Blue Book file, Rivera and Heaphy (CUFOS)

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

Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA) , the Oakland Airport, and the San Francisco Airport all agreed that there were many local carriers (about 160) that could have flown over the Gold Beach area but that less than 1% of these file flight plans, so it would be useless to try to locate a flight that could account for the sighting;the Sixth Army and the Twelfth Naval District Intelligence did not possess radar installations near enough or powerful enough to have recorded anything at Gold Beach at that time; the Air Force Early Warning Radar Stations in the Bay Area were not powerful enough to reach as far north as Gold Beach and these stations did not report anything as unidentified on the date of the sighting; the 505th Aircraft Control and Warning Group at Silver Lake , Washington did not have Gold Beach under radar coverage.

Of all the above listed supplementary information, the only part of direct interest, since there was evidently no radar coverage, is the confirmation of the witnesses' claim that the weather was clear.

However, agent Brooks did dig up an interesting bit of information which led to the "final identification" according to Project Blue Book (or Grudge). Quoting Brooks' report:

"On Aug.2, 1949, Air Force radar installations at Treasure Island and the military reservation at Fort Baker, both in the San Francisco area, send aloft radar testing devices known as "kites" twice each day, at around 1000 and 1600. These devices are of aluminum sheet, approximately 5 feet on a side, roughly diamond shaped and containing a double set of traingular fins on the top side. These are carried aloft by gas filled balloons approximately 2 feet in diameter when they leave the earth. When these devices reach high enough altitude, the expanding gasses cause the balloons to burst and the devices known as "kites" fold and drift earthward. It is possible that one of these devices from one of these radar installations may have blown as far north as Gold Beach, Oregon, on 24 May, 1949."

Apparently the BB (or Grudge) investigators accepted the "possibility" that one of these devices could have drifted Northward by about 340 miles on May 24, 1949. (Note: typical balloon ascension rates put a balloon at bursting altitude within an hour after launch.) If the 1600 launched balloon had reached Gold Beach by 1700 it would have travelled roughly 340 miles per hour. If the 1000 launched balloon had reached Gold Beach it would have only had to travel 1/6 as fast. Of course, if a balloon launched on a previous day had reached Gold Beach(without bursting and without leaking sufficiently to drop to the ground), it could have moved quite slowly. The investigators "only" had to ignore the statements