Loren Gross is the only source used
The only source listed was the history of UFOs for October of 1957 by Loren Gross. It seems the media reports were pretty consistent and it was probably a meteor.2 Gross even agreed with this conclusion. Instead of promoting this as something exotic, Gross focused his attention on astronomer Dr. H. H. Nininger, who did not like where the Air Force had computed the potential meteorite to have come down.3 According to the scientist, their computations were off and he implied that this mean the Air Force was not capable of investigating these kinds of reports (UFOs among them) properly. The Blue Book file contains multiple reports and newspaper clippings all indicating it was probably a fireball meteor.4
Analysis
There seems to be little doubt that the source of the sighting was a fireball meteor. As for the criticism by the scientist in Gross’ selection, I agree that the USAF probably did not accurately determine the fall of a meteorite but they weren’t scientists. The one scientist they did employ was Hynek and he was missing in action on this one. He probably had better things to do with his time. The reason for the identification of a potential landing site came from a report in the file, where a Navy pilot reported seeing it strike the ground. As a result, the local authorities were asked to search this area. This is probably the same Navy pilot, who reported a near collision with the meteor. Blue Book had to see if there was something that came down based on this information. Perhaps the criticism leveled by Dr. Nininger should not have been directed towards the USAF but towards the quality of the reports being sent to Blue Book by the pilots themselves.
Conclusion
In my opinion, this is another case that demonstrates the claim by Dominique Weinstein that pilots are “much more reliable witnesses than others” 5 is incorrect. There is little doubt that this was a fireball meteor and that some of the pilots’ claims about near collisions and seeing it strike the ground were not accurate. This case should be removed from the Weinstein catalogue.
Quelle: SUNlite 5/2021