From: John Harney <magonia.nul>
Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2004 18:57:17 +0100
Fwd Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2004 14:07:54 -0400
Subject: Re: Chiles-Whitted Sighting - Harney


>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 15:44:02 -0500
>Subject: Re: Chiles-Whitted Sighting

>>From: Jerome Clark <jkclark.nul>
>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 13:09:56 -0500
>>Subject: Re: Chiles-Whitted Sighting [was New Mexico Governor]

>>>From: Christopher Allan <cda.nul>
>>>To: <ufoupdates.nul>
>>>Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004 11:25:11 +0100
>>>Subject: Re: New Mexico Governor Rekindles Roswell

>>As pelicanists won't tell you, there was a fully conscious,
>>knowledgeable observer who, an hour before, witnessed what may
>>well have been the same object. It didn't look like a meteor. As
>>I write in my book, "On August 10 [1948] the officer in charge
>>of the Sixth District Office of Special Investigations ...
>>interviewed Walter Massey, a ground-maintenance crewman
>>stationed at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia. Massey related
>>that two hours prior to the Chiles-Whitted sighting [which

>Careful readers will have caught the contradiction here. Did
>Massey's sighting take place one hour or two hours before
>Chiles-Whitted's? I'm afraid I have it both ways here.

>When writing the above, I was consulting several sources - one
>my book, the rest other accounts of the incident. Most of those,
>I am chagrined to learn, say the Massey observation occurred an
>hour before.

>I may have been in error in my own published account.

This illustrates a common problem in trying to evaluate UFO
reports. Witnesses make the reports, usually giving the time,
but often not making it clear whether the time is the local time
(as defined by an officially recognised time zone, sometimes
advanced one hour for "summer time"), or GMT (Greenwich Mean
Time, also referred to as Universal Time or Zulu Time).

Obviously in this case the time of the Chiles-Whitted sighting
is not GMT. This sighting was in Alabama and Walter Massey's
sighting was in Georgia. However, this does not help to resolve
the problem, as both states are in the same time zone (Eastern
Standard), which would presumably have had the Summer Time hour
added on.

Ideally the times of UFO reports would all be recorded in GMT
together with date, latitude and longitude. It would then be
easy - assuming the reports were stored in a computer data base
- to calculate the local apparent time, from which relevant
astronomical information could be calculated.


John Harney