The Lubbock lights.

Interesting series of UFO sightings from around the area of Lubbock, Texas in 1951 where a few hundred people reported witnessing lights in a 'wing shaped' formation.

Several photographs were taken of the object(s) and the lights were also seen by four professors who estimated that the UFOs were travelling 18,000 miles per hour at an altitude of 50,000 feet.

Photographs

If a group had been hand-picked to observe a UFO, we couldn't have picked a more technically qualified group of people. They were:

Dr. W. I. Robinson, Professor of Geology.

Dr. A. G. Oberg, Professor of Chemical Engineering.

Professor W. L. Ducker, Head of the Petroleum Engineering Department.

Dr. George, Professor of Physics.

On the evening of August 25 the four men were sitting in Dr. Robinson's back yard. They were discussing micrometeorites and drinking tea. They jokingly stressed this point. At nine-twenty a formation of lights streaked across the sky directly over their heads. It all happened so fast that none of them had a chance to get a good look.
One of the men mentioned that he had always admonished his students for not being more observant; now he was in that spot. He and his colleagues realized they could remember only a few details of what they had seen.
The lights were a weird bluish-green color and they were in a semicircular formation. They estimated that there were from fifteen to thirty separate lights and that they were moving from north to south.
Their one wish at this time was that the lights would reappear. They did; about an hour later the lights went over again.
This time the professors were a little better prepared. With the initial shock worn off, they had time to get a better look. The details they had remembered from the first flight checked. There was one difference; in this flight the lights were not in any orderly formation, they were just in a group.

The professors reasoned that if the UFO's appeared twice they might come back. Come back they did. The next night and apparently many times later, as the professors made twelve more observations during the next few weeks. For these later sightings they added two more people to their observing team.

Being methodical, as college professors are, they made every attempt to get a good set of data. They measured the angle through which the objects traveled and timed them. The several flights they checked traveled through 90 degrees of sky in three seconds, or 30 degrees per second. The lights usually suddenly appeared 45 degrees above the northern horizon, and abruptly went out 45 degrees above the southern horizon. They always traveled in this north-to-south direction. Outside of the first flight, in which the objects were in a roughly semicircular formation, in none of the rest of the flights did they note any regular pattern. Two or three flights were often seen in one night.

Other witnesses:

Armed with a list of names of other observers of the mysterious lights, an intelligence officer started out to try to get a cross-section account of the other UFO sightings in the Lubbock area. All the stories about the UFO's were the same; various types of formations of dull bluish-green lights, generally moving north to south.
We talked to observers in nearby towns. Their stories were the same.
Two of them, tower operators at an airport, reported that they had seen the lights on several occasions.

August 31st:

Two ladies, a mother and her daughter, had left their home in Matador, Texas, 70 miles northeast of Lubbock, about twelve-thirty P.M. on August 31.
They were driving along in their car when they suddenly noticed "a pear-shaped" object about 150 yards ahead of them.
It was just off the side of the road, about 120 feet in the air. It was drifting slowly to the east, "less than the speed required to take off in a Cub airplane.
"They drove on down the road about 50 more yards, stopped, and got out of the car. The object, which they estimated to be the size of a B-29 fuselage, was still drifting along slowly. There was no sign of any exhaust blast and they heard no noise, but they did see a "porthole" in the side of the object. In a few seconds the object began to pick up speed and rapidly climb out of sight. As it climbed it seemed to have a tight spiraling motion.

The investigation showed that the two ladies were "solid citizens," with absolutely no talents, or reasons, for fabricating such a story. The daughter was fairly familiar with aircraft. Her husband was an Air Force officer then in Korea, and she had been living near air bases for several years. The ladies had said that the object was "drifting" to the east, which possibly indicated that it was moving with the wind, but on further investigation it was found that it was moving into the wind.

Radar:

Did a huge flying wing pass over Albuquerque and travel 250 miles to Lubbock in about fifteen minutes? This would be about 900 miles per hour. Did the radar station in Washington pick up the same thing? I'd checked the distances on the big wall map in flight operations just before leaving Reese AFB. It was 1,300 miles from Lubbock to the radar site. From talking to people, we decided that the lights were apparently still around Lubbock at 11:20 P.M. and the radar picked them up just after midnight. They would have had to be traveling about 780 miles per hour. This was fairly close to the 900-mile-per-hour speed clocked by the two radars. The photos of the Lubbock Lights checked with the description of what the AEC employee and his wife had seen in Albuquerque.

Other reports:

Witnesses said they saw "dots" of lights flying in "U" and "V" shapes, passing in two and three-second intervals. The number of dots reported in the formations ranged from eight to nine to 20 to 30. The lights appeared in the northeastern part of the sky and proceeded in a straight line to the southwest.

The color of the lights was "about like the stars, only brighter," while others said they were either a blue or white with a slight yellow tinge to them. Others described them as appearing "as a string of beads," moving roughly in a semi-circle, and were "soft, glowing, bluish-green."

Dr. J.C. Cross, head of Tech’s Department of Biology, examined the 35mm photographs, and asserted, "It definitely wasn’t caused by birds."
In Matador, reports were made of a "noiseless aircraft flying at a low altitude, without aid of propellers or wings." They said it was different from any aircraft they had ever seen.

Birds, natural phenomenon, military flares, reflections or unidentified aircraft - this certainly is an interesting case with some very strange eye-witness testimony


Links:

www.sacred-texts.com...
www.ufocasebook.com...
www.subversiveelement.com...
en.wikipedia.org...

I have a question about the radar reports. Where are they? I can find no reference to them other than in the quote you gave.

reply to post by karl 12


Here are some blogs by Kevin Randle that deal with the Lubbock Lights:

kevinrandle.blogspot.com...

There are several good blogs that deal with that and other earlier cases. He writes about the evidence and answers some questions raised by skeptics.

it kind of reminds me of the phoenix lights i mean the shape and everything.
maybe the ETs came back for another peak at us Umans.

Originally posted by Phage
I have a question about the radar reports. Where are they?

Phage, thanks for the reply - thats a good question and I've no idea where the reports are but here's an interesting statement from the Chief of Project Blue Book:

"Every time I get skeptical, I think of the other reports made by experienced pilots and radar operators, scientists, and other people who know what they are looking at. These reports were thoroughly investigated and they are still unknowns.
We have no aircraft on this earth that can at will so handily outdistance our latest jets... The pilots, radar specialists, generals, industrialists, scientists, and the man on the street who have told me, I wouldn't have believed it either if I hadn't seen it myself, knew what they were talking about. Maybe the Earth is being visited by interplanetary space ships.
When four college professors, a geologist, a chemist, a physicist, and a petroleum engineer report seeing the same UFOs on fourteen different occasions, the event can be classified as, at least, unusual. Add the fact that hundreds of other people saw these UFOs and that they were photographed, and the story gets even better. Add a few more facts, that these UFOs were picked up on radar and that a few people got a close look at one of them, and the story begins to convince even the most ardent skeptic."

Captain Edward J. Ruppelt
Chief of Project Blue Book, from his book, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, 1956.

Cheers.

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

Thanks for another great work, Karl

Regarding the radar question, the first thing to say is that Project Grudge (officially closed on 1949 bt still operational at lower levels www.ufologie.net... reported no radar detections related to cases 1, 2 and 3 (respectively Lubbock, Aug. 25 1951 @ 21:10 | Lubbock, Aug. 30 1951 @ 23:30 and Albuquerque, Aug 25 1951 @ 21:58).

From Lt. Metscher to Colonel Kirkland - Memorandum, Oct. 10, 1951
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/bbc1deacb3d7511e.jpg[/atsimg]

But according to Ruppelt himself, from his memories,

I almost overlooked the report from the radar station because it was fairly short. It said that early on the morning of August 26, only a few hours after the Lubbock sighting, two different radars had shown a target traveling 900 miles per hour at 13,000 feet on a northwesterly heading. The target had been observed for six minutes and an F-86 jet interceptor had been scrambled but by the time the F-86 had climbed into the air the target was gone. The last paragraph in the report was rather curt and to the point. It was apparently in anticipation of the comments the report would draw. It said that the target was not caused by weather. The officer in charge of the radar station and several members of his crew had been operating radar for seven years and they could recognize a weather target. This target was real.

www.ufologie.net...

a delay of hours could have broken any link between the 25 Aug. event and the radars' tracking: it wouldn't be surprising, given the way they were used to investigate on this type of cases, but this is a mere speculation by me.
Anyway, the first report from Grudge is this one:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/095eb968994a4737.jpg[/atsimg]
Now, it's interesting to notice how a radar tracking occurred hours after the sighting has been ignored, but they did put in relation two sightings occurred the second almost a week after the first one.
Here are the four shots:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/0876af87e1d461c5.jpg[/atsimg]
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/202d43b4e61f265d.jpg[/atsimg]

A nice scan of one them
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/2cd06d39a15b1f64.jpg[/atsimg]

Professors at Texas Tech who saw Lubbock Lights (left to right):
Dr. Oberg, Prof. Ducker, and Dr. Robinson, discuss them with Dr. E. L. George.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/879b7cccc1d97d29.jpg[/atsimg]

And some newspaper's articles: they won't add so much to the research, but they can give to us the feeling of how the events were perceived at the time:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/20266f4eae307be8.png[/atsimg]
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/226bf8049b56046b.jpg[/atsimg]

Blue Book: flying "whatsits" seen again (from lubbock morning avalanche)
Blue Book MAXW-PBB9-21
Blue Book MAXW-PBB9-22
Blue Book MAXW-PBB9-23
Blue Book MAXW-PBB9-24
Blue Book MAXW-PBB9-40
Blue Book MAXW-PBB9-41
Blue Book MAXW-PBB9-42
Blue Book MAXW-PBB9-43
Blue Book MAXW-PBB9-44


More from Blue Book

www.ufologie.net...
www.ufologie.net...
www.ufoevidence.org...



[edit on 23/4/2009 by internos]

Originally posted by internos
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/226bf8049b56046b.jpg[/atsimg]

Internos, thanks for the reply...and thats a truly remarkable post.
I think from the above photograph we can rule out 'birds' as an explanation for the Lubbock Lights - its a shame that Captain Ruppelt did not include the radar confirmations in the Blue Book report but its certainly a very interesting one nonetheless.

Cheers.

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

reply to post by internos

I saw the extract about the radar report in the OP but I was wondering if the report that Ruppelt mentions was available.

I think it's a stretch to make a definitive connection between a six minute radar contact in Washington to a visual sighting in Texas, some 1,500 miles away. Ruppelt doesn't provide the time of the radar contact, just "a few hours after" the sighting. How many is "a few"? Three? At 900mph, that would give the target a location somewhere around the Yucatan peninsula at the time of the sighting. Two hours would still put it a great distance from Lubbock.




[edit on 4/24/2009 by Phage]

Yes, the account is definatelly confused, he mentions that the radar tracks were actually two different ones:

I quickly took out a map of the United States and drew in a course line between Lubbock and the radar station. A UFO flying between these two points would be on a northwesterly heading and the times it was seen at the two places gave it a speed of roughly 900 miles per hour.
This was by far the best combination of UFO reports I'd ever read and I'd read every one in the Air Force's files.

The next morning as I rode to the airport to catch an airliner back to Dayton I tried to put the whole puzzle together. It was hard to believe that all I'd heard was real. Did a huge flying wing pass over Albuquerque and travel 250 miles to Lubbock in about fifteen minutes? This would be about 900 miles per hour. Did the radar station in Washington pick up the same thing? I'd checked the distances on the big wall map in flight operations just before leaving Reese AFB. It was 1,300 miles from Lubbock to the radar site. From talking to people, we decided that the lights were apparently still around Lubbock at 11:20 P.M. and the radar picked them up just after midnight. They would have had to be traveling about 780 miles per hour. This was fairly close to the 900-mile-per-hour speed clocked by the two radars. The photos of the Lubbock Lights checked with the description of what the AEC employee and his wife had seen in Albuquerque. Nobody in Lubbock, however, had reported seeing a "flying wing" with lights. All of this was swimming around in my mind when I stepped out of the staff car at the Lubbock airport.

I think that the question about why he did mention two radars can find its explanation in AF FORM 112 part II (see below).

Now, according to Ruppelt's description of the radar's tracking:

The target had been observed for six minutes and an F-86 jet interceptor had been scrambled but by the time the F-86 had climbed into the air the target was gone.

The only matching report from Washington that i've been able to find is the following one:

Blue Book MAXW-PBB8-1382

Blue Book MAXW-PBB8-1384

Blue Book MAXW-PBB8-1385

Blue Book MAXW-PBB8-1386

Blue Book MAXW-PBB8-1387

Blue Book MAXW-PBB8-1388

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/03cd66cb3a282535.jpg[/atsimg]
dated August 26, indeed, with time references 08:28u - 08:36u (i don't know how comes that in their calculations 36 - 28 = 6, lol ) , but it's definately the one which Ruppelt was referring to (i colorized the relevant data):
now, he seems to be open to the theory that the UFOs flown over Albuquerque before pointing towards Washington: in this case, this would be the hypotetical scenario
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/4d159b12e7d00cb3.png[/atsimg]

otherwise, this would be the alternate one:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/1feb8bdd682b5ad1.png[/atsimg]

Now Washington time zone would be UTC - 05 (-04 in summer), while Lubbock would be UT -06 (-05 in summer) basically, there would be one hour difference if i'm correct, but i don't know how it was at the time. So assuming that the fleet pointed straight to Washingtong (let's take as good the distance indicated by Ruppelt, 1.300 miles) it covered 1.300 miles in ten hours more or less [1.300 / 10 = 130 mph ].
Take this calculation with a grain of salt, because it's hard for me to believe that he made such a wrong calculation, it's most likely that I'm missing something here, and anyway Phage is correct in my opinion: "a few hours later" is a sentence that shouldn't exist in a serious report, no matter if it's an official one or just a book.
All in all, i do think that the one of Lubbock lights is by itself an interesting sighting (regardless the radars trackings), as well as I find the explanations provided so far (in general) to be unsatisfactory.

reply to post by internos

Yeah. You missed something...
Larson AFB is in Washington...state.


Interesting, there is an indication of a transponder response from the radar contact. But the conclusion about the contact seems to be that it was a result of interference.

I do agree that the visual reports are very interesting.

[edit on 4/24/2009 by Phage]

reply to post by internos


internos, you should be commended for all the work you put in on gathering the facts for these cases. The old ones still have a wealth of information about them that has not been tainted with time. This is one of the few reports where birds flying in formation at night just does not work.

reply to post by Phage

OMGROFLMAO
Thank you for pointing it out Phage
Yep, totally different scenario,
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/2575f42310e538c3.jpg[/atsimg]
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/6ed2caae025d48fa.jpg[/atsimg]

while the calculations (by coincidence) basically won't change:
the only difference is that the fly over Albuquerque makes now more sense than before, but the time references indicate an unexplained gap of 7.000 + miles: i won't claim that Ruppelt deliberately lied by using the terms "a few hours" while aware of the data, but the difference is unexplainable if only one looks at the data.


reply to post by kidflash2008

Thanks kidflash2008, i just do what i can, and i'm really happy whenever it gets appreciated

The birds explanation has a very controversial story:
Ruppelt himself, on 1951, dismissed the sighting as a flock of plovers, but not only...

Ruppelt's conclusion at the time was that the professors had seen a type of bird called a plover (Ruppelt, 110). The city of Lubbock had installed new vapor street lights in 1951, and Ruppelt believed that the plovers, flying over Lubbock in their annual migration, were reflecting the new street lights at night.
Witnesses who supported this assertion were

T.E. Snider, a local farmer who on August 31, 1951 had observed some birds flying over a drive-in movie theater; the bird's undersides were reflected in the light. Another witness,

Joe Bryant, had been sitting outside his home with his wife on August 25 - the same night on which the three professors had first seen the lights. According to Bryant, he and his wife had seen a group of lights fly overhead, and then two other flights. Like the professors, they were at first baffled by the objects, but when the third group of lights passed overhead they began to circle the Bryant's home. Mr. Bryant and his wife then noticed that the lights were actually plovers, and could hear them as well.

Hynek contacted one of the Texas Tech professors in 1959 and learned that the professor, after careful research, had concluded that he had actually been observing the plovers

but

However, not everyone agreed with this explanation.

William Hams, the chief photographer for the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, took several nighttime photos of birds flying over Lubbock's vapor street lights and found that he could not duplicate Hart's photos - the images were too dim to be developed.

Dr. J.C. Cross, the head of Texas Tech's biology department, ruled out the possibility that birds could have caused the sightings.

A game warden Ruppelt interviewed felt that the sightings could not have been caused by plovers, due to their slow speed (50 MPH) and tendency to fly in groups much smaller than the number of objects reported by eyewitnesses. The warden did admit that an unusually large number of plovers had been seen in the fall of 1951.

Dr. Mead, who had observed the lights, strongly disputed the plover explanation: "these objects were too large for any bird...I have had enough experience hunting and I don't know of any bird that could go this fast we would not be able to hear...to have gone as fast as this, to be birds, they would have to have been exceedingly low to disappear quite so quickly".

Curiously, in his bestselling 1956 book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects,
Ruppelt himself would come to reject the plover hypothesis, but frustratingly refrained from explaining what the lights in fact were:
"They weren't birds, they weren't refracted light, but they weren't spaceships. The lights ... have been positively identified as a very commonplace and easily explainable natural phenomenon. It is very unfortunate that I can't divulge ... the way the answer was found....
Telling the story would lead to [the identity of the scientist who "finally hit upon the answer"] and ... I promised the man complete anonymity".

With all the due respect one may have for Ruppelt, i don't think that a man who has three different opinions on a single case is the best source from which to get informations (in one hand he accepts a flock of birds able to reach 50mph as explanation, in the other hand he investigates on the possibility that it was something flying at 900mph, and in the middle, according to his theory, there was involved something flying at 130 mph): but sadly we haven't many alternatives I would say that the plovers explanation is incomplete, uncorroborated and on top of that every attempt to replicate it failed (while to replicate a photo won't automatically debunk the original, if the object photographed is known, the camera used is known, the time and the weather conditions are known, i don't see why all they have been able to get was a black film Who really knows what really happened there? A fascinating sighting for sure, it was worthy the offorts .


[edit on 24/4/2009 by internos]

Some great reading there and I agree about the plovers.

Theres some interesting reading below from a 1952 LIFE magazine article about the sightings and some further info on the estimates from the professors who witnessed the 'lights':

April 7, 1952, LIFE article - "Have We Visitors From Outer Space


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/c79114867f0f.jpg[/atsimg]

The observations have been too numerous and too similar to be doubted. In addition the Air Force, after the closest examination, has found nothing fraudulent about Hart's pictures. The lights are much too bright to be reflections, and therefore bodies containing sources of light. Since Professors Ducker, Oberg, and Robinson could not measure the size and distance of the formations, they could form no precise estimate of their speed. However they calculated that if the lights were flying at an altitude of 5,000 feet they must then have been traveling about 1,800 mph. The professors, along with other scientists, agree that in order to explain the silence of the objects, it must be assumed that they were at 50,000 feet in the air; in which case they were going not 1,800 but 18,000 mph.

Link

Cheers.

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

Unknown object tracked on radar same time as Lubbock lights.

This incident is of interest because it was observed during the same period as the objects over Lubbock, Texas.

LARSON AFB. WASHINGTON - 26 August 1951

On 26 August 1951 at O836 PST, an unidentified flying object was detected
by an AN/CPS-4 and AN/CPS-l radar sets. The object was tracked continuously for a period of six minutes and made a timed ground speed of 950 mph. The object was on a course of 340 degrees with only slight deviations enroute. An altitude reading of 13,000 feet was obtained but the accuracy of the measurement is questionable due to brief length of time the object was detected.

The F-86 aircraft were scrambled but radar contact with the object was
lost before the aircraft were airborne, A visual search was conducted from
17,000 to 25,000 feet with negative results.

The operator of the radar set, an Air Force Captain, is considered to
be an expert operator.

Interference

Status of Investigation.

Review of this incident by the Electronics Section of ATIC concludes
that the return was possibly due to interference. This was concluded be-
cause of the apparent path of the object, directly approaching the station,
and the fact that the target was observed on only the low beam of the AN/CPS-l radar set.

Brad Sparks:

If it was tracked on two different radars, a CPS-4 as well as the CPS-1, then it couldn't be interference because they are on two different radio frequencies, interference could only affect one radar and could not possibly affect two radars and coordinate an identical target blip on both.

Link

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

ok first of all professors most of the time are the worst people to go to for reliable real world information. Many never even hold a real job or work in the field of their profession to develop a working knowledge of what they teach.

Obviously these professors are the worst scientists providing no images or recordings to provide any concrete data to support their research findings.

All of this throws their credibility into question. Four doddering old men realize in life they never accomplished much and so created this elaborate hoax as a means to be well known by society since their peers did not respect them since they werent published enough to be respected and taken seriously in scientific circles.

I wonder if flares may be an explanation...similar to the Phoenix Lights case (later sighting that was video taped and photographed, as opposed to the 8pm sighting on the same day).

The color is about right, so is the description that they didn't change size, etc. Also, the brief duration could have been from burning out, vs. high speed.

Should be a way to check if any exercise using flares was done from a nearby base...or maybe it's been ruled out. Just that it looks SO similar to the PL case...

As for Ruppelt, he's been on BOTH sides of the UFO issue, once as a coverup agent with Bluebook, and then as a UFOlogist after the investigations, so one has to examine his statements based on the time at which he gave them...

An interesting case though, no doubt...

reply to post by Gazrok


Gazrok, thanks for the reply -theres an interesting newspaper below about another sighting from the Lubbock area which occurred around the same time. The two witnesses report a 'pear-shaped object, aluminum or silver in color, which readily reflected the sunlight' - they also mention the object had a 'door or porthole'.

Article published in 'The Lubbock Morning Avalanche' newspaper, September 1, 1951.


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/adfbd2f4b7ee.jpg[/atsimg]

'Strange Aircraft' Seen at Matador.

MATADOR, Aug. 31. (Special) -- A "noiseless aircraft, flying at low altitude without aid of propellers and wings," was reported seen early this afternoon by two Matador district women and a 5-year-old child.

Mrs. Tom Tilsom, her daughter Mrs. M. G. Bethard and little Noilene Bethard were driving on State Highway 70, one and one half-miles north of here about 12:45 p.m. when the wingless craft passed 150 feet in front of their car.

The slow-moving machine "shaped somewhat like a helicopter," began circling as Mrs. Bethard stopped the car. As the craft rose "it gained speed and was out of sight within a few minutes."

The women were near enough to spot one door, or porthole, in the side of the gleaming metal, they said. When first seen, it was moving at the rate of a commercial airliner taking off, they said. It had no exhaust showing.

Mrs Bethard, whose husband sailed for Korea recently, has lived near several Air Force bases, and reported the machine she saw today was different from any she had seen before.

Link

Project Grudge Report:

On 31 August 1951 at approximately 1245 CST two ladies were driving in an automobile several miles north of Matador, Texas. The object was described as a pear-shaped object, aluminum or silver in color, which readily reflected the sunlight. The object had a port or some type of aperture in the side. It moved through the air with the small end forward. They judged the size to be about that of a B-29 fuselage. There was no sign of any axhaust and no nois was heard.

As the two ladies were driving north from Matadir, Texas, the driver of the automobile first noticed the object about 150 yards ahead of the automobile. They stopped and both ladies got out to observe the object. It was drifting slowly in an eastward direction at a speed they judged to be "less than the speed required to take off in a cub aircraft" and an altitude of abot 120 ft. Seconds later the object began to ascend rapidly and in a few seconds it moved out of sight to the east in a circular ascent. (The wind at this time was from the NE at about 5-7 knots.)

A background investigation showed that both women were of excellent character.

This incident is of interest because it was observed during the same period as the objects over Lubbock, Texas.

Link

Cheers.

Originally posted by tigpoppa
Four doddering old men realize in life they never accomplished much and so created this elaborate hoax as a means to be well known by society since their peers did not respect them since they werent published enough to be respected and taken seriously in scientific circles.

Tigpoppa -did you read any of the links (or even the first sentence) from this thread?

Interesting series of UFO sightings from around the area of Lubbock, Texas in 1951 where a few hundred people reported witnessing lights in a 'wing shaped' formation.

reply to post by karl 12


Very interesting incident and great documentation. I'm quite surprised there seems to be no reports of fighters scrambled from Reese Air Force Base on the west side of Lubbock. It was a major training base where pilots did there T-33 training.

As an aside, I'm quite certain that Lt. Felix Eugene Moncla Jr. was doing his T-33 training at Reese AFB at the time of the Lubbock Lights. He is the pilot who disappeared a few years later in an air defense mission involving a UFO over Lake Superior.

All of this throws their credibility into question. Four doddering old men realize in life they never accomplished much and so created this elaborate hoax as a means to be well known by society since their peers did not respect them since they werent published enough to be respected and taken seriously in scientific circles.

It's attacks on people you don't even know, calling scientists "doddering old men," not reading the reports or looking at the other evidence, that firmly puts people like you in the dubunker camp. It's pretty obvious you have no interest in looking at facts, especially if they go against your theories about alien visitation.

It also proves that it doesn't matter if the Pope says he saw a UFO. A true debunker will denounce anyone on the planet as a reliable witness for one reason or another.