This is the longest "necrobump" I've ever made of about 11 years, but some other research led me back to this event, so I'm placing my observations
here for the record. I'm not sure if anybody will see this unless someone pulls up this old thread for research like I did.
originally posted by: Kandinsky
reply to post by jkrog08
The silver fuselage type (with bright port holes) reflected the tech of the time and sci-fi imagery.
That much is true.
Nevertheless, it seems certain that the incident occurred and the UFO fitted the description.
I know we are inclined to make judgements
like that, and maybe in 2009 I would have been inclined to think a multiple witness sighting like this is confirmation, though even back then I would
probably not have used the word "certain" in this context, because while I'm certain the incident occurred, I'm never certain that the UFO fits the
description. Even in 2009 I had some inking of witness misperceptions, and during the last 11 years of researching UFOs, I have come to place less and
less confidence on the accuracy of witness descriptions based on the evidence available that such descriptions are often unreliable in many
respects.
In 2014, about 5 years after this 2009 discussion, Jim Oberg presented some information about a UFO sighting over Kiev in 1963. On page 3 of his
paper, he says "May constitute a 'Rosetta Stone' for world Studies of human misperception" and indeed it may hold clues for this case in particular.
Now, what may have seemed unthinkable in 2009, seems likely, that Hynek's "unlikely" suggestion for an explanation may have actually been correct.
A 50 YEAR OLD SOVIET UFO CASE IS THE KEY TO UNLOCKING THE MYSTERY OF THE GIANT ALIEN
MOTHERSHIPS
Look at the two drawings in the middle of that 1963 UFO over Kiev, with the two rows of windows and long fiery exhaust!
Did they see the same space ship? No! It was something burning up in Earth's atmosphere. So now we know that people can perceive things breaking up
and burning up in Earth's atmosphere as structured spacecraft, and not just one witness, multiple witnesses. Many things seem to fit, like the long
fiery exhaust. Compare that to First Officer Whitted's sketch of two rows of windows from the OP:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/1d505f70b910.jpg[/atsimg]
About the "pulling up" maneuver that Capt. Chiles mentioned: "After it passed it pulled up into some broken couds and was lost from view. There was no
prop wash ot rough air felt as it passed."
One thing we know about bolide sightings (and also man-made objects burning up as they enter the atmosphere) is that almost all observers commonly are
way off on estimating the distances to such objects, with the usual error being to assume the object is much closer than it really is. Given that
knowledge, it seems quite possible that it was never as low and as close as the pilots thought. They would be very unusual observers indeed if they
estimated the altitude and distance correctly when almost nobody else ever does. So this also casts serious doubt on the "pulling up" when in fact
they may have just got a more accurate impression after it passed that it was really further away than they thought. I would also note that in every
cockpit I've seen, pilots cannot see objects that have "passed" them in the manner these pilots described, that is, an object on a near collision
course that was flying in the opposite direction. After it passed, it would be behind them, so it doesn't make any sense for them to be describing the
maneuvers of an object that passed them which they can no longer see.
So in summary, in 2009 I probably would have thought Hynek's meteor explanation was very unlikely. After looking at the 2014 report on the 1963 Kiev
UFO, as well as what happened with the 1996 Yukon UFO where witnesses also saw a structured craft where there was none, I no longer think Hynek's
explanation is unlikely, in fact, I now think it is quite likely. I know there are those who refuse to believe that human perception can work this
way, but see the evidence that it can work this way, with multiple witnesses seeing "familiar-looking" structured craft when the looked at a fireball
swarm, bringing us back this this statement of "The silver fuselage type (with bright port holes) reflected the tech of the time..." which is what the
human mind can imprint on observations that confuse us like a fireball swarm.
edit on 2020721 by Arbitrageur because: clarification