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.
43 Discussion. This case has been the subject of much comment over the years, and rightly so. Menzel (Ref. 24) first proposed that this was a "mirage", but gave no basis for such an unreasonable interpretation. The large azimuth-change of the pilots' line of sight, the lack of any obvious light source to provide a basis for the rather detailed structure of what was seen, the sharp pull-up, and the high flight altitude involved all argue quite strongly against such a casual dis- position of the case, In his second book, Menzel (Ref. 25) shifts to the explana- tion that they had obviously seen a meteor. A horizontally-moving fireball under a cloud-deck, at 5000 ft., exhibiting two rows of lights construed by experienced pilots as ports, and finally executing a most non-ballistic 90-degree sharp pull-up, is a strange fireball indeed. Menzels 1963 explanation is even more objectionable, in that he implies, via a page of side-discussion, that the Eastern pilots had seen a fireball from the Delta Aquarid meteor stream. As I have pointed out elsewhere (Ref. 2), the radiant of that stream was well over 90° away from the origin point of the unknown object. Also, bright fireballs are, with only rare exceptions, not typical of meteor streams. The official explanation was shifted recently from "Unidentified" to "Meteor", following publication of Men- zel's 1963 discussion (see Ref. 20, p. 88). Wingless, cigar-shaped or "rocket-shaped" objects, some emitting glowing wakes, have been reported by other witnesses. Thus, Air Force Capt. Jack Puckett, flying near 4000 ft. over Tampa in a 0-47 on August 1, 1946 (Ref. 10, p. 23), described seeing "a long, cylindrical shape approximately twice the size of a B-29 with luminous portholes", from the aft end of which there came a stream of fire as it flew near his aircraft. Puckett states that he, his copilot, Lt. H. F. Glass, and the flight engineer also saw it as it came in to within an esti- mated 1000 yards before veering off. Another somewhat similar airborne sight- ing, made in January 22, 1956 by TWA Flight Engineer Robert Mueller at night over New Orleans, is on record (Ref. 27). Still another similar sighting is the AAL case cited below (Sperry case). Again, over Truk Is., in the Pacific, a Feb. 6, 1953, mid-day sighting by a weather officer involved a bullet-shaped object without wings or tail (Ref. 7, Rept. No. 10). Finally, within an hour's time of the Chiles-Whitted sighting, Air Force ground personnel at Robins AFB, Georgia, saw a rocket-like object shoot overhead in a westerly direction (Refs. 3, 5, 10,6). In none of these instances does a meteorological or astronomical 'explanation suffice to explain the sightings. 3. Case 3. Sioux City,Iowa,January 20,1951. Another of the many airline-crew sightings of highly unconventional aerial devices that I have personally checked was, like Cases 1 and 2, widely reported in the national press (for a day or two, and then forgotten like the rest). A check of weather data confirms that the night of 1/20/51 was clear and cold at Sioux City at the time that a Mid-Continent Airlines DC-3, piloted by Lawrence W. Vinther, was about to take off for Omaha and Kansas City, at 8:20 p.m. CST. In the CAA control tower, John M. Williams had been noting an oddly maneuver- ing light high in a westerly direction. Suddently the light abruptly accelerated, in a manner clearly precluding either meteoric or aircraft origin, so Williams alerted Vinther and his co-pilot, James F. Bachmeier. The incident has been discussed many times (Ref. 4, 5, 10, and 28), but to check details of these reports, I searched for and finally located all three of the above-named men. Vinther and Bachmeier are now Braniff pilots, Williams is with the FAA in Sacramento. From them I confirmed the principal features of previous accounts and learned additional information too lengthy to recapitulate in full here. The essential point to be emphasized is that, shortly after Vinther got his DC-3 airborne, under Williams' instructions to investigate the oddly-behaving light, the object executed a sudden dive and flew over the D0-3 at an estimated 200 ft. vertical clearance, passing aft and downward. Then a surprising ma- neuver unfolded. As Vinther described it to me, and as described in contemporary accounts, the object suddenly reversed course almost 180°, without slowing down or slewing, and was momentarily flying formation with their DC-3, off its port wing. (Vinther's dry comment to me was: "This is something we don't see air- planes do.") Vinther and Bachmeier agreed that the object was very big, per- haps somewhat larger than a B-29, they suggested to newspapermen who in- terviewed them the following day. Moonlight gave them a good silhouetted view of the object, which they described as having the form of a fuselage and un- swept wing, but not a sign of any empennage, nor any sign of engine-pods, propellers, or jets. Prior to its dive, it had been seen only as a light; while pacing their D0-3, the men saw no luminosity, though during the dive they saw a light on its underside. After about five seconds, the unknown object
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.