by Mack Maloney
And with that, the U.S. Air Force shut down the project, eager to get out of the business of investigating flying saucers. It is there that many researchers believe the U.S. military’s cover-up of UFOs began — something many claim remains in place today.
Whatever the case, the door seemed closed for good.
But then, six months later, in June 1950, communist North Korea invaded South Korea, igniting the world’s first major post — World War II conflict.
And that would change everything.
PART FIVE
The 1950s
14
Saucers Over Korea
In September 1950, two months after the beginning of the Korean conflict, a trio of U.S. Navy fighter-bombers launched from an aircraft carrier cruising off the coast of the war-torn country. One after the other, they climbed to 10,000 feet and headed for the skies over the communist north. Beneath their wings were several tons of bombs.
The fighting in Korea over the previous two months had been brutal. During some particularly dark days in July and August, the U.S. military, woefully downsized after World War II, found itself and its UN allies nearly pushed off the Korean Peninsula altogether.
The strategic situation changed when General Douglas MacArthur led a surprise seaborne attack on the communist-held port of Inchon, cutting the enemy forces in two. MacArthur’s dramatic action eventually led to the communists being forced out of South Korea entirely and then pursued into the north. By late September 1950, the United States was finally on the offensive.
The mission for the three carrier-launched navy attack planes this early morning was to bomb a North Korean truck convoy that had been spotted moving through a valley about 100 miles south of the Chinese border.
The sun was just coming up when the navy planes reached their target. Each aircraft carried two crewmembers — a pilot and a radar operator/gunner, also known as the RO. Each plane was also carrying about 4,000 pounds of munitions.
As they were preparing for their bombing runs, the planes’ radar operators, intent on getting a fix on the targeted convoy, instead found themselves staring at a pair of huge shadows crossing the valley floor two miles below. Looking out in front of them, the navy fliers were astonished to see a pair of saucer-shaped objects approaching from the northwest—they were causing the giant shadows. Incredibly, these objects were traveling close to Mach 2, or 1,200 miles per hour, twice as fast as any military aircraft of the day.
Most astonishing, though, was their size. The navy crews estimated the silver-colored objects were nearly 700 feet in diameter — more than two football fields put together!
What were these things? Certainly neither of the war’s combatants had any aircraft the size of two football fields, or the ability to travel at such blisteringly high speeds. The largest combat plane flying the skies during the Korean War was the U.S. Air Force’s B-29 bomber, a plane easily recognized by pilots on both sides. These were definitely not B-29s.
One of the navy ROs instinctively went to arm his guns. But at that moment, his radar set malfunctioned. The RO ran a quick checklist of adjustments, hoping to get the radar back, but nothing worked. His equipment was being jammed.
The RO next tried calling the carrier, but his radio wasn’t working, either. He switched frequencies, only to hear a strange buzzing at every turn. His radio was being jammed, too.
At this point the gigantic flying objects were about a mile in front of the navy attack planes. Suddenly, the saucers stopped in midair, changed direction and swung around toward the three navy planes. In seconds the saucers were effortlessly maneuvering both above and below the fighter-bombers, circling them, as if inspecting them.
Then just as abruptly, the saucers spun around again, turned back toward the northwest and left the area at high speed.
* * *
Warfare had changed substantially in the five years since the end of World War II. By the time the Korean Conflict began, military technology in particular had taken a great leap forward, especially in the area of combat aircraft and air operations.
Suddenly there were hundreds of high-speed jet airplanes flying through the crowded airspace above the Korean Peninsula, an area less than one-third the size of Texas. At the same time, there had been a proliferation of radar devices. These were not just ground-based or shipborne; powerful radar sets were also being carried inside all those high-speed aircraft.
This meant any strange flying thing could now be seen not just by human observers, but by many, many electronic eyes as well.
Yet at the same time, the U.S. military, and principally the U.S. Air Force, was shackled to its new policy of labeling all “unexplainable” flying saucer reports as being the result of “crackpots, hoaxes or delusions.” This was hard to do when, in addition to the sudden increase in all this war-making technology, the U.S. had hundreds of highly qualified and, in many cases, combat-hardened pilots airborne at any given time. When these pilots began reporting UFOs flying over Korea, the military found itself in an uncomfortable position: If they were to follow the new policy, they’d have to label any pilot who saw a UFO either a crackpot, a hoaxer or delusional.
To avoid this predicament, anything strange seen in the sky had to be explained away so as not to disparage the men the U.S. was counting on to help win the war.
The results were sometimes darkly humorous.
On January 29, 1952, two B-29 bombers flying in the area of Wonsan, North Korea, encountered a bright orange saucer-shaped object. Appearing out of nowhere, the object flew parallel to the pair of bombers for more than five minutes. As it happened, the crews on both B-29s were combat veterans of World War II. They later said what they’d witnessed that night bore no resemblance to anything they’d ever seen before.
The air force’s conclusion: The strange object was probably a “secret flare weapon” fielded by the communists.
In August 1952, near Sinuiju, North Korea, the crew of another B-29 bomber saw an orange cigar-shaped object streak by them at very high speed. The air force later claimed the crew had spotted a surface-to-air missile. The problem was, SAMs didn’t come into service until 1954. What’s more, the early versions were large, expensive, hard to move, hard to operate and built to protect major cities in the Soviet Union and the United States. It’s extremely unlikely a SAM of any kind would be found in the wilds of North Korea in 1952.
On October 16, 1952, two pilots in a T-6 training aircraft were flying over the front lines in the eastern part of South Korea when they spotted a large silver ball, 25 feet in diameter, traveling at nearly 200 miles per hour. When the pilots turned to get a better look at it, the object accelerated to 800 miles per hour and disappeared out over the sea. Air force intelligence later concluded the object was “an enemy balloon.”
Just after midnight on February 10, 1953, near Cho-do, North Korea, two U.S. Marines on guard duty spotted a large white object moving across the horizon. The object stopped, reversed direction, stopped again and then began moving back and forth across the sky, alternately flashing between red and white. A South Korean military officer stationed nearby also saw “a flying saucer” at the same time and same location in the sky. Eventually the air force ruled what all three men saw was “the planet Venus.”
* * *
In February 1952, the Associated Press reported that the Far East Air Force headquarters in Tokyo was refusing to issue any definitive statement about flying saucers. The following month, famous newspaper columnist Drew Pearson wrote in the Washington Post that the Pentagon knew of more than two dozen flying saucer incidents over Korea that had been both seen by eyewitnesses and tracked on radar, but still they would not admit to them. The implication, and it was a good one, was that the military was covering something up.
This official reticence did not make the sightings go away, though. There were many dramatic incidents between 1950 and the 1953 armistice that just couldn’t be explained — by anyone.
* * *
Anot
her night in the fall of 1951 found a task force of U.S. Navy ships sailing off the coast of Korea.
This small fleet numbered fourteen vessels; its capital ship was a CVE, a modestly sized aircraft carrier. Each warship was equipped with its own radar system; each was monitoring the airspace around the task force, on the lookout for enemy aircraft.
Suddenly the carrier’s radar systems lit up. An unidentified blip had appeared on its screens. Flying about a mile above the ocean’s surface, some kind of unknown object was circling the fleet.
The aircraft carrier launched airplanes to confront the intruder. At that moment, everyone involved was certain this was a North Korean aircraft sent to spy on the task force as a prelude to an attack.
But though a number of carrier planes were quickly in the air, none of them could get a visual fix on the object. It was a dark night, but also a thick layer of clouds had blanketed the task force, making good visibility almost impossible.
What began as a scramble then became a desperate search. The object continued to circle the fourteen-ship fleet, never leaving its radar screens. But none of the carrier planes could get close enough to actually see the intruder.
This went on all night. But at one point, after another batch of carrier aircraft was launched to take up the hunt, the situation changed dramatically. The unknown object suddenly ceased orbiting the fleet and instead maneuvered behind one of the navy planes.
To the astonishment of all, the object began flying in close formation with this carrier plane, still unseen but right on its tail. It stayed this way for at least five minutes, and then the object abruptly sped off, leaving the area at a speed in excess of 1,000 miles per hour.
In all, the fleet’s radars had tracked the object for more than seven hours.
Like the earlier case of the two huge saucers spotted by the trio of navy fighter-bombers, this incident could not be easily explained away. The initial suspicion was the object was a North Korean or Chinese MiG-15. (China had entered the war in the fall of 1950.) But like any jet fighter of the era, a MiG could stay airborne for only about two hours before its fuel began to run out. Yet, again, the navy ships had tracked the mystery object for more than seven hours. As aerial refueling had not yet been perfected, no military plane of any kind could stay in the air that long.
So, whatever was circling the task force that night, it wasn’t a MiG.
* * *
A similar incident occurred on February 2, 1952. The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Philippine Sea was sailing off the east coast of Korea when its radar operators picked up an unidentified incoming blip.
The object was 25 miles out from the carrier, flying at 52,000 feet, extremely high for any aircraft of the day. It was heading right for the carrier at high speed.
It was daytime, and what made this sighting unusual was that three observers on the carrier’s deck had also sighted the object through long-range binoculars. Now being tracked both on radar and by human eyes, once the object was within 20 miles of the carrier, it was assumed not to be a friendly aircraft. A general alarm was sounded, and the carrier’s crew rushed to their battle stations.
But just as this happened, the object performed a dramatic maneuver. It literally reversed direction in an instant and roared off at tremendous speed, fading from the carrier’s radar screen at 110 miles away.
The carrier immediately reported the incident to the Commander of Naval Forces, Far East. Its message read, in part, that while tracking the object, the carrier’s radar men had determined its speed went as high as 1,800 miles per hour, much faster than any aircraft of the day.
A few months later, a document detailing the incident was sent by the Commander of Naval Operations, Far East, to the Chief of Naval Operations. It was marked “Secret.”
Among other things, it stated the encounter was probably the first instance of both a visual and radar contact of a “high-speed aerial target” made in the Korean theater.
* * *
Ground sightings of UFOs during Korea were not uncommon, either.
For instance, some of the most vicious battles of the conflict were fought at a place called Pork Chop Hill. Located northeast of Seoul along the so-called main line of resistance, U.S. troops engaged in a series of back and forth battles with communist Chinese forces in the spring and summer of 1953, all for what was essentially a worthless piece of ground. Just after one of these battles, ground observers spotted UFOs flying at speeds of more than 800 miles per hour over the area.
But nothing in the entire war can compare to what happened at a place called Chorwon.
* * *
Just as Keith Chester’s Strange Company is considered the definitive book on “foo fighters,” Dr. Richard Haines’s book Advanced Aerial Devices Reported During the Korean War is the bible on UFO activity during the Korean conflict. The former NASA scientist gathered information on more than forty incidents involving UFOs and the U.S. military during the war, some of which have already been mentioned here.
But Haines also found and documented one of the most dramatic UFO incidents of any war, a rare “close encounter of the fifth kind,” a chilling episode that showed a decidedly nonpacifist side of UFOs.
Early in the spring of 1951, U.S. Army private Francis Wall found himself in a bunker on the slope of a mountain near Chorwon, North Korea. Wall’s unit was fighting the communists for control of a village below, and it was while they were shelling this village that something very strange happened.
“We suddenly noticed on our right-hand side what appeared to be a jack-o-lantern come wafting across the mountain,” Wall told Haines years later in an interview for his book. “This thing continued on down to the village where our artillery bursts were exploding. It had an orange glow in the beginning. We further noticed it could get into the center of an airburst of artillery and yet remain unharmed.”
Wall and his fellow soldiers watched the astonishing object for about thirty minutes. Then its disposition suddenly changed.
“This object approached us,” Wall said. “It turned a brilliant blue-green and started pulsating.”
Wall and his comrades became so alarmed, he asked his commanding officer for permission to fire at the object. His request was quickly granted.
“I fired at it with an M-1 rifle with armor-piercing bullets,” Wall said. “And I hit it. It must have been metallic because you could hear the projectiles slamming into it. But why would a bullet damage this craft if the artillery rounds didn’t? I don’t know. But after I hit it, the object went wild. The light was going on and off. It was moving erratically from side to side, as though it might crash. Then, a sound — we had heard no sound previous to this — the sound of diesel locomotives revving up. That’s the way this thing sounded.”
Things quickly went from bad to worse for the shocked GIs.
“We were attacked,” Wall stated. “We were swept by some form of ray. It was like a searchlight. You would feel a burning, tingling sensation all over your body [when it hit you], as though something were penetrating you.
“So the company commander hauled us into our bunkers. We didn’t know what was going to happen. We were scared. These are underground dugouts where you have peepholes to look out to fire at the enemy. So, I’m in my bunker with another man. We’re peeping out at this thing. It hovered over us for a while, lit up the whole area with its light, and then I saw it shoot off at a 45-degree angle, that quick, just there and gone.”
Simply spotting a UFO is considered a close encounter of the first kind. Seeing a UFO and having some associated physical effects, like feeling heat from it, is considered a close encounter of the second kind. Third kind encounters involve observing beings with the UFO. Fourth kind encounters are when a human is abducted by those beings.
Private Wall’s experience was a close encounter of the fifth kind (CE5). This is when a sort of two-way communication is established between the UFO and the humans that have encountered it. In this case, Walls fired at the Ch
orwon UFO, and it began a series of gyrations in response. As alarming as it was, two-way “communication” was established.
Even more astounding, Haines found other CE5 incidents years later in which the UFO in question acted in a very similar manner to the UFO at Chorwon, once it was “signaled.” In at least one case this was accomplished by a hunter in the United States shooting at a UFO, just as Walls had done in Korea. Same means of “signaling,” same gyrating reaction from the UFO, years later and a half a world away?
What does that tell us?
* * *
When the Chorwon UFO disappeared that day, it was not the end of it for Private Walls and his colleagues. Three days later, Walls’s unit had to be evacuated from the battlefield. Roads were cut so the soldiers could be taken out by ambulance. Many were too weak to walk.
When army physicians examined them, they were all found to have extremely elevated white blood cell counts, a serious condition that doctors had no explanation for.
UFO sightings continued throughout the Korean War, but the U.S. Air Force never changed its stance in refusing to talk about them. One could say it was “adamant in its ignorance.”
When the Korean War eventually came to an end, it was not by any clear-cut victory or peace treaty, but instead by a shaky armistice that, technically at least, is still in force today.
One quote, given by an air force spokesman during the conflict, seemed to say it all when it came to the subject of UFOs and the Korean War: “To affirm or deny that U.S. pilots were seeing UFOs over Korea would put the Air Force in the position of discussing UFOs. And we just will not do that.”
15
Tales From the Cold War
One Spaceman’s Journey…
In 1951, the U.S. Air Force’s 525th Fighter-Bomber Squadron was based at Neubiberg, West Germany.
