The Great Aztec Debate on Paracast

Well, the great Aztec debate is over and the winner is… Yeah, you’d think that but it was probably Scott Ramsey. After all, he had immersed himself in the case for twenty years and was able to divert the conversation into other arenas without doing much damage to his own point of view. You can listen to the show here:

NOW PLAYING! July 28, 2013 — Scott Ramsey and Kevin D. Randle

 Take, for example, this investigation that was apparently launched by the Air Force Office of Special Investigation into a claim that someone had offered for sale pictures of the Aztec flying saucer in late 1948. This was clearly a hoax of some kind because the man offering the pictures, a fellow named Cline, apparently didn’t exist and was never found. The Army CID and then the AFOSI were involved which seems to lend some credibility to the tale, but the reality is, while the military was involved, there was nothing to suggest that the pictures ever existed and that it seems to have been some sort of con. Just because Aztec and pictures were mentioned it doesn’t actually prove that something happened near Aztec.

Ramsey wrote, “A skeptic might suggest that the photo sting might have been part of a con game attempting to capitalize on Scully’s best-selling book, but the other interesting part of history is that Scully’s book was published, not yet on the booksellers’ shelves when this “sting” took place. If this were some crazy marketing scheme by Scully, he would surely have made reference to the Aztec photos in his book, but no such reference is found in the book to photographs other than the Dr. Gee comments about them.”

There are several flaws here, the first of which is that the publication date is not the date the books land in the bookstores. They’re usually there earlier than the publication date and are often for sale prior to that date.

But what is overlooked here, and which I didn’t think of while in the debate, is that Denver, where all this took place, was where Silas Newton, in March 1950, had made his famous UFO speech at the University of Denver. Newton was talking about a crash and mentioned specifically that one had fallen within 500 miles of Denver.

In fact, according to newspapers and other documents, there had been a lot of discussion of the UFO crash in the Four Corners area of New Mexico since the beginning of 1950. In Scully’s book (page 20 of the old hardback), Scully wrote:

In fact the night the Denver Post was exposing Scientist X and the Farmington citizens were exposing Operation Hush-Hush, I was dining in Hollywood with the man all Denver was hunting for. He had just talked to George Koehler in Denver by long distance. Koehler had worked for him and had married his nurse. The Farmington report had set Denver in an uproar, Koehler told him.

“Do you remember my telling you,” Scientist X said as he hung up, “that the first flying saucer was found on a ranch twelve miles from Aztec?”

I remembered when he reminded me but I had forgotten. “Yes,” I said, “I remember now.”

“Well, he said, “Farmington is only twenty-eight miles from that ranch…”

The point here is that the name of Aztec and details of the crash were being bandied about many months before Scully’s book came out, and many in the Denver area were aware of the case. So, a hoax, appearing in Denver in the weeks after the official publication date of Scully’s book isn’t all that impossible… in fact, had it been any other city besides Denver, that whole episode might have greater importance.

Had I known that this would become an important point in the debate, I would have been ready for it. Scott chose the ground for the battle and I moved to meet him, rather than retreating for an advantage. My mistake.

So, let’s talk about the conman, Silas Newton. Scott said that I had said that when Newton died 140 claims were filed against his estate. This figure came from Jerry Clark in his UFO Encyclopedia and he cited Bill Moore as the source. Scott said that he had only been able to document one of these claims which, to me, is one too many (though claims filed against an estate are not all that rare). The suggestion was that the information came from Moore and therefore was unreliable because Moore, in 1989 had committed UFOlogcial suicide admitting to various and somewhat unethical activities. Moore was unreliable. We can ignore what Moore said for that reason and I just wasn’t going to defend Moore as a researcher, given what I knew about him.

But the information about Newton being a conman runs far beyond what Moore had said in 1989. According to J. P. Cahn, Newton had a long history of engaging in shady activities. In 1931, he was arrested for conspiracy and was later arrested for larceny, false stock statements, and interstate transportation of stolen property. He seemed to have a long arrest record, but in many of the cases had the charges dismissed when Newton made restitution.

Not exactly a sterling reputation… and one that didn’t seem to end until his death. So, the information is that there had been 140 claims against his estate, but nearly all of them dropped when it was learned that he had about $16,000.00 in assets. I suppose the single case that was left, at least according to Scott, was the one that wasn’t dropped.

We talked about the case in Denver in which Newton and GeBauer were on trial for fraud. They lost the trial but the debate seemed to center on whether this was a criminal trial or a civil trial, but in the end the distinction isn’t great… meaning that the judgment went against them. They lost and were forced to pay restitution and to prove what a sterling character Newton was, he never did make restitution.

So the real point wasn’t how many people attempted to have Newton pay them after Newton died, but that he had a long history of con games.

I asked Scott if he had ever interviewed Manuel Sandoval, a part-time police officer from Cuba, New Mexico who had been on the scene. Scott readily admitted that he hadn’t and that was clear from the book. I have been back through this book (having not read it for about two years) and I still say that it seems that he had interviewed Sandoval, given the way the chapters are written. Scott said it’s clear that the information came from Sandoval’s best friend but if you read the information starting on page 3, it seems that he is quoting Sandoval… and he does again later in the book. This point might have been a little too subtle, and Scott argued that it wasn’t true.

We talked about the information that came from Donald Bass, known as Sam, which came by way of Virgil Riggs. I noted that there was no confirmation that Bass had been killed by a hit and run driver in Vietnam as alleged. Scott said that the database I used suggested there might be omissions in it, but there is little room for error. I did check others, but cited only the one. Scott had no information to refute this only that the one database might have been incomplete.

Here’s the problem. Scott wrote that he had Bass’ service number but apparently has not checked with the Records Center in St. Louis. I sent him the information on how to access that information but have not heard back. If Bass had been killed in Vietnam, the St. Louis Records Center would be the final authority on it because it would be noted in his record. Given that Scott has a service number for the guy, we can get information about him. This point should be checked.

This is a minor point, but what I was suggesting was that some of the avenues, some of the easy ones had not been followed. It would only take a short letter and a stamp to get the information, but that hasn’t been done. Instead Scott just said the database might have been incomplete, which doesn’t really advance his position or validate the claim.

And while it seemed that the debate went Scott’s way most of the time, I believe there was one knockout punch I delivered. I asked if Scott had any documentation for the Aztec crash that preceded Scully’s reports on it. A newspaper clipping, a diary, a letter, anything with a date that preceded Scully, but he said he didn’t have anything like that.

That might be the real game changer. Something, anything, that can be shown to have been written before Scully released the information, would go a long way to validate the Aztec crash. At this point there are no newspaper articles, no magazine reports, and no government documents to show this.

There were some other points that were made, but not much of substance. I mentioned that the man who was sheriff in 1947 had said it didn’t happen. Scott countered that he had talked to the family and well, maybe that wasn’t quite true… I’ll stick with what Coral Lorenzen had to say when she talked to the sheriff in the mid-1970s.

I mean that’s sort of where it all ended. Scott believes there was a crash and I do not. He is required to prove his case and I am not. He is the one making the claims of the crash so the burden of proof is on him. I don’t believe he met that burden, but I do remember the Mogul debate that took place in Roswell in 1997 between Karl Pflock and me. Those who believed Mogul thought Karl had won and those who did not believed I had won. I don’t know if either one of us swayed an opinion and it was the same thing here. I don’t think either of us swayed an opinion.

Mogul and NOTAMs

I’ve grown tired of this NOTAM game but have to wonder why the skeptics just don’t attempt to answer the question themselves… and why do they demand that I answer their questions when they continue to ignore mine? What is this double standard where all things skeptical are accepted without critical thought but anything that might suggest an answer they don’t like is attacked?

And remember what Sherlock Holmes said about the dog that didn’t bark… but more on that later.

Anyway, take, for example, the Phil Klass diatribe against Bob Jacobs. Jacobs made a suggestion that he had been involved in a UFO case now known as the Big Sur UFO Sighting, and in the course of the discussion mentioned a paper about some aspect of it. He cited it properly, and provided Klass with all the information needed for Klass to access the paper himself but that’s not what Klass wanted. He wanted Jacobs to copy the paper and send the copy to him. Jacobs refused because, according to Jacobs, he didn’t like the tone of Klass’ letter to him. So, Klass sent a letter to Jacobs’ bosses making all sorts of allegations. We’ve explored all that before (see this blog on September 11, 2011), but the point is how Klass seemed to believe that Jacobs owed him the paper.

And now we have a similar situation about the requirements of NOTAMs for the Mogul flights. Make no mistake; this flap over NOTAMs is another red herring by the skeptical side. They demand that I supply them with NOTAMs for Mogul Flights No. 5 and 6. But it really makes no difference what those NOTAMs might have said because the issue is the NOTAM for Flight No. 4 and not those for other, later flights. What did Flight No. 4’s NOTAM say or not say is irrelevant since there was no NOTAM issued for it.

A quick review… according to the documentation available, the CAA (which was the forerunner of the FAA) required a NOTAM, an announcement about the Mogul flights because these long trains of balloons, rawin radar targets and other equipment could reach 600 feet long. If these balloon arrays drifted into the clouds, then aircraft could conceivably fly into them causing an accident. Flight crews had to know what was out there and the NOTAMs were a way of telling them that these flying monstrosities were one of those aerial hazards they might encounter (and yes, I used the word monstrosities on purpose to annoy some of you).

I wanted to see what the Mogul team had to say about the balloon arrays and how they were described in the NOTAMs. I have since learned that these arrays were not all constructed of the same components, something you wouldn’t know just by looking at the skeptical arguments (and something that I’ll explore in a later post). Documentation showed that the arrays sometimes differed from one another in significant ways and that in some cases there were no rawin targets included at all. Flight No. 5 had no rawin radar targets, the configuration for Flight No. 7 had no long string of balloons one above the next but clusters of balloons and Flight No. 10 (July 5,1947) used a polyethylene balloon as a lifter rather than the smaller neoprene balloons.

But I digress…

So, I spent about a year and a half chasing the NOTAMs, using the Internet, telephone and the snail mail. I contacted regional offices and the FAA in Washington, D.C. asking if NOTAMs had been archived at some point and where that archive might be. I expected to find little or nothing because NOTAMs aren’t of great historical significance, and the information in them is quite perishable. They might tell you a runway was closed for repairs or a lighting system was down at an airport. When the situation changed a new NOTAM would be issued sort of cancelling the last, or the NOTAM would expire and the document tossed away.

I found no repository. The only place I haven’t heard much from is the FAA office in El Paso where the Mogul NOTAMs were issued, other than to learn they don’t have anything obvious available. There might be something filed away somewhere, or at one of the regional airports around El Paso, or more likely, some airport around Alamogordo might have a file laying around with something in it… though I doubt it.

So now that I tire of the game of ignoring the skeptics about this, I reveal the answer they so patiently have demanded (did you notice the disconnect here, patiently demanded… can you actually do that?)

Even though it is a red herring and of no importance, I reveal that I learned there is no repository and apparently are no records of the NOTAMs for the Mogul flights.

And now for the dog that didn’t bark…

How do I know that there was no NOTAM for Flight No. 4? Charles Moore, in a letter dated August 10, 1995 and sent to New Mexico Representative Steven Schiff, told us. He wrote, “Since we launched from just within the restricted air space associated with the White Sands Proving ground and expected the balloons to rise high above the civil air space, we did not notify the CAA in El Paso.”

Now why in the world would Moore write such a thing as Schiff began his investigation? What would be his motivation? What does it say about the mythical Flight No. 4?

I’ll let you all ponder that, but I think the answer is fairly obvious. I’ll simply ask, “Why bring it up at all?”

Roswell Festival 2013

The 2013 Roswell Festival celebrating the 66^th anniversary of the UFO crash has come and gone (and I will note here that to appease the skeptics, I probably should have said alleged UFO crash). Held, as normal over the Fourth of July Weekend and sponsored by the International UFO Museum and Research Center, there was a full slate of speakers and presentations that covered the whole gamut of UFOs including a slight foray into science fiction.

On the science fiction side there was Tom Kirkbride, who is becoming a regular feature at the Festival. He is the author of the Gamadin books that he says evolved from a love of science fiction and his desire to write a “character” driven adventure for young adults. It is a series for boys that will appeal to girls, at least according to the promotional displays around Kirkbride.

Sharon King also writes science fiction for a younger crowd. Her latest book is Oops was Bullied? This is the story of a tiny alien named Oops and the Earth girl who befriends her. King said that her ideas were inspired by an earlier visit to the Roswell area.

At the other end of the spectrum, there were those who are big with the UFO crowd and who have made the rounds at various UFO functions. Most popular of those

Travis Walton 2012

who are involved with alien abduction was Travis Walton. I was told that his books are difficult to keep stocked in the Museum’s bookstore because of his popularity. Walton’s tale of being hit by a beam of light from an alien craft and his captivity for five days seems to resonate with the crowd. In the times I’ve met him, he has always seemed to be somewhat understated, meaning I guess, a little reserved or quiet but adamant about what he had seen and what he had experienced.

The interesting thing here is that those who were with him that night have remained steadfast in their support of their story and their observations which certainly suggest Walton had undergone a truly strange experience. After so many years, had this been a hoax, you would have expected some cracks in the story. The best that can be said is that Steve Pierce told Philip Klass it was a hoax, but that whole episode was covered last year in my interview with Pierce.

Kathleen Marden, Betty Hill’s niece, was there as well. She seems to take a more scientific approach to alien abduction than most, searching for ways to verify the experiences of those others and to build a file of corroborative evidence. She attempts to look at some of what I think of as the “hidden facts” about abduction such as the blood types of those who have been abducted. If there is an anomaly, meaning for example, that a certain group of people with these hidden attributes are abducted more frequently than those who are not, this information might tell us something about alien abduction. These could be things such as blood type or those who are left-handed, as just two examples.

Derrel Sims, who has billed himself as the “Alien Hunter,” after missing last year was back this year. He hosted a number of workshops that dealt with alien a

Derrel Sims 2011

bduction and his views on the subject.

One of the things covered this year was the Citizen Hearing in Washington, D.C. Both Stan Friedman and Don Schmitt, who were in Washington for that Hearing, discussed what had gone on there, the format used, and the outcome of that event. As I have mentioned here a number of times, I thought the event was well done, seemed to gain some support from those who usually mock anything UFO related (meaning, for example, that the New York Times report on the Hearing was favorable rather than slanted against it simply because it dealt with alien visitation).

Quite naturally, there were panels on the Roswell UFO crash that included Schmitt and Friedman, but also Frank Kimbler and this year Jesse Marcel, Jr. Of all those on the panel, Jesse was the only one to have lived the event and held some of the actual debris.

Kimbler enjoyed a little fame in the last year when his discoveries out on the Brazel ranch site were featured on the National Geographic channel’s Chasing UFOs.

Frank Kimbler

Kimbler had talked of finding some buttons in the field that were of military origin. The Chasing UFOs crowd found a button as well, but it was from a Class A uniform, and not military fatigues as the buttons found by Kimbler were. That the fatigue buttons were metallic suggested they were old enough to have been dropped by soldiers cleaning the field in 1947… the button found by the Chasing UFOs crew was simply not old enough to have been dropped in 1947. History got in the way to prove that the Chasing UFOs button was not old enough.

Crowds this year seemed to be larger than those in the past and it might be there has been a lot of UFO coverage lately or it might simply have been the way the Fourth of July holiday worked out. Many took the Friday after the Fourth off which gave them an extra travel day… and some, it seems, took most of that week off to stretch their vacation days. Whatever the reason, more people were there this year than last (when the holiday didn’t really help.)

Whatever the reason for the increase in attendance that increase will surely result in a festival next year. Anything that alerts the public to the events in New Mexico in 1947 can’t be a bad thing, and the diversity of the programs and the presenters certainly represent a wide range of views.

Mogul and Roswell

I was doing a video lap the other day, which is what I call channel surfing. I found a documentary about Roswell and they were conducting an experiment to recreate the Mogul balloon array and then see what would happen when it fell back to earth. They kept the balloons tethered, I don’t think the array was quite as large as those run in 1947, and they shot down the balloons with a pellet gun. Their debris field was small, there were large amounts of twine or rope that held the array together and the radar targets were not particularly degraded.

Or, in other words, it didn’t match the descriptions of the debris or the field given by those who saw it in 1947.

But that wasn’t what annoyed me about this. It was the idea that the Mogul explanation had enough merit that the producers of the show thought that they needed to attempt to replicate it. It was that anyone who was paying attention still thought that the Mogul explanation was viable based on the documented evidence that is available to us now.

Crary on the left.

So, let’s just start that whole debate again by saying, there was no Mogul Flight No. 4. Dr. Albert Crary’s field notes and his diary entries are quite clear on the point. Flight No. 4 was cancelled… end of story. Period.

Okay, end of story, semi-colon.

Here’s the deal. Crary made it clear that Flight No. 4 had been cancelled. He said that specifically and the other historical evidence backs it up. The first flight noted in New Mexico was Flight No. 5, and that was recovered. Had there been a Flight No. 4 as successful as Charles Moore claimed it was, (with all his nonsensical but very extensive research conducted in the 1990s using winds aloft data from 1947), it would have been noted as the first flight.

Moore in Socorro.

The second notation for June 4, the date of the cancelled Flight No. 4, was that they had flown a cluster of balloons, with a sonobuoy in the afternoon. Crary only told us that they had good reception on the ground for the radio signal but not so good on the B-17 that was also used in their attempts to detect a signal. But he did tell us what that flight was and it did not have the rawin targets. It was just a cluster of balloons and a sonobuoy.

A cluster of balloons is not the same as a full Mogul array. Crary made the distinction in his field notes about this, when all of that material is reviewed. It is quite clear what happened. There was no Flight No. 4 to drop debris up on the Foster ranch, no Flight No. 4 that would have presented a threat to aerial navigation, hence no NOTAM filed for the flight, and nothing to indicate that the balloons headed off to the northeast, flying over those distinctively named towns that Charles Moore remembered all those years later to prove that Flight No. 4 not

A Mogul launch for the Press.

only existed, but had flown off in the proper direction.

We have been pussy-footing around this for years, allowing those who wish to force their views on us set the ground rules, pick the fight, and then we sit back and listen to what they have to say even when that position is indefensible. The field notes and diary make it clear and I do not understand why that clarity is being obscured nor do I understand why there are those who refuse to understand it…

Well, that’s not true. Without Flight No. 4, Mogul fails as an answer. It cannot account for the debris because it never left Alamogordo. If there was no Flight No. 4, then Moore’s role as the man who launched the Roswell case falters and fails and the Mogul experiments are reduced to an attempt to spy on the Soviets. He doesn’t find his name in the newspapers and he isn’t visited by those researching the case and he certainly doesn’t get to appear on TV or participate in a book.

So, there was no Flight No. 4, and I’m not even going to bother with the argument that Mogul wasn’t all that secret… with pictures of it published in the newspapers on July 10, 1947, and the name being used in all sorts of non-classified publications which eliminates another of the legs for the Mogul explanation.

My point is that we shouldn’t even be dealing with this anymore just as we are no longer dealing with a stray rocket or missile (and yes there is a difference) from White Sands, an experimental aircraft accident, an aircraft accident involving an atomic weapons, or a bunch of other things such as John Keel’s Fugo Balloons that have been ruled out by evidence. Mogul should join those and we just shouldn’t entertain arguments about this any longer.

Mogul is a distraction that does not work. Each time someone proposes it, we should tell them the flight was cancelled and demand they provide evidence that it wasn’t. We should tell them that a cluster of balloons is not a Mogul flight and that the debris found on the Foster ranch was simply too wide spread to be that from Mogul let alone a cluster of balloons with a sonobuoy.

We tell them Mogul doesn’t work and if they have no evidence for it, then give it up. Find something that does in fact work, and let us see that evidence.

USS Helm Revisited

A few weeks back, I mentioned a UFO sighting from the USS Helm that had been reported in the MUFON UFO Journal in July 1983. This was of a disk-shaped object that had circled the Guadalcanal invasion fleet and had been fired on by a number of the ships. The UFO reacted to the hostile fire and sped off.

USS Helm

I mentioned that on the dates the source, who was not identified, gave, there was nothing in the deck logs to support the report but allowed how he might have gotten the dates wrong. I suggested that a more thorough search be attempted simply to be sure that we had the facts straight.

First, let me point out that in 1983 we didn’t have the research sources available that we have today. I can go on the Internet and usually in a matter of minutes, if not find an answer, I can find out how to get an answer. As an aside, just today, through email, I received an answer to an inquiry that I would never had been able to make in 1983, simply because everything seems to be on the web… more on that in another post.

A search of the deck logs of the USS Helm for November and December 1941; and for July 1942 through November 1942 has been completed. A day-to-day search for anything that remotely resembles the story first reported in 1983 has failed. The closest we can come is to an entry on July 6, 1942 (a Monday if anyone cares) that at 0325 (or 3:25 in the morning), those on watch “Sighted steady white light bearing 061 [degrees], distance about 10 miles; unidentified.”

Deck Log, July 6, 1942

Not really much here and no reason to assume the light was anything other than something of a terrestrial nature. Granted, showing a light in a combat zone with all kinds of trigger-happy people around, on both sides, isn’t very smart but there is no reason to assume anything else about it. This light didn’t buzz the ship, or the fleet, and no one fired on it.

While it seems that the USS Helm was involved in the Guadalcanal invasion in the beginning of August 1942, there is nothing to suggest they fired, or anyone else fired, on a disk-shaped object at any time in August. And there was nothing to suggest the incident took place in October 1942 either. The USS Helm wasn’t near Guadalcanal but was operating off the coast of Australia.

With no documentation to support the tale, it must be rejected. We have no source that has been named, we have two separate dates for the event, and we have now reviewed the deck logs of the ship involved and found no support for the tale on those dates. A search of the deck logs covering several months has failed to find anything even remotely like the story told. The only conclusion to be drawn is that this event, as described, did not happen… and since it was not reported to anyone prior to 1983 or more than forty years later, there is no reason to accept it today. This should be removed from the list of UFO sightings.

Let me add this. I can see no blame to attach to Paul C. Cerny or Robert Neville because, in 1983, they didn’t have the resources to take this to the end. I’m not even sure the deck logs would have been available to civilian researchers then and if they were I’m not sure what you would have had to do to access them. Today, we all have access to a wide range of documentation from all kinds of sources and we should use them to verify our reports. We ignore the documentation at our peril.

But, to me, this case is now closed.

Philip Klass and Frederick Valentich

Back some time ago I put together a long article about Phil Klass and some of the dirty tricks he pulled on UFO researchers, investigators and witnesses. In the course of that article I suggested that Klass sometimes provided explanations for sightings that were not in keeping with the evidence available. The case in point was Klass’ claim that Frederick Valentich was a drug smuggler because he had four life preservers on his aircraft. Like many others, I never understood how you could make the leap from the number of life preservers on an aircraft to drug smuggling, but in the world of UFOs, if you can’t fight the evidence, then smear those associated with the case.

Some in the skeptical world were not satisfied with my response that Russ Estes had interviewed Klass a number of years ago and was told the smuggling theory by Klass. Since I didn’t have the direct quote, they wished to reject the information, though Klass’ assertion was widely reported in various other forums. In the world of the skeptic, you just never step on the toes of a fellow skeptic. You support his point of view to ridiculous lengths.

I mention all this because the Valentich sighting has popped up again and Klass’ claim about him has surfaced again. This time links of various statements made by Klass have been posted so that all can listen to his words and decide if the claim is outrageous, a distortion of the situation or if there might be some validity in it.

You can now download the debate between Don Ecker and Klass in which Klass makes the claim again. This is the whole thing so that you can listen to it in the context of that debate. It can be found at:

http://tinyurl.com/p9jvru3

 For those interested, this debate was covered on the Paracast as well, and those debates can be found here:

http://tinyurl.com/nbk2po7

http://tinyurl.com/pnmjw6h

This might not end the debate about Klass and his war on UFOs, UFO researchers or UFO witnesses, but it does demonstrate the point that I was making.

More Pre-Arnold UFO Sightings

I have been chasing sightings that predate Arnold, but just those made in the months prior to that rather than in the years earlier. I’ve been looking for documentation that proves a sighting was pre-Arnold, meaning that it was published in some form before June 24, 1947. My luck has been sporadic. I’ve found some but there are more out there. The trick was to figure out where to look.

There are many cases that were reported after Arnold but that were made prior to him. For example, there is a report from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma dated May 17, 1947, made by Byron Savage who said that he, and his wife, had seen a round, flat object traveling nearly due north at a speed estimated at three times that of a jet. I have found nothing that documents this sighting prior to Arnold, but the Air Force accepted the date and listed it in the master index for Project Blue Book.

Another May sighting took place on the nineteenth at Manitou Springs [Colorado Springs], Colorado but wasn’t published until June 28 in the Denver Post. Dean Hauser, along with six other railroad workers, said that he and they watched a silver, metallic object fly in from the northwest, stop overhead and then maneuver erratically for some twenty minutes before it disappeared to the west-northwest in a cloudless, blue sky.

A similar case, dated June 12, 1947, came from Weiser, Idaho (with Weiser being redacted from the Blue Book master index for some reason). According to the information, Mrs. H. Erickson (identified that way as a convention of the time) said that she had seen two high-speed, round objects at a high altitude. They were flying in a trail formation and left a vapor trail that persisted from more than an hour.

All these sightings were by civilians, though Savage is described as a field engineer. I mention this simply because it seems that in early 1947, the military was much more interested in sightings by military pilots. And, since a military pilot, in late 1946 or early 1947 might be inclined to mention such things through military channels, those at ATIC would be aware of their sightings. This means that there was a mechanism for collecting the data on such observations, but nothing shows up in the Project Blue Book files.

There are many examples of these early sightings by military pilots. The first listed military sighting is from June 28, 1947 in Montgomery, Alabama. There was another civilian pilot sighting on June 14, 1947, but like so many others it was not reported until after Arnold. The witness, Dick Rankin, claimed some 7000 hours of flight experience, but was on the ground when he saw the “V” formation fly over. In a statement to the military, Rankin wrote:

My name is [redacted, but is Richard Rankin]. I am 47 years old and have flown since I was nineteen years old. I first soloed in an aircraft in1919 … I have accomplished 7000 hours in the air as pilot of both civilian and Military aircraft [though there is nothing in his statements to suggest that he had ever been a military pilot only that he had flown military aircraft]. I am well acquainted with most articles that one would see in the air and I feel that I am well qualified to say when I see articles flying through the air, although I would not attempt to say that I am infallible… The following is an account of what I saw on 14 June 1947 from the yard of my home at [redacted], Bakersfield, California.

At approximately 1200 noon on the 14 of June I was lying in the front yard of my home. There was a lad mowing the lawn at the time. I looked up into the sky and saw ten articles flying from South to th [sic] North at what I would judge to be 350 miles per hour. As I have stated before, I have done quite a lot of map work with the US Forest Service. I distinctly remember that at the time I saw the articles I mentioned it to the lad who was mowing the lawn at the time. I told the lad that the objects were in all probability some sort of Army or Navy test planes from the nearby test centers on the deserts of Southern California…. At the time I did not give the slightest thought to anything but that the objects were some sort of test ship for the Government Service. The objects resembled the pictures that I have seen of the XF5U-1, the so-called “Flying Flapjack” that the Navy is testing. After the objects disappeared I proceeded into the house and had my noon meal. At approximately 1415 [2:15 p.m.] I went back into the yard to sit and lie in the shade. At this time the objects reappeared going from North to South, although this time there were only seven of the articles. When I first saw the original ten objects they were flying in a “V” formation with one object straggling in the rear of the formation. When the objects appeared the second time they were still in the “V” formation although there was only seven of the objects at this time. I remember at this time that I told the lad, who was still working on the lawn, that probably three of the objects had proceeded back to their base on a different course. I actually thought that this was the case, that the other three objects had probably gone back to their base on the other side of the mountains from Bakersfield. A week later when I read of Mr. Kenneth Arnold claiming that he had seen articles flying through the air over the Cascade Mountains in Washington, I realized that the articles I saw were probably the same thing. I was still reluctant to mention this to anyone thinking that they would probably say I was crazy. After sometime I mentioned the incident to the editor of the “Oregonian”, a Portland, Oregon newspaper. At this time I was in Portland for the remainder of the summer…

The sighting is interesting because of the description of the objects, which match that given by Arnold. Had he told this to anyone prior to Arnold’s sighting, had there been any sort of documentation of it prior to Arnold, and had he not mentioned Arnold by name and location, suggesting that he was well aware of the Arnold sighting, this would be a wonderful bit of corroboration for Arnold.

The Flying Flapjack

There is another document in the Project Blue Book files about this, and it is a “Memorandum for the Officer in Charge.” The military was apparently attempting to find Dick Rankin in California, and ran their check through various Palm Springs agencies including the police, the newspaper, Chamber of Commerce but could find almost no record of him there.

On July 11, 1947, according to the Memorandum, the Postmaster in Palm Springs was asked if a person named [redacted, but obviously Richard Rankin] had ever lived in Palm Springs. Ryland M. Gorham said that he, Gorham, had lived there for 14 years and he didn’t recognize the Rankin’s name, which isn’t all that surprising given the large transient population in the area, not to mention the fact that in 1947, Rankin lived in Bakersfield. The problem was the newspaper article, which seems to have generated the investigation mentioned, “He [Rankin] now operates a string of auto courts, spending his winters at Palm Springs.” That same article mentions that Rankin has seen the objects over Bakersfield, which would suggest another avenue for investigation as well.

What makes this disturbing, considering all that has transpired here in the last few days (meaning the NSA monitoring of nearly everything in the name of National Security) is the following from that Memorandum:

A check of General Delivery records revealed a letter addressed to Mr. [redacted, but so poorly done that the last name Rankin can easily be deduced], Palm Springs, mailed from Cicero, Indiana, postmarked at Cicero, Indiana July 1947, at 5 p.m. The return address on the envelope was listed as the Gospel Tract Worker, Route 1, Cicero, Indiana. Mr. Gorham permitted the contents of the envelope to be examined inasmuch as the contents was [sic] 3^rd Class material and the envelope not sealed. The records were of a religious nature concerning the sad plight of American non-church goers, the second coming of Christ and etc. Superintendent of Mails was contacted by Mr. Gorham and stated that there was a Mr. [redacted, but Rankin] who are received mail through the general delivery office of the Palm Springs Post Office, but that the last mail, other than the letter mentioned above, came through the Post Office approximately two years ago. The Superintendent of Mails seem to have a very uncanny memory and recalled where the mail coming for [redacted… Rankin] had been addressed to. This mail was addressed to [redacted but is Richard Rankin] in care of a trailer camp located in Palm Springs. On calling the trailer camp office, it was found that Mr. [redacted… Rankin] had lived in the camp but departed approximately two years ago and left no forwarding address. Investigation is continuing in an effort to locate Mr. [redacted… Rankin] and obtain a statement from him.

Clearly they finally succeeded in finding Rankin and getting a statement. Interestingly, his return address, though mostly redacted, showed that he was in Portland, Oregon. I’m not sure why it was such a task for them to find him, given the information in the newspaper which said, “Rankin, who plans to spend the summer here at 834 N. E. Simpson street [sic]…”

Arnold's original drawing of the object for the Army.

This sighting can be seen as extremely important. The description of the UFOs, that they looked like the Flying Flapjack, matches that given by Arnold. And, it matches that of the photographs taken by William Rhodes, about two weeks after the Arnold sighting was reported in the newspapers.

To look at all this from the perspective of someone who accepts the idea of extraterrestrial visitation, this information is important. First, those earlier sightings show that something was happening before Arnold. Second, Rankin’s report reinforces Arnold because Rankin described an object that resembled the objects Arnold saw. Third, the Rhodes photographs further reinforces Arnold because it is another sighting from another part of the country that resembles what Arnold saw. None of these men knew one another and each reported his sighting independently of the other. The timing is interesting because all the sightings were within a month of each other, suggesting that they were seeing something real. Each of these sightings seems to support the other, and then add in those sightings from May and early June and a very interesting and realistic picture emerges. Everything suggests that what is

The Rhodes Photograph, July 7, 1947

being seen is something that was not created on Earth.

But, looking at all this from the other side of the spectrum, that is from the skeptical side, we must note that Rankin didn’t make his report until after Arnold. Rankin, in fact, mentions Arnold which means that he was aware of Arnold’s sighting and Arnold’s description of the objects. Rhodes’ photographs were taken over two weeks after Arnold’s sighting, which means, if they were faked, Rhodes had the information about what the objects looked like. While none of the men knew each other, the Arnold sighting was reported around the country. It is clear that Rankin know about it before he made his report, and Rhodes, coming after Arnold, certainly could have been influenced by it. While it is true that neither man knew the other, it is also true that those following Arnold could easily have drawn their descriptions from him.

The final point here is that the government investigators on this case pawed through Rankin’s mail. While I suppose, since it was third class mail and the envelop was unsealed it was legal for them to look at it, that still doesn’t mean they should have gone through it. I suppose the legal definition would be no expectation of privacy because of the classification of the mail and the open envelop.

For those interested, the Air Force finally determined that Rankin had seen birds. To me, it seems ridiculous that a pilot with 7000 hours of flight time would be fooled by birds. If he was unfamiliar with the sky and what to expect, had he seen the birds under unusual conditions, then it might be conceivable. But there was nothing in the weather reports to suggest that viewing conditions would have obscured birds to the point where the Rankin would be unable to identify them.

At any rate, this is one of the sightings made before Arnold that appears in the Project Blue Book files. For those keeping score at home, in the great AMC analysis of these early sightings, this is Incident No. 29. I don’t know how the sightings were assigned numbers. Arnold was Incident No. 17.

Although this is another of those pre-Arnold sightings, it wasn’t reported until after Arnold. Had there been documentation for it prior to Arnold, it would be a valuable observation. After Arnold, it is interesting, but nowhere as important.

Pre-Arnold UFO Sightings

I have been searching for any documentation of a flying saucer, a disk-like craft, being described in the months prior to the Arnold sighting of June 24, 1947. There are many such references, but all of them seem to have been published after Arnold. The Project Blue Book files list several… and it should be noted that there are fewer listed there today than there were originally… the lone exception, as mentioned, is the Walter Minczewski sighting in April 1947. Michael Swords told me that he suspected that documentation for it existed in the Weather Bureau but he had seen nothing. For me, with this particular question, I had to know that the documentation existed. It was about being able to wave a document of known provenance and showing that it mentioned a disk-shaped craft and with an established date before Arnold.

Yes, and to head off any discussions of saucers in the decades that preceded Arnold, I know that these descriptions had been used. Yes, there was documentation for it, but I was looking for something specific in the months prior to Arnold.

Thanks to the people over at the NICAP site especially Michael Tarbell, and Steve Sawyer who made sure that I saw it, we have an interesting sighting from December 30, 1946. It appears in a mimeographed publication known as “Round Robin.” It is dated February 1947 [which given how these things worked, might not have been published until March or April, but it is dated February], and has the title, strangely, “Space Ships Again?”

The editor noted that they had published, in December, a report by Ella Young from 1927 and another sighting of “remarkable lights seen on 20^th of last October.” This report, including corroboration of a friend, said:

Yesterday, Dec. 30, [1946] I was with a friend on the high ground that curves southward from Morro Bay [California]. We were looking at the sky to the south where the sun had gone down – golden, with a bank of cloud mist, also golden, on the horizon. The time was 25 min. of six. Suddenly a dark object appeared in the sky; it came forward and grew more distinct. It was very black on the golden sky, and was coming forward head-on – an air machine of some sort. It had a bat-like appearance owing to the curve of its wings. There may have been motion at the extreme tip of each wing but I could not be sure. It appeared to stand still for several minutes and the form was most distinct. Suddenly it with lowered itself toward the horizon, or the bank of cloud mist made an upward movement (perhaps both movements occurred), for the machine passed behind the cloud and did not again appear. Immediately afterward a great flush of colour spread on the sea… I enclose a statement from my friend…

This Ella Young, described as the distinguished author seems to have been a fairly well-known poet. She was born in Ireland but immigrated to the United States in 1925, and moved to California. Given that information, and the spelling of “colour,” I suspect this is the right woman.

The friend is not identified in the “Round Robin” and I have been unable to learn who it was, though this sighting is in Harold Wilkins’ Flying Saucers on the Attack [page 40 of the American paperback edition]. He describes “…Young as an American authoress, who wrote to Mr. Meade Layne, M.A., who has devoted much time to the investigation of these remarkable phenomena, seen at various dates…” Although Wilkins reproduces Young’s statement in his book, that didn’t provide evidence of the report prior to Arnold. Interestingly, he also alters it, changing the time from “25 min. of six,” to “and the time was 5:35 p.m.,” and removes both the underlining and the parenthetical statement.

The “Round Robin” editor also printed the note that came from Young’s friend but without a name, it does little to actually corroborate the story. It was signed as “An Interested Observer,” and it said:

A friend [Young] and I were sitting near Morro Bay about 5:30 in the evening of Dec. 30, watching the sunset over the sea. As brilliant colours poured into the sky, golden and bright red, a large blackish shape appeared. We thought it was a large airplane but noticed that the wings were larger than usual and that they curved like the wings of a bat or a bird. They were wider and broader, also. The shape flew slightly toward land, then hung poised in the air for at least more than five minutes. Then rather suddenly a large band of golden cloud floated in front of it, blotting it out completely. The sunset deepened in colour but the shape had disappeared. I thought this might be of interest to you, as there is no doubt about the shape.

Well, not exactly a disc shape, but then, it sort of matches the description given by Arnold some months later. Sure, you have to interpret what is meant by the descriptions and by doing that you certainly can slip off the rails. For those who think they might want to track down Ella Young, which wouldn’t be all that difficult given her writing career, I will note that she died on July 23, 1956.

There is some intriguing discussion with this article. It said, “And as was lately pointed out in Flying Roll, RR [Round Robin] friend Vincent Gaddis has collected data on some thirty-odd instances of mysterious flying objects, widely varying in appearance – nearly all of recent date.”

This might be even more important than Young’s sighting. Here is a reference to thirty UFO sightings that were made prior to Arnold. We know little about them, other than Vincent Gaddis had collected them. If we can access that source, then we might find a wealth of information about disk-shaped UFOs (which to this point I have been unable to do other than learn that Meade Layne was probably the publisher of “Round Robin”… and that Layne had a Ph.D from USC, taught at a couple of universities, and wasn’t the nutcase he has been labeled as being). It would suggest a growing wave of sightings that existed prior to Arnold and suggest that Arnold didn’t mark the beginning, but actually the middle of the wave. The press jumped on the Arnold sighting, and only then realized what was going on, meaning that people were seeing strange things in the sky. My search of sightings documented prior to Arnold might just have found the mother lode.

Spy Balloons and Philip Klass

In the last few days I have been fielding some inquiries about the Staff Sergeant Charles L. Moody abduction in August 1965. Moody had mentioned to Jim Lorenzen, then the International Director of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), that after his UFO encounter, he had gone to the news stand and bought a copy of Official UFO. I wondered what might have been in that issue and thought I could figure it out based on the date of the sighting, but the most likely candidate is Official UFO Volume 1, No. 2, which I don’t have and probably would have had a publication date of August 1975. It would have been on the news stand in late July, if the normal distribution procedure held true.

I mention all of this to explain how I happened to see Official UFO Volume 1, No. 4, dated November 1975. As I was putting the magazines away, I glanced at the cover which had a big headline in the middle of the cover that said, “Interview: Philip Klass Tells – “Why I Don’t Believe In UFOs.”

Okay, seeing an interview with Klass so early in his anti-UFO career seemed interesting. The interview was conducted by George Earley, who found himself at FORTFEST ’74 in Baltimore, and had an opportunity to sit down with Klass for several hours.

All that was fine, but not particularly helpful, and most of what Klass told Earley was the same thing that he would say time and again in articles, his SUN newsletter and his various books. One thing I did find interesting was his discussion of secret balloon projects.

Earley asked, “There have been numerous claims of CIA involvement in the ‘UFO coverup.’ Didn’t they suggest debunking UFO reports at one time?”

Philip Klass

Klass said, “Yes, and I go into the reason for that in my new book [which is now, what, 38 years old]. Just briefly – about the time flying saucers were discovered (perhaps “invented” is a better word) [and I point out in my new book to be published later, Secrets in the Government Files… hey, everyone else promotes their work, why shouldn’t I? that the sightings began before the Arnold sighting] in the summer of 1947, the CIA and the USAF and the Navy were involved in a top-secret program involving giant, camera-carrying balloons. [That’s right, Klass is blaming balloons for UFO sightings made in 1947 in this 1975 interview]. They would be released from Western Europe; the westerly winds would carry them over the Communist Bloc countries – Soviet Union, Red China, etc. – snapping photographs all the way. Then, if the balloons arrived over Japan, we would send up a radio signal which would bring the camera down by parachute. We would recover the film. We would get a lot of pictures of Russian farms, but, hopefully, we would also get some pictures of Russian military installations, pictures that might indicate the Russians might be preparing to start World War III. This was 1947 – 48, remember.”

Well, our favorite topic here, Project Mogul was certainly underway in 1947, but they were experimenting with using microphones to detect nuclear explosions as opposed to photographing the Russian landscape, but Klass is referring to projects that actually existed including Moby Dick, Skyhook and Genetrix, to name just a few. And while most of them were operating, in a limited and experimental fashion in 1947, they didn’t actually get going until later.

Klass said, “They were experimenting. It began to become operational about 1949 or 1950. Because it was an intelligence gathering operation, the CIA was in overall charge. The Navy supplied the balloons while the USAF supplied the cameras, radio gear and the parachutes. The CIA knew we were flying balloons over Russia to photograph their military facilities, and now here we are getting flying saucer reports. Did this mean the Russians were doing the same thing – releasing reconnaissance spy balloons from Russia and Siberia to fly over the U.S. and photograph our military installations? In those days, back in the 1950s, where we had our missile sites, our air defense installations, our bomber bases was a very hush—hush operation.”

All well and good but the basic premise here is flawed. Klass is suggesting that these high altitude balloons being flown around were the genesis of the flying saucer reports and speculates that the Soviet Union might have been doing the same thing to us. Except the balloon operations here, in the United States, didn’t begin until after the Arnold sighting in June 1947, with the exception of Mogul, but those balloons were in New Mexico or on the east coast and numbered about a dozen. So, whatever Arnold saw, it wasn’t one of these balloons, and the follow up sightings reported around the country were not these balloons.

 Oh, don’t get me wrong, balloons, weather and experimental, were responsible for some UFO sightings. Although I’m worried we’ll get into a big argument about it, I believe that Thomas Mantell was killed chasing a balloon, so it did happen. But the genesis of the UFO sightings, which actually began earlier than Arnold, was not caused by balloon research.

Earley asked about Skyhook, and cosmic ray balloons. Klass said, “Yes, the same type of balloons as used for that. And they flew at such very high altitudes – 100,000 feet or more – that they could not be shot down by ordinary fighter planes of that day. Of course this was a classified program, but what is [emphasis in original] a matter of record – and you can check on this – is that not all of those balloons made it to Japan. They developed leaks or came down for various reasons, and they came down in Russia and the Russians complained about ‘spy balloons’ in the United Nations. There are accounts in the New York Times about this. The U.S. delegate at the U.N. simply said that these were not spy balloons but scientific research balloons. So the CIA’s interest in flying saucers had nothing to do with the idea they were spaceships from another world; the possibility that they were Russian spy balloons similar to ours was what concerned them.”

Well, that might not be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but there is some truth in there. The Japanese, during the Second World War had succeeded in launching some 200 to 300 attacks on the United States using “balloon bombs.” Six people were killed in these attacks, and some forest fires were set, but given they had launched some 9000 of the balloon bombs, the results were small and the damage done was of little consequence. The tragedy was the deaths of the six people… which given the destruction rained down on England, Germany and Japan during the war pales in comparison.

Anyway, the timing seems to suggest that the balloon explanation offered here is a little more enthusiastic than the data warrant. But what is really interesting was that Klass was floating [pun intended] the idea of balloons before it was fashionable. Kind of like the old adage, “Let’s just send up a trial balloon ….”

Vetting the UFO Field

Almost from the point that civilian UFO investigations began, there has been an expressed desire to find evidence of alien visitation. The mere fact that these organizations were looking toward the extraterrestrial does not negate the research they have done. Often scientists have an opinion of how an experiment will conclude, which is one of the reasons for double blind tests. But the gathering of information can be done without the bias of the investigators getting in the way of collecting the data. It is only when data are ignored that the problem arises.

Sort of the corollary to this is the lack of vetting of the witnesses and the information. In the world today it is very easy to check the claimed credentials or backgrounds of witnesses. And too often when the checks fail to produce the verification, then the government is blamed for destroying records to make the witnesses look bad… not creditable.

There are dozens of examples of this. Take Robert Willingham who claimed to have been at the scene of a UFO crash in 1948… or rather in the first, published version of his tale he claimed that. Later it became 1950, which he blamed on a UFO researcher, probably justifiably, and finally in the middle of the 1950s, which he said was the correct date. He claimed to be an Air Force fighter pilot and a retired colonel. Neither of those claims could be verified by military records.

What many people don’t understand is that when someone claims a military career, there is vast documentation for it, from the DD 214, which is a document given to everyone when he or she leaves active duty, to copies of orders, copies of awards and decorations, travel vouchers, photographs and a hundred other pieces of paper to prove the point. Those who are fudging their military service will simply not have those documents, and an investigator will not be able to verify the claim.

When I attempted to verify the validity of the few documents Willingham had supplied, I was unable to do it. In fact, I learned that these documents had been submitted to various authorities for verification by others investigating Willingham’s claims. They were told, and I was told, that the documents had been forged. Rather than accepting this evidence, the investigators accused me of “circling the wagons” and refusing to listen. They didn’t seem to understand that the facts were on my side, but they’d rather believe the guy talking about the UFO crash than the evidence of his fabrication of that event.

This is simply one example of someone who has been caught in embellishing a military career, and thrusting himself into the center of a UFO case… I say himself rather than theirselves, because the vast majority of those doing this are male.

This isn’t limited to witnesses either. Take, as an example, the Spitzbergen Island UFO crash in 1952. This has been proven to be a hoax time and again. The original story was evidentially traced to a newspaper article in Germany and that was about a Soviet-made craft that had crashed. This evolved into a UFO, but it is clear that it never happened, and even if it had, it was a Soviet-made device and not something extraterrestrial.

But here were are in 2013, this case from 1952, is still defended and still used in various reports of UFO crashes. It is used as evidence that the US government is hiding UFO information, but the case is a hoax. It proves nothing about what the US government might be doing or that alien creatures have visited Earth. The origins seem to have been lost to most of those doing research. Once they have what they consider the basic facts, they no longer pursue the information to its ultimate conclusion.

In fact, as mentioned in an earlier post, it is all too often assumed that other researchers have done the original research. I was looking for any UFO reports published in 1947, prior to Kenneth Arnold, that mentioned disk-shaped craft. One that was cited in some of the most credible UFO publications, was of a UFO sighting from Cedar Rapids, Iowa on June 23, 1947. As noted in that earlier post, it was a sighting actually made in Illinois allegedly on the same day as the Arnold sighting but it was not reported until after Arnold.

The point here is that we wish to elevate UFO research from the swamp we find it in to something that is respected, but we never reject a sighting or witness, even when the evidence is stacked against them. There are those who still endorse the Santilli alien autopsy hoax in the face of overwhelming evidence that Santilli and his friends created it… even though Santilli has said that part of it is a hoax… even though the men involved in creating the alien bodies have demonstrated how it was done… even though the cameraman was never identified, there are those that still argue for its authenticity. How do we make any progress with that sort of attitude?

Oh, it’s not limited to the alien side of the fence. Philip Klass made up solutions and attacked those whose opinions differed from his. We’ve already demonstrated this more than once, but there are those who accept what he claimed without question. Oh, don’t get me wrong, he did solve some sightings and he did provide some good information, but there were times that he was way outside the box but no one dragged him back into it. The skeptics continue to defend some of his practices even when it is demonstrated that he had missed the boat.

Charles Moore, he of Mogul fame, is given a pass by those who believe a balloon fell at Roswell. Evidence that he was less than candid on some of what he claimed is ignored because his solution does away with an alien craft. Never mind that Dr. Crary’s diary tells us there was no full array launch, and never mind that he does describe exactly what was sent aloft (a cluster of balloons with a sonobuoy and not a full array) they will insist that the cluster was Flight No. 4. They simply will not look at the documentation against it. In fact, one skeptic denigrated the 50 year old diary. Let’s ignore the written word from the time if it does not conform to our world view.

There are times when you just have to sit on information. We need a chance to validate it before making it public which is sort of an ancillary point here. Premature release can jeopardize research that is underway. We need the chance to complete the work before commenting on it publically.  If we can’t validate it, well, then, we should make that public as well but not until we are sure of the facts. All the information about a specific event should eventually be published, but sometimes it is just too early. Sometimes you need to wait until you know everything about a case. Once you have found the truth, then you should make all the facts public.

We need to raise the quality of our research, regardless of the side we fall on, and we need to accept conclusions that are based on the evidence available and not our opinions of how things should be. We can no longer argue about those cases that are solved and we can no longer accept the solution if it does not fit the facts. We need to elevate our standards and we must follow the evidence. If we can reach that level, then we have made it about halfway to solving the problem.

Citizen Hearing and the USS Helm

There was another aspect to the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure that was more personal than anything else. I looked at it as an opportunity to engage in some first-hand research. I could talk to some of the people who had witnessed UFO sightings and UFO events and get their perspective without those perspectives being filtered through another research or writer. I could learn if their stories had been distorted by others. I could learn, personally, what they had to say.

NARA in College Park

One of the things I wanted to do was visit the National Archives in College Park because I had learned that the deck logs of the USS Helm were kept there. Paul C. Cerny and Robert Neville, two UFO investigators with the Mutual UFO Network, reported in the July 1983 issue of the MUFON UFO Journal that a sailor with the fleet off Guadalcanal in August 1942 said a disk-shaped object circled overhead. According to them, “…a chief at the time aboard the U.S.S. Helm… had an excellent observation of an incredible encounter with an unknown, unidentified intruder. At 10:00 a.m. the fleet received a radar report from one of the cruisers and a little later a visual sighting of the object was made from their destroyer.”

Inside the National Archives

The sighting, according to the unidentified source, said that the initial contact had been by radar. The object was then seen by the sailors of the fleet, as it approached. Because it was not coming from the correct direction, known then as the radio beam according to the witness, the object was assumed to be hostile. When it was still over a mile away, the fleet opened fire.

According to Cerny and Neville, “The unknown then made a sharp right turn and headed south from an approach heading of 320 degrees. The UFO increased its speed and then circled the entire fleet.”

The witness, who unfortunately refused to let his name be used, said that he had a pair of 7 x 50 binoculars so that he had a chance to see the object quite well. According to him, it was fairly flat, silver in color, with a slight dome in the center of the top.

Having circled the fleet, the object departed to the south. It had been taken under fire but the speed seemed to make it difficult to hit. If it had been struck by any of the antiaircraft fire, it showed no adverse effects to that.

There were two dates given for the event in the original article. The first was August 5, 1942, just prior to the Marine landing on Guadalcanal, and the second as either October 9 or 10, 1942.

I now have the deck logs for the dates given, and while they are interesting, which is to say they are a little slice of history, they are also boring. Every entry begins with “Steaming as before,” and they provide the routine matters of the ship’s operation. If something unusual happens, it is logged such as an event on October 10, 1942. The log said, “1930 [7:30 p.m.] stopped to identify small boat.”

I know that during a gunnery practice on October 10, they fired 330 rounds from 20 mm machine guns at an airborne target sleeve.

But I also know that on those dates in October, the USS Helm was not with the invasion fleet, but was operating off Palm Island, near close to Australia. They took on passengers from the sea plane base there and moved them to Townsville, Queensland, Australia.

So, on the days that the unidentified sailor suggested they had been “buzzed” by a disk-shaped object, the USS Helm was engaged in routine activities. There is nothing to suggest that they fired on a target, an unidentified “enemy” aircraft, or anything else. The only day they apparently fired their weapons (on the three mentioned) was October 10 for gunnery practice.

And no, I do not believe that the CIA or the Air Force got to the deck logs and altered them to remove the sighting. During 1942 anything like this would have been thought of as enemy action. In 1942 no additional excitement would have been attributed to it, and with, literally, hundreds of ships engaged in the war, and tens of thousands of sailors fighting that war, no additional attention would have been brought. By the time the war ended, nearly everyone would have forgotten about a minor shooting incident during the invasion of Guadalcanal.

Here are the conclusions that can be drawn from this:

a. Without the name of the sailor, there is a real problem with the validity of the incident. There is no way to check his background to ensure he was assigned to the USS Helm at the proper time.

b. The deck logs (or rather the pages I have) of the ship do not provide any corroboration for the tale, though had it happened, this is the sort of thing that would have been logged.

c. Even though the deck logs on the dates given by the witness do not corroborate his tale, it doesn’t mean that he didn’t get the date wrong. The article in the MUFON UFO Journal gives three dates. I didn’t have the ability to look through the whole deck log, which means that someone should do that, just to be sure.

d. For the October dates, the USS Helm was just off the coast of Australia, which doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t have engaged an enemy aircraft if one had been spotted. Of course, if the object was an alien spacecraft, the location of the sighting, meaning close to Australia, doesn’t eliminate it.

All this means to me is that one more case of a disk-shaped object seen prior to Arnold has not been verified. Had the deck logs mentioned the incident, then we would have documentation for the sighting prior to Arnold. Without that corroboration we have another sighting reported after Arnold that allegedly happened prior to Arnold.

At any rate, this provides a little bit of an update for the sighting as first reported, but it still has not been conclusively eliminated. To do that, meaning to ensure that we haven’t overlooked something, a careful study of the USS Helm’s deck logs for August, September and October, 1942 should be made. It is always possible the witness got the date wrong… though I suspect that is not the case.