OK, just what the hail is this thing!?!

This thing right here has been driving me crazy for a few years, ever since I first saw it.* It seems to have been captured on film just once, in 1962:

www.rense.com...

I mean, what the HELL is that thing? Most UFOs tend to come in a few basic shapes and can generally be fit within a few different categories of sighting and/or theories regarding their true nature.

But this thing? It's just totally bizarre. Stare at it and ponder it long enough, and it can look like anything from a super-advanced, experimental aircraft to a whale with severe genetic anomalies or a giant jellyfish monster that's jumped out of the water.

Adding to my perplexed agony is the fact that I can find almost no additional information on the thing. You'll see it referenced elsewhere on the Web if you look for it, but with no more data than what's mentioned on the above-referenced site.








*By "saw it," I mean the enigmatic photograph, not the thing itself.





I posed the above question at a non-UFO-related message board which I frequent, and another member made the following keen observations:

1) The description is rather inconsistent. Looking at the picture the object appears to be more tube-like than disc-like.

2) What happened to the second winglet on the right in the drawing? Doesn't there seem to be two matching pairs of winglets in the picture rather than the single large fin on the right as shown in the drawing?

3) This Ghibaudi is a journalist with a camera and he took only ONE picture? OK, perhaps he only had one shot left on the roll of film in his camera, but if he had taken more pictures let's see them all, even the badly out-of-focus pictures and under/overexposed pictures--surely they can't be much worse than the one used on that web page.

4) The picture appears to be cropped from a larger picture. I wish that we could see the full picture.

So what about folks? Does anybody out there know of any more detailed info on this case? Anybody ever seen or photographed anything similar? Any theories?

So what about folks? Does anybody out there know of any more detailed info on this case? Anybody ever seen or photographed anything similar? Any theories?

Cant say I have.

But I like the way you're thinking.

Flagged





[Mod Edit - removed unnecessary BB code]

[edit on 11/3/2009 by Sauron]

I think it's fake... And a very bad one.

Adding to the fact that such a good picture (if real) taken by a science jornalist, isn't famous at all...... Doesn't had up any credibility.

First of all, the picture doesn't have a single point of reference about distance nor size...

It's just a single piece of the photo.

And analyzing the picture......


...This reminds me of the "doctor picture" of the Monster of Lockness. It looks really amazing and "clear", but it doesn't look real in scale.

In this case, the UFO seems very close (again, no point of reference) to the camera, and if you look below it, you can see the waves on the beach, which gives you the feeling that the UFO is REALLY close to the camera, what is impossible according to the description and the drawing.

In the top left corner of the picture you see something... My bet it is something holding the FAKE object. The UFO is out of focus, but it looks like it is out of focus because it's too close to the camera.

If he was a scientific jornalist he would KNOW the procedure to capture an event and do it with good credibility.

Besides, the positioning of the UFO to the description of the trajectory it took, it's not right.

he noticed an unusual metallic-looking disc- shaped flying objectcoming in at a low level over the ocean. It passed overhead(...)

If it was coming at a low lever over the ocean, how the hell it passed overhead? And if it passed overhead, then why he took the photo with the UFO at eye-level?

Nice find though... Flag.

[edit on 11/3/09 by Tifozi]

[edit on 11/3/09 by Tifozi]

[edit on 11/3/09 by Tifozi]

Hard to tell from the grainy picture. Perhaps a USO?

IRM

reply to post by Tifozi


Well it could very well be fake , but some of your argument for the case of a hoax is flawed. First of all I need to point out that something which is flying low to the ground/sea level CAN still pass over head. 20 feet from the ground is quite low when you consider the speed of your average jet or military aircraft, and yet that still allows a pilot to fly over a person. That person will state that the aircraft was pretty low to the ground,because lets face it, usualy you see planes high up unless they are taking off or landing.
Secondly , when something amazing happens, even a seasoned snapper could be forgiven for failing to get a perfect shot, especialy since lets be honest, in 1962 attitudes and information proliferation on aliens and UFO was not nearly as all pervading as it is today . Shock does odd things to peoples reaction times, and messes up motor function in cases of extreme confusion.

I'm going to have to go with fake for now just because of a couple things I see in the pic.

First thing like someone said you can see at the top of the pic what almost looks like a sleeve from a shirt or coat just barely making it into the pic and it goes across to the wing that is sticking up out of the pic as if it stops at the wing like someone was holding it there. Now if there is a photo with more area shown in it we might be able to rule that out but really this is the one thing to me that says fake.

I played around with the photo and it almost looks like it's a model with plane and maybe sub pieces attached to it but the quality is so poor that there is no way to really tell this for sure.

I did notice on the left side where it looks like the nose of the aircraft there appears to be a straight line going through the nose and the left side of the nose is off set to the right side of it by just a bit. You can see it quite easily if you zoom in.

From this alone I would say it's a journalist desperate to provide a pic to his employer for whatever reason, but I could be easily swayed the other way if there was a pic encompassing a larger area to be able to see the thing at the top is not a coat sleeve or something like that.

there is a legend that whales and doplhins where otherworld beings that dicided to stay to help earth.Funny how the ship looks like a flying whale.

Yeah but it is really well set up for underwater travel. I don't see how aerodynamic it would be (even though they might just use anti-grav so the aerodynamics would not really matter. USO or fake my opinion.

reply to post by flightsuit


It seems that internos posted some pretty interesting comments about this case in this thread by karl 12

Peace

[edit on 11/3/09 by Majorion]

Majorion, thanks for that. Internos's posts are the only place I've ever seen any more in-depth info on the case!

Speaking as an avid collector of vintage toys, especially Sci-Fi toys, I'd be very interested to see the toy or model that the one guy claims was available in stores at the time.

It's also interesting, but not necessarily damning, that the photographer had authored two books on the subject of flying models.

However, I've flown numerous R/C airplanes and helicopters, not to mention a couple of R/C flying saucers, and if the thing in the photo is a model, there's no way it could have possibly flown, unless it was filled with helium or simply tossed in the air. Its "wings" just don't have enough surface area, and its "fuselage" isn't the right shape for a wingless, lifting-body type of aircraft.

On the other hand, it's said that with a strong enough motor, you can make a brick fly. However, there's no visible means of propulsion on that thing. Of course, a propeller spinning fast enough wouldn't necessarily appear on camera or be visible to the naked eye.

Looking at the thing, I do get a vague impression of what a whale or dolphin looks like when it jumps, or back-flips, out of the water with its belly towards the sky. The two largest "wings" on the right side of the image look a lot like how a dolphin's fins would look during such an action.

Obviously there appear to be lots of extra details not consistent with a marine mammal's morphology, but is it possible that could be an illusion created by the camera's imperfect ability to capture a flexible object in rapid motion?

I've seen numerous photos of apparent cryptids and UFOs which, upon closer examination, appear to be birds, insects, or other animals whose rapid motions have blurred certain parts of them in such a way that they're not immediately recognizable, and they appear to have extra parts or unusual shapes.

On the end of the "fuselage" pointing to the left, there does appear to be a detail that's far more motion-blurred than the rest of the object, almost in the position that a tail or hind flippers would be if a whale or pinniped was curling its lower extremities towards its stomach.

This explanation is, perhaps, a bit of a stretch, but I'm just trying to look at every possible angle.

[edit on 12-3-2009 by flightsuit]

reply to post by TrueBrit


I wasn't talking about the altitude of the UFO by itself...

When you say "it passed me overhead", you are saying that something passed you OVER your HEAD, meaning, it passed ABOVE you. Right?

So, if overhead means that the object passes above you, how did he managed to take the photo with the object in front of him? Not very consistent, if you ask me...

If he took the photo of the UFO when he was passing by him (again, overhead), the camera would have been pointing at the sky, not in an angle of 90º relative to the ground.

Again, I recall the "doctor picture" of the Lockness Monster. People said the same thing, but if you think about the picture, you see that the photo was taken from above, not consistant with viewing the monster in the middle of the lake (unless you were in a helicopter..lol).

Same for the guy... If the object was flying above him, the picture wouldn't look like what it really looks: that the object was flying in front of him, and actually, pretty close... Closer than the beach behind the object (again, contradiction with the position of the object like reported).

About what he should have done...

...we are just assuming. I might be right, you might be right, maybe we're both wrong.

For all we know, the camera could have been one of those you take a long time to take another photo... And in that time, the cameras weren't equiped with auto-focus and all that tech... So...

The testimony says that the object passed over the witness and moved away to the north.It does not say that the picture was taken when the object was above the witness. I can see how that inference could be taken, due to the grammar used , however the description of the exact position relative to the witness at the time of the picture being taken is not explicit . In fact the account of the incident is not at all complete, and it is doubly unfortunate that this story is isolated to the website that has been linked to . If there were other media sources to aquire information on this from, then we might have a better time of trying to establish the order of events.

reply to post by flightsuit


Looks man made.
Reasons follow.

The lower part of the craft seem to looks as wheels, assuming for landing.
Keeping that in mind for take off aswell, meaning it needs speed and air for travel, keeping this craft terrestrial. The wings add more of a areoplane type than a space craft. More reasons to believe man made. So my conclusion stand the same, man made fanatic of some sort.

Peace!

Its one of those elusive flying whales

I have to admit, my wife has one of those things as a toy, she says its fun and her girlfreinds are into it to. I am not threatened, but it gives me a reason to go the pub without feeling guiloteiney.

great find....

Just be thankful she hasn't got the strap-on version.

All kidding aside, I think much of the difficulty reconciling the photographic evidence with the details of the report may be the result of a flawed, imperfect translation from Italian into English. Who knows what may have been changed or lost in the process?

If any of the original reporting in Italian could be located and a fresh translation could be done, certain parts of the story might be shown to possibly convey very different meanings.

There is a lot of strange things flying around out there
if you care to believe the photages, like this

www.youtube.com...

[edit on 13-3-2009 by Acharya]

Originally posted by guessing
I have to admit, my wife has one of those things as a toy, she says its fun and her girlfreinds are into it to. I am not threatened, but it gives me a reason to go the pub without feeling guiloteiney.

great find....

Just now came across this. My dragonlady has one too!



Sorry, everyone is so dadgum serious all the time. This was funny.

seriously though, I scrolled down on the source, and the artist's coneption left off one of the wings from the original photo.

It also does resemble the Lockheed L-133, a little bit.