Читать книгу The Big Book of UFOs - Chris A. Rutkowski - Страница 16
ОглавлениеCOMETS, METEORS, OR SOMETHING ELSE?
The most written-about case of a strange flying object in historical Russia took place on June 30, 1908, over Siberia. Early in the morning of that day, hundreds of people in and around the Tunguska region reported seeing an oval fireball passing overhead, changing direction and speed, with a luminous trail behind it. A massive explosion was felt throughout the continent, with seismic stations in Irkutsk and Tashkent registering tremors. The sky glowed so brightly that people could read newspapers at midnight in Moscow, Paris, and even in London.
It was not until 1927 that an expedition funded by the Soviet Academy of Sciences managed to visit the swampy wilderness area, and what they reported was more astounding than anyone had imagined. A wind-driven firestorm had swept the area, uprooting and charring trees in a region measuring thousands of square kilometres in diameter.
Many theories have been proposed to explain the event, ranging from an asteroid impact, a comet, black hole, nuclear blast, and even an alien spaceship. Most scientists now favour a cometary impact as the most likely explanation. If it had been a relatively small asteroid, like the object that created the Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona, there would be some evidence of a well-defined gouge on the landscape.
At about 9:05 p.m. EST on the night of February 9, 1913, a strange phenomenon was seen in the skies over much of Canada and the United States. Beginning in Saskatchewan and heading to the east, a “procession” of brilliant lights made their way slowly and majestically overhead. Some witnesses described the sight as a red object with a long, fiery tail. Others saw two, three or more sources of light travelling one behind the other, each with separate trails of sparks. As soon as these were out of sight, dozens of smaller lights in groups of twos, threes, and fours again passed overhead on the same apparent path from northwest to southeast, all with glowing tails. There were even reports of the strange phenomenon as far east as Bermuda.
Estimates of the total number of objects in the procession ranged as high as 1,000 or more, although the best approximation was that 10 or 15 objects, each possibly composed of a number of smaller bodies, were seen over a 4,000 kilometre path over the entire continent. The duration of the event was said to be as long as three and a half minutes.
Astronomer Dr. Clarence Chant presented a very detailed analysis of the meteor train including many reports from eyewitnesses. He noted, “The front portion of the body appears to have been somewhat brighter than the rest, but the general colour was a fiery red or golden yellow. To some the tail seemed like the glare from the open door of a furnace in which is a fierce fire; to others, it was like the illumination from a ‘search light’; to others, like the stream of sparks blown away from a burning chimney by strong wind. Gradually the bodies became smaller, until the last ones were but red sparks, some of which were snuffed out before they reached their destination. Several report that near the middle of the great procession was a fine large star without a tail, and that a similar body brought up the rear.”
The spread of reports was very remarkable. Chant noted that the place farthest west from which a report has been received was Mortlach, about 105 kilometres west of Regina, Saskatchewan, where they were described as travelling from west to east. However, in Ontario, the meteors were described as travelling generally from northwest to southeast, and there were enough observations reported to allow triangulation and calculate their true path.
The Barringer meteor crater in Arizona was formed 50,000 years ago when a large chunk of rock hit the Earth, creating a hole more than 150 metres deep and over a kilometre wide.
DID YOU KNOW?
UFOs have been reported from every continent on Earth, including Antarctica.
From Campbellville, Ontario, the meteors passed directly overhead, travelling from northwest to southeast, and over Hespeler, they “seemed to go right over our heads,” in a line about 15 degrees to the west of the zenith.
Chant calculated that based on the elevation angles and triangulation that the meteors were at a height of about 40 kilometres, just within the Earth’s atmosphere, and travelling at a speed of somewhat less than 15 kilometres per second. However, these values were debated among the astronomical community and a much higher altitude of about 70 to 80 kilometres was later accepted.
The procession also made its presence known through noise. Chant noted that at Niagara-on-the-Lake the windows rattled, and at St. David’s, Rev. G. Munro heard the sound but looked in vain up in the sky to see the cause of it.
Similarly, near Sand Hill, Ontario, a witness reported, “Some had tails and some seemed to shoot a red vapor which threw a beautiful red glow. They came in bunches or groups. I counted 10 in one group and I think there were 20 groups. As they disappeared in the east there was a loud report like rolling thunder, and then another sound like thunder, and a tremor of the earth.”
And in Shelburne, Chant noted, “There must have been an earthquake the night before, that the vibration was quite perceptible, and the noise was like a series of blasts going off. In the Shelburne Economist it is stated that a man living 12 miles west of the town was awakened from sleep and thought that his horses were wrecking the stable. On investigating, however, he found the horses perfectly quiet.”
Other sample observations included:
Fort Frances, Ontario: “I saw them come slowly from the northwest; first, a string like candles, about forty of them; then, after 5 minutes, another string in the same line and about eight in number. They made the snow red quite a while after they had disappeared in the east. There was no sound, and they were lower than the stars. They went slow. A big one led the first string. I am sure you will hear something. It must be the end of the world. It was about 9 p.m. They did not pass overhead, but north of us.”
Peterborough, Ontario: “The appearance was like that of an express train lighted up at night. The elevation was about 25 degrees. Movement was slow and the duration about 3 minutes. In the first section there seemed to be from six to nine lights, with slightly spreading ends. Then, in succession, some three or four not so brilliant sections passed. The most striking feature to me was the regular movement in an even plane. There appeared to be no curve whatever. No noise was heard. It was the grandest display I have ever seen.”
Beyond the objects seen that night, there were also scores of other sightings recorded across North America on the days just before and just after the procession, and in some cases minutes or hours before or after. Chant also noted a daylight sighting that may or may not have had anything to do with the sightings on February 9:
I shall refer to a curious observation reported in The Toronto Daily Star for Monday, February 10. At about 2 p.m. on that date some of the occupants of a tall building near the lake front saw some strange objects moving out over the lake and passing to the east. They were not seen clearly enough to determine their nature, but they did not seem to be clouds, or birds, or smoke, and it was suggested at the time that, perhaps, they were airships cruising over the city. Afterwards it was surmised that they may have been of the nature of meteors moving in much the game path as these seen the night before.
Many years later, the identity of the meteors in the procession was still being debated. In the journal Popular Astronomy, Vol. XLVII, No. 6, June-July, 1939, astronomer C.C. Wylie argued that the procession was not a series of meteors in a long train. He stated that “the popular explanation of the phenomenon is that a cluster of fire balls travelled from Saskatchewan across North America, and over the Atlantic to the equator, a distance of some 5,700 miles. Several considerations, of which we will mention four, make this explanation untenable.”
Wylie’s chronology of events was that:
1. A detonating meteor fell over Ontario on February 9 at 9:06 p.m., Ontario time.
2. A shadow-casting meteor was observed from Ann Arbor, Michigan at 10:15 p.m., CST. (11:15 p.m. Ontario time.)
3. A spectacular fireball was observed from Bermuda at 10:00 p.m. Atlantic time (9:00 p.m., Ontario time.)
4. A shadow-casting meteor observed in Ontario on February 10 at 1:25 p.m.
In addition to these spectacular meteors, several groups of shooting stars were observed, among them the ones over Fort Frances at 9:00 p.m. CST. A string of 40 or so meteors, followed after five minutes by a string of eight, passed north overhead. Meteors were also observed over Pense and Morllach, Saskatchewan (“Must have been hundreds”) and even as far afield as Watchung, New Jersey.
UFOS AND ALIENS IN MOVIES
Earth Versus the Flying Saucers (1956) was one of the best saucer movies of the 50s, with excellent special effects for its time, including the now-classic but cliché stock footage of plastic model saucers flying over Washington, D.C. The malevolent aliens were clearly here to take over the planet, with displays of force such as blowing up buildings and automobiles. The film conveyed the fear and panic that many people expressed regarding the “invasion” of saucers over the U.S. in the 1950s, when a flurry of UFO sightings over Washington was actually reported, and the resultant military response to the alien menace.
Charles Fort, the chronicler and collector of news reports of unusual phenomena, and for whom the field of Fortean research is named, questioned the meteor explanation. Indeed, if he had still been active when Wylie disputed Chant’s conclusions, Fort would have certainly had some cynical comments to offer. In his book New Lands, Fort noted:
It is questionable that the same spectacle was seen in Bermuda, this night. The supposed long flight from the Saskatchewan to Bermuda might indicate something of a meteoric nature, but the meteor-explanation must take into consideration that these objects were so close to this earth that sounds from them were heard, and that, without succumbing to gravitation, they followed the curvature of this earth at a relatively low velocity that can not compare with the velocity of ordinary meteors.
Fort’s belief was that alien civilizations were possible, and that some observations of aerial objects were undoubtedly due to their appearance.
The headline of the Toronto Globe on February 15, 1915, read: “Ottawa in Darkness Awaits Aeroplane Raid.” Call-outs in the body of the article warned: “Several Aeroplanes Make a Raid into the Dominion of Canada,” and “Entire City of Ottawa in Darkness, Fearing Bomb Droppers.”
One alarming series of headlines and secondary headlines told readers: “Machines Crossed St Lawrence River, Passing over Brockville — Two over Ganonoque — Seen by Many Citizens, Heading for the Capital — One Was Equipped with Powerful Searchlights — Fire Balls Dropped.” To anyone reading the latest news from the country’s capital, it appeared as though Canada was about to enter the war on its own home front.
The excitement began on the night of February 14, about 9:15 p.m., when many people in Brockville were startled to see the lights of unknown aircraft crossing over the St. Lawrence River and heading for Ottawa. The lights were even seen by the mayor and three city constables. The unidentified craft flying rapidly overhead was said to have made “unmistakable sounds of the whirring motor.”
A second flying machine was heard as it crossed the St. Lawrence River from the direction of Morristown, New York. As it passed overhead, three balls of fire were seen to drop into the St. Lawrence. Some observers thought these might have been bombs, while others worried they could have been flares used by enemy pilots to find their way across the border or over the ocean to the Canadian interior. Two more aerial invaders were reported to have passed over the east and west ends of Brockville, raising further fears.
The mayor said he also had seen a bright beam of light, like a searchlight, flash out from the aerial craft, lighting up an entire city block. The police chief, facing numerous inquiries from nervous citizens, called the mayor for instructions of what to do. He then relayed information to the mayor and police chief of Ottawa, advising them of the approaching aircraft.
At approximately 9:30 p.m., the mayor of Gananoque contacted the Brockville police chief with the news that two invisible aircraft were heard quite distinctly passing overhead there. With so much activity over the seat of government, it was not long before advisors met with Prime Minister Robert Borden and evaluated intelligence information about the mysterious fliers. Borden and his caucus were concerned that the lights of Parliament Hill would make it an easy target for any invasion, and ordered them to be turned off.
Under direct orders by the government, Parliament Hill went dark at about 11:15 p.m., and the entire city of Ottawa followed suit at approximately 11:20 p.m., including Rideau Hall and the Royal Mint. Shutters were secured and windows were darkened throughout the Capital region. Military and police marksmen climbed to the roofs of government buildings in Ottawa and were given orders to shoot down any hostile aircraft. This was the first blackout and air raid in Canadian history, only one month after the first raid on Britain.
Ottawa was not the only target of an “aerial invasion” that night. Early in the morning of February 15, people living in a Toronto suburb notified police of a “strange aeroplane” hovering over their homes. Later in the morning, a man in Guelph saw “three moving lights passing over the agricultural college.” He called out to other residents in his boarding house who also watched the silent lights until dawn.
Meanwhile, far to the west, three people returning home from a late-night game of curling in Morden, Manitoba, heard a peculiar noise in the sky and looked up to see a bright light moving to the northwest. They, too, described it as an “aeroplane” travelling swiftly through the night sky.
It is important to note that there may have been an explanation for at least some of the objects seen in the skies over Ontario that night. It was reported that the hysteria in Ottawa was the result of a prank by a few jokers in Morristown. Supposedly, three fire balloons with fireworks attached were sent aloft in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the end of the War of 1812. The explanation went on to say that the fireworks created the impression of aircraft lights and engines, falling balls of fire and the beam of light seen over Brockville.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
West Springfield, Massachusetts September 1, 1994
This summer on Labor Day weekend in West Springfield, Massachusetts. My wife and myself saw what appeared to be a green fireball. We observed it for approx. 6–7 seconds before it disappeared over the horizon. I checked with the local science museum and the astronomer in charge of the planetarium said she saw it too. However she said she would check with Boston Observatory and they told her nothing was reported to them. How odd us three were the only ones that saw it and reported it.
Reported by T.T.
Source: Ufology Research
At first, the government and its citizens refused to believe this. Even the profoundly skeptical Dominion Observatory rejected the explanation, noting that prevailing winds were from the east and would not have taken the balloons northeast towards Ottawa from Morristown. However, on February 15, a Brockville policeman found a paper balloon near Eastern Hospital, and a second paper balloon was later found along the river. This seemed to validate the explanation of fireworks, and afternoon media took advantage of the discoveries to poke fun at the morning dailies that had been quick to fall victim to hysteria. Nevertheless, the next night, the lights of Ottawa were again turned out and guns were set up on rooftops.
Later research showed that at the time of these observations, only a handful of aircraft in the United States were actually capable of making the flight from the border to Ottawa, and none of these were capable of carrying searchlights.
Elsewhere in the world, an early report of an unidentified object occurred in 1930, in an area southwest of Rio de Janeiro called Jacarepagua, long before any modern development. A couple was asleep in their small cottage one night, situated in a large expanse of primitive grassland. They were awakened to light streaming into their bedroom through the slats in the blinds, a very unusual thing because there were no others living near them and no roads or railroads near their homestead at that time.
When they opened the window to look out, they were shocked to see a large craft, “a white rounded object with two monstrous ‘eyes’” and a leg or column coming down from it. The eyes were square, brick-shaped holes in its body, and they likened it to a man-made “ghost” constructed to frighten them for some reason. The husband took out his pistol and fired several shots in its direction, but the object was unaffected.
The object crossed the lawn in front of them, moving slowly up and down as if it was walking. It then rose up and headed for a dam some distance away, but paused and rotated back to “look” at the couple several more times before it was lost in the distance. The next day, the wife broke out in a rash of some kind, but it cleared up after a few days. Another apparent physical effect was that the grass on their lawn had turned from a lush green to a dead grey.
On June 10, 1931, pioneer aviator Francis Chichester (later knighted for his courage) was flying solo between Australia and Norfolk Island across the Tasman Sea when he saw flashes of light that he assumed were from other nearby aircraft. He noted that a “dull, gray-white shape of an airship” like an “oblong pearl” was heading towards his plane. He was momentarily distracted by more flashes beside him, and when he looked ahead the airship was gone.
Soon, however, another such craft emerged from the clouds on the opposite side of his airplane. He wrote in his diary that the object “drew steadily closer until perhaps a mile away when … it suddenly vanished.” The odd object reappeared near where it had been obscured from sight and flew closer to Chichester’s path. He could see a dim glow of light on its leading edge and rear section as it approached, but to his astonishment, the object seemed to be shrinking in size instead to getting bigger. Before his eyes, the object faded and “became its own ghost,” leaving behind a small cloud in the shape of an airship.
UFOS AND ALIENS IN LITERATURE
Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon started beating up bad guys in space in the 1920s and 1930s.
In parallel to the fireballs over the Canadian Parliament, a similar military scare occurred over Los Angeles in 1942. Known as the “Battle of Los Angeles,” many people witnessed odd lights and objects, some flying in formations of 10 or more, on the night of February 24 to 25. Because of the war raging at the time, and since this was only a few months after Pearl Harbor, the reports led to antiaircraft artillery fire being shot into the sky.
Because of war jitters, people were anxious about a possible attack from across the Pacific. They were somewhat justified, as just the night before, on February 23, 1942, a Japanese submarine surfaced about a mile offshore and shelled an oil refinery near Santa Barbara. Around 7:15 p.m., almost 20 shells were shot at the shore, yet little damage was actually done. Some shells landed well off target, but the bold attack created a fear of an invasion along the west coast of North America. Eyewitness reports suggested the sub may have been heading further south, towards Los Angeles.
So, when unidentified lights were reported over Los Angeles the next night, air raid sirens sounded throughout Los Angeles County and the entire area was blacked out. At 3:16 a.m. on February 25, the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade began firing more than 1,400 anti-aircraft shells into the air at the lights. The “battle” lasted more than an hour.
One witness noted: “I could clearly see a V formation of about 25 silvery planes overhead… they were moving slowly across the sky toward Long Beach.” An experienced Navy observer watched with powerful binoculars and said he could count nine silver aircraft when they passed into the beam of a searchlight.
The objects flew in and out of view as searchlights played across the sky, all the while under fire from the big anti-aircraft guns, which unfortunately were so loud no one could tell if the aerial objects were making any engine noise. Gunners were certain that their shells must have hit their targets, although there was no evidence that this was so. An “all clear” was finally sounded at 7:21 a.m.
Although the supposed enemy aircraft didn’t fire on any targets, there was some damage — from friendly fire! Several buildings were hit by stray American shells, and three civilians were killed! Three other people died of heart attacks because of the stress of watching the battle rage in Los Angeles’ skies.
While it was assumed that the unidentified aircraft were Japanese bombers or perhaps kamikaze pilots, it was learned after the war that the Japanese had not been able to stage an attack on American mainland until some time later when they reached Alaska in mid-1942. It was possible that this was simply a case of war nerves, although enough witnesses thought they had actually seen something.
One suggestion put forth in later years was that the Los Angeles “incursion” was caused by some Japanese fire balloons. It is known that in 1944 and 1945, the Japanese army had launched more than 9,000 incendiary balloons, knowing that they would be carried eastward to North America via the jet stream. The idea was that they would reach land and set fire to buildings, crops and forests, disrupting American livelihood. It is estimated that approximately 300 of these fire balloons did reach America, but they had much less of an effect than was expected. A few people died when their curiosity got the better of them and they examined a landed balloon too closely, and one forest fire was thought to have been caused directly by one of the balloons. It is thought that at least some of the balloons made it as far inland as North Dakota and Saskatchewan.
The prevailing opinion of historians as to the cause of the Battle of Los Angeles was that it was a weather balloon that had gone astray. However, some writers on the subject of UFOs have suggested that the objects were extraterrestrial craft of some kind.
European ufological history began before Kenneth Arnold saw his crescent-shaped objects over Washington in the United States in 1947. Starting early in 1946, residents of Scandinavian countries reported seeing strange “ghost rockets” zooming and flashing through the skies. Many of these were fireballs, bolides, and large meteors, but others were seemingly of more unusual objects.
An interesting CIA document dated April 9, 1947, was located by researchers investigating early UFO accounts. It listed several reports of “rockets and guided missiles” seen over Norway and Sweden. It noted: “A strange object flying through the air was observed at noon today (July 13, 1946) by workmen in Stockholm. The object was round, and appeared to be rather small. It sent out a strong blue-green light, but no sound could be heard.” Another citation reads: “It is reported from Hudiksvall that railway workers this morning saw an object a few meters long and with backward-sloping wings flying towards the north at a height of about 150 meters. They heard a sound resembling that of an outboard motor.”
DID YOU KNOW?
UFOs seen
at night are classified as Nocturnal
Lights (NLs).
Some of the ghost rockets flying over Scandinavia were said to have been detected on radar, and there was speculation that they were of Russian origin. Certainly, the Russian base at Peenemünde could be considered suspect in this regard, except that these odd missiles were said to also have been mystifying the Russians as well. Indeed, even after British bombing of that base in 1943, a V-2 from Peenemünde crashed in Sweden in June 1944 and was appropriated by the British.
In December 1944, work on a winged version of the V-2 rocket was underway and there was a successful flight on January 24, 1945, reaching an altitude of about 80 kilometres. In May 1945, at the war’s end, the Soviet Army occupied the base but very little was found to indicate it had been in operation. Later, at least one historical record noted: “Western intelligence is convinced that the Soviets conducted missile tests from Peenemünde in the late 1940s (the Scandinavian ‘ghost rockets’). But Russian historical sources available after the downfall of the Soviet Union do not support this belief.”
On August 16, 1945, Jose Padillo and his friend Remigio Baca were riding their horses near Walnut Creek in a remote area of New Mexico. Although Jose was nine and his friend was only seven years old, they were very comfortable in the saddle. Both had been riding horses from the time they were barely able to run, and growing up on ranches, they were used to being out on the range. They had been sent out in the morning to look for a cow that had wandered away from the Padillo Ranch.
UFOS AND ALIENS IN LITERATURE
In 1934, a landmark story titled “A Martian Odyssey” (there’s that Martian theme again!) by Stanley Weinbaum featured an encounter with an ostrich-like creature called Tweel, who was sentient and able to communicate with visiting astronauts on its home planet. In other words, Tweel was an alien who wasn’t out to destroy the Earth, nor was it something to be overcome. It was truly alien in the sense it didn’t look or act human, yet possessed qualities that we would recognize as intelligent and civilized. This trend in science fiction stories would continue in the 1930s and 1940s.
Only a month earlier, the first atomic bomb had been detonated at Trinity Site in New Mexico. In a matter of weeks, bombs were dropped on Hiroshima. But something else happened not that far from Trinity Site, and Padillo and Baca were witnesses to it. They kept quiet about what they had seen for decades as they lost track of one another as they grew up and apart. Then, after a chance meeting, they renewed their friendship that had been tested back in 1945 and finally came forward with their story in 2003. They described a bizarre event.
The two boys had entered some uneven ground along a dry creek bed, and the horses were having difficulty — their hooves were not able to get a good foothold on the rough chunks of mud. They decided to leave the horses and proceed on foot. Padillo tied up his horse on a cactus branch and his friend did the same with his own animal.
Off in the distance, Padillo had seen a mesquite thicket, a good place for a cow to hide. They went in its direction, clambering over sharp rocks and cacti with large thorns. Storm clouds formed as they slowly made progress towards their destination. By the time they neared the thicket, a loud “Boom!” announced the arrival of the rain.
The boys quickly ducked under a ledge to get shelter from the storm and its possible lightning bolts. They waited out the cloudburst as it sent torrents of water down onto the creek bed and lightning flashed around them. Such storms were common, but always short-lived.
Padillo and Baca talked for a while, watching the downpour turn the dry creek bed briefly into a fast-moving river. In a matter of minutes, however, the rain stopped and most of the water had sunk into the ground out of sight. Soon, the clouds lifted and the sun came out again.
They came out into the open and began travelling again towards the patch of mesquite. Suddenly, the ground quaked and they were startled by more light, but it did not seem like lightning. They assumed it was something involving the nearby army base.
Nearing the mesquite bushes, they were able to hear the sounds of a cow from inside. Sure enough, as they approached, they could see the cow — and a baby calf. They decided to have lunch while the cow dried off its calf.
While they ate, Jose happened to glance up, looking further along the creek bed. A wisp of smoke was rising from somewhere just over a rise in the desert scrub. He thought that lightning from the sudden storm had started a brushfire. They put their lunches down and left the cow to tend to its calf while they went exploring in the direction of the smoke.
As they made it over a ridge, they stopped and gaped at a strange sight. There was a long groove dug into the ground, as long as a railroad train. And at its end, almost hidden by smoke, was a bowl-shaped object the colour of tarnished metal. They assumed a stray rocket had crashed.
They moved in to the crash scene, but found that the ground was very hot, as if there had been a great fire. As they walked among the smoldering greasewood trees, they had difficulty breathing because the smell was bad and the air was unbelievably hot and humid.
Baca noticed the ground was covered in patches of small pieces of shiny metal, but very thin, like the paper inside a cigarette package. He picked up one that was jammed between two rocks, and as he did, it unfolded by itself! Baca crumpled it together in his palm and let it go again. Sure enough, the curious piece of metal opened up and flattened out, without any help.
Easing their way over boulders and broken rock, they were eventually able to get within three to five metres of the object.
Padillo looked into a jagged hole in the side of the large, circular thing, and saw some people inside, moving around. But he was shocked to see they were not human. Instead, they were small creatures that had the general shape of people. These strange beings moved back and forth inside the object so fast they seemed to blur their features. They were barely bigger than the two boys, with no hair on their heads, and skinny arms and legs. The scene and the creatures’ appearance seemed somehow unreal.
UFOS AND ALIENS IN LITERATURE
Of course, the most popular alien of all time looks and acts very humanlike. In 1938, the first Superman comic strip appeared, about an alien who was not only friendly towards Earth people, but who vowed to protect them as well.
Baca was very afraid at seeing these creatures, and began to run away. Padillo was more curious and didn’t share his friend’s concern, but he decided to go with him so they would not be separated.
They both went back the way they came, leaving the gouge in the Earth and its occupants behind. They passed right by the cow and her calf, finally reached their horses, then quickly untied them, mounted, and galloped away.
When they made it back to their ranch, it was already dusk. They found Jose’s father, Faustino Padillo, who asked them right away about the lost cow.
The boys explained what had happened and what they had seen. Jose’s father was surprised at their story, but was more surprised at how they were acting. However, he reassured them that what they had seen was likely only some army operation. He decided he would go with them to check on the area in a few days. He called a friend who was a police officer and invited him out to their ranch to come along when he went with the boys to look into the discovery.
Two days later, the four of them drove out in two trucks as close as they could get to the mesquite thicket, then hiked in to where the boys had found the gouge in the Earth and the strange craft with the little creatures. But when they got there, Padillo and Baca were surprised not to see any sign of a disturbance or a metallic craft. They went farther down the canyon and noticed that the ground was covered in shallow lines or grooves, as if someone had used a giant rake to even out the debris and rocks. Suddenly, they came upon the metallic craft, although it was now resting at a different angle than when the boys saw it, and it was almost completely covered in dirt and branches.
The two men climbed on top of the large saucer-shaped object and looked inside. There was no sign of any life at all. They came back out, puzzled by what they had seen.
Padillo’s father wondered what to do, but the police officer pointed out that the ranch was on federal land and that Padillo was paid by the National Wildlife Refuge for tending the land. Furthermore, Baca’s father worked for the government as well, and they worried that the army would be concerned if they knew the boys had been to this area. They decided to do nothing about their discovery, and told the boys that the object was probably a new kind of weather balloon, and they were not to tell anyone else about it. The small creatures were just figments of their imaginations.
With that, they walked back to the trucks and drove home.
The young Padillo and Baca were a bit disappointed. They were sure that they had stumbled across something very important, but Padillo’s father was right. Maybe it was nothing at all.
They were even more surprised when, a few days later, some soldiers showed up at the ranch. They explained that a balloon did in fact come down in the creek bed, and to recover it and its payload, the Army needed to build a road over the desert scrub so that military vehicles could drive there safely.
“But don’t tell anyone we are doing this,” the soldiers directed. “It is a military secret.”
The boys watched the military transports and jeeps come and go over the next several weeks. They wondered what really had crashed into the desert.
Many years later, when they were grown up men, they remembered the events of that night.
“I am sure it was a flying saucer that crashed there,” Padillo told investigators. “Just like the one that crashed at Roswell two years later.”
DID YOU KNOW?
Less than 1
percent of all UFO reports involve
the observation of an alien.
Almost everyone has heard the story of the flying saucer that was said to crash near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. Some witnesses insisted that they saw pieces of the craft being carted away by the U.S. Army, and that a cover-up of the event has been in place ever since. According to some versions, bodies of small creatures were found in the wreckage, and they are being kept at a top secret laboratory, perhaps in a place known as Area 51 in Nevada.
But Padillo and Baca may have seen an even earlier crash, of a different spaceship.
“I don’t know what we saw,” Padillo says today, “but I will never forget it.”
KENETH ARNOLD: THE MAN WHO STARTED IT ALL
At 2:00 p.m. on June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold finished his work as a fire control engineer at the Central Air Service in Chehalis, Washington. He took off from the Chehalis airport in his own Callair aircraft for a short trip to Yakima, but he decided to assist in the search for a marine transport plane that had gone down somewhere near Mt. Rainier, not far away.
He flew around the area, then turned and began flying east towards Yakima. His altitude was about 2,800 metres. He noted the sky was “crystal clear” and that it was a perfect day for flying. He saw a DC-4 in the air about 24 kilometres away from him, but at a much higher altitude.
Suddenly, a bright flash attracted his attention. He looked around for the source and eventually saw nine “peculiar” aircraft flying south at about the same altitude as his own plane. He noted they were flying very fast, approaching the mountain, and he thought they were jets. The flashes recurred as they would occasionally dip and adjust their flight slightly, catching the Sun.
Arnold couldn’t tell what kind of aircraft they were because they were initially very far away, but he soon got closer as they drew nearer the mountain, and he could see them against the snow. He was surprised to see that they didn’t have tails or stabilizers like jets would. He timed their speed with the clock on his dash and a distant reference point. They were indeed going very fast, as fast as or faster than some military planes.
To make sure that he was not seeing a mirage or reflection, Arnold opened the cockpit window and watched them through the clear high air. After almost three minutes, the formation of odd objects had passed behind a distant ridge of mountains out of sight. But Arnold had a good enough look at the objects as they wobbled in flight that he could determine they were roughly disc-shaped, with a missing chord at their trailing edges that made them look like chubby crescents.
In 1947, pilot Kenneth Arnold saw a formation of disc-like objects flying over mountains in the Pacific Northwest. These were the first reported flying saucers.
When Arnold landed at Yakima, he told his story to the ground crew there. A helicopter pilot told Arnold the discs were probably just a flight of guided missiles from a nearby military base. Arnold then flew to Pendleton, Oregon, but wasn’t aware that someone from the Yakima airport had called ahead to let them know a pilot on his way there had seen some very unusual objects. Pendleton was in the midst of an air show, and when Arnold landed there, many people wanted to hear his story.
The next day, although he had been told by some skeptics he had just seen guided missiles, Arnold was certain he had seen something more unusual, and he went to Pendleton’s newspaper office to speak with reporters there. The result was a wire service news story written by reporter Bill Bequette, which read:
Pendleton, Ore., June 25 (AP) — Nine bright saucer-like objects flying at “incredible speed” at 10,000 feet altitude were reported here today by Kenneth Arnold, Boise, Idaho, [a] pilot who said he could not hazard a guess as to what they were.
Arnold, a United States Forest Service employee engaged in searching for a missing plane, said he sighted the mysterious objects yesterday at three pm. They were flying between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams, in Washington State, he said, and appeared to weave in and out of formation. Arnold said he clocked and estimated their speed at 1200 miles an hour.
Although it is sometimes noted that Bequette was the one who first coined the term flying saucer, that term does not actually appear in his news story. What likely happened is that as the wire story went out to newspapers across the continent, headline writers composing the story in their local papers created the phrase from a quick reading of the news copy. The result was that many newspapers carried the Bequette story under a headline that contained the now-familiar term flying saucer, even though neither Arnold nor Bequette actually called the objects that at all.
Several explanations for Arnold’s sighting have been put forth over the years by skeptics and debunkers, all of which are inadequate. An example is that suggested by Harvard University astronomer Dr. Donald Menzel, who in 1977 proposed that the discs Arnold observed were actually raindrops on the Callair aircraft’s windows.
This, of course, makes no sense when Arnold’s own testimony is read, which clearly indicates he had thought of such an explanation himself and opened the window to rule this possibility out.
If one was to propose a more reasonable explanation for Arnold’s sighting, it is more likely that what he saw was a group of secret military test vehicles, perhaps missiles with their fins and/or ailerons rendered invisible by the bright sunlight reflecting off their surfaces. However, no evidence uncovered through any investigation of the case has been offered which would support this contention.
We are left with a sighting of nine saucer-like objects that sparked the popular imagination and impressed the image of flying saucers indelibly on our collective memories.
Strictly speaking, the famous (or infamous, if you prefer) case involving a crash of a flying saucer near the town of Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, is not a very “good” UFO report. In fact, were it not for a series of events that followed the sighting of an unusual bright object, the case might have remained lost to history. But this incident has become possibly the best-known UFO case in the annals of ufology, spawning books, movies, TV series, and achieving legendary status among hard-core believers and the general public.
On July 2, 1947, business owner Dan Wilmot and his wife were sitting outside on their porch, enjoying the summer evening. At about 9:50 p.m., they saw a bright, disc-shaped object with glowing lights flying northwest very rapidly. To a reporter from the Roswell Daily Record, Wilmot described the object as shaped like “two inverted saucers mouth to mouth” and an estimated six to eight metres in diameter.
Over the next few days, sightings of unusual objects were reported in the general area. Most were of bright fireballs, such as one on July 4 described as a “brilliant light” plunging to Earth, similar to an aircraft on fire and falling from the sky.
This handful of sightings was hardly remarkable. In fact, the cases have characteristics of astronomical phenomena known as bolides — pieces of comets or planetary debris which impact the Earth’s atmosphere at high speeds and immediately burn up, leaving a trail of light that is often blue, green, or orange. Each year, many of these objects are seen and reported as UFOs, but later assigned an “explained” or “possibly explained” status by investigators and researchers.
If the Roswell case rested solely on these relatively unexciting reports, it would have faded into obscurity. However, on July 4, rancher Mac Brazel had been watching the skies during a severe lightning storm and heard a large boom that didn’t sound like thunder.
The next day, July 5, 1947, he was riding his horse through a pasture when he came upon a large mass of debris unlike anything he had seen before. Scattered throughout an area 400 metres long by hundreds of metres wide were numerous metallic strips that looked like dark tinfoil. Examining it in some detail, he said that as he crumpled it in his hand then released it, a strip would assume its original shape and could not be bent or wrinkled. As well, he found sticks of lightweight material like balsa wood, upon which were inscribed odd writings like hieroglyphics.
Brazel collected some of the pieces and took them home. He showed them to his family and to some neighbours, who all marvelled at the unusual quality of the material. Brazel notified the local Sheriff, George Wilcox, who in turn contacted the nearby Roswell Army Air Field, since the two thought the debris had come from a military operation of some kind.
Major Jesse Marcel, Intelligence Officer of the 509th Bomb Group, drove from the base to Wilcox’s office, where he interviewed Brazel and examined some of the debris he had brought into town. Upon hearing the details of Brazel’s find, Marcel believed the crash to be that of an aircraft and decided to travel to the site along with Captain Sheridan Cavitt, a counterintelligence officer from the Roswell base. Driving in separate vehicles, they arrived at the location too late to be able to do an extensive search, so Marcel and Cavitt decided to sleep overnight there in the desert.
In the morning, they explored the area in detail and found material scattered throughout a large crash site over a kilometre long and almost 300 metres wide. They also found pieces of debris that resembled tinfoil and several lengths of light rods like balsa wood. However, unlike balsa wood, the rods could not seem to be bent or broken.
Cavitt left in the middle of the afternoon, while Marcel stayed and loaded much of the remaining material into the trunk of his car. He finally headed towards home late in the evening, stopping there in the early hours of the morning before going to the base. He woke up his wife and his 11-year-old son Jesse to show them what he found in the desert. He told his family that he had found the remnants of a crashed flying saucer. Later, his son Jesse told investigators about the strange metallic “I-beams” that had lettering like hieroglyphics on them, and that his father had been very excited about what he had seen.
Marcel returned to the airfield and informed his superiors of the discovery. The 509th’s press officer, Walter Haut, was ordered by his commander, Colonel William Blanchard, to send out a press release to the effect that a flying saucer had been captured.
On July 8, the Roswell Daily Record ran the headline: “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch In Roswell Region,” announcing the recovery of something by the Roswell Army Air Field. Soon, media were calling the base and Sheriff Wilcox’s office for the real story of what had been found.
The debris was shipped to Brigadier General Roger Ramey of the 8th Air Force at Fort Worth, Texas. There, Ramey called the local media and told them the debris was not of a flying saucer but a weather balloon. The sticks and metallic pieces were actually part of a radar reflector.
On July 9, the newspaper ran a story under the headline “General Ramey Empties Roswell Saucer,” essentially retracting the earlier story. It also ran a story about Brazel, indicating he was mistaken and that he was sorry ever to have caused such a commotion. That seemed to end the affair, and the incident was brushed aside.
After the fact, researchers found evidence that military personnel had visited radio and newspaper offices in the Roswell area, requesting the original copies of the first, erroneous release about the flying saucer. Complicating the story and adding further intrigue, some military personnel later claimed that they witnessed or they themselves loaded very unusual wreckage onto flatbed trucks or transport aircraft destined for Los Alamos or Fort Worth or other classified locations.
It was many years later before anything more was learned about Roswell.
In February 1978, Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist and outspoken advocate for the reality of flying saucers from outer space, was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for a TV interview. While he was waiting to go on, he was told that a man living not far away was a former Air Force officer who had seen and touched some debris from a crashed flying saucer. Friedman was curious and looked him up: Jesse Marcel, who was then in Houma, Louisiana. Friedman interviewed him at length and learned that there was much more to the story than most people knew.
Friedman reopened the case and found additional witnesses and others who seemed to be able to corroborate the amazing story that an unknown craft of some kind had indeed crashed in the New Mexico desert. His investigations became the basis for a book authored by Charles Berlitz and William Moore, The Roswell Incident (1980).
In October 1978, Friedman was at Bemiji State University lecturing about UFOs and met a couple who told him that a friend of theirs named Barney Barnett, who had since passed away, had described seeing a crashed flying saucer in New Mexico sometime in the 1940s. Barnett was an engineer working for the government, and was deemed very reliable. His story seemed to match that of Marcel, with one added feature: he had seen several small bodies near the crash debris.
While in Minnesota, Friedman talked about this story with William Moore, a high school teacher with a strong interest in UFOs. He suggested to Moore that he research the Barnett story and see if it had any merit. A few months later, Moore discovered newspaper clippings that told the Roswell story. The investigation of the Roswell crash began in earnest.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
Weyauwega, Wisconsin February 2003
My son and I were visiting a friend of mine in Weyauwega. My boy was sledding in the snow and I was taking pictures.
It was in the evening and was starting to get dark pretty quickly. My son pointed up to the sky and we noticed some lights coming in from what I believe is the south west. At that point I just pointed the camera up and took the shots. The object really gave me the impression of a balloon — except for the lights. They seemed to cycle all different patterns.
The object passed almost directly overhead and then headed south towards the train tracks. As the object passed I could make out more of a disk shape than a balloon shape. I just remember my son asking me over and over what it was and I didn’t have a clue.
Reported by Anonymous
Source: UFOCasebook.com
Speculation about the incident flourished during the next decade. Friedman found additional witnesses, and in 1988 the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) sponsored a team to locate the crash site. In 1991, author Kevin Randle and CUFOS investigator Don Schmitt published their book UFO Crash at Roswell, claiming that the government had retrieved the debris, cleaned up the site and was covering up its possession of several alien bodies.
One of the new witnesses located was mortician Glenn Dennis. He said he was working in a funeral home in 1947, when he got a call from the base about whether small, child-size coffins were available. As well, he said that when he had been at the base hospital one day in July, he had been ordered to leave after speaking with a nurse who told him she had assisted on autopsies on weird, tiny, childlike bodies.
After the TV show Unsolved Mysteries aired an episode in 1989 about the Roswell incident, a Missouri man named Gerald Anderson called in to say he was rock hunting with his family in New Mexico in 1947, and had also seen the crashed flying saucer. What’s more, he later told investigators that he had seen three alien bodies underneath the hull of the saucer, with a fourth tending to his injured crewmates. But he said military personnel showed up and ordered the rockhounds to go away and never tell anyone what they had seen.
Anderson’s story seemed to be corroborated by another independent witness, Frank Kaufman, who said he was part of a military search party that had found a crashed saucer some distance away from Brazel’s debris site. He too said he had seen a large craft half-buried in sand, as well as a number of small humanoid bodies.
In 1992, another book by Friedman and co-author Don Berliner came out with a new theory — that two crashed saucers were actually recovered in 1947, along with their alien crews. Crash at Corona explained why Anderson’s story was inconsistent with the Brazel discovery: one saucer exploded in midair, leaving only debris, while the other crashed almost intact.
What really happened at Roswell? The case and its numerous investigations have taken on lives of their own, with researchers debating one another on TV shows and in books and magazines. Even those whose new evidence seems to support another writer or investigator seem to be at odds with others’ statements. It is a confusing quagmire of facts, anecdotes, and, very likely, fiction.
FLAPS AND WAVES
Ufologists recognize several periods in history during which there were significant increases in the numbers of UFO reports either throughout the world or in several countries at the same time. These are called UFO waves. These were in the years 1896–1897, 1947, 1952, 1957, 1966–1967, 1973–1975, 1988–1989, 1993, 1996– 1997, 2004 and 2009.
In addition, there are localized or regional increases of UFO reports during short periods of time, usually over a few weeks or months, called UFO flaps. A good example of this was the Stephenville, Texas, UFO flap of 2008, when hundreds of people reported seeing UFOs near this small town over a matter of weeks.
It’s no wonder, then, that skeptics and debunkers have had fun with the Roswell case. The late Philip Klass, who made a name for himself as a UFO arch-skeptic, took great delight in pointing out inconsistencies and problems with various theories. For example, in 1994, when the U.S. Air Force released a report on an internal investigation into the Roswell claims, the controversy reached a new plateau. They claimed that in 1947, a secret program called Project Mogul was conducted by scientist Charles Moore in the Roswell area.
Moore supervised the launching of balloons with equipment for monitoring Soviet nuclear tests. Each balloon had reflective materials that allowed radar tracking for easy retrieval. According to Air Force records, one of the Mogul balloon arrays was launched on June 4 and was lost by radar tracking near the Brazel debris site a few weeks later. What seemed to clinch the case was the fact that some of the balloon package material was balsa wood held together with glue and packing tape, some of which was emblazoned with abstract designs and lettering that could have been mistaken for hieroglyphics.
But in June 1997, the Air Force came up with a different explanation for the Roswell debris. An internal study discovered that shortly after 1947 a military project was underway, involving the dropping of mannequins from high-altitude balloons to help understand the injuries sustained by pilots and crew who fell from their aircraft. According to the Air Force, it was these three- and four-foot hairless mannequins that were seen by Roswell witnesses and interpreted as aliens.
Needless to say, this explanation hasn’t sat well with investigators and researchers. Some point out that the mannequins were not deployed until long after the Roswell debris discovery. This is countered by the detail that eyewitness accounts of alien bodies did not emerge until decades after the fact, allowing the possibility of confusion in witnesses’ memories about the year of their observations. The alien bodies story became even more confounding with the publication of a new theory in 2005 that the small bodies with large heads were actually human victims of progenia or other malformations who had been subjects in Air Force experiments.
The problem with coming up with a viable and coherent explanation for all the Roswell evidence and claims is that first the Air Force denied there was any event at all. Then it suggested that the crash was Mogul balloons and later added the mannequin explanation. This sounds suspiciously like arm-waving exercises — trying to make the data fit the theory, and not the other way around. Pro-UFO researchers are probably justified in looking askance at these explanations, which seemed to change as newer information was discovered by researchers.
In fact, since part of the Roswell legend is the switching of newspaper stories to comply with military demands, the accusation of a cover-up may be valid. Even if the truth behind the Roswell crash stories is something militarily terrestrial, there is enough evidence to suggest a cover-up of some kind is involved. But was an alien spaceship behind it all, or a top secret military accident?
Researchers note that the air base near Roswell was the only one with nuclear capability in 1947. Furthermore, the area was home to former Nazi rocket scientists spirited out of Europe following the end of the Second World War as part of Operation Paperclip, an attempt to obtain secrets of rocketry and nuclear science. Certainly some experiments would have resulted in at least a few “accidents” which would have been highly classified.
One argument in defense of an apparent cover-up is that with all the secret projects underway in the area in the late 1940s, and with compartmentalization of knowledge in a typical military approach, it is indeed possible that some high-ranking (and most low-ranking) military personnel would not have had knowledge of certain experiments taking place literally right under their noses.
The most vexing issue is that of time. We are well past the sixtieth anniversary of the Roswell case. Most firsthand witnesses are dead. All relevant official documents may have crumbled out of existence long ago, or been accidentally (or purposefully) destroyed.
In 2007, the publication of the contents of an affidavit signed by Walter Haut, the 509th’s press officer responsible for the initial report that a UFO had been found, created a considerable stir within ufology. It was supposedly written in 2002 and sealed until his death. Throughout his lifetime, Haut maintained that he had never seen any wreckage, and even stated this explicitly on the Larry King show on CNN in 2003.
However, in the affidavit, Haut stated that he not only had seen it but handled wreckage from the crash site. He wrote that it was “unlike any material I had or have ever seen in my life.” Further, he was later taken to a hangar where he was shown an object “12 to 15 feet in length, not quite as wide, about 6 feet high, and more of an egg shape.” And, most astonishingly, “from a distance, I was able to see a couple of bodies under a canvas tarpaulin.” Later in his post-mortem confession, he stated: “I am convinced that what I personally observed was some type of craft and its crew from outer space.”
Skeptics have charged that there is no evidence Haut actually drafted the affidavit himself, as he was already becoming frail and feeble at the time it was written. Indeed, on that same CNN program in 2003 he did appear confused and did not even stay through the entire planned interview. Yet, one ufologist insisted that when Haut was interviewed in 2001, he was clear of thought and knew precisely what he was talking about.
UFOS AND ALIENS ON TV
A TV series based entirely on the UFO mythology surrounding this incident is Roswell, which ran from 1999– 2001. The premise was that some aliens did survive the crash of a craft at Roswell in 1947 and hatched in 1989 as young aliens with the physical appearance of humans. They are unaware of their heritage and powers but learn them over time as they are hunted by the FBI and other factions who want to capture them. Essentially a teenage romance series, the TV show was based on a series of popular young adult literature novels.
As for the change of heart about seeing the wreckage, while Haut was alive, there was no way that he would have admitted seeing it as he would still have been liable for prosecution. In order to protect himself, he could be on record to admit his falsehood only after his death.
Despite the excitement within ufological circles about this testimony, even a signed affidavit by a key witness to the Roswell incident does not offer proof that the crash really occurred. Furthermore, the Roswell crash is only one of several alleged cases where an alien spacecraft has been said to have impacted Earth. Other crashed-saucer cases have been cited and discussed elsewhere in the world, including Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, in 1965; Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1953; and Moriches Bay, New York, in 1989.
If any alien debris was recovered by military personnel near Roswell, it has long since been hidden or disposed of. The public debates among believers and non-believers (or other believers with opposing theories) have contributed to a cover-up of the true nature of the original event. In short, we may never get to the bottom of what occurred in the New Mexico desert in 1947.
The Roswell case goes far beyond the debate as to whether or not an alien spacecraft crashed into the desert. Roswell has taken on a life of its own, with an annual celebration and series of UFO conventions in the area. There are tours of the crash site, souvenir stands, museums, and yearly re-enactments of the incident. The town has had parades, costume contests, and even a commissioned musical theatre show to commemorate the event.
It’s almost as if the Roswell story did not have to be true anymore.
