Page Content (OCR)
drama. Dr. Warren Lovell, a Seattle, Washington pathologist, has investigated more than 150 air crashes involving 2,000 deaths. Last summer, Dr. Lovell was quoted as saying that he could not exclude the possibility of a force "completely unknown to science at present" as the cause of many air crashes. "| would also not exclude that a force from outer space is responsible," Dr. Lovell said, "no matter how unlikely this possibility appears to be." The possibility appears less unlikely with each passing month. Chemists examining the wreck of a Canadian Pacific Air lines DC-6B, in which 52 persons lost their lives, concluded that the plane was destroyed by an explosion which had originated in the toilet, causing the aircraft to split apart. Yet the investigating chemists have found no traces of nitrates that would have been in ample evidence in a conventional explosion. There has been no evidence of bomb injuries, and it has been determined that nobody was in the washroom when the explosion occurred. Was a force "completely unknown to science at present" the cause of the crash? On February 27, 1960, Vice Admiral Robert Hillenkoetter, U.S.N., Retired, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, rocked the Air Force when he released to the press photostatic copies of an Air Force directive which warned Air Force Commands to regard the UFO's as "serious business." The Air Force admitted that it had issued the order on December 24, 1959, but added that the photostatic copy of the command, which Hillenkoetter had released to the press, was only a part of a seven-page regulation, which had been issued to update similar past orders, and "made no substantive changes in policy." The official Air Force directive, which was issued to all Air Force Commands on December 24, 1959, indicated the remarkable dual role which the Air Force continues to play in the ever unfolding UFO "Unidentified flying objects - sometimes treated lightly by the press and referred to as ‘flying saucers' - must be rapidly and accurately identified as serious USAF business. ... As AFR 200-2 points out, the Air Force concern with these sightings is threefold: First of all is the object a threat to the defense of the U.S.? Secondly, does it contribute to technical or scientific knowledge? And then there's the inherent