A woman died of thirst and exposure in the Mojave Desert trying to reach the spot where a man told her he was going to "make a contact."

Some of it isn't comical.

Even though the field is becoming crowded, through thick and thin, Martian and Venusian, the old Maestro, George Adamski, is still head and shoulders above the rest. The hamburger stand is boarded up and he lives in a big ranch house. He vacations in Mexico and has his own clerical staff. His two books Flying Saucers Have Landed and Inside the Space Ships have sold something in the order of 200,000 copies and have been translated into nearly every language except Russian. To date, he's had eleven visits from people from Mars, Venus and Saturn. Evidently Truman Bethurum's Aura Rhanes put out the word about earthmen because two beautiful spacewomen have now entered Adamski's life: an "incredibly lovely" blonde named Kalna, and the equally beautiful Illmuth.

Only a few months ago, while on one of his numerous nationwide lecture tours, a saucer unexpectedly picked Adamski up in Kansas City and took him on a galactic cruise before depositing him at Ft. Madison, Iowa, where he had a lecture date. He "wowed" the packed auditorium with his "proof"—an unused Kansas City to Ft. Madison train ticket.

Last week, in the Netherlands (Adamski's nationwide tours have expanded to world-wide tours), he repeated his exploits to Queen Juliana.

But at Buckingham Palace, Mr. Barnum, all he saw was the changing of the guard.



CHAPTER TWENTY

Do They or Don't They?

During the past four years the most frequent question I've been asked is: "What do you personally think? Do unidentified flying objects exist, or don't they?"

I'm positive they don't.

I was very skeptical when I finished my tour of active duty with the Air Force and left Project Blue Book in 1953, but now I'm convinced.

Since I left the Air Force the Age of the Satellite has arrived and we're in it. Along with this new era came the long range radars, the satellite tracking cameras, and the other instruments that would have picked up any type of "spaceship" coming into our atmosphere.

None of this instrumentation has ever given any indication of any type of unknown vehicle entering the earth's atmosphere.

I checked this with the Department of Defense and I checked this through friends associated with tracking projects. In both cases the results were completely negative.

There's not even a glimmer of hope for the UFO.

Then there's Project MOONWATCH, the Optical Satellite Tracking Program for the International Geophysical Year.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the director of MOONWATCH wrote to me: "I can quite safely say that we have no record of ever having received from our MOONWATCH teams any reports of sightings of unidentified objects which had any characteristics different from those of an orbiting satellite, a slow meteor, or of a suspected plane mistaken for a satellite."

Dr. Hynek should know. He has investigated and analyzed more UFO reports than any other scientist in the world.

And the third convincing point is that twelve years have passed since the first UFO report was made and still there is not one shred of material evidence of anything unknown and no photos of anything other than meaningless blobs of light.

The next question that always arises is: "But people are seeing something. Experienced observers, like pilots, scientists and radar operators have reported UFO's."

To be very frank, we heard the words "experienced observer" so many times these words soon began to make us ill.

Everyone, except housewives with myopia, were experienced observers.

Pilots, "scientists" (a term used equally as loosely), engineers, radar operators, everyone who reported a UFO was some kind of an "experienced observer." This man had taught aircraft recognition during World War II. He was an experienced observer. That man spent four years in the Air Force. He was an experienced observer. We soon learned that everyone is an experienced observer as long as what he sees is familiar to him. As soon as he sees something unfamiliar it's a UFO.

Pilots probably come as close to falling into this category as anyone since they do spend a lot of time looking around the sky. But even those who can rattle off the names and locations of stars, planets and constellations don't know about a few relatively rare astronomical phenomena.

The bolide, or super meteor, is a good example. Few pilots have ever, or will ever, see a deluxe model bolide but when they do they'll never forget it. It's like someone shooting a flare in front of your face. There are a number of reports of bolides in the Blue Book files and each pilot who made each report called each bolide a UFO. The descriptions are almost identical to the classic descriptions of bolides found in astronomy books.

While on the subject of meteors, if most people realized that meteors can have a flat trajectory, they can go from horizon to horizon, they can travel in "formation" (groups), and they can be seen in daylight (as "large silver discs"), the work of UFO investigators would be lighter.

Enough of meteors and back to our experienced observers.

The example of pilots and bolides holds true in many, many other cases.

Take high flying jets for example. To a person in an area where there isn't much high altitude air traffic, a thin, blood red streak in the sky at sunset, or shortly after, is a UFO. To anyone in an area where there are a lot of high flying jets even our myopic housewife, it's just another vapor trail. They're as common as the sunset.

When the flashing red strobe lights, now used on practically all aircraft, were still in the experimental stage back in 1951 they gave us fits. Every time an airplane with one of these flashing lights made a flight people within miles, including other pilots, called in UFO reports. Now these strobe lights are common and no one even bothers to look up.

The same held true, and still does, for the odd array of lights used on tanker planes during aerial refueling operations.

Some phenomena are so rare and so little is known about them that they are always UFO's. The most common is the disc following the airplane.

I've never heard an explanation for this phenomenon but it exists and I've seen it on three occasions. Maybe a dense blob of air tears off the airplane, floats along behind, and reflects the sunlight. Whatever it is, it gives the illusion of a saucer "chasing" an airplane. Sometimes it's steady and sometimes it darts back and forth. It only stays in view a few seconds and when it disappears it fades and looks for all the world as if it's suddenly streaking away into the distance.

Birds, bees, bugs, airplanes, planets, stars, balloons, and a host of other common everyday objects become UFO's the instant they are viewed under other than normal situations.

Then there is radar. This poor inanimate piece of electronic equipment has taken a beating when UFO proof is being offered. "Radar is not subject to the frailties of the human mind," is the outcry of every saucer fan, "and radar has seen UFO's."

Radar is no better than the radar observer and the radar observer has a mind. And where there's a mind there is the same old trouble. If the presentation on the radarscope doesn't look like it has looked for years a UFO is being tracked.

Radar is temperamental. The scope presentation of each radar has certain peculiarities and an operator gets used to seeing these. Occasionally, and for some unknown reason, these peculiarities suddenly change. For months a temperature inversion may cause 50 or 75 targets to appear on the radarscope. The operator has learned to recognize them and knows that they are caused by weather. They are not UFO's. But overnight something changes and now this same temperature inversion causes only one or two targets. The operator isn't used to seeing this and the targets are now UFO's.

Many times we'd stumble across the fact that after the first report of a UFO being tracked on radar the same identical type of target would be tracked again, many times. But by this time the operator would have learned that they were caused by weather and it wouldn't be reported to us.

It is interesting to note that, to my knowledge, there has never been a radar sighting classed as "unknown" when radarscope photos were taken. The reason is simple. The radar operator can take ample time to re-examine what he had to interpret in seconds during the actual sighting. Also, more experienced radar operators have a chance to examine the scope presentation.

Mixed in with the fact that there are few really qualified observers on this earth is the power of suggestion. About the time someone yells "UFO!" and points, all powers of reasoning come to a screeching halt.

We saw this happen day after day.

Few people I ever talked to, once they had decided they were looking at a UFO, stopped to calmly say to themselves, "Now couldn't this be a balloon, star, planet, or something else explainable?"

In one instance I traveled halfway across the United States to investigate a report made by a high ranking man in the State Department. An experienced observer. It was evening by the time I got to talk to him and after he'd excitedly told me all the pertinent facts, how this bright fight had "jumped across the sky," he said, "Want to see it? It's still there but it's not jumping now."

We went outside and there was Jupiter.

Then, there was the UFO over Dayton, Ohio, in the summer of 1952.

I first heard about it at home. It was about six in the evening when the phone rang and it was one of the tower operators at Patterson Field.

The tower operators at Lockbourne AFB in Columbus, Ohio, 60 miles east of Dayton, had spotted "three fiery spheres flying in a V- formation" over their base. Two F-84's had been scrambled to intercept and they were in the air right now. So far, the tower operator told me, the intercept had been unsuccessful because the objects were traveling "two to three thousand miles an hour" and were too high for the old F-84's.

He was monitoring the two jets' radio conversation and he put his telephone near the speaker.

I heard:

"At 28,000 and still above us."

"High speed."

"Headed toward Wright-Patterson."

"Low on fuel, going home."

I made it to my car in record time and took off toward Wright- Patterson, about twelve miles from where I was living.

It was still light, although the sun was low, and as I drove I kept looking toward the east. Nothing. I reached the gate, showed my pass to the guard, and had just written the whole thing off as another UFO report when I saw them.

They convinced me.

Off to the east of the airbase were three objects that can best be described as three half-sized suns.

By the time I arrived at base operations there were three or four dozen people on the ramp, all looking up.

The standard comment was: "Look at them go."

About this time a C-54 transport taxied up and stopped. It was the "Kittyhawk Flight" from Washington and I knew several people who got off.

One passenger, an officer from ATIC, ran up to me and handed me a roll of film.

"Here's some pictures of them," he said breathlessly. "I never thought I'd see one."

The next passengers I recognized were two other officers, Ph.D. psychologists from the Aero Medical Laboratory. I knew them because they had visited Blue Book many times collecting data for a paper they were writing on UFO's.

The title of the paper was to be: The Psychological Aspects of UFO Sightings.

Almost climbing over each other in their effort to tell their story they told me how they had watched the UFO's from the C-54. Both had seen them "dogfighting" between themselves.

"How fast were they going?" I asked.

"Like hell," was their only answer but the way they said it and the looks on their faces emphasized their statement.

The crowd on the ramp had increased by now and some of the newcomers had binoculars. The men with the binoculars were the focal point of several individual groups as they watched and gave blow-by-blow accounts.

Some of the crowd were talking about jet fighters and it suddenly dawned on me that just across the parking lot was the operations office of the local ADC jet outfit, the 97th Fighter Interceptor Squadron.

I ran over to interceptor operations and went in. I knew the duty officer because several times before the 97th people had chased balloons over Dayton. When I told him about the UFO's all I received was a rather uninterested stare. When I said they were over the base he did me the courtesy of going out to look.

He came running back in and hit the scramble button. Three minutes later two F-86's were headed UFOward. They soon disappeared but their vapor trails kept the tense crowd informed of their progress.

And believe me there was tension.

As the vapor trails spiraled up, first as two distinct plumes, and later only one—as they blended at altitude—more than one pilot standing on the ramp expressed his thankfulness for his unenviable position—on the ground watching.

The vapor trails thinned out and disappeared right under the three UFO's and it was obvious that the two jets had closed in.

Here were three that didn't escape.

That night the 97th Fighter Interceptor Squadron added three more balloons to their record. The F-86's had been able to climb higher than the F-84's.

The next morning photos confirmed the balloons. They had been tethered together and carried an instrument package.

I had been fooled. Two Ph.D psychologists who had studied UFO's had been fooled. A C-54 load of "experienced observers" (many pilots) had been fooled. The tower operators had been fooled and so had a hundred others.

This was an interesting sighting and we used to discuss it a lot. All of the observers later agreed that what made them so excited was the tower operator's announcement: "F-84's from Lockbourne are chasing three high speed objects." This set the stage and from then on no one even considered the fact that if the objects had been traveling 2000 or 3000 miles an hour they would have been long gone in the fifteen minutes we watched them.

Secondly, I found out that the C-54, a slow airplane, had actually overtaken and passed the balloons between Columbus and Dayton but none of the passengers I talked to had stopped to think of this.

And I'm positive that in our minds the balloons, which were about 40 feet in diameter and at 40,000 feet, looked a lot larger than they actually were.

I know the power of suggestion plays an important role in UFO sightings. Once you're convinced you're looking at a UFO you can see a lot of things.

But then there's the "unknowns."

Any good saucer fan—wild eyed or sober—will magnanimously concede that a certain percentage of the UFO sightings are the misidentification of known objects. They drag out the "unknowns" as the "proof."

Technically speaking, an "unknown" report is one that has been made by a reliable observer (not necessarily experienced). The report has been exhaustively investigated and analyzed and there is no logical explanation.

To this, the Air Force says: "The Air Force emphasizes the belief that if more immediate detailed objective observational data could have been obtained on the 'unknowns' these too could have been satisfactorily explained."

I think the Case of the Lubbock Lights is an excellent example of this. It is probably one of the most thoroughly investigated reports in the UFO files and it contained the most precise observational data we ever received. Scientists from far and near tried to solve it. It remained an "unknown."

The men who made the original sightings stuck by the case and furnished the "more detailed objective observational data" the Air Force speaks of.

The mysterious fights appeared again and instead of looking for something high in the air they looked for something low and found the solution.

The world famous Lubbock Lights were night flying moths reflecting the bluish-green light of a nearby row of mercury vapor street lights.

I will go a step further than the Air Force, however, and quote from a letter from ex-Lieutenant Andy Flues, once an investigator for Project Blue Book. Flues' statement sums up my beliefs and, I'm quite sure, the beliefs of everyone who has ever worked on Projects Sign, Grudge or Blue Book.

Flues wrote: "Even taking into consideration the highly qualified backgrounds of some of the people who made sightings, there was not one single case which, upon the closest analysis, could not be logically explained in terms of some common object or phenomenon."

The only reason there are any "unknowns" in the UFO files is that an effort is made to be scientific in making evaluations. And being scientific doesn't allow for any educated assuming of missing data or the passing of judgment on the character of the observer. However, this is closely akin to being forced to follow the Marquis of Queensbury rules in a fight with a hood. The investigation of any UFO sighting is an inexact science at the very best. Any UFO investigator, after a few months of being steeped in UFO lore and allowed a few scientific rabbit punches, can make the best of the "unknowns" look like a piece of well-holed Swiss cheese.

But regardless of what I say, or what the Air Force says, or what anyone says, we are stuck with flying saucers. And as long as people report unidentified objects in the air, it's the Air Force's responsibility to explain them.

Project Blue Book will live on.

No responsible scientist will argue with the fact that other solar systems may be inhabited and that some day we may meet those people. But it hasn't happened yet and until that day comes we're stuck with our Space Age Myth—the UFO.

THE END