equate attention, but not
frantic attention."

The summary of the press conference straightened things out to some
extent and our flow of reports got back to normal.

I was anxious to start enlisting the aid of scientists, as General
Samford had directed, but before this could be done we had a backlog
of UFO reports that had to be evaluated. During July we had been
swamped and had picked off only the best ones. Some of the reports we
were working on during August had simple answers, but many were
unknowns. There was one report that was of special interest because
it was an excellent example of how a UFO report can at first appear
to be absolutely unsoluble then suddenly fall apart under thorough
investigation. It also points up the fact that our investigation and
analysis were thorough and that when we finally stamped a report
"Unknown" it was unknown. We weren't infallible but we didn't often
let a clue slip by.

At exactly ten forty-five on the morning of August 1, 1952, an ADC
radar near Bellefontaine, Ohio, picked up a high-speed unidentified
target moving southwest, just north of Dayton. Two F-86's from the
97th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron at Wright-Patterson were scrambled
and in a few minutes they were climbing out toward where the radar
showed the UFO to be. The radar didn't have any height-finding
equipment so all that the ground controller at the radar site could
do was to get the two F-86's over or under the target, and then they
would have to find it visually.

When the two airplanes reached 30,000 feet, the ground controller
called them and told them that they were almost on the target, which
was still continuing its southwesterly course at about 525 miles an
hour. In a few seconds the ground controller called back and told the
lead pilot that the targets of his airplane and the UFO had blended
on the radar-scope and that the pilot would have to make a visual
search; this was as close in as radar could get him. Then the radar
broke down and went off the air.

But at almost that exact second the lead pilot looked up and there
in the clear blue sky several thousand feet above him was a silver-
colored sphere. The lead pilot pointed it out to his wing man and
both of them started to climb. They went to their maximum altitude
but they couldn't reach the UFO. After ten minutes of unsuccessful
attempts to identify the huge silver sphere or disk--because at times
it looked like a disk--one of the pilots ha