1948 07 9670642 20Mi SofMontgomery Ala 144 (Project Blue Book case file)

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

# Everybody Seeing Speedy Sky Bogey

By CHARLES POU

Is that Thing no more than a wayward floor lamp? Mrs. Noah Atkinson, of Brookhaven, saw it. And what did that Thing look like?

"A great big floor lamp, all lit up. Oh, it was beautiful!"

And C. M. Bowles, an Exposition Mills painter who lives near the Municipal airport, Sunday night saw a "huge, brilliantly lighted object" streaking over Atlanta skies at maybe 30,000 feet. Mr. Bowles thinks the Thing was straight from Moscow.

Two Eastern Air Lines pilots first were startled by the newest astronomical "what-is-it" near Montgomery early Saturday. To them, it was "a wingless craft, spurting flame like a Buck Rogers rocket ship." Elsewhere; all over the country, that Thing was variously identified as:

What It Looked Like

1. An aluminum covered balloon.

2. A ball of fire.

3. An unusually bright light.

4. A red and blue flame that burst in mid-air.

5. A flash of cherry red fire.

6. A meteor.

Mrs. Atkinson kept her Flying Floorlamp secret three weeks. But she knew she wasn't seeing things when she saw the Thing.

She and her husband, who also saw it, kept mum. The story really sounded a little silly until the two Eastern pilots saw their Thing gamboling and fire-breathing through air-line skies early Saturday morning.

## Pretty and Fast

After that, she decided her tale could be told:

"My husband and I were sitting on our front porch the night of July 5, and at a quarter to 9 o'clock we saw this Thing. Our front porch doesn't have a screen, and we were sitting near the edge where we could see good.

"I saw it first. It was not high about 200 feet. I guess, but it looked like it was right above the treetops. 'Looka there', I recalled to my husband, and he saw it too.

"It looked like the top part of a floor lamp, and it was the crettiest thing I ever saw. It came and passed so quick—I guess it must have been 500 miles an hour or faster."

And now the pilots. and Joan B. Whitted. or Atlanta:

Well. they took off today, med with a camera. And they hope to bring back a picture of Thing.

# Airline Pilots See "Sky Monster"

ATLANTA, Ga., July 25. (UP) Two Eastern Air Line pilots who reported seeing a huge flame-shooting Buck Rogers sky monster near Montgomery, Ala., yesterday maintained stoutly today that what they saw was a "man-made gadget."

They said they will be flying the same route again this week and this time they'll be armed with still and movie cameras in case the giant craft turns up again.

## By R. DEWITT MILLER

LOS ANGELES, July 25. (UP) Strange things in the sky again! This time something that looks like a gigantic Buck Rogers space rocket traveling between 500 and 700 miles an hour over Alabama. Only a year ago there was the famous "Flying discs" uproar. Since

then there have been numerous reliable reports of even stranger things in the sky. Now a detailed report by an airline pilot and co pilot of this fantastic machine over Alabama.

In an article written exclusively for the United Press July 8, 1947. I said there had been thousands of reliable reports during the last 150 years of strange things in the sky. Here are some more recent reports In addition, to the "flying saucers":

Oct. 14. 1946—San Diego. Calif. A strange, fantastic craft was reported maneuvering through the moonlit sky. One witness described it as "shaped like a bullet, leaving a thin trail of vapor behind."

Wilmington, O., Jan. 8, 1948-The Clinton county air base issued an official report on something in the sky seen by army personnel and thousands of civilians. It was described as "a flaming cone trailing a gaseous green mist."

Louisville, Ky., Jan. 8. 1948 national guard flyer lost his life while chasing a wierd object in the sky.

I could cite 50 similar cases during the last two years.

now comes the startling report of a "space rocket" with windows again traveling at high speeds and reported by an airline pilot and co-pilot who had ample opportunity for observation. What are these strange things in the skies? Here are a few possibilities:

1. Army experimentation — possibly, but it doesn't seem reasonable that the army would allow top-drawer secret weapons to wander over the country fouling up commercial airline routes.

2. The product of some strange group of super scientists working in a secluded Shangri-La—an outside possibility, but it would be almost impossible to conceal the manufacturing facilities necessary.

3. Space ships from Mars, or somewhere else beyond this earth. This is a distinct possibility. Our scientists inform us that we may soon build space rockets, so why shouldn't beings on some other world beat us to it?

4. Objects out of other dimensions of time and space. This seems fantastic, but silence has recently discovered startling facts about the possibility of unknown dimensions of time and space.