Page 62 of 151
62 {p. 72} On New Year's Day, 1948, a similar rocket-shaped object was sighted at Jackson, Mississippi. It was first seen by a former Air Force pilot and his passenger, and later by witnesses on the ground. Before the pilot could begin to close in, the odd wingless ship pulled away. Speeding up from 200 to 500 m.p.h., it swiftly disappeared. Besides these two cases, already on record, I had the tips Purdy had given me. One wingless ship was supposed to have been seen three or four days before the Chiles- Whitted sighting; like the thing they reported, the unidentified craft was a double-decked "space ship" but moving at even higher speed. At first I ran into a stone wall trying to check this story. Then I found a lead conforming that this was a foreign report. It finally proved to be from The Hague. The tip had been right. This double-decked, wingless ship had been sighted on July 20, 1948--four days before the Eastern case. Witnesses had reported it at a high altitude, moving at fantastic speed. While working on this report, I verified another tip. We had heard a rumor of a space- ship sighting at Clark Field, in the Philippine Islands. Although I didn't learn the date, I found that there was such a record. (In the final Project "Saucer" report, the attempt to explain away this sighting was painfully evident. Analyzing this case, Number 206, the Air Force said: "If the facts are correct, there is no astronomical explanation. A few points favor the daytime meteor hypothesis--snow-white color, speed faster than a jet, the roar, similarity to sky-writing and the time of day. But the tactics, if really performed, oppose it strenuously: the maneuvers in and out of cloud banks, turns of 180 degrees or more, Possibly these were illusions, caused by seeing the object intermittently through clouds. The impression of a fuselage with windows could even more easily have been a sign of imagination." (With this conjecture, Project "Saucer" listed the sighting as officially answered. The Hague space-ship case was unexplained.) {p. 73} In following up the Jackson and Bethel reports, I talked with two officials in the Civil Aeronautics Administration. One of these was Charley Planck, who handled public relations. I found that the pilots concerned had good records; C.A.A. men who knew them discounted the hoax theory. "Charley, there's a rumor that airline pilots have been ordered not to talk," I told Planck. "You know anything about it?" other planes nearby that could have been mistaken for this strange craft.