I agree. They are often seen with standard blinking beacon lights exactly as required by the FAA. They don't always have them on though. They seem to change light configuration to appear to be a plane sometimes.
Printable View
I agree. They are often seen with standard blinking beacon lights exactly as required by the FAA. They don't always have them on though. They seem to change light configuration to appear to be a plane sometimes.
glad to see im not the only one inform on this kinda thing
daps, respect son
Back in 2008 I saw a HUGE black triangular shaped object flying about 250-300 ft above my head making a very faint humming sound (like high voltage sound if that makes any sense) The sound was only audible when it was very close over our heads. This craft was traveling VERY slow. Couldn't have been more than 20-30 mph After passing overhead and about a mile south of us it suddenly came to a complete stop mid-air! Fucked me up!! I was freaking the fuck out! We all were. We had no idea about black project stuff like the TR3B at the time, so you can imagine what was going through our minds. This wasn't one of those 3 lights forming a triangle sightings, the moon was large and bright and this thing was clearly visible as one solid triangle shaped craft that was darker than the sky surrounding it. It had lights on only 2 of the 3 corners on, but you could still see that the thing was a perfect triangle. A friend of mine also claimed he could actually see the light (still turned off) on that corner at one point as he was looking straight up at it. Then it slowly continued on in the same direction until we couldn't see it any longer. That was when my research began. I believe I know what I saw now.
UFO? Not Sure Then Double Check Here;
Here is a list of organisations and links to "check able data" when, if ,where and why you ever see something you perceive to be unexplained or just too weird up in the skies;You can check all these sites as a cross reference to see if what you saw is explainable under any of the given possibilities in the links below;
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Satellites/ISS;
Heaven's Above;http://www.heavens-above.com/
NASA - Human Space Flight; http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/
Orbitron - Satellite Tracking System; http://www.stoff.pl/
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Stars, planets;
Stellarium; http://www.stellarium.org/
American Meteor Soceity; http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireball2/public.php
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Aircraft;
Aircraft Light Identification; http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question...cs/q0263.shtml
Aircraft Light Identification - 2; http://www.ultraligero.net/Sitios/Pl...uirementos.pdf
Article on Helicopter Lights - they vary; http://www.caelestia.be/helicopters.html
Flightware - Live Flight Tracking;
http://flightaware.com/live/
Launch Schedule;International Launch Schedules;
http://www.satelliteonthenet.co.uk/i...aunch-schedule
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more identification to check;
Sensory Illusions in Aviation;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory...ns_in_aviation
Yehudi lights;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yehudi_lights
IsaacKoi's Sky Lanterns Research Project;
http://www.weddinglanterns.co.uk/
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread299865/pg1
Weather balloons and radiosondes (good example);
http://www.helium.com/items/1512013-...r-balloon-work
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiosonde
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread464522/pg1
Compound observations;
http://forgetomori.com/2008/ufos/ext...-explanations/
Atmospheric phenoemna:
Lenticular clouds;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenticular_cloud
Sun dogs;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_dog
Ball lightning;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning
Earthquake lights;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light
TLEs;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transient_luminous_event
Mirages;
http://english.cri.cn/811/2006/05/07/[email protected]
Natural smoke rings;
http://www.swisseduc.ch/stromboli/et...ovideo-en.html
Identified Flying Objects;
http://www.laesieworks.com/ifo/
Request help identifying all govt. & civilian saucer-related projects!;
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread449104/pg1
Interesting to note that American presidents in the past have stepped up to the mark on occasions and offered their thoughts/perceptions on UFOs, from personal sightings to alleged briefing documents these presidents and prominent senators offer a whole new perception on this enigma;
UFO for American presidents;
17.06.2011;
http://english.pravda.ru/images/arti...5/9/44659.jpeg
quote;
"Many U.S. presidents during their terms were seriously interested in UFOs and extraterrestrial intelligence issues, and some of them even had a chance to make contact with aliens. We turn to the recently declassified archives of ufology. Let's start with 1948, when President Harry S. Truman summoned his Assistant Robert Landry to the Oval Office".
"Truman gave him the order to make reports every three months on the flying saucers observed over the country. Once, Truman asked to investigate the case of the appearance of mysterious object over Washington that he observed through his window".
CIA agent Gerald Haines said that in July of 1952 the presidential administration was seriously disturbed by a "massive wave of UFO sightings over the United States." There was even an order to shoot down unidentified flying objects.
Most of all "UFO" rumor refer to Dwight Eisenhower. There is documentary evidence that in 1952 something extraordinary happened with Eisenhower. Here is the story of a naval officer who at that time served on the aircraft carrier "Franklin Roosevelt":
"We were to the north-east of England with a fleet of NATO. Around 1:30 am to the right side of us a large blue-white UFO appeared. It came down and hovered 30 meters above the water. The UFO then rose and flew off to the left. General Eisenhower, who arrived by helicopter with the admiral of the fleet, stepped out on the bridge at that very moment. We watched the UFO for about ten minutes."
Of course, we can assume that this is just another UFO tale. However, the events of January of 1972 made a great deal of noise.
On January 12th Oklahoma resident Sherry Eckhardt was on the phone with her mother. Suddenly, something cracked in the receiver and there was an unfamiliar voice: "We issued an alarm ... We are getting objects with a radar that appear on the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico ... Fighters are on the way ... An object has fallen into the Pacific Ocean, the fighters are shot down."
Astonished, Sherry gave her husband a sign to pick up the phone in another room. They heard: "Call the president on the phone!"
Then they heard a voice similar to that of Richard Nixon.
Of course, the couple told everything to the reporters. A scandal erupted. The White House and Air Force service made a televised rebuttal: there were no UFOs, nobody was knocked down. However, officers of the local telephone exchange have publicly stated that theoretically Eckhart could be mistakenly connected to the line of government communications.
But the most striking, absolutely reliable evidence of contact with the UFO was left by President Carter. It happened on January 6, 1969. Carter saw a large glowing object in the sky that was changing colors. "It was the most devilish of all the stuff I've ever seen," the former president said.
During his presidential campaign, Carter promised to declassify all information about UFO sightings in the U.S. He kept his word, and a number of documents became available to the public, including ufologists.
Ronald Reagan was another president who observed UFOs even back when he was still a governor. It happened when the president was on a plane. This is what Reagan later told the reporter Norman Miller:
"We followed it for several minutes. It was a bright white light. We followed it to Bakersfield, and all of a sudden to our utter amazement it went straight up into the heavens."
Once private screening of Steven Spielberg's "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" was arranged for Reagan attended by the famous director. Following the screening the President leaned over, clapped Spielberg on the shoulder, and quietly commented, "You know, there aren't six people in this room who know how true this really is."
Margarita Troitsyna
Yoki
Read the original in Russian;
http://www.yoki.ru/anomalous/ufo/16-...5609-truman-0/
http://english.pravda.ru/society/ano.../118232-ufo-0/
UFOs;
Goldwater was one of the more prominent American politicians to openly show an interest in UFOs.
On March 28, 1975, Goldwater wrote to Shlomo Arnon: "The subject of UFOs has interested me for some long time. About ten or twelve years ago I made an effort to find out what was in the building at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where the information has been stored that has been collected by the Air Force, and I was understandably denied this request. It is still classified above Top Secret."
[70] Goldwater further wrote that there were rumors the evidence would be released, and that he was "just as anxious to see this material as you are, and I hope we will not have to wait much longer."[70]
The April 25, 1988 issue of The New Yorker carried an interview where Goldwater said he repeatedly asked his friend, Gen. Curtis LeMay, if there was any truth to the rumors that UFO evidence was stored in a secret room at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and if he (Goldwater) might have access to the room. According to Goldwater, an angry LeMay gave him "holy hell" and said, "Not only can't you get into it but don't you ever mention it to me again."[71]
In a 1988 interview on Larry King's radio show, Goldwater was asked if he thought the U.S. Government was withholding UFO evidence; he replied "Yes, I do." He added:
I certainly believe in aliens in space. They may not look like us, but I have very strong feelings that they have advanced beyond our mental capabilities....I think some highly secret government UFO investigations are going on that we don't know about – and probably never will unless the Air Force discloses them.[72]
[edit]Goldwater Scholarship;
The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program was established by Congress in 1986. Its goal is to provide a continuing source of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians, and engineers by awarding scholarships to college students who intend to pursue careers in these fields.
The Scholarship is widely considered the most prestigious award in the U.S. conferred upon undergraduates studying the sciences. It is awarded to about 300 students (college sophomores and juniors) nationwide in the amount of $7500 per academic year (for their senior year, or junior and senior years). It honors Goldwater's keen interest in science and technology.
link; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Goldwater#UFOs
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One of the most powerful U.S. senators in modern history actually eye-witnessed two UFO’s while on a fact-finding trip through Russia in 1955, and the U.S. government kept the sightings a secret for more than three decades. The incredible encounter is detailed in 12 TOP SECRET CIA, FBI, and Air Force reports, and declassified in 1985.
Those startling reports reveal that Senator Richard B. Russell, Jr. (D-GA), then chairman of the Armed Services Committee, was on a Soviet train when he spotted a disc-shaped craft taking off near the tracks. He hurriedly called his military aide and interpreter to the window and they saw the UFO, plus another one that appeared a minute later. The astonished trio reported the sightings to the U.S. Air Force as soon as they were out of Russia.
link; http://ufosuncovered.com/united-stat...a-oct-13-1955/
A few Quotes about UFOs and aliens for your consideration:
"In my mind, there is no question that they're out there. My Career is well established. My texts books are required reading in all the major capitals on planet earth. If you want to become a physist to learn about the unified feild therory-you read my books. Therefore, I'm in a position to say: Yes- Most likely they're out their, perhaps even visted, perhaps on our moon. - ABC News Quote --
-- Professor Michio Kaku Author of Theoretical Physics UNY
"I've been convinced for a long time that the flying saucers are real and interplanetary. Another words we are being watched by beings from outer space."
--Albert M. Chop, deputy public relations director, National Aeronautics and Space Administration,(NASA) and former United States Air Force spokesman for Project Blue Book.
"When the long awaited solution to the UFO problem comes, I believe that it will prove to be not merely the next small step in the march of science, but a mighty and totally unexpected quantum leap." "We had a job to do, whether right or wrong, to keep the public from getting excited"
--Dr.J Allen Hynek, Director US Air Force´s project Blue Book as a scientific consultant, astronomer, investigator and analysis.
"Of course it is possible that UFO's really do contain aliens as many people believe, and the Government is hushing it up."
--Professor Stephen Hawking
"Given the millions of billions of Earth-like planets, life elsewhere in the Universe without a doubt, does exist. In the vastness of the Universe we are not alone."
--The Bible According to Albert Einstein
"It is my thesis that flying saucers are real and that they are space ships from another solar system.There is no doubt in my mind that these objects are interplanetary craft of some sort. I and my colleagues are confident that they do not originate in our solar system."
--Dr. Herman Oberth (The father of modern rockerty)
"I am completely convinced that UFOs have an out-of-world basis."
--Dr. Walther Riedel (Once chief designer and research director at the German rocket center in Peenemunde)
"The possibility of reduced-time interstellar travel either by advanced extraterrestrial civilizations at present or ourselves in the future, is not fundamentally constrained by physical principles."
-- Dr. Harold Puthoff (Director, Institute for advanced studies at Austin, Author of fundamentals of Quantum Electronics)
The least improbable explanation is that these things are artificial and controlled ... My opinion for some time has been that they have an extraterrestrial origin."
--Dr. Maurice Biot (leading aerodynamicists and mathematical physicist)
"The evidence is overwhelming that Planet Earth is being visited by intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft. In other words, SOME UFOs are alien spacecraft. Most are not. It's clear from the Opinion Polls and my own experience, that indeed most people accept the notion that SOME UFOs are alien spacecraft. The greater the education, the MORE likely to accept this proposition"
-- Stanton Friedman Defense Contractor Nuclear Physicist
"Extraterrestrial contact is a real phenomenon. The Vatican is receiving much information about extraterrestrials and their contacts with humans from its Nuncios (embassies) in various countries, such as Mexico, Chile and Venezuela."
-- Monsignor Corrado Balducci As stated 5 different times on Italian TV** (Vatican theologian insider close to the Pope,Monsignor Balducci said that he is on a Vatican commission looking into extraterrestrial encounters, and how to cope with the emerging general realization of extraterrestrial contact.)
"We must insist upon full access to disks recovered. For instance, in the La case the Army grabbed it and would not let us have it for cursory examination."
--J Edgar Hoover
"I am convinced that these ojects do exist and that they are not manufactured by any nations on earth"
--Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding (Commander-in-chief, Royal Air Force Fighter Command) (3) An outpouring of UFO reports which forces response in high places, particularly when unknowns virtually blitzed the U.S. capitol in Washington, D.C. An Air Force intelligence analysis also concluded that UFOs were interplanetary spaceships. (1952)
"The UFO phenomenon being reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious"
--General Nathan Twining Chairman, Joint chiefs of staff, 1955-1958
"With control of the universe at stake, a crash program is imperative.We produced the A-bomb, under the huge Manhattan Project, in an amazingly short time. The needs, the urgency today are even greater. The Air Force should end UFO secrecy, give the facts to scientists,the public, to Congress. Once the people realize the truth, they would back, even demand a crash program...for this is one race we dare not lose."
--Major Donald E Keyhoe USMC, Director NICAP 1953
"Unknown objects are operating under intelligent control... It is imperative that we learn where UFOs come from and what their purpose is. I can tell you, behind the scenes, high ranking military officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs"
--Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter (Former director of the Central Intelligence Agency)
"The possibility of reduced-time interstellar travel either by advanced extraterrestrial civilizations at present or ourselves in the future, is not fundamentally constrained by physical principles."
-- Dr. Harold Puthoff (Director, Institute for advanced studies at Austin, Author of fundamentals of Quantum Electronics)
An astonishing statement by Gen. Douglas MacArthur that, "...the next war will be an interplanetary war. The nations of the earth must someday make a common front against attack by people from other planets. The politics of the future will be cosmic, or interplanetary" (1955)
Truman climbs on board: "I can assure you that flying saucers, given that they exist, are not constructed by any power on earth"
--President Harry S. Truman
"The US Airforce assures me that UFO's pose no threat to National Security.."
--President John F Kennedy
I feel that the Air Force has not been giving out all the available information on the Unidentified Flying Objects. You cannot disregard so many unimpeachable sources."
-- John W. McCormack, Speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States. January (1965)
(9) Senator Barry Goldwater tries to gain access to a secret building at Wright-Patterson AFB rumored to house top UFO material, but is refused.
"I certainly believe in aliens in space, and that they are indeed visiting our planet. They may not look like us, but I have very strong feelings that they have advanced beyond our mental capabilities."
--Senator Barry Goldwater (1965)
(Retired Air Force Brigadier General and pilot with many decades of flying experience)
Future President Gerald Ford recommends an official committee investigation of the UFO phenomenon.
"I strongly recommend that there be a committee investigation of the UFO phenomena. I think we owe it to the people to establish credibility regarding UFOs and to produce the greatest possible enlightenment on this subject"
--President Gerald Ford (1966)
On the campaign trail, soon-to-be President Jimmy Carter promises that upon election, he would make public all the government's information on UFO sightings.
"I don't laugh at people any more when they say they've seen UFOs. I've seen one myself!"
--President Jimmy Carter (1976)
"I looked out the window and saw this white light.It was zigzagging around. I went up to the pilot and said,Have you ever seen anything like that? He was shocked and he said, "Nope." And I said to him: "Let's follow it!" We followed it for several minutes. It was a bright white light.We followed it to Bakersfield, and all of a sudden to our utter amazement it went straight up into the heavens. When I got off the plane I told Nancy all about it."
--President Ronald Reagen (Describing his 1974 UFO encounter to veteran newsman Norman C. Miller, then Washington bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal.)
"I think about how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And I ask you, does not this threat alread exsist?"
--President Ronald Reagen UN address
"The phenomenon of UFOs does exist, and it must be treated seriously."
--Mikhail Gorbachev
"I'm not at liberty to discuss the governments knowledge of extraterrestrial UFO's at this time. I am still personally being briefed on the subject!"
--President Richard M. Nixon
What say you, NASA?
I believe, and I scientifically am certain, that there are endless other living forms out there, including intelligent sentient beings. I do know that there are entire universes of living forms out there.
--Dr.Story Musgrave NASA scientist-astronaut
"I believe that these extraterrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets which obviously are a little more technically advanced than we are here on Earth." --Colonel L. Gordon Cooper (Mercury 9, Gemini-5 Astronaut)
"Mission control, We have a UFO pacing our position, request instructions!"
-- Astronaut Cady Coleman NASAtransmission shuttle mission STS-73
"I've been asked about UFO's and I've said publicly I thought they were somebody else, some other civilization."
--Commander Eugene Cernan, Commanded the Apollo 17 Mission. (LA TIMES, 1973)
"We have contact with alien cultures."
--Astronaut Dr. Brian O'leary
"In my official status, I cannot comment on ET contact. However, personally, I can assure you, we are not alone!
--Charles J. Camarda (Ph.D.) NASA Astronaut
"UFO sightings are now so common, the military doesn't have time to worry about them - so they screen them out. The major defense systems have UFO filters built into them, and when a UFO appears, they simply ignore it."
--Lee Katchen (former atmospheric physicist with NASA)
"In my official status, I cannot comment on ET contact. However, personally, I can assure you, we are not alone!
--Charles J. Camarda (Ph.D.) NASA Astronaut
We all know that UFOs are real. All we need to ask is where do they come from, and what do they want?"
--Apollo 14 Astronaut Capt. Edgar Mitchell
"All Apollo and Gemini flights were followed, both at a distance and sometimes also quite closely, by space vehicles of extraterrestrial origin - flying saucers, or UFOs, if you want to call them by that name. Every time it occurred, the astronauts informed Mission Control, who then ordered absolute silence."
--Maurice Chatelain, former chief of NASA Communications Systems.
"At no time, when the astronauts were in space were they alone: there was a constant surveillance by UFOs."
--NASA's Scott Carpenter
When asked if he believed that UFO's were real;"Yes as a matter of fact I do." He was also asked if he had ever seen a UFO and he said he had, on his Gemini mission. He went on to say that he tried to take a picture of it, but it did not come out.
--Brigadier Gen. James Mc Divitt command pilot of the Gemini space craft. (This interview can be seen on a video tape called Beyond Belief, from United Entertainment, Inc. 1986.)
On May 11, 1962 NASA pilot Joseph Walker said that one of his tasks was to detect UFOs during his X-15 flights. He had filmed five or six UFOs during his record breaking fifty-mile-high flight in April, 1962. It was the second time he had filmed UFOs in flight. To date none of those films has been released to the public for viewing. During a lecture at the Second National Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Space Research in Seattle, Washington, he stated:
"I don't feel like speculating about them. All I know is what appeared on the film which was developed after the flight."
-- NASA Pilot Joseph A. Walker
"The evidence points to the fact that Roswell was a real incident and that indeed an alien craft did crash, and that material was recovered from that site. We all know that UFOs are real.All we need to ask is where do they come from, and what do they want?"
--Capt. Edgar Mitchell Apollo 14 Astronaut
"I was testing a P-51 fighter in Minneapolis when I spotted this object. I was at about 10,000 feet on a nice, bright, sunny afternoon. I thought the object was a kite, then I realized that no kite is gonna fly that high." As I got closer it looked like a weather balloon, gray and about three feet in diameter. But as soon as I got behind the darn thing it didn't look like a balloon anymore. It looked like a saucer, a disk.
About the same time, I realized that it was suddenly going away from me -- and there I was, running at about 300 miles per hour. I tracked it for a little way, and then all of a sudden the damn thing just took off. It pulled about a 45 degree climbing turn and accelerated and just flat disappeared."
--Mercury Astronaut Capt. Donald Slayton
"Let there be no doubt. Alien technology harvested from the infamous saucer crash in Roswell, N.Mex., in July 1947 led directly to the development of the integrated circuit chip, laser and fiber optic technologies, Particle beams, Electromagnetic propulsion systems, Depleted uranium projectiles, Stealth capabilities, and many others! How do I know? I was in charge! (A matter of public record)I think the kids on this planet are wise to the truth, and I think we ought to give it to them. I think they deserve it.
--Colonel Philip Corso Army Intelligence officer, former head of the Foreign Technology at the U.S. Army's Research and Development department at the Pentagon. Four years director of intelligence on President Eisenhower's White House National Security Staff
Skeptic Quote -- "Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax."
--William Thomson, Lord Kelvin English scientist, 1899.
The body of excellent evidence in respect to ETs is overwhelming and much information has come out. Correspondingly, there would be no easy way to inform the public of the Extraterrestrial existence, and no one government or military group to tell it. The situation is extremely complex, with some of it quite disturbing. The sudden announcement of the true reality of ETs would have a profound effect on Earth's cultural, financial, religious, and social institutions.
There appears investigators uncovering undeniable proof of a working relation between members of the Intelligence Agencies; the Pentagon and various off-world races that is totally separate from the perhaps hundreds or even thousands of contactee cases around the Globe. They had better tread softly.
Not UFO Related but Very Significant - Ike was Right! Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960 Farewell Public Address;
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. To those who remain skeptical about the value of UFO research, here are some suggestions:
Read the serious and relevant UFO literature. Learn about the UFO investigators and research organizations. Know the facts behind the phenomenon. Study the data and do not confuse facts with speculation. Examine the research methods and arguments of skeptics.
Remember that honest and serious skepticism requires an understanding of the data, relevant scientific and social research, and the world-wide history of the UFO mystery;
link; http://www.netscientia.com/ufo_quotes.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrWINYfnWC8
Truman admits that UFOs are real, and hes not alone, Many presidents have admitted to the fact that UFOs are real, including Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and JFK tried to even expose the truth but was assassinated. "I can assure you that flying saucers, given that they exist, are not constructed by any power on earth." Truman says.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK-XATA-5gs
Ronald Reagan's speech about UFO Alien at UN;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd8wwMFmCeE
Rare video 1961 speech President & WWII General Dwight D Eisenhower warns us of the New World Order aka Military Industrial Complex.
Project 1947;by kenneth arnold;
Here is the actual report by the man to start the whole UFO debate off ,a one Mr Kenneth Arnold;The second report is from the “the Rockefeller Briefing Document”;It was the American press who gave rise to the term ,"FLYING SAUCERS" that would mold the public's perceptions of UFOs, Kenneth Arnold actually told the press that the objects he saw where like" disks" or one plate on top of another, he never used the term flying saucer, this phrase was used as a tool of early debunking or ridiculing from the main stream press;
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PROJECT 1947;
CONFIDENTIAL;
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...scent_1947.jpg
Arnold Showing a drawing of the crescent-shaped object;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Arnold
COPY;
BY KENNETH ARNOLD;
quote;
"The following story of what I observed over the Cascade mountains, as impossible as it may seem, is positively true. I never asked nor wanted any notoriety for just accidentally being in the right spot at the right time to observe what I did. I reported something that I know any pilot would have reported. I don't think that in any way my observation was due to any sensitivity of eye sight or judgment than what is considered normal for any pilot".
On June 24th, Tuesday, 1947, I had finished my work for the Central Air Service at Chehalis, Washington, and at about two o'clock I took off from Chehalis, Washington, airport with the intention of going to Yakima, Wash. My trip was delayed for an hour to search for a large marine transport that supposedly went down near or around the southwest side of Mt. Rainier in the state of Washington and to date has never been found.
I flew directly toward Mt. Rainier after reaching an altitude of about 9,500 feet, which is the approximate elevation of the high plateau from which Mt. Rainier rises. I had made one sweep of this high plateau to the westward, searching all of the various ridges for this marine ship and flew to the west down and near the ridge side of the canyon where Ashford, Washington, is located.
Unable to see anything that looked like the lost ship, I made a 360 degree turn to the right and above the little city of Mineral, starting again toward Mt. Rainier. I climbed back up to an altitude of approximately 9,200 feet.
The air was so smooth that day that it was a real pleasure flying and, as most pilots do when the air is smooth and they are flying at a higher altitude, I trimmed out my airplane in the direction of Yakima, Washington, which was almost directly east of my position and simply sat in my plane observing the sky and the terrain.
CONFIDENTIAL;
CONFIDENTIAL;
There was a DC-4 to the left and to the rear of me approximately fifteen miles distance, and I should judge, at 14,000 foot elevation.
The sky and air was clear as crystal. I hadn't flown more than two or three minutes on my course when a bright flash reflected on my airplane. It startled me as I thought I was too close to some other aircraft. I looked every place in the sky and couldn't find where the reflection had come from until I looked to the left and the north of Mt. Rainier where I observed a chain of nine peculiar looking aircraft flying from north to south at approximately 9,500 foot elevation and going, seemingly, in a definite direction of about 170 degrees.
They were approaching Mt. Rainier very rapidly, and I merely assumed they were jet planes. Anyhow, I discovered that this was where the reflection had come from, as two or three of them every few seconds would dip or change their course slightly, just enough for the sun to strike them at an angle that reflected brightly on my plane.
These objects being quite far away, I was unable for a few seconds to make out their shape or their formation. Very shortly they approached Mt. Rainier, and I observed their outline against the snow quite plainly.
I thought it was very peculiar that I couldn't find their tails but assumed they were some type of jet plane. I was determined to clock their speed, as I had two definite points I could clock them by; the air was so clear that it was very easy to see objects and determine their approximate shape and size at almost fifty miles that day.
I remember distinctly that my sweep second hand on my eight day clock, which is located on my instrument panel, read one minute to 3 P.M. as the first object of this formation passed the southern edge of Mt. Rainier. I watched these objects with great interest as I had never before observed
airplanes flying so close to the mountain tops, flying directly south to southeast down the hog's back of a mountain range. I would estimate their elevation could have varied a thousand feet one way or another up or down, but they were pretty much on the horizon to me which would indicate they were near the same elevation as I was.
They flew like many times I have observed geese to fly in a rather diagonal chain-like line as if they were linked together. They seemed to hold a definite direction but rather swerved in and out of the high mountain peaks. Their speed at the time did not impress me particularly, because I knew that our army and air forces had planes that went very fast.
What kept bothering me as I watched them flip and flash in the sun right along their path was the fact that I couldn't make out any tail on them, and I am sure that any pilot would justify more than a second look at such a plane.
I observed them quite plainly, and I estimate my distance from them, which was almost at right angles, to be between twenty to twenty-five miles. I knew they must be very large to observe their shape at that distance, even on as clear a day as it was that Tuesday,
In fact I compared a zeus fastener or cowling tool I had in my pocket with them - holding it up on them and holding it up on the DC-4 - that I could observe at quite a distance to my left, and they seemed smaller than the DC-4; but, I should judge their span would have been as wide as the furtherest engines on each side of the fuselage of the DC-4.
The more I observed these objects the more upset I became, as I am accustomed and familiar with most all objects flying whether I am close to the ground or at higher altitudes. I observed the chain of these objects passing another high snow-covered rIdge in between Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams
CONFIDENTIAL;
CONFIDENTIAL;
and as, the first one was passing the south crest of this ridge the last object was entering the northern crest of the ridge.
As I was flying in the direction of this particular ridge, I measured it and found it to be approximately five miles so I could safely assume that the chain of these saucer like objects were at least five miles long. I could quite accurately determine their pathway due to the fact that there were several high peaks that were a little this side of them as well as higher peaks on the other side of their pathway.
As the last unit of this formation passed the southern most high snow-covered crest of Mt. Adams, I looked at my sweep second hand and it showed that they had travelled the distance in one minute and forty-two seconds. Even at the time this timing did not upset me as I felt confident after I would land there would be some explanation of what I saw.
A number of news men and experts suggested that I might have been seeing reflections or even a mirage. This I know to be absolutely false, as I observed these objects not only through the glass of my airplane but turned my airplane sideways where I could open my window and observe them with a completely unobstructed view. (Without sun glasses);
Even though two minutes seems like a very short time to one on the ground, in the air in two minutes time a pilot can observe a great many things and anything within his sight of vision probably as many as fifty or sixty times.
I continued my search for the marine plane for another fifteen or twenty minutes and while searching for this marine plane, what I had just observed kept going through my mind. I became more disturbed, so after taking a last look at Tieton Reservoir I headed for Yakima.
I might add that my complete observation of these objects, which I could even follow by their flashes as they passed Mt. Adams, was around two
CONFIDENTIAL;
and one-half or three minutes -- although, by the time they reached Mt. Adams they were out of my range of vision as far as determining shape or form. Of course, when the sun reflected from one or two or three of these units, they appeared to be completely round; but, I am making a drawing to the best of my ability, which I am including, as to the shape I observed these objects to be as they passed the snow covered ridges as well as Mt. Rainier.
When these objects were flying approximately straight and level, they were just a black thin line and when they flipped was the only time I could get a judgment as to their size.
These objects were holding an almost constant elevation; they did not seem to be going up or coming down, such as would be the case of rockets or artillery shells. I am convinced in my own mind that they were some type of airplane, even though they didn't conform with the many aspects of the conventional type of planes that I know.
Although these objects have been reported by many other observers throughout the United States, there have been six or seven other accounts written by some of these observers that I can truthfully say must have observed the same thing that I did; particularly, the descriptions of the three Wester[Cedar City, Utah] Air Lines employees, the gentleman [pilot] from Oklahoma City and the locomotive engineer from Illinois, plus Capt Smith and Co-Pilot Stevens of United Air Lines.
Some descriptions could not be very accurate taken from the ground unless these saucer-like disks were at a great height and there is a possibility that all of the people who observed peculiar objects could have seen the same thing I did, but, it would have been very difficult from the ground to observe these for more than four or five seconds, and there is always the possibility of atmospheric moisture and dust near the ground which could distort one's vision.
I have in my possession letters from all over the Unites States and people who profess that these objects have been observed over other portions of the world,principally Sweden, Bermuda, and California.
CONFIDENTIAL;
I would have given almost anything that day to have had a movie camera with a telephoto lens and from now on I will never be without one - - but, to continue further with my story. When I landed at Yakima, Wash., airport I described what I had seen to my very good friend, Al Baxter, who listened patiently and was very courteous but in a joking way didn't believe me.
I did not accurately measure the distance between these two mountains until I landed at Pendleton, Oregon, that same day where I told a number of pilot friends of mine what I had observed and they did not scoff or laugh but suggested they might be guided missiles or something new. In fact several former Army pilots informed me that they had been briefed before going into combat overseas that they might see objects of similar shape and design as I described and assured me that I wasn't dreaming or going crazy.
I quote Sonny Robinson, a former Army Air Forces pilot who is now operating dusting operations at Pendleton, Oregon, "What you observed, I am convinced, is some type of jet or rocket propelled ship that is in the process of being tested by our government or even it could possibly be by some foreign government."
Anyhow, the news that I had observed these spread very rapidly and before the night was over I was receiving telephone calls from all parts of the world; and, to date, I have not received one telephone call or one letter of scoffing or disbelief. the only disbelief that I know of was what was printed in the papers.
I look at this whole ordeal as not something funny as some people have made it out to be. To me it is mighty serious and since I evidently did observe something that at least Mr. John Doe on the street corner or Pete Andrews on the ranch has never heard about, is no reason that it does not exist. Even though I openly invited an investigation by the Army and the
CONFIDENTIAL;
FBI as to the authenticity of my story or a mental or a physical examination as to my capabilities, I have received no interest from these two important protective forces of our country; I will go so far as to assume that any report I gave to the United and Associated Press and over the radio on two different occasions which apparently set the nation buzzing, if our Military intelligence was not aware of what I observed, they would be the very first people that I could expect as visitors.
I have received lots of requests from people who told me to make a lot of wild guesses. I have based what I have written here in this article on positive facts and as far as guessing what it was I observed, it is just as much a mystery to me as it is to the rest of the world.
My pilot's license is 333487. I fly a Callair airplane; it is a three-place single engine land ship that is designed and manufactured at Afton, Wyoming as an extremely high performance, high altitude airplane that was made for mountain work. The national certificate of my plane is 33355
/s/ Kenneth Arnold;
Box 587;
Boise, Idaho;
They seemed longer than wide, their thickness was about 1/20th their width
Mirror Bright;
They did not appear to me to whirl or spin but seemed in fixed position traveling as I have made drawing.
/s/
Kenneth Arnold;
CONFIDENTIAL;
Arnold’s report to the USAF is available online at: http://www.project1947.com/fig/ka.htm
other links to various documents;
http://www.nicap.org/arnolddir.htm
************************************************** ********
Cover of International UFO Reporter showing a photograph of Kenneth Arnold, his original sketches and a reconstruction of the flying wing he saw, which led to the name of flying saucers. Insert lower right shows Arnold's original sketch for Army Intelligence. Courtesy of CUFOS.
1947: FIRST AMERICAN SIGHTING WAVE;
quote;
"The first major wave of American sightings produced more than a thousand reports, the term "flying saucer," and the first confirmed investigations by the U.S. Government. The reports were from all 48 states, mainly of round objects seen in the daytime. For two weeks, especially around the July Fourth weekend, newspapers and radio broadcasts were full of stories of flying saucers and flying discs. Early official studies concluded that they were real and unexplained".
It began on the afternoon of June 24, 1947 with the sighting of a formation of strange high-speed objects. Kenneth Arnold, flying his single-engine Callair airplane over southwestern Washington State, had interrupted his business trip to assist in the search for a missing military transport plane. From the official U.S. Army Air Force's report on the event:
"I hadn't flown more than two or three minutes on my (new) course when a bright flash reflected on my airplane. It startled me as I thought I was too close to some other aircraft. I looked every place in the sky and couldn't find where the reflection had come from until I looked to the left and the north of Mt. Rainier where I observed a chain of nine peculiar looking aircraft flying from north to south at approximately 9,500 feet [3,000 m.] elevation and going, seemingly, in a definite direction of about 170 degrees.
"They were approaching Mt. Rainier very rapidly, and I merely assumed they were jet planes. Anyhow, I discovered that this was where the reflection had come from, as two or three of them every few seconds would dip or change their course slightly, just enough for the sun to strike them at an angle that reflected brightly at my plane.
"I thought it was very peculiar that I couldn't find their tails but assumed they were some kind of jet plane. I was determined to clock their speed, as I had two definite points I could clock them by; the air was so clear that it was very easy to see objects and determine their approximate shape and size at almost 50 miles [80 km.] that day.
"[The clock]... on my instrument panel, read one minute to 3 p.m. as the first object of this formation passed the southern edge of Mt. Rainier... I would estimate their elevation could have varied a thousand feet [300 m.], one way or another, up or down, but they were pretty much on the horizon to me, which would indicate they were near the same elevation as I was.
"They seemed to hold a definite direction but rather swerved in and out of the high mountain peaks. Their speed at the time did not impress me particularly, because I knew that our army and air forces had planes that went very fast.
"What kept bothering me as I watched them flip and flash in the sun right along their path was the fact that I couldn't make out any tail on them, and I am sure that any pilot would justify more than a second look at such a plane.
"I observed them quite plainly, and I estimated my distance from them, which was almost at right angles, to be between 20 and 25 miles [30-40 km.]. I knew they must be very large to observe their shape at the distance, even on as clear a day as it was that Tuesday.
In fact I compared a... fastener or cowling tool I had in my pocket with them - holding it up on them and holding it up on the DC-4 (airliner) - that I could observe at quite a distance to my left, and they seemed smaller than the DC-4; but, I should judge their span would have been as wide as the furthest engines on each side of the fuselage of the DC-4. [Note: this span is about 55 ft. or 16 m.].
"I could quite accurately determine their pathway due to the fact there were several high peaks that were a little this side of them as well as higher peaks on the other side of their pathway.
"As the last unit of this formation passed the southernmost high snow-covered crest of Mt. Adams, I looked at my sweep second hand and it showed that they had travelled the distance in one minute and 42 seconds. Even at the time, this timing did not upset me as I felt confident that after I landed there would be some explanation of what I had seen. [Note: 48 miles in 1:42 seconds works out to 1,700 mph or 2,700 km./hr., at a time when the official World Speed Record was 624 mph or 1,000 km./hr.]
"A number of newsmen and experts suggested that I might have been seeing reflections or even a mirage. This I know to be absolutely false, as I observed these objects not only through the glass of my airplane but turned by my airplane sideways where I could open my window and observe them with a completely unobstructed view, without sun glasses... They seemed longer than wide, their thickness was about 1/20th of their width."32
To accompany his statement, Arnold added a simple sketch of one of the objects: a circle with the rear flattened or clipped off. (See above.)
It was not known at the time, but others had seen formations of strange objects in the Pacific Northwest on the same day. That morning, five or six discs were seen banking and circling from the same Cascade Mountain Range over which Arnold had been flying during his sighting; at 2:30 p.m., three flat discs were seen tilting as they flew from Richland, Washington, 100 miles [160 km.] to the east; at 3 p.m., a man saw nine discs in formation from Mineral, Washington, almost directly beneath Arnold's airplane.
The conclusion drawn later by Project Blue Book was that Arnold had failed to identify some conventional airplanes. No specifics were suggested, as there were no circular, disc or similarly shaped airplanes flying in or near the U.S., nor any airplanes in the world capable of even half the speed at which he clocked the formation. The other sightings of formations in the same area do appear in newspaper reports, but not in the official files.
This marked the beginning of the 1947 UFO sighting wave. A study of newspapers by Ted Bloecher lists 832 sighting reports between June 15 and July 15. An expansion of his study, still in progress, is expected to raise the total to at least 1,500 separate reports, including many from outside the United States.33
The files of Project Blue Book show barely 50 reports for the period. Nevertheless, the first known official study of the 1947 sighting wave concluded, from just 13 of those reports: "From detailed study of reports selected for their impression of veracity and reliability, several conclusions have been formed:
"(a) This 'flying saucer' situation is not all imaginary or seeing too much in some natural phenomena. Something is really flying around.
"(b) Lack of topside inquiries, when compared to the prompt and demanding inquiries that have originated topside upon former events, give more than ordinary weight to the possibility that this is a domestic project about which the President, etc., know.
"Whatever the objects are, this much can be said of their physical appearance:
"1. The surface of these objects is metallic, indicating a metallic skin, at least.
"2. When a trail is observed, it is lightly colored, a blue-brown haze, that is similar to a rocket engine's exhaust. Contrary to a rocket of the solid type, one observation indicates that the fuel may be throttled which would indicate a liquid rocket engine.
"3. As to shape, all observations state that the object is circular or at least elliptical, flat on the bottom and slightly domed on the top. The size estimates place it somewhere near the size of a C-54 or a Constellation. [Note: 1940s airliners had a wingspan of 120 ft. or 35 m., and length of 95 ft. or 30 m.]
"4. Some reports describe two tabs, located at the rear and symmetrical about the axis of flight motion.
"5. Flights have been reported, from three to nine of them, flying good formation on each other, with speeds always above 300 kts. [350 mph or 650 km/hr.].
"6. The discs oscillate laterally while flying along, which could be snaking."34
Official interest in the phenomena was demonstrated in a famous September 1947 memo from General Nathan D. Twining, Chief of the Air Materiel Command at Wright-Field, Ohio, who stated:
"a. The phenomena reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious.
"b. There are objects probably approximating the shape of a disc, of such appreciable size as to appear to be as large as a man-made aircraft.
"c. There is a possibility that some of the incidents may be caused by natural phenomena, such as meteors.
"d. The reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and action which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar, lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically, or remotely."35
Following other studies and reports, the U.S. Air Force instituted its first announced UFO investigation in January 1948: Project Sign.
_______________________________________
FOOTNOTES
32. Arnold, Kenneth, report to the U.S. Army Air Force, June 1947. Reprinted in Steiger, Brad, ed., Project Blue Book, Ballantine Books, 1976.
33. Bloecher, Ted, Report on the UFO Wave of 1947, NICAP, 1968.
34. Study by Air Force Base Intelligence Report, "Flying Discs," ibid.
35. Twining, Gen. Nathan, Memo to Commanding General Army Air Forces re "AMC Opinion Concerning 'Flying Discs'," September 23, 1947.
36. Ruppelt, Edward J., The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, Doubleday & Co., 1956.
Paul Trents UFO photographs 1950;
Paul Trent took this one of two photographs of a UFO in the USA in May 1950.
A UFO skeptic named Robert Sheaffer stated that “many serious UFOlogists regarded these photos as the strongest photo case on record.
http://img157.imageshack.us/img157/5...ville2a0lg.jpg
McMinnville UFO Photos 50 Years Later - Still A Mystery;
By Kelly Kennedy - The Oregonian;
quote;
"DAYTON, OR - On the 50th anniversary of one of the most-famous UFO sightings in history, townsfolk don't seem to understand what the fuss is all about.
They don't understand why experts have worked for decades to debunk the photos taken from Paul and Evelyn Trent's back yard on May 11, 1950"
http://www.rense.com/1.graphics/mcminn2.jpg
They don't have conversations at the town's single bar about whether there is life beyond Earth.
They say they're not interested in an alien-themed ball and UFO watch that McMenamins Hotel Oregon is throwing in McMinnville to commemorate the event.
A month passed before the Trents gained their notoriety, in part because the couple waited to finish the roll of film that contained two of the most hotly debated UFO photographs ever, the closest ever taken of an unidentified flying object and one of the first captured on film.
A June 10, 1950, story in The Oregonian reports that Evelyn Trent was outside feeding the rabbits on the family farm near Dayton, about 11 miles south of McMinnville, when she saw a strange metallic object in the sky. She yelled for her husband, who grabbed a camera and ran outside.
The Trents told The Oregonian that the saucer came from the northeast at about 7:45 p.m., changed direction, then slipped out of sight. "It was like a good-sized parachute canopy without the strings, only silvery bright mixed with bronze," she said at the time. "It was as pretty as anything I ever saw."
When a friend saw the pictures, he hung them in his bank window, where they drew the eye of a McMinnville reporter. From there, the photos traveled worldwide across the news wires. Life magazine featured them in its June 26, 1950, edition.
Kim Trent Spencer, the farm couple's granddaughter, says she remembers talking about the UFO pictures when she was young, but back then she didn't know the details -- that her grandmother said she had seen UFOs before, that the object created a breeze that blew through her grandparents' hair, or which relative spotted the saucer first.
http://www.rense.com/1.graphics/mcminn1.jpg
"We think about it every once in a while," she said. "It stays in the back of your mind. I just remember they had a lot of problems with people not believing them. They'd come out and hang up hubcaps and take pictures to see if that's how they did it."
Both of Spencer's grandparents died a couple of years ago.
Dave Sanguinetti, special events coordinator for the Hotel Oregon, said he's not surprised about the lack of interest in Dayton.
"It's not a real popular subject around town," he said. "You never know -- it could have happened. The whole area is a mecca for sightings. Seems like everyone has a UFO sighting story."
To celebrate, McMenamins is bringing in Bruce Maccabee, the UFOlogist who investigated the photos.
"We're taking it seriously to a point because Bruce Maccabee is going to be here," Sanguinetti said. "But we're also taking it campily. There will be green Martians. I think it's going to be great. I think it's going to be insane."
In a recently updated report to the Center for UFO Studies in Chicago, Maccabee said he was unable to prove the photos were a hoax because the image is so clear. He came to a similar conclusion to that of photo analyst William Hartmann, who determined that the way the light was distributed on the photo shows it was a distant object, not a hubcap hung on a telephone wire.
In an Air Force investigation of the UFO reports at the University of Colorado in 1967 -- known as the Condon Report -- Hartmann determined that the evidence was "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."
Hartmann, a senior scientist at the Tucson Planetary Science Institute, said his ideas about the analysis changed when he learned the Trents said they had seen other UFOs. "In my mind this reduced their credibility as follows: If their photo is real, it is clearly an artificial object and apparently not terrestrial, i.e. an alien spacecraft. But such objects must be extremely rare, or we'd have better documentation by now."
Some Dayton inhabitants may not be excited about the 50th anniversary of the event, but they do say it happened. They've seen similar things themselves. A 1996 Newsweek poll showed that 48 percent of Americans think the government is hiding proof of UFOs from the public.
Howard Putman, owner of Putt's Store in Dayton, said he and several other teen-agers saw several spaceships in the late 1940s.
"We were out working a field at U.S. Alderman Farms near Independence, hoeing corn or potatoes, and we saw five saucers swing down, corner off, then disappear," he said. "A little later, some military planes came over, and that's all we know. We can't prove it or disprove it. You know, there were a lot of things going on in the war years, so it could have been anything."
But Putman, like many Dayton residents, hasn't joined the UFO debate.
"They say it's a regular occurrence around here," he said. "The Trents could've seen something. It's not a big deal, though. If they're out there, they're out there." _____
McMinnville Photos 50 Years Later
By Pat Forgey - The News-Register, McMinnville, Oregon
link
12-00
Fifty years ago, the most important event in human history happened in McMinnville when a local farm couple captured evidence of interplanetary visitors on film.
Or they merely snapped a couple of pictures of a still-secret military craft. Or maybe it was an optical illusion, or a hoax.
Even after 50 years, nobody yet knows what to make of the two photographs taken by Paul and Evelyn Trent a bit after dinner on May 11, 1950. Much has been made of the photographs, nonetheless.
What set the Trents' photographs apart wasn't the timing. They weren't the first photos purporting to show unidentified flying objects, and they've hardly been the last.
"There have been a lot of such events, but this was of particular interest because of the clarity of the photos," said Bruce Maccabee, a researcher who has performed an exhaustive analysis. "Without the photos, it would have been just another sighting by some people, but the Trent case stands out because these photos are so clear that it's either the real thing or a hoax."
Unlikely hoaxers
Beyond the relative clarity of the photos, though, it was the Trents themselves who really set the photos apart.
Both Paul and Evelyn Trent died in the late 1990s. The house where the photographs were taken has long since been torn down.
But the Trents were, by all accounts, simple farm folk. They weren't the sort of people likely to either imagine or make up a flying saucer story, said Maccabee, who spent hours interviewing them over several years while he studied the photographs.
"I basically concluded that they were not the type of people who would attempt a UFO hoax, to say the nothing of pulling one off," he said.
That conclusion was echoed by journalist Bill Powell, who showed the Trent photographs to the world and touched off a media circus decades before that term came into common use.
Working for the Telephone-Register, predecessor of the News-Register, Powell got word of the photos in June 1950. They had been snapped a month earlier.
There were two of them. Retrieving the negatives from Paul Trent, Powell published them across the top of the Telephone-Register and told the Trents' story.
Evelyn Trent had been feeding rabbits in the backyard of their Ballston-area farm when she saw a flying disc in the sky to the northwest. She called for her husband, Paul, who snapped a photograph with his Kodak camera, rewound the film as rapidly as possible, and snapped a second shot 30 seconds later.
Both photos appear to show a disc zipping through the sky.
Paul Trent may have had photos of the biggest news story ever to hit McMinnville, but all he did was put the camera away. Later, after finishing off the roll of film on Mother's Day, he took it to a drug store on McMinnville's Third Street to be developed.
"The reason I thought they were authentic was that the negatives were in the middle of the roll," said Powell from his retirement home in Idaho Falls, Idaho. "He'd taken some more pictures so that he'd make sure he got his money's worth when he developed the things."
Maccabee said that story is part of why the photographs have taken on such importance in the UFO movement. If the Trents had been trying to fake a photograph, they'd likely have taken several practice shots and shown the world only the best of what they ended up with.
The other thing that makes the photos believable is that the Trents didn't seem to be trying to take advantage of them.
The day Paul Trent got the film developed, he told banker Ralph Wortman about it. Wortman mentioned it to Telephone-Register Editor Phil Bladine, who dispatched Powell to investigate.
Photos go national
Once the photos were published, however, they touched a national nerve.
Several supposed UFO sightings, usually called flying saucers then, had recently made the news. The photos went out on the wires and were reprinted across the nation.
Life, then the nation's top circulation magazine, published them in July.
Mutual Broadcasting System radio personality Frank Edwards obtained a copy of the Telephone-Register and called Bladine.
"Your paper is 10 cents," Edwards said to Bladine. "Can I tell people that if they send you a dime, you'll send 'em a copy?"
"I said 'sure', figuring that we might get a request for three or four papers," Bladine recalled.
Instead, requests flooded in. Dimes came taped to cards and wrapped in paper.
Sometimes payment was made in stamps. Sometimes dollar bills were sent and multiple copies were requested.
The Telephone Register's headline the next week reported, "Saucers Top Story in U.S. Inquiries Flood TR office."
At the time, the paper's circulation was less than 4,000, Bladine guesses. But by the end of week, requests for an extra 2,000 copies had come in.
That led to a special reprinting of the front page on high quality paper. By late summer, most of a special press run of 10,000 copies had been mailed out to people in all 48 states, the District of Columbia and Canada.
Bladine said many of the people contacting the paper had stories to tell. "People said that they'd seen a flying saucer, but didn't want to tell anyone because they were afraid they'd be thought nuts."
The Trents were eventually invited to New York for a radio appearance.
The photos have been reprinted many times since. They were included in the Condon Report, a University of Colorado study conducted into UFO sightings on behalf of the U.S. Air Force.
Before Life published the photographs, they were cropped by someone. Nothing but the cropped versions have been published since, said Tim Hills, a McMenamins historian who researched the photos as part of a look at the area's history when the pub chain reopened Hotel Oregon in McMinnville.
"The Telephone Register is the only source of the full-frame photos," he said. "They were never published full-frame ever again."
Skeptics abound
UFO skeptics have challenged the photos' authenticity, saying the story the Trents told of how the photos came to be taken was inconsistent. Maccabee, who interviewed the Trents many times, said he didn't find the inconsistencies significant.
"If they had said exactly the same thing every time, they (skeptics) would have said it was a hoax because they'd memorized it," he said. "You can't win with that one."
Other critics have said the shadows in the pictures indicate the photos were taken in the morning, rather than evening as the Trents said, but no one has come up with an explanation for why they'd lie about an insignificant element like that.
Hills finds the Trents and their story credible, even after the variations of multiple tellings.
"Their stories really didn't change significantly," he said. "It's a credit to them, and bolsters their credibility."
That doesn't mean that it's not a hoax of some sort, he said.
But it's stood up for five decades. "If it is a fake it's a masterful one," he said.
Maccabee said he's convinced of the photos' authenticity. What he doesn't know is what Paul Trent snapped a picture of that day in 1950.
Trent himself thought it was some type of secret military plane, Maccabee said.
He was reluctant at first to even let the newspaper publish the photos. He was quoted in the first story as saying, "I'm afraid I'll get into trouble with the government."
Hills is among those who doesn't think it was a top secret Air Force project.
"If we had the capability in 1947 to make a flying saucer, we should be able to do that today, and we can't. It's a big question mark to me," he said.
Powell still doesn't' know what to make of it. The story he published carried the headline, "At Long Last -- Authentic Photographs of Flying Saucer [?]"
Powell said it should be read carefully.
"You'll notice that on my screamer, I put a question mark," he said. "I was covering my butt a little bit."
Hills said he may not be able to explain it, but he knows one thing. "It's a great story."
Gen. Nathan Twining Chief of Staff, US Air Force;'
Perhaps the most compelling military documents on UFOs to surface is the memo written by a one Gen Nathan Twining Chief of Staff of the US Air Force;This document seems to indicate that SOME UFOs are indeed ET in origins and paints the USAF at that time, in a very different but highly serious concern on UFOs;
Below is declassified letter by Gen Nathan Twining that was written on September 23, 1947 in which he discusses flying saucers
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Twining_02.jpg
Gen Nathan Twining Chief of Staff of the US Air Force;
http://keyholepublishing.com/1947-9-23-TWINMEM1.JPG
Air Material Command Opinion Concerning Flying Discs;
This is a memo from Lieut.Gen. NF Twining to Brig.Gen. George Schulgen; regarding "Flying Discs"
Document date: 1947-09-23;
Department: Air Materiel Command Opinion Concerning "Flying Discs" ;
Author: Lieut.Gen. N.F. Twining;
Document type: Memo;
http://files.abovetopsecret.com/uplo...ing_Memo_1.jpg
http://foia.abovetopsecret.com/ultim...pt_23_1947.pdf
************************************************** ********
The Twining Memo;
(This is a transcription from the original memo. As much as possible, the original format has been preserved.)
SUBJECT: AMC Opinion Concerning "Flying Discs"
TO: Commanding General;
This letter was sent out from Air Material Commands (AMC) in response to a request from Brig General Schulgen. As a result of the opinions expressed by Twining, Gen Schulgen issued his now famous Collection Memorandum.
Gen. Twining requested that investigations be conducted that might shed some light on the recent rash of Flying Saucer sightings. In response to the Schugen Collection Memorandum, The Walker Memo was sent to see what field offices could find.
Some proponents view this letter as proof that the Air Force knows that extraterrestrial UFOs exist. The closest the the letter comes to considering alien origin is the opinion that [there is] "The possibility that some foreign nation has a form of propulsion possibly nuclear, which is outside of our domestic knowledge." However, the proponents tend to ignore, or dismiss as an "obvious lie" dictated by the Super Secret Roswell Conspiracy, the instruction that his commanders should consider:
"The lack of physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits which would undeniably prove the existence of these subjects."
Army Air Force
Washington 25, D.C.;
ATTENTION: Brig. General George Schulgen;
AC/AS-2
1. As requested by AC/AS-2 there is presented below the considered opinion of this command concerning the so-called "Flying Discs." This opinion is based on interrogation report data furnished by AC/AS-2 and preliminary studies by personnel of T-2 and Aircraft Laboratory, Engineering Division T-3. This opinion was arrived at in a conference between personnel from the Air Institute of Technology, Intelligence T-2, Office, Chief of Engineering Division, and the Aircraft, Power Plant and Propeller Laboratories of Engineering Division T-3.
2. It is the opinion that:
a. The phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious.
b. There are objects probably approximating the shape of a disc, of such appreciable size as to appear to be as large as man-made aircraft.
c. There is a possibility that some of the incidents may be caused by natural phenomena, such as meteors.
d. The reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and motion which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar, lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically or remotely.
e. The apparent common description is as follows:-
(1) Metallic or light reflecting surface.
(2) Absence of trail, except in a few instances where the object apparently was operating under high performance conditions.
(3) Circular or elliptical in shape, flat on bottom and domed on top.
(4) Several reports of well kept formation flights varying from three to nine objects.
(5) Normally no associated sound, except in three instances a substantial rumbling roar was noted.
(6) Level flight speeds normally above 300 knots are estimated.
f. It is possible within the present U.S. knowledge -- provided extensive detailed development is undertaken -- to construct a piloted aircraft which has the general description of the object in sub- paragraph (e) above which would be capable of an approximate range of 7000 miles at subsonic speeds.
g. Any development in this country along the lines indicated would be extremely expensive, time consuming and at the considerable expense of current projects and therefore, if directed, should be set up independently of existing projects.
h. Due consideration must be given the following:-
(1) The possibility that these objects are of domestic origin - the product of some high security project not known to AC/AS-2 or this Command.
(2) The lack of physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits which would undeniably prove the existence of these subjects.
(3) The possibility that some foreign nation has a form of propulsion possibly nuclear, which is outside of our domestic knowledge.
3. It is recommended that:-
a. Headquarters, Army Air Forces issue a directive assigning a priority, security classification and Code name for a detailed study of this matter to include the preparation of complete sets of all available and pertinent data which will then be made available to the Army, Navy, Atomic Energy Commission, JRDB, the Air Force Scientific Advisory Group, NACA,
and the RAND and NEPA projects for comments and recommendations, with a preliminary report to be forwarded within 15 days of receipt of the data and a detailed report thereafter every 30 days as the investigation develops. A complete interchange of data should be affected.
4. Awaiting a specific directive AMC will continue the investigation within its current resources in order to more closely define the nature of the phenomenon. Detailed Essential Elements of Information will be formulated immediately for transmittal thru channels.
link; http://www.roswellfiles.com/FOIA/twining.htm
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1932279274888146526
Some info on Gen Nathan Twining Chief of Staff of the US Air Force below;
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++
Nathan Farragut Twining, KBE (pronounced /ˈtwaɪnɪŋ/ twy-ning; October 11, 1897 - March 29, 1982) was a United States Air Force General, born in Monroe, Wisconsin.[1] He was Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force from 1953 until 1957. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1957 to 1960 he was the first member of the Air Force to serve in that role.
Military offices;
Preceded byGen. Hoyt Vandenberg Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force;
1953–1957 Succeeded by
Gen. Thomas D. White
Preceded by
Adm. Arthur W. Radford Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
1957–1960 Succeeded by
Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer
[show]v · d · e
link; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Twining
The Incident at Exeter (Muscarello Case);1965
This is one UFO case that is considered a "very high strangeness encounter";
************************************************** ********
The Incident at Exeter (Muscarello Case);1965;
Date: September 3, 1965;
Location: Exeter, New Hampshire, United States;
quote;
"Norman Muscarello, a teenage Navy recruit, was walking down a quiet country highway at night, when suddenly, a huge object loomed above him. Thus began the "Incident at Exeter," a series of sightings officially qualified as "unidentified." The encounters that night took special precedence over other UFO sightings because of the credibility of two Exeter police officers who also saw the UFO, as well as that of the dispatcher and supervising officer who first heard Muscarello's account".
http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/pic...erDrawing2.jpg
http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/pictures/Exeter1.jpg
Left to right: 18 year old Norman Muscarello who first spotted the UFO, patrolman David Hunt and Eugene Bertrand and dispatcher "Scratch" Toland. (Manchester Union Leader);
http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/pictures/Exeter2.jpg
Norman Muscarello speaks to the Journalism class at Exeter High School in 1980, his first public interview since the "Incident at Exeter" in 1965. (Courtesy Talon);
Type of Case/Report: MajorCase
Hynek Classification: CE1
Number of Witnesses: Multiple
Special Features/Characteristics: Police, Animal Reaction, Witness Photo;
************************************************** ********
The Exeter, NH/Muscarello Case Directory;
NICAP;
Articles and documents related to the case.
Full Investigation by Raymond Fowler (NICAP);
Raymond Fowler, "UFOs: Interplanetary Visitors" (reprinted on NICAP.org)
Raymond Fowler's report on his investigation of the "Incident at Exeter."
The Exeter Puzzle;
TRUE Magazine's Report On Flying Saucers, 1967 (reprinted on UFOs at Close Sight)
This is the full article, including several photographs, from the TRUE Magazine's Report On Flying Saucers, 1967.
J. Allen Hynek: The Incident at Exeter
Excerpt from Hynek, J. Allen . "The Hynek UFO Report" (1977)
Excerpt from J. Allen Hynek's book, "The Hynek UFO Report," discussing the Exeter UFO encounter case. R
Interview With the Witnesses of the Exeter Incident
Dennis Robinson / SeaCoastNH.com
Fifteen years after the "incident at Exeter", students at Exeter High School with teacher Dennis Robinson interviewed key witnesses to the event.
Boston Globe: 'Close encounter revisited'
Joel Brown, Boston Globe (Sept. 1, 2005)
"Forty years ago this Saturday, New Hampshire teenager Norman Muscarello walked down a dark country road into weird history." R
Print / Other References
Fuller, John Grant. "Incident at Exeter". Putnam, 1966.
Full Report / Article
Source: The Portsmouth Herald (Portsmouth, NH), Sept. 2, 2005 Original Source
"UFO Sighting Terrified Locals 40 Years Ago"
By Bonnie Meroth;
The Portsmouth Herald;
EXETER - Engulfed in the blackness of a late summer night, a teenage Navy recruit walked down the quiet country highway. Suddenly, a huge object loomed above him. Throwing himself to the ground to avoid being hit, he huddled against a stone wall. The blood drained from his face.
The time was around 2 a.m. The date was Sept. 3, 1965. Thus began the "Incident at Exeter," a series of sightings officially qualified as a legitimate visit from an unidentified flying object.
In September and October 1965, several sightings in New Hampshire were carefully investigated and documented by local and federal offices.
The encounters that night took special precedence over other UFO sightings because of the credibility of Exeter police officers Eugene Bertrand and David Hunt, as well as Reginald "Scratch" Toland, who was dispatcher and supervising officer when the shaken teenager, Norman Muscarello, came to the police station claiming he had encountered a UFO.
A similar report substantiated his story. Earlier, Bertrand had come upon a lone woman parked on the side of Route 101 near an overpass two miles outside Exeter.
She said a huge, silent, red and brilliantly glowing airborne object had chased her from the town of Epping about 12 miles away. It had been only a few feet from her car before it departed at a tremendous speed and disappeared.
Bertrand saw nothing but a bright star and sent her home. Toland also spoke to the woman, who told him she had been chased by the "low-flying, large, round object with flashing red lights."
An hour later, Bertrand received a call from Toland to report back to the station immediately because "a kid had come in who had seen a UFO." The police officer picked up Muscarello at the station.
The teen led him back to the site where he'd seen the craft. After sitting in the parked cruiser for several minutes, Bertrand radioed the dispatcher to say they saw nothing unusual.
Bertrand, instructed to check out the field before heading back, proceeded to do so with Muscarello.
Horses in a nearby barn began to kick and whinny. Dogs in the neighborhood began to howl.
Muscarello shouted, "Look out, here it comes!" and they watched as something luminous rose from behind tall evergreens.
The aircraft, about 100 feet away, silently sped so close to Bertrand that he dropped to the ground and drew his service weapon.
"There was this huge, dark object as big as that barn over there with red flashing lights on it," Bertrand later told an investigator. "It barely cleared that tree right there, and it was moving back and forth... It seemed to tilt and come right at us. Norman told me later that I was yelling, 'I'll shoot it! I'll shoot it!' I did drop on one knee and drew my service revolver, but I didn't shoot."
Bertrand, dragged Muscarello, frozen with fear, back to the cruiser.
From the car, the men saw no tail, no wings and heard no sound.
Already en route, Hunt arrived within minutes and saw the UFO as it "floated, wobbled and did things that no plane could do" before it darted away toward Hampton. They returned to the station to write their report.
Toland received a call shortly after from a Hampton telephone operator who said that a distressed motorist attempted to contact the police from a pay phone. He yelled at the operator, saying he was being chased by a flying saucer that came right at him and that it was still out there. He was then disconnected.
A Hampton Police Department's blotter entry for that night reads: "September 3, 1965: 3 a.m. Exeter Police Department reports unidentified flying object in that area. Units 2, 4 and Pease Air Force alerted. At 3:17 a.m., received a call from Exeter operator and Officer Toland. Advised that a male subject called and asked for police department, further stating that call was in re: a large unidentified flying object, but call was cut off. Call received from a Hampton pay phone, location unknown."
The official report to Project Blue Book from the director of administrative services of the Pease Air Force Base at Portsmouth concluded with this paragraph by the investigator: "At this time, have been unable to arrive at a probable cause of this sighting. The three observers seem to be stable, reliable persons, especially the two patrolmen. I viewed the area and found nothing in the area that could be the probable cause."
Project Blue Book is a compilation by the U.S. government to repute the existence of extraterrestrial objects.
Peter Geremia, New Hampshire state director of the Mutual Unidentified Flying Object Network Inc., noted: "The police officers involved put their careers on the line. They courageously came forward and stated what they saw at a time when witnesses were not allowed any credibility on the subject."
Geremia, who has appeared on national media programs including "Unsolved Mysteries," presented chronological depiction of what happened the night of the Incident at Exeter.
His "decent rendition of what happened" matches the series of events starting with Muscarello being frightened by a UFO.
Bertrand, although an Air Force veteran, was never able to put a name to the UFO.
"What do you call a UFO? Was it from another planet? We just couldn't identify it," he noted.
He meticulously described it as a "huge, shapeless object with five sequentially pulsating-from-left-to-right bright red lights, so bright you couldn't look at it."
The Pentagon repeatedly denied the sightings, but the incident was read into the congressional record in April 1966 by Raymond Fowler, representative of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena in Washington. It was the first open congressional hearing on UFOs.
Fowler, internationally renowned author of 11 books about UFOs, has studied UFO reports for decades.
In a recent interview, he shared his thoughts on the Exeter incident and the stories that followed.
"The second-hand speculation stories were varied and perhaps hypothesized," Fowler said. "Muscarello's mother purportedly saw confidential drawings of a UFO landing site pattern that was handcuffed to an Air Force investigator who visited her house. The neighboring farmer was instructed by the Air Force to plow under landing marks in his field.
"The hens in the neighborhood stopped laying eggs. The air-base intelligence officer was seen buying up all the newspapers carrying stories about Sept. 3. A base commander was seen in civilian clothes rather than uniform while investigating," he related.
Then, there was the irrefutable.
"There were major similarities with these area sightings that conform to documented cases. UFOs tend to be seen near swamps, major power lines or nuclear sources. Muscarello noticed the object coming from over a line of trees behind which were major power lines. There was a swamp in the area. Pease and the Navy yard both had nuclear power entities. And, when a Pease Air Force base commander attempted to disprove it was a UFO by simulating the incident by turning on runway lights, he failed," noted Fowler.
Fowler, now retired from active investigation, noted in a letter to the United States Air Force, "The UFO sighted by Norman Muscarello was identical to the UFO seen later by Muscarello, Bertrand and Hunt.
"There is no question in my mind that the same or similar object was involved in both of these particular sightings.
"Since I did not interview the unnamed woman, I am not certain of the details... but according to Officer Bertrand, the object... was very similar to the UFO they sighted later... another witness, a male motorist, also sighted a similar object..."
Because of the viability of the testimonies of those involved on the night of Sept. 3, 1965, and because of Fowler's testimony into the Congressional Record in April 1966, the United States Air Force admitted that indeed, the Incident at Exeter involved an unidentified flying object.
Case ID: 426
link; http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case426.htm
Incident at Exeter/Hynek, J. Allen ."The Hynek UFO
Following on from my last post that covered the UFO Incident at Exeter (Muscarello Case);1965;Below is the conclusions and report of Dr Hynek, chief UFO scientific investigator for the USAF investigations into UFOs;
************************************************** ********
Incident at Exeter, Pt. 1 of 2 (Hynek).repost;
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 1997 22:52:52 -0500
To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <[email protected]>
From: "Jerry Cohen" <[email protected]>
Subject: Incident at Exeter, Pt. 1 of 2 (Hynek)
QUOTE;
"For those people that read the Oberg/Cooper series, I had mentioned
that Dr. Hynek, the Air Force's number one civilian astronomical
consultant, slowly turned from a debunker to a believer and I cited
some things that happened along the way to cause this".
The following case, also located in Blue Book files, had to
be one of the major precipitating factors. I had recently
posted a brief summary of the case in a post to John Powell.
Most researchers are quite familiar with it, but for those
people out there not old enough to remember, but who are reading
this mail and attempting to fathom where some of the researchers
today are coming from, this was just one of many items that Dr.
Hynek found impossible to reconcile in his many years dealing
with UFO reports. It sounds like science fiction, but it was on the
police blotter and in Blue Book files.
Remember, we only need one of these cases we are mentioning
along the way to be the real thing for us to demonstrate the
necessity for the varied research being performed today by
various civilian groups. You may not agree with all their
methods, but _someone_ has to examine this thing seriously.
The scientific establishment has simply shaken its head and
said; "We don't know what it was or if it was real." This
was not much help to the two patrolmen who "experienced" and
reported the following events. God knows we need more
"scientists" taking it seriously.
Excerpt below taken directly from:
Hynek, J. Allen . "The Hynek UFO Report" . paperback, pp
154-166 . Dell Publishing Co. 1977 : which included material
therein from Blue Book files.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
http://www.cohenufo.org/Images.GIF/hyneksml.jpg
Dr. Hynek:
The "Incident at Exeter" - September 3, 1965 *
Dr. Hynek: "Incident" is hardly the term for this classic
Close Encounter case which is known to virtually all who
have followed the UFO phenomenon. This encounter at Exeter,
New Hampshire gained national prominence, and caused both
the original witnesses and the Air Force considerable
embarrassment.
Not only is this a fine example of a Close
Encounter of the First Kind, but it is a showcase
illustration of Blue Book negligence, put-down of witnesses,
attempts to explain away the testimony of responsible
witnesses with a parade of "official" explanations, and of
capitulation on the part of the Pentagon which, months
later, had to admit that the case should have been carried
as "Unidentified."
The file folders in Blue Book, however,still have the original evaluation of "Astro-Stars/Planets"and "Aircraft for Operation Big Blast." (The astronomical
evaluation is completely untenable and Operation Big Blast
terminated more than an hour before the incident at Exeter
began, according to official records.)
The story of this case is well documented in John Fuller's book
"The Incident at Exeter," and in an excellent report by Raymond
Fowler and his associates, who did a far better job investigating
the case than did Blue Book. I am indebted to Mr. Fowler for the
excerpts from his report that follow. Blue Book files on this case
are fairly extensive in themselves although they draw heavily on the
report by Mr. Fowler.
Blue Book's first mention of the incident at Exeter is dated
October 15, 1965, and comes in the form of a request from the
Headquarters of the 817th Air Division (SAC) at Pease AFB, New
Hampshire. Written by their Director of Information for the
Commander, and addressed to the Information Officer at
Wright-Patterson AFB, it reads:
. . .
There have been an unusually high number of reported sightings
of unidentified flying objects in the Pease AFB, New Hampshire, area
which have been the subject of much discussion and numerous
newspaper, radio and television reports. Many of these sightings
have been reported to this base and your records will show that we
have performed thorough investigations of the . . .
Several members of this command have actually been called to view UFOs by sincere and sober citizens but as yet, we have always been too late or
"unlucky." The most interesting sighting, in the nearby town of
Exeter, aroused special interest as two policemen saw the object at
very close range. . .
This office has, of course, not commented on sightings reported
to the Air Force other than to say that they have been or are being
investigated, that the reports will be sent to your organization,
that further releases will be made from the Public Information
Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, etc.
The fact that we cannot comment on the investigations has led to somewhat alarming suspicion of Air Force motives and interest in this area, the most
popular belief being that "...the Air Force won't release the truth
because if the truth were known, everyone would be panicked." I
have attempted to counter this by explaining the USAF's interest in
this matter every time I speak to the press or private citizens
about this matter. . . Still, however, an alarming number of people
remain unconvinced {!}.
Many members of the two nearby Military Affairs committees and
key citizens from surrounding towns and cities have inquired
concerning the possibility of an Air Force speaker on this subject.
Do you operate a speaker's bureau or would you be able to suggest
where I might be able to obtain knowledge of an Air Force spokesman
who could explain the Air Force UFO program and what happens to
reports sent to your organization? If speakers from your
organization are available, it might be possible for us to arrange
transportation via Pease Base C-47, Billeting poses no problem.
Your assistance is greatly appreciated.
For the Commander
A.B.B., 1st Lt. USAF
Director of Information
Dr. Hynek: The initial report which came in from Pease AFB
on September 15, 1965, was the soul of brevity.
"The following report of an unidentified object is
hereby submitted in accordance with AFR-200-2.
A) Description of Object;
1) round
2) baseball
3) bright red
4) five red lights in a row
5) lights were close together and moved as one object
6) none
7) none
8) none
9) extremely bright red
B) Description of Course of Object;
1) visual sighting
2) object was at an altitude of approximately 100 feet
and moved in an arc of 135 degrees;
3) object disappeared at an altitude of approximately
one hundred feet on a magnetic heading of
approximately 160 degrees;
4) the object was erratic in movement and would
disappear behind houses and building in the area.
It would then appear at a position other than where
it disappeared. When in view, it would act as a
floating leaf.
5) object departed on a heading of 160 degrees and was
observed until it disappeared in the distance
6) one hour;
C) Manner of Observation;
1) ground-visual
2) none
3) N/A;
D) Time and Date of Sighting
1) 3/9/0600 Z
2) night
E) Location of Observer
1) 3 nautical miles SW of Exeter in New Hampshire
F) Identifying Information of Observer
1) civilian, Norman J. Muscarello, age 18.... appears
to be reliable.
2) civilian, Eugene F. Bertrand, Jr., age 30, Exeter
Police Department, Exeter, New Hampshire,
patrolman, reliable
3) civilian, David R. Hunt, age 28, Exeter Police
Department, Exeter, New Hampshire, patrolman,
reliable
G) Weather and Winds;
1) weather was clear with no known weather phenomena.
There was a five-degree inversion from surface to
5,000'.
2) winds at Pease AFB (the winds were uniformly from
the west, low velocity near the surface to quite
high above 10,000')
3) clear (unlimited)
4) 30 nautical miles
5) None
6) None
H) None
I) None
J) None
K) Major David H. Griffin, Base Disaster Control Officer,
Command pilot;
1) at this time I have been unable to arrive at a
probably cause of this sighting. The three
observers seem to be stable, reliable persons,
especially the two patrolmen. I viewed the area of
the sighting and found nothing in the area that
could be the probable cause. Pease AFB had five
B-47 aircraft flying in the area during this period
but I do not believe that they had any connection
with this sighting.
Dr. Hynek: The report in Blue Book continues with the statements of
the three witnesses involved. The first, from Norman Muscarello,
follows:
I, Norman J. Muscarello, was hitchhiking on Rt. 150,
three miles south of Exeter, New Hampshire, at 0200 hours on
the 3rd of September. A group of five bright red lights
appeared over a house about a hundred feet from where I was
standing. The lights were in a line at about a sixty-degree
angle.
They were so bright, they lighted up the area. The
lights then moved out over a large field and acted at times
like a floating leaf. They would go down behind the trees,
behind a house and then reappear. They always moved in the
same sixty-degree angle. Only one light would be on at a
time. They were pulsating: one, two, three, four, five,
four, three, two, one. They were so bright I could not
distinguish a form to the object.
I watched these lights for about fifteen minutes and they finally disappeared behindsome trees and seemed to go into a field. At one time while
I was watching them, they seemed to come so close I jumped
into a ditch to keep from being hit. After the lights went
into a field, I caught a ride to the Exeter Police Station
and reported what I had seen.
signed,
Norman J. Muscarello
Dr. Hynek: The statement from the first patrolman, who after being
called to the scene also witnessed the UFO:
I, Eugene F. Bertrand, Jr., was cruising on the morning
of the 3rd of September at 0100 on Rt. 108 bypass near
Exeter, New Hampshire. I noticed an automobile parked on the
side of the road and stopped to investigate. I found a woman
in the car who stated she was too upset to drive. She stated
that a light had been following her car and had stopped over
her car. I stayed with her about fifteen minutes but was
unable to see anything.
I departed and reported back to Exeter Police Station where I found Norman Muscarello. He related his story of seeing some bright red lights in the
field. After taking him back to where he stated that he had
seen the lights. When we had gone about fifty feet, a group
of five bright red lights came from behind a group of trees
near us.
They were extremely bright and flashed on one at a
time. The lights started to move around over the field. At
one time, they came so close I fell to the ground and
started to draw my gun. The lights were so bright, I was
unable to make out any form. There was no sound or vibration
but the farm animals were upset in the area and were making
a lot of noise. When the lights started coming near us
again, Mr. Muscarello and I ran to the car.
I radioed Patrolman David Hunt who arrived in a few minutes. He also
observed the lights which were still over the field but not
as close as before. The lights moved out across the field at
an estimated altitude of one hundred feet, and finally
disappeared in the distance at the same altitude. The lights
were always in line at about a sixty-degree angle. When the
object moved, the lower lights were always forward of the
others.
signed,
Eugene F. Bertrand, Patrolman
Dr. Hynek: From the third witness:
I, David R. Hunt, at about 0255 on the morning of the
3rd of September, received a call from Patrolman Bertrand to
report to an area about three miles southwest of Exeter, New
Hampshire. Upon arriving at the scene, I observed a group of
bright red lights flashing in sequence.
They appeared to beabout one half mile over a field to the southeast. After
observing the lights for a short period of time, they moved
off in a southeasterly direction and disappeared in the
distance. The lights appeared to remain at the same altitude
which I estimate to be about one hundred feet.
signed,
David R. Hunt, Patrolman
Dr. Hynek: Blue Book's way of dealing with these witnesses'
reports was to make every effort to locate some type of
aircraft operation in the area in question; none was
successful.
A news clip from the Amesbury News, Massachusetts,
stated that the UFO was identified as an "ad gimmick"; but
Ray Fowler checked with the Skylight Aerial Advertising
Company and was advised that their aircraft was _not_ flying
on the night of September 3.
He was also informed that the company aircraft rarely flew into southern New Hampshire,and when it did, it was usually in the Salem and Manchester
areas, miles away from Exeter.Furthermore, he learned that
the "Skylight" aircraft does not carry red flashing lights;
it carries a rectangular sign with white flashing lights.
Yet the manager of the advertising company had stated to the
Amesbury News that "perhaps some UFOs reported in the New
Hampshire area could have been their aircraft."
Unfortunately, the press anxiously latched on to this bit of
irrelevant information to "explain" the Exeter case.
The two simultaneous investigations of this case are an
interesting study in contrasts. The Air Force records are at
best sketchy, and focus essentially on attempts at locating
existing aircraft in the area; as usual, Blue Book started
out its investigation with a negative premise. On the other
hand, Raymond Fowler and his associates made an exhaustive
examination of the case, keeping their minds open at all
times. Their final reports were duly submitted to Blue Book.
The following is excerpted from Fowler's report, which
supplements Muscarello's statement to the Air Force
investigator:
. . .
Muscarello reported the incident to Desk Officer
Reginald Towland at about 1:45 A.M. EDT. Side view and angle
view seen. He was hit with fear and hardly able to talk. A
radio call was made to Officer Bertrand asking him to return
to the station, pick up Muscarello, and investigate at the
scene of the sighting which he did. Upon arriving at the Carl
Dining field, the object was nowhere to be seen.
After waiting and looking from the cruiser for several minutes,
Bertrand radioed headquarters that there was nothing there
and that the boy must have been imagining things. It was
then suggested that he examine the field before returning,
so Bertrand and Muscarello advanced into the field.
As the police officer played his flashlight beam back and forth
over the field, Muscarello sighted the object rising slowly
from behind some nearby trees and shouted. Bertrand swung
around and saw a large dark object carrying a straight row
of four extraordinarily bright, red, pulsating lights coming
into the field at treetop level.
It swung around toward the man just clearing a sixty-to seventy-foot tree and seemingly only one hundred feet away from them. Instinctively, Officer
Bertrand drew his service revolver (he stated that
Muscarello shouted, "Shoot it!"), but thinking this unwise,
replaced it and yelled to Muscarello to take cover in the
cruiser.
He told me (Fowler) that he was afraid that they
both would be burnt by the blinding lights closing in on
them. They ran to the cruiser where Bertrand immediately put
in a radio call to headquarters for assistance. Officer Hunt
arrived within minutes, and the trio observed the object
move away over and below the tree line.
Dr. Hynek:
Now let us return to the Blue Book coverage for
a look at an interesting exchange of letters between the
then Major Quintanilla and the police officers involved.
Quintanilla states:
Our investigations and evaluation of the sighting
indicates a possible association with the Air Force
operation "Big Blast." In addition to aircraft from this
operation, there were five (5) B-47 aircraft flying in the
area during this period. Before final evaluation of your
sighting can be made, it is essential for us to know if
either of you witnessed any aircraft in the area during this
time period, either independently or in connection with the
observed object.
Since there were many aircraft in the area,
at he time, and there were no reports of unidentified
objects from personnel engaged in this air operation, we
might then assume that the objects observed between midnight
and two A.M. might be associated with this military air
operation. If, however, these aircraft were noted by either
of you, this would tend to eliminate this air operation as a
possible explanation for the objects observed.
Signed,
Hector Quintanilla, Jr.
Major, USAF, Chief,
Project Blue Book;
Incident at Exeter, Pt. 2 of 2 (Hynek).
Part two of The Hynek UFO Report on the UFO Incident at Exeter;
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Hynek, J. Allen . "The Hynek UFO Report" . paperback, pp
154-166 . Dell Publishing Co. 1977 : and also, material
therein from Blue Book files.
Dr. Hynek: It is interesting to note that Maj. Quintanilla
had used the term "before a final evaluation of your sighting
can be made," whereas the Pentagon had in fact already issued
its evaluation (attributing the sighting to Operation Big
Blast) some time before Quintanilla wrote his letter.
Maj. Quintanilla received a prompt reply from Officers
Bertrand and Hunt. Their letter of December 2, 1965, reads:
"Dear Sir:
We were very glad to get your letter during the third
week in November, because as you might imagine, we have been
the subject of considerable ridicule since the Pentagon
released its "final evaluation" of our sighting of September
3, 1965.
In other words, both Patrolman Hunt and myself saw
this object at close range, checked it out with each other,
confirmed and reconfirmed the fact that this was not any kind
of conventional aircraft, that it was at an altitude of not
more than a couple of hundred feet and went to considerable
trouble to confirm that the weather was clear, there was no
wind, no chance of weather inversion, and that what we were
seeing was in no way a military or civilian craft.
We entered this in a complete official police report as a supplement to
the blotter of the morning of September 3rd (not September 2
as your letter indicates).
Since our job depends on accuracy and the ability to tell
the difference between fact and fiction, we were naturally
disturbed by the Pentagon report issued which attributed the
sighting to "multiple high-altitude objects in area" and
"weather inversion."
What is a little difficult to understand is the fact that your letter arrived considerably after the Pentagon release. Since your letter says that you are still in the process of making a final evaluation, it seems that
there is an inconsistency here. Ordinarily, this would not be
too important except for the fact that in a situation like
this, we are naturally very reluctant to be considered
irresponsible in our official report to the police station.
One of us (Patrolman Bertrand) was in the Air Force for four
years, engaged in refueling operations, with all kinds of
military aircraft; it was impossible to mistake what we saw
for any kind of military operation, regardless of altitude.
It was also definitely not a helicopter or balloon.
Immediately after the object disappeared, we did see what
probably was a B-47 at high altitudes, but it bore no
relation to the object that we saw.
Another fact is that the time of our observation was
nearly an hour after two A.M. which would eliminate the Air
Force Operation Big Blast since as you say, this took place
between midnight and 2 A.M. Norman Muscarello, who first
reported this object before we went to the site, saw it
somewhere in the vicinity of 2 A.M. but nearly an hour had
passed before he got to the police station and we went out to
the location with him.
We would both appreciate it very much if you would help
us eliminate the possible conclusion that some people have
made in that we might have: (a) made up the story, (b) were
incompetent observers. Anything that you could do along this
line would be very much appreciated, and I am sure that you
can understand the position we are in.
We appreciate the problem that the Air Force must have
with the number of irresponsible reports on this subject, and
don't want to cause you unnecessary trouble. One the other
hand, we think that you probably understand our position.
Thanks very much for your interest.
Sincerely,
Patrolman Eugene Bertrand;
and Patrolman David Hunt;
Dr. Hynek: They received no reply to this letter. They wrote
again on December 29:
Dear Sir:
Since we have not heard from you since our letter of
December 2, we are writing this to request some kind of an
answer since we are still upset about what happened after the
Pentagon released its news that we had just seen stars or
planets, or high-altitude air exercises.
As we mentioned in our last letter to you, it could not
have been the Operation Big Blast you mentioned since the
time of our sighting was an hour after that exercise and it
may not have even been the same date since you refer to our
sighting as September 2.
Our sighting was on September 3. In addition, as we mentioned, we are both familiar with all theB-47's and B-52's and helicopters and jet fighters which are
going over this place all the time. On top of this, Patrolman
Bertrand had four years of refueling experience in the Air
Force and knows regular aircraft of all kinds.
Click here for more information regarding the Exeter sightings.
link; http://www.cohenufo.org/authorsc.html#exeternh
link; http://www.cohenufo.org/Hynek/hynk_exeter2.htm
UFOS & NUKES | U.S. Air Force/Military witnesses;
In this section the area of UFOs interfering or manipulating nuclear facilities will be covered in the following posts;This area i feel needs highlighting as there have been so many military witnesses who have came forward to share their experiences;
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UFOS & NUKES | U.S. Air Force Fighters Chased UFOs at Malmstrom AFB in the 1960s and ‘70s;
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By Robert Hastings;
www.ufohastings.com
3-19-11;
quote;
" My father, USAF Senior Master Sergeant Robert E. Hastings, was stationed at Malmstrom AFB, Montana in 1966-67 and worked in the SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) building which housed the base’s sophisticated, NORAD-integrated radar facility.
As some former members of the 29th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron (FIS) based at Malmstrom will recall, there were several scrambles during that era involving intercept attempts of “unknown targets” that were being tracked on radar as they maneuvered near and/or hovered above various Minuteman nuclear missile sites scattered across the surrounding countryside".
I possess a fake 29th FIS uniform patch, impishly created by a former squadron member, which features a strange-looking creature seated in the cockpit of a fighter and the caption “Land of Make Believe”—both being references to the, uh, interesting missions that some squadron members participated in during those years.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-r2yLRHZi52...rm%2Bpatch.jpg
In the course of my 38-year research project on the UFO-Nukes Connection, I have interviewed retired Air Force and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) radar operators who tracked UFOs at Malmstrom and other USAF bases. In the late 1960s, Grover Austad worked as an FAA controller at Malmstrom’s SAGE building. In a telephone interview conducted in December 2003, he described one such incident:
“One night this object came on the radar and it was moving at tremendous speed,” he said, “We estimated that it was flying about 2,400 mph. Now, the controllers who worked at SAGE knew about the SR-71—even though it was still secret. But this thing, whatever it was, was even faster than that.” (The SR-71 “Blackbird” still holds the official record as the world’s fastest jet—at 2,193 mph—a speed achieved during a short-duration, straight-course flight on July 28, 1976.)
Austad continued,
“So I called ADC—that’s Air Defense Command—to see if they had it too. The controller I talked to said, ‘Yeah, I see it, but UFOs don’t exist, do they?’ Then he laughed sarcastically. The object played around for a few minutes. It zigzagged back-and-forth, covering hundreds of miles. Then it disappeared off the scope.”
Austad said that this tracking, and similar ones that he only heard about, involving other controllers at Malmstrom, were formally logged by the FAA controllers and then reported to the ADC radar unit at SAGE. “We always told them about what we saw [on radar], but they never gave us any feedback.”
Describing a different incident, another retired FAA controller who worked at Malmstrom’s Radar Approach and Control (RAPCON) center, Paul Selley, told me,
“Yeah, I was on that night when we tracked the UFOs. There were five of them. We tracked them for a short time and then they just disappeared. They were moving really fast—they went across the screen in no time. At first, we thought it might have been some high-altitude aircraft that the Air Force was testing, but to have five targets on the screen at once, that explanation wasn’t too realistic.”
When I asked Selley to estimate how many times UFOs had been tracked at RAPCON during the period that he worked there, he immediately responded,
“It wasn’t just once. I was on several times when we picked them up. It was strictly at night, usually between 7 o’clock and 11 o’clock. Now, some of [the incidents] might have been during the midnight shift—I worked them all—but I don’t recall any during that time, but there might have been some. I don’t remember tracking them in the daytime.”
When I asked Selley to describe exactly how the UFOs appeared on radar, he said,
“All of a sudden, they would just pop-up out of nowhere and cross our screens in just a few seconds. They were so fast that you couldn’t take your eye off them or they’d be gone. We’d call [the Air Force] to find out if they had [any of their own aircraft] up, but they never did.”
Referring to the Air Defense Command radar operators working at Malmstrom’s SAGE building, he added,
“We heard rumors that they were tracking the objects too, but whenever we asked them about it, they would just clam-up and wouldn’t verify it. Sometimes, they would claim that we were just tracking false targets, but they never would confirm that we were tracking UFOs.”
Despite these denials, Selley said that he and the other controllers all held the same opinion about the nature of the unknown targets.
“We thought that they were [bona fide] UFOs,” he said, “We didn’t have anything that could move across the screen as fast as they did. They were moving at thousands of miles per hour, faster than the SR-71.”
Selley suggested that I call O.P. “Pote” Morrow, who worked as a supervisor at RAPCON from 1967 to 1980. Initially, Morrow said that he didn’t remember any incidents when UFOs had been tracked on radar at Malmstrom. However, when I mentioned that I had worked as a teen-aged janitor at RAPCON in 1966-67 and had once been told by one of the controllers that Air Force jet interceptors had been scrambled to intercept five UFOs, he interrupted me and said,
“You know, you’ve jogged my memory. Now that you’ve mentioned it, I do recall something about fighters being sent up one time to chase unknown targets. They went southwest, but when they got out there, they couldn’t see anything. They were vectored right to the spot but nothing was there.”
Whether Morrow or anyone else with the FAA knew it or not, Air Force radar controllers at Malmstrom later reported that the five unknowns—which were actually southeast, not southwest of the base—had ascended vertically at high velocity as the jets approached their position.
This incident is described in greater detail in my book UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites, which is available at my website.
For whatever reason, unlike Austad and Selley, Morrow’s demeanor was guarded and at times evasive. His claim that fighters had only been scrambled “one time” during the lengthy period of his employment at RAPCON is simply untrue, according to others in-the-know. For example, when I called another former FAA controller, “Bud” Kittleson, to ask about UFOs being tracked at RAPCON and SAGE, he said,
“There were objects that were unknown that were tracked on radar out near Lewistown, and some closer to Great Falls. There were some occasions where [the Air Force] did scramble aircraft out of Great Falls. As far as I know, nothing was found.”
Kittleson said he didn’t remember an incident when five unknowns were simultaneously tracked. However, significantly, he did acknowledge that fighters had been launched from Malmstrom to intercept UFOs on more than one occasion. Also noteworthy is his reference to Lewistown, Montana, located not far south of Echo and Oscar Flights, where credible reports by former Minuteman missile launch officers say that UFOs were involved in missile shutdown incidents in March 1967.
That said, there is currently no evidence available to link those cases with the trackings described by Kittleson.
Another retired controller, Joe Weinzetl, told me,
“There were a couple of times when Jerry Webster and I tracked unknown objects moving at high speeds. I remember we estimated that one of them was traveling around 1,700 miles per hour.
It was at high-altitude and only appeared on our screen for about 20 seconds. On another occasion, Paul [Selley] was there with me when we tracked one. Whenever something like that happened, we called the [FAA] In-Route Traffic Control Center and told them about it. But that’s where we left it. We never heard anything back once we reported it.”
Declassified U.S. government documents referring to these kinds of incidents are relatively rare. However, one Air Force letter released via the Freedom of Information Act—containing North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) log entries describing UFO incursions at Malmstrom’s missile sites in November 1975—refers to the radar tracking of the objects, which subsequently played cat-and-mouse with the F-106 jet fighters sent up to chase them. A few of the log entries follow here—some of them followed by my own comments in brackets:
24th NORAD Region Senior Director’s Log (Malmstrom AFB, MT)
7 Nov 75 (1035Z) Received a call from the 341st Strategic Air Command Post (SAC CP), saying that the following missile locations reported seeing a large red to orange to yellow object: M-1, L-3, LIMA, and L-6...Commander and Deputy for Operations (DO) informed.
7 Nov 75 (1203Z) SAC advised that the LCF at Harlowton, Montana, observed an object which emitted a light which illuminated the site driveway.
7 Nov 75 (1319Z) SAC advised K-1 says very bright object to their east is now southeast of them and they are looking at it with 10x50 binoculars. Object seems to have lights (several) on it, but no distinct pattern. The orange/gold object overhead also seems to have lights on it. SAC also advised female civilian reports having seen an object bearing south of her position six miles west of Lewistown. [RH: Note that all of these reports refer to the observation of aerial “objects.”
Apparently, the Security Alert Teams could not identify them as either military or civilian aircraft.]
7 Nov 75 (1327Z) L-1 reports that the object to their northeast seems to be issuing a black object from it, tubular in shape. In all this time, surveillance [radar] has not been able to detect any sort of track except for known traffic. [RH: In other words, when these sightings were first reported by SATs, radar personnel at Malmstrom AFB and Great Falls International Airport could not detect any unknown aerial objects near the missile sites. As we shall see, radar contact with the UFOs was finally established as the sightings continued to unfold.]
8 Nov 75 (0635Z) A security camper team at K-4 reported UFO with white lights, one red light 50 yards behind white light. Personnel at K-1 seeing same object.
8 Nov 75 (0645Z) Height personnel picked up objects 10-13,000 feet. Track J330, EKLB 0649, 18 knots, 9,500 feet. Objects as many as seven, as few as two A/C. [RH: Height-finding radar finally confirmed that UFOs were present, varying over time between two and seven in number.]
8 Nov 75 (0753Z) J330 unknown 0753. Stationary/seven knots/12,000...two F-106...NCOC notified. [RH: Radar confirmed that one UFO, at an altitude of 12,000 feet, had hovered—that is, was “stationary”—before resuming flight at a leisurely 7 knots, or 9 mph. Shortly thereafter, two F-106s were scrambled to intercept it.]
8 Nov 75 (0905Z) From SAC CP: L-sites had fighters and objects; fighters did not get down to objects.
8 Nov 75 (0915Z) From SAC CP: From four different points: Observed objects and fighters; when fighters arrived in the area, the lights went out; when fighters departed, the lights came back on; To NCOC.
[RH: As SAT personnel at four different locations watched, the UFOs played cat-and-mouse with the F-106s, extinguishing their illumination as the jets approached their position and re-illuminating themselves after the fighters returned to base. The NORAD Combat Operations Center (NCOC) in Colorado Springs, Colorado was immediately informed of this incident.]
8 Nov 75 (1105Z) From SAC CP: L-5 reported object increased in speed — high velocity, raised in altitude and now cannot tell the object from stars. To NCOC.
9 Nov 75 (0305Z) SAC CP called and advised SAC crews at Sites L-1, L-6, and M-1 observing UFO. Object yellowish bright round light 20 miles north of Harlowton, 2 to 4,000 feet.
9 Nov 75 (0320Z) SAC CP reports UFO southeast of Lewistown, orange white disc object. 24th NORAD Region surveillance checking area. Surveillance unable to get height check. [RH: Note the reference to the UFO having a “disc” or saucer shape. Two more log entries from November 9th confirm that UFOs continued to be reported by SAT teams positioned near various missile launch facilities. Then the action moved from Malmstrom to Minot AFB, in North Dakota.]
10 Nov 75 (1125Z) UFO sighting reported by Minot Air Force Station, a bright star-like object in the west, moving east, about the size of a car...the object passed over the radar station, 1,000 to 2,000 feet high, no noise heard...NCOC notified.
END OF NORAD LOG ENTRIES;
In conclusion, UFOs were tracked by both USAF and FAA radar operators at Malmstrom AFB during the Cold War era. My “UFO-Nukes Connection” press conference in Washington D.C. last September included the participation of seven former or retired USAF personnel who described UFO activity at the ICBM sites outside of Malmstrom and other SAC bases in the '60s and '70s. CNN streamed the event live. The video of the press conference is at:
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More . . .
http://www.ufohastings.com/
See Also:
Malmstrom Air Force Base Picks Up UFO on Radar; "Sabotage Alert Team Located Another UFO Directly Over The Base"
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2008...up-ufo-on.html
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Air Force Staff Message: Malmstrom AFB Receives Multiple Reports of UFOs in The Great Falls, Montana Area
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2008...strom-afb.html
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UFOs & NUKES | Missile Shut Down at Malmstrom Confirmed By (Civilian) Veteran of Minuteman Program
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Investigation of UFO Reported Landing on 24 March 1967 Near Malmstrom AFB
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2009...d-landing.html
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SHARE YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE;
[email protected]
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Carpio Grano, North Dakota: UFO Lands Near Minutem
This next cases are interesting in the sense that credible military witnesses are saying that genuine UFO causes radio transmissions interference and that this lead to direct defensive measures taken in some cases;The below format is in the form of official documents showing reports of unknown object/s that where reported to the relevant military authorities;
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UFOs & NUKES | Carpio Grano, North Dakota: UFO Lands Near Minuteman Missile Base; Affects Radio Transmissions - Defensive Measures Taken!
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By Department of The Air Force;
Headquarters 862nd Combat Support Group (SAC)
Minot AFB, North Dakota;
8-24-1966;
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Air Force Personnel Observe UFOs Near Minuteman Missile Silo (Golf Launch) in Nebraska
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_PXeDY3KOwg...B-%2B8-26-1965
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_PXeDY3KOwg...-26-1965%2B(B)
By Department of The Air Force;
Headquarters 90th Strategic Missile Wing (SAC);
Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming;
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Farmer Reports UFO Over Nearby Minuteman II Missile Silo
4-13-1966;
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_PXeDY3KOwg...lo%2B4-13-1966
By United States Air Force;
Headquarters 4th Strategic Aerospace Division (SAC);
4-13-1966;
Malmstrom AFB Receives Multiple Reports of UFOs;
Continuing with the format of unclassified documents on UFOs interfering or showing up at military nuclear facilities:
Air Force Staff Message: Malmstrom AFB Receives Multiple Reports of UFOs in The Great Falls, Montana Area;
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_PXeDY3KOwg...h%2B1967%2B(A)
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_PXeDY3KOwg...h%2B1967%2B(B)
UFO Sightings at ICBM Sites and Nuclear Weapons Storage Areas ;
- part I -
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By Robert Hastings;
quote;
"Although the vast majority of Americans are completely unaware of its existence, the UFO/Nukes Connection is now remarkably well-documented. Air Force, FBI, and CIA files declassified via the Freedom of Information Act establish a convincing, ongoing pattern of UFO activity at U.S. nuclear weapons sites extending back to December 1948".
For more than 30 years, I have been interviewing former and retired U.S. Air Force personnel regarding their direct or indirect involvement in nuclear weapons-related UFO sighting incidents. These individuals—from retired colonels to former airmen—report extraordinary encounters which have obvious national security implications. In fact, taken to their logical conclusion, the reported incidents have planetary implications, given the horrific consequences that would result from a full-scale, global nuclear war.
At the time of their experiences, my former/retired USAF sources held positions ranging from nuclear missile launch and targeting officers, to missile maintenance personnel, to missile security police. The incidents described occurred at Malmstrom, Minot, F.E. Warren, Ellsworth, Vandenberg, and Walker AFBs, between 1963 and 1996. Other sources were stationed at Wurtsmith and Loring AFBs, where B-52 nuclear bombers were based during the Cold War era.
To date, I have interviewed over 50 individuals who were involved in various UFO-related incidents at Strategic Air Command bases or remote sites. I have selected the statements of 20 of those persons for presentation here. An expanded discussion of this material will appear in my forthcoming book, The UFO/Nukes Connection.
The testimony below is admittedly anecdotal evidence. Nevertheless, it is offered—often reluctantly—by persons who were entrusted by the U.S. government with the operation or security of weapons of mass destruction. As such, each source was subjected to, and passed, rigorous background checks and personality tests designed to ascertain, with a reasonable degree of certainty, their psychological stability and reliability.
For the moment, the international tensions of the Cold War era have receded. Consequently, the U.S. and Russia are currently downsizing their nuclear arsenals. Nevertheless, vast numbers of nukes still exist and may be unleashed at a moment’s notice. Therefore, these weapons remain a potential threat to the future of the human race.
The events described below leave little doubt that our nuclear weapons program is an ongoing source of interest to someone possessing vastly superior technology. Significantly, the reported UFO activity occasionally transcends mere surveillance and appears to involve direct and unambiguous interference with our strategic weapons systems.
Considering these and similar accounts—too numerous and credible to dismiss—I would argue, as others have before me, that the heightened presence of the UFO phenomenon since the end of World War II is a direct consequence of the advent of the Nuclear Age. To suggest that this is the only explanation for widespread UFO sightings during our own era would be presumptuous, simplistic, and undoubtedly inaccurate. Nevertheless, I believe that the nuclear weapons-related incidents are integral to an understanding of the mystery at hand.
Anyone wishing to contact me may do so at [email protected]
My Sources:
Malmstrom AFB, Montana (1966-67):
1st Lt. Robert C. Jamison—Former USAF Minuteman ICBM targeting officer (Combat Targeting Team Commander), 341st Missile Maintenance Squadron, Malmstrom AFB, Montana:
Jamison states that he assisted in the re-start of an entire "flight" of ten Minuteman ICBMs which had simultaneously and inexplicably shut down immediately after a UFO was sighted in their vicinity by Air Force Security Police. Jamison is certain that the incident occurred at one of the missile flights located near Lewistown, Montana, perhaps Oscar Flight. This event probably occurred on the night of March 24/25, 1967, based on Jamison’s portrayal of related events.
Jamison said that while his and other teams were preparing to respond to the stricken flight, they were ordered—as a precaution—to remain at Malmstrom until all UFO reports from the field had ceased. He further states that his team received a special briefing prior to being dispatched, during which it was directed to immediately report any UFO sighted while traveling to or from the missile field.
In the event that a UFO appeared at one of the missile silos during the re-start procedure, the team was directed to enter the silo's personnel hatch, and remain underground until the UFO had left the vicinity. According to Jamison, the Air Police guard accompanying the team was to remain outside and relay information about the UFO to the base Command Post. Jamison’s own team re-started three or four missiles but did not observe any unusual aerial activity.
Jamison said that while he was at the missile maintenance hangar, waiting to be dispatched to the field, he overheard two-way radio communications at the temporary Command Post, relating to another UFO having been sighted on the ground in a canyon near the town of Belt. He states he recalls hearing that a top commander—either Malmstrom’s base commander, or the 341st Strategic Missile Wing commander—was on-site with other personnel. Based on these recollections, it appears that Jamison is describing the well-documented Belt, Montana UFO sighting of March 24/25, 1967.
Jamison said that immediately after the missile shutdown incident, for a period of approximately two weeks, his team received a special UFO briefing, identical to the one described above, before being dispatched to the field.
Jamison said that approximately two weeks after the full-flight missile shutdown, his team responded to another, partial shutdown—involving four or five ICBMs. Prior to being dispatched, Jamison’s team received a report that the missile failures had occurred immediately after a UFO was sighted over the flight's Launch Control Facility. Jamison recalls that this incident took place at a flight located south or southwest of Great Falls, possibly India Flight, and during daylight hours.
Jamison said that he had subsequently spoken with several individuals, mostly missile security guards, who had witnessed various UFO-related incidents. He reports that they were “visibly shaken” by their experiences.
Comment: At least five other former or retired USAF personnel—all Minuteman missile launch officers stationed at Malmstrom AFB in 1967—have previously divulged their knowledge of UFO involvement in two separate, large-scale missile shutdown incidents. One of these individuals, former Deputy Missile Combat Crew Commander Robert Salas, has extensively investigated these events, together with researcher Jim Klotz. Their revealing summary of the March 1967 incidents may be found at:
HERE;http://www.cufon.org/cufon/malmstrom/malm1.htm
The article above also discusses the Air Force’s formal denial of UFO-involvement in the one officially-acknowledged, full-flight missile shutdown incident at Malmstrom AFB—at Echo Flight—despite the missile launch officers’ testimony to the contrary. The official disavowal is found in the 341st Strategic Missile Wing’s “unit history”.
Significantly, the unit historian, David Gamble, told Klotz that while compiling material for the official history, he had learned of reports of UFO activity within Malmstrom’s missile fields. When he made inquiries, Gamble received “no cooperation” from those in-the-know. He further said that written changes regarding “the UFO aspect of the missile shutdown incident” had been made by superiors. The final version of the unit history states, “Rumors of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) around the area of Echo Flight during the time of the fault were disproven.”
Salas and Klotz have written a thorough and persuasive book, Faded Giant, which expands upon their earlier online report.
If Jamison’s recollections are correct, and he did indeed respond to a large-scale missile shutdown at Oscar Flight on the same date as the well-documented Belt UFO sighting, then the date proposed for the Oscar event by Salas and Klotz—March 16, 1967—would seem to be in error. Salas has now acknowledged this possibility, however, Klotz remains skeptical about the alternate date.
Prior to my posting the Jamison-related material on the NICAP and NCP websites, I sent it to Klotz for his review. He responded, "I think that while witnesses’ memories of ‘events’ tend to be pretty clear, memories of dates tend to be less accurate. I am a document-driven guy and I'd like to see some documentary evidence of multiple events. Lacking this, I only wish to keep open the idea that memories may be of a ‘single’ UFO-related missile shutdown event at Malmstrom. Certainly the indications from witness testimony are that multiple events may well have occurred."
For the record: I too would like to see unaltered documents relating to the shutdown events. In the early 1980s, I attempted to access, via the Freedom of Information Act, Office of Special Investigations (OSI) files relating to UFO sightings at Malmstrom’s ICBM sites, only to be told that all such documents had already been declassified.
However, multiple source testimony strongly suggests otherwise. I think David Gamble’s comments above are telling. In my opinion, the documents that might shed light on the true facts relating to the missile shutdowns will remain hidden indefinitely, whereas those supporting the official version of events, including unit histories, will sometimes be declassified.
I also sent my Jamison-related material to Bob Salas. He responded, "What is interesting to me is the briefing Jamison received about how to respond if they sighted a UFO while working in the field. This would be a further indication that there had been experiences with UFOs at [Launch Facilities] prior to Jamison going out to the sites. We have also received similar information from a source we are protecting at this time."
Salas continued, "I [now] think it is more likely that Oscar Flight went down on some date after the Echo Flight [shutdown] and that it could very well have been on the same day as the Belt sighting. One of the factors that lead me to that 'opinion' is the lack of comment about two flights going down in the [now-declassified] telex that went out, and in the unit history. If the two had gone down on the same day, that would have been mentioned.
The reason, I think, Oscar wasn't mentioned later is because by then the Air Force wanted to keep a secrecy lid on it and avoid the possibility of a leak by the indication of a growing and continuing problem. That would have made quite some headlines in the press."
Salas concluded, "Remember, from all we have heard from the maintenance people we have interviewed, the rumors and comments [about UFO activity] were rampant. I personally received a call from an NCO after the Oscar shutdowns, practically begging me to come talk to him and others about the incident. Believe me, it was all over the base and some of the troops were flat scared."
In conclusion, Jamison’s statements are important because they indicate that the Air Force was fully aware of UFO involvement in at least two missile flight shutdown incidents prior to dispatching the missile maintenance teams to restart the ICBMs. Specifically, according to Jamison, the 341st Missile Maintenance Squadron undertook certain precautions and formally implemented various procedures to protect the teams’ safety while in the field. In this respect, his testimony is unprecedented.
Staff Sgt. Louis D. Kenneweg—Former Minuteman ICBM maintenance clerk, 341st Missile Maintenance Squadron, Malmstrom AFB, Montana:
At the time of the 1967 missile shutdown incidents, Staff Sgt. Louis D. Kenneweg was assigned to the 341st Missile Maintenance Squadron (MIMS) at Malmstrom AFB. His duties at the MIMS hangar included issuing Technical Order kits (T.O.s) to other members of his squadron. As Kenneweg explained, “Each of the repair teams would be required to take T.O.’s in the truck with them.
The kit included books or manuals that would contain technical information that the technicians could look up rather than rely on memory. There was also a check list in plastic sleeves, kind of like a pre-flight checklist for a pilot, that they would use before removing the warhead from the missile. Of course there was an awful lot of supervision when that occurred.”
Although the date is uncertain, one night, around 11:45 P.M. Kenneweg was driving to work when he noticed something unusual in the sky. “As I traveled down one of the roads parallel to the flightline,” he said, “I saw something that I first thought was a private plane’s lights, blinking. As I watched it get closer, I realized that it wasn't blinking at all, but zig-zagging. First here, then there, traveling too fast for a plane.
Then looming over the flightline. I got up late, and I knew that I had little time, but I stopped anyway. I opened the car door, got out, and focused on the lights. I watched it as long as I could, without being late to work. I remember saying to myself that this pilot was going to be in a lot of trouble, coming across the runway, or at least across the Air Force Base property.
I don’t remember it traveling that close to me, but I do remember the image of it disappearing in a low southerly trajectory over the [MIMS] hangar. Of course, it was much farther away than it appeared. At that point, it wasn't ‘blinking’ anymore but had more of a glow. It appeared as a bright light the size of the moon, on a cloudy night, although I don't remember it being cloudy.”
Upon arriving at the MIMS hangar, Kenneweg was confronted by a scene of high activity. “As I entered the hangar I noticed that there were numerous trucks being loaded,” he said, “many more than I had ever seen all at the same time.”
Still puzzled about the strange, zig-zagging light, Kenneweg walked toward the Air Police office, where APs were routinely assigned to accompany the maintenance teams into the missile fields, guarding their trucks and the silos once they opened the gates. When he arrived, he noticed an unusual level of activity there as well. Kenneweg asked the Air Police sergeant on duty whether the base had any helicopters up. The sergeant replied that the helicopters didn’t have radar and didn’t fly at night.
Kenneweg continued, “Back at the office, I issued almost all of the [T.O.] kits on the shelf. I remember saying to myself, ‘I'm running out of kits, this is a busy night.’ Now, I didn’t check the sign-out sheet to see how many kits had been checked out before my shift, but while I was on duty, I did recall that they were almost all checked out. As I count them off in my head today, and try to see them on the shelf, we had a wall with 3 shelves that would hold 25 or so.”
Clearly, a lot of missiles were either undergoing routine maintenance, and/or had gone off Strategic Alert for another reason, all at the same time.
When the maintenance teams returned to the MIMS hangar—Kenneweg first thought that it had been some three hours later, but upon reflection, now believes that it was more than 24 hours later, during his next shift—one of the technicians hinted that something out of the ordinary had taken place in the missile field. “One of the guys mentioned to me that some very weird things were going on that night,” said Kenneweg, “It takes two guys to carry the T.O. kit, and there were other guys behind him, waiting in line to get checked in, and they were all nodding their heads in agreement.
But this guy said that he couldn’t talk about it right then. He said he would tell me all about it back at the barracks. Well, like I have said before, I was busy working [a second job] at the Red Lion Supper Club and didn't really have that serious sit-down conversation with that particular airman. But the barracks was buzzing. Stories about how when they got to the [missile silos] and found no damage, and how all the batteries were dead. I also heard a story that [UFOs] were seen on radar, then they were gone.”
He continued, “Our missile sites each had a tertiary power system. The main power source was delivered by Montana Power. Telephone poles, transformers and wire. The second system was the diesel generators, and the third was the battery back-up within the silo itself.
Numerous reports came back saying that they had found no damage to the fences, wires, transformers, microwave intrusion system, locks on the three-foot-thick concrete blast doors, or to the batteries. So, no evidence of damage from intruders or animals, lightning or fire. Just three sources of power vanished and the batteries were dead.”
Kenneweg believes that the incident was not isolated. “As I recall,” he said, “there were other nights where the guys would come back and look a little shaken, all within that same time-period.”
Comment: Based on Kenneweg’s description of his own UFO sighting, during which the object appeared to be near or over Malmstrom’s flightline at one point, I have speculated that the UFO may have briefly maneuvered near the base’s nuclear Weapons Storage Area (WSA), which is located just east of the main runway. The WSA contains Minuteman missile nuclear warheads, known as Re-entry Vehicles (RVs).
A review of aerial photographs of Malmstrom, which show the WSA, coupled with an analysis of Kenneweg’s probable position near the MIMS hangar, lead to this conjecture. Regardless, another UFO sighting at the WSA, some years later, has been confirmed by two other sources. See Malmstrom AFB, Montana (1975).
Airman 1st Class David Hughes—Former Air Policeman, 341st Combat Defense Squadron, Malmstrom AFB, Montana:
Hughes stated, “I was stationed at Malmstrom from January 1966 through August 1967. I was an Air Policeman, assigned to ‘B’ Flight, with the 341st Combat Defense Squadron. I worked at the Foxtrot [Flight Launch Control Facility]. Many nights we observed a light in the sky between Choteau and Augusta, Montana.”
He continued “This light would move at incredible speeds, make right-angle moves, and continue for hours. When seeking further information from wing command, we were often insulted when told it was a Telstar satellite. On one occasion we were told by other friends working in the [air traffic control] tower at the base that aircraft had been launched to seek to identify a strange radar echo that had appeared on their screens and on the screens of the local airport. This was later denied the next day, but if memory serves, the local newspaper had an story on it the next day. This must have happened sometime in early 1967, or late 1966.”
Hughes concluded, “All I know is that some strange things consumed our attention many nights while on patrol. We patrolled from Augusta to Choteau each night and [frequently] saw something that lent credance to the UFO concept. To us, ‘UFO’ simply meant it was an Unidentified Flying Object, either from our military or some unknown source. We never believed the satellite story. However, when we learned that the jets had been scrambled and the next day it was denied, then we knew something was up.”
Malmstrom AFB, Montana (1975):
Staff Sgt. Joseph M. Chassey—Former Minuteman ICBM maintenance technician, 341st Missile Maintenance Squadron, Malmstrom AFB, Montana:
Chassey states that one night in the fall of 1975, he overhead a two-way radio transmission alerting Air Force Security Police about an unknown craft hovering over the base’s Weapons Storage Area.
Chassey said that the incident was widely discussed at the missile mechanical shop the following day. He later heard additional details about it from a friend, who was a helicopter re-fueler.
Apparently, two base helicopters had been scrambled to chase the intruder, which rapidly flew toward Belt, Montana, some ten miles distant. As the pursuing choppers neared the town, the unidentified craft quickly doubled-back to Malmstrom—leaving them far behind—and again hovered over the WSA for a short period of time before finally departing.
Chassey states that the object was described as an extremely bright light and was assumed to have been a bona fide UFO because of its superior capabilities. He emphasized, “It flat outran the helicopters. We heard that it zipped out to Belt and back to the base in no time.”
Chassey, who separated from the Air Force at the end of October, 1975, believes that the incident occurred shortly before he left Malmstrom.
Comment: USAF documents from October 1975, declassified via the Freedom of Information Act, confirm other UFO sightings at the Weapons Storage Areas at Wurtsmith AFB, Michigan, and Loring AFB, Maine. At the time, each base hosted B-52 nuclear bomber squadrons.
At Wurtsmith, initial sighting reports referred to the unidentified craft as a “helicopter”, however, the radar operator aboard a nearby KC-135 aircraft later tracked the craft traveling at approximately 1000 knots, far faster than any known helicopter. At Loring, some reports mentioned an “unidentified helicopter” near the WSA.
However, eyewitness accounts from a B-52 ground crew indicated that the “helicopter” was bright orange, football-shaped, and had hovered silently. (For an extended discussion of these cases, consult Lawrence Fawcett and Barry Greenwood’s authoritative book, Clear Intent, later re-named The UFO Cover-Up.)
Lt. Col. Robert Peisher (USAF Ret.)—Former Commanding Officer, Detachment #5, 37th Air Rescue Squadron helicopter unit at Malmstrom AFB, Montana:
Peisher has confirmed the accuracy of Joseph Chassey’s account regarding the incident during which an unknown craft hovered above Malmstrom’s nuclear Weapons Storage Area, one night in the fall of 1975. However, Peisher said that even though his unit’s helicopters had indeed been involved in the intercept attempt, he himself had already been transferred to another squadron when the incident occurred, and had only heard about it “much later”.
Peisher also states that he had once been briefed by local civilian law enforcement about a series of cattle mutilations, many of which had occurred near Minuteman missile sites, during the summer and fall of 1975. He states that he and Cascade County deputy sheriff Captain Keith Wolverton determined that more than 80 such mutilations had occurred within Malmstrom’s missile field boundaries, some quite near various ICBM Launch Facilities (silos).
Peisher further states that he had been informally told about multiple UFO incidents at Malmstrom’s Minuteman missile sites, including one event during which a UFO "the size of a football field" had silently flown over the Echo Launch Control Facility one night in the fall of 1975.
Comment: The following verbatim excerpts are NORAD log entries from November 1975, declassified via the Freedom of Information Act. My own comments and clarifications follow some of the entries (in parentheses):
24th NORAD Region Senior Director’s Log (Malmstrom AFB, MT):
7 Nov 75 (1035Z) Received a call from the 341st Strategic Air Command Post (SAC CP), saying that the following missile locations reported seeing a large red to orange to yellow object: M-1, L-3, LIMA, and L-6...Commander and Deputy for Operations (DO) informed.
7 Nov 75 (1203Z) SAC advised that the LCF at Harlowton, Montana, observed an object which emitted a light which illuminated the site driveway.
7 Nov 75 (1319Z) SAC advised K-1 says very bright object to their east is now southeast of them and they are looking at it with 10x50 binoculars. Object seems to have lights (several) on it, but no distinct pattern. The orange/gold object overhead also seems to have lights on it. SAC also advised female civilian reports having seen an object bearing south of her position six miles west of Lewistown.
(Note that all of these reports refer to the observation of aerial “objects”. Apparently, the Security Alert Teams could not identify them as either military or civilian aircraft.)
7 Nov 75 (1327Z) L-1 reports that the object to their northeast seems to be issuing a black object from it, tubular in shape. In all this time, surveillance has not been able to detect any sort of track except for known traffic.
(In other words, when these sightings were first reported by SATs, “surveillance”—that is, radar personnel—at Malmstrom AFB and Great Falls International Airport could not detect any unknown aerial objects near the missile sites. As we shall see, radar contact with the UFOs was finally established as the sighting reports continued to unfold.)
7 Nov 75 (1355Z) K-1 and L-1 report that as the sun rises, so do the objects they have visual.
7 Nov 75 (1429) From SAC CP: As the sun rose, the UFOs disappeared. Commander and DO notified.
8 Nov 75 (0635Z) A security camper team at K-4 reported UFO with white lights, one red light 50 yards behind white light. Personnel at K-1 seeing same object.
8 Nov 75 (0645Z) Height personnel picked up objects 10-13,000 feet. Track J330, EKLB 0649, 18 knots, 9,500 feet. Objects as many as seven, as few as two A/C.
(Height-finding radar finally confirmed that UFOs were present, varying over time between two and seven in number.)
8 Nov 75 (0753Z) J330 unknown 0753. Stationary/seven knots/12,000...two F-106...NCOC notified.
(Radar confirmed that one UFO, at an altitude of 12,000 feet, had hovered—that is, was “stationary”—before resuming flight at a leisurely 7 knots, or 9 mph. Shortly thereafter, two F-106s were scrambled to intercept it.)
8 Nov 75 (0905Z) From SAC CP: L-sites had fighters and objects; fighters did not get down to objects.
8 Nov 75 (0915Z) From SAC CP: From four different points: Observed objects and fighters; when fighters arrived in the area, the lights went out; when fighters departed, the lights came back on; To NCOC.
(As SAT personnel at four different locations watched, the UFOs played cat-and-mouse with the F-106s, extinguishing their illumination as the jets approached their position and re-illuminating themselves after the fighters returned to base. The NORAD Combat Operations Center—NCOC—in Colorado Springs, was immediately informed of this incident.)
8 Nov 75 (1105Z) From SAC CP: L-5 reported object increased in speed — high velocity, raised in altitude and now cannot tell the object from stars. To NCOC.
9 Nov 75 (0305Z) SAC CP called and advised SAC crews at Sites L-1, L-6, and M-1 observing UFO. Object yellowish bright round light 20 miles north of Harlowton, 2 to 4,000 feet.
9 Nov 75 (0320Z) SAC CP reports UFO southeast of Lewistown, orange white disc object. 24th NORAD Region surveillance checking area. Surveillance unable to get height check.
(Note the reference to the UFO having a “disc” or saucer shape. Several more log entries from November 9th and 10th confirm that UFOs continued to be reported by SAT teams positioned near various missile silos.)
END OF LOG ENTRIES;
Malmstrom AFB, Montana (1966-67);one;
Malmstrom AFB, Montana (1966-67):
1st Lt. Robert C. Jamison—Former USAF Minuteman ICBM targeting officer (Combat Targeting Team Commander), 341st Missile Maintenance Squadron, Malmstrom AFB, Montana:
Jamison states that he assisted in the re-start of an entire "flight" of ten Minuteman ICBMs which had simultaneously and inexplicably shut down immediately after a UFO was sighted in their vicinity by Air Force Security Police. Jamison is certain that the incident occurred at one of the missile flights located near Lewistown, Montana, perhaps Oscar Flight. This event probably occurred on the night of March 24/25, 1967, based on Jamison’s portrayal of related events.
Jamison said that while his and other teams were preparing to respond to the stricken flight, they were ordered—as a precaution—to remain at Malmstrom until all UFO reports from the field had ceased. He further states that his team received a special briefing prior to being dispatched, during which it was directed to immediately report any UFO sighted while traveling to or from the missile field.
In the event that a UFO appeared at one of the missile silos during the re-start procedure, the team was directed to enter the silo's personnel hatch, and remain underground until the UFO had left the vicinity. According to Jamison, the Air Police guard accompanying the team was to remain outside and relay information about the UFO to the base Command Post. Jamison’s own team re-started three or four missiles but did not observe any unusual aerial activity.
Jamison said that while he was at the missile maintenance hangar, waiting to be dispatched to the field, he overheard two-way radio communications at the temporary Command Post, relating to another UFO having been sighted on the ground in a canyon near the town of Belt. He states he recalls hearing that a top commander—either Malmstrom’s base commander, or the 341st Strategic Missile Wing commander—was on-site with other personnel. Based on these recollections, it appears that Jamison is describing the well-documented Belt, Montana UFO sighting of March 24/25, 1967.
Jamison said that immediately after the missile shutdown incident, for a period of approximately two weeks, his team received a special UFO briefing, identical to the one described above, before being dispatched to the field.
Jamison said that approximately two weeks after the full-flight missile shutdown, his team responded to another, partial shutdown—involving four or five ICBMs. Prior to being dispatched, Jamison’s team received a report that the missile failures had occurred immediately after a UFO was sighted over the flight's Launch Control Facility. Jamison recalls that this incident took place at a flight located south or southwest of Great Falls, possibly India Flight, and during daylight hours.
Jamison said that he had subsequently spoken with several individuals, mostly missile security guards, who had witnessed various UFO-related incidents. He reports that they were “visibly shaken” by their experiences.
Comment: At least five other former or retired USAF personnel—all Minuteman missile launch officers stationed at Malmstrom AFB in 1967—have previously divulged their knowledge of UFO involvement in two separate, large-scale missile shutdown incidents. One of these individuals, former Deputy Missile Combat Crew Commander Robert Salas, has extensively investigated these events, together with researcher Jim Klotz. Their revealing summary of the March 1967 incidents may be found at:
http://www.cufon.org/cufon/malmstrom/malm1.htm
The article above also discusses the Air Force’s formal denial of UFO-involvement in the one officially-acknowledged, full-flight missile shutdown incident at Malmstrom AFB—at Echo Flight—despite the missile launch officers’ testimony to the contrary. The official disavowal is found in the 341st Strategic Missile Wing’s “unit history”.
Significantly, the unit historian, David Gamble, told Klotz that while compiling material for the official history, he had learned of reports of UFO activity within Malmstrom’s missile fields. When he made inquiries, Gamble received “no cooperation” from those in-the-know. He further said that written changes regarding “the UFO aspect of the missile shutdown incident” had been made by superiors. The final version of the unit history states, “Rumors of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) around the area of Echo Flight during the time of the fault were disproven.”
Salas and Klotz have written a thorough and persuasive book, Faded Giant, which expands upon their earlier online report.
If Jamison’s recollections are correct, and he did indeed respond to a large-scale missile shutdown at Oscar Flight on the same date as the well-documented Belt UFO sighting, then the date proposed for the Oscar event by Salas and Klotz—March 16, 1967—would seem to be in error. Salas has now acknowledged this possibility, however, Klotz remains skeptical about the alternate date.
Prior to my posting the Jamison-related material on the NICAP and NCP websites, I sent it to Klotz for his review. He responded, "I think that while witnesses’ memories of ‘events’ tend to be pretty clear, memories of dates tend to be less accurate. I am a document-driven guy and I'd like to see some documentary evidence of multiple events. Lacking this, I only wish to keep open the idea that memories may be of a ‘single’ UFO-related missile shutdown event at Malmstrom. Certainly the indications from witness testimony are that multiple events may well have occurred."
For the record: I too would like to see unaltered documents relating to the shutdown events. In the early 1980s, I attempted to access, via the Freedom of Information Act, Office of Special Investigations (OSI) files relating to UFO sightings at Malmstrom’s ICBM sites, only to be told that all such documents had already been declassified. However, multiple source testimony strongly suggests otherwise. I think David Gamble’s comments above are telling. In my opinion, the documents that might shed light on the true facts relating to the missile shutdowns will remain hidden indefinitely, whereas those supporting the official version of events, including unit histories, will sometimes be declassified.
I also sent my Jamison-related material to Bob Salas. He responded, "What is interesting to me is the briefing Jamison received about how to respond if they sighted a UFO while working in the field. This would be a further indication that there had been experiences with UFOs at [Launch Facilities] prior to Jamison going out to the sites. We have also received similar information from a source we are protecting at this time."
Salas continued, "I [now] think it is more likely that Oscar Flight went down on some date after the Echo Flight [shutdown] and that it could very well have been on the same day as the Belt sighting. One of the factors that lead me to that 'opinion' is the lack of comment about two flights going down in the [now-declassified] telex that went out, and in the unit history. If the two had gone down on the same day, that would have been mentioned.
The reason, I think, Oscar wasn't mentioned later is because by then the Air Force wanted to keep a secrecy lid on it and avoid the possibility of a leak by the indication of a growing and continuing problem. That would have made quite some headlines in the press."
Salas concluded, "Remember, from all we have heard from the maintenance people we have interviewed, the rumors and comments [about UFO activity] were rampant. I personally received a call from an NCO after the Oscar shutdowns, practically begging me to come talk to him and others about the incident. Believe me, it was all over the base and some of the troops were flat scared."
In conclusion, Jamison’s statements are important because they indicate that the Air Force was fully aware of UFO involvement in at least two missile flight shutdown incidents prior to dispatching the missile maintenance teams to restart the ICBMs. Specifically, according to Jamison, the 341st Missile Maintenance Squadron undertook certain precautions and formally implemented various procedures to protect the teams’ safety while in the field. In this respect, his testimony is unprecedented.
Staff Sgt. Louis D. Kenneweg—Former Minuteman ICBM maintenance clerk, 341st Missile Maintenance Squadron, Malmstrom AFB, Montana:
At the time of the 1967 missile shutdown incidents, Staff Sgt. Louis D. Kenneweg was assigned to the 341st Missile Maintenance Squadron (MIMS) at Malmstrom AFB. His duties at the MIMS hangar included issuing Technical Order kits (T.O.s) to other members of his squadron. As Kenneweg explained, “Each of the repair teams would be required to take T.O.’s in the truck with them. The kit included books or manuals that would contain technical information that the technicians could look up rather than rely on memory. There was also a check list in plastic sleeves, kind of like a pre-flight checklist for a pilot, that they would use before removing the warhead from the missile. Of course there was an awful lot of supervision when that occurred.”
Although the date is uncertain, one night, around 11:45 P.M. Kenneweg was driving to work when he noticed something unusual in the sky. “As I traveled down one of the roads parallel to the flightline,” he said, “I saw something that I first thought was a private plane’s lights, blinking. As I watched it get closer, I realized that it wasn't blinking at all, but zig-zagging. First here, then there, traveling too fast for a plane. Then looming over the flightline. I got up late, and I knew that I had little time, but I stopped anyway. I opened the car door, got out, and focused on the lights. I watched it as long as I could, without being late to work. I remember saying to myself that this pilot was going to be in a lot of trouble, coming across the runway, or at least across the Air Force Base property.
I don’t remember it traveling that close to me, but I do remember the image of it disappearing in a low southerly trajectory over the [MIMS] hangar. Of course, it was much farther away than it appeared. At that point, it wasn't ‘blinking’ anymore but had more of a glow. It appeared as a bright light the size of the moon, on a cloudy night, although I don't remember it being cloudy.”
Upon arriving at the MIMS hangar, Kenneweg was confronted by a scene of high activity. “As I entered the hangar I noticed that there were numerous trucks being loaded,” he said, “many more than I had ever seen all at the same time.”
Still puzzled about the strange, zig-zagging light, Kenneweg walked toward the Air Police office, where APs were routinely assigned to accompany the maintenance teams into the missile fields, guarding their trucks and the silos once they opened the gates. When he arrived, he noticed an unusual level of activity there as well. Kenneweg asked the Air Police sergeant on duty whether the base had any helicopters up. The sergeant replied that the helicopters didn’t have radar and didn’t fly at night.
Kenneweg continued, “Back at the office, I issued almost all of the [T.O.] kits on the shelf. I remember saying to myself, ‘I'm running out of kits, this is a busy night.’ Now, I didn’t check the sign-out sheet to see how many kits had been checked out before my shift, but while I was on duty, I did recall that they were almost all checked out. As I count them off in my head today, and try to see them on the shelf, we had a wall with 3 shelves that would hold 25 or so.”
Clearly, a lot of missiles were either undergoing routine maintenance, and/or had gone off Strategic Alert for another reason, all at the same time.
When the maintenance teams returned to the MIMS hangar—Kenneweg first thought that it had been some three hours later, but upon reflection, now believes that it was more than 24 hours later, during his next shift—one of the technicians hinted that something out of the ordinary had taken place in the missile field. “One of the guys mentioned to me that some very weird things were going on that night,” said Kenneweg,
“It takes two guys to carry the T.O. kit, and there were other guys behind him, waiting in line to get checked in, and they were all nodding their heads in agreement. But this guy said that he couldn’t talk about it right then. He said he would tell me all about it back at the barracks. Well, like I have said before, I was busy working [a second job] at the Red Lion Supper Club and didn't really have that serious sit-down conversation with that particular airman. But the barracks was buzzing. Stories about how when they got to the [missile silos] and found no damage, and how all the batteries were dead. I also heard a story that [UFOs] were seen on radar, then they were gone.”
He continued, “Our missile sites each had a tertiary power system. The main power source was delivered by Montana Power. Telephone poles, transformers and wire. The second system was the diesel generators, and the third was the battery back-up within the silo itself. Numerous reports came back saying that they had found no damage to the fences, wires, transformers, microwave intrusion system, locks on the three-foot-thick concrete blast doors, or to the batteries. So, no evidence of damage from intruders or animals, lightning or fire. Just three sources of power vanished and the batteries were dead.”
Kenneweg believes that the incident was not isolated. “As I recall,” he said, “there were other nights where the guys would come back and look a little shaken, all within that same time-period.”
Comment: Based on Kenneweg’s description of his own UFO sighting, during which the object appeared to be near or over Malmstrom’s flightline at one point, I have speculated that the UFO may have briefly maneuvered near the base’s nuclear Weapons Storage Area (WSA), which is located just east of the main runway. The WSA contains Minuteman missile nuclear warheads, known as Re-entry Vehicles (RVs). A review of aerial photographs of Malmstrom, which show the WSA, coupled with an analysis of Kenneweg’s probable position near the MIMS hangar, lead to this conjecture. Regardless, another UFO sighting at the WSA, some years later, has been confirmed by two other sources. See Malmstrom AFB, Montana (1975).
Airman 1st Class David Hughes—Former Air Policeman, 341st Combat Defense Squadron, Malmstrom AFB, Montana:
Hughes stated, “I was stationed at Malmstrom from January 1966 through August 1967. I was an Air Policeman, assigned to ‘B’ Flight, with the 341st Combat Defense Squadron. I worked at the Foxtrot [Flight Launch Control Facility]. Many nights we observed a light in the sky between Choteau and Augusta, Montana.”
He continued “This light would move at incredible speeds, make right-angle moves, and continue for hours. When seeking further information from wing command, we were often insulted when told it was a Telstar satellite. On one occasion we were told by other friends working in the [air traffic control] tower at the base that aircraft had been launched to seek to identify a strange radar echo that had appeared on their screens and on the screens of the local airport. This was later denied the next day, but if memory serves, the local newspaper had an story on it the next day. This must have happened sometime in early 1967, or late 1966.”
Hughes concluded, “All I know is that some strange things consumed our attention many nights while on patrol. We patrolled from Augusta to Choteau each night and [frequently] saw something that lent credance to the UFO concept. To us, ‘UFO’ simply meant it was an Unidentified Flying Object, either from our military or some unknown source. We never believed the satellite story. However, when we learned that the jets had been scrambled and the next day it was denied, then we knew something was up.”
Malmstrom AFB, Montana (1975):
Staff Sgt. Joseph M. Chassey—Former Minuteman ICBM maintenance technician, 341st Missile Maintenance Squadron, Malmstrom AFB, Montana:
Chassey states that one night in the fall of 1975, he overhead a two-way radio transmission alerting Air Force Security Police about an unknown craft hovering over the base’s Weapons Storage Area.
Chassey said that the incident was widely discussed at the missile mechanical shop the following day. He later heard additional details about it from a friend, who was a helicopter re-fueler.
Apparently, two base helicopters had been scrambled to chase the intruder, which rapidly flew toward Belt, Montana, some ten miles distant. As the pursuing choppers neared the town, the unidentified craft quickly doubled-back to Malmstrom—leaving them far behind—and again hovered over the WSA for a short period of time before finally departing.
Chassey states that the object was described as an extremely bright light and was assumed to have been a bona fide UFO because of its superior capabilities. He emphasized, “It flat outran the helicopters. We heard that it zipped out to Belt and back to the base in no time.”
Chassey, who separated from the Air Force at the end of October, 1975, believes that the incident occurred shortly before he left Malmstrom.
Comment: USAF documents from October 1975, declassified via the Freedom of Information Act, confirm other UFO sightings at the Weapons Storage Areas at Wurtsmith AFB, Michigan, and Loring AFB, Maine. At the time, each base hosted B-52 nuclear bomber squadrons. At Wurtsmith, initial sighting reports referred to the unidentified craft as a “helicopter”, however, the radar operator aboard a nearby KC-135 aircraft later tracked the craft traveling at approximately 1000 knots, far faster than any known helicopter. At Loring, some reports mentioned an “unidentified helicopter” near the WSA.
However, eyewitness accounts from a B-52 ground crew indicated that the “helicopter” was bright orange, football-shaped, and had hovered silently. (For an extended discussion of these cases, consult Lawrence Fawcett and Barry Greenwood’s authoritative book, Clear Intent, later re-named The UFO Cover-Up.)
Lt. Col. Robert Peisher (USAF Ret.)—Former Commanding Officer, Detachment #5, 37th Air Rescue Squadron helicopter unit at Malmstrom AFB, Montana:
Peisher has confirmed the accuracy of Joseph Chassey’s account regarding the incident during which an unknown craft hovered above Malmstrom’s nuclear Weapons Storage Area, one night in the fall of 1975. However, Peisher said that even though his unit’s helicopters had indeed been involved in the intercept attempt, he himself had already been transferred to another squadron when the incident occurred, and had only heard about it “much later”.
Peisher also states that he had once been briefed by local civilian law enforcement about a series of cattle mutilations, many of which had occurred near Minuteman missile sites, during the summer and fall of 1975. He states that he and Cascade County deputy sheriff Captain Keith Wolverton determined that more than 80 such mutilations had occurred within Malmstrom’s missile field boundaries, some quite near various ICBM Launch Facilities (silos).
Peisher further states that he had been informally told about multiple UFO incidents at Malmstrom’s Minuteman missile sites, including one event during which a UFO "the size of a football field" had silently flown over the Echo Launch Control Facility one night in the fall of 1975.
Comment: The following verbatim excerpts are NORAD log entries from November 1975, declassified via the Freedom of Information Act. My own comments and clarifications follow some of the entries (in parentheses):
24th NORAD Region Senior Director’s Log (Malmstrom AFB, MT):
7 Nov 75 (1035Z) Received a call from the 341st Strategic Air Command Post (SAC CP), saying that the following missile locations reported seeing a large red to orange to yellow object: M-1, L-3, LIMA, and L-6...Commander and Deputy for Operations (DO) informed.
7 Nov 75 (1203Z) SAC advised that the LCF at Harlowton, Montana, observed an object which emitted a light which illuminated the site driveway.
7 Nov 75 (1319Z) SAC advised K-1 says very bright object to their east is now southeast of them and they are looking at it with 10x50 binoculars. Object seems to have lights (several) on it, but no distinct pattern. The orange/gold object overhead also seems to have lights on it. SAC also advised female civilian reports having seen an object bearing south of her position six miles west of Lewistown.
(Note that all of these reports refer to the observation of aerial “objects”. Apparently, the Security Alert Teams could not identify them as either military or civilian aircraft.)
7 Nov 75 (1327Z) L-1 reports that the object to their northeast seems to be issuing a black object from it, tubular in shape. In all this time, surveillance has not been able to detect any sort of track except for known traffic.
(In other words, when these sightings were first reported by SATs, “surveillance”—that is, radar personnel—at Malmstrom AFB and Great Falls International Airport could not detect any unknown aerial objects near the missile sites. As we shall see, radar contact with the UFOs was finally established as the sighting reports continued to unfold.)
7 Nov 75 (1355Z) K-1 and L-1 report that as the sun rises, so do the objects they have visual.
7 Nov 75 (1429) From SAC CP: As the sun rose, the UFOs disappeared. Commander and DO notified.
8 Nov 75 (0635Z) A security camper team at K-4 reported UFO with white lights, one red light 50 yards behind white light. Personnel at K-1 seeing same object.
8 Nov 75 (0645Z) Height personnel picked up objects 10-13,000 feet. Track J330, EKLB 0649, 18 knots, 9,500 feet. Objects as many as seven, as few as two A/C.
(Height-finding radar finally confirmed that UFOs were present, varying over time between two and seven in number.)
8 Nov 75 (0753Z) J330 unknown 0753. Stationary/seven knots/12,000...two F-106...NCOC notified.
(Radar confirmed that one UFO, at an altitude of 12,000 feet, had hovered—that is, was “stationary”—before resuming flight at a leisurely 7 knots, or 9 mph. Shortly thereafter, two F-106s were scrambled to intercept it.)
8 Nov 75 (0905Z) From SAC CP: L-sites had fighters and objects; fighters did not get down to objects.
8 Nov 75 (0915Z) From SAC CP: From four different points: Observed objects and fighters; when fighters arrived in the area, the lights went out; when fighters departed, the lights came back on; To NCOC.
(As SAT personnel at four different locations watched, the UFOs played cat-and-mouse with the F-106s, extinguishing their illumination as the jets approached their position and re-illuminating themselves after the fighters returned to base. The NORAD Combat Operations Center—NCOC—in Colorado Springs, was immediately informed of this incident.)
8 Nov 75 (1105Z) From SAC CP: L-5 reported object increased in speed — high velocity, raised in altitude and now cannot tell the object from stars. To NCOC.
9 Nov 75 (0305Z) SAC CP called and advised SAC crews at Sites L-1, L-6, and M-1 observing UFO. Object yellowish bright round light 20 miles north of Harlowton, 2 to 4,000 feet.
9 Nov 75 (0320Z) SAC CP reports UFO southeast of Lewistown, orange white disc object. 24th NORAD Region surveillance checking area. Surveillance unable to get height check.
(Note the reference to the UFO having a “disc” or saucer shape. Several more log entries from November 9th and 10th confirm that UFOs continued to be reported by SAT teams positioned near various missile silos.)
END OF LOG ENTRIES;
Malmstrom AFB, Montana (1992):
Staff Sgt. Joseph M. Brown—Former Security Policeman, 343rd Missile Security Squadron, Malmstrom AFB, Montana:
Comment: I first learned of Joe Brown’s experience after he posted a brief summary of it on researcher Ron Wright’s Triad Research website. With Wright’s assistance, I located Brown and interviewed him.
Brown states that one night in the spring of 1992, he and his security team partner were posted at Alpha Flight missile silo A-3. Due to an alarm system malfunction at the site, the two-man team was staked-out in a security camper near the launch facility, with one man on duty while the other slept. “I believe it was March or April,” Brown told me, “site top-side security was down—the IMPSS (Improved Minuteman Physical Security System)—and if I remember correctly, there was no top-side power.”
At about 4:30 a.m., Brown noticed a bright white light moving erratically across the sky. In his online posting, Brown had written, “This light was doing some wild things in the sky, sudden direction changes, moving very fast, then stopping, then shooting off in another direction. I watched this for about 15 to 20 minutes.”
Then the light appeared to move closer to the silo. “I started getting spooked,” Brown wrote, “so I reached out the window of the truck and started banging on the camper shell to wake [my partner] up. He finally came around the front, asking me what was wrong. I pointed to the light and told him I'd been watching it for around 20 minutes and I didn't know what it was. He got into the passenger side of the truck and we kept watching this thing doing its acrobatics.”
Brown decided to radio another security team posted at Alpha Flight silo A-10, located some 10 miles away. “They responded hesitantly that they were watching this light,” he wrote. The Flight Security Controller (FSC) at the Alpha Flight Launch Control Facility apparently overheard this exchange, because he suddenly broke into the conversation to inquire about the anxious radio chatter between the two security teams. Each confirmed that they were observing the strange light as it raced wildly around the sky.
Brown wrote that the team continued to watch the UFO until around 6:30 to 7:00 a.m., when it suddenly appeared to go straight up and hover. “We could still see the light, but by now it was starting to get daylight. As it got brighter, we could sort of make out a black shape around where the light was. We had binoculars, but even with them, all you could see was a fuzzy outline of sort of a triangle. I can't estimate the height of the object.”
Upon returning to Malmstrom, Brown and his partner privately conferred with the security team posted at Alpha Flight silo A-10. The four guards agreed that they would not mention the sighting, and all expressed concern about possible repercussions resulting from their report to the Flight Security Controller.
As the security guards returned their weapons to the armory, they were suddenly ordered to report to a captain assigned to their squadron. Brown can not recall the officer’s name but remembers being very concerned by this unexpected development. The captain asked the men to describe what they had seen. He listened carefully and then pointedly suggested that they not discuss the sighting. Brown told me, “At this point, the captain says, well I don't think you saw anything and I wouldn't go around talking about it. You guys are under PRP, remember that!”
Comment: Here is an apparent instance in which the mere mention of the PRP—Personnel Reliability Program—effectively intimidated military UFO witnesses into silence. This Department of Defense directive pertains to those who work with or around nuclear weapons, and dictates their conduct both on and off the job. If an individual’s commanding officer judges his or her behavior to be unreliable, and a potential threat to the security of the weapons, a psychological examination of that person is usually ordered. Depending on its outcome, the individual under scrutiny risks being relieved of duty.
Brown stated that a couple of days after his experience at Alpha Flight, he heard that there had been some unusual activity at Malmstrom that same night. Referring to these rumored developments, he told me, “[A friend of mine] was a Tech Sergeant in the [missile] maintenance squadron, and it was a bit unusual for him to actually go to out in the field. He normally trouble-shot stuff on-base. He and I never got to really discuss what had happened...[but] he did tell me that a lot of maintenance folks were sent out that night. Quite honestly, a lot of us were afraid to talk about it openly, especially after being told we should not talk about anything by our Captain.”
Malmstrom AFB, Montana (1995):
UFO sighting by a Minuteman missile maintenance technician, who requests anonymity, as reported to Tech. Sgt. Jeff Goodrich (USAF Ret.)—Former Team Chief of Missile Handling, 341st Maintenance Squadron, Malmstrom AFB, Montana:
In the early hours of January 20, 1995, an Alert Response Team, composed of two security police, had been driving to the India Flight Launch Control Facility when they noticed a strange light in the southern sky. As they passed by Minuteman silo I-4, one of the men radioed a missile maintenance team working there, and asked its leader whether he could see the light too. The response was affirmative.
The missile maintenance technician who later reported the sighting to Goodrich said that the light was “large”, and displayed numerous smaller lights—red, orange, yellow, green, and blue in color—across its surface. The UFO had been moving very slowly across the missile field, at low altitude. The technician insisted that the object was not an airplane or helicopter. Because he was a member of the missile maintenance team, and not a security policeman, he did not know whether the Alert Response Team had subsequently reported the UFO to the Flight Security Controller at the India Flight Launch Control Facility.
Comment: This UFO was not the first to be reported in Montana during January 1995. A brief entry in the sighting database published by the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) indicates that on the evening of January 5th, an unnamed Air Force officer at Malmstrom AFB had called NUFORC to relay a sighting report which he had just received from someone in the town of Shelby. At about 9 p.m. the unidentified person had observed two objects moving silently through the sky for about two minutes.
Although their shape could not be determined, the absence of any sound had apparently struck the sighting witness as unusual, and so a call was made to Malmstrom. Shelby is located almost exactly on the northern boundary of the Quebec Flight Minuteman missile field—with silo Q-18 situated less than two miles east of town, just north of Route 2.
Another entry in the NUFORC database indicates that two days later, on January 7th, at about 3 p.m., an unidentified woman had called Malmstrom AFB regarding a UFO sighting. Unfortunately, the location of the sighting is not specified in the entry.
A third call to NUFORC occurred on January 18th—just two days prior to the incident at India Flight reported to Tech. Sgt. Jeff Goodrich. The reporting center’s log states, “An anonymous caller reports multiple UFO sightings reported between Fairfield and Deer Lodge, Montana. Background noise during call sounds like communications noise from some kind of operations center.”
The caller told NUFORC that he had received multiple UFO sighting reports, over the period of an hour, from persons located between Fairfield and Deer Lodge. Perhaps significantly, Fairfield lies near the geographic center of the Hotel Flight Minuteman missile field, with silo H-9 situated at the western edge of town, just north of Route 408. Furthermore, if one leaves Fairfield and travels southwest—in a straight line toward Deer Lodge—one will eventually exit the Hotel field and cross directly into the Golf Flight missile field.
In short, nearly half of the countryside between Fairfield and Deer Lodge lies within the boundaries of Malmstrom’s Minuteman missile fields. Although no evidence has yet surfaced which would place the reported UFOs in close proximity to specific silos within either Hotel or Golf Flight, the caller from Deer Lodge was nevertheless relaying sighting reports made by persons calling from the heart of “Rocket Ranch” country. The three sighting reports published by NUFORC may be found at http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/ndxlMT.html.
Malmstrom AFB, Montana (1996):
Tech. Sgt. Jeff Goodrich (USAF Ret.)—Former Team Chief of Missile Handling, 341st Maintenance Squadron, Malmstrom AFB, Montana:
Goodrich states that February 2, 1996, he and an officer, whom I will not identify here, observed a loose formation of five triangular-shaped objects flying above Great Falls, Montana, which is located just west of Malmstrom. At the time of the sighting, both had been working at the Missile Roll Transfer Building, a remote site located some miles from the main base.
When first sighted, the objects were about 75-degrees above the horizon. They made no sound that the two men could discern, and left no contrails. Due to distance and glare, no surface detail was visible on any of the craft. Goodrich noted that the objects flew in unison, moving slowly from north to south. On two occasions, all five appeared motionless for 10-15 seconds. After the second hover, the objects suddenly accelerated, made a sweeping arc to the southwest, and soon disappeared over the horizon.
Goodrich estimated the objects’ altitude to be 15-20,000 feet. This guess was based, in part, on statements made to him by personnel working at Malmstrom’s air traffic control tower. After contacting them, he had been told that nothing out of the ordinary had been detected on radar at the time of the sighting—but was also told that the tower didn’t track aircraft above 10,000 feet. Immediately after contacting the base’s air traffic control tower, Goodrich called Great Falls International Airport. The controllers there also denied tracking unknown aircraft at the time of his sighting.
Given that Goodrich reported the UFOs’ shape to be triangular, some skeptics might say that he and the officer had merely observed a flight of F-117A “stealth” fighter-bombers. Due to its unique design, an airborne F-117A can appear, from certain angles, to be nearly triangular. Moreover, the aircraft’s stealth capability would explain why the flight had not been tracked on radar.
However, because Goodrich is certain that he and the officer had twice observed all five objects briefly hovering, this prosaic proposal would seem an unlikely solution. The F-117A is an amazing aircraft, but it can not remain motionless in the air. Furthermore, Goodrich described the UFOs as being bright white in color and occasionally exhibiting glare as their position varied in relation to the sun. An F-117A is painted flat black and appears dark against the sky, under all lighting and atmospheric conditions.
Jeff included two hand-drawn diagrams of the objects in his report about the sighting. The first one depicts their positions relative to one another in the sky. The second illustrates each object’s shape—an isosceles triangle—with two sides of equal length. The third, shorter side was on the trailing edge of each object as it flew.
I asked Goodrich if he could determine whether the UFOs had flown or hovered over ICBM facilities at any time during the sighting. He replied that after the objects turned southwest, and left the city limits, they would have briefly passed over the India Flight missile field. However, he said that it did not appear that they had lingered in that vicinity. Instead, they continued to move steadily away, and eventually faded from view.
(It should also be noted that when the objects approached Great Falls, they had to have flown over other missile fields located north of the city, however, I am not aware of any information currently available in the public domain to suggest a close-proximity incident at any ICBM LCF or LF, relating to the sighting.)
F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming (1965):
Comment: Beginning at 1:30 A.M. on August 1, 1965, various personnel at F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming—including the base commander—telephoned the Air Force’s UFO Project Blue Book, at Wright-Patterson AFB, to report several UFO sightings at Warren’s Minuteman missile sites.
The officer who fielded and logged the telephone calls to Blue Book that night was a Lt. Anspaugh. A memorandum summarizing these telephone calls was published in 1972 by Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the civilian scientific consultant to the project, in his book The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry.
Inserted below are the verbatim entries in Lt. Anspaugh’s memo:
1:30 A.M. - Captain Snelling, of the U.S. Air Force command post near Cheyenne, Wyoming, called to say that 15 to 20 phone calls had been received at the local radio station about a large circular object emitting several colors but no sound, sighted over the city. Two officers and one airman controller at the base reported that after being sighted directly over base operations, the object had begun to move rapidly to the northeast.
2:20 A.M. - Colonel Johnson, base commander of Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, near Cheyenne, Wyoming, called Dayton to say that the commanding officer of the Sioux Army Depot saw five objects at 1:45 A.M. and reported an alleged configuration of two UFOs previously reported over E Site. At 1:49 A.M. members of E flight reportedly saw what appeared to be the same [formation] reported at 1:48 A.M. by G flight. Two security teams were dispatched from E flight to investigate.
2:50 A.M. - Nine more UFOs were sighted, and at 3:35 A.M. Colonel Williams, commanding officer of the Sioux Army Depot, at Sydney, Nebraska, reported five UFOs going east.
4:05 A.M. - Colonel Johnson made another phone call to Dayton to say that at 4:00 A.M., Q flight reported nine UFOs in sight; four to the northwest, three to the northeast, and two over Cheyenne.
4:40 A.M. - Captain Howell, Air Force Command Post, called Dayton and Defense Intelligence Agency to report that a Strategic Air Command Team at Site H-2 at 3:00 A.M. reported a white oval UFO directly overhead. Later Strategic Air Command Post passed the following: Francis E. Warren Air Force Base reports (Site B-4 3:17 A.M.) –A UFO 90 miles east of Cheyenne at a high rate of speed and descending—oval and white with white lines on its sides and a flashing red light in its center moving east; reported to have landed 10 miles east of the site.
3:20 A.M. - Seven UFOs reported east of the site.
3:25 A.M. - E Site reported six UFOs stacked vertically.
3:27 A.M. - G-1 reported one ascending and at the same time, E-2 reported two additional UFOs had joined the seven for a total of nine.
3:28 A.M. - G-1 reported a UFO descending further, going east.
3:32 A.M. - The same site has a UFO climbing and leveling off.
3:40 A.M. - G Site reported one UFO at 70' azimuth and one at 120' . Three now came from the east, stacked vertically, passed through the other two, with all five heading west.
END OF SUMMARY;
Airman 2nd Class Robert R. Thompson—Former Air Policeman, 809th Combat Defense Squadron, at F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming:
Thompson states that he was on duty at the Quebec Flight Launch Control Facility one night in 1965, when he got a telephone call from the underground launch capsule. The Missile Combat Crew Commander asked Thompson and his partner to walk outside and look straight up. Thinking this was a joke of some kind, the two Air Policemen nevertheless complied. Directly overhead, Thompson saw eight stationary lights, much brighter and larger than stars, grouped together in four pairs. Due to their altitude and brilliance, it was not possible to determine the objects’ shape or other details.
Thompson said that one light eventually left its position and began to roam among the others, moving slowly from pair to pair. He and his partner watched the mysterious aerial formation for about 10 minutes, before reporting the sighting to the missile commander. In response, Thompson was informed that NORAD, located at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, had earlier notified FE Warren that its radars were tracking eight unknown objects hovering in the vicinity of the Quebec launch control site. Apparently, Warren’s Command Center had called the LCF and asked the missile commander to verify their presence.
Said Thompson, “I wasn’t sure what we were seeing until I reported back to the launch commander. When he told me of the report of UFOs from Cheyenne Mountain, I could tell by his voice that he wasn’t joking.” Thompson states that he and his partner were never debriefed, or warned to remain silent about the incident, but he never again mentioned it to the missile commander.
Perhaps significantly, the Blue Book memorandum inserted above may lend credence to Thompson’s report. Specifically, this entry:
4:05 A.M. - Colonel Johnson made another phone call to Dayton to say that at 4:00 A.M., Q flight reported nine UFOs in sight; four to the northwest, three to the northeast, and two over Cheyenne.
However, because Thompson can not remember the date of his own sighting at “Q” or Quebec Flight, it may or may not have been the same incident noted above.
In any event, Thompson’s sighting was not the last UFO incident to be reported at Quebec Flight during that period. Less than a week later, he had been approached by another individual in his unit, and told about a far more dramatic incident.
“We worked three days on, three days off,” Thompson said, “One crew would relieve the other. Shortly after the sighting, when my crew returned to the LCF, an acquaintance came up and told me that while we were off-duty, he had been involved in another UFO sighting, at one of Q-Flight's Launch Facilities.”
According to this individual, he and his partner had been on stake-out duty one night, and were sitting in a Security Alert Team (SAT) camper that was parked next to the missile silo. Without warning, the vehicle began to shake violently. He quickly leaned his head out the window and saw a large, very bright light silently hovering directly above the camper. After a few seconds, the shaking ceased and the light rapidly departed.
link; http://www.nicap.org/babylon/missile_incidents.htm
Malmstrom AFB, Montana (1966-67);two;
The SAT guard went on to tell Thompson that he and his partner had later been debriefed by an OSI agent and ordered not to talk about the incident. However, in spite of this warning, he had nevertheless felt compelled to compare notes with Thompson, whose own UFO experience had occurred less than a week earlier, and was common knowledge among the missile guards at Quebec Flight.
After hearing this strange story, Thompson approached the Non-Commissioned Officer In Charge (NCOIC) who had been on duty at Quebec the night of the camper incident and asked him to verify it. To his surprise, the NCOIC did so. Furthermore, he told Thompson that he had personally seen the UFO as it hovered over the LF.
“The Launch Facility in question was the one located closest to the LCF,” said Thompson, “Even though it was five, maybe six miles away, the NCOIC told me that, on the night of the incident, he had seen an extremely bright light hovering over its location.”
Thompson said that he later heard that the UFO activity at various missile flights had continued for about a month.
Comment: Although the bizarre report involving the camper is strikingly similar to a scene in Steven Speilberg’s 1977 movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, UFO researchers Jim Klotz and Tom Tulien have heard a nearly-identical account from a former USAF missile guard who was stationed at Minot AFB, North Dakota, in 1968.
Airman 2nd Class Terry Stuck—Former Air Policeman, 809th Combat Defense Squadron, F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming:
Stuck states that one morning in the summer of 1965, while reporting for duty at the Oscar Flight LCF, he was informed about a UFO sighting by the departing night-shift guards. “The night team had observed fast-moving lights or objects,” said Stuck, “vehicles moving with incredible speed.”
Apparently, during the shift-change, the departing security team leader also informed the arriving missile commander about the UFOs. Stuck overheard the exchange. “The OIC (Officer in Charge) was a Captain—I don't recall his name,” said Stuck, “I do remember him saying that he had been a pilot in Korea and had observed UFOs and had reported the incident. He said they had sent him to the base psychiatrist and had basically put a stop on advancements in his career.”
The moral of this story was clear to Stuck and the departing security team leader: Be careful what you report because there may be repercussions. Stuck did not know whether the team leader had ever filed an official report about the incident. In any event, the Oscar Flight UFO sighting incident is not mentioned in the Project Blue Book memorandum inserted above. Perhaps it took place on another date during that period, or perhaps it did indeed occur on August 1st, but went unreported.
A few days after these events, Stuck had his own UFO sighting, again at the Oscar Flight LCF. “The observations,” he recalled, “were actually made in front of the launch control security facility which was at ground level, facing the access gate of the main launch control facility. I was never able to determine the size or shapes [of the UFOs]. When I saw them, they were at extreme distances and were doing right [-angle] turns at unbelievable speeds. I never heard any sounds.”
F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming (1973-74):
1st Lt. Walter F. Billings—Former Minuteman ICBM launch officer (Deputy Missile Combat Crew Commander), 90th Strategic Missile Wing, F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming:
I have inserted below excerpts from Billings’ first letter to me, with a few clarifications (in parentheses) and minor modifications relating to grammar and punctuation:
Dear Mr. Hastings,
...I arrived at F.E. Warren AFB in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in late January of 1972 from Vandenburg AFB [where I] had been trained in Minuteman I. After further training at F.E. Warren [I] was sent with the operations crews as a Deputy Missile Commander and assigned to a Squadron for the typical duty as a 2nd lieutenant. I was later trained as a training officer for the [missile] wing in Minuteman I, which encompassed assisting new arrivals in training and running simulators, and other duties. [These were] the standard duties until the Spring of 1973.
As a first lieutenant, along with so many others, [I] went back to school at F.E. Warren to learn the new Minuteman III system that was to be installed during the year of 1973. After training and evaluations, alert duties were assigned for the new system to those that had completed their training. We were to go on alerts as the new missile system was installed. In those days, F.E. Warren had 200 missiles on alert and was very active.
I am afraid that the dates that I will provide are somewhat vague. I wrote my experiences for a publication in this arena back in September 1993, and even then the dates were not exact. Also, some of the missile terminology may not be exact. I have forgotten some of the terms. I am sorry that I did not keep a private log of these events, back when they occurred.
The first event took place in the Fall of 1973. Over half of the LCCs (Launch Control Centers) had been converted to Minuteman III by this time, and I was on alert at Golf LCC. It was late at night. The UHF radio linking all twenty LCCs opened up with urgent talk from India LCC. In those days, the UHF radio was turned on, at all times, and if one LCC spoke to their SAT (Security Alert Team) or other LCCs, all twenty LCCs heard the conversation. After the India crew received a Outer Security Zone [alarm] on one of their missiles, and sent their SAT crew out for the standard investigation trip, we began to hear over the radio the events that developed.
From the UHF radio communication between the SAT and the India LCC crew, as we listened, we heard that as the truck was heading to the missile silo, the Inner Security Zone [alarm] had been tripped at the silo. Upon arriving near the subject silo, the SAT team observed a bright UFO hovering above the silo. The LCC crew advised the SAT team to proceed no further and to observe only. Approximately a minute later, the UFO moved off slowly for several thousand feet and then sped off at a high rate of speed. The conversation between the India LCC crew and the SAT team was heard by 19 other LCC crews on duty that night.
Upon relief by the next crew and upon return to F.E. Warren AFB, all crews on duty that night were informed that they would not speak to civilians or the news media about what they had heard on the UHF radio. Severe penalties were mentioned for those that did not heed this warning.
We, the LCC crews in general, began to hear rumors and stories, from other officers in operations and maintenance, that SAC headquarters at Offut AFB had sent the OSI (USAF Office of Special Investigations) to investigate this incident by helicopter. The India crew of that night would not speak of the incident at all.
There were stories from missile maintenance that the missile in question had been carefully examined and that they found the target tapes (which guide the H-bomb warheads to their targets) on the three warheads had supposedly been erased that night by the UFO. Needless to say, I only heard that these things had occurred. These stories were told between missile guys over the following week, but they were reliable people, who did not speak to civilians or the press about this subject. However, the squadron commanders warned us, again, not to speak of the incident.
The second incident involved an entire missile maintenance crew, I believe six enlisted men and one officer. This also occurred in late 1973. A Minuteman III missile was being worked on for some routine problem during one of those late fall nights. A UFO was observed by the entire maintenance crew. The UFO appeared to be watching the work and was seen for a full five minutes as it maneuvered close to the missile silo. This was told to me by a missile maintenance 1st lieutenant, approximately three days after the incident occurred.
The third incident took place in early Spring of 1974. As I was arriving at Charlie LCC in the morning with my captain, to begin an alert duty, we were told by the staff sergeant and two security police who had been on duty that night, of the strange thing that had happened.
They told us that a UFO had actually landed near the LCC and had been observed by the three, and that a minute-by-minute report had been given to the operations crew downstairs. When we asked about this, as we were relieving the LCC crew for our duty to begin, they would not talk about it with us. I heard a few days later that the staff sergeant was in some sort of trouble for speaking to us about what he saw, and that the OSI was again involved.
While I was in SAC, I personally was not directly involved with a UFO incident while on duty. However, during June of 1974, while on a camping trip in Dubois, Wyoming, with three other lieutenants, we observed a UFO flying relatively low. It was similar to the ones that were described to us, in the above three incidents. Since all four of us were Air Force lieutenants, we knew that this low-flying object was not an aircraft. From that time forward, I have had an interest in this subject and have read some on the subject as well.
I can tell you that these three incidents at F.E. Warren AFB did occur. It was a long time ago and I am sure many other things have happened since. I have not been able to find any written statements of these three incidents since. This could be because there was a very good cover-up of the situation at that time, or they were not deemed important enough to bother with. Though, I doubt that the latter is true.
I have always wondered as to what really happened to the missile that had the UFO hovering above it, and if the warhead target tapes had really been erased.
I wish you good luck on any research that you may do on this subject. I doubt that you will receive any help from those that might know the truth. I am sure that the cover-up that I observed many years ago is still in effect.
Thank you for your interest.
Sincerely,
Walter F. Billings
10/18/2002;
Comment: In an effort to obtain an informed perspective on Billings’ statements, I forwarded his letter to retired USAF Lt. Col. Philip Moore who, in 1978-79, had been the Commander of the 321st Strategic Missile Squadron at F.E. Warren AFB. Moore found the letter to be entirely credible. In an e-mail to me, dated 6/12/05, he wrote, "Billings' statement is totally believable, and his supporting facts are correct in spite of his dates and terminology caveats."
However, I also sent the letter to another former Minuteman missile launch officer who skeptically questioned Billings’ use of the term "target tapes", when describing the Minuteman III’s guidance system. (While the Minuteman I missile utilized such tapes, the Minuteman III did not.)
When I asked Moore to comment on this particular discrepancy, he replied, "[Regarding] Billings use of ‘tapes’ to refer to the maintenance part of the [guidance] system, the old tape system was replaced by a plug-in unit system. I think I remember that Billings was at F.E. Warren at the time MMI was deactivated and MMIII replaced it, having served in MMI and retrained in MMIII. Old terminology dies a slow death and the new system was often referred to as ‘the tapes’ for awhile after MMIII was in-place, until the old-timers got used to the new terminology."
Lt. Col. Moore’s own ICBM-related UFO experience is discussed in the Walker AFB section of this article.
F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming (1980-81):
Airman 1st Class Jay DeSisto—Former Air Policeman (Law Enforcement), 90th Security Police Squadron, F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming:
Comment: Jay DeSisto’s “UFO” experiences are somewhat different from those reported by my other former/retired USAF sources. For that reason, I have chosen to include his statement to me in its entirety.
DeSisto states, “I was an Airman First Class while stationed at FE Warren, in 1980-81. I worked as an LE (Law Enforcement) with the 90th Security Police Group. I was assigned to base patrol and very soon promoted to the position of Desk Sergeant, even though I was only an airman.
Thinking back, I can recall numerous occasions when I was on duty as Desk Sergeant when the security personnel at the Weapons Storage Area would contact me and report ‘lights’ overhead. I would usually dispatch a base patrolman to the area to confirm the sightings but I cannot recall any specific outcomes. I am sure I would have reported these incidents in the desk blotter.”
“While I never experienced or heard of any ‘UFOs’ while stationed there, there were several times when we were called in for duty on our days off to patrol the base perimeter because there were satellites allegedly overhead taking pictures. I always wondered what those recalls were about. It was strange. Again, no one ever mentioned UFOs, it was always ‘satellites’. None of those recalls happened while I was on duty as the Desk Sergeant.”
“The ‘satellite’ incidents were clustered, not spread-out, during my tenure at Warren. I seem to recall they would occur two or three nights in a row. I recall three times when my flight had to report for extra duty. One time we had been out at a bar off-base and when we returned to the base, the gate guards told us to immediately report to the armory to obtain weapons.
Even though we had been drinking, they issued us weapons and we were posted on the perimeter of the nuclear Weapons Storage Area on base. It was unusual to use Law Enforcement personnel for this duty in that it was normally a function of the Security Police personnel.”
“On two other occasions we were contacted at our barracks and told to report to the armory and obtain weapons. One of those times, I was posted at the Weapons Storage Area and another I was posted at the Combat Command Center doorway. Each time I was recalled for duty, our Flight Chief, a Tech Sergeant name Robert Moore, explained the situation regarding the satellites. During these instances our group headquarters was very active. Our squadron commander, Major Bernal F. Koersen, was usually present.”
“It really did not make sense to us that we were being called in for duty because of a satellite overhead. It seemed odd to have us don combat gear and weaponry. We just accepted the explanation of ‘satellites’ but, because of the way we were rousted for duty and the command activity present, we knew these incidents were very different from any type of readiness response exercise we had participated in, which were frequent and routine. We were often called in for extra duty during DoD inspections or Global Shield exercises, but again, during the satellite incidents, there was a different feel to the situation and the hurried and tense demeanor of command-level staff was quite different.”
Comment: One of my other sources suggests the possibility that the mysterious satellites reported above FE Warren were actually Soviet satellites involved in the verification of the 1979 U.S./Soviet SALT II agreement, which limited the number of strategic missile launchers in each country. However, given the specifics of DeSisto’s statement, this theory seems unlikely. Regardless, the Soviet satellite scenario would not explain the unidentified lights reported hovering at low altitude above the base’s nuclear Weapons Storage Area.
DeSisto states that those sightings, by Air Force Security Police, had occurred on “numerous occasions” during 1980 and/or 1981. It should be noted that declassified documents from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) confirm similar reports of UFOs, in August 1980, near the Manzano Weapons Storage Area, outside Kirtland AFB, New Mexico.
Furthermore, another UFO was observed in December 1980, as it directed laser-like beams of light down into, or near, the Bentwaters AFB Weapons Storage Area, during the now-famous series of sightings at the Anglo-American base, in Suffolk, England.
Walker AFB, New Mexico 1963-65:
Comment: Florida Today newspaper columnist Billy Cox conducted the initial interviews with Jerry Nelson and Gene Lamb. His article, “UFOs Haunt Missile Crew”, was published in June 2001.
1st Lt. Jerry C. Nelson—Former Atlas ICBM launch officer (Deputy Missile Combat Crew Commander), 579th Strategic Missile Squadron, Walker AFB, New Mexico:
Nelson states that on several occasions, while on alert in the underground launch capsule at Atlas Site 9, missile guards at ground-level had frantically reported a silent, very bright UFO hovering over the site. As he told Florida Today columnist Billy Cox, "The guards were scared.
These objects would hover over the silo and shine lights down on them without making any noise.” Nelson told me that he had personally been involved in “probably more than three but fewer than ten” such incidents, over a period of a month or so. He also remembered that the sightings had occurred “at least six months, maybe more like a year” after the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, when the squadron had been placed on high-alert.
Oddly enough, when Nelson notified the missile squadron’s Command Post about the incidents, his reports met with apparent indifference. Only much later did he learn that agents from the Office of Special Investigation had interviewed another individual regarding his knowledge of a similar incident.
1st Lt. Philip Moore—Former Atlas ICBM launch officer (Deputy Missile Combat Crew Commander), 579th Strategic Missile Squadron, Walker AFB, New Mexico:
Moore, who retired as a Lieutenant Colonel, states that one night in the fall of 1964, while on alert in the launch capsule at Atlas Site 7, his missile commander, Major Dan Gilbert, received an extraordinary call from one of their “sister sites”, either Site 6 or Site 8.
The commander at the other site reported that an extremely bright light was repeatedly hovering directly over the site, racing away, returning, and hovering again. Apparently, one of the enlisted men at the site, perhaps the security guard, had observed this activity and reported it to the missile commander.
Moore states that some of Site 7’s own enlisted men, including Tech. Sgt. Jack Nevins, were ordered up to the “silo cap” to monitor the situation. Moore states, “They reported the UFO zooming from the direction of Site 6 to the direction of Site 8 and hovering for awhile at the end of the movement…They all described it as a silent light that moved extremely rapidly—instant go and instant stop, no getting up to speed or slowing down.
The common comment I remember was that everyone thought it was a UFO, and that it was hovering directly over Sites 6 and 8 and nowhere else. Thus, it was specifically interested in those sites.”
Moore states that the Site 7 crew were never debriefed and never warned not to discuss the incident. “In other words,” he said, “there was no official discussion or acknowledgment.” Moore concluded, “I personally believe that there is something to the UFO/ICBM connection. I know the Air Force covers-up when it feels the official need. UFOs over ICBM sites could be one of those official needs.”
Airman 1st Class Thomas Kaminski—Former Atlas ICBM Launch Facilities Specialist, 579th Strategic Missile Squadron, Walker AFB, New Mexico:
Kaminski states that he had been at one of the Atlas ICBM launch sites northeast of Walker AFB one evening in 1964, possibly 1965, when the missile commander, Captain D------, directed him topside to view unexplained lights which had been reported to the site. Kaminski states he observed two star-like objects at a great distance, moving in unison.
When he reported his observations to the missile commander, Kaminski was told that the base was tracking the objects on radar and had scrambled two jet fighters to intercept them. Shortly thereafter, he observed the jets attempting to approach the unidentified lights, which then put on a burst of speed and outran the interceptors. The lights disappeared into a Cumulous cloud, followed by the fighters. Moments later, the jets emerged from the cloud but the lights were no longer visible. The fighters changed course and returned to base.
The next morning, upon returning to Walker AFB, Kaminski’s missile team was routinely debriefed. He states, “During that briefing, my captain asked, ‘Whatever happened to the two UFOs?’ The response was, ‘What UFOs?’ My captain said, ‘The ones you sent the fighters up after!’ They said, ‘We didn’t sent up any fighters.’ We knew that was the end of that conversation!”
Kaminski also states that he had once observed another UFO display, not at one of the remote missile sites but at Walker AFB itself. “At least half of my barracks saw this,” he said, “It was at night and there were two or three lights—possibly four or five—that were moving around in the sky. They looked like stars but, from time to time, they did 90-degree turns. Not all at once though—they moved independently. They obviously knew that they wouldn’t run into each other.
I don’t understand why we didn’t hear any sonic booms. That bothers me. They stayed in the same general area [of the sky]. After about 15 minutes, zoom, they were gone.” Then he added, “Actually, [sightings of UFOs] were fairly common on base. I think that a lot of guys saw them. It wasn’t something that you discussed.”
1st Lt. Eugene Lamb—Former Atlas ICBM launch officer (Deputy Missile Combat Crew Commander), 579th Strategic Missile Squadron, Walker AFB, New Mexico:
Lamb states that while he had not personally witnessed any of the UFO-related incidents at Walker’s Atlas sites, he had once spoken to a former missile crew commander who had. This individual admitted, decades later, that he had briefly left the launch capsule to go topside to observe strange aerial lights being frantically reported by the missile site’s guard. According to Lamb, the officer told him that the lights were unsettling because they had been moving erratically, and faster than jets.
He told Lamb that he was familiar with all types of aircraft but had never seen anything like the extraordinary display in the sky above the Atlas silo. According to Lamb, the former officer had said, “These were not just lights. This was something else.”
Lamb concluded, “People talked about [the sightings] at Happy Hour, after work, or after we got off-site, but it was kept pretty quiet as far as official statements went. To my knowledge, we were never briefed about it as a unit.”
Airman 2nd Class Barry L. Krause—Former Atlas ICBM Missile Facilities Specialist, 579th Strategic Missile Squadron, Walker AFB, New Mexico:
I did not personally interview Krause, who died in 1973. However, on December 20, 1964, he wrote to a civilian UFO research organization, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), to report an ongoing series of UFO-related incidents at his squadron's Atlas ICBM sites. In the letter, Krause stated that some of the missile security police whom he had queried about the sightings had deflected his questions by saying that the incidents had been classified "top secret."
Krause also stated that, at one point, the UFO incidents had become so numerous, and ominous, that some of the missile guards were balking at reporting for duty.
Comment: Krause’s 1964 letter to NICAP, written while the UFO incidents at Walker AFB were ongoing, is extremely important because it provides an unsolicited, contemporary account of some of the sightings at the missile sites. I would like to thank Richard Hall for sharing Krause’s letter with other researchers.
Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota (1966):
Staff Sgt. Albert Spodnik (USAF Ret.)—Former Electro-Mechanical technician, 44th Missile Maintenance Squadron, Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota:
Spodnik states that one summer night in 1966, he and a fellow Electro-Mechanical Team technician were dispatched to Launch Facility (silo) Juliet-3 to correct an electrical malfunction. For some reason, both the commercial power supply to the site and the emergency power systems had simultaneously failed, rendering the Minuteman I missile temporarily inoperable. In Air Force parlance, the ICBM had “gone off alert status”.
After restoring power to the launch facility, Spodnik and his partner began an automated start-up procedure which would return the missile to normal operational status. When they left the underground silo to take a break, the technicians’ security escort alerted them to a sudden, excited exchange over the Crew Cab’s two-way radio.
As the three men listened, they learned that an armed Air Force Security Alert Team had been ordered to investigate a triggered security alarm at nearby Launch Facility Juliet-5. Furthermore, the missile there had abruptly dropped off alert status. As with Juliet-3, the site had lost commercial electrical power and its diesel-powered generator, designed to charge back-up batteries, had failed to start.
When the Security Alert Team arrived at Juliet-5, they reported that a strange object was sitting on the ground inside the security fence that surrounded the missile silo. As Spodnik and his companions eavesdropped, they heard the Flight Security Controller order the SAT to approach the object.
Obviously upset, the team leader responded that he would not do so. He said that his team was parked outside the gate to the launch facility but would go no further. He then reported that the mysterious object was round, apparently metallic, and resting on a tripod landing gear.
As this drama was unfolding over the radio, Spodnik and his companions quickly climbed up on the Crew Cab’s roof and flat bed to get a better view of the adjacent missile silo, which was about four miles away. Gazing across the flat, open terrain, they noticed an intense glow that seemed to envelop the entire launch facility, much brighter than the security lights located there.
By this time, the Flight Security Controller had notified Juliet Flight’s Launch Commander about the situation. Spodnik could only hear the radio conversation between the Flight Security Controller and the Security Alert Team, but the Launch Commander had apparently ordered the team to approach the unidentified object.
Once again, the team leader refused. In a strained voice, he abruptly asked for permission to fire on the object. In response, the Flight Security Controller yelled, “Negative! Don’t shoot until you know what’s going on!” He then informed the agitated security team leader that the Launch Commander had ordered the men to stand-by while he called the Missile Command Post at Ellsworth AFB. After a few moments, the team leader was told that a helicopter was being sent to the site.
Spodnik states that about 30 minutes after the Command Post had been notified about the UFO landing, he saw the helicopter in the distance, as it approached the stricken launch facility. When it was about five minutes away, someone screamed into the radio, “There it goes!” Instantly, Spodnik saw a brilliant white light directly above Juliet-5, ascending vertically at enormous velocity. He said that while he couldn’t see the object itself, the light beneath it had the appearance of an “inverted flashlight beam”.
After the furor had subsided, Spodnik and his partner finished their work at Juliet-3 and returned to the base. Upon arriving, they and their security escort were unexpectedly met by the missile maintenance commander, who promptly asked them if they had seen or heard anything unusual while at the launch facility. The security guard readily admitted to eavesdropping on the two-way radio, confessing that he was baffled by what had taken place at Juliet-5.
Glancing nervously at each other, Spodnik and the other technician impulsively denied having witnessed anything out of the ordinary. Both men told the commander that they had spent the entire visit to the launch facility underground, restoring the missile to alert status.
When I asked Spodnik why he had not admitted to listening to the radio chatter, he replied that he and his partner had previously heard rumors about missile technicians being relieved of duty for reporting strange occurrences at ICBM sites. “We heard about people reporting seeing things,” he said, “Not necessarily UFOs, just anything oddball that couldn’t be explained rationally.
Those guys were ordered to report to the [base] hospital, examined, and medically discharged as mentally unfit for military service.” Spodnik admitted that he didn’t personally know of anyone who had been treated in this manner, but rumors to that effect had been circulating within his squadron.
Spodnik was undoubtedly referring to a Department of Defense regulation known as “PRP”—Personnel Reliability Program. As mentioned earlier, this directive is designed to govern the behavior of those who work with or around nuclear weapons. Under its guidelines, potentially severe consequences await those judged by their superiors to be psychologically unstable. Several former Air Force missile personnel whom I have interviewed have said that, because of this regulation, they also had concerns about reporting their own UFO sighting, and often did not.
Spodnik said that the maintenance commander, upon hearing his denial, eyed him suspiciously and then ordered the two technicians to report to his office early the next morning. Upon arriving there, Spodnik noticed that the commander had with him an individual dressed in civilian clothes. This person was not introduced, said nothing, took no notes, but listened attentively as Spodnik and his partner answered the commander’s questions about the events of the previous evening.
Now very nervous, the pair nevertheless stuck to their story—they had seen and heard nothing. After a several-minute interrogation, the maintenance commander ordered the two men to report to duty.
Spodnik further stated that the neither he nor his partner ever saw their security escort again. Ordinarily, standard duty rotation would have ensured that the same individual be assigned to accompany Spodnik on some future maintenance call, but this never occurred. Spodnik assumed that the escort had been transferred to another base, but never did learn the reason for his sudden departure.
Comment: A second former 44th Missile Maintenance Squadron technician, whom I will not identify, has independently confirmed the essential elements in Spodnik’s account, in particular the landing of the UFO inside the missile silo’s security fence. This individual estimates that the incident occurred in late June or early July, 1966, just prior to his separation from the Air Force.
Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota (1992):
UFO sighting by two Minuteman missile maintenance personnel, whom I will not identify, as reported to Tech. Sgt. Jeff Goodrich (USAF Ret.)—Former Minuteman missile technician, 44th Field Missile Maintenance Squadron (FMMS), Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota:
Just before midnight on October 27, 1992, two members of the 44th FMMS, Airman 1st Class Michael R-----, a vehicle controller, and Airman 1st Class Jason B-----, a Minuteman Electro-Mechanical Team technician, were approaching the squadron’s operations hangar when they saw a group of bright, white lights moving rapidly in rigid formation. While no solid object was actually visible, the fact that the lights did not vary in their positions relative to one another led the witnesses to concluded that they were arranged across the surface of a very large but unseen craft.
As R----- and B----- watched, the light formation moved directly toward the Minuteman missile maintenance hangar, hovered over it momentarily, and then moved away, disappearing behind a bank of low clouds. Both of the observers estimated that at its closest approach, the object was approximately a quarter-mile from them.
Upon arriving at work, the startled eyewitnesses excitedly told those present about the sighting. At that time of night, there wasn't much happening at the hangar and it was relatively empty except for a handful of people in the vehicles and equipment sections.
The next day, another missile maintenance technician, Jeff Goodrich, also learned of the incident. Goodrich had a long-standing interest in UFOs, and was a certified field investigator for the Mutual UFO Network. Using that organization’s standard sighting questionnaire, he had R----- and B----- independently record the details of their experience less than two days later.
R----- wrote, “It was kind of foggy out...When I first saw it, I thought it was an airplane, but it moved too smooth and swiftly without noise. I couldn’t believe it. I was totally amazed. It was an awesome sight. It seemed to hover about three-to-five hundred feet over the ground and [then] it just sort of disappeared in the air.”
In his report, B----- wrote, “I noticed it when I looked out over the hangar where I work. I pointed it out to Mike, who was driving. At first I thought it was an airplane but it was way too big. There were no flashing lights like on most planes and [its] shape was like no plane I’ve ever seen. I was freaked out [and] Mike almost ran off the road, trying to get a better look at it...It disappeared behind the clouds above the base.”
Each airman made drawings of the UFO itself, as well as its position in the sky, relative to the hangar. In R-----’s picture, the lights appear similar to a string of pearls, delineating the presumed boundary of an unseen kidney bean-shaped object. B----- drew essentially the same picture, but with some of the lights positioned away from object’s edge. He also depicted it as having more of a boomerang shape.
R----- drew the UFO hovering directly over the missile maintenance hangar, whereas B----- depicted the object approaching the facility from the north, and (as indicated by an arrow) moving into the cloud bank.
Elsewhere on the questionnaire, in the section titled, Object Description, R----- wrote that the UFO’s apparent width had been “2-3 times the size of a full moon”. B----- instead described the lights, writing that each one appeared “2-3 times the size of a star.” However, in the Personal Account section, he wrote that the object itself had been much larger than an airplane and, in one of his drawings of the entire cluster of lights, he added the caption, “Approx. 300 ft. long”.
Neither sighting witness was officially debriefed. It is unknown whether the UFO appeared on radar.
END OF SOURCE TESTIMONY;
NICAP Home Page;http://www.nicap.org/index.htm
Malmstrom Air Force Base Picks Up UFO on Radar;
Malmstrom Air Force Base Picks Up UFO on Radar; "Sabotage Alert Team Located Another UFO Directly Over The Base"
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http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_PXeDY3KOwg...1967%2B(B).jpg
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See also:
Air Force Staff Message: Malmstrom AFB Receives Multiple Reports of UFOs in The Great Falls, Montana Area
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2008...strom-afb.html
Did UFOs Cause the Shutdown of ICBMs at Malmstrom AFB, in March 1967(?)
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2008...-icbms-at.html
UFOs over Argentina/Argentinean Military's Role;
Very interesting case concerning UFOs over Argentina or the The Bariloche Incident
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Translation;
SAN CARLOS DE BARILOCHE (Argentina). -- A "flying saucer" of "white color", moving "at high speed while defying the laws of physics" disturbed, in the night from Monday to yesterday, the traffic of the airport of San Carlos de Bariloche, 1.800 kilometers in the South-west of Buenos Aires.
Avoid the collision;
It all begun whereas a flight coming from Buenos Aires with 102 passengers finished its approach maneuvers to land on the strip of Bariloche.
"The pilot had to make an desparate maneuver not to enter in collision with a UFO", claim several members of the Argentinean Air Forces. According to an officer "at the same time, an interruption of power occurred in all the city and the measuring devices of the airport went crazy."
White light;
"At the time when I started the descent, I suddenly saw opposite a white light which came directly at us at full speed, before stopping suddenly at a hundred meters (...) After a moment, the saucer changed color, two green lights appearing at the ends with an orange gleam in the center, which ignited intermittently", the pilot adds.
At the time when I started my last approach, the lights of the landing strip suddenly went off. I had to go up, still accompanied by the UFO which went up at a supernatural speed," the pilot adds. " When the light came back on the ground and that I started again my descent, the UFO then disappeared at full speed," the pilot concludes.
Argentinian Military/Government communique:
The Seven Official declarations made by the Argentinian Government;
1962: At 19:20 hrs on May 22, a squadron of fighters in the vicinity of Bahía Blanca's Comandante Espora Naval Base, reports the presence of UFOs along its flight path. The interception lasted 35 minutes. Direct eyewitnesses to this incident were Lt. Rodolfo César Galdós and his student, Roberto Wilkinson. Report No. 02779 causes the first official acknowledgment by an Argentinean government.
1965: Between the months of June and July, a succession of UFO incidents occur in the Antarctic region, some of them producing electromagnetic disturbances, and witnessed by personnel from the British, Chilean and Argentine bases. A phenomenon on July 3rd at the Deception Island Naval Station generates the second official acknowledgment.
1973: On November 2nd, six members of the Comandante Espora Naval Air Base, close to Bahía Blanca, witness the maneuvers of a UFO, immediately producing the third official acknowledgment.
1978: On the evening of February 4 at the La Florida dam in San Luis, six persons report the presence of a UFO and the descent of an occupant from within, leaving ground marks. The Police Precinct of San Luis, through its chief, Lt.Col. Raul Benjamín López, issues a document which constitutes the fourth official acknowledgment.
1978: Toward midnight on July 12, a low-level UFO sighting causes a commotion in the Estación Ramblón region, located between the limits of San Juan and Mendoza. It was witnessed by police officers among many others. The San Juan chief of police, Col. Guillermo Voguel, prepares the fifth official acknowledgment.
1982: In the evening of August 13, a UFO causes a disturbance in the town of Londres, Catamarca, and its flyover produces strong winds and starts a conflagration. A police patrolman attests to the intruder's presence. The provincial police emits the sixth official acknowledgment.
1986: The appearance of a nocturnal UFO and the subsequent discovery of a gigantic indentation on El Pajarillo hill, Córdoba, on January 9th, prompt this city's municipal authorities to issue the seventh and final official acknowledgment
UFOs CAUSE TWO MORE BLACKOUTS IN BARILOCHE;
Some more relativity interesting cases from around the world including mysterious unexplained power failures that blacked out Bariloche;
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Two more unexplained power failures blacked out Bariloche last week at the same time people reported seeing UFOs passing overhead.
The city, also known as San Carlos de Bariloche, is a popular resort in the Andes of Argentina. Located on the south shore of Lago (Lake) Nahuel Huapi, the city is about 1,040 kilometers (650 miles) southwest of Buenos Aires.
The first in the series of inexplicable blackouts took place Sunday, April 12, 1998 when witnesses reported seeing two UFOs "fuse together" over Cerro Carbon (hill).
On Tuesday night, April 14, 1998, "a great part of the city was totally darkened." Cooperativa Electricidade de Bariloche (CEB), the city's power company, traced the source of the blackout to the transmission lines along the Avenida Bustico near the transformer substation at Puerto Moreno. CEB said the sobrecorriente (power surge) "was five to six times greater than normal."
In the barrio Melipal, eyewitness Julio Posse stated, "I saw an interesting glow to the east of the Cerro Otto (hill). With my family I saw it from my yard. My sons shouted, 'Papa, the OVNIs!' (Spanish acronym for UFOs--J.T.) All I said was 'Yes, the OVNIs.'"
According to the newspaper Diario La Manana del Sur, "Officially no one has cited the word OVNI. But, to all of the questions, no one (at CEB) can explain the phenomenon. The lines were hit with a charge of 1,050 amperes. The automatic meters at the transformer substation Los Cipresales indicated the same surge at the moment during which witnesses sighted OVNIs last Sunday in the skies over Bariloche."
CEB spokesman Luis Baigorria said, "At present we do not have an explanation that can determine the cause of the surge."
Claudio Campo, an engineer for CEB, said, "That which occurred Tuesday night was identical to the incident Sunday. But in this case it was reported by the meters at the substation in Puerto Moreno."
The third blackout occurred Thursday night, April 16, 1998. Again Bariloche was completely blacked out for several hours.
Meanwhile reports of UFO sightings poured in from the Lago Nahuel Huapi shore and the hills and valleys east of Bariloche.
A man named Zuber "videotaped an OVNI about 15 kilometers from home, near School #255 at the intersection of Rutas 23 and 237. His three-minute tape shows a great black object with a light that 'shines intently and incessantly' with twinkling red, blue, yellow and green lights. The object can be seen with better clarity when he zooms in. A slight luminous halo surrounds the object."
Zuber's Sony camcorder tape was aired on Canal (Channel) 6's noontime news broadcast in Bariloche the following day.
Other witnesses reported seeing "two or three OVNIs" flying eastward over the city towards Cerro Leon" hill. (See the Argentinian newspapers Diario la Manana del Sur for April 15, 1998 and Diario Rio Negro for April 17, 1998, "Filmaron un OVNI Cerca del Cerro Leon en Bariloche." Muchas gracias a Carlos Iurchuk para esas noticias.)
CIGAR-SHAPED UFO HOVERS OVER A STADIUM IN ECUADOR;
A luminous, cigar-shaped UFO hovered over the municipal stadium in Guayaquil, Ecuador on Tuesday, April 21, 1998, at 7 p.m., interrupting a professional futbol (soccer in the USA--J.T.) game.
Guayaquil, Ecuador's port city on the Pacific Ocean, is located 380 kilometers (224 miles) southwest of Quito, the national capital.
The game pitted the Guayaquil pro futbol team against the pro team from Barcelona.
Midway through the game, people in the stands noticed "a very bright light" rising in the southwest sky. As it drew nearer, more and more spectators pointed it out and shouted. The UFO was described as "a white cigar-shaped object surrounded by a strong luminosity."
The UFO crossed the city and then hovered over the stadium for ten minutes. A cameraman for Canal (Channel) 7 in Guayaquil, who was covering the game, aimed his videocam at the object. His footage was broadcasted by Canal 7 the following day.
The UFO flew away to the north "at a tremendous velocity." (See the Brazilian newspaper Correio Brasiliense for April 22, 1998. Muito obrigado a Pedro Cunha por eso caso.)
FIRST CROP CIRCLE APPEARS IN ISRAEL;
On Thursday, April 16, 1998, Israel Television Channel One broadcast an interview with Golan Nasrir, 30, an Israeli Arab who discovered a crop circle in a wheat field in the Emeq Yisreel (Valley of Jezreel.)
The crop circle was found near the village of Bet Zarzir, located about 40 kilometers (24 miles) southeast of Haifa.
According to Israeli journalist Barry Chamish, "On the evening of April 12, a resident of the Jezreel Valley Arab village of Bet Zarzir heard dogs bark wildly, looked outside and saw small lights darting in a nearby wheat field. The next day he told his friend Golan Nasrir about the incident, and he (Golan) went to the field, thus discovering the crop circle."
Chamish described the crop circle as "a 26-meter half-circle with an equally long and straight 'tail' attached."
"Within the circle were seven round pods in the mud. All vegetation within was killed, and the ground was severely dessicated compared to the surrounding soil. In four of the pods, the soil was covered with a white powder, while, in the other three pods, there was a red oily fluid."
Israeli ufologist Gil Bar painstakingly took samples of the white powder and red oil. Chamish showed the samples to Dr. Marvin Antleman, who reportedly speculated that the oil might be a derivative of cobalt. Dr. Antleman is making arrangements to have the samples analyzed in a laboratory. (Many thanks to Barry Chamish for this news story.)
UFOs AGAIN ACTIVE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA;
On Saturday, April 18, 1998, at 8:30 p.m., Richard Macedo was at his home in Temple City, California (population 31,100), a suburb of Los Angeles, with his wife and sister. Macedo is a 39-year-old quality assurance manager for a Boeing subcontractor.
"My sister saw it first," Richard reported, "She was looking east and saw the object in a one o'clock position. She was sitting under a 2-foot eave so I imagine her viewing angle was around 80 degrees. My wife responded to my sister's shouting and spied the object somewhat lower in the sky."
"I saw the final part of its descent with a large tree in the foreground, and it seemed to be blinking as the foliage partially blocked out my view. But my sister claimed it was blinking all the way down, even when it was in the open sky. It appeared to be falling at an 85 degrees angle."
The trio watched the UFO from their porch near the intersection of Olive Street and Halifax Road in Temple City. Richard said the UFO was "utterly silent" and might have gone down in the area of lower Azusa Avenue.
"The object appeared to be illuminating the roof of the church next door...I thought I might have noticed a bluish glow from the bottom of the object before it vanished completely." (Email Interview)
On Wednesday, April 22, 1998, Cinde Costello of San Bernardino MUFON received a phone call from a woman employed by the Job Corps. The woman reported that "fifty people had witnessed three bright lights heading east towards the Big Bear mountain area" at about 8:30 p.m.
San Bernardino (population 164,164) is located 65 miles (84 kilometers) east of Los Angeles.
At first the woman "thought they might be hang gliders with lights." She described the UFOs as "the lights were bright amber-yellow and appeared to be floating or hovering. The three objects then began to move south and changed color from amber to bright red. The objects were viewed for more than 10 minutes."
The UFOs were an estimated one mile from the 50 witnesses. Some claimed to have seen a "wing-like structure or an object with what she described as 'like a seagull's wings.'"
According to Cinde Costello, a gull-winged UFO was seen over San Bernardino on January 5, 1998. (Many thanks to Jerry Glass and Cinde Costello of MUFON for this news story.)
FLYING-WING UFO SIGHTED OVER SAN FRANCISCO;
On Saturday, April 18, 1998, at 10:15 p.m., designers Amy S. and Jennifer K. were in the backyard of a home near Army Street in San Francisco (population 723,959) when Amy spotted a strange-looking object high in the sky.
Jennifer reported, "The object was moving northwest" over the city "really slow, way up. We were out looking at the stars--looking for satellites. No sound, no trail. We had it in view for 35 to 40 seconds."
"There was no fuselage. It looked like a wing flying in the air. No tail section," she added. "Wings were not bigger than the fuselage because there wasn't any." The object was primarily "perpendicular wings with some sweeping back, the ends were bent slightly. It was moving in a forward direction. There was no glow, just a faint gray color. Other friends of ours didn't see it because it was so fast. It seemed very high up." (Email Interview)
MARFA MYSTERY LIGHTS DAZZLE FAMILY IN TEXAS;
On March 13, 1998, at 7 p.m., Nicole Prescott and her grandmother, mother and sister were at their home near Marfa, Texas (population 2,424) when the area's most puzzling phenomenon--the Marfa Lights--made a sudden appearance.
The lights appeared "at 70 to 75 degrees above the horizon. They were crackling bright lights of white and orange."
Nicole reported, "They seemed to come towards you. Some were the size of a basketball. Others were no bigger than the head of a pencil."
The Marfa Lights were first reported in 1881 by a local cowboy. A Japanese scientific team videotaped them in 1994. Science has never been able to explain the mysterious darting lights, which usually appear over Mitchell's Flat, southwest of Chinati Mountain.
Marfa is at the junction of U.S. Highways 67 and 90, about 194 miles (310 kilometers) southeast of El Paso.
According to Nicole, a local man was driving across the flat prairie north of the Cuseto del Punto mountains last winter when a Marfa light entered his car through the rear window, hovered over the back seat hissing and crackling, and then vanished several minutes later. (See American UFO Newsletter #7 for 1998. Many thanks to editor Stefan Duncan for this news story.)
GLOWING TRIANGULAR UFO SIGHTED IN FRANCE;
On Wednesday, April 15, 1998, at 11:40 p.m., law clerk T. Tony was at his home on the Rue d'Authie in the quartier Chemin Vert in Caen, a city in northern France, when he spied a triangular UFO.
"I found myself at home when my attention was drawn to the window by a luminosity in the night sky, which that night was very clear," M. Tony reported. "The moon was in its first quarter but could not be seen, the wind slight and there were few clouds. It (the UFO) appeared to be a luminous mass, vaguely triangular, like a triangle with rounded edges but very sharp in the front. It was a bright orange luminosity, with a band of light red across the middle that was quite visible. It was followed by a red rectilinear hind part. There weren't any beacons or clusters of lights."
"The object was in rapid descent when I saw it, but without any noise. In 20 seconds, the object performed a multitude of aerobatic maneuvers that did not appear to have any logical purpose, passing in pirouette and looping without ever changing its speed. Then it left my field of view, and I saw nothing more."
Caen is in Normandy, in the department Calvados, about 250 kilometers (150 miles) west of Paris. (Merci beaucoup a Franck Marie et Banque OVNI pour ces nouvelles.)
(Editor's Note: In July 1944, Caen was the site of a big battle of World War II.)
FLOURESCENT GREEN UFO SPOTTED IN AUSTRALIA;
On Saturday, April 4, 1998, at 10:30 p.m., residents of Healesville, Victoria state, Australia spotted "a flouro (flourescent) green illumination crossing the northern sky."
The UFO flew very quickly and "traveled from the east to the north, taking about five seconds to pass. There was no sound, no tail and no trail. The respondents described it as 'a green fireball.' It appeared to be the size of a half-moon."
Healesville is 120 kilometers (72 miles) northeast of Melbourne. (Many thanks to Ross Dowe and the Australia/New Zealand 24-Hour UFO Hotline for this report.)
IRISHMAN REPORTS UFO SIGHTING IN DUBLIN;
On April 2, 1998, at about 5 p.m., David Martin "was walking in an area called Blanchardstown" in Dublin, capital city of Eire. As he approached "the Bell Pub, I saw an object flash across the sky. It stopped and hovered over my head. It seemed circular in shape. It flew off to the east in the direction of Raheny." (Many thanks to John Thompson of ISUR and David Martin for this report. See Filer's Files #15 for 1998.)
SATURN-SHAPED UFO BACK IN NORTH CAROLINA;
On Monday, April 20, 1998, Stefan Duncan, editor of American UFO Newsletter (AUFON) began a skywatch "on a pier approximately 300 yards (270 meters) east of Panter's Point" on High Rock Lake. The lake is located just east of Salisbury, North Carolina (population 23,087), a city on Highway 29 about 115 miles (184 kilometers) west of Raleigh.
At 9:45 p.m., "looking towards the east end of the lake, I saw my reddish UFO," Duncan reported. "Similar to the one I saw April 2, an object whose light was a non-blinking reddish-white" with "the shape of Saturn when the rings are seen edge on. The object was probably a mile down the lake. The object rose from the treetops and hovered for about five minutes and then descended."
At 10 p.m., the UFO "moved from the treetops but just to the top of the trees and went no higher." An attempt to videotape the object failed when Duncan's camcorder jammed. "It stayed in position for two seconds before descending."
At 10:14 p.m., "the object rose a third time but just over the treetops. It brightened, then went back to normal glow. After two minutes, it descended."
The UFO flap began December 15, 1997 when local resident James Minster spotted four flat discs hovering over High Rock Lake. (See American UFO Newsletter #7. Many thanks to Stefan Duncan for this report.)
WHITE TUBULAR UFO SEEN IN NORTHERN NEW JERSEY;
On Friday, April 17, 1998, at 7:30 p.m., Sam Sherman and his wife were driving to dinner on Route 516 in Old Bridge, New Jersey (population 6,090), heading for nearby East Brunswick, when Sam spotted a UFO.
"Directly overhead storm clouds were gathering, although low on the horizon," Sherman reported. "The sky was still blue and the sun was shining brightly prior to setting. I looked up in the sky and saw what looked like a contrail between two clouds. It was like no contrail (condensation trail--J.T.) I had ever seen, and it moved forward in a northerly direction (towards New York City--J.T.) but did not have a tail or vapor or smoke behind it."
"This was of definite and finite length. To describe what I saw, as follows--at arm's length, it appeared to be 3 or 4 inches (6 or 8 centimeters) in length and tubular in shape. The color was white but with luminescent color overlying a bluish-green tinge. As the sun appeared to be behind it, the object did not appear to be reflecting the sun's rays...The tubular bright object was moving north and threading its way through the clouds." He eventually lost sight of the UFO "behind a dark cloud to the north." (See Filer's Files #15 for 1998. Many thanks to George A. Filer, Eastern MUFON director, for this report.)
AIR SYSTEM FAILURE MAY SHORTEN NEUROLAB FLIGHT;
The space shuttle Columbia may have to end its 15-day Neurolab mission days earlier than planned because of a failure in the spacecraft's air cleansing system.
Columbia blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida on April 17, Aboard are seven astronauts, led by pilot Scott Altman and mission commander Rick Searloss, and animals scheduled for inflight tests, including 152 rats, 18 pregnant mice, 60 snails, 75 snail eggs, 1,514 baby crickets and 233 swordtail fish.
The shuttle, nicknamed Altman's Ark, now holds the record for the largest number of passengers-- living creatures from Earth--to enter outer space.
"If Columbia's crew can't fix a unit designed to remove carbon dioxide from the cabin air, the spacecraft may have to return to Earth late Wednesday or early Thursday, several days early."
"NASA Mission Control spokesman James Hartsfield said the carbon dioxide system may be repairable."
"In the meantime, the astronauts are using cans of lithium hydroxide which cleans carbon dioxide out of the air chemically. They've got enough cans to last seven days." (See the New York Post for April 26, 1998, "Shuttle landing is up in the air.)
from the UFO Files...
1937: STRANGE CRUISE OF THE O.M. McFARLAND;
One of the weirdest disappearances in the history of the Lake Michigan Triangle occurred on April 28, 1937, sixty-one years ago.
According to the Cleveland Press, "A new mystery of the Great Lakes was unfolded today when the freighter O.M. McFarland docked in Port Washington, Wisconsin and crew members reported the disappearance of the ship's master."
It was a big day for the McFarland's skipper, Captain George R. Donner--his fifty-eighth birthday. Born in 1879, Donner "had sailed for ten years on the old Valley Camp Steamship Company boats until the firm was taken over by Columbia (Transportation Company). It was his first command under the Columbia house flag, although he had been on the lakes for years and had served as a skipper for several of them."
Days earlier, the McFarland had picked up 9,800 tons of coal at the dock in Erie, Pennsylvania. The vessel sailed out of Lake Erie, across Lake Huron, and through the Straits of Mackinac into Lake Michigan.
"At 10:15 p.m. on the night of April 28, 1937," Captain Donner "left the pilot house, giving instructions to the second mate to call him when the McFarland was off her destination of Port Washington, Wisconsin, some three hours hence. Stating that he wanted to get a couple of hours sleep, he went below, out of sight of the mate and the wheelman.
The desire for rest was understandable, for the McFarland, on her first trip of the season, had encountered the usual heavy ice in the Straits of Mackinac, losing considerable time. And, once in northern Lake Michigan, a sharp watch had to be kept for roving ice fields."
"After leaving the pilot house, Captain Donner must have busied himself with paperwork before retiring, for he was later heard moving around in his room."
"At 1:15 a.m. (April 29, 1937--J.T.) as the McFarland neared Port Washington, the mate, as instructed, descended to the captain's room to summon him. There was no response to his knocking on the door, so the second officer opened it and peered in, assuming that the captain was merely sleeping heavily. But Captain Donner was not in the bed or anywhere else in sight."
"On the possibility that the captain had walked aft to get coffee or partake of the night lunch, the mate hurried back to the galley, but except for a couple of off-duty firemen finishing a midnight snack, it was deserted. Quickly summoning the other mate and the chief engineer, he organized a thorough search of the McFarland, crew members combing every nook and cranny of the thirty-four year-old vessel. Without a doubt, Captain Donner had disappeared!"
Yes, indeed, Captain Donner had vanished from his locked room. There was no other hatch except the one leading into the companionway, and he was too large to pass through the room's two portholes. No one had seen him in the companionway between midnight and 1:15 a.m., when the mate knocked on his door.
Interestingly, during this critical hour, the McFarland was 30 miles (48 kilometers) northwest of Ludington, Michigan. Ludington is reputed to be the nexus of the Lake Michigan Triangle.
"Ships along the McFarland's route were asked to keep a watch for Donner's body, and the same request was passed on to communities along the shore."
"Captain Donner's body never did turn up, and his disappearance from his cabin aboard ship is as much a mystery now as it was in 1937."
(See STRANGE ADVENTURES OF THE GREAT LAKES by Dwight Boyer, Freshwater Press, Cleveland, Ohio, 1974, pages 223 to 225. Also THE GREAT LAKES TRIANGLE by Jay Gourley, Fawcett Publications, Inc., Greenwich, Conn. 1977, page 176. Also GATEWAY TO OBLIVION by Hugh Cochrane, Avon Books, New York, NY, 1980, pages 34 and 35. And the Cleveland (Ohio) Press for April 29, 1937.)
FUN UFO WEBSITES:
Mars continues to interest the UFO community. Check out MUFOR's image of Cydonia at this site:
The Pathfinder Anomalies Analysis Group has a site at http://mufor.org/mars.html
Stephen Miles Lewis has an Anomalous Experience page devoted to Forteana at his site. Drop in at http://www.sogweb.com/~elfin/links/ELFLinks1.html
More on recent crop circles in the UK, the Netherlands and Israel can be seen at Circles Phenomenon Research (CPR-Canada). Try them at http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Cavern/3310
There's more Forteana available at Jacques Poulet's site at http://www.generation.net/~jpoulet
Kenneth Green of UFO TIMES has a new page that organizes sightings in the USA on a state-by-state basis. Drop in and look it over at http://ufo-times.home.ml.org
Definitely not to be missed is our parent site, UFOINFO, with its vast array of news, photos and features. Check it out at this URL: http://ufoinfo.com
Back issues of UFO ROUNDUP can be accessed and downloaded at our website at http://ufoinfo.com/roundup/
On this date sixty-five years ago, i.e. on April 26, 1933, physicist Arno Allen Pezias was born. In 1978, Pezias won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the existence of microwave cosmic radiation in space.
That's it for this week. We'll be back next Sunday with more saucer news from "the paper that goes home--UFO ROUNDUP." See you then.
LINK; http://www.ufoinfo.com/roundup/v03/rnd03_17.shtml
Scientists & engineers ufo witnesses;
Quite a detailed text showing that there are and has been a number of good UFO reports by scientific observers and are on record;It should also be noted that there have been more people of the stature of SCIENTISTS & ENGINEERS who have came forward with their witness testimony since the time of this article from the 1960s;
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THE UFO EVIDENCE, published by the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, Copyright 1964;
SECTION VI;
SCIENTISTS & ENGINEERS;
quote;
"One of the many current myths about UFOs is that no trained observers have reported them. Often this argument is used by skeptics to imply that UFO reports result only from careless observations. This attitude is reflected in a question often posed in newspaper articles: "If UFOs are real, why haven't astronomers seen them?" The answer is that they have, on many occasions.
The ridicule evoked by the reporting of a UFO sighting definitely has taken its toll among professional scientists and engineers who value their reputations. A significant number of scientists have told NICAP privately that it would be professional suicide for them to discuss the subject openly among their colleagues. Nevertheless, a number of good UFO reports by scientific observers are on record.
Another myth is that only amateurs and pseudo-scientists consider UFOs worth further investigation. One scientist who took early notice of UFO reports was Dr. Anthony O. Mirarchi, chemist employed by the Air Force in its geophysical laboratory. In 1951 Dr. Urner Liddel, a Navy scientist, insisted all UFOs were Skyhook balloons.
Dr. Mirarchi challenged this conclusion and urged a full investigation of UFOs which, he said, could be foreign experiments of some kind. Dr. Mirarchi rejected the idea that UFOs were only misidentified conventional phenomena and said he had recommended a "considerable appropriation" to investigate them. After studying Air Force reports, he said UFOs appeared to have "maneuvered motion" and their vertical and horizontal motions could not be reconciled with natural phenomena. [1.]
A former German rocket scientist, Dr. Walther Riedel, headed the now defunct Civilian Saucer Investigation of Los Angeles, which attained national prominence in 1952 after being publicized in Life and Time. Dr. Riedel stated his opinion that UFOs were of Extraterrestrial origin. [2.] (Some of the cases gathered by CSI are incorporated in this report).
Three world-famous scientists have expressed similar views:
Prof. Hermann Oberth, whose pioneering studies paved the way for space travel, has stated his complete conviction that UFOs are piloted by super-intelligent beings from another planet. [3.]
Admiral Delmer S. Fahrney, U.S.N. (Ret.), "father of guided missiles," and former NICAP Board Member, in a 1957 press conference stated that there was an urgent need to know the facts about the apparently controlled objects reported to be entering our atmosphere. His statement received wide coverage in the world press.
Dr. Carl Jung, famous Swiss psychologist, shortly before his death in 1961, sent a personal communication to the NICAP Director. In it he stated he had come to the opinion that UFOs did appear to be space ships. [4.] (Previously he had been embroiled in international publicity, accidentally misquoted as believing UFOs were real when he still considered this an open question)
Chart: UFO Sightings by Scientists;
DISCS CIRCLE AIRCRAFT;
Source: "Mars, The New Frontier", by Wells Alan Webb (Fearon Publishers, Calif., 1956) p.124.
Witnesses: John Zimmerman, Geologist; Charles Fisher, civil engineer.
Date: June 12, 1950.
Location: California
Time: About 4:00 p.m.
Working outdoors at a quarry, they had noticed a high-flying swept-wing aircraft leaving a vapor trail, and paused to watch it.
"He [Zimmerman] was startled to notice a rift form in the vapor trail not far behind the airplane and a wisp of cloud suddenly streak upward as if an object had come from below and cut upward through the vapor trail, disturbing it. Looking quickly for the object, Zimmerman saw a silvery disc of diameter about one-third the apparent length of the airplane's fuselage, flying rapidly in a circle above the airplane, overtaking it.
With an exclamation he called Fisher's attention to the phenomenon, and together they watched two additional discs pass from below, dart up through the vapor trail, overtake the airplane and then dive down in front of it, making vertical loops around the airplane. Each object made several such loops in succession, each time coming up behind the airplane and cutting the vapor trail, each cut displacing a filament of the trail in an upward direction."
Date: August 3, 1951. Witness: Walter N. Webb, Chief Lecturer on Astronomy, Charles Hayden Planetarium, Boston, Mass., (former member of the Smithsonian Institution Satellite Tracking Program): "That summer I was a nature counselor at Camp Big Silver, the Toledo (Ohio) Boy's Club camp on the shores of Silver Lake in southern Michigan, three miles south of Pinckney. It was a clear, moonless night. I had been showing two boys various celestial objects through my 3-1/2 inch reflecting telescope and pointing out constellations.
The time was about 11 p.m. or midnight. Suddenly I noticed a glowing yellow, or yellowish-red light moving in an undulating path (but on a straight course) over the hills south of Silver Lake. As the object traveled slowly westward in this peculiar manner, the three of us watched in fascination. It was at such a low elevation that its regular wavelike course caused it to dip behind the hills a few times.
At first I frankly didn't realize that I might be seeing anything unusual and thought the object was a plane light. But something was disturbing about that flight path and by the time it dawned on me that planes don't fly on wavy paths, the thing was about to vanish for good behind trees in the foreground. I swung the telescope toward the hills, but it was too late.
"I had seen something strange in the sky that I could not explain. No known object I could think of followed a path like that. The remote possibility that the UFO might have been the reflection of a moving ground light from a rippling inversion layer was quickly rejected, An inversion reflection would appear as a hazy spot of light in the sky much reduced in brightness when compared with its original light source.
My UFO appeared to be a bright, glowing object moving in a regular wavy pattern. It is impossible for an inversion layer to produce a smooth rhythmic reflection. A turbulent rippling layer of air would be required, and such a condition would not be capable of producing any image at all."
Formation of Rocket-like Objects
The following report was submitted to NICAP by Dr. Charles H. Otis, professor emeritus of Biology, Bowling Green State University.
"Place of observation: 3724 Dexter Rd., R.D. No.1, Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, Michigan; a small acreage at the top of Lyon Hill, called Sleepy Hollow, situated about four miles west from Main Street (or the County Court House). Altitude at the road, about 975 feet (the place is easily located on the
50
Ann Arbor quadrangle, topographical map, U.S. Geological Survey), at the place of observation, in the hollow, probably 950 feet, or a little more. Along the west property line is a small woods and two low buildings. To the east is a wide expanse of sky.
"Date of sighting: July 27, 1952. Time of observation, about 10:40 a.m. Conditions for observation, perfect; a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky (see an observation later); the sun at this time of day high in the heavens; no observable haze. Photographically speaking, conditions were probably those of maximum light for the year and suitable for the fastest exposure (only, no camera-what a picture, I think, could have been made, with a ray filter over the lens, and with telephoto equipment, either snapshot or movie-explanation will appear in the story).
"The story: (apologies for the use of "I").
"I was working on a lawn settee, giving it a coat of white enamel, in the shade of a walnut tree. My wife was sitting nearby......For some reason - perhaps my back was tired - I stood up, laid down my brush, stepped out into the sunshine and glanced up and to the east. I was startled by what I saw. There in a pattern, were a number of objects, seemingly floating along, making no sound.
My first thought was that something had been released from a plane that I remembered had passed overhead not long before (I refer to a noisy 4-engined plane that makes its regular east to west trip at about this time of day, and to which we never pay any attention, although it usually passes over the house, both coming and going), and I called to my wife to come and then I realized that these objects were probably much higher than the plane was flying and that there was no connection with it (I mention these reactions because, so far as I am aware, the pilot of the plane did not report on these strange objects, and, they might not even have been there at the time of his passing).
It was my impression that the objects were as high as the highest fleecy white clouds, but it may be only an impression (later checking of the sky revealed only two small white clouds lying low on the horizon at the north, and there was nothing at the time to use as a gauge). I assumed that they were traveling over the city of Ann Arbor, as if a reconnaissance were being made; the direction appeared to be due south.
They were traveling so slowly (but, of course, they may have been much higher than I supposed) that I told my wife to keep looking, while I ran to the house and seized a bird glass (magnification near 5X). From then on, with the glass, I studied the objects until they disappeared at my horizon.
"When first counted, the objects number 15; and they were traveling in the form of an organized flotilla, the horizontal distribution being something on this order (but probably not an exact duplication):
http://www.nicap.org/ufoe/draw51a.gif
For this reason, I will hereafter refer to the objects as "ships." The "ships" traveled so slowly that it seemed to me that I was able to study them for minutes (that may have been one of those times, however, when a minute may seem an hour; but, of course they were going farther away all the time). Before they reached my horizon, one "ship" as if receiving a signal, left the flotilla and, describing what to me seemed to be a wide arc, disappeared with a burst of speed that seemed incredible.
I had the glass on it, and then it was gone. . . The mathematics has not been worked, but just after the episode the approximate angle of sight when first seen was determined to be 34 degrees with the horizontal, using level and planimeter, and if we knew the height, it could be calculated.
Description of a "ship":
The 15 "ships" appeared to be identical in size, shape, and other discernible characteristics. In the way in which they seemingly floated, one got the impression that they were of very light weight (unless someone has discovered some way to eliminate the force of gravity). There was no sound (even from 15 of them in a body).
They maintained position in the flotilla perfectly. The body appeared to be elongated, but split at the rear; there were no wings. Nothing like a cabin could be discerned, nor windows, nor persons. The sketch shown here is a copy of one hastily made in my notebook immediately after the "ships" had passed out of sight.
http://www.nicap.org/ufoe/draw51b.gif
Two items stand out conspicuously. In the "bow" end of each "ship" was a relatively large and exceedingly bright glow (brighter than a star, even in the bright light of the day; - this might explain the reported "lights over Washington" episode, which occurred at night). Each "ship" also had, emanating from the "stern" portion, two "tails", seemingly streaming out horizontally, never changing in length, nor wavering.
These "tails" had none of the aspects of vapor trails, and they cut off cleanly; i.e. they had definite ends. It was as if the "ships" laid down a caterpillar track, walked on it, but carried it along with them. They gave the appearance of the tail of a comet, like Halley's, which I once saw very beautifully one night (1910?), but in this instance, and strangely enough, in a bright sky. They gave somewhat the appearance of the Tyndall effect which the stereopticon beam gives in a darkened theater.
But, if due to the Tyndall effect, why should the "tails" or "beams" have been visible in broad daylight? It is possible that the "tails" just described represent atomic or subatomic particles leaving the "ship" with terrific speed and with propulsive force, that they were luminous in themselves, and that they had a limited and short length of life (which could account for the definite length of the "tail" which has been mentioned previously). What other explanations are there which might account for the appearance and behavior of the "ships" upon which I am reporting?"
GYRATING LIGHT;
Wells Alan Webb;
B.S., M.S., Chemistry, University of California Chemical Engineer & Research Chemist;
Provided Univ. of Calif. with deuterium source for cyclotron research.
Source: "Mars, The New Frontier", by W. A. Webb (Fearon Publishers, 1956), page 125:
"On January 30, 1953, at approximately 7:25 p.m. the author was riding in the back seat of an automobile in which Felix Gelber and Grover Kihorny, both of Los Angeles, were also passengers. The night sky appeared black except for stars. The desert air was clear and the stars and ground lights shone with brilliance. We were on Highway 80, traveling west toward Yuma, Arizona, 7 miles away at the approximate rate of 60 miles per hour.
While looking through the windshield the writer noticed a half mile ahead among a group of steady bright ground lights there was one light which flickered and danced. At about 15 degrees above the horizon stood the evening star.
All of these lights, the steady, the dancer and the star, had approximately equal brilliance in the field of vision at that moment. As we approached the ground lights, they resolved into floodlights on twenty foot poles illuminating the hangar area of Spain Flying Field. We saw through the side window a single engine Army trainer standing in this area with a man working over it. The dancing light, now apparently higher than at first, hovered directly over the airplane at about twice the height of the floodlights.
Suddenly, looking out the side, then the rear window, we became aware of the dancing light's rising motion. It rose slowly at first, then gathering momentum it lifted rapidly. The author strained at the rear window and watched the light blink repeatedly, then vanish among the stars at an altitude of at least 60 degrees. This was not more than about ten seconds after we had passed the flying field, still traveling at 60 mph.
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Gelber and Kihorney had also seen the light, their observation of the details had been the same as the author's, so the next morning the writer prevailed upon them to investigate the mysterious light. We returned to the place on the highway opposite the hangar. The airplane stood on the same spot as the night before. We paced off the perpendicular distance from the highway to the airplane. It was one hundred yards.
Then we found a mechanic who said that he was the man who had been working on the airplane the evening before. He had not seen the dancing light; there had been no sound to attract his eyes overhead. Therefore the light had not been on a helicopter. He referred us to the U S. Weather Station, one quarter of a mile eastward.
There the weatherman said that he had released a lighted balloon at about the time we had seen our flickering light. He showed us one of the balloon lights, a very small flashlight bulb without reflector. It did not flicker, it burned steadily the weatherman said, but its light could never appear to be of the same brightness as the glaring floodlights of the Spain Flying Field.
Furthermore, the weather balloon had not hovered over the hangar of that flying field; at a uniform rate it had mounted steadily in the sky above the weather station. The weatherman proved this by showing us the chart he had plotted by taking telescope sightings of the altitude of the light at timed intervals.
When all of the facts about the light that Gelber, Kihorney and the writer had seen were laid before the weatherman, he said that ours must have been a UFO, that such things were a great mystery but had nevertheless been seen frequently in the neighborhood by the personnel of the Weather Station and also of the nearby Air Force Fighter Base."
Mr. Webb's second UFO sighting was on May 5, 1953. Time:
9:45 - 10:00 a.m.
"It was a clear sunny morning; the author was standing in a field near the Vacuum Cooling Company plant, not far from Spain Flying Field, and about a mile north of the Yuma Air Force Fighter Base. His attention was drawn by the buzzing of jet fighters taking off in quick succession, passing directly overhead traveling northward. As he scanned the northern sky, the author's attention became fixed upon what at first appeared to be a small white cloud, the only one in the sky at the time.
The author was wearing Polaroid glasses having a greenish tint, and as was his custom when studying clouds he took the glasses off and put them on at intervals to compare the effect with and without Polaroid. The object was approximately oblong with the long axis in a horizontal plane. It floated at an elevation of about forty-five degrees.
During the course of about five minutes the object traveled approximately 30 degrees toward the east. Then it appeared abruptly to turn and travel northward; at the same time its oblong shape changed to circular section.
As a circular object it rapidly became smaller as if receding. While receding, the object did not noticeably lose any of its brightness. In about thirty seconds of this, its diameter became too small for the author to hold in his vision.
During the first period the writer had not noticed a change in the oblong nor in the field of view about it as a result of putting on and taking off his Polaroid glasses. But during the second period several uniformly spaced concentric circles appeared around the now circular object. The circles were distinct dark bands which enveloped the silvery disc. The largest of these circles was, perhaps, six times the diameter of the central disc.
When the writer removed his polarizing glasses the silvery disc remained but the concentric rings vanished. When the glasses were put on again, the rings reappeared. The writer repeated this several times, each time with the same result. The rings with glasses on, faded to invisibility before the disc became too small to see."
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ASTRONOMERS' REPORTS;
The late Dr. H. Percy Wilkins, British lunar astronomer, relates several UFO reports including one of his own in his book "Mysteries of Space and Time", (F. Muller Ltd., London, 1955). Attributing most UFO reports to conventional objects, Dr. Wilkins states: ". . . a residuum remains which cannot be thus explained." [p.4]
Dr. Wilkins was flying from Charleston, W. Va. to Atlanta, Ga. on the morning of June 11, 1954. At 10:45 a.m. he noticed two brilliant oval-shaped objects apparently hovering above the tops of cumulus clouds an estimated two miles away. They were "sharp-edged objects," the color of polished brass or gold, and much brighter than the clouds.
"They looked exactly like polished metal plates reflecting the sunlight," Dr. Wilkins reported, "and were in slow motion northwards, in contrast to the clouds which were drifting southwards." [p.41]. Then he noticed a third object of the same description against the shadowed side of the cloudbank; it was grayish and not reflecting sunlight. The third UFO accelerated, and arced across the sky, disappearing behind another cloud mass.
The UFOs were about 15 minutes of arc in length [about 1/2 the apparent diameter of the moon], and the two bright ones maintained a separation of about five degrees. Based on his estimation of distance (2 miles) and apparent size (15 minutes of arc), Dr. Wilkins calculated the actual size of the UFOs to be nearly 50 feet in diameter.
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October 2, 1958; near Blairstown, New Jersey. Shortly after 5:00 p.m., noted Zoologist Ivan T. Sanderson observed a disc- shaped UFO maneuvering over the Delaware Water Gap. The flat disc looped back and forth, appearing sometimes edge-on (as a very thin line), sometimes oval to circular. It vanished once, but quickly reappeared, and continued its rapid gyrations, finally speeding away to the west.
Frank Halstead;
Former Curator of Darling Observatory;
University of Minnesota;
Mr. Halstead and his wife saw two UFOs while crossing the Mojave Desert on a Union Pacific train in 1955. He reported the experience to NICAP Board Member, Frank Edwards:
"It was the first day of November, 1955. We were on our way to California - about 100 miles west of Las Vegas when it happened. My wife Ann was sitting next to the window and she called my attention to an object which she saw - something moving just above the mountain range. Our train was running parallel to this range of mountains and this object was moving in the same direction as the train, just above the mountains. I first thought the thing was a blimp. . . But as I watched it I
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realized that it could not be a blimp - they are only about 200 feet long. And this thing was gigantic. It was about 800 feet long. I could estimate that because it was so close to the mountain ridge where trees and clumps of trees were visible for comparison.
While we were watching the cigar-shaped thing, for four or five minutes as it paced the train, we noticed that another object had joined it. This second object appeared very suddenly in back of the first one. It was a disc-shaped thing. Both of them were very shiny, we noticed. . . If my estimate of size on the cigar-shaped thing was correct then the disc-shaped object would have been about 100 feet in diameter, flat on the bottom with a shallow dome on top.
My wife and I watched them for another two or three minutes. They were moving at about the same speed as the train and they were very close to the top of the ridge, not more than 500 feet above it, I should say. Then they began to rise, slowly at first and then much faster. In a matter of seconds they had risen so high that we couldn't see them any more from the train window.
All over the world credible witnesses are reporting experiences similar to mine. Holding these people up to ridicule does not alter the existing facts. The time is long overdue for accepting the presence of these things, whatever they are and dealing with them and the public on a basis of realism."
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Antarctic Sighting;
March 16, 1961; Antarctica. A Brazilian Meteorologist, recently employed at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center near Washington, D. C., observed a strange phenomenon while aboard an ice-breaker in Admiralty Bay, Antarctica on a scientific expedition. He noted the observation in his diary, and later filled out a NICAP report form. Though in some respects the phenomenon resembles a meteor, in other respects it does not. At any rate, it is worth recording as an unexplained aerial phenomenon, possibly related to UFO activity.
Rubens S. Villela, who also has experience as a glider pilot and Moonwatch observer, was on the deck of the U.S,S. Glacier about 6:15 p.m. The temperature was about 33 degrees, dew point 28, wind calm, sky overcast, visibility about 5 miles. Weak, yellowish sunset light was visible to the NW. About 50 degrees above the horizon he noticed a strange tear-shaped "luminous body" crossing the sky from NW to SE. It was "multi-
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colored, leaving long trail as tracer bullet; abruptly divided in two (in tandem) as if 'exploding', shone more brightly in bluish- white and red, and threw lateral rays radiating backwards at an angle. Appearance neither 'solid' nor 'purely light'; best described as 'corporified light', forms geometrical and not diffuse," The object was roughly tear-shaped before and after splitting.
The object traveled on a level course, completely disappearing "very suddenly" after about 10 seconds. It moved "rather slowly" leaving a long trail.
"I believe it was much too slow for a meteor," Mr. Villela stated, "also its appearance was 'out of this world.' I can think of nothing on earth which would reproduce the phenomenon."
Hovering Cigar-Shaped Object;
A Minneapolis Honeywell metallurgist, Melvin C. Vagle, Jr., saw a cigar-shaped UFO on November 22, 1961. NICAP later learned of the sighting through the Honeywell newspaper [7.] and obtained a first-hand report from Mr. Vagle, as well as a detailed painting of the UFO done under his supervision. [See sketch.]
It was a clear starlit night about 7:00 p.m. (CST). Mr. and Mrs. Vagle were traveling north on U S. Highway 81 approaching Grafton. A red light in the sky west of the highway up ahead attracted their attention, then other associated lights made them think it might be an aircraft. As they neared the site and pulled alongside they saw "a cigar-shaped object hovering at a sharp angle over a plowed field. .
At the lower end. . . there was a bright 'flashing white light ann at the upper end there was a steady red light. Along the length of the fuselage there was a row of square-appearing ports, illuminated with a white yellowish light."
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The UFO seemed to be motionless until, when the Vagle's son started crying, they drove on. Then the UFO appeared to drift westward across the highway. Earlier the same evening a farmer in the Grafton area had seen a reddish cigar-shaped UFO west of Grafton and reported it to an area newspaper. Accompanying Mr.Vagle's report to NICAP was a letter from the farmer confirming the basic points of his sighting, which occurred at sunset. The farmer could not see any "ports", only a dull reddish glow from the UFO. The object vanished behind a dark cloud after about 10 minutes.
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NICAP Board Member, Prof. Charles A. Maney, was among seven witnesses to a UFO sighted in Defiance, Ohio, May 20, 1902. Prof. Maney is Head of the Defiance College Physics Department.
About 8:00 p.m., Don Reimund noticed a distinctly round unidentified object in the northwest sky, moving horizontally at an elevation of about 10 degrees. Knowing of Prof Maney's interest in UFOs, Mr. Reimund telephoned him. Prof. and Mrs. Maney rushed to the Reimund residence, only to learn that the UFO had disappeared to the southwest minutes before.
As they discussed the sighting, the same or a similar object appeared in the southwest, moving north, at an elevation of about 20 degrees. Prof. Maney and the others present viewed the object through binoculars, and with the unaided eye. It appeared as a brilliant blue light, changing to brilliant yellow.
Then the UFO stopped abruptly, hovered for 5-6 seconds, reversed course and headed south. Its motions continued to be erratic, sometimes moving rapidly, then apparently hovering. The UFO finally disappeared in the southwest about 9:00 p.m.
Prof. Maney later learned that near St. Johns, Ohio, 55 miles to the south, a UFO had been witnessed at about the same time. Mr. Quincy L. Dray, Jr., and a neighbor, had watched a similar performance between 8:10 and 8:30 p.m. "It moved erratically, seemed to dip or back up then start forward fast," Mr. Dray said. [
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UFO Sightings by Engineers;
In addition to the detailed report by the crew of General Mills balloon technicians headed by aerologist Charles B. Moore on April 24, 1949 (Section I), dozens of professional engineers and technicians have reported UFOs. As indicated in these sample cases, their backgrounds include a cross-section of technological fields. Many are uniquely qualified to evaluate the appearance and performance of aerial phenomena in comparison to known devices or atmospheric effects. (All reports on file at NICAP).
Chart:UFO Sightings by Engineers;
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VERTICAL ASCENT, OTHER MANEUVERS;
Summer 1958; Erie, Penna. Victor G. Didelot, B.S. Physics, research engineer in aircraft instrumentation and magnetics; "The object appeared to be elliptic or oval shaped, approximately twice as long about its longest axis as it was thick. The object maintained a course parallel to the ground for a visible arc of close to 120 degrees, and roughly parallel to the shore line of Lake Erie. The object moved at a very rapid pace from west to east.
When it had reached what appeared to be a position directly over the city of Erie, it abruptly and at a speed at least three times its horizontal speed ascended vertically until it passed from my sight."
Mr. Didelot adds that the time was early afternoon, and the UFO was a silvery-white color. "I was also able to see that the object did wobble slightly, but when it changed course to the vertical, it seemed to lose this apparent instability. There was a complete absence of noise, and there was no discernible vapor trail."
Mid-August 1951; Central, N.M. At his ranch 10 miles east of Silver City, N.M., about 10:30a.m., Alford Roos, mining engineer, heard a "swishing" noise, looked up and observed the performance of two lens-shaped UFOs in particularly interesting detail. Mr. Roos at the time had a Civil Service rating of senior mining engineer, was a project engineer for the U.S Bureau of Mines and other government agencies, and a member of the American Institute of Mining & Metal Engineers. Extracts from his report:
"I saw an object swooping down at an angle of about 45 degrees, from southerly direction, traveling at immense speed, coming quite close to the earth over Ft. Bayard, 2 miles to the NW. Reaching the bottom of the swoop it hovered for moments, then darted up at an angle of about 70 degrees from vertical, in a northwesterly direction, directly over Ft. Bayard. . . .
I neglected to state that there were two objects that [converged at the point of hovering] at which time they were in close proximity.......Over Ft. Bayard there was an isolated cloud island covering perhaps 3 degrees of arc and perhaps a mile across. The two objects shot up at this steep angle at incredible speed, both entering the cloud, and neither appeared beyond, and no trace after entering the cloud.
"Their track was as straight as a ruled line, no zigzagging. The astonishing thing was that the cloud immediately split into 3 segments, ever widening, where the objects entered. . . Each object left a pencil-thin vapor trail."
At first, Mr. Roos continued, the UFOs appeared spherical, "but after the hovering and the turn up, they must have tipped, canted so I then saw the edge-on of the lens-like-object. Going toward the cloud they were disc-shaped. There was no gathering of momentum from the low hover, to the lightning-like shoot.
From almost stationary to instant about 500 mph., the shock of inertia would have made human (terrestrial) survival impossible.
"After the objects turned on their sides at the hover, there appeared to be a button, or some small protrusion on the upper side as viewed edge-on. . . the objects were quite close and we [Ed. Note: other witnesses named in report] could all detect some form of outer ornamentation or processor possibly orifices or port holes, on the lower side just below the rim of the lens, and these seemed to undergo change of iridescent color, almost like a blinking."
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From: J. J. Kaliszewski;
http://www.nicap.org/ufoe/draw57b.gif
Subject: UNIDENTIFIED OBJECT OBSERVATION;
Time: 1010, 10 October 1951;
Place: 10 miles east of St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin;
Observers: J. J. Kaliszewski and Jack Donaghue;
We had just spotted our trajectory flight and were approaching from the north at an altitude of 4000 feet. We started a climb towards the balloon on a course of 2300. At 5,000 feet I noticed a strange object crossing the skies from East to West, a great deal higher and behind our balloon. I estimate that our balloon was at approximately 20,000 feet at the time.
Using our balloon for comparison, this object appeared to be about 1/4 the size of the balloon. We were climbing and about six miles northeast of the balloon. The object had a peculiar glow to it, crossing behind and above our balloon from East to West very rapidly, first coming in at a slight dive, leveling off for about a minute and slowing down, then into a sharp left turn and climb at an angle of 50 to 60 degrees the southeast with a terrific acceleration, and disappeared.
Jack Donaghue and I observed this object for approximately two minutes and it crossed through an arc of approximately 40 to 50 degrees. We saw no vapor trail and from past experience I know that this object was not a balloon, jet, conventional aircraft, or celestial star.
JJK:rj ;
cc: G. 0. Haglund;
/s/ J. J. Kaliszewski
[Supervisor of balloon manufacture
Aeronautical Research Laboratories
General Mills, Inc.]
From: J.J. Kaliszewski;
Subject: SIGHTING OF UNIDENTIFIED OBJECTS;
Time: 0630, 11 October 1951;
Dick Reilly and I were flying at 10,000 feet observing the grab bag balloon when I saw a brightly glowing object to the southeast of the University of Minnesota airport. At that time we were a few miles north of Minneapolis and heading east. I pointed it out to Dick and we both made the following observation:
The object was moving from east to west at a high rate and very high. We tried keeping the ship on a constant course and using reinforcing member of the windshield as a point. The object moved past this member at about 5 degrees per second.
This object was peculiar in that it had what can be described as a halo around it with a dark under surface. It crossed rapidly and then slowed down and started to climb in lazy circles slowly. The pattern it made was like a falling oak leaf inverted.
It went through these gyrations for a couple minutes. I called our tracking station at the University of Minnesota airport and the observers there on the theodolite managed to get glimpses of a number of them, but couldn't keep the theodolite going fast enough to keep them in the field of their instruments.
Both Doug Smith and Dick Dorion caught glimpses of these objects in the theodolite after I notified them of their presence by radio. This object, Dick and I watched for approximately five minutes.
I don't know how to describe its size, because at the time I didn't have the balloon in sight for a comparison.
Two hours later we saw another one, but this one didn't hang around. It approached from the west and disappeared to the east, neither one leaving any trace of vapor trail.
JJK:rj
cc: G. 0. Haglund
/s/ J. J. Kaliszewski
Oscillatory Flight;
March 10, 1952; Oakland, California. Two UFOs, one in oscillatory flight, were observed by Clarence K. Greenwood, an Inspector of Engineering Metals:
"About 6:45 a.m., as I waited for my bus to come along, I was examining the sky predicting the weather for the day, when two dark objects came into my line of vision apparently from my right rear. It was difficult to gauge their altitude. I estimated very roughly between five thousand and seventy-five hundred feet. The two dark objects flew - scooted would be a better description of their flight - diagonally away from me gradually picking up speed. One followed a direct or regular course while the
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other seemed to play at flight - a sort of pendulum motion. I could only estimate their size. I judged about forty-five feet. Their length about one-half the width. Below is a sketch of how they appeared to me."
April 22, 1952; Lexington, Mass. Mr. R. C. Munroe (then Engineering Standards Section Head of Raytheon Manufacturing Company). While watching an AT-6 trainer aircraft about 9:30 a.m., noticed a second object nearby:
"Because of the speed at which this second aircraft was moving, I immediately concluded it was of the jet variety. I would estimate its altitude at approximately 40,000 feet. . . just below the cloud cover. My curiosity was aroused upon realizing that I could not distinguish a fuselage wing configuration. My curiosity was further aroused when this aircraft began to decelerate at an unbelievable rate. I observed the aircraft going into a flat turn, while continuing to decelerate and believe I saw the aircraft come to a stop.
"The observation that inspires writing this letter to you [i.e., to CSI of Los Angeles] was the speed of this aircraft, apparently accelerating from a stopped condition and flying in a northeast direction which would carry it over the north end of Boston. I would relate this speed to the apparent speed of a falling star. This speed was considerably in excess of that of any jet aircraft that I have observed.
"The altitude of this aircraft did not permit color identification. There was no apparent exhaust or vapor trail. It is inconceivable to me that any human being could have withstood the deceleration or acceleration displayed by this aircraft."
Aviation Expert;
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UFO RENDEZVOUS OBSERVED;
July 16, 1952, Hampton, Virginia, 9:00 p.m. (EST). Mr. Paul R. Hill, an Aeronautical Research Engineer, holds a B.S. degree in mechanical and aeronautical engineering from the University of California. At the time of the report he had 13 years experience in aeronautical research.
Mr. Hill was aware of previous UFO sightings which had been headlined in July 1952,. particularly the report by Capt. William B. Nash, Pan-American Airways pilot, who on the night of July 14 had sighted 8 circular UFOs while flying above Newport News, Va. [Section V]. Mr. Hill was situated on Chesapeake Avenue (near La Salle Avenue) on the north shore of Hampton Roads watching the sky. With him was his wife, Frances, who also witnessed what followed.
At 9:00 p.m., he noticed two amber-colored lights. He gave this description: "Two were seen first coming in over Hampton Roads at about 500 mph. from the south. These slowed down as they made a "U" turn at the southern edge of the Peninsula. They moved side by side until they revolved around each other at a high rate of speed in a tight circle 2 or 3 hundred feet in diameter.
This appeared to be a rendezvous signal as a third UFO came racing up from the direction of Virginia Beach and "fell in" several hundred feet below the first two, forming a sort of "V" formation. A fourth UFO came in from up the James River and joined the group which headed on south at about 500 mph."
Mr. Hill added that the UFOs changed altitude "only when they revolved around each other, circling or spiraling rapidly (as fast as once per second).
"They moved jerkily when moving slowly. The speed varied from about 50 to 500 mph. Their ability to make tight circling turns was amazing." [See diagram.]
At about 9:03 p.m., the four UFOs had moved into the distance out of sight to the south. The color and brightness of the objects, which did not change except apparently due to increase in distance, was compared to "an amber traffic light about 3 or 4 blocks away." The elevation angle of the UFOs covered a range of about 50 degrees, from about 10 to 60 degrees, during the observation.
Mr. Hill was interrogated by an Air Force intelligence officer from Langley Air Force Base. [9.]
NICAP note: Four amber-colored UFOs were reported at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida later the same evening
http://www.nicap.org/ufoe/draw58.gif
1. Two UFOs approached, slowed.
2. Point of fast circling.
3. Third two joined circling ones.
4. Fourth joined formation.
5. All four moved south in group.
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Paul R. Hill - Hampton, Virginia July 16, 1952
September 30, 1952; Edwards AFB, California. In a letter to the President of CSI of Los Angeles, Dick Beemer, aviation photographer for North American Aviation Company, described the following sighting. [Note that once again observation of a passing aircraft attracted the witnesses' attention to the sky. Otherwise they probably would not have noticed the UFOs]
"I went to Edwards Air Force Base [Muroc]. . . to direct the motion picture photography of a flight test, We had driven to the test site on the lake bed, and were standing outside. At 10:30 a.m., Carlos Garcia, one of our cameramen, looked up at a B-29 which was passing overhead. He said that he believed something had fallen from the plane.
He then discovered that it was not from the plane, but seemed to be flying around. Then he noticed another. I thought he was joking and didn't pay much attention. Then Gene Piehler, the other cameraman looked up. He too observed them. By this time, I joined the watching party, and sure enough, there was really something there. We watched them for nearly ten minutes, and they appeared as follows:
"They were east of us at approximately a fifty degree angle from the ground level, and just below the mid-morning sun. They were flying at a very high altitude, moved at an extremely high rate of speed (much faster than a jet plane), left no vapor trails, and made no sound. Each of us thought that there were at least three in flight, but we could see no more than two at one time. They moved in no definite direction. For a short time, fifteen seconds or more, one would hover while the other would
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zoom down past one side of it, make a sharp turn, and flash back above it on the opposite side.
"They seemed to be shaped more like flattened spheres, rather than thin saucers. In fact, they looked and behaved somewhat like yo-yo's. They moved about quickly, but seemed to have no particular destination.
"Although the sun was above them, the side away from the sun, that is, the side toward us, appeared as if it were reflecting the sunlight. They were somewhat metallic tn appearance, but seemed whiter than modern aircraft.
"We had a color motion picture camera with us, but were waiting for them to fly away from the direct rays of the sun. Instead, they disappeared away from us, and we were left with nothing but memories.
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Formation of Discs;
Mid-August 1956; Boulder City, Nevada. A formation of five disc-shaped UFOs was seen about 10:15 pm. (PDT) by Edison F. Carpenter, a research technician for a division of North American Aviation, At the time of the sighting, Mr. Carpenter was employed by the U.S Bureau of Mines.
"My wife and I were sitting on the back step of our home. It was a clear night, not a cloud in sight and a slight breeze from the southwest. We were facing due south. . . Suddenly from directly overhead, they had come over the house from the north, we both became aware of a group of slightly glowing objects as they flew to the south. The group numbered five and was in roughly this formation:
Their shape was perfectly round as viewed from below and they had a sort of phosphorescent glow (pinkish in color). The general shape must have been round and flat rather than round like a ball because as they drew away the shape was like this (elliptical) rather than this (circular) as a ball would appear from any angle.
"They held the formation illustrated while in view and maintained a spacing of approximately one diameter between ships. This diameter was about the diameter of a cigarette cross-section held at arm's length. They crossed approximately 60 degrees of sky, from the time they came into view over our roof until I lost sight of them, in about 6 seconds. I'm quite sure of the time element because pistol shooting is a hobby of mine and I've become accustomed to counting off 10 and 20 seconds for rapid and timed fire."
(In an accompanying letter to NICAP, Mr. Carpenter added an important point about the duration of some UFO sightings: "I am also aware that 10 seconds is a much longer interval than most people realize since it allows time for 5 aimed shots with a pistol." Some skeptics deny the validity of observations of several seconds duration, even when made by trained observers. Anyone in military service who has taken courses in aircraft and ship identification is also aware of how much detail can be observed in 2-3 seconds, and even in a fraction of a second with appropriate training).
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Rocketdyne Engineers;
During a large flurry of UFO sightings in November 1957, four engineers for Rocketdyne, near Canoga Park, California, observed three UFOs flying in formation in bright daylight. One of the engineers, Harold R. Lamb, Jr., filled out a NICAP report form. [10.]
November 11, 1957: at 4:20 p.m. the group was driving in a generally ESE direction from the Rocketdyne SanSu facility toward Canoga Park, with the late afternoon sun to their back. One of the men happened to look up and saw three shiny objects crossing their path, from NE to SW. He alerted the others, and they all clearly saw a large narrow oval object (almost cigar- shaped) accompanied by two smaller nearly circular objects (slightly oval, as if discs viewed at an angle).
The large UFO was silvery on top, but bright orange underneath, possibly reflecting sunlight. The two smaller UFOs were solid silver colored. Keeping the same positions relative to each other, a V with one of the smaller objects slightly ahead and one slightly behind the large object, the three UFOs accelerated and climbed away into the distance.
The four men compared notes, and arrived at a consensus of opinion that the UFOs were first seen at about 10,000 feet altitude, climbing to 30,000 feet, at an estimated 5000 mph.
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TELESCOPIC SIGHTINGS;
August 11, 1958; Chautauqua Lake, N.Y.
Time: 9:15 to 10:30 p.m.
Observers: Fred C. Fair, Ph.D., and Gary Phillips.
Dr. Fair, a retired professor of Engineering, New York University, submitted the following log of observations of aerial phenomena. He and Gary Phillips were using a survey transit to observe the altitude and azimuth of certain stars.
"(1) A white light was observed moving across the sky to the right and away from the observers. When the transit telescope was sighted on the moving light, possibly a minute had elapsed since it was first observed. At first only one white light was seen, then a second was noted, then a third and finally a fourth light, all four being more or less in line, and each separated by an angular distance of about 2 degrees.
It is the opinion of both observers that when the first of the four lights was seen, that there were no other moving lights in the vicinity. Which does not mean that the objects were not in the sky, but that they were not emitting visible light at that time.
Shortly after watching all four lights with the naked eye, the third light became about ten times as bright as the others, becoming brighter than Jupiter which was in the same sky area. The other three lights at this time were about as bright as a second magnitude star. A few seconds later this third light rather suddenly dimmed until it was the faintest of the four lights.
Due to the narrow field of view of a surveyor's transit telescope, it is rather difficult to locate and follow a rapidly moving object. By the time that Gary made his first observation through the telescope the moving lights had traveled from Northwest to Southwest, passing close to Jupiter. Gary made the statement that the objects were Flying Saucers, and that the telescope showed that what appeared to be a single light to the naked eye was several lights, and that there was a red light above the others.
When Dr. Fair took his turn to observe the lights, three of the objects had already disappeared behind trees to the south. The very brief glance that Dr. Fair had showed several white lights, he thought there were five, and he observed a faint red light to the rear and above the white ones.
(2) Fifteen minutes later, while in a boat on Lake Chautauqua, while looking for meteors, a single white light was seen in the southeast sky traveling from south to north. The light slowly and continuously varied intensity, fluctuating from 5th to 3rd magnitude, but the time of the cycle was irregular, but of more than three-second duration per cycle. For several seconds the light appeared to be stationary and when it resumed its motion it was traveling in a direction opposite to when first observed. Total time of observation of this light was about five minutes. As it receded in the south it became too faint to be further seen.
At about this time a jet trail, making an arc of about 180 degrees was observed in a tighter radius than that described by the first four objects, but following essentially the same course. At the head of the jet trail Gary saw a red glow, possibly the exhaust from the jet.
(3) Still later a different type of lighting was seen close to the horizon in the western sky. We were still out on the lake at the time. A bright, rapidly blinking red and white light moved rapidly from right to left. Soon a similar blinking red and white light was seen to the right of this light, moving from right to left. It was fainter than the other which could have been due to being farther away. When the two lights passed each other they were separated by a vertical angle of about 2 or 3 degrees.
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(4) After returning to the transit on shore, star observations were resumed but in a few minutes were interrupted to again observe a white light in the northwest traveling rapidly from west to north. The telescope showed this light to be similar to the first objects. Dr. Fair noted in particular that the five white lights were not arranged in a straight line, but appeared as though spaced on the circumference of an oval.
[Emphasis added]. Again, a red light was noted above and slightly to the rear of the white lights. This was followed with the telescope until it disappeared behind some nearby trees. Gary who noticed this object first saw only two white lights. Probably fifteen seconds elapsed before Dr. Fair was sighted on the object and observed that there were five white lights.
No vapor trail was observed behind any of the sighted objects.
September 4, 1960; Lexington, Kentucky. John R. Cooke, currently owner of an automobile company, was a radar technician in the U. S. Air Force Strategic Air Command for four years, completing special electronics courses during Air Force service. His report was obtained by the Bluegrass NICAP Affiliate in Lexington, on a NICAP report form
About 9:30 p.m., Mrs. Cooke noticed a bright light low on the horizon to the SW, and called it to the attention of her husband. As they watched, the UFO, appearing as a fiery-looking, glowing sphere, passed from horizon to horizon in about 2 minutes, fading from sight in the bright lights above the city. The UFO did not move particularly rapidly, but was unlike any conventional phenomenon, and flew parallel to the earth.
(Mr. Cooke also stated that in 1952, while a passenger in a B-25, he had listened on the radio to an F-86 jet pilot describing the maneuvers of a UFO).
NOTES;
1. Associated Press; February 25, 1951
2. Time; March 3, 1952
3. American Weekly; October 24, 1954
4. Letter on file at NICAP
5. London, Ontario, Free Press: May 1, 1954
6. Copy of cable furnished to NICAP by member employed at Space Agency
7. The Honeywell World, Minneapolis; Vol.2, No.17 January 1, 1962
8. Defiance, Ohio, Crescent-News; June 2, 1962. See also May 21st edition.
9. See Ruppelt, Edward J., Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, (Doubleday, 1956), p.210.
10. Names of other witnesses on file at NICAP
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Section VII, Officials & Citizens (pages 61-72)
NICAP Home Page;
link; http://www.nicap.org/ufoe/section_6.htm
CIA Papers Detail UFO Surveillance;Historic UFOs;
The below article shows how the CIA may be saying one thing but doing the exact opposite when it claims or claimed that it had or is going too 'closeits books' on UFOs.
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Historic UFOs;
CIA Papers Detail UFO Surveillance;
New York Times 1-14-79;
C.I.A. PAPERS DETAIL U.F.O. SURVEILLANCE ------------
Agencies Secret Studies Convince;
Arizona Research Group That Flying Saucers "Are Real" ------------
quote;
"PHOENIX, Jan. 13- Documents obtained in a lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency show that the agency is secretly involved in the surveillance of unidentified flying objects and has been since 1949, an Arizona based U.F.O. group said yesterday".
The C.I.A. has repeatedly said that it investigated and closed it's books on U.F.O.'s during 1952, according to Ground Saucer Watch, a nation-wide research organization of about 500 scientists, engineers and others who seek to scientifically prove or disprove the existence of U.f.O.'s, but 100 pages of documents obtained under a freedom of information suit, show "the Government has been lying to us all these years," it said.
Embassies Gather Information;
Mr. Spaulding an aerospace engineer with Airesearch, one of the largest producers of aerospace components, said the documents show the United States embassies are used to help gather information on U.F.O. sightings and that the information "seems to be directed to the C.I.A., the White House and the National Security Agency."
A C.I.A. memo of Aug. 1, 1952, recommends continued agency surveillance of "flying saucers," saying, "it is strongly urged, however, that no indication of C.I.A. interest or concern reach the press or public, in view of their probably alarmist tendencies to accept such interest as 'confirmatory' of the soundness of 'unpublished facts' in the hands of the U.S. government," the document said.
Among the documents are several detailed reports of Air Force attempts to either intercept or destroy U.F.O.'s.
In a 1976 incident in Iran, one report says, two F-4 Phantom jet fighters pursued a large U.F.O. that seemed to send out smaller craft. One of their smaller craft "headed straight toward the F-4 at a very fast rate of speed,' the report said. "The pilot attempted to fire an Aim-9 missile at the object but at that instant his weapons control panel went off and he lost all communications." The pilot eluded the craft, then watched as it "returned to the primary object for a perfect rejoin," the report continued.
Concern About Russian Aims;
A major point of concern, a C.I.A. document of Oct. 2, 1952, shows, is that U.F.O. sightings could mask Russian air attacks, or "psychological warfare." The report to the director of Central Intelligence from the assistant director for the Office of Scientific Intelligence recommends the the National Security Council be advised of the "implications of the flying saucer problem"; that the matter be discussed with the Psychological Strategy Board, and that the C.I.A. help "develop a policy of public information which will minimize concern and possible panic resulting from the numerous sightings of unidentified objects."
A document dated November 1975, directs against acknowledging any pattern in sightings. "Unless there is evidence which links sightings, or unless media queries link sightings, queries can best be handled individually at the source and as questions arise," it said. "Response should be direct, forthright and emphasize that the action taken was in response to an isolated or specific incident."
Mr. Spaulding says the documents show that there are links and patterns in the sightings. From that evidence, he says, he believes U.F.O.'s are here on surveillance missions.
"We find a concentration of sightings around our military installations, research development areas," he said. " The U.F.O. phenomenon is following what our own astronauts are doing on other planets- we send a scoutship, we take soil samples and then we land."
Another Suit Pending;
Mr. Spaulding said he has sworn statements from retired Air Force colonels that at least two U.F.O.'s have crashed landed and have been recovered by the Air Force.
One crash, he said, was in Mexico in 1948 and the other was near Kingman, Ariz., in 1953. He said the retired officers claimed they got a glimpse of dead aliens who were in both cases about four feet tall with silverish complexions and wearing silver outfits that "seemed fused to the body from the heat."
Mr. Spaulding said his group is waiting for a Federal Judge to rule on the last phase of its C.I.A. suit, which seeks access to 57 items that would provide "hard evidence" of U.F.O.'s or "retrievals of the third kind." That evidence includes motion pictures, gun camera film and residue from landings, he said.
Among the films they want is 40 to 48 frames taken in 1952 by Ralph Mayher, then a cameraman for KYW-TV in Cleveland and now a member of Ground Saucer Watch. The Air Force borrowed the film in 1957 and has never returned it. The official finding was that the object was a meteor, Mr. Spaulding said.
"We're past the story-telling stage," Mr. Spaulding said. "We have to have it in black and white to satisfy the scientific community. We have to establish the existence of the object to all the people in Missouri and then figure out who's driving it." --------------------------------
[Image] [Image]
From Frank Warren [email protected] 8-20-01
link; http://www.rense.com/general13/historic_ciasurvel.htm
Newspaper cutting;
http://www.rense.com/1.imagesC/cia.gif
Large 'V'-Shaped UFO encounter with US Navy Sub;
Hers is a fascinating account of a USO or "unidentified submerged object" with a US Navy nuclear submarine that also contained electromagnetic effects;
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Large 'V'-Shaped UFO encounter with US Navy nuclear submarine; electromagnetic effects;
Date: October 24, 1989;
Location: Florida, United States;
http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/pic...USSMemphis.jpg
USS Memphis nuclear submarine.
Type of Case/Report: RawReport;
Hynek Classification: .
Number of Witnesses: Multiple
Special Features/Characteristics: Military, Water-Related, E-M Effects
quote;
"From the witness: "My ship was on patrol about 150 miles of the Florida coast. We were cruising at about 500 feet when the submarine started experiencing electronics problems.... I saw a large inverted V-shaped UFO off the port side....This huge vessel was over a half mile across. The UFO made a half circle around our ship then passed across the stern..."
Full Report / Article;
Source: George Filer (MUFON Eastern Director), Filer's Files #43-1998, 10-30-98 Original Source;
A sailor reports about the UFO sighting he had while in the Navy. "I was assigned to USS Memphis (SSN-698), homeport Titusville, FL. (Cape Canaveral.) Our mission was Special Assignments which meant we protected the Space Program. We would go to sea and patrol while the shuttle was on the pad. Nine years ago, on October 24 and 25, my ship was on patrol about 150 miles of the Florida coast.
We were cruising at about 500 feet when the submarine started experiencing electronics problems. The ship was malfunctioning, our tanks were blowing out of control, we were losing navigation ability and the communications area was totally lost. We went to all stop and tried to access what was happening. The controls in the reactor area started to malfunction.
This presented a serious danger to our safety, so the captain ordered us to shut down the reactor, surface and go to diesel motors. When the ship surfaced I went to my watch station. The ship was still experiencing electronic difficulties but the mechanical devices such as diesel engines, cook stoves, and turbines were fine.
It was raining and the entire sky was red like a red neon sign. I saw a large inverted V-shaped UFO off the port side. The executive officer told me to stand fast and he would speak to the captain. In a minute, the captain appeared on the tower and asked me for a distance to the craft.
The laser range finder determined the closest point was 200 meters and the farthest point was 1,000 meters off the port. The UFO was not perpendicular to our ship but at about a 45' angle. This huge vessel was over a half mile across. The UFO made a half circle around our ship then passed across the stern causing our electronics systems to go crazy. We had permanent damage in communications and the sonar room.
As the craft flew over the stern, I could see the rain stop under its red glow. The water seemed to rise almost a foot as the UFO passed over silently. When the UFO finished its swing across the stern it paused - the sky got brighter red and it simply moved off at tremendous speed inside 15 seconds. When the UFO left our boat returned to normal with the exception of the radio and sonar. We did a quick system check and the captain ordered us to return to reactor power and get underway.
The captain took two petty officers, the executive officer, and myself into the wardroom. He told us to not spread any rumors until we had a chance to talk to Commander Submarine Fleet - Atlantic. We reached port in about 7 hours where I was taken into "protective custody." Two enlisted men and myself agreed we had witnessed a real UFO. I was the one who shot it with a laser range finder so I was the only one that had its exact sizes. I shot that vessel as it hovered and I got solid readings not spotty like I would on debris.
We were in holding for about three hours when an officer from the Air Force arrived and gave us a line of bull about an exploding weather satellite. The Navy then transferred virtually everyone on the crew to new assignments. This included the her captain, the executive officer and the entire crew. They were split up which almost never happens unless one of them gets a promotion or a new command, neither of which happened. The military just split up a 4 year team. I was watching a program tonight that gave me the courage to share it.
Case ID: 1110 edit: U.S.C § 107.
UFO Photograph Found in Air Force Blue Book Files;
Mystery UFO Photograph Found in Air Force Blue Book Files
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zlyQrAqfq5...B4-16-1967.jpg
In doing some research on UFO sightings in ’67, in the great state of Montana, I happened to come upon this photograph (shown above) while perusing various Blue Book File reports. Generally, “photographs” that accompany said reports that have been reproduced from microfilm, as one might imagine–are not the best in quality; accordingly, this one was a pleasant surprise.
Additionally, and with great perplexity, there was "no accompanying report." I thought perhaps it got separated; however in doing a thorough database search, I came up empty.
This morning, I searched alternate databases and still nothing. The only attribution was a preceding page and it read:
File 11683 4-16-1967
Ramey AFB, Puerto Rico
1 Photo;
It can “only be speculation,” since we have only the photograph to go by; however, it would appear that it was an airborne shot, presumably taken from a plane. One has to wonder if the shot was taken by military personnel–given the Ramey AFB provenance.
Because the pic was so pristine, it evoked the memory of another like photo, this one taken over Roswell, New Mexico shortly before the Lonnie Zamora sighting (also from the BB Files).
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2009...raphed-in.html
UFO Photographed In Roswell a Month Earlier?
Below are two cases that on the whole seem to have been mercilessly attacked and labeled hoax;
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Lonnie Zamora's UFO Photographed In Roswell a Month Earlier?
" . . . Appeared To Be a Metallic Oblate Spheroid"
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_PXeDY3KOwg...A%2BCrpd)).jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_PXeDY3KOwg...(A%2BRes)).jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_PXeDY3KOwg...BSpheroid).jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_PXeDY3KOwg...2BSocorro).jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_PXeDY3KOwg...FO+3+(ILL).jpg
By Kevin Randle;
A Different Perspective;
11-13-09 ;
quote;
"In the last few weeks, a controversy about the Socorro UFO landing has erupted when it was suggested, again, that a hoax had been perpetrated. The theory was, now changed slightly, that students at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology had created the spaceship and the landing evidence in an elaborate plan that fooled not only Lonnie Zamora but a group of investigators that included the FBI, Army Intelligence, the Air Force and its scientific consultant, and, of course, Jim and Coral Lorenzen of APRO and Ray Stanford the researcher from NICAP".
According to the latest, the one time president of the school, Stirling Colgate, in the late 1960s, told Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling that the whole thing was a hoax. Donald Menzel, the UFO debunker, said that it was as hoax almost from the beginning, but he based that on his own opinion that there were no alien spacecraft and anything that suggested otherwise was inaccurate at best.
But that is just one side of the argument. Like almost everything in UFO research, those arguing for the hoax haven’t presented all the information, though, according to them, they have looked at all the relevant information. I have, in my files, the complete Air Force report on the Socorro landing, and it provides ammunition for other side.
Dr. J. Allen Hynek was the Air Force scientific consultant for UFOs and he visited Socorro in the days after the sighting hit the national press. He interviewed dozens, including the police officer, Zamora, the FBI man and many in the general population.
On page seven of his lengthy report, Hynek wrote, "I also questioned, while in Socorro, my old friend, Dr Jack Whotmen, President of the New Mexico School of Mines (emphasis added), who said he knew of no geophysical or other types of experiments going on in the area at the time. He, as the rest of the townspeople, were puzzled by the event, but the general underground slull (sic) of opinion was that it would turn out to be some device which the government still had under raps (sic)..."
Okay, that doesn’t completely rule out hoax and that idea isn’t mentioned specifically, but we can infer that Whotmen had no indication that it might be a hoax. He, along with many others, believed it to be a government project, probably from White Sands.
Hynek, in his report does write, "No paraphernalia of a hoax were ever found. It would be rather hard to have done away with all the tell-tale evidence, such as tubes of helium, release mechanism, etc. Finally, it was LaPaz’s (that would be Dr. Lincoln LaPaz at the university in Albuquerque and the leading expert on meteorics) feeling had it been a hoax, it surely would have leaked by now."
One of the arguments against this is that there had been a secret society at the New Mexico Tech that engaged in such pranks. They never wanted to reveal what they had done because that was part of the fun. We know about this secret society because they have a website on which they talk about such things. And, if I have understood this correctly, they weren’t in operation in 1964. They came after that.
Finally I turn to my old nemesis, Dr. Charles Moore (seen here) who has claimed that Project Mogul was responsible for the Roswell UFO crash. According to Volume 41, No. 8, November 1, 1994 of Jim Moseley’s Saucer Smear (available for a nominal "love offering" from Moseley at PO Box 1709, Key West, FL 33041) Moore wrote, "At Jim McDonald’s request, I investigated the residue of the Socorro sighting in 1967 or 1968... Despite Phil Klass, I found no indications suggesting that this was a tourist-attracting ploy by the local Chamber of Commerce, nor was it a prank by the New Mexico Tech students (emphasis added)."
Dr. Charles Moore, (seen below), who has claimed that Project Mogul was responsible for the Roswell UFO crash
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_PXeDY3KOwg...rles+Moore.jpg
So here is a man at New Mexico Tech, who taught there for decades, who worked with the students directly, who had investigated the Zamora story, and he found no evidence of a hoax. This in contrast to Colgate who, for no currently justifiable reason has said that it was a hoax.
But in an interview conducted by Moseley, and published in his Saucer Smear on July 15, 2000, Moseley wrote that Moore said, "Something went wrong (with the Surveyor lunar module undergoing testing at White Sands on the day of the Zamora sighting) and they don’t want to admit it. I have good reason to believe that."
Isn’t that just as good an explanation as the hoax story. Neither has any solid evidence to push it forward as the final answer, but it comes from men who were at New Mexico Tech at the time and who have investigated the story. The hoax hypothesis fails because there have been no students identified as the tricksters and the Surveyor theory fails because Moore was unable to establish a time for the Surveyor tests.
And had the Surveyor been the answer, I suspect that Hynek, or the Chief of Project Blue Book at the time would have been given the answer. On a Joint Messageform (DD Form 173] and dated June 19, 1964, Colonel Eric T. de Jonckheere (seen here) wrote,
"The possibility of a research vehicle being involved with the Socorro sighting has been investigated... at great length; however, they have no knowledge of an Army research vehicle which would leave marks such as those found at Socorro. Lt. Col Conkey and Maj H. Mitchell of the AFMDC have also been contacted... However, neither one of them has any knowledge of a vehicle in the Holloman [AFB, Alamogordo] area, such as described in our report."
Which means that if such a research project was going on, or if the Surveyor had strayed off course, Col. Jonckheere would have been able to learn about it. And the Air Force, believing the files would be classified for a long time, would have had their answer. Nothing in the file indicates that any such project was ever seriously considered and no evidence was ever found to corroborate that opinion.
Once again, it appears that the hoax idea fails because we have no information about the tricksters. Moore’s idea of a research vehicle fails because Air Force officers, following that trail failed to find any documentation that would support it despite the fact the Air Force wanted this case solved. We are where we began, with a police officer telling, honestly, what he had seen, and no evidence yet presented to suggest either of these alternative answers are viable.
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2009...-part-one.html
Two police officers in UK encounter UFO;
This is one of those cases that stand the tests of time and for me personally it stands out as one of the most important and often over looked UFO case witnessed by police officers that has occurred in Britain;
PC Tony Dodd who was one of the police officers who witnessed the preceding account of this UFO encounter and he remained steadfast in his belief to the day he passed away that what he witnessed that frosty morning in the quite English country side was like nothing he had ever seen and was adamant that this encounter was of a very high strangeness;
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Two police officers in UK encounter UFO (researcher Tony Dodd's sighting)
Date: December 12, 1978;
Location: Skipton, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom;
quote;
""At 4:30 a.m., a lonely police patrol car was driving on a remote country road along the Cononley Moor. In the car were Sgt. Anthony Dodd and Constable Alan Dale. They saw a bright white light that seemed to be diving towards them in a glide. a big shining disc which flew over their heads at a speed of about 40 mph. At its closest, it was hardly 100 feet away from them, so that they could see a number of details. "It was a huge thing, about 100 feet in diameter, and it made no noise whatsoever."
http://ufoevidence.org/cases/picture...oddArtwork.jpg
Artistic impression of the UFO encounter in the North Yorkshire Moors. (credit: Tony Dodd Zone)
http://ufoevidence.org/cases/pictures/TonyDodd1978.jpg
Detailed sketch of the object Dodd and Dale observed. (credit: Hesemann);
http://ufoevidence.org/cases/pictures/TonyDoddPhoto.jpg
Police Sgt. Anthony Dodd. (credit: Hesemann)
Type of Case/Report: StandardCase;
Hynek Classification: ND
Shape of Object(s): Disc;
Number of Witnesses: Multiple;
Special Features/Characteristics: Police, Body Lights, Silent, Portholes/Windows, Witness Sketch, Witness Photo;
Full Report / Article;
Source: Michael Hesemann;
The incident occurred on the frosty winter morning of December 12, 1978, not far from Skipton in North Yorkshire. At 4:30 a.m., a lonely police patrol car was driving on a remote country road along the Cononley Moor. In the car were Sgt. Anthony Dodd and Constable Alan Dale, who operated the radio. It was very dark and the road was lit only by the headlights of the car, the silence broken only by the noise of the motor and the occasional messages over the radio.
Dodd loved that kind of mysterious stillness in the middle of a bare and unspoiled countryside, with dark houses snuggling up against the low hills as if seeking shelter from the cold winds, and the stone walls that divided the meadows from time immemorial.
It was the land of sagas and legends, of witches and elves, spirits and wills-o'-the-wisp, which lured unfortunate wanderers in the moor towards inescapable death. There was a magic in the air which, even thousands of years ago, the ancestors of the Celts must have been aware of, as is shown oy the mighty sacrificial altar stones in the middle of the moor.
Suddenly, a loud static noise, hissing and rustling, tore Sgt. Dodd out of his reverie. They were just then driving into a curve when, to the right, a bright white light seemed to be diving towards them in a glide. They thought it was a burning airplane so they drove to the side and stopped the car to see what was happening and where it would land, in case help was required.
It was, however, no airplane but a big shining disc which flew over their heads at a speed of about 40 mph. At its closest, it was hardly 100 feet away from them, so that they could see a number of details.
When I interviewed Dodd in 1991 for my documentary film UFOs: The Secret Evidence, he explained, "It had a dome with ports all around it. The bottom was surrounded by colored lights like neon lights in blue, red, green and white which blinked in a sequence as if they were rotating, and in the middle there were three spheres or hemispheres. It was a huge thing, about 100 feet in diameter, and it made no noise whatsoever. What fascinated me even more was that the object was enveloped in a kind of halo which made its entire metallic structure glow white.
It flew slowly over our heads and seemed to land at a place behind a group of trees. But we couldn 't see or check that out because at that point it was too far away and in the middle of the moor." "What on Earth was that?" asked Constable Dale breaking the silence, brought back to reality by the penetrating cold. Sgt. Dodd's answer came minutes after that.
"/ don't know, but it was wonderful. "
From that day onwards Dodd started collecting all the information about UFOs that he could get, including, of course, the book "Flying Saucers Have Landed" by Desmond Leslie and George Adamski. His personal encounter with a saucer that resembled Adamski's saucer like a twin had convinced Dodd that Adamski must indeed have had an encounter with a UFO. Since retiring in 1988, Dodd has dedicated himself fully to his "cosmic hobby" as he calls it, and is today one of Britain's leading UFO researchers.
Adamski was the first person to have spoken about contact with aliens who resembled human beings. After him many others reported such encounters. With Adamski, the age of the contactees had begun.
----------------------------------------
Biography of Sgt. Tony Dodd, one of the two police officers who were involved in the encounter, from "The Tony Dodd Zone" website:
A Police Officer for 25 years. Tony had his first close encounter with UFO in 1978 while serving officer. Had many subsequent encounters over North Yorkshire Moors leading to becoming an investigator into the phenomenon.
For many tears he was head of investigations for Quest International, which became UFO Magazine (UK) for which he produced many fine case studies & investigations.
Has given lectures in many countries including America, Iceland, Germany, Holland, Denmark and many British Cities.
Specialised in Alien Abduction Phenomenon, Animal/Human mutilations and interaction of aliens with certain military authorities.
Author of book,'Alien Investigator'.
Case ID: 662 edit: 662;
link; http://ufoevidence.org/cases/case662.htm
__________________
Some official documents/Airports/US Atomic areas;
Below are official documents dealing with UFO reports/sightings over various air ports and US Atomic facility's;A more in depth view of these cases will be covered sometime, i included only the official documents that dealt with the sightings and reports;
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Silver rotating UFO over US Atomic facility;
Governmental document;
http://files.abovetopsecret.com/imag...32a2af6d41.jpg
Flying discs over Hanford Nuclear plant;
Governmental document;
http://files.abovetopsecret.com/imag...bee44f432b.jpg
Flying disc over Topcliffe;
Governmental document
http://files.abovetopsecret.com/imag...4179506585.jpg
Circular objects over Langley AFB;
Governmental document;
http://files.abovetopsecret.com/imag...ebdc14d2e2.gif
Rotating saucer shaped object over Georgia;
Governmental document;
http://files.abovetopsecret.com/imag...7d4b303a5e.jpg
Maxwell AFB Emergency Report - Flying Saucer;
Governmental document;
http://files.abovetopsecret.com/imag...1cd66417bf.jpg
Disc shaped object over Minot AFB - 1966;
http://files.abovetopsecret.com/imag...80fa8d2d37.jpg
Flying disc over Chicago's O Hare airport - 1952;
Governmental document;
http://files.abovetopsecret.com/imag...00c6b606b2.jpg
Bob Taylor's UFO ENCOUNTER;
This is quite a remarkable case here that occurred in some woods in Livingstone in west Lothian in Scotland; Bob Taylor was working as a forestry worker at the time and he encountered something that had the police forensics baffled;
************************************************** ********
QUOTE;
"IT IS an X-File that remains unsolved and still fascinates UFO enthusiasts all over the world.
This week saw the anniversary of one the planet’s most intriguing UFO mysteries – that happened right here in West Lothian.
He didn’t see little green men exactly, but 30 years ago forester Bob Taylor had a remarkable encounter with a UFO at Dechmont Law in Livingston.
Experts say it is the only one ever to have left tangible and recorded evidence, has been verified by the authorities and was the subject of a full police investigation.
To mark the event, West Lothian film company Waterborn TV have recorded a fascinating new documentary, The West Lothian Question, which includes an interview with the late Mr Taylor, which can be seen on YouTube.
The incident took place on November 9, 1979 in broad daylight when Mr Taylor came across a large object in a clearing.
Not only did he see the UFO but also two spherical ‘robots’ dropped from the object and grasped him, pulling him over.
Both police and ufologists say this encounter is unique because it appeared to leave evidence to support the story with strange marks in the clearing where the incident took place and inexplicable damage to Mr Taylor’s trousers, long johns and skin.
Realising that time was passing and those concerned were getting older, Waterborn Productions founders Duncan McKay and John Forsyth, recorded their documentary in a bid to get to the bottom of the inexplicable event.
Mr Taylor has since passed away and the documentary has been released on YouTube this week to mark the 30th anniversary of the sighting.
Duncan explained: “The story is told through the voices of the people actually involved on the day.
“For us, one of the most compelling aspects was the integrity and sincerity of the victim and this was reinforced by the universal agreement among all the professionals involved that no matter what did actually happen in the woods that day, Robert Taylor was completely honest and truthful, his story being a faithful account of his experience.
“These points together with a range of physical evidence supporting his story made a convincing case.
“The programme tests equally the events as experienced by Robert Taylor and also considers Steuart Campbell’s [sceptic and investigative science writer] alternative explanation that Robert Taylor saw an ‘astronomical mirage of Venus’, both interpretations are fully supported by exciting 3D graphics.”
The documentary follows police officers as they consider both theories and their interpretation of the event itself provides a new perspective to consider.
Duncan continued: “One thing remains certain, that day in the woods something very strange, something quite inexplicable, happened to Robert Taylor.
“Watch the programme, view the facts, and consider the testimony and ask the question - is this the World’s first real evidence of an inexplicable encounter?
http://www.westlothiancourier.co.uk/...2405-25144528/
Below is a list of some early UFO Physical Trace Cases or cases that contain evidence of Physical traces left behind by unknown objects;
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Top Physical Trace Cases;
Ted R. Phillips & J. Allen Hynek During A CE-II Investigation in Medord, MN, 1975;
QUOTE;
"The following is a preliminary list of High Strangeness cases involving physical traces associated with UFO sightings. It is not complete and will be added to as additional reports are received. I would ask that anyone having additional information on any of these cases ( or any other trace related case ) pro or con, please email me with the data at [email protected]"t.
CASES OF HIGH STRANGENESS - A Preliminary List;
Report 4/15/1930 Largentiere, France: multiple witness, cone-shaped, lands very close, projects beams, traces.
Report 8/??/1933 Nipawin, Sask., 0700: multiple witness, disc with 6 legs, occupants, 30 minutes, traces.
Report 2/5/1934 Malselv, Norway: multiple witness, humanoids, footprints, traces.
Report 12/25/45 Newland, MO: multiple witness, 2 minutes, house damage, traces.
Report 7/11/46 Njurunda, Sweden: multiple witness, sphere, human effects, 7 ft crater liquid traces.
Report 4/24/50 Varese, Italy: multiple witness, humanoids, human effects, metal fragments, four circular imprints, burns.
Report 1952 Lamonte, MO: multiple witness, 16 ft dehydrated ring.
Report 8/27/52 Lumberton, NC, 0030: 5 witnesses, blue-white object 30 ft away, 30 ft diameter, depressed traces.
Report 11/??/53 Gjersjoen Bridge,Norway: multiple witness, human effects, EM, traces.
Report 6/21/54 Ridgeway, Ont.: multiple witness, round 50 ft object, EM, dehydrated ring.
Report 9/10/54 Quarouble, France, 2230: multiple witness, animal reaction, area heated to high temperature, imprints.
Report 9/24/54 Becar, France: multiple witness, humanoids, traces.
Report 9/24/54 Ussel, France, 2300: multiple witness, 5 minutes, tree damage, traces.
Report 9/27/54 Premanon, France, 2050: multiple witness, disc, humanoids, traces.
Report 10/2/54 Benet, France, 2130: 2 discs, 5 minutes, oily traces.
Report 10/3/54 Montmoreau, France 2250: multiple witness, oval object, traces.
Report 10/4/54 Montceau, France: multiple witness, disc, 10 minutes, traces.
Report 10/10/54 Donjon, France 1830: multiple witness, fired at glowing object, metal traces.
Report 10/14/54 Meral, France: orange disc landed, humanoid, 10 minutes, luminescent steam, layer of white, sticky substance at site.
Report 10/20/54 Lusigny Forest, France 1830: 6m ovoid, intense heat, rain falling, steam, area dehydrated.
Report 11/5/54 La Roche-Brenil, France: multiple witness, orange object lands, humanoids, human effects, 12 ft ring, ash-like appearance.
Report 12/12/54 Campinas, Brazil: multiple witness, 3 objects, liquid dropped from one object, like a silvery rain, brilliant glowing stain.
Report 8/??/55 Cayerer, France 2200: multiple witness, egg-shaped object, humanoids metal traces.
Report 8/21/55 Kelly-Hopkinsville, KY 2030: multiple witness, humanoids, luminous traces.
Report 11/2/55 Williston, FL 2220: multiple witness, disc, humanoids, human effects, traces.
Report Fall, 1956: Bethel, CT: multiple witness, ring of burnt grass 18 ft in diameter, traces of nickel & chromium.
Report 5/10/57 Beaucourt, France 2250: multiple witness, 8 minutes, humanoids, traces.
Report 11/4/57 Fort Itaipu, Brazil: multiple witness, EM, radiation, burns.
Report 10/??/58 Stroudsburg, PA 1900: multiple witness, disc, beam, traces.
Report 10/??/59 Mariannelund, Sweden 1855: multiple witness, disc, EM, humanoid, gray-white substance found at site.
Report 12/9/60 Carignen, France 2030: multiple witness, glowing 14 ft object, animal reaction, humanoid, dehydrated ring.
Report 10/21/63 Trancas, Argentina 1900: multiple witnesses, disc on ground several minutes, animal reaction, EM effects, humanoids, numerous traces.
Report 04/24/64 Socorro, NM 1745: daylight, egg-shaped object with four structured legs, primary witness, several confirming witnesses, humanoids, burns, imprints.
Report 07/01/65 Valensole, France 0530: daylight landing, single witness, humanoids, human effects, dehydration and imprints + central shaft hole.
Report 09/15/65 Silverton, South Africa 0000: multiple police, road landing, traces.
Report 01/19/66 Tully, Australia 0900: daylight sighting, single witness, 30 ft trace.
Report 05/??/66 Whiteman Air Force Base, MO: multiple witness, daylight landing in wooded area, humanoid, tree damage, burnt traces, imprints.
Report 11/22/66 Roaring River State Park, MO 1000: multiple witness, daylight, photographs of object ascending 300 ft away, tree damage, multiple traces.
Report 3/20/67 Tuscumbia, MO 0630: daylight landing, single witness, animal reaction, occupants and object 15 ft away, central shaft, traces.
Report 3/21/67 New Baden, IL 0200: multiple witness, landing, Air Force investigation, imprints, human effects, very odd liquid.
Report 5/20/67 Falcon Lake, Canada : single witness, daylight, 0 ft away from object, human effects, traces.
Report 07/13/69 Van Horne, Iowa 2300: multiple witness, disc, 40 ft circular area- dehydrated in soybean field.
Report 08/30/70 Itatiaia, Brazil 2145: multiple witness, 35 ft away, shots fired at object, light beam, severe human effects, dehydrated circular trace.
Report 11/02/71 Delphos, KS 1900: single primary witness, 4 confirming witnesses, 40 ft away, several minutes, human effects, animal effects, 8 ft glowing ring + tree damage.
Report 06/26/72 Fort Beufort, South Africa 0800: multiple witness, long duration event, daylight, imprints.
Report 08/17/72 Norton Sound, Alaska 0000: multiple witness, long duration landing, Air Force investigation, traces.
Report 9/14/72 Houston, MO 2000: multiple witness, two events, animal reaction, EM effects, scorched oval+3 imprints+tree damage.
Report 06/28/73 Columbia, MO 0100: multiple witness, animal reaction, human reaction, EM effects, close approach, 35 minutes, tree damage, imprints.
Report 09/0174 Langenburg, Sask. 1100: single witness, daylight, 15 ft away, 5 objects, animal reaction, human reaction, 5 rings.
Report 10/08/78 Jenkins, MO 0700: multiple (7) witness, two objects, one on ground two hours, 180 ft away, traces.
Report 12/29/80 Piney Woods, Texas 2100: multiple witness, object close over road, heat, possible radiation effects.
Report 01/08/81 Trans en Provence, France 1700: single witness, small disc lands briefly, 8 ft ring at site.
Report 01/20/88 Mundrabilla, Australia: multiple witnesses, multiple confirming witnesses, object attempted to lift car, witness touched base of object, damage to car + traces.
Report 10/01/95 Piacabucu River, Brazil 2300: multiple witness, luminous object, 5 m circular site + four 10 cm x 15 cm imprints, 1.5 cm deep.
These cases represent some of the high strangeness trace/landing events from a database of over 4,000 such events. As the reports are processed the entire database will be available on this site.
LINK; http://www.angelfire.com/mo/cptr/topcases.html
OME FACTS THAT SHOW FBI, CIAs UFO monitoring;
Below are some very revealing facts about the FBI, AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE AND THE CIA"s involvement with UFO sightings and reports;As pointed out before in previous posts these intelligences did and probably still are very involved with this UFO enigma;
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Facts About the UFO / FBI Connection: "The REAL X-Files"
THIS BOOK IS BASED ON THE FILES OF THE FBI, AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE AND THE CIA. It tells the history of the FBI involvement and of the Air Force activities as seen through the "eyes" of the FBI. The AF told the FBI things that it didn't tell the American people!
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Fact 1
July 10, 1947, Air Force Intelligence asked the FBI to interview witnesses. The Air Force was worried that some sighting reports might come from communist sympathizers.
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Fact 2
The FBI officially investigated during the late summer of 1947. The FBI interviewed a dozen and a half or so witnesses and found no evidence of communist sympathizers, but did find unexplainable sightings. Many of these interviews and sighting reports were filed under "Security Matter - X"..... so these are the "Real X Files."
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Fact 3
Air Force Intelligence supplied the FBI with secret UFO-related information from the summer of 1947 until the middle of the 1950's. Some of this information did not appear in the files of Project Blue Book (1952- 1969) which include the files of Project Sign (1948) and Project Grudge (1949-1951), or in the Air Force .
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Fact 4
Information supplied to the FBI during the years 1949-1950 indicated that the Air Force treated the subject seriously even though the Air Force publicly stated that the sightings could all be explained and that there was no threat to the United States.
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Fact 5
In January 1949 an Air Force Colonel at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, who directed the project to create and atomic powered aircraft, told the FBI that saucers were real and were weapons of the Soviet Union.
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Fact 6
In 1949 and 1950 the FBI was told by the Air Force intelligence that the saucer project had been ended. But then the FBI received further requests for sighting information which proved that the Air Force was still investigating. The confusion of the Air Force investigators over whether or not saucers were weapons of another nation or something else is evident in the FBI file.
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Fact 7
During 1949 and 1950 numerous "green fireballs" were observed flying over restricted military installations in New Mexico and Texas. These military installations were associated with the construction and storage of atomic weapons. The security agencies were very worried that these "fireballs" were Soviet missiles. The Air Force reports also indicate a "disc shaped variation" also reported by Air Force security personnel.
The local FBI agents reported numerous times to headquarters (Hoover) about these sightings. In 1950 the AF project set up to investigate these sightings (Project Twinkle) obtained **photographic proof** of saucer reality. This proof is presented publicly for the first time in this book.
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Fact 8
On July 29,1952, a week after saucers appeared over Washington, DC, the FBI was told by Air Force Intelligence that roughly 3% of the sightings COULD NOT BE EXPLAINED and that it was "not entirely impossible" that some saucers were "ships from another planet. On the SAME DAY the General in charge of Air Force Intelligence ( General Samford) held a press conference and told the American public that sightings were all explainable as natural phenomena such as mirages and "temperature inversions" (affecting radar).
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Fact 9
In October, 1952, the FBI was told that some AF officers were "seriously considering the possibility of interplanetary ships."
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Fact 10
In 1956 an FBI employee and an employee of the National Security agency saw and reported to the FBI a UFO
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Fact 11
The FBI file contains several reports by the agent who investigated the Lonnie Zamorra/Socorro, New Mexico case of April 24, 1964.
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Fact 12
The FBI file has a memorandum which indicates that when Jimmy Carter became President he did query government agencies about their UFO activities, as he had promised before the election.
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Fact 13
The FBI does not now investigate sightings
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Fact 14
In the spring of 1998 the FBI placed on the web the roughly 1600 pages of UFO files ... see www.foia.fbi.gov and check for "foipa" documents. These are not arranged in any order so if you are looking for a particular item you may have to search through all 16 files of 5 Mbytes each.
link; http://brumac.8k.com/index.html
Natural /Artificial Objects/Earth-Moon Libration;
A Search for Natural or Artificial Objects Located at the Earth-Moon Libration Points;
Very interesting article on the vicinity of the Earth-Moon triangular libration points or a place where advanced ETs could hide in these positions for the intentions of discrete and passive observations of us and our planet;There craft systems could be sort of stealth like or non reflective or in a scientific way there craft would be non-reflective and have only a notional effect on any nearby natural objects due to minute mass.
It begs the real question here that what are the odds of discovering any advanced ET craft that used or remained in this "Earth-Moon Libration Points", the odds would be very high against us every discovering any ET craft that chose to locate its self in these "Earth-Moon Libration Points"due to the fact that it would be like looking for a twinkle within a twinkle; but it would be highly rewarding and worth the venture for any advanced ET intelligence that chose this method of observation of us;This was studied and put forward by the respected Robert A. Freitas and Jr. Francisco Valdes who where working for the Department of Astronomy University of California, Berkeley, California;
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Robert A. Freitas, Jr.
100 Buckingham Drive, Santa Clara, California 95051
AND Francisco Valdes;
Department of Astronomy University of California, Berkeley, California 94720
Icarus 42, 442-447 (1980)
Received October 29, 1979; revised April 4, 1980;
Note: This web version is derived from an earlier draft of the paper and may possibly differ in some substantial aspects from the final published paper.
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Photographs in the vicinity of the Earth-Moon triangular libration points L4 and L5, and of the solar- synchronized positions in the associated halo orbits (A. A. Kamel, 1969, Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University), were made during August-September 1979, using the 30-in Cassegrain telescope at Leuschner Observatory, Lafayette, California.
An effective 2' square field was covered at each position. No discrete objects, either natural or artificial, were found. The detection limit was about 14th magnitude. The present work extends traditional SETI observations to include the search for interstellar probes (R. A. Freitas Jr., 1980, J. Brit. Interplanet. Soc. 33, 95-100).
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If two bodies of appropriate masses orbit each other under their mutual gravitation, infinitesimal objects placed at certain points in the plane of revolution will also be in equilibrium. Two points in particular, the Lagrangian or libration points L4 and L5, are stable. These correspond, respectively, to the leading and trailing apexes of equilateral triangles having as a common edge a line connecting the two gravitating bodies. The Trojan asteroids are well-known examples of objects trapped in the stable libration points in the Sun-Jupiter system.
The Earth-Moon system also has triangular libration points. However, in the Earth-Moon case the problem of stability is greatly complicated by the appreciable solar gravitational influence. Taking this properly into account, it can be shown theoretically and numerically that L4 and L5 are no longer stable.
For instance, a detailed numerical integration of the motion of objects initially at rest in the Lagrangian orbits was performed by Schutz and Tapley (1970) They found large oscillations on the order of the Earth-Moon separation. For a object begun at L4 this led to a close lunar encounter with subsequent ejection from the system after 579 days.
Though the Lagrangian points are not stable, large stable orbits around the libration points have been determined analytically by Schechter (1968) and Kamel (1969) and numerically by Kolenkiewicz and Carpenter (1968). Schechter found one stable orbit using a second-order perturbation .procedure and assuming a circular lunar orbit. The stable orbit was synodic with the Sun. In addition he found that oscillations out of the lunar orbital plane were essentially decoupled from the in-plane motion.
The numerical search by Kolenkiewicz and Carpenter, using restricted coplanar motion and eccentric lunar orbits, found two synodic stable orbits of similar size with a 180' phase difference. The scale of the orbits found by Schechter and by Kolenkiewicz and Carpenter differed because of the low-order analytic technique. Kamel used a third- and fourth-order theory in the coplanar model, the third-order analysis including an eccentric lunar orbit, which agreed well with the numerical results. A schematic of these stable "halo orbits" is shown in Fig. 1.
http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/Search...EMLP_Img01.gif
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the Earth-Moon triangular libration points L4 and L5. and their associated halo orbits, in the rotating coordinate system de scribed by Kamel (1969). Coordinates x and y are in units of the mean Earth-Moon separation.
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There have been occasional attempts to detect objects at the Earth-Moon libration points. Kordylewski (1961) and Simpson (1967a,b) reported visual sightings of dim clouds near L5, but subsequent ground-based observations failed convincingly to confirm these results (Roosen, 1968; Roosen and Wolff, 1969). Photographic observations from NASA's Convair-990 Jet Laboratory operating at an altitude of 12,000 m failed to find clouds at L5 (Wolff et al., 1967), but experiments conducted on Skylab using the Rutgers OSO-6 Zodical Light Analyzer produced new evidence for a libration cloud counterglow near both L4 and L5 (Munro et al., 1975; Roach, 1975).
A search for discrete objects at L4 has been reported by Bruman (1969), using the 48-in Schmidt telescope at Palomar Observatory, with negative results down to 15-17th magnitude.
To the best of our knowledge, no observations of the Earth-Moon halo orbits have yet been attempted, nor have searches specifically designed to detect discrete objects at L5 been reported in the literature. Investigation of these positions for trapped objects is important as a check on theoretical calculations, for the discovery of asteroidal material, and as a SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) search for possible alien artifacts. The authors have attempted a preliminary photographic search with the 30-in. Cassegrain telescope at Leuschner Observatory in Lafayette, California.
The SETI aspect of this observational search is based on the proposals that the Earth-Moon libration points might represent excellent parking orbits for SETI receiver antennae (Basler et al., 1977), for large space habitats (O'Neill, 1977), or for interstellar probes sent to the Solar System by advanced technical societies located elsewhere in the Galaxy (Lawton, 1974).
The possibility of using messenger probes in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence was first suggested by Bracewell (1960), and the feasibility of this approach recently has been demonstrated by the British Interplanetary Society Starship Study (Martin, 1978).
Much like the "preferred frequency" concept in SETI beacon theory, libration orbits might constitute the most universally convenient meeting places for alien spacecraft exploring arbitrary stellar systems. A viable long-term SETI program may be founded upon a search for these objects (Freitas, 1980a).
We suggest (Freitas, 1980b), that halo orbits could be among the best places to begin a search for evidence of ancient spacecraft parked in the Earth-Moon system. Such orbits should be stable over geological time scales and are expected to be widely available in arbitrary solar systems that might be visited by exploratory spacecraft (Szebehely, 1967; Everhart, 1973; Weissman and Wetherill, 1974). In addition, libration/halo orbits may serve as well-defined loci for a network of interplanetary surveillance and communication relay stations (Strong, 1967; Farquhar, 1971).
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OBSERVING PROGRAM;
The aim of the observational program was to obtain maximum sensitivity to discrete objects in the lunar orbital plane by guiding the telescope to follow the predicted libration/halo orbits. Except for Bruman's work, all previous observations have tracked at the sidereal rate or were untracked.
The combined effects of changing horizontal parallax, rotation of the Earth, the mean orbital motion of the Moon and, for the halo orbits, the additional epicyclic motion produce tracking rates of from 19 to 2.51 per minute less than sidereal and from 3" to 12" per minute in declination. Failure to correct for these variations would have reduced the photographic limits of the search by 1-2 magnitudes, as determined by comparison of calibration exposures of stars in M15.
The equation for halo orbits about L4 in the (x, y) coordinate system defined in Fig. 1 is given by Kamel (third-order orbits e2 and e3 with lunar orbital eccentricity e = 0.0549) as
f = S (i=0,3) { ai cos(iqs) + bi sin(iqs) }
+ S (i=4,5) { ai cos((i - 3)qe) + bi sin((i - 3)qe) }
+ a6cos(2qs - qe) +b6 sin(2qs - qe).
Kamel's halo orbits were calculated from (1) by using i, ai, and bi provided in Table I to generate the Lagrangicentric orbital coordinates (f = x, f = y) as a function of qs, and qe. The angle qs. between the Sun and the Moon was taken as the apparent angle in the sky, since a trial projection of the Sun onto the lunar orbital plane produced only a negligible correction to the computed halo orbits.
The angle qe, between the Moon and its point of perigee was determined by linear interpolation of the preceding and succeeding ephemeris perigee positions to the date of observation. Calculations of halo orbits about L5 were performed by reflecting the (x-y) coordinate system about the y-axis and reversing the time dependence. This is indicated by the coordinate axis at L5 in Fig. 1.
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TABLE I;
COEFFICIENTS FOR EQUATION (1) FOR HALO ORBITS WITH e = 0.0549
(KAMEL, 1969);
Inner halo
Outer halo
f = x
f = y
f = x
f = y
i
ai
bi
ai
bi
ai
bi
ai
bi
0
-0.064577
0
0.018542
0
-0.068827
0
0.019775
0
1
-0.321277 -0.132489 0.035567 0.23299 0.331245 0.139196 -0.03396 -0.2397
2
-0.016204 0.002959 0.003824 -0.01069 -0.016903 0.002706 0.00354 -0.01156
3
-0.001425 0.001902 -0.002126 -0.00125 0.001541 -0.002065 0.002317 0.001345
4
-0.011154 -0.116615 -0.05631 0.045241 -0.042675 -0.072047 -0.037866 0.06184
5
0.00007 -0.000046 -0.00063 -0.000003 0.00007 -0.000046 -0.000063 -0.000003
6
0.002666 0.009637 0.004462 -0.005623 0.002666 0.009637 0.004462 -0.005623
The mean motion of an object in an L4/L5 halo orbit is synchronized with the synodic month (Kolenkiewicz and Carpenter, 1968; Schechter, 1968). Thus, it is possible to determine a unique time-variable position for trapped bodies or hypothetical ancient spacecraft. The sky positions of the triangular libration points and the four unique synodic halo points were computed using the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac 1979 at every hour during the planned observing periods in August-September 1979, and were interpolated to 1-min intervals to permit close digital tracking.
To obtain the best possible conditions, the search was conducted close to maximum reflection angle to ensure full brightness from any objects that might be present. About half the photographs were taken in a moonless sky. The remainder were taken before moonset, as early (for L4) and as late (for L5) in the Moon's phases as possible, consistent with the above reflection angle requirement. The exposures were made by manually guiding the telescope in declination and by adjusting the tracking oscillator continuously according to digital readouts.
No visual target was available, so guiding was unavoidably imperfect. Conservatively, libration/halo objects may have trailed as much as 1s in right ascension and 15" in declination during each exposure, thus decreasing the limiting magnitude. Seeing was generally 3-8" which further reduced the visual magnitude limit.
It is likely that the true position of orbiting halo objects is very near the coplanar solution. The out-of-plane halo orbit motion studied by Schechter (1968) was found not to be seriously excited by the Sun. Roosen et al. (1967) estimated an oscillation perpendicular to the Earth-Moon plane with a period equal to the synodic period and an amplitude as seen from the Earth of about 0°.25, and concluded that the integrated effect of the Sun would be to smear any material into bands lying in the plane of the lunar orbit.
For particles initially at the triangular libration point L5 Schutz and Tapley (1970) found a progressive reduction in inclination from the mean lunar value of 5°.15 down to a lower limiting value of about 2° after 5000 days, a trend which they were unable to explain.
The search for objects at the Lagrangian points and in the halo orbits given by (1) allowed for excursions of up to 1° away from the orbital plane and tip to 8° along the plane of the orbit. The circular field of the Leuschner telescope is 1°. Photographs were taken at points along the orbital plane and at positions offset by 0°.5 to survey a 2o square grid around each point.
These observations covered only about 6° along the halo plane at intervals of about 2°. A similar sampling was made in the vicinity of the Lagrangian points L4 and L5. Given the limited sensitivity and narrow field of each photograph this search must be considered preliminary and is not complete.
Each photograph consisted of a 10-min exposure, then a 1-sec "jog" obtained by briefly disengaging the telescope drive, followed by another 10-min exposure on the same film. Any libration/halo objects thus would appear as doublets on each exposure, helping to eliminate most of the false alarms caused by defects in the photographic emulsion. Observations took place during 1-4 August 1979, 14-17 August 1979, 29-31 August 1979, and 11-13 September 1979. A total of 90 photographs was taken, including 41 at L4 and its associated halo orbit positions and 40 similarly near L5.
All were 4 x 5 in. (100 x 130 mm), Tri-X ASA 320 sheet film, firmly affixed to rigid glass plates during exposure and developed with manual agitation for 5 min in D-19. Nine calibration photographs were taken of M15, a prominent and well-studied globular cluster, covering a variety of observing conditions.
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RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS;
Each exposure was examined using a microfiche reader with two magnification levels available. The entire 1° photographic field was divided into 288 search squares of approximate angular dimensions 4' x 4' and each was visually scanned for the expected double image of a libration/halo object. The results were all negative. Each double-image candidate considered could be ruled out on the basis of size, doublet position angle or separation distance, tracking error, passage of aircraft or emulsion defect.
To determine the limiting magnitude achieved, several calibration exposures of M15 were taken tracked at the sidereal rate without a guide star to simulate the effects of imperfect guiding on libration/halo objects. Comparison of these photographs, obtained under various conditions of seeing, with detailed photometric data on individual stars in M15 provided by Sandage (1970) indicated a visual limit of about 14th magnitude for this series of observations. Our data therefore indicate that no ancient spacecraft -- or other object of reflectivity greater than lunar albedo -- having the size of Skylab or larger is parked at L4, L5, or in any of the predicted halo orbits in the Earth-Moon system.
The authors would encourage others to perform more comprehensive observational investigations of this type with the possibility in mind of ancient artifacts in the Solar System. Our experience suggests such work could most profitably be accomplished using a wide field, wide aperture Schmidt telescope which would push the limiting magnitude to about +21. This corresponds roughly to an object at the distance of the Moon having the size of Pioneer 10 and an albedo like that of carbon black.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS;
It is a pleasure to acknowledge the generosity of the University of California, Berkeley Astronomy Department for making available the facilities at Leuschner Observatory, the helpful discussions with John V. Breakwell of Stanford University and Ahmed A. Kamel of the Ford Aerospace Corporation, and useful comments on the manuscript by Robert G. Roosen, Joseph A. Bums, and an unnamed referee.
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REFERENCES;
Basler, R. P., Johnson, G. L., and Vondrak, R. R. (1977). Antenna concepts for interstellar search systems. Radio Sci. 12, 845-858.
Bracewell, R. N. (1960). Communications from superior galactic communities. Nature 186, 670-671.
Bruman, J. R. (1969). A lunar libration point experiment. Icarus 10, 197-200.
Everhart, E. (1973). Horseshoe and trojan orbits associated with Jupiter and Saturn. Astron. J. 78, 316-328.
Farquhar, R. W. (1970). The Control and Use of Libration-Point Satellites. NASA TR R-346.
Freitas, R. A., Jr. (1980a). Interstellar probes: A new approach to SETI. J. Brit. Interplanet. Soc. 33, 95-100.
Freitas, R. A., Jr. (1980b). Possible locations of xenological artifacts in the solar system. Submitted for publication.
Kamel, A. A. (1969). Perturbation Theory Based on Lie Transforms and Its Application to the Stability of Motion Near Sun-Perturbed Earth-Moon Triangular Libration Points. Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University.
Kolenkiewicz, R., and Carpenter, L. (1968). Stable periodic orbits about the Sun-perturbed Earth-Moon triangular points. AIAA J. 6, 1301-1304.
Kordylewski, K. (1961). Photographic investigations of the libration point L5 in the Earth-Moon system. Acta Astron. 11, 165-169.
Lawton, A. T. (1974). Interstellar communication: Antenna or artifact? J. Brit. Interplanet. Soc. 27, 286-294.
Martin, A. R. (Ed.) (1978). Project Daedalus -- The Final Report on the BIS Starship Study. Unwin Brothers, London.
Munro, R. H., Gosling, J. T., Hildner, E., MacQueen, R. M., Poland, A. I., and Ross, C. L. (1975). A search for forward scattering of sunlight from lunar libration clouds. Planer. Space Sci. 23, 1313-1321.
O'Neill, G. K. (1977). The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space. Morrow, New York.
Roach, J. R. (1975). Counterglow from the Earth-Moon libration points. Planet. Space Sci. 23, 173-181.
Roosen, R. G. (1968). A photographic investigation of the Gegenschein and the Earth-Moon libration point L5. Icarus 9, 429-439.
Roosen, R. G., and Wolff, C. L. (1969). Are the libration clouds real? Nature 224, 571.
Roosen, R. G., Harrington, R. S., Jeffreys, W. H.. Simpson, J. W., and Miller, R. G. (1967). Doubt about libration clouds. Phys. Today 20, 5, 10-15.
Sandage, A. (1970). Main-sequence photometry, color-magnitude diagrams, and ages for the globular clusters M3, M13, M15, and M92, Astrophys. J. 162, 841-870.
Schechter, H. B. (1968). Three-dimensional nonlinear stability analysis of Sun-perturbed Earth-Moon equilateral points, AIAA J. 6, 1223-1228.
Schutz, B. E., and Tapley, B. D. (1970). Numerical studies of solar influenced particle motion near the triangular Earth-Moon libration points. In Periodic Orbits, Stability and Resonances (G. E. O. Giacaglia, Ed.), pp. 128-142. Reidel, Dordrecht, Holland.
Simpson, J. W. (1967a). Dust cloud moons of the Earth. Phys. Today 20, 2, 39-46.
Simpson, J. W. (1967b). Lunar vibration cloud photography. In The Zodiacal Light and the Interplanetary Medium (J. L. Weinberg, Ed.), pp. 97-107. NASA SP-150.
Strong, J. (1967). Trojan relays-a method for radio communication across the solar system. Wireless World 73, 3, 119-121.
Szebehely, V. (1967). Theory of Orbits: The Restricted Problem of Three Bodies. Academic Press, New York.
Weissman, P. R., and Wetherill, G. W. (1974). Periodic Trojan-type orbits in the Earth-Sun system. Astron. J. 79, 404-412.
Wolff, C., Dunkelman, L., and Haughney, L. C. (1967) Photography of the Earth's cloud satellites from an aircraft. Science 157, 427-429.
Creation date: July 26, 1998
Last Modified: April 30, 1999
HTML Editor: Robert J. Bradbury
link; http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/SearchIcarus1980.htm
Alaska's 1986 UFO sighting;
This case is one that needs a place in this directory, a case that to this day is still in essence a real mystery and one that could just be the smoking gun that proves not only that we are not or every have been alone in this universe,well this one at least and that we have possibly been visited in some form or another;The information gathered on this case will be presented in sections;
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Alaska's 1986 UFO sighting still rouses curiosity;
KTUU Channel 2 News (Alaska), November 8, 2002;
Summary:
Although man has walked on the moon and orbited the earth, there is still no proof that intelligent beings exist on other planets. Yet scientists believe there could be. There is even one account to suggest aliens have flown over Alaska. "Either there's something there or there isn't it," says former FAA division chief John Callahan. "Is it a spaceship or not? Why would they say it's a spaceship if it's not? The radar ain't lying."
Washington, D.C., Nov. 8 - Although man has walked on the moon and orbited the earth, there is still no proof that intelligent beings exist on other planets. Yet scientists believe there could be.
There is even one account to suggest aliens have flown over Alaska.
For generations, man has fictionalized what it would be like to meet aliens or unidentified flying objects. But again, that's just fiction. This may be fact.
"Either there's something there or there isn't it," says former FAA division chief John Callahan. "Is it a spaceship or not? Why would they say it's a spaceship if it's not? The radar ain't lying."
Radar reports were part of what Callahan investigated while working for the Federal Aviation Administration in 1986. The investigation stemmed from a report by a Japan Airlines 747, as it flew about 50 miles from Anchorage. An inexplicable image appeared on air traffic control and military computers, and the three pilots flying the plane claimed they saw a UFO.
"The pilot has it on his radar, and then the pilot and the other two guys in the cockpit look out the window, and they see him over here, and they see him over there, and they see him over here, and for 31 minutes," Callahan says.
The FAA said the incident was due to a radar malfunction. The CIA believed the pilots, Callahan says, but it buried the story. "The CIA said it was a UFO. The CIA said we're not going to tell the public, because it would scare the public. They told me that."
Stories like Callahan's were the subject of a symposium Friday in Washington, D.C. Reputable scientists and even a former NASA official concluded such stories may be more than just the visions of those with active imaginations.
"Within our own backyard, the Milky Way Galaxy, there could be literally 50 billion planets, of which 10 percent may be earthlike in nature," says Dr. Michio Kaku of City University of New York. "So it's hard to believe that God would create a universe and waste it, making all these barren planets."
Scientists say more funding needs to be devoted to determining if there is life on other planets -- and they acknowledge there is also the challenge of getting people to accept the idea of alien life.
That's an idea Callahan accepted two decades ago. "What I'm hoping is, before I die, to be able to say I told you so," he says.
Callahan continued to work for the FAA after the Japan Airlines incident. He is now retired and does some aviation consulting.
link;http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc1322.htm
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"AFTER the plane levelled out he observed "lights that looked like aircraft lights, 30 degrees left front, 2,000 feet below us, moving exactly in the same direction and with the same speed we were." At that time the airplane was flying at about 525 kts (nautical miles per hour) ground speed (972 km/hr or 605 mph) according to the tracking data (3); Subsequently the speed decreased to about 500 kts".
link; http://brumac.8k.com/JAL1628/JL1628.html
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Communication between JAL Captain Terauchi and ground controllers was published by the Federal Aviation Administration:
http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/5776/flight37mq6.jpg
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/7290/flight01wn2.jpg
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/7290/flight01wn2.jpg
Disclosure Project: Testimony of John Callahan, Former FAA Division Chief;
Disclosure Project Briefing Document - Executive Summary;
Summary:
" For 6 years Mr. Callahan was the Division Chief of the Accidents and Investigations Branch of the FAA in Washington DC. In his testimony he tells about a 1986 Japanese Airlines 747 flight that was followed by a UFO for 31 minutes over the Alaskan skies. The UFO also trailed a United Airlines flight until the flight landed. There was visual confirmation as well as air-based and ground-based radar confirmation".
FAA Division Chief John Callahan: October 2000
For 6 years Mr. Callahan was the Division Chief of the Accidents and Investigations Branch of the FAA in Washington DC. In his testimony he tells about a 1986 Japanese Airlines 747 flight that was followed by a UFO for 31 minutes over the Alaskan skies. The UFO also trailed a United Airlines flight until the flight landed.
There was visual confirmation as well as air-based and ground-based radar confirmation. This event was significant enough for the then FAA Administrator, Admiral Engen, to hold a briefing the next day where the FBI, CIA, President Reagan’s Scientific Study Team, as well as others attended. Videotape radar evidence, air traffic voice communications and paper reports were compiled and presented.
At the conclusion of this meeting, the attending CIA members instructed everyone present that ‘"he meeting never took place" and that "this incident was never recorded." Not realizing that there was additional evidence, they confiscated just the evidence presented, but Mr. Callahan was able to secure videotape and audio evidence of the event.
JC: Chief John Callahan SG: Dr. Steven Greer
JC: …Now in the 747 they have radar in the nose that picks up the weather outside there. So his radar is picking up a target. He sees this target with his eyes. And the target, the way he described it, was a huge ball with lights running around it. And I think he said it was like four times as big as a 747!
And the military man said something like, yeah, I see him 35 miles north of Anchorage…
The UFO was bouncing around the 747 here. And when he would say that, the military guy would cut in and say, he’s now at 2:00 or 3:00 and he would confirm the position. The military controller has, what they call, height-finding radar, and they have long-range radar and short-range radar. So if they don’t catch it on one of their systems they catch it on the other. And if you listen to the military man, at one time he said, I have it on the height radar, or my range radar, which indicated that they had a target on his system. Well they ran through for the best part of 31 minutes…
Then the next day I got a call from someone with the Scientific Study Group [for President Reagan], or the CIA, I’m not sure who it was, the first call. And they had some questions about the incident. And I had said, I don’t know what you are talking about, you probably want to call the Admiral [FAA Administrator Engen].
Well a few minutes later the Admiral calls down and says, I have set up a briefing tomorrow morning at 9:00 am in the round room. Bring all the stuff you have. Bring everybody up there and give them whatever they want. We want to get out of it. Just let them do whatever they want. So I brought all the people from the Tech Center. We had all kinds of boxes of data that we had them print out; it filled up the room. They brought in three people from the FBI, three people from the CIA, and three people from Reagan’s Scientific Study team — I don’t know who the rest of the people were but they were all excited…
When they got done, they actually swore all these other guys in there that this never took place. We never had this meeting. And this was never recorded.
SG: Who said that? Who was saying that?
JC: This was one of the guys from the CIA. Okay? That they were never there and this never happened. At the time I said, well I don’t know why you are saying this. I mean, there was something there and if it’s not the stealth bomber, then you know, it’s a UFO. And if it’s a UFO, why wouldn’t you want the people to know? Oh, they got all excited over that.
You don’t even want to say those words. He said this is the first time they ever had 30 minutes of radar data on a UFO. And they are all itching to get their hands onto the data and to find out what it is and what really goes on. He says if they come out and told the American public that they ran into a UFO out there, it would cause panic across the country. So therefore, you can’t talk about it. And they are going to take all this data…
Well when they read the reports that came through the FAA decided it had to protect themselves — you can’t say you saw a target, even though this is what he said. So they made him change his report to say "position symbols," which makes it sound like it wasn’t really a target. Well if it’s not a target then a lot of the other position symbols that we are separating [on radar] aren’t targets either. And when I read that, I thought oh, there is something fishy here, that somebody is worried about something or other and they are trying to cover up.
When the CIA told us that this never happened and we never had this meeting, I believe it was because they didn’t want the public to know that this was going on. Normally we would put out some type of a news release that such and such happened…
The only ones that see a UFO in the TV programs are the rednecks out in the country that are going coon hunting or alligator hunting at night. You don’t find anybody with any kind of smarts or some professional individual saying hey, last night let me tell you what I saw. They don’t display that in the United States. So if you talk about seeing a UFO, you are putting yourself in a funny kind of category. That’s probably one of the reasons why you don’t hear about it anymore. But as far as I’m concerned, I saw a UFO chase a Japanese 747 across the sky for over half an hour on radar. And it’s faster than anything that I know of in our Government.
Well, I’ve been involved in a lot of cover-ups with the FAA. When we gave the presentation to the Reagan staff I was behind the group that was there. And when they were speaking to the people in the room, they had all those people swear that this never happened. But they never had me swear it never happened. And it always bothered me that we have these things going on and when you see something or you hear something on the radio or TV, the news, that it’s put down as it’s not there.
I have a hard time saying nothing.
It still bothers me that I’ve seen all this, I know all this, and I’m walking around with the answer, and nobody wants to ask the question to get the answer. And it kind of irritates me a little bit. And I don’t believe our Government should be set up that way.
I think when we have something like this, that you can probably find out more about what’s going on in the world [by not covering it up]. If they [the UFOs] can travel that far, that distance with that type of machinery, who knows what they could do here for the health of the nation, the people, the food they could give them, the cancers we could cure. They have to know more than us to be able to travel at that speed.
For those people that say that if these UFOs existed, they would some day be on radar and that there’d be professionals who would see it, then I can tell them that back in 1986 there were enough professional people that saw it. It was brought down to headquarters, FAA headquarters, Washington D.C. The Administrator saw the tape of it. The people that we were debriefing, they’ve all seen. Reagan’s Scientific Study team, three of those professors, doctors, they’ve seen it.
As far as I was concerned they were the ones that verified my own thoughts about it. They were very, very excited about the data. They had said that this was the only time a UFO was ever recorded on radar for any length of time where it is 30 some minutes. And they have all this data to look at…
What I can tell you is what I’ve seen with my own eyes. I’ve got a videotape. I’ve got the voice tape. I’ve got the reports that were filed that will confirm what I’ve been telling you. And I’m one of those, what you would call the high Government officials in the FAA. I was a Division Chief. I was only three or four down from the Admiral…
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LINKS AND REFERENCES;
Alaska's 1986 UFO sighting still rouses curiosity
KTUU Channel 2 News (Alaska), November 8, 2002
Disclosure Project: Testimony of John Callahan, Former FAA Division Chief
Disclosure Project Briefing Document - Executive Summary
FAA investigates JAL Flight 1628 UFO Sighting
Associated Press, 1986
Statement of Captain Terauchi, Pilot of JAL Flight 1628
UFO FILES: Black Box UFO Secrets (.PDF)
Wednesday, 11th August, 2006
Video: John Callahan, Former FAA Division Chief, dicusses JAL Flight 1628
UFO Symposium at The George Washington University, 2002
FOLLOW UP TO LAST POST;
Video: John Callahan, Former FAA Division Chief, dicusses JAL Flight 1628
UFO Symposium at The George Washington University, 2002
http://www.freedomofinfo.org/science.html
Aboriginals:Their tales Of Extraterrestrials;
Here we have a often over looked but very important treasure of information pertaining to the lore of the ancient natives of Australia , the Aboriginals, this ancient race of people left tales ect of sky people ect and some cave paintings can be found that depict possible UFOs, humanoids ect; Below is a sort of condensed portfolio of some of this peoples myths ect;
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Flying Shiny Eggs and Moon-Man tales.
Indigenous Cosmology and Science;
Extra-terrestrial life - Indigenous and Western Scientific Viewpoint;
"Aboriginal cosmology, dismissed as "myth", has a lot to offer science in the quest for "extra-terrestrial life and intelligence". The problem is defining the terms".
"In an Aboriginal worldview, all things in the universe (including rocks, wood, dirt) are alive, and are intelligent. Contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life in this worldview happens all the time, not only in Dreaming Stories, but in everyday life, with natural phenomena empirically linked to seasonal movements of celestial bodies, also defined in lore as indicators of communication from sky beings".
"The most direct form of extra-terrestrial communication with earth is in seasonal indicators – like for example, when a crocodile appears in the Milky Way it is Autumn and Winter. At that time, the emu up there is upside down, and his rotation determines the breeding cycle of the emu on earth".
"Death is the ultimate form of space travel for many Aboriginal cultures, for people whose spirit goes to the skycamp after the body dies. So really, Aboriginal people are the ultimate space explorers, and the ones who communicate with extra-terrestrial life daily through interaction with the land and the supernatural.
It’s just that in this cosmology, the definition of life is different, and the definition of intelligence as well. These stellar bodies and matter in space that westerners regard as dead and unintelligent hold intelligence and life for us, and communicate with us".
Aboriginal Dot Art A range of accommodation options for all budgets - outback Australia www.ayersrockresort.com.au
quote;
"Western Scientists are unable to interact with extra-terrestrial life because of the limitations of what they accept as life and intelligence. You need to look at the history of western science here to find the source of this disparity in definitions. The ancient Greek philosophers were the first to put forward the theory of “dead matter” such as rocks and wood and dirt".
" Before that, everybody understood the life in these things. Modern science has discovered the tremendous energy that exists in these objects that were thought of as “lifeless”, but the Greek idea of lifeless matter still persists in western ideologies, and this limits the directions western science can take".
"The ancient Greek scientists also put forward the idea of animals and plants being unintelligent life-forms, thus separating humans from nature, and limiting the concept of intelligence to human thought. This ignores the complex patterns and dynamics in geology, astronomy, biology etc – all complex adaptive systems that adapt and recreate aspects of the universe, and all of which satisfy even the western definition of intelligence, in that they are self-organising".
"Aboriginal knowledge has a lot to offer in the western search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, but this mostly involves a shift in perspectives and concepts of what constitutes “alien” life. (Read more about collaboration between Western Science and Indigenous Knowledge Systems)".
READ THIS NEXT;;
Origin Of Aboriginal Occupation;
The Scientific Cost of Rejecting the Bible - Part II;
Aboriginal Astronomy;
The very concept of “alien” is a western construct as well. It is part of the “othering” process through which westerners define themselves by creating an opposite, fascinating, terrifying monster that can be viewed, examined and defined as an opposing construct. Aboriginal people and other ethnic groups are often viewed this way in mainstream culture – creating an “other”, an alien, to help westerners define themselves. For example, how can you define yourself as “white” unless you have other people to define as “black”?
This quest for self-definition has been the purpose of the creation of UFO and ET myths in popular culture. Westerners are unable to define themselves as human unless they have a non-human “other” to compare themselves to. The western quest to answer the question, “Who are we and why are we here?” is the driving force behind the creation of fictional aliens and also the search for “extra-terrestrial intelligence”.
As Aboriginal people, we already know who we are and why we are here, and so our quests and our interactions with the universe are different. Our definitions of what constitutes life and intelligence, and other aspects of our complex cosmology, have a lot to offer western science in the future. We only need to move beyond common conceptions of our cosmology as “myth”.
Read more about Aboriginal Astronomy or Dreaming and Quantum Physics.
Read more at Suite101: Indigenous Cosmology and Science: Extra-terrestrial life - Indigenous and Western Scientific Viewpoint | Suite101.com http://www.suite101.com/content/indi...#ixzz1SH3v2fQM
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Australian Aboriginal Culture and Possible Ufo Connections;
BY BILL CHALKER;
(copyright ©1996 - B. Chalker)
This article expands on some material which appears in the book "The OZ Files - the Australian UFO Story".
The author can be contacted at:
P.O. Box
West Pennant Hills,
NSW, 2125,
AUSTRALIA.
Phone: Sydney, Australia + 9484 4680
or by email: [email protected]
quote;
"The legends and lore of the indigenous aborigines also provides material suggestive of interactions with anomalous aerial phenomena. Of course, in speculation about such data, it should be realised that the accounts are of historical and anthropological nature and therefore care should be taken not to interpolate too much into them".
PREHISTORY;
Aboriginal myths incorporate the idea of "sky beings", with the Wandjina being among the most interesting to consider. The Wandjina have been preserved in a fascinating oral tradition and in a large collection of rock paintings scattered throughout the Kimberley region of northern Australia. The paintings have received all manner of interpretations from stylised representations of a pervasive myth system to naive "ancient astronaut" theories.
It is however fascinating to see that the indigenous tribes viewed the Wandjina as "the spirit in the cloud." Indeed, the unique painting style shows a logical sequence from human figures to stylised representations of clouds. This duality of anthropomorphic form and "clouds" is widespread in primitive cultures and finds an interesting parallel in the biblical accounts in "Exodus."
While this line of thought is suggestive of superior "sky beings" acting as cultural catalysts for primitive societies, I should point out that making mythological component comparisons, can make for interesting exercises, full of emotive similarities, but are purely speculative. [1]
ANCIENT TRACES?
There are numerous elements of aboriginal lore in which provocative parallels can be seen with modern day UFO experiences. To argue that identical stimuli may have been involved may be foolish as it is impossible to prove either way. Never the less some accounts are startling. Prosaic explanations are probable but consider the following.
The aboriginal tribe, the Bad, of the West Kimberly area, Western Australia, revered "a supreme being" called Djamar. According to tradition he manifested in a manner highly suggestive of "something" landing and leaving behind a physical record. Of course the reverse can argued. That is that the aborigines invested supernatural dimensions into many prosaic features of the natural landscape.
The young initiates of the tribe were led to the stony bed of a creek and were shown the holes where Djamar had planted his "bullroarer". In aboriginal lore the sound of the "bullroarer" a roaring wind noise symbolised the approach of the god. The original accounts indicate that Djamar's bullroar or "galuguru" are representations of the "being" itself. According to E.A. Worms:
"Earnestly the old men impress on the youths the terrible force of the original tjurunga, by pointing out the baldness of the surrounding hills and the damaged bark of the trees struck by Djamar when he whirled the bull-roarer. It smashed the rocks of the foreshore."
After the manifestation of Djamar, which left behind all this damage, the supreme being himself ascended once again into the sky with his "tjurunga". Such accounts lost in prehistory are full of emotive similarities but beyond that they are only diverting tales of the Australian aboriginal 'dreamtime'. [2]
According to Bundjalung tribal tradition, Salty Lagoon, north of the Broadwater National Park, near Evans Head, on the NSW north coast, was home to a female ancestral being called Gaungan. Described as "tall and slim, with long flowing hair, beautiful hands and long fingernails," when she moved between Salty Lagoon and Wardell, Gaungan often appeared as a shining light. The legends indicate she would try to seduce men into the sea or the lagoon. Tradition has it that Gaungan flew from Woodenbong, landed on a beach near Salty Lagoon and turned into a black rock. [3]
"MEN OF HIGH DEGREE" - indigenous "abductees"
The Australian aboriginal shamans "clever men" or "men of high degree" described "celestial ascents" to meet with the "sky gods" such as Baiame, Biral, Goin and Bundjil. Many of the accounts of ritualistic initiation bare striking parallels to modern day UFO contactee and abduction lore.
The aboriginal shamanic "experience of death and rising again" in the initiation of tribal "men of high degree" finds some fascinating parallels with modern day UFO abduction lore. The "chosen one" (either voluntarily or spontaneously) is set upon by "spirits", ritualistically "killed", and then experiences a wondrous journey (generally an aerial ascent to a strange realm) to met the "sky god." He is restored to life a new life as the tribal shaman.
Ritual death and resurrection, abduction by powerful beings, ritual removal or rearrangement of body parts, symbolic disembowelment, implanting of artifacts, aerial ascents and journeys into strange realms, alien tutelage and enlightenment, personal empowerment, and transformation - these and many other phenomena are recurring elements of the extraordinary shamanic tradition.
At the turn of the last century, anthropologists Spencer and Gillen, in their book The Northern Tribes of Central Australia (1904), provided a classic account of the extraordinary shaman genre.
An aborigine, Kurkutji, was set upon by two spirits, Mundadji and Munkaninji, in a cave: "Mundadji cut him open, right down the middle line, took out all of his insides and exchanged them for those of himself, which he placed in the body of Kurkutji. At the same time he put a number of sacred stones in his body.
After it was all over, the youngest spirit, Munkaninji, came up and restored him to life, told him that he was now a medicine-man and showed him how to extract bones and other forms of evil magic out of them. Then he took him away up into the sky and brought him down to earth close to his own camp, where he heard the natives mourning for him, thinking that he was dead.
For a long time he remained in a more or less dazed condition, but gradually he recovered and the natives knew that he had been made into a medicine-man. When he operates the spirit Mukaninji is supposed to be near at hand watching him, unseen of course by ordinary people."
This is an excellent description of the initiatory experience of an Australian aboriginal shaman. A.P. Elkin aptly referred to these individuals as 'aboriginal men of high degree.' There are numerous other accounts of this kind from the past, from more recent times and the present. [4]
I first drew attention to the similarities between UFO abduction narratives and the initiation accounts of shamans in a paper I presented to an Australian UFO conference in November, 1977. I noted then that "while these accounts often mirror many aspects of the contemporary contactee tales and also a number of the "abduction" cases, further remarkable correspondence can be found in documented shaman lore..."
Elkin pointed out one particularly evocative example of shamanic lore:
"Amongst the powers of the Mara medicine-men is that of climbing at night by means of a rope invisible to ordinary mortals up to the sky, where he can hold converse with the star people. " Eliade quotes A.W. Howitt's "The Native Tribes of South-East Australia", when he recounts the initiation of a Wiradjuri medicine man: "We will go up to Baiames camp. He got astride of a Muir (thread) and put me on another, and we held by each other's arms. At the end of the thread was Wombu, the bird of Baiame. We went through the clouds, and on the other side was the sky.
We went through the place where the Doctors go through, and it kept opening and shutting very quickly. My father said that, if it touched a Doctor when he was going through it would hurt his spirit and when he returned home he would sicken and die. On the other side we saw Baiame sitting in his camp."
In modern parlance we have a lesser, but never the less similar Australian account: "...a beam of white light dazzled my inner eye and I felt myself soar through the air, upwards into the sky and I was spinning all the while ... I was drawn along this beam of light, but then the effort was too much and it flickered away.
Then in what seemed only minutes later I burst back to full conscious awareness ... I was lying on a floor of a room which was dimly lit ... I looked up ... and saw the figure of a man..."This description comes from an Australian UFO contactee and "astral" abductee named Frank Lavery. His account appeared in Psychic Australian, July, 1977.
Even then in 1977 I was pointing out the common denominators between UFO contact and abduction accounts with shaman initiation accounts, for example the alien entity, the period of disorientation, the travelling into the sky in some cases, and the "experience of death and rising again." [5]
Because of the many similarities between elements of shamanic initiation experiences, modern UFO abduction and contact narratives, and even "near death" accounts, the modern travellers of what may be the same realm could be seen as potential "cosmic shamans" of the UFO abduction and contact or "near death" genres.
Because modern society has not recognised the utility of the shamanic experience in interpreting the significance of these contemporary "alien visions", their percipients are seldom able to confront the possible lengthy tradition of their experiences. It should be said, however, many UFO abduction researchers do not accept this interpretation and instead contend we are dealing with bonafide extraterrestrial abductors.
Needless to say a sizeable part of the general community completely rejects any arguments for the reality of these experiences. Whatever the eventual explanation, it is impossible to ignore the parallels between traditional shaman initiation experiences and contemporary UFO abduction and contact reports.
A BURNING TALE?
About six kilometres north of Wingen, an underground coal seam has been burning for possibly 5,000 years. Sydney newspapers in March, 1828, reported that a farm worker saw the mountain area on fire. Initially thought to be a volcano by the settlers who first saw it, it was soon verified as resulting from the underground burning coal seam.
The Burning Mountain Nature Reserve was created to highlight its existence. It was ostensibly named by local aboriginals as wingen (win -- burning, gen -- mountain) or wingen (meaning fire). Kisha, who wrote a psychic column for the Australiasian Post, recorded a bizarre story of a strange flying object landing at Burning Mountain (or Mount Wingen). She attributes the following tale to a man called Ted:
"Grandad used to say that it was cigar-shaped and had a funny silver colour. When it landed it set fire to all the vegetation and killed the cattle. "The noise was dreadful and there was a series of loud bangs. Grandad also spoke of tall strangers appearing in town. They never said anything but always pointed to the things they wanted. "Quite often people just disappeared and dogs and domesticated animals disappeared too.
We always thought that Grandad's stories were good but he knew they were true and never made light of them." Kisha did not indicate a date for the events in Ted's granfather's tale, but presumably its vintage would have to be at least contemporary with the first settler awareness of the burning mountain back in 1828. [6]
AN "ET" ELF IN A MANDURAH HUMPY?
In 1982 a 67 year old woman saw a picture of "ET", Steven Spielberg's cute alien creation. It made her think of an experience she had as a 15 year old girl, near the estuary at Mandurah, Western Australia. She supplied a report to the Perth UFO Research Group which stated: "(In 1930 I was) sitting reading with my parents in a humpy, on a block in Mandurah, in Greary Rd, by the light of a hurricane lamp, with the door partly open. The time (was) about 8 pm as we went to bed early.
"A little pink creature walked in. (It was) about 24 inches in height (with) large ears, big bulbous eyes, covered with a film, small hands, large feet, slit of a mouth, no hair, and shiny as if wet or oily. "We were terrified and my father went white and being a religious man said it was the work of the devil. "Picking up a prawning net, he picked it up in it and it made a noise like 'EE...EE' and my father put it outside.
We never saw it again and went to bed feeling very scared. This was in 1930 and I never thought any more about it until I saw a picture of 'ET,' although only its eyes were the same. ... It did not have a round body, more straight down like a child's body. I cannot remember seeing any sex organs... (It's shape was) like an elf." [7]
Before we leave this quaint tale behind, I will mention anthropologist's Dr. Charles Mountford's description of a "spirit child" in his fascinating study, Nomads of the Australian Desert: "This child, called mulu-kuranti (nose-spirit), was a mamu (malignant being).
Its fingers were twisted, it had ears like a kangaroo, large eyes resembling those of an owl, a grotesque face, and projecting teeth. When Kuntunga (mother of all spirit-children, the "julanja") was suckling this infant, it bit her so often that she finally killed it and left the body in the creek, where it was transformed into (an) irregularly-shaped boulder." [8]
An Aboriginal Women's Abduction Experience in 1933!
Australian mysteries researcher Rex Gilroy records an intriguing tale allegedly from 1933 that reportedly involved an aboriginal woman in a UFO abduction experience at the isolated locality of Discovery Well, on the northern edge of the Great Sandy Desert, in Western Australia. The story echoes the tribal legends and traditions of men and women being abducted by "sky gods" or "culture heros" in the dreamtime and the initiation experiences of aboriginal "men of high degree" or shamans.
In Rex Gilroy's account, the aboriginal woman claimed her tribe had been frightened off from Discovery Well when a "large shiny egg" suddenly came down out of the sky. In broad daylight the strange object flew low over them. Several beings, described as strange, grey skinned and man like, came out of the "egg". The woman said she was "stunned" by an object carried by one of the beings.
Her story indicates she was carried aboard . Inside the "egg" the interior was glowing. She was strapped to a shining table and apparently "experimented with". The woman told stockmen of her experience, but perhaps not surprisingly they laughed at her. [9]
This 1933 tale also anticipates the spate of UFO abduction tales that would virtually domininate the UFO landscape by the 1990s. It was not until 1957 that the sexual abduction experience of Antonio Villas Boas from Brazil occurred. The famous Betty and Barney Hill abduction story in the United States did not take place until 1961. Neither story was well known until the mid 1960s.
Tales Of "Feather Foot" And Phantom Pregnancies;
John Kernott, who does a mail run in the Kimberleys, has heard a lot of strange stories from aboriginals. He told me of tales of sexual contact of an abduction kind that were apparently very common amongst aboriginal women in the Great Sandy and Central Deserts. John told me this before I was aware of Rex Gilroy's story.
Since about 1986, Central desert aboriginal women have told him of "feather foot" spirits (which do not walk on the ground, they walk in the air; they can move through walls and things; they can come and punish people), which he connected with possible UFO abduction situations.
They talk about waking up and spirits having sex with them, having babies, and no baby ever comes. Often their stomachs swelled up , then go down. Their sexual assailants were often described as being like "men in black"! It was often hard to see their eyes. "Phantom" or "false" pregnancies, or missing fetuses feature in UFO abduction lore.
The concept of "spirit children" is also widespread. Such comparisons are fascinating, but ultimately they are difficult to interpret, given the cultural filtering and distortion that is likely in such a fringe area.
In about 1989 John's father-in-law, an aborigine, told him that when he was a young man (in about the 1930s) camping with a group of aborigines, before the white man took them off their land, they saw a green light spinning around in the sky. It landed behind trees. Lots of little men shining with green light came. They walked around the aborigines, looking at them, and then walked back to the UFO, which then took off. [10]
Contemporary Aboriginal Ufo Stories;
Dr. Hannah Wolfe, a teacher, a member of the Anthropological Society of Western Australia and an anthropologist who has done extensive field work at Western Australian aboriginal sites, undertook a trip to the Northern Territory, with the Victorian UFO Research Society's (VUFORS) veteran investigator, Paul Norman, during 1992, to look into a contemporary report of a sighting over an aboriginal community on one of the islands off Arnhem Land, west of Kakadu National Park.
Dr. Wolfe, after talking to aboriginal people and examining their art, had already concluded that elements of their culture seemed to reflect the possibility that aborigines may have been visted by extraterrestrials, during the long history of the idengenous peoples presence in Australia. Dr. Wolfe suggests that examples of evidence for this may possibly be seen in the Wandjina tradition and in a faded cave painting in southern Australian, which depicts a circular, striated image with what may be "rays" coming out of one side.
The cave is linked to a tradition involving a man who came from the moon. While on Earth he lived in the cave. He eventually departed his cave through a hole in the roof and returned to the moon. [11] Dr. Wolfe does not identify the location, but anthropologists, Spencer and Gillen, recorded in their 1899 study that the aboriginal men of the Aranda tribe in the southern portion of the Northern Territory, believed that at one time the moon-man lived on earth.
A pancake- (or it could be said "disc" or "saucer") shaped boulder, approximately two feet wide, in the western Aranda territory was pointed out as the place where the moon-man once rested.
The Ngatadjara tribe of the Warburton ranges, in central west of Western Australia, had a myth which described how a group of women, the Kunkarunkara, were protected from the unwelcome attentions of the moon-man, Kula. Another variation, indicates they were being continuously pursued, and occassionally raped, by Jula, a man of the constellation of Orion. The women, legend has it, finally escaped into the sky and became the Pleiades. [12]
The sighting report Paul Norman had received described a silver elongated object that hovered over the area until an aircraft appeared. Norman and Wolfe were not allowed to visit the area, according to local administrative officers.
On the border of Arnhem Land and Kakadu National Park, Dr. Wolfe was told by a local aboriginal elder, Joseph, that a community to the south-west, had once been forced to run from a UFO encounter. At another place, Joseph indicated, that aliens had abducted an aboriginal child. The two year old had not returned. Norman and Wolfe visited the isolated, river-side community referred to by Joseph.
A local man, Steven, told them that when he was a boy on a station in the area, he had witnessed a UFO landing. A woman there allegedly recieved a telepathic message from the alien beings that they wanted to take her. The UFO left without the woman when the station manager emerged with a gun. The object left behind a physical trace of its landing, a circle on the ground, which according to Steven can still be seen. [13]
Question Of Perspective;
This sort of information argues for a literal extraterrestrial interpretation of such incidents, but one should be careful not to uproot such tales from the cultural setting they emerged from and to stamp them with western cultural imperatives, such as our fascination with extraterrestrials and their possible relevance to UFO experiences.
This caution is particularly relevant to the tribal legends and oral traditions. Even though similarities occur between say UFO abduction stories and the shamanic experiences of aboriginal men of high degree, literal interpretations may be incorrect. Instead of exterrestrials we may be dealing with something else.
The perspectives offered by indigenous cultures such as Australian aborigines may support other interesting possibilities. Such experiences may be about the effect that subtle forces have on humans. Fascinating work is being done on the effects of the natural landscape, "places of power" (or locations of unusual natural energies), hallucinogens, our modern electromagnetic environment, and so-called "earth lights".
These are areas rich in possibilities for the extraordinary worlds of UFO and alien abduction experiences. The popular acceptance of a literal extraterrestrial explanation may be premature or incorrect. [14] I have talked to a number of people about this sort of perspective. Robert Lawlor, author of Voices of the First Day - Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime, provided me with some interesting insights.
He told me that he had come across abduction stories in at least three aboriginal areas, the Kimberly, the Nowra area and Bathurst Island. In each case they were linked with initiation procedures and were associated with a particular place, known to be highly charged with 'spiritual force'. I have already mentioned accounts of this nature, collected by anthropologists. Such abductions by powerful spiritual beings, are almost provoked or are sort as a legitimate or fulfilling part of the young males initiation.
Such events are certainly part of the initiations of tribal shamans -- aboriginal men of high degree. It is well known in the tribal context that such aspects occur in initiation ceromonies. Robert Lawlor had his longest conversations on this theme, in the Nowra area, with a full blood aboriginal, who was passing on the traditions and memories of his father.
He had been dislocated from a tribal environment further south. While the later environment served to erode traditional values, the aborigine had long memories of his father, which were of a magical nature. He talked about a cave area, where young boys were taken by a spirit and had to endure fearful sights, without loss of courage, as part of their initiation rituals. Outside of these rituals, the boys knew to stay away from the cave site. Robert Lawlor suggested this may have been due to the "natural telluric ambience" of such sites, as researchers like Paul Devereux have suggested.
The experiences there parallel UFO abduction tales, but the extraterrestrial perspective is a technological orientated metaphor or explanation. The ET perspective, according to Robert Lawlor, plays into the vanities of modern culture. That perspective is the preferred propaganda in our western world. The indigenous view (the shamanic world) validates the realities and the cultural development of primitive peoples. The former is more palatable in the western technological setting.
Robert Lawlor suggested the rash of modern UFO abduction experiences may be due to an intensification of industrial energies or electromagnetic pollution, and the indigenous accounts may be due to abnormalities in the electromagnetc ambience of the natural landscape. All this tells us that there are many perspectives to examine when considering UFO experiences, beyond the obvious mainstream appeal of the extraterrestrial hypothesis. [15]
An Aboriginal Is Levitated Through A Closed Window During A Ufo Flap In 1971
The town of Kempsey situated on the Macleay River in northern New South Wales has been the centre of extensive UFO activity, since at least 1971. Like a small number of other areas throughout the rest of Australia, sightings have continued, suggesting that factors common to the area are of significance to the manifestation of the UFO phenomenon.
Enquiries into these areas may eventually lead to the elucidation of the nature and motive of this elusive phenomenon. Just after 6 pm, on Friday, April 2nd, at least 14 Kempsey residents observed what appeared to be a pink flare approaching the river from the south. Reaching the river, the light turned, following the course, of the Macleay River, in a north-westerly direction.
It finally disappeared in the direction of Greenhill, an aboriginal settlement area. It was at Greenhill that an extraordinary drama unfolded several hours later on the same night. At about 10.00 pm, an aborigine went into the kitchen of his home at Greenhill to get a drink of water. Suddenly he saw a "small face pressed against the window pane. It had no hair and was the shape of a small saucer".
Too terrified to run away, the aborigine was drawn towards the face by some unseen force. His wife in the next room, heard glass breaking and ran into the kitchen just in time to see her husband disappearing horizontally through the top section of the bottom window.
The 5 feet 3 aborigine was apparently lifted bodily a distance of four and half feet and transported horizontally without any body movement, smashing through a window pane (only I0" by 32") above a sink piled high with dishes. He landed on his back seven and a half feet below the window level, but he wasn't even winded or stunned by the fall. The man's wife rushed outside to see him jump up and run "like hell down to the gravel near the house", where she found him crying and shaking.
"I thought he had the horrors", she said later. She accompanied her husband to hospital where one stitch was put on his finger. The man had been drinking but was sober at the time of the incident. I would think that indeed the experience would be very sobering anyway! [16]
An "Earth Light Infestation" On A Remote Aboriginal Settlement In Northern Australia
Late in 1995, the well known "earth lights" researcher and author, Paul Devereux, travelled to a remote location in northern Australia, with Erling Strand, a Norwegian engineer (who wrote the Project Hessdalen report, covering the extraordinary depth of recurring nocturnal light activity at the remote Hessdalen Valley) and a cameraman.
They were there for 11 nights attempting to document the extent of recurring light phenomena. Dr. David Seargent and I had been assisting Paul Devereux, trying to establish whether the locality did indeed play host to recurring anomalous light phenomena.
This possibility represents great opportunities for serious researchers to actively interact with unusual phenomena in the context of possible repeatable observations and experiments -- potent mainstays of the scientific method. We were open minded as to what was going on there.
The most intriguing possibility was that at this remote aboriginal property we had a recurring anomolous light "infestation" that offered researchers exciting opportunities to document and attempt to understand the nature of the display events. At the very least we were dealing with an area rich in "min min light" style reports and other anomalies.
Our research into the area confirmed that aboriginals in the area were witnessing recurring light shows but its repeatability was questionable. Aboriginals and white people described sighting a variety of strange lights and other experiences. Some of these experiences were also occuring in localities further north. These included transient white lights and "bubble shaped" jelly like things that floated about.
One of these came down near the ground and a man approached it with a cigarette lighter. It appeared to sublimate on contact to a precipitate. On another occassion the same man witnessed a luminscent "bubble" appear to take on the form of a person in what seemed to be a silver suit. [17]
That incident reminded me of a strange event that befell the wife and 2 daughters of a well known country and western singer (whose name is known to me). On a road south of Broome one night in about 1971, while travelling in a truck, towing a caravan, some distance behind the singer's vehicle, they observed a light on the side of the road. Thinking the singer had pulled off, they investigated.
Instead they found that the light came from an extremely large humanoid "figure", bathed in a luminous glow. One hand was outstreched in which there was some sort of ball of light. The "ball" bounced up and down from the ground to the figure's hand, rather in the manner of a yo yo.
The 3 witnesses found they were surrounded by thousands of small mushroom shaped lights, arranged in regular patterned rows as far as the eye could see. Although frightened, they were able to turn the vehicle around and as they drove out each row would go out with the truck tires impact. Whatever it was they were pleased to leave it behind. [18]
Devereux, Strand and company did not see any substantial light activity during their stay, but there were some intriguing events. When they observed flickering lights on hills to the south, their magnetometer started registering anomalies for several hours. The lights however lasted only a few minutes.
Devereux characterised the magnetic anomalies as registering some 800 times above normal terrestrial fields. There were other less compelling observations. Local aboriginals were helpful. Some were in a state of excitement as they had been "buzzed" by a large white light. Paul Devereux was impressed enough to believe that the area warrants further monitoring.
Given the sensitivity and scientific nature of the project, the locality needs to been kept reasonably confidential. Otherwise the potential for further research and the privacy of the aboriginal owners may be compromised. [19]
An Aboriginal "Abductee" Speaks Out
Some aboriginal people are already coming forward to tell of possible UFO or abduction related experiences. For example, Lorraine Mafi-Williams, who has been described as a storyteller and 'liaison officer' for the spiritual truths of her Githebul group from the Bundjalung tribe, has revealed to me some of her perceptions of these intrusions into both aboriginal and western lives:
"Our attitude to what goes on up in the heavens is what rules us Aboriginals. Its similar to religion, whereby Christians believe in a religious world ruled by one God, but many "Saints", we believe the same only the many "saints" to us are planetary ones whom you in the the Western world refer to as ET or aliens.
We call them Wandjinas and Mimi Spirits, and have done so for thousands of years, until 1788, when an English concept of the above was interestingly enough (found to be) parralel to what we have practised for eons; that we commonly refer to as our Dreamtime, that began in the Milky Way.
" Lorraine suggests that communications from these beings is ongoing and cites her own experiences with her "old friend" since the age of 12. She feels she is an "abductee". "... my dear old friend took me up, yes in a UFO, but a different sort to the western beliefs."
Her experiences were more spiritually orientated. She adds, "I went through all or nearly what abductees did ... " Lorraine indicated, "We believe in UFO, but here to we have the aboriginal concept and belief, and we know about abductions and why."
Lorraine has, over a number of decades, courageously tried to act as a bridge between western and indigineous cultures, to improve understanding between both. In doing so, she has occassionally drawn the ire and prejudices of both cultures. One wonders what her expressions on what seems to be interactions with another culture, a native spiritual or an alien culture might lead to.
References:
1: The Art of the Wadjina by I.M. Crawford (Western Australian Museum), 1968;
The journals of George Grey, "Expeditions of Discovery"
The Australian Aboriginal by A.P. Elkin (1954)
Australian Religions by M. Eliade (1973)
The Past is human by P. White (1974)
Yorro Yorro -Everything Standing up alive - Spirit of the Kimberley by David Mowaljarlai & Dutta Malnic, Magabala Books, Broome, WA, 1993
Messengers of the Gods - Tribal Elders reveal the Ancient Wisdom of the Earth by James Cowan, 1993, re; The cave at Wanalirri
2: Djmar, the Creator, E.A. Worms, Anthropos, XLV, 1950, pgs. 643 - 58;
Also quoted in Eliade's Australian Religions.
3: Burnum Burnum's Aboriginal Australia - A Traveller's Guide edited by David Stewart, 1988.
Personal communication from area teacher;
4: Aboriginal Men of High Degree by A.P. Elkin (1945, reprinted in 1977)
Australian Aborigines by Mircea Eliade (1973)
5: Beyond the CE3 down under - Notes on the apparent abdence of contact, time lapse and abduction cases in Australia by Bill Chalker, 1977, UFO conference paper, Surfers Paradise, Queensland, UFOCON3.
"Alien Abductions - a shamanic perspective on UFOs" by Bill Chalker, Nature and Health Vol. 11, No.1, Autumn, 1990.
UFOs - a shamanic Perspective, lecture by Bill Chalker to Theosophical Society, Sydney, June 3rd, 1994.
6: Australasian Post June 17, 1989
7: Perth UFO Research Group sighting report form, 1982
8: Nomads of the Australian Desert, by Charles Mountford, 1976
9: Mysterious Australia by Rex Gilroy, Nexus, 1995
Personal interview with Rex Gilroy, January, 1996
10: Personal interview with John Kernott, September, 1993
11: "Australia's aborigines have long known about UFOs", by Dr. Hannah Wolfe, FSR, Vol.39, No.3, Autumn, 1994;
"Trip to the Northern Territory" by Hannah Wolfe, Australian UFO Bulletin, VUFORS, December, 1992.
12: Northern Tribes of Central Australia by B. Spencer & F.J. Gillen, 1904
Native Tribes of Central Australia, ibid., 1899
Nomads of the Australian Desert, Mountford, 1976)
13: Ibid 11.
14: See the work of Devereux, Persinger, Budden, McKenna, Luna, Harner, Fred Wolf.
Luis Eduardo Luna & Pablo Amaringo, Ayahuasca Visions - the religious iconography of a Peruvian Shaman, 1991, is especially fascinating re: comments on UFO imagery
15: Personal communication with Robert Lawlor, January, 1996
Dreamtime & Inner Space - The World of the Shaman, by Holger Kalweit, 1988
The Way of the Shaman by Michael Harner, 1980
Black Elk - The sacred Ways of a Lakota by Wallace Black Elk & William S. Lyon, 1990
16: "The Macleay UFO Window," by Bill Chalker, in 2 parts, Psychic Australian, March & April, 1977
17: Personal research by Bill Chalker & David Seargent, 1993 - 1996
Personal communications with Paul Devereux, 1993 - 1996
18: Personal communication from James Oram, 1975
The Last Showman - Larry Dulhunty's Larrikin Life by James Oram, 1992
19: Ibid 17.
link; http://www.theozfiles.com/history_au...o_history.html
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The Wandjina of the Kimberley Region of WA;
quote;
"To the Aboriginal people who live in the Central, Northern and East Kimberley region, including Mitchell Plateau and King Edward River areas of Western Australia, the Wandjina has a deep and meaningful relationship with their heritage and their culture. The Wandjina has for many years appeared on bark coolamons which were used for food gathering and for cradles for newborn babes, ceremonial boomerangs and shields and a myriad of symbolic artifacts - the Wandjina is part of the lives of the tribes who have for many many years lived and hunted and survived in the country of the Wandjina rock art".
spaceman???
http://www.australiaforeveryone.com....rWandjina4.gif
In Aboriginal culture, the Wandjina is the Rain Spirit of the Wunambul, Wororra and Ngarinyin language people, the controller of the "Seasons", the bringer of rain which equals water which equals "life".
Then it says that the Earth is hot and that it breathes; the Earth it breathes, it's a steam blow up, and it gives cloud to give rain. Rain gives fruit, and everything grows, and the trees and the grass to feed other things, kangaroos and birds and everything. With the completion of their earthly tasks, each of the Wandjina turned into a rockface image. There, the Wandjina spirits continue to live.
The Wandjina figures are strange, majestic creatures; usually painted against a white background. An oval band encircles the face, except for a break at the chin, and from the outer edge of the head, lines radiate out. They are often shown wearing a headband; eyes and nose form one unit; with lashes encircling both eyes, and they are rarely given a mouth. The body, when there is one, is filled with parallel stripes down the arms and legs. Long lines coming out from the hair are the feathers which Wandjinas wore and the lightning which they control.
Wandjina ceremonies to ensure the timely beginning of the monsoon wet season and sufficient rainfall are held during December and January, following which the rains usually begin. The figures are generally drawn surrounded by the totemic beings and creatures associated with them, on which they depend for sustenance, and these caves and rock shelters become a focus of tribal religion and ritual action.
Aboriginal people believe that if the Wandjina are offended then they will take their revenge by calling up lightning to strike the offender dead, or the rain to flood the land and drown the people, or the cyclone with its winds to devastate the country.
These are the powers which the Wandjinas can use. Aboriginal culture teaches it is possible for new life to emanate from the figures adorning the cave walls, to re-enter the physical world as unborn children. Such places are sites to which local Aborigines have a deeply spiritual attachment. These Wandjina are seen to have considerable powers and the Aborigines are careful to observe a certain amount of protocol when they approach the paintings, fearing that if they do not, the spirits might take their revenge.
This protocol normally consists of calling out to the Wandjinas from several yards' distance, to tell them a party is approaching and will not harm the paintings. Visitors are required to walked past small fires to be "smoked" before visiting Wandjina sites. This is not only to let the spirits know that "strangers" are visiting, but also so that the Wandjina's "strong spirit" would not follow visitors home.
Although the paintings represent the bodies of the dead Wandjinas, the Aborigines believe the spirits of the Wandjinas live on in much the same way as they believe the spirits of human beings continue to exist after their death.
http://www.australiaforeveryone.com....rWandjina7.gif
http://www.australiaforeveryone.com....rWandjina2.gif
The most widely known Aboriginal story from the Kimberley refers to a mythical being. In this legend, Wandjina collaborated to fight against human Aboriginal groups and, in the process, kill many of them. The story is one of cause and effect and is told here in an abridged version. Two children were playing with the bird, Tumbi, who they thought was a honeysucker. However, it was really an owl. They did not see the difference in the eyes and thought the bird was unimportant. The children maimed and blinded the bird. They mocked him by throwing him into the air and telling him to fly, but he could not and fell back to earth.
Tumbi was not just an ordinary bird, he was the owl, the son of a Wandjina. This is why he was able to disappear and go up to Inanunga, the Wandjina in the sky, to complain. The news flew to all the Wandjina who determined to punish the people. A Wandjina named Wodjin called all the Wandjina from throughout the country together, and the owl who had been maimed incited them to revenge.
However, they did not know where to find the people, and the lizards and animals which they sent to scout around for them refused to tell where the people were. The animals were sorry for the people, and tried to hide them, knowing that the Wandjina would kill them in revenge for the bad deeds.
But the Wandjina saw the people on a wide flat near the spring at Tunbai. They moved to the top of one of the hills which surround this flat and Wodjin, by stroking his beard, was able to bring heavy rain and floods. The Wandjina divided into two parties and attacked in a pincer movement from the top of the hill. Meanwhile, the Brolgas (birds) had been dancing on the wet ground and had turned it into a bog. The Wandjina drove the people into the boggy water, where they drowned.
The people tried to fight back, but they were unable to harm the Wandjina. The boys who had injured the bird were very frightened by the fight, the rain and lightning, and escaped to a large boab tree with a split in it, where they decided to hide. But the tree was really a Wandjina and no sooner were the boys inside than it closed on them and crushed them. The Wandjina, having achieved their aim and revenged the injuries done to the owl, were now able to disperse around the country.
Were the Wandjinas European religious figures?
Ancient Aboriginal cave painting,classic "GREYS"/ET;?
http://www.australiaforeveryone.com....rWandjina5.gif
The earliest claim to the discovery of Australia by Europeans was made by a French sailor from Normandy named Jean Binot Paulmier De Gonneville, who claimed that, during a two year voyage of discovery with the intent of finding an ocean route from Europe to the East Indies, he landed on the shores of the Southland early in 1504.
In his paper on "Early Voyages to Terra Australis," printed in 1861, British Admiral Burney, and the eminent English geographer, Mr. Major, told of De Gonneville's voyage but dismissed his claim, stating instead that the country De Gonneville's described was the island of Madagascar.
This opinion has been generally entertained by navigators and historians ever since, though others have argued he landed in Brazil (Brazilians celebrated the 500th anniversary of his arrival on their shores in 2004 at Carnivale), however there is much evidence to suggest that De Gonneville might well have reached Australia's shore.
After having rounded the Cape of Good Hope he was assailed by tempestuous weather and driven into calm latitudes. After a tedious spell of calm weather, want of water forced him to make for the first land he could sight. The flight of some birds coming from the south caused him to run a course to the southward, and after a few days' sail he landed on the coast of a large territory at the mouth of a wide river. There he remained for six months repairing his vessel and making exploratory excursions into the hinterland, establishing contact and maintaining good relations with the inhabitants during his stay.
These included a tribe of light skinned people. He left this great Austral Land, to which he gave the name of "Southern Indies," on 3rd July, 1504, taking with him two of the natives, one of whom was the son of the chief of the people among whom he had resided.
Subsequent discoveries, and a closer scrutiny of the Norman captain's narrative indicate that De Gonneville's "Southern Indies" could be the Australian Continent, and that he may well have landed at the mouth of one of the rivers on the north-western coast, namely the Glenelg or Prince Regent Rivers of North-west Australia. De Gonneville's description of the place of his sojourn fits the description of the area, which is quite different to any other part of Australia.
Lieutenant George Grey explored the Kimberley region in 1838 and his description of the natives, their customs, tribal structure and way of life, is not dissimilar to that described by De Gonneville. Further, Grey discovered a series of caves containing what we now know as the Wandjina figures, that he observed were unlike any currently being drawn by the local natives.
Some of these figures resembled nuns with head-dresses and beads (above), not unlike pictures common throughout contemporary Europe of the Virgin Mary surrounded by other women in an act of worship. Of one, he wrote, "Its head was encircled by bright red rays, something like the rays which one sees proceeding from the sun, when depicted on the sign board of a public house."
Of another, he recorded,
"It was the figure of a man, ten feet 6 inches [3.2 metres] in length, clothed from the chin downwards in a red garment, which reached to the wrist and ankles"
http://www.australiaforeveryone.com....rWandjina3.gif
The face and head of the figure were enveloped in a succession of circular bandages or rollers ... these were coloured red, yellow and white: and the eyes were the only features represented on the face. Upon the highest bandage or roller, a series of lines were painted in red ... it was impossible to tell whether they were intended to depict written characters, or some ornament for the head." Grey's writings are an accurate description of a priest dressed in his cassock.
The illustration (right) is from Grey's journal. Grey then found there the head of an European sculptured in the hard rock, evidently with instruments such as the natives do not possess. The sculpture has never been located by subsequent visitors to the area.
http://www.australiaforeveryone.com....rWandjina1.gif
To Grey the art in these caves was a strange mixture of European and Malay art; the former exhibited in the remarkable aureolas which so commonly surround the heads of saints in church windows at the time of De Gonneville; the latter depicted in the dress-like garment over the body, which resembled the matted clothing of Malay peasants (Malay fishermen were known to have made regular fishing trips to the area).
In the tribal history of Aborigines living in the vicinity of Napier Broome Bay on the far North Eastern coast of Western Australia, is the story of how two Portuguese swivel guns named carronades were taken after a battle with white-skinned invaders dressed in skins like those of turtles and crocodiles, a description of European armour. The tribal elders, using the number of past generations to calculate the passage of time, estimated that the intruders were seen about l550 AD, which coincides with De Gonneville's claimed visit to the South Land.
It is well documented that Aborigines in all parts of Australia, on first meeting white people, commonly mistook them for spirit beings. Their common reaction, like lighting fires and throwing stones, was consistent with their method of driving spirits away.
If De Gonneville did land on Australian soil, by the description he gave of his landfall he could have landed nowhere else but at precisely that part of the country visited and similarly described by Grey. The paintings Grey discovered, which today are known as Wandjina, may well relate to De Gonneville and his companions and their practising of Catholicism during their six month sojourn in the Kimberleys.
A wee bit more info and follow up from last post;
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Australia's Ancient Astronauts;
By Rex Gilroy;
The Legend of the Silver Bird;
QUOTE;
"From Arhem Land I have obtained the legend of a great silver bird which, according to local tribesmen, landed upon a certain plateau to lay a big silver egg, out of which the first tribesmen hatched; they were white skinned. Around the Ayres Rock (Uluru) region local tradition has it that the ancestors of the Aborigines came from the stars. The legend was related to me by Aboriginal actor-historian Ben Blakenley: -"Long long ago, far back in the Dream Time, a great red coloured egg (spaceship) came down from the skies. It tried to land safely on the ground but broke (crash landed). Out of it emerged white-skinned culture-heroes (gods) and their children".
"The children's elders soon died, either through their old age or because they could not accustom themselves to our atmosphere. The children however were young and able to adapt more easily to their new surroundings. "They carved and painted the likenesses of their parents upon cave walls to perpetrate their memory.
In time the great red coloured egg rusted away until its remains had merged with the ground, thus creating the red soil of Central Australia. "The children of the culture heroes who came from the sky grew in numbers until they eventually populated the whole land, their skins turning black due to the hot climate. The cave art depicting the elders still survives showing figures in garments reminiscent of modern day astronauts.
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Traditions;
"Aboriginal myth and legend, like that of most primitive people throughout the world, speak of "dream-time" culture heroes {gods} who came down from the sky at the dawn of history to impart culture on Earth's primitive cultures. These traditions linked as they are with many ancient archaeological sites give rise to current thoughts that in ancient times our Earth may have been visited by intelligent beings from other worlds.
Perhaps the most fascinating evidence supporting this hypothesis can be seen in the many beautiful cave paintings and rock carvings of early man throughout the world. The cave paintings and carvings of the Australian Aborigines like those elsewhere in the world depict vivid animal scenes and often beside these animals are seen strange human-like shapes and images".
Scholars have long argues whether these are visiting astronauts and their spacecraft, or mythical culture heroes and toltemic designs. Ufologists have pointed out that many of these puzzling shapes are similar to UFO shapes which have been sighted and reported in the 20th century.
The implications are that 15,000 years ago strange shapes were observed in the skies. Whether these were spacecraft containing voyaging astronauts remains unresolved. What I therefore offer is evidence both for and against the theory of ancient astronauts and that they may once have visited and had some influence upon the ancient history of Australia.
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Wandjina Cave Paintings;
Take for example the world famous Wandjina cave paintings of the Aborigines of Western Australia. These human figures dressed in strange garments have been claimed by many to represent ancient astronauts. The myths and legends surrounding the Wandjina claim in some cases that these beings came down from the stars to impart culture to the primitive tribesmen, while other legends say that Wandjina came from the west across the Indian Ocean in great ships in ancient times.
Some researchers maintain the Wandjina figures represent astronauts and place special emphasis upon the apparent helmets worn by the figures. On the other hand I see the Wandjina in a different light-as representations of visiting Egyptian and Phoenician seafarers who may have landed on the Kimberley coastline during South-East Asian trading expeditions over 3,000 years ago.
Archaeologists have pointed to the basic similarities in the garments worn by the Wandjina too those of early middle eastern seamen. These interesting possibilities are further supported by the presence of middle-east blood groups, racial features and Egyptian words to be found among local tribes. Yet there still remain other equally mysterious cave paintings and carvings thereabouts which would tend to support the ancient astronaut hypothesis, including many strange myths and legends extending across into Central Australia.
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Creation Myths {Legends} Blue Mountains;
I have obtained two further creation myths of the "ancient astronaut" variety from the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. Both were myths of the Dharuk tribe which formely occupied a vast area stretching from the Hawkesbury River-Sydney District across to the western slopes of the Blue Mountains. The first legend concerns "Biramee the Bird Man," who laid a great egg near what id now the town of Linden, from which the ancestors of the Aborigines hatched.
The second myth is also described in carvings found upon a slab of rock unearthed during road work operations some years ago. Biame the Sky God created earth out of a big ball of mud. he then took stones from the earth's surface from which he created all the animals and plants, including the first Aborigines. However, Biame had forgotten to give the first Aborigines the power to think, and as a result they began starving to death due to fact they did not know how to hunt food.
So together with his culture heroes Biame came down from the sky in a big dream-time hunt across the Blue Mountains he gave the Aborigines the spear thrower and the boomerang, teaching them how to hunt their food and also to make fire. Then together with his culture heroes he returned to the sky from whence he had come.
The carvings not only depict the sky god Biame but also many strange little figures which were also the totemic figures of the various tribal groups that peopled the area. Among these totemic figures carved on the stone is a strange fish-like object which some have theorised to be space-craft. They also point to a strange human figure clad in garments which could be said to resemble an astronaut; others see a resemblance between this figure and a Egyptian soldier equipped with helmet and shield and say that the above creation myth is more reminiscent of those of the middle-east.
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Blue Mountain Rock Art;
Be this as it may, there are nevertheless some strange rock arts on the Blue Mountains dating back many thousands of years which may yet to be given a convincing explanation by archaeologists. Perhaps the most remarkable of these is the "astronaut's face" found upon a cliff side. Measuring 30 cm in height and 24 cm in width, the mysterious face has been carved by first hollowing out the rock to a depth of 4 inches.
In the center are carved two eyes, nose with nostrils and an open mouth; the area surrounding the face gives the impression of a head encased inside a "space helmet" type covering. Situated some distance around the cliff is a large rock shelter, upon a wall of which is a mysterious flying object.
Heart shaped, it measures 77 cm long by 26 cm width, is painted in red ochre and is depicted emitting a "vapour trail" of grey ochre extending for some 20 ft along the cave wall.Is it really a representation of a flying object? And if so then what relationship does it share with the carved "astronaut's face" nearby? Whatever their importance, these stone-age artworks defy current explanation along traditional lines. Ufologists throughout the world marvel at the famous Nazca Plain "airstrip" and other astronomical formations of the Peruvian alps, yet similar structures are to be found throughout Australia.
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Queensland Rock Formations;
A large plateau near Toowoomba in southern Queensland although now covered in trees was at one time cleared. Scattered upon it are to be found strange rock formations and outlines in stone which when seen from above by aircraft suggest the remains of an ancient airstrip. Elsewhere in Queensland are to be found a number of mysterious pyramidal structures. Claimed by geologists to be natural formations these pyramids often measuring 400 ft high with four sides each measuring 400 ft long at the base, when arranged on a grid are found to connect with one another over distances of some hundreds of square miles.
If not natural formations then what was their purpose? Can we speculate that here were aerial markers for ancient astronauts? It will be a point of interest to Ufologists that a large percentage of unidentified object reports have come from these and other areas where extensive "astronomical" structures have been found.
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Bathurst Stonehenge;
If this is the case then how long has this been happening? There are certainly many unanswered questions about these and other enigmatic archaeological structures found across our continent, particularly with respect to those mysterious granite structures which form the "Bathurst Stonehenge," Australia's answer to the Megalithic monuments that dot the landscape of Europe.
Consisting of extensive stone alignments, standing stones {Menhirs}, stone circles, even carved human heads and other structures, this enigma of our ancient past covers and extensive area over several square miles. Whilst most of the stones arranged to form alignments could have been placed there easily by human hands, there are certain structures which by their very weight and proportions could not possibly have been moved and erected by normal human means.
These include a large circle 30 feet wide erected upon a 4 ft thick granite base and consisting of 10 large granite boulders. One of these has been carved in the shape of an altar stone.Nearby upon a hillside and erected upon a 16 ft wide base of carved granite blocks is a standing stone 15 ft tall and 33 ft in circumference.
Apart from the two extensive stone alignments which are a feature of the "Bathurst Stonehenge" culture, are numerous structures including several triangular formations each consisting of large granite boulders. One such triangle is built of three enormous boulders each spaced 60 yards by 60 yards by 60 yards apart. For a full report of "Bathurst Stonehenge" see {Paranormal Australia, Nov '76}
The two extensive stone alignments pass through a large number of strange formations, these include another alignment constructed of seven enormous boulders which have been erected in a south-west-north-east axis, and passing through one of the alignments of smaller stones ending near the base of a large wall. The wall built of large granite blocks is 15 ft high and 53 ft on length with a width of 30 ft.
It is very reminiscent of other structures found in the Pacific Islands and South America. There can be little doubt that these structures are all part of an enormous astronomical observatory for plotting the heavenly movements and the seasons.Yet who were its builders? And we might ask ourselves, what strange forces motivated this and other races of man throughout the world, to take from about 15,000 years ago such an intense interest in the heavens?
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Possible Visitations;
Could it have been motivated by actual visitations to this planet in dim antiquity by advanced beings much like ourselves from other worlds in the cosmos? Such a possibility is given little or no attention by many other scientists. yet who can dare claim that ours is the only planet in the Universe capable of supporting life? On the basis of a study by astronomer Harlow Shapley it is estimated that there are as many as 100,000,000 planets on which we can speculate that life exists. Among these perhaps 100,000 contain civilisations more advanced than our own.
Willy Ley a scientific writer {now deceased} suggests there may be 18,000 inhabited planets in the Milky way alone. Although our present day space ships would not permit us to travel very far or very fast in space, who knows what our space travel might be in 10,000 years? If civilisation survives that long it could bee speculated that space travel may be commonplace on other planets as driving to the supermarket is for us and if so, perhaps spacemen have indeed come to earth.
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Aboriginal Folklore{Giants};
Not only does early Aboriginal folklore tell of beings who came down from the stars at the dawn of history to impart knowledge, some of these beings according to Aborigines were giants. Certain rock art throughout Australia, like that of other lands throughout the world, is claimed to depict these giant beings often clothed in garments reminiscent of those worn by modern day- astronauts.
Regardless of whether these artworks really do depict giants, astronauts from other worlds or not there can be no doubt the claims of giant races in ancient times is a proven scientific fact. Fossilised jaws and teeth of tremendous proportions have been unearthed from Africa, the near-east, China, Java and also Australia.
Enormous stone artifacts which, I have excavated from Bathurst in central western New South Wales range in weights from 8 to 25 pounds, implements which only beings of enormous strength and stature could have possibly have made and used. One recent fossilised giant man track discovered near Cowra NSW measures 2 ft 5 inches in length by 15 ins across the toes. Another footprint from Katoomba on the Blue Mountains although only half intact measures 18 inches across the toes.
Many smaller giant man tracks exists which are 8 inches wide and 1 and a half feet in length. Nevertheless if we make a calculation based upon normal human stature and constitution, the beings who were able to handle these clumsy stone artifacts and left behind such enormous footprints must have ranged in height from 12 to 15 ft, and even as much as 20-25 feet tall, weighing anything from 800 to over 1,000 lbs!
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Ancient Astronauts Theory;
Although these finds may not be proof of extraterrestrial civilisations having visited earth in antiquity, there is certainly evidence which could be said to lend considerable weight to the ancient astronaut theory here in Australia. The evidence primarily consists of Archaeological finds which imply the former existence on this continent of a race of non-aboriginal man who inhabited Australia before the dawn of history, and who have left behind them traces of a vast astronomical knowledge.
Similar features are to be found elsewhere throughout the ancient world. However, the mystery remains as to how these ancient peoples came by their knowledge often without sophisticated equipment which is only now available too modern man.
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Star and Moon Maps{Astronomers}
In the Gosford district of NSW are to be found "star and moon" maps carved upon flat rock surfaces, often upon mountaintops where a clear view of the heavens could be obtained. These "maps" not only depict th phases of the moon but also the movements of certain stars and planets. In the same area have been found a great slab of stone, hollowed out saucer fashion, into which water could be poured to give a good reflection of the heavens at night.
Mounds of earth heaped up around them enabled the ancient astronomers to look down into the water, for a more comfortable study of the heavenly movements. Similar "star maps" and open-air astronomical observatories are to be found on the Blue Mountains west of Sydney but the race that left them remain a mystery.
Were the Gods of the Aborigines and other ancient people voyages from other worlds? Only time can decide. All the research and numerous volumes devoted to the subject are inconclusive, and raise questions to which there are only tentative answers. In 1969 man set foot on the Moon. and took the first steep towards the exploration of the cosmos. Perhaps only when we can explore other worlds will we fully understand the history of our own.
LINK; http://www.mysteriousaustralia.com/s...enomenonq.html
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Linear vs Circular Logic;
Conflict Between Indigenous And Non-Indigenous Logic Systems;
Jun 11, 2006Woorama;
Aboriginal circular time is considered part of dreamtime myths, while western linear time is considered to be the reality. But does western physics support this?
On Blackfella Time
An Indigenous person in my country who is late for an appointment is often said to be "on Murri time", or "on blackfella time". This term was coined by the colonists to build the myth of Aborigines being inherently incapable of understanding basic European skills like telling the time. Another mythology created for us is that of the "Dreamtime", which places our creation and spirituality in the distant past, and thus relegates our peoples to the past as well - fossilised stone-age cultures to be examined and studied. (Read about the real Dreaming, as opposed to the western construct.)
The Quantum Reality;
Australian history Books about Australian history. Easy to read, well illustrated rosenbergpub.com.au
It is true, western constructs of time can differ from Indigenous concepts of time, but this is more a difference in cosmology than native intellectual deficit. I find it is easier to explain this difference to non-Indigenous people by using western quantum physics theories.
Time is a human construct. Or at the quantum level it might also be seen as being tied up with attraction to objects according to relativity principles introduced by that paragon of western science - Albert Einstein. Time actually runs slower as you move away from earth into space; this has to be factored in mathematically for satellites to be accurate.
The second law of thermodynamics indicates that in a closed system, (eg. earth) that system will tend towards disorder (entropy). That is why time runs forwards on earth, but in other places in the universe time is mathematically impossible even as a human construct, eg at the event horizon of a black hole.
And in quantum physics, many kinds of sub-atomic particles can move forwards and backwards in time, or like photons, not exist in time at all. Read more about the intersection between Aboriginal knowledge and western scientific research here
READ THIS NEXT;
Aboriginal Creation Myths of Australia
Indigenous Cosmology and Science
Understanding The Dreamtime of Aboriginal Australians
Dreamtime Is Now
The creator spirits are not earth-bound or materially based, and as such are not time limited. Therefore the creation of souls is/was/will be simultaneously. My soul comes from a storyplace of my ancestors. It will go back there. It has always been there and always will be. Dreaming stories and songs are the way we continue creation, which is still happening now - not in some "dreamtime", as it was mistranslated fifty or so years ago. It was, and it is. The rainbow snake is still pushing up the mountains. This is a circular thing, and has no time. In this way, entropy through western linear concepts of time is thwarted, and my people and land endure.
Language and Culture.
A lot of Aboriginal ways of thinking and speaking are circular. Kinship systems often spiral, so that in many groups grandfather and grandson is the same word, as is past and future tense. The word for soon and recent is often the same. Stories and sentences are often circular, with repetition used to arrive back at the same point where you started. Cycles of birth and rebirth go on through sacred places, which are referred to simultaneously as times and places (as in time-space in western physics).
When you consider this mismatch of logic systems, it is easy to see why there are so many problems with communication between native and non-native peoples. Maybe if Einstein had been able to sit down with some tribal clevermen to discuss relativity - well who knows? If you read back through this article, you might see a lot of common ground between western science and Indigenous knowledge systems.
And with western science now exploring the new fields of chaos theory and complexity theory, non-natives are now starting to see patterns within the complex adaptive systems that make up our universe, patterns Indigenous people have always understood. With this holistic approach to western science, the return to Indigenous non-linear thinking is on its way.
Perhaps soon western "civilisation" will come full circle, and rediscover the knowledge it has lost. Find out more about Indigenous cosmology.
Scientific investigations in to UFOs;
If anyone thinks that there is no real credible Scientific investigations or interest in UFOs then the below scientific research establishments need to be viewed and studied;Just a wee heads up on these two very important establishments;
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Journal of Scientific Exploration;
http://www.scientificexploration.org...humb_small.jpg
"The JSE is the quarterly, peer-reviewed journal of the SSE. Since 1987, the JSE has published original research on consciousness, quantum and biophysics, unexplained aerial phenomena alternative medicine, new energy, sociology, psychology, and much more.The journal also contains book reviews, letters to the editor, and peer correspondence".
link for further study or reading; http://www.scientificexploration.org/
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NARCAP is also invaluable when it comes to credible scientific investigation's and is highly recommended to any up and coming UFO investigator or enthusiast;
http://www.narcap.org/_images/narcap124.gif
National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena;
"To improve aviation safety and enhance scientific knowledge"
Summer/Fall 2010;
Announcing Project Sphere:
"Over the past year NARCAP researchers have been preparing papers addressing the subject of aviation safety-related incidents involving Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) that appear to be spherical in form. The first phase of this project is the compilation of these studies into a core document addressing various aspects of Spherical UAP including Fluid Dynamics, Radar Reflectivity, Case Studies, Photo cases, and more. This document is titled: “Spherical UAP and Aviation Safety: A Critical Review”.
http://www.narcap.org/index_clip_image002.jpg
Recent Publications:
NARCAP is pleased to share these recent studies by NARCAP researchers from
around the world.
A Pilot's View on Why Today's Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Cannot Explain Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
Jose Americo Medeiros, NARCAP-Brazil, April 2010
A Preliminary Study of 300 cases of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP)
Reported by Military and Civilian Pilots
Dominique F. Weinstein NARCAP International Technical Specialist - France
Member of GEIPAN/CNES College of Experts – France, September 2009
A Comparative Analytical and Observational Study of North American Databases on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena
Massimo Teodorani, Ph.D. Astrophysicist, Researcher, Science Writer, NARCAP Research Associate, Italy, November 2009
Near-Miss with UAP near Sao Paulo, Brazil Airport in 2004
Richard F. Haines, NARCAP Chief Scientist
Analysis of Digital Photographs of Commercial Airplane and Small UAP on November 8, 2009
Richard F. Haines, NARCAP Chief Scientist, November 27, 2009
Image Doctoring: JPEG Encoding and Analysis
Richard Tortorella, NARCAP Research Associate, May 2009
Infrared Photographs of Alleged “UFOs
Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos NARCAP International
Technical Specialist and Miguel Guasp, Spain
Small White Ball of Light Flies Near Airliner: Investigation of High Resolution, Digital, Color Photographs of July 3, 2005 at 2031 Hrs., Palo Alto, California
Richard F. Haines, NARCAP Chief Scientist
A Review of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Designs and
Operational Characteristics
Terrell J. Osborn, Ph.D., NARCAP Research Associate
The NARCAP "OHare" Report
Report of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon and its Safety Implications at O'Hare International Airport on November 7, 2006
Dr. Richard Haines, Chief Editor with K. Efishof, D. Ledger, L.Lemke, S. Maranto, W. Puckett, T. Roe, M. Shough, R. Uriarte, 2007
link; http://www.narcap.org/technicalreports.htm
Historical Marker for Betty and Barney Hill;
Just a wee heads up on a New Hampshire Erects Historical Marker for Betty and Barney Hill;The state of New Hampshire erected a plaque to remember the Betty and Barney hill UFO and abduction encounter;
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-knd3-i2VU8...Hills%2529.jpg
quote;
"Many states might shy away from immortalizing its UFO history. But the State of New Hampshire is known for its fiercely independent people and its “live free or die” motto. On July 20, 2011, it erected a historical marker to commemorate the September 19-20, 1961 close encounter and “lost” time of Portsmouth residents Betty and Barney Hill.
The marker is located next to the highway in front of Cabin # 20 at the Indian Head Resort in North Lincoln and across the street from the granite stone face called Indian Head".
"Several years ago, Mike Stevens, a Farmington, NH, man circulated a petition to request a marker to commemorate Betty and Barney Hills’ UFO experience. The State of NH Division of Historical Resources, Department of Cultural Resources advised him that a formal request would be required. I, as the Hills’ niece and trustee of Betty’s estate, then worked with the state over the next 3-4 years to complete the process.
Employees at the Department of Cultural Resources called upon me to suggest appropriate text for the marker—a challenge in and of itself. Every statement had to be footnoted and supported by ample evidence that it was true and accurate. In all, the wording for the 12 line plaque had 20 footnotes and 28 sources listed in its bibliography"y.
The final wording approved by the state agency reads as follows:
On the night of September 19-20, 1961, Portsmouth, NH couple Betty and Barney Hill experienced a close encounter with an unidentified flying object and two hours of “lost” time while driving south on Rte 3 near Lincoln. They filed an official Air Force Project Blue Book report of a brightly-lit cigar-shaped craft the next day, but were not public with their story until it was leaked in the Boston Traveler in 1965. This was the first widely-reported UFO abduction report in the United States.
They didn’t accept my first draft. I had stated that the Hills were prominent members of the community and supported it with evidence that Betty and Barney were active in community affairs. They helped organize the Rockingham County Community Action Program and Barney was chairman of the Board of Directors. In 1965, Barney was appointed to the NH State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.
Barney was legal redress officer for the local chapter of the NAACP and served on the regional board. They promoted literacy throughout the state and worked on Lyndon Johnson’s presidential campaign. I accompanied Betty and Barney to his inauguration in January 1965. We were invited guests.
I had also added that the Hills’ experience generated interest in the scientific community because J. Allen Hynek, James McDonald, Carl Sagan, David Saunders, Leo Sprinkle, Stanton Friedman and others looked into the case. But that text didn’t make the final cut either. I am, however, very pleased with the text that the D.O.C.R. eventually approved. The marker is beautiful.
The decision to place the marker by Indian Head was a difficult one to make. Five locations were initially considered. The Mt. Cleveland picnic area, south of the Town of Twin Mountain was the Hills’ first stop. It gave Betty the opportunity to view through binoculars the star like object that had sparked her curiosity fifteen miles north.
She watched as it traveled across the face of the moon flashing multi-colored lights. By the time she handed the binoculars to Barney, the object had changed course, and shortly thereafter, rapidly descended in their direction.
My next suggestion was the Old Man of the Mountain historical site in Franconia Notch, the Hills’ second stop. The Hills stated that as they motored past the Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway just north of the Old Man, Betty noticed that the lights on a structure at the top of the mountain blinked out as the craft passed over it.
It then rounded the mountain and hovered motionless in the sky, except for its rotation, beside the Old Man’s 48 foot profile. It was at least 1 ½ times the length of the natural granite formation from chin to forehead. It appeared cigar shaped because they were observing a lighted row of windows. Within moments, the silent craft rapidly changed direction and ascended and descended in a stair step pattern.
Indian Head was my next suggestion. Located near Franconia Notch’s the south entrance, the resort offers ample parking space and was a prominent landmark along the Hills’ journey south.
In regressive hypnosis with Dr. Benjamin Simon, Betty stated, “We went past the Flume, somewhere between the Flume and Indian Head or……..it was just beyond the Flume or just beyond Indian Head. There was a motel and it was like cabins, these small neat looking cabins.
The sign itself wasn’t lighted, but there was one cabin on the end that had a light on, and there was a man standing in the door. And I saw this and I thought, “If I want to I can get out of this whole situation right now. All we’ve got to do is drive in here and this object will go away, and that will be the end of it.” But they didn’t stop.
Only a mile south of Indian Head and almost directly in their path, the couple encountered a huge flattened circular disc with a row of intense blue-white lighted windows along its forward edge. Barney rapidly brought the car to a halt in the middle of the road and grabbed his binoculars for a closer look, opening the car door for a less encumbered view.
The silent hovering object descended to an estimated eighty to a hundred feet above their vehicle. It had ceased rotating. Rapidly, in an arc like movement, it shifted from its location directly ahead, and rested above the tree tops in an adjacent field. Barney pocketed his handgun and walked toward it. The silent enigmatic craft was huge; maybe sixty to eighty feet in diameter. As he approached it, two red lights at the end of fin-like structures parted from the sides of the craft, and it tilted toward Barney.
Lifting his binoculars to his eyes, he spied a group of “strangely not human” figures moving about with what he described as “the precision of German officers.” As the craft tilted downward and began to descend toward him, one of these strange creatures, who remained at the window, communicated a frightening message. Barney had the immediate impression that he was in danger of being plucked from the field.
Overcome with fear and with all of the courage that he could muster, he tore the binoculars from his eyes and raced back to the car. Breathless, trembling, and in near hysterics, he told Betty that they needed to get out of there or they were going to be captured.
The close encounter field would have been my number one choice for the marker but Interstate Highway 93 now passes through it, with entrance and exit ramps to Route 3. At the height of the tourist season, it would have presented a traffic flow problem.
The Notch Express, a convenience store and gas station near the ramp is a place of interest. Its walls are lined with UFO photos and memorabilia and UFO related video is constantly playing on a monitor by the checkout counter.
The fifth location that we considered was the abduction site on Mill Brook Road in Thornton. We almost immediately rejected that notion because it is located off the highway in a new housing development. In 1961, Betty and Barney found themselves on the then deserted logging road where they encountered a roadblock by non-human entities.
They reported that they were forced aboard a landed disk and subjected to unearthly physical examinations before they were released. After years of searching, they located the landing site on Labor Day Weekend in 1965.
We made the final decision that Indian Head was the best overall location for the historical marker. Over the past 50 years, the Indian Head Resort has grown into a large modern facility with motel rooms, a function hall, business center, restaurant and lounge, and swimming pools.
This year it will host a 50th anniversary celebration of the Hills’ UFO experience on September 23-25. There will be a memorial marker dedication and many additional activities. I will be on hand to give a guided tour along the close encounter route and a new presentation about the Hills’ close encounter and abduction.
For additional information, see my website at www.kathleen-marden.com and my 2007 book with Stanton Friedman, Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Encounter.
Note: the Hills’ archival collection is housed at the Milne Archival Collection Department at the University of New Hampshire Library, 18 Library Way, Durham, NH 03824. The collection consists of 87 folders, arranged in 9 series. These contain correspondence, personal journals and essays, manuscripts, newspaper clippings, photographs, slides, and films and audio tapes of the Hills’ radio and television appearances. I compiled the collection in 2005 at Betty’s request.
. . . More
See Also:
Barney & Betty Hill: The White Mountain Abduction Documentary
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2010...-mountain.html
Anniversary of Barney & Betty Hill's UFO Incident;
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2006...hills-ufo.html
this thread is epic.
wait, what?Quote:
but what appeared to be flying saucers ended up being trash can lids.
Minot afb b-52 ufo incident 1968;
Fascinating UFO encounter from the 1968 involving a , the crew of the B-52 bomber;
MINOT AFB B-52 UFO INCIDENT;
http://www.project1947.com/shg/minot/LF.jpg
http://www.project1947.com/shg/minot/B-52.gif
quote;
"For over three hours in late 1968, numerous ground witnesses observed an unconventional aerial object maneuvering over the [Minuteman] ICBM missile fields surrounding Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota. During this time, an unidentified object paced a B-52 and was recorded on radar. Later, the crew of the B-52 overflew and observed a large glowing object on or near the ground".
"Portions of this incident were recently dramatized in the ABC News Special television documentary Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs: Seeing is Believing".
"This will be the place to look for further information about this extraordinary UFO even"t.
link; http://www.project1947.com/shg/minot/index.html
During the past five years that we have been investigating the events at Minot AFB, we have located and interviewed over fifteen principal witnesses and amassed hundreds of pages of supporting documentation. This has allowed us to fairly accurately reconstruct the events and provided insights into the official investigations. Only recently have we completed our research, and currently are in the process of writing a comprehensive historical report which will be available here in the coming weeks.
Bookmark this page and return soon. Pre-publication ordering will be announced in the coming days.
Inquiries may be addressed to the researchers by clicking here.
[email protected]
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Witness testimony below in video;
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...46387438905636
UFO seen from the cockpit of the B-52 below;
http://files.abovetopsecret.com/imag...34df5aab24.jpg
quote;
"The crew of the B52 and sixteen ground witnesses attested that they saw a UFO that night. Blue Book came to the astonishing conclusion that what they actually saw were nothing more than stars"!
link;http://www.mercuryrapids.co.uk/articles3.htm
North Dakota UFO Buzzes;
B-52 And Missiles In 1968;
George A. Filer <[email protected]>
Director - Mutual UFO Network Eastern
MUFON Skywatch Investigations;
Filer's Files #27 7-10-00
UPDATE;
North Dakota UFO Buzzes B-52 And Missiles In 1968;
From George A. Filer <[email protected] Director - Mutual UFO Network Eastern MUFON Skywatch Investigations Filer's Files #28
7-17-00
MINOT AIR FORCE BASE - Ken Seven writes,
quote;
"Regarding last weeks Filer's Files #27, I can verify verbally, and have the papers to prove that I was stationed at a radar installation about 22 miles south of Minot during 1966 to 1968 with the 786th Minot Radar Station." I was involved in the incident alluded to your Files last week and in the book "Above Top Secret" by Timothy Good, that states on page 300, "The much respected researcher Raymond Fowler, who once served with the USAF Security Service, had revealed details of a NORAD-related incident that occurred on 5 March 1967.
NORAD radar tracked an uncorrelated target descending over the Minuteman missile site at Minot AFB (91st Strategic Missile Wing), North Dakota. Strike teams were notified immediately and sighted a metallic disk-shaped UFO with bright flashing lights moving slowly over the site. Three armed trucks chased the intruder until it stopped and hovered at 5000 feet. The teams had orders to capture the UFO undamaged if it landed, but it then began circling over a launch control facility.
F-106 jets were about to be scrambled when the UFO climbed vertically and disappeared at high speed. Fowler has received confirmation from undisclosed sources that there have been other instances when UFOs have hovered directly over nuclear missile sites."
Anyway, your mentioning this incident makes me think it was the same one that I was involved in. My "experience" was from an entirely different perspective than from the air but only adds validity and depth to your case. I was involved in an indirect-direct sort of way with the missile incident involving a UFO. My friend, who was on the shift manning the radar scopes, during this incident, even though we were told later that the incident was classified, wrote a letter (brave of him, or, naive) to the then military's spokesperson Dr. Hynek.
He actually tried to correct Hynek, who at that time was saying publicly, "If there were solid aerial UFOs that our military radar systems would be tracking them." In other words, officially and publicly, our radar are not giving evidence to validate the public's claims, which my friend, and all of us knew quite the contrary. He wrote Hynek a letter saying the evidence is there, they are solid, they are maneuvering, and they were at that time showing a lot of interest in the missile sites in North Dakota.
Not only that, there were two radar site fixes on that UFO with both the 786th's and Minot AFB; (see below), This pretty much ruled out that our radar site was faulty; plus, you had the Non-commissioned officers (NCOs) ground observation of it also.
I was in a position to verify the tampering with missile sites by the UFOs. There were a group of about ten NCOs, that were a maintenance crew at a missile site, who phoned our radar site reporting they had a ground visual of a UFO (or UFOs?) doing very odd maneuvering near their missile site.
The UFOs would drop down from out of sight to about a mile in elevation and stop at that point; then float like a leaf to about 500 feet? They would reverse the floating leaf back to the mile elevation, and then repeat this maneuver. I have forgotten how many times, because it may have been several UFOs at one time. Only one dropped down as if to land.
Meanwhile our radar got a fix on it such that it indicated a very real unknown/s. These were solid maneuvering object/s at the site. Our protocol required us then to phone the radar systems at Minot AFB for them to also get a fix on the unknown. They also got a fix on their radar, which meant, for a certainty, that it was a very real unknown. Protocol required that jets be scrambled to intercept and to identify the unknown. In this case, they sent two jets to intercept/identify the UFO, which meant, it wasn't ours.
Because of my job function, I unfortunately had to leave my access to this activity at the critical point in which, one of the NCOs said, "Several of the crew have taken one of the vehicles to get a closer look because a UFO has descended behind a nearby hill because it looks like it is going to land"! I could not find out later what the conclusion of that incident was. I did hear later from an officer who came to our radar site,
"That the jets were unable to intercept (and that even though we had two radar fixes and the ground visuals, the jets could not lock onto or see the UFO/s. The radars showed that the UFOs and the jets converged or should have been seen visually? The UFOs would climb vertically and shoot upward from the mile high level to out of sight at more than either 3,000 or 5,000 mph, which my friend in the radar room corroborated.
I can confirm that the military were well aware of the UFO activity and that in this Minot instance, it was associated with a missile site, and the military at normal operational levels were dealing with such activity as standard operating procedure. "They were told to track but keep it quiet." Yet, publicly, Hynek was saying, there was no solid radar evidence. I vaguely recall that my friend was visited either by Hynek, or a representative of his.
It was, as if, Hynek was not in the loop about the military's real stance; that he had to come and visit the radar site to get a confirmation rather than the military offering the evidence to his Blue Book investigative team. If they did, it was probably filtered; it was probably about this time that Hynek's thinking began to change, if I recall. Well that's my been my "experiences" while in the USAF ADC. Thanks to Ken Seven.
OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE - John Hickman writes,
"I read your article about the B-52 at Minot with much interest- and I have a slightly similar story that may interest you. I was stationed at Offutt Air FB (55SRW) near Omaha from 1981 to 1984. Around 1982 or '83, a story was making the rounds about either one or several UFOs being seen over several missile launch sites in Montana. (I believe they would have been under the control of Malstrom AFB.)
The interesting thing about the sightings was that shortly after the occurrences, several of the missile guidance computers located in the missile warheads had their data banks wiped clean- so they couldn't be launched- launch and preprogrammed course data was just gone. Since we were co-located with Strategic Air Command (SAC) Headquarters,
I am reasonably sure that this was a real occurrence that leaked out. At any rate, I have always wondered what they were trying to tell us, it is obvious we were pretty much helpless against their technology, or maybe just a warning that we'd better play with each other nice or they'd take our toys away. Thanks to John Hickman [email protected]
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MINOT AIR FORCE BASE - In Captain Kevin Randle's new book Scientific Ufology he reports on a Project Blue Book case dated October 24, 1968, when missile crews, control personnel and maintenance personnel observed a UFO in the vicinity of the base. The following is the tape between the air controllers and the B-52 crew with call sign JAG Three one.
At 0330 hours: The controllers received the information that there was a UFO 24 miles to the northwest. A B-52 jet bomber (JAG 31) flying at 2000 feet was on a calibration check and requests a clearance from radar personnel.
At 0334 "MIB (Minot) approach control does JAG 31 have clearance to WT fix at Flight Level 2000?"
JAG 31, Roger climb out on a heading of 290 climb and maintain 5000. Stand by for higher altitude. We're trying to get it from center now.
At 0335, the controller asked, "And JAG 31 on your way out to the WT fix request you look out toward your one o'clock position for the next fifteen miles and see if you see any orange glows out there? "Roger, roger glows 31, "Someone is seeing UFOs again!" "Roger I see a........ (Rest of transmission garbled)
At 0352, The controller then radioed, "Three one, the UFO is being picked up by weather's radar also. Should be at our one o'clock position three miles now"
The pilot said, "We have nothing on our airborne radar and I'm in some pretty thick haze now and unable to see out that way."
At 0358, the pilot then requested an instrument guided approach, and received instructions. The pilot called, and then the transmitter went dead, but they could hear instructions from the ground. The controller asked them to squawk ident," which meant to use the aircraft's transponder which would paint the controller's radar with a large, glowing blip with the aircraft's identification.
At 0400, the controller then radioed, "JAG 31 if you hear me squawk ident...JAG 31 ident observed. Cleared for the approach attempt. Contact on frequency 271 decimal three and you're cleared for the low approach. They continued to have radio problems for another couple of minutes.
At 0402, they were able to communicate easily. The pilot said, "Our UFO was off to our left side when we started penetration.
"Roger, understand you did see something on your left side." "We had a radar return at about a mile and a quarter, at nine o'clock position for about the time we left 200 to 14..."They discussed the troubles with the transmission and then, the controller asked, "Affirmative. I was wondering how far out did you see that UFO?"
"He was about one and a half miles off our left wing at 35 miles when we started in and stayed with us 'til about 10."
"I wonder if that could have been your radio troubles?"
"I don't know.... But that's exactly when they started. "At 0413, Jag 31 are you observing any more UFOs? Negative on radar. We can't see anything visually.
JAG 31, request you have someone report to base ops after you land.
What we have, then, was a group of sightings made by men on the ground, at the missile sites scattered around the base. There was radar sightings from ground and weather's radar. There were visual sightings from the crew of the B-52, and an airborne radar sighting where the target traveled at 3,000 miles per hour. Scope photographs were taken.
There were sightings made by S.Sgt. Bond the FSC at Nov. Flight, S.Sgt. Smith at Oscar-1, Julelt, and Mike Flight Team and a number of men in widely scattered locations. The object landed at location AA-43 and the entire observation lasted for 45 minutes. Fourteen other people in separate locations also reported the UFO. Security alarm were activated for both the outer and inner ring at the missile sites. When the guards arrived at the outer door it was open and the combination lock on the inner door had been moved.
Editors Note: The case in my estimation was never investigated properly. Project Blue Book personnel never sent a representative and the case was essentially written off despite the interest of several Strategic Air Command generals including 15th Air Force's Major General Nichols. The sighting was officially explained by on November 13, by Lt. Col. Hector Quintanilla who wrote, "The following conclusions have been reached after a thorough study of the data submitted to Foreign Technology Division.
The ground visual sightings appear to be of the star Sirius and the B-52, which was flying in the area. The B-52 radar contact and the temporary loss of the UHF transmission could be attributed to a plasma similar to ball lightning. The air visual from the B-52 could be the star Vega, which was on the horizon at the time, or it could be a light on the ground, or possibly a plasma. No further investigation by the Foreign Technology Division is contemplated.
This is a classic Blue Book case where dozens of Air Force personnel who see B-52s and stars nightly have their testimony doubted. They know when they've seen a UFO. In this case the scientists doing the Condon report agreed that this was a real UFO. The apparent damage to the missile site and disruption of B-52 radio transmissions was in my opinion a threat to primary nuclear offensive systems and should not have been trivialized. The records speak for themselves. This article was taken from Scientific Ufology written by Captain Kevin D. Randle USAFR.
I consider this his finest book and recommend its reading. This case like thousands of others are explained away with any simple mundane explanation that can be found. Yet many cases involve the tampering of key government weapon systems. It appears Quintanilla either did not care or had instructions to write off most of the sightings with any available excuse. I wonder why the reports were white washed, while the Air Force's scientific advisor Alan Hynek was coming to the opposite conclusion that, UFOs were real?
link; http://www.rense.com/general2/dak.htm
http://files.abovetopsecret.com/imag...87abf29e1b.jpg
Below is the report filed by Blue Books scientific consultant Dr. J. Allen Hynek, here he gives his professional conclusions on this UFO based on the objects speed and electromagnetic interference effects
http://www.nicap.org/images/title2.jpg
Minot Radar/Visual Photo E-M Case;
Minot, North Dakota ;
October 28, 1968 (Not 1956);
Dr. J. Allen Hynek:
quote;
"Some of the more pertinent details of the sighting are contained in the following excerpts from a Project Blue Book Memorandum for the Record, prepared by a Blue Book staff officer":
At about 0300 hours (3:00 A.M.) local, a B-52 that was about 30 miles northwest of Minot AFB and making practice penetrations sighted an unidentified blip on their radars. Initially the target traveled approximately 2 1/2 miles in 3 sec. or at about 3,000 mi/hr.
After passing from the right to the left of the plane it assumed a position off the left wing of the 52. The blip stayed off the left wing for approximately 20 miles at which point it broke off. Scope photographs were taken. When the target was close to the B-52 neither of the two transmitters in the B-52 would operate properly but when it broke off both returned to normal operation.
At about this time a missile maintenance man called in and reported sighting a bright orangish-red object. The object was hovering at about 1000 ft, or so, and had a sound similar to a jet engine. The observer had stopped his car, but he then started it up again. As he started to move, the object followed him, then accelerated and appeared to stop at about 6-8 miles away. The observer shortly afterward lost sight of it.
In response to the maintenance man’s call the B-52, which had continued its penetration run. was vectored toward the visual which was about 10 miles northwest of the base. The B-52 confirmed having sighted a bright light of some type that appeared to be hovering just over or on the ground.
The Blue Book files contain the reports by fourteen members of missile maintenance crews from five different sights at Minot AFB who claimed to have seen a similar object.
Lt. Quintanella sent a dispatch to Col. Pullen of the Strategic Air Command advising him that after reviewing preliminary information submitted by Minot AFB, it was his belief that the object sighted by the B-52 crew on radar and visually was “a plasma of the ball-lightning class.”
How he made this determination is not explained. As for the sightings by the missile maintenance crew and security guards, he stated that some were “observing some first-magnitude celestial bodies,” although he did not explained how such celestial bodies could be magnified to the degree that they would appear to be “as the sun,” or give the impression of landing as reported.
The official Blue Book record card on this case gave at least three “possibilities” for the air-visual sighting by the B-52 crew. But no detailed analysis was made, and once again these explanations appear to have been straws grasped simply to close the case--quickly and quietly.
J. Allen Hynek;
link; http://www.nicap.org/reports/681024minot_hynek.htm