RCAF pilot Childerhose Canada 1956 UFO Photo over the Canadian Rockies near Ft. MacCleod, Alberta, Canada.
Story: Royal Canadian Air Force pilot R. J. Childerhose, while flying in a 4 plane formation at an altitude of about 11 km on 27-Aug-1956 7:20PM, saw and photographed a bright, sharply-defined disk, that was remaining stationary between the clouds.
Analysis of case by Bruce Maccabee (PhD optical physicist).
From pilot's letter to Philip Klass:
"I had the object in good view for upwards of 45 seconds. It was stationary, with sharply defined edges. Looked like a shiny silver dollar sitting horizontal. The light emitted was much brighter than the existing sunlight and overexposed the film causing blurred edges in the picture... It neither moved nor changed shape while I had it in sight."
From pilot's letter to Dr. James McDonald:
"...the photo of the bright object doesn't represent quite what appeared to the naked eye. When I first saw the object it appeared as a very bright, clearly defined discoid, like a silver dollar lying on its side. The photo makes it look like a blob of light, the result of light intensity. It appeared much brighter than that (sic) of the sun which, of course, was setting behind the clouds up ahead. What appears in the Kodachrome slide is a disappointment, really." "It was in good view for some minutes because I looked at it trying to figure out what I was seeing and I called the attention of the formation to it before remembering that I had a camera in my leg pocket.".
Today it is accepted by most UFO researchers that the glowing "halo" around UFOs -which is also why they often appear as a "blob"/ball of light at night with changing neon-like colors white-blue-yellow-red and "wavy" / "blurred" / fuzzy in daylight (depending on angle of observation)- is due to the ionized air (aka "plasma sheath") related to the flying saucers' flight mechanism. The absorption characteristics of the plasma can also partly account for the daytime hazy or smoky appearance of the atmosphere around the UFO. When the surrounding illumination is brighter than the plasma, the plasma absorption may be greater than its emission, making it look darker or hazy. Read info on UFO illumination and performance (extract from book "Unconventional Flying Objects" by former NASA engineer Paul Hill).
Related: There are many photos of brightly luminous UFOs in flight appearing as "blobs of light", due to camera film saturation (over-exposure), e.g. USCG 1952 (more info below), Zurich Airport, San Jacinto 1988.
Considering this, one can imagine why the vast majority of UFO reports are of strange "lights in the sky", distinguished by their erratic moves (zig-zagging).
Also, the World War II "foo fighters"more were luminous objects that would pace aircraft over battle-zones.
Salem Coast Guard Station, Massachusetts USA, 16-Jul-1952 photo of a formation of 4 UFOs.
1-Aug-1952 - The US Coast Guard released a photograph of "unidentified aerial phenomena" (the official term for UFOs), taken on 16 July at the Salem Coast Guard Air Station. Coast Guard Officer Shell R. Alpert snapped the photograph of four UFOs. The UFOs were also witnessed by Coastguardsman Thomas Flaherty.
Source: The Daily Chronology of Coast Guard History
"The summer 1952 UFO sighting wave was one of the largest of all time, and arguably the most significant of all time in terms of the credible reports and hardcore scientific data obtained." -- Richard Hall (who served at NICAP and FUFOR)
Sightings were coordinated with radar fixes and airforce jets were scrambled to intercept the UFOs, making newspaper headlines and causing considerable concern in the population.
"I was fascinated by your account of the 1952 UFO flap around DC. I'm 68 now, but at age 13, I was there, living with my family - temporarily - in the sedate, colonial Alexandria home of my mother's sister and her husband. (My father was an Army officer. En route to Bogota, Colombia, Dad was going through Pentagon briefing.) What I recall as most striking about this flap was the ubiquitous excitement on local television, newspapers, and so forth. You didn't mention this in your piece, but individual sightings seemed to be all but continuous. Cars were piled up along the shoulders of the Mt. Vernon Parkway. Crowds gazing out across the Potomac toward DC and National Airport came and went. I remember my grown cousin - Jim (a broker in the family real estate business) - arriving at the house one day all but breathless with excitement over a sighting. As a sociologist I've long been fascinated by how civil authorities are able to virtually erase the direct experience (in this case) of literally hundreds of witnesses. Years would pass before my own inquiries would lead me to understand that UFOs represent a vital dimension of the human picture - hidden though it is behind smoke, mirrors, disinformation and sheer ignorance." -- source
Below: Documentary extract on the 1952 "Washington DC UFO Merry Go Round", media coverage, General (USAF) Sanford press conference (3min):
Pilot John R. English, San Jacinto, California USA, 16-Jul-1988
From the pilot's report to NUFORC:
"The photo was taken by another sailplane pilot that was flying right seat in the Mooney for that purpose (ed: to take photos of the other sailplane). The object most resembled a very bright sphere, much like a mirrored ball, with a distorted area opposite from its direction of travel." more
The 1958 Trindade Island Brazil "saturn"-shaped UFO was photographed while being seen by more qualified observers than any other sighting.
When ufologists can't find strings, shadows or signs that a UFO photo is faked, they question the credibility of the photographer and witnesses. Trained observers -including pilots, ship captains etc- are generally considered good witnesses. It is the credibility of the tens of crew members on the deck of the Brazilian Navy ship "Almirante Saldanha" that makes the Trindade, Brazil UFO photos so interesting.
As part of its contribution to the 1957-58 International Geophysical Year, the Brazilian Navy set up a weather station on the small rocky island of Trindade, in the south Atlantic Ocean. Observers began spotting unusual aerial activity visually and on radar. At noon on 16-Jan-1958, the UFO shown here appeared for a few seconds within view of the ship's company. The incident was not isolated, but at least five other sightings had occurred in the island or near the water during the end of 1957 and in January 1958.
The crew onboard saw a bright grey object approach the island, fly behind a mountain peak and then do a acute-angle turn around and head back the way it came, disappearing at high speed over the horizon.
Among those present was civilian photographer Almiro Barauna, who snapped a series of 6 photos, of which 4 showed the UFO. After the ship returned to port, the photos, which had been developed on board in a makeshift darkroom, were turned over to the Brazilian Navy Ministry. Analysts determined the photos to be authentic and concluded they showed a diskoid object moving at 900-1000Km/hr.
According to Capt. Viegas, the object was like a flattened sphere encircled at the equator by a large ring or platform. In Barauna's words, "...it made no noise, although with the shouting of the people on the deck and the noise of the sea, I cannot be certain. It had a metallic look, of an ash color, and has like a condensation of a green vapor around the perimeter, particularly in the advancing edge. Its motion was undulating, like the flight of a bat."
Note: These photos are poor quality, overexposed and B/W; there are many photos of multi-witness and well documented sighting stories over the past ~60 years. But I present this as a classic case, because it has 3 attributes: multiple witnesses, authenticity verified by Brazilian authorities and photos taken at a time when we can in retrospect be reasonably sure that no government had anything remotely similar. [Collections of UFO cases]
If the only strange things seen in the sky were a few oddly moving lights at night, or some specks glinting in the sun, there would be no UFO issue. But there have been many close range observations of these strange objects. Often by multiple witnesses and sometimes with radar confirmation.
US Navy pilot Graham Bethune describes the encounter with a huge 90m (300ft) discoid UFO in 1951 on the way back from a classified mission to Iceland: "We had 31 people on board and a psychiatrist, plus the crew. We all witnessed it" (2.5min):
Some with four-way confirmation: ground visual, ground radar, airborne visual and airborne radar -- as early as 1950s, watch LtCol Brown NPCC 2001 testimony (2min Youtube video) who worked in the US Air Force's Office of Special Investigations on project Grudge, the precursor to Project Bluebook.
Such radar/visual UFO cases include the Washington DC 1952, Bentwaters England 1956, the landmark RB-47 1957 case, the Minot AFB B-52 1968 case and more recently, the JAL-1628 1986 case (more on both cases in our UFO documentaries page).
In addition, physical traces of various kinds have been left behind, and witnesses have experienced physical and medical effects.
"The type of UFO reports that are most intriguing are close-range sightings of machine-like objects of unconventional nature and unconventional performance characteristics, seen at low altitudes, and sometimes even on the ground. The general public is entirely unaware of the large number of such reports that are coming from credible witnesses... When one starts searching for such cases, their number are quite astonishing. Also, such sightings appear to be occurring all over the globe." -- Prof. James E. McDonald (past head of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Arizona), "Are UFOs Extraterrestrial Surveillance Craft?", talk given at AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics), 1968.
Definition of UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects):
"A UFO is an object or light seen in the sky or on land, whose appearance, trajectory, motions, lights and colors do not have an obvious conventional or natural explanation, and which cannot be explained, not only by the original witness, but by scientists or technical experts who try to make a common sense identification after examining the evidence." -- Center for UFO Studies
In popular culture the terms UFO and "flying saucer" are used alternatively and are both synonymous with extra-terrestrial (alien) craft.
According to multiple surveys over the last several decades and from different countries: ~7% of people have seen a UFO. Over 150.000 UFO sightings have been documented in the last 60 years and recorded in various databases, but the total number of UFO sightings is estimated to be in the millions. There are several thousand sightings reported each year, yet surveys show that only a small percentage of those who see a UFO report the sighting.
Of all of the reported sightings, a "core" between 5% and 25% (depending on the sample) remain unidentifiable to expert examination. These are the real UFOs i.e. inexplicable "high quality and strangeness" cases (the rest being cases with insufficient information or misinterpreted astronomic or meteorological phenomena, optical illusions, balloons, aircraft, birds etc). Deliberate fraudulent reports / hoaxes are relatively few, under 5%.
Although the term "flying saucer" infers a disk-like craft (which is a common type seen near the ground), most UFOs observed in daylight, when the shape and details can be seen, are described as having simple symmetrical geometric shapes: disk/saucer, sphere/round, egg/oval/elliptical, cigar/cylinder, conical/ice-cream cone, triangular/pyramid, fireball/"orbs" and variety of sizes (more details in the "Technical Overview" page).
Dr. J. Allen Hynek (past Chairman of the Astronomy Department of Northwestern University) served as the scientific consultant to US Air Force's official UFO investigation, initially the secret Project SIGN and later the well-known Project "Blue Book". He did field-investigations and talked to claimed UFO eye-witnesses for 2 decades (between 1948-1969). Starting out as a skeptic, who tried to "explain away" the phenomenon (in an attempt to explain the Michigan 1966 sightings, Hynek came up with the infamous "swamp gas" idea, which became something of a national joke), he later became convinced of the UFO reality and admitted that Project Blue Book had misled the public (1.5min):
He also presented his views at the United Nations, on 27-Nov-1978:
"Mr. Chairman (of the United Nations), we are dealing here with an unexplained phenomenon which has been reported so far from 133 nations, and which has aroused the concern, and often the fear, of significant fractions of their population.
[snip]
Mr. Chairman, I have not always held the opinion that UFOs were worthy of serious scientific study. I began my work as Scientific Consultant to the U.S. Air Force as an open skeptic, in the firm belief that we were dealing with a mental aberration and a public nuisance. Only in the face of stubborn facts and data similar to those studied by the French commission... have I been forced to change my opinion.
[snip]
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, let me once again clearly state that it is my considered opinion, as a scientist who has devoted many years to its study, that the UFO phenomenon is real and not the creation of disturbed minds, and that it has both grave and important implications for science and for the political and social well-being of the peoples of this Earth."
[full text of speech] -- Dr. J Allen Hynek
Essential reading
The UFO subject is huge, there is a lot of good stuff, but also a lot of nonsense out there, as well as deliberate disinformation. If you are new to the subject and have very little time (~20hrs) to devote to it, a few essential items you want to read/view (you need fast Internet to watch the videos online) are:
Out Of The Blue: The definitive investigation of the UFO phenomenon (watch online GoogleVideo or YouTube) video documentary (2003), 1hr30min 353MB (GoogleVideo). (best "general background" UFO documentary I've seen sofar). Interviews with former astronauts (Gordon Cooper and Dr Edgar Mitchell), military pilots, radar operators, scientists. UFO initiatives by former US presidents Carter, Ford and Clinton etc. Briefly covers classic UFO incidents in US, Russia, Britain, France, Iran etc and studies like the French COMETA Report. (purchase the 2007 Update DVD directly)
Prof. James E. McDonald'spresentation about the UFO issue, before the Committee on Science and Astronautics of US Congress July-1968 (alternate source)
The hypotheses of UFOs issue. Why don't pilots see UFOs? Why are UFOs only seen by lone individuals? Why no multiple-witness sightings? Why don't astronomers ever see UFOs? Why aren't UFOs ever tracked by radar? Why aren't there numerous photos of UFOs if they really exist? Shouldn't they produce physical effects? etc
debunking popular UFO myths with examples from personally investigated cases.
A bit more technical, his paper at the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute Astronautics Symposium, Montreal, Canada, 12-Mar-1968.
The Disclosure Project Witness Testimony (2001) Googlevideo (2hrs), part 1 of 2 (59min 230MB) and part 2 of 2 (1hr 240MB). Two hours long video distillation from 400hrs of raw video footage of dozens of retired USA intelligence, government and military persons testimonies on the subject of UFO and US government coverup. Quick text summary (.html) of such testimonies given in 1999-2000.
CNN reporting on Disclosure Project's National Press Club Conference 9-May-2001:
UFO Briefing Document - The best available evidence by Don Berliner (1995). Financed by Laurance Rockefeller, roughly 1,000 copies of this 168-page document were delivered in 1995 to President Clinton, U.S. Congress, Heads of State and other potentially influencial people around the world (also available as mass paperback edition from Amazon)
French COMETA Report "UFOs and Defense: What should we prepare for?" (1999) originally 90pages, translated into English without the images Part 1 (.pdf 750KB) and Part 2 (.pdf 2MB). A study by top French military officers and scientists/engineers. The report is prefaced by General Bernard Norlain of the Air Force, former Director of IHEDN, and it begins with a preamble by Andre Lebeau, former President of the National Center for Space Studies (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales), or CNES, the French equivalent of NASA.
It is well known that France created an official organization for the study of UFOs under CNES, first called GEPAN in 1977 and later SEPRA in 1988 -see From GEPAN to SEPRA: Official UFO studies in France (.PDF 105K)-.
In Mar-2007, at www.cnes-geipan.fr, CNES published parts of the French UFO sighting database with more than 100,000 pages of witness testimony, photographs, film footage and audiotapes of officially investigated cases, collected since 1954.
The 1955 book "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects" (full text e-book, ISBN: 096653123X) by Edward J. Ruppelt (bio - head of the United States Air Force's Project Blue Book between 1951-1953 and later research engineer at Northrop Aircraft Company). Until you have read at least the last 2 chapters (Ch.16: The Hierarchy Ponders, Ch.17: What Are UFOs?), stop talking about UFOs.
Paul R. Hill's (bio - aeronautical engineer and Chief Scientist-Manager at NASA's Langley Research Center who privately acted as an informal citizens' clearinghouse of UFO-related data for over 2 decades) excellent
book "Unconventional Flying Objects: A Scientific Analysis"
(written in the 1970s, published post-humously 1995) explains many things about the probable science/physics behind UFOs. If you only buy ONE book about UFOs, this should be it.
Extracts: Table of UFO shapes (drawing) - chapters on UFO illumination, color, brightness, performance.
It attempts to explain the apparently reactionless propulsion, lack of sonic boom, lack of overheating at high velocities, high accelerations, lack of stress under high acceleration, etc. His book is not pseudo-science. The speculation that he does make is minimal, but required, to conform to the observations.
Book reviews by Dr.Hal Puthoff and H.Ellis Ensle.
Hypothesing that UFOs are ET vehicles, the next obvious question is "If extraterrestrials have already come to Earth, why don't they make themselves known?" (i.e. the famous "UFOs Land on White House lawn" scenario). Jim Deardorff (professor emeritus of atmospheric sciences at Oregon State University) offered the "leaky embargo" hypothesis in 1997, which argues that the aliens in charge wish to let us gradually know of their existence and presence, while providing "deniability" to those who can't yet handle that fact. A gradual acclimation will avoid threatening the governmental, financial, cultural and religious foundations on which we depend.
In contrast to the "benevolent alien" approach, other researchers, particularly those studying the "alien abductions" phenomenon such as Dr. David M Jacobs (history professor), describe a rather disturbing situation where we humans are "victims of a widespread program of physiological exploitation, with breeding and hybridization programs".
Symposium on UFOs (1968) Hearings before the Committee on Science and Astronautics of US Congress 29-Jul-1968, with all the "heavy-weight" scientists (Hynek, McDonald, Carl Sagan, Menzel etc) of that time expressing their views.
Artist drawn chart of UFO shapes submitted. This happened before the cover-up "Condon Report" conclusions were used to discontinue "official" UFO sighting reports (i.e Blue Book) and block further examination of the subject of UFOs for the next 35yr until today.
From a "conspiratorial" viewpoint, read the (disputed authenticity, leaked anonymously in 1985 and 1994; some demonstrably fake, others probably authentic) Majestic-12 docs 1948-1959. For those who don't know the background, it's claimed that in the aftermath of the crash of an extraterrestrial craft in Jul-1947, near Roswell in New Mexico USA, a small group known as Majestic-12 (or MJ-12) was set up to study the craft and the alien bodies. (more details in the docs page)
If you enjoy shifting through "raw data" and scientific analysis you can read: USAF's Project Blue Book - Special Report 14 (1955) (PDF 9.6MB) a quantitative cross-analysis of 3201 UFO sightings recorded between 1947 and 1953 performed by Battelle Memorial Institute under contract to USAF. Skipping over the initial misleading one-page summary and reading the actual data, reveals that 21.5% of the cases were "unknowns" (i.e. inexplicable, despite good data), that these unknowns shared no similarities with the identified cases (so that one could presume they were misidentifications of mundane objects) and that the better the quality (more and better qualified witnesses) the more probable for a case to classify as unknown!
It was speculated for years that there was a secret UFO investigation that wasn't part of Blue Book. Now it's fact. In 1953 US Air Force issued Regulation 200-2, which instructed Air Force officers not to discuss UFO reports that were unsolved, and to classify the reports at restricted level. By December 1953, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a Navy-Air Force publication 146 (JANAP 146) which made the unauthorized release of UFO reports a crime under the Espionage Act, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Thereafter, UFO sighting reports would be investigated by the 4602 AISS. When they completed their investigation, the results were forwarded to ATIC at Wright-Patterson and BlueBook didn't receive those reports. So after 1953, US Air Force's Project Blue Book, ostensibly engaged in studying UFO reports, was in fact a public relations scheme whose main purpose was to convince the public that UFOs were all misidentifications of conventional objects. Finally, the infamous "Condon Report" in 1969 was the excuse to close down BlueBook.
In the 1990s, UFO researchers discovered General Bollender's 1969 memo that "reports of UFOs which could affect national security are not part of the Blue Book system" and in his last years Dr.Hynek felt "used and abused" when even after having consulted for USAF for 2 decades "all the hardcore UFO cases, with pilot-UFO close encounters so close they could read writing on them, were going upstairs". And all Hynek was left with were reports of nocturnal lights.
There have also been many notable persons -usually in advanced years, after retirement- to have publicly stated that UFO evidence is being suppressed. These have included Senator Barry Goldwater (US Senator and Republican candidate for President in 1964, US Air Force Brig.General, who was denied access the "Blue Room" at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base -where UFO/ET info is allegedly stored-), Admiral Lord Hill-Norton (former NATO head and chief of the British Defence Staff), Brigadier-General Arthur Exon (former commanding officer of Wright-Patterson AFB), Vice-Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter (first CIA director), US astronauts Gordon Cooper, Deke Slayton (who both had personal close encounters with UFOs as pilots) and Dr.Edgar Mitchell, US General Curtis E. LeMay (head of the Strategic Air Command in the 1960's), former Canadian Defence Minister Paul Hellyer, the authors of the 1999 French COMETA Report (top French Generals and scientists), the 2001 Disclosure Project top-secret military/intelligence/government witnesses testifying on the subject of UFO/ET and many others.
To quote Dr. James MacDonald, past head of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Arizona, "If you are not interested or concerned about the UFO matter, you are simply uninformed." General Arthur Exon stated: "Everyone from the White House on down knew that what we had found was not of this world within 24 hours of our finding it". On 25-Sep-2005, in a startling speech at the University of Toronto that caught the attention of mainstream newspapers and magazines, Paul Hellyer, Canada's Defence Minister from 1963-67, publicly stated: "UFOs, are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head."
"We are in the curious situation today that our best modern physics and astrophysics theories predict that we should be experiencing extraterrestrial visitation, yet any possible evidence of such lurking in the UFO phenomenon is scoffed at within our scientific community," contends astrophysicist Dr.Haisch. "You simply cannot dismiss the possibility that some of these UFO sightings are actually sightings from some object created by an advanced civilization, a civilization far out in space, a civilization perhaps millions of years ahead of us in technology. You simply cannot discount that possibility." Physicist Dr. Michio Kaku (NYU Professor and one of the String Theory originators).
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