The article below was published in the daily newspaper Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, California, USA, page 1, on July 7, 1954.
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By United Press
BOZEMAN, Mont., July 7 (UP) -- A Los Angeles pilot reported today that he knocked down a "flying saucer" - he called it a "flying yo-yo" - yesterday over the Tobacco Root mountains in Western Montana.
Vernon Baird, Los Angeles, pilot for the Fairchild Photogrammetric Engineers Co., said he tangled with the "yo-yo" while flying a P-38 for the firm. The company is mapping the area between Helena and Yellowstone park for the reclamation Bureau.
Baird said he and his photographer, George Suttin, Los Angeles, were flying 360 mph at 32,400 feet when he turned to check an oil distribution mechanism.
"There about 100 yards behind me was the yoyo," Baird said. "It was a pearl-gray clam-shaped airplane, with a plexiglass dome on top. It was about 15 feet in diameter and almost four feet thick."
The curious yo-yo overhauled the P-38 and Baird took evasive action.
"The yo-yo caught in my propwash and the thing came apart like a clamshell. The two pieces spiralled down some place in the Madison range."
Baird said that after the yo-yo fell apart he looked around and saw several of them darting around "like a batch of molecules doing the rhumba."
Baird said he was too busy handling his plane to notice if there was a man inside the gadget.
His photographer didn't think about his camera until too late to get a picture, Baird said.
Army pilots were ready today for another air search for the mysterious "flying saucers" now reported in 31 states and parts of Canada as practical jokesters added to the confusion.
Equipped with telescopic cameras, 11 army planes searched the Pacific Northwest yesterday without finding any trace of the flying discs which had been reported over scores of communities the preceding two days. At Sioux Falls, Mr., a coast guard plane already in the air was ordered to investigate a silvery disc with a short tail which Gregory Zimme said he saw shoot across the heavens. The pilot found nothing but empty sky.
The army "camera patrol" over the Cascade mountains yesterday included eight P-51 pursuit ships and three A-26 bombers.
There was growing belief that the concentrated search would show the saucers to be optical illusions and the work of practical jokesters magnified by aroused imaginations.
