OK, so we'll move on to Coleman's statement next then (so Mr Oof can have an early night).
Note: In these initial analyses, I'm presuming what is being said by each individual observer is true (though obviously if one is true that also presumes the rest are false). I'm not ignoring anything each individual says or making presumptions about what they may have meant.
As we only have one report from the Johnson ranch on the ground, that information will not change over the course of these initial analyses.
Johnson states that from his ranch, the object was somewhere over Pt. Mugu. We have no way of knowing how far over, so I've simply left in the line of sight that the object would need to be on, in order for it to appear over Pt. Mugu from the Johnson ranch.
I've placed the plane
"off the coast somewhere in the vicinity of Santa Monica" and I think I've been generous in how far off the coast and how far up the coast, but I'm ready to make a 5 mile allowance either way from my positioning.
Coleman states that the object was spotted at approximately 5.00pm.
So the bottom plane position represents where the object was first spotted from. He goes on to say
"I saw an object apparently standing still in the air off the coast in the vicinity of Point Mugu"
Assuming that Coleman is correct, we have to place the plane traveling somewhere between due West and North West (because the other reports say the object was to the "right" and any further toward North would put the object to the left of the plane).
The closest that the plane could be to the object at this point is 25 miles if it was actually directly over Point Mugu, but as Colman says
"off the coast, in the vicinity of Point Mugu", we can put the position of the object further away from the plane somewhere along the red line.
Where the red line and the yellow line cross is 29 miles away from the plane, but if we're factoring a margin of error in here (the 5 miles each way), that would put the plane as close as 24 miles (this is a margin of error of about 20% which is very generous).
Next part of Coleman's statement says they headed towards the object and that
"I estimate the object was hovering in our sight for about ten minutes"
Now as we know from Thorem (who was controlling the plane), that the plane was traveling at 225mph, over that ten minutes, it would have travelled to somewhere around the top end of my yellow line.
Then Colman goes on to say
"Thereafter, it suddenly accelerated due West and in a time, in the order of ten seconds disappeared from view"
Any questions?
