Chiles, Whitted, Turbulence and Ed Ruppelt

Yes, I thought we would revisit the Chiles-Whitted sighting just one more brief time. As I was working on something else, I happened to thumb through Ed Ruppelt’s book, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects when something about the Chiles-Whitted sighting caught my eye. These guys were airline pilots who suggested a cigar-shaped object had flashed by their aircraft. In the hours that followed they said that there had been no turbulence associated with the sighting but they also said that there had been turbulence. It was a case of taking the position which most closely matched your own belief structure because a solid case could be made from either position.

About the sighting (see pages 57 – 58 in his book), Ruppelt wrote, “Just as the UFO flashed by about 700 feet to the right, the DC-3 hit turbulent air. Whitted looked back just as the UFO pulled up in a steep climb.”

Does this change anything?

Not really. Ruppelt was working from the Blue Book file, and that information is in the file. There are also indications that someone there (Hynek?) thought that a bolide would explain the sighting and that the turbulence was nothing more than imagination, like the double row of brightly lighted windows.

I have to say that while I lean toward the bolide explanation, especially after the Zond IV reentry confusion in 1968, and having seen those compilations of meteor falls on YouTube, there is just enough here to make you wonder. There aren’t actually additional witnesses to that craft or that bolide and that leaves the door open however slightly. If you ask me, I would cautiously say that they saw a bolide that was bigger and brighter than other meteors they’d seen at night, but in the back of my mind there would still be a sliver of doubt.

Chiles and Whitted Revisited

Although I was working on another project, this Chiles-Whitted thing is beginning to get out of hand, so I thought I’d just run through it again based on the Project Blue Book files, various newspaper reports from the time, and what has been said

Chiles' Drawing

about the case in the years since by a number of UFO writers. There has been some evolution in the sighting details over the years but I’m not completely sure the blame can be laid at the feet of Chiles or Whitted. Their statements, for the most part, have remained consistent.

According to the documentation, gathered in the hours after the sighting, Captain Clarence S. Chiles and John B. Whitted were flying an Eastern Airlines DC-3 at

Whitted's Drawing

about 5,000 feet, heading toward Atlanta. The night was clear and the moon was bright. They were twenty miles from Montgomery, Alabama, when Chiles saw a bright object in front of them. He tapped Whitted on the shoulder and told him that “Here comes a new Army jet job.” (It would seem that the glow of the jet engine would be what Chiles thought he saw and that would mean the aircraft was flying away from him but I digress.)

It appeared to them to be slightly above them and coming directly at them. It flashed by them on the right. Both Chiles and Whitted said that it was cylindrical in shape and that there was a double row of windows along the side. They thought it was about double the size of a B-29 fuselage in circumference and there was a long flame from the rear. As it passed them, one of the passengers, Clarence L. McKelvic, said that he saw a steak of light but no object. It seemed to climb into the clouds and disappear. The object was in sight for something like five or ten seconds.

Chiles called the company on the radio and asked if there was any other traffic in the area, meaning were there any aircraft near him. After they landed in Atlanta at 0349, they learned that the encounter had already been reported to the media. They were taken to radio station WCON and later were interviewed by William Key for the Atlanta newspaper. This provides a record of their descriptions within hours of the sighting.

The Air Force was impressed with the sighting. It might have been because both Chiles and Whitted had been military pilots during World War II. Chiles had been a lieutenant colonel and Whitted had been a first lieutenant. The report in the Project Blue Book files suggest that both were qualified observers, meaning that they were familiar with aircraft and had seen most of the natural phenomena that would be observed in the night sky.

At first the Air Force suggested a weather balloon but then switched to meteor. Chiles and Whitted both rejected the idea, explaining the object was much closer and much slower than a meteor. They also mentioned that they had to maneuver to avoid a collision. Although that information does not appear in the first official accounts, it was reported by Key in his first article. Chiles said, “We veered off to the left and the object veered off to the left.”

He also said, “There was no prop wash or rough air felt as it passed.”

In 1960, in a description of the sighting in a letter to ATIC dated February 17, an unidentified civilian wrote, “The UFO was now almost on top of them. Chiles rocked the DC-3 into a tight left turn. Just as the UFO flashed by about 700 feet to the right, the DC-3 hit turbulent air.”

In 1968, James McDonald interviewed Chiles. One of the points to come out of that was the idea that the object came out of a squall line. The weather that night was described as broken clouds in 4/10s of the sky. We are told that there was a bright moon and there is no mention of a squall line anywhere.

There was another sighting that took place about fifteen minutes earlier near Blackstone, VA. Captain Perry R. Mansfield and co-pilot Louis Feldvary on another flight saw only a streak of light that seemed to be heading west. It was in sight for only three seconds. The Air Force concluded, in 1948, after their investigation that this object was most probably a meteor, given the lack of detail and the brief length of time the object was in sight.

Donald Menzel, the Harvard astronomer and rabid debunker, reported that on the night of July 24, an amateur astronomer in Alabama counted fifteen meteors in a one-hour period. That was part of an annual meteor shower so the rate of meteors hitting the atmosphere was higher than non-shower times.

In the Blue Book files there is a note suggesting that this might be a meteor, though if it had maneuvered to avoid the aircraft, then it was not a meteor and it was under intelligent control. There was a suggestion that a passing of a meteor might produce a perceptual artifact such as the double row of windows, but that it was something to be left to the psychologists.

It turned out, based on other evidence, that such is the case. March 3, 1968, provided a textbook example. The Zond IV spacecraft reentered the atmosphere and broke up in a spectacular flaming display. Most people recognized it for what it was, but a few thought they had seen a cigar-shaped craft with windows along the side.

Zond IV Drawings

Taking this a step further are the videos that appear on YouTube. There are dozens that show meteors as they break up, often looking like a glowing cockpit with a stream of fragments behind it looking just like the lighted windows along a fuselage.

There are those who say that Chiles and Whitted could not have seen a meteor because it was traveling too slowly and it was much too low. They said that it disappeared into the clouds and though McDonald reported they had seen it come out of a squall line, that doesn’t seem to be accurate based on the weather data available.

An object seen against the night sky, through a broken cloud cover, can be quite deceptive. It can appear closer than it is, traveling at a slower speed then it was. Chiles thought the object passed within 700 feet of his aircraft but Whitted thought it was about 2500 feet away.

Their drawings of the object, other than the general shape, don’t match very well, given that they had about an hour to discuss this before the aircraft landed. Whitted said that he saw a double row of six windows and his illustration shows that arrangement. Chiles drawing has a different front end and no real windows like that of Whitted. Of course some of this is nitpicking, but then, the differences do suggest they weren’t actually seeing the thing the same way.

There is one other aspect that needs to be discussed and that is Walter Massey who was a ground maintenance crewman at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia. I mention this so that there will be no accusations of hiding information. I’m not sure it is relevant given the timing and the distance but the Air Force as well as other civilian investigators have suggested a connection.

At about 0140 or 0145, or about an hour before Chiles and Whitted had their sighting, Massey said that he had seen a stream of fire that he said, “…was a fairly clear outline and appeared to be cylindrical-shaped object, with a long stream of fire coming out of the tail end… I noticed a faint glow on the belly of the wingless object.” He said that he was sure it wasn’t a meteor.

Massey said that the trajectory of the object was more or less straight and level. He said that it was about the size of a B-29 and that the fuselage might have had a slightly larger circumference. It was too large for a jet.

But this was an hour before Chiles and Whitted and might not be related. By separating the sightings, the explanation becomes simpler. Two separate events. Linked, then you must ask what sort of meteor stays airborne for an hour.

Given all the information, given the description of the object and given the misidentification by some of the Zond IV reentry, I believe that a meteor, or rather a fireball (bolide), is the most likely answer. Or, as some others have pointed out, there is nothing to disqualify that as an answer. All the information suggests meteor (which I say at the risk of sounding like Philip Klass who invoked the

Meteors in Flight

meteor explanation frequently).

And yes, as far as I know, Chiles and Whitted never deviated from their original story and their original descriptions. They rejected the meteor theory from the moment they heard it. They were convinced they had seen some sort of craft that was not part of any countries aviation inventory and was therefore extraterrestrial in origin. For me, the answer seems to be a bolide, but then, you can argue that the experienced aviators wouldn’t have been easily fooled. You just have to pick the side where the evidence seems to be the strongest.

Chiles/Whitted and Skepticism

Since some people have gone nuts over the article about pseudoskepticism, I thought I might demonstrate what I think along those lines. There is a claim that Clarence S. Chiles and John B. Whitted, two airline pilots saw a cigar-shaped craft that flashed by their aircraft buffeting it with the turbulence of its passage. A passenger on the aircraft didn’t actually see the object, but did see the light from it. The other passengers were on the wrong side of the aircraft or they were asleep given the late hour.

Chiles/Whitted illustrations. Photo courtesy of USAF.

Proponents of the alien visitation explanation suggest that you have two reliable observers who both saw virtually the same thing at the same time and within hours of the event provided military investigators and radio reporters with their eyewitness testimony. They believe this is a solid case and point to the evidence of alien visitation.

Skeptics say that they were fooled by a bolide, a very bright meteor, and although both had seen many meteors during their nighttime flights, this was something different. It was bigger and brighter and was only visible for a few seconds. The case is solved by this explanation.

Proponents ask, “How do you explain that both pilots saw a cigar-shaped craft with a double row of square windows?”

I say, “That question is fair enough. How do we explain it?’

And the answer was given to us on March 3,1968 when the Zond IV, a spacecraft that had been made on Earth reentered the atmosphere. While the majority of those seeing the craft as it broke up in a shower of glowing pieces, there were some who thought they saw a cigar-shaped craft with square windows. Clearly this description was in error and it calls the Chiles-Whitted case into question. It shows that witnesses, provided with a glimpse of a glowing object at night can image they have seen something that was not there. They were fooled by an optical illusion and the way the brain functions.

Zond IV reentry illustrations.

In fact, in today’s world, with the Internet hosting all sorts of video clips we can take this a step further. Meteor falls have been recorded many times and in them we can often see an object breaking up with glowing pieces stringing out behind it. The illusion, for those who happen to glimpse something like that is a glowing cockpit and a row of windows along the fuselage of the craft. Meteors can fool us when seen briefly and in those conditions.

Yes, you say, but what about the turbulence felt as the craft passed Chiles and Whitted. Surely a meteor wouldn’t create that turbulence.

And skeptics say, look at the statements they made right after the event. Written statements signed by both men within hours of the sighting. They don’t mention the turbulence at all. That fact was introduced later.

What about the passenger? He only glimpsed a bright light flash by which serves to prove something was in the sky, but he didn’t see a cigar shape or rows of windows. His role in this sighting does nothing to validate the object or the windows. He didn’t see them.

What do we see here? Proponents offered a case that seemed to suggest alien visitation. Two airline pilots reported a cigar-shaped craft with square windows. Clearly this was not something manufactured on Earth. Skeptics said, “No, it was a meteor.”

Who is right?

Well, the skeptics seem to have the weight of the evidence on their side. They acknowledge that Chiles and Whitted saw something extraterrestrial, but it was not an alien spacecraft. They believed that they saw square windows, but we now know that can be an artifact created in the mind when something is glimpsed that is unusual. We can say, based on evidence from other reported events, that this illusion of a cigar-shaped craft with square windows is a perception problem and not a glimpse of reality.

The added fact, which might have disconfirmed the explanation, that is the buffeting of the aircraft, is not something that was reported by either pilot at the time. This “fact” was added sometime later.

It seems to me, that proponents offered what they thought of as a solid case, but skeptics, as they researched the events, using the testimony of the witnesses and their written statements, plus the observations of the Zond IV reentry, have proved their case. They didn’t just dismiss it by claiming hoax without evidence, or by suggesting other wild ideas, but provided solid evidence that the object observed was a meteor. I believe this to be a good explanation.

The point here is that the proponents had some very good testimony gathered within hours of the event. They had the drawings of the object with its square windows. Skeptics didn’t have the best evidence until 1968, but then we all could see how people might mistake a bright meteor glimpsed as it broke up as a craft with windows. Video tape confirms that impression. The evidence gathered in the years following the sighting proved that explanation is the most likely of the solutions offered… and to me that is how skepticism should work… I was skeptical of the meteor explanation until the evidence was laid out.

October 18,1973: The Coyne Helicopter Case and Philip Klass

Since it seems that some in the skeptical side of the UFO question are outraged at the lack of credible research at the other end of the spectrum, I thought it time to turn the tables. Yes, we all know that the Roswell Slides was a fiasco from the beginning but some of the things under discussion now seem to be a little less definitive. I mean, first claiming that we had UFOlogically increased the burns on the California police officer from first degree to second and third degree, and then wondering where the idea of second degree came from because the sheriff’s report only mentioned the third degree burns. Although Lance Moody suggested the idea of the third degree burns came from the sheriff that doesn’t really matter because the documentation for it existed and it was not an attempt by us to elevate the severity of the burns. It was reporting something that could be documented.

But this isn’t about the degree of burns on the officer, but about skeptics making leaps of logic and additional claims that are not supported by the evidence in the cases they have “solved.” Here I’m going to refer to the Lawrence Coyne helicopter case of October 18, 1973. I’m not going to discuss the merits of the case or argue for either an extraterrestrial or a conventional solution. I’m only going to talk about

Combat assault in a UH-1H helicopter.

some of the assumptions that Philip Klass made in his analysis. I base this on my training and experience as a helicopter pilot in the same type of aircraft flown by Coyne that night.

Coyne was, in 1973, an Army Reserve captain and the aircraft commander of the UH-1H helicopter flying northeast from Columbus, Ohio to Cleveland (though in the stateside environment he would be considered the pilot). With him were co-pilot First Lieutenant Arrigo Jezzi, Sergeant John Healey, seated in the left rear and Specialist Five (Spec 5, E-5) Robert Yanacsek, seated in the right rear.

Initially it was Sergeant John Healey who spotted an object or a red light off the left side of the aircraft (or the western side) at about 2300 hours [11:00 p.m.] and heading to the south. He thought it was brighter than the red navigation lights on an aircraft and he could see none of the other aircraft lights required by the FAA. This light disappeared behind the helicopter and Healy thought nothing more about it.

A few moments later at 2302 hours, Specialist Five (Spec 5, E-5) Robert Yanacsek, seated in the right rear, saw a red light on the eastern horizon. He, at first, thought it was a red warning light on a radio tower, but the light wasn’t blinking and it seemed to be pacing the aircraft. He watched for a minute or two. Finally the light seemed to turn so that it was coming toward the helicopter and when it did, he mentioned it to the pilot, Coyne. Coyne glanced out the right window (eastern side) and saw the light. He suggested that Yanacsek keep an eye on it, though there didn’t seem to be any real danger from it.

After about half a minute, Yanacsek thought that the light was coming at them and Coyne agreed. Coyne then took the controls of the aircraft from the co-pilot and believing the object might be on a collision course, pushed down the collective (or technically, the collective pitch, that is a lever on the left side of the seat of the pilot or co-pilot) which changes the pitch of the rotor blades so that the aircraft will gain or lose altitude. He entered a 500 foot per minute descent, which is not very rapid. They had been flying at 2500 feet which over that part of Ohio is about 1200 feet Above Ground Level (AGL).

Healey now left his seat and moved forward, crouching between the seats occupied by the Coyne and Jezzi. The light was getting brighter, or as Healey would later say, brighter than the landing lights of a commercial jet.

The red light was closing on them quickly and dangerously. Coyne again pushed down on the collective to increase his rate of descent, eventually pushing it all the way to the stop. Believing that he was not descending fast enough, he pushed the cyclic (think of the yoke on an airplane here) forward so that he would be descending even faster.

At this point Coyne looked up and said the light, which he could now see was an object, was covering the front of the windshield. Coyne said that there was a red light at the front of the object, a green light that seemed to reflect off the rear of the object, and a green light, like a searchlight coming from the rear. The overall shape seemed to be that of a cigar or cylinder and under the tail was a pyramid-shaped structure from which a green beam came. The overall object was not glowing, but Coyne, and his crew, could see the general shape against the bright, starry background.

According to Jenny Ziedman, who published the results of her lengthy investigation for the Center for UFO Studies in 1979, Yanacsek said:

The object may have hovered over us for 10 to 12 seconds. It seemed like a long time. It seemed like it was there for so damn long. It was just stopped, for maybe 10 to 12 seconds, and I mean stopped. It wasn’t cruising, it was stopped. It didn’t waver, it didn’t put on the brakes, it didn’t gyrate – it was just like in a cartoon. It was coming at us, and then, in the next frame, it was there, just like that. No noise, no flaps. It reminded me very much of a submarine. I really didn’t think we would collide, because the object was obviously completely in control of the situation.

The object hovered there for those long seconds and then took off toward the northwest. They could see the light at the rear of the object was bright white. Coyne glanced at the altimeter and realized they were at 3500 feet. Coyne said the collective was still full down and he couldn’t explain the ascent. With what he was doing, the helicopter should have been descending rapidly. Coyne then pulled up on the collective (which, of course, the opposite of what he should have done to stop an ascent but then the collective was full down so he couldn’t have pushed it any lower) and at 3800 feet, they felt a bump and the climb ceased. With the climb stopped, and Coyne now in control again, began a descent back to the cruising altitude.

Philip Klass, when he heard about the case decided to take a look at it. He was on a television show about UFOs with Healey, and he recorded another show that aired the next night that featured Coyne as the guest. Klass, in his book UFO’s Explained, wrote, “As I studied the transcript of my tape recording [of Coyne on the Dick Cavett Show] my attention began to focus on the possibility that the UFO might have been a bright meteor-fireball.”

Klass explained his long search for a meteoric explanation but found nothing to corroborate his idea. He did bring up the Zond IV reentry in 1968 where a number of people believed they saw a cigar-shaped craft with lighted windows as the rocket broke up. He seems to have confused Yanacsek’s sighting on the right side of the aircraft, with Healey’s sighting of the red light that was seen out the left that slid to the rear, heading south. If it was the same object, then that approach from the other side moments later clearly proves that it wasn’t a meteor.

He also reported that he had asked others in a position to have seen the fireball or bolide if they had, but there were no reports of anyone else seeing it. Given the time of day, meaning not all that late, and the area over which it would have flown, it seems reasonable to believe that someone else would have seen it. In today’s world, a fireball would be widely reported, often with video of the event. In that time, it would have made the news, though the reports probably would have been confined to the immediate area.

Klass mentioned that the cockpit was bathed in green light as the object passed overhead and reported that there are two Plexiglas panels set above the pilots’ heads and these are tinted green. They were called, cleverly by the flight crews, the greenhouses, but they are directly over the pilots and are not part of the windshield. Klass seemed to have confused these green tinted areas for something on the windshield (or canopy as he called it) much as cars used to have a green tint at the top of the windshield. The crew was not looking through the greenhouses and the light was not coming directly through them. Besides, the crew described other colored lights on the object which they were watching through the clear, Plexiglas windshield.

Klass admitted that the climb was the “real puzzler.” He discussed it with Dave Brown, an “experienced pilot with some hours in a helicopter [which tells nothing about his experience in a helicopter and it doesn’t say if those hours are as a pilot or a passenger and if there are very many of them]. Brown suggested that perhaps the pilot or co-pilot might have unconsciously pulled back on the collective [though the proper term here would be pulled up on the collective] and or cyclic-pitch control(s) as he leaned back in his seat to view the luminous object overhead.”

Lieutenant Arrigo Jezzi, the co-pilot, would never have pulled up on the collective in the way Klass speculates. Coyne and Jezzi had both gone through the same flight training as I had. Had Jezzi felt the aircraft was in danger and he needed to take over the controls, he would have put his hands on them and said, “I’ve got it.”

Coyne would have relinquished control taking his hands off and said, “You’ve got it.”

This was done so that the pilots wouldn’t be fighting each other for control. In similar circumstances, meaning if one of them in the cockpit saw something the other didn’t that might endanger the aircraft, this is what was done, and that includes combat assaults under enemy fire, which can easily be even more stressful than seeing a UFO. Every Army trained helicopter pilot followed this ritual even at times like that, so, it is clear that Jezzi didn’t take over control and didn’t touch the controls without alerting Coyne to that. In fact, it would have been quicker for Jezzi to say, “Watch your altitude.”

Could leaning back in the seat, trying to see the UFO above have caused Coyne to pull up on the collective (as opposed to have pulled back as Klass suggested)? Not really given the way the controls are configured. Could he have pulled back on the cyclic in such a circumstance? Maybe, but there would have been other consequences to that action, including a slowing of the airspeed, a change in the engine noise and a change in the orientation of the view in the cockpit which would have suggested that something had happened. Or, in other words, that would have been noticed because that is how the Army pilots were trained.

Klass, continued his speculation about all of this, based on the information he had collected, some of which he failed to report, and he concluded, “…we should all be grateful for the instinctive, if unconscious, reactions of pilot Coyne or co-pilot Jezzi in pulling their helicopter out of its steep descent barely four hundred feet about the ground.”

He then solved the case. He wrote, “…it will not be easy for them to accept the explanation that the UFO was merely a bright fireball, that the seemingly mysterious behavior of the helicopter was due to the unconscious, instinctive reactions of well-trained pilots…”

With absolutely no evidence of a bright meteor that night, Klass has created one out of thin air and the skeptics have not asked him to explain that position. They don’t ask him why Yanacsek’s account is not mentioned, or the confusion about which crewmember saw what and where. Finally no one asks him how it would be for the pilot to have lowered the collective to arrest the ascent when it was already at the bottom stop and couldn’t be pushed down any further. He just speculates, contrary to the pilot testimony, that one or the other had pulled up on the collective earlier (which he could have then pushed down, but said that he couldn’t, so he pulled up). It is clear that Klass does not understand the Army procedures, and that he reports his speculations as if they were facts. None of this means that Coyne and his crew saw an alien craft, only that Klass’ analysis of it is flawed by what others would call “Ufological thinking” if Klass was at the other end of the spectrum. So, now let the defense of Klass begin, regardless of the facts.

Lies and More Lies

In an earlier posting I purposely and deliberately said that the Air Force lied about sighting solutions in the Project Blue Book files. I said this because they knew, based on their own files, that the satellite solution for one aspect of the Portage County Chase did not work. They, which is to say Hector Quintanilla, knew the truth. As the man in charge, he owns the ultimate responsibility here and he had, naturally, complete access to the Project Blue Book files.

Let’s look at something that I have found in the Air Force file on the Las Vegas UFO crash of April 1962. A New York civilian had written to the Air Force and asked if fighters had been scrambled to intercept the object, whatever that object might have been. Major C. R. Hart of the Air Force Office of Public Information wrote back and said that no fighters had been scrambled. Other evidence showed that jets had taken off from Luke Air Force Base near Phoenix, but nothing came from Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas. Did Hart lie in the letter?

No, I don’t think so. I believe he was answering the question honestly based on the information he had and based where he was located. He was not part of Project Blue Book staff but assigned to Air Force public affairs. He didn’t know of the attempted intercepts so when he wrote that none had been tried, he was telling the truth as he knew it.

The difference here is that Quintanilla knew the truth about the Portage Country chase and knew that part of the solution didn’t work. The memo for the record that mentioned that the Echo satellites were not visible in northeastern Ohio at the time was in his file, in his office and he should have seen it. I don’t believe that he ever thought the UFO files would become part of the public record or that we would ever see that memo, so that any solution provided was just fine with him.

And yes, I can provide other examples where the Air Force mislead the public about their UFO information. They say that only 701 sightings remained unidentified at the close of Blue Book but that isn’t exactly true. Overlooking the fact that some cases were labeled as identified when that identification can be shown to be untrue, there were some 4000 sightings labeled as “insufficient data for a scientific analysis.” That means that more than thirty percent of the sightings were labeled as “insufficient data,” which isn’t an identification at all but keeps that sighting off the unidentified roles.

We can reduce it to single cases as well. In Levelland, Texas in 1957, witnesses at thirteen difference locations reported that their engines had been stalled, their headlights dimmed, and their radios were filled with static as a glowing UFO landed near them or flew over them. The Air Force concluded that ball lightning was responsible.

But ball lightning is very short lived and there are no cases in which a dozen or more displays of ball lightning are seen over a limited geographic area within a couple of hours of each other. Ball lightning is small, eight inches to a foot in diameter. They sometimes roll along the ground and “pop” out of existence. They in no way match the descriptions provided by the witnesses, but in the world in 1957, the Air Force didn’t care about that. They just wanted a solution and ball lightning, to their minds, fit the bill.

To be fair, the Air Force did get some of the solutions right. In the Chiles – Whitted case from 1948 in which the two airline pilots thought they saw a cigar-shaped craft with windows on it, the Air Force suggested a “bolide.” Most rejected this idea, but when the Soviet rocket Zond 4 re-entered the atmosphere in 1968 there were some who described a cigar-shaped craft with windows. It became obvious that this sort of illusion was possible. In today’s world, with hundreds of meteor falls recorded and displayed on YouTube, it is possible to see this illusion. As the meteors break up, it does look as if there is a structured craft with windows on the side. When the witness only manages a split second sighting, this sort of explanation becomes even more likely.

The real point here, however, is that the Air Force, as their investigation continued was not interested in investigating UFO sightings, they were only interested in explaining them. If that explanation sounded “scientific” that was even better. But as we review the files, we see how some of those “scientific” explanations fail, and we see where the Air Force bent the facts to propose some ridiculous explanations. And, as noted, in a few cases their solutions were contradicted by the facts they had gathered themselves.

Eddie Bullard's "The Myth and Mysteries of UFOs"

(Blogger’s Note: A slightly different version of this review ran in the Summer 2012 Journal of Scientific Exploration.) 

The Myth and Mysteries of UFOs. By Thomas E. Bullard. Lawrence Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 2010. 417 pp. ISBN 978-0-7006-1729-6

 

UFO books run the gambit from slapped together pulp jobs with little thought to accuracy to Ph. D dissertations that rely on scholarship without a thought to style. Thomas (Eddie) Bullard’s book, The Myth and Mysteries of UFOs, is one that walks the fine line between over the top scholarship and the bottom of the barrel trash. His is a book that belongs on everyone’s shelf because of the scholarship and the readability. 

It was, for me, confusing at first. I wasn’t sure where he was going with his scholarship. He wrote about sightings that most of us inside the UFO community knew about, but he often answered the questions about their reality. Or maybe I should say about their extraterrestrial nature. Clearly something had happened, but Bullard seemed to provide us with answers for those strange cases. 

The massive sightings of March 3, 1968, in which a number of witnesses described a cigar-shaped UFO with windows on the side, for example, was explained as the re-entry and break-up of the Zond IV spacecraft launched by the Soviet Union. This has become an accepted explanation throughout the UFO community and one not without merit. 

The case is interesting because, as Bullard notes, while some thought of alien craft, there were those who recognized the sighting for what it actually was. Bullard suggests that the reason there weren’t more reports of this with the proper answer is because those who properly identified it felt no compulsion to report it. Those who thought of it in terms of an alien craft did.  

But the real importance of the sighting was how it applied to other, similar reports. In 1948 two airline pilots saw something that they described as cigar-shaped with square windows. This was, of course, the same thing said about the Zond IV reentry. A cigar-shaped craft with square windows. Of course there was no returning space debris in 1948, but there were bolides, very bright meteors, that could give the same impression and often do. 

Bullard looks at the UFO phenomenon through the eyes of a folklorist who is studying the legends and myths of the human race. He notes that humans, from the very first, were reporting the strange apparitions in the sky that we now call UFOs or flying saucers. He looks at the history of those myths.

But he is not telling us that all UFO sightings can be explained with such a study, only that science might learn something about human nature, about how we view the world as opposed to how our ancestors viewed the world, and that there is something real happening. Some of the sightings aren’t based only on our perceptions, but on something concrete and tangible flying, or floating, through the sky. 

He acknowledges many of the answers for what people have seen, but also makes it clear that these answers do not cover everything that is seen. It is impossible to write off a UFO sighting that was witnessed by dozens, especially when the object, or objects, are detected by radar or have been photographed or leave traces on the ground.

In other words, Bullard sees something of value in the study of UFOs. There is science that can be applied, and science has been negligent in what they have done with UFO reports. Rather than be intrigued by them, science simply ignored them. 

This is a book that has been needed since 1969 when the Air Force sponsored study at the University of Colorado, popularly known as the Condon Committee, rejected the idea of UFOs. They found that not only did UFOs not pose a threat to national security, one of the Air Force’s requirements, but more outrageously, nothing of scientific importance could be learned by studying them. Skeptics have cited this investigation as if it is the final word on UFOs since it was released. 

Bullard’s book, however, is the important and long needed counterpoint. He’s not arguing that UFOs are extraterrestrial, though it appears in some places he has reached this conclusion. No, he’s arguing that some UFOs demand scientific study. They might not led to alien spacecraft but they will certainly add to our knowledge of the world around us. While national security might not be an issue, scientific understanding of our world is. 

While alien abduction might not be extraterrestrial creatures taking humans into their craft for examination, neither is it explained by sleep paralysis. While sleep paralysis may, in fact, explain some abduction tales, it does not explain them all.  

Bullard’s argument here, then, is that UFOs deserve academic study. Hufford’s study of the Old Hag, as outlined in The Terror that Comes in the Night, which is about bedroom visitation, led us to a more complete understanding of the phenomenon related to sleep paralysis. The study of the UFOs might lead us to an better understanding of our psychological make up. 

With that said, Bullard is also suggesting that there are UFO sightings that are sufficiently strange, sufficiently documented, with sufficient eyewitness testimony, that demand study. This might lead us right into the extraterrestrial.  

Bullard is suggesting that we stop dismissing UFOs by saying the witnesses were drunk, uneducated, unsophisticated, or simply of below average intelligence, and apply our science to them. He looked at the UFO phenomenon with the eyes of a trained folklorist and found much that required study. He is saying that other sciences, both physical and social, might benefit from a similar academic analysis. 

Ridicule is not a way to learn something new. Ridicule is a way to dismiss something without having to know anything about it. Bullard tells us that now is the time to stop ignoring UFOs and actually try studying with the same sort of academic precision that is devoted to other types of anomalies. Now is the time to begin the real science and not the pseudo-science that has gone before.

The Meteorite Men and UFOs

Since the last couple of postings has created an acrimonious debate, let’s move onto something a little tamer for the moment. I have been watching Meteorite Men on Discovery Science and was surprised by the number of meteor falls that have been captured on video tape. And I was surprised at how, as the meteor broke up, it began to look like something else.

Let me take a step back here and provide a little history. On March 3, 1968, there was a series of UFO reports in the Midwest. These were of a cigar-shaped craft with lighted windows (first two illustrations from March 3). Skeptics, including Philip Klass, identified the UFO as the reentry of one of the Zond 4 booster rockets. The spacecraft had been placed in orbit the night before so we were dealing with a spacecraft or rather part of one but not with an extraterrestrial one.

Klass suggested in his book, UFOs Explained, that this was also the solution for the Chiles – Whitted sighting of July 24, 1948. Chiles and Whitted were the pilot and co-pilot of an airliner and they reported they had seen what they thought, at first, was some kind of jet aircraft but then described a cigar-shaped object with lighted windows (second two illustrations supplied by Chiles Whitted). Originally it had been suggested they had seen a meteor but that explanation was rejected, especially when one of them reported that their aircraft had been rocked by the passing of the UFO. It was a short sighting but one that baffled the Air Force investigators originally. Later, or maybe eventually, it was identified as a "Fireball". That is, an extremely bright meteor.

Along with many others, I wasn’t happy with these explanations, offered by Klass and the Air force, but now we have a compilation of meteor falls on video tape. I confess that looking at some of these, it does appear that they resemble some kind of craft with lighted windows, especially as they begin to break up. Given the coincident of the Zond 4 reentry with the drawings and descriptions of the Chiles – Whitted sighting, it seems that these cases can be marked as solved, as Klass and the Air Force has suggested.

Yet, there seem to be other cases that fit into this as well but do not have these simple solutions. Two that spring to mind immediately are the Kecksburg case of December 9, 1965 and the Washington case of November 25, 1979. In fact, Jim Clarkson, who has been investigating the Washington case almost since the day it happened, has a number of descriptions that match, generally, those given in the Zond 4 and the Chiles – Whitted case.

Clarkson also seems to have found a military connection and does report that military and police authorities searched an area near Westport and the Elk River Bridge looking for something. Some witnesses have reported roadblocks by the military, a larger than normal military presence in the area after the events, and some unusual activities. He has spent years assembling his data.

Stan Gordon has done the same with the Kecksburg case. There are no reports of anything like a cigar-shaped craft with windows. There are reports that the military responded, reports of the military establishing some sort of a forward command post and that something was found in the woods near Kecksburg only to be hauled away by military authorities. The connection to a meteor was drawn by several skeptics including Robert Young who though that pictures of the smoke trail published in astronomy magazines shortly after the event solved the case.

There is one other fact that impacts both those cases and it was something that was demonstrated as the bolide, that is, an extremely bright meteor flashed over the Midwest last week. Within hours there were meteorite hunters all over the place looking for fragments. On the news the next day were reports from one man who had found a small piece of the meteorite and an expert from Chicago who was talking about the radar return and the strewn field.

Let me elaborate. In the old days of radar, it was said that radar could not detect the meteor but could see the ionized trail left behind. Today’s weather radar that is all over the place with interlocking patterns still might be only able to see the ionized trail, but it does see them. That gave the meteorite hunters a direction of flight (as if the eyewitnesses didn’t) and a possible location of impact.

The strewn field is an area that contains the pieces of the meteor as it broke up in flight. Think of it as a debris field left as an aircraft crashed. The strewn field could be very long but would be relatively narrow and it could hold thousands of pieces of the meteor.

Knowing all this, I contacted Stan Gordon, the long time investigator and local expert on the Kecksburg crash. I asked him if he had been contacted by any meteorite hunters. His response was that not about this, but he had been contacted about other events around Pennsylvania.

I put the same questions to Jim Clarkson about the Washington crash. He told me, " I never heard of anyone searching the area for meteor fragments."

But I took this one step further. I sent an email to the Meteorite Men. It took them a week to get back to me, but considering the number of emails they received, I was surprised by the speed of their reply. They told me that they knew of no meteor falls on either December 9, 1965 or November 25, 1979 (Photographs of meteor falls seen in the last four illustrations).

Does this rule out the meteor answer for both those cases? I would say, "Not really." However, a meteor, or bolide of sufficient size to cause the stir these two events did would seem to be listed in someone’s database and the Meteorite Men would seem to be the experts on this. Which is to say that they should know, but something might have slipped through.

Where does all this leave us? I believe, based on the evidence, that the March 3, 1968 UFO sighting has been explained by the reentry of the Zond 4 booster.

I believe, based on the illustrations supplied of the Zond 4 and the descriptions given by Chiles and Whitted, that they probably saw a meteor as it approached them and then broke up. Given that this was 1948 and extremely early in the morning, there simply weren’t any other witnesses awake to see the object, though there were some ground reports. The illustrations made by them seem to match those drawn to reflect the Zond 4.

With both Kecksburg and Elk River Bridge in Washington, I’m not sure. With Kecksburg there are no eyewitness drawings to match the Zond 4 and there apparently have been no one hunting the meteorites. Had this been such an event, I would expect it to be overrun by meteorite hunters. And yes, I know the closest road to the impact site is known as Meteor Road.

With the Washington case, the drawings and illustrations provided by Jim Clarkson seem to be reminiscent of the Zond 4, but do not match with the same degree that those of Chiles and Whitted do. And, there have been no meteorite hunters in the area that Clarkson knows about. He also said that the possible impact area is being returned by the state to it’s natural condition which means swamps and rough, tangled brush.

This means that I believe the solutions to Kecksburg and Washington have not been found... or rather the evidence for something other than a meteor remains high. In both cases, it was reported that the object changed course and there have not been the meteorite hunters in the area that you would expect.

But it also means that we might be getting closer to an overall solution as we learn more about meteors, we gather more videos of them falling, and we search these areas for those fragments that we would expect.