◆ SpookStack

of the 11,000 sightings since 1947, did have some ex- planations. "The mysterious flaming object in the East was “probably a meteor.”’ As for Michigan’s much- publicized and plentiful unidentified flying objects, they turned out to be instead of “Unidentified ng pranks frighten the astronomer called in by the Air Force to investigate the Hillsdale af- fair. Every report of a “flying saucer” had ostensibly been checked out by the Af Force’s special squad known as ‘Project Blue Book,” al- though the staff was woefully small. Of the 10,147 sightings since 1947, the / Force insisted that only 646 remain explained — and most of these because of insufficient information. The others have been attributed to planes, balloons, astronomical causes, missiles, swamp gas, meteors, fireworks and, in some cases, to hallucinations and psychological reasons. Ball Lightning? Philip Klass, avionies edi- tor of Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine, recently proposed some other explanations. Klass, an electronics engineer, said a form of “ball lightning,”’ gen- erated by high tension power lines, could explain the phe- nomena. Many of the sightings, said Klass, occurred along or very near high-tension lines where luminous balls of ionized air could be generated under certain conditions. ‘0 Threat’ The main u reached by the Air Force were: @ “No unidentified flying objects reported, investigat- ed and evaluated by the Air Force have ever given a n- dication of a threat to our national security.” e@ “There has been no ev- “Wence submitted to or discov- ered by the Air Force that sightings represent techno- logical developments or prin- ciples beyond the range of present day scientific knowl- traterrestrial vehicles.” Donald Keyhoe, was unconvinced. Major howeve! al Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NI- CAP), a private space watch- ing organization, accused the Air Force of conducting a long-term whitewash on the UFO question. It was Keyhoe’s theory that the Air Force was with- holding information for fear of causing public panic. UFOs, insisted the Major, who had never seen one, were of extrat ant ir Force feared that the public could not accept this knowledge. “They won’t give é you details,’ he complained. “If they did, many of their explanations would fall flat.” And Keyhoe could also claim a powerful ally in Michigan's Gerald Ford, the H se Republican leader, Congr tified fi investigat Ford suggest- ed, would make the Ameri- can people ‘feel better.” Study in Depth Whether or not that was so, Air Force last week took tter. Fed up with in- ting reports of glow- ing, flying, zooming, wink- ing, awesome, blinking, streaking, hovering things, the Air Force last week de- cided to bail itself out of all responsibility for future con- clusions concerning UFOs. The Air Force announced that it had commissioned the University of Colorado to conduct an ‘‘in-depth” study of flying saucers for the next 18 months. The director of the study (expected to cost $300,000) would be Dr. Ed- ward U. Condon, former di- rector of the National Bureau of Standards, and now a physics professor at Colora- do. x To satisfy the skeptics, and insure the study’s objectivi- ty, Colorado would select several other universities to take part in the independent investigation, with about 100 scientists participating, And in case that wasn’t enough, the National Acade- my of Sciences also agreed to appoint a panel to review the Colorado report. 5