Why did a Manhattan Project physicist write UFO letters in the 1970s?

“James L. Tuck, a Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist and Manhattan Project veteran, wrote to the U.S. Army Engineering School in December 1970 asking for 'the recipe' for simulated atomic-bomb demonstrations — to study 'the large atmospheric vortices' referenced in Dr. Edward Condon's UFO report.”

Catalog entry DOE-UAP-D002 (UAP.WATCH ID DOC-139) is four pages of declassified correspondence to and from James L. Tuck, a British-American physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and led ball-lightning research at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The bundle contains three letters: a handwritten 1970 eyewitness account to Tuck describing 'green lights weaving in and out of Mountain peaks' over Los Alamos and the Jemez Mountains during 1948–1951, all reported to the LANL Protective Force; Tuck's typed December 16, 1970 letter to the U.S. Army Engineering School at Fort Belvoir requesting 'the recipe that was used for the simulated atomic bomb demonstrations' to study atmospheric vortices per the Condon Report; and an undated note enclosing UFO researcher James M. McCampbell's commentary on ball lightning, citing Einstein's unified field theory. The letters reveal direct engagement between mainstream nuclear physics and UAP investigation.