FBI file: UFO, UFO Part 03

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

asking them to describe what they saw, before telling them my story, in order to avoid suggestion or inference of a leading nature. They saw the object (from the ground) while I was on my second search. They believed the time to have been 14:00 hours. The object performed in the same erratic manner, they told, as I observed.

The above is the extent of the story, and information concerning myself is now in order.

I have approximately 2600 hours of flying time in equipment ranging from primary trainers to 7-29s. Of course, that does not increase my powers of observation except as to those practiced daily by an airman. It does not make my eyesight any sharper except again as to the incidental demands upon the eyes of a pilot.

At the time of the experience related above, I had flown fourteen and one-half hours on an assignment to find a disc and if possible, to photograph it. In all frankness, I was tired. I may have been suffering, although slightly, from want of oxygen.

Prior to sighting the object, I had concluded there was no point in pressing the search, that I probably would never see the disc-like objects referred to by and by of United Air Lines.

At all times during the search, both on that day and the two preceeding days (particularly when I was with I had literally talked to myself to keep boating into my road that I would not fall victim to the power of suggestion or self-hypnosis arising from a naturally very intent desire to find a disc and bring success to the assignment given me.

I therefore do not believe that I was the victim of suggestion or hypnosis. I am familiar with the optical illusion of a fixed object beginning to move after it is watched a sufficient length of time. I know that tricks the eyes will play as to moving-bodies, and have learned of this particularly during night formation flying.

I saw the object appear suddenly. If it had moved in a jerky fashion (as it did at first) for the full length of time I observed it, I would not be so strong in saying that I saw something not an aircraft, not a balloon, and not a corpuscle moving across the retina of either eye. The maneuver described by the object when its edge was presented to me convinces me that I saw an object actually performing in an erratic flight path.

The question remains, of course, whether I saw it. The motion picture film, developed and processed by in the Eastman laboratories at 241 Battery Street, San Francisco, showed no trace of any object. says that if it was more than a mile distant from me at the size I described, the object would not have registered sufficiently on the film to be shown. He said it probably was too far away to be apparent even through great enlargement of the negative, and enlargement in that case is limited because of the size of the film and the fact I did not have any telescopic equipment on the lens. The exposure was f.16, stop set at infinity, at a speed of 16 frames per second.

I have worried over this matter a great deal since seeing it. I "took myself aside" and said, "come now, don't be stupid." But I cannot bring myself to the point of thinking I did not see anything. The impression of the moment was too vivid, too realistic, and I knew in the air when I saw that partial slow roll or barrel roll, that I was not a victim of illusion.

I trust this matter will be of help to those investigating the flying disc phenomena which have been reported. A chart is attached depicting the movements of the object as I