shooting
star" in the direction of Montgomery, Alabama, at about the exact
time the Eastern Airlines DC-3 was "buzzed."

According to the old timers at ATIC, this report shook them worse
than the Mantell Incident. This was the first time two reliable
sources had been really close enough to anything resembling a UFO to
get a good look and live to tell about it. A quick check on a map
showed that the UFO that nearly collided with the airliner would have
passed almost over Macon, Georgia, after passing the DC-3. It had
been turning toward Macon when last seen. The story of the crew chief
at Robins AFB, 200 miles away, seemed to confirm the sighting, not to
mention the report from near the Virginia-North Carolina state line.

In intelligence, if you have something to say about some vital
problem you write a report that is known as an "Estimate of the
Situation." A few days after the DC-3 was buzzed, the people at ATIC
decided that the time had arrived to make an Estimate of the
Situation. The situation was the UFO's; the estimate was that they
were interplanetary!

It was a rather thick document with a black cover and it was printed
on legal-sized paper. Stamped across the front were the words TOP
SECRET.

It contained the Air Force's analysis of many of the incidents I
have told you about plus many similar ones. All of them had come from
scientists, pilots, and other equally credible observers, and each
one was an unknown.

The document pointed out that the reports hadn't actually started
with the Arnold Incident. Belated reports from a weather observer in
Richmond, Virginia, who observed a "silver disk" through his
theodolite telescope; an F-47 pilot and three pilots in his formation
who saw a "silver flying wing," and the English "ghost airplanes"
that had been picked up on radar early in 1947 proved this point.
Although reports on them were not received until after the Arnold
sighting, these incidents all had taken place earlier.

When the estimate was completed, typed, and approved, it started up
through channels to higher-command echelons. It drew considerable
comment but no one stopped it on its way up.

A matter of days after the Estimate of the Situation was signed,
sealed, and sent on its way, the third big sighting of 1948, Volume
III of "The Classics," took place. The date was October 1, and the
place was Fargo, North Dakota; it was the famous Gorman Incident, in
which a pilot fought a "duel of death"