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. 

Kerman, California UFO Case - An Update

As I had hoped, the Manuel Amparano sighting and burn incident has caused some good discussion and a few irrelevant points (let’s look at Stephenville, Hasting’s work and the Phoenix Lights… though I’m surprised that no one mentioned the Washington Nationals, the Lubbock Lights photographs and the Levelland Sightings in their wishes to see information on other cases). The discussion did take a nasty turn when it appears that some couldn’t read what I had posted and when I attributed an International UFO Reporter article to Dr. Michael Swords that he did not write. That article follows:

I also used, as a source, the APRO Bulletin article that was probably written by Coral Lorenzen which follows:

There is also a new assessment of the case written by Jason Marzek for the Fringe Republic which can be found here:

http://fringerepublic.com/kerman-ufo-burning-061401/ 

And there is another assessment with some documentation embedded in it that can be found here:

http://www.examiner.com/article/ufo-evidence-just-the-facts-please

For those who wish another source, the NICAP.org website has a short article that references the IUR article from September 1978 on pages 10 – 11, which appears above, and articles from the Fresno Bee for May 19, 1978 and February 23, 1979.

Dr. Swords did write an article for the IUR, Volume 34, Number 4 (September 2011) which does mention the Kerman, California case, but only in a table on Foundational “burn-like” skin cases. It gives the date and nothing more. The coincidence here is that both articles were published in September in the IUR, though decades apart. There is no byline on the first IUR article. The only names associated with the IUR then were J. Allen Hynek and Allan Hendry. It would seem that Hendry was the author, though, as I say, there is no byline.

This is, however, a secondary issue. The question seems to be, where did the report of second degree burns come from? Clearly the man was burned as the documentation and the witness testimony establishes. Since there is documentation for third degree burns from both the sheriff and the medical facility, I’m not sure why we have bogged down in the question of the second degree burns.

At any rate, if this was one of the articles on chasing footnotes, I would have mentioned that the article attributed to Michael Swords was not written by him but it does appear in the IUR. I will note that I try to attribute the information to the proper source and give credit where credit is due. Here, I believed that Swords, because of the reference I had found, was responsible for the earlier article. So, we clear that up, and I apologize to Swords for dragging his name into this. We can move on to the other questions.

Oh, just for fun, I will note that most of us know that attempting to determine distance, size and speed of an unknown object seen in the night sky with no points of reference is nearly impossible… if the witness gets it right, I would suggest that it more luck than observational ability and that angular size, angle above the ground and direction would be more important than guesses about precise figures for size, distance and speed.

May 13, 1978: Kerman, California

(Blogger's Note: I attributed an article in the International UFO Reporter to Dr. Swords. The article has no byline on it and my attribution was in error. Dr. Swords did make a reference to the case in the September 2011 IUR, but it is only the name of the case in a table about "skin burn" cases. I have updated this article so that the attribution is proper. It does appear in the IUR in 1978 but the article is unattributed.) 

Dr. Michael Swords has suggested in an article in the IUR, "Can UFOs Cause physiological Effects, Part 2 (September 2011) that there are cases that demonstrate there are side effects to UFO sightings that can be investigate (which I mention here only because it was in that article I found the reference to Kerman). While there is not a bit of metal to take into the laboratory in this case, there are the physical reactions of the witness, police officer Manuel Amparano, who was a veteran of five years on the force. Had the situation developed differently, there was research that could have been conducted, but wasn’t.

According to the information available, including that in the APRO Bulletin of August 1978, Amparano was on late night-early morning patrol when he spotted, what he thought was a fire in the distance. He thought it might be youngsters setting palm trees on fire, but as he neared an intersection, saw that it was something else.

According to an article in the September 1978 issue of the IUR, “…at 3:32 a.m. … he observed a reddish glow ahead of him… he drove to the site and pulled off the road by a cotton field near railroad tracks in time to see an unusual source of illumination… up in the southern sky.”

Coral Lorenzen reported that “The object was hovering, was a ‘silver aluminum, round’ craft which the witness approached fairly close.”

Amparano later said that the oval-shaped object was twice as wide as it was high and that it was a bright crimson, about half as large as the full moon. He said that it was about one hundred to one hundred fifty feet off the ground and that it was twenty-five to fifty feet in diameter. He was close enough to it and it was large enough that there was no question that it wasn’t some sort of conventional craft.

As it hovered overhead, it glowed with an intensity that did not hurt his eyes. He watched it out of the side window of the car for about four minutes until a bright blue beam shot out of the craft that Amparano described like that of a flash from a camera. The UFO then climbed out silently toward the southeast, and finally disappeared straight up in seconds.

Although he felt a slight tingling, he thought it was the results of the cold night. He drove back to the station. There he met several fellow officers and the police chaplain, who mentioned that he looked as if he had been sunburned. According to Swords, the sunburn lasted for about four hours before fading.

The IUR article noted that at 7:00 p.m. that night, Amparano went to the hospital for treatment of second and third degree burns to his face, neck and arms. The trip to the hospital was documented in various hospital records and because of the injury, he applied for, or his boss, the chief of police applied for, worker’s compensation. That too was documented.

It would seem that something that large, that bright and that close to the ground would have been seen by someone else. Although it was very early in the morning, there were others who said they had seen the same thing. Lorenzen reported:

… Lisa Harrison’s husband had driven his cement-mixer truck to Los Angeles for an overnight job and she wasn’t able to sleep, so she was watching the late show on television. She was sitting next to the living room window of her apartment in Kerman… Suddenly, at 3:30 A.M., she heard a strange loud whirring noise and the house began to vibrate. She took three quick steps to the front door to see what was happening. Looking toward the northwest, she saw two lights moving towards the South at tree-top level. The leading light was white and the rear light was reddish, but “not like the red lights on airplanes.” She described the lights as large, but couldn’t estimate how large. Mrs. Harrison ran back into the house after the object went out of sight behind some houses to the south.

Harrison isn’t the only other witness to be found. Amparano, on his way back to the station, had stopped at a parking lot near Highway 145 and Interstate 80 for a few minutes. There he found Phil Mahler, who was delivering newspapers for the Fresno Bee. Mahler said that he had seen what he called “a reddish ball in the sky.”

There were still other, somewhat ambiguous reports. According to something referred to as the “a Seattle-based phenomenon research center,” an astronomer in Fresno reported a “reddish ball” close to the ground.

At about the same time someone called the Fire Department to report a fire that was in a direct line from where Amparano saw the UFO. The Fire Department said that they found no evidence of a fire.

After Amparano’s sighting was reported Ken Westbrook, Jr. who had been raking hay at the Gilory Farm west of Kerman said that he had seen a glowing “orange ball,” at treetop level. He watched it for some thirty to forty seconds as it “just kind of drifted around a little bit.”

At the station, Amparano called the Air Guard, the Fresno Airport and the weather bureau, wondering if they had anything on their radar scopes, or if there had been any other reports. While he was making the telephone calls, police officers A. J. Byington and Bob Muller, saw the burn marks on his face. They then discovered that Amparano had been burned through his shirt as well. At that point, they all returned to the cotton field, but there was nothing there to be seen.

According to other sources, it was at 5:00 p.m. that evening that Amparano woke and was feeling sick. That was when he went to the Fresno Community Hospital emergency room. There his burns were noted and listed as coming from an unknown source. It was also noted his blood pressure was high and later, a private doctor said that he suffered from “high intensity fluorescent pipe light or a gamma ray.”

What is important here is that these injuries, regardless of source, were documented by the hospital authorities, and there was that worker’s compensation claim that was also filed which further corroborated the injuries.

At this point Police Chief James Van Cleaf decided that he wanted nothing about the sighting to be released to the press or to UFO researchers. He told Amparano not to talk to them. According to Lorenzen:

A reporter went to the Amparano home after learning the identity of the officer, but was told that Amparano wasn’t available for an interview. Mrs. Amparano said that Chief Van Cleaf had told her husband not to talk to anyone about the incident, least of all out-of-town reporters. She thought that her husband would be willing to talk – he had nothing to hide – but only if the Chief said it was all right. But Van Cleaf was adamant – no interviews.

This order also seemed to apply to members of other law enforcement agencies. On June 26, 1978, according to a sheriff’s department memorandum that was sent to Amparano, “Saw the article and was impressed with your [sighting] … one of our sgts. (mike soderberg) experienced much the same thing as you did… no burns however… no one really knows at this point what really exists out there in space!!!”

While interesting, it’s not clear if the sighting was at the same time and exactly what Soderberg saw, other than it was similar. This could be further corroboration of the sighting, but at this point no one has followed up on it.

In July 2014, Jason Marzek, writing for Fringe Republic, contacted Amparano, who responded to him. In that email, Amparano wrote:

The UFO… was behind the trees lining the west side of Del Norte Avenue and near the ground hovering midway below the tree tops which gave the impression the tree was on fire… The UFO was first sighted at Trinity and Shaw Avenues by a Fresno County resident who called the North Central Fire Department Kerman Station and reported a grass fire in a field…The fire men arrived on the scene and found no evidence of a fire… A short time later Thomas Addis was working in a vineyard… when he observed a fire ball moving at tree top level… Also five Kerman Police Personnel observed my physical appearance when I reported for duty and confirmed that I was not sunburned prior to going on patrol. Officers A. J. Byington, Bob Muller, Bill McKinney, Jon Crouch and Chaplin Tom Johnson were with me inside a well light police station. Fresno Community Doctors, Allen Mau and T. T. Shigyo reported that officer had a sun burnt condition when examined at community hospital. Dr. Shigyo said that microwaves can burn the flesh through clothing without damaging the cloth. Chief Van Cleaf requested workman compensation for on the job injury.

This case becomes important because it has multiple chains of evidence. There was the physical effect which was the burns suffered by Amparano and documented by the hospital records, and observed by his fellow police officers. There were additional witnesses to the red object in the sky at about the time that Amparano made his sighting which creates another chain of testimony.

Had the chief of police reacted with a more open response, some of that additional testimony might have been documented as well. Tests could have been conducted on the police car which might have yielded some interesting results. Unfortunately, as has happened all too often, the chief was probably afraid of adverse publicity and his response was to limit access to the witnesses.

Here the opportunity was lost to gather additional evidence. This might have yielded something of scientific importance. It might not have been related to alien visitation but some sort of rare natural phenomenon. Whatever the case, the opportunity for a proper investigation was missed.

Roswell, Nathan Twining and the Mini-EOTS

There is a misunderstanding about the Twining letter and it is about what caused it to be written. To understand it in the context of the time, it is necessary to understand why the letter was written.

In July 1947, an officer who worked for Brigadier General George Schulgen put together an Estimate of the Situation, which is not to be confused with the big one that was written later. This mini-EOTS covered a number of sightings that had been made early in 1947, including a few that had preceded Arnold. LTC George Garrett was the officer who wrote this EOTS that was sent to LTG Nathan Twining at Wright Field for analysis. I covered all this in Government UFO Files, which, if I was smart, is all I would say about it, making those interested in this discussion buy the book. However, and with the help of many others including Dr. Michael Swords ...

In July 1947, Garrett believed that nothing useful would be found by additional Air Force (really Army Air Forces) investigation of the flying saucer reports. Both Garrett and Schulgen decided that the answer was held above their pay grade and thought of a way to pass the buck back up the chain of command so they would no longer have to deal with it. They were quite certain that when they assembled their information in what might be considered an intelligence Estimate of the Situation, they would be told that those at the top knew what the flying saucers were and there would be no need to continue to investigate. Or, I suppose, you might say that this is what they hoped would happen.

Garrett began his work on his Estimate in the beginning of July, 1947. He selected sixteen flying saucer reports that seemed to demonstrate the truly unusual nature of the phenomenon, and then provided his analysis of the data that had been collected.

The first case he mentioned preceded that by Kenneth Arnold; the man many believe “launched” the UFO phenomena as we know it today, by over a month. That sighting, from Manitou Springs, Colorado happened sometime between 12:15 and 1:15 p.m. on May 19, 1947. This was a silver object that remained motionless, giving the three witnesses a good look at it, and then made a number of aerobatic maneuvers before disappearing at incredible speed. The sighting report mentioned that it had been watched through optical instruments and had been in sight for over two minutes meaning they had time to study it carefully. This sighting does not appear in the Project Blue Book files, though it was used as support for Garrett’s conclusions at the end of this study which in and of itself is interesting.

The second report that was mentioned was from Oklahoma City on May 22, 1947. There are few details available other than it was made by a businessman pilot and he saw the object or light from the ground and not the cockpit.

The third case came from Greenfield, Massachusetts on June 22, 1947. According to the report:

Edward L. de Rose said, ...there appeared across his line of vision a “brilliant, small, round-shaped, silvery white object” moving in a northwesterly direction as fast as or probably faster than a speeding plane at an estimated altitude of 1,000 feet or more. The object stayed in view for eight or ten seconds until obscured by a cloud bank. It reflected the sunlight strongly as though it were of polished aluminum or silver… He said it did not resemble any weather balloon he had ever seen and that “I can assure you it was very real.”

According to the information available, this was a case that had been secretly investigated by the FBI, and given Special Agent Reynolds’ (who has a role in these early investigations as outlined in The Government UFO Files) participation with Schulgen and Garrett it is not difficult to believe that the FBI was involved.

Next was the report that got everyone talking about flying saucers and this is the Kenneth Arnold’s sighting. In 1947, as Garrett was putting together his Estimate, it was still considered an unknown by those who had officially investigated it and who had talked to Arnold.

Garrett’s next sighting involved two Air Force (at the time Army Air Forces) pilots and two intelligence officers who saw a bright light zigzagging in the night sky over Maxwell Air Force Base on June 28, 1947. The sighting lasted for about five minutes. The eventual label applied to the case was that this was a balloon.

Garrett’s next case was witnessed by three scientists at White Sands, New Mexico. The object was silver in color and no external details were reported. There was the possibility of a slight vapor trail and none of the three were sure how it disappeared, suggesting that the angle changed and they lost sight of it.

Civilian pilots were responsible for the next sighting that Garrett quoted. Captain E. J. Smith was piloting a United Airlines plane when one of the flying saucers appeared coming at them. The first officer, Ralph Stevens, reached down to blink the landing lights, and Smith asked what he thought he was doing. Stevens responded that another plane was coming at them. As it closed, they realized that it wasn't another aircraft but one of the flying disks.

Although the case was thoroughly investigated, the Air Force found no solution for it. In the Project Blue Book files, it is still carried as “Unidentified.”

Three airmen on a B-25, near Clay Center, Kansas said they saw a silver-colored object pacing their aircraft was the next case cited. One of the witnesses was the pilot who said that a bright flash called his attention of the object, which he said was thirty to fifty feet in diameter and very bright. He said the object appeared to be pacing the aircraft at 210 miles an hour. When they turned toward it, the object seemed to accelerate to high speed and disappeared. Later the Air Force would suggest that the sighting was caused by a reflection on the windshield.

Garrett next reported that Captain James H. Burniston, on July 6, 1947, while at Fairfield-Suisun Army Air Base saw one of the flying disks. According to that report:

…He observed an object traveling in a southeasterly direction at an estimated height of 10,000 feet or more and at a speed in excess of that of any aircraft he had ever seen. The object was in his view for approximately sixty seconds during which time it travelled over three-quarters of the visible sky. Burniston could distinguish no definite color or shape. It appeared to roll from side to side three times during his observation and one side reflected strongly from its surface while the other side gave no reflection. He estimates the size to be about that of a C-54 and states that between the time the top of the object was visible and the time it rolled over … the bottom became very difficult to see and almost disappeared.

Although the next two reports seem to be related, Garrett broke them into two separate incidents, one from Koshkonong, Wisconsin and the second from East Troy, Wisconsin. They are listed on the same “Project Card,” which supplies very little information. Both sightings lasted under a minute, and in both sightings the witnesses were members of the Civil Air Patrol, an official civilian auxiliary of the Air Force. The first of the sightings was reported at 11:45 (CST) in the morning and the second at 2:30 (CST) in the afternoon. Both were made on July 7, 1947.These two cases were marked, “Insufficient information for proper analysis.”

Following his theory of who might make the best witnesses, the next case involved an Army National Guard pilot flying near Mt. Baldy, California on July 8, 1947. The flat object, reflecting light, was about the size of a fighter. The pilot said that he gave chase attempting to keep the object in sight but was unable to do so.

A police officer, among others, in Grand Falls, Newfoundland, reported an egg-shaped object with a barrel-like leading edge about thirty minutes before midnight on July 9, 1947, in the next case reported by Garrett. There were four objects that had a phosphorescent glow.

The next day, and next on the list there was a series of sightings in Newfoundland. Garrett used the sighting that took place about four in the afternoon, and was seen by a “TWA Representative and a PAA Representative [who was identified as a Mr. Leidy] on the ground. The object was “circular in shape, like a wagon wheel,” and was bluish-black with a fifteen foot long trail. The object “seemed to cut clouds open as it passed thru [sic]. Trail was like beam seen after a high-powered landing light is switched off.”

The case took on added importance because there were color photographs of the disk as it cut through the clouds. Dr. Michael Swords reported in the Journal of UFO Studies:

The bluish-black trail seems to indicate ordinary combustion from a turbo-jet engine, athodyd [ramjet] motor, or some combination of these types of power plants. The absence of noise and apparent dissolving of the clouds to form a clear path indicates a relatively large mass flow of a rectangular cross section containing a considerable amount of heat.

In 1947, this was an important case and provides a hint as to what Garrett and the others thought. They believed that the solution here rested in terrestrial technology, or in other words, this was something of Soviet manufacture. While the sighting itself is interesting for the photographs, it was important because it seemed to suggest the Soviets were responsible rather than aliens.

The final case that Garrett cited was from Elmendorf Field in Anchorage, Alaska on July 12. A major in the Army Air Forces said that he watched an object that resembled a grayish balloon as it followed the contours of the mountains some five miles away. The major said that the object paralleled the course of a C-47 that was landing on the airfield.

With these sixteen reports, and two added later, Garrett composed his study. It might be said that he drew on these specific cases because he, along with Schulgen, believed they most accurately described the objects seen, the maneuvers they performed, and they would most likely lead to the conclusion that these sightings were of a classified research project then in development. They thought they would be told to quit because of that. The answer they received, after they had forwarded their report to the Air Materiel Command and to Twining must have surprised them. It was not at all what they had expected.

On September 24, 1947, Schulgen, Garrett and the others received the written response from Twining’s staff. This analysis of the situation was based wholly on the information supplied by Garrett through Schulgen. Twining’s staff looked at the reports that had been included and then produced a draft of the response for approval by Twining.

Given the information they had to work with, and it seems those at Wright Field added nothing to the mix themselves; they reached their conclusions based on the information supplied. These reports, for the most part, came from pilots, both military and civilian including airline pilots. They came from scientists, police, and aviation personnel who should have been able to recognize aircraft in the air. The reports were selected because they were, for the most part, from multiple witnesses and one must have been selected because of the photographs. These were some of the best sightings that had been received beginning with the May reports that did not make it into the Project Blue Book files.

This response, then, from Twining's AMC staff was telling them that the phenomenon was “something real and not visionary or fictitious.” Not only that, Twining was telling them that his command didn't know what the flying saucers were and that they should be investigated.

If the flying saucers were a U.S. project, then the last thing anyone at the higher levels of the chain of command would have wanted would be an official investigation. Any investigation would be a threat to the security of the project. To end such an investigation one of those on the inside of the secret would have to drop a hint to someone on the outside. If, for example, it was such a secret project that General Twining and the AMC were outside the loop, then another general, on the inside, could call Twining to tell him to drop the investigation. He wouldn't have to spill any details of the secret project, only tell Twining that it was something he didn't need to worry about and the answer was not Soviet or anything else that could threaten national security. Twining would then end his inquiries, secure in the knowledge that the solution to the mystery was already known to someone inside the US military and the government.

Swords, commenting on this, wrote, "What explains this confident display of mediocrity? Although we are apparently not dealing with genius here, neither should we assume complete stupidity. This report was not put together with any greater intensity because the authors did not feel that it was necessary. They did not think that UFOs were any great mystery. It was obvious to them that UFOs were mechanical, aerial devices. Whose devices was still up in the air (so to speak), but the indications were fairly clear: despite assurances to the contrary, they must be our own. 'Lack of topside inquiries' [meaning, of course, those higher up in the chain of command] made this the only reasonable conclusion in their eyes."

What this does explain, for those who haven’t figured it out yet, is why there was a mention of a “lack of crash recovered material.” None had been included in the mini-EOTS. The response by Twining, which was written under the supervision of Howard McCoy, used only that information included in the original EOTS. They added nothing to it because they could accomplish what they wanted in that way. Had they added additional information or mention information that was classified “Top Secret” that would have changed the nature of the discussion and, of course, the classification of the response.

And this is why the Roswell crash wasn't mentioned in Twining's letter. It wasn't part of the original query, there was no reason to add it, and the investigation could continue as they searched for additional answers... or more importantly, they scrambled around trying to find out if national security was at risk. This they could accomplish without compromising the Roswell information.

Electromagnetic Beam Weapon

Taking the opportunity to again mention my latest book, The Government UFO Files, (for those who want to know about such things) I can use it to add something more to the discussion of EM effects and an Earth-based technology that is of interest to us. Please note, so that I’m not forced to explain this time and again, I am not offering this as a solution to those UFO reports that mention EM effects and stalled car engines, only that this is a somewhat interesting side discussion.

During World War II, as the allies attempted to learn something about the Foo Fighters, they sent a fellow, Dr. David Griggs to Europe. He was there to assist with radar and to investigate the Foo Fighters. When the war ended in Europe, he went to the Pacific Theater, to continue the investigation. He was part of the Compton Scientific Intelligence Committee, and he wanted, specifically to track down Japanese military technology with an eye to finding more about their electromagnetic beam experiments. There had been some discussion that these beam weapons could interrupt the smooth functioning of engines, as had been reported in some of the European Foo Fighter cases and, of course, was what Len Stringfield would report about his own sighting near Iwo Jima at the very end of the war in the Pacific.

Griggs did find some information about this electromagnetic “ray” technology. The ray was something primitive, but “[They could] stop the engines at short range… and one massive device could kill a rabbit…” The document is somewhat difficult to decipher, but it might have suggested that the ray killed the rabbit at a distance of about three feet. Apparently the device was discovered and captured, complete with its thirty-four foot dish. According to Michael Swords, the dish and its equipment were shipped to the US, but there is no record of it arriving and there seems to be no follow up into what happened to it.

So, apparently, the Japanese had invented a weapon that could stop the operation of an engine, and I would imagine that it was some sort of electromagnetic field that suppressed the flow of electrons. I would suspect that once the engine stalled under this scenario, it would not restart without some sort of action by the operator, meaning the driver or pilot. But the range was extremely limited so as a weapon it was a novelty but not effective.

For those interested in learning more about Griggs and his investigation into the Foo Fighters I would suggest:

UFOs and Government: A Histoical Enquiry by Michael Swords, Robert Powell, et.al, Anomalist Books, pp. 5 – 10

Or

Strange Company by Keith Chester, Anomalist Books, pp. 194 – 198 (as well as many other references to him throughout the book.)