Project Blue Book: Exposed

Appendix A: The Lubbock Lights, the Washington Nationals, and the Las Vegas UFO Crash: An Analysis of the Data

Over the years there have been a number of important cases that have received a great deal of attention. To understand the situation at Project Blue Book, it is necessary to understand those cases. Many of them show how the investigations progressed and how the solutions were determined. There are, however, a number of other cases that were well researched by Air Force investigators at the time they occurred. These other cases, for the most part, took place between August 1951 and January 1953.

In putting together the book, I wanted to deal with cases that were important to understanding the philosophy of the Air Force investigation without confusing the issue of what they were really attempting. Because of that, there were a couple of cases that I wanted to discuss, but that didn't fit the flow of the narrative elsewhere. For that reason, I combined the cases and put them here.

The following are three cases that were investigated in depth by Air Force officers. For the most part, they found what they believe to be explanations for the sightings. As happened in so many other aspects of the Air Force study, the facts do not directly support the conclusions drawn. This is, you might say, just additional ammunition for the case I have been attempting to make throughout the book.

In August 1951, a series of spectacular sightings, including a series of photographs, took place over Lubbock, Texas. This all happened about the time that Ed Ruppelt had taken over the leadership of Blue Book and was reorganizing it. Less than a year later, a series of sightings took place over Washington's National Airport. The explanations offered by the Air Force, and the investigation of the case demonstrated the mindset of the military at that time. And, about ten years later, the Air Force investigated a series of sightings that culminated in the apparent explosion of something near Las Vegas, Nevada.

The Lubbock Lights story began on a hot August night as several professors from Texas Tech College (later University) sat outside. A group of dully glowing lights flashed overhead. They moved silently, crossed the sky rapidly, and seemed to be in some kind of loose, but organized, formation. They were only in sight for two or three seconds and none of the professors got a very good look at them.

The professors, W.I. Robinson, A.G. Oberg, and W.L. Ducker, discussed what they had seen trying to figure out what it might have been. They also tried to determine what to do if the lights returned. An hour or so later, the lights reappeared, and this time the professors were ready.

The lights were softly glowing bluish objects in another loose formation. It seemed to the professors that the first group had been in a more rigid and structured formation than later groups.

To the professors the next logical move was to learn if anyone else had seen the objects. Ducker called the local newspaper and spoke to the managing editor, Jay Harris, who wasn't interested in the report. Ducker, however, convinced him that a story should be printed. Harris finally agreed but only if Ducker allowed his name to be used. Ducker refused.

But then, a few minutes later, Ducker called back and agreed. In fact, he could print the names of all the professors, but only if Harris called the college public relations department and cleared it with them.

The newspaper story was successful in that one respect. There were others who claimed to see the lights that same night. That seemed to be some corroboration of the lights seen by the professors. But, the important sighting, at least in the minds of the Air Force officers who later investigated, was made by Joe Bryant of Brownsfield, Texas.

Bryant told Air Force officers that he was sitting in his backyard when a group of the dim lights flew overhead. He described them as having a "kind of a glow, a little bigger than a star." Not long after that, a second group appeared. Neither of the groups was in sort of a regular formation, a clue that the Air Force choose to ignore.

There was a third flight, but instead of flying over the house, they dropped down and circled the building. As he watched, one of them chirped and he recognized them immediately. He identified them as plover, a bird common in west Texas. When he read the account of the professors in the newspaper the next day, he knew immediately what they had seen. If he hadn't been able to identify the last flight, if one of the birds hadn't chirped, he would have been fooled too.

The professors, unaware of what Bryant had seen and believed, set out to obtain additional information. Joined by other professors and professionals including Grayson Meade, E.R. Hienaman and J.P Brand, they equipped teams with two-way radios, measured a base from the location of the original sightings, then staked out the area. They hoped for additional sightings along the base line. Knowing the length of that line, the time of the sighting, and the location and direction of flight, they would be able to calculate a great deal of important and useful information that might tell them what they had been seeing.

The problem was that none of the teams ever made a sighting. On one or two occasions, the wives said of the men, who had remained at one house or the other, had seen the lights but the men at the bases saw nothing. The plan of calculating the data fell apart.

Then, on August 31, the case took an amazing turn. Carl Hart, Jr., a nineteen year old amateur photographer, managed to take five pictures as the lights flew over his house in the middle of Lubbock. Lying in bed about ten o'clock, he saw the lights flash over. Knowing that they sometimes returned, he prepared for that. When the lights appeared a few minutes later, he was ready, snapping two pictures of them. Not long after that, a third group flew and he managed three additional pictures.

Harris, Lubbock newspaper editor, learned about the pictures when a photographer who worked for him periodically called to tell him that Hart had used his studio to develop the film. Harris, the ever reluctant newsman, suggested that Hart should bring the pictures by the office.

Naturally the newspaper feared a hoax. Harris, and the newspaper's lead photographer, William Hams, talked to Hart on a number of occasions over the next several hours. Harris bluntly asked if the pictures were faked. Hart denied it. When I spoke to Hart about forty years later, I asked him what he had photographed. I didn't want to accuse him of faking the pictures but I wanted to know if he had changed his mind with the passage of years. Hart told me that he still didn't know what he had photographed.

Hams later decided to try to duplicate Hart's pictures. From the roof of the newspaper office, he attempted to photograph, at night, anything that flew over. He thought, that if he could duplicate the pictures, he would be able to figure out what they showed. He waited, but all he saw was a flight of birds that were barely visible in the glow of the sodium vapor lamps on the streets below him. The birds were dimly outlined against the deeper black of the night sky and flew in a ragged V-formation.

He took photographs of the birds, but when he developed the film, the image was so weak that he couldn't make prints. He repeated his experiment on another occasion but was no more successful. From his experience, he was convinced that what Hart photographed couldn't have been birds under any circumstances.

Air Force investigations were conducted throughout the fall of 1951. Investigators were dispatched from Reese Air Force Base on the west side of Lubbock. They spoke to Hart on a number of occasions. They forwarded copies of their reports to both Project Blue Book headquarters and to Air Force Office of Special Investigation headquarters in Washington, D.C. Ed Ruppelt even made a trip to Lubbock to speak to the witnesses including Carl Hart.

During those interviews, Hart was advised of his rights under the Constitution of the United States. The investigators were playing hardball with the teenager. They were trying to pick apart his story to prove that he had somehow faked the pictures. Between November 6 and 9, during still another investigation of the Lubbock Lights, Ruppelt and AFOSI Special Agent Howard N. Bossert again interviewed Hart. In their report, they wrote, "Hart's story could not be 'picked apart' because it was entirely logical. He [Hart] was questioned on why he did certain things and his answers were all logical, concise, and without hesitation."

When I talk to the experts at Texas Tech about the possibility of birds, Loren Smith told me that there are ducks in the Lubbock area that fly in V-formations, but they are reddish-maroon and have no white on them to reflect the lights. Although migratory birds do fly past Lubbock, it is later in the year. What this means is that there are no birds in the area that account for the photographs.

What we must do is separate the Hart photographs from the rest of the Lubbock case. In fact, we must look at all the sightings individually, realizing that a solution to one is not necessarily the solution to another or to all the reports.

First we have the sightings made by the professors. Clearly this was something that was unusual. They were unable to identify the lights. They then, using their scientific training, set about to find out what they had seen. Although their plan was good, the phenomenon did not cooperate with them. There were some facts obtained and these can lead us to some conclusions.

For example, they had originally estimated the objects as being very large and flying at a very high altitude. When they established their base lines, they never saw the objects again. The wives, however, reported the objects overhead. That would seem to indicate they were smaller and much lower than originally thought. In fact, it suggests they were much smaller and much lower. The door is open for birds, though the problem, once again, is the lack of a proper bird in the Lubbock area.

Or is it. Joe Bryant claimed that he saw the lights too, but that one of them, or several of them, swooped out of the sky to fly around his house. At that point he identified them as plover.

From Bryant's claim, the Air Force investigators extrapolated that all the Lubbock sightings could be explained by birds. In one of the reports, the investigators wrote, "It was concluded that birds, with street lights reflecting from them, were the probable cause of these sightings… In all instances the witnesses were located in an area where their eyes were dark-adapted, thus making the objects appear brighter."

The problem is, and one with which the Air Force investigators never dealt was that similar sightings, that is, strings of lights in the night skies, were seen all over west Texas. From as far north as Amarillo to as far south as the Midland-Odessa area, reports of these sorts of sightings were made. Birds and the newly installed sodium-vapor lamps in specific areas of Lubbock do not provide an adequate explanation.

What is relevant here, however, is that Air Force officers made a long, complex investigation of the sightings. Ruppelt flew down from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and officers and investigators were dispatched repeatedly from nearby Reese. They actually spoke to the witnesses in person, searched for evidence, analyzed the photographs and conducted follow-up interviews. Ruppelt made it clear that he believed there to be a plausible, mundane explanation for the sightings, but never officially said what it was. Later, by searching his files, I learned that he thought, personally, the Lubbock Lights were explained by fireflies.

Of course, that explanation didn't explain the photographs. Ruppelt wrote that he never found an explanation for them. "The photos were never proven to be a hoax but neither were they proven to be genuine." According to Ruppelt, "There is no definite answer."

Less than a year later Ruppelt and Project Blue Book would be involved in another series of sightings that had highly credible, multiple witnesses, and provide another type of physical evidence. This one would involve radar and air intercepts and would take place of the nation's capital.

It began late in the evening on July 19 when two radars at the Air Routing and Traffic Control Center (ARTC) picked up eight unidentified targets near Andrews Air Force Base. According to reports made by the controllers, these were not airplanes because they moved too fast. One object, according to the calculations made at the time was tracked at 7,000 miles an hour.

About twenty minutes later, or just after midnight on July 20, the tower radars at Washington's National Airport tracked five objects. What this meant was that three radars at three different locations had solid targets that were not identified as aircraft.

One of the controllers at the ARTC called for a senior controller, Harry C. Barnes who in turn called the National Airport control tower. They had unidentified targets on their scopes, as did the controllers at Andrews Air Force Base. They had already eliminated a mechanical malfunction as the cause, but with the objects on other scopes in other locations, there was no longer any question of their reality. The performance of the blips ruled out airplanes. All the men, including Barnes, were sure they were looking at solid objects based on their years of experience with radar. Weather related phenomena wouldn't produce the same effect on all the radars at the widely scattered locations. In fact, if weather was the explanation, the targets would have varied from scope to scope.

Just after midnight, Airman Second Class (A/2c) Bill Goodman, called the Andrews control tower to tell them he was watching a bright orange light about the size of a softball that was gaining and losing altitude as it zipped through the sky.

During this time, Goodman talked to A/1c William B. Brady, who was in the tower. Goodman told Brady that the object was to the immediate south. Brady saw a ball of orange fire. There were discrepancies between the physical description given by Goodman and Brady, but the problems were relatively small. It can be argued that the discrepancies are the result of the points of view of the two observers.

Joseph DeBoves, who was also on the scene as a civilian control tower operator at Andrews, said that Brady became excited during one of his telephone conversations, yelling, "There one goes." DeBoves believed that Brady was watching nothing more interesting than a meteor.

About two in the morning on July 20, the Radar Officer, Captain Harold C. Way, at Andrews Approach Control, learned that the ARTC had a target east of Andrews. He went outside and saw a strange light which he didn't believe to be a star. Later, however, he went back out, and this time decided that he was looking at a star.

Bolling Air Force Base became involved briefly about the time Way went outside. The tower operator there said that he saw a "roundish" object drifting low in the sky to the southeast of Bolling. There were no radar confirmations of the sighting, and that was the last of the reports from that base.

The ARTC again told the controllers at Andrews that they still had the targets on their scopes. There is conflicting data because some of the reports suggest that the Andrews radar showed nothing, while other reports claim they did. Now DeBoves, and two others in the tower, Monte Banning and John P. Izzo, Jr., swept the sky with binoculars but could see no lights other than the stars.

The sightings lasted through the night, and during that time, the crews of several airliners saw the lights right where the radars showed them to be. Tower operators also saw them, and jet fighters were brought in for attempted intercepts. Associated Press stories written hours after the sightings claimed that no intercepts had been attempted that night but those stories were inaccurate. Documents in the Project Blue Book files, as well as eye witnesses, confirm the attempted intercepts.

Typical of the sightings were those made by Captain Casey Pierman on Capital Airlines flight 807. He was on a flight between Washington and Martinsburg, West Virginia at 1:15 A.M. on July 20, when he, and the rest of the crew saw seven objects flash across the sky. Pierman said, "They were like falling stars without trails."

Capital Airline officials said that National Airport radar picked up the objects and asked Pierman to keep an eye on them. Shortly after takeoff, Pierman radioed that he had the objects in sight. He was flying at 180 to 200 mph, and reported the objects were traveling at tremendous speed. Official Air Force records confirm this.

Another Capital Airlines pilot, Captain Howard Dermott, on Capital Flight 610, reported a single light followed him from Herndon, Virginia, to within four miles of National Airport. Both the ARTC and the National Tower confirmed that an unidentified target followed the aircraft to within four miles of landing. At about the same time, an Air Force radar at Andrews AFB was tracking eight additional unknown objects as they flew over the Washington area.

One of the most persuasive sightings came early in the morning when one of the ARTC controllers called the Andrews Air Force Base control tower to tell them that there was a target south of the tower, over the Andrews Radio range station. The tower operators looked to the south where a "huge fiery-orange sphere" was hovering. This again was later explained by the Air Force as a star.

Just before daylight, about four in the morning, after repeated requests from the ARTC, an F-94 interceptor arrived on the scene, but it was too little too late. All the targets were gone. Although the flight crew made a short search of the local area, they found nothing unusual and returned to their base quickly.

During that night, apparently the three radar facilities only once reported a target that was seen by all three facilities. There were, however, a number of times when the ARTC radar and the Washington National tower radars had simultaneous contacts. It also seems that the radars were displaying the same targets that were seen by the crews of the Capital Airlines flights. What it boils down to is that multiple radars and multiple eyewitnesses were showing and seeing objects in the sky over Washington.

Air Force intelligence, including ATIC and the officers assigned to the Project Blue Book, had no idea that these sightings had taken place. They learned of the Saturday night — Sunday morning UFO show when the information was published in several newspapers on Monday. Ruppelt, on business in Washington and unaware of the sightings, reported "I got off an airliner from Dayton and I bought a newspaper in the lobby of Washington National Airport Terminal Building. I called Major Dewey Fournet, but all he knew was what he read in the papers."

Ruppelt wanted to stay in Washington to investigate the case but the bureaucracy got in the way. Ruppelt's orders didn't allow for an overnight stay. He tried to get them amended, but failed. He was warned that if he remained in Washington, even if on official business, he would be considered as absent without leave. Ruppelt had no choice but to return to Ohio without talking to anyone about the sightings.

A week later, almost to the minute, with the same crew on duty, the UFOs returned. About 10:30 P.M. the same radar operators who had been on duty the week before again spotted several slow moving targets. This time the controllers carefully marked each of the unidentifieds. When they were all marked, they called the Andrews AFB radar facility. The unidentified targets were on their scope too.

An hour later, with targets being tracked continually, the controllers called for interceptors. Al Chop, the Pentagon spokesman for the UFO project, told me, that he was in communication with the main basement command post at the Pentagon. He requested that interceptors be sent. As a civilian, he could only make the request and then wait for the flag officer (general or admiral) in command at the Pentagon to make the official decision.

As happened the week before, there was a delay, but by midnight, two F-94s were on station over Washington. At that point, the reporters who had assembled to observe the situation were asked, by Chop, to leave the radar room at National Airport because classified radio and intercept procedures would be in operation.

Although that fact was well reported, Ruppelt in his book, wrote, "I knew this was absurd because any radio ham worth his salt could build equipment and listen in on any intercept. The real reason for the press dismissal, I learned, was that not a few people in the radar room were positive that this night would be the big night in UFO history — the night when a pilot would close in on and get a good look at a UFO — and they didn't want the press to be in on it."

Major Dewey Fournet, the Pentagon liaison between the UFO project in Dayton and the intelligence community in Washington was at National Airport. Also there were Al Chop, a public information officer and Naval Lieutenant Holcomb, an electronics specialist assigned to the Air Force Directorate of Intelligence.

With those men watching, as well as the controllers at various facilities using various radars, the F-94s arrived. And the UFOs vanished from the scopes immediately. The jets were vectored to the last known position of the UFOs, but even though visibility was unrestricted in the area, the pilots could see nothing. The fighters made a systematic search of the area, but since they could find nothing, they returned to their base.

Chop told me, "The minute the first two interceptors appeared on our scope all our unknowns disappeared. It was like they just wiped them all off. All our other flights, all the known flights were still on the scope… We watched these two planes leave. When they were out of our range, immediately we got our UFOs back."

Later, Air Force officers would learn that as the fighters appeared over Washington, people in the area of Langley Air Force Base, Virginia spotted weird lights in the sky. An F-94, in the area on a routine mission was diverted to search for the light. The pilot saw it and turned toward it, but it disappeared "like somebody turning off a light bulb."

The pilot continued the intercept and did get a radar lock on the now unlighted and unseen target. That was broken by the object as it sped away. The fighter continued the pursuit, obtaining two more radar locks on the object, but each time the locks were broken.

The scene then shifted back to Washington National. Again the Air Defense Command was alerted and again fighters were sent. This time the pilots were able to see the objects, vectored toward them by the air traffic controllers. But the fighters couldn't close on the lights. The pilots saw no external details, other than lights where the radar suggested that something should be seen.

After several minutes of failure to close on a target, one of them was spotted lopping along. A fighter piloted by Lieutenant William Patterson turned, kicked in the afterburner and tried to catch the object. It disappeared before Patterson could see much of anything.

Interviewed the next day, Patterson said, "I tried to make contact with the bogies below one thousand feet, but they [the controllers] vectored us around. I saw several bright lights. I was at my maximum speed, but even then I had no closing speed. I ceased chasing them because I saw no chance of overtaking them. I was vectored into new objects. Later I chased a single bright light which I estimated about ten miles away. I lost visual contact with it…"

Al Chop remembered this intercept, as did Dewey Fournet. Chop said, "The flight controllers had directed him to them [the unknowns]. We had a little cluster of them. Five or six of them and he suddenly reports that he sees some lights… He said they are very brilliant blue-white lights. He was going try to close in to get a better look… he flew into the area where they were clustered and he reported they were all around him."

Chop said that he, along with the others in the radar room, watched the intercept on the radar scope. What the pilot was telling them, they could see on the radar.

Patterson had to break off the intercept, though there were still lights in the sky and objects on the scope. According to Chop, the pilot radioed that he was running low on fuel. He turned so that he could head back to his base.

Chop said that the last of the objects disappeared from the scope about the time the sun came up. Ruppelt later quizzed Fournet about the activities that night. According to Ruppelt, Fournet and Holcomb, the radar expert, were convinced the targets were solid, metallic objects. Fournet told Ruppelt that there were weather related targets on the scopes, but the controllers were ignoring them. Everyone was convinced that the targets were real.

At 4:00 P.M., in Washington D.C., Major General John A. Samford, Chief of Air Intelligence, held a press conference. Of that press conference, Ruppelt wrote, "General Samford made an honest attempt to straighten out the Washington National Sightings, but the cards were stacked against him. He had to hedge on many answers to questions from the press because he didn't know the answers. This hedging gave the impression that he was trying to cover up something more than just the fact his people fouled up in not fully investigating the sightings. Then he brought in Captain Roy James from ATIC to handle all the queries about radar. James didn't do any better because he'd just arrived in Washington that morning and didn't know very much more about the sightings than he'd read in the papers. Major Dewey Fournet and Lieutenant Holcomb, who had been at the airport during the sightings, were extremely conspicuous by their absence… " As was the Pentagon spokesman on UFOs, Al Chop.

From that point, it seems that there was an explanation for the Washington National sightings. Samford, during the conference, backed up by the radar expert, James, suggested that there was a temperature inversion over Washington. That became the explanation for the radar sightings but the truth is that there is no explanation. The temperature inversion simply doesn't work, especially when it is remembered that there were both radar and visual observations. But the Air Force officers were happy. The news media had an answer and the sightings could be ignored. Ironically, the sightings were carried as unidentified in the Project Blue Book files.

Ten years later, long after Ed Ruppelt had left Blue Book and the Air Force, there was another series of sightings, this time in the desert southwest. The object interacted with the environment, it was seen on radar, and fighters from two separate Air Force bases were scrambled to intercept. Project Blue Book officers would explain the sightings but as happened so often in the past, that explanation is inadequate.

According to the Project Blue Book record cards, on April 18, 1962, an object came in over "Cuba and apparently landed in rough terrain West of Eureka, Utah. Bright enough to trip photo electric cell which controlled city street lights." Air Force investigators believed that the case was explained by a meteor.

Just sixteen minutes later there was another major sighting over Las Vegas, Nevada. According to the Project Blue Book record card, it was a "Radar sighting. Blip. Speed of object varied. Initial observation at 060 no elevation. Disappearance at 105 degrees at 10,000' altitude. Heading tentatively NE, however disappeared instantly to S. Observed by search and height radars. No visual."

The Air Force investigator noted on the record card, "There is insufficient data in the report to form a valid conclusion. Speed, changes in course, and altitude not included. Appearance on both search and height finder confirms that some object was there. Track characteristic indicate a possible balloon of the source."

But the problem with that is the Las Vegas Sun. The banner headline claimed, "Brilliant Red Explosion Flares in Las Vegas Sky. The article told of "a flaming sword" that started a ground search for a weird unidentified flying object, that, according to the newspaper, "Air Force spokesman said that radar tracked the object to the Mesquite [Nevada] area… Spokesman for the 28th Air Division in Reno said the power at Eureka [Utah] 40 miles west of Provo was knocked out from the impact and word of the strange landing was held up until power was restored."

Deputy Walter Butt, of the Clark County Nevada (Las Vegas) Sheriff's Department led a search and rescue unit into the Spring Mountain area to look for wreckage. When I spoke to him in November 1988, he told me that they searched through the night using jeeps and when the sun came up, they continued using aircraft. They didn't find anything of importance. When no one reported a missing aircraft, they called off the search.

During my investigation of the case, I spoke to a number of people in the Eureka area. It is true that the city street lights went out, and one or two parroted the Air Force explanation of photoelectric cells reacting to an extremely bright meteor. But such an explanation does not explain localized failures of lights nor does it explain car engines that stalled.

Among the first to sight the object was Sheriff Raymond Jackson of Nephi, Utah, not that far from Eureka. According to him, he was on Main Street and "heard kind of a roar." He glanced up and saw a yellow-white flame going west, heard a series of loud booms, and the lights in Nephi went out. Jackson noted specifically that it was the lights in the doctor's office, but said, "All the lights went out temporarily.

From Nephi, the object traveled to the northwest, toward Eureka which is about thirty miles away. It flew over Bob Robinson and Floyd Evans. Robinson told me he was traveling south of Eureka when they stopped for a moment and both men climbed out of the truck. Robinson saw the light in the southwest and pointed it out. Evans thought it was a jet aircraft.

The object, according to Robinson, approached them rapidly and passed directly overhead. Robinson said that he thought it was no higher than five hundred feet. It was a flaming object and he thought he could see a series of square windows on the craft, almost hidden in the glow of it.

Robinson said that both men were frightened by the experience. They dived under the truck for protection. The engine of the truck began to sputter and run roughly as the object approached. The headlights dimmed, but didn't fade completely. When the object disappeared in the west, the lights brightened and the engine smoothed out, running normally.

What was interesting here was that we had two reports that seemed to be linked but which the Air Force investigators had separated. Yet the newspaper article put them back together. If that was true, then something very interested happened.

The Air Force report on the Eureka end of the case, dated April 19, provided some interesting information. There was a lengthy report from Captain Herman Gordon Shields, who was interrogated at Hill Air Force Base by Douglas M. Crouch, the Chief of the Criminal Investigations Section. Shields said that he had seen something from the cockpit of the aircraft he was piloting. It was an intense illumination from above. He thought it was another aircraft, and looked in its direction. He saw a long object that he said was shaped like a cigarette. "The fore part, or lower part of the object was very bright, intense white such as a magnesium flare. The second half, the aft section, was a clearly distinguishable yellowish color."

Others in the area reported to the Air Force that they had seen something strange. A man in Silver City, Utah saw a glowing ball of light about the size of a soccer ball.

Sometime after the sighting, the Air Force dispatched Lieutenant Colonel Robert Friend, then the chief of Project Blue Book and Dr. J. Allen Hynek to the scene. They spent a day in Utah, searched for the meteor and found nothing. They offered a reward for it but had no takers.

There were also reports in the files that suggested that jet fighters had been scrambled from two locations. Planes were sent up from both Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, and Luke Air Force Base near Phoenix. The fighters didn't catch the object.

On September 21, 1962, Major C.R. Hart, of the Air Force Office of Public Information, wrote to an unidentified New York resident, "The official records of the Air Force list the 18 April 1962 Nevada sighting to which you refer as 'unidentified, insufficient data.'… The phenomena was not intercepted or fired upon."

We could read that letter and decide that it was strictly true. It could be that the Air Force spokesman was suggesting that the jet fighters scrambled had not been able to find the object, though they searched for it. Therefore the object was not intercepted, though the attempt was made. However, no matter how you slice it, the letter is misleading.

So, what do we have here. We have an object that was seen crossing the United States. We have a report of a craft heading toward the west as it passed over Utah, but one that, when spotted in Reno was going to toward the southeast. We have a craft that was tracked on radar and which disappeared from the scope in a flash. And, we have dozens of reports from witnesses who saw the object in Utah and Nevada, including those who talked about a "flaming sword."

If we link those two cases, and there is no reason not to link them, then we have a UFO report that is inexplicable. A meteor does not swoop close to the ground to turn out lights and stall truck engines. A meteor does not make a long looping turn. And a meteor is not visible on radar. The ionized trail it leaves might be, the meteor itself is not.

If, on the other hand, we separate the cases by suggesting events on two separate days as the Air Force did, we have two cases that are easy to explain. The master index for Project Blue Book lists the Nellis Air Force Base end of the case on April 18 and the Eureka, Utah end as April 19. If that is true, then the cases are explainable as separate events.

However, what the Air Force investigators did was list one by the local time, which is early evening on April 18, and the other by Greenwich Mean Time, which is early morning on April 19. By converting the Greenwich Time back to local time, and compensating for the fact that Utah is in the Mountain Time Zone and Nevada in the Pacific, we learn that the sightings took place within sixteen minutes of one another. These weren't two events on two days, but a single event on one day.

What has the examination of these cases taught us about the Air Force investigation of UFOs? When the Lubbock Lights case began in August 1951, at the time the UFO project was being reorganized, a real effort was made to learn what was going on. Repeated investigations and extensive interviews were carried out. Ruppelt himself made his way to Lubbock to talk to the principals in the case. He made the effort to learn what was going on and gathered data from different experts in his attempts to find the truth.

The photographs, which provided a form of physical evidence, were carefully analyzed. The validity of the photographs rested on the shoulders of a nineteen-year-old photographer. To be fair, it must be pointed out that the vast majority of teenage males who have submitted UFO pictures to the Air Force or the media have faked them. In this case, however, there is absolutely no evidence that a hoax was involved. Even more than forty years after the event, Carl Hart, Jr. maintained he doesn't know what he photographed.

In the end, however, Air Force investigators accepted the explanation as birds. While it is clear that Joe Bryant's sighting is explainable as birds, there is no reason to extrapolate from it. There is no evidence that what the college professors saw were birds. And certainly the photographs don't show birds. In other words, the Air Force investigators were able to label the case but were not able to solve it. A more honest answer is that the Lubbock Lights are unidentified.

During the Washington Nationals, there were highly trained professionals making the sightings. The men were trained in the use of radar, knew what weather related propagation looked liked, and believed they were seeing something real. When airline pilots were called and asked to spot the objects, they saw lights where the radar said they should be.

More importantly, when jet interceptors arrived on the scene, the UFOs seemed to react to them, something that weather related phenomena would not do. In one case, as the jets arrived, all the UFOs disappeared. When the jets departed the area, the UFOs returned. That suggests something other than weather.

On the second night the Pentagon liaison officer for Project Blue Book, Dewey Fournet was present. Al Chop, the Pentagon spokesman for Project Blue Book, was present. Both saw the blips on the radar screens. Both watched the attempted intercepts. Both knew that what was happening had nothing to do with weather or temperature inversions.

Yet forty-eight hours later, as General Samford briefed reporters, neither man was at the press conference. Instead Samford relied on an Air Force captain, an expert on radar, who had not been on the scene during the sightings. His explanations sounded good, he was an expert, but he had not been there during the sightings so he didn't know.

It is Ed Ruppelt's discussion of the case that provides us with the best clues. Ruppelt candidly wrote that some of the Air Force personnel, both officers and enlisted men, were pressured to alter their testimonies. What had been seemingly inexplicable sightings of objects in the sky, became nothing more than stars. This implies that even in the summer of 1952, as some officers tried to conduct real investigations, others were attempting to suppress the data. There would be no other reason to pressure witnesses to change their stories.

By 1962, when the Las Vegas UFO explosion took place, all attempts at independent and objective investigation ceased. We've seen in other cases how the Air Force investigators split sightings into many components and then dealt with them individually. This is an old military tactic. Split the enemy forces and then attack them in detail. It means that it is easier to defeat a company than it is a regiment. If you can take on the regiment a company at a time, you can defeat it a company at a time.

If we can split the UFO sightings into their components, we can explain each of the components. The explanation of meteor is ridiculous when the whole of the Eureka-Las Vegas case is examined. However, a meteor can explain the Eureka end of it if there is no linkage to the Las Vegas sighting. A meteor becomes a plausible explanation.

And the Las Vegas end is "explained" as insufficient data. Just what does that mean? Well, it means they found no explanation for it, but they were able to label it. And, what additional information did they need? They had a time, a date, a location, and very precise information about the directions and altitudes. They even had a number of eyewitnesses had anyone at Project Blue Book or Nellis Air Force Base bothered to read the newspaper. Of course, had they done that, they would have had additional and unanswerable questions with which to deal.

These three cases all have a single common denominator and that is the attempt to find an explanation, any explanation. Each was labeled with an explanation that doesn't stand up to any sort of objective scrutiny. The holes for the explanations are many. But it does reveal the nature of the investigation, even when there were attempts to objectively investigate. It demonstrates that the real motivation wasn't to find the truth but the label the cases. How else to explain what happened in these instances? How else to explain solutions that make no sense when the evidence, available to the investigators is examined?

Yes, I spoke to people thirty and forty years after the fact. Yes, in that time memories can change and confabulation is a real consideration. But I also had access to the files prepared when the events were fresh in the minds of the witnesses, and I could see if confabulation had taken place. I could see if stories had changed, been altered over time or had been embellished.

And events, especially frightening events, stand out in the mind. Bob Robinson talking of the craft flashing overhead is interesting, but the sputtering of the truck engine and the dimming of the lights is even more so. Raymond Jackson's comments about the lights in the doctor's office are interesting as well. Both suggest that the UFO was interacting with the environment under it and photoelectric cells on street lights had nothing to do with it.

These cases are illustrative. They show us what was going on at the official UFO project. They show us that objective investigation did not take place. They show us that there was a scramble for answers regardless of the facts in the case. And they show us that the high-ranking Air Force officers were not above applying pressure to people so that a solution would seem to be more likely.

There is one other thing that we can see here. As I conducted my investigations, sometimes as much as forty years after the sightings, I was able to find additional witnesses. I was able to interview men and women who had made sighting reports and to find additional witnesses. Even in the limited time that I had, on the limited budget I had, I could talk to many different people about the case. The question that springs to mind is why couldn't the Air Force investigators do that? They had access to the same information resources that I did. They could have used the telephone the way I did. And, in many cases they were on the scene with days or weeks of the sightings, yet failed to find what I did. Doesn't that really speak volumes about the way the investigation was conducted? Doesn't that suggest that truth was not the motivation? Doesn't that suggest, just as we have all along, that Air Force and official investigators were doing something other than searching for the truth?