Page:Ruppelt - The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects.djvu/302

 was an airplane, chances were he could close in and if it was a star, he should be able to climb up to 30,000 feet and the light shouldn’t change its relative position. He checked his oxygen supply, increased the r.p.m. of the engine, and started to climb. In three or four minutes it was obvious that he was getting above the light, and he watched it; it had moved in relation to the stars. It must be an airplane then, he’d decided—an airplane so far away that he couldn’t see its red and green wing tip lights.

Since he’d gone this far, he decided that he’d get closer and make sure it was an airplane; so he dropped the nose of the F-86 and started down. As the needle on the machmeter nudged the red line, he saw that he was getting closer because the light was getting bigger, but still he couldn’t see any lights other than the one big white one. Then it wasn’t white any longer; it was changing color. In about a two-second cycle it changed from white to red, then back to white again. It went through this cycle two or three times, and then before he could realize what was going on, he told me, the light changed in shape to a perfect triangle. Then it split into two triangles, one above the other. By this time he had leveled off and wasn’t closing in any more. In a flash the whole thing was gone. He used the old standard description for a disappearing UFO: “It was just like someone turning off a light—it’s there, then it’s gone.”

I asked him what he thought he’d seen. He’d thought about flying saucers, he said, but he “just couldn’t swallow those stories.” He thought he had a case of vertigo and the more he thought about it, the surer he was that this was the answer. He’d felt pretty foolish, he told me, and he was glad that he was alone.

Up ahead he saw the sprawling lights of Fort Benning and Lawson AFB, his turning point on the flight, and he’d started to turn but then he’d checked his fuel. The climb had used up quite a bit, so he changed his mind about going to Robins AFB and started straight back to Moody.

He called in to the ground station to change his flight plan, but before he could say anything the ground radio operator asked him if he’d seen a mysterious light.

Well—he’d seen a light.

Then the ground operator proceeded to tell him that the UFO chase had been watched on radar. First the radar had the UFO