Ah yes, the way I put it made it sound as if the USAF kept classified records of this event only.
Thanks for clarifying!

And I wonder if they even could be since I myself am unsure what significance I'd attach to this.

So how do you know my "notion of its significance?"

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Perhaps you might've put this thread in Small Media then?

CT is specifically a forum in which one argues for or against an idea.
Are you defending this video as evidence for UFO conspiracy within the USAF?

Or are you merely saying, "Hey this video makes an argument for USAF-UFO-CT. I think it could be a smoking gun. What do you think?"

__________________
"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

Ah yes, the way I put it made it sound as if the USAF kept classified records of this event only.

A nit picked only because it's salient in this discussion -- much is being made of the supposed reason for classification.

And I wonder if they even could be since I myself am unsure what significance I'd attach to this.

Fair enough; I drew a conclusion prematurely from your identification of the incident as a "UFO" incident. I'm reading more into that than you intended.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

I stand corrected. The transcript of the tape as provided by NICAP does mention weather balloons. The pertinent section is here:

Any balloons?
Yeah.
Not that I know of.
I see. Well, do, uh, does Edwards have a [CLEARS THROAT]
Edwards don't, don't have a rawinsond [radar reflector balloon target] unit? [UNINTELLIGIBLE]
[SOUNDS LIKE: to send up.] So I doubt if they launched anything. They wouldn't have no reason to.
They wouldn't have any reason to send [OVERLAPPING] balloons up ?
[OVERLAPPING] Not the weather section anyway.
Out of Edwards, huh?
No.

This is not talking to the weather section of the base. It is talk between the tower and the Air defense controller. They talk about any RAWIN balloons (which employ radar reflectors). However, contrary to what they state here, it is standard procedure to launch weather balloons at regular intervals during the day (how do you think they got the temperature data in the report for that evening?). Since they did not use radar targets, the balloon would have to be tracked visually, which means it would be lit. BTW,the winds that morning were from between NW and NE (again data measured through the use of a balloon) depending on the altitude. This means the balloon would have traveled towards the South, which is the direction of travel of the one target the UFO officer states was a weather balloon! It did not travel against the wind as you stated earlier.

I'm not sure what time the balloon was seen, but if my simulations are correct, the moon was just on the western horizon around 3:00AM. There may still have been enough lunar illumination to reflect but I am uncertain of the balloon construction and whether it had reflective surfaces.

-V

Not really because most balloons are clear/unpigmented for night launches. The colored ones are used for daylight to track against the sky. If you read the UFO officer's report, he saw the object and felt it was a balloon with a light. It moved north to south (same as the wind) and had a small light. I believe the UFO officer stated in his report that this was around 0500 local time, which is past moonset.