ng, because he couldn't see any airplane at
the head of it. He altered his course a few degrees to the right so
that he could follow the trail and increased his rate of climb.
Before long he could tell that he was gaining on the object, or
whatever was leaving the vapor trail, because he was under the
central part of it. But he still couldn't see any object. This was
odd, he thought, because vapor trails don't just happen; something
has to leave them. His altimeter had ticked off another 12,000 feet
and he was now at 35,000. He kept on climbing, but soon the '84 began
to mush; it was as high as it would go. The pilot dropped down 1,000
feet and continued on--now he was below the front of the trail, but
still no airplane. This bothered him too. Nothing that we have flies
over 55,000 feet except a few experimental airplanes like the D-558
or those of the "X" series, and they don't stray far from Edwards AFB
in California. He couldn't be more than 15,000 feet from the front of
the trail, and you can recognize any kind of an airplane 15,000 feet
away in the clear air of the substratosphere. He looked and he looked
and he looked. He rocked the F-84 back and forth thinking maybe he
had a flaw in the plexiglass of the canopy that was blinking out the
airplane, but still no airplane. Whatever it was, it was darn high or
darn small. It was moving about 300 miles an hour because he had to
pull off power and "S" to stay under it.

He was beginning to get low on fuel about this time so he hauled up
the nose of the jet, took about 30 feet of gun camera film, and
started down. When he landed and told his story, the film was quickly
processed and rushed to the projection room. It showed a weird, thin,
forked vapor trail--but no airplane.

Lieutenant Olsson and Airman Futch had worked this one over
thoroughly. The photo lab confirmed that the trail was definitely a
vapor trail, not a freak cloud formation. But Air Force Flight
Service said, "No other airplanes in the area," and so did Air
Defense Command, because minutes after the F-84 pilot broke off
contact, the "object" had passed into an ADIZ--Air Defense
Identification Zone--and radar had shown nothing.

There was one last possibility: Blue Book's astronomer said that the
photos looked exactly like a meteor's smoke trail. But there was one
hitch: the pilot was positive that the head of the vapor trail was
moving at about 300 miles an hour. He didn't know exactly how much
groun