U.S. Air Force Analysis of Flying Objects in the United States, 1-100

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

An unusually loud roar attracted the observer and upon looking up he saw a group of very light-colored objects at an altitude of about 50° bunched rather closely with no regular formation. The group could have covered 1-1/2° angular diameter in the sky. There might have been 10 As a group they were proceeding as to cover 30° of arc estimated of course in 10 to 15 seconds. If one of them subtended 1/10° with a possible wing spread of 100 ft it would put it at a distance of over 10 miles, and quite invisible for a light object. With 30° arc of travel at a 10 mi distance would be roughly 5 miles in 15 seconds or 60 mi per minute or 1200 mi per hour. Rather fast for a bomber. A 50 ft object at 5 miles dist. wo ld be about 600 mi. per hr - also fast going. The only concrete evidence of form appeared on the left tangent of the group - two dark shaped forms:

These could have been tail wings. But since they were in no regular formation, and seemed to be moving irregularly like a swarm of bees why shouldn't all of them have had wings? The loud roar suggests they may have been much closer and rather small. The sky background was hairy blue with the sun behind. One plane towing a lot of balloons, the witness thought, would have been easily recognized.