c. Radar "ghosts" at Salina, Kansas, September 10, 1956. ([CHAP. VIII])
Only a Balloon?
A review of the evidence, made by the authors during the preparation of this book, emphasized some puzzling inconsistencies. Lieutenant Gorman had had the UFO in view for about twenty-seven minutes. During the first five or ten minutes it had traveled horizontally at low altitude in a fairly steady course. Then it had suddenly changed tactics, had climbed to high altitude, turned, darted in and out, and performed both evasive and aggressive actions. The three witnesses on the ground, however, did not see the UFO perform any of these combat maneuvers. It had been traveling steadily north and northwest and had disappeared from view ten or fifteen minutes before the aerial dogfight ended.
These differences strongly suggested that two unknowns were involved in the sighting. According to this theory, the light seen by the ground observers was the weather balloon; the light first seen over the airfield by Gorman was also the weather balloon. His adversary during the major part of the dogfight was a second unknown, not a physical object but some kind of optical phenomenon, very probably a mirage of the planet Jupiter. The reconstruction based on this theory would account for all the puzzling aspects of the case.
As first described by Lieutenant Gorman and by the three witnesses on the ground, the light was small, bright, and clear; no structure was visible; it made no noise and left no trail or exhaust. It was south of the control tower, was traveling horizontally west and northwest, seemingly at high speed, on a straight course, at low altitude. On these points all the witnesses agreed.
They did not agree in their estimates of its actual distance and height—a fact that is not surprising when we consider the circumstances. The night was clear and cloudless. It was also dark. The sun had set more than two hours earlier and there was no moonlight (new moon on October 2). On a dark night, the height and distance (and hence the speed) of a moving light of unknown size are notoriously difficult to estimate. According to Lieutenant Gorman, the light when he first saw it was about 1000 feet above the ground and 1000 yards—a little more than ½ mile—from his plane. The three men on the ground saw the UFO, for a few seconds, at different times during a period of less than ten minutes. Like Gorman, they were experienced airmen but they differed from him and from each other in their estimates. According to the assistant traffic controller, the altitude and distance from the control tower were 2000–2500 feet and 1–2 miles. According to the traffic controller, they were 4000–5000 feet and ½ mile; according to the Cub’s pilot, they were 5000–6000 feet and 1 mile.
In spite of the discrepancies, these estimates are in general agreement and, together with the details of the UFOs appearance, are consistent with the description of the weather balloon that had been released at 8:50, about ten or fifteen minutes before the UFO was sighted from the ground. The balloon carried a small white light, moved west and then northwest, was at low altitude and slowly climbing, and would soon have disappeared from the view of ground observers.
The object that Lieutenant Gorman first saw and pursued was also the balloon, climbing and turning. As it bobbed and swayed in the air currents it would have seemed to blink off and on, just as he reported. Underestimating its height and distance and overestimating its velocity as did the pilot in the Cuban dogfight ([p. 42]), he tried to follow its apparent climbing turn and, as he stated, blacked out briefly because of his excessive speed. During this interval, short as it may have been, he of course lost track of the object. Shortly afterward, when the UFO passed over his canopy and he dived, he again lost sight of the object.
When he resumed the chase he supposed that he had located the same object he had been following earlier—but the evidence suggests that he had picked up a different target. The unknown was going much faster than before, was at a much higher altitude, and shone with a steady brilliance instead of blinking off and on. In such a tense situation he could understandably have mistaken one strange light for another. Pursuing an apparently hostile unknown, less than a year after the still mysterious death of Mantell in a similar encounter, he might justifiably have been frightened.
The most probable source of the second light is the planet Jupiter. The sun had set at 6:24 P.M. Following some three hours behind the sun, the planet had a magnitude of -1.7 and was thus brighter than Sirius, the brightest star. Shortly after 9:10 when the UFO began its violent maneuvers (the exact time is not known), Jupiter was very low in the southwest sky, between two and three degrees above the horizon, at a bearing of about 231 degrees. The UFO was also attacking from the southwest, as is shown by Gorman’s tactics: in trying to cut it off in circles to the left, he gradually moved to the southeast.