1 ! t.l TE ;J.tJAE GRQ.~P 2. LOCATION J. SOURCE 10. CONCLUSION Civilian UNIDENTIF.I:ED 4. NUMBER OF OIJICTS 5. LENGTH OF OISI!RYA TION 11. IRIEfl SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS . .3 -4 Seconds 6. TYPE OF OBSERVATION Ground-Visual 9. PHYSICAL EVIDENCE See Case FUe jor Quintanilla DEARBORN OBSERVATORY NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY IIVANSTON, ILLINOIS 60101 , . 5 January 1965 Foreign Technology Division \lright-Patterson Air Force Base D3.yton, Ohio _ Dear Major: I finally got around to callil'1..g "'rho turned in the sighting of' Y 26, 1964. The si,?;lltln.; "'ras i1:ade froi.l a location I am 'fairly familiar 1-1ith rfself---the parking lot. at Sears in Cambridge, Nassachusetts, which was just a few blocks from the Observatory. On a very clear ,. .. one GO~ see the aircraft from Logan Airport and also from Bedford. indicated that this '\>18.S a very clear day with about o.4 cumulus coverage. He was in the parking lot 1rl th his yeYag tvo year old son and had been watching some Fa.irchlds high . . in the sky, and since his son bad been restive in the car, he suggested that they both look up at the sky at the airplanes, and it v7as at that time that he saw this strange elliptical object go across the slcy from about ten degrees ~ to the northeast of the ~ori~on to about forty degrees above the southvest horizon vTbere ... it 1ms cut off by the roof of the Sears store. The duration of the sighting was 'only three or four seconds, and the object moved about fifty or sixty degrees during that ti~e. The state~ent rrade in his original letter that the object was moving 'from 1000 to 3000 seconds of arc per second.at a time is erroneous; he "Was basing that on any miscalculation of Baker-Nunn camera tracking rates. had been one of the men I en~loyed as .a satellite tracker in Iran; he is a -vuy reliable fellow and not eilt 1 J it" excitable. The net result of the rather long phone call with him is simply that the sighting still remains unidentified, and there is no basic discrepancy between the data contained in his letter of Ma~9, 1964 and that given many months later /by telephone. Although there wa.sA one "t-ritness, he is eneireJ.y reliable and was actually trained as an observer, ,ms a pilot, and operated a satellite tracking camera for three and one half years in Iran. It is for this reason that I took the time to talk with him as closely as I did. In 1cy phone call he talked entirely from mewory and had no notes since rzy phone cal:i caught hiu SAtirely by surprise. Yet, except in minor poin"ts, the account v7a.S identical with that given in his original interview. For the record, it might be good to go over a few of the essential points. He said he 1-Tas fairly cynical aoout the J:".atter of flying saucers although he had experience with a rrnn v1!1o had seen, just a few months prior to trJB.t, a fast, flat object which hovel .. ed in the sky and had a falling leaf motion but v~sn't falling. I ediate~ after he had this experience in the Sears parking lot, he made rough pencil notes and later made a more extensive resume lrhich he included in the letter. The time he stated '\iaS 19L}3 but tnis ~.;as Z time. It was actually 3 :J~3 P. M. Eastern Iaylight Saving Time under ve17 good conditions of visibility. Here are some i terus: The trajectory was completely straight. It did pass behind cumulus clouds but did not leave a contrail. At about the same time, there was a contrail that was le:t't by a high flying plane. There '\o7a.S no noise and no trail '\-That ever. At first he thought it was a""\pia.te in a therrno.J.v Hmvever, he decided it couldn't be a plate because it passed behind a cu1~lus cloud. Further, he couldn' t see vte::e the therma.l.,,;ould have cor1e from, and the object wasn't :flipping as it would in a then:al. He thought he could see an edge to the object which lta.s not fuzzy. It seened cocked toward him, and there seemed to be a demarcation between top and bottom. When asked what he would have put up in the sky to simulate the object, he said he would put up two pear~ white picnic plates glued together. He said object had no bumps on it at all. He has no idea at all of what it might have been. He said that if it was an aerodynamic in nature, it should have been in a turn because of its cocked position, but it flew in a com- pletezy straight line. He tried visualizing it as a S'\veptback plane but could not. The hind end was just about the same shnpe as the front--- a pretty good oval. He looked for a trail, and be looked for an apparent change in shape. He could see aircraft at great distances and !dentif'y them. He saw thfee twin-engine Fairchilds. He saw transports coming in tm.,ards Hansco!d; and he heard a transport shortly afterwards but no sound from this object. He di~ not obse..~e through a window but was leaning out of the car trying to point out the transports to his son. As far as color is concerned, he said the object was exactly the color of a metallic surface reflecting cumulus clouds. He put the cumulus at between 2500 and 8000 feet. Although he realizes he cannot tell dis- tances and sizes, he had the intuitive feeling that the object was fifteen to twenty feet in diameter. As far as a pparent size was concerned, it was one-third to one-half the size of the full moon. In appearance, the object appears a ver,y thin ellipsoid vdth a rrajor to minor diameter ratio of approximately 3.5 to 1 . He is naturally curiou s as to '\That the object night have been and wonders whether ,.,e could at this late date check radar. I info:-r.:ed hi r1 that there \-18.3 very little chance of that, but that this could have ceen do:1e he..d we had irru::ediate capability ana if the sighting had been reported i~::eaiately. I quizzed him about the 1000 to 3000 seco::.S.s of arlo! per second, and he e.d.uitted t i:at this vas a gross miscalculation since "':.his Hould give onl y about two de6rees for the total duration of the sighti~g, an1 t~is is entirely out of the question . He also quickly dismissed the idea tr.at it :'light have been a gull riding a ther~al. He said this occurred t o him at the t i1ne he was rral-:.ing the sighting, but it did not jibe with the facts. So ".ie have another unidentified that falls in the general pattern of rapidly flyin2 discs in st=aight trajectories. Despite the shortness of the observation; consider \veight r.ru.st be gi ,-en to -~ne excellence of the obse:rver ,.,~o) in this case) vras trained for specific trat:king of objects in the s:-:y. e -ya e l.n \'la.S .. ln ,on urJ.ng ."~l.S questions arise) I can get in touch state Depart:.:ent trai:1ing: and if any furthe: '.-Ti th him there . Sincerely) J . Allen Hynek MASSACZHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY NEUROSCIENCES RESEARCH PROGRAM PHONE SU-6700 CABLE: NEUllOCNT 110 NEWTON STilEET, BllOOKLINE of6, MASSACHUSETTS Base Commander Hanscom ~ Field Bedford, Mass ' On Wendsday May 26 I observed something which I can only class as an unidentified flying object. Below given are the notes I made immediately after the sighting: , . Place: Car-park in front of Sears & Roebuck Store, Mass. Ave., Cambridge. Time: 19:43 hrs. , [!checked my wrist-watch against WCRB time signal at 20:11 hrs. after the sighting.} Met. Conditions: Estimated 5/10 cumulus,-.. base est. vertical development. Visibility unlimited. ~ppearance of object: .Yery thin ellipsoid as seen, major to minor diameter ratio approximately 3.5:1. Would estimate length of major axis between 1/3 to t/2 full-moon diameter but did not see moon ouc at the time so it is a memor;y comparison . .. . .. . Altitude: Object definitely was above the cumulus. Object was dead white, indicating reflection of cloud upper boundry, also I saw it dissapear behind cloud. As base of cloud was definitely gray, were the object to have passed below the cloud it would have shown white against the background. Course: Estimated ENE. [Position of north estimated from sun-wrist-watch combination, allowing 15 for correction from DST.] FtrS't .st c:.~ ovH'h&~a..G:(, .r 10 Speed: Appeared equivalent to 200 mph at 1,000'. Estimating from a different datum I should guess it at between 1000 to 3000 seconds of arc per second. Time visible: Disregarding short periods when object ed behind clouds I probably tracked it for 35 to 40 of arc at which point it dis~ap~ared behind the roof edge of the Sears store. ' \ EM1J ROUTING SLIP .. NBVtR USB POR APPROVALS, DISAPPROVALS. CONCUR.RBNCES, OR SIMiLAR ACTIONS CII'CULATI I H f'O IINATI'.'JC NOTf AI'IO SIGNATUI'l Attached is report of UFO forwarded to this ottice (dtd 29 Mq 64/P. Wankowicz) FS'!TA/ Lt. - Reolaoe8 DD Form 94, 1 Feb 60 1o11d DD Form 96, 1 Feb SO which will be uaed lllltil ezhu.ted. I had sufficient time for observation t.o determine that the object was not a paper plate or cup being carried up in a thermal n or that it was a n aircraft. During the entire time of observation the outlines of the object did not change indicating that it was maintaining its orientation in space. Its course was parallel to the major axis of the ellipsoid -this destroyed my initial hypothesis that it was a sea-gull in a thermal. A dawing of it is sketched in below: The dotted line is a suggestion o~ an edge or something and was in the position shown. It was not of great contrast to the rest. aenerally the sm~ll visual angle of the object and the brightness of the white coloring or reflection was such that detail was difficult if not impossible to see. The whiteness was of the same quality as the bottom of an aircraft over snow or clouda; I saw a jet high up (leaving a contrail a few minutes before the sight~g)with the same brilliant white reflected and had similar difficulty in trying to pick out engine pods.; There was no smoke trail from the object, nor did I hear any unusual sound. There was somewhere within the aural range a re.ciproca ting engined aircraft, which I didn't see, but which was the cause of my looking up. Three Fairchild milita~y transport planes ln formation were seen just before the sighting located probably over Woburn and turning left in an easy turn, presumably to join the Hanscom AFB landing pattern. They were out of aural range but plainly identifiable under the clouds -this shoudl give an idea of the visibility at the time. My qualifications as an observer are as follows: Qualified RAF pilot in 1945, with approx 200 hours and holder of private pilot's license. College graduate, holder of a series of jobs in armament research and the aero-space field, both in design and production. I also spent three and a half years in Iran as a satellite observer for Smithsonian In titution NASA. We were opera ing there a n optical tracking station equipped with a standard Baker-Nunn tracking camera. I am presently a writer-evaluator with MIT as shown on the letter head; My eyesight, last tested in a rough test was 20-20. available (after Thursday, June 4) by telephone: ring working hours.