UFO

By David E. Gates

Ever wonder if we are alone in this universe?

Over the years, researchers and scientists have scoured government documents in search of proof that life exists beyond Earth and has regularly visited us here.

One set of documents, known as Project Blue Book, includes retired, declassified records from 1947 to 1969 from the United States Air Force (USAF), currently in the custody of the US National Archives.

According to a US Air Force Fact Sheet, a total of 701 out of 12,618 sightings reported to Project Blue Book remained “unidentified.”

In a world of disinformation and false reporting, what can we believe?

The reports and stories within are true testimonies from witnesses and investigators, along with evidence corroborating, disputing and even dispelling the accounts from what is often reliable and credible (and in some cases, multiple) witnesses.

What will you believe?

• Language: English
• Publisher: David E. Gates
• Release date: Nov 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005091484

David E. Gates

David E. Gates has published several books and short-stories. His first book, Access Denied, is a true story.  A deeply personal and heart-wrenching account of becoming a father and having to fight the mother and Family Courts to see his daughter and also battles against the incompetence and lies of the Child Support Agency who seem hell-bent on ruining him, emotionally and financially.. It has garnered 100% positive reviews. The Roots of Evil, his first horror novel, is a graphic, violent, intense and gore-laden horror story. His second fictional novel, The Wretched, is an original horror story set in and around Portsmouth. David has made a documentary film about the battlefield memorials in Ypres, Belgium called Ypres – The Battlefield Tours and previously wrote film reviews for Starburst and Samhain magazines and interviewed the likes of Clive Barker, Terry Pratchett, James Herbert and many others. He has also written many short stories and poems, a full-length motion picture screenplay, the screenplay to a short film and in his spare time hosts a rock radio show. Also by David E. Gates: Access Denied The Roots of Evil The Wretched Omonolidee First Words Unzipped: The Mind of a Madman The Projectionist A Planned Demise The Ghost of Clothes Fixing the Faker The Christmas Carol Omonolidee - Morgado, Portugal, 2018. Two Sides of Vegas

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Introduction

Ever wonder if we are alone in this universe?

Over the years, many researchers and scientists have scoured government documents at the National Archives in search of proof that life exists beyond Earth. 

The National Archives and Records Administration is home to several collections of documents pertaining to unidentified flying objects (UFOs) or flying disks. And over the decades, those resources have been thoroughly probed and scrutinised for even a hint of more information and proof of alien existence.

One set of documents, known as Project Blue Book, includes retired, declassified records from the United States Air Force (USAF), currently in the custody of the National Archives. It relates to the USAF investigations of UFOs from 1947 to 1969. 

According to a US Air Force Fact Sheet, a total of 12,618 sightings were reported to Project Blue Book during this time period. Of those, 701 remained unidentified.  The project — once headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio — officially ended in 1969. 

The subject of UFOs has long fascinated National Archives staff members as well. In a July 15, 2017, National Archives The Text Message blog post, See Something, Say Something: UFO Reporting Requirements, Office of Military Government for Bavaria, Germany, May 1948 archivists Greg Bradsher and Sylvia Naylor share a brief history of Project Blue Book, the project’s alternative names over the course of its existence, and some information on the infamous Roswell, New Mexico, UFO incident. 

All of Project Blue Book documentation is available on 94 rolls of microfilm (T1206) with the case files and the administrative records. These records are available for examination in the National Archives Microfilm Reading Room at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. Motion picture film, sound recordings, and some still pictures are maintained by the Motion Picture & Sound & Video Branch and the Still Picture Branch.  There is even a Project Blue Book webpage so researchers can access online more than 50,000 official U.S. Government documents relating to the UFO phenomenon.

Richard Peuser, chief of textual reference operations at the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, said the agency has seen a steady amount of interest in files dealing with UFOs, responding to a few hundred or so requests over the years. 

Sometimes the same person would write multiple times hoping for a different answer, Peuser continued.  Many felt that the records were too benign and that the Government [must be] ‘hiding’ the real stuff.  Often there were allegations of coverup of deliberately hiding or destroying the documents.

Peuser said, The National Archives still gets a fair amount of inquiries relating to UFO's and folks have come in looking for other records in accessioned US Air Force records. So, Roswell, Area 51, Majestic-12, Projects Mogul, Sign, Grudge, and Twinkle continue to fascinate and draw researchers to examine our holdings for aliens. 

The National Archives catalogue yielded 37 catalogue descriptions, organised under flying saucers, saucers, flying UFO phenomena, Ufology, or UFOs.

A Department of Defense news release and response letter to then-Congressman Gerald Ford outline the US Air Force's plan to investigate reports of unidentified flying objects—UFOs. (Box D9, Ford Press Releases-UFO 1966 of the Ford Congressional Papers: P

1 - Congressional press releases from then-House Minority Leader, Gerald Ford

These Congressional press releases from then-House Minority Leader, Gerald Ford, called for an investigation into UFO sightings in 1966. (Box D9, folder Ford Press Releases-UFO 1966 of the Ford Congressional Papers: Press Secretary and Speech File at the

Do Records Show Proof of UFOs?

Over the years, as records have been processed and catalogued at the National Archives, other documents have come to light. 

Just a few years ago as archives technician Michael Rhodes was processing hundreds of boxes of Air Force records, he came across a drawing in the corner of a test flight report document that caught his eye.

The drawing—Rhodes said in the July 8, 2013 National Archives Pieces of History blog post, Flying Saucers, Popular Mechanics, and the National Archives—caught his attention because of its striking resemblance to the flying saucers in popular science fiction films made during that era. Researchers can look through the entire series in person or read the Project 1794 Final Development Summary Report of 1956 online.

The National Archives online catalogue includes a series of records from the Federal Aviation Administration that document the sighting of a UFO by the crew of Japan Airlines Flight 1628 while in Alaskan air space. National Archives records include simulated radar imagery and an article that appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine on May 24, 1987, about the incident. 

Records in this collection also include notes from interviews with the three crew members who spotted the UFO and are available in the online catalogue.  The records were discovered as part of the Alaskan digitisation project, according to Marie Brindo-Vas, a metadata technician at the National Archives in Seattle, Washington.

Another interesting record from National Aeronautics and Space Administration files includes the Air-to-Ground transcripts from Gemini VII. Found in the National Archives online catalogue, the records include the transcript of a conversation between Houston control and astronauts who have a bogey at 10 o’clock high. Bogey was often the term used to refer to UFOs. The conversation goes on to explain that the astronauts are seeing in a polar orbit hundreds of little particles going by from the left out about 3 or 4 miles.

The National Archives also has audio-visual records pertaining to UFOs such as the video of Maj. Gen. John A. Samford's Statement on Flying Saucers from the Pentagon, Washington, DC, on July 31, 1952, in which the military leader discusses the Army’s investigation of flying disks. Another video issued by the Department of Defence highlights USAF Lt. Col. Lawrence J. Tacker and Maj. Hector Quintanilla, Jr., discussing Project Blue Book and the identification of UFOs.

The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum possesses a document relating to UFOs composed by Ford when he was House Minority Leader and Congressman from Michigan. The original document is located in Box D9, folder Ford Press Releases - UFO, 1966 of the Ford Congressional Papers: Press Secretary and Speech File at the Ford Library.

In this memorandum, then-Congressman Ford proposed that Congress investigate the rash of reported sightings of unidentified flying objects in Southern Michigan and other parts of the country.  An attached news release to that memorandum goes on to say, Ford is not satisfied with the Air Force explanation of the recent sightings in Michigan and describes the swamp gas version given by astrophysicist J. Allen Hynek as flippant.

In October 1969, the then-Governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, saw a UFO over the skies of Leary, Georgia. The Jimmy Carter Presidential Museum and Library in Atlanta, Georgia, has the full report that he submitted into the International UFO Bureau.

As more documents are searched, processed, and declassified, what evidence might be found of alien and UFO existence at the National Archives? That remains to be seen, but based on history, it’s clear that researchers and UFO enthusiasts will continue to dig for more information. The widespread fascination with the possibility of the existence of alien life forms and UFOs continues to arouse great passion and controversy all over Earth. 

Apollo 16 UFO

UFOs aren't necessarily alien spacecraft. And some purported UFOs aren't UFOs at all. Take the example from Apollo 16:

Apollo 16 film showing the object in question

2 - High-resolution, digital scan of a full frame from the original Apollo 16 film showing the object in question (top center) and its position relative to the moon. Reflections in the window are also visible (left and right). Credit: NASA

Beginning their return from the moon to an April 27, 1972, splashdown, Astronauts John Young, Thomas Mattingly and Charles Duke captured about four seconds of video footage of an object that seemed to look a lot like Hollywood's version of a spacecraft from another world.

The thing was described as a saucer-shaped object with a dome on top. The images were captured with a 16mm motion picture camera shooting at 12 frames per second from a command/service module window. The object appears momentarily near the moon. As the camera pans, it moves out of the field of view. It reappears as the camera pans back. It appeared in about 50 frames.

Close-up of object

3 - Image enhancement of the object and linear feature. Credit: NASA

Some very bright people recently worked hard to analyse that footage. Their conclusion was that the object wasn't at all what some observers thought it seemed to be. There is no indication the Apollo 16 crew ever thought the film showed anything special.

A group headed by Gregory Byrne of Johnson Space Centre’s Image Science and Analysis Group completed a report on its investigation earlier this year. They used a video copy of the film initially, then did a high-resolution digital scan of the original film for detailed analysis.

They stabilised images to correct for camera movement, and then aligned multiple frames in a sequence. One thing that showed them was that the object appeared to move slightly with respect to the moon, because of parallax brought about by slight camera motions and the nearness of the object to the camera.

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Location of the EVA floodlight/boom

4 - View of the Apollo Command/Service Module from the Lunar Module during Apollo 17 showing the location of the EVA floodlight/boom. Credit: NASA

The investigators also combined several frames in a sequence, to give them higher resolution and greater contrast than individual frames. The combinations showed them more clearly a linear feature attached to one side of the object. They also looked at archived images from other Apollo missions.

Bottom line: All of the evidence in this analysis is consistent with the conclusion that the object in the Apollo 16 film was the EVA [spacewalk] floodlight/boom. There is no evidence in the photographic record to suggest otherwise.

Apollo 16 image compared with EVA floodlight/boom

5 - Enhanced Apollo 16 image (left) compared with features of the EVA floodlight/boom from the perspective of a Command/Service Module window (right). Credit: NASA

The Edinburg UFO Incident

Number of witnesses: 8

Location: Farm to Market Rd 490, approximately 4 miles west of U.S. Highway 281.

Just North of Edinburg, Texas

Date: October or November 1966 (exact date unknown)

Time: Approximately midnight

In October or November of 1966, J. R. Milo Ponce, a deputy sheriff with the Hidalgo County Sheriff’s Department, received a phone call at around midnight from the sheriff’s department dispatcher, George Rapp. The dispatcher stated that someone had called in to report a group of disturbed men standing alongside Farm to Market Highway 490, north of Edinburg, Texas, near Laguna Seca Road.

The eight men, who were digging a gravel pit in the area for a company out of North Texas, were greatly agitated. They were yelling and screaming for help alongside the road. A motorist must have seen them and then driven them to a nearby truck stop, from where they called the sheriff’s department.

According to Joe, When my father received a phone call from the sheriff’s department, I heard him asking George Rapp, the dispatcher, if it was serious or if it was a prank call. Rapp told him that the men seen along Highway 490 appeared to be very frightened about something they had seen, and they also said they needed help putting out a fire. My father got dressed, got in his vehicle, and responded to the call.

The site in question is a ranch located approximately four miles west of Highway 281, owned at the time by Samuel Gonzalez, now deceased, and now owned by Mary Moya. The charred and burned area was about one-quarter mile into the ranch next to some very large gravel pits.

The pits were being dug out by a crew of eight men from North Texas. The men, who were all Anglo and whose identities are not known, were roughneck types. All of them told the same story of that eerie night. One of the men had been so frightened that he urinated in his pants. The men were later taken to the sheriff’s office, where they were interviewed and then allowed to spend the night. They told sheriff’s deputies that they would never return to the site of the incident, and they reportedly left town the next day, happy to escape with their lives.

Milo Ponce’s son, Joe Ponce, says, Although I did not witness this incident, I heard several different people give the same details about it at separate times. There was a police report filed, but I don’t know if it would still be around. I will tell the story as I heard it from my father.

The workers told deputies of having seen bright lights in the sky and of hearing a loud humming or throbbing sound. They also experienced sudden, strong winds on an otherwise calm night, and they saw flames shoot down out of the sky, presumably from one of the UFOs that had been previously seen hovering in the area. The beam of fire set ablaze all the surrounding area, including their vehicles and their mobile home.

A local resident, known as Manito, who lived near the caliche pit, reported seeing a cigar-shaped object that hovered over the field that night. Manito had seen this and other bright lights hovering over the surrounding fields prior to the night of this incident. The gravel pit workers themselves stated that they had seen strange lights hovering around the area on other occasions, prior to the night of the fire. Spanish-speaking people who lived near the area called these eerie night lights La Luz del Llano, which in English means the light in the fields. According to Joe Ponce, this area has been known for years as the site of strange phenomena.

Firefighters eventually arrived at the scene of the fire, but by the time they got there, the flames had mostly died out. Ponce’s dad said that, on the following morning, he and another deputy returned to the scene and found everything, including the crew’s sleeping quarters, destroyed by fire.

Among what was damaged or destroyed by the fire was: a 12’ x 60’ mobile home that the crew was using as sleeping quarters, a couple of pick-up trucks, a bobtail truck, and an excavating machine. It was all charred, Joe Ponce remembers, All that stuff had been burned.

Ponce says, Years later after I returned from the Army in 1972, I visited the area with my father. He pointed out the location and you could still see an oddly shaped area where nothing would grow. The sides of the pit appeared to have been burned all the way to the top 25-30 feet high.

Joe Ponce says that Sheriff E. E. Vickers told his dad that he had been approached by two men dressed in military uniforms asking to see the report about the incident. Vickers, a resident of Donna, Texas, was the county sheriff from 1955 to 1969. Apparently, Vickers thought the men might have come from Moore Air Base, which is located about six miles southwest of the site where the incident happened, but the base had been closed by the Air Force in 1961 and was no longer a military institution at the time of the incident.

No more was ever said of the incident and my father never spoke about it anymore, Ponce says.

His father later became captain of the Highway Patrol and then ran for office and