For those interested in the Kecksburg UFO Crash I offer the following news article. I have not reviewed the evidence offered here and am sure that my friend Stan Gordon will have some comment about it. However, for those who wish to read the story, it can be found here:
I will note that others, Tim Printy, Robert Young and Jim Oberg have offered alternative explanations for the crash as well, all of which I explored in Crash: When UFOs Fall from the Sky. If Stan Gordon does have comment, I'll publish that as well.
Here's the main article on the theory:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.futuretheater.com/assets/pdf/kecksburg-mark.pdf
I'll have to study this a while, but initially it strikes me as deficient in several ways:
1. Too small according to eyewitness reports
2. Dubious explanation for "hieroglyphics" observed around base
3. No good explanation why this would be kept secret for 50 years (50th anniversary this Dec. 9)
4. Most bothersome to me is how this object could make a soft landing instead of smashing itself to bits and digging a huge crater. Our manned capsules, e.g., using the same sort of blunt reentry system, did not "glide" down in some controlled way, but needed to deploy parachutes, else they would have fallen out of the sky like big rocks. Neither we or the Russians had any sort of soft-landing technology for landing on earth without parachutes. (If anybody knows better and can correct me, please do.)
I might add that the widely seen fireball that preceded the Kecksburg object by a few minutes created an explosion soon after it passed over the Detroit/Windsor area, pver 200 miles away. This would need to be explained with the nose capsule remaining intact and somehow gliding the rest of the way and coming down softly in a very controlled way.
At least we are moving away from the discredited Cosmos 96 explanation originally posited by James Oberg 20 years ago, with the meteor fireball explanation close behind. (Again, the military is NOT interested in recovering meteorites, yet we have very credible witnesses, plus newspaper articles, saying the military was there in force at Kecksburg.) Let us also not forget that for the 40th anniversary, a NASA spokesperson claimed it was a Soviet spacecraft that had been recovered. When Leslie Kean filed s lawsuit to try to get what NASA had on Kecksburg, they claimed all their files on this had been lost.
"What struck the residents of Kecksburg — and investigators to this day — was how quickly armed military men, more than two dozen of them, arrived at the scene, taking charge and chasing people away."
ReplyDelete"Others were just ordered to leave — at gunpoint — and did so."
Echoes of some of the reports we heard from the civilians involved in the Roswell Incident.
I don't know of any western, democratic nation that uses it's military against it's own citizens in such an aggressive manner. ("Land of the free", huh?)
One thing seems certain to me. The Govt/Military of the USA has invested too much into keeping the UFO phenomenon a secret for so long, that it will never willingly "disclose" on the subject.
For "disclosure", when it eventually comes, we'll have to rely on a less obsessively secretive nation...like China or North Korea.
Also with Kecksburg we find echoes of the Berwyn event in Wales a decade later. Written off as a fluke in that an earthquake hit the immediate region at the precise time as a meteor crashed on the mountain. (That old chestnut!)
ReplyDeleteAs in Kecksburg,the military were on the scene so rapidly, it was presumed they were expecting this "meteor"...and went on to recover it.
As David Rudiak is surprised the US military has an interest in recovering meteorites...I am similarly surprised that the UK military seemingly does too.
Larry Lemke, literally a NASA rocket scientist (retired), emailed me with more reasons why the Mark 2 re-entry nosecone literally will not fly as a possible explanation for Kecksburg. If you read the theory, the launch from Johnson Island of a Thor missile (ICBM) took place Dec. 7, 1965, but the Kecksburg fireball and event was Dec. 9. This required that the nose cone became orbital in order to come down 2 days later.
ReplyDeleteThe problem here is that the GE Mark 2 nose cone was designed strictly for ICBMs and SUB-ORBITAL missions. It could survive only these sub-orbital missions, but not an orbital one. Had it been orbital, it would have melted down and disintegrated at the higher orbital speeds upon reentry. Further, the smaller Thor rocket in this Dec. 7, 1965 test (and other Johnson Island tests) was incapable of attaining orbital speeds.
In addition, since such sub-orbital missions lasted only a very short time, the Mark-2 carried only a one hour battery supply. It did not have the capability to become a stable orbiting satellite, much less a maneuvering object even it could survive reentry.
So nice try, but the theory falls far short for a number of reasons.
I stayed up to listen to the Coast to Coast AM show interview John Ventre and Owen Eichler. They made a very convincing case. If the reentry vehicle was atop an Atlas rocket it could have achieved orbit. Do we know for sure that there were only launches of Thor boosters from Johnson island? Certainly if it was from a spy satellite then it would not have been launched stop a Thor.
ReplyDeleteOther points made by Ventre and Eichler in the linked article:
The size and shape appear similar to the Kecksburg UFO. Other points made by Mr. Eichler and Mr. Ventre include:
1) The GE vehicle had four control jets, which would explain the controlled, turning descent that witnesses described.
2) One of the metals in its construction was copper, which would explain the green flames people saw.
3) Photos of the re-entry vehicle seem to show markings that might have seemed foreign to civilian observers.
“Another significant thing we believe is that this thing had a nuclear or atomic generator in it,” Mr. Ventre said, “and when that hit, they had to get it out of Kecksburg before they had a radiation leak. That’s why they were there so quickly, that’s why there were guys in radiation suits with a lead box going into the woods. They had to get that and make sure it was not leaking before they drove it out to the turnpike.”
I can't be dismissive of their theory, especially considering one is a Mufon director and the other has investigated the incident for decades. I hope someone doesn't say they are "disinfo" agents.