Ancillary Mercy полностью

An August Gallup poll reported that 90 percent of the adult population had heard of flying saucers; most considered them to be illusions, hoaxes, secret weapons, or other explainable phenomena; a small number believed them to be from outer space.³⁹ Interesting sightings continued to occur, however, several of which involved U.S. military personnel. Sometime during the summer, a navy commander saw a disc-shaped UFO over the airport in Pittsburg, Kansas. In Media, Pennsylvania, an air force pilot reported a disc hovering and speeding away.⁴⁰

An interesting case was related by the Signal Corps of the Alaska Communication System to the commanding general of the 4th Air Force in San Francisco. The report stated:

Capt. Jack Peck and his copilot, Vince Daly, have stated that on August 4, 1947, they sighted and followed a flying saucer northwest of Bethel, Alaska. This object was bigger than the Douglas DC-3 they were flying, crossed their course at right angles to them. It was flying at an altitude of one thousand feet. They swung in behind it and followed it at an air speed of one hundred seventy miles per hour, but it was out of sight in four minutes. They state the object was smooth surfaced and streamlined with no visible means of propulsion whatever.

The report emphasized the excellent reputation of Captain Peck and added that “no one here doubts in the least but that he actually saw this object.” The sighting report was forwarded to Air Defense Command.⁴¹

U.S. military personnel in Guam reported two objects—“small, crescent-shaped, and traveling at a speed twice that of a fighter plane”—flying in a zigzag motion over Harmon Field on August 14 at 10:40 A.M. The objects flew westerly at 1,200 feet and disappeared into clouds. A few seconds later, a single object, possibly one of those just seen, emerged from clouds and proceeded west.⁴² Later that week, an air force major at Rapid City AFB in South Dakota saw “approximately twelve objects flying a tight diamond-shaped formation.” The objects were elliptical-shaped, silent, and glowed yellow-white. The official air force evaluation: birds. On August 19, in Twin Falls, Idaho (near the sighting six days earlier), residents and police saw a group of twelve strange objects “flying in formation over the city ... at terrific speed.” The air force explained this, too, as birds.⁴³

Within the higher levels of the military, there was—Ruppelt again—“confusion to the point of panic.” A few senior officers in the Pentagon probably knew what was going on at ATIC. Overall, “the UFO security lid was down tight.”⁴⁴

General Schulgen was not one of those officers in the know, but wanted to be one. At the end of July he decided to make a direct request to the Air Material Command, which housed the labs and resources best able to identify the flying saucers. He prepared an “Estimate of the Situation” (not the famous Estimate of 1948), which concluded that the discs were mechanical aerial objects, and probably part of a highly classified U.S. project. Schulgen then sat on this document for a month. He sent it to Twining’s office at AMC in late August, along with a request for information about flying saucers.⁴⁵ Before we consider Twining’s response, we must review the Maury Island affair.

THE MAURY ISLAND SAGA

The Maury Island affair shows a singular interest by U.S. intelligence agencies in flying saucers. The most complete account about it came from Kenneth Arnold, who investigated the events and wrote about them at length in his 1952 book, The Coming of the Saucers.⁴⁶ The air force stated the case was a hoax, and Ruppelt concurred in his book. In the 1990s, however, several researchers began revising their conclusions about the case, based on a careful reading of Arnold’s account and renewed investigations.