The lights were softly glowing bluish objects in another loose formation. It seemed to the professors that the first group had been in a more rigid and structured formation than later groups.
To the professors the next logical move was to learn if anyone else had seen the objects. Ducker called the local newspaper and spoke to the managing editor, Jay Harris, who wasn't interested in the report. Ducker, however, convinced him that a story should be printed. Harris finally agreed but only if Ducker allowed his name to be used. Ducker refused.
But then, a few minutes later, Ducker called back and agreed. In fact, he could print the names of all the professors, but only if Harris called the college public relations department and cleared it with them.
The newspaper story was successful in that one respect. There were others who claimed to see the lights that same night. That seemed to be some corroboration of the lights seen by the professors. But, the important sighting, at least in the minds of the Air Force officers who later investigated, was made by Joe Bryant of Brownsfield, Texas.
Bryant told Air Force officers that he was sitting in his backyard when a group of the dim lights flew overhead. He described them as having a "kind of a glow, a little bigger than a star." Not long after that, a second group appeared. Neither of the groups was in sort of a regular formation, a clue that the Air Force choose to ignore.
There was a third flight, but instead of flying over the house, they dropped down and circled the building. As he watched, one of them chirped and he recognized them immediately. He identified them as plover, a bird common in west Texas. When he read the account of the professors in the newspaper the next day, he knew immediately what they had seen. If he hadn't been able to identify the last flight, if one of the birds hadn't chirped, he would have been fooled too.
The professors, unaware of what Bryant had seen and believed, set out to obtain additional information. Joined by other professors and professionals including Grayson Meade, E.R. Hienaman and J.P Brand, they equipped teams with two-way radios, measured a base from the location of the original sightings, then staked out the area. They hoped for additional sightings along the base line. Knowing the length of that line, the time of the sighting, and the location and direction of flight, they would be able to calculate a great deal of important and useful information that might tell them what they had been seeing.
The problem was that none of the teams ever made a sighting. On one or two occasions, the wives said of the men, who had remained at one house or the other, had seen the lights but the men at the bases saw nothing. The plan of calculating the data fell apart.
Then, on August 31, the case took an amazing turn. Carl Hart, Jr., a nineteen year old amateur photographer, managed to take five pictures as the lights flew over his house in the middle of Lubbock. Lying in bed about ten o'clock, he saw the lights flash over. Knowing that they sometimes returned, he prepared for that. When the lights appeared a few minutes later, he was ready, snapping two pictures of them. Not long after that, a third group flew and he managed three additional pictures.
Harris, Lubbock newspaper editor, learned about the pictures when a photographer who worked for him periodically called to tell him that Hart had used his studio to develop the film. Harris, the ever reluctant newsman, suggested that Hart should bring the pictures by the office.
Naturally the newspaper feared a hoax. Harris, and the newspaper's lead photographer, William Hams, talked to Hart on a number of occasions over the next several hours. Harris bluntly asked if the pictures were faked. Hart denied it. When I spoke to Hart about forty years later, I asked him what he had photographed. I didn't want to accuse him of faking the pictures but I wanted to know if he had changed his mind with the passage of years. Hart told me that he still didn't know what he had photographed.
Hams later decided to try to duplicate Hart's pictures. From the roof of the newspaper office, he attempted to photograph, at night, anything that flew over. He thought, that if he could duplicate the pictures, he would be able to figure out what they showed. He waited, but all he saw was a flight of birds that were barely visible in the glow of the sodium vapor lamps on the streets below him. The birds were dimly outlined against the deeper black of the night sky and flew in a ragged V-formation.
He took photographs of the birds, but when he developed the film, the image was so weak that he couldn't make prints. He repeated his experiment on another occasion but was no more successful. From his experience, he was convinced that what Hart photographed couldn't have been birds under any circumstances.
Air Force investigations were conducted throughout the fall of 1951. Investigators were dispatched from Reese Air Force Base on the west side of Lubbock. They spoke to Hart on a number of occasions. They forwarded copies of their reports to both Project Blue Book headquarters and to Air Force Office of Special Investigation headquarters in Washington, D.C. Ed Ruppelt even made a trip to Lubbock to speak to the witnesses including Carl Hart.
During those interviews, Hart was advised of his rights under the Constitution of the United States. The investigators were playing hardball with the teenager. They were trying to pick apart his story to prove that he had somehow faked the pictures. Between November 6 and 9, during still another investigation of the Lubbock Lights, Ruppelt and AFOSI Special Agent Howard N. Bossert again interviewed Hart. In their report, they wrote, "Hart's story could not be 'picked apart' because it was entirely logical. He [Hart] was questioned on why he did certain things and his answers were all logical, concise, and without hesitation."
When I talk to the experts at Texas Tech about the possibility of birds, Loren Smith told me that there are ducks in the Lubbock area that fly in V-formations, but they are reddish-maroon and have no white on them to reflect the lights. Although migratory birds do fly past Lubbock, it is later in the year. What this means is that there are no birds in the area that account for the photographs.
What we must do is separate the Hart photographs from the rest of the Lubbock case. In fact, we must look at all the sightings individually, realizing that a solution to one is not necessarily the solution to another or to all the reports.
First we have the sightings made by the professors. Clearly this was something that was unusual. They were unable to identify the lights. They then, using their scientific training, set about to find out what they had seen. Although their plan was good, the phenomenon did not cooperate with them. There were some facts obtained and these can lead us to some conclusions.
For example, they had originally estimated the objects as being very large and flying at a very high altitude. When they established their base lines, they never saw the objects again. The wives, however, reported the objects overhead. That would seem to indicate they were smaller and much lower than originally thought. In fact, it suggests they were much smaller and much lower. The door is open for birds, though the problem, once again, is the lack of a proper bird in the Lubbock area.
Or is it. Joe Bryant claimed that he saw the lights too, but that one of them, or several of them, swooped out of the sky to fly around his house. At that point he identified them as plover.
From Bryant's claim, the Air Force investigators extrapolated that all the Lubbock sightings could be explained by birds. In one of the reports, the investigators wrote, "It was concluded that birds, with street lights reflecting from them, were the probable cause of these sightings… In all instances the witnesses were located in an area where their eyes were dark-adapted, thus making the objects appear brighter."