Documents / Hearing transcript
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.
“Nevers”43 pages
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.
Hearing transcript, from the govinfo collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 256 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.