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34 Gorman realized instantly he was seeing something unusual and decided to take action. Little did he know, he was about to make UFO history. “I dived after it... but I couldn’t catch up with the thing. It started gaining altitude and again made a left bank. I put my F-51 into a sharp turn and tried to cut off the light, in my turn. By then we were at 7,000 feet. Suddenly, the thing made a sharp turn right and we were headed straight for each other! Just when we were about to collide, + x tr 1 toro 1 I guess I got scared. I went into a dive and the light passed over my canopy at about 500 feet. Then the thing made a left circle about 1,000 feet above me, and I gave chase again.” Meanwhile, the air traffic controller, L.D. Jensen, was shocked to observe the entire “cat and mouse” fight between the pilot and the UFO. He grabbed a pair of binoculars. While he could clearly identify Gorman’s plane, the lighted object remained unidentifiable. Several other witnesses in the area also observed the strange object. For the next half-hour, Gorman chased the object, reaching speeds up to 400 miles per hour. The object easily eluded him and finally sped away, never to reappear. After the encounter, Air Force investigators from Project Blue Book interviewed Gorman. Project Blue Book was responsible for investigating UFO reports for the Air Force. At the time of the incident, the U.S. Air Force had taken a policy of ridiculing UFO encounters, usually explaining them away as hallucinations, hoaxes, or misperceptions. They concluded that Gorman had encountered a weather balloon. The case was widely published in the media, and again skeptics and believers were divided. Like many UFO en- Gorman, however, remains unshaken in his convictions and says, “T am convinced there was thought behind the thing’s maneuvers. I had the distinct impression that its maneuvers were controlled by thought or reason.”!° One of the common misconceptions about UFO encounters is that they are very rare. In fact, each year produces a number of high- UFOS AND ALIENS counters, there was little evidence other than eyewitness testimony.