o the right and 10 degrees
below the F-94. The lock-on was held for ninety seconds as the ground
controller watched both the UFO and the F-94 make a turn and come
toward the ground radar site. Just as the target entered the "ground
clutter"--the permanent and solid target near the radar station
caused by the radar beam's striking the ground--the lock-on was
broken. The target seemed to pull away swiftly from the jet
interceptor. At almost this exact instant the tower operators
reported that they had lost visual contact with the UFO. The tower
called the F-94 and asked if they had seen anything visually during
the chase--they hadn't. The F-94 crew stayed in the area ten or
fifteen more minutes but couldn't see anything or pick up any more
targets on their radar.

Soon after the F-94 left the area, both the ground radar and the
tower operators picked up the UFO again. In about two minutes radar
called the tower to say that their target had just "broken into three
pieces" and that the three "pieces," spaced about a quarter of a mile
apart, were leaving the area, going northeast. Seconds later tower
operators lost sight of the light.

The FEAF intelligence officers had checked every possible angle but
they could offer nothing to account for the sighting.

There were lots of opinions, weather targets for example, but once
again the chances of a weather target's being in exactly the same
direction as a bright star and having the star appear to move with
the false radar target aren't too likely--to say the least. And then
the same type of thing had happened twice before inside of a month's
time, once in California and once in Michigan.

As one of the men at the briefing I gave said, "It's incredible, and
I can't believe it, but those boys in FEAF are in a war--they're
veterans--and by damn, I think they know what they're talking about
when they say they've never seen anything like this before."

I could go into a long discourse on the possible explanations for
this sighting; I heard many, but in the end there would be only one
positive answer--the UFO could not be identified as something we knew
about. It could have been an interplanetary spaceship. Many people
thought this was the answer and were all for sticking their necks out
and establishing a category of conclusions for UFO reports and
labeling it spacecraft. But the majority ruled, and a UFO remained an
_unidentified_ flying object.

On my next trip to the Penta