Gorman's experience. Combs, flying with another lieutenant named
Jackson, was about to land his T-6, at 9:45 P.M., when a strange
object loomed up near him. It looked like a grayish globe, and it gave
off an odd, fuzzy light.

Combs chased the weird object for over ten minutes, during which it
appeared to evade every move he made. Once, its speed was nearly six
hundred miles an hour, as closely as he could estimate. In a final
attempt to identify it, Combs zoomed the T-6 up at a steep angle

{p. 96}

and flashed his landing lights on it. Before he could get a good look,
the globe light whirled off to the east and vanished.

Since Combs's story had been in the newspapers, Project "Saucer"
evidently had felt in wise to give some explanation. When I read it,
in the preliminary report, I was amazed. Here was the concluding
sentence:

"The mystery was cleared up when the object was identified positively
as a cluster of cosmic-ray research balloons."

Even one of the giant balloons would have been hard to take as the
explanation. Combs was almost sure to have collided with it in his
head-on passes. But an entire cluster! I tried to picture the T-6
zooming and twisting through the night sky, with several huge balloons
in its path. It would be a miracle if Combs got through without
hitting one of them, even if each balloon was lighted. But he had seen
only one light; so had Lieutenant Jackson. That would mean all the