Eighty Years of Pilot UFO sightings.

Thread dealing with the work of NARCAP, military/civilian pilot UFO sightings, electromagnetic interference effects and the 3400 actual unknown reports collated from aviation professionals:

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Great thread authored by Xtraeme dealing with Sir Francis Chichester´s UFO sighting whilst piloting the Gypsy Moth:

Aviation Pioneer, Sir Francis Chichester, Sights UFO

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Swissair 127 near miss with a UFO:

Incident feaured at 6:57

Pilot Transmission recording:

Swissair Flight 127 (Probably Capt. Bobet speaking.) "ATC Swissair 127."

ATC = Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center, Danbury Sector 22: "Go ahead Swissair."

Swissair: "Yes sir, I don't know what it was, but it just over flew just like a couple of hundred feet above us. I don't know if it was a rocket or whatever. But incredibly fast. Opposite direction."

ATC: "In the opposite direction?"

Swissair: "Yes sir, and the time was two-one-zero-seven (5:07 PM local time). It was too fast to be an airplane."

ATC: "OK, thank you."

(ATC): To Houston 986, another airplane in the vicinity of Swissair 127: "Did you see anything like a missile in your area, perhaps off to your right?"

H 986: "I'll take a good look, but if it's going that fast, I probably won't get a chance. We just saw Swissair go by a minute ago."

Swissair 127: "We had no warning. It was way too fast!"



Force Fit debunk

The radio report was so provocative that the Boston Flight Standards office was notified while the airplane was still airborne and a FFA officer was sent to meet the crew. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), along with the FAA met the pilots. Normally this type of meeting is unheard of. The next day the Swissair crew was interviewed separately by four government agents. Bob Durant a commercial airline pilot later interviewed the Captain Bobet who said, he was clearly dismayed the balloon explanation. "He thought it preposterous!"

Captain Bolet thought, "The path of the UFO was from opposite direction, slightly right. Estimated horizontal distance-between First Officer's seat and engine #3, vertical distance between 100 and 200 feet above the aircraft. "At the same time, I saw the First Officer plunging his head down towards his knees. The Flight Officer mentioned later that he thought he would get hit by the object. The UFO speed appeared to be very high. The object was white and balloons are dark. Balloons fly for about an hour and the last one had been launched ten hours earlier.

Transmission recording

has it really been 80 years. and people sttill dont believe...

Originally posted by SheScreamsMyName
has it really been 80 years. and people sttill dont believe...

SheScreamsMyName, thanks for the reply and I know it's the title of the thread but I think UFO reports go way further back than that - I also agree the subect should be treated far more seriously than it currently is (if that's what your comment means).
Cheers.

Airline Captain Neil Daniels describes UFO witnessed by his crew and the resulting electromagnetic effects on his aircraft:

Official FAA cockpit recordings released under the freedom of information act. Additional compelling testimony from a NASA research scientist.

skeptic logic....pilots with 30 years experience must have mistake Venus for a UFO...lol...gimme a break...pilot > anybody else's opinion with regard to UFOs especially some guy who has never flown a plane before

reply to post by primetime2123



Primetime, thanks for the reply and I agree that the Venus explanation does tend to get abused by 'debunkers' in specific UFO cases - it's not a pilot report but the official explanation for the Portage County incident is an absolute joke, no wonder certain individuals on these boards won't touch the thread with a ten foot bargepole:


*Above BlueBook* - Ohio UFO Chase , Portage County April 17, 1966


As for unexplained aviation reports, here's a very interesting case from over Honolulu covered in the free E-book 'The Challenge of Unidentified Flying Objects' by Professor Charles Maney:

THE SIGHTING NORTHEAST OF HONOLULU

One of the best authenticated cases and one which received nationwide publicity in the newspapers of the United States is the sighting witnessed and confirmed by six different airline crews some nine hundred miles northeast of Honolulu in the early hours of July 11, 1959. The fact that the captains of these airliners and their crews, expert and experienced aviators all of them, testified as to having witnessed the sighting of unidentifiable navigated objects in the sky can leave no doubt in the mind of any reasonable thinking person as to the reality of the incident.

The six aircraft within the region of the sighting included three Pan American Airways planes, an Air Force B-50, a Canadian Pacific airliner, and a Slick Airways Cargo plane. Captain W. B. Nash, a PAA pilot, a NICAP special advisor, secured extra details of this sighting, in line with the policy of NICAP to explore all available evidences of significant sightings. (It will be remembered that Captains Nash and Fortenberry witnessed one of the most dramatic maneuvers of the UFO's ever recorded, when they observed a fleet of large disc­-shaped objects perform aerial gyrations in the sky above the neighborhood of Newport News, Virginia on the night of July 14, 1952.)

The objects were observed in a clear sky. "A large and very bright object"--"flanked by three or four smaller lower magnitude lights in a line below" were observed to be travelling at terrific speed, estimated by Captain George Wilson at "thousands of miles per hour." Captain Wilson stated that the formation hurtled across the sky toward the airliner he was piloting, when suddenly it "made an abrupt right turn and disappeared to the south." Captain George Wilson with co-pilot Richard Lorenzen and crew member Bob Scott were flying a Boeing strato-cruiser of the Pan American Airways. In his report to NICAP Captain Wilson said that the object was so bright it was "like looking at a piece of the sun." He told Honolulu newsmen: "It was faster than anything I've ever seen. It may have been one very large object with brilliant center lights and surrounding lights of lesser magnitude, or separate objects. The smaller lights were either part of the mysterious object or this was an example of darn good formation flying.

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Cheers.

Captain Dennis Betts interview:

UFO Recollections of a WW11 Pilot, Captain Dennis Betts; Rare Interview From 1995 (poor sound quality)

Please excuse the somewhat low definition quality here...as video camera technology from the early 90's wasn't too good, but this previously unseen recording that I made has some very interesting and important content indeed.
Please be patient and listen to the reminiscences of this WW11 pilot; I can testify that the photographs Dennis holds up do contain a very interesting unidentified aerial object, which if I could have taken these snaps away for duplication, would have had major scientific implications should I have been allowed to get this into the media at the time. Incredibly, the flying object was an orb with a cross on the top of it, (as clear as you like and taken with a good camera). Sadly, Dennis wouldn't let the originals out of his possession after he had previously been tricked out of the negatives...(nothing new there then).
I found the witness to be entirely straight forward and honest, and one couldn't wish to meet a more sincere person; he was even kind enough to give us here at BEAMS - The British Earth and Aerial Mysteries Society, a fine lecture, sometime after this interview was conducted and he even let the audience examine said pictures.

The whole pilots seeing ufo's thingy has always been a sticking point for me. While I am the first to acknowledge that pilots are people first (meaning, they are idiots like you and me) I find it difficult to simply dismiss all of their accounts not only based on the quantity, but also the quality.

The engineer that works for us bought a plane two years ago. We use it to fly around our local territory. It saves us a huge amount of drive time and hassle. I have flown commercially my entire life....and a ton at that. But I have not really flown in these little planes before. I don't like them, lol. Too loud...etc.

But, over the last two years I have logged thousands of miles at night in this tiny tin can. Man, the crazy stuff you see at night while flying, lol. I have never seen anything that I would consider a UFO, but I can see how flying at night could produce such reports easily. Now, daytime accounts with pilot recordings and radar data is another matter.

But, just remember that pilots are idiots first, pilots second.....just like you and me (minus the pilot part, lol). No different than astronauts....I once got in a mild fender bender while a passenger in an astronaut's car because he had difficulty figuring out how a four way stop sign worked, lol...

Ignorethefacts, thanks for your reply about the 'pilots seeing ufo's thingy' - I see what you're saying about pilots only being human and I'm sure some of the military/civilian pilot UFO reports do involve misidentifications of some sort or another - that said, cases where electromagnetic effects and/or radar confirmation are involved are more difficult to dismiss - there's a good article below from the Herald Tribune and Dominique Weinstein makes some interesting points about report percentages - I'm just thankful people like him and his NARCAP colleagues are out there conducting serious investigations into this subject and attempting to make a positive contribution to the field of UFO/UAP research.



Article:

If you’ve been too lazy to check out the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena’s extensive Project Sphere report, here’s an example of the level of detail:


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/84a6e81597d4.jpg[/atsimg]

Dominique Weinstein belongs to the French National Center for Space Studies’ UFO study, GEIPAN. He analyzed 300 cases of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) activity reported across the world by military and civilian pilots from 1947-2007. In support of NARCAP founder Richard Haines’ contention that these encounters pose flight-safety hazards, Weinstein addresses 39 incidents, or 14 percent, involving electromagnetic effects.

Specificly, 15 planes lost some form of UHF/VHF radio communication; nine had their magnetic compasses screwed up, including one that showed two compasses pointing in opposite directions; seven automatic radiocompasses went haywire; six planes experienced engine problems; five reported varying levels of weapons-system failure; and three logged general electrical issues. In all but two cases, the effects were temporary, as systems returned to normal when the UAP left the vicinity.

Eighty seven percent of these encounters occurred at cruising altitude. Radar data confirmation, or lack thereof, was available for 146 reports. Eighty one of those incidents generated radar data, with 15 reflecting both ground and air radar coverage.

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Interesting aircraft UFO report from Soviet Cosmonaut Pavel Popovich in 1978:

In the 2002 SciFi Channel documentary Out of the Blue, Popovich relays a sighting of a UFO next to the airplane he was travelling aboard as he was returning home from Washington D.C. with a delegation of scientists. The UFO was seen by everyone on board the plane. It was perfect triangle shaped and emitted a very bright, white light at a distance of about 1.5 kilometres and an altitude about 1,000 metres above the airplane. The object had en estimated speed of 1500 km/h travelling parallel to the airplane and passed and overtook the plane in about 30 to 40 seconds.

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This is a very good documentary posted at UFOs Merseyside News:

UFOs In South America

Covers some pilot reports as well as some ground sightings. Some very interesting videos too.

Originally posted by UFO Partisan
This is a very good documentary posted at UFOs Merseyside News:

UFOs In South America

UFO Partisan, thanks for posting that film mate - I'm about five minutes into it and it looks extremely interesting.

Second part of interview with WWII pilot Dennis Betts describing 'an oval, hovering object and strange activity over Thurleigh airfield' (very poor sound quality - best with earphones).

Another WW2 pilot reports UFO encounter:

Veteran World War II pilot says he had close encounter during mission

"... another pilot and I were flying in close formation on our way back to base ... Suddenly, two spherical objects, each bigger than a single-engine plane, appeared, flying not more than 20 yards off my left side, as if they were flying in formation with us."

Everett Harris, 89yrs, tells of his UFO sighting during WW2

Pelotas, Brazil - October 5, 1996:

Brazilian pilot Haroldo Westendorf, 39, was flying over Pelotas when he encountered an enormous pyramid or cone shaped UFO, with 8-10 sides; it was 100 meters in diameter and 70 meters high. Westendorf was able to fly around the base of the object three times, at one point coming as close as 40 meters. Then, out of an opening at the top of the craft, a smaller classic disc-shaped UFO emerged and flew off at tremendous speed. Three air traffic controllers and others on the ground also witnessed the event.

Post

Spain - 1967/1968:

The ufo wave over Spain was so intense that in that same fall, the office of the Air Ministry of Spain made public a note which solicited that all citizens who would be witness to any of these objects ,should communicate to the corresponding air sector [authorities]. That official note was going to be the first indirect acknowledgement by the authorities in Spaniard Avionics of ufo's.Another Pyramid Over Spain

In one of those official files precisely dated June,3, 1967, the Air Defense was explaining the intent of an interception of another UFO in "Pyramid" form by saber F-86 fighter jet.

Thread

Testimony taken from the NOUFORS audio collection involving three disc shaped objects being photographed by military jet's gun camera:


Audio Link

CALCULATING THE COST OF COVER-UP:

In reading the UFO reports on the MUFON site, I notice a good percentage of sightings are
followed by reports of the witness seeing jet fighters chasing the object.

IF someone could calculate the cost of keeping a crew and jet on standby alert, and
the percentage of sightings where jet fighters are reported, we'd have at least an
estimate of the costs for covering up this phenomenon.

Example:
1. One jet and crew on standby 24/7
2. At 50 locations across the US.
3. Actual cost of scrambling the jet
4. Jets used per incident
Sum that up.
Estimate that chasing/monitoring cost is approx. 1/4 of the expenses.
Voila! A black budget cost estimate.