James E. McDonald statement, Symposium on UFOs, House Committee on Science and Astronautics

low angular velocity could confuse dozens of persons into describing fast-moving disc-shaped objects (including a
large red object) is simply not reasonable. However to check further on this, I contacted first Holloman AFB and
then the Office of Naval Research, who jointly hold records on all Alamogordo Skyhook releases. No Skyhooks or
other experimental balloons had been released from the Holloman area or any other part of the country on or near
the date of this incident. A suggestion that the witnesses were seeing only cotton-wisps was not only unreasonable,
given the witness accounts, but was in fact tracked down by a local journalist to comments casually made by a law
enforcement officer and overheard by another reporter. From my examination of this case, I see no ready
explanation for the numerous disc-shaped objects moving in unconventional manner and seen by large numbers of
Farmington residents on 3/17/50.
2. Case 10. Longview, Wash., July 3, 1949:
Many of the UFO cases I am citing are drawn intentionally from earlier years, in order to illustrate that the evidence
for the existence of a quite real and scientifically significant phenomenon has been with us for a disturbing number
of years. I discuss next a case on which I hold copies of material from the official investigative files, copies that state
that this incident was "observed by 150 other people at an Air Show", in addition to the reporting witness, Moulton
B. Taylor. I have interviewed Mr. Taylor and have obtained strong recommendations of his reliability from a former
superior officer, Adm. D. S. Fahrney, under whom Taylor served in Naval guided missiles work prior to the
incident. Taylor is an aeronautical engineer, and was airport manager at Longview, in charge of an air show that was
to be held on the afternoon of 7/3/49, the day of the incident in question. A skywriting Stearman was at 10,000 ft at
10:40 a.m., laying down "Air Show Today", and hence holding the attention of a number of the personnel already at
the airport, when the first of three unidentified objects flew over at high altitude. Alerted by one of the persons who
first spotted the object coming from the northwest, Taylor got on the public address system and announced to all
persons at hand that they should look up to see the odd object. Many had binoculars, and among the over 150
persons present were police officers, city officials and a number of Longview's leading citizens, Taylor emphasized.
The object was observed by a number of experienced pilots; and, according to official file summaries, all agreed that
the object was shaped much like a discus. It seemed to have metallic luster and oscillated periodically as it crossed
the sky from northwest to southeast until lost in mill-smoke. Taylor described the motion as "a sculling or falling-
leaf motion rather than a movement through the axis of the disc." Its angular size he estimated as about that of a
pinhead at arm's length, or about that of a DC-3 at 30,000 ft, both of which come out to be near 10 minutes of arc
(one-third of moon's diameter).
The crowd's attention to events in the sky did not lapse when the first object was lost from view, and, about nine
minutes later, someone spotted a second object, whereupon the event was again announced via the public address
system. Still a third object was brought to the attention of the crowd in the same manner at 11:25. The second object
came out of the north, the third came from almost due west. In the third case, someone thought of timing the
oscillation frequency (all three exhibited the same unconventional oscillation, with sun-glint perceptible in certain of
the instances of tipping, Taylor mentioned). The oscillation frequency was clocked at 48 per minute. In the official
report are height estimates and some disparate comments on color, etc., from several other witnesses, as well as
remarks on other sightings in the same area on the same day. Full details cannot be recounted here, for reasons of
space limitation. Taylor, in his statement submitted to official investigators, said:
"My experience in radio control of pilotless aircraft and guided missiles for the Navy at NAMU
during the war, and over 20 years of aircraft study, does not permit my identification of the
objects which were seen. They definitely were _not_ balloons, birds, common aircraft,
parachutes, stars, meteors, paper, clouds, or other common objects. The moved in a regular
motion either straight or in curved lines. They were all at approximately the same altitude, but
moved on different courses as indicated on the sketch. The oscillations wee clearly visible and
timed on the 3rd sighting..."
Discussion:
The official explanation for this case is "Balloons". I obtained information on upper winds over that part of
Washington on that day (700 and 500 mb charts), and the flow aloft between 10,000 and 20,000 ft was from the
southwest. The objects, all reported as about the same angular size, came from three distinctly different directions,
all within a period of less than an hour. This immediately casts very strong doubt on the balloon hypothesis, as does
the flipping motion, the sun glint, and, above all, the fact that no pilot balloon stations were located close upwind of