Prescott UFO Sighting

In his book the astronaut Donald Kent “Deke” Slayton (March 1, 1924 – June 13, 1993) reported the following UFO experience whilst test flying a F-51 Mustang.

“I was up about the middle of one afternoon-a nice sunny day— wringing out this particular 51. I had just come out of a spin at around ten thousand feet over the Mississippi River, near Prescott, where the Mississippi and the St. Croix meet, about twenty-five miles from the Twin Cities. I was heading back to Holman Field when all of a sudden I saw this white object at my altitude, at one o’clock. I didn’t think anything about it. My first thought was that it looked like a kite. But logic said nobody’s flying a kite at this altitude. So I started kind of watching it to see what it was. I was closing on it, but I still didn’t think too much about it. The closer I got, the more it like a weather balloon, and I’m thinking; that’s what it’s gotta be.

Then I flew past it a little high, about a thousand feet off. It still looked like a three-foot diameter weather balloon to me. My guess on the dimensions couldn’t have been too far off. I had plenty of gas, so I figured I’d make a pass on it. Burn some gas and have a little fun. I pulled into a turn.

But when I came out of the turn and headed straight at it, all of a sudden it didn’t look like a balloon anymore. It looked like a disk on edge! I thought that’s strange. Then I realized I wasn’t closing on the son of a bitch. A F-51 at that time would cruise at 280 miles an hour. But this thing just kept going and climbing at the same time at about a forty-five degree climb. I kept trying to follow it, but he just left me behind and flat disappeared.  I wondered what that was, but I never saw it again. I turned around, headed back and landed, and didn’t tell anybody about it for two days. I was afraid they’d think I’d lost my mind.

A couple of evenings later I was over in the O-club with my boss, a full colonel, and after I had a couple of beers I thought I’d better tell him, and I did. He said, “Get you ass over to Intelligence in the morning and give them a briefing.” So I did. They sat there and nodded and took notes. Then they told me: Just for your information, the day you saw this object a local company was flying-high-altitude research balloons. They had a light airplane tracking it, and a station wagon on the ground.

Both observers were watching this balloon and had seen this object come up beside the balloon. The object appeared to hover, then it took off like hell. The guys on the ground tracked it with a theodolite, and they computed its speed at four thousand miles per hour. I guess they were trying to tell me I wasn’t crazy.”