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| The Project Card from the Air Force Files. |
Thereare some cases in the Blue Book files that create problems for UFO researchers.That is, a solution has been offered,
CaptainJames R. Howard, a pilot for British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), andwho had crossed the Atlantic 250 times, spotted something that he could notidentify. According to his statement as published:
Iwas in command of a BOAC Boeing Strato cruiser en route from New York to Londonvia Goose Bay Labrador (refueling stop). Soon after crossing overhead SevenIslands at 19,000 feet, True Airspeed 230 kts, both my co-pilot and I became awareof something moving along off our port beam at a lower altitude at a distanceof maybe five miles, in and out of a broken layer of Strato Cumulus cloud. Aswe watched, these objects climbed above the cloud and we could now clearly seeone large and six small. As we flew on towards Goose Bay the large object beganto change shape and the smaller to move relative to the larger…
Weinformed Goose Bay that we had something odd in sight and they madearrangements to vector a fighter (F94?) on to us. Later I changed radiofrequency to contact this fighter; the pilot told me he had me in sight onradar closing me head-on at 20 miles. At that the small objects seemed to enterthe larger, and then the big one shrank. I gave descriptions of this to thefighter and a bearing of the objects from me. I then had to change back toGoose frequency for descent clearance. I don’t know if the fighter saw anythingas he hadn’t landed when I left Goose for London (Gillmor, 1969, p. 139).
JennyRandles (1987), writing in The UFOConspiracy, expanding on this, mentioned that Lee Boyd, the first officer,alerted Goose Bay that there was an unidentified object escorting them. GooseBay told them that an interceptor would be launched with the call sign of PintoOne.
Althoughthe BOAC crew never saw the interceptor, and the radar on the fighter neverpainted the object, the BOAC crew were told that the radar at Goose Bay did seeit. That would, of course, eliminate some sort of natural phenomenon given theobservations of the flight crew. It also provided a bit of instrumentality forthe sighting, something that was outside the problems of human perception.
Accordingto Randles, when the aircraft landed at Goose Bay at 1:51 a.m., the crew wasmet by both US Air Force and Canadian officials that included intelligenceofficers. Both pilots, Howard and Boyd, were taken away to be debriefed. Thenavigator H. McDonnell, said that the flight logs were taken by the Air Forceand that he was questioned about their airspeed and direction. Hisinterrogation didn’t last very long. He said the pilots were gone much longer.
Thatwasn’t the end of it. Once they reached London, the pilots were ordered to theAir Ministry. The explanation offered then for the sighting was that the crewand some of the passengers had seen a solar eclipse. The trouble was that theeclipse had not begun when the sighting was made.
Howard,in a report in the New York Times(1954) said that the objects resembled “a large burst of flak and six smallerblobs.” He had refined the description in other reports, saying that the UFOwas opaque, dark and jelly-fish-like. He also said that all but one of the crewand many of the passengers had seen the object. In one newspaper article,Howard said, “sometimes it was wedge shape, sometimes like a dumbbell,sometimes like a sphere with tail-like projections. The six smaller objectsdodged about, either in front or behind (Project Blue Book; Associated Press,1954).”
McDonnellmet up with Howard some months later. He asked Howard what had happened at theAir Ministry. Howard responded, “Sorry. I can’t say. You know the score.”
Howard,his crew and passengers, however, were not alone spotting the strange object.According to the Blue Book file, more information came from a ship, USS Edisto, in the area. They describedthe same thing. The ship’s crew identified the object as Mars and suggestedthat there were “mirage conditions” on that date which could have influencedthe sighting from the air.
Thefile confirmed the attempted intercept. The fighter pilot, who wasn’tidentified by name, said that no intercept was made. He also said that he didnot make radar contract with the unidentified object.
Thefile also contained a message that had been sent to various commands. It said,“NEAC evaluates sighting as unknown natural phenomena cma (comma) possibly amirage as a temperature inversion in referenced area made this conditionpossible pd (period).”
TheBlue Book file also provided some additional information. Howard estimated thatthey watched the objects for about eighteen minutes. Eleven other crew membersverified the information. One of the messages ended with “No furtherinformation available. Duty officer regards as improbable threat to US.”
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| Part of the Joint Message Form about the sighting. |
Giventhis lack of information, this certainly not one of Blue Book’s best cases. Theexplanation seems to be clear, and while some might reject that explanationbecause it came from the Air Force, it is based on observations made at thetime by another set of witnesses. There seems to be no reason to reject theirsolution.
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| Newspaper article covering part of the sighting. |
TheCondon Committee, however, thought the case deserved more attention. That mightbe explained by their interest in weather related phenomena that could causeUFO sightings. In a chapter called, “Optical and Radar Analysis of Field Case,”it was noted, “Very little meteorological data are available for this part ofthe world on the date in question, so that the presence of significant opticalpropagation mechanisms can be neither confirmed nor ruled out. This sightingwas examined because of the ‘Mirage’ explanation. In fact, the author noted,“Nevertheless, certain facts in the case are strongly suggestive of an opticalmirage phenomenon (Gillmor, 1969).”
TheCondon scientists went on to explain that the mirage might have been caused bya reflection from over the horizon. This is called superior mirage and has beenreported often over the ocean. They then qualified that by writing:
Theprincipal difficultly with this explanation, besides having to hypothesize theexistence of the mirage-producing layer, is how to account for the anisotrophy[being directionally dependent] of the mirage. Anisotrophy of this sort, i.e. amirage limited to certain viewing azimuths, is common in earthbound mirageswhen viewed from a single location. But a mirage layer through which areflected image could be seen only in one, constant principal direction (plus aview smaller “satellite” images over a distance of 85 n. mil [nautical miles]is quite unusual (Gillmor, 1969).
Whatthis says is that the Air Force was happy with the mirage answer, and with thesuggestion that Mars was the culprit. And it says that the Condon Committee,looking at cases in which some sort of weather phenomenon is suspected, endedup not agreeing with the Air Force.
Theyadded that there was a “slim possibility” that the aircraft itself wasresponsible for the “image layer through intensification (by compressioninduced by the shock wave of the aircraft’s passage through the air) of abarely subcritical layer, i.e. one in which the temperature gradient is just alittle bit less than the value required to produce a mirage.”
Butnone of this is really all that important. It is the final conclusion,published in the Condon Committee’s report which says, “This unusual sightingshould therefore be assigned to the category of some almost certainly naturalphenomenon, which is so rare that it apparently has never been reported beforeor since.”
Or,in other words, they had no real explanation for it but believed it to benatural, but they didn’t know what that would be. They just refused to say thatthey had failed to identify the source of the sighting which would have beenthe honest thing to do.
Andthat last paragraph from the Condon Committee report on the sighting is whatdemanded its inclusion here. It gives an insight into the mission of the CondonCommittee, and it provides a look at the Air Force investigation. True, the AirForce relied on the observations of the crew of a ship in the region, but thatdoesn’t seem to be unreasonable. Had the “mirage, Mars” answer been leftintact, that would be a reasonable conclusion. Since it was taken a stepfurther, there is no reasonable conclusion. It is “Unidentified.”