Project Blue Book case file: Levelland, November 2-3, 1957 (81 pages)

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

The Air Force also took the unusual step of referring to specific cases. An AP dispatch from Washington (Nov. 15) began: "The Air Force has looked into five recent reports ... and there isn't a flying saucer in the lot." Five reports out of scores or hundreds received? Was the Air Force, perhaps, practicing frugality? We might think so, in the light of another Washington dispatch (Science Service, Nov. 7), which said: "Each major track-down costs about $10,000, including sending out investigating personnel, paying transportation expenses, sending planes aloft to investigate intruders and taking pictures of, perhaps, Venus - plus administrative work." But on this point there is some instructive evidence (see below).

Of the five cases "looked into," one could be promptly dismissed as a hoax (the Schmidt case, Kearney, Nebraska, Nov. 5). The other four cases, concluded the AF, were either (a) exaggerations, or (b) misunderstood natural phenomena. What about these natural phenomena?

At Levelland, Texas, the luminous egg-shaped object 200-300 feet long that stopped car motors and radios was identified as: "a natural electric phenomenon called ball lightning or St. Elmo's fire." Apparently the technical investigators who conducted this particular $10,000 investigation were not aware that these are two entirely different electric phenomena; or that the average diameter of ball lightning is 8 inches; or that a good many scientists deny that ball lightning even exists; or that St. Elmo's fire is invariably attached to some solid object. As for the stalled car motors, continued the AF, the same weather that produced St. Elmo's ball lightning might have - MIGHT have, notice - "soaked the ignition systems of cars." And what might have dried them out so quickly once the light departed? And did anyone's ignition in fact become soaked? Were the witnesses asked this? (One report, said the AF, arose from "an automobile mechanic's mistake"; no details are given.)

The investigators said further (note that plural) that they could find only three witnesses who actually saw the big light. The miracle is, they found as many as three. For we know, in this case, exactly what the Air Force investigation amounted to. On November 6 the Levelland Daily Sun News reported: "Air Force 'Mystery' Man Leaves City; Actions, Identity Cloaked in Secrecy." The anonymous visitor drove an AF vehicle, wore civilian clothes, and"said he could not give his name or any identification" (italics ours). Around noon on the 6th he spent 30 minutes in Sheriff Weir Clem's office. He returned about 2:30 p.m. for another half hour. About 3 p.m. he headed for Lubbock (30 miles away); he came back about 6:30, said to Sheriff Clem, "Well, I'm gone," and drove off into the dark, drippy night. Adds the paper, "There was never any hint as to what he found out or whether he was really a civilian or an Air Force officer."

Does the Air Force call this a "major track-down"? We won't even bother to laugh. Do they say that the activities of the mysterious gentleman's 7-hour day cost $10,000 or anything like it? Then the taxpayers had better start yelling bloody murder, for they are being well bilked. Yet it was on the basis of this feeble parody of an investigation that the Air Force, on November 15, uttered its "conclusions" about the Levelland object!