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.

55
two
incidents
occurred just
after
11
:00 p.m.
on two
successive nights,
Friday
2/5/60
and
Saturday
2/6/60,
over
or
near
the
intersection
of
Sunset Blvd.
and
La
Brea
Ave.,
i.e.,
in
the heart
of
downtown
Hollywood.
I
have
gone
over
the
site
area
with
one
of the
principal investigators
of
these
incidents,
Mrs.
Idabel
Epperson
of
LANS,
have examined
press
accounts
(Ref.
35)
that
dealt
(very
superficially)
with
the
event,
and
have
studied
correspondence
between
the
LANS
investigators
and
official
agencies
concerning
this
case.
The
phenomenol-
ogy
is
far
too
complex
to report
in
full detail
here;
even
the
21
-page
single-
spaced
LANS
report
was
only
a
digest
of
results
of
all
the
NICAP
witness
-
interviewing
carried
out
to substantiate
the
events.
The
LANS
report
sum-
marizes
object
-descriptions
given
by
eight
witnesses
Friday
night
and
eighteen
witnesses
Saturday
night,
several
of
them
police
officers.
Cars were
stopped
bumper
-to
-bumper,
according
to
employees
of
several
busi-
nesses
on
the Sunset
-La
Brea
intersection
in
the
midst
of the
main
events,
with
people
gaping at
the
object
overhead.
Persons
on
hotel
and
apartment
rooftops
were
out
looking
at the
bright
"cherry
-red,
circular
light"
that
figured
in both
incidents.
On
the
two
successive nights,
the
red
object
first
appeared
at about
11
:15
p.m.,
and
on
both
nights
it
stopped
and
hovered
motionless
for
periods
of
about
10
minutes at
a
time.
The
angular
estimates
of the
size
of the red
light
varied,
but
seemed
to
suggest
a
value of
one-fourth to one-third
of
the lunar
diameter,
say 5-10
minutes
of
arc.
Almost
all
agreed that the
light
was
sharp
-
edged
rather
than hazy
or fuzzy.
The
usual
witness
-variances
are
exhibited
in
the
total
of
about
two
dozen
persons
interviewed,
e.g.,
some
thought
the
light
pulsated,
others
recalled
it
as
steady,
etc.,
but
the
common
features, consistent
throughout almost
all
the
testimony,
bespeak
a
quite
unusual
phenomenon.
On
Friday
night,
the red
light
was
first
seen
directly
overhead at Sunset
and
La
Brea.
Two
service
-station
attendants
at
that
intersection,
Jerry
Darr
and
Charles
Walker,
described to
LANS
interviewers
how,
".
..
hundreds
of
people
saw
it—everybody
was
looking"
as
the
light
hovered
for
at
least
five
minutesover
a
busy
drive-in
there.
Ken
Meyer,
another
service station
attendant a
third
of
a
mile
to
the north, estimated
it
hovered for
about
10
minutes.
Harold
Sher-
man,
his wife,
and
two
others
watched
it
in
the
later
phases
(also
described
by
the
above
-cited
witnesses)
as
it
resumed
motion very
slowly
eastward.
After
proceeding east
for
a
distance
that
witnesses
roughly
estimated
at
a
block
or
two,
it
veered
southeastward
and
passed
out
of
sight.
(It
is
not
clear
whether
it
was
occulted
by
buildings
for
some
witnesses,
or
diminished in
intensity,
or
actually
passed
off
into
the
distance.)
No
sound
was
heard
over
street-noise
background.
The
following
night,
an
object
which
appeared
to
be
the
same,
to those several
witnesses
who
saw
both
events,
again
showed up
overhead,
this
time
first
seen
about
one
block
farther east
than
on
Friday
night.
Triangulation
based
on
estimates
of angular
elevations
as
seen
from
various
locations
was
used
to
approximate
the height
above ground.
LANS
concluded
that,
when
first
seen,
it
lay
about 500-600
ft.
above
the
intersection
of
Sunset
and
Sycamore.
A
number
of witnesses observed
it
hovering motionless in that
position
for
about
10
min-
utes.
Then a
loud
explosion
and
brilliant
bluish
-white
flash
was
emitted
by
the
object,
the
noise described
by
all
witnesses
as
unlike
any
sonic
boom
or ordinaryexplosion
they
had
ever heard.
The
sound
alerted
witnesses
as
far
away
as
Curson
aNd
Hollywood
Blvd.,
i.e.,
Tom
Burns and two
friends
who
asked
LANS
interviewers
not
to
use
their
names. Condensing very
greatly
here the
descrip-
tions
given
to
the
interviewers
by
independent
witnesses
who
viewed
the "explo-
sion"
from
various
locations scattered
over
a
circle
of
about
a
1
-mile
radius
yields
a summary
-description
as
follows:
What
had,
just before the
explosion,
looked
much
"like
a
big
red
Christmas
ball
hanging
there in the sky",
was
suddenly
the
source of
a
flash
that extended
downward and
to
the west,
lighting
up
the
ground
all
around one
interviewed
(Soe
Rosi)
on
La
Brea Ave.
A
"mushroom
-
shaped
cloud",
with
coloration
that impressed
all
who saw
it,
emerged upward
and
soon
dissipated.
Concurrently,
as the red
light extinguished,
an
object de-
scribed
by
most, but not
all,
witnesses
as long
and
tubular shot
upwards. Angularestimates implied
an
object
a number
of tens of
feet long,
70
ft.
from Harold
Sherman's rough
estimates.
Clearly,
it is
difficult
to explain
how an
object of such
size
could
have
materialized
from a
light
at 500
ft.
elevation
and
subtending
an
angle of only
10
minutes of
arc, unless
it
had been there
all
along, unseen because of thebrilliance
of the red light
beneath
it.
Or
perhaps the angular
-size
estimates are
In
error.
Some
witnesses followed only the tubular ascending
object, others
saw