Project SIGN Case Number: 172

2nd Lt. GEORGE F. GORMAN INCIDENT 

1 October 1948 
Project SIGN Case Number: 172 

The third most publicly celebrated UFO case of the Project SIGN period would again involve one of the military’s own personnel. A drama would be played out in the North Central area of the United States. In a sparsely populated area of the country a modern cowboy would face a showdown with an unidentified flying object. This case would be listed in the Project SIGN files as Incident Number 172, and to be commonly known as, "The UFO Dogfight over Fargo." 

Twenty-five year old George F. Gorman of Fargo, North Dakota and a Second Lieutenant in the Air National Guard, was putting in some flying time on a cross-country flight in his P-51 Mustang. It was October 1, 1948 at 8:30 p.m. Lt. Gorman was a few minutes away from an incident that would cause an immediate response from the SIGN team at Wright-Patterson AFB. 

Lt. Gorman was enjoying his flight. He headed west on this clear, crisp autumn evening toward Valley City, North Dakota. Getting night flying hours under his belt would be good, or so he thought. Turning 180º he headed back toward Fargo, ND and began circling the football field, enjoying glimpsing the game from the air. 

As he circled the football field he noticed, to the North, a Piper Cub airplane that was approximately 500 feet lower than his P-51. A few moments later a light traveling from the East toward the West caught his eye. The light is between Hector Airport and the football field. It is moving rapidly. Gorman does not know what the object is and decides to radio the control tower at the Hector Airport. Mr. L.D. Jensen, the Air Traffic Control Operator on duty radios back that the only traffic in the near vicinity of Gorman’s aircraft is the Piper Cub being piloted by Dr. L.N. Cannon and his friend, Einar Johnson. 

At this moment Lt. Gorman decided to investigate the object. Heading his plane toward it he found that the object apparently does not take kindly to close inspections. As Gorman would later relate to Major Paul Kubala of Air Technical Intelligence at Wright-Patterson AFB and Major Donald C. Jones of the 178th Fighter Squadron of the North Dakota Air National Guard in two separate interviews:

"My first reaction was to keep it [the lighted object] in sight and circle with it. At the time the object was making a circle around the city of Fargo at approximately 1000 feet [and] traveling at the same rate of speed as I [was]. Putting it in the light of the city, myself above it, I checked it for wings and fuselage but appeared to have none. I could distinguish the outline of the cub [Dr. Johnson’s Piper Cub] distinctly." 

Gorman described the object as, "a white light with no apparent glare and a clear cut edge…it seemed flat…from 6 to 8 inches in diameter." 

Major Jones asked Lt. Gorman to describe what had been happening during the 27 minutes that Gorman was chasing the object. Lt. Gorman replied: 

"After the initial peel off, I realized the speed of the object was too great to catch in a straight chase, so I proceeded to cut it off in turns. At this time my fighter was under full power. My speed varying between 300 and 400 [MPH]. The object circled to the left, I cut back to the right for a head-on pass. The pass was made at approximately 5000 feet, the object [was] approaching head-on until a collision seemed inevitable. 

The object veered and passed approximately 500 feet or less over the top [of my aircraft] above me. I chandelled around, still without the object in sight. The object made a 180º turn an initiated a pass at me. 

This time I watched it approach all the way and as it started to pull up, I pulled up abruptly, trying to ram the object until [it] was straight up; with me following. At approximately 14,000 feet I stalled out with the object apparently 2000 feet above me circling to the left. 

We made two circles to the left. The object then pulled out away from me and made another head-on pass. At this time the pass started and the object broke off a large distance from me heading over Hector Airport to the northwest at apparently 11,000 feet. I gave chase circling to the left trying to cut it off until I was 25 miles southeast of Fargo. 

I was at 14,000 [feet], the object at 11,000 [feet] when I again gave the aircraft full power [attempting] to catch it in a diving turn. The object turned around and made another head-on pass. This time, when pulling up, I pulled up also and observed it traveling straight up until I lost it. I then returned to the field [Hector Airport] and landed." 

Interestingly, Dr. Cannon and Einar Johnson upon landing their Piper Cub went immediately to the control tower at the Hector Airport and listened to the radio transmissions of Lt. Gorman. Dr. Cannon watched the object through binoculars but couldn’t follow the action as well as he wanted to. When the team from Project SIGN arrived they checked out Gorman’s aircraft with a Geiger Counter. The aircraft showed signs of radiation. Unfortunately, the team would later discard this aspect of the incident. 

As was becoming commonplace among the Project SIGN personnel, the investigation of the Gorman Incident would be an exercise in gross inaccuracies and inconsistent reporting, coupled with an affinity to immediately discount a witness statement because it could cause trouble further up the chain of command. Alfred C. Loedding makes this aspect clear in his memorandum of the Gorman Incident to Colonel Howard McCoy. Portions of his memorandum are transcribed as follows: 

"A review of Lt. Gorman’s statement and facts presented, which were considered highly reliable by interrogation from this Headquarters [MCIAXS – Project SIGN], suggests the following… 

The positive statement that the aerial object sighted by Lt. Gorman was a piloted aircraft is unjustified and may lead to serious complications. Although the object apparently performed in a superior manner and as though human thought was involved, nothing was reported to indicate or permit assumption that the object was an aircraft, as the term is accepted today. 

A check with MCIA personnel involved in this case and Project SIGN disclosed that their concept of the configuration was spherical or "ball-like," furthermore, it was officially reported and recorded as such. Actually, the configuration is round, but flat or "disc-like…This error on the part of the Intelligence Department could cause some serious embarrassment and repercussions. 

…It is recommended that the entire comment 2 from MCIAXS be disregarded and not made a matter of official record of the subject incident No. 172…" 

That Alfred C. Loedding was doing in sending his memorandum to Colonel Howard McCoy was two-fold. It alerted Col. McCoy to the fact that the Project SIGN team were making errors in their reports, but more importantly, that the reports were being doctored to avoid both errors in reporting the intelligence data being gathered and to temper the ardent belief of the SIGN team that these objects were obviously extraterrestrial in nature. Loedding was already astute to the fact that the Pentagon brass were extremely divided over whether the UFOs being reported were advanced technology from Russia or really "space ships" from another planet. It did not take long for Col. McCoy to cover his bases. He immediately requested clarification from Major Donald Jones at the North Dakota National Guard. 

Early cases investigated and/or analyzed by the Project SIGN team or through the use of consultants, left much to be desired as far scientific acumen goes. The members were few; there was little support from the Pentagon for the efforts expected by the SIGN project and cooperation was helter-skelter at best. These cases, Mantell, Chiles-Whitted and Gorman have become classics over the last fifty years. Most of them still cause intense debate among Ufologists, but they represent the cream of the crop as far as the early incidents were considered by both the military and the media. They played well in the newspapers of the time and brought the public insight and some comfort knowing that the phenomenon was being investigated. The fears of war were still in the hearts of the American citizens and the Cold War continued to fuel the feeling that the nation and its people were not safe. 

This small group of men comprising the forces of Project SIGN remained extremely busy with reports of unidentified flying objects pouring into the small office at Wright-Patterson AFB. Although the project was understaffed and under funded, the work of gathering the data from the various sightings continued at a frenzied pace. Even so, the Project SIGN team did make a bold attempt to return to the earlier sighting cases that flooded the Air Force Office of Intelligence at the Pentagon and attempt to gather the data into one place and review the analyses that had gone before under the pseudo project known as SAUCER. 

There is little doubt that the Project SIGN staff was aware that many excellent sightings or cases involving UFOs were never assigned to them. Dr. J. Allen Hynek and other prominent researchers have expressed frustration regarding this aspect for many years. There are many elements of the Project SIGN reports that cryptically signal that more was going on regarding the UFO phenomenon than was being expressed or included in the Project SIGN files. 

Looking back into those earlier years, it is of value to rediscover the incident that actually started the process toward the evolution of Project SIGN. That case has become infamous in the annuals of UFO history. Incident Number 17 in the files of Project SIGN was commonly referred to as the Arnold Sighting. 

A common misconception in the American vernacular came from Incident Number 17. It has always been assumed and reported that Kenneth Arnold coined the term, "Flying Saucers." However, this fact is a misnomer. Although the term was used in newspapers following Kenneth Arnold’s sighting, the term "Flying Saucers" was first used by John Martin, a Texas farmer in 1867. He actually called the unidentified object he saw on a hunting trip, a "Flying Saucer."