Official UFO Rides Again

 

Back in the mid-1970s, there were a half dozen magazines devoted to UFOs and at their peak some had a publishing schedule of nine times a year, and others, six times but that was eventually reduced to quarterly. If you had contacts in the UFO community and could put a complete sentence together, you could supplement your income by writing for them. That many magazines publishing that frequently required a great deal of material.

I started writing my first UFO related article while still in the Army. It had to do with physical evidence. What I didn’t know was that several men’s magazines, those that told stories of interest to men but not those that featured scantily clad women, were developing these UFO magazines. I hit the trend at the right time. I sent off that article, was discharged from the Army and headed to college. Turned out that I was making enough money to pay my tuition and supplement the GI bill which picked up other expenses by writing about UFOs.

I bring all this up now because Bernie O’Connor, who was the original editor for Official UFO, has put together a book, The Official History of Official UFO Magazine, that draws from the first six issues of the magazine. Not only do you get to read the best of those stories, but there is commentary and inside information spread through the book. It’s printed on high quality paper and filled with color photographs and even some of the ads there were published in the magazine in the mid-1970s.

Yes, several of my stories are included in the book. Most people don’t know that I sometimes used the pen name James Butler Bonham, which was the name of one of the defenders of the Alamo. Anyway, some of my earlier writings appeared in the magazine.

At the time, I was also writing science fiction of Robert Charles Cornett, know as RC squared and I’ll let you figure that out. We developed a good relationship with Bernie O’Connor. Once Bob got a check for a dollar more than the agreed-on fee. That extra dollar was for Bob to buy a beer.

When Bernie was the editor, he looked for articles that reflected the reality of the situation rather than sensational stories that might pull in the fringe readers. Later, as Bernie explains in the book, the owner wanted to exploit fictional events because they sold magazines. As Bernie put it in one of the commentaries included, it proved the skeptical theory that we all were only in it for the money. While that wasn’t true for Bernie or those of us who wrote for the magazine, turned out the owner was just in it for the money. As I say, this is one of those side commentaries that provides insight to times.

Bernie O'Connor

The magazine appealed to those of us with an interest in UFOs, but didn’t cater to one point of view. If the writer, who was often an investigator who got out and talked to the witnesses, could provide the source and documentation, then Bernie was interested in it. That doesn’t mean that the skeptics were left out. Included is an article by James Oberg who interviewed Philip Klass about the Walton abduction. Both Oberg and Klass are or were hardcore skeptics. And there was another story written by George Earley about why Klass didn’t believe in UFOs.

There were also articles covering the history of UFO investigation, such as articles on “The History of APRO” by Dick Ruhl, “The Center for UFO Studies” by Don Berliner, and “UFOs and the CIA” by Jim and Coral Lorenzen. There were also articles such as “UFOs Behind the Iron Curtain” by Dr. Felix Y Zigel and Joseph Brill. And I haven’t even mentioned Dick Hall’s “The CIA Robertson Panel Report Declassified.”

That’s just a quick sample of some of the early research written by those who would become well known in the UFO field. The book is a history of what was of interest in the mid-1970s, along with was happening in the world outside the walls the magazine offices.

I must admit that it is somewhat pricey, but if you have an interest in the world of the UFO as it existed in the mid-1970s, this is a must have. You get a good feel about who was doing what and what was happening at the time. It ranks up there with Jerome Clark’s massive The UFO Encyclopedia and the work of Michael Swords and Robert Powell in there UFOs and the Government. If you are serious about UFOs, then this is a must have in your library.

Ray Stanford's Socorro Photograph

For those interested in such things, Ray Stanford had claimed that he had a photograph of a Socorro-like UFO, he had taken after the Lonnie Zamora sighting. He was careful who saw the picture. I’m not sure his rationale for that, but there were very few who had seen it. We had to rely on their descriptions of the picture, if they were inclined to give us any information about it.

Ben Moss, who had worked with Stanford for years, thought the picture to be important. He had mentioned to me that it looked somewhat like an egg-shaped UFO with landing gear underneath it. With Stanford’s passing, and with Stanford’s wife’s permission, Ben searched through the mountains of material that Stanford had collected. He didn’t want to say anything about this, though he had located a print. He wanted to have the negative.

From what he emailed me, he thought he had the original negative, but, apparently, it was only a duplicate. It follows here:

The Ray Stanford photo of the Socorro like-object.

Close up of the object, whatever it might be.

Here is the important part of Ben’s email to me. “If you wanted to post the Socorro craft pictures I sent, please feel free to do so with any commentary you want to add, I'm sure the usual suspects will be commenting on them. I discovered that the picture of the dynamite shack that I thought had the images was the wrong one, it is in the original polaroid Ray took without the kid standing in front of it. I will scan that picture in January, but have no negative, yet I did find it at Ray’s house listed as 'original', and as I examined it there are several objects in the background sky, I just need to get a high DPI scan to confirm.”

Here’s where we are with this. A solid analysis has not been made but Ben plans to do that. We have an interesting story that connects to the Zamora sighting, we have photographic evidence, but those of us who have been around for a while, we know we need the original. Ben is attempting to find that doing the follow up investigation as time permits.

Without the original, and without a solid analysis, I can say nothing about the authenticity of the photograph. All I’m able to say is that we now know what it looks like. We need the analysis to determine the important of the picture. 

Robert Willingham and the Lie about the Del Rio UFO Crash

 

A couple of years ago, I heard Dr. Eric Davis mention, briefly, that the UFO crash near Del Rio, Texas, was real. It was something of a “throw away” line on Coast-to-Coast AM, and there was no follow up. Having investigated the Del Rio crash for more than two decades, I was surprised by such a bold statement and attempted to reach out to Dr. Davis to learn why he thought the case was solid.

I never received a reply… until now.

Apparently, André Skondras reached out to Dr. Davis to ask him about my assessment of the Del Rio case. According to Andre the response was, “Davis maintains that Randle’s conclusions about crash-retrieval history are incorrect and based on flawed research. He stresses that he, David Grusch, and other cleared personnel were briefed on classified evidence firsthand—information that remains inaccessible to the public due to long-standing national-security restrictions. According to Davis, critics often misunderstand how these secrecy protocols work, and the absence of public proof does not invalidate what is known inside classified programs.”

Yes, we have the old dodge that he is privy to information from classified sources and that he, among others, were briefed on classified evidence and that we, on the outside, misunderstand secrecy protocols. Except, of course, I served as an intelligence officer in both the Air Force and later the Army. I get all that, but the problem is his belief that the Del Rio crash is real.

As I have noted in the past, when the story first popped up, in 1968, the architect of the tale was Robert Willingham, identified as a lieutenant colonel in the Civil Air Patrol. You can read the entry from Skylook, the original publication of MUFON here:

The Willingham story is the 3rd paragraph down. 

This provides not only the article but identifies the 

source.

I will point out that the original source on this, the self-proclaimed Air Force colonel, Robert Willingham lied about his Air Force experiences, lied about being a fighter pilot and lied about serving in Korea. I’ll note that he eventually claimed to have been present at six other crashes. I was the first to actually vet his military record and found it wanting. I learned he had been a Civil Air Patrol lieutenant colonel, which is nowhere the same as being an Air Force officer. For those who missed it, a good recap of all this information can be found here:

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/09/dr-davis-confirms-del-rio-ufo-crash.html

The point is that in over two decades of research into the Del Rio crash, I have not found another witness to the Del Rio retrieval. The date has changed three times and Willingham told me that he wasn’t sure if it was 1954 or 1955. Please note here that I did interview the prime source and so far, as I know, the only witness to the crash.

While Dr. Davis may well have been exposed to first-hand witnesses to other crash/retrievals, he heard nothing first-hand about Del Rio. That crash was invented by Robert Willingham. Other than him, there is no evidence that the crash took place.

I’ll close this by saying that unless there is something about Del Rio that I haven’t discovered, and I freely admit that possibility, my conclusion, based on my research to date is that it is a hoax.

The Project Mogul Conspiracy Destroyed by One Question... Well, Two

 

Here’s another conspiracy that can be destroyed by a single question. This conspiracy has been pushed by most in the media, by the military and the skeptics who are supposed to question everything but only that which suggests alien visitation.

“How can balloon Flight #4, which was cancelled, leave any sort of debris on the ranch managed by Mack Brazel?”

As I wrote that, I thought of another question. “How can a flight that was cancelled at dawn according to the documentation, actually been launched two or three hours earlier?”

Dr. Albert Crary, the man in charge of the New York University balloon project based in Alamogordo, kept comprehensive notes on the balloon flights. The first of those flights, which some have labeled as Project Mogul, was supposed to be Flight #4, but according to Crary’s field notes and diary entries, was cancelled at dawn because of clouds.

Dr. Albert Crary, the man in charge of the
balloon flights in New Mexico.

The rules under which they operated in New Mexico prohibited flights at night or in cloudy weather. The balloon arrays, which could reach 600 feet in length were a hazard to aerial navigation and would be invisible to air commerce at night or in cloudy weather. As dawn on June 4, 1947 broke, it was cloudy and the flight was cancelled. The next day, Flight #5 was launched and according to Crary’s records, was the first successful flight in New Mexico.

Yes, I know that Crary’s notes also mentioned a cluster of balloons that were flown on June 4 later in the day. But according to the records and reports, this was nothing like the full array. It was small, was not expected to leave the White Sands Missile Range and was not a hazard to aerial navigation. The winds aloft data suggested that it would not have flown anywhere near the ranch Brazel managed.

How do I know?

Charles Moore, an engine with the project in New Mexico and who provided the analysis of the winds aloft data told us that. Oh, not directly, but in his excuses for Flight #4.

Moore told us, and wrote, that his examination of the winds aloft data, including the records that I gave him, took the balloons in a different direction if they had been launched at dawn. The winds aloft data I received from the National Weather Service was good only to 20,000 feet and was sometimes incomplete. Moore found records from a station in Orogrande, New Mexico (on the highway between Alamogordo and El Paso), that had records that went up to 50,000 feet. According to those records and those I supplied, a front went through the area around Alamogordo about dawn. It changed the atmospheric dynamics which met that the balloon would not have flown to the northeast to fall on the Brazel ranch. Well, that’s not quite true. Moore said that his calculations put the balloon about 17 miles south of the ranch. Still close enough to suggest a legitimate culprit, if those calculations were accurate.

Charles Moore reviewing the winds aloft data that I
supplied to him.
Photo by Kevin Randle

However, that front that passed through the Alamogordo area, meant the balloons wouldn’t even have come that close to the ranch. However, if the balloons were launched early in the morning, at 2:30 or 3:30, the winds would have driven the balloons in the right direction. The solution, well, the balloons were launched before dawn, in violation of the regulations.

There is nothing in Crary’s documents to suggest that happened and you have to wonder how a balloon array launched hours earlier could be cancelled at dawn. This little problem is ignored by those who just can’t wrap their heads around the fact that Flight #4 never flew. And if it never flew, it left no wreckage on the ranch.

I could have mentioned that the pasture where the wreckage was found was one Brazel was in, if not every day, then every other day. That means he would have found the debris on June 5 or 6, and since there was quite a bit of it, that wreckage was a hazard to the operation of the ranch. The sheep refused to cross it to get at water. Brazel wanted to know who was going to clean up the mess, which was his motivation for driving into Roswell.

And here’s another little tidbit. Charles Moore told me that Flight #4 had been configured just like Flight #5. Since #4 was cancelled, we don’t have any schematic of it. However, #5, which was described as the first successful flight in New Mexico, contained no rawin targets. That raises the question of where did the metallic debris originate? Where did the rawin target displayed in General Ramey’s office originate? Certainly not with the mythical Flight #4.

The schematic for Flight # 5. 

I could ask additional questions such as if the debris fell on June 4, why did Brazel wait until July 6 to take samples into Roswell? Why couldn’t the officers of the 509^th Bomb Group recognize the debris taken to the sheriff? Why did they arrange a special flight to Fort Worth Army Air Field and then send that material onto Washington, D.C.?

The point here, is that there is no current terrestrial explanation for what Brazel found and the soldiers in the 509^th recovered in that field. I am astonished that the news media insists on telling us that a Project Mogul balloon was responsible for the debris, yet all the documentation tells us otherwise. We can point to the pictures taken in Fort Worth of a weather balloon and rawin radar target in General Ramey’s off and ask where that material originated. Two of the officers in those pictures, Colonel Thomas DuBose, then the chief of staff at the Eighth Air Force Headquarters and Major Jesse Marcel, Sr. said that what was photographed was NOT the material recovered in New Mexico.

Jesse Marcel with the fake debris in
General Ramey's office.

I’ll let this go here. There are several other points that rule out Flight #4 but I believe the case is made. There was no Flight #4, and without it, the last of the terrestrial explanations is eliminated. You decide for yourselves what the answer to that question is.

Coast-to-Coast AM Sightings for December 5, 2025

 

While there have been many discussions about the Age of Disclosure, which opened to somewhat mixed reviews, not much has happened in the hunt for Disclosure. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been other sightings that are of interest. I made a survey of cases on the National UFO Reporting Center website, and here are a couple of the more interesting sightings.

I noticed an uptick in triangular objects and while this one was in sight for only a few seconds, there is a photograph of it. The witnesses, three of them, were near New Bern, North Carolina on November 13 of this year. They reported they saw the triangle and that it took off in a matter of two or three seconds. They said that there were lights on the craft, and the photograph does show a triangular formation of lights. You see the photograph here:

The New Bern Triangle.

You can also access the case at:

https://nuforc.org/sighting/?id=194088

The other aspect of the case, which is somewhat problematic is that they reported a possible abduction. There are no details about that and I’ll try to follow up on it.

On October 31 of this year, a pair of witnesses in Prospect, CT, said they were on the deck in the backyard. The first witness said she saw something glowing in the dark woods behind her parent’s house.

She wondered, “Is that someone up there having a fire? However, it was 1:09 am and it didn't look like a fire. We then noticed it started to move. With our naked eye it looked as if it was flickering, it went from a cluster of lights into a straight line and then we saw it disperse into 4-5 separate orbs/balls of light in opposite directions and then it was completely gone. It only lasted about 4 mins total. There was no sound. I was very scared at what we witnessed.”

There is a short video on the National UFO Reporting Center website that is interesting. The lights didn’t look like those on an aircraft and the motion of the object might be more the result of the witness moving the camera rather than motion of the craft.

She said that the lights were white, purple and green on the object and it moved slowly until it dispersed into orbs. The lights were about fifty yards away. The other interesting aspect of the case was that she reported that the animals reacted to the lights suggesting an electromagnetic component to the report. You can see the video here:

https://nuforc.org/sighting/?id=193777

And finally, again proving the international aspect to the phenomenon, the two observers in Edmonton, Canada, watched a flat black triangle and an Arrowhead shaped craft for about a minute on October 26 of this year.

The witness said that as he was stargazing when he spotted a dark, slow-moving triangle. He said there were no lights, no reflection, and it was at about 2000 feet. They heard no sound, but it did have aura around it that made him think it was hot. He thought it was about the size of two 747s stacked up.

About two minutes later as he stood in his driveway, he said that he looked up hoping to see something else. He said this was a different craft but flying along the same flight path as the first UFO. Rather than the flat black of the first craft, this one seemed to be silver and had five or six lights on the underside.

He said, “As it drifted past the lights became hard to see as they must have been recessed in the hull. I think this one was about 3000 feet up, it was more directly above me.”

He said that he thought the craft were about 300 feet long and moving about 300 miles an hour. I’ll note that it is very difficult to accurately estimate distance, speed and size at night without the sort of references found during the day.

You can see the illustrations of the UFOs on the NUFORC website. Click on the Tier 1 reports and scroll down to the Edmonton case.

Why the Roswell Press Release

 

I’m going to have to stop looking at the Internet because there is always something there that pisses me off. The latest was a video about five conspiracies that can be destroyed by asking a single question. Naturally, I clicked on it because I was sure that Roswell would show up. It was the fourth of five. I was surprised by the question that supposedly unravels the Roswell conspiracy.

That question was, “Why did the 509^th Bomb Group issue the press release saying that they had captured a flying saucer in the Roswell region?”

It is fine question but one that I have answered several times. The answer is predicated on the timing of the question, meaning that the press release was issued on July 8, 1947, only two weeks after the phenomenon had exploded in the newspapers. Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of nine strange craft flying in formation was the cause of the interest and the inspiration for the term flying saucer. In those days that followed, there were hundreds of reports of flying saucers. There were almost as many explanations for what they were as there were newspapers and military theories. The idea of an interplanetary craft was one of those but that explanation was not at the top of the list.

Ed Ruppelt, who took over as the chief of Project Grudge which evolved into Project Blue Book said that the Pentagon was in a panic over the reports. There was a certain hysteria about the flying saucers. It was because no one knew what was going on. Army Air Forces fighters had intercepted UFOs, and the UFOs had paced commercial aircraft, not to mention cars on the ground. Part of the hysteria was fed by those inventing their tales of close encounters suggesting an alien invasion. No one knew what was going on.

When Jess Marcel, Sr. returned to the Roswell Army Air Field with a carload of strange metallic debris, no one knew what it was. According to the officers I interviewed who were there at the time and would have been in a position to know what was going on, were aware of the hysteria. After all, World War II had been over for less than two years, the Soviets were throwing up an Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe that suggested that a new war was on the horizon and now there were tales of strange craft flying around the US unimpeded.  

Randle on the Debris Field in the early 1990s.

The debris recovered by Marcel suggested that the flying saucers might not be hostile or threatening. Blanchard’s thoughts were to announce they had a flying saucer, though it was only bits and pieces of one, but it was enough that they could relieve some of that hysteria. His thoughts were to remove that one aspect from the public consciousness. According to the officers I talked to, including Walter Haut, Colonel Butch Blanchard felt an obligation to report what they had found.

Walter Haut, the man who wrote the press release at his home in Roswell.
Photo by Kevin randle

It was only after the debris had been examined carefully that they realized that whatever it was, it represented a technology that surpassed that of the United States. The metal that was extremely light weight but super strong, what we now suspect was fiber optics which had yet to be invented and, of course, the thin metal that when wadded up returned to its original shape.

But the real turning point came after the press release was, well, released. That was when the rest of the craft was discovered much closer to Roswell than the debris field 65 miles away near Corona. It was here that the bodies were recovered. That changed the dynamic. That told those in charge, meaning the civilian and military leadership in Washington that what was recovered was something so extraordinary that they created the cover up to give them time to determine just what was going on. Were the flying saucers hostile? Benign? What would it mean to our civilization?

The events in Roswell were isolated because Roswell was in the middle of the desert and the military could control all the information coming out of the town. They shifted the story to Fort Worth and Brigadier General Roger Ramey. He was able to put out the fire with the display of a weather balloon and a rawin target. The tale died at that point and the press moved onto other stories.

But the answer to the question about the press release is simple. When Blanchard ordered the press release, all they had was the strange metallic debris, which was just strange metallic debris. He thought to end some of the hysteria by telling the public that they had found a flying saucer. It was nothing to worry about. Blanchard, as the commanding officer at the Roswell Army Air Field, had the authority to provide the press with information that he believed was important. He had not seen the true value of the find until the craft and bodies were located but believed it was his duty to suggest that they had the situation under control. They had a flying saucer and it was nothing to worry about.

The trouble was, he issued the press release prematurely. Had he waited twenty-four hours, it is unlikely we would have ever heard about the crash. It was a tactical mistake but not a strategic one. The situation was altered within three hours of the press release hitting the national wires. But the point here is that I know why he issued the press release based on my discussions with some of the senior officers on the base in 1947. Forty-five years after the event, they provided an answer, but the skeptical community is now hung up on Project Mogul, just one more evidence of how important the find was.

Now, can we put that question into a footnote where it belongs and get onto the more important aspects of the case?