Charles Moore and the Array, New Mexico, UFO Sighting

 

Dr. Abraham Loeb, he of Harvard and the Galileo Project, is beginning research to identify alien objects passing close to Earth that originated outside our Solar System. He is looking up, into the sky, rather than down, at the ground. As he said to me, he is uninterested in UFO reports from the past, suggesting, with some justification, those sighting reports have been poorly collected and are absent of scientific objectivity. The past is cluttered with hoaxes and hallucinations and

Dr. Avi Loeb

delusions. This renders much of the information as unreliable in the eyes of the scientist and of no interest to him and those working at the Galileo Project.

That attitude seems to have changed, slightly, in the past few weeks. Loeb has invited a number of those associated with the UFO community to join his consulting team. These include Lue Elizondo, Kevin Knuth, Chris Mellon, Nick Pope, Robert Powell and Gary Voorhis, who is the founder of something called UAPsx and is a first-hand witness to tic-tac incident on the USS Nimitz in 2004. Most importantly, Loeb has now added Jacques Vallee to his consulting team as well.

 I will note here for no reason, that nearly everyone on this list has some connection into a government agency. I have to wonder if this has something to do with having had government security clearances in the past. I have been approached by others whose first question to me has often seemed to be if I still had my top-secret clearance.

Anyway, while Loeb’s criticism about the gathering of UFO data being less than scientific, that doesn't hold true for all UFO reports. Charles B. Moore, yes, the Roswell balloon guy, made a UFO report to Project Blue Book. His sighting was labeled as "unidentified," by the Air Force investigators. The sighting, made near Array, New Mexico, on April 24, 1949, isn't very spectacular, except that it is

Charles Moore

multiple witness and used instrumentality to observe the object. Moore, along with a crew from General Mills, identified as Akers, Davidson, Fitzsimmons and Moorman and a Naval officer Douglas C. McLaughlin (also identified as Robert or "R" McLaughlin in some reports) were launching the balloons. Brad Sparks has suggested that McLaughlin was not physically at the site, but in the Public Information Office.

They had "released 350-gram balloon about 1020 MST and were following it with a standard ML-47 David White Theodolite." Moore made a reading at 10:30 a.m. and then took over at the theodolite.

His report, originally classified as “secret” but later downgraded to “restricted,” (and proving that some of the UFO sightings were classified) was made to what was then known as Project Sign. He wrote that he had looked up to acquire the balloon with the unaided eye and spotted what he thought was the balloon. Moore later wrote:

We thought we had the balloon when we picked up a whitish, spherical object right along the direction the theodolite was pointing… The object was drifting east rapidly… but we had thought to encounter similar balloons. When the distance between the theodolite and the supposed balloon became apparent, I took over the theodolite and found the true balloon still there, whereupon I abandoned it and picked up the object after it came out of the sun. The object was moving too fast to crank the theodolite around; therefore, one of the men pointed the theodolite and I looked. The object was ellipsoid... white in color except for a light yellow of one side as though it were in shadow. I could not get a hard focus on the object due to the speed at which the angles changed. Therefore, I saw no good detail at all.

"The object," according to Moore, "was not a balloon and was some distance away. Assuming escape velocity, a track is enclosed which figures elevation above the station of about 300,000 feet over the observed period. If this is true, the flight would have probably gone over the White Sands Proving Ground (later White Sands Missile Range), Holloman Air Force Base, and Los Alamos."

They lost sight of the object in the distance, after watching it for about 60 seconds. They had made measurements using their equipment and a stopwatch but took no photographs.

Moore’s statement isn’t the only one available. In March, 1950, True, published an article by Commander Robert B. McLaughlin (which means this is in conflict with the Blue Book file that mentions Douglas McLaughlin). According to him, an accurate plot of the UFO’s course was made and that he, McLaughlin, at least, saw the object in cross section, reporting that it was elliptical in shape. He definitely believed that the object was 105 feet in diameter and that it was about fifty-six miles high, which is just a shade under 300,000 feet. Although this seems to be a first-hand account by McLaughlin, Sparks suggested it was written in a way to give that impression or changed by an editor to provide additional credibility.

Document from Blue Book Showing the original
classification as "Secret" and later down
graded to "Restricted."

McLaughlin, or those with at the site, calculated the speed as five miles per second and that, at the end of “its trajectory, it served abruptly upward.” He wrote that this resulted in an increase in altitude by twenty-five miles in about ten seconds and would have had more than twenty times the force of gravity.

In an interesting note, McLaughlin wrote, “Close questioning of the observers prior to the official report that went to ‘Project Saucer’ [the public name of Project Sign] at Wright-Patterson Field in Dayton, Ohio, produced an almost unanimous judgement that the object was discus-shaped and that it was a flat white color. High-powered binoculars showed no exhaust trail, no stream of light or other evidence of a propulsion system. And no sound.”

There is another point that must be made. In a document found in the Blue Book file, Major Joseph O. Fletcher, the Director, Base Directorate for Geophysical Research wrote, “It is felt that although the theodolite and stop-watch were of great assistance in making estimates, the principal factor responsible for the unusually specific information contained in this report, is that Mr. (name redacted, but is Moore) was made aware of in advance what factors should be observed in case such an object was sighted. Therefore, it is urged that your office issue advanced observation instructions to people who might be in a position to make observations and turn in reports.”

These two sentences suggest that someone had briefed Moore on what to do if he saw something strange while conducting his experiments, and that others should be briefed on this as well. Someone believed that flying saucers would be seen around the White Sands area and that proper observations must be made. In other words, they were actually planning for the event.

Dr. Donald Menzel, he of Harvard at the time, later did what the Air Force couldn't in their investigation in 1949. He identified the object seen by Moore and his crew. According to Menzel, the object was a mirage. That is, Menzel believed it to be an atmospheric reflection of the true balloon, making it appear as if there were two objects in the sky instead of one. He was so sure of this that he told Moore about the solution.

Moore, however, was an atmospheric physicist. He was as qualified as Menzel to discuss the dynamics of the atmosphere, and, according to him when interviewed on El Paso radio station KTSM in March 1995, the weather conditions were not right for the creation of mirages. Since Moore was on the scene, and since his training qualified him to make judgments about the conditions of the atmosphere at the time of the sighting, his observations are more important than Menzel's wild speculations.

When Moore spoke to Menzel, the Harvard professor, would not listen to what Moore had to say. Menzel had found, what to him was a satisfactory solution for the sighting, and he didn't want to discuss it seriously, or have his conclusions challenged. Air Force investigators, however, left the sighting labeled as "unidentified."

This boils down to a lesson for all of us. We learn here about the mental gymnastics used by some to explain any sighting regardless of the facts. Here was a case where a trained scientist, technicians and military personnel saw something strange, tracked it, and used their instruments to gather data. The object was measured to be 300,000 feet in the air, moving rapidly. They knew it wasn’t a balloon and described a craft with an elliptical shape.

Given the nature of the data gathered, given that the UFO was seen through “high-powered” binoculars, given that the angles and trajectories were measured using the theodolite, and that the sighting was timed, lasting more than a minute, this should be the sort of scientifically gathered information that Dr. Loeb would want. While it certainly doesn’t fit into the Galileo Project, meaning the UFO was inside the Earth’s atmosphere instead of flying through space beyond it, the case does provide some insight into the phenomenon and might provide clues about what to look for in the future. It merely suggests that some UFO reports might be useful as the search for other extraterrestrial objects continues.