The World of Flying Saucers: A Scientific Examination of a Major Myth of the Space AgeMenzel, Donald H. (Donald Howard)
Science
The World of Flying Saucers: A Scientific Examination of a Major Myth of the Space Age
Menzel, Donald H. (Donald Howard)
Unidentified flying objects
By this time all the witnesses were greatly excited by the UFO. The
master sergeant couldn’t decide what to do next because he kept
thinking, “They’re bigger than all of us!” but the traffic controller
notified the F-84 patrolling in the west and asked for an intercept.
The pilot soon found the light, which was still stationary. He began
the chase, but when he had approached to within an estimated three
miles, the light rapidly began to retreat. He continued the chase
directly north for 120 miles (during which both the jet and the UFO
went off the ground scope) but he could not gain on the object. Running
short of fuel, he turned back toward the base. The ground scope soon
picked him up again and, a few seconds later, picked up an unknown
target apparently trailing the jet by ten or fifteen miles.
A second jet then took to the air, located the light, and began the
pursuit. Like the first pilot, he could not close the distance between
him and the receding UFO. After performing various tests to convince
himself that he wasn’t chasing a reflection, he finally turned on
his radar gun camera. After a few seconds the red light blinked on,
indicating a solid object ahead. The pilot thereupon asked permission
to break off the intercept and, having taken a photograph, returned
to base. As before, the ground scope picked up the returning jet but
this time the UFO did not reappear on the scope. The controller then
called officials at the filter center at Fargo, North Dakota. They
had not received any UFO reports; a few minutes later, however, they
called back to say that spotter posts between the two cities, on a
southwest-northeast line, had indeed seen a bluish-white light.
Investigators from ATIC arrived promptly but they were not able to
explain the sighting. Even the photographs showed nothing useful.
Conclusion: unknown.
The incident remained unexplained chiefly because the investigators,
like the witnesses, apparently assumed that a single unidentified
flying object accounted for all the phenomena observed that evening.
Although the available evidence is somewhat confusing, a careful study
shows that, on the contrary, the visual and the radar targets could not
have been the same.
When the ground spotter first reported the UFO, she described it as a
stationary light low on the horizon. The radarscope, however, showed
a target that was moving slowly, at an altitude of about 16,000 feet.
Some minutes later, when the visual target did begin to move, the radar
target speeded up. This was the only instance in which the movements
of the two seemed to be roughly parallel. But in the excitement
that followed, all the witnesses assumed that the two targets were
identical. The published account[VIII-3, p. 303 ff.] does not
distinguish clearly between the actions of the light and the movements
of the blips on the radarscope.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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