The Official Guide to UFOs-pages

Page 30 of 161

Page 30 of 161
The Official Guide to UFOs-pages

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"This was the most mysterious, unexplainable and spectacular sighting we have ever made and we will appreciate any explanation you can make of it. The letter was signed "O. Hart." Lt. Colonel Lawrence Tacker, to whom the letter was addressed, answered it with promptness and attached the nine-page U.S. Air Force Technical Information Sheet to be answered. The questionnaire contains 42 pertinent questions regarding the sighting of a UFO. Mrs. Hart answered the questions, in collaboration with her husband, with obvious care. She made three points that were not included in her letter. One was that the planet Mars was in the sky, often near the strange UFO, so an accurate comparison could be made of the UFO's size and color. Another was that when the object sped down past San Diego over Mexico, its size and magnitude resembled those of the planet Mercury. The third point was in answer to question 38: "In your opinion what do you think the object was and what might have caused it?" Whether or not this opinion of Lewis and Olive Hart is "unquestionably" valid, there can be no question about their sharpness as observers. What they saw must definitely be called a "good unknown." In fact, about three and a half months later, on March 13, 1961, two Naval officers sighted what could be only an identical object. The sighting was made at San Diego by Lieutenant William Friel and Ensign James Jacanin, both of the All-Weather Fighter-Interceptor Squadron based on North Island. It is the only Navy squadron of its kind in the Air Force's Air Defense Command. The two fighter pilots described the object they sighted like this: Said Lieutenant Friel: "We are just going home from a routine alert when I saw this unusual light in the sky. We were three blocks from our house at 311 First Street. When we got there, the light was still visible. At first I thought it must be a satellite, but it wasn't moving as a satellite would. We then got binoculars and watched it." Said Ensign Jacanin: "At first it was almost due east. It seemed to be moving east to west. Then it made a 90-degree turn toward the north. A minute or so later, it turned another 90 degrees and went back east." Both men watched the UFO for between eight and 10 minutes. As pilots of the Air Defense Command, they are trained to be acutely observant and objective in their decisions. Lieutenant Friel summed up the sighting as follows: "What intrigued us was the light from the object. It wasn't the kind of light you see from a reciprocating engine exhaust at night or from a jet afterburner. The nearest you can describe it is to from all sides. "My husband says I should state that the one hundred diameters means diameters of the main body." The Hart's answer: "It was unquestionably some kind of intelligently controlled air or space vehicle."