Betty Hill and Alien Books

I am in something of a quandary. For those who had read Reflections of a UFO investigator, you know that I interviewed Carroll Wayne Watts about his encounters with, shall I say it? Men from Mars. It was clear that Watts had a limited imagination. He suggested that the space traveling aliens used paper maps, when an electronic survey would have been much better… Just look at what we can do with our satellites, spy planes and aerial photography. His descriptions seemed to be drawn from 1950s science fiction movies rather than a tour of an advanced, alien spacecraft.

Where am I going with this?

For an upcoming interview, I have been reviewing the Hill abduction. As those of you who follow this blog, you know I’m more than a little skeptical of the Star Map that Betty Hill drew. There are four different interpretations of it, with the Fish model suggesting the Zeta Reticuli double star system as the leading contender. You can read about that elsewhere on this blog.

Alien from "Hocus Pocus and
Frisby."

You might also remember that I have suggested that the illustration of the aliens that Barney provided is reminiscent of the aliens shown on the Twilight Zone episode, “Hocus Pocus and Frisby.” Betty had asked Barney at one point if he had been watching the Twilight Zone, though she said that she had never seen the program herself.

And, let’s not forget that in The Interrupted Journey, she described the aliens, saying, “Their chests are larger than ours; their noses were larger (longer) than average size although I have seen people with noses like theirs – like Jimmy Durante’s. (page 298 in the hardback edition).” Her later descriptions are somewhat different.  

Just so that I can again be accused of being an “abduction propagandist,” I noticed something else in one of the sessions that Betty had with Dr. Benjamin Simon. She was describing her talk (telepathic communication?) with one of the aliens. She wanted something for a souvenir, to help validate her

Jimmy Durante

story. He seemed agreeable and she looked around for something. She said, “…there wasn’t much around – but on a cabinet there was a book, a fairly big book. So I put my hand on the book and I said, ‘Could I have this?’ And he told me to look in the book and I did. It had pages, it had writing, but nothing like I had ever seen before. It looked almost like a – I don’t know – it wasn’t a dictionary – maybe a – it had the – the writing didn’t go across, it went up and down (page 172).”

I’m thinking now, “A book? With pages? A book made of paper and writing that she would later suggest looked like Japanese.” And while I understand that it looked Japanese but certainly wasn’t, I’m wondering now why they would have a book at all. I can’t tell you the last time I actually bought a book that was printed on paper. I now get them digitally, on my iPad. I have dozens of them that I can haul around easily and they take up no real space… and that would be something important on a spacecraft. Saving space and weight. A data retrieval system that is virtually weightless and doesn’t take up space would be ideal. I certainly wouldn’t want to carry around any books.

I have a one terabyte external hard drive. I mention this because, on it, I have the Project Blue Book files. I have the vast majority of the more than 12,000 cases (though I have found a few minor gaps) and thousands of pages of administrative files. On that same hard drive, I have most of The A.P.R.O Bulletins, CUFOS IUR, NICAP’s UFO Investigator and the MUFON Journal beginning with the issues known as SKYLOOK. It also holds several dozen UFO books, including the manuscript versions of many of my own.

The point is that the hard drive is only slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes but not as thick. I can slip it into my pocket and carry to conferences, if the mood moves me. No matter where I am, I have access to a huge amount of data that not so long ago, would have been difficult to review.

To make this worse, and as I have said many times, my cell phone is more powerful than Star Trek’s communicator. I have access to all of human knowledge through the Internet. True, I have to ask for the right information, and sometimes there is a fee to access it, but it’s all there, in my cell phone which is even smaller than that external hard drive that I just mentioned.

Back in the 1960s, when Dr. Simon was treating the Hills and John Fuller was writing his book, no one thought in terms of digitally stored data. Having a book, and something that might have been a paper star chart (or some other flexible material that was rolled up) didn’t seem out of the ordinary. Astronauts, pilots and nearly everyone else thought of data retrieval in terms of something printed. But today, with my desk covered with electronic devices that give me access to so much information, I have to wonder why a spacefaring race would deal with books and paper. When Betty talked about a book in the 1960s, no one thought about that being unusual. Today, well, you have to wonder.

Is this a major problem with the Hill abduction? Nah. It’s just something that struck me as I was reading parts of Fuller’s book. Everything we need is available digitally with no need for ink and paper. There are schools that no longer teach cursive because that is now an obsolete form of communication.

And all that just makes me wonder about that book just laying around on that cabinet in an alien ship. Wouldn’t everything be available digitally? Wouldn’t they have advanced beyond pen and paper? Would they be carrying books? Did they even use it if they are telepathic… but that’s a question for another time.

Deming, New Mexico Movie - November 1957

It’s happened again. While searching for something else I stumbled onto something that is interesting. I have been unable to find much in the way of additional information and thought that I would ask for some help.

According to NICAP’s The U.F.O. Investigator of January, 1958:

At 7:30 p.m. [November 3, 1957] at Deming, New Mexico, a large brightly-lit object swept in over the area. It was seen by Robert Toby, radio station owner and GOC [Ground Observer Corps] and CBS-TV cameraman Russell B. Day.

As the UFO maneuvered through the clear sky, Day recorded its movements on 35 feet of film.

The APRO Bulletin for November, 1957, gives a little more information. There I learned that:

On 3 November, 1957, at 7:30 p.m. CBS-TV cameraman Russell B. Day filmed 35 to 40 feet of film of a UAO at Deming, New Mexico while perched atop the fire station in the G.O.C. tower. Day had spent six nights on watch for a UAO. With him were Bob Toby, owner of the local radio station, a G.O.C. observer and two teen-age boys. The object, a light described as larger than the bright planets, but smaller

Blogs of light photographed at Tremonton, Utah.

than the moon, came into sight, maneuvered about, changing from yellow to orange occasionally. There were no clouds, and visibility was good.

What is believed to have been the same object followed the automobile of Kenneth Clear with his wife and two sons for 15 miles on State Road 26 at 8 p.m. the same evening.

Given what was reported by APRO, my guess is that the film either showed nothing at all or a point of light that could have been anything at all. There was no reason for them to follow up on what was, essentially, a sighting of a light in the sky, with none of the EM Effects reported in Levelland by so many people the day before and earlier that morning.

However, if anyone living in the Deming, New Mexico, area can learn anything else about this case, I would like to know. Of course, we’re talking about a sighting that is more than 60 years old, so the avenues of investigation are probably limited to the local newspapers and the like. It just struck me that a film had been taken and there was nothing more about it that I could find.

The RB-47 Case, American Airlines and Original Sources

Over the last several weeks I have been looking into the RB-47 UFO sighting from July 17, 1957. It is an interesting case with the possibility of multiple chains of evidence but that is a discussion for another time. Right now I’m more interested in the problem of original sources.

Let me explain.

I thought that I would see what Richard Dolan had to say about the case and was a little surprised that he devoted only about a half page to it. What I found more interesting is a second case he described on that same page. He wrote, “On the same day as the RB-47 incident, an airliner one hundred miles east of El Paso nearly collided with a UFO ‘at least the size of a B-47.’ Two passengers were injured and hospitalized; no known aircraft was near.”

Well, I recognized the report because this aspect had been presented in some of the RB-47 case notes I had seen and was actually connected to it. The footnote didn’t provide much illumination. It took me to Timothy Good’s 1988 book, Above Top Secret and page 283.

Good reported, “On 17 July 1957, Flight 655 en route from Dallas to Los Angeles with Captain E. [identified as Ted in some sources] Bachner at the controls had a near miss with an object ‘at least the size of a B-47,’ 100 miles east of El Paso, Texas. Two passengers suffered slight injuries and had to be taken to hospital on landing. No known aircraft were in the vicinity at the time.”

His footnote cited Coral and Jim Lorenzen in UFOs: The Whole Story which was published in 1969. They mentioned it on page 79 in the Signet paperback. I didn’t have this book in my library and the reason seemed to be that I spent most of 1969 outside the United States. I didn’t have the opportunity to see it.

But, knowing Coral Lorenzen and the way she created her books, I thought that there might be a mention of this in The APRO Bulletin. I checked the September 1957 issue and on page three found another reference, which would be indirectly, I believe, the original source of the quotes by Dolan and Good.

Here we learn that “Ted” Bachner of American Airlines was flying a DC-6 and was about an hour out of Dallas. He said that he spotted an object about ten miles away, climbing fast. It was coming at him and he said that when he saw it wasn’t going to miss, he “dumped my ship [dived] 200 feet in a right turn. It whipped only 50 feet over our heads. It sure looked big up there.”

Lorenzen concluded her report writing, “It has been definitely established that no planes were in the area at the time.”

Well, that wasn’t exactly true. In the original reports found in the Project Blue Book file, it was suggested that the other aircraft was a B-36 but there were none of those in the area at the time which doesn’t, of course, eliminate all aircraft.

The El Paso newspapers, not to mention the Blue Book files, establish that American Airlines Flight No. 655, did serve to avoid another object. Two passengers were injured, and this, because it was a near miss, required documentation, reports and investigation. The mysterious object in the near miss was American Airlines Flight No. 966.

Brad Sparks interviewed American Airlines Director of Operations Larry L. Strain on February 3, 1976, who said that both Bachner and the captain of 966, T. A. Hinson, agreed in their written statements on file that they had been involved in the near miss on July 17. In other words, the pilots of both aircraft had been found and both had submitted the required documentation for a near miss, which allowed investigators to identify the specific flights.

There is additional documentation. In a November 8, 1957 letter by Roy Keeley of the Department of Commerce to Brigadier General Harold Watson and eventually forwarded to Major George Gregory at Blue Book, Keeley wrote, “….incident mentioned occurred on July 17, 1957, near El Paso, Texas, and involved American Airlines’ Flight No. 655. Investigation of this incident definitely established the fact that the unidentified flying object was American Airlines’ Flight No. 966, which had previously departed El Paso, Texas, enroute to Dallas, Texas.”

It is certain that this “UFO” case has been identified. Coral Lorenzen can be forgiven because, when she prepared The APRO Bulletin, the information was that Flight 655 had nearly missed an unidentified object. The solution wasn’t provided until some months later. That solution was part of the Blue Book file which was not only classified in 1957 and in 1969 when her book was published, but misfiled so that even the Condon Committee investigators couldn’t find it in the late 1960s.

But decades later, when Good and Dolan were writing, that solution was available. The August/September 1957 issue of NICAP’s U.F.O. Investigator contained information about the incident with the note that “a scheduled flight of an eastbound four-engine airliner was undoubtedly the ‘unknown’ though no negligence was indicated.” (Which was published after Coral Lorenzen’s note in the APRO Bulletin, but before her book was published… she should have known about it at that time.)

Klass referenced it in his 1974 book UFO’s Explained as part of his flawed analysis of the RB-47 case (which is a discussion for another time… but he puts Flight 966 in the traffic pattern at Love Field, Dallas when it was actually nearer El Paso).

 I found the problems with the sources by following the trail. I shouldn’t have had to do that. Other writers should have done it first when they cited the case. I found it all because I was attempting to verify, from original sources, what was claimed. I had an advantage, having read the various other accounts of the RB-47 incident that predated either Dolan’s or Good’s books but they should have found some of them as well.

The footnote I could have created for this aspect of the case would be (remembering that Good’s book was published in 1988 and Dolan’s in 2000):

Clark, Jerome. UFO Encyclopedia, Second Edition. Detroit: Omnigraphics, 1998: 781 – 783; Dolan, Richard. UFOs and the National Security State. Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads, 2000: 199; Gillmor, Daniel S.  ed. The Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects. New York: Bantam Books, 1969: 260 – 266; Klass, Philip J. The RB-47 Case – A New Explanation. Washington, D.C.: The Author, December 30, 1971 (see also, Klass, Philip J. UFOs Explained. New York: Random House, 1974; 186 – 215); McDonald, James E. “Science in Default: Twenty-two Years of Inadequate UFO Investigations.” In Carl Sagan and Thornton Page, eds. UFOs – A Scientific Debate, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972: 56 – 70; Printy, Tim. “The RB-47 Case: UFOlogy’s Best Evidence?” SUNlite 4,1 (January/February 2012): 1, 5 – 38; Project Blue Book Files, Microfilm Roll 28, Case 4810; “Scientists Say Near Collisions May Involve Space Vehicles,” The U.F.O. Investigator, August/September 1957: 9,; Thayer, Gordon David. “RB-47 Radar/Visual Sighting.” In Ronald Story, ed. The Encyclopedia of UFOs. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1980: 297 – 298; “Two Planes In Near Collisions With UAO,” The A.P.R.O. Bulletin, September 1957: 3

These entries refer, for the most part to the American Airlines flights and how they crept into this case. In the last few years I have tried to make the footnotes and citations as complete as possible. Quoting a single source that is not the original source doesn’t have the credibility that a footnote that refers to the original source or that provides information on a variety of sources has.

And for those who had not been keeping score, it is clear that the Air Force explanation for the RB-47 case, that it was the American Airlines airplane does not work because the aircraft were nowhere near one another. At the time the crew of the RB-47 was reporting a visual UFO sighting, that airliner was more than four or five hundred miles away in El Paso, sitting on the ground.