Early in April the publication that is highly revered by so many, U.S. News and World Report, threw in their lot.  The UFO’s belonged to the Navy.  Up popped the old non-flying XF-5-U again.

Events drifted back to normal when Edward R. Murrow made UFO’s the subject of one of his TV documentaries.  He took his viewers around the U.S., talked to Kenneth Arnold, of original UFO fame, by phone and got the story of Captain Mantell’s death from a reporter “who was there.”  Sandwiched in between accounts of actual UFO sightings were the pro and con opinions of top Washington brass, scientists, and the man on the street.

Even the staid New York Times, which had until now stayed out of UFO controversy, broke down and ran an editorial entitled, “Those Flying Saucers—­Are They or Aren’t They?”

All of this activity did little to shock the military out of their dogma.  They admitted that the UFO investigation really hadn’t been discontinued.  “Any substantial reports of any unusual aerial phenomena would be processed through normal intelligence channels,” they told the press.

Ever since July 4, 1947, ten days after the first flying saucer report, airline pilots had been reporting that they had seen UFO’s.  But the reports weren’t frequent—­maybe one every few months.  In the spring of 1950 this changed, however, and the airline pilots began to make more and more reports—­good reports.  The reports went to ATIC but they didn’t receive much attention.  In a few instances there was a semblance of an investigation but it was halfhearted.  The reports reached the newspapers too, and here they received a great deal more attention.  The reports were investigated, and the stories checked and rechecked.  When airline crews began to turn in one UFO report after another, it was difficult to believe the old “hoax, hallucination, and misidentification of known objects” routine.  In April, May, and June of 1950 there were over thirty-five good reports from airline crews.

One of these was a report from a Chicago and Southern crew who were flying a DC-3 from Memphis to Little Rock, Arkansas, on the night of March 31.  It was an exceptionally clear night, no clouds or haze, a wonderful night to fly.  At exactly nine twenty-nine by the cockpit clock the pilot, a Jack Adams, noticed a white light off to his left.  The copilot, G. W. Anderson, was looking at the chart but out of the corner of his eye he saw the pilot lean forward and look out the window, so he looked out too.  He saw the light just as the pilot said, “What’s that?”

The copilot’s answer was classic:  “No, not one of those things.”

Both pilots had only recently voiced their opinions regarding the flying saucers and they weren’t complimentary.