This official reticence did not make the sightings go away, though. There were many dramatic incidents between 1950 and the 1953 armistice that just couldn’t be explained — by anyone.
Another night in the fall of 1951 found a task force of U.S. Navy ships sailing off the coast of Korea.
This small fleet numbered fourteen vessels; its capital ship was a CVE, a modestly sized aircraft carrier. Each warship was equipped with its own radar system; each was monitoring the airspace around the task force, on the lookout for enemy aircraft.
Suddenly the carrier’s radar systems lit up. An unidentified blip had appeared on its screens. Flying about a mile above the ocean’s surface, some kind of unknown object was circling the fleet.
The aircraft carrier launched airplanes to confront the intruder. At that moment, everyone involved was certain this was a North Korean aircraft sent to spy on the task force as a prelude to an attack.
But though a number of carrier planes were quickly in the air, none of them could get a visual fix on the object. It was a dark night, but also a thick layer of clouds had blanketed the task force, making good visibility almost impossible.
What began as a scramble then became a desperate search. The object continued to circle the fourteen-ship fleet, never leaving its radar screens. But none of the carrier planes could get close enough to actually see the intruder.
This went on all night. But at one point, after another batch of carrier aircraft was launched to take up the hunt, the situation changed dramatically. The unknown object suddenly ceased orbiting the fleet and instead maneuvered behind one of the navy planes.
To the astonishment of all, the object began flying in close formation with this carrier plane, still unseen but right on its tail. It stayed this way for at least five minutes, and then the object abruptly sped off, leaving the area at a speed in excess of 1,000 miles per hour.
In all, the fleet’s radars had tracked the object for more than seven hours.
Like the earlier case of the two huge saucers spotted by the trio of navy fighter-bombers, this incident could not be easily explained away. The initial suspicion was the object was a North Korean or Chinese MiG-15. (China had entered the war in the fall of 1950.) But like any jet fighter of the era, a MiG could stay airborne for only about two hours before its fuel began to run out. Yet, again, the navy ships had tracked the mystery object for more than seven hours. As aerial refueling had not yet been perfected, no military plane of any kind could stay in the air that long.
So, whatever was circling the task force that night, it wasn’t a MiG.
A similar incident occurred on February 2, 1952. The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Philippine Sea was sailing off the east coast of Korea when its radar operators picked up an unidentified incoming blip.
The object was 25 miles out from the carrier, flying at 52,000 feet, extremely high for any aircraft of the day. It was heading right for the carrier at high speed.
It was daytime, and what made this sighting unusual was that three observers on the carrier’s deck had also sighted the object through long-range binoculars. Now being tracked both on radar and by human eyes, once the object was within 20 miles of the carrier, it was assumed not to be a friendly aircraft. A general alarm was sounded, and the carrier’s crew rushed to their battle stations.
But just as this happened, the object performed a dramatic maneuver. It literally reversed direction in an instant and roared off at tremendous speed, fading from the carrier’s radar screen at 110 miles away.
The carrier immediately reported the incident to the Commander of Naval Forces, Far East. Its message read, in part, that while tracking the object, the carrier’s radar men had determined its speed went as high as 1,800 miles per hour, much faster than any aircraft of the day.
A few months later, a document detailing the incident was sent by the Commander of Naval Operations, Far East, to the Chief of Naval Operations. It was marked “Secret.”
Among other things, it stated the encounter was probably the first instance of both a visual and radar contact of a “high-speed aerial target” made in the Korean theater.
Ground sightings of UFOs during Korea were not uncommon, either.
For instance, some of the most vicious battles of the conflict were fought at a place called Pork Chop Hill. Located northeast of Seoul along the so-called main line of resistance, U.S. troops engaged in a series of back and forth battles with communist Chinese forces in the spring and summer of 1953, all for what was essentially a worthless piece of ground. Just after one of these battles, ground observers spotted UFOs flying at speeds of more than 800 miles per hour over the area.
But nothing in the entire war can compare to what happened at a place called Chorwon.
Just as Keith Chester’s Strange Company is considered the definitive book on “foo fighters,” Dr. Richard Haines’s book Advanced Aerial Devices Reported During the Korean War is the bible on UFO activity during the Korean conflict. The former NASA scientist gathered information on more than forty incidents involving UFOs and the U.S. military during the war, some of which have already been mentioned here.
But Haines also found and documented one of the most dramatic UFO incidents of any war, a rare “close encounter of the fifth kind,” a chilling episode that showed a decidedly nonpacifist side of UFOs.
Early in the spring of 1951, U.S. Army private Francis Wall found himself in a bunker on the slope of a mountain near Chorwon, North Korea. Wall’s unit was fighting the communists for control of a village below, and it was while they were shelling this village that something very strange happened.
“We suddenly noticed on our right-hand side what appeared to be a jack-o-lantern come wafting across the mountain,” Wall told Haines years later in an interview for his book. “This thing continued on down to the village where our artillery bursts were exploding. It had an orange glow in the beginning. We further noticed it could get into the center of an airburst of artillery and yet remain unharmed.”
Wall and his fellow soldiers watched the astonishing object for about thirty minutes. Then its disposition suddenly changed.
“This object approached us,” Wall said. “It turned a brilliant blue-green and started pulsating.”
Wall and his comrades became so alarmed, he asked his commanding officer for permission to fire at the object. His request was quickly granted.
“I fired at it with an M-1 rifle with armor-piercing bullets,” Wall said. “And I hit it. It must have been metallic because you could hear the projectiles slamming into it. But why would a bullet damage this craft if the artillery rounds didn’t? I don’t know. But after I hit it, the object went wild. The light was going on and off. It was moving erratically from side to side, as though it might crash. Then, a sound — we had heard no sound previous to this — the sound of diesel locomotives revving up. That’s the way this thing sounded.”
Things quickly went from bad to worse for the shocked GIs.
“We were attacked,” Wall stated. “We were swept by some form of ray. It was like a searchlight. You would feel a burning, tingling sensation all over your body [when it hit you], as though something were penetrating you.