s after
the sighting at Terre Haute.

When I finished calling I got an aeronautical chart out of the file
and plotted the points of the sighting. The CAA employee had seen the
UFO disappear over the northwestern horizon. The pilot had been
flying from Greencastle, Indiana, to Paris, Illinois, so he'd have
been flying on a heading of just a little less than 270 degrees, or
almost straight west. He was just east of Paris when he'd first seen
the UFO, and since he said that he'd looked back and to his left, the
spot where he saw the UFO would be right at a spot where the CAA man
had seen his UFO disappear. Both observers had checked their watches
with radio time just after the sightings, so there couldn't be more
than a few seconds' discrepancy. All I could conclude was that both
had seen the same UFO.

I checked the path of every balloon in the Midwest. I checked the
weather--it was a clear, cloudless day; I had the two observers'
backgrounds checked and I even checked for air traffic, although I
knew the UFO wasn't an airplane. I researched the University of
Dayton library for everything on daylight meteors, but this was no
good. From the description the CAA employee gave, what he'd seen had
been a clear-cut, distinct, flattened sphere, with no smoke trail, no
sparks and no tail. A daylight meteor, so low as to be described as
"a 50-cent piece held at arm's length," would have had a smoke trail,
sparks, and would have made a roar that would have jolted the Sphinx.
This one was quiet. Besides, no daylight meteor stops long enough to
let an airplane turn into it.

Conclusion: Unknown.

In a few days the data from the Long Beach Incident came in and I
started to put it together. A weather balloon had been launched from
the Long Beach Airport, and it was in the vicinity where the six F-
86's had made their unsuccessful attempt to intercept a UFO. I
plotted out the path of the balloon, the reported path of the UFO,
and the flight paths of the F-86's. The paths of the balloon and the
F-86's were accurate, I knew, because the balloon was being tracked
by radio fixes and the F-86's had been tracked by radar. At only one
point did the paths of the balloon, UFO, and F-86's coincide. When
the first two F-86's made their initial visual contact with the UFO
they were looking almost directly at the balloon. But from then on,
even by altering the courses of the F-86's, I couldn't prove a thing.

In addition, the weather observer