1968: Dueling Giants

August 15 - Zenia to Yellow Springs, Oh . 4 witnesses observed the object(s) for 30 minutes.

Gold and white object, "piece of pie" shape with corners rounded off, flying tip up, plate or round, light bright enough to illuminate road and surround, It was observed directly overhead, later it moved to the east. 

The case contains comments from Dr. Donald H. Menzel pushed the moon explanation, as he pushed any and every explanation that was not one that accepted the concept of UFO's as craft from another world. He was stridently opposed to the extraterrestrial hypothesis. In later years, as if evident in these and other documents, this created a rift between Dr. J. Allen Hynek and Menzel. Hynek had a tendency to follow the science, even when the science suggested things that were a little hard to accept and recognized the need to continue to ask questions and challenge assumptions. Menzel, as he displays in his book The World of Flying Saucers, articles, and in the statements he makes in these documents, had a more narrow view that viewed science as more set in stone than open to ongoing revision as new data was found.

Menzel explained away the apparent erractic movement as "auto kinesis", dismisses as imagination witness descriptions of events, and discounts as standard practice the full statements of witnesses to make the theory fit his presumptions of the events. He chides Hynek for accepting that it was not the moon, as Menzel affirmed, simply because a witness said what they saw was not the moon "because the moon doesn't do that."  For Menzel, he did not even need to investigate because he did not believe in UFO's as craft of other worlds and thus could speak authoritatively that the witnesses had mistaken the moon for something more.

Menzel dismissed Hynek's acceptance of such witness statements : "I simply don't share Hynek's faith in the reliability of human beings." (Nob. 8, 1968, Menzel to PBB). Earlier in October he had advised PBB head Quintinella to terminate Hynek's consulting agreement. With the same tenacity that he pressed for "ball lightening" as the explanation for events in one Texas series of sightings, he was no doubt behind later explanation for the October Minot AFB events were the still ill-defined and much questioned "plasma" rationale had replaced the ball lightening of an earlier day.  The fact that plasma had been pushed by another individual of questionable intent, Phillip Klass is worth noting. Both men shared an unprecedented, and often unidentified, connection to the back room workings of Project Blue Book. Both, most probably (to use PBB terms), were working to serve the hidden agenda of the project and provide debunking as needed. The arrival of both Klass and the appearance of Menzel in the pages of the project both occur at roughly the same time that Hynek is becoming more vocal about the possibilities behind the whole UFO subject and the continued need to address with unbiased scientific inquiry the totality of the subject. The timing is very interesting.