In mid-July, Keyhoe met with the Senate Chief Investigator Healey regarding air force secrecy about UFOs. Keyhoe spoke strongly about the cover-up and the “silence group.” He showed Healey the Grudge Report, released by the air force in December 1949. Keyhoe appears to have persuaded Healey that most of the answers to the report’s 244 cases were “sheer speculation” or “deliberately fitted.” He also presented Gen. Joe Kelly’s letter to Lee Metcalf, indicating genuine air force interest in UFOs and conceding that pursuits of UFOs continued. There is no question that some senators took UFOs seriously. Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater wrote to one of his constituents on August 31, 1957, that “I, frankly, feel there is a great deal to this.”21
During the summer of 1957, the Air Defense Command disbanded the 4602nd and reassigned UFO investigating duties to the 1006th Air Intelligence Service Squadron (AISS). (Clark has the 4602nd disbanding a year sooner.) Soon after, the air force reduced funds for the 1006th, impairing its investigative ability. Meanwhile, the army reimposed a UFO secrecy order in August, after NICAP protests had prompted its removal the previous spring.22
SUMMER 1957: CRASHES, NEAR COLLISIONS, OPENING FIRE, AND SILENCE
As NICAP confronted the air force over UFO secrecy, sightings and encounters occurred worldwide. One of the classic radar-visual UFO cases took place on July 17, 1957. A six-man crew, including three electronic warfare officers, was flying a USAF RB-47, equipped with state-of-the-art electronic intelligence gear. The crew obtained a strange radar signal over Mississippi, at first thought to be an anomaly. Soon, however, they saw an intense blue light moving toward them very fast. Before they could take evasive action, the object streaked by in front of them. For many hours, the crew continued to see the object while obtaining multiple air and ground radar signals (including ground radar from an air force unit in Duncanville, Texas). The object’s maneuverability was extraordinary: at one point it stopped suddenly and the RB-47 flew past it; at another point it easily pulled away when the RB-47 accelerated to 550 mph; at yet another point it blinked out visually and on radar simultaneously, then reappeared a little later. All instruments were functioning perfectly, and the experienced crew was extremely uneasy about their escort. After accompanying the crew for eight hundred miles, the UFO disappeared over Oklahoma City. Air Defense Command intelligence and Blue Book investigated the encounter, although no printed account appeared before the Condon report of 1968. Condon Committee investigator Gordon David Thayer declared the case unexplained, and later described the official air force explanation (“airliner”) as “literally ridiculous.”23
On the same day as the RB-47 incident, an airliner one hundred miles east of El Paso nearly collided with a UFO “at least the size of a B-47.” Two passengers were injured and hospitalized; no known aircraft was near.24
On July 24, it appears, Soviet anti-aircraft batteries on the Kouril Islands opened fire on UFOs. According to a Reuters news dispatch:
Last night, the batteries of the Kouril Islands have opened fire on UFOs. Japanese authorities have reported that the whole of the Soviet artillery was in action and that powerful searchlights were searching the sky. The guns have fired again in the morning.
The U.S. Air Force stated that no American craft flew near Soviet coasts. Radio Moscow quoted the U.S. communique and stated that the objects fired upon were luminous, flew very fast, and none had been hit. Although the encounter may well have happened as indicated, we must recall that the KGB spent immense sums on disinformation, that no information left the Soviet Union without state sanction; also that the Americans could easily have been lying about not violating Soviet airspace—U-2s did this all the time. Still,
