Fargo

Fargo and the Gorman Dogfight

On the evening of 1 October 1948 Lieutenant George Gorman of the National Guard was on approach to Fargo when he saw a fast point of light beside him — no body, no navigation lights. For the next twenty-seven minutes he tried to catch it: it turned away, came head-on, and climbed more steeply than his fighter could. The chase was watched from the ground by a controller and by two men in a light aircraft. The Air Force explanation is a lit weather balloon, and it is plausible: the balloon is stationary and all the manoeuvring is produced by the pilot circling it. Gorman disagreed for the rest of his life; the transcript of his debriefing that same evening is still read as a model of a detailed report.