by Dreams End » Sat Feb 25, 2006 3:42 pm
I wrote a very long article (never published) about that day. I lived in L.A. and found several witnesses, including 3 in the same anti-aircraft battery (all three of whose memories differed on the details.) I examined an original print of the photo as well. (the anti-aircraft bursts you see were retouched with what looks like white paint...I imagine it was a trick to enhance highlights so far before photoshop, but the "object" itself was not retouched.) <br><br>The thing was in the air for some time. It got all the way down to longbeach at one point and a witness who was also a columnist in a local paper described it as "blimp shaped" which matches the shape in the photo. Others reported seeing many planes, but they may have actually been planes...I think they may have scrambled and accidentally shot down one of their own (there were two reports of downed planes and I talked to witnesses who'd seen cordoned off areas and heard they were recovering planes.) <br><br>There was radar of the object though radar was rather primitive. The night was clear, so the shape, in my opinion, cannot have been reflections from cloudcover. In addition, the fact that the searchlights all converge shows that they were all seeing SOMETHING.<br><br>Naturally, the first explanation was a weather balloon...I kid you not. One of the AA gunners said he actually saw it through the scope and saw slowly deflating after being hit by AA flak. This isn't really possible, however. They are balloons...a hit would pop them (as I confirmed with a meteorologist) not simply cause a slow leak. His other two buddies didn't remember seeing the actual object at all.<br><br>And the thing meandered quite awhile.<br><br>Unfortunately I don't have the report on disk or I'd just "data dump" it. I should retype it, though, and offer it to the website.<br><br>Lots of other details, but still "unsolved" in my book. <p></p><i></i>
