e he thought he
was--that he never did fly around the northern edge of the field and
get in behind the UFO--then the UFO could have been a balloon.

But if you want to believe that the pilot knew where he was all
during the chase, and he did have several thousand hours of flying
time, then all you can conclude is that the UFO was an unknown.

I think the pilot summed up the situation very aptly when he told me, "I
don't know what it was, but I've never seen anything like it before or
since--maybe it was a spaceship."

I went back to Dayton stumped--maybe it was a spaceship.

CHAPTER TEN

Project Blue Book and the Big Build-Up

Just twenty minutes after midnight on January 22, 1952, nineteen and
a half hours after the Navy lieutenant commander had chased the UFO
near Mitchel AFB, another incident involving an airplane and
something unknown was developing in Alaska. In contrast with the
unusually balmy weather in New York, the temperature in Alaska that
night, according to the detailed account of the incident we received
at ATIC, was a miserable 47 degrees below zero. The action was
unfolding at one of our northernmost radar outposts in Alaska. This
outpost was similar to those you may have seen in pictures, a
collection of low, sprawling buildings grouped around the observatory-
-like domes that house the antennae of the most modern radar in the
world. The entire collection of buildings and domes are one color,
solid white, from the plastering of ice and snow. The picture that
the outpost makes could be described as fascinating, something out of
a Walt Disney fantasy--but talk to somebody who's been there--it's
miserable.

At 0020, twenty minutes after midnight, an airman watching one of
the outpost's radarscopes saw a target appear. It looked like an
airplane because it showed up as a bright, distinct spot. But it was
unusual because it was northeast of the radar site, and very few
airplanes ever flew over this area. Off to the northeast of the
station there was nothing but ice, snow, and maybe a few Eskimos
until you got to Russia. Occasionally a B-50 weather reconnaissance
plane ventured into the area, but a quick check of the records showed
that none was there on this night.

By the time the radar crew had gotten three good plots of the
target, they all knew that it was something unusual--it was at 23,000
feet and traveling 1,500 miles an hour. The duty controller, an Air
Force captain, was quickly cal