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Approved For Release 2001/04/02 : CIA-RDP81R00560R000100010002-9 vering pilot and the object as Harris tried to close in. Harris got within what he estimated was three miles of ’ the object, near enough to see that its surface was not un- like “sand blasted” aluminum, approximately 50 feet in diameter and five to ten feet thick at the center. Although in its rocking motion it sometimes took on the look of a zeppelin, when it finally took off, going straight up, then to the south, Harris could see it was more like a disc, plates linked by their lips. The UFO hovered briefly over Lake Omni station, then with a great thrust of speed, moved west and out: of sight within seconds. By the time the Lorenzens interviewed Harris, they were familiar with the conclusions of the Air Force on this sight- ing: A research balloon or Venus. The veteran pilot was familiar with the Pentagon established conclusion, too. But he had seen a gray disc, hovering, then shooting off with terrific acceleration to the south then the west, against the ‘wind. This was Venus? This was a weather balloon? Two Navy commanders and several other officers from Na- val Intelligence interviewed Harris, too. They didn’t try to sway the pilot’s convictions. They, too, were convinced the object was real and unidentified. A concise, convincing and provocative report on Sau- cers. was submitted to Project Blue Book in 1954 by Lieu- tenant Colonel Richard Headrick, USAFR, senior pilot, and later confirmed by letter in a brief description to . NICAP which reports it in The UFO Evidence, pg. 25, in the same outline the colonel presented. 1. “Saucers exist. (I saw two). 2. They were intelligently controlled or operated. CEvasive tactics, formation flight, hovering flight.) 3. They are not propelled on any thermodynamic prin- ciple. (No contrails while jet intercept aircraft left heavy ones. ) : 4. They are mechanisms rather than hallucinations, op- tical illusions, natural phenomena. The Colonel's evaluation: , 5. They are not U.S. secret weapons, for if they were, many contracts I am now working on would be dropped. Also they would not fly outside military test reservations. 6. They are not Russian for similar reasons. Russians have complained about their flying over their borders. They would not risk malfunction over our territory. 7. I presume they are extraterrestrial. 8. Provided they are, interstellar navigation would like- ly present little more complication than navigation within our solar system. Therefore, discussion on whether or not planets in the solar system are capable of supporting life is not material. 9. Judging from all evidence I have read, personal con- tact has not yet been established either on the ground or by the radio transmission.” It makes sense that a sizable number of UFO reports would come from the men who make their living in the skies and who are conversant with the types of curious lights and shapes with which they may come in contact. Airline pilots have been the source of some of the most in- formative reports that are on record with the Air Force from the time of its initial organized filing, first with Proj- ect Sign then Project Grudge, and finally Project Blue Book. But in the Spring of 1950 even this usually calm branch of the service was jolted by the number and quality of reports from pilots that began to pour in. In three months, starting with April, air line crews had accounted for 35 reports on UFOs and Captain Eddie Rickbacker, in an interview, quoted in The UFO Evidence, pg. 33, said: “Flying saucers are real. Too,many good men have seen them, that don’t have hallucinations.” I; was not until the summer of 1952, however, that the very capital itself was rocked. That was with the famous sightings over Washington, D.C., sightings that hit the headlines with INTERCEPTORS CHASE FLYING SAUCERS OVER WASHINGTON, D.c., before Air Force Intelligence even knew about it. There had been forewarnings, sightings near Quantico, and Newport News, Va., another at Langley Air Force Base, another 60 miles southwest of Washington, all within a few nights of each other in mid-July. But on July 19, it was Washington, D.C., on the nose, picked up by radar at National Airport and at Andrews, and reported as 8 unidentified targets near Andrews AFB, accelerating too rapidly to be planes. Airline pilots were also sighting the unknown lights that slowed, then spurted ahead with fantastic speed. Within 14 minutes, one pilot spotted six. The grandaddy of them all was a huge “fiery- orange” sphere that hung over the Andrews Radio range station. That many crack radar experts and veteran pilots couldn’t be kissed off. They had seen something and it fell to Edward Ruppelt, then head of Project Blue Book, to decide what explanation the Air Force could release to the press. A week later, Washington had its second visit. This time the objects were spread in an arc around the nation’s capi- tol and jets were being vectored out to see what they were. The objects would shoot off before the jets could get near. It wasn’t easy for nerve-wracked Air Intelligence to fend off the public excitement and queries engendered by such headlines as FIERY OBJECTS OUTRUN JETS OVER CAPI- TAL. One of the most sympathetic chapters in Ruppelt’s excellent Report On Unidentified Objects, deals with the almost insoluble problem that confronted ATIC during that week. It was a chance remark by an ATIC official, sug- gesting that the radar targets might have been caused by temperature inversions, according to Ruppelt’s account, that eventually got the press off their backs and quieted a dis- tressed nation with the headline AiR FORCE DEBUNKS SAUCERS AS JUST NATURAL PHENOMENA. Although Mr. Ruppelt acknowledged that the “twin sightings are still carried as unknowns.” Yes, one does find skeptics and outright non-believers among the air pilots of all nations. But one finds solid converts to the UFO legions, too, one of whom, Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding, RAF (England) was quoted in a UFO activity report released in 1965 by NICAP: “I am convinced that these objects do exist and that they are not manufactured by any nation on earth . . . (they must) come from some extraterrestrial source.” Approved For Release 2001/04/02 : CIA-RDP81R00560R000100070002-9” "°*! Page