not possibly have missed it.

For the cosmic-balloon answer to be correct, this leaking gas bag
would have had to rise swiftly to seventeen thousand feet--after a
loss of helium had forced it down to one thousand. As a balloon pilot,
I know this is impossible. The Project "Saucer" report said
unequivocally: "The object could outturn and outspeed the F-51, and
was able to attain a much steeper climb and to maintain a constant
rate of climb far in excess of the Air Force fighter."

A leaking balloon? More and more, I became convinced that Secretary
Forrestal had persuaded some editors that it was their patriotic duty
to conceal the answer, whatever it was.

That thought had begun to worry me, because of my part in this
investigation. Perhaps John Steele had been right, and we shouldn't be
trying to dig out the answer. But I had already told Purdy, and he had
agreed, that if national security was involved, we would drop the
thing completely.

By the time I had proved the balloon answer wrong, I was badly
puzzled. The idea of a disembodied light was the hardest thing to
swallow that I'd come across so far.

And yet there were the other light reports--the strange sighting at
Fairfield Suisan Field, the weird green lights at Las Vegas and
Albuquerque. And there was the encounter that Lieutenant H. G. Combs
had had one night above Andrews Field, near Washington, D. C.

This incident had occurred on November 18, 1948, six weeks after