Patrick D. McCaslin Interview, 11 November 2000
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| think that Delta had him fly to Atlanta or somewhere for an interview. He was going to leave the Air Force and become an— | ||
| JK | Airline pilot, right. | |
| PM | So, I don't think Don was there the next day, I think he went ahead and went on his trip, at least that's my memory. But the rest of us showed up to see the Division Commander, and I don't remember his name. | |
| JK | OK, he was a two-star general? | |
| PM | Right, I remember he went on to be an Air Materiel Center Commander, I think down in Atlanta, I believe, but I don't remember his name right now. And that's where we learned from him that there had been alarms at some of the missile sites, or at least one of the missile sites that evening. And apparently there were two Air Policemen who were responding to the missile people reporting something, and they went out in a truck, a pickup, to do that and were apparently somewhere north of the base and this thing was hovering over them. And again, I'm pretty sure it was in that debriefing with the Division Commander that we learned that they saw our airplane in its initial approach to the airport, saw it take off toward the west and then reported that this thing went dark and took off in the same direction our aircraft was going. The assumption I made was that, you know, shortly after that is when I picked this thing up on the radar. I mean that is somewhat a leap of logic, but when they told us that, I thought well, makes sense, you know, if that's what they said, that it was going that direction, then it would have been just about right, you know, by the time we were halfway up to the altitude to do the approach. It would have made sense radar-wise too, a weak return would be something descending into the radar energy, or climbing through, or out through the top of it. | |
| JK | OK, so on the end of this radar contact with this thing, as you were approaching the runway the return went weak and then it was gone. | |
| PM | Right, one sweep, and then it was gone the next sweep. My assumption is that it descended out of the radar energy and was, again, right on or over the ground, which is what the pilots reported that it was either on the ground or hovering just over the ground when they flew over it. | |
| JK | When you went around again and saw it on the ground. Yeah, there's a point here that I'm curious about because, Mr. Runyan said that this thing broke off as you were approaching and descended. I'm wondering, 'cause he doesn't say that he ever saw it, and I can't, you know, other than what you've said about the radar, you don't really have a height finder function. | |
| PM | No. All I do is can say that it was co-eq—I could report because of the way the radar energy was painting it that it was more or less co-altitude with us, and then it was either— when it disappeared—I could only say that it was either climbing out of the |
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