At this point, low on fuel, the RB-47 had to return to its original course. The airplane picked up a signal two minutes later, and the pilots saw one of the lights once more. Passing over Oklahoma, this signal’s source took up station behind the bomber again. It finally vanished just as the RB-47 was passing over Oklahoma City. In all, the stalking had lasted more than an hour.
Though it couldn’t explain how the bomber’s sophisticated equipment had tracked something close by in the air during the flight, or how that something managed to blink on and off of at least two tracking radar screens, or that the RB-47’s pilots had actually seen not one but two bright lights in the sky and had actually given pursuit, Project Blue Book nevertheless said later that the sightings were caused by an ordinary jet airliner.
On the morning of May 3, 1957, a film crew at Edwards Air Force Base was tasked with filming a new piece of equipment near one of the base’s runways. The film crew consisted of two enlisted men. Both were trained photographers and were experienced at shooting pictures at the vast air base.
Located in the desert on the far eastern edge of Los Angeles County, Edwards was then, and still is today, a mecca for America’s military pilots. Its official name is the Air Force Flight Test Center, and as such it is the gathering place for this country’s test pilots, the elite among America’s air warriors.
Many of the U.S. military’s experimental aircraft have been flight-tested there over the years. Because the air base is located next to an enormous dry lake bed, its runways literally extend for miles, a necessity when flying new, advanced and unpredictable airframes.
Edwards is also a highly restricted place. All of its activities are classified. Security breaches there are considered on the same level as those at Area 51, several hundred miles to the northeast in the Nevada desert. In fact, technically speaking, Area 51 is considered an extension of Edwards Air Force Base.
This day, the two enlisted men were filming a precision landing device called an Askania system. It consisted of a specialized camera designed to take one frame per second, images that would be used later to study aircraft landing characteristics.
They were equipped with a movie camera as well as a regular still camera.
They began work at 8 A.M.
Later that morning, the two men, out of breath and extremely anxious, rushed in to see their commanding officer.
They’d just seen a flying saucer out on the runway — this is what they told their superior. The craft had flown right over their heads, had landed about 150 feet away from them, and when they tried to approach it, it took off at great speed. The object was indeed saucer shaped, was silver metallic and had landed on three extended gears.
Given that these men were photographers, the officer’s first question was obvious. “Did you get any pictures?” he asked.
They replied: “Yes, sir. We were shooting the whole time.” The officer told the men to develop the film immediately. In the meantime the officer called a special number at the Pentagon used by the military for occasions such as this. The officer’s first conversation was with another captain. He was then passed on to a colonel who passed him on to a general. The general ordered him to develop the film but not to make any copies. He was then to put the film into a secure pouch and have it flown immediately to Washington DC on the Edwards base commander’s plane.
The officer did what the general ordered, but not before looking at the still camera’s negatives. What he saw astonished him. The photos were clear, crisp and in focus — and indeed, they showed the object landing, at rest and taking off again. He didn’t look at the motion-picture film — but he didn’t have to. He knew he was looking at a flying saucer.
And that was ironic, to say he least, because this was not the officer’s first brush with UFOs.
The officer was Gordon Cooper, now a captain and a test pilot, and just a couple of years away from being selected as one of America’s first astronauts.
What he’d seen up close in the photos was pretty much what he’d seen flying so high over West Germany back in 1951.
The circle was complete — or so it seemed.
Cooper said later that once the photos and film reached Washington, he was sure there would be a huge investigation and that he’d be asked about everything he knew.
But that investigation never materialized. Despite the fact that there was now photographic evidence of a flying saucer landing, in the middle of a highly classified installation no less, the air force never did anything about it. There was no follow-up. In fact, no one in the military ever mentioned it to Cooper again.
To his dying day — October 4, 2004—Gordon Cooper, test pilot, astronaut and American hero, not just suspected, but actually knew, like hundreds of other U.S. military pilots — pilots who’d been told they were chasing temperature inversions, 800-mile-per-hour balloons, off-course airliners and the planet Venus — knew, that UFOs existed, and that throughout the 1950s the government they’d devoted their lives to had gone to great lengths to cover them up.
PART SIX
The 1960s and 1970s
16
The Great ICBM Flap
In autumn of 1962, the Soviet Union secretly installed nuclear-armed missiles on the communist-controlled island of Cuba, just 90 miles off the tip of Florida.
The missiles were soon detected by American spy planes, and the U.S. president at the time, John F. Kennedy, demanded the Soviets remove them or risk an all-out nuclear war.
For two weeks the world held its collective breath, fully aware that a massive nuclear exchange would end most, if not all, life on Earth.
The crisis eased at the end of October when the Soviets agreed to dismantle their missile sites. But the whole frightening episode gave the American public a harsh education on what nuclear brinkmanship was all about and how at the time, the United States and Russia alone had enough atomic weapons, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), to destroy the planet many times over.
The crisis played out on TV, on radio and in newspapers. Every American citizen knew what was happening hour by hour, if not minute by minute. Those two weeks in October 1962 were unparalleled for creating fear and uncertainty around the world.
But very few people know that starting right around the same time in the early 1960s, the United States had another nuclear missile crisis. This one involved an extremely mysterious entity that caused dozens of security breaches at U.S. ICBM sites, at times shutting down their launch mechanisms, at times starting launch sequences and, by some reports, at times even breaking into ICBM launch silos, which are among the most guarded, most military-sensitive installations on earth.
And no, these weren’t the Russians doing this. This secret nuclear crisis was caused by the mysterious entity we’ve all come to know as UFOs.
During the Cold War, the most powerful section of the U.S. military, and likely the most powerful body on earth, was the U.S. Air Force’s Strategic Air Command.
More readily known as SAC, it controlled all of the air force’s nuclear-armed bombers, plus all of America’s ICBMs, those hundreds of nuclear-tipped missiles that would be launched should World War III break out. It was SAC’s collective fingers that were resting on the doomsday button.