Thread dealing with spurious, contrived or just plain ridiculous 'official' government UFO explanations.

I'm sure there are many people out there who just accept these USAF 'debunks' without a second look but if a person actualy examines the case histories then many of these evaluations simply fail to stand up.

Heres a relevant statement made by Dr James E Mcdonald from the University of Arizona:

"As a result of several trips to project Bluebook,I´ve had an opportunity to examine quite carefully and in detail the types of reports that are made by Bluebook personnel.In most cases, I have found that theres almost no correlation between so-called "evaluations and explanations" that are made by Bluebook and the facts of the case...
There are hundreds of good cases in the Air Force files that should have led to top-level scientific scrutiny of this problem,years ago,yet these cases have been swept under the rug in a most disturbing way by Project Bluebook investigators and their consultants."

Dr James McDonald -Senior physicist at the Institute for Atmospheric Physics and professor in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Arizona

If anyone knows of any more examples then please feel free to post.

The Redmond Oregon UFO Incident.


Incident

Shortly before dawn on September 24th,1959,Police Officer Robert Dickerson was driving through the streets of Redmond,Oregon when he saw a large,bright object descend over the city,stop abruptly,and hover at two hundred feet.
The object was low enough that nearby treetops glowed.
Minutes later,Dickerson drove to the Federal Aviation Administration Office at the Redmond Airport.
Meanwhile,the object rapidly moved to an area northeast of the airport and once again hovered. Its colour changed from bright white to reddish orange.
Through binoculars,Dickerson and others perceived it as flat and round;tongues of "flame" occasionaly extended from its edge.

At 5:10,the F.A.A. reported the object to Seattle Air Route Control Centre,which relayed the message to Hamilton Air Force Base in California.
At 5 :18 A.M.,six F-102 jet fighters were scrambled from Portland to intercept.
Witnesses were still watching the hovering object when the jets roared over Redmond. As the aircraft approached,the object squelched its "tongues of flame",emitted a fiery exhaust,shot up into the air at an incredible speed,and disappeared into the clouds at fourteen thousand feet.
It was so close to the path of the jets that one of the pilots swerved to avoid hitting it. Another jet,caught in the turbulence of the tremendous exhaust,nearly lost control.One pilot,using gunsight radar,continued the chase,but the object abruptly changed course-an event that was tracked on radar at Klamath Falls Ground Control Intercept -and the pilot gave up.
For two hours afterward,the unknown object continued to register on radar,performing high-speed maneuvers at altitudes between six thousand and fifty-four thousand feet.


USAF "Force fit" debunk:

The pilots immediatley received an intelligence debriefing and were ordered not to discuss the matter,even among themselves.But hundreds of Redmond citizens had heard the jets,some had seen the interceptors,and a few had made reports about the unknown object.
Forced into an explanation,the air force said the flight was a routine investigation caused by false radar returns.Excitable witnesses probably imagined the glow.
Word soon leaked out,however,that the F.A.A. was checking for abnormal radioactivity where witnesses saw the object hover and "blast off".
This made it difficult for people to swallow the air force explanation.
Why would the F.A.A. check for abnormal radiation if the whole event was illusionary?
As a result the air force changed its solution: the object everyone had seen was probably a weather balloon.It did not bother to explain how weather balloon could outdistance jets flying 600 mph.
When offering this explanation,the air force did not know that the nation´s leading civilian UFO group -the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena -had obtained certified copies of F.A.A. logs.
This was an unexpected coup,as the F.A.A. logs described the UFO and its maneuvers in great detail,including its evasion from the interceptors.The logs also included air force confirmations of radar tracking,scrambling of Portland jets,and a report from Klamth Falls.
When this information became public,the air force promptly denounced the F.A.A. for issuing false information and maintained its balloon answer.

After more pressure from NICAP and several legislators, however, the airforce finally announced the "true" explanation: the witnessess had seen planet Venus.

Link

Dayton,USA -March 8th,1950

An extraordinary encounter took place on March 8th,1950, once again right over ATIC in Dayton. In mid morning,TWA pilot Capt.W .H. Kerr reported to the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) that he and two other TWA pilots saw a UFO hovering at a high altitude.
The pilots were unaware that CAA had received over twenty other reports describing a UFO in the area.
ATIC contol tower operators saw the object,and the radar had an unidentified target in the same position.Something was up there.

Wright Patterson AFB sent four F-51 fighters to intercept.Two of the pilots saw the object,which appeared round and,in the words of one of them, "huge and metallic".
It appeared to be hiding in a cloud formation,which prevented the pilots from closing on it. They eventualy turned back.The Master Sergeant who tracked the object on radar stated
"The target was a good,solid return....caused by a good,solid target", Witnesses reported that the UFO climbed verticaly out of sight at high speed.

A report was sent to the Civil Aeronautics Authority in Washington,then turned over to Air Force Intelligence -

ATIC's official answer was that the UFO had been the planet Venus.
The pilots and radar men vehemently disagreed.

Link

30th May 1952 - Chorwon ,Korea.

Several U.S. soldiers saw a bright UFO that looked like a falling star,except that it stopped falling and began to climb again.
It then moved northeast at about 150mph, reversed course twice,then climbed at a forty five degree angle and faded from sight.
One guard reported a pulsating sound from the object.
An Air Intelligence Information Report stated that an F-94 attempted to intercept this object.
The pilot described it as round,of unknown size, "brilliant white" and leaving no exhaust.
It undertook clearly evasive maneuvers and pulled away from the F-94 at thirty thousand feet.
According to this intelligence report,"the object possessed a superior speed,superior climbing ability,and was able to turn equally as well as the F-94"

Blue Book's evaluation: balloon with flare.

Link

the ignorant majority of the populus will just eat it up

A new national poll found that 72 percent of Americans believe the government is not telling the public everything it knows about UFO activity, and 68 percent think the government knows more about extraterrestrial life than it is letting on, the SCI FI Channel reported. The poll—sponsored by SCI FI as part of its promotion for Steven Spielberg's 20-hour SF miniseries Taken—also revealed that men more than women think such information should be shared with the public. RoperASW conducted the poll of 1,021 adults aged 18 and over from Aug. 23-25. The margin of error is 3 percent.

Most Americans say it is very likely or somewhat likely that humans are not alone in the universe and that intelligent life exists on other planets.

a. Persons wanting to report UFO/Unexplained Phenomena activity should contact an UFO/Unexplained Phenomena Reporting Data Collection Center, such as the National Institute for Discovery Sciences (NIDS), the National UFO Reporting Center, etc.

b. If concern is expressed that life or property might be endangered, report the activity to the local law enforcement department.

Thanks for the replies -couldn't agree more.

Another extremely dubious USAF 'debunk' is the official explanation for the Portage County incident from April,1966.

Easynow has done a great thread on this one

Testimony:

"I always look behind me so no one can come up behind me. And when I looked in this wooded area behind us, I saw this thing.... As it came over the trees, I looked at Barney and he was still watching the car.. and he didn't say nothing and the thing kept getting brighter and the area started to get light..."

The object was about fifty feet in diameter, with a bright, well-defined light beam shining down from the bottom.

"When Barney Neff saw the object he just stood there with his mouth open for a minute as bright as it was, and he looked down. And I started looking down and I looked at my hands and my clothes weren't burning or anything, when it stopped right over on top of us. The only thing, the only sound in the whole area was a hum... like a transformer being loaded or an overloaded transformer when it changes..."

They broke for their patrol car. Once safely inside, Spaur radioed a quick report. A Sergeant Schoenfelt told them to follow the object. They chased the object at speeds of up to 100 mph as it headed east, constantly reporting their position on the radio to allow other officers to follow the chase.

As the object moved to the east, Officer H. Wayne Huston of East Palestine, Ohio joined in the chase. He had been listening to the radio reports, and when he saw the object pass overhead with Spaur and Neff close behind, he took off in pursuit.

The chase continued across the state line into Pennsylvania, and as Spaur's vehicle got low on gas, he pulled over to enlist the aid of a Conway, Pennsylvania officer. When Spaur stopped, so did the object. They phoned the Air Force from Conway, and minutes later over the radio they heard that jet fighters were being scrambled to intercept the object. The object had other plans, however, and it suddenly shot straight up and vanished.

Frank Panzenella, a Conway, PA police officer said:

"The object was the shape of half a football, was very bright and about 25 to 35 feet in diameter.... The object continued to go upward until it got as small as a ballpoint pen. Relative to the moon, the object was quite distant and to the left of the moon. We all four watched the object shoot straight up and disappear."

Police Chief Gerald Buchert of Mantua photographed the object from in front of his home. The Air Force told him not to release the photo, but The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that the photo showed an object that was like two saucers put together, with a light upper saucer upside down over a dark lower saucer. The picture was only seen by a reporter and Mr. Weitzel, NICAP investigator, who was not convinced, but it was never available for analysis.

You need to read Mr. Weitzel's investigation details in his letter to Prof. Powers to realize just how stunning the events were.

Spaur stated:

"Somebody had control over it. It wasn't just an object floating around. It can manoeuver."

The official Air Force evaluation has concluded that the case is explained "by an astronomical phenomenon." When asked for details, they explained that the officers had seen a satellite at first, and then had chased the planet Venus for forty-odd miles.

Absolutely none of the witness and investigators could agree with this perfectly ridiculous explanation. But at that time, after the Robertson Panel organized by the CIA, Project Blue Book did not have anything left of a possibly sincere research project but had clearly become an anti-UFO propaganda machine.

The investigation by Major Quintanilla actually consisted in a two minutes and a half phone call to the sole Dale Spaur, starting with this question: "tell me about this mirage you saw."

Link

Originally posted by GW8UK
The national investigations comittee on areal pheonomena arent making this up

No, they're most certainly not.

NICAP lists some quite remarkable incidents in their UFO Evidence report - perhaps the one thing they all have in common is that UFO cynics rarely want to address them.

NICAP Evidence report

Originally posted by redwoodjedi
Is there any more nefarious of an example than Roswell?! Talk about a force fit debunk.

Originally posted by converge
The FAA has since learned to not get caught directly dealing with the UFO phenomena. It's actually their explicit public policy.

In FAA's Order 7110.65S ("a manual that prescribes air traffic control procedures and phraseology for use by personnel providing air traffic control services") and the FAA's Aeronautical Information Manual (AIM), (which "(...) contains the fundamentals required in order to fly in the United States National Airspace System."), under Chapter 9, Section 8 and Chapter 7, Section 6 of the respective documents, we find something titled Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) Reports..

SWISSAIR 127'S NEAR MISS WITH A UFO

Incident feaured on this (excellent) documentary at 6:57

YouTube Link

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

Originally posted by karl 12

SWISSAIR 127'S NEAR MISS WITH A UFO

*snip*

Incident feaured on this (excellent) documentary at 6:57
www.youtube.com...

Lemme help with that vid link, Karl! good job by the way!

YouTube Link

Cheers,

Erik

Though it may be debatable whether the above cases of electrical transmission failure were merely coincidences with UFO activity, an incident on April 18,1962, involving a UFO that had been tracked from New York, through Kansas to Eureka, Utah, was well documented. The Air Force spokesman admitted that the object had landed, and during the 42 minutes that it was on the ground near the power station there was no power, but it was restored when the UFO left. The object was pursued by jet interceptors summoned from Phoenix and Stead Field in Reno until it exploded over the Mesquite Range in Nevada in a brilliant glare that was visible over five states.(67)

Summer 1948; Goose Bay, Labrador

Major Edwin A. Jerome, USAF (Ret.) reported the following information to NICAP in 1961. Major Jerome was a Command Pilot, Air Provost Marshal for about 8 years, and also served as an Intelligence Officer and CID Investigator.

"My only real contact with the UFO problem was way back in the summer of 1948 while stationed at Goose Bay, Labrador. There an incident happened which is worthy of note. It seems that a high-ranking inspection team was visiting the radar facilities of this base whose mission at the time was to serve as a prime refueling and servicing air base for all military and civilian aircraft plying the north Atlantic air routes. GCA [Ground Control Approach radar] was a critical part of this picture, thus these high-ranking officers RCAF & USAF up to the rank of General as I recall.

"While inspecting the USAF radar shack, the operator noted a high-speed target on his scope going from NE to SW. Upon computation of the speed it was found to be about 9000 mph. This incident caused much consternation in the shack since obviously this was no time for levity or miscalculations in the presence of an inspecting party. The poor airman technician was brought to task for his apparent miscalculation. Again the target appeared and this time the inspectors were actually shown the apparition on the radar screen. The only reaction to this was that obviously the American equipment was way off calibration.

"The party then proceeded to the Canadian side to inspect the RCA"' GCA facility Upon their arrival the OIC related his most unbelievable target they had just seen. The inspecting officers were appalled that such a coincidence should happen. I was part of the meager intelligence reporting machinery at the base and I was called in to make an immediate urgent intelligence report on the incident. The prevailing theory at the time was that it was a meteor. I personally discounted this since upon interviewing the radar observers on both sides of the base they stated that it maintained an altitude of 60,000 feet and a speed of approximately 9000 mph.

To make this story more incredible the very next day both radars again reported an object hovering over the base at about 10 mph, at 45,000 feet.
The "official" story on this was that they were probably some type of "high-flying sea gulls".

www.nicap.org...