The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (Nicap)

# Approved For Release 2001/04/02 : CIA-RDP81R00560R000100010001-0

Gelber and Kihorney had also seen the light, their observation of the details had been the same as the author's, so the next morning the writer prevailed upon them to investigate the mysterious light. We returned to the place on the highway opposite the hangar. The airplane stood on the same spot as the night before. We paced off the perpendicular distance from the highway to the airplane. It was one hundred yards. Then we found a mechanic who said that he was the man who had been working on the airplane the evening before. He had not seen the dancing light; there had been no sound to attract his eyes overhead. Therefore the light had not been on a helicopter. He referred us to the U. S. Weather Station, one quarter of a mile eastward. There the weatherman said that he had released a lighted balloon at about the time we had seen our flickering light. He showed us one of the balloon lights, a very small flashlight blub without reflector. It did not flicker, it burned steadily the weatherman said, but its light could never appear to be of the same brightness as the glaring floodlights of the Spain Flying Field. Furthermore, the weather balloon had not hovered over the hangar of that flying field; at a uniform rate it had mounted steadily in the sky above the weather station. The weatherman proved this by showing us the chart he had plotted by taking telescope sightings of the altitude of the light at timed intervals.

When all of the facts about the light that Gelber, Kihorney and the writer had seen were laid before the weatherman, he said that ours must have been a UFO, that such things were a great mystery but had nevertheless been seen frequently in the neighborhood by the personnel of the Weather Station and also of the nearby Air Force Fighter Base."

Mr. Webb's second UFO sighting was on May 5, 1953. Time: 9:45 - 10:00 a.m.

"It was a clear sunny morning; the author was standing in a field near the Vacuum Cooling Company plant, not far from Spain Flying Field, and about a mile north of the Yuma Air Force Fighter Base. His attention was drawn by the buzzing of jet fighters taking off in quick succession, passing directly overhead traveling northward. As he scanned the northern sky, the author's attention became fixed upon what at first appeared to be a small white cloud, the only one in the sky at the time. The author was wearing Polaroid glasses having a greenish tint, and as was his custom when studying clouds he took the glasses off and put them on at intervals to compare the effect with and without Polaroid. The object was approximately oblong with the long axis in a horizontal plane. It floated at an elevation of about forty-five degrees. During the course of about five minutes the object traveled approximately 30 degrees toward the east. Then it appeared abruptly to turn and travel northward; at the same time its oblong shape changed to circular section. As a circular object it rapidly became smaller as if receding. While receding, the object did not noticeably lose any of its brightness. In about thirty seconds of this, its diameter became too small for the author to hold in his vision.

During the first period the writer had not noticed a change in the oblong nor in the field of view about it as a result of putting on and taking off his Polaroid glasses. But during the second period several uniformly spaced concentric circles appeared around the now circular object. The circles were distinct dark bands which enveloped the silvery disc. The largest of these circles was, perhaps, six times the diameter of the central disc. When the writer removed his polarizing glasses the silvery disc remained but the concentric rings vanished. When the glasses were put on again, the rings reappeared. The writer repeated this several times, each time with the same result. The rings with glasses on, faded to invisibility before the disc became too small to see."

## ASTRONOMERS' REPORTS

The late Dr. H. Percy Wilkins, British lunar astronomer, relates several UFO reports including one of his own in his book "Mysteries of Space and Time", (F. Muller Ltd., London, 1955). Attributing most UFO reports to conventional objects, Dr. Wilkins states: "...a residuum remains which cannot be thus explained." [p.4.]

Dr. Wilkins was flying from Charleston, W. Va. to Atlanta, Ga. on the morning of June 11, 1954. At 10:45 a.m. he noticed two brilliant oval-shaped objects apparently hovering above the tops of cumulus clouds an estimated two miles away. They were "sharp-edged objects," the color of polished brass or gold, and much brighter than the clouds. "They looked exactly like polished metal plates reflecting the sunlight," Dr. Wilkins reported, "and were in slow motion northwards, in contrast to the clouds which were drifting southwards." [p. 41]. Then he noticed a third object of the same description against the shadowed side of the cloudbank; it was grayish and not reflecting sunlight. The third UFO accelerated, and arced across the sky, disappearing behind another cloud mass.

The UFOs were about 15 minutes of arc in length [about 1/2 the apparent diameter of the moon], and the two bright ones maintained a separation of about five degrees. Based on his estimation of distance (2 miles) and apparent size (15 minutes of arc), Dr. Wilkins calculated the actual size of the UFOs to be nearly 50 feet in diameter.

Frank Halstead

Former Curator of Darling Observatory,

Mr. Halstead and his wife saw two UFOs while crossing the Mojave Desert on a Union Pacific train in 1955. He reported the experience to NICAP Board Member, Frank Edwards:

University of Minnesota

"It was the first day of November, 1955. We were on our way to California — about 100 miles west of Las Vegas when it happened. My wife Ann was sitting next to the window and she called my attention to an object which she saw — something moving just above the mountain range. Our train was running parallel to this range of mountains and this object was moving in the same direction as the train, just above the mountains. I first thought the thing was a blimp. . . But as I watched it I