Journalistes et rédacteurs

Case 27: June 23, Wapakoneta, Ohio

Richard L. Bitters, editor of the Wapakoneta Daily News, had waited two weeks to report a sighting by his wife and himself on the evening before the day Arnold made his observation. He held off reporting the story, he said, because at the time "I didn't think it was a news story." Mr. and Mrs. Bitters had been to a movie, and on their way home, about 9:30 p.m. EST, they saw a "saucer-like" object "flying an uneven course in the sky, and weaving in an out off view."

The same night, at an unspecified time, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Nelson, of 1013 Main Street, Cincinnati, some 90 miles south of Wapakoneta, reported having seen a saucer-like object "streaking over their home" and leaving a long trail in its wake (Case 28).

Case 258 -- July 4, Boise, Idaho:

John Corlett, UP staff' correspondent and news manager, who was sitting in his garden with his wife and two friends, reported that they had seen a single disc-like object about 6:30 p.m. MST which crossed the sky in a matter of three or four seconds. Mr. Corlett reported:

"Before dark last night, as my wife and I and two friends were relaxing after dinner, a tiny white disc - one of the mysterious 'saucers' - scudded across the sky at a terrific speed. In just about the time it takes to turn your head, the silver object was nearly out of sight. Both my wife and I and our guests, Mr. and Mrs. V. H. Selby, caught a glimpse of the tiny object. Selby is a Boise artist. There was no noise -­ absolutely none that we could hear, either before or after the disc shot by. The sky was clear and we could not have mistaken a cloud for the disc we saw. At one point in its progress the disc was almost overhead. It was flying fairly high -- I'd judge at about 10,000 feet. Until last night, I didn't believe in them. But now I know those 'saucers' aren't just a myth, part of someone's imagination. It took seeing them with my own eyes to believe it."

Case 315 -- July 5, Augusta, Maine:

Radio station WRDO newsman Dan Kelly reports a dozen discs flying over the city in a straight line (II-3).

Case 337 -- July 5, Charleston, South Carolina:

While driving in the eastern section of Charleston with his wife in the late afternoon, News and Courier staff writer Samuel A. Cothran watched a silvery object following "a regular course almost due east" for two minutes.

"I saw a silvery, circular object," wrote Mr. Cothran in the News and Courier the next day, "traveling generally eastward high in the sky at 6:20 p.m. . . while pleasure driving on Charleston's waterfront. My wife saw it first and pointed it out to me. We watched it disappear over the Atlantic Ocean, after observing it for two full minutes. It was flying alone. There was no formation.

"It followed a steady course, without deviation. No wings or other projections were perceptible, although it seemed to me that a medium sized plane at a fairly high altitude would have been easily identified as such. I saw no glow or vapor trail, which have been characteristic of other Flying Saucer reports.

"We were not the only ones to see it. Several youngsters on the street saw it, becoming wildly excited, and they ran from one vantage point to another to keep it in view. It is not out of the realm of possibility that it was a high-flying plane, but if so, it was a strange contraption. It is not possible to say how high it was flying because I had no notion of its actual size."

Several independent sightings at about the same time were reported to the News and Courier. At almost the same time as the Cothran's sighting, Joseph Price Cameron, of Byrns Downs, who was also driving in an automobile, said he had seen a disc-like object, bright like aluminum, and apparently the "size of a dinner plate." It was moving fast directly over Byrnes Downs in the general direction of the Charleston Navy Yard, north of the city. Mr. Cameron established the time of his sighting at 6:17 p.m. (Case 336).

About 30 miles north of Charleston, H. L. Babson, of Monck's Corner, a crane operator, reported that around 6:00 p.m. he and a friend had been fishing on Lake Moultrie, near Pinopolis, when they saw an object to the south, "like a shiny clam." It was flying in the direction of Charleston, eastward. It appeared to Babson to "perhaps measure ten by ten feet." The front looked larger in thickness than the rear, according to the witness, and the bottom was rounded. Mr. Babson was certain that it was not an airplane, for it was flying much too fast and made no noise. On the lake, he explained, a plane's engines can be heard before and after it is in view (Case 334).

Case 578: July 7, Reno, Nevada

Under headlines that read "Tiny Speck Whizzes Across Sky Here At Unbelievable Speed--Many Reno Persons See Small Object," John Brackett, City Editor of the Reno Nevada State Journal, described in the July 8 edition his own sighting of the previous morning.

"Whizzing silently through the air at a high altitude and almost unbelievable speed, a flying disc or saucer. . .was seen in Reno yesterday for the first time. I was one of the few people in Reno who saw the object streak across the sky yesterday morning leaving intermittent trails of bluish-white vapor behind it. I watched it for less than two minutes. During that time it crossed the sky twice. Then, gleaming like a mirror reflecting the sun, it turned into the sun and disappeared.

"My wife, Wilma, who was hanging out the washing, spotted the thin string of vapor first. I was mowing the lawn nearby. She called my attention to it, and I told her it was probably a sky­writing airplane. . . . Then we spotted the disc, moving from east to west high above us to the north. It looked like a tiny grey speck, and it was round. As we watched it, it emitted another stream of blue vapor that turned white as the object pulled away from it.

"'It's a disc!' Wilma shouted. . . . The two small children of Mr. and Mrs. John Solaro, who live a few houses away from us on Mann Street, were with us and watched. They are Philip, 5, and Maty, 3. Within the space of seconds, it had reached the western horizon and we could see it begin to turn. It made no sound and I can't estimate the height. It was well above the few clouds. . .Suddenly I thought of my camera and ran into the house to get it. I obtained it within seconds but by the time I returned outside the mysterious object was traveling away from us to the east, into the sun, and I couldn't take a picture of it.

"As it neared the eastern horizon -- just above the mouth off the Truckee River canyon east of Sparks -- it dipped downward and turned to the south. For a moment it glistened and disappeared. We checked the time at 9:55 a.m. About 2 mn later I looked at the sky again, and noticed two separate vapor streams running north and south, but I could see no discs. It appeared to me that the disc might have completed its southward swing and then disappeared to the north. . . ."

Brackett reported that at least eight other persons in or near Reno saw the same object. He figured the distance over which the disc would have had to travel during the time it was in view and estimated it was moving at more than 1,000 miles an hour. There were jets in the sky during the morning, but a check indicated that they had flown over Reno at 10:11 and 10:16 a.m. The CAA advised him that it had received a number of calls from people who saw objects similar to the one reported by Brackett.

"At least ten Sierra Pacific Power Company employees, working in the open at Verdi, saw the same thing we did," Brackett wrote. "They clocked it at 9:55 a.m. and said they saw another at 10:22 a.m. Harry Rose, 450 Cheney Street, said the object, on its west to east sweep before it disappeared, took forty seconds to cross the sky -­ that jibes with my estimate that we watched it altogether for a minute and a half." Three other youths with Rose at the time were George Morrison, 802 Gordon Avenue; Kenneth York, 588 West Taylor Street; and Carnie Hall, 452 Washington Street. Brackett was unable to get the names of the other witnesses (Case 577).

Dr. McDonald was able to locate Brackett, who is now publisher of a paper in Visalia, California. His recollection of the sighting was somewhat vague, but he recalled both he and his wife having watched it cross the sky at an extremely high velocity. In his recollection was the idea that many others had also seen it and he wrote it up for the newspaper because there had been so many phone calls about it. He remembered the group of workmen in Verdi who had seen it, but could not recall any details about other witnesses. The job he held was a mixture of being city editor and general reporter. He wrote up the account of the sighting on the afternoon of July 7, so it was a particularly freshly recorded report of what he had seen. He told McDonald that there had been a number of sightings recently in Visalia, and expressed interest in the problem from the point of view of the journalist.