. When I said they were over the base
he did me the courtesy of going out to look.

He came running back in and hit the scramble button. Three minutes
later two F-86's were headed UFOward. They soon disappeared but their
vapor trails kept the tense crowd informed of their progress.

And believe me there was tension.

As the vapor trails spiraled up, first as two distinct plumes, and
later only one--as they blended at altitude--more than one pilot
standing on the ramp expressed his thankfulness for his unenviable
position--on the ground watching.

The vapor trails thinned out and disappeared right under the three
UFO's and it was obvious that the two jets had closed in.

Here were three that didn't escape.

That night the 97th Fighter Interceptor Squadron added three more
balloons to their record. The F-86's had been able to climb higher
than the F-84's.

The next morning photos confirmed the balloons. They had been
tethered together and carried an instrument package.

I had been fooled. Two Ph.D psychologists who had studied UFO's had
been fooled. A C-54 load of "experienced observers" (many pilots) had
been fooled. The tower operators had been fooled and so had a hundred
others.

This was an interesting sighting and we used to discuss it a lot.
All of the observers later agreed that what made them so excited was
the tower operator's announcement: "F-84's from Lockbourne are chasing
three high speed objects." This set the stage and from then on no one
even considered the fact that if the objects had been traveling 2000
or 3000 miles an hour they would have been long gone in the fifteen
minutes we watched them.

Secondly, I found out that the C-54, a slow airplane, had actually
overtaken and passed the balloons between Columbus and Dayton but
none of the passengers I talked to had stopped to think of this.

And I'm positive that in our minds the balloons, which were about 40
feet in diameter and at 40,000 feet, looked a lot larger than they
actually were.

I know the power of suggestion plays an important role in UFO
sightings. Once you're convinced you're looking at a UFO you can see
a lot of things.

But then there's the "unknowns."

Any good saucer fan--wild eyed or sober--will magnanimously
concede that a certain percentage of the UFO sightings are the
misidentification of known objects. They drag out the "unknowns"
as the "proof."

Technically speaking, an "unknown" report is one that has been m