Two days later, without waiting for a reply from Washington, Mrs. Lorenzen through the newspaper amplified her challenge. If the Air Force wanted to examine the mysterious fragments, she said, they would first have to agree to certain conditions[[XI-22]]:
“(1) APRO officers, together with duly appointed Air Force liaison personnel, would establish a board of experts representing both military and civilian UFO researchers.
“(2) This board of experts would decide what meaningful tests need to be performed on the material in question.
“(3) The board then would select a qualified testing agency to perform these tests under its cognizance.”
In all its history, the United States Air Force can surely have received no more extraordinary proposition. Whatever he may have felt, Colonel Tacker merely suggested that Mrs. Lorenzen could submit the material to ATIC for analysis.
The fragments were never forwarded to the Air Force.
Eventually APRO published some information about the “disaster.” Early in September 1957 a group of fishermen on a beach near Ubataba, Brazil, had supposedly sighted a disk-shaped object flashing down toward the sea. The UFO had suddenly veered upward and exploded, showering down fragments and sparks like fireworks. Several pieces had been obtained by a Brazilian representative of APRO, who submitted them to a chemist for complete tests including spectrographic and X-ray diffraction analyses.
The analyses have apparently never been published. Although they evidently showed the presence of at least three elements common on earth—magnesium, hydrogen, and oxygen—APRO somehow deduced that the fragments in their original state had consisted of pure magnesium and that the hydroxide must have formed when they came in contact with the water. The final conclusion stated that the object consisted, at least in part, of 100% magnesium. Similarly, perhaps, a cook might assert that since chocolate fudge consists, at least in part, of 100 per cent sucrose, fudge must originally have been composed entirely of pure sugar, except for a little chocolate and milk it picked up in passing through the kitchen.
From the few facts available a positive identification of the fragments is impossible. The description of the object seen by the fishermen fits that of a meteor that broke into pieces near the end of its flight. In the photographs the fragments look like ordinary meteorites, which often contain a fair amount of magnesium (see [Chapter V]). There is no evidence to suggest that the fishermen’s “wrecked spaceship” was anything but an exploding meteor.
In the last fifteen years the Air Force has patiently analyzed dozens of odd substances ranging from angel hair to pancakes. The statement made in 1960 by General Thomas D. White, Chief of Staff, United States Air Force, still holds true: