Former World War II Fighter Pilot Bud Clem’s 1945 UFO Experience at the Hanford Plutonium Plant

Greetings Forumerions!

The latest from researcher/author Robert Hastings, involving a UFO event at the former plutonium plant at Hanford, Washington:

When World War II ended, in September 1945, Clarence R. “Bud” Clem was a Lieutenant Junior Grade (Lt. jg) in the U.S. Naval Reserves, serving as an F6F Hellcat fighter pilot assigned to Air Group 50 aboard the U.S.S. Cowpens CVL25. In an email, Clem told me, “[After the Japanese surrendered,] the Cowpens was the first aircraft carrier to arrive in Tokyo Bay and I was with the first flight to land at Yokasuka Naval Air Station (NAS) that day.”

However, almost a year earlier, the Hellcat squadron had been based at NAS Klamath Falls, Oregon. “Our group was deployed to NAS Pasco, Washington for ground support training in March 1945.” Clem wrote, “The Hanford Ordnance Works was just across the Columbia River from Pasco and designated TOP SECRET. We experienced an unknown object over the Hanford site in March/April, 1945. I did not fly after the object, as two members of our squadron did . . ..

The rest of the story . . .

Cheers,
Frank

[edit on 8-8-2009 by Frank Warren]

Very compelling story. The size, the hovering and the altitude says weather balloon is the best natural explanation to me anyway.

When reading these detailed accounts it does seem like a lot of them could have been weather balloons, but these are experienced aviators too. You'd think somebody would recognize it as such and say something.

Good Day Fls13,

Originally posted by fls13
Very compelling story. The size, the hovering and the altitude says weather balloon is the best natural explanation to me anyway.

When reading these detailed accounts it does seem like a lot of them could have been weather balloons, but these are experienced aviators too. You'd think somebody would recognize it as such and say something.

Carefully read the article again, it in part states:

"Brown quickly found the object, a bright ball of fire, and took chase. But he could not close, even with water injection that gave a quick boost in speed. The object headed out NW towards Seattle and was quickly lost by radar. Brown returned to base and we three retired to the club, still shaking and wondering what we had encountered."

This negates a "weather balloon."

Cheers,
Frank

Originally posted by Frank Warren
Good Day Fls13,

Originally posted by fls13
Very compelling story. The size, the hovering and the altitude says weather balloon is the best natural explanation to me anyway.

When reading these detailed accounts it does seem like a lot of them could have been weather balloons, but these are experienced aviators too. You'd think somebody would recognize it as such and say something.

Carefully read the article again, it in part states:

"Brown quickly found the object, a bright ball of fire, and took chase. But he could not close, even with water injection that gave a quick boost in speed. The object headed out NW towards Seattle and was quickly lost by radar. Brown returned to base and we three retired to the club, still shaking and wondering what we had encountered."

This negates a "weather balloon."

Cheers,
Frank

High altitude jet streams can hit 250 MPH. That's fast. The Hellcat Clem flew topped out at about 375 MPH but I don't think it's unreasonable that once a UFO left the area, for whatever reason, they'd pull back. Excellent case, but the weather balloon explanation isn't disproved.

"(That said, Bud Clem’s initial estimate of his squadron’s presence at the Pasco NAS was off by some two months, perhaps not unreasonably, given that the reported event occurred over 60 years ago. Similarly, Powell’s estimate of the time-frame for his own experience may be somewhat inaccurate as well.)"-Hastings

I am assuming that you are the same Frank Warren of the UFO site referenced so I am commenting here in hopes that you will investigate further (Your site will only take 4,096 characters for comments and I have a long comment).

Although intriguing, a good look at the history of the Hanford site explains this. In my opinion, what Bud Clem witnessed was the Xenon effect from reactor startup operations. This same effect is documented to have been experienced in the initial startup of B Reactor at the Hanford site.

education.jlab.org...

Xenon produces a brilliant white flash of light when it is excited electrically and is widely used in strobe lights. The light emitted from xenon lamps is also used to kill bacteria and to power ruby lasers.

Although not quite accurate (large scale plutonium production at Hanford began December 28, 1944), the following excerpt is important because at the time he could have seen this is the same time period that the reactors were starting up - from the OP link:

Other questions to Clem added few details. He later sent me his military records which revealed that the squadron was actually at Pasco from January 9 to February 15, 1945, not during March and April, as he had first indicated. Perhaps significantly, Hanford started plutonium separation on January 20, 1945.

Hanford's B Reactor (the first of 3) went critical on September 26, 1944 and they documented their experience of the Xenon effect.

History of the Plutonium Production Facilities at the Hanford Site pages 28 & 29:

“Tuesday evening, September 26, 1944, the largest atomic pile (reactor) yet assembled on earth was ready…The operators withdrew the control rods in stages just as Fermi had once directed at CP-1…The pile (reactor) went critical a few minutes past midnight; by 2 A.M. it was operating at a higher level of power than any previous chain reaction. For the space of an hour all went well…Early Wednesday evening 8 pile died…Early Thursday morning the pile came back to life. By 7 A.M. it was running well above critical again. But twelve hours later it began another decline. Princeton theoretician John A. Wheeler…had been “concerned for months about fission product poisons.” B pile’s heavy breathing convinced him such a poisoning had occurred.” – Rhodes 1986, pp. 557-558

To determine if this were the case, Crawford Greenewalt, also present for the startup, called Samuel Allison at the Argonne laboratory to test Wheeler’s theory using the CP-3 reactor: “Disbelieving, [Walter] Zinn started the 300-kilowatt reactor up again and ran it at full power for twelve hours. It was primarily a research instrument and it had never been run for so long at full power before. He found the xenon effect…Groves received the news acidly. He had ordered Compton to run CP-3 at full power full time to look for just such trouble” (Rhodes 1986, p. 559).

Fortunately, Wheeler had anticipated fission poisoning and had convinced Du Pont to increase the count of uranium channels for a margin of safety. The channels were already in place but not connected to the water supply – that took 2 months. But because of the extraordinary schedule pressures they operated “with sufficient reactivity to overcome fission product poisoning effects”. This does not say that they eliminated the Xenon effect but just that the process was “sufficient”.

D Reactor went critical December 28, 1944 and it is documented fact that they took shortcuts,

In the face of intense pressure from Oppenheimer in Los Alamos and Groves in Washington, D.C., Matthias continuously pressed Du Pont to produce more plutonium. In response, Du Pont not only “ran the reactors above their rated power level” (Findlay and Hevly 1995, p. 50), but also reduced the radiological cooling period for irradiated fuel elements to potentially unsafe levels to meet immediate demands: “Throughout the spring and easrly summer of 1945, metal cooling times fell, as HEW rushed to produce plutonium for the Trinity and Nagasaki bombs. Exactly how short the metal decay periods became is unclear, but it is known that they fell below 30 days and to perhaps as low as a few weeks” (Gerber 1994a, p. 1).

F Reactor went online February 25, 1945 and I would venture to say it would have experienced some of the same effects that B & D Reactors did at startup.





[edit on 8/8/2009 by Iamonlyhuman]

As luck would have it, my father (who worked on the Manhattan project) called just after I posted the above. There is a question in my mind about whether the light made by the Xenon effect would have escaped reactor containment. I asked him about this and, though he knew about the problem that the people at Hanford had (he worked at a different site during this time period) and he was quite familiar with Xenon, he did not learn about it until later because of the massive degree of secrecy and his area of expertise was chemical engineering.

He did suggest that I talk to a long time family friend who did work at Hanford during startup. This man is around 90 (a couple years older than my father) and fortunately is still in good health and in the area. However, because of the massive secrecy during the time (no one person knew the total picture), I'm not sure that he would have been privy to this information but, at very least, he may have seen something or heard talk and he definitely would know whether it was possible for the gas to escape containment as he holds a PhD and after his work at Hanford became the director of reactor operations at yet another plutonium production site (where he and my father became friends).

I'll let you know if he knows or remembers anything that would help, I plan on visiting him as soon as he's available as I haven't talked to him or his wife in about a year anyway and at his age it's important to make the opportunity.

There is no Foo like and old Foo (traveling fire ball).
Under intelligent control as the saying goes.
Sightings repeated many times and still around.
Now called orbs.
One can see the effects of electricity and air on youtube experiments.
Lacking is the demo of the craft flying away in a flash of light.

Good Day Iamonlyhuman<


reply to post by Iamonlyhuman


Sorry for the slow response on this end; I find the "Xenon effect" fascinating and appreciate your input; also, I would appreciate it if you would post it in the comments section at the end of the article (at The UFO Chronicles); if your content won't fit into "one" comment, then continue it in another.

As I haven't looked into the matter yet, my initial questions would be if the phenomenon would show up on radar as was the claim in the report; also, did the effect have range limitations? The report states that,

"the large object, which hovered above the Hanford nuclear reactor for an additional 20 minutes, before going straight up as the six Hellcats gave up the intercept"

Cheers,
Frank

reply to post by Frank Warren


Yes I will most certainly post it on UFO Chronicles. I don't know why I didn't think to post more than one comment to begin with, lol, brain burp I guess.

Those are good questions and I will see if he has any theories on those as well. I couldn't get in touch with him today but I did talk to his son who told me that they were out of town for a couple of days visiting the son's sister. At least it was good to hear that they are doing well. I will follow up with this as it is very interesting to me to!

Afternoon "I"!

Originally posted by Iamonlyhuman
reply to post by Frank Warren

 

Yes I will most certainly post it on UFO Chronicles. I don't know why I didn't think to post more than one comment to begin with, lol, brain burp I guess.

Those are good questions and I will see if he has any theories on those as well. I couldn't get in touch with him today but I did talk to his son who told me that they were out of town for a couple of days visiting the son's sister. At least it was good to hear that they are doing well. I will follow up with this as it is very interesting to me to!

Much thanks! Also, I forwarded your theorem to Robert Hastings, and he has sent a response as well . .

Cheer,
Frank

Hi Frank -very interesting thread.

Theres a government document below (taken from this thread) which describes unknown objects over the Hanford plant:

Flying discs over Hanford Nuclear plant:

Title: MEMORANDUM, Subject: Flying Discs

To: Memorandum For Record

Author: U. G. Carlan, Major, Survey Section

Date: August 4, 1950

Length: 1 page

Classification: CONFIDENTIAL

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/51bee44f432b.jpg[/atsimg]

Cheers.

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