4. Other factors, (a) Between midnight and 4 A.M. a Coast Guard cutter equipped with an eight-inch spotlight had been plying back and forth on Lake Erie, searching for an overdue cabin cruiser. At about 3 A.M. the cutter had been headed east toward Lorain, reaching there at 3:15, had then continued east beyond Sheffield to Avon, before turning back to the Lorain lifeboat station and berthing at 4 A.M. (b) At 2:52 A.M. a train had left the Lorain railroad station, roughly three miles from the Fitzgerald house. Eight minutes later it would have been passing south of the house at a distance of about 100 yards. The engine was using a rotating headlight.
From these facts it was possible to reconstruct the probable sequence of events that produced the UFO: In the hour or so before the sighting, the witness had been sitting up alone watching the late movie on TV. The film that night was a horror movie, Dracula’s Daughter. About 3 A.M., soon after the witness had gone to bed, the Coast Guard cutter on Lake Erie was traveling east toward Lorain, was very near the harbor and was flashing its spotlight toward shore. The light had briefly illuminated the two bedrooms of the Fitzgerald house and had roused Mrs. Fitzgerald. At that distance, between three and four miles, the beam would have spread and would have been dispersed still more by the drops of rain falling. By the time Mrs. Fitzgerald reached the window and pulled back the curtains, the searchlight was gone. At the same time, however, the train that left Lorain at 2:52 was passing south of the house, using its rotating headlight and producing a roaring noise made more piercing by the moist atmosphere. Looking through the wet glass of the window, the witness saw the beam of the train’s headlight moving through the haze in the yard. Smoke from the nearby foundry was also being blown into the yard. Illuminated by the circular beam of light, the smoke seemed to be a glowing, solid object that moved back and forth and emitted clouds of gray-pink smoke.
In summary, the Air Force concluded that Mrs. Fitzgerald’s UFO was an illusion produced by a combination of factors: an excited frame of mind induced by Dracula’s Daughter, the spotlight on the Coast Guard cutter, the rotating headlight of the train and the noise of its engine, drifting smoke from the foundry, and the haze of the drizzly night.
This conclusion provoked an explosion from the witness, who wrote her congressman suggesting mental incompetence on the part of the Air Force official who analyzed the case.
“The Fitzgerald Report”
The UFO Research Committee compiled and on December 1, 1958, published a thirteen-page pamphlet (later reissued in amplified form and copyrighted) entitled: “The Fitzgerald Report, A Complete and Detailed Account of the Sighting of an Unidentified Flying Object, Sheffield Lake, Ohio, September 21, 1958.” This document charged “duplicity” in the Air Force treatment of UFO reports in general, and asserted that the Fitzgerald investigation in particular had been “criminally mishandled” and was a “disgrace to the U. S. Air Force and an insult to the American public....” It further suggested that Sergeants A and B be “disciplined” because their investigation was not adequate or thorough, and that they had had “little or no intention of making an honest investigation of this sighting.”
Copies of the pamphlet were mailed to eminent scientists throughout the country, members of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate, officers in the Air Force, the Secretary of the Air Force, and the Secretary of Defense. The publication of such charges against an ordinary private citizen might easily have caused a suit for libel. The Air Force investigators, whatever their private reactions may have been, had no such recourse; their accusers could act with fair assurance of immunity from legal action.
The document made a number of specific accusations. Because of the wide publicity given this attack, we shall discuss each point fully. Our comments, appended in brackets, are based on official records of the Air Force, the New York Central Railway, the United States Weather Bureau, and the United States Coast Guard. Most of these facts were available to the Akron Committee itself.
Charge 1. Because of the position of the Fitzgerald house, the headlight of the train could not have shone into the bedroom windows. [Correct. But the point is irrelevant. The Air Force did not suggest that the train’s light shone into the window. The light could have shone into the yard, however, and would have been visible to a witness looking out of the window. The brilliant light that flashed in the window and roused the witness did not come from the train but from the spotlight of the Coast Guard cutter.]
Charge 2. Events taking place on the lake could not have had any relation to the sighting because the shore was 3000 feet away and, because of intervening houses and trees, a witness in the Fitzgerald house could not see the lake. [Incorrect conclusion from the facts. The beam of a spotlight on a boat moving one or two miles offshore (as was the Coast Guard cutter at about 3 A.M.) could have been seen from the house. The beam of such a light can be visible for great distances. Reflected from the clouds and spread by the drops of moisture in the air, it could easily have flashed into the window with great brilliance.]