Maury Island and National Geographic

The other night I was doing what I call a “video lap.” This is sitting with the remote in one hand and checking out the programming on the stations. I found, on the National Geographic channel a documentary on “Mysterious Islands,” which might or might not by the precise title. It was a bout islands that have something mysterious having happened there.

What caught my attention was a mention of Maury Island. As we all know, meaning those of us have been around the UFO field for a long time, the Maury Island sighting was described by Captain Edward Ruppelt, one-time chief of Project Blue Book, as “the dirtiest hoax in UFO history,” or something like that.

Captain Edward Ruppelt

Naturally, I stopped on that channel, fearing what I was going to see. Now, I understand that those reporting on these sightings, often don’t have the time to take a long, hard look at a case and can’t get beyond the surface. Or, they find what they want to find based on the bias of the documentary and quit their research.

Yes, they provided a look at the surface, suggested that this was an important UFO case that resulted in the recovery of metallic debris from a damaged UFO, and ultimately ended with the death of two Army Air Forces officers. Only mentioned briefly was the fact that one of the participants later said that it was a hoax. It was clear from the context that we could dismiss this claim.

Rather than go through all this again, I have written about it at length in Crash: When UFOs Fall from the Sky. I had the time to do complete research, had the chance to talk with those who had investigated the case in the past, and reviewed many documents relating to the sighting. What that means, simply, is that I did the sort of deep research that those now reporting on Maury Island, didn’t do. I did post a long article on this blog and you can read it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/07/maury-island-ufo-crash.html

Yes, I periodically review cases such as this to learn if there is anything new to learn about it. I have found nothing today that would change my mind. I still believe it to be a hoax. To me, that seems to underline the truth. But we still must deal with new documentaries that don’t provide a complete picture. This is one of those cases that should be reduced to nothing more than a footnote. 

The Kingman UFO Crash Connumdrum

 

Two years before Jesse Marcel, Sr. told Stan Friedman and Len Stringfield about the UFO crash in the Roswell region, Ray Fowler published the article, What about Crashed UFOs? in Official UFO magazine. Although he touched on a couple of stories, the thrust of the article was told by “Fritz Weaver,” a pseudonym for a man later identified as Arthur Stansel.

Stansel told of a crash of a large, disc-shaped object near Kingman, Arizona. He was part of a large team of specialists brought in to examine the wreck and the body of one alien creature. Although his specific task was to determine speed and trajectory of the object, he did have the opportunity to glimpse the alien pilot and the interior of the craft. This was on May 21, 1953, according to his calendar and for more than twenty years, he kept the secret.

In February 1973, Stansel told two teenagers who were interested in UFOs about his adventure in Arizona. It wasn’t long before Ray Fowler, a respected UFO researcher, learned about this sighting and went to interview Stansel, who not only added a few new details, but produced his calendar from 1953 and signed a statement attesting to the validity of his tale. Of course, that statement was not witnessed by a notary, only by Fowler, and had no legal status as an affidavit.

I had investigated the Kingman crash long ago and was unimpressed with it for several reasons. Originally, there was only Arthur Stansel as the witness, no real documentation for the crash, and a suggestion that Stansel, after he had been drinking, told wild stories. There was a point when a second witness was discovered, but her credibility was not very good and her daughter said that her mother was a liar. You can read about some of that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/05/kingman-ufo-crash.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/03/kingman-rises-from-dead.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2011/05/kingman-ufo-crash-really.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/06/kingman-ufo-crash-revisited.html

This latest flap began when Christopher Mellon, who had been a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence released a redacted email exchange he had with a person Mellon called a senior U.S. government member. We were not provided with a name. That meant, of course, that we could not verify that this source existed or if he had any inside knowledge about the Kingman UFO crash. That email, with the critical information redacted and with little in the way of useful information is seen here:

 

The Mellon email that tells us nothing of value but
does mention the recovered UAP from Kingman.

Over the course of the years, we have been treated to many accounts of the case, that began with Fowler’s article filled with direct quotes from Stansel. I do have a copy of the complete report that Fowler filed with NICAP about his rather comprehensive investigation. That includes a transcript of Jeff Young’s initial interview with Stansel that ignited Fowler’s interview and report.

I’m not going to recapitulate that story because it has been told several times. I used it in Crash: When UFOs Fall From the Sky, though my assessment of the case was critical of the data. But this latest flap (which, BTW, I think will impact on David Grusch’s UFO testimony, but that’s something for another time), inspired me to revisit Kingman. I found information from Fowler, in which he verified Stansel’s rather impressive credentials and resume. There were some problems, which centered around his claim that he had been a consultant for Project Blue Book. He originally suggested a rather long-term association, but later told Fowler that it was short-lived. Stansel suggested it lasted only a few days and was based on his examination of the crashed off-world craft.

There is one important interview that seems to have been left out of this whole tale. In a section of Fowler’s report entitled A Man Who Made Contact, we learn some disturbing things about Arthur Stansel. Fowler wrote, “On the next following pages I will explain the fascinating tales of Mr. Arthur Stansel’s flying saucer contacts.”

That part of the interview, conducted by Jeff Young and witnessed by Paul Chetham, began with the question, “Did you say that you had contacted beings from other planets?”

His astonishing answer was, “Yes, but now we’re getting into things where you’ll just have to take my word for it because I can’t produce it or prove it.”

After a short discussion about a group who met regularly met to explore the contacts with other worlds, and who Stansel said, “We were involved in the usage of seances, we weren’t out to contact relatives, but we were out to contact other things,” the questioning continued:

Q: Do you think that it’s possible for a person to convey himself to any place on or of Earth by just using his brain power?

A: Yes. I’m convinced that’s true. I know that can happen because I’ve done it…

Q: Did you gradually or all of a sudden receive contact with these extraterrestrials?

A: We did this on many, many occasions after about a year meeting once a week. We would contact beings, but we never really knew what we were going to contact that particular Sunday night. On many, many occasions we contacted beings from planets other than Earth.

Q: Were these the same beings or were these different beings each meeting.

A: Sometimes they were the same, but generally they were different.

Q: Could you see them or visualize them?

A: Onetime we had an experiment, which took place for about three weeks, in which we learned astral projection, in which you project yourself to the point where the contact is…

 

Q: That’s using your mind to convey yourself?

A: Right, using your mind.

Q: You actually conveyed yourself to some beings?

A: Yes, I did. As a matter I was the only one who was able to go to that particular space craft which was many light years away.

Q: You were on the craft?

A: I was actually on it.

The questioning then turned to what he could see and how he interacted with the beings on that craft, saying that it was some sort of prison ship. The beings had been on it for a thousand years and had no control over it.

Q: Did you [Stansel] have a physical feeling of being on the ship?

A: Yes, very much so. It’s just like I was sitting here.

Q: Would you describe the inside of the ship?

A: Well, the furniture was different than ours in the fact that it had no legs. It was as if it were suspended in the air, but I remember checking for wires holding them up…

 

Q: What were the colors in the room?

A: It was basically red and it seemed to be generated by everything in the room. I saw no light bulbs, but the room was dimly illuminated….

Q: Were they short beings?

A: They were various heights. They were short and tall, but I don’t remember seeing any fat beings.

Q: Were they uniformed or did they wear different types of clothes?

A: They were uniformed in a way, but they were in different colors.

Q: Do you think that could have signified a rank?

A: That could be and another interesting thing is that the dress of the people was no different between a man and a woman and there were males and females.

Q: Were the males in short hair and the females in long hair?

A: No, you couldn’t tell by that. You could just tell by a woman’s bodily characteristics and facial features.

They discuss some emblems that were attached where we would have put shirt pockets. Stansel said that one was in the shape of a leaf and was red against a sort of blue glistening jerkin. There was another which was just a round shape, probably three inches in diameter and it too was glistening.

With that line of questioning finished, the discussion went in another direction. Young wondered if the prisoners had met people from other planets:

A: Yes, they had talked with many, but I was the first one actually projected. They got pretty excited over my arrival, for they felt I was the savoir who could get them back to their home planet or make communication with home base.

Q: Could you have projected yourself back to their home world”

A: I tried but I couldn’t. I think they were beyond range.

They moved the discussion to the nature of the ship, meaning that it was some sort of prison. Stansel mentioned these alien beings were complaining about their incarceration. He then said:

They were complaining about being prisoners because they had so much to offer their own civilization, but they had no way to get back to their civilization except through some intermediary and they thought I could be that intermediary. They had been conducting experiments, but they had been about a thousand years on the ship, so that there had been many generations of these people…

Other things that came out of this interview. He was told that there were thousands of worlds “of intelligent occupation.” That line of questioning ended at that point.

There was more of this sort of thing but then Stansel mentioned that of all these alien worlds, there were none that were interested in Earth. Earth is too overcrowded. Stansel said that they had contact many ships but the beings weren’t interested in Earth.

Then, falling into what would become the David Jacobs theory or hybrid humans, Stansel said, “In fact, there’s more than one extraterrestrial planet that have implanted people here, but generally people don’t know it… they just become part of our civilization.”

There was more of this sort of thing that reads like poor science fiction. At one-point Stansel talked of switches and buttons on the ship but I think of our touch screens that eliminate buttons and switches.

There were other disturbing things in the interview. Stansel, at one point seemed to suggest that he had been a consultant to Project Blue Book for a long time, but there is no record of it. He claimed to have seen a UFO during one of the Atomic Tests, but later claimed he had only heard about it from others.

Stansel did say that when he was interviewed by Young and Chetham, he had been drinking. He’d had four martinis but when Fowler asked the boys about that, they said Stansel had not been drinking. So, was Stansel drinking too much and offered it as an excuse for the discrepancies between the interviews conducted by Young and Fowler. Was the alleged drinking an excuse for telling conflicting tales? Was the drinking the motivation in creating a tale of extraterrestrial contact?

Here’s where we are on this. Stansel is the only man who was involved with the crash in Kingman that had forty or more expert consultants to speak about this. He suggested those on the bus were not allowed to talk during the four-hour trip from Phoenix to the Kingman area, but when they arrived, they were called by name as they were assigned specific jobs. Everything was carefully orchestrated but Stansel managed to see the dead alien pilot and caught a glimpse into the ship. Again, poor security.

There are many reasons that I simply don’t buy this tale and the later interview with astral projection, visits to alien spaceships in flight and all that other nonsense argues that Stansel was adept at spinning tales even he had only had a beer or two and not several martinis.

What this means today, is that the leaked email from Christopher Mellon is irrelevant. There may well have been an email exchange but it is, essentially worthless. Mellon and his unidentified correspondent may well have exchanged the emails about Kingman but that doesn’t prove there is any substance to the report.

There is another element to this and that’s David Grush’s claim of twelve craft in government hands. He may well have talked with Mellon, or someone else who believes the Kingman tale, but without evidence, it is just, dare I say it, a conspiracy theory. And that also suggests that some of Grush’s claims are false, if this is one of the stories. Doesn’t mean that Grusch invented any of the tales, but he has heard them from people he believes are telling him the truth.

Finally, Len Stringfield added some commentary to the Kingman case in his 1978 MUFON Symposium paper on crash/retrievals, and later in his status reports. He suggests the possibility of additional witnesses, but he failed to supply names of any of those witnesses. I am following up on this and will report on it later.

For those interested, I have reached out to a couple of other people who might be able to shed some light on this, including some in the Kingman area. To this point I have not heard back, but will update my analysis as it is warranted by additional information.

Coast to Coast AM - Changes to the AARO Directive

 

First, an update from last week. The Bruce, South Dakota, sighting on June 19, has been positively identified as a SpaceX launch. Tim Printy found a picture of it.

Second, it seems there has been a bit of a change in the latest version of the government’s directives on the investigation of UFOs. The House of Representatives has included a requirement that the agency with the responsibility to investigate UFOs include a section on crash retrievals.

Specifically, the new language in the House version requires, and I quote:

…compile and itemize a complete historical record of the intelligence community’s involvement with unidentified aerospace-undersea phenomena, including successful or unsuccessful efforts to identify and track unidentified aerospace-undersea phenomena, efforts to recover or transfer related technologies to United States-based industry or National Laboratories, and any intelligence community efforts to obfuscate, manipulate public opinion, hide, or otherwise provide unclassified or classified misinformation about unidentified aerospace-undersea phenomena or related activities, based on the review conducted …

The key words here refer to efforts to the recovery or transfer of related technologies to United States industry or National Laboratories. Or, in other words, debris from crash retrievals.

The problem here is that I don’t think they understand the complexity of that investigation. Working on my book, Crash: When UFO’s Fall from the Sky, I listed more than one hundred alleged crashes. Most are single witness with no supporting evidence. I have seen lists that suggest there are more than 300 crashes. At best, there are only a handful and by that, I mean fewer than five. Unless they truly understand the nature of the problem, they are going to be overwhelmed by these mistakes and miss the important crash evidence.

The home of the UFO crash/retrieval information?

While the tales of crash retrievals are interesting and might provide the physical evidence, we still have good sightings going on. For example, in American Fork, Utah, on July 19 of this year, the witness said that he was outside smoking and looking up into the twilight. He noticed a bright object that he thought was Venus and then realized it was in the eastern sky. As he watched, it came closer and he saw that it was disk shaped, with blue and yellow lights. It made no sound that he could hear. It crossed the sky turned to the north and disappeared. He thought it was in sight for two to three minutes.

Finally, two couples at a backyard BBQ near Dallas, Texas, on July 7 of this year reported spotting three dim red lights slowly approaching. At first, they thought nothing of it, believing it was some type of aircraft. As it got closer, they could see a dim, triangular-shaped object that seemed to connect the three lights, which had become slightly brighter and had taken on a yellow glow. They said that the craft made no noise and its movements were steady, crossing the sky in four or five minutes. They all got a good look at the object but the lights were so dim that they couldn’t get an image on their cell phones. This is just one more example of the triangular objects that have become more common in the world today.

Len Stringfield - Liar?

When Don Schmitt and I discussed Len Stringfield’s contributions to the UFO community, I thought we had covered all the problems. However, it seems that there are still some out there who believe that Len was a liar. I think these comments were made because they disagreed with Len’s work and they disagreed with Len’s belief structure but there really is nothing in any of it that would suggest Len was a liar.

Len Stringfield

In the last decades of his life, Len was collecting tales of UFO crash retrievals. He produced a series of “Status Reports,” providing the information that had been given to him. He made no judgments about the information without additional knowledge and shared these reports with the hope that others might have a chance to verify that information. He was not advocating a position on the cases but sharing information that had been given to him.

An example of this was the tale of a crash/retrieval near Del Rio, Texas, in 1948. He reported the information as provided by Robert Willingham, who claimed to be a retired Air Force colonel and former fighter pilot. Len did note some trouble with the case as he learned of it, and reported the new information in his Status Reports.

Now, I should point out that there were many in the UFO field who accepted this case as legitimate. I was one of those, reporting on it in A History of UFO Crashes. I accepted the information because Willingham had signed an affidavit about the veracity of the tale and I believed that others had vetted the information by checking his military credentials. That I found it credible at the time

Civil Air Patrol officer,
Robert Willingham

doesn’t make me a liar because I was accurately reporting what others had told me about Willingham and his tale. These others believed the story as well because Willingham was a retired colonel and had signed an affidavit.

However, as I was working on Crash: When UFOs Fall from the Sky, I thought I would see what new information about this case was out there. In one of Len’s “Status Reports,” he mentioned that the date had changed from the original 1948 to December 1950, which, of course, was a red flag.

Worse still, as I followed up on it, I learned that no one had bothered to verify Willingham’s credentials. I requested information about Willingham from St. Louis, where NARA houses military records and learned the only documentation available was that Willingham had served a mere 13 months in the military, was a low-ranking enlisted soldier and that he left the military in early 1947. He you read the whole, sad tale here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/03/ihave-argued-for-years-that-eisenhower.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2018/06/mj-12-and-cognitive-dissonance.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2010/07/del-rio-ufo-crash-and-mj-12.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2014/04/eisenhower-briefing-document-mj-12-and.html

The point is, that I hadn’t lied about Willingham, and Len hadn’t lied about him. He, as had I, reported what others had told us. We were wrong, but we hadn’t lied.

And that is what I’m trying to say here. You might disagree with Len’s conclusions or with the information he published, but that doesn’t make him a liar. You might believe, as many do, that there is no alien visitation and anything that suggests otherwise is in error, but believing in alien visitation doesn’t make you a liar.

I have advocated for a long time that we tone down the rhetoric but there are those who just can’t seem to make a point without calling names and attempting to assassinate character. Believe what you will, but make the point without slandering those with whom you disagree…

And please, understand what Len was attempting to do. He wanted to get the best information, regardless of what that information might be. He was priming the pump to get to the bottom of the reports because he couldn’t do it all himself.

But lying? Nope. Just a search for the truth.

Dr. Eric Davis and Admiral Thomas Wilson - Redux

The Devoid (Billy Cox), columnist at the Miami Herald, reignited the Admiral Thomas Wilson debate several days ago. Although it seemed that most of mainstream Ufology had realized that the story told by Dr. Eric Davis about his clandestine meeting with the Admiral was probably more hyperbole that truth, there are still those who believe the information is leading us to disclosure. You can read the article here:

http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/16000/eric-who-the-admiral/#comment-588557

I bring all this up because, a while back, Dr. Davis had suggested, on Coast-to-Coast, that the Del Rio UFO crash was real. That crash is based on the information of a single witness who had claimed to be a retired Air Force colonel, a former Air Force fighter pilot, and a veteran of the Korean War. I explored all this at length in a posting on this blog that you can read here:

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

Given that the Del Rio story is a hoax, and the lone witness to it has been less than honest about it, this does cast a shadow over the credibility of Dr. Davis. I mean, if he truly had inside information, he would have known the Del Rio crash

Dr. Eric Davis

was a hoax. I exposed it as such in 2010 in my book, Crash: When UFOs Fall from the Sky. I also gave a presentation at the MUFON Symposium in Denver about Willingham and why his tale should be rejected. This merely means that the information I uncovered was available long before Dr. Davis had his conversation with Admiral Wilson (which, BTW, Wilson has denied ever having taken place).

In the last few days, a number of people have been discussing this on the Internet, and I wouldn’t mention it but their experiences seem to match my own. As I said in the post, I had emailed Dr. Davis a couple of times, even asking George Knapp for some help in making contact, but never heard a word back from Davis. The excuse was that Dr. Davis was getting plenty of emails from all over the world and I certainly could understand his failure to reply to me.

However…

I wasn’t the only one having that sort of problem. André Skondras told Philip Mantle had he had attempted to contact Dr. Davis but hadn’t heard back. Given that had been less than twenty-four hours after he had sent his email, that wasn’t all that surprising. Now, several days later, he still hasn’t had a response.

Don Schmitt

That’s not the end of it. Don Schmitt reported, “Tracy Torme had asked me to contact Davis after his failure when he and James Fox were shooting the forthcoming docu-film. He never responded to email or personal calls. Next, because Davis was listed at that time as a MUFON consultant, I asked Jan Harzan to make the same effort. Same result.”

This was important because of Don’s efforts and the suggestion that MUFON Executive Director Jan Harzan was involved. While I fully understand Dr. Davis ignoring some of these requests, as a consultant to MUFON, you’d think that a response to the Executive Director would be forthcoming.

This has now taken a different path with a suggestion that we contact Admiral Wilson, who has repeatedly denied that he knew Davis and wouldn’t recognize him if he walked into the room. Since the Admiral has been contacted and responded a number of times, I don’t know what good it will do to bother him again. He’s not going to change his mind.

I’m reminded of the note Kent Jeffrey received from the late Colonel Robert Barrowclough, who, in 1947, was one of the senior officers at the Roswell Army Air Field. In that note dated June 15, 1997, Barrowclough wrote, “Thank you for the copy of the [MUFON] UFO Journal on the Roswell Myth. Maybe some of those crack pots will quit calling me up and say I’m covering up a deep gov’t secret.”

Even if Admiral Wilson did know something, he would be obligated to deny it if it was still classified. I’m not saying that he does, only that continued pestering of the man will not yield any positive results… especially since he is on the record, repeatedly, as saying he had no such discussion with Dr. Davis.

The key here is Dr. Davis, but it seems to be a key that is lost. Since Dr. Davis has proclaimed a well-known hoax (Del Rio) as being authentic, I fear that there is nothing more to learn from him. All we end up doing is chasing a claim that cannot be verified and it does nothing to advance our knowledge. It only diverts us from a path that could yield better results.

X-Zone Broadcast Network - Ryan Wood and MJ-12

This week I spoke with Ryan Wood. He had sent out an email complaining about the anti-UFO bias on Wikipedia. I thought that would be an interesting topic, and since he is a proponent of MJ-12, I thought we could spend some time on that as well. But, as usual, the conversation took on a life of its own. You can listen to it here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/20493888

We veered off into the Cape Girardeau UFO crash of 1941, which, as everyone will tell you, is six years older than the Roswell case. The problem here is that there are no first-hand witnesses and while the granddaughter of minister who was called to scene heard about it from family, the problem is that she heard about it from family. There really is no documentation in the form of newspaper articles and diary entries, or anything of that nature. And while I didn’t make the comment

Ryan Wood. Photo copyright
by Kevin Randle.

during the show because, well, we went off in other discussions, I always worry about these pre-Roswell cases. If this had happened, it would seem to me that the military might have been better prepared for the events in Roswell.

Ryan said that his book, Majic Eyes Only, listed 74 crash retrievals. I thought that there just weren’t that many because it would be impossible to keep all that secret for so long. At some point one of those crashes would have produced evidence no matter how hard the various government agencies attempted to suppress it all. I did point out that in my book, Crash: When UFOs Fall from the Sky, I listed something like 110. One of those was an alternative look at the Cape Girardeau crash. An analysis of that case follows this posting.

Given there were so many alleged crashes, I asked what Ryan thought were the best. He suggested Roswell, Kecksburg and Shag Harbour. I mentioned that I thought of Shag Harbour as more of an emergency landing than an actual crash. But the real point was that each of these had documentation and newspaper articles while most of the other crashes were single witness with no documentation at all. Some were clearly mundane objects seen under unusual circumstances. Some were clearly meteors, others debris from missile tests, and a few outright hoaxes.

We finally did make it to MJ-12 and the so-called Operations Manual. I mentioned that there were some anachronisms in it. Ryan pointed out that skeptics said the War Department seal on the front was one, but that he had found that symbol on other manuals printed after the War Department ceased to exist in 1947, meaning that, in this one case, it might not be an anachronism.

I wondered about the lack of a provenance for the manual and asked if there were any MJ-12 documents from a legitimate government source that lead to support MJ-12. Ryan said that there was a letter from Lieutenant Colonel Robert Blount to Dr. Robley Evans that did lead to MJ-12. You can see that letter here:

http://www.majesticdocuments.com/pdf/blount_evans.pdf

I believe the top-secret report to which Blount referred is the Air Intelligence Report (AIR) 100-203-79 with a date of April 29, 1949. There is nothing in it about UFO crashes or anything like that. Blount seemed to think it was more of a psychological analysis, which the AIR report is not.

But there is a real problem with the Blount letter that I’m sure if obvious to everyone. To sort of prove that point, I think the Hottel Memo makes the case. Here is an FBI document that mentions a UFO crash. You can read it here:

https://vault.fbi.gov/hottel_guy/Guy%20Hottel%20Part%201%20of%201/view

The point is, the Hottel Memo refers to the Aztec crash hoax and is based on information from Frank Scully’s book, Behind the Flying Saucers. Time magazine, in January, 1950, printed an article about little men from Venus. That predates the Blount letter and might well be the source of the rumor.

Next week, John Burroughs is the guest. He’ll be offering some new information about the Rendlesham Forest events of December 1980. If you have questions for him, put them in a comment here, and I’ll try to get them answered during the program.

Jefferson Airship - 1897

To fully understand a case, it is necessary to return to the original source. I had the opportunity to do that just the other day. Andy McGinn of the Jefferson Herald, which had been the Jefferson Bee, called to ask about an entry in Crash: When UFOs Fall from the Sky. He was interested in an entry for April 15, 1897 which

Greene County Courthouse, Jefferson,
Iowa

discussed a crash near Jefferson.

Frankly, I didn’t remember it off the top of my head. It was a short entry and gave the bare bones of the story. I had written:

The Jefferson Bee reported that an airship had crashed in a farmer’s field on the north edge of town. Most of the town’s residents gathered around the huge, smoking hole. The next day, a man was lowered into the ole on a rope, along with a Volapak [sic, Volapuk] dictionary, which is the second time that this artificial language has been mentioned in connection with an airship crash. Once in the hole, the man claims he entered the airship that seemed neat and clean, despite the violent crash.

McGinn and I discussed the airship stories that had been circulating at the time. He said that he had pulled the newspaper for that date, April 15, 1897, and read to whole story. It was more detailed than what I had reported. He also mentioned that the last paragraph seemed to suggest the tale, which had been printed on the front page, was a hoax. I was interested in what that last paragraph said.

In the world today, there are lots of sources of information available that don’t require trips to libraries or newspaper morgues. I found, online, a short article about the crash in the Omaha Bee on April 17, 1897. It said:

JEFFERSON, Ia. April 16 – (Special Telegram) – A local paper this morning printed a lurid story concerning the airship which was alleged to have plunged into the earth north of town. Before noon a number of people had actually visited the place to see the hole.

That certainly didn’t clarify anything and added nothing to what I already knew. I did find an entry in Jerome Clark’s UFO Encyclopedia, Second Edition, but his information had been drawn from the Omaha newspaper, so he had even less information than I did about this crash.

What I really needed was to see the original article. McGinn was kind enough to send me a pdf. of the front page which carried the story. Rather than paraphrase it, and in keeping with the idea that the original source would be better than my interpretation of it, I thought I would provide the text.

FATE OF AN AIR SHIP

CAME TO GRIEF IN GREENE CO.

The Mystery of the Aerial Visitor Solved at Last.

Details of Accidents Important Discoveries

Up to the hour of going to press five air ships have been located by the enterprising citizens of Greene county. Air ships know a good thing when they see it, and so when wo heard of a flock of aerial pilgrims in Kansas, Nebraska, Omaha, Cedar Rapids, North wood, Evanston, St. Paul and Marshalltown, it became a settled conviction with us that it was only a question of time until they should be with us and taste the Joys of our Incomparable mud.

Two hundred nervous Jefferson people scanned the horizon Saturday night. They looked for an air ship. Along about 9:30 one came cavorting (sic) along the etherial (sic) domain like a wash tub on a mill pond. It was a giddy thing, evidently fresh from the shops, and after arriving within two or three miles of the earth, began cutting all sorts of pigeon wings, grapevines and doubledutch (sic) rolls. The sight was bewitching and cheer after cheer ascended as the airship executed some difficult selection.

Part of the time the great white light at the bow was visible and then the green light suddenly appeared and the ship would reverse itself. Then it evolved into a monstrous pin wheel, the green, red and white blending into a circular disc beautiful beyond compare, followed by an undulating, weaving motion as though flouting on a heavy swell.

Suddenly the great boat seemed to steady itself; the white light became fixed and gradually increased in size.

The Airship that landed in Waterloo, Iowa, 1897.

Somebody shouted, "the airship is headed for the earth," and sure enough.

Rapidly the great ball of purest white grew until it assumed the proportions of a full moon; then to the size of a wagon wheel and in the sky dim outlines of the great hull could be seen rushing downward at a rate of speed simply incalculable.

When within a thousand yards of the earth a distinct roar could be heard which Increased to the proportions of a cyclone us with ajar like an earthquake the mighty engine plunged into the earth.

The concussion was so terrific that houses trembled, children were thrown from their beds, dishes fell in showers from cupboards and hundreds of panes of glass were shattered.

Men rushed hatless out upon the street shouting for Information as to the whereabouts of the airship. There was a wild scurrying around to locate the point of contact but the search was fruitless—the earth had evidently swallowed the aerial visitor and sealed the opening.

Sunday morning, however, hundreds of men joined in the search and about nine o'clock a huge circular hole, twenty feet in diameter was discovered on the cast side of Mahlon Head's celery patch adjacent to the Northwestern depot. The hole was as clean cut and smooth - as though made by expert well-diggers, and was apparently bottomless. Ropes were secured, a heavy iron weight attached to one end and lowered into the abyss. A hundred feet had been played out when there was a sound us If a metallic object had been struck.

The airship had been sounded. [Yes, that is what it said. I don’t understand it.]

The next problem was what to next.

Finally it was decided that someone must descend and investigate. The rope was hauled up, a noose made and volunteers called for.

A hush fell upon the great throng, which by this time numbered over a thousand. It looked as if the scheme must fail when a local newspaper man, clad In a Prince Albert and with n huge $1 25 diamond flashing alternately with his eyes, strode forth and grasped the rope. A lantern, cold chisel, hammer and drill were tied about him, and with a clubbing list, and a Volupuk (sic) dictionary in his inside vest pocket, he gave the word.

It will be a long time before we forget the peaceful expression that lit up his alabastine (sic) face as he disappeared — in fact we don't think we will ever forget it.

Down, down sped the rope until lack of tension showed the explorer had landed. Soon after hoarse, guttural tones in the Volupuk tongue were wafted upwards and then hammer were heard. In the course of half an hour there was a pull at the rope and willing hands hauled away with vim. It seems that the rear portion the ship was blunt like the hot end of a cigar, but a door, apparently fastened on the inside, eighteen inches square was found. The hinges were chiseled off and the door pried open. The Interior was found to consist of an oblong chamber or room eight feet square and eighty feet in length This room, which was situated in the upper part of the ship, was elegantly appointed; finished in plush fancy woods and provided with every convenience. About forty feet from the rear end was a square tower that could be raised and lowered, after the manner of a conning tower upon a submarine torpedo boat. This had been drawn down leaving the ship in the form of a cylinder. At the extreme end toward the bow the bodies of four persons, probably men, were discovered, jammed almost to a pulp by the terrific force of the concussion. The beings were somewhat larger' than earthly inhabitants, and each seemed to have a face on each side of the head, two sets of arms and legs, evidently so as to locomote forward or back without necessitating turning around.

It would be quite interesting to go into the details concerning these strange people, but we must defer that until a future time. At all events they were dead—both sides.

Further Investigation revealed that the ship, except the eight feet occupied by the salon, was perforated, horizontally by tubes about the size of a stove pipe. At the rear was a great propeller (sic), having eight blades. This was connected with a small electric motor, which evidently merely served to start the ship, as when motion has been secured the air rushes through the tubes at such a rapid rate that the propellor was driven at high speed and this forced the ship ahead like greased lightning.

The speed was regulated by means of a brake on the rim of the propellor.

Two plans are suggested. One to build a permanent ladder down to the air ship; another to ascertain if the monster can be raised. It is probable a meeting will be held within a few days to determine upon the best course. Meanwhile a sort of windlass has been erected at the mouth of the opening and hundreds of people have examined the wonderful craft that evidently slipped a cog, somewhere on that fatal Saturday night.

It seems to be the general Impression that the ship hailed from Mars, and if this Is the case, other ships of which there seem to be several hundred, will eventually alight without fatal results to the operators and the secret of aerial navigation will be solved.

Green county is the rendezvous of the fleet of air ships operating in this part of the state, is very evident. The following messages from men of unquestioned veracity, prove this fact and at the same time throw considerable light upon the Interesting topic.

This tells us, in great detail, what happened, or was alleged to have happened. One thing that came out of this is that the crash occurred on April 10 rather than the fifteenth. The date given by many of us for the crash was based on the date of the newspaper story rather than the date of the actual incident. There was very little follow up.

New Kecksburg Explanation?

For those interested in the Kecksburg UFO Crash I offer the following news article. I have not reviewed the evidence offered here and am sure that my friend Stan Gordon will have some comment about it. However, for those who wish to read the story, it can be found here:

http://www.post-gazette.com/news/science/2015/12/06/50-years-later-the-Kecksburg-Westmoreland-County-UFO-is-identified-probably/stories/201512060146

I will note that others, Tim Printy, Robert Young and Jim Oberg have offered alternative explanations for the crash as well, all of which I explored in Crash: When UFOs Fall from the Sky. If Stan Gordon does have comment, I'll publish that as well.

Chasing My Own Footnotes

(Blogger's Note: This probably not all that interesting to many people, but I thought of it as important, if only to improve the quality of footnotes and endnotes that we see in many books... Besides, at the moment I'm tired of the whole Roswell Slides saga and there is nothing new happening there at the moment. So, enjoy if you can.)

While I continue my quest to improve the footnotes used by us all, I thought I should detail my latest challenge. While working on another project, I was looking at the Spitzbergen UFO crash. I was aware that there was a report for it in the Project Blue Book files, but I couldn’t seem to lay my hands on it. I looked at my A History of UFO Crashes which had a footnote reference that said, “Project Blue Book files, September 1952.”

That didn’t tell me much and I pulled out the master index for Blue Book but couldn’t find the file there in September. I went back to the files and notes I had created for the Spitzbergen case but could find nothing there that was helpful. I went to a number of other sources, none of which seemed to have drawn on Blue Book for their information or if they did, they didn’t mention it.

There are, in the Blue Book index, a large number of cases that fall outside of the investigation. These are newspaper clippings and other sources that have provided information on a case but that is all that is available about them. I thought Spitzbergen would be included among these but that didn’t help.

Frank Edwards and Ryan Wood, who both had written about the case, provided some source material, but according to Ole Jonny Braenne, who wrote a detailed account of the sighting in the November/December 1992 issue of the International UFO Reporter, the story couldn’t be traced to any specific individual or organization. Some of those sources, as quoted by Edwards and Wood, couldn’t be verified and were nothing more than dead ends. An article was attributed to a reporter with the initials J.M.M. but no one was able to identify him. These various sources seemed to be circular meaning one lead to another that eventually led back to the first.

All of this was interesting, and Braenne’s report suggested that the story was a hoax, but that didn’t get me to the Blue Book source. I tried using Fold3 and their Blue Book archives but Spitzbergen didn’t come up in the search engine. I finally went back to the Blue Book Index and starting with June, ran down through them, searching for anything from Norway or Spitzbergen. I finally came to a notation for a sighting there on July 9, 1952, but the solution was “aircraft.” That didn’t seem right but it was the only reference I could find to Spitzbergen in the files in the right time frame.

I went to the microfilm and searched for the case. There is no “Project Card” for it. The case follows another in which there is no Project Card but I did find it. After all this, I found that the footnote should have read, “Project Blue Book files, July 9, 1952, case no. 1411.” That tells you everything you need to know about it, even to the handwritten case numbers that appear in the index and if you went to the NICAP Blue Book site, you could have gotten to it quickly and easily providing you knew the proper date.

I will note here that there are several different dates associated with the case which complicated my search and I knew that it was in the Blue Book files when I started. In A History of UFO Crashes the date is September 9, 1952 and in Crash: When UFOs Fall from the Sky it is listed as September 12, 1952. Frank Edwards in Flying Saucers – Serious Business quotes from a newspaper report dated September 4, 1955 (as if this wasn’t complicated enough already) published in the Stuttgarter Tageblatt (which apparently is the Stuttgarts Dagblad). The Stuttgarter Tageblatt does not exist. The first mention of the Spitzbergen crash, at least according to Braenne was in the June 28, 1952 Saarbrucker Zeitung and mentions that the disc-shaped object was apparently tied to the Soviet Union. Markings and lettering in the craft were in Russian. The original story did not mention an alien craft. Although this is the source of the following stories, as it spread, the information about the Soviet origin of the craft was lost and it soon became an alien spaceship.

For those interested in Spitzbergen, avoid most of the articles about this case and look for the IUR article by Braenne (though in Crash I do cite the Braenne article and provide a more detailed analysis that I have here). Braenne provides the most comprehensive examination of the information. For those who don’t want to look at all this varied information in varied sources, I tell you this case is a hoax … even though that is suggested in the documentation, it is listed in the Blue Book files as an Earth-based aircraft.

In today’s world, if I was to write a footnote for this case, it would be a little more comprehensive and would look like this:

For the most comprehensive analysis of the Spitzbergen crash, see Braenne, Ole Jonny. “Legend of the Spitzbergen Saucer.” International UFO Reporter, 17,6 (November/December 1992): 14 – 20. See also, Randle, Kevin D. Crash: When UFOs Fall from the Sky. Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Page Books. 2010:  146 – 152: Wood, Ryan. Majic Eyes Only, Broomfield, CO: Wood Enterprises, 2005. 102 – 104; Steinman, William S. and Wendelle C. Stevens. UFO Crash at Aztec, Tucson, AZ: Wendelle Stevens, 1986: 353 – 357; Edwards, Frank. Flying Saucers – Serious Business. New York: Bantam Books, 1966: 44 – 48.

I could also mention that Donald Keyhoe in Flying Saucers from Outer Space, Harold T. Wilkins in Flying Saucers on the Attack and Jimmy Guieu in Flying Saucers Come from Another World do mention the story briefly, but I only have the Wilkins’ book which contains no index. I haven’t bothered to search out the information in it simply because I know that the case is a hoax. In fact, I mention these other works, including those in the footnote to provide a balanced view of the report. I could have avoided all this effort had I properly provided the information in my original footnote, but then, I did cite the source and in the end I did find the information there. It just wasn’t all that easy to do.