U.S. Air Force Analysis of Flying Objects in the United States, 101-172
DOW-UAP-D088 · page 5 of 210
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-- -----•~---- - It is held by rocketry experts (example, WILLY LEY - see his ROCKE'IS, p. 192, diagram and note in connection there with) that it wol,ll.d take about 100 hours f or a rocket-craf t to negotiate the di stance from Earth to Moon. Prior to its ~xplosion over Norcatur, this object of Feb. 18th was variously reported as a "falling plane", a "jet plane", and a ''ball of fire 11 • It is said by some to have l eft a trail of smoke behind it. It is the suggestion of this writer that the Army collect am assimilate reports on this object , with a view t o determining where it was seen as an object trailint: smoke and llhe re as a ball of fire. If this thing is a r ocket of some kind headed for the moon, it might first have been seen as a streak of sr.oke, then later as a ball of fire , and lastly as a tremendous ex plosion when it at last reached sufficient speed and eleva tion for take-off . The writer has in mind the various and unexplained r e1.,orts on "!lying saucers", and bases this speculation upon a lonb c onsideration of various oddments of reports whose significance might be of epace-craft f r om other worlds of space. The so- called "meteori c procession" which crossed Tor ont o in February 1913, consisted of a number of u oups or illimunated bodies traveling in v oups of three an:l moving in "rigid formation", all pursuing a course acr oss the same streak of the earth's surface . J.r a line is projected backward along ·t his line of fli ght it will be seen that this line "comes out" at the position of the moon at the time. The 1913 phenomenon occurred in the mid-period of a series of reports on dirigible aircraft of appearance like zeppelins which were seen over :&, gland an:i whose appearance terminated - or reports on the appearances stopped - j ust prior to the inferior conjt.mction of Venus of April 24, 1913. The writer begs to call attention to the f act that the times prior to and just after inferior conjunction of Venus are prolific in reports of strange t hings seen i n the sky. Also t }at lights have been reported on t he moon from time to time, back f or at l east a century. Ir in thr future of mil itary experiment the moon is selected as a base for the launching of r ockets (which has been suggested by some writers), it may be wel l to look first 2