The 1951 Lubbock Lights

Don't think it's geese for a couple of reasons:

1)Geese are always vocal during night flights, and a bunch of good old Texas boys would be familiar with geese.

2)Geese don't migrate during August---that's their good month to be primarily in the Arctic.

reply to post by Hopechest


Unless it's hoaxed (the birds turned into light orbs with retouch or some camera filter), there is no way these can be birds... Especially at night. I've taken picture of 2 airplanes during daylight that appeared strange on the photo,. as I saw 2 black disks instead. I deleted that picture but had others with some black balls in the sky, I figured birds somehow may appear so, so in the end those balls were likely birds.

So birds may appear as a ball/orb. Not at night and not if what they tell, the colors, birds can be dismissed.

Still,. where are all these good cases from the 2nd half of the 20th century... nowadays it's just nonsense reports.

Something always bothered me about this case.

How the hell an old Kodak 35 camera with an aperture set at f/3.5 and an exposure time as short as of one tenth of a second (Source: "Ruppelt, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects") can results in such luminous objects? Of course it depends of many other factors, such as the development process, the various scans that were made until now and so on...



However, the high contrast is still there between these lights and the dark background sky... And this have to be put at the light of what Hart said himself on Ruppelt's book ("The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects"):

I stopped Hart at this point and asked why he didn't get more excited about what could be the biggest news photos of the century. He said that the lights had appeared to be so dim that he was sure he didn't have anything on the negatives; had he thought that he did have some good pictures he would have awakened his friend to develop the negatives right away.

Another weird thing is that ALL the lights kept the EXACT same relative position to each other between the two first photos:

Photo "A":



Photo "B" superimposed + rotated:


(Credit: Nablator, thanks to him! )

I find it quite strange for something that is supposed to fly at 900mph ("...the lights had crossed about 120 degrees of open sky in four seconds.") not to show any perspective difference between each of its components during the time it took for Hart to manually reload the negative of the Kodak camera....

Old threads, for reference:
- The Lubbock lights, started by karl 12 on 16-4-2009.
- Classic Case: Lubbock Lights, Texas (1951),, started by IsaacKoi on 15-1-2008.
- The Lubbock Lights case, started by SloAndPainful on 11-12-2012

Originally posted by MuzzleBreak
Don't think it's geese for a couple of reasons:

1)Geese are always vocal during night flights, and a bunch of good old Texas boys would be familiar with geese.

An original eyewitness (Professor Ducker) thought they were birds he saw after doing some research. He didn't say they were geese.

Originally posted by elevenaugust
Something always bothered me about this case.

How the hell an old Kodak 35 camera with an aperture set at f/3.5 and an exposure time as short as of one tenth of a second (Source: "Ruppelt, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects") can results in such luminous objects?

Agreed. There is a lot of reason to be suspicious of this kind of night photography with primitive cameras, and the fact that the professor said the V-formation in the photos don't match the "u-formation" he saw doesn't help the credibility of the photos.

Old threads, for reference:
- Classic Case: Lubbock Lights, Texas (1951),, started by IsaacKoi on 15-1-2008.

From that thread:

"Ducker had had conversations with Ruppelt in later years and told him that he conclusively proved their UFO sightings were caused by birds. In fact, these author's have recently discovered this correspondence in Ruppelt's personal papers." (The relevant observation at page 35 is part of the discussion of the Lubbock Lights in that book at pages 30-31, 32-35 (in Chapter 1), 65, 74 (in Chapter 2), 245 (in the
unnumbered chapter entitled "Final Word - The Forgotten Correspondence of Edward Ruppelt") of the Rose Press softcover edition.)


Similarly, Jerry Clarke's Encyclopedia quotes from an undated Project Blue Book document which includes the following "In 1959 Dr J Allen Hynek contacted one of the professors at Texas Tech regarding [the] case. This professor informed Dr Hynek that he had conducted an extensive study of the Lubbock sightings and determined that they were definitely [of] birds"

So one of the original eyewitnesses, a professor, concluded what he saw were birds, and he seems pretty sure of it. I'm amazed at how many people can say he's wrong about what he saw when they didn't see it.

Originally posted by extraterrestrialentity
In Ruppelt's book, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, he had apparently dismissed the plover explanation as well, so once again, another person that disagreed with the birds explanation.

He seemed to waffle about whether he thought they were birds or moths, as explained in IsaacKoi's thread.

at page 276 Ruppelt makes the following comments:

"The world famous Lubbock Lights were night flying moths reflecting the bluish-green light of a nearby row of mercury vapour street lights."

So you say Ruppelt disagreed with the birds explanation, but you fail to mention it's because he thought the birds explanation was likely at first, but then thought they were moths instead? Don't you think that's relevant?

Originally posted by Hopechest



Very similar don't you think?

Yes similar

reply to post by Arbitrageur


So to sum up you are saying those are birds.
Your position is based on an appeal to the authority of one witness who happens to be a professor, despite the fact that numerous other people who also witnessed this say otherwise?

Including wildlife experts?

ETA: and other professors.

The only thing that I can think to add is that I think that the objects in the Lubbock photos look an awful lot like the objects in the photographs from the UFO flap that occurred only 1 year later over Washington, D.C. in 1952.

1952 Washington, D.C. UFO incident

reply to post by JayinAR

You're putting words in my mouth. For one thing I supported the OP's statement that Ruppelt apparently decided against the bird explanation, after initially thinking they were birds, though I think OP should have mentioned he thought they were moths, which I mentioned. So why are you accusing me of implying they are birds, and not moths, which I also mentioned?

Actually, Ruppelt never really seemed to clarify his discrepancy between those two explanations.

Perhaps Ducker did prove that what he saw was birds, but since I haven't seen his proof, it's hard for me to judge.

Between Ducker and the game warden, Ducker is an eyewitness and the game warden didn't see anything, did he? The game warden thought plovers weren't fast enough, and if the estimated 600mph was correct, the game warden certainly would have been correct. However I think it's safe to say that Ducker decided the 600mph speed estimate was incorrect, and he was an original witness.

reply to post by Hopechest


You would! Geese with halogen headlights...OK then

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Apologies. I must have misread you.

To me this whole thing, even including the issue of the photographs' showing the objects relative positions being unchanged, comes down to an issue of scale.

When the high rate of speed was calculated, they were using a cloud that the objects were seen to be behind as a reference for distance. They said that the objects were therefore above 2,000' feet. Meaning that their estimate of 600mph was the low end calculation and the speed would only go up based on how high the objects actually were.

Also, the farther away the objects, the less likely they are to move relative to one another...sorta like stars. That probably isn't right, but it is how my mind digests the info.

Now, considering this same professor was in on the initial calculation of said speed, I see little reason to think that this can be questioned, considering the game warden pointed out that in order for the objects to be birds they would have to be much closer to the ground to appear to move so fast. Moths?

That's one heck of a flock of moths to be flying around town spooking several folks for days never to be seen again. Heck, same with the birds.

Certainly birds fly in a V formation As do humans in planes. As do UFOs that are sighted.

I'm fairly certain the Phoenix lights were not birds..

reply to post by Hopechest


Yeah, those birds are giving off a nice light source (hence Lubbock Lights)

reply to post by extraterrestrialentity


I can say around 1989 I saw 8 to 10 lights that looks very similar to these "Lubbock Lights", all of them were very large, very round, and all the same size, the ones I saw weren't in a v formation, they were in a circle, but were not 1 single craft, they were all independent, and as for the source of the lights I don't know what the source was, they appeared to not be craft, but solid beams of light, not beams in the respect that they were attached to a spotlight or source, there was no source, just flying hovering flat looking circles of light. What I saw was never explained, but I'd say it's possible to be related to these lights. I've seen a very very few videos on youtube that barely resemble the lights I saw, but I can't track them down, they aren't popular and it's possible the vids I saw were coincidentally similar and could've been CGI, but what I saw was 100% mystery, I got a good look, watched them for 15 minutes, but they lasted for a good 2 hours.

"But they are flying 600 mph..." ....well maybe your instruments got it wrong.

....and maybe they didn't? It's very easy to dismiss a sighting when you think that you have an explanation, but that doesn't automatically mean that you are right. There are actually some differences between these light formations and flocks of geese, such as the way that the lights seem to be in "twos" down each line, whereas geese tend to be in single file. I also find it difficult to believe that so much light could have reflected off the undersides of birds that would enable them to look incredibly bright in photographs.

For the record, I have seen the reflection of streetlights off the undersides of birds in flight several times, and I would be surprised if they looked anywhere near as bright as the Lubbock lights in those photos.

Having said that, I do not discount the possibility that these were birds in formation. I just find it strange that, if this is the explanation for the Lubbock lights, then why haven't there been hundreds of other photographs like this between 1950 and the present day? Surely someone would have proved this theory by now??

Interesting....I wonder if Buddy Holly witnessed the 'lights'?

Lubbock was his home town; he would have been about 15 at the time.

He would certainly have been aware of the story.

Originally posted by MuzzleBreak
Don't think it's geese for a couple of reasons:

1)Geese are always vocal during night flights, and a bunch of good old Texas boys would be familiar with geese.

2)Geese don't migrate during August---that's their good month to be primarily in the Arctic.

it's definitely not geese, i think whoever said that first was joking, or at least i hope he was. There is no chance a group of well educated people would easily confuse a set of lights in the sky with birds. Think its lazy just to say because they are the same shape as something, that it must be that, even if it doesn't look anything else like it.

Originally posted by Bybyots
The only thing that I can think to add is that I think that the objects in the Lubbock photos look an awful lot like the objects in the photographs from the UFO flap that occurred only 1 year later over Washington, D.C. in 1952.

1952 Washington, D.C. UFO incident

The picture above is a still from a video that was a reconstruction for a TV documentary and is not a photograph from 1952 - just search 1952 Washington UFO flap in ATS for several threads confirming this.

Very interesting read, I did not hear about this incident before.

While the formation does indeed remind me of birds flying in formation, the apparent luminescence, estimated size and speed do not speak for the bird theory.

Unfortunately, and as is often the case, we do not have enough data for more than mere speculation.

S&F'ed !

Has anyone seen the video of these UFOs? I think it exists.

I grew up near there, west of Lubbock. I was seven years old at the time of the Lubbock lights. I remember my parents joining watch groups that went out and scanned the skies all night. I went too and slept on a quilt on the ground or in the car. I don't recall if anything unusual was seen or not... but, In the '50's Reese Air Force Base, 10 miles West of Lubbock was very active at the time as a training facility. Lots of different aircraft flying- B-25's, B-47's, B-36's, P-38's, P-80's-T-33's, F-86's. Occasionally, I would see an aircraft, usually a B-25 towing a target behind, like a big windsock.

Texas Tech campus was on the Western edge of Lubbock then, not far from Reese AFB- 10 miles or less.

The time of this sighting is in August- Birds like Geese, Sandhill cranes don't migrate in August in West Texas- more like October. There were a few indigenous geese on the sewage pond at Reese, but these were the domesticated variety and don't fly very far. Not much water or food for geese out there in August. I never saw Canadians or Snows on the ground feeding

Migrating Sandhill crane flocks may number in the hundreds, they did feed, usually in dry playa lake beds, but not in august.

There were also watch groups that went west toward the New Mexico border, but I think this was an earlier time-- '47-'48. I think they saw something like a small group of lights moving together that night... but again an Air Force training facility was nearby at Hobbs N.M., Cannon at Clovis- Holoman at Alamogordo.

The were lots of things flying in the area back then- some aircraft I didn't always recognize.

I didn't see the thing flying in the photographs, but the odds of it being an alien UFO are less than miniscule with all the military activity during that time.