men got right down to the point: "If I saw a flying saucer flying
wing-tip formation with me and could see little men waving--even if
my whole load of passengers saw it--I wouldn't report it to the Air
Force."

Another man cut in, "Remember the thing Jack Adams said he saw down
by Memphis?"

I said I did.

"He reported that to the Air Force and some red-hot character met
him in Memphis on his next trip. He talked to Adams a few minutes and
then told him that he'd seen a meteor. Adams felt like a fool. Hell,
I know Jack Adams well and he's the most conservative guy I know. If
he said he saw something with glowing portholes, he saw something
with glowing portholes--and it wasn't a meteor."

Even though I didn't remember the pilots' names I'll never forget
their comments. They didn't like the way the Air Force had handled
UFO reports and I was the Air Force's "Mr. Flying Saucer." As quickly
as one of the pilots would set me up and bat me down, the next one
grabbed me off the floor and took his turn. But I couldn't complain
too much; I'd asked for it. I think that this group of seven pilots
pretty much represented the feelings of a lot of the airline pilots.
They weren't wide-eyed space fans, but they and their fellow pilots
had seen something and whatever they'd seen weren't hallucinations,
mass hysteria, balloons, or meteors.

Three of the men at the Caffarello conference had seen UFO's or, to
use their terminology, they had seen something they couldn't identify
as a known object. Two of these men had seen odd lights closely
following their airplanes at night. Both had checked and double-
checked with CAA, but no other aircraft was in the area. Both
admitted, however, that they hadn't seen enough to class what they'd
seen as good UFO sighting. But the third man had a lulu.

If I recall correctly, this pilot was flying for TWA. One day in
March 1952 he, his copilot, and a third person who was either a pilot
deadheading home or another crew member, I don't recall which, were
flying a C-54 cargo airplane from Chicago to Kansas City. At about
2:30P.M. the pilot was checking in with the CAA radio at Kirksville,
Missouri, flying 500 feet on top of a solid overcast. While he was
talking he glanced out at his No. 2 engine, which had been losing
oil. Directly in line with it, and a few degrees above, he saw a
silvery, disk-shaped object. It was too far out to get a really good
look at it, yet it was close enough to be abl