at this point, other objects appeared in all sectors of the radarscope; when they moved over the white house and the united states capitol, barnes called andrews air force base, located 10 miles from national airport. although andrews reported that they had no unusual objects on their radar, an airman soon called the base's control tower to report the sighting of a strange object. airman william brady, who was in the tower, then saw an "object which appeared to be like an orange ball of fire, trailing a tail . . . [it was] unlike anything i had ever seen before." as brady tried to alert the other personnel in the tower, the strange object "took off at an unbelievable speed." on one of national airport's runways, s.c. pierman, a capital airlines pilot, was waiting in the cockpit of his dc-4 for permission to take off. after spotting what he believed to be a meteor, he was told that the control tower's radar had detected unknown objects closing in on his position. pierman observed six objects — "white, tailless, fast-moving lights" — over a 14-minute period. pierman was in radio contact with barnes during his sighting, and barnes later related that "each sighting coincided with a pip we could see near his plane. when he reported that the light streaked off at a high speed, it disappeared on our scope."