That would certainly suggest there was no July 4 launch to fall to the ground near Corona. But the listings of all rockets in July 1947 suggest it was well. According to the White Sands History, a WAC Corporal E was launched on July 17 (much too late to drop material near Corona) with a note that said, “Small thrust developed and missile rose and impacted near launchers… main air regulator at fault.”
For the V-2, there was a launch on July 10 and it was noted, “Set yaw angle caused faulty course.” and for a second launch on July 29, the note said, “Steering vane 4 failed to operated at 27 secs — Success.”
There is nothing in the record to suggest there were any launches not mentioned in the history and all launches have been accounted for. There was nothing on July 4, 1947, and for all these reasons, I believe the document to be a fake.
The Skeptical Perspective
Bad Astronomy and UFOs
Here’s something that I find incredibly amusing. An expert in one subject being asked an opinion in an related subject and then answering the question with misinformation. You would think that a scientist would want to know the facts before he made a claim that is so easily refuted.
I’m thinking here of Phil Plait and his Bad Astronomy column in which he talked about UFOs just a couple of days ago. He was suggesting that when he lectured, he was often asked if he believed in aliens and flying saucers. His answer was, “Yes and no.”
He meant, quite clearly, and he did explain it, that he believed there was life on other planets, mainly those outside the Solar System and that he didn’t believe we were being visited. His reasoning? He wrote:
Amateur astronomers, of course. They are dedicated observers, out every night peering at the sky. If The Truth Is Out There, then amateur astronomers would be reporting far and away the vast majority of UFOs.
But they don’t. Why not? Because they understand the sky! [Emphasis in original] They know when a twinkling light is Venus, or a satellite, or a military flare, or a hot air balloon, and so they don’t report it.
That, to me, is the killer argument that aliens aren’t visiting us. If they were, the amateur astronomers would spot them.
The problem here is that astronomers, both professional and amateur have reported UFOs, and if we add in atmospheric scientists, we increase the pool of those who understand the sky and who have reported UFOs.
Examples you say?
Certainly. The one that springs immediately to mind is Clyde Tombaugh who was credited with discovering the now dwarf planet, Pluto (seen here with three of its four moons). In 1949, at 10:45, Tombaugh, his wife and his mother-in-law saw something strange in the night sky. The full report is now housed at the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies in Chicago, and I have held the original report in my hands (and I wonder what that document would bring on eBay?).
Tombaugh wrote, “I happened to be looking at the zenith… when suddenly I spied a geometrical group of faint bluish-green rectangles of light… As the group moved south-southeasterly, the individual rectangles became foreshortened, their space of formation smaller… and their intensity duller, fading from view at about 35 degrees above the horizon… My wife thought she saw a faint connecting glow across the structure.”
I’m sure that we’re about to hear that Dr. Donald Menzel, the UFO debunker and critic of anyone who suggested that any UFOs are anything other than misidentifications or hoaxes, was able to solve the sighting. He suggested that “a low, thin layer of haze or smoke reflected the lights of a distant house or some other multiple source.”
Tombaugh, who saw the objects replied to Menzel, who didn’t see them, writing, “I doubt that the phenomenon was any terrestrial reflection, because in that case some similarity to it should have appeared many times… nothing of the kind has ever appeared before or since.” Well, a UFO sighting by one astronomer does not make the complete case, so let’s take a look at that paragon of scientific investigation, the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objectsnow almost universally called the Condon Committee. They, of course, didn’t bother with their own research, but quoted from Project Blue Book Report No. 8 dated 31 December 1952.
The Blue Book astronomical consultant (which they don’t name but everyone today knows it was Dr. J. Allen Hynek) interviewed 44 astronomers about their attitudes about UFOs and found, not surprisingly, that most were completely indifferent to UFOs, or at best, mildly interested. Only eight said they were very interested.
The important point here is that five of them, according to Hynek, “made sightings of one sort or another. This is a higher percentage than among the populace at large. Perhaps this is to be expected since astronomers do, after all, watch the skies.”
Hynek said that when he told these astronomers that there were some cases that were highly interesting and in which there was no easy solution, their interest was “almost immediately aroused.”
This, of course, goes back to the original comment that amateur astronomers don’t see flying saucers and if they don’t, then there simply can’t be anything to the reports of them. But here we’re talking about the professionals, who confided in Hynek because he was a colleague. Hynek, because of his position with Project Blue Book had some inside knowledge about the UFOs that had been reported and he was taking the whole thing seriously.
Hynek, in his report added another comment that explains part of this perception that astronomers don’t see UFOs. Hynek noted, “And certainly another contributing factor to their desire not to talk about these things is their overwhelming fear of publicity. One headline in the nation’s papers to the effect that ‘Astronomer Sees Flying Saucer’ would be enough to brand the astronomer as questionable among his colleagues.”
So now we learn that astronomers do see UFOs and they do not report them for fear of professional ridicule. I heard one professional astronomer, in the 1970s, when asked what he thought of Hynek’s work reply, “Allen always wanted to discover a new constellation.”
What that tells us is that Hynek’s interviews of two decades earlier were still true in the 1970s, and we know that it is true today. We still have the professional scientists making pronouncements on the topic without benefit of personal knowledge. They are all too willing to dismiss the topic without bothering to learn the facts because, to do so, they would have to wade through oceans of ill-informed skeptical comment, such as Menzel’s dismissal of Tombaugh’s sighting.
But let’s ask one other question. When does anecdotal testimony become scientific observation? When does the training of the person making those observations suggest some sort of expertise? Does a pilot, military or commercial, with tens of thousands of hours in the cockpit, who is familiar with what is in the sky, make anecdotal statements or refined scientific commentary?
What about the use of instrumentation? Charles Moore, the man who claims to have launched the balloon array that explains the Roswell UFO crash has his own, unexplained UFO sighting. On April 24, 1949 Moore and four Navy technicians in New Mexico were tracking a weather balloon using a theodolite that consisted of a 25-power telescope equipped to provide readings on vertical and horizontal bearings. Given his observations as it passed in front of a mountain range, he estimated the UFO was traveling at 18,000 mph, before it disappeared in a sharp climb.