The Kecksburg UFO Crash: December 9th, 1965

Actually Arby, I'm glad that you rephrased your theory again.

It's starting to get clearer to to me what you were inferring.

Yes, I did notice that in my post, it's one of the reasons I keep going over Oberg's change of stance on this topic over the years. I think that there are clues in there, as to what really happened. I have no real 'proof', but I've just got a gut feeling that Oberg knows more than he's letting on here...

Like yourself Arby, I'm still in research mode here, and I want to draw the best conclusions I can (I don't think I can make any accurate guesses yet...)

The biggest hole in the data, as far as my research goes so far, is that while we have reputable reports of 2 objects passing through the skies over Kecksburg on Dec. 9th, (including orbital tracking data on Cosmos 96, and this fantastic analysis from the Sky & Telescope article detailing the assumed meteor [with a chance of being something other than a meteor]), we don't have any evidence of anything ever actually being recovered, with the exception of reports from the Kecksburg area, that seem impossible to verify...

I'm still digging, but I really want to wait until that perceived 'hole' in the data has been located. I'll admit, I'm having more trouble than usual trying to find supporting documentation for a Canada landing...

-WFA

Originally posted by WitnessFromAfar
we don't have any evidence of anything ever actually being recovered, with the exception of reports from the Kecksburg area, that seem impossible to verify...

I'm still digging, but I really want to wait until that perceived 'hole' in the data has been located. I'll admit, I'm having more trouble than usual trying to find supporting documentation for a Canada landing...

Jim Oberg explained that hole and accused us UFOers of possibly being pawns in the government conspiracy to hide the truth. It was in the article you posted the link to but you didn't quote this part, so I will to help explain the "hole":

www.post-gazette.com...

Oberg acknowledges that the ordinants, which have been reviewed by a leading amateur satellite watcher who didn't want his name revealed, seemed to confirm the official Air Force account that Kosmos 96 crashed in Canada more than 12 hours earlier than the Kecksburg crash. But Oberg checked the data further. The released tracking data, he said, couldn't be positively identified with specific pieces of the failed probe.

"It could have been jettisoned rocket stage of a large piece of space junk," he wrote. "The probe itself could have headed off toward Kecksburg."

Oberg proceeds to explain why the U.S. military would lie, or at least decide not to divulge everything it knew about the Kecksburg crash.

"In the 1960s, U.S. military intelligence agencies interested in enemy technology were eagerly collecting all the Soviet missile and space debris they could find. International law required that debris be returned to the country of origin. But hardware from Kosmos 96, with its special missile-warhead shielding, would have been too valuable to give back."

After all, he concluded, what better camouflage than to let people think the fallen object was not a Soviet probe, but a flying saucer?

"The Russians would never suspect, and the Air Force laboratories could examine the specimen at leisure. And if suspicion lingered, UFO buffs would be counted on to maintain the phony cover story, protecting the real truth."

For that reason, Oberg concluded, the Kecksburg scenario produced "delicious irony."

"A famous UFO case may actually involve a real U.S. government cover-up, but UFO buffs are on the wrong side. Instead of exposing the truth, they may be unwitting pawns in deception."

So we may be "pawns", eh? I can't rule that out either!

Remember Roswell took 50 years to declassify and we didn't even break any international law in that case. It won't be 50 years in this case until 2015, and it might take longer in this case or it may be determined prudent to NEVER declassify the fact that we broke international law. Why admit we are international criminals if we don't have to and all the UFO "pawns" are doing such a fine job of obscuring what happened that there's no need to admit it?

Is any of this adding up as to why there might be a hole about what was recovered? I suspect you don't need to look much further than this for the answer to the question about the "hole" in the data (but I'm sure we'll both keep looking anyway since we're so curious).

Perhaps you missed my post on that point...

You're right, I didn't quote the full explanation (didn't want to over quote lol)...

The problem I have with Oberg's assertion there is that he claims the probe capsule was never identified in the tracking data.

As I've shown in this thread, it WAS identified, as designation 94A, amongst the various pieces of Cosmos debris. 94A was tracked to land in Canada, if I'm not mistaken.

Oberg makes the claim that the probe capsule was not identified from the other pieces of debris, and therefore we can't determine which piece of debris it was. He then claims that several pieces of debris were unidentified, and he does so without actually revealing the data for all of us to review, we're just supposed to take his word for it.

Now I find that years later, in this current thread at ATS, Oberg is still making this claim. Further investigation in this thread (by both of us specifically Arby...) has uncovered the data itself, and we find the report in stark contrast to Oberg's conclusions.

We find that not only was there only 1 piece of unidentified debris, that the probe capsule itself WAS designated and tracked...

So yes, you're right, I'm of the opinion that it's worth continuing to investigate (especially the parts Oberg has already lent his 'expert opinion on').

But to be fair, I suppose his theory to explain this 'hole' in the data could be correct. I'd rather personally find the data to fill the hole, than to defer to this particular 'expert opinion' on why the hole exists...

I'm willing to accept the hypothesis from you though Arby, as you are clearly willing to test it here in the public forum, and to debate differing theories against the available evidence!

-WFA

Originally posted by WitnessFromAfar
What they did was place two points on the smoke trail (that were 'markers' in both photos) and compared the time the photos were taken, and from these two points they extrapolated a trajectory.

Now perhaps extrapolated isn't the proper word. I'm not sure what the proper word would be, but it seemed to fit in this situation.

Jkrog posted so many great links in this case I'm still going through all of them. Yes extrapolated is probably the wrong word, but you could correctly say there are possible sources of error in their measurements, which are discussed at length at this link which jkrog posted in the OP:

A Prelimary Analysis of the "Kecksburg UFO" Fireball Trajectory and Possible Error

I can't say I'm impressed with their spelling of the word "preliminary", and I can't say I agree with their exact estimates of the potential magnitude of errors, but they are correct that there are sources of error. At the most extreme error conditions, they state the trajectory could actually be Southeast toward Kecksburg instead of Northeast toward Toronto. It's unfortunate we don't have more photographs from different locations which would clear this up one way or another, but what might exist is more eyewitness testimony about what direction the fireball was headed in. For example if someone in Cleveland saw it, then if it was headed SE toward Kecksburg it would form a very small arc horizontally, but might pass more or less overhead, whereas if it was headed NO toward Toronto, it would have a completely different horizontal arc from left to right across the sky. This should be a resolvable question, but I will have to hunt for eyewitness testimony to see if any can clarify that. I know the Royal Astronomical Society sent out standardized questionnaire forms to 107 people and got back 66 of them completed. It would be helpful to know if the questionnaires had information about an apparent heading. Then they say that "A prelimianry analysis of these data indicated that the meteorite had been moving in a generally north-easterly direction". So if the only evidence we had to rely on was the 2 photographs, one can speculate about potentially large errors, but if a preponderance of 66 witnesses describe a NE trajectory, then I'd say that would tend to limit the range of error one can extrapolate from the photos.

Still, it would be nice to see what is on those 66 questionnaires but I haven't found that. I found another link here:
home.comcast.net...

and the astronomer's website here:
www.clarkfoundation.org...

So if curiosity gets the better of me I might ask him about the questionnaires.

[edit on 25-9-2009 by Arbitrageur]

reply to post by Arbitrageur


How can Oberg say the Russians would never suspect - were they incapable of tracking ?

I apologize if my comment here is posted on the wrong thread.

As a child, I was living fairly close to the location of the Kecksburg crash. I was living just north of Greensburg near the town of Delmont. At that time I was very into science fiction, and was at least somewhat interested in the concept of aliens, although I mostly thought of them as scary things on TV. I remember at the time that this Kecksburg crash was a fairly big news event. I had an AM radio that I listened to at the time. I can remember tuning into it all the time to listen for more news about the crash. Then, all of a sudden, the story vanished off the airwaves. The two radio stations that would have been the strongest would have been WHJB in Greensburg, and KDKA in Pittsburgh. I asked the adults around me about what happened about the crash, but I didn't get any real answer. I don't necessarily think they took the story very seriously, but as a kid, it definitely sparked my imagination.

There has been documentation to the effect that this UFO story was squelched from the news media. I just wanted to mention my experience as far as my childhood, that this is what indeed happened.

Many thanks to jkrog08 for posting this detailed & informative thread. This particular case is signifigant to me for several reasons. I grew up in western PA, and I have family roots there. My Grandma was raised in Scottdale, and knew people in Kecksburg. I was born three weeks and one day before this event occurred. I've often wondered about the warhead REV hypothesis, except that a warhead doesn't follow an intelligently controlled flight path, does it? What about a pre-Soyuz capsule with cosmonauts inside? Except that the writing that eyewitnesses reproduce, and the writing on the model at the Kecksburg firehall, doesn't look Russian to me. It doesn't look Egyptian either, or Sumerian. Could it be Sanskrit, or some relation thereof? The Nazi Bell hypothesis is interesting as well. (Werner Von Braun has been quoted as enigmatically stating, "We had help...") The account of a second bright object being observed above and to the left of the crashed object is one that I've never heard before, like it was helplessly watching its buddy...
It does not seem probable to me that this was of human origin, and it most definitely was not a meteor.

I have personally witnessed unexplainable events, but I won't go into detail about them here, as they do not relate directly to this thread. Suffice it to say that there are (& have been for a long time) things going on in PA, and elsewhere, that defy the standard "rational" explanations. I hope to write about my own personal experiences on my own thread soon, but as I've just joined ATS tonight, I won't be posting my own thread for a while. I would post a link to my blog, but I tend to use a lot of colorful language on there that some might consider to be profanity, so I'll refrain from posting the link.

I no longer reside in PA, but I still have family there, so I go back to visit occasionally. I've spent a lot of time in the area, working, fishing, spelunking, exploring, etc. Often enough I've had experiences that let me know things are not always as they seem, and, to quote Neil Young, "There's more to the picture than meets the eye."

Thanks again for keeping the story of the Kecksburg event alive. I must go now, my eyes are tired, and the cat wants my attention.
Peace.

Interesting thread, I agree that this is one of The more interesting cases I've come across, in large part because because the official stonewalling is so contrary to all evidence it is laughable. The angle of the case that, as the years have rolled by, still interests me most is John Murphy. He was one of the first on the scene, a journalist, and those who knew him said he was "astounded". He held off on details from many friends because he was planning his big radio expose. His wife's testimony, about him working feverishly, getting ready to put his stuff out, then getting that "visit" really strongly emphasises the point that whatever happened was far far beyond the pale of ordinary.

That he was subsequently murdered tells me someone had second thoughts about him. His wife reported him, after the visit, becoming despondent, inward and irritable. Something amazed this guy, and afterwards it appears someone threatened him or his family, which appeared to be eating him up. From an outside point of view, this always rang true to me, but that's my instinct.

For those on the thread saying all the stuff took on a UFO character later, to create a local industry, I say well it's plausible, but the local press and archives from the time are freely available (including the day after). It's on record. I'm a little confused about why anyone would think that when there is freely available evidence to the contrary.

I hope to find more threads on this incident, and I hope fresh developments emerge. Great post.

Was there ever a foia document on this case?Did anything surface?

Its been what,54 years now