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was now part owner of a flying school, also a pilot in the Air National Guard. Green was working for an air charter service
We met at the Palmer House. Art Green didn"t need much prompting to talk about Project "Saucer." After reporting a disk, seen during a West Coast Right, he had been thoroughly grilled by a Project "Saucer"
team.
"They practically took me apart," he said irritably. "They"ve got a lot of trick questions. Some of "em are figured out to trip up anybody faking a story. The way they worked on me, you"d think I committed a murder.
"Then they tried to sell me on the idea I"d seen a balloon, or maybe a plane, with the sun shining on it when it banked. I told them to go to the devil--I knew what I saw. After seventeen years, I"ve got enough sense to tell a ship or a balloon when I see it."
"Did they believe you?" I asked him.
"If they did, they didn"t let on. Two of "em acted as if they thought I was nuts. The other guy-I think he was Air Force Intelligence--acted decent. He said not to get steamed up about the Aero-Medical boys; it was their job to screen out the crackpots.
"And on top of that, I found out later the F.B.I. had checked up on me to find out if I was a liar or a screwball. They went around to my boss, people in my neighborhood--even the pilots in my outfit. My outfit"s still razzing me. I wouldn"t report another saucer if one flew through my c.o.c.kpit."
Pete Farrell hadn"t encountered any Project "Saucer" teams personally, but he had some interesting angles. Some of the information had come from commercial and private pilots in the Midwest, part of it through National Guard contacts.
"I can tell you one thing," Pete said. "Guard pilots got the same order as the Air Force. If we saw anything peculiar flying around, we were to do our d.a.m.nedest to identify it."
"What about trying to bring one down? I"ve heard that was in one order."
Pete hesitated for a second. "Look, I told you that much because it"s been in the papers. But I"m still in the
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Guard. I can"t tell you the order itself. It was confidential."
"Well, I"m not in the Guard," said Art Green. He lit a cigarette, blew out the match. "Why don"t you look into the Gorman case? Get thc dope on that court-martial angle."
I"d heard of the Gorman case, but the court-martial thing was new to me. Gorman, I recalled, was a fighter pilot in the North Dakota Air National Guard. He had a mystifying encounter with a strange, fast-moving "light" over Fargo Airport in the fall of 1948.
"That case is on my list," I told Green. "But I don"t remember anything about a court-martial."
"It wasn"t in the papers. But all the pilots up that way know about it. In his report, Gorman said something about trying to ram the thing. The idea got around that Air Force orders had said to try this.
Anyway, it got into the papers and Gorman almost got court-martialed.
If his family hadn"t had some influence in the state, the Air Force probably would have pushed it."
"Are you sure about this?" I said. "You know how those things build up."
"Ask Gorman," he said. "Or ask some of the pilots at Fargo."
Before I left them, Green double-checked my report on his sighting, which Hilton had forwarded. As in the majority of cases, he had seen just one disk. It had hovered at a very high alt.i.tude, gleaming in the sun, then had suddenly accelerated and raced off to the north.
"I couldn"t tell its size or speed," said Green. "But if it was as high as I think, it must have been pretty big."
Pete told me later that Green believed the disk had been at least twenty miles high, because it was well above clouds at thirty thousand feet.
"It"s kind of hard to believe," said Pete. "The thing would have to be a lot bigger than a B-twenty-nine, and the speed over two thousand miles an hour."
"You know what they said about the Mantell saucer," I reminded him.
"Some of the G.o.dman Field people said it was at least three hundred feet in diameter."
"I"ve heard it was twice that," said Pete.
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"You know any Kentucky National Guard pilots?" I asked.
"One or two," said Pete. "But they couldn"t tell me anything. It was hushed up too fast."
That evening I talked with the airline official, whom I knew well enough to call by his first name. I put it to him bluntly.
"d.i.c.k, if you"re under orders not to talk, just tell me. Fm trying to find out whether Project "Saucer" has muzzled airline pilots."
"You mean the ones who"ve sighted things? Perhaps, in a few cases. But most of the pilots know what happened to Captain Emil Smith, on United, and those Eastern pilots. They keep still so they won"t be laughed at. Also the airlines don"t like their pilots to talk for publication."
"I"ve heard of several cases," I said, "where Air Force Intelligence is supposed to have warned pilots to keep mum. Two of the reports come pretty straight."
He made a gesture. "That could be. I"m not denying that airline pilots--and that includes ours--see these things all the time. They"ve been sighted on the Seattle-Alaska route, and between Anchorage and j.a.pan. I know of several saucers that pilots have seen between Honolulu and the mainland. Check with Pan-American--you"ll find their pilots have seen them, too."
"What happens to those reports?"
"They go to Operations," said d.i.c.k. "Of course, if something really important happens, the pilot may radio the tower before he lands. Then the C.A.A. gets word to the Air Force, and they rush some Intelligence officers to quiz the pilots. if it"s not too hot, they"d come from Wright Field--regular Project "Saucer" teams. Otherwise, they"d send the nearest Intelligence officers to take over temporarily."
I asked him if he had ever been in on one of thee sessions. d.i.c.k said he hadn"t.
"But a couple of pilots talked to me later. They said these Air Force men seemed quite upset about it; they pounced on everything these boys said about the thing"s appearance--how it maneuvered and so on."
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"What do your pilots think the saucers are?"
d.i.c.k gave me a slightly ironic grin. "Why ask me? Captain Blake says you"ve been getting it firsthand."
"I wasn"t pulling a fast one," I protested. "We"re not going to quote actual names or sources, unless people. O.K. it."
"Sure, I know that," said d.i.c.k. "But you"ve got thc answer already.
Some pilots say interplanetary, some say guided missiles. A few--a very few--still think it"s all nonsense, because they haven"t seen any."
"What do you think?"
"I don"t know the answer," said d.i.c.k, "but I"m positive of one thing.
Either the Air Force is sitting on a big secret, or they"re badly scared because they don"t know the answer."
During the next week or so, I covered several northwest and mountain states. Although I was chiefly trying to find out about Project "Saucer," I ran onto two sightings that were not on my list.
One of these had occurred in California, at Fairfield Suisan Air Force Base. A Seattle man who had been stationed there gave me the details.