by Mack Maloney
In fact, the saucer was nearly five times larger that the R7V-2—meaning it was at least 600 feet across and 30 feet thick.
The gigantic saucer very nearly collided with the transport plane. It had climbed almost five miles in less than eight seconds, moving somewhere between 2,000 and 2,200 miles per hour. But somehow, the craft’s tremendous speed abruptly dissipated and a collision was avoided.
But then suddenly the giant saucer was riding off the plane’s wing, not 300 feet away. The two craft flew like this for a short while. Then the monstrous saucer accelerated to tremendous speed, and in an instant, it was gone, disappearing into the night.
Regaining his composure, the pilot radioed Gander air base and asked if they had anything unusual on their radar. Gander’s radar station replied that they’d indeed picked up an unidentified blip but had failed to get it on the radio.
The pilot gave Gander a short version of what had just happened, then proceeded as quickly as possible to the air base. When the transport plane landed, several air force intelligence officers were on hand to greet it.
They immediately began questioning the crew, but it was obvious to the navy pilot from the start that their interrogators were not surprised the transport plane had come in contact with the huge saucer. In the two hours of extensive questioning that followed, the air force men wanted to know details like how close the saucer had come to the transport and was there any electrical interference noticed on the plane during the encounter; questions that indicated they’d been through this before.
* * *
The R7V-2 transport eventually made its way to its destination of Pax River air station. There, the passengers were interrogated again, this time by navy intelligence officers. Only then were the passengers free to go, told no doubt not to mention to anybody what had happened.
About a week after the incident, the transport plane’s pilot got a call from a scientist working for a high level U.S. government agency. The scientist wanted to question the pilot about the saucer incident.
The navy had cleared the scientist to talk to the pilot, so the meeting was set up for the next day.
The scientist listened to the pilot’s version of the encounter. Then, at the end of the session, the scientist took out a folder that contained photographs of UFOs.
He showed the photos to the pilot, asking if he recognized any of them. According to the pilot, the third photo showed exactly what he and his colleagues had seen over the Atlantic that night. The pilot was astonished that the scientist, and by extension, the U.S. government, had an exact photo of the object.
The pilot demanded the scientist tell him where he’d gotten the photo. His rationale was if the U.S. government had a photo of what he saw, then someone must know what it was.
But the scientist said nothing.
According to the pilot, the man just gathered up his photos and left, without another word.
When Worlds Collide…
On the morning of July 22, 1956, a U.S. Air Force Convair C-131D cargo plane piloted by Major Mervin Stenvers took off from Hamilton Air Force Base, California, heading to Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The plane climbed to 16,000 feet and leveled out. It was a clear day with good weather. The crew settled in for what promised to be a routine flight.
But soon after reaching a point about 30 miles north of Bakersfield, California, something went wrong.
Later on, a person on board the C-131 recalled that it felt like the airplane had hit a brick wall. One moment they’d been flying along smoothly; the next, the plane was shaking violently from the tail right up to the nose. An instant after that, the C-131 was plummeting straight down.
The plane fell about two miles before Major Stenvers, a man with thousands of flight hours under his belt, somehow got control back. He finally managed to level off, just a few seconds away from disaster.
Stenvers immediately radioed Bakersfield airport and, among other things, urgently requested clearance to make an emergency landing. Minutes later, the plane bounced into Bakersfield and rolled to a stop. The much-relieved crew climbed off the plane only to be greeted by something inexplicable. The airplane’s tail was torn apart. Both the horizontal stabilizer and elevator were badly damaged. The tail structure itself was horribly bent. The crew was astonished. Considering the extent of the damage, that Stenvers had been able to get the plane down in one piece seemed miraculous.
* * *
The air force’s official explanation was that rivets in the plane’s tail had worked loose, causing the airstream to bend back the fuselage skin. In other words, metal fatigue. This had happened so quickly, the air force said, it led Stenvers and his crew to believe they’d hit something in midair.
But there was a problem with this. Subsequent investigation of the Convair C-131 airframe revealed no structural problems of that type. Indeed, at the time, there were hundreds of these planes flying as commercial airliners around the world. Had this been an inherent structural problem with this airframe, the plane, in all its variations, would have been grounded until a solution was found — and yet they weren’t.
So what really happened?
Again, Stenvers and his copilot were certain they’d hit something in the air. But when local authorities searched for any wreckage on the ground in the vicinity of the incident, nothing was found.
Then came a report that a UFO had been spotted in the area shortly before the incident. Witnesses had seen an oval-shaped object flashing through the skies near Fresno, trailing a greenish light in its wake. Fresno is only about 50 miles away from where the incident happened.
So had the C-131 collided with a UFO?
Later on, one of the air force officers investigating the C-131 incident sent an anonymous report to UFO investigator Major Donald Keyhoe of the U.S. Marines. According to this source, whom Keyhoe trusted implicitly, shortly after regaining control of the C-131, Major Stenvers had indeed radioed Bakersfield, urgently requesting clearance to make an emergency landing. But he also told the ground control that his plane had been hit by a flying saucer.
His comments were never entered into the official account of the incident, and no follow-up investigation was ever done.
UFO Stalks Bomber
On the night of July 17, 1957, a U.S. Air Force RB-47H jet aircraft took off from Forbes Air Force Base in Topeka, Kansas, and headed south toward the Gulf of Mexico.
The six-man crew — two pilots, a navigator and three equipment monitors — had a busy night ahead of them. First, they were scheduled to do a gunnery drill over Texas. Then they would proceed to a navigation exercise over the open waters of the gulf, and finally, do an electronic countermeasures (ECM) exercise overland on the return trip to Topeka.
The RB-47 was a variant of the B-47 heavy bomber, the little brother of the B-52 Stratofortress. Normally manned by a crew of three, this particular model carried the three additional crewmembers needed to look after its sizable array of ECM gear. Located in stations at the rear of the airplane, these men were known as EWOs, or electronic warfare officers.
The equipment jammed inside the big six-engine plane could best be described as “antiradar” gear. Designed to detect electromagnetic radiation coming from sources on the ground, the RB-47 had the means to pinpoint enemy radar stations that other U.S. aircraft could then bomb and destroy. This particular plane and crew were soon to be deployed to Germany and the front line of the Cold War, thus the need for the training mission.
By 4 A.M., the aircraft crew had finished their gunnery exercise and their open-water navigation training. The big plane was now turning back toward the coast, intent on making landfall somewhere above Gulfport, Mississippi. That’s when one of its EWOs detected a bizarre signal on his ECM equipment. It indicated something was following the airplane.
This was odd because the signal was of a type normally emitted by radar ground stations. Yet it was coming from an airborne source out over the Gulf.
The only explanation was the e
quipment was malfunctioning. But then as the EWO watched, the signal’s source came right up on the plane — and according to his scope, began to fly a ring around it.
The EWO was astonished. The RB-47 was traveling at 500 miles per hour, nearly as fast as the fastest jet fighters of the day. What could fly a ring around the big bomber?
It was so peculiar, the EWO became convinced something was wrong with his gear and said nothing to the rest of the crew. As the plane flew north, the signal faded from his scope.
Time passed. The plane made its uneventful preassigned turn over Mississippi. The task now was to work the aircraft’s ECM antiradar detection gear, using air force radar units on the ground as simulated targets.
Just as this part of the mission was about to begin, though, the RB-47’s pilot saw a bright light off to his left. It was flying around 34,000 feet, the same altitude as his aircraft.
Thinking it was another airplane straying into their flight path, the pilot ordered the crew to prepare for evasive action. But before the crew could react, the bright light flashed by the nose of the aircraft at tremendous speed — and then blinked out.
Recovering quickly from the near miss, the pilot hastily explained to the crew what had just happened. That’s when the EWO revealed the odd signal he’d picked up a short time before.
It was now about 4:10 A.M. CST, and the plane was somewhere over Louisiana. The EWO rechecked his equipment and discovered a signal in the same location as the pilot had seen the bright light before it blinked out. The ECM equipment was checked again, and all of it was found in good working order. This confirmed that the signal was not coming from ground-based radar.
That’s when the plane’s crew realized that the signal’s source — whatever it was — was flying alongside the RB-47, keeping pace with it, even as the plane was still flying at 500 miles per hour.
* * *
The RB-47 was soon back over Texas.
Again the pilot spotted an extremely bright light in front of the aircraft and about a mile below. Then the EWOs reported seeing two signals, and sure enough, the pilot and copilot saw red lights in those locations. The pilot contacted a radar station near Duncansville, Texas, and reported what was going on. When he gave the radar station personnel the position of the mysterious lights, they confirmed they were picking up radar blips exactly where the RB-47 crew said the blips would be.
Deciding they’d had enough of this, the RB-47 pilot requested permission from the Duncansville station to pursue the lights. Permission was granted — and the chase was on.
The RB-47 set off toward one of the lights. Just a few seconds into the pursuit, though, the light stopped in midair, causing the jet to overshoot it. Moments later, the light blinked out. When it did, it also disappeared from the RB-47’s radar, as well as that of the radar station on the ground.
The RB-47 pilot went into a steep turn, and the light suddenly blinked back on again — along with radar indications on the plane’s scope and those below. Now the RB-47 found itself only about five miles away from the UFO. But suddenly the object dropped three miles down to 15,000 feet and disappeared again, both visually and from radar.
At this point, low on fuel, the RB-47 had to return to its original course. The airplane picked up a signal two minutes later, and the pilots saw one of the lights once more. Passing over Oklahoma, this signal’s source took up station behind the bomber again. It finally vanished just as the RB-47 was passing over Oklahoma City. In all, the stalking had lasted more than an hour.
Though it couldn’t explain how the bomber’s sophisticated equipment had tracked something close by in the air during the flight, or how that something managed to blink on and off of at least two tracking radar screens, or that the RB-47’s pilots had actually seen not one but two bright lights in the sky and had actually given pursuit, Project Blue Book nevertheless said later that the sightings were caused by an ordinary jet airliner.
A Circle Is Completed
On the morning of May 3, 1957, a film crew at Edwards Air Force Base was tasked with filming a new piece of equipment near one of the base’s runways. The film crew consisted of two enlisted men. Both were trained photographers and were experienced at shooting pictures at the vast air base.
Located in the desert on the far eastern edge of Los Angeles County, Edwards was then, and still is today, a mecca for America’s military pilots. Its official name is the Air Force Flight Test Center, and as such it is the gathering place for this country’s test pilots, the elite among America’s air warriors.
Many of the U.S. military’s experimental aircraft have been flight-tested there over the years. Because the air base is located next to an enormous dry lake bed, its runways literally extend for miles, a necessity when flying new, advanced and unpredictable airframes.
Edwards is also a highly restricted place. All of its activities are classified. Security breaches there are considered on the same level as those at Area 51, several hundred miles to the northeast in the Nevada desert. In fact, technically speaking, Area 51 is considered an extension of Edwards Air Force Base.
This day, the two enlisted men were filming a precision landing device called an Askania system. It consisted of a specialized camera designed to take one frame per second, images that would be used later to study aircraft landing characteristics.
They were equipped with a movie camera as well as a regular still camera.
They began work at 8 A.M.
* * *
Later that morning, the two men, out of breath and extremely anxious, rushed in to see their commanding officer.
They’d just seen a flying saucer out on the runway — this is what they told their superior. The craft had flown right over their heads, had landed about 150 feet away from them, and when they tried to approach it, it took off at great speed. The object was indeed saucer shaped, was silver metallic and had landed on three extended gears.
Given that these men were photographers, the officer’s first question was obvious. “Did you get any pictures?” he asked.
They replied: “Yes, sir. We were shooting the whole time.” The officer told the men to develop the film immediately. In the meantime the officer called a special number at the Pentagon used by the military for occasions such as this. The officer’s first conversation was with another captain. He was then passed on to a colonel who passed him on to a general. The general ordered him to develop the film but not to make any copies. He was then to put the film into a secure pouch and have it flown immediately to Washington DC on the Edwards base commander’s plane.
The officer did what the general ordered, but not before looking at the still camera’s negatives. What he saw astonished him. The photos were clear, crisp and in focus — and indeed, they showed the object landing, at rest and taking off again. He didn’t look at the motion-picture film — but he didn’t have to. He knew he was looking at a flying saucer.
And that was ironic, to say he least, because this was not the officer’s first brush with UFOs.
The officer was Gordon Cooper, now a captain and a test pilot, and just a couple of years away from being selected as one of America’s first astronauts.
What he’d seen up close in the photos was pretty much what he’d seen flying so high over West Germany back in 1951.
The circle was complete — or so it seemed.
Cooper said later that once the photos and film reached Washington, he was sure there would be a huge investigation and that he’d be asked about everything he knew.
But that investigation never materialized. Despite the fact that there was now photographic evidence of a flying saucer landing, in the middle of a highly classified installation no less, the air force never did anything about it. There was no follow-up. In fact, no one in the military ever mentioned it to Cooper again.
To his dying day — October 4, 2004—Gordon Cooper, test pilot, astronaut and American hero, not just suspected, but actually knew, like hundreds of other U.S. military pilots �
� pilots who’d been told they were chasing temperature inversions, 800-mile-per-hour balloons, off-course airliners and the planet Venus — knew, that UFOs existed, and that throughout the 1950s the government they’d devoted their lives to had gone to great lengths to cover them up.
PART SIX
The 1960s and 1970s
16
The Great ICBM Flap
In autumn of 1962, the Soviet Union secretly installed nuclear-armed missiles on the communist-controlled island of Cuba, just 90 miles off the tip of Florida.
The missiles were soon detected by American spy planes, and the U.S. president at the time, John F. Kennedy, demanded the Soviets remove them or risk an all-out nuclear war.
For two weeks the world held its collective breath, fully aware that a massive nuclear exchange would end most, if not all, life on Earth.
The crisis eased at the end of October when the Soviets agreed to dismantle their missile sites. But the whole frightening episode gave the American public a harsh education on what nuclear brinkmanship was all about and how at the time, the United States and Russia alone had enough atomic weapons, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), to destroy the planet many times over.
The crisis played out on TV, on radio and in newspapers. Every American citizen knew what was happening hour by hour, if not minute by minute. Those two weeks in October 1962 were unparalleled for creating fear and uncertainty around the world.
But very few people know that starting right around the same time in the early 1960s, the United States had another nuclear missile crisis. This one involved an extremely mysterious entity that caused dozens of security breaches at U.S. ICBM sites, at times shutting down their launch mechanisms, at times starting launch sequences and, by some reports, at times even breaking into ICBM launch silos, which are among the most guarded, most military-sensitive installations on earth.
