Tag: weather balloon

What Happened at Roswell, the Birthplace of the Flying Saucer Legend?

July 2, 2020                                      (timesnownews.com)

• On July 7, 1947, when ranch worker William Brazel, discovered unusual debris 75 miles north of the town of Roswell, New Mexico, he wouldn’t have believed that this would be the first incident in a long sequence of events, spanning over seven decades, to form a rich and mysterious conspiracy theory that continues to fascinate and bewilder UFO theorists today. The ‘Roswell Incident,’ as it has now come to be called, provided to many the proof of extraterrestrial visitation and spawned a cultural movement.

• In 1947, stories of ‘flying discs’ or ‘flying saucers’ had already been circulating in the national press. So when Brazel discovered the debris, did the previous news of flying saucers lead him to believe that this may have been of an extraterrestrial origin? Brazel informed Roswell’s sheriff, who, in turn contacted Colonel William Blanchard, the commanding officer of the Roswell Army Air Field. The following day saw the RAAF issue a shocking press release confirming that a “flying disk” had, indeed, crashed at a ranch near the town of Roswell.

• As scientists arrived to the area, a press conference was hastily put together to explain that debris tinfoil, sticks and rubber strips was no more than that from a fallen weather balloon. The Roswell Daily Record newspaper which initially claimed that the debris came from a UFO, corrected their story to fit the RAAF’s weather balloon narrative.

• The incident faded from the news until 1980 when authors Charles Berlitz and William Moore published a book called The Roswell Incident. This book alleged that the weather balloon story was nothing more than a cover-up. Then in 1994, the US Air Force released a report claiming that the debris actually came from a spy device designed to fly at high-altitudes over the former USSR to detect sound waves, called Project Mogul, with the purpose of monitoring the Soviet Union’s efforts to develop an atomic bomb.

• But the USAF report did not address the eyewitness accounts of bodies seen at the crash site. So a follow up report was drawn up in 1997 to debunk the theory that alien corpses were discovered and transported by the US government to a top secret facility, saying that the figures were merely parachute test-dummies.

• To many, the reaction of the US government remains suspicious. Some have contended that, in attempting to originally claim one version of events, and then immediately backtrack on it, the government’s response had the unintended effect of attracting even greater attention to, not just the incident, but the covert operation as well.

• Roswell has since become the unofficial UFO capital of the world, and houses the International UFO Museum and Research Center. Since 1996, Roswell has also been the home of an annual UFO festival that sees thousands of tourists congregate at the little town to conduct scientific experiments, workshops and seminars, perform plays, experience its planetarium and even dissect fake alien corpses as part of the spectacle.

 

The little town of Roswell, New Mexico has been made famous for an incident that took place in 1947 that several conspiracy theorists maintain was

Major Jesse A. Marcel with tinfoil, sticks and rubber strip “debris”

proof of extraterrestrial visitation.

When ranch worker William Brazel, discovered what he thought to be unusual debris 75 miles north of the little town of Roswell, New Mexico, on that fateful day of July 7, 1947, he wouldn’t have, in his wildest dreams, believed that his was to be the first incident, in a long sequence of events, spanning over seven decades, forming a rich and mysterious conspiracy theory that continues to fascinate and bewilder UFO theorists even today. The ‘Roswell Incident,’ as it has now come to be called, has spawned a cultural movement, that has defied both, reason and time.

A whole host of conspiracy theories have made their way into the mainstream over the last few decades, and, it appears that we may never actually learn the full truth, amid all the cacophony. Nevertheless, some facts of the tale remain undisputed beginning with Brazel’s discovery.

Stories of ‘flying discs’ or ‘flying saucers’ had already been circulating in the national press that year, and, perhaps, these may have been what led Brazel to believe that the tinfoil, sticks and rubber strips he uncovered, may have had extraterrestrial origins. He soon informed Roswell’s sheriff of his discovery, who, in turn, contacted Colonel William Blanchard, the commanding officer of the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF).

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Letter: No Weather Balloon

May 9, 2019                       (pilotonline.com)

[Editor’s Note]    This is a Letter to the Editor from the Virginian-Pilot, the local newspaper for the Norfolk/Virginia Beach region, from May 9th.

Re: “Navy to take UFO sightings seriously” (front page, April 26): I was so pleased to see that the U.S. Navy has decided that UFOs do exist and they will be investigating the sightings.

In May 1968, while serving in the U.S. Coast Guard, I encountered an object in Atlantic Beach, N.C. I was within 50 to 70 feet of the object when it landed and actually seemed to welcome my interest. It made no noise, no thrust, no nothing. It moved around like a laser dot on a screen, an approximately 24-inch-diameter ball of light but left a much larger imprint on the ground. The encounter lasted maybe 15 minutes.

There were four others who witnessed this event. They wanted to report the event, but I refused. I didn’t want to be labeled as some sort of nut. However, the next day I was summoned to a meeting with a Marine Corps captain from Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station. He stated he was representing the Air Force’s Blue Book investigation and asked if I wanted to report a UFO. I said to him, “I’m reporting either God, an angel or a UFO, something that flies that we don’t have.” He said I had seen a weather balloon and to return to my duties.

It was no balloon. Ladies and gentlemen, there is something more powerful and knowledgeable than the United State, Russia, China, North Korea and the world combined.

Reginald E. Stubbs, Jr.

Chincoteague Island

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When a U.S. Fighter Pilot Got Into a Dogfight With a UFO

by Colin Bertram                 July 19, 2018                  (history.com)

• On October 1, 1948, a 25-year old former World War II fighter pilot named George F. Gorman (standing at left in  above photo) had a 27-minute encounter with a white orb UFO at high altitude above Fargo, North Dakota. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Gorman told a local newspaper following the event. “If anyone else had reported such a thing I would have thought they were crazy.” The incident was recorded both on the ground and in the sky by numerous reputable sources, and investigated by the U.S. Air Force under Project Sign, a precursor to Project Blue Book.


• Gorman was serving as a second lieutenant in the North Dakota Air National Guard, and was taking part in a cross-country flight in a P-51 Mustang alongside other National Guard airmen. When the other pilots landed at Fargo’s Hector Airport, Gorman stayed in the air in order to get in some night-flying time in the cloudless conditions. Having circled over a lighted football stadium, he was preparing to land at about 9 pm when he saw the taillight of another craft passing on the right, though the tower had no other object on the radar.

• Gorman closed to within 1,000 yards to see a white orb “…about six to eight inches in diameter, clear white and completely without fuzz at the edges.” “It was blinking on and off. As I approached, however, the light suddenly became steady and pulled into a sharp left bank. I thought it was making a pass at the tower.”

• Gorman tried in vain to catch up with the object, and got behind it at around 7,000 feet when it made a sharp turn and headed straight for his P-51. Almost at the point of collision Gorman dived and said the light passed over his canopy at about 500 feet before cutting sharply once more and heading back in his direction. Then the object shot straight up in the air in climb so steep that his plane stalled. The object was not seen again. Gorman had been engaged in aerial maneuvers with the UFO for 27 minutes by the time he brought his plane in to land.

• Gorman reported that he noticed no sound, exhaust trail or odor from the object. And while he had reached speeds of up to 400 m.p.h. while in pursuit—he couldn’t keep up with whatever it was.

• “I’m convinced that there was definite thought behind its maneuvers,” Gorman said in a sworn statement to his commander. “I am further convinced that the object was governed by the laws of inertia because its acceleration was rapid but not immediate… [and] followed a natural curve.” “The object was not only able to out-turn and out-speed my aircraft… but was able to attain a far steeper climb and was able to maintain a constant rate of climb far in excess of my aircraft,” said Gorman.

• The small white orb UFO was also witnessed by air-traffic controllers Lloyd D. Jensen and H.E. Johnson, who were manning the Hector Airport tower. According to Johnson, the object was “travelling at a high rate of speed” and was “fast enough to increase the spacing between itself and [Gorman’s] fighter.” Johnson described the object as appearing to be “only a round light, perfectly formed, with no fuzzy edges or rays leaving its body.”

• Dr. A. E. Cannon, the pilot of the Piper Cub also flying in the vicinity, and his passenger also viewed the object both in the sky and upon their return to the airport where they immediately joined the traffic controllers in the tower. Two Civil Aeronautics Authority employees on the ground also reported seeing the object.

• Back in Fargo, after the Air Weather Service revealed it had released a lighted weather balloon 10 minutes before Gorman first saw the object, Air Force investigators pounced, proclaiming the balloon the likeliest explanation for the object seen. They determined that Gorman’s own maneuvers and high speed gave the balloon the appearance of moving in opposite directions as he passed by. Investigators also noted the bright appearance of Jupiter on that date, and that Gorman had been attempting to chase the bright dot of the planet at the same time the weather balloon was in range. This became the official government explanation.

• Gorman returned to the Air Force full-time, retiring at the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1969. He never spoke publicly about the encounter again, though he did tell friends “he was never convinced that he had been dueling with a lighted balloon for 27 minutes.” Gorman died in 1982.

 

In the words of Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the man who investigated unidentified-flying-object reports for the U.S. Air Force in the early 1950s, the Gorman Dogfight remains one of the “classics” among UFO sightings.

                     newspaper account

The incident, which still lacks an airtight explanation, involved a 27-minute air encounter between a veteran World War II fighter pilot named George F. Gorman and a mysterious white orb at high altitude above Fargo, North Dakota. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Gorman told a local newspaper following the October 1, 1948 event. “If anyone else had reported such a thing I would have thought they were crazy.”

Captain Ruppelt operated Project Blue Book, which continued the work of Project Sign and Project Grudge, a series of hush-hush studies conducted by the U.S. Air Force between 1947 and 1969. His mission: to determine if UFOs were a threat to national security and to scientifically analyze UFO-related data.

What makes the Gorman Dogfight unique in the now-declassified pages of Project Blue Book is not only the length of the encounter, but that it was recorded both on the ground and in the sky by numerous reputable sources.

Chasing—and being chased by—a light

At the time of the incident, Gorman, a 25-year-old former fighter pilot, served as a second lieutenant in the North Dakota Air National Guard. It was this role that placed him behind the flight controls of a P-51 Mustang on Oct. 1, 1948, taking part in a cross-country flight alongside other National Guard airmen.

George F. Gorman in later years

While the other pilots landed at Fargo’s Hector Airport, on that fateful evening Gorman stayed in the air in order to get in some night-flying time in the cloudless conditions. Having circled his P-51 over a lighted football stadium, he was preparing to land at about 9 P.M. Advised by the control tower that the only other plane in the vicinity was a Piper Cub (which Gorman could see about 500 feet below him), he witnessed what he believed to be the taillight of another craft passing on the right, though the tower had no other object on the radar.

Deciding to take a closer look at the unidentified object, Gorman pulled his plane up and closed to within about 1,000 yards. “It was about six to eight inches in diameter, clear white and completely without fuzz at the edges,” he said of the object in his report. “It was blinking on and off. As I approached, however, the light suddenly became steady and pulled into a sharp left bank. I thought it was making a pass at the tower.”

Deciding to follow, Gorman tried in vain to catch up with the object, reporting that he finally got behind it at around 7,000 feet, where it made a sharp turn and headed straight for the P-51. Almost at the point of collision Gorman dived and said the light passed over his canopy at about 500 feet before cutting sharply once more and heading back in his direction. Just as collision seemed imminent once again, Gorman said the object shot straight up in the air in a steep climb—so steep that when he tried to intercept, his plane stalled at about 14,000 feet. The object was not seen again, but according to Gorman he had been engaged in aerial maneuvers with it for 27 minutes by the time he brought his plane in to land.

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