During A Period Of High UFO Activity
This case is reported by James F. McDonald on an intense period of UFO activity in 1947.The report was made 20 years after the sighting, to Professor McDonald for the reasons given at the end of the quotation.
Mrs. Olavick was in her kitchen at 2101 East Hawthorne Street, Tucson, while Mrs. Down was out in the backyard patio.
It was then that Mrs. Down called her out excitedly, and both proceeded to observe what had caught Mrs. Down’s eye.
The time was just after the noon hour, Tucson’s skies were completely cloudless.
Somewhat North of their zenith lay an unusual, isolated, steamy/fleecy cloud at an altitude which Mrs. Olavick found difficult to estimate, though she recalled that it seemed lower than average for that time of year, thus, perhaps, at or below 10,000' say.
No other cloud was to be seen in the sky.
In and out of the cloud moved a number of dull white disk like objects that rose and fell in an erratic manner, occasionally disappearing into or above the unnatural cloud.
She said that these objects were round in plain form but were not spherical, for they frequently tipped a bit, exposing a flattened sphere form.
She estimates that they watched these objects cavorting near the cloud for perhaps 5 or 6 minutes before the entire group disappeared within the cloud or perhaps above it.
After a minute or so, as she now recalls it, a new object, perhaps 3 or 4 times as large as the little objects, came out of the cloud on its East side.
After it emerged, the small objects began to emerge also, taking up a V formation pattern behind it.
The V comprised a line of 4 abreast just to the rear of the large object, then a line of 3 abreast behind that, and finally 2 abreast in the rear.
Thus the point of the V was to the rear, in the sense of the emergent and subsequent motion.
This formation permitted the first accurate count of the small objects, 9 in all.
No sooner had the last pair emerged than all 10 objects shot off to the northeast, climbing out of sight in a time that she thought was probably 2 to 3 seconds.
She does not recall what happened to the cloud after the ten objects departed.
I have spoken with Mrs. Olavick several additional times, following her first call, her account was presented in an unembellished manner, and her descriptions were carefully framed, specifying just which parts had become less distinct in her memory.
But the basic vividness of her memory of this observation she stressed repeatedly.
I had to explain that it was by no means clear that the objects she saw were identical with those reported by Kenneth Arnold 2 months later.
When I queried her as to why she had not reported them, she pointed out that she & Mrs. Down were entirely convinced that they had been fortunate enough to witness some new American military vehicles about which the general public had not yet been informed.
Later she heard of the flying saucers and she & Mrs. Down, when they rejoined their husbands in midsummer in Iowa, told them about their own observation.
The husbands, she recalled, made such a joke of it that they ceased mentioning it.
Again we have a daytime sighting of several minutes duration, with 2 witnesses.
As is often the case when the phenomenon appears mechanical, it was interpreted as some secret Government development.
Ridicule of the sighting by family members and friends, if not by authorities, is frequently mentioned as a reason for delayed reporting of sightings.