Eighty Years of Pilot UFO sightings.

Thanks for the replies -appreciate the comments and completely agree that some of the reported flight characteristics sound very strange indeed.
Theres a great French OVNI video here which does a good job of compiling some of the more interesting pilot/UFO incidents - it only lasts for ten minutes but is definitely worth a watch.

Cheers.

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

Originally posted by karl 12
reply to post by fls13

 

Fls13 -thanks for posting that one

Found this bit interesting - seems to be a reoccurring theme with Air Force/Naval UFO/USO incidents:

Mr Torres, now 77 and a retired professor of civil engineering living in Miami, told The Times that the day after he was scrambled from RAF Manston he received a visit from an American in a trenchcoat who waved a National Security Agency identity card at him and warned him that, if he ever revealed what had happened, he would never fly again.

www.timesonline.co.uk...

Here's some youtube of Mr. Torres. This guy is just amazing. I'd love to hear Bill "the fraud masquerading as a scientist" Nye respond to this.

Originally posted by fls13
Here's some youtube of Mr. Torres. This guy is just amazing. I'd love to hear Bill "the fraud masquerading as a scientist" Nye respond to this.

Fls13 -that is a great, great video.

Kudos for posting that one

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

Originally posted by Enceladus
Nice thread with lots of interesting information; need some time to go through everything; thanks for your(OP) time & effort

Enceladus -thanks for the reply, theres certainly been some freaky reports - the Black Box Secrets documentary (linked in the OP) does a great job of covering specific cases and its one of the best UFO programmes I've seen in a while.

Cheers.

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

Radio interview with Milton Torres - continued here

Milton Torres (Ret. USAF Maj.) is finally speaking about his UFO encounter. The British Ministry of Defense declassified his file in October, 2008.

Milton Torres, a United States Air Force pilot who stated that on 20th May 1957 he was ordered to open fire on a UFO that was being tracked on radar. He was based at RAF Manston in Kent and was scrambled to intercept a UFO that had been tracked over Kent. He claims that he came within seconds of firing off a salvo of 24 rockets when the UFO accelerated away at a speed of around Mach 10.

Times article

---

Similar incident involving two F-86 Sabre Jets as presented in the Air Force Academy's science book:

www.cufon.org...

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

What was Dr. Allen Hynek's evaluation of the quality of pilot reports of UFOs? I seem to rtecall it might have some bearing here.

Hynek in his own words: Towards the end of this CBS documentary discusses why he likes pilot reports, and in this Saturday Evening Post says essentially the same thing.

reply to post by JimOberg


Quite positive realy and at least he had the intellectual honesty to actualy address some of the more puzzling cases.

Theres a thread here which you might enjoy about the Condon Committee - some of their techniques may seem familiar.

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

Originally posted by fls13
Hynek in his own words: Towards the end of this CBS documentary discusses why he likes pilot reports, and in this Saturday Evening Post says essentially the same thing.

Fls13 -Great post

Always found this to be an interesting (and honest) statement made by Dr Hyneck:

"Before I began my association with the US Air Force, I had
joined my scientific colleagues in many a hearty guffaw
at the "psychological postwar craze" for flying saucers
that seemed to be sweeping the country and at the naivete
and gullibility of our fellow human beings who were being
taken in by such obvious "nonsense." It was almost in a
sense of sport that I accepted the invitation to have a
look at the flying saucer reports....."

"I had started out as an outright 'debunker,' taking
great joy in cracking what seemed at first to be puzzling
cases. I was the arch enemy of those 'flying saucer
groups and enthusiasts' who very dearly wanted UFOs to be
interplanetary. My own knowledge of those groups came
almost entirely from what I heard from Blue Book
personnel; they were all "crackpots and visionaries.'"


"Now, however, documentation which puts the UFO-
U.S. government controversy in quite a new light has
become available. The authors have made revealing use of
documents released through the mechanism of the Freedom
of Information Act and other data which have been made
available to them, often through private sources, which
show that the CIA and NSA protestations of innocence and
lack of interest in UFOs are nothing short of
prevarication."

"The reader must judge for himself or herself just
how far these implications extend, but certainly no one
can deny any longer that various intelligence agencies of
our government were long cognizant of UFOs and the global
extent of this phenomenon. Official dispatches from our
embassies and air bases in other countries to these
agencies, to the State Department, and even, on occasion,
to the White House, bear incontrovertible witness to
this."

"For the government to continue to maintain that
UFOs are nonexistent in the face of the documents already
released and of other cogent evidence presented in this
book is puerile and in a sense an insult to the American
people."

Dr Allen J Hyneck,astronomer, professor and scientific adviser to UFO studies undertaken by the U.S. Air Force.

And these two are quite revealing about the true nature of Project Bluebook:

"Blue Book was now under direct orders to debunk...I remember the conversations around the conference table in which it was suggested that Walt Disney or some other educational cartoon producer be enlisted in the debunking process".
Dr Allen J Hyneck,astronomer, professor and scientific adviser to UFO studies undertaken by the U.S. Air Force.





"Project Blue Book was ballyhooed by the Air Force as a full-fledged top-priority operation. It was no such thing. The staff, in a sense, was a joke. In terms of scientific training and numbers, it was highly inadequate to the task. And the methods used were positively archaic. And that is the crack operation that the general public believes looked adequately into the UFO phenomenon".
Dr Allen J Hyneck,astronomer, professor and scientific adviser to UFO studies undertaken by the U.S. Air Force.

I suspect you've seen the film before but, if not, Dr Hyneck raises some excellent points towards the end:

UFOs -it has begun.

Cheers.

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

Here's a little addition, never saw this before, the RB47 case from 1957.

reply to post by fls13


Fls13, thats a truly perplexing UFO incident - nice one for bringing it up.

Theres a great case report here on the RB-47 UFO encounter by Dr. James E. McDonald for the UFO subcommittee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and it makes for some very interesting reading.

The case is long and involved and filled with well-attested phenomena that defy easy explanation in terms of present-day science and technology. The RB-47 was flying out of Forbes AFB, Topeka, on a composite mission including gunnery exercises over the Texas-Gulf area, navigation exercises over the open Gulf, and ECM exercises in the return trip across the south-central U.S. This was an RB-47 carrying a six-man crew, of whom three were electronic warfare officers manning ECM (Electronic counter-measures) gear in the aft portion of the aircraft.
One of the extremely interesting aspects of this case is that electromagnetic signals of distinctly radar-like character appeared definitely to be emitted by the UFO, yet it exhibited performance characteristics that seem to rule out categorically its having been any conventional or secret aircraft.

Link

Cheers.

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

Pilot UFO Reports - FireFighters UFO Manual.

Subject: Firefighters FEMA UFO training manual

Following excerpt appeared in Fire Officer's Guide to Disaster Control by William M. Kramer and Charles W. Bahme.

Copyright (c)1992 by Fire Engineering Books & Videos.

Force Field Impact

The disruption of air and ground travel has often been reported in the presence of UFOs. The ignition systems of auto and aircraft engines have apparently been affected by energized force fields to such an extent as to stop their operation; the headlights and radios have also ceased to function. Here are a couple of examples. In Buenos Aires, on March 29, 1978, "A strange force shut off their engine and headlights of their Citroen CG, lifted it 15 feet off the road, then set it down a minute later and 75 miles to the north." The driver had noticed a yellow and violet light shining in his rear view mirror while driving the last leg of a long stock car race, and he realized that it was approaching too fast to be a competitor. A month later a Colombian bank manager and a navy officer had their car headlights go off when buzzed by a UFO, with the navy man suffering temporary paralysis. Other South American countries in which similar actions were reported around that time included Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay.(61)

These effects have also been noted to influence the controls and instruments of aircraft, e.g., the pilot of a Piper PH-24 reported that his controls became inoperable when he was approached by three disk-shaped objects, 10 to 12 feet in diameter, over Mexico City on May 3,1975.(62) Similar cases have been reported by military pilots, illustrated by the classic case of the near mid-air collision of an army helicopter with a UFO on October 18, 1973, over Ohio, where not only did both the UHF and VHF radio wave- lengths go dead temporarily, but the downward movement of the helicopter with its four occupants was levitated upward by a green beam from the UFO in time to prevent its crash into the ground.

Link

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

What I was asking for was Hynek's assessment of pilot reports as a category of UFO reports -- since there is a very common view that pilots, who are professionals of the skies, are highly accurate observers of unusual visual stimuli. Hynek discovered to his surprise that the opposite was true, and in hindsight, it makes sense:

www.zipworld.com.au...



Experienced UFO investigators realize that pilots, who instinctively and quite properly interpret visual phenomena in the most hazardous terms, are not dispassionate observers. Allen Hynek wrote: "Surprisingly, commercial and military pilots appear to make relatively poor witnesses..." The quote is from "The Hynek UFO Report", page 261 (Barnes and Noble reprint). (271 in original Dell, Dec 1977) He found that the best class of witnesses had a 50% misperception rate, but that pilots had a much higher rate: 88% for military pilots, 89% for commercial pilots, the worst of all categories listed. Pilots could be counted on to perceive familiar objects -- aircraft and ground structures -- very well, Hynek continued, but added a caveat: "Thus it might surprise us that a pilot had trouble identifying other aircraft, but it should come as no surprise that the majority of pilot misidentifications were of astronomical objects." Dell page 271

reply to post by JimOberg


Why didn't you just post that initially?

In terms of pilot sightings of UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena), this interview with Dr Richard Haines of NARCAP is fascinating. It's possibly the best interview on the subject I've yet to hear. A qualified, respected and objective man...

Dr. Richard F. Haines, Chief Scientist for the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP), speaks at length about airline sightings, airline safety, and his extensive research into these strange aerial mysteries.

Right click and save

If anyone enjoys it, there are some more excellent interviews at Paracast, I highly recommend a visit

reply to post by JimOberg
I've agreed with quite a few of your posts regarding STS footage. They've been rational and supported by evidence...plus I've checked up on them.

Sometimes your motivation to undermine witness credibility undermines your own credibility. The impression you give is that no matter what the position of responsibility or training, all witnesses of UFO/UAP are mistaken. I guess the extension of that logic is that if no witnesses can be credible, how can their critics be credible? If the authority of a pilot's experience isn't admissible, the value of your experience must also be inadmissible.

This isn't a standard ATS ad-hom attack, I'm trying to make a reasonable point. Have there been any reported incidents since 1980 that you have interpreted as 'unidentified' or 'anomalous?'

Many fields of research need to wrestle with limitations in human perception and memory, which alone is not grounds for outright disbelief in claims. My favorite counterexample involves the eyewitness reports of 'meteor sounds', hissing noises that sometimes accompanied bright fireballs. Scientists poohpoohed the idea because of the absence of any physical explanation of real-time noise from far-distant events. But the witnesses turned out to be accurately reporting a genuine phenomenon, and I helped Dr. Colin Keay solve it by noticing -- and then acting upon -- reports that similar noises were heard during shuttle reentries across Texas in the early 1980s.

Seeing anomalous objects in space is also not a genre of UFOs that can (or should) be 100% dismissed, and NASA has known this forever -- sightings could well be clues to spacecraft malfunctions. The saddest UNSEEN 'space UFO' was the hunk of wing thermal barrier that drifted away from Columbia the day after it reached orbit (after having been mortally wounded during ascent) in January 2003. Had any astronaut or exterior camera noticed it and reported it, more attention might have been paid to investigating 'potential' heat shield damage, and countermeasures (or a rescue) could have been attempted.

The problem with pilot sightings of UFOs is the same problem with pilot reports of aircraft accidents: they automatically jump to interpretations of what they are seeing and as a result they subconsciously edit the raw perceptual evidence. The NTSB knows this and tries to correct for it.

I bring this up in order to stress ways to make witnesses BETTER, or to make interviewers more cautious in asking witnesses to explain what they think they saw rather than report it raw -- when forming an explanation is an automatic mental process to shape the raw perceptions into a coherent pattern, often to the detriment of key details perceived (or not) during the experience.

This is why, I was told many years ago by Gene Tighe, Major Marcel of Roswell fame was a notorious counter-example in the Defense Intelligence Agency training programs in the 1950s as a perfect case of how NOT to perform your professional function of gathering raw intelligence for evaluation later in context. Students at the DIA School at Anacostia were told to NOT emulate Marcel. He, as his own accounts make clear, immediately decided what it was he had found -- a mental misjudgment that was a classic case in 'operator error' in the field of professional intelligence gathering, because from that point on the person is involved in proving himself right, at any cost in involuntary, innocent manipulation or editing of collected raw data.

Not recognizing these problems with oral evidence has directly led to the current fringe status of this entire field, and I am not convinced that such a status is entirely fair. But it has been earned the hard way -- by persistent mental malpractice for decades. Aren't we all happy with the results?

Originally posted by Kandinsky
In terms of pilot sightings of UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena), this interview with Dr Richard Haines of NARCAP is fascinating. It's possibly the best interview on the subject I've yet to hear. A qualified, respected and objective man...

Dr. Richard F. Haines, Chief Scientist for the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP), speaks at length about airline sightings, airline safety, and his extensive research into these strange aerial mysteries.

Right click and save

Kandinsky- thats a pretty remarkable interview.

Dr. Richard Haines introduction to the paper involving 56 reports of electromagnetic effects is quite an eyeopener - he also made this statement in 1998.

"What I found was compelling evidence to claim that most of these aerial objects far exceeded the terrestrial technology of the era in which they were seen. I was forced to conclude that there is a great likelihood that Earth is being visited by highly advanced aerospace vehicles under highly 'intelligent' control indeed."

Dr Richard F. Haines-Retired NASA senior research scientist, Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science, 1998.

Always found this quote by John Alexander quite interesting too.

“The undeniable reality is that there are a substantial number of multi-sensor UFO cases backed by thousands of credible witnesses. In the physical domain there are many photos, videos, radar tracking, satellite sensor reports, landing traces including depressions and anomalous residual radiation, electromagnetic interference, and confirmed physiological effects. Personal observations have been made both day and night, often under excellent visibility with some at close range. Included are reports from multiple independent witnesses to the same event. Psychological testing of some observers has confirmed their mentally competence. Why is none of this considered evidence?

There are over 3000 cases reported by pilots, some of which include interference with flight controls. On numerous occasions air traffic controllers and other radar operators have noted unexplained objects on their scopes. So too have several astronomers and other competent scientists reported their personal observations. Many military officials from several countries have confirmed multi-sensor observations of UFOs. The most senior air defense officers of Russia, Brazil, Belgium and recently a former Chief of Naval Operations in Chile all have stated that UFOs are real. These cases and comments are a miniscule fraction of the total body of evidence.

Of course they do not constitute irrefutable proof. However, to state there is no evidence suggestive of intelligent extraterrestrial life simply belies the facts. Decades in duration and global in nature, there are too many hard sensor data-points and millions of eyewitnesses to ignore. We certainly can debate the significance of specific data and question whether or not it establishes a causal relationship between the observations and extraterrestrial life. However, it is only through ignorance or pomposity that one can say no evidence exists.”

John B. Alexander,Ph.D.

Cheers.

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

Some great pilot (and ship's Captains) UFO/USO reports covered in this interview with Carl Feindt from the WaterUFO website.

After appearing on BoA:Audio for a brief interview that generated a lot of buzz last Fall, Carl Feindt returns to the program for an in-depth discussion on the water-UFO connection.
We'll be exploring why Carl decided to investigate this aspect of Ufology, interesting trends and fascinating insights that he has gained from his research, cases that he does not think are related to UFOs, the international aspects of the phenomenon, sea monsters, radar and sonar cases, UFOs. v. USOs, "Water Wheels", the Eltanin, Shag Harbour, and a ton more aquatic-themed esoteric material.

We plumb the depths of the UFO-water connection as BoA:Audio returns with a must-hear episode for any serious student of Ufology.

Link:
www.binnallofamerica.com...

reply to post by JimOberg

Jim, while I do agree with some of what you said, the cases Hynek mentions are not the ones outlined by the OP. Those are the ones that are easily dismissed and long forgotten. The percentages are higher simply because pilots are more likely to see objects in the sky.

However, a pilot IS going to be able to identify other aircraft, very accurately, unless they are very damn far away. Something that shows up on radar, and/or can be observed changing direction, and at thousands of miles per hour, are clearly NOT 'other aircraft' or 'astronomical objects'. Nor are the things that are reportedly MUCH larger than conventional aircraft.

You never did answer Kandinskys question, and I'd also be interested in your answer, if you would be so kind:

Originally posted by Kandinsky
Have there been any reported incidents since 1980 that you have interpreted as 'unidentified' or 'anomalous?'

[edit on 20-8-2009 by Clickfoot]