Part 11

The reports from the Southeast for that week have particular interest for the Chiles-Whitted case. A regular observer in Alabama counted fifteen meteors in one hour’s watching on the evening of July 24, and twenty-one in two hours the following night[V-22]. On the evening of July 26 he apparently took a holiday, but many other persons saw a huge fireball that flashed over North Carolina and Tennessee at 9:36 P.M. E.S.T.; its radiant (AMS 2322), plotted from many reports, showed it to be a member of the Delta Aquarid stream, then approaching its maximum. Early on the morning of July 27 another fireball soared over Tennessee and apparently exploded[V-23]. On the night of July 28 the Alabama watcher recorded fifteen meteors, from which he obtained the radiants AMS 3269, 3270, and 3271[V-9, p. 521].

These facts alone--the occurrence of scheduled showers and the number of well-plotted meteors observed during the period--point strongly to the probability that the Chiles-Whitted UFO was a meteor. The probability becomes virtual certainty when we examine the available records for the night of July 23 and morning of July 24, the period when this particular UFO appeared. The watcher in Alabama was not on duty, but another observer in Iowa counted fourteen meteors in one hour[V-22], more than double the rate for an average night. About an hour before the UFO appeared in Alabama, ground observers at Robins Air Force Base near Macon, Georgia, reported an unusually bright meteor going from north to south. A few minutes before the Alabama sighting, two Air Force officers flying between Blackstone, Virginia, and Gainsborough, North Carolina, reported an unusually bright meteor traveling in a southerly direction.

When Chiles and Whitted observed their UFO, its appearance and manner of motion were identical with those of many other bright meteors but the pilots, startled by the sudden apparition, misinterpreted what they saw. They probably overestimated the length of time the meteor was in view and they almost certainly underestimated the distance. Meteors notoriously mislead even the experienced observer, who often sees them disappearing “just behind the next hill,” when they may actually be fifty or a hundred miles away. Although the night was moonlit and clear except for broken clouds, the witnesses had no fixed reference point by which to determine either distance or size.

There can be no doubt that Chiles and Whitted misinterpreted the appearance of an unusually brilliant meteor, its body glowing to white (the momentarily persisting luminous train of a meteor often has a veined or fibrous structure that could easily have suggested the “lighted window” and “cockpit”) and blue incandescence (the glowing “undercarriage”) as it rushed through the atmosphere some fifty miles or more away, shooting off flaming gases (the “exhaust”) and vaporizing from the friction of the atmosphere. Flashing beyond their range of vision (“pulling up into the clouds”), it probably burned and disintegrated before it reached the earth.

This fresh analysis, based on meteor records for July 1948, has led ATIC finally to remove the Chiles-Whitted UFO from the category of Unknowns and, as Dr. Hynek suggested originally, add it to the file of recorded meteors.

A more recent sighting that closely resembled the Chiles-Whitted incident occurred on the evening of January 8, 1959, and was promptly reported to ATIC [V-19]. Two Air Force pilots were flying in a C-45 type of aircraft from Phillipsburg to Brookville, Pennsylvania, at an altitude of 8000 feet. The night was clear and moonless. At 6:14 P.M. E.S.T. they observed what appeared to be a brilliantly lighted solid object rushing toward them. Bluish green in color, shaped roughly like a teardrop and about 200 feet in diameter, it made no audible sound. Glowing like a small sun, it seemed to be flying level with the aircraft, less than a mile away and headed straight for the plane.

The frightened pilot jerked on the controls in an attempt to dodge the object, but almost before the plane could respond the unknown had disappeared. It had been in sight about three seconds. In his official report he estimated that the object had been the size of a pool ball held at arm’s length and that it had been not more than a mile away. The copilot, however, did not agree. A man with special training and unusual experience in the study of UFOs, he estimated the object to be the size of the head of a pin held at arm’s length and the distance to be at least 300 miles. The extreme brilliance of the object against the night sky, he thought, had made it seem larger. In his opinion, supported by Air Force investigation, the unknown had been a fireball at least fifty miles high that had burned out and vanished as they watched.

As in the Chiles-Whitted case, ground observers also saw the object and thus provided independent confirmation of the analysis. A member of the Ohio State University reported to the Harvard College Observatory that on the night of January 8, at approximately 6:15 P.M. E.S.T., he had watched a brilliant bluish-white meteor streak across the sky over Columbus and vanish within a few seconds. The fireball must indeed have been high and spectacular to be visible at the same moment from points nearly 300 miles apart.

_Other Flaming UFOs_

Not all spectacular UFOs are meteors, of course, any more than they are all planets or balloons or rockets. Sudden brilliant illuminations of the night sky can have any one of a dozen or more explanations. The atmosphere is crowded with potential Unknowns, more than at any time in man’s history. The air surrounding our planet plays host not only to meteors and fireballs, birds and insects, but also to military and commercial planes, private planes, jets, helicopters, weather balloons, experimental rockets, and an ever-growing number of artificial satellites. An ear-shattering detonation that rattles a house or breaks a window may come from an exploding fireball or it may come from a jet penetrating the sound barrier. Without an exact knowledge of all the circumstances, only the foolhardy would attempt to say positively what caused any given unusual aerial phenomenon.

Let us consider a sighting that might have received various wrong interpretations and would probably have become one of the most famous of the UFOs cited by saucerdom, had investigators lacked full information.

Shortly after midnight one spring morning reliable witnesses on the east coast, particularly in Connecticut and Long Island, reported a brilliant bluish-white object flying at high altitude and incredible speed. As it flashed overhead, it changed color to become reddish, and several smaller objects apparently detached themselves from the main body and followed it in orderly fashion. About five minutes later more than fifteen ships in the Caribbean area observed similar objects soaring overhead but the reports varied in many details. Ship number two saw brilliant short flames darting about behind the main body, which had a long, tapered tail. Ship number four saw a flaming white object more brilliant than the full moon. Ship number seven reported a flaming green ball followed by a group of several small objects. Ship number nine observed at least fifteen smaller objects that suddenly separated from the main body and fell into formation behind it. Ship number eleven saw an object with a trail several miles long, brilliant as a peacock’s tail, so luminous that the deck and sea around were bathed in pale light as the mass crossed overhead. Ship number twelve reported, “The main body appeared to have a blue-white head, then a short dark space before the glowing orange-yellow tail. Twenty-seven separate particles were actually counted as they appeared in the main plume. Each followed the main body and each developed its own glowing tail on leaving it.” The main body was several times brighter than Venus, while the offshoots were each twice the magnitude of Sirius. One observer described it as round on top and bright blue-white, while the lower half, which was emitting sparks, seemed to be flattened and reddish in color.

During this period of less than five minutes, similar objects were observed from the ground by witnesses in the Virgin Islands. One man in Martinique saw a luminous green globe, brighter than Venus, followed at a slight distance by a flaming red, enormously long, cigar-shaped object. Observers in Barbados saw two huge objects followed by from twelve to eighteen “offspring” shaped like the main body; some of the offspring subdivided to form two small cometlike objects. The object disappeared into a cloud bank and vanished. No observations were reported from areas farther south.

These unidentified objects were reported over an area stretching from Connecticut to the coast of British Guiana, a distance of about 2700 miles. They flew in a straight course. All of the objects were noiseless. They were remarkably brilliant. They seemed to have one or more leaders, to discharge smaller objects, and to fly in formation. They maintained a substantially horizontal path, and only the last observers, who saw the things disappear into the cloud bank, noted any tendency to descend. No fragments were ever found, and all witnesses agreed that the objects were not like meteors. If all the observers were describing the same single phenomenon, it was flying at the incredible speed of more than 16,000 miles an hour.

What was it?

With only these facts to build on, an investigator might interpret the sightings according to his own prejudices: an invasion fleet from another planet making a reconnaissance in force, the mother ships discharging the smaller craft at intervals; a mass hallucination; a peculiar meteoric display.

Without knowledge of one essential fact, some hundreds of landsmen and seamen in the United States, the Caribbean islands, and the British West Indies might now feel firmly convinced that they had witnessed a genuine “Unknown.” The date was April 14, 1958. The privileged observers had witnessed the death of Sputnik II, the Russian satellite launched on November 3, 1957[V-24].

The UFO reports inspired by this event presented no problem to the Air Force. All information on the re-entry of artificial satellites is immediately accessible to ATIC. Whenever a reported UFO shows any possible resemblance to a falling satellite, Air Force investigators check at once with Spacetrack. Astronomers who had been tracking this satellite as it circled the earth had predicted more than a month in advance that it would spiral toward the earth and fall sometime between April 12 and April 15. A few days before the actual event they had refined their estimate and predicted the time of the fall within a few hours.

[V-1] _Meteoritics_, Vol. II, 1954.

[V-2] Keyhoe, D. E. _The Flying Saucer Conspiracy._ New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1955.

[V-3] Biot, J. B. “Account of a Fire-ball which Fell in the Neighborhood of Laigle.” _Philosophical Magazine_, Vol. XVI (1803), pp. 224–28.

[V-4] Whipple, F.L., and Hawkins, G. S. “Meteors,” _Handbuch der Physik_, Vol. LII (1959), pp. 519–64.

[V-5] Nininger, H. H. _Out of the Sky._ University of Denver Press, 1952; New York: Dover Publications, 1959.

[V-6] Menzel, D. H. Personal files.

[V-7] Ruppelt, E. J. _The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects._ Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1956.

[V-8] _Meteoritics_, Vol. III, 1955.

[V-9] _Meteoritics_, Vol. I, 1953.

[V-10] Millman, P. M., and Halliday, I. “The Near-Infra-Red Spectrum of Meteors,” _Journal of Planetary and Space Science_, Vol. V (1961), pp. 137–40.

[V-11] Millman, P. M. “An Analysis of Meteor Spectra,” _Annals of Harvard College Observatory_, Vol. LXXXII, Nos. 6 and 7 (1917–37), pp. 113–77.

[V-12] Robey, D. H. “An Hypothesis on the Slow Moving Green Fireballs,” _Journal of the British Interplanetary Society_, Vol. XVII (1959–60), pp. 398–411.

[V-13] Krinov, E. L. _Principles of Meteoritics._ New York: Pergamon Press, 1960.

[V-14] O’Keefe, J. A. “Tektites and the Cyrillid Shower,” _Sky and Telescope_, Vol. XXI (1961), p. 4.

[V-15] Fesenkov, V. G. “Cloudiness of the Atmosphere Produced by the Fall of the Tunguska Meteorite of June 30, 1908,” _Meteoritika_, Vol. VI (1949), p. 8.

[V-16] Nininger, H. H. “Tracing the Norton, Kansas, Meteorite Fall,” _Sky and Telescope_, Vol. VII (1948), p. 294.

[V-17] La Paz, L. “The Achondritic Shower of February 18, 1948,” _Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific_, Vol. LXI (1949), p. 63.

[V-18] Wilson, A. S. [Letter] _Sky and Telescope_, Vol. XXII (1961), p. 3.

[V-19] Air Force Files.

[V-20] Tacker, L. J. _Flying Saucers and the U. S. Air Force._ Princeton, N. J.: D. Van Nostrand Co., 1960.

[V-21] Chant, C. A. “An Extraordinary Meteoric Display,” _Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada_, Vol. VII (1913), pp. 145–215.

[V-22] Olivier, C. P. “Tables of Hourly Rates Based Upon American Meteor Society Data.” Interim Report No. 28, Harvard University Radio Meteor Research Program (May 1958).

[V-23] Whipple, F. L. Personal files.

[V-24] Jacchia, L. G. “The Descent of Satellite 1957 Beta One,” Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, _Special Report No. 15_, July 20, 1958.

_Chapter_ VI

LIVING LIGHTS

A gamekeeper in Norfolk, England, in the year 1897 observed the flight of an unusual luminous object. According to his story, he was “... out one very dark night stopping up fox-earths. While I was so engaged I saw a very bright blue light pass close to my face and was very much startled as I saw it going away from me ... I put it down as some insect.” After the mysterious light reappeared a few nights later, the gamekeeper prudently began carrying his gun and eventually he managed a shot at the light. To his amazement he brought down “a poor old half-starved barn owl, _Tyto alba_, whose body continued to glow for some hours after death.”[VI-1]

_The Luminous Owls of Norfolk_

Some ten years later, on the night of February 3, 1907, another Englishman and his son while taking a walk observed a similar luminous phenomenon. Apparently about a quarter of a mile away, it moved horizontally over a course several hundred yards in length, reversed direction, then rose into the air to the height of forty feet or more. “It then descended and again went through the same evolutions many times. The light was slightly reddish in the centre, and resembled a carriage lamp for which we at first mistook it. We watched it for twenty minutes and were quite at a loss to ascertain its cause.

“On December 1st, 1907, when again reaching the top of Twyford Hill, I noticed what I took to be the lamp of a motor bicycle moving rapidly along the Bintree road to the south. The light suddenly stopped, rose into the air above the trees and retraced its course. This it did several times, sometimes rising twenty to forty feet into the air, and then rapidly descending. I called my groom and his wife from their cottage a few hundred yards away, and they watched it with me for several minutes. I then went to my house about half a mile off, and from one of the attic windows watched it with my son and three servants for a short time....”

The mysterious light appeared frequently for a period of weeks, maneuvering silently, its luminosity sometimes so great that “it literally lighted up the branches of the trees as it flew past them.” Attempts to identify it through a telescope were unsuccessful but eventually one observer was lucky enough to hear a sound as the light soared past, and at once identified it by its unique call as a white owl, _Strix flammea_[VI-2].

If these sightings had occurred half a century later, the witnesses might well have called them flying saucers.

_Things That Glow in the Dark_

The luminous owls of Norfolk have appeared at intervals since 1866 to frighten the superstitious and puzzle the naturalist, but ornithologists managed to solve the mystery some years ago[VI-3]. The birds acquire their temporary luminosity from contact with a common fungus, _Armillaria mellea_, popularly known as “honey-tuft.” This mushroom, which mycophagists prize for its delicious flavor, grows in large clumps on dead trees and stumps. The dark-brown cap is rough, with fibrous scales, while the white gills are hooked or toothed at the end and the spores are white. The dense white lacework of the root system or mycelium, which gives off a phosphorescent light, may permeate the entire tree and extend even into the fibers at the base of the tree. Wood infested with the fungus can glow in the dark, sometimes so brightly that a man could read his watch by its light.

Many of the tales of fox fire, corpse candles, and lanternmen undoubtedly come from glimpses of this fungoid phosphorescence. Owls that seek refuge in the dark interiors of hollow trees during the daytime may brush against the veins of the mycelium, which adheres to the feathered body. Flitting about at night, the luminous bird becomes the dancing flame of the will o’ the wisp.

Other luminous mushrooms abound in woods, swamps, and marshy areas. Decaying, they may produce an unearthly light and can give off a peculiarly unpleasant odor. Unexpectedly seeing and smelling a bird touched with the substance, on a dark night, a witness might well feel bewildered and even frightened. _Polyporus sulfureus_, which grows in dense masses on dead trees, often phosphoresces brilliantly in the early stages of its decay, as does _Clytocobe illudens_, the jack o’ lantern. In the tropics these fungi may produce enough light to read by. Birds, insects, and animals that brush against them can carry away some of the luminous material and thus, for a time, appear to be luminous themselves.

Most of us recognize fireflies, lightning bugs, or glowworms--which are not worms but beetles. The wingless females must creep on the surface of ground or branch, but the winged males flit through the air. These sparkling creatures form part of the diet of birds and bats, and when carried aloft to be consumed in flight can make one more mysterious, swiftly moving light to frighten the apprehensive. The earth teems with other self-luminous organisms such as frogs’ eggs, which most of us have never seen and would not recognize. Luminous parasites sometimes live in the feathers of birds and make them glow. The plumage of the great blue heron, a North American bird, can emit a pale light sometimes known as the birds’s “lantern” because it is supposed to help him while fishing. Fish or meat when decaying can become infected with luminous bacteria and thus shine brilliantly in the dark. The sea is filled with phosphorescent fish and plants which help perpetuate tales of sea serpents. Some waters in the Caribbean contain so dense a population of phosphorescent algae that a bird, dipping its wings to snatch a meal, will glow for minutes after it soars again into the air. These luminous birds, innocently fishing for dinner, probably account for many reports that flying saucers come and go from underwater[VI-4].

Many of the erratically behaving UFOs observed at night over wooded areas, swamps, and marshes have undoubtedly been one of these will o’ the wisps--winged creatures glowing with borrowed fire. Unfortunately proof of this explanation is rarely possible. Before the startled observer can recover his wits the flitting “saucer” has gone, taking with it the evidence of its identity.

Fear of the unknown is not confined to _Homo sapiens_. A news item published in England a few years ago reveals that the animal kingdom, too, may have its ghosts. Under the headline, _Owl Attacks Luminous Man_, the article reads:

“A Bournemouth long-distance runner, Ken Baily, was attacked by an owl last night when he was running through the centre of Bournemouth in a luminous track suit. The bird ripped the front of his suit before it flew back into the trees.

“Baily said afterwards: ‘I heard it hooting before it attacked. The suit is luminous so that motorists can see me, but if it attracts owls like this I’d rather take a chance with the traffic.’”[VI-5]

_Sea Gulls as UFOs_

Early in the afternoon of December 10, 1941, three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a research technician standing at the fourth-floor window of a laboratory in Boston saw a number of bright objects maneuvering high in the sky and slowly descending over the city. Making a quick guess at their distance, size, and speed, he concluded that the objects were parachutes, the first of a Japanese invasion. Only after they had dropped to the level of a nearby church spire was he able to gain the right perspective, correct his estimates, and identify the objects as sea gulls drifting down with the winds.

A decade later, the public was no longer worried about danger from Japan but was concerned about possible invasion from outer space. Sea gulls flashing in the sun were interpreted not as parachutes but as flying saucers.

Many luminous UFOs have in fact been ordinary living creatures, normal inhabitants of the earth--owls that had acquired a temporary luminosity, sea gulls reflecting the sunlight, flights of birds reflecting the lights of a town. But in trying to identify them, the witness is influenced by the pattern of his time. In 1897 and 1907 the world seemed reasonably secure. Observers of mysterious lights made fairly accurate estimates of their distance and size and compared them to familiar, everyday things--an insect and a carriage lamp. In 1941, three days after Pearl Harbor, the world was at war and the observer’s imagination, stimulated by a hundred rumors of imminent Japanese invasion, transformed cruising sea gulls into parachutes. By 1950, when space travel had become at least a theoretical possibility and scientists were discussing ways to reach the moon, uneasy persons fantastically overestimated the height and size of mysterious lights in the sky and sometimes saw birds as spaceships from another planet.

A well-publicized incident took place on the morning of July 16, 1952, when a Coast Guard photographer at Salem, Massachusetts, happened to glance out of a window and see four bright, egg-shaped objects moving in the sky. Grabbing his camera, he managed to take a picture before the objects were lost from view. According to some saucer enthusiasts, certain reproductions of the photograph show typical UFOs shaped like two saucers arranged face to face, as though joined by a ring at the mid-line[VI-6]. The official Coast Guard photograph however, shows merely four bright, fuzzy-edged blurs arranged in a rough V formation. Only imagination could convert these spots of light into spaceships. Many readers of this book have probably seen similar objects gleaming briefly in the sun, mysterious for the moment, and then identified them as gulls or airplanes when a shift in orientation cut down the reflection.

On the morning of the Coast Guard photograph the day was exceptionally clear, the sun extremely bright, and the sky a deep blue unusual on the Massachusetts coast. Under these circumstances, objects reflecting the sun look larger and brighter than normal. Because the picture was taken with a dirty lens through a window, the images were further distorted. Since the UFOs did not produce highlights on the tops of the cars in the foreground, as luminous objects overhead would have done, they were probably not in the sky at all. Elaborate Air Force experiments with photo-flood lamps showed that the images were reflections in the window glass from an interior light source behind the camera (see Plate IVa).