What happened
Preparing to land, Gorman saw a blinking light that the tower said was not another aircraft. He described a simple ball of light six to eight inches across. When he gave chase it became steady, turned sharply and made what he took for head-on passes, one over his canopy. The "dogfight" lasted 27 minutes. The Air Weather Service had released a lighted weather balloon from Fargo at 8:50 p.m. Ruppelt noted that the reported speeds strained the balloon answer, and Donald Menzel proposed a balloon plus a mirage of Jupiter.