On 23 November, 1953, an unidentified flying object was picked up on the radar screen of the Kinross Air Base in Michigan. Flight Lieutenant R. Wilson, who happened to be on a training flight in an F-86 jet aircraft, was given permission to chase the 'thing'. The radar crew watched Wilson pursuing the unidentified object for 160 miles. Suddenly both flying bodies merged with one another on the radar screen. Radio calls to Lt Wilson were unanswered. During the next few days, the region in which the inexplicable event took place was combed for wreckage by search troops and nearby Lake Superior was examined for traces of oil. They found nothing. There was absolutely no trace of Flight Lt. Wilson and his machine!
On 13 September, 1965, shortly before one in the morning, Police Sergeant Eugene Bertrand came across a distracted woman at the wheel of her car in a by-pass at Exeter (New Hampshire, USA). The lady refused to drive on and claimed that a gigantic gleaming-red flying object had pursued her for 10 miles to Route 101 and then disappeared into the forest.
The policeman, an elderly level-headed man, thought the lady was a bit crazy, until he heard the same report from another patrol over his car radio. Speaking from headquarters, his colleague Gene Toland ordered him to return there at once. There a young man told him the same story as the lady had done; he too had sought refuge in the ditch from a glowing red object.
Rather unwillingly the men went on a car patrol, convinced that the whole silly story would have a rational explanation. They searched the district for two hours, then they set off on the return journey. They passed a field in which stood six horses that suddenly stampeded madly out of it. Almost simultaneously the region was bathed in glowing red light. 'There. Look there!' shouted a young policeman. Indeed, a fiery red object, which moved slowly and silently towards the observers, was floating above the trees. Bertrand excitedly informed his colleague Toland over the telephone that he had just seen the damned thing with his own eyes. Now the farm near the road and the neighbouring hill were also bathed in glowing red light. A second police car screeched to a halt next to the men.
'God damn it!' stuttered Dave, 'I heard you and Toland yelling to each other over the radio. I thought you'd gone crazy. But just look at that!'
Fifty-eight qualified eye-witnesses came forward during the investigation of the mysterious incident that was subsequently carried out. They included meteorologists and members of the Coast Guard, in other words men who as reliable observers were scarcely likely not to be able to tell a weather balloon from a helicopter, or a falling satellite from the navigation lights of an aircraft. The report contained factual statements, but did not give any explanation of the unidentified flying object.
On 5 May, 1967, the Mayor of Marliens in the Cote d'Or, Monsieur Malliotte, discovered a strange hole in a field of clover 680 yards from the road. He found traces of a circle with a diameter of 15 1/2 ft and a depth of 1 ft. Deep furrows 4 inches deep ran out in all directions from this circle. They gave the impression that a heavy metal grating had been pressed into the ground. At the end of the furrows there were holes 1 ft 2 in. deep, which might have been impressed in the soil by 'feet' at the end of the metal grating. An exceptionally curious feature was the violet-white dust which was deposited in the furrows and holes. I have inspected this place near Marliens personally. Ghosts could not have left those traces!
What are we to make of this account? It is depressing what many people—and sometimes whole occult societies— make out of their ostensible observations. They only blur our view of reality and deter serious scholars from dealing with verified phenomena because they are afraid of exposing themselves to ridicule.
On 6 November, 1967, during a transmission by German Television 2 on the subject 'Invasion from the Cosmos?', the captain of a Lufthansa aircraft told of an incident of which he and four members of the crew were eye-witnesses. On 15 February, 1967, about ten to fifteen minutes before landing in San Francisco, they saw close to their own machine a flying object with a diameter of about 33 ft that shone dazzlingly and flew alongside them for some time. They sent their observations to the University of Colorado which for want of a better explanation surmised that the flying object was part of a previously launched rocket falling to the ground. The pilot explained that with over a million miles of flying experience he was as unable as his colleagues to believe that a falling piece of metal could stay in the air for a quarter of an hour, have such dimensions and fly alongside an aircraft; he believed this explanation even less since this unidentified flying object had been observable from the ground for nearly three-quarters of an hour. The German pilot certainly did not give the impression of being a visionary.
Two reports from Die Suddeutsche Zeitung, Munich, for 21 and 23 November, 1967:
'Belgrade (from our own correspondent)
'Unidentified flying objects (UFO's) have been sighted over various districts of south-east Europe during the last few days At the weekend an amateur astronomer photographed three of these gleaming celestial objects at Agram. But while the experts were still giving their opinions of this photograph that was splashed across several columns of the Yugoslavian papers, more UFO's have already been reported from the mountainous region of Montenegro, where they were even supposed to have caused several forest fires. These accounts come mainly from the village of Ivangrad where the inhabitants swear black and blue that they have observed strange brightly illuminated heavenly bodies every evening during the last few days. The authorities confirm that several forest fires have occurred in this district but so far cannot explain what started them.'
'Sofia (UPI)
'A UFO has appeared over the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. According to the report of the Bulgarian News Agency BTA, the UFO could be recognised with the naked eye. BTA says that the flying body was "bigger than the sun's disc and later took the shape of a trapeze". The flying body is supposed to have emitted powerful rays. It was also observed by telescope in Sofia. A scientific collaborator of the Bulgarian Institute for Hydrology and Meteorology said that the flying body apparently moved under its own power. It was flying about 18 miles above the earth.'
People block the road to serious research by boundless stupidity. There are 'contact men' who claim to be in communication with extraterrestrial beings; there are groups who develop fanciful religious ideas from hitherto unexplained phenomena or build cranky philosophies of life from them or even claim to have received orders for the salvation of mankind from UFO crews. Among the religious fanatics, the Egyptian 'UFO angel' naturally comes from Mohammed, the Asiatic one from Buddha and the Christian one directly from Jesus.
At the 7th International World Congress of UFO Investigators, in the autumn of 1967, Professor Hermann Oberth, the man known as 'the father of space travel' and the teacher of Wernher von Braun, said that UFO's were still 'an extra-scientific problem'; but, said Oberth, UFO's were probably 'space-ships from unknown worlds' and to use his own words: 'Obviously the beings who man and fly them are far ahead of us culturally, and if we go about things properly we can learn a lot from them.' Oberth, who accurately predicted rocket development on earth, suspects that the prerequisites for abiogenesis exist on other planets in the solar system. Oberth, a research scientist himself, demands that serious scientists, too, should tackle problems that may seem fantastic at first. 'Scholars behave like stuffed geese who refuse to digest anything else. They simply reject new ideas as nonsense.'