X-Zone Broadcast Network - David Booher

David Booher

This week I talked with David Booher who wrote No Return which is about the strange case of Gerry Irwin. I say strange case because it might have nothing to do with a UFO though it does seem he saw something strange in the sky. He believed, originally, that it fell to the ground on the other side of a ridge line but he never found it and those who followed later found no evidence of a crash. You can listen to the whole interview here:

https://youtu.be/ITSLwiJ4MBY

This was a case that fell off the radar back in 1959. Jim and Coral Lorenzen of APRO had been deeply involved originally, had invited Irwin to their home, and were prepared to help him. But Irwin, an Army enlisted soldier, went AWOL and then was listed as a deserter when he was gone more than thirty days. According to Jacques Vallee in Dimensions, after he was listed as a deserter, “He was never seen again.” And that was what sparked Booher’s interest in the case.

For more information about the case, Booher has created a Facebook page which can be found here:

https://www.facebook.com/forgottenencounter/

I also visited the case in The UFO Dossier but that analysis ended at the same place as did the Lorenzen’s investigation. And, of course, there is Booher’s book, No Return: UFO Abduction of Covert Operation? available from Anomalist Books.

Next week’s guest: Fran Ridge

Topic: NICAP and UFOs

Chasing Footnotes and Cannon Air Force Base

It’s been a while since I had a post about chasing footnotes and while this isn’t quite the same thing, it did sort of begin there.

Fran Ridge

Fran Ridge, who runs the NICAP website (http://www.nicap.org/), which is filled with all sorts of interesting information, posed a question about a UFO sighting that was part of the comprehensive Blue Book Unknown (BBU) list prepared by and updated regularly by Brad Sparks. That sighting was described as:

Like to have more on this RR case anyone has it.
May 18, 1954; Cannon AFB, New Mexico (BBU)

 7 p.m. 2 witnesses saw a house-size lens-shaped object
 land near railroad tracks, kicking up a small
 sand storm in the desert. One witness approached it, then
 ran away in fear. (Vallée Magonia 129; BB files??)

Michael Swords took a run at the question but didn’t seem to have a very good answer about the case. He wrote:

I'm curious to know where the "BBU" comes from. It's not impossible that this is a BBU, but the source cited doesn't lead to that. Vallee's source is listed as Binder. That's Otto Binder, not the best source to begin with. Binder had a newspaper column which would feature readers' UFO accounts that were mailed to him. Some of these had a ring of truth to them, but they were just that --- essentially "letters" to a UFO interested person who did no investigation. Binder was a writer as a profession, so I can't damm him for making some money out of this. He picked several of his more intriguing letters and published them in FATE of February 1968. The relevant letter quoted there sounds good (and it has a second letter in support) but it is only a letter claim. (Vallee is always doing this by the way--- picking some flimsy mention of something and putting it in the MAGONIA catalog. Often these citations have errors. A error here might be that the location of the claim was not in Cannon AFB but more truly might be labeled "Clovis, NM". (a small matter.) ) In Binder's article, he says that the witness claims that a small mention of the case appeared in FATE of November 1954. That would be potentially encouraging to me, but I could not find it there on a thumb-through.

So, two mysteries for me: A) --- major --- how did this get a BBU?
      B) --- minor --- is it actually mentioned in FATE back in 1954?

There is, allegedly, a DATA-NET report of this --- date unknown to me. Hynek also allegedly mentions something like this in his UFOExp --- I got lazy and didn't search after that claim. (hard to believe Hynek would ever mention anything from Binder in that book, but maybe something more substantial could be there.

Following Mike’s lead, somewhat, I looked at the Project Blue Book master index and found that there were no sightings listed for May 18, 1954, and none in New Mexico for the entire month. All that meant was that the mention of “BB files??” as one of the sources could be eliminated. The sighting was not part of the Blue Book system.

This led to another brief exchange. Fran had noted that this was case no. 1018, in the BBU but when I looked at the copy I had it wasn’t the same. I wrote, “I just looked at both Brad’s BBU and the Blue Book master index and the case no. 1018 is from California and not New Mexico. The case from May 18, 1954 is labeled as case 836 in Brad's listing (or at least in the copy I have) but only questions if it is found in the BB files. I can't find anything in the BB master index that matches this, though, I haven't spent a great amount of time looking. I can say that there is no listing for May 18, 1954 in New Mexico in the BB files.”

Turned out that my version of Brad’s BBU was older than the one used by Fran. He had an updated version and 1018 was the Cannon AFB (Clovis) entry. This was becoming somewhat confusing but would become more so as time passed. But that still didn’t put the report into the Blue Book system.

Barry Greenwood seemed to have come up with that connection. He wrote, “There is a listing for Oceanside CA in the OSI records for May 18, 1954 (Roll 90, frame 269. Roll 91, frames 990 – 991, Blue Book Archives.)”

I went back to the Blue Book microfilms (as I keep saying, I have them all), and found that the first reference to the Oceanside sighting is a letter dated June 28, 1954 (the date on the copy I have is a little difficult to read) that has a subject of “Sighting of Unidentified Aerial Object on 18 May 1954 over Oceanside, California. SPECIAL INQUIRY.”

There are no details in that letter other than saying that a “Spot Intelligence” report had been sent dated June 10, 1954 and gave the OSI district that had responsibility for the case. The report was not located with this letter.

The second entry, in Roll 91, that Barry mentioned, was the spot intelligence report which provided some details. The information was that:

SYSNOPSIS: On 27 May 1954, advice was received by letter from the District Intelligence Officer, Eleventh Naval District, San Diego, California, to the effect that [name redacted but is clearly, Higgins, Squadron Leader, Royal Air Force, on duty with the Marine All Weather Fighter Squadron El Toro 542, Marine Base, California, reported sighting an unidentified flying object while flying in the vicinity of Oceanside, California, 1240 hours, 18 May 1954.

Interestingly, the Blue Book entry for this, in Brad’s BBU was number 1017, which is, of course, the one just prior to the case that stared all this. For those interested in the details of the sighting, though sparse, Brad had reported it as:

May 18, 1954; 10-15 (or 6-7) miles SE of Lake Elsinore, Calif. (BBU 2994) 12:48 p.m. RAF Squadron Leader Donald R. Higgin, assigned to USMC All Weather Fighter Sq, El Toro MCAS, Calif., while flying an F3D-2 jet fighter at 15,000-16,000 ft on a heading of 240° magnetic [255° true] at 300 knots IAS and descending, saw a dark blue almost black gun-metal "glint" delta-shaped object, about 22-23 ft long and 20 ft wide, with 3 fins of equal size and shape, at his 11 o'clock position just above the cockpit of his wingman flying another F3D-2 about 250 ft away. Object was on a head on collision course but before Higgin could radio warning it passed under his wingman and between their aircraft, descending at a 25°-30° angle on a heading N of about 30°

There is nothing in the report by the OSI that suggests a solution or much of an investigation and Brad’s entry does nothing to clarify any of this. The names have been redacted, but as I have noted on many occasions, those responsible for removing the names did a terrible job. In fact, in one paragraph, none of the names were reacted, and given the ranks of those involved in the sighting as well as their military organizations, it is simple to put the names back in. We know who had seen what.

I will note that two copies of the spot intelligence report were sent on to ATIC, which, in 1954, had responsibility for Blue Book. That surprised me because there was no enter on May 18, 1954, for any sighting in the United States, but Blue Book should have had a copy given the regulations in force at the time.

There was documentation in the file for the Oceanside case but these were in the administrative section and not part of the investigative files. Fran asked a question then that got me to thinking. He wondered if the Lake Elsinore sighting that was part of the BBU was the same as the Oceanside sighting that were part of the administrative files. It was clear from the documentation that some of the names in the Oceanside sighting were the same as those from the Lake Elsinore sighting which meant that it was the same report. I took a look at the master index again and noticed that there was a sighting on May 10, 1954, for Lake Elsinore.

The illustration of the object
over Lake Elsinor in the
Oceanside UFO file.

I looked at the Blue Book microfilm and found the same pages from the OSI section but this one also included a statement from the pilot and his radar officer and the illustration that was not available in the administrative section. There was, of course, the Project Card, which suggested that the pilot might have seen a lenticular cloud, but also noted that such clouds are rare at the altitude reported and that they persisted much longer than the sighting lasted. The conclusion was that lenticular cloud did not provide a proper resolution and the case was labeled unidentified.

About the time that I was finding this, Brad Sparks pointed Fran to the same sighting. We had all found the sighting from Oceanside and had now resolved the discrepancy between it being at Oceanside and Lake Elsinore. There was no doubt, given the documentation that we were all talking about the same sighting. Lake Elsinore merely pinpointed the location while Oceanside provided a larger, general area.

What are the conclusions here?

Well, it seems that the original source for the Cannon AFB (Clovis) case was Otto Binder and those of us who have been around for a while realize that he is not the most credible of sources. The case was picked up by Jacques Vallee but he apparently did nothing to validate the information. I could find nothing in the Blue Book files about it and believe that it should be removed from the Catalog that Brad Sparks has been creating (I say creating because, as mentioned, it seems he regularly updates it).

The second part of this is the sighting from Oceanside, California. We have the details of the sighting, that include the pilot’s statement. It seems that those at Blue Book did know of it because the spot intelligence report but were unable to identify the cause of the sighting. Interestingly for me, I had included, in my book Project Blue Book – Exposed, a list of all the Unidentified cases. Somehow, I had missed that one. It is not listed by me. *

Here’s what I take away from all this. Fran asked a question over the Internet about 10:00 in the morning. There were responses from a number of people, and by four, we had found some of the answers. We had the documentation and resources to get to the bottom of the case. By noon the next day we had found the Oceanside (Lake Elsinore) sighting in the Blue Book files, but nothing to support the Cannon AFB sighting other than a reference that began with Otto Binder. The Cannon AFB case is mildly interesting but not actually part of Blue Book, and I had reached, at least in my mind, a valid conclusion or two about the reliability of the Cannon AFB sighting. There is nothing beyond what Binder had written and this case should be eliminated from the various listings in which it appears.

* Here’s something I noticed about the list of Unidentified sightings in my book, which I had always thought was important because Bob Cornett and I had been through the files before they had been redacted. We had listed every unidentified case including the names of the witnesses… I have since learned that others managed to do the same thing. I bring all this up because, for some strange reason, I have no unidentified cases listed for 1954. There are a number of them, but when I prepared the list for the book, I overlooked them. 

Bonilla's Comet

In the UFO literature, one of the older cases frequently quoted as the first ever UFO photographs (see Blum, Ralph and Judy, Beyond Earth: Man’s Contact with UFOs, page 45; Vallee, Jacques, Anatomy of a Phenomenon, page 30, for example) happened on August 12, 1883. Jose Bonilla, an astronomer at the Zacatecas Observatory, saw dozens of objects cross the disk of the sun and he photographed some of them. He reported that they seemed to be grouped in formations of fifteen to twenty and appeared at regular intervals. The Blums reported that the photographs showed circular or spindle-shaped objects.

One of Bonilla's Photographs.

Over the years, the number of object reported to be seen by Bonilla ranged from 150 to 283 to over 400. He informed other observatories in Mexico City and Puebla but they reported nothing out of the ordinary. The photographs, of course, did prove that he had seen something unusual.

There seemed to be no explanation for the sighting or the photographs until 2011. Researchers at the National Autonomous University in Mexico suggested that the objects were the result of a gigantic comet that nearly hit the Earth. The gravitation pull of the planet caused the break up. Because the objects, ranging in size from a few hundred feet across to some that might have been two or three miles across, were close to the Earth, they were visible only in certain areas much in the way that total solar eclipses are seen in a narrow band. Most of the points of observation were in regions that had few if any astronomical observatories.

Bonilla reported that the objects had a “mistiness” around them and astronomers say that the only objects that have a similar “mistiness” are comets. The conclusion of scientists in Mexico in 2011 was that Bonilla observed and photographed the remnants a comet. It seems to be a reasonable suggestion, but one, at the moment, that is not proven, just likely.

The other point is that had the comet not broken up and had hit the Earth, life, if it survived would have been radically altered. If one or two of the larger fragments had hit, they might be what are called “continent killers.” That means that there would have been widespread damage to the continent where they hit but other parts of the Earth would have survived, thought radically altered as well. In other words, we dodged a bullet that could have wiped out the human race, destroyed much of civilization as it was in 1883, and set back human progress centuries providing the human race survived.

I thought this solution for the sighting and the photographs interesting, if nothing else. It just shows that there are often good explanations for what was once considered to be inexplicable.

And yes, it seems that I’m about four years later on reporting this “breaking news.”

Fort Itaipu and Footnotes

I’ve been working on my new book, which is sort of a follow up to Government UFO Secrets (notice that I’ve slipped the name of my last book into this) and I have been doing something that I don’t think is being done very much. I’ve been chasing footnotes again. This means as I research a case, looking for all the information available on it, I attempt to return to the original source as much as possible. One way of doing that is look at the footnotes in other books to see where they gathered the information.

The case in question here is the attack on Fort Itaipu, Brazel on November 4, 1957. According to all those other sources, two sentries on duty saw a “new” star blossom in the distance, over the Atlantic Ocean, fly toward them, hover and then slowly descend. It was an orange disk that was humming slightly. There was a blast of heat that caused the sentries to panic. One fell to the ground unconscious and the other torn at his clothes screaming. That alerted the garrison, all of whom apparently reacted to the UFO.

About the same time, as the confused soldiers attempted to find out what was happening, the lights failed, as did their communications ability, their generators and even their weapons.  The electricity came back quickly and the clocks, set to ring at 5:00 a.m., began at 2:03 a.m.

The injured soldiers were removed, first to the infirmary, and later to an Army hospital. The fort commanding officer ordered an information blackout, telling the soldiers not to discuss the case with anyone, not even their fellow soldiers. Someone did talk, and Dr. Olavo Fontes, APRO’s representative in Brazil learned of the case some two or three weeks later. Though he tried to interview the soldiers, using his contacts as a medical doctor, he failed. His information came from some of the officers at the fort, but he never mentioned their names, nor did he identify the soldiers.

This is the bare bones of the sighting. As I was conducting my research, I looked to see what others had written about the case. In The A.P.R.O. Bulletin of September 1959, Fontes’ tale was published apparently as it appeared in his book Shadow of the Unknown. Later, in 1962, Coral Lorenzen, in her 1962 book, The Great Flying Saucer Hoax: The UFO Facts and Their Interpretation, repeated the information supplied by Fontes but in her own words. She suggested that Fontes had talked to an officer who was at the fort, but she didn’t supply his name or that of the sentries.

Jacques Vallee, in Anatomy of a Phenomenon, quotes from Lorenzen’s book, and adds nothing new to the case. Donald Keyhoe, in Aliens from Space, reports on the case in his own words, but there is nothing in that report that is new or different. He does speculate about alien motivations and their worries about our first tiny steps into space. Keyhoe wrote, “It would also mean that the burnings were intended as a demonstration of superior weapons they could use against aggressive explorers from Earth.”

But the point is that everything comes back to the article by Fontes in The A.P.R.O. Bulletin. I could find no new information about the case that wasn’t traced to Fontes. I did email Thiago Luiz Ticchetti, a Brazilian UFO researcher and a co-editor of Revista UFO and Coordenador da Revista UFO Brasil: www.ufo.com.br, who did update the case for me. He wrote that he had been unable to verify the tale of the injured soldiers, and unable to verify the power outage whether it was momentary or something a little longer. According to what he told me, most Brazilian UFO researchers believe that there had been a UFO sighting, but the details of what would be a Close Encounter of the Second Kind, meaning a sighting in which there are some sort of physical effects, remained unverified.

Fontes, according to his own writings, never got the chance to talk to the sentries, so much of what he wrote about their reactions had to come from the officers that Fontes said he had interviewed. The problem is that he never identified them. The tale then is based, at best, on second-hand testimony and we have no way to verify the information supplied by Fontes. We must trust him based solely on the trust that Coral Lorenzen had in him and if we have no faith in that, then almost everything he wrote about the Fort Itaipu case must be carefully scrutinized. In the end, the best we can say, based on what we know, is that there was a UFO sighting and the other elements are yet to be verified.

Walesville UFO Jet Chase

I was inspired the other day to take another look at the Walesville, New York jet crash in which four people were killed. This incident has been attributed to a UFO in the area. What got me started on this was that I was working on my presentation for the August MUFON Symposium in Denver, and I was using, as an example of scientific research something that Barry Greenwood had done with the film of two UFOs over Great Falls, Montana. I remembered that Greenwood, along with Larry Fawcett had mentioned the Walesville case and had attributed to me some information that more properly belonged to Jacques Vallee.

Convoluted enough for you yet?

So, let’s take a look at this and see what we can learn by accessing some of the sources that are available to us in today’s world.

First, we need to take a look at the basics of the case. According to various UFO writers and researchers including Donald Keyhoe (Aliens from Space pp 26 – 27), on July 1, 1954 "an unknown flying object was tracked over New York State by Griffiss AFB radar. An F-94 Starfire jet was scrambled and the pilot climbed steeply toward the target, guided by his radar observer. When the gleaming disc-shaped machine became visible he started to close in."

Keyhoe (seen here) continued, "Abruptly a furnacelike heat filled both cockpits. Gasping for breath, the pilot jettisoned the canopy. Through a blur of heat waves he saw the radar operator bail out. Stunned, without even thinking, he ejected himself from the plane."

Keyhoe then noted, "The F-94, screaming down into Walesville, N.Y., smashed though a building and burst into flames. Plunging on, the fiery wreckage careened into a car. Four died in the holocaust – a man and his wife and their two infant children. Five other Walesville residents were injured, two of them seriously."

If all this could be factually established, that is, the jet crashed as a result of the actions of a UFO, then we have big news. UFOs aren’t just harmless lights in the sky, but can result in tragedy on the ground.

Keyhoe wasn’t alone in his belief of a UFO attack on an Air Force interceptor. Otto Binder, writing in What We Really Know about Flying Saucers (1967) suggested that it was the radar officer who was saw the UFO and pointed it out to the pilot. The pilot turned the aircraft to get a better look and when the cockpit filled with heat, both men bailed out. Binder claimed that both men were interrogated at length by Air Force investigators who concluded that they were not responsible for the crash. According to Binder, there was only one source for the heat and that was the UFO. Binder said that his account was based on Air Force Records, which is true, to an extent. There was also a great deal of interpretation in Binder’s account.

J. Allen Hynek (seen here) and Jacques Vallee, in The Edge of Reality (1975) discussed the case. Vallee suggested that there had been a dense cloud cover and that the UFO had been picked up on radar. Two jets were scrambled, one that remained in the clouds and the second that climbed to a higher altitude. When it broke through into clear sky, the pilot saw the UFO coming at him. The cockpit filled with heat and both men believe the aircraft was about to burst into flames. They bailed out and landed safely, but the aircraft crashed into Walesville.

Hynek said the case wasn’t documented but Vallee said, "Yes, it is documented. It was even mentioned in the New York Times the next day."

So, what are the facts in this case? According to both news and official sources, there was a UFO sighting over Rome, New York on July 2, but in the evening, hours after the jet crash. The New York Times for July 3 reported:

UTICA. N.Y., July 2 (AP) – A silvery, balloon-like object floating over the Utica area tonight sent residents rushing to their telephones to make inquiries of newspapers, police and radio stations.

The Utica Press estimated that more than 1,000 calls about the object jammed its switchboard between 6 and 10 P.M. It was reported by residents in a twenty-five mile radius extending from Rome on the west to Frankfort, east of Utica.

Col. Milton F. Summerfelt, commandant of the Air Force Depot at Rome, said the object appeared to be a plastic balloon about forty feet long and partially deflated. He
theorized that it was making a gradual descent and said that if it was still in in the area tomorrow morning a plane would be sent to investigate.

A Mohawk Airlines pilot estimated the altitude of the object at about 20,000 feet. He said he saw a light apparently shining from it.

For some reason, Keyhoe and some of the others have given the July 1 date for the balloon sighting and sometimes for the jet crash as well. A confusion of the two events might explain how the description of a disc-shaped object originated. Since both incidents were reported in the same general area and on the same day, the confusion is understandable.

The Project Blue Book files tell the jet-crash story in a slight different way from that given by Keyhoe, Vallee and others. Neither incident is part of Blue Book’s official record. The index for Blue Book, which does list the accident, also notes it is "info" only, and lists the "witnesses" as Len Stringfield and others. I suppose I should point out that Stringfield, living in Ohio, did not make an on-site investigation and didn’t witness the incident. He reported it in his newsletter and that is what made him a "witness" in the Air Force file.

According to the "Summary of Circumstances" which is part of the official Air Force file on the case:

The F-94C took off at 11:05 AM EST for an operational training mission out of Griffiss Air Force Base, New York on 2 July 1954. The aircraft was only a few miles out when the Griffiss control tower operator called the pilot to advise that he was being diverted to an active air defense mission. A vector of 60 degrees and 10,000 feet altitude was give to intercept an unidentified aircraft. The pilot experienced some difficulty finding this aircraft and the controller informed him of a second unidentified aircraft in the area. This aircraft was [subsequently] identified [by the pilot] as an Air Force C-47, tail number 6099. At this time there were no indications of F-94 malfunctions as stated by the pilot and the C-47 pilot.

What this tells us is that the unidentified object was later identified as a C-47. The F-94C (seen here) was not, in fact scrambled to intercept a UFO as suggested by some, but was already airborne when diverted to the mission. However, it is true that the aircraft was asked to identify an unknown target, which, in layman’s terms is a UFO.

Once the C-47 was identified:

The ground controller gave the F-94C pilot a heading of 240 degrees as a vector back to the first unidentified aircraft. The F-94C was at 8,000 feet, flying about the tops of broken clouds, so the pilot started to descend below the clouds. It was evident that the unidentified aircraft was going to Griffiss Air Force Base. During the descent there was intense heat in the cockpit and the engine plenum chamber fire warning light came on. The pilot shut down the engine and the light remained on. Due to critical low altitude and the fire warning, the pilot and the radar observer ejected and were recovered without injury.

Clearly, based on this, the other UFO, the one the pilot couldn’t find at first, was in the traffic pattern for the Air Force base. The identity, though not established by the pilot, was by the tower crew and the mission had ended. The UFOs were both military aircraft.

I think this is where the idea there were two jets involved came from. There were two attempted intercepts but by only one aircraft. I have seen notations suggesting a second jet, but the evidence doesn’t bear this out.

The other point that needs to be made here is that there was not a dense cloud cover. The term, "broken clouds" relates to the portion of the sky obscured by clouds. This means there were some clouds but they did not obscure the whole sky, and given the various altitudes for those clouds, it could have meant that from the cockpit, little of the sky was hidden.

The reported ended, "The aircraft traveled about four miles from the point of ejection and, while on a heading of 199 degrees, crashed into the Walesville intersection at 11:27 AM EST. The aircraft struck a dwelling, killing a housewife and injuring her daughter, then struck an auto at an intersection, killing all three occupants."

The Air Force report says nothing about the aircraft being scrambled, a disc-shaped UFO, or a heat ray, as alleged by some UFO writers. There is, in fact, no reason to suggest that this case has anything to do with UFOs, other than the assumptions made by Keyhoe in the 1950s and those who followed after that.

Keyhoe, in fact, gets the identities of the civilians killed wrong. According to the New York Times for Saturday, July 3, 1954, "Those killed were Stanley Phillips, 38, his wife, Florence, 32, and their son Gary, 11, all of neighboring Hecla, and Mrs. Doris Monroe, 28, occupant of one of the houses."

The Air Force conducted an investigation into the accident, but this report was sealed for many years. Given that the Air Force-sponsored University of Colorado UFO study, popularly known as the Condon Committee, had access to many official documents, it may not be surprising they did not create a UFO file for this incident because there was no UFO involved.

With or without a UFO, there is the question of what caused the heat in the cockpit. Was there a fire on the F-94C, and if so, what caused it? Was the malfunction of the aircraft in any way mysterious?

Until years after the crash, these questions could not be answered definitively because the accident report was still in the government archives. But upon the request of Jan Aldrich, the report was declassified and released. The general details of the accident are basically the same as reported by Keyhoe and the others. The key finding in the accident investigation is in paragraph 3 of the summary statement:

Investigation revealed the primary cause of the accident to be a malfunction of the aircraft fire detector circuit. The cause of the malfunction could not be determined. The pilot’s decision to abandon the aircraft was consistent with the emergency instructions contained in the F-94C Flight Handbook.

A thorough examination of the plane’s air conditioning and pressurization system indicated no evidence of smoke, fuel, or oil, which would have been generated by a fire. The pilot had flown the aircraft on a previous flight that same day and had found it necessary to adjust the cockpit temperature manually several times. The air vents were set so that pressurized air was being directed into the cockpit.

The report suggests that "Inasmuch as the pilot acknowledged changing the engine power settings and flight attitude during his attempted second interception, it appears that the pilot interpreted a normal, non-automatically controlled temperature rise as an overheat cockpit condition. Since there was no evidence of an inflight fire, the fire warning indication received was probably due to a malfunction of the fire warning circuit."

This accident then became a terrible bit of bad luck as the malfunctioning of the fire warning occurred just as the cockpit was being heated from normal aircraft operations. Following procedures, after the warning continued, the pilot shut down the engines and he and his radar observer bailed out, leaving the pilotless plane to crash in Walesville. As a relevant aside, another conclusion of the report was that the Air Force’s inspection requirements for the F-94C fire and overheat warning circuits were inadequate.

The accident report was completed on August 17, 1954, before Keyhoe wrote Flying Saucer Conspiracy (Jet engine on the ground in Walesville). If he had been given access to the document, or at least was provided with the relevant conclusions by Air Force spokesmen, the confusion over Walesville might never have happened. Instead, given the understandable confidentiality requirements of military accident investigators, Keyhoe and other writers were left to speculate about the cause of the heat in the cockpit and the cause of the crash.

In any event, the Walesville case, like that of the death of Thomas Mantell in 1948, should be removed from the UFO files. There was no UFO involved in this tragedy, though there certainly were momentarily unidentified aircraft.

Fawcett and Greenwood in their book, The UFO Cover-up (which originally was titled Clear Intent) wrote, "Without the full details of the crash, it is impossible to determine what caused the jet to malfunction."

Then they go on to write, "In the Encyclopedia of UFOs, edited by Ron Story (Doubleday Dolphin, 1980), an entry by Kevin Randle attempts to explain away the Walesville crash as nothing more than an engine fire which poured heat into the cockpit. His "documented evidence" is a news clipping from the New York Times. If the author of the entry had truly been interested in documented evidence other than a newspaper clipping, he would have noticed that the accident report on Walesville contained the following conclusions: ‘Investigation of the wreckage disclosed no in-flight fire. The cause of the malfunction in the fire warning system could not be determined.’(Emphasis in the original.)"

Of course, had they bothered to read what I had written, they would have realized that I was quoting Jacques Vallee. The sentence in question is, "Jacques Vallee claimed that the case was documented, and it was even reported in The New York Times."

Secondly, documentation available today suggests, as noted earlier, there was no fire, but there was a malfunction in the fire warning system. The pilot, identified as Lt. William E. Atkins, thought that because the cockpit was extremely hot, and because of the warning light, that the aircraft was on fire. Fawcett and Greenwood wrote that "He [the pilot] alerted the radar operator, Lt. Henry Condon [identified in some sources as Coudon], placed the throttle in the idle position, waited four seconds, then stop-cocked the throttle. After waiting another four seconds, Atkins and Condon successfully bailed out."

They then added, "So, while we have no specific evidence that the aircraft was attacked by a UFO, the cause of the crash remains unknown to this day. Is it merely coincidence that the jet developed a fault during a UFO chase or...?"

Except, everything points to the UFO, or UFOs, being identified as aircraft or the partially deflated balloon. There is no UFO in the classic sense involved in this case. The cause of the accident is the malfunctioning fire warning light and the only thing not explained is the sensation of extreme heat in the cockpit that suggested to the pilot, along with the warning light, that the aircraft was on fire.

This is a tragic accident that resulted in the deaths of four civilians on the ground. The Air Force got this one right. It isn’t a UFO case, but an aircraft accident.