Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions - James Randi [44]
To complete the misrepresentation that plagued the Mantell episode, we should look briefly at what NBC-TV's "Project UFO," produced by actor Jack Webb, did with it. It is no surprise that they exaggerated the facts of the case to create a more exciting program. As you read the breakdown that follows, remember their official statement: "This program is a dramatization inspired by official reports of Government investigations of claimed reported sightings of unidentified flying objects on file in the National Archives of the United States."
1. NBC said that Mantell was scrambled to chase the UFO. He was not.
2. NBC said Mantell reached supersonic speeds to pursue the UFO. He did not, and could not.
3. NBC showed him in a jet fighter. He was not in a jet
4. NBC said he reached 60,000 feet. He did not.
5. NBC said he crashed at a speed of mach 1.5. He did not.
6. NBC showed Mantell using oxygen in the plane. He did not; he had none.
7. NBC said Mantell locked into the UFO with radar. He did not; he had none.
8. NBC said the wreckage of his plane was scattered over several miles. It was not. It was within a thousand yards of the central wreckage.
9. NBC showed the wreckage burning on impact. It didn't burn.
10. NBC said the Air Force finds about 30 percent of reported UFO sightings to be "unexplained." This is more than five times the Air Force figure.
With this program, NBC-TV maintained its reputation for distortion, misrepresentation, and exaggeration of the facts.
In the Godwin book we read of a marvelous sighting that took place the night of March 16, 1966. Deputy David Fitzpatrick photographed two "strange objects in the sky," we are told, southeast of Ann Arbor, Michigan. He used a "sub-miniature camera" to photograph the "flying objects." Well, it sounds pretty good, and the photo looks impressive, until one looks into the matter carefully, as Godwin should have done before writing about this story. When I first saw the photo I knew right away what it was. The shape of the lower object tagged it as the moon, and it was probable that the other was either Venus or a bright star. Dennis Rawlins, an astronomer whose specialty is positional astronomy, put the raw data into his computer and came up with some interesting conclusions. First, the photo was a time exposure of eleven minutes and had to have been made with a tripod. It showed the moon and Venus exactly where they should have been—not on March 16 but on March 17, the next morning. The shutter was opened at 5:42 a.m. EST and closed at 5:53. The moon was four days before New Moon phase, and the angle of the path traced is 38 degrees to the horizon. The angle of the planet Venus is 40 degrees, as predicted by the computer readout. In an hour, the sun will rise on the left of the picture. The separation of the two objects shown is 10 degrees 31 minutes, and the larger precedes the smaller by eighteen and a half minutes, again agreeing with the computer prediction. Is there any doubt that the deputy photographed the moon and Venus and sold the picture to the newspapers as a photo of two UFOs?
Drawing based on the photo that showed "two UFOs streaking across the night sky, March 16, 1966." Wrong on all counts. This was an eleven-minute exposure of Venus and the Moon on the morning of March 17.
But John Godwin did not need the skills of Rawlins or the use of a multi-million-dollar computer to discover the true nature of the photograph. All he needed to do was visit a library and consult the good old New York Times. On the evening of March 25 an Associated Press story reported that