Subsequent radio transmissions made it clear that Ellsworth’s base commander, wing commander and missile maintenance commander, among others, were on board the helicopter heading for Juliet-5.
Such a collection of upper brass being in one place at one time was extremely rare. For them all to be put on a helicopter, at night, when rotary-wing flying wasn’t the safest, was almost unheard of.
But just as the helicopter was approaching Juliet-5, the security team leader was heard shouting that the mysterious object was leaving. At that exact moment, the three witnesses at Juliet-3 saw a bright beam of light rise up from Juliet-5 and fly off at an incredible speed.
The helicopter landed moments later, and its high-ranking passengers entered the sealed-off area. They saw three indentations in the ground, each about 25 feet apart, forming a triangle. The marks were just what would be expected from the landing gear the security team leader had described.
And at that moment, to everyone’s amazement, the electricity at Juliet-5 suddenly came back on, restored as mysteriously as it had been lost.
When the two technicians and the security man who had followed the incident from Juliet-3 returned to base ops, they were questioned extensively about what they’d seen and heard.
The security guard admitted he’d overheard the radio chatter. But knowing that others had been punished for talking about UFOs, the techs lied, saying they’d been underground when it all happened and had witnessed nothing unusual.
The three men were questioned again the next day, this time in the presence of an unidentified civilian, most likely a member of the air force’s OSI.
The techs stuck to their story. The security man stuck to his. Nothing happened to the techs, but neither saw the security guard again.
According to several published accounts, including one by Hastings, Malmstrom Air Force Base, near Great Falls, Montana, was the next target of the UFO incursions.
In early February 1967, some local residents saw strange objects flashing across the sky. These would be a prelude to what happened next.
One night in mid-February, a Malmstrom security officer took a call from an airman doing a routine check of one of the base’s isolated launch facilities.
The airman was frightened. He told the officer that he was looking at a huge shining object hovering over the missile silo. The officer didn’t believe the airman at first — it just sounded too fantastic. The airman’s repeated pleas finally convinced the officer, though. He, in turn, notified Malmstrom’s command post — but, incredibly, he was told that the command post no longer took “those kinds of reports.”
The only other action the officer could think of was to authorize the airman to fire on the UFO. While the airman appreciated the officer’s authorization, he remarked that considering what he was looking at, shooting it wouldn’t do any good.
The UFO flew away shortly afterward.
A few weeks later, in the early morning of March 16, a blaring alarm went off across Malmstrom. One of the facility’s ICBMs had suddenly gone off-line and was now inoperable.
Command post officers phoned the affected missile site. The prevailing thought was that a maintenance crew had caused the malfunction. Instead, the security guard at the site responded that no maintenance had been performed at the silo that morning — but people had seen a UFO hovering over the site.
The command officers did not take this report seriously — but then other warnings started coming in. More missiles were shutting down, one after the other. In just a few seconds, ten of Malmstrom’s ICBMs were inoperable.
This was serious. A large part of America’s national security depended on the capability of these missiles — and at the moment, they were useless.
The command post officers had to get the missiles up and running again immediately. To do so, though, they had to know what had gone wrong.
When the silos were checked, it was discovered that a fault in the guidance system of each missile had caused the malfunctions. Nobody had a clue why. The sites had not lost electric power per se, and the missiles showed no signs of tampering.
It was known that the only thing that could interfere with an ICBM’s guidance system was an electromagnetic pulse — a big one — targeted directly at the missile’s shielded circuits. While it was technically possible to produce such a huge power surge, it would require highly specialized equipment to do so. Such equipment did not exist at Malmstrom.
It took until late that night for maintenance crews to bring all the affected ICBMs back online. But there was no denying that on March 16, 1967, a significant part of America’s nuclear arsenal would not have been available had an enemy chosen that day to attack the United States.
A week later, on March 24, an airman at one of Malmstrom’s launch facilities spotted two bright objects in the sky.
They were moving in bizarre ways — so much so, the man called the base’s deputy security officer. But for some unfathomable reason, especially in light of what had happened at the base just a week before, the security officer was unconvinced this was something important. He told the airman to alert him only if the objects came closer.
A minute later, the airman’s terrified NCO (noncommissioned officer) called the security officer back and shouted that a red, saucer-shaped UFO was at that moment hovering outside the silo’s gate.
After ordering the NCO to secure the site, the security officer contacted his commander. While the two men were discussing what to do, an alarm sounded throughout the command post. One of the base’s missiles had gone off-line. Ten seconds later, another missile went down. Then another and another.
In a virtual repeat of the events of the week before, in less than a minute, eight of Malmstrom’s ICBMs had become inoperative.
One witness who’d helped restart this round of stricken missiles provided a personal account of what happened next, along with some baffling and unnerving details.
Before this man’s particular replacement team left to begin their restart work, they received a special briefing from an NCO who told them starkly that the base was having big problems. UFOs were in the area, and they were shutting down the missile sites. The replacement crews were then given strict procedures on what to do if they saw a UFO out in the field.
The instructions went like this: If the crew saw a UFO while approaching a missile silo, they should stop immediately and call in their location. If they should see a UFO after arriving at a silo, they should stop what they were doing and leave immediately. If they were actually working on a missile and saw a UFO, the team should take the missile’s targeting tapes, then descend deep into the silo, closing all the hatches behind them.
This scenario would leave an unlucky guard behind, up on the surface. It would be his duty to report to the command post what was happening aboveground.
Luckily, none of these situations ever played out.
The Malmstrom commanders arranged for engineers from the Boeing Company, which had built the missiles, to examine their ICBMs and explain why they’d so mysteriously shut down. But the civilian contractors were baffled, too. One engineer who was there said no data could explain how or why the missiles were knocked off alert. However, neither the air force nor Boeing even considered UFOs in their analysis.
The cause of the Malmstrom shutdowns remains a mystery to this day.
Perhaps the most frightening UFO incursion at a U.S. ICBM facility happened at Minot Air Force Base three months after the bizarre events at Malmstrom.