Lieutenant Gorman, meanwhile, had begun a weird “dogfight.” The UFO seemed to be at an altitude of about 1000 feet, was traveling about 250 miles an hour, and was blinking off and on. As he approached, the light banked to the left. Gorman dived after it but could not catch up. The light then began to climb in a rapid turn. Attempting to turn with it, Gorman blacked out temporarily from the excessive speed.
Continuing the chase, this time at 5000 to 7000 feet Gorman noticed that the light was now traveling fast, apparently faster than the F-51 could go, so he began trying to cut it off in turns with his fighter at full power. As the object circled to the left, Gorman cut back to the right for a head-on pass. When collision seemed inevitable he dived and the light seemed to pass over his canopy at a distance of about 500 feet. According to the description he later gave the Air Force, the unknown at this closest approach seemed to be a round white light, somewhat flattened, from six to eight inches in diameter—about a quarter the apparent size of the full moon. Gorman then made a climbing turn. When he could see the light again it suddenly reversed direction and headed straight for the plane, attempting to ram. It was no longer blinking off and on but was a steady white. Just before collision it pulled up and Gorman, too, pulled up. The light went straight up, with Gorman following until, at 14,000 feet, his plane went into a power stall while the object circled some 2000 feet above him. As he resumed the battle, the light seemed to retreat, then attack. Gorman dodged and circled to the left to get in position for another intercept. Finally, when these maneuvers had taken him some twenty-five miles southeast of Fargo, he was at 14,000 feet with the object below him at 11,000 feet. He dived after it. The UFO turned and started a head-on pass, then broke it off, climbed straight up, and disappeared. The time was 9:27. Gorman returned to the Fargo airport and landed, convinced that some intelligence had been controlling the actions of the unknown[[IV-1]].
With the memory of the Mantell tragedy ([p. 33]) and the Chiles-Whitted sighting (see [Chapter V], [p. 109]) still fresh in mind, officials from ATIC arrived at Fargo in less than twenty-four hours to investigate this new incident [[IV-2], p. 63 ff.]. They carefully questioned Lieutenant Gorman and the three other witnesses, but could find no obvious explanation. No other aircraft had been in the neighborhood at the time of the sighting. The weather had been clear, visibility unlimited, with some auroral activity in the northeast. When tested with a control group of five other F-51s that had flown during the same period, Gorman’s plane showed no more radioactivity than did the control group—the slightly higher amount shown by all planes after flight. Gorman’s report was confusing, in parts, and reconstructing the exact sequence of maneuvers by UFO and plane proved impossible. There were almost as many theories offered in explanation as there were investigators, but eventually a reasonable solution did appear.
A lighted weather balloon had been released from the weather station at Fargo at 8:50, ten minutes before Lieutenant Gorman’s first call. As observed from the station, the balloon had traveled west and then northwest. At 9:00 it would have been near the airport about where the unknown light was first reported. A balloon could well have accounted for the events described in the first phases of the incident, but less well for those in the last. Officially, however, the cause was listed as a lighted weather balloon[[IV-2], p. 67]—an answer that was not entirely satisfactory.
PLATE I
a. "Grindstone" clouds over Mount Rainier. ([CHAP. II])
PLATE I
b. A "stack of plates" near the Maritime Alps northeast of Marseilles. ([CHAP. II])