Page 9 of Flying Saucers Magazine - August 1960

The eyes of millions of people focused skyward on the evening of October 28. From Maine to Florida people were watching an object that some described as "a large star around which a cluster of smaller stars rotated." Others reported "a large star with a steady glow, with blinking lights about it, a vapor trail behind and a rear extension." On the Dartmouth College campus in Hanover, New Hampshire, we watched a brilliant object appear in the west and for more than a half hour travel across the sky.

It was dark when I left the library ,that night at 5:25. As I walked down the road I looked up at the sky as I often do on clear nights. I was facing nearly westward and the first thing I noticed was a remarkably bright light about sixty degrees above the horizon. Moving on to where I could get an unobstructed view of it, I realized that it seemed to be moving,, although at first I had thought it stationary. I also noticed a diffuse beam of white light emanating from the back and being reflected off the very light, misty clouds as a flash light beam is through fog. By this time it was 5:30; the sun had set at 4:43 and it was pitch dark with a sky clear except in the west and many stars visible. The lights of a plane, showing as a dot due to their altitude, passed silently at what appeared to be a short distance from the object. I judged its apparent diameter to be equal to one-third the diameter of a penny held at arm's length, although the radiant extensions as seen around a star made it seem larger. Still not sure that its movement was not due to my imagination, I lined the object up with the corner of a building and there I could definitely see it moving away from the brick corner. Later measurement showed that it was moving through .5 degrees of arc every nine seconds, which is approximately equal to taking the same length of time for an object to cross the diameter of the moon.

I directed the attention of a passing student to it and soon a crowd had gathered, marveling at its peculiar characteristics, which I shall describe. At this time it was 5:35. It occurred to me that it would be a good idea to get the names of some witnesses and I made a list of ten students who were watching the object at that time.

By now it had moved from our right, as we faced south, perpendicularly across, and at 5:40 was slightly to our left. Its height above the horizon was about two-thirds o the way to a point in the sky directly above our heads and remained constant. It made no sound through the duration of its flight.

In addition to the beam of light we all noticed what appeared to be "blips" of light shooting both upward and downward from the object. These resembled sparks in the way they shot out at high speed and later disappeared, but they seemed to have a definite perimeter, making them circular or ellipsoidal in shape. They did not emanate continuously but in groups of five or six every eight or ten seconds. The body of the object itself flashed, and at one point began to slowly split into two globes, not dissociating but remaining joined at one point, and then coming together again to reform the single body. At irregular intervals red and green lights flashed from the bottom of it.

It was at this time that the object was at its closest proximity. I believe that it is important to note that the above observations were ones made by the whole group and that they were not reinforced by suggestions as might have happened if the observers imagined they saw something after it had been suggested to them by one of the group. Rather there were spontaneous vocalizations from everybody as soon as anything happened.

At 5:45 another student and myself decided to run over to the center of the green in the middle of the campus where there were no lighted buildings to interfere with observation. Here, instead of facing it in a southerly direction, we watched it coming toward us from the west again. It was gradually becoming smaller and the beam radiating from its back end was no longer visible. It was at this time that a third student, who I will mention later, began watching it with us. He had not seen the object before. The three of us watched it for fifteen minutes-until 6 p.m.-while it traveled in a very gradual arc to the south, becoming smaller all the time and finally remaining stationary about fifteen degrees above the horizon in the SSE, looking like a bright star. However, unlike other stars, it was green and occasionally flashed a red spot from the bottom. At the end of ten more minutes it became neither brighter nor dimmer and we assumed that it was remaining stationary except for a very slight movement to the west again which was noticeable only after the end of the ten minute period. As it was getting rather cold we decided to go indoors and this concluded my sighting.

However, the third student who joined us at the green observed at 6:15, high in the ME, "a flashing object, too large to be a star, with sparks shooting out of it." He reported that he watched it for about ten minutes, during which time it remained stationary, but had to leave to meet an appointment. Returning an hour later the object was no longer there although the sky was clear. The next night, with the sky again cloudless, he looked but found no star in that position.

At 6:15, after I had left the green, I got to a telephone and called the Civil Aeronautics Administration at the West Lebanon (N. H.) Airport. They informed me that they had been receiving many calls from the surrounding area that evening. However, all they knew was what Boston had told them when they called to inquire. And this was that "it was a high altitude weather rocket." They knew no more. I thought to ask about wind speed and direction and received the answer that on the ground it was negligible (5mph) and at 3000 to 5000 feet was from the west at fifteen miles per hour.

At 9:30 that same evening, a student came in to tell me about a man with whom he had taken a ride back to Hanover from Concord, N. H. The man, very excitedly, had told him about an elongated object with a "rear extension" which he saw just above the horizon outside of Concord. The object, according to the report, moved up in the sky a few degrees and then approached the observer high in the heavens. Although the man's name is not known and his story can therefore not be checked, it is likely that he did see something since neither he nor his rider knew about the sightings in our area.

We now get to the second part of our story - the official explanation. By ten o'clock that night many questions were puzzling me. I wanted to know how a rocket could act as we had observed it to act, and I also wanted some explanation for the lights, splitting and colors that we had seen. I therefore put in another call to the C. A. A. in West Lebanon. Answering was the same man that I had talked to earlier. "No new information," he said. But I did get him to elaborate on what he had told me before. I learned that what I had seen was the reentry of a high altitude weather rocket shot off from Virginia at 5:40 p.m., E. S. T., where at 10,000 feet, the rocket burned due to friction with the atmosphere and became visible.

It was a perfect explanation and agreed with all the facts - except the arc through which we saw it move, the time at which we saw it, its speed, or rather lack of speed, its existence for more than three-quarters of an hour, its tail beam, colors, and the lights shooting out of it. I mentioned these things to him and he laughed, admitting that the explanation certainly did not seem to agree with what we saw, "but that was what Boston had said."

The next morning I decided to see what the newspapers had to offer, and was surprised to see almost every paper blazing with headlines such as "Space Balloon Startles Millions" (from "The Boston Herald"). From Manchester, N. H. to New York City they told of how people up and down the Atlantic coast had witnessed the flight of a sphere as large as a ten story building which was launched by rocket at 5:40 p. M. from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's rocket test station at Wallops Island, Virginia. The sphere, made of plastic with a highly reflective coating of aluminum, was released from the rocket at 250 miles where it inflated. The balloon was then carried by winds for about half an hour while it gradually descended, finally crumpling and falling into the sea 500 miles due east of Wallops Island. The test was conducted as a prelude to the future launching of such inflatable spheres as earth satellites which would be used to bounce radio and television signals.

There is no doubt that this object was sent up and that it was seen by a number of people. However there is a great deal of doubt as to whether this was the only thing seen in the skies at that time. In the following five days after we made the sighting in Hanover, a great deal of time was spent trying to find out if what we saw could really have been a weather balloon. The facts given below were enough to convince us that there were two objects and should be sufficiently conclusive for any skeptic.

1.) We have conclusively established the time of our observation as being from 5:30 P. M. until 6:15 P. M., E. S. T. However the rocket carrying the collapsed sphere did not ascend into the heavens until 5:40 P. M. The balloon itself could not have been seen until at least a few minutes after that time. In the New York area, much closer to Virginia than we are in Hanover, the object was not seen until shortly before 6:00 P. M. In Boston it was visible for only ten minutes before it dropped below the horizon.

2.) The balloon from Wallops Island, upon reaching an altitude of 250 miles, was borne by the wind in an easterly direction for 500 miles before falling into the sea. The object we saw was also traveling in an easterly direction, coming from the west, but then assuming a southerly direction as it made an arc to remain above the southern horizon for at least twenty minutes. In New York, however, the object was seen to arc across the southern horizon from east to west

3.) Its altitude above the horizon is one of the strongest arguments against the identity of our sighting and the balloon. You will remember that we saw the object at a height of sixty degrees. But Wallops Island is 500 miles from Hanover; the balloon was at an altitude of 250 miles over the island. Simply drawing a triangle will show that the altitude of the sighted object would be thirty degrees in Hanover, and probably less. Professor George Z. Dimitroff, an astronomer at Dartmouth College, has confirmed this point. He stated that by assuming its point of firing to be Wallops Island and its altitude to be 250 miles, "it could not have been above thirty degrees altitude in Hanover." In New York the object arced across the southern horizon, and it would have been higher there than it was here.

4.) Minor points, not very important in themselves, are the splitting of the object we observed, its flashes of red and green lights - from an object that is shown in pictures to be a plain sphere of aluminum, and 'the "blips" or sparks which it emitted. This last observation was made almost universally, being usually described as "shooting sparks." Officials could not say for sure what these were, but said "apparently" they were lights being reflected from the broken surface of aluminum as the balloon inflated. Although I am not prepared to state categorically that this could not be so, the circular objects traveling outward from the central body looked nothing like either "glancing lights" from a broken surface or reflections off clouds which might be an alternatively proposed explanation.

A point of mystery about this whole affair is why the astronomical observatories and other observing stations were kept ignorant for so long. The Harvard Observatory, which followed the object, evaluated the sphere as "man-made" (meaning not natural) but could provide no help beyond that. The Astronomical Observatory, which maintains the "moon-watch," said at 6:15 P. M. "that it was not prepared to say what had been seen." Professor Robert Brown, director of the moonwatch station in New Haven, according to "The Boston Herald", "followed the object with his telescope and described it . . . as 'the craziest thing in the world' ". In the Boston area jet fighters were scrambled to intercept the "intruder" which quickly vanished over the horizon. Two interceptors were sent up from the Suffolk County Air Force Base on Long Island, N. Y., but gave up the chase.

"I don't see why they don't tip us in advance when they are going to send up something like that," complained an official to "The Boston Herald." The exact time that authorities came through with an explanation is not available, but it was long after this mysterious object had set off one of the greatest mass inquiries ever experienced by newspapers, radio stations and public authorities.

What was this mystery object that was at so many places, doing so many things, and still only an aluminum balloon over Virginia? If we at Dartmouth and the millions of other Americans who saw this object on the evening of October 28 were really watching a flying saucer, we can only imagine the government's relief at this ready-made and nearly perfect explanation to what might have been one of the largest unexplained sightings in history.