344 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1959 
ited areas near Yuma, some 20 miles apart, mirages showing the 
city of San Diego and its harbor have been reported several times, 
but not from both places at the same time. Approximately the 
same picture has been reported in Quartzite, 90 miles north, 
and from Long Beach, 100 miles up the coast from San Diego. 
All these city images are set up very low, not much above ground level. 
There have been mirage showings of ships too, always, for some rea- 
son, set well up in the sky. In no case here over the desert have in- 
verted images been shown. While cities and ships seem to be favorite 
subjects, others are sometimes shown. From a service station in 
California west of Yuma, motorists reported the appearance of moun- 
tain scenery, pine trees, shrubery, all complete, seemingly less than 
half a mile distant, set up right out in the desert. 
Operation Long Distance is not confined to the desert. The Los 
Angeles Times, some 20 years ago, under a Santa Barbara date line, 
told of a mirage that brought a settlement on one of the Channel 
Islands, about 30 miles distant, so close to shore that houses could be 
recognized and boats seen moving about in the little bay. At St. 
Albans, W. Va., about 1914, a group of young people were on a hill 
near the schoolhouse after dark. They noticed a glow in the sky, 
watched it become the picture of a city on fire, could see the firefighting 
equipment, the flames, roofs and walls falling in, and people rushing 
about or standing watching. Next day they learned that the fire had 
been in Ashland, Ky., about 40 miles away. <A friend, who had spent 
his younger years in North Dakota and thereabouts and had traveled 
a good deal, said that the only objects the mirage makers seemed 
interested in in that part of the country were grain elevators. They 
were seen many times, well up in the sky, and always upside down. 
Many of us may remember accounts of polar explorers who saw 
rescue ships in the sky several days before their arrival. 
A well-vouched story relates that an airplane pilot was flying in the 
Yuma area at about 3,000 feet, when quite suddenly he saw directly 
ahead a Navy ship, so close he could identify it and see the bow wave. 
A check, I was told, showed that the identification was correct and 
that the ship was sailing off San Diego at the time. Even if the pilot 
had been interested in mirages, I suppose he would have turned off his 
collision course instinctively, and lost sight of the ship in seconds, but 
it would have been tremendously interesting if he had crashed through 
the mirage picture to find what he would see on the other side. 
Sometimes both erect and inverted images are seen, the erect one 
higher in the sky. 
A great deal of material has been published on what Operation 
Long Distance does, but no article of my reading had even attempted 
to tell how it is done. This is not a matter of one problem but of 
many, the most impressive being, doubtless, that of transportation. 
