“It was like two round mirrors whirling around the sky,” one of the men was later quoted as saying. “They couldn’t have been any ordinary planes; not round like that. And they were going too fast.”
During this part of my trip, I also was told that one saucer had fallen into a mountain lake. This came to me secondhand. The lone witness was said to have rushed over to his car to get his camera as the disk approached. When it plunged toward the lake, he was so startled that he failed to snap the picture until the moment it struck. This story sounded so flimsy that I didn’t bother to list it.
Months later, a Washington newsman confirmed at least part of the lake story. When he first related it, I thought he had fallen for a gag.
“I heard that yarn,” I said. “Don’t tell me you believe it?”
“I come from Idaho,” he told me. “And I happen to know the fellow who took the picture. Maybe it wasn’t a disk, but something fell into that lake.”
“Did you see the picture?”
“Yes, at the Pentagon.” At my surprised look, he added, “That was long before they clamped down. I was talking to an Air Force officer about this lake thing, and he showed me the picture.”
“What did it look like?”
“You couldn’t tell much about it-just a big splash and a blur where something went under. Maybe a magnifying glass would bring it out, but I didn’t get a chance to try it.”
It was early in 1950 when he told me this. I asked at the Pentagon if this picture was in the Wright Field files, and if so whether I could see it. My inquiries drew blank looks. No one remembered such a photograph. And even if it were in the Project “Saucer” files, I couldn’t see it.