U.S. Air Force Analysis of Flying Objects in the United States, 101-172

-- - ----•~------ It is held by rocketry experts (example, WILLY LEY - see
his ROCKE'IS, p. 192, diagram and note in c onne ction there
with) that it wol,ll.d take about 100 hours f or a rocket-craf t
to negotiate the di stance from Earth to Moon.
Prior to its ~xplosion over Norcatur, this object of Feb.
18th was variously reported as a "falling plane", a "jet
plane", and a ''ball of fire 11 • It is said by some to have
l eft a trail of smoke behind it.
It is the suggestion of this writer that the Army collect
am assimilate reports on this object , with a view t o
determining where it was seen as an object trailint: smoke
and llhe re as a ball of fire.
If this thing is a r ocket of some kind headed fo r the moon,
it might first have been seen as a streak of s r.oke, then
later as a ball of fire , and las tly as a tremendous ex
plosion when it at last reached sufficient speed and eleva
tion for take-off .
The writer has in mind the various and unexplained r e 1.,orts
on "!lying saucers", and bases this speculation upon a
lonb c onsideration of various oddments of reports whose
significance might be of epace-craf t f r om other worlds of
space.
The so- called "meteori c procession" which crossed Tor on t o
in February 1913, consisted of a number of u oups or
illimunated bodies traveling in v oups of thre e an:l moving
in "rigid formation", all pursuing a course acr oss the
same streak of the earth's surface . J.r a line is proj ected
backward along ·t his line of fli ght it will be seen that
this line "comes out" at the position of the moon at the
time. The 1913 phenomenon occurred in the mid-period of
a series of reports on dirigible aircraft of appearance
like zeppelins which were seen over :&, gland an:i whos e
appearance terminated - or reports on the appearances
stopped - j ust prior to the inferior conjt.mction of Venus
of April 24, 19 13 .
The writer begs to call attention to the f act that the
times prior to and just after inferior conjunction of Venus
are prolific in r eports of strange t hin gs seen i n the sky.
Also t }at lights have been r eported on t he moon from time
to time, back f or at l east a century.
Ir in thr future of mil itary experiment the moon is selected
as a base for the launching of r ockets (which has been
suggested by some writers), it may be wel l to look first
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