On the ground at Kecksburg

(Ok, this is my last Kecksburg thread for a while.)

In late afternoon on December 9, 1965, an object crashed into a wooded creek bed in rural Pennsylvania near the small community of Kecksburg. For 40 years the event has been the subject of wonder and inquiry. Some people think it never happened, some think it was a secret government aircraft, others believe the object was an alien spaceship. I think the object was a nuclear warhead, and invite you to review the events of that December evening with that idea in mind.

If the object WAS a warhead, it would explain many things that happened than night:

-- The mission controllers would have already known there was a problem and set the recovery process in motion even before the object reached the ground. Recovery teams on the East Coast would have been alerted, and every Air Force commander along the flight path advised to stand by for special orders.
-- It's quite possible that state police and others would be contacted immediately after the event and asked to forward any reports of "meteors" landing in the area.
-- As soon as any reports of strange objects were received, Air Force personnel would have been dispatched from the nearest Air Force facility to verify the sighting.
-- Military security troops would have then been directed to the scene immediately. They would secure the site then hunker down and wait for the experts to arrive. Their orders would be simple: keep EVERYONE away from the site. To witnesses, it would be like they came out of nowhere and took over the whole community.
-- There were reports that the object was "sparking" and there was a strong smell of ozone. "Normal" satellites and space probes are designed for long-haul performance and need steady, stable power supplies, moderate current over long periods; a warhead, in contrast, needs lots of power delivered really fast. The Mk-6 and its associated mounting spacer were jammed with electronic equipment supplied by batteries capable of delivering hundred of amps of current.
-- The first on-scene experts to approach the object would have been a radiological team. As soon as they determined the extent of any radiation hazard, the recovery teams could move in.
-- The recovery teams would be directed by Navy officers.
-- Under normal circumstances, an Mk-6 RV is handled in a special cradle. There were cradles available on the coast, but would have been too bulky to transport to Kecksburg quickly. The recovery team would probably opt to use a standard flat-bed or drop-bed heavy equipment trailer, the type used to transport bulldozers, perhaps borrowed from the National Guard. The RV could then be welded to the metal trailer bed.
-- Since the cradle was not available, it would have been necessary to weld chains or metal hawsers on the RV to allow it to be winched out of the crash site. All this dissimilar metal welding would require arc or plasma welding, accounting for the blue flashes seen through the trees.
-- The winch would have been under enormous strain, as the warhead assembly weighed in at around 10,000 pounds. That alone would account for the "screams" heard from the forest that night.
-- The warhead would have been whisked to the nearest base with nuclear weapon handling capability. Wright-Patterson, Ohio could do the job nicely: they had experience with the W-53 bomb carried by the Titan II.
-- At Wright-Patterson the warhead would have been removed from the RV for transport, possibly to Sandia Labs, and the RV itself packed and shipped out for analysis by the National Labs and General Electric.

This is a theory which can explain the facts well, but the real test of any theory is its power to enable accurate predictions. Unfortunately, the projects surrounding this event have mostly been dismantled (but not completely, wink, wink), so future predictions are difficult to come by. However, as I started researching the Kecksburg event, I made a list of "predictions" which should have come to pass if the theory were a good one.

Here's a list I came up with; perhaps you can add to it:

-- There should be a ballistic missile radar tracking system along the flight path.
-- There should be some reason that Canadian early-warning radar didn't raise alerts. (We can assume American radar systems were compromised, or perhaps 'co-opted' is a better term.)
-- There should be a good reason that satellite-tracking systems didn't raise alerts.
-- There will be a correlation between UFO and/or fireball sightings and these tests that I think were happening.
-- There has to be a place for the warheads to be recovered at the end of the flight path.
-- The desert Southwest should be littered with scrap metal from all those rocket boosters.
-- There should be evidence of undocumented missile tests.
-- There should be evidence of missiles launched from the west coast eastward.
-- There should be discrepancies in the reports of the number of Titan missiles produced.
-- UFO/fireball report distribution along the flight path will not correspond well with population density and/or traffic patterns (ie, highways).
-- There will be strange artificial debris found along the flight path.
-- There will be "torpedo" recovery systems which the US Navy doesn't like to talk about.
-- There would be other incidents like Kecksburg and the Great Lakes Fireball along the flight path.
-- There will be even stranger UFO sightings along the flight path, especailly near or beyond the touch-down point.
-- Evidence will eventually surface of top-secret missile tests which the US could not afford to allow the Soviet Union to witness.
-- There has to be a way to prevent anyone from watching these missiles being fired off.
-- There will be evidence of a an ongoing search for fragments of this missile and others in the test series.

Most of these "post-predictions" have, in fact, happened.

I think that the Kecksberg sighting fits a Corona film bucket who's chute didn't open. Look at the sketches that are posted of the shape and the photos of some of the buckets. I don't have a link to these photos handy but I will try to find one.

A Corona film bucket does not weigh 10,000 pounds - this is the weight being suggested by the original poster who, by the way, did not explain the presence of NASA personnel that evening.

Good posts, both of you.

The ones that we know of don't weigh 10,000. Besides is there any proof that the object weighed 5 tons?

Finally, some hard questions! Thanks.


That's true, but the object was described as being about 8-10 feet across, and 10-12 feet long, about the size of a Volkswagon. It was supposedly acorn-shaped or conical. That fits the Mk-6 RV if there is still part of the elliptical transition ring attached, and if we remember that not all acorns are short and squatty. A Carona film capsule was much smaller.

Also, the Corona project was declassified a decade ago, and every mission has been accounted for.


Is there any proof it didn't? A flatbed trailer can carry 46,100 lbs (that's the limit in Pennsylvania, I think). 10,000 lbs is just the throw-weight of a Titan II (and about the wieght of my Chevy van), so IF the object was a Mk-6 warhead, it probably weighed close to that amount.



Well, I have said there is still much to know

It makes sense to me to think that everyone there that night was part of a pre-arranged team and that they were on their way to the scene as soon as or even before the object touched down.

I do think NASA was there, but I never fully understood the reports. I've seen the claims, but the basis was never clear. How many people said NASA was there? How were they sure it was NASA? Did the witness(es) actually see a NASA patch? Did someone shake their hand and say "Hi, I'm from NASA. Nice town you have here."? Is it possible that someone wearing a rad-suit or just a coverall and wearing a hardhat was mistaken for a NASA employee?

I'd really love to know for certain, since the agency's actual role would answer many more questions. NASA was listed in the need-to-know lists of many National Security Directives from that time (like NSAM 261: Project Four Leaves, which has never been declassified), so it's reasonable to think that they would have observers on the
recovery teams. I just can't understand why they would be so readily identifiable.

One of the things that interests me about Kecksberg is the amount of time that elapsed between the event and the arrival of Government and Military personel. I live about 90 minutes from Kecksberg in Butler, Pennsylvania. That is 90 minutes with today's highways. I can remember when going to Pittsburgh was considered a long trip and took most of the day. Even with them being flown in to Pittsburgh airport and trucked to the sight, they must have had some advance knowledge of something happening to pre-deploy their forces like they must have done. I used the Corona film bucket as an example, but I do recall reading somewhere that they did try retrieving an entire satellite in order to reuse the expensive cameras. I think it was in the book Deep Black.

Hello rand, good thread. Let me explain the NASA link. If you review the body of the pending law suit, you'll discover that NASA will be the respondent. NASA reps were indeed there that evening.

The issue as I see it is one of the government saying nothing was found, taken, collected from the site - against what witnesses say/saw.

One one side or the other of the statement-fence rests the truth.

i thought that at the time america had found the Soviet Venus probe that had crashed in Kecksburg, and there was a big cover up story about that.


www.post-gazette.com...

[edit on 11-12-2005 by ATSGUY]

Is that the FOIA suit by SciFi and friends? If not, do you have a link?

[Aside: Hmmm...if the government recovered something which belonged to the government, could "they" then maintain that nothing was found? It might be better to sue the government, not for information, but for property damage.]

But then, as i said in one of the posts, NASA didn't track sub-orbitals, and I don't remember reading anything about their role in tracking satellite debris which mentions launch debris. NASA may actually be telling the truth, the agency may not have any records pertaining to the Kecksburg object, as such.

However, there will be records, if one looks in the right places. The thing to look for at NASA would be travel vouchers and personnel assignements from December, 1965; that's where the real tale would be told (and don't overlook contractors. For instance, let's say you have a travel voucher of an engineer who travelled from the east coast to Las Vegas in the 60s for a meeting. He was there for 4 days, made two phone calls home, got his shoes shined, got two cups of coffee at the airpodrt and left decent tips, but didn't pay for a hotel, and didn't pay for any meals. Oh, he also rented a car, a station wagon, and put 400 miles on it. Now, what if you also knew that he was working on an Air Force project for LTV? What if you knew his specialty was missile guidance and tracking radar? You think maybe there was a missile test that weekend? See, that's where the real dirt is.)

I'd look for records on the truck, myself. It had to come from somewhere, and some lifer Sargent almost certainly made sure it was properly signed out.

And the troops: They had to get there from somewhere, and get back somewhere, and probably were fed along the way -- there's going to be a voucher somewhere for transportation and a whole lot of meals.









[edit on 11-12-2005 by rand]

Hello rand. Take a look at this thread.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

The interesting thing is that NASA says it was just a Russian satellite that came down . . . BUT, the DoD says nothing came down or was recovered. I'm sure you understand that one of these groups is wrong. The issue is one of who is telling the truth.

With all respect to Leslie Kean and friends, they've just been rehashing the story for the past few years. No real new evidence has come out, unfortunately, and I'm afraid that suing NASA is going to be pointless.

I'm personally disappointed and a little bit angry at all the researchers who make a good living without actually extending understanding one bit. Do you know of any UFO mystery that's ever been satisfactorialy solved?

I mean, you'd think that somebody would have noticed that high-resolution before-and-after photographs are available of the Kecksburg site. Tree rings? Broken branches 30 years after the fact? C'mon, show us the freakin' photos, guys!

So I've already made up my mind that I, who doesn't get paid or get donations (or even much notice: "...one simple does not argue the existance of Angels whilst debating the number which can dance on the head of a pin."), will have to pay for the pics from my own pocket. Then we'll know at least if this is all moot.

I missed a big one. If this theory is correct, somebody may have seen the break-up of the second-stage/warhead.

While looking for something else this morning, I came across this post on a page about the Keckburg event:



The timing is about right ("...40 years ago..."), as is the direction ("...from the East..."), and the fireball WAS seen in Michigan, although his account of the sounds he heard are out of line with sighting an object exploding 200 miles away -- the Great Lakes Fireball of 1965 was heard in six states, but the sound would have taken about 15 minutes to get to Milwaulkee.