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CONFIDENTIAL

It does not make my eyesight any sharper except again as to the incidental demands upon the eyes of a pilot.

At the time of the experience related above, I had flown fourteen and one-half hours on an assignment to find a disc and if possible, to photograph it. In all frankness, I was tired. I may have been suffering, although slightly, from want of oxygen.

Prior to sighting the object, I had concluded there was no point in pressing the search, that I probably would never see the disc-like objects referred to by Arnold and by Captain Smith of United Air Lines.

At all times during the search, both on that day and the two preceding days (particularly when I was with Arnold) I had literally talked to myself to keep beating into my head that I would not fall victim to the power of suggestion or self-hypnosis arising from a naturally very intent desire to find a disc and bring success to the assignment given me.

I therefore do not believe that I was the victim of suggestion or hypnosis. I am familiar with the optical illusion of a fixed object beginning to move after it is watched a sufficient length of time. I know what tricks the eyes will play as to moving bodies, and have learned of this particularly during night formation flying.

I saw the object appear suddenly. If it had moved in a jerky fashion (as it did at first) for the full length of time I observed it, I would not be so strong in saying that I saw something not an aircraft, not a balloon, and not a corpuscle moving across the retina of either eye. The maneuver described by the object when its edge was presented to me convinces me that I saw an object actually performing in an erratic flight path.

The question remains, of course, whether I saw it. The motion picture film, developed and processed by R. R. Stohr in the Eastman laboratories at

1945

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CONFIDENTIAL