there were also witnesses who claimed to see structured craft and not merely "glows" or bright lights. on july 19 an army artillery officer, joseph gigandet, was sitting on the front porch of his home in alexandria, virginia, across the potomac river from washington. at 9:30 p.m. he claimed to see "a red cigar-shaped object" which sailed slowly over his house. gigandet estimated the object's size as comparable to a dc-7 airplane at about 10,000 feet altitude; he also claimed that the object had a "series of lights very closely set together" on its sides. the object eventually flew back over his house a second time, which led gigandet to assume that it was circling the area. when the object flew away a second time, it turned a deeper red color and moved over the city of washington itself; this occurred less than two hours before edward nugent first spotted the unknown objects on his radar at washington national. dr. james e. mcdonald, a physicist at the university of arizona and a prominent ufologist in the 1960s, did his own analysis of the washington sightings, including speaking with four pilots and five radar personnel who were involved with the 1952 washington incident. mcdonald discussed his conclusions before the committee on science and astronautics of the us house of representatives. he told the committee that the temperature inversion theory used to explain the unknown radar traces was "quite untenable" and that, in his opinion, the 1952 washington ufo incident was "an instance of unidentified aerial objects over our capital." howard cocklin, who was interviewed by mcdonald about the incident, told a "washington post" reporter in 2002 that he was still "convinced that he saw an object over washington national...i saw it on the [radar] screen and out the window...it was a whitish-blue object. not a light - a solid form...a saucer-shaped object."