it allowed us to start
investigating the better reports before they cooled off. But it also
had its disadvantages. It authorized the sender to use whatever
priority he thought the message warranted. Some things are slow in
the military, but a priority message is not one of them. When it
comes into the message center, it is delivered to the addressee
immediately, and for some reason, all messages reporting UFO's seemed
to arrive between midnight and 4:00A.M. I was considered the
addressee on all UFO reports. To complicate matters, the messages
were usually classified and I would have to go out to the air base
and personally sign for them.

One such message came in about 4:30A.M. on May 8, 1952. It was from
a CAA radio station in Jacksonville, Florida, and had been forwarded
over the Flight Service teletype net. I received the usual telephone
call from the teletype room at Wright-Patterson, I think I got
dressed, and I went out and picked up the message. As I signed for it
I remember the night man in the teletype room said, "This is a lulu,
Captain."

It was a lulu. About one o'clock that morning a Pan-American
airlines DC-4 was flying south toward Puerto Rico. A few hours after
it had left New York City it was out over the Atlantic Ocean, about
600 miles off Jacksonville, Florida, flying at 8,000 feet. It was a
pitch-black night; a high overcast even cut out the glow from the
stars. The pilot and copilot were awake but really weren't
concentrating on looking for other aircraft because they had just
passed into the San Juan Oceanic Control Area and they had been
advised by radio that there were no other airplanes in the area. The
copilot was turning around to look at number four engine when he
noticed a light up ahead. It looked like the taillight of another
airplane. He watched it closely for a few seconds since no other
airplanes were supposed to be in the area. He glanced out at number
four engine for a few seconds, looked back, and he saw that the light
was in about the same position as when he'd first seen it. Then he
looked down at the prop controls, synchronized the engines, and
looked up again. In the few seconds that he had glanced away from the
light, it had moved to the right so that it was now directly ahead of
the DC-4, and it had increased in size. The copilot reached over and
slapped the pilot on the shoulder and pointed. Just at that instant
the light began to get bigger and bigger until it was "ten tim