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

circa 1946-47
keep em coming rand

Aircraft witnessed by many civilians. And this aircraft project was more publicly covered than others.

Those right there are Just cheap imitations of the real thing. They prove nothing. These weird planes that you show here are not what people where reporting.

These planes do NOT:

1. Fly Silent

2. Cast a glow at night. Or are self luminescent.

3. Hover and speed off at thousands of miles per hour.


These planese are so cheaply made, and such poor imitation from the real thing, that if a person would see them they would probably laugh to death.
And yes even if they where from 1947.

Your USA UFO SUCK

Cabanman - That's extreme uninformed speculation on your part. Citizens did report this aircraft. One even glided and crashed onto a beach. I understand there are hard core believers and zealots here who will say that this SUCKS but I'm ok with that.

I see the purpose of this forum is to evaluate all the possibilities for explanation. Not simply to accept what that something is extraterrestrial because of blind faith.

rand is showing possible/plausible explanations for what people have seen. And i'll add he has gone to great lengths to illustrate his point. If someone like yourself wants to produce the evidence to counter rands points, it may better to do so on the level he is producing his points.
Writing "Your USA UFO SUCK" is not a compelling argument at all.

[edit on 7-1-2006 by nullster]

My bad for the USA UFO SUCK comment, it was out of line.


But I would like to provide this piece of evidence and you guys can tell me if it looks like, or is a blimp. See Here


Or mybe you guys can try this one Here




[edit on 7-1-2006 by Cabanman]

There are those that believe everything ,then there are those that do not believe anything at all, then there is the majority us who want to believe that even though a high percentage can be explained logically, that there is still a possibility that with the hoaxes out of the way there are genuine UFO,S. We have some strong critics on this site, that offer constructive info on why something is not alien,these are probably the most important people,they want to believe,its the govenment coverups which causes the most frustration,but as more and more sightings show up ,the internet is certainly bringing the people and immediate info together,who knows maybe soon we will all know the truth.It would be a great idea if all the subjects that are connected by a thread could come together under one heading ie,UFO,S, RELIGIOUS SECRETS, MASONS,GOVERNMENT SECRETS,etc, we need the moles to let the info out, mike

For the record.................

radar is not the only method out there for determining airspeed. many estimations were made by pilots who were flying beyond the sound barrier, and saw craft flying 5 times faster than them.

Also, i have seen no evidence of top secret blimps. Since damn near every military invention eventually filters to the civilian market, wed already have amazing blimps to putter around in.

And a blimp would be shreded to pieces trying to perform the manuevers reported of UFOs by military pilots, who themselves would be ripped to pieces if they tried it on a sturdier craft.

Sorry, not convinced in the slightest.

Now, finally, we get back to the question of whether the modern UFO era got started with a mistaken sighting of a bunch of blimps.

For those readers unfamiliar with the story (shame on you! ) here are links to Arnold's own words about the sighting:
First Radio Interview with Kenneth Arnold; 25 June 1947
Project Blue Book Archives on Kenneth Arnold (his letter actually starts at document 566)
Interview with Edward R. Murrow(this account of the interview contains a glaring error: Arnold says the objects were on a 107 degree trajectory; that's most certainly a mistake, since there's no possible way he could have seen them in the direction of both Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams -- not to mention Mt. Baker -- on that heading. Perhaps it's an audio transcription error, or maybe Arnold mis-read his script.)
The Coming of the Saucers by Kenneth Arnold and Ray Palmer

It's interesting to see how Arnold's account evolved over time.

Also, there was a lengthy and lively discussion on the Virtually Strange mailing list dealing with the possiblity that Arnold saw a flock of pelicans; just jump into the discussion almost anywhere and work you way back out, and you'll find some excellent analysis on both sides.

One thing you won't see here is any further mention of the reports of Arnold's sighting in newpaper and magazine articles of the time. That's because I simply don't trust them; if you've seen the recent "Nasa About To Announce Life In Our Solar System!" discussion here at ATS you know what I mean. It was a compounded media mistake which led to the term "flying saucer" after all; why trust the same media to accurately quote Arnold in any other regard? I'm qualified to complain: I've been a journalist, and I've seen how writers and editors alike will "sweeten" a quote (if not get it completly wrong).



This map gives an overview of the Arnold sighting, from the first contact until the objects disappeared in the direction of Mt. Adams. It also shows both trajectories (160 and 170 degrees) which Arnold mentioned. My feeling is that Arnold realized that the 160-degree path didn't fit his later accounts, and changed the direction to fit.

The question here is not so much "DID Kenneth Arnold see a formation of blimps?" as it is "COULD Kenneth Arnold have seen a formation of blimps?" The first question will never be answered until one of the aging blimp pilots or their crew comes forward with definitive proof. The second question we can certainly tackle.

But first, we need to deal with several peripheral questions, starting with:

Did Arnold see what he says he saw?"

Almost certainly, no.

The problem is that the flat, streamlined craft which he described is almost incapable of appearing as he reported.

Let's start with a simple fly-by. I'm using a model based on Arnold's own drawing as found in the Blue Book records. He indicated that the craft were dark but shiny, so I painted mine gloss black.

These following animations are lit as if it were 3:30 PM, PST, at Mineral, Washington (another one of those uncertainites: Arnold forgot what time zone he used to set his clock, so I spilt the difference). According to the Naval Observatory, the sun was at 256 degree azimuth, 44 degrees altitude (again, I split the difference).



Boring, isn't it? The problem is that a flattened object like that will mostly reflect whatever is behind it, like the horizon, so getting it to 'flash' with reflected sunlight is a bit of a hassle when the Sun is behind the observer. In fact, if the object here was silver instead of black, it would just about disappear completely.

We could try wiggling the wings, as Arnold thought they were doing, but let's just cut to the chase: under the prevailing conditions West of Mt. Rainier on July 24, 1947, a smooth, flattened, pie-pan-like object would need to be tipped at an outragous angle to throw refections as Arnold described. The flatter the object, the greater the angle. To match Arnold's description, we need aircraft carrier sized shovels snowplowing over the Cascades at Mach II.

The sunlight that day was coming down at a 44 degree angle. In order to reflect that light back to an observer at roughly the same altitude, there has to be a reflecting surface oriented 22 degrees from vertical.



The situation is more complicated in the horizontal. A flat object moving from North to South would need to orient itself at a constantly changing angle in order to reflect the light to our observer. In fact, the required angle is equal to the tangent of a parabola, as shown.



When we apply that priciple to the Arnold sighting we can see how a flat object would have to be aligned in order to 'flash' as he described it.



We can try, of course, starting with a look at the object as seen at 45 degrees, around the same angle he would have first seen them North of Mt. Rainier.



There's a tiny glint on the leading edge at about 50 degrees rotation, and again 180 degrees later -- that's my fault, I still haven't mastered the skill of forming razor-sharp edges -- but other than that, there is no sunlight reflected back to our observer.

It is possible to get a good flare, but only at one azimuth: 265 degrees, the same as the direction of the sunlight, but, as mentioned, only within a few degrees of 22 degrees from vertical:



At any other angle, it takes some serious wiggle-waggle to get a flash:



Now, it might actually be that strange alien creatures decided to drive their wonderfully aerodynamic craft across the Cascades like so many drunken shovels. Maybe they were there to test aircraft carrier sized flying snowplows, perhaps.

But that's not what Arnold claims to have seen.

Luckily, there is a simpler, easier explanation, one that correctly accounts for everything Arnold said he witnessed, and I'll bet you can already guess what it is. That's for another time. There is still some groundwork to do.

THe problem is secrecy istelf. It creates a Republic destined to establish an underclass of information, which, with time, will detach from the powers that be unless sufficiently passified.

Interesting post, Rand. I disagree in some instances, but not all.

Like others have mentioned, blimps only fit blimp incidents, not all the sightings. For example, the first hand testimony of various people, from various walks of life. The lead singer of Grand Funk Railroad said that when he was younger, he and his entire family (his mom, dad, and siblings), witnessed a UFO hovering a few hundred feet away from their house, just 20 feet or so, over a
field. He was on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory (Art interview him though) back in 2005. Here's an excerpt blurb from the streamlink page:

In 1968, Farner claims to have seen a UFO hovering 100 yards away in a field across the street from his parents' house. He described the craft as disc-shaped, approximately 200 feet in diameter with "tiny lights twinkling around the middle of it." While staring up at the UFO, Farner explained, he felt a low rumble, then the craft shot across the sky leaving behind a large ring of smoke.

He said this event was later corroborated by his cousin's secretary, who lived down the road and also witnessed the UFO. Farner believes the craft was alien in origin.

---

This is a link to the interview with him (you have to be a subscriber to Coast to Coast AM, in order to listen to the show. It's from their archives.):
www.coasttocoastam.com...


[edit on 17-3-2006 by undo]

Originally posted by undo
...blimps only fit blimp incidents. The lead singer of Grand Funk Railroad...(etc)

My theory has been and continues to be that not all sightings are blimp-like, but many, if not most, are. And there are enough of them that we should be suspicious that the military AND the established investigation groups go out of their way to avoid mentioning the possibility that some UFOs might be blimps.

As for Farner, his father died years earlier, so if Dad witnessed a UFO in 1968 we've got more interesting things to discuss

And actualy, the report could easily be a classic blimp-ish sighting. A cigar-shape can easily be taken for a disk, and it was 2 AM, after all. 200' is about a perfect size for a blimp. The area east of Flint is covered in small lakes: UFOs and blimps are attracted to small, calm bodies of water like ponds and stock-tanks. And, wouldn't you know it, the Navy was playing with JATO for bliimps at least as far back as 1950. I saw a plane use JATO at an airshow when I was a kid; it sounded a lot like Farner's description: kinda like the ffffft of a bottle-rocket, only freakin' LOUD.

The real question is: what are all those silvery blimp-like things doing in Michigan?

My brother-in-law on my husband's side of the family, saw one too, also in Michigan. He said it was so close he could actually see details like a ladder?!! It moved across highway 23, very slowly, coasted across a field and eventually disappeared behind some trees.

A friend of mine also claimed to see several. One saw the cigar-shaped craft, the other saw several different types.

Hubby is in the Air Force and he says they have a plane now, that is absolutely gigantic. He said he's never seen anything that big before. That's all he told me about it, but I can inquire for details when he gets up.

Lemme see... Oh I'm from Michigan. I suppose you are looking for a way to attach it to the car industry somehow? Proving Grounds?

UFO's do exist but the real question is are they ET or man made?

Originally posted by rand
Here's the bad news:

The sad and awful truth is, they've mostly been blimps.

wrong move to post a thread like this in ATS.
You`v just dug yourself a hole

I could probably give you 10 paragraphs of why your so wrong and lecture on for hours but I think most of the members will give you a run for your money.

Might aswell raise the white flag in early,you might get compassion.

[edit on 17-3-2006 by blackSt33L]

so your telling me the craft kenneth arnold saw going thousands of miles an hour was a blimp? gimme a break... any idiot can tell the difference between a mile wide slow moving blimp and a ufo stopping in mid flight an going backwards the same speed. right a blimp was travelling beside the airplane when half of the crew reported seeing it along with the captain. (from project blue book) you just dont believe ufos thats all.

What I want to know is, how do blimps travell at over 1000 mph & do all the stuff that we've seen like become invisible, hover & wizz off, change colours & so on

I don't beleive they are ET but they do infact exist man made or not. The evidence pictures and video proove it. though a lot of stuff is faked there is good footage.

Originally posted by worksoftplayhard
so your telling me the craft kenneth arnold saw going thousands of miles an hour was a blimp? gimme a break... any idiot can tell the difference between a mile wide slow moving blimp and a ufo stopping in mid flight an going backwards the same speed. right a blimp was travelling beside the airplane when half of the crew reported seeing it along with the captain. (from project blue book) you just dont believe ufos thats all.

Well, I wasn't going to into the subject unless someone (who could tell the difference?) brought it up, but since you did, I'll digress a bit and deal with Arnold's estimate that the objects were travelling over 1000 mph before tackling the other issues. Keep watching this space.

I've touched on your second point (how a slow or even stationary object can appear to travel 'along with' an aircraft) so I won't go into that.

And you were warned, after all: this was not intended as a flame-fest between the blindly faithful and the blindly sceptical, but a reasoned discussion and investigation into the possibility that the NRO/CIA/USAF have been using blimps for domestic and international surveillance.

Originally posted by blackSt33L
I could probably give you 10 paragraphs of why your so wrong and lecture on for hours but I think most of the members will give you a run for your money. Might as well raise the white flag in early, you might get compassion.

Bring it on. The really sad thing is that noone seems to be able mount a decent argument to my theories.

Rand,

It looks like you've put a lot into that analysis of the Arnold sighting.
I haven't had the time to fully devote to reading it, and researching it further, but I will definitely do so!

You may want to consider copying that post into a separate thread in and of itself...

Originally posted by worksoftplayhard
so your telling me the craft kenneth arnold saw going thousands of miles an hour was a blimp? gimme a break...

Don't take my word for it; don't take anybody's word for granted, either, do the research yourself. The internet has provided us with a fantastic set of tools for the purpose. Here's my results, with the evidence it's based on. But don't expect me to cut anyone any breaks; if you don't like my results, present your own.

Arnold based his estimate on the speed of the objects on his belief that the object had travelled between Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams, a distance of around 45 miles, in exactly 102 seconds. This estimate is based soley on his insistance that the objects had in fact passed close by both peaks, but there was never any real reason to believe this assertion (at least not until the publication of his book, when we suddenly learn new and conflicting details).

Let's look at the situation, using Arnold's own words from his first radio interview, his July, 1947 letter to the Air Force, and his 1952 self-published book, "The Coming of the Saucers".

Where were the objects?

According to his first accounts in June, the objects passed between Arnold's aircraft and Mt. Rainier:
"...I could see them against the snow, of course, on Mt. Rainier...
"...going at a terrific speed across the face of Mt. Rainier."
which he confirmed the next month:
"...they approached Mt. Rainier, and I observed their outline against the snow quite plainly."

But with the publication of "The Coming of the Saucers" the public learned a detail he had withheld, it seems, in earlier reports and interviews: the objects, it now seemed, had actually passed east of the mountain.
"...they revealed their true position by disappearing from my sight momentarily behind a jagged peak that juts out from the base of Mount Rainier proper."
even though they were still simultaneously, somehow, between him and Mt. Rainier:
"...I observed the objects' outlines plainly as they flipped and flashed along against the snow..."

Arnold never named that peak or defined its location any better, but it's generally supposed he meant the Little Tahoma Peak, it being the only peak in the area of Mt. Rainier which is tall enough (he reported the objects flying at over 9000' feet, you will remember). Little Tahoma is also the only peak in the area save Mt. Rainier itself wide enough and which has enough prominence (ie, clearance) to the east for an aircraft to momentarily disappear behind. All the other available crags tend to have a lot of snow and ice piled behind them.

In June, he said he could see the objects in front of the snow of the two mountains
"...and against a high ridge that happens to lay in between..."
and repeated that again in the July letter:
"...passing another high snow-covered ridge in between Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams"
but by 1952, the ridge had metamorphasized into
"...a very high plateau with quite definite north and south edges."

At first the objects were travelling in one direction:
"...flying at about 160 degrees south..."
but by July, had changed course:
"...in a definite direction of about 170 degrees."

We can only speculate, of course, but perhaps Arnold realized the earlier course didn't actually pass very near Mt. Rainier, didn't get anywhere close to the ridge he mentioned, didn't go near Mt. Baker, and would have put then nine immense objects over the most densly populated area of the Northwest just two minutes earlier, in sight of thousands, if not millions, of potential witnesses. The course correction solved those problems.



So, where were they?

Well, disregarding the suspicious changes found in "The Coming of the Saucers", the only thing we can absolutely deduce from Arnold's statmentments is that the objects were flying generally north-to-south and that they passed between Arnold and three easily-seen landmarks.


But we can't really map that out until find out
Where was Arnold while all this was happening?

Despite Arnold's assertion that "...I knew where I was...", his own statements offer some doubt. For instance, in his first radio interview he indicates that he flew 15 minutes West from Mt. Rainier:
"...and as I come out of the canyon there, was about 15 minutes..."
and in July confirmed that he
"...flew to the west down and near the ridge side of the canyon where Ashford, Washington, is located."
In June Arnold left it at that, but in July he mentions that he
"...made a 360 degree turn to the right and above the little city of Mineral..."
which is several miles south of the Nisqually Valley where Ashford is located, so turning right over Mineral would have involved a bit more navigation:



He was also, he says, 5 miles or so east of Mineral when he first saw the objects:
"I trimmed out my airplane in the direction of Yakima, Washington...I hadn't flown more than two or three minutes on my course when a bright flash reflected on my airplane."

In 1952, the turn over Mineral was more reasonable, but the time of the initial contact was moved up a few minutes, because it was
"while making a turn of 180 degrees over Mineral, Washington, at approximately 9200 feet altitude, that a tremendously bright flash lit up the surfaces of my aircraft."
In 1947, he said he had to climb back to 9200' after making that turn.

At the same time, the distance to Mt. Rainier shrank considerably. In June, 1947,
"...I was approximately 25 to 28 miles from Mt. Rainier."
which works out just right if he was 15 minutes down the valley, considering the cruising speed of the CallAir which Arnold flew. In July he didn't estimate his distance from Mt. Rainier, but told the Air Force
"I estimate my distance from them...to be between twenty to twenty-five miles."
By 1952 the estimates had disappeared, and he more sure of the distance:
"...I determined my distance from their pathway to be in the vicinity of twenty-three miles..."
which would have put his plane between 18 and 20 miles from Mt. Rainier, depending on the part of the mountain used for the measurement.

He never actually says he was southwest of Mt. Rainier although he said several times that he was west of the mountain:
"...and flew to the west down and near the ridge side of the canyon..."
"I had made one sweep of this high plateau to the westward..."
although Mineral IS southwest of Rainier, and three minutes east bound, even more so.

Mineral is completely surrounded by low mountains, and so may have been out of his sight.

Just to complicate things further, Arnold said he was headed for Mt. Rainier, which is on a NE heading from Mineral (about 60 degrees), as noted above, but he was also flying almost directly east toward Yakima, which is at 97 degrees.
"...starting again toward Mt. Rainier...I trimmed out my airplane in the direction of Yakima, Washington, which was almost directly east of my position..."
and which is located right in line with the Nisqually River Valley.



Perhaps he was confused after the experience and actually turned right over Alder Lake, which is almost the right distance.



That's an attractive scenario: it easily answers several questions about the sighting.

Curiously, there is another small community perched just south of a small lake, Clear Lake, a near-twin of Mineral (actually, there are several, but this one is the most obvious). Clear Lake is in the Nisqually River Valley -- situated at the mouth of the valley, in fact -- and is almost exactly 25-28 miles west of Mt. Rainier, again depending on which part of the mountain you gauge it from.


Perhaps the best we can say is that Arnold was somewhere southwest-ish of Mt.Rainier that day:



Ok, now we can plot this all out and, maybe, figure out what Kenneth Arnold saw that day.

(That's going to have to wait until later; I have to help a kid with his income tax. In the meantime, here's the parameters we're going to have to deal with



If anyone want to start plugging in figures, Arnold would have travelled 14960 feet in those 102 seconds...