The vapor trails thinned out and disappeared right under the three
UFO's and it was obvious that the two jets had closed in.
Here were three that didn't escape.
That night the 97th Fighter Interceptor Squadron added three more balloons to their record. The F-86's had been able to climb higher than the F-84's.
The next morning photos confirmed the balloons. They had been tethered together and carried an instrument package.
I had been fooled. Two Ph.D psychologists who had studied UFO's had been fooled. A C-54 load of "experienced observers" (many pilots) had been fooled. The tower operators had been fooled and so had a hundred others.
This was an interesting sighting and we used to discuss it a lot. All of the observers later agreed that what made them so excited was the tower operator's announcement: "F-84's from Lockbourne are chasing three high speed objects." This set the stage and from then on no one even considered the fact that if the objects had been traveling 2000 or 3000 miles an hour they would have been long gone in the fifteen minutes we watched them.
Secondly, I found out that the C-54, a slow airplane, had actually overtaken and passed the balloons between Columbus and Dayton but none of the passengers I talked to had stopped to think of this.
And I'm positive that in our minds the balloons, which were about 40 feet in diameter and at 40,000 feet, looked a lot larger than they actually were.
I know the power of suggestion plays an important role in UFO sightings. Once you're convinced you're looking at a UFO you can see a lot of things.
But then there's the "unknowns."