What had the two pilots and their passenger seen? We kicked it
around plenty that afternoon. It was no balloon. It wasn't another
airplane because when the pilot called Kirksville Radio he'd asked if
there were any airplanes in the area. It might possibly have been a
reflection of some kind except that when it "sank" into the overcast
the pilot said it looked like something sinking into an overcast--it
just didn't disappear as a reflection would. Then there was the
sudden reappearance off the right wing. These are the types of things
you just can't explain.
What did the pilots think it was? Three were sold that the UFO's
were interplanetary spacecraft, one man was convinced that they were
some U.S. "secret weapon," and three of the men just shook their
heads. So did I. We all agreed on one thing--this pilot had seen
something and it was something highly unusual.
The meeting broke up about 9:00P.M. I'd gotten the personal and very
candid opinion of seven airline captains, and the opinions of half a
hundred more airline pilots had been quoted. I'd learned that the
UFO's are discussed often. I'd learned that many airline pilots take
UFO sightings very seriously. I learned that some believe they are
interplanetary, some think they're a U.S. weapon, and many just don't
know. But very few are laughing off the good sightings.
By May 1950 the flying saucer business had hit a new all-time peak.
The Air Force didn't take any side, they just shrugged. There was no
attempt to investigate and explain the various sightings. Maybe this
was because someone was afraid the answer would be "Unknown." Or
maybe it was because a few key officers thought that the eagles or
stars on their shoulders made them leaders of all men. If they didn't
believe in flying saucers and said so, it would be like calming the
stormy Sea of Galilee. "It's all a bunch of damned nonsense," an Air
Force colonel who was controlling the UFO investigation said.
"There's no such thing as a flying saucer." He went on to say that
all people who saw flying saucers were jokers, crackpots, or
publicity hounds. Then he gave the airline pilots who'd been
reporting UFO's a reprieve. "They were just fatigued," he said. "What
they thought were spaceships were windshield reflections."
This was the unbiased processing of UFO reports through normal
intelligence channels.
But the U.S. public evidently had more faith in the "crackpot"
scientists who were spending millions of the public's dollars at the
White Sands Proving Grounds, in the "publicity-mad" military pilots,
and the "tired, old" airline pilots, because in a nationwide poll it
was found that only 6 per cent of the country's 150,697,361 people
agreed with the colonel and said, "There aren't such things."
Ninety-four per cent had different ideas.