+from 200 to 500 miles per hour . . . .
+
+Going back over this group of cases, I made an incredible discovery:
+All but three of these unsolved cases were officially listed as
+answered.
+
+The three were the United Airlines case, the White Sands sightings, and
+the double-decked space-ship report from The Hague.
+
+Going back to the first report, I checked all the summaries. Nine times
+out of ten, the explanations were pure conjecture. Sometimes no answer
+was even attempted.
+
+Although 375 cases were mentioned, the summaries ended with Case 244.
+Several cases were omitted. I found clues to some of these in the
+secret Air Weather Service report, including the mysterious “green
+light” sightings at Las Vegas and Albuquerque.
+
+Of the remaining 228 cases, Project “Saucer” lists all but 34 as
+explained. These unsolved cases are brought up again for a final
+attempt at explaining them away. In the appendix, the Air Materiel
+Command carefully states:
+
+“It is not the intent to discredit the character of observers, but each
+case has undesirable elements and these can’t be disregarded.”
+
+After this perfunctory gesture, the A.M.C. proceeds to discredit
+completely the testimony of highly trained Air Force test pilots and
+officers at Muroc. (The 300-400 m.p.h. research balloon explanation.)
+
+The A.M.C. then brushes off the report of Captain Emil Smith and the
+crew of a United Airline plane. On July 4, 1947, nine huge flying disks
+were counted by Captain Smith and his crew. The strange objects were in
+sight for about twelve minutes; the crew watched them for the entire
+period and described them in detail later.
+
+Despite Project “Saucer’s” admission that it had no answer, the A.M.C.
+contrived one. Ignoring the evidence of veteran airline pilots, it
+said:
+
+“Since the sighting occurred at sunset, when illusory effect are most
+likely, the objects could have been ordinary aircraft, balloons, birds,
+or pure illusion.”
+
+In only three cases did the A.M.C. admit it had no answer. Even here,
+it was implied that the witnesses were either confused or incompetent.
+
+In its press release of December 27, 1949, the Air Force had mentioned
+375 cases. It implied that all of these were answered. The truth was
+just the reverse, as was proved by these case books. Almost two hundred
+cases still were shown to be unsolved-although the real answers might
+be hidden in Wright Field files.
+
+These two black books puzzled me. Why had the Air Force lifted its
+secrecy on these case summaries? Why had Major Boggs given me those
+answers, when these books would flatly refute them?
+
+I thought I new the reason now but there was only one way to make sure.
+The actual Wright Field files should tell the answer.
+
+When I phoned General Sory Smith, his voice sounded a little peculiar.
+“I called Wright Field,” he said. “But they said you wouldn’t find
+anything of value out there.”
+
+“You mean they refused to let me see their files?”
+
+“No, I didn’t say that. But they’re short of personnel. They don’t want
+to take people off other jobs to look up the records.”
+
+“I won’t need any help,” I said. “Major Boggs said each case had a
+separate book. If they’d just show me the shelves, I could do the job
+in two days.”
+
+There was a long silence.
+
+“I’ll ask them again,” the General said finally. “Call me sometime next
+week.”
+
+I said I would, and hung up. The message from Wright Field hadn’t
+surprised me. But Smith’s changed manner did. He had sounded oddly
+disturbed.
+
+While I was waiting for Wright Field’s answer, Ken Purdy phoned. He
+told me that staff men from _Time_ and _Life_ magazines were seriously
+checking on the “little men” story. Both Purdy and I were sure this was
+a colossal hoax, but there was just a faint chance that someone had
+been on the fringe of a real happening and had made up the rest of the
+story.
+
+They key man in the story seemed to be one George Koehler, of Denver,
+Colorado. The morning after Purdy called, I took a plane to Denver.
+During the flight I went over the “little men” story again. It had been
+printed in over a hundred papers.
+
+According to the usual version, George Koehler had accidentally learned
+of two crashed saucers at a radar station on our southwest border. The
+ships were made of some strange metal. The cabin was stationary, placed
+within a large rotating ring.
+
+Here is the story as it was told in the _Kansas City Star_:
+
+
+In flight, the ring revolved at a high rate of speed, while the cabin
+remained stationary like the center of a gyroscope.
+
+Each of the two ships seen by Koehler were occupied by a crew of two.
+In the badly damaged ship, these bodies were charred so badly that
+little could be learned from them. The occupants of the other ship,
+while dead when they were found, were not burned or disfigured, and,
+when Koehler saw them, were in a perfect state of preservation. Medical
+reports, according to Koehler, showed that these men were almost
+identical with earth-dwelling humans, except for a few minor
+differences. They were of a uniform height of three feet, were
+uniformly blond, beardless, and their teeth were completely free of
+fillings or cavities. They did not wear undergarments, but had their
+bodies taped.
+
+The ships seemed to be magnetically controlled and powered.
+
+In addition to a piece of metal, Koehler had a clock or automatic
+calendar taken from one of the crafts.
+
+Koehler said that the best assumption as to the source of the ships was
+the planet Venus.
+
+
+When I arrived at Denver, I went to the radio station where Koehler
+worked. I told him that if he had proof that we could print, we would
+buy the story.
+
+As the first substantial proof, I asked to see the piece of strange
+metal he was supposed to have. Koehler said it had been sent to another
+city to be analyzed. I asked to see pictures of the crashed saucers.
+These, too, proved to be somewhere else. So did the queer “space clock”
+that Koehler was said to have.
+
+By this time I was sure it was all a gag. I had the feeling that
+Koehler, back of his manner of seeming indignation at my demands, was
+hugely enjoying himself. I cut the interview short and called Ken Purdy
+in New York.
+
+“Well, thank God that’s laid to rest,” he said when I told him.
+
+But even though the “little men” story had turned out-as expected—a
+dud, Koehler had done me a good turn. An old friend, William E.
+Barrett, well-known fiction writer, now lived in Denver. Thanks to
+Koehler’s gag, I had a pleasant visit with Bill and his family.
+
+On the trip back, I bought a paper at the Chicago airport. On an inside
+page I ran across Koehler’s name. According to the A.P., he had just
+admitted the whole thing was a big joke.
+
+But in spite of this, the “little men” story goes on and on. Apparently
+not even Koehler can stop it now.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+For two weeks after my return to Washington, General Sory Smith held
+off a final answer about my trip to Wright Field. Meantime, Ken Purdy
+had called him backing my request to see the Project files.
+
+It was obvious to me that Wright Field was determined not to open the
+files. But the General was trying to avoid making it official.
+
+“Why can’t you accept my word there’s nothing to the saucers?” he asked
+me one day. “You’re impeaching my personal veracity.”
+
+But finally he saw there was no other way out. He told me I had been
+officially refused permission to see the Wright Field files. Some time
+later, Ken Purdy phoned General Smith.
+
+“General, if the Air Force wants to talk to us off the record, we’ll
+play ball. _True_ will either handle it from then on whatever way you
+think best or we’ll keep still.”
+
+Whether this offer was relayed higher up, I don’t know. But nothing
+came of it.
+
+Meantime, saucer reports had begun to come in from all over the
+country. Some even came from abroad. Some of these 1950 sightings have
+already been mentioned in early chapters. Besides the strange affair at
+Tucson on February 1, there were several other cases in February. Three
+of these were in South America. One saucer was reported near the naval
+air station at Alameda, California. Some were sighted in Texas, New
+Mexico, and other parts of the Southwest.
+
+In March, the wave of sightings reached such a height that the Air
+Force again denied the saucers’ existence. This followed a report that
+a flying disk had crashed near Mexico City and that the wreckage had
+been viewed by U. S. Air Force officials.
+
+Scores of Orangeburg, South Carolina, residents watched a disk that
+hovered over that city on March 10. It was described as silver-bright,
+turning slowly in the air before it disappeared. The day before this,
+residents of Van Nuys, California, saw a bright disk moving swiftly
+four hundred feet in the air. Seen through a telescope, it appeared to
+be fifty feet in diameter.
+
+Disks were reported at numerous places in Mexico, including
+Guadalajara, Juárez, Mazatlán, and Durango. On the twelfth of March,
+the crew and passengers of an American Airlines ship saw a large
+gleaming disk high above Monterrey airport in Mexico.
+
+Captain W. R. Hunt, the senior airline pilot, watched the disk through
+a theodolite at the airport. This disk and most of the others seen in
+Mexico were similar in description to the one sighted at Dayton, Ohio,
+on March 8. This was the large metallic saucer that hovered high over
+Vandalia Airport, until Air Force and National Guard fighters raced up
+after it. The disk rose vertically into the sky at incredible speed,
+hovered a while longer, and then vanished.
+
+Within twenty-four hours this mystery disk had been “identified” as the
+planet Venus. (It was broad daylight.) Newspapers quoted “trained
+astronomical officials in Dayton” as the source for this explanation.
+
+Meanwhile the Mexican government newspaper, _El Nacional_, quoted “a
+famous and reputable astronomer” as saying the numerous disks reported
+over Mexico “carry visitors from Mars.”
+
+One of the strangest reports came from the naval air station at Dallas,
+Texas. It was about 11:30 A.M. on March 16 when CPO Charles Lewis saw a
+disk streak up at a B-36 bomber. The disk appeared about twenty to
+twenty-five feet in diameter, Lewis reported. Racing at incredible
+speed, it shot up under the bomber, hung there for a second, then broke
+away at a 45-degree angle. Following this, it shot straight up into the
+air and disappeared.
+
+Captain M. A. Nation, C. O. of the station, said it was “I the second
+report in ten days. On March 7, said Captain Nation, a tower control
+operator named C. E. Edmundson saw a similar disk flying so fast it was
+almost a blur.
+
+“He estimated its speed at three thousand to four thousand miles per
+hour,” Captain Nation stated. “Of course, he had no instruments to
+compute the speed, so that’s a pure estimate.”
+
+It was some time before this when I heard the first crazy rumor about
+the guided-missile display. This story, which had new details every
+time I heard it described the Air Force as refusing to let the Navy
+announce a new type of missile. According to the rumors, the Air Force
+was trying to prove its own missile far superior, to keep the Navy from
+invading its long-range bombing domain. Then the Army joined the
+pitched battle with still a third guided missile, according to the
+rumors.
+
+And the flying disks? Army, Navy, and Air Force missiles, launched in
+droves all over the country to prove whose was the best? A public
+missile race, with the joint Chiefs of Staff to decide the winner!
+
+It seems fantastic that this theory would be believed by any
+intelligent person. In effect, it accuses the armed services of
+deliberate, criminal negligence, of endangering millions in the cities
+below.
+
+I am convinced that some of these rumors led to at least one of the
+published guesses about our missile program. One widely publicized
+story stated that the flying saucers seen hurtling through our skies
+are actually two types of secret weapons. One, according to radio and
+newspaper accounts, is a disk that whizzes through space, halts
+suspended in the air, soars to thirty thousand feet, drops to one
+thousand feet, and then usually disintegrates in the air.
+
+These saucers, it was said, ranged from 20 inches to 250 feet in
+diameter. They were supposed to be pilotless—and harmless.
+
+The second type was said to be a jet version of the Navy’s circular
+airfoil “Flying Flapjack.” It was credited with fantastic speed.
+
+The “true disks,” however, were mainly Air Force devices, according to
+the report.
+
+“Some are guided, others are not,” said the radio commentator who
+released this story. “They can stay stationary, dash off to right or
+left, and move like lightning. But they are utterly harmless.”
+
+In these “harmless” disks there was supposed to be an explosive charge
+that destroyed them in mid-air at a predetermined time.
+
+Within a few days after this story was broadcast, the _United States
+News and World Report_ declared that the saucers are real, and
+identified them as jet models of Navy “Flying Flapjacks.” This
+magazine, which is not an official publication despite its name,
+mentioned the variable-direction jet principle that I had previously
+described in the True article.
+
+These two flying-saucer “explanations” brought denials from the White
+House, the Navy, and the Air Force.
+
+The Air Force flatly declared that:
+
+1. None of the armed forces is conducting secret experiments with
+disk-shaped flying objects that could be a basis for the reported
+phenomena.
+
+2. There is no evidence that the latter stem from the activities of any
+foreign nation.
+
+Before this, President Truman stated he knew nothing of any such
+objects being developed by the United States or any other nation.
+
+The Navy denial came immediately after the first broadcast story. It
+ran:
+
+“The Navy is not engaged in research or in flying any jet-powered,
+circular-shaped aircraft.”
+
+The Navy added that one model of a pancake-shaped aircraft, called the
+Zimmerman Skimmer, was built but was never flown. However, a small,
+three-thousand-pound scale model did fly and was under radio control
+during flight. This last device is now being rumored as the Navy’s
+unpiloted “missile,” said to have been launched over the country like
+the so-called “harmless” disks.
+
+Even though all these accounts have been officially denied, many
+Americans may still believe they are true. I have no desire to
+criticize the authors of these stories; I believe that in following up
+certain guided-missile leads they were misled into accepting the
+conclusions they gave.
+
+But these stories, particularly the accounts of huge unpiloted disks,
+may have planted certain fears in the public mind-fears that are
+completely unwarranted. For this reason, I have personally checked at
+Washington in regard to the dangers of unpiloted missiles. Here aye the
+facts I learned:
+
+1. Neither the Army, Navy, nor Air Force has at any time staged any
+guided-missile competition as rumored.
+
+2. No unpiloted missiles or remote-controlled experimental craft have
+been tested over American cities or heavily populated areas.
+
+3. No unpiloted missile carrying dangerous explosives, whether for
+destruction of the device or other purposes, has been deliberately
+launched or tested over heavily populated areas.
+
+In regard to the so-called jet-propelled “Flying Flapjack,” I have been
+assured by Admiral Calvin Bolster, of the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics,
+that this type of plane has never been produced. I concede that he
+might make this statement to conceal a secret development, but there is
+one fact of which every American can be certain: Neither this type, nor
+the radio-controlled smaller model, has been or will be flown or
+launched over areas where people would be endangered.
+
+The three armed services are working on guided missiles. They are not
+risking American lives by launching such missiles at random across the
+United States,
+
+Although most of our guided-missile projects are secret, it is possible
+to give certain facts about guided-missile developments in general.
+
+The first successful long-range missiles were produced by the Germans.
+These were the buzz-bomb and. the V-2 rocket. But research in various
+other types was carried on during the war. Some of this was with oval
+and round types of airfoils. As already stated by Paul Redell, there is
+strong evidence that the disk-shaped foil resulted from German
+observations of either space ships or remote-control disk-shaped
+“observer units.” All the Nazi space-exploration plans followed this
+discovery that we were being observed by a race from another planet.
+
+After the end of World War II, the international guided-missile race
+began, with the British, Russians, and ourselves as the chief
+contenders. Numerous types have been developed-winged bombs, small
+radar-guided projectiles launched from planes, and ground-to-plane
+plane-to-ground, and plane-to-plane missiles, equipped with target
+homing devices.
+
+In certain recent types, the range can be stated as several hundred
+miles. So far as I have learned, after weeks of rechecking this point,
+not a single long-range missile has been identified as Russian.
+
+Since this country is working closely with Great Britain on global
+defense problems, it is no violation of security to say that we have
+probably exchanged certain guided-missile information. In regard to the
+British long-range missile picture outlined to me by John Steele, I can
+state two major facts:
+
+1. The British have categorically denied testing such long-range
+missiles over American territory, where they might endanger American
+citizens. There is convincing evidence that they are telling the truth.
+
+2. There is no British missile now built, or planned, that could
+explain the objects seen by Captain Mantell, Chiles and Whitted, and
+witnesses in most of the major sightings.
+
+The preceding statement applies equally to American-built missiles.
+There is no experimental craft or guided missile even remotely
+considered in this country that would begin to approach the dimensions
+and performance of the space ships seen in these cases.
+
+There is concrete evidence that the United States is as well advanced
+as any other nation in guided-missile development. Certain recent
+advances should place us in the lead, unless confidential reports on
+Soviet progress are completely wrong.
+
+If American scientists and engineers can learn the source of the space
+ships’ power and adapt it to our use, it may well be the means for
+ending the threat of war. The Soviet scientists are well aware of this;
+their research into cosmic rays and other natural forces has been
+redoubled since the flying-saucer reports of 1947.
+
+The secret of the space ships’ power is more important than even the
+hydrogen bomb. It may someday be the key to the fate of the world.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+After one year’s investigation of the flying saucers and Air Force
+operations, I have come to the following conclusions:
+
+1. The Air Force was puzzled, and badly worried when the disks first
+were sighted in 1947.
+
+2. The Air Force began to suspect the truth soon after Mantell’s
+death—perhaps even before.
+
+3. Project “Saucer” was set up to investigate and at the same time
+conceal from the public the truth about the saucers.
+
+4. During the spring of 1949 this policy, which had been strictly
+maintained by Forrestal, underwent an abrupt change. On top-level
+orders, it was decided to let the facts gradually leak out, in order to
+prepare the American people.
+
+5. This was the reason for the April 27, 1949, report, with its
+suggestions about space visitors.
+
+6. While I was preparing the article for the January 1950 issue of
+_True_, it had been considered in line with the general education
+program. But the unexpected public reaction was mistaken by the Air
+Force for hysteria, resulting in their hasty denial that the saucers
+existed.
+
+7. Because the Air Force feared any closer analysis of the Mantell
+case, Major Boggs was instructed to publicize the Venus explanation.
+Although it had been denied, the Air Force knew that most people had
+forgotten this or had never known it.
+
+8. Major Boggs, having stated this answer publicly (along with the
+other Chiles-Whitted and Gorman answers), was forced to stick to it,
+though he knew it was wrong and that the case summaries would prove it.
+
+9. The case summaries were released to a small number of Washington
+newsmen, to continue planting the space-travel thought; this decision
+being made after _True’s_ reception proved to the Air Force that the
+public was better prepared than had been thought.
+
+In regard to the flying saucers themselves, I believe that in the
+majority of cases, space ships are the answer:
+
+1. The earth has been under periodic observation from another planet,
+or other planets, for at least two centuries.
+
+2. This observation suddenly increased in 1947, following, the series
+of A-bomb explosions begun in 1945.
+
+3. The observation, now intermittent, is part of a long-range survey
+and will continue indefinitely. No immediate attempt to contact the
+earth seems evident. There may be some unknown block to making contact,
+but it is more probable that the spacemen’s plans are not complete.
+
+I believe that the Air Force is still investigating the saucer
+sightings, either through the Air Materiel Command or some other
+headquarters. It is possible that some Air Force officials still fear a
+panic when the truth is officially revealed. In that case, we may
+continue for a long time to see routine denials alternating with new
+suggestions of interplanetary travel.
+
+The education problem is complicated by two imperative needs. We must
+try to learn as much as we can about the space ships’ source of power,
+and at the same time try to prevent clues to this information from
+reaching an enemy on earth,
+
+If censorship is suddenly imposed on all flying-saucer reports, this
+will be the chief reason. This would also help solve a minor problem
+where partial censorship now exists. A few test missiles launched from
+a southwest base have been seen by citizens at a distance from the
+proving grounds. In some cases, their reports have got into local
+papers, though the wire services did not carry them.
+
+These missile tests are peculiarly different from the general run of
+flying-saucer reports. Contrasted with the Chiles-Whitted, Mantell, and
+other space-ship sightings, they stand out with a certain pattern, easy
+to recognize. News or radio reports of these tests might accidentally
+give an enemy clues to the type, speed, and range of this particular
+missile, once he learned the pattern. Periodic censorship, or even a
+complete blackout of sighting reports, may be enforced during the next
+year or so.
+
+For the purposes mentioned, such action would be justified. But
+whenever such censorship is lifted, the complete truth about space
+visitors should be told at the same time: the full details of all the
+major cases, the size of the Godman Field space ship, any attempted
+landings or other efforts at contact by interplanetary visitors, and
+all other details that now are official secrets.
+
+I also believe that a certain group of disk sightings in this country
+is linked with our guided missiles. Official announcements, of course,
+may be delayed a long time. With this exception, I believe that
+Americans should be told the truth, now.
+
+When the announcement of our guided missiles is made, some Americans
+not familiar with the facts may accept it as a full answer. If
+officials are not yet ready to reveal the space-travel facts, the
+Mantell evidence and other key cases may be deliberately glossed over.
+
+But even if all the evidence—the world-wide sightings, the old records,
+the Chiles-Whitted and other cases—should be completely ignored,
+Americans cannot escape eventual contact with dwellers on other
+planets. Even though space visitors never attempt contact with us,
+sooner or later earthlings will be traveling to distant planets—planets
+that scientists have said are almost surely inhabited.
+
+The American people have proved their ability to take incredible
+things. We have survived the stunning impact of the Atomic Age. We
+should be able to take the Interplanetary Age, when it comes, without
+hysteria.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLYING SAUCERS ARE REAL ***
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