This article was published in the daily newspaper The Rocky Mountain News, of Denver, Colorado, USA, on Saturday, February 13, 1954.
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By JIM G. LUCAS
Scrippe-Howard Staff Writer
Washington, Feb. 12 -- Commercial airline pilots report between five and 10 flying saucers sightings each night.
Representatives of major airlines will meet Wednesday in Los Angeles with Military Air transport Services (MATS) intelligence officers to discuss speeding up saucer-reporting procedures.
The idea will be to "get the reports in the quickest possible way" so that the Air Force can send fast jet fighters to investigate.
Heretofore, commercial pilots have landed and then reported to MATS through their companies. By that time, the trail usually is cold. Now pilots are instructed to flash reports direct from the air to MATS intelligence in Washington or to the nearest Air Force base.
However, several "bugs" have been found in this plan. Some pilots, for example, don't know how to contact MATS intelligence. Others don't think it is important enough. That's one angle to be discussed at the Los Angeles meeting.
Airline pilots are asked not to discuss their sightings publicly or give them to newspaper.
Navy Capt. Bernard Baruch Jr., MATS intelligence officer, is in charge of this project. Capt. Baruch's headquarters are in New York, but MATS intelligence also maintains a large staff at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, near Washington.
One well-informed source said that until recently the largest number of sightings were from the Southwest Pacific. Saucer sightings have been particularly numerous around Australia where the British maintain a guided missile range.
Recently, however, there has been an increase in saucer sightings in the North Atlantic, this source said. Simultaneously, the number of oil slicks and submarine lightings in this area has increased.
The same source said flying saucer sightings are "fairly common" throughout the non-Communist world.
