Unconventional Flying Objects: A Former NASA Scientist Explains How UFOs Really Work

UNCONVENTIONAL FLYING OBJECTS

a scientific analysis

Paul Hill has done a masterful job ferreting out the basic science and technology behind the elusive UFO characteristics and demonstrating they are just advanced and exotic extensions of our own technologies. Perhaps this book will help bring solid consideration for making all that is known about extraterrestrial craft publicly available.

—Edgar Mitchell, Sc.D.,

Apollo 14 Astronaut

Copyright © 1995 by Julie M. Hill

Foreword © 2014 by Robert M. Wood and Don C. Donderi

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Hampton Roads Publishing, Inc.

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Cover art: space ship © shutterstock / Fer Gregory

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Contents

Foreword by Robert M. Wood

Introduction

I. Physical Properties and Effects

II. Performance

III. Illumination

IV. How Hot is UFO Radiation?

V. Energetic Particle Ejection as Propulsion Possibility

VI Transmission of Forces

VII. Direct Evidence of Force Field Propulsion

VIII Force Field Evaluation: Which Type?

IX. The Saucer Hum and the Cyclic Field

X. Propulsion Oddities

XI Saucer Dynamics

XII. Silent Subsonic Operation

XIII. Silent Supersonic Operation

XIV. The Aerodynamic Heating of UFOs

XV. High-Acceleration Loading On Occupants

XVI. UFO Artifacts

XVII. The Humanoid Occupants

XVIII. Time Requirements for Interstellar Travel

XIX. UFO Operational Capabilities

XX. Summary and Conclusions

Appendix 1. Analysis of the Sound (Hum) and Vibrations

Appendix 2. A Comparison of Level and Ballistic Trajectories

Appendix 3. UFO Aerodynamics: Incompressible Potential Flow Theory

Appendix 4. Compressible Gas Dynamics With Force Field

Appendix 5. Interstellar Travel Theory

Appendix 6. Propulsion Equations

Appendix 7. Analyses of UFO Fields

Author's Technical Biography and Credentials

Works Cited

Index of Names and Places

General Index

FOREWORD

NASA aeronautical engineer Paul R. Hill began to collect and analyze evidence about unidentified flying objects (UFOs) during the 1950s, but he could not publish anything about UFOs while employed by NASA. After Hill died in 1991, it was possible to publish the book that he wrote while working for NASA, Unconventional Flying Objects. Hill was a good engineer—he designed the fuselage for the World War II P-47 fighter-bomber—and his UFO analysis drew on his knowledge of the physics and engineering of flight. While at NASA, Hill designed and flew a machine that used the same basic principle of thrust that he used to explain UFO propulsion—except, as he had to admit, the anti-gravity drive. That drive would have allowed that principle to explain the observed near-earth performance of UFOs, and by extension, their interstellar performance. Hill knew that UFO technology so far exceeded the capability of terrestrial technology that UFOs could not have been made by humans: therefore, they have come here from somewhere else in the universe.

Hill's approach was 20 years ahead of its time. He never became trapped in the endless speculation about the reality of UFOs; he accepted the reports at face value and let his analysis of the observed phenomenon speak for itself. And his methodology was impeccable. He took the reported observations and then directly evaluated alternative hypotheses, exploring all relevant aspects of the observations. His comprehensive analyses dealt with size, color, halos, clouds, wakes, jitter, heat, maneuvers, performance, sound, solidity, landing, weight, nests and rings, propulsion, propulsive forces, force fields, radiation, merging systems, occupants, collecting, interference, weaponry and artifacts.

Although written in technically precise language, Unconventional Flying Objects is easy to understand because Hill sticks to the central principles of flight, dynamics and electricity, and he uses those clearly explained principles to clarify the remarkable set of reports he compiled. The plain narrative style and the clear observations bring the book within the reach of the non-technical reader. The case histories are easy to follow, and the information unfolds like a mystery story unraveling its plot. Sketches are simple and focus on the point in question, as if Hill were drawing them on the blackboard in his office for the visiting reader. Interspersed within the observational narrative are quantitative explanations for much of what Hill observed. The calculations are simple, comprehensible and checkable thro ugh-out—one of the necessary conditions for good technical work. The appendices carry the quantitative analysis further than in the narrative chapters, and they will interest the engineer and scientist.

As Paul Hill knew, as our scientific predecessors of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries knew, and as we know, science begins with systematic observation. Observation is the foundation on which experiment, and eventually theory, is built. Observational UFO evidence began to accumulate during World War II, was still accumulating when Hill wrote Unconventional Flying Objects, and continues to accumulate as we write. There are close-range, multiple-witness reports by trained observers, visual observations coincident with radar tracking, ground traces of visually observed UFOs, and dogfights between UFOs and the fighter jets of various nations, recorded on radar and reported by the pilots themselves. We have each independently reviewed more than sixty-five years of UFO evidence. On the basis of this evidence, we both know, as did Hill, that some UFOs must be extraterrestrial vehicles.

Given the continually accumulating, and by now very public, body of evidence for extraterrestrial UFOs, why do so many leaders in science, culture and government still deny their reality? Extraterrestrial contact is upsetting for all of us. To admit that technologically superior extraterrestrials are in contact with us is scientifically embarrassing because we do not understand nature as well as the extraterrestrials, it leaves us culturally uncertain what to do about it, and it makes governments anxious about what might happen as a result. The embarrassments, uncertainties and anxieties weigh heavily on the meritocracies of science, culture and government. People resist embarrassing, uncertainty-provoking and anxiety-producing facts by building psychological defenses that allow them to maintain a state of denial that is less upsetting than the facts.

In 1890 William James explained how facts that are unrelated to any of our mental frames of reference are just not recognized—or if recognized, are only fleetingly acknowledged—because we have no mental category with which to associate them. We do not now have the science to explain UFO performance, so the technical frame of reference for UFO evidence is lacking, and this makes the evidence easy to ignore. In 1909, Sigmund Freud theorized that upsetting facts may be repressed out of conscious awareness, at the psychological cost of a subsequent neurosis. If your professional focus is national defense, repression may be the only way you can quiet your anxiety about our technological unpreparedness to deal with an extraterrestrial adversary. In 1975, Leon Festinger explained that unpleasant facts can be ignored by metaphorically shooting the messenger: when you denigrate and diminish the messenger's importance or credibility, you discredit the facts. If your role is political, shooting the UFO messenger is easier than briefing your constituents on the reality of extraterrestrial UFOs. All of these psychological defense mechanisms have been used to ignore, dismiss or deny the accumulated evidence about the existence of extraterrestrial UFOs.

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote: All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. Hill's book has helped to move the evidence for extraterrestrial UFOs far beyond ridicule and has helped to position it in the public mind somewhere between violently opposed and accepted as self-evident. Reading Unconventional Flying Objects should convince you that the existence of extraterrestrial UFOs is self-evident.

Robert M. Wood

PhD (physics), Cornell University, 1953

McDonnell-Douglas Corporation, Huntington Beach, CA:

Aeronautical Engineer, 1953 – 1961

Research and Development Manager, 1961 – 1993

Don C. Donderi

PhD (experimental psychology), Cornell University, 1963

IBM Corporation Federal Systems Division, Owego, NY

Human Factors Psychologist, 1958 – 1962

McGill University, Montreal

Lecturer to Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, 1962 – 2009

Associate Dean, Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, 1975 – 1978

Introduction

The sighting of what has been taken to be unconventional vehicle-like objects in our skies has created great interest, surprise, and, for some, a welcome diversion to the daily routine. Others react with incredulity, even open hostility. Opinions have been sharply divided, and, as is so often the case when facts are in short supply, emotions have ruled. All must realize the tremendous potential sociological, technological, and historical impact that contact with beings from another world would create if such were established. Through the decades of the 1950s and 1960s, the believers were in the minority but, as if to make up for their lack of numbers, were very outspoken and argumentative. There was no lack of opposition after the U.S. Air Force threw down the gauntlet.

Both the believers and the nonbelievers have insisted on proof without avail, until it is now widely accepted that the proof concept does not apply, since not one of the objects has been captured and therefore none can be subjected to laboratory tests in the scientific tradition. On the other hand, proof of nonexistence is even more remote. About the best that the challengers have come up with is that the phenomena as reported seem to defy the laws of physics as we understand them. They say that for this reason the reports cannot be believed. A major intent of this book is to show that UFOs obey, not defy, the laws of physics.

One reason for the tide of opinion now running in favor of the believers, if the Gallup Poll's 51-percent figure can be so interpreted, is probably the well-known Condon Study and its recommendations which resulted in the retirement of the U.S. Air Force from their limited investigations of unconventional objects. Project Blue Book was closed. What looked at the time like a case-closed verdict of guilty against unconventional object sightings and all they might signify, in retrospect looks more like the demise of their main opposition by public institution.

Also, partly because of the outspoken opposition to the existence of unconventional objects in our skies by U.S. government institutions and sponsored studies, a scientific protest of sorts developed. Important and distinguished men of science such as Dr. James E. McDonald, atmospheric physicist; Dr. J. Allen Hynek, astronomer and for years Project Blue Book consultant; Prof. James A. Harder of the University of California, Director of Research for the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization; and others stepped forward to demand more impartial studies in order to determine what the sightings really meant. At last the UFO witness, long the butt of ridicule from all sides, had some of the heavy guns of science on his side for a change.

A common opinion among such scientists, as set forth by Dr. Hynek in The UFO Experience, is that a computerized study of UFO reports is required to sort fact from fiction and to establish a bona fide pattern of observations. They feel that such a study will establish to a higher degree of probability the objective existence, or nonexistence, of what the witnesses say they have observed. One of the outstanding UFO students to take the computer study approach is Dr. David Saunders, co-author of UFOs? Yes! Where the Condon Committee Went Wrong. He made a good start on such a study while an investigator on Condon's study project, but he was destined not to finish it owing to his separation from the project.

Fortunately, work on cataloging UFO phenomena into categories and patterns was started long ago by collectors and analysts of unconventional object reports. Notable among these are the numerous works by Coral and Jim Lorenzen, Jacques and Janine Vallee, Frank Edwards, and the National Investigating Committee for Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) under the direction of Maj. Donald Keyhoe.

Naturally, different data catalogs emphasize different features. Sporadically over a period of 25 years and during a final two-year period of concentrated effort and analysis, I have evolved my own brief catalog of UFO phenomena, summarized and substantiated in these pages. The items of this summary list of phenomena, comprising the highly repeating and therefore most believable aspects of the unconventional objects, will be called the UFO pattern. The UFO pattern, together with the more detailed information used in its compilation, forms the basis of this inquiry into possible scientific explanations. A review at this point of the bewildering array of data which constitutes the pattern should allow all readers to start on a more common footing. With regard to configurations, bear in mind that only highly repeating shapes are given.

The UFO Pattern: A Condensed Statement of Repeated Observations

CONFIGURATIONS, the highly repeating shapes.

Figure i-1.

Note: (1) Shine marks show typical nighttime air glow.

(2) Dash-dot vertical centerline is saucer axis of symmetry.

(3) Giant cigars have plumes also.

SIZE

The size range is tremendous, varying from something like 8 inches for a lenticular foo-fighter of World War II to well upwards of a thousand feet in length for the giant cylindrical shapes. Dirigible configurations range in the hundreds of feet, possibly larger. Saucers, spheres, and ellipsoidal configurations ordinarily range in the 1-to 30-meter size, and Saturn-like vehicles, so named because of their central rim, are frequently in the 5- to 15-meter range. Sufficient estimates of conical-hat saucers have not been made to suggest a range in size, but one was reliably estimated to be of the order of 200 meters in diameter. Obviously statistical studies are needed to further define the range of UFO sizes.

COLOR

In daylight, unconventional objects range from a brightly polished silver color to a dull aluminum appearance. Flat-bottomed saucers are often darker underneath in a central circular area or in an annular ring near the rim.

At night, there are two variations:

(a) The unconventional objects carry running lights in many patterns. Sometimes they blink, making the object look like a Christmas tree or a theater marquee.

(b) They are solidly lighted in red, orange, amber, yellow, blue or blue-violet, and brilliant white, singly or in combinations. The solid colors resemble neon lighting.

HALOS

The nighttime neon-like, solid-color luminescence emanates from an envelope of air around the objects like a halo, rather than from the vehicle directly. This halo tends to obscure the vehicle, making the edges indistinct, as we will explore further.

Around saucers and Saturns, the halo is most concentrated near the rim, more extensive below than above. (See shine marks on sketches.)

A unique cone of illuminating air is sometimes present below a saucer, giving it an ice-cream-cone appearance.

CLOUDS

The big cylindrical objects are sometimes surrounded with a white cloud, giving rise to the name great cloud cigar. This phenomenon is less frequent with other configurations.

WAKES

Dirigible and cylindrical objects carry plume-like wakes when accelerating rapidly or moving at high speeds, grey to straw-colored in daylight, flame-colored at night. They can move slowly (100 mph) without generating the plume.

JITTER

Unconventional objects at times seem to vibrate heavily. If the object is also moving slowly, the movement seems jerky or jittery. It is difficult to know whether the jitter is an actual motion or an optical effect. For this reason, the phenomenon is listed with other appearance factors.

HEAT

No one complains that being near an unconventional object is like being near a hot stove. Heat radiations (infrared, etc.) from their surfaces or from the surrounding halos and wakes is missing except for mild sensations of warmth. This observation carries the strong implication that the surfaces, halos, and wakes are not very hot (i.e., nothing is at a red heat).

MANEUVERS

Hovering. Hovering at any altitude is common. UFOs also hover very close to the ground for substantial periods, sometimes giving the distinct impression that they are doing so instead of landing. (In other words, hovering seems to serve the same purpose as landing.)

Falling leaf or UFO-rock. This maneuver is similar to the motion of a coin falling in water. It most often occurs just before the UFO begins to hover.

Silver-dollar wobble. To duplicate this motion, give a coin a slow spin on a flat surface. This motion occurs at the end of a rapid descent as the UFO initiates hovering.

Acute-angle turn. This is another dazzling but common maneuver. The UFO decelerates rapidly to a stop at the point of the turn and accelerates rapidly in the new direction. (It requires acute observation to note the stop.) The right-angle turn (90 degrees) is a special case of the acute-angle turn.

Sudden reversal of direction. This maneuver surprises the witness because it isn't in the repertoire of Earth vehicles. It is actually an extreme acute-angle turn (180 degrees).

Bank-and-turn. The motions are in every way comparable to the motions of conventional aircraft—a familiar one at last!

Straight-away speed run. This maneuver also can be similar to the corresponding maneuver of conventional craft, but can be different in that it is just as apt to be vertical as horizontal or any angle in between.

Tilt to maneuver. While not actually a maneuver, this observation, which I have confirmed, is important. UFOs tilt to perform all maneuvers. For example, they sit level to hover, tilt forward to move forward, tilt backward to stop, bank to turn, etc.

PERFORMANCE

Speed. Speeds to about 9,000 miles per hour have been measured by radar at 60,000 feet altitude at Goose Bay, Labrador; by radar near 18,000 feet altitude over the Gulf of Mexico; and eyeballed between landmarks at about this speed and 3,500 feet altitude over Hampton Roads, Virginia.

Acceleration. The literature on unconventional objects is filled with adjectives of superlative degree to describe accelerations, but there are no numbers. Here my sightings and calculations can help; they place minimum values of observed accelerations at the order of 100 times Earth-surface gravity on two occasions, once for spheres and once for a big dirigible. (This is an order of magnitude more than Earth vehicles of comparable size, but far less than some small tube-launched or gun-launched missiles.)

Some reported sudden disappearances are quite likely cases of extreme acceleration, which may be beyond the comprehension of the testifying witness and even the case investigator. The major report pattern is either that they disappear with lightning speed or incredible swiftness or that they move off slowly.

Altitude. A half-dozen sightings of unconventional objects by orbiting astronauts place operating altitudes at near 200 nautical miles. This figure would seem to qualify these objects as space-worthy, non-atmospheric phenomena, possibly spacecraft.

SOUND

Hum, buzz, or whine. These are the characteristic sounds of the UFO at close quarters. The sound rises in both pitch and intensity seconds before and during takeoff from hovering or landed condition. Sometimes moving UFOs make a slight swish-of-air sound. At other times, the observer is greeted with absolute silence.

Unconventional objects seldom create a roar or boom, even when moving at supersonic speed.

SOLIDITY

Unconventional objects have solid surfaces. This characteristic is attested to by those who have touched them, rapped on them, and listened to the thud or the whine of ricocheting bullets from rifle and point-blank pistol fire.

LANDING

The main pattern is that UFOs let down retractable landing gear before landing. The gear leaves well-defined prints in the contacted surfaces.

WEIGHT

Landing gear imprints are defined well enough to make weight estimates possible. The weight estimates indicate that modest-sized unconventional objects weigh tons.

NESTS AND RINGS

Saucers landing without use of gear in reeds or soft terrain leave saucer nests.

Low-hovering saucers sometimes swirl down grass rings.

Hovering saucers at times form chemically and physically altered annular rings in the earth itself. These are called saucer rings.

Hovering saucers at times leave evidence of charred roots or wilted plants.

PROPULSION

Unconventional objects have no visible means of support. They have no externally visible engines, power plant, or other visible means of locomotion or propulsion. As one witness put it, So whatever made it go, I don't know, Pattern-wise, jet propulsion is absent (see Section XII).

PROPULSIVE FORCES

Assuming unconventional objects don't neutralize their nertial mass, the accelerations displayed place the propulsive forces at high values, too high to be accounted for by any aerodynamic principle.

FORCE FIELDS

Analysis of direct physical evidence shows that unconventional objects employ force fields. Invisible forces bend down or even break tree branches; bump or slow automobiles, sometimes spinning them out of control or even tipping them over; and stop people by force and even knock them down, among other observations.

RADIATION

Unconventional objects are highly radioactive (see Section IV).

MERGING SYSTEMS

Spheres and saucers have on numerous occasions been seen to separate from the large cylinders and dirigibles and re-merge with them. The small objects move with the large object as a swarm, or dart away at high speed in different directions, some swiftly returning.

OCCUPANTS

Occupants have been seen to disembark from and to re-board unconventional objects. On occasion, one or two occupants are seen. On other occasions, several occupants seem to work as a team or crew.

COLLECTING

Unconventional objects and their occupants engage in collecting things such as plants, minerals, and water, both manually and by automated processes such as suction hoses.

INTERFERENCE

Unconventional objects interrupt all electric circuitry, burn out batteries, and stop gasoline engines, but they don't affect diesel engines.

WEAPONRY

Unconventional objects employ heat beams, paralyzing beams, and force beams as tools and weapons, generally applied in moderation.

ARTIFACTS

Artifacts are hard to obtain, and even more difficult to prove bona fide. The most outstanding artifact is a fine white filament, left in the wake of unconventional vehicles, known as angel hair. It may be gathered by witnesses but disappears by sublimation, a direct change from the solid to the gaseous state of matter.

OVER AND UNDER WATER

Unconventional objects have been observed submerging into and emerging from bodies of water, as well as floating on the surface, often enough to form a pattern.

HABITS

UFOs at times appear in much greater numbers than usual. The resulting increase in the rate of UFO sightings and reports is called a flap. A flap may be confined to a single continent or may be worldwide. Flaps occur on a cyclic basis with two years being one of the periods.

UFOs appear to have preferred observational habits. Among preferred snooping sites are defense installations, hydroelectric installations, dams, and lakes. They also give preference to lone individuals or small groups and to isolated cars. They are sometimes attracted by blinking light signals.

UFOs are most often observed at dusk or early evening. They are frequently seen traveling or maneuvering over water, just off shore. They sometimes return to a given area within minutes or hours or return the following day, as though they had not concluded their observations.

Individuals may be taken aboard for examination. In some cases, the person remembers the experience; in others, recall appears possible under hypnosis.

This UFO pattern—represented by this brief outline—contains the essentials of existing UFO data. This pattern in its entirety is all we have on which to base an understanding of the unconventional objects.

Having briefly reviewed the pattern, one can see what all the fuss has been about. If all this is true, the old dead universe many astronomers believed in is gone; the new live universe they now accept is verified, with exobiology assuming major importance; new viewpoints are given to old mythologies; religions are affected; ideas about space-travel difficulties are shattered; interest in exploration beyond the solar system is heightened; all natural sciences are given tremendous impetus; emotional involvements will be heightened; dogma of all types will be shattered. With the entire twentieth century being a period of scientific revolution, the establishment of unconventional objects as fact would add much to the revolutions, perhaps a quantum jump as some have suggested.

Be all that as it may, the process of acceptance takes time. Anyone who has read Dr. Thomas S. Kuhn's fascinating book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, must know that the acceptance of the UFO has to be the gradual process that it is turning out to be because it is man's nature, and scientific history, that old ideas are discarded only after new ideas are firmly established. It often takes new generations to squarely face new facts. Dr. Kuhn says:

No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomena; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all. Nor do scientists normally aim to invent new theories, and they are often intolerant of those invented by others. Instead, normal-scientific research is directed to the articulation of those phenomena and theories that the paradigm already supplies (p. 24).

Let us assume that crises are a necessary precondition for the emergence of new theories and ask how scientists respond to their existence. Part of the answer, as obvious as it is important, can first be discovered by noting what scientists never do when confronted by severe and even prolonged anomalies. Though they may begin to lose faith and then to consider alternatives, they never renounce the paradigm that led them to the crisis. They do not, that is, treat anomalies as counter instances, though in the vocabulary of philosophy of science that is what they are (p. 77).

New facts and theories have to form a neat, logical package before they can be accepted, and justifiably so; otherwise technological chaos would reign. Therein lies the problem. Some degree of technological sense has to be made of the unconventional object, even to make seeing believing. Otherwise, we are still apt to be in mythology, or dealing with the occult. If there be any doubt about this, look how members of occult groups have grabbed the ball and are sprinting with it. They have now been joined by a few parapsychologists who do little better. A prominent parapsychologist, in attempting to link the mind with UFOs, has suggested they are projected here by vast mental powers.

Objective

I seek the answers to unconventional objects in the physical sciences. Indeed, the main questions posed by the UFOs can best be formulated and asked in terms of the engineering sciences. As an example, I support the questioning viewpoint of Dr. Bruce Rogers, expressed in his article in the December 1973 UFO Investigator, entitled UFOs: Their Performance Characteristics. After giving various speed and acceleration performance examples, including the case of the 9000-mph UFO in Goose Bay, Labrador, he duly asks why they don't burn up when moving at such speeds in the earth's atmosphere, and how the occupants can stand the high accelerations. Continuing the engineering science view, he questions how the vast power needed to drive them can be packaged in the limited space available, pointing out that an atomic power plant would never fit. Dr. Rogers concludes, There is much that is mystifying about UFOs, and woefully little information about them. But, there is one thing about which there can be no doubt. Whoever builds and operates these vehicles possess a technology incredibly advanced beyond anything known on our planet.

UFOs are indeed a technological challenge, and serious work to explain them in terms of the physical sciences is long overdue. Professor James Harder is one of the prominent scientists who have repeatedly expressed this view for a number of years. In the APRO Bulletin for March/April 1973, he said:

Who among UFO investigators has not wished for a clear, closeup, detailed photograph of a UFO? And what would it prove? Surely it would help settle the question, still on some agendas, of whether UFOs actually exist. . . however, is it not time to go beyond that issue to a host of scientific problems and questions that are raised once one has accepted the fact of UFO existence? It seems to me that we should be well into a second phase of UFO investigations in which the object is not so much to prove the existence of UFOs as to try and understand more about them.

The main objective of the analyses in this book is to present what can be explained of the UFO pattern in terms of today's scientific principles. If much of the pattern can be so explained, those crying defying the laws of physics will be discredited, making the UFO more understandable and therefore more acceptable. For the reasons stated by Dr. Kuhn, a lot of scientific sense has to be made of the UFO enigma to make UFOs acceptable. In simple terms, pieces of the jigsaw puzzle have to be fitted into place to the point where the casual observer can see the picture forming. Then the clever bystander, always present, can suggest a piece here and there to aid the progress as well as to correct misfits, for teamwork is essential in the end. But a start must be made.

Early Beginnings

I made my beginning analysis of unconventional object maneuvers in the 1950s. This work was no doubt stimulated by my sighting of unconventional objects on July 16, 1952. My sighting was made at the peak of the flap for that year, tightly sandwiched between the July 14 Pan American Airways sighting in my own neighborhood and the great Washington D.C. flap on July 19, 1952. My sighting was investigated by Project Blue Book, classified as unknown, and given first public mention by Major Edward Ruppelt on pages 157-58 in his Report on Unidentified Flying Objects.

My background of flight experiments with rocket-supported platforms was pertinent to the understanding of the control of unconventional objects, that is, to the understanding of how they maneuver. It enabled me to correlate their tilt-to-control maneuvers fifteen years before that idea came to a member of the Condon Project. In his book, Dr. David Saunders says, ... information might be gleaned from a careful analysis of the relation (if any) between attitude changes (tilting) of a single UFO and changes in its direction, or speed of flight. Questions along these lines were a part of my UFO reporting questionnaire that the project never got around to using (p. 232).

While I did not invent the idea of flying platforms, I built the first ones capable of flight testing and capable of testing flight maneuvers. They were of the type which tilt-to-control, the thrust remaining coincident with the axis of symmetry. I did not realize until after I had experienced the superb controllability of my device that unconventional objects might be controlled on the same principles. If this thought was correct, I had a nearly perfect piece of equipment for simulating their maneuvers. Another encouraging aspect was that saucer UFOs even looked like a flying platform.

I was soon doing the pendulum-rock and falling leaf, the sudden reversals, banking-to-turn, and the silver-dollar wobble, surely the first UFO maneuver flight simulations. I did them as much because they came naturally and I enjoyed doing them, as for any other reason. Although some data about some of them, such as the falling leaf and sudden reversals, was common even then, data about others, such as the bank-to-turn, was in short supply and the experiments were almost ahead of the data. But as the data rolled in through the 1950s, the correctness of the UFO maneuver simulations became more and more evident. By the time I saw the Tremonton, Utah, movies of maneuvering disks (see Section XI) in slow and stop motion, in which I could make out the circular planforms and the edge-on fadeouts as well as the elliptic in-between on banking turns, I was totally convinced that the analysis of UFO maneuvers as presented in Section XI is the correct one.

I was prevented from making any pronouncements about this application of my work by official National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) policy. That policy was that flying saucers are nonexistent. The NACA Director, Dr. Hugh L. Dryden, made a public pronouncement to that effect at about that time, and I had been instructed by my superior in official channels that my name could not be used in connection with my sighting or in any way that would implicate the NACA with these objects. NACA research officials were all scientists with management training in which the necessity for unambiguous policy had been emphasized. Clearly, I was destined to remain as unidentified as the flying objects. When the name of the organization was changed from NACA to NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the same officials remained in charge, and one could notice no change in policy. The only difference was that individuals were going into space; when astronauts sighted unknowns in space, a grounded official couldn't rationally contradict them. But they could shut them off the air (APRO Bulletin, February 1976).

Rationale and Disciplines in the Analyses

The rationale used in the analyses is primarily simple logic, and the usual fitting of evidence to theory in what has come to be accepted as the scientific method. Perhaps the previous paragraphs regarding the fitting of flight maneuver data to a control theory is a fair example, although we are not usually so fortunate as to have laboratory simulations.

In some cases, a process of elimination is used, a process suggested by that fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, whose admonition was to first eliminate the impossible, for it is in the remaining possibilities, however improbable, that the answers are to be found. Since impossible is a dangerous word