e "night fighter"--if I'd have shot it I'd
have fouled up the astronomers but good because the "night fighter"
was Venus.

While the people on Project Sign were pondering over Lieutenant
Gorman's dogfight with the UFO--at the time they weren't even
considering the balloon angle--the Top Secret Estimate of the
Situation was working its way up into the higher echelons of the Air
Force. It got to the late General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, then Chief of
Staff, before it was batted back down. The general wouldn't buy
interplanetary vehicles. The report lacked proof. A group from ATIC
went to the Pentagon to bolster their position but had no luck, the
Chief of Staff just couldn't be convinced.

The estimate died a quick death. Some months later it was completely
declassified and relegated to the incinerator. A few copies, one of
which I saw, were kept as mementos of the golden days of the UFO's.

The top Air Force command's refusal to buy the interplanetary theory
didn't have any immediate effect upon the morale of Project Sign
because the reports were getting better.

A belated report that is more of a collectors' item than a good UFO
sighting came into ATIC in the fall of 1948. It was from Moscow.
Someone, I could never find out exactly who, reported a huge "smudge-
like" object in the sky.

Then radar came into the picture. For months the anti-saucer
factions had been pointing their fingers at the lack of radar
reports, saying, "If they exist, why don't they show up on
radarscopes?" When they showed up on radarscopes, the UFO won some
converts.

On October 15 an F-61, a World War II "Black Widow" night fighter,
was on patrol over Japan when it picked up an unidentified target on
its radar. The target was flying between 5,000 and 6,000 feet and
traveling about 200 miles per hour. When the F-61 tried to intercept
it would get to within 12,000 feet of the UFO only to have it
accelerate to an estimated 1,200 miles per hour, leaving the F-61 far
behind before slowing down again. The F-61 crew made six attempts to
close on the UFO. On one pass, the crew said, they did get close
enough to see its silhouette. It was 20 to 30 feet long and looked
"like a rifle bullet."

Toward the end of November a wire came into Project Sign from
Germany. It was the first report where a UFO was seen and
simultaneously picked up on radar. This type of report, the first of
many to come, is one of the better types of UFO reports. The wire said: