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Let me give you an example. Here's a man, a college graduate, who's a successful businessman. He's running a garage, car sales connected with it, in a small town, but a good county seat in Eastern Colorado. This was back in the year 1931. And I had worked on a fireball quite some weeks, had it very well pinned down. I knew practically where it disappeared, at about what height it disappeared, and over what location. I got a letter from him saying that he had seen this smoke cloud that followed the fireball, from his place, and he thought I might like to know that from his place he observed the smoke cloud at the height of 75o above the horizon. I read the letter, and of course thought of it in terms of all the other testimonies I had. I had been over in the area where this happened, on all sides of it, and I knew he couldn't be right. I didn't tell him so, but I wrote back and said, "Will you please check that matter of height again? Seventy-five degrees doesn't agree with what I already have, and I thought maybe you didn't write quite the way you meant to. But please check it again and write me." He did, said, "I can't do any better than 75o above the horizon." I knew he was wrong, but I didn't say so. I waited 'til I happened to be in that community again, and I went over and called on him. I said, "Just for my records, will you take the time to go out where it was you were the night you observed this?" - or the day, it was a daylight meteor - "and I've got an instrument, we'll register the degrees as you remember them, on the instrument." We went out, he pointed out, and I knew he was way down around 10o-15o, instead of 75o, just by pointing. But I didn't say anything, I said, "Now, here's the instrument. You site it, and I will register the degrees." Ten degrees above the horizon. Now, there is a college-trained man, he's a good businessman, he's an honest man, but he never had any training in the thing that he's reporting on.

H.H. NININGER

Comdr. Mandelkorn: Do you think it unusual no fragments are found?

Dr. LaPaz: I certainly do. And I think it unusual, not only in the case of the green fireballs, but in view of the fact that a great fall, like the ..... fall of October 30, 1947, where for the first time we detected a bit of the interest on the party of the military, there too we recovered nothing. October 30, 1947, about 4:48 in the afternoon there was, what appeared to be, a tremendous meteorite fall over the reservation area - the Four Corners Area. We got there within a very few hours, had excellent observations, went back time and again, exhausted ground search, CAP people in airplanes, we had a radio centered, we had radio controlled jeeps and a lot of people out walking around - not a trace. I can't give you a color on that because .....

Comdr. Mandelkorn: Ordinarily, when phenomena of that nature occur, you are able to recover some material?

Dr. LaPaz: Yes, some material is recovered almost always. If proper search is conducted. We have, by the way, very thorough air search conducted by Gill Field Corps of Intelligence Unit; Dr. Lansberg of the Research and Development Board, very kindly interested himself in the problem and the air searchers resulted not even in the discovery of a broken branch.