Chapter VIII: Preface (5)

In trying to identify the alarming objects approaching his plane, the pilot often thinks first of a meteor, then rejects the idea with some form of the remark, “Whatever it was, it was certainly not a meteor; I’ve seen meteors and I can’t be fooled.” He usually adds that no meteor could travel so fast (or so slowly) as the one he saw; so high (or so low); could have such a color; steer so “obvious” a collision course; fly as part of so orderly a group; move in so level (or so steeply angled) a path; maintain so steady a course; change course so abruptly; move so silently; or create so loud a detonation.

Such an incident occurred on a Pan American flight from New York to San Juan early on the morning of March 9, 1957. At about 3:30 A.M. when the plane was off Jacksonville, Florida, the pilot and the flight engineer saw a burning, greenish-white, round object coming out of nowhere, seemingly only a half mile away and headed across their nose on a direct collision course[V-19]. In such a situation a plane’s captain cannot waste time in analyzing what he sees, but must act. In a violent evasive move he put the plane into a climb of about 1500 feet, during which several passengers were thrown out of their seats and injured. At the same moment the crews of at least seven other flights within an area of 300 miles were reporting the same object. One witness saw it split in two and the fiery rear section drop away. About an hour earlier, the pilot of another plane in the area had seen the breakup of a similar meteor but had not reported it. In spite of all the evidence that the unknown was a normal meteor, breaking apart as many meteors do, the Pan American pilot, “having seen thousands of meteors,” could not accept the object as a natural phenomenon although he did realize, after he heard the other reports, that he had greatly underestimated its distance. The object showed all the characteristics of a typical fireball, but the flying-saucer cultists have still tried to convert this undoubted meteor into an unknown object.

The number of meteors reported as flying saucers or spaceships has diminished in the last few years, but the Air Force has continued to investigate all doubtful or puzzling sightings to determine whether they in any way represent a possible threat to the nation’s security. Every sure identification of a UFO as merely a meteor, not a ballistic missile, brings a certain amount of relief.

A typical case, successfully solved, is that of June 20, 1959. About 2:15 A.M. the pilot of a United Airlines flight over the Pacific reported by radio to Flight Operations that he had observed an apparent rocket firing about thirty-five miles west of the plane position; radar detected the presence of a surface vessel at about the same position. The pilot first noticed a flash of light, then the entire sky lighted up and he saw four round, fiery globules, of an intense bluish-white color, with no tails. Flying two by two in a straight line, they made no sound and disappeared after about two seconds. The weather was clear and calm, the visibility excellent. The copilot, sitting at the right, saw only the first flash, but the pilot of another plane some 120 miles to the west reported seeing the same objects at the same time[V-19].

Because this sighting occurred in a very sensitive area where military officials were expecting a Russian test firing of an ICBM, the Air Force made an exhaustive study of this report and identified the object as a meteor. Their evaluation proceeded as follows:

The United Airlines pilot estimated the distance of the objects as only about thirty miles and their rate of travel as about 15 degrees in two seconds. These figures indicated a velocity of approximately 14,500 miles per hour, about the speed of a ballistic missile. But the relatively low altitude, the flat trajectory, and the fact that a visible “power plant” was apparently still operating at this stage of flight ruled out the possibility of a missile. However, if the observer had underestimated the distance and the objects were actually hundreds of miles away, then the data would indicate a speed of about 50,000 miles an hour, in the range of meteor velocities. The descriptions given closely matched that of the classic fireball, whose colors range over white, blue, green, red, and yellow, and whose luminosity may be as great as -3 magnitudes. The Air Force concluded that the object sighted was, in all probability, a meteor.

A similar sighting, which saucer enthusiasts have publicized as a brilliantly lighted UFO that appeared to hold a definite course, occurred at 3:02 A.M. on July 11, 1959, also over the Pacific[V-19]. The pilot of a Pan American Airlines flight reported that a mysterious bright object accompanied at its left by four smaller lights had approached his plane at “inconceivable speed,” made a sharp right turn, and then disappeared. The objects seemed to be flying evenly spaced in formation, and the pilot, who had never seen anything like it in all his years of flying, told the newspapers, “I’m a believer, now.”

The official investigation began immediately. Four other commercial flights had reported seeing the object at the same time. In each case, the pilot stated that the objects seemed to head straight at his plane at high speed on a collision course, then made a 90-degree turn and disappeared. The various reports, however, showed significant disagreements. Some witnesses gave the color as white, some as orange-yellow. Of the several pilots, each gave a different description of the “formation”: a big light with four smaller lights flying at the left; a big light surrounded by a cluster of six or seven smaller lights; a big light followed by four smaller lights; a big light in the center of a rectangle formed by four smaller lights. Of the five pilots who made official reports, one said the phenomenon was definitely not a meteor, two said it could have been a meteor, and two did not venture an opinion. The pilots of several other flights stated, on landing, that they too had seen the object but had not radioed a report because they assumed it to be a meteor.

After mapping and correlating all the observations, ATIC completed the analysis and released the result to the press on July 14, only three days after the sighting, a remarkably efficient piece of work. Conclusion: the object was a fireball[V-20].

The literature of flying saucers contains dozens of similar incidents that fit perfectly into the meteor pattern. Pointing to this list of “unidentified” flying objects, saucer addicts still abuse the Air Force for concealing the “fact” that these UFOs are actually spaceships!

_Great Meteor Processions_

Even more dramatic than the ordinary exploding meteor whose fragments naturally fall into a pattern around it, a cluster of fireballs or a great procession of meteors occasionally startles the world. On December 21, 1876, about 8:45 P.M. such a swarm of fireballs appeared over Kansas and disappeared some three minutes later over Pennsylvania, having traveled the thousand-mile distance at a velocity of 20,000 to 25,000 miles an hour. Hundreds of persons in Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania saw the display, which included nearly 100 separate fireballs; the leader was more brilliant than the full moon and many of the followers were brighter than Venus or Jupiter. Perhaps fortunately for the nerves of the public, the most recent such display occurred before the saucers began to fly (March 24, 1933). This cluster of fireballs was visible chiefly in the skies over New Mexico and left a great cloud that was visible for at least three hours.

The most spectacular of such formations was the great meteor procession of February 9, 1913. At about 9:05 in the evening the leader or leaders appeared in the sky over western Canada, their fiery red bodies followed by long streaming tails. These immense fireballs showed no tendency to fall toward the earth but, like the green fireballs of New Mexico, “moved forward on a perfectly horizontal path with peculiar, majestic, dignified deliberation,” and disappeared in the distance to the southwest. No description can surpass that given by Professor Chant[V-21] who spent two weeks in locating and interviewing many of the witnesses.

“Before the astonishment aroused by this first meteor had subsided, other bodies were seen coming from the northwest, emerging from precisely the same place as the first one. Onward they moved, at the same deliberate pace, in twos or threes or fours, with tails streaming behind, though not so long nor so bright as in the first case. They all traversed the same path and were headed for the same point in the southeastern sky.

“Gradually the bodies became smaller, until the last ones were but red sparks, some of which were snuffed out before they reached their destination. Several report that near the middle of the great procession was a fine large star without a tail, and that a similar body brought up the rear.

“To most observers the outstanding feature of the phenomenon was the slow, majestic motion of the bodies; and almost equally remarkable was the perfect formation which they retained. Many compared them to a fleet of airships, with lights on either side and forward and aft;... Others, again, likened them to great battleships, attended by cruisers or destroyers.”

No other recorded meteors have persisted for so great a distance. Thousands of persons saw this great procession as it soared over Saskatchewan, central Canada, Toronto and the Great Lakes region, New York and Pennsylvania, the shipping lanes from New York to Bermuda, and on over the South Atlantic, where before it vanished it was observed by ships as far south as Brazil--a distance of some 5000 miles, one fifth of the earth’s circumference. The descriptions do not vary significantly and they all mention the slow, level flight, parallel to the earth’s surface.

Some astronomers have suggested that these unusual meteors may have been a group of natural satellites deflected by the earth’s gravitation, slowing down and finally disintegrating as they made their final revolution[V-14]. But if the UFO cult had existed in 1913, the flying-saucer enthusiasts would probably have regarded the fireball procession as a fleet of spaceships, and would have speculated on the problem of what planet dispatched them and for what purpose.

_The Chiles-Whitted Sighting_

The Chiles-Whitted UFO, sighted on July 24, 1948, is one of the most publicized of the classics. Although the object appeared, passed, and vanished in an interval of roughly ten seconds, and the descriptions given by the three witnesses differed on several vital points, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, astronomer consultant to ATIC, in his report of April 30, 1949, identified it as an undoubted meteor. Nevertheless, not until 1959 did the Air Force officially accept this solution, and the literature of saucerdom still cites the incident as indisputable proof of alien spaceships.

On the evening of July 23 an Eastern Airlines DC-3 took off from Houston, Texas, en route for Boston, with an experienced pilot and copilot in the cockpit. By 2:40 A.M. C.D.S.T. July 24 the plane was a few miles southwest of Montgomery, Alabama, flying at an altitude of 5000 feet. The night was clear, and a bright moon just four days past full shone through a layer of broken clouds about 1000 feet above the plane. At 2:45 A.M. the pilot, Captain C. S. Chiles, noticed a dull red glow some distance ahead, approaching from a little above and to the right of the plane. He remarked to his copilot, Lieutenant J. B. Whitted, “Look, here comes a new Army jet job.”[V-19] In the next few seconds, however, he changed his mind about the identity of the object. As both men watched, the brilliantly glowing unknown continued to approach with incredible swiftness, apparently on a collision course; it seemed to veer slightly, passed the plane on the right almost level with and parallel to the flight path, then seemed to pull up sharply and disappear into the clouds. Captain Chiles estimated that the object was in sight for about ten seconds. The one passenger who was awake, sitting at the right of the cabin, saw the light for only an instant as it flashed by.

The brief impressions of these three witnesses were the sole foundation for newspaper stories that the plane had narrowly escaped collision with a spaceship.

In their official report both pilots agreed on the general appearance of the UFO: it looked like a wingless aircraft with no fins or protruding surfaces, was cigar-shaped, about 100 feet long, and about twice the diameter of a B-29 superfortress. It seemed to have two rows of windows through which glowed a very bright light, brilliant as a magnesium flare. An intense dark-blue glow like a blue fluorescent factory light shone at the bottom along the entire length, and red-orange flames shot out from the rear to a distance of some fifty feet. Neither man heard any sound and neither saw any occupants. In their original report to ATIC both men agreed that “no disturbance was felt from the air waves, nor was there any prop wash or mechanical disturbance when the object passed.” The third witness, the passenger, did not report any turbulence or rocking of the plane. Some of the later versions of the incident gloss over these facts, however, and thus exaggerate the startling nature of the sighting. One account subtly implies the presence of a pilot in the UFO and several state that, as the object passed, the plane hit turbulent air[V-7, p. 61] or was “rocked” by the UFO[V-20, p. 21].

Like most eyewitness descriptions of a startling event, the testimony of the three men differed. Chiles stated that at the front of the UFO was a lighted pilot compartment or cockpit with a “snout” similar to a radar pole, and that a kind of nozzle projected from the rear from which the flames fanned out to a width of twenty or thirty feet. Whitted did not see a cockpit, a snout, or a rear nozzle; he thought the flames flared out from the entire rear and were never any wider than the width of the UFO itself. The third witness, the passenger, saw no shape or form, only an intensely brilliant streak of light that appeared and vanished before he was able to focus his eyes. As responsible officers, both pilots had obviously tried to separate the observed phenomena from their interpretation. They differed widely on the estimated distance of the UFO (the passenger did not offer an estimate). Chiles thought it passed them with a margin of only about 700 feet, but Whitted believed the distance to be more than ten times greater, about a mile and a half. However, when we remember that these men had the UFO in sight for only a small fraction of a minute and that their study of the side view (“windows,” “cockpit,” etc.) must have been limited to the instant of passing, these disagreements are not remarkable.

When Captain Chiles and Lieutenant Whitted reported their frightening experience, the Air Force made a prompt investigation. Since Captain Chiles explicitly stated his belief that the UFO was under intelligent control, the case required careful consideration. A check of the air traffic showed that no other planes had been in the area at the time, so the object could not have been a normal aircraft. Furthermore, other equally reliable witnesses reported seeing unusually bright meteors in the Southeast that night. Since the bare physical description of the UFO, apart from the inferences made, was identical with that of a fireball, Dr. Hynek concluded that it was an unusually bright meteor.

But the climate at ATIC that summer was not friendly to a prosaic explanation. Remembering the tragic death of Captain Mantell some six months earlier while he was chasing a UFO, then unidentified (p. 33), some officials were more than half ready to believe in invading space fleets as the answer to every puzzling phenomenon in the sky. They rejected the fireball explanation. Instead of accepting the Chiles-Whitted UFO as a meteor, they identified the other two meteors seen that night as UFOs!

And yet the evidence is overwhelming that the UFO _was_ a fireball.

The major meteor showers that occur on schedule every year have accounted for hundreds of alleged UFOs over the last fifteen years. Several of these showers begin in mid-July; thus July 24 falls in a period of greatly increased meteor activity, when the earth is moving through the Aquarid streams and is encountering the forerunners of the Perseids. All during the year, and particularly during these weeks of shower meteors, amateur astronomers throughout the country spend many evenings watching the sky, counting meteors, mapping their paths, and reporting the data to various observatories. On an average night outside the shower periods, if there are few clouds and no moon, an experienced watcher may count about half a dozen meteors in an hour’s time, but during a shower he usually sees many more. For the week of July 23 to 30, 1948, the records of the American Meteor Society, the Harvard College Observatory, and the Flower and Cook Observatory show that, in spite of the interference of a bright moon, large numbers of meteors were counted and the paths of many of them were mapped and plotted.

The reports from the Southeast for that week have particular interest for the Chiles-Whitted case. A regular observer in Alabama counted fifteen meteors in one hour’s watching on the evening of July 24, and twenty-one in two hours the following night[V-22]. On the evening of July 26 he apparently took a holiday, but many other persons saw a huge fireball that flashed over North Carolina and Tennessee at 9:36 P.M. E.S.T.; its radiant (AMS 2322), plotted from many reports, showed it to be a member of the Delta Aquarid stream, then approaching its maximum. Early on the morning of July 27 another fireball soared over Tennessee and apparently exploded[V-23]. On the night of July 28 the Alabama watcher recorded fifteen meteors, from which he obtained the radiants AMS 3269, 3270, and 3271[V-9, p. 521].

These facts alone--the occurrence of scheduled showers and the number of well-plotted meteors observed during the period--point strongly to the probability that the Chiles-Whitted UFO was a meteor. The probability becomes virtual certainty when we examine the available records for the night of July 23 and morning of July 24, the period when this particular UFO appeared. The watcher in Alabama was not on duty, but another observer in Iowa counted fourteen meteors in one hour[V-22], more than double the rate for an average night. About an hour before the UFO appeared in Alabama, ground observers at Robins Air Force Base near Macon, Georgia, reported an unusually bright meteor going from north to south. A few minutes before the Alabama sighting, two Air Force officers flying between Blackstone, Virginia, and Gainsborough, North Carolina, reported an unusually bright meteor traveling in a southerly direction.

When Chiles and Whitted observed their UFO, its appearance and manner of motion were identical with those of many other bright meteors but the pilots, startled by the sudden apparition, misinterpreted what they saw. They probably overestimated the length of time the meteor was in view and they almost certainly underestimated the distance. Meteors notoriously mislead even the experienced observer, who often sees them disappearing “just behind the next hill,” when they may actually be fifty or a hundred miles away. Although the night was moonlit and clear except for broken clouds, the witnesses had no fixed reference point by which to determine either distance or size.

There can be no doubt that Chiles and Whitted misinterpreted the appearance of an unusually brilliant meteor, its body glowing to white (the momentarily persisting luminous train of a meteor often has a veined or fibrous structure that could easily have suggested the “lighted window” and “cockpit”) and blue incandescence (the glowing “undercarriage”) as it rushed through the atmosphere some fifty miles or more away, shooting off flaming gases (the “exhaust”) and vaporizing from the friction of the atmosphere. Flashing beyond their range of vision (“pulling up into the clouds”), it probably burned and disintegrated before it reached the earth.

This fresh analysis, based on meteor records for July 1948, has led ATIC finally to remove the Chiles-Whitted UFO from the category of Unknowns and, as Dr. Hynek suggested originally, add it to the file of recorded meteors.

A more recent sighting that closely resembled the Chiles-Whitted incident occurred on the evening of January 8, 1959, and was promptly reported to ATIC [V-19]. Two Air Force pilots were flying in a C-45 type of aircraft from Phillipsburg to Brookville, Pennsylvania, at an altitude of 8000 feet. The night was clear and moonless. At 6:14 P.M. E.S.T. they observed what appeared to be a brilliantly lighted solid object rushing toward them. Bluish green in color, shaped roughly like a teardrop and about 200 feet in diameter, it made no audible sound. Glowing like a small sun, it seemed to be flying level with the aircraft, less than a mile away and headed straight for the plane.

The frightened pilot jerked on the controls in an attempt to dodge the object, but almost before the plane could respond the unknown had disappeared. It had been in sight about three seconds. In his official report he estimated that the object had been the size of a pool ball held at arm’s length and that it had been not more than a mile away. The copilot, however, did not agree. A man with special training and unusual experience in the study of UFOs, he estimated the object to be the size of the head of a pin held at arm’s length and the distance to be at least 300 miles. The extreme brilliance of the object against the night sky, he thought, had made it seem larger. In his opinion, supported by Air Force investigation, the unknown had been a fireball at least fifty miles high that had burned out and vanished as they watched.

As in the Chiles-Whitted case, ground observers also saw the object and thus provided independent confirmation of the analysis. A member of the Ohio State University reported to the Harvard College Observatory that on the night of January 8, at approximately 6:15 P.M. E.S.T., he had watched a brilliant bluish-white meteor streak across the sky over Columbus and vanish within a few seconds. The fireball must indeed have been high and spectacular to be visible at the same moment from points nearly 300 miles apart.

_Other Flaming UFOs_

Not all spectacular UFOs are meteors, of course, any more than they are all planets or balloons or rockets. Sudden brilliant illuminations of the night sky can have any one of a dozen or more explanations. The atmosphere is crowded with potential Unknowns, more than at any time in man’s history. The air surrounding our planet plays host not only to meteors and fireballs, birds and insects, but also to military and commercial planes, private planes, jets, helicopters, weather balloons, experimental rockets, and an ever-growing number of artificial satellites. An ear-shattering detonation that rattles a house or breaks a window may come from an exploding fireball or it may come from a jet penetrating the sound barrier. Without an exact knowledge of all the circumstances, only the foolhardy would attempt to say positively what caused any given unusual aerial phenomenon.

Let us consider a sighting that might have received various wrong interpretations and would probably have become one of the most famous of the UFOs cited by saucerdom, had investigators lacked full information.

Shortly after midnight one spring morning reliable witnesses on the east coast, particularly in Connecticut and Long Island, reported a brilliant bluish-white object flying at high altitude and incredible speed. As it flashed overhead, it changed color to become reddish, and several smaller objects apparently detached themselves from the main body and followed it in orderly fashion. About five minutes later more than fifteen ships in the Caribbean area observed similar objects soaring overhead but the reports varied in many details. Ship number two saw brilliant short flames darting about behind the main body, which had a long, tapered tail. Ship number four saw a flaming white object more brilliant than the full moon. Ship number seven reported a flaming green ball followed by a group of several small objects. Ship number nine observed at least fifteen smaller objects that suddenly separated from the main body and fell into formation behind it. Ship number eleven saw an object with a trail several miles long, brilliant as a peacock’s tail, so luminous that the deck and sea around were bathed in pale light as the mass crossed overhead. Ship number twelve reported, “The main body appeared to have a blue-white head, then a short dark space before the glowing orange-yellow tail. Twenty-seven separate particles were actually counted as they appeared in the main plume. Each followed the main body and each developed its own glowing tail on leaving it.” The main body was several times brighter than Venus, while the offshoots were each twice the magnitude of Sirius. One observer described it as round on top and bright blue-white, while the lower half, which was emitting sparks, seemed to be flattened and reddish in color.

During this period of less than five minutes, similar objects were observed from the ground by witnesses in the Virgin Islands. One man in Martinique saw a luminous green globe, brighter than Venus, followed at a slight distance by a flaming red, enormously long, cigar-shaped object. Observers in Barbados saw two huge objects followed by from twelve to eighteen “offspring” shaped like the main body; some of the offspring subdivided to form two small cometlike objects. The object disappeared into a cloud bank and vanished. No observations were reported from areas farther south.

These unidentified objects were reported over an area stretching from Connecticut to the coast of British Guiana, a distance of about 2700 miles. They flew in a straight course. All of the objects were noiseless. They were remarkably brilliant. They seemed to have one or more leaders, to discharge smaller objects, and to fly in formation. They maintained a substantially horizontal path, and only the last observers, who saw the things disappear into the cloud bank, noted any tendency to descend. No fragments were ever found, and all witnesses agreed that the objects were not like meteors. If all the observers were describing the same single phenomenon, it was flying at the incredible speed of more than 16,000 miles an hour.

What was it?

With only these facts to build on, an investigator might interpret the sightings according to his own prejudices: an invasion fleet from another planet making a reconnaissance in force, the mother ships discharging the smaller craft at intervals; a mass hallucination; a peculiar meteoric display.

Without knowledge of one essential fact, some hundreds of landsmen and seamen in the United States, the Caribbean islands, and the British West Indies might now feel firmly convinced that they had witnessed a genuine “Unknown.” The date was April 14, 1958. The privileged observers had witnessed the death of Sputnik II, the Russian satellite launched on November 3, 1957[V-24].

The UFO reports inspired by this event presented no problem to the Air Force. All information on the re-entry of artificial satellites is immediately accessible to ATIC. Whenever a reported UFO shows any possible resemblance to a falling satellite, Air Force investigators check at once with Spacetrack. Astronomers who had been tracking this satellite as it circled the earth had predicted more than a month in advance that it would spiral toward the earth and fall sometime between April 12 and April 15. A few days before the actual event they had refined their estimate and predicted the time of the fall within a few hours.

[V-1] _Meteoritics_, Vol. II, 1954.

[V-2] Keyhoe, D. E. _The Flying Saucer Conspiracy._ New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1955.

[V-3] Biot, J. B. “Account of a Fire-ball which Fell in the Neighborhood of Laigle.” _Philosophical Magazine_, Vol. XVI (1803), pp. 224–28.

[V-4] Whipple, F.L., and Hawkins, G. S. “Meteors,” _Handbuch der Physik_, Vol. LII (1959), pp. 519–64.

[V-5] Nininger, H. H. _Out of the Sky._ University of Denver Press, 1952; New York: Dover Publications, 1959.

[V-6] Menzel, D. H. Personal files.

[V-7] Ruppelt, E. J. _The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects._ Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1956.

[V-8] _Meteoritics_, Vol. III, 1955.

[V-9] _Meteoritics_, Vol. I, 1953.

[V-10] Millman, P. M., and Halliday, I. “The Near-Infra-Red Spectrum of Meteors,” _Journal of Planetary and Space Science_, Vol. V (1961), pp. 137–40.

[V-11] Millman, P. M. “An Analysis of Meteor Spectra,” _Annals of Harvard College Observatory_, Vol. LXXXII, Nos. 6 and 7 (1917–37), pp. 113–77.

[V-12] Robey, D. H. “An Hypothesis on the Slow Moving Green Fireballs,” _Journal of the British Interplanetary Society_, Vol. XVII (1959–60), pp. 398–411.

[V-13] Krinov, E. L. _Principles of Meteoritics._ New York: Pergamon Press, 1960.

[V-14] O’Keefe, J. A. “Tektites and the Cyrillid Shower,” _Sky and Telescope_, Vol. XXI (1961), p. 4.

[V-15] Fesenkov, V. G. “Cloudiness of the Atmosphere Produced by the Fall of the Tunguska Meteorite of June 30, 1908,” _Meteoritika_, Vol. VI (1949), p. 8.

[V-16] Nininger, H. H. “Tracing the Norton, Kansas, Meteorite Fall,” _Sky and Telescope_, Vol. VII (1948), p. 294.

[V-17] La Paz, L. “The Achondritic Shower of February 18, 1948,” _Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific_, Vol. LXI (1949), p. 63.

[V-18] Wilson, A. S. [Letter] _Sky and Telescope_, Vol. XXII (1961), p. 3.

[V-19] Air Force Files.

[V-20] Tacker, L. J. _Flying Saucers and the U. S. Air Force._ Princeton, N. J.: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1960.

[V-21] Chant, C. A. “An Extraordinary Meteoric Display,” _Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada_, Vol. VII (1913), pp. 145–215.

[V-22] Olivier, C. P. “Tables of Hourly Rates Based Upon American Meteor Society Data.” Interim Report No. 28, Harvard University Radio Meteor Research Program (May 1958).

[V-23] Whipple, F. L. Personal files.

[V-24] Jacchia, L. G. “The Descent of Satellite 1957 Beta One,” Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, _Special Report No. 15_, July 20, 1958.

_Chapter_ VI

LIVING LIGHTS

A gamekeeper in Norfolk, England, in the year 1897 observed the flight of an unusual luminous object. According to his story, he was “... out one very dark night stopping up fox-earths. While I was so engaged I saw a very bright blue light pass close to my face and was very much startled as I saw it going away from me ... I put it down as some insect.” After the mysterious light reappeared a few nights later, the gamekeeper prudently began carrying his gun and eventually he managed a shot at the light. To his amazement he brought down “a poor old half-starved barn owl, _Tyto alba_, whose body continued to glow for some hours after death.”[VI-1]

_The Luminous Owls of Norfolk_

Some ten years later, on the night of February 3, 1907, another Englishman and his son while taking a walk observed a similar luminous phenomenon. Apparently about a quarter of a mile away, it moved horizontally over a course several hundred yards in length, reversed direction, then rose into the air to the height of forty feet or more. “It then descended and again went through the same evolutions many times. The light was slightly reddish in the centre, and resembled a carriage lamp for which we at first mistook it. We watched it for twenty minutes and were quite at a loss to ascertain its cause.

“On December 1st, 1907, when again reaching the top of Twyford Hill, I noticed what I took to be the lamp of a motor bicycle moving rapidly along the Bintree road to the south. The light suddenly stopped, rose into the air above the trees and retraced its course. This it did several times, sometimes rising twenty to forty feet into the air, and then rapidly descending. I called my groom and his wife from their cottage a few hundred yards away, and they watched it with me for several minutes. I then went to my house about half a mile off, and from one of the attic windows watched it with my son and three servants for a short time....”

The mysterious light appeared frequently for a period of weeks, maneuvering silently, its luminosity sometimes so great that “it literally lighted up the branches of the trees as it flew past them.” Attempts to identify it through a telescope were unsuccessful but eventually one observer was lucky enough to hear a sound as the light soared past, and at once identified it by its unique call as a white owl, _Strix flammea_[VI-2].

If these sightings had occurred half a century later, the witnesses might well have called them flying saucers.

_Things That Glow in the Dark_

The luminous owls of Norfolk have appeared at intervals since 1866 to frighten the superstitious and puzzle the naturalist, but ornithologists managed to solve the mystery some years ago[VI-3]. The birds acquire their temporary luminosity from contact with a common fungus, _Armillaria mellea_, popularly known as “honey-tuft.” This mushroom, which mycophagists prize for its delicious flavor, grows in large clumps on dead trees and stumps. The dark-brown cap is rough, with fibrous scales, while the white gills are hooked or toothed at the end and the spores are white. The dense white lacework of the root system or mycelium, which gives off a phosphorescent light, may permeate the entire tree and extend even into the fibers at the base of the tree. Wood infested with the fungus can glow in the dark, sometimes so brightly that a man could read his watch by its light.

Many of the tales of fox fire, corpse candles, and lanternmen undoubtedly come from glimpses of this fungoid phosphorescence. Owls that seek refuge in the dark interiors of hollow trees during the daytime may brush against the veins of the mycelium, which adheres to the feathered body. Flitting about at night, the luminous bird becomes the dancing flame of the will o’ the wisp.

Other luminous mushrooms abound in woods, swamps, and marshy areas. Decaying, they may produce an unearthly light and can give off a peculiarly unpleasant odor. Unexpectedly seeing and smelling a bird touched with the substance, on a dark night, a witness might well feel bewildered and even frightened. _Polyporus sulfureus_, which grows in dense masses on dead trees, often phosphoresces brilliantly in the early stages of its decay, as does _Clytocobe illudens_, the jack o’ lantern. In the tropics these fungi may produce enough light to read by. Birds, insects, and animals that brush against them can carry away some of the luminous material and thus, for a time, appear to be luminous themselves.

Most of us recognize fireflies, lightning bugs, or glowworms--which are not worms but beetles. The wingless females must creep on the surface of ground or branch, but the winged males flit through the air. These sparkling creatures form part of the diet of birds and bats, and when carried aloft to be consumed in flight can make one more mysterious, swiftly moving light to frighten the apprehensive. The earth teems with other self-luminous organisms such as frogs’ eggs, which most of us have never seen and would not recognize. Luminous parasites sometimes live in the feathers of birds and make them glow. The plumage of the great blue heron, a North American bird, can emit a pale light sometimes known as the birds’s “lantern” because it is supposed to help him while fishing. Fish or meat when decaying can become infected with luminous bacteria and thus shine brilliantly in the dark. The sea is filled with phosphorescent fish and plants which help perpetuate tales of sea serpents. Some waters in the Caribbean contain so dense a population of phosphorescent algae that a bird, dipping its wings to snatch a meal, will glow for minutes after it soars again into the air. These luminous birds, innocently fishing for dinner, probably account for many reports that flying saucers come and go from underwater[VI-4].

Many of the erratically behaving UFOs observed at night over wooded areas, swamps, and marshes have undoubtedly been one of these will o’ the wisps--winged creatures glowing with borrowed fire. Unfortunately proof of this explanation is rarely possible. Before the startled observer can recover his wits the flitting “saucer” has gone, taking with it the evidence of its identity.

Fear of the unknown is not confined to _Homo sapiens_. A news item published in England a few years ago reveals that the animal kingdom, too, may have its ghosts. Under the headline, _Owl Attacks Luminous Man_, the article reads:

“A Bournemouth long-distance runner, Ken Baily, was attacked by an owl last night when he was running through the centre of Bournemouth in a luminous track suit. The bird ripped the front of his suit before it flew back into the trees.

“Baily said afterwards: ‘I heard it hooting before it attacked. The suit is luminous so that motorists can see me, but if it attracts owls like this I’d rather take a chance with the traffic.’”[VI-5]

_Sea Gulls as UFOs_

Early in the afternoon of December 10, 1941, three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a research technician standing at the fourth-floor window of a laboratory in Boston saw a number of bright objects maneuvering high in the sky and slowly descending over the city. Making a quick guess at their distance, size, and speed, he concluded that the objects were parachutes, the first of a Japanese invasion. Only after they had dropped to the level of a nearby church spire was he able to gain the right perspective, correct his estimates, and identify the objects as sea gulls drifting down with the winds.

A decade later, the public was no longer worried about danger from Japan but was concerned about possible invasion from outer space. Sea gulls flashing in the sun were interpreted not as parachutes but as flying saucers.

Many luminous UFOs have in fact been ordinary living creatures, normal inhabitants of the earth--owls that had acquired a temporary luminosity, sea gulls reflecting the sunlight, flights of birds reflecting the lights of a town. But in trying to identify them, the witness is influenced by the pattern of his time. In 1897 and 1907 the world seemed reasonably secure. Observers of mysterious lights made fairly accurate estimates of their distance and size and compared them to familiar, everyday things--an insect and a carriage lamp. In 1941, three days after Pearl Harbor, the world was at war and the observer’s imagination, stimulated by a hundred rumors of imminent Japanese invasion, transformed cruising sea gulls into parachutes. By 1950, when space travel had become at least a theoretical possibility and scientists were discussing ways to reach the moon, uneasy persons fantastically overestimated the height and size of mysterious lights in the sky and sometimes saw birds as spaceships from another planet.

A well-publicized incident took place on the morning of July 16, 1952, when a Coast Guard photographer at Salem, Massachusetts, happened to glance out of a window and see four bright, egg-shaped objects moving in the sky. Grabbing his camera, he managed to take a picture before the objects were lost from view. According to some saucer enthusiasts, certain reproductions of the photograph show typical UFOs shaped like two saucers arranged face to face, as though joined by a ring at the mid-line[VI-6]. The official Coast Guard photograph however, shows merely four bright, fuzzy-edged blurs arranged in a rough V formation. Only imagination could convert these spots of light into spaceships. Many readers of this book have probably seen similar objects gleaming briefly in the sun, mysterious for the moment, and then identified them as gulls or airplanes when a shift in orientation cut down the reflection.

On the morning of the Coast Guard photograph the day was exceptionally clear, the sun extremely bright, and the sky a deep blue unusual on the Massachusetts coast. Under these circumstances, objects reflecting the sun look larger and brighter than normal. Because the picture was taken with a dirty lens through a window, the images were further distorted. Since the UFOs did not produce highlights on the tops of the cars in the foreground, as luminous objects overhead would have done, they were probably not in the sky at all. Elaborate Air Force experiments with photo-flood lamps showed that the images were reflections in the window glass from an interior light source behind the camera (see Plate IVa).

Weird and frightening apparitions do occur; Air Force files bulge with reports suggesting that unfamiliar objects are moving around us day and night, by land, sea, and air. Imagination endows them with life or turns them into mysterious, saucer-shaped craft manned by creatures from Mars, Venus, or even from some planet of a star beyond our solar system. The UFO photographed over France on October 2, 1954 (a weekend when every French village was reporting saucers by the dozen), shows no details and might be almost anything: a bird, a balloon, a cloud of gossamer, the sun, a plane, or merely the result of a lens defect (see Plate IVb).

How many of the UFOs listed in the saucer publications originate from birds, insects, and animals we cannot know, but the number must be large. Most of us have only a sketchy acquaintance with the non-human forms of life that share the earth with us. Seeing an unfamiliar creature suddenly, or a familiar creature under unusual circumstances, we often imagine it to be whatever we most fear--vengeful spirits of the departed, fire-breathing dragons, devils, parachutes, or flying saucers.

_The Lubbock Lights_

The luminous objects sighted in Texas during the last week of August, 1951, would probably have been explained and forgotten in a week’s time, except for the publication of alleged photographs of the unknowns. This complication converted a simple incident into a conglomerate of puzzles which, though actually unrelated, were lumped together to form a classic Unknown. The most detailed published account of this case[VI-7, p. 133 ff.] contains a number of statements that differ in detail from those in the official files. When discrepancies exist, the facts as given in this chapter are those in the original Air Force reports[VI-8].

The Saturday night of August 25, 1951, was uncomfortably hot in the Southwest, and many persons spent the evening in the relative coolness out of doors. In the town of Lubbock, a professor of geology was sitting in his yard with two guests, fellow members of the faculty, discussing micrometeorites and counting meteors, which for several nights had been more numerous than usual. The sky was clear and cloudless and seeing conditions were ideal. About 9:20 the men noticed a group of fifteen to twenty lights passing silently overhead, going from north to south. They were obviously not meteors or planes, but disappeared too quickly to be identified. About an hour later a second group of lights appeared, forming a rough semicircle or crescent like a string of beads. Shortly before midnight a third group soared overhead in a random pattern (see Figure 11).

Trying to account for the phenomenon, the men agreed that all three flights had appeared suddenly, not gradually, in about the same part of the sky. Only the second had shown any sort of pattern, all had moved silently from north to south, their luminosity was not constant but had varied in intensity, and all had disappeared suddenly, not gradually, at about the same point in the sky. The men did not agree on the color, which they described as yellowish to white, with a soft glow. The lights had passed too swiftly for the men to locate them in relation to specific stars and there were no clouds in the sky; thus they had no known reference points by which to judge altitude, distance, or size. Since the lights had apparently moved over about 30 degrees of sky in one second, however, and the observers estimated the altitude as 5000 to 50,000 feet, the unknowns must have had an enormous size and an incredible speed of from 1800 to 18,000 miles an hour--typical flying saucers.

Understandably curious, the host telephoned the managing editor of the local newspaper, the Lubbock _Evening Avalanche_, hoping that a printed account would elicit more information from other persons who had noticed the mysterious lights. The report appeared in the Sunday paper, August 26, but in the days that followed, no reader responded.

Then on Friday August 31, five days after the original story had appeared and apparently died, it suddenly came to life. A college freshman who occasionally sold news photographs to the Lubbock paper brought in five pictures of a group of mysterious lights he had photographed the night before. He had been lying in bed next to an open window, he explained, and shortly before midnight he had observed a formation of brilliant lights moving rapidly across the sky. Grabbing his camera, a Kodak 35-mm., he had rushed out into the yard and, after a brief wait, had been able to photograph two similar flights that raced overhead a few minutes apart. Each light had been brighter than Venus, they had maintained a perfect V formation, and had sped from horizon to horizon in a mere four or five seconds. Yet this amazing apparition had apparently gone unnoticed by all except the lucky amateur.

Fearing a hoax, both the editor and the staff photographer hesitated but, since the negatives displayed no obvious evidence of fraud, they finally bought and printed the pictures and distributed them over the country through the United Press.

People all over the nation could now argue the question: What were the Lubbock lights? A few said flying saucers. Many Texans said ducks, plover, or other migratory fowl. But the things in the pictures didn’t look like birds; and if they weren’t birds, what were they? Some persons bluntly called them a hoax.

Impelled perhaps by the growing publicity, the staff photographer of the _Evening Avalanche_ several times tried to duplicate the pictures by photographing flights of birds at night. He allowed himself better equipment--a Speedgraphic camera loaded with a tungsten ASA 80 film, and a GE no. 22 flashbulb in a concentrating reflector. Opening the camera to f 4.7 at 1/10 second, he went up to the roof of the newspaper building to try his luck. After a brief wait he was able to photograph a flock of birds that appeared high overhead, reflecting the mercury-vapor lights of the street, flying noiselessly in a “ragged” V formation, but the image on the negative proved too faint for use. The next night he tried again, using a Kodak Reflex set at f 3.5, Super XX film, at 1/10 second, plus the flashbulb and concentrating reflector. The birds appeared on schedule, but again the images proved too faint for use. The experimenter concluded, probably correctly, that the amateur must have photographed something much brighter than birds.

Not until late October, nearly two months after the original incident, did the Air Force receive official notice of the mystery at Lubbock, and Captain Ruppelt of ATIC arrived to interview witnesses in Lubbock and the neighboring towns of Lamessa, Brownfield, and Big Spring. He quickly discovered that he had two mysteries to solve instead of one since, according to the witnesses who had started all the excitement, the objects shown in the pictures were wholly unlike the luminous phenomena observed by the three professors. The pictured lights formed a perfectly geometrical, flat V, while the original objects had formed a random pattern. Furthermore the pictures showed brilliant, sharply outlined lights as intense as unshaded electric bulbs, while the original objects had been softly glowing.

Meanwhile the professors themselves had been trying to solve their own mystery. During September and October they had observed at least a dozen similar flights, and in an attempt to obtain the true altitude of the objects they had organized a field survey, operating in the country to achieve better seeing conditions. Two groups of observers were stationed at two different points, a measured distance apart, with radio communication between the two. By making simultaneous observations, they hoped to calculate the true height of the objects and thus obtain accurate estimates of size and speed. This well-planned experiment failed because the lights never appeared to the watchers in the country even on nights when they were clearly visible in the town. Nevertheless the scientists did establish one fact: the altitude could not be as high as 50,000 feet, their original estimate. An astronomer in the group, calculating from the few data available, showed that the height must have been only 2000 to 3000 feet, less than a tenth of the first estimate.

Continuing his investigation, Captain Ruppelt found that other persons had seen the lights on the night of August 25--and identified them.

At Brownfield, Texas, some thirty miles from Lubbock, a rancher and his wife had been sitting in their back yard when they noticed a group of fifteen to twenty lights flying overhead from north to south, silently, in no particular formation. They appeared to be very high and had “a kind of glow, a little bigger than a star.” Some time later a second group flew over. When a third group appeared, flying lower, he could see that they were birds; as they moved on to the south and one of the birds emitted a cry, he recognized the familiar call of the plover. Plover have a wing span of a foot and their oily white breasts form an excellent surface for reflecting the lights beneath them.

Like most old-time residents of the area, the rancher was accustomed to the yearly exodus of migratory fowl. Traveling at night in groups of six to twenty, they usually flew at 1000 feet or lower at a maximum speed of about fifty miles an hour in the weeks from late August to mid-November. The rancher had read about the professors’ sighting, which sounded exactly like his own. It would have baffled him, too, he said, if he had not gotten a good look when the third flight circled the house and if he had not happened to hear the single call.

Another resident reported, much later, that he had often seen such lights and recognized them as birds. One night he had noticed “a formation of ducks pass over so low that you could actually see the whole bodies with their shiny white undersides glowing.” At other times he had seen ducks flying at low altitudes with only the undersides glowing and creating an illusion of objects moving very fast at a high altitude[VI-9].

In spite of the overwhelming evidence that the original objects had been birds, probably plover, reflecting the city’s lights, Captain Ruppelt chose to regard them as mysterious and listed the professors’ sighting as an Unknown. Several years later he wrote that a natural explanation did exist but, for some reason, he had promised not to divulge it[VI-7, p. 150]. Still later, he asserted without amplification that the lights had been night-flying moths reflecting the bluish green of mercury-vapor street lights[VI-10, p. 276]--a surprising anticlimax, in view of his earlier secrecy. In a reanalysis of the facts made in 1959, Major (now Lieutenant Colonel) R. J. Friend of ATIC and Dr. J. Allen Hynek, science consultant, determined beyond doubt that the objects had been plover.

_The Lubbock Pictures_

The problem of the photographs remained. In Dayton, Air Force experts studied the four available negatives.

The photographer had used a Kodak 35-mm. camera, lens at 3.5, Plus-X film, and an exposure time of 1/10 second. The negatives were badly scratched and dirty from much handling. According to the photographer’s story, each flight of unknowns had moved from horizon to horizon in four to five seconds and had passed directly overhead; he had “panned” his camera with the movement of the objects and had managed to snap two pictures during one flight and three during the next.

Analysis yielded no suggestion that the negatives had been tampered with but they offered no clue to the background, identity, height, distance, or speed of the things shown. The images themselves, however, aroused some doubts. Each frame showed twenty bright spots against a uniform dark background. No trace of stars or starlight could be found, although the sky that night had been clear and cloudless. The spots showed evidence of slight motion during the exposure but the amount of blurring was amazingly slight, considering the speed with which the photographer claimed to have moved his Kodak. Professional cameramen tried repeatedly to duplicate the performance, but failed. The most successful try produced only two pictures, badly blurred, in four seconds.