Sunday, August 31, 2014

The Roswell Rock


So now we have the Roswell Rock. What is it? Just a rock found in New Mexico with some sort of crop circle design on it that some think is beyond our capability to make. There seem to be no tool marks found under microscopic examination, it seems to have some strange magnetic properties and it was found within twenty-five miles of the site that is alleged to have contained the alien bodies.

It now takes it place with all those other things that have been identified with Roswell such as the Mexican Roswell, the British Roswell, the Chinese Roswell, the Russian Ros… well, you get the point. Stick Roswell in the name somehow and you have a built in audience, even if the event or thing you are describing has nothing to do with Roswell or aliens or a crashed spacecraft.

Stick this rock up there with all the other failed artifacts that have been presented from the bit of debris announced with such fanfare in 1997 as material with a known chain of custody was announced… only that the chain of custody was not presented and never has been. And let’s not forget the scientist who was claiming the isotopic ratios of the metal were not found on Earth (except, of course, they were not naturally occurring but were found on Earth) and the scientist changing the story when independently interviewed.

And let’s not forget the other bit of metal that was taken under police escort for scientific testing only to learn that it was jewelers’ scrap. Nothing extraordinary about it, except for the story that it was part of the spacecraft.

 Or the button found on the debris field that proved an Air Force connection of some kind. But it was clear that the button had been planted there for discovery by the researchers in Chasing UFOs. The Air Force didn’t exist (it would have been the Army) when the UFO allegedly crashed and the button was much too pristine. I had Air Force buttons that had not been outside in thirty years that were in worse shape because of simple neglect than this button that had been out in the weather for more than sixty years.

And now we have this rock with a strange carving on it that resembles the sort of symbols found in crop circles. In fact, Colin Andrews, one of the leading expects on crop circles said that it was an almost exact copy of a crop circle. Please note the qualifier here… almost an exact copy.

I suppose what we’re supposed to deduce here is that this rock had been in the spacecraft before the crash and that somehow it was ejected with no sign of the destruction of the craft, to be found, literally miles and miles from the crash site by a bow hunter. And while I have no doubt that the man is telling his story accurately, meaning he found the rock while bow hunting, the fact he was in New Mexico doesn’t mean that this rock had anything to do with the events of July 1947 and there is absolutely no way to connect it to 1947, just as they had been no way to connect any of these other items to the crash.

Here is where we slide off the rails completely. Colin Andrews was able to identify the crop circle and said that it was nearly a match for one created by Julian Richardson, which means it wasn’t alien in the beginning. It was a manmade crop circle and if the design on the rock was almost exactly like that of a manmade crop circle you have to ask, “What are the odds?”

We also saw, in a documentary about the Roswell Rock, an artist who creates designs by sandblasting the surface of rocks, duplicate, to a great degree the design on another rock. But he took only thirty minutes to do it and didn’t bother to polish it much at all. Had he taken more time, then he might have been able to match it to an even closer degree.

But the endgame seems to be the Roswell Alien Encounter Festival 98. According to some who were there, a company known as MLennuim Productions was selling rocks with crop circle designs on them, some looking quite a bit like the design on the Roswell Rock. This should be the last gasp of the alien nature of the Roswell Rock. Humans were making them and selling them in Roswell… so, I guess, it is legitimate to call it a Roswell Rock but it has nothing to do with alien visitation.

We can close another chapter on the Roswell UFO crash. Clearly the rock had nothing to do with it and had it not been found in central New Mexico, no one would have taken a second look at it. For those interested, a quick search of the Internet will provide other examples of these rocks. With all of this arrayed against the Roswell Rock, we have the answers we need… and it wasn’t necessary to devote an hour of TV time to the discussion. It should have taken five minutes, but then, what do you do with the other fifty-five minutes (minus the commercials)? 

Saturday, August 30, 2014

The Air Force and the McMinnville UFO Photographs


For the last several weeks I have been researching my new book and I stumbled across a bit of information that suggests the Air Force was less than enthusiastic in their investigations of UFOs. I wondered what their conclusion of the McMinnville photographs was. These are the two pictures taken by Paul Trent on May 11, 1950 of a disk-shaped object near his farm in Oregon. I’m not going to debate the merits of the pictures here, merely look at the Air Force response.

According to the Project Blue Book files, they came to no conclusion. In fact, they didn’t bother to investigate the case. Here was a sighting with physical evidence in the form of photographs. Even a cursory look at the pictures tells you that they are either an alien spacecraft or a hoax. There really doesn’t seem to be a third explanation because the pictures are too sharp and crisp to suggest some type of indistinct natural phenomenon or an advanced aircraft of Earthly design. But again, that really is an argument for another day.

These pictures, because of the clarity and because of the foreground detail that allowed analysis, should be of interest to an official investigation attempting to learn all it could about flying saucers. You would think that an organization that was charged with that investigation, would want to, at the very least, look at the pictures. Apparently the Air Force couldn’t be bothered with that because, according to the Blue Book files, this case was “info” only. No investigation, no analysis and no conclusion. If you don’t label the case, then you don’t need to account for it in your statistics and most importantly you can pretend it didn’t happen. There are many UFO sightings that are included in the files that are labeled as “info only.”

But that doesn’t mean you can’t offer a solution if asked about it. In 1965, W. Case wrote to the Air Force:

I have recently acquired some information concerning the sighting and taking of two, (2), photographs of one, (1), unidentified object by Mr. and Mrs. [name redacted but obviously Paul Trent] of McMinnville, Oregon.
The Photographs were taken on May 11, 1950 at the [Trent] farm just outside McMinnville, Oregon.
I would appreciat [sic]  it very much if you would obtain and send to the address listed below information and photographs of other and then such incident [sic].
Overlooking the fact that this guy claims to have information, which should have induced a query about what that information might be, the Air Force was uninterested. Yes, I know that it might have been nothing more than rumor or speculation that added nothing to our knowledge, but what if this guy had found another witness, one independent of the Trents? Wouldn’t that be of interest to the Air Force in their search for the truth?

Apparently, the answer would be, “No.” The response was written by Lieutenant Colonel John P. Spaulding, who was the Chief, Civil Branch, Community Relations Division, Office of Information. He explained:

The Air Force has no information on photographs of an unidentified flying object taken by Mr. & Mrs. [redacted but again quite obviously Paul Trent] of McMinnville, Oregon.
In this regard, it should be noted that all photographs submitted in conjunction with UFO reports have been a misinterpretation of natural or conventional objects. The object in these photographs have a positive identification.
Overlooking the fact that he said they had no information on the photographs; he offered a solution for them anyway. If they had no information, how would he know that the object, singular, in the McMinnville photographs had been identified? And why wouldn’t he have offered that explanation in his letter? Wouldn’t that have carried more weight than his blanket statement that was in error? The Lubbock Lights photographs taken by Carl Hart, Jr., have not been positively identified, as but a single example of his misstatement.

The point here is that he said he had no information and then offered information. You either don’t know or you do, but you don’t say you don’t know anything and then refute that in your next paragraph. Yes, he could make the blanket statement about all the photographs are misinterpretations but he then specified these particular photographs. He should have left that last sentence off his reply.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

General Exon and the Unholy Thirteen


When I began the Roswell investigation with Don Schmitt, I thought we’d find a solution quickly and that would be it. That didn’t happen, but as we talked with various witnesses, prowled various archives, museums and newspaper morgues, and found some limited documentation, it became clear that something had happened back in 1947.

When I interviewed retired Brigadier General Arthur Exon on the telephone on May 19, 1990, I began the discussion by saying that we were doing some research into the activities at Wright – Patterson Air Force Base. The discussion began with him mentioning that some outside agency would call, tell him they needed an aircraft for a mission, and then people would arrive by commercial air to be carried to the site of the investigation by an Air Force aircraft. This was all in the mid-1960s when Exon was the base commander. Seemed like a good way to disguise what you were doing.

Eventually we got around to the events of 1947 and Exon said:

As a result of that, I know they saw the one sighting and then where there… a good bit of the information came down. There was another location where it was, where apparently the main body of the spacecraft was… where they did say there were bodies there. I’ve been in… I’ve got special information but it may be more rumor than fact about what happened to those bodies although they were all found apparently outside the craft itself but were in fairly good condition. In other words, they weren’t broken up a lot.
I know what some of you are thinking. This doesn’t get us to Roswell and 1947 but it does mention bodies and does mention a spacecraft which means he wasn’t talking about an aircraft accident. He then said (after my question wondering if the bodies had come into Wright – Patterson which was simply “And they came to Wright – Patterson?):

Well, that’s my information. But one of them was that it went to the mortuary outfit… I think at that time it was in Denver [Lowery Field] where these people were being identified. But the strongest information was that they were brought into Wright – Pat. But whatever happened to the metal residue, I imagine it’s still there in the [unintelligible] some place.
But back in that ’47 time period, everybody was, it happened and why wasn’t there more information and who kept the lid on it. Well, I know that at the time the sightings happened it went to General Ramey who is now deceased, who was at Carswell AFB [Fort Worth] and he along with the people out at Roswell decided to change the story while they got their act together and got the information into the Pentagon and into the President.
Of course President Truman and General Spaatz, the Secretary of Defense [actually Secretary of War] who has now passed away, and other people who were close to them were the ones who made up the key investigative teams in relation to the released information. In one of my officers who did some research, who worked for me at Wright – Patterson, who had done some research on this part of his school came up with a deal that there was great concern at the time and there was fear that the people would panic if the sketchy information that they had such as what was it and where did it come from and what was their mission and so on and so on got out. So they decided to make it a national cover up. And that there probably wouldn’t be much released until everybody who was involved in it, including the thirteen people I’m talking about and their immediate staff who made up the, oh what was it, the twelve people who made up the investigative team had passed away. So they wouldn’t divulge information or information wouldn’t come out that they may or may not have been involved while they were alive.
That’s the logical thing and I know most of those people were around. I did know that they’re numbers one and two people were at the top of the staff including the Secretary of Defense and the Chief of Staff and the intelligence circle including the President’s office, I never heard of any elected officials…
I cut in to ask a very basic question. I asked, “Now, is this personal knowledge that you have of this?” Exon said:

This is stuff that I’ve heard from ’47 on to the present time, really. About why wasn’t it… about who was responsible and it was no problem to find out who was in those positions in ’47 and ’48 and I just happen to remember them because the Air Force was being formed and I was in the Pentagon and worked around a lot between the Pentagon and the field so I knew these people.
Given this information, I wondered who would have been the controlling agency. Who had the overall responsibility for this? Exon said:

I just know there was a top intelligence echelon represented and the President’s office was represented and these people stayed on it in key positions even though they might have moved out to investigate all sightings and stuff and get pictures and get information and bring it into the central repository
From that point, the discussion shifted into who might be able to provide additional information. He did tell me of a man who had been in charge of the Foreign Technology Division at one time by the name of Cruikshank. I actually found him and called him. That conversation was very short and I could think of no way to keep him talking. He was too clever. He just told me that he didn’t know who I was, he didn’t know what was still classified and what wasn’t, and he had nothing else to say. While I didn’t appreciate the short telephone call, it made perfect sense to me. It was what I would have done in a similar circumstance.

I did ask about other crashes, but Exon said that the only one he knew about was the one in New Mexico. We finished our conversation with Exon saying, “…I’d be surprised if you found much in the records of FTD or like that because it was so closely held… If it originated there it ended up being part of the unholy thirteen group… people that I know who were involved in it, they were sworn to secrecy.”

Now here’s something that I came to realize later. We all assumed, and it is almost engraved in stone, that the modern UFO era began on June 24, 1947, when Ken Arnold made his sighting and report. We assumed that nothing else was going on in the world of the UFO, but as I was working on Government UFO Secrets, I learned that the UFO investigations actually went back to the Foo Fighters. There were the Ghost Rockets in Scandinavia in 1946 and finally the flying saucers of the US. But the intelligence networks had been looking into these things since World War II, and one guy’s name surfaced throughout this. Howard McCoy was the man and he was involved in the Foo Fighter investigation, was part of the US Ghost Rocket investigation and was then charged with investigating the flying saucers that were being reported prior to Arnold. And then in September 1947, when Twining’s letter was written, it was McCoy who wrote it for Twining’s signature.

So, if what fell at Roswell was alien, the committee to study these things already existed. It might have been expanded at that point but it was not created in response to anything that happened in July 1947. This was the mistake that I think we were all making. The people who were going to study this were already worried about the national security implications of the flying saucers, though they wouldn’t have called them that until after Arnold. So this committee, these “Unholy Thirteen” as Exon called them, was already at work trying to determine what was going on. If we postulate that they were already in existence because of what had been happening before Arnold it changes the complexion of UFO history.

So, when Exon revealed what he knew, he was talking about something that existed prior to July 1947. When what he told me, and later amplified for Don Schmitt, is looked at in this context, we see something a little different. What he says makes a little more sense, when what we know today is added to what Exon said in 1990.

In the end here, we see Exon’s words with a little more clarity, and we understand a little more about what he was saying. That doesn’t diminish the importance of them, just changes the context slightly and gives us a better understanding of what he said. 

Saturday, August 16, 2014

MJ-12, The Unholy Thirteen and Roswell


Since it has come up recently on Facebook, I thought that I would revisit the “Unholy Thirteen,” as named by Brigadier General Arthur Exon about two decades ago. It was Exon who brought this up in my first interview with him, it was he who described the committee, and it was he who linked it specifically to UFOs.

First, though, a little bit of background. Back in the late 1970s, when cattle mutilations were all the rage, I did an article about my investigations into them and the fact that I had found terrestrial explanations for these seemingly inexplicable events. I wrote an article for one of the half dozen magazines devoted to UFOs but the editor sent it back with a note that he, or the magazine, wasn’t interested in another discussion of cattle mutilations. Imagine my surprise when the next issue contained a long story about cattle mutilations. It seems he was not interested in solving the mystery, but rather in keeping it alive.

My lesson might not have been what he wanted it to be. I learned that if I was going to write an article explaining something, I had better find an alternative mystery. Or, if I was going to expose MJ-12, I had better find another mysterious committee to replace it. Exon provided that for me with his discussion of the “Unholy Thirteen.”

According to Exon, he had run into this committee while assigned to the Pentagon in the mid-1950s. He said that he was not a part of it, but he did know who some of the members were. He linked it to Roswell, but in today’s world, given what we know about the history of UFOs, the creation of this committee might have preceded the Roswell crash. The information about the debris was sent up the chain of command, and this oversight committee, whoever they were, would have been about the last stop on the journey. Exon didn’t know their official name and called them the “Unholy Thirteen.”

Exon said that the information about Roswell would have gone to Brigadier General Roger Ramey in Fort Worth because he was the next level of command. It would have been passed farther up the chain of command to Strategic Command Headquarters (Kenny) which was in Washington, D.C., to the Chief of Staff of the Army for Air (Spaatz), the Chief of Staff of the Armies (Eisenhower), to the Secretary of War for Air (Stuart Symington), the Secretary of War (Patterson, I believe) and finally to the President (Truman, if I need to point that out). Remember, this would have been the first word of the discovery, and today it doesn’t matter what you believe fell at Roswell, this protocol would have been followed because in July1947, these top people were worried about the identity of the flying saucers. They wanted to know what they were, who made them and if they were hostile… which is not the situation we find ourselves in today.

Exon also said, “I just know there was a top intelligence echelon represented (here I think he is referring to Colonel Howard McCoy who had been studying these things since the Foo Fighters of WW II and for more about McCoy see Government UFO Files: The Conspiracy of Cover-up which is a plug for my book but would provide the details of this for those who want it) and the President’s office was represented and the Secretary of Defense’s office [at the time, July 1947, Secretary of War] was represented and these people stayed on it in the key positions even though they might have moved out [Symington, for example, becoming a US senator].”

This is important because these guys who Exon named were not mentioned in MJ-12 document, but given who they were and what they were doing, they would have been tapped for this kind of committee… but then, if Eisenhower was on the committee, he already knew about Roswell and there would be no reason for the briefing given to him in 1952. Given the structure of the government in 1947, these are guys who would have been involved and that they are not mentioned in MJ-12 is just another indication that MJ-12 is not legitimate.

We know that this was going on because Edward Ruppelt, one time chief of Project Blue Book wrote, in his book, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, (page 109 in hardback, 147 in Ace paperback), “The only people outside Project Blue Book who have studied the complete case of the Lubbock Lights were a group who, due to their associations with the government had complete access to our files [emphasis added]. And these people were not pulp writers or wide-eyed fanatics; they were scientists – rocket experts, nuclear physicists, and intelligence experts [emphasis added]. They had banded together to study our UFO reports because they were convinced that some of the UFOs that were being reported were interplanetary space ships and the Lubbock Lights were one of these reports.”

Now, none of this proves that anything extraordinary fell at Roswell but it does suggest that there was some kind of high power committee of mixed civilian and military that oversaw the collection of UFO information. Given the situation in 1947, and what we have learned about interest in UFOs that began with the Foo Fighters, continued to the Ghost Rockets and then to the flying disks, there is no question about this. The motivation for the formation of the committee seems to have begun before the Roswell crash (for a detailed look into this again see Government UFO Files: The Conspiracy of Cover-up).

Stan Friedman, to counter this “assault” on MJ-12, wrote that I had misquoted Exon in the magazine article and UFO Crash at Roswell. I sent transcripts, as well as tapes, of Exon’s comments to Don Schmitt and to me, on to him along with a copy of the book and asked what I had misquoted. He acknowledged that the quotes were accurate and then complained that I had given more emphasis to his words than they warranted… well, that’s sort of my job, deciding what was important in the interview. The important point is that the quotes were accurate.

So, where are we then? Well, the committee existed and we have documents other than Exon’s claims to back that up. Their purpose was to answer questions about UFOs. Exon tended to link them to Roswell, but given what we know it seems the committee was formed prior to anything happening at Roswell. It was very high level, it contained those you would expect to be on it, and this information tends to negate MJ-12, which was the purpose of my article published in the Spring, 1992. The point is, there is evidence for a high level committee, it was not MJ-12, and the documentation proves it.

Or maybe the point here is to show that the name, “Unholy Thirteen,” was just something Exon invented because he didn’t know the official name of the committee and to him it was a useful way to discuss them. He knew they existed and that they were charged with determining the national security threat of the flying saucers… especially in 1947 when no one knew much of anything about them... and that was about all he knew about that.

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Astronomers and Alien Spacecraft


It is sort of an ongoing belief that astronomers don’t see UFOs… or as some of those claiming this say, “Alien spacecraft.” Some astronomers have seen things that could be classified as UFOs, meaning unidentified flying objects as opposed to spacecraft. Clyde Tombaugh who discovered the now demoted planet Pluto, had a sighting, but it was of rectangular lights passing overhead which could have been some kind of spacecraft or might have been some misunderstood natural phenomenon so strange that he had never seen anything like it. The point here that could be debated was if Tombaugh was claiming to see something alien. He did file a UFO report but that still is not the same as saying it was an alien spacecraft.

In working on another project, I was looking at the November 1959 issue of The A.P.R.O. Bulletin, and found, under the “Recent Sightings” banner (page 10) the following:

Rio de Janeiro, 13 July, 1959 (oh my lord the hated Bill Moore dating format that might have contaminated the MJ-12 Eisenhower Briefing Document… You’re welcome Stan...) – Three Brazilian astronomers followed, for twenty minutes, the trajectory of a lighted circular object (the lights were green) which occasionally emitted rays. From 2210 to 2230 [meaning 10:10 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.] Professors Luiz Eduardo, Mario Ferreira, and Silvio Vaz watched it from the Valondo Observatory of the University of Brazil. It evolved from the constellation of Alfa to the constellation of Paon after which it entered the southern triangle of the Southern Cross to finally disappear on the horizon. The trajectory was the arc of a circle. The mysterious object did not revolve about itself. According to the astronomers, it could easily be seen with the naked eye, being about twice the size of Venus. “I am persuaded that it was a Flying Saucer,” declared Professor Eduardo.
Okay, I know what you all are thinking because I’m thinking the same thing. But in the world of the Internet, I could check out some of this. I found a listing for Luiz Eduardo de Silva Machado (1927 – 1992) who could be the man mentioned in the report. He is listed as an astronomer who discovered asteroids, among other things. I found a couple of listings for the others but I’m not sure they are the right guys.

And, of course, there is a listing for the observatory. This tells me only that one of the men and the observatory wasn’t invented. This brief fact check was something that couldn’t be done when the story first appeared in 1959… and frankly, it is not all that great today.

However, if accurate, and I have no reason to doubt it at this point, it is just another sighting by astronomers. Instead of calling it a UFO, they gave a description and called it a flying saucer. It is the story of astronomers seeing a spaceship… and yes, I had to go to Brazil and 1959 to find this, but then I wasn’t really looking for it. I just stumbled across it and thought I would mention it. 

Tuesday, August 05, 2014

The Coyne Helicopter UFO Case


I have been working on a new book and so I have been reviewing some interesting older cases. One of those is the Coyne case in which the flight crew of an Army Reserve UH-1H helicopter spotted a UFO which might have caused a radio outage and then a sudden, mysterious climb when Captain Lawrence Coyne had entered a descent to avoid a collision.

Briefly, they were returning to their home station in Cleveland, Ohio, when Sergeant John Healy, seated in the left rear spotted an object or a red light off the left side of the aircraft. He thought it was brighter than the red navigation lights on an aircraft and he could see none of the other aircraft lights required by the FAA. This light disappeared behind the helicopter and Healy thought nothing more about it.

A few moments later, Specialist Five (E-5) Robert Yanacsek, seated in the right rear, saw a red light on the eastern horizon. He, at first, thought it was a red warning light on a radio tower, but the light wasn’t blinking and it seemed to be pacing the aircraft. Finally it seemed to turn so that it was coming toward the helicopter and when it did, he mentioned it to the pilot. Coyne glanced out the right window and also believed the light was coming at them.

Coyne took the controls of the aircraft and believing the object might be on a collision course, pushed down the collective (or technically, the collective pitch, that is a lever on the left side of the seat of the pilot or co-pilot) which changes the pitch of the rotor blades so that the aircraft will gain or lose altitude. He eventually pushed it all the way down to the stop. Believing that he was not descending fast enough, he pushed the cyclic (think of the yoke on an airplane) forward so that he would be descending faster.

At this point Coyne looked up and said the object was covering the front of the windshield. Coyne said that there was a red light at the front of the object, a green light that seemed to reflect off the rear of the object, and a green light, like a searchlight coming from the rear.

The object hovered there for what seemed like a long time and then took off toward the northwest. They could see the light at the rear of the aircraft was bright white. Coyne looked at the altimeter and realized they were at 3500 feet. Coyne said the collective was still full down and he couldn’t explain the ascent. Coyne then pulled up on the collective (which, of course, the opposite of what he should have done to stop an ascent but then the collective was full down so he couldn’t have pushed it any lower anyway) and at 3800 feet, they felt a bump and the climb ceased.

Philip Klass, when he heard about the case decided to take a look at it. He was on a television show with Healy, and he recorded another show that aired the next night that featured Coyne. Klass, in his book UFO’s Explained, wrote, “As I studied the transcript of my tape recording [of Coyne on the Dick Cavett Show] my attention began to focus on the possibility that the UFO might have been a bright meteor-fireball.”

He then spends a great deal of time reporting on his search for a record of a meteor at the time and place in question but failed. True, not every meteor is reported, but this one would have been spectacular enough that someone else should have seen it. No one did and no reports were filed. But that’s okay, because Klass is hung up on the meteor explanation and cited examples of many people being fooled by fireballs, miscalculating the distance to them, their altitude, their shape and the length of time they are visible, and some other UFO cases that were explained by fireballs which is all irrelevant here.

Klass mentions nothing of Healy’s sighting of the red object that was seen out the left side of the aircraft and that slide to the rear. If it was the same object, then clearly it wasn’t a meteor and Klass’ explanation fails at that point.

He mentions that the cockpit was bathed in green light as the object passed overhead and reports that there are two Plexiglas panels set above the pilots’ heads and these are tinted green. We called them, cleverly, the greenhouses, but they are directly over the pilots and are not part of the windshield. Klass seems to have confused these green tinted areas for something on the windshield much as cars used to have a green tint at the top of the windshield. The crew was not looking through the greenhouses and the light was not coming through them. Besides, the crew described other colored lights on the object which they were watching through the windshield.

Klass admits that the climb is the “real puzzler.” He discussed it with Dave Brown, an “experienced pilot with some hours in a helicopter [which tells me nothing and I wonder if those hours are as a pilot and if there are very many of them]. Brown suggested that perhaps the pilot or co-pilot might unconsciously have pulled back on the collective and or cyclic-pitch control(s) as he leaned back in his seat to view the luminous object overhead.”

Well, the co-pilot, Lieutenant Arrigo Jezzi would never have done that. How do I know? Because Coyne, Jezzi and I had all gone through the same flight training, though not at the same time. Had Jezzi felt the aircraft was in danger and he needed to take over the controls, he would have put his hands on them and said, “I’ve got it.”

Coyne would have relinquished control taking his hands off and said, “You’ve got it.”

This was done so that the pilots wouldn’t be fighting each other for control. In similar circumstances, meaning one of us in the cockpit saw something the other didn’t that might endanger the aircraft, this is what we did, and that includes combat assaults under fire, which can easily be as stressful as seeing a UFO. We followed the ritual even at times like that, so, we know that Jezzi didn’t take over control.

Could leaning back in the seat, trying to see the UFO above have caused Coyne to pull up on the collective (as opposed to have pulled back as Klass suggests)? Not really given the way the controls are configured. Could he have pulled back on the cyclic in such a circumstance? Maybe, but there would have been other consequences to that action, including a slowing of the airspeed and a change in the orientation of the cockpit. Or, in other words, that would have been noticed. Besides, given the circumstances, it is more likely that Coyne would have pushed the cyclic forward as he attempted to see the object, which would have increased the rate of descent.

Klass, continues his speculation about all of this, based on the information he has collected, some of which he fails to report, and he concludes, “…we should all be grateful for the instinctive, if unconscious, reactions of pilot Coyne or co-pilot Jezzi in pulling their helicopter out of its steep descent barely four hundred feet about the ground.”

So Klass has solved the case by creating a meteor where none was reported, ignoring the flight of the light when it doesn’t conform to his ideas, misunderstanding the configuration of the cockpit controls that doesn’t fit his belief and his failure to understand the flight procedures of Army helicopter pilots. His analysis is badly flawed and his speculations are not driven by facts.

Oh, and he does mention the report from someone on the ground who might have seen the UFO, but he never found him and for our purposes as well as those of Klass that witness does not exist. There are two other witnesses who saw the UFO from the ground and they have provided statements about what they saw corroborating, after a fashion, the sighting by Coyne and his crew.

In the end, this is a case that screams to be labeled as “unidentified” because there is no a valid explanation for it. Klass was simply wrong in his analysis and his speculations should be ignored because of his manipulation of the evidence and his lack of understanding of the flight characteristics of the helicopter. There is no easy solution here and sometimes that is about all that can be said about a case.