The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (Nicap)

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

back upward, and consequently it went rapidly out of sight and out of hearing distance...What the object was, where it came from, and where it went, are all a complete mystery to me but the sighting was as clear as a picture on a wall." [33]

July 31, 1957; Calistoga, California. William J. Besler, president of Besler Corporation, Oakland, California, was relaxing in the natural hot springs mineral bath at Calistoga, about 9:30 a.m. "I happened to glance out the window," Besler said, "and was attracted by a very bright light behind a poplar tree on the top of a nearby knoll at an angle of about 20 degrees from the horizon. The light was climbing behind the branches and I thought it might be a brilliantly white bird, but discerned in a matter of seconds that it was ascending too slowly and deliberately for any bird. The bright light rose above the tree, and it was then apparent that there were two objects approximately a thumb-nail's height at arm's length above the tree and completely stationary. I wondered what kind of jet-jobs or objects could be reflecting the sun's light and remain so completely stationary but so brilliantly white and maintain such a fixed position relative to each other.

"The objects then started to rise higher above the tree and I began to wonder, so I got out of the tub and proceeded to the window for a better look, by which time the lights were no longer in their previous position relative to the tree. I looked around the horizon, left and right, and up; and there they were - now almost due north and at an angle of about 70 degrees from the horizontal, describing antics which no jet-jobs, guided missiles or airplanes could accomplish.

"I pushed the window open...and got a good look at the two bright lights which can be described as the size of the tip of a blue-head wood stick match at arm's length at a distance from each other equal to about 6 or 7 times their diameter. No better description can be given than that they were brilliantly white lights against an azure blue cloudless sky...

"To describe the antics they were going through is to first state that they made no pattern nor any sense. One could climb above the other, then the other would climb above the first, the lights sometimes blinking on and off at a surprising frequency of four blinks per second as they climbed. When the lights would blink out, there was absolutely nothing to see, indicating that they could hardly have been a somersaulting disc, black on one side and white on the other, as something would have shown up against the clear azure sky.

"The two lights then circled around each other twice and began moving in a more or less straight line due west and continued in this path at a speed I would estimate at 200 mph., for an arc of perhaps 15 degrees requiring some 8 seconds...as

I was watching them intently they mysteriously and instantaneously went out...I looked in all directions for the next 30 seconds but they didn't reappear..."

(Mr. Besler added a note about the natural tendency for a person to try to account for unusual observations in terms of familiar experiences. "I was aware from almost the first of the 18 seconds I had them in observation that these could well be UFOs. Nonetheless my mind was struggling at all times to identify them as planes, birds, pieces of tinfoil in the wind, or something familiar to this planet. Even after they disappeared my mind kept searching for an explanation other than the obvious that there had been a couple of brilliant flying unidentified objects (saucers?) under observation by the rare chance of a glance out of a window.") [34]

November 11, 1957; California Desert. During the surge of sightings in November 1957 [See Section XII; November 1957 Chronology], a silvery elliptical UFO was sighted flying below an airliner. Robert D. Hahn, a jewelry designer, was flying from Minneapolis to Los Angeles aboard Western Airlines flight #61.

"Flight #61 was over desert country approximately 30 to 45 minutes before landing at Los Angeles International Airport," Hahn reported. The sighting occurred approximately seven to ten minutes before we passed what appeared to be an Air Force base. My seat was just above the leading edge of the wing next to the window on the right side of the plane. We were at about 14,000 feet, or so it had been announced some time previously. I was observing several jets making vapor trails at high altitude, crossing and criss-crossing. The earth seemed rugged and deserted with no sign of roads or cultivation, with the exception of a meandering, apparently dirt, road approximately 10 to 12 miles to the right angling away from our line of flight.

"My first observation of the object struck me as a large, roughly elliptical, metallic building on the ground at the base of a hill that seemed to have dark patches, like brush or small trees. I wondered what such a structure was doing out there with no roads or sign of access appearing near it - it was, I should judge, eight to nine miles ahead and to the right of the plane. Suddenly, I observed it was moving

"Dark patches on the hill, probably scrub trees, were passing beneath it. It went up and over the hill angling toward the road. Its course was extremely erratic, seeming to zig-zag two or three hundred feet in an instant to the right or left while maintaining a general direction angle of about 45 degrees away from our course. Its overall speed seemed to me (pure 'guestimate') about one-third our own. It eventually disappeared from my view behind and under the wing, paralleling the road about a mile to the right...

"I would judge the size of the object to be approximately 200 to 250 feet in diameter - its height off the ground to be only a couple hundred feet as it went over the first hill and never over 1000 feet during my observation."

Mr. Hahn added that the UFO's surface resembled "sandblasted aluminum," and was not shiny. He saw no trail or exhaust from the object. [35.]

(That afternoon a group of Rocketdyne engineers sighted three elliptical UFOs over the San Fernando Valley; See Section VI).

September 7, 1958; Mission, Kansas. The publisher of The American Hereford Journal, Hayes Walker, Jr., and his wife saw a white disc speed across the sky about 5:30 p.m. The UFO, round and flat, passed nearly overhead traveling from southwest to northeast, disappearing over the horizon in 12-15 seconds. It was "more distinct than the daytime moon," Walker reported. [36]

## Rendezvous of Two UFOs

February 16, 1960; Laguna Beach, Calif. Mr. Earl T. Ross, retired chemical manufacturing company executive (industrial chemist and engineer) reported the following case to NICAP.

"At 9:15 a.m., Tuesday, February 16, 1960, from my home... I saw, in a very clear and cloudless blue sky, an oval, light colored object move steadily toward the east from a point a little south of overhead. Then, perhaps two seconds later, I saw another similar object approach and overtake the first from a position lower in the southern sky; the second object wobbled or rather nodded, (on an axis through its center and at right angles to its CIA-RDP81R00560R000100010001-0

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