The Key West Citizen

Big Meteor Lights Sky From Cuba To Middle Of Florida

Hundreds of persons here and from Cuba to central Florida saw the big meteor that flashed across the skies at 7:30 p. m. yesterday.

Their impressions of the meteor ranged from an A-bomb explosion to lightning and a flare fired from a boat or an airplane.

Lt. Bruce Weart, of 76 Arthur Sawyer Road, Sigsbee Park, who was piloting a Navy plane at 4,000 feet about four miles northeast of Boca Chica, said:

"It was a tremendous bright light from a big ball of green fire. My first thought was that someone in a plane above me had shot a green flare right at me. The light blinded me," he continued, "for a few moments and I had to strain to see the instruments in the plane after the flash. It looked very close."

"It no doubt was in the Kennelly Heaviside layer which is 200 to 300 miles above the earth," Lt. Weart added.

Thought Of A-Bomb

Lt. W. H. Westray, an engineer at VX-1 who was outside his home at 2905 Harris Avenue at the time, said:

"I at first thought it was the flash from an A-bomb. The flash of the meteor was such as the civil defense describes as the first warning of an A-bomb explosion."

Mrs. Victor Lang was on the patio of her home at 1119 Von Phister Street.

She said she had her back turned toward the meteor when she saw the flicker flash.

"I turned and saw this yellow and bluish green thing shaped like a drop of water lying on its side. It was sort of sailing along."

Mrs. Lang said that friends of hers, Mr. and Mrs. William Marks, were at their home dressing at the time.

"They saw the flash and thought it was lightning," Mrs. Lang said. "They walked over to our house and when they got here they were carrying raincoats and an umbrella. They thought the lightning was advance warning of a shower."

Navy Chief Bill Spillman of VX-1, who lives at 1601 Von Phister Street, said:

"I was at a meeting of the executive board of the PTA at Truman School. There were about seven people there on the south side of the school building."

"This big bluish green ball of fire with a long tail came from an easterly direction," he added.

"It disappeared overhead. I think it was about 200 miles high since we did not hear an explosion when it disappeared."

Spillman said he counted the seconds for more than three minutes after the meteor disappeared.

He said he expected to hear an explosion and by counting the seconds from the time of disappearance until the sound reached him he would have been able to estimate the distance of the meteor from the earth.

Pilots Report

Pilots flying over Fort Pierce, the Associated Press said, reported the meteor as did two pilots flying the Atlantic between Miami and Nassau. A ship near Cuba radioed it had seen the meteor.

"I thought it was coming in the window of my plane," said Capt. Francis Black, Eastern Air Lines pilot enroute to Miami. "I was over Fort Pierce at the time on a trip from Detroit. It looked like a ball of fire 10 or 15 feet in diameter."

"I took my plane up about 1,000 feet to keep from getting hit but I felt a little foolish when I got to Miami and learned that a pilot flying over Key West did the same thing."

The Miami Weather Bureau took a sober view of the occurrence:

"It was no different from hundreds that fall every night. It was a big one but it probably burned out at about 20,000 to 30,000 feet over the Everglades about 30 or 40 miles southwest of Miami International Airport."