tion a
few big questions would have popped up and taken some of the intrigue
out of the two reports. It took me a year to put the question marks
together because I just picked up the information as I happened to
run across it, but it could have been collected in a day of
concentrated effort.

There was some doubt about the visual sighting of the "large fiery-
orange-colored sphere" that the tower operators at Andrews AFB saw
when the radar operators at National Airport told them they had a
target over the Andrews Radio range station. When the tower operators
were later interrogated they completely changed their story and said
that what they saw was merely a star. They said that on the night of
the sighting they "had been excited." (According to astronomical
charts, there were no exceptionally bright stars where the UFO was
seen over the range station, however. And I heard from a good source
that the tower men had been "persuaded" a bit.)

Then the pilot of the F-94C changed his mind even after he'd given
the press and later told me his story about vainly trying to
intercept unidentified lights. In an official report he says that all
he saw was a ground light reflecting off a layer of haze.

Another question mark arose about the lights that the airline pilots
saw. Months after the sighting I heard from one of the pilots whom
the ARTC controllers called to learn if he could see a UFO. This
man's background was also impressive, he had been flying in and out
of Washington since 1936. This is what he had to say:

The most outstanding incident happened just after a take-off one
night from Washington National. The tower man advised us that there
was a UFO ahead of us on the take-off path and asked if we would aid
in tracking it down. We were given headings to follow and shortly we
were advised that we had passed the UFO and would be given a new
heading. None of us in the cockpit had seen anything unusual. Several
runs were made; each time the tower man advised us we were passing
the UFO we noticed that we were over one certain section of the
Potomac River, just east of Alexandria. Finally we were asked to
visually check the terrain below for anything which might cause such
an illusion. We looked and the only object we could see where the
radar had a target turned out to be the Wilson Lines moonlight
steamboat trip to Mount Vernon. Whether there was an altitude gimmick
on the radar unit at the time I do not know but the ra