The ‘Tex’-Files : Engine Stopping UFO - Levelland, Texas 1957

What's interesting is that instances of vehicles stalling out during a sighting dropped off once car design moved into more computerized components, when common sense would dictate it should have increased due to ease of disruption to those newer systems.

It's always been my understanding that the older cars were harder to tamper with, from an outside force such as described by the witnesses. KPB while a humans perception can be manipulated you could always trust the mechanics of your vehicle. Interesting to note in MM's report no one specified car radio interference, just that the engines died.

It would seem there was a progression as UFO sightings continued from the early years from outright stalled engines, to later reports of witnesses reporting their first clue after seeing a strange light was their radio's went to static. Whether the craft are ours or not the different types of "interference" noted is one heck of a clue to the propulsion systems used.

a reply to: Bedlam

Electronics is the science of controlling electrical energy electrically, in which the electrons have a fundamental role. Electronics deals with electrical circuits that involve active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes, integrated circuits, associated passive electrical components, and interconnection technologies. Commonly, electronic devices contain circuitry consisting primarily or exclusively of active semiconductors supplemented with passive elements; such a circuit is described as an electronic circuit.

The way it was done back then only had a spool a energy source and a moving rod that will contact each sparkplug-supply wire after another, discharging the spools energy into the sparkplug and thus igniting the air-fuel mix. Hardly what one would call electronic, so I named it an electric circuit. Might be some translation thingy, too.

a reply to: verschickter

spool

Coil.

moving rod that will contact each sparkplug-supply wire after another

Distributor.

so I named it an electric circuit.

Correctly. The system would be called electro-mechanical.

a reply to: Phage
Coil & Distributor, those were the words I could not find the translations in my head and was to lazy to look it up.
Spool is the direct translation to what "coil" is in german...

a reply to: verschickter

Spool is the direct translation to what "coil" is in german...

Quite interchangeable in usage. But coil is specific to the device.

a reply to: Phage
Right. Sometimes I really struggle to find the perfect terms. However, going back to topic, such basic circuits without semiconductors are much more rigid and not as easy to disturb like electronic circuits that rely on electrons going through the right gates (avalanche effect (transistors). You can disturb a common IC with the static electricity your body charged up to, even with an anti-static wristband. That was my point.

If the so called foo fighters were disabling engines remotely, I conclude it has to do with altering the magnetic field around the wires, either overcharging it via induction or via a exotic type of effect that is not known to me, if it was affecting electro mechanic circuits, too.

originally posted by: Bedlam

originally posted by: ctj83
Essentially, the system arcs due to the air being ionised and therefore conductive. The result of conductive air is the system is grounded because of the ionisation, preventing it functioning.

To achieve that level of ionization, you'd have to be in a plasma ball, like being inside a neon light. It doesn't hang together. Plus the recombination time of STP air is pretty damned fast.

What did you make of the paper that suggests Radon seeps into the atmosphere causing ionisation as it decays- which can then lead to a dusty plasma as it mixes with existing atmospheric particulates.

a reply to: Caver78

You are assuming that there are propulsion systems involved.

I do not make that assumption.

That's just human cultural bias speaking.

300 years ago, the discussion would have been about "air sylphs"
visiting the lower realm, not "propulsion systems".

Kev

This engine stopping UFO has got me intrigued and there is a lot more in one of the links in the OP.

The ability to stop auto-mobile/aircraft engines with some kind of 'invisible beam' seems to have started as pure science fiction. But as the 20th century wore on various people like Tesla and Marconi were being linked to inventions that could do such a thing. Even though nothing tangible appears to have come from it.

However an interesting story comes from British WWII scientific intelligence officer R.V Jones. He was investigating various rumours of German secret weapons during the the war. One of the rumours was of a secret German weapon that could stop vehicles.

The years before 1939 were full of stories of an engine-stopping ray. As I heard the story in 1937 or 1938 it was that an English family on holiday in Germany would be travelling in a car when its engine would suddenly fail, invariably on a country road, and usually at the edge of a wood. A German sentry would then step out of the trees and tell them there were special tests in progress and that they would be unable to proceed. Some time later he would come back and tell them that it was all for them to start the engine again and the engine would immediately fire and they were able to drive off.

“By this time I was becoming concerned with intelligence and one of my tasks was to ascertain the truth about the mysterious rays. At about the same time someone thought that it was a pity that the Germans should have a monopoly in the story and a parallel story was deliberately spread, hinting that we, too, had a ray. Within a short time we in Intelligence were flooded with similar events in England. We were astonished at the circumstantial detail that the public had added. In one instance, said to have occurred on Salisbury Plain, it was no ordinary family that was in the car, but a family of Quakers – and Quakers were well known for telling the truth.

“Eventually, I got to the bottom of the story. The places most mentioned in Germany were the regions around the Brocken in the Harz and the Feldberg near Frankfurt. These were the sites of the first two television towers in Germany. A Jewish radio announcer at Frankfurt who escaped to this country was at first puzzled when I told him the story and then, with a chuckle, he told me that he could see how it had happened. In the days before the television transmitters had been erected, the engineers made field strength surveys, but these surveys were rendered difficult by interference from the engines of motor vehicles.

“Under the authoritarian regime such as that of the Nazis it was simple to eliminate this trouble by stopping all cars around the survey receiver for the period of the test. Sentries, who were probably provided by the German Air Force, were posted on the roads, and at the appointed hour would emerge and stop all vehicles. At the end of the test they would then give the drivers permission to proceed. It only required a simple transposition in the story as subsequently told by a driver for the vehicle to have stopped before the sentry appeared, giving rise to a twoyear chase after the truth.
– [R.V. Jones. 1968]

See : Magonia - Engine Stoppers

Now I am not saying that there is definitely a parallel with Levelland by any means. However there is a lesson to be learned from R.V Jones story. When we don't have anything but anecdotal evidence then facts can easily get distorted.

thanks
good work there.

originally posted by: Caver78

It would seem there was a progression as UFO sightings continued from the early years from outright stalled engines...

If you plot the stories on a timeline, you'll find a sudden abrupt drop in them after a certain year. Hm.

originally posted by: verschickter
If the so called foo fighters were disabling engines remotely, I conclude it has to do with altering the magnetic field around the wires...

Righty right! Maybe not in the wires, per se. The point ignition system depends on storing energy in the magnetic field of an ignition coil, then letting that field collapse abruptly. The field collapse induces a high voltage in the secondary of the coil (actually an autotransformer) which fires the plug. But if you altered the permeability of the coil, you might get sparks at the wrong time, or no spark, or arcing, depending on how you did it.

Perhaps in the proximity of an older UFO of that era, the magnetic permeability of materials altered erratically.

a reply to: Bedlam
That's enlightening.

What about a loss of electrical power from the battery?

originally posted by: Jukiodone

What did you make of the paper that suggests Radon seeps into the atmosphere causing ionisation as it decays- which can then lead to a dusty plasma as it mixes with existing atmospheric particulates.

To get to visible plasma formation in free air, you'd have to have something a lot hotter than radon.

I mean, plasma is what the spark plug is forming when it fires. If you've got ionization levels up high enough in free air at STP that it shorts out a plug, that fuel mix will fire as soon as the gasoline vaporizes, because you're going to have to convert the atmo to a pretty good plasma.

It's one of those explanations that's true in a sense, but won't happen in real life. Like the one where the guy got off a ticket by stating if he approached a traffic light fast enough, the red light would appear green. True, but you won't ever be able to do that in real life.

Yes, if the air is totally ionized, it will short out electronics. It'll also kill everything and scour the landscape free of organics due to plasma etching. And how are you keeping it ionized at that level? Radiation? Air at STP recombines pretty darned fast. Especially at that level of ionization. And you'd be forming O3 and O4 like mad. Everyone in the vicinity would be plasma etched and die of ozone poisoning. But it would be nice and germ free, so it's got that going for it.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Bedlam
That's enlightening.

What about a loss of electrical power from the battery?

If the alternator was still working, it wouldn't matter. O'course, if you're screwing up the ignition coil then either alternators or generators would fail as well. Same with anything that reduces electron mobility directly. If you had something that screwed with the Poynting vector you could stop current flow, but that again would kill people.

Time rate gradients would cause mechanical stress in moving objects, the cars didn't just wad up or shear so that's probably out.

I assume anything that would prevent electrochemical reactions from occurring would kill people as well.

a reply to: Bedlam
coils are wrapped with wires, and the magnetic field that builds up when electrons flow is the reason why a transformer works. But Right, either the permeability, find a way to alter the conductivity of the normaly non-conductive isolation around the coil-wire or the ceramic isolator at the sparkplug.

Or go the opposite route and find something to hinder the magnetic field to build up, and puff, your transformer is useless. Only resistive circuits would work then. Like a lightbulb. Or a diesel glow plug but I think a diesel engine is too heavy for a plane.

The missing part of the story of course is what does the govt know here? It would seem a quick explanation of ball lightning was adopted by the powers that be, but surely either 1 of 2 things had to happen...

The govt already knew what was going on and was simply trying to cover it up(whether it was alien or ours). Or the govt didnt have the first clue and secretly conducted their own real investigation to figure it out.

It doesnt seem like a secondary investigation occurred, unfortunate we cant say for sure. The technology here does seem beyond 1957, if not, interesting that it never turned up later.


How do those following along rate this case? Kevin Randle thinks it is one of the better cases and has blogged on it several times .

Self proclaimed skeptic John Shirley is impressed by the case

The so called "Iron Skeptic" isnt so easily persuaded

Bunch of other links in Isaac Koi's thread

a reply to: Bedlam

Bah- I could have explained away 50% of all UFO sightings by correlating to Radon seepage/dusty plasma if it weren't for your pesky (yet logical) recombination rationale.

Cant read the full paper but the various citations seem to suggest any additional oomph required may come from interaction with upper atmospheric "lightning" such as Blue Jets and Sprites, which discharge to proposed dusty plasmas like conventional lightning does to ground....

Like how you mention Time Gradients in your reply to Phage and no one raises an eyebrow BTW.

a reply to: Jukiodone

Time flows at a different rate at our head than at our feet--known and aclnowledged physics.

So saying "time gradients" is not anything to raise eyebrows about.

a reply to: 111DPKING111

The technology here does seem beyond 1957, if not, interesting that it never turned up later.

Yes it appears that way. Levelland is a fascinating case. This is not like Socorro where the technology Zamora witnessed 'could' have been emulated with terrestrial know how of the day. Unless it was all a science fiction inspired hoax. Which I find difficult to believe.