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

Hey, good to see you back around these parts again Karl, me and the girlfriend really enjoy reading your threads.

Thanks for the new link, there is a large amount of case information on the website you provided.

reply to post by Jocko Flocko


Hey bud, good to see you too.

Easynow's compiled two great vids below featuring police eye-witness testimony about the case and I think it's pretty darn obvious the object wasn't Venus.








Cheers

Originally posted by dampnickers
It astounds me that more people do not know about this case. I talk regularly to people about UFO cases, and very few ever know about this one.

It also astounds me as it truly is a fascinating one - UFO debunkers also seem to have an aversion to addressing it.

Further reading about the Portage County case taken from 'The UFO Experience - A Scientific Inquiry' by Dr J. Allen Hynek:

link

Originally posted by karl 12

It also astounds me as it truly is a fascinating one - UFO debunkers also seem to have an aversion to addressing it.

Hello,

I've read through this thread and found it interesting as well. Thanks to the OP for bringing it up and the other contributors of information to it.

Hadn't heard of this case until I came to the ATS thread, Missing UFO Evidence, which linked me to this thread. It may well be because this is a fairly obscure UFO case, that no "debunkers" or skeptics have yet addressed this thread. I, until recently, thought the JAL 1628 case was a compelling one, too; however, after reading some posts in:

ATS thread on JAL 1628

I am now more skeptical of it (in part, because generally it is not reported that the radar hits on the "UFO" were consistent with a cloud rather than a metal object). So I think skeptics generally aren't afraid to wade into the "best evidence" cases.

For the record, I consider myself to be fairly skeptical towards most UFO reports anymore. This is because of what I have learned about some of the supposedly more credible ET UFO cases. That said, it does seem like there are still some compelling cases that defy more prosaic, terrestrial/human or natural phenomena explanations. And I certainly believe there are advanced civilizations in other star systems, and that it may be possible that we have been and/or are being visited.

As for the Portage County case, on the face of it, it, too, seems rather compelling. However, even reading through the quoted material here and/or going to related linked sites, there is at least one report that the initial sighting of the UFO by one of the police is of a "pin-prick-size light" in the sky. Hence, it's hard to decide what the "facts" are in this case.

I'll have to peruse the details in this thread and associated links again before I come to a conclusion on it. That the original post on this thread is mainly a set of video links, many of which are now deleted, and that the additional text-based evidence is provided in fragments and many additional links, it is hard to readily get one's head around the pertinent facts of the case.

I do have a few thoughts on the case. Seems the possibility that the UFO was some experimental military vehicle can't be dismissed. WPAFB is nearly due west of where this incident took place, and as once poster noted, there is/was this big Ravenna munitions facility close to where this case took place. Perhaps the vehicle was a suped-up Avro air car, which would explain why it never traveled much over 100 mph; however, admittedly, the observation that it rose rapidly several thousand feet at the end of the chase doesn't comport with what I'd imagine possible for such a man-made craft.

If it were a secret military craft, that could explain why the incident was handled by the AF as it was, i.e. the snatching up the photographic evidence, the continued contradiction of the witnesses' testimony and leaving it out of Project Blue Book. Let me be clear that I am throwing this out as a possible hypothesis to also consider, but I am not doing so to dismiss the ET UFO hypothesis.

I wasn't too impressed by Michael Nelson's talk. He has the usual M.O. of dodgy speakers, whereby he spends a lot of his time on introductory chit chat at the expense of information later in the talk. He talks up this special metal he had, but provides no evidence. It floats on water? Why no video or pictures of this? And he is still waiting for all the "lab" reports, huh? Then he should have waited until a later conference to give his talk. So I don't find him to be very credible.

That said, his detractors talking him down, while providing no evidence of his implied shadiness, at the UFO Media Matters site:

Michael Nelson's credibility questioned

is also very bush league. And let me be the first to acknowledge that debunkers love to fling the unsubstantiated ad-hominem attacks around, saying it is easy to track down information confirming their claims but never providing any.


Back to the question of why more "debunkers" and/or skeptics haven't addressed this thread, I think it is in large part because of all the "noise" of other threads in the Aliens/UFOs forum. There are over 692 pages of thread titles alone, which equates to some 34,620 threads. It's hard to sort through all this to find the interesting/important ones.

Even if one goes through the list of threads methodically, page by page, looking for interesting-sounding ones, each page's list changes based on threads being re-posted to, thus placing them higher up on the list. I don't find the overview page for this forum particularly helpful in this respect. Like I wrote earlier, I only came to this one -- which I would consider a good thread -- by happenstance.

Originally posted by Kandinsky
reply to post by easynow

 

Good work Easynow

Have a look at what happened in the area 10 days earlier...

April 7, 1966; Mansfield, OH Time not reported. Two sheriffs deputies while on patrol chased a bright round object at high speed, seeing it or a similar object five times. The UFO alternately hovered and sped up, the last time departing vertically upward. (NICAP notes.) [Compare to April 17, 1966, Ravenna, Ohio, sheriffs deputies case.]

It seems there were more witnesses than those already mentioned too. I'm not sure if it's part of the Mod's snip, but I didn't see the part about planes being scrambled? According to this account three jets were scrambled to investigate/ intercept the UFO (or Floyd!)...

They lost sight of object at Brady Run Park regained it in Bridgeport, Penna. At about this time officers Lonnie Johnson and Ray Esterly in Salem, Ohio, saw 3 jet fighters attempting to intercept a bright object at about 10,000-20,000 ft about 25° elevation to the E for about 2 mins. In Conway, Penna., at 6 a.m. they met with officer Frank Panzarella who had been watching the object for 10 mins to the E or SE which he described as 25­35 ft half-football-shaped object at about 1,000 ft height (or 1,500-2,000 ft according to the others), when it stopped in the NE towards Harmony, Pennsylvania, then rose. They watched as the object climbed to about 3,500 ft to the left of and level with the quarter moon in the ESE (which was at about azimuth 116° elevation 14° and 11 % illuminated at 6:00 a.m.) and Venus (at 122° azimuth 22° elevation) and it passed near a 707 airliner taking off from Pittsburgh Airport and disappeared shooting up vertically at about 6:10. (Hynek UFO Exp ch. 8; NICAP)

1966 Chronology of UFO Reports

I wonder why the Condon Report ignored this? Seems like a lot of witnesses, reports, images and an alleged piece of 'unusual' metal would've made an impression. Jets possibly mean radar traces too

yes and My father saw this as well the night prior near Defiance Ohio... he described the exact same thing... and though a fearless person... was scared of this and didn't like to talk about it at all...

Originally posted by MrInquisitive

I'll have to peruse the details in this thread and associated links again before I come to a conclusion on it. That the original post on this thread is mainly a set of video links, many of which are now deleted, and that the additional text-based evidence is provided in fragments and many additional links, it is hard to readily get one's head around the pertinent facts of the case.

Mrinquisitive, there's a pretty comprehensive link here reposted from the OP where Patrick Gross discusses the witness statements, news articles and documents about the case - there's also a good link below where William B. Weitzel goes through the timeline of events.

The letter from William Weitzel, NICAP investigator, to Professor William Powers gives a very detailed and rich account of the events..

link

I don't know about the experimental military vehicle hypothesis you mention as the reported flight characteristics and object descriptions do sound very strange indeed (especially for 1966) but there are some of the relevant statements below about the level of aerial manoeuvrability displayed by the object and it's appearance as described by the police officers - I also think Dr James E Mcdonald makes some very, very good points here about the lack of objectivity and highly dubious nature of the resulting USAF 'explanation'.

Statements:


"When they started talking about fighter planes, it was just as if that thing heard every word that was said; it went PSSSSSHHEW, straight up; and I mean when it went up, friend, it didn't play no games; it went straight up."
Police officer Dale Spaur


"The object then moved out towards Harmony Township approximately a 1,000 feet high, then it stopped then went straight up real fast to about 3,500 feet."
Police Officer Frank Panzanella


"I've seen Venus many times, but I never saw Venus 50 feet above a road and moving from side to side like this was..."
Portage County Sheriff Ross Dustman



Object:

SPAUR-NEFF, UFO DETAIL

1. Projection, tilted from rear (trailing edge) 18' long, tapered to to tip

2. Dome-shaped top; partly metallic, partly self-illuminated

3. Glowing front (leading edge)

4. Cone-shaped light underneath

5. Glowing tip of trailing edge

6. Metallic surface

7. Sharp "drop-off" (Neff disagrees; remembers more rounded here)

8. Rounded "undercarriage"

9. Line separating metallic from self-illuminated portions



SPAUR-NEFF, SIGHTING TERMINUS

1. Bright spot to right of moon, a little above axis of symmetry of crescent

2. Crescent moon (bump in concave portion indicates "nose" of "Man in Moon")

3. TV antenna on nearby house, through whose elements Spaur and Neff saw the
UFO hovering before 1st upward elevation

4. Position of UFO after 1st elevation, above moon (now moving away, or disappearing)

(NOTE: Panzanella agreed with relative positions of levels of hovering; Spaur agreed with Panzanella's on-the-spot location of object relative to nearby houses; Spaur examined a photograph made from the spot he claimed to have been standing.)


HUSTON, UFO DETAIL

1. Cone-shaped light underneath

2. Bright, self-illuminated solid appearing top

3. Dome shape

4. Cone tilted toward rear, of direction of motion, more so than shown here.

Document

Originally posted by MrInquisitive

There are over 692 pages of thread titles alone, which equates to some 34,620 threads. It's hard to sort through all this to find the interesting/important ones.

There's a thread below which chronologically lists some of the more interesting UFO sightings and cases like the Edwards Air Force base incident, the Tehran case, the Coyne incident, the Bariloche incident, the Colares case, the Red Bluff case, the Shag Harbour incident, the Minot AFB incident etc.. are well worth a look.


Thread


Cheers.

Originally posted by HunkaHunka

yes and My father saw this as well the night prior near Defiance Ohio... he described the exact same thing... and though a fearless person... was scared of this and didn't like to talk about it at all...

HunkaHunka, thanks for sharing that and considering what happened to the two deputies involved in the Portage County case, I can't really blame your father for not wanting to discuss his UFO sighting the night before.

As a footnote, UFO researcher Thomas Wertman gave a talk at the Defiance public library last year about UFO incidents in Ohio and brought up the Portage County case - not really any new information but I didn't realise the two police officers had to borrow money to get home as they had ran out of petrol chasing the object.

Wertman highlighted five cases, all in northeast Ohio. The first one happened in Ravenna in 1966. Wertman said that people swear Steven Spielberg got the idea for a scene from "Close Encounters" from this case.

'This is based on a true case that happened," Wertman said. At 5:30 p.m., April 17, 1966, two Portage County deputies stopped to investigate an abandoned car when they saw an object rise from behind trees. As the object passed the deputies it bathed them in light and made a humming sound similar to a transformer. The deputies radioed dispatch and began to pursue it.

"Deputies estimated the altitude of the object to be between 300-500 feet above the ground," Wertman said. "The object illuminated the ground as it traveled. Speeds during the chase reached 100 miles per hour."

The pursuit covered 86 miles and ended in Pennsylvania, when the officers ran out of gas. They had to borrow money to get back home. An official from Project Bluebook, which was a U.S. Air Force group, that was to investigate if UFOs were a threat to national security sent someone to investigate it. The government official said it must have been a satellite or Venus.

link

Cheers.

Good page discussing the Portage County object (Floyd) and the research of NASA Aerodymanicist Paul Richard Hill (link):

Now, there are a number of things that stand out very strongly with the Portage County case, and point directly to theories offered in Mr. Hill’s work. For me, it was startling just how well this set of events meshes in with field-propelled UFO’s.

First of all, let’s tackle the reported shape of the object. Per Spaur and Neff, its initial appearance was rounded on top, with a cone-shaped light underneath, like a “partly melted ice cream cone”. It also quite brilliantly lit up the whole area, even the interior of their patrol car. The “ice-cream cone” descriptor is very commonly reported, so this links this sighting with a long chain of other sightings. Hill had a strong idea of why this particular geometry is so prevalent.

The energies produced in field propulsion and maneuvering would induce a plasma sheath around the UFO, directed as a vector away and essentially normal from the base of object..

Another tie to Hill’s theories is that of the hum reported by Spaur. I find the Hum aspect one of the most fascinating things so often reported in UFO events. Let’s consider a quote from Spaur:

“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..."

The “transformer” description of the sound is important on its own, strictly because it ascribes a mechanical, cyclical nature to field. Changes in the operation and performance of UFO seemed to be linked with the character of the hum, as well, which certainly hints at the idea of changing field energies and geometry..

link

Some very interesting reading on page 7 of this pdf file version of the NICAP UFO Investigator describing a book called 'the Ravenna case' in which Dr Hynek disputes Major Quintanilla's 'explanation' for the Portage County object - it also mentions a tenacious female news reporter whose news articles and interview with Quintanilla caused 'high level pressure' to re-open the case but I don't know who that could be.

An 80-page booklet called "THE RAVENNA CASE," covering the April 17th dramatic UFO chase by Ohio police officers and the inside story of an attempted cover-up, is being prepared for NICAP publication.

Written as a narrative documentary, "THE RAVENNA CASE" includes:

Unpublished details from the deputy sheriffs who chased the UFO -- a glowing, maneuvering object at times so low it lit up the ground;

the on-the-scene investigation taped by William B. Weitzel, Chairman, NICAP Pittsburgh Suhcommittee;

Weitadl's efforts to prevent the cover-up;

the cooperation of a tenacious woman reporter whose news articles, including a revealing interview with Major Quintanilta, Project BlueBook head, caused high level pressure to re-open the case;

and details of a behind-the-scenes AF conflict over the "explain away" -- a disagreemenf which caused Dr. Hynek, the AF chief UFO consultant to reject the published explanation, label the case "'unexplained," and urge that Quintanilla admit his answer was wrong.

PDF File

The Portage County sightings as described by Richard Dolan in his book 'UFOs and the National Security State':

link

Newspaper article describing how the UFO 'came down and waited near a bridge' for the pursuing police officers.

Hundreds of Ohio people see UFO

Spaur said the lines of the object were very distinct, "Someone had control over it" he said. It wasn't just floating around. It can maneuver."

The deputy said the chase slowed down near Rochester Pa., when the cars "got tangled up in a mess of bridges. But when I came out from under the bridge it came down and waited for us, just as though it knew these two cars were following it."

"I know nobody's going to believe it, but it's true" he said.

Google News Archive

Police burn new set of tires bald in high speed UFO chase.

Full Article

Mystery object disappears near Beaver County:

reply to post by karl 12


Wow ! Thank You Karl for all the excellent posts !

I have two images to add to this thread ...



1 - This is a better quality picture of the officers:

Chief Buchert - Deputy Sheriff Spaur - Deputy Wilson


(Wilson was supposedly the radio dispatcher)





2 - An enhanced version of the actual UFO picture:

Chief Buchert's photo - Digitally enhanced by Paul Hynek



Source for both images:
Cleveland Scene - Strangers in the Night




FYI - I recently spoke with a relative of one of the deputy's involved in this case and invited him here to this thread so I'm really hoping he will join us and give us some additional insight about the unidentified object and how these officers were treated after the event and I hope everyone will give him a warm welcome

Originally posted by easynow

Chief Buchert - Deputy Sheriff Spaur - Deputy Wilson

FYI - I recently spoke with a relative of one of the deputy's involved in this case and invited him here to this thread so I'm really hoping he will join us and give us some additional insight about the unidentified object and how these officers were treated after the event and I hope everyone will give him a warm welcome

That's good news my friend and I'm sure everyone will -this is a truly remarkable UFO case and any additional insight into the actual incident (and aftermath) will always be welcome. It's been said before but the way the police officers were treated by the USAF and media in the days/weeks following the event was an absolute disgrace (especially considering they'd been ordered to chase the object in the first place) and your link featuring the quotes makes for some very affecting reading.

Jackelyne Neff later spoke out about the impact the UFO encounter had on her husband:

I hope I never seen him like he was after the chase. He was real white, almost in a state of shock. It was awful. And people made fun of him afterwards. He never talks about it any more. Once he told me, "If that thing landed in my back yard, I wouldn't tell a soul". He's been through a wringer. (Clark, 1998)

Huston quit his job and moved to Seattle, Washington, becoming a bus driver. He later said:

Sure, I quit because of that thing. People laughed at me. And there was pressure. You couldn't put your finger on it, but the pressure was there. The city officials didn't like police officers chasing flying saucers. (Clark, 1998)

Obviously Deputy Spaur took the brunt of it and his statement just about sums things up.

"If I could change all that I have done in my life, I would change just one thing. And that would be the night we chased that damn thing. That saucer."

Apparently Major Hector Quintanilla was responsible for that and there's more info here about the man's complete disregard for objectivity and underhand debunking methods, it's even been claimed he went back through the old Bluebook UFO files and 're-edited' many of the evaluations to 'explained'.

However, Spaur absorbed the brunt of the publicity in the case, and had the most tragic outcome. Quintanilla's final report on the UFO chase report mentioned only Spaur, and Quintanilla's ambiguous wording led some to conclude that only Spaur, and not more than half a dozen others, had claimed to have seen a UFO

Cheers.

There may be no connection but here's an interesting incident from 8 days later where a UFO 'paced' a politician's plane for 40 miles over north Florida on April 25th - there article also states the object was witnessed by a group of newsmen and officials.

Here's a report that Francis Ridge (new NICAP) and Jan Aldridge (Proj. 1947) can confirm as accurate from the NICAP Journals in their possession. It concerns a sighting reported by the Governor of Florida, his entourage, and some pilots during his re-election campaign. It appeared in the NICAP May/June 1966 issue. Maybe Fran, Jan and scientists have it figured out. The sighting occurred eight days after the Ravenna, Ohio case investigated by Dr. James McDonald.

link

This is one of the best threads I've seen on ATS in months!!
Thanks Guys

Originally posted by Caver78

This is one of the best threads I've seen on ATS in months!!

It sure is a great read mate and I think this UFO case has got to be up there as one of the most intriguing ones -especially when you consider the sheer number of witnesses, the reported description and flight characteristics of the object and the completely contrived USAF explanation.

Here's another relevant news article from April 1966 and it also mentions there was another sighting on the same day as the Portage County incident involving three municipal workers and a policeman who described a 'hot dog' shaped object in the skies over Western Michigan.

Area UFO Followed By Trouble




link

Cheers.

News article about Deputy Spaur sourced by Easynow:

Pdf file