New Sightings with Video

 

To begin, on Wednesday morning, April 27, a bolide flashed over Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. It was bright enough to be seen in the morning sky and made a roaring sound, something often reported with large meteors.

While this, in and of itself, is relatively unimportant, a comment about this, is. One commentator suggested it suggested something about the capability of American military defense. They hadn’t spotted the meteor and that meant, I suppose, a hole in our defense system, except…

This bolide probably was no larger than a softball, maybe a basketball, was traveling at something around 50,000 miles an hour, and would have been lost in the hundreds of items of space debris now in orbit around the Earth. This is not to mention that our sensor arrays and radar facilities are often set to discriminate, looking for threats to national security rather than a high-flying bolide that probably burned up before reaching the ground. There are some very good videos of meteor falls and you can watch them here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLM1pfgv9IE&t=20s

I just thought I would mention this because, in the following reports, it is mentioned that the object sighted, at least at Midway, made no sound. In other cases, the witnesses heard a low rumbling but the passage of a bolide has been described as sounding like an artillery round flying overhead, and yes, I have heard many of those.

So, I thought I’d take a bit of a tour around the world and see what is being reported in other areas. First, is an interesting report from Midway Atoll in the Pacific. On November 24, 2021, the witnesses said that they saw an object that was moving away at high speed. There was no sound and no trail that might suggest a fireball.

One of the witnesses said that it was an airplane, but others said that it was not. The witness reached for her cell phone and began to record. The film lasts for two and a half minutes, meaning that the witnesses were able to get a good view of the UFO. It moved quickly and steadily and seemed to be descending as it disappeared.

Here's the important point with this sighting. The witness attempted to find a way to provide the video to the Pentagon, but was unable to do that, the current interest in UFOs not withstanding and I believe it is because the source was not military.

UFO seen over Midway Atoll.

The preliminary analysis by William Puckett, was that the object might have been a balloon, but the witness said that it was moving faster before she began filming. The sighting did not take place during the normal balloon launchings and has been ruled out by Puckett. You see the video here:

https://www.ufosnw.com/newsite/bright-irregularly-shaped-object-moves-fast/

On March 8 of this year, the witness watched a slow moving, triangular object as it flew over Meyerton, South Africa. The UFO made no noise but did cause a slight rumbling. It was very big, the size of a football field, but given this is South Africa, I’m thinking that meant a soccer field. It was very low. The witness said that friends had been searching for her for thirty minutes, but she was there the whole time, which is an intriguing detail suggesting some sort of missing time.

Finally, on March 9 of this year, in Harwington, Connecticut, the witness said that she had seen a massive black triangle with curved corners, and red, yellowish and blue round lights under each side.

According to her report, it was dark outside and she turned on the garage lights. When she reached the driveway, she heard a low, but deep rumbling. The triangle was right above her and extended over part of the roof. She thought the only reason she could see it was because of the lights underneath it. As she watched, it moved very, very slowly until it was completely over the house roof and then was gone in seconds.

She was concerned about the sighting and lost sleep for several nights because, as she said, her good fortune in seeing the UFO. She decided to report it and sent the information to the National UFO Reporting Center.

The MADAR network had a hit in the Newington area, about 21 miles east of Harwington, which when the times were converted to UTC matched. Although the witness said that she watched the UFO for about two and a half minutes, the recorded anomaly was eight minutes long and the MADAR node also recorded a compass deviation at the time of the sighting. That does, to an extent, corroborate the idea that some UFOs do emit a strong magnetic field.

This is an important sighting for two reasons. One is the independent corroboration of the event by the MADAR system and second, the witness did report the sighting but not to an official government organization. Again, the report probably would have been ignored by this new UFO investigating office because it came from a civilian.

Triangular Craft on Aircraft Carrier Deck and a Video from Scotland

 

As you all know, I have been reporting on triangular-shaped UFOs over the last several weeks. I have speculated that some of these sightings might be of military or experimental aircraft. I found a photograph of just such a triangular-shaped object on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Studying the photograph, it looked somewhat photoshopped to me because it didn’t seem the shadows quite matched. Digging a little deeper, it seems that this is a faked photo. We need to circulate this widely to make sure that all know the photograph is faked.

The photograph is a fake.

But are some very interesting sightings out there. The witnesses, in Clatteringshaws, Galloway, Scotland, said that he and a friend were camping in July of last year. They spent time star gazing because they were away from city lights and were treated to a massive display of meteors.

They watched a meteor flash across the sky, leaving a wake of soft blue/white light and as it dissipated the witness spotted what he thought was another meteor. It was traveling in the opposite direction and was, according to the witness, “real confusing” about the way it broke up. The UFO broke into three parts, but rather than trailing behind, they seemed to spin off in different directions.

The witness asked for his friend’s cell phone and began recording. The points of light are relatively small and the one toward the bottom seems to have a flashing light on it, not unlike the strobe on an aircraft. For those interested, here is the link:

https://www.ufosnw.com/newsite/object-breaks-into-3-pieces-vanishes-reappears/

The witness described the motion of the objects, and the fact that he recorded for more than 30 seconds, as the three UFOs maneuvered, that seems to rule out a meteor.

In the witness’s words, “The two orbs would move further apart and a third much smaller orb would travel between the two points. At one point we both turned to each other to check we were seeing the same thing as multi-colored rings appeared around the now singular orb, like the rings of Saturn, but in a revolving color spectrum.”

I will note one other thing here. The witness mentions that both of them were drunk during the sighting. And, they were in the same spot the next night, but there was no additional display. Without the video, which, frankly, doesn’t show much, it would be easy to dismiss the report.

William Puckett, in his analysis, wrote, “Originally, I thought that the object could be space debris or another meteor. The video doesn’t support that as the object moves very little. In absence of more information, I will classify sighting as unidentified. The clip in this report is only a small portion of the original clip.”

Finally, a private pilot flying somewhere between Cedar City, Utah, and Las Vegas, Nevada, reported that a bright light approached his plane rapidly, slowed and paced him for five minutes. It was glowing white and it was difficult to see a shape behind that light. The witness said it looked like a tic-tac, which, as I say is what we would have called cigar shape in the past. The UFO veered to the north, and disappeared in seconds.

Chasing Footnotes: The Kit Green DIRD Report Analysis

 

(Note: This post began as a short piece to provide context for the Kit Green DIRD report that has caused some controversy. Dr. Michael Swords, who had turned a critical eye to that particular report, saw that it relied on information supplied by John Schuessler and, according to Mike, referred to an article that appeared in the February 1976 issue of Official UFO. I had a copy of that magazine, scanned the article that Mike needed, and then looked at it. Walter Webb was the author, and it contained a listing of people who had experienced some form of paralysis during UFO sightings. Although there was a list of references at the end of Webb’s article, there was no way of knowing, from that list, which reference went with which article… so, I decided to chase a “footnote” or two. The following is the original story about all this, along with the sources for some of the sightings, which I was able to trace.)

It was John Greenewald, using FOIA, who had managed to obtain the Defense Intelligence Reference Documents (DIRDs) that had been mentioned by Dr. Eric Davis during a radio interview several years ago. There were hints that these documents, or rather some of them, related to investigations into warp drives (for interstellar flight) and propulsion systems that would allow for, well, interstellar flight and on-going research into means and methods of space travel. John filed his FOIA request on January 31, 2018.

There were other hints about these documents and Tony Bragalia, in his own FOIA requests managed to obtain a few of the DIRD documents but not all of them. Tony’s interpretation suggested that this was research into several topics related to UFOs. While there was some controversy about what was mentioned in the documents Tony had received, John’s FOIA request was still working its way through the government bureaucracy.

On March 25, 2022, all 37 of the requested documents were released to John, among others. We were now able to see what this was all about. For those interested in all this, the documents are available in The Black Vault. You can find and download them here:

https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/the-advanced-aerospace-weapon-system-applications-program-aawsap-documentation/

Looking through the list of documents, it seems that only one of them relates directly to UFOs and this was prepared by Kit Green. Dr. Michael Swords reviewed this document and mentioned that Green used material provided by John Schuessler that dealt with human contact with UFOs. Mike, chasing a footnote or two himself, found a reference to an article in the February 1976 issue of Official UFO magazine that might provide some additional information.

There are a couple of points to be made here. Obviously, Official UFO was not a peer reviewed science journal. At the time, the editor was Bernard O’Connor, and his vision for the magazine was to accurately report on various aspects of the UFO phenomena. He wanted articles that were based on evidence and not the wild speculation that filled the pages of some other magazines. Once Bernie left the editorial duties, the magazine devolved into something that was less than reliable and more in line with some of those other magazines.

I will note here that I worked with Bernie, which is to say that I was one of the writers who contributed to the magazine. I spoke to him on the telephone and knew that he was as careful as he could be in his selection of articles. In fact, I interviewed him on the radio version of A Different Perspective, and you can listen to that interview here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/25580581

The point is this. Official UFO was a commercial magazine, and while the editor tried to maintain high standards, the publishers weren’t quite so rigid. When you looked at the articles, the other thing that had to be considered, was the author. In the case of the Schuessler reference, we find ourselves looking at an article written by Walter Webb. Like Bernie, Walter has a good reputation. He wasn’t prone to inventing evidence and was as accurate as it is as possible to be, given all the trouble in the UFO field.

Here's where we are. We have the document written by Kit Green and included in the DIRD material obtained by John Greenewald through FOIA. By looking at Green’s report, we see that a great deal of it comes from the work of John Schuessler. We see, according the Mike Swords, that Schuessler referenced a specific magazine article, which was written by Walter Webb. And if we wish to take this a step farther, we see that Walter Webb collected the data from a variety of sources, all referenced in the article. For those who wish to follow up on that. Following are the pages from that particular article.

 

I suppose the next step is to chase the notes to the original sources, but all we have is the list of sources without any specific reference tied to a specific story. And while that might be a problem, I do have access to enough sources that I could begin the search and using my book Levelland, I can find the references to some of these cases and get closer to the original source.

For Example, there is the March 8, 1967, sighting by an unidentified victim in Leominster, Massachusetts. The car lights, engine and radio failed and one of the witnesses received electric shocks that caused momentary paralysis. There is an Air Force file on the case, but that information was supplied by NICAP UFO investigator Frank Pechulis. There are articles in the NICAP UFO Investigator (March/April 1967), and the Leominster Daily Enterprise on March 10, 1967, and additional information supplied by Ray Fowler. All this information, and a great deal more is found in Levelland and in the Blue Book file on the case. There are quotes from the witnesses, and information from the original investigators.

There was another sighting that Webb mention, made on August 27, 1967, but it was not reported in The A.P.R.O Bulletin until the March/April 1969 issue. The main witness, Kenneth Flack, was driving about a mile east of Texas Creek, Colorado about 11:20 p.m. He saw two cars in front of him and as he began to approach them, his engine failed and his lights went out. According to Flack, the other two cars suffered the same sort of failures.

Flack said that the night was bright, and he could clearly see object between him and the Arkansas River. He said that the object stood on three legs and had an egg shape to it that Coral Lorenzen would suggest that it resembled the craft reported by Lonnie Zamora in 1964.

The passengers in the other two cars had gotten out of them but were standing near them. Flack started to walk toward the object and as he approached, the UFO “rotated on the legs about a quarter of a turn.” He said that the back end raised up and there was a bright flash. Flack was stopped in his tracks, unable to move. He could only stand and watch what was happening.

As Flack watched, the UFO lifted off and rose slowly, flying toward the north. It did not light up or make a sound as it moved. The legs had retracted into the bottom as it lifted off.

As the UFO disappeared, Flack lost consciousness and the other witnesses carried him to his car. When they were unable to rouse him, his friends took him back to the college dorm. Later, he would remember that one of the other vehicles was a pickup with a camper on the back that had come from Pueblo, Colorado. The other vehicle had Texas license plates but he didn’t remember the number.

However, and according to Flack, the driver of the Texas car mentioned that she was going to write to Condon. Coral Lorenzen said that she had contacted Roy Craig of the committee about this, and, according to Flack he had a letter from her confirming the claim.  Craig, however, was unable to locate a letter or report from the woman and Flack said that he lost the letter. Flack said that her name was Mitchell Miller or Miller Mitchell. He also put an ad in the Pueblo, Colorado, newspaper attempting to locate the other witness but he received no reply.

The case made its way to APRO though Flack’s girlfriend’s father, Charles Upp, who provided the information to the APRO’s Colorado representatives. None of the other witnesses have been found. There has been no additional follow up to the case so that boils down to a single witness, without any sort of corroborative evidence.

Another of those cases cited by Webb, is the Goffstown, NH, sighting of November 2, 1973. The witness was Lyndia Morel. According to the story, Morel felt a “high-pitched” whine through her body and a tingling sensation wash over her. The case was reported in Encounters with UFO Occupants and the original investigators were Betty Hill (yes, that Betty Hill) and Walter Webb.

Also reported in Encounters with UFO Occupants, was the September 17, 1954, sighting in Cenon, France. Yves David, while cycling, felt a prickling and itching all over his body as if he had just experienced an electric shock. Coral Lorenzen, the author of the book, provides no source for the report. Webb doesn’t either, other than that list at the end of his article. However, Jacques Vallee in Passport to Magonia, gives Aime Michel and his book, Flying Saucers and the Straight Line Mystery as the source. That is as far as I could take it without spending about thirty-five bucks for a copy of Michel’s book.

Here's another example of these sorts of cases. Webb reported that on October 20, 1954, in Turquestein, France, the motorist drove up to an inverted cone in the road. As the car’s engine failed, he said that his hands seemed to be glued to the steering wheel and he felt hot throughout his body. I reported on this in Levelland, giving my source as Mark Rodeghier, and his UFO Reports Involving Vehicular Interference. In turn, Rodeghier cited Michel’s Flying Saucers and the Straight Line Mystery.

The point here, I suppose, is that I couldn’t always get to the original source. I did find the NICAP reports and the Blue Book reports on the Leominster sighting. Webb wrote about his own investigation in the Goffstown sighting, which suggests the information published is reliable. In the other cases, the trail for me ended with Michel because, as I said, don’t have a copy of his book.

There is another problem developing here. In the article, Webb mentioned a sighting from La Tessoualle, France on November 8, 1954. Webb reported:

 As a cone-shaped object approached, the subject’s automobile headlights and engine failed. While the UFO bathed the car in a blue light, the driver was unable to move for several minutes, could not speak, and felt pricklings in his hands. When the blue light was turned off, he was able to move again.

Mark Rodeghier in his comprehensive vehicle interference analysis, described the sighting this way:

As a single witness saw a blue disc, his car engine died and the headlights went out. The disc came closer and the witness was paralyzed with a feeling of prickling in his hands. When the blue light on the UFO disappeared, he could move and start the car The UFO, which was five to six meters in size, now appeared again 200 meters away. As he drove towards it, the object again turned off the blue light and flew away with a soft whistling sound.

Rodeghier cited The Humanoids by Charles Bowen as his source. Jacques Vallee also reported on the sighting. Vallee wrote:

Andre Chaillou felt pricklings in his hands “in spite of his gloves,” when a blue disk came close to his motorcycle and his electrical system failed. He was unable to move or articulate a word for several minutes/ As soon as the blue light was turned off, he started again and went near the light when it appeared 200 m away. He saw the object, a cone, 5.5 m in size, rise vertically with a soft whistling, then fly horizontally to the north.

Vallee gave his source as Combat, Nov. 23, 1954; Paris-Presse, Nov. 24, 1954. Given that the sources quoted by Vallee are in a French newspaper, this might be the closest to the original source as I’ll be able to get. The problem here is the vehicle changing from a motorcycle to a car and that the UFO changed from a disk to a cone. Webb, in his article cites both Vallee’s book and Bowen’s book as sources but not that he used both sources to create the entry. It is clear that he didn’t notice the problems with this case. Of course, the same thing can be said about me because I used the same material without noticing that in one case it was a car and in the other a motorcycle.

There is one final point that needs to be mentioned. Webb reported on a truck driver living in Bahia Blanca, Argentina, who was changing a tire on a deserted highway in October 1973. According to Webb, “Suddenly, he was paralyzed and could not speak. He saw a hovering disc-shaped object and three five-and-a-half-foot tall humanoids standing near him. After losing consciousness, he awoke some distance away from the encounter site in a state of total amnesia. Reportedly, hypnosis and drugs revealed the victim had been taken aboard the UFO and later released.”

This information had been supplied by Coral Lorenzen. She also provided it to me, and I wrote an article for Saga’s UFO Report about it. I also used it in the book, The October Scenario. Unfortunately, it was later revealed that this case was a hoax. Neither Webb nor I knew that at the time we wrote about it.

While this certainly doesn’t negate the other information used by Webb in his article, it does suggest that we need to vet all that information. Given our resources today, that task is much easier to accomplish than it was in the 1970s. I have provided some of that vetting here, but not all of it.

I will note that many of the cases reported by Webb came from Jacques Vallee’s Passport to Magonia. According to a note in the section that provides the long list of references, Vallee wrote:

We shall not apologize for the inclusion of reports that may with reason be regarded as unbelievable or ludicrous. We are not claiming that any of the reports in the list relates to a real physical event. We are compiling not a table of controlled laboratory experiments but only a general guide for a study of the abundant literature of this intriguing subject. It would be an unfair procedure and a grave misunderstanding of our purpose to assume that all cases in the list stand at the same level of reliability, or to claim that the presence of this or that particular case either supports or weakens by itself the credibility of any other. We cannot accept responsibility for the mistakes of those who ignore this warning.

What we learn here is that Kit Green had supplied a report dealing with these cases as evidence about UFO encounters with humans. It doesn’t appear that he attempted to update the material, didn’t bother with checking the sources mentioned, which is, of course, the reason that sources are cited, and that he didn’t apply much in the way of analysis about any of them.

As I said, Mike Swords, following the trail, arrived at the Official UFO article, which seemed to be the source for Green by way of Schuessler, who probably used Vallee’s Passport to Magonia. It meant, simply, we didn’t have the full story on the sources, and sometimes that it’s just what we need. What do the original sources say, and was it what Green and others alleged they said or something completely different? Now we have a better picture.

(Final Note: I have continued to plow through Webb’s article, and have been able to figure out the sources for most of the information. If there is any real interest in this, I’ll post it later, once I finish the analysis.)

Memphis Photo Update, More Sightings

 

I have an update from last week’s show which was also posted here. I had reported on a photograph taken by an airline pilot over Memphis, Tennessee on January 31. It was of a bright object surrounded by a cloud of some kind that was visible for about five minutes. I have learned that on January 31, there was a launch of a SpaceX rocket and this might have been a fuel dump during the first orbit. I did post a long article here with some of the information suggesting all this. I also found another picture that was clearly from a SpaceX launch that looked just like that taken over Memphis which you can see here:

Pilot's photograph above, SpaceX fuel dump below.

About the only thing missing from this story was directions of flight for the rocket, the aircraft, and the direction to the UFO. This would lock down the solution. Tim Printy supplied that additional information and we can now label this as an IFO, identified flying object.

This is what I have in mind as I mention UFO sightings during the Coast-to-Coast broadcasts. With all the tools available to us in the world today, we should be checking the information and searching for solutions. I use sightings that last more than a minute because the witness just doesn’t have the time to get a good look at the UFO. And if the sighting lasts for an extended period of time, there is ample opportunity for the witness to identify the UFO. I look for those that seem truly inexplicable, but given the situation, sometimes all I can do is report on what I see as an interesting sighting.

Although it has been said for years that 95% of all UFO sightings result in an explanation, it seems recently that the number is closer to 99%. The Memphis photograph fell into that 99% but it is that 1% that is of interest to us here.

The US Space Command announced that it believed, based on the research of two Harvard astronomers, Amir Siraj and Avi Loeb, that a bolide that exploded over the Pacific in 2014 was a rock from another star system. Loeb, you remember, was the scientist who made news by announcing that an object that flew through the Solar System in 2017 was artificial, meaning, of course, that it was of alien manufacture. He suggested at the time that the object had been traveling for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years, before it made its trip through the Solar System

The paper written by the Siraj and Loeb has not been accepted for publication in a peer reviewed journal because it relied on some data from classified government sources. One of those government sources, however, have endorsed the claim.

There are still sightings that are closer to home. A formation of lights, somewhat reminiscent of the Phoenix Lights, was spotted over Tucson on February 22 of this year. The witness saw a huge “V” formation of five lights that were hovering. The witness was outside the house, smoking, when he noticed the five lights described as a city block long and flying close to the ground. The lights were amber at first but then turned red. The lights disappeared shortly after that but not before the witness snapped three pictures.

The Tucson Triangle.

In keeping with the triangular-shaped formations, the witness in Licking County, Ohio, said that in early March, while watching a satellite cross the sky, he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. At first it looked like the heat shimmering off a highway, but above that distortion were eight to fifteen dim lights, moving quickly. The witness has seen satellites and the Starlink satellites, but these were very low and in the triangle formation. According to the witness, it was only by chance that he saw the formation because the lights were so dim.

Finally, on April 10^th of this year, the witnesses in West Palm Beach Florida, saw a tic-tac shaped, white object flying next to an airplane. They said that the object was far away, flew in a straight line, and passed behind the clouds. They said that it made it look as if the airplane was moving at a snail’s pace.

There is a note that the MADAR node in Royal Palm Beach, Florida, showed a slight increase in magnetic field readings, but it wasn’t enough of a change to trigger the alarm. This does suggest the value of the MADAR network.

What all this shows us is that we are moving toward more acceptance of alien visitation. True, some of that visitation is by naturally formed objects, but we have always had those extraterrestrial visitors such as meteors and comets. It’s only recently that we’ve begun to think of terms of naturally formed visitors as arriving close to Earth, or even falling into the ocean. Now, we just have to apply the same scientific rigor to the tales of alien visitation so that we might solve that problem as well.

Memphis UfO Photograph - Chasing Solutions

For years, I have chided the skeptics for accepting solutions for UFO sightings without critical comment. The Air Force explained the Levelland sightings as ball lightning, but I have never heard a skeptic questioning that solution. The theory is that any solution is better than admitting that they have no solution at all. To question a solution doesn’t require them to embrace the alien explanation, merely to acknowledge that those solutions that have been offered are inadequate.

This is a way investigating the Memphis, Tennessee, sighting for which a solution has been offered recently. To recap for those who might have missed it, I mentioned the sighting by an airline pilot of an object he had seen while flying over Memphis. I was mainly intrigued by the photograph, and the fact that the picture had been taken by an airline pilot.

In my search to prepare for my weekly segment on Coast-to-Coast AM, I visit many sites, access various discussion and news groups, look at what has been reported to William Puckett’s Northwest UFOs, Peter Davenport’s Nation UFO Reporting Center, and even various MUFON sites, both national and by state. I pick those sightings that I think are interesting, and as I have mentioned, last more than a minute. The Memphis sighting was reported by the NUFORC fit a number of those criterion. That listing follows:

Occurred: 1/31/2022 18:55 (Entered as: 01/31/2022 6:55 PM) Reported: 2/1/2022 11:43:15 AM 11:43 Posted: 3/4/2022 Location: Memphis (over), TN Shape: Light Duration: 5 minutes Characteristics: There were lights on the object. There was an aura or haze around the object

I’m a commercial airline pilot. While flying at FL 380, at 0055z I observed a round white donut and a lighted moving object within it. The observation lasted five minutes. Sky conditions at cruise altitude were clear with unlimited visibility. No moon illumination was present in the starlit sky. Winds aloft were 310/20 and my ground speed was 445 knots. There was a scattered undercast cloud layer with tops around 10,000 ft. The glowing object within the donut was slowing moving, and I do not attribute its movement to autokinesis. After five minutes of observation the lit object vanished and the white donut dissipated within a minute. One photo was taken.

 

This report provides all the information for a good investigation, with the exception of the direction of flight and the direction to the object from the aircraft cockpit. Either of those numbers would be valuable in understanding the sighting and aiding in solving it. If the orientation of the aircraft, or the direction to the UFO were provided, they might have either confirmed or eliminated the solution offered.

After I posted the information, there was a comment made to this blog about the sighting, which is relevant. According to that post, “That last photo from a pilot over Tennessee was of a SpaceX polar launch.”

Here, then, was a plausible explanation. The problem was, that explanation as offered provided nothing in the way of evidence. It was merely an opinion, which might be relevant… or might not.

So, I looked up the listing of SpaceX launches and found there was one on the evening to January 31. Liftoff, according to the records was at 18:11 hours (6:11 p.m.). Assuming that the pilot’s time of 6:55 p.m. (18:55 hours) is correct, and given he was airborne at the time and that there are clocks on the instrument panel, and his given time is accurate, it seemed to be a long gap.

I found a reference that suggested that the light from the launch would be visible at a radius of 520 miles, which is a long way from Memphis, but that was the number provided by SpaceX. It also mentioned that it would be visible for two minutes and 4 seconds (2:04) but the pilot said the light was in sight for five minutes. Again, this is probably an accurate time, given he was at the controls of his aircraft.

The distance from the launch site to Memphis was something over 700 miles (719. 4 miles to be precise) which also seems to put it out of range for the pilot. Of course, we see that he was flying at 39,000 feet, which changes that dynamic, not to mention that the SpaceX rocket would be climbing upward as it attempted to enter orbit, so the mileage figures might not be relevant.

I could find nothing that told me anything about the direction of launch, though it was supposed to be in a polar orbit. I did wonder, and in fact, do wonder, if they would be launching rockets over land rather than the Atlantic Ocean, but will note I found a reference to a southernly trajectory. I was unable to confirm exactly what that meant, other than a suggestion that the rocket would have been flying away from the Memphis area. I do not know, at this time, if all the SpaceX rockets are launched with the same trajectory, though I would suspect they are all launched out over the ocean.

The picture taken by the pilot actually provides us with the best clues about the solution. As you can see, it provides a dramatic look at the UFO.

However, I found another picture of a SpaceX launch, which looked a great deal like the picture taken by the pilot.

Although I don’t have any directions to the UFO or the heading of the aircraft for that matter, that might not be relevant. The photos seem to prove the point. While I would like to believe the pilot photographed something that was truly strange, the similarity between the two is difficult to ignore. Given that, I believe we have a solution…

And I will note that this is the way things should work. In the world today, with so many of us connected to one another, something that might have been unidentified because we didn’t have access to all the information, now can be explained. In the future, I’m confident that we’ll be able to repeat this process. 

'X" zone Broadcast Network - Don Schmitt and the State of UFO Research

This week Don Schmitt and I engaged in a wide-ranging conversation about the state of the UFO research, where it has been and where it was going. Although I had an agenda in mind, and in fact, written down, as usual, the discussion diverged from that almost immediately. You can listen to the program here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/49360091

And, there is a video version of the show as well that you can watch here:

https://rumble.com/v106pun-kevin-randle-interviews-don-schmitt-ufos-in-2022-part-one.html

I mentioned that my good friend, Bob Cornett had passed away on April 1. I talked about our trip to see the Project Blue Book files when they were first released into the public arena and some of our other adventures in investigating UFOs.

And, of course, in that discussion, I had to mention that the Blue Book files that dealt with the Levelland UFO sightings. That did lead us into a discussion of the way that the Air Force had investigated UFOs, especially after 1953.

We had to talk about the recent release of hundreds of pages of information about UFOs, or that they alleged were about UFOs. Most of them, the vast major of them, had nothing to do with UFOs. It was all part of the study that was done by Bigelow Aerospace.

We moved onto alien abductions. There seemed to be little disagreement between us about the nature of abductions. There was no question that those telling of abductions were relating what they believed to be the truth but the answer seemed to be more terrestrial rather than alien. Like much of the UFO field, there is no single answer.

MJ-12 was another topic that we talked about. We looked at the history of the documents and have come to the same conclusion about them. There are there very few who still believe that MJ-12 is anything authentic. Ryan Wood, as well as his father, Dr. Robert Wood, became the most vocal proponents of MJ-12.

We concluded the conversation with a quick discussion with Gerald Anderson claiming that he had seen the remains of a crashed UFO on the Plains of San Agustin. Again, there are very few who believe that in the world today.

Don Schmitt at the Anderson (Plains of San Agustin) crash site. The Plains
are behind Don,the mountains in the distance are the site of the Bat
Cave, where Herbert Dick and his crew were working at the
time of the crash.

That concluded the first hour, but the plan had been to carry on the discussion on the program next week. Of course, we recorded the second hour immediately, which I believe everyone knows we were going to do. To underscore the idea, it was a week later (which would be next week) we both put on jackets.

The first thing that we talked about were some of the Roswell witness, including some of the problems with their stories. Don suggested that Glenn Dennis, had told his story as a way to cover up an affair he was having with a nurse out at the base at the time of the Roswell crash. I wondered why Dennis would have been telling these stories to cover up the affair that had taken place nearly a half century earlier. You can listen to that hour here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/49360136

There is a video version of this hour as well. You can watch it here:

https://rumble.com/v106rp1-a-different-perspective-with-kevin-randle-interviews-don-schmitt-ufos-in-20.html

I did mention the some of the trouble with Walter Haut, and his endorsement of the Dennis tale. I have mentioned in the past, and again wonder about this in Understanding Roswell.

We do move on from Roswell, and cases in the past to more modern cases, or rather cases from the past that have only recently been reported which is not quite the same thing. That, of course, centered around Jacques Vallee’s book, Trinty, which was about a UFO crash near San Antonio, New Mexico, in 1945, or two years before Roswell.

Both of us found the book wanting, but more important, Don had talked with Remy Baca years before he linked up with Paola Harris, which led to Vallee. According to Don, the story changed significantly over the years.

We end the program with a discussion of drones that might account for some of the modern UFO sightings. And, we talked about the number of sightings of triangles. In fact, there are pictures of triangles that suggest many of the sightings are of terrestrially based technology.

Next up, if things work out, will be Michael Shermer. I mention “work out” because there are some problems with his schedule. If not, I’ll invite him on again in May 

Coast to Coast AM Links

 I have some updates, as I have promised in the past. I have been in communication with the MUFON State Director for Iowa about the Christmas Eve UFO sighting and photographs from Bettendorf, Iowa. Unfortunately, there has been no investigation into the authenticity of those photos by Iowa, nor have they been investigated in Illinois or Missouri, according to the state directors there. I am somewhat surprised, given there is a series of photographs. You can see the photograph in the following post.

I have also reviewed information about some of the developments of triangular shaped aircraft and find that this seems to be the wave of the future. There are a number of aircraft in development, including some that have been tested recently that are triangular. I have all this updated here and for those interested in that story, it follows this posting.

It was reported, just Tuesday, April 5, that the newspaper, The Sun, had received 1574 pages of documents related to the AATIP program. What is important here are the documents are related to scientific reports, letters to the Pentagon and research into the biological effects of close approaches on humans. The documents also mention electromagnetic effects which is the topic of my book, Levelland. The book contains a much deeper analysis of those EM Effects.

Here's an interesting aspect of this. The report mentions 42 cases, based on medical files where humans were injured. Cash-Landrum and Rendlesham Forest spring to mind here. John Burroughs is the only American airman to have received a determination of a 100% disability because of the close approach of a UFO.

Also mentioned are an additional 300 cases that were unpublished and therefore unknown to us. We don’t know the extent of those injuries, though I have reported on a number of people who were harmed by the close approach of a UFO. For example, see:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Kerman

I should point out, however, that of those 1574 pages, only 38 of them related to UFOs. Most of the documents related to items dealing with research related to space exploration.

Finally, the report also contains information on poltergeists, crop circles, spontaneous human combustion, alien abduction and other paranormal events. I’ll put a link on my blog to all the reports available at John Greenewald’s Black Vault. You see the full list and read the documents here:

https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/the-advanced-aerospace-weapon-system-applications-program-aawsap-documentation/

This doesn’t mean there are no interesting UFO reports out there. On February 28 of this year, the witness, in Georgetown, DE, reported a bright white oval that seemed to be hovering just above the treetops. The witness did take two photographs of the UFO that look somewhat like the tic toc objects reported by the Navy pilots. The object’s lights eventually changed then, and there was a diamond shaped pattern of lights in blue, red and green.

The Georgetown Tic Tac.

The witness then stopped the car and tried to get a video of the object, but was unable to get it going before the UFO disappeared. There was also a small plane flying in the area at the time, but it didn’t show up on the photos, which the witness suggested proved the UFO was large. I’ll note here that the photograph shows a shaking of the camera which does distort the image slightly.

A commercial pilot flying over Memphis, Tennessee, on January 31 of this year, saw a white, donut-shaped cloud that contained an object in it. There was no moon but there was a scattered undercast at about 10,000 feet. The object inside the donut was moving slowly. After about five minutes, the bright object disappeared and a minute later the donut faded.

What we are seeing here is that there are more photographs of strange being taken every day. We need to discriminate between those that have terrestrial explanations and those that show alien craft.

Some of the Promised Updates

 

As I have said a number of times during my various radio appearances, when I have additional information, I’ll publish it. So, here we go.

For those who wonder about the photographs taken in Bettendorf Iowa, on December 24, 2021, I have heard back from the MUFON State Director for Iowa. He reported that no investigation had been initiated in Iowa, but he also checked with Illinois and Missouri with the same negative results. At the moment, I have nothing more on those pictures.

The Bettendorf UFO.

David Marler said, during my interview with him, that skeptics had suggested that sightings of triangular-shaped objects were sparked by Star Wars. Many of the Imperial ships had a very distinctive, triangular shape. David pointed out that sightings of triangles predated Star Wars and provided an example from 1953. I mentioned a chart published in the early 1960s showed triangles as one of the shapes. Someone wanted to know where to find that chart. It was published in several magazines and a couple of books. Here is the chart from the 1964 UFO Evidence published by NICAP.

The UFO shapes chart, circa 1964

I also found a magazine article that dealt with the look of future aviation which included a number of test aircraft that are triangular in shape. We do have the B-1 bomber and the F-117 aircraft that had triangular shapes. This suggests that some of the uptick in such sightings might be the result of tests of these somewhat experimental aircraft.

There is additional evidence of this. On April 14, 2016, an amateur photographer, Jeff Templin, shot a picture of a triangular craft over Wichita, Kansas. Templin said that he used a 400 mm lens, and took the picture when the object was directly overhead. He said that it was making a series of “S” turns and was leaving a contrail behind.

A real triangle, though terrestrial based.

On March 10, two men in Amarillo, Texas, Steve Douglass and Dean Muskett took pictures of three triangles flying over the city. They resembled the craft in Templin’s picture.

I mention this because it does support the idea that some of the triangle sightings are not of alien spacecraft, but are of the next generation of terrestrial airplanes. This does not, of course, solve all cases of triangular UFOs. It just means that some of those sightings are of Earth-base craft rather than space ships.

A triangular balloon that can also fool a witness.

And, if we look into the future, meaning of course, what is being proposed by various aircraft manufacturers, we see that the triangle shape is becoming more common. As more of these aircraft are mistaken for something alien, we also must be aware that sightings of triangular UFOs predate the development of our terrestrial based craft. A solution of one sighting does not translate into the solution for all sightings.

Bob Cornett, My Friend, is Gone

Just yesterday, April 1, Robert Charles Cornett, “Bob,” sometimes known as R C Squared, passed away. Bob and I had been friends for nearly a half century. We met while we were both taking Air Force ROTC at the University of Iowa in the early 1970s. We shared an interest in science fiction and writing and a few other things.

Bob doing research in Colorado.

Bob had originally majored in both physics and Russian which seemed to be a very difficult path to follow. Eventually, he changed majors, and we both graduated in 1975. Bob remained in Iowa City.

It was in 1975 that I learned the Project Blue Book files had been declassified and were open for public scrutiny at Maxwell Air Force Base. Bob and I drove to Maxwell and began a search of those records. We might have been the first two outsiders to see those records. At the time, the names had not been redacted and we spent two days going through the index, writing down the names of all the witnesses for the unidentified sightings. At the time, this was a unique record but today the information is available on the Internet. That search translated into a few magazine articles about Project Blue Book and sparked Bob’s interest in UFOs.

Writing had always been one of his goals, though I suspect he was more interested in writing science fiction than he was in writing about UFOs. We had written a book of science fiction short stories that was never published, but some of them have been posted to www.thesciencefictionsite.blogspot.com.  

Bob had suggested that we talk to James van Allen about UFOs because he, Bob, knew van Allen. I thought it was just that Bob had taken a class from van Allen and it was a sort of nodding friendship. But, one day, in the Physic Building, van Allen got on the elevator with us. Van Allen looked at us and said, “Hi, Bob.”

And Bob said, “Hi, Van.”

Van Allen sat down with me for two hours to talk about UFOs. Bob missed the meeting for some reason but it would not have happened had he not known van Allen. That van Allen would talk to me about UFOs said something about Bob.

We did investigate cattle mutilations for APRO. Jim Lorenzen had called me, asking me to look into them. With Bob, we went to Minnesota and spent a week to ten days there, learning what we could. We had been told that these mutilations were part of Satanic rituals, but we found no evidence to support that claim. Nor did we find anything to suggest that UFOs had anything to do with it.

Bob interviewing witness during a UFO investigation

All this resulted in Jim Lorenzen introducing Bob at a UFO convention as one of his top investigators. The irony was that Bob belonged to the rival NICAP. But the recognition did help Bob place some stories about UFOs in the magazines that were popular at the time.

We began to attend science fiction conventions with an eye to meeting the editors working for publishers. We thought that if we met them, if they knew who we were, then we might have a leg up when a manuscript was submitted. I’m not sure if that ever worked in our favor, but we did meet Sharon Jarvis, an agent looking for writers. She recognized our military connection and one day called, wondering if we could write books about the Green Berets in Vietnam. We said yes and set about creating those books, now all recently republished under the banner of Vietnam Ground Zero. This did not erase our quest to write science fiction, and I don’t know if those books helped or not, but we did finally publish science fiction.

I was at home one night when Bob called and told me he had started a novel that dealt with a war in space. We planned to meet the next day and he suggested that I bring along something. His “chunk” of the book, as we came to call them, was in the third person but mine was in the first person. Before we were done, the book, Seeds of War, had five first person narrators, not all of whom survived the conflict, and the third person beginning in which Earth declared war on another planet. I mention this only because we used Lyndon Johnson’s Gulf of Tonkin speech as the basis for the one in the book. We didn’t have do change much. It was a commentary on war. It was a strange attitude for us because of our connections to the military.

Bob and I attended many science fiction conventions, even after we had books published. At a party hosted by Berkley Books, we ended up as volunteer bartenders about two in the morning. A very drunk science fiction fan wanted a Scotch, but we had run out of Scotch. He was so drunk that we didn’t think he would know the difference, so we made some Scotch for him, using gin, Pepsi, some wine and worked hard to make it look like Scotch. The man took it away happy.

Bob was popular on the science fiction circuit. I think it was a combination of things, including some of the stories that he wrote. He would do readings periodically, and I noticed that the fans sat quietly listening to his stories. He was sometimes slow in getting the story written, but it was always a good one. He was an imaginative writer, with a keen ear for human speech.

He was habitually late for nearly everything. We were to meet in Iowa City one day but I got interested in a movie and figured that Bob would be late. So, I watched the end of the movie and was more than an hour late. Bob showed up about twenty minutes after I got there.

Bob eventually left Iowa City, moving to Moulton, Iowa, and our writing sessions waned at that point. We did a number of limited series, including one about time travel that started with Remember the Alamo, in which the time travelers return to 1836, to win the battle for the Texicans by using modern weapons.

But with the move to Moulton, our contacts, lessened. I became involved in UFO research and Bob stuck closer to the science fiction. I think the last science fiction convention we attended together was in 1991, about the time of the Gulf War. We hadn’t writing much together by that time. The Vietnam Ground Zero series had wound down and we didn’t have any contracts for science fiction novels.

Bob, had trained as an EMT while living in Moulton and at some point, had become a letter carrier. With his wife, MaryAnn, he eventually moved to Albuquerque where they hosted a few conventions.

Bob was interested in firearms and had a massive knowledge about them. Some of the writing about Vietnam showed just how much he knew about weapons. He was very good at describing the combat of the time. He was honorably discharged from the Air Force and later the Marines.

He was a very good friend and I wish that I had been a better friend to him. I knew that his health had been poor these last few years. I had him on the radio version of A Different Perspective, and was sadden by what I heard as we talked about UFOs. He just wasn’t as sharp as he had been when he was younger. You can listen to that show here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/19655144

In the last several years, maybe the last couple of decades, he had lost his fire for writing. Bob Tucker, who turned out to be a good friend, had said in his later years that he had retired from writing. Neither Bob nor I could understand that attitude… but sometimes writing is a very difficult task. I think Bob retired from it without really saying that he was retired.

I had thought of writing a tribute to my friend, but this turned into more of a remembrance. I’m surprised by how much I miss him.

He was only 69.