Page Content (OCR)
61 Second, if such a rocket had gone astray, it would certainly have caused wild confusion at White Sands until they found where it landed. Hundreds of people would have known about it; the story would be certain to leak out. Third, such a rocket would have had to travel from White Sands to Macon, Georgia, then circle around south of this city for over forty minutes. (If it had kept on at the speed observed at Robbins Field, it would have passed Montgomery long before the DC-3 reached the area.) In addition, the rocket would have had to veer sharply away from the airliner, as both pilots testified, and then zoom into the clouds. No high-atmosphere test rocket has automatic controls such as this would require. {p. 71} And if it had gone astray from White Sands, the station's remote control would no longer be guiding it. The Eastern Airlines "space ship," then, was not just a fugitive rocket. But it could be a new type of aircraft, something revolutionary, developed in absolute secrecy. Other airline pilots had reported flying disks racing along the airways, though none that I knew of had described projectile-like objects. Chiles and Whitted insisted the mystery ship was not a disk, and the report from Robbins Field agreed on this point. Man-made devices or not, it seemed fairly certain there was more than one type of saucer. The more I studied the evidence, the harder it was to believe that this was an earth-made ship. Such a wingless rocket ship would require tremendous jet power to keep it in the air. Even our latest jet bombers could not begin to approach its performance. Going back over the Project "Saucer" preliminary report, I found strong evidence that the Air Force was worried. In their investigation, Project teams had screened 225 military and civilian flight schedules. After nine months, they reported that the mysterious object was no conventional aircraft. On April 27, 1949, the Air Force admitted that Project "Saucer" had failed to find the answer. The "space ship" was officially listed as unidentified. "But Wright Field is still working on it," an Air Force officer told me. "Both Chiles and Whitted are responsible pilots, and McKelvie has a reputation for making careful statements. Even without the Robbins Field confirmation, no one could doubt that they - wae abt saw something." The Chiles-Whitted "space ship" was not the first of this type to be reported. Another wingless aircraft was sighted in August 1947, by two pilots for an Alabama flying service. It was at Bethel, Alabama, just after sunset, when a huge black wingless craft swept across their course. Silhouetted against the evening sky, it loomed larger than a C- 54. The pilots saw no wings, motors, or jet exhausts. Swinging in behind the mystery ship, they attempted to follow. But at their speed of 170 m.p.h. they were quickly outdistanced. Careful checking showed there were no