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The controller acknowledged the message and said that he was scrambling all his alert airplanes from George AFB. Could the two F-86's stay in the area a few more minutes? They stayed and in a few minutes four more F- 86's arrived. They saw the UFO immediately and took over. The two F-86's with nearly dry tanks went back to George AFB.
The two F-86's had been at about 40,000 feet when the photos were taken and the 20-foot balloon was at about 70,000 feet. Andy's question to the photo lab was, "How big should a 20-foot balloon appear on a frame of 16-mm. movie film when the balloon is 30,000 feet away?"
When the ground controller blended the targets of the two F-86's into the unidentified target, they were at 30,000 feet and were looking for the target at their altitude or higher so they missed the low-flying jet but they did see the balloon.
The radar picked up the F-86's soon after they were airborne, and had begun to direct them into the target when the target started to fade on the radarscope. At the time several of the operators thought that this fade was caused by the target's losing altitude rapidly and getting below the radar's beam.
By this time one remaining F-86 had been alerted and was airborne toward Long Beach. He passed the four homeward-bound F-86's as he was going in, but by the time he arrived over Long Beach the UFO was gone. All the pilots except one reported a "silver airplane with highly swept-back wings." One pilot said the UFO looked round and silver to him.
Some of the other operators thought that it was a high-flying target and that it was fading just because it was so high. In the debate which followed, the proponents of the high-flying theory won out, and the F-86's were told to go up to 40,000 feet. But before the aircraft could get to that altitude, the target had been completely lost on the radarscope.
The colonels promptly replied that if the objects had been F- 86's they would have easily been recognized as such. The colonels knew what F-86's looked like. An investigation was started at once.
In the original report of how the six F-86's chased the high-flying UFO over Long Beach, the intelligence officer who made the report had said that he'd checked all aircraft flights, therefore this wasn't the answer. The UFO could have been a balloon, so I sent a wire to the Air Force weather detachment at the Long Beach Municipal Airport.
Two F-86's from the 97th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron at Wright-Patterson were scrambled and in a few minutes they were climbing out toward where the radar showed the UFO to be. The radar didn't have any height-finding equipment so all that the ground controller at the radar site could do was to get the two F-86's over or under the target, and then they would have to find it visually.
When I told him about the UFO's all I received was a rather uninterested stare. When I said they were over the base he did me the courtesy of going out to look. He came running back in and hit the scramble button. Three minutes later two F-86's were headed UFOward. They soon disappeared but their vapor trails kept the tense crowd informed of their progress. And believe me there was tension.
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