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.