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Ford Motor Co. scientists were called in to study a saucer-based theory that the powerful magnetic field generated around a UFO stalls nearby cars by disrupting their electrical systems. Researchers had previously found that an extremely strong magnetic field imposed upon an ignition coil would indeed stall a car; but the Ford experts pointed out that the field would also permanently change the normal magnetic pattern in the metal of the auto body. When they compared a car reportedly immobilized by a saucer with identical models that were nowhere near the site of the incident, the Ford men found that its magnetic pattern was no different from the others. Their conclusion: the stalled car had never been subjected to an intense magnetic field—from a UFO or anything else.
The Condon forces also launched an attack on some of the most cherished UFO photographs. Traveling to Fort Belvoir, Va., where an Army private had photographed a ringlike UFO in 1957, investigators showed the picture to Army technicians. The technicians immediately identified the UFO as a vortex ring formed when diesel oil, gasoline and white phosphorus was exploded by TNT to simulate atomic-bomb explosions during demonstrations.
With the assistance of a photo analyst from the Raytheon Co., the Condon group found discrepancies in a pair of saucer photographs taken in 1966 by a barber in his front yard in Roseville, Ohio. Although the barber insisted that he had shot the pictures less than two minutes apart, the analyst surveyed the yard and determined from the position and length of shadows in the pictures that they could only have been taken more than an hour apart—and in the reverse order from that claimed by the barber.
Despite careful examination, the report admits, the Colorado team was unable to explain satisfactorily either the saucer photographs taken in 1950 by a McMinnville, Ore., farmer or those shot from a truck by a California traffic investigator in 1965. The scientists were particularly impressed by the analysis of the McMinnville pictures, "in which all factors investigated appear to be consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary object flew within sight of two witnesses." The report nonetheless does not rule out the possibility of a hoax. "The fact that the object appears beneath the same part of the overhead wire in both photos," the report cautions, "can be used as an argument favoring a suspended model."
Hot-Air Balloon. Scientists from the Stanford Research Institute were also pressed into service by Condon and were able to attribute many radar UFO sightings to atmospheric aberrations. But no one could explain a radar blip that overtook and passed a Braniff airliner as it descended toward the Colorado Springs airport in May, 1967. Says the report: "This must remain as one of the most puzzling radar cases on record, and no conclusion is possible at this time."
Other episodes have proved considerably less mysterious. In January 1968, near Castle Rock, Colo., some 30 witnesses reported night-flying UFOs with flashing lights, fantastic maneuverability and occupants that were presumed to be from outer space. "Two days later," the study says, "it was more modestly reported that two high school boys had launched a polyethylene, candle-heated hot-air balloon."