William E. Smith Interview, 25 August 2001(b)
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| WS: | Always kind of linear, yes, angular to some degree [gestures 45 deg angle to floor] but still linear. I don't recall it making any flip-flops [gestures loops] or anything like that, no. But still jerky movements. Aircraft don't move jerky. [small laugh] They move slow, they're laborious even jet aircraft don't move that way, 'course and they'd have to be going faster, this thing would be slowing down. Even a helicopter doesn't because that's dangerous. 'Course we have new aircraft today that might be doing something like that, but that was a long time ago. | |
| JK: | Right. | |
| TT: | Who knows what they are doing. | |
| WS: | Who knows what they are doing? [smiles] | |
| JK: | Just for asking those kind of questions, did you ever see it go down, apparently go to the surface or above the surface? | |
| WS: | Yes, we were able to see that and it; sometimes it would disappear for a while. Say "Oh, it's gone!" All of a sudden: "Hey! It's back again!" And we'd all get to the window and look. | |
| TT: | And again, you saw more than one object most of the time? | |
| WS: | We saw, generally I think most of the time we were looking at two objects. | |
| TT: | More than that on some occasions? | |
| WS: | No, I don't recall any more than two at any given time. That seemed to be the number because if there had been even more then, of course, I think it would have heightened us more. But generally, you could see two of the things moving. Sometimes they'd be moving in concert, and another time, the other one might go down [gesturing positions] and the other one would be going [gesturing zig-zag trajectory across] like this you know, and down. But from our position, going across, back and forth, you couldn't tell whether it was, you know, angular except this way [gesturing motion east-west] across our field of vision. I went out with my team— | |
| JK: | During the night? | |
| WS: | Yes, still quite early in the morning. Matter of fact, I had trouble getting up the next day [laughs] but I remember we said, "Oh, well let's go out!" Now, things were happening. They'd come back in and so now we went out on patrol. | |
| JK: | They had returned from this alarm? | |
| WS: | Yes, because now we're talking about wee hours of the morning. After I had gotten off the phone because I was on the phone quite some time while some of these other things were going on. And of course I wanted to make sure that I was there in control of things in case my controller needed help. And I was one of those on the phone to the Capsule Crew most of the time, so I was, sort of giving ideas [gesturing differing positions] where it was now, and that kind of thing. | |
| JK: | You mentioned that you heard, on this telephone patch, that the B-52 was being diverted to the area or? |
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