William E. Smith Interview, 25 August 2001(b)
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| WS: | In my three years there I don't ever recall having a missile in a hole and not having officers there, not ever. Once they put a missile in, we had to be on site, and from that point on it was... you know... and it normally had, at least the... well, warheads probably, whether they were armed, or whether they were targeted or not, but once that warhead was there, it was a category "A" resource just like on the base. If we had aircraft sitting out there and as long as there was nothing on it, B-52, it was a "B" resource, and we had to protect it in a general patrol. Once it had a warhead on it in any way, we always had to have two officers there, so yeah... so that, what he was saying could be absolutely true but we treated it as though it were hot. | |
| JK: | Hot... I would imagine, sure. | |
| WS: | Yeah, yeah. As a matter of fact, that may also go along with what he was saying because, I remember, as I said before, a lot of times we always had Camper Crews on that site, the security wouldn't set up or— | |
| JK: | It's the closest one to base. I think that might be a logical choice for— | |
| WS: | —for a training facility, sure. | |
| JK: | Did you ever see this thing come close? | |
| WS: | No, we didn't. | |
| JK: | Did you ever see it move quickly accelerate or do any maneuvers like that? | |
| WS: | Well, much more quickly than a normal aircraft would, yes. And that's what, you know, really piqued our interest. We saw it moving at odder angles than an aircraft would and erratic flight patterns and as it were hovering, but it was still a point of light. It was still pretty much a point of light because it was still quite a bit away, you know we're still talking 15 to 20 miles from uh JK: You think between Oscar-1 where you were at— | |
| WS: | —and the base, it was between us and it would never get—I saw some of the size reports they had. We never saw it since it was such a huge ball of light, we never saw that. Ours was more of a pinpoint—well, I say "pinpoint," bigger than a star, not as big as the moon, of course. But it was still, making those movements that if it were an aircraft that had a light on the side of it, we'd know that. I had many years of service at that point being around many air force bases so I knew what aircraft look like. We didn't get close enough so that we heard anything, because we'd stand outside and look, we couldn't hear anything. | |
| TT: | It always a straight-line sort of flight? Were there ever any curves in the patterns? | |
| WS: | Well, from the distance we were we couldn't tell that. | |
| TT: | Any odd drops of the object? | |
| WS: | Odd, yes, there would be odd drops, it would be yes, up and down movements [gesturing vertical movements]. | |
| TT: | But always linear? |
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