saucer stories, and both thought the
light was a balloon. But, to be comedians, they called to several
more officers and airmen inside the operations office and told them
to come out and "see the flying saucer." The people came out and
looked. A few were surprised and took the mysterious light seriously,
at the expense of considerable laughter from the rest of the group.
The discussion about the light grew livelier and bets that it was a
balloon were placed. In the meantime the light had drifted over the
base, had stopped for about a minute, turned, and was now heading
north. To settle the bet, one of the officers stepped into the base
weather office to find out about the balloon. Yes, one was in the air
and being tracked by radar, he was told. The weather officer said
that he would call to find out exactly where it was. He called and
found out that the weather balloon was being tracked due west of the
base and that the light had gone out about ten minutes before. The
officer went back outside to find that what was first thought to be a
balloon was now straight north of the field and still lighted. To add
to the confusion, a second amber light had appeared in the west about
20 degrees lower than where the first one was initially seen, and it
was also heading north but at a much greater speed. In a few seconds
the first light stopped and started moving back south over the base.

While the group of officers and airmen were watching the two lights,
the people from the weather office came out to tell the UFO observers
that the balloon was still traveling straight west. They were just in
time to see a third light come tearing across the sky, directly
overhead, from west to east. A weatherman went inside and called the
balloon-tracking crew again--their balloon was still far to the west
of the base.

Inside of fifteen minutes two more amber lights came in from the
west, crossed the base, made a 180-degree turn over the ocean, and
came back over the observers.

In the midst of the melee a radar set had been turned on but it
couldn't pick up any targets. This did, however, eliminate the
possibility of the lights' being aircraft. They weren't stray
balloons either, because the winds at all altitudes were blowing in a
westerly direction. They obviously weren't meteors. They weren't
searchlights on a haze layer because there was no weather conducive
to forming a haze layer and there were no searchlights. They could
have been