In spite of the overwhelming evidence that the original objects had been birds, probably plover, reflecting the city’s lights, Captain Ruppelt chose to regard them as mysterious and listed the professors’ sighting as an Unknown. Several years later he wrote that a natural explanation did exist but, for some reason, he had promised not to divulge it[[VI-7], p. 150]. Still later, he asserted without amplification that the lights had been night-flying moths reflecting the bluish green of mercury-vapor street lights[[VI-10], p. 276]—a surprising anticlimax, in view of his earlier secrecy. In a reanalysis of the facts made in 1959, Major (now Lieutenant Colonel) R. J. Friend of ATIC and Dr. J. Allen Hynek, science consultant, determined beyond doubt that the objects had been plover.
The Lubbock Pictures
The problem of the photographs remained. In Dayton, Air Force experts studied the four available negatives.
The photographer had used a Kodak 35-mm. camera, lens at 3.5, Plus-X film, and an exposure time of 1/10 second. The negatives were badly scratched and dirty from much handling. According to the photographer’s story, each flight of unknowns had moved from horizon to horizon in four to five seconds and had passed directly overhead; he had “panned” his camera with the movement of the objects and had managed to snap two pictures during one flight and three during the next.
Analysis yielded no suggestion that the negatives had been tampered with but they offered no clue to the background, identity, height, distance, or speed of the things shown. The images themselves, however, aroused some doubts. Each frame showed twenty bright spots against a uniform dark background. No trace of stars or starlight could be found, although the sky that night had been clear and cloudless. The spots showed evidence of slight motion during the exposure but the amount of blurring was amazingly slight, considering the speed with which the photographer claimed to have moved his Kodak. Professional cameramen tried repeatedly to duplicate the performance, but failed. The most successful try produced only two pictures, badly blurred, in four seconds.
The most crucial discrepancy between negatives and story, however, was revealed by the pattern of the spots, which formed a flat V. The orientation of the V was the same on all the negatives. If the formation had actually passed directly overhead and the photographer had panned with it, as he claimed, then he must have taken all his pictures either as the lights approached him or as they receded. If he had taken two successive pictures, one as the formation approached and the next as it receded, the V would have reversed position in the second picture—V would have changed to ∧—unless he had managed to stand on his head while taking the second picture. And if he had actually taken all his pictures either as the lights approached or as they receded, he had performed the incredible feat of obtaining two clear, sharp photographs, while panning, in a mere two seconds.
Although these facts suggested that the explanation given for the pictures was at least highly improbable, Air Force experts refrained from labeling them frauds. Professional photographers can undoubtedly make various guesses as to how the pictures were made and the possible identity of the V of bright spots, but proof is impossible. In the Air Force files they remain in the category of Unknowns.
Other Winged UFOs
During the era of the saucers, winged creatures were responsible for many UFO stories. But winged creatures do not stay put, and in flying away they usually take with them the evidence that the alleged spaceships were actually only birds or insects.
One such incident occurred at Downey, California, on May 29, 1951. Late in the afternoon three technical writers for North American Aviation were standing outdoors chatting and looking at the sky when suddenly they noticed about thirty glowing, meteorlike objects moving in the east, about 45 degrees above the horizon. They made no sound and left no trail. Emitting an intense electric-blue light, the objects made fantastic right-angled turns and swept across the sky in an undulating vertical formation, apparently covering about 90 degrees of sky in about 25 seconds. The diameters of the objects were estimated at 30 feet and the speed at 1700 miles an hour[[VI-11]].