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the like. the later date. This unyielding position prompted one newspaper in the Washington area to run the headline, "PENTAGON CAN'T SEE SPOTS IN SKY," over the story of the incident. This was not the first time the UFO's had visited Washington. A wave of sightings in 1952 caused the big. gest press conference since the Second World War. But just as in the early Fifties, the rare official who did comment on the 1964-65 sightings blamed them on meteorological illusions, wild imaginations, and But the presence on a radar screen of a solid object moving at speeds greater than any known jet, requires a more sophisticated explanation. The first sighting officially occurred on December 29, 1964, but some independent investigators have speculated that the actual radar sighting took place ten days before but only leaked out to the public at Three objects were detected by the radar screens. First one alone, then two together, all traveling at an estimated speed of 4,800 miles an hour. Weeks after the sighting had taken place, official Air Force sources blamed defective equipment for the presence of the objects on the radar screen. In the countryside surrounding Washington, sightings of UFO's occurred both before and after reports were made in the city itself. Horace Burns, a gunsmith of Grottoes, Virginia reported a fantastic experience on December 21, 1964. While driving along U.S. highway 250 between Staunton and Waynesboro, he was startled to see a huge cone-shaped object float into view. It glided across the road in front of him, and at one time, the outline of its shape more than filled the windshield in front of him. Without any warning of engine trouble, he said he felt "some sort of force" that caused his car to stop. The strange looking craft settled easily in a meadow about a hundred yards from the highway as Burns climbed out of his stalled car. The gunsmith counted six concentric circular rings that diminished in