The area around Great Falls, Montana, has had a high occurrence of UFO sightings since the 1950s. However, what happened on March 16, 1967, near Mahnstrom Air Force Base, just outside Great Falls, went pretty far beyond a mere sighting. On that morning, Crew Commander Captain Eric Carlson and Deputy Crew Commander First Lieutenant Walt Figel, the Echo Flight (E-Flight) Missile Combat Crew near Malmstrom Air Force Base, were below ground in the silo, in the E-Flight Launch Control Center. Missile maintenance crews and security teams had remained at two of the launch facilities after working there the previous day. During the early morning hours, the crews reported that they had seen several glowing, disc-shaped UFOs. Some of them were pretty disturbed by these sightings; one security policeman was reportedly so affected by this incident that he never returned to missile security duty.
Around 8:30 that morning, the alarm horn sounded, indicating that one of the Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), under the supervision of Figel and Carlson, had gone off alert, which meant it had become inoperable. Figel became understandably upset, figuring that the maintenance personnel had failed to notify him that maintenance work was being performed on a missile, necessitating putting it on "off-alert" status. Because such notification is required by very rigid procedure-after all, these were nuclear weapons-Figel immediately called the missile site, ready to give somebody a serious butt chewing.
When Figel spoke with the on-site security guard, however, he learned that no maintenance work had been performed that morning. The guard also informed Figel that a UFO had been observed hovering directly over the site. At first, Figel thought that the guard must have been putting something in his thermos besides coffee.. until one by one, across the board, the other missiles also started to go off alert in rapid succession. Within seconds, the entire flight of 10 ICBMs was down, all indicating a "No Go" condition. When the troubleshooting procedure checklist had been completed for each missile site, it was discovered that the missiles had gone off alert status due to a Guidance and Control System fault, which typically occurs only after a loss of main and backup power. The troubleshooting checklist showed that there had been no such interruption of power to the sites, and that the missiles' guidance and control systems had simply and inexplicably-malfunctioned. Figel ordered two of the Echo Security Alert Teams (SATs) to those sites where the maintenance crews were present, but did not inform the teams of the reports about the UFO sighting. On arrival at the launch facilities, the SATs reported back that all of the maintenance and security personnel present at each site reported seeing UFOs hovering over each of the two sites.
When Captain Don Crawford and his crew relieved the Echo Flight crew later that morning, Crawford noted that both Carlson and Figel were still visibly shaken. Crawford also recalled that the maintenance crews worked on the missiles the entire day and late into the night during his shift to bring the missiles back to ready condition. The end result was that a full complement of missiles-crucial elements in the country's deterrent forces-had been out of service for an entire day. Obviously, when such a significant and rare event occurs, all hell breaks loose, and anyone bearing any responsibility for the malfunction faces, at best, a reprimand, and at worst, severe disciplinary action. But after an extensive investigation by both Boeing (the chief contractor) and the military, there was no reasonable explanation for the event, much less a finding of culpability on the part of on-duty personnel.
Before dawn on that same morning, a similar-hut even more ominous-sequence of events occurred about 20 miles southeast, near the town of Roy, Montana, at the Oscar Flight Launch Control Center. According to Deputy Missile Combat Crew Commander Robert Salas, who was at the Oscar Flight Control Center that morning, it had been a clear, cold night. On-duty airmen often looked to the sky to observe shooting stars, but what one airman saw that morning seemed to be something else entirely. He observed what he first assumed to be a star, until it began to move erratically across the sky; shortly afterward, he saw another light do the same thing. This time, however, it was much larger and closer than the first. The airman asked his flight security controller to come and take a look. The two men stood there watching as the lights streaked directly above them, then stopped, changed directions at high speed, and returned to their positions overhead. The flight security controller ran into the building and phoned Salas at his station in the silo, reporting what they had seen, and stressing that they weren't aircraft. Salas initially figured the men, who were conscientious in their service but not above a bit of harmless kidding around, were doing just that. His response was, "Great. You just keep watching them and let me know if they get any closer." He then directed the security controller to report back if anything more significant happened.
Even though his response was not indicative of any particular concern, Salas knew that this kind of behavior was out of character for on-duty air security personnel, who were typically very professional, especially when addressing a superior.
A few minutes later, the security controller called again, this time obviously agitated. The man literally shouted, "Sir, there's one hovering outside the front gate!"
Salas, somewhat unnerved at this point, retorted, "One what?"
"A UFO! It's just sitting there. We're all just looking at it. What do you want us to do?"
Salas asked for a description, but the security controller couldn't describe it, other than to say that it was glowing red. "What are we supposed to do?" he asked Salas.
"Make sure the site is secure and I'll phone the command post," Salas told him. He was a bit taken aback when the security controller said, "Sir, I have to go now. One of the guys just got injured."
Before Salas could inquire as to the nature of the man's injury, the security controller terminated the call. Salas immediately went to the quarters of his commander, Lieutenant Fred Meiwald, awakened him, and began to brief him about the phone calls and the events that were transpiring topside. In the middle of this conversation, the first alarm horn was activated, and S alas and Meiwald immediately looked at the panel of indicator lights at the commander's station. A "No Go" light and two red security lights were lit, indicating problems at one of the missile sites. Meiwald jumped up to query the system in order to determine the cause of the problem, but before he could complete that task, several other alarms went off at other sites simultaneously. Within the next few seconds, six to eight missiles had spontaneously become inoperable.