THE SKY IS FALLING: a Walk on the Wild Side with DARPA and the Air Force, Part Two.

OK folks, here we go again. Yesterday we had a bit of a mystery involving a somewhat mysterious falling object collected by the Hartford CT police department and local astronomer Robert Brown of Southern Connecticut College and the Moonwatch program. The material seemed unusual to Dr. Brown. Then we unexpectedly ran into a MAJOR mystery when T.Townsend Brown strolled into Fred Whipple's office at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Moonwatch Headquarters, presented some kind of credentials, and confiscated everything. What the heck was THAT all about?? I'm not sure that I can answer the question, but here's a hard-won try. Let's begin with the question, what was Townsend Brown doing at the time??

Brown was doing what he basically always was doing: chasing his early intuition that gravity and electromagnetics were interrelated, and that use of one [the electric force] could allow you to control and shield or cancel the other [gravity]. Brown was going for anti-gravity.

This dream had begun well before WW2 when he was a child whizkid at college. Just prior and during the War, he had several stints with the Navy in research capacities and one at least with aerotech envelope pusher Glenn Martin Company. He never stuck with any of the positions long [except the wartime Navy one wherein he rose to Lt. Commander], and always reverted back to setting up his own "Foundation" where he could pursue his obsession.

In one of those iterations, he found enough support to develop a model "electrolevitation" demonstration [see a picture of the device above] which he felt was proof of principle of his electrogravitic concept. Interestingly, Brown always used low-aspect metallic disks for his models, imitative of UFOs. Running alongside his interest in anti-gravity was his fascination with the UFO phenomenon. Very probably, the two mysteries were related. Even if they weren't, Brown felt that his discovery was the way that WE could get one off the ground.

While in Hawaii, Brown allegedly showed a device to Admiral Radford or one of his staff. While in southern California, he demonstrated it for General Victor Bertrandias [pictured below]. Both high-ranked officers were impressed. In 1953, he sent in a proposal to the USAF entitled "Project Winterhaven". This was an extremely elaborate project meant to not only test his electrogravitic principles but to build working propulsion units, communication devices, and detectors of distant events like atomic detonations. Its flow chart of related working institutions included The Franklin Institute, the University of Chicago, the Stanford Research Institute, several corporations such as Lear, Brush, Jansky&Bailey, Hancock Manufacturing. The department of Defense would foot the bill, and, oh yes, they would be able to consult with the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies. Einstein was there at the time so that would be handy on something involving "Unified Field Theory", which this was.

How did Brown have the Brass to float this thing?? In a roundabout way, he had Old Albert to thank.

Ever since the Theory of Relativity had taken over physics in the early half of the 20th century, physicists had been giving themselves headaches about whether the forces of electromagnetism and gravity were relatable mathematically. No one spent more time on the problem than Einstein himself, and as he would say, unproductively. Still, Einstein's struggles with this were making some heavy thinkers believe that the concept was not ridiculous. There even began to be a little public fascination with this during and after the war. Electromagnetism was successfully described by quantum electrodynamics and the siege guns of the theoretical physics community began to eye a possible synthesis with gravity again. Some of this thinking seeped into military and technological industry enough that a serious wondering about all this was surfacing.

That brings me to one of my favorite all-time guys, Ed Ruppelt. Edward was just a young Iowa farm boy and ace fighter pilot, who went to Iowa State University and got an engineering degree. Post-War jobs were slim but not in the Air Force, so our hero went and signed up for engineering intelligence work at Wright-Patterson, where he was analyzing Soviet MIG reports. This is of course where he began BSing with Jerry Cummings about the UFO reports that were Jerry's job. The relevance to our story is the Fort Monmouth NJ case which broke the backs of the Project Grudge negativists who still inhabited the AMC intel desks in Dayton. I've told that story elsewhere. For our purposes, there is one significant detail. When Cummings went to the Pentagon to personally inform General Cabell about the case, he entered a room full of not only the General and staff, but also at least one representative of Republic Airlines Corporation. Why?? He, a "Mr. Brewster", was interested in the "Unified Field" concept as it might apply to propulsion research, and, we must assume, that he, and others, thought that this could have some relation to how UFOs flew.

Really?? You can't mean that the airline companies were taking it THAT seriously?

Well, yes they were.

When Ed Ruppelt left the service after 1953, he went out to southern California to look for work in that mighty military-industrial complex. He found a job almost immediately with Northrup Aviation writing what we would call "tactical" appraisals of how certain aircraft can be used in modern warfare. Presumably these would give Northrup ideas about "products" aimed at real Air Force problems. Although Ruppelt's work was apparently just fine, he wanted something more exciting.

In his files Ed had a torn out Aviation Week article that you can see at the left. "Martin Team Pushes Anti-Gravity Study", October 18th, 1951. This is almost the date of the Fort Monmouth case and Jerry Cumming's conference with Cabell and Brewster at the Pentagon. [Glenn Martin ... hmmmm .... that was where Townsend Brown worked... uh .. no... I don't want to go there.]

The second page of the Av-Week article shows the guy behind the Martin project : George Trimble. I am very reluctant to assign this fellow to the funny farm. Note that he is a member of a NACA sub-committee, and those appointments are not handed out to fools. Something was going on there which a lot of people thought had promise.

Martin was far from alone in the aerotech industry. Several companies had decided to make some efforts in this direction. The newsclipping below [I know, it's terrible] shows another company's wizards talking about their new anti-gravity project [Convair-General Dynamics] .

The buzz was on in the aerotech side of things. Go back up to the first page of the Av-Week article and note the markings on the page. [Well, darn it, I clicked on it and I think that the red was too light to show]... well, Ruppelt marked on the page himself. What he marked was essentially the paragraphs after the bulletpoint "Man's Leg Iron". In other words Ruppelt was interested in the anti-gravity research. And he was interested in it for a long time --- he saved this article from the time of his entry into Wright-Pat until 1955. Why 1955?? That's when he sent Glenn Martin an application to join the Martin team.

OK. So the aerodesign companies were going nuts for the Unified Field, anyone else?? Yep. Just about everybody.

At Wright-Patterson AFB, the Air Force set up a project within the engineering side of the base to monitor developments in the field, possibly facilitate some things, and, "who knows what other black project might have been spawned". I was really trying to hold this particular blog study under PhD thesis length, so someone else will have to illuminate the "skunk works" side of things. The scientist in charge of the Wright-Patterson desk was Joshua Goldberg {seen above in his "mature prof's picture"; he was just a fresh PhD at the time}.

Goldberg's office was to [at least in part] fund university theoretical work on Unified Field theory, and hope that the suspected breakthrough would arise to allow actual development of functional devices.

Meanwhile, the powers of the intelligence community and Big Science decided that the US needed a really big black science frontier agency. Thus in 1958 was founded DARPA [Advanced Research Projects Agency --- the "D" was added later for "Defense"]. This movement has been directly linked to the shock everyone was given by Sputnik. DARPA immediately gobbled up funds and research areas formerly heading for individual services and practically caused a war right in the Pentagon. When the dust settled, many of the fundings were shifted back, and another agency also created [NASA], and DARPA went on with the remaining projects. The centerpiece of the DARPA agenda was Project Defender. This had everything to do with ballistic missiles, satellite weapons, both theirs and the development of our own. This project bloomed in the summer of 1960 ... hmmm... just before the material fall we're talking around. Embedded in its ideas for both protection against and development of these space weapons were several "unusual" interests: force fields, antimatter, and ... uh oh ... antigravity. {you are not cleared for this information. Hit delete immediately. If you have printed the page, eat it}.

Meanwhile, back on a slightly less spooky front, a second generation business manufacturing firm owner, Agnew Bahnson, was pursuing his own obsession. Well, you don't have to guess what it was. He had used some of his leftover wealth to build his own laboratory facility to experiment upon gravity, electromagnetics, and whatever else he wanted to seriously play around with.

Somehow this behavior got him in the know with other wealthy characters like Isaac Babson, and heavyweight scientists like Bryce Dewitt and John Wheeler. A letter between him and Dewitt is on the left. The bottom line of these relationships was a coming together of a motherload of the world's best theoretical physicists, plus Goldberg's Air Force money and Babson's money [and I'd bet the forerunner personnel of what was about to become DARPA but I'm not supposed to know that] to create the famous Chapel Hill Conference of 1957 on "The Role of Gravitation in Physics", which is a deliberately chosen soft [non-controversial] title to mask that a lot of what they were going to talk about was Unified Field Theory and, horrors, anti-gravity possibilities.

The conference happened as you can see from the book title below. To my knowledge, all the talks are public. For our purposes, it shows that such discussion was rollicking about everywhere.

And right in the middle of it was our boy T. Townsend Brown. While all those heavy greymatter guys were arguing about whether anti-gravity was possible, here he was claiming that he'd already done it.

The diagram above is part of his patent on his device, Note the year that it was presented to the Patent Office: 1957. Right on time for the Chapel Hill Conference and the beginnings of DARPA.

And what did Brown want to do?? Well fly a UFO with it of course. Brown was always interested in propulsion first and other applications later. And as we've seen, he had already placed an elaborate proposal with the Air Force for doing just that in 1953. I'll make a "wild bet" that this proposal was still on file.

But where? Wright-Patterson with Joshua Goldberg? Or at DARPA?

Whatever the situation there, right after the big Chapel Hill conference, Brown and Bahnson make a deal. Brown will come to Bahnson's lab, and with Bahnson's money and facility he will demonstrate his anti-gravity principle. Agnew Bahnson is in Hog Heaven at the idea, and when the results come in, he feels that Brown did not disappoint. These are the famous Brown-Bahnson electrogravitic demonstrations of 1958-1960 .... hmmm ... THAT date again. The picture below is of Brown, Bahnson, and Brown's co-worker happily enjoying the rush of being on the frontier.

Brown "knew" he could do this. Bahnson knew that he could do this. Bahnson had a backdoor connection with the big wheels in the field and possibly even Goldberg's office. Brown had a proposal in to the Air Force. Who else knew? Who took him seriously? And what did it have to do with the Hartford fall?

In 1960, the patent was granted.

Then along came Robert P. Luker. [Betcha can't guess who HE is]. Part three/Final hopefully tomorrow.

THE SKY IS FALLING: a Walk on the Wild Side with DARPA and the Air Force.

This is an organizational nightmare, so I'm going to break it up into three smaller posts in the hope for a chance of clarity.

Being back home in Michigan, and as the writing and most of the organizing of the big UFO book is over, I decided to face the fact that my files associated with government actions, stupidities, and meddlings were in a colossal mess and begin to do something about that. I came across a file folder which we did not use in the book. I'd collected it at the Smithsonian Institution in 1988 [?]. I'd forgotten completely about it and had no clue. My label said: 1960 CIA investigates object fall. Well, how about that?! Just goes to show you what having too many resources can do for you. I'd never read it closely.

Inside was a memorandum for the record about a phone call from the CIA to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution about something which fell from the sky on September 4th, 1960 in Hartford CT and burned [in a small way, it turned out] a shed. A famous satellite watcher astronomer was involved with the case, and chemical analysis was said to show that the thing was neither satellite nor meteorite. As the Smithsonian Institution was the parent of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory which was now involved publicly, and since the Director of the SAO, Carl W. Tillinghast, was tasked with creating a public statement about the incident, the CIA was requesting a copy of the [blow-off] statement. Hmmmm. What the heck was THIS all about??

On the evening of September 4th, separate individuals saw a greenish-colored [mainly] bright object passing overhead. They were attracted to it by the fact that it made a noise. These visual in-flight observers did not see it land. Another person, however, also alerted by noise, went outside and discovered a smallish object which was reducing itself to pieces and ash and setting afire the local shed.

The witness immediately [with neighbors' help] put out the fire and picked up a moderate pile of various fragments which were still warm. They also called the police. The police arrived not only with their detective, but with a reporter in tow, AND a well-known local college professor, Dr. Robert L. Brown. He, it turned out had much to say.

The press story with out and national almost immediately. This was the time for Soviet and US satellites and everybody was seeing them and was interested. It was also the time of Moonwatch at the SAO, and the time when people were seeing UNexplainable "satellites" either following ECHO about or running in "wrong" orbits in the skies. [I think I posted on this a long time ago, but it may have been an IUR article].

Inspections were made [the picture on the left is the Project Blue Book document showing the shed with burned areas on the bottom]. Note that this case ultimately went to the UFO project. Also, the other witnesses were located by the police.

Professor Brown was avidly interested. He had been the first US citizen to actually spot Sputnik I and was well known to the SAO. In fact he directed one of Moonwatch's observation stations. His group had seen anomalistic "somethings" approximately one week earlier. His press comments flatly eliminated meteors as a culprit, but suggested some Soviet satellite fragments might be involved. Brown was also imagining some other more mysterious artificial object which he did not go into.

What he surely DID do however was to bring the "fall" to the attention of Project Moonwatch and its director Harvard astronomer Fred Whipple and assistant director J. Allen Hynek. Yep. THAT guy again. Those two knuckleheads are shown below at the SAO Moonwatch offices around the time of this story. [the actual photo is one of those posed pictures that they did when they cracked the orbit of Sputnik I. --- two happy, obviously professorial buddies].

It is then that this story takes an abrupt left turn. T. Townsend Brown shows up. My jaw just about hit the floor when I got to this part.

Well, us folks in UFO history research know a great deal about T Townsend Brown and it's rarely good. This guy had almost as many angles and mysteries about him as George Hunt Williamson, and I still don't quite understand him. Please go to the internet and read a little about this guy; I can't write the necessary book here. I'm going to list a bare minimum: rich man's son; child science prodigy; had some ideas which impressed a lot of people; came up with idea that electricity and gravity were related and could be shielded or cancelled; early "president" of NICAP.... by this time fired but still active with his esoteric science ideas.

So, somehow Brown read the press story and IMMEDIATELY got permission to TAKE CONTROL of the samples!!! He walked right into Whipple's office the NEXT DAY, and presented his credentials. Whipple, a severe skeptic about almost anything, agreed that these samples were not worth anything to Moonwatch [doubtless Hynek disagreed, and equally doubtless contacted Major Friend at Blue Book].

Brown gathered up the samples and copies of the police report, promising that he would keep Dr. McCrosky of the SAO informed [he is the scientist pictured below] and was on the phone with Colonel Victor A. Cherbak of the Bedford, MA Cambridge Research Center at the time --- i.e. right there in Whipple's office. [Cherbak is above left]. Who the heck was Cherbak??

Cherbak was the first director of Project Space Track [at the time called Project Harvest Moon]. This was the Air Force's secret analog to Moonwatch, set up to track all Earth-orbiting satellites. T. Townsend Brown: immediately getting access and possession of "anomalous debris" of some kind and talking to the USAF's secret satellite project director by phone in Whipple's office --- almost makes my head hurt. Was no one interested?? But THAT can't be, because Brown had to get that permission somewhere high up. And, at least Blue Book was interested.

We know that Blue Book was interested because when they learned about the case they immediately asked in. They acted on the 8th as you can read below. Little did Major Friend know that Townsend Brown had beaten him to the punch by two days.

Even invoking Air Force Regulation 200-2 which covered the collection of photos and physical evidence, among other things, couldn't help him if the "stuff" was already gone. Plus, the military is usually as slow as molasses on these things anyway.

Nine days later Dr. John T. Wasson [an extremely good atmospheric physicist] was sent to Hartford and SAO-Moonwatch from the USAF Atmospheric Circulation Laboratory, Nuclear Studies Branch. He was a bit surprised to find that the SAO had given everything they had to Brown. In Hartford itself he had more luck as the witnesses had kept some of the stuff themselves, although brown had taken at least half of that too. But at least Wasson could take his oral reports, his pictures of the site, and some meagre samples and make a Blue Book report. And what did his report say?? More importantly what was Townsend Brown doing? That's for the next two segments.

As a little treat: the picture below is of Professor McCrosky at the left on one of his satellite tracking field experiences [Hawaii, I think], and the young bespectacled man in the middle is UFO researcher/legend Walt Webb.

UFO-DNA is back on-line

To all who pursue the UFO field seriously: this is really good news. The terrific case resource UFO-DNA has returned to active duty after a hiatus. If you have access to a good research collection of books and journals, this accumulation of references to case commentary locations has been very helpful to me. When coming across a case new to me, I habitually go there if I have only a slim single piece of information. Many times the site lists several books, journals, collections where comment on the case resides. Piling my desk with five or six references, all of a sudden I begin to feel like I am getting clearer on the incident. Extremely valuable and kudos for all the hard work by the creator.

http://thecid.com/ufo/

A Small Moment In UFO History

I've been too rushed to post for about a week, so I thought it a good idea to put some little something up before I trek back to Michigan, as who knows if there will be time there or not.

The fractional government document above is a section of a Pentagon UFO report from the earliest days. I photocopied it from Dr. Hynek's personal papers, as he had an original. I then selected out the majority of it to use in a paper. Notice that it is "clean": no markings on it nor scribbled out witness names. Most of the on-line documents from the Blue Book microfilms are not like this, but clean microfilm copies do exist elsewhere. But the reason that I'm making a post is the image below.

This is the image you get from the typical on-line source. [It's the full page without me "selecting" just the gist of the report]. And it's messy. It happens, however, that it's the kind of messy that historians like.

This case was one of the early military reports from the 1947 "beginning" wave. Wright-Patterson was not yet receiving the reports. This case from Maxwell field, involving four witnesses, was sent through channels to TAC at Langley Field, and from there onto the Pentagon. It took one week to get from Maxwell HQ to Langley [officers at Maxwell were probably not yet sure of what they were supposed to do with something like this], and then four more days to get into the Pentagon. I.E. "Received AFBIR-CO 11-July 47". That means that the report went to Air Force Intelligence [AFBIR at the time] and was received at the desk of the Chief of the Collection Division [CO]. That chief was Colonel Robert Taylor III. He passed it on to his top assistant Lt. Colonel George Garrett. How do we know that, other than "logic"?

Look at that "wonderful" grease marker circled 5 at the bottom of the page. You might think it stupid, but that circled 5 makes me smile. That indicates that this paper was the exact copy that George Garrett spread out on his desk that fateful day in late July/early August [along with several others] to begin making the first ever estimate-of-the-situation. This case, Maxwell field, was his "fifth" case in that estimate. The Kenneth Arnold, EJ Smith cases etc were others.

That moment in UFO history created a snowballing effect leading to Brigadier General George Shulgen's asking all services and commands whether we had developed anything like this, and then separately asking AMC at Wright-Pat the same thing. Wright-Patterson's reply became the now-famous "Twining Memo". This exact sheet of paper led to the USAF admission that the flying disks were real.

Stare a bit at it folks. Sacred document. History right there before your eyes.

DATA-NET: A Clutch of Classics.

As I've penetrated a little further into the SITU DATA-NET collection, I've gotten into the early 1970s UFO desert, which is well known. This was a true diminishment of cases, as the post-Colorado era was, paradoxically, one of the most intense times for high quality people being active in the UFO research field. The point there is: if the good cases had been there, someone would have jumped on them. This desert lasted from latter 1969 to most of 1972. DATA-NET so far in this era reflects that, in that there are few impressive cases to report. The New Zealand mystery traces have been an exception. DATA-NET's editor was I believe sensing this too. The pages of the newsletter began including old cases. Whether these were being generated by the editor or by the correspondents, I can't say, but there they are. It is some of those old cases that I'm going to thumbnail here [rather than "current" [1970] events].

Since I have no illustrations for these old-timers, I'm going to post some non-connected old time alleged UFO photos, just to give you something to look at. The thing to the left is a photo taken in 1947 on the California coast. Don't ask me if it's a good one, I don't have a clue.

Olden case#1: July 3rd, 1947; St. Maries, ID. Ten witnesses watch as eight "tub-shaped" UFOs come slowly down and "land" on the ground. They are luminous and the size of small houses. As they approached the ground they stirred up leaves and flattened them beneath them. Later, the witnesses approached the vacated spot, but could find no trace that the UFOs had landed. Pretty wild stuff especially for so early.

Olden case #2: July 3rd, 1949; Longview, WA. While officiating at an air show, former Navy guided missile chief, Moulton Taylor, spotted three flying disks above the field at an estimated 30000 feet. He alerted the crowd to them and everyone watched, many through binoculars. Taylor maintained throughout his life that he and his aerotech buddies would speculate on whether these were extraterrestrial craft whenever they got together later.

Olden case #3: April 24th, 1950; Arrey, NM. This is the famous Charles Moore balloon scientists' observation. There were five witnesses in the research team. They saw a white elliptical object traveling very fast, visually and through theodolite. Sighting lasted 55 seconds. They estimated the thing at 300,000 feet and, therefore, 100' diameter. [these estimates would mean little if the observers weren't the best in the world, so we need to pay at least a little attention to them]. Moore reported the sighting to the USAF and never received a reply. As Moore's group worked as a Navy team, this probably began the interservice antagonism where the USN was very unhappy with USAF cooperation on UFO analyses. This ultimately led to a separate USN UFO desk for a while in 1951-1952. Many balloon researcher reports went to the Navy for a while.

The odd thing at the left is an alleged UFO from New York from 1950. Pretty weird looking but fun.

Olden case #4: July 6th, 1950; Louisville, KY. An employee of the Louisville Times, out trying to film birds, sees a UFO and shoots off 50' of movie film. Allegedly the film shows a "bright disk" which hovered, and then disappeared by either shrinking or moving directly away. I have no idea what this film looks like, nor did DATA-NETs editor who was pleading with the readership for facts. As far as the case goes: if the description is real, if the object moved directly away from the witness, that seems like awareness and deliberate display. If it "simply" shrunk out of sight, that's even stranger.

Olden case #5: September 26th, 1950; Philadelphia, PA. One of the crazier things in UFO files. People saw a large [six-foot diameter] "blob" float down and rest so lightly that it didn't even bend tall weed stalks upon which it rested. My memory of this case is that the thing was purplish. The police were right there to watch the whole thing. One policeman tried to grab a bit off it, and the stuff dissolved in his hand. It had "substance" but was incredibly light. By the time the FBI got there, it was all gone. ... who the heck knows what it was....

The picture on the left is from California in 1951. It's one of those things which reminds you of Adamski but is not one of his. Maybe it inspired his "creativity"?

Olden case #6: May 22nd, 1951; Over Chicago, IL area. An American Airlines pilot and two of his crew saw a very fast blue-white "star-like" object pacing their plane, as if "playing tag". It would approach and then get further away. This went on for 20 minutes until they neared Chicago. Most distinctive was the object's behavior of drawing an up-&-down vertical line, and then a forward-&-back horizontal line [as if making a cross in the sky] several times. The Captain said: "I hated to see it leave. It was a very interesting sight."

Olden case #7: May 28, 1951; Rainy Lake, MN. A large number of persons witnessed a "crystal ball" moving rapidly about in the air. It then darted off to join with another one in their antics. They continued to make fast non-inertial motions until they drifted away. This is near General Mills research balloon territory, but the flying off and joining up does not indicate a balloon. Rather it reminds me of the in-air balloon chase cases where Joseph Kaliszewski would report spherical white globes or disks rushing up [or down from height] upon their balloon and dancing all about it. According to him, this happened on more flights than not in this era. The General Mills cases are in fact among the strongest on record.

Olden case #8: January 25th, and earlier, 1952; San Jose, CA. Within about one week in the area, two independent witnesses, one on ground and one in-air pilot, reported unusual red lights in the air near the city. No particular motions of the lights are mentioned in the DATA-NET article, but one odd behavior was: when the pilot turned to them and shown his plane's lights on them, they "went away". One assumes he means flew away rather than disappeared, but either way it indicates a responsive behavior.

The picture on the left is a famous old one from the Bolivian-Peru "jungle border". Dates from 1952. Good ol' cigar-shaped flying fuselage. Don't know if anyone had enough info to take it seriously, but it's awfully early.

Olden case #9: February 22nd, 1952; Keysville, VA. Only one witness on this one. Observer says that the thing was an elongated silver cigar which moved slowly in a horizontal line across the sky ... well, not QUITE a horizontal line. The thing would move, then disappear. Then reappear a little way ahead, move, and disappear. And so on until out of sight. The Space-jumping Amateur from Whackland??

Olden case #10: April 16th, 1952; Hamilton Ontario. Many witnesses, independently, saw a "great whirling smoke-ring" moving rapidly across the sky. It was black and seemed to have little or no "depth". It was estimated as being 600' in diameter. Before disappearing, it changed color to blue. One witness said that he concentrated hard trying to see stars through the apparently open middle, but could not. One witness said that the thing finally just vanished. {In honor of this "smoke-ring" I include a picture montage below of UFOlogy's most famous Smoke-ring, which was argued about by the Colorado Project, ultimately making them look like fools.}.

Olden case #11: November 1st and 19th, 1953; over London, UK. These are two separate but essentially identical observations by the British military [and public, I believe] of white, circular objects hovering over London for 15 minutes before moving off. They were estimated at 60000' altitude, and larger than an airliner. The kicker is that both cases were tracked by radar. If these cases have good bona fides [I don't know], then one might say that the Brits got their own taste of our Washington DC merry-go-round a little over a year later.

Well, that's it for the moment, folks. Hope that there was something in all that which stretched your mind a bit. Till next time...God be with you.

DATA-NET: On The Road Again In Queensland.

This is an incident from the April 1970 edition of DATA-NET. It's one I'd read before at CUFOS. I've not seen it mentioned anywhere else, though surely it must be [I mean as a case report rather than just a listing in Mark Rodeghier's catalog of "electromagnetic" Vehicle Interference Reports. Mark cites this same entry from DATA-NET as his source]. The case, to me, is astonishing, and cries out for more coverage. At a minimum there must be an investigative interview somewhere, perhaps in an old Queensland Flying Saucer group newsletter [unfortunately pretty rare in my resource collection]. Thankfully, the DATA-NET article is long for that publication's typical entries.

Here's the case: On the evening of March 19th, 1969, a woman was well into a 1300 mile drive from Cairns to Brisbane, Australia. With her were her children, understandably asleep. She was nearing Gladstone [having just passed Marmor and Mt. Larcom] in Queensland with 500 miles still to go. There is nothing in the narrative, by the way, which says that she drove this whole thing in one go, nor that she was in any way unalert. In fact much of the experience takes place outside the car, as you will see. "Highway Hypnosis" is, thereby, an unlikely ingredient in this story.

The first thing that is astonishing is that she begins to hear a "distant" and intermittent "radio broadcast" despite her car having no radio. This excited her with a sense of wonder. Following the piecemeal "news", there was a musical tune of some kind. This now worried her a bit, as she wondered if the experience might be premonitionary, and she slowed the car, fearing a possible accident [though there had been no traffic for awhile.]

She kept on at a reduced speed of 40mph for a time and then noticed a light pacing her car off to the side past the trees. It turned and came towards her. She thought: "could this be a flying saucer??" That scared her and she slowed nearly to a stop. The light pulsated as it came on.

The lady, now thoroughly afraid, stopped her vehicle and decided to turn around to go back to the nearest passed town, Mt. Larcom, and stay the night. Just as she was to return, another vehicle came up from the lane that she had been on [i.e. from behind her original path going towards Gladstone]. Our lady flashed her lights and the oncoming car stopped.

It was another single woman. This new arrival seemed to know a lot about UFOs and had a very relaxed confident manner about the UFO presence. She convinced our first lady to turn back around and they'd drive in tandem onwards toward Gladstone. As they began to proceed, the UFO came closer until it was over the other woman's car. Now alarmed herself, she and our first lady braked to a stop and both got out and talked. The UFO-savvy lady said that if they turned off their lights it would go away. Our lady watched the thing closely. It was about automobile-sized and had several porthole-like lights. The second lady relaxed a bit when the UFO moved to the side, and wanted to watch what she said "was something wonderful that we probably would never see again". Our first lady was not so sure, as she wanted to get going on her trip home, and she was noticing a strange pulsing of her new companion's car lights when the object itself pulsed. They drove off finally, our first lady driving in the "wrong" lane as there was no traffic and she distrusted the way her companion's car was pulsating its headlights.

The second woman apparently never understood what our lady was talking about [re: her headlights] and seemed somewhat non-plussed from then on out. Our lady reported that the object continued to fly along beside them at about 100 yards distance as they drove towards Gladstone. Apparently, the thing would send out a "streak" of light horizontally [though not it seems directed at the cars], and simultaneously her companion's car lights would broaden. Then, even more astonishingly, the object would send out a streak of light upwards, and her companion's car headlights "would streak up".

Then she says this: "It appeared to be a pattern. A lengthening of the vertical shaft of light, followed by a horizontal lengthening, alternatively." Our witness is apparently describing the famous and highly strange UFO-associated phenomenon of "solid", cut-off, extendible light beams.

As they drew near Gladstone, the UFO rapidly soared off into the sky, looking like a star at height. The UFO-savvy lady took our witness' name and address and said she'd contact her. That never happened, sadly, or we'd have a lot solider case with two independent witnesses on record. Our lady stayed overnight in Gladstone and drove on to Brisbane. There she reported the experience, and was apparently visited by the Australian military. They wanted to inspect her vehicle, and later told her that she needed a new alternator for her electric system. She had no idea what that could have had to do with her UFO encounter as it was the other lady's lights which were pulsing. The DATA-NET correspondent seems to have visited the anonymous witness and made a recording of his interview, which was the basis for this report. He describes her as "an ordinary housewife who speaks with no frills, and is apparently telling the event exactly as she remembers it happening". He reports that she has talked to very few people and seeks no publicity.

So, what have we here? My intuition is: a very good high strangeness UFO encounter with critical "missing witness" testimony. Still, it seems a case worth keeping in the pile of "good" UFO incidents and it is a shame that it remains a hidden rough gemstone waiting for the rest of the testimony.

More Than Meets The Eye With Moreland??

Above is the brilliant [as usual] piece of art by Mark Cashman [of the Temporal Doorway] of the Blenheim, New Zealand 1959 CE3, often called the "Moreland" case after the witness. Pretty picture, but why is it here?? I've stumbled into something that I don't remember reading about this case, and, when I googled several references to it, STILL can't find mentioned, which really puzzles me. Really puzzles me....

The "new"? information is so out-of-norm for my readings of the "old" case reports, that I'm almost doubting it's legitimacy. But it is directly out of the released documents of the New Zealand Air Force, and I read it there myself. If there is no colossal joke/hoax involved, this seems significant.

While pursuing web sites for the trace cases that were talked about on the blog recently, a site referred to these NZAF documents. Out of curiosity [and hoping to find material on the 1969 traces], I went and looked. No luck. But there were references to other NZ "Classics", like the Kaikoura lights, and the Blenheim/Moreland CE3. What-the heck? I looked. The Blenheim material was surprising.

In a thumbnail: Mrs Moreland was caring for her cows when an object approached. It was a pretty disk with much glowing light of both green and orange variety, and it had a clear dome on its top, within which you could see two "men". The green light had a strange "attractive effect" on her, making her want to go towards the craft. That then scared her and she literally ran for the trees and watched. She gives a very precise and detailed description of everything about the craft and the persons inside. When it left, she went inside and told her husband [an NZAF soldier] who told her to call the police. It was the NZAF that then showed up to take testimony, finding her credible and consistent in her story, despite using clever interrogation techniques. Ultimately, the NZAF tried to debunk her story by criticizing her character, but no such allusion is present in the original interview. The case is also always listed as single witness, but read the illustration to the left/above. The officer has written in "AirForce person also reported the sighting". No reference to any document concerning the corroborating sighting was found by me... but maybe it's in the files somewhere else.

But what was FAR more interesting was the drawing to the left. This alleges to show one of the entities almost full height. All the renditions I've read say she saw two entities in the dome from the waist up. What's going on?

Mrs Moreland apparently had a VERY close encounter that she didn't want to talk about. Upon having the "attraction" of the green light shown on her, she saw a being "land" from the disk and approach. There was no loss of memory, as she remembered the details just fine [as you can see]. She was apparently very worried that people would call her nuts, and left this part of the story out continuously afterwards. But the NZAF got it out of her.

How did they respond to the story of this close an encounter?? Note the original security classification: "Top Secret".

Now you know why I'm a bit stunned by all this, and wonder if some strange hoax is being pulled. If so, it would involve messing with the NZAF files. But that doesn't seem very likely does it? So, until I'm told differently: The Moreland CE3 seems to be a face-to-face encounter with an unexplainable entity from an unexplainable craft, and maybe even the partial awareness of an early on-board experience still hidden.

The NZAF has apparently even now refused to release all documents associated with the case, citing a privacy agreement. How much, if any, more do they know?? And WHY the "Top Secret"?

You can read all the details of the case as normally reported in many places on the internet. It has always seemed to me, as it did to Allen Hynek and Jim McDonald, who interviewed Mrs Moreland separately, to be a good case. Maybe there's WAY more to it than we've known.