During the summer of 1966, McDonald met with the Lorenzens at their home and repeated his complaint that Hynek should have spoken out long before. The Lorenzens were unimpressed. McDonald’s complaints about “alleged censorship” did not persuade them, and he appeared to be “totally oblivious to the psychological aspects involved,” whatever that meant. Besides, McDonald had not done much himself. Like Hynek, he had been collecting data for years, “but waited until others had paved the way before publicly stating his own opinions.”97
Hynek, still reeling from the awful publicity he received in March, and further affected by McDonald’s demonstration in his own office, wrote a letter that summer to Science magazine, which publicly contradicted the air force position of the recent Armed Services Committee hearing. He stated that the air force did have unexplained radar reports and photographs of UFOs. He called for an end to witness ridicule and, in a direct slap at Blue Book, stated that a scientific program had never been undertaken regarding UFOs. One should be initiated, he wrote, as soon as possible.98
The air force had reached a dead end in its public handling of the UFO problem. During the summer of 1966, Vallee heard rumors in Europe through “informal channels” that the air force was looking for an excuse to unload UFOs. The problem was “to find a university that was willing to write a negative report after a cursory examination of the facts.” In fact, wrote Vallee, this rumor was taken seriously enough in Paris to prevent the creation of a French UFO investigative committee, where pressure was also rising for something of the sort.99
Meanwhile, UFO sightings continued at a fast rate, including a close-range sighting by a Michigan police officer on June 13 and an investigation by Selfridge AFB. On June 23, Apollo Space Project Engineer Julian Sandoval and other witnesses reported seeing a UFO about three hundred feet long near Albuquerque. It left at an amazing speed, they said, swiftly reaching over 3,000 mph. Through the summer, more close-range sightings were reported throughout the United States.100
AN AUTUMN BARRAGE
The autumn of 1966 may not have equaled the spring in number or quality of UFO sightings, but it still reminded people why all the action was stirring within the air force and elsewhere. On August 20, just before 5 P.M. in Donnybrook, North Dakota, a border patrolman saw a bright, shiny disc on its edge, about thirty feet in diameter, floating down the side of a hill, wobbling from side to side low over the ground. It reached the bottom, then climbed to about one hundred feet and moved across to a small reservoir. The patrolman then saw a dome on top. It hovered briefly and seemed ready to land but tilted back and zoomed into the clouds. Hynek personally interviewed the officer and believed him to be “above reproach.”101
Another sighting occurred in North Dakota on August 24, this time involving Minot AFB. At 10 P.M., an airman reported on base radio that a multicolored light was visible very high in the sky. A team went to the location, confirmed the original unknown, then saw a second, white object pass in front of clouds. The base radar tracked the object, which was as high as 100,000 feet (almost twenty miles). The object rose and descended several times; each time it descended, an air force officer in charge of a missile crew found his radio transmission interrupted by static, even though he was sixty feet below the ground. The object eventually descended to ground level ten to fifteen miles south of the area. The air force sent a strike team to check. Apparently, they saw the object either on the ground or hovering very low. According to the official report:
When the team was about ten miles from the landing site, static disrupted radio contact with them. Five to eight minutes later, the glow diminished, and the UFO took off. Another UFO was visually sighted and confirmed by radar. The one that was first sighted passed beneath the second. Radar also confirmed this. The first made for altitude toward the north, and the second seemed to disappear with the glow of red.
The incident lasted nearly four hours and was confirmed by three different missile sites but failed to reach the press.102
On September 13, 1966, an eleven-year-old in Stirum, North Dakota, saw a disc-shaped object land near a farm. It had a tripod landing gear, two red lights, two white lights, one green light, and a transparent dome. It left so quickly that it appeared to vanish. Two investigators, including an air force lieutenant colonel, went to the site and discovered three round impressions in the ground several inches deep, very compact. In Summerside, Canada, on September 21, eight members of the Royal Canadian air force saw a bright object that flew down rapidly, stopped abruptly, remained at ground level for twenty minutes, then ascended vertically.103
