The
problem with chasing footnotes is that I never know when I’ll find something of
importance. Well, this isn’t exactly chasing a footnote to find the original
source, but it does involve a sighting of a landed object and the occupant seen
in conjunction with the sighting. This has been discussed in a couple of places
on the Internet in the last few days. This was the Temple, Oklahoma, sighting
of March 23, 1966. You can read about it here:
What
prompted this was a note from a researcher that suggested he had found a newspaper
article that mentioned some sort of design or insignia on the craft. He wrote
that he hadn’t read or seen anything like a symbol being addressed by others and
he found nothing about it in the Project Blue Book files.
According
to the article in the Amarillo Globe-Times, the object had a T over an L
and the numbers 168 or 468 on it. But this is not the first time that these
markings have been mentioned by others in the past. In fact, I mentioned those
letters and numbers in The Government UFO Files as I reviewed the case.
Well, I had a slightly different set of numbers, but I did address the issue.
And, by looking at the illustration, these numbers can be interpreted as TLA
rather than TL4. William Laxson himself was not sure if the second number (or
first depending on the interpretation) was a 1 or a 7.
That’s
not all. I found lots of other references to them as well. J. Allen Hynek reported the same thing in The
Hynek UFO Report, page 200 (1997, Barnes and Noble edition). Hynek
attributes the information to the Dallas Times – Herald and the
Associated Press of March 27, 1966.
Jerry Clark, in High Strangeness, reported,
" [William] Laxson recalled them as looking like the letter "T"
over "L", with four-digit numbers (either 4738 or 4138) immediately
underneath." He attributes this to Hayden Hewes in the Spring 1976 issue
of True Flying Saucers and UFO Quarterly, pages 12 - 17.
And, while the letters and numbers aren’t written about in the Blue
Book files, the illustration created by Laxson show the placement and
orientation of the numbers on the side of the craft. The “T” is somewhat
obscured, but it can be seen. That illustration is in the Blue Book files.
 |
| William Laxson's illustration of the craft. Drawing from the Project Blue Book files. |
 |
| The letters and numbers seen on the drawing. |
The question becomes, then, what is the best source for this?
Given that Laxson drew the craft and added the letters and numbers, this would
seem to be the best source. Those other sources provide most of the data and I’m
not exactly sure why we have the variations we do. I mean, the various entries have the same letters and numbers but some of those entries don't have all of them. I suppose we can say that everything
lines up fairly the same way and the only real question is if the second number
was a 1 or a 7.
The point here was to note that there were multiple sources for
the description of the letters and the numbers so that we didn’t have to rely
on the single story. We have Laxson’s original statements to the Air Force,
multiple newspaper articles about it, and of course, Hayden Hewes report based
on his interviews with the witnesses. Our examination of the illustration demonstrates
how this confusion came about.
The interesting thing, for me, was that this case is one of three
in the Project Blue Book files where a crew member is seen and described that
is labeled as “Unidentified,” rather than as some sort of psychological problem
of the witness.
