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This is the prepared statement James E. McDonald, a senior physicist at the University of Arizona's Institute of Atmospheric Physics, submitted to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics for its July 29, 1968 Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects. He draws on hundreds of witness interviews and weighs eight hypotheses. His conclusion is that UFOs are probably extraterrestrial surveillance devices. He argues that scientists have wrongly neglected the subject and urges much more scientific investigation and further Congressional hearings.
“UFO Files”15 pages
On the other hand, there seems no reason to take seriously Menzel's evaluation of this Odessa F-94 sighting (Ref. 25, p. 62). Menzel evidently had the full file on this case, for he adds a few details beyond those in Ref. 7, details similar to those in Ruppelt's account of the case (Ref. 5): "Dim reddish-white lights seemed to be coming from 'windows' and no trail or exhaust was visible. The pilot attempted to intercept but the object performed amazing feats -- did a chandelle in front to of the plane, rushed away, stopped, and then made for the aircraft on a collision course at incredible speed." He indicates that after the pilot banked to avoid collision he could not again locate it visually, although another brief radar contact was obtained. Having recounted those and other sighting details, Menzel then offers his interpretation: "In the east, Sirius was just rising over the horizon at the exact bearing of the unknown object. Atmospheric refraction would have produced exactly the phenomenon described. The same atmospheric conditions that caused the mirage of the star would have caused anomalous radar returns." Now stars just above the viewer's horizon do scintillate and do undergo turbulent image-displacement, but one must consider quantitative matters. A refractive excursion of a stellar image through even a few minutes of arc would be an extremely large excursion. To suggest that a pilot would report that Sirius did a chandelle is both to forget realities of astronomy and to do injustice to the pilot. In fact, however, Menzel seems to have done his computations incorrectly, for it is easily ascertained that Sirius was not even in the Washington skies at 7:15 p.m. PST on 12/10/52. It lay at about 10 degrees below the eastern horizon. A further quite unreasonable element of Menzel's explanation of the Odessa case is his easy assertion that the radar returns were anomalous results of the "atmospheric conditions". Aircraft flying at altitudes of 26,000 ft do not get ground returns on level flight as a result of propagation anomalies. These extreme forcings of explanations recur throughout Menzel's writings; one of their common denominators is lack of attention to relevant quantitative factors. 3. Case 33. Rosalia, Wash., February 6, 1953: Another official case-summary of interest here is cited by Menzel (Ref. 25, p. 46). Keyhoe (Ref. 4), who studied the case-file on it much earlier, gives similar information, though in less detail. A B-36, bound for Spokane was over Rosalia, Wash., at 1:13 a.m. when, as Menzel describes it, "the pilot ... sighted a round white light below him, circling and rising at a speed estimated at 150 to 200 knots as it proceeded on a southeast course." Menzel states that the B-36 "made a sharp descending turn toward the light, which was in view for a period of three to five minutes." The light was blinking, and Keyhoe mentions that the blink-interval was estimated at about 2 seconds. Menzel concurs in the official evaluation of this as a "weather balloon", noting that a pilot balloon had been released at Fairchild AFB at 1:00 a.m., and remarking that the "winds aloft at altitudes of 7,000 to 10,000 ft were from the northwest at a speed of about fifty knots." He says that
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