Bertrand took the debunking as a personal insult and complained to the air force. In late November, Quintanilla sent an undated and unpostmarked letter to Bertrand and Hunt, which explained the Exeter sighting as a high-altitude military exercise that occurred between midnight and 2 A.M. (giving the date of September 2, 1965). He stated the case was still in the process of final evaluation. Bertrand and Hunt wrote back on November 2, unequivocal about what they saw, and asked for a letter to clear their names. They received no response and wrote again on December 28. Finally, on February 9, 1966, the Pentagon wrote to Bertrand and Hunt that the Exeter sighting was unidentified, but that air force experience in these matters proved “almost conclusively” that UFOs were all either man-made, natural phenomena, or caused by celestial bodies or meteors.63
Philip Klass and Robert Sheaffer both tried to debunk this case. In fact, it marked Klass’s entry (a year later) into the field of UFO research, as he attempted to explain the case as ball lightning. No scientist took his theory seriously. Sheaffer claimed that the witnesses saw the planet Jupiter.64
In terms of drama and quality of the UFO sighting, the incident at Exeter could not easily be topped. Yet, the following night—still September 3, 1965, at 11 P.M.—in Brazoria County, Texas, near the town of Damon, another extraordinary encounter occurred. Two area sheriffs saw a huge object from their car, over two hundred feet long and about fifty feet high. It had a bright, violet light at one end and a pale-blue light at the other. They stopped to watch it and saw the craft fly to within one hundred feet of them, casting a huge shadow when it passed by the moon. They felt a wave of heat and drove away in fear. They decided to return to the site but turned back around when they saw the object still there. One of the men had been bitten by an animal before the sighting, and his left index finger was swollen and bleeding. After exposure to the light from the object, however, the pain was gone, and the wound healed quickly. Both officers were badly shaken by the incident. Later that evening, two men found one of the officers at a restaurant and described the object in detail, adding he should keep future encounters to himself. The incident was, however, reported to NICAP.
Hector Quintanilla initially explained the Damon sighting as a star or planet. But the local air force investigating officer reported:
After talking with both officers involved in the sighting, there is no doubt in my mind that they definitely saw some unusual object or phenomenon.... Both officers appeared to be intelligent, mature, level-headed persons capable of sound judgment and reasoning.
This forced Quintanilla to reverse his original debunking explanation and label the sighting unidentified.65
On September 23, in the Mexican city of Cuernavaca, a major blackout coincided with the appearance of a glowing, disc-shaped UFO hovering low over the city. Witnesses included the governor, Emilie Riva Palacie, the city’s mayor, and a military zone chief.66
AIR FORCE CRISIS OF CREDIBILITY
In the past, the Blue Book policy of debunking all UFO sightings helped to submerge the problem. Now it only worsened matters. By early September, as a result of the recent sightings, many newspapers demanded better air force investigations of UFOs. An editorial in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram stated:
They can stop kidding us now about there being no such thing as “flying saucers.” Too many people of obviously sound mind saw and reported independently from too many separate localities. Their descriptions of what they saw are too similar to one another and too unlike any familiar object. It is becoming clear to many that the air force explanations succeed only in making the air force look ridiculous.67
On September 28, the air force responded to Hynek’s suggestion for a more serious UFO investigation and recommended more support for Blue Book. It called for
a working scientific panel composed of both physical and social scientists [to] be organized to review Project Blue Book—its resources, methods, and findings—to advise the AF as to any improvements that should be made in the program to carry out the AF’s assigned responsibility68
