the tower and looked out. He could see the Cub in the air and, a
little above it, a clear white light. The light was moving swiftly to
the north, then shifted and continued in a straight line toward the
northwest. After watching it for several seconds, he returned to his
post. A few minutes later Gorman called the tower for the third time to
say that he was going to try to close in on the unknown. The traffic
controller then stepped to the south window of the tower. Through his
binoculars he could see a light moving rapidly over the field in a
straight line toward the northwest. It had no particular shape and was
merely a clear white light about the size of a plane’s tail lamp. After
a few seconds he returned and resumed communication with Gorman.
The pilot of the Cub glimpsed the light briefly as he was landing his
plane. He supposed it to be the tail light of another ship going very
fast in a straight line in a westerly direction, and was puzzled by
the fact that an army plane seemed to be pursuing it. After landing
he delivered some bottles of Coca-Cola to the tower operators and,
overhearing the conversation between them and Gorman, stepped to the
balcony at the southeast corner of the tower to see what was happening.
From there he could see the light going west, with the army plane after
it. The light shifted briefly to the southeast but almost immediately
resumed its northwest course and disappeared after a few seconds.
Lieutenant Gorman, meanwhile, had begun a weird “dogfight.” The UFO
seemed to be at an altitude of about 1000 feet, was traveling about 250
miles an hour, and was blinking off and on. As he approached, the light
banked to the left. Gorman dived after it but could not catch up. The
light then began to climb in a rapid turn. Attempting to turn with it,
Gorman blacked out temporarily from the excessive speed.
Continuing the chase, this time at 5000 to 7000 feet Gorman noticed
that the light was now traveling fast, apparently faster than the F-51
could go, so he began trying to cut it off in turns with his fighter
at full power. As the object circled to the left, Gorman cut back to
the right for a head-on pass. When collision seemed inevitable he dived
and the light seemed to pass over his canopy at a distance of about
500 feet. According to the description he later gave the Air Force,
the unknown at this closest approach seemed to be a round white light,
somewhat flattened, from six to eight inches in diameter--about a
quarter the apparent size of the full moon. Gorman then made a climbing
turn. When he could see the light again it suddenly reversed direction
and headed straight for the plane, attempting to ram. It was no longer
blinking off and on but was a steady white. Just before collision it
pulled up and Gorman, too, pulled up. The light went straight up, with
Gorman following until, at 14,000 feet, his plane went into a power
stall while the object circled some 2000 feet above him. As he resumed
the battle, the light seemed to retreat, then attack. Gorman dodged and
circled to the left to get in position for another intercept. Finally,
when these maneuvers had taken him some twenty-five miles southeast of
Fargo, he was at 14,000 feet with the object below him at 11,000 feet.
He dived after it. The UFO turned and started a head-on pass, then
broke it off, climbed straight up, and disappeared. The time was 9:27.
Gorman returned to the Fargo airport and landed, convinced that some
intelligence had been controlling the actions of the unknown[IV-1].
With the memory of the Mantell tragedy (p. 33) and the Chiles-Whitted
sighting (see _Chapter_ V, p. 109) still fresh in mind, officials from
ATIC arrived at Fargo in less than twenty-four hours to investigate
this new incident [IV-2, p. 63 ff.]. They carefully questioned
Lieutenant Gorman and the three other witnesses, but could find no
obvious explanation. No other aircraft had been in the neighborhood
at the time of the sighting. The weather had been clear, visibility
unlimited, with some auroral activity in the northeast. When tested
with a control group of five other F-51s that had flown during the
same period, Gorman’s plane showed no more radioactivity than did the
control group--the slightly higher amount shown by all planes after
flight. Gorman’s report was confusing, in parts, and reconstructing
the exact sequence of maneuvers by UFO and plane proved impossible.
There were almost as many theories offered in explanation as there were
investigators, but eventually a reasonable solution did appear.
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.
As first described by Lieutenant Gorman and by the three witnesses on
the ground, the light was small, bright, and clear; no structure was
visible; it made no noise and left no trail or exhaust. It was south
of the control tower, was traveling horizontally west and northwest,
seemingly at high speed, on a straight course, at low altitude. On
these points all the witnesses agreed.
They did not agree in their estimates of its actual distance
and height--a fact that is not surprising when we consider the
circumstances. The night was clear and cloudless. It was also dark. The
sun had set more than two hours earlier and there was no moonlight (new
moon on October 2). On a dark night, the height and distance (and hence
the speed) of a moving light of unknown size are notoriously difficult
to estimate. According to Lieutenant Gorman, the light when he first
saw it was about 1000 feet above the ground and 1000 yards--a little
more than ½ mile--from his plane. The three men on the ground saw the
UFO, for a few seconds, at different times during a period of less
than ten minutes. Like Gorman, they were experienced airmen but they
differed from him and from each other in their estimates. According
to the assistant traffic controller, the altitude and distance from
the control tower were 2000–2500 feet and 1–2 miles. According to the
traffic controller, they were 4000–5000 feet and ½ mile; according to
the Cub’s pilot, they were 5000–6000 feet and 1 mile.
In spite of the discrepancies, these estimates are in general agreement
and, together with the details of the UFOs appearance, are consistent
with the description of the weather balloon that had been released at
8:50, about ten or fifteen minutes before the UFO was sighted from the
ground. The balloon carried a small white light, moved west and then
northwest, was at low altitude and slowly climbing, and would soon have
disappeared from the view of ground observers.
The object that Lieutenant Gorman first saw and pursued was also the
balloon, climbing and turning. As it bobbed and swayed in the air
currents it would have seemed to blink off and on, just as he reported.
Underestimating its height and distance and overestimating its velocity
as did the pilot in the Cuban dogfight (p. 42), he tried to follow its
apparent climbing turn and, as he stated, blacked out briefly because
of his excessive speed. During this interval, short as it may have
been, he of course lost track of the object. Shortly afterward, when
the UFO passed over his canopy and he dived, he again lost sight of the
object.
When he resumed the chase he supposed that he had located the same
object he had been following earlier--but the evidence suggests that
he had picked up a different target. The unknown was going much faster
than before, was at a much higher altitude, and shone with a steady
brilliance instead of blinking off and on. In such a tense situation
he could understandably have mistaken one strange light for another.
Pursuing an apparently hostile unknown, less than a year after the
still mysterious death of Mantell in a similar encounter, he might
justifiably have been frightened.
The most probable source of the second light is the planet Jupiter. The
sun had set at 6:24 P.M. Following some three hours behind the sun,
the planet had a magnitude of -1.7 and was thus brighter than Sirius,
the brightest star. Shortly after 9:10 when the UFO began its violent
maneuvers (the exact time is not known), Jupiter was very low in the
southwest sky, between two and three degrees above the horizon, at
a bearing of about 231 degrees. The UFO was also attacking from the
southwest, as is shown by Gorman’s tactics: in trying to cut it off in
circles to the left, he gradually moved to the southeast.
The weather bureau records for that evening, obtained from radiosonde
observations, show that temperature inversions existed both near the
ground and at higher altitude. Thus conditions were ideal to produce
a furiously twinkling planetary mirage. When a planet is close to the
horizon this twinkling, together with the defocusing action of the
earth’s atmosphere, can spread out the image so that it looks huge,
with an apparent diameter as great as ten minutes of arc. Under such
conditions, both the size and the intensity of the light fluctuate.
When they diminish, the object seems to be racing away from the
observer; when they increase, it seems to be rushing directly towards
him on a collision course. The peculiar lens-like action of the
atmosphere makes the image seem to be, not at infinity, but only a few
hundred feet away from the observer.
Seen through the distorting atmospheric lens, the image of Jupiter
could have performed exactly as Gorman described: it would have
darted back and forth, seemed to attack, retreat, and carry out the
“controlled” maneuvers that actually depended partly on the movement of
the plane itself. Gorman apparently assumed that he was dealing with a
material object (as indeed he was in the beginning), and therefore did
not consider the possibility that he was seeing merely an optical image.
The geographical situation would have helped produce the illusion.
Fargo lies at an elevation of about 900 feet and the land rises
gradually to the west. Due west is Bismarck at 1670 feet. To the south
lies a series of buttes, some of them as high as 3500 feet. Thus in the
southwest where Jupiter was setting and where the UFO attacked from,
the buttes would repeatedly have cut off the planet from view as Gorman
maneuvered, so that the image would have seemed to race in and out and
perform evasive actions, just as did the mirage of Sirius in Alaska (p.
60). Since Jupiter was very low, however, the buttes served to conceal
it from the observers on the ground.
[Illustration: _Figure 9._ Positions of refracted image of Jupiter from
9:00 to 9:29 P.M. at Fargo, North Dakota, on October 1, 1948. Azimuth
measured north through east.]
The times involved provide the last piece of the puzzle. The dogfight
ended at about 9:27. The time of the geometrical setting of Jupiter
was 9:25. The usual lag due to refraction is between two and three
minutes (see Figure 9). The planet therefore remained visible for about
two minutes longer. The image actually sank below the horizon and
disappeared from view between 9:27 and 9:28, the same time that the
UFO climbed straight up into the sky and disappeared. When Jupiter
vanished, the unknown also vanished and did not return.
Absolute proof of this solution is of course impossible. Nevertheless,
the description of the UFO, its behavior, its direction, its time of
disappearance--all are consistent with its identification as Jupiter.
The Gorman case might reasonably be removed from the “Balloon?”
category and listed as “Balloon plus planetary mirage.”
_Jupiter through a Jet Trail_
Venus, Mars, and Jupiter seen under unusual conditions can mystify even
the most hardheaded witness. Unrecognized air turbulence and increased
scattering of the light can easily create the illusion of a flying
saucer.
An ex-army man, a trained observer with a good knowledge of physics and
optics, reports the following unnerving experience[IV-11].
“On January 30, 1954, my buddy and I had been fox hunting in
southwestern Indiana. We hunted until well after sundown and headed for
the car. As we neared it, a jet plane thundered through the darkening
sky, from north to south. Placing game and guns in the car, I walked
around it to see if the tires were OK. Happening to glance skyward,
I let out a yell. There it was, and no mistaking it. A flying saucer
blazing in the sky. A real illuminated spaceship. Only it wasn’t
moving, just hanging in the sky. Football-shaped, about as long as the
apparent diameter of the full moon, it showed red, yellow, and bluish
green. [Here he sketched a football shape, glowing red knobs placed
at the two ends, yellow lights girdling the middle, and yellow and
green arcs curving between the two ends (see Figure 10).] I carry an
eight-power field glass when hunting and I immediately trained this on
the celestial wonder. The result was weird. It seemed to be pulsating
with a quivering, twinkling light. We watched it for some five minutes,
trying to figure out what we were seeing. Then the spaceship began
to get smaller, simply reducing in size without moving. Smaller and
smaller it became and in another five minutes it suddenly contracted
into a planet--Jupiter, I believe it was. [Jupiter was in the eastern
sky 50 to 60 degrees above the horizon.]
[Illustration: _Figure 10._ Witness’s sketch of Jupiter seen through a
jet trail.]
“When we realized what we were watching we began to try to figure
out the ‘why.’ Suddenly we realized we were looking directly through
the path of the plane at the planet and our best guess was that the
atmospheric turbulence and temperature change caused by the passage of
the jet was to blame for the strange aberration we had witnessed. And
we wondered if refraction of the golden light could cause the reds,
greens, and blues. Since neither of us uses snake-bite medicine in any
form, we figured our observations were about as substantial as our
feeble scientific understanding would permit.
“But anyway, I found out how people may see flying saucers and be
perfectly honest in their incomplete observations. Had a person
inclined to the supernatural taken a good look, jumped in his car,
and headed for home at high speed, he would steadfastly have believed
he had seen a flying saucer which was evidently observing the earth
preparatory to an attack from outer space.”
[IV-1] Air Force Files.
[IV-2] Ruppelt, E. J. _The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects._
Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1956.
[IV-3] Tacker, L. J. _Flying Saucers and the U. S. Air Force._
Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1960, p. 59.
[IV-4] Payne-Gaposchkin, C. _Introduction to Astronomy._ Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.; Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1954.
[IV-5] Gann, E. K. _Fate Is The Hunter._ Crest Reprint, New York:
Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1962, p. 172.
[IV-6] Case 151, CRIFO _Orbit_, Vol. III (April 6, 1956).
[IV-7] Buffalo _Evening News_, April 10, 1956.
[IV-8] Keyhoe, D. E. _Flying Saucers: Top Secret._ New York: G. P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1960.
[IV-9] Menzel, D. H. _Flying Saucers._ Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1953.
[IV-10] Ley, W., and von Braun, W. _The Exploration of Mars._ New York:
The Viking Press, 1956.
[IV-11] Main, O. Personal correspondence.
_Chapter_ V
OUT OF THE SKY: METEORS AND FIREBALLS
About one o’clock in the afternoon on November 30, 1954, a spectacular
meteor flared across the southeastern part of the United States and
exploded. Many persons in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi saw the
bright flash high in the sky, followed by a trail of smoke, and heard
three violent detonations. Over the town of Sylacauga, Alabama, a
nine-pound fragment of the falling meteoric body crashed through the
roof of a house, bruised the left arm and hip of the unlucky resident,
and came to rest on the floor. Members of the American Meteor Society
collected detailed descriptions of the event from many witnesses and
added this daylight fireball to the official list of observed meteorite
falls from which meteorites are recovered[V-1, p. 128].
UFO addicts, however, apparently regarded both the meteor and its
fragments as unnatural phenomena, implied some doubt that the fragment
was really a meteorite, and characterized the incident as peculiar[V-2].
To the astronomer who specializes in the study of meteors the only
peculiar aspect of the episode is that saucer publications list so
few mysterious UFOs for that particular week when similar spectacular
fireballs were almost a commonplace in the southeast states. On
November 29 a meteor flew over Alabama at 5:30 P.M., and about two
hours later another with a long trail soared over Florida. On November
30 at 5:00 P.M., a few hours after the fall at Sylacauga, another
bright fireball flashed over Alabama. Shortly before midnight the
same night a meteor flamed over North Carolina, so brilliant that its
copper-green light illuminated the interior of cars on the highway;
blue-green fire shot out above the treetops, changed to magnesium
white, and then slowly faded. Detailed observations of all these
appeared in the scientific journal _Meteoritics_[V-1, p. 128].
_Stones from Heaven_
Until roughly a hundred and fifty years ago meteors and meteorites
had the status of cosmic orphans, unacknowledged members of the
astronomical family. Few persons doubted the existence of the fixed
stars, the solar planets, comets, or even of “new stars” or novae, but
they rejected a natural explanation for meteors and interpreted them
as falling stars, flying dragons, or fountains of fire in the sky.
Most astronomers as well as laymen laughed at the recurrent idea that
“stones from heaven” could fall on the earth. Then in 1803 the French
scientist J. B. Biot described an extraordinary rain of meteorites
that fell at L’Aigle on April 26[V-3]; he convinced the French Academy
of Sciences that the stones had indeed pelted from the sky during the
great meteor display. Meteoritics is thus a relatively young science.
Much remains to be learned about these cosmic visitors, but certain
basic facts have been established[V-4].
Meteors enter the earth’s atmosphere continually, by day as well as by
night, and they show great variety. Some are so brilliant that they are
visible even in broad daylight. Some are so faint that even in darkness
they can be seen only through a telescope. Others, still fainter, can
be detected only by radar specially designed for this purpose. Because
of the friction created when they penetrate the earth’s atmosphere,
most meteors vaporize and vanish many miles above the ground. We see
them as only bright streaks of light, quickly extinguished. If the
meteoric body is large enough, has the right chemical constitution,
and enters the atmosphere at a favorable angle and velocity, some of
it may survive the journey and fall to the earth as a meteorite. A
distinct odor sometimes accompanies the fall--the smell of sulphur,
onions, or cyanide. About 40,000 tons of meteoritic material fall on
the earth each day, most of it in the form of fine dust. The object
may be a chunk of metal or stone the size of a pebble or a boulder, or
it may be a mass weighing several tons, so enormous that it gouges out
a crater at the place where it hits and comes to rest far beneath the
earth’s surface. Some meteors, fortunately extremely rare, apparently
can strike the earth and devastate a large area but, like the wind,
leave behind no physical trace. According to present theory, members
of a regular shower are probably remnants of comets, which have an
icy structure, and the minute bits of frozen debris vaporize in a
flash of light high in the atmosphere. Meteors that survive to reach
the earth as meteorites are thought to be fragments of asteroids, or
tiny planets. Meteorites vary so widely in their physical and chemical
structure that they require a complex system of classification.
Nevertheless the specialist can distinguish between a meteorite and
earthly rocks and stones by laboratory tests[V-5].
_Meteor Streams and Showers_
Any clear night displays its quota of meteors. But at certain times,
when the earth happens to collide with a stream of cosmic debris
moving in an elliptical orbit, a shower of meteors takes place. (For
a list of the major night meteor streams, see TABLE I.) Most meteor
streams probably result from the breakup of comets; if the debris is
distributed uniformly in the comet’s orbit, a meteor shower occurs
each time the earth crosses the orbit. For example, the Perseids,
fragments of Comet 1862 III, have reappeared every August for more
than 1200 years, and the Leonids, debris of Comet Temple (1866 I),
regularly return around the third week in November. Like the Taurids,
another dependable stream, the Leonids are notable for their brilliant
fireballs, which have deposited some of the largest meteorites ever
found on the earth.
Some regular showers produce great numbers of meteors at intervals of
several years. For nearly a millennium, A.D. 902 to 1866, a marked
increase in the number of Leonids occurred every thirty-three years.
The display in 1833 was one of the most spectacular in history, and
witnesses said that the “stars were falling” as thick as snowflakes.
Before the scheduled major shower of 1899, however, the main stream
was deflected by passing close to the planet Jupiter and the periodic
spectacle did not take place. Since then, the Leonids have been
considered a “lost” stream, but some members of the shower have
continued to appear each November. On November 16 and 17, 1961, they
produced an unexpectedly awesome display with many brilliant fireballs.
TABLE I
MAJOR METEOR STREAMS