Page:Ruppelt - The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects.djvu/109

 before, at the suggestion of a group of scientists at White Sands, McLaughlin had carefully written up the details of the sightings and forwarded them to Washington. The report contained no personal opinions, just facts. The comments on McLaughlin’s report had been wired back to White Sands from Washington and they were, “What are you drinking out there?” A very intelligent answer—and it came from an admiral in the Navy’s guided missile program.

By the time his story was published, McLaughlin was no longer at White Sands; he was at sea on the destroyer Bristol. Maybe he answered the admiral’s wire.

The Air Force had no comment to make on McLaughlin’s story. People at ATIC just shrugged and smiled as they walked by the remains of Project Grudge, and continued to “process UFO reports through regular intelligence channels.”

In early 1950 the UFO’s moved down to Mexico. The newspapers were full of reports. Tourists were bringing back more saucer stories than hand-tooled, genuine leather purses. Time reported that pickpockets were doing a fabulous business working the sky-gazing crowds that gathered when a plativolo was seen. Mexico’s Department of National Defense reported that there had been some good reports but that the stories of finding crashed saucers weren’t true.

On March 8 one of the best UFO sightings of 1950 took place right over ATIC.

About midmorning on this date a TWA airliner was coming in to land at the Dayton Municipal Airport. As the pilot circled to get into the traffic pattern, he and his copilot saw a bright light hovering off to the southeast. The pilot called the tower operators at the airport to tell them about the light, but before he could say anything, the tower operators told him they were looking at it too. They had called the operations office of the Ohio Air National Guard, which was located at the airport, and while the tower operators were talking, an Air Guard pilot was running toward an F-51, dragging his parachute, helmet, and oxygen mask.

I knew the pilot, and he later told me, “I wanted to find out once and for all what these screwy flying saucer reports were all about.”