The Minot AFB B-52 UFO Incident.

Very intriguing witness testimony from pilots and security guards involved in the Minot AFB B-52 incident of 1968 (see video) - the unknown object was confirmed on radar and witnessed by several (separately located) military personnel including the crew of a B-52 as they passed overhead.

MINOT AFB B-52 UFO INCIDENT

For over three hours in late 1968, numerous ground witnesses observed an unconventional aerial object maneuvering over the [Minuteman] ICBM missile fields surrounding Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota. During this time, an unidentified object paced a B-52 and was recorded on radar. Later, the crew of the B-52 overflew and observed a large glowing object on or near the ground.

Portions of this incident were recently dramatized in the ABC News Special television documentary Peter Jennings Reporting: UFOs: Seeing is Believing.

Link

Witness Testimony from ground and flight crews begin at 36:10

..We are also reminded of Blue Book case# 12548, in which a UFO was sighted on October 24th, 1968 at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota. Airmen on the ground saw a brightly-lit object hovering above the ground. A B52 was flying in the area and was diverted to investigate. The crew clearly saw a structured craft and they appear on camera to describe their experiences. The co-pilot, an Air Force captain, is certain that what he saw was an alien spacecraft. The navigator picked it up on his radar scope and we are shown photographs of the actual blip as it paced the aircraft. When it vanished from the scope, they turned the aircraft in an attempt to locate the UFO visually.They saw it hovering close to the ground. It was described as at least 200-feet in diameter, hundreds of feet long, glowing yellow, with a metallic cylinder that was attached.

The crew of the B52 and sixteen ground witnesses attested that they saw a UFO that night. Blue Book came to the astonishing conclusion that what they actually saw were nothing more than stars!

Link

edit on 4-5-2023 by karl 12 because: (no reason given)

Object as witnessed from the cockpit of the B-52:











Pilot Transmissions

MINOT AIR FORCE BASE - In Captain Kevin Randle's new book Scientific Ufology he reports on a Project Blue Book case dated October 24, 1968, when missile crews, control personnel and maintenance personnel observed a UFO in the vicinity of the base. The following is the tape between the air controllers and the B-52 crew with call sign JAG Three one.

At 0335, the controller asked, "And JAG 31 on your way out to the WT fix request you look out toward your one o'clock position for the next fifteen miles and see if you see any orange glows out there? "Roger, roger glows 31, "Someone is seeing UFOs again!" "Roger I see a........ (Rest of transmission garbled)

At 0352, The controller then radioed, "Three one, the UFO is being picked up by weather's radar also. Should be at our one o'clock position three miles now"

The pilot said, "We have nothing on our airborne radar and I'm in some pretty thick haze now and unable to see out that way."

At 0358, the pilot then requested an instrument guided approach, and received instructions. The pilot called, and then the transmitter went dead, but they could hear instructions from the ground. The controller asked them to squawk ident," which meant to use the aircraft's transponder which would paint the controller's radar with a large, glowing blip with the aircraft's identification.

At 0400, the controller then radioed, "JAG 31 if you hear me squawk ident...JAG 31 ident observed. Cleared for the approach attempt. Contact on frequency 271 decimal three and you're cleared for the low approach. They continued to have radio problems for another couple of minutes.

At 0402, they were able to communicate easily. The pilot said, "Our UFO was off to our left side when we started penetration.

"Roger, understand you did see something on your left side." "We had a radar return at about a mile and a quarter, at nine o'clock position for about the time we left 200 to 14..."They discussed the troubles with the transmission and then, the controller asked, "Affirmative. I was wondering how far out did you see that UFO?"

"He was about one and a half miles off our left wing at 35 miles when we started in and stayed with us 'til about 10."

"I wonder if that could have been your radio troubles?"

"I don't know.... But that's exactly when they started. "At 0413, Jag 31 are you observing any more UFOs? Negative on radar. We can't see anything visually.

JAG 31, request you have someone report to base ops after you land.

What we have, then, was a group of sightings made by men on the ground, at the missile sites scattered around the base. There was radar sightings from ground and weather's radar. There were visual sightings from the crew of the B-52, and an airborne radar sighting where the target traveled at 3,000 miles per hour. Scope photographs were taken. There were sightings made by S.Sgt. Bond the FSC at Nov. Flight, S.Sgt. Smith at Oscar-1, Julelt, and Mike Flight Team and a number of men in widely scattered locations. The object landed at location AA-43 and the entire observation lasted for 45 minutes. Fourteen other people in separate locations also reported the UFO.

Link

Intriguing story.

Quick question, is that supposed to be an actual photo taken of the object by the crew in the cockpit? If so, is it just the glowing yellow shape, or is everything else in the picture also supposed to be part of the object?

Originally posted by Croda

Quick question, is that supposed to be an actual photo taken of the object by the crew in the cockpit? If so, is it just the glowing yellow shape, or is everything else in the picture also supposed to be part of the object?

Croda, thanks for the reply -the cockpit picture is taken from the animation sequence found on this video (see 39:10).

The pilot described the object as "a minimum of 200 feet in diameter and hundreds of feet long with a metallic cylinder attached to another section that was shaped like a crescent moon".

The radar operator also makes some very interesting comments on the video stating how the object flew in formation along the same heading as the B-52 at about three o clock off their right wing.


Heres the image of the object taken from the radarscope:






Cheers.

Report about the incident from Bluebook scientist Dr. J. Allen Hynek describing object speed and electromagnetic interference effects.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek:

Some of the more pertinent details of the sighting are contained in the following excerpts from a Project Blue Book Memorandum for the Record, prepared by a Blue Book staff officer:

At about 0300 hours (3:00 A.M.) local, a B-52 that was about 30 miles northwest of Minot AFB and making practice penetrations sighted an unidentified blip on their radars.
Initially the target travelled approximately 2 1/2 miles in 3 sec. or at about 3,000 mph.
After passing from the right to the left of the plane it assumed a position off the left wing of the 52. The blip stayed off the left wing for approximately 20 miles at which point it broke off. Scope photographs were taken.
When the target was close to the B-52 neither of the two transmitters in the B-52 would operate properly but when it broke off both returned to normal operation.
At about this time a missile maintenance man called in and reported sighting a bright orangish-red object. The object was hovering at about 1000 ft, or so, and had a sound similar to a jet engine. The observer had stopped his car, but he then started it up again. As he started to move, the object followed him, then accelerated and appeared to stop at about 6-8 miles away. The observer shortly afterward lost sight of it.

In response to the maintenance man’s call the B-52, which had continued its penetration run. was vectored toward the visual which was about 10 miles northwest of the base. The B-52 confirmed having sighted a bright light of some type that appeared to be hovering just over or on the ground.

The Blue Book files contain the reports by fourteen members of missile maintenance crews from five different sights at Minot AFB who claimed to have seen a similar object.

Link

reply to post by karl 12
S&F!
Another good one!

reply to post by butcherguy


Hey bud -it certainly is an interesting one.

Heres another bit of strange information from Kevin Randle's report on the incident:

Now comes one of the most interesting parts, and one that seemed to have slipped by the Air Force investigators at Blue Book. "Fourteen other people in separate locations also reported sighting a similar object. Also, at this approximate time, security alarm for one of the sites was activated. This was an alarm for both the outer and inner ring. When guards arrived at the scene they found that the outer door was open and the combination lock on the inner door had been removed."

Link

Cheers.

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

More UFO incidents at Minot AFB (as well as many other nuclear-weapons storage areas):

U.S. Government Documents

* DOD, USAF, and CIA document reveal that during October, November, and December of 1975, reliable military personnel repeatedly sighted unconventional aerial objects in the vicinity of nuclear-weapons storage areas, aircraft alert areas and nuclear-missile control facilities at Loring Air Force Base, Maine; Wurtsmith AFB Michigan; Malstrom AFB, Montana; Minot AFB, North Dakota; and Canadian Air Forces Station, Ontario. Many of the sightings were confirmed by radar. At Loring AFB, the interloper "demonstrated a clear intent on the weapons storage areas."


* The incidents drew the attention of the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Secretary of Defense. Though the Air Force informed the public and the press that individual sightings were isolated incidents, an Air Force document says that "Security Option III was implemented and that security measures were coordinated with fifteen (15) Air Force bases from Guam to Newfoundland. Another AF document reveals that the Air Force conducted an investigation into the incidents but found no explanation for their occurrence.


* It appears Air Force "security measures" provided no protection against the "invasion." One month later, on January 21, 1976, UFOs "25 yards in diameter, gold or silver in color with blue light on top, hole in middle, and red light on bottom" were observed "near the flight line of Cannon AFB, N.M." Ten days later, on January 31, a UFO was observed "over the ammo storage area" at Fort Richie, Maryland.


* From 1948 through 1950, an FBI document reveals, UFOs were sighted by "persons whose reliability is not questioned, "near highly sensitive military and government installations, including nuclear weapons design, construction, testing and stockpiling sites. Security officials were greatly alarmed by these incidents."


* A CIA document reveals that in 1952 "sighting of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds" were reported in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations and posed a threat to national security.

Link

Government documents (pdf)

More info on the Minot AFB case - two airmen pass out after witnessing the UFO:

1968 UFO Mystery Still Unresolved

B-52 Navigator Patrick McCaslin recounts a 1968 UFO encounter.


A routine bomber flight in the pre-dawn hours of Oct. 24, 1968, turned unforgettable for navigator Patrick McCaslin. McCaslin and his B-52 crewmates were practicing maneuvers in the skies above Minot, N.D., when officials at the nearby Air Force base radioed a request..

McCaslin’s first move was to focus the plane’s radar into a narrow, high-intensity beam. “I saw a radar return off to our right; it was faint on the first sweep and then it was very strong on the next sweep,” he said.

When McCaslin informed the pilots about the contact, they replied they couldn’t see anything because of cloud cover, but asked him to keep them apprised of what the object did.

What it did, McCaslin said, was move faster than anything he had ever clocked on radar.

“From one sweep of the radar to the next, it came from three miles to one mile,” he said. “Later, we computed the closure speed at 3,000 miles an hour.”

From there, it only got stranger.

“It blew my mind that this thing had closed on us this quickly,” said McCaslin, who recalled that as he advised the pilots of what the object was doing, the bomber lost radio contact with the tower.

Long Witness List

While the bomber crew members were making their observations, workers on the ground were seeing something similar and reacting to alarms going off at one of the Minuteman missile silos near the Minot air base, said Bill McNeff, who heard parts of the story firsthand from a brother-in-law who worked as a security guard at the air base in 1968.

McNeff, a retired electrical engineer living in the Twin Cities and a former director of the Minnesota chapter of the Mutual UFO Network, said the Minot incident was one of the things that inspired him to pursue decades of research into UFO phenomenon.

His quest led him in the 1980s to the National Archives in Washington, where he poured over the files of Project Blue Book, the official U.S. Air Force inquiry into reports of unidentified flying objects in the 1950s and ’60s.

“There were incidents during the Minot episode that did not make it into the Blue Book files,” said McNeff, who added the official record doesn’t reflect that two airmen passed out after a close approach from the UFO.

He said a report that the lid of a missile silo was tampered with was also left out.

“What I learned later is that the lid was completely off the silo and lying on the grass,” McNeff said.

Link

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

reply to post by karl 12


very interesting sighting here , thanks for the great thread karl 12

multiple witnesses and the radar confirmation makes this a strong case. not sure if you noticed but our buddy Quintanilla once again came up with one of his ridiculous "force fit" explanations.

The sighting was officially explained by on November 13, by Lt. Col. Hector Quintanilla who wrote, "The following conclusions have been reached after a thorough study of the data submitted to Foreign Technology Division. The ground visual sightings appear to be of the star Sirius and the B-52, which was flying in the area.
www.ufocasebook.com...

do i believe that explanation ? heck no and i am sure this is another incident were they had to explain it away so the public wouldn't get excited and cause a panic.

This is a classic Blue Book case where dozens of Air Force personnel who see B-52s and stars nightly have their testimony doubted. They know when they've seen a UFO. In this case the scientists doing the Condon report agreed that this was a real UFO.
www.ufocasebook.com...

[edit on 26-2-2010 by easynow]

reply to post by karl 12


holy cucumber, karl! that was one big chinese weather balloon lantern

[edit on 26-2-2010 by reject]

Originally posted by easynow
very interesting sighting here , thanks for the great thread karl 12

multiple witnesses and the radar confirmation makes this a strong case. not sure if you noticed but our buddy Quintanilla once again came up with one of his ridiculous "force fit" explanations.

Easynow -good to see you mate and thanks for bringing up Major Quintanilla's 'explanation'
(not him again) - his debunks seem to get more and more ridiculous as time goes on and I found it interesting that even the hideously one sided and agenda based Condon committee couldn't bring themselves to swallow that one.


Found another very strange UFO incident from Minot AFB in the article below by the late, great Richard Hall - he states there was "a metallic, disc-shaped object ringed with bright flashing lights" hovering over the nuclear missilie silos the year before in March, 1967.

March 5, 1967; Minot AFB, North Dakota.

Witnesses: Air Force security police and other base personnel.

Features: disc, radar visual sighting, flashing body lights, Hover acceleration.

Air Defense Command radar tracked an unidentified target descending over the Minuteman missile silos of the 91st Strategic Missile Wing. Base security teams saw a metallic, disc-shaped object ringed with bright flashing lights moving slowly, maneuvering, then stopping and hovering about 500 feet off the ground. After a while the object circled directly over the launch control facility. F-106 fighter-interceptors were scrambled to investigate. At that moment the UFO "climbed straight up and streaked away at incredible speed." (Fowler, 1981, p. 187)

THE SCIENCE OF UFOS - FACT VERSUS SKEPTICISM, BY RICHARD HALL

Cheers.


PS - Maybe we should start a thread on the antics of Major Quintanilla - there's certainly no shortage of controversial material.



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

Originally posted by reject
holy cucumber, karl! that was one big chinese weather balloon lantern

Reject, not to worry matey -as Easynow points out, Major Quintanilla has assured us that all the radar reports were wrong and all the military personnel and pilots were just seeing 'stars' so theres nothing to worry about.




Just ignore this bit:

What we have, then, was a group of sightings made by men on the ground, at the missile sites scattered around the base. There was radar sightings from ground and weather's radar. There were visual sightings from the crew of the B-52, and an airborne radar sighting where the target traveled at 3,000 miles per hour. Scope photographs were taken. There were sightings made by S.Sgt. Bond the FSC at Nov. Flight, S.Sgt. Smith at Oscar-1, Julelt, and Mike Flight Team and a number of men in widely scattered locations. The object landed at location AA-43 and the entire observation lasted for 45 minutes. Fourteen other people in separate locations also reported the UFO.

Cheers.

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

Ongoing investigation into the Minot AFB UFO incident:

During the past five years that we have been investigating the events at Minot AFB, we have located and interviewed over fifteen principal witnesses and amassed hundreds of pages of supporting documentation. This has allowed us to fairly accurately reconstruct the events and provided insights into the official investigations. Only recently have we completed our research, and currently are in the process of writing a comprehensive historical report which will be available here in the coming weeks.

Link

If it wasn't some type of "off world craft" or even something of their own, then the US Military has a MAJOR security risk to deal with in regards to these types of installations and the security breaches that are taking place. It's kind of scary to think that even the most "secure" of installations can be penetrated at will by these objects. I can completely understand why a situation like this would be covered up to prevent some kind of panic that may take place in terms of the security of the United States nuclear arsenals. Fascinating stuff as always Karl.

reply to post by Jocko Flocko


Jocko Flocko, thanks for the reply - would you believe that, as well as 1968 and 1967, Minot Air Force Base experienced another Radar/Visual UFO incident in 1966.

Intrusion at Minot Air Force Base, 1966


Government document:

One of many classified reports that slipped through the cracks occurred at Minot Air Force Base, in North Dakota, on August 24, 1966. That night, an airman radioed to the base about a multicolored light, very high in the sky. A team went to the location, confirmed the original unknown, then saw a second, white object pass in front of clouds. The base radar tracked the object, which was as high as 100,000 feet (almost twenty miles). The object rose and descended several times; each time it descended, an air force officer in charge of a missile crew found his radio transmission interrupted by static, even though he was sixty feet below the ground. The object eventually descended to ground level ten to fifteen miles south of the area. The Air Force sent a strike team to check. Apparently, they saw the object either on the ground or hovering very low. According to the official report:

“When the team was about ten miles from the landing site, static disrupted radio contact with them. Five to eight minutes later, the glow diminished, and the UFO took off. Another UFO was visually sighted and confirmed by radar. The one that was first sighted passed beneath the second. Radar also confirmed this. The first made for altitude toward the north, and the second seemed to disappear with the glow of red.”

The incident lasted nearly four hours and was confirmed by three different missile sites.

Twelve Government Documents That Take UFOs Seriously

Cheers.

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

The more these types of reports come to light, the more a bigger picture begins to be painted in regards to "their" intentions, whoever they might be... Other than the Rendelsham Forrset incident, has there been similar events on Russian and European soil in the past and during the Cold War? If this is a world wide occurrence at these types of installations, one could rule out some kind of experimental US "spy craft", even though back then the technology for such a "drone" type "spy craft" wasn't in the United States possession; on paper of course...

reply to post by Jocko Flocko


Jocko,you make a good point there mate and there does appear to be a disproportionate amount of UFO sightings in or around nuclear weapon storage areas - there are quite a few government documents at this thread dealing with specific incidents and in some official reports, the U.S. Government refers to UFOs as 'mystery helicopters'.

Cheers.

We can pretty much count on the fact these types of installations have a vast array of security camera's and other intruder type measuring devices, the surveillance stuff around Area 51 is a good example. I'm willing to put money on the chances these things have been recorded numerous times with such equipment over the years and it's all hidden away someplace from prying eyes.

I can imagine these events rattled a few nerves at the height of the Cold War when the former Soviet Union and America both had their fingers ready on the buttons. Can you imagine what must have raced through the minds of the guards on duty during those incidents? I'm willing to also bet the objects must have been fired upon at some point...

Originally posted by Jocko Flocko
We can pretty much count on the fact these types of installations have a vast array of security camera's and other intruder type measuring devices, the surveillance stuff around Area 51 is a good example. I'm willing to put money on the chances these things have been recorded numerous times with such equipment over the years and it's all hidden away someplace from prying eyes.

Jocko, I'd certainly agree there - the trouble is, as with cases like the Indian Point Nuclear facility UFO incident, these security tapes have a strange tendency to go 'missing' or investigators are informed by authorities that they never existed in the first place.

Summary of events:

1. As the object approached the east gate of Reactor Number Three, the nuclear plant's security system shut down. Sensors that detect movement shut down, and the entire alarm system failed.


2. Inside the security console, the computer that controls all security and communications systems shut down.


3. At that time, the commander contacted Camp Smith, a New York National Guard base less than ten miles away, requesting identification of the object. No answer was given. A request was then made for an armed helicopter to shoot the object down. Before the command was given to launch the helicopter, the UFO moved away.


4. The next day, the commander of the security guards informed then that “nothing happened” and the event was to be forgotten.


5. The incident was witnessed by several plant workers as well as the security guards.


6. A number of area residents saw the object at the same time the plant guards did, and the Peekskill police received numerous calls about the UFO the same night.


7. A videotape of the object may exist, since all the security cameras automatically record everything they see and the tapes are kept for a certain period of time before being reused. However, authorities say no such tape exists.


8. All radio communications that night were also routinely recorded, but the tapes reportedly no longer exist.


9. In the days following the incident, officials of the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission visited the plant, and the entire security setup underwent a shakeup

Link

Thread

Cheers.

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