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
49 The crowd's attention to events in the sky did not lapse when the first object was lost from view, and, about nine minutes later, someone spotted a second ,object, whereupon the event was again announced via the public address system. Still a third object was brought to the attention of the crowd in the same manner at 11 :25. The second object came out of the north, the third came from almost due west. In the third case, someone thought of timing the oscillation frequency (all three exhibited the same unconventional oscillation, with sun- glint perceptible in certain of the instances of tipping, Taylor mentioned). The oscillation frequency was clocked at 48 per minute. In the official report are height estimates and some disparate comments on color, etc., from several other witnesses, as well as remarks on other sightings in the same area on the same day. Full details cannot be recounted here, for reasons of space limitation. Taylor,in his statement submitted to official ingestigators, said: "My experience in radio control of pilotless aircraft and guided missiles for the Navy at NAMU during the war, and over 20 years of aircraft study, does not permit my identification of the objects which were seen. They definitely were not balloons, birds, common aircraft, parachutes, stars, meteors, paper, -clouds, or other common objects. They moved in a regular motion either straight or in curved lines. They were all at approximately the same altitude, but moved on different courses as indicated on the sketch. The oscillations were clearly visible and timed on the 3rd sighting * * Discussion.—The official explanation for this case is "Balloons". I obtained information on upper winds over that part of Washington on that day (700 and 500 mb charts), and the flow aloft between 10,000 and 20,000 ft was from the southwest. The objects, all reported as about the same angular size, came from three distinctly different directions, all within a period of less than an hour. This immediately casts very strong doubt on the balloon hypothesis, as does the flipping motion, the sunglint, and, above all, the fact that no pilot balloon stations were located close upwind of Longview. Furthermore, a typical pilot balloon of about 1 meter diameter could be no higher than about 2500 ft altitude to subtend as large an angle as 10 minutes of arc. Taylor's report (official files) gave transit times of 2-3 minutes for the unknowns to cross the Longview sky, and, during such a time interval, the normal ascent rate of a pilot balloon would carry it up by 1200-1800 ft. To then fit the angular-size requirements would clearly require that the balloons have been released at some nearby location, which fails to match known pibal-station locations at that time. Furthermore, surface winds were from the west, and winds a short distance above the ground were southwesterly, as indicated by pulpmill smoke-drift described in Taylor's report. This, plus the previously cited upper-flow directions, contradict the balloon hypothesis for all three directions of arrival, particularly those coming from north and northwest. To hypothesize that these were, say, Skyhook balloons coming from three differ- ent (unknown) sites, at three different high altitudes, but all so arranged that the apparent balloon diameter came out at about the same 10 minutes of arc each time is scarcely reasonable. In all, I can only regard the balloon explanation as untenable. Disc-shaped objects have been sighted in dozens of instances, including Arnold's 6/24/47 Mt. Rainer sighting. In many, though not all, the odd flipping or flutter- ing motion has been described by witnesses (Refs. 8, 10). What the dynamical signficance of this might be is unclear. We know no more about this in 1968 than we knew in 1947, because such observations have been ignored as nonsense— or misidentified balloons. 3. Case 11. Salt Lake City, Utah, Oct. 3, 1961 A midday sighting of a lens-shaped object involving one airborne witness and seven witnesses on the ground became headline news in Salt Lake City (Ref. 32). Accounts of the incident have been summarized elsewhere (Refs. 2, 10, 13, 25). A private pilot, Mr. Waldo J. Harris, was taking off on Runway 160 at Utah Central Airport at almost exactly noon on 10/2/61 when he noted what he at first idly viewed as a distant airplane. He noted it again in the same area just after becoming airborne, once more after gaining some altitude, and then became some- what puzzled that it had not exhibited any appreciable change of position. About then it seemed to tilt, glinting in the noonday sun, and exhibiting a shape unlike any aircraft. To get a better view, Harris climbed towards the southeast and found himself at its altitude when he was somewhat above 6000 ft. By then it appeared as a biconvex metallic gray object, decidedly different from conven- tional aircraft, so he radioed back to the airport, where eventually seven persons were taking turns viewing it with binoculars. I have interviewed not only Harris,
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