Thomas G. Goduto Interview, 20 February 2001
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| for awhile. In fact, the object trailed you for almost 25 miles because you were 35 miles out, and it dropped away from the B-52 at 10 miles out. | ||
| TG: | Okay. My recollection to that was that the radar was able to paint it during this period of time and the biggest thing I remember is excitement by saying, 'There it is!' It's there and station keeping with us. In other words, where we were going, it was going rela—in a position relative to our airplane. And then all of a sudden, the thing, the big excitement from downstairs was, 'It's gone!' and the sweeps meant that it didn't sweep, you know, that they weren't able to watch it go away. Just all of a sudden it was gone, which meant that it moved very fast to get away, that fast without being recorded in a sweep. | |
| INT: | Now what Pat remembers from what he could observe on the radar screen, he knew it dropped. | |
| TG: | You mean dropped altitude-wise? | |
| INT: | Descended. Yes. | |
| TG: | Descended. Well flight level 200 is 20,000 feet, but we're going down, we're descending down to probably 1,000—1,200 feet. That was pattern altitude, okay? We would've leveled at 1,200 feet. Once you get below 17,000 or 15,000 you no longer say 'flight level', you now say regular altitude. So once we left flight level two zero zero, 20,000 feet and we're going down to 1,200 feet, okay? So that's where we would've been. If it went lower, it was certainly safe to go lower. I mean you can go all the way down to a hundred feet above the ground. | |
| INT: | Now, it's at that point that the radios come back on when this thing drops away. | |
| TG: | It would've been, yeah, by that time frame, I guess. Without putting the idea or words in my mouth that would be normal because we would've needed those radios to make an approach. We would've had to have been cleared for an approach to the field. | |
| INT: | Yeah. Can you land that aircraft without radios? | |
| TG: | Yep. But there are procedures and we weren't in that condition. | |
| INT: | Yeah, because what the...and this is interesting because both Werlich and the control tower said that they never really heard a radio go out that way before, because it kept going out mid-word. But to them, it was odd the way the radio cut out. |
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