The Awful Truth About UFOs (long) -- not for believers!

Originally posted by Gazrok
If this assumption is correct, I'd love to know why we aren't using these 1000mph blimps nowadays....

Our radar got better

Originally posted by SteveR
Sorry, in no way is that a picture from 1943.
It's a reconstruction, or possibly even a modern pic.

Lots and lots of "fake" blimp pictures
Knock yourself out, cowboy.
I once had the privilege, I guess you'd call it, of making prints for the Marine Corps from a whole bunch of old negatives. A copy of that very image was among the lot. I wish now I'd snagged a copy when it went through the lab. (One day I pulled out a negative and it was THE picture -- the Marine's own negative of "Raising The Flag Over Mt. Suribachi"; you can bet I got a 20x30 print of that one! -- of course, I then had to make one for every General, Colonel, Major, etc, etc, etc.)

Originally posted by chinabean
man...that just looks gheyyyyyy!!!
hmm i didn't know pics from the olden days would have bevel and emboss to them

An artifact? it doesn't show on my monitor. This shot was cropped and resized from a much bigger one.

oh well...what's the record for fastest moving blimp anyway..considering their just a balloon of hot air and a little teenie tiny propeller in the back.

Well, the Navy was toying with JATO on blimps at least as far back as 1950 (here's a hint and a preview: think "Socorro"). And there were compact (200 lbs) turbojets available commercially from around 1952. Imagine what you could do with jet power on an aircraft whose take-off weight is zero.

Originally posted by chinabean
if you want to see ufo's..concentrate your eyes in the skies in san diego..just watch the navy ships and in due time you'll see some tic-tac shaped flying objects at 29,000ft going 100mph heading south.
they also have a heat signature too..so whatever you are gonna use to see it with,make sure it can see the heat signature,the tic-tac shaped ufo has no widows or any type of exterior opening and are about 100ft long.

don't take my word for it..go look at it yourself and tell me if that's a blimp.

oh and they can go into the water as well..last year during a navy war game excercise they counted at least 100 of them on radar.

Sounds juicy. Got any collabodration on that?

Would you answer my questions about 'bimps' pacing with jet liners, and at times zipping past or keeping pace with them?

Blimps? Fast moving blimps?

Are you serious?

Geez if I knew that sooner I've asked for a ride on them when they had landed.

I know that what I've seen couldn't of been a blimp..

Well rand, kudos for interesting. Best post in this forum for months, except for Cicada's UFO's in Works of Art .

Dont worry about the jeers you draw here. If you aint telling about your latest abduction, or hand holding with a Reptilian,
lead up to a new star map revelation on Zeta Reptilicus, or your latest UFO sighting while on EBAY, you will get a lot of
raspberry blowing your way. I have to admit, this does appear to be a new approach to the topic.

First real question. Is this comment serious, or casual ?

"Thanks, I'll include that in the book. " == rand

Originally posted by Gunman
I can't help but notice how you side stepped the fact that countless experianced pilots and flight crews have reported craft out running, following and staying with craft like 747's and Dc-8's, which would be like a bike keeping pace with a sports car.

So, where does one get a blimp that can go as fast as a bullet (quite literally) and make a perfect right angle turn without slowing down or turning?

I didn't sidestep, just haven't got to it yet. And it's probably not countless, more like quite a few.

Anyway, without a decent video record of the event it would be difficult to say, but in most cases it's probably just an optical illusion. it can occur several ways: if the aircraft goes into a slow turn about the time the object is sighted, it could appear to be standing still. On a really smooth 1-g turn only the pilots would know that it's happening, if they're looking at the instruments and not the object; if the object is farther away that the observers think it is, it can appear to be travelling with the aircraft (I've seen it a few time myself, when travelling -- I'm just watching the clouds drift by the window when a funny little cloud appears which seems to be standing still, which is ridiculous, of course, because that would mean it was keeping pace with a jet aircraft -- it is, of course, just a bigger cloud farther away).

It's also possible that the object has a low airspeed but it's ground speed matrches the aircraft. That might happen near a frontal boundry, where winds can blow in opposite directions. There's also sometimes (usually?) a wide difference in wind speeds at different altitudes -- pilots are very inerested in "winds aloft" as I recall -- with the jet streams being the extreme case.

And it's also possible that blimp technology has had some advances since WWII. Back then, they traded speed for endurance; 75 knots is more than sufficient if your quarry is a ship speeding along at 12 knots. There are some old (like mid-50's) documents down at UT Dallas titled "Studies in Improving Airship Velocities" or something like that, which I need to check into the next time I'm down there. It at least shows that someone was studying the subject.

Originally posted by nightwing
First real question. Is this comment serious, or casual ?
"Thanks, I'll include that in the book. " == rand

Heh, heh, I really don't know. I do know I've just gotten started with this subject and I already have more potential material than most researchers, in any field, turn into a whole career. I'm still open to the possiblity that this is all a load of hooey, but it just ties together too well, you know? It may be completely wrong, but it makes for a pretty good story. I haven't even gotten to the part that ties blimps to Kecksberg (who'd a thought, huh?) but there's probably a UFO Files episode there, at least. If someone offers me a book deal someday I might consider it Same goes for the CIA buying me off if the price is right.

I don't think this one is going to write off the UFOers But like the others have said, It's a start! I have been around for a little bit and been to some places, I would love to have seen a UFO then or now, but nope It may be do to the fact that I have 20/15 vision. I am pretty sure that a blimp can not handle the tolerances of going over 200 mph. much less 400 mph.
But that's coming from a guy that has a crock rocket that will go 180 mph. with a tag that has UFO on it :

"I haven't even gotten to the part that ties blimps to Kecksberg" == rand

Hmmm. I figured you would start with the 1942 Blimp over Los Angeles. If any sighting would match the
locale, trajectory, etc...that one does.

Its kind of hard not to jeer.. I'll grant that this is something new, but new isn't always best. This seems plausible in some cases and just sorta.. Questionable in others. Good thoughts though.

This thread makes me want to own a blimp just because of the fact that they can do some pretty neat stuff.

Just to be devils advocate here...

For "some" of the speed related manouvers it could be possible that the blimp was stationary in the air. If a pilot did not check their RADAR systems and only used visual cues, it could be interpreted that the object approached the plane at high speed.. but in actuality it was the plane approaching the object at high speed.

However this would not work obviously on any of the reported inicidents that have been reported regarding RADAR.

Originally posted by nightwing
Hmmm. I figured you would start with the 1942 Blimp over Los Angeles. If any sighting would match the locale, trajectory, etc...that one does.

You're referring to the infamous "Battle Of L.A."; I've have always found that one amusing. I can just imagine all those AA gunners blasting away at each other's smoke I do sometime wonder if an un-retouched version of the "original" image even exists; the latest versions are wearing more makeup than Tammy Faye at her best.

quote: Originally posted by UnBreakable
So what about "blimps" that exceed 1,000 mph? That's harder to fathom than the ufo phenomenon. Sorry, I don't buy the "blimp" explanation for all the reported ufo cases.
www.nicap.dabsol.co.uk...


See another post about how to fool radar using two or more blimps.

Many people have a fundamental misunderstanding about how radar works, and especially how early radar sets operated. Until doppler radar came of age, radar sets didn't directly track the speed of an object. It more like, well, there's a blip here... and now there's a blip over here...it must be the same object because no other object shows up in the same general direction. But if the operator was actually tracking two or more separate targets it could easlily appear that one object was exceeding the bounds of reasonable physics.

It was a know problem from the earliest days of radar research, and one of the main reasons NORAD spent less money on radar equipment than on the computers and communications needed for fully-correlated targets.

I've noticed that more recent radar UFOs rarely seem to exceed Mach 1, while UFOs from the 50s and 60s could dart off at 8000 mph with no trouble. It's probably due to the better equipment we have now.

Please note that the visual sighting associated with the Sebago affair couild have easily been a blimp: the sun was just a few degrees below the eastern horizon, at an azimuth of around 100 degrees, while the the object was high in the west, over 30 degrees, at an azimuth of 270 degrees. Under those conditions a silvery cigar-shaped object would have lit up like a klieg light in the dark pre-dawn sky.

I guess witnesses from the Air Force, Marines, Army, civilian authorities, etc. , who use radar all the time, and have verified speeds greater than mach 1, have a "fundamental misunderstanding of how radar works" , even systems as recent as say 2000.

Sgt. Robert Blazina: (ret.), August 2000

Mr. Robert Blazina is a retired military man with a top-secret clearance. He worked transporting nuclear weapons all over the world. He personally witnessed a UFO maneuvering in the clear nights sky at an incredible speed straight up. Another time he and a civilian 747 both saw on their radar screens an object travel an estimated 10,000 miles an hour directly at them.

www.ufoevidence.org...

Originally posted by Keeval

Just to be devils advocate here...

For "some" of the speed related manouvers it could be possible that the blimp was stationary in the air. If a pilot did not check their RADAR systems and only used visual cues, it could be interpreted that the object approached the plane at high speed.. but in actuality it was the plane approaching the object at high speed.

However this would not work obviously on any of the reported inicidents that have been reported regarding RADAR.

Doppler radar, yes, perhaps, but without knowing something about the type of radar system used it would be difficult to be more definite, Otherwise, see Post 1894653 above
about radar.

Do you have some links to any specific reported incidents you'd like me to check out?

I currently design in depth prefire plans for aircraft for the air force. I would like to think my knowledge of aircraft being utilized this day is knowledgible. I've never seen any blimp move as fast as I've seen something move. That something? Not sure. But it sure could take a turn going faster than what any human could endure.

Originally posted by UnBreakable
I guess witnesses from the Air Force, Marines, Army, civilian authorities, etc. , who use radar all the time, and have verified speeds greater than mach 1, have a "fundamental misunderstanding of how radar works" , even systems as recent as say 2000.

Did I say "radar operators"? I was talking about the general population, people like yourself But, yes, it's quite possible for a radar operator to be fooled by multiple targets.

Doppler radar, as I said, is able to directly measure the radial velocity of an object, but still has limitations. NEXRAD weather radar, for instance, is accurate up to tornadic wind speeds, but can't cope with anything much higher, and re-paints on something like a six-minute interval; it also self-limits the range to about 200 miles or so. I've never heard of a doppler radar system designed for aircraft that's been calibrated for 10000 mph, but there might be one.

As far as I know, no current radar system directly measures the tangential velocity of a target (but I'm willing to be corrected if you know of one).

(edit: Ok, I'll correct myself on this one)

Tangential Velocity Measurement Using Interferometric Mti Radar
An Interferometric Moving Target Indicator radar can be used to measure the tangential velocity component of a moving target. Multiple baselines, along with the conventional radial velocity measurement, allow estimating the true 3-D velocity vector of a target.
Authors: Doerry, Armin W. ; Mileshosky, Brian P. ; Bickel, Douglas L.
Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (US); Sandia National Labs., Livermore, CA (US)
01 Nov 2002

Still don't know if it's in production yet, but it looks interesting. Got some book-larnin' to do. For those who want to read along at home,
www.prod.sandia.gov...
(/edit)

Sgt. Robert Blazina: (ret.), August 2000
Mr. Robert Blazina is a retired military man with a top-secret clearance. He worked transporting nuclear weapons all over the world. He personally witnessed a UFO maneuvering in the clear nights sky at an incredible speed straight up. Another time he and a civilian 747 both saw on their radar screens an object travel an estimated 10,000 miles an hour directly at them.
www.ufoevidence.org...

estimated
That says to me that they saw blips and had to interpret the range and direction to come up with a result. It's undoubtedly a very good estimate IF they were tracking a single object which wasn't doing anything special to trick their radar.

But I'm suspicious about Sgt. Robert Balzina (ret) anyway. Anyone know what branch he served in? (Or even which country?) All the other prior military on the Disclosure list show their affiliation. And did he really retire as a Sgt.? If he was Air Force, he would have retired as an E-4, which makes for a pretty sad career. Army or Marines, he would have been E-5, which is still pretty bad.

I'm supposing that he's a pilot now, but by the time 747's came out AF for sure and probably the other branches didn't have NCO pilots any more. Anybody know what has he done at Disclosure? I haven't found any references beyond his bio.

...a retired military man with a top-secret clearance People don't take their security clearance with them when they retire, especially Top-Secret. Maybe they mean he had a TS at some point whilst in the service.

He worked transporting nuclear weapons all over the world. What capacity, I wonder?

Anyway, if anyone has any other info on the good Sgt., could you please post it? TIA

[edit on 2-1-2006 by rand]

First , Project Sign did not exist until it was ordered into existence as you stated on Dec. 31 , 1947. However, T-2 had opened on office at Wright Field to study UFOs early in July ,1947.

Also , Kenneth Arnolds sighting is considered to be the first of the '47 Wave, but it is in no way the first UFO sighting.

There were "Foo Fighters" during WWII.

Mid-July,1945; Hanford Nuclear Reactor, Washington State
UFO over AEC plant tracked by radar, F84's scrambled www.nicap.dabsol.co.uk...

16 January 1947 - The North Sea Incident that becomes RAF "Operation Charlie".
A Bullseye exercise was in progress, involving mosquitoes of 25 and 29 Squadrons, from RAF West Malling in Kent. Two aircraft from 29 Squadron were operating off the East Coast under the control of the GCI at Trimley Heath, near Felixstowe, Suffolk.

"Trimley ( Heath ) came up on my direct phone to report a strange plot which was either stationary at a great height or moving erratically at a great speed and then stopping again. If this was a conventional aircraft it would have travelled in a straight line, but it did not do that. This was not an aircraft, it was something very odd. 400 mph [quoted in the Daily Mail] is a pretty disappointing figure, as it is within the range of some 1947 aircraft types. Somebody – either at one of the [radar] stations or at Uxbridge [11 Group Operations Room] – had computed speed between the rather intermittent plots and had come up with a startling figure of 1,000 mph."
www.project1947.com...

1 Jul 47 - "GCA radar at Hokkaido, Japan picked up an unidentified target at 16 miles, with a speed in excess of 500 mph. This target split into two targets, each estimated to be larger than a P-51." (TS USAF Air Intel Div Study 100-203)

And as for people not being able to recognize Blimps is laughable, the Good Year Blimp has been gracing the Skies of Stadiums and Race Tracks for over 70 Years.