Читать книгу The Big Book of UFOs - Chris A. Rutkowski - Страница 17
Оглавление3 THE BEGINNING OF THE FLYING SAUCER ERA
Following the sighting of metallic disc-like objects by Kenneth Arnold, many more people reported seeing unusual objects in the sky.
On July 10, 1947, at about 5:30 p.m., two Pan American Airways mechanics and a third witness were driving up a mountain road about 10 kilometres south of Harmon Field, an American Air Force Base near Stephenville, Newfoundland.
J.E. Woodruff, J.N. Mehrman, and A.R. Leidy reported seeing a silver, disc-shaped object flying high overhead at an estimated altitude of about 3,000 metres. The object was flying in a horizontal arc over the base and towards the north-northeast. Its size was comparable to a C-54 transport aircraft. As it flew past, it left behind a bluish-black trail about 24 kilometres long. One of the witnesses (not specified in the report but thought to be Woodruff) had a camera with him and managed to take two Kodachrome pictures of the trail.
Copies of these photos are part of the official Project Blue Book files. Although very poor reproductions, they nevertheless show the odd smoke trail in the sky. Weather records confirmed there were scattered clouds between 2,400 to 3,000 metres that supported the original altitude estimate.
This case was investigated by Army Air Force Intelligence and was of particular concern to military officials because of a perceived threat that the Soviets may have been behind the appearances of flying saucers. If this was the case, then it was obvious that in order to spy on the U.S., flights from the U.S.S.R. would have to pass over Canada. The initial report was filed by Harmon base intelligence officers on July 16, with a more detailed report received at the Pentagon on July 21.
Air Force Brigadier General George F. Schulgen, then chief, Air Intelligence Requirements Division, Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, A-2 (Intelligence) ordered intelligence officers at Wright Field in Dayton to go to Harmon Field to assess the situation and report directly to the Pentagon. The Wright T-2 chief, Colonel Howard M. McCoy, dispatched a team by July 30.
The T-2 investigation report on the Harmon Field case noted: “The bluish-black trail seems to indicate ordinary combustion from a turbo-jet engine, athodyd motor, or some combination of these types of power plants. The absence of noise and apparent dissolving of the clouds to form a clear path indicates a relatively large mass flow of a rectangular cross-section containing a considerable amount of heat.”
The report did not consider that a meteor or fireball had made the trail, even though this explanation was the official conclusion on the case file. However, Blue Book documents showed that the Pentagon was still focused on a Soviet connection. As noted in a report on the case, “Wright Field investigators spoke with the commander of Harmon Field and others to make sure that no British or Canadian aircraft had been in the area at the time. And since they knew no American aircraft were to blame, they privately concluded something of ‘foreign origin’ made that curious split in the clouds over Newfoundland.”
What we are left with is a well-witnessed and intensely investigated UFO case, reported long before the term UFO was coined by the American military. In the early years of the Cold War, the Soviets were suspected, since the object seen was not “friendly.” The photographs show a very strange rocket-like exhaust trail or contrail, proving that something definitely was seen by a number of qualified observers that day. It was one the first photographs of an unidentified flying object reported in North America.
In 1947, an unusual object was seen over a U.S. air force base in Newfoundland. Photographs were taken of the smoke trail it left behind.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
San Francisco, California November 3, 2004
An airline transport pilot with 14 years’ experience in commercial aviation can’t quite explain what he saw at 11 p.m., November 3, 2004. His aircraft was approaching the city from the east, passing just north of Stockton, when he received instructions from the tower to descend from 35,000 to 24,000 feet [10,500 to 7,200 meters].
“While approaching San Francisco from the east, an orange dot began to glow and seemed to flash higher up to the west of us. I thought that it was a planet. It then changed color from orange to white. Again, I thought a planet could be illuminated through a [local] atmosphere that would explain the color change.
“It then began to move in a northeasterly direction. Once again, being in an airplane, it is very easy to think an object is moving, from small corrections the autopilot makes. I found a handful of stars to serve as a reference point and verified that the object was slowly moving north.
“It moved about 30 degrees and then stopped. Then, it made a slight tangent to the right and continued moving for about 20 more degrees. It stopped and turned again to the right and continued for 10 degrees, then stopped again and disappeared.
“The whole sighting ran about two minutes or so from start to finish. It was difficult to judge the actual distance and speed. When I talk about ‘moving in degrees and turning,’ I am talking about my [cockpit] viewpoint and compass degrees. The UFOs size was very small, about the size of the stars and planets you see in the sky.
“We had initially been at 35,000 feet [10,500 meters] but had descended to 24,000 feet [7,200 meters] when we saw the object. We were above the clouds with a clear view, and there was a crescent moon behind us. The weather in San Francisco was partly cloudy skies and light rain.
“There were two of us in the cockpit, and we both witnessed the same thing. We were both in awe. I have been flying for 14 years have never witnessed something like this before.”
Reported by Anonymous
Source: UFOCasebook.com
The first death due to a UFO took place on January 7, 1948. Captain Thomas Mantell, a veteran pilot who had flown in the battle of Normandy in 1944, was scrambled with three other pilots in response to reports of an unidentified object over Marysville, Kentucky. The sightings started at about 1:20 p.m., with many area residents reporting something in the sky, and at 1:45 p.m. an object looking like a white umbrella was seen by an airport tower operator and the commanding officer at Fort Knox.
Mantell, flying an F-51, climbed dangerously high in order to get closer to the object, reaching an altitude of more than 6,000 metres, without his oxygen mask. On his radio, he described the object as “metallic” and “of tremendous size.” He continued to fly upward, but the other pilots decided to break off the pursuit. Radio contact was lost with Mantell as he reached 6,900 metres. The wreckage of his plane was found near Franklin, Kentucky.
News reports announced that an air force pilot died while chasing a flying saucer. However, after a lengthy investigation, the object was identified as a Navy Skyhook balloon, a secret high-altitude experiment — information not shared with the air force. Mantell had died because of military compartmentalization: only those involved in the Skyhook program knew of its existence, and the air force did not know it was a military operation. He was not shot down by a flying saucer; he had climbed too high and his engine likely stalled, leading to the unfortunate crash.
• During the afternoon of April 5, 1948, several researchers at a geophysics laboratory on Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico all saw two unusual dish-shaped objects, white or grey in colour, about 30 metres in diameter, and high up in the sky. One object moved upward, then moved sharply to one side, dropped and made a loop in the air and vanished. The other flew rapidly to the west, made a similar loop and vanished as well.
• On May 7, 1948, at 3:00 p.m., three people in Memphis, Tennessee, saw as many as 50 shiny objects flying at high speed across the sky. Although most were travelling all in a straight line, a few seemed to occasionally deviate from the line and weave in and out. They did not make any noise, even though a few seemed to have whitish tails that were thought to be exhaust. A check with a meteorological office showed that only one balloon had been launched that day, and there had not been any military aircraft flying in the vicinity that afternoon. The suggestion that the witnesses had seen a train of daytime meteors was rejected. The incident was listed by Project Blue Book as “unknown.”
• On June 30, 1948, the ship Llandovery Castle had left Kenya bound for Cape Town. At 11:00 p.m. on July 1, it was going through the Straits of Madagascar when the lookout and some passengers saw a light high in the sky heading in their direction. As they watched, it descended until it was only about 15 metres above the water and began travelling alongside the ship. As it flew, it shone a beam of light like a searchlight down onto the water, then the beam and its lights were extinguished. The crew and passengers of the ship were then able to see that the object was a cigar-shaped metallic craft, with its rear section cut off. It did not have any windows or portholes and seemed to be 300 metres in length. It kept pace with the ship for approximately a minute, then it ascended to about 300 metres in altitude, flames came out of its tail section and it shot ahead becoming lost to sight quickly.
• On August 20, 1949, astronomer Clyde Tombaugh was casually observing the sky one night near Las Cruces, New Mexico, with his wife and mother-in-law beside him. In February 1930, he had been comparing sets of photographic plates taken of the night sky when he noted one star seemed to have moved from one night to the next; he had discovered the planet Pluto. But on this night, nearly 20 years later, he and his family saw something completely different that left him perplexed. They saw a half-dozen rectangles of greenish light, moving together in a line from the northwest to the southeast. It was as if they were windows on a long, cylindrical object, moving about 35 degrees in altitude, making no sound as they sped rapidly across the sky and vanished within three or four seconds.
On June 30, 1948, a cigar-shaped object flew by a cargo ship, shining a light on the water as it passed by.
In 1941, the United States built an Air Force Base at Goose Bay in the heart of Labrador, a strategic location, leading to the ocean. It facilitated anti-submarine exercises and staging of aircraft on overseas flights. A set of Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line sites was constructed in Labrador during the Cold War and monitored at a NORAD site at Goose Bay beginning in 1953. The 641 Aircraft Warning and Control Squadron was based there and began flying missions for “surveillance, identification, and interceptor control.”
Given this mandate, when the flying saucer phenomenon began spreading in the 1940s and unidentified aircraft were being reported, Goose Bay seemed to be a major hotspot. It was not surprising that an American airbase on Canadian soil might be the site of many saucer sightings, just like so many other bases worldwide.
What is perhaps a bit surprising, however, is that there were so many saucer sightings at Goose Bay. In the 1940s and 1950s, there were 20 known reports, a considerable number for such a remote base. Most people were unaware of what was being seen and reported by pilots and other military personnel, although rumours of events persisted over the years.
The first known sighting near Goose Bay took place in the summer of 1948 and was described by a military witness who came forward much after the fact, relating his story to UFO investigators. He provided few details but painted a picture that can be easily visualized, showing the reaction of the intelligence community and the command chain.
UFOS AND ALIENS IN LITERATURE
In 1938 C.S. Lewis published Out of the Silent Planet, the first of a trilogy of books in which people from Earth travel to Mars (here called Malacandra) where they encounter a race of intelligent seal-like creatures called hrossa and others. However, the caretaker of the planet is Oyarsa, an angelic being who belongs to a race that oversees intelligent life. Unfortunately, the being in charge of the Earth has become evil, and as a result we have fallen from grace.
Major Edwin A. Jerome, USAF (Ret.), stated that in the summer of 1948, a high-ranking inspection team was visiting the base’s radar facilities as part of a tour looking at refuelling and servicing capabilities for all military and civilian aircraft on North Atlantic air routes. During the generals’ inspection of the USAF radar shack, the operator painted a high-speed target on his scope going from the northeast to the southwest with a calculated speed of about 15,000 kilometres per hour. This caused considerable concern since the base personnel wanted to look good in front of the inspection team, and such a calculation must have been an error.
Jerome noted: “The poor airman technician was brought to task for his apparent miscalculation.” However, when the target appeared a second time, the brass saw the target on the screen themselves. They dismissed it as poorly calibrated American equipment. They then went to the Canadian side of the base to inspect the RCAF facility and learned that the equipment there had also just tracked the same or similar object. The inspecting officers branded the incident a coincidence. The anomalous target on both scopes had been moving at speeds faster than anything known to be possible.
Jerome was an intelligence officer at the base and was ordered to make a report on the incident. It had been suggested that the object was a meteor, but when he interviewed radar operators on both sides of the base, he found the object was tracked as it maintained an altitude of 18,000 metres throughout its flight and he believed this ruled out a meteor as a possibility. While conducting his investigation, he was shocked to learn that the very next day, both radars again reported an anomalous object, this time moving slowly over the base at about 16 kilometres per hour at 14,000 metres. This time, the anomaly was explained as “high-flying seagulls.”
Remember, this case occurred long before rockets and jet aircraft were capable of such speeds or high-altitude helicopters were possible. The consternation of the inspectors and the embarrassment of the radar technicians must have been considerable, and was something that was talked about in the mess hall for many weeks.
If a radar case is explained as being due to faulty equipment, technicians point out that the same equipment is used to track known military operations without malfunctions. You can’t really have it both ways; either the equipment was working or it wasn’t.
Through the rest of the decade, there were four more known sightings at Goose Bay. Three of these were October 29, 31, and November 1, 1948, with little information available on the first two other than that they were noted in Project Blue Book. But Donald Keyhoe, a noted journalist and author of several UFO books, described the cases this way, citing the third case as well:
One of the first cases, involving three separate incidents, took place in Labrador, at Goose Bay Air Force Base. About 3 a.m. on October 29, 1948, an unidentified object in slow level flight was tracked by tower radar men. Two days later, the same thing happened again. But the following night, on November 1, radar men got a jolt. Some strange object making 600 mph was tracked for four minutes before it raced off on a southwest course. At the time, weather conditions were considered as a possible answer. But … this obviously must be ruled out.
A fourth Labrador sighting took place on September 9, 1949, when a military aircraft pilot saw an egg-shaped object disappear into a cloud at a high speed.
