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Symposium on unidentified flying objects: hearings before the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, Ninetieth Congress, second session, July 29, 1968.

U.S. House of Representatives · 1968-07-29 · 256 pages · text from the file's own layer

This is the printed record of a July 29, 1968 symposium on unidentified flying objects held by the Committee on Science and Astronautics of the U.S. House of Representatives, chaired by Rep. J. Edward Roush. The committee heard statements from six scientists: J. Allen Hynek, James E. McDonald, Carl Sagan, Robert L. Hall, James A. Harder and Robert M. L. Baker. It also printed papers from Donald Menzel, Stanton Friedman, Frank Salisbury and others. Hynek argued that puzzling UFO reports from competent witnesses deserve serious scientific study.

31
period
unidentified.
Then
they
identify
them.
But
here
is
an
impres-
sive
number
of
both
military
and
civilian
radar
sightings
that
defy
radar
explanation in
terms of
unknown
phenomena.
Most
of
these
de-
ficiencies
are
well
understood, so
one
can be
fairly
sure that
many
of
these
unidentified
radar
cases
have
no
conventional explanation.
In
a
case
where
a
P-61
flew
over
Japan,
back
some
years
ago,
made
six
passes
at
an
unidentified
object
is
was
getting
radar
returns
on,
and
the
pilot
saw
it
visually.
Here
you
are dealing
with
an
unknown.
Then
there
was
a
case in
Michigan where
a
ground
radar
detected
an
object
at
600
miles
an
hour
coming
in over
Saginaw
Bay.
The
pilot
got
a
radar
return,
and
also
saw a
vast
luminous
object
the
object
turned
in
a
very
sharp
180
-degree
turn
and went
back,
and
eluded
the
F-94.
Here
you
are
dealing
with
a
case
where
radar
propagation
anomalies
will
not
explain
it.
There
was
one
radar
in
the
airplane
at20,000
feet
and one
radar
on
the
ground,
both
showing
the
object.
There
are
many
cases
like
that
which
I
could enlarge
on.
Mr.
RYAN.
Let
me
ask
a
further,question:
In
the
course
of your
investigation
and
your
study of
UFO
sightings,
have you found
any
cases
where
contemporaneously with
the
sighting
of
UFO's
alleg-
edly, there
were
any
other
events
which
took
place,
which
might
or
might
not be
related
to
the
UFO's?
Dr.
MCDONALD.
Yes.
Certainly there are
many
physical
effects.
For
instance,
in
Mr.
Pettis'
district,
several
people
found
the
fillings
in
their
mouth
hurting while
this object
was
nearby,
but
there are
many
cases
probably
on
record
of
car
ignition
failure.
One
famous
case,
Was
at
Levelland, Tex., in 1967.
Ten
vehicles
were
stopped
within
a
short
area,
all
independently
in
a
2
-hour
period,
near
Levelland,
Tex.
There
was no
lightning
or thunder storm,
and
only
a
trace
of
rain.
There
is
another
which
I
don't
know
whether
to
bring to the
com-
mittee's
attention
or
not.
The
evidence
is
not
as
conclusive
as
the
car
stopping
phenomenon,
but
there are too
many
instances
for
me
to
ignore.
-
UFO's
have
often
been
seen
hovering near
power
facilities.
There
are
a
small
number
but
still
a
little
too
many
to
seem pure
fortuitous
chance,
of
system
outages, coincident
with the
UFO
sight-
ing.
One
of
the
cases
was Tamaroa,
Ill.
Another
was
a
case in
Shelby-
ville,
Ky.
'
early
last
year.
Even
the
famous
one,the
New
York
blackout,
involved
UFO
sightings.
Dr.
Hynek
probably
would
be the
most
ap-
propriate
man
to
describe
the
Manhattan
sighting, since
he
inter-
viewed
several witnesses involved.
I
interviewed
a woman
in
Seacliff,
N.Y. She saw
a
disk
hovering
and
going
up
and down.
And
thenshooting
away from
New
York
just after
the
power
failure.
I
went
to the
FPC
for data,
they
didn't
take
them
seriously
although they
had
many
dozens of
sighting reports
for that
famous
evening.
Therewere
reports
all
over
New
England
in the midst of
that blackout,
and
five
witnesses
near Syracuse, N.Y.,
saw a
glowing
object ascend-
ing
within
about a minute of the blackout. First
they thought
it
was
a
dump
burning
right at the
moment
the
lights
went
out.
It
is
rather
puzzling that the pulse
of
current that tripped the relay at the Ontario
Hydro
Commission
plant has never been
identified,
but
initially
thetentative suspicion
was
centered
on
the Clay
Substation of the Niagara
Mohawk
network right there in the Syracuse area, where,
unidentified
aerial
phenomenon has been seen
by some of the
witnesses.

Cases discussed

About this file

Hearing transcript, from the govinfo collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 256 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.