People of Phoenix ~ the time has come

a reply to: spiritualarchitect
Of course not, the media is intentionally obfuscating events for ratings, as Tony Ortega explains.

The Phoenix Lights Explained (Again)

To this day, programs like Dateline invariably question people who saw the earlier “vee” event, and quote them saying that flares couldn’t possibly explain what they saw. They are right. They didn’t see flares, they saw a formation of planes. Dateline repeatedly showed people talking about their memories of the 8:30 vee while showing video of the 10 pm flares. Talk about misleading.

So the people saying flares couldn't possibly explain what they saw are right, when they saw the 8:30 vee, because it wasn't flares.

Perhaps it’s a good thing that NBC has now declared this the numero uno UFO sighting of all time. Few sightings have been so thoroughly investigated by reporters, and so well debunked. But you won’t hear that from the networks, who can’t get enough of the ratings that come with “the unexplained.”

Lynn Kitei and this news article also make no distinction between the two events, so either they are totally ignorant or more likely, intentionally misleading for ratings and promotional reasons:

20 years later: What were the Phoenix Lights?

"How can flares that cannot keep a formation, traverse the entire state and beyond for hours in a rock-solid V?" Kitei asked.

Way to go Lynn, nobody claimed flares traversed the entire state. Is she really that ignorant to think that's what people are claiming, or does she really know better and is intentionally misleading people with that comment?

Finally had motivation to quit lurking and post, apologies for being new and having no credibility. Maybe one day I'll regret the specificity of this post and will need to wipe it, BUT:

I grew up in Phoenix and lived directly under where the "lights" event occurred (like literally underneath, side of the Mountain). Unfortunately I wasn't out and about on the night in question, and maybe that's for the best - who knows how my life would have gone if I'd seen an actual UFO during my youth after some tape-delayed X-Files reruns), so keep that in mind.

That said, I CAN offer you a lot of local context about the event at the time including a weak-as-# attempt at replicating the "flare drop" IIRC within 1-2 days of the lights. Phoenix was/is a fairly conservative town and in the pre--smartphone days UFOs and whatnot were an instant earmarker of crazy, so almost nobody talked about the lights.

Local media (Fox, ABC, NBC) quickly picked up either the infamous Simington press conference or ran with "Luke Air Force Base was running synchronized flare drops" and nobody really challenged it. Seemed pretty bull# at the time and most importantly - why I made this post - there was a recreation by Luke AFB after the fact and it looked nothing like the lights from the event. EDIT - there was exponentially more discussion around the flare re-enactment than the actual sighting, and regardless of whether somebody saw the triangle thing the flares just weren't up to snuff.

Given that it's 26 years ago I personally can't remember whether I watched them in my backyard or on the local news, but Luke AFB already attempted to recreate the triangle lights with flares and failed miserably. The consistency of distance and height just can't be accounted for with flares, and I felt obligated to share this with you as I'm not sure if it's widely known.

Phoenix Lights wasn't much of a story until the 2010s, as much as I wish it had been, and despite the complete lack of Air Force ability to create something that mirrored the sightings/video from the craft...nobody pushed it. That was the culture of the time, and my guess is that most people ticked it off as stealth aircraft we didn't need to know about (more or less my conclusion).

Anyway - TL;DR...lived at the site of the Phoenix Lights for my entire childhood, didn't see them, at the time local attempts to explain the lights as flares/military exercise failed miserably (but nobody pushed it regardless). Make of it what you will.

a reply to: SonsOfPwn
It sounds like you're another victim of the media confusion, and if you read my post before yours, you missed my point.
Flares couldn't possibly duplicate the vee sighting, which flew across the state at about 400 mph, and flares don't do that. So there would be no point in the air force attempting to duplicate that with flares, they know it's impossible before they even try.

But the media has no interest in getting the truth out there, because they get better ratings from a mystery, so they promote a mystery even when nobody who has thoroughly looked into the case would think flares are supposed to explain the ~400 mph vee sighting. I suggest reading the article by Tony Ortega I linked to in my prior post which will give you a better idea what happened, if you're interested.

That's what I was saying? I was agreeing that flares just didn't match the description of the sightings, and adding the local context that nobody believed that they did at the time?

It doesn't seem like you read my post, I felt like it was pretty clear. But yeah - the flares never did it but locally nobody cared enough or had resources at the time to push the issue any further. And it was quickly, quickly forgotten locally.

a reply to: SonsOfPwn
I did read your post but this comment suggested you still don't know about some details of the case:

That was the culture of the time, and my guess is that most people ticked it off as stealth aircraft we didn't need to know about (more or less my conclusion).

The amateur astronomer named Mitch saw the planes through his telescope
www.abovetopsecret.com...
"Here's Mitch with his telescope:"


"And Mitch's words:"

"It was plain to see. What looked like individual lights to the naked eye actually split into two under the resolving power of the telescope. The lights were located on the undersides of squarish wings."

Mitch's "squarish wings" description matched what the America West pilot and Co-pilot were told that it was a flight of Canadian Tutors, which happen to have squarish wings as seen here:
Canadair CT-114 Tutor

There is some question if those are the actual planes seen since someone followed up with Canada to confirm and was unable to, but it seems strange the America West pilots would get such a specific aircraft identification from air traffic controllers if it was incorrect, and maybe the right people in Canada haven't been contacted, or there's some other mixup. I've noticed the Pentagon recently issuing two completely contradictory statements within some months of each other, where they said their original statement was wrong and issued a "corrected" statement, so mixups do happen in government agencies.

But I doubt any stealth planes have "squarish wings" because I don't think they have a good geometry for stealth, so whatever the planes were, I suspect they were not stealth planes, based on Mitch's description.