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.
