Page:Ruppelt - The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects.djvu/315

 looking at the UFO’s; they were looking off to the right of them. I’m inclined to agree with Captain Hardin of Blue Book—the photographer just fouled up on his double exposure.

Sightings spread across southern Europe, and at the end of October, the Yugoslav Government expressed official interest. Belgrade newspapers said that a “thoughtful inquiry” would be set up, since reports had come from “control tower operators, weather stations and hundreds of farmers.” But the part of the statement that swung the most weight was, “Scientists in astronomical observatories have seen these strange objects with their own eyes.”

During 1954 and the early part of 1955 my friends in Europe tried to keep me up-to-date on all of the better reports, but this soon approached a full-time job. Airline pilots saw them, radar picked them up, and military pilots chased them. The press took sides, and the controversy that had plagued the U.S. since 1947 bloomed forth in all its confusion.

An ex-Air Chief Marshal in the RAF, Lord Dowding, went to bat for the UFO’s. The Netherlands Air Chief of Staff said they can’t be. Herman Oberth, the father of the German rocket development, said that the UFO’s were definitely interplanetary vehicles.

In Belgium a senator put the screws on the Secretary of Defense—he wanted an answer. The Secretary of Defense questioned the idea that the saucers were “real” and said that the military wasn’t officially interested. In France a member of parliament received a different answer—the French military was interested. The French General Staff had set up a committee to study UFO reports.

In Italy, Clare Boothe Luce, American Ambassador to Italy, said that she had seen a UFO and had no idea what it could be.

Halfway around the world, in Australia, the UFO’s were busy too. At Canberra Airport the pilot of an RAAF Hawker Sea Fury and a ground radar station teamed up to get enough data to make an excellent radar-visual report.

In early 1955 the flap began to die down about as rapidly as it had flared up, but it had left its mark—many more believers. Even the highly respected British aviation magazine, Aeroplane, had something to say. One of the editors took a long, hard look