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.

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His account emphasizes that the boundaries of the object(s) were definite and
sharp, not diffuse. Villela's account indicates that a total of six persons were
above-decks and saw this striking phenomenon. It is to be emphasized that, in
the estimated 10 seconds that this lasted, the object was moving below a cloud
deck that lay only about 1500 feet above the sea, so that, for the reported eleva-
tion angle of about 50 degrees, the slant range from observers to object was
perhaps of the order of 2000 ft. Villela had the subjective impression that the
egg-shaped initial form was about as big as a small airplane.
Di8C1488i012.—In a recent book aimed at showing that a majority of the most in-
teresting UFOs are an atmospheric-electrical plasma related to ball lightning,
Philip J. Klass (Ref. 39) cites the preceding case as a good example of the sort
of observation which he feels he can encompass in his "plasma-UFO" hypothesis.
To the extent that he treats only the breakup into two parts, he has some ob-
servational basis for trying to interpret this as something akin to ball lightning.
But almost at that point the similarity ends as far as meteorologically recog-
nized characteristics of ball lightning go. The highly structured nature of the
object and its rays, its size, its horizontal trajectory, its presence in a foggy area
with low stratiform clouds free of thunderstorm activity scarcely suggest any-
thing like ball lightning. Nor does this account suggest any meteoric phenomenon
at sub-cloud altitudes. I would regard this as just one more of a baffling array
of inexplicable aerial phenomena which span so wide a range of characteristics
that it is taxing to try to invent any single hypothesis to rationalize them all.
The full spectrum of UFO phenomena will, I predict, come as a shock to every
scientist who takes the necessary time to look into the wealth of reports accumu-
lated in various archives over the past two decades and more. Official assertions
to the effect that UFO reports in no way defy explanation in terms of present
scientific and technological knowledge are, in my opinion, entirely unjustified.
The Villela sighting seems a case in point. And meteorologists do see UFOs, as
the foregoing cases should suggest.
DON'T WEATHER BALLOONS AND RESEARCH BALLOONS ACCOUNT FOR MANY UFOS ?
Probably the most categorical statement ever made attributing UFO observa-
tions to balloons appeared in a Look magazine article by Richard Wilson in
February 1951, entitled, "A Nuclear Physicist Exposes Flying Saucers." Dr.
TTrner Liddel, then affiliated with the Navy cosmic ray research program using
the large Skyhook balloons, was quoted as saying, "There is not a single reliable
report of an observation (of a UFO) which is not attributable to the cosmic bal-
loons." When one considers the large number of UFO reports already on record
by 1951 in which reliable airlines pilots, military personnel, and other credible
witnesses have observed unidentified objects wholly unlike a high-altitude,
slowly drifting pear-shaped Skyhook balloon, that assertion appears very curious.
Nevertheless, that many persons have misidentified Skyhook balloons and even
the smaller weather balloons used in routine meteorological practice is unques-
tioned. A Skyhook seen against the twilight sky with back-illumination yields
a strangely luminous, hovering object which many observers, especially if
equipped with binoculars, were unprepared to identify correctly in the 1946-51
period when Skyhook operations were tied up with still-classified programs. To
this extent, Liddel's point is reasonable; but his sweeping assertion fails to fit
the facts, then or now.
Actually, in official case-evaluations, one finds Skyhook balloons invoked
relatively infrequently compared with "weather balloons." But in many of the
latter cases, the balloon hypothesis is strained beyond the breaking point. The
official criterion used (Ref. 7, p. 135) is extremely loose:
"If an object is reported near a balloon launch site within an hour after the
scheduled launch Unites, it is classed as a balloon"
with no specification of heights, shapes, distances, etc. Using such a criterion, it is
easy to see why so many "balloon" explanations figure in the official summaries.
There are even "balloon" UFOs whose speed, when inferred from the report, comes
out supersonic! The tiny candles or flashlight bulbs hung on pilot balloons for
nighttracking have been repeatedly made the basis for explanations of what wit-
nesses described as huge luminous objects at close range. Within only days of this
writing, I have checked out such a case near Tucson where four adult witnesses
saw, on July 2, 1968, a half-moon-shaped orange-red object hovering for several
minutes at what they estimated to be a few hundred feet above terrain and
perhaps a few miles away over open desert. They watched it tip once, right