ject in each successive photo,
one could see that it was moving rapidly.

The intelligence officers aboard the carrier studied the photos. The
object looked like a balloon. From its size it was apparent that if
it were a balloon, it would have been launched from one of the ships,
so the word went out on the TBS radio: "Who launched a balloon?"

The answer came back on the TBS: "Nobody."

Naval Intelligence double-checked, triple-checked and quadruple-
checked every ship near the carrier but they could find no one who
had launched the UFO.

We kept after the Navy. The pilots and the flight deck crew who saw
the UFO had mixed feelings--some were sure that the UFO was a balloon
while others were just as sure that it couldn't have been. It was
traveling too fast, and although it resembled a balloon in some ways
it was far from being identical to the hundreds of balloons that the
crew had seen the aerologists launch.

We probably wouldn't have tried so hard to get a definite answer to
the Mainbrace photos if it hadn't been for the events that took place
during the rest of the operation, I explained to the group of ADC
officers.

The day after the photos had been taken six RAF pilots flying a
formation of jet fighters over the North Sea saw something coming
from the direction of the Mainbrace fleet. It was a shiny, spherical
object, and they couldn't recognize it as anything "friendly" so they
took after it. But in a minute or two they lost it. When they neared
their base, one of the pilots looked back and saw that the UFO was
now following him. He turned but the UFO also turned, and again it
outdistanced the Meteor in a matter of minutes.

Then on the third consecutive day a UFO showed up near the fleet,
this time over Topcliffe Aerodrome in England. A pilot in a Meteor
was scrambled and managed to get his jet fairly close to the UFO,
close enough to see that the object was "round, silvery, and white"
and seemed to "rotate around its vertical axis and sort of wobble."
But before he could close in to get a really good look it was gone.

It was these sightings, I was told by an RAF exchange intelligence
officer in the Pentagon, that caused the RAF to officially recognize
the UFO.

By the time I'd finished telling about the Mainbrace Sightings, it
was after the lunch hour in the club and we were getting some get-the-
hell-out-of-here looks from the waiters, who wanted to clean up the
dining room. But before I could