The Report on Unidentified Flying ObjectsRuppelt, Edward J.
History
The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects
Ruppelt, Edward J.
Unidentified flying objects
It was a nice night to fly and he had to get in so much time anyway,
so he thought he'd try to get a little closer to it. If it was an
airplane, chances were he could close in and if it was a star, he
should be able to climb up to 30,000 feet and the light shouldn't
change its relative position. He checked his oxygen supply, increased
the r.p.m. of the engine, and started to climb. In three or four
minutes it was obvious that he was getting above the light, and he
watched it; it had moved in relation to the stars. It must be an
airplane then, he'd decided--an airplane so far away that he couldn't
see its red and green wing tip lights.
Since he'd gone this far, he decided that he'd get closer and make
sure it _was_ an airplane; so he dropped the nose of the F-86 and
started down. As the needle on the machmeter nudged the red line, he
saw that he was getting closer because the light was getting bigger,
but still he couldn't see any lights other than the one big white
one. Then it wasn't white any longer; it was changing color. In about
a two-second cycle it changed from white to red, then back to white
again. It went through this cycle two or three times, and then before
he could realize what was going on, he told me, the light changed in
shape to a perfect triangle. Then it split into two triangles, one
above the other. By this time he had leveled off and wasn't closing
in any more. In a flash the whole thing was gone. He used the old
standard description for a disappearing UFO: "It was just like
someone turning off a light--it's there, then it's gone."
I asked him what he thought he'd seen. He'd thought about flying
saucers, he said, but he "just couldn't swallow those stories." He
thought he had a case of vertigo and the more he thought about it,
the surer he was that this was the answer. He'd felt pretty foolish,
he told me, and he was glad that he was alone.
Up ahead he saw the sprawling lights of Fort Benning and Lawson AFB,
his turning point on the flight, and he'd started to turn but then
he'd checked his fuel. The climb had used up quite a bit, so he
changed his mind about going to Robins AFB and started straight back
to Moody.
He called in to the ground station to change his flight plan, but
before he could say anything the ground radio operator asked him if
he'd seen a mysterious light.
Well--he'd seen a light.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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