almost from the moment of general samford's press conference, eyewitnesses, ufo researchers, and air force personnel came forward to criticize the temperature inversion/mirage explanation. captain ruppelt noted that major fournet and lt. holcomb, who disagreed with the air force's explanation, were not in attendance at samford's press conference. ruppelt himself discovered that "hardly a night passed in june, july, and august in 1952 that there wasn't a [temperature] inversion in washington, yet the slow-moving, solid radar targets appeared on only a few nights."