At any rate — here’s what’s interesting. Not only did Robinson apparently see, in real time, what would become one of the most thoroughly government-vetted films of the early UFO era, he also — same year, 1952 — claims to have witnessed a second daylight incident that attracted intense federal scrutiny in Arizona. This one involved a B-36 bomber that was approached and paced by a pair of shiny round objects for several minutes. Every crew member saw what happened, and the pilot was so rattled he requested and received permission to make an unscheduled landing at Davis-Monthan AFB outside Tucson. Physicist James McDonald, one of the true heroes of that distant age, reported that the Davis-Monthan UFO-desk officer saw it himself, took detailed individual crew testimony, and compiled “the thickest [document] he ever filed on a UFO.” Unfortunately, the Air Force managed to lose that raw report, and its brief Blue Book analysis attributed the B-36 encounter to a one-word suspect: “Aircraft.” Which, probably, is technically accurate.
Robinson, a University of Arizona astronomy major, was alerted to the encounter by the distinctive racket of B-36’s 10 engines (4 jet, 6 piston). He remembers seeing one UFO, not two, but he wouldn’t forget the sight. “The plane was just north of me and it was heading west, toward Los Angeles,” he recalled. “It was definitely something round, but all I saw was the shaded side, the silhouette. I’m standing there watching the plane and this thing approaches it and disappears on the north side of it, behind the fuselage. I’m waiting for it to reappear, but it never does. I guess that's because it stayed in a fixed position off the wing.”
