Despite a number of well-documented UFO sightings, NICAP remained stalled in its efforts to break the secrecy throughout 1964. On the other side of the fence, the air force was also stymied in its efforts to unload the Blue Book program. Allen Hynek was showing signs that he was no longer a certain air force ally. Moreover, Gen. Curtis LeMay’s autobiographical
There is no question about it. These were things which we could not tie in with any natural phenomena known to our investigators.... There were some cases we could not explain. Never could.35
Such developments were generally ignored by the public, of which less than 20 percent believed in UFOs, according to various polls and private estimates by both the air force and NICAP. The air force reinforced such negative public perceptions on January 25, 1965, with the statement that only 2 percent of the UFO cases of the past five years had not been solved.36
The dam broke in 1965. The UFO activity of 1964 was a whisper compared with the following year. Along with the dramatic increase in sightings, there was an explosion of UFO-related literature, including the first significant discussions of the abduction phenomenon.
Incredibly, air force official statistics provide fewer unidentifieds for 1965 (sixteen) than for the previous year, although the number of reports received nearly doubled, to about nine hundred. But the Blue Book numbers were a small fraction of the total story. Flying saucers were being reported in great numbers around the world. Indeed, one of the early interesting reports of the year came from Waihoke, New Zealand, where a ring on the ground at the location of a UFO sighting remained visible for four years. The site contained a high concentration of an unidentified whitish material which resolved into fibers during an oil immersion test. Philip Klass said the material was from the urine of sheep feeding from some circular device; Vallee, who had the results of the tests, said the material was “vegetal in nature.”37
On January 5, 1965, a large flying disc was seen over the NASA station at Wallops Island, Virginia. The station’s satellite tracking chief calculated its speed at 6,000 mph. On the same day, the navy disclosed that two UFOs had been tracked on radar at the Naval Air Test Center in Maryland. One had made a sharp turn at 4,800 mph. The air force, which was working hard to debunk as many reports as quickly as possible, decided to do something. Therefore, Blue Book chief Hector Quintanilla went to Richmond for a debunking tour. Not a single UFO report was genuine, he told reporters.38
In Washington, D.C., at 4:20 P.M. on January 11, twelve Army communications specialists in the Munitions Building at 19th Street and Constitution Avenue., N.W, saw twelve to fifteen white, oval-shaped objects moving across the sky between twelve thousand to fifteen thousand feet. These objects were also tracked on radar, and two delta-wing jets were soon in pursuit but were easily outmaneuvered. The incident was reported in the Washington Star on January 13. The Pentagon had a ready response to the incident: the army personnel had seen nothing at all. Just in time, as the soldiers had been scheduled for an interview by a local television station. At the scene of the interview, a representative from the Pentagon prevented both military and civilian witnesses from speaking.39
