At Duluth, Minnesota, in March, it's dark by five o'clock in the evening. It's cold. The temperature hovers around zero and it's so clear you have a feeling you can almost reach up and touch the stars.
It was this kind of a night on March 13, 1959, and as the officers and men of the Air Defense Command fighter squadron at the Duluth Municipal Airport moved, they shuffled along slowly because the heavy parkas and arctic clothing they wore were heavy.
Then came the UFO report and things speeded up.
At 5:20P.M., exactly, the operations officer noted the time, word came in over the comm line that someone had sighted an unidentified flying object off to the north. Word flashed around the squadron and as people rushed out of buildings to look they were joined by those already outside.
And there it was: big, round and bright, and it was moving at high speed. Some observers thought it was "greenish," others "reddish," but it was something and it was there.
The bearing was 300 degrees from the base.
It was an awesome sight and it became even more awesome when a quick call to an adjacent radar site brought back the word that they had just picked up a target on a bearing of 300 degrees from the air base. They were tracking it and taking scope photos.
In the alert hangar, the two pilots standing the alert had been listening to a running account of the sighting so when the scramble bell rang they took off for their airplanes like a couple of sprinters.
As the two big alert hangar doors swung up the whining screech of the jet starters, followed by thunder of the engines, filled the airfield. The atmosphere around the Duluth Municipal Airport was closely akin to Santa Anita the instant the starting gates open.
I've been around when jet interceptors scramble and you can twang the tension with your finger.