by Leslie Kean
Beyond the legitimate efforts to confront safety issues, I became intrigued by the absolutely crucial and central role pilots can play in simply documenting these mysterious and elusive UFOs, whether safety is a factor or not, since they represent the world’s most experienced and best-trained observers of everything that flies. Able to rapidly identify and respond to anything that would endanger a flight, pilots are required to have practical knowledge of all other aircraft, military test flights, and other special air activities such as missile tests, as well as unusual weather and natural phenomena. Professional pilots are highly qualified to recognize a true anomaly as distinct from any of these. What better source for data on UFOs is there? The aviation world is in a position to provide information that could greatly increase knowledge about the UFO phenomenon, if only our scientists wanted to take advantage of it.
These professionals spend countless hours behind a unique window into miles of usually empty sky, a perfect platform for observing exceptional details about the behavior and physical appearance of UFOs when they appear. Pilots might be able to precisely determine the distance and velocity of the anomaly, as well as its relative size, which is more difficult to estimate from the ground. They could also document the transitory impact of electromagnetic fields on cockpit equipment, providing potentially useful clues as to the nature of any radiation from the object. Able to remain calm and focused during unexpected stressful situations, pilots can report accurately and precisely on events outside, using on-board radar and communications with air traffic control with its ground radars to home in on the object. Nearby aircraft could be contacted and asked to head for the area, or military jets could be launched if the encounter was prolonged. And—of great interest to all of us—crew members would be able to take outstanding photographs and videos of the lengthier encounters. These unique circumstances potentially transform any jet aircraft into a specialized flying laboratory for the study of rare anomalous phenomena. Important evidence of UFOs has been obtained this way in many powerful cases since the 1950s, not only raising concerns about safety, but also adding greatly to the historical record.
Pilots are among the least likely of any group of witnesses to fabricate or exaggerate reports of strange sightings. But unfortunately, as things stand now, most would prefer never to be confronted with the dilemma of seeing a UFO and having to decide whether to report it. According to Haines, reporting on the presence of UAP has been enough to threaten some pilots’ careers, and for this reason, most choose not to do so.
Neil Daniels, a United Airlines captain for thirty-five years,5 with more than 30,000 hours of flying time and an Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross, was one of those pilots who feared reporting his sighting, despite the physical effect experienced by his airplane. In 1977, he, his copilot, and a flight engineer observed a perfectly round, “brilliant, brilliant light off the wing tip,” as he described it, about 1,000 yards away from their United DC-10, which was en route to Boston Logan from San Francisco. While flying on autopilot, the passenger plane was forced into an uncommanded left turn, apparently pulled by the object’s magnetic interference, prompting Boston Center to ask, “United 94, where are you going?” Captain Daniels replied, “Well, let me figure this out. I’ll let you know.”
The captain and his first officer then noticed that their three compasses were all reading different headings, and at that point they deliberately uncoupled the autopilot and flew the airplane manually. (Haines points out that the magnetic sensor providing the input to the compass then controlling the autopilot was the one located nearest to the UAP.) The powerful light followed along with the aircraft at the same altitude for several minutes, and then took off rapidly and disappeared.
Captain Daniels said that the luminous object shot away so swiftly that he does not understand how it could possibly be a man-made machine. But no matter what it was, he says, “it did cause a disruption in the magnetic field around the aircraft to the point where it pulled the aircraft off course.”
Neither Daniels nor any of his crew reported the incident. The air traffic controllers did not ask further questions about the disturbance to his flight. It was as if everyone wanted to pretend that nothing had happened, but Daniels could not forget what he had seen with his own eyes. Seven months later, while duck hunting with his United Airlines boss, he had a momentary change of heart and decided to tell him the story. Unfortunately, he discovered that his initial instinct to keep quiet was the right one. “I’m sorry to hear that,” Daniels’s employer admonished. “Bad things can happen to pilots who say they have these sightings.”
Now retired, Daniels was not particularly concerned about the safety of his jet at the time. But if, as Daniels reported, a UFO can knock a flight off course from a distance, what might happen if it were closer?
CHAPTER 4
Circled by a UFO
by Captain Júlio Miguel Guerra
In 1982, Portuguese Air Force pilot Júlio Guerra happened to look from his cockpit window down toward the ground below, and saw a low-flying metallic disc. Suddenly, it bolted up toward him at high speed. During a lengthy series of events, this object demonstrated a harrowing variety of maneuvers at close proximity to Guerra’s small plane, witnessed by two other Air Force pilots called to the scene. Since leaving the Air Force in 1990 after eighteen years of service, Guerra has been a captain with Portugália Airlines,1 Portugal’s largest commercial airline. He’s never seen another UFO, but remembers this life-changing event with tremendous clarity.
On the morning of November 2, 1982, I was flying a DHC-1 Chipmunk northward in the region of Montejunto mountain and Torres Vedras near Ota air base. It was a beautiful, clear day with no clouds, and I was headed in the direction of my work area, E (echo) zone, planning to climb to 6,000 feet for an aerobatic training. As a twenty-nine-year-old lieutenant with ten years in the Air Force, I was a flight instructor as part of 101 Air Force squadron, flying solo in my plane.
At about 10:50 a.m., when I was overflying Maxial zone at an altitude of 5,000 to 5,500 feet, I noticed below me and to the left, near the ground, another “aircraft.” But after a few seconds I saw that this airplane seemed to have only a fuselage. It didn’t have wings and it didn’t have a tail, only a cockpit! It was an oval shape. What kind of airplane could that be?
I immediately turned my plane 180 degrees to the left in order to follow and identify this “object,” which was flying to the south. Suddenly the object climbed straight up to my altitude of 5,000 feet in under ten seconds. It stopped right in front of me, at first with some instability, oscillations, and a wavering motion, and then it stabilized and was still—a metallic disc composed of two halves, one on the top and another on the bottom, with some kind of band around the center, brilliant, with the top reflecting the sun. The bottom half was a darker tone.
I made this drawing the day after the encounter and submitted it to the Portuguese Air Force. On top I wrote “metallic aluminum” and underneath “metallic red.” J. Guerra, CNIFO Case Report
At first it moved with my aircraft, then it flew at a fantastic speed in a large elliptical orbit to the left, between 5,000 feet to the south and approximately 10,000 feet to the north, always from left to right, repeating this route over and over. I tried to keep it in sight.
Right away, when I realized it was an unknown object, I called the tower and told the controller that there was a strange object flying around me. He, and others from three or four other airplanes, said it must be some kind of balloon. Some of the pilots flying in other zones made fun of it, and I responded by asking them to come and see it with their own eyes if they didn’t believe me. I told them that if it was a balloon, how could it ascend from the ground to 5,000 feet in a few seconds? The response was silence. They started asking for my location, my work zone, and two fellow Air Force officers, Carlos Garcês and António Gomes, told me they would join me.
While waiting and watching it, I wanted to know more about this object. Even th
ough I got close, I didn’t know what it was. I was alone with it for fifteen minutes—which felt like forever—never knowing what would happen next or if it would come back each time it set out on its course. I stayed there and focused on this thing repeating its elliptical course around my aircraft.
When Garcês and Gomes arrived in their Chipmunk after about fifteen minutes, they radioed “Where is it?” I gave them the position, and after they saw it I felt better, because now two more Air Force pilots had seen the same thing I did. They stayed with me for about ten minutes while the object kept up its circular pattern, each loop almost the same as the previous one, and we conversed on the radio. I was in the interior of the orbit and they were outside of it, so the object passed between the two planes. Because of that, we could estimate the size relative to the length of the Chipmunk’s fuselage (7.75 meters): about eight to ten feet.
After about ten minutes, I still was curious and really wanted to know more about this object, so I decided to make an interception, meaning I would head directly toward it but slightly to the side, so it might be forced to alter its course. I told my two Air Force colleagues there that I was planning an intercept. Since the object’s speed was much faster than my own, I flew directly to a point along the trajectory of its elliptical course. It came toward me and flew right over me, on top of my aircraft, and stopped there, like a helicopter landing but much, much faster, breaking all the rules of aerodynamics. It was very close to my plane, only about fifteen feet. I was astonished. I closed my eyes and I froze at this moment, without reacting.
There was no impact …
It then flew off in a flash toward the direction of Sintra mountain, to the sea. All this happened so fast that I couldn’t do anything with my aircraft to try to avoid the object. One of the other pilots saw the whole thing.
At various times the object had been very close to me and I was able to verify that it was round with two halves shaped like two tight-fitting skullcaps. I carefully looked at the lower one, which seemed to be somewhere between red and brown with a hole or dark spot in the center. The center band looked like it had some kind of a grid, and possibly a few lights, but it was hard to tell since the sun was so bright and was reflected.
Right after landing, all three of us filed detailed, independent written standard reports about the incident, and our planes were checked for damage, but we didn’t hear anything more about it from anyone in the Air Force, and we were not interviewed by the military. A little later, General José Lemos Ferreira, the Portuguese Air Force Chief of Staff at the time, authorized the release of all the records to a team of scientists and experts.
In 1957, General Ferreira had witnessed an unknown luminous object himself when he was leading a nocturnal flight between Ota air base, Portugal, and Cordova, Spain. Three other Air Force pilots flying in separate planes saw the phenomena as well—at first one large object and then four small “satellites” that came out of it. He was aware of the scientific importance of these types of things, and he sent a report on this incident to Project Blue Book,2 run by the U.S. Air Force.
Since the general had some understanding about UFOs, he released all information held by the Portuguese Air Force about my encounter, and a lengthy scientific investigation was launched in 1983 and completed in 1984. The team of experts included about thirty people from different disciplines and academic institutions, including historians, psychologists, physicists, meteorologists, engineers, and other scientists.
This investigation involved cooperation between the military and the civilian scientists. I went back to the zone and flew in the path that the object took for its initial vertical ascent at the time I first saw it, which took only a few seconds. Estimating ten seconds, and covering the same distance, we determined that it was flying at over 300 mph vertically. This is not possible for a helicopter, and, more importantly, a human being inside could not survive the g-force from the acceleration required for this upward motion.
Since I could show the investigators on the map the trajectory of the object in its elliptical orbits relative to points on the ground, they could determine its velocity to be about 1,550 mph. This speed is incredible, especially given the maneuvers it was making. I don’t know if it was from another universe or planet, or if it was from the ground here; I simply don’t know. I have never seen anything else like this since.
The scientific team studied all the data and the three pilot reports, and after a meeting of all thirty investigators in Porto, in 1984, the group provided a written analysis of more than 170 pages. They did everything they could to understand this case, but they could not find an explanation for it. They concluded that the object remained unidentified.3
I talked about my experience to the media and had no problems; it was covered seriously in many newspapers and on TV because we had three Air Force pilots involved. Since then, people have approached me to tell me about other UFO incidents, but most of them want to keep their experiences private.
Another incident occurred in Portugal before mine. An Air Force pilot, a colleague, saw a portion of an object behind clouds, which appeared to have two or three windows. He lost control of his Dornier Do 27 aircraft; it began to fall, and he only regained control right above the trees. His comments were on the air traffic controller tape, and he thought this was the end. I was there at the base when he landed and he talked with a group of us right away and filed a report. The engineers tried to figure out how he lost control. Afterward, some engineers outside of the Air Force came to the hangar where his plane was parked with many other identical aircraft. They were able to locate his particular plane by using an instrument that measures radiation; his plane registered high, and this could not be explained.
This pilot went on to have a career as a civilian pilot, as I did. After eighteen years in the Air Force, ending in 1990, I began flying commercially and am now a captain with Portugália Airlines (TAP), though I still fly solo. I still don’t know what I saw that day back in 1982, but I love flying as much now as ever. My encounter, though incredible, did nothing to change that.
CHAPTER 5
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and Aviation Safety
by Richard F. Haines, Ph.D.
Safety is of prime importance to everyone who flies or is associated with flying. Yet most Americans have never heard about the fact that UAP sightings can affect flight safety. These incidents are not investigated by any government agency, as are other events affecting aircraft. In fact, aviation officials have prevented them from coming to light by censoring the reporting process in various ways. Pilots who make an official UAP report continue to be ridiculed by government officials and/or their own airlines and instructed not to report their sighting publicly. This attitude serves no one and in fact puts all of us at greater risk while traveling in airplanes. It prevents the scientific community from acquiring the data necessary to investigate the origin of these UAP, and it also keeps airlines and pilot organizations from taking action or providing their pilots with specialized training and safety protocols. Despite all this, these unusual aerial phenomena have continued to plague commercial, military, and private flight operations over many years.
The near-miss incident described by Lieutenant Guerra over Portugal in 1982 provides a powerful example of a case in which aviation safety was challenged by an unidentified object, according to virtually any standards: military, private, or commercial. Whenever another airborne vehicle of any kind cannot be communicated with, makes a very high-speed approach, and then stops unexpectedly within fifteen feet of one’s airplane, any pilot in the world would be justifiably concerned and even afraid. Lieutenant Guerra and his two fellow pilots are to be commended for reporting this bizarre incident to officials, although the pressures against doing so are less intense in Europe and South America than they are here. In addition, General Ferreira, the Portuguese Air Force Chief of Staff at the time, willingly made all the records available to a scientific research group qualified to investigate�
�a scenario that we unfortunately do not see in the United States. Yet all countries are equally affected by the fact that UAP can appear without warning at any time and place.
Three kinds of UAP dynamic behaviors and their consequences have been consistently reported. First and foremost are near-miss and other high-speed maneuvers by UAP near airplanes. Many cases involve a relatively small distance—generally on the order of tens of yards—between the aircraft and the reported aerial phenomenon, which qualifies them as near misses by federal aviation standards in the United States and the United Kingdom. While a pilot’s estimate of the distance to a UAP may be affected by darkness or the lack of reliable visual distance cues, these highly trained professionals are generally quite accurate and usually will not be in error by more than an order of magnitude.1
Fortunately, the immediate physical threat of in-flight collision seems unlikely because of the high degree of maneuverability exhibited by the UAP. In many cases, the objects rapidly avoid a collision at the last minute, and it’s not left up to the pilots to make these moves. But in some cases, pilot reactions can be a problem, as well. In order to avoid a perceived collision with UAP, some have made violent control inputs resulting in passenger and flight crew injury. And there is always the danger that if a pilot makes the wrong control input at the wrong time during an extremely close encounter, a midair collision could occur.
In one example, a U.S. Air Force Boeing KB-50 aerial refueling tanker was making a night landing at Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina when the pilot and crew noticed an object and saw strange lights. On their final approach, the pilot had to maneuver around the object and climb again to wait for it to depart. Air Force tower personnel saw the UAP hovering above the airport, and watched it through binoculars for twenty minutes, stating that it was not an atmospheric phenomenon of any kind. Air Force officials acknowledged that “the UFO presented a hazard to aircraft operating in the area”—one of the few official statements to this effect on record.2
