The following is extracted from my email to Tom Tulien of July 11, 2002, right after I talked to Col Coleman:

I talked to Coleman by phone today for over 1/2 hour, from 3:45 to 4:21 PM PDT (July 11, 2002).

A chapter [in his 370-page draft manuscript for a UFO book] is called "However" which deals his genuine unexplained UFO sighting of July 1955.  He was flying a B-25 out of Miami with a co-pilot, flight engineer, a Lockheed test engineer and a General Motors jet engine guy (names forgotten of the latter two).  He got to Mariana, Florida, then [northward] into S Alabama when he spotted at 2 o'clock high what he called a "craze" in the windshield.  After a while he called the others' attention to it.  Eventually chased it at low altitude over farmland saw its shadow on the ground, saw two vortexes coming out of the shiny metallic disc which kicked up dust on the ground, and when he tried to cut it off at max speed of 300 knots the object was gone leaving behind the vortexes on the ground.  Duration 10-11 minutes.

However [about 45 minutes later according to his version in Florida Today Dec 1999] as he was landing at Greenville, Mississippi (on the phone call he kept saying they penetrated the Greenwood to get to Greenville, using Meridian beacon) he saw the object again briefly at 2 o'clock high traveling across the sky.  Sighting was at about 2 or 2:30 PM.  He told his crew he wasn't going to report the UFO until after they landed because he didn't want to hassle with reporting in the air.  After landing he had each crew member write up their version independently and put it in sealed envelopes.  Opened later by base intelligence officer (?) who said they were all remarkably similar accounts.  Coleman complained that while he sent reports to BLUE BOOK a few years later when he was PIO for BB and had them search they couldn't find his report.  He said his UFO report must have gone to the CIA (as to why it wasn't at BB).

I told him BB often misfiled and misdated cases and his case might actually still be in the BB files.  He reiterated that he had BB look.  I asked him if he could look in his Flight Log and see if he could get an exact date on his sighting.  He said he would.  Call him back in a week.  It's in a safe but he can look it up for me.

I called Coleman several more times at length on Aug. 3, 18, Oct. 13, 2002, in an effort to see if he could search his flight log to pin down the date but he was running into various problems and couldn't do it.  I also tried to pin down the date by his recollection of his military positions but this reinforced his recollection that it was July 1955, without specifying a particular date.

Brad