A lighted weather balloon had been released from the weather station at Fargo at 8:50, ten minutes before Lieutenant Gorman’s first call. As observed from the station, the balloon had traveled west and then northwest. At 9:00 it would have been near the airport about where the unknown light was first reported. A balloon could well have accounted for the events described in the first phases of the incident, but less well for those in the last. Officially, however, the cause was listed as a lighted weather balloon[IV-2, p. 67]--an answer that was not entirely satisfactory. [Illustration: PLATE I _a._ "Grindstone" clouds over Mount Rainier. (CHAP. II)] [Illustration: PLATE I _b._ A "stack of plates" near the Maritime Alps northeast of Marseilles. (CHAP. II)] [Illustration: PLATE II _a._ Kite with lantern photographed at Curaçao, B.W.I. (CHAP. III)] [Illustration: PLATE II _b._ UFOs over Kentucky, 10:35 P.M., CST, July 7, 1947. Jet trails? Bolides? (CHAP. III)] [Illustration: PLATE III _a._ Meteor trail. (CHAP. V)] [Illustration: PLATE III _b._ Fireball over Puerto Rico, January 12, 1947. (CHAP. V)] [Illustration: PLATE IV _a._ Coast Guard photograph of UFOs over Salem, Massachusetts, July 16, 1952. (CHAP. VI)] [Illustration: PLATE IV _b._ UFO near the village of Arbleterre, in northern France, October 2, 1954. (CHAP. VI)] [Illustration: PLATE IV _c._ Radar "ghosts" at Salina, Kansas, September 10, 1956. (CHAP. VIII)] _Only a Balloon?_ A review of the evidence, made by the authors during the preparation of this book, emphasized some puzzling inconsistencies. Lieutenant Gorman had had the UFO in view for about twenty-seven minutes. During the first five or ten minutes it had traveled horizontally at low altitude in a fairly steady course. Then it had suddenly changed tactics, had climbed to high altitude, turned, darted in and out, and performed both evasive and aggressive actions. The three witnesses on the ground, however, did not see the UFO perform _any_ of these combat maneuvers. It had been traveling steadily north and northwest and had disappeared from view ten or fifteen minutes before the aerial dogfight ended. These differences strongly suggested that two unknowns were involved in the sighting. According to this theory, the light seen by the ground observers was the weather balloon; the light first seen over the airfield by Gorman was also the weather balloon. His adversary during the major part of the dogfight was a second unknown, not a physical object but some kind of optical phenomenon, very probably a mirage of the planet Jupiter. The reconstruction based on this theory would account for all the puzzling aspects of the case.