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.

63
and
appeared "almost round,
a
solid
dull
pure
white
color,
with
a
thin
white
mist
completely
edging
each
object."
The
first
object
moved
into
the
optical
field
and
curved
upwards
to
the
west,
with the
theodolite
oriented to
about
53
degrees
elevation,
157
degrees
azimuth.
About
20
seconds
later,
a
second
object
entered
the
field
and moved
in
and
out
of the
field
erratically
two
times,
to
rejoin
the
first
object.
Brown was
able
to
track
the
pair
thereafter,
as
they
jointly
changed
both
azimuth
and
elevation.
Because
he had
a
stopwatch
at
hand
for
the
baloon
observation
(which he
did
not
complete because
of
follow-
ing the
unknown
objects),
he
was
able
to
determine
that
he
followed
the
pair
of
objects
for
five
minutes
(1350
to
1355),
until
he
lost
sight
of
them
against
a
cirrus
cloud
deck
to
the
SSW.
At
the
termination
of the
observation,
his
instru-
ment
was
pointed
to
29
degrees
elevation,
204
degrees
azimuth.
Discussion.—This
case
is
carried
as
Unidentified
in
the
official
files
(see Ref.
7
for
official
summary).
At
times
these
objects
lay
near the
sun's
position
in
the sky,
which might
suggest
forward
-angle
scattering
of
sunlight
by
airborne
particles.
However,
initially,
the
objects
were
detected
at
angular
distance
of
about
40
degrees
from
the
solar
position,
which would
not
yield
appreciable
low
-
angle
scattering.
Furthermore,
if
these
were
airborne
scatterers,
they
would
almost
certainly
be
separated
by random
turbulence
within
as
long
a
period
as
five
minutes,
yet
the
observer's
report
indicates
that they
maneuvered
together
within
angular
separations
of
the
order
of
the roughly
one
-degree
field
of such
theodolites.
The
fact
that the second
object
did
go
out
of the
field
only
to
return
to
the
vicinity
of the
first
object strains
the
airborne
-particle
hypothesis.
Thus
the
official
categorization
of
Unidentified
seems
reasonable
here.
3.
Case
28.
Upington,
Cape
Province,
December
7,
1954
R.
H.
Kleyweg,
Officer-in
-Charge of
the
Upington
Meteorological
Station,
had
just
released
a
balloon
for
upper-wind
measurement and
was
shielding his
eyes
from
the
sun
trying
to
spot the
balloon to get
his
theodolite
on
it.
Seeing
an
object
east
of
the
sun,
moving
slowly
to
the west,
he
thought
it
was
his balloon
and
got the
theodolite
on
it,
only
to
find
that
it
was
white,
whereas
he had
re-
leased
a
red
balloon.
An
account in the Natal
Mercury,
January
28, 1955,
quoted
Kleyweg
as
saying that
it
seemed
"like
a
half
-circle
with the
sun
reflecting
off
the
sloping
top."
He
had no
difficulty
following
it
for
about
three minutes,
but
then
it
began
to
accelerate
and,
after
another minute,
he
was
unable
to track
fast
enough
to
keep
it
in
optical
view (Ref.
10).
Discussion.—Kleyweg
was
quoted
in
the
cited
press
source
as
saying,
"I
have
followed
thousands
of
meteorological
balloons.
This
object
was
no
balloon."
A
South
African student doing graduate
work
in
my
Department,
Petrus
DuToit,
has
confirmed
this sighting,
having
had an
account of
it
directly
from
Kleyweg.
An
accelerating
airborne half
-circular
object
with
sloping
top
seems
best
cate-
gorized
as
an
unidentified flying object.
4.
Case
29.
Arrey,
New
Mewico,
April 24,
1949Charles
B.
Moore,
Jr.,
was
with four
enlisted
Navy
personnel
making
a
pilot
balloon observation
preparatory
to release
of
a
Skyhook
balloon
at the
White
Sands
Proving
Ground
in
the middle of the
morning
of
4/24/49.
The
balloon
was
airborne
and
was
under
observation
by one
of the
men
when
Moore became
aware
that
a
white
object
which he
took
to
be the
balloon
was
in
a
part of the
sky
well
away
from where
the
theodolite
operator
had
this
instrument
trained.
As
Moore has
explained
directly
to
me
in
discussing this
famous
ease,
he
thoughtthe operator
had
lost
the
balloon.
Moore
took
over,
swung
the
25
-power
scope
onto the "balloon"
he had
spotted,
and found
that
it
was
in fact
an
ellipsoidal
white
object
moving
at
a
rapid angular
velocity
towards
the
NE.
With
stop-
watch and
recording
forms
at
hand,
it
was
possible
for the
team
of
five
men
to
secure
some
semi
-quantitative
data
on
this
sighting;
Moore
disengaged the
vernier drives to track manually,
and
followed the
object
as
it
sped
from
the
southwest
into
the northeast
skies.
At
its
closest
approach,
it
was
moving at
about
5
degrees/sec.
Just
before
Moore
lost
it
in the distance to the
northeast,
its
angular
elevation
began
to increase,
as
if it
were
climbing,
a
quite significant
point.
The
object
had a
laorizontal
length
about
two
to three times greater
than
its vertical thickness.
Moore
never got
a
sufficiently
clear
view to
identify
any
finer details if
any were
present.
Another
balloon
was
immediately
released to
check the slim
possibility
that
a
high-speed jet
from
SW
to
NE
might havecarried
some
airborne object across the sky; but the winds were blowing
moreor
less
at right angles to the
object's
path to the 93,000
ft. level,
and were
rather
weak (Ref. 10).
The
angular diameter of the object
was
estimated at about
a