Pictures Sought Of Mystery Discs
See Story on Page 1 also.
Northwest national guard air squadrons went on an emergency footing Monday, determined to keep Oregon, Washington and Idaho skies under constant surveillance until the mystery of the "flying saucers" is solved.
Fighter groups from Portland, Boise and Spokane began arranging sector patrols designed to include every portion of the Northwest in a systematic search for the strange aerial visitors.
Col. G. R. Dodson, commander of Portland's 123rd fighter squadron, was in close communication with Col. Tom Lamphier, leader of the 190th squadron at Boise, and Col. Frank Frost, Spokane squadron commander. The top air officers plotted the areas in which the discs have been reported and made plans for regular patrols by fast, camera-equipped warplanes in "flyways" established along the Columbia river from Walla Walla to the sea and from Puget Sound south to headwaters of the Willamette river.
Additional supplies of movie film for the planes gunsight movie cameras was being flown here from Washington, D. C., the officers reported.
Earlier in the day Col. Robert Delashaw and Maj. David Warwick, regular AAF officers attached to the ONG fighter squadron as instructors, took two P-51s up for a fruitless search flight over Portland after a report that an unidentified object had been sighted in the sky above the Eastmoreland golf course.
Additional supplies of movie film for the planes' gunsight movie cameras are expected to arrive Tuesday by air express from Washington, D. C., squadron headquarters announced.
Colonel Dodson said he had been informed by telephone from Spokane that Colonel Frost led two search missions in flights over the St. Maries, Idaho, area where picknickers Sunday reported seeing eight huge, shining discs land in a dense forest. The searchers found nothing, he said.
The story of a P-38 tangling with one of the hurtling hallucinations while engaged in aerial mapping at 32,000 feet over Montana also proved to be a complete hoax.
Russell Baird, pilot of the photographic plane at Bozeman, Mont., said he was "just sitting around the hangar
gassing
" and somebody must have told the tale to the newspapers.