Page:Ruppelt - The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects.djvu/301





While the scientists were in Washington, D.C., pondering over the UFO, the UFO’s weren’t just sitting idly by waiting to find out what they were—they were out doing a little “lobbying” for the cause—keeping the interest stirred up.

And they were doing a good job, too.

It was just a few minutes before midnight on January 28, 1953, when a message flashed into Wright-Patterson for Project Blue Book. It was sent “Operational Immediate,” so it had priority handling; I was reading it by 12:30 a.m. A pilot had chased a UFO.

The report didn’t have many details but it did sound good. It gave the pilot’s name and said that he could be reached at Moody AFB. I put in a long-distance call, found the pilot, and flipped on my recorder so that I could get his story word for word.

He told me that he had been flying an F-86 on a “round-robin” navigation flight from Moody AFB to Lawson AFB to Robins AFB, then back to Moody—all in Georgia. At exactly nine thirty-five he was at 6,000 feet, heading toward Lawson AFB on the first leg of his flight. He remembered that he had just looked down and had seen the lights of Albany, Georgia; then he’d looked up again and seen this bright white light at “ten o’clock high.” It was an unusually bright light, and he said that he thought this was why it was so noticeable among the stars. He flew on for a few minutes watching it as he passed over Albany. He decided that it must be an extremely bright star or another airplane—except it just didn’t look right. It had too much of a definitely circular shape.

It was a nice night to fly and he had to get in so much time anyway, so he thought he’d try to get a little closer to it. If it