in the first half of 1950 and
seventy-five during the latter half. The actual count could have been
more because in 1950, UFO reports were about as popular as sand in
spinach, and I would guess that at least a few wound up in the
"circular file."

In early January 1951 I was recalled to active duty and assigned to
Air Technical Intelligence Center as an intelligence officer. I had
been at ATIC only eight and a half hours when I first heard the words
"flying saucer" officially used. I had never paid a great deal of
attention to flying saucer reports but I had read a few--especially
those that had been made by pilots. I'd managed to collect some 2,000
hours of flying time and had seen many odd things in the air, but I'd
always been able to figure out what they were in a few seconds. I was
convinced that if a pilot, or any crew member of an airplane, said
that he'd seen something that he couldn't identify he meant it--it
wasn't a hallucination. But I wasn't convinced that flying saucers
were spaceships.

My interest in UFO's picked up in a hurry when I learned that ATIC
was the government agency that was responsible for the UFO project.
And I was really impressed when I found out that the person who sat
three desks down and one over from mine was in charge of the whole
UFO show. So when I came to work on my second morning at ATIC and
heard the words "flying saucer report" being talked about and saw a
group of people standing around the chief of the UFO project's desk I
about sprung an eardrum listening to what they had to say. It seemed
to be a big deal--except that most of them were laughing. It must be
a report of hoax or hallucination, I remember thinking to myself, but
I listened as one of the group told the others about the report.

The night before a Mid-Continent Airlines DC-3 was taxiing out to
take off from the airport at Sioux City, Iowa, when the airport
control tower operators noticed a bright bluish-white light in the
west. The tower operators, thinking that it was another airplane,
called the pilot of the DC-3 and told him to be careful since there
was another airplane approaching the field. As the DC-3 lined up to
take off, both the pilots of the airliner and the tower operators saw
the light moving in, but since it was still some distance away the DC-
3 was given permission to take off. As it rolled down the runway
getting up speed, both the pilot and the copilot were busy, so they
didn't see the light