What was it?
With only these facts to build on, an investigator might interpret the sightings according to his own prejudices: an invasion fleet from another planet making a reconnaissance in force, the mother ships discharging the smaller craft at intervals; a mass hallucination; a peculiar meteoric display.
Without knowledge of one essential fact, some hundreds of landsmen and seamen in the United States, the Caribbean islands, and the British West Indies might now feel firmly convinced that they had witnessed a genuine “Unknown.” The date was April 14, 1958. The privileged observers had witnessed the death of Sputnik II, the Russian satellite launched on November 3, 1957[[V-24]].
The UFO reports inspired by this event presented no problem to the Air Force. All information on the re-entry of artificial satellites is immediately accessible to ATIC. Whenever a reported UFO shows any possible resemblance to a falling satellite, Air Force investigators check at once with Spacetrack. Astronomers who had been tracking this satellite as it circled the earth had predicted more than a month in advance that it would spiral toward the earth and fall sometime between April 12 and April 15. A few days before the actual event they had refined their estimate and predicted the time of the fall within a few hours.
[[V-1]] Meteoritics, Vol. II, 1954.
[[V-2]] Keyhoe, D. E. The Flying Saucer Conspiracy. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1955.
[[V-3]] Biot, J. B. “Account of a Fire-ball which Fell in the Neighborhood of Laigle.” Philosophical Magazine, Vol. XVI (1803), pp. 224–28.
[[V-4]] Whipple, F.L., and Hawkins, G. S. “Meteors,” Handbuch der Physik, Vol. LII (1959), pp. 519–64.
[[V-5]] Nininger, H. H. Out of the Sky. University of Denver Press, 1952; New York: Dover Publications, 1959.
[[V-6]] Menzel, D. H. Personal files.