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44 field abuzz. It seemed that almost everyone had heard at least one report of a crash but had been unable or unwilling to investigate it for fear of being laughed at and losing hard-won community stature. Now, however, with the cat out of the bag, it was suddenly acceptable to speak openly of crashed flying saucers. First, however, all this had to be digested, for it carried UFOs into a much more personal and potentially threatening realm. Every private researcher and investigator had to weigh the risks inherent in the dangerous journey into a subject that could easily make him the object of ridicule. But the possible payoff was just too great. If just one crash-and-retrieval could be proved, or even supported by good testimony by individuals willing to be identified publicly, then all the great sightings in anyone's file would be rendered unimportant. Stringfield had the jump on his fellow investigators, but he was spreading his time and effort over dozens of cases, while others could concentrate on one or two cases and thus stand a chance of getting ahead. Besides, Stringfield was known to be so methodical and cautious that others might well turn his leads into useful information while Len was plodding along. Among those galvanized into action by the shocking revela- tions at Dayton was Stanton Friedman. It had been but a few months since his revealing talk with Jesse Marcel, who de- scribed recovering strange debris from a sheep ranch. A few months after the Dayton meeting, Friedman talked with Vern Maltais and got the story of Barney Barnett at the Plains of San Augustin. Soon he added confirmation of Marcel's claims in 1947 newspaper stories. While Stringfield and others were working on their choices of promising leads, Friedman and Bill Moore zeroed in on the Corona, New Mexico, crash, for it was then thought the downed craft seen by Barnett must have been the one that left some of its pieces on the Foster ranch before crashing 150 miles to the west. They had a growing collection of names to check, and many of those named contributed even more names of people to track. CRASH AT CORONA