Coast to Coast - Update on EM Effects and Aircrew UFO Sightings

 

Before I get into the airline pilot sightings, here is additional information from last week’s report. In November, 1953, while driving near Gjersjoen Bridge, Norway, three witnesses—Mr. Trygve, Mrs. Buflot and a neighbor-observed an object as it ascended from behind a hill. It oscillated over the lake for more than one minute, moved rapidly toward the witnesses and followed their car. The object passed over the vehicle and hovered ahead of them very low to the ground. Mr. Trygve stopped the automobile, and they watched the stationary object. During the sighting all three experienced mild electrical shocks until the object ascended vertically. A watch stopped working, and numerous people vouched for the fact that the paint on the car changed from dark beige to a bright green.

In a report I learned of just this week, two men driving near Oslo, Norway, on July 20, 1954, were chased by an object for several minutes. They stopped their car to observe it hovering a short distance away. A watch stopped- working, and the paint on the car changed color.

And to show that this is a worldwide phenomenon, though somewhat rare, is this case. On Nov. 4, 1974, a single witness driving near Scottsdale, Tasmania, at 2300 observed a soundless object of great size. His car engine and radio cut out, and his watch dial lit up brightly. The object moved away, and suddenly ascended vertically. The watch stopped shortly after the event. The left-hand mudguard of the car changed color from red to orange, and the color change was permanent. This information was originally published in The MUFON UFO Journal in June 2005. Mark Rodeghier pointed it out to me.

Now on to the airline reports. On January 17 of this year, a passenger on a Singapore Airlines aircraft filmed what was described as a white object as it flew beneath the aircraft as they came in for a landing at the Zurich airport. It was flying too fast for the passenger to get a good look and the film is, given the subject, relatively unremarkable. The pilot followed the near collision protocol, by increasing his speed, and according to some, the passengers reacted to the sudden, sharp acceleration. The object was not a bird or a drone because it was not visible on radar but was large enough for the pilot to see. At least that was the first pass on the story.

After the initial excitement created by the video clip, it seems that others, including those on both sides of the Ufological question, are less than impressed. Close examination of the clip now suggests that while the video of the landing is authentic, it seems that other parts of the video have been doctored. As more than one commentator reported, the video was not taken on a Singapore Airlines aircraft, the landscape looks too green for Zurich in January but most important is that the person who shot the video had now removed it from public scrutiny. This is most likely a hoax and I mention it here because it is important that we report on the solutions of sightings as well as those that have no explanation.

On October 15, last year, the pilot of a commercial airliner that had just taken off from Heathrow International Airport, saw a bright red object fly alongside the left side of the aircraft. It was no more than twenty feet from the aircraft and at about 3000 feet which is more than seven times the altitude allowed for drone aircraft. Although there has been on identification, a weather balloon or some other terrestrial object has not been ruled out, though I would suggest that they wouldn’t be launching weather balloons so close to the active runways.

On September 1, again, last year, something passed within ten feet of a Boeing 737. Both pilots said they saw a bright light and then an object flying directly the front of the aircraft, just slightly above it and to the left.  The object appeared so suddenly that they had no time to react. The control tower said that the pilots of a police helicopter had reported Chinese lanterns in the area, but the pilots said that what they had seen could not be explained by a lantern.

A UFO was filmed as it shot by a passenger plane that had just taken off from Philadelphia on August 20 of last year. One of the passengers, who occupied a window seat filmed the object as it flashed by at a distance. The object, described as a shiny, domed disk, seemed to be flying at unusually high speed. It paced the plane for several moments. One of the passengers, identified as Mariah Lyn, is heard asked, “What is that?” I don’t have any additional information about his case at the moment, but when more details are available, I will post them here.

This is not a new phenomenon. Just days after Kenneth Arnold had reported nine objects in fast flight near Mt. Rainier, Washington. The crew of a United Airlines DC-3, on July 4, 1947, saw a number of objects after they had taken off from Boise, Idaho. According to the government files and the newspaper accounts, about dusk Captain E. J. Smith (not to be confused with Captain E. J. Smith who was captain of Titanic) was near Emmett, Idaho, when a flying saucer appeared, coming that them. The first officer, Ralph Stevens, reached down to flash the landing lights, and Smith asked him what he was doing. Stevens said that another plane was coming at them and he wanted to ensure that they were seen. Smith wrote:

My copilot…was in control shortly after we got into the air. Suddenly he switched on the landing lights.

He said he thought he saw an aircraft approaching head-on.

I noticed the objects then for the first time.

We saw four or five “somethings.” One was larger than the rest and for the most part … right of the other three or four similar but smaller objects.

Since we were flying northwest – roughly into the sunset we saw whatever they were in at least partial light. We saw them clearly. We followed them in a northwesterly direction for about 45 minutes…

Finally, the objects disappeared in a burst of speed.

According to the Project Blue Book files, Smith said that they were never able to see any real shape. He thought the craft was flat on the bottom and seemed to be irregular on the top. The object appeared to be at their altitude and followed them for ten to fifteen minutes.

Stevens, Arnold and Smith, July 1947.

The AMC (Air Materiel Command) opinion of the sighting was that it had occurred at sunset which meant the lighting conditions would be changing rapidly and that illusionary effects are most likely then. The objects could have been ordinary aircraft, balloons, birds, or pure illusion. They remarked that they had insufficient data to draw any sort of conclusion. In the final Project Blue Book listing, it is marked as “Unidentified.”

Andrew Danziger, the first officer on a flight to Waterloo, Iowa, said that he spotted a white, disk-shaped object through the clouds near his aircraft in 1989. He pointed it out of the pilot, who also saw it. The two discussed what it might be, ruling out the conventional explanations. He said that after twenty minutes, it was replaced by a massive red ball and was pacing the aircraft. As the aircraft descended, the ball followed before disappearing behind the clouds. There was then a burst of multicolored lights in the clouds.

All this provides additional information about the close approach of UFOs affecting car paint color and airline crew sightings of UFOs. At some point we have to notice that there is a growing body of evidence surrounding these sorts of cases. While eyewitness testimony is sometimes rejected because, well, eyewitness testimony isn’t always reliable, these cases provide something more than just eyewitnesses. We need to collect, review, and substantiate these sightings when possible.

A New Annoyance to Include Roswell and Socorro

 

Yes, I’m annoyed again, which, given the situation in the United States today shouldn’t be a surprise because I suspect everyone is annoyed about something or other. What set me off was another of the special edition “magazines.” This one dealt with the paranormal and, of course, UFOs were lumped in with the paranormal, which is something of a misnomer and a minor annoyance all by itself.

Of course, there was a section on Roswell that was about 300 words long. They seemed to believe the Project Mogul explanation but did note that many of us don’t accept it. I would say that this analysis is more or less neutral, but then, how do you explain a major UFO event in so few words?

The Roswell UFO Museum in downtown Roswell (where else?)

But the real problem was the short section that was devoted to the Socorro UFO landing and Lonnie Zamora. At the end, they noted that explanations had been offered including a hoax by high school students or that the mayor and Zamora had engaged in a different hoax with different motives.

Ignoring, for the moment, those explanations, I will note that Lieutenant Colonel Hector Quintanilla, the chief of Project Blue Book at the time, labeled the Socorro sighting as “Unidentified.” He wrote that he had searched long and hard for an explanation, that he had the proper clearances that would have allowed him to seen any top secret projects under development at either White Sands or Holloman Air Force Base and he could tap into sources unavailable to civilian researchers. He wouldn’t have had to probe very deeply, or known very much about those secret projects, if they fit the descriptions, timing, and location to offer a plausible solution. He came up with nothing.

Now, I look at these two explanations. Philip Klass concocted the explanation that the mayor owned the land where the UFO touched down, and it was the mayor’s plan to build some sort of monument or tourist attraction there. It was to create a situation in which his nearly worthless land would become a valuable property as a tourist attraction with possibly a small motel and other such conveniences. All speculation on Klass’ part.

The major problem with the theory is that the mayor didn’t own the land and the idea for the tourist attraction didn’t occur to anyone until a year after the landing. Then the idea originated in the city council and not the mayor. And, of course, no tourist attraction was ever built.

The second theory fails because there is no way that high school students could have devised such an elaborate hoax. They would have needed to create some sort of object that could land and take off. Zamora saw two beings near the craft or object, but he didn’t see them flee the area, which students would have had to do, unless they took off in that craft. They ran to the rear of the craft, it lifted off with a roar, and they were never seen again. Did they ride off in that UFO? To begin with, just how did they get it out there without being seen by someone? Wouldn’t it have involved more than the two people Zamora saw? Wouldn’t there have been some evidence of these others found on the site? The logistics simply do not work out.

The UFO Landing Site, photo by the Air Force.

This is not to mention that Sergeant Sam Chavez, who responded almost immediately, who arrived while the object might still have been visible high in the sky, saw nothing. And there were those people in Socorro who called the police to mention what they had seen and heard the thing in the air before Zamora made his report.

High school students just couldn’t have pulled it off without a lot of help, it would have involved more than the two beings that Zamora saw and probably vehicles to move the participants around the site.

The point here is that we have this rather slick magazine that provides nothing in the way of evidence, giving an explanation, or explanations, for sightings without actually doing much in the way of real research. Sure, I get they couldn’t have taken up pages, but when the Air Force investigator doesn’t have an explanation that works, it would seem that the magazine would be aware of that. You would think that they would be a little less biased in their presentations.

Anyway, I’m tired of having to make the same explanations over and other. As I say, Project Mogul Flight No. 4, was cancelled and did not fly, so it is not responsible for the Roswell crash. The cluster of balloons launched later in the day would not have made it up toward the Brazel ranch to leave the recognizable debris of weather balloons and rawin targets. How do I know this? Because Charles Moore, who is the author of this nonsense, had to change the launch time of Flight No. 4 claiming it was three hours earlier than the time the launch that was canceled. He had to do this because the winds aloft data did not support the path of the balloons later in the morning drifting to the Brazel ranch.

And we’ve dealt with the tired explanations of the Socorro landing. It is clear, from the information that has been developed by various researchers including Ray Stanford, Ben Moss and Tony Angiola (not to mention my own work on the case), that there was no plan for a tourist attraction and high school students didn’t pull off a prank.

I wish those who create these things would put a little more research into the articles. It doesn’t really do any good if they fill the pages with the first thing they find on the Internet. It just seems that very few, whose job it is to do proper journalism, take the time to do it. Kind of explains where we are today.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Dr. Abraham (Avi) Loeb and the Alien Artifact

 

This week’s show was with Dr. Abraham (Avi) Loeb, the Harvard astronomer who has caused a stir by suggesting that a strange object that was spotted in the Solar System was, in fact, an alien artifact. Given its attributes, he says that it was something manufacture more than ten thousand years ago. You can listen to our discussion here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/43152043

For those interested, we did talk about the age of the artifact and the idea that there

Dr. Abraham Loeb

would be others out there. Avi, in his book, and on the show, talked about astro-archaeology, which is searching for artifacts created by other intelligence species as a better way to discover other civilizations than SETI. These alien civilizations might be long gone, but their artifacts are still out there. He thought that they might be rare but not unique. He suggested ways for us to prepare for discovery of the next one, gathering additional data about it. You can find his book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Extraterrestrial-First-Intelligent-Beyond-Earth-ebook/dp/B081TTY4NX/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Abraham+loeb&qid=1611791911&sr=8-1

I did mention a science fiction novel (The Rat Trap) that I had written, literally, decades ago about an alien race that sent out probes, searching for other intelligence races. They determined the level of development by the capabilities the civilizations exhibited. A race that had some form of space flight would be able to intercept their artifact and those that managed to penetrate into the craft, displayed a higher intelligence. It was, in one form, an intelligence test.

Although many had suggested that the artifact was associated with Vega, a star some 25 light years from Earth, that seems to have been a misunderstanding. Avi explains that situation and suggests that there really isn’t a good way to track the object back to its point of origin.

We also discussed whether a spacefaring race would be interested in the Earth. Avi suggested, given our propensity for tribal warfare, that we weren’t displaying much in the way of intelligence. I thought that any spacefaring race that found Earth would be interested in us from a scientific point of view, watching our societal evolution (or based on what has been happening, de-evolution). He thought they would wait until we were more enlightened.

Eventually, we did talk about UFOs and what he’d like to see in the way of evidence. In this case, he’d like to take the witnesses out of the equation and rely on instrumentality exclusively. I did mention the MADAR network to him but he seemed to want something that was much more sophisticated, which, I think meant something much more expensive and with the best equipment. He wanted all the data gathered by the instruments without any human participation.

We never did talk about the problems of interstellar flight, which I see as the major hurtle here. I do believe we had a very interesting discussion about the alien artifact, interstellar communication, and what we might expect in the future.

While I didn’t get all the questions asked, I think I did get answers to all of them. For example, one of them was about RF emissions from the artifact. Given his belief that it was so old and therefore didn’t hold any sort of crew, there wasn’t much chance of any sort of signal from it. But, of course, no one checked for any RF signal. However, it also seems that the next time this happens, they’ll be better prepared to observe it.

Next week, I’ll be talking with Don Schmitt. The plan is to look at the state of Ufology and where it needs to go.

Coast to Coast - EM Effects

As I have mentioned in the past, I’m a fan of multiple chains of evidence and in UFO cases, one of those chains is electromagnetic effects. These are cases in which the UFO interacts with the environment often by stalling a car engine or dimming the headlights among other things.

William Puckett at his ufosnw.com website reported an interesting case. On June 23, 2009, a truck driver who was hauling cars from Denver to various dealers in New Mexico spotted a UFO. He had delivered three cars to a dealer in Vaughn, New Mexico, very early in the morning, and was on his way to Alamogordo, when he stopped at rest area. As he got out of his truck, he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He looked up and saw a very large, black triangle-shaped object overhead. At that time, the truck, which had been idling, stalled, all the lights went out. Then his flashlight failed. He got another flashlight, but it didn’t work and even the light on his watch went out.

The object, coming from the southeast was getting closer, and he went to pull one of the remaining cars off the trailer, something he does in an emergency, so that he can drive it to get help. The car’s lights would not come on. About this time, the object began to retreat into the southeast. As it moved away, all the lights on the various vehicles and his flashlights came back on. Everything was working again and he had no further trouble with the truck.

Later, and here is another interesting aspect, when he arrived at his final destination, he had a chance to look at the mechanical alarm clock he keeps in his cab. It was thirteen minutes faster than the truck’s clocks and when he checked the clocks in the cars, he noticed that they, too, were thirteen minutes behind the alarm clock.

In an interesting twist to cases of EM interaction, Robert Spearing, a dedicated UFO investigator has found an interesting and unreported aspect of the EM Effects. He is looking into cases of car paint changing color after being exposed to a high intensity magnetic field. He asks the question: Car paint has a number of possible oxides that theoretically can be victims of induced magnetic fields. But why are there not hundreds of cases of car paint changing color? 

According to his research, he found only two such cases. The first is from Norway in 1953. The UFO circled car and blocked the road. According to the report, the paint changed from beige to dark green but changed back the next day. Spearing noted that UV light can cause the paint color to change but the effects are irreversible.

Spearing also reported that in 1978 there was a UFO sighting in Massachusetts: According to the witness, the Ford Mustang he was driving had the engine, water pump and the battery fried by the close approach of the UFO. The paint changed from white to grey and the car had to be junked rather than repaired.

Levelland, the granddaddy of all EM Cases. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle.

The only case I have found in which the car’s paint was mentioned was Case No. 39 (page 380) in the Condon Committee final report. There is also a discussion of problems with the car’s clock as well, which fits in with this report.

In early morning of November 8, 1967, an unidentified business executive, driving in a remote region of the South Pacific area later identified as Lake Elsinore, California, when his engine failed. He said that the lights went out and the radio went dead at the same time. It was at this point that he saw an object that flew over his car and then hovered above the highway in front of him.

He later described the object as about thirty feet in diameter, saucer shaped and red orange with rotating lights around the rim. He couldn’t see a sharp edge to the craft, saying it had a hazy outline. It hovered about 160 over him.

He watched the UFO for about ninety seconds before it disappeared into the fog ahead of it. Once it as gone, he said that his headlights came back on, the radio cleared up and he was able to start his car.

He told his story to both those at the Condon Committee and to NICAP, but under the condition that his name wouldn’t be revealed. The NICAP investigators who inspected the car and found the clock has stopped at 3:46 a.m. The found spots where the paint was easy to rub off and that there was pitting in the glass and the paint. Music tapes that had been in the car had also been affected by the UFO. The back window had a bizarre optical distortion that hadn’t been noticed before.

The investigator for the Condon Committee, Roy Craig, interviewed the man and then they drove to the scene of the sighting. He said that the details of the case as given to him matched what the witness had said earlier, except a few changes. The witness now said the object was 55 feet in diameter and flew over his car at 50 or 75 feet.

Craig saw the same distortions in the rear window and saw the pitting and thin spots in the paint. He didn’t think much of this, suggesting it was what would be expected in a car that was four years old. Craig also said that a car dealer said that it was not unusual to receive a car from the factory where the paint was not even.

As had the NICAP investigators, Craig noticed that the clock had stopped at 3:46 a.m. The witness, however, wasn’t sure that the clock had been running the day before, which was another departure from his original story.

Although Craig thought the changes in the witness’ story were significant, he believed that this was a perfect case to test the magnetic mapping theory. They were able to locate another car that matched that of the witness. He mapped the hood and the trunk of the cars and compared the numbers. He wrote:

Some points of sharp change in the magnetic orientation may have displayed that change because of structure beneath the hood. However, the comparison car did show some readings very similar to those of the witness’ car throughout, including corresponding points of sharp change. Even with this crude check, it appears reasonably certain that his Chrysler had experienced no reorientation of its magnetic signature, as one might expect if the car had been subjected to a strong magnetic field.

In the conclusions wrote that the vagueness of the witness description of the object, and the wide inconsistencies in his estimate of its size and distance and that there were no other witnesses to the “alleged event” and because the car showed no evidence of a magnetic field, he concluded that no further investigation was needed which is probably a fair analysis.

If anyone has any reports of cars changing color after the close approach of a UFO, I’d be interested in hearing them. I’ll pass them along to Spearing. Just append them to the comments section here. Include contact information but these reports will not appear on the blog so that your contact information will not be compromised. 

X-Zone Broadcast Network - James McQuiston and Oak Island

 

This week I moved from UFOs back to Oak Island. James McQuiston was the guest who has worked with the Laginas at Oak Island, been in their “War Room,” and has offered his insights into the source of the treasure. For those interested, you can listen to the interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/43032989

James McQuiston

McQuiston provided an earlier history of Nova Scotia and Oak Island, suggesting an occupation in the area going back to nearly 1600. He suggested that Scots had been induced to settle Nova Scotia and they had arrived with those who had a variety of technical skills to include blacksmiths and carpenters. Their job would be to construct, well, basically, a village or town.

According to McQuiston’s history, a couple of decades after they arrived, they were forced out of the area. They had brought with them, originally, a treasure to be used to finance building the settlements. When they were forced to leave, in April (1632, I believe he said) they decided to bury their treasure because travel on the North Atlantic was dangerous given the weather. I think Titanic proved that. You can learn more about all this here:

www.oakislandgold.com

One thing that had always bothered me was that I didn’t believe the pirates, hiding their booty on Oak Island, would have had the ability to build the Money Pit, as it has been described. But the retreating Scots would have had the people with the necessary training to do just that. So, we have moved from pirates to Scots, which is a much better solution.

Although I believe that Joy Steele had provided us with a solution that fits more of the facts, and much of what the Laginas brothers and their team have uncovered on Oak Island supports her theory, McQuiston does offer a tempting alternative. Some sort of British military facility seems to fit what the Laginas have found there. Joy Steele’s theory covers that. I do have to say, however, that extending the history of the island by a couple of hundred years does change the dynamic to a degree.

McQuiston also provides some insight into the behind-the-scenes workings on Oak Island. Although an NDA prohibited him diving too deep into what is going to happen and information about some of the finds, he did describe what he believes will be the end game here… and no, he didn’t rule out the finding of a treasure, but it seems that he’s more excited by the quest than the outcome.

Next up is Dr. Abraham (Avi) Loeb, to provide insight into his theory that an alien artifact passed through the Solar System over two years ago. If you have questions, post them to the comments section and I’ll get them answered during the show.

Coast to Coast - More UFO Occupants

One of my reports on UFO occupants caught the attention of one of the listeners. He, or she, contacted me, wondering how many UFO sightings included reports of the occupants, which is, of course, a good question. Jim and Coral Lorenzen collected such stories long before most of those in the UFO community were willing to talk about occupant sightings. They (or rather Coral) wrote several books about UFO occupants. You can learn more about their books here:

https://www.amazon.com/Flying-saucer-occupants-Signet-T3205/dp/B0006BQ02U/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Coral+Lorenzen&qid=1610720666&sr=8-1

and

https://www.amazon.com/Encounters-occupants-Berkley-medallion-book/dp/0425030938/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=Coral+Lorenzen&qid=1610720715&sr=8-2

Along with the enquiry about UFO occupants, the writer added this detail. “One my bosses in the USAF said that one night he was flying an airplane and got a call from ATC [Air Traffic Control] that he had fast moving traffic approaching. It slowed and flew in formation with him for a bit. He did not describe it, other than to say, ‘I’m telling you that was a ship from another world.’ Then it did the usual zip maneuver and ATC said they lost track of it.”

Of course, we can’t do much with the story without additional information. I find it interesting but without being able to communicate with the actual witness, it just falls into the category of anecdotal evidence, which isn’t much in the way of evidence. However, when added to the hundreds or thousands of other stories, it does take on some added weight.

It also reminded me of a story that I had heard while researching the Roswell case. I was told about a retired Air Force colonel, who had been a pilot on Air Force One during the Kennedy administration. The story was that the man had flown the president out to a base to see the alien bodies recovered in Roswell.

After a month or more, I found the man. I caught him as he was walking into the business he owned and asked him about this tale. He confirmed for me that he was a retired colonel and that he had been an alternate pilot on Air Force One in the early 1960s. He had flown President Kennedy to various locations at various times. And, the colonel said that one night, while flying a fighter, he had been approached by a domed disk. Through some sort of cockpit window, he seen the alien pilot of the craft. He didn’t get a good look at that pilot, other to know that he wasn’t a human.

I have more confidence in this report because I talked with the witness in person sothat I had a chance to gauge his reactions and body language as he talked, but in the end, it too, is anecdotal. Oh, I should mention that almost all of the elements of the rumor checked out. He was an Air Force One pilot; he had seen an alien and he had flown Kennedy around the country. It was just that the tale was a combination of more than one incident. And, most importantly, he hadn’t flown Kennedy anywhere to see the Roswell bodies.

I will note here, that I don’t know how many UFO reports contain descriptions of alien creatures. If we limit ourselves to Project Blue Book, there are three sightings labeled as unidentified that contain descriptions. These are Socorro and Lonnie Zamora, of course. Then there is Pittsburg, Kansas on August 25, 1952, and finally, Temple, Oklahoma, on March 23, 1966. The other cases in Blue Book involving occupants label the witnesses as unreliable or as having psychological problems. I will have a link to the unidentified sightings at my blog.

For those interested in the Socorro landing, take a look at Encounter in the Desert, which is my investigation into that sighting. You can find the book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Encounter-Desert-Alien-Contact-Socorro-ebook/dp/B07J1WMGP7/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=Kevin+Randle&qid=1610728620&sr=8-3

It also details some of the other reports of landings and alien creatures. To learn more about the other landing cases labeled as unidentified, you can find the information here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Pittsburg%2C+Kansas

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Temple%2C+Oklahoma

And for those who would like to look at more occupant cases found in the Project Blue Book files; you can read about it here:

https://www.amazon.com/Government-UFO-Files-Conspiracy-Cover-Up-ebook/dp/B00IWTR464/ref=sr_1_7?dchild=1&keywords=Kevin+Randle&qid=1610728826&sr=8-7

Finally, I had another occupant case that came in over the transom, which means that I have not had a chance to vet it. The report comes from the Dallas – Fort Worth area. A couple, in the area south of Arlington, reported they had seen a low, hovering domed disk on January 8 of this year. Like the colonel, through a window, porthole or cockpit windshield, they could make out the shape of what they thought was a small humanoid creature. Given the distance, they couldn’t see much detail, other than they didn’t believe it was human. After a minute or so, the object lifted up, into the clouds and was gone. I’ll try to follow up on this but I don’t have any additional information at this time.

Again, this tale falls into the category of anecdotal evidence. However, following the lead of Len Stringfield, I offer the case without critical comment in case there are others who have additional information about the sighting. Without more to go on, it joins a long list of interesting UFO cases that can’t be verified. 

X-Zone Broadcast Network - William Puckett

 

Today I spoke with William Puckett of the www.ufosnw.com website about current UFO sightings. We ranged from electromagnetic effects to occupant reports to cases of entities that might have nothing to do with UFOs. You can listen to the interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/42923457

William Puckett

One of the sightings that we talked about was from a man in Las Vegas who photographed a green object as well as a being of some kind that was associated with the sighting. Rather than telling you about it, you can see one of the photographs and listen to the report here:

https://www.ufosnw.com/newsite/transparent-robot-like-being-emerges-from-glowing-green-ufo/

We talked about a sighting near Vaughn, New Mexico, in which a truck driver reported that a triangular-shaped object hovered over his truck, causing the engine to fail. He also mentioned that his flashlight went out and a car that he had unloaded from the trailer couldn’t be started. Once the UFO left the area, he was saw that his flashlight was again on. He then started his truck and continued to El Paso, Texas. Once in El Paso, he discovered that truck clocks were thirteen minutes slow, but another of the clocks, that wasn’t electric, had not stopped. You can read about it here.

http://www.ufosnw.com/sighting_reports/2009/vaughnnm06232009/vaughnnm06232009.htm

Next week, I’ll be talking with James McQuiston about Oak Island. He’s been to the island several times and has worked with the Laginas boys. We should be able to get some interesting insight into what is happening behind the scenes there.

Following that, I’ll have a chance to chat with Dr. Avi Loeb, the Harvard astronomer who believes that an artificial, alien object passed through the Solar System in 2017. If you have questions for him, or for James McQuiston, post them here and I’ll try to get them asked during the show.

Coast to Coast - The Alien Artifact in the Solar System

Jerome (Jerry) Clark sent me an interesting email that directed me to an entry in his massive UFO Encyclopedia, which, by the way, is a required investment for anyone who wants to seriously study UFOs. He suggested that an abduction/contactee case from 1951 or 52, was an interesting match to one I had just reported. According to the story, as told to some rather obscure sources, the witness, whose name was not mentioned, walked into a newspaper office in December 1957, and told his tale of alien contact.

He said that while serving in the US Army in Austria, as he was walking home, a helmeted entity, stepped from behind some bushes, and pointed some sort of weapon at him that paralyzed him. He was taken to some kind of craft. He told the reporter, the creature put a black mask over his face, and that he was “pulled along… after him.”

They entered the craft through an opening in the top. It was a round object that was about 150 feet in diameter. They then took off, flew past the moon and on to a planet that might have been Mars. They landed at a spaceport (my deduction) where there were other, similar vehicles parked. The being with him floated out and the witness said that he saw two other humans, but they didn’t acknowledge him. The creature returned, they flew back to Earth, and he was taken from the craft. The being pointed the weapon at him and he was no longer paralyzed. The being returned to its craft and took off.

This would be of no interest to me, if not for the description of the alien creature. According to what Clark reported, “He [the creature] had no hair at all… His head was sort of cylinder form. A very high forehead with big eyes. You could see lots of little eyes in the two big eyes. It seemed to me it looked like the eyes of a fly.”

There are points here that make no real sense. Why would an alien creature abduct the man, fly him to Mars (if it was really Mars?), and then return him? There is no indication that the witness was questioned, examined, or provided with some sort of message for humanity. There is no way to investigate or corroborate the story because the name of the witness has been lost, if it was ever known. It is interesting here, only because of the description of the alien eyes, which fits with the description given by the couple who made a sighting in New Mexico in 2017. And I mention it only for that reason.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that November 1957 was a time of intense UFO activity and reporting. The news media was filled with tales of UFOs. In many of those cases, the alien craft stalled car engines and dimmed headlights. It wasn’t as if the witness appeared in a time when people weren’t talking about flying saucers. Maybe all the talk inspired him to finally tell his tale, or more likely, inspired him to invent it. And that is probably the reason that the newspaper decided to run with it. The witness was talking about seeing a flying saucer and riding in it.

Second, someone pointed out that the Belt, Montana, and Malmstrom Air Force Base sightings, were more than a half century old. To them, the idea that national security was an issue was something that, in this case, was more than half a century out of date. In all that time, wouldn’t the policy have been changed?

But we see that Area 51 was exposed by UFO investigations surrounding Bob Lazar and his claims of UFOs housed there. Had it not been for the investigation into Lazar’s claims, whether real or imaginary, the existence of Area 51 might have remained a secret. It was the probing of Lazar’s story that led to the exposure of Area 51. It demonstrated that any tale of UFOs could compromise a real element of national security. This reinforces the idea that national security is one of the driving forces that is the reason that we still find UFO information suppressed and the government’s continual denial that there is anything to reports of UFOs.

The big news is that a Harvard scientist, Dr. Abraham (Avi) Loeb, (seen here) who is the chair of the Department of Astronomy, has suggested that we were visited in 2017. Well, visited isn’t quite the right word but that an alien artifact had entered the Solar System.

In my communications with him, I asked a number of questions, such as where it might have originated. According to the data, it came from the direction of Vega, which is about 25 light years from Earth.

On September 6, 2017, the artifact crossed into the orbital plane of the solar system, and on September 9, it made its closest approach to the sun. On October 7, it passed Earth, moving in the direction of Pegasus.

This was the first interstellar object that was detected inside the Solar System. It was not bound to the sun’s gravity, and apparently was just passing through. According to the scientists, when it passed Venus it was traveling around 60,000 mph, which isn’t even close to the speed of light. Unless it had slowed down as it approached the Solar System (which suggests intelligent control), then it had taken a really long time to get here from Vega (if that is the point of origin) … and I’m not even going to try the math. I’ll just say we’re talking many, many millennia.

Earth-based scientists were able to study the object, which was about three hundred feet in length, had a somewhat cigar shape and was rotating slowly.

It was named, “Oumuamua,” which means scout in Hawaiian.

It was, at first believed to be a comet, but it exhibited none of the characteristics of a comet. That suggested to Dr. Loeb that it was something completely different.

Nearly all the scientists agree that the object did not originate in the Solar System, which makes it the first alien object to be observed inside the Solar System. While Dr. Loeb believes that it is an artificial object, many scientists disagree.

The Nature Astronomy article published in July 2019, concluded, “We find no compelling evidence to favor an alien explanation for Oumuamua.” 

I, on the other hand, am rooting for Dr. Loeb’s explanation but must note that while the object is certainly alien, it is not necessarily artificial. I’ll have more after my interview with Dr. Loeb coming up in the next couple of weeks. 

Lewis Chase and the RB-47

 

(Note: Back when I was taking a creative writing course in college, the instructor said to never give away your writing. That weakened the market and made it more difficult for you in the future. When one of those posters  on this blog suggested I do something with the RB-47 case, my first thought was to provide a link to the book in which I had written about the sighting. A good marketing strategy. However, I just wanted to answer the question without making it seem that I was overly mercenary about it. Here is the write-up of the case. If anyone would like to buy the book, it is the UFO Dossier, and you can click on the book cover on the left which will take you to Amazon and the book.)

According to the Condon Committee report, that is, the Air Force sponsored University of Colorado investigation, they learned about the RB-47 incident at a “project-sponsored conference for air base UFO officers held in Boulder in June 1967.” The aircraft commander of the flight, then Major Lewis Chase, who was assigned as the UFO officer at Malmstrom Air Force Base in 1967, mentioned his sighting that occurred in 1957. Roy Craig, who was the investigator for the study on this sighting, wrote:

Lewis Chase

According to the officer, a Major [Chase] at the time of the encounter, he was piloting a B-47 on a gunnery and electronic counter-measures training mission from an AFB [Air Force Base]. The mission had taken the crew over the Gulf of Mexico, and back over South Central United States where they encountered a glowing source of both visual and 2,800 mHz. electronic radiation of startling intensity, which, during the encounter, held a constant position relative to the B-47 for an extended period. Ground flight control radar also received a return from the “object,” and reported its range to the B-47 crew, at a position in agreement with radar and visual observations from the aircraft.

Craig tried to find the report in the Project Blue Book files or in the Defense Command records but failed. He did mention that the most important members of the crew, in relation to the sightings, were the pilot, Chase, co-pilot 1^st Lieutenant James McCoid, and the Electric Counter Measures Officer, known as a “Raven” in the Number Two position, Captain Frank McClure. Those interviewed were surprised that there was no report in the Project Blue Book files, and it was clear from those interviewed that a report had been made by the base intelligence officer Captain E. I. Piwetz, the crew was debriefed at length, and the aircraft commander, Chase, had filled out the forms being used at the time for UFO reports.

During the investigation, Craig gathered additional information from the crew members he could locate and who were not serving in Vietnam at the time of his work. Craig learned that there were a series of incidents that began when the RB-47 crossed the coast of Mississippi and McClure picked up a signal on his scope. McClure was surprised to see it move “up scope” which wasn’t supposed to happen. His job was to find ground-based radar stations emitting signals at around 3000 MHz. Since these were ground based stations, the signal would, naturally, move down scope as long at the aircraft was flying straight and level. McClure thought, at first, this was an equipment malfunction and didn’t mention to either the other Ravens with him or to the aircraft commander.

Near Meridian, Mississippi, they turned toward the west, heading for Louisiana and eventually the Dallas – Fort Worth area, where they would again turn, this time to the north toward their home base. While on the east – west leg of the flight, the pilot spotted a bright white light that he believed was coming right at the aircraft. According to the Intelligence Report created by Piwetz in the hours after the encounter:

At 1010Z [that is 5:10 CDT] aircraft commander [Chase] first observed a very intense light white light with light blue tint at 11 o’clock [position] from his aircraft, crossing in front to about 2:30 position, co-pilot [McCoid] also observed passage of light to 2:30 o’clock where it apparently disappeared. A/C [aircraft commander] notified crew and the ECM operator nr 2 [McClure] search[ed] for signal described above…

 The Condon Committee report noted that the pilot had seen a white light that crossed in front of the plane, “moving to the right, at a velocity far higher than airplane speeds.” The pilot, according to this report, said the light was as large as a barn. The co-pilot also saw the light.

In what might be a confusion of the events, given that the Craig was gathering the information some ten years later, he reported that after the light disappeared, McClure switched his monitoring equipment back to the original frequency and picked up something at the two o’clock position. At this point Chase requested permission to switch radio frequencies to a “ground interceptor control radar and check out the unidentified companion.” The ground radar showed the object on their radar and that it was holding about ten miles from the RB-47.

After the UFO had held the two o’clock position and the ten-mile range and as the Chase had varied speed, heading and altitude, the number two monitoring officer, McClure, reported the object was beginning to move up-scope, to a position in front of the aircraft. According to Craig:

It moved to a position ahead of the plane, holding the ten-mile range, and again became visible.  The pilot went to maximum speed. The target appeared to stop, and as the plane got close to it and flew over it, the target disappeared from visual observation, from monitor number two, and from ground radar. (The operator of monitor number two [McClure] also recalled the B-47 navigator having this target on his radar scope at the same time). The pilot began to turn back. About half way around the turn, the target reappeared on both the monitor and the ground radar scopes and visually at an estimated altitude of 15,000 ft. The pilot received permission from Ground Control to change altitude, and dove the plane at the target, which appeared stationary. As the plane approached to an estimated distance of five miles the target vanished again from both visual observation and radar. Limited fuel caused the pilot to abandon the chase at this point and head for his base. As the pilot leveled off at 20,000 ft. a target again appeared on number two monitor, this time behind the B-47. The officer operating the number two monitoring unit, however, believes he may have been picking up the ground radar signal at this point. The signal faded out as the B-47 continued flight.

Here’s where we are on this, at this point. If the information is accurate, the UFO was seen by a ground-based radar, by the aircraft-based radar, was seen visually by the flight crew, and was detected by monitoring equipment on the aircraft emitting an electromagnetic signal at about 3000 mHz. More precisely, there are three chains of evidence from the visual sighting to the radar returns and to the detection of the electromagnetic signal. That makes this a very strong case.

To add to the impressive array of evidence, according to Craig, both the co-pilot, McCoid, and the number two monitoring officer, McClure, said that they were impressed with the way the UFO disappeared and then reappeared. They said that during some of the encounter, the object could be tracked on the navigator’s radar. McClure said that he remembered the navigator, Thomas Hanley, was receiving a return on his radar and that the bearings to the object matched, exactly, what McClure was receiving on his scope.

Craig, during his investigation, developed a series of questions about the sighting. He wondered if the monitoring station might have picked up a ground-based radar or a reflected signal. He wondered if the visual sightings could be airplane lights, afterburners or meteors. He wondered if the visual sightings were actually the same as the objects on the radars. In other words, he was wondering if the sightings were separated into individual events then they might be explainable. Craig could see that the overall event was mysterious, but that elements of it might have conventional explanations.

Craig also noted that there was a sharp divergence on the report of the sighting and the data that might have been gathered. Chase seemed to believe that records in the form of scope photographs and wire recordings, which was standard on all flights including training flights, had been made, but others disagreed. They thought that this was a “shakedown” prior to deployment of the aircraft overseas and that such records were not made. In his search, Craig was unable to find any such records.

Assuming that these sorts of records were not made and therefore did not exist, Craig decided on another course. He wrote:

Since it appeared that the filmed and recorded data we were seeking had never existed, we renewed the effort to locate any special intelligence reports of the incident that might have failed to reach Project Blue Book. A report form of the type described by the pilot could not be identified or located. The Public Information Officer at ADC Headquarters checked intelligence files and operations records, but found no record of this incident. The Deputy Commander for Operations of the particular SAC Air Wing in which the B-47 crew served in 1957 informed us that a thorough review of the Wing history failed to disclose any references to an UFO incident in Fall 1957.

Later work by others would discover some documents including the form that Chase said that he had filled out. Their problem was that they had the date of the event wrong, believing that it happened in September 1957 rather than July 1957.

With no documentation, with only the testimony of the half the members of the crew taken a decade after the event, there wasn’t much else that could be done. In the conclusion, Craig wrote:

If a report of this incident, written either by the B-47 crew or by Wing Intelligence personnel, was submitted in 1957, it apparently is no longer in existence. Moving pictures of radar scope displays and other data said to have been recorded during the incident apparently never existed. Evaluation of the experience must, therefore, rest entirely on the recollection of the crew members ten years after the event. These descriptions are not adequate to allow identification of the phenomenon encountered.

And that was the end of it. This was an intriguing case that contained some interesting evidence that could lead to some important conclusions. Visual sightings of the UFO, radar contacts on the ground and in the air and electromagnetic radiation from the UFO, all possibly documented with wire recordings, scope photographs and with written reports by crew members and ground radar stations.

Although the details of the case as they were known then by two members of the Condon Committee who had quit in a dispute over the ultimate purpose of the study, it was Dr. James McDonald who straightened out the mistakes in the case. David R. Saunders and R. Roger Harkin published UFOs! Yes! in 1968, before the final report from the Condon was issued.

McDonald determined that the date of the sighting was July 19, 1957 rather than September, which was why they couldn’t find the case file. When it was located, many of the things that the Condon Committee reported were found to be untrue. In fact, part of the massive report included an appendix Q, which were weather records for Mineral Wells, Texas on September 19, 1957, but are wholly irrelevant to understanding the case.

There are four long analyses of this case. As mentioned, McDonald and Klass wrote opposing views. Later Brad Sparks and Tim Printy did the same thing. Sparks endorses the extraterrestrial believing this is one of the best cases for that. Printy’s analysis points out the problems with the case but in the end, isn’t sure what it proves.

Taking a page from Klass, which was to deal with each element of the sighting alone rather than as a whole, some of the flaws in the case can be seen. What we know was that the aircraft had flown from Forbes Air Force Base in Kansas, south out into the Gulf of Mexico for a gunnery exercise and as a problem in celestial navigation. When that was finished, they turned north heading toward Meridian, Mississippi. As they approached the coast, the Number Two Raven, McClure, saw a radar signal that was confusing to him.

According to McClure, the detected signal started at the rear of his scope and began to move upward, in what is now thought of as the “Up Scope Incident.” This sort of thing was, according to nearly everyone, impossible. The purpose of the monitoring system in the aircraft was to detect the signal emitted from enemy ground-based radars and therefore, they would always be moving down scope. The system is passive which means they don’t emit a signal but search for other radar signals. The only way for them to move up scope was if the radar was airborne and the craft carrying it was approaching the RB-47 and then passing it.

McClure, interviewed by the Condon Committee in 1967, said:

I had… a radar receiver…. It had a DF capability which can tell you the bearings from you to the object… Any ground radar that you intercept has to go down your scope because the airplane is moving forward… This particular signal… it was behind me and it moved forward which indicates it was either in the air or the aircraft was in a turn…. So I called the front because I asked them were they turning. He said, “No.” They were flying straight and level. So I just ignored the thing because I figured that’s something that can’t happen and I’ll just forget about it…

 Chase would tell investigators that at this point McClure changed frequencies that he was searching. He was thinking that his equipment had malfunctioned in some fashion. McClure didn’t think much about it at the time it happened. Only after the other events of the evening, did McClure and the others attach significance to this sighting.

Philip Klass in studying this aspect of the sighting believed that the problems were a malfunction in the equipment and a signal received from a station near Biloxi, Mississippi.

Sparks, in his analysis said that the aircraft crossed the coast closer to Gulfport, which meant there were no ground-based radars to account for the signal. He based this on the information that Chase had supplied to the Condon Committee. He also said that the radar site, at Keesler Air Force Base was not in operation at the time. It was a training site, and this was summer and long after midnight.

While the source of the signal has not been identified, according to Printy, the site could well have been in operation on July 17, early in the morning. It is true that the site was a training facility but they did hold late night classes and they did work on the radars in the hours when it would necessarily conflict with nighttime training.

In the end, there is no evidence that the signal came from a ground source, but it does mimic one of the types of radars being used at the time. It was radiating on the proper frequency. In other words, there is no positive solution for this part of the case.

Raven Two, McClure, didn’t mention this problem to the pilot at the time, other than request information about the attitude of the aircraft. If it was in a turn, then the strange movement of the return could be explained. If they were in straight and level flight, then there was some sort of a problem.

Once the flight reached the area of Meridian, Mississippi, they turned to the west, heading toward the Dallas – Fort Worth area, or to a point somewhat south of there, north of Waco. According to the Wing Intelligence report, quoted above, the bright light startled Chase. He thought it was another aircraft heading directly at his, at the same altitude, and that he would have to take evasive action. Chase warned the crew to prepare, but then the light flashed by from left to right. Chase said, according to the documentation in the Condon files:

I didn’t have any time to react at all – that’s how fast it was and it went out to about the 2 o’clock position and all the lights go out on… I asked him [McCoid], “Jim,” I said, “Did you see that?” He gave me some remark like, “Well, I did if you did.” He wasn’t going to admit to anything… Then one of us made the remark, “Well, it must be a flying saucer.” … We were laughing about it in the interphone.

According to the Air Defense Command sighting questionnaire, filled out by Chase some three months after the event, the object or light, was an intense “blue-white light.”  He thought it was about two miles away, but then it was a light seen in the sky without a point of reference. He told the Condon investigators that it was impossible to estimate the distance to an unknown light in the sky. Or, in other words, it could have been much farther away if it was a very bright object.

Interestingly, nearly everyone who has studied the case agree with the idea this was a meteor. It matches descriptions of other such fireballs seen under a variety of conditions. Sparks, in fact, wrote, “This meteor fireball sighting is the only part of the RB-47 incident having a mundane explanation, in this case as a natural phenomenon.”

It was during the next phase of the flight, as the RB-47 approached the next turn that the sighting changed in nature. According to what Chase told Klass:

We actually turned over Meridian, but by the time we got over Jackson we have to be very accurately on course, straight and level for the work to be done. So Meridian would have been the actual turning point with the ECM mission starting at Jackson, in other words the Navigator would have to have a precise fix and you’re on course with no turns so he chart the points along the line.

After the visual sighting and the discussion of “flying saucers,” McClure began to search for some sort signal. At about 4:30 (CST), McClure found a signal that mimicked the characteristics of the CPS-6B radars and like the signal he had detected when they had crossed the coast into Mississippi earlier. The signal was scanning at the same rate as that of the radar, meaning there would be a signal, it would disappear as the radar antenna spun and reappear when the antenna was pointed at the aircraft.

McClure wondered if the UFO that had been seen earlier was the source of the signal that he was now watching. If it was, then it would suggest that the UFO had changed course and was pacing the aircraft, clearly something that no ground station could do. McClure told Chase about what he was seeing on his scope and wondered if he had visual contact with anything out there. He continued to make his observations.

 The wing intelligence report, which was created within hours of the aircraft landing said:

A/C [aircraft commander, Chase] notified crew and ECM NR 4 [McClure] for signal described above, found same approximately 1030Z [4:30 CST] at a relative bearing of 070 degrees; 1035Z, relative bearing of 068 degrees; 1038Z, relative bearing 040 degrees. At 1039Z A/C sighted huge light which he estimated to be 5000 feet below aircraft at about 2 o’clock. Aircraft altitude was 34,500 feet, weather perfectly clear. Although A/C could not determine shape or size of object he had a definite impression [sic] light emanated from top of object. At 1040Z ECM operator nr 2 reported he then had two signals at relative bearings of 040 and 070 degrees. A/C and co-pilot saw these two objects at the same time with the same red color. A/C received permission to ignore flight plan and pursue object. He notified ADC site UTAH and requested all assistance possible. At 1042Z ECM nr 2 had one object at 020 degrees relative bearing. A/C increased speed to Mach 0.83, turned to pursue, and the object pulled ahead. At 1042.5Z ECM nr 2 again had two signals at relative bearings of 040 and 070 degrees. At 1044Z he had a single signal at 050 degrees relative bearing. At 1048Z ECM nr 3 was recording interphone and command position conversations. ADC site requested aircraft to go to IFF mode III for positive identification then requested position of object. Crew reported position of the object as 10NM (nautical miles) north west [sic] of Ft Worth, Texas, and ADC site UTAH immediately confirmed presence of object on their scopes. At approximately 1050Z object appeared to stop and aircraft overshot. UTAH reported they lost object from scopes at this time and ECM nr 2 also lost signal. Aircraft began turning, ECM nr 2 picked up signal at 160 degrees relative bearing, UTAH regained scope contact and A/C regained visual contact. At 1052Z ECM n2 had signal at 200 degrees relative bearing, moving up his D/F scope. Aircraft began closing on object until the estimated range was 5NM. At this time object appeared to drop approximately 15,000 feet altitude and A/C lost visual contact. UTAH also lost object from scopes. At 1055Z in the area of Mineral Wells, Texas, crew notified UTAH they must depart they must depart for home station because of fuel supply. Crew queried UTAH whether a CIRVIS report had been submitted and UTAH replied the report had been transmitted. At 1057 ECM nr 2 had signal at 300 degrees relative bearing but UTAH had no scope contact. At 1058Z A/C regained visual contact of object approximately 10NM northwest of Ft Worth, Texas, estimated altitude 20,000 feet, at 2 o’clock from aircraft. At 1102Z aircraft took up heading for home station. This placed area of object off the tail of the aircraft. ECM nr 2 continued to D/F signal of object between 180- and 190-degrees relative bearing until 1140Z when aircraft was approximately abeam Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. At this time signal faded rather abruptly. 55SRW DOI has no doubt the electronic D/F’s coincided exactly with visual observations by A/C numerous times thus indicating positively the object being the signal source.

 The report was taken by Captain Elwin T. Piwetz within hours of the aircrew landing in Kansas. The memories of the crew would be fresh and suggest these are the best of the interviews conducted. Those held some ten years after the fact don’t agree precisely with these statements, but the discrepancies are all minor and relatively unimportant.

This interview, conducted by the Wing intelligence officer, would seem to provide a good case. Observations that were backed up by both airborne radars and ground-based radars. But the Blue Book file has some contradictory information in it. There is a TELEX alerting those at ATIC and Blue Book that a sighting had been made. Most of the information in that TELEX reflects what the Wing intelligence report said, but there is one line that is troublesome. Although partially hidden by a piece of paper obviously put there to hide some of the information, the line says, “UTAH had negative contact with object.”

On the TELEX someone had identified UTAH as the ground radar and had also written, “Note,” with an exclamation point. This document created within hours of sighting as well and is in direct contradiction of what was reported by Chase and his crew. They also reported that all the documentation they had created had been removed by someone and none of that appear in the Blue Book file.

This demonstrates that the Blue Book file is no help in resolving the questions raised by the sighting. It seems inconceivable that the aircrew would believe that the ground radar station reported they had tracked the object and that those at that station would deny it.

The same can be said for the CIRVIS report. The aircrew said the report had been filed, but if there was no radar contact on the ground, then the report might not have been filed. Or, the ground station filed the report based on what the aircrew said. The search for the CIRVIS report is ongoing.

It also seems odd that the Condon Committee investigators could not find the Blue Book file on the case. True, in 1967, as they were investigating UFOs, some of them had access to the Blue Book files. Ironically, as they investigated a series of sightings at Malmstrom Air Force Base, they were dealing with the base UFO officer, Lieutenant Colonel Lewis Chase. In the course of that investigation, or rather the documents surrounding it, it became clear that some members of the Condon Committee had been granted security clearances so that they could pursue specific sightings.

What that means, simply, is that had they wanted to follow up on what Chase had told them about his sighting in 1957, they had access to the files. Granted, the information supplied by Chase gave the sighting date as September 1957 instead of July, but even a limited search of the records should have turned it up. After Condon finished his work and after Blue Book was closed, James McDonald did find the case file. It wasn’t as if it would have been in another file cabinet, or that the Project Card didn’t contain sufficient information to suggest that it might be the case. Their conclusion that the information is no longer available is inaccurate.

Brad Sparks, in his report published in Jerome Clark’s massive UFO Encyclopedia, Second Edition, wrote:

The RB-47 incident is the first conclusive scientific proof for the existence of UFOs. Calibrations of the RB-47’s electronic measurements provide an irrefutable case. By comparing the measures of the airborne UFO microwave emissions against a known microwave source (the Duncanville, Texas, air defense radar [known in the documentation as UTAH]), with both signals compared simultaneously, the accuracy of the UFO measurements becomes scientifically unassailable. Since both signals were measured at the same time as 30 degrees apart, this proves that it was impossible for the UFO signal to have been a misidentification of the Duncanville radar signal. The UFO signal was the dominant signal since the Duncanville signal was not detected until the RB-47 flew into the strongest part of the Duncanville radar beam.

Even if this statement is considered to be hyperbole, it does suggest that the case was mishandled by the both the Air Force and the Condon Committee. It screamed for a follow up in 1957, when the aircrew was reporting radar contacts from the air, reporting electromagnetic radiation detected emanating from the UFO and with visual sightings of the UFO. As noted, the Blue Book file contains contradictions that should have been resolved in 1957. Did Duncanville track the object or not? And if they didn’t, why did the flight crew believe they did? Those simple questions should have been answered in 1957.

Tim Printy, at his skeptical website wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about the case as was Sparks. Printy wrote, “Is the case solved? I would never suggest so unless there was much more evidence as to aerial activities that morning. As a result, the case is still unidentified.”

Which, of course, seems to be a proper solution here because there are so many aspects that were not explored when various individuals and entities had the opportunity. In 1957, with the Air Force charged with the investigation of UFOs, and with a case that seemed to have so many independent chains of evidence, it would be expected that the Air Force would investigate. That investigation was apparently reduced to having Chase fill out their questionnaire, and paying attention only to the visual sighting that took place near Fort Worth. According to the Project Card, the case file referred only to the “1^st sighting,” which, of course, it was not. They claimed that it was solved as an aircraft, specifically American Airlines flight number 655. Unfortunately for the Air Force, that flight was on the ground in El Paso, Texas. What this demonstrates was that they simply didn’t care to continue to investigate.

Klass concluded that the sightings were a combination of things and taken separately, they were all explainable in the conventional. The first radar sighting was a simple electronic error that flipped the image on the radar screen so that it appeared traveling up scope rather than down. The first visual sighting was of a meteor with which Brad Sparks agrees. The other radar sightings from the ground were misidentifications of the ground radar beams since the frequencies of those beams matched, to a degree the pattern emitted by the UFO. The second visual sightings were American Airlines flight number 966, which according to Klass, “If American Airlines flight #966 was on time, it would have been approaching the Dallas airport at the time that the Duncanville radar operators noted an unidentified target in the same location…. On final approach, the airliner’s landing lights would have been turned on, and this could explain the RB-47 crew’s observation that it had overflown a bright light northwest of Dallas.”

Unfortunately for Klass, American Airlines flight number 966 was involved in a near miss situation in west Texas and was nowhere near Dallas at the time. There is no explanation for the sighting, which doesn’t mean that it was alien, only that it is unidentified.

It is interesting, however, that Klass acknowledges the Duncanville [UTAH] radar tracking an object when the Blue Book file suggests otherwise. Again, this is one of the unresolved points in the case.

In the end, the consensus seems to be that this case is unidentified. The explanations offered for it or rather the radar displays on the airborne detectors might be explained, in part, by ground stations. As noted, there is no evidence that the radar at Biloxi was in operation at the time, and if that is the case, then the explanation fails at that point.

It should also be noted that the flight crew, while unsure of how much was recorded or when the recording started, all agree that there were some recordings made and photographs of the scopes taken. Those have all disappeared and there is no evidence that they were ever part of the Blue Book file.

Given what has been documented, there should be other evidence somewhere. The Condon Committee had the best opportunity to find it in the late 1960s. Members of the team had the clearance to see the files, unless there was something there that would be considered a threat to national security and classified at a level that would not have allowed review by the civilians of the Condon Committee. Chase told one of the committee members who was attempting to learn about the Belt, Montana, sightings in 1967 that related to the allegations that missile launch capability had been compromised that he couldn’t get into that because of the classified nature of the reports.

However, given the instructions the Air Force had given Condon, it is not surprising that nothing came from that information. To probe too deeply could have exposed a significant case. Today, we have the remnants of the case and nothing else. Condon did his job, but here it was not in the public interest.