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29 sighting reports in early 1952 and built as activity surged to unprecedented levels in July and August. With fifteen hundred reports to Project Blue Book for all of 1952 and as many as forty per day at the height of the wave, the limited facilities of the little office were swamped. Cases were stacked up after having been scanned and "explained" with little regard for the facts. Huge, violently maneuvering spheres were called "balloons," while discs that hovered silently and then streaked away were called "possible aircraft." The situa- tion was out of control even before UFOs appeared over Wash- ington, D.C., in mid-July, tracked on radar simultaneously from three separate locations as they flitted at will over the White House, the Capitol, and even the Pentagon. Under heavy pressure to explain what was going on, the U.S. Air Force on July 29 held its largest press conference since World War II. Maj. Gen. John Samford of USAF Intelligence admitted that the UFO sightings were not all imagination: "There have remained a percentage of [the] total, in the order of twenty percent of the reports, that have come from credible observers of relatively incredible things." And who were these "credible observers"? SAMFORD: "I think there might be some- thing like eight percent that come from civil airlines pilots. You might find another percentage, in the order of twenty-five, might come from military pilots." In other words, one of every three persons reporting "relatively incredible things" was a professional pilot, whose eyesight and judgment were regularly checked to make certain he could safely carry out his vital duties. Here was the first truly public admission from the Air Force that UFO sightings should be taken seriously. But it was over- shadowed by the more immediate concer of the gathering of reporters, which was the sightings over Washington. These, Samford implied, were caused by temperature inversions (the source of mirages) that supposedly made lights on the ground appear to be high in the sky. This explanation was widely accepted and served its purpose—to calm the fears of the American people, who were understandably worried about THE GOVERNMENT AND UFOS