On June 2, the air force reported eighty-seven UFO sightings for the first four months of the year, a rather low total. Shortly afterward, however, Col. John O‘Mara, deputy commander of intelligence at ATIC, told Stringfield something a little different: that the air force was receiving an average of seven hundred sighting reports per week! Soon, Frank Edwards announced the news to the whole country. Stringfield was becoming quite a nuisance. Then, on June 9, Col. Frank Milani, Director of Civil Defense in Baltimore, publicly attacked air force UFO secrecy. The air force denied any UFO secrecy or censorship and restated its 1954 UFO statistics. Back in Dayton, however, O’Mara said over one thousand scientists were working on the UFO problem. The air force PIO denied O’Mara said this. Finally, Blue Book chief Capt. Charles Hardin told the press:
Colonel O’Mara’s words were misinterpreted. What he meant to say was that if all the sightings were reported to the air force, they would total about seven hundred per week.67
A rather weak correction, and not enough to stop UFO news. On June 12, Baltimore GOC members spotted a UFO shortly before midnight. Soon after, Ground Observer Corps (GOC) radar in Delaware tracked a very large object that stopped and hovered near the Capitol. Jets located it, but could not climb high enough. Two days later, a large UFO returned to the Washington-Baltimore area. Again, Air Defense Command scrambled jets, and again the jets could not reach the object.68
SUMMER 1954—ONCE AGAIN, MATTERS GET OUT OF CONTROL
To make sense of the past, historians must do more than record events. The sheer quantity of data forces us to select carefully and to shape an interpretation that makes the most sense. The process is never neat, it always involves errors in judgment that can only be seen at a distance, and it must always undergo revision. The summer of 1954 illustrates these problems. A typical history of UFOs focuses on the events of 1947, early air force interest, the periods of Sign and Grudge, the Great Wave of 1952, and the Robertson Panel. Then, it would seem, not much happened until the 1960s. Certainly this is a reasonable conclusion from reviewing the Blue Book files—the typical approach. From over two hundred Blue Book unknowns in 1952, there were only thirty-two in 1953, forty-six in 1954, and a mere twenty in 1955.
There was a drop in UFO activity during these years and, to an extent, the rest of the 1950s. Yet, the drop-off was less significant than official data indicate. As we have seen, Blue Book became a marginal operation after 1953. All these years later, we still do not know the true number of UFO reports that were made by U.S. government agencies during the 1950s, nor any other era. Sometimes a researcher’s doggedness pays off, and a new report surfaces. How many elude us? All we can say with confidence is that many UFO reports were not part of an official, public system, and undoubtedly there are many we will never see.
As we have seen many times by now, Blue Book did not receive many of the best UFO reports. Despite so-called CIA disbelief in UFOs, the agency monitored them worldwide. A June 18, 1954, report from French Equatorial Africa described a luminous globe suddenly stop, rise, drop, stop, gyrate, and shake. Some noise previously heard stopped. The center appeared dark, but rays of light emanated out. After fifteen minutes of observation, the object shot away.69
That the CIA’s reports escaped Blue Book is understandable, due to the agency’s worldwide scope. But many cases within the United States continued to remain outside of Blue Book. Consider a dramatic UFO chase that took place on June 23, 1954, was obtained by Keyhoe, and confirmed by an air traffic controller before the military forced him into silence. Just after 8 P.M., Lt. Harry L. Roe, Jr., was flying an F-51 Mustang fighter from Columbus to Dayton, Ohio. He saw a “brilliant white light” race down and pace him. Roe swerved left, then right, then slowed down suddenly. Each time, the light stayed with him. As he approached Dayton, he radioed the CAA tower at Vandalia Airport and asked the traffic controller, George Barnes, if he could see it. The light was too bright for either man to see the actual object, but both saw it pace Roe’s aircraft precisely, no matter what maneuver Roe attempted. Finally, the UFO passed the F-51 and vanished toward the southeast.
Barnes’s report quickly reached Intelligence at Wright-Patterson, and Roe was told not to discuss his encounter. However, enough people already knew the story, and it leaked to AP. Barnes confirmed the report when he assumed the air force had released it, and Roe admitted it as well, adding that he had been silenced by the air force.70
