Mogul Flight No. 4 - The End

 

This has evolved in the last few days and it’s not the original theory that I was going to point out. I had noticed that most of those who published the typical Mogul array train used the composition of Flight No. 2, which was launched on the east coast, and contained several rawin radar targets. The first “successful” flight in New Mexico, Flight No. 5, contained no rawin targets. According to what Charles Moore, one of the engineers working at Alamogordo, New Mexico, launch site in what we now know is a part of Project Mogul, told me early in the investigation was that Flight No. 4 was the same configuration as Flight No. 5.

Since I have been involved with attempting to understand all this for about thirty years, and although the original purpose was to discuss the composition of Flight No. 4, this has become something a bit more complicated. The first problem encountered is Dr. Albert Crary’s field notes and diary. Crary was, of course, the man in charge of the experiments. According to that document, as published in multiple locations and dated June 4:

Out to Tularosa Range and fired charges between 00 [midnight] and 06 this am. No balloon flights again on account of clouds. Flew regular sono buoy up in cluster of balloons and had good luck on receiver of the ground but poor on plane. Out with Thompson pm. Shot charges from 1800 [6:00 p.m.] to 2400 [midnight].

This seems to suggest there was no Flight No. 4. However, it mentions the cluster of balloons that lifted a sonobuoy for an experiment testing the ability of the microphone to detect explosions on the ground. In the documentation produced by the New York University that ran the experiments in New Mexico, there is some information about the composition of these clusters. Unfortunately for us, that information is somewhat contradictory.

Flight No. 5 is listed in New York University Technical Report No. 1, Constant Level Balloon and dated April 1, 1948, as Figure 31, “Train Assembly, flight 5,” (meteorological cluster). This does suggest that a cluster of balloons might, in fact, be of the same composition as the true flights. It means that it can be argued that when Crary mentioned they flew a cluster, it might have been the balloons that were to have been launched earlier in the day as Flight No. 4. However, it should also be noted that there were no rawin radar targets on Flight No. 5. And finally, there is additional information about the composition of Flight No. 4, which will be noted later.

The other complication is the requirement that the flights be preceded by a NOTAM, that is a Notice to Airmen. These were issued by the CAA, forerunner to the FAA, and provided information about conditions at airfields and other temporary problems that might adversely affect aerial navigation. The launching of a long array of balloons, especially those that were about six hundred feet long, could present just such a hazard to aerial navigation. This becomes an important part of the story.

A final note about Flight No. 4. It does not appear in the documentation in the technical report. Table VII, labeled, “Summary 0f NYU Constant-Level Balloon Flights,” jumps from Flight No. 1 (April 3, 1947) to Flight No. 5 (June 5, 1947). In the critique section for Flight No. 5, it said, “First successful flight carrying a heavy load. 3 Lifter balloons, 26 main balloons.”

Charles Moore, who received an honorary doctoral degree from New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, New Mexico, where he taught, was interviewed about Project Mogul by several UFO researchers, military officers and reporters about the situation in Alamogordo, New Mexico in June and July 1947.

Charles Moore at a microfilm reader reviewing the winds aloft data I supplied.
Photo copyright by Kevin Randle

Moore would become the leading proponent to the idea that Flight No. 4 was the culprit in the Roswell UFO crash case. On March 16, 1995, he published The New York University Balloon Flights During Early June 1947. It was his belief that one of the array trains from their project was responsible for the debris found by Mack Brazil and later recovered by members of the 509^th Bomb Group stationed at the Roswell Army Air Field. He wrote in the abstract, “One of these, undocumented Flight #4, was last reported over Arabela, NM. From recent examination of the Weather Bureau winds aloft reports and of the ground tracks of the two subsequent NYU flights, it appears that Flight #4 is a likely candidate to explain the debris later recovered on the Foster Ranch about 23 miles to the north-northwest of Arabela.”

Of importance to understanding the sequence of events on June 4, Moore wrote, “One interpretation of the June 4 entry [from Crary’s diary] is that the launch scheduled for shortly after 0230 MST [emphasis added] was canceled because of clouds but, after the sky cleared around dawn [emphasis added], the cluster of already-inflated balloons was released, later than planned.”

Later in the report, he provided an explanation for some of the discrepancies that had been noticed. He wrote:

The June 4^th flight apparently caused a change in our method of tracking. Up to that time, we planned to use radar targets and the flight train configuration show in Figure 2 (except that no radiosondes were to be used in the New Mexican operations). Since we had spent the time after our arrival at Alamogordo in preparing a full scale flight, I think that we would not have improvised on the morning of June 4, [emphasis added], after the gear was ready and the balloons were inflated; we would have launched the full-scale cluster, complete with the targets for tracking by the Watson Lab radar. The tracking was essential whenever an acoustic instrument was flown so that the microphone location could be determined, relative to the surface and air-borne explosions Crary created.

I have a memory [emphasis added] of J. R. Smith watching the June 4^th cluster through a theodolite on a clear, sunny morning and that Capt. Dyad reported that the Watson Lab radar had lost track of the targets while Smith had them in view. It is also my recollection [emphasis added] that the cluster of balloons was tracked to about 75 miles from Alamogordo [emphasis added] by the crew in the B-17. As I remember this flight [emphasis added], the B-17 crew terminated their chase, while the balloons were still airborne (and J.R. was still watching them), in the vicinity of Capitan Peak, Arabela and Bluewater, NM. … From the note in Crary’s diary, the reason for the termination of the chase was due to the poor reception of the telemetered acoustic information by the receiver on the plane. We never recovered this flight and, because the sonobuoy [emphasis added], the flight gear and the balloons were all expendable equipment, we had no further concern about them but began preparation for the next flight.

Since we obtained no altitude information from this flight because of inadequate tracking by the Watson Lab radar, we pressured Dr. Peoples into letting us carry radiosondes on the subsequent flights. It is interesting to note that the drawing of the balloon train for Flight#5 shows a radiosonde but no radar targets; after Flight #4, I think [emphasis added] we no longer relied on them for our primary performance and location information.

Finally, Moore provides some analysis of the flight tracks as he calculated them based on the winds aloft data. He wrote:

However, to land on the Foster Range, it is necessary that Flight #4 had a flight profile when an entry into the stratosphere and a transport to the west of its tropospheric track, just as were experienced by Flights #5 and #6. Since we planned to make all of these early cluster flights with the Flight #2 configuration we adopted after our learning experiences in Pennsylvania, I think [emphasis added] that Flight #4 probably performed about as Flight #5 did and had an adequately long residence in the stratosphere.

Given the nature of Moore’s paper, and given the expertise of Charles Moore, it would seem, at first glance, that this does explain the debris recovered by Mack Brazel in early July 1947, and subsequently taken to Roswell and eventually to the 509^th Bomb Group.

But that wasn’t the end of the discussion. There were discrepancies in the report. These seemed to contradict part of Moore’s analysis. First, was the timing of the balloon launch. Documentation available in the Air Force report, The Roswell Report, Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert, made it clear that the regulations under which the NYU team operated in New Mexico, prohibited flights at night and in cloudy weather. The long arrays, although shorter than those used on the east coast, were still considered a hazard to aerial navigation. That means, quite simply, that a launch time of 0230 hours, that is, 2:30 a.m., would be at night. This means that the flight was not scheduled for an early morning launch and the notation that it was cancelled then, at 2:30, is inaccurate.

The "official" balloon flight records as published by NYU and the Air Force. Please
note that there is no entry for Flight No. 4.

It should also be noted that the idea of a 0230 hours launch probably originated in the notation for June 3 launch. Crary’s notes said, “Up at 0230 am to fly balloon but abandoned due to cloudy skies.” That doesn’t mean the launch was set to 2:30, but that Crary rose at 2:30 to prepare for a later launch, but the clouds forced a cancelation.

Instead, when written that the flight was cancelled due to clouds, that was at dawn. It means that the flight did not take place then. It would have been released later in the morning. Unfortunately, this changes the atmospheric dynamic because, according to Moore, a front moved through the area about dawn and the winds aloft changed. If that is true, then the estimated path of Flight No. 4, would have been significantly different and would have landed nowhere near the Foster ranch. In that case, Flight No. 4 is eliminated as the culprit for the debris.

That isn’t the end of the problems. According to the chart published by Moore in the book UFO Crash at Roswell: Genesis of a Modern Myth. Flight No. 4 took flight at 3:00 a.m. The Summary of New York University’s First Balloon Flight Attempts for Watson Laboratories in 1947, that Moore included with his analysis, clearly lists the date and time of release as “4 June (probably around 0300 MST).”

The balloon flight records as recreated by Moore that now includes data for 
Flight No. 4. It does not match the official record.

But that contradicts his earlier report in which he said the flight was cancelled at 2:30 because of clouds, but then was launched about dawn, when the clouds cleared. As noted, if it was launched that late, or just after 5:00 a.m., then the atmospheric conditions he wrote about excluded the flight.

It is noted there that there was no data for the maximum altitude, that the tracking was “theodolite to Arabela”, the flight duration was unknown, but (calculated duration 466 min), recovery was the Foster Ranch? and “telemetry failed over Arabela; B-17 pilot then terminated tracking.”

But again, reading from Moore’s documentation in his first report, we learn, based on his language, that he was speculating about the timing and what must have happened. He had nothing to support his speculations other than his memory, which, he himself contradicts.

In fact, he provides more information about all this. I had raised the specter of those NOTAMs. As mentioned, these things had nothing of historical significance and were probably destroyed when they expired. I had contacted several FAA facilities that might have records but was unsuccessful in recovering any. However, the question of NOTAMs did serve another purpose and that was more information about Flight No. 4.

In a letter dated August 10, 1995, Moore, explaining the situation in Alamogordo on June 4, 1947, wrote:

The jury-rigged flight #4 of meteorological balloons [emphasis added] that we launched as AMC contractors from Alamogordo Army Air Field on July 4, 1974 [sic] was no big deal, it was a test flight, the first in a series and there was no announcement of our plans, either on base or to the Army Air Forces authorities. Since we launched from just within the restricted air space associated with the White Sands Proving Ground and expected the balloons to rise above the civil air space, we did not notify CAA in El Paso. As I remember [emphasis added], we launched before sunrise without our Watson Laboratories associates and the B-17 crew knowing about the ascent. This flight was not successful [emphasis added] due to the failure of the Watson Lab radar to track the balloons and the poor transmission of the acoustic data caused by use of out-dated World War II batteries.

This language changes the perspective of Flight No. 4. Now it was jury-rigged rather than a late launch of originally prepared array for the flight. In other words, on March 16, 1995, he wrote that he didn’t think they would improvise, but in the August 10, 1995, letter, he said it was “jury-rigged.” Moore later would say that Flight No. 4 was a full flight complete with rawin radar targets, but Crary’s notes suggest a cluster that carried only a sonobuoy. It mentioned nothing about rawin targets. It was only Moore’s undocumented speculation that equipped the cluster of balloons with the radar targets.

Let’s recap what we know. Flights of the balloon arrays were prohibited by rule and regulation from launch at night or in cloudy weather. Crary’s diary suggests that the June 4 flight was cancelled at dawn because of clouds. Moore wrote that the flight was cancelled around 2:30 a.m. because of clouds, but the clouds cleared at dawn, so the flight was then launched. Later, he wrote, that the flight was launched “probably around 0300 MST”. But given everything, including his changing times in his own writings, we know this is untrue.

We have Moore’s claim that Flight No. 4 was a duplicate of Flight No. 2, and this unmodified flight took place on June 4. But Moore also wrote that Flight No. 4 was jury-rigged, which suggests that it was modified. It was not a duplicate of Flight No. 2. But to drop debris on the Foster ranch, he needed the rawin targets as shown in the diagrams of Flight #2.

The final point here is that Moore himself, wrote that they hadn’t bothered to file a NOTAM because, “Since we launched from just within the restricted air space associated with the White Sands Proving Ground and expected the balloons to rise above the civil air space, we did not notify the CAA in El Paso.”

He also wrote, “As I remember, we launched before sunrise with only our Watson Laboratories associates and the B-17 crew knowing about the ascent. This flight was not successful due to the failure of the Watson Lab radar to track the balloons and poor transmission of the acoustic data caused by the use of out-dated World War II batteries.”

This is quite revealing because later, Moore would claim that Flight No. 4 was as successful as Flight No. 5. In the book, UFO Crash at Roswell: Genesis of a Modern Myth, he wrote, “I think that Flight #4 used our best equipment and probably performed as well as or better than Flight #5.” If it had performed as well as or better than Flight #5, then wouldn’t it have been the first successful flight, which would have provided the various data points needed?

Here is a direct contradiction provided by Moore, who apparently forgot what he had written earlier. He can’t have it both ways. Either Flight #4 was unsuccessful, which is why it wasn’t listed, or it was as successful as Flight #5, and it would have been listed as the first successful flight.

What we see is that as the interest in the Roswell case grew, Moore began to modify what he “remembered” to keep up with the data being developed. If there were no rawin targets, then how did one end up in General Ramey’s office with the claim that it was Roswell debris? If there were no rawin targets, then there were no large, metallic looking components to fool Mack Brazel and later Jesse Marcel. If the flight wasn’t launched until after dawn, then the proposed track, based on the winds aloft data, wouldn’t have come near the Brazel (Foster) ranch.

The degraded rawin radar reflector displayed in General
Ramey's office. Where did it originate?

Moore himself was originally less than sure about this proposed track. Using the weather data that I originally supplied to him (and acknowledged in his early report and in letters to me, even requesting that I send him additional information charts) plotted a track that suggested they lost the balloons within seventeen miles of the Foster ranch. But in some of the original correspondence about this, said that they lost contact with Flight No. 4 about seventeen miles from the ranch, which is not quite the same thing.

Another analysis of the weather data shows that by tweaking the variables in the data, the balloons end up, not in New Mexico, but more than 150 miles away. Moore himself acknowledged this when he noted that a minor change in one of the variables could have placed the array 150 miles away, which would have put the landing site somewhere in Oklahoma or Kansas.

What all this analysis does is ignore some of the witness testimony. Let’s not forget that the field where the debris was found was one that Brazel was in every other day and sometimes every day. That field was one of the watering locations for the livestock. Others, such as Tommy Tyree, who sometimes worked for Brazel as a ranch hand, told Don Schmitt and me that Brazel complained about all the debris that was so densely packed that he was forced to drive the sheep around it to the water.  He wondered who was going to clean it all up. Why then, did it take him more than a month to get from the ranch near Corona to Roswell to report the find if it was the remains of Flight No. 4?

Mack Brazel picked up samples of the debris and took it to the Roswell sheriff, George Wilcox. We know this because we have eyewitness testimony telling us that. Jesse Marcel saw that debris in Wilcox’s office before returning to talk to Colonel Blanchard. Apparently, Marcel was unable to identify that debris. Blanchard told Marcel to take Sheridan Cavitt with him. This is important, because they, Marcel and Cavitt, returned to the sheriff’s office to meet Brazel.

Cavitt was unable to identify the debris in the office. However, Cavitt told Colonel Richard Weaver, that when he saw the debris in the ranch pasture, recognized it as a balloon. But Cavitt told Don Schmitt and me that he had never been involved in the recovery of any balloons because he was too busy with his investigations.

The point is that before either Marcel or Cavitt followed Brazel back to the ranch, they had the opportunity to see debris prior to making the long drive to the ranch. But they couldn’t identify the debris in the sheriff’s office.

Bill Brazel talked about a gouge that ran down the center of that pasture. Bud Payne also saw the gouge and the military personnel on the site. Jesse Marcel talked about a large area of debris that was three-quarters of a mile long and two hundred yards wide. General Arthur Exon flew over the site and mentioned tracks from several military vehicles, again suggesting something more than a Mogul array. All of this suggests something more substantial than the remains of a weather balloon array train.

Bill Brazel also told Don and me about the items he had found in the field in the weeks after the crash. He said that his father, Mack Brazel, told him the debris looked like some of that contraption he had found. Items that resembled fiber optics, a piece of material that was light like balsa but so strong he couldn’t cut it with his knife, and, of course, the foil-like material that when wadded up would return to its original shape. There was nothing like that on the Mogul arrays,

Others reported similar things including Sallye Tadolini, who talked about the foil-like material, as did Frankie Rowe. Jesse Marcel, Sr. and Jesse Marcel, Jr., described the debris, none of it that resembled anything found in the Mogul arrays.

I could continue in this vein, but it is something of a digression. To understand what fell on the ranch, it is necessary to understand what the witnesses who saw the debris and the pasture said. Charles Moore said that if there was a gouge, then Mogul was not the culprit.

We now have enough information, much of it supplied by Moore, to eliminate Flight No. 4. The documentation available establishes that the flight was not a full array but a jury-rigged combination of balloons and a sonobuoy. It was not expected to leave the confines of the White Sands Proving Ground which is the excuse for not issuing a NOTAM according to Moore. It did not contain any rawin targets and it did not fall on the Brazel ranch. For those who examine the totality of the evidence, they will see the problems with Flight No. 4 as the answer. For those with an open mind, they will see that there is no known terrestrial answer that accounts for all the facts from the eyewitnesses and the documentation available to us today. Eliminate the misinformation and the outright lies, and the puzzle remains. Just what did Mack Brazel find?

UAPs and National UFO Historical Records Center

 

As most people know, I’m more than a little skeptical of the new government interest in UFOs. We seem to be traveling a path that has been worn out in the past. A claim of interest and investigation that devolves into a propaganda campaign to debunk the idea of alien visitation with half-truths and a suggestion of National Security.

However, there is good news from the civilian side of the house. David Marler, the executive director of the newly created National UFO Historical Records Center, announced the establishment of the largest historical archives that is dedicated to the preservation and centralization of UFO material in the United States.

Marler said that multiple official agencies have begun programs to study the phenomenon and that there have been civilian researchers entering the field as well. They don’t have access to the vast array of historical material in the hands of private UFO researchers. The National UFO Historical Records Center has been created to gather that material. While, at present the physical holdings are in Albuquerque, New Mexico, there are efforts to digitize the materials for, as Marler says, “global accessibility.”

David Marler and his pals and lots of file cabinets.

Marler said that there is a vast array of UFO files and collections already destined to be added to the growing inventory. He added:

Currently, the collection consists of materials from over 25 countries derived from 70+ U.S. and foreign individuals. Some of the largest U.S. collections served as the cornerstone for this center. This included diverse materials from the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS). We are also interested in anyone wanting to donate historical UFO/UAP materials to us. Efforts are underway to acquire a building to house this national treasure and make it readily accessible to researchers, academics, and the general public. Funding and donations will be vital to making this vision a reality. Thus, the creation of the non-profit organization to facilitate achieving that goal. We look forward to working collaboratively with similar free-standing worldwide UFO/UAP archives and those within the university setting. Together, we can preserve the history and, perhaps, gain insights into the mystery.

Marler did provide contact information: National UFO Historical Records Center, which can be found at P.O> Box 15541 Rio Rancho, NM 87174. On the Internet you can find them at www.nufohrc.org and you can email David Marler, the Executive Director at dbmarler@outlook.co.

This lines up with the work of Clas Svahn, the Swedish researcher who has been collecting materials for the Archives for the Unexplained or the AFU since 1973. The Archives contains information about paranormal activity as well as UFOs. You can listen to my interview with Clas here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/51697969

read more about the AFU here (along with links to the radio interviews:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Clas+Svahn

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2022/10/x-zone-broadcast-network-clas-svahn-and.html

And civilians continue to report interesting UFO sightings. On October 1 of this year, the witness in Newville, Pennsylvania, said that while walking home he noticed a series of lights on what seemed to be a triangular-shaped object. The sky was a pale gray with light rain. The object was moving swiftly and according to the witness “sort of slid through the sky with no noise.” There were rows of lights on the object that blinked from red to white to green and seemed to be similar to LED lights. They filled the triangular shape of the UFO. The object was below the clouds and had a sharply defined triangular shape.

In Westminster, Colorado, on October 2 of this year, the witness was outside when four faint lights approached. There was a light at each corner of the triangular-shaped UFO and one in the center. The witness said that the object seemed to be translucent and made no noise. It disappeared traveling to the south.

And finally, on November 19 of this year, four people in Joplin, Missouri, said that they were outside about dusk, looking for Jupiter when they spotted a group of blue and yellow lights moving slowly toward them. They thought, at first, it was a formation but as it approached, they saw the dark, triangular shape and that the lights were at each corner of the triangle with one in the center which is an interesting coincidence with the Westminster sighting.

They thought the UFO was about five thousand feet above them, but said there was no way to judge the altitude or the size. They believed it to be large. It moved with no sound and eventually turned to the north, disappearing in the distance. Although they tried to photograph the UFO, it was too dark to be seen and the lights were just bright pin points in the video.

The "Lost" UAP Report of October

 

Tennessee Republican Congressional Representative Tim Burchett, who won reelection on Tuesday, November 8, said recently that the UAP report that had been scheduled for release on October 31 but was delayed, will be a whitewash. He said that those in charge believe that we’re too stupid to handle the truth about alien visitors.

He said leaks suggested that 366 cases of UFO, I mean UAP, sightings would be explained. He also said that the report makes it clear that these sightings are of terrestrial objects rather than alien visitation. The sightings are the result of foreign drones and weather balloons. While drones are a new wrinkle, the weather balloon explanation has served the government well, used to explain everything from the Roswell crash to Gorman dog fight with a UFO. Of course, the balloon explanation fails for Roswell but that’s another story that will come soon.

Burchett said it was all about power. This is a reason for the continued cover up that I explored in depth in UFOs and the Deep State. Those in power feared their power would be diminished if the truth came out. In Washington, it’s all about the power and the financial rewards of that power.

History has provided us with examples of how that works and while overt conquest in not necessarily the problem, it is the introduction of a superior technology that can result in a shift of power. A rifle is a superior weapon to a bow and arrow, but it takes a manufacturing base to create and a supply system to produce the ammunition. Once the rifle is adopted as the weapon of choice, those who had relied on bows and arrows, which could be made by the individual, were now at the mercy of those who had the ability to manufacture the rifle. Their society was radically altered by that superior technology and the desire to have the latest and the best.

Of course, government officials have said that there are national security implications which are the umbrella used to bury the truth. Some times that is the truth, but more often than not it is a simple excuse for refusing to answer questions.

Republican Marco Rubio, has also called for the release of the information. He said that one of the explanations offered was “airborne clutter” and that investigators found no evidence of extraterrestrial life or, and I stress this, a technological advancement by a foreign foe, meaning Russia or China. Yet, hints in the new report suggest China and others are using drones to surveil our military exercises are a solution, which negates the denial of technological advancement.

But Congressional interest doesn’t translate into governmental action. After a series of sightings in Michigan in 1966, then Congressman Gerald Ford called for a Congressional investigation. The hearings, that lasted for a day, resulted in no known action on the part of the government or the Air Force. In the end, the official conclusion about the sightings by the officers of Project Blue Book was, yes, you remember, “Swamp Gas.”

While swamp gas might have explained a sighting or two, it did not cover the range of sightings by multiple witnesses in multiple locations. The Air Force conclusion of swamp gas remains as the explanation for the sightings. The Congressional influence did nothing to advance the investigation into UFOs, only suggested that there was nothing of importance to be learned and that only the uneducated and the unsophisticated reported UFOs.

What most people are missing here, in this latest round of Congressional interest, is that we had men running for federal office who were advocating research into UFO sightings and suggesting the government has been less than candid without journalist questions about the overall situation. There were no consequences for their opinions about UFOs or for the government lack of candor in answering those questions.

Remember Democrat Dennis Kucinich. He was making a run for the presidential nomination some fifteen years ago. Fox News reported, “Dennis Kucinich’s UFO Comments Prove He’s Nuts.” At least in today’s environment, those suggesting there is something to UFO reports aren’t dismissed as nuts. The news media seems to have softened their view but I fear the outcome will be the same. In other words, there will be some sympathetic press and then everyone will forget about the UFOs, or as they are now called UAPs.

One of the real problems it that they make no plans to review the history of UFOs. There have been many good cases with independent witnesses and multiple chains of evidence. Too often these sightings have been rejected because we all know there is no such thing as alien visitation. The Lubbock Lights from 1951 are rejected as birds, even with witness statements that suggest a craft and four photographs of them. The debunkers are now saying that the pictures are faked, but I talked to the photographer more forty years after the fact. He told me then that he still doesn’t know what he photographed. In so many cases of faked photos, the photographers have eventually come clean and admitted the hoax.

The Lubbock Lights photographs taken by Carl Hart, Jr.

There are the Washington National sightings of July 1952 with multiple pilots, both civilian and military reporting the objects. Radar sightings on multiple radars. And the official conclusion is temperature inversion.

Of course, the Levelland sightings of 1957 that was ball lightning. The Socorro landing of 1964 that some believe was a lunar lander suspended under a helicopter but no record of such a test at nearby White Sands at the proper time. The Michigan sightings, mentioned above that were labeled as swamp gas.

And since the end of “official” investigations, there have been good sightings that were belittled and categorized so that we don’t have to deal with them. Rendlesham Forest and the Cash-Landrum personal injury cases from December 1980 spring to mind here.

And, good reports being made today with calls for investigation but with no one wanting to review UFO history. These new investigators will be condemned to making the same mistakes because they won’t know what happened in the past. And in some cases, are refusing to even consider past sightings for reasons that are not viable.

The only upside for all this is that those calling for renewed investigations in the world today are not ridiculed as “nuts.” We do have some serious people who want serious investigation, but given the history, some of it briefly outlined here, I have little hope that we’ll have either an unbiased or scientific investigation. I believe that we are doomed to more of the same given the missed deadlines and the leaked information that we have seen recently.

Kathleen Marden - No Longer a Ufologist?

 

Just yesterday, a colleague wrote that Kathleen Marden, the niece of Betty Hill and an abduction researcher, had announced that she was no longer a Ufologist. I didn’t know what that meant but I do know Kathleen, so I reached out to her asking for clarification. I made it clear that I wanted to publish the information but it could by a private communication between the two of us. I was seeking information and had no desire to make editorial comment about it. She responded and granted permission to publish the letter. She wrote:

Hello Kevin,

 I did not intend to write, "I am no longer a Ufologist." To be clear, I am no longer a Scientific Ufologist because I have moved beyond the type of UFO research that I was immersed in for thirty-two years. My research and investigation continues to grow and flourish but I have stepped onto a different path. My new focus is on assisting Contact Experiencers and humankind in general, to move beyond fear and the chains that bind us, to a deeper understanding of consciousness.

 I am on a spiritual journey in service to humanity. It is personal but can be shared with others through direct contact. It involves divine light and healing. It began when I was struck by a blinding light in May 2020, while in my home office. There was no thunderstorm activity in my area, nor was there a power surge. I can find no prosaic explanation for what occurred. I can only describe it as a powerfully loving energy that swept me off my feet and dropped me to my knees.

 If you have read of Rey Hernandez's miraculous event on March 4, 2012, and how it altered everything in his life, my story is similar. Prior to this date, he had a material science orientation but this experience transformed him and radically altered his worldview. His experiences have continued, as have mine.

I will share additional information in the future but I do not feel comfortable unveiling this knowledge at the present time. Nor do I wish to invite skepticism. I am not delusional, misinterpreting sensory information, engaging in wishful thinking, or undergoing an emotional crisis. My new path is personal but is not in service to self. I have lived my life in service to others and will continue on this journey. My greatest desire is to bring hope to the hopeless, love to the unloved, and to do my part, as each of us can, in transforming darkness into light. 

Very best wishes, 

Kathleen Marden

www.kathleen-marden.com 

I grant you permission to publish this letter.

 This, then, is a clarification of her statement, which is to suggest that she was no longer a Scientific Ufologist, which is a change in the direction of her research. I was going to say that we now understand more about this, but it would be more accurate to say that I understand more about it.

Kathleen Marden with the late Stan Friedman at a MUFON symposium in Denver.

About the only editorial comment I will make is that I understand the desire to avoid skepticism, which can take a nasty turn. I have never understood why we can’t debate a point without it becoming acrimonious. I am not required to accept your point of view nor are you required to accept mine. We can both look at the evidence and interpret it in different ways. When dealing with something like UFO research, sometimes there isn’t a clear answer and two interpretations, or three interpretations of that evidence can be supported by the available evidence. Something more is needed to arrive at the proper answer.

Anyway, this is the direction her research is taking her and I wish her well in that endeavor.

The latest on the Government UAP Report

 

Many of my colleagues in the UFO field believe we have moved into Condon 2.0, meaning, that we are presented with a scientific study of UFOs with the conclusions already drawn. The quotes were published in the January 26, 1967, edition of the Elmira Star-Gazette, newspaper which said:

Condon even expressed his belief about UFOs and what the ultimate conclusions would be at a meeting in Corning, New York, on January 25, 1967, where he told the audience that UFO’s “are not the business of the Air Force… It is my inclination right now to recommend that the government get out of this business. My attitude is that there’s nothing to it… but I’m not supposed to reach a conclusion for another year.”

As more evidence of this, there is the Hippler letter which was a letter from Lieutenant Colonel Robert Hippler to Dr. Robert Low of the Condon Committee. It laid out exactly what the Air Force wanted the “scientific study” of UFOs to conclude. You can read about that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/03/hippler-letter.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/06/condon-committee-negated.html

It is also reminiscent of the 1953 CIA sponsored Robertson Panel that suggested the military release information about mysterious UFO sightings and then explain them. It didn’t matter then, and doesn’t matter now, if the explanation fits the facts, as long as the media and the public accepted the answers as legitimate. Their final report said, in part:

 4. In order most effectively to strengthen the national facilities for the timely recognition and the appropriate handling of true indications of hostile action, and to minimize the concomitant dangers alluded to above, the Panel recommends:

          a. That the national security agencies take immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired;

          b. That the national security agencies institute policies on intelligence, training, and public education designed to prepare the material defenses and the morale of the country to recognize most promptly and to react most effectively to true indications of hostile intent or action.

We suggest that these aims may be achieved by an integrated program designed to reassure the public of the total lack of evidence of Inimical forces behind the phenomenon, to train personnel to recognize and reject false indications quickly and effectively, and to strengthen regular channels for the evaluation of and prompt reaction to true indications of hostile measures.

You can, as always, read more about the Robertson Panel and its conclusions here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-uap-report-and-historical.html

A wonderful example of this demystifying is the Levelland sightings of November 2, 1957. Multiple witnesses, at multiple locations, independently reported their cars stalled at the close approach of a UFO. The witnesses were able to watch the UFO for several minutes and when it disappeared, the stalled cars could be restarted. The official explanation, one that still stands today, was ball lightning, a phenomenon that was more theory than fact in 1957 and is still controversial today. There is no way that ball lightning, even if it does exist, explains the sightings. I have published an in depth look at the sightings in the book I cleverly named Levelland.

You can read about the Condon Committee and its reasons for ignoring the Levelland sightings here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-levelland-sightings-and-condon.html

There is more information here about Levelland. One of the most informative articles can be found here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2016/03/one-of-best-cases-levelland-texas.html

And now we learn, through sources that have yet to be identified, that many of those 144 sightings mentioned in DoD’s first report to Congress about UAPs, is the result of Chinese drones. We are told that DoD was reluctant to mention this earlier because they didn’t want the Chinese, or the intelligence officers in other countries, to know that we had detected their drones… as if that wouldn’t be obvious to anybody when the New Yorks Times reported the story and the videos were released.  They would have read about the confusion and the investigation into what had approached our ships. They would have known it was their drones that had been detected, which means there was no real reason not to release the information that we suspected drones.

Drones have become the weather balloons of the 21^st century.

According to the official spokesman, “…of the cases that have been resolved, most have proved to be either errant junk in the sky, like balloons, or surveillance activity… Incidents recorded in the past year… have turned out to have ordinary, earthbound explanations.”

The video, known as the Gimbal, was a problem related to the classified image sensor, that made it look as if the object was moving in a strange way.

In May, the Pentagon said that the images released showing green triangles were actually drones photographed through night-vision lenses. I had reported on that months ago. You can read about my analysis here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=night+vision+goggles

I predicted that we would see this sort of thing as they began their investigation. We all know, and we all agree, that 95% of all UFO sightings are of mundane things. We know that a single witness sighting doesn’t contribute much to our knowledge, but that there are many good sightings that have multiple witnesses and multiple chains of evidence. I have said, and others have said, “It only takes one.”

One such sighting was reported in the latest issue of The MUFON Journal. MUFON Utah assistant state director Brian Lindley provided the information. A man and a woman were hiking and while taking a break, he saw a bright, shiny object in the deep blue sky. He determined that it was hovering and said there was a very strong wind that didn’t seem to affect it.

They watched the object for several minutes and were unable to identify it. As it began to descend, again against the wind, he grabbed her cell phone and began recording. He followed it until it dropped down to the same level as the mountains and he lost sight of it.

Lindley wrote in his analysis, “I believe I can rule out a mylar balloon. It’s possible it could have been a drone, but it would have to be a high-end one that could fly in severe conditions… I am closing this case with the disposition “Unknown – UAV.”

Interestingly, Lindley mentioned both a mylar balloon and a drone, which seems to be the go-to answer for those desiring a terrestrial explanation. In this case those answers were rejected but we’ll see more of them in the near future.

And, I suppose I really shouldn’t end this discussion without pointing to many good multiple witness sightings that do involve multiple chains of evidence. The Washington National sightings of July 1952 that involved multiple radars at separate locations, both military and civilian pilots, and dozens of people on the ground. The Air Force said it was temperature inversions but that explanation simply does not cover all the reported sightings and other observations. I have updated my book on the Washington Nationals and it will be available soon.

There are the Rendleshaw Forest sightings made by Air Force personnel that have defied explanation. There are hundreds of cases of the UFOs stalling cars and affecting other electric equipment such as the sightings in France in 1954, and the series of sightings here, in the United States in 1957, and thousands of landing trace cases that provide another chain of evidence.

Although some of the recent articles have been more or less benign, others seem to have suggested hostile content, that is anti-UFO content. They usually include the phrase that there is no evidence of alien visitation but that is not accurate. There is some very interesting evidence, but given the tone of the DoD statements, NASA statements, and what newspapers report, I fear we are going down the same path we have followed for three-quarters of a century. The “final” answer will be that there is no evidence of alien visitation because they’ll ignore the past and obscure the future. In two years or ten years, we’ll be right back where we started.

'X' Zone Broadcast Network - Clas Svahn (And Swedish Abductions)

 

This week I reached out to Clas Svahn. I was curious about Sweden’s UFO scene and if it matched that of the United States. The first case we talked about was an abduction case. I wondered if the abduction situation in Sweden mirrored ours and learned that abduction in Sweden is somewhat rare and it is often a combination of contact and abduction, rather than just abduction. The case was interesting because there was another, independent witness to it, who called the police. There is much more to the tale than this first, single abduction. Unfortunately, the police arrived after the UFO was gone, and the mysterious telephone caller has not been identified. You can listen to the show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/51697969

And Clas mentioned what he called an interrupted abduction. This was something I have never heard of and found it interesting. Not sure what to make of it, but there are some implications that might provide an answer or two about alien abduction.

Clas Svahn

We did talk about crashes of strange craft or phenomena, in Sweden as well. It seems that witnesses see strange craft that dive into lakes. No wreckage of any kind has ever been recovered and apparently, these objects don’t hit dry land. It is another phenomenon that seems to be unique to Sweden, or maybe unique to all of Scandinavia.

I also asked about the reaction of Sweden to the current UFO sightings here. Clas said that the Swedish Air Force hasn’t been bothered in the way our Navy has been and that they have not chased UFOs for a long time.

One of the take-aways here is that the UFO phenomena in Sweden is different than what we have here. I found it interesting simply because you would think there would be an overlap in the types of reports. Of course, that might be explained by the cultural differences or the difference in emphasis in the UFO reports.

And, of course, we did talk about the Archives for the Unexplained (AFU), which covers more than just UFOs. This is an effort to create a repository files, documents and other material covering the paranormal with an emphasis on UFOs. You can learn more about the AFU here:

www.afu.se

The show is, I believe quite provocative given the wide range of the discussion. For those interested in the UFO phenomenon in the rest of the world, this will provide some insight.

Next week, I’ll talk with Curt Collins about his The Saucers Time Forget series as well as his blog, https://blueburrylines.com.

Coast to Coast AM - Levelland and Sightings

The Internet is a wonderful tool. It provides us with the totality of human knowledge. Such is the case in and around Levelland, Texas, from November 1957. My pal, Rich Reynolds, at his UFO Conjectures blog, reported on October 6 of this year that a video of Sheriff Weir Clem, the Hockley County sheriff, meaning, of course, Levelland, as well as other witnesses, had been interviewed by a reporter in 1957. All this before the Air Force investigated. You can watch those interviews here:

https:youtu.be/8JgR0jpNb3A

Levelland was the scene of several UFO sightings in which the craft stalled car engines and dimmed headlights. As but a single example, Newel Wright, a nineteen-year-old college student at Texas Tech in Lubbock, was nearing Levelland when he glanced at his dashboard ammeter. Wright told the Air Force investigator, "I was driving home from Lubbock on state highway 116 at approximately 12:00 a.m. when the ammeter on my car jumped to complete discharge, then it returned to normal and my motor started cutting out like it was out of gas. After it had quit running, my lights went out. I got out of my car and tried in vain to find the trouble.

“It was at this time that I saw this object, I got back into my car and tried to start it, but to no avail. After that I did nothing but stare at this object until it disappeared about 5 minutes later. I then resumed trying to start my car and succeeded with no more trouble than under normal circumstances."

Sheriff Weir Clem and his deputies.

There were others who independently reported similar experiences. The UFO remained in the area for about two hours and witnesses reported watching the UFO for several minutes before it would lift off and leave the immediate vicinity. Once the UFO disappeared, the witnesses reported their cars could then be started. I have reported on all these sightings in depth in the book, Levelland.

And, in conflict with the Air Force report, the sheriff said that he saw an oval-shaped, brightly glowing object as he searched the area. He was accompanied by other law enforcement officers and there are indications that Air Force officers were there with him as well.

The sightings in the area didn’t end on November 3. Sightings of the UFO continued in New Mexico, stalling more cars. Military Police at Whites Sands also had encounters. The series of sightings are an important part of UFO history and have never been adequately explained, though the Air Force claimed ball lightning was responsible.

The White Sands MPs. Photo courtesy Glen Toy.

Moving into the modern world, on July 9, of this year, the witness and his family were water skiing in the Spencerville, Indiana, area. The main witness had stopped the boat to pick up his son who had fallen and looked toward a tree line on shore. He saw a white, round object travelling east to west at a high rate of speed. He said that it was moving faster than anything he had ever seen and was in sight for a minute or two. Both his son and wife saw the UFO as well.

The witness also operates MADAR Node 81 in Spencerville. Although there was no alert, a review of the recorded data showed a spike in the magnetometer, that is an electromagnet effect, at the time of the sighting. This also relates to the Levelland sightings in which there were reported EM Effects.

The investigation showed that object the witness reported was too slow for a meteor and too fast for an aircraft. He heard no sound associated with it and believed that it had been flying at about 10,000 feet. The witnesses saw no wings, or vertical stabilizer.

On October 6 of this year, the witness in Palm City, Florida, said that he saw a straight, long, white object that was not moving. He said, “The object appeared… to be bigger than a plane I’m flying… it did not move like a plane.” The UFO was in sight for about a minute. The witness said that he looked down to check his airspeed and when he looked back, the object was gone.

From Lynwood, California, on October 5 of this year, the witnesses saw what looked like fireballs. Five of them were close together and the sixth some distance off. The one farthest away was moving rapidly and changed color from orange to green. The witness reported that it had a cylindrical shape and was moving super-fast. The sighting lasted for a total of fifteen minutes.

The witness did take the following photograph of the UFOs. I have cropped the photographs to fit better on this space. 

Photographs are courtesy of the National UFO Reporting Center and the photographers.The upper photograph has the cylinder in the upper left and the bottom photo is the street scene with the formation of lights.