Over the years unidentified flying objects have made for a number of interesting newspaper stories. A number of those stories stem from the 1950s and 60s prior to the launch of the first astronauts.
I remember being filled with fear listening to news bulletins related to the Russians’ launch of their first Sputnik space satellite on Oct. 4, 1957. The little thing was about the size of a beach ball. In the 1970s, I met and visited with the American who was the first to intercept radio transmissions between the satellite and the Russian scientists on the ground.
I stood on dark country hillsides in 1960 and scanned the sky looking for a high altitude balloon named Echo as it passed over this area. For those who don’t remember, Echo was NASA’s first communications satellite. It was described as a passive spacecraft based on a balloon design created by an engineer at the Langley Research Center. Made of Mylar, the satellite measured 100 feet in diameter.
Satellites are now much more accepted. Though no longer in use, I have satellite receiver dishes mounted on the roof of the newspaper office and the side of my home. I remember when the Superior post office and at least one Superior bank had satellite dishes used for private communications with similarly equipped offices. Today some folks are making gazebos out of those large dishes.
In the summer of 1954, two Nelson residents, McKinley Adamson and Don Doher, made headlines when they chased an unidentified object in Doher’s Cessna airplane.
I may have taken my first airplane ride in the same plane for my first plane ride was before 1962 and it was in a Cessna airplane owned by Doher.
A July 1, 1954, Nuckolls county newspaper reported McClinley Adamson, a longtime Nuckolls County deputy sheriff, had trained his nose and eyes to be on the lookout for strange goings-on. On the preceding Sunday afternoon, Mac, along with several other Nuckolls County residents, saw a small white ball in the sky directly overhead. As they watched, the object slowly drifted westward.
With a hankering to get a closer look, Mac went to talk with Don Doher, a Nelson businessman who owned a four-place Cessna airplane. Together they boarded the plane and took off into the wild blue yonder.
They followed the spot in its westward drift, climbing as they went. When their plane had reached an altitude of 13,000 feet in the Alma area they gave up. They had been unsuccessful in their attempt to reach the white spot. Doher guessed the object was still 40,000 feet, perhaps even 50,000 feet above them.
In a shortwave radio conversation with the Grand Island airport, Doher learned the object was likely a 300-foot weather balloon.
I suspect it was the same year that my country school teacher refused to believe my eyewitness account of an unidentified aircraft sighting as an acceptable excuse for being late for school.
Rather than a red or white dot, I saw a large pencil shaped object floating over Jewell County. I stopped my horse and watched the object for so long I was considerably late for the start of school.
Most people I told my story to thought it was nothing more than a youngster’s daydream. The late Harry Huge is the only person I know of who believed my story. While working as a reporter for the Holdrege Daily Citizen, he was sent out to gather a story from a farmer who supposedly had seen a similar object in the sky.
Harry said the object was tracked across the United States and into the Gulf of Mexico where it is thought to have been brought down by the U.S. Air Force. The Air Force would neither confirm nor deny having a role in the story.
Had Doher and Adamson caught up with the white object and shot it down, they may have changed the course of history.
Was it a weather balloon or a Chinese spy balloon?
In more recent years the presence of Chinese spy balloons flying in the Midwestern sky has been confirmed. And there have been numerous reports of unusual and unexplained drone activity.
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