I
had always wondered why the Condon Committee, that University of Colorado study
of UFOs financed by the Air Force, which is to say us, never bothered looking
into the Levelland UFO sightings of November 1957. In their final report there
is a single mention of Levelland in which they report, “Magnetic mapping of
automobiles involved in particularly puzzling UFO reports of past years, such
as the November 1957 incidents in Levelland, Texas, would have been
 |
The Levelland sign. Photo copyright by
Kevin Randle. |
most
desirable, but the cars were no longer available.”
An
interesting idea and the scientists working with Condon had pointed out that
the manufacture of the cars’ steel components such as hoods and doors would
have created a magnetic signature. Even if the cars involved in the incidents
had not been mapped prior to the sighting, those manufactured at the same time,
at the same place, would have a magnetic signature that matched those from the UFO
event. It meant that the magnetic signature of all the cars were similar and
any major deviation would have been significant.
They
did follow up on this, after a fashion. They reported that two of their
investigators, Fred Hooven and David Moyer (actually part of the Ford Motor
Company) investigated a case (Case No. 12 in the official report) from the
winter of 1967, in which a woman said that a lighted UFO hovered over her car
for several miles and that it interfered with the electrical functions of her
car. Hooven and Moyer said that an examination of the car some two months later
found all the electrical systems working as they should and that they
discovered no magnetic anomalies when the magnetically mapped the automobile.
I
will note here that it seemed a real effort was made to investigate the case
including extensive examination of the car by Ford engineers. What they found
was a car in poor repair with a radio antenna that was broken so that it only
picked up the local stations, a fan belt that was loose so that it was not
charging properly, that the speedometer had been broken, repaired and
apparently broken again so that there were speed functions on the dashboard display
and that oil gauge was malfunctioning because of leakage in the electrical
system. In other words, it seemed that everything the witness had reported
about car trouble was related to the car itself and not some sort of outside
influence such as the hovering UFO.
They,
that is Hooven and Moyer, reported that she seemed to be a nice woman who was
not prone to hysteria and who was competent, meaning I suppose, that she was
intelligent and wasn’t mentally ill in some way. However, they noted that her
memories of the UFO incident were not without problems including that she
remembered a bright, full moon when it was actually in its last quarter and
that though she claimed to have seen the UFO in her rearview mirror, the
configuration of the car and the placement of the mirror meant that the UFO couldn’t
have been seen in the way she described.
There
was a second case (No. 39) from the fall of 1967 and in a location noted as the
South Pacific, that had somewhat similar results. Again, the Condon Committee
doesn’t supply the name of the witness, only that he was a businessman who said
that his car had been stopped by a UFO sometime between 3:30 and 4:00 a.m. The
lights failed and the radio went dead. He also reported that he felt something
pressing down on his head and shoulders. Through a break in the fog, he saw a
UFO that passed over his car and stopped, hovering over the highway. He thought
it was about thirty feet in diameter, red-orange, saucer shaped but with a
fuzzy outline. It had rotating lights and wobbled as it moved and hovered about
160 feet above the ground. He watched it for about a minute and a half, before
it took off into the fog. When it was gone the radio came back on, the lights
brightened and he was able to start his car. (Note here that he had to take an
action. The car did not spontaneously restart.)
Once
he had started the car, he drove to the nearest town in search of someone to
talk to. He didn’t find any additional witnesses. Eventually the case made its
way to NICAP. That investigation showed that the car’s clock had stopped at
3:46 a.m. and, according to the unnamed witness, the clock had been working
perfectly prior to the sighting. Interestingly, they found that stereo tapes
that had been in the car at the time of the sighting had lost some of their
fidelity, especially in the lower ranges and that the rear window had some sort
of distortion in the glass.
The
Condon Committee investigation was carried out by Roy Craig, who recorded the
interviews with the witness and gathered additional details. In this case they found
a car of similar manufacture and engaged in a magnetic mapping of the hoods of
both. There were a couple of points where the magnetic signature differed
significantly but for the most part, the magnetic signatures of the two cars
were similar.
What
I found interesting is that Craig reported that the radio’s FM band no longer
worked, though, according to the witness, it had been fine until the sighting.
Five days after the sighting all that could be heard was a loud hum across the
whole FM spectrum.
And,
now, according to the witness, he was no long certain that the clock had been
working in the days prior to the sighting. The clock stoppage might not have
been relevant.
Craig
was bothered by the witness’ vague description of the object and with the
inconsistencies in his estimates of the size and distance as they were
determined later by measurement. He was also worried that no one else had seen
the object and that the car didn’t seem to show an exposure to a strong
magnetic field. Craig wrote, “…car body did not show evidence of exposure to
strong magnetic fields, a more detailed investigation of this event as a source
related to electro-magnetic effect on automobiles did not seem warranted.”
These
were the only cases of reported electromagnetic effects stalling cars but they
did look into other aspects such as power outages caused by UFOs. In their
research of several of these blackouts, they could not establish a causal
relationship. In other words, the evidence didn’t support the idea that a UFO
had been
 |
Location of the first Levelland sighting.
Photo copyright by Kevin Randle. |
responsible for a blackout and I have to agree with that assessment.
The
purpose here, however, was to try to understand why the Condon Committee seemed
to ignore the Levelland case. It differed from those they did investigate
because it had multiple, independent witnesses, and included law enforcement
officers among those who had seen the object or the light.
The
papers, documents, research, rough drafts and other material collected during
the project were eventually sent to the American Philosophical Society Library.
It turns out that they did make a study of the Levelland case though it seemed
to have been based solely on the Project Blue Book files, what NICAP reported,
and what was found in Dallas Times Herald
newspaper.
Although
there seemed to have been no original research, meaning they didn’t interview
any of the witnesses and noted that the vehicles involved couldn’t be located
(I have to wonder if this was just an excuse, though 10 years had passed and
the effort to locate those vehicles would have been extremely difficult) they
didn’t take their investigation any further. It amounted to a synopsis of the
sources quoted, a short discussion on areas of further investigation that was
only about related weather phenomena, especially ball lightning, which was the
Air Force final conclusion, none of which made it into the final report.
At
the end of the Condon Levelland report, there was a series of hypotheses
suggesting solutions. This seems to have been taken almost directly from an Air
Force document about the case. They simply did not bother to follow up on this
case, though they noted its importance. There were multiple witnesses to the
suppression of the electrical system made independently and there were multiple
witnesses who reported an actual, physical object either close to the ground or
sitting on the ground.
In
the end, I’m unsure of the motives here. We know that Condon was instructed
about the conclusions of his study prior the beginning of the work, and we know
that he adhered to those instructions. We see evidence in other aspects of this
research where solid leads were virtually ignored (Shag Harbour, though it
could be argued that the Canadian case fell outside the scope of their
project), and we see that sometimes they gave little more than lip service to
the investigation. I had thought we’d find some more evidence of the committee
ignored a solid case, but given the circumstances, it might just have been
impossible for them to do more than they did with Levelland.
However,
the Levelland case provided some interesting dynamics such as the craft
interacting with the environment, multiple independent witnesses, and an
opportunity for some scientific investigation. It suggested that they look a
little deeper into this idea of electromagnetic interference, which they did,
sort of. Instead, they found a way to ignore Levelland and move onto other
aspects of their research. This was at best, a missed opportunity and at worst
just another example of how not to actually conduct research.
