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

Meyer, another service station attendant a third of a mile to the north, estimated it hovered for about 10 minutes.
Harold Sherman, his wife, and two others watched it in the later phases (also described by the above cited witnesses)
as it resumed motion very slowly eastward. After proceeding east for a distance that witnesses roughly estimated at a
block or two, it veered southeastward and passed out of sight. (It is not clear whether it was occulted by buildings
for some witnesses, or diminished in intensity, or actually passed off into the distance.) No sound was heard over
street-noise background.
The following night, an object which appeared to be the same, to those several witnesses who saw both events, again
showed up overhead, this time first seen about one block farther east than on Friday night. Triangulation based on
estimates of angular elevations as seen from various locations was used to approximate the height above ground.
LANS concluded that, when first seen, it lay about 500-600 ft above the intersection of Sunset and Sycamore. A
number of witnesses observed it hovering motionless in that position for about 10 minutes. Then a loud explosion
and brilliant bluish-white flash was emitted by the object, the noise described by all witnesses as unlike any sonic
boom or ordinary explosion they had ever heard. The sound alerted witnesses as far away as Curson and Hollywood
Blvd., i.e., Tom Burns and two friends who asked LANS interviewers not to use their names. Condensing very
greatly here the descriptions given to the interviewers by independent witnesses who viewed the "explosion" from
various locations scattered over a circle of about a 1-mile radius yields a summary-description as follows: What had,
just before the explosion, looked much "like a big red Christmas ball hanging there in the sky", was suddenly the
source of a flash that extended downward and to the west, lighting up the ground all around one interviewee (Sone
Rosi) on La Brea Ave. A "mushroom-shaped cloud", with coloration that impressed all who saw it, emerged upward
and soon dissipated. Concurrently, as the red light extinguished, an object described by most, but not all, witnesses
as long and tubular shot upwards. Angular estimates implied an object a number of tens of feet long, 70 ft from
Harold Sherman's rough estimates. Clearly, it is difficult to explain how an object of such size could have
materialized from a light at 500 ft elevation and subtending an angle of only 10 minutes of arc, unless it had been
there all along, unseen because of the brilliance of the red light beneath it. Or perhaps the angular size estimates are
in error. Some witnesses followed only the tubular ascending object, others saw only something that "spiraled
downwards" beneath the explosion source. No witness seemed certain of what it was that came down; some spoke
of "glowing embers"; no one gave indication of following it to ground.
Glossing over other details bearing on this "explosion" at an estimated 5-600 ft above Sunset and Sycamore,
witnesses next became aware that the just-extinguished red light had evidently reappeared in a new location, about a
block to the west. Police officers Ray Lopez and Daniel Jaffee, of LAPD, located at the corner of Sunset and La
Brea, heard the explosion and looked up, seeing the light in its new location "directly overhead", as did many others
at that intersection who then watched the red light hovering in its new location for about 8 minutes. (Space precludes
my giving all pertinent information on time-estimates as set out in the 21-page LANS summary. For example, a
good time-fix on the explosion came from the fact that E.W. Cass, a contractor living almost a mile west, was just
winding his alarm clock, looking at it, when flare-like illumination "lit up the whole bedroom", just at an indicated
time of 11:30. He went out, watched the hovering red light in its new location, and added further details I shall omit
here. Others took their time clues from the fact that 11:30 commercials had just come on TV when they heard the
peculiar explosion and hastened outside to check, etc.)
The red light, now over Sunset and La Brea, was roughly triangulated at about 1000 ft up, a figure in accord with
several witness comments that, when it reappeared some 4-5 seconds after the "explosion", it lay not only somewhat
west of its first location, but noticeably higher. After hovering there for a time inferred to be eight minutes, it began
slowly drifting eastward, much as on the previous night when much less spectacular events had occurred. Larry
Moquin, one witness who had taken rather careful alignment fixes using rooflines as an aid, remarked that, at this
stage, La Brea and Sunset was filled with watchers: "Everybody was standing outside their cars looking up -- cars
were backed up in the streets -- and everyone was asking each other, "What is it?".
After moving slowly but steadily (observers mentioned absence of bobbing, weaving, or irregularity in its motion)
for about a block east, to its first location, it turned sharply towards the north-northeast, accelerated, and climbed
steeply, not stopping again until at a very high altitude well to the north. From crude triangulation, LANS
investigators inferred a new hovering altitude of over 25,000 ft, but it is clear from the data involved that this
estimate is extremely rough.