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THE DMSP SATELLITE PHOTOGRAPH;part two;
The time it takes to scan from east to west (or v.v.) is determined by
a rotating mirror scanning system. The mirror rotates on a motor-driven
shaft that is parallel to the orbit direction (tangent to the orbit). The
rotation rate is 1.73 Hz, or 0.56 sec/revolution (3).
This corresponds to
11.2 rad/sec (641 degrees/sec). Because the light rays bounce off the
scanning mirror in such a way that the mirror is continually at 45 degrees
to the centerline of the shaft and at 45 degrees to the incident and
reflected rays, the scan rate of the IFOV is equal to that of the mirror
rotation rate, i.e., the scan rate, SR, is 11.2 rad/sec.
The total scan
angle (as displayed on the photograph) is twice 55.6 degrees (0.97 rad) or
112 degrees (1.94 rad) so it takes 1.94 rad/(SR) = 0.173 sec for the sensor
to scan from east to west (or west to east). (Actually the time was shorter
than this if the scan width as smaller, as calculated below.)
The rotating mirror also determines the time lag, TL, between
successive scans (the time from the beginning of one scan to the beginning
of the next scan). Since it takes O.56 sec for the mirror to rotate
completely around, TL = 0.56 sec. Because the satellite is traveling along
its orbit at a high speed each scan begins at a location further along the
orbit than the previous scan, as illustrated in Figure 5.
http://brumac.8k.com/DMSP/DMSP4.gif
The distance that
the satellite moves between equal scan angle points on successive scans is
VsTL = 2.24 nm, where Vs = 4.012 nm/sec and TL = 0.56 sec. Because the
optical system points toward the center of the earth at the center point of
each scan (the nadir), the separation distance between scans at the earth's
surface, S, is smaller than the spacing of the satellite positions by the
ratio Re/(Re+A) = 0.88 (Re and A were given previously). Thus the spacing of
the scan strips on the earth is S = VsTL(Re/[Re+A])= 2.24 x 0.88 = 1.97 or
about 2.0 mm (3.6 km) and the speed of the scan along the earth is 2 nm/0.56
sec = 3.57 nm/sec. Since the instantaneous area of view on the earth is
always larger than 2 nm, the scan strips overlap on the surface of the earth
(see Figure 5).
As the optical system scans the earth the detector output voltage
changes with temperature changes along the scan strip. At any instant the
output voltage corresponds to the average temperature of all the objects
viewed within the IFOV, i.e, all the objects within an area 2.45 mm wide or
larger. The temperature changes that occur from one IFOV location to the
next along a scan are processed electronically and ultimately are recorded
as color and brightness changes along a scan line on the photographic
negative that is created, line by line, by the DMSP electronic and
photographic processing equipment.
The temperature variations along a series
of successive parallel scan strips on the earth become brightness variations
along a series of parallel scan lines on the photograph. Thus the
combination of the east-west scan in 0.17 sec (or less, see below) with the
forward satellite motion, which causes 2.0 nm (at the earth's surface)
separation of scan lines, makes a two dimensional picture of the
temperature variations as seen by the infra-red sensor.
Since the average
temperatures of major earth features (land, ocean, clouds) are different the
outlines of the features are clearly visible. This picture will be quite
accurate if nothing changes temperature and nothing moves during the time of
passage of the satellite over an area. (Because the earth rotates under the
satellite there is a very small east-west smear along the direction of the
scan. The distance the earth landforms would move due to rotation
is about 0.25 cos(lat) in nm/sec, where lat is the latitude angle. So in
0.17 sec the landforms would move toward the east by about 0.04 cos(lat) or
less than 300 ft, an entirely negligible amount.)
The temperature sensor has a range from (3) 210 K (210 degrees Kelvin)
to 310 K (-63 C to 37 C or -145 F to 99 F). This covers most of the range
of temperatures found on the earth's surface and up to the altitude of the
highest clouds. (Note that generally temperature decreases with increasing
altitude.) Temperature differences as small as 1 C are sensed. However, the
photographic display can be adjusted to show larger temperature differences,
for example, 10 degree changes.
The display can also be adjusted to show
only a portion of the 100 degree maximum range, for example, 250 K to 300 K
(a 50 degree range). The photographs of interest here show six or seven (it
is difficult to determine whether it is six or seven) gradations in color
between the land (dark blue) and the clouds tops (white). Assuming that the
display was showing the whole temperature range (100 C) using 6 levels, then
each temperature gradation was about 17 C.
DISCUSSION OF THE ANOMALOUS IMAGE (AI) ;
The clouds in the photograph have irregular shapes ("fractal" edges).
The AI, on the other hand, has two nearly straight edges (see Figure 2). One
edge lies along the scan direction and one edge is nearly at 45 degrees to
the scan direction. Clouds do not have adjacent straight edges so this is a
reason to reject the idea that the AI is a cloud.
The outline of the AI is
also more angular and more distinct than edges of cloud images and the shape
is not striated or "blobby" the way other cloud images are. Hence the
following analysis has been carried out under the assumption that the AI was
not made by some exceedingly strangely shaped cloud.
The curved "contrail" images at the upper right of the AI create the
illusion of a speeding object that left vapor trails behind it. This might
be true (but with "severe" consequences; see below), or it might be that
these were simply elongated curved clouds that happened to appear next to
the AI. One can find similar elongated or "striated" clouds with dark
spaces (views of the earth's surface) between them in other portions of the
picture (e.g., just below of center of the photo).
The close proximity of
the ends of these curved elongated clouds to one edge (the "back edge") of
the AI combined with one's knowledge of what contrails behind a high-flying
jet look like, make one think immediately of a multi-engine aircraft.
However, if one covers up the AI itself leaving the "contrail" images one
can see that there could be an association between the elongated clouds and
the other cloud structure which is to the right of the AI.
In other words it seems reasonable to assume that the curved elongated
images are of clouds that have no real association with the object that made the AI.
Since there is a question as to the relevancy of the "contrail" clouds, for the
purposes of the following analysis they will be ignored and the analytic effort
will concentrate on the AI.
The white image of the AI lies "on top of" the images of the warmer
(i.e., bluer and hence lower altitude) clouds. The whiteness of the AI
image seems equal to the whiteness of the larger areas of cloud and hence
appears to be least as cold as the upper cloud tops.
Thus it appears that
the AI is above the clouds, or at least at the level of the cloud tops, i.e.
at an altitude of several tens of km or more and so it cannot be some
unusual feature on the surface of the earth. The extreme whiteness of the
AI implies that whatever made it was at the "maximum cold" that could be
registered, or colder, e.g., equal to or less than -60 C.
The trapezoidal (nearly rectangular) "hole" in the AI image (see Figure
2), on the other hand, has the same dark blue color as the lower clouds and
the earth's surface and so would appear to be at least as warm as the lower
clouds and perhaps about as warm as the earth's surface beneath. At each
end of the trapezoidal "hole" there is a region where the dark blue color
appears to match the blue of the land mass. Between these darkest blue
regions in the "hole" there is a less blue region.One gets the impression
of perhaps looking through a hole in the object toward the earth and clouds
below.
A comparison with land features in the photograph suggests that some
land may actually be visible within the trapezoidal area. (To prove or
disprove this would require a very careful comparison with a map or a DMSP
satellite photo of the same area.) At any rate, the temperature within the
"hole" is comparable to the temperature of land and ocean features that are
visible elsewhere in the photo.
THE LATERAL ANGULAR SIZE OF THE ANOMALOUS IMAGE;
To find the angular size one must first "remove" from the AI the angle-
dependent stretching in the scan direction that was introduced by the DMSP
processing system as part of a standard "map rectification process" that
compensates for the forshortening that occurs due to the oblique view of the
earth at large scan angles. The map rectification results in a constant
number of nm/inch along the photograph. The usual mode of operation (3)
corresponds to 205 nm/inch (1:15,000,000 scale factor). Since the scan lines
are spaced 2 nm on the surface of the earth this would correspond to (205
nm/inch)/(2 nm/line) = 102 lines/inch on the photograph.
However, Figure 1 has 42.25 lines/inch. This corresponds to 42.25
lines/inch x 2 nm/line = 84.5 nm/inch. This is close to, but not as large as
the other listed optional expansion (3), 102 nm/inch (1:7,500,000) which
should produce a picture with 50 lines/inch. Why the number of lines/inch
does not agree with either standard (102 or 51) is not known. However, there
may have been a different scale factor used in the signal processor which
created the photo from the electronic signals sent by the satellite. At any
rate, I assume that the horizontal (east-west) and vertical (north-
south) scale factors are the same (which they should be) and are, therefore,
84.5 nm/inch.
(NOTE: this assumption applies only to the scan as projected
to the surface of the earth. The vertical distance scale remains
approximately constant with altitude up to the satellite but the horizontal
scale shrinks with increasing altitude, as will be described. That is, a
vertical dimension of one inch always represents 84.5 nm but a horizontal
dimension represents 84.5 nm only along the earths's surface. At altitudes
above the surface the horizontal scale factor is less.) With this
assumption the picture does not show 1600 nm measured east to west across
the surface of the earth, as illustrated in Figure 4, but rather about 680
nm.
This variation in the data presentation does not affect the scan rate,
11.2 rad/sec (which is determined by the satellite and cannot be changed by
ground operation control) but it does mean that the duration of a single
scan was about 0.11 sec rather than the 0.17 sec calculated above.
A "flat earth" approximation to the map rectification equations is
presented in Figure 4. Let t be the angle away from vertical (nadir).
(NOTE: angle t is represented as the Greek letter theta on Figure 4 and A,
is represented as h) Then, x = distance on the earth's surface in nm =
My, where M = 84.5 nm/inch and y is the distance in inches measured along a
scan line on the photograph starting at the center of the scan line (the
center of the photo represents the nadir, "straight down," or t = 0).
By trigonometry, x = A tan (t). Now, imagine that a relatively small object
on the earth's surface has a width (east-west dimension) given by Dx.
The scanning process will create an image of angular width, Dt, that is
related to Dx by the derivative of the equation, Dx/Dt = A/cos^2(t).
Solving this for the angular size, Dt, corresponding to a length Dx, as
viewed by the satellite, gives Dt = (Dx/A)cos^2(t) which shows that the
angular size shrinks with increasing angle (cos(t) shrinks as the angle
increases) even when Dx stays constant. The electronic processor "reverses"
this equation to make the horizontal length scale constant. In other words,
the processor multiplies the angular width of an image, Dt, by the
factor [A/cos^2(t)] to give Dy, measured on the film, as Dy = Dx/M =
A/[Mcos^2(t)] Dt. That is, a "stretch" was applied to each scan line,
with the amount of stretch increasing with the angular distance from the
nadir. To determine the actual angular width from a width measurement, Dy,
on the photograph it is necessary to multiply Dy by the inverse of the
"stretch factor," as indicated in the following equations.
The angular width of an image along a scan line corresponding to an
object of width Dx at the earth's surface is given by
Dt = (Dx/A) cos^2(t). (1)
To find the actual angular width of a small image (much smaller than
the width of a scan line), first find the off-nadir angle, t, at the center
of the image from
t = arctan(My/A) (2)
using M = 84.5 nm/inch and A = 461 nm: t = arctan(0.183y). The distance,
y, is measured on the photo along any particular line that goes through the
image, starting at the center of the scan line and measuring to a point
along that scan line which is within the image. For example, measuring
along a scan line that passes approximately through the widest part of the
AI (which is close to the center of the image), from the center of the
photo to a point at the center of the AI the distance is about y = 1.6
inches. Therefore at that point t = arctan(.183 x 1.6) = 16.3 degrees .
(This is based on a print that is exactly 8 inches wide by 10 inches long.
This print is apparently a direct 1:1 copy of the original negative created
by the DMSP system. Figure 1 shows this print copied at 75 dpi and cropped
about 0.6 inches at the left side, which shows only more cloud and a small
amount of land, to save "bandwidth.")
Let Dy be the width of any small image as measured along a scan line
and let Dx = MDy. From the equation above (and see Figure 4, wherein h is
used to denote altitude, represented here by A), the actual angular width of
a small image, after removal of the "stretch" that was introduced by the
DMSP electronics, is given by
Dt = (Dx/A)cos^2(t) = (MDy/A)cos^2(t) = 0.183Dy cos^2(t). (3)
Along the scan line that passes through the widest portion of the AI,
Dy = 0.6 inches so Dt = 0.101 radians (0.101 rad) or about 5.8 degrees.
This, then is the actual angular size of the AI as seen from the perspective
of the DMSP. (Note: the stretch correction factor is only about 8% for the
AI image, so one could proceed without including it.)
A REAL OBJECT "OUT THERE";
Finally, after all this preliminary calculation, the time to scan
across the widest portion of the AI can be calculated: 0.101 rad/(11.2
rad/sec) = 0.0090 sec. For comparison, the time to scan across the third
scan line up from the bottom of the AI, where y = 1.4 inches, Dy = 0.46
inches, t = 14.4 deg and Dt = 0.079 rad, was about 0.079 rad/(11.2 rad/sec)
= 0.0070 sec (see the calculations at the bottom of Figure 4). Thus each
scan across the AI required about 0.007/0.56 = l/80th of the time from one
scan to the next.
The total time required to create the AI is the time it took to create
the 22 scan lines which make up the image (see Figure 6): 21 x 0.56 + 0.007
= 11.77 sec. (This is the sum of 21 "spaces" between the starting points
for the 22 scan line plus the time it took for the 22nd scan line to cross
the AI. This isn't quite correct because of the sloping boundary of the
AI.)
During this nearly 12 sec period a substantially straight edge, at
nearly 45 degrees to the scan direction, was created. This high degree of
correlation means that the AI is not an artifact of random detector noise,
mechanical vibration or electronic signal processor. Instead the AI was
produced by a real thing "out there' an Unidentified Object (UO).
Since the AI was not created by random system noise, nor was it created
by a cloud it must have been made by a "real thing out there." The only
conventional possibilities are that the UO was some man-made object at or
above cloud level. Only aircraft and satellites travel above cloud level, so
the remaining analysis is directed toward determining whether or not it is
logical to conclude the UO was an aircraft or a satellite.
COULD IT HAVE BEEN AN AIRCRAFT?
One "quick" conclusion is that the object could not have been a high-
flying aircraft. To see that this is true in a simple way, consider that
the IFOV is 0.00533 rad. Therefore the area covered by the IFOV at the
altitude of the cloud tops, about 8 nm, would be (0.00533)(461 nm - 8 nm) =
2.4 nm = 14,670 ft. Any aircraft that could fly at 8 nm would be under 100
ft in size and therefore would only be a "dot" within a single IFOV. It
would not register at all (unless it were a "ball of fire", in which case it
might make a tiny blueish dot, one IFOV in size, on a picture such as Figure
1).
Because of the width of the AI, another requirement for the
hypothetical aircraft would be to make at least one scan line width.
Consider the widest scan line in the AI, 0.101 rad. It required 0.009 sec
to create. During that time a fast aircraft at 3,600 nm/hr = 1 nm/sec would
move 0.009 nm = 54 ft, or about its own length. For the purposes of this
calculation it could, therefore, be considered virtually stationary during
the time it was scanned.
How does this compare to the size at cloud-top
level that would create a scan line .101 rad long? Projected to the cloud
tops, at an angle of 16.3 degrees from vertical, this angular length
corresponds to a distance (length) of X = 0.101 (461-8)/cos^2(16.3) = 49 nm.
Clearly this single scan line by itself could not be caused by any
stationary (zero velocity) man-made object at the altitude of the cloud
tops!!
But then one might suggest that the scan line was made by an aircraft
which remained within the IFOV for a period of time by virtue of its speed
(and, by extension, one might suggest that the 22 scan lines were created by
22 similar high speed, high altitude aircraft, each one of which happened to
remain within an IFOV).
If that were true, then the aircraft must have
traveled 49 nm in the direction of the scan during the time of the scan,
0.009 sec (for the widest scan line) with the consequent velocity of 5520
nm/sec or about 20,000,000 nm/hr, not exactly a "moderate" speed.
Another requirement for size of a slowly moving or stationary object at
the cloud tops is based on the velocity of the DMSP satellite and the time
duration represented by the 22 scan lies. That is, if stationary, it would
have to be at least 11.77 sec x 3.6 nm/sec = 42 nm long, where 3.6 nm/sec is
approximately the speed of the scan at 8 nm above the earth. If, on the
other hand, one were to assume an object traveled along with the satellite
and so appeared in a succession of scans the, besides having to be about 49
nm wide and 2 nm long (to fill the IFOV), it would have to travel at 3.6
nm/sec = 12,960 mph.
The preceding analysis shows clearly that the UO could not have been
any man-made object at the cloud tops for reasons related to size and speed.
The only remaining man-made type of object is a satellite, and one that was
at essentially the same altitude as the DMSP satellite, as will be shown.
source; http://brumac.8k.com/DMSP/DMSP.html
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THE DMSP SATELLITE PHOTOGRAPH;part three;
COULD IT HAVE BEEN A SATELLITE ?
The Appendix provides a considerable amount of analysis that shows that
if the object were an Unidentified Satellite (US), then it had to be moving
nearly parallel to the DMSP. Any object in orbit would be traveling at a
high speed and so satellites traveling in the opposite direction or
perpendicular to the direction of motion of the DMSP would have to be much
larger than any man-made satellite to create the AI. The only logical
possibilty, then, is that a US passed, rather slowly, beneath the DMSP
(actually about 16 degrees to the east of directly below).
In order to determine the allowed range of satellite sizes and orbits
it is necessary to consider first the following relationship between the
orbital altitude and the velocity: Vp - Vs = -5.14E-4 Ro, where Vp =
Vo cos(a) and Vo is the US velocity and 5.14E-4 = 5.14 x 10^-4 = 0.000514.
For the purposes of this calculation it is sufficiently accurate to imagine
that the US velocity vector lies in an imaginary horizontal plane that is at
the altitude of the US and is perpendicular to the radius from the center of
the earth to the US. (This is because any satellite in a (nearly) circular
orbit has an instantaneous velocity vector that is essentially perpendicular
to the radius from the center of the earth out to the satellite, i.e.,
tangent to the circular orbit, and any vector perpendicular to a radius
vector lies in a plane defined as "locally horizontal.") The horizontal
plane that contains the US velocity vector during the nearly 12 seconds of
this "sighting" is slightly below the imaginary horizontal plane that
contains the DMSP orbit velocity during the same time period. In the above
equation, Vp is the component of the US velocity parallel to the DMSP orbit
velocity, a is the acute angle between the US velocity vector and the DMSP
velocity vector and Ro is the vertical distance between orbital altitudes,
essentially the height difference between the imaginary horizontal planes
described above.
The above equation can be derived from the basic Newtonian force
calculation for a circular orbit: F = ma where ma = mv^2/r and F =
m(GM/r^2). The solution of these equations leads to v = k/r^0.5, where r is
the radial distance from the center of the earth to the orbit altitude, r =
Re+A = 3432 nm + 461 nm = 3893 nm. The derivative of this equation is dv/dr
= - 0.5k/r^1.5. Because the variation in radial distance is small compared
to the actual radius 0.5k/r^1.5 is a constant equal to 5.1E-4/sec.
Hence dv
= - 5.1E-4 dr. In this equation, dr = Ro where Ro is a negative number
(positive is upward). For example, if the US were 1 nm below the DMSP, then
Ro = -1 nm and Vp-Vs = (- 5.1E-4/sec) (-1 nm) = 5.1E-4 nm/sec = 3.12 ft/sec.
In other words, Vp = Vs + 3.12 ft/sec so the US travels more rapidly than
the DMSP. This is a small change to the orbital velocity, 24,381 ft/sec.
(Note: from now on the (-) sign will be ignored as it is understood that
distances Ro are measured downward from the DMSP.)
Imagine a US traveling at some altitude Ro below the level of the DMSP
satellite. If Ro = 1 nm, then Vp - Vs = 3.12 ft/sec. The US would approach
the DMSP from behind below, catch up with the DMSP and then move ahead.
As it approached it would eventually reach a point where the scan would pass
over the leading edge of the US. As time went on the scan would move
backward over the US as the US moved along, until eventually the lagging
edge of the US would move ahead of the scan position. The image thus
created would be a series of scan line segments with the width of each
segment being a measure of the width of the US. But note that the US image
would be reversed: the front (most forward in the DMSP orbit direction) edge
of the image would correspond to the rear edge of the object (front-back
mirror reversal).
By the time of the last scan line the US would have moved, relative to
the DMSP, a distance equal to its own length, Lo. Hence Lo = (time of
scanning 22 lines) x ( the speed differential) or Lo = 11.77(Vp-Vs). The
above relation between speed differential and altitude establishes a close
relationship between the distance of the US below the DMSP and the length
of the US: Lo = 11.77(-5.14E-4)Ro = 0.00605Ro. For R = -1 nm = -6,077 ft
this yields a length (dimension along the orbit) of 36.8 ft (which is probably
within the outer bound of man-made size). (Note that the length dimension
is not affected by having the US not directly below the DMSP. However, the
width is affected by the off-nadir angle, as shown below.)
Consider the same US moving nearly parallel to the DMSP orbit but at a
lower altitude. The angular width (as measured perpendicular to the orbit)
is the angle corresponding to the width along a scan line. For the third
line up from the bottom of the AI, for example, the angular size is 0.079
rad (see above). The lateral dimension of the US (a dimension lying within
the imaginary horizontal plane as discussed above) is given by Wo =
0.079Ro/cos^2(t) (where the cosine factor corrects for the perspective
effect of being off of vertical by t degrees). With t = 14.4 deg for the
third line up and Ro = 1 nm = 6077 ft, Wo = 512 ft. (Decidedly NOT man-made
size.)
More generally, the equations for Lo and Wo can be combined: Ro =
Lo/0.00605, so Wo = 0.079(Lo/0.00605)/cos^2(t) = [13/cos^2(t)]Lo. For t =
14.4 deg this becomes Wo = 13.8Lo or the width is about 14 times the length.
Thus, although it is impossible to determine from the available information
the exact value of either dimension, it is possible to determine their
ratio. (This is a surprising result that is a consequence of the assumption
that the US is in an orbit and hence constrained by orbital mechanics.)
One can explore a range of values for Ro and calculate the resulting
values of L and W: Ro = 0.1 nm = 607 ft, Lo = 3.68 ft, W = 50.8; Ro = 0.05
nm = 304 ft, Lo = 1.84 ft, W = 25.9 ft, etc. What one learns from this set
of calculations is that to have both dimensions within the roughly 50 ft
allowed maximum for man-made satellite structures in 1978, Ro can be no more
than a few hundred feet!
The above analysis leads to the conclusion that if the object was a US,
then it was in an orbit very close to that of the DMSP. More specifically,
the above analysis is based on the assumption (not stated until now) that
the US was traveling exactly parallel to the DMSP for the 11.77 seconds of
this encounter or "sighting." This, of course, could be possible but, if
so, the orbital planes would have been very close to one another.
Based on the above reasoning one might conclude that the image is that
of some satellite with the shape of its outline equal to the outline
indicated on the photo. Such a conclusion might be right or it might be
wrong. If the US were a rotation-stabilized satellite the image shape might
be a reasonable approximation of the actual shape. On the other hand, if it
were a piece of space junk that was tumbling rapidly (more than 1 rotation
per second, for example) as it traveled along, then there would be hardly
any resemblance between the image shape and the object shape.
Alternatively, if the object were a rotation stabilized satellite and
traveling toward (or away from) the DMSP orbit the shape of the image could
be distorted by the lateral motion. Note that the right edge is mostly a
straight line at an angle to the direction of DMSP motion. In the Appendix
it is shown that a rectangle could get distorted by motion and thereby
create an image with a slanted edge as in the AI. More specifically,
consider that the variation in end position of the successive scan lines at
the right side is 0.022 inches per line for 13 of the 22 scan lines, a total
of 0.286 inches of shift making a line at about 45 degrees. A reasonable
assumption would be that this is a result of the US moving toward (or away
from) the DMSP by some amount from one scan to the next. Using the
method presented before for finding the angular size of an image an the photo
(Equation 3), the shift in the image edge position corresponds to an angle
shift Dt = (0.183) x Dy x cos^2(18) = (0.183 x 0.022 x 0.905) = 0.0036 rad,
where the angle used, 18 deg, is at the (vertical) center of the right edge
of the image. This amount of shift in angular position took place in 0.56
sec, so the angular transverse velocity that would produce the (nearly) 45
degree sloping right edge of the image is 0.0064 rad/sec. For an altitude
difference of 300 ft, for example, this corresponds to a transverse velocity
of 0.0064 x 300/cos^2(18) = 2.1 ft/sec. In other words, a US with a straight
edge at its right (east) side and a transverse velocity component Vt = 2.1
ft/sec could make a slanted edge such as observed on the photo.
This would make the UO orbit non-parallel to the DMSP, but not by much.
One must not be confused by the "scale" of the photograph. What looks like
a 45 degree angle is not that when projected onto real space because the
distance moved by the UO satellite is essentially X = (0.56 sec)(Vp ft/sec)
along the orbit and Y = (0.56 sec) (Vt ft/sec) transverse to the orbit. The
acute angle, a, of the US velocity vector (and also the US orbit plane)
relative to the DMSP velocity (and orbit plane) is therefore a =
arctan(Vt/Vp), where Vt = 0.0064Ro/cos^2(t) and Vp = Vs + 5.14E-4Ro. In
taking the ratio we can ignore the small contribution to Vs and simply write
Vt/Vp = 0.0064Ro/[Vs Cos^2(t)] = 2.62E-7Ro/cos^2(t). For Ro = 300 ft the
ratio is 8.7E-5 and the angle is 8.7E-5 radians or 0.005 degrees. Here is
another way of looking at it: during the nearly 12 sec "sighting" both
satellites would have travelled appoximately 12 sec x 4 nm/sec = 48 nm along
their orbits, while the US would have moved only a comparatively miniscule
12 sec x 2.1 ft/sec = 25 ft toward (or away from) a point directly below the
DMSP (i.e., a point lying in the DMSP orbit plane).
For small angles such as these the arctan of an angle equals the value
of the angle in radians. Hence one can write a = [2.62E-7Ro/cos^2(t)] which
shows that the angle between the orbits increases with the vertical distance
between the orbits. With 600 ft being the likely maximum value for Ro (see
above; for satellites with maximum dimensions less than 50 ft) the maximum
angle between the orbits would be about 1.74E-4 radians or about 0.01 deg.
Since this would also be the acute angle between orbit planes, the maximum
separation between these satellites, which would occur 1/4 of an orbit
before or after this "sighting" would be only (Re+A)(1.74E-4) = 0.68 nm
(where Re+A = 3893 nm). For smaller values of Ro the maximum separation
decreases (.34 nm at Ro = 300 ft, etc.)
This raises the question of whether or not the DMSP would detect the US
at another location in its orbit. The period of a circular orbit is P =
2pi(Re+A)/v. In this case v = 4.012 nm/sec and 2 pi (Re+A) = 24,460 nm so P
= 24,460/4.012 = 6096 sec = 101.6 min. With a speed differential of dV =
5.1E-4Ro, at 600 ft the US would travel .3084 ft/sec faster than the DMSP.
One half an orbit later, when the DMSP and US would again be close together
(where the orbits would cross on the other side of the earth), the US would
be 3048 x .3084 = 940 ft ahead of the DMSP. Since the US travels faster the
DMSP would never catch up with it, so it would not be detected. As the two
satellites continued to orbit the earth the US would "lap" the DMSP after
(24,460 nm x 6077 ft/nm)/(940 ft per 1/2 orbit) = 158,131 half orbits or
about 79065 1/2 full orbits. The time for this many orbits would be about
134,000 hours or about 5,580 days (about 15 years). That would mean that
within the lifetime of the DMSP (10 years or so) one might expect only one
encounter with the UO satellite.
This last conclusion explains why there was no similar image reported
in any other photo from this DMSP satellite. (On the other hand, even if
there had been such an image it might not have been noticed since many of
the photos were simply thrown away. It was apparently a chance occurence
that this particular picture was saved because of the "cute" image.)
The above analysis was based on the seemingly reasonable assumption
that the right hand edge of the AI was a straight line because the US was
drifting slowly toward the orbit plane of the DMSP as the US passed nearly
beneath the DMSP. The alternative possibility, mentioned above, is that the
actual outline or edge of the US was a straight slanted line. If this were
so then there was no motion of the US toward or away from the DMSP. (One
would also imagine of mix of these explanations: the right edge of the US
had a slant, but not as steep, and at the same time the US was moving very
slowly toward the DMSP.) If the US were actually traveling eactly parallel
to the DMSP orbit but at a slightly lower angle and slightly to the right,
then because of orbital mechanics this would be the farthest apart,
laterally, that their orbits would be. The orbits would cross 1/4 of an
orbit later but, as with the situation above, the US would be ahead of the
DMSP and so would never be imaged again (at least not for more than 15 years).
-
THE DMSP SATELLITE PHOTOGRAPH;part four;
CONCLUSION;
It is unfortunate that the DMSP photo was not made available for
analysis until many years after it was taken because it should have been
possible to determine which satellite, if any, could have been at the exact
location indicated by the DMSP. On the other hand, it should still be
possible to determine the dimensions of the largest satellites and
pieces of space junk that were orbiting in 1978 and which of those
satellites might have been in an orbit that would put it close to the DMSP.
If there was no such satellite, then this could have truly been classified
as an unidentifiable object.
(Note: the meteor hypothesis is rejected because a meteor caught in a
temporary arc about the earth would be traveling much faster than a
satellite. If there were only on scan line image one might consider a
meteor, but then such a small image would have been ignored and the question
of identifying it would not have come up.)
FOOTNOTES AND REFERENCES;
1) Photographs made from the original negative were provided by Mr. James
Bounds and Mr. Terry Slaughter of Anchorage, Alaska. According to Mr. Bounds
the original negative was obtained in October, 1978, by a friend who worked
at the weather center at Elmendorf Air Force Base where DMSP satellite data
are received and processed. According to Mr. Bounds the original negative
shows an infrared picture of the earth. Am effort was made, as part of this
study, to verify the photographs as being derived from a DMSP satellite
negative by locating in archival storage a magnetic tape containing the
original electronic data. However, it was determined that no such tape
exists. Therefore it is assumed in this analysis that the photographs are,
in fact, derived from a DMSP negative. No information has been obtained
which contradicts this assumption.
2)Letter entitled, "To Whom It May Concern, " by Dr. B. Ray Knox , Professor
of Geology, Southeast Missouri State University dated Nov. 1, 1985
3) DMSP User's Guide, Air Weather Service (MAC), United Air Force Report #
AWS-TR-74-250. Normal operation of the DMSP satellite is either "Mode infra-
red" (MI) or High Resolution (HR) visibler. Because of information provided
by Mr. Bounds it is assumed that the negative is a MI image of the earth. MI
operates in the 8 - 13 micron band. Since the very cold cloud tops appear
white it appears that the MI output was inverted to make colder regions
appear whiter amd warmer regions appear darker.
4) The normal altitude according to Ref. 3 is 450 nm in a circular orbit.
However, the altitude could range from 430 nm to 480 nm. The altitude used
here, 460.9 or 461 nm was supplied by Mr. Bounds who was given the
information on the actual altitude by a contact at Elmendorf Air Force Base
near Anchorage, Alaska. The general conclusions stated here do not depend
upon whether the satellite was at 450 or 461 nm altitude.
APPENDIX;
(Note: only the mathematically include aficionado should take the time
to read this. However, do take a look at Figures 9, 10 and 11 below.)
The size and actual shape of the Unidentified Object, "thing out
there," the UO, can only be guessed at since the distance to it is unknown.
(The DMSP satellite did not provide two simultaneous, independent views that
could have allowed for a triangulation.) "Educated guessing" consists of
creating model objects and then determining what such models would look like
in DMSP photos. Any model which produces an image with the features of the
AI is, potentially, an actual model of the object. Unfortunately there are
many such models so one cannot be certain that any particular one is the
actual shape of the object. Nevetheless this sort of analysis can help to
determine with some level of confidence what the UO was not.
DISCUSSION OF A SINGLE LINE OF THE IMAGE;
Because the satellite scans line by line at a low rate the picture that
created is not like a "normal" photograph in which the whole picture is
created "at once" (within the shutter time of the camera, for example). The
slow scan would make no difference if the objects being scanned were at or
near the earth's surface did not move or change in any way during the time
that the picture was created. However, when one allows for the possibility
that something, specifically, the UO, was (a) close to the DMSP and (b) did
move relative to the DMSP, then it becomes necessary to proceed with
caution in trying to understand the image. (Note: the DMSP scanning
mechanism and electronics compensates for the motion of the MSP over the
earth so that the views of the earth and slowly changing clouds are quite
accurate.)
Although the total picture of the UO took about 12 seconds to complete
(with consequences that will be illustrated below), a given scan across the
UO was rapid, taking less than 1/100 of a second. Let us, therefore try to
understand the significance of this single line "snapshot" of the UFO.
The maximum width of the AI as measured along a single scan line is
about 0.6 inches and this corresponds to an angle of about 0.1 radians. The
first question to be asked is, what size does this correspond to if the
object were at the altitude of the cloud tops, say 8.2 nm (50,000 ft) above
the earth? The satellite was about A = 461 nm above the earth so an object
8 nm above the earth would have been about A - H = 453 miles from the
satellite.
Imagine a scan line projected onto a plane that is parallel to the
horizontal surface of the earth (flat earth approximation). The width of an
object is measured within this imaginary plane, parallel to a scan line. If
the line of sight to the object is not straight down but rather at angle t
to the nadir (where t = 0), then the width must be projected onto an
imaginary plane that is perpendicular to the the line of sight. This
projection is given by x = X cos(t), where X is the actual width measured in
the imaginary horizontal plane and x is the projected width in the imaginary
plane. At the same time, the radial distance from the satellite to the
object is R = (A-H)/cos(t). Therefore the projected length of the object is
related to the angular size by x = R tan(a) = [(A-H)/cos(t)]tan(a) and the
actual length is X = [(A-H)/cos^2(t)]tan(a).
When an angle is given in radians, if the angle is less than 0.4
radians (about 23 degrees), tan(a) = a to better than 5% accuracy. In this
case a = 0.1 rad, so at an altitude A - H = 452 miles an at an angle of abou
16 degrees from the nadir, the object dimension along the scan direction
(the projected width on the photo) would be about X = (453 nm)(.1)/cos^2(16)
49 miles!! Hence the claim made by the promoters of this photo that the
object was "climbing out of the atmosphere" only makes sense if the object
was fantastically huge! It is no wonder that they never mentioned a size of
the object (even though they did claim a huge speed of 4,000 - 5,000 mph).
This size calculation immediately rules out an airplane.
However, the angular width used in the calculation above is based on
the assumption that there was no component of motion of the object along the
scan line. What if there were motion of some small object, like an
aircraft, along the scan direction? In that case it would spend too much
time in the IFOV and create an image much longer than its actual length.
(In the limit that the object moved at the scan speed it would create an
"infinitely" long image.) In other words, one has to consider the
possibility that the width of the AI image might be due, in part, to motion
parallel to the scan direction. The following discussion is directed toward
deciding whether or not the length of a scan line in the AI image was
increased (or decreased) by motion of the object.
All we know from the photo is that the scan line contacted one end of
the UO at time To and maintained contact until it reached the other end at
time T1. During this time the scan moved through the measured angle, Dt =
0.1 rad in 0.009 sec (for the longest scan line). If the object was moving
with a component of its motion parallel to the scan line then the product of
the total scan time, TS = T1 - To, multiplied by the scan angular velocity,
SR, must equal the sum of the actual angular size plus the angular distance
it moved during TS. Let the actual projected size along the scan direction
(the projected width of the AI along a scan line) be Lp, let its projected
velocity component along the scan line be Vp and its distance from the DMSP
satellite be d = (A-H)/cos(t). Then its angular velocity along the scan line
is Vp/d and its angular size along the scan line is Lp/d (for small angles
less than 0.4 rad this is accurate to better than 5%). Then the above
verbal equation can be written as
(TS)(SR) = (Lp/d) +(Vp/d)TS, where SR > |Vp/d|. (4)
In this equation we know SR (= 11.2 rad/sec), TS (= 0.009 sec for the
longest scan line on the image) and d is assumed to be 452 nm. The equation
becomes 0.1 rad = Lp/452 + 0.009(Vp/452) or
0.1 = 0.0022Lp + 0.00002 Vp = 2.2E-3Lp + 2E-5Vp, (5)
where Lp is in nm and Vp is nm/sec.
Since there is only one equation the actual length and velocity of the
object cannot be determined without further information. However, one can
easily see that if an image is constructed over a period of time rather than
instantly, then the size of the image depends upon the relative velocity
between the "camera" and the object.
The image size could be greater or
less than it should be depending upon whether the scan is in the same or
opposite direction to the motion of the object. If the object velocity is
very small and/or the "shutter time" (scan time) is very small the projected
size is accurately given by ignoring the second term on the right side of
the above equation.
Using this equation one can test the "high flying aircraft" hypothesis
by assuming a length, say 50 ft = 0.0082 nm, for the object, and then
calculating how fast it would have to move (Vp) to create the 0.6 inch wide
scan image, i.e., to satisfy equation (5). The answer is Vp = [0.1 - 2.2E-
3(0.0082)]/2E-5 = [0.1 - 1.8E-5]/2E-5 = 5E3 nm/sec which corresponds to a
super duper meteoric speed of 1.8E7 nm/hr...that is 18 million nautical
miles per hour! (Light speed is 1.6E5 nm/sec = 5.8E8 nm/hr).
Scratch high flying aircraft!! The only remaining conventional
explanation is that the DMSP happened to scan a passing satellite. But this
is not as "simple" as it might seem. In order to understand why, it is
necessary to delve more deeply into the consequences of the method by which
DMSP pictures are made. This understanding can be gained by analyzing the
effects of the scan system on creating images of "known" simple objects,
i.e., model UOs.
ANALYSIS OF SIMPLE MODELS OF THE UNIDENTIFIED OBJECT;
In the following discussion the terms "width" and "length" have
specific meanings. The length of an object is a distance measured along the
orbit of the DMSP satellite. The width is measured transverse
(perpendicular) to the orbit and parallel to the east-west scan direction.
First, a very simple model UO will be used to illustrate how the image shape
and model size are related by the optical and scanning properties of the
satellite.
Assume that a flat rectangular (cold) object is directly below the
satellite at altitude H above the surface of the earth (see Figure 7).
The width of the object is W, measured transverse to the orbit. It is
shown at three possible heights above the earth. The angular size of the
object as viewed by the satellite is the angle formed at the satellite by
the lines of sight to the "left and right" edges of the object (see Figure
7). The angular size (i.e., the angle) increases as the altitude increases
since the actual size is assumed to stay constant. The important fact to
note is that for any assumed width there is only one height, H, which would
give the same angular size as the angular size of the AI on the photograph.
A SINGLE LINE IMAGE MODEL;
The third scan line up from the bottom of the AI will be used as a
measure of the angular width of the AI. This width of this scan segment is
about 0.46 inches on the photograph. Previously this width was calculated
to be 0.079 rad (see the bottom of Figure 4).
To create (using thought) the image that would result from this simple
model UO, assume that the center of the flat object is directly below the
satellite (the center is at some distance along the nadir) and observe that
the ratio of the width, W, to the distance from the satellite, (A-H) is the
angular size in radians as "seen" by the satellite (W << A-H is assumed to
be less than 0.4 rad). For example, assume W = 1 nm (not a small size!).
If H1 = 1 nm (see Figure 7), then A - H = 460 nm and the ratio is W/(A-H1) =
1/460 = 0.00217 rad. This is much smaller than the angular size of the AI
along this scan line (0.079 rad). To increase the angular size move the
object up to H2 = 100 nm altitude (not a small altitude!). Now the angle is
1/(461-100) = 11/361 = 0.0077 rad. This angle is bigger, but still not big
enough. Let H3 = 361 nm (the altitude of a "low-flying" satellite). The
ratio is now 1/(461-361) = 1/100 = 0.01. This is still not big enough. To
find the correct value of H we can reverse the procedure and write
H = A - (W/B), (6)
where B is the angle in radians. With B = 0.079 rad, W = 1 nm (assumed) and
A = 461 nm this equation gives H = 448 nm. In other words, if the UO
were "only" 1 nm wide and directly below the DMSP satellite it would have to
be at an altitude about 13 nm lower than the satellite itself. At this
altitude and with this size it could only be some truly unconventional
object.
The mathematical procedure can be modified once again to provide the
object width as a function of the assumed height keeping the angular width
constant at 0.079 rad. The equation for this is
W = B x (A-H)/cos^2(t), (7)
where the cosine factor is introduced to correct for the oblique view (at
angle t). (The model UO is supposed to be at the same angle away from the
nadir as the real UO that made the AI.) This calculation also assumes that
the model UO is oriented horizontally as in Figure 7. The center of the AI
along the third scan line from the bottom is at t = 14.4 degrees from the
nadir (see the bottom of Figure 4). Therefore, if the flat object were
horizontal (the plane of the flat object is perpendicular to vertical) and
if the altitude were, say, 460.95 nm, i.e., if it were 0.05 nm or about 291
ft lower than the DMSP satellite, then its width would be
W = 0.079 rad x 291 ft/cos^2(14.4)= 24.5 ft. (8)
Similarly, if it were at an altitude 50 ft lower than the satellite
then it would be about 4 ft wide.
The calculations just completed gave the sizes (widths along a scan
line) for different altitudes assuming that the UO was essentially a flat
plate oriented horizontally. More generally, the UO would be some three
dimensional object. The shape of the AI (if there were no motion involved -
see below) would be a projection of the outline of the UO onto a plane
perpendicular to the line of sight.
The 25 ft size just calculated for a 300 ft distance is the size scale
of some of the the largest man-made orbiting structures. Could this have
been a man-made satellite or "space junk?" If so it would have been
traveling at a speed almost identical to that of the DMSP satellite, i.e.,
Vs = 4.012 nm/sec = 24,381 ft/sec in order to be picked up during the time
it took to create 22 scans across the object. At this speed, during the
time, 0.007 sec, required for the satellite optics to scan across the object
(to make third scan line up from the bottom of the AI) the DMSP satellite
would have traveled 0.007 sec x 24,381 ft/sec = l7l ft. This distance
traveled along the orbit direction restricts the allowed size and speed of
the object.
Assume that a model UO was a flat-topped satellite of length Lo in the
direction of its motion and a width, W, to be determined. Assume the flat
top was horizontal (perpendicular to the radius from the center of the
earth) and that it was at nearly the same altitude as the DMSP satellite but
traveling in a direction perpendicular to the DMSP satellite orbit (i.e.,
traveling in an east-west direction).
When the leading edge of the object was "met" by the leading edge of
the scan (the leading edge of the IFOV) the scan line would brighten and the
image on that scan line would appear. The brightness would continue until
the trailing edge of the UO "met" the trailing edge of the IFOV, after which
the line would darken and the image would "go away." This would create the
length of the scan line on the image. In the case of the third scan line up
from the bottom this is length is equivalent to 0.079 rad. To be more
specific, assume, as an example, that the object was 300 ft away from the
DMSP satellite at an angle of 14.4 degrees from the nadir and an altitude of
300 x cos(14.4) = 291 ft lower. During the time (0.007 sec) that IFOV was
swept across the UO (by the scanning mechanism at 11.2 rad/sec), the IFOV
area (the area viewed at any instant by the satellite sensor system), at
that height difference, 291 ft, would have traveled a horizontal distance of
about [291 ft/cos^2(14.4)] x 11.2 rad/sec x 0.007 sec = 24.5 ft along the
scan direction, thereby making an image width of 0.079 radians. (At other
ranges the distance scanned would be different. For example, if the object
had been only 50 ft below the distance would have been .007 x 11.2 x
50/cos^2(14.4) = 4 ft.)
The assumption that the flat-topped UO satellite was in orbit at
essentially the same altitude as the DMSP satellite means that the UO would
have been traveling at essentially the same speed, Vo = 24,381 ft/sec
(specific calculations showing this are presented below). Hence, during the
time that the scan was made, the leading and trailing edges of the object
would travel 171 ft. In order to maintain continual "contact" with the IFOV
(to make a continuous segment of the scan line) the UO would have to be
long enough to cover this distance plus or minus the distance covered by the
scan area, 24 ft.
Specifically, if the UO were approaching the DMSP orbit and
traveling against the scan direction (e.g., scanning toward the east while
the UO travels toward the west), then the UO would have to be 171 + 25 = 196
ft long, whereas if the UO were traveling with the scan direction it would
have to be 171-25 = 146 ft long. This is an application of equation 4 with
Vo being a positive or negative number: (TS)(SR) = (0.007)(11.2) = |[Lo
cos^2(14.4)]/291] + (0.007)[(+/-)Vo cos^2(14.4)]/291|, where the cosine
factors project the horizontal UO length, Lo, and horizontal velocity, Vo,
onto a plane tilted by 14.4 degrees to the horizontal in order to be
perpendicular to the line of sight from the DMSP satellite. With Vo =
(+/-)24,381 ft/sec the equation can be solved for Lo:
Lo = |[(291)(11.2)(.007)/cos^2(14.4)] + (0.007) + (+/-)24381)| (9)
= |25 + (+/-171)| = 146 or 196 ft
The preceding calculation shows that for a UO satellite in an orbit
perpendicular to but within a few hundred feet of the altitude of the DMSP
orbit, the length of the UO in the direction of its motion is large.
If the UO were moving opposite to the scan, then the minimum length
would be about 171 ft if it were immediately below the DMSP satellite (say 3
ft below) and its size would increase with distance below the DMSP. On the
other hand, if the UO moved with the scan direction then it would be
possible to have the UO far enough away from the DMSP so that its angular
rate of motion matched that of the scan, 11.2 rad/sec. At this distance the
UO would only have to be large enough in the scan direction to substantially
fill the IFOV. Equation 9 can be used to find that distance by setting Lo =
0 and replacing 291 ft with an unknown height difference distance, A-H = r.
Then r = 171 cos^2(14.4)/(11.2)(.007) = 2,041 ft. (At this distance the
speed of the UO in its orbit would be about 1 ft/sec faster than the DMSP
orbit speed. ) To fill the IFOV at this distance the UO would have to have
a size of appoximately 0.00533 rad x 2041 = 10.9 ft. At greater distances
below the required UO size would increase with distance.
In the above discussion the UO velocity component parallel to the
motion of the DMSP satellite was assumed to be zero. This has a severe
consequence for the required width of the UO (the dimension perpendicular to
its own orbit). The consequence is that it must be at least 171 ft wide,
and this dimension is roughly independent of the distance of the UO from the
DMSP. This is because during the time that the DMSP scans the UO, the DMSP
moves 171 ft along in its orbit. Therefore, in order to maintain continual
contact with the flat, horizontal surface of the UO, the UO surface must be
at least 171 ft wide (it could be wider). Thus, even for the "optimally
small" dimension requirement of a UO moving with the scan and 2108 ft below
the DMSP, for which the length could be as short as 11 ft (to fill the IFOV
in the scan direction), the width would still have to be about 171 ft.
The preceding analysis illustrates requirements for UO size based on
the assumption of motion parallel or anti-parallel to the scan direction
only. Let us now consider the requirements on UO size when the motion of
the UO is only parallel or anti-parallel to the DMSP orbital motion. Again
this analysis will be based on a single line of the image.
If it moved anti-parallel, i.e., toward the DMSP satellite, at the same
speed as the DMSP (because it is essentially at the same altitude), then the
relative "closing" velocity between the two would be the sum of the
velocities, 8 nm/sec or 48,762,ft/sec. Assuming it was at an altitude 291 ft
lower and 300 ft away from the satellite (as before), then, in order to have
an angular width (dimension measured along the scan direction) of 0.079 rad,
it would have to be about 24 ft wide, which is acceptable for "man-made
size." However, to also be visible within the IFOV along a scan line for
0.007 sec it would also have to be about 0.007 x 48,762 = 341 ft long! This
is not acceptable for "man-made" size. (The tracing made by the scan area
on the flat surface of the UO would be a diagonal line from the initial
point of contact with the UO to the final point. The diagonal would be at
an angle to the long edge of the large rectangular UO with the angle being
arctan(24.5/341) = 4 degrees.)
The object sizes calculated so far, based on the assumption that the UO
was a satellite in an orbit just below that of the DMSP satellite, are much
too large in at least one dimension (length or width) to be consistent with
man-made satellites. However, this size problem can be "solved" by assuming
that the UO satellite had a velocity component parallel to that of the DMSP
satellite as well as a component perpendicular. In this case the relative
velocity between the two could be low (but not zero). Since the UO was
below the DMSP one might assume that the UO was traveling along in its orbit
and passed nearly underneath the DMSP satellite.
The assumption that the UO was in an orbit at a lower altitude has a
consequence: to be at a lower altitude it would have to be traveling faster
than the DMSP satellite. This is because orbital speed decreases with
increasing altitude according to the equation V = K/R^0.5, where R is the
altitude above the center of the earth, R = Re + A = 3,445 + 461 = 3,906 nm
= 2.374E7 ft or 7,234 km. The value of K depends upon the units chosen for
R. With r in meters, K = 2E7 m^1.5/sec in mks units; with r in feet, K =
1.18E8 ft^1.5/sec. One can show that for small altitude changes, dR, the
derivative of the above equation yields dV = [(- 1/2)K/R^(1.5)]dR. For
altitudes in feet starting at A = 461 nm altitude or 2.374E7 ft, [(-1/2)
K/R^1.5] = [-5.1E-4]/sec so
Vat R - Vdmsp = dV = - 5.1E-4 (Rdmsp - R), R
Suppose that the angular size of the sphere is 0.00533 rad (e.g., 1.6
ft in diameter at 300 ft distance) and that it travels at an angle to the
DMSP orbit such that it continually fills the moving IFOV along 0.46 inches
(0.079 rad) of a single scan line at an angular distance 14.4 degrees from
the nadir. As pointed previously, the moving IFOV travels perpendicular to
the DMSP orbit plane at an angular rate of 11.2 rad/sec. Therefore at 14.4
degrees from the nadir and 300 ft away the velocity of the scan area, as
projected onto a horizontal flat surface 300 cos(14.4) = 291 ft lower than
the DMSP, is about (11.2)[291/cos^2(14.4)] = 3469 ft/sec = 0.571 nm/sec.
In
order to remain within the IFOV the sphere must have a transverse velocity
component equal to this: Vt = 0.57 nm/sec. Further assume that Vo = Vs =
4.012 nm/sec so that the UO sphere travels in its orbit at the same speed as
the DMSP satellite (if in an orbit 291 ft lower, the sphere would travel
only 0.15 ft/sec faster than the DMSP satellite, a negligible difference
compared to the 24,381 ft/sec orbit speed). Then Vp = Vo cos(d) = Vs. The
tangent of angle d is the is the ratio of the components: tan(d) = (Vt/Vp)
which is the same as tan (d) = [Vo sin(d)]/[Vo cos(d)]. In this case we
have Vo sin(d) = 0.571 nm/sec and Vo cos(d) = 4.012 nm/sec which leads to
the equation tan (d) = 0.571/4.012, which has the solution, d = 8.098
degrees. With this angle we can find the required Vo: Vo =
4.012/cos(8.098) = 4.052 nm/sec or 24,626 ft/sec.
The fact that a small object must travel at a higher orbital speed than
the DMSP in order to satisfy the requirements is not surprising. However,
the amount of increased speed is surprising and it means that the distance
below the DMSP would have to be very large. Specifically, to have a speed
difference of 24,626 - 24,381 = 245 ft/sec, using Equation 10 above,
relating orbital speed difference to altitude difference, 245 ft/sec = 5.1E-
4 dR, where dR is the altitude difference, dR would have to be about 480,400
ft = 79 nm. Aside from the fact that this distance below would require the
UO, in order to fill the IFOV, to be 0.00533 x 480,400 = 2,560 ft in size,
which is way beyond reason for man-made objects, there is an inconsistency
in the angular rate of the scan. It was required that the transverse
component of velocity of the UO match the angular scan rate. This should
happen regardless of the altitude of the UO if the UO is assumed to remain
within the IFOV as it moves relative to the DMSP (crossing the track of the
DMSP). The angular scan rate of an object traveling 24,626 ft/sec at a
distance of 2,560 ft is 2560/24626 = 0.104 rad/sec which is two orders of
magnitude less than the 11.2 rad/sec rate of the scan.
Consider this situation another way. Imagine a horizontal surface at
altitude H, which is distance Ro = A-H lower than the DMSP at altitude A.
Another satellite's orbit would, for practcal purposes, be a straight line
within this imaginary flat surface (the curvature of the orbit would be
small over the lateral distances used here and, in any case, would project
onto the plane as a straight line). The IFOV scans perpendicular to the
DMSP orbit at a rate of 11.2 rad/sec. This corresponds to a horizontal,
transverse component of scan velocity, Vts, projected onto that surface
which is given by Vts = 11.2 r/cos(t) ft/sec, where r = Ro/cos(t), and t is
the nadir angle, as before. The parallel component of the scan velocity is
Vps = 4.012 nm/sec = 24,381 ft/sec. Thus on the imaginary flat surface at
altitude (461 - H) in nm one can construct scan vector components Vts and
Vps which make a net scan vector with a magnitude Vo = (Vts^2 + Vps^2)^0.5
and an angle relative to the DMSP orbit direction given by tan(ds) =
Vts/Vps. For the previously assumed case of t = 14.4 deg and r = 300 ft, Ro
= 291 ft and Vts = 3469 ft/sec the scan angle would be ds =
arctan(3469/24381) = 8.098 deg as calculated before. Any object moving
along this direction relative to the DMSP orbit and having velocity Vo, once
it appears in a scan line, should stay within the single scan IFOV, at least
for a short distance.
More generally, ds = arctan[11.2Ro/24381cos^2(t)]. Note that the
angle isn't constant; it increases as t increases. At Ro = 291 ft and t = 0
degrees, at the nadir, the angle is arctan(0.1336) = 7.6 deg, and at the
maximum scan angle, ds = arctan(0.406) = 22.1 deg. Hence the projection of
the scan line on the imaginary plane is a curve starting with a "slope" of
7.6 deg at the nadir, a slope 8.098 deg at t = 14.4 deg, 15 deg at t = 45
deg and finally reaching 22.1 deg at the end of the scan. Because of the
curvature no small "point" satellite could stay within the scan for more
than a short angular distance.
The required Vo is given by Vo = (Vts^2 + 24,381^2)^0.5. When t =
14.4, Vts = 3469 ft/sec and Vo = 24,626 ft/sec, as calculated before. This
speed is so large it requires that the imaginary horizontal surface, in
which the UO satellite makes a straight line track, to be about 480,400 ft
below the DMSP, and that, in turn, makes the UO satellite large (2,500 ft)
in order to fill the IFOV.
The bottom line is that a "point" satellite could not make a short line
segment image such as the 0.46 inch scan line considered here. If it passed
through the scan it would make only a "dot." A satellite of some size is
necessary to make a sizeable image.
DISCUSSION OF MODEL OBJECTS WHICH CAN CREATE
IMAGES IN SEVERAL CONSECUTIVE SCAN LINES
The image of interest appears not in a single scan line but in 22
consecutive lines. This means it "hung around" for a while.
The following discussion illustrates the ranges of size, shape and
velocity for an object to make an image that could appear in that number of
scan lines.
An object of the minimum size to make a single scan line, i.e., an
object of 0.00533 rad angular size (e.g., 1.6 ft at 300 ft or 3.2 ft at 600
ft or 0.5 ft at 100 ft, etc.) cannot make two or more scan lines. This is
because in order to make a single scan line by remaining within the IFOV
long enough to make a reasonably long image on one scan lime it must be
traveling at an angle to the orbit and therefore must have a non-zero
transverse velocity. It could appear in one scan line, but by the time the
scanning svstem went through its complete revolution, requiring 0.56 sec,
the object would be so far from the spacecraft that it would not be within
the field of view of the optical system.
To see that this is true, consider the 0.53 ft sized object 100 ft away
as an example. To be at an angle of 14.4 deg from the nadir it would have be
at an altitude 100 cos 14.4 = 96.9 or about 97 ft lower than the satellite
and 100 sin 14.4 = 24.9 or about 25 ft away from the orbit plane measured
horizontally. (For the 1.6 ft sized object at 300 ft and 14.4 deg,
considered previously, the distance down would be 291 ft and the distance
from the orbit plane would be 300 sin(14.4) = 74.6 ft.) To remain at the
same altitude and also within the IFOV long enough to make an image 0.079
rad wide along on a scan line it would have to travel at a transverse
angular velocity of (at least) 11.2 rad/sec, corresponding to a transverse
velocity of Vt = 100 x ll.2/cos 14.4 ft/sec = 1156 ft/sec. (For the 1.6 ft
object this was 3469 ft/sec.) At this speed, by the time the satellite
scanner completed a revolution the object would have moved 0.56 sec x ll56
ft/sec = 648 ft perpendicular to the orbit plane. (For the 1.6 ft object
this would be 1940 ft.) If it were a man-made object in another orbit it
would remain at an altitude 97 ft (291 ft) lower over this short time
interval. However, the horizontal distance would now be 25 ft + 648 ft = 673
ft, if the object moved to the right, and the next scan line image would
appear at an angle of arctan([648+25]/97) = 82 deg to the right of the
center. If the object were imagined to be traveling to the left, the next
scan line image would appear at arctan[(648-25)/97]= 81 deg to the left of
center. (For the 1.6 ft object these angles are arctan([1940 - 79]/291) =
81 deg and 82 deg). The maximum scan angle left or right of the DMSP
satellite is only about 56 deg (see Figure 4) so the object would be lost on
the next scan.
Since the smallest possible size which will make an image on a single
scan line will not make an image on several scan lines, it is necessary to
consider larger objects. The next larger size to consider is a rectangular
object 0.079 rad in angular width by 0.00533 rad in angular length (e.g., at
300 ft distance, 24 ft by 1.6 ft). If an object such as this were to travel
at exactly the same speed as the satellite it would appear in consecutive
scans. If Vp = Vs and Vt = 0 the object would make a series of scan line
images such as are illustrated in Figure 9, except the series would be
continuous from the top of the photograph to the bottom and not finite in
length as illustrated (i.e., the image would consist of many more than 22
scan lines).
If the UO were traveling in an orbit parallel to but lower than, the
DMSP satellite orbit it would be going slightly faster and could "catch up"
with the DMSP and pass underneath it. While it was passing underneath, the
DMSP would scan it a number of times. In this case a finite series of scan
line images would be produced. The variables in this case are the object
length, L (measured along the orbit direction), and the parallel component
of velocity, Vp. To understand what is happening one should imagine
the satellite and the object moving in the same direction with the object
moving slightly faster (and at a lower attitude). The UO satellite would
slowly catch up with DMSP satellite and eventually its leading edge, 0.079
rad wide and 14.4 degrees from directly below the DMSP, would be scanned.
The first scan line would "paint" the object and create an image 0.46 inches
wide. During the 0.56 sec needed for the scanner to revolve and begin
another scan line across the object, the UO satellite would move forward
relative to the DMSP satellite by an amount 0.56 sec(Vp - Vs). Thus the
next scan line would be this distance from the first scan line, measured
toward the rear end of the UO satellite. With each revolution of the scanner
(i.e., with each scan line on the object) the scan would again move this
distance along the object. Finally, after a number of scans the rear end of
the UO would move ahead of the DMSP and the UO would not be detected again.
To get N scans on the UO would require L = (N-1)(0.56)(Vp - Vs), where
N-1 is the number of "spaces" between the scan lines. (It is the "spaces"
which add together to make the length of the UO.) L would be at least this
long but no longer than N(0.56)(Vp - Vs). In this equation neither L nor Vp
are known. However, we know from the previous calculations that Vp is
related to the distance below the DMSP satellite: the greater the distance
down, the greater then speed.
As an example, assume Vp - Vs = 1 ft/sec, corresponding to the UO
satellite being at Ro = (1 ft/sec)/(5.1E-4/sec) = 1960 ft below the DMSP,
and use N = 22. The L = (22-1) (0.56) (1 ft/sec) = 11.8 ft. Thus an 11.8
ft long UO satellite traveling parallel to the DMSP at a speed 1 ft/sec
faster would create an image in 22 scan lines. However, because it would be
1960 ft below the DMSP, the width would have to be considerable: W = 0.079
rad x 1960 = 155 ft. If Vp - Vs = 0.1 ft sec, L = 1.18 ft, the distance down
would be 196 ft and the width would be 15.5 ft. This would, of course,
require a remarkable coincidence between satellite locations and hence
between satellite orbits. For even lower speed differentials the calculated
length of the UO would be unacceptably small (a fraction of a foot). A
speed differential of 0.2 ft/sec provides a good compromise: L = 2.3 ft, Ro
= 392 ft, W = 31 ft.
If, in addition to having Vp nearly equal to Vs so that 22 scans appear
on the object, it is also true that Vt = 0, then the object will appear at
the same distance from the center of the photo in successive scans and the
outline of the image will be rectangular, as illustrated in Figure 9. Note
that to make this image the object was assumed to be rectangular with an
anqular width of 0.079 radians an a length of (N-1)(0.56)(Vp - Vs) = L ft
where Vp - Vs could be any number that qives a reasonable lenqth.
It would be impossible to determine the actual size of a rectangular
object from its image without knowing either the distance (down) or the
velocity component, Vp, (or the speed differential) to within a fraction of
a ft/sec. Because the length cannot be determined the actual object shape
cannot be determined. However, the ratio between the length and width is
known because, surprisingly, the speed vs altitude equation establishes a
connection between the speed differential and the distance down.
Specifically, we have Vp-Vs = (5.1E-4)Ro, L = 11.8(Vp-Vs) and W = 0.079(Ro),
where (22-1)(0.56) = 11.8. Therefore L = 11.8(5.1E-4)Ro = 0.006(Ro) and so
L/W = 0.006/0.079 = 0.076 or the width is about 13 times the length.
The previous discussion considered a rectangular UO satellite making a
rectangular AI. However, the actual AI is not rectangular. It has a
"sloping" right hand edge. This, of course, could be an actual feature of
the outline of the object. However, it could also be an artifact of the
scanning system, as the following analysis shows. Assume that a rectangular
object with an angular width of 0.079 rad moved at an angle to the DMSP
orbit while keeping its "long" sides parallel and the leading edge
perpendicular to the orbit. Its transverse component would cause the
location of the image to shift "sideways" from scan to scan. Suppose that
as the UO satellite "catches up" with the DMSP it is slightly to the right
(and below) as illustrated in Figure 10.
The DMSP satellite scans the leading edge making an image 0.079 rad in
angular width (scan #1- in Figure 10A). By the time of the next scan the
satellite has moved 0.56 x (Vp - Vs) feet beyond the leading edge and at the
same time the left and right edges have moved a distance 0.56 x Vt to the
left and thus the second scan line image appears shifted sideways from the
first (closer to the center of the photograph in Figure 10B, for example).
The amount of shift is an angle in radians equal to the shift distance
divided by the distance to the object. The same angle appears on the
photograph as the shift (in radians) of the left and right edges of the
image in one scan line relative to the next scan line. In the AI the right
hand edge of the image shifts 0.022 inches from one scan line to the next
(corresponding to 0.286 inches total shift over 13 scan lines). Using the
method presented before for finding the angular size of an image an the
photo, the shift in the image edge position corresponds to an angle shift D
= (0.183) x Dy x cos^2(18) = (0.183 x 0.022 x 0.905) = 0.0036 rad, where the
angle used, 18 deg, is at the (vertical) center of the right edge of the
image. This amount of shift in angular position took place in 0.56 sec, so
the angular transverse velocity that would produce the (nearly) 45 degree
sloping right edge of the image is 0.0064 rad/sec. At a distance of 300 ft,
for example, this corresponds to a transverse velocity of 0.0064 x
300/cos(18) = 2 ft/sec.
If the rectangular object just discussed moved at a velocity such that
Vp exactly equalled Vs and Vt = 2 ft/sec it would make a series of displaced
images on the scan lines but the images would "never end." That is, the
object would make images on scan lines from the upper right edge of the
photo to the lower left because its parallel component is the same as that
of the satellite. In order to make the image a finite size one must, as once
before, assume that Vp is slightly greater than Vs and that the UO satellite
catches up with the DMSP and passes under it in 11.77 sec. If Vp - Vs = 1
ft/sec the object would be 11.8 ft long as well as 23.7 ft wide (at a
distance of 300 ft). Consider the photographic image that would be made by a
model rectangular UO under these conditions (see Figure 10B). The
impression one would gain from seeing such an image in a DMSP photograph is
that the object itself was diamond shaped. However, using the above analysis
one can show that a rectangular object 24 ft wide and 12 ft long, oriented
with its "long" sides parallel to the DMSP orbit, moving with a parallel
velocity component that is abou 1 ft/sec less than the satellite velocity
and a transverse velocity component of 2 ft/sec and traveling 291 ft below
the DMSP orbit at a radial distance of 300 ft from the satellite can make an
image such as shown in Figure 11. The severe distortion present in the image
of the rectangular object is an artifact of the scanning combined with the
object motion relative to the satellite. The lesson to be learned
is that the image in a photograph made with the slowly scanning system is
not necessarily an accurate representation of the shape of the object.
Incidently, if the object were rotating, which is the likely condition
if the UO were space junk, then all bets are off as to the actual shape
(see below).
-
-
The ufo evidence;the air force investigation;
This section will deal with the history of the USAF investigation's and conclusions from day one on the UFO enigma;From the early days after Roswell the first USAF investigation began named "Project "Sign".
================================================== ========
THE UFO EVIDENCE, published by the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, Copyright 1964; PART ONE;
SECTION IX;
THE AIR FORCE INVESTIGATION;
Abstract;
NICAP contends that the Air Force has practiced an intolerable degree of secrecy and withholding of information in its public policies on the UFO subject, and refuses to allow an independent evaluation of its data. There are two general schools of thought on the reasons for this secrecy:
(1) That the Air Force has obtained significant proof of UFO reality, and is withholding its evidence until the public can be psychologically prepared under a program guided by some higher agency;
(2) That the withholding of information is not because of any special knowledge on the subject, but results more or less unconsciously from red tape, lack of continuity to the UFO project, differences of opinion within the Air Force, etc.
In either case, the secretive public information policies are symptomatic of the general governmental secrecy which has mushroomed since World War II, and must be viewed in that context. Since official secrecy has become so commonplace, almost an accepted way of life, the topic is extremely complex. For the sake of simplicity, this section is presented mostly in outline form:
A. Background of Government Secrecy
B. Air Force Regulations & Policies
1. History of the UFO Project
C. Air Force Statements About Its UFO Investigation/NICAP Rebuttals
D. Sample UFO Cases Involving Aspects of Secrecy.
A. GOVERNMENT SECRECY
It is a generally conceded fact in Washington that government secrecy, since World War II, has grown by leaps and bounds. Even high-ranking officers in the Pentagon, in testimony to Congress, state that there is considerable over-classification of information. Sometimes it appears to be a case of the tail wagging the dog.
There is no simple solution to this problem, though it should be a matter of concern to anyone who believes in democracy. It is worth examining the structure of this secrecy, to pinpoint some aspects of it which have been uncovered by Congressional investigators, scholars and newsmen.
The Cold War burden plainly has put a severe strain on the traditional American belief in freedom of information. Censors can (and sometimes do) make a case that almost any information released in this technological age is of value to a potential enemy. Often information is withheld in the name of the "public interest." But who defines the "public interest?"
Rep. John E. Moss (D.-Calif.), Chairman of the Government Operations Subcommittee on Government Information, has long been a champion of the public's "right to know." Hearings by his subcommittee over the past several years have brought out many specific instances of unwarranted secrecy, especially by the Executive Branch. The subcommittee was chartered on June 9, 1955. A year later, the parent committee unanimously adopted House Report No. 2947, which included a study of Defense Department secrecy. The report stated:
"The study of the Defense Department so far shows that the informational policies and practices of the Department are the most restrictive- -and at the same time the most confused- -of any major branch of the Federal Government." [2]
Two recent books indicate that there has been no appreciable change in Defense Department information practices. Clark R. Mollenhoff, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for Cowles Publications, in his 1963 book Washington Cover-Up, states what he believes is the crux of the problem: ". . . the arbitrary secrecy of 'executive privilege' . . There would be 'managed news' as long as executive departments and independent regulatory agencies were able to invoke an arbitrary secrecy to prevent the press and Congress from reviewing the record- - and as long as news papers indolently accepted the management." [2]
Power In Washington, by Douglass Cater, also probes Washington "sub-governments" and their influence on government policies. According to reviewer James MacGregor Burns, Cater considers the "military-industrial complex" (so phrased by President Eisenhower) a sub-government. Part of it is "news managers in the Pentagon who try to influence public opinion." [3]
In summary, these aspects of the secrecy brought out by the Moss subcommittee particularly concern us:
* The Defense Department, in practice, claims executive privilege to withhold information from Congress and the public; existing directives leave the decision in specific cases to an arbitrary judgment by the Defense Department.
* Because of over-classification, the public often is not kept properly informed.
* By existing regulations, Defense Department personnel are forced to justify release of information and are not required to justify withholding of it. (A natural desire on the part of individuals to avoid trouble on controversial issues by not releasing information about them results in excessive secrecy).
A more pervasive tendency has developed among the military services to issue reassuring statements, rather than facts; generalized statements putting the best face on the matter (as far as the agency is concerned), rather than useful detail. In short, the concept of "public information" has been perverted to public relations, which tries to put across a favorable idea or image rather than to inform.
B. AIR FORCE REGULATIONS & POLICIES
1. Regulations Governing the UFO Investigation
Air Force Regulation 200-2, "Intelligence; Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), . . . establishes the responsibility and procedure for reporting information and evidence on [UFOs] and for releasing pertinent information to the general public."
Paragraph 3c, rather than furnishing objective guidelines, biases the investigation by clearly implying that all UFOs are explainable as misidentified conventional objects. (Thus the investigation assumes its own conclusion). Contrary to the oft-repeated public relations announcements about the investigation being "completely objective and scientific," the regulation states what the conclusion of the investigation must be:
"c. Reduction of Percentage of UFO 'Unknowns.' Air Force activities must reduce the percentage of unknowns to the minimum. Analysis thus far has provided explanation for all but a few of the sightings reported. These unexplained sightings are carried statistically as unknowns. If more immediate, detailed objective data on the unknowns had been available, probably these too could have been explained. . . [Due to subjective factors] it is improbable that all of the unknowns can be eliminated."
Paragraph 9 explicitly states that, in the area of occurrence, only explained cases may be released to the public:
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"In response to local inquiries resulting from any UFO reported in the vicinity of an Air Force base, information regarding a sighting may be released to the press or the general public by the commander of the Air Force base concerned only if it has been positively identified as a familiar or known object." Follow-up queries about unexplained cases are to be referred to the Office of Information Services in the Pentagon (which seldom releases detailed information on a specific case unless it has been widely publicized).
Paragraph 11 restricts Air Force personnel from publicly discussing UFOs: "Air Force personnel, other than those of the Office of Information Services, will not contact private individuals on UFO cases nor will they discuss their operations and functions with unauthorized persons unless so directed, and then only on a 'need-to-know' basis."
JANAP 146 is a Joint Chiefs of Staff directive: "Communications Instructions for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings [CIRVIS] From Airborne and Waterborne Sources." In addition to military aircraft and surface vessels, the directive also applies to civil aircraft under certain conditions.
Chapter II, Section I, paragraph 201 includes, under information to be reported, (1) (c) "Unidentified flying objects."
Section III, "Security: 210. Military and Civilian. a. All persons aware of the contents or existence of a CIRVIS report are governed by the Communications Act of 1934 and amendments thereto, and Espionage Laws. . . The unauthorized transmission or revelation of the contents of CIRVIS reports in any manner is prohibited."
The effect of this directive, relative to UFOs, is to silence even commercial airline pilots cooperating with the intelligence network, once they have made a UFO report through official channels. It is, of course, also binding on all military personnel.
2. Regulations Concerning Release of Information
There are only three classifications of military or national defense information authorized directly by law: Top Secret, Secret and Confidential. The types of information, and procedures of classification, are carefully spelled out. Legitimate security needs clearly necessitate withholding certain types of information from the general public. Theoretically, the public interest is protected by the limitations on the types of information which can be classified.
In practice, military (and other) agencies have adopted other quasi-legal means of withholding additional information from the public for reasons of their own. "Executive privilege" and the so-called "administrative classification" is the gray area of secrecy, where no clear standards delimit the withholding of information. The particular agency itself becomes both judge and jury in deciding what the public ought to know.
Any business (the U.S Government is the world's largest business organization) may have justifiable reasons for withholding certain types of information beyond those which are clearly concerned with national defense. Personal information which if released might unfairly damage an individual's reputation, for example, might be considered private information. Files of correspondence or personnel records, in most cases, could be considered private information (unless needed for the defense of an individual on trial or for other overriding considerations).
However, there is a great potential for abuse of a system which, in effect, allows arbitrary withholding of government information from the public. To the maximum possible extent, government business should be public business. Clearly, the system is continually abused and "administrative classifications" are used to conceal facts which might embarrass an agency, or which might throw a spotlight on government activities that a significant segment of the public would oppose. The system continues to encroach on the public's right to know what its government is up to.
Worst of all, such pseudo-classifications as "For Official Use Only" are rapidly being given status by default, largely unchallenged by Members of Congress or the press. Many Air Force regulations, for example, (using a free interpretation of Federal Law) authorize Air Force personnel to judge what information they may withhold "in the public interest." About this practice Clark Mollenhoff said, "The broad right of arbitrarily withholding information is not something that any officials should he permitted to arrogate to themselves." [4]
Air Force Regulation 11-30 , "Administrative Practices; Custody, Use and Preservation of DOD [Department of Defense] Official Information Which Requires Protection in the Public Interest."
The euphemistic phrase "in the public interest" is repeated in paragraph 1, which explains the "Reason for Issuing Regulation." Among other things, the regulation is intended to "assure the proper. . . use of official information which in the public interest should not be given general circulation." In spite of outlining some apparently worthy uses of this administrative classification, the regulation nevertheless does give blanket authority to withhold information whenever someone in the Air Force considers it to be "in the public interest." It is difficult to imagine how the public benefits by this arrangement.
Air Force Regulation 11-7, "Administrative Practices; Air Force Relations With Congress." This regulation goes one step further than AFR 11-30, and claims the authority to withhold "For Official Use Only" information from Congress in some cases.
After stating that most 'For Official Use Only" information not given to the public is given to Congress, the regulation continues:
"However, the considerations set forth [in AFR 11-30] which preclude making information available to the public may raise a question, in rare instances, as to whether the particular information requested may be furnished to Congress, even in confidence
." This, it must be emphasized, refers to information whose release in no way endangers national security--or else it would be legally classified "Top Secret," ''Secret," or "Confidential." This indicates the extent to which the Air Force has taken upon itself the right to decide what the public- -and even Congress-- should know.
Chronological History of the Air Force UFO Project;
[One of the most informative sources regarding the conduct of the UFO investigation is the book Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, (Doubleday, 1956), by Capt. Edward J Ruppelt, who headed the investigation from September 1951 to September 1953. Page references to this book are indicated after some of the following entries].
Early Investigation;
July 1947: The Air Force began investigating UFO reports seriously after sightings by airline pilots, other qualified observers.
September 23, 1947: The Chief of Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) sent a letter to the Air Force Commanding General stating the conclusion of ATIC that UFOs were real, and urging the establishment of a permanent project to analyze future reports. (p. 31)
January 22, 1948: Project "Sign" (popular name "Saucer") established at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, to investigate UFO reports.
September 1948: Top Secret "Estimate of the Situation", concluding UFOs were interplanetary, sent from ATIC to Air Force Chief of Staff, General Hoyt S. Vandenberg. (Report was kicked back for additional proof; later declassified and burned). (ppg. 62-63, 67)
February 11, 1949: Project name changed to "Grudge." Because of internal disagreement about the significance of UFOs, reports were then "evaluated on the premise that UFOs couldn't exist." (ppg. 85-88)
April 27, 1949: Project Saucer report released: About 30% of the sightings investigated to date were said to be explained as conventional objects. An equal number, the report said, probably would be explainable after further probing.
December 27 1949: Project Grudge report released: Explained away all reports to date as delusions, hysteria, hoaxes and crackpot reports. Announcement that project had disbanded.
Phase Two
1950-51: This period has been called the "Dark Ages" of UFO investigation. Following the Project Grudge report, the project was not disbanded. However, those who believed in a more positive
106
investigation could not win support for their views--until late in 1951 when the situation was reviewed partly due to public protests.
__________________________________________________ _______________________
UFO PROJECT CHIEFS;
After reorganization of the UFO project during 1951, it became an organization in its own right, at ATIC, Wright- Patterson AFB, Ohio.
Summer 1951: Lt. Jerry Cummings
Sept. 1951-Sept 1953: Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt
(Ruppelt's assistants at various times during this period were Lt. Bob Olsson, Lt. Henry Metscher, Lt. Andy Flues, and Lt. Kerry Rothstien. From May to July 1953, Lt. Olsson was acting chief while Ruppelt was away on temporary duty. The position devolved on A/1C Max Futch briefly in July 1953, when Lt. Olsson was discharged).
1954-1956 (approx): Capt. Charles A. Hardin
1957-1959 (approx.): Capt. George Gregory
1959-early 1964: Lt. Col. Robert Friend
Early 1964 to date: Capt. Hector Quintanilla
PENTAGON UFO SPOKESMEN
April 1952-March 1953: Al Chop
1953-1957: Various officers including Capt. Robert White (circa 1955), Maj. Robert F. Spence (circa 1957).
1958-March 1961: Lt. Col. Lawrence J Tacker
April l96l-January 1962: Maj. William T. Coleman
Feb. 1962-Summer 1963: Maj. Carl R. Hart
Summer 1963 to date: Maj. Maston M. Jacks
__________________________________________________ ______________________
September 15, 1951: Lt. Jerry Cummings, and a Lt. Col. from ATIC, were called to Washington to brief a General (and a disgruntled group of industrialists and scientists) about the conduct of the investigation. Received orders to set up a new project. (ppg. 128-130)
September 1951: Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt became chief of the newly revitalized project.
October 27, 1951: New project officially established. (p.154).
March 1952: Project Grudge had become a full-fledged organization, the "Aerial Phenomena Group." Soon thereafter, the code name was changed to "Blue Book." (p.176)
April 1952: Al Chop appointed public information officer for UFOs.
Air Force Letter 200-5 gave Project Blue Book authority to cut red tape, contact any Air Force unit in the U.S. without going through channels; provided for wire transmission of reports to ATIC, followed with details via Air Mail.
Life article "Have We Visitors From Space?", inspired by several top officers in the Pentagon. (ppg. 177-178)
May 8, 1952: Capt. Ruppelt and a Lt. Col. from ATIC briefed Air Force Secretary Thomas K. Finletter for one hour. (p.185)
Mid-June 1952: Capt. Ruppelt briefed General Samford, Director of Intelligence, others; given directive to take further steps to obtain positive identification of UFOs. (ppg. 196-199)
Mid-July 1952: Every Air Force installation in U.S. swamped with UFO reports. (p.205)
August 1952: Study of UFO maneuvers initiated, to determine whether objects displayed intelligent control; (ppg. 250-251)
November 1952: Panel of four scientists convened at ATIC to make preliminary review of accumulated reports. Recommended convening panel of top scientists. (p.264)
January 12, 1953: The Air Force (reportedly with the assistance of the Central Intelligence Agency) convened a panel of top scientists to weigh the accumulated evidence. The panel was to decide whether the evidence indicated UFOs were interplanetary, whether it was all explainable, or whether the project should continue and seek better data. (p.275). A study of UFO maneuvers concluding the objects were interplanetary was presented to the panel by Maj. Dewey Fournet. (p.285)
January 17, 1953: The conclusions of the scientific panel were not made public at the time. Since then, two conflicting versions have been released:
Conclusions Reported by Ruppelt, 1956
The panel recommended that the UFO project be expanded, the investigative force quadrupled in size and staffed by trained scientists; that tracking instruments be established all over the country, and that the public be told "every detail of every phase" of the investigation. The scientists believed this program would "dispel any of the mystery" created by military security procedures, and also keep the investigation on a scientific basis. The recommendations were not adopted. (ppg. 293-298)
Summary Released by Air Force, 1958
The panel concluded that UFOs constituted no "direct physical threat to national security," there was no evidence of "foreign artifacts capable of hostile acts," and no "need for the revision of current scientific concepts." The panel recommended "immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired." The panel suggested "an integrated program designed to reassure the public of the total lack of evidence of inimical forces behind the phenomena."
Phase Three
The 1958 summary issued by the Air Force Office of Public information--five years after the fact--first released the names of the scientists on the panel: H. P. Robertson, Luis W. Alvarez, Lloyd V. Berkner, S. A. Goadsmit, and
Thornton Page.
Exactly what transpired at the conclusion of this meeting is not clear, though it is strongly suggested that the whole story has not been told. If the decision of the panel had been clearly negative, as the 1958 summary implies, there would have been no reason to be so secretive about it. On the contrary, there would have been every reason to make an immediate public announcement.
What is known about the affair is the public manifestation of the UFO project following the meeting. After a period at apparent serious interest in gathering better data (which supports Ruppelt's version of the panel conclusions), the Air Force began debunking UFOs. Since then the Air Force does not admit to having the slightest shred of evidence that anything at all out of the ordinary is taking place. Concurrently, a noticeable public relations policy has been adhered to by the Air Force through the Public Information Office:
A policy of public reassurance. Members of Congress or citizens who request current information on the subject are told repeatedly that UFOs do not present any danger, or threat to the national security.
About the same time as the panel meeting, or shortly thereafter, the Air Force (reportedly through its own RAND Corporation) had an independent study conducted. This resulted in the Project Blue Book "Special Report No.14." What relationship this had to the scientific panel meeting is not known. However, the introduction to the Blue Book report states (p. viii): "The special study which resulted in this report started in 1953. . the information cut-off date was established as at the end of 1952."
August 26, 1953: AF Regulation 200-2 issued by Secretary of Air Force; procedures for reporting UFOs, restrictions on public discussion.
December 1, 1953: The Air Force announced in Washington it had set up cameras around the country equipped with diffraction gratings to analyze the nature of light from UFOs.
January 6, 1954: Reporters seeking information on UFOs were banned from Wright-Patterson AFB. [Cleveland Press]
February 23, 1954: Scripps-Howard papers said the Air Force had worked out a plan with commercial airline companies to report sightings quickly.
May 15, 1954: General Nathan F. Twining, Air Force Chief of Staff, stated the best brains in the country were working on the UFO problem; Air Force could not explain 10 per cent of the sightings. [Quoted by United Press; Amarillo, Texas].
May 5, 1955: Project Blue Book "Special Report No.14" declassified.
October 25, 1955: Summary of Blue Book report released to press; linked with statement that Air Force would soon have its own saucer-shaped aircraft, the AVRO disc. (The AVRO disc project subsequently was scrapped without producing a flying model). Reported no evidence that UFOs "constituted a threat to the security of the United States. .
1956-1957: UFOs all but faded out of the news. Queries to the Air Force were answered by a "fact sheet" referring back to the 1955 report. A 1957 "fact sheet" stated the unexplained cases had been reduced "from approximately 10% in 1954 to 3%, as of now."
November 1957: When the "flap" of UFO reports began about November 1 [See Section XII; November 1957 Chronology, "fact sheets" were issued on the letterhead of the Department of Defense, Office of Public Affairs. These emphasized the percentages of explained cases, and again the lack of evidence of "a threat to the security of the country."
1958-1959: "Fact sheets" were issued approximately semi annually reiterating the above position.
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December 24. 1959: Air Force Inspector General brief to Operations and Training Commands: "UFOs Serious Business." Stated that UFO investigators on base level "should be equipped with binoculars, camera, geiger counter, magnifying glass and have a source for containers in which to store samples."
August 15, 1960: "Air Force Information Policy Letter; For Commanders," Vol. XIV, No.12, issued by Office of Secretary of Air Force. Under title "AF Keeping Watchful Eye on Aerospace," stated, "There is a relationship between the Air Force's interest in space surveillance and its continuous surveillance of the atmosphere near Earth for unidentified flying objects--'UFOs.'"
1960-1961: Through its spokesman in the Pentagon, Lt. Col. Lawrence J. Tacker, the Air Force began answering critics of its UFO program publicly. Late in 1960, Col. Tacker's book Flying Saucers and the U.S. Air Force (Van Nostrand) was published, with a foreword by General Thomas D. White, Air Force Chief of Staff. Col. Tacker went on a public tour to publicize the book, appearing on radio and television, and giving lectures. Examples- -
December 5, debate with NICAP Director on Dave Garroway's network television program.
December 18 interview on Westinghouse network radio program, "Washington Viewpoint."
March 17, 1961, lecture at Aero Club of Buffalo, N.Y.
March 1961, article in Argosy magazine.
Col. Tacker used the strongest language to date in denouncing critics of the UFO investigation. Their claims were "absolutely erroneous;" "a hoax;" "sensational theories; "the work of amateur hobby groups." NICAP's evidence was "drivel," its claims "ridiculous" and it was making "senseless accusations."
In April 1961 after being associated with the UFO project for over three years, Col. Tacker was shipped to Europe on "routine reassignment."
June 1961: The outspoken new policy, if that is what it was, apparently backfired. Angered by Col. Tacker's attitude, NICAP members and other citizens deluged Congress with requests for an investigation of the Air Force project. Congressional hearings were contemplated [See Section XIII] but never came about. Instead, Air Force Congressional Liaison personnel briefed key Congressional committees in private.
February 6, 1962: The Air Force issued the last "fact sheet" (No.179-62) of the old style, then dropped that format.
1963-1964: In the past two years, packets of information-- including some details of specific cases--have been substituted for the generalized "fact sheets." The unexplained cases for each year are briefly described.
(In the new "fact sheets", the "unknown" category has been rendered meaningless by the inclusion of vague and incomplete eases. Formerly the term "unknown" was applied to the most detailed and inexplicable cases from the .best observers. Now the distinction between "unknowns", and cases which lack detail or apparently have natural explanations, has been blurred.)
SUMMARY;
1947-1949: Serious investigation, conclusions UFOs real and interplanetary..
1950-1951: These conclusions challenged on basis of lack of proof; "explain-away" approach adopted by investigators.
1952-1953: After review of situation, new serious investigation started; evidence uncovered led many high-ranking officers to conclude UFOs were interplanetary.
1954 to date: Evidence again challenged as "proof," this time by panel of scientists. Conflicting versions of whether expanded investigation was recommended (and adopted) to obtain more data. Public relations program adopted to assure public UFOs posed no danger, or threat to national security.
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C. Air Force Statements/NICAP Rebuttals
Over the past ten years, the Air Force has had considerable correspondence with citizens unsatisfied by the official conclusions and attitudes about UFOs. The letters have reflected Air Force thinking and the philosophy of their investigation at various stages. The letters often have been more specific than the "fact sheets," but fewer people are aware of their contents.
The left-hand column below contains Air Force statements about its UFO investigation, general and specific. The right-hand column contains NICAP rebuttals, comments, or other data refuting the Air Force statements.
(Note the recurrence in these letters, and the detailed cases following, of certain types of answers given by the Air Force. These include counter-to fact, "shotgun," and "zigzag" answers. "Shotgun" refers to a fusillade of explanations given for one UFO sighting, e.g., that it was either a balloon, an aircraft, or the planet Venus. "Zigzag" answers are those in which the press is given a quick explanation for public consumption; this explanation is later quietly changed one or more times. These techniques result in a sort of patchwork explanation for a given case. If Venus cannot explain one aspect of a sighting, then perhaps a balloon or aircraft can.)
"NOTHING WITHHELD"
"The allegation that the Air Force is withholding vital UFO information has no merit whatsoever. The press release approach is considered censorship by some UFO organizations, because they do not receive individual attention from the Air Force, they contend that we are withholding vital information.
The Air Force was compelled to adopt the press release approach because in the past when factual information was furnished to certain writers of UFO books, upon their individual request, our action was interpreted as granting approval and clearance for the books in which the information was used." (Maj. Gen. W. P. Fisher, USAF, Director of Legislative Liaison, to Senator Harry Flood Byrd, 1-20-59).
"As stated in the material recently forwarded to you, limited resources preclude the distribution of case summaries to individuals and private organizations. Summaries of findings are published only when deemed necessary. (Maj. Maston M. Jacks, USAF, Public Information Division, Office of Information, to Charles R. Culbertson, 8-1-63).
NICAP: These letters admit that specific information is not given out; only generalized summaries. Conflicting reasons given for this: "limited resources" or alleged "misuse" of the material. The use of public information is no concern of the Air Force. It is standard procedure in the Defense Department to stamp disclaimers on factual material stating DOD is not responsible for ''factual accuracy or opinion" in the use of the material.
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"No reports of unidentified flying objects have been withheld. . . As Director of this Committee {NICAP], Major Donald E. Keyhoe, Marine Corps, Retired, has already received all the information in the hands of the United States Air Force. . . " (Maj. Gen. Joe W. Kelly, USAF, Director of Legislative Liaison, to Rep. Peter Frelinghuysen, 9-12-57).
Asked to provide data on specific cases which had not been furnished to NICAP, General Kelly replied: "I assure you the Air Force never intended to turn over 'official use only' files to your organization." (11-15-57) NICAP: This has been standard practice; public announcements that UFO information is not classified, but refusal to provide specific in formation when requested.
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"The Department of the Air Force does not 'edit' or 'splice' film submitted by private citizens. When the Department receives such a film, it does make the necessary studies, analyses, and duplication of the film. When this work has been completed, it has been the consistent practice of the Department to return the film to the person who submitted it.,, (Major Lawrence J. Tacker, USAF, Executive Officer, Public Information Division, Office of Information Services, to Eli Bernzweig, 10-10-58).
Photographs which the owners allege were either edited, spliced, or not returned to them by the Air Force [See Section VIII; Photographs]: Aug. 15, 1950, Great Falls, Montana. Nick Mariana: Reported best frames of color movie film missing when returned by Air Force. July 2, 1952, nr Tremonton, Utah. D. C.
Newhouse: Reported frames of movie film showing a single UFO moving away over the horizon, missing when film returned by Air Force. July 29, 1952, Miami, Fla. Ralph Mayher:
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USAF STATEMENTS;
On December 1, 1957 at about 3 p.m. Ralph Benn of Los Angeles, using a 3x telephoto lens, took about six and a half feet of Kodachrome film showing four of six objects - resembling those in the Tremonton, Utah film - which made repeated passes over the area.
Benn described the objects as dull white and oval shaped and said they moved slowly west at constant speed. Other passes - one described as "very fast" - were observed by Bonn's children.
EXTRACT FROM NICAP MEMBERSHIP BULLETIN;
Reported submitting 16 mm movie film to Air Force for analysis; film never returned. Dec. 1, 1957, Los Angeles, Calif. Ralph Benn: Reported several splices in his 8 mm film and two or three frames missing when returned by Air Force.
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"There is no truth to allegations that the Air Force withholds or otherwise censors information vital to public understanding or evaluation of the nature of unidentified flying objects (UFO). (Lt. Col. William J. Lookadoo, USAF, Public Information Division, Office of Information, to Miss Miriam Brook man, 7-19-62)
http://www.nicap.org/ufoe/photo109.jpg
link source; http://www.nicap.org/ufoe/section_9.htm
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The ufo evidence;the air force investigation;2;
Film Data reportedly analyzed by USAF, but never released to public [See Section VIII]: Apr. 27, 1950; White Sands, N.M., Cine-theodolite film of UFO, also observed visually. May 29, 1950; White Sands, Cine-theodolite films (2) of one or more UFOs, also observed visually. July 14, 1951; White Sands, Movie film (35 mm) of UFO, also seen visually, tracked on radar. Sept. 20, 1952; North Sea, three color photographs taken on board an aircraft carrier. Aug.12, 1953, Rapid City, S.D., gun camera film of UFO also seen visually, tracked on radar. Aug. 31, 1953; Port Moresby, New Guinea, movie film of UFO taken by aviation official. May 24, 1954; nr Dayton, Ohio, photograph of circular UFO taken by Air Force photo reconnaissance plane.
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"We are interested in the truth concerning reported sightings and are fully aware of our obligation to keep the public informed on such matters." (Hon. Richard F. Horner, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Research and Development, to Richard Tuttle, 7-3-58).
"It is my belief that one of the objectives of your organization [Air Research Group] is the public dissemination of data on unidentified flying objects... this is contrary to Air Force policy and regulations." (Capt. Gregory H. Oldenburgh, USAF, Information Services Officer, Langley AFB, Va., to Larry W. Bryant, 1-23-58).
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THE 1947 & 1948 DOCUMENTS;
"There has never been an Air Force conclusion that flying saucers were real and were interplanetary space ships. The Alleged 1948 document in your letter is non-existent." (Maj. Gen. W. P. Fisher, USAF, Director of Legislative Liaison, to Larry W. Bryant, 10-27-58).
"With regard to Mr. Maccubbin's reference to the 1948 top secret report which he states officially concluded that UFOs were 'real,' no such report exists. . There never has been an official Air Force report with the conclusion Mr. Maccubin indicates." (Colonel Carl M. Nelson, USAF, Congressional Inquiry Division, Office of Legislative Liaison, to Rep. Porter Hardy, Jr., 3-31-60).
"It is believed that the documents you refer to are the first estimates of the UFO situation prior to the establishment of the project. These early documents did indicate that UFOs were probably real, in the sense that they were objects and/or phenomena, but did not in any way indicate that they were interplanetary space vehicles." (Major William T. Coleman Jr., USAF, to George W.. Earley, 9-7-61)
"There is no record of an alleged Top Secret document by (sic) the late Mr. Ruppelt, as suggested. It is true that ar early estimate, probably 1948, of the UFO situation was prepared by the Intelligence Division of the then Air Materiel Command. It is not known exactly what this estimate consisted of in the way of conclusions or leads thereto. It cannot be positively stated that such a document existed." (Col. Carl M. Nelson, USAF, Chief Congressional Inquiry Division to Senator B. Everett Jordan 9-20-61).
Existence of 1948 Top Secret document reported by Capt. Ruppelt; described as a thick document on legal-size paper with a black cover. [Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, p. 62]
Existence of 1948 document confirmed by Dewey J. Fournet, former Major, USAF, Pentagon Monitor of the UFO investigation [See photostat]. Existence of 1947 letter by ATIC stating UFOs were real, reported by Ruppelt [p.85].
Dewey J. Fournet (see photostat for complete statement): "...I would like to confirm the existence of two USAF documents which were recently denied by an official USAF representative. These are: 1. An intelligence summary on UFOs prepared in 1948 by the organization which later became the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright Patterson AFB. 2. An intelligence analysis on specific aspects of UFO data which I prepared in 1952 while acting as UFO program monitor for Headquarters USAF, Washington, D.C.
109;
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LINK FOR BETTER VIEW OF DOCUMENT;
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BLUE BOOK: "SCIENTIFIC & OBJECTIVE"
"Some cases arise which, on the basis of information received, are of a weird and peculiar nature. The objects display erratic movements and phenomenal speeds. Since maneuvers and speeds of this kind cannot be traced directly to aircraft, balloons, or known astronomical sources, it is believed that they are reflections from objects rather than being objects themselves. . . Reflections may be projected to clouds and haze both from the ground and air. Many things which are common to the sky have highly reflective qualities, such as balloons, aircraft, and clouds." ("Fact sheet," November 1957).
NICAP: Air Force logic appears to be that, if something is observed which out-performs conventional aircraft and balloons, it must not be a real solid object. The "objective" Air Force investigation denies the possibility that UFOs could maneuver as reported, in effect concluding that all witnesses have been deluded.
The hypo thesis that UFOs represent a superior technology- -and may be space ships--is not even considered. The "investigation" therefore consists of searching for the conventional phenomenon- -or phenomena- - most nearly resembling the reported UFO. If none is found, complex speculative "light reflection" theories are invoked.
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"...the Air Force does not proceed with an investigation unless the sighting is reported directly to the Air Force." (Col. George M. Lockhart, USAF, Congressional Inquiry Division, Office of Legislative Liaison, to Senator Harrison A. Williams, Jr., 2-21-63)
NICAP: A scientific investigation of any phenomenon would set out to gather objective and quantitative data about that phenomenon. It would not ignore potentially valuable data merely because it was not reported through official channels.
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"Four frames from the films taken by Mr. Diaz in Venezuela [Dec. 1962--See Section VIII] were forwarded to the Air Force for evaluation. However, the negatives of these frames were not submitted and therefore, without them, it has been impossible to make any investigation." (Maj. Maston M. Jacks, USAF, Public Information Division, Office of Information, to Richard Hack, 12- 31-63).
NICAP: There is no such thing as negatives of movie film. Upon learning of this statement, NICAP had its adviser in Caracas, Dr. Askold Ladonko, contact Mr. Diaz again. The film was loaned to the Air Force attache with permission to make copies or stills if desired, and was returned intact with no frames missing. Apparently the attache did not have a copy of the film made; just four stills.
"The images on the photographs which were made by the U.S. Coast Guard on 16 July 1952 at Salem, Mass., were evaluated as being due to a double exposure." (Maj. Carl H. Hart, USAF, Public Information Division, Office of Information, to George D. Fawcett, 2-12-63).
"The unidentified flying objects in the photographs taken at Salem, Mass., on July 16, 1952 have been evaluated as light reflections on the window through which the photos were taken." (Maj. Maston M. Jacks, USAF, Public Information Division, Office of Information, to John P. Speights, 8-5-63).
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"The Long Beach sighting of November 5, 1957 [See Section XII; Nov. 1957 Chronology] has been evaluated as possible reflections on sheet-ice, from either the sun or from lightning. Also there was a balloon in the area, and there were 10 aircraft in the vicinity. . .(Maj. Maston M. Jacks, USAF, Public Information Division, Office of Information, to Herbert S. Taylor, 11-18-63).
NICAP: A good example of "shotgun" explanation for a sighting which is difficult to explain in conventional terms; in this case, six shiny circular objects making sharp turns and maneuvers. It is obvious guess work, hardly a "scientific" evaluation. This is one of many similar cases during the November 1957 "flap" which the Air Force lists as "explained."
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Re: April 8, 1956 sighting by Capt. Raymond Ryan, American Airlines pilot; "The Air Force concluded that the object viewed during this sighting was the planet Venus." (Air Force "fact sheet", 1963).
NICAP: In a taped description of his sighting, Capt. Ryan states that the UFO zoomed through a 90 degree arc from off his wingtip to dead ahead. Control tower operators reported seeing a silhouette of a UFO. [See transcript, Section V]
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"The objects which appeared in the film taken at Great Falls, Montana on 15 August 1950 were identified as F-94 aircraft." (Maj. Carl R. Hart, USAF, Public Information Division Office of Information, to George D. Fawcett, 2-12-63).
The F-94 aircraft were observed by the photographer behind him coming in for a landing. Photogrammetric analysis [See Section VIII] states there are "several factors which make such a hypothesis quite strained." Persistence of reflection from alleged aircraft "would require a very rare coincidence of airplane maneuver."
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"The Air Technical Intelligence Center reports concerning the Washington Airport Control Center sighting of July 1952 state there were radar blips observed and that they were caused by a temperature inversion." (Maj. Gen. W. P. Fisher, USAF, Director of Legislative Liaison, to Senator Kenneth B. Keating, 0-19-59).
NICAP: Gen. Fisher failed to mention that visual observations often coincided with the unexplained radar blips; that the degree of inversion was insufficient to account for the sightings; and that Project Blue Book classified the sightings as "unknown," contrary to public announcements at the time. [Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, Ruppelt, p.226; also see Section XII]
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"...the Air Force feels that public hearings would merely give dignity to the subject out of all proportion to which it is entitled. The sensation seekers and the publishers of science fiction would profit most from such hearings, and in the long run we would not accomplish our objective of taking the aura of mystery out of UFOs," (Maj. Gen. W. P. Fisher, USAF, Director of Legislative Liaison, to Senator A.S. "Mike" Monroney, 6-4-59).
NICAP: Nothing would remove the "aura of mystery" about UFOs more rapidly than Congressional hearings. Presumably, the Air Force believes hearings would prove its case. If so, the alleged "myth" of UFOs would be punctured. Sensationalists and opportunists thrive only because of public confusion about UFOs. Hearings could help to establish the facts and clarify the entire picture. Continued refusal to give out detailed information encourages an "aura of mystery."
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"The Air Force has a tremendous task in defending this country against weapon systems which we know exist. To divert more men and money from this mission into a greatly enlarged program for investigation of and defense against UFOs would jeopardize the security of this country against a known threat and would, in our opinion, be grossly imprudent." (Cot. Carl M. Nelson, USAF, Congressional Inquiry Division, Office of Legislative Liaison, to Senator Philip A. Hart, 4-8-60).
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"The UFO investigative role is intimately associated with the air defense role of the United States. As such, the first thing to be determined is the threat potential of an unidentified flying object. When this determination has been made (none of the over 7,000 sightings have proven inimical or hostile) an understandably lower priority is placed on the further evaluation of the sighting. I'm sure you will agree that the security of the nation is and must be our primary concern." (G. Wise, for Maj. William T. Coleman, Jr., USAF, UFO Project Officer, Public Information Division, to Fred Kempf, 8-17-61).
NICAP: These letters pinpoint the real issue between the Air Force and its scientific critics. No one denies that the Air Force mission is to defend the country against attack, and that this is an important mission. The thinking is clear: UFOs are evaluated in the light of being a potential threat to the country. If preliminary investigation satisfies the Air Force the country is not under attack, "an understandably lower priority is placed on the further evaluation of the sighting." But what about scientific investigation of the reported objects thereafter?
The Air Force should not be expected to carry through a job for which it is not fitted: scientific investigation of a phenomenon. Yet, as the agency officially charged with investigation of UFOs, the Air Force is under pressure to do just that. Intelligence techniques are not sufficient for scientific investigation. The full resources of the scientific community, including tracking instrumentation specifically for that purpose, would be required. Once satisfied that a given UFO poses no threat, the Air Force investigators apparently search for the most plausible conventional explanation. When none can be found, the "shotgun" approach is used. Clearly, this is not a scientific investigation.
D. Sample UFO Cases Involving
Aspects of Secrecy
Red Bluff, California
The sighting of a UFO Aug. 13, 1960, by California Highway Patrolmen [Section VII] described a highly maneuverable, elliptical object. Toward the end of the observation, a second similar object was observed.
In a letter to a NICAP member, the Air Force stated: "The findings [are] that the individuals concerned witnessed a refraction of the planet Mars and the two bright stars Aldebaran and Betelgeux. . . [temperature inversions] contributed to the phenomena as the planet Mars was quite low in the skies and the inversion caused it to be projected upwards." (9-16-60).
In a letter to NICAP, the Air Force stated: "It is an impossible task to determine what the exact light source was for each specific incident, but the planet Mars and the star Capella were the most probable answers for these sightings." (10-6-60). The change of identification occurred about the time NICAP re ported, in a special bulletin for October, 1960, that the first three named astronomical objects all were below the horizon at the time of the sighting. As it happens, the star Capella is the only one named which was above the horizon at the time of the sighting.
NICAP recently telephoned the office of a California Senator and confirmed that the state is on Daylight Saving Time (P.D.T.) from April 26 to October 25. The sighting began at 11:50 p.m. (P.D.T.), Aug. 13. At that time, the planet Mars was about one hour (i.e., about 15 degrees) below the eastern horizon. It is completely absurd to suppose that it could in any way account for the sighting. Aldebaran did not rise until about 1 a.m., Betelgeux about 3 a.m.
As for Capella, which was barely above the horizon when the sighting began, no star, by the wildest stretch of imagination, could give the appearance of a large ellipse a few hundred feet off the ground, nor could it maneuver as described by the police officers. [See Section VII] Also, the objects disappeared below the eastern horizon at the end of the sighting, whereas Capella would have risen about 35 degrees in that period. The Air 'Force explanation of this case is one of the most strained and counter- to-fact on record.
UTAH FILM
In 1963, the Air Force circulated an information sheet labeled "Ode D 'Classic' -- Seagulls" (See photostat) suggesting that there was a "strong possibility" that the UFOs filmed by Delbert C. Newhouse on July 2, 1952, were seagulls, By the end of the statement, after baldly assuming that actual seagulls "undoubtedly" showed up in some of the frames, the conclusion was stated more positively: There is "little reasonable doubt" that the UFOs actually were seagulls. The author refers to the "unanimity of opinion" of those who analyzed the film.
As a matter of fact, there is virtually no support for this identification. Mr. Newhouse, a Navy chief photographer (aviation), viewed the UFOs at relatively close range at first. They were shiny, perfectly disc-shaped objects. By the time he was able to unpack his camera, the objects had receded into the distance, but he was still able to capture them on film.
When the new Air Force information sheet was issued, NICAP forwarded a copy to Board Member Dewey J. Fournet, Jr. Mr. Fournet is a former Air Force Major who monitored the UFO program for the Pentagon. While on active duty with the Air Force, he handled the Utah movie film, helped arrange for its analysis, was conversant with the analyses conducted and their results. The following are excerpts from his reply to NICAP:
"This [document] was apparently written by someone only very superficially acquainted with the Tremonton movie case - - some one who obviously didn't bother to study the case history in any detail, or by someone who is purposely distorting the facts of the case.
"There were two different analyses made of the movies shortly after I received them in 1952, both by the most qualified military photoanalytical labs then in existence. One was by the Wright- Patterson AFB photo lab and the other by the Navy photo lab at Anacostia. . . . The W-P lab concluded that the objects were not airplanes or balloons and probably not birds. The Navy lab concluded that they were not any of these. In neither case was there anything even remotely hinting that birds of any type had been identified in any frames of the movie.
"The 'unanimity of opinion' to which the author of "Ode D" refers must certainly be a recent development. There most certainly was no such unanimity among the original parties in this case that the objects were probably seagulls. Quite to the contrary, the majority concluded that they were probably not birds although some of us conceded this possibility if certain corollary assumptions were made: [That the witness was lying or unreliable; that despite his photographic experience, the witness panned his camera opposite to the direction the lone object was flying.]
"The 'Ode D' author apparently is unaware of or intentionally omitted reference to Newhouse's statement. . he described [the UFOs] as 'two pie pans, one inverted on top of the other.'
"Overall, whether the USAF author realized it or not, it would be necessary to conclude that Newhouse was lying in many of his statements in order to conclude that the Tremonton objects were birds. If I recall correctly, the unanimous opinion of the intelligence officers was that he was completely sincere and somewhat reserved. I have never heard anyone claim anything to the contrary. . .
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ODE D "CLASSIC" - SEAGULLS
(FROM COLORED MOTION PICTURE FILM)
TREMONTON, UTAH INCIDENT;
2 July 1952
At approximately 1110 on 2 July 1952 while driving in the vicinity of Tremonton, Utah, Chief Petty Officer Delbert C. Newhouse's wife noticed a group of objects in the sky that she could not identify. She asked him to stop the car and look. There was a group or about ten or twelve objects that bore no relation to anything he had seen before milling about in a rough formations and proceeding in a westerly direction.
He opened the luggage compartment of his car and got his camera out of a suitcase. Loading it hurriedly, he exposed approximately thirty feet of film. There was no reference point in the sky, "and it was impossible for him to make any estimate of speed, size, altitude or distance.
Toward the end one of the objects reversed course end proceeded away from the main group. He held the camera still and allowed this single one to cross the field of view, picking it up again and repeating for three or four such passes. By this time all of the objects had disappeared. He stated that he expended the balance of the film late that afternoon on a mountain somewhere in Idaho.
The original film was analyzed by a photo reconnaissance laboratory shortly after the sighting. The conclusion reached was that a strong possibility existed that the bright spots of light appearing on the film were caused by seagulls soaring in thermal air currents. The credibility of the conclusion was undoubtedly supported by the presence of identifiable seagulls in some of the frames.
This conclusion was further strengthened by movies of seagulls, taken at various distances, which showed these as bright spots of light similar to those in the Newhouse film.
A recent analysis (1956) of the Newhouse film, made by USAF photo specialists totally unaware of the nature or previous history of this case, yielded the opinion that the bright spots of light on the file were bird reflections on the strong sunlight.
The unanimity of opinion present in all evaluations made in this case leaves little reasonable doubt that the UFO's in the Newhouse film were, indeed, seagulls.
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Actual Document HERE; 112
The Sheffield Lake Case
Early on the morning of Sept. 21, 1958, a domed, disc-shaped UFO was observed a few feet above the ground outside a house in Sheffield Lake, Ohio. The main witness was Mrs. William Fitzgerald. Other residents in the area reported UFO sightings that morning. After a superficial investigation, the Air Force reported a completely counter-to-fact explanation (also incorporating the "shotgun" approach):
Mrs. Fitzgerald had been fooled by a train headlight, plus a spotlight on a Coast Guard ship on Lake Erie. After a careful investigation, the Akron UFO Research Committee published a documented report, "The Fitzgerald Report" (P.O. Box 5242, Akron 13, Ohio), refuting the Air Force statements.
Air Force:
"The investigation revealed that a railroad track ran near the home of Mrs. Fitzgerald. The night of Mrs. Fitzgerald's sighting, a train passed the house at approximately the same hour of the reported sighting. The train had a rotating headlight which, under some conditions, would produce unusual effects. Contact was also made with Chief Bosun's Mate William Schott of the Coast Guard Station, Lorain, Ohio. Chief Schott reported that he was using his spotlight in an attempt to attract the attention of another ship, and that the light was directed toward the shore in the general direction of Mrs. Fitzgerald's house. . .The weather at the time of the incident was a misty rain with haze and smoke.
"The conclusion of the Air Force investigators was that the combination of moving lights, noise of the train and prevailing weather account for the illusion experienced by Mrs. Fitzgerald. The Air Technical Intelligence Center, after evaluating the evidence in this case, concurred with the conclusion of the investigators." (Maj. Gen. W. P. Fisher, USAF, Director, Legislative Liaison, to Rep. A. D. Baumhart, Jr., l0-31-58).
The Air Force logic is apparent: UFOs are not real objects and can all be explained in terms of honest but deluded witnesses. Mrs. Fitzgerald only thought she saw a distinct disc-shaped domed object. She must have been fooled by some local light. A bright train headlight, or Coast Guard spotlight shining through mist and haze could be the cause.
Akron UFO Research Committee:
Checking each point of the Air Force statements, the Akron group found many errors and omissions. Gen. Fisher had also told Congressman Baumhart that one of the confirmatory witnesses listed by Mrs. Fitzgerald had stated she had not seen anything unusual that night. Later, the witness signed a statement, reproduced in the Akron report, that she had confirmed the sighting to Air Force investigators: A round object with a "hump" or dome. The investigators, she stated, then decided not to have her fill out a report form.
* The railroad track is situated so that no train headlights ever shine into the window of Mrs. Fitzgerald's house. Although urged to do so by the Akron group, the Air Force investigators made no attempt to check this.
* At the time of the UFO sighting, Chief Schott's ship was about 5-1/2 miles from Mrs. Fitzgerald's house. Lake Erie is not even visible from her house, being obscured by trees and other houses.
Through Ohio Congressmen, the Air Force was asked to explain these discrepancies. Various spokesmen for the Air Force reiterated their confidence in the "competence" of their investigators and that their findings were "accurate and adequate." Maj. Lawrence J. Tacker, Pentagon UFO spokesman, in a letter to the Akron group, labeled their report ". . . the erroneous charges [of] amateur organizations." He added, "Further, we are not interested in your theories or science fiction approach to this subject." (1-14-59).
When pressed by Congressman Baumhart for "a more complete report" on the incident, the Air Force was totally unresponsive. The Congressman was sent a form reply defending the Air Force position against the "mistaken beliefs" of UFO groups which make "sensational claims and contentions." The same form letter has been sent to Members of Congress repeatedly.
Redmond, Oregon
When a UFO sighting by Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) personnel on Sept. 24, 1959, at Redmond, Ore., airport [See Section V] was reported in the press, NICAP made a thorough investigation. Information was obtained from the FAA, the Weather Bureau and the IGY World Data Center at Cornell University. A taped interview of the witnesses was obtained by members in the area. The essence of the report was that a round object had descended and hovered, moved quickly to a new position, then shot up into clouds emitting a flame trail as jet interceptors approached. The jets were scrambled because, according to FAA logs, an Air Force radar station was also tracking a UFO at the time.
When queried about the official explanation for this sighting, the Air Force replied: "The Portland Oregon UFO sighting of 24 September 1959 is carried on the records of ATIC as 'insufficient information.' The ATIC account of the sighting fails to reveal any evidence of radar tracking or any success of the attempted intercept. It is the ATIC opinion that this object was probably a balloon as evidenced by its relatively long period in the area (more than an hour), and the fact that, unless equipped with reflectors, balloons are not good radar reflectors.
The average direction and strength of the wind at the time of the sighting was south at 15 knots [NICAP: The UFO reportedly moved south, where it showed on radar after the visual sighting had ended'." (Maj. Lawrence J Tacker, USAF, Public Information Division Office of Information, 1 19-60).
NICAP obtained wind data from the U.S. Weather Bureau showing steady winds from the southeast throughout the morning, from 3-7 knots, until nearly five hours after the sighting. No balloon had been launched locally at the time of the sighting, and even if one had been, it almost certainly would have traveled on a northerly course. Later, the Air Force dropped the balloon explanation.
After NICAP publicity on the case drew Congressional attention, the Air Force issued a much more detailed account (admitting that six jet interceptors had been scrambled, but denying that radar had tracked a UFO). Air Force letters to Members of Congress attributed the radar sighting to an error on the part of their Ground Control Intercept radar station. "It was determined by the four senior controllers on duty during the period of the search that this radar return on the ground station scope was a radar echo from a gap filler antenna located on a mountain at the 8010-foot level. This radar return did not move during the entire period of the search. [NICAP:
The FAA logs state, "Altitude has been measured on height finder at altitudes that vary from 6000 to 54,000 feet."] . The fact that this radar return did not move is in complete disagreement with ground observers who sighted the UFO visually. They all testified it maneuvered rapidly and at times hovered." (Col. Gordon B. Knight, Chief, Congressional Inquiry Division, Office of Legislative Liaison, to Senator Warren G. Magnuson, 4-27-60.)
On March 25, 1960, the Pentagon UFO spokesman had written to NICAP that ". . because of the information contained in the FAA logs, your correspondence and the copies of the logs have been forwarded to ATIC for possible additional consideration.......Based upon all the present data on this sighting, the finding of 'insufficient data' is definitely valid." As of Col. Knight's April 27, 1960, letter to Senator Magnuson, the case still was classified as ''insufficient data."
An Air Force information sheet circulated in 1963 attributes the UFO to ''tile refraction of light from the planet Venus." (The sheet also accuses NICAP of "exploitation" of the FAA logs which contradicted the Air Force story). NICAP astronomy advisors had already checked this possibility, and knew Venus was prominent in the eastern sky that morning. The witnesses were queried on this specific point and stated they did not see Venus during the UFO sighting, but did see it and identify it afterwards.
NICAP concedes that, if the radar target was perfectly stationary throughout, it was not the UFO observed visually. When trying to establish the balloon explanation, the Air Force emphasized the long period of observation (The FAA log indicates the visual sighting lasted about 10 minutes.) When dissociating the radar sighting from the visual sighting, the Air Force emphasized the high maneuverability of the UFO. Finally, the UFO which "maneuvered rapidly and at times hovered" has been explained as the planet Venus.
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DOCUMENT;
LINK; http://www.nicap.org/ufoe/section_9.htm
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The ufo evidence;the air force investigation;3
OLDEN MOORE;
At the height of the November, 1957, "flap," [See Section XII], a resident of rural Montville, Ohio, had a close-range sighting of a UFO. The report quickly spread to newspaper reporters, area Civil Defense officials and others. The witness, Olden Moore, stated that not only was he interrogated by representatives of the Federal Government, but also he was taken to Washington, D.C., and questioned repeatedly over a three-day period. At the conclusion, he was sworn to secrecy
After more than three years' observance of this, he decided the need for revealing his story superseded the need for secrecy, so he told his story to newspaper reporter Don Berliner, then of the Painesville (Ohio) Telegraph, on Jan. 21, 1961.
Moore stated that, within two weeks of the sighting, he was taken to Youngstown (Ohio) AFB by car, then to Wright-Patterson AFB by helicopter, and from there to an air base within 20-30 minutes drive of Washington, D.C. (probably Andrews AFB) in a small Air Force transport plane. At all times he was accompanied by two government representatives.
During his stay in Washington, he was quartered in a hotel-like room with one of the government men, who, impressed Moore as being there for the purpose of keeping an eye on him. Questioning and interviewing took place in the basement of the building in which he stayed. (The U.S, Court House fits the description. Upstairs are hotel-like jury rooms; in the basement are many offices, including those of U.S, Marshals.) The only time he was permitted to leave the building prior to departure was for a brief guided tour of some historic and scenic areas (which proved highly impressive to one who had never before seen the Nation's Capital.)
The interrogation, according to Moore, was not so much a question-and-answer session, as a corroboration by him of details of his experience, i.e. "was the thing you saw a such-and-such?" His answer, in almost every instance, was affirmative. This led him to conclude that his questioners were less interested in learning what he had seen than in finding out how much he had detected. He said he got the definite impression that those asking the questions were quite familiar with what he had seen.
At the end of the third day of questions, Moore was required to sign a statement promising never to tell of his trip to Washing ton. Upon returning home, all he would tell the newspapers was that he had talked with some officials at home and others elsewhere. His wife said he was taken to Washington, but Moore did not confirm this at the time.
Don Berliner, who interviewed Moore in 1961, was highly impressed by his sincerity, lack of sensationalism, and his awareness of the seriousness of revealing information he had promised to keep secret. This material was not published by Mr. Berliner at the time because of its sensitive nature. However, Mr. Moore did offer to tell his story to any Committee or Subcommittee of Congress which might be interested.
Allegedly, the Air Force (government spokesmen on this subject) has withheld nothing from the public. The implication of Moore's story is that considerable information has been withheld. A Congressional inquiry into this matter would appear to be fully justified.
The 1956 sighting of a huge disc by the crew of a Navy transport over the Atlantic [See Section IV] was followed by the personal visit to the aircraft commander by a government scientist. The man took a set of photographs out of a briefcase and showed them to the pilot, asking him to point out the object he saw. The Commander quickly identified one of the pictures as the machine he had seen, whereupon the unnamed scientist put the picture back, refused to comment further, and departed. [Report obtained by R. Adm. D. S. Fahrney, USN, Ret.].
The obvious implication of this incident is that someone in the government has considerably more information about UFOs than has been released by the Air Force. It tends to substantiate Olden Moore's report.
The Sheneman Case
On Aug. 1, 1955, W. M. Sheneman, proprietor of a radio and TV store, arrived at his home near Willoughby, Ohio, (20 miles east of Cleveland). As he got out of his car, he saw a large circular object, with a red light on the front rim, descend rapidly over a nearby field. It stopped at an estimated 800 feet altitude and shot two beams of light toward the ground.
As the glow illuminated the ground, Mr. Sheneman saw several "windows" around the edge of the hovering disc. He fled into the house, but returned after a minute with his wife for another look. The craft had become dark and was hovering about 200 feet above the house; from this vantage point, he estimated its diameter at 80-100 feet. It then began to move away, revealing a dome on top lit by a white glow from within. Mrs. Sheneman reported hearing a soft humming sound.
Following report of the incident to the Air Force in 1956, the Sheneman's were visited by a major from ATIC, who told them they had seen a test of a Canadian Avro vertical-lift device developed for the U.S. Air Force. To back up his claim, the officer displayed a glossy print purportedly showing the craft in flight. This was, in fact, an artist's conception of what the Avro disc might look like, as the first example was not completed until 1959. The major tried for three hours to convince Mr. and Mrs. Sheneman that they had seen the Avro and to sign a statement to that effect, but they refused.
While definitely resembling the public idea of a "flying saucer," the 18-foot Avro VZ-9V failed to achieve its design performance of vertical take off and high-speed flight. Wind tunnel and free-flight tests demonstrated that it would not fly out of ground effect, and was therefore limited to an altitude of several inches and top speed of about 35 mph. [5]
(AS A SCOT THE BELOW CASE FASCINATES ME TO THIS DAY)
The Kinross Case;
On the night of November 23, 1953, an unidentified flying object was detected over Lake Superior by Air Defense Command radar. An F-89C all-weather interceptor was scrambled from Kinross AFB, near the Soo Locks in northern Michigan. Guided by radar, the jet sped northwest across the lake on an intercept course. On the radar screen, ground controllers saw the F-89 dose in on the UFO blip, and then the two blips merged and faded from the screen. From all appearances, the aircraft and the UFO had collided. No trace of the jet has ever been found.
The last radar contact with the F-89 showed it to be at 8000 feet, 70 miles off Keeweenaw Point, and about 160 miles north west of Soo Locks. Later, the Air Force reported that the "UFO" was identified by the F-89 as a Royal Canadian Air Force C-47. After identifying the friendly plane, the Air Force states, the F-89 turned back to base. From that time, "nothing of what happened is definitely known." [Air Force information
114
sheet; copy on file at NICAP. The C-47 was "on a flight plan from Winnipeg, Manitoba, to Sudbury, Ontario, Canada." Air Force letter to NICAP member, 4-2-63].
The original report released by the Air Force PIO at Truax AFB, Wise., stated that contact was lost with the F-89 when it appeared to merge with the UFO. There is no mention of tracking the jet after that.
In 1961, a NICAP member wrote to the RCAF concerning the Kinross incident to verify the C -47 identification. The reply stated:
"Thank you for your letter of April 4 requesting information regarding an 'Unidentified Flying Object' on November 23, 1953.
"A check of Royal Canadian Air Force records has revealed no report of an incident involving an RCAF aircraft in the Lake Superior area on the above date." (Flight Lt. C. F. Page, for Chief of the Air Staff, RCAF, to Jon Mikulich, 4-14-61).
Later, another NICAP member wrote to the RCAF arid received an even more specific denial that any Canadian aircraft was intercepted by a U.S. jet. The spokesman added: " as you stated the C-47 was travelling on a flight plan taking it over Canadian territory; this alone would seem to make such an intercept unlikely." (See photostat).
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Click here for actual, larger document;
There are two interpretations of what happened over Lake Superior that night: (1) Air Force radar tracked a UFO, the F-89 closed in to investigate, collided with or was in some manner destroyed by the UFO (as indicated by the blips merging on radar, the fact that radar contact was lost after the blips merged, and the fact that no trace of the fully-equipped all-weather aircraft has been found.); or (2) Air Force radar tracked a temporarily unidentified RCAF plane, the F-89 intercepted it, made the identification and then crashed for unknown reasons.
The latter explanation does not account for what was observed on radar; it assumes that expert radar men cannot read radar scopes. The RCAF has no record of such an incident, although a flight plan allegedly was filed. If there was such a flight, it would have been entirely over Canadian territory. Because of international identification networks between Canada and the U.S., its flight plan would have been known to the radar stations and there would have been no need for the intercept mission to begin with. The F-89 was originally reported to be chasing an "unidentified object."
The Air Force information sheet on this case states: "It is presumed by the officials at Norton AFB [Flying Safety Division] that the pilot probably suffered from vertigo and crashed into the lake." Judging by weather reports at the time, the pilot would have been on instruments, so that vertigo (dizziness resulting from visual observation) would be an extremely unlikely explanation. Even if the F-89 was not on instruments at the time, there is no explanation why radar tracked it 160 miles out over the lake and then lost contact just after the blips appeared to merge.
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Capt. Peter Killian, American Airlines pilot, was one of several pilots who reported observing three UFOs above Pennsylvania, Feb. 24, 1959. [See Section V]. While traveling westward across the state, Capt. Killian and the other pilots saw the UFOs flying a parallel course to the south. The Air Force later stated that the pilots had seen Air Force bombers refueling from a tanker aircraft.
Reconstructing the sighting (see map), it is possible to trace a hypothetical, but very consistent, picture of the UFOs' flight path. Around 8:20 to 8:40 p.m., from Central Pennsylvania, the UFOs were observed to the SSW paralleling the westerly course of the airliners. Their distance, of course, is unknown. But based on subsequent observations, it is a reasonable supposition that the UFOs were over southern Pennsylvania, in the vicinity of Pittsburgh and Johnstown.
Around the same time that Capt. A. D. Yates, United Airlines, saw the UFOs turn and head northwest in the vicinity of Akron, three American Airlines pilots simultaneously saw the objects (8:55 p.m.). Their lines of sight converge on the Cleveland-Akron area. By 9:20 p.m., The Akron UFO Research Committee had received reports from ground observers, describing three UFOs headed west. Capt. Killian continued to observe the UFOs until he began his landing approach at Detroit, about 120 miles northwest of Akron.
In a letter to Senator Harry Flood Byrd, dated 6 May 1959, Maj. Gen. W, P. Fisher (Air Force Director of Legislative Liaison) stated:
"The investigation of this incident revealed that an Air Force refueling mission, involving a KC-97 and three B-47 aircraft, was flown in the vicinity of Bradford, Pennsylvania, at the time of the sighting by Capt. Killian. The refueling operation was conducted at 17,000 feet altitude at approximately 230 knots true air speed (about 265 mph) for a period of approximately one hour."
Assuming that this is a completely accurate statement, the Air Force could lay to rest this "flying saucer" report once and for all by publishing the exact flight plan of the refueling mission. Surely, at this late date there would be no compromising of security. On the surface, the explanation is plausible (except for the back-and-forth motion of the third UFO in line). The distance from the area of Johnstown, Pa., to Detroit is approximately 250 miles, which is consistent with the distance that would be covered by the refueling tanker. On closer analysis, however, there are several discrepancies in this explanation:
(1) Bradford, Pa., given as a geographical reference point for the refueling mission, is north of the flight paths of the American and United airliners. All the pilots saw the UFOs to the south. If the refueling mission actually took place over southern Pennsylvania (which would have to be the case to account for the reported facts), why wasn't Pittsburgh or Johnstown given as a reference point? Bradford is virtually the full width of the state away from the apparent location of the UFOs.
(2) Triangulation shows that (from the line of Capt. Killian's flight path in Central Pennsylvania) the tanker and other aircraft would have to be within 12 miles of Capt. Killian's position for a sighting angle of 15 degrees to place them at approximately 17,000 feet altitude. Even allowing for a 1/3 error in estimation of angle, the aircraft would have to be within 20 miles to the south of Capt. Killian. This is inconsistent with the observation by Capt. Yates, farther to the south, who also saw the UFOs to his south as he traveled all the way to the Pennsylvania-Ohio border.
(3) Triangulation of the simultaneous sighting by the three American Airlines pilots is even more damaging to the tanker explanation. The three lines of sight converge on the general Akron area, where ground sightings also tend to confirm the distance from Capt. Killian's aircraft. From the position of Capt. Killian's plane at the time of the simultaneous observation, the distance to Akron is approximately 70 miles.
tan 15 degrees = x / 70
x = 70 tan 15 degrees;
x = 18.1 miles
x = 95,568 feet (altitude of UFOs)
Even allowing for a 2/3 error in angle estimation:
x = 70 tan 5 degrees
x = 6.1 miles
x = 32,208 feet (altitude of UFOs)
(4) The American Airlines pilots checked after landing and learned that no jet tankers were in the area. (Taped statement by copilot on file at CSI, New York). Capt. Killian is also quoted by the Air Force as stating that a check with Air Traffic Control showed no three aircraft in the area (see below).
(5) Several aspects of the Air Force handling of this case suggest a desire to explain it away, including issuance of typical counter-to-fact explanations.
Before any representatives of the Air Force contacted Capt. Killian to obtain his report, the Air Force first suggested he had been fooled by the belt of the constellation Orion seen through breaks in the overcast. (There was no overcast). This statement was issued from ATIC three days after the sighting. An anonymous spokesman implied that UFO witnesses often proved to be drunks (N.Y. Herald-Tribune; March 1, 1959)
On March 20 (more than three weeks after the sighting) the Air Force issued a statement from Washington alleging that the airline pilots had seen a refueling mission. (One critic of the USAF UFO investigation wryly suggested to NICAP that it took the Air Force three weeks to locate some of its own planes). The refueling mission explanation has since been given all inquiring Members of Congress.
When contacted by the press about the tanker explanation, Capt. Killian gave a strong rebuttal: "If the Air Force wants to believe that, it can," Capt. Killian said. "But I know what a B-47 looks like and I know what a KC-97 tanker looks like, and I know what they look like in operation at night. And that's not what I saw." [See Notes, Section V]
Later, the Air Force began circulating a copy of a statement (unsigned) which it alleges was obtained from Capt. Killian by American Airlines:
__________________________________________________ ___________________
COPY;
American Airlines, Inc.
Flight 139 - February 24, 1959
Captain P. W. Killian;
Departing Newark 1910 arriving Detroit 2252.
It was approximately 2045 I noticed these three lights off my left wing in the vicinity of Bradford, Pennsylvania. I was flying 8,500 VFR on top of broken clouds. Visibility was unlimited with no upper clouds observed. It was extremely difficult to ascertain the distance of the lights. The color of the lights were from a yellow to a light orange.
The intensity of the lights also changed from dim to a bright brilliant. Sometimes the interval of the three lights were identical to the Belt of the constellation Orion. Occasionally the rear lights lagged somewhat behind. Also changed altitudes. During the 40 minutes of observation, the three lights occasionally came forward from a 9 o'clock position to 11 o'clock position and then fell back to the original 9 o'clock position.
Also occasionally the lights extinguished completely alternating from one to another, sometimes the whole three were extinguished and during this whole operation, as I mentioned before, the lights changed in intensity. This motion was not only seen by myself but four crew members and passengers on board and also by two other airplanes in the area.
The only possible explanation other than flying saucers could be a jet tanker refueling operation. Never having witnessed refueling operation at night, I am not aware of the lighting of the jet tanker.
My air speed during this complete flight was 250 knots indicated. I also do not know the air speed of tankers during operation if this could be so. I contacted ATC to find out if they had any airplanes on a clearance and no three airplanes were given.
__________________________________________________ ____
In attempting to resolve the contradictions, NICAP once again telephoned Capt. Killian. Mrs. Killian stated to the NICAP Director that Capt. Killian had been instructed not to say any more about the sighting. She indicated he was angry about being silenced, and felt his rights were being denied.
Officially, the case has been "explained" as a refueling mission. The facts obtained before Capt. Killian was silenced (including his own public denial of that explanation), the above triangulations, and the type and timing of the Air Force statements all cast doubt on the validity of the explanation.
Though it may seem far-fetched to those unfamiliar with UFO history to suppose that the Air Force would have any motive for a deliberate cover-up, the former chief of the Air Force UFO project, himself, reported many similar incidents. A good parallel to the Capt. Killian sighting is described by Capt. Edward J. Ruppelt (Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. ppg. 119-120). When a report came in from airline pilots that their plane had been buzzed by a cigar-shaped object as they were taking off from Sioux City, Iowa [See Section V; 1-20-51], Capt. Ruppelt witnessed the reaction by Air Force investigators.
The sighting was treated as a joke; the "investigator" merely located an Air Force bomber near Sioux City and blamed it for the sighting. Capt. Ruppelt acknowledged the absurdity of this answer: a bomber buzzing an airliner in an airport traffic pattern. There was no investigation; only an arbitrary and counter-to-fact "explanation."
The Ryan Case;
On April 8, 1956, an American Airlines flight, headed west across New York state, saw and followed a UFO. After notifying an Air Force Base in the vicinity, the pilot, Capt. Raymond Ryan, was requested to follow the UFO until jet interceptors could reach the scene. In a taped interview [see transcript of sighting detail, Section V], Capt. Ryan admitted going off course and following the UFO as far as Oswego, N.Y., on the shore of Lake Ontario, before giving up the chase.
Although Capt. Ryan stated the UFO zoomed through a 90 degree arc from off his wingtip to dead ahead, the Air Force later blamed the sighting on the planet Venus. NICAP asked the then Civil Aeronautics Administration and the Civil Aeronautics Board for an investigation. CAA, CAB and American Airlines all denied that Capt. Ryan departed from his course. The Air Force does not admit asking Capt. Ryan to follow the UFO. [Taped interview of Capt. Ryan and all other documentation, on file at NICAP].
November 1957 Press Release;
On November 15, 1957, after two weeks of highly publicized UFO sightings, the Air Force issued news release No.1108-57. Out of hundreds of current sightings, five cases were listed and debunked: 1. Levelland, Tex.; 2. Alamogordo, N. Mex. (James Stokes); 3. Coast Guard Cutter, Gulf of Mexico; 4. White Sands, N. Mex. (Army jeep patrols); 5. Kearney, Nebr. (Reinhold Schmidt).
Two, the Kearney incident and the sighting by James Stokes at White Sands, were labeled hoaxes. The first case no doubt was a hoax, but there is not the slightest evidence of a hoax in the White Sands case. At last report, Mr. Stokes was still employed as a research engineer at White Sands in good standing.
The Levelland sightings were attributed to "weather phenomena of electrical nature, generally classified as 'Ball lightning' or 'St. Elmo's fire,' caused by stormy conditions in the area
The two are totally different phenomena. The Air Force stated it was able to locate only three persons who saw the "big light." Actually, there were at least 10 witnesses who similarly described elliptical objects. [See Section XII, Nov., 1957 Chronology]
The Coast Guard sighting was attributed to "aircraft, and possible spurious radar returns." [See Section XII]
The Army jeep patrols sightings were evaluated as "astronomical." The release said: "Astro plots indicate Venus is at magnitude at the time, place and direction of the first patrol's observation, and the Moon, with scattered clouds, was in general direction of the second patrol's observation." [See Section XII]
With the exception of the Levelland sightings and the one fairly obvious hoax, the remaining cases all involve personnel under military control. This selection of cases could be significant. A few days after the November sightings began, the Air Force had rushed out a general news release stating that in 10 years of UFO investigation "the number of unknowns has been reduced to less than 2%."
Both news releases bear all the earmarks of public relations utterances designed to reassure the public that (1) the Air Force is conducting a thorough scientific investigation, and (2) nothing truly unexplainable is being seen. Inside of two weeks, the Air Force found answers to hundreds of reports. The time factor, alone, casts doubt on the thoroughness of investigation and validity of the explanations.
NOTES;
1. Committee on Government Operations, U.S. House of Representatives, Availability of Information From Federal Departments and Agencies. (House Report No. 1884, 1958), p.2
2. Mollenhoff, Clark R., Washington Cover-Up. (Popular Library, 1963), p.73
3. Burns, James MacGregor, "The Eagle's Wings Need Realigning," Book Week, March 8, 1964. [Review of Power in Washington, by Douglass Cater (Random House, 1964)]
4. Mollenhoff, op. cit., p.12
5. NASA Technical Note D-1432
LINK FOR ALL ABOVE TEXT AND LINKS TO DOCUMENTS; http://www.nicap.org/ufoe/section_9.htm
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THE UFO EVIDENCE;FOREIGN REPORTS part 1;
In this section we will deal with FOREIGN REPORTS of UFOs; The quote from the late and much respected Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Chief scientific consultant to Air Force on UFOs is significant to the reality that this enigma is far from a American problem;
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THE UFO EVIDENCE, published by the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, Copyright 1964;
SECTION X;
FOREIGN REPORTS;
quote;
"Although we tend to think of flying saucers as peculiarly American, they are international in scope. England has had more reported sightings, per square mile of territory, than has the United States. France has had its share, not only sporadically, but also in one apparently major wave in the fall of 1954. Brazil, Spain, Italy, Australia, Canada and even several Iron Curtain countries have also been the sources of reports."
-- Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Chief scientific consultant to Air Force on UFOs [Yale Scientific magazine, April 1963]
A Survey of Foreign UFO Activity, Public Interest, and Official Attitudes
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United States press coverage has sometimes given the impression that UFOs are wholly, or mostly, a native phenomenon. This is completely disproved by the evidence below. Nearly every nation on earth has had reports of sightings from reputable witnesses. Most have had official investigations, usually by military departments rather than scientific agencies. Organizations exist on every continent, privately pursuing the study of UFOs.
Wherever man travels on the globe, UFOs have been sighted. Ships at sea have reported strange objects [For example see Section II; U.S.S. Supply case]. Although not many reports have been made in the polar regions, this is no doubt due to the small populations and lack of opportunity for observations in these areas. It is worth noting that increased population in Antarctica, at scientific bases, has resulted in some reports. Even the natives of remote islands in the South Pacific have reported UFOs.
The following survey is a small sample of thousands of world-wide UFO reports, official statements and significant opinions. The section is divided by geographical regions: A. Western Hemisphere; B. Eastern Hemisphere; C. Oceana and Antarctica.
A. WESTERN HEMISPHERE;
NORTH AMERICA;
Canada has had a history of UFO sightings closely paralleling that of the U.S, Early reports led to acceptance of UFOs as a reality and establishment of a government laboratory to investigate gate them, in the period 1952-53.
On April 16, 1952, RCAF Intelligence "went on record as believing that 'flying saucers' could not be laughed off as optical illusions." The spokesman termed UFOs a "bona fide phenomenon." Dr. Peter Millman, noted Dominion astrophysicist, stated: "We can't laugh off these observations." [1]
In the fall of 1953 the government Department of Transport announced establishment of a flying saucer laboratory designed to prove or disprove UFO reports. The laboratory, with scientific equipment to detect gamma rays, magnetic fluctuations, radio noises, etc., was headed by engineer W.B. Smith, later a member of the NICAP Panel of Advisers.
After the official project was closed in 1954 because of "embarrassing" publicity, Mr. Smith issued a statement: "The conclusions reached by Project Magnet and contained in the official report were based on a rigid statistical analysis of sighting reports and were as follows: There is a 91% probability that at least some of the sightings were of real objects of unknown origin.
There is about a 60% probability that these objects were alien vehicles." [2]
Typical Canadian Sightings;
July 9, 1957: An attorney in Hamilton, Ontario, with another witness watched a glowing white elliptical object speed overhead from SW to NE, about 9:05 p.m. [3]
December 12, 1957: Capt. J. A. Miller, Trans-Canada Air, Inc. pilot, flying between Toronto and Windsor about 7 p.m., saw a whirling orange oval object at about 2000 feet altitude, moving at "a terrific rate of speed." The UFO flashed across Lake Eric and was seen over a wide area before swinging back over the lake and disappearing. Other witnesses included employees of Windsor airport and police from every detachment in Southern Essex County. [4]
April 12, 1959: Control tower operators at St. Hubert Air Base, Montreal, and many others about 8 p.m. watched a reddish UFO which hovered over the base for several minutes, then darted away to the north. An RCAF spokesman stated: "It was a genuine UFO as far as we are concerned." [5] About the same time residents of north Montreal saw a red UFO, alternately described as round and cigar-shaped, which hovered low over a field, then climbed rapidly emitting "fiery sparks" from the underside.
Later official statements also paralleled U.S. policy. In a 1960 letter to a NICAP member, Group Captain L.C. Dilworth, for the Chief of the Air Staff, RCAF, stated: "The RCAF has recently implemented the JANAP 146 (D) procedure for the re porting of vital intelligence sightings [including UFOs; see Section IX]... Needless to say, the RCAF in concert with American forces is interested in all such reports and evaluation is done on a systematic basis. While the outcome of individual evaluations is not made public, you may rest assured that any threat to the security of Canada or the United States will be reflected in appropriate military plans." [6]
In 1961, RCAF Station Comox, British Columbia, stated in a letter to a NICAP member: "Most UFOB reports terminating at Headquarters are unclassified and there should be no reason to suspect that information on this subject is being withheld from the public. Such phenomena pose no threat to the safety of North America in so far as is known by this Headquarters... Station Comox does not receive directives which apply to the USAF AFR 200-2. This unit, however, does have a reporting guide to be used when phenomena is [sic] reported." (7]
(As in U.S. statements, note the emphasis on assurances that UFOs pose no threat, implying that the inquirer's letter is motivated by fear rather than curiosity.)
In 1961 the Canadian Defense Minister, Douglas S. Harkness wrote a NICAP member that official investigations "have not revealed positive evidence of anything which might affect national welfare and which could not be attributed to possible natural phenomena or mistaken identity." As of 1963, "The Air Officer Commanding Air Defense Command, is charged with the military investigation of Unidentified Flying Object reports. ... Information compiled by the RCAF, pertaining to this matter [UFOs], is not available to the public." [8]
Alaska has had many UFO sightings [See Section X[; Chronology]. In a typical case February 14, 1960, airline employees and others in Nome about 4:40 p.m. saw a silvery tube-shaped object spouting orange flame from the tail, The UFO moved ENE, then curved up and away 'as if it were manned and controlled." Another similar UFO was sighted at Unalakleet the same day, moving rapidly NW and leaving contrails. [9] (Five days later the U.S. Air Force stated the objects were meteors.)
Three USAF F-94 jet interceptors pursued a UFO January 22, 1952 which had been tracked on ground and airborne radar at a northern Alaska radar outpost. [See Section VIII; Radar].
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(Alaska, of course, is now one of the United States, and is covered in this Section because of its geographical location).
Mexico: In 1949-1950, during the sighting wave which occurred in that period, there were many press reports of UFOS sighted over Mexico, Example: Los Angeles News, March 14 & 15, 1950, Mexico City (UP) -- Hundreds of persons said they saw four flying saucers over Mexico City, and one at Monterrey. Witnesses included trained aircraft observers and meteorologists [See Section V]
Many additional sightings in past 12 years.
In 1958, Mr. Rafael Aveleyra, Minister of the Embassy of Mexico, Washington, in a letter to NICAP stated: "Please be advised that in accordance with the information just received from my Government, no reports have been received of unidentified flying objects within the area of Mexico, therefore no official investigation has been made." [10]
CENTRAL AMERICA;
UFOs have been sighted regularly over the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea, and Central America [See December 6, 1952 Gulf of Mexico case; Coast Guard Cutter Sebago case, November 5, 1957, Section VIII; etc.] On January 23, 1959, the New York Times reported that a bright silver unidentified object, which had arced across the sky above the Panama Canal, had been tracked by U.S. radar.
A NICAP member in El Salvador who visited the NICAP office in 1961, informed us that UFO sightings were very common in her country, and that they were a regular topic of conversation, in schools and elsewhere.
SOUTH AMERICA;
The same is true of most South American countries, at least five of which have active UFO organizations. Two, Argentina and Brazil, have treated the subject more frankly and openly than any other nations.
Argentina: A letter to NICAP from the Argentine Embassy dated October 10, 1958, requested information about the structure, scope and aims of NICAP, because "the creation of an agency similar to NICAP, with the same objectives, is under consideration by Argentine Air Force officials." [11]
Strong Argentine interest in UFOS is not surprising considering the well-documented cases which have occurred there. At Cordoba Airport, November 25, 1954, two luminous objects which hovered for nearly an hour were reported by Dr. Marcos Guerci, chief of the meteorological service; Carlos Bassoli, control tower operator; and many others. One UFO was roughly semi-circular, appearing like a disc on edge, the other circular. Dr. Guerci stated he believed he had observed "something foreign to our knowledge," according to the official report released by the Argentine Embassy. [12]
The most recent series of sightings in Argentina (as this is being written) began in May 1902, continuing throughout the year. The incidents included reported landings with resultant markings and stains on the ground, highly maneuverable luminous phenomena, electromagnetic effects, and other typical UFO features. [See Section XII; Argentine Chronology]
On May 22, 1962, UFOs were sighted four times in a period of about 35 minutes by a flight of Navy pilots in the vicinity of Espora Naval Air Base. In one instance, about 7:20 p.m., student pilot Roberto Wilkinson reported that a luminous object trailing his plane lit up his cockpit, and his radio-electric transmission failed as the UFO passed below his aircraft. [13]
Sightings continued throughout the summer, many concentrated around aircraft and airports. Over Floresta District, September 8, 1962, Lt. (j.g.) Juan Jose Vico sighted a "burnished metal" lenticular UFO making smooth and apparently controlled maneuvers, according to the report.
Investigations of the 1962 sightings by military authorities brought forth two statements. Capt. Luis Sanchez Moreno investigating for the Navy, told the press the Navy had been constantly concerned about UFOs since the great wave of global sightings in 1952. Following the sightings by Navy personnel in May 1962, the investigation report released by the Argentine Embassy concluded: "The testimonies of Naval Air Officer pilots and personnel of the Flying Course indicate the existence of abnormal luminous phenomenon."
In addition to receiving good cooperation from the Embassy, NICAP is indebted to Mr. Thomas Williams, Fundacion Williams, Buenos Aires; Mr. Christian Vogt, Secretary of the "Comision Observadora de Objetos Voladores No Identificados (CODOVNI)" and Ing. William Kalocai, Director of the "Centro Investigador de Fenomenos Espaciales (C.I.F.E.)," Bahia Blanca, [14] for details of many Argentine UFO cases.
At Ezeiza International Airport, Buenos Aires, December 22, 1962, a UFO was sighted about 3:00 a.m. Tower operators Horacio Alora and Mario Pezzutto were watching an Aerolineas Argentinas plane which was about to take off, and an approaching DC-8 jet operated by Panagra (a division of Pan American Airways).
One of the operators was radioing landing instructions when the jet Captain suddenly broke in:
"What's that thing at the end of the runway?"
An instant later, the same question came from one of the Argentine airliner pilots. Operator Alora turned and saw a large round object, glowing with an intense fiery light, at the head of runway 1-0-2-8. It had evidently descended while he and Pezzutto were watching the two airliners.
Because of the UFOs' brilliant glow, Alora could not tell whether it had actually touched down or was hovering just above the runway. At the moment he turned, the UFO rose about ten meters, hovering briefly. Then, rapidly accelerating, it took off on a northeast course. Before it disappeared, it was also seen by Operator Pezzutto.
During the 1962 sightings around Buenos Aires, as well as in remote areas of the country, key cases were reported freely on television. Argentina's treatment of the UFO question provides an interesting contrast with the secretive policy of the U. S. Government.
Brazil: UFO activity has been virtually constant in Brazil during the past 10-15 years. The number and quality of sightings has been at least equal to that of the U.S., and since 1952 sightings have been reported much more openly than in this country.
In 1958, the majority of experienced UFO investigators, many of whom had published bulletins or headed small UFO groups, formed the "Comissao Brasileira de Pesquisa Confidencial Sobre Objetos Aereos Nao Identificados (CBPCOANI)," a top level commission to promote scientific investigation of UFOs on an international basis. Members of the Commission include Dr. J. Escobar Faria (Attorney and author), a NICAP Adviser; Dr. Olavo Fontes, (M.D.), adviser to the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), Tucson, Arizona; Prof. Flavio Pereira President (also President of the Scientific Council, Brazilian Interplanetary Society); Cmdr. A.B. Simoes (airline official and writer).
Significantly, the Commission includes representatives of the Brazilian armed services. As in Argentina, UFOs are considered an important problem justifying the formation of civilian-military agencies for continuous investigation.
Virtually every large coastal city, military base, and airport of Brazil has been visited by UFOs, and witnesses have included high-ranking officers, public officials and scientists.
A formation of "circular silver-colored" objects, apparently "mechanical" devices, were observed by FAB (Brazilian Air Force) officers and men, as well as airline personnel and civilians, as they sped over Porto Alegre AFB, October 24, 1954. [15]
(SAUCER)
PORTOALEGRE BRA2IL.--THE AIR FORCE BASE HERE REPORTED THAT "CIRCULAR, SILVER-COLORED OBJECTS MOVING AT TREMENDOUS SPEEDS HAD BEEN SIGHTED OVER THE BASE LAST SUNDAY.
A STATEMENT DISTRIBUTED BY THE BASE COMMAND SAID THE PHENOMENON WAS REPORTED IMMEDIATELY TO THE AIR MINISTRY IN RIO DE JANEIRO WITH A REQUEST FOR INVESTIGATION.
THE STATEMENT SAID THE BODIES WERE NOT CELESTIAL "BECAUSE THEIR MOVEMENTS APPEARED MECHANICAL AND INTERMITTENT." NO BALLOONS WERE ALOFT AT THE TIME THE BASE ADDED.
"'IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO CALCULATE THE ALTITUDE OR VELOCITY AT WHICH THE OBJECTS MOVED BUT THE SPEED WAS GREATER THAN ANY OF WHICH THE BASE HAS KNOWLEDGE, THEIR GENERAL SHAPE WAS CIRCULAR, SILVER-COLORED AND SHIMMERING."
THE STATEMENT SAID THE OBJECTS WERE OBSERVED BY OFFICERS AND ENLISTED MEN OF THE AIR BASE, BY PERSONNEL OF THE VARIG AIRLINE 'AND BY A NUMBER OF CIVILIANS IN THE CITY, BETWEEN 1 P.M. AND 6 P.M. SUNDAY.
10/27-- PA 306P
A startling incident on November 21, 1954, was reported on the front pages of newspapers in South and Central America, and in England, but apparently not in the U.S. A Brazilian airliner in flight near Rio de Janeiro, at night, encountered 19 glowing saucer-shaped objects. The UFOs flew at high speed within about 300 feet of the plane causing a panic among the passengers.
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The crew had to act forcibly to calm the passengers and continue the flight safely. [16]
Another extremely important incident, January 16, 1958, was only sketchily reported in a few U.S papers. Near Trindade Isle off the Brazilian east coast, the Almirante Saldanha, an IGY oceanographic vessel, saw and photographed a maneuvering disc-shaped UFO which made several passes over the area [See Section VIII; Photographs]. Marine photographer Almiro Barauna, officers and men on deck, sighted the UFO and Barauna obtained four good exposures of the object. The film was developed on board ship, the witnesses confirming that the Saturn-shaped images (disc with central flange) corresponded to what they had observed.
The impressive evidence created a stir in the Brazilian Congress. At first the Navy was cautious and secretive about the incident, but the President of Brazil, Mr. Juscelino Kubitschek, intervened at the request of a reporter and the photographs were published in the press. [17]
Both airline and military pilots in Brazil have often reported UFOs:
June 30, 1957. An airliner enroute from Belo Horizonte to Rio de Janeiro, at 6:30 p.m., encountered a glowing red-orange disc-like object. Capt. Saul Martins later told the press the UFO maneuvered all around the DC-3, pacing it, flying above and below it. One of the many passengers who also witnessed the object was a renowned Brazilian writer, Prof. Aires de Mata Machado Filho. [18]
July 4, 1957. A REAL Airlines plane enroute from Campos to Victoria, capital of Espirito Santo State, was paced by a circular UFO. The pilot, Cmdr. Delgado, said that when his plane and the UFO were passing through clouds, brightly lighted apertures like windows became visible on the object. When they left the clouds, these markings disappeared. The UFO had raised portions on top and bottom. [See Section IX; Patterns].
August 14, 1957. Near Joinville, at 8:55 p.m., a Varig Air lines C-47 enroute from Porto Alegre to Rio de Janeiro was approached by a luminous object. The pilot, Cmdr. Jorge Campos Araujo, said his co-pilot first noticed the UFO pacing the plane to the left. As they watched, the UFO suddenly sped ahead and crossed just in front of the plane.
Then it hovered briefly, and dove into the undercast at about 5,700 feet. (The plane was flying at 6,300 feet). At the moment when the strange object hovered briefly, the engines of the airliner began coughing and missing, and the cabin lights dimmed. When the UFO moved away, the aircraft electrical system returned to normal. [See Section VIII; Electro-Magnetic Effects].
Cmdr. Araujo described the UFO as "shaped like a saucer with a kind of cupola or dome on top of it. The whole cupola glowed with an intense green light. The flattened base glowed with a less intense yellowish luminosity." [19]
November 4, 1957. Capt. Jean Vincent de Beyssac, flying a Varig Airlines C-46 near Ararangua at 1:20 a.m., noticed a red light to the left. The plane was at 7,000 feet above a layer of stratus clouds. Both Capt. de Beyssac and his co-pilot watched curiously as the light increased in size. When the pilot decided to investigate and started to press his rudder, the UFO suddenly leaped through an arc of about 45 degrees and appeared much larger in size. Capt.
de Beyssac went into an 80 degree left turn for a closer look. About midway of the turn, the object began glowing more brilliantly and the pilot smelled smoke in the cabin. While the crew hastily looked for fire, the UFO vanished. It was then discovered that the ADF (direction finder), right generator and transmitter-receiver had burned out simultaneously. [20]
May 27, 1958. Near the Bahia State coast, a Varig airliner piloted by Cmdr. Bittar, was approached by a brightly luminous UFO with ball-like projections on the underside. The object maneuvered under the plane, hovered, then dove toward the sea. [21]
July 14, 1959. A Brazilian Air Force pilot checked on a hovering light observed from the control tower at Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais State at the request of the tower operator. After landing, the pilot reported that the unidentified light had followed him for about an hour while he was enroute from Pico do Couto. The control tower operator then fired some flares in the direction of the UFO, and it changed color from white to amber to intense green. Then it turned white again, and darted upwards, disappearing in the darkness. [22]
July 24, 1961. At night in the vicinity of llha Grande, Cmdr. Jose Guilherme Saez, pilot of a VASP Airlines "Scandia" flying at 7,000 feet, saw a luminous object which he first believed was a meteor. "I radioed the Santa Cruz Air Force Base and Sao Paulo airport," Cmdr. Saez stated. "Suddenly the object changed direction, from the left to our right. Then I saw it quite near our Scandia." The object remained visible several minutes. During this time, Cmdr. Saez said, "The UFO did not describe curves, but made angular turns. It moved up and down, back and forth, in all directions." [23] (cf., sighting by Capt. Hull, Capital Airlines, November 14,1956; Section I).
At times, Brazil has been one of the least secretive governments in regard to release of UFO information. High officials have often openly admitted their serious concern with UFOs.
As in the case of several countries, there is evidence that the Embassies in Washington, either yielding to the wishes of the U.S. Government or for political reasons of their own, sometimes debunk the subject in spite of serious official concern of their governments at home. In 1959, Maj. Gen. Antonio Barcellos, Air Attaché of the Brazilian Embassy, wrote a NICAP member:
"The Brazilian Government does not accredit or acknowledge any reports of unidentified flying objects... it considers the question of UFO to be in the same category as that of Santa Claus. Therefore, if anyone in Brazil has ever cited what they consider to be a UFO, they would probably not report to any official agency, but if they did try to make such a report, they would find that it would not be accepted." [24]
Other South American Countries
The history of UFO reports in the other South American countries is very similar to that of Argentina and Brazil.
In Valparaiso, Chile, October 28, 1959, Juan Fruto (Director of a local Astronomical Association), C. Ventura (civil aviator), and others about 9:15 p.m. sighted a luminous orange concave disc performing evolutions in the sky. [25]
Cases of electro-magnetic effects [See Section VIII] have been noted in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru and Venezuela. On January 30, 1958, a lawyer and his wife, near Lima, Peru, saw a circular UFO hovering an estimated 500 meters above the highway. As their automobile passed beneath the object, the car lights went out. Truck drivers and others on the same highway also witnessed the UFO. Passengers on a bus felt an electric shock, and the bus motor failed as the UFO was seen. [26]
A NICAP Subcommittee (investigative unit) is operative in Santiago, Chile, headed by Prof. Juan E. Gatica Salinas, astrophysicist. Other members of the unit are professors of mathematics and physics, and students. The Subcommittee is divided into three groups which make scheduled observations of the sky from different observatories, increasing the chances of obtaining triangulations of a UFO.
In Montevideo, Uruguay, Milton W. Hourcade is one of the directors of the "Centro de Investigacion de Objetos Voladores Inidentificados (C.I.O.V.I.)." The group has investigated and compiled reports in Uruguay for many years, periodically exchanging data with NICAP.
One of the cases investigated by C.I.O.V.I. occurred May 5, 1958, near San Carlos. About 3:40 p.m., Carlos A. Rodriguez, an experienced and reputable pilot, was flying his piper aircraft in the vicinity of Capitan Curbelo Naval Air Base when he noticed a brilliant glowing object approaching his plane. The UFO stopped an estimated 2000 meters away and, according to the report, "it rocked twice in a balancing motion." [ef., Oct. 2,1961, Salt Lake City, Utah, pilot sighting; Section I].
The object was shaped like a child's top, symmetrical above and below. As he closed to about 700 meters, Rodriguez felt intense heat in the cockpit and was forced to open the windows and door of the plane and remove his jacket. The UFO then took off, accelerating rapidly eastward toward the sea, leaving a thin vapor trail. [27]
Venezuela has been the scene of so much UFO activity that as of 1963, according to a NICAP member who visited Caracas, the sight of huge glowing objects lighting up mountain tops around the city was no longer considered noteworthy. Active in UFO investigation around Caracas are Dr. Askold Ladonko (NICAP Adviser) and Horacio Gonzalez Ganteaume (NICAP member). In December 1962 over an unexplored jungle area near famous Angel Falls, a UFO was photographed on 8 mm movie film by
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Mr. Ah Diaz. Diaz was aboard a DC-3 plane carrying vacationists on a tour to view the beautiful scenery. Dr. Ladonko and Gonzalez Ganteaume notified NICAP, interviewed Diaz, and encouraged analysis of the film.
During June 1963 a Spanish speaking NICAP member from New York City, Mr. Jose A. Cecin, flew to Caracas and borrowed the original film. Analysis of it currently is being arranged by NICAP. [See Section VIII]. Viewed at the NICAP office by the staff and several members, the movie shows an eerie, brilliant yellow, tear-drop shaped light rising from the base of Auyantepuy Mountain, oscillating back and forth as it accelerates across the mountain, blue sky and clouds.
(During his visit to Caracas, Mr. Cecin was told of an incident in which a prominent citizen was driving through a rural area when he saw a large disc hovering over a field where several peasants were working. He excitedly called their attention to it. "We know about it," they replied casually. "It comes here every day. It doesn't bother anyone.")
Venezuela also has a history of sightings by airline pilots and other experienced observers. An orange light closed in on a Venezuelan airliner at 6:45 p.m., January 2, 1955, in the vicinity of Punta San Juan. When the UFO was at close range, a bright light from it shone into the cockpit of the plane intermittently. [28]
A month later, February 2, an Aeropost Airlines plane was bound for Merida from Maiquetia. At the controls was Capt. Dano Celis; co-pilot was B.J. Cortes. About 11:15 a.m., a round, glowing green "apparatus" approached the plane, rotating counter-clockwise. Around its center was a reddish ring which emitted flashes of brilliant light. Above and below the ring, markings like portholes were visible. Capt. Celis banked his plane toward the UFO. Instantly, the object whirled downward, leveled off, and sped away. During the sighting, Capt. Celis attempted to report the object by radio, but his communication was cut off. [29]
July 2, 1960, near Maiquetia, a Venezuelan Airlines Super-Constellation was arriving from Spain about 3:00 a.m. Flying at 10,000 feet about 20 degrees N, 68 degrees W (near Puerto Rico), the pilot and crew noticed a bright luminous object angling toward the plane at about their altitude. After paralleling the plane for several minutes, the object suddenly shot away at terrific speed. The pilot reported the sighting to the press upon landing. (30]
A Professor of Engineering, Central University, reported a UFO September 15, 1960. Prof. German Alvarez, in Carrizales, Miranda State, watched a luminous object sweep across the sky for about three minutes, after 7:30 p.m. The UFO accelerated in a curved course. Before disappearing behind mountains, it appeared as two objects. [31]
Formations of UFOs, about 16 objects in all, passing from east to west between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. were witnessed by many people in the Parque del Este, Caracas, February 11, 1962. One witness, Sr. Emiro Ayesta, ran to the Humboldt Planetarium in the park where Sr. Carlos Pineda of the Planetarium staff witnessed one of the UFOs. Sr. Pineda described it as "a body giving off a brilliant light, moving at great altitude as if towards the moon." [32]
link; http://www.nicap.org/ufoe/section_10.htm
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THE UFO EVIDENCE;FOREIGN REPORTS part 2;
B. EASTERN HEMISPHERE;
Scandinavia;
The earliest well-publicized UFO reports from Scandinavia were the so-called "ghost rockets" observed in Sweden during the summer and fall of 1946. Military authorities adopted secrecy reminiscent of wartime in dealing with reports of the objects, banning publication of the location of sightings, and requiring newspapers to use the dateline "somewhere in Sweden." [33]
Mysterious fireballs and cigar-shaped UFOs were observed all summer. [34] Finally, in October the defense ministry announced that it had been unable to discover the origin or nature of the "ghost rockets." Of 1000 reports studied, about 80% were attributed to "celestial phenomena." But, the report continued, radar detected some "which cannot be the phenomena of nature or products of imagination, nor be referred to as Swedish planes..." [35]
In May 1954, Mutual news commentator Frank Edwards (now a NICAP Board Member) reported an item from Stockholm:
"Swedish military authorities sent special crews into north Sweden where scores of residents have reported strange glowing objects maneuvering over forests at low altitude during the week of May 10... Military men who have seen the things say they were not planes of any type."
After the crew of a Swedish airliner reported a wingless circular UFO over southern Sweden December 17, 1953, the defense department ordered a full scale investigation. Capt. Ulf Christiernsson, former RAF pilot, said: "It was an entirely unorthodox, metallic, symmetrical and circular object." The UFO was seen speeding over the town of Haessleholm in the main commercial air lane between Stockholm and Copenhagen. [36].
In 1961 Mr. Sven Schalin, aeronautical engineer in Linkoping, became NICAP Adviser for Sweden. In his acceptance letter, Mr. Schalin stated: "UFOs very definitely have been sighted also in this country. A 'flap' seemed to occur around January 1959, the whole period starting perhaps in July 1958 and ending about June 1959. Obviously the Swedish Intelligence Center in Stockholm knows what is going on but the usual debunking policy is strictly followed."
During Operation Mainbrace, extensive naval maneuvers in the North Sea on and about September 20, 1952, UFOs were sighted in the vicinity on several occasions. [See Section XII; Operation Mainbrace Chronology] On the 20th, a silvery disc of metallic appearance was observed passing swiftly over the Allied fleet. Wallace Litwin, an American newsman onboard the aircraft carrier "Franklin Roosevelt," took three color photographs of the UFO. As far as is known, the pictures have never been published and no explanation of the incident was offered.
Norway, Finland and Denmark also have had their share of UFO sightings. During an aerial expedition to take photographs of a solar eclipse, June 30, 1954, Norwegian scientists and others on board three planes observed and photographed two "enormous" silvery discs which gave a metallic glint. [Section I]
In 1958, replying to a NICAP query, the Norwegian Embassy stated: "Our Air Force's UFO material is mainly of security graded nature and cannot be put to the disposal of NICAP." [37]
During the winter of 1958, observers on the Finnish-Soviet border reported circular and cigar-shaped luminous objects maneuvering over Soviet territory near the Arctic Circle. Brilliantly glowing spherical "missiles," some of which moved vertically up and down, also were reported. [38]
While "Operation Mainbrace" was in full swing nearby in the North Sea during September 1952, a shining apparently metallic disc was seen on the 20th by three Danish Air Force officers. About 7:30 p.m., the UFO sped over Karup Airfield, Denmark, disappearing in clouds to the east.
On November 20, 1957, during the rash of UFO sightings in the Western hemisphere [see Section XI] Air Force officers and many civilians near Bernholm, Denmark, saw a UFO flashing red and green lights as it swooped low above the water and over the island. At times the object hovered motionless. No sound could be heard. The Danish newspaper "Famflie-blad" reported the sightings.
September 11, 1956: Allied intelligence experts were reported to be investigating radar sightings of "mysterious objects" which had been tracked for three weeks over the Baltic Sea by a NATO radar station on Bernholm Island, Denmark. The UFOs followed a curved course traveling about 2000-2500 m.p.h. [See Section VIII; Radar]
England
The policy of the British Air Ministry has been identical to that of the U.S. Although claiming their investigations have proved that almost all UFO sightings have mundane explanations, the Air Ministry firmly refuses to release the case histories. When NICAP requested information about specific cases in 1957, the Air Ministry replied: "We regret that we are unable to release any information on the radar sighting at West Freugh in Scotland on 4th April ... We cannot release any information on the B.O.A.C. or the Flt. Lt. Salandin sightings. Air Ministry policy has not changed since those sightings were made." [39]
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In a 1963 letter to a NICAP member, the Air Ministry stated: "Because of our defense responsibilities we investigate reports of UFOs as they come in whenever there is sufficient information for this to be done. I am afraid, however, that we cannot undertake to provide details of any particular reports which have been received." [40]
Unofficially, a totally different picture of British opinion is available. Dozens of very active UFO organizations exist in England, many publishing bulletins. The largest and most professional magazine is the "Flying Saucer Review," published in London. The groups exist because of a long history of good UFO sightings in the British Isles, many involving trained observers.
The Royal Air Force, one of the most highly respected air forces in the world, has contributed a number of sightings. One of the most prominent proponents of UFOs in England is Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding, head of the RAF fighter command during the Battle of Britain. In a by-line article for the London Sunday Dispatch (July 11, 1954), Lord Dowding stated: "I am convinced that these objects do exist and that they are not manufactured by any nation on earth. I can therefore see no alternative to accepting the theory that they come from some extra- terrestrial source."
"RAF Flying Review," unofficial but authoritative and highly regarded aviation publication in London, has treated the UFO subject seriously and urged a more thorough investigation.
The fact that UFOs were being taken seriously in England was first widely known in 1957. The London Reynolds News reported June 16:
"In room 801 of what was once the Hotel Metropole, Britain's Air Ministry is investigating Flying Saucers - - and that's official... At airfields all over Britain, fighter planes are kept ready to intercept, and if necessary engage, any unidentified flying object within combat range... [the room's] existence was admitted last night by an Air Ministry spokesman. He disclosed that it has been investigating Flying Saucer reports since 1947. 'We have something like 10,000 on our files,' he said."
A few of the reports which have concerned British authorities: Topcliffe, September 20, 1952 (Reuters) -- "A flying saucer entered the eight-nation Baltic area maneuvers "Operation Mainbrace" here today.
The RAF base here reported to maneuver headquarters that an unidentifiable silver circular object had been sighted 15,000 feet above the airfield. The object, which appeared five miles behind a Meteor jet fighter [piloted by Lt. John W Kilburn], maintained a slow forward speed before descending in a swinging pendulum motion. Then it began a rotary motion about its own axis and accelerated at an incredible speed in a westerly direction but later turned southeast. It was seen by RAF officers and men on the airfield."
Another AAF pilot encountered a UFO October 4, 1954. Flight Lt. J.R. Salandin of the 604th Fighter Squadron, flying a Meteor jet but of North Weald, Essex, nearly collided head-on with a huge, metallic appearing object; The UFO was shaped like two saucers pressed together, one inverted on top of the other. At the last second, it flipped to one side and streaked past at tremendous speed. Two round UFOs had been sighted speeding between two other Meteor jets in the vicinity just be fore Lt. Salandin's sighting. [41}
An object described as a "bright yellow light varying in intensity some 200 feet from the ground" was reported hovering over London Airport February 26, 1959. (Some accounts called it a "yellow disc.") Control tower operators and other airport personnel saw the object, studying it through binoculars. The official report to the Air Ministry concluded, the object "then climbed away at high speed."
(On March 6, conflicting theories were advanced by Air Ministry and Airport officials. Some believed the UFO was the planet Venus distorted by clouds; others that it was the "nose cone light" of a civilian aircraft).
An Aer Lingus (Irish International Airlines) pilot reported a globe-shaped unidentified object which flew beneath his Viscount May 21, 1962, above southern England. While flying from Cork to Brussels at about 17,000 feet, Capt. Gordon Pendleton and First Officer J.P. Murphy saw the UFO approaching head-on.
They estimated the rate of closure at about 1200 m.p.h. The UFO sped past about 3,000 feet below the airliner at close to 700 m.p.h. "I could see it quite clearly," Capt. Pendleton said. "It definitely had no wings. It was brown, appeared to be round and had a number of projections, looking rather like some kind of radio antennae, on its surface. I have never seen anything like it before." [42]
The European Continent;
On the Continent, UFOs have been sighted in virtually every country. In Switzerland businessman J.H. Ragaz, publisher of "Weltraumbote," has supported NICAP's investigation as well as publicizing European UFO activity. Many sightings of typical UFOs have taken place in Switzerland.
Other small countries, such as Austria, also have experienced UFO activity:
May 15, 1954, Vienna (Reuters) -- Three discs in wedge formation reported by five persons.
December 19, 1954, Vienna (INS) - - Several witnesses re ported UFOs moving at great speed above the capital. "Austrian authorities are reportedly taking these observations seriously. Police received orders to report any strange flying objects."
The "Nederlandse Studiekring Voor Ufologie" has been active for several years in Amsterdam, Holland. Mr. A.F. van Wieringen, a member of its board, is also a NICAP member and correspondent. A recent report investigated by his group involved a Royal Dutch Air Force pilot who chased a UFO January 29, 1962, over eastern Holland.
After sighting the object and seeing it on the radar set of the F-86, the pilot radioed his base. He was informed that the UFO was also being tracked by ground radar. Following instructions, he tried to make radio contact with the unidentified object, but there was no response. Arm ing his "Sidewinder" rocket, the pilot tried to close in, but the UFO swiftly pulled away before he could fire, and disappeared within seconds.
On the night of August 6-7, 1952, Will Jansen, a marine engineer and designer, was visiting in Kerkrade, Holland. Just after midnight a disc-shaped craft with visible superstructure swooped down to low altitude, hovered, zigzagged and sped away. A second disc-shaped UFO, similar in outline, was then seen hovering farther away. Finally it tilted up vertically and shot up out of sight. [43]
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Numerous UFO sightings in France have been thoroughly investigated and documented by Aime Michel, mathematician and engineer. (Author of "The Truth About Flying Saucers," Criterion Books, N.Y., 1956; and "Flying Saucers and the Straight Line Mystery," Criterion, 1958). Since 1958, M. Michel has joined forces with Rene Hardy, engineer at Drivomatic Laboratories in Paris, and other scientists to form a scientific commission to study UFO reports. Both Michel and Hardy also serve as NICAP Advisers.
On June 13, 1952, a very prominent bright orange-red light hovered in the sky, visible from Le Bourget airport. About 1:00 a.m., after hovering for an hour, the UFO began moving and crossed the sky southwest of the field, accelerating rapidly. Witnesses included M. Navarri, pilot of an approaching plane; M. Veillot and M. Damiens, control tower operators. [44]
At a military meteorological station in Villacoublay, August 29, 1952, a UFO was tracked by theodolite and the observation carefully logged. The object alternately hovered, and moved erratically. [45]
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New Yorker magazine, in a "Letter From Paris" column, October 23, 1954 recounts many UFO sightings during the summer and fall of that year. Witnesses included the Mayor of Briancon, gendarmes, sailors, taxi-drivers and other citizens. The European "flap" of fall 1954 is one of the most intense concentrations of UFO activity on record. [See Aime Michel's books, cited above, for details]
At Orly Field, Paris, February 17,1956, a UFO was tracked on radar and seen by an Air France pilot. "They [radarmen at Orly] said the object showed up on radar screens at an estimated speed of about 1700 mph., then hovered at various points over the capital." [46]
Also in Paris, September 26, 1957, an American Embassy officer and his wife watched a reddish-orange elliptical UFO for twenty minutes around 7:00 p.m. The sighting was later reported to NICAP in confidence. [47]
Germany: In 1963, Major Artur W Heyer, air attache at the German Embassy, answered a NICAP member's query: "I have been informed that no information with regard to your questions is available and that there is no official West German Government policy or agency concerning unidentified flying objects (UFOs)." "However," he concluded: "I am sorry to give you this reply and I think your request deals with a matter which has not yet been exploited sufficiently." [48]
Over Furston-Feldbruck November 23, 1948, a bright red UFO was seen by a USAF pilot and tracked by ground and air radar. The UFO was clocked at 900 mph., and climbed 23,000 feet in a matter of minutes, far exceeding the performance of any known aircraft. [See Section VIII; Radar]
London Daily Mail, July 5, 1954: "Berlin is seeing saucers regularly. Allied officials there are investigating the appearance of mysterious objects over the city. German eyewitnesses claim that a formation of three fast-moving objects can regularly be seen whenever the sky over Berlin is clear. The objects, de scribed as "small and disclike," are said to appear between 10 and 11 p.m., at extremely high altitudes."
In recent years, German NICAP members have contributed UFO information to NICAP regularly. Martin Bruckmann, engineering student, at about midnight November 19, 1956 observed seven bright, blue-white elliptical objects in V-formation moving rapidly east to west over Frankfurt. [49J
In Kirchberg, Hunsruck, at 3:30 p.m., May 25, 1958, Gunter Henn (Master of Business Administration) with another person watched a glistening silver object, circular with spoke-like markings. The UFO descended on a slant, them moved horizontally into clouds. [50]
The NICAP Adviser for West Germany, at Wolfsburg, is Dr. Helmut H. Damni, a German-born American citizen currently employed in Germany as a management consultant in engineer ing. He holds the degree of Doctor of Mechanical Engineering. During World War II he served as a systems and field instructor, and design engineer, in the Rocket Division of the German Army.
Dr. Damm took a survey of UFO interest in West Germany during 1962. Results:
* Air Force headquarters at Bonn stated they had no personnel or funds to devote to UFO investigation.
* The German Research Institute for Aeronautics also stated they were doing no work on UFOs, but appeared interested and open-minded in discussing the subject.
* The daily newspaper "Bild" stated it was greatly interested in obtaining more facts and new evidential reports for publication.
* On the whole, Dr. Damm found individuals and agencies poorly informed on the subject.
At least two eminent German scientists who have been employed in the U.S since World War II are outspoken believers that UFOs are space ships from another planet. Prof. Hermann Oberth in 1954 began an American Weekly article (October 24) in these words: "It is my thesis that flying saucers are real and that they are space ships from another planet." Upon his return to Germany in November 1958, after being employed by the U.S. at Huntsville, Alabama, Prof. Oberth repeated his belief that "very intelligent beings" have been observing the earth for a long time. [51]
Dr. Walter Riedel, former chief designer and research director of Peenemunde rocket center in Germany, directed the Civilian Saucer Investigation of Los Angeles. CSI was the first prominent UFO investigation group in the U.S., publicized by Life and Time early in 1952. Dr. Riedel stated; "I'm convinced saucers have an out-of-world basis." (Another prominent member of CSI was philosopher Gerald Heard, author of Is Another World Watching? Harpers, 1950).
Reports in southern Europe and over the Mediterranean Sea have been as frequent as in any other area of the world. (For example, see New York Times, March 30, 1950, ''More Flying Saucers in Mediterranean, Orient.") The sightings which received the most attention in the press and were best documented, however, were those during the fall 1954 European "flap".
Around 7:00 p.m., September 17, 1954, a large circular object, (shaped like a truncated cone) trailing smoke and making a series of explosive sounds, was observed along a 15-mile stretch above the Mediterranean coast west of Rome. International News Service (INS) reported that an Italian Air Force radar station at Practica Dimare, 40 miles southwest of Rome, tracked the UFO for 39 minutes at an altitude of 3600 feet. The UFO flew slowly at first, then accelerated rapidly and disappeared straight up at great speed.
Mrs. Clare Booth Luce, then U.S. Ambassador to Italy, was among dozens of witnesses to a UFO phenomenon over Rome, October 28, 1954. A luminous round object sped across the sky, followed by a fall of fine cotton-like particles from the sky. Mrs. Luce said: "I saw something, but I don't know what it was." An Associated Press reporter, Maurizio Andreolo, described the UFO as being "like a moon dashing across the sky at fantastic speed... silently." {52]
Several UFOs, some described as spear-shaped and some egg-shaped, sped over Belgrade, Yugoslavia shortly after 6:15 am., October 25, 1954. (The same or similar objects were also seen in Austria and Italy that day.) Witnesses included Vladimir Aivas, aeronautical engineer; Stjepan Djitkol, Air Force Captain; and members of the staff at Zemun Airport.
United Press reported from Belgrade, October 27: "Authorities announced today they were making a 'serious investigation' of the flight over Yugoslavia Monday of objects which looked and acted like nothing described in the standard aviation reference books. . . . The reports under investigation were that shiny 'ellipsoidal' objects zipped through the Yugoslav skies trailing bluish tails for about an hour after sunrise Monday. Scientists in astronomical observatories who witnessed the flights concluded that the objects could not have been meteors, and probably were not any form of 'heavenly body'..."
Barcelona, Spain, November 12, 1958 (AP): "A group of scientists here has founded the interplanetary studies center to investigate 'unexplained phenomena in space and unidentified objects in the skies' . . ." The President of the "Centro do Estudios Interplanetarios," Mr. Eduardo Buelta, established contact with NICAP late in 1956 offering collaboration and setting up an exchange of information.
Palma Observatory on the Spanish Island of Majorca (or Mallorca), in the Balearic Islands (off the east coast of Spain in the Mediterranean Sea) sighted a UFO at 9:33 a.m., May 22, 1960. The report, cabled to NASA in Washington, described a white triangular object about 1/4 the size of the moon spinning on its own axis as it flew on a steady course. NICAP efforts to obtain more information from the Observatory went unanswered.
Africa
The vast African continent has been visited repeatedly by unidentified flying objects showing characteristics similar to those seen all over the world. One of the earliest and most spectacular reports on record concerns the sighting of a huge cigar-shaped UFO which hovered over famous Mt. Kilimanjaro February 19,1951. The UFO was photographed from an Host African Air ways plane flying in the vicinity. After remaining motionless for a considerable period of time, the object suddenly climbed steeply and disappeared. The movie film was developed and reportedly showed a clear and sizeable image of the object, according to the Natal Mercury.
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The sighting was detailed in the Nairobi Sunday Post, February 25, 1951, by Capt. Jack Bicknell, pilot of the East African Airways plane. Extracts from Capt. Bicknell's report: "The Lodestar plane left Nairobi West at 7:00 a.m. At 7:20 a.m., the radio officer (D. W. Merrifield) drew my attention to a bright object like a white star hanging motionless about 10,000 feet above Kilimanjaro. My first reaction was to say nothing. We watched it for three minutes. Then we told the passengers about it. One of them had a very powerful pair of binoculars with him and he began to study it. In the meantime, we put a radio message through to Eastleigh describing it. Eastleigh asked us to check whether it was a meteorological balloon. I then examined it for several minutes through the binoculars. . . [At this point the plane had approached to within about 50 miles of the mountain]...
"Through the glasses I saw a metallic, bullet shaped object which must have been over 200 feet long. At one end was a square- cut vertical fin. Its color was a dull silver, and at regular intervals along the fuselage were vertical dark bands. Its whole outline was clear and sharp and there was no haziness about it at all. . . It was absolutely stationary, and remained that way for 17 minutes. . . [Capt. Bicknell states that two passengers were taking photographs at this time]
"Then it began to move eastwards, rising as it did so. It disappeared at about 40,000 feet. . . The machine left no vapor trail, and it had no visible means of propulsion. . . My impression was that it was definitely a flying machine of some kind."
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New Yorker magazine, October 23, 1954 reported a UFO sighting by the Administrator of Danane, French West Africa on September 19th of that year. He, his wife, a doctor, and others saw an object described as an "oval flying machine" with a dome, and lights like searchlights.
In populous South Africa, scientists, aviation personnel, police and many others have reported UFO sightings. At the Upington Meteorological Station, Cape Province, December 7, 1954 the Officer-in-Charge, Mr. R. H. Kleyweg, tracked a white semi-circular UFO through a theodolite for about a minute. Then the object began moving too fast to track. "I have followed thousands of Meteorological balloons," Mr. Kleyweg said. "This object was no balloon." [53.]
During the North and South American "flap" in November 1957 [See Section X~, hundreds of people in the Southern Transvaal area witnessed an "enormous" cylindrical UFO. On the night of November 5, the object was observed hovering in the sky. South African Air Force searchlights in Dunnotar pin pointed the UFO, which then "withdrew" behind clouds, according to witnesses. [54.]
At Johannesburg, April 11, 1958, H. F. Daniels (airport instrument inspector) and others watched a reddish-white UFO above the north horizon at night, moving back and forth east and west. "I have worked with aircraft for 18 years," Mr. Daniels said, "and the thing I saw was certainly no conventional plane. The speed was phenomenal and it sometimes became completely stationary, changing color from white to blood red." [55.]
Many other African UFO sightings, some from French air bases and scientific stations, are recorded by Aime Michel.
Far East;
Because of language difficulties, NICAP has not been able to compile as many reports from the Far East (except in the Australia-New Zealand area), but it is known that UFOs are often seen and that UFO groups exist in most countries. A query to the Nationalist Chinese Government, referred to the Taiwan Weather Bureau, brought the following reply in 1903:
"The Mission for the observation on unidentified flying objects should be assigned to a Military Agency such as National Civil Defense Organization in order to meet the emergencies. The Government will inform the public on the sightings of UFOs when the situation is necessary. . . At present no conclusion on the observation of UFOs has been reached or an official report. . announced to the public." [56.]
An unclassified Air Force intelligence report in NICAP possession describes a U.S. Air Force sighting of a "large round object" somewhere in the Far East in December 1950. A jet pilot experienced radar jamming as he closed on the UFO, and saw it flash away easily outdistancing his jet. [Section 1.]
On September 15, 1954, in Manbhum, Bihar, India Mr. Ijapada Chatterjee (manager of a mica mine) and hundreds of others watched a saucer-shaped object descend to an altitude of about 500 feet. The UFO hovered, then soared upwards at terrific speed causing a tremendous gust of wind. The object was seen over a mine which has supplied beryllium for the U.S Atomic Energy Commission. [57.]
A book entitled "The Mystery of the Flying Saucers Revealed," published in Indonesia in 1961, contains a foreword by the Air Force Chief of Staff, Air Chief Marshal S Suryadarma, which discloses that UFOs have often been reported by Indonesian Air Force personnel. The author is Col. J. Salatun, Secretary of the Indonesian Joint Chiefs of Staff and member of the Supreme People's Congress. NICAP checked with the Indonesian Embassy and verified the positions of both men.
In Japan and Korea, notably during the Korean War, UFOs have often been sighted by U.S. Air Force and other military personnel.
October 15, 1948: The crew of an F-61 night fighter over Japan tracked on radar and saw the silhouette of a UFO shaped "like a rifle bullet" (cf., Mt. Kilimanjaro sighting, above) which repeatedly accelerated out of reach of the fighter. [Section VIII; Radar.]
January 29, 1952: Bright, rotating, disc-shaped UFOs seen by B-29 crews near Wonsan and Sunchon, Korea. [58.]
March 29, 1952: Small shiny disc maneuvered around USAF F-86 in flight north of Misawa, Japan. [Section 1.]
August 5, 1952: Dark circular UFO with bright body light hovered near control tower at Oneida AFB, Japan, sped away, dividing into three sections. [Section VIII; Radar.]
October 13, 1952: Elliptical UFO hovering in clouds near Oshima, Japan, sighted by Major William D. beet, USAF, and his engineer; object sped away after 7 minutes. [Section III.]
December 12, 1962: Five school girls in Amagaski City, at 4:30 p.m., saw a brightly glowing UFO. Asked to draw in dependently what they had seen, all five sketched a Saturn-shaped disc. [59.]
link; http://www.nicap.org/ufoe/section_10.htm
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THE UFO EVIDENCE;FOREIGN REPORTS part 3;
AUSTRALIA --NEW ZEALAND;
Another hotspot of UFO activity has been the Australia-- New Zealand area. The great number of UFO sightings in this region (about the same southern latitudes as Brazil - Uruguay - Argentina) and the amount of public interest in them can only be suggested in this limited survey of foreign reports. [60.]
As in many other countries, UFOs are "officially" non existent. A 1963 letter to a NICAP member from A. B. McFarlane, Secretary, Department of Air, Commonwealth of Australia states: "From time to time reports of unidentified flying objects are received and investigated by the Royal Australian Air Force, but details of individual investigations have not been made public.". .
The letter goes on to quote a 1960 speech in Parliament by Minister for Air, Hon. F. M. Osborne: "Nearly all UFO reports] are explainable on a perfectly normal basis. . . only three or four per cent cannot be explained on the basis of some natural phenomenon, and nothing that has arisen from that three or four
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percent. . . gives any firm support for the belief that interlopers from other places in this world or outside it have been visiting us." [61.]
The New Zealand Embassy in 1963 said their government had never stated any policy on UFOs and that "a policy on this subject has never been warranted."
In mid-December 1954 a Royal Australian Navy pilot was flying back to Nowra air base after dark when "two strange air craft resembling flying saucers" took up formation with him. The pilot called Nowra air control, whose radar showed three objects flying together. The pilot identified himself by moving according to pattern. Upon landing, the pilot said the two UFOs were much faster than his Seafury fighter. [62.]
As a result of hundreds of similar UFO reports, there are a number of UFO groups in Australia. NICAP member Peter E. Norris, an attorney in Melbourne, heads the Victorian Flying Saucer Research Society, which publishes "Flying Saucer Re view" (not to be confused with a publication of the same name in London).
On October 16, 1957 Air Marshal Sir George Jones sighted a UFO resembling a balloon with a white light on the bottom, except that it sped past silently at an altitude of about 500 feet "Nothing can shake mc from my belief in what I saw," he said. Interviewed by Mr. Norris, he admitted he had no explanation for the sight ing. Sir George Jones is the former Commander-in-Chief of the RAAF.
During the November 1957 "flap" in the western hemisphere, Australia also was flooded with sightings. Mr. Norris reported that "during early November UFO reports came from all Australian states except Tasmania."
The most prominent UFO organization in New Zealand is Civilian Saucer Investigation headed by Harold H. Fulton, a Sergeant in the Royal New Zealand Air Force. Mr. Fulton is now a NICAP Adviser. C.S.I. publishes a bulletin named "Space Probe," however, it has recently been suspended while Mr. Fulton has been on a tour of active duty with the RNZAF. Over the years, Mr. Fulton has contributed dozens of good cases to NICAP and actively publicized serious UFO evidence in his country.
A National New Zealand Airlines plane was enroute to Auckland, N.Z., from Wellington on the night of October 31, 1955. At the controls was Capt. W. T. Rainbow. The co-pilot was S. G. Trounce. A bright object, changing color repeatedly, came from behind the plane on a parallel course, flew alongside, passed the plane and disappeared in the distance. Capt. Rainbow estimated the UFOs' speed at about 850 mph. The strange object, unlike any aircraft, pulsated in colors of red, yellow, orange, and blue.
One of the potentially most important pieces of evidence for UFOs is a secret motion picture film purporting to show a saucer-like UFO climbing steeply over Port Moresby, New Guinea. The film was taken August 31, 1953 by Mr. T. C. Drury, Deputy Regional Director of Civil Aviation. According to Reuters news agency, the film was sent to Air Technical Intelligence Center in Dayton, Ohio, for analysis. The USAF analysis report has never been released.
C. OCEAN & ANTARCTICA;
UFOs have been sighted at sea, in the islands of the major oceans, and in Antarctica. Reports from ships' officers are of unusual interest because they are experienced sky observers, familiar with the stars and planets and other astronomical and atmospheric phenomena.
A well-qualified scientific observer aboard an ice-breaker in Admiralty Bay, Antarctica, sighted a luminous object which divided into two parts while flying on a level course below an overcast. This phenomenon was observed by Rubens J. Villela, Brazilian meteorologist, March 16, 1961. [Section VI.]
Pacific Ocean;
Two objects "like small moons" were observed June 18, 1957 about 150 miles off San Francisco. Capt. C. 0. Wertz, Roy Melton, electrician, and other crew members of the freighter "Hawaiian Fisherman" at 8:00 p.m., watched the objects pacing the freighter. Then 15 minutes later a third UFO joined the first two, making a V, and followed the ship. [63.]
A missionary, and four natives in a separate location, in the Fiji Islands witnessed a circular white UFO which descended and hovered about 20 feet above the sea during the night of October 8, 1957. The UFO was revolving and gave off a blinding beam of light as the natives approached it in their boat. The natives reported seeing a man-like figure on top of the object. [64.]
Trans-Oceanic pilots have often sighted strange aerial phenomena, but are reluctant to talk about their experiences. Capt. Willis T. Sperry, American Airlines pilot whose plane was circled by an elliptical UFO May 29, 1950 [Section V.1 stated in 1951:
"I have talked to just as many pilots who have seen strange occurrences while flying and have not reported it, as have re ported the incident. The ones who did not report it feared adverse publicity. . . Several P.A.A. [Pan American Airways] pilots have seen unexplained objects far from land - one near Australia, several between the mainland of California and Hawaii, and two that I talked to out there [in the Far East] said they saw an object close enough so they could describe it in some detail. ."[65.]
The sighting of a formation of UFOs east of Hawaii by the crews of several aircraft July 11, 1959 was reported widely by Associated Press, United Press International and Hawaiian news papers. NICAP interviewed several of the civilian witnesses; the crews of Air Force planes were not available.
Capt. George Wilson, Pan American Airways, gave the following account: "While flying a Boeing Stratocruiser at 20,000 feet on a 224 degree heading [about 900 nautical miles northeast of Honolulu] a large and bright light appeared on the horizon at 11 o'clock position [58W].
The large bright light was flanked by 3 or 4 smaller lower magnitude lights in a line below, behind and to the left of the main vehicle. The lights passed from 11 o'clock to 10 o'clock position, the formation made an abrupt right turn and disappeared to the south."
The co-pilot, Richard Lorenzen, and Flight Engineer Bob Scott, also saw the UFOs. Lorenzen commented that "the rate of closure with us was much greater than any I had ever experienced before. It was not until the object turned that I was able to distinguish the smaller lights associated with it."
First Officer D. W. Frost, on another Pan American flight in the vicinity, reported essentially the same phenomenon. The UFOs were also observed by Air Force bomber crews, a Slick Airways plane, and a Canadian Pacific airliner. Capt. Lloyd Moffait, pilot of the Canadian airliner, told the press: "You can take it from me they were there. I never saw anything like it in my life and there are four of us who saw the same thing at the same time."
For about 10 minutes at 7:00 a.m. (Honolulu time), September 21, 1961, two airliners and a U.S. ship at sea observed a UFO simultaneously. The object passed overhead, apparently at extremely high altitude, angling southeasterly above the North Pacific. (See map.)
Reports from the Federal Aviation Agency, and the U.S. Navy Oceanographic Office publication "Notice to Mariners," establish the following facts.
At 1700 Greenwich Mean Time, the S.S. Iberville, north and east of Midway Island, noticed a white object about 20 degrees above the NW horizon. Its apparent angular size was about I degree (twice the apparent size of the full moon). For about 10 minutes, the UFO was observed passing over the ship headed southeast. As it neared the ship's meridian, it resembled a huge halo with a bright object in the center. The apparent size in creased to over four times the size of the full moon. [See Notice to Mariners report, reproduced below.]
At the same time, a British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) airliner about 800 miles northeast of the ship saw the object overtake the plane. From a steep angle above the plane, the UFO continued southeasterly and disappeared over the horizon. Capt. H. F. Griffin described the UFO as "like a large smoke ring about 2 degrees in diameter [about 4 times the size of the full moon]." He said the center of the ring was clear sky, and once a star was visible through it. A ray of light seemed to project downward from the object.
A Pan American Airways plane, about 400 miles southeast of Capt. Griffin's position, confirmed the report. The pilot re-
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ported a doughnut-shaped object moving easterly about l0 degrees above the horizon. [66.]
The Soviet Union announced a few days later that they had successfully test fired a multi-stage carrier rocket over the pacific (exact date not on record). However, the reported size of the UFO was far too large to be explained as a rocket payload.
NORTH PACIFIC;
Second Officer William C. Ash of the American 5.5. Iberville, Capt. M. 0. Vinson, Master, reported the following:
"At 1700 O.M.T. on September 21, 1961, while in let. 31~~O' N., long. 175'30' E., a few minutes before morning twilight, a white opaque mass about twice the size of a full moon appeared in the northwest at an elevation of about 20'. It continued to climb toward the zenith and at about an elevation of 40' the mass opened gradually to appear as a huge halo with a satellite in the center having very nearly the brightness of a first magnitude star.
By the time it reached the zenith it had more than doubled in size reaching its maximum at the zenith and then diminishing as it proceeded to the southeast. As it diminished it continued to decrease In size hut did not appear to shrink into a corona as it had appeared but rather faded out completely at an elevation of approximately 20'. The entire mass was in view for approximately 8 to 10 minutes."
Weather partly cloudy, wind NW force 2, slight sea and small NW swell temperatures: dry 74 degrees F., wet 67 degrees F., sea 79 degrees F.
(N.M. 43/61.)
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Atlantic Ocean;
About 150 miles south of Goose Bay, Labrador, above the North Atlantic, another BOAC pilot observed UFO activity June 30, 1954. Capt. James Howard described the sighting to the London Sunday Chronicle:
"I had taken off from Idlewild airfield New York at 5 o'clock... headed northeast across the St. Lawrence River. . . It was 9:05 p.m. Labrador time and we were about twenty minutes' flying time northeast of Seven Islands when I first sighted the thing."
The UFO first appeared as a "dark blob" in the distance, similar to a flak burst, with smaller objects around it. "As near as l can describe it," Capt. Howard said, "it was something like an inverted pear suspended in the sky." The object was to the port side of the Stratocruiser, in a westerly direction.
Capt. Howard pointed out the UFO to his co-pilot, Lee Boyd, and they noticed that it was moving on a course parallel to the plane. The smaller objects were stretched out in a line, in front of and behind the larger object.
Anticipating the questions that would come when he reported this, Capt. Howard counted the smaller objects several times. "Six. Always six. Sometimes there were three stretched out in front and three behind. Sometimes five stretched out in line ahead and only one behind."
To rule out a flight of normal aircraft, Capt. Howard radioed Goose Bay. A minute later they replied: "No other traffic in your area." When he described the UFOs, Goose Bay said they would send a fighter to investigate.
As the pilots continued to watch, the large UFO appeared to change shape. "It turned into what looked like a flying arrow - an enormous delta-winged plane turning in to close with us." The object appeared to grow larger, as if coming closer, but then changed shape again and seemed to hold its distance. Now it appeared more flattened and elongated, as the smaller objects continued to maneuver around.
The other members of the crew crowded forward to watch: George Allen, navigator; Doug Cox, radio officer; Dan Godfrey, engineer; and Bill Stewart, engineer. They all saw it, as did the stewardess Daphne Webster and many of the passengers.
The navigator lined the UFOs up with the window frame, and reported that they pulled ahead of the plane once, then dropped back. This reduced the possibility that the "objects" actually were some kind of illusion.
In a short time, the fighter pilot called in and said he was about 20 miles off at higher altitude. Capt. Howard confirmed that the UFOs were still pacing his plane. When the fighter pilot asked how they looked, Capt. Howard turned to look again. The small satellite objects had suddenly vanished. He asked the navigator what had happened. Allen replied: "It looked to me as though they went inside the big one."
At that moment, the remaining UFO began to diminish rapidly in size, apparently moving away at terrific speed. In a matter of seconds, the UFO diminished to a pinpoint, then disappeared. Eighteen minutes had elapsed since the first sighting.
Capt. Howard called it "the strangest eighty-mile journey of my life."
When they landed at Goose Day, the crew was interrogated by a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer.
"It was a solid thing," Capt. Howard concluded. "I'm sure of that. Maneuverable and controlled intelligently - a sort of base ship linked somehow with those smaller attendant satellites.
It must have been some weird form of space ship from another world."
NOTES;
Ottawa Journal;
Copy of statement on file at NICAP;
Report on file at NICAP;
Windsor Daily Star; December 13, 1957;
United Press International; April 13, 1959;
Letter on file at NICAP;
Letter on file at NICAP;
Statements by Wing Commander William M. Lee, Director of Public Relations, RCAF, on file at NICAP;
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner; February 16,1960. Anchorage Daily News; February 16, 1960. Anchorage Daily Times' February 15, 1960
Letter on file at NICAP;
Letter, signed by Lt. Col. Arnoldo C. Tesselhoff, Assistant Air Attache, on file at NICAP;
Stringfield, Leonard H., Inside Saucer Post. . .3-0 Blue. (Privately published: 4412 Grove Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1957), p.83 CRIFO Newsletter, June 1955, L. H. Stringfield, Ed.
Official report from Argentine Embassy, on file at NICAP
C.I.F.E. has twenty counselor members, among them Army, Navy and Naval Air Force officers on active duty. Collaborating members include directors of astronomical and astronautical centers.
15. Keyhoe, Donald E., Flying Saucer Conspiracy. (Henry Holt, 1955), p.212
Ibid., p. 26. London Dafly Sketch, November 22, 1954
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Diairo de Sao Paulo; February 22, 1958;
Diatro Popular; July 7, 1957
APRO Bulletin- September 1959. Brazilian newspapers; August 20, 1957
Pilot interviewed by Cmdr. A. B, Simoes, Sao Paulo, Brazil
0 Estado de Sao Paulo May 28,1958
Report officially logged at airport and relayed to Brazilian Air Force. Obtained for NICAP by J. Escobar Faria, Adviser in Sao Paulo
Report obtained by J. Escobar Faria, Sao Paulo
Letter on file at NICAP
El Mercuno; October 28, 1959
El Universal; January 31, 1958
Report on file at NICAP
APRO Bulletin; April 1955
Keyhoe, Donald E., op. cit., p.249
Ultimas Noticias; July 3, 1960
Report on file at NICAP
El Universal' February 13, 1962
New York Times; July 28, 1946
See New York Times; August 11, 1946; Associated Press; August 11, 1946; Stockholm Aftenbiadet; August 13, 1946
New York Times; October 11, 1946
United Press; December 18, 1953
Letter, signed by Col. 0. B. Engvik, Air Attache, on file at NICAP
Christian Science Monitor; January 29, 1959
Letter on file at NICAP
Letter on file at NICAP
RAF Flying Review; July 1957, London Illustrated News; December 2, 1954
Irish Times; May 22, 1962. Reuters News Agency; May 22, 1962
Letter to CSI of Los Angeles, on file at NICAP
Michel, Aime, The Truth About Flying Saucers. (Criterion, 1956), ppg. 165-166
Ibid., p. 169ff
Los Angeles Times; February 19, 1956
Report on file at NICAP, available to Congressional investigators
Letter on file at NICAP
Report on file at NICAP
Report on file at NICAP
United Press International; November 7, 1958
Associated Press; October 28, 1954
Natal Mercury (Durban); January 28, 1955
New Zealand Herald- Novembet 7,1957 (Datelined Johannesburg)
Johannesburg Sunday Times; April 13, 1956
Letter, signed by Kenneth T. C. Cheng, Director of Taiwan Weather Bureau, on file at NICAP
Information obtained by Rev. Albert H. Baller, NICAP Board Member, from Indian newspaper
Life; April 7, 1952. Newsweek; March 3, 1952
Report and sketches published in Japan International UFO Investigation, J. I. Takanashi, Editor; Toyonaka, Osaka, Japan. (8-9-2, Sakurazuka-Higashi)
For additional data on UFO sightings in Australia, New Guinea and New Zealand, see: Maney, Charles A. & Hall, Richard, Challenge of Unidentified Flying Objects (Willard Courts #504, Washington, D.C. 20009); Chapter 3, "Recent Sightings in the Pacific."
Letter on file at NICAP
Auckland Star; December 16, 1954 (N.Z.P.A., Reuters)
San Francisco newspapers; June 19, 1957
Manila Bulletin' November 6, 1957
Popular Science; August 1951
Reports on file at NICAP
127
link; http://www.nicap.org/ufoe/section_10.htm
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Debunking of The Condon UFO Report/New Findings;
The American governmental initiated UFO investigation group named "THE CONDON REPORT" was set up by the USAF to seriously investigate UFOs.The report on this investigation reveals that NICAP found serious flaws , deliberate exclusions and ignoring off high quality reports from creditable sources and witnesses including very important data on these particular sightings.
The text below sets out these very important flaws and shows that the USAF set out from day one with a investigation that was based on a agenda of deliberate debunking and ridiculing of the UFO reality;
In case anyone new to this subject is curious enough here is a bit on this CONDON REPORT ORGANISATION:
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The U.F.O. Investigator;
FACTS ABOUT UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS;
Published by the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena
Vol. IV, No. 9 (This Replaces Nov-Dec 68 Issue) SPECIAL January 1969
For an uncolored Black/White Version of this issue, please click here
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE CONDON REPORT (page 1);
The conclusions of the Colorado University UFO project are fully negative, as we predicted.
However, some of the chapters contain strange contradictions of what the project's director, Dr. Edward U. Condon, stated in his two opening sections. Several reports state the probable existence of structured, intelligently controlled, unknown objects capable of precise maneuvers and extremely high speeds.
In one case (No. 46, Bantam, 396-407), a scientific evaluation of photographs was carried out along with detailed interviews with the witnesses. After an 11-page evaluation in the Bantam edition (entitled Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects. . .), the analyst states "the simplest, most direct interpretation of the photographs confirms precisely what the witnesses said they saw." "This is one of the few UFO reports in which all factors investigated, geometric, psychological, and physical appear to be consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic, disk-shaped, tens of meters in diameter, and evidently artificial, flew within sight of two witnesses," the analyst concluded. (Bantam, 407).
Regarding this case, Dr. Condon stated, "The UFO images turned out to be too fuzzy to allow worthwhile photogrametric analysis."
A Mohawk Airlines pilot computed a UFO's speed between 4,500 and 4,800 mph. The project's analysis states that this sighting "must certainly be classed as an unknown pending further study, which it certainly deserves." (Bantam, 143)
Yet Dr. Condon's overall conclusion is that no further investigations of UFOs are justified.
A UFO paced an RAF fighter plane for 10 minutes while ground radar tracked it. The Colorado report said of this case that the "probability that at least one genuine UFO was involved appears to be fairly high." (Bantam, 248-256).
At least 20 percent of the less than 100 cases in the report are listed as unidentified.
Condon Did Not Investigate Cases
Dr. Condon, although he is named in the Air Force contract as the project's principal investigator, did not make a single field investigation. Nor did he interview even one of the hundreds of pilots, astronomers, aerospace engineers, control tower operators, and other highly competent witnesses sent to him by NICAP at Colorado's request.
Large volumes of case material was apparently completely ignored, (see pages two, three, & Five) including the deaths of three Air Force pilots involved in UFO chases and a UFO encounter with an Air Force transport captain who said he believed they were "shot at."
Dr. Condon stated that there should be no attack on the integrity of persons having different opinions on UFOs. Yet, he ridiculed UFO witnesses, well-informed scientists on the subject, and NICAP, (Bantam, Section I).
Witnesses Discredited
In regard to witnesses, he said, "Phenomena is often noted by a witness who is inexpert, inept, or unduly excited." The reports, he stated, are usually vague and inaccurate. He also said that witnesses often change their stories until they all agree. Even reports by some astronauts are indicated as dubious by the project director. In one case he says that the window was smudged and the astronauts were very busy, indicating that the report is not authentic. "When field studies are made by amateur organizations such as . . . NICAP," Condon continued, "there are often several members present on a team, but usually they are persons without technical training and often with a strong bias toward the sensational aspects of the subject."
Condon and Low Praise NICAP
On December 1, 1967, Dr. Condon wrote NICAP's Director urging that we continue cooperation with the project. "We deeply appreciate the cooperation which has been given to our own scientific study of UFOs," he wrote, "from both the central office and field groups of NICAP. It is my earnest wish that we can continue to work in full cooperation with NICAP because the help that you have given us so far has been of great importance . . ."
Further confirmation of NICAP's competence was indicated by Project Coordinator Robert Low on December 8. "NICAP's assistance has been invaluable," he stated. "I have said this to you many times and I would like to repeat it here. Your files, because of the high caliber of field investigations NICAP has conducted, are of very good quality. Our working relationship with the headquarters office and NICAP members in the field have been from our point of view excellent, and they have provided valuable support to our research effort. It would be a great pity if they were terminated."
Kook Cases Get Coverage
Dr. Condon takes up considerable space in the report discussing numerous hoaxes and "contactee" trips to Venus but did not include, in his sections, even one strong, responsible case from a good witness. He also accepts Dr. Donald Menzel's misconceptions and states that witnesses should be examined for defective vision (spots before the eyes).
From 1947 to 1966, Condon added, almost no attention was paid to the subject by well-qualified scientists. This is not true. In 1949, for instance, Project Grudge made use, however inadequately, of numerous government agencies, laboratories and private industries, including the Rand Corporation. Dr. Condon also ignored the fact the Air Force, for over 20 years, has had a chief UFO scientific consultant, Dr. J. Allen Hynek. There have been numerous other individual scientists, such as Dr. James E. McDonald, who have given the subject careful study.
Secrecy Denied
(U.F.O. Investigator page 2)
Dr. Condon denied in the report that there was any evidence of secrecy. NICAP gave him evidence of cases that were withheld, reports whose very existence was denied, and sightings whose conclusions were changed years later.
Two days after Colorado signed the contract with the Air Force, Dr. Condon was asked about possible Air Force secrecy. He replied that some people believed this, but that he personally didn't. "Maybe they are [misleading us] . . . ." he stated. "I don't care much." (Rocky Mountain News, November 5, 1966). Although the Congressional hearings of July 29, 1968, before the House Committee on Science and Astronautics was mentioned in the report (Bantam, 49), virtually all of the evidence presented by the highly qualified scientist participants was ignored.
NAS Report Inadequate
A strong statement by the highly prestigious, 32,000-member American Institute for Astronautics and Aeronautics (AIAA) calling for a full scientific study of UFOs was presented to Dr. Condon before it was published, but there is no indication that it was passed on to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for consideration.
The NAS report fully accepting the project's conclusions and recommendations was based solely upon Colorado's report itself. NAS scientists conducted no study and interviewed no witnesses. They also must have read the report quickly because there is no mention of the discrepancies between the report's "no evidence" conclusion and the unidentified cases listed. Dr. James E. McDonald stated that the Academy's acceptance of the report will prove "a serious source of future embarrassment" to NAS (see p. 7).
NICAP feels that the collective body of criticism to the report will, in the final analysis, discredit Colorado's conclusions and force the subject more into the open than it has ever been.
In addition to more than half a million dollars, Colorado is also receiving royalties from the hardcover and Bantam editions of the report.
WHAT HAPPENED TO KEY WITNESSES?
Among the omissions in the Condon report are the hundreds of detailed UFO sightings by reputable witnesses whose intelligence and credentials make examinations of their reports essential. Without an evaluation of these high-quality UFO cases any conclusions are meaningless.
Their exclusion from the official report cannot be because Dr. Condon did not know that this source material existed or could not obtain access to it. Not only NICAP, but independent researchers, such as Dr. James E. McDonald, made special efforts to be certain that the Colorado University scientists were aware of these cases.
The fact that the project did have these reports in its records is unequivocally established by examination of the project's computer print-out, listing case references with a coded number assigned each case. Obviously, the project had to select certain reports and omit others, but when one examines the 59 case histories the project reviewed in Section IV, Chapters 1-3, an important question emerges: why were certain low-priority, easily-explained sightings chosen for investigation and discussion rather than cases such as those listed below?
In Section II, Summary of the Study (6. Field Investigations), Condon offers a partial answer.
"We concluded that there was little to be gained from the study of old cases, except perhaps to get ideas on mistakes to be avoided in studies of new cases. We therefore decided not to make any field trips to investigate cases that were more than a year old, although in a few cases we did do some work on such cases when their study could be combined with a field investigation of a new case." (Bantam, 15-16).
By this arbitrary decision, a large body of important reports was left unexplored and unexplained.
Another explanation is offered by Dr. Roy Craig in discussing field studies:
"In general, testimony of the witnesses recorded shortly after their experiences can be considered more reliable than their retelling of the story two to 20 years later, both because of memory and because of a tendency to crystallization of the story upon repeated retelling. For this reason, reexamination of witnesses in 'classic' cases was not considered a useful way for the project to invest time. Field investigation of classic cases was therefore limited to those in which existing reports contained a serious discrepancy which might be resolved." (Bantam, Section III, Chapter 1, p. 52).
This is a specious argument. By this principle, all testimony in courts would be thrown out where it was consistent. Referring to the Washington, D.C., radar reports of July 1952, for example, Craig writes:
"On-site interviewing had contributed no new information. Since our experience generally showed that new interviews of witnesses in classic cases did not produce dependable new information, few on-site investigations of such cases were undertaken." (Bantam, 55).
Credible Witnesses Ignored
(U.F.O. Investigator page 3)
Hundreds of credible witnesses were therefore ignored because "they could not add anything new" to their original reports. But is this actually the case? On the contrary. Both NICAP and individual investigators like Dr. McDonald have uncovered new information and testimony regarding important cases, although working on a far more modest budget than Colorado's. In the very case the Craig mentions, the Washington sightings of 1952, project scientists were given explicit new leads to additional information by NICAP- for example, the report of an airline employee who was present during the sightings and whose testimony had never been heard. The information was ignored by Colorado.
Thus, arguing from a false premise, the Condon committee authorized itself to sweep aside most of the important and unexplained reports by highly credible witnesses. Is this the scientific method?
Top Cases Omitted
Among the cases that were brushed off were many reports by scientists - case material that certainly met Colorado's own requirements of witness reliability. These unexplained cases include the following:
A round, silvery UFO that flew north near the White Sands test center, seen by missile expert Dr. Carl J. Zohn and three others (6/29/47); a rapidly ascending ellipsoidal UFO, seen near the horizon by astronomer Dr. Lincoln LaPaz and his family near Fort Sumner, N.M. (7/10/47); a high-speed oval object tracked with theodolite by aerologist Charles E. Moore and his staff during a balloon tracking at Arrey, N.M. (4/24/49); passage overhead of a fixed formation of rectangular lights seen by astronomer Dr. Clyde Tombaugh and his wife at Las Cruces, N.M. (8/20/49); sightings of several glowing objects performing "controlled maneuvers" on two consecutive days by cosmic-ray expert J.J. Kaliszewski and associates in the air over Wisconsin and Minnesota (10/10-11/51);
the sightings by aeronautical engineer Paul R. Hill and a companion at Hampton, Va., of a maneuvering flight of four objects (7/16/52); three round UFOs seen by astronomer Dr. H.P. Wilkens over northern Georgia during a flight from Charleston, W. Va., to Atlanta 96/11/54); a sighting by physicist Dr. Vasil Uzunoglu of a lighted, low-flying UFO near Andrews AFB, Md (8/1/66); a boomerang-shaped object over Houston, Texas, observed by Dr. Albert Kuntz, University of Houston psychologist (1/21/67); geology professor Bryce M. Hand's sighting of an elongated, silvery UFO near Amherst, Mass. (9/23/67); and a low-hovering, white-glowing object seen by physicist Lewis Hollander and his wife at Mendota, Calif. (10/14/67).
Pilots' Sighting Not Included
Reports by scientists were not the only category rejected by project investigators on the basis of their exclusion criteria. There was wholesale elimination of sightings by engineers and other technical personnel, including many airline pilots. While the report does include several of the more recent airline pilot reports, the omission of the older, well-known cases constitutes a glaring defect. A complete listing of such cases, beginning with the United Airlines sightings of July 4, 1947, in which Capt. E.E. Smith and co-pilot Ralph Stevens saw two groups of disc-like objects while flying between Emmett, Idaho, and Ontario, Oregon, would fill several columns. Even a small selection would have to include the following, none of which was considered:
The Eastern Airlines case of 7/24/48, over Montgomery, Alabama, in which Capt. C.S. Chiles and co-pilot John Whitted saw a rocket-like object pass close to their DC-3, then pull up in a sharp climb; the TWA sighting (and associated reports from the ground and other pilots) near Dayton, Ohio (3/8/50); the observation of a circular UFO with a ring of lighted "ports" underneath by Chicago and Southern Airlines pilots Adams and Anderson over Stuttgart, Ark. (3/20/50); the Mid-Continent Airlines observation by pilots Lawrence Vinther and James Bachmeier, at Sioux City, Iowa (1/20/51); the Pan American sighting of eight maneuvering discs seen by pilots William Nash and William Fortenberry over New port News, Va. (7/14/52); and the American Airlines sighting of a glowing orange UFO over central N.Y. by Capt. Raymond Ryan (4/8/56).
Other notable early sightings were made by many private and military pilots. The list is too long to itemize here.
One airline case discussed in some detail by Gordon Thayer (Bantam, Section III, Chapter 5, pp. 139-40) is the well-known BOAC sighting of June 29, 1954, over the Quebec-Labrador area, in which the airliner was paced for a number of minutes by a large object which changed shape and up to six smaller objects that emerged from and merged with the parent UFO. The project's solution for this report is a classic in itself: "Some almost certainly natural phenomenon, which is so rare that it apparently never has been reported before or since."
Reports by Police
Among the omissions are reports by police officers and sheriffs' deputies. In several cases, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials also figured in the reports, such as the one at Redmond, Ore., on (9/24/59), when a large disc was seen pursued by a formation of F-102s, while the flight was tracked on FAA radar; and repeated sightings, some at close range, of a large, lighted, cigar-shaped UFO at Red Bluff, Calif., in mid-August, 1960.
Other excluded cases in which police officers were involved are the well-known Socorro, N.M. report by Officer Lonnie Zamora, who observed a landed, egg-shaped object which left traces (4/24/64); and the equally well-known police report of an 80-mile chase of a UFO from Portage County, Ohio, into Pennsylvania (4/17/66).
The number of important cases involving key witnesses is hardly exhausted by the examples listed above. The project's decision to ignore them was ill-advised. It not only removed from the field of study some of the strongest and potentially most significant data that have been accumulated in the past 20 years; it also greatly weakened the project's conclusions. No study failing to examine carefully these classic cases from groups of well-qualified witnesses can be regarded as complete or even taken seriously.
WHAT HAPPENED TO CASE MATERIAL?
(U.F.O. Investigator, pg. 5)
Significant Data Omitted
Another major defect of the Colorado Project was the meager use it made of the enormous reservoir of case material available to it. Over the 20 years preceding the project, between 10,000 and 15,000 UFO sighting reports had been recorded. Yet the report treats only 50 cases from this period, or 1/2 of 1% of the available material.
The March 1966 wave, chiefly in Michigan, received nation-wide publicity and was the immediate cause of the establishment of the Colorado Project. Hundreds of sightings were recorded, including many by police officers; but not one of the Michigan 1966 cases is examined in the Report. One case in particular from this period, a March 31 sighting near Kalamazoo, Michigan, in which a disc-like UFO, inches above the highway, maneuvered around the witness's car, buffeting it violently, was furnished to the Project, at Mr. Low's specific request, immediately after the Project began. The case, although it certainly warranted careful examination, does not appear in the Report.
The sighting wave of July-September 1965, which touched off countless editorials critical of the Air Force, also involved hundreds of reports. Only three are treated in the Report. The radar case of August 2, in Wichita, Kansas, "may probably" be due to false radar returns; associated visual sighting "may have been enhanced" by temperature inversions. Analysis of the Heflin photographs of August 3 in Santa Ana, California is inconclusive. The August 8 photographs in Beaver, Pennsylvania, are considered a probable hoax. Among the omitted cases are the remarkable close range sighting near Damon, Texas (Sept. 3) by two sheriff's (furnished to the Project both by NICAP and by Dr. J. E. McDonald). The sightings at Exeter, N.H., of the same date and later, are briefly mentioned but not analyzed.
One of the most extraordinary sighting waves of all time, in November 1957, at Kirtland AFB in New Mexico, but at least 118 sightings were reported that November (see The UFO Evidence, pp 163-67), and 20 of these were in New Mexico and the adjacent Texas panhandle; none are referred to in the Report.
The wave of summer 1952 is similarly neglected. It included a large number of puzzling radar-visual sightings by the Air Force and the FAA, and jet pursuits of UFOs. The Report discusses only five cases, with "explanations" that are subject to challenge (some will be disputed in a later NICAP report). A major omission is the classic sighting (July 14, 1952) by two Pan-American Airways pilots, who saw 8 discs moving in formation at high speeds over Newport News; this case was recommended to the Project both by NICAP and by Dr. McDonald. Important radar-visual jet pursuit cases on July 23 (Massachusetts), July 26 (California), and July 29 (Michigan) are omitted.
LINK; http://www.cohenufo.org/nicap.html
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Now we compare the new information that has came to light on this Condon Report and its finale conclusions it reached on UFOs;
DR CONDON;
http://files.abovetopsecret.com/imag...092a81cb26.jpg
New Information on the Condon Committee;
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Reposted from UFO UpDates with permission:
(c) 2008 by Brad Sparks;
quote;
"Two stunning new revelations have emerged from the collection of 1,200 pages of files copied by MUFON's Project Pandora from the files of the late Roy Craig, a physical chemist who was a key investigator for the University of Colorado's UFO study. One, it turns out that late in the study a project scientist wrote a memo admitting that more than 50% of their cases had turned out to be unexplained. Two, proof has now been found that project director Edward Condon had not in fact read his own report before writing up the report's "Conclusions and Recommendations," the opening chapter in the front of the report.
MUFON Director of Research Robert Powell and MUFON historical consultant Michael Swords traveled to Texas A&M University earlier this year to examine the Craig files and copy what they could. Powell kindly made the files available, which will eventually be posted online by MUFON. A more detailed report will be made by Swords who has investigated the history and internal workings of the controversial Colorado UFO project.
The "Colorado Project," as it is best termed (often called the "Condon Committee") was a US Air Force funded $525,000+ contract study of UFO's conducted from 1966 to 1968. The release of its thousand-page final report in January 1969, usually called the Condon Report, was a devastating blow to serious UFO research because of its scorchingly harsh anti-UFO conclusions rendered by the project's chief scientist Condon. The Condon Report was endorsed by the National Academy of Science and set back scientific UFO research for decades by making the very subject disreputable.
Condon declared that no scientific progress had ever been made by UFO studies and that none could be expected in the future. He recommended that the AF close down its UFO study, a long-standing PR nightmare, called Project Blue Book. It has been known for some time from internal documents that the AF in fact apparently set up the project in order specifically to "scientifically justify" (my phraseology) its closure of Blue Book (AF Directorate of S&T Lt. Col. Robert Hippler letter to Condon, Jan. 16, 1967).
The most telling criticism of the Condon Report, universally pointed out almost from day one by Hynek, McDonald, the AIAA, Sturrock, Jacobs, Friedman, Maccabee, Swords, and many others, has been that Condon's "Conclusions and Recommendations" bore no relationship to the actual contents of the report (written by other staff members) and its UFO case investigations. Many commented that it seemed as if Condon had not even read "his" own report, since he completely glossed over the disturbingly large numbers of unexplained UFO cases that his own project had documented and had admitted could not be solved.
Now we have documentation proving it. Craig's notes of his all-day meeting with Condon and other project staff on Sept. 13, 1968, begin with Condon presenting his draft "Conclusions and Recommendations" chapter. Condon had not read the rest of the report because he wrote this Conclusions chapter before the rest of the report had even been written.
Craig's notes (p. 1) state concerning the draft "Conclusions and Recommendations" that Condon distributed to the group: "EUC [Condon] produced a draft of this section, written 1 to 3 mo [months] previously, written without benefit of prior reading of the other sections of the report which were by now nearing completion."
Condon said he would consider altering his draft, as if that would exculpate or exonerate him from having written the Conclusions before even reading the then unfinished report. However, all indications are from Craig's notes that Condon's caustic anti-UFO conclusions remained unchanged and are those we are painfully familiar with from the published report.
It will require in-depth line by line analysis to see if there were any subtle changes as a result of this project staff meeting and other inputs. It would be very helpful if Condon's original draft could be found, perhaps in the Condon papers at the APS Library in Philadelphia, where the Colorado Project files have been preserved.
The other bombshell also dates from the same time period near the end of the Colorado Project as the final report was being written up. Project investigator and physicist at NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research), Joseph Rush, wrote a confidential 3-page memo to Condon on Sept. 5, 1968.
In it he revealed that he had begun his study fairly open-minded about UFO's but as a result of the project's work had grown skeptical. Rush commented to Condon that this skepticism was ironic because so many of their UFO investigations had resulted in unexplained cases, specifically stating (p. 1) that:
"This may seem an anomalous conclusion, since more of the C-cases [CU Project investigations] are unexplained than explained."
Thus, Rush admits that the Project had more than 50% unexplained UFO cases after investigation by the Colorado Project. This is a stunning statistic. Again, from day one numerous scientific critics have pointed out that Condon Report had about 30% to 34% of its cases remaining unexplained. This has been rightly regarded as a profound contradiction to Condon's Conclusions which disclose no awareness of such a high percentage.
It has been wondered whether the Project was even consciously aware of the high percentage of unknowns or were oblivious to it, and whether or not the staff discussed it among themselves and/or with Condon. Now we know. They did. And the situation was much worse than we imagined, since the percentage evidently exceeded 50% unexplained.
(An important resource in identifying the cases the Colorado Project could not explain is the "Sightings, unexplained" list in the Index to the Bantam Books edition of the Condon Report, p. 961. The Project hired not one but two professional indexers, Victoria Siegfried Barker and Margaret C. Shipler, who were full-fledged members of the Project staff, thus the index of unexplained sightings is an official list and not a product of an outside publisher, which might have been discounted as unofficial.)
Thus, when Condon wrote his Conclusions in the Summer of 1968 he was apparently unaware of the high percentage of unknowns that his project had left him with, because he had no report to read yet in which this pattern could be seen, and because Rush had not yet told him about the 50%+ unexplained rate (though admittedly we do not know if other project staff members might have previously informed Condon of the problematic statistic on the UFO unknowns).
However, we now can establish that Condon was made aware of this high unexplained rate in Sept 1968 (by physicist Rush) and did nothing to incorporate that challenging fact in any revised draft of his Conclusions. This conscious and willful suppression of contrary evidence certainly reflects badly on the scientific ethics and integrity of the Condon Report, as has often been declared based more on inference. Now we have direct evidence.
Still more disturbing is this fact we now must consider: When the Final Report was finalized a few weeks later, in October 1968, somehow this 50%+ unexplained percentage had been reduced to about 34%.
How was that possible? All Project investigations had ended months earlier in 1968 so the drastic reduction of unknowns could not have come about by new or continued investigations. Only days remained before the contract would end and the final report submitted to the AF -- one contract extension had already been granted in order to allow time to write the report so another extension was out of the question.
The only way the numbers of unexplained UFO cases could have been reduced is if more than a dozen unexplained reports in the draft Condon Report were arbitrarily rewritten to make them into explained IFO's, by blatant doctoring of the case write-ups. Ideally what we need to pin down the details of this shocking manipulation of the Condon Report case evaluations is to find the original drafts of each case (in the Condon papers in Philadelphia) and compare the UFO vs. IFO conclusions as rendered in the published edition.
This will be an enormous task due to the sheer volume of the Colorado Project files and the expense of travel, lodging and photocopying in Philadelphia, and is not likely to be done any time in the near future, regrettably.
source & references:
http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2008...committee.html
http://library.wustl.edu
link; http://www.ufocasebook.com/2008b/newinfocondon.html
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British Air Force UFO sighting 1953:
http://files.abovetopsecret.com/imag...53b3f5a6a8.jpg
quote;
"Terry Johnson (RAF pilot) & Geoff Smythe (RAF navigator) interviewed by the BBC in the early 1950s about their sighting of an Unidentified Flying Object November 1953"
quote;
"Follow-up BBC feature to the 1953 sighting of a UFO by Terry Johnson (RAF pilot) and Geoff Smythe (RAF navigator) in 1953 featuring original BBC news footage".
quote;
"In chapter 17 Ruppelt reveals that even after he had left Project Blue Book and the USAF, friends in RAF intelligence kept him informed about latest developments, on a private basis.
Another indication of the strong US influence on the Flying Saucer Working Party is the fact that their June 1951 final report was entitled Unidentified Flying Objects. This term had been devised by Ruppelt himself, early in 1951, but was not at the time in use outside US Government circles.
..The Flying Saucer Working Party had been dissolved in 1951 amidst a frenzy of scepticism that had clearly been fuelled by the Americans. The response that Churchill received to his 1952 enquiry showed that the sceptics still had the upper hand within the MOD. But this was soon to change.During the period 1952 to 1957 there were a series of UFO sightings involving the military, which forced the MOD to rethink and then reverse its policy.
These included sightings during Operation Mainbrace in September 1952 (including those at RAF Topcliffe), the West Malling incident on 3 November 1953, Flight Lieutenant Salandin’s near-collision with a UFO on 14 October 1954, the Lakenheath/Bentwaters radar/visual sightings on 13 and 14 August 1956 and the RAF West Freugh incident on 4 April 1957".
links; http://books.google.es/books?
http://www.thewhyfiles.net/pilotsightings2.htm
http://www.ufocasebook.com/report7.html
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British Air Force UFO sightings PART TWO;
Here is another interesting case ,once again involving RAF pilots who were involved and witnessed these events;
ALL TEXT BELOW IS FROM A EXTERNAL SOURCE;
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UK paper"s report below covering the MOD files on this case that indicate a real event and show the UK military intelligences being very reluctant to admit the real possibility of "off world technology".
Boulmer reports of UFO sightings were hushed up;
Published on Wed Jan 26 11:09:40 GMT 2005;
QUOTE;
"THE X-Files came to RAF Boulmer as strange flying objects were spotted hovering over the North Sea by a fighter pilot at the base.
In a case that would intrigue TV’s Mulder and Scully, bright objects were spotted by RAF staff in 1977. They changed shape as they watched.
So sensitive was the sighting that all records of it were hidden from public gaze and have only just been released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI).
It was stored in the Ministry of Defence’s “possible extra-terrestrial contact” department, known only by the code name SF4.
It is one of many sightings listed by the Government where credible witnesses, such as military staff, policemen and airline pilots, have reported UFOs.
The drama started in July 1977, when Flight Lieutenant AM Wood reported seeing the objects, saying the nearest was luminous, round and four to five times the size of a Whirlwind helicopter.
The two possible UFOs were seen hovering at a height of around 5,000 feet and were three miles out to sea.
His report is backed by those of Corporal Torrington and Sergeant Graham, who say the objects parted, with one going west and changing shape as it went.
The objects, with one then looking body shaped, were watched by the three men for one hour and 40 minutes.
A radar station at the base also picked up the objects in the same position before they vanished. Checks were made to RAF West Drayton to see if it had spotted them.
Flt Lt Wood is described as “reliable and sober” in the report, which adds that radar staff at RAF Staxton Wold also picked up the strange objects.
The RAF Boulmer report was deemed so sensitive that instead of being released to the public 25 years later as normal a further three-year ban was imposed.
It is only because of the FOI Act, which came into force on January 1, that the case was reviewed and the details declassified.
Other released reports show that fighters were scrambled in July 1976 when a British Airways pilot reported strange, white cigar-shaped objects over Portugal.
Nearer to home Chief Supt Hobson, of Manchester Police, watched a bright light for two minutes and followed it along the A62 on July 3, 1976.
The reports will add to UFO hunters’ belief that governments have deliberately stayed silent on possible visits by space craft over the years".
LINK; http://www.northumberlandgazette.co....shed.930633.jp
RAF Boulmer;
http://files.abovetopsecret.com/imag...b834f6f7df.jpg
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION Request 32;
"Re events at RAF Bentwaters / RAF Woodbridge UFO incident back in
26th to 29th December 1980. The events were investigated personally by
Bentwater CO - Deputy Base Commander Lieutenant Colonel Charles
Holt (also by US Dept of Defense). Popularly known as the Rendlesham
Forest Incident. Date on this event most appreciated.
Other UFO reports include the July 1977 one by Flt Lt A M Wood at
RAF Boulmer in Northumberland. Radar confirmed this at RAF Boulmer
and also at RAF Staxton Wold. I understand the above is now
declassified".
Response;
"I am writing concerning your request for information relating to the
incidents at RAF Bentwater/RAF Woodbridge and RAF Boulmer. Your
requests have been passed to this Department as we are the focal point
within the Ministry of Defence for correspondence regarding UFOs.
All the documents concerning the events at Rendlesham Forest have been
released and can be viewed at the MOD Freedom of Information
Publication Scheme via the internet at www.foi.mod.uk. A search under
‘Rendlesham Forest’ will take you straight to this information".
"With regard to your request for information about a UFO sighting at RAF
Boulmer in 1977, this information was released at the National Archives
in January 2005. The National Archives can be contacted at Ruskin
Avenue, Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 4DU or telephone, 020 8876
3444. The National Archives also has a website giving information about
the records they hold and how to access them. This can be found on the
internet at" http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk.
LINK; British Ministry of Defense Document request -RAF Boulmer (pdf)
http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/95802...0/uforeq32.pdf
Confirmation of Radar contact with object;
QUOTE;
"One of the most puzzling came from RAF Boulmer, an important radar control centre on the coast of Northumbria. In the early hours of 30 July 1977 airmen on the night shift were alerted by a call from a civilian who could see two bright objects hovering over the North Sea. The duty controller, Flt Lt A.M. Wood and a group of airmen then emerged from their bunker and saw the UFOs for themselves".
"In his detailed report to MoD, Flt Lt Wood says the objects were close to the shore and stationary, at a height estimated between 4-5,000 feet. They appeared to move apart and then together as they slowly climbed into the clear sky. “No imagination was required to distinguish the shape,” he wrote. “Westerly object [was] conical with apex at top. Object seemed to rotate and change shape to become arrowhead in shape. The easterly object was indistinct.” He said the UFO closest to the base was “round, luminous, [and] 4 to 5 times larger than a Whirlwind helicopter.”
"Flt Lt Wood’s story was supported by Cpl Torrington and Sgt Graham who were on duty at a picket post outside Boulmer’s underground operations room. They said the westerly UFO moved “and changed shape to become body shaped with projections like arms and legs.” All were described as “reliable and sober” in a MoD report.
"The descriptions, and more significantly, the fact these UFOs were visible for one hour forty minutes make me suspect they may have been bright stars or planets. But in his report Flt Lt Wood says that shortly after disappearing visually, two unidentified contacts were detected on the base radars at a range of between 20 and 30 miles out to sea. These slowly moved northeast as they climbed, “then parted, one climbing to 9,000 feet estimated and moving east, the other holding 5-6,000 ft.”
"While the UFOs were being tracked, he contacted the controller at RAF Patrington, an early warning station on the East Coast. He confirmed the two unidentified blips were visible on the radar picture there, which was relayed directly to RAF West Drayton in Middlesex. But oddly, the Senior Reporting Officer at headquarters was less forthcoming when asked if he could see the UFOs"
http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/95802...0/uforeq32.pdf
-
Freedom of Information: Top secrets for public;
Here is a very intriguing article by a investigative journalist from the UK paper "The Independent", the text below covers a particular classified document released under the "freedom of information act";
================================================== ========
The first text outlines the introduction of the "Freedom of Information Act" and the implications it has had on declassified files;
================================================== ========
Freedom of Information: Top secrets for public inspection;
Freedom of Information;
The Independent;
quote;
"Introduced two years ago, the Freedom of Information Act has forced the British Government to give up its darkest secrets and present many of its most sensitive documents for public inspection. Robert Verhaik opens the files
9 December 2006;
Britain is not the same country it was two years ago. Following the introduction of new rights of access, with the Freedom of Information Act on 1 January 2005 the Government has been forced to give up its secrets, while Whitehall has had to offer up its most sensitive files for public inspection. What we have witnessed is a seeping release of documents, memos and classified papers that has shone a light into the darkest workings of our democracy, as well as revealing fascinating facts about the rich and famous along the way.
I was one of many journalists who took part in the stampede for stories that followed the introduction of the new regime two years ago next month. It was a moment of great anticipation. We had all seen how the governments of other countries had been opened up to public scrutiny through the use of right-to-know legislation. In America there had been startling revelations about President Kennedy's assassination, Watergate and the political scandal of Nicaragua. Now it was our turn, finally, to get to the truth about war with Iraq, the death of Princess Diana ... and Wham!'s historic tour of China.
link; http://www.spinwatch.org.uk/latest-n...lic-inspection
================================================== ========
STATUS: Alien visit?
SUBJECT: U.F.O.s ;
DATE: July, 1977
The National Archives Office in Kew, formerly known as the Public Records Office, holds the largest database of secrets in the world. Millions of documents in electronic and hard copy have been painstakingly filed under classified headings ranging from "restricted viewing" to "top secret".
For an investigative journalist there can be no more exciting a phrase than the words that flashed across the top of my documents: "Classified - not for release until 2010". The black ink stamp of secrecy meant that mine was the first unrestricted eye to see these documents for 30 years.
Since the 1950s, when the first reports of UFOs reached this country from America, the men from the ministry had maintained a contemptuous silence about the possibility of alien visitors. So it is still surprising to me, even today, that there exists at the heart of the Ministry of Defence, working in a committee room supported by secretarial staff, a special unit whose sole purpose is to investigate and collate reports of UFOs. These papers are Britain's very own X-Files.
Many of the documents contained fanciful reports from old ladies, children or UFO enthusiasts - and, on the whole, they do not make very convincing reading. But after a great deal of digging I finally came across a slightly thicker file, with much more MoD correspondence than any of the others. This time the observers were not children, confused old ladies or UFO nuts but an RAF pilot and two NCOs based at RAF Boulmer in Northumberland.
In July 1977, Flt Lt A M Wood reported "bright objects hanging over the sea", the closest of which was "luminous, round and four to five times larger than a Whirlwind helicopter".
The RAF personnel estimated that UFOs were three miles out to sea at a height of about 5,000ft. The officer's central report is carefully backed-up by the NCOs. With great attention to detail, he writes: "The objects separated. Then one went west of the other, as it manoeuvered it changed shape to become body-shaped with projections like arms and legs."
All three men who were positioned at the picket post at the RAF station were able to observe the strange objects for an hour and 40 minutes. At the same time a radar station detected the objects in exactly the same position as the men had observed them.
The accompanying MoD report describes Flt Lt Wood as "reliable and sober ". It adds: "Two contacts were noted on radar, both T84 and T85, at RAF Boulmer. They were also seen on the Staxton Wold radar picture which is relayed to West Drayton ... On seeing the objects on radar the duty controller checked with the SRO at RAF West Drayton as to whether he could see the objects on radar supplied from RAF Staxton Wold."
This account was deemed so sensitive to the national interest that the MoD had delayed its release for an extra three years. It was the most credible evidence to emerge from Britain of extraterrestrial life visiting our world. Could this really have been Britain's very own Roswell experience?
-
The 1977 UFO Chronology;PART ONE;
Superb list of reports from 1977, all text below is from external sources;
http://www.nicap.org/images/title2.jpg
Map of sightings for 1977, courtesy of Larry Hatch's "U" Database (Pending)
Created: August 15, 2007; Updated 3 July 2009;
This is currently a 24-page chronology of UFO incidents and events for 1977. Our thanks for these chronologies must go to our documentation team: Richard Hall (the original 1977 chronology from UFOE II), William Wise (Project Blue Book Archive), Dan Wilson (archive researcher), Brad Sparks (Comprehensive Catalog of Project Blue Book Unknowns), and Jean Waskiewicz (online NICAP DBase [NSID]).
The latest entries were provided by A-Team member Mike Swords. You will note the many foreign reports that we are now being able to access. Our special thanks to Dan Wilson for getting those to us. As more come in, this page will be updated.
This is the year that the MADAR Projecthttp://www.nicap.org/madar.htm got its real test. Go to July 10th and listen to the datatape recording! There were seven detections of magnetic anomalies by the Multiple Anomaly Detection and Automated Recording system at my Mt. Vernon, Indiana facility, within a six week period! There were UFO sightings within 60 miles NW and 85 miles SW at the same time MADAR was triggered.
Finally, in November, I was invited by the press to view the motion picture Close Encounters of the Third Kind" before it was officially released.
Francis Ridge;
NICAP Site Coordinator;
The 1977 UFO Chronology;
__________________________________________________ _________________________________
Jan.-May, 1977; UK
Miniwave of UFO sightings, including round and triangular objects (NICAP UFOE II, Section VIII).
Jan. 1, 1977; Creysseilles, France
1:30 AM. A pink glowing sphere hovered in the sky for six minutes, then flew away to the east toward the Mezayon Valley.
Jan. 1, 1977; Chabeiul, Drome, France
7:50 PM. A lenticular metallic disc with flames coming from the bottom made a 180-degree turn and flew off toward the south. The witness's eyes were sore from the glare of the light.
Jan. 1, 1977; Valence, France
8:00 PM. Mr. and Mrs. Perez had a close encounter with a ten-meter long ovoid object that chased their car. They also complained of eye pain and conjunctivitis as a result of the encounter, and a watch of theirs had stopped working. The UFO made a reappearance 40 minutes later.
Jan. 1, 1977; Leca de Palmeira, Oporto Province, Portugal
9:00 PM. A TV crew filmed a UFO. It made a sound like an electric motor.
Jan. 1, 1977; Eyragues,Bouches-Rhone Department, France
10:00 PM. A luminous hemisphere-shaped object, about .65 meters in diameter, maneuvered and glowed among trees. Broken branches were found later in the area.
Jan. 4, 1977; Carapito Beira Alta, Portugal
12:30 a.m. A man was training his German shepherd dog in a pine grove when the animal suddenly became agitated and sat next to him. He then saw hovering 10 meters from the ground a dark metallic domed object that was emitting a beeping sound. Near the object was a very tall, heavy set figure, human like.
The object suddenly emitted a silvery lighting flash and disappeared, and so did the bulky figure. The witness suffered from severe headaches soon after the incident, and his dog died with no obvious cause of death in August of the same year. (Source: Albert S. Rosales, Humanoid Contact Database 1977, case # 106, citing Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos & Fernandez Peri, Enciclopedia De Los Encuentros Cercanos con Ovnis).
Jan. 16, 1977; Moscow, Russia
On a clear and cloudless morning a giant flying saucer appeared over the southwestern part of Moscow, Russia. It was photographed as it hovered for more than an hour. It had a grayish-blue surface, but was distinctly visible against the blue sky. (Source: Paul Stonehill, The Soviet UFO Files, p. 69).
Jan.18, 1977; Bussieres-Saint-Georges, France
1:00 AM. A UFO witness was thrown into some bushes when three glowing balls of light flew overhead at one a.m. The witness had 75 minutes of missing time, and the incident was followed by many days of persistent headaches. (Source: Lumieres dans la Nuit, issue 317).
Jan. 21, 1977; St. Bernard Parish, LA
Boat brightly illuminated by round glowing object, abnormal silence, heat, boat held back as if by invisible force, light beam, time loss (NICAP UFOE II, Section VI).
Jan. 21, 1977; Bogota, Colombia
Night. An Avianca airline crew observed a light that followed their plane in a zigzag flight, and reacted to flashing landing lights. (Reference: AIRCRAFT / UFO ENCOUNTERS FILE Military, Airline and Private Pilot UFO sightings from 1942 to 1996,Compiled and © 1997 by Dominique Weinstein). Brilliant white light zigzagging erratically at high speed, confirmed on ground and airborne radar; responded to pilot at 25,000 feet flashing his landing lights. Five witnesses. 3 mins. (NICAP UFOE II, Section III).
Jan. 21, 1977; St. Bernard Parish, LA
8:45 PM. Two hunters spotted an extremely bright light which seemed to appear from nowhere. The light moved over them and just hovered. There was no sound coming from the light source, but the men could feel heat emitting from it. The light moved slowly toward a fire station located close by and appeared to hover for about 30 minutes. Finally it moved over to the Shell Oil Plant for awhile and then disappeared as quickly as it had come. (Reference: UFO INVESTIGATOR, February 1977, page 4)
Jan. 21, 1977; St. Bernard Parish, LA
Night. Two adult males were doing some [mildly] illegal poaching along the Dike Canal, one guy in a boat and the other moving parallel on the shore. They were not in close approximation when the man in the boat saw a bright red light in the sky. Suddenly the light seemed right around him as the boat was engulfed in the glow which extended to the surrounding landscape. It was too bright to see through to make out any shape behind it, and the only thought that the poacher had was that this was the game warden and he'd been busted.
But there was no noise, so no helicopter, and the light flew away into the woods. His partner was already back at their camp, and saw none of this. When the boatman paddled back to camp, his story was met with derision. The two both got into the boat and began to go down the canal, this time using the outboard motor as power. The light reappeared and moved in on them. The boatman's hair was felt "standing on end" with fright. Worse, although the motor was running, the boat was not moving--seemingly held in place by whatever this was.
Then the light quickly left and "the boat lurched forward with great force, as if what was holding it back released the motor's power once again. Both men were thrown but neither fell out". The light again flew at low level into the trees and continued on for some distance until they lost it. They estimated that the light was about 15-25 feet in diameter, mainly circular [though hard to see], of a "diamond texture" [by which they apparently mean that it appeared faceted with diamond shapes], and strikingly fast only when it moved toward them. Both men reported "nausea, stomach aches, and fever, for a period of two days following".
They intuitively connected this with the incident but the researcher did remark that it was flu season. Neither witness was interested in UFOs and neither used the terms UFOs or flying saucers during the interviews. Normal checking revealed no balloons nor aircraft in the area at the time. (Submitted by Mike Swords. Source: NICAP Report file by Dr. Ted Peters, February 7, 1977; "Mysterious hovering light observed by Yscloskey men", St.Bernard News, January 26, 1977; "Mysterious hovering light still a mystery", St.Bernard News, February 9, 1977;
Ted Peters in the MUFON Journal #111, February 1977 [ in this article it is claimed that an anonymous phonecaller, claiming to be a night guard on duty, said that he saw the thing too].
Jan. 26, 1977; Anchorage, KY
Dogs barked while object was present. (Woodward)
Jan. 27, 1977; Prospect, KY
1:05 AM. A teenager spotted a rectangular, orange-red object coming down to near his jeep. His jeep's radio failed 15 seconds into the sighting. He felt compelled to watch the object, which stayed in the vicinity only a short time. Later under hypnosis, however, he related being taken inside the object and examined by three strange creatures who were shaped like machines. The electrical system on his jeep went haywire the day after the sighting. (Source: Mark Rodeghier, UFO Reports Involving Vehicle Interference, case 406, citing CUFOS; IUR,2,4)
Jan. 27, 1977; Clarksville, TN
Evening. Humanoid report. Concerned businessman while driving through Clarksville had a bizarre experience. (MUJ-110)
Feb. 2, 1977; Pineville, MO
CE-II, one witness (EGBA,577)
Feb. 2, 1977; Louisville, KY
Close encounter (CE-II) one witness. (EGBA, 510)
Feb. 3, 1977; Tasmania, Australia
9:30 PM. Several children at a youth camp at Seven-Mile Beach observed a stationary, dome-shaped object hovering near the beach. The object then moved behind some trees, partially obscuring it. On the dome was a row of windows through which at least two of the children reported seeing a thin humanoid figure with a round head.
It seemed to be moving back and forth behind the window. One child described the object as similar to two plates placed edge to edge, with flashing yellow white lights along the edge and a red light on top of the dome. The object disappeared from view behind the trees. (Source: David F. Webb & Ted Bloecher, HUMCAT: Catalogue of Humanoid Reports, case 1977-68, citing Tasmanian UFO Investigation Centre).
Feb. 4, 1977; Basford, Staffordshire, England
2:25 AM. An automobile club patrolman sighted a luminous orange object at some distance from his car. His two-way radio had heavy static while the object was in view. There was simultaneous radio interference at the Stafford police headquarters. (Source: Mark Rodeghier, UFO Reports Involving Vehicle Interference, case 407, citing Northern UFO Network News, 1977)
Feb. 7, 1977; Newcastle-under-Lyme, England
12:30 PM. School students from a school saw a gray flattened cigar-shaped object moving slowly through the sky, surrounded by a vapor or mist. It changed color to orange, then to green, and flew off toward the east-southeast. The sighting lasted 10 minutes. (Sources: Northern Network files, case report dated March 1, 1977; Awareness, July 1977, p. 20).
Feb.10, 1977; Tucson, AZ
7:30 PM. From a window in her house Ms. Lois Stovall saw a luminous object in the sky approach her house from the north. She and her grandmother, Mrs. Alice Buckner, went out to the yard for a better view and saw it hovering over a small tree less than 50 feet away. It was capsule shaped with a cylindrical vertical axis, and transparent on the side facing them with dark vertical bars.
Through the transparent surface they could see a flame-like light and a human-shaped figure, gray all over gray, that looked puffed up like a balloon. It had ridges or rings running round the appendages, like the Michelin Man. She could not see any hands or feet. This figure in an inflated suit was about four feet tall and was standing crouched over in a space only barely big enough for him.
The light was coming from between his feet. Mrs. Buckner walked directly beneath the object and tried to touch it but it was hovering two feet too high. She could see there was a faceplate in the being's suit, and she could barely make out some sort of face behind it. The object began to ascend, and soon passed out of sight to the south. Ms. Stovall saw three helicopters with glowing red cabin lights flying very low over the adjacent school grounds. The investigators were unable to find any plausible source for these mystery aircraft.
Mrs. Dessie Turner, a neighbor, also saw the object while it hovered, and estimated that it was 6.5 feet high and 2.5 feet in diameter. She thought she could see a shadowy figure inside. She also saw the helicopters. (Sources: David F. Webb & Ted Bloecher, HUMCAT: Catalogue of Humanoid Encounters, case 1977-8, citing Coral Lorenzen, APRO; Coral & Jim Lorenzen, APRO Bulletin).
Feb. 17, 1977; Pembrokeshire, Wales
During the day a teacher and two canteen workers at Broad Haven school watched a silvery yellow cigar-shaped object glide over a field emitting a loud humming sound. Before it left the area, a human-like figure was seen briefly to step out of the object and then go back inside. (Source: Albert S. Rosales, Humanoid Contact Database 1977, case # 1386, citing J. A. Brooks, Ghosts and Legends of Wales).
Feb. 18, 1977; Salto, Uruguay http://www.nicap.org/ar-770218.htm
Disc hovered, illuminated barnyard, farm animals reacted, watchdog later died. Witness felt electric shock, heat, paralysis; physiological and physical effects (NICAP UFOE II, Section VI).
Feb. 24, 1977; Langenargen, Lake Constance, Germany
Humanoid encounter (NICAP UFOE II, Section XII).
Spring, 1977; Lumberton, OH
Alleged skirmish between U.S. military forces and a landed (or disabled) alien craft. (Case B-13 in Status Report II, Leonard Stringfield; SYMPAP, 1978,77)
March 5, 1977; McNatt, MO
11:00 PM. Lonnie Stites and his wife, Deborah, were driving their pickup truck around a bend in the road when "the whole area lit up like a football field light was turned on, and a very bright light was shined on our windshield." He saw a man of normal height or slightly smaller stature standing alongside the road. He was human looking, but dressed in green coveralls with square glasses and a tight green cap over his ears.
He was "waving us down." Up on the hill was another figure carrying what appeared to be "a ball of electricity about the size of a basketball." The second figure was walking away from an object that looked like a water tank, about 10 feet across and 10 to 15 feet tall, with red lights going around it. The UFO was about 50-60 feet from them. Mrs Stites said that she saw two people on the hillside carrying "basketball sized lights," and that the UFO at one point flew over the truck. They turned the truck around and drove away in great fear. (Source: David F. Webb & Ted Bloecher, HUMCAT: Catalogue of Humanoid Reports, case 1977-11, citing Monte Blue Skelton & Bob Pratt).
March 6, 1977; Sylmar, CA
1:05 AM. Mr. Kiese, a security guard, age 18, witnessed an orange, domed disc-shaped UFO descend into the field near his factory's security gate. The UFO either landed or hovered close to the ground for five minutes, but no noticeable landing traces were found at the site. (Source: Ann Druffel, MUFON UFO Journal, March 1978, p. 12).
March 6, 1977: Evansville, IN
5:55 PM. Four witnesses, 5-mins. Two objects, three minutes apart. First one big enough to hold an 18-wheeler. (Ridge files)
March 7, 1977; Chaumont, Haute-Marne, France
Radar-visual UFO approached Mirage bomber, sped away (NICAP UFOE II, Section II).
March 7, 1977; Winchester, Hampshire, England
9:00 PM. Mrs. Jane Bowles was driving with a friend, Mrs. Ann Strickland, along a country road when their car stopped and a brilliant glow "like a white sun" lit up the area around them. An oval object was observed that was luminous and making a humming sound. A man emerged from the UFO, one similar in appearance to the one involved in Mrs. Bowles earlier close encounter. He was human like with long hair, a beard, and pink eyes. He approached, holding out his hands, and touched Mrs Bowles. His hands were warm to the touch like a human's. The man looked at Mrs. Strickland and then spoke in an unknown language.
He gave something to Mrs. Bowles which she would not divulge, and then he returned to the UFO, which ascended into the sky with a hum and high-pitched noise. The women returned to Winchester, and Mrs. Bowles observed that her hands were red and swollen. She had to remove her wedding ring and she found the skin underneath raw. (Source: David F. Webb and Ted Bloecher, HUMCAT: Catalogue of Humanoid Encounters, case 1977-12, citing Lionel Beer, BUFORA).
March 8, 1977; Gatchelville, PA
7:30 PM. Nine independent witnesses watched a red ball of light maneuver against the wind. Holes were found burnt in the ground at a possible landing site. (Sources: Allan Hendry, The UFO Handbook, p. 120; Larry Hatch, U computer database, case 11471).
March 9, 1977; Nelson, North Lancashire, UK
3:10 AM. A cigar-shaped, metallic object appeared in the sky, so the two witnesses stopped their car for a better look. The UFO had lights at either end that were changing color and the entire object was surrounded by a gray mist. The witnesses heard a sound they described as being like the tide coming in and going out. As the object came quite close, their car's engine stopped and the headlights dimmed. After five minutes, the object flew off and the car could be restarted. Both of the witnesses came down with headaches shortly after the sighting. (FSR, Vol. 23, No. 2, (NICAP UFOE II, Section VI).
March 10, 1977; Indianapolis, IN
4:00 PM. Hoax photo. (APRO Bulletin)
March 12, 1977; south of Syracuse, NY
9:05 PM. The pilot and first officer of an United Airlines DC-10 observed a round bright white object. The object had strong effects on the autopilot and the three compasses. (Reference: UNIDENTIFIED AERIAL PHENOMENA EIGHTY YEARS OF PILOT SIGHTINGS Catalog of Military, Airline, Private Pilots Sightings from 1916 to 2000 Dominique F. Weinstein)
March 13, 1977; Pen-Y-Cwm, Pembrokeshire, Wales
9:00 PM. Stephen Taylor, age 17, was walking home from a visit to his girlfriend's house when he saw an orange, luminous, pear-shaped UFO in the sky. He walked to a friend's house to tell him but was not believed. About half a mile further on he noticed that he could not see the lights of farmhouses to his right. Looking closer, he saw that they were obscured by a large dome-shaped object, dark in appearance, about 30 to 40 feet in diameter and 40 feet high, that was resting in the adjacent field. Around its underside there was a dim glow of light.
As he watched he heard footsteps, and looking around only a few yards away was a figure "like a skinny human six-foot tall." The being looked "like an old man" with high cheekbones, and had large round eyes resembling those of a fish. Over its mouth was a box like device with a tube leading over the shoulder. It was wearing a one-piece suit that looked semi-transparent. Taylor took a swing at the figure and ran for home.
On arrival he found his dog acted strangely toward him, snarling and barking, and had to be put outdoors. The dog behaved normally the next day. (Source: David F. Webb and Ted Bloecher, HUMCAT: Catalogue of Humanoid Reports, case 1977 -13, citing Randall Jones Pugh, BUFORA).
March 15, 1977; West Jacksonport, Door County, WI
8:30 PM. Mrs. Joan Le Clair and four other local people saw a UFO hovering over some nearby trees. Mrs. Le Clair looked through binoculars and could see an elongated object, green on top and bottom, with a red band around the center. "There appeared to be another compartment on the bottom of this disc, and I could see windows in this lower part.
There appeared to be a figure inside the object." After three minutes the UFO sped away. Other observers of the UFO failed to see the windows or the occupant. (Sources: Sturgeon Bay Advocate, March 17, 1977; David F. Webb & Ted Bloecher, HUMCAT: Catalogue of Humanoid Reports, case 1977-14 (A1715), citing Thomas Heiman).
March 20, 1977; Pebble Beach, CA
On this night a husband and wife were in a pair of sleeping bags by the seashore when they saw a bright disc-shaped object come from the ocean straight towards them. The woman had a brief recollection of seeing several tall humanoids without mouths, who communicated with her telepathically and showed her a book. She later recalled that the craft was flat, streamlined, and black in color. A beam of light was shone on the couple and apparently took them inside the UFO.
The eyes of the aliens were reportedly black and shiny but rounded towards the nose and did not blink. The aliens were about six and a half to seven feet, thin, with delicate bodies, and very long fingers. They wore skintight one-piece diver outfits like wetsuits. Their heads were completely hairless.
The inside of the craft resembled a doctor's office: it was very bright white and warm. The wife was made to lie on a very cold table, where she was strapped down and observed many instruments, one of which made a buzzing sound. The woman had been involved in previous close encounter incidents. (Source: Albert S. Rosales, Humanoid Contact Database 1977, citing WBS Newsletter, special edition # 4)
LINK; http://www.nicap.org/waves/1977fullrep.htm
