e desk with his
fist, "they're going to blow up and you're going to have the
granddaddy of all UFO sightings. The sighting will occur in
Washington or New York," he predicted, "probably Washington."

The trend in the UFO reports that this scientist based his
prediction on hadn't gone unnoticed. We on Project Blue Book had seen
it, and so had the people in the Pentagon; we all had talked about it.

On July 10 the crew of a National Airlines plane reported a light
"too bright to be a lighted balloon and too slow to be a big meteor"
while they were flying south at 2,000 feet near Quantico, Virginia,
just south of Washington.

On July 13 another airliner crew reported that when they were 60
miles southwest of Washington, at 11,000 feet, they saw a light below
them. It came up to their level, hovered off to the left for several
minutes, and then it took off in a fast, steep climb when the pilot
turned on his landing lights.

On July 14 the crew of a Pan American airliner en route from New
York to Miami reported eight UFO's near Newport News, Virginia, about
130 miles south of Washington.

Two nights later there was another sighting in exactly the same area
but from the ground. At 9:00P.M. a high-ranking civilian scientist
from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics Laboratory at
Langley AFB and another man were standing near the ocean looking
south over Hampton Roads when they saw two amber-colored lights,
"much too large to be aircraft lights," off to their right, silently
traveling north. Just before the two lights got abreast of the two
men they made a 180-degree turn and started back toward the spot
where they had first been seen. As they turned, the two lights seemed
to "jockey for position in the formation." About this time a third
light came out of the west and joined the first two; then as the
three UFO's climbed out of the area toward the south, several more
lights joined the formation. The entire episode had lasted only three
minutes.

The only possible solution to the sighting was that the two men had
seen airplanes. We investigated this report and found that there were
several B-26's from Langley AFB in the area at the time of the
sighting, but none of the B-26 pilots remembered being over Hampton
Roads. In fact, all of them had generally stayed well south of
Norfolk until about 10:30P.M. because of thunderstorm activity
northwest of Langley. Then there were other factors--the observers
heard no